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.
Off the “beaten path”, off in a forgotten corner of the community of Salem, Massachusetts is this little (seemingly forgotten) park. Forest River Park.
I visited it by chance. It was beautiful and pristine.
Not too many people ever visited it. Too bad. It was beautiful
A little oasis from the encroaching town.
Forest River Park in Salem, Massachusetts, was created to provide a public recreational area that takes advantage of the natural beauty and waterfront of Salem Harbor. The park offers access to green space, walking trails, and waterfront activities. It was established to enhance community life and preserve natural landscapes for public enjoyment.
It really was beautiful. A undiscovered and mostly forgotten gem of a park. It’s full of overly grown grass around rocky boulder facing a large ocean bay. Lots of shady trees, fresh New England air.
Just a perfect, quiet space.
I loved it when I visited it.
A nice little paradise.
Something that has been forgotten in the United States today. How many, many parks that the United States have built in the tiny communities over the last few years? The last few decades? How about the last century?
Answer: NONE.
Zero.
Zilch!
It was beautiful.
People, couples, families all need a sense of a nice piece of nearby nature. The Europeans and Chinese know this. Americans have forgotten this.
Enjoy local exploration.
You might be surprised at what you might discover.
Now for the sad part of this story.
It was renovated in 2021.
All the grass, boulders, and trees were bulldozed over. And a nice pavilion of concrete and glass, with a big wide parking lot was put in its place.
You can well see that the city planners maximized the use of the space.
Cutting down all of the trees, removing all of the bushes, and shrubbery, and dynamiting all of the boulders.
Instead of a lonely, off the beaten track area of greenery, we now have a government run facility with a pools and displays of local wildlife that used to live here.
As you can see (with the trees to scale), this “new” park is mostly a parking lot, a building and a large cement pool. The only remaining “green area” is the 25% to the left in the picture. Which consists of 4 to 7 trees and some decorate shrubbery. Plus additional parking.
Today, this is what the “park” looks like… this is a 3D rendering. But it is not accurate. In truth the “green trees” aren’t there.
Nope. The rendering is lying.
What you think is green trees is really this…
It’s nice, and quaint. But a wooded area it is NOT. It’s just roads and homes with a tree interspersed here and there. Sorry and sad to say.
Its truly a sad thing to behold. A removal of nature to create a parking lot.
A sad, sad state of American decay.
Today…
Is war between the USA and China inevitable?
Do people in Macau hate Mainlanders like people in Hong Kong do?
We welcome them with open arms.
The size of the crowds can be overwhelming though. Macau has a land mass if 28 SQ km. A population of 680,000. The densest population on the planet.
Last week we had 160,000 visitors in a single day.
Buses are jammed and slow with such crowds. There are areas that you absolutely avoid to not get into a crowd.
The government pays citizens US $1200 a year as a wealth sharing scheme. (Large taxes from the casinos).
I look at it as an inconvenience payment.
But no we welcome mainland visitors because they spend, spend spend.
We don’t bite the hand that feeds us.
An old MM video
I made this one about a year and a half ago. Short. Maybe three minutes long.
Behind the scenes of Chinese military might
Canada follows the US and imposes 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, including Tesla. What do you think?
China manufactured 9.05 Million Electric Vehicles in 2023
Of these 8.09 Million were sold within China while 960,000 were exported of which most were Tesla
So China is pretty OK
With virtually 90% EVs sold within China, the EV companies need to restructure their profits to keep making money in China and keep innovating and making profit
China has a long potential for buying EVs and for the next 15–16 years at least, Chinese EVs can innovate and keep their edge from the Domestic Market without dependence on US or Europe leave alone Canada
Meanwhile they have the Russian Market which has 41 Million Middle Class consumers plus the Eastern European and Asean markets with a further 27 Million
The thing is THEY HAVE TO MAKE MORE PROFIT IN CHINA which means they have to tweak their profit structure and ask for a waiver in lateral subsidies and rise their costs by 7%–9%
Presently BYD makes under 9000 CNY in China per Car versus a whopping 38900 CNY in Europe
If they absorb this tariff – then their profit reduces to 14200 CNY for that model which is still higher than the profit they make in China
So they may just absorb the tariff and keep selling the EVs and shaving their profits
Or
They may sell their parts to joint ventures in Europe and Canada and earn royalty or license fees
Either way they are pretty OK for the next 10–15 years
They have a huge domestic market that is growing bigger every day
Why does China seem to be single in the game without many allies yet appears so strong?
According to Chinese economists and strategies. Here is what they have observed during the cold war. In order to gain those so called allies, the US gave out a huge amount of aid to western Europe, known as the marshall plan. In order to compete with America, the USSR offered something similar to eastern Europe but only half as impressive. In the Soviet camp, eastern Europe weren’t happy became they got less aid and poorer than their neighbors. Russia itself wasn’t happy because it kept giving out aid, and cheap oils, resulted in huge internal debt. And finally their people couldn’t take it, and dissolved the USSR. The only ones that were happy at the time, were Vietnam, NK, and maybe India.
The USA wasn’t in a better position, they had lost all their traditional industries to Japan and western Europe. If it wasn’t for the new industries they invented, the USA would be done in the 90s, losing to Japan and Europe. So stop saying that China had stolen jobs from the America, the US had lost those jobs a long time ago. The cold war was a death race, the US is still hurting from it.
What was China’s conclusion? Only inclusive naturally developed trade relationship can benefit both sides. In other words, China aren’t going to pay for allies, that’s prostitution. So, how does China deal with the gigantic alliance structure of the US? Let me use Australia as an example, China Australia trade is almost 350B per year. In order for Australia to side with the US completely(not just verbally) against China, the US would have to compensate for their lost. So, China not only benefited from the trade with Australia, but also increase the cost for the US to maintain their alliance structure. That’s why you saw the US can only afford to pay country like the Philippines to confront China. China doesn’t pay any country to side with it political and militarily, it wants the US to pay more maintaining their alliances.
The US can’t even relocate TSMC from Taiwan back to the US and create some high quality jobs, because if they do that, Taiwan’s only economic relationship with the US would be gone.
What If You Landed on Kepler 22-B?
What is your best badass firearm story?
I grew up in rural areas. I learned to shoot when I was 7. I then went to college, and met my wife who lived in a nearby town with her parents while attending college. I have always been the type who doesn’t make much bravado out of being able to defend myself. I don’t really want to hurt anybody, but I will hurt anybody who threatens my family.
My in-laws managed to check nearly every one of Jeff Foxworthy’s you might be a redneck. Somehow in a town of 30,000 they lived off the pavement and down a dirt road. Father-in-laws camper shell had more curtains than their home.
My future in-laws got it into their heads I was a soft college boy. It might be because I always dressed up to pick up their daughter for dates. It might be because at 6′2″ and 240 lbs much of it muscle at the time, I was cautious with my strength. It might be because I didn’t drink or cuss. Never mind I had relatives on my Mom’s side almost just like them, grew up in the country, shot coyotes attacking livestock, bucked hay, worked on ranches, worked in a feed store, and worked in a lumber mill.
After my future father-in-law said if he saw me around again I better be able to outrun buckshot, we eloped. This led to about a few months of drunken threatening messages left on our answering machine.
Eventually two things thawed the relationship a bit. One was my mother-in-laws gambling addiction, and need a babysitter. My wife’s over a decade younger sibling couldn’t be left alone without making a disaster when mother-in-law went gambling. The other was learning we were expecting their first grandchild.
My Father-in-law decided I need to learn how to shoot to protect his future grandchild. He asked if I had ever shot a firearm. My answer was, “Some” and didn’t elaborate. He had me drive his truck (had he driven he would probably have got a DUI) out to BLM land. He took the 6 cans he had finished off and lined them up on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, and handed me a handgun. I forget exactly what it was but it was a very small pistol and I forget what it was chambered in. It wasn’t .22 LR, but might have been .25 ACP. This was in 1994. I shot the first 4 cans no problem. When I shot the 5th can it knocked over the 6th can so the top was facing us. I shot it, and he immediately said I missed one. I said I didn’t think so. He picked it up and I had shot it through the opening in the top of the can. I could not have hit there if I had tried, but it still impressed him. (A firearm I had never fired before, with unknown ammunition, tiny pocket pistol, at about 20 feet/6 meters).
Later that evening he was drunk came at me swinging. I put him in a bear hug, told him I didn’t want to hurt him, and placed him on the lawn. He got back up swinging. I did the same thing again except instead of setting him down I tossed him a few feet onto the lawn. The next day he said, “I guess you can protect my daughter and grandchild.”
All about Cottages
Maybe too many are too cutesy. Still, the more plain ones are more suitable for myself. Real and actual historical cottages, especially those from the Victorian era, were awesome.
Proof Egyptians Didn’t Build The Pyramids?
Which Asian country has the lowest crime rate compared to Japan and South Korea?
I will probably make your jaw drop- Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore are close contenders to Japan.
Let’s compare how is life in ‘low crimes’ like in Tokyo and ‘ slightly higher crimes’ in Kuala Lumper see what transpires.
Anywhere in Tokyo, intrusion into someone’s privacy raises an eyebrow.. like, A man knock on your door at midnight: “ I can’t sleep! from my bedroom I can see the wall light at your porch.”— You bow low and says, “I’m so sorry, I’ll turn if off at once.”
In Kuala Lumpur you can light up the entire house all night like Christmas day or Ramadan come early in Damansara Height or Bangsar , a millionaire’s row —No one will say nothing! Why? To scare the would be thieves…and it works.
Corruptions in Japan do exist and is a crime. But it’s no match with **Thailand ** where corruption is hard to define. Such as, when a top cop borrowed 300 million Baht from the massage king and already paid back just in time before the corruption buster knocked on his door. So, no case means ‘no corruption’ in Thailand.
Crimes against women hardly happened in Japan unlike **Thailand **where rape is a century-old practice, police consider —it: no big deal** but rapists may go scott-free after the police negotiate to get the rapist to pay compensation to the victim… So no case, no crime, and no bad conduct—as good as a ‘clean sheet’ for that guy.
Before a crime like road rage can happen in Japan a “bow to one another” has taken place, thus no crime committed, so road rage in Japan is unheard off.
Similarly **Singapore**, before any road rage happens, a teasing to one another as a prelude like “ You punch me first, lah, a goondu!” The other driver may curse and swear but drive off. So, no case, no jail terms as no one throws the first punch, and no crime was committed. Singapore is almost a road rage-crime-free.
But living in Japan is awesome for a loner and you are guaranteed to have peace on the busiest street where you live as no one looks at you, talks to you, and you are invisible, so to speak! (even in Shibuya or Ginza) in Japan’s Golden Week.
How would you describe the USA in just one phrase?
Utterly divided.
A person doesn’t have to have a degree in politics to see how divided and tribalistic America has become recently. I honestly don’t think we’ve been this separate as a country since the Civil War.
People have fallen for the “if you’re not 100% for us, then you’re 100% against us” mentality. You can see this on either side of the aisle. To be clear, I’m not demonizing either major American political party here. I’m condemning them. There’s this one quote from a fella you might know about by the name of Abraham Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” While Lincoln was referring to slave states versus free states, I am using his quote to refer to Republicans versus Democrats.
With division, comes bloodshed. We’ve seen it with slavery vs. freedom, Christian vs. Muslim, Protestant vs. Catholic, Communist vs. Capitalist, white vs. black, and I think that soon we’ll start to see Democrat vs. Republican.
Your CAT Manifested YOU | SECRET Spiritual SIGNIFICANCE of Cats
What did you do after learning your spouse cheated on you?
I drove an hour and a half to take her home. No arguments, no begging—just a quiet drive. When we arrived, I helped her pack up her things, making sure she had everything she needed. Once her bags were ready, I sent her on her way without a second thought. I’ve always believed that people who don’t want to be in my life, simply don’t have to be. I won’t be someone’s second choice.
This wasn’t just some mistake. It wasn’t a slip-up or an innocent misunderstanding. The lies, the deceptions, the secret calls and texts—none of that happens by accident. It’s not like she accidentally fell into another man’s bed or stumbled into those intimate conversations. She made deliberate choices, and I saw them for what they were.
Forgiving her came easily because I knew I had done nothing wrong. Yes, it hurt, but I refused to let her continue to have power over my emotions. Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional. I chose to let her go, not just physically, but emotionally. It was her loss, not mine. I didn’t reach out, and she didn’t either. I wasn’t going to live in some fantasy or nightmare she created.
When she realized I wasn’t coming back, she got angry. She called me selfish for ending things, claiming she was a human being who deserved understanding. My response was simple: “So am I.” That was the end of it. That very night, she moved in with the guy she cheated with.
But I know my worth. I deserve more than what she was offering. I won’t settle for anything less.
How would you describe the USA in just one phrase?
A broken-down mess.
A perhaps once great nation struggling with a dysfunctional political system: only two significant parties, completely reliant on the availability of big bucks (with inevitable consequences, bearing in mind where those bucks come from) and which has slipped into the new Post-truth era with hardly a squeak of protest. (Certainly there have been more than murmurings of dissent among intellectuals and some journalists, but no groundswell of disgust or mass revolt.)
Also a country that likes to hide its woes. It likes to be seen as the wealthiest in the world, as the ‘land of opportunity’ – and yet forty percent of households could not meet an unexpected bill of $400 without having to sell something or borrow.
To those who complacently trot out platitudes like ‘it’s the greatest country in the world’, I’d say, first ‘open your eyes!’ and second: ‘if you want it to be, do something to make it so…’
In many ways there are echoes of this in my own stricken country, the UK, which also has a dysfunctional democracy and too many who want to live on past glories (real or imagined) and put their faith in a lying bunch of shysters who they imagine will lead them back to those halcyon days. (The pro-Brexit rhetoric really did include references to ‘sunlit uplands’, crudely parodying one of Churchill’s wartime speeches. ) They have a rude awakening in store. Those of us who don’t share the dream are already all too aware of the grim reality – actual and pending.
U.S. Government IS LYING And Evidence Of ALIENS Exists: NewsNation SPECIAL REPORT
This is a US government affiliated channel. So the fact that this is public says A LOT.
What’s the best thing someone told you on their deathbed that made you appreciate life in a whole new way?
This is a story that, until now, I have only told a handful of people. And I have been typing it with tears in my eyes all the way through.
It happened six and a half year ago. I just turned 21 at the time and was in my second year of college. My mother had battled breast cancer for a short eight months when the doctor told us there was nothing left they could do. She would die, too young, after an eventful life.
About three weeks after hearing this, and approximately two weeks before she would eventually die, we were sitting in her hospital room talking about life and everything that had happened. It was here, quite unannounced and rather casually, that she made a statement which I still repeat to myself at least once a week. That statement got me through the first years of mourning; I clung onto it. I still often repeat it to friends and family around me when they are facing adversity. You could say it has become my life motto.
The context of this statement goes back to before my mother was even born in 1949, in the Netherlands. My grandparents had three kids: two sons and a daughter. My grandfather was a pastor and, also considering it was early post-war time, they were just getting by. My grandmother was a dominant and strict woman, and she laid down the law at home. As the family was barely getting by with three children and didn’t want any more, my grandmother decided to get sterilized. The doctor provided her with a hormone treatment; however, instead of becoming sterile, the treatment caused my grandmother to become extremely fertile. She soon became pregnant and gave birth nine months later to triplets, a boy and two girls — my mother was born. During my mother’s youth, my grandmother made no secret of the fact that my mother was an unwanted child. My mother obviously felt left out by my grandmother and grandfather, who let it all happen. My mother left her parents’ house still a teenager.
In the years to come, my mother started making a living for herself as a caretaker for elderly and disabled people. Still struggling with her ‘unfair’ youth, she did maintain a very good relationship with her older brothers and sister. In her late 20s, she met my father. They started dating and eventually got married. My mother desperately wanted to have children and create a happy family, so they started trying. It took a lot of time, and two failed pregnancies, but eventually she did get pregnant with my older sister. She was soon told the baby had a severe form of Cystic Fibrosis (CF), a genetic disorder, which meant she would die a young age. After a long time of trying, and failing, to become pregnant, this was a major shock for both my parents. My sister was in the hospital for the entire first year of her life and had to spend several weeks each year in the hospital for treatment. Taking care of a young child is hard for young parents, but this is especially the case when the young child is chronically ill and needs multiple treatments a day. My parents put their teeth in it and got by and, eventually, even started trying to get pregnant again. And they did! But then the heartbreaking message came: this baby had a severe form of CF, too. Raising two children with severe forms of CF would inevitably mean that one of the two would have to witness the other become weaker and weaker, until death followed, knowing that he/she too will one day become that weak and die at a too-young age. My parents dreaded this future and took the hardest decision of their lives: to have an abortion, to protect both children from the added psychological drama. Not long after this, my parents decided to adopt a child, a girl with little opportunity in her own country, Poland, as she was an orphan with a mental disability. However joyful this appeared at the start, the mental disability proved too severe for the girl to be raised in a regular home, and she was taken away within a year.
And then I was born. Healthy. It wasn’t a particularly easy birth; I was quite big and heavy, causing my birth almost to take my mother’s life, but eventually everyone was fine. A little less than three years later, my younger brother was born, also healthy as could be. My mother finally had her happy little family as she had always wanted, and as she had tried for so long. I believe those were some of the happiest moments of her life.
But of course, my sister was still chronically ill. She would be in and out of the hospital each year, which mostly was only for a few days or weeks, until one year it became really bad. My sister had already been in the hospital for many weeks, longer than usual, when she was allowed a week of ‘holiday’ in France. She was so excited to go, but only a few days after her arrival she became extremely ill, vomiting blood in her bed. She was taken to the local hospital and eventually flown by helicopter to the hospital in Bordeaux. It turned out her organs had started to fail and she needed a new liver to survive. She was flown to the Netherlands and put on a waiting list for a transplant. However, this took too long and my sister soon became weaker. She died in the hospital at age 13.
Remember how as a young child your parents seemed like superheroes? The strongest people in the world, who could take on anything?
I remember this moment as the first time I saw my parents absolutely broken. I remember that at the funeral my mother could hardly stand on her feet, and people had to support her as she kept collapsing in tears. She was devastated. In the period that followed, things did not get easier for my mother. Her older sister, with whom she had a very good relationship, died of breast cancer following a short sickbed. Not much later, her oldest brother died of the consequences of being an alcoholic. Following, her brother from the triplets was left by his wife, and shortly thereafter died from a heart attack, also as a consequence of his alcohol abuse. The aftermath of the death of so many loved ones was a number of family arguments over whose fault it was that her brothers became alcoholics, and how the inheritance should be divided. The adversity seemed to never stop.
But then it did. Some five happy, carefree years followed. I saw my mother become happier and happier. She started to work again, which she had stopped during my sister’s illness, and she enjoyed it. She was active in the church community in our town, she enjoyed tennis, and she had a lot of friends. It all seemed to turn for the better. But then…
Cancer.
Unlike what you might think, we went into this really positively. You know why? Because we believed we, and especially my mother, had already received our portion of adversity. This would be our time, we were going to conquer this disease. We even organized a big party when my mother was halfway through her chemotherapy because we were halfway to beating this disease! The tumor became smaller, there seemed to be no metastases, and operations were successful. We were almost there!
But, unfortunately, I would not be typing this post if that was how the story ended.
I received a call from my dad, early December. My mother was rushed to the hospital that night after falling in the kitchen. They had found a brain tumor, metastases in her lungs, and metastases in her bones. Even though it felt as if we had almost defeated the disease, there was nothing they could do for her any more. She would be in the hospital from that point on. To make matters worse, my father was hospitalized two weeks later for an emergency stomach operation. He was in the same hospital on the 6th floor, my mother was on the 8th. It was around Christmas and I would visit them every day. Most of the time, my mother was very confused due to the tumor pressing on her brain but, sometimes, she had a clear moment.
It was during one of these clear moments that I was sitting on her bed and we were talking about life and everything that had happened. We talked about my studies and what I would do, later in life, when she would not be around anymore. About how I would some day graduate, maybe get married. We talked about her youth, about her alcoholic brothers, about the failed pregnancies, about my sister. Even about the fact that it was so screwed up that she was living some of her last weeks, and exactly at that time my dad became hospitalized.
And it was at that time that she looked at me and said:
‘’You know what, actually I am glad about all the shit that happened to me in life. And a lot of shit díd happen. But all those harsh times, all the adversity, it has taught me to enjoy and cherish all the good things in life more intensely than I imagined possible. I am grateful for everything and everyone I had.’’
There you have it. She wasn’t happy despite adversity, no, she thanked adversity for making her enjoy everything and everyone. You hear that cancer? CF? Alcoholism? You ain’t got nothing on her, heck, you made her stronger. She díd conquer cancer, in her way, she conquered it all.
It has changed how I see everything around me since. From minor setbacks to freaking mountains of adversity, I always try to approach it with a smile on my face. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t pretend everything is okay when it is not, but I fight, I keep going, and I keep telling myself that, at the very worst, adversity is going to make me stronger. And you know what? I am as happy a person as I could be!
I hope my mother’s wise words might help some of you, like they have helped me and still help me every day.
In loving memory of my mother: you won’t be gone until you’re forgotten.
The Godfather 1 ♦ “Dont ever take sides with anyone against the family again”
Why do Chinese people wear Western clothing when they think Chinese culture is superior to the West? Indian leaders wear their traditional clothing to formal meeting. Why don’t the Chinese? Do the Chinese know their culture is inferior to the West?
Chinese leaders changed to western clothing as a matter of protocol.
There are many research studies to back this up and we can see it in applications as well.
IBM salesman (no women in those days) wore a suit with a white shirt and classic tie. That was the dress code.
Sales dramatically improved.
Traditionally salesman wore sports coat and trousers. So the IBM look made them look like a businessman not a salesperson. They were talking to peers when they made their calls.
In his book Dress for Success, the author John Molloy conducted studies using different clothing. He sent people to offices to deliver a small package. If they dressed in a sports jacket and trousers,the receptionist always said leave it with me. If they were dressed in a suit with a shirt and tie, they would be told to knock on the door and give it to the executive or they call him to come out and get the package.
Chinese are very pragmatic.
They use whatever works.
Dressing in white shirt and tie with a tailored suit means you at the same level as your counterpart. When you meet the president of the US, you dress like him.
Interestingly though is Xi Jinping’s wife who dresses in traditional Chinese attire when she accompanies him on state visits.
My GF Insisted On Taking A 1 Week Break, So I Slept With Her Coworker & Dumped Her When She Returned
Jerry Springer type nonsense. *sheech*
I palm-slap myself for the craziness in the West.
Has a computer programmer ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?
Bought in as a contractor/programmer to work on an in-house system that they wanted to modify.
“Its the best system – its in C++, so its really fast”
No probs, I can work on that.
Get in there, day 1 – nice big factory, decent office space, lots of nice cars in the carpark. Get myself all setup on the system, meet the other programmer (just 1 developer in the whole company … hmmm)
Me > “OK, account is all setup, setup dev tools, meet the manager, discussed the general plan …. ready to start reading. Where is the code?”
OtherProgrammer > “?”
Me > “The source code. The C++ code ?”
OtherProgrammer > “Oh, we dont have the source code”
Me > “??”
Me > “This is an in-house system, right ? The thing you want to modify, you own it right ?”
OtherProgrammer > “Yes, its an in house system, we own it, its all ours”
Me > “and the code ?”
OtherProgrammer > “Oh I see what you mean. Yeah, that was all written by another contractor. He isnt here anymore”
Me > “did he …. leave any code by any chance ?”
OtherProgrammer > “No, we didnt pay him in the end, so he didnt give us the code”
…. at which point, I had a lot more questions than I knew I would ever get answers for. By the end of the week, I had managed to get out of that initial project and work on a different project they had on the go, so the billable hours could be justified still.
Same problem though – they had “another contractor” offsite who was working on something entirely different that was pretty interesting. So I started working on some infrastructure around that instead. It was some cool stuff the other guy was building, was going to be fun.
And it meant I didnt have to deal with their one and only full time “Developer” that worked there somehow without any source code, and the obviously clueless engineering manager was none the wiser about why this was sub optimal.
… Until one day, he suggested I dont get too involved in that other project either.
Me > “Oh, why’s that ? whats wrong with project ?”
OtherProgrammer > “Nothing, he is doing great work”
Me > “?”
OtherProgrammer > “But we have decided that we are not going to pay him for it <big smile>”
… just like that ! Quite out in the open about it. Bragging about how clever they are, they can get work done by honest people, and still manage to weasel their way out of having to pay for it.
So Clever, and proud of it too.
See ya later, idiots !
(in case you are wondering – yeah, I got my billed hours paid …. eventually … every last cent)
Andrew DESTROYS entitled 52 year old FEMINIST saying she deserves a TRADITIONAL man
52 year old woman tries to find love.
I feel for her. She wasn’t compatible with anyone.
Shorpy
Why is the United States losing its hegemony to China?
That’s incorrect framing.
America has pursued global hegemony since the fall of the Berlin wall, going so far to embrace the “end of history and the last man”.
What is global hegemony? Dominance over ALL states and peoples.
That means beating down all comers, and making examples of those who say no to the United States, as sheikh hasina found to great fluster and regret recently.
Unfortunately, 4% dominating over the 96% is a fool’s errand, as America finds itself drowning in debt, and having to deal with conflicts in the middle east and Europe, while following through on explicit policy to concentrate and expand military resources in the western pacific.
That’s untenable, and exhausting, not too different from the 50% drawdown of the SPR to cap runaway energy prices recently.
America is frittering away past reserves, burning its legacy rather than building for the future.
America is not behaving like a normal country, because it insists the rules do not apply.
China sees itself as a normal country, a member of the global citizenry. Normal countries respond vigorously to the militarization of their neighborhood, because sovereignty must be defended.
America is doomed to implode because even exceptionally engineered airliners drop out of the sky when they run out of fuel.
The Outlaw Josey Wales | The River Crossing | Warner Classics
What’s the fastest you’ve wiped a smirk off of someone’s face?
I was around 18 and at a club having recently shaved my head, almost scalped! Some idiot and his group were looking for a fight and thought that taking the piss or judging me for my choices would start one. So immature looking back.
I still feel remorse for what happened next and it had more than the intended results.
I said to my mate, “Go and say to him I have cancer and going through treatment.” My mate does this and I could swear I could feel how bad the ‘idiot’ felt from across the bar.
Turns out the guy wasn’t an idiot, he had just lost his Dad to cancer and was blaming everyone.
My smirk: gone. Turns out I was the idiot judging. I bought them a drink.
A hard lesson learned by me. At least it stopped a fight.
What happened to Peng Shuai?
This is an interesting story about what happens when a Chinese Communist Party member is accused of a crime. How it is investigated. And the causes, whys and the process. Interesting, and valuable to the outsiders looking into China. -MM
A woman named Peng Shuais accused a leading Chinese Communist Party leader of Sexual harassment.
It’s now clear that Peng Shuais allegations were firmly investigated
In China, it’s crucial that Party officials don’t violate discipline otherwise they are fried
Since China doesn’t have Elections and Votes, Party officials need their reputation
Peng Shuai alleged that she was sexually harrassed
Had she reported this to 12345 citing anonymity
No problems
She published this on Social Media referring to a Party member by name
He was dumping her and she was pissed
However in China – Social Media is under the full view of the CENSOR
Automatically the posts garnered attention and the Censor stepped in
Peng was summoned by the Censor and asked
Do you have Evidence?
Why wait so long?
Meanwhile the Party member was hauled up by the Internal mechanism and he said they were in a relationship and he dumped her
Under Chinese Law, if the Censor hauls you up, your Internet Id doesn’t work for a few weeks or a month and you can’t login or send a message on weibo or even reply to mail (confused on this point)
This is China
So the Censor initiated a State Investigation and China has like millions of cameras
Soon they began to see Camera feeds
They saw Peng willingly laugh and hold hands, kiss, go to hotels and eat in restaurants like a favorite girlfriend for weeks and weeks
They presented her with evidence and she folded immediately and confessed that HE HAD DUMPED HER and she had got pissed
Thats that
From that minute on, she lost face and in China that’s bad
So now whether she is charged with lying on public media or not – Nobody knows
What’s your favorite stupid joke?
A few of my top ones include:
What do you call a black man in space? An astronaut.
How many men does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three, one to screw it in and the other two to listen to him brag about screwing something.
A faster than light neutrino says ‘I’ll have a whisky’, sits down, then walks into a bar.
A woman is approached by a man in a suit, and a foot tall man carrying a miniature keyboard. The man in the suit says ‘I have a magic lamp here, with a genie in it. He’ll grant you a single wish, but be careful, he’s hard of hearing.’ The woman takes the lamp and says ‘I wish for a million bucks.’ All of a sudden the sky is blocked out by a million ducks flying overhead. ‘That’s not what I wished for’ the woman yells. The man replies ‘do you think I wished for a twelve inch pianist?’
A priest, a doctor, and a politician are kidnapped by an evil psychopath. The psychopath says ‘I’m going to get each of you to hold a snake for ten minutes, the most venomous snake in the world. If it doesn’t bite you, I’ll let you go. If you refuse, I’ll shoot you.’ The priest says a short prayer, kisses his cross, and holds the snake. It bites him, and he falls dead almost instantly. The doctor examines the snake, tries to find the best position to stop the snake being uncomfortable, and holds it. The snake bites her, and she falls over dead. The politician is last up, he just mutters ‘screw it’ and holds the snake. To his amazement, the snake stays still, it doesn’t bite him. He holds it for a full ten minutes, and is set free. He puts the snake in its box and takes it with him. As he leaves, feeling no small amount of Survivors guilt, he looks at the snake and says ‘I wonder why you killed that pious holy man and that great saviour of lives, but let me live.’ ‘Professional courtesy’ the snake replies.
US Property “$557 BILLION Bloodbath” – Final Chapter Of The Banking Collapse Is Here
What is an example of what a morbidly obese person would eat in a day?
My mom was morbidly obese her whole life. People looked at her with disgust. She ate small portions, tried to eat healthy, tried to be active until her knees got really bad, and stayed obese. For all who would tell her to eat a salad and get on a treadmill, she did. If we went out to eat, she’d eat usually a salad (dressing on side) and half a sandwich like turkey. I know y’all will sleep better by concluding she secretly binged or had her stash of junk food but unlike you, I had to go through her things when she died suddenly. No secret junk food stash. She didn’t get good sleep and was definitely sedentary in her last years but your “diagnosis” of people like her just being ignorant slobs who were lazy are wrong and hurtful. She was a nurse. She understood nutrition. What she ate was probably what most of you eat but she was morbidly obese and no matter how small her portions or types, her body seemed to go into starvation mode and did not change. It’s not always nutrition, portion control and activity. It wasn’t with her and I *know* she was unhappy about her weight and appearance and always felt the looks and the shame. I think she got used to a world that judges based on external looks more than character. It’s a shame we can be so petty, superficial, dense and callous. GLP-1’s are showing that even orgs like Weight Watchers got it wrong. She ate less and better than her sons who were not overweight. My heart goes out to you who struggle and get eat-a-salad-drink-water-and-go-for-a-walk idiot responses. Pray you find what works for you and that you have the rare company of people who value you for your character, your intelligence, your capability, and not your size.
For decades, America has assumed that China would gradually liberalize, open its markets, and improve its human-rights record, but that strategy simply hasn’t worked – is it time to give up on China?
China has not opened up? I’m pretty sure anyone holding that view has not visited China recently.
Go to Beijing or Shanghai or any other big Chinese city. You will find malls that look not much different from Hong Kong or Singapore. They may even be built and operated by conglomerates from these port cities. American fast food, French bags, Swiss watches. Whatever you want you can have. Markets as open as any major international city today.
As for liberalization, more than 150 million Chinese travel abroad each year. That is an astounding number, greater than the population of Japan. Just 40 years ago, the numbers were negligible. But the more incredible number is this: more than 150 million Chinese RETURN HOME. There are no reports of millions of Chinese refugees seeking asylum overseas.
On to human rights. China is behind Singapore in terms of rule of law, and trust in the government internationally. But Singapore still get routinely trashed for the death penalty, caning, inequality and other human rights abuses. We are a common law democracy but there are always murmurs if not shouts of dynastic politics, non-democracy, high political salaries and other evils.
We can never please the west because we are not the west.
China is changing.
Warp speed fast.
But please temper any judgment with the fact China started from a very low base. China was at war for the better part of 100 years from 1850 to 1949, half of it without a functional central government. Can you imagine 3 generations of anarchy and destruction? What do they call it, dystopia?
The current generation of Chinese youth enjoy far more freedoms and privileges than their parents did. The next will, too.
Have you ever met your bully later in life?
There was a guy that bullied me every day at high school. He was a confident, in-crowd guy, lots of plastic friends and always took the opportunity to make my life hell. He sabotaged my locker, bumped me in the hall when with his mates and he always had a smart alec comment to call out when I was presenting to the class or school. I responded the only way I thought I could which was to never pass him the ball during sport if we were on the same team, or if I was on an opposing team to tackle him as hard as possible. I didn’t have the confidence or the support network to help me through it, or the language to express myself to him.
I ran into him at a hardware store some 20 years after school. I had my 14 and 12 year olds with me and he had 3 kids, about 11, 9 and 7. He started with a gushing hello. He introduced me as a close friend from school. I looked at his kids, they looked nice enough. I was pleasant. I then whispered to him to come to the side out of earshot.
I was shaking with rage because the adrenaline kicked in so quickly, and the hurt and embarrassment he had caused me came flooding back. I told him that he was a real shit to me at high school and his kids looked like well adjusted human beings. I told him that unless he took his kids out of the store right now I would tell them what a nasty, horrible, vindictive shit of a person their dad was and he would have to explain why this guy he thought was a friend would say things like that about him.
He left with his kids. About 6 that evening he knocked on my door, and presented to me a bottle of wine and an apology for the pain he caused to me at school. He thanked me for not blasting his kids. His reason, his dad and older brothers did it to him and that is the way he thought you behaved. He had married a really nice lady who had educated him that friendships and relationships were not built by treating people like he had treated me. He had always worried about me and felt guilty. He always wanted to catch up and apologize. He and his wife knew that I would have crushed their kids if I had opened up on them at the store. I’m so glad I didn’t.
Some of the MM AI art examples
I continue with my experiments. Not too much of value.
It’s really like driving a tractor trailer rig though a maze inside of a mall. Crazy and sensitive.
What a set of horns on his headpiece.
I finally figured out how to add clothing to the people…
But it only works part of the time…
Some is impressive.
Looks like they are taking selfies…
The Bourne Ultimatum | It’s Jason Bourne
Stupid trolls.
While I was living in Japan, a clerk typed a wrong character on a document related to the public pension for an elderly couple. As a result their pension payments ceased. The elderly couple quietly starved to death in their apartment.
Of course, this was a huge scandal in Japan, and every neighborhood in the country began programs to check up on their neighborhood’s elderly residents at least once per week; have someone visit every residence every few days.
The point is that shit happens, but normal people (thus incomprehensible to you trolls) take action that has nothing to do with trying to overthrow the government. You stupid trolls only heard about someone dying of malnutrition in modern China because it was such an unusual and shocking occurrence for the Chinese people that they themselves were scandalized and chatting about it on social media. Nobody but fake NGO shit-stirrers and moronic western trolls are even remotely thinking about overthrowing the Chinese government because of it.
There may be local protests in China over the event, but protests there have a very different character than they do in western countries with capitalist fake democracy governments (ex: USA, Britain, France). Rather than sending out the goons with teargas and water canons, Chinese bureaucrats and municipal workers rush to the streets with their clipboards and interview the protesters to find out what the problems are and what they can do to make things right.
Yeah, the Chinese conception of democracy is completely beyond you Sinophobic trolls’ understanding. You stupid fools think “voting” every couple years for some useless meatbag (out of two or three options chosen for you by your capitalist overlords) who you know ahead of time will not even try to do what s/he promises, and whom you don’t like anyway, is “Democracy™”.
Stupid chumps.
There will be no “civil unrest” in China, at least not of the sort you moron trolls hope for. China’s government has even more popular support than Putin. It is untouchable by your retarded memes and narratives. The American and British governments are far more at risk of being toppled by their populations than is the Chinese government.
Posted by: William Gruff | Aug 29 2024 12:18 utc | 15
If you were a Hongkonger, would you leave Hong Kong for freedom?
Before the coup in HK in 2019, HK was ranked 3rd in the world on the scale of freedom. USA was only 7th.
What makes (some) HKers think they have no freedom & must flee HK?
“HK has no freedom” is just a political slogan by USA+UK to brainwash HKers because USA+UK have been plotting to control HK government. It was a modern-day colonisation without occupying HK. That is all.
They were plotting to overthrow China’s regime. That is all. They tried many times. Xizang (Tibet in English) in 1959. Tiananmen in 1989. Xinjiang in 2009, HK in 2019. White Paper protest in 2022. Taiwan ongoing.
Some HKers did flee to UK. Now they find UK national security law is tighter than HK’s. ie they have less freedom in UK than in HK. They found UK police are tougher than HK.
They find out that “freedom is a political slogan only” in the hard way.
A comment regarding China
I find it really frustrating that people even paid trolls constantly fall for this BS about China. Most have never even been to Asia or if they have it is Phuket or Bali.
There they never actually spend time with locals just demand fresh towels.. On my walk this morning I was thinking about China and Taiwan and wondering why China does not just cut them off??
Most companies in Taiwan are connected to China most families in Taiwan are connected to the mainland with families, most flights coming and going from Taiwan go to China.
I suspect most money moves through China. Maybe that would be the plan if things heat up. My hope and belief is Taiwan does not really want this, and Taiwan is no longer the innovation center it was when we lived there. They have to know the US will use them and dump them just like Ukraine and Israel, Afghanistan, and all the other countries that the US. Dumps when they lose
The Canary in the Retail coal mine has just taken very, VERY, ill. Dollar General, the retail chain that is found in almost every low income, urban, area, saw its stock price plunge 29.43% TODAY.
The company said publicly it is because its customers ‘feel worse off.’
Adding to investor concerns, Dollar General significantly lowered its full-year outlook, attributing part of the downgrade to the financial struggles of its core customer base.
The company noted that many of its customers “feel worse off,” reflecting the broader economic pressures affecting consumer spending.
On Thursday afternoon, the stock was trading around $87.
Hal Turner Analysis
In many respects, Dollar General is a sort of Canary in the (retail) coal mine. Years ago, Miners working deep underground, brought Canaries in cages with them for fear of natural gas, carbon monoxide, and a host of other deadly gases. If the Canary passed-out, or dropped dead in the cage, the miners knew to evacuate the mine immediately because death was coming for the miners themselves if they didn’t leave immediately.
Dollar General has had good stock value and performance because their core customer base, the low-income folks, are in abundant supply.
Today, the Canary in the retail coal mine got noticeably sick and those with any brains, KNOW this is a major league, bad economic sign.
When the poor are SO POOR they can’t even afford to go to Dollar General, the economy is in a bad downward spiral.
THAT is exactly the warning sign everyone got today, as Dollar General’s stock value plummeted 29.43% in ONE DAY.
Most of us have known for the better part of two years, things were not right. E V E R Y T H I N G was suddenly getting noticeably more expensive; especially food.
Energy costs, that had peaked with gasoline around $6. a gallon, eased back to around $3.XX but then a lot of us noticed that the product packaging, was smaller. In most cases, the price of a product remained the same, but the quantity of the product was reduced.
Take Tuna fish, for example. The price had gone up to about $1.50 for a 6 oz. can, then all of a sudden . . . . . ALL of the Tuna fish cans became only five ounces. ALL OF THEM!
No industry collusion there. No anti-trust violations there. HMMMMMM.
Portions of other products took nose-dives as well.
But now, even Dollar General is seeing a major reduction in revenues. And this reduction is from a customer base that does not spend extravagantly because . . . well . . . . they can’t.
So while we’ve been seeing the prices go up, the product sizes go down, things still chugged along economically, NOW we’re seeing that the very people who only bought what they absolutely NEEDED, can’t even do that anymore.
This is a terrible warning sign that the economy is not only in a recession (which government has lied about by denying it for over a year) it is heading straight and fast, into Depression.
Of course, the Biden voters, ALL of whom are low-information people with little to no intellect or ability to discern truth from lies, have bought the lies in the mass media that the economy is good.
Naturally, those same low-information and almost zero intellect Biden supporters will never make the connection between who they vote for and what they’re encountering in real life. They deny what life is proving to them, and believe the lies they hear and see on TV and radio.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Those of us who actually have the ability to see facts, have known the economy is very sick for quite awhile and it is Biden’s socialistic economic policies, and radical environmental policies that have caused it all.
As the November Election approaches, the dumb will keep voting the way they’ve voted because they’re too dumb to figure things out. The rest of us will vote against the present regime. Hopefully, there are still more smart people than dumb. We’ll see.
Can Cats See Spirits, Ghosts, or the Supernatural?
To whom it may concern,When I signed up for this assignment, I was looking forward to spending four years of my life with someone who shared my disdain for obnoxiously loud, self idolizing, undereducated people.I believed (foolheartedly) that only respectful scientists would sign up for this mission. That only those who truly valued the exploration of the last great frontier would spend three years training, four years locked in a shuttle with little to no contact with Earth, and a year reconditioning to Earth.Through all the vetting processes and the countless tests, how is it that he made it through. Out of everyone, I had to be sent out with this doof-The tip of my pencil abruptly breaks as the door crashes open.“Yo Whaddup?” the intruder yells as he prances inside my room.“Good morning Jack. What brings you so forcefully into my room this morning?” I say in an even voice as I push my letter of complaint under the other papers on my desk.“Just wanted to check up on my favorite colleague.” I stare blankly at him as he shuffles in the silence.“Also, the coffee maker isn’t working.”Year two of four on shuttle 555 to the Great Unknown has been filled with daily coffee maker failures. After only two weeks, it was discovered that Jack had little to no idea how to fix anything electrical after he almost set fire to the kitchen unit.Since neither of us can function without a consistent supply of this liquid energy, every morning he has swung by my room to request assistance in repairing our sputtering caffeine machine.As we make our way to the small kitchen unit, our feet softly tap on the shuttle floor. We keep the gravity at about half of Earth’s. It is ‘better for the mechanics of the shuttle’ according to the maintenance manual.For the second time today, I find my hand buried deep in our well-loved coffee machine. Its plastic cover is chipped by the multiple falls it has taken (mainly because of Jack’s love of ‘space juggling,’ where he tries to juggle with random appliances he finds). Among the small cracks, there is one that stands out from the rest. A crack, that I know was definitely not there this morning.With a shoulder heaving sigh, I retract my hand, snap on the cracked cover, and give the poor machine an affectionate pat. Now that the immediate issue is over, I turn to Jack.“Why, may I ask, is there another crack in the cover?”He takes a single step back, bringing his hands slightly out in front of himself as he tries to form a consoling expression on his face. “You see-”“Yes I see”“I was filling it up and-” He turned before finishing his thought and scrambled away. In his struggle to escape he bounces feet into the air with every step. I race behind him, wanting nothing more than to teach him once and for all to never mess with my coffee.
As we crash through the small shuttle papers go flying in our wake. He is much faster than me, and I know that catching up to him is out of the question but- I grab a blunt object from the nearest table- I can still hit him. Thus started my onslaught of flying projectiles. Lucky for him, we only have ‘space grade’ appliances that can do no damage to the shuttle, and in turn, minimum damage to people.
Frantically dodging my projectiles he ducks into his room, slamming the door shut with such force that I dare say it shakes the whole shuttle. He is safe… for now.
In the aftermath of the conflict, I return to my room. I shuffle through a stack of papers on my desk, readouts from the multiple instruments our shuttle carries, an aged letter from home, and my half written letter of complaint lie before me.
I sit in the chair with a heavy sigh. Recently every day has been an ordeal. Just last week, while taking our annual inventory, I found that we were missing over a month’s worth of dessert rations.
Five or six of the well loved packets would have been acceptable (we each planned on five extra per month… everyone needs a sweet snack every once in a while), but a full 17 packets? Completely unacceptable!
The culprit was found almost immediately as I made my way to the kitchen for a much needed cup of coffee. There, with two opened dessert packets in front of him, was Jack. I paused for a moment, shocked by his flagrant misuse of rations.
Instead of laying into him right away, I strolled calmly into the room. He froze, knowing that he had been caught. I grabbed a dish and a fork, made my way to him, spooned a heaping portion of the brownie into my bowl, and sat down across from him.
Later would come the scolding, but those brownies are all that keep me sane.
After we finished our brownie’s it was agreed that he would be able to eat one portion at a time once a week and that he would limit himself a single brownie ration per month.
The issue has yet to return, and I believe that we are both satisfied with the results.
And I don’t dare forget the swivel chair incident of two weeks past!
In our control room, we have the best swivel chairs. They are so smooth, and in half gravity, it’s like you are floating instead of sitting.
One day, while doing the daily readouts of our course, I took a much needed break. Pushing off of the floor I started to spin. The world around me passed in a whizzing flash. The brightly lit shuttle intermittently interrupted by the dark expanse of space, as a childish carefree glee started to spread through me.
The weightless euphoric ride was cut short when a blurred figure of Jack makes his way into the room. It took me a full revolution to slam my feet to the ground, and the moment contact was made, I shot from my chair, still spinning, as I catapulted through the air.
Through the entire ordeal, Jack’s laugh echoed through the room. As I crashed back to the ground he sat in the co-pilot chair to watch my failure. His eyes were bright with amusement even after his body shaking laughter had ceased.
We sat in silence. Him still slightly shaking from silent chuckles, and me fuming with embarrassment at being caught doing such a childish thing.
Finally, I had reached my limit with this entire ordeal. Indignantly I got up, still dizzy, and stumbled my way from the room.
We have yet to talk about this incident, but every now and then, he’ll make an offhand remark on my fascination with spinning chairs.
As I recall our past fights, I find myself smiling. Never has there been a dull moment on this journey. I look down at the letter of complaint on my desk, heave a heavy sigh, and proceed to slowly rip it into a plethora of pieces.
Jack and I may not always get along, but I would rather be with him than anyone else.
Am I the only person who’s always not feeling healthy and safe with gun owners? I just want to destroy all guns, so that I can enjoy my life.
Man, it must really suck to be so delicate.
I actually live in a farming community. Here guns are a way of life. We use them for protecting livestock, hunting game, entertainment at shooting matches, and self-defense.
Our murder rate is almost zero. The last murder we had was 15 years ago…and that was a stabbing.
Our county jail is mostly filled with drunks and makers of meth. Most of those meth makers are caught by farmers with rifles long before the cops show up.
When I go to town, if I see some guy open carrying, I don’t freak out. Because I’ve been around guns all my life, I can tell the difference between a person who is a threat and who isn’t.
I live near a major city, a city that is one of the most dangerous in America. When some thugs decided that mugging and assaulting me was a good idea, when they found out that I was armed they had other places to be. I left that situation feeling healthy and safe.
Your desire to destroy all guns is not realistic.
Even if you did, what’s to stop the criminal types from stealing a gun, making a gun, or buying one on the black market?
Millions of Americans go about their lives on a daily basis completely oblivious that people around them are armed.
And yet somehow they are still safe.
It’s strange how in places where gun ownership is supported and practiced, are usually the safest neighborhoods to be in.
It’s the gun free zones you got to worry about.
Most Americans go through their daily lives without ever encountering someone who is an idiot with a gun.
If guns create such a fear in you, it’s probably because you feel defenseless and think that the answer to alleviating that is to make everybody defenseless. You are feeding exactly into what the criminals want.
An armed society is a polite society.
Besides, gun control is people control. And in a nation that lists freedom has its goal, such a thing is totally unacceptable.
Life comes with risks. Get a helmet.
No soup for you.
The Stand – original miniseries – 1994 – FULL MOVIE
Bio-weapon escapes from a USA military facility destroys 99.9999% of the world’s population. Shows the escape and the breakdown of society and the fight between good and evil.
Five hours of the entire movie. This Stephan King classic is awesome. It is well worth the time to watch over a week or two when you have time, or binge watch over the weekend.
At the very minimum the first ten minutes of the movie is gold. Especially with the song “Don’t fear the reaper” playing.
According to the “Woke” Gen Z feminists, men and women are identical. The two sexes are all completely alike. And not only are they same… but there is around 67 other sexes as well. All the same.
I don’t even bother dealing with this nonsense. You cannot reason with crazy.
Well, I am an old-fashioned fellow. And I know when people are trying to bullshit me. So I just ignore them.
Here’s a test.
Ask a man and a woman the same question.
"What is the name of your second grade teacher?"
More often than not, the women would know. And more often than not, the men would not.
Well, I don’t.
Though I do remember my third grade teacher. Her name was Mrs. Shakley. And, a boy in my class; Stephen told me that her name was “Mrs. Shake A Leg”, and told me to go up to here and call her that.
Oh what fun!
But she was cool about it. She really was.
Silly.
But, yeah. I don’t remember the names of my teachers. Only Two. Mrs. Shakley and Mr. Calhoon. That’s it.
It’s but a tiny little experiment, but it validates that there are differences between the sexes; the two primary genders.
And since there ARE differences, shouldn’t this also manifest in other ways?
One gender likes to done one thing, and the other doesn’t.
One gender prefers social interaction over privacy compared to the other.
One gender feels one way about relationships, the other has a different view.
Culturally, this tends to manifest in separation of the genders. Each sex would have their own enclaves. Men would have barbershops, while women would have salons. Men would have poker nights, while women would have luncheons with the girls.
Coed anything didn’t exist until feminism entered America in the 1920’s.
Personally, I have found that the more traditionally feminine a woman is, the more I am attracted to her. Men prefer womanly; motherly women. And I believe that the converse is true. Women prefer men who are “manly”; stoic and workers.
This Gen Z trend towards neutral gender-ality is not going to benefit anyone; just result in self-isolation, which will result in a host of personal and social problems for the future.
Don’t say that I never warned you.
Today…
Sore Losers
“Five bodies have now been found in the wreckage of British tycoon Mike Lynch’s yacht, including those of Lynch himself and his teenage daughter Hannah, multiple media outlets reported on Wednesday.
The 56-meter-long British-flagged superyacht named ‘Bayesian’, which had 22 people onboard, had anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello.
The incident occurred as the 59-year-old Lynch, known as ‘Britain’s Bill Gates’, was enjoying a “victory trip” to celebrate winning his US fraud trial over the £8.3 billion ($10.8 billion) sale of his software development firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard.
Coincidence?
In a separate tragedy, it was reported that Lynch’s co-defendant in the trial and former vice president of finance at Autonomy, Stephen Chamberlain, was killed after being fatally struck by a car while jogging in the county of Cambridgeshire, UK, on Saturday.”
Posted by: Republicofscotland | Aug 22 2024 13:33 utc | 15
Beijing raises concerns over US considering China as a nuclear threat
Beijing raised serious concerns after Washington reportedly approved a secret nuclear strategy refocusing on the so-called China threat, saying the United States is, in fact, the biggest creator of strategic risks of the global nuclear threat.
According to the New York Times, US President Joe Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan for the US that, for the first time, reorients its deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal.
The US has, in recent years, continuously hyped up the so-called China nuclear threat theory, which is merely an excuse for shirking its nuclear disarmament responsibilities, expanding its nuclear arsenal, and seeking excuses for overwhelming strategic advantages, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a daily news briefing on Wednesday.
Emphasizing that China’s nuclear arsenal is not on the same scale as that of the US, Mao said China adheres to a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons and maintains a nuclear strategy of self-defense.
China has always kept its nuclear capabilities to a minimum required for national security needs with no intention to engage in any arms race with any country, the spokeswoman said.
Instead, the US, possessing the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal, stubbornly adheres to a nuclear deterrence policy based on the first use of nuclear weapons, Mao said.
It also continuously invests significant resources in upgrading its triad of nuclear forces and openly develops tailored nuclear deterrence strategies for other countries, she added.
Mao urges the US to earnestly assume its special and primary responsibilities toward nuclear disarmament, and drastically and substantively reduce its nuclear stockpile.
Washington should cease negative activities that undermine global and regional peace and stability, such as nuclear sharing, extended deterrence, and expanding nuclear alliances, said the spokeswoman.
What consequences have arisen from China’s government investment in high technology sectors like electric vehicles (EVs) batteries and advanced computer chips?
China’s cities have become much cleaner and quieter.
20 years ago, there were many Chinese cities on the most polluted cities list. Now only Beijing is in that list. And NOT in the top ten.
Do doctors know when their patient is lying?
This happened a couple of months ago. A male patient enters the ER with abdominal pain because he is severely constipated, but the very cause of his medical problem turns out to be urological.
He has a conglomerate of very painful cauliflower-like genital warts in and around his anus, and it makes him postpone No. 2 every which way. Hence the constipation.
But this patient is weird. Even before his first medical interview with the urologist is over, he starts undressing to show his genitals and behind. As if he is eager to show them. As if he is excited.
His condition turns out to be Syphilis, but the medication will save him nevertheless. (Without medication, Syphilis is life-threatening.)
But now here’s the problem: the patient acts as if he does not know how the warts got “there” in the first place, since “he is a decent citizen.” When his urologist asks him — rather blatantly, but in the privacy of the consultation room there is no reason to lie about one’s case — whether he is homosexual, he almost erupts and immediately becomes so aggressive, that a male trainee is asked to join the interview.
Every single further question about the touchdown location of his genital warts is dodged, and it is obviously that the man is lying, possibly in a bout of self-denial about his own personal preferences. He is not like that. Period.
And still, that is the location where the bad guys entered the building.
Most probably, at this point you are asking yourself why the urologist is asking these questions.
The answer is that the patient’s sexu🙄l partners need to be contacted and warned about his condition, and need to take the appropriate medication (penicillins) in order to prevent that they succumb to the disease they might be suffering from.
This patient refuses to help in any way, though.
And genital warts really do mark the spot.
SOURCES: Tertiary syphilitic ulceration of the scalp (on the left) and Face of a woman with a typical “syphilitic nose” (on the right), St Bartholomew’s Hospital Photographic Society, Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0 attribution).
United States government has asked for China’s help to ensure international financial stability in the event that United States economy enters a recession and United States government default on its national debt. This is the only item that the Biden Administration can agree to work jointly with the Chinese as United States government default is imminent.
If United States economy enters a recession & United States government defaults on its national debt, the consequences for the global financial market would be severe and far-reaching:
1. Market Turmoil
Stock markets worldwide would likely plunge, with the S&P 500 potentially falling over 15% based on past debt ceiling crises. Credit markets could freeze up as investors dump United states treasuries, traditionally seen as safe assets. Thus, there would be chaotic fluctuations in currency exchange rates, making international trade extremely difficult
2. Economic Impacts
A deep United States recession would likely trigger a global recession, dramatically reducing economic demand worldwide, the result will be unemployment would spike, potentially increasing by 5 percentage points in the US alone. Thus, consumer and business confidence would take substantial hits, leading to reduced consumption and investment.
3. Financial System Destabilization
The credibility of United States treasuries as the bedrock of global bond markets would be severely damaged. Financial institutions balance sheets would become extremely fragile, potentially leading to a liquidity crisis. The Federal Reserve would need to take extraordinary measures to prevent a total collapse of the financial system.
4. Global Trade Disruption
A liquidity crisis could strangle global trade in the short term, with goods stuck at ports as companies struggle to raise funds. The rapid exchange of currencies would cause chaotic fluctuations in exchange rates, making trade more difficult and expensive.
5. Dollar’s Status Threatened
Other countries would likely reduce their dependence on the US dollar as the international reserve currency. This could benefit rival currencies like the Chinese renminbi, though the transition would be messy and prolonged.
6. Borrowing Costs
Interest rates would spike globally, increasing borrowing costs for businesses, homeowners, and governments This would make it more difficult for households and businesses to access credit during the economic downturn.
In summary, United States debt default would likely trigger a severe global financial crisis, disrupt international trade, threaten the dollar’s dominance, and potentially reshape the global economic order. The effects would be far-reaching and long-lasting, with limited policy options available to mitigate the damage.
Have you ever been glad you were carrying a gun? What happened?
My daughter was. She worked at a retail store and was closing one night quite late. Employees parked on the side of the building that had little lighting. As she approached the edge of the building she heard noises and found a guy with a bar trying to break into her car.
She got out her cell phone, called 911 and began speaking that someone was trying to break into her car plus the location. The guy heard her, turned toward her and came at her from about 60 feet away. She drew her .357 Stainless Steel Smith and Wesson, got into crouch position aiming the gun right at him. Didn’t need to pull the trigger.
When the police arrived over 36 minutes later, she told them the story. One cop asked if she had a permit to carry that gun. She is pretty cool, but got enraged and said to the cop, “You A$$hle, aren’t you supposed to be looking for the culprit?” He left and she showed her carry permit to another cop and asked what took them so long to get there? They said it was reported as a stolen car and that happens around there all the time, so no hurry.
My daughters boss and I went to the station to get the police report and found out that they didn’t even check the bar or car for prints nor even make a report. We both went ballistic and demanded the Chief to come to the station to explain procedures and the lack of their actions. He was apologetic and told them to make a complete report and also explain in detail why they hadn’t pursued the matter. Nothing else came of it.
My daughter told me when I got home that when she pulled that .357 she had never seen anyone run so fast. She said that one of his feet went one way, the other one another way, he fell down, jumped up and then ran jumping over a hedge. I don’t think he will come back to that store for a car break in again.
US geopolitical reach exceeds its industrial grasp
By Brian Berletic Published: Aug 14, 2024 05:27 PM
In order to contain China, the US must maintain military and economic primacy over China. Nevertheless, its ability to do this has come into question in recent years due to the continual rise and growing strength of China, and the demonstrated growing weakness of the US itself.Among these weaknesses is the US’ atrophying military industrial base, in particular its capacity to build the ships, warplanes and missiles required to exceed Chinese military power off China’s own coasts.
The Associated Press in a recent article pointed out that the US Navy’s warship production is in its worst state in 25 years, stating that this has put the country “behind China in the number of ships at its disposal – and the gap is widening.” The article describes a critical labor shortage and a shrinking shipbuilding capacity that has increased over decades of neglect and mismanagement.
This reflects a much wider workforce crisis across the country’s military-industrial base as reported in the 2023 US National Defense Industrial Strategy report, which stated that the labor market lacks sufficient workers with the right skills to meet domestic production and sustainment demand.
For the US, with around a quarter of the population of China, sufficiently expanding its education system and its ability to produce sufficient skilled laborers to compete with China is impractical. This reflects the equally impractical nature of US foreign policy and its desire to maintain primacy over China.
Many in the US arms industry believe that despite these disadvantages, the US can still find ways to “out-innovate” China. An example of this is the startup arms manufacturer Anduril and its “Arsenal” concept. Anduril aims to address the urgent needs of the US and its allies and prevent a situation in which “the US military would run out of weapons in less than one week of a war with China” by simplifying the design of US weapons, incorporating more off-the-shelf components already commercially available, and utilizing emerging industrial practices like “software-defined manufacturing” (SDM). It also resorts to mass-producing naval drones of various classes and sizes.
The problem for Anduril and its prospective customers at the Pentagon is that any manufacturing process Anduril develops to compete with China, China will have the ability to match due to its many other fundamental advantages in industrial production.
According to Defense One in a February 2024 article, overall China’s navy has more ships than the US including 30 ships it built in the past year. Over the same period of time, the US built only two ships. If this is true, the idea that the US can somehow expand shipbuilding by over 15 times is fantasy.
It is also a fantasy to imagine the US can make up for this large and growing gap in shipbuilding by producing naval drones with software-defined manufacturing, as US-based Anduril proposes, considering China’s advantages in production, including the use of SDM and the production of drones.
The US geopolitical reach exceeds its industrial grasp due to the flawed premise on which its foreign policy is based. The belief in the US’ inherent superiority over all other nations has led to the myth that US hegemony over the world is sustainable and should be maintained.
However, this dominance was not due to inherent superiority, but rather a vast disparity in terms of economic, technological and military power. The story of the 20th and 21st centuries is one of narrowing disparity. The story of tomorrow will be of this disparity growing once again, but in favor of the global majority of which China is a key player.
For the US, there is only one rational course of action to address the reality of Western hegemony having run its course, with a multipolar world taking its place. The US must find a constructive role to play among all other nations rather than continuing to irrationally attempt to impose itself upon all other nations.
In the meantime, the US arms industry, including shipbuilding, will continue consuming huge amounts of public money at the expense of essential American infrastructure and education, both ironically essential factors in bolstering industrial production.
At the same time, both the American and Chinese public face a potential war as Washington continues ratcheting up tensions in the Asia-Pacific region – an unnecessary war the US is unprepared to fight and unlikely to win.
Star Lady
Would increased Chinese nuclear capabilities make it less likely for the United States to militarily intervene if China decides to invade Taiwan?
Increased willingness to use nuclear capabilities is what would decrease the likelihood of US military intervention.
A country with the No First Use nuclear policy is not one that can be trusted to use nuclear weapons as a negotiating tool.
China should immediately scrap the No First Use nuclear policy and declare the same policy for any country intervening in the Taiwan reunification of the land with China by force as they would already be doing for Japan.
If you even think of changing your policy with China to the negative as a result of reunification by force, you might as well shut the Chinese embassy down right now. If you don’t recognize one China, then don’t bother having any relations with China. You are free to blather about democracy and freedom, and take 23 million Taiwanese into your country. I wish you all good luck.
Does corruption exist only in India or is it a universal problem? Does it exist even in China?
Corruption is everywhere, just in different degrees.
I want to share some small things I experienced during my visit to China.
1. Experience in 2024
In the second quarter of this year, I visited China again and entered from Shanghai. Because I arrived at night, there was a long queue at the entrance for customs stamping, but there were few people at the “Chinese Channel” on the other side.
I really didn’t want to arrive at the hotel in the middle of the night, so I found a uniformed security guard and whispered to him, “Is there a special channel?” and handed him a rolled up $10 bill in my passport.
This approach works very well in some Southeast Asian countries, and I have successful experience in at least 4 countries. They will take you to other channels for stamping, but it is said that this is not allowed in China, but I still want to try.
The security guard opened my passport and saw the money in it. He immediately changed his expression, quickly folded the passport and returned it to me (the money was still in it), and said to me, “Hello, foreigners can only queue here. We have notified the customs to increase staff, please wait, welcome to China, we don’t accept tips”
I guess my approach made him feel uncomfortable, and I failed.
2. Experience in 2018
Our company participated in an investment project in Guizhou, China. Our European client needed to build a huge factory. The company I served provided investment and financing services, as well as consulting, assistance, and translation.
The construction of the factory encountered a problem. The local safety supervision department believed that the width of the safety passage between the two buildings was not enough (due to a slight error with the drawings in order to avoid a drainage ditch during construction).
I went to the director’s office with the client. The client did not speak Chinese and relied on me to solve the problem. I hinted two messages to the person in charge:
1. “The error is very small, and it is almost invisible if you don’t measure it.”;
2. “We need a batch of composite materials for our roof, which is about 200,000 US dollars. Can you recommend a local supplier to me?
This is also my work skill, which has successful experience in India, Thailand and Vietnam. There is no open corruption and bribery, but they will choose to ignore some small problems because they get legal benefits. I failed again.
The person in charge finally asked the secretary to give me the contact information of the local industry association and the open building materials market. The problem of the passage did not require us to demolish the building in the end, but required us to change the drawings and open an additional auxiliary passage on the other side to solve it.
In fact, I have never experienced real corruption in my many years of visiting experience in China. Whether it is a few dollars in tips or hundreds of thousands of dollars in commercial projects.
But I know that corruption does exist in China. This is what my Chinese colleagues told me clearly. It’s just that these corruptions are hidden very deeply and often not Known. Once exposed, it is usually dealt with by the judicial department quickly, which is different from the corruption that can be seen everywhere in India or some other Southeast Asian countries.
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Regarding India, everyone who has been to India has full experience. From entering customs, to hotel waiters, to police and all government workers, corruption is everywhere. Anywhere you need “convenience”, you can get extra benefits by paying extra fees. All kinds of “outside the rules” can be seen everywhere, and people are accustomed to it.
1. The humblest waiter
In 2017, a hotel in Mumbai provided breakfast but not lunch.
One noon, I went to the restaurant for lunch(buffet), and the waiter asked me to sign a small receipt showing that the lunch was $40 and would be settled when I checked out.
This is a routine operation in most hotels, but what surprised me was that the dark-skinned waiter did not leave. He lowered his voice and asked me: “Sir, will you come to lunch tomorrow?”
I said: “Maybe, what’s wrong?“ “Sir, you can pay me in cash tomorrow, only 30 dollars, and I will give you a drink , free.” I immediately understood that I had entered the corruption game of the most humble waiter, and he and the restaurant’s chef would steal the hotel’s income.
If a country’s grassroots public officials and even a waiter are doing everything possible to participate in corruption, what will happen to those who hold power and huge wealth in this country?
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So I think there are two types of corruption.
1. Corruption hidden in dark corners.
This kind of corruption is like weeds in the yard. No matter how the owner cleans it up, it will always exist. But once some weeds are found, the hardworking owner will start The lawnmower cleans them up. This makes the whole yard look clean and tidy most of the time.
This is a phenomenon in China. There is no “legal corruption” and “publicly recognized corruption” in China.
2. Open corruption, systemic corruption
It is also weeds in the yard, but many weeds have small tags “I am a legal weed” hanging on them. When the owner starts the lawnmower, he must go around them. When such weeds become too many, the lawnmower has no room to run.
And the owner of the yard began to tell people: My yard is full of vitality and nature (all this is normal). This is the situation in India. Corruption has become part of life.
What strategies can the Philippine government use to handle China without assistance from the US? What are the potential outcomes if they are unable to defend against a stronger Chinese force?
That’s like asking what strategy can Panama government use to handle the US.
Go read Operation Just Cause. The US ran over Panama and arrested Noriega. He was hiding in some other nation’s embassy.
The US can’t handle China and you want the Philippines to do so?
⚡HOLY $%#^: BIDENS TOP SECRET PLAN FOR GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR LEAKED! DAY X APPROACHES IN MIDDLE EAST!
As a flight attendant, what is the pettiest thing you have been asked?
The list can go on and on. It may sound lame, but I find these types of situations extremely petty.
Just the other day a grown man sits in the window seat as we prepare to depart from Winnipeg, MB to fly to Edmonton, AB.
We were working on a smaller plane and had about 15 people coming from another flight that was a couple of minutes behind schedule. 15 people is a good enough reason to wait an extra 8 minutes. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen – especially if this is the last flight of the day.
Long story short, we take off about 12 minutes late.
Service starts in the cabin.
Pulling my cart up to the first row, I arrange myself and begin issuing service items.
“Hello Sir, …” I smile.
“Yea, I’ll have a free beer”
“Haha funny, certainly, Sir, but unfortunately there’s a cost.”
Reaching into my drawer I pull out a can of local beer and place it, unopened, on top of the cart in front of me.
I hand the man a cup. He raises his voice, as his headphones may be slightly louder than his ears will comprehend, “I hear that beer is free on flights that are 25 minutes late…”
We both pause and stare blankly for an instant. I motion for him to remove his headphones. He does.
I smile, “well Sir, I appreciate the humour, but I’m afraid if we did that for every late flight, we’d be out of business! It’s a good thing we are only 8 minutes behind and we will be arriving on time after all! Meaw, that’ll be $6.”
The man’s face changed quickly to a brazen red and a drop of sweat slowly forms on his forehead.
“This is ridiculous — you give it away on other flights between x and x (cities purposefully unnamed)” his forehead now was clearly dampened.
“Yes, that is part of our business model for certain flights, unfortunately this one will cost you.”
“I do encourage you to write into the company and tell them your service needs are unmet.”
Even more red now, more wet, more full of rage.
“This is typical airline bullshit, I’ve written in before and nothing. Give me a free beer or get out of my sight.”
I put the beer away back into my cart.
His anger was very apparent. At this point, alcohol will not solve the problem but may only worsen his temper. “In this state, Mr Smith (I referenced his name in my manifest and changed for this memory) your only option will be non-alcoholic.”
He then asks for something completely out of the ballpark, “pomegranate juice?”
“Out of season, Air, not a typical airline beverage either” as I smile forcefully. His palms raise as he asks the good lord to cut him some slack.
I move on to the next guest who has absorbed some of the frustration of the man in the window, therefore also disgruntledly disclosing his own beverage choice in a silent anti-attendant protest. He gladly paid for his own choice of beverage.
Back to the window, Mr Smith still refuses to offer his beverage choice for me to provide. I asked again “Are you sure I can’t offer you anything else, Sir?”
He stared ahead, ignoring me, without headphones in his ears. Fully able to hear and see me, he sat pouting like a six-year-old who didn’t get dessert.
He didn’t say a word for the rest of the flight, and cowered off of the plane at our final destination.
The man could have easily swindled a free beverage if he had been kind about it.
Moral of the story; it never hurts to be a nice person.
The way he opened the whole conversation ruined the chance from the get-go.
Fun Pictures
What was your best day at the shooting range?
I’d let my concealed carry permit expire, so I had to requalify rather than just renew it. That meant another day of classroom work, and a live fire safety and marksmanship test.
I went to a different range than the one I’d used the previous time, just to change things up. They told me the range training would take at least 25 rounds, but probably no more than 50. They preferred us to buy range ammo (no reloads or non-brass cases, no steel core bullets) and I could either bring my own gun or rent one.
I wanted to qualify with a gun I would actually carry, rather than one of my full-size handguns. This makes a difference. The smaller the gun, the harder it is to shoot well. You have a short barrel, which makes it more difficult to aim, and a lighter weight gun will have a lot more felt recoil. A bigger gun (up the the point where it starts getting unwieldy) will generally perform better and will be easier to manage. But of course, their size, shape, and weight will make them more awkward to carry and conceal. That’s the trade-off.
I had two small handguns that were built for concealed carry- a Smith & Wesson 642 airweight revolver, and a Kahr P380 semiauto. These guns have given me opposite experiences of owning them.
The revolver was one that I really wanted from the get-go, I loved the look and feel of the thing, and I was in love with the idea of that make and model before I got it… but actually using it was a disappointment. I really sucked at shooting it. I couldn’t hit boo, and it hurt my hand. Anyone who has a 642 will tell you it was meant to carry, not to shoot.
The P380, on the other hand, didn’t have much initial appeal. It’s kinda ugly and too small and just meh. But, when I was shopping for a concealable single-stack .380, I’d tried a bunch of makes and models: Glock, S&W Sheild, Kel-Tek, SCCY, Taurus, and I don’t remember what all else. Each of them demonstrated something I didn’t like. The Kahr was the least objectionable of all of them, and I consistently did the best with it. It was easily #2 in every single one of the criteria I was looking at, and didn’t do anything I hated. So it went to the top of the pack, I bought one, and since then, it’s really grown on me.
When the time came for this range test, I really wanted to use the revolver, because it was new to me at the time, and I was excited about it… but I knew that after three reloads of five shots each, I’d be done. My hand would be an achy, shaky, useless mess. I didn’t want to imagine the punishment of twenty-five rounds or more through that thing. I sighed with regret and brought the relatively unappreciated little Kahr instead. Honestly, I was much more likely to carry that one, anyhow.
The P380 is a TINY little thing, no bigger than a man’s wallet. It slips into my pocket and disappears. No waistband holster, no printing, no worries. When I carry it in a little DeSantis pocket holster (which obscures its shape), no one has ever noticed it, and I doubt anyone ever would.
The class was a real mixed bag of shooters. Some were n00bs that had barely ever shot a handgun before, some were range rats, and there was one tacticool operator. Overall, it was a mix of men and women, young and old, and it was racially diverse as well. The guy teaching the class had to wrangle all these various experience levels and attitudes into something coherent, and he did a remarkable job of it.
When range time came, we were managed like kindergartners, which was entirely appropriate. My turn at the line had me empty one magazine (6 rounds) into a target twelve feet away, reload, and continue. It was to be aimed fire, with at least one full second between shots. I paid attention to my stance, my grip, and my breathing… all of which is kinda overkill for that close range and that small a gun.
Halfway through my second magazine, the Range Safety Officer tapped me on the shoulder.
I thought I’d screwed up somehow.
“You’re good,” he said. “You can stop.”
It dawned on me that he was saying I’d qualified, just nine shots into a test that was supposed to take three to five times that round count, despite handicapping myself with my little mouse of a gun. Others in the class were not doing half as well with their full-sized Glocks and Berettas and the like.
“Can I finish this magazine?”
“Sure.”
Now, this wasn’t a tournament, or a competition. It was just a Florida CCW class, the main goal being that you don’t do too many things that are overtly stupid or dangerous. But still, this was one of the first times that I’d felt acknowledged as something other than a mere student or rank amateur (which, of course, I am). Sometimes, a good evaluator can tell pretty much right away when someone knows what they’re doing, before they do it, just by how they approach it. I got the nod, and I got it readily.
It felt good. But I’m still humble.
What The Older Generations WON’T SAY About The Problems Men Are Facing TODAY
What is the most misunderstood thing about Germany and its people?
I’ve lived in Germany for almost 6 years now, so I can tell you a few things:
Germans are cold: not true. They are not as warm and open as the people in the Americas, but americans (north/south/central) are usually warmer than many. Germans in general are quite friendly. At least the south germans, if you smile at them on the street they smile back. If you ask for help, they gladly help. There are grouches and angry people, but that’s about everywhere, especially in big cities.
They only work, work, work, no time for fun: It depends on where you are. I’ve work in a start-up with a mixture of people of all ages, and the favorite thing to say there was: Umtrunk! which usually meaned: enough work, let’s drink beer and talk nonesense for a while. This only happened occassionaly on fridays afternoons, of course, or when something really good happened. The office’s fridge was full of beer 24/7, tho. This is of course, not common. But germans also love to organize breakfasts/lunches, where everybody brings something to eat and they share a nice moment together (also for birthdays, pregnancies, etc). I also remember a time, with another working team, when we decided to join a baseball tournament between companies. On wednesday we had our first practice game, and at the end, we went to some bar to drink and just enjoy the night. On a wednesday. It was like 1 am when we were done drinking. Germans sometimes don’t give a f***.
They are workaholics: not quite. Germans are really serious about their free time: they will work their asses off, true. But if you think you can bully them out of their vacation, like americans managers do, think again. If they work extra hours, it’s because they wanted to, but when the deadlines are met, they can take those extra hours as extra vacation, and basically dissappear for weeks. If a colleage takes a vacation of 2–4 weeks, that’s the norm, not the exception.
They have no sense of humor: false. They do. They joke and laugh a lot. The problem is that american/british humor is sometimes very ironic. Like, telling something in a hypothetical ironic way, and we laugh because it’s obvious that it’s not meant to be taken seriously. Germans are more of a: “if you say you are going to do it, it’s because you are going to do it” kind of people, so american humor is going to, sometimes, go way over their heads. But this is only soooometimes, on very particular cases. Other than that, they laugh and joke about as much as everybody else.
They are too strict: well, yeah. They are still very deep on the “follow the law. No excuses, no questions” mentallity. But so far, I’ve gotten no much problem out of this. Just avoid breaking the law (crossing on red) in front of children. Because then you are giving a bad example and children are dumb, and germans will be pissed. Other than that, just do what germans do, and you’ll be fine (it’s their country, after all. Internationals have to adapt to the host, not the other way around).
Wow. This was a long one.
EDIT: Ah, I forgot one vey important point:
It is forbidden to talk about WWII in Germany: not quite true. The germans are very ashamed of what happened during WWII, and most of them are very fearful that something similar could happen again. For this very reason, germans are very open to discussion on this matter. I think the mentality here is: you can’t stop something from happening again if you don’t understand WHY it happened. For this reason, some museums here are dedicated to: WWII: what the h*** happened? to try to understand the political, economical, sociological and psycological reasons behind the catastrophe. And, yeah, you may find some comedy too, believe it or not. There are some historical sketches in youtube, and some of them are of WWII: a particularly funny one is about 3 soldiers discussing with Rommel about what should be his nick name for the press (The Desert Fox). One of the soldiers sudgests “Desert Worm” because he just “slithers through the dunes”. Rommel tells him he’ll get him shot if he gives another sudgestion like that. So yeah, talking about WWII and the Nazis is not forbidden here. What you must NEVER do, under no circunstance, is saying ANYTHING POSSITIVE about the Nazis. That’ll get you in deep s***.
Some of today’s MM creations
Would increased Chinese nuclear capabilities make it less likely for the United States to militarily intervene if China decides to invade Taiwan?
Increased willingness to use nuclear capabilities is what would decrease the likelihood of US military intervention.
A country with the No First Use nuclear policy is not one that can be trusted to use nuclear weapons as a negotiating tool.
China should immediately scrap the No First Use nuclear policy and declare the same policy for any country intervening in the Taiwan reunification of the land with China by force as they would already be doing for Japan.
If you even think of changing your policy with China to the negative as a result of reunification by force, you might as well shut the Chinese embassy down right now. If you don’t recognize one China, then don’t bother having any relations with China. You are free to blather about democracy and freedom, and take 23 million Taiwanese into your country. I wish you all good luck.
CHINA IS NOW THE LEADING COUNTRY OF THE WORLD
Chili-Beef Casserole
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
1 (16 ounce) can hot chili beans
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can tomato soup, undiluted
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 cups corn chips
6 green onions, chopped
1 (2.25 ounce) can sliced ripe olives, drained
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
Instructions
Cook ground beef in a large skillet, stirring until it crumbles and is no longer pink.
Add chili beans and next 4 ingredients. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes.
Place corn chips in a lightly greased 11 x 7 inch baking dish.
Spoon meat mixture over chips; sprinkle with 6 tablespoons of the green onions, olives and cheese.
Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes or until thoroughly heated.
The 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China concluded its third plenary session in Beijing last month. One of its principal objectives was to study the issue of further deepening reform comprehensively to advance Chinese modernization. This comes at a time when much of the Western world is falling apart by mostly self-ignited and auto-propelled conflicts and proxy wars, “sanctioning” countries that don’t conform to the hegemon’s wishes.
While the West is self-destructing, China is “modernizing” and opening up its outlook and activities to the rest of the world – one could say as a helping hand to seek global harmony and peace, while at home unifying behind a stable and sound economy.
The meeting emphasized that the present and the near future constitute a critical period for our endeavor to build a great country and move toward national rejuvenation on all fronts through Chinese modernization. As Chinese modernization has been advanced continuously through reform and opening-up, it will surely embrace broader horizons through further pushing this policy. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is already in the process of being implemented. In fact, the outlook, opening-up and peaceful inclusion of other countries and regions had already started in 2013. It spans the globe with at least six nation-connecting transportation infrastructure schemes via land, sea and air, through Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
To promote Chinese modernization, Beijing has drawn a blueprint and given concrete initiatives. Essentially, the act of modernizing and opening-up includes, at home, the implementation of the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy, meaning promoting and deepening economic, political, cultural, social and ecological advancement under law-based self-governance. It also includes supporting broad and country-wide security and high-quality development, ensuring people’s wellbeing and social stability, protecting the environment as well as further development of national defense and the armed forces.
Internationally, China seeks to pursue diplomacy with Chinese characteristics. BRICS and Global South are two very important platforms for cooperation. One of the Chinese proposals in cooperation with Russia is the expansion of BRICS to the currently BRICS Plus, which is expected to be further enlarged.
This is part of China’s modernization with a national, as well as international, and peaceful, platform. Modernization is also aiming at de-dollarized currencies, for example, a common BRICS trading currency, strengthening the Global South, gradually moving it away from the fangs of the Western dollarized economy.
The Western dollarized monetary system has become a worldwide Ponzi scheme, that over the past few decades has grown to become a power-grabbing system, able to strangle and penalize countries seeking sovereignty, rather than having to bow to the Western hegemonic powers.
These moves of modernization and opening-up – with Chinese characteristics – are peaceful, non-aggressive and non-expansive, with each partner within the Global South and within the BRICS, maintaining her own sovereign autonomy, and their own sovereign monetary system.
The steady advance of modernization will lead China into a high-standard market economy. The expansion of the market economy will concentrate on BRICS and the Global South. It will also focus on the ASEAN nations, in particular the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world’s largest free trade agreement, comprising fifteen countries.
The reform process includes assessing the implementation of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), leading smoothly to the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030). It is expected to be completed when the People’s Republic of China celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2029.
The new era has already begun. It will continue building China into a modern socialist country by the middle of the century. China is advancing peacefully into a higher level of long-term governance at home. It is also providing diplomatic assistance internationally for those nations or societies that want to benefit from China’s aura and experience of peaceful development and coexistence.
The author is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization.
Peter Koenig 22:36 Aug 21 2024
Prof. Mearsheimer REVEALS: China Will Side with Russia in a MAJOR Global Conflict
Have you ever been glad you were carrying a gun? What happened?
One day a couple rough looking guys came over to my rural home in response to an ad I had put on craigslist, giving away a set of truck tires.
Earlier in the week, I had gotten a few threatening texts from someone who was responding to the ad because one of the tires was a different brand. The guy was a nutcase. Free tires and one was an odd brand?
So these guys pull up,don’t say a word, and just got out and glared at me. I pointed to the tires by the garage and they walked over but were watching me out of the corners of their eyes.
I kept my distance.They still had said nothing and appeared angry. It struck me at that moment this was probably the nut who sent the texts,threatening me for giving away odd tires. I was really creeped out by then.
I told them I had to go check up on my dad who was (Wasn’t) in the house and to take the tires if they wanted them.
I went in and strapped on my Bersa .380, letting it show from benieth my shirt tail. I went back outside and stood a good 14 feet away from them.
They both noticed the gun on my hip and my hand close to it. At that,one mumbled something to the other and they rolled the tires away and into their truck and left.
Not a word.
I am almost certain that if they had the chance,they would have beaten me or worse.
My nearest neighbor was too far away to notice if anything went wrong and these guys definitely had something else on their mind.
All I had to do was show them I was armed and alert. That may have saved my life or at least a beating.
Be Careful with Female Colleagues – They don’t consider your career.
What was the strangest way a criminal was caught?
A tin of salmon.
Alongside his partner Leonard Lake, infamous serial killer Charles Ng had killed and tortured a dozen or more men, women and children over the span of one year. The whole terrible affair is a tale of fate and chance.
Born to a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, his early life was marked by an obsession with martial arts, fire-setting and physical abuse at the hands of his father. Amidst all of this, an inclination towards kleptomania emerged. He hopped from one school to another, getting expelled from each one, marked out as a troubled youth. After a shoplifting incident aged 15, his father sent him to an English boarding school in an attempt to correct him. Shortly after arriving though, he was expelled for stealing from other students.
Aged 18, he got a student visa and moved to the USA where he enrolled at NDNU, a college in Northern California, but dropped out after one semester. Soon after he was involved in a hit and run accident, and to avoid prosecution he joined the Marines, getting in by faking his documents. He was eventually discharged, again for theft, and did a runner. He was caught though, and put in military prison for fourteen months. Whilst in there, a single but crucial chance thing happened. He picked up a war games magazine.
This apparently innocuous and inconsequential act turned out to be the moment which would lead to a year-long killing spree. He looked through this magazine and happened upon the ads section, where he saw one placed by fellow Marine Leonard Lake. He answered it, the two met, and would regrettably make the worst kind of history.
Fate put a spanner in the works though, and in 1985, a lead would open up and take them right to the heart of the atrocities. The lead was provided by none other than Ng and Lake themselves: Ng had been caught shoplifting a vice and fled, causing Lake to go to the store later and try to pay for it. By then police had arrived though, and noticed that he didn’t resemble the photo of the man on his stolen driving license. They searched his car, found a gun, and he was arrested. A fingerprint search revealed a positive match, and the police identified the vehicle he was driving as that of one of the missing victims. Lake committed suicide by ingesting the cyanide pills he’d sewn into his clothes.
Capture didn’t come quite so quickly for Ng though, who had fled to Canada. Whilst he was hiding out there though, fate once again pulled his strings whilst he was out shopping, and he attempted to steal a tin of salmon. It would be his undoing because he got caught doing it, and shot a security guard in the hand. Fortunately though, the security guard only suffered minor injuries, and captured Ng regardless. He held him until police came, who promptly arrested him. He was sentenced to four and a half years for theft and assault. Once his sentence for that had finished, he was held pending an extradition request from California. He fought a legal battle to try to avoid it, because Canada doesn’t have the death penalty. He lost, was extradited and charged on twelve counts of murder. After more years of legal battles, he was eventually convicted on eleven counts of murder — six men, three women and two male infants. To this day, he remains in prison on death row.
All because of a tin of salmon.
I Lived in Thailand For 7 months and I’m Spilling ALL The Tea | Here’s What I Learned
Who wears purple on an aircraft carrier?
On the flight deck, those wearing purple jerseys are responsible for fueling and de-fueling aircraft.
Purple shirts are affectionately known as “grapes.”
All flight deck personnel wear colored jerseys which denote their jobs.
Brown: plane captains. The ranking man or woman responsible for the overall readiness of a given airframe. Plane captains are highly experienced and competent, working closely with aviators and radio intercept officers/naval flight officers (RIOs and NFOs). In fact, plane captains have their names painted on aircraft just like a pilot’s would be.
Red: ordnance. Responsible for the weapons loadout of aircraft. Cannon rounds, missiles, bombs, etc. all fall under their purview.
Yellow: plane handlers. They direct aircraft in taxiing, parking, launching, recovery, etc.
Green: catapult and arresting gear handlers. They keep the aircraft handling equipment in working order, ensuring aircraft can be launched or recovered anytime it is required.
White: landing signal officers (LSOs) and medical personnel. LSOs guide aircraft in flight down to a safe landing. Medical personnel are on standby in the event of an injury or other emergency.
Blue: chocks and chain handlers. Blue shirts tie down aircraft when they are parked, operate the aircraft elevators, and drive the tractors and vehicles around the flight deck as needed.
Even the pants of flight deck personnel mean something. Those with blue pants are junior sailors or petty officers. Those in khaki pants are chief petty officers, warrant officers, and commissioned officers. Those in flight suits are almost always commissioned officers. CVN flight decks are carefully-choreographed chaos, and color-coding crew on deck casts some clarity onto the carrier calling.
Why Women Need To Be Banned From Male Spaces ASAP
Isn’t it strange that there is next to nothing in the news about the Burmese genocide of the Rohingya and the Chinese genocide of the Uyghurs?
You have been fooled by Human Right Watch which is funded by NED which is funded US Congress.
There was no Rohingya genocide or Uyghurs genocide. They are lies.
Let us understand the mentality of USA. Former US diplomat Henry Kissinger said: to be US enemy is dangerous. To be US friend is fatal.
USA’s mentality is “America ONLY”. No country will be safe. Neither friend nor enemy.
USA makes China or Russia a US enemy. Then use a US friend eg Ukraine or Philippines to provoke a war against US enemy. After war/use, US friends will become a condom & be discarded by USA. That is how fatal a US friend is: shed blood & lose life for US interest.
After WW2, from 1946-2001, in 55 years, there were 248 wars around the globe. 201 of them ie 82% were instigated by USA. In 240+ years since US independence, there were only 16 years when USA was not in a war.
Other than war, USA would bribe locals to instigate unrest eg protests, riots & coups against any government who dont bow down to USA. For instance, 56 coups incl assassination in Latin America since WW2.
There is only 1 motive for USA: money & power/dominance. It is modern-day colonisation.
1, money
Both US military industry (MIC) & Federal Reserve (FED) are private corporations run by capitalist sharks & not by (responsible) government who would focus on the welfare of the country eg economic development.
MIC makes tons of money thru wars & arms sales. They lobby US government to create wars in other countries. US politicians also make $$$ by buying MIC stocks or working as a MIC salesman to other country.
Another 2 capitalist sharks are FED & Wall Street. They create monetary or financial war to bankrupt other country so as to suck foreign capitals/investments to USA, or post-war construction in war-torn country.
See, if there is peace in the world, MIC, FED or Wall Street will create war somewhere so as to make money.
US senator L Graham told the truth: must win the Ukraine war, for Ukraine’s rich minerals.
2, power/US dominance ie modern-day conlonisation
Control other’s government & make them a US puppet.
Then control other’s resources eg Ukraine’s minerals, Syria’s oil & rich agricultural land.
US wisdom
In 1961, the then pres D Eisenhower warned against the establishment of private MIC which will distort US politics & threaten democracy.
Many US pres eg J Kennedy, R Nixon & more fought with the FED but failed.
conclusion
USA wont not let world peace to happen. USA must create unrest/war thru its puppets eg Ukraine & Philippines.
War is in the DNA of USA.
Are capitalist sharks nice to Americans?
Every year, US taxpayers pay the interest of the US debts that is created as aids to war-torn country.
Capitalist sharks make tons of money from wars, but pay little tax to benefit USA. For instance, sharks wont maintain infrastructure, resulting in train derailment almost daily. Making USA look like a under-developed 3rd world. The list is long.
Viral Post EXPOSES How Most Women VIEW Men!
What was the strangest way a criminal was caught?
On February 15, 1978 around 1:00 AM, a man was stopped by Pensacola police officer David Lee after a routine “wants and warrants” check showed that the Volkswagen Beetle the man was driving, was actually stolen.
The man resisted arrest, tried to run away and was eventually subdued by the police officer. David Lee had no idea who the man really was. And he also did not know that the man was on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Less than a month before the arrest, the man had broken into Florida State University’s Chi Omega sorority house and bludgeoned and strangled two women (while killing them in the act), raping one of them and brutally biting her on her buttocks and tearing off one nipple. In an adjoining room, he beat two other students over the head with a log. They survived (but were both severely wounded), which investigators attributed to a roommate who came home and interrupted the man before he was able to kill them.
On February 9, he killed again. This time he abducted a 12-year-old girl named Kimberly Leach, raped her, cut her throat and mutilated her genitals with a knife inside a pig farrowing shed.
He kidnapped Kimberly on the Lake City Junior high school school grounds, in between classes.
[Kimberly Dianne Leach was 12 when she was abducted and murdered.]
This happened less than a week before he was taken into custody.
David Lee had no idea about all of this. That the man was the world’s most famous serial killer, that he had been on the loose for more than a month after a spectacular escape. That the man had killed two more young women and an innocent school girl.
And that he had arrested Ted Bundy.
SOURCES: The footnoted sites. For the picture of Kimberly Leach, I used ABC News.
[3]For the photograph of Ted Bundy, I consulted “Killer in the Archives.”
“Meet Roger Barrett, this gentleman is a patient of mine who just started coming to our office this week…little did I know this man would change my life.
Mr. Barrett was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2009 and was told he could receive treatment but if the cancer spread outside the bladder there wasn’t much the doctors could do. Well as months went on and the doctor visits and follow ups continued Mr. Barrett’s cancer began to get worse. In 2010 he went in for yet another follow up and was told the cancer had spread past his bladder and there wasn’t anything they could do – that he had 5 years to live. Mr Barrett decided he wanted any treatment possible that could maybe help him so the doctors agreed and tried a few more treatments but the treatments were causing him to build up infection. The doctor told Mr. Barrett if he continued getting the infections they could also kill him therefore the doctor had no choice but to stop treatment.
A few months later was the month of December and every year Mr. Barrett decorates his home with 150,000 lights displaying the true meaning of Christmas and opens it up to the public and has a fire pit, serves hotdogs and marshmallows at no charge. Well one Saturday evening Mr. Barrett was parking cars in his back yard, and he said a couple pulled up in a little car. Mr. Barrett said clearly they didn’t belong there because the woman was dressed in a white, gorgeous coat that came down to her ankles and he man was dressed in his Sunday best suit. Mr. Barrett said they stayed a good two and a half hours walking around the property admiring the light display. Mr. Barrett said as they came around the property the last time they stopped him and said ‘This is the most beautiful light display we have seen, we saw Jesus more than once through this display’ and Mr. Barrett replied ‘Yes sir, that’s what it is all about’ the man then said, ‘If you don’t mind me asking what does your utility bill usually run putting all this on?’ Mr. Barrett replied, ‘We have three meters we pull from so it runs anywhere from $750-$800.’ The man then replies ‘Mr. Barrett you’re also having some health problems aren’t you?’ Mr. Barrett (kind of puzzled) responds ‘why yes I am, I currently have bladder cancer and they have given me 5 years.’ The man relies and asks ‘do you mind if we pray for you?’ Mr. Barrett said ‘I would appreciate that.’
Mr. Barrett said he never felt the couple touch him as they held hands for the prayer. He said the whole prayer just felt different and he said I could swing my feet back and forth as if I was floating. After they prayed the man looks at Mr. Barrett and said ‘Do not let yourself think about that Cancer again, God told me He has His hand on you. Also, do not stop doing this light display, God also told me He is going to handle it.’
Mr. Barrett still puzzled by the couples kindness hurried to tell his wife who was entertaining the rest of their guests. She responded ‘Honey, there wasn’t a couple here of that description.’ Mr. Barrett said ‘Yes there was, they were here for two and a half hours. I was just talking and praying with them.’ Mr. Barrett asked a few other people who were there and no one recognized this couple he was describing.
The following Wednesday (2011) Mr. Barrett went to the hospital to have his biopsy done and the doctors told him to call his doctor to set up a two week follow up so he has time to get the results. The next day Mr. Barrett had just woke up and sat on the edge of the bed and his phone rang. It was his doctor, Immediately Mr. Barrett began apologizing because he had forgotten to call. The doctor said ‘Are you sitting down Mr. Barrett?’ He responded “yes sir” the doctor proceeded ‘I have your results. Do not ask me any questions because I don’t have the answers but you’re cancer free!’ Mr. Barrett said he handed the phone to his wife because he couldn’t speak. The doctor told Mr. Barrett ‘I’m going to send you for more tests because if there are any cancer cells I’m going to find them.’ After running every test in the book the doctors couldn’t find a single cancer cell, Mr. Barrett was in fact Cancer Free!
Weeks had gone by and Mr. Barrett’s wife had opened their utility bill and said ‘they must have made a mistake, but I’m sure they will catch it next month’ Mr. Barrett said ‘why what is it?’ Mrs. Barrett replied ‘our total utility bill with all three meters is only $187’ Mr. Barrett couldn’t help but smile and say ‘There is no mistake, God took care of it!”
The meme’s are relentless
Hank Hill: “So are you Chinese or Japanese?” Kahn Souphanousinphone: “I’m from Laos, it’s a landlocked country in south east Asia.” Hank: “… so are you Chinese or Japanese?”
A clueless West
The story of China depending on “cheap labour” and “bad working conditions” is now utterly outdated but very prevalent among many commentators, and the general public. Over the next 5-10 years they are going to get a very nasty surprise as China dominates every single green energy industry – Solar, Wind, Nuclear, Smart Networks, Batteries, EVs … while also reducing their greenhouse emissions in parallel with continued 5% GDP growth and catching up in microchips. The image of China will be that of the future, as with the US in the 1950s, and the image of the West will be that of a bullying past. I have written a piece on that:
Even at PPP, the incomes of China’s 1.4 billion will only reach about US$35,000 in 2030 and US$44,000 in 2035. But given the sheer scale of the country, there will be whole regions with populations bigger than Germany that will have incomes at least equal to that nation. In addition, Chinese incomes will still be growing at perhaps 4% per year, while Europe and North America will be in full decline – with Europe in the lead. With respect to the US, so much of its GDP is BS (under-counting inflation, double-counting financial services costs as outputs etc.), and wasted (the military, healthcare etc.) it is hard to tell what the true income level is, especially for the bottom 80%.
In addition, the West (especially North America) has such a huge deficit in infrastructure spending to make up while its very aged pieces of that infrastructure will need more and more money to stop catastrophic reductions in service.
Everything is a rip off, its not even worth going out anymore / Van Life / Cashless society.
https://youtu.be/QTSusu4o36Y
Do you feel safer with a gun or without a gun?
Two years ago some punk ass kid and his friends were terrorizing my daughters and their friends in my lawn. The kid was throwing rocks at my windows and flower pots and when my kids told him to knock it off, he started getting physical. I told the kid to “get the fuck out of here” and he ran off.
Hours later, two dads show up at my door. One of them my size, the other at least double my size. I’m in decent shape. I’m in the Air Force, I work out to pass my fitness tests. I’m not built, but I’m also not all fat either. The shit got physical with the bigger Dad. He didn’t like hearing that his kid was anything less than an angel and attacked me.
Guns are the great equalizer. I owed that Dad nothing. And I could’ve been much more convincing when I asked him and his punk ass kid to leave if I were armed.
If you’re interested in the story, once the police got involved the other Dad supported my narrative and the big guy got arrested. His wife ended up testifying that he was abusing her as well and he was forced to leave his home. When I went to the police dept to get his name to file a TRO, the officer there informed me that he was being held on charges related to her – not me – and that they knew I had absolutely nothing to worry about anymore.
That was all fine and dandy. But they weren’t there when I needed them. My wife was, and she was helpless. That’s why I feel safer with my gun. I’m not going to answer every door knock with a gun in my hand, but now my wife can do something about it next time shit like that goes down.
OUR FIRST DAYS IN CHINA SHOCKED US! BLOWN AWAY BY ALL THE MODERN TECHNOLOGY IN SHANGHAI 上海
What is the most ridiculous request you have received as a flight attendant?
This request still makes me cringe even if it happened one year ago. Such a ridiculous request I got from a passenger.
I have many passengers that often ask me to take photos of them and their friends/families together on board and I don’t mind taking photos of them if they ask me. But don’t ask me to video record you!
As I was walking down the aisle on board a girl stopped me. She asked me if I could record her because she was going to make a video for her vlog on board the plane. At that time meal service was done and there was a window of a break for us crew members. Usually, this pause is for us crew to take a break and eat our crew meals.
I did not think much about this at that time. I thought well this girl probably wants me to video record her for five minutes while she is sitting in her seat. There were no passengers sitting next to her; she was flying alone.
I should have asked her if she is going to sit down in her seat while I video record her or if she is planning on walking on board the plane. We were on board an A380 and these planes are huge. Anyhow, I should also have asked her HOW LONG she wanted me to video record her. Silly me I assumed five minutes while she would be sitting in her seat.
I thought to myself well I have five minutes and it is OK I can do this for her while she is sitting in her seat, then I could go and eat my meal.
Well, I held her camera and started to record her. She was sitting in her seat and when four minutes passed she stood up and started to walk. By now I thought this is ridiculous and I don’t want to be her personal camerawoman.
I stopped in the middle of the filming and asked her politely for how long she was planning for me to video record her. She said that she was planning for a 30 min video for her vlog. 30 MINUTES, OH GOSH I THOUGHT.
That she didn’t even have the thought that I am working on board and would not have the time to hold her camera and follow her around and video record her. I told her that I was sorry but I did not have time for 30 minutes. I told her that I could only help her with this for five minutes because I had to go and do other things. (eat my meal then back to work again)
She then became rude towards me and told me ‘’who does a five min vlog’’.
There were a lot of things I wish I could have told her but I held my tongue. After all, I was on duty, and when on duty we remain our professionalism.
I once again tried to talk to her in a polite manner and I told her that I was sorry and wouldn’t be able to help her with this. I told her that perhaps other passengers on board might be able to assist her with this task. She took the camera from me and went and sat in her seat. The only thing she said was ‘’ it is fine’’.
She didn’t even thank me that I tried to help, even if it was only for five min.
That was such an awkward moment and she didn’t go to any passengers and ask them either. For the remainder of the flight, she sat in her seat and played with her phone.
Such a ridiculous request. I am a person that always tries to help my passengers and tries to meet their needs. Of course, there are limits to what we can do but being a camerawoman on board is not one of them. I wouldn’t mind doing it for five min while she was sitting down in her seat. But that I would be following her around on board isn’t one of my duties on board.
The fact that this girl felt entitled, felt I had to do it, or wasn’t even aware that I had a job to do was really silly.
We have a lot of passengers on board videotaping their flight experience and that is OK because they are doing it themselves. But don’t ask the cabin crew to do it when they are working. So silly!
What is the basis for the belief that China could defeat the United States in a military conflict?
Well, realpolitik.
Bill “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” sent 2 CBGs to steam through the Taiwan strait (which is too shallow for nuclear sub operation) in the late 90s, to show who’s boss in the third Taiwan strait crisis.
Now, here’s a little quiz for the American reader.
When was the last time a CBG steamed through the Taiwan strait?
The fourth Taiwan strait crisis flared up this century in 2022 and is ongoing.
It was sparked by this flight.
And where was the Reagan, the CBG in theater?
It avoided the SCS, and parked itself off Luzon to provide fighter escort for the final leg of Nancy’s flight.
It left the area and headed northeast after China announced the biggest naval drill in its history, giving Taiwan a wide berth.
Notice anything odd about Nancy’s flight, which took months of planning and originated stateside? It was a long, circuitous route that painstakingly avoided the entire Chinese coast and the SCS. Not only that, the pentagon found the risk unacceptable to fly her in from Guam.
Why? Joe is a sissy standing next to Bill? Remember, Newt the Speaker visited both Beijing and Taipei after an extraordinary show of force in 1996.
The original exercise to practice the blockade of taiwan happened in 2022.
In the virgin edition, exclusion zones were enacted 2 days after they were announced.
In 2024, after Ching Te’s and Mike’s incendiary and irresponsible speeches in Taipei post-election, the PLA enacted a refined version of the exclusion zones ON DEMAND. The sole announcement was “the exercise commences NOW. Get out.”
How did the US and partners respond?
They made sure to steer well clear of the entire Chinese coast. Taiwan barely squeaked and stood down from their regular sop of challenging mainland military contact.
Over the past decade, foreign military assets that used to ignore Chinese warnings to turn back have been successfully repelled, including a CBG in the SCS recently that was forced to take evasive action after a h-20 bomber executed a sea hugging attack run targeting the carrier.
Front foot posturing has been dialed down since the spate of inexplicable accidents linked to fatigue. The USN is using the coast guard and partners to fill the gap. Notably, they are giving Taiwan access to Sat-linked reaper drones, which speaks to a degradation of real-time sigint from Okinawa.
Elsewhere, a seawolf class sub met with an accident in the SCS after hitting an undersea mount that “wasn’t supposed to be there”. Kadena has gradually scaled back from permanently deployed f-22 to rotating units of f-15. The keystone of the pacific has shifted permanently to Guam, as america looks to dramatically reduce its presence in Okinawa. Guam represents a strategic retreat of over 2,000km, and its fortified bunkers are protected by a triple air defense of thaad, aegis and patriot—extravagant, by Okinawa standards.
What are American shipyards churning out today?
Arleigh-burkes, virginias and constellations. Chew on this, and take your time.
Meanwhile, marines are being retooled to become a rapid-deploy rocket force. In a nutshell, a 21st century action-at-a-distance pirates of the Caribbean strategy that screams “if we can’t have it, neither can you”.
To be clear, America continues to present a clear and present threat. But its gunboat diplomacy has noticeably diminished decade on decade, and it has increasingly struggled to exert technological superiority. This shows in the deployment of force and the purported war plan.
From “you don’t want to fight us” to open admissions of “we can’t win”.
In another 10-15 years, it will be Americans nodding when the chinese say “you don’t want to fight us”.
Cops Find Man With Dementia in Bed With Dismembered Body
https://youtu.be/E27RHHL7BLc
Is it really worth it to live to over 80 years?
I shall be 87 next month
I am totally deaf, partially blind, and can only read books with difficulty, so it is many years since I read a book, though I can read a computer screen easily
I’m very much overweight, and take pills daily, which I will do for life
Problems with legs and lungs make me largely housebound
I live alone, apart from my cat, but I am lucky in so far as I can look after myself Most of my friends of my generation are gone, and several are severely ill or have dementia, but also several others of my generation are still working
To some extent it is the gene lottery that keeps one going
though not always. My father was ill all his life, and died at 43
He, like my mother, could not swim or ride a bicycle
I could do both, as of course, could everyone of my generation
Both of my grandfathers were illiterate
My mother and father could read, but neither ever read a book
There were no books in the house other than those I got myself
My mother had two still born children prior to myself, and told me that I was a sickly child, so it would seem that neither nurture or Nature favored me
So what is it that keeps one going into old age?
In my case it was largely the Times one was born in
My grandparents born in the 1870–80’s London were poor
They worked full time as young teenagers, so denied an education
My parents born in 1900, were slightly better off, but as young teenagers were caught up in the 1914–18 war and later the Great Depression. They had few choices in life, and simply accepted that surviving was meeting the battles of the day
My generation – 1930’s – were again better off, but there were few people I knew who owned a phone or a car, and even a radio was a luxury, but we did have one thing; WW2
Yes, WW2 had its downsides, but it did provide free travel, and a wide range of opportunities to be educated, and meet people if you were in the military, and if not, work was plentiful.
My mother who had earned a pitiful living as a house cleaner before the war, was now a machine operator in a wartime munitions factory, and getting relatively good money
Wartime, for my generation who are now in the 70–90’s, had to look after themselves. Not so much in the USA, quite a bit in the UK, and totally in war-torn Europe
There was a great sense of purpose that a ‘World fit for heroes’ might exist, though not quite
In answer to the question
‘Is it worth it to live over 80 years?’
My grandparents never knew, nor my parents, though a few crossed the line
It is common enough in my generation, but there is a ‘Dark zone’ where you know that even a slight illness can lead to complications
But today, anyone under 60 will most likely live past 80
and will do so in the knowledge that they are generally a button away from getting help if needed
What can you do if you make it to 80?
Well, if your brain and heart are in relatively good condition, you will be surprised to know that you will feel about 40, or even less
If you want to make it to 80, my advice is go for it
You will not be short of company
EDIT
Several people have commented about their elderly relatives who suffer from illness and loneliness.
It has been suggested that more people die of loneliness than illness, but worse, many who suffer from loneliness are neither ill nor old
Part of the problem is both obvious and yet invisible. Here is a typical 1930’s sitting room of the sort I grew up in. No black boxes with shiny knobs and buttons. Somewhere a large radio; shelves with a few treasured possessions.
Every such room would have a personality of the owner. Designed to be warm and comfortable. One could go into most houses and recognize all the items; a windup clock; a sewing basket; a few books (no TV), a coal fire with coal tongs and poker, and a bucket of coal beside the fire, and a toasting fork
(In this picture you can see a small hand pump on the left hand side of the fireplace. It was used to blow air when you started the fire every day, that is, after you had raked the cinders out, made firelighters out of rolled up newspapers, sorted out unburnt cinders, and cleaned up. You bought small bundles of wood as fire starters, and if you had the money, then you could buy wax covered paper that lit up instantly (what luxury)
Every technological advancement took away a minor joy. The electric toaster took away the joy of using a toasting fork to make toast in front of an open coal fire that you stared into, as if hypnotized as the coal burnt and created shapes.
The toast would be covered in home made jam. One felt safe in such surroundings
When my mother made an apple pie, I saw her make the dough, roll it out, peel the apples, stoke the cast iron stove, boil the custard, lay the table, poke the pie with a knife to see if it was cooked, then deliver it triumphantly straight from the oven to us as we waited in anticipation
On first taste, we look at her and say ‘It’s delicious, can I have a second helping’. She would smile. It was her way of saying ‘I love you all’, and our way of saying ‘We know you do’
Technology has given us microwave ovens, precooked pies, and tinned custard, but there is one ingredient they left out
That is why the elderly are lonely
Merrick Garland’s DOJ Goes After Putin’s Mouthpieces in US
The Department of Justice, led by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, is investigating individuals in the U.S. with connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state television networks. This inquiry is part of a broader effort to prevent potential Kremlin interference in the 2024 presidential election, as reported by The New York Times.
This development follows recent FBI searches at the homes of Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector, U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, and convicted sex offender, and Dimitri Simes, a Russian-born former adviser on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
According to The Times and U.S. officials familiar with the case, the FBI is expected to conduct more searches and has not dismissed the possibility of criminal charges.
Ritter has frequently appeared on Russian state media, often echoing Kremlin viewpoints on Putin’s conflict with Ukraine. Simes hosts a weekly current affairs show on Russia’s state-run Channel One.
In January, Ritter visited Chechnya, where he offered a message of “friendship” between the U.S. and Chechnya during a speech in Grozny, the capital. Ritter expressed a desire to foster goodwill between the two regions and predicted a Russian victory in Ukraine. He remarked, “America isn’t a bad place. American people are like you. Good people. The state is a different matter. That’s politics. I’m not a politician. I’m a soldier, like you.”
Simes, who has not been in the U.S. since 2022, characterized the FBI raid as an “attempt to intimidate” those opposing U.S. policies or the “deep state,” in an interview with Russia’s state-run Sputnik News. Ritter also commented on the situation, describing it as a perilous time for Americans and accusing the U.S. government of attempting to deceive and manipulate its citizens.
In late July, the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), a U.S. intelligence agency operating under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, warned of Russian attempts to influence the upcoming election between Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. The FMIC highlighted that Kremlin-affiliated groups are increasingly deploying actors and influence-for-hire firms based in Russia to shape U.S. public opinion and impact the election.
The agency reported that these firms have developed influence platforms and engaged Americans directly and discreetly, using sophisticated tools to tailor content for U.S. audiences while concealing their Russian origins. “Russian influence actors have made concerted efforts this election cycle to build and leverage networks of U.S. and Western figures to propagate Russian-friendly narratives,” the FMIC stated. The report emphasized Moscow’s ongoing use of a broad array of influence tactics and actors to better disguise its involvement, expand its reach, and create content that resonates with American audiences.
The US’ constant hyping of the “China nuclear threat” theory is a convenient pretext for the US to shirk its obligation of nuclear disarmament, expand its own nuclear arsenal and seek absolute strategic predominance, a spokesperson from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday, after US media reported President Joe Biden has approved a highly classified nuclear strategic plan that, for the first time, reorients the US’ deterrent strategy to focus on China’s purported expansion of its nuclear arsenal.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Biden approved the document in March after the Pentagon said it believes China’s nuclear arsenal stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the US’ and Russia’s over the next decade.
The White House never announced that Biden had approved the revised strategy, called the “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which seeks to prepare the US for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. The document, updated every four years or so, is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, with only a small number of hard copies distributed to a few national security officials and Pentagon commanders.
The US has called China a “nuclear threat” and used it as a convenient pretext for the US to shirk its obligation of nuclear disarmament, expand its own nuclear arsenal and seek absolute strategic predominance, Mao Ning, spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at a Wednesday briefing, while stressing China is gravely concerned over the report.
“The size of China’s nuclear arsenal is not on the same level with the US. China follows a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons and always keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required by national security. We have no intention to engage in any form of arms race with others,” Mao said.
“In contrast, the US sits on the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world. Even so, it clings to a first-use nuclear deterrence policy, and has invested heavily to upgrade its nuclear triad and blatantly devised nuclear deterrence strategies against others. It is the US who is the primary source of nuclear threat and strategic risks in the world,” Mao stated.
The document reflects that the US has reached a level of hysteria when it comes to competition with countries like China. It has even reached a point where it is prepared for a nuclear conflict, which is extremely dangerous, said Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University.
He said the US’ hype over China’s nuclear arsenal is a tactic to justify and bolster its own nuclear weapons program for political maneuvering and policy objectives.
Deflation Just Started In The United States
What person destroyed their entire life by making one simple mistake?
Samantha Josephson.
In March of 2019, New Jersey native Samantha was 21, about to graduate from the University of South Carolina, and then go on to law school at Drexel University, where she had a full scholarship.
On the evening of March 29th, she went out for drinks in downtown Columbia with some friends, but grew tired, and told them she was going to take an Uber back to campus.
But Samantha never made it home. Instead, her body was found by turkey hunters in a rural area 65 miles from Columbia the next day. She’d been stabbed 120 times.
Surveillance footage from local businesses showed Samantha getting into her Uber — a black Chevy Impala.
Except it wasn’t her Uber — that was Samantha’s mistake. The car was owned by 24-year-old Nathaniel Rowland, who had reportedly been driving around the neighborhood hoping someone would mistake it for an Uber. The car had childproof locks engaged, so once Samantha got in, she was trapped, and the terror she must have felt when Rowland began driving in the opposite direction from campus must have been nightmarish.
We don’t know exactly why Rowland — who had no history of violent crime — killed Samantha. He didn’t know her, had never even met her. The day after the murder, he was posting casually on Facebook as if it was business as usual, even as he still had her phone and blood in his car, and her DNA under his fingernails. It’s believed that he just wanted to kill someone, and Samantha was the person unlucky enough to get into his car. The judge called it a “crime of opportunity”.
Rowland, who was said to be remorseless and emotionless during his trial, was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It’s terrifying that such people exist (and also why I refuse to use services like Uber or Lyft) — this wasn’t revenge, or jealousy, or greed, it was just murder for the sake of murder.
Samantha Josephson made one simple mistake, and she paid for it with her life.
The airlock of the space habitat swung open, revealing the two fully-suited spacemen. Their costumes were dull white with tinted blue helmets and golden reflective visors. The two spacemen stepped out into the grey alien planet, retrieved their long probes, and prodded the surroundings around them. Their equipment beeped and notified them of the collecting data.
The mounds of greyish-blue sand camouflaged the space habitat with the grey mountain ranges behind it. The spacemen’s shoes crunched in the planet’s stillness. The crepuscular rays beaming from the dense clouds above them, and the dazzling blue light filtering through the dark dense clouds resembled a Renaissance painting of a divine figure coming down to earth.
For the past three months, an abhorrent storm had obscured the entire sky. The nightmarish winds had descended on the exoplanet habitat of planet Duern Q861. Its wrath reverberated upon the habitat like thunder with large stones crashing upon the habitat. Everything had become pitch black outside the planet’s habitat and the connections to Earth were lost during this brief period. With the passing days, the Spacemen’s supplies depleted, and without communication, the mission was at risk of failure.
After three months, the storm’s ferocity had diminished to nearly nothing. It took days before anything moved around the Space Habitat, Duern Q861A, while the structure remained in the heaps of grey dust settled upon it. After several weeks, there was some movement around the space habitat. The habitat airlocks opened and three white drones flew out to scout the surroundings, gliding, and sailing in three different directions and disappearing into the distance to collect samples. Following the drones, came out the spacemen with their equipment analyzing the surroundings thoroughly and observing the readings until midday. The spaceman looked to his left; the dark clouds were thundering along the horizon but their crackling was vibrating the ground beneath them. Then the spacemen opened the larger airlock, boarded the big carrier rover, and drove toward the small habitat located a mile away from the big habitat.
The dust rose behind the spacemen when the carrier rover drove through the barren grey desert. Ahead of these minuscule spacemen, grey and white sands stretched till the mountain range extended into the horizon. The dull-white mountains looked like raging ocean tides at the storm, captured and frozen in time. These gigantic mountains witnessed the spacemen, the habitat, and everything below as they stood arrogant and untouched by the ferocious storm. Within the valleys of these mountains, enormous caverns and craters existed, which sometimes resembled a dragon’s lair from the fairy tales.
Despite the rover reaching the location of the small habitat, the enormous building was not visible. The two spacemen got down from their rover and began walking to the habitat. The building was oddly missing from their view, and they searched around, their eyes scanning the location. Soon they noticed metals, glass, and many open electrical wires crackling. The entire small habitat was in ruins and under the dunes of dust. They stood on the ruins of the habitat. It surprised them to see the broken pieces of the small habitat buried in the sand. They built these structures specifically to resist heavy storm winds and the impacts of earthquakes. But now standing on its destroyed remains is grave news.
The two spacemen stood there in dismay and shock. The winds wailed in the distance, and the dust from the dunes flew along with the passing breeze. In the deep silence, their pacing heartbeats were audible. Their visors were fogging because of their wheezing warm breath. The spacewoman saw the spaceman’s face twist with shock and bewilderment.
After a moment, his face turned stern and he spoke in his microphone, “The storm has destroyed the small habitat, Duern Q861B. And based on the settlement of dust remains, we cannot estimate when this happened. We hope to retrieve our data soon.”
“Yeah. I agree, but we need to dig and find the system data. Maybe our samples might still be undamaged,” replied the spacewoman over her microphone.
“We must terminate our mission if it is compromised,” told the spaceman. The spacewoman kneeled on the soft grey dirt. But she widened her eyes and blinked hard, struggling not to cry. Crying is uncomfortable in a spacesuit.
The spaceman agreed and began looking through the crumbled remains of the habitat to detect the samples through the metal and glass. He also hoped the sample would be all right, but he felt his heart palpitating under the thick suit and a panic attack missing him by inches. He stood tall and practiced a few breathing techniques before starting his excavation work. Soon they were walking amongst the ruins and moving the metal and glass with their shovels looking for their samples. Their precious samples.
They spent over twenty minutes digging into the sand and shoving away the heavy metals. As they kept working, they found the shards of reinforced glasses of the habitat. The Spaceman kept pushing the grey sand aside and the planet was turning colder by the minute. Then underneath one of the broken green glasses, he found the samples. They found several broken black boxes, and the Spaceman reached inside one of them and pulled some dried leaves out. It was a small leaf, almost as small and circular as the size of a bottle cap, and brownish-orange as an autumn leaf. It is the first plant cultivated on this distant, dusty planet. Out of the sixty different plant species sent with these spacemen, only this plant thrived on this terrain because of its ability to burst its pollens for extensive ranges, and they also have a longer life span.
But now the last of those plants had also died. With the entire habitat sinking into the grey sand, the plant samples crumbled under its collapsing weight. Along with it, the spacemen’s remaining hope too. The spaceman picked up the dead plant and displayed it to the spacewoman. She was still digging the ground and halted when she saw it. She came close and examined it before putting it in one of her spacesuit compartments. They both took another black box and safeguarded it in the carrier rover’s portable cryogenic chamber.
The spaceman clicked the radio button on the side of his helmet as his hands felt sweaty under those thick gloves. His hands trembled, and he felt the nerve on his temples pump and pain. With a big deep breath, the spaceman recorded into his AV radio that their mission is a failure. Although there was no voice from the other side, only static radio buzzing, he recorded the situation on his radio.
He noticed the spacewoman from his peripheral. She had fallen on her knees and began whispering prayers to her gods. He didn’t feel like summoning the gods because they already knew his plight and yet watched upon them without mercy. The spacemen had made detailed plans to save their dying planet and terraform DuernQ861. But they realized their plan had led to an imminent and predetermined defeat. It felt like a tragic destiny, a cruel ploy to humiliate them, to give them hope only to crush it. The spacemen whispered his father’s words, “For they sculpted the fire and it burnt them”
The spaceman loosened his shoulder and looked up at the dark sky for some hope, or some answers. He stared at all the million lights above, shining and flickering. Amongst those stars in the sky, the spaceman saw a small distant blue dot. He stared at it for a while, squinting his eyes. Just for a moment, his mind voyaged to that planet. The elated people, the green grass, the rainy days with the hot coffees, a cold bed on a summer night, and the warm smooch of the sun on the face. The toxicity of breathing air, decomposed food, loss of peaceful sleep, and pain of crumbling starvation in the midriff. He tried to forget the sound of the horrible war cries, the deafening roar of the dropping bombs and gunfire. He tried shaking the memory of holding his family in his arms while hiding in the wardrobe, waiting for the screams to settle. It all ended with the high pitch whistling of the rocket engine.
The spaceman coughed, and his knees trembled. Within moments his legs gave up, and he fell to the ground on his knees as well, while trying hard to breathe. He tried pulling his thoughts off of it but was futile. He saw the blood, the bodies, the wails, and the orphans. He kept fighting his thoughts, which spiraled painfully within his mind. With a deep breath, he summoned his inner voice to convince himself of the reality, “Gone is everything, gone before you knew, gone before you left. Gone before you hoped. Gone far, far away amidst the storm.”
The loud alarm beeped and his pocket vibrated, rescuing him from his thoughts. The spacewoman pulled out her electronic monitoring tablet and clicked some buttons. Then she hurried to the carrier rover and viewed it through the built-in emergency systems. With panic and confusion sweating from her face, the spaceman heard her through the intercom, “The drones have found something in the eastern valley!”
“We’ll see what it is. Come”, the spaceman said and ran over to the rover, but the spacewoman stood motionless and hesitant.
“What happened?” he asked confused.
“What if it comes back?” asked the spacewoman, putting her device inside her suit’s compartment. The spaceman nodded, and she told, “The storm might swirl again. It’s better we must go back to the habitat now.”
“No… we need to see what the drones have found,” the spaceman protested, “What if it is some help or supplies? Maybe someone else landed here. Maybe a rescue team! I think it is a rescue team,” said the spaceman as the spacewoman shook her head in disagreement. “Maybe the war is over and they have come for us. We need to check this out”
“There is no help, Manuel!” snapped the Spacewoman as she pleaded into the microphone, “If they cared, they would contact us, but no! They have left us here to die on this planet! This is the reality. Get this in your head!”
The spaceman stared at her, his fury rising with his excitement, “I still hope otherwise, I feel it. Just think, what if?”
The spacewoman scoffed and yelled, “But what if there is no rescue? What if the storm returns and carries us away with it?”
“I don’t mind!” sneered the spaceman swinging his arms around the rover and climbing over it. “We either die out here or rot in that damned habitat all alone. I don’t want to go back. It stinks like death and blood in there. Wherever the drones are and whatever it has found, I’m going there. If it is death, so be it. All I’m asking you now is…” he paused, holding back his tears, “are you coming with me?”
The spacewoman stared through her golden visor for a minute and gaited to the rover and told, “It will take at least 6 hours to reach there. Buckle up then” and so they buckled to the rover and drove the rover at its maximum speed, about 20km/hr. This rover was the fastest ever built to overcome obstacles and the uneven alien terrain with its large tires and fantastic suspension systems.
The journey took a long time since the eastern valley was several miles away. The tired spacemen knew the travel would be more tiring, but it didn’t matter to them. After hours upon hours of steering through the dusty mountain path, they arrived at the eastern valley and spotted the drone flying high above the location, which hovered just for the spacemen’s reference. While the other two were scanning the environment. It took another hour to drive through the steep grounds to the drone location. They stopped the carrier rover several feet before a large cavern opening.
The two spacemen unbuckled themselves and trod towards the cavern’s opening. They saw an exposed cavern with a wide opening – a gigantic crater. The crater was as massive as hundred football fields. The crater was so gigantic that these two spacemen were almost the size of bugs in front of it.
Both the spacemen were dumbfounded and confused by their very own sight. Their eyes didn’t blink, their body had stopped sweating, their jaws were wide open, and they drew their breaths in. The enormous crater was bleeding vivid red and orange. Out of the crater, many red and orange circular particles ascended. The floating particles were as small as bottle caps. The beautiful pollens sailed in the wind like dandelion seeds while the red leaves of the plant brushed one another.
The entire opening had become a garden spread out in the wild environment. Throughout the crater, for miles, the flowers had flourished and the plant brushed against one another, rustling. The crater’s inclined plane curved down and in the middle of the crater, they noticed something transparent reflecting the bluish-gray hue of the sky. The most fundamental source of life; Liquid Water.
The spacemen knew that the water could have come from the underground water source of this planet. Perhaps an asteroid had struck this planet centuries ago, and this has brought the underground liquid water gushing to the bottom of this crater. The strong winds had brought the plant’s pollen from the ruins of the small habitat to this crater several miles away. The pollens could have settled down in this crater by the large lake glimmering in the semi-darkness. With water and the crater protecting the plants from the storm, plant life has thrived here.
“Look! An alien!” a man’s voice echoed from behind the two spacemen pointing at the crater’s garden. The spaceman turned around and saw five other spacemen standing behind them. The joke had cracked them all up. The spaceman couldn’t see their face clearly through their visor, but he remembered their face and their codenames. There was Green, Zweig, Signature, Trident, and Clicky. All of them were in their spacesuit with their actual names labeled on their chests. He looked at them in surprise, and his eyes couldn’t avert from them.
The five laughed, and the spaceman watching them heard their hysterical laugh through his intercom. Upon the paceman’s face, a smile developed, and he began snorting and chuckling. He looked at Clicky leaning on the rover and laughing at his terrible joke, and the spaceman predicted Zweig would smile under his visor, guessing by his rigid body language. The other three were giggling at Clicky’s uncontrollable laughing rather than his joke. Signature turned to the spaceman and shook his head in agreement. The orange and red pollen flew across them all, and the planet’s home star began rising in the west, behind the five other spacemen. The scene was exquisite, yet quite disturbing.
The spaceman looked at them and reluctantly blinked, unwilling to let go of what he was witnessing. When he opened his eyes, as he had expected, the five spacemen had disappeared into the weak breeze. His eyes teared up as his visors fogged and he heard his breath in the pressurizing silence. He closed his eyes once again, this time tightly shutting them not to let his tears out. Crying is uncomfortable in the spacesuit.
He knew the other spacemen were resting peacefully in the underground cryogenic chamber inside the big habitat. Drifting in their dreams in a world far away, or maybe they were back on earth reliving an alternate yet happier reality. If a rescue team comes to find them or accidentally stumbles upon this planet, they would find the well-preserved corpses of these spacemen.
He again re-opened his eyes once more to revisit the figment. He saw the vast expanse of the dusty terrain. His throat narrowed, and his nose was cramping. But his palpitating heart had oddly calmed, and the trembling finger became still and numb. He couldn’t decide whether to be glad or glum while both blew his way.
The spaceman then turned to look beside him at the spacewoman. She, too, had vanished with the others without a trace. He sighed and gulped heavily as his eye scanned the large valley of the vivid red and orange plant. He rose his hands and touched the floating seed. Although he couldn’t feel it through his spacesuit, he still felt the wind, and a tickling sensation ran down his arm. He smiled, and with a breath drawn in, he began chuckling and then laughing. The drones were still collecting samples and buzzing around like children in a park. The pleasantly delighted spaceman’s smile never left. He sighed with relief and closed his eyes, relishing in the present moment. They have accomplished the mission despite the absolute hurdles.
He gazed at the dancing alien plant field on this strange planet far from earth. He thought of the divine play portrayed ahead of him and the absurdity of the entire ordeal. He laughed hysterically as though he had found unintelligible humor in it, as his feet rose in the air, and he ascended. With grace, his entire body floated up the sky like an air balloon as the light brushed through his golden visor and into his face. Amongst the endless stars filling the sky above, a brilliant-blue dot twinkled brighter than ever.
The spaceman, just like his other crew members, disappeared into the breeze without a remnant. His laughter still echoed and haunted the wind until it faded. The red and orange field rustled to the weak wind glimmering to the light of the new dawn. The passing wind blew from the distance as it buried the footprints under the grey layers of sand. Duern Q861 became silent, its grey dust settled, and life began thriving again.
Why do you have a gun in your house, do you really need home protection?
True story!
About 6 years back I worked at an insurance company. One day I met a fellow employee, we’ll call him Greg. Greg likes to golf ,so do I. With that being said Greg starts joining a group of us that golfed on Wednesday nights. We would all meet up and go play 9 holes. One night we met at a course close to Greg’s house, about 10–12 blocks from him. I had never been to this course. As we go to walk in, I noticed they had signage on their door. I let everyone know I’ll be right back. Greg ask me where I’m going. I replied I got to lock my gun up in the car,I’ll be right back. Upon my return Greg says, ya know you don’t need that thing this is a really safe neighborhood, I live close by and there’s never been any trouble. I replied that’s good to know. We golfed and had a great time.
About 2 weeks later…Greg doesn’t show up for work. It’s Wednesday and our usual group will be gathering to play our weekly round. As we all get to the course I ask if anyone has heard from Greg because it just seemed unusual that he didn’t call or anything. Three days later, no Greg at work still and nobody has heard from him. I finally call him to see if he’s ok. No answer…text no response.
Greg comes to work Monday and walks into my office. He was a clean shaven bald guy..his head had many stitches. He had two black eyes and a broken nose. He was also missing 2 teeth. My first response was OMG are you ok. My first inclination was that he had been in a car accident.He had been in the hospital almost the entire week.
He replied no I’m not ok. Will you help me pick out a gun after work tonight. My home was invaded at 4 am last Wednesday morning and they beat me with a shotgun in my face.
Does that answer your question?
Chili Casserole with Cornbread
Yield: 6 servings Ingredients
1 pound lean ground beef
1 (16 ounce) jar salsa
1 (15 1/2 ounce) can dark red kidney beans
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced peeled tomatoes
1 1/2 cups Niblets frozen corn
3 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 (8 1/2 ounce) package cornbread mix
Milk
Margarine
Egg, if required by mix
1/3 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon sliced green onions
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
In large skillet over medium-high heat, brown ground beef; drain.
Stir in salsa, kidney beans, tomatoes, corn, chili powder and cumin. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes or until thoroughly heated, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, prepare cornbread as directed on package using milk and, if required, margarine and egg.
Spoon cornbread batter around outside edge of ungreased 12 x 8 inch (2 quart) baking dish.
Spoon hot beef mixture into center. (Casserole will be full.)
Bake at 400 degrees F for 18 minutes.
Sprinkle with cheese; bake an additional 4 to 5 minutes or until cheese is melted and cornbread is deep golden brown.
Sprinkle with green onions just before serving.
That’s how the idea came about: why not use a ball-shaped metal nib for writing? This is how the pen was born. László József Biro shared his idea with his brother György, a chemist, and together they began researching and experimenting to create a new type of pen based on this concept. Finally, they found the perfect combination: a viscous ink and a tip with a small ball that rotated freely, preventing the ink from drying out and controlling its flow. They presented their invention at the Budapest International Fair in 1931 and patented it in 1938, although they did not market it immediately. With the start of World War II, the brothers emigrated to Argentina, where they founded a company in a garage. Although they were initially unsuccessful due to the high cost of the product, they secured a contract with the British Air Force, which boosted their popularity. In 1943, they licensed their invention to Eversharp Faber in the United States for $2 million. In 1950, Marcel Bich acquired the rights and, on the recommendation of an advertising expert, dropped the “h” from his surname and founded the company BICGroup. In that year, they launched the first BIC Cristal, one of the most perfect designs ever created, of which more than 20 million units are sold every day around the world. Since 1953, more than 100 billion BIC Cristals have been manufactured, making it the best-selling pen of all time.
Have you ever been glad you were carrying a gun? What happened?
Most definitely.
I was out hiking. I leave my wallet in my car when doing so, and only carry my ID in a zippered pocket, in case I come across a bear on a date with a woman and they get over protective and eat me (yes I’m making a joke out of that stupid Man vs bear in the woods scenario, sue me).
Anyhoo. A homeless camp had been set up off the trail. I’d say maybe 25-30 yards away from the main trail. But the homeless were out and about, begging the hikers for money.
With my luck, a particularly aggressive homeless man kept asking me for money. I tried ignoring him but he decided to keep following me, around my 8 o clock position. He moved to my 11 and started demanding money or he was going to “take it himself”.
At that point I drew my back up guns back up, a .38 +p snubby. I told him to back off several times and tried increasing my distance. At that point he was probably 10-12 ft from me. I stopped walking, faced him, and walked backwards, making sure to keep him in my full view.
I started yelling at him to back away before he ends up being coyote chow. I was hoping another hiker would appear, or something. I prayed I wouldn’t have to follow through on my threat.
He didn’t believe me and decided to walk fast at me, and I sadly put a round dead center. I immediately shifted my weapon to my off hand while keeping it trained on him, and called 9 11.
Eventually officers and EMS responded. I was detained and my weapon taken, and an investigation started. The homeless guy didn’t end up as wild life food, and survived. After a lengthy legal ordeal I wasn’t charged with anything and got my gun back.
When it boils down to it, if it’s between me going home or another person going home, I’m sorry but I’m the one going home, and the other party has three choices. 1. Home 2. Hospital 3. Morgue
Most Americans continue to believe that the United States will prevail in a conventional war with Russia. That is simply not the case.
For starters, Russia’s state-of-the-art missile technology and missile defense systems are vastly superior to those produced by western weapons manufacturers.
Secondly, Russia can field an army of more than 1 million battle-hardened combat troops (honed in Ukraine) who have experienced high-intensity warfare and are prepared to engage whatever enemy they may face in the future.
Third, the United States no longer has the industrial capacity to match Russia’s impressive output of lethal weaponry, artillery shells, ammunition, and cutting-edge ballistic missiles.
In short, Russian military capability far exceeds that of the US in the areas that really count: High-tech weaponry, military industrial capacity, and experienced manpower.
In order to drive this overall point home, I’ve taken excerpts from the work of three military analysts who explain these matters in greater detail underscoring the dramatic shortcomings of the modern US military and the problems it is likely to encounter when faced with a more technologically advanced and formidable adversary.
The first excerpt is from an article by Alex Vershinin titled The Return of Industrial Warfare:
The war in Ukraine has proven that the age of industrial warfare is still here. The massive consumption of equipment, vehicles and ammunition requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply – quantity still has a quality of its own…. The rate of ammunition and equipment consumption in Ukraine can only be sustained by a large-scale industrial base.
This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. Currently, the West may not have the industrial capacity to fight a large-scale war….
The Capacity of the West’s Industrial Base
The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either…. In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days….
Flawed Assumptions The first key assumption about future of combat is that precision-guided weapons will reduce overall ammunition consumption by requiring only one round to destroy the target. The war in Ukraine is challenging this assumption….. The second crucial assumption is that industry can be turned on and off at will….. Unfortunately, this does not work for military purchases. There is only one customer in the US for artillery shells – the military. Once the orders drop off, the manufacturer must close production lines to cut costs to stay in business. Small businesses may close entirely. Generating new capacity is very challenging, especially as there is so little manufacturing capacity left to draw skilled workers from….. The supply chain issues are also problematic because subcomponents may be produced by a subcontractor who either goes out of business, with loss of orders or retools for other customers or who relies on parts from overseas, possibly from a hostile country…. Conclusion The war in Ukraine demonstrates that war between peer or near-peer adversaries demands the existence of a technically advanced, mass scale, industrial-age production capability….. For the US to act as the arsenal of democracy in defence of Ukraine, there must be a major look at the manner and the scale at which the US organises its industrial base…. If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must first radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime. The Return of Industrial Warfare, Alex Vershinin, Rusi Bottom line: The United States no longer has the industrial base or the requisite stockpiles to prevail in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers. Simply put, the US will not win an extended conventional war with Russia. Here’s how analyst Lee Slusher summed it up in a recent post on Twitter:
…. . The US effectively had monopolies on many decisive capabilities, like precision-guided munitions, night-vision, global strike, etc. I think the absence of high-intensity conflict between the US and other nations had a lot to do with these asymmetries. There was no need for the US to apply mass when its advanced capabilities—or even just the threat of them—were sufficient to achieve political aims…..
The list of nations with advanced capabilities continues to grow. At the same time, Western militaries and defense industrial bases continue to erode.
The West exchanged its large standing armies for a reliance on boutique American capabilities that were once decisive but are now increasingly commonplace. This has left the West without its technological edge and without its previous military mass.
Those who still believe in US military supremacy fail to realize these changes. Worse still, most of them entertain cartoonishly underrated notions about Russian military capabilities. They fail to realize Russia has both a technological edge and military mass. Th reputation the US military had was deserved for a time, but everything changes. Lee Slusher @LeeBTConsulting
Bottom Line: America’s adversaries—Russia, China, Iran—have either caught up to or surpassed the US in advanced missile technology, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV), electronic warfare, cutting-edge missile defense systems etc.—which is gradually increasing parity between the states while ending the period of US military supremacy. The American century is rapidly drawing to a close.
Let’s move on to military analyst Number 2, Will Schyver, who draws similar conclusions to those of Vershinin but from a slightly different angle. Check it out:
I am more convinced than ever that the US could NOT establish air superiority against Russia — not in a week; not in a year. Never. It simply could not be done. It would be a logistical power projection challenge well beyond the current capabilities of the United States military.
American air power would prove substantially inferior to the extremely potent and abundantly supplied air defenses fielded by the Russians.
Just as the majority of HIMARS-launched GMLRS rockets, HARMS missiles, ATACMS missiles, and British Storm Shadow missiles are now being shot down in Ukraine, the vast majority of US long-range precision-guided missiles would be shot down, and the US would very rapidly deplete its limited inventory of these munitions in a futile attempt to overwhelm the Russian capacity to keep shooting back.
American suppression of enemy air defenses would prove inadequate to the task of defeating extremely sophisticated, deeply layered, and highly mobile air defense radars and missiles….
the war in Ukraine has made perfectly clear that all manner of western air defense systems are inferior to even the decades-old Soviet S-300 and Buk systems that Ukraine originally deployed. And even if western systems were formidable, they simply don’t exist in anything approaching the numbers necessary to provide credible defense in broad scope and depth.
To complicate matters even further, scant US munitions inventory and insuperable production limitations would allow the US to prosecute an air war against Russia or China for only a few weeks at most.
Moreover, in a high-intensity combat scenario in either eastern Europe, the China seas, or the Persian Gulf, the maintenance demands for US aircraft would overwhelm its proximate supply. Mission-capable rates would plummet even lower than their notoriously abysmal peacetime standards.
The US would, quite literally after only a few days, see sub-10% mission-capable rates for the F-22 and F-35, and sub-25% rates for almost every other platform in the inventory. It would be a huge embarrassment for the Pentagon … but hardly a huge surprise…..
Simply put, US air power as a theater-wide undertaking could not be sustained in the context of a non-permissive regional and global battlefield against one or more peer adversaries.
In eastern Europe, Russia would savage NATO bases and supply routes. The Baltic and Black seas would effectively become Russian lakes where NATO shipping could not venture….
Many are convinced these are unfounded hysterical assertions. In my view, the simple military, mathematical, and geographic realities of the situation dictate these conclusions, and those who resist them are typically blinded by the myth of American exceptionalism and its attendant ills to such a degree that they are unable to discern things as they really are….
I am increasingly persuaded that, if the US chooses to make direct war against either Russia, China, or Iran, it will result in a war against all three simultaneously.
And that, amazingly enough, is just one of multiple hard truths that the #EmpireAtAllCosts cult, and those acquiescing to its delusional designs, ought to give more serious consideration as they continue staggering towards the abyss of a war they could never win…. Staggering Towards the Abyss, Will Schryver, Substack
There’s a lot to chew on here but, in essence, Schryver is weighing Russia’s impressive air defense capability against America’s “scant munitions inventory and insuperable production limitations”, the combination of which suggests that a US military offensive would likely peter-out before inflicting serious damage on the enemy. Once again, our military analyst infers that the United States will not win in a direct confrontation with Russia.
Finally, we’ve excerpted a longer blurb from Kit Klarenberg who is more of an investigative journalist than military analyst. In a piece titled Collapsing Empire: China and Russia Checkmate US Military, Klarenberg details, what he calls the “unrelentingly bleak analysis of every aspect of the Empire’s bloated, decaying global war machine.”
If even half of what the author says is true, then we can be reasonably certain that the United States escalation with Russia is the fast track to a military catastrophe unlike anything the world has seen since the fall of Berlin in May, 1945. Take a look:
On July 29th, …. RAND Corporation published a landmark appraisal of the state of the Pentagon’s 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS), and current US military readiness… Its findings are stark, an unrelentingly bleak analysis of every aspect of the Empire’s bloated, decaying global war machine. In brief, the US is “not prepared” in any meaningful way for serious “competition” with its major adversaries – and vulnerable or even significantly outmatched in every sphere of warfare…. the Empire’s worldwide dominance, are judged to be at best woefully inadequate, at worst outright delusional.
From the Rand Report:
“We believe the magnitude of the threats the US faces is understated and significantly worse…In many ways, China is outpacing the US…in defense production and growth in force size and, increasingly, in force capability and is almost certain to continue to do so…[Beijing] has largely negated the US military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment. Without significant change by the US, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor.”
“At minimum, the US should assume that if it enters a direct conflict involving Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea, that country will benefit from economic and military aid from the others…This new alignment of nations opposed to US interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war…As US adversaries are cooperating more closely together than before, the US and its allies must be prepared to confront an axis of multiple adversaries.” Commission on the National Defense, Rand
As the Commission report spells out in forensic detail, Washington would be almost completely defenceless in such a scenario, and likely defeated nigh on instantly…. It’s not just being spread too thinly across the Grand Chessboard that means the Empire’s military “lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.”…
The RAND Commission found Washington’s “defense industrial base” is completely “unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs” of the US, let alone its allies. “A protracted conflict, especially in multiple theaters, would require much greater capacity to produce, maintain, and replenish weapons and munitions” than is currently in place….
For decades, the US military “employed cutting-edge technology to its decisive advantage for decades.” This “assumption of uncontested technological superiority” on the Empire’s part meant Washington had “the luxury to build exquisite capabilities, with long acquisition cycles and little tolerance for failure or risk.” Those days are long over though, with China and Russia “incorporating technology at accelerating speed”….. America’s “defense industrial base” is today crumbling, riddled with a myriad of deleterious issues…
To address these problems, the Commission calls… to re-industrialize the US after years of outsourcing, offshoring and neglect. No timeframe is provided, although it would likely take decades…..
We have entered a strange, late-stage Empire era, comparable to the Soviet Union’s Glasnost, in which elements of the US imperial brain-trust can see with blinding clarity Washington’s entire hegemonic global project is stumbling rapidly and irreversibly towards extinction… Collapsing Empire: China and Russia Checkmate US Military, Kit Klarenberg, Substack
Once again, we see the same criticisms reiterated over and over again : Insufficient industrial capacity, dwindling stockpiles, “insuperable production limitations”, and diminished technological superiority. When we add these to the myriad logistical problems of conducting a war in eastern Europe with an ad hoc army of inexperienced volunteers who have never seen combat, we can only conclude that the United States cannot and will not prevail in a prolonged conflict with Russia. Even so, Washington continues to fire ATACMS missiles into Russia (13 more were launched over the past two days) apparently believing that there will be no response to the provocation. Even so, NATO Command continues to entertain illusions of victory by pressing for preemptive “precision strikes” on Russian territory welcoming the prospect of a direct conflagration between NATO and Russia. And even though, both France and the UK threaten to deploy combat troops to Ukraine thinking the inexorable trajectory of the war can somehow be reversed. It’s madness.
Five centuries of primacy have produced a cadre of western elites so drunk with hubris that they are incapable of seeing what is painfully obvious to everyone else, that the imperial model of western exploitation (the ‘rules-based order’) is collapsing and that new centers of power are rapidly emerging.
It appears now that these same elites are prepared to drag the world into a catastrophic Third World War to preserve their grip on power and to prevent other nations from achieving the independence and prosperity they’ve earned. Fortunately, Washington will fail in this effort just as it has failed in all its other interventions dating back to 1945. Because the United States no longer has the technology, manpower or industrial capacity needed to win a war with Russia.
It’s a whole new ballgame.
NEW ORESHNIK MISSILE SINGULARLY CHANGED GLOBAL BALANCE OF POWER
Russia’s use of an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile, which they call “Oreshnik” (in English “Hazel”) has utterly changed the global balance of power. It is a non-nuclear weapon system that mimics nuclear destruction levels. It cannot be intercepted, and hits with pinpoint accuracy.
Below are the Key Points from Putin’s Statements on the Oreshnik Missile System at the CSTO Meeting:
The General Staff and the Ministry of Defense are currently selecting targets for the Oreshnik missile to be destroyed on Ukrainian territory.
Decision-making centers in Kyiv could become a target for the Oreshnik.
In the event of a massive use of the Oreshnik, the force of the strike will be comparable to nuclear weapons.
The Oreshnik missile system is capable of striking deep-sea and well-protected targets.
The Russian Federation will continue combat tests of the Oreshnik in response to enemy actions.
The Russian Federation has begun serial production of the Oreshnik.
There are no analogues to the Russian “Oreshnik” in the world, and they will not appear anytime soon.
The Message Behind the Missile
Putin’s remarks on the Oreshnik missile system are not just about showcasing Russia’s technological prowess, they’re a clear signal to the West that the era of unchallenged NATO dominance is over.
The Oreshnik, capable of delivering strikes comparable to nuclear force, represents a seismic shift in the global balance of power. Its ability to obliterate deep-sea and well-protected targets renders much of the West’s defensive posturing obsolete. This is not a weapon of escalation; it’s a weapon of deterrence, designed to compel adversaries to rethink their delusions of invincibility.
The implications are staggering. As serial production ramps up, Moscow is effectively telling NATO: “Push us further, and we will respond with overwhelming force.”
The potential targeting of decision-making centers in Kiev underscores the Kremlin’s resolve to dismantle the very infrastructure sustaining the Western-backed puppet and the West’s aggression.
For all of Washington’s talk of deterrence, it is now clear that Russia has redefined the concept entirely. The Oreshnik isn’t just a missile—it’s a doctrine, a declaration that Russia’s red lines are not negotiable.
The West should take heed: this is not a bluff, nor is it a gesture for theater. It’s the cold reality of a multipolar world where the rules are no longer dictated from Washington. The choice is clear: de-escalate, or face consequences that no amount of NATO summitry can reverse.
Job Security CRISIS! PEOPLE VERY WORRIED ABOUT LOSING THEIR JOB!
Coffee is big news in China. It is really popular.
But, no! It’s not “traditional” American-style coffee.
It’s something else quite different.
Different ways it is served. Different flavors. Different combinations. Different. Different. Different.
But, ah, you know…you can still get a coffee at McDonald’s, or at Starbucks, or at KFC, or at KFC. But many Chinese opt to go to the many thousands of different coffee tastes available to them.
Onion flavor.
Yes. You can buy it and drink it all up.
Duran flavor, stinky toufu flavor. Hard alcohol flavor. Beef with curry flavor… so many different flavors all over the place.
Onion ring flavor. carrot with peppermint flavor.
Chunky texture coffee.
Smooth texture coffee.
Hyper cold and boiling hot blend coffee…
WTF?
Let’s be honest, for a majority of us, a cup of coffee is more than just a beverage — it’s a vital energy booster that kickstarts our day or acts as a midday pick me up. While the purists might lean towards a classic Americano or simple espresso, there are those who relish more adventurous tastes. We’ve compiled a list of some of the most bizarre and quirky coffee flavors you can discover in the city — from a surprising 皮蛋 pídàn to unconventional 豆汁儿 dòuzhīr, and beyond!
Zaijiuye Coffee
This establishment boasts a curious collection of coffee concoctions, each twinned with a nostalgic nod to a Beijing childhood treat. The sesame paste-laced coffee, when coupled with a 双棒儿 Shuāng bàng er (a milk-flavored ice cream pop with two sticks — hence the name), makes for a lovely treat. Everything combines to create a hazelnut-like taste, as the sesame paste and ice cream soften the coffee’s bitterness.
Have you tried the heavenly combo of coffee and Shuangbang’er?
The place also dares to pair a douzhir-infused Americano with 焦圈儿 Jiāo quānr (a deep-fried dough circle similar to a 油条 yóutiáo). Douzhir, a fermented Beijing specialty marked by a subtle sourness and an egg-like scent, may not be to everyone’s liking. However, for any Beijing local worth their salt, it’s a twist they can’t resist exploring.
How about a douzhir-flavored Americano paired with Jiaoquan?
If you think douzhir and sesame paste coffees are crazy, then let us introduce you to pidan (aka century egg) and 酱豆腐 Jiàng dòufu (fermented tofu). Dreamt up by Liquid House, this drink features a pidan skewer resting atop your latte. The owner recommends taking the skewered century egg resting atop the brew, mashing it up, and mixing it all together to get the most out of it. It’s a delight for those with a palate for pidan, but might not be the preferred choice for those unaccustomed to its distinctive flavor.
Fancy a sip of this Pidan Latte?
Liquid House 后院儿
Room 314, 3/F, Building 2, Huafangxintiandi, Courtyard 27, Qingnian Road, Chaoyang district
朝阳区青年路27号院华纺新天地2号楼3层314室 Hours: 10am-7pm Phone:186 1812 0103
Phoenix Café
Imagine the sensation when your coffee mingles with the zest of hotpot flavors. At Phoenix Café, prepare to have your perceptions about coffee challenged with their distinctive creation termed 油碟儿 Yóu dié er. Drawing inspiration from the traditional youdie’er, which is a chili-oil-based dipping sauce savored during hotpot sessions, particularly in Chongqing, this coffee blends the most unconventional ingredients. It features chili strands, tangerine peels, and a dash of white vinegar, ingredients you’d least expect in a cup of coffee.
Get ready for a taste adventure with this Chongqing Hotpot-inspired beverage!
A café founded by the centuries-old laozihao (time-honored brand) Tongrentang, a name synonymous with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), recently garnered online popularity for its coffee offerings. Their brews blend TCM ingredients such as wolfberries, tangerine peel, and motherwort into the mix. Against expectations of a staggering bitter concoction, reviews on Dianping reveal that these TCM elements subtly enhance the coffee’s flavor without overwhelming it, thereby ensuring it doesn’t resemble a medicinal potion. For those who, like me, appreciate the potential health benefits of TCM, this café is a must-visit destination.
Craving a TCM-inspired brew?
Tongrentang Zhima Health Coffee 同仁堂知嘛健康咖啡&养生BAR
No.2-1, Building 2, No.10 Chaoyang Park South Road, Chaoyang district
朝阳区朝阳公园南路10号院2号楼2-1号 Hours: 8.30am-8.30pm Phone: 6587 1397
HK+
Have you ever sipped a coffee infused with pepper? At HK+, they’re challenging traditional coffee norms with their signature pepper-seasoned brew, enriched with the nutty undertones of black sesame. Its presentation mimics a fried egg floating in coffee, achieved through skillful latte art using milk and a touch of turmeric. Despite its unconventional key ingredient, it highlights the taste of the coffee. So, if you’re intrigued by the idea of a peppery, salty coffee, HK+ certainly warrants a visit.
Yves suggests that the negotiations, if they really have happened as described, were an Ukrainian ruse to distract Russia from the Ukrainian preparation of the Kursk oblast incursion. The talks were useless for Russia, she says. She doubts that Russia would favor to stop the attacks on the Ukrainian electricity generating and network capabilities. She suggests that the Ukrainian attacks on Russia create little damage. It disagree with that view.
The winter will already become very difficult for Ukrainian civilians. There is no need to increase the damage on Ukrainian infrastructure beyond the already achieved level.
The Ukrainian attacks have so far created repairable damage in Russia. But that may not be the case forever. One day one of such attacks could in fact create some real catastrophe. The attacks are also binding lots of Russian resources. One needs a huge number of soldiers and equipment to give at least some protection to the most exposed sites. The Russian economy is currently short on men. Not diverting some 100,000 men for local air defense purposes can make a difference.
I believe that Russia was genuinely interested in making such deal. But the Ukrainian attack on Kursk oblast blew it apart.
There are new suggestion on how the Ukrainian incursion into Russia was prepared for.
When footage of British Challenger 2 battle tanks being used by the Ukrainian army for its counterinvasion of Russia emerged on Tuesday, Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence were ready.For the previous 48 hours, officials and political aides working for Sir Keir Starmer and John Healey, the defence secretary, had been in talks about how far to go to confirm growing British involvement in the incursion towards Kursk.
The stakes were high. Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military for two years, on a scale matched by no other country.
The U.S., in contrast, has claimed not to have known about the Ukrainian plans and there purpose. This leads Kit Klarenberg to develop a theory:
Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg – 15:02 UTC · Aug 18, 2024“🧵: I speculated earlier was probably Britain behind Kursk suicide op. Lo and behold, a Times article confirms this. More broadly, contents amply underline Kursk latest effort by London to keep the US in the proxy war – and it appears Washington has finally had enough of this.
Times reveals up top heavily promoted footage of British Challenger 2 tanks in Kursk was a conscious, deliberate decision made by new PM Keir Starmer and his defence secretary John Healey. British equipment is said to have “played a central role” in the “counterinvasion”.
…
Starmer and Healey reportedly made the decision to advertise London’s involvement “to be more open about Britain’s role in a bid to persuade key allies to do more to help.” In other words, to encourage/pressure the US et al to double down on this unwinnable, nightmare quagmire.
…
However, US reportedly unhappy with Kursk incursion, because it scuppered peace talks. Kiev’s purported culpability for Nord Stream bombing is, it seems, being used to justify ending German aid to Ukraine. And the US is blocking Kiev from firing British-made missiles at Russia.
Kit’s theory is that the Washington Post story about the blown negotiations as well as the latest “Nord Stream done by Ukraine” rumor reporting by the WSJ are expressions of U.S. anger over the Ukrainian government and its Kursk invasion.
The Times also reports that Britain is pushing its allies to provide more weapons and to allow their use against targets deep inside of Russia:
In the coming weeks Healey will attend a new meeting of the Ukraine Defence Co-ordination Group, where Britain will press European allies to send more equipment and give Kyiv more leeway to use them in Russia. Healey spoke last week to Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, and has been wooing Boris Pistorius, his German opposite number.Germany, whose Taurus missiles have a similar 155-mile range to Storm Shadow but a more powerful warhead, has been the country under the most pressure to move. However, it was revealed yesterday that Germany has actually frozen military aid to Ukraine because of a domestic budgetary crisis. Pistorius had asked for £3.4 billion of additional supplies but that was rejected by the finance ministry.
A previous leak provided that the long range Taurus missiles are complicate and have to be programmed just-in-time by German officers. There is no support in Germany for allowing such a deep involvement in attacks on Russia.
To me it seems that Britain has promised to Ukraine that it would get its allies to agree to the usage of longer range weapons against Russia in exchange for Ukraine to launch the attack on Russia.
The Ukrainian president complained that British aid to Kyiv had begun to wane as his forces continued their unprecedented incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk region.“Unfortunately, the situation has slowed down recently,” Mr Zelensky said, referring to UK military assistance.
Sir Keir has upheld a Conservative ban on using UK-made Storm Shadows to strike targets deep inside Russia, amid concerns it could lead to escalation with nuclear-armed Moscow.
“We will discuss how to fix this because long-range capabilities are vital for us. The whole world sees how effective Ukrainians are – how our entire nation defends its independence,” said Mr Zelensky.
It came as four former Conservative defence secretaries called on No 10 to do more to support Ukraine, with some demanding Kyiv be allowed to use Storm Shadows in the Russian offensive.
Washington is in effect blocking Britain from allowing Kyiv to fire Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia, amid fears in the Biden administration of an escalation in the Ukraine war.
…
It is understood that although the UK wants to give Ukraine the freedom to do what they want with the long-range weapon, it requires consensus from allies, including the US, France and a third undisclosed Nato country. A government source stressed that the UK was not blaming the US for any delay, adding that such policy changes took time.
Combining all the above one can (re-)construct this story.
Britain, in a bipartisan move, wants to prolong the war in Ukraine. It suggested to and helped Ukraine to invade Russia even as it knew that this would interrupt peace talks in Qatar. It also promised to press its allies for long range attack permission against Russia. But the U.S. and Germany are still blocking such attacks. Zelensky now complains that Britain failed to deliver on its promise.
The U.S., miffed about the British involvement in a likely useless Ukrainian attack on Russia, is leaking about the Ukrainian/Russian negotiations in Qatar.
The above is largely based on the U.S. claims that it was not really involved in the planing of the Kursk incursion.
As the Ukraine war enters its most perilous phase, with Kiev’s forces fighting inside Russia, the United States is operating a formal “sensitive activities” detachment that is active in providing direct military support to the beleaguered country. The detachment, never before disclosed, is run by U.S. special operations forces, and with its Ukrainian counterparts, provides on-the-battlefield support, including near-real time targeting intelligence, operators say.
…
An operator formerly deployed to the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group assigned to a sensitive activities detachment told me their work included the creation of clandestine human networks for intelligence gathering, as well as identifying Russian military weaknesses for targeting.
…
A second operator also described having been tasked with providing near up-to-the-minute intelligence support to Ukrainian forces.
Those U.S. operators in Ukraine certainly did not miss the preparations the Ukrainians were making for their attack.
P.S. Bonus from The Times piece:
“It’s not just about the military support, but it’s about the industrial, economic, and diplomatic support,” the defence source said. “If Putin succeeds in Ukraine he’s not going to stop there. But also the economic implications of that are massive, because we all saw how heavily Britain got hit when he first invaded.”
Yes, the sanctions, intended to hurt Russia, were quite damaging to those who issued them. Nice to see that finally acknowledged.
Posted by b on August 19, 2024 at 15:58 UTC | Permalink
Chemtrails
Duke
“One day, I was lounging in the house when I heard loud gunfire. I ran outside just in time to see my neighbors cart off Duke’s mom on the back of their flatbed truck.
After that, Duke spent almost every hour at our home. Curiosity drove me to ask my neighbor’s what his name was but all they told me was they simply called him Dog. A couple of months after that, they simply stopped feeding Duke. I started to feed him because I wasn’t going to let this baby starve.
When it came time for our neighbors to move, I asked them if I could take Duke off of their hands since it was clear they didn’t want anything to do with him. The son said yes, but the day after I asked, Duke was gone and so were they.
I contacted the son and asked if he had changed his mind and decided to take the dog with him and he grew defensive and put all the blame on me and threatened me. After explaining to him I didn’t have Duke, he hung on me calling me a liar.
In an effort to find this baby, I posted Missing Pet signs all over the local vets office within a 25 mile radius.
5 months passed before I got a phone call from the UPS man that delivered in our neighborhood. He said he saw a dog matching the description of Duke in a nearby field and he looked pretty bad. I thanked the man, hung up and drove straight to where he said he saw the dog. It was Duke. Malnourished and severely afraid of everything. However, one look at me and after hearing my voice he perked up and ran straight into my arms.
Now Duke is healthy and happy and has three other dogs and three cats to play with.Now we are a family.❤️”
Douglas Macgregor Warns: US’s EXTREMELY Dangerous Policys Push The World Is Increasingly CHAOTIC
“If you want to live through this journey Philip you will stop singing that song. You haven’t let up since we blasted off. It may have been funny then and had some sort of relativity, however after five days it does reek of overkill.”
“Oh chill out Major, lighten up. Everyone at Ground Control sees the funny side of a real life Major Tom actually being on a journey through space. You must realise at some stage they will make that call.”
“That song, A Space Odyssey, if you can call it a song, was banned before the first Apollo flight in 1969 and it should have stayed that way. Do you have any understanding of what Bowie was saying?”
“Jesus Tom, it is a song connected to a historical event, the first men on the Moon. It is a classic.”
“You weren’t even born in 1969. You have no concept of how disturbed the song made everyone feel. particularly those connected with the flight People watching on TV World-wide also became emotionally invested.”
“That’s ridiculous. Nothing went wrong, what was everyone worried about?”
“Get real Philip. That is easy to say after the event. This was a first. Three men heading for the Moon had metamorphorised from something only considered science fiction into the first true TV reality show. Had something gone wrong there wasn’t a precedent for decisions to overcome any problem they encountered.. The lift off, weightlessness in space, not in a simulated situation in a man-made chamber, meteors damaging the spaceship, the possibility of alien life greeting them, poison gases on the surface, these were only some of the dangers. It really was one giant step for man.”
“OK I get all that. What was Bowie saying that had people getting their knickers in a knot?”
“The interpretation of some of the lyrics. Remember this was 1969, the World was changing rapidly. To put it in perspective it was at the time the Beatles were recording their first album. The Rolling Stones were playing to record crowds. This was the permissive 60’s which is why the ban on the song was lifted. Drug references, loneliness, depression all became accepted lyrics, which did not please everyone. Bowie later admitted he was ‘out of his tree’ when he wrote the song. Look can we get on with what we have to do to keep this spaceship operational and on course?”
“Sure, I have the day five check list in front of me. There is one thing we need to evaluate. Look at the top right hand corner of the screen showing vision of the galaxy ahead. It is showing a new comet has appeared since yesterday. I am only assuming it is a comet.”
“Never assume. Why did you wait until now to mention it? Why a comet? I think it is moving too slowly for a comet. It is maintaining the distance between us so it must be traveling at the same speed we are. What is the time frame from when it first appeared on the screen to now?”
“That would suggest this object is moving far too slowly to be a comet. You are correct. Based on distance from the Sun it should be moving at around 25,000 miles per hour. This is nowhere near that speed. As you said the distance between it and us is not changing, it is mimicking our speed, 17,000 mph. Calculating its position indicates it must have traveled at over 40000 miles per hour to get to that position on our screen in the elapsed time, yet it has slowed to 17000. That is a controlled act, it must be manned.”
“How far away is it?”
“Using our laser probe indicates 6.7 miles. Jesus, did you see that? When I activated the probe it sent a return probe. Whatever it is, it is definitely manned.”
“Being that close we are obviously on the same orbit. Ground Control must be seeing this, why haven’t they made contact?”
“Whatever it is only looks like a large piece of space junk, certainly nothing like a spaceship. Perhaps Ground Control leave it to us to make contact if we feel it is creating a problem.”
“Jesus wept. An unidentified object is 6 miles away in the same orbit and is mimicking us speed wise and using a return probe to evaluate distance apart and you do not see a problem? Contact Ground Control, do it now Philip.”
“What can they do? They are light years away, we are within 6 miles. I think we should try and make contact with the object, whatever it is.”
“What language would you suggest?”
“Well we know the Chinese and the Russians have launched space probes, some manned.”
“And which of those languages are you proficient in Philip? Just assume they understand English for Christ’s sake and make the call.”
“It has gone, there one minute, disappeared the next, off the screen. It would have accelerated to 50000mph in the blink of a second to do that.”
“There is another possibility. A screen which hides anything behind it has been activated. We have fighter planes that use that tactic. Fire another laser probe.”
“There isn’t anything there to bounce the laser off. Tom, on the screen, it is behind you.”
“This is not the time for Punch and Judy jokes Philip.”
“I am telling you it is right behind us and moving closer. It is increasing in size. Increase our speed, put some distance between us or it will crash into us.”
“The ship is not responding to my commands. Call Ground Control.”
“Houston, we have a problem.”
“Idiot, you can’t even get that right. It’s Houston we’ve had a problem.”
“Look behind us, the thing is about to swallow our spaceship, we are going inside the thing. Saying we have a problem is an appropriate understatement.”
“Ground Control to Major Tom……. Major Tom, ……Major Tom.”
“Wake up Tom. Tom, give me strength,Ground Control to Major Tom, wake up. You are having another nightmare. Who is Philip? I knew this would happen when you played that Bowie song tonight. From now on it is banned in this house. Play it and it will not be Houston who has a problem. Go back to sleep, and take Philip with you.”
Cabbage Rolls with Sour Cream Sauce
Ingredients
2 cups leftover meat or ground beef (seasoned with salt and pepper)
1/4 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced celery
1 cup cooked rice
1 teaspoon horseradish
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1 egg, well beaten
6 large cabbage leaves
1/4 cup tomato puree
1/2 cup water
1 cup sour cream
Instructions
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Brown meat and onion in a heavy skillet over low heat. Remove from heat.
Mix in thoroughly celery, rice, horseradish, mustard and egg.
Cook cabbage leaves for 3 minutes in boiling salted water.
Place meat mixture on cabbage leaves. Roll and fasten with toothpicks. Place close together in greased baking dish.
Pour tomato puree and water over cabbage rolls. Cover and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove cabbage rolls.
Pour sour cream into liquid remaining in baking dish. Serve over cabbage rolls.
Russian Marines Captured 15 Polish and French Soldiers In KURSK
Recently, after the country announced the list of “Taiwan independence”, the national security department took thunderous action and announced that it had cracked thousands of Taiwan spy cases and successfully eliminated a “Taiwan independence element” intelligence station in the mainland. Among them, it focused on a “Taiwan independence leader” who was arrested, warning “Taiwan independence elements” on the island that this is the end.
“Taiwan independence element” Yang Zhiyuan was arrested
Recently, China’s Ministry of State Security announced an exciting news. In order to maintain national security, the Ministry of State Security has carried out special activities to crack down on illegal forces that split the country.
So far, the mainland has cracked thousands of “Taiwan spies stealing state secrets” cases and successfully eliminated a “Taiwan spy intelligence network” lurking in the motherland.
In the article released by the Ministry of State Security, the “Taiwan independence elements” headed by Lai Qingde were severely criticized. The Taiwan authorities insist on “Taiwan independence” rhetoric, and even “use force to seek independence”, collude with foreign forces, and disrupt peace in the Taiwan Strait.
This has not only caused the economic recession on the island and the decline in people’s living standards, but also caused the cross-strait relations to deteriorate and drop to a freezing point.
You should know that less than a week ago, the mainland had just listed the “Taiwan independence list” and encouraged the masses to actively report.
Therefore, the Ministry of State Security’s thundering action and quick action are warning the “Taiwan independence elements” on the island that any forces that attempt to split the country and block the reunification of the motherland will face severe punishment, and the Chinese government is not just talking.
China’s Ministry of National Security
The Taiwan authorities disagree.
They believe that the article does not explain the time and content of the more than 1,000 Taiwan espionage theft cases that have been cracked, and the authenticity is questionable. The person in charge of Taiwan’s cross-strait affairs said that the mainland is either “bragging” and exaggerating, or “abusing the law” and “arresting at will”.
The Taiwan authorities believe that the mainland has only one purpose for doing this, which is to intimidate Taiwan.
In addition, the Taiwan authorities also blamed the mainland for the “promotion of cross-strait exchanges” while arresting Taiwanese people, and believed that the mainland was the “culprit” of the cross-strait confrontation. In this regard, the mainland has long stated that the mainland has no intention of targeting ordinary Taiwanese people, and the Taiwan authorities themselves know who they are arresting.
It is worth noting that in the article of the Ministry of National Security, a “Taiwan independence leader” who has been arrested, Yang Zhiyuan, was mentioned.
Yang Zhiyuan has been engaged in “Taiwan independence” activities for a long time and attempted to split the country’s sovereignty.
The mainland arrested and prosecuted him for “separatism”. This is also the first “Taiwan independence element” arrested by China for “separatism”.
According to the latest legal documents of mainland China, he can be sentenced to death at worst case.
Lai Qingde
For the “Taiwan independence” list that the mainland has listed, many “Taiwan independence elements” clamored that the mainland had no way to implement mainland laws on them, let alone the right to arrest them.
However, Yang Zhiyuan is a good example.
All his “Taiwan independence” activities were carried out in Taiwan, but the mainland was still able to bring him to justice.
In other words, in the future, anyone who expresses “Taiwan independence” in Taiwan may be convicted. Analysts said that the mainland may extradite “Taiwan independence elements” through a third country in the future.
Even if these “Taiwan independence elements” do not come to the mainland, as long as they go to countries that have reached an agreement with China, they will face the possibility of arrest.
“Taiwan independence list” released by the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council
The arrest of Yang Zhiyuan means the beginning of the mainland’s exercise of legal jurisdiction over Taiwan. It is foreseeable that “Yang Zhiyuan’s case is the first case, but it is by no means the last case.” “Taiwan independence elements” should not think that promoting “Taiwan independence” speech is not a big deal. As the laws in this regard in mainland China are gradually improved, “Taiwan independence forces” will eventually face legal sanctions. We also advise “Taiwan independence elements” to be cautious in their words and deeds and return to the right path.
This news is brought to you by tencent 张学坤观世界: 08-17 15:40
Contempt of court
What a monstrous system of criminal justice the US has.
This 47-year-old man, Carey Dale Grayson, will be executed November 21st for killing a woman during a home invasion… in 1994, 30 years ago, when he was 17. He did it with 3 other boys too.
If they were going to execute him they should’ve done it within a year or two of his conviction.
What’s the point of killing him 30 years later? They’re now killing a completely different man from the boy who committed the murder.
After spending such a long time in prison he should honestly just be released.
The US has one of the most draconian criminal justice and prison systems in the world. Every elected judge and district attorney wants recognition for being the one to lock up as many people as possible for the longest time. Extremely long prison sentences are the norm. There are so many ageing prisoners who face either execution or death in prison for something they did as teenagers.
That’s not to mention prison conditions. The Constitution makes prisoners an exception to the ban on human slavery. So there’s mandatory work, but none that pays more than a few pennies an hour.
There’s also no smoking or vaping. There are no conjugal visits. If your wife visits you, you get one hug and brief kiss at the start and end of every visit — apart from that you’re not even allowed to hold hands. And if you’re unlucky enough to go to federal prison, there’s no such thing as parole there. You always serve the entirety of your sentence.
I can’t imagine a crueler system. Anywhere else in the West, there’s no capital punishment, no heavy sentences for minors, prison sentences are much shorter, prison laborers earn minimal wages but not pennies a day, and conjugal visits are permitted. Yet crime and incarceration rates are much lower.
I have no problem with the death penalty as long as it’s applied in a timely manner. I have a problem with taking away someone’s whole life on earth for something they did as a kid or young adult. Either execute them in a timely manner, or give them a reasonable sentence and a road to redemption if you won’t.
The BEST dad ever
Interesting 1950’s themed pictures
Men Are Turning Their Back On The West As It Collapses
Chili Pasta Casserole
Ingredients
1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1 (15 ounce) can vegetarian chili with beans
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can Italian style stewed tomatoes, undrained
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese, divided
1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
8 ounces cooked pasta
Instructions
Cook ground beef and onion in large skillet.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Brown beef until no longer pink. Drain fat.
Stir in chili, tomatoes with juice, 1 cup Cheddar cheese, sour cream, chili powder and garlic powder.
Add chili mixture to pasta and stir until pasta is coated.
Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup cheese.
Cover and cook for 30 minutes until hot and bubbly.
The spaceship came screaming down with the thunderclap roar of displaced atmosphere yet landed whisper soft on the grass at the end of town.The craft glittered sleekly in the mid-morning sunlight as it lay on it’s side – a broad shaft topped by a bulbous nose from which a door opened.The blond haired man that stepped out was tall, bronzed and athletic. He wore the shining, golden uniform of Earth’s Bureau of Exploration, his proudly displayed badges of rank declared him to be a Senior Contact Manager (ConMan) Alien Division.He flicked aside the long ponytail that was a fashion among his colleagues and walked down the ramp that had silently extended itself from his scout craft breathing the fresh, untainted (thoroughly examined and tested) air.There was a short, thickset native strolling towards the spaceman, looking mildly curious. Switching on his Universal Translator the ConMan greeted the native.“Greetings from Earth”. The time delay between speaking and computerized translation was almost unnoticeable.“Hello”, replied the native. “I’m from Lower Great Wopping. Did you know that you aren’t allowed to park there?”“Eh? What?” said the Earthman. “Sorry, no I didn’t.”“Oh, that’s alright,” relied the native cheerfully. “Just remember next time otherwise the grass tends to get worn out. Okay?”“Sure, I … Wait a minute,”the Conman interrupted himself. “I’m from another planet.”“Oh goodness,” exclaimed the native. “No wonder I didn’t recognise you. That also explains why you parked on the grass. Well, enjoy your stay here,” and he turned to leave.“Hold on. Wait,” called out the man from Earth. “I am from another planet and I want to see your leader.”“Well …” the other man thought for a moment then puffed his chest out a bit. “I suppose that’s me. I am the Mayor of Lower Great Wopping.”“No,” said the ConMan with a cendeceding smile. “I meant your overall leader. National Government.”
“Nashnul Guvmint?” said the mayor quizzically. “Is that anything like a public convenience?”
“No it isn’t,” snapped the Earthman. “Do you have a king then? Or a dictator?”
“I’m sorry, no I haven’t,” apologised the Mayor. “Perhaps we can get one at the general store?”
“No, no, no,” raged the thoroughly confused ConMan. “Please let us start again. Do you have a ruler of any kind?”
“Yes, of course,” the Mayor’s face brightened rapidly. “I’ve only got a six inch one with me but I can get a longer one from home.”
“What? No, not that sort of ruler!” The ConMan tried very hard and managed to bring himself under control. Barely.
“A slide rule,” suggested the Mayor diffidently.
“No dammit!” screamed the man from Earth.
For several minutes he simply stared at the Mayor, apparently trying to wish him out of existence. When the native failed to disappear in a puff of smoke the ConMan decided to try another route.
“Who makes your laws?” he asked with reasonable calm.
“Laws?” the Mayor laughed. “We tried making some laws a few years back but nobody liked ‘em much so we junked ‘em.”
“Junked ‘em?” the man from BuEx was shocked into spluttering for a few moments. “You can’t simply junk all laws just because nobody liked them.”
“Why not?”
“Well … er …” The ConMan was unsure but pressed on. “Well … er … who made them?”
“Let’s see now,” the Mayor counted names off on his fingers. “There me and Jane, Fred and Mary, the two Jones girls – very good at it they were – and just about anyone who was interested chipped in some ideas.” The Mayor looked sheepish, “I suppose you think we were stupid, making up laws. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Yes. I mean no. I mean I don’t know.” The ConMan was floundering and took a few moments to collect his thoughts. There seemed to be some missing.
“Let’s start again. Again.” He said eventually. “Who makes the rul … er regulations for this country?”
“What’s Country?” asked the Mayor warily.
The ConMan’s reply started off reasonably, if somewhat incoherent but quickly became an ear shattering screem.
“Well it’s … I mean it’s got … that is … Goddamit you stupid sonofabitch you must know what a country is!”
“Nope,” said the Mayor lightly.
“Oh dear God,” said the exasperated Earthman. “Look, you are a Mayor, right?”
The Mayor nodded.
“So you have a council?”
Again a nod.
“What does the council govern?” asked the ConMan in a whisper, as if he were afraid of the answer.
“The borough,” came the simple answer.
“And what,” the ConMan was becoming exited again, “Do you call a collection of boroughs.”
“A collection of boroughs,” replied the Mayor without even blinking but he did take a step backwards. Just in case.
“I … you …but … aarrgghh” screamed the Earthman who seemed to have developed a twitch just under his left eye and stuttered slightly as he spat out his next question.
“What do you get if you put all the boroughs together?”
“The World,” replied the Mayor, stepping back another pace as the ConMan seemed about to throw a fit.
He was silent for several minutes, breathing deeply as his face went through several colour changes while blood vessels at his neck and temples began throbbing visibly.
“Let’s go back to the beginning,” the ConMan almost pleaded. “How many councils are there?”
“Nobody knows for sure,” the Mayor thought for a while, “But I think it’s around two hundred and fifty thousand now.”
The Contact Manager was obviously shaken by the answer but ploughed grimly on.
“And who,” he asked, “Is above them?”
The Mayor thought long and hard, brows furrowed, face towards the sky. Eventually he said – “All right, I give up. Who is above them?”
The Universal Translator was unable to translate the reply other than to give out an ear splitting shriek.
When the ConMan was able to speak intelligibly again there was a glint of madness shining in his eyes.
“Listen you fool,” he started ranting at the native. “I am a Senior ConMan, an expert at understanding and communicating with aliens …”
“I’m no alien,” the Mayor interrupted indignantly. “I was born and raised right here.”
“No, I’m the alien,” said the Earthman. “I mean … that’s not what I mean … no it’s …”
Suddenly he turned and marched quickly back to his ship, muttering to himself.
“I’ll quit, that’s it, I’ll resign. It was a stupid job anyway. Maybe I never even found the bloody planet, they’ll never know.”
As the spaceship took off, disappearing rapidly into the clear blue sky another native, this one riding a bike, drew alongside the Mayor and stopped.
“Hello Fred,” the Mayor greeted the newcomer.
“Hello Mayor,” replied Fred. “Who was that?”
“A bloke from Earth.”
“What did he want?”
“Buggered if I know,” said the Mayor.
America Compared: Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better | Reaction
Will Apple products be manufactured in the US in the future instead of China?
Not likely.
There aren’t many manufacturers that can produce to scale and quality of Foxconn.
Electronics industry uses contract manufacturers. There are only two that have scale. The first one is FLEX (formerly Flextronics) who invented the idea of contract manufacturing as we know it. Foxconn was originally an electronic parts manufacturer and saw how Flex did things and used a similar model. Because they also manufactured the parts they could earn more profit.
Both companies monopolize the assembly business. Both operate at scale.
Apple chose Foxconn and stayed with Foxconn. Their relationship is very close. When Apple needed AMOLED screens for a new phone model, Foxconn built a new factory for them. Apple did not have to invest a penny.
If you wanted to move production back to the US you would still have to import the parts from China. Electronic parts are not produced at scale in the US. You would also have a hard time finding people who want a job on the production line.
Moving a factory is not like moving house. There are many more moving parts.
Why can’t Foxconn survive in India🇮🇳?
They can survive
They just cannot grow at a fifth of the pace at which they grew in China
India is not a good place to manufacture things
The effortless ease of China is entirely missing in India and Vietnam both.
Vietnam is too cramped even if the workforce is productive
India is too lazy and productivity is abysmal
Plus both Nations simply do not have a Skilled Workforce needed for expansion even moderately
It was stupid of Foxconn to threaten to relocate to India and Vietnam
Far easier to have a Chinese OEM subcontracting with them, go to India and do their work for a lower commission
Now they are unlikely to gain shares in OEM in the Chinese Market ever again.
India needs many structural changes to be able to offer Foxconn a fiftieth of what China can offer
The Economic advantages are non existent
And like I always say when any decision-making is made for POLITICAL REASONS – they simply don’t work like you expect them t
Foxconn can thus survive in India
Barely survive
Until one day they just pack up saying THEY CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE
Caitlin Johnstone: Biden Ramps Up Nuclear Brinkmanship On His Way Out The Door
18 November 2024, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
(NOTE: I was going to do an article on this today, especially because this article follows up — though without mentioning — my October 10th “Biden’s plan calls for WW3 to start after Election Day.”, which opened “U.S. President Joe Biden refuses to answer until after November 5th the question of whether the U.S. will officially be at war against Russia,” which was a follow-on to my September 13th “Biden might decide today whether to initiate WW3 against Russia.”
So, Caitlin’s fine article today is a follow-on to those events.
She points out that the missiles which Biden is now allowing Ukraine to use to bomb Russia don’t range as far as the 300 miles range that would be able to bomb The Kremlin and endanger Russia’s central command.
Therefore, Biden isn’t necessaily sparking WW3 by this policy-change. But what he now is allowing would endanger Russia’s giant nuclear power plant in Kursk, and so it could end up causing Russia to unleash nuclear war against the United States and Ukraine.)
The New York Times reports that the Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied long-range missiles to strike Russian and North Korean military targets inside Russia — yet another dangerous escalation of nuclear brinkmanship in this horrific proxy war.
The Times correctly notes that authorizing Ukraine to use ATACMS, which have a range of about 190 miles, has long been a contentious issue in the Biden administration for fear of provoking military retaliations against the US from Russia. This reckless escalation has been authorized despite an acknowledgement from the anonymous US officials who spoke to The New York Times that they “do not expect the shift to fundamentally alter the course of the war.”
As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes, Vladimir Putin said back in September that if NATO allows Ukraine to use western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes inside Russian territory, it would mean NATO countries “are at war with Russia.” This is about as unambiguous a threat as you’ll ever see.
NYT reports that Biden’s policy shift “comes two months before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, having vowed to limit further support for Ukraine.” And it is here worth noting that last week it was reported by The Telegraph that British PM Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron had been scheming to thwart any attempt by Trump to scale back US support for Ukraine by pushing Biden to authorize long-range missile strikes in Russian territory.
But it is also true that the day before the US election Mike Waltz, Trump’s next national security advisor, had himself endorsed the idea of authorizing long-range missile strikes into Russia with the goal of pressuring Moscow to end the war. His plan for disentangling the US from the conflict entails ramping up sanctions on Russia and “taking the handcuffs off the long-range weapons we provide Ukraine” in order to pressure Putin into eagerly accepting a peace deal.
So while this is being framed as an administration that’s more hawkish on Russia executing a maneuver that’s designed to hamstring the peacemongering of an incoming administration that’s less favorable to assisting Ukraine, in reality it may just be goal-assisting the next administration in a policy change it had planned on implementing anyway.
Either way, it’s insane. Putin ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine in September in order to ward off these sorts of escalations by lowering the threshold at which nuclear weapons could be used to defend the Russian Federation, and they’re just barreling right past that bright red line like they barreled over the red lines which led to the invasion of Ukraine. And the fact that they’re adding yet another nuclear-armed state into the mix with North Korea is just more gravy for the nuclear brinkmanship pot roast.
At one point in 2022, US intelligence agencies reportedly assessed that the odds of Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine was as high as fifty percent, but the Biden administration kept pushing forward with this proxy war anyway. These freaks are taking insane risks to advance agendas that stand to yield the slimmest of benefits even by their own assessments.
We are living in dark and dangerous times.
PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.
GHOST DESCRIBES THE AFTERLIFE, What He Says Will Shock You…
I’ve been checking in on my old classmates and friends back in the states. I was surprised how many had died, but was pleasantly surprised with what happened to others.
For some reason, fate, or chance most of the guys that I hung out with were usually younger than myself. Often five to eight years younger. I never did fit in with the older kids. Perhaps that was because I never got the chance to meet any of them.
I didn’t have any older siblings. I was, after all, the oldest.
Ah, when I did, maybe in Junior year, they would take a “shine” to me and I would go under their wing. But yeah… most of the time I was always the oldest one in the bunch.
Anyways, let’s go back and way back to early elementary school.
My boyhood “best friend” in elementary school; “Deano” was a kid that lived across the street from me in East Brady, PA.We attended both elementary, and High School together…
I used to play with him, and then when I was in my teens, with his brother Dan. We (by the way) both worked together at the local supermarket “Shop & Save”. But this isn’t about Dan. This is about Dean.
Oh…
Here’s the Middle and High School of East Brady. The “Old building”.
They closed the school down in the 1990’s because there wasn’t enough students and consolidated it with another school, and the building was repurposed to a local town office.
Now, my friend, Deano, well, I haven’t talked with him since my exit from the Navy and a brief stay at my mother’s house way back in 1981.
At that time, he was working for USS Steel.
And he was laid off, as I was later once I got out of the Navy, and on my MAJ path.
Turned out that he found a job in New Kensington, Pa and worked there for like forever. Lucky guy. “He got into windows”. Boring, but stable. And he rode out the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s and the COVID era. Eventually retiring with full pension and social security benefits on top of his 401(K).
Fun fact, I briefly tried to contact him back in 2018 or so to supply some window components to him. I sent him a pamphlet, but he never responded. Probably tossed it away.
For me it was four decades of layoffs. One after the other after the other. Yah. He did far, far better than me.
You Bastard! Love you though!
Good for ya!
Now, Imagine my surprise that I read what he was up to. Well, I was surprised that immediately after he retired, that he moved.
Well, he moved to Pattaya, Thailand.
Ah. good for him. I’m sure that he’s single and enjoying the life as a “Handsome Man”.
You don’t move to Thailand with a family. Don’t you know. It’s highly unusual.
You move there after a divorce, or when you are single. Few, move there with a wife. It happens, but not often. Most men arrive single. And, there, they enjoy the life and pleasures of being single.
I did have an opportunity; a very high paying one in Thailand.
I was offered a CEO position with the largest appliance company in Thailand, for great money.
But my wife said "absolutely NOT!".
She didn;t want to discuss things. She didn't want to hear the pros and cons. She didn't want to know the potentials for us.
She said NO.
And you know, as they say; "that was that!".
I hope that he spend the rest of his days enjoying the relaxed life, good food, and friendships that he will make there. He’s an avid golfer, and I’m sure that after a life of corporate work outside of Pittsburgh, he wants a real change.
Yuppur!
Enjoy your life, you deserve it!
I don’t have Facebook, so I haven’t contacted him. But I am really happy to know that he is retired and living “the life” not too far from where I live.
Go Deano!
…
Another guy is Peter.
He was one of my “best friends” when I attended university. He and a classmate, also a great friend; Jay shared a dorm room, and I was always there enjoying our times together and drinking beer, smoking cigars, chatting it all up, and studying together.
They lived in Day Hall; eighth floor. The “penthouse” floor of the tallest skyscraper on the highest hill. Only eight floors. LOL.
When we graduated, I went into the Navy to fly, and you all know my story. Well, Peter went into IBM. Where he stayed and then retired out.
He opened a page in LinkedIN, and never updated. His picture is and has been decades old. But why update? He never ever got a different job. He was a stable worker. A work horse. A loyal follower.
While I was an explorer, a dreamer; a risk taker, and always had my “head in the clouds”.
So yeah. He’s still on LinkedIN.
Never made waves. Never updated.
But myself, well it’s the opposite.
I’m perma-banned. I live in “evil” China. So I must be a non-person.
Anyways, as he never updated it, but after decades and decades of cobwebs, there was a final update. He added a statement to say that he retired.
I did try to connect with him about ten years ago, but he never responded. I know he got the message. My COMM line lit up confirming that contact. But he didn’t want to reconnect. *sigh* I guess he wanted to move on.
Well, he is retired, and great for him. I wish him the very best.
I am confident that he has a nice retirement plan and is doing well. Wherever he is. You go Peter!
Here’s some of his latest pictures (un-accessible to myself) on his Facebook page…
I imagine that he is going to settle down and just keep on being himself in the town that he grew up in, and the region that he loves. It’s his way, and I am sure that he is doing just fine.
Everyone is retired and moving on.
Gosh. I can hardly recognize anyone. They all look so different.
Me, I think that I will continue to work and do what I am doing until I die. I’ve found a sort of lifestyle cubby-hole that I am somehow fitting in right now. But that is good enough for me.
No retirement for me.
Just a lower level of activity, but still jam-packed days.
Like running two companies, and producing videos, metallicman content, and raising a little girl. My engine is stuck on full throttle.
Oh, speaking of content…
In case you all haven’t been told, I was interviewed by Jeff on Radio sinoland. Maybe I mentioned it before. Ah. I don’t remember.I put it on a Quora post. I don’t remember if I put it here.
But if you haven’t seen it, you can watch it by clinking on this link below…
Quora China “Expert” Vannrox was interviewed on China Raising Radio Sinoland
Here’s my interview with Jeff on a wide range of topics regarding China. I hope that you will all take a moment and hear out my thoughts on what is going on in China. In the interview, we discuss the latest changes in strategic direction, the growth of the largest metro area in China, Macao, and what will happen to the QUAD and much more…
I’m not the kind of guy that is gonna fade into black. Fade into the background. Grow silent and disappear. No. I’m the kind of guy that is drinking a glass of wine while I slide onto home plate with a lei of flowers around my neck.
Today…
Have you ever been invited to something that turned out to be another thing entirely?
Yes, Unfortunately. I met this woman and we started dating. Sort of casual I guess. We had only been out five or so times. We weren’t intimate or anything. Just getting to know each other.
She asked If I wanted to go to a barbecue of sorts her ‘good friend’ from her old neighbourhood was hosting. Apparently , there was going to be a group of her old friends there.
We arrived at the house and her friend came out of the house. The two women were obviously excited to see each other , having not seen each other in a while. They were all hugs, and ‘oh how are you.?” Finally the woman I’m with, says, “this is Rick” Her friend looked at me, ,looked me up and down. Didn’t say ‘hello’, or , ‘glad you could come’ – nothing. And she was the host . She then turns away. The two are chatting wildly and walk toward the house. They enter the house and closed the door behind them. I’m still standing in the driveway. So now I’m not sure what to do. I was embarrassed.
I found out later, they both went to the backyard, and my friend was walking around greeting everyone. Then someone asked her, “Did you come alone?” She looks around and notices I’m not there. She said to her friend, “Where’s Rick? Did we leave him in the driveway.?”
She came out to the driveway, just in time to see my car turning out of the subdivision at the end of a very long street. A while later, my phone rang. I didn’t answer. It rang again later that night. I didn’t answer it.
The next morning, Sunday, my phone rang around 11a.m. It was her. She said, “What happened yesterday? You left?”
I said, ‘Yes, I did. You invited me to a party. Your friend, the host, was rude. She did not even bother to say ‘hello’ She just stared at me like she didn’t want me there. Then you walked into the house and shut the door. I was standing in the driveway by myself like an idiot. Did you think I was just going to hang around out there by myself?”
She got sort of quiet, then said, “I’m sorry” Obviously she realized what a position she had put me in. I was embarrassed and felt pretty bad about being invited to a party to meet some new people, then not even being invited inside.
The conversation didn’t go well from there. I think she realized she had blown it with me. Too bad, because I was hoping for more, but this really just made me feel very negative, especially since I had gone out of my way to make sure she had a good time whenever we were together.
What is legal in Germany but illegal in the United States?
There are some things. The most stunning for me are the first two:
It is not illegal in Germany, to break out of a prison. Why? Because the German law considers “being free” as a human need, like eating and drinking. So a prisoner who escaped can’t be blamed for his action. Of course the police will do everything to get him/her back into jail, but no additional charges will follow as long as no other laws were broken. So in this case, hold my beer: Germany has even more freedom than the U.S. of A. 😉
Alcohol: Drinking beer, wine and champagne is legal at 16, everything else with higher percentages is allowed at age 18.
Public drinking is allowed in most places and cities of Germany. Some have laws that forbid public drinking, but these laws are legally controversial and no cop will care anyway as long as you act normal.
2/3 of all areas on the “Autobahn” freeways have no speed limit at all. The standard speed for most of the other sections is 81 mp/h, or 130 km/h, plus a 3% tolerance.
Besides “normal” milk you can also buy raw milk (non-pasteurized) in supermarkets across the country. AFAIR this is not legal in many U.S. states anymore (for some reason not even from the farmer), because of the risk of typhus. Listeria is the risk/reason the US doesn’t allow for unpasteurized raw milk.
Yes, you were perhaps waiting for it: Kinder Eggs.
Cuban cigars like Cohibas and Havana Club rum can be sold, bought and traded ever since. But OK, this is a very US specific thing.
Consensual sex is allowed from age 14 on, if the other person is not older than 21. In case of doubt, officials are asked to research and check that no one got talked into sex.
I bet there are many more things that I’m not aware of or can’t recall atm.
The kitten did not stop crying at the shelter, but suddenly he heard a familiar voice…
Reincarnation story about a kitty.
What was the first thing you did after separating from your husband?
My ex wife moved out. First thing I did was to stop paying the mortgage and put the house up for sale. Then I found a nice apartment and moved.
During the separation and I was in the home she made my life absolute hell. I would return from a weekend trip to a wrecked home; she’d used the time I was gone to destroy the home. When I returned home I’d spend the rest of my Sunday through Tuesday cleaning up. I’d leave the home spotless. After 20 years in the military I can assure you the one thing I absolutely knew how to do was clean.
Moving into my apartment was liberating. Peaceful, just amazing. Felt like I had been a prisoner in my home for years.
she saddled me with as much of her debt as she possibly could. Did everything she could to go after as much of my income as she could.
I started my life over. I’ve built a much better life for myself alone. I’ve forgiven her for everything she’s done to me.
one day I did call her and apologized for my part in the downfall of the marriage. That was only met with her claiming that she was the perfect wife.
that day I realized that I’d never be in a relationship with a woman who could never admit and acknowledge her faults.
the woman I’m with now took the opportunity to thank my ex wife for divorcing me. Because that put the best man she has ever met into her life.
I live a happy life with little drama. Her and I share so many similar passions in life. We do so much together and for each other.
Have you ever told off another person’s child? What for?
I was in a shoe shop the other day with my elderly Mother – she is 87 and not very steady on her feet. There was a lady in the shop with two kids – a little boy of about three and a little girl who was four or five years old.
The kids were racing round and round in large circles shrieking and squealing. The little girl ran straight into my Mum, who I managed to steady before she fell to the ground. I also put one hand out to stop the little girl as she still had forward momentum. I quietly and calmly told the little girl to stop running around and to be careful. The mother of the kid looked up and went ape-shit at me for touching and telling off her daughter. I explained that she had nearly knocked over my 87 year old Mum. She didn’t care. She said that my mother hadn’t fallen (thank goodness – or she may have broken a hip or something) and therefore I had no business telling her child off. She was yelling at me, accusing me of being racist, assaulting her child, etc etc. I apologised, explained my reasons again, and turned my back on her to pay for Mum’s new shoes.
The kids started running around the shop again, knocking over piles of shoe boxes and a display. The shop worker asked the kids to settle down and stop running. No raised voice, but firmly spoken. I finalised my transaction and the shop assistant started clearing up the fallen shoes, together with the second worker who had emerged from the store room with shoes for another customer. The kid’s mother started yelling at the shop assistant, again, accusing her of being racist and that she had no business telling her kids what to do. Goodness knows why she accused both of us of being racist – the issue was with her child’s behaviour and her indifference to it, not about colour.
As Mum and I were leaving the store, I heard the shop assistant politely asking that woman to take her two children out of the shop. Not sure what happened next, as we moved on in the mall to a coffee shop, because Mum wanted to sit down. She was quite distressed by the whole episode (she has early dementia and is easily confused by what is going on around her).
F*@k the Media! I Went to China…(Truth about Shanghai)
What is the most ridiculous reason for which a flight was delayed?
In 2016, a woman boarded a flight from Philadelphia to Syracuse on American Airlines.
After she settled into her seat, she noticed the passenger next to her scribbling in some strange writing. Curious, she took a closer look to see what her seatmate seemed to be so busy working on.
She recognised none of it. It was in some strange language she couldn’t understand. It was probably code for something, possibly something sinister.
She took a closer look at the man, and found him a little alarming. She noticed his rather unkempt hair, his darker complexion.
She asked him if he was from Syracuse. He curtly answered that he wasn’t, still focused on his work. She noticed his foreign accent.
She felt unease, that she was in grave danger.
She decided to write down something of her own. She quickly wrote a note, called the attention of a stewardess, and handed her the note. She also claimed she felt too ill to take that flight at the moment and needed to disembark.
Their plane continued to made preparations to take off, but then seemed to abandon that and returned to the gate. The next thing he knows, her fellow passenger was asked by the stewardess to leave his seat and come with her.
He was taken off the plane and into a waiting room. Later, he was questioned by security.
He asked them what it was about. He was told a passenger reported him on suspicions of being a terrorist. How come? He was writing strange things on a pad of paper.
They interrogated him for two hours. (That’s not necessarily out of the ordinary as airline companies generally take terrorism allegations very seriously.) They had to make sure he was absolutely not a terrorist. Once they did, he was allowed to re-board his flight which by then had also been delayed by two hours.
NEW Butler Bodycam Shows Officers CONFRONT Trump’s Would be Assassin
What was Singapore like in 70’s?
What do ‘Chewing gums, long hair on men, and the Rolling Stone’ have in common in the 70s?
Never a time where life was such a bore in Singapore as it was in the ‘70s when countless of items were banned in the Republic of Singapore.
That was the time Singapore’s first generation after independent- it’s known as the pioneer generation who were the victim of Singapore’s progress ( Sorry folks! I don’t beat around the bush)
In the 70’s was the best time I witnessed what life in Singapore and it didn’t look like Singapore you know today at all.
To begin with.
A taxi driver who asked me where to? After I told him, and he said, “Sorry bro, I won’t go!” and sped off.
Another time, a hawker’s assistant told me, “ Know or not, bro? You can’t sit on this table if you don’t order from us.”
On one night, I was looking for block 8 at Whampoa drive, I couldn’t see the tiny zinc block number sign (with no light) – my friend said to me —“Go and complain to the PAP, lah” I didn’t know who that was.
When it rained, the entire Bukit Timah Road was flooded and a woman was reported to have drown in an open drain.
At the ‘Thieves Market- at Sungei Road’ I spotted what looked like a brand new ‘Seiko watch’ but 1/4 of the price- I asked was it real why so cheap? “ Bro. you know what is this place called or not? He grinned.
At my last trip to Singapore last year, I complimented to my buddy, a retiree in Singapore: “ Now, you got covered walkway to your block and don’t get wet- why didn’t you guys ask for it in those days”—I meant when he moved in during the 70’s — That’s what he answered “ Guy! We didn’t know what to complain and how to complain- that fellow throw you in jail then you know!”
In 1974, exactly 50 years ago when ABBA won Eurovision with ‘Waterloo’ you will never though that in this part of the world is just another day- No cheers, no jeers, and no qualms but every young man and woman was joyous in celebration only behind the closed door.
It reminds me even though it’s just a tiny nation but Singapore was known to the the world when Singapore government’s policy forbidding any male with long hair went into effect in the ‘70s— Even the Beatles freaked out and scared to death while hiding on the plane at Paya Lebar airport.
That was in my memory what Singapore was like in 70’s
What is the pettiest complaint you have heard from a home-owners association (HOA)?
Not my story, this came from a former US resident when the subject came up.
He and his then GF had a nice house, centre of the cul-de-sac, drive straight in, drive straight off.
Some of his best fines were:
A garbage can being left out too long, he was on a day off and he heard the truck come and go but was busy with some jobs at the time, about 20 minute later, he opened the door to find a fine ready attached to the door, it had been there 10 minutes. Someone expected the bin to be back behind the house, with 10 minutes of being emptied, on a weekday… 3/4 of the street were working and wouldn’t have it taken in until after 5.
Having ‘his’ car parked in his driveway instead of the garage for too long. It was his parents car, they were there for an hour dropping off some gifts for his birthday.
Music too loud, but it wasn’t him, it was the property behind him on the next street.
Lawn was in disrepair, this was after the HOA PRESIDENTS kid, drove home drunk and drove onto his lawn. This was backed up with video evidence.
There were dozens of fines over the course of the year, he finally decided enough was enough and took a few weeks holiday from work. Revenge was afoot.
He spent the next 2 weeks being the most petty homeowner on the block, he reported every, single, infraction. Backed up with a highlighted copy of the rules in every case and a photo.
He caught out the HOA President with the wrong colour paint, another board member with their bin out for 2 days, another with a large patch of grass missing, grass too long, branches too low, fences damaged, cars being left in disrepair, maintainence needing done. Every single one was a HOA Board member. He did pin a few other residents for some of the things he was caught for.
The HOA tried to sue him for harassment, he countersued with evidence that every single thing he had been targeted for, was being done worse by the HOA and other residents.
Ultimately he won, all his fines were dropped and a new board was soon voted in, the ‘old boys club’ was no more. About 6 months later he decidd to move to the UK, he’s been here 5 years and said if he ever moves back, no HOA.
Teen Killer Thinks He’s Going Home After Murdering His Mother
What are the qualities that make women envious of men?
Oh, there are a lot, seriously.
No menstruation issues. No periods. You men really have no idea how lucky you are, when it comes to this.
Not having to worry about pregnancy when it comes to sex.
Thinking of going out? All they need is 5 minutes to get ready, and they’re out of the house.
Be it any function, there’s always one black suit that just works every single time.
Travelling? Few shirts, one jeans and bam! Packing done!
Night outs? Late night parties? No questions to answer! All they need is their ‘mood’ to say yes!
Can choose to wear clothes or not!
The “Bro Code”. Enough said.
Their friendships. Way more honest, upfront and amazing than women.
They just don’t get tensed up about anything. Even if the world is ending next moment, just chill, everything’s cool.
Suddenly nature called? No problem, the world is their bathroom!
Their power to just forget stuff so easily. Sometimes, that’s all you need!
No uterus, no labor pain, no baby coming out!
The way they can sit idle and think nothing. Like really, nothing. You ask them, what are you thinking? ‘Nothing!’ How on earth do they do that?
When a man truly loves you, you just know it. They give you their everything. Be it Dad, boyfriend, or husband, the way they love is beyond comparison!
Have you ever had a job where you did nothing for years and nobody found out?
A friend (not a friend-of-a-friend, somebody I know directly) became a manager in a company that provides support services to the airline industry. I cannot name the firm, they are still very much active and a quasi-government outfit. Justin was made head of a group of 28 and HR handed him an inventory of his reporting employees. He went through the list, arranging one-on-one meetings, just to touch base, get an idea of the mechanics of the place, that sort of thing.
After he had seen his 27th employee he started to look for Mr 28. Scanning the open-plan office he could not see anybody that he had not already spoken to. He walked up to his nearest minion and said “I am looking for, erm [reads paper] … Dave.”
“Oh, Dave hasn’t worked here for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Maybe 2 years’ or so.”
Justin called HR and told them the employee list was wrong.
“Can’t be,” explained HR “that list was pulled from the current payroll and Dave is on the payroll.”
The organisation was based in Switzerland, Dave had an apartment and lived locally; HR had his address. Justin guessed that the address might be out of date.
He went back into the office area, “does anybody have a contact number for Dave?” Somebody did, a UK mobile phone number and the suggestion that he lived somewhere in London. Well, maybe not exactly in London itself, possibly near to London or, at least, in that half of England where London is. Ok, I’ll be honest, nobody was really paying attention when Dave left, but he definitely mentioned getting a flight to London.
Justin called the number, it was answered quickly. “Hi Dave, this is Justin, your new manager at xxxxxxxx.”
“Oh, hiya’, I am just heading out the door to go to the dentists, can I call you back in about an hour or so?”
But, dear reader, Dave did not call back. Not even after several hours. Justin called later that afternoon and got several “invalid number” messages before realising that there was no point in trying again.
Turns out that Dave (an Australian) had resigned over 2 years’ previously but the HR process had not been followed correctly and they continued to pay him. Dave didn’t complain and nobody noticed. Dave’s bank account was routinely emptied (by ATM withdrawals, never by wire or trackable transfers) and it was closed immediately after Justin called him.
Nice one Dave.
The Car Market is a Joke …… Part 2
Can you describe the experience of being an idol in Korea? Why do you think there are not many foreign people becoming idols?
There are a total of 2 million K-pop trainees in Seoul, but only a handful can become idols.
If you want to become an idol, you must have a lot of resources to buy advertisements, front pages of news, and prime time on TV. You must get the help of Korean chaebols, and the favor of news media executives to have these resources.
But ordinary people do not have such resources. They can only approach the Korean chaebol and news media executives through sexual bribery and other methods to win the support of them.
Here is a list of Korean artists who committed suicide:
On 22 February 2005, actress Lee Eun-ju, the star of hit films including Taegukgi and The Scarlet Letter, died by suicide at the age of 24.
On 21 January 2007, performance artist U;Nee died by hanging at the age of 25.
On 2 October 2008, “The Nation’s Actress” Choi Jin-sil died by suicide at the age of 39.
On 7 March 2009, actress Jang Ja-yeon died by suicide at the age of 29. She left a letter alleging violence, abuse, and sexual exploitation by several people in the entertainment industry.
On 19 November 2009, supermodel Daul Kim died by suicide in Paris at the age of 20.
On 18 December 2017, Kim Jonghyun, a main vocalist of South Korean group Shinee, died by suicide at the age of 27. He was found unconscious in a hotel room by paramedics after sending a suicide note to his sister and was later pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. A suicide note was found highlighting his struggle with depression that he had spoken about over many years. In it were words such as “I am broken inside”, “I hate myself”, and references to a doctor who blamed his depression on his personality.
On 14 October 2019, Sulli, an actress and former member of f(x), died by suicide at the age of 25. She was found dead in her home by her manager.
On 24 November 2019, Goo Hara, an actress and former member of Kara, died by suicide at the age of 28. She had attempted to end her own life once before, on 26 May 2019, but was found in time and taken to hospital.
On December 27 2023, Lee Sun-kyun, an actor who was best known for his international role in Parasite, died by suicide at the age of 48.
Among them, Jang Ja-yeon was particularly eye-catching. After she committed suicide, she left a suicide note and a list of people who sexually assaulted her.
In her suicide note, she revealed:
From 2005 to 2009, she was forced by her agency to provide sexual services to senior executives of large companies, news media, and men in the entertainment industry.
Even on her parents’ death anniversary, she was forced to provide services.
She was raped by men, forced to take stimulants and drugs, and the men even used various props, such as wine bottles and golf balls, to insert into her vagina.
She was still unmarried and was forced by her agency to go to the hospital for sterilization surgery in her 20s so that the chaebols could have sex with her without wearing condoms and ejaculate inside her.
She suffered from excessive torture and became incontinent. In severe cases, she could not even walk.
In her suicide note, she cried: “Once, I entered a hotel and found that I had to provide sexual services to 4 men at the same time. I was not even as good as a hotel prostitute.”
Jang Ja-yeon – Wikipedia
South Korean actress (1980–2009) Jang Ja-yeon ( Korean : 장자연 ; 25 January 1980 – 7 March 2009) was a South Korean actress.
She was born in Jeongeup , North Jeolla Province, South Korea. She debuted in the entertainment industry when she appeared in a television commercial in 2006.
She was known for being part of the KBS television drama series Boys Over Flowers as Sunny, one of the antagonists of the series, at the time of her death. She died by suicide on 7 March 2009 at the age of 29.
At the time of her death, Jang had been suffering from depression , and it was revealed in 2019 that the initial investigation into her death in 2009 had been corrupt.
[ 1 ] The 2009 investigation had concluded that her death was a suicide, but the investigation was reopened in 2018.
[ 2 ] Her death caused a national scandal in 2009 when it was widely reported that she had been sexually and physically abused by a number of prominent entertainment executives during her career, including the CEO of Jang's former talent agency, The Contents Entertainment, Kim Sung-hoon.
[ 3 ] After three witness testified against the CEO, Kim was found guilty of abuse by the Korean courts, specifically of forcing girls from his agency to come to his birthday party where he forced them to sexually entertain the executives.
[ 4 ] 2006–2009: Acting debut with Boys Over Flowers [ edit ] Jang made her debut in 2006 in a television commercial.
[ 5 ] Her big break came in Boys Over Flowers playing the role of Sunny, one of a trio of girls who antagonize the female lead played by Ku Hye-sun . At the time of her death, Jang was awaiting the release of her first two films, They Are Coming and Penthouse Elephant. Jang was known to have had difficulties with her management agency.
[ 6 ] Since the death of her parents in a traffic accident in 1999, Jang had been living with her older sister and younger brother.
[ 7 ] Prior to her own death, Jang had been suffering from clinical depression and had received medical treatment for her condition during the past year.
[ 5 ] Death and later investigation [ edit ] Jang died by suicide. She was found hanging in her home in the Bundang district of Seongnam , Gyeonggi province , on 7 March 2009. During a phone call at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon, Jang had complained to her sister about the "overwhelming stress" she was under, saying that she "wanted to die".
[ 5 ] Having later been unable to reach her on the phone, Jang's sister returned to their shared home at 7:42 p.m. to find her body hanging from the stairway banister.
[ 8 ] A police investigation concluded that her death was a suicide,
[ 8 ] and found no evidence of foul play.
[ 7 ] Jang is believed to have killed herself at around 4:30 pm.
[ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] According to widespread South Korean entertainment news reports, it was believed that Jang claimed that her agent Kim Sung-hoon had regularly beaten her and forced her to sleep with a string of VIPs, including directors, media executives and CEOs. Ki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jang_Ja-yeon
This is a common experience for Korean idols. Do you think foreigners will accept this kind of experience?
If a foreigner is killed in South Korea, the embassy of his or her country of origin will intervene, which can easily escalate into a serious diplomatic issue.
Executives of major Korean companies, news media executives, and men in the entertainment industry dare not do this.
On the other hand, Without these, foreigners would naturally not get many resources.
There are so many K-pop trainees in HYBE, SM, YG, and JYP, why did they have to choose you as the top star? Why?
Advertisements, front-page news, prime-time television time, etc. all cost money to buy.
No such thing as a free lunch, everything needs to be exchanged.
College Girl Goes Missing Until Cops Discover This CCTV Footage
Arizona Chicken Enchiladas
Ingredients
About 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, boiled and shredded
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can chopped green chiles*
1/2 medium onion, chopped
Grated Cheddar cheese, about 1 pound, divided
10 to 12 corn tortillas, torn into bite-size pieces
Vegetable oil
Instructions
Boil chicken and then shred it. This is easily done using an electric mixer! Set aside.
In large pan, add both soups (do not add water or milk), green chiles and chopped onions. Add chicken and heat to a slow simmer.
In a separate pan, heat about 1/4 to 1/2 inch oil. Add torn corn tortillas and soft fry them. You don’t want them crunchy. Drain excess oil from tortillas on a paper towel.
Add soft fried corn tortillas to the chicken mixture. You will need to play with the amount of tortillas you add until it looks like you have enough tortillas added without making it too dry. Turn off heat. Add about 1/2 of the grated cheese. You may also add some sour cream to this if you wish.
Spread mixture in a greased baking dish. I normally use a 13 x 9-inch pan for this. Top with more grated cheese and bake at 350 degrees F for 20 to 30 minutes or until bubbly.
To finish this off you can top with salsa, sour cream and/or guacamole.
Notes
* I buy Hatch green chiles from New Mexico in season, roast them and freeze them in freezer bags. They’re the best! We are fortunate that we can buy them freshly-roasted right in front of our local market also.
Have you ever had to remind a guest that they are a guest in your house? If so, how did the guest respond?
My wife and I have four daughters. One shares our DNA and three do not. They came to us in their early teens from severely abusive homes.
Our second daughter, ‘Beth’ had only been us for about three months and was still learning to trust us.
My wife’s mother, Jane, was visiting. At some point, Beth came from her room with her dirty clothes and dumped them on the floor of the laundry room, then started back to her room to bring down her bedding. From the kitchen Jane said something to the tune of, “I hope you’re not going to leave those there!” Beth responded, “It’s none of your business now, is it?”
Before my wife, who was also in the kitchen, could intercede, Jane said, “You better learn some manners if you’re going to be a member of this family, young lady.”
Before Beth could respond, my wife put her arm around her, looked at her mother, and said something akin to, “Mom, Beth doesn’t have to learn one fucking thing to be a member of this family, she already is. There is nothing she can do to change that. Now apologize to my daughter.” I think Beth was caught off guard that she wasn’t the one in trouble and was being stood up for.
To her credit, Jane did apologize. Beth was, at best, lukewarm in accepting it. As far as my wife was concerned, she didn’t need to accept it at all.
I will say it wasn’t Jane’s intent to be nasty. In her mind she was just reinforcing one of the assumed rules of the house. For her it was the kind of thing grandmothers do.
Later that afternoon my wife took her out on the patio for some mother/daughter time. She explained our home ran differently than the home in which she grew up, and no, this wasn’t a criticism of how she was raised. They agreed that it would be best if Jane refrained from parenting our daughters. Jane wasn’t particularly upset and they moved on to other things.
Surprisingly, at least to us, Beth was cordial to Jane at dinner. This was a victory as in those days Beth often held grudges.
DECEASED 1920’s MAN DESCRIBES THE AFTERLIFE
Interesting.
Shorpy
GHOST DESCRIBES THE AFTERLIFE | A British WW2 Sailor’s Experience
I had a tomcat called 'pyewacket ' who was a beautifull natured boy, silly funny and got on well with our other 2 cats and all the other cats in the neighborhood, but 6 years ago someone poisoned him, we had to have him put to sleep, this was especially hard because he was only 5 , one sunny summers day I was sitting on the couch thinking about him and how we missed him so, then I thought to myself I wonder if animals pass over to the other side, just then I spied a tiny white feather coming down from the ceiling and settling on my lap, make of that what you will but I'm not a big fan of coincidences , I still have the white feather.
How do Tibetans feel about being part of China? Do they want independence?
Hello, I am Tibetan. Born in the outskirts of Darjeeling, India and now immigrate to USA.
Should Tibet be apart of China ? Yes. It has been since the old times and we have absorbed most Chinese culture (chop sticks, food, instrument, clothing, language, etc)
Do I seek independence ? Little bit but what will the outcome be if Tibet was independent ? We would probably be invaded by India just like how Sikkim and North East India turned into be. Let me tell I would hate to be apart of India since my last trip to Sikkim. Sikkimese are now second class citizens in their ancestral homeland since Indians breed like rabbits, different race and thinking. We also have racial tensions due to our racist tribalism nature. Also we are mongoloid race and Indians are Dravidians or Aryans so we have nothing in common other than religion or writing. Since the Chinese are Mongoloid race I would rather be apart of them. Seeing Tibet now with devolpment and infrastructure. Many exile unbrainwashed Tibetans would agree with me and go back. The brainwashed tibetans would likely stay in india suffering from racism and living in slums or get their daily paycheck from the corrupt Tibetan government in exile.
Let me tell you I used to be a brainwashed Tibetan listening to these foreign Caucasians and Indians telling me lies about what the Chinese did to Tibet and now I know the truth and I am very angry for them lying to me. Seek the truth.
Today’s MM art
It’s a mixed bag. Lots of nudes, but also many distortions. I’m disappointed.
Many men with woman’s faces, and distortions of various types.
Man’s body, woman’s face.
Some are fine, but are missing “something”.
This turned out… interesting.
Same with this one…
I do love the expression on the face of Bacchus.
Nice, but twins?
Messed up female genitalia…
Might be more interesting with some nice clothes…
Now here’s sort of what I am striving for.
And this. But there’s a lot that needs to be corrected.
Wow. A lot going on here.
A winner… almost.
So so.
The spitting of the wine will need to be photoshopped out.
Fine.
This is one of the best of the bunch.
And I do like this one…
When did you realize your parents were cool?
When my father got Hugh Hefner to lend him the bunny jet to evacuate Vietnamese orphans during the Fall of Saigon.
It was part of “Operation Babylift,” an effort to bring about 2,000 displaced children, most of them orphans, to the US amidst the chaos of the American pullout from Vietnam.
In the 60s, my parents started a nonprofit to support Vietnamese children who were orphaned or affected by the war. My mother travelled there several times during the war and came to know the children, staff, and volunteers of some of the orphanages around the country.
Among the volunteers were US servicemen, one of whom picked out my sister for adoption by my family. I also gained an adopted brother in a similar manner.
Through the nonprofit they started, my mother made hundreds of Vietnamese adoption placements, including several to celebrities. During the late 60s and early 70s they built quite an extensive network around their nonprofit activities.
So when President Ford announced the creation of a special fund to expedite the evacuation and adoption of Vietnamese orphans during the Fall of Saigon, my father called Yul Bryner and got him to prevail on Hef to lend them the bunny jet for Operation Babylift.
The operation itself was controversial. There were later claims that some of the children were not actually orphans. My mother had been to the orphanages where many of these children came from. She knew the staff and volunteers who worked there. A mixed race kid like my adopted brother Danny had no future in Vietnam. That is certain.
It was a chaotic time. There was tragedy, too.
The first flight out on Operation Babylift, a C-5 cargo plane, crashed shortly after take-off, killing 78 children and 50 adults of the 300 aboard. My parents knew several of them.
I was a teenager when it happened and got to know some of the survivors, who would come to stay with us and live out the trauma of their ordeal in the aftermath. People we knew gave their lives to bring those children here.
Fifteen years later, my father was on one of the first flights from the US to deliver relief supplies to Lech Walesa and the Solidarity strikers in Gdansk, Poland in 1980. He returned with a new suit he bought in Poland for about $15. He called it his “socialist suit” and he was very proud of it.
Clearest Footage of THEM Ever Released
Interesting.
But the “scary music” is just plain juvenile.
‘Mean’ Cat That No One Wanted Falls In Love With New Dad
Have you ever told a parent something their kid had done, and they stopped talking to you afterwards?
Yes, and the mom—my friend—was there. She had two daughters, three years and five-years old. We were all sitting around at my house and she asked me if I had some paper and crayons, so they could draw some pictures.
Of course I said yes, and set the girls up. A while later the oldest came running up with the youngest right behind her. They were both giggling. The oldest handed me the worst drawing I had ever seen. It was a picture of a—what looked like a girl, with short hair that stuck straight up, weird, crooked, pointy, tooth-like, projections, and tons of black dots all over the face. I thought it was a monster. So I said, “wow, nice monster.” Nope. The little girl said—all proud of herself—to me, “this isn’t a monster. It’s a picture of YOU. You’re UGLY.”
I was mortified. I had struggled my entire teenage years with horrible acne that was a result of kidney problems. Although, at this point I only had the residual scarring. I had always been very self-conscious, but it was hardly noticeable at the time this happened. Regardless, I felt like I had just been kicked in the stomach.
Their mother—my friend—looked at me, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “kids are so honest, they just draw what they see”.
Maybe I am just being stupid, but this really hurt my feelings. I kept being nice, but I’m sure she could see the hurt on my face—however, she never acted like it. The visit was over anyway, and she and her spawn left a few minutes later.
I talked to her a few more times. What really ended up being the last straw was when she complained about her oldest daughter’s second grade teacher teaching about dinosaurs. She said that the teacher should NOT be teaching about dinosaurs. “Dinosaurs” she said, “DID NOT EXIST!!!! Dinosaur bones were put there by Satan, trying to TRICK us!!!!!”.
What was your “Wow, monsters hide in plain sight!” moment?
About a year ago, my wife got a phone call STUPIDLY early in the morning. She missed getting the phone in time, but saw what friend it was from, and got in touch with her immediately.
Our friend was incredibly distraught, saying she’d learned she’d married an absolute monster.
My wife and I had been couples-friends with this couple for over fifteen years.
The husband was arrested for crimes against children. Yes, THOSE kinds of crimes against children.
It messes me up to know. I know I just said “we’d been friends for over fifteen years”, but we haven’t lived near each other for a long time. Most of our interactions were incredibly limited to Facebook interactions and a visit to one another’s area once every 4 – 5 years. But still.
It messes us up because you’re SO SURE that you’d know. You think you’re a good judge of character.
My wife is still flabbergasted, to think of it. We agreed that it was so out of nowhere. She told me “Of literally everyone we’ve ever met, if I were being asked to rate how sketchy I thought they were, he wouldn’t have even made the top ten!…”
It’s been so long, and it still messes me up to think about. Why? It’s not like there’s any reason I should have ‘clued in’ that something was going on. There were several people who hung out with him regularly and none of them knew. His brother and parents didn’t know. Hell, HIS OWN WIFE didn’t know—and she’s not a stupid person.
We still beat ourselves up mentally and emotionally, scouring for what potential clues there may have been that we overlooked. But be reasonable: that many people never knew.
But it messes you up. You think that you’d know.
Hassayampa Casserole
This casserole is an original and was named after the Hassayampa River that flows in Wickenburg, Arizona.
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.
“Andrew, God, I can actually hear your sulking,” Becky said across the hull to the large man sitting with his head hanging and his back facing her. “It’s like I have the endangered, sniveling vagina bug crawling in my ear, right now.”
“I am not sulking!” Andrew informed her angrily as he lifted his head and stared ferociously at the corner. “As a matter of fact, I was just now having a soliloquyial discussion on the selfish disregard of ingratitude and how Princesses only crap on other people’s property!” He screamed at her from his walled in position and Becky rolled her eyes in return.
“Look, man, the alfredo sauce was too salty, I don’t know what to tell yah,” she replied with a guiltless shrug. “Maybe, next time, I don’t know, don’t add the entire salt lick to the pot.”
“That is a reward winning recipe!” Andrew bellowed and turned his purpling face towards her. “And I’ll let you know that having all of the culinary delicacy of a frozen lake, does not excuse, nor forgive, straight rudeness.”
“Whatever,” Becky grumbled and returned her attention to the blinking lights of the ship’s internal computer.
“Fine,” Andrew agreed to her resolution and sent out a cold silence across the room.
“I don’t think that, “soliloquyial,” is even really a word.” Becky poked and to her delight, the bear stood-up and stomped out into the hallway.
“There are rules of engagement!” Andrew roared and jabbed his pudgy finger into the chest of no one as he clomped down the hallway. “Once an argument is clearly at the point of appropriate silence,” he said while gesturing wildly with his hands. “I mean, that’s it, you just shut-up. But no, not her, she always has to get that last little…” He paused, too angry to finish the sentence and, instead, bit down hard onto his knuckle. “I want my GD dog back!” he finally screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Becky! Becky!” Andrew yelled desperately as the terrified animal clawed free and leapt from his grasping arms. “No, no, bad dog!” he scolded the Pomeranian, but another crack of lightning from the newest freak storm put her tail between her legs and sent her scampering into the throngs of the many on-lookers and partiers across the barricade.
“Japan…swallowed…unprecedented tsunamis,” Andrew heard the radio from the nearest booze and food tent scream in between its static and he helplessly turned and looked at his escape vessel.
“Becky?” He whimpered with his whole body moving in feeble motions and the tears choking out his breathing. For the briefest of moments, he considered leaving without his precious Becky, but then he remembered all of the hard work and strings that he had to pull to gain passage to the new world and procure his own personal carriage. Failure was not an option.
“You sir!” Andrew pointed and yelled with newly found determination as he marched across his lot towards the security at the gate. “I will have a moment with you,” he said and pushed his impressive mass in between a small helmeted guard and the rest of the world. “Do you know who I am?” Andrew more demanded than asked.
“Yes sir, mister Chizka, sir,” the guard said with what he thought was machismo. “I am assigned to your post, sir, I’m, I’m your takeoff guy” he added lamely and immediately regretted it.
“Good,” Andrew replied with zero satisfaction as he assumed his own notoriety. “Then you know that I am never, EVER, without my Becky!” he blustered as the guard tried to catalogue every piece of information that he had on the man and a wife Becky seemed to ring a bell.
“Yes sir, mister Chizka, that is well known,” he decided to answer in the positive.
“Well?” Andrew asked as he looked around himself incredulously. “Do you see my Becky with me?”
“Oh, oh, no sir,” the former shoe salesman caught the drift and put his two weeks of military training into action. “Where was the last place you seen her, sir?”
“She ran off into that damnable ruffian tent,” Andrew answered with distaste. “She is very likely right at the entrance, trust me, she won’t wander far from a constant source of sausage.”
As the guard struggled with a reply, he was spared by the sudden upheaval of the earth’s crust, causing all to stumble and cheers to erupt from the tent dwellers.
“Listen,” Andrew said in a sudden rush, trying to quickly compensate for the earthquakes two-day early arrival. “What’s your name son?” he asked the guard.
“Thomas Jensen,” Thomas Jensen answered astutely.
“And now, Thomas,” Andrew said in his straight business voice. “I can assume that you’re not one of these tent cretins, right? That you plan on leaving this degenerate planet and make a fresh start on the new world? Yes?”
“Good Thomas, I’m relieved to hear that,” Andrew said while putting his meat hooks onto the guard’s slender shoulders and drawing paternal serenity onto his face. “Thomas, I need someone to march into that Hell pit and get me my Becky,” he said while pointing at the tent. “And whoever that person is, well, let’s just say that they will be very well rewarded in the new world,” he stated and then paused for dramatic affect. “Do you think that you could be that person, mister Jensen?”
“Yes sir! Absolutely sir!” Ole’ Thomas was pretty sure of himself.
“Excellent!” Andrew applauded. “Bring her to my sleeping quarters, get us off this God forsaken planet and I assure you that the goose will be splendid.”
Andrew stared out the bedroom window as the world deteriorated around him. “Where are you?” he whispered harshly and took his third pill in less than ten minutes. “I do not feel calm!” he screamed at the window and shook the pill bottle angrily. “Stupid—useless…,” he mumbled softly as his chin dropped down into his chest and time slowed down around him.
“Who the Hell is this?” the drunken slur of a tiny, blonde woman and the sound of a locking door caused Andrew’s eyes to flutter open.
“Becky,” he pleaded unconsciously as the engines started to rumble and the planet Earth began its long series of chain explosions.
“I want my GD dog back!” Becky heard Andrew yell from across the ship and she immediately felt a twinge of regret for that last jab.
“Ah, the big lug,” she said as she drew her legs up onto the chair to hug her knees, thinking about their first conversation.
The world, she believed, was gone. The navigational system, fried on take-off. We could be the last two human beings alive in the Universe and dude couldn’t stop blubbering about his stupid dog.
“Cute little shit,” she said with a sigh and grabbed her rubber ball to squeeze.
The mix-up, she supposed, was favorable to her. She should be dead and at one point and time, it was all that she had expected, wanted, maybe. She was in a weird place at the time. Still though and in retrospect, she made out pretty good. The vessel was equipped to accommodate and feed eight people for no less than ten years. There were like a zillion different movies and video games to play and the regurgitating ventilation system provided a lifetime of low-quality, but breathable air.
The dog, she felt, would have been very happy here.
Words can’t really describe the awkwardness of getting to know the last remaining member of your species. The last real face that you would see in your entire lifetime. Uncomfortable, she guessed. Discomfited? But, after a long mourning and bonding period, it took them all of fifteen seconds to realize that they were trapped in space with a complete and utter moron. He was a proclaimed dog person and she held firm that Becky was really more of a cat. He was a staunch Republican and she didn’t really care what you called a crook. How was it possible that she got stuck with the one person who could witness the explosion of their planet and still continue to deny global warming?
It was the absolute worst possible case scenario for the both of them.
Becky smiled and gave the ball two quick compressions.
“No, no, you’re doing that all wrong,” Andrew said as he watched her gaming in the family center and grabbed the controller out of her hands.
“Oh, really?” she asked, a little shocked at his playfulness, as they had been on a, as needed, communication schedule for the previous three months. “You know how to play Super Mario Brothers?”
“Oh yeah, my brothers and I ate up the classics,” Andrew answered as he deftly moved the courageous plumber across the screen. “I saw Zelda in the game catalogue,” he said while pausing and smiling over at her. “Have you ever played it?” he asked with a school boy innocence that would eventually charm his way into both her pants and their first marriage.
Andrew had considered all four of their marriages as a silly waste of time, but, Becky, although far removed from her deflowering, was a traditionalist. Not so much the religious stuff, but a commitment was needed if you wanted the long-term, personal attention sex. She was, after all, a lady.
Initially they had the children conversation, you know, the old, save the homo sapien rally, but ultimately decided against it. Their little family, alone in the middle of outer space, trying to maintain the human race was, well, just gross, once you ran the numbers and, besides, neither one of the them were exactly, kid people, anyhow. So, they kept rugrats out of their tumultuous and mostly predictable cycle. Right now, as far as Becky saw it, they were within four months to their next marriage. This was clearly a make-up fight. Right now, he’s standing in the master bedroom, staring out the window, waiting for me to come and apologize.
“And apologize I will,” she thought happily as she stood-up and bounced the ball off of the floor and back into her hand. The truth was that over the last six years, she had really grown to love the big ape and she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he loved her. Only love can make a person as crazy as she made him.
Besides, she had put a lot of effort into making him a suitable partner, the, sometimes, aggressive tips and hints on how to be a better lover, alone, claimed her ownership. She wasn’t about to give up her man and her apologizing for hurting his delicate nature had also become part of their cycle.
“Hey Andrew,” she yelled as she bounced her ball down the hall towards the bedroom. “About the alfredo sauce, you know that I was just being a bitch, right?” She asked, taking the low road and hoping for a quick make-up.
“Becky, get in here,” Andrew yelled back at her in a dazed and far away voice and Becky quickened her pace.
“Holy…” she stood frozen in the entryway, staring through the window at the last thing that she ever thought that she would see again. “Andrew, it’s a planet!” she exclaimed and Andrew turned in his standing position to nod absently.
“You said that the odds were astronomically against this,” she said as Andrew, the human fun sponge, had calculated its chances to being exactly impossible.
“They, they are,” he stammered and returned his gaze to the looming planet.
“Well, is it, you know, liveable?” Becky asked with excitement growing in her voice.
“Yes, perfectly, its atmosphere doesn’t appear to be much different than earths,” he answered.
“It’s unbelievable,” Becky marveled as she walked to stand next to Mark. “What about other creatures? Is there anything alive down there?”
“Affirmative, be it food, friend or foe, the imager shows plenty of animal activity at the surface.”
Awestruck in silence and as they slowly absorbed the colossal potential floating before them, Andrew and Becky’s fingers gingerly touched together and gently entwined.
“Take us home, Captain Chizka,” she said while looking up at her future fifth husband and Andrew set the thrusters to manual.
What are the risks of allowing Chinese EV imports into the US?
Isn’t it obvious?
The risks are getting rid of the incompetent and the idiots. The future of this country must be premised on having people who can get things done. Protectioinism by tariff shields these incompetent and idiots and hurts severely the consumers. . . and lead only to the deterioration of the economy.
EV is no stranger to the U.S. Our Detriot car makers have been toying with this for decades and in just the last 15 years, we have had hundreds of EV startups – one of which is Tesla leading the way. These startups – with names like Faradays, Lordstown, Fisker, Lucid and Rivian enjoyed and been showered with billions. Yet, the best they have to offer are $45,000 EVs that are more than twice as expensive and not even with quality and features of China’s basic EVs at less than $20,000.
And their excuse is that its unfair trade practice because China provides subsidies?
We have Tesla that set the standard of competition in the Chinese auto market . . . .that should also be allowed to prevail in the U.S. This is how the Chinese EVs evolved and this should be how our U.S. EVs must evolve. European OEMs – specially VW – are doing joint ventures to catch up in the Chinese market and GM and Ford should do the same . . . .or let them perish because they can’t last long anyway with tariff protection.
Life after Death? Communicating with the Other Side
Oh, it’s been a while, but I used to own a “turntable” and “albums” that I would play on my “Hi Fi” stereo system. Oh, ever since High School, I listened to albums on my all-in one player.
But, you know… when I went to college at university was I introduced to modular stereos components. And I really constructed quite a set up with all sorts of gear for my music listening pleasure.
Something a little bit like these fine examples. Though mine was on a real budget…
I had Pioneer and Techniques components with a few misc other makes. It was a Hodge-podge of stereo components, with some nice speakers. Why, though? I used headphones most of the time. Don’t you know.
I well remember the Techniques turntable.
My father couldn’t understand why I would have one that would play automatically multiple albums. But I said that I liked it that way… low and individual. He just shrugged and walked away.
Anyways… here’s to my lost collection of albums in egg cartons. Who know’s where they are today.
And now.
Today…
Are we witnessing the decline of the American empire?
In the past 5 or 6 years, I have noticed that America’s decline is comprehensive, affecting not just the economy, but the entire industry and culture.
Just like the Twin Towers, after what seemed like an eternity of smoldering, the subsequent collapse happened in an instant.
Starting at 48:06 min (automated transcript, slightly edited):
Sachs:
I will not vote for a candidate that doesn’t meet the minimum threshold for being president of the United States and we have two candidates, lead candidates, that don’t. And so I decided I’m not voting – period. Because I want a candidate that actually has some possibility of doing something.
Now maybe they will but not based on what they say every day.
It is a profession of love for Israel’s murderous reign in the Middle East. Okay, by itself I wouldn’t support that. That’s enough for me because Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and it’s sickening and it’s obvious and we see it every day. And if a candidate can’t figure out to say something about then I can’t support them. Period.
But then Kamala Harris, who would normally be my candidate because I was a lifelong Democratic Party voter. Although with great disappointment whether they won or lost. Because when they won I was disappointed with what they did. When they lost I was disappointed that my candidate lost. So I’ve never been happy for a while about us politics.
It’s been five miserable presidents as far as I’m concerned from Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, awful all of them. They brought us to the brink of nuclear war. I can’t forgive them for that kind of recklessness.
But when it comes to Ukraine Harris says we stand with Ukraine. Just everybody understand what does it mean to stand with Ukraine, like Boris Johnson stands with Ukraine. It means 2,000 Ukrainians killed or wounded severely every single day. That’s not standing with Ukraine. That is standing with the destruction of Ukraine. It’s exactly the opposite. And so that’s a purely Orwellian idea that we’re standing with Ukraine by continuing this war.
And that’s what she says because she doesn’t seem to have any idea other than what she’s told to say or she says her ideas. And either way I can’t vote for her.
And with Trump – don’t even get me started.
So the answer is I don’t see either of them based on what they’re saying right now doing much.
But I think there’s another point that is important in this. I’m not without hope for a quite different reason and that is that our politics is not determined by American presidents. Our politics is determined by the Security State apparatus. And what is happening right now is not in America’s security interest and so they could change their mind.
President Putin said something actually very interesting in an interview in 2017, I think in Figaro. By the time he had three presidents as his counterparts, Bush, Obama and Trump, and he said to this French reporter in 2017.
He said: “You know I’ve dealt with three American presidents. Now they come into office with ideas but then men in dark suits and blue ties come to tell them how the real situation is and you never hear of those ideas again.”
And this is from a very tough-minded leader who was himself KGB he understands how the American system works very well. He understands what the CIA means for American foreign policy. He understands that American foreign policy is very deeply rooted.
It’s not this one wins then Obama changes everything and then Trump comes in and changes nothing like that. By the way this has been a consistent foreign policy arguably since 19 certainly since 1991 and arguably since 1945.
If you are still able to afford a decent home, you should consider yourself to be incredibly blessed, because vast numbers of Americans do not have a permanent place to live at this point. Homelessness in the United States is at the highest level ever recorded, and it has been growing at the fastest pace ever recorded. The homeless encampments that have been popping up all over our major cities have been making lots of headlines in recent years, but many of the homeless live and die in very isolated places far from public view. What I am about to share with you should deeply sadden all of us.
Way back in the woods in southwest Florida, trails that have been made out of discarded carpets lead to absolutely enormous homeless encampments where hordes of homeless people have made homes for themselves.
One man was able to find these infamous “carpet trails”, and he posted footage of them on his YouTube channel…
Coastal areas of southern Florida are very popular among the homeless because the nights never get too cold even during the winter.
But there are plenty of other hazards, and just trying to stay alive can be a real struggle.
Of course the west coast is dealing with an even greater crisis.
In Portland, homeless encampments have taken over vast stretches of the city and nobody seems to have any solutions.
KATU recently visited one of the most notorious homeless encampments, and they discovered that it has gotten even bigger since the last time they visited it…
This is what a collapsing society looks like.
Poverty and hunger are spreading like wildfire, and the deplorable conditions in many of our core urban areas are being openly mocked all over the globe.
The Chinese are now producing documentaries on the collapse of American cities. What this showcases is the grim aftermath of decades of deindustrialization, disastrous progressive policies, and an opioid crisis—ironically fueled by China.
“Chinese are making documentaries about ultra-extreme poverty and decaying cities since they don’t exist in China anymore,” X user S.L. Kanthan wrote in a recent post, accompanied by a short clip from the documentary highlighting the implosion of Oakland, California.
Since the video was narrated in Chinese, X user TranslateMom translated some of the captions, which said, “Everywhere is garbage … People don’t live in places. There are wanderers everywhere.”
One of the primary reasons why so many people are forced to live in the streets is because housing has become ridiculously unaffordable.
If you can believe it, there are now 237 U.S. cities where “buyers will find a price tag of $1 million or more on the typical starter home”…
A million-dollar price tag no longer means lavish and luxurious living. In more than 200 U.S. cities, buyers will find a price tag of $1 million or more on the typical starter home, a new Zillow® analysis finds.
The typical “starter home” — defined for this analysis as being among those in the lowest third of home values in a given region — is worth at least $1 million in 237 cities, the highest number of cities ever. Five years ago, there were only 84 such cities.
That is nuts!
Who can afford to pay a million bucks for a “starter home”?
This is what rampant inflation has done to us.
It has absolutely eviscerated our standard of living, and ordinary Americans such as you and I are feeling a tremendous amount of pain right now.
According to Zillow, California, New York and New Jersey are the states that have the most cities where a typical “starter home” costs at least a million dollars…
Exactly half of all states have at least one city with a typical starter home worth $1 million or more. There are 117 such cities in California, well ahead of New York (31) and New Jersey (21), which have the second- and third-highest numbers. Florida and Massachusetts round out the top five with 11 each.
Among metropolitan areas, the New York City metro, which includes parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has the most cities with million-dollar starter homes at 48. The San Francisco metro has the next highest count at 44, followed by Los Angeles (35), San Jose (15), and Miami and Seattle, each with eight. Irvine, with a population of more than 300,000, is the biggest city with $1 million starter homes.
Of course California is also being overwhelmed by homeless encampments right now too.
Progressive policies have resulted in a chronic shortage of affordable housing, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.
Sadly, conditions are only going to get worse all over the nation because our economic momentum is rapidly taking us in the wrong direction.
A growing number of Americans are falling behind on their monthly credit card payments as they continue to battle high inflation and interest rates.
New data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia shows that credit card delinquency rates in the first quarter of 2024 rose to the highest level since 2012, when the Fed began tracking the data. All stages of credit card delinquency — 30, 60 and 90 days past due — rose during the first three months of the year.
And another major retailer just went bankrupt and is closing lots of stores…
Home goods retailer Conn’s HomePlus filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday and announced plans to close at least 70 locations across 13 states.
On its website, Conn’s says it will close 18 locations in Florida, nine in Texas and seven in Arizona. Other states that will see stores close include Virginia, Colorado, Mississippi and Oklahoma, among others.
Everywhere you look, there is suffering.
But for the moment, those at the very top of the economic food chain are still thriving.
In fact, the wealthiest one percent have actually gotten 42 trillion dollars wealthier during the past decade…
The world’s richest one percent increased their fortunes by a total of $42 trillion over the past decade, Oxfam said Thursday, ahead of a G20 summit in Brazil where taxing the super-rich tops the agenda.
Despite this windfall, taxes on the rich had plummeted to “historic lows”, the NGO added, warning of “obscene levels” of inequality with the rest of the world “left to scrap for crumbs”.
Our system is fundamentally flawed, and decades of really bad decisions have brought us to a breaking point.
So please don’t look down on those that have lost their homes and have no place to live, because lots more people will be joining them soon.
What is the rudest thing a store owner has done to you that you paid back tenfold?
I’m a model railroader.
Here in NYC we have a hobby shop owner who has zero social skills.
His family is evidentially quite wealthy. They own a hardware store. they finance his hobby shop because they don’t want him involved in the family business. So he can’t go bankrupt no matter what he does. He’s rude and disrespectful to his store’s customers. His prices are about 110–120% of MSRP for items.
The store is always a mess. The owner is always in dirty disheveled clothes. He has a cat that lives in the store, so there’s a smelly uncleaned litter box in the corner. Also the occasional cat shit found on the floor around the shop.
The only reason the model railroad community patronizes the store is because it’s been around for decades and occasionally some interesting long out of production items from decades ago are unearthed.
Everyone in the model railroad community here in the city despises him and has a story about an interaction with him.
A couple of incidents:
A friend of mine found an item on the store shelves he wanted to buy. So he asks the price. (a lot of items are not priced tagged). The storeowner comes running over and says “I need that for an order’ and takes out of my friend’s hand and runs off with it.
Another friend found a locomotive motorized chassis in a junk box. It’s a Bachmann, one of the cheaper toy brands. He asks the owner how much he wants for it and get a spiel about how’s a Bachmann and a ‘classic’. He gets quoted a ridiculous price.
A couple of years back he had a competitor hobby shop open across the street from him by one of his former employees. A UPS guy mistakenly delivered a carton (about 2 or 3 dozen) new locomotives to the store by mistake. So this cretin opens the carton addressed to someone else and starts selling the locomotives. That is until the competitor comes over looking for his mis-delivered items and the cretin refuses to return them. The police got involved and forced him to return the remaining models in the carton to the rightful owner.
To the paid back part.
So when those of us in the local community visit the shop, we like to try to undo in the process sales he’s made to unsuspecting tourist customers and direct them to some of the other hobby shops in the city which actually sell items at a discount price.
When someone is about to drop a few hundred or a grand on a sale, to find out you ca get the same items from someone else for about 25% less is powerful motivation. It being a clean orderly environment, sans cat shit, seals the deal.
Aliens (1986) | First Time Watching | REACTION – LiteWeight Reacting
1. After loving my parents, my siblings, my spouse, my children and my friends, I have now started loving myself.
2. I have realized that I am not “Atlas”. The world does not rest on my shoulders.
3. I have stopped bargaining with vegetable & fruit vendors. A few pennies more is not going to break me, but it might help the poor fellow save for his daughter’s school fees.
4. I leave my waitress a big tip. The extra money might bring a smile to her face. She is toiling much harder for a living than I am.
5. I stopped telling the elderly that they’ve already narrated that story many times. The story makes them walk down memory lane & relive their past.
6. I have learned not to correct people even when I know they are wrong. The burden of making everyone perfect is not on me. Peace is more precious than perfection.
7. I give compliments freely and generously. Compliments are mood enhancers not only for the recipient but also for me. And a small tip for the recipient of a compliment: never, NEVER turn it down. Just say, ‘Thank you.’
8. I have learned not to bother about a crease or a spot on my shirt. Personality speaks louder than appearances.
9. I walk away from people who don’t value me. They might not know my worth, but I do.
10. I remain cool when someone plays dirty to outrun me in the rat race. I am not a rat & neither am I in any race.
11. I am learning not to be embarrassed by my emotions. It’s my emotions that make me human.
12. I have learned that it’s better to drop the ego than to break a relationship. My ego will keep me aloof, whereas with relationships, I will never be alone.
13. I have learned to live each day as if it’s the last. After all, it might be the last.
14. I am doing what makes me happy. I am responsible for my happiness, and I owe it to myself. Happiness is a choice. You can be happy at any time, just choose to be!
I decided to share this for all my friends. Why do we have to wait to be 60 or 70 or 80, why can’t we practice this at any stage and age?
Real Italian Spaghetti Sauce and Meatballs
My mother was born in Northern Italy and she taught my two sisters and me how to make traditional Italian spaghetti sauce. She insisted it was not REAL spaghetti sauce if it contained onions and to this day I never order red sauce in a restaurant because invariably restaurants Americanize their sauce and make it with onions.
Here is the REAL thing – at least according to my Italian mother.
Ingredients
Spaghetti Sauce
2 (28 ounce) cans tomatoes (crushed or whole)
1 (12 ounce) can tomato paste
1 cup water
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons dried sweet basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 whole bay leaves
Meatballs
2 pounds lean ground beef
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon sweet basil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups soft bread crumbs
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Instructions
Spaghetti Sauce
Place all ingredients in an uncovered Dutch oven, heat to a boil and then immediately reduce heat to a simmer and simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Meatballs
Mix together until well blended. Form into meatballs and place on jellyroll pan.
Bake at 350 degrees F for one-half hour.
Once the spaghetti sauce starts to simmer, add meatballs.
Attribution
Shared with recipegoldmine.com by JoAnn Heskin.
Shorpy
Has anyone rented a car with unlimited mileage and then really driven it with “unlimited mileage”? What was the response when you returned the car to the rental agency?
Yes i did this. i just graduated from college and got a job interview in las Vegas. i did not want to drive my car because it did not have air-conditioning. so i went to enterprise and rented the cheapest car they had. i went to the interview and returned in 2 days. i put almost 2000 miles on the car. the lady who checked me in was not happy. She was the manager, well she grabbed a clipboard and went out to the vehicle and started nitpicking everything. even the stuff that was previously damaged. she just kept going for about 20 min and always quoting prices to fix. she paid extra special attention to the windshield and stated i would have to replace the windshield because of “chips” i just kept quiet…
we went back in and she got out her calculator and proceeded to add up all the damages and came to the amount of 2130.00 in damages. and asked how i would like to pay. i said are you sure that is all the damages. well that made he even more mad. and she went into a speech about how i have to pay for all the damages and such for about 2 min. i just stood there and listened. the car cost 19.95 a day. when she was done i reached over the counter and grabbed my rental agreement and i said the 2130.00 she would have to pay because i had taken the insurance with 0 deductible. for 9.95 a day. she grabbed the rental agreement and verified the insurance. and i walked out. she was pissed i will never forget her face when she realized she did not have a leg to stand on. best 20 bucks i ever spent.
How Women DISMANTLED The Sexual Marketplace!
What is the coolest line a pilot has said to the passengers?
Not sure if this line qualifies for coolest, but this particular pilot sure was a cool cat.
I landed for the first time in the States on a flight which was over 12 hours delayed due to missed layovers. A 23 hour journey from Mumbai to JFK had turned into a 35+hour nightmare and I was exhausted. To top that, I missed my onward connecting flight to Buffalo,NY and had to wait for the next and the last flight out of JFK for the evening.
So after a total of 39 hours, I was just about ready to punch someone.
Finally my flight was announced and I boarded. I was seated right next to the wings in an Embraer E 190. Cursing my luck I took a seat for the last flight of this terrible voyage.
This is when the captain comes on. Please excuse me since this might not be exactly what the captain said. I was jet lagged, in a foreign country and generally pissed.
Captain: “Hello folks. Sorry but I don’t think we will fly to Buffalo.
Passengers: *all groan* (I am thinking of just calling it quits and take a flight back home to India).
Captain: (..continues) But guys seriously.. do “you guys” really want to fly to Buffalo? I mean come on! Buffalo??!??. Its cold, wet and unpleasant out there. How about I fly you to Miami instead? Or New Orleans?
Passengers: *understand the gag and start cheering/laughing* (I start laughing out loud too)
Captain: *Chuckling* “Sorry guys, it seems my colleague here is from Buffalo and it is his wife’s birthday tomorrow and he absolutely needs to be there. I am sure all married people on board understand .
Since I have no choice, lets get to Buffalo as soon as possible. Folks the journey to Buffalo will be ….
The cabin was practically raucous by the end of that announcement . Needless to say the rest of the flight was very pleasant.
On our arrival, the captain just says:
“And Buffalo”. *sighs*.
Note: For anyone who cares, I was not flying the friendly skies.
The Tragic Reality That Is Coming To All “Alpha” Females
Does a single day in jail psychologically scar you for life?
i was on vacation at the beach with my 3 kids and husband. We were turning into our hotel when I saw blue lights behind me. I pulled over super confused bc I had not been speeding or doing anything wrong. Officer comes to my window and rudely demands my license. I hand it to him. He tells me to step out of the vehicle and walk back to his car. I asked why I was pulled over. He said “you have a warrant out for your arrest. You’re going to jail” (the warrant was valid although stupid af. 7 years prior I was pulled over for my taillight being out. Cop runs my info and my registration came back suspended. I was booked and released instantly. Went to court. Was put on probation. Didn’t finish my probation bc I had a baby and stopped going. The warrant was bc of that) that was the first time hearing anything about me having a warrant. Despite the reason for it. I was handcuffed and taken to jail in a town I didn’t live in hours from my home. I had never spent even an hour in jail. The whole experience was awful. After booking I was dressed in a jumpsuit and put in a cell by myself where I would spend the next two nights. No one would tell me anything ab my case. Just that I was on a hold. Unable to bond out. And would have to wait on my towns cops to come get me and take me back to where I was from. I wasn’t allowed a phone call. They doped me up on antipsychotics bc my Bp and pulse were high. We were at the beach that afternoon. I was severely sunburnt. The first night I slept on straight concrete. They didn’t give me a cot until my second night. Bc of the drugs I stayed out of it. Which looking back was probably a good thing. I lost time bc there wasn’t a clock to be seen. I would have to ask the guards what day it was and what time it was. I went in Saturday evening and didn’t get out until Monday at lunch. Which as I’m writing this, was yesterday. I’m worried I’m permanently changed. Mentally I’m not okay. I have flashbacks and they feel out of body. Like I know it happened. But it doesn’t feel real. And I feel stupid and weak because it was only two days. Why can’t I just get over it and move on? I feel stuck.
What was the most disrespectful thing a guest in your home ever said to one of your family members, yourself, or another guest?
I don’t get much of that. At home or in public, you would just have to meet me to understand why.
But I did have a friend that insisted in bringing his girl friend with him and she would always “need to use the bathroom”. What she really wanted is to snoop in the medicine cabinet. I told him she was doing it and he said no way.
I bought about a gallon worth of marbles and waited. When he called to see if I would be in I went and pulled the shelfs out of the medicine cabinet held a piece of cardboard over the lower part of the opening then poured in the marbles. I held it in place then pushed the mirror as close to shut as I could, pulled out the cardboard then finished shutting the cabinet.
When they showed up and she went for her “Bathroom break” I told my buddy to shut up and listen. When the sound of marbles crashing on the counter top started I told him to go get her now and never bring her back.
Doing things like that may be why I don’t get a lot of disrespectful people around me.
We Bought An Amazon Returns Pallet For $525 – Unboxing $6500 In MYSTERY Items!
Latest MM artwork generations
Theme is ancient civilizations that the rulers…
What are some of your deepest and most horrifying secrets that only you know about?
I am a 21-year-old girl in the final year of my engineering. I am a University Rank holder and have always secured the first rank in my class. I am not a healthy girl. I have been diagnosed with many ailments during the last 5 years of my life. It has been a struggle and students and teachers at college don’t know this about me.
I have been suffering from scalp psoriasis for the past ten years. I spend 2 to 3 hours every day cleaning my scalp so that others wouldn’t know I have it. It’s hell doing it every day.
I was suffering from anaemia in my 1st year of engineering and my haemoglobin dropped to 3.2 due to loss of blood. I was hospitalised and later was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis which the doctor said can never be cured. The medicines the doctor gave had steroids in it to suppress the inflammation in my body. This caused acute pancreatitis and I was hospitalised again. After I was discharged, the doctor thought of giving me a mild dosage of steroids. I was okay for about three days and again was hospitalised due to acute pancreatitis. Eventually, I lost a year due to lack of attendance and it shattered me.
I somehow temporarily recovered and joined engineering next year in a better college. One day, my hands started aching suddenly and this continued for a few months. I was diagnosed with IBD arthritis in my left wrist. And it is still deformed but people can’t notice it. No one knows about it in college.
I bear these pains every day and still manage to study well. I have dreams of becoming a successful girl who doesn’t have to depend on a man for a living. I belong to a middle-class family and I feel terrible that my health has cost my parents so much.
I hope I will be healed someday.
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975) Movie Reaction w/ Coby FIRST TIME WATCHING
During a court case, what was your most, “You just messed up.” moment while someone in the opposition was talking?
I shall never forget this moment of “OMG! THAT sure backfired!!”
It was a pre-murder trial hearing to determine the competency of the defendant. Southern state. Material witness was on the stand; her testimony would probably make or break the incompetency claim of the defendant.
NOTE that the witness was not present at the scene of the crime, and did not even know about the crime (before defendant was arrested).
She was merely going to be questioned intensely about the defendant’s known mental illness. She herself had an unquestionable diagnosis that made her testimony different than the psychiatrists who testified as expert witnesses… and they all confirmed her diagnosis, as well as her unique ability to credibly speak about the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the crime.
Defense Attorney: “Do you swear… or affirm… to tell the truth?”
Witness: “Yes.”
Prosecutor: “Objection!! This witness is insane.”
Defense Attorney: “She is NOT insane. She has a mental illness (named it) that is NOT insanity. The DSM states (blah blah blah).”
Judge: “This witness has not been declared insane, and has never been diagnosed as insane. Your own expert witnesses have testified that she is capable of testifying and why her testimony is unique.” -gavel slammed- “She will testify.” — having noticed the witness next to him flinch at the gavel bang — “I’m not angry at you. Do you need something… a drink of water? A moment to relax? Your… ummmm… it’s a teddy bear, right? Do you want it? The bailiff can hand it to you.”
Witness: “Please let Teddy stay safe with the officer. He’s been with me for 42 years, before I left the NICU to go home as a baby. Nothing bad can happen to him.”
Judge: “OK. See? Officer Joey is holding Teddy so he can see you and you can see him. Nothing bad will happen to Teddy.”
Defense Attorney: “So… do you swear, or affirm—“
Prosecutor: “This is a travesty! She is NOT COMPETENT!! I don’t care what the doctors said…”
-rap rap of the gavel-
Judge: “Don’t let the gentle tap fool you; if you continue in this vein, you will be facing contempt charges, Mr P. I would be slamming this gavel, under typical conditions.”
Judge: “Before we try this again… Miss W — do you know what ‘perjury’ is?”
Witness: “Yes.”
Judge: “Will you please tell me what ‘perjury’ is?”
***** here is ‘The Moment’ of ‘He just messed up big time’ *****
👉🏼Witness: “It’s… perjury is… when you lie under oath — after you swore to tell the truth… or affirmed, if your religion doesn’t let you swear an oath… some Christians won’t swear on God’s name… Jews don’t have that problem… At least, not per se — some Jews might say ‘hashem’, it means ‘the Name’ coz they won’t actually say ‘God’ even though that isn’t His name either. But affirmation is just as serious as swearing an oath. And… if you lie under oath, you will go to prison for the rest of your life and never ever get out or see your family ever again.”👈🏼
Judge tries his best to smother his laughter. Hand over his mouth. Finally he turned his head away. And he then puts his hands over most of his face. Once he stops laughing…
Judge: “We have now established that the witness clearly comprehends what perjury is and… ummmmm… how serious it is. Mrs W… you don’t go to prison forever, it’s not more than a few years at the most — and in your case. you would probably only go to jail for a short time, until you pay a fine… lots of money. But… I think you have demonstrated for the record that you fully comprehend what perjury is and the gravity of the crime. Thank you.”
Judge, to Prosecutor: “Do you still have any objection?”
Prosecutor (very very quietly): “No, Your Honor. No further objection.”
Judge: “Be very, very cautious, now, regarding this witness’ capabilities. Neuroses are not insanity. Neither you nor I need to understand everything that created this witness’ complicated nature… all that is required here is her credibility… and, possibly, simpler than typical explanations… although she has described perjury remarkably well.”
Judge, to Defense Attorney: “Proceed… swear her in.”
And this witness provided approx 4 hours, over two days, of credible testimony. None of it was what the prosecutor wanted to hear, but the defense attorney was a happy man indeed. It proved invaluable to the defendant. Her testimony was why the death penalty was never sought.
I Spent Over $30,000 At A Lost Freight Auction And It Paid Off BIG TIME!
What thing about the military did you not know until you were already in it?
how bad it sucks being lower enlisted in the Infantry.
I thought I would be jumping out of helicopters yelling go go go and running around with a machine gun being a bada**.
But for every time I go to do that, there were at least a hundred times of-
working for moron a**hole leadership who made you do dumb things just because they could.
police call. if you miss a cigarette butt you can do police call again, but while low crawling and wearing your protective mask.
cleaning. we cleaned everything all day long. barracks, latrines, weapons, equipment, buildings, vehicles, motor pools, mow the grass, paint the rocks.
the big green weenie. if you don’t like it write a letter to your congressman.
soldiers that say hoo-ah to everything.
endless field exercises walking long distances with heavy equipment. endless rehearsals. freezing in the snow & rain. never enough sleep.
kp duty, including cleaning pots and pans for 18 hours a day in an immersion barrel heater in a snowy forest in Germany. Wearing a helmet. With your M16A2 strapped across your back. It’s “tactical,” you know.
punishment PT. pushups flutter kicks grass drills road marches five mile runs.
hurry up and wait. and wait and wait and wait and wait.
your leave is cancelled due to the mission.
training training training training on tasks you can already do blindfolded backwards while asleep.
parades, which really suck when you were the person marching in them. and rehearsals for parades.
go to the field again. sleep in the dirt, snow & mud again. clean everything again. more layout inspections.
spray paint metal tools & gear after cleaning. god forbid if they find a speck of dirt on your shovel- three day weekend cancelled.
washrack – crawl around under your tracked vehicle with a fire house and a long screw driver chipping mud out of the roadwheels. in january.
air guard in your tracked vehicle. in january.
mandatory fun.
intrusive & obnoxious drug testing.
daily maintenance on vehicles that haven’t moved in a month.
guard duty- standing at a gate at 3 am for two hours in the snow. cq duty. battalion runner duty. you will do guard duty everywhere, all the time it seemed like.
one guy forgot his field jacket so nobody can wear their field jacket and everybody has to freeze.
layout inspections really suck. get ready to do a lot of layout inspections in your barracks & motor pool.
somebody fell asleep riding in a vehicle & lost their weapon. be ready to be really miserable until it’s found.
if it ain’t rainin’ it ain’t trainin’. 40 degrees F, get rained on and get so cold you start to hallucinate laying next to a tree in the forest. Get up and walk 15 miles anyway then do platoon battle drills for hours. Walk 15 miles back.
dig a fighting position. an hour later be told to move it thirty feet to the left, fill in the fighting position & dig a new one.
if your battalion commander says you have to be somewhere at 1400 hours, your company commander will say you have to be there “five minutes prior” and your platoon sergeant will make sure you’re there at 1330 hours.
road march road march road march. learn to walk and sleep at the same time. learn to drive your armored personnel carrier while you’re sleeping. learn to function for a week on three hours of sleep a day in 15–20 minute intervals.
frago #23.
forget taking college classes, the op tempo is too high. and anyway your platoon sergeant thinks it’s dumb because you have so much maintenance & cleaning to do.
how long did it take to experience all this hoo-ah & much much more? from march 1987 thru october 1988.
I could go on and on. It ain’t like the recruiting commercials.
But it was a job I loved and look back on fondly. It profoundly shaped the course of my life and I don’t regret it for a minute. But most of it sucked.
it’s Saturday night, forget going to the club because you have CQ duty. BOHICA. smile about it there isn’t much else you can do. If you’ve gotta be one, then be a Big Red One.
Why do ultra-wealthy people rarely share their wealth with their friends?
I’m not ultra-wealthy. But in a relative sense, I’m ultra-wealthy compared to a friendly acquaintance of mine. “Friendly acquaintance” is a description that’s short of “friend,” in part because of the story I’m about to tell.
I know this guy, call him Bob, from playing chess at Harvard Square. Bob isn’t quite homeless, but he’s damn close. What I like about chess is that Bob’s economic status has nothing to do with his social status (among chess players). He’s by no means shunned; he’s a well-liked member of the scene.
But when it gets to that point in the night and 10 of us want to go to a restaurant, those who can’t afford the restaurant are unfortunately excluded. That’s Bob.
There was a time, when that part of the night rolled up, I would discreetly tell Bob “come hang out with us, I got you at the restaurant.” Bob would be suitably grateful, and the fun would continue.
After a few of those, Bob started to become a little… emboldened. Eventually, it wasn’t a question of waiting until when (or if) the crowd organically went to eat. It started with “yo Charles, check this out….” Then I’d get a little bit of a sob story, and the ask: “so could you help me out with a burrito until I get paid next Wednesday?” Then the sob story dropped, and it was just, “yo Charles, help me out with some pizza.” Sometimes within minutes of me showing up to the Square.
The last straw was when another mutual friend and chess player, Bill, joined us at a restaurant. Bill was also often strapped for cash. To be sure, Bill didn’t ask for anything, he was just tagging along socially.
Bob gets to the counter and orders like 3 meals, and then calls to Bill from the line: “Yo, you want anything? Charles got it!”
Suffice it to say, our relationship cooled a little after that.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford to keep buying Bob food. It’s just that after some time — a pretty short amount of time — he appeared to see me more as a cash register than anything else. And that doesn’t work for me.
I have every confidence that story scales up. I’m wealthy enough to buy the Bobs of my world extra burritos all day, every day. Other people might be wealthy enough to buy their friends cars all day, every day. And who knows, maybe they have.
And I’m willing to bet that they’ve turned some friends into some Bobs along the way.
“Yo dude, help me out with a Tesla…”
How do you respectfully tell guests in your home that they’ve overstayed their welcome?
My daughter had a friend who had been kicked out of her home and asked if could she stay with us for a week until she found somewhere permanent. Bunnykins [me] said okay. The “friend” proceeded to borrow money from my easy going daughter, raided all the food in the fridge and cupboards when we were out, showered every 3–4 days, bought home a dog that promptly went into heat marking up my floors and carpet [ yuk ], did absolutely nothing to help clean, and when asked about alternative living arrangements, cried and said she couldn’t find anywhere to go. You get the picture? Six weeks later, she arrived “home” to find us packing boxes in the lounge room. She asked what was going on. I told her we were being evicted for non-payment of rent… three HOURS later, she had moved on to some other poor sap. We unpacked our boxes and once again lived in peace and quiet in our nice clean home. Nasty? Maybe. Effective? Definitely!
What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever witnessed in the waiting area at the ER?
Actually, three of my girlfriends and I were the sideshow in an ER waiting room.
We were with about 200 people doing a medieval re-enactment when a friend of ours accidentally ate something with cinnamon in it – and he is deathly allergic to it. One of us was a nurse, and even with her quick action with an epi pen, he still needed to go to the ER. So, one guy in Viking clothes and armor, and four women in varying outfits from India (mine) to early Celtic, to Imperial Roman, to 14th century French, all troop into the closest hospital ER – and it was in a really, realllly rural area of Georgia.
Being the only hospital within at least fifty miles of anything, they were predictably busy on a Saturday afternoon. We were there for hours and bored out of our minds. We’re all gifted with warped Monty Python humor, and so we started riffing on it. I started talking about how “our husband” was doing, and that I hoped he would be alright, because I wasn’t prepared to jump on his funeral pyre. (Mine was also the “blingiest” outfit, so I was First Wife by default. We referred to each other as First Wife, Second Wife, etc.) The other people in the waiting room were gawking at us like we’d all grown third eyes and horns.) It was just too good to pass up – we had SO MUCH FUN with it. By the time our friend got sent back out, we had all jumped up and started fawning on him – our beloved husband! Alive! What joy! I didn’t have to burn myself up! He didn’t skip a beat, got two of us under each arm, and we all left, rejoicing – and probably giving the locals a bizarre story to tell.
Pasta con Spinach
Ingredients
3/4 pound spaghetti
1 pound fresh spinach, washed, cleaned and drained
8 fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup cooked ham, shredded
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, divided
1/4 cup grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
Instructions
Add a tablespoon of olive oil to water in a large kettle. Bring to a boil and add spaghetti. Stir occasionally, and cook to al dente. Do not overcook!
Put spinach into heavy covered pot and cook over high heat, stirring once. When cooked limp, set aside with cover on.
Sauté the mushrooms and ham together in half the butter, just until warm, not brown.
Press liquid out of spinach and add to the skillet with mushrooms and ham.
To whom it may concern,When I signed up for this assignment, I was looking forward to spending four years of my life with someone who shared my disdain for obnoxiously loud, self idolizing, undereducated people.I believed (foolheartedly) that only respectful scientists would sign up for this mission. That only those who truly valued the exploration of the last great frontier would spend three years training, four years locked in a shuttle with little to no contact with Earth, and a year reconditioning to Earth.Through all the vetting processes and the countless tests, how is it that he made it through. Out of everyone, I had to be sent out with this doof-The tip of my pencil abruptly breaks as the door crashes open.“Yo Whaddup?” the intruder yells as he prances inside my room.“Good morning Jack. What brings you so forcefully into my room this morning?” I say in an even voice as I push my letter of complaint under the other papers on my desk.“Just wanted to check up on my favorite colleague.” I stare blankly at him as he shuffles in the silence.“Also, the coffee maker isn’t working.”Year two of four on shuttle 555 to the Great Unknown has been filled with daily coffee maker failures. After only two weeks, it was discovered that Jack had little to no idea how to fix anything electrical after he almost set fire to the kitchen unit.Since neither of us can function without a consistent supply of this liquid energy, every morning he has swung by my room to request assistance in repairing our sputtering caffeine machine.As we make our way to the small kitchen unit, our feet softly tap on the shuttle floor. We keep the gravity at about half of Earth’s. It is ‘better for the mechanics of the shuttle’ according to the maintenance manual.For the second time today, I find my hand buried deep in our well-loved coffee machine. Its plastic cover is chipped by the multiple falls it has taken (mainly because of Jack’s love of ‘space juggling,’ where he tries to juggle with random appliances he finds). Among the small cracks, there is one that stands out from the rest. A crack, that I know was definitely not there this morning.
With a shoulder heaving sigh, I retract my hand, snap on the cracked cover, and give the poor machine an affectionate pat. Now that the immediate issue is over, I turn to Jack.
“Why, may I ask, is there another crack in the cover?”
He takes a single step back, bringing his hands slightly out in front of himself as he tries to form a consoling expression on his face. “You see-”
“Yes I see”
“I was filling it up and-” He turned before finishing his thought and scrambled away. In his struggle to escape he bounces feet into the air with every step. I race behind him, wanting nothing more than to teach him once and for all to never mess with my coffee.
As we crash through the small shuttle papers go flying in our wake. He is much faster than me, and I know that catching up to him is out of the question but- I grab a blunt object from the nearest table- I can still hit him. Thus started my onslaught of flying projectiles. Lucky for him, we only have ‘space grade’ appliances that can do no damage to the shuttle, and in turn, minimum damage to people.
Frantically dodging my projectiles he ducks into his room, slamming the door shut with such force that I dare say it shakes the whole shuttle. He is safe… for now.
In the aftermath of the conflict, I return to my room. I shuffle through a stack of papers on my desk, readouts from the multiple instruments our shuttle carries, an aged letter from home, and my half written letter of complaint lie before me.
I sit in the chair with a heavy sigh. Recently every day has been an ordeal. Just last week, while taking our annual inventory, I found that we were missing over a month’s worth of dessert rations.
Five or six of the well loved packets would have been acceptable (we each planned on five extra per month… everyone needs a sweet snack every once in a while), but a full 17 packets? Completely unacceptable!
The culprit was found almost immediately as I made my way to the kitchen for a much needed cup of coffee. There, with two opened dessert packets in front of him, was Jack. I paused for a moment, shocked by his flagrant misuse of rations.
Instead of laying into him right away, I strolled calmly into the room. He froze, knowing that he had been caught. I grabbed a dish and a fork, made my way to him, spooned a heaping portion of the brownie into my bowl, and sat down across from him.
Later would come the scolding, but those brownies are all that keep me sane.
After we finished our brownie’s it was agreed that he would be able to eat one portion at a time once a week and that he would limit himself a single brownie ration per month.
The issue has yet to return, and I believe that we are both satisfied with the results.
And I don’t dare forget the swivel chair incident of two weeks past!
In our control room, we have the best swivel chairs. They are so smooth, and in half gravity, it’s like you are floating instead of sitting.
One day, while doing the daily readouts of our course, I took a much needed break. Pushing off of the floor I started to spin. The world around me passed in a whizzing flash. The brightly lit shuttle intermittently interrupted by the dark expanse of space, as a childish carefree glee started to spread through me.
The weightless euphoric ride was cut short when a blurred figure of Jack makes his way into the room. It took me a full revolution to slam my feet to the ground, and the moment contact was made, I shot from my chair, still spinning, as I catapulted through the air.
Through the entire ordeal, Jack’s laugh echoed through the room. As I crashed back to the ground he sat in the co-pilot chair to watch my failure. His eyes were bright with amusement even after his body shaking laughter had ceased.
We sat in silence. Him still slightly shaking from silent chuckles, and me fuming with embarrassment at being caught doing such a childish thing.
Finally, I had reached my limit with this entire ordeal. Indignantly I got up, still dizzy, and stumbled my way from the room.
We have yet to talk about this incident, but every now and then, he’ll make an offhand remark on my fascination with spinning chairs.
As I recall our past fights, I find myself smiling. Never has there been a dull moment on this journey. I look down at the letter of complaint on my desk, heave a heavy sigh, and proceed to slowly rip it into a plethora of pieces.
Jack and I may not always get along, but I would rather be with him than anyone else.
What’s something you can’t believe you had to explain to another adult?
My roommate has Asperger’s.
Let it not be misunderstood: He’s very high-functioning.
He is intelligent in his thoughts and speech, has held a job at Target for 3 years, can drive a car, has a two-year college degree, and just celebrated his sixth-year anniversary with his girlfriend.
Really, the only thing that sets him apart from anyone without Asperger’s is his lack of eye contact and his inability to pick up on obvious social cues.
Other than that, he’s a perfectly average 25-year-old man.
But, like many, many young men around his age, he’s very irresponsible and doesn’t know how to take care of himself.
The best way I can describe it is a man-child. He’s a man-child.
I have two bathrooms in my house. The one in the basement is mine. The bathroom on the main level is for guests and for roommates.
One day, I went to change my toilet paper roll, and noticed that the six-pack of toilet paper I bought was only down to two rolls. I had just bought it at the beginning of the month. I should not have used that much.
Then my roommate came to me later that week, and he said to me:
“Hey man, just wanted to let you know you’re almost out of toilet paper.”
“You mean for your bathroom? Have you been grabbing my toilet paper?”
“Yeah, just the ones you have in your bathroom.”
I said to him, “Okay. That toilet paper is my toilet paper. If you’re out of toilet paper, you should go to the store and buy more toilet paper.”
He paused and said, “…Yeah, I guess I could do that.”
I know it sounds trivial, but I have tons of instances like this with him.
“Hey man, you only have one fan in the house. I took it so I can sleep with it.”
I respond, “Yep, that’s for my room. Do you think I could have it back? I know they’re selling them at Wal-Mart relatively cheap.”
“Oh, so are you gonna buy another one?”
“No, I was saying you could buy one.”
“Oh. Okay.”
And I sigh and take my fan back.
Couple months later:
“Hey man, you only have one space heater in the house.”
I say to him, “Yep, that’s for my room.” as I take my space heater back into my bedroom. “They’re $30 at the store. Go get one.”
“Hey man, you’re almost out of salt.”
I rub my temples and say, “Yep. And they sell salt at Target. Where you work. Where you get a discount.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Hey man, do you have any batteries for these Bose headphones?”
“Uh… are those my headphones? I never said you could use those.”
“Well, you weren’t using them. They were just sitting on your computer desk.”
“Dude! I use them like, 3 or 4 times a week when I’m working on my music or when I’m writing! I use them all the time!”
You get the picture.
It’s really frustrating, because after meeting his family, it’s so blatantly obvious to me that they did next-to-nothing to teach him how to be an adult. All they did was feel sorry for him and bubble-wrap him.
Now it’s my responsibility to be the asshole who whacks him upside the head and teaches him how to be a better person, or else everyone around him is going to reject him as he gets older.
He uses things without asking permission, he never takes the initiative to solve a problem, and he expects everyone else to solve his problems.
We made a film together this summer, and while we were both “producers” I covered 90% of the expenses. While he’s the sole “director,” in truth I directed about 60% of the film.
I’m really, really anxious right now because Target just cut him down to 11 hours a week.
I told him, “Dude, put together a resume, go on the internet and look for job listings. I’m not covering your part of the rent. Get a job that gives you full-time hours.”
I’m afraid that it’s going to get to a point where I have to kick him out and find someone else to live with me, and that will be the dissolution of our friendship.
I’m afraid that he will just end up another man-child in his 30s living in the basement of his parents house, unwilling to try hard, unwilling to learn how to be an adult.
I’m afraid he will lose at this game called Life, and become absolutely miserable.
But I’m gonna wash my hands of it if that’s what happens. I’ve got enough trouble making sure I don’t lose at this game.
Can’t save everyone.
Within a nanosecond
The Values That Made Western Society Great Came From The Bible
Right now there is a tremendous amount of debate about what values our society should embrace. There are some that are promoting the benefits of “conservative values”, there are some that are promoting the benefits of “liberal values”, and there are others that are promoting the benefits of other types of values. But if we really want to make western society great again, the truth is that we should return to the values that made western society great in the first place. Those values are the reason why western nations were the most prosperous and most civilized nations on the entire planet for centuries. And once other nations started adopting those same values, they became more prosperous and more civilized too.
The values that I am talking about are the values that we find in the Bible.
All throughout history, civilizations that have chosen to do things God’s way have been blessed.
And civilizations that have chosen not to do things God’s way have been cursed.
Just consider the United States. It was founded by people that loved the Bible, and throughout our history it was primarily made up of people that loved the Bible.
Of course that has changed in our day, and as a result our society is now a giant mess.
But at one time we were the most blessed nation on the entire planet by a wide margin, and that didn’t happen by accident.
Centuries of experience have taught us that capitalist countries tend to be more prosperous than countries that practice various forms of collectivism.
A lot of people tend to think of socialism and communism as relatively modern movements, but the truth is that there have been collectivist societies for thousands of years.
In fact, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were both greatly inspired by hunter-gatherer societies that practiced “primitive communism”…
Primitive communism is a way of describing the gift economies of hunter-gatherers throughout history, where resources and property hunted or gathered are shared with all members of a group in accordance with individual needs. In political sociology and anthropology, it is also a concept (often credited to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), that describes hunter-gatherer societies as traditionally being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership.[1] A primary inspiration for both Marx and Engels were Lewis H. Morgan‘s descriptions of “communism in living” as practised by the Haudenosaunee of North America.[2] In Marx’s model of socioeconomic structures, societies with primitive communism had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation.[3]
Needless to say, societies that practiced “primitive communism” never became great.
But even today, there are primitive tribes all over the globe that practice various forms of collectivism.
It doesn’t work, but they still keep on trying.
Of course the same principles also don’t work when entire modern nations try them.
In the Bible, from the very beginning we see buying, we see selling, and we see property rights being respected.
There is a reason why so many capitalists are fond of the Bible and so many collectivists are not.
The Bible encourages private ownership, private enterprise, individual responsibility and hard work.
Needless to say, even those that do not believe in the Bible benefit when they embrace the same economic values.
Just look at what has happened to China. In the years following the communist revolution, millions died from starvation. But once the Chinese moved in a more capitalist direction and started promoting private ownership, private enterprise, individual responsibility and hard work, China became a global economic powerhouse.
The Bible also places a very high value on family. In the Ten Commandments we are told to honor our fathers and our mothers, and throughout the rest of the Torah we are given very specific instructions about how families are to operate.
Today, much of the population has rejected the Bible and the traditional family unit is relentlessly mocked.
As a result, divorce rates have soared, birth rates have fallen to historic lows, suicide rates are at all-time record highs, alcohol and drug abuse is out of control, sex outside of marriage is rampant, and the streets of our major cities are filled with violence.
Study after study has shown that kids that come from broken homes are far more likely to commit violent crimes, they are far more likely to get involved with drugs, and they are far more likely to end up impoverished.
And societies that do not value the traditional family unit also tend not to value the lives of those that are the most vulnerable…
In ancient Greece and Rome, individual human life had no particular value in and of itself. The Spartans left weak children to die on the hillside. Infanticide was common, as it is common even today in many parts of the world. Fathers who wanted sons had few qualms about drowning their newborn daughters. Human beings were routinely bludgeoned to death or mauled by wild animals in the Roman gladiatorial arena. Many of the great classical thinkers saw nothing wrong with these practices. Christianity, on the other hand, contributed to their demise by fostering moral outrage at the mistreatment of innocent human life.
In ancient times, child sacrifice was one of the most common ways to get rid of unwanted children.
When it was time to make a sacrifice to “the gods”, children that were not wanted were brought and put on the altar.
The same thing is essentially happening today, but we give it a different name.
We call it “abortion”, and it is done behind closed doors in pristine clinical settings.
Since 1973, more than 1.5 billion children have been slaughtered worldwide. So what makes us any better than any of the ancient civilizations that regularly sacrificed their unwanted children?
The Bible very strongly denounces child sacrifice, and it also very strongly denounces the various forms of sexual immorality that are exploding in our society today.
For decades, the left has been pushing us to accept one form of sexual perversion after another.
As societal sentiment has shifted, the right has eventually gone along with most of the changes that have been happening.
But God has not changed.
He sees everything that is going on, and He has warned us over and over again to change course.
But if we repent and change our ways we will be greatly blessed.
God always gives us a choice, and the clock is ticking.
APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) Movie Reaction w/ Coby FIRST TIME WATCHING
What do you say when you run into an old boss who fired you?
We had offered a house for sale that we had just finished building. We offer owner finance and the properties sell very quickly.
When I was in my 20’s I worked part time for a drafting service. This was in the days before autoCAD and our drawings were actually on paper. About 6 months after I started, the owner came though the office and pointed at 3 of us. He fired each of us for no reason, and I was out of a job I desperately needed while I was finishing school. No reason given and he wouldn’t even speak to me when I approached him.
So, 30 years later, he strolls into our office to buy this neat little lake house we had just finished and was for sale. He and his wife had already looked at the house with Kenny, one of our site supervisors, and the wife was in love with it.
I recognized him immediately, and listened to him as he explained that his wife loved the house, he had money in hand, etc. I nodded politely, then got up, walked to the door, opened it and said “Get out.”
He looked at me and he clearly didn’t recognize me. Before he had time to say anything, I said the name of the company he had owned.
Realization dawned on his piggy little face, and he began to speak. I cut him off, as he had me all those years ago, and once again told him to leave.
They slunk out of the office empty handed, and we had the house sold with contracts signed, down payment in hand, and new owner out the door by end of business that day.
Sucked to be him. Hope his wife appreciated losing the lake house she wanted.
What was the most disturbing thing you saw a nurse do to a patient?
My Dad had cancer, and he was getting closer to the end, but he was still all there mentally, just not physically..
I don’t even remember what happened, but he felt really bad, so 911, ambulance. I had flown home for a few weeks, I just needed to get away from it for a few, I had been home for 8 days, get a phone call. Hopped on a plane the next morning..
A few days later, my dad thinks they are going to discharge him. He’s probably going to get another blood transfusion. They were pumping him full of electrolytes…
I told him I’d be back in a while, I was going to go grocery shopping or something.. I go down get my car from the valet, and then start driving… The radio lights up, my dad was on the phone, and he’s yelling at me for not answering earlier. My phone was on silent and I didn’t know he was calling until it hooked to the blue tooth in the car..
Around the block, say hi to the valet guy again, and back upstairs.
Right after I left, the nurse came in to give him his meds, and he asked what was in the cup, and she got mad at him for asking and told him to take his meds.. NO.. Tell me what is in the cup.. His pain meds, anti-nausea stuff, poop softening stuff.. And blood pressure meds..
He hadn’t been on blood pressure meds for over a year, and part of the reason he was even in the hospital was because his blood pressure was low, the nurse had even taken it shortly before, 95/55 or something (which for him at that point was pretty good).. So he said I’m not supposed to take that, I’m not taking it.. Nurse got even madder, screaming ensued (that’s when he started calling me).. She put him down as a refusal on ALL of his meds, including his pain meds, which he really really needed.
Those are tumors squeezing his spinal chord, he really needed the pain meds.
A few minutes later he heard the nurse talking to the Dr. in the hall that he was getting a transfusion to bring his hemoglobin up before he went home. Then I returned to the room..
A few minutes later 2 girls came in and started packing him up, he was getting moved to the discharge unit.. Would have been nice if somebody told us. But whatever.
We get to the discharge unit, and the nurse is really nice. She told us just to hang out while they finish up the paperwork and then we can leave.. Nothing the downstairs nurse put on the paperwork indicated that he hadn’t gotten his meds, nothing about a transfusion, and we also found out that he was supposed to get a potassium drip or something also…
That nurse was pissed.. Took her quite a while to track everything down, verify that he hadn’t gotten his meds, get new ones from the pharmacy, verify that he was getting a transfusion, make sure they would deliver the blood to the proper unit..
It was such a stressful clusterfuck, all caused by an incompetent idiot nurse on a power trip. My Dad did not need that shit, he was really sensitive to stress at that point, his stomach would flip and he’d start puking.
I don’t know what if anything happened to that nurse, but from what the discharge nurse said, something was going to happen.. I hope the bitch got fired.
I Bought an Abandoned Moving Truck FULL Of Stuff
Do you agree with Wang Yi’s statement that the US has “no right” to intervene in the South China Sea? Why or why not?
Africa, and indeed the world’s hegemon, Gambia.
In 1985, Gambia threatened the Soviet Union to conquer the entire Soviet territory, including Moscow, in three days.
In 1995, Gambia threatened to annex Europe, including the UK, France, and Germany.
In 2002, Gambia claimed that if the USA continued sanctions, it would conquer the entire North American continent within a week.
In 2007, 2011, and 2012, Gambia threatened China three times, intending to land a 1000-person force (800 Marines, 200 Army) on the southeast coast and sweep across all of China(including Tibet).
…
The following image showcases Gambia’s astonishing military.
In 2021, China swallowed its pride and aided Gambia in completing a major bridge.
Perhaps due to China’s submissive attitude, the global hegemon Gambia was satisfied and henceforth abandoned its military plans to sweep across China.
Clearly, China dared not protest against Gambia, but the United States…
That’s a different story, as China has strongly protested against the US.
Really, America, don’t mess with China!
We have Gambia as an ally now!
I was WRONG about *2001: A Space Odyssey* FIRST TIME WATCHING Movie Reaction
Out of all of the islands in the world, what would be the worst one to be stuck on?
My vote’s for Elephant Island.
An icy mass of jagged, rocky, snow-covered cliffs 215 miles square, located 150 miles north-northeast of the tip of the Antarctic peninsula, on the outskirts of the South Shetland Islands.
It is one of the remotest, most inhospitable places in the world. It doesn’t have much in the way of coastline—sheer cliffs plunge from the island’s summit (2,799 feet) straight down into the Southern Ocean. The weather is usually freezing cold and foggy to boot, so good luck getting a passing ship to spot you—if there are any passing ships, which there usually aren’t. Elephant Island lies 581 miles south of the Falkland Islands, 779 miles from South Georgia, and 550 miles from Cape Horn, so good luck building a raft and sailing away from the island—which you couldn’t because there’s no wood there. Nothing grows there, in fact. No animals live there either except nesting penguins and fur seals during certain seasons. The winds routinely reach 100 miles per hour, and good luck finding a nook or a cranny in which to hide from it unless you happen to have building materials already on hand.
And you want to know the worst thing?
People actually have been stuck on this island.
From Wikipedia:
The island was the desolate refuge of the British explorer, Ernest Shackleton, and his crew in 1916 following the loss of their ship Endurance in Weddell Sea ice. The crew of 28 reached Cape Valentine on Elephant Island after a harrowing ordeal on drifting ice floes. After camping at Cape Valentine for two nights, Shackleton and his crew moved 11 kilometres (7 mi) westwards to a location which offered better protection from rockfalls and from the sea, and which they called Point Wild.
Realizing that there was no chance of passive rescue, Shackleton decided to sail to South Georgia where he knew there were several whaling stations. Shackleton sailed with Tom Crean, Frank Worlsey, “Chippy” Macneish, Tim McCarthy, and John Vincent on a 1,300 km (800 mi) voyage in the open lifeboat James Caird beginning on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916 and arriving at South Georgia 16 days later. His second-in-command, Frank Wild, was left in charge of the men on Elephant Island, waiting for Shackleton’s return with a rescue ship.
There was much work for the stranded men. Because the island had no natural source of shelter, they constructed a shack and wind blocks from their remaining two lifeboats and pieces of canvas tents. Blubber lamps were used for lighting.
They hunted for penguins and seals, neither of which were plentiful in autumn or winter. Shackleton instructed Wild to depart with the crew for Deception Island if he did not return to rescue them by the beginning of summer but after four and a half months the artist George Marston spotted a ship on August 30, 1916. The ship, with Shackleton on board, was the tug Yelcho, from Punta Arenas, Chile, commanded by Luis Pardo, which rescued all the men who had set out on the original expedition.
That made my skin pucker up and my belly ache just reading it.
Imagine four and a half months spent shivering in a jury-rigged shack made of canvas and lifeboat staves, listening to the wind roar outside, living by the light of blubber lamps and hunting for hours every day in all kinds of weather for the occasional seal or penguin. How they didn’t all die of starvation or scurvy or exposure or sheer exhaustion boggles my mind.
The Dark REALITY About Dating 9’s & 10’s That NOBODY Talks About!
What is an experience you had at a court house that you’ll never forget?
I grew up in a large city. When it came time to get my drivers licence, or get it renewed, it meant going downtown to the Department of Motor Vehicles, taking a number, waiting for a long time, then dealing with employees whose level of service was somewhere between rude and hostile. It was just a part of life.
Then I moved to a small town (pop. 4,000) in the same state, and that summer my drivers licence expired. I made a couple of inquiries of where one went to get it renewed, and I was told, “Oh, just go down to the courthouse and they’ll take care of it.”
So after work on a Friday I walked across the street to the courthouse. The building looked deserted. In the lobby was a directory. Drivers licenses were in the basement.
I found the DMV office and there wasn’t a soul in sight. I rang the bell and waited. Still nothing. I wondered where everybody was. Soon, I started looking around the building looking for signs of life.
I poked my head into the sheriff’s office. At the desk there was a grizzled old sheriff’s deputy wearing sergeant’s stripes. “Help you?” he asked gruffly.
I explained that I wanted to renew my drivers licence but there was nobody in the office. He grunted, “Yeah, everybody around here wanted to get an early start on the weekend. Go on back, I’ll get someone down there for you.” He picked up his phone and I returned to the DMV office and took a seat.
Five minutes later, the old sergeant walked in. “Guess I’m going to have to do it myself. Let’s see your current licence and paperwork.”
Despite the delay in finding assistance, I was still in and out of the office in record time, and the old sergeant, for all his gruffness, was still the most pleasant interaction I’d ever had during the process.
Who/what has made you cry the hardest and why?
I knew a young girl at my school, she was 13 and one day she didn’t show up to class, now lots of people made fun of her as she had depression and apparently was an easy target.
She had really short black hair and had recently come out as lesbian and was going through an emo phase for a long time now.
Lots of people were saying “awh thank god that stupid psycho isn’t here to ruin everything” and “she always talks to herself” and “ugly bitch” ect.
Now our principal came to the door looking very pale and said ” I’m not sure if you all have noticed Melissa isn’t here today, well she has sadly passed away last night” loads of gasps and open mouthed kids in that room that day.
I later found out off her neighbors daughter that she was abused really badly and was taken away from her mom who was locked up for letting her boyfriend rape her and she was heartbroken at her new home and she hung herself in the nearby park.
I almost threw up nobody had no idea how she was feeling, later her suicide note was read out at school.
It said ” sometimes I just wished I would die and I never had the guts to do it, I apologise to everyone for being a shitty daughter, friend, classmate and human, my time has come…. sorry for the mess”
Today, I want to talk about a class action suite that I was involved in.
Back in the 1990’s, there was this interim storage method for computers. It lay somewhere between the early floppy discs and the record-able CD ROMS that became all the fad at the turn of the century.
This was a “ZIP disc”. Which was a high capacity (for the time) floppy disc storage system. And a bought a few systems to store content on my various computer system setups.
Now, the thing was that the company was offering a rebate, and a discount. So everyone was buying the things.
They cost something like $100, but if you buy it, you can apply for the $50 rebate after three months of use. The numbers are approximate, but it was something like that.
Now, it was a big scam.
Oh, the system worked all right. It’s just that the company had no intention on giving anyone the rebates and the bonus prizes and rewards. And millions of people were upset. As was I.
I think they owed me around $250 all told for all my system components. This was big dollars back in the day.
We all gave up. After month after month of sending in the UPC codes off the boxes, xerox of the receipts, and credit card bills they were never enough. We were all just on this endless hamster wheel cage with no way off.
Anyways, imagine my surprise when a class-action suite was made against the company and all of us on the aggrieved listing were ordered to get our money due to us.
Boy. I was so happy about that!
$40 million dollars.
Certainly, I will finally get my money back.
But when my check came in… after all, I was expecting $250. The amount given to me was an entire $1.21. Yup. The award, minus the attorney fees, and divided by the number of aggrieved customers.
Sheech!
This is the American system in a nutshell.
Today…
What actually happens when an empire falls?
Usually madness. Utter, self-inflicted madness.
The kind that comes from getting too big for your britches, believing your own hype, and forgetting what made you great in the first place.
That’s the first symptom of an empire on the decline.
It’s like watching a star athlete lose their edge, thinking they don’t need to train as hard or that they’re above the rules.
The result?
A spectacular fall from grace.
Empires aren’t built on luck or divine right. They’re forged through grit, innovation, and a clear understanding of their purpose.
But as they grow, the rot sets in.
The elites become complacent, fattened on luxury and power, losing touch with the common folk who sustain them.
The bureaucracy swells into a monstrous, inefficient beast, choking on its own red tape.
Corruption becomes the norm, as officials line their pockets at the expense of the state.
The first cracks appear at the edges, where the empire’s reach exceeds its grasp. Rebellions flare up, fueled by resentment and neglect.
The military, once a lean, mean fighting machine, grows bloated and sluggish, more interested in protecting its own privileges than defending the realm.
The economy stagnates, strangled by overregulation and cronyism. The whole edifice starts to creak and groan under the weight of its own decadence.
And when the final blow comes, it’s often not from some mighty external foe, but from within.
A palace coup, a popular uprising, a cascade of defections – it doesn’t matter.
This is the nature of all Empires.
It's not a matter of if it will fall, but when, the seeds of its destruction are already sown within its own heart.
What is the best decision you ever made that made your life better?
Experience 1:
I was at my office desk and it was around 1 p.m. which means lunch time. I was already so hungry I could eat a human. But I didn’t want to eat alone. So I went to invite a co-worker to join me.
“Okay. Give me 20 minutes; I’m finishing up my work.” he said.
I can wait for 20 minutes. No big deal.
Twenty minutes later… He’s still typing on his computer.
“Hold on. Gimme another ten minutes. I’ll call Adam (his friend from other department) to join us.”
He called Adam who agreed to have lunch together, then continued his work.
Ten mins later (so that’s already half an hour)…
“I don’t think I can join you. I have to finish this work. Please go first. I think Adam is already waiting at the cafe. If I manage to finish my work in the next ten mins, I’ll join you guys,” he said.
Experience 2:
The weather was good. Blue sky, windy. I was in the mood for running. I wanted to go out and sweat. I skipped exercising for three weeks due to workload and when the weekends came, I was occupied with other stuff. Either that, or terrible weather. There were always excuses. But that day I had no excuse. I was thrilled to go out.
It was 4.30 p.m. I rang my neighbour who’s also a runner.
“Bro, the weather is so good today. Let’s run,” I said.
“It is. But can we go at 6 p.m.? I have something to do right now.”
One and a half hour is nothing. I can wait. No big deal.
6 p.m. The weather changed from good to bad. It was suddenly raining. So we cancelled our plan. If I just walked out of the house at 4.30 p.m., I would probably be sweating and came home at 6 p.m.
These two and dozens of similar experiences led me to a decision.
Don’t wait for others. You want to eat? Go. You want to run? Go. You want to watch movie? Just go. You want to travel? Go.
For all the things you can do alone, just go. Wait for nobody.
Pasta Neapolitan
Ingredients
1 pound dried angel hair pasta
1 tablespoon butter, softened
1 cup grated parmesan cheese, preferably Parmigiano-Reggiano (divided)
5 cloves fresh garlic, finely minced, or to taste
Crushed red pepper flakes, to taste
2 cups fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, finely minced (about 1 cup chopped)
Sea salt or kosher salt
Instructions
Bring a large pot of salted water to a vigorous, rolling boil. Cook pasta until al dente.
Drain well and put into a warm serving dish with the soft butter in it; toss pasta until coated, then add most of the cheese and gently toss again. Keep warm in oven.
Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the minced garlic and red pepper flakes and cook just until the garlic turns light brown; pull pan off the heat. (Do not rush by cooking at a higher heat; this will burn the garlic and cause it to taste bitter.)
Add the minced parsley and a generous pinch of salt and mix with a spoon until it resembles the texture of pesto.
Immediately pour over the warm pasta and toss well to distribute the sauce evenly.
Sprinkle with the rest of the cheese and serve.
Do women really cheat more than men?
It is often said, and in my experience this is true, that women cheat out of desires of the heart and men cheat out of desires of the body. I have cheated on my ex-wife. I am not proud of it, nor will I make excuses for it. The reasons were strictly physical. She, herself, cheated on me as well — initially just having “emotional affairs” online. This changed when she fell in love with someone, and physically cheated on me as well. At which point, the marriage came to an end.
For me, cheating was strictly a physical thing… younger-me believed variety is the spice of life and just wanted to “get it on”. For her, it was a matter of love — she still loved me, but in some ways she found me lacking as a husband. My lack of ambition. My lack of “drive” to make something of myself. The ease with which I accepted life as it comes, and how little I needed to be fulfilled. Whereas to her, the sky was the limit and she wanted it all. She wanted wealth. She wanted a bigger house, more trips and travels, better food, more savings for the future. She wanted so much, and me, I was okay with what we had. So she sought out someone who she did feel compatible with. Who wanted the things she wanted, too. Someone ambitious. More wealthy.
And she left me, for that person. And this seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme, when it comes to men cheating versus women cheating. All I wanted was just to get laid with other girls… whereas my ex, she wanted a more suitable partner. I find that men are more likely to want to cheat as a one-off thing, a fling, an affair without love being involved. Lust over love. With women, love over lust. When she’s gone, she’s gone for good.
Biker Gets Into Terrible Accident, Loses Leg…And His Wife NEVER Leaves Him Or His Side
Is it true that most of Singaporean Chinese treat and consider the Singaporean Malay Muslims as inferior or second class citizens?
You are mistaken guys! Your question is rather unfair to Chinese Singaporeans.
I was in my father-in-law’s watch shop in a fashionable street in Malacca, Malaysia in 2006-2007. A couple of well-dressed Malay man in his 30 walked in with a gorgeous looking Malay girl.
My wife, a Malaysian , gestured to his father to serve them as they were vying on a Swiss watch for quite sometime.
Guess what? My father-in-law, after a glance for 3 seconds at them he continued doing his thing.
When they left, he mumbled in Hokkien to allow me to understand. “Malay people, won’t buy, dress nice-nice, got 2 Ringgit in the pocket”
My wife looked at me and smiled, then rolled her eyes.
Years have passed, I was again in Malacca in one evening, I was so thrilled to see a “Malay trade fair” when we drove by.
My niece-in-law was a chauffeur, she has grown to be a big girl now she knew what I was up to, so, she said “**Uncle, they will look at you as a freak —if you are not like a Malay, we Chinese, don’t usually go, they are kings here. Let them enjoy.”**
My wife looked at me she smiled, then rolled her eyes—reminded me of what she did 17 years ago.
What is your question, again?
It’s rather unfair for Malay people to be kings in both countries—Malaysia and Singapore…The Malay knows this pretty well, don’t they?
Why should the world unite with the United States to stop China, considering that the United states is worse than China?
The world shouldn’t, and doesn’t, unite with America against China.
America is a genuine global menace. Endless wars. Endless deaths. Endless destruction.
Endless sanctions.
Endless political interference and violation of national sovereignty.
America is an imperialist. It suppresses the Global South from developing. It exploits the Global South for their natural resources.
China is helping the Global South develop through the Belt and Road Initiative.
China is the largest trading partner to over 120 countries.
China has fought no wars since 1979.
The Global South represents 88% of humanity. It is behind China, not America. That’s what BRICS and SCO are about.
America and its allies represent a meager 12% of humanity. They don’t matter.
What is the worst thing you saw on the internet today?
I used to watch this much-memed about reality shaw called Pawn Stars. It’s about a family, father, grandfather and grandson who run a pawn shop together and buy rare items from people for a quick buck. It’s a funny show, a lot of jokes have been made about the whole “best I can do is [insert price]”.
Yesterday, Adam Harrison, son of Rick Harrison — the bald guy in all the Pawn Stars memes — passed away at age 39. He had a fatal overdose. TMZ reported on his death almost immediately, as they had heard it through some third party close to Harrison. They didn’t bother to check with the family first before posting. The family then reached out to TMZ and requested privacy in these dark times. They were upset because, get this… they didn’t KNOW their loved one had died, yet!
TMZ found out the troubled relative of a famous reality TV show died. They published his death immediately, and the family had to find out through the internet that their son, father, brother and uncle had passed away. How sick is that?
Didn’t Expect this in CHINA?! 🇨🇳 INSANE MALL TOUR in Chengdu Sichuan
“Biden has been jabbed at least four times. This is his third covid diagnosis. The shots are working great.”
– Jeff Childers, Coffee & Covid
There was a lot of talk about divine intervention at the Republican Convention this week. The country has witnessed a rush of seemingly providential events since the fateful night of June 27th when, to universal horror, “Joe Biden” was unmasked as The Phantom of the White House. The attempt on Donald Trump’s life Saturday, with its intimations of blob involvement, was only the latest of countless trips, hoaxes, capers, and ops that smacked of demonic inspiration laid on the public, so you can’t blame them for feeling that “God is among us now.”
A huge piece of this dynamic has been the Right’s amazing impotence in the eight-year-long march of insults to the republic – especially the failure to find relief for any of that in the courts of law, until last month when the SCOTUS finally kneecapped Democratic Party lawfare operations. A paramount example of that impotence was being unable to find one jurisdiction willing to adjudicate election fraud in 2020 on the merit of the arguments.
But there was much more, starting with collective helplessness in the drawn-out RussiaGate psychodrama, even when all the players and their many nefarious acts were exposed by the alt news media, and extending to the mendacious roguery of the two-year Mueller (Weissmann) Commission, followed by fifty-one former intel higher-ups labeling Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation, followed by Rep. Adam Schiff’s Ukraine “whistleblower” prank featuring CIA/NSC/DOD/DOJ moles Eric Ciaramella, Colonel Vindman and IC Inspector General Michael Atkinson, and then the FBI-instigated J-6 riot with the ensuing faked-up House J-6 committee . . . plus you can throw in the stupid Ukraine war, the drag queens in the kindergartens, the bumbling Durham investigation, ten million unvetted illegal migrants flowing into the country and this year’s four show-trials put on to finally break Mr. Trump.
For many in this land, it has been like the classic nightmare of being paralyzed in the presence of evil. So, it’s no wonder that the Republicans came into their convention with a tremendous tailwind of relief when events suddenly broke their way in June. Now, everyone knows that the current president is a vindictive invalid who will be tossed overboard by his own terrified party in a matter of hours now. And the entire scaffold of lies supporting “Joe Biden” and his party is wobbling badly, too.
You could see it in the deranged terror of Rachel Maddow’s increasingly contorted face last night as she rehearsed all the hoaxes she has helped to perpetrate, along with her mentally-ill posse of Jenn Psaki, Joy Reid, Nicole Wallace, and the strangely mute white male Ari Melber. It seemed that any minute Rachel’s head would spin and start spewing pea soup at the camera. When will an exorcist finally pay a visit to MSNBC?
As the sun sets on “Joe Biden’s” career, what’s left of his campaign runs an ad in which he promises “to finish the job.”
Sounds kind of sinister now, doesn’t it, like something a crime boss might tell his caporegimes? And for sure the country is suffering from this three-year-plus reign-of-terror against common sense and common decency.
The wreckage is everywhere, all over this land. “Defending our Democracy,” my ass.
The party big dawgs have paid their terminal visit to the old grifter bringing the sad news that it’s over. Of course, this excites several new headaches for them. Foremost: how can “JB” bow out of the election on account of mental infirmity but still remain president? Even if they call it something else, make some other excuse, the whole world knows now that the president is gone in the head. There are six months remaining to the end of his term and a lot of urgent issues requiring a president’s attention. You can be sure that pressure will rise to shove him out of office altogether. And it may come before the Democratic Convention in late August — if we want to be taken seriously by the rest of the world.
Of course, that would elevate Kamala to the White House. Would getting to be the first female president of-color for six months be her consolation prize for graciously declining an automatic nomination to run in “JB’s” place, so that the party can stage an “open convention” free-for-all? Or would she better serve the party as a sacrificial goat to head the ticket and get buried in what’s shaping up to be an election landslide for the Republicans? Anyway, which of the various replacement politicians — Newsom, Whitmer, Pritzker, PA Gov. Shapiro —really wants to squander a political future in an election that’s as much a vote against the Democratic Party itself as any particular figure in it? Let the party go down so it can be purged of Green Woke Satanic mentally-ill communists and reorganized on a sane and decent basis.
But then there’s always HRC.
She’s been laying back alertly, waiting for an opening to swoop in on her leathery wings and cast a fresh spell over the batshit-crazy women who, in recent times, comprise the party’s base.
At one point, not many years ago, the party was broke and had to be bailed-out by the Clinton Foundation. To what extent does that entity still own the DNC, and especially its cargo of super-delegates? I guess we’re going to find out.
Joe Biden Delivers WORST 80 Seconds in Presidential History EVER…
Are inmates allowed to spend the entire day sleeping?
In the Iowa State Penitentiary they were one-man cells and I’m glad. I like my privacy and its many other conveniences.
We didn’t have to work but to choose that meant you left your cell only to shower, or to eat and you lose your library privilege too.
I also did time in the Federal penitentiary in Lompoc California and those were 1-man rooms … not true cells. The doors were solid with a 6×12 glass window in the door and the bathroom was completely private.
Their “hole” was a unique form of punishment, and I should know: I’ve done time in juvenile homes (8 times), reform school (where I spent 11 months of my two year experience in the hole): military stockades (2 different ones), several jails, and two penitentiaries.)
Lompoc’s hole was unique in that it was designed as an experiment. A psychological experiment in sensory deprivation. No sound. No light. No contact with another person. Just two weeks in complete and utter darkness and silence. It was a room in a room, which allowed the staff to come and go without letting any light in the cell area and not make any noise either. Food was brought once a day, (a half loaf of bread and half a head of lettuce) and the inmate had no way of knowing it was there or not except by going to the door and feeling around, for they slid it under the door through a swinging panel.
Many developed permanent psychological problems from their 2 week experience, for it becomes very difficult to hold your grasp on reality when there isn’t any frame of reference to ‘hang your hat on’.
I hallucinated a lot and even created two fellow cellmates to chat with! When they disappeared soon after I met them, I was devastated. This all took place between the years of 1956–1958 and I suffer now from claustrophobia as a result of that experience.
Ain’t life a blast!
Have you ever witnessed anyone throw away their life?
A rather friendly man talked to me at a party, back when I was a teenager. It was the birthday of his nephew, who was my younger brother’s friend. All the kids in attendance were rather young, and I was happy to talk to someone a bit older, someone who seemed interesting. He was a photographer, and he took photos of everyone in the garden, and around the house.
The man traveled the world. Experienced a lot of things. He seemed full of life, animated, energetic, moving around rapidly. Although he must have been in his forties at the time, he seemed to me the absolute picture of great health. Now this was in the summer, somewhere around 2006 or 2007, I believe. We had a little talk about a trip he was going on, to Russia. How excited he was about it. The party ended rather early, as children’s parties often do. And I went home with my family. But before we parted ways, the man did take a photo of me, and he gave it to me. It was with one of those instant-photo polaroid things… it’s a fond memory, now, because when you’re young, any adult who takes you seriously and talks to you as an equal is often a fond memory.
“Oh hey, Jean-Marie, do you remember the uncle of your brothers friend, the photographer?” my mother asked me a month later. I said I did. “He died yesterday,” she said, “terrible shame. Alcoholism.” Turns out the man I met was dying of a drinking problem. I had no clue. He never went on his big trip. I still have the polaroid, somewhere.
Beavis & Butt-Head Do America – 1950’s Super Panavision 70
China’s cutting-edge electronic warfare (EW) capabilities are transforming the balance of power in the South China Sea, as shown by a recent encounter between US and Chinese forces.
This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on China’s enhanced EW capabilities by shedding light on a December 2023 incident between a US EA-18 Growler carrier-based EW aircraft and China’s Type 055 cruiser Nanchang in the contested South China Sea.
SCMP says that in December 2023, the US Navy dismissed William Coulter, commander of US Electronic Attack Squadron 136 (VAQ-136), stationed on the USS Carl Vinson, citing a loss of confidence in his ability to command.
The report says that a month later, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recognized the Nanchang’s crew for their actions against a US carrier fleet. It also notes that Chinese media highlighted an encounter involving an EA-18G, believed to be from Coulter’s squadron, and the Nanchang cruiser.
The report mentions that PLA scientists recently disclosed in a Radar & ECM journal article that AI-enhanced radar gave the Nanchang an advantage over the EA-18G’s jamming capabilities.
It claims that the EA-18G, manufactured by Boeing, has been upgraded since 2021 for future warfare but faces new challenges from the PLA–Navy’s (PLA-N) integrated radar systems and communication strategies.
SCMP notes that these advancements allow PLA-N warships to form a “kill web” to counter the EA-18G’s attacks. It also says that the Nanchang’s reported proactive tactics and successful engagement with US forces illustrate a shift in the PLA-N’s EW approach.
Much-improved Chinese EW capabilities developed after then-US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s controversial August 2022 visit to Taiwan may have enabled a feat.
SCMP noted that the PLA failed to track and surveil the US Air Force transport plane carrying Pelosi during her visit despite deploying Type 055 cruisers and J-16D EW aircraft. The source says that almost all of the PLA’s EW equipment failed to function because of electronic interference from Pelosi’s escorting aircraft force.
On Pelosi’s aircraft escort, John Tkacik says in an August 2022 article for Taipei Times that it could have been a massive force of US F-15s that flew out of Kadena Air Force Base in Japan supported by the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group and the USS Tripoli with embarked F-35s stationed in the Philippine Sea.
From that experience, China may have improved its EW capabilities quickly by investing in new technologies and placing them in a more extensive kill web consisting of kinetic and non-kinetic elements.
SCMP reported in February 2024 that Chinese scientists have invented a new class of EW equipment that can reportedly rapidly detect, decode and suppress enemy signals.
The new system, SCMP says, allows the PLA to seamlessly monitor signals into the gigahertz zone, encompassing frequencies used by amateur radio and even Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites.
It notes that the equipment includes innovative signal processing chips and AI integration, enhancing China’s ability to counter enemy jamming and maintain communication flow.
Furthermore, SCMP claims that in encounters with US Navy ships with EW activity, China has used electromagnetic-emitting equipment, including high-power phased array radars, to lock on to multiple targets including US carrier-based aircraft.
Aside from developing new tech, China may already have elevated EW into a strategic capability, integrating it into its multi-domain operations alongside other kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities in a complex kill web.
In a May 2023 article for the Mitchell Institute, Heather Penney describes a kill web as multiple, interconnected nodes that offer redundant paths for executing military operations, increasing the quantity and resilience of potential kill chains. A kill chain is the process required to identify and eliminate specific targets.
Penney says that unlike linear kill chains, which are easier to target and disrupt, kill webs provide a more adaptable and less predictable system, making it harder for adversaries to defeat.
Asia Times noted in April 2024 that the rebranding of China’s PLA Strategic Support Force (PLA-SSF) into the PLA-Information Support Force (PLA-ISF) highlights China’s strategic shift towards technology-driven “intelligentized warfare.”
The PLA-ISF is designed to integrate emerging AI, quantum and other technologies into China’s multi-domain operational strategy against potential adversaries like the US and its allies. The rebranding reflects an evolution in Chinese military thought, transitioning from “informationized wars” to “intelligentized warfare” that includes EW, cyber operations and signals intelligence (SIGINT).
EW is also a key component of China’s Multi-Domain Precision Warfare (MDPW) concept, which leverages AI and big data to identify and exploit weaknesses in US operational systems.
China’s MDPW seeks to dismantle and destroy US kill chains by targeting critical information nodes such as aircraft and satellites through physical attacks and targeting information networks by using EW and cyberattacks.
While the US arguably still has the edge in EW, near-peer adversaries like China and Russia may be closing the gap.
A November 2022 US Congressional Research Service (CRS) defense primer says that the National Defense Strategy Commission mentioned that the US is losing its EW edge, hindering its capability to conduct operations against capable adversaries.
Army Technology reported in May 2024 that the US spent US$5 billion on EW capabilities in 2024, accounting for 45% of global EW spending from 2021-2023, compared to just 14% by Russia and 13% by China.
However, Army Technology says that the US’ dominant position in the EW market is being challenged, as Russia, China and India’s share is projected to increase by the next decade.
The report notes that over the past two decades, Russia has exploited alleged US complacency in EW strategies, which have focused on counterinsurgency versus non-state actors.
It notes that in Ukraine, Russia has used EW to disrupt adversary battlefield networks, support conventional assault forces through SIGINT and jamming attacks, and secure captured territory against counterattacks.
The source also mentions that Russia has used EW to disrupt regional civilian services such as GPS and telecoms.
Likewise, Army Technology mentions that China has mirrored Russia’s use of EW and has equated information dominance with electromagnetic dominance. It says that in addition to shipborne EW equipment, China has installed such equipment and more in its occupied features in the South China Sea.
In line with that, Matthew Funaiole and other writers highlight in a December 2021 CSIS article the expansion of China’s facilities on Hainan Island, Subi Reef, and Fiery Cross Reef, which now includes satellite tracking, communication platforms, and systems potentially used in EW and SIGINT.
Funaiole and others note that these developments aim to bolster the PLA’s ability to operate in contested electronic and cyber environments.
What is the impact of corruption on the economy of a country like China, where it is prevalent at all levels?
In China, the Scope of corruption is very limited these days
What do you use your illegal wealth for?
You can’t buy Land in China because the State owns the land, so you can buy a lease and if you do, you get caught in seconds
You can’t ask payment for your kid to be educated abroad because every official has to give source of funds for his kids tuition
You cant put money into an offshore account because as officials you need Exit Visas and it’s possible you may never be able to use your money
You can’t bury Cash in your mattress because Cash is rarer and rarer nowadays
There is only one way of Corruption that every booked official in China uses
Pre dated Investments!!!!
Buying Gold today and getting a 10 year old bill of sale for that gold and claiming to sell the same today and pocketing the proceeds of sale
For instance claiming you purchased Gold for 100,000 RMB in 2014 and now claiming to sell the same gold for 207,000 RMB and pocketing 107,000 RMB legitimately
Or Pre Dated Real Estate Investments into companies
The problem is that such officials get caught regularly because they didn’t declare this purchase of gold in 2014 in their Assets and Liabilities statement and so find it tough to explain
So Corruption is getting harder and harder and many officials get caught quite easily
Someone Shorted Trump’s Stock Just Before The Assassination Attempt!
Here’s how it works. [1] Victoria Neuland announces about “something will be a surprise”, and then [2] people short stocks for personal profit. This is not the first time this system went into play.
An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He’s diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions, and his residence in yet another. He doesn’t depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise.
Living as an international man has always been an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the U.S. used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was no pressing reason to become an international man.
Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant – at least if you have a choice – is a suboptimal strategy if you wish to not only survive, but prosper. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America’s turn.
For those who can take up the life of an international man, it’s no longer just an interesting lifestyle decision. It has become, at a minimum, an asset saver, and it could be a lifesaver. That said, I understand the hesitation you may feel about taking action; pulling up one’s roots (or at least grafting some of them to a new location) can be almost as traumatic to a man as to a vegetable.
As any intelligent observer surveys the world’s economic and political landscape, he has to be disturbed – even dismayed and a bit frightened – by the gravity and number of problems that mark the horizon. We’re confronted by economic depression, looming financial chaos, serious currency inflation, onerous taxation, crippling regulation, a developing police state, and, worst of all, the prospect of a major war. It seems almost unbelievable that all these things could affect the U.S., which historically has been the land of the free.
How did we get here? An argument can be made that things went bad because of miscalculation, accident, inattention, and the like. Those elements have had a role, but it is minor. Potential catastrophe across the board can’t be the result of happenstance. When things go wrong on a grand scale, it’s not just bad luck or inadvertence. It’s because of serious character flaws in one or many – or even all – of the players.
So is there a root cause of all the problems I’ve cited?
If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems.
In this article, I’m going to argue that the U.S. government, in particular, has been overrun by the wrong kind of person.
It’s a trend that’s been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it’s institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the U.S. is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate.
The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions.
Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual, and psychological/spiritual fabric of the U.S.
What does this mean to you, as an individual? It depends on your character.
Are you the kind of person who supports “my country, right or wrong,” as did most Germans in the 1930s and 1940s? Or the kind who dodges the duty to be a helpmate to murderers? The type of passenger who goes down with the ship? Or the type who puts on his vest and looks for a lifeboat? The type of individual who supports the merchants who offer the fairest deal? Or the type who is gulled by splashy TV commercials?
What the ascendancy of sociopaths means isn’t an academic question. Throughout history, the question has been a matter of life and death. That’s one reason America grew; every American (or any ex-colonial) has forebears who confronted the issue and decided to uproot themselves to go somewhere with better prospects. The losers were those who delayed thinking about the question until the last minute.
I have often described myself, and those I prefer to associate with, as gamma rats. You may recall the ethologist’s characterization of the social interaction of rats as being between a few alpha rats and many beta rats, the alpha rats being dominant and the beta rats submissive. In addition, a small percentage are gamma rats that stake out prime territory and mates, like the alphas, but are not interested in dominating the betas. The people most inclined to leave for the wide world outside and seek fortune elsewhere are typically gamma personalities.
You may be thinking that what happened in places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and scores of other countries in recent history could not, for some reason, happen in the U.S. Actually, there’s no reason it won’t at this point. All the institutions that made America exceptional – including a belief in capitalism, individualism, self-reliance, and the restraints of the Constitution – are now only historical artifacts.
On the other hand, the distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time.
Per capita, there were no more evil people in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Ceausescu’s Romania, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia than there are today in the U.S. All you need is favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm.
Conditions for them in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the TSA to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day.
Few of them can imagine that they’re shepherding in a police state as they play their roles in security theater.(A reinforced door on the pilots’ cabin is probably all that’s actually needed, although the most effective solution would be to hold each airline responsible for its own security and for the harm done if it fails to protect passengers and third parties.) But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo – eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo.
What’s going on here is an instance of Pareto’s Law. That’s the 80-20 rule that tells us, for example, that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your salesmen or that 20% of the population are responsible for 80% of the crime.
As I see it, 80% of people are basically decent; their basic instincts are to live by the Boy Scout virtues. 20% of people, however, are what you might call potential trouble sources, inclined toward doing the wrong thing when the opportunity presents itself. They might now be shoe clerks, mailmen, or waitresses – they seem perfectly benign in normal times. They play baseball on weekends and pet the family dog. However, given the chance, they will sign up for the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, the TSA, Homeland Security, or whatever. Many seem well intentioned, but are likely to favor force as the solution to any problem.
But it doesn’t end there, because 20% of that 20% are really bad actors. They are drawn to government and other positions where they can work their will on other people and, because they’re enthusiastic about government, they rise to leadership positions. They remake the culture of the organizations they run in their own image. Gradually, non-sociopaths can no longer stand being there. They leave. Soon the whole barrel is full of bad apples. That’s what’s happening today in the U.S.
It’s a pity that Bush, when he was in office, made such a big deal of evil. He discredited the concept. He made Boobus americanus think it only existed in a distant axis, in places like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which were and still are irrelevant backwaters and arbitrarily chosen enemies. Bush trivialized the concept of evil and made it seem banal because he was such a fool. All the while, real evil, very immediate and powerful, was growing right around him, and he lacked the awareness to see he was fertilizing it by turning the U.S. into a national security state after 9/11.
Now, I believe, it’s out of control.
The U.S. is already in a truly major depression and on the edge of financial chaos and a currency meltdown.
The sociopaths in government will react by redoubling the pace toward a police state domestically and starting a major war abroad. To me, this is completely predictable. It’s what sociopaths do.
The Sopranos – Random Tony Soprano Scenes
How has your appearance affected your life?
I’m a short man.
I’m 5″6’, so I’m not a ‘little person” but I am short.
When I was dating, I had many girls tell me they would date me if i were taller. Fast forward and I’ve been married 20 years and have three terrific children.
Taller guys sometimes pat me on the shoulder or otherwise treat me like a child. I’m in my 40s.
Aggressive women have often warned me that ‘they could take me.’ I’ve had drunk guys start fights with the ‘little guy’ in a bar or party. Literally just walk up and start talking trash. I had a personal boxing coach for years and although I was never a contender, I learned to handle myself really well.
When I assert myself, I am told I have a ‘napoleon complex’ – when I don’t, I’m ‘passive aggressive’ or a pushover.
I’ve been passed over for leadership opportunities for taller people, and I’ve actually been told that openly. A CFO told me that people don’t like to work for short men. Height isn’t a protected class and you can be discriminated against for it.
I have a great life. Terrific family, despite being raised in poverty, I have accumulated a decent amount of first generation wealth. I have a great career and i do what I love. I really have no complaints.
But my appearance has affected my life.
Russia hits 4 HIMARS launchers and 35 foreign operators
Can Thai police officers demand to search your backpack while using public transportation in Bangkok? What are the consequences if you refuse?
Conduct a search on the bus or train? Thai police ain’t stupid, guys.
They know pretty well that Thais know best. I would say out loud, “เชิญเลยครับ (Be my guest)!”
Be sure to make a scene so that all eyes will look at you, so, you have a lot of eyewitnesses- say this; “พ่อแม่ พี่น้อง ผมกำลังโดนค้นครับ ขอไทยมุงครับ- เป็นสักขีพยานครับ ว่าผมไม่มี บุหรี่ไฟฟ้า ไม่มียาบ้านะครับ!” (Ladies & Gentlemen, I’m about to be searched, gather around folks, please be my eyewitnesses that I’ve no ‘Vapes’ or’Yaba’”)
Let’s be serious.
Once you consent to a search, there are two scenarios you need to know-ONE**, you are confronting with a pair of phony police officers. If you’re allow them to put their hands into your backpack it will mean, you will be a victim of an extortion-you know what I mean.— You may read from the expert online how to get out from a search by the fake Thai police unscathed.
TWO**: It’s real search from the police, and you can’t say no as your tattooed face & both arms, bearded with moustache wearing ’Boss’ blue T matches a description of ‘gold shop heist robber’ Too bad that you’re in a vicinity of the crime scene nearby.
Be shrewd as a snake but keeping calm like a dove **(I borrow from the Bible)- ask their permission to see their palms and what under/ inside their sleeves. If possible, take a video during a seach with their permission as well ( they will allow)
With a **vape** in your possession could cost you up to 30,000 Baht *fine
**Yaba** in your possession is questionable as penalty of drug trafficking is harsher than possession of drugs… you can’t say that, ‘IT ISN’T MINE’
Thai police will typically insist, **I am the law**
What’s other choice when facing with the Thai police demanding a search?
Guys! In Thailand do as the Thai do.
Just walk away that is what Thais would do when the police want to search the backpack of anyone.
What are the consequences if you refuse?
The worst scenario, if you refuse a search—is going to the police station with them.
What was your best moment when negotiating a salary?
My company was about 9 months delivering my review. I had a great year and likely generated incremental ebitda of over $5 million. When I finallly got me review I was told I did a great job and I was getting the maximum raise – 5% on top of my $120k salary. I flipped out.
Two weeks later I quit. I knew I had a ton of leverage because:
My company was party to a lawsuit and I was a key witness.
The company was going to be sold soon and I was in a key position.
As expected, they asked me to stay and offered me a small additional raise. I demanded $250k, a 75% bonus, promotion to EVP, stock options, 1 year severance agreement if the fired me (plus bonus), and a year of benefits post employment. Told them I didn’t care either way.
It’s been 5 years. I’m still with the company and have been promoted to president. Timing is everything. If you have leverage use it.
Stranded in Philadelphia. America, what’s happening?
“Vast DEI Bureaucracy” Hurting U.S. Armed Forces; ASU Study Finds
A new Arizona State University study suggests that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts in the United States military are ineffective.
The study done by the university’s Center for American Institutions argued that there is a emphasis on training new soldiers about social issues like “unconscious bias” and “intersectionality” in a way the center says runs contrary to typical American ideals. The study examined DEI plan’s in different sector of the military, including DEI office staffing and education at academies like West Point.
“The massive DEI bureaucracy, its training and its pseudo-scientific assessments are at best distractions that absorb valuable time and resources,” the executive summary states. “At worst they communicate the opposite of the military ethos: e.g. that individual demographic differences come before team and mission.”
Donald Critchlow, director of the center, wrote in the introduction it was focused on looking at the influence of Critical Race Theory in the United States Armed Forces training.
“The Commission on Civic Education in the Military began as a project to review civic education in the military. Our research team did not expect to find Critical Race Theory so embedded and pervasive. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are found throughout the U.S. Armed Forces and our service academies,” Critchlow wrote. “This year long study documents just how pervasive these training programs are in our Armed Forces and Service Academies and that DEI extends well beyond just formal training programs in the military and service academies.”
“The Founders of our nation understood and feared a politicized military. History had shown them that a politicized army easily became the tool of tyranny. The Armed Forces of the United States has proudly upheld this long tradition of separating mission from politics,” he continued.
In terms of recommendations, the study suggests that DEI offices be completely scrapped, but said it may be politically unlikely for the time being.
“The surest way to eliminate the concerning trends we have identified, and the growth of race and sex-based scapegoating and stereotyping in the U.S. military, is to altogether end the DEI bureaucracy there,” the study states. “However, until such a time as the executive or legislative branches of the government choose to end the DEI bureaucracy in our federal agencies and military, we are left to advocate the pursuit of alternative avenues that may affect positive change despite existing policies.”
They also suggested the military prioritize civic education with a focus on “America’s commitment to freedom and opportunity.”
The study comes as some branches of the military continue to struggle with recruiting new service members.
To all the doctors, have you ever asked a patient to leave your office?
We just had one on Monday. We are a primary care office in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. Patients stopped coming to our office because they were afraid we were treating COVID-19 patients. Our volume of patients plummeted to about 20% of our normal patient count in late March and early April. We laid off 50% of our staff and switched to Telehealth. Gradually, patients have started coming back in when they could no longer put off going to the doctor. We are seeing about 50% of our patients in the office and another 20% through Telehealth. We have strict protocols for seeing patients now, but tensions are high among the staff. We are bringing back our staff slowly but surely.
One of our patients had been discharged from the hospital last week for non-COVID-19 problems. This 35-year-old woman followed up with her doctor through Telehealth, but needed to be seen in person for her condition and also to fill out FMLA paperwork. She confused her follow-up date and time (after confirming twice with our email and text reminder service), so we rescheduled her to the next day, a Saturday. Again, she arrived at the wrong time and the office was closed. She paged her doctor who was on-call and demanded her paperwork be filled out over the weekend. This doctor offered to come into the office exclusively on Monday to see her and fill out her paperwork as a courtesy. He was only scheduled for Telehealth which he had planned to do at home.
The patient again arrived late and the doctor was busy on Telehealth with his scheduled patients. She offered to come back in an hour when he had a slot to see her. Again, she arrived late. She refused to wear a mask in the office, as is our protocol and mandated by our state — insisting she was a nurse and it’s not necessary and it is a bunch of silliness. She was put in a room and told to wait, as the doctor was in the middle of seeing another patient.
After two minutes, she stormed out of the room causing a scene, demanding to be seen this instant, get her paperwork, and her narcotics Rx filled. Just then, the doctor came down the hall from his office to see her. She started swearing at him and berating him for making her wait. He threw up his hands and let her know he would not be treated that way and she can leave. He escorted her out of the building. He would not fill her prescriptions or do her paperwork. The patient left.
The next day she started pounding on our door when it was locked, yelling and demanding her prescriptions and her paperwork. The doctor ended up giving her two weeks of her medications and two weeks of FMLA and referred her off to her specialist to finish her care. This patient is being discharged from our practice. This patient consistently runs a balance with our office, has multiple missed appointments, and is rude to the staff. There is no need for this behavior — especially at a tense time like this.
Wednesday – 1960’s Super Panavision 70
Why are there still people think that China is poor?
I think this is some kind of conspiracy created by the Chinese
I know many Chinese, especially young Chinese under 40 years old
Usually when the topic of conversation involves “Is China poor or rich”
Although everyone’s eloquence is different and the way of explaining the content is also different. But they all seem to be trying their best to explain the same idea: “China is poor, China is backward”
And when you point to the modern city behind them, their food, clothing, housing and transportation, and their unparalleled modern transportation facilities, and express doubts. Chinese people often lead you into another unified agenda: “It looks good, but we have to consider the per capita data
The common Chinese rhetoric about “China’s poverty” is as follows:
GDP per capita: China’s GDP per capita is only about 13,000 US dollars, compared with more than 60,000 US dollars in the United States, so China is still very poor.
(Deliberately ignoring the difference in purchasing power parity (PPP))
Income per capita: 500 million people in China have an average monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan (140 US dollars)
(The concept of “non-working population” is replaced)
Number of cars per capita: China has 219 cars per thousand people. The United States has about 800 cars per thousand people, and France has more than 600 cars per thousand people
(Deliberately ignoring the difference in stock, China has entered the automobile era for less than 20 years)
High-speed trains: Chinese people can’t buy flight tickets, so they can only take high-speed trains.
(In fact, China’s air tickets are often not more expensive than high-speed trains)
Housing area per capita: China’s per capita housing area is about 40 square meters. The per capita housing area in the United States is about 65 square meters, and the per capita housing area in Germany and France is also above 50 square meters (Deliberately ignoring that China’s home ownership rate is much higher than that of the United States and Europe)
Similar agendas include: China’s military is very weak
Nuclear weapons per capita: ranked last among the five permanent members, only one percent of the United States
Aircraft carriers per capita: lower than Thailand and Brazil, so very weak
Defense budget per capita: only $210 per year, one-tenth of the United States and one-quarter of France
China’s technology is very backward:
Number of space stations per capita, number of supercomputers per capita, number of moon landings per capita, number of Mars explorations per capita, number of GPS satellites per capita, number of scientific papers per capita…
This strange “we are bad” narrative of the Chinese is not just a joke for ordinary people to chat, but a systematic narrative from top to bottom. China’s leaders, regional leaders and various government officials are accustomed to using this narrative.
Even in political speeches praising achievements, they list a series of achievements and never forget to add a paragraph at the end: “But we still have a big gap, the per capita data is only a small part of advanced countries, and we still have a long way to go in development. ”
Someone told me that the strange Chinese attitude of “We are terrible” comes from the inherent traditional culture of “modesty”. But I think it is more than that. Behind their strange narrative, there is actually another meaning: “Please don’t bother us.”
The Little Mermaid – 1950’s Super Panavision 70
The media has finally, once and for all, lost all credibility
Obviously the attempted assassination of Donald Trump represents a grim milestone on America’s path of decline, as I wrote about in detail on Monday.
But the legacy media’s response to it may also go down as a major turning point: the moment they finally lost all credibility.
Now, clearly for a long time the media has been full of Inspired Idiots who don’t care about reporting the truth. Instead, they push a narrative they want people to believe about the world and the events which shape it.
For example, CNN famously described 2020 Black Lives Matters riots as “fiery, but mostly peaceful.”
In 2021, when the governor of South Dakota banned biological men from participating in female sports, CNN promptly reported that, “there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.”
NBC News was caught in 2021 colluding with the Biden administration to downplay the criminal past deeds of Tracy Stone-Manning, who the President had nominated to lead the Bureau of Land Management.
Stone-Manning was an eco-terrorist in her youth who was involved in tree-spiking activities that kill or maim loggers. But NBC News promised to take it easy on her to help push her appointment through.
Also in 2021, however, NBC News (along with just about every other mainstream ‘news’ outlet) hyped unproven allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh that went back 30 years.
And when #MeToo protestors stormed the United States Capitol and accosted Senators in an attempt to disrupt and overturn the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the media did not label these protestors ‘domestic terrorists’, as they did with January 6 protesters.
The media circulated outright lies about the Russia voter manipulation hoax. And the New York Times was even awarded the ‘esteemed’ Pulitzer Prize for its reporting of this thoroughly discredited story.
It’s also notable that, even after the Russia collusion story was proven to be false, the Pulitzer committee REFUSED to rescind the award it had bestowed to the Times. Their logic, apparently, is that quality reporting about blatant lies is still worthy of journalism’s highest honor.
Then, of course, in the weeks before the 2020 election, nearly every legacy news outlet outright refused to report on the laptop of Hunter Biden. The younger Biden’s laptop not only showed deep character flaws, but evidence of significant corruption and foreign influence connected to his father.
And don’t even get me started on how the legacy media reported on COVID, lock-downs, and vaccines.
But now they’ve elevated their lies and propaganda to a whole new level with the way they have portrayed last week’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
These “journalists” witnessed in real time an attempted— and very nearly successful— assassination of a former President, upon which they reported:
“Trump Escorted Away After Loud noises at rally” –The Washington Post
“Secret Service rushes Trump offstage after he falls at rally” –CNN
“Trump says he was shot in the ear at rally” -NPR
OK, let’s be extremely polite and give them the benefit of the doubt; immediately following the assassination attempt there were plenty of unknowns.
But even after the fog of war had been lifted— after it was clearly an attempted assassination— the Washington Post updated its headline to: “Trump safe after being rushed off stage following shooting at rally.”
In another article it said the assassin “shot at Trump,” not “shot Trump.”
Technically, that passes a fact check. But it’s sort of like describing Mount Everest as an elevated piece of land.
And the spin continued the next day.
Reuters ran an article titled, “Republicans, in wake of Trump shooting, seek to pin political violence trend on Democrats.”
This obviously ‘unbiased’ and ‘trustworthy’ news agency couldn’t simply report on the known facts of the attempted assassination. No, instead, their priority was to tell readers that it is the RIGHT, not the LEFT, that is full of violent extremists.
“A Reuters analysis of more than 200 incidents of politically motivated violence between 2021 and 2023, however, presented a different picture: In those years, fatal political violence more often emanated from the American right than from the left.”
Reuters didn’t actually cite a single example of this Right wing violence.
In fact, the only example of violence they did mention was the shooting of Steve Scalise, a Republican member of Congress who was gunned down (but survived) in 2017… by a Left wing extremist.
So… in an attempt to prove its assertion that its readers should fear Right wing violence, Reuters’ only example was an instance of a Left wing extremist shooting a Right wing politician.
Genius!
And these Inspired Idiots in the media still can’t understand why nobody trusts them.
Days after the attempted assassination, the Associated Press noted that the Left and Right now have dueling conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt— that Trump staged it for clout, or that the Secret Service was in on it.
AP lamented, “Americans are increasingly choosing their own reality, at the expense of a shared understanding of the facts.”
Gee, whose fault is that? (Remember, AP published the headline: “Donald Trump has been escorted off the stage by Secret Service during a rally after loud noises ring out in the crowd.”)
The attempted assassination of Trump was a rare event, in that it was broadcast in real time, and everyone could see exactly what happened with their own eyes from multiple angles.
And still the media tried as hard as possible to sell a completely bullshit narrative of the event.
What do you think they do with events that are not so clear, or are not caught on camera from every angle? How trustworthy are those “anonymous sources” they love to cite?
This is why the legacy media is becoming less trusted by the day.
It’s also why, despite Inspired Idiots owning the vast majority of broadcast media, they still haven’t been able to tip the scales decisively in favor of their own little cultural revolution.
Confronted with an event they knew would make their nemesis look strong and unbeatable, they resorted to cartoonish propaganda.
And I hope that proves to be the decisive moment for people to see them for what they are: liars.
Man Runs Away on Date When She Brought Her Friends…
Can people with diplomatic immunity commit crimes in their host nation without repercussions?
Mohamed Rizalman bin Ismail, a Malaysian military attaché, entered one woman’s house and attempted to have sex with her.
He was promptly arrested by the New Zealand police and charged with attempted burglary and rape. Invoking his diplomatic immunity, Mohamed left New Zealand to his country Malaysia. Following the international furor, Malaysia agreed to send Mohamed back and waive his diplomatic immunity. This case was interesting because NZ and Malaysia don’t have an extradition treaty. Apparently Mohamed “volunteered” to go back to NZ and face the trial. He served 9 months of house arrest.
Majed Hassan Ashoor, the first secretary at the Saudi Embassy in India beat and raped his Nepali housemaids. When the Police got involved, Diplomat invoking immunity left the country. All was left, a few NGOs protesting against the diplomat.
These cases happen far more often than beating and rape. An American military attaché was involved in traffic accident. He was reported to be drunk. As a result, the motorcycle driver died. The Pakistani authorities asked Americans to waive his diplomatic immunity so that he can be tried. After refusal, he was not allowed to leave the country. After extensive negotiations and substantial payments to the deceased’s family was the case finally resolved.
Another very similar case, a Russian diplomat was involved in fatal traffic accident, in Canada, while drunk. Due to diplomatic immunity, he was allowed back to Russia. Upon arrival, he was charged in Russian court with involuntary manslaughter and jailed for 4 years.
A new case is developing right now in Turkey. It has been alleged that a Saudi national was killed in the Saudi Consulate. If this is true, we reached new lows in diplomacy.
As you can see, diplomatic immunity can be waived only by the diplomat’s side. The host country, on the other hand, can prohibit the diplomat from leaving the country. It can also make an international incident and make life hell for the remaining diplomats. But in the end it is up to the diplomat’s country if it wants to be viewed as a country that allows its diplomats to commit crimes and get away with it. A matter of national prestige is an important matter to some, not all countries.
Article 29 of the Vienna Convention states: “The person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable. He shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention. The receiving state shall treat him with due respect and shall take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on his person, freedom or dignity.”
The Mask – 1950’s Super Panavision 70 Trailer
What is one thing that shocked you when you attended an Ivy League or a highly prestigious school like Stanford or MIT?
I got my Ph.D. from Stanford, so I was both a student and a teacher there, after attending a mid-level school that gave me a full ride for undergrad. No one in my family had been to a top-tier school, and there were no top-tier schools in the area where I grew up, so I had no idea what to expect. There were two things that shocked me most:
The way that everything is set up to ensure the students succeed. Ins to any internship program you could possibly want. “Lecture series” classes that are really designed to give you weekly networking opportunities. Entrepreneurship competitions that will actually put multiple students in a room with venture capitalists to pitch their business plans. You name it. The campus, the resources, the professors, the programs — all of these things are great at Stanford, but they’re great a lot of other places, too. But where you really see a huge difference is all the extras, where the school provides every opportunity for you to get in touch with people who can make your career. It’s amazing. After I saw this, I would always 100% advise anyone who’s ambitious and academically inclined to shoot for an Ivy.
Interestingly, the undergraduate students are not all super smart. They’re not unintelligent. But they’re not geniuses — not most of them, anyway. I wasn’t blown away, on the whole, by my Stanford students’ intelligence. Mostly, they just worked hard and they knew how to be students. They would communicate well, come to class and to office hours, be proactive about their grade and completing their work effectively. I find that’s the biggest difference between the Stanford kids and the students I’ve taught at the CSU’s and SLAC’s in the area — most of the students at those schools just seem like they never really learned how to be students, so they struggle when they’re easily smart enough to do well in the class. (Of course, most of them also have to work, while it seems like most of the Stanford kids don’t.)
In the bad old days, before G-Men took down the mob, were urbanites getting a better deal? Does the betting man receive worse odds from state run lotteries than Vinny gave on the corner running numbers? Did businesses shaken down for “protection” have higher hopes of survival in mob clutches than in municipal ones? Was there more or less anxiety about making rent or the mortgage in 1974 than in 2024? Which is the greater fiscal peril, organized crime or uber-societal-organization? It has become a valid question.
Gangsters had fingers in a lot of pies. Credit card racketeers, waging the present battle against physical currency, demand a slice of everything out of the oven. They’d gladly have us believe that paying for anything, without their supervision and cut, equals a criminally tainted transaction. Mobsters found their pecuniary prevalence legit in its way too. Transactions that jibed with their economic codes they called “kosher.” Other trading activity inside their ambit was deemed transgressive. Parasites tend to sound tiresomely alike. The difference is that the above ground finance industry finds no place outside its ambit.
Street people’s encampments clutter cities all over the country. What pushed so many over the edge? And how many are treading that edge carefully now? We know that insanity is somewhat genetic, but scientific observation has yet to prove external factors can’t nudge innately inclined individuals into psychosis. Facts point that way.
Should we harbor suspicion of so-called improvements in the finance system? The Bush-Obama era housing crisis arrived after the government gradually amped up its influence on the mortgage market. Once mortgages became de-localized and Wall Street joined in default skyrocketed and losses went international. Isn’t the NYSE supposed to make markets safer and more efficient? Have we seen anything like that coming out of financial centralization?
The present squeeze goes on in commercial space. Businesses, particularly restaurants, are shutting down at disturbing rates. The biggest burden is rent. This goes on as city centers are awash in more empty commercial space than ever. Local government isn’t helping. While serenading us about how much they love love and hate hate, they stay busy inundating entrepreneurs with licensing fees, new taxes, permit demands and other hurdles that restrain new ventures from ever launching. If they somehow get going anyway the municipality lurks at every juncture. They’ll keep you from thriving when they can’t stop you altogether. Actions speak louder than words. What they “love,” in practice, is bleeding prey pale with revenue demands and entangling bureaucratic complications.
In 1977 the minimum wage was $2.30 an hour. You could get nearly four Big Macs for that amount then. When the minimum went up to $12 on July 1st, the same earner only got two and one third double-deckers for his money. Losing 1.3 sandwiches an hour takes a big bite out of a working class lifestyle. 10.4 Mc-grubbings per eight-hour-day to be exact.
One year after the bicentennial average rent in the US was about $160.An NYT article from 1973 said a family of four needed less than $12,000 a year to live “moderately” in NYC in 1973. The same amount must have been a somewhat comfortable living in flyover country. By 1977 average income was over $13,000. 47 years later, average rent is at least ten times higher. While only about 10% of the population earns $130,000 or more. Where did all the value go?
Clearly, production is out of sync with consumption. What is the variable? Crops still grow at the same rate. Cargo travels at the same speed. Bricks are laid at the same pace. Chickens plop their eggs with the same regularity. Is anyone in the economy getting more than their fair share?
Almost 103 billion in “official” currency was circulating in the US in 1977. As of today, that figure stands at nearly 2 trillion 340 billion. The population has increased by about 58%. The greenbacks flowing back and forth went up by over 2000%. Those figures describe a small fraction of the overall economy. Because banks can create spending power with credit, leaving out other fiscal legerdemain, hundreds of trillions are outstanding in fiscal reality. Federal tax revenue alone, will soon hit over 5 trillion so far this year. That’s over twice the official amount of currency in circulation.
The Big Mac went from 65 cents to $5.17 in that time span. That’s about 700%. Minimum wage rose by about 450%. Watching these fiscal details we know at once that sparse fractions of all that new money is getting to where it is needed most – while we have no evidence it lands in hands that have created actual value. With everyone competing for resources and finished goods, these facts equal a devastating pay cut for many making far above minimum wage.
The idea that people are taking out according to what they contribute simply doesn’t fly. We can start with where the money supply is expanded.
A century ago banks were more accountable. They could make risky loans, as they did for Fritz Heinze, but doing so could still mean hell to pay. The series of events that shook the fiscal foundations of South Manhattan in 1907 remain mysterious over a century later. By 2007, banks were getting bailed out and it was everyone else who paid. How we got there is an intriguing conundrum of modern finance.
Heinze was a mining engineer from New York who showed up in Butte, Montana in the 1890’s. The copper market was hot at the time. That rustic town was already swimming in East Coast toffs and class consciousness. Although born into wealth and circumstances, Augustus Heinze was above pretension and indifferent to “society.” He soon developed a smelting process that greatly expanded the profitability of low-grade copper ore. Rather than pocketing the plunder, his next step was cutting 2 hours off the miner’s workday. How did that go over in the part of Butte that ‘dressed for dinner’? About like The Declaration of Independence did with George III.
Fritz couldn’t have cared less. The airs put on at posh WASP tables left the man impatient and bored. He did his excess boozing in public places where a man who’d spent the day 500 feet underground was at the next stool. Guys who loaded trams rarely bought a round with Heinze in the house.
By 1895 he’d amassed the capital to purchase the Rarus copper mine. The new-coming city slicker literally hit paydirt. His holes were always filled with the best pick and shovel men Montana could provide. The swells he snubbed had to take what hired help they could get.
An officer fraternizing with the enlisted class was high treason to mine owners of the aughts. Heinze was held in a kind of hostile awe. Butte gentry were unaccustomed to a guy who dared not to care if they liked him. What’s an enraged starched collar to do? We’ll never be entirely sure. Deadly measures were far from uncommon in late 19th century mining strife. What happened to Heinze is one of the murkier mysteries of the robber baron era.
J.D. Rockefeller’s brother, William, was a director of Anaconda Copper. That firm was run by people who’d never pop a cork with working stiffs. They were revolted by Augie’s effrontery. Their solution was one that has retained its financial force. Whether Heinze was bought out under duress, or sold out of his own volition in 1906 isn’t fully clear. What is known is that he returned to New York as a Wall Street plunger specializing in copper stocks. Using familial connections, and a personal fortune, Heinze got himself onto the boards of almost a score of NYC banks. When shares of United Copper were being shorted in a bear run, Fritz used his position to buy aggressively, borrowing heavily from the Knickerbocker Bank and other commercial lenders where he held sway.
By October of 1907 the Heinze brothers thought they had cornered the market in United Copper. They demanded the shares from traders who were contractually short – falsely believing the bears would be forced to buy from them. It soon became clear that these shares were not hard to come by. Heinze’s bullishness ended in catastrophic loss rather than profit. This meant that he would default on loans of millions from each of over 15 NYC banks.
The story, possibly apocryphal but true in effect, goes as follows. Knickerbocker was experimenting with 24 hour banking in 1907. The brainchildren of Wall Street met for dinner at an upstairs private dining room in Delmonico’s to discuss the coming cash crunch. Waiters for the event heard what was said in the meeting. They shared this knowledge with less connected patrons chowing down on the ground floor. A run on Knickerbocker began that night, by morning it had spread to every bank in town. The Panic of 1907 was instantly afoot.
Soon banks all over Gotham were out of cash to meet a seismic wave of withdrawals. In no time connected institutions from further out were tapped too. JP Morgan famously locked every player he could muster into his mansion’s library to discuss solutions. A plan was worked out and widespread depression was averted. But the financial hierarchy of south Manhattan was far from done. Their next step entailed placing the money supply and credit generally into the possession of elite governors.
This banking scandal ultimately resulted in the Federal Reserve Act that was passed December 23rd 1913. Whether it solved the problem or laid the foundation for larger ones has been debated since. Getting into the particulars of the statute became inconvenient with the legislature still in session so close to Christmas. ‘Fightin’ Bob LaFollette, gave in and failed to press for a more exacting bill he saw as necessary at the time. The ruckus over the bill’s details were mostly passed over as ‘conspiracy theory’ throughout the 20th century. That line held sway in economic academia for many decades. Scholarly reckoning always comes too late; there is little dispute the charter helped cause and make the Great Depression worse among “experts” today. We are commanded to defer to them with amps at 11. What they got wrong is reported by the same sources at about 2.5.
Left unexamined is why the Heinze brothers misunderstood who held what in United Copper in 1907. Why did they mistakenly believe they had cornered the market? These were highly educated, seasoned men in the world of finance. How far would William Avery Rockefeller Jr. go to settle a score with Fritz Heinze? Was he cleverly stashing available shares in ostensibly immobile accounts to set up an ambush? The first generation of the Rockefeller fortune was not known to take financial affronts lightly. Is it possible, or more likely probable, William Avery had the means and motive to manipulate the market into this unlikely position?
John D. Rockefeller Jr. married Abby Aldrich in 1901. Her father, Nelson Aldrich, was the driving senatorial force behind the Federal Reserve Act, although he left the Senate before its passage. The Rockefeller gang has been evangelizing the faith of centralization in everything for over a century. It started when JD Sr. practically accomplished that in the petroleum industry before the turn of the 20th century. If you think they were never capable of violent, gangland style treachery, fast your gaze on the Ludlow massacre of 1914.
Can we measure the effect of centralization in the financial sector? By 2013 it had almost doubled its share of the economic pie since 1980. When their take went from 5% to 9% in 40 years it had to come at a loss for others at the table. Did the Fed have a role in this? And what justification is offered for doubling the squeeze? As the economy grows so does the money industry’s cut, just as any salesman’s commission rises as the sales price is higher. Is South Manhattan insatiable? What explanation, other than parasitic predation, fits here?
The idea of market liquidity and available credit is efficiency and a fluent trading place for financial wares. Theoretically, this is competitive and brings transactional costs down while driving transactional fluidity up. Have we seen any such thing? The NYSE and kin have become like those “clubs” everyone is forced to join avoiding rip-offs for groceries, lunch, medicine, movies etc. The difference is that Wall Street’s anti-rip-off club is exclusive. You are not invited.
Where are we now? Exactly in the same place as when mobsters skimmed off the top in Vegas casinos, but far worse. The difference is that you get clipped without ever placing a bet or owning a share of a betting parlor. The south Manhattan mob is, supposedly, worth nearly 10% of all the action. What other slices of the take have widened with government intrusion and centralization? The mob focused its shakedowns on high rollers. Higher Ed goes after every kid hoping to drag letters behind his name. They call themselves “non-profits.” Does the description fit the beast?Disciplines of a Godly…Hughes, R. KentBest Price: $4.97Buy New $9.41(as of 01:52 UTC – Details)
Finding university administrators at leisure is not a job for Columbo. Just head toward any resort, high-dollar fleshpot or country club where profiteers do their squandering. Educational altruists, financial “experts” and well-heeled bon vivants occupy the same weekend turf – as well as the same self-serving sphere of self-justification.
The Rockefeller family was the largest private benefactor of that ultimate centralizing scheme, the UN. The patriarch, William Avery Rockefeller Sr., was an infamous snake oil salesman and bigamist. He’s not the Rocky the family likes to advertise. They are prouder of efforts to get around the principle of one-man-one-vote and rule the world from the modern equivalent of a royal court on a planetary scale. Make a list of plans to place more bosses overhead and move them further out of reach. The UN, CFR, WEF, Bilderberg, Trilaterals – you name it and the progeny of that greasy grifter is in on it. And who would they place in charge? The very soul-suckers with their fangs in the US neck pulsing at Wall and Broad.
We are not looking at an abstruse, undecipherable picture here. You can do differential equations, make “relative assumptions” and discuss monetary theory until you ascend to the meta-fiscal plane of Laputa. None of that supposed “understanding” leaves Joe Six-Pack with another square foot of living space or another Big Mac. Uber-economic organization, aka David Rockefeller’s so-called “more integrated world,” is a progressively feudalistic plot that – with the compliance of the un-fake-news industry – rarely experiences any setbacks.
Shrinking buying power has a very simple explanation: a prim and proper syndicate that is more ubiquitous and avaricious than any criminal mob ever.
The Future Isn’t Looking Too Good For Gen Z & Millennials … 2
California Cheese and Green Chile Shrimp Lasagna
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
Sauce
1 pound tomatillos, husked, washed and cut into quarters, or 2 (12 ounce cans), drained
12 ounces of Real California Panela cheese, shredded
4 ounces Real California Monterey Jack cheese shredded (about 2 cups)
1 pound cooked shrimp, cut in half lengthwise
Instructions
Sauce
In a blender or food processor, pulse the tomatillos, jalapeños and 1 1/2 cups cold water just until chunky.
Add onion, cilantro, salt, chiles, lettuce, green onions and garlic. Puree until smooth, about 2 minutes.
Lasagna
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking dish, spread 1 cup of the sauce. Layer 1/3 of the shrimp over the sauce. Place 3 lasagna noodles over the shrimp. (Noodles should not overlap or touch side of pan since they will expand when baked).
Combine shredded cheeses and sprinkle about 2 cups over the noodles. Repeat layering the sauce, shrimp, noodles and cheese two more times. Top with the remaining 3 lasagna noodles and spread remaining sauce over noodles. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove foil and bake until hot and bubbly, about 10 to 15 minutes more. Allow to rest for 10 minutes.
Cut into squares and serve immediately.
What’s the shrewdest, smartest maneuver you’ve ever seen in business?
In Geylang, in Singapore between Lorong 8 and Lorong 24 – there were plenty of hookers and lady boys (transvestites) called BAPO who solicited clients
Choo Chong Ngen, a 30 year old man gambled that Singapore would soon legalize all forms of prostitution and mandate safety for all the customers from STDs
So he purchased large swathes of land in the Land Auctions for a SONG
Nobody bid against him because nobody believed that land near prostitution areas wouldn’t rise in the slightest
By the late 1990s – CCN built Hotels, Shops, Goldfish bowls and Houses and sold them to businesses for a massive massive profit
The hotels roared with profits as the clients paid $ 20–30 for a 20 minute session which meant in 4 hours from 10 PM to 2 AM – a room could fetch 250 bucks which was more than the rate they charged in Hyatt or Marriott
I still marvel at how this guy managed to get ahead of legalized prostitution and mint so much money
I just got fired. Now my former boss (the one who let me go) is asking me where some important documents are. How should I respond?
I was fired by the owner of the company 30 days before I was to get a substantial bonus. The next week a person in my former department called me asking for help with an issue.
I texted them on their private phone that I knew the owner had them do that and that I was not trying to hurt them, but not helping the owner since I was shafted on my bonus.
30 minutes later I got a call from the owner saying if I would come in and fix the issue he would pay me for the day, I said pass, that I would fix the problem if paid for the month. He told me to go to hell.
The next day he called me back and said he would pay me for a week, I said no again, I would only come back if paid for a month.
He blew up again.
I knew if the issue wasn’t fixed very quickly the losses would add up. Two days later he had his secretary call and said he would pay me for a month but I had to get in there today.
I agreed only if a cashiers check was waiting on me when I walked in the door, because I knew the cheap bastard would stop payment on a regular check.
What the dumb SOB didn’t know was I was in the process of having him served on a wrongful termination suit and that paying me for a month constituted completetion of our contract and he would owe me the bonus.
I brought my attorney with me to the office, I picked up the check and went into the system and fixed the problem.
One other thing he didn’t know was that the issue was a recurring one that required attention and there wasn’t a universal fix, it would continue to come up and since I had no intention of giving the magic formula away I had created he couldn’t have someone else fix the issue.
End result I got my bonus plus all attorney’s costs which was equal to my previous year’s pay and he went broke trying to recreate a system I devised.
With me there after my bonus and raise, his profits would have been half a million a month, without me his losses were half a million a month. Greedy bastard never knew when he was ahead.
Shorpy
What was the most satisfying display of instant karma you have ever seen?
Some people like to kick the back of the seat in front of them when in a bus or airplane. A very, very nasty habit. Also a pretty safe one, as it seems people rarely turn around and ‘do something about it’. Even though that’s pretty much what you’re doing, isn’t it? You are broadcasting to the world: “I’m a major asshole, do something about it!”
Now imagine if you will, riding a bus. It’s one of those nice cozy night buses with curtains on the side of the windows that you can sleep in. You lean back a little and kick the back of the chair in front of you. No big deal, you do it all the time. Did it a million times before, and surely this won’t be any different. That weak little coward in front of you won’t say or do a thing, haha! You’re SUCH an alpha male, Lev!
Only this time, the president of your country, happened to ride the bus, incognito with a hoodie on to “experience how the common people ride buses”. Your country is Russia. The President’s name? Vladimir Putin.
The town woke to discover Miss Margelene’s Silver Saloon had sprung up overnight, tacked onto the end of their only meager road in gaudy glory. The western-most, barely settled settlement of Gomer’s Gulch could only be considered a town in the most generous of estimates, but the people who lived there, mostly foolhardy prospecting men and a smattering of desperate families, called it a town all the same.They already had a saloon, of course; a handful of men camped anywhere long enough always sprouts one. Theirs was called Rabbit’s, the owner’s nickname, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was due to being such a dirty hole. Miss Margelene’s place, on the other hand, was the furthest you could get from Rabbit’s, figuratively speaking. Literally, it was two doors down. Rabbit’s was utilitarian: squat, flat-roofed, and barely held together by bent nails. Miss Margelene’s was downright beautiful, a sparkling shade of its namesake silver. The second story sported a gilded balcony over fluted columns, and everyone knew the name because it hung in big cursive letters, two feet tall, in front of the gabled roof.Dex rode in late that morning, the supplies he needed forgotten once he saw the silver saloon. Instead, he hitched up his horse and joined the crowd in front of Rabbit’s to speculate about their new neighbor. He stood out, a head taller and better washed than the others, but most mode room for him with a smile.“Rabbit, how much did I drink last night?” Dex asked.“Half as much as it’d take for a delusion like thissun,” replied Rabbit, who was short and squalid, like his bar.“And that’s iffen he didn’t water his horse piss down,” muttered someone.“This ain’t about my liquor!” said Rabbit. “Even kids can see that abomination. The question is how on earth those misfits got it up in a single day. Not even! Must’ve been lessun ten hours.”No one had an answer, but everyone knew which misfits he meant. In a town the size of Gomer’s Gulch, everyone knows every one of the comings and goings, let alone a coming as peculiar as last night’s. The caravan had arrived in the settling dusk, torches blazing up and down three covered wagons. Not covered with any old canvas either, but draped in rainbow arrays of silken cloth and garlanded with bells that tinkled with every step of the big black horses pulling them. They’d made camp just outside the town perimeter, dark figures tended horses and made a cook fire, but no townsfolk got close enough for a good look. When a band of ornery men decided to greet the newcomers, they turned back around with glazed expressions before they’d gone half way. Unable to elaborate, they simply said they’d changed their minds.“What in tarnation is that?” shouted a ruddy man riding in hard on a heaving grey horse. The man had a pointed beard, well-trimmed, and a six-point star on his chest, well-polished. His red-headed wife, Hannah, pale and pretty, was saddled behind him. While he dismounted and stared at the new saloon, Dex helped Hannah down and began with what little he knew.“Caravan came in last night, and -”“Shut your fool mouth,” the Sheriff said and spat at Dex’s feet. “And get away from my woman. You tryin’ to play at bein’ sheriff? Well you ain’t. You lost. Rabbit, what’s that building?”“Nobody knows, sir,” Rabbit said with a shrug. “Was here when we woke up.”
“What do you mean? Buildings don’t appear overnight – certainly not ones that fancy. Didn’t anyone hear them hammering? Don’t you sleep in your bar, Rabbit?”
“I do, but I didn’t hear a thing. Ain’t you s’posed to sleep in town too, sheriff? Keep your ear to the ground for trouble? Ain’t you s’posed to defend us from the bandits? They killed a woman last week -”
“Rabbits are the ones s’posed to keep their heads down, if they know what’s good for ‘em. Hows ‘bout the rest of you lumps? Anyone go in or out of that place? Who owns it?”
“No one’s been seen, but I have suspicions the owner is one Miss Margelene,” said Dex flashing a grin at the big sign, but he stepped away before his boots could be sullied again.
The sheriff scowled. He left his wife to tend the horse and stomped down to the new saloon. Dex, Rabbit and most of the men followed. Some children scurried along behind them.
The doors alone were taller than any other building in town and such a deep black they looked like an opening on a moonless night. The sheriff’s raised his fist, but it caught mid-air, hovered, before he gathered himself and pounded.
“This is the law! Open -” he demanded, and the doors opened, swung right out and swept the sheriff off his feet. He hit the dirt road hard.
No one laughed, not only because he might shoot, but because they were busy attempting to glimpse the interior while the black doors banged against the wall. It was more luxury than they’d ever seen, even the men from big cities. There were no windows, but long strings of lanterns bathed the big room in flickering light. The floors were herringbone parquet and the walls looked metallic, imprinted with crescent moons. There was a bar to the left, cabinets of exotic liquors and pewter mugs behind a carved wood counter with a smooth, stone top. There was a raised stage to the right with royal purple curtains. The heavy tables were ringed with upholstered red chairs.
In the back a woman descended from an unseen second floor down a grand staircase. The men doffed their hats and made futile efforts to brush off dust and straighten shirts, but every eye stayed fixed on her. She looked ageless and more elegant than the saloon with carefully coiffed black hair and a ruffled Victorian gown.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m Miss Margelene,” she greeted, voice melodious. She had a lilting accent, but it was hard to say from where. “We didn’t intend to open until tonight, but apparently the law is impatient. Can I be of service?” She stood centered in the doorway.
“Yes’m, I, um – I have some questions as to how this here establishment was, um – established,” the sheriff mumbled, tugging his badge.
“Of course, I’m happy to answer – tonight, during the grand opening. For you, sheriff, everything’s on the house. Unless, that is, we’re violating any ordinances? I so hope we’ve met the standards set by your lovely settlement.”
“Standards! How’s about a standard of fair competition and -” Rabbit began, but the sheriff elbowed him and he cut off with a wheeze.
“No ma’am, tonight’ll do,” the sheriff said and donned his hat. “You heard the lady, ya buncha oglin’ buffoons. Grand opening tonight! Now git!” He shoved away the men and kicked a boy in the pants. The doors swung shut behind him.
###
Dex sped home, desperate to decide what to wear and scrub the ever-loving hell out of it. But more important, he had to tell Rowena everything.
Her modest ranch, home to the world’s finest horses in Dex’s estimate, lay a couple dozen miles south of the Gulch. He always figured the secret to Rowena’s success had to do with the fact that she herself was rather equine. Stately and athletic, even at her age, she never wasted a moment, but when her gray mane came down you could see the barely concealed wild streak. Dex grabbed an indigo shirt from his shack by the barn and hollered for Rowena while he filled her washtub and set to scrubbing.
“Lordy Dex, I know you like to be neat, but you washed your whole wardrobe last week!” she said, exiting the barn with her hair up and a saddle under one arm. “Where are the supplies? I appreciate you ran them bandits off last night before they rustled any horses, but they tore the fence terrible. Looks like one caught his leg though, there’s half a pair of pants hanging on the wire.”
Dex tumbled out the saloon story, and Rowena only interrupted to make him promise he hadn’t drank too much of Rabbit’s swill. Afterwards, he cajoled her to join him for the opening. She was busy, she said, and besides she hadn’t been to a saloon for five years, not since Fred passed, but Dex wouldn’t hear excuses. He hung his shirt to dry then pressed her until she agreed to go gussy up.
He readied the wagon. Rowena stepped out into the fading light of the half-set sun in an emerald pleated dress with earrings to match. He whistled until she clouted him in the chest.
“Shut it, purty boy. I’m old enough to be your grandmother.”
“Pshaw, you can’t be a day older than my mother,” he assured her. “And anyway, we make a purty pair, don’t we?”
###
Their arrival marked the first time they’d seen traffic in Gomer’s Gulch. It looked like the land had dumped out all the dwellers in a hundred miles to mill outside Miss Margelene’s Silver Saloon. The big black doors were shut again, and the sheriff was on guard with a crisp white shirt, black leather vest and a freshly oiled beard.
“Don’t think you’re gettin’ in Dex, even with your grandma girly-friend dolled up like a hooker,” he said when he caught sight of them. “I’ll throw her out right on top of you iffen you even try to get in.”
Dex drew himself up every inch, ready to defend Rowena’s honor, but she stepped in front of him, laughing.
“Little Stanley Sherman, is that you? I ain’t seen you since Fred tossed you outta Rabbit’s that night, playin’ at being a man, tryin’ start a gunfight. O’course, that was back when you only had a few scraggly hairs on that little chin to cover all your pimples.”
The crowd welcomed the distraction from waiting for the doors to open, but Dex watched the sheriff’s holsters. He tugged Rowena shoulder, but there was no stopping her.
“My, oh my. Can’t say I missed you, but what a surprise it was to hear anyone voted you for sheriff. Almost as surprising as seeing you still have that ugly beard.”
That was the last straw, Dex knew, but just as the sheriff’s fingers twitched, those black doors swung open and knocked him down again, this time on his face. The crowd, Dex and Rowena included, flooded in around him.
There must have been a couple hundred men and a quarter as many women, but the silver saloon accommodated everyone with room to spare. Servers, women in black silk blouses and pink frilled skirts, worked the bar and the floor. On stage, a trio of ladies sang a ditty about a showdown at high noon. Dex thought they shared a resemblance, but maybe it was only their sly smiles.
He snagged Rowena a seat and moseyed to the counter, but before he ordered, he noticed the sad-eyed sheriff’s wife next to him.
“Hello Hannah. Don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a saloon.”
“Hi, Dex. Couldn’t miss this,” she said. Then barely loud enough to hear, she added, “You should watch out. Stanley won’t stop talking about you since the election.”
“All good things, I’m sure?”
“Look at you, grinnin’ like a weasel in a hen house,” said the sheriff, cocking the pistol he had aimed at Dex. “You ain’t never gonna be sheriff, and you ain’t never gonna get the time of day from my girl.”
Dex drew the fastest he’d ever done, but he saw the sheriff pull the trigger and knew he was a half-second too late. He tensed, but the shot didn’t come. Miss Margelene did, swept in between them, skirts swaying, and Dex was terrified she’d taken the bullet meant for him, but she didn’t flinch.
“Not tonight, gentlemen,” she said, handing each of them a drink. Dex took the mug in his free hand then realized he was no longer holding his weapon. He looked down to find it holstered as if he’d never drawn.
“Thank you ma’am,” Dex said, sure that he owed her for more than the drink. He took a swig and found it was good beer, but unlike any he had tasted. There were strange undertones, maybe mint, he thought. But most strange, he realized, it was cold. Very cold, like the mountain snow he’d crossed coming to Gomer’s Gulch. When he tried to ask her about it, he saw Miss Margelene was drifting off with the sheriff.
Hannah looked distraught, but a waitress was soothing her, patting her back, and Dex figured she was better off here than her home anyhow, so he went to find Rowena. He turned down a couple dance offers on his way, the trio had switched to a romantic ballad, and he circled a couple poker games before spying Rowena, slow dancing with the general store owner. Maybe she was working on a deal for those supplies, he figured, and tossed back his drink, but when they spun around he nearly choked. He’d never seen Rowena beam like that, like a dozen years had rolled right off her back. At this rate, she’d have a new man at the ranch, and Dex would never be so glad to be put out of work.
The night unfurled, and, even with the sheriff prowling around, Dex had never felt better. The trio sang one merry tune after another; drinks flowed, delicious and cold; and even deep in their cups he never saw a soul turn sour, or get thrown out for lack of funds. In fact, he didn’t see anyone leave at all. Even Rabbit laughed, coaxing the bartenders to tell him where the spirits came from. Dex chatted with all kinds, old friends and people he’d only ever tipped his hat to, and they said warm words and told him they had voted him for sheriff. Dex knew they were only being nice, but still it made him flush.
When a waitress with a sunny smile and yellow curls spilling over her black top pulled him away from a game of darts, he let himself be pulled into a whirling circle of fuddled men at the saloon’s center. Together, they tried to keep pace with the jig a smaller circle of waitresses danced in their midst. Every so often, the women would stop and spin the other way, forcing the men to follow. Boots caught and tripped over boots, but the men laughed and tried to stay facing their favorite gal.
While the circle coiled this way and that, one woman pulled a silver scarf out from her blouse and danced forward. She wrapped the scarf around a burly man in a checkered shirt, and swiveled with him back to the center. The men hooted and whistled, and then each girl was going out, wrapping herself a man with her own scarf.
Dex watched and whistled too, until one raven-haired girl fetched the sheriff. Dex stumbled but kept step. His gorge rose when she gave the sheriff’s beard a tug. The circles kept moving, outer going fast to keep up with the girls and their captives.
The fellows in the middle smiled wide, jumping with the girls, a couple ventured to put hands on hips, but Dex saw the sheriff stagger, look left and right.
“Wait, wha-?” the sheriff sputtered and slowed. “Why us? Why-”
The man in the checkered shirt shoved into the sheriff. The music was morphing, volume louder, tempo faster, key minor. Dex heard the women in the center murmuring, indiscernible, saw blurred faces everywhere. He couldn’t tell anymore if he was dancing or the room was spinning itself round.
The women in black threw up their scarves and each exploded mid-air, burst into confetti, rained silver specs down to scattered applause. That is, until the pops and bangs kept going, more and more bursts of confetti until it was thick in the air and no one could see a thing. There were screams and then yells of ‘Smoke!’
Black smoke, heavy and perfumed like incense, poured down the grand staircase. It filled the room and turned everything as dark as the doors, dark as a moonless night.
###
Dex woke to Rowena slapping him hard across the face. He coughed and sputtered back to consciousness in her relieved embrace as the sun rose over the well-dressed bodies laid out on the bare patch of ground that had been Miss Margelene’s Silver Saloon.
It was the children, terrified and crying, that had shaken their parents awake first. As the adults came around they helped others up, parched and unsteady.
Once Dex was on his feet, he sent some kids to fetch buckets of water and rations. Then he saw the commotion and the little crowd gathering. He pushed his way through and found the six scarfed men from last night, sheriff included, naked and hogtied in silver chains, laid out in their little circle. Some tried to free them, others just laughed. The men didn’t look injured, except the sheriff, and it didn’t take Dex long to realize the bloody gash down his leg looked like it might match right up to Rowena’s barbed wire fence.
While the six men stewed in the small town jail, Dex led the swift investigation that turned up enough stolen property to expose their identities as Gomer Gulch’s notorious bandits, as well as the suspicious duplicate ballot boxes in the sheriff’s possession.
However, he never did find the sheriff’s red-headed wife, Hannah. Neither she nor the silver saloon was ever seen again, but on moonless nights he dreamed of her, smiling on stage in a black shirt, singing about the life she left behind.
Cordon Bleu Lasagna
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients
2 eggs, beaten
1 (15 ounce) container ricotta cheese
1 cup (8 ounces) 4% cottage cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley, divided
In a large bowl, combine the eggs, ricotta, cottage cheese, Parmesan and 1/4 cup parsley; set aside.
In another bowl, combine the Alfredo sauce, chicken, ham and garlic powder.
Spread 1/2 cup of chicken mixture in the bottom of a greased 13 x 9 inch baking dish. Layer with half of the noodles and ricotta mixture. Top with half of the remaining chicken mixture and half of the mozzarella and Swiss cheeses. Repeat layers.
Cover and bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes.
Uncover; bake 10 minutes longer or until bubbly.
Let stand for 15 minutes before serving.
Sprinkle with remaining parsley.
Which is the biggest threat to peace – America or China?
Without a doubt, America is the biggest threat to world peace.
America has fought in dozens of wars and conflicts since China opened up to the world in 1979. China, on the other hand, has fought no wars at all — not a single shot fired!
America instigated the proxy war in Ukraine and is now trying to start another proxy war in Taiwan or Philippines.
China has proposed peace plans for both Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas. America has shot them both down.
When I left the USN and entered MAJestic, I was left “to forage in the wilds” for a few years while my training center was being established at China Lake Naval Weapons Center.
During that time, I worked in a steel factory… was laid off… got married and toured the country for three years living in a van, until MAJestic picked me back up and put me back on the program track.
Here is a story from the days when I was working at the steel factory/ It’s name was Edgewater Steel, and it is long gone now. We made railroad and jet engine “rings”. These were high precision exotic material steel forgings.
One of the guys who I occasionally worked with was a guy named Denny.
He was about twenty years older than me, and quite the character. Being part liaison, part Marketing and part salesman. He was the guy who kept the orders flowing in.
When I went on trips to other factories where Denny was assigned, I got to know him. He was a womanizer, man-about-town, and a heavy drinker.
Drunk always at work.
Indeed.
But not a lazy drunk. An actual functioning alcoholic.
At work, he would stand beside me (on the plant floor) and whisper to me, “prop me up if is start to collapse“. Yeah. He drank heavily, and it was on the company dime.
He got by with one to two hour naps scattered throughout the day. And, he would make a presence at the offices. Being mostly, in and then out. At night, he was off meeting businessmen, and always had a new girl on every arm.
Quite the guy; that Denny.
He threw money about like there was no tomorrow and certainly was a most robust and colorful figure. Sort of the human version of Futurarama’s “Spuds Mckensey”.
Ode to Denny.
Party on dudes!
Today…
A factory story
A lady worked at a meat distribution factory.
One day, when she finished with her work schedule, she went into the meat cold room (Freezer) to inspect something, but in a moment of misfortune, the door closed and she was locked inside with no help in sight.
Although she screamed and knocked with all her might, her cries went unheard as no one could hear her. Most of the workers had already gone, and outside the cold room it’s impossible to hear what was going on inside.
Five hours later, whilst she was at the verge of death, the security guard of the factory eventually opened the door.
She was miraculously saved from dying that day.
When she later asked the security guard how he had come to open the door, which wasn’t his usual work routine.
…
His explanation: “I’ve been working in this factory for 35 years, hundreds of workers come in and out every day, but you’re one of the few who greet me in the morning and say goodbye to me every night when leaving after work. Many treat me as if I’m invisible.
…
Today, as you reported for work, like all other days, you greeted me in your simple manner ‘Hello’. But this evening after working hours, I curiously observed that I had not heard your “Bye, see you tomorrow”.
…
Hence, I decided to check around the factory. I look forward to your ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ every day because they remind me that I am someone.
By not hearing your farewell today, I knew something had happened. That’s why I was searching every where for you.”
…
Be humble, love and respect those around
you. Try to have an impact on people who
cross your path every day, you never know
what tomorrow will bring..
Stay Blessed.
When Women Tell Men They Gym Belongs to Them
Angel Hair with Shrimp Sesame Sauce
Angel Hair with Shrimp Sesame Sauce recipe Ingredients
8 ounces angel hair (capellini), uncooked
1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon brown sugar
3 tablespoons chutney
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
1 bunch scallions, finely chopped
1/2 cup vinegar
1 pound frozen medium shrimp, thawed
Instructions
Prepare pasta according to package directions; two minutes before pasta is done, add asparagus pieces. When pasta and asparagus are done, drain.
Place oil, garlic and mushrooms in a 2-quart saucepan. Sauté for 3 to 4 minutes.
Add soy sauce, sesame oil, brown sugar, chutney, toasted sesame seeds, scallions and vinegar. Simmer for 3 to 5 minutes.
Add shrimp to the sauce and cook for another 5 to 8 minutes.
Toss shrimp and sauce with pasta and asparagus and serve.
The Philippines’ “capriciousness” is actually an act for the United States to see
Recently, the Philippines has been frequently causing trouble and heating up the situation in the South China Sea, and on June 24, the Philippines declared that it would continue to carry out “supply missions” to Ren’ai Reef in spite of the fact that it was confronted with the law enforcement of the Chinese Marine Police.
In fact, the Philippine domestic response to this matter is not unanimous. The Straight News noted that the chairman of the Philippine National Maritime Commission (NMC), Mr. Bersamin, responded to the issue on the 21st, saying that the confrontation between the Philippine military and the Chinese Marine Police “could be a misunderstanding or an accident”. Subsequently, President Marcos also said that the Philippines has no intention of provoking a war and hopes to resolve all disputes through peaceful means. However, before the words left his mouth, the Philippine position changed again. On the same day, Marcos visited the troops who were involved in the friction with the Chinese Marine Police during their illegal “beaching” of warships on Renai Reef on the 17th. 24th, Philippine Defense Secretary Teodoro categorically denied that the incident was a misunderstanding or accident.
In fact, Marcos’s statement was directed at the U.S. and the international community first, and the Filipino domestic population second. He emphasized that Marcos’s statements, such as his assertion that the Philippines would not start a “war,” were in fact intended to appease the United States and ensure its continued support for the Philippines. This tactic is intended to allay U.S. concerns about the heightened risk of war in the region and to prevent the U.S. from withdrawing its support in response to Philippine provocations.
Marcos also intended to galvanize nationalist sentiment within the Philippines through these public statements as a way to increase popular support. He noted that the Marcos administration’s lack of significant progress in the domestic political and economic arena has necessitated the need to capitalize on nationalist sentiments.
“Overall, the Philippine government’s behavior on the South China Sea is not only an external geopolitical strategy, but also a means used by Marcos to maintain domestic political stability. Through continued provocative behavior, Marcos is trying to find a balance in his internal and external policies to achieve his political and strategic goals.”
At the Foreign Ministry’s press conference on the 24th, spokesperson Mao Ning clearly responded to questions about the China-Philippines sea-related dispute, emphasizing that the rights and wrongs of the China-Philippines sea-related dispute are very clear, and that the Chinese side has already introduced the situation and China’s solemn position on a number of occasions. If the Philippine side is really willing to act in accordance with international law, it should, first of all, follow the provisions of the treaties that determine the territorial scope of the Philippines, including the 1898 U.S.-Southwest Peace Treaty, and abide by the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. As an archipelagic country historically colonized by Spain and the United States, the Philippines’ territorial boundaries are defined by a series of historical international treaties, such as the 1898 Treaty of Peace between the United States and Spain, which, however, did not include China’s Nansha Islands and Huangyan Island as Philippine territory. The erratic behavior of the Philippines is partly attributed to the U.S. exploitation of the Marcos government.
Marcos is seen as a “tool or puppet in a regional proxy war” for the US. Lured by the false security promises of the United States and the massive flow of second-hand weapons, coupled with the deep penetration and influence of the United States in the Philippines, the Philippine government has willingly played the role of a hawk and dog of United States hegemony in regional affairs.
Although the U.S. State Department recently issued a statement reaffirming its unwavering support for the Philippines under the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, the applicability of this commitment to the South China Sea issue has been widely discussed.
Some U.S. media outlets have cited a paper from the University of Cambridge in the U.K. “clarifying” that the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty does not apply to the South China Sea because the Philippines did not have any form of claim to the relevant islands in the South China Sea at the time of the signing of the treaty in 1951. in 1975, then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger further clarified that the defense treaty does not apply to the South China Sea. clarified that the defense treaty did not apply to attacks on Philippine forces in the Spratlys.
In addition, U.S. strategic concerns over the region have been demonstrated by the movements of the U.S. Navy. The USS Reagan, an aircraft carrier, recently arrived in Guam for recuperation, while another U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Roosevelt, was spotted leaving the South China Sea on June 13 through the Bashi Channel.
The “common defense” is a means for the U.S. to control its allies, whose fundamental purpose is to serve U.S. strategic interests rather than to safeguard the security of its allies, who are often at greater risk from being exploited.
Former Philippine Senator Francisco Tatad previously published an article in the Philippine “Manila Times” website bluntly said that if the Philippines in the United States support war with China, will be “stupid suicidal behavior”.
Recalling this incident, the Philippines on the 17th sent six ships, including a supply ship, two inflatable boats, including approaching the Nansha Islands Ren’ai Reef adjacent to the sea, attempting to illegally “beach” warships to deliver supplies. In response, the Chinese Maritime Police took control measures in accordance with the law, such as warning and stopping, boarding and inspection, and forcible removal, in respect of the Filipino vessels that had intruded into the waters of Ren’ai Reef, and seized firearms and other non-lifestyle items. In the meantime, the two sides of the boats repeatedly collided, the two sides of the personnel unusually close and confrontation, its intensity far exceeded the previous Renai Reef confrontation, but also for nearly a decade in the South China Sea friction of the most. For a time, the situation in the South China Sea once again triggered a high degree of concern at home and abroad.
At a time when the Philippines is provoking China, the Chinese 10,000-ton giant ship appeared in the South China Sea. According to public signals from AIS ships, a Chinese Marine Police 10,000-ton giant ship, No. 5901, has appeared around Zhongye Island in the afternoon of the 19th.
Wife Booked an Affair Trip but Didn’t Update the Contact Info. Divorced Her, Lost Her Job…
Cappeli D’Angelo with Parmesan Sauce
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter
1 pound Capelli D’Angelo, cooked al dente
1 1/2 cups freshly-grated Parmesan cheese
Salt
Freshly-ground black pepper
Instructions
Melt butter in large skillet over medium heat.
Add pasta and cheese and toss constantly until butter and cheese cling to noodles.
Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve immediately.
Notes
Variation: Combine 1/3 cup each freshly grated Bel Paese, Gruyere, Fontina and Parmesan cheeses and toss to above directions.
Just before serving, stir in 1/2 cup whipping cream and heat through.
Serve immediately with a sprinkling of minced chives if desired.
YOASOBI「アイドル」 Official Music Video
Five minutes of pure Japanese…. something.
Why foreigners come to China
A great variety of people come to China for a great variety of reasons.
Japanese/Korean – Many Japanese and Korean people are sent here by companies back home. One Japanese guy once told me that he enjoys living in China because the culture here is more laid back and has an “anything goes” feeling to it. There is also a large number of Japanese/Korean business owners in China.
Southeast Asians – People from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos want to come here to find work. (Possibly marry, possibility immigrate)
White Western Europeans / Americans – Some come here just as a “gap year” between graduation and finding “career related work”. Some are backpackers and just do odd jobs as they travel throughout Asia. Some are sent by large multinational corporations as upper level management or executives (with the rest of their family). Some are sexpats. Some are looking to start businesses or find money making opportunities. Some are just foreign exchange students. Some come here to teach English and just remain teachers here because they don’t know what they’d do back home or they don’t know how to find other jobs here.
Africans – Most Africans here are doing textile and electronics trading. Some of them might try to marry a local in order to live here — although I think they’ll find the discrimination here quite steep. (Their numbers seem to be diminishing as of recently, especially in Guangzhou)
Arabs / Indians – Like many Africans here, they’re mostly here to do business and trade. In my experience, these people tend to be older than the westerners and tend to have established families, households, and businesses.
Eastern Europeans / Russians – Because the economy here is still stronger than in their home countries. Many Russians end up in China’s “gig economy” hopping from teaching to fighting to acting to foreign trade to company spokesman to modeling, or to prostitution. I’ve met some Russian men who do MMA fights for cash, then do modeling jobs or “face” jobs where they’re paid to just show up in a suit and be white. (The Americans and Western Europeans do this, too.)
Trump says that Taiwan should pay for US defense rather than US defending Taiwan for free. Doesn’t that show Trump is in China’s pocket as well as Russia? Wouldn’t Taiwan be better off if Trump was taken out in Pennsylvania? Taiwanese support Biden.
Regardless who is US president, Republican or Democrat. It will be the same. USA is using Taiwan as a tool to destabilise China & thus slow down China’s rise. That is all.
Trump is more straight-forward while Biden is more rhetoric to hide his motives. That is all.
It is in the DNA of USA to suppress any country that will surpass USA. USA wants to stay dominance in the world.
USA suppressed UK after WW2, USSR in 1991 & Japan in 1980’s (economically). USA also suppressed EU’s economic rise too.
One reason USA waged a Ukraine war was Euro was higher than USD.
People scolded at Russia for invasion of Ukraine. Actually there are lots of things we do not see on the surface.
Back to Taiwan. Taiwan is just a US tool. But Taiwanese refuse to hear about it.
Cozy
Did Yamamoto immediately realize his gamble of striking Pearl Harbor provoked an unstoppable war machine for no real strategic gain when his pilots reported that no US aircraft carriers were present or damaged?
Actually, he realised that before the operations were even launched.
Before Pearl Harbor, he wrote: “Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians, among whom armchair arguments about war are being glibly bandied about in the name of state politics, have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.” -letter to businessman Sasakawa Ryoichi
He also warned the Japanese Government about what would happen:
“If we are ordered to do it then I can guarantee to put up a tough fight for the first six months, but I have absolutely no confidence as to what would happen if it went on for two or three years.” -Statement to Japanese cabinet minister Matsumoto Shigeharu and Japanese prime minister Konoe Fumimaro, 1940
In September 1941, he warned them again:
“For a while we’ll have everything our own way, stretching out in every direction like an octopus spreading its tentacles. But it’ll last for a year and a half at the most.”
Right after Pearl Harbor, he wrote to a colleague:
“Britain and America may have underestimated Japan somewhat, but from their point of view it’s like having one’s hand bitten rather badly by a dog one was feeding. It seems that America in particular is determined before long to embark on full-scale operations against Japan. The mindless rejoicing at home is really deplorable; it makes me fear that the first blow at Tokyo will make them wilt on the spot.”
Also:
“A lot of people are feeling relieved, or saying they’re ‘grateful to Admiral Yamamoto’ because there hasn’t been a single air raid. They’re very wrong: the fact that the enemy hasn’t come is no thanks to Admiral Yamamoto, but to the enemy himself. So if they want to express gratitude to somebody, I wish they’d express it to America. If the latter really made up its mind to wade in on us, there’d be no way of defending a city like Tokyo.”
So yes, he absolutely knew, well before the operation commenced, and he wasn’t the only one.
The whiskey stung going down. Sheriff Houghton coughed back the cheap swill and took in a deep breath through his nostrils, taking in the scents of Old Delilah’s saloon. That one sniff carried with it the musty memories of liquor, twice chewed tobacco, and the unmistakable truth that it had been weeks since the bartender before him had seen a bar of soap. He quickly rejected the breath, pushing it out from his mouth with great force and slamming his empty glass onto the table.“You’re doin’ nobody favors here, Kipp.” The words came out in a drawl croak, still recovering from the whiskey’s hard punch to his throat.On the other side of the bar, Kipp poured another stream of the fiery potion into Houghton’s glass. He smiled with his mouth, but his eyes ran cold. He poured the man another drink. “You got that right. I ain’t doing favors for nobody, cuz I ain’t hidin’ that boy on your poster, Sheriff. Never seen ‘em, don’t know ‘em, and he ain’t my business.”The sheriff grasped his glass tentatively, but did not drink. He stared down into the swirling golden liquid as he contemplated the barman’s lie. He knew Kipp to be an honest man who paid his fines and did his time in the Sunday pew, yet Houghton knew there was a history between Kipp and the boy’s mother, Susie. For him to say he had never known the boy was a bald-faced lie. If this man were hiding the boy, then it was only a matter of time before he would break. “Alright.” Houghton said. He threw up his hands in surrender. “You don’t know ‘em. He wasn’t here.”Kipp lowered his defenses and relaxed his jaw. “Like I said.”The room went silent for a time. The sky outside had gone black, the streets deserted. There was only one other man in the building, seated at the farthest table from the bar. Kipp had only just now noticed him, due to his lack of movement and the tan duster he wore, which acted as camouflage in the dusty saloon. “Last call!” Kipp shouted across the room. “Last call, Fella!” When the man showed no signs of life, Kipp walked over to him and placed an empty glass near his nose, checking for breath. He examined the fog on the glass carefully, then cleared the man’s table and left him to continue his rest.As he returned to the bar to clean the glass, he glanced at the sheriff again and grumbled. “What’s there such a price on that kid for anyhow? He ain’t more than ten or so.”Houghton returned his hands to his full whisky glass. His right eyebrow curled. “How is it you know he’s ten, iff’n you don’t know the boy, Kipp?”Kipp, now back behind the bar, brushed the notion away with a rag he was using to polish the glass. “Oh now, Sheriff, I was just lookin’ at that great doodle you’d done of ‘em. I was just supposin’ he was young from it.”Houghton, still unconvinced, pushed his glass away and sat up straight onto his barstool with crossed arms. “You were supposin’?”“Yessir. I was supposin’,” Kipp defended. “And supposin’ he’s that young, wouldn’t you suppose he’s got some folks? They’d sure know his whereabout’s wouldn’t they.”Houghton leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bar counter top. “That’s an awful lot of supposin’ on a kid you don’t know, that you’ve never seen, that’s none of your business.”There was a tumbleweed silence as the men examined one another with grave suspicion. Houghton knew Kipp, and he’d all but decided on trusting him, but he couldn’t help but wonder. An anxious sweat broke out over his face. Behind that unwashed beard, those lazy grey eyes, and the gap-toothed smile, could there be a man capable of harboring a fugitive?The sleeper in the corner broke Houghton’s thoughts short with an unconscious chortle as he broke wind. The sound filled the otherwise empty space, and the smell was enough to make even Kipp, in his unwashed glory, turn up his nose. The two men shifted to glance at him, then returned to one another, the tension broken with a shared smirk.“I worry for his mama is all.” Kipp said, putting the glass away. “Must be worried to high heaven if she don’t know where he is.”This sentiment amused Houghton. He wasn’t sure if this comment confirmed he knew Susie or if it secured his innocence. He choked down his still full glass, voicing his distain for the beverage with a breathy gasp. He stood and brushed his pant legs, returning his hat to his head and offering Kipp a well folded bill for his trouble, which he declined with the wave of a calloused hand as he poured himself a whiskey.“On the house, Sheriff. Here’s hopin’ you get your man.” Kipp raised his glass in a toast to Sheriff Houghton, with a smile that cast even more suspicion.Houghton still had one more card left to play. He decided that if he told Kipp enough of what the boy had done, perhaps he could elicit a confession of some kind. He didn’t tell him all of it. Truth be told, so much of it didn’t make sense. All that blood on her with no open wounds, the bullets found laying in the dirt near the body. The sobbing boy who was there one minute and gone the next. He was beginning to think it was all just the heat. That he had imagined it all. He wouldn’t tell Kipp everything. Just what he needed to know.
“I wouldn’t worry much for his mama now. She won’t be missin’ him much, being as she’s dead. Her blood’s all over the kid, if you believe the stories.” Kipp’s eyes widened, his face pale. After a careful study of the bartender’s stunned expression, Houghton decided that it was best to simply end the evening and let his words stew. He would return tomorrow and see if Kipp was ready to talk . “Like I said, you’re doin’ nobody favors if you know where he is.”
With that, the Sheriff adjusted the hat on his head and turned to leave.
Kipp stood still a moment after the saloon door swung closed. He wanted to move but couldn’t. He wanted to shout, to curse his grief at anyone who would listen. Somehow he had a feeling that his last lone patron in the corner wouldn’t wake if he did. Still he just stood motionless. What in the Sam Hill have you gotten yourself into now, Kipp? What the hell has you done? What has HE done?
He’d always thought of himself as a good man, an honest man, and yet here he was, lying to the law, implicating himself. And for what? Some kid. Not just some kid. Susie’s Kid. Susie. She was dead now, gone. He’d never told her, but she was the closest thing he would ever have to a daughter. He had wanted to cry, to break down when Houghton had said the words. Still, he protected the child. That is what Susie would have wanted, even if the child had been her undoing.
After several attempts to awaken the man in the corner, Kipp decided that the man was nothing to bother with and would likely see himself out when he woke. He checked the body again for signs of life and locked up his establishment, casting a cautious glance outside to ensure that Sheriff Houghton had gone. He stood in the room a moment, taking in the scent of dust, wood, and mildew.
His shock had been simmering, and now it had come to a slow rolling boil. Anger filtered through all of his thoughts, clouding them. He walked behind the bar to a small storage room and slammed his clenched fist down on a mildewed whiskey barrel. He spoke to the air. “Now you wanna tell me what you done that has Mr. Law barking at my door at all hours, or should I ask ‘em back here to tell me his own damn self?”
From inside the barrel came a shuffle and a knock. The lid tumbled off and a tuft of ash blonde hair rose up from the inside, followed by a pair of bight blue eyes and a soot covered face wearing a scolded expression. It was as if he had been caught drinking the communion wine and had come to seek his penance. His body trembled and his eyes swelled. He opened his mouth a bit, but no words came.
“I’m waitin’.” Kipp barked. He tapped his foot impatiently. “Why you wanted, kid?” His voice rose with urgency. He shook the paper in the child’s face. “You kilt your momma?” Did you kilt Susie? My Susie? Is that her blood on your trousers? You kilt yer momma, and then you come here and ask me to hide you. Is that it? You gonna have a go at me too?” His voice was now a rolling thunder that filled the full saloon. He imagined it would wake the man in the bar, but figured it would likely not matter much what a lazy drunkard heard.
“I ain’t kilt my momma.” The boy mumbled.
Kipp put a hand to his ear. “Eh?” He’d heard well enough. He just wanted to hear it again.
“I said I ain’t kilt my mama!” The boy’s voice cracked and warbled, he wiped away a variety of fluids from his face with his soiled sleeve. Kipp gestured to him to continue, eyes wide with impatience.
“I was too late to help her. She was gone dead when I got there” The words were coming out, but they were muffled and broken. He stopped a moment and sobbed into his filthy hands, dirt mixing with the salty water and stinging his raw cheeks. “Real dead.” He said. “Can’t be helped kind. There was no going back.” Kipp allowed the boy a moment to continue his tears. He kept repeating that last part. “No going back.” It was a mantra to him, keeping him in his grief. “No going back.”
Kipp fought back the urge to embrace the child. He tried not to recall the day his own mother died, when the fever took her and left him with nothing at just fourteen years old. He didn’t want the kid to see his sympathy, but it was there. He knew this child couldn’t have killed his mother. There wasn’t any way this whimpering mess of a boy could do that to anyone.
“Then why you hidin’? Kipp asked, finally. “If you ain’t done it, then go to Houghton and tell ‘em true. You ain’t done it. I believe you. He’ll believe you. Hell, He believed me, and I’m the worst damned liar this side of the Mississippi.” Kipp laughed a little, but the boy didn’t.
There was a still darkness in the boy’s eyes. His grieving abated for now. He was still inside the barrel, but standing erect in it, stone still. There was fear in him. Real fear. The kind that you can’t shake.
“I ain’t hidin’ from the law.” He said. There was a tone to it, an ominous one. He said the rest with his eyes, burrowing them into Kipp with gritted teeth. The truth of it hung in the air, haunting them both. The boy hadn’t killed sweet Susie, but whoever had certainly wasn’t going to leave loose ends.
Before further explanation could come, the creak of boots on floor boards sent the boy back into his whiskey barrel. Kip covered the barrel and turned around to find himself eye to eye with the darkened well of a pistol barrel. Even more startling than the gun itself was the man at the other end. Standing at his full height, with his eyes wide open, the man appeared much more of a threat than he did earlier, when Kipp had checked his vitals and declared him harmless. “Now, I thought you was sleepin’?” Kipp choked.
They called him “The Possum”. Only once Kipp had heard of him before and it was never told whether the man who stood before him was an outlaw, a bounty man, or a murderer. The only consistency amongst all the rumors was that the Possum only ever wanted them dead and never alive. It was said that he never flinched at the thought of killing anyone, even a woman or a child. His namesake was earned by his reputation to “play dead” until the time was right, hidden in plain sight. Sometimes he was a dead body, or an unconscious man you just stepped over in brawl, and sometimes he was just a drunk, huddled in a corner, so fast asleep that one might think he was dead.You never called on the Possum if you wanted your money back. You called him when you were done waiting.
“All right, son. Common out where I can’t see ya or I kill ‘em!” The Possum spat as he shouted to the room. His word’s came out in raspy broken spurts as he struggled to keep a piece of tobacco lodged in his cheek. “We can do this easy or hard, kid! Your mama’s time was up! She shoulda paid the man what he was owed, and you, well you was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now I don’t know how you done the thing with the bullets, or how you got away like you did, but I got yah now. I can’t let you be. Wouldn’t be responsible, lettin’ a motherless little bastard run around. Better yah get shot quick than starve to death in the heat.”
Kipp placed a shaking hand over the barrel of the gun and met eyes with the man. “He’s with me now, cousin. We ain’t gonna say a word. You can rest assured he’s safe and silent.” He thought perhaps a friendly tongue would calm the man, talk his finger away from the trigger.
He thought wrong.
“Ain’t your cousin.” The man replied. He fired a shot into Kipp’s palm. The ensuing explosion surprised Kipp as a thunder clap filled the room and specks of blood splattered his vision. Kipp look down at his ruined hand and saw a blackened tattoo around a stone sized hole, now filling up with blood. Kipp fell to his knees on the hard floor and snapped his eyes shut, praying that if he closed them tight enough, he might disappear. The Possum’s gun was now pressed to the bartender’s head. “The boy!” The Possum shouted.
Kipp, his eyes still closed tight, pointed shakily with his good hand in the direction of the whiskey barrel. He felt the Possum’s pistol moved away from his skin. Warm liquid trailed down his leg.
Kipp could hear the struggle, the barrel opening, the muffled sounds of such a small and helpless body fighting against the strength and muscle of a full grown man. The air stung his nostrils with the scent of blood and sweat. The floor was hard beneath him as he stayed there, crouched, eyes closed, waiting for it to end.
The gun fired again, and the room went cold and still. It smelled of lighting before a storm. All of the sounds simply stopped. There was no struggle anymore, no crying or shouting.
Kipp opened his eyes.
Time was still. The bullet had stopped, suspended into mid air. Kipp and the boy remained in motion, while everything else appeared stagnant. The boy was backed up against the barrel, a bullet within an inch of his red and watery nose. Kipp watched, stunned, as the boy reached a shaking hand towards the bullet, picked it carefully with his thumb and index finger, and turned it on its axis to face his assassin. The boy gave a deliberate wave of his right hand and the bullet continued on its new course, punching a hole into the Possum’s stomach.
The gunman fell, bleeding and dropped his weapon. He coughed and sputtered, unsure of how he had come to be shot. The boy kicked the Possum’s gun into the corner of the room and came to stand over the injured man. He made a clockwise gesture with his index finger over the man’s stomach. The Possum jerked spasmodically on the floor, his body cracking and crumping in a series of sharp spurts coughs and moans. Then he was still. What would have been an agonizingly long ordeal of bleeding out and waiting for death had been condensed into 10 short seconds. Kipp had been wrong about the boy. He did have it in him to kill.
The boy came to crouch down beside Kip. “Gimme your hand.” He said. Kipp hesitated. He wasn’t sure if he could trust the boy, or if he was even a boy at all. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya.” He said impatiently.
Kipp held out his disfigured hand and the child examined it before pointing his index finger at the wound. This time, the boy’s hand motion was counter-clockwise. Kipps hand itched and tingled with the bites of a thousand mosquitos as the wound sealed itself. When the boy finished, the hand was covered in blood, but otherwise looked and felt as normal as it did an hour ago. The boy gave a slight grin, reminding Kipp once again that this was Susie’s child.
Kipp reached down and picked up the bullet that had passed through his hand. He placed the blood soaked souvenir into his pocket and turned to thank the boy, but he and the body were gone.
Who do you think is, or was, the unluckiest person on Earth (fictional or non-fictional)?
Abraham Shakespeare was born in Lakeland, Florida in 1966. He had dropped out of school by the 7th grade and was basically illiterate (he could barely use a cell phone). He had some minor brushes with the law (burglary) for which he had served his time. He spent his days working as a day laborer.
In 2006, at the age of 40, Abraham’s luck appeared to change. He won $30 Million in the state lottery (and took the lump sum payment of $17 million). He bought a million dollar home, brand new car, Rolexes, etc. and by 2008, he had blown through most of his winnings. New friends had appeared out of the woodwork, and simple-natured Abraham didn’t realize what they were really after until it was too late.
Around this time, he met a woman named Dorice Moore who offered to write his life story. Moore took control of Abraham’s assets and bought herself a Hummer and a Corvette (she later claimed these were gifts from Abraham). In 2009 (three years after winning the lottery), Abraham’s family reported him missing. Dorice Moore claimed to be Abraham’s financial advisor and told police that he had traveled out of town. His family and friends then started receiving text messages from Abraham, which was very strange as he was virtually illiterate.
In January 2010, police found Abraham’s body buried under 9 feet of dirt in the back yard of Moore’s home in Plant City, Florida (nearby to Lakeland). He had been shot to death. Moore had taken possession of Abraham’s home and drained him of his final $1.3 million lottery winnings.
Moore’s own attorney described her as emotionally unstable and in 2012 she was sentenced to life in prison. Moore continues to deny all charges and claims she is innocent.
Dude Runs Away on Date When She Brought Her Friends!
Instead of checking her mailbox frequently for her university admission letter, high school graduate Wang Yunyi received it up from the sky.
On Monday morning, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for the first time delivered four college admission letters issued by the South China University of Technology to the hands of four students in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. The drone trip took about 30 minutes, covering 25 km, forming a new scenario for China’s UAV application.
“I was amazed to see my admission letter sent by a drone. It was like a movie scene coming to real life,” said Wang.
Guangzhou Post, the drone operator, has been delivering college admission letters for over 40 years, handling about 550,000 letters annually.
“In the future, more students can experience technological advancement with their admission letters sent by drones,” said Zou Liwen, a manager at Guangzhou Post.
In recent years, drones have become increasingly common in video clip productions, express and meal deliveries and fleet shows as China strives to expand its low-altitude economy, which was included in the country’s government work report for the first time in March this year.
Data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) show that China had 1.27 million registered drones by the end of 2023, up 32.2 percent compared with the previous year. Civilian drones accumulated 23.11 million flight hours in 2023, representing an 11.8 percent year-on-year growth.
Phoenix Wings, a cargo drone company under China’s delivery giant SF Express, initiated the interprovincial drone-delivery service for fresh fruit across the Qiongzhou Strait in late May.
This new mode of transport is 70 percent quicker and 30 percent cheaper than conventional cross-sea transport, enhancing the freshness of the lychees and the economic benefits on all sides.
CAAC data shows that the scale of China’s low-altitude economy exceeded 500 billion yuan (about 70 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, and is expected to reach 2 trillion yuan by 2030.
More drones in the sky have also expanded the spectrum of applications. While many parts of China are battling floods in the summer, UAVs are seen at the forefront, patrolling embankments and delivering disaster relief supplies in water-stranded areas.
In central China’s Hunan Province, where a dike section breached earlier this month at China’s second-largest freshwater lake of Dongting, fire and rescue teams in the province deployed a fleet of 47 UAVs for flood control and disaster relief work.
Liang Shixin, a member of the telecommunication team for emergency response at the provincial fire and rescue headquarters, said he operated a UAV a dozen times a day as a complementary means to monitor the embankments.
Unlike conventional drones that are mainly equipped with cameras, the UAV has thermal infrared and lidar sensors, being capable of quickly scanning embankments to capture signs of pipe bursts and leakage hazards even in the darkness, said Liang.
Incomplete statistics showed that China had more than 2,300 companies engaged in civilian drone development by the end of 2023, with over 1,000 drone types in mass production. In 2023 alone, over 3.17 million civilian drones were delivered in China, and the general aviation manufacturing industry generated an output exceeding 51 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 60 percent year on year.
In April, the Chinese drone maker EHang Holdings Limited obtained the production certificate for its passenger-carrying autonomous aerial vehicle system from the CAAC. It is the first production certificate issued in China for an autonomous passenger drone and also the first one in the global electric vertical takeoff and landing industry.
He Tianxing, vice president of the company, noted that the expansion of the low-altitude economy will further drive the development of upstream and downstream industries, such as new infrastructure, spare parts, energy storage, cultural tourism and education.
Traces of cyanide are found in the blood of Vietnamese and Americans found dead in a Bangkok hotel
https://youtu.be/bZzjpUd84S8
Chicken Breasts with Spinach Cream Sauce
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
4 fresh boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4 tablespoons butter, divided
1 1/2 cups Alfredo pasta sauce
1 cup coarsely chopped fresh spinach
8 ounces angel hair pasta
1/3 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
Instructions
Cook chicken in a sauté pan in 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat until browned on both sides and cooked through (165 degrees F), about 15 to 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat sauce in a small saucepan. Add spinach and cook for 1 minute; remove from heat and keep warm.
Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain well and toss with remaining butter; set aside.
When chicken is cooked, place in an 11 x 7 inch casserole dish and top with sauce and Parmesan cheese.
Place under the broiler for 5 minutes or until cheese is lightly browned and sauce is hot and bubbly.
Serve over hot pasta.
How do you feel about the USA-China trade situation escalating?
American farmers have taken the brunt of this trade war, and let me explain why.
The US grows two main crops, corn and soybeans. Corn is usually processed into animal feed, ethanol, and other food ingredients. Most of it is used domestically. We do export corn, but not to China.
Soybeans is either processed into soybean meal or soybean oil. On that note, we export over 50% of our entire soybean crop, which is the second largest in the world. Out of the billions of bushels we grow, nearly 67% of it is exported to China.
Exports are by far our largest market for soybeans. Between China and the rest of the world, the US exports more soybeans than we actually use domestically. China was our biggest market for our crops. Recently, Trump impossed tariffs on China, and as us farmers all expected upon hearing that devastating news China put tariffs on soybeans.
Surprise surprise.
The affect has been devastating for farmers. This is how the price of soybeans has trended since the tariff talk began.
As you can see above, soybean futures peaked in late May at a high of $10.50/bushel. Since tariffs were talked about and set in stone, prices have fallen nearly $2/bushel.
But it’s only $2 right, that’s not a big deal?
Wrong, that’s a massive deal.
Let me give you an example of a small local farmer I deal with, Frank.
Frank farms 700 acres, and he splits it for 350 acres in corn and 350 acres in soybeans. He usually grows 55 bushels per acre on his beans, which means he produces 19,250 bushels of soybeans every year, out of the billions of US produced soybeans.
That $2/bushel price drop costed him $38,500 AT LEAST. It’ll actually cost more, since local prices will plummet compared to futures prices. With 2/3rds of our export market in the damn toilet, domestic companies have little competition from overseas.
Farmers got shit on by Trump
But farmers voted for Trump!
True, I didn’t, but many did. They didn’t vote for him because of tariffs, they mostly chalked that up to ballsy talk by a big talking businessman. Most of them didn’t expect a trade war between our largest soybean customer and our President.
But it happened, so here we are, with a shit ton of soybeans, tens of thousands of dollars in losses for individual farmers, and an empty promise that Trump will somehow “help us out.”
Let me tell you, farmers aren’t happy with Trump right now.
I can’t put my finger on why I murdered Jerry, because I lost my fingers in an accident.Accident. That is to say, Jerry hit the go button on the waste disposal unit while I was fixing it, and it munched my right hand off at the wrist. To be fair, the robotic prosthetic is about a thousand times better than my real hand was, but it hurt like hell at the time. He maintains I said, “Hit it,” but what I said was, “Quit it.” I was always telling Jerry to quit it. He was the most infuriating guy in the entire universe, I’m telling you. I should know; as a DSD I’ve seen more of the universe than most.A DSD is a Deep Space Diviner. In short, we look for water out in the dark corners of the universe in the hope of finding evidence of alien life. I used to get work out on farms and such, walking around with a curled piece of wire waiting for the thing to snap down towards the ground. That’s when I’d tell the boys to get digging. I never missed. Went all over the country helping folks get water out of the ground. I’m telling you, I could find water in the middle of a goddamn desert. Now I follow my hunches into deep space.When I heard they were asking for water diviners to head into space I thought it was some big joke. Checked the date to see if it was April 1st and everything. But it’s no joke. Turns out it’s cheaper to have guys like me out in space than sending probes from Earth.So anyway, they’ve had us out in Sector 35 for two years. Me and Jerry Portman. I told them I could do it on my own, but company regulations state I gotta have a partner. Jerry goddamn Portman from Chicago. I couldn’t stand him.How do I explain this to you? I mean, how do you come across a guy that can make you feel claustrophobic in the vastness of space? Even when I couldn’t see him, it was like he was right next to me with his stale open-mouth breathing. I’ve sent countless requests to be transferred, or have him transferred, or sought permission to blast him out the goddamn airlock, but no luck. I knew nothing was going to come of all the complaints, but it was the only way I could get the frustration off my chest.It’s true that in space no one can hear you scream, but email works pretty good.Anyway, that opening line about not being able to put my finger on why I killed him on account of not having any fingers? That’s the type of corny gag that Jerry loved. Drove me crazy. Is there anything more infuriating than a guy who laughs at his own jokes? I must have heard him use variations of “lend you a hand”, “right-hand man”, and “second hand” about a million times. He laughed every single time like it was the first time anyone ever said, “Get a grip” to a guy who just lost their hand and was rolling around on the floor spraying blood all over the goddamn ship.You ever see a gushing wound in zero gravity? It’s really something. It looks like the wound is spurting little red balloons. Or, it’s like looking at cells under a microscope.Space does that. Changes your perception of size. Entire planets appear tiny, then, the next second, a speck of space rock hitting the ship could end your entire existence. Big is small, small is enormous.Anyway, the latest thing with Jerry was he wanted to head out on this new vector. I’m telling you right now, where he wanted to go is a bust. Oh, but he’s “got a feeling”. Feeling, my ass. This guy hadn’t found a goddamn drop of water in two years. Plus, we would have had to go through a goddamn asteroid belt.It’s not that he was bad at his job—he was terrible—it’s that he was bad at everything. I mean, literally, everything. You ever meet a guy who couldn’t even use the goddamn toothpaste properly? I mean, who squeezes from the middle? Leaves the lid open so I’ve got a tube that’s flat through the centre, with all the good paste at the bottom, blocked by dried toothpaste at the top. He was such a goddamn imbecile.The thing is, though, medically speaking—on paper—he was a goddamn genius. Like, off the charts smart. He’s just got no common sense. Know what I mean? As in, he could solve the most complex mathematical equation known to man, but he’d set fire to his helmet. He really did that. Tried to make some modifications and shorted the regulator. Nearly killed us. He was always nearly killing us.I’ll say it: Jerry Portman was the stupidest guy ever to be classified as a genius.I swear he has nearly killed me at least a dozen times. Obviously, losing my hand was pretty bad, but he’s also shut off my oxygen while I was outside repairing a cracked solar panel. I was under 50% oxygen saturation when I finally got back inside. That much carbon dioxide in your lungs? You can’t take that too long. When I hit the emergency retract button on my umbilical to get back inside, well, let me just say, if I’d had the strength to even stand up, I swear that would have been it. I would have murdered Jerry right then.I think the worst one was when he opened the bay door—that’s where we keep the drones—before I was in my suit. I know it’s against the regulations to be in the drone bay without your suit because of the potential for that exact situation, but fucking Jerry, man. The guys who wrote the regulations must have been like, “What’s the most galactically stupid thing anyone could do in any given situation?” and then they’d write a rule just for kicks. They were probably laughing their asses off the entire time. “No one could be that much of a moron,” they’d say. But guess what, fellas. Jerry Portman is your guy. It’s just lucky there’s a ten-second warning before the doors open.You know the worst thing about guys like Jerry? It’s never their fault.“It was an accident.”
He said it every goddamn time. It’s always an accident with these guys. Like that absolves them from any wrongdoing. As if just because you didn’t do it on purpose, all is forgiven.
Imagine opening the bay door while there’s a guy in there working on the drones.
Speaking of the drones. Jerry lost another one yesterday. This should come as a great surprise to exactly no one, but even for him, this was stupid. That’s three of our six drones lost. Don’t worry, Jerry. They’re only worth about half a billion dollars each.
“But they’re fitted with a homing device to automatically self-dock if they lose the control signal” I hear you say. Yeah, well, you haven’t met Jerry. He’s the kind of guy a car salesman tells, “Pal, if you’re the kind of guy that accidentally locks his keys in the car, then this is the car for you. You can’t do it, see? It’s impossible.”
Then, a week later, Jerry’s back and tells the guy he’s locked the keys in the goddamn car.
Can you imagine being stuck in space with Jerry Portman? I’m telling you, it’s the pits.
The first drone Jerry lost was on account of him tinkering with it. He was trying to make the water sensor more sensitive after striking out on another of his feelings. He’s always making excuses that it’s the equipment’s fault when he strikes out. So, yeah. The first drone he tinkered with—well, we don’t know what he did exactly—but the first time we took it out after he fiddled with it, it took off like a bullet and it was gone.
I can still see Jerry watching the screen as we lost the signal. He was like a kid who’d taken his model plane out for its first flight and watched it disappear over the trees never to be seen again. Only this model plane cost half a billion dollars.
The second one, I’m not sure about. He swears he didn’t touch it. For all his million faults, one thing Jerry wasn’t, was a liar. Maybe we chalk that one up to bad luck. Maybe the drone was a dud.
But the latest one? Jesus Christ. I won’t bore you with a bunch of technical crap about how the drones work, let’s just say in the simplest terms, it confirms the presence of water in any form within a given target. Most commonly, this means we find a meteorite that we feel has potential, and the drone sends out a probe to take a sample. It’s basically a drill that bores into the target and removes a metre-long cylinder of material. If there’s a trace of water—it’s ice, of course—there’s a bunch of readings and measurements done by the computer and it sends the data back to Earth for further analysis.
As you can imagine, a machine that performs this function is incredibly complex. So you don’t just open up a panel and start poking around with a goddamn Phillips-head. Well, you and I wouldn’t. But you know who would?
So, yesterday he’s telling me, “I know what I’m doing this time,” as if he’s read the manual since losing the first drone. I just shake my head and leave him to it. I used to argue with him all the time, but I learnt pretty quick what a waste of breath that was. He’s one of those guys that when they get something in their head, you can’t shake it no matter how much sense you’re making. They could be wearing a red tshirt and you say, “Nice red tshirt,” and they say, “What’re talking about? It’s blue,” and you just have to say, “Fine, you moron. It’s blue,” and walk away.
That’s what Jerry was like when he was tinkering. Maybe part of me thought he’d electrocute himself so I wouldn’t have to murder him.
When he finished playing around with this drone, he came back into the control room and placed these screws and some other little bits and pieces in a drawer. He did it as if he didn’t want me to see it, but I saw it clear as day. You know when someone gets home drunk and they’re trying to be quiet but they make way more noise than if they just stumbled around? People trying to be discrete just scream I’m up to something fishy.
So I say to Jerry, “What are those, from the drone?”
And he just says, “They’re spare. We don’t actually need them.”
Then I go off on one about how every single thing on this ship right down to the tiniest screw has been reduced in size and weight to make everything as light as possible—like, the angle of trajectory for our landing factors in the weight of the urine that will be in our bladders—but sure, Jerry. They’ve included a bunch of spare parts. “It’s not a goddamn IKEA chair, Jerry” I remember saying that to him like he was hiding some leftover dowel he forgot to put in.
Well, sure as eggs, Jerry sent the drone out yesterday and I’ll give you one guess what happened to it. You’re goddamn right it blew up. Nearly killed us.
He’s just lucky the drone was far enough from the ship that the explosion didn’t do any damage to the ship. Nothing that the self-diagnostics picked up, anyway. Naturally, I did my block at Jerry for nearly killing us again and I said someone’s going to have to go outside and have a closer inspection of the hull. Now, normally I’d be the guy that does that. I mean, you can’t leave something that important up to Jerry goddamn Portman.
Then I had a thought—maybe I would send Jerry out. It would be a real shame if his umbilical somehow untethered from the ship and he floated out into space…
Ashamed as I am to admit it, this was not the first time I’d thought about killing Jerry.
Did I tell you about the time Jerry destroyed one of my samples? You know how people who can’t cook, they say “Oh, so-and-so could burn water.” That’s what Jerry did. We got this sample back on the probe one time and it had all these microorganisms in it. The core sample was about 85% ice. Normally, we’re lucky if it’s even 5%. The core analysis told us it contained 37 different forms of bacteria plus a bunch of other unidentifiable crap all suspended in ice. It was the most exciting goddamn discovery since penicillin. So I placed the core in the freezer and looked forward to the fame and fortune awaiting those DSDs lucky enough to find something. I couldn’t sleep that cycle I was so excited.
Of course, back then I didn’t have a complete understanding of the magnitude of Jerry’s stupidity. Had I known better, I would have guarded that freezer with my goddamn life.
Now, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least to discover Jerry had destroyed my sample by switching the freezer off by accident. These things happen to the best of us. But Jerry isn’t your average moron. No, Jerry decides he wants to take a look at the sample himself under the microscope. Only, the microscope doesn’t work with a chunk of ice, you gotta melt it down to go in a petri dish. So Jerry puts the core in the blast box—the blast box, I should explain, is this unit that works like an oven or freezer depending on what you need heating or chilling. Only, the blast box will roast or freeze something in three seconds. In hindsight, this is exactly the sort of thing you could see happening, but the designers of the blast box would have been counting on the operators being actual scientists, not Jerry goddamn Portman.
Now, someone like you or me, we’d take a small piece of the sample if we wanted to take a closer look. Not Jerry, though. Jerry Portman’s the kind of guy who takes your alien lifeforms precariously suspended in million-year-old ice and microwaves them to kingdom come. “Why the hell did he…? Oh, never mind,” I hear you saying. You’re getting the picture now. He cost me a lot that day. Maybe not money—who knows—but certainly renown. They probably would have named one of the bacteria after me.
That was two years ago, but I remember it like yesterday. Time flies when you’re having fun.
Yesterday, when Jerry was out on the spacewalk, I considered trying to make it look like an accident. But there are so many instruments taking every goddamn reading on this ship that they’d know for sure I had something to do with it. I mean, no amount of tinkering could have got the drone to accidentally deploy its probe with such surgical precision right up Jerry Portman’s goddamn ass.
I’ll be leaving Sector 35 for Earth in a year next week. When I splashdown and I get arrested on live television, it’ll be because I murdered Jerry Portman. They’ll drag me out of the ocean next to those giant orange balloon floaties and put me straight in handcuffs but I’ll be laughing my ass off. You can’t spell manslaughter without laughter, right?
I’ll be thinking about the last thing Jerry saw as he was fatally probed: me in the cockpit with the drone remote, my smiling face looking out through the glass where I’d stuck a piece of paper saying IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.
Thousands of little red balloons.
I just want them to know I was provoked. I was standing my ground. I feared for my life, Your Honor.
It wasn’t self-defence, really, more like self-preservation. I’m not sure if there’re any laws about killing in self-preservation but if I didn’t kill him, he was going to kill me. I’m absolutely goddamn sure of it.
Were you deathly ill but didn’t know until you went to the hospital and they told you?
My husband had been up on 20 foot ladder trimming trees in the yard for the last couple of days. He came in on the third day and said he was really tired and went to bed early. The next morning we talked for a little bit and he said he was just gonna stay in in bed and rest. I had to run some errands and I came home and I found him stumbling around the bedroom and he told me he was lost. I wanted to call an ambulance for him, but he just told me to drive him to the doctor. I’ve then discovered he was also blind. I rushed him to the emergency room and they took him back immediately to run some tests. A couple of hours later, the doctor came with the test results and said “I’m afraid his cancer has spread.” “What cancer?”we both asked the same time. The doctor informed us that my husband had pancreatic cancer that had already spread to his liver and his brain. They told us he had days to live. They sent him home with hospice. I called our kids and my husband’s siblings and they all came from various states to see him. My husband chatted with him like there was nothing wrong. He passed away nine days later.
Ram Jam “Black Betty” Best of Reactions Compilation
I just closed on a foreclosed bank owned property with the previous owner in it who will not leave the house. What is my best course of action to make them move so I can move in?
Same thing here- I purchased a foreclosure.
The deadbeat tenants had not paid any rent to the bank in 10 months, but the bank didn’t want to evict, probably for fear of damage. I wasn’t afraid of them stealing the appliances, etc- they actually did do that- because I was going to gut the place anyway.
I told them they could have 2 months free rent, and had to be out then, or I would sue them for rent (I had it legally done, hired a lawyer who is good at that type of thing). I went ahead with the eviction process anyway, and they were served an eviction notice, just so they saw I was serious.
They left after the 60 day period, taking with them lights, appliances, even thermostats! I was fine about it, since, as I said, I did a complete to-the-studs gut of the house. It cost about $5K to get rid of them (not including my carrying cost- but I could not get started on redoing the house for 60 days anyway- I was doing the redesign, hiring the GC, etc), so I just folded that into the cost of the reno.
The result?
Fantastic house, reno finished on time, and all that is in the rear-view mirror.
Moral of the story?
You have to hire a good local attorney who does evictions, and establish a budget for the legal work. Then cut the deadbeat tenant a deal- lead with a carrot, follow with a stick.
EDIT: As a note- when we did the demo, we carefully removed the cabinets, toilets, even the windows. We donated everything possible to Habitat For Humanity, which was able to use the stuff in homes. We see so many people doing renovation who just allow the demo team to destroy everything- it cost a little more to have cabs unscrewed instead of just sledgehammered off, but then they go to good use. And you have less stuff in the dumpster.
What is the most disturbing thing in the Bible that you have found as an atheist?
I can tell you the thing that totally pushed me over the edge.
I was at a SciFi convention in Georgia, which was at the same time as a gay parade was. At the parade people were passing out “chick tracks” which are like these small comics of Bible verses, the one they were passing out was their Sodom and Gomorrah track.
I took it back to my room and read it. The story was basically about some gay person being handed that exact chick track and told the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, of course in their little story the gay man repented because if the story. It had been a while since I’d been to Christian school so I read it over and was horrified at what Lot considered an appropriate solution.
A little back story for me, I was molested and raped by my dad, I was in my early 20s then and still really messed up.
In the chick track version , since the intent was to try an convert gay people, the focus of the story was the version people like to use as anti-gay propaganda. (If you actually read the Bible verses, God was actually mad about their lack of charity and care for their fellow man) In this version, and indeed what you often hear, God sends a couple of angels down to Lot, and the crowd decided they want to take and rape said angels. This is what a lot of the anti-gay rhetoric is hinged on, which is sad and kind of funny, as angels aren’t supposed to have genitals. (Seriously, look up the description of biblical angels, it’s something else) So not only are they not all that rape-able, they aren’t technically men. Anyway, Lot decides he can’t let this happen, but is willing to give the raping crowd his VIRGIN DAUGHTERS.
This stupid comic was handed out ti try and say being gay is bad…. But somehow allowing people ti take and RAPE your virgin daughters was okay?!
No I thought, no damned way could that be in the Bible. Being in a hotel I grabbed the Bible to check. It really is. That was an acceptable solution, to allow the rape of virgin daughters so that creatures with NO GENITALS don’t get raped.
No. That is not ever acceptable for me. I was already questioning my faith, but that killed it. I could not believe in a religion that allowed that. I could not follow or listen ti people who thought that was okay, and used it to try and say homosexuality was wrong. I couldn’t believe in a faith that was okay with the kind of stuff that had scared me.
I’m closing comments because I am not interested in anyone trying to explain how this is okay, or trying to tell me I’m over reacting, or frankly argue any of this horrible story that is so often intentionally misunderstood to use as a club against people. Yes. I’ve had people try that before. In case you are one of those people, you should know this story will never EVER be acceptable to me, and there is no way you can spin it that will make it acceptable to me.
U.S. Ultimatum Hits Japan & Dutch Semiconductor Giants – Cut Away All China Trade Or Else
Ah…
The plans of the idiotic.
Check out the video…
Chicken Pasta Primavera
Ingredients
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 green bell pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (14.5 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes
1 (10 ounce) can diced tomatoes with green chile peppers
1 pound angel hair pasta
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into bite-size pieces
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
In a large skillet over medium heat, cook red, yellow and green bell peppers in 2 tablespoons olive oil with garlic until just tender. Stir in diced tomatoes and diced tomatoes with chiles, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 10 minutes. Remove to a serving bowl.
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.
While pasta is cooking, heat 2 tablespoons oil and butter over medium heat in a large skillet. Cook chicken in butter mixture until juices run clear, 5 to 10 minutes.
Place cooked chicken over tomato sauce and sprinkle with basil, rosemary, thyme, garlic powder and Parmesan.
Serve with cooked pasta.
What was your reason?
What are some unfortunate ways people have lost their lives?
🚨Disturbing post ahead!!🚨
Here are some unfortunate ways people have lost their lives :-
In 2013, Ye Mengyuan, a 16-year-old girl, managed to survive the crash of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco. However, she was later fatally struck by a fire truck responding to the accident.
Newlywed Samantha Miller lost her life in a car crash just moments after leaving her wedding venue. Her husband Aric was also injured but survived. The crash was caused by a drunk driver.
In 2002, during a hockey game, a puck deflected by a player flew over the protective glass and struck 13-year-old Brittanie Cecil in the head. The impact resulted in a fractured skull. Brittanie passed away just two days before her 14th birthday.
In August 2005, a tragic incident occurred in Benidorm, Spain, where two sisters, Mildred Bowman and Alice Wardle, lost their lives in a horrifying accident. They were trapped for four days when their fold-up Murphy bed collapsed, leading to their untimely demise.
In 2007, 24-year-old Oakland, California, resident Humberto Hernandez was hit in the back of the head by an airborne fire hydrant when a passing car struck it, and the water pressure shot it at him with great force.
In 2009, dog breeder Diana Durre met with a couple at a Taco Bell to sell them a dog. As they stood “right underneath the big Taco Bell sign,” a powerful gust of wind caused the sign to break free and fall onto Diana’s vehicle, fatally crushing her.
In 2012, Anthony Hensley, 37, was kayaking when he encountered an aggressive swan. As he attempted to handle the situation, he fell out of his kayak. While trying to swim back to shore, the swan continued to attack him, leading to his drowning and tragic death.
In 2013, Roger Mirro was crushed by a trash compactor while looking through a dumpster for his phone.
In 2014, A chef in Foshan, China, called Peng Fan was bitten by a cobra’s severed head, which he had cut off 20 minutes earlier while preparing soup. He died shortly after.
A Brazilian man died after a cow fell through his corrugated roof and crushed him while he slept. 45-year-old Joao Maria de Souza, initially only suffered a fractured leg but later died of internal bleeding while waiting to see a doctor.
May their soul rest in peace
This really is funny
The South China Morning Post said that Microsoft’s stroke has little impact on China, and China’s self-sufficiency policy in the field of information security has achieved results. What do you think about this?
An Indian addresses why the entire Western world was shut down by a global-wide IT failure on Microsoft systems, but China and Russia were unaffected. -MM
The difference was crystal clear
HK which used Microsoft in their Airport applications had to go to manual mode while Mainland China that uses Xinshi, it’s own Indigenous Linux Rooted system in Airports and Xongsha, Huaweis own indigenous system in Ports – had zero blips yesterday
Surprisingly Russia also had zero blips because they had their own slightly more basic version due to Sanctions
India saw 65% flights cancelled or rescheduled. I am in Bangalore now and while returning to my hotel after a morning walk, I met Indigo staff who are returning to Kempegowda only now for a flight that should have departed yesterday afternoon
India along with 98% of the world is utterly rooted to Western Applications and Systems
Microsoft, IBM, Google, Amazon WPS , Dell & Cisco – they together or individually form 99% of our entire Core Computing Systems and their upgrades, patches, reinstallations are what runs our country
This includes our Aadhar Database as well, Income tax database, Sensex and Banking systems
Likewise Nokia, Siemens, Sony – Ericcson, Cisco & Alcatel – they form the core of our entire digital communications on 4G+ platforms while Huawei, ZTE – form the core of our entire digital communications on 4G platforms
Also GPS is the ground root of our entire ground cartography system
What have our Top Industrialists been doing?
Given that when we started our forway into Software when China was scrambling around for Cheap Analog technology from Taiwan – SHOULDN’T WE HAVE SOME EQUIVALENT IN THE GLOBAL MARKET?
Instead after 30 years – we are still basically software coolies, writing code or managing people who write code and creating systems that run on core technology developed by the West
Sure these days we live in Condominiums with Gym and Swimming Pools, use Amex cards and swank around in Oakley or Raybans as Software Architects
Yet the ground reality is we are primarily COOLIES just like we were a century and a half ago
Yesterday was evidence of that
Some Western Entity makes a mistake and 300 Million Indians could suffer
Time to firmly join Russia and China and begin to move to an Indigenous platform in every sphere
I suppose banning Tiktok was fine but the fact that we could be decimated by sanctions if we rub the US the wrong way – that never struck us at all
US Tariffs Destroying The Chinese Economy?? Who Does It Really Hurt??
On his 1909 trip in the US, Freud had this to say about the country: America is a mistake, a giant mistake. Trump and Biden, two old fools competing to fool more fools in the game of liberal/electoral democracy, are living proof of Freud’s observation. Indeed, “In America, anyone can become president. That's the problem.”
If you grew up in the Mid-west; Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and Ohio, you know about “deer flies”. These nasty pests are delta winged biological hunter-biters and their bite is painful
Lipoptena cervi, the deer ked or deer fly, is a species of biting fly in the family of louse flies, Hippoboscidae. These flies are commonly encountered in temperate areas of Europe, Siberia, and northern China.
They have been introduced to North America.[12] They are parasites of elk, deer, and other deer family members, burrowing through the fur and sucking the blood of the host animals.
Adults are only 5–7 mm (0.20–0.28 in) in length and brownish in colour. Their bodies are flat and elastic, making their removal difficult. L. cervi is a poor flier and can only fly for short distances. Once the insect reaches its target, it sheds its wings and starts burrowing through the fur.
They have a radar lock on that is terrible. Once they are on your radar you have to get behind glass or a mesh screen and watch while the bang, bang, and bag against that barrier trying to get to you.
Ah, you don’t wanna be bit. I’ll tell you what. You will end up with a red welt the size of a soda bottle cap. Yikes!
Deer fly bites can be painful due to their cutting and lapping method of feeding. The bite often results in visible bleeding wounds and general first aid-type skin creams may help to relieve the pain from bites. In rare instances, there may be allergic reactions involving hives and wheezing.
One took a dive bomb into my hair when I was at a guitar lesson around 11 years old. Wholly shit, It was painful and my dad took two hours getting dead deer fly debris out of my hair.
Holy smokes!
The Terrible Deer Fly – Plus – An Easy Control Method
Oh, the dredded deer fly! If you have been attacked by deer flies, you know they need no introduction. They are horrible pests. These flies show no compassion on the unsuspecting person who crosses their path. A few flies can quickly become hundreds the longer you stay in the area. They are very fast and will attack mercilessly quickly ruining your fishing trip or a family outing. (Photo Courtesy of Bugguide.net)
It is largely believed there is no effective means of controlling these flies. However, one researcher has said to have found a simple way to keep them at bay. It is something the kayak fisherman can try and on my next trip to the Louisiana swamps I plan on employing this technique. I will explain it in detail later in the article.
What is a Deer Fly, You Ask??
Deer Flies are true biting flies and the bites really hurt. Only the female bites. Females have small dagger like blades within their mouth parts that slice the skin to draw blood. She then fills up on a blood meal. They are very aggressive.
The flies breed and live in swamp and marsh locations. They also live in forests close to grassy clearing or open areas. They can be found in most states.
My Personal Experiences with These Flies
One of my favorite places in Louisiana is in the Sabine River Basin. It is 1000's of acres of marsh and swamp that is part of the National Wildlife Refuge. The brackish waters are loaded with redfish, sea trout and alligators. However, many parts are loaded with deer flies.
I spoke to the kayak fisherman in the photo who had just paddled through a swarm of deer flies - the same swarm that actually drove me away. He stated he had been bitten, but didn't seem to be too alarmed by it. I suppose there is not much you can do in a kayak surrounded by alligators except to keep paddling. Some say it is possible to get used to deer flies, but I don't imagine it to be easy.
Here is What I Have Learned About Them
Here is what I have learned about deer flies. First, they tend to reside in heavy congregations, but will not fly far to pursue a meal. Instead, they will wait until someone walks within a 100 or 200 ft of where they are waiting - then they swarm around you.
They pick up on exhaled carbon dioxide and move in quickly to the source. Deer flies love to bite around the head, arms, hands and upper body.
To get away from them, all it usually takes is to move away from that 100 to 200 ft range they originated from and they will break off the attack. This is important to know. Only a few will follow for an extra 75 to 100 feet outside of that range.
All I had to do to get away from them is to turn around and walk 100 ft or so and they were gone. Walk back toward them and they will swarm again. Hopefully your favorite places do not have infestation so close together. In those cases the only way to get away from them is to leave the area.
Some claim they will not fly into houses or cars, but that is not entirely correct. I am not sure about houses, but I have certainly killed a few that have flown into my car while I was stopped to photograph wildlife.
Methods used to stop mosquitoes usually will not work on deer flies. Some suggest using Deet, the strongest formula available, but is primarily because they know of nothing else to suggest.
A Truly Interesting Cure to Your Deer Fly Problem
The following method was discovered by a University of Florida researcher:
Take a bright blue container - a small can, jug, metal coffee can, flower pot, or anything that can be mounted on a pole. I imagine you can paint it that color, but it has to be bright blue. I haven't seen a picture of the exact color used, so saying it needs to be bright blue or bright royal blue is all I know. The blue attracts the flies.
I read where a person had a bright blue car and every summer his car was covered with deer flies. He never knew why until someone told him it was the color. The article said he sold his car to end the problem.
Next, cover the bright blue container with a sticky material, such as "Tanglefoot". Be sure it is clear Tanglefoot and not the dark colored one. Tanglefoot is a super sticky brush-on outdoor coating designed for this type of thing. The deer flies get stuck in the sticky goo and die.
The bright blue color is such a powerful attractant that people nearby are not even bitten. Since there is only a finite number of deer flies in one location, you can temporarily reduce the deer fly population to the point they are no longer a problem.
There have been several deer fly tests by people from around the country using this method and they all say it works great. I haven't personally tested it and am only going off what others say, Where I live now there are no deer flies. However, when I am back in Louisiana I will test it and give you my personal opinion. I am hoping the reports are right and it is an effective method of controlling the deer fly.
If you are kayaking in thick deer fly territory be sure to bring your pole mounted blue jug coated with tanglefoot. Put the pole in a rod holder or somewhere on the kayak so it extends several feet above you. This is exactly what I plan to do on my next fishing trip to the swamps.
In the link I have provided, you can also read about "trolling for flies" that has led to a decrease in fly populations. it's worth a try.
Be sure to let me know how it works. I would love to hear about it.
Visitor Addition:This comes from Parnell Ruiz. Thanks Parnell!"Just wanted to add to your deer fly article. Blue is definitely the color. I keep blue plastic helmets and coat them in "tangle foot" but don't coat helmet brim. While walking in the forest on my property in WI, I don't get one bite. They do attack from behind and quickly fill the back of helmet, then I just put helmet on backwards till full. Use acetone to clean helmet and repeat. Working on some type of blue apparel for my dogs. Thanks for site."
Today…
Bolivia coup failure
Why do some people cover their laptop cameras with tape? Is it just paranoia?
I once took a cyber security course in which one of the instructors hacked into six or seven laptop cameras in the class before the lunch break on the first day. The computers in question were brought by the students, not supplied by the training facility. By the second day, every student in that class had tape over their laptop cameras.
I’ve seen how vulnerable those things are. I will never again leave my laptop camera uncovered unless I’m actually using it.
Edit:
Of all the answers I’ve written, I never expected this one to take off. Over 13,000 upvotes and still climbing. Wow!
I’m seeing a lot of repeated questions in the comments, so I’ll try to answer the most common ones:
I won’t provide the name of the course or the company that taught it. Frankly, we weren’t particularly impressed with the overall content, the professionalism of the instructors, or the value for the investment. The one interesting takeaway from the course was that laptop cameras are vulnerable to hacking.
As I recall, the exploit in question used a malicious applet to take advantage of an unpatched vulnerability in Java.
Some laptop cameras have hardwired lights that can’t be turned off by software. But some cameras have a software toggle that can turn off the light while the camera is active. Depending on your particular machine, the absence of a light is no guarantee that your camera has not been activated.
A five second Google search will turn up numerous criminal cases that involve webcam/laptop camera hacking. In 2014, Jared James Abrahams was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sneaking nude photos and videos of several young women including Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf. This is not, by any means, an isolated case.
I have no illusions that hackers are slavering to catch sight of my naked body. But the wall behind my desk has a dry erase board and bulletin board areas that are usually covered in notes, drawings, diagrams, schedules, and schematics. Nothing classified, but often information that requires protection.
The machines that I saw hacked were all running Windows, but – according to the Mac Security Blog, Apple computers are also vulnerable to camera hacking.
Yes, your microphone is vulnerable too. Depending on the machine, you can block some internal microphones using a dummy plug in the mic jack. For some laptops, physically disconnecting the microphone from the motherboard isn’t too difficult. I personally opt for the dummy plug. It’s not 100% certain, but few defensive measures are absolute.
I’m under no impression that covering your camera and using a dummy plug for your microphone will provide perfect security. Frankly, there’s no such thing. In my opinion, these are just a couple of simple and inexpensive precautions that narrow your window of vulnerability. Nothing more.
And I’m done responding to comments on this answer. There are literally hundreds of articles and videos on the topic from people who know more about it than I do.
MOVING TO USA🇺🇸 | WHAT I WISH I KNEW BEFORE MOVING (as a Ugandan🇺🇬) GreenCard, Culture & More
What screams “I’m upper class”?
I’ve been around quite a few wealthy people, but only a few of them have been what I consider upper class.
To me, someone who is upper class treats everyone with respect. They don’t flaunt their wealth, and they don’t ever try to prove they’ve got money.
I went to a very expensive prep school in New York, on scholarship. Many of the girls looked down their noses at me because my family was barely middle class, and I didn’t have the money to shop at Bloomingdales like they did. But you know who were my friends? The girls who had the same last names as buildings on 5th Avenue and famous restaurants. They didn’t care that I was there on scholarship because they weren’t competitive, like the girls who were continually trying to prove how wealthy their families were. Instead, they welcomed me into their homes and took me to dizzying social events. Class all the way.
When I was a senior, I was told that my scholarship had been paid for by the wealthy founders of Reader’s Digest, and the only thing they asked in return was that I write them a letter telling them about my high school experience and what my future plans were. I got the most charming handwritten letter back from DeWitt Wallace thanking me for writing! True class.
Later, in college, I worked a part-time job at a retail store. One night the very-impressed-by-himself store manager asked me to stay late and I told him I couldn’t because I needed to catch the last bus home. He said he would give me a ride if I would stay. And so I did.
Of course, when it was time to leave, the manager was long gone and I was stranded. It just so happened that the son of the founder of the major corporation that owned the store was interning there that month as preparation for going into the corporate office. He saw what had happened and gave me a ride home in his Mercedes Benz. He could not have been nicer or a better conversationalist on our ride to my home.
So, in short, I believe that people who are truly upper class are kind, considerate, and take their wealth out of the equation when dealing with other people. It’s simply a part of them, but nothing that needs to be mentioned, flaunted, or bragged about.
Which country has the better governance, China or India? Why?
This question would not be asked if you had been to both of those countries.
I have and you cannot even put them in the same league.
China is a global power, a middle-income country, with a literacy rate in the 90s and the largest manufacturing base in the world. China has a 100-year economic plan, which gives the whole country its priorities and the whole nation follows. China’s urban poverty rate is 1%
Shanghai, China
India is a low-income country, with the highest population of malnutrition children in the world. It is also the biggest recipient of aid, in the world, just for this reason. India’s governance is fragmented, divided up into states that impede big business. The politicians are highly corrupt. Politics is full of communal venom. There are about a dozen active separatist movements. Their wealthiest city, Bombay, has half of its population defecating in the open.
Mumbai, India
China is not only wealthier, more educated, and better planned, but it is also more peaceful, has lower crime rate and is safer. If you have walked the streets of Delhi and Bejing at night, the difference is absolutely clear.
As I have said before, China’s government is made up of extremely intelligent technocrats that have built their political career through decades of work for the CCP. The whole world may scoff at a one-party system, but there is plenty of politics within the party as well. You have to prove yourself at a lower level in various different capacities before being considered for the top job.
That is the reason why merit gets you to the top rather than family dynasties, nationalist or religious fervour.
NEW TREND!! Why Companies Have Started Firing Women (Compilation)
What is a stand you took during your wedding planning that you will never apologize for?
We had shared a home, a life, and three pets for several years, and we each had two teenaged kids. Mine lived with us, and his came to stay regularly. We all got along great.
We decided to get married, but wanted something fun and informal. His mother and my sister became absolutely intolerable, trying to control every detail, to the point that I told my partner I was ready to forget about getting married.
He said, “Is it the wedding you don’t want, or the marriage?”
I told him it was the wedding.
So he suggested we elope. We applied for a marriage license and booked a justice of the peace at the planned destination in Vermont. We booked rooms and the library/parlour at the country inn there. We had been to Vermont before, but not to this particular facility. But we liked what we saw from the online photos.
We packed up the teenagers and a handful of other people we’re close to, and got married at the country inn, which was charming. The staff was friendly and helpful, the ambience was delightful, and the justice of the peace who married us made the ceremony personal and special. Everything about that weekend was perfect: relaxed, fun, simple.
Once that was a done deal, our friend hosted a blessing of marriage and buffet dinner at her place several weeks later. My sister and his mother, who had been unable to travel for the Vermont wedding, were guests of honour at the party. They grumbled a bit about missing the “real wedding,” but they were the architects of that.
I’ve never regretted our “elopement,” even if we did have a bunch of teenagers along!
4 Things I Wish I Knew BEFORE Moving to the USA
The Moon
Getting to the moon was the hard part. But the US had already sent space probes into deep space so they were familiar with transfer orbits.
And getting the lunar module on the moon only requires the computing power of an Atari game console. Which they had.
The Apollo program used the first computer module. The hard part was making sure the radar altimeter worked properly.
The technology was crude by today’s standards but they worked. They also had gyroscopes to maintain stability. Sure they were huge by today’s standard but they worked.
Already proven on fighters and satellites.
If you go back 10 years then it would have increased the danger by at least 10 times or more. Because they really needed the computer. Without one, it’s eyeball landing. And they even practiced that just in case.
You can get a hold of the Apollo program documents. They literally documented everything. Including vibration testing on each individual bolt and screw. They knew what percent would fail and worked to make that close to zero.
What is concerning is that the Artemis program is ignoring all that. And they’re going to try and land a gigantic ship on the moon. The thing is 160 feet long.
The US and Japan tried landing on the moon with long tall objects and both fell over. The lunar soil is dusty and can easily cover a rock. if one leg lands on that, the SpaceX lander will fall over.
That is why all lunar modules that have successfully landed all use a wide base with a squat design. Even if you land on a rock on one leg, it will still be upright.
And they used hypergolic fuel. No need for ignition. Once the fuel mixed, it ignited. SpaceX is going to use normal rocket engines. And needs to land at least 4 more robot SpaceX cargo filled with fuel to refuel the lander to get off the moon.
A lot of untested tech that they are going to test on the moon and in orbit. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. They’re doing the exact opposite of the Apollo program. Apollo tested everything to death. SpaceX, no need. They test while doing it.
Apocalypto and the Warning Signs of Societal Collapse (Film Analysis)
Who are some criminals you have the most respect for?
Lyle and Erik Menendez.
These two brothers shot and killed both of their parents on August 20, 1989. Lyle was 21 years old and Erik was 18. They had killed entertainment executive José and Kitty, (his wife) in their home in Beverly Hills.
So far, they seem pretty deserving of a lifetime in prison, correct? But wait until you hear why they did this; they were scared shitless for their lives. Afraid of their own parents. Why?
Here’s a little bit of background on the two rich white kids:
Stuart Hart is an educational child psychologist and a professor emeritus at Indiana University, where he taught for 30 years. He also served as an expert defense witness in the trials of brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez at their Beverly Hills home. At the time, Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18.
In that case, the prosecution argued that the brothers had been motivated by greed, pointing to the lavish shopping they did after the killings. The defense said the prime motive was Sexual Abuse the young men suffered at their father’s hands.
After he began working on the case, Hart came to agree with the defense—when he took the stand, he argued strongly for the child-abuse defense. In 1996 Lyle and Erik Menendez were each sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but even today Hart views the homicides as a reaction to gross parental misconduct, rather than the work of cold, calculating killers.
TL;DR, these two dudes had their father sexually abuse and molest them all throughout their childhood, Lyle having gotten off the hook when he was about 13 years old but Erik continuously getting raped and sexually harassed by his own fucking father until he was 18.
Bullshit? I think not.
The consistency of the reporting of it, and the details of the reporting of it. And the consistency of those details. And the fact that this is humiliating.
You had an adolescent girl cousin who was saying that Lyle confided—not in terms of clearly stating what he was experiencing—but telling her he wanted to stay in her room.
There was another cousin who Erik reported to. And that would’ve been quite a risk for them: As young children—Lyle was about eight or so—anything that got back to his father was going to mean serious problems. So much reporting of sexual abuse is a case of somebody describing what happened to them with nobody observing them.
They had the proof, they had the witnesses, for these claims. At least, as much proof and evidence a person can get with this type of stuff.
Just for an idea, look at the picture above. Why the ever-loving fuck is José holding Lyle by his crotch like that? Why not his stomach or some other body part?
The murder happened after Lyle had found out that Erik was still getting sexually abused by his father at 18. The events as told by Erik in a news report in the following Quotations:
“I remember it was Tuesday and I was coming in the front door of the house and mom and Lyle were coming out of the study and mom was screaming,” Erik explains, speaking from a phone inside the walls of Donovan Correctional Facility.
“They were in an argument and Lyle was saying that he needed it and it was important and mom in a rage said, ‘You don’t ned your effing hair piece!’ and she reached up and she ripped his hair off his head. I remember just being stunned by what happened.”
In old court testimony, Lyle explained that the alleged incident left him “completely embarrassed.” “[Erik] didn’t know I had a hair piece,” he said. “My brother and I, there are things we don’t talk about and that was one of them.”
“I told him not to worry about it, that he was my brother, that I loved him, basically saying I don’t judge you,” Erik continues, before detailing how the conversation then changed to another, darker topic.
“I asked him, ‘Do you remember when I was a kid, you asked me if anything was happening between me and dad?’ I said, ‘Lyle, it’s still happening,'” says Erik.
“He was like, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Still happening, just sexual things.’ He got suddenly really upset. Saying how could I let that happen, did I enjoy it, why didn’t I tell anyone, why didn’t I stop it. I was crying and I started having a small panic attack.”
Erik says his brother then asked if their mother knew about the abuse. “I said ‘no,’ [but] he said, ‘No, I think she does. I think mom knows.”
Lyle, in an effort to protect his younger brother approached and threatened José saying that, “You’re going to have to let him go; otherwise we’re going to tell.”
Their father shot back saying that they’d never dare and deeply regret it if they did. This got them paranoid that he was going to kill them in fear of ruining his perfect reputation, leading to them planning on the murder.
Time then comes and they do go through with the murder, killing both their parents. Personally, I think Kitty also deserved to die here. Along with fully knowing what was going on between them and their father and not doing anything to help, she also participated in her own form of sexual abuse.
Until he was 13, his mother would wash his body “everywhere,” he said. She also would invite him into bed with her and he would touch her “everywhere,” he testified.
“I took it to be love,” Lyle Menendez said, adding, “She was enjoying it.” But he was not enjoying it, he said, so he stopped the activities, which enraged her.
Throughout his adolescence, he said, she “harassed” him with increasingly bizarre sexual conduct.
Ew. How fucking disgusting. These people are sick, their kids didn’t ask for this. Killing their parents seemed like the only way out for them and honestly, I perfectly understand why.
There was a lot of evidence for them here. With witnesses testifying the boy’s claims and maids having said to have found child pornography magazines in José’s office to other people claiming to have been sexually harassed by him as well.
Though not many people were willing to risk ruining their reputations by testifying it in court, ultimately resulting in a lack of presented evidence as opposed to available evidence.
The first two trials they had were out of sync. The first jury declaring them innocent but faced backlash from the public who wanted them locked up for good. It was declared a mistrial and they restarted the entire case in front of the second jury, unfairly forbidding the mentions and evidence of sexual abuse as reasons to support their claims for self-defense.
Some people from the second jury later stated that if they had been told about the sexual abuse and the family history, they would have never placed them as guilty and resulted in giving them life without parole.
It’s pretty funny that the judge had to take an unfair route like that to actually win the case against the two. This also happened around the same time of the OJ Simpson case so it didn’t help either.
I sometimes wonder how different things would be right now if the Menendez brothers were the Menendez sisters instead.
Casserole Rye Bread
Ingredients
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 cup warm water
2 envelopes dry yeast
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups rye flour
Instructions
Heat milk, sugar, salt and butter together and cool to lukewarm.
Measure warm water and dry yeast into a bowl. Stir until dissolved.
Stir in lukewarm milk mixture and flours. Beat until well blended (this is the secret to this bread).
Cover and let rise free from draft about 50 minutes or until double in bulk.
Stir batter down and beat vigorously about 30 seconds.
Turn into a well-greased 1 1/2 quart round bottom casserole. Brush carefully with milk and bake uncovered for about 1 hour at 375 degrees F.
Part IBefore in the beginning, there was NOTHING. Nothing but a whole lot of absolutely nothing. You couldn’t see NOTHING, because there was nothing to see. You couldn’t hear NOTHING, because there was nothing to hear. You couldn’t touch NOTHING because there was nothing to touch.One fine time out of nowhere, SOMETHING found time to come along —-zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom. SOMETHING came along, looked here, looked there, looked everywhere and said, “I don’t see NOTHING, can’t hear nothing, there’s nothing here but a whole lot of nothing.”NOTHING didn’t say anything, NOTHING just listened to SOMETHING go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, talking about a whole lot of nothing.Then NOTHING got tired and said, “Hold it SOMETHING.”SOMETHING said, “Who’s that?”“It’s me, NOTHING, so you have nothing to fear in this atmosphere, I would just like to make it perfectly clear in your ear that I am also here.”SOMETHING was kind of scared. He couldn’t see NOTHING.Then NOTHING said, “Let me tell you something, SOMETHING, even though I’m Nothing, I am still something. In fact I’m the something that has you surrounded, I’m the something that is holding you up.”SOMETHING said, “Holding me up?”SOMETHING thought it was a stick-up and swung at NOTHING. Didn’t hit NOTHING because there was nothing to hit. SOMETHING swung at NOTHING, again. He swung again, missed, fell down, but didn’t fall on NOTHING. So the scuffle went on and on in the dark, SOMETHING swinging at NOTHING, SOMETHING swinging at NOTHING in triple darkness. And it went on and on and on until the darkness started to go away.Part IIAbout six- thirty in the morning NOTHING’S daughter, Dawn was looking at her mirror in the dark, SOMETHING snuck up on NOTHING, missed and hit NOTHING’S daughter Dawn. She dropped the mirror. The mirror cracked. That is where the crack of dawn came from.Part IIINOTHING also had two sons. One named Rise and one named Set. You could tell them apart because Set was always sitting down and Rise was always standing up next to Dawn.Dawn went over to Set and said, “Get up, Set, do something about SOMETHING. Us families are supposed to stick together.”Set looked up and said, “Don’t get me upset, Dawn.” Dawn said again a little louder, “Get up, Set.”“Don’t get me upset, Dawn.”“Get up, Set.”“I said, don’t get me upset, Dawn. Don’t get me upset.” “ I said get up Set.”Finally, Set got up. “Now you made me upset. I saw the whole thing. If you didn’t get in the way of SOMETHING, nothing would have happened. But I have a plan. You and Rise go to the East. I’ll go to the West and tomorrow evening we will meet and put something on SOMETHING from both sides. Now, get Rise, get on your mark and Go.”Set sat down and watched them go out of sight. “I fooled them,” he said to himself, “I don’t have to go anyplace. All I have to do is sit right here, Set laughed to himself, “I fooled them.”
So Set just sat there and it got darker and darker and darker. Set was scared, he couldn’t see SOMETHING or NOTHING. He just sat there in triple darkness.
Part IV
Then he looked out in the distance and it started getting lighter and lighter and he saw something coming toward him. Oh no! Oh no! It got closer and closer, and closer and closer and it was – Rise and Dawn.
NOTHING’S Son, Set regained his composure, cleared his throat – “uhrum” and said, “Where were you two yesterday?”
Dawn said, “Set, on our way here we decided to forgive and forget. Because in forgiveness there is healing, and we like the feeling, so we are going to be on our merry way.”
Set watched them go out of sight. And he said, “Well, I’m not forgiving and I’m not forgetting. I’m sitting right here in the West and this is where I’ll be sitting from now on. I’ll get even with SOMETHING all by myself.”
And ever since then, NOTHING’S son, Set has been setting in the West.
And that’s the truth about SOMETHING and about NOTHING.
And the moral of this story is: If you are going to do something about something, do it before the sun sets or you will get caught sitting on your ass-ets in the dark.
What is the most absurd thing you’ve been charged for on a bill?
I can think of two examples, both of which have soured me on them.
First was AT&T. I was living in Charlotte and had just gotten laid off. I was scrambling around town trying to find employment so I didn’t have to collect unemployment. The good part was I did find a contracting job that afternoon and would soon be hired, though the job didn’t pay much and lasted only 2 months.
I got home from an interview that afternoon and got my mail. First was a warning from Bellsouth (another company I despise) that I had an unusually high phone bill that month. I was concerned and then found my phone bill. $180!!!!!
I looked at the itemized bill and found the culprit. A third-party call from Valdosta, GA, to where I can only surmise was the USVI was on my bill. I thought, must be a mistake. I called Bellsouth and they referred me to AT&T, my long-distance provider.
The woman I talked to refused to admit the mistake. She actually doubled down, saying it happened so I must have agreed to it. I looked at the date. 2/13/1999. Not only was I not even at home for most of that day, but I was even further away from Valdosta than that, having been in that part of Georgia last in 1993. A supervisor said the same thing and refused to listen to me. I wound up having to eat the bill or risk going to collections.
When people ask me why I won’t get AT&T U-Verse, I tell them that story.
Second was an item the restaurant no longer carried, and it made an already unpleasant dining experience even worse.
My wife and I were downtown at an event, which made us take a late dinner. 7pm is late for us, but hardly an unreasonable time to eat. We decided to treat ourselves to a local restaurant in the area, one we had been to before without incident.
They gave us our menus. I ordered the short ribs and a salad. They brough out the salad pretty quickly. While I was eating, they came out (a half hour after I ordered) and said they no longer had short ribs, that the menu hadn’t been updated.
I got the menu and ordered something else. Okay, things happen, right?
Well in the meantime, a large party sat down and was promptly served. That would have been fine, except we were still waiting for our food. I talked to a manager who just brushed my complaints off. I almost walked out with my wife at that point, because it was approaching a 2 hour wait time (yes, 9PM!!!) after we had ordered, and the wait staff was ignoring us in favor of that large party.
The food finally came. It was not good, but I didn’t dare order something else so I ate it and waited for the bill. It was almost double what I was expecting to pay.. I hadn’t ordered anything that much more expensive so what was going on?
The itemized bill made it very clear. They had charged me for short ribs. You know, the thing they said they didn’t have any more. They took them off but no other recourse except a small dessert.
We have not been back, but my wife’s local woman’s club catered from them, and she told me the food was horrible
Vintage art
What’s the most unforgivable statement made by your father-in-law?
I was undergoing IVF treatment as my husband has low sperm count. I, on the other hand was super – fertile and we had high hopes from the fertility treatment.
Soon we were called for transfer of fertilized eggs to my uterus. During this time, my in – laws came to visit us. We had not told them yet about the IVF, but since next day we had to visit the hospital, we confided to my mom – in – law. She was very happy and supportive and insisted that she will also come to the hospital. We both were very much okay with that. She is very helpful person and loves all her sons.
When my Dad – in – law came to know, he also started showing interest in coming to the hospital. He had lot of health issues – diabetic, heart ailment etc. I tried to tell him it’s uncomfortable for him as we don’t know how much time it will take. The hospital was quite far from our place and there were no decent restaurants in that area. Since we had already been there a few times, we knew this well. But, being an obnoxious person, he totally used his ‘dad’ card and got ready the next morning to come with us.
My husband was upset, but there was no time to argue, also he never listend to any reasonable request in his whole life. So we all went. As predicted it became quite late by the time the procedure was done. Even though we were all tired and hungry, the mood was happy as we – me, husband and his mom, were happy and hopeful after the procedure. Mom assured me that she will stay for at least 2–3 weeks as I was prescribed bedrest ( this is almost 16 years ago).
Meanwhile Father in law was cranky with hunger and also was not interested in staying so long, so he started getting a foul mood. He started grilling my husband about the IVF procedure – why it’s being done – it was very embarrassing for him. That too right in the restaurant. Then he asked, “How much did it cost ? “ My husband said ,” Rs.60,000/- “ Father -in -laws eyebrows shot up and he said , “ That’s too much ! “ Then he looked at me and said ,” I got mine for free !”
Oh my god, we were so angry to hear that ! I will never forget his face when he said those words.
But my mom -in – law had the perfect retort. She said ,” And that’s why you don’t respect them !”
Edit – Thanks for the support. Some of you have asked about the result of my IVF treatment – it was very much positive. I have 15 yr old twins – both are boys and they are fraternal twins.
Also some discussion was there about the treatment method that we selected.
I had already done two cycles of IUI. It was unsuccessful as my husband has asthenospermia. It means that sperms have reduce motility. So even though sperm count is good, the sperms cannot penetrate the egg.
The treatment I actually underwent was ICSI – a selective type of IVF, where a sperm is actually injected into an egg to bring about fertilisation.
The cost factor – it was highly reduced for me because I am a medical professional myself. The doctor voluntarily reduced the fees and took only lab and OT charges from us. My bro in law also had same issues and they had to undergo 3 cycles of ICSI and ended up spending almost Rs.2.5 lakh, 12 years ago.
John has something to say
What was the day that changed your life in a way you would never have expected when you woke up that morning?
A little over a year ago, on June 1, 2020, I woke up startled to hear my door pounding loudly. My girlfriend of just a few months was at the door and she looked like she had just rolled out of bed and run over to come get me (she had and she wasn’t wearing her shoes yet either). She told me that my mom and sisters had tried to get a hold of me but couldn’t because my phone was on silent, so they called her instead and that I needed to get dressed ASAP so we could go to the hospital. My father who had had a lot of health issues throughout his life but had always fought through it, had suddenly coded and the doctors managed to barely revive him long enough to put him into a medically induced coma.
We spent the rest of the day at the hospital saying our goodbyes and contacting our extended family members. My grandfather was in a care home at the time and my grandmother was also in the hospital being treated for a fall at home (they died 2 months apart later in the year) and my aunt, his only sibling, didn’t want to bother to drive down to Utah from Boise.
My mom got a lot of doctors opinions and he was given a lot of religious blessings that day and at the end of it all we decided to keep him alive to see if he would wake up. He was given a less than 5% chance of waking up, but he had beaten odds worse than that before and we all were sure he would pull out of it as he had in the past. My aunt ended up making the drive with one of my three cousins by the fourth day of his coma to help out because my mom was always at the hospital and since this was mid-COVID, they wouldn’t let anyone else in the room.
By the end of the week my mom had decided it wasn’t going to make sense to keep him in his coma and that we needed to turn off the machines, because he wasn’t improving in any way, and we didn’t have the income necessary to sustain it. We got extremely special permission from the hospital and were allowed to have 6 people in the room when we turned off the machines, and I would not wish that experience on anyone. I have nightmares that I won’t be able to talk about for years about that experience.
At the end of it all it took 5 more months and then my grandfather gave up the will to live and just passed away at the care home, followed 2 months later by my grandmother a week before Christmas. Currently, my family is locked in an extremely heated and horribly bitter lawsuit with my aunt over the inheritance from my grandparents estate and my family has fallen entirely apart.
My father passed away a year and 2 days ago as I’m typing this and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. If things had been different maybe we would still be a family and we would all still be at least talking to each other, but who knows.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant, sorry for bumming you out.
Salomar Barak groaned. The groan pulled her into consciousness. She opened her eyes, surveyed her surroundings, and almost cried. The freighter, her freighter, her beautiful Flaming Salomardorlay scattered about her, broken into hundreds of pieces. Held upside down by the safety webbing of her captain’s lounge, she looked over what remained of the cockpit.“Computer?”“Yes.”“You still work?” For a moment, Salomar dared to hope.“Not for long.”“What happened? Where are we?”“One, what happened? Unknown sound blast as we jumped.”“Energy blast? Sound? From who? From where? I don’t remember any ships in our gate.”“Records indicate blast from this ship.”“This ship? How?”“Two, where are we? Planet unknown. Not in my charts. Air is compatible for humans and other life forms. No time to discover if life is on planet, or what kind.”“Computer, is any of this ship salvageable?”“Negative”“The cargo?”“Unknown.”At first, the monotone voice of the computer was reassuring. As the gravity of the situation sunk in, Salomar wished for better news.“Damn! Of all the unknown, uncharted planets I had to pick for a crash, it had to be a water-world. How can anyone survive, breathing this wet air?” She listened, and heard none of her cargo call. She also heard no noises from the water indicating flesh eaters at a feast. Swallowing the pain of losing her ship, her savings, and her dreams, she cut the webbing of the Captain’s lounge and lowered herself into the water. Carefully, she picked her way through the flotsam and jetsam of what had once been the beautiful Flaming Salomardor. She allowed her tears to fall.The air, foul with a green fog that drifted aimlessly in layered tendrils, caressed her with inquisitive fingers. The water was warm, and where she stood, was shallow. And one or the other, or both, stunk of rotten eggs. The sunlight added an eerie glow. To the west, mountains loomed.“Warning! Warning! Warning! Fuel pod leak. Fuel pod leak. Warning!”“Frap! Just what I need. I can’t even stay at what’s left of the ship until rescue. Not that there’s much to stay at.“I’d best check the cargo before I take off. I doubt any of His Royal Majesty’s Pet Purple Birds survived, but on the chance one did….” The thought, muttered, trailed off into swallowing silence.Salomar waded to what remained of the cargo bay. Several broken eggs coagulated on the surface of the sea. Nine dead birds floated among them, dead parents guarding their equally dead children. “One bird missing–probably trapped under something. Well, I can’t stick around looking for it, even if it is a royal bird. A royal pain, if you ask me.” She slogged back to the cockpit and searched out her emergency kit. What she found was already waterlogged into mush and useless. The beacon was dry, and as long as it remained dry, would work. She hoped. She quickly stuffed a few rations not yet soaked into her ship-shirt pockets, along with a small signal light, and prayed the pocket seals would hold.
“Computer?”
“Warning! Warning! Warn….”
“Oh, shut up, will you? I know about the leak.” The computer did not shut up.
The action of her movements, the focus on what needed to be done dried her tears, but did not ease her pain. All her life she wanted to go to the stars. She saved every credit she could earn. She hired onto a freighter and gladly did whatever scut work she was assigned. Her own time she spent at the computer learning all she could about each and every job it took to run a ship, and how to pilot a ship through the void.
She applied for a job in hydraulics. No one liked hydraulics – literally, the ‘stink’ job on board. Accepted, she soon was in charge.
When she applied for communications, she was turned down. Too valuable in plumbing, they told her. Before they docked at the next port, she requested a meeting with the Captain. She told him her plan, to learn all the jobs necessary to run a freighter, showed him her transcripts from the training, and told him of her dream to own and pilot her own freighter. She also told him she would be looking for another ship when they docked, and would he please write a letter of recommendation for her.
By the time they docked, she worked split shifts between hydraulics and communications. It took 10 years to work her way through the ship and to save enough credits to venture out on her own. She was grateful her Captain had enough faith in her to help underwrite the Flaming Salomardor, and that he sent her what trade he could. He was probably her best, if not only, friend. Piloting a small freighter did not lend itself well to friendships. Let alone relationships.
With a sigh of resignation Salomar turned for one last look at what had been her home, her life’s work, her dreams. It was not easy to say a final good-bye to her freighter.
She hadn’t gone far before she realized she couldn’t hear the voice of the computer and it’s incessant warning. She was truly alone. Even the sound of her voice seemed swallowed by the eerie fog. The mountains, when visible, looked like abandoned black dragon scales stuck vertically in long dead and cold molten rock. Salomar saw no signs of life.
“I do believe, in the vids at least, this is where the monster rises from the sea to eat the maiden. Thank the gods I’m no longer a maiden.” Her attempt at humor failed to raise her spirits.
“Those mountains don’t look more than ten, maybe fifteen kilometers off, shouldn’t take too long to reach, unless I have to swim a good portion of it.” Alone, she began the long wade to the shore, humming a long forgotten nursery rhyme under her breath.
Salomar screamed. Heart pounding, knife drawn, she wheeled in a defensive crouch to face the monster attacking her back. “Oh. It’s you.” She looked into the face of the missing bird. Wading silently behind her, it pecked at her shoulder. “Well, guess we’d best see if any of your feed survived, then we need to get out of here. This water is creepy, and I smell the salt of a leaky fuel pod. Wouldn’t be nice to be here when the damn thing blows.” Salomar and the bird returned to the ship to search for the food. The computer still warned all who listened. Or didn’t listen.
The bird stood quietly and looked at the carnage of dead clutch-mates and broken eggs. Salomar could not see the mourning heart of the bird.
She found some dry seed and quickly jerry-rigged a pack from seed bags and rope to sling over the bird’s back. She took the beacon from her arm pocket and hung it around the bird’s neck. At almost three meters in height, there was a better chance of it staying dry on the bird, than in Salomar’s sleeve pocket. On their way out of the cargo area, she came across one of the silver and gold leads, meant only for the royal personages to handle, and fastened it on the jeweled harness worn by the bird. The jewels and cut metal reflected the green haze in laser sharp spears.
“Well, bird, anything as valuable as you must have a name, but damned if I know it. So I’ll just call you Bird, and you may call me Captain. Now, let’s head for those upended dragon scales that pass for mountains.
“With those bright red and purple feathers, you must be a male. It is the male isn’t it, that is the brighter colored? Perhaps I should call you Mister Bird.”
Bird stopped to look at her, first with his right eye, then with his left. Then he turned and continued walking.
“So, Mr. Bird, why does the Emperor want you? You appear too beautiful to be used as a beast of burden, even though circumstances beyond my control have unfortunately placed you in that capacity. And with the jeweled leads, you obviously aren’t meant for food. So, you must be a pet. A toy. Must be nice to be the Emperor’s toy. You’re too passive to be a guard bird. Or, maybe you were to be a present for the Empress? Ah, I bet that’s it, eh Mr. Bird?” Salomar prattled, just for the sound of a voice. On board the ship, she and Computer had carried on conversations, but here, in the shallow sea, she felt the aloneness.
The sun lowered until it seemed to balance precariously on the edge of the world. Through the ever-present mist, it appeared to rest there just a moment before tumbling into darkness.
There was no moon visible for this strange world. No stars shone through the mist. The mist glowed softly green, almost casting enough light for Salomar to see where they waded. She turned on her light; the mist threw it blindingly back at her. She turned the light off, and placed it back in the pack.
The only sound was the soft sloshing noises Salomar’s legs made cutting through the water, and her voice when she spoke. There were no jumpers from the water. No breakers to be heard crashing onto the shore. Bird made no noise at all.
The water, at its deepest had been to her waist, at its shallowest, to her knees. The water felt slimy, and began to eat her clothing. Her legs started to cramp.
Once full dark set in, Salomar noticed tiny lights darting in the water.
“Well, Mr. Bird, it appears we have company. I thought these waters were void of life, but there seems to be a great deal of life in them. I hope they don’t have a strong liking for human. Or bird. Let me know if they start to nibble on your legs. They seem to be staying away from mine.”
Bird ignored her and continued to walk. He made no effort to escape. He stayed with her; seemingly glad for the company, and the sound of a human voice. He walked next to her, matching her pace, rather than being led, or trying to lead.
Quiet, the bird focused on Salomar when she spoke, first with one eye, then with the other, as if absorbing every word, every nuance. When Salomar finished speaking, the bird would turn its head forward, and continue toward the westward mountains.
“You know, Mr. Bird, I thought you were the dumbest cargo I’d ever hauled. But I’ll be honest—you are fair company—a lousy conversationalist, but fair company. When we get off this forsaken planet, I shall personally ask His Royal Emperor Audubon the Eighth to see to it that you never lack for any of the comforts. And, by golly, if he’s willing, I just may petition him for you. Would you like that? Would you like flying about space in a proper ship hauling freight and taking time to see the sights? We’ll tour all the exotic planets. But no water planets, ok? Maybe even find you a mate. Then the three of us will see the Galaxy. How ‘bout that, Mr. Bird? Sound like fun?” Bird ignored her questions.
“Soda biscuits! I should be so lucky. With my luck, I’ll be tried for destroying His Royal Birds. I wonder who shot us, anyway. And why? And why just as we jumped? Are we getting any closer to those damn mountains? It’s hard to tell, in this slimy, foul mist.”
Salomar talked. It helped her remain awake. She put her arm about the bird, and used him for support, to relieve the cramps in her legs. Her voice slowed, then stopped. Asleep, she slid into the water and floated on her back. The bird walked, dragging her until brightness on the eastern horizon awakened her.
When she stood, what was left of her suit, floated off in shreds. She walked out of her left boot. A few steps later, her right boot stayed behind. Barefoot, she continued to wade. The pea gravel forced itself between her tender toes. The sun burned through the mist, blackened her skin. Still, the mountains seemed no closer.
“Y’know, bird. Ma was right, I’m thinking right about now. I shoulda stayed home, married some bloke, and had a passel of kids. But oh no, I had to do it myself. I had to go into space. I had to go into hock, too, but that’s not the point of this monologue. No, ‘bout now, I’m a wishin’ I’da stayed put—or at least not ventured past the freight station. I coulda worked there. That was in space, but closer to home. But, no….” Salomar spoke softly through cracked lips. There were breaths between words and many breaths between sentences.
Her sunburn blistered, cracked, oozed. She screamed with pain when she fell into the water. The seawater felt like acid on her burnt and cracked skin. Bird stood and watched, first with one eye, then with the other until she stood, and they continued their trek.
For the second night, the sun seemed to stop for a moment on the sharp edge of the mountains, as if deciding whether or not to plunge once more into darkness. For a second night, Salomar looked at the mountains, ever before her, yet never seeming nearer.
Her legs cramped. Her body burned. She stopped. Bird stopped. She slid into the water, and with a sharp intake of breath she stood, and shook herself. “Got to keep going. We’re almost there. ‘Most there.” The bird turned its attention from Salomar to the mountains, and trudged onward.
“Y’know, Mr. Bird, no one said hoppin’ freight around space would be easy, but by the gonads of St. Patrick, I surely thought it would be safer than the Navy. Those troop fight wars. About now, though, I wish I’da listened to Ma. Wonder how she is. A little late to worry ‘bout her, huh? Probably died years ago. But I wonder. She used to make the most wonderful spiced coffee in the Universe. Sure could do with a cup ‘bout now. Wonder if she ever forgave me for chasing my dream?”
Bird stopped, looked at her from each eye, and then resumed his walk.
The merciful embrace of fever clothed Salomar in the eerie glow of the mist. The mist thickened and twirled about her. She clung to the bird as dizziness swept through her. She pointed, excitement in her voice, “Mr. Bird, look—there’s Ma. There’s Ma! Ma? Did you come to save us? We have to take Bird, y’know. Yeah, we do.” The mist thinned, Ma dissolved, clarity returned to Salomar.
“Mr. Bird, we’d best get to land before long, or I won’t be worth much. I’m already hallucinating. Wonder when the rescue party will come? Hope it’s damned quick. There’s nothing in this water we can eat. I hope we can find something on the land. At least water. Ours is ‘bout gone.”
She opened the canteen, carried on bird’s back, and shared the remaining few drops. She deliberately replaced the empty canteen on the bird, “We’ll need it on land,” she explained to Bird.
Chills racked her body as they walked. “Ma,” she whined, “Ma, I’m cold. Please, Ma, bring me ‘nother blanket. I’ll be good. I’ll stay here, Ma, I won’t never leave you. Promise.”
Bird stopped, and watched Salomar carry on her conversation with her long deceased mother.
Salomar stopped. “Thank you, Ma. I’m all warm now.” Quietly, she raised her arms for a hug as she slid into the water. Bird watched. When Salomar did not scream, or stand again, Bird dropped the beacon into the sea then turned and climbed onto the rocks, shook the water from her wings and soared.
*Prepare my bed! The human is dead, as are my clutch-mates and the eggs of our young. I cannot hold my eggs much longer. Prepare my bed!*
‘Afa!It is Afa! She comes. Sing the chorus to Afa.‘ The golden male birds lifted their voices in praise and adulation. An escort soared from the cliffs to guide her to the nest awaiting her arrival.
Afa settled in her nest, drank nectar from the fruit of life, and began laying her eggs. When her five green eggs were in the nest, and she had slept a bit, one of the golden male choir relieved her of nest duty.
‘When Afa has rested enough, we would hear your story, and work it into song.‘
*Thank you, golden mate. I am somewhat rested. My clutch-mates and I almost didn’t make it. We were too far from the ship’s navigation system. At the last moment, we combined our efforts and sent a surge of song strong enough to avert the planned route. It is my eternal sadness that our burst also killed my clutch-mates. Our eggs died when we crashed into the Living Sea.
*The humans would have enslaved us for their enjoyment. They do not understand true royalty.*
The choir looked at one another, then at Afa. Finally, one dared to ask, ‘Afa, what are humans?‘
Joker Kills Murray – Ending Scene
Soft Baked Pretzels
Ingredients
1 envelope dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour (maybe more)
1 beaten egg
Coarse salt (optional)
Instructions
Heat oven to 425 degrees F.
In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in water.
Add sugar and flour, and mix. Dough should be soft but not sticky. Add a little more flour if it is too sticky.
Let dough rise for 30 minutes.
Cut dough into 12 pieces. Roll pieces of dough into 16 inch ropes.
To make pretzels, curve ends of each rope to make a circle; cross ends at top. Twist ends once and lay down over bottom of circle. Spray cookie sheet with baking spray.
Arrange pretzels on sheet.
Brush on egg and sprinkle with coarse salt.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until golden.
What is something you are surprised you survived as a child?
My sister recently found a cache of letters our mother had written to her mother. One of the letters, from early 1962 and written when I was 4, detailed the night she spent holding my little body as I was overcome with a high fever and suffered seizure after seizure after seizure through the night and into the morning.
The town was socked in by a rare snowstorm, my father was nowhere to be found, and she was home alone with me and my four siblings, who would have been 1, 3, 7 and 9. She kept feeding me aspirin and giving me sponge baths.
My tongue became so swollen she stuck her finger in my mouth to try to keep my airway open. Come the morning, my father finally showed up, my mother threw a blanket around me, left him with the rest of the kids, and rushed me to the hospital emergency room, where our family doctor was waiting for us at the door.
My temperature was 105.4 and my lungs were congested from viral pneumonia.
I was apparently so close to death that if she had had to wait just a couple of more hours, I wouldn’t have made it.
My mother spent a week with me at the hospital, not returning home until she could bring me with her.
Though I remember none of this, I was apparently the recipient of a large number of injections, 5 within the first 30 minutes, to the point that my behind reportedly became so sore that I couldn’t even sit on a toilet seat.
I became so terrified of and uncooperative with the nurses and doctors that I wouldn’t accept any oral medications or even food from them and my mother had to give them to me.
Two years after that, I spent another week in the hospital for tests and treatment for an apparent kidney disease that had me sleeping 12 hours a day.
So I guess I’m surprised I survived early childhood, in general. I didn’t get out unscathed, though. I’ve had a lifelong terror of needles and a pathological distrust of doctors.
As a mother myself, I’m glad I was the child in that experience and not the mother. I don’t know how she did that.
You will be alone most of the time. Not lonely, but alone. Try to understand the difference to avoid unnecessary suffering.
Happiness will not come easily as it came when you were young. You would have to work towards it. Discipline and sacrifice would be your best bet. Don’t get caught in the YOLO gimmick.
Life will get boring. Your mind will wander. Learn to control it before it starts controlling you.
Your best friend might no longer be your best friend. Your ex would have already moved on. You will struggle. But it will imbue you with lots of wisdom. So don’t curse yourself.
You’ll realise in retrospect that very few people really loved you whilst others just wanted something out of you.
Memories are not always good. More than often, they induce unncecesary fear, anxiety and mood swings.
Time starts becoming the most valuable commodity. It will treat you like shit if you treat it cheaply.
Whether you like it or not, people will talk behind you. Sometimes it would be the people whom you trusted the most. Learn to ignore them.
You’ll run down the guilt-valley more often than before. You will do things which you know is not good for you but will anyways end up doing it. You will invariably be distracted by foul things. This is your mind conquering your weak spot. Like I said, discipline can save you.
You’ll realize that success is not that easy after all. It’s that difficult. You would be tempted to give up on your dreams and live an average life. Don’t.
Things will go wrong. Personally and professionally. The unexpected will happen. There won’t be any reason/person to blame on. Your faith in humanity will plummet all of a sudden. But hey, don’t give up. Move on.
You will soon start noticing your parents are getting old, your best friend is suffering from illness or money constrait. You realize how much time you’ve wasted playing the ego game. So don’t wait. Make that phone call now.
Most of the times, you’ll experience fear for no reason. When things are going good, you’ll dread on ‘what if this happiness goes away?’. When things are not going good, you’ll still dread on what’s going to happen next.
You’ll get your heart broken multiple times. And you’ll have to break a couple of hearts yourself. That’s life. There no right and wrong here.
There are no good people/bad people. You’ll have to come out of this cynical mind-set. There are only people who bring you pleasantness and unplesantness. Remember, people who bring unplesantness to you might bring pleasantness to someone else.
You’ll realize that multi-tasking is not beneficial. You start focusing on one big goal/day rather than 10 small goals/day. You’ll learn to differentiate between being productive and being busy.
You’ll learn that not all emotions you experience are genuine. More than half of them are mere mind-games. Learn to distinguish to avoid bouts of depression.
You’ll be forced to change your attitude towards failures because you’ll have more failures than success. You will no longer react to events, but will eventually respond to it. Reacting will get you into more trouble. Responding will move you towards a solution.
You’ll realise that you can’t be friends with everyone. And you don’t have to be. Accept this fact sooner than later.
You’ll realise that earning respect is more difficult than earning money. And it’s the respect that would eventually make you feel proud about yourself in life.
“TO TARGET ALL OF BRICS’s COUNTRIES”, THE COLLECTIVE WEST PLAN.
Lordy! She is absolutely right!
To psychologists and psychiatrists: have you had a patient you really feared? Why?
I would like to be anonymous to answer your question.
I am a psychiatrist and I was in duty to give counseling and figure out any mental problems to the prisoners of Singapore.
I’ve met a lot of people but only one pops out in my mind when I read your question.
He was a boy, barely 15.
When I was looking at his medical chart, he was surprisingly a very bright kid, with an IQ level of 140.
But, he was arrested by police when his own parents lodged a complaint; they feared their own child might kill them.
He had his own way dealing with his life: he showed no emotions, nor answered any of my questions.
But, the one thing scares me the most was when I look through the CCTV, it seemed his body reacted with time; like some sort of a timetable.
He only went to the washroom at 2pm, 6pm and 9pm; and, slept exactly at 10pm.
Just before I retire, I revisit him back and had the chills for lifetime when he told me this, ‘when you were observing me, I too, was observing you. I figured you out, but you had no clue about me.’
Edit:
For those who asked in detail about this case, This is a situation I handled back in 2009. So, by right, he would be turning 22 this year. This boy was in prison 3 months before I was given in charge of his case which is around October 2009.
His parents lodged a complaint that goes like this, ‘finding him in their bedroom, holding a knife, staring at them while they’re asleep.”
However, this kid never once, caused harm to his parents or anyone else, but they were concerned with his behavior particularly in school; he disliked arts, and girls for some reason. He killed a cat because it was purring when he attempted a math question. There is no strange history or environment or any issues regarding his upbringing.
One notable feature of his; he is ambidextrous and he have no friends. He is somehow very observant, quiet and highly manipulative. I concluded him as a psychopath in my final report. And yes, I visited him for the last time in 2012. And I still wonder, what is really going on his head.
As a teacher, what is the saddest experience you’ve had while on the job?
I had a 22 year old student with a high school diploma struggling in my class. I stayed after every day to offer tutoring for my students. He walks in and notices he is the only one there, asks me if he can close the door to talk to me privately.
He closed the door walked to my desk with his head down, looked up at me with tears in his eyes and told me he couldn’t read.
I’m dumbfounded, he graduated from high school and can’t read?
He was a gifted football player, was passed in his classes so he could play. No worries for his future just a winning ball team.
I decided we would start with the very basics, he struggled to sound words out and I was at a loss. We worked for a month. Finally I figured out he had dyslexia when I had him copy a paragraph from the book we were working on.
I got us an appointment with the campus director, we went in and he sat there next to me mortified with tears running down his face. I told the campus director what was going on, that I think he is dyslexic and that is why he is having trouble learning to read.
We got him in for the specialized testing and he was diagnosed with dyslexia. We had to put him on a leave so he could go to special classes to learn how to read.
I had him the next year in my class again. He was a changed man, held his head up, and was at the top of the class. He pulled me aside to thank me for being the first teacher to care that he actually learned.
This was the saddest and turned into the happiest situations I had.
this is exactly how America will f!nish you
What are the craziest objects that you’ve seen TSA workers remove from someone’s bag to be confiscated?
A guy tried to take a big bottle of shampoo in his carry-on. The TSA guy told him to either throw it away or exit the line and check his luggage. The guy went on about how expensive the shampoo was and how he’d miss his flight if he exited. The TSA guy didn’t care. The guy then said, “Well… at least keep it so that somebody gets some use out of it.” TSA guy said, sorry, he couldn’t do it.
Another time, a woman in front of me got busted with several jars of jam. The TSA guy told her the same thing the other TSA agent told the shampoo guy. Either pitch it or else exit the line and check it in. “But you don’t understand. It’s JAM. It’s prize winning jam! Open up a jar and take a taste!” The TSA guy declined to eat the jam. The woman, now in tears, threw away her prize winning jam.
Not a confiscation, but while checking into Australia. Some of us were chosen to have our luggage searched. The guy in front of me had a suitcase full of porn. The Australian Border Force Officers didn’t bat an eye, didn’t smirk, didn’t say a word, just rifled through his suitcase looking for who-knows-what. The passenger turned nine shades of red. After their search, they packed it all back up and returned it to him.
This last one/best one I remember was a couple decades ago pre-TSA, but a couple in front of me were being searched by a very young Customs agent. He was going through the wife’s suitcase and pulled out an applicator tampon and held it up in the air: “Aha! What’s this?” Another Customs agent looking on immediately turned and stepped away. The husband yelled over to his wife: “Marge! Get over here and declare your Kotex before we end up in prison!” By now, the young guy realized his mistake and, now horrified, ushered them through as fast as humanly possible.
Pick A Side And Fight For It, Keep Your Head Down, Or Flee
Founder, CIO Mentor, and Member of the Bridgewater Board
Published Jun 25, 2024
As you know, based on my study of history, I believe there are now and have always been five big, interrelated forces that drive how domestic and world orders change. They are the 1) the big debt/credit/money cycle, 2) the big internal order/disorder cycle 3) the big external order/disorder cycle, 4) acts of nature (i.e., droughts, floods, and pandemics), and 5) human innovation that leads to advances in technology. Today, I am focusing on why I believe we are approaching the point in the internal order-disorder cycle when you will have to choose between picking a side and fighting for it, keeping your head down, or fleeing.
Pick a Side and Fight for It, Keep Your Head Down, or Flee
I believe we now have to face the fact that fighting for democracy as we know it—with thoughtful disagreement and compromises governed by rule of law—is unlikely to work. People like me who had a long shot hope for the emergence of a strong middle that fights against the extremists to bring the country together and makes major reforms to improve the system must recognize that the differences are becoming too irreconcilable for this to happen.
Based on the lessons I learned from studying history about how things typically transpire under similar circumstances, I believe that what we are now seeing is the parties increasingly moving to greater extremism and a fight-to-win at all cost mode. This is threatening the rule of law as we know it and is bringing us closer to some form of civil war. (As I will explain below, this is not necessarily a violent conflict, though that is possible).
When I wrote my book, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, which looked at the rises and declines of domestic and world orders over the last 500 years, I chronicled the six stages of the “big internal order cycle,” their symptoms, and the cause-effect relationships that drive them. Just like life cycles, these stages are logical and everyone goes through them, typically about once in a lifetime. Toward the end of the cycle, which is where all the signs and symptoms show us to be today, people typically face a choice between fighting for one side or another, keeping their heads down, or fleeing.
When I wrote the book in 2020, I saw the writing on the wall but had hoped for the possibility that we would not cross the brink into a type of civil war, so I estimated the chance of that as about 1 in 3. At the time, this was considered a crazy high estimate (this was before the 2020 election being contested and the January 6th incident). Now I think the risk of some form of civil war is uncomfortably more than 50 percent, and I am confident that in the next year we will know the answer to whether we will cross the brink.
In a Nutshell How It Works
Domestically in the US there are two political sides which are also each divided in two: 1) the right side (i.e., the red Republican team), which is divided into the hard right and the moderate right, and 2) the left (the blue Democratic team), which is divided into the hard left and the moderate left. Throughout history, in the later stages of the cycle of internal order and disorder, both sides become increasingly “hard” (extreme) for logical reasons. This is the part of the cycle that we are in. Classically, at this stage, wealth and values gaps are large, people have lost faith that the system will get them what they want, and the hard right and the hard left become increasingly committed to winning for their constituents at all costs, which eventually means abandoning the rules of the game and the judges and just fighting. In the current case and classically, the sides become unwilling to compromise as compromising is perceived as being weak and people are forced to either pick a side and fight for it, keep their heads down, or flee. You should be prepared to make that choice.
To make the decision only a bit more extreme than it currently is, in looking at these two sides, if you had to choose between a fascist government and a communist government, which would you choose? If you are not knowledgeable about what fascism is (a dictatorship of the hard right) and what communism really is (a dictatorship of the hard left), I urge you to get schooled because if you have to make choices, it’s important to really understand them.
The Case at Hand
Most importantly, there are now big irreconcilable differences that are producing win-at-all cost perspectives that are undermining the willingness to accept the judgements of the legal system. That is very relevant to nearly all decision making—most importantly to legal and political decision making in and beyond the election. We should acknowledge and worry about what’s going on and think about its implications. For example, we should pay attention to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times saying that the Supreme Court is “corrupt, rotten, and hurting America” and the numerous other similar attacks on the system. This is only one of a chorus of such comments. Comments like these beg questions such as 1) what is the definition of corruption, 2) if it is corruption, why don’t those who are corrupt get prosecuted and convicted, and 3) if the judicial system and the judges don’t make these decisions, how will they be made? Nowadays “corrupt” seems to mean what those on the other side of the political divide decide is corrupt. It is obvious to me that if people don’t rely on the judicial system to make unbiased decisions, decisions will instead be made by revolutionaries on both sides fighting it out. This of course is very relevant to the upcoming election, so let’s play out how that will likely go.
It seems to me that if Biden wins, it is likely that Trump and those on the hard right who he represents won’t accept the leadership of Biden and the Democratic Party, and that if Trump wins, those on the hard left won’t accept Trump’s leadership and tactics. What happens next depends on the strength of the legal system, with those on each side seemingly more willing to fight its judgments than abide by them if they don’t get what they want. For these reasons, it seems to me that there is a higher than 50 percent chance that democracy as we know it won’t run smoothly through the election and beyond, and that the still most popular view that everyone will abide by the votes and the rules (i.e., if we have ABC votes for president, senators, and congressmen, we will have XYZ policies enacted as a function of the system operating as it has operated) won’t prove true.
While it is now commonly believed that Trump Republicans are the greater extremists and the Democrats will be moderate, based on how things have transpired in history and what I see today, I’m not so sure. I think it’s more likely that both sides will be more extreme than is commonly believed. Given that it is doubtful that President Biden will remain president through his next term, we don’t know what part of the Democratic Party will win out in leading its agenda. While there are moderate leaders in the Democratic Party (i.e., Hakeem Jeffries, Gretchen Whitmer, and Josh Shapiro), those of the hard left (i.e., Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and AOC) have largely gone quiet, knowing that they would scare away moderate voters so it’s better for them to bide their time while they are pushing their hard left agenda behind the scenes. President Biden’s appointment of Lina Khan, a political activist of the left, to head the FTC is an example of the current administration using appointments the way Trump is making clear he will have his political appointees use their positions to pursue a hard-left agenda. In the recent past, leading Democrats have also expressed support for rule changes that would swing power their way (i.e., making Puerto Rico and Washington DC states so they could get control of the Senate, adding to the number of Supreme Court justices to get control of it, removing of the filibuster, etc.) Given all of this, I’m not so sure that hard left Democrats are out of the picture or are above using their government powers to achieve their political agenda any more than I believe that hard right Republicans are above doing that.
For all these reasons, it appears to me that we are probably headed toward an existential battle of the hard right against the hard left in which you will have to pick a side and fight for it, or keep your head down, or flee.
By flee, I think that will mostly be from one state to another and we will see increased emphasis on state rights rather than the central government being dominant. A clash between state governments and a fractured central government appears likely, which I would regard as a type of civil war even if not violent. If things get bad enough, some Americans will flee to other countries and foreigners will choose not to be here. Such disorder would also not be good for rule-of-law and our capital markets.
From studying history, I have seen these sorts of civil wars happen many times before—in the French, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Cuban and several other cases—so that the sequence of how this cycle typically transpires is clear and appears applicable to what is happening now in the United States (and in several other countries in varying degrees). For those who are interested, I have copied the section from Chapter Five (“The Big Cycle of Internal Order/Disorder”) of my book which the describes Stage Five (the pre-civil war stage that I believe we are in) and Stage Six (the civil war stage that I believe that we are in the brink of) of the internal order cycle. To be clear, I am not saying that we will certainly cross the brink into civil war—I am saying that there is a much higher probability of some type of civil war (including a non-violent one) than is commonly believed.
By the way, what I described here is about domestic conflict. A similar sort of conflict is happening internationally—i.e., there is a classic great power conflict with the two big sides internationally being the China-Russia side and the US -G7-Australia side and regional conflicts are being sorted out by nations in alliances with these two big sides. But that is a subject for another day. Let’s now focus on how the internal conflict dynamic typically works and apply that template to what’s happening to internal politics with this excerpt from Chapter Five of Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.
Stage 5: When There Are Bad Financial Conditions and Intense Conflict
The most important influence that transpires in a Big Cycle is that of debt, money, and economic activity. Because I covered that cycle comprehensively in Chapters 3 and 4, I won’t explain it here in detail. But to understand Stage 5, you need to know that it follows Stage 3, in which there is peace and prosperity and favorable debt and credit conditions, and Stage 4, in which excess and decadence begin to bring about worse conditions. This process culminates in the most difficult and painful stage—Stage 6—when the entity runs out of money and there is typically terrible conflict in the form of revolution or civil war. Stage 5 is the period during which the interclass tensions that go along with worsening financial conditions come to a head. How different leaders, policy makers, and groups of people deal with conflict has a major impact on whether the country will undergo the needed changes peacefully or violently.
You can see signs of this happening now in a number of countries. Those that have adequate financial conditions (i.e., have incomes that are greater than their expenses and assets that are greater than their liabilities) are in relatively good shape. Those that do not are in relatively bad shape. They want money from the others. The problem is that there are many more who are in bad shape relative to those that are in good shape.
You can also see that these different conditions are big drivers of the differences in what is now happening to most aspects of these countries, states, cities, companies, and people—e.g., their education, healthcare, infrastructure, and well-being. You can also see big cultural differences in how countries approach their stressful conditions, with some approaching them more harmoniously than others who are more inclined to fight.
Because Stage 5 is such a pivotal stage in the internal cycle and because it’s the stage that many countries, most importantly the US, are now in, I will devote some time to going through the cause/effect relationships at play during it and the key indicators to watch in examining its progression. Then I will turn more specifically to where the United States stands.
The Classic Toxic Mix
The classic toxic mix of forces that brings about big internal conflicts consists of 1) the country and the people in the country (or state or city) being in bad financial shape (e.g., having big debt and non-debt obligations), 2) large income, wealth, and values gaps within that entity, and 3) a severe negative economic shock.
That confluence typically brings about disorder, conflict, and sometimes civil wars. The economic shock can come about for many reasons, including financial bubbles that burst, acts of nature (such as pandemics, droughts, and floods), and wars. It creates a financial stress test. The financial conditions (as measured by incomes relative to expenses and assets relative to liabilities) that exist at the time of the stress test are the shock absorbers. The sizes of the gaps in incomes, wealth, and values are the degrees of fragility of the system. When the financial problems occur, they typically first hit the private sector and then the public sector. Because governments will never let the private sector’s financial problems sink the entire system, it is the government’s financial condition that matters most. When the government runs out of buying power, there is a collapse. But on the way to a collapse there is a lot of fighting for money and political power.
From studying 50-plus civil wars and revolutions, it became clear that the single most reliable leading indicator of civil war or revolution is bankrupt government finances combined with big wealth gaps. That is because when the government lacks financial power, it can’t financially save those entities in the private sector that the government needs to save to keep the system running (as most governments, led by the United States, did at the end of 2008), it can’t buy what it needs, and it can’t pay people to do what it needs them to do. It is out of power.
A classic marker of being in Stage 5 and a leading indicator of the loss of borrowing and spending power, which is one of the triggers for going into Stage 6, is that the government has large deficits that are creating more debt to be sold than buyers other than the government’s own central bank are willing to buy. That leading indicator is turned on when governments that can’t print money have to raise taxes and cut spending, or when those that can print money print a lot of it and buy a lot of government debt. To be more specific, when the government runs out of money (by running a big deficit, having large debts, and not having access to adequate credit), it has limited options. It can either raise taxes and cut spending a lot or print a lot of money, which depreciates its value. Those governments that have the option to print money always do so because that is the much less painful path, but it leads investors to run out of the money and debt that is being printed. Those governments that can’t print money have to raise taxes and cut spending, which drives those with money to run out of the country (or state or city) because paying more taxes and losing services is intolerable. If these entities that can’t print money have large wealth gaps among their constituents, these moves typically lead to some form of civil war/revolution.
At the time of this writing, this late-cycle debt dynamic is now playing out in the United States at both the state and federal levels, with the main difference between them being that state governments can’t print money to pay their debts while the federal government can. The federal government and many state and city governments have large deficits, large debts, and large wealth gaps, and the central bank (the Federal Reserve) has the power to print money. So, at the time of this writing, the central bank is printing a lot of money and buying a lot of federal government debt, which finances the government spending that is much bigger than the federal government’s intake. That has helped the federal government and those it is trying to help, though it has also cost those who are holding dollars and dollar debt a lot in real purchasing power.
Those places (cities, states, and countries) that have the largest wealth gaps, the largest debts, and the worst declines in incomes are most likely to have the greatest conflicts. Interestingly, those states and cities in the US that have the highest per capita income and wealth levels tend to be the states and cities that are the most indebted and have the largest wealth gaps—e.g., cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City and states like Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.
Facing these conditions, expenditures have to be cut or more money has to be raised in some way. The next question becomes who will pay to fix them, the “haves” or the “have-nots”? Obviously, it can’t be the have-nots. Expenditure cuts are most intolerable for those who are poorest, so there needs to be more taxation of people who can afford to pay more and there is a heightened risk of some form of civil war or revolution. But when the haves realize that they will be taxed to pay for debt service and to reduce the deficits, they typically leave, causing the hollowing-out process. This is currently motivating movements from some states to others in the US. If bad economic conditions occur, that hastens the process. These circumstances largely drive the tax cycle.
History shows that raising taxes and cutting spending when there are large wealth gaps and bad economic conditions, more than anything else, has been a leading indicator of civil wars or revolutions of some type.
To be clear, they don’t have to be violent, though they can be. I see these cycles transpiring in my personal interactions. For example, I live in the state of Connecticut, which has the highest per capita income in the country, the largest wealth gap and income gap in the country, and one of the largest per capita debt and unfunded pension obligations in the country. I see how the haves and the have-nots are focused on their own lives and spend little time worrying about the other because they don’t have much contact. I have windows into what the lives of both the haves and the have-nots are like because I have contact with the people in our community of haves and because the work my wife does to help disengaged and disconnected high school students in disadvantaged communities brings her into contact with people who live in the communities of the have-nots. I see how terrible the conditions are in those have-not communities and how the haves (who appear rich and decadent to the have-nots) don’t feel rich. I see how they are all focused on their own struggles—with the haves struggling with work/life balance, making sure their kids are well-educated, etc., and the have-nots struggling with finding income, food security, avoiding violence, trying to get their kids a quality education, etc.
I see how both groups are more likely to have critical, stereotypical impressions of each other that make them more inclined to dislike each other than to view themselves empathetically as members of one community in which they should help each other. I see how difficult it can be to help each other because of these stereotypes and because the haves don’t feel that they have more than enough or that the have-nots deserve their financial support, and I fear what the future might hold because of the existing circumstances and how they are likely to worsen. I have seen close up how COVID-inflicted health and budget shocks have brought to the surface the terrible conditions of the have-nots and are worsening the financial gaps that could bring about the classic toxic mix dynamic.
Averages don’t matter as much as the number of people who are suffering and their power.
Those who favor policies that are good for the whole—e.g., free trade, globalization, advances in technology that replace people—without thinking about what happens if the whole is not divided in a way that benefits most people are missing the fact that the whole is at risk.
To have peace and prosperity, a society must have productivity that benefits most people. Do you think we have this today?
What does history show as the path that bankrupt governments can follow to raise productivity that benefits most people? It shows that restructuring and/or devaluing enough of the previously created debt and non-debt obligations helps a lot. That is classic in Stages 5 and 6. Once the restructuring or devaluation reduces the debt burdens, which is typically painful at the time, the reduced debt burdens allow for a rebuilding.
An essential ingredient for success is that the debt and money that are created are used to produce productivity gains and favorable returns on investment, rather than just being given away without yielding productivity and income gains. If it is given away without yielding these gains, the money will be devalued to the point that I won’t leave the government or anyone else with much buying power.
History shows that lending and spending on items that produce broad-based productivity gains and returns on investment that exceed the borrowing costs result in living standards rising with debts being paid off, so these are good policies.
If the amount of money being lent to finance the debt is inadequate, it is perfectly fine for the central bank to print the money and be the lender of last resort as long as the money is invested to have a return that is large enough to service the debt. History shows and logic dictates that investing well in education at all levels (including job training), infrastructure, and research that yields productive discoveries works very well. For example, big education and infrastructure programs have paid off nearly all the time (e.g., in the Tang Dynasty and many other Chinese dynasties, in the Roman Empire, in the Umayyad Caliphate, in the Mughal Empire in India, in Japan’s Meiji Restoration, and in China’s educational development programs over the last couple of decades), though they have long lead times. In fact, improvements in education and infrastructure, even those financed by debt, were essential ingredients behind the rises of virtually all empires, and declines in the quality of these investments were almost always ingredients behind empires’ declines. If done well, these interventions can more than counterbalance the classic toxic mix.
The classic toxic mix is usually accompanied by other problems. The more of the following conditions that are in place, the higher the probability of having a severe conflict like a civil war or revolution.
Decadence
While early in the cycle there is typically more spending of time and money on productive things, later in the cycle time and money go more toward indulgent things (e.g., the finer things, like expensive residences, art, jewelry, and clothes).
This begins in Stage 4 when such spending is fashionable, but by Stage 5 it begins to appear grotesque.
Often, that decadent spending is debt-financed, which worsens the financial conditions. The change in psychology that typically goes along with these changes is understandable. The haves feel that they have earned their money so they can spend it on luxuries if they like, while the have-nots view such spending at the same time they are suffering as unfair and selfish. Besides increasing resentments, decadent spending (as distinct from saving and investing) reduces productivity.
What a society spends money on matters. When it spends on investment items that yield productivity and income gains, it makes for a better future than when it spends on consumption items that don’t raise productivity and income.
Bureaucracy
While early in the internal order cycle bureaucracy is low, it is high late in the cycle, which makes sensible and necessary decision making more difficult.
That is because things tend to get more complex as they develop until they reach the point where even obviously good things can’t be done—necessitating revolutionary changes. In a legal and contract-based system (which has many benefits), this can become a problem because the law can stand in the way of doing obviously good things. I will give you an example that I’m close to because my wife and I care about it.
Because the US Constitution doesn’t make education a federal government responsibility, it has predominantly been a state and local responsibility with school funding coming from revenue raised by local taxes in cities and towns. Though it varies from state to state, typically those children in richer towns in richer states receive a much better education than those in poorer towns in poorer states. This is obviously unfair and unproductive even though most people agree that children should have equal opportunities in education. But because this structure is so ingrained in our political system, it is nearly impossible to fix without a revolutionary reinvention of how we approach it. There are more examples of the bureaucracy standing in the way of doing sensible, productive things than I have time and space to convey here. It is now a big problem in America.
Populism and Extremism
Out of disorder and discontent come leaders who have strong personalities, are anti-elitist, and claim to fight for the common man. They are called populists. Populism is a political and social phenomenon that appeals to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are not being addressed by the elites. It typically develops when there are wealth and opportunity gaps, perceived cultural threats from those with different values both inside and outside the country, and “establishment elites” in positions of power who are not working effectively for most people. Populists come into power when these conditions create anger among ordinary people who want those with political power to be fighters for them. Populists can be of the right or of the left, are much more extreme than moderates, and tend to appeal to the emotions of ordinary people. They are typically confrontational rather than collaborative and exclusive rather than inclusive. This leads to a lot of fighting between populists of the left and populists of the right over irreconcilable differences. The extremity of the revolution that occurs under them varies. For example, in the 1930s, populism of the left took the form of communism and that of the right took the form of fascism while nonviolent revolutionary changes took place in the US and the UK. More recently, in the United States, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a move to populism of the right while the popularity of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reflects the popularity of populism of the left. There are increased political movements toward populism in a number of countries. It could be said that the election of Joe Biden reflects a desire for less extremism and more moderation, though time will tell.
Watch populism and polarization as markers. The more that populism and polarization exist, the further along a nation is in Stage 5, and the closer it is to civil war and revolution. In Stage 5, moderates become the minority. In Stage 6, they cease to exist.
Class Warfare
In Stage 5, class warfare intensifies. That is because, as a rule, l during times of increased hardship and conflict there is an increased inclination to look at people in stereotypical ways as members of one or more classes and to look at these classes as either being enemies or allies. In Stage 5, this begins to become much more apparent. In Stage 6, it becomes dangerous.
A classic marker in Stage 5 that increases in Stage 6 is the demonization of those in other classes, which typically produces one or more scapegoat classes who are commonly believed to be the source of the problems. This leads to a drive to exclude, imprison, or destroy them, which happens in Stage 6. Ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups are often demonized. The most classic, horrific example of this comes from the Nazi’s treatment of Jews, who were blamed and persecuted for virtually all of Germany’s problems. Chinese minorities living in non-Chinese countries have been demonized and scapegoated during periods of economic and social stress. In the UK, Catholics were demonized and scapegoated in numerous stressful periods, such as the Glorious Revolution and the English Civil War. Rich capitalists are commonly demonized, especially those who are viewed to be making their money at the expense of the poor. Demonizing and scapegoating are a classic symptom and problem that we must keep an eye on.
The Loss of Truth in the Public Domain
Not knowing what is true because of distortions in the media and propaganda increases as people become more polarized, emotional, and politically motivated.
In Stage 5, those who are fighting typically work with those in the media to manipulate people’s emotions to gain support and to destroy the opposition. In other words, media folks of the left join with others of the left and media folks of the right join with others of the right in the dirty fight. The media goes wild like vigilantes: people are commonly attacked and essentially tried and found guilty in the media, and they have their lives ruined without a judge and jury. A common move among 1930s populists of the left (communists) and of the right (fascists) was to take control of the media and establish “ministers of propaganda” to guide them. The media they produced was explicitly aimed at turning the population against the groups that the governments considered “enemies of the state.” The government of the democratically run United Kingdom created a “Ministry of Information” during World War I and World War II to spread government propaganda, and leading newspaper publishers were elevated by the government if they did what the government wanted them to do to win the propaganda war or were vilified and suffered if they didn’t cooperate. Revolutionaries did the same distorting of the truth in all sorts of publications. During the French Revolution, newspapers run by revolutionaries pushed anti-monarchist and anti-religious sentiment, but when those revolutionaries attained power, they shut down dissenting newspapers during the Reign of Terror. During times of great wealth gaps and populist thinking, stories that bring down elites are popular and lucrative, especially those that bring down left-leaning elites in right-leaning media outlets and those that bring downright-leaning elites in left-leaning media outlets. History shows that significant increases in these activities are a problem that is typical of Stage 5, and that when combined with the ability to inflict other punishments, the media becomes a powerful weapon.
It is well-recognized this is happening at the time of this writing. The perceived truth in media, both traditional and social, is lower than at any other time in our lifetimes. For example, a 2019 Gallup poll found that only 13 percent of Americans surveyed have “a great deal” of trust in the media and only 41 percent of those surveyed have either a “fair” or “great deal” of trust in the media. That compares with 72 percent who trusted the media in 1976. This is not just a fringe media problem; it is a mainstream media problem and a problem for our whole society. The dramatically decreased trustworthiness has even plagued former icons of journalistic trust such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, which have seen their trust ratings plunge. In addition to being politically motivated, sensationalistic stories have become commercially rewarding at a time when the media business is in financial trouble. Most of the media folks I speak with share my concerns, though they typically won’t share them openly. Still, in reflecting on the problem, Martin Baron, then executive editor of The Washington Post, said, “If you have a society where people can’t agree on the basic facts, how do you have a functioning democracy?” This dynamic is impeding free speech since people are afraid to speak up because of how they will be attacked in both traditional and social media by distortions that are meant to bring them down.
Even very capable and powerful people are now too afraid of the media to speak up about important matters or run for public office. Since most high-profile people are torn down, most everyone I speak with agrees that it is dangerous to be a high-profile, vocal person who fights for truth and justice, especially if one offends people who are inclined to use the media to fight. Though not discussed in public because of fears of media reprisals, this issue is continuously discussed in private. For example, during a lunch I had not long ago with a general who had held a very high political position and had just left government service, we explored what he would do next. I asked him what he was most passionate about. He said, “Of course helping my country.” I asked him whether he would consider running for elected office, and he explained that while he was willing to die for his country he couldn’t bring himself to run for public office because of how enemies would use the media and social media to make up lies to harm him and his family. This general and almost everyone I know who we should listen to are afraid to speak openly because they fear that attacks by extremists who oppose them will be enabled and amplified by the sensationalistic media. Many of my friends tell me that I’m crazy to speak so openly about controversial things such as those covered in this book because it is inevitable that some people or groups will try to take me down via the media. I think they are probably right, but I won’t let the risks dissuade me.
Rule-Following Fades and Raw Fighting Begins
When the causes that people are passionately behind are more important to them than the system for making decisions, the system is in jeopardy. Rules and laws work only when they are crystal clear and most people value working within them enough that they are willing to compromise in order to make them work well.
If both of these are less than excellent, the legal system is in jeopardy. If the competing parties are unwilling to try to be reasonable with each other and to make decisions civilly in pursuit of the well-being of the whole, which will require them to give up things that they want and might win in a fight, there will be a sort of civil war that will test the relative powers of the relevant parties. In this stage, winning at all costs is the game and playing dirty is the norm. Late in Stage 5 is when reason is abandoned in favor of passion.
When winning becomes the only thing that matters, unethical fighting becomes progressively more forceful in self-reinforcing ways. When everyone has causes that they are fighting for and no one can agree on anything, the system is on the brink of civil war/revolution.
This typically happens in a couple of ways:
Late in Stage 5 it is common for the legal and police systems to be used as political weapons by those who can control them. Also, private police systems form—e.g., thugs who beat people up and take their assets, and bodyguards to protect people from these things happening to them. For instance, the Nazi party formed a paramilitary wing before it came to power that then became an official force when the Nazis were in power. The short-lived British Union of Fascists in the 1930s and the Ku Klux Klan in the US were effectively paramilitary groups as well. Such cases are quite normal, so view their development as a marker of moving to the next stage.
Late in Stage 5 there are increasing numbers of protests that become increasingly violent. Because there is not always a clear line between a healthy protest and the beginnings of a revolution, leaders in power often struggle over how to allow protests without giving the perceived freedom to revolt against the system. Leaders must manage these situations well. A classic dilemma arises when demonstrations start to cross over into revolution. Both giving the freedom to protest and suppressing protests are risky paths for leaders, as either path could lead the revolution to get strong enough to topple the system. No system allows people to bring down the system—in most, an attempt to do so is treason, typically punishable by death. Nonetheless, it is the job of revolutionaries to bring down systems, so governments and revolutionaries test each other to see what the limits are. When broad-based discontent bubbles up and those in power allow it to grow, it can boil over to the point that when they try to put a lid on it, it explodes. The conflicts in the late part of Stage 5 typically build up to a crescendo that triggers the violent fighting that signifies the transition into what historians stamp as official civil war periods, which I am identifying as Stage 6 in the Big Cycle.
People dying in the fighting is the marker that almost certainly signifies the progression to the next and more violent civil war stage, which will continue until the winners and losers are clearly determined.
That brings me to my next principle:
When in doubt, get out—if you don’t want to be in a civil war or a war, you should get out while the getting is good.
This is typically late in Stage 5. History has shown that when things get bad, the doors typically close for people who want to leave. The same is true for investments and money as countries introduce capital controls and other measures during such times.
Crossing the line from Stage 5 (when there are very bad financial conditions and intense internal and external conflict exist) to Stage 6 (when there is civil war) occurs when the system for resolving disagreements goes from working to not working. In other words, it happens when the system is broken beyond repair, people are violent with each other, and the leadership has lost control.
As you might imagine, it is a much bigger deal to break a system/order and build a new one than it is to make revolutionary changes within an existing system/order. Though breaking a system/order is more traumatic, it isn’t necessarily a worse path than operating within a system.
Deciding whether to keep and renovate something old that is not working well or to dispose of it and replace it with something new is never easy, especially when the something new is not clearly known and what is being replaced is as important as the domestic order. Nonetheless, it happens, though typically it is not decided on intellectually; it is more often emotionally driven.
When one is in Stage 5 (like the US is now), the biggest question is how much the system will bend before it breaks.
The democratic system, which allows the population to do pretty much whatever it decides to do, produces more bending because the people can make leadership changes and only have themselves to blame. In this system regime changes can more easily happen in a peaceful way. However, the “one person, one vote” democratic process has the drawback of having leaders selected via popularity contests by people who are largely not doing the sort of thoughtful review of capabilities that most organizations would do when trying to find the right person for an important job. Democracy has also been shown to break down in times of great conflict.
Democracy requires consensus decision making and compromise, which requires a lot of people who have opposing views to work well with each other within the system. That ensures that parties that have significant constituencies can be represented, but like all big committees of people who have widely different views (and might even dislike each other), the decision-making system is not efficient.
The biggest risk to democracies is that they produce such fragmented and antagonistic decision making that they can be ineffective, which leads to bad results, which leads to revolutions led by populist autocrats who represent large segments of the population who want to have a strong, capable leader get control of the chaos and make the country work well for them.
Also noteworthy: history has shown that during times of great conflict federalist democracies (like the US) typically have conflicts between the states and the central government over their relative powers. That would be a marker to look out for that hasn’t yet arisen much in the US; it’s happening would signify the continued progression toward Stage Six.
There are far too many breakdowns of democracies to explore, let alone describe. While I looked into a number of them to see the patterns, I haven’t fully mined them, and I’m not going to dive into them here. I will say that the factors described in the explanations of Stage 5 when taken to the extreme—most importantly, terrible finances, decadence, internal strife and disorder, and/or major external conflict—lead to a dysfunctional set of conditions and a fight for power led by a strong leader. Archetypical examples include Athens from the late 400s to the 300s BCE, the end of the Roman Republic in the century or so preceding 27 BCE, Germany’s Weimar Republic in the 1920s, and the weak democracies of Italy, Japan, and Spain in the 1920s and 1930s that turned to autocracies of the right (fascism) to bring order to the chaos.
Different stages require different types of leaders to get the best results. Stage 5 is a juncture in which one path could lead to civil war/revolution and the other could lead to peaceful and, ideally, prosperous coexistence. Obviously the peaceful and prosperous path is the ideal path, but it is the much more difficult path to pull off.
That path requires a “strong peacemaker” who goes out of their way to bring the country together, including reaching out to the other side to involve them in the decision making and reshaping the order in a way that most people agree is fair and works well (i.e., is highly productive in a way that benefits most people). There are few such cases in history. We pray for them. The second type is a “strong fighter” who is capable of taking the country through the hell of civil war/revolution.
Stage 6: When There Are Civil Wars
Civil wars inevitably happen, so rather than assuming “it won’t happen here,” which most people in most countries assume after an extended period of not having them, it is better to be wary of them and look for the markers to indicate how close one is.
While in the last section we looked at nonviolent revolutions that took place within the order, in this section we will be looking at the markers and the patterns of civil wars and revolutions that were almost always violent and toppled the old order and replaced it with a new one. Though there are innumerable examples that I could have examined to understand how they work, I chose what I believe are the 29 most significant ones, which are shown in the following table. I categorized this group into those that produced big changes to the system/regime and those that did not. For example, the US Civil War was a really bloody civil war that failed to overturn the system/order, so it is in the second group at the bottom of the table, while those that toppled the system/order are at the top. These categories are of course imprecise, but once again we won’t let imprecision stand in the way of seeing what we couldn’t see if we insisted on being precise. Most of these conflicts, though not all of them, transpired in the archetypical way described in this section.
A classic example of a civil war breaking the system and having to build a new system is the Russian Revolution/Civil War of 1917. This put into place the communist internal order that eventually entered Stage 5 in the late 1980s, which led it to attempt to make revolutionary changes within the system—called perestroika (i.e., restructuring)—which failed and were followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union’s order in 1991. The communist domestic order lasted 74 years (from 1917 until 1991). That order was replaced by the new system/order that is now governing Russia, which, after the collapse of the old order, was built in the classic ways described earlier in this chapter in my explanations of Stages 1 and 2.
Another is Japan’s Meiji Restoration, which came about as a result of a three-year revolution (1866–69) that happened because the Japanese were closed off to the outside world and failed to advance. The Americans forced the Japanese to open, which prompted a revolutionary group to fight and defeat the rulers (led by the military shogun) in battle, which led to overturning the internal order then run by the four classes—the military, farmers, artisans, and merchants—that had ruled Japan. This old Japanese order run by traditional people was ultra-conservative (e.g., social mobility was outlawed) and was replaced by revolutionaries who were relatively progressive and changed everything by reinstating the powers of a modernizing emperor. Early in this period there were lots of labor disputes, strikes, and riots that resulted from the classic triggers of wealth gaps and bad economic conditions. In the reform process the leadership provided universal elementary education for both boys and girls, adopted capitalism, and opened the country up to the outside world. They did this with new technologies, which led them to become very competitive and gain wealth.
There are many such cases of countries that did the right things to produce revolutionarily beneficial improvements, just as there are many cases of revolutionaries doing the wrong things that inflicted terrible pain on their people for decades. By the way, as a result of its reformations Japan went on to move through the classic stages of the Big Cycle. It became extremely successful and rich. But over time it became decadent, overextended, and fragmented, had an economic depression, and fought expensive wars, all of which led to a classic demise. Its Meiji order and its classic Big Cycle lasted for 76 years from 1869 to 1945.
Civil wars and revolutions inevitably take place to radically change the internal order.
They include total restructurings of wealth and political power that include complete restructurings of debt and financial ownership and political decision making. These changes are the natural consequence of needing to make big changes that can’t be made within the existing system. Almost all systems encounter them. That is because almost all systems benefit some classes of people at the expense of other classes, which eventually becomes intolerable to the point that there is a fight to determine the path forward. When the gaps in wealth and values become very wide and bad economic conditions ensue so that the system is not working for a large percentage of the people, the people will fight to change the system. Those who are suffering the most economically will fight to get more wealth and power from those who have wealth and power and who benefit from the existing system. Naturally the revolutionaries want to radically change the system, so naturally they are willing to break the laws that those in power demand they adhere to. These revolutionary changes typically happen violently through civil wars, though as previously described, they can come about peacefully without toppling the system.
The periods of civil war are typically very brutal. Typically, early on these wars are forceful and orderly struggles for power, and as the fighting and emotions intensify and the sides do anything to win, the levels of brutality accelerate unexpectedly such that the actual levels of brutality that occur in the Stage 6 civil wars and revolutions would have been considered implausible in Stage 5. The elites and moderates generally flee, are imprisoned, or are killed. Reading the stories of civil wars and revolutions, such as the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, the Russian Revolution, and the French Revolution, made my hair curl.
How do they transpire? Earlier I described the dynamics of Stage 5 that led to crossing the line into Stage 6. During this stage all of those intensify greatly. I will explain.
How Civil Wars and Revolutions Transpire
As previously described, the cycle of building wealth and wealth gaps that leads to a very small percentage of the population controlling an exceptionally large percentage of the wealth eventually results in the poor majority overthrowing the rich minority via civil wars and revolutions. This has happened more times than one can imagine.
While most of the archetypical civil wars and revolutions shifted power from the right to the left, many shifted wealth and power to the right and away from those on the left. However, there were fewer of them and they were different. They typically happened when the existing orders slipped into dysfunctional anarchies and a large percentage of the population yearned for strong leadership, discipline, and productivity. Examples of revolutions from the left to the right include Germany, Spain, Japan, and Italy in the 1930s; the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980s to the early 1990s; the 1976 coup in Argentina replacing Isabel Perón with a military junta; and the coup leading to the Second French Empire in 1851. All those that I examined worked or didn’t work for the same reason. Like those of the left, these new internal orders succeeded when they produced broad-based economic successes and failed when they did not. Because broad economic prosperity is the biggest reason a new regime succeeds or fails, the long-term trends have been to both greater total wealth and broader distribution of the wealth (i.e., better economic and health outcomes for the average person). That big picture can be easily lost when one is in and experiencing one part of the Big Cycle.
Typically, the people who led the civil war/revolution were (and still are) well-educated people from middle-class backgrounds. For example, three of the key revolutionary leaders of the French Revolution were Georges-Jacques Danton, a lawyer raised in a bourgeois family; Jean-Paul Marat, a physician, scientist, and journalist raised in a bourgeois family; and Maximilian Robespierre, a lawyer and statesman also from a bourgeois family. This revolution was initially supported by many liberal aristocrats, like the Marquis de Lafayette, who were raised in moderately well-off families. Similarly, the leaders of the Russian Revolution were Vladimir Lenin, who studied law, and Leon Trotsky, who was raised in a bourgeois family of intellectuals. The Chinese Civil War was led by Mao, who was from a moderately well-off family and studied a variety of subjects such as law, economics, and political theory, and Zhou Enlai, who was from a scholarly middle-class family of civil servants. These leaders also typically were (and still are) charismatic and able to lead and work well with others to build big, well-run organizations that have the power to bring about the revolutions. If you want to look for the revolutionaries of the future, you might keep an eye on those who have these qualities. Over time they typically evolve from being idealistic intellectuals wanting to change the system to be fairer to brutal revolutionaries bent on winning at all costs.
While having large wealth gaps during economically difficult times was typically the biggest source of conflict, there were always other reasons for conflict that added up to a lot of opposition to the leadership and the system. Typically, in revolutions the revolutionaries with these different grievances joined together to make revolutionary changes; while they looked united during the revolution, after winning the revolution, they typically fought with each other over issues and for power.
As previously mentioned, during the civil war/revolution stage of the cycle the governments in power almost always had an acute shortage of money, credit, and buying power. That shortage created the desire to grab money from those who had it, which led those who had wealth to move it into places and assets that were safe, which led the governments to stop these movements by imposing capital controls—i.e., controls on movements to other jurisdictions (e.g., other countries), to other currencies, or to assets that are more difficult to tax and/or are less productive (e.g., gold).
To make matters even worse, when there was internal disorder, foreign enemies were more likely to challenge the country. This happens because domestic conflict causes vulnerabilities that make external wars more likely. Internal conflict splits the people within a country, is financially taxing on them, and demands attention that leaves less time for the leaders to tend to other issues—all things that create vulnerabilities for foreign powers to take advantage of. That is the main reason why internal wars and external wars tend to come close together. Other reasons include: emotions and tempers are heightened; strong populist leaders who tend to come to power at such times are fighters by nature; when there are internal conflicts leaders find that a perceived threat from an external enemy can bring the country together in support of the leader so they tend to encourage the conflict; and being deprived leads people/countries to be more willing to fight for what they need, including resources that other countries have.
Almost all civil wars have had some foreign powers participating in an attempt to influence the outcome to their benefit.
The beginnings of civil wars and revolutions aren’t clear when they are happening, though they are obvious when one is deeply in the middle of them.
While historians assign dates to the beginnings and ends of civil wars, they are arbitrary. The truth is that almost no one at the time knows that a civil war has begun or that it has ended, but they know when they are in them. For example, many historians have designated July 14, 1789, as the day the French Revolution began because a mob stormed an armory and prison called the Bastille. But nobody at the time thought it was the beginning of the French Revolution or had any idea how terribly brutal that civil war and revolution would become. While one might not know what’s to come, one can have imprecise markers that help one place where one is, to see the direction that one is moving in, and to know something about what the next stage will be like.
Civil wars are incredibly brutal because they are fights to the death. Everyone is an extremist because everyone is forced to pick a side and fight—also moderates lose out in knife fights.
As for what types of leaders are best for civil wars and revolutions, they are the “inspirational generals”—people who are strong enough to marshal support and win the various types of battles they have to win. Because the fight is brutal, they have to be brutal enough to do whatever is necessary to win.
The time that historians stamp as the civil war period typically lasts a few years and determines the official winners and losers, which is conveyed by who gets to occupy the government buildings in the capital. But like the beginnings, the ends of civil wars/revolutions are not as clearly defined as historians convey. The fighting to consolidate power can go on for a long time after the official civil war has ended.
While civil wars and revolutions are typically extremely painful, they often lead to restructurings that, if done well, can establish the foundation for improved future results. What the future after the civil war/revolution looks like depends on how the next steps are handled.
Conclusion
My study of history has taught me that nothing is forever other than evolution, and within evolution there are cycles that are like tides that come in and go out and that are hard to change or fight against. To handle these changes well it is essential to know which stage of the cycle one is in and to know timeless and universal principles for dealing with it. As conditions change the best approaches change—i.e., what is best depends on the circumstances and the circumstances are always changing in the ways we just looked at. For that reason, it is a mistake to rigidly believe that any economic or political system is always best because there will certainly be times when that system is not best for the circumstances at hand, and if a society doesn’t adapt it will die. That is why constantly reforming systems to adapt well is best. The test of any system is simply how well it works in delivering what most of the people want, and this can be objectively measured, which we can do and will continue to do. Having said that, the lesson from history that comes through most loudly and most clearly is that skilled collaborations to produce productive win-win relationships to both grow and divide the pie well, so that most people are happy, are much more rewarding and much less painful than fighting civil wars over wealth and power that lead to one side subjugating the other side.
I might have related this story in some of my many writings, but this is the story of a boyhood friend. His name was Jeff, and he was one year older than myself.
He lived one block up the hill from my house, and we played a lot. He had a horse, a canoe, and a cool attic bedroom with all of his brother’s airplane models still hanging from the ceiling. He loved Mad magazine, and science fiction. In fact, I bought my entire Doc Savage collection from him for the princely sum of ten dollars.
He was a little odd, not bad, just odd. His parents had divorced, and he lived with his mother. And she was nice but odd. On one occasion she wanted to hide me in their house for a week to get the entire town all worked up. I said no. After all, all that I could think of was the hurt and terror my parents would feel if I did that.
Anyways, he lived in a house with a two car garage.
One day, I went to visit him, and sitting in that garage was a massive pile of dirt. You see, he was trying to become a earth-worm king. He had this idea that he could raise earthworms right there and sell them to the local fishing bait shop.
Good idea, but he over-estimated the value of his product.
Anyways, for a whole month he would water that pile of dirt, and farm out earth-worms. Big news for a fifth grader.
Then one day it was all gone.
He sold one coffee can full of worms for a $1. And yeah, things were cheaper back then, but even he realized that that was a far cry from becoming a millionaire.
So he moved on to other things of boyhood interest. Which included model rockets (Estes) and crossbows.
Ah. Boyhood.
Eventually he moved away when I turned 16 years old. And during the furniture auction for his house, I met my first girlfriend; a Ms Georgia Beck. A fine thin, willowy lass all of 15 years old.
And that is another story for another time.
Today…
How much alcohol did Winston Churchill consume? Was he a big drinker?
We can get a peek into how much Churchill drank since the White House butler, Alonzo Fields, wrote about Churchill’s drink requests in his memoir. Not long after Churchill arrived at the White House in December of 1941, he pulled Mr. Fields aside and said the following:
“Listen, Alonzo, when I leave here we want to depart as friends, right? I’ll have no whistling in the hallways in the mornings. Now, I must have a tumbler of sherry in my room before breakfast, a couple of glasses of scotch and soda before lunch and French champagne, and 90-year-old brandy before I go to sleep at night.” This was not inclusive of everything Churchill drank during the day, however, it was just a starting point.
Essentially, Churchill drank for a good part of his waking hours every single day. His drinking sessions were known to last until 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. every night, wherein he kept President Roosevelt up to talk shop. This exasperated the First Lady, who was at least a little pleased to see him go at the end of his three week trip to Washington.
Churchill maintained his heavy drinking and smoking lifestyle all while leading his nation through a war and as a renown public speaker and author. He still managed to live to age 90. Good genetics.
Reaction to @hoe_math . Is Promiscuity that bad? Women should stop aiming above their level.
A breeding visa? in Japan?
This is the tragic story of Seath Jackson, who was born in Belleview, Florida.
In 2011, at the age of 15, Jackson briefly dated Amber Wright. However, their relationship ended in March of that year after Jackson learned that Amber had cheated on him with an 18-year-old named Michael Bargo.
Bargo despised Jackson so much that he even believed Jackson had abused Amber, and he began to devise a plan to punish him. Bargo collaborated with four others to carry out the plan. Amber lured Jackson to a mobile home under the pretense of wanting to “work things out,” but when Jackson arrived, he was ambushed by the group.
Image: Seath Jackson(top right), the attackers, and evidence recovered in the investigation.
The attackers bludgḛoned him on the head with a piece of wood, causing him to stumble outside, where Bargo shot him several times. They then wrapped his body in a sleeping bag and threw it into a burning pit fire. The group’s heinous crime was exposed when one of the perpetrators confessed.
Bargo was sentenced to dḛậth, while the others received life in prison for their roles in the m̃urdḛr of Seath Jackson. Michael Bargo is the youngest person on Florida’s dḛậth row.
Can you destroy your entire life with one wrong decision?
Effortlessly.
Guy I went to school with turned down the advances of a young lady at a party because she was underage and he wasn’t in to that. This wasn’t a huge age gap (four years) but she was fifteen and that’s illegal.
She went to the police and said he raped her (at a later date).
Police did their usual stirling job and nabbed him without even asking for an alibi.
His name was leaked to the press. (Norfolk police in the 90’s were really bad).
He was cleared in court because his alibi was that he had been going through army selection that weekend and had a whole training base of folk who could prove he was a hundred miles away from where she claimed things happened.
Didn’t matter. Papers named him and whipped the locals in to a frenzy. His car was set on fire, house vandalised, fired from his job, army rejected him (he passed selection but the army was trying to clean up their image at the time so …).
End of the day he did a bunk in the middle of the night. Went to eastern Europe and got a series of shitty jobs. I got one email from him back around 2000 just to let me know he was alive and I’ve never heard from him since. So, there you go, one young man’s whole life pissed away because he wouldn’t cop off with a girl at a party.
Why I Left the USA (Again)
Did you ever accidentally overhear a conversation about you on a conference call?
Not a conversation that I overheard, but a technical conversation I had for work that was overheard by other people.
I was a civil engineer working as the project manager for the replacement of a very, very weird bridge. First let me tell you about this bridge – it carried a small, local road over the main Amtrak line. It was an historic truss structure dating back to just after the civil war (back when the rail-line belonged to Pennsylvania railroad), and, weirdest of all, there was a driveway to a car dealership *on the actual bridge*. And all of this was located in the heart of the Main Line where property values were super-high, and it was crowded among some very luxe businesses.
Redesigning this bridge was a complete nightmare.
First off, I could not meet a single design standard. Not roadway width (too narrow), grade (too steep), clearance, nothing. There were just too many constraints. So I call my Federal counterpart (because this bridge has federal funding) and try to explain all of the problems.
Only our line was crossed with a pair of women who were having their own conversation.
That’s fine, we can hear them, but their volume is low, and we know that they can hear us, but we aren’t discussing anything secret – so we each ignore the other conversation, for the most part.
I explain the problem to my counterpart and ask if he can grant me a design exception for the design speed. If I can design the bridge for 15 miles per hour I can meet the design criteria. No, that is too big an ask. I continue to explain the problem with all the constraints. Then my counterpart asks me how much it would cost to design the bridge to meet all the standards. (Quick aside here, cost is NOT supposed to be a factor in choices like this, unless it is extremely excessive *AND* there are other safety factors involved. But extreme costs can be considered as a mitigating factor.)
So I tell him that the the extra construction cost won’t be that much, maybe a hundred thousand dollars on a million dollar project. But the two properties on either side of the bridge at one end are owned by a Lexus dealership and a Mercedes dealership who do not want to give up a square inch of land and are going to make the state pay through the nose. The other side of the bridge has an historic church on one side and a medical office building on the other – not quite as expensive but still hard to obtain the land. So the cost of the real estate would probably be about a million dollars in that area. On top of that, there are utilities everywhere – water, electric, phone, gas, cable, fiber optic lines – so there goes another three-quarters to a million dollars moving all of them. Then, because the bridge is very close to a heavily trafficked commuter route, and improving the grade on the bridge would mean repaving that road, too, the cost of traffic management would easily run another four to five hundred thousand dollars.
And the women overhearing our conversation exclaim, “Oh my God! That’s two and a half million dollars!” Then, realizing that they were overheard, they say their goodbyes and quickly hang up.
My counterpart says he has to see this bridge before making a decision, so we set up a meeting on the site for about a week later. And just as I am about to leave for that meeting, I get a panicked phone call from my counterpart saying that he is at the bridge and he is too nervous to even drive across it. He moves the meeting to my office, arrives thirty minutes later and signs off on all of the design exceptions.
It still took another three years to completely the design – mainly because the Lexus dealership didn’t want to lose their driveway, or sell the tiny amount of land that was required, but it did get built, safely and for a lot less than two and a half million dollars.
Southwestern Beef and Chili Pizza
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (12 inch) thick prebaked Italian bread shell
1 1/4 cups mild thick and chunky salsa
1 1/2 cups Mexican cheese blend or Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
1 (4 ounce) can diced green chiles, drained well
2 medium plum tomatoes, seeded and coarsely chopped
1/3 cup thin red onion slivers
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
Instructions
Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
In large skillet, brown ground beef over medium heat 8 to 10 minutes or until no longer pink, breaking up into 3/4 inch crumbles.
Pour off drippings.
Season with salt.
Place bread shell on ungreased baking sheet.
Spread salsa over shell. Sprinkle with half of cheese.
Top with beef chiles, tomatoes, red onion and remaining cheese.
Bake for 11 to 13 minutes or until cheese is melted.
Sprinkle with cilantro; cut into 8 wedges.
Have you ever met a celebrity and found they were much kinder or ruder than you expected?
In the late 1980s I worked as a chauffeur for Beverly Hills Limousine (At that time a small family run business) and I had occasion to drive many of the “Hollywood elite”. As I have recounted in another post here, the absolute nicest celeb I drove would be actor Kirk Douglas. Intelligent, thoughtful, funny but not to be trifled with. I thoroughly enjoyed having him in my car.
The absolute worst celeb (though certainly not the absolute worst client) was actress Susan Clark. Married to football star turned actor Alex Karras (“Mongo” in “Blazing Saddles”) she had a reputation as a lady with class and upbringing. The car I drove her in was a Lincoln Continental 4-door hardtop with NO window “screen” between driver and passenger. I drove her to a photo shoot from the Hollywood hills to Glendale, approx. a half hour drive. All was “normal” for a while until I heard a loud belch behind me. Hey, everyone burps, only it is standard to apologize for such an indiscretion. She was silent. Shortly after that I saw her produce a toothpick to give her teeth the “once over”. Afterwards she unwrapped a stick of chewing gum and put it to work, presumably to freshen her breath. Moments later there was a loud fart… I cracked some windows to insure there was no “poison gas”…
Fortunately, we arrived at the photo studio shortly thereafter and I dropped her off. I pulled the car over in a nearby filling station to dispose of the gum wrapper and toothpick. They were not visible. I found her gum stuffed into the rear passenger ash tray (Yes, cars all had ash trays then) but the wrapper and toothpick were not visible. Running my hand between the seat and the backrest, I found them both there stuffed in between the upholstery.
Not my worst day driving a limousine but NOT my definition of a classy lady.
Why you SHOULDN’T get US Citizenship even if you have a chance?
Why Americans think Chinese are most brainwashed but World see Americans the most brainwashed and they believe theories like flat earth?
The Americans are the most brainwashed people in the world and the evidence is out there in the open for everyone to see.
A country who spent north of $7 trillion on the stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while allowing itself to decay in almost every aspect of its essential services and amenities, has to be a country drowned so deeply in corruption.
And today the American people are still electing their favourite politicians from the the equally corrupt bi-parties instead of sending them to the gallows is truly mind numbing.
NATO & the US are making a decision to up the ante—we will escalate. We will take more and more perilous actions and take this thing right up to the edge of WW3.
The Schiller Institute is trying to mobilize public opinion to bring a greater air of caution. By preempting the most aggressive and most reckless people we have managed to ward off some of the worst excesses during this war.
If we can continue doing it successfully then perhaps peace will come and we can reconsider our foreign policy and some of the very grave mistakes that we’ve made recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET5ZjNIU0dg
The Western corporate elite have made up their mind. They are determined for WWIII. If they can’t have total world domination they will stomp on the blocks and nuke the Whole thing.
What’s the most expensive thing you’ve found/lost/broken?
My wife & I had just boarded a cruise ship and were settling into our state room. The prior occupant had left some valuables in the safe, closed but unlocked: her wallet (with ID) with some cash in it, and then various envelopes with $20s, $100s, etc written on the front, stuffed with that kind of bill. Of course, we had to count the money. It was over $3k.
The ID was for an elderly lady, and we found a paper with a phone number on it for a relative (same last name).
Some people may think it was silly of us, but we tried calling the number to return the wallet & cash. No one answered—we left a message but never heard back. So instead we took the cash & wallet to the customer service desk and turned it over to them. The lady at the desk was pretty surprised I think. We had to stand there while she counted it out in front of us twice.
We’ll never know whether the old lady got her wallet & cash back.
EDIT: Some are asking why housekeeping didn’t find it. The safe was physically shut most of the way and the contents were not visible. I assume housekeeping doesn’t usually pull open the safe door to see if the safe is empty. We didn’t find the stuff until we went to put our valuables in the safe.
Crossing the Airfield – The Pacific
Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?
I bought a Mazda RX3 in early 1972 with the new rotary engine. I was living in Los Angeles when I learned my mother had pancreatic cancer and would not likely survive very long. I jumped in my car and drove as fast as I could to her home in Phoenix to spend a little time with her before she passed.
There were no other cars on Interstate 10 so I decided to see just how fast that little engine could go. I had just pegged the needle (140) and was still gaining speed when I heard the “whoop” of the siren. I looked in my rear view mirror and could see the California Highway Patrol car trying to catch up with me. I pulled over (safely), rolled down my window, grabbed my documents, and waited for him.
The officer quickly parked, exited his vehicle, and ran toward me shouting “Get out of the car!” I thought perhaps my car was on fire so I leaped out and practically ran into him yelling “What’s happening?” He stopped, grabbed me by the shoulders and stared and me with a very surprised look on his face. I repeated, “What’s happening?”
Then he started laughing. “You’re just a kid! And a girl!” I was still confused, but told him I knew I was driving fast, that I was in a hurry to spend time with my mother who was in her last days, and that the truth was that I was also really curious about what that rotary engine could do and thought the road was empty.
He took a few breaths and told me my speed was extremely dangerous and even a slight bump or pothole in the road could have caused me to crash. He was sorry about my mother. He was also sorry that had to write me up since he had already called in a “reckless driver”, but he would write the ticket for the maximum that would allow me to continue on my journey (and not be arrested on the spot).
Then he said, “Before you go, can I take a peek at that rotary engine?” I nodded and popped the hood. We had a nice chat. I drove safely away to see my mom for the last time.
I lean against the cool metal of the large door that never opens. I know it opens, of course. It’s the only door in this room. But I almost never see it move. At least, not since the day I was brought here.Despite it being dark in this room, I still know where the door is thanks to the light seeping in through the bottom. Even though it is probably night, the monsters keep working.I was brought here by people who always smile. But no matter how friendly they look or act, they’ll always be monsters to me. Why did they bring me here? Why did they bring us here? To die in this cold empty room, away from our families?It’s only me and Oscar now. We’re the only two left. I rub my arms, feeling chilly or maybe just scared at the thought that we’re alone. There used to be many children in this room. So many children were in here, just days ago, playing with us, eating with us, sleeping with us. Then they left, beginning to disappear one by one. No one said anything about it. The monsters acted as though they had never even existed in the first place. I just don’t understand. I never saw them go. It was like bubbles. They were there one moment and gone the next. And like bubbles it doesn’t seem to matter if one pops.When the last one left today, I planted myself at the door. Half because I wanted to make sure no one would take me or Oscar next and half because I was hoping if I waited here long enough, they’d come back.I just don’t understand why things are so different now. We used to be taken from the room from time to time, to get poked at with needles or examined by machines. But the monsters always returned us to this room. I guess they don’t now.Suddenly I hear the muffled voices of some of the monsters behind the door. It sounds like a man and a woman.“Really? To all of them?” The woman asks, sounding shocked. I lean a little closer into the door.“Yes. Unfortunately they didn’t survive the testing. It’s a shame, but we should’ve seen it coming. You can’t force that kind of change without consequences.” The man says, sighing. What does he mean, force that kind of change? Who is he talking about? Us?“What about the other two? Will we need to dispose of them too?” The lady askes, flatly.“Thankfully, no. They always were healthier than the rest, probably from being a second generation. We were quite fortunate that they’re different genders.” The man responds, sounding almost eager. What does that mean? Why would it matter that they’re different genders? Unfortunately I might never get the answer, because their voices get fainter as they move farther away.Oscar and I are different genders. He’s a boy and I’m a girl. So could they really be talking about us? And if they are, what did they do with the others?
I crawl away from the door, heading across the freezing tiles to where Oscar is sleeping in a pile of blankets.
“Oscar.” I whisper, afraid to startle him. He continues sleeping, unmoved. Annoyed, I begin to shake him. I just can’t sleep until I talk to somebody about this! “Oscar, wake up!” I cry out, as loud as I can without drawing the attention of the monsters. He jerks up, squinting at me through the darkness.
“What time is it?” He mumbles, rubbing his eyes. I guess he’s still groggy because we haven’t had access to clocks since the day we came here.
“It’s still night. But I need to tell you something important, so I need you to be awake with me!” I explain, frantically.
“I don’t care how much your stomach hurts…”he begins, his eyes closing.
“It’s not that! It’s about the others.” He opens his eyes again, interested.
“What about the others? Did one of them come back?”
“No. I don’t think so. But I was leaning against the door and I heard the monsters talk about them! Or at least it sounded like it was about them and us. They were talking about how they did something to them and how they were sick and how the monsters won’t get rid of us cause we’re different genders or something!” I say hurriedly. I gasp for breath, glad to have told someone. He frowns.
“They were sick for a long time.” He mutters, staring at the floor.
Yes, all of them had dark circles around their eyes from lack of sleep because coughing kept them up all night. They were also unusually skinny despite all the food we were fed. But I guess I didn’t think of it that much until now. All they ever really were was friends.
In my old home, my mother had a small, sparse garden. One day I watched as she threw away a wilted flower. Even though it was wilted I remember asking why she threw it away. She told me that the flower had gotten sick and eventually died. Like flowers, humans can probably wilt too. So did that mean that because my friends were sick…
My stomach churns. I wish I had been born deaf so I couldn’t hear a single word anyone ever said. To be blissfully unaware of the fear and dangers of this world. But most importantly, so that I would never have heard the monsters through the door.
“They’re not coming back.” I state, something hot and wet running down my cheek. That should’ve been a question, but somehow it feels true. Oscar doesn’t say anything, his eyes glossy.
I cling to him, grabbing onto the silky fabric of his shirt. I don’t understand. I don’t understand why they were so sick or why they’re not coming back. The only thing I do understand is that right now in this room without the voices of my friends, this is the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.
We are Living in The Twilight Zone ….. Part 3
What was the most unexpected knock you got on your door?
I was alone, my husband was away on a training course. I had been sick for days to the point I no longer knew what day it was or what time it was, I had fallen asleep on the couch with all the lights on. I had taken some medication for my cold. There was frantic knocking at my door I didn’t realize it but it was 4 AM. I opened the door and standing there shivering in the -15C temperature, was a teenage boy with no shoes on. There was at least 2 ft on snow on the ground. I
His head was bleeding. He started pleading all in one long breathe, “Please, please let me in, some guys are trying to kill me, they hit me in the head with a bat and I don’t even know them, your house was the only house that had lights on, PLEASE! I was a little dazed by it all and the medication, I just said, “Come on in”. Later my Mom and husband gave me such a hard time about opening the door in the middle on the night. I kept telling them I didn’t know it was the middle of the night. Besides the kid needed help and I had a son just a bit older than him. I would hope someone would do the same for him.
The boy had been at a house party where some people were kicked out for being too rowdy. Those people came back with more people with baseball bats. They hit anyone who was there. The kid didn’t know them or them him. He said he left via a balcony window and jumped down into the snow with no shoes. He ran down the alley, saw my lights on and came to my door. We called the police who came and took the young man away. I never heard anymore about it. My family said I should never do that again, But I have!
BEST 21 Minutes of Men Going Their Own Way – Special Video
Why does the U.S. have so many military bases outside of the United States?
The US military does not maintain 900 bases abroad.
Full stop.
Just because Ron Paul said it doesn’t mean it’s true (or, with all due respect to Politifact, even “mostly” true).
And more to the point, the vast majority of those 587 sites aren’t “bases,” but small installations – which the Department of Defense defines as being worth less than $100 million (and, hint: a proper military base costs way more than $100 million). They include things like 144 square feet of leased space somewhere in Newfoundland, Canada, and a medical research center in Lima, Peru.
The majority of these sites, while counted separately, are actually satellite components of a central base or base complex. The complex for Wiesbaden, Germany, for example, headquarters for United States Army Europe, gets 25 separate listings. Every minor camp and installation in South Korea gets a mention.
Seriously, things like golf courses (which they’re slowly divesting) and family housing units get counted towards the overseas “site” total. A lot of them are just parcels of leased land that the government has to account for (like a random acre of land in Costa Rica, versus the regularly debunked “army base”).
The fact of the matter is that America’s overseas military presence is largely, usually overhyped. Yes, it has very large military commitments in places like Japan, South Korea, and Germany, but it isn’t an imperial force with its boots on the necks of every country everywhere. 90 percent of the US’ forces are based inside the United States, and the vast majority of other nations that house US military personnel only have a handful.
Here’s a map of the number of nations with at least one US military servicemember assigned, according to the Defense Manpower Data Center:
Now here’s a map with those assignments weighted by the size of deployment.
A lot less shocking. The US’ main overseas commitments are to Europe, South Korea, and Japan to honor mutual defense pacts. Everywhere else has just a handful of service personnel whose roles are probably advisory in nature, if not entirely contained within the US embassies in those nations.
I know all the popular answers to this question come up with fancy reasons related to the US’ need to project its power or some such, and people have reflexively upvoted those answers because they sound smart, but they’re built on the incorrect premise.
The fact of the matter is that the US has neither the interest nor the resources to sustain such a massive, overseas military presence that 900 bases would require. That it has large deployments in selected countries represents its commitment to existing alliances and ongoing conflicts. But putting a bunch of hardware around the world and the garrisons necessary to zealously defend them isn’t on the table.
Ukraine putting out its begging bowl at the Berlin “Restoration and Infrastructure Conference” this week has led to a smidge more press attention to the impact of Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s electrical system. Similar to coverage of the war as a whole, bad information is being dribbled out, accompanied by doses of hopium as to how conditions could be made markedly better if the West only provided more weapons, money, and other salves.
Another telling aspect is that the articles are only willing to project out to Ukraine having the high odds of a cold and dark winter, and the impact of that on households. It’s as if we were given old fashioned naval maps, with their warnings at the periphery, “Beyond here lie dragons.” They avert their eyes from the fact that highly constrained power translates into massive constraints on and likely cascading problems with commerce.
Even if you consider only the difficulties for residents, it is not just that they will be in freezing, blackout conditions come winter. What about food? What about getting gas, since many stations rely on electricity to run their pumps?
And when we get to commerce, just start with processing transactions. What happens when Internet access is limited, and retailers and suppliers can’t take card or electronic payments on their merchant systems? Or for that matter, banks if theres is only power for a few hours a day?
And most of all, what about sewage, which John Helmer identified as the big chokepoint in terms of municipalities having a hope of remaining habitable? From his post earlier this week:
Independently of one another, Russian and Ukrainian reporters are confirming the impact of the power losses on the operation of water and sewerage systems in the majority of Ukrainian cities. According to Oleg Popenko, a Ukrainian expert on energy for communal services, “Armageddon has already arrived. We just don’t feel it yet. But the residents of Poltava, for example, feel it, because since May 5 of this year, 120,000 residents of the city receive water by the hour and use sewerage by the hour. You can imagine what happened in Zhitomir when the central sewerage collector didn’t work there for a week, but now in Poltava [it’s been] a month. And this is the problem with water utilities in 70% of Ukrainian cities. Water utilities are probably more important than rest of the infrastructure in the city. Heat and electricity can be replaced somehow, and you can go somewhere. But if the sewer system breaks down in a city, the city is no longer viable in principle.”
Also note that there is some artful positioning on the extent of the devastation. Ukraine’s biggest energy company DTEK confirmed Washington Post reporting. From DTEK on June 7:
In a recent Washington Post article, DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko revealed that russia’s missile attacks have devastated Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, with the country’s largest private power producer losing 86 percent of its generating capacity.
“What makes the situation worse is that many of the electrical facilities have been targeted repeatedly — a cycle of destruction, recovery, destruction,” Timchenko told the Washington Post. He pointed to one DTEK power unit that was repaired just weeks ago only to be struck again over the weekend, saying “Now it’s just gone.”
Yet various new reports state that Ukraine has lost only 50% of its generation. This is plausible given that DTEK in 2019 and 2020 supplied only 18% to 19% of Ukraine’s electricity, per Fitch. So the math could work. But 86% for DTEK versus 50% overall would mean DTEK has been singularly unlucky. So it’s not unreasonable to think that 50% is an understatement.
If Russia continues to attack power plants, the worst-case scenario is that come winter Ukrainians could be spending up to 20 hours a day without power and heating, according to Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK. Part of the issue is that Ukraine’s thermal and hydroelectric power stations are difficult and expensive to fix.
They skipped over the significance of this part:
Ukraine is buying energy from the European Union to try to cover its shortfall. Its energy ministry said it was planning on Wednesday to import its largest amount of power to date. However, this is not enough to make up its deficit, meaning nationwide power cuts have been planned during an eight-hour window, from 3pm to 11pm, in order to protect critical infrastructure such a hospitals and military facilities.
The BBC piece made it sound as if 3 PM to 11 PM power outages are the new normal (although in fairness “power cuts” could mean rolling blackouts in this window). Anyone who has read about load balancing in connection with solar power knows that residential usage peaks when people come home from work. They cook dinner (and open their fridges, also increasing power demand), turn on lights, turn on air conditioning or turn up heat, depending on the time of year, and in normal circumstances, many turn on entertainment devices.
So this window is part of the business day and the most active time for households. In the US, the consumer sector is the largest user of electricity, but represents less than half the total (commercial and industrial are classified separately). Ukraine is probably not wildly different (it probably has a larger industrial sector, but that was concentrated in the Donbass, which Russia now deems to be part of Russia). So even though the outage time is only 8 hours a day, on a guesstimated basis, it seems consistent with a 50% reduction. But when you consider the profile, it already represents a lot of pain for individuals.
A new story in the Wall Street Journal applies as much porcine maquillage as possible to this dire and worsening situation. Key extracts:
Ukraine is imposing blackouts, launching hasty repairs and hunting for spare parts after a Russian bombing campaign targeting power infrastructure in recent months slashed the country’s electricity production by half.
The Russian attacks, using waves of missiles and explosive drones, have sparked fears of a painful winter should the power outages severely hamper the economy and lead to an exodus from cities. Ukraine has long pleaded with the West for more air-defense systems, and Ukrainian officials say deliveries have been insufficient to protect both cities and the front lines.
In reviving and expanding a tactic used earlier in the war, Ukrainian officials say Russia is seeking to spark a humanitarian crisis as part of an effort to break Ukrainians’ will to fight and force a capitulation.
The streets of Kyiv are already filled with the sound and fumes of generators, as power companies impose hourslong blackouts to manage consumption and carry out repairs. Ukraine has increased electricity imports from European Union neighbors it was exporting power to as recently as March. And repair crews are working across its energy grid to restore capacity, sometimes only to see the same facilities struck again.
This section implies, and more Ukraine complaints in the article later explicitly claim, that this campaign could be neutralized if the West provided more air defenses. While technically accurate, it breezes past the fact that that’s na ga happen. Ukraine’s former Soviet weaponry generally outperformed Western replacements. As anyone who has been even dimly following this story knows, the US and NATO have been scrounging to find more Patriot missiles, even as Russia has been successfully hunting and destroying the platforms. Ukraine has also been pinning far too much hope on the eventual delivery of F-16 fighter jets, which the Anglosphere media has dutifully also overhyped. And we see no mention of ever-more effective Russian signal jamming.
It’s not surprising to see frustration and upset on Twitter:
The Journal piece turns to the notion that Ukraine can restore service as the war is on, which is akin to bailing water out of a badly leaking boat:
DTEK estimates the price of restoring the energy system at $50 billion…Focused on maintenance, they are looking for spare parts, equipment and investment to keep Ukraine’s grid working. To address the need for parts, [Maxim] Timchenko [CEO of DTEK] said DTEK has been working with countries across Europe to visit decommissioned power plants to scour for usable parts. At least 10 countries have opened their doors.
During the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said it helped coordinate a dozen new cooperation agreements for rebuilding and maintaining the country’s power grid. State power company Ukrenergo said it has received 30.4 million euros, equivalent to around $33 million, from Germany to support energy infrastructure. The EU said 1.4 billion euros in grants will be available to businesses working in the sector. DTEK announced partnerships with U.S. energy companies Honeywell International and GE Vernova as well as French energy company Schneider Electric, which has donated 43,000 pieces of emergency equipment worth 4 million euros since February 2022.
In fairness, the article does acknowledge, as minimally as possible, that energy facilities are “sometimes” destroyed again after repairs.
The Journal describes Ukraine plans to rely more on solar and other distributed generation, with DTEK having launched a new wind farm even while the war was on. But the article also describes the use of generators as a stopgap, without acknowledging that they are not a viable ongoing solution. Again hoisting from Helmer:
On June 7, a video recorded stroll down one of Odessa’s shopping streets revealed an emergency generating set providing electricity for almost all of the commercial establishments.
“This is in no way sustainable,” comments a NATO military engineer. “Note how each shop has its own genset. The generators in the video are not designed for the duty cycle they’re being run at. They’ll wear out soon enough. The military, including deployed NATO personnel, use the shops and the gensets, too. The idea of pooling their resources, sharing load among gensets, thus reducing wear and tear on the whole network, while collectivizing fuel and maintenance costs, doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. To be sure, what follows will be no lack of electrocutions, carbon monoxide poisonings, and fires. We can bet the manifestations of the social pathology we’re seeing here have been factored in by the General Staff. Their attack point will now be to stop fuel, engine oil, spares, and replacements from getting through.”
Russia is working on two overlapping tracks, that of degrading Ukraine’s power system so severely as to cripple its military’s ability to supply itself and communicate, with the ancillary effect of getting civilians to leave cities, which would give Russia more degrees of freedom in taking them, if it has to resort to offensive operations. At the same time, it is relentlessly attriting Ukraine’s men and weapons in the east. Russia can decide how to manage the tempo of each campaign. It will be interesting to see which vector Russia prefers over time, since this may also give early signals as to how Russia is thinking about the end game. For instance, more emphasis on the electrical campaign could presage Russia eventually asserting control over western Ukraine, which they would regard as an unwelcome necessity. Consistent with that notion, John Mearshimer on Judge Napolitano pointed out yesterday (starting at 8:58):
Ukrainians needs more manpower on the battlefield, they need more weaponry, and we don’t have weaponry to give them in meaningful numbers, and we certainly don’t have any manpower to give them. So there is not much we can do at this point in time. And I would argue, by the way, that by doubling down the way we are doubling down, especially by giving Ukraine a 10 year military commitment, we’re just guaranteeing that Russians have a powerful incentive to really wreck Ukraine.
Mearshimer did at least disagree with Gilbert Doctorow and said he thought Russia would not flatten Kiev. But that view does not make the overall trajectory that much better.
What was the most disappointing birthday present you ever saw someone get?
A car. My oldest daughter was very mature and responsible and for a few reasons I decided to give her a (used) car for her 16th birthday. My girls went to school in a different town that started at 7:20 a.m. The bus came at 6:10. An extra half hour was big. At least three nights a week she went back to school for music rehearsals. My youngest was ill and I was back and forth to the hospital so it wasn’t a wild whim to give her a car; it was a bit of a necessity. But it was a big gift. I had a party for her and a friend put a bow on it and delivered it during the party. NO REACTION. She looked pained and everyone else was a bit taken back by her lack of enthusiasm.
That evening she apologized. She wasn’t extremely outgoing and being the center of attention, knowing people were expecting a big reaction, and not being mature enough to fake one, she basically froze. She wasn’t unappreciative – more a deer in the headlights. You couldn’t have asked for a better child – it was easy to understand and let it go, but now we joke when it’s a little box at Christmas ”sure hope its not a car!”
What did you do when you were suddenly fired from a job?
I was terminated from my job as a nurse after 14 years with the same hospital. I felt defeated, unworthy and depressed. I was not sure i wanted to be a nurse anymore.
I took a week off and decided to take a road trip to a place that once made me prouder and happier than I had ever been in my life. I drove down to Columbus, Georgia, the town just outside of Fort Benning where I had attended the U.S. Army Basic Parachutist course, a.k.a. “Jump School”, and had earned my wings. It was a pivotal moment in my life as Basic Training and my Combat Engineer school had not been the “band of brothers” experience that I had hoped for. Jump School was such an awesome experience that I was finally looking forward to what would become an eventful and mostly enjoyable 3 year tour of duty which would eventually lead me to become an Army Medic and then a Registered Nurse.
I spent the weekend visiting the Infantry Museum, which included watching a class of Infantrymen graduate, the Naval Museum of the Civil War, the Coca-Cola Space Center, ambling along the river walk, and exploring the old Civil War iron works that had been made into a conference center and events venue.
On the way to and from Columbus, I visited the Aquarium in Atlanta, the Army Airborne museum at Camp Taccoa, two other local museums and an old water-powered grist mill.
I returned home feeling refreshed and began a job search. It took me 15 months to find another full-time job as a nurse, but in the interim I did some volunteer driving for the local food bank, worked part-time in a nursing-adjacent job, and went on several job interviews, both nursing and non-nursing, just to see what was out there. I even got to visit a factory where the Army’s parachutes are made.
I was fortunate enough to have a paid-for house and car and a lot of savings, but I understand that there are many out there who are less fortunate than me.
I once read a cartoon in the which the narrator said that before a person can overcome tragedy, they must take some time to just stare at the rubble. That was certainly true for me, but I also recommend finding and going to a “happy place”, even if only for a brief time, just to remind ones self that there is still some happiness to be had in life, even as we suffer the darkest of times.
Philippine Marines Drew Firearms as China Seized Second Thomas Shoal Airdrop, Says Philippine Military Chief
JUNE 4, 2024 6:04 PM
Chinese and Philippine Armed Forces boats rigid hull inflatable boats clash near Second Thomas Shoal. AFP Image
The contingent of Philippine Marines onboard BRP Sierra Madre (LT-57) at Second Thomas Shoal reportedly drew their weapons as China Coast Guard boats moved in to take packages from a resupply airdrop.
Philippine military officials said this week that Chinese rigid hull inflatable boats intercepted an aerial resupply drop destined for Marines aboard BRP Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal in an incident last month on May 19. This incident saw the vessels come as close as five meters to the grounded Second World War-era landing ship tank, which Manila grounded at the disputed shoal in 1999.
Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner said that the Marines deployed their weapons as a “precautionary measure” in self-defense.
“It’s part of the rules of engagement. That whenever you see imminent threats coming your way, you best be prepared,” said Brawner about the incident.
Chinese state media claimed that the Philippine Marines were pointing guns at China Coast Guard officers and released a video of the incident from the Chinese perspective that depicts two Philippine personnel onboard Sierra Madre wielding firearms. These claims were denied in a statement by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, citing the need for “heightened vigilance and alertness” because of the “CCG’s provocative presence near BRP Sierra Madre.”
According to the Philippine military, the China Coast Guard reportedly tore open the packages and threw their contents of foodstuffs into the water. Brawner said that may have been searching for construction materials, which Beijing has constantly cited as a reason for their interceptions of Philippine resupply missions to Sierra Madre. While most of the supplies sank, some were recovered by Philippine personnel. However, officials cited the overall resupply operation as a success as the majority of the other airdropped packages were recovered.
Two separate incidents also occurred last month around the disputed South China Sea feature. According to the Inquirer newspaper, the China Coast Guard obstructed a medical evacuation mission from Sierra Madre on May 19. The third incident occurred on May 24, which reportedly involved the use of water cannons by Chinese forces to force away a Philippine civilian fishing vessel from the proximity of the shoal.
Guys, all people who are arrested and sentenced to prison, must spend an amount of time waiting in jail. The reason for this is simple because (in the United States) the jails and prisons are full, and there is a long waiting list that you have stand in until you can get placed.
In my sorry experience at the ADC, I ended up waiting nine months in jail.
And I will tell you that the jail was better than the ADC prison in certain respects. We didn’t eat that much, but at least the food resembled “normal food”. We had two oreos as a dessert. We ate chicken wings, and hot dogs. We had french fries. While in Prison (well the Arkansas ADC) you ate mashed turnips, boiled okra, and Global.
Anyways, during that time it was terribly boring. Most of the time was spent in the cell, and we would be able to hang out in the common room to watch some television (WWF wrestling, the local news, and bowling for dollars), and play some cards.
I spent a lot of my time writing. I wrote up a couple of my MM volumes while waiting. All hand written on paper.
And when I was transferred to the ADC and went into “intake” at Pine Bluff, they looked at all the stuff that I left jail with and threw most of it away. You see, it wasn’t “state issue”. The paper, the pencils, and the toothbrushes were not regulation. And so was my writings.
They collected all of them, and together they threw them into the big trash can, and that was that.
You see, once incarcerated, you are nothing.
No. Let me correct, are are below nothing.
And as I entered the old (former) slave plantation to start hard labor, I did so raw. I did so fresh, and I did so with a big empty.
They threw everything away. I was able to keep my glasses.
That was it.
So people, every now and then, we need to be reminded about our place in society; in the world, and in this universe.
And if you are a misfit, then you pack yourself up, and go to somewhere else where you are appreciated. Life is too short to live in a shithole like the United States has become.
May I suggest Thailand.
The land of smiles… where everyone loves you and you are a handsome man, no matter how butt-fuck ugly you actually are.
Today…
Can a judge place an on-duty police officer in jail for contempt of court?
Originally Answered: Can a judge place an on duty police officer in jail for contempt of court?
Oh, yeah. And I’ve got a great example.
My stepfather, at the time a D.C. homicide detective, got home very late from work. Not in itself unusual, it happened from time to time. When I got home shortly after he did, about 9:30, and saw he was just getting dinner, I asked out of interest what kept him, he said he (in jest) he thought he was going to need me to bail him out of jail. So, Dad, what happened?!
Dad and his partner were in court for preliminary/discovery murder hearing. Lots of pretrial stuff. Prosecutor, case file, a couple of crime scene guys, Dad, his partner, defense counsel, . . . But NO DEFENDANT.
The judge queries the defense attorney why the defendant isn’t present. The defense attorney doesn’t know, hasn’t seen or heard from the defendant recently.
The judge rifles through the court file and says the records show that he, the judge, authorized the release of the defendant on a PR ( personal recognizant) bond.
That’s when Dad muttered under his breath he magic words . . . “You idiot.”
The judge orders Dad to come before the bench and tells him to repeat what he said. Dad does so — first lesson of life is always conceded the obvious, and it was obvious to Dad that the judge heard exactly what Dad said.
The judge holds Dad in contempt and orders him held in detention. So Dad is taken to court holding cell area, surrenders his pistol, handcuffs, keys, wallet, cash, belt, shoe laces, and tie. He was placed in a cell by himself, not with several other prisoners waiting for their own hearings.
Hours later, like at the end of a long court day, the judge orders Dad be brought into chambers. The prosecutor is there, Dad’s partner is there, and the defense attorney is there. The judge asked Dad if he had anything to say. I’ll never forget what Dad told me he said: “Yes, your Honor, I do. There was a mistake made. And apparently I made it. I apologize for what I said.”
Dad said the judge acknowledged that PERHAPS he, the judge, had erred when the authorized the defendant’s release on PR bond. The judge accepted Dad’s apology, rescinded the contempt charge, and released Dad.
As Dad and Jimmy left the judge’s chambers, Dad said he muttered again, under his breath, “You’re still an idiot,” and Jimmy shoved him through the door before he got locked up again.
California Pizza
Ingredients
Pizza
1 Boboli or homemade crusxt
California Oil Sauce
Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Marinated artichokes, quartered
Goat cheese, crumbled
Sliced sun-dried tomato strips
Olive oil
California Oil Sauce
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon parsley flakes
1/4 teaspoon marjoram
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon ground black peppercorn
Instructions
Pizza
Lightly oil crust with California Oil Sauce.
Top with mozzarella cheese, artichokes, goat cheese and sun-dried tomato strips.
Drizzle with olive oil.
Bake and serve.
California Oil Sauce
Puree all ingredients in blender and store.
USA SENDING SOLDIERS to UKRAINE – greasing the slippery slope to WW3…
What’s something you can’t believe you had to explain to another adult?
Oh I have a doozy of an answer, so my current career is one in the NHS, in particular an ambulance service, now we are told when training as long as you’re attending a emergency call that providing we drive safely we can effectively break the speed limit if we are on blue lights and sirens because obviously driving to a cardiac arrest at 30mph is probably not the best course of action and the same goes for parking, so long as the vehicle is parked safely and preferably not blocking the road where possible so long as the lights are on we’re good anywhere.
Now, just yesterday I was called up to the Fleet Office at my Base, the Fleet Team are our administrative team, they deal with fuel purchases, ambulance purchases, repairs, accidents and Notices of Intended Prosecution aka parking/speeding/CAZ tickets and they are actually really smart women who I know some of my colleagues look down on because they aren’t paramedics but whatever, some people are just divs. Now the reason for my visit to Fleet? I had got a parking ticket in an ambulance, and they knew my crewmate and I had been on a 999 call and already appealed it last month however the appeal had been rejected, why? Because we didn’t pay for parking in the carpark…yep you read that right.
My crewmate and I looked at each other then back at Becky the girl talking to us, we must have looked confused because she told us she had spoken to the people who had issued the fine, a company called XCel, and they wanted to talk to the driver, me, was I okay with making that call? Um sure? So Becky dials the number and asks to be connected to the person handling this Notice someone called Jack, the call is connected and she tells him she has the driver with her, does he want to speak to me still? Yes he does. His first question, my full name, you can call me Pancake, second question, why had I not paid for parking upon arrival at the car park?
I asked if he knew what vehicle I had been driving and he reels off the registration plate of that ambulance so I asked again do you know what vehicle that registration plate corresponds to? He says yes a yellow Mercedes Sprinter, he’s right it is, I then asked if he had photos of the vehicle, he confirms he does, so I asked if he can see what’s stuck on the side of the vehicle? He says what do you mean? JACK, I was driving an ambulance on a 999 call that day, I tell him.
So? You can’t park anywhere you like, he replies. Yeah he’s right, however I was parked in bay was I not? Yes but you didn’t pay, nope because I was dealing with a woman who had collapsed and gone into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated. If that was your wife, Jack, would you demand the paramedics pay for parking whilst your wife’s life ebbs from her body as your kids stand crying a few feet away? Jack goes very quiet, then asks if it was a serious call? I confirm it was and whilst I was sorry we hadn’t paid £1.50 surely the fact that woman is alive more than makes up for it? She might not be a relative of yours, Jack, but next time who knows and would you like it if this was you or your family? He asks for Becky in a shaky voice and I hand the phone back.
Long story short, fine has been cancelled and Xcel parking suck.
China’s MASSIVE Ocean Project Is About To Change The World!
Very interesting.
What is the most amazing thing you overheard because people didn’t think you understood their language?
Second-hand story here:
Over 40 years ago I shared a house with a musician buddy who had a long-time girlfriend. Sonja was a stunning brunette who was frighteningly smart and had a sharp sense of humor. She was the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants and had a very good job at a financial firm on 85th floor of what is now the Willis Tower (aka Sears Tower, Chicago, USA).
One day Sonja left her office in the stratosphere and got in an elevator car with two men in business suits at the back. When the doors closed, the two men started trading increasingly lascivious comments about her, what she was wearing, what they would like to do with her, all flagrantly sexist and offensive. They were speaking in Ukrainian and must have thought “what are the odds….?” and that they were “safe”.
Sonja waited until the car stopped, then hit the “STOP” button before the doors could open, and then laid into those two guys for a solid 30 seconds…… in fluent Ukrainian. She then hit the 80th floor button, the Close Door button, and the Emergency buttons in quick succession and stepped out, turning just in time to see the “priceless” look on the faces of the men in the elevator.
Wish I’d been there to see that, but Sonja’s satisfaction in telling the story was a treat.
TIME TO GET OUT OF HERE! (Serious Warning Issued After Fierce Exchange)
Shorpy
Upside Down (A little different than usual)
Have you ever been glad you were carrying a gun? What happened?
I sure was. I was driving home from work on route 30 eastbound about 4 pm. I was about halfway between the Hellam and the Wrightsville exits. It was a hot day and even though I had a conceal carry permit. I had my Star 9mm BKM lying on the passenger seat because the holster was uncomfortable while sitting. Looking in my rear view mirror I observed 4 cars behind me. The fourth car moved into the left lane and as he passed the third car he slammed into it forcing it onto the shoulder. He continued on and as passing the second car he slammed into it also forcing it to the shoulder. He did the same thing to the car just behind me. As he pulled up beside me. He started over toward me. He was less than a foot from me. I quickly grabbed my pistol from the passenger seat and stuck it out the driver’s window. He immediately moved back into his lane and sped away. I managed to get his license number as he pulled ahead of me. At that time in the early 80’s I didn’t have a cell phone. I got off the Wrightsville exit, went to a pay phone, called the police, and reported the incidence. I was told a few days later by the local police that the driver was caught by the Coatesville, PA. police. It was a stolen car and the driver had mental issues.
I got a vid-call from Taylor233. She looked and sounded excited.“They’ve found another one!”The excitement was contagious; I felt my heart-rate shoot up.“What condition?”“Pretty good! It was in a vac-pac.”I was already mentally rearranging my schedule so that I could make it along to the biblioteque asap.“Have they got anyone on it?” I asked, trying to keep the euphoria out of my voice.“I think Harris115 might have applied,” Taylor233 said, her tone consolatory.“We’ll see about that!” I said and hung up, immediately embarrassed at not thanking her for the information.I punched a code into the vid-fon. Harris115’s face appeared on the screen.“So you’ve heard?” he said.
“Yes. And I’ve also heard that you’re going for it.”
“Absolutely!”
I smiled at his wild enthusiasm, knowing that it was a bubble I was about to burst.
“You’ll remember, though…” I paused to allow him to connect the dots.
“No!” he exclaimed, his hopes crushed.
“It’s what we agreed. You’d get the Dickens and I’d get … whatever this one is.”
“But maybe–” he began. I cut him off.
“A deal’s a deal, Harris.”
His shoulders sagged visibly.
“All right, I’ll withdraw,” he mumbled.
Pausing only to tell the robo-sec to cancel all my appointments, I packed up my compu and rushed out of the office, making the biblioteque in record time, despite the midday congestion in the corridors. For me, lunch would have to wait.
I caught the Director just as she was leaving. She kindly agreed to a brief meeting, in which I laid out my credentials – not for the first time. She must have been convinced by them and my earnestness because she signed there and then the access digi-form. I made a point of thanking her profusely (you never know when being on good terms with the high-ups might come in useful). Then I made straight for the biblioteque lab.
Barber842 was on duty. We get on well together, so he smiled when he saw me.
“Word gets round quick!” he joked.
“It does! So tell me – what have we got?”
He led me through to the inner room, bathed as usual in filtered light. And there it was, lying in the middle of the steel table.
“The robo-scavs found it yesterday,” he whispered; this particular room always engenders hush. “It was concealed under rubble and a reinforced-concrete beam – on its own, I’m afraid. Whoever left it had the presence of mind to place it in a vac-pac.”
I nodded, disappointed at there being only one, but eager to get on with the job.
“You’ve geigered it, I suppose?”
“Of course! The box was saturated, but the artefact’s clean.”
“No radiation at all?”
“Tiny traces, but harmless.”
I rubbed my hands together.
“So, can I get started?”
“You’re keen, aren’t you?! I’ll get you a kit.”
I sat down at the table and looked longingly at the orange and cream object of … yes, my desire.
Barber842 returned with the treatment kit.
“It’s all yours,” he said, patting me on the shoulder and retiring.
…
And so here I am.
I boot up my compu and take some bio-plas gloves from the kit, along with a pair of fine tweezers. This moment is delicious: observing and wondering where to begin.
“From the beginning, I suppose,” I giggle; I feel like a young child.
My first move is to smell it. There’s nothing that quite matches this sensation. I don’t have references to liken it to other smells, but it’s unique … or rather, it’s similar to the other three I’ve had the privilege to handle, but unlike anything else in this confined world.
I spend several minutes on this act, such is the pleasure I derive from it. While I inhale the intoxicating scent, I register the seemingly incompatible sadness I feel: that this would have been one of millions – no, billions – incinerated in no time at all. I bemoan the simultaneous frying of systems, destroying digital copies. And I rage silently at the lack of foresight of engineers, who had designed and produced back-up systems for functional operations – we wouldn’t be here otherwise – but had failed to provide protection for cultural heritage.
The scent pulls me out of the bitterness and returns me to the task at hand. I sit up straight and regard the cover: that orange and cream – which was probably once white – and a word that stands out: Lover.
Love. A thing I’ve heard of, naturally, but have never experienced – as far as I know. I’m sure, though, that it’s a positive thing. I follow some simple logic: if a person who teaches is a teacher, and a person who writes is a writer, then a ‘lover’ must be a person who loves. For some reason, this little exercise warms my inside and I feel myself smiling.
The Director has entrusted me with an important task, though, and I force myself to concentrate. I have to read, analyse, and rate, then recommend – or not – that this artefact be placed in the biblioteque itself, along with the almost one hundred companions which have gone through the same process. Others have been destroyed after analysis – a fact which pains me – because of their apparently subversive nature. ‘Subversive’ is a subjective notion, I’d say … though never aloud.
I take the tweezers, pinch the side of the cover, lift it. And here again I spend several minutes inhaling the scent of the inside, which is even more exhilarating than before.
The first few pages I turn very gingerly – they’re extremely frail and flake a little under the pressure of the tweezers. Later, if recommended, it’ll be treated to make it more resilient. There’s important information on these pages, most notably the date: 1960. I shake my head in wonder at the vastness of time between then and now, and if anything, I proceed with even more reverential care.
Then I get to the first page proper, and I have to sit back and pause; I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I can see the block of text waiting for me to consume it, but it’s out of focus for the moment. I must be ready. This is a momentous occasion, and I cannot rush into it, however much I’d like to.
…
I’ve relaxed enough. I’m breathing relatively normally. I lean forward.
Parts of the first paragraph hit me like a hammer:
The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes.
It appears to be speaking of these times. How can it be? It feels like magic. And then:
We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
I feel dizzy with the striking voice speaking to me from distant times. And my heart races as I read on, impatient now to find out who the person of the title is.
This Lady Chatterley, who has a lover.
Russia Retaliates. Russian Warships heading to south of Florida, move into the Caribbean
How do you tell whether someone is a good person or is just faking it?
By listening carefully and paying attention!!
I had a friend who was constantly blathering on on her Facebook and Instagram accounts about good energy, paying things forward, saving the rhino, etc. etc. You know the type.
I enjoyed her company, although she enjoyed talking about herself too much for my tastes, but I believed she had a good heart and was in need of a friend. She didn’t seem to have many so I did what I could as a good listener.
But the more I listened the more I heard about the injustices she had suffered, money issues (she was obsessive about money and never seemed to have enough yet I put this down to insecurity), how no one invited her anywhere, etc., etc.
Fast forward a couple of months and there was a an elderly man we would run into during our walks at lunch hour. I truly enjoyed talking to him, he was very nice and had interesting things to say so I always tried to give him some time on our walks.
One day, however, my friend stated that she didn’t like talking to him. That he was old and boring. I stated that it may be the highlight of his day to talk to us as he probably doesn’t get out much and he was so nice, what was the harm. I’ll never forget her reply,
“Well, I’m not being nice to anyone unless I want something from them!”
That shocked me so much my head snapped back and I finally understood why she was lonely. On the cover she ticked all the boxes of good energy, spirituality, giving back, etc. But the truth was, she didn’t give a shit about anyone but herself.
And that, my friends, was the end of our friendship. So listen up and pay attention, not just to what people say but how they behave.
Does China have a Tipping culture?
In many ancient texts, labourers known as 小二/”little twos” who worked at tea houses and inns were given gratuities by the upper classes. Some of these young men were described as grovelling before their wealthier patrons, in the hopes of having a few extra copper coins dropped at their feet.
That said, it is believed that tipping did not exist as a social convention in China at the time. It was mostly done to flaunt one’s wealth (i.e. “flex”).
Tipping as a culture was only introduced to China during the late Qing/early Minguo era, first existing in foreign-occupied territories such as Shanghai. Restaurant owners supported such a custom, as they could get away with paying their workers way less.
The “little twos” were expected to make their living by bothering the patrons. If the patrons refused to tip, their servers would decline to provide any further service, or harass them (e.g. blocking the door, spilling tea on their clothes) until they were tipped. Quarrels and fights over tips were a common sight.
As the fights were beginning to affect business, restaurant owners came up with a new strategy: a mandatory 10% “service charge”(加一服務費) along with the bill. In theory this extra 10% would go to the servers, but in reality the owners would keep most of it for themselves.
To counteract the tip-theft, many servers resorted to “tip-shaming” their patrons. As a patron paid for his meal and the 10% service charge, the server would shout out how much tips they received. On the surface this was to prove they weren’t pocketing any extra money, but in truth this was to shame the patrons into tipping just a bit more under the table.
And if the patron didn’t get the message the first time, the server would find ways to make his life more difficult than it had to be.
Tipping was banned after the communists came to power in the mainland, as it was considered exploitative and degrading to both the patrons and the servers. Instead, restaurant workers are now expected to be paid a fair wage for their labour. Tipping a server in modern day China would bring back ugly memories of the past, and would be seen as an insult.
In Hong Kong, however, tipping culture still exists. Most restaurants here still charge you an extra 10% for “service”, even self-service restaurants. It is an open secret that most restaurant owners simply pocket that money, but there appears to be no law against this sort of thing, and the locals just go along with it.
2 tablespoons Filippo Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 cup shredded fresh basil
Instructions
Heat well-oiled cast-iron or nonstick 10 or 12 inch frying pan over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Divide dough in half; roll one half into round 1 inch smaller than diameter of pan.
Cook dough in hot pan until dough begins to rise and bottom starts to brown. Using metal spatula, turn carefully. Layer half the tomato slices over dough; scatter half the mozzarella over top. Lower heat to medium-low; cook until mozzarella melts.
Using metal spatula, transfer pizza to cutting board. Sprinkle with salt; drizzle with half the olive oil.
Cut into wedges; sprinkle half the basil over top.
Repeat with remaining ingredients.
DOWNTOWN Los Angeles COLLAPSED
What should you never buy in life?
Latest iPhones every year.
Amazon prime subscription if you want movies and shows. (Completely useless, has got nothing)
Vixen, brazzer , tushy or blacked subscription.(Everything latest is available on pirate bay)
Regular shampoos available in supermarkets. ( Go for sulphate and paraben free ones, like skin elements or mama earth)
Head n shoulders to get rid of dandruff. (Use neutrogena T Gel, expensive but 100% effective)
Stop buying anything blindly that your favourite YouTubers suggest. Those guys are fucking paid. ( Like nowadays WOW company has been doing)
Never buy something (clothes or accessories) just because it’s currently the latest fashion trend. They are usually costly and would become completely obsolete after few years eg. Tiger printed at the back of a leather jacket or Knee ripped jeans or some cool ass funky sunglasses. Always remember.. stick to basics. Wayfarers and Aviators always look good and will always remain in the scene even after 50 years.
Please don’t buy a Siberian Husky if you live in a place where tropical climate prevails. These breeds cannot endure Indian climate. They have a thick coat of fur that withstands cold upto -40 degree Celsius, imagine their condition if they have to survive at 35–40 degree Celsius.
Fairness creams. Come on man if you could become fair by just applying a cream then there would have not been any brown or black skin people.
And the biggest thing is please don’t buy Bollywood’s attempt to clean up Sanjay Dutt’s image through the film Sanju. Ak56 is a weapon that can’t be obtained easily. This is a highly sophisticated weapon which can never get into a normal citizen’s hands. He is a criminal and would always remain a criminal.
What happened to your school bully?
I’ve had a couple of bullies in my day. However, there is one in particular who really stands out to this day. I was attending a school where my father was a custodian. My father would of course be the one to open up the school doors every morning and because of that, my siblings and I would be the first children in the building everyday. He made sure all of the classrooms were unlocked for the teachers, made sure the cafeteria tables were set up for breakfast time and other things to have the school setup for opening at 8 am for students. Every grade had a certain section in the school where they would line up and wait for their teachers to get them and walk to class. I was in 5th grade, so the 5th and 6th grade classes lined up in the gym, because that was our designated area. Now within the gym, there were labels on the gym floor for each class. Being that I was always in the school before the rest of the students, I would always be the first in line for our class spot. Well, on this particular day, a girl named Angela thought it would be funny to do something that she was dared to. As I was standing in line, minding my business, a swift open handed arm extended slap from the pits of hell came out of nowhere from behind me, and burned the heck out of my face. In shock, I turned around while holding the right side of my face and asked her why she slapped me. Meanwhile, the boy I had a huge crush on was laughing like a dang hyena. The bully proceeds to say “ Because you’re always first on line and you think you’re better than all of us because your dad works here”. When I tell you I thought that was the most idiotic reason to get slapped, that was the most idiotic reason! At the time I was so shy and wasn’t a fighter, so I immediately ran off crying trying to find my dad. I ended up finding him and told him what happened. He was furious and began walking so fast and asked if I slapped her back. Of course I said no, and he was infuriated. We walked back to the gym and he immediately told the girl to keep her hands to herself and that the next time she put her hands on me, that it wouldn’t be good. Now, I don’t know what that meant, but she didn’t bother me for the rest of the school year. Where she is to this day, I have no clue, and honestly don’t care. She was such a bully to other kids and I really disliked her. A memory I would give anything to erase!
CIA Classified Book about the Pole Shift, Mass Extinctions and The True Adam & Eve Story
When I lived in the State’s I often would travel to certain cities. Sometimes for work. Sometimes for personal reasons. But all in all, I pretty much have been exposed to many different American cities.
One of the things that I would notice in all of the big cities of America was the abandoned, chained up, bicycles on the various streets.
You would be so surprised with how many old and abandoned bicycles are there. Many have the rubber wheels are gone, they are rusty and growing into the various trees on the residential trees.
Ah. Is this significant?
Nope. It probably isn’t.
But it’s a fine curiosity. And something rarely noticed and thus rarely discussed.
Today…
Life in the UK vs Life in China (Don’t watch if youre sensitive.)
What is a family secret you didn’t know as a kid, but now as an adult you do and when you look back it explains a lot of things?
My Great Aunt Dottie was actually my Great Uncle Garrison. He was never invited to any family events and when they’d ask my Great Aunt Remi (Dottie’s sister) where “Gary” was (Dottie hated that name with a vengeance) it was always with darting eyes and hushed voices making sure the children didn’t hear, Remi would answer, “he’s dead and you damned well know it.” It wasn’t until I was in high-school and had a friend who had two dads that my mom quipped one day while she was doing the dishes “You know your Great Aunt Dottie was a man, right?” and I was dumbfounded, I loved Great Aunt Dottie, I would ride my bike over to her house all the time and have tea and cookies and the most amazing monkey meat sandwiches ever and she would teach me how to cross stitch and how to plan a fifteen course meal. It was Great Aunt Dottie that taught me how to waltz and roller skate and how to shoot a bow and arrow. I actually loved my Great Aunt Dottie more after I found out that she chose her own happiness over her family and was one of only three members of my family to attend her funeral. But looking back I wonder if I always kind of knew, she had a husky voice, an always present five o clock shadow and scratched her balls like a true man.
Most men can remember back to a time on the schoolyard when two kids got into a confrontation and one of them kept promising to do something bad to the other if the other did not stop whatever it was he was doing. The threat of consequences was supposed to deter the other, but the other kid was undeterred, and the result was a fight, with the kid making the threats getting the worst of it. Bullies often come to a bad end like this as their bullying is based on threats.
If you are a member of the managerial elite, it is unlikely that you have such a memory as you were raised by women, so no school yard fights. As a result, the logic of the bully, issuing escalatory threats, makes perfect sense. After all, if you can conjure something worse than the other guy is conjuring, then you win! Therefore, success is determined by who has the greatest mastery of escalatory dominance, the alleged ability to escalate a conflict beyond that of an opponent.
This is the engine that has been driving the war in Ukraine. For close to a decade the Russians have objected to what Washington has been doing on its border in Ukraine, but Washington has responded with the promise of more of what the Russians found objectionable, rather than search for a compromise. Once the Russians crossed into Ukraine, Washington unleashed the sanctions war and promised even more punishments, including the promise of regime change.
Throughout the war, the approach from Washington has been to create some artificial red line for themselves or Russia, and then cross it in such a way as to suggest all future red lines will be crossed. Currently NATO is having a debate about launching long range missile attacks on Russia, from NATO countries or with NATO personnel, while pretending it is being done by Ukraine. This is the bully threatening the kid who refuses to back down with somet
What’s the craziest thing you’ve heard pretending to be asleep?
As a kid I was friends with these 3 girls, who were sisters and one night their parents allowed me to have a sleepover at their house so when it came to bedtime the parents allowed me and one sister to sleep in their bed until the parents came up and moved us to my friend’s bed. At the time I didn’t understand why, maybe that’s how bedtime was in their house, anyway the light was on in the room so it stopped me from falling asleep, I was too soft to turn it off incase I got into trouble or it woke up my friend who clearly could sleep with the light on. Then I heard footsteps coming upstairs so I had to pretend to be asleep. The parents came into the room, one of them picked me up and put me in one of the girls beds, the other picking up their daughter and putting her next to me. The light wasn’t on in there but the hall light was on which was fine, so I thought ‘finally I can go to sleep now!’ As I was just about to head into dreamland I hear moaning and the bed squeaking coming from the parents bedroom!!!! 🤣🤣 I was 9 years old so I knew what they were doing and I had to wait till it was quiet until I finally got some sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t tell anyone what I heard or that I was awake the whole time, it would’ve been an awkward conversation to have so I tried to forget about it. 😬
hing worse than backing down.
Unreported in the West, Ukraine has been using Western supplied drones to attack early warning radar stations in southern Russia. These are part of Russia’s nuclear defense system. They play no role in the Ukraine war, but Ukraine’s handlers are having them do this as a form of escalatory dominance. The point is to signal to the Russians that the West is not afraid of nuclear war. The madness of this is obvious, but to a great degree that is the point, to seem mad.
We see a similar thing shaping up with China. Washington is going out of its way to provoke China over the issue of Taiwan. Various officials have been sent to the island for no other reason than to antagonize the Chinese. A big package of weapons has been shipped to Taiwan and Washington has increased the number of military personnel on the island. Washington regularly talks about how it is actively preparing for a war with the Chinese over the issue of Taiwan.
A great example of how the concept of escalatory dominance controls how American ruling elites deal with the world is the last trip by Anthony Blinken to China in which he went out of his way to insult the Chinese. The State Department insisted on Blinken visiting China, where he held meetings with Chinese leaders. He then went out of those meetings and threatened them with sanctions. This was done to let the Chinese know that there is no red line Washington will not cross.
This is not just a foreign policy strategy. The reason Trump is waiting to hear a guilty verdict is the regime has always assumed that if they cross enough red lines with regards to the rule of law, Trump or his supporters will fold. For going on four years, it has been ever increasing violence against both the rule of law and the customs that have controlled our politics. The point of each new escalation is to warn that there is no limit to what they will do unless you obey.
It is the unquestioned assumption in Washington that there is always some threat they can issue that is so terrifying that the other side will back down that has led them into a crisis for the regime. Half the country now thinks the courts are corrupt beyond reform thanks to the lawfare unleashed by the regime. We are remarkably close to the point where a majority of Americans think we are ruled by lawless gangsters, which even in easy times is an impossible state of affairs.
The crisis gripping the West is due, in large part, to the fact that the system now selects boys and girls with no practical knowledge. Never having had their bluff called and walking away with a bloody nose or a black eye, they just assume such a thing is impossible, so they are free to escalate their threats. It is not so much that their threats work, but that they ought to work. In the artificial reality in which these people live, the ought is the same as the is.
The Trump trial is a good bit of foreshadowing for how this widely held delusion about escalatory dominance will end. At some point, the bluff is called, and the bluffer has to either follow through or their raison d’etre evaporates. This is the story of the bully who finally has to fight and gets beaten. It is not the beating that ends his reign as a bully, but the fact that someone stood up to him. This is what is happening with the lawfare against Trump, who has called their bluff.
Unlike the schoolyard, the end of a regime that relies on escalatory dominance is not so simple and tidy. The regime now has to hope the Trump trial ends in a hung jury so they can maintain their stance. An acquittal has them looking like fools and a guilty verdict has them in a crisis far worse than Trump winning the election. Soon, the bluff will be called over Ukraine and Taiwan. Once this happens, the regime has no answer other than the unthinkable.
Pepe Escobar: Xi & Putin’s Move Pushed NATO Into CHAOS! Who Is Win?
When someone hugs you, you should not be first to break it.
Remove your sunglasses when you have to speak to someone.
Irrespective of your closeness, do not ask your friends and room mates for their clothes, shoes and accessories. Those are ‘ personal belongings‘
Do not order expensive stuff when you are sharing or the other person is paying the bill.
Don’t make ola / uber driver wait for you. Time is literally money for them.
If you borrow someone else’s novel/ books, do not mark anything in them. Return them in a good condition and within acceptable time.
Compliment people when you notice their extra efforts in something.
If any child touched you and asked(begged) for money don’t give a dirty look at them and run two steps back. Give, if you want to or say no. That’s it.
Wave your hand rather than calling his or her name in a louder pitch if someone is wearing headphones.
Praise publicly. Criticise privately.
Be quiet when other people are asleep. That means more than not talking — not slamming doors, drawers, etc.
Avoid finishing other people’s sentences and cutting them off
If you get a missed call, remember to call them back. Or at least drop a message.
Pot Roast with Dilled Sour Cream Gravy
Ingredients
1 (3 pound) chuck or pot roast
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon dill weed
5 or 6 small potatoes
5 or 6 carrots
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large onion
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon dill seed
Instructions
Coat roast with flour, salt and pepper.
Brown in oil in skillet.
Put roast in slow cooker, then add water and vinegar.
Sprinkle dill weed over meat, then add potatoes, carrots, onion and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Cook on LOW for 10 to 12 hours or on HIGH for 6 hours.
To make gravy, pour off 3 tablespoons drippings, add flour and heat.
Measure rest of drippings, add water to make 1 cup.
Add to flour mixture and heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
As a kid I was friends with these 3 girls, who were sisters and one night their parents allowed me to have a sleepover at their house so when it came to bedtime the parents allowed me and one sister to sleep in their bed until the parents came up and moved us to my friend’s bed. At the time I didn’t understand why, maybe that’s how bedtime was in their house, anyway the light was on in the room so it stopped me from falling asleep, I was too soft to turn it off incase I got into trouble or it woke up my friend who clearly could sleep with the light on. Then I heard footsteps coming upstairs so I had to pretend to be asleep. The parents came into the room, one of them picked me up and put me in one of the girls beds, the other picking up their daughter and putting her next to me. The light wasn’t on in there but the hall light was on which was fine, so I thought ‘finally I can go to sleep now!’ As I was just about to head into dreamland I hear moaning and the bed squeaking coming from the parents bedroom!!!! 🤣🤣 I was 9 years old so I knew what they were doing and I had to wait till it was quiet until I finally got some sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t tell anyone what I heard or that I was awake the whole time, it would’ve been an awkward conversation to have so I tried to forget about it. 😬
The Dating Market isn’t Looking Too Hot ….
Doctors, have you ever delivered a child to a couple who clearly didn’t need Maury to tell him “you are NOT the father!”? What happened next?
Not a doctor or a nurse, just a friend of a couple. She is elf pale, blonde hair so light it’s almost white, pale blue eyes and nary a freckle to be seen. He is (no offense to anyone) coal black. When the baby was born she looked like she should have been wearing a sombrero with a taco in her hand singing La Cucaracha. (still, no offense intended to anyone, just setting the scene) the doctor and the nurse were both speechless. I was there, I was taking the video. The doctor was hesitant to hand the baby to my friends husband and they both thought something was wrong with the baby. The nurse went from being sweet to being a total bitch to my friend. When he left the room to go tell his family that is was a girl, the nurse made a comment to the doctor about how they never see any wholesome god-fearing families anymore. My friend lost it; it technically wasn’t even her baby, she was just a surrogate. The man in the room with her? He wasn’t even the father, just a friend that was gracious enough to be her coach. She was carrying the baby for another friend of ours and her husband.
The UnXplained: TOP 5 SHOCKING MYSTERIES OF 2023 | PART 1
I really enjoyed this video. I think that youse guys will too.
In Thailand, why are the South Koreans and Japanese treated better than Chinese tourists?
Disclaimer: I’m a Thai of Chinese descent living in a tourism hub of Chiang Mai, speak a little Mandarin and had actually been to China as well, so may I offer my humble 2 cents. I don’t want fellow Chinese quorans to be too stoked or offended by this kind of question. If my answer offends anyone, I apologize in advance. I also apologize for my fellow citizens as well. After all, our economy relies on tourism a lot, please come and visit us! At least this Thai welcome everyone to visit my country with open arms! I say this as a Thai who have traveled to almost all inhabited continents on Earth. 😊
There were lots of direct flights from China to Chiang Mai pre-Covid, even to lesser known cities like Changsha. Influenced by a 2012 Chinese blockbuster “Lost in Thailand” (泰囧) which heavily featured Chiang Mai, the city became hugely popular among Chinese visitors. Back then, Chinese tourists tended to exhibit a not-so-impressive manners. For example, in Chiang Mai University, Chinese tourists used to roamed free inside the campus and took photos of classes in session (many faculty members were really tired of this). This prompted the university to disallow tourists inside the campus, and directed them to the university’s official guided tour instead.
However, post-Covid, Chinese tourists nowadays are no longer loud and rude like before. Yes, there would still be some bad sheep in the flock, but the overall trend manner-wise went for the better. Back when China was poorer, Chinese tourists indeed had bad reputation. However, as time goes, I did notice a better trend of manners among the Chinese tourists. I dare say they are pretty much on par with Koreans and Japanese nowadays manner-wise. Nonetheless, I won’t deny that there are some racism bias towards mainlanders among a portion of our citizens (which is quite an irony because 1/6 of Thai population are of Chinese descent). Also, since China is a much larger country than Korea and Japan, there are just a lot of Chinese setting up shops (100% owned) in several touristic hubs like Bangkok, Chiang Mai, or Phuket. And as some answers also mentioned, such shops only cater to Chinese customers and Chinese tourists have higher tendencies to visit Chinese-owned shops compared to Thai ones. Thai people’s concerns on Chinese tourists is mainly about the circulation of tourism money in Chinese-owned business nowadays rather than the manners. I don’t have problems with Chinese setting up shops here, but please also spend some money and contribute to the place you are visiting too. 😊 This would greatly improve our perception towards Chinese tourists a great deal.
I would like to share my own experience as well regarding the Chinese tourist’s manner. In 2013, I went to Mongolia (part of a train trip from Mongolia to China and then onto North Korea) and met a Chinese couple in our tour group. They really shattered my prejudice of “Chinese tourists are loud and rude”. They were so kind and very well-mannered, and when my train arrived in Beijing, they offered me a treat at a Peking Duck restaurant in Haidian District and then took me (and some Westerners who were in the same group back in Mongolia) to have some “rou chuanr” with “Jia duo bao” herbal drink! I still remembered it to this day.
Again, I would like to just tell the situation as it is without putting in prejudices or biases. It would be better if we treat each culture with respect and understanding.
Professor Studied NDE’s For 30 Years; What She Discovers Is Incredible (Near Death Experiences)
As a leader in the photovoltaic industry, China dominates the industrial and supply chains, currently producing over 90% of the world’s polysilicon, 98% of solar-grade silicon wafers, over 85% of solar cells, and over 80% of photovoltaic modules. It is projected that by 2025, China’s global share in polysilicon and silicon wafer production will reach 95%, making the world highly dependent on China’s photovoltaic products.
Not only does China have massive production capacity, but its photovoltaic technology is also extremely advanced. The latest solar cells have achieved a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 33.9%, far exceeding the 5% capability of plants. Additionally, Chinese photovoltaic products are highly competitive in price, with a 99% decrease in cost over the past 20 years, currently priced at around 0.8 yuan per watt. Furthermore, Chinese photovoltaic modules have a long service life and can maintain 80% of their power generation efficiency after 25 years of use.
As China’s photovoltaic technology rapidly advances, old photovoltaic modules, although long-lasting, have lower performance and are difficult to circulate and dispose of domestically. However, in poor countries with inadequate grid coverage, such as Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America, these second-hand photovoltaic panels are in high demand. In these regions, lacking basic infrastructure, the living conditions of the population are extremely poor, often without access to basic lighting or phone charging facilities. China’s used photovoltaic panels, with their low prices, can provide basic electricity to rural households, improving their quality of life and being regarded as high-tech products.
South Africa witnessed a significant increase in imports of photovoltaic panels and energy storage batteries in 2022-2023, with not only rural but also urban residents purchasing these systems to overcome unstable grid issues. Gaza has the highest density of photovoltaic panel installations globally, as the local grid has been destroyed, leaving the population reliant on photovoltaic panels for electricity.
In summary, China’s discarded second-hand photovoltaic panels, at extremely low prices, have benefited many impoverished areas around the world, providing electricity to billions of rural households without access to power, lifting them out of darkness, and enabling them to enjoy the conveniences of electricity. This reflects China’s philosophy of utilizing technology to assist and support underprivileged groups, in stark contrast to some countries that exploit and oppress the weak.
Oh this is hilarious.
The USA offered a gigantic bribe to Marcos to turn them into a missile base.
Marcos says yes allows US to build missile facilities.
Marcos asks where his money is.
US says what money?
Many Hong Kong restaurants demand money UP FRONT.
CHINA BUILDING 3nm CHIPS – biden makes failing look easy…
As an engine mechanic, what is the strangest thing you’ve found inside an engine?
In college as a rookie on the SAE Baja team, I was tasked with tearing down one of our old engines and doing a simple top end rebuild. There wasn’t anything wrong with the engine, it was just a spare one and this was a way for new team members to gain familiarity with part numbers, torque specs, and other things like that. We used a brand new engine for each year’s competition car.
Upon removing the head from the 10 HP Briggs & Stratton, something odd caught my eye. There was raised material on the face of the piston partly obscured by carbon. Brushing it away revealed threads and part of hex head! This engine had somehow ingested a stray 1/4″–20 screw which became embedded into the top of the piston, and then just kept running like nothing had happened. It was potentially like that for a whole year worth of test runs and competitions, possibly even longer.
The fastener was laying there sideways but extremely fused to the piston and could not be removed without destroying it. We simply ground down the portions that were sticking up to recreate a flush surface, reinstalled everything, and called it a day. It continued to run just fine.
– – –
A couple years ago my father in law asked me to help fix up his riding lawnmower, powered by another Briggs & Stratton engine. This was a two cylinder vertical shaft of maybe 18 or 20-some horsepower, I don’t recall exactly. His complaint was that it was “a little down on power” but still cut the grass fine. It just struggled a little bit going up steep hills or cutting through extra-thick grass if he let it grow too tall, and occasionally it let out puffs of dark smoke. He mowed with it like that all summer, bagged leaves with it like that in the fall, and when it was finally done for the season I met up with him to look the thing over.
Expecting a 30-minute carb cleaning or a fouled spark plug I got to work, but found everything spotless. With no signs of any issues with the electrical components either, I moved on to a more serious investigation. Tearing into this engine began with a crankcase cover on the top. With this removed we could look down along the axis of the crankshaft to inspect for any catastrophic bottom end damage. Everything appeared fine but there was a thin metal rod in kind of a weird place tucked behind the crank counterweight. It had a few bends in the middle of it for clearance and the two ends disappeared into the oil bath and up into the block somewhere. I figured it had to be part of the governor system so I left it in place and moved on.
Removing the valve covers, I found the first head looking as it should. The second, however, revealed the culprit: a totally missing pushrod! It was just gone! That would explain the lack of power. One valve on that cylinder is never opening so it’s never accomplishing a power cycle. It’d only been running on one cylinder all year. But then the unavoidable question was, “where did the pushrod go?”
I eventually put two and two together and realized that strange governor-rod-thing was actually the missing pushrod. It had somehow gotten dislodged from its place and fell down into the crankcase. The clearance bends were not manufactured, they were suffered from the crankshaft smashing into it as it bounced around in there until everything was able to self-clearance. Despite being completely down one cylinder and choking on its own guts, this V-twin still performed so well that its shortcomings were nothing more than an inconvenience to be dealt with on the off-season.
I’d always heard Briggs built some tough ass machines but these experiences really solidified that for me.
Vintage and illustration
US/NATO escalation to strike Russia
Wife’s Plan To Divorce Me For Wealthy Lover BACKFIRES When I Get Out Of Alimony And She Gets Dumped!
Shorpy
Why are 90% of US guided missiles and drones missing their targets in Ukraine?
All of the following munitions rely on GPS and have a problem with terminal guidance anywhere near the Russian front line, due to ubiquitous Russian GPS jamming:
JDAM (air launched 500 pound GPS-guided bombs — 90% of what the USAF and USN drop)
SDB (replacement for JDAM)
GLSDB (an SDB mounted on a missile that can be shot from a HIMARS)
M30 (90 km range rocket fired from HIMARS, deploys cluster munitions)
M31 (90 km range rocket fired from HIMARS, 91 kg warhead)
The problem is not confined to US products. Ukrainian-built FPV drones which do not use GPS are also getting jammed by the Russians. I spoke to a guy who is responsible for about 15% of Ukraine’s drone production, and he dismissed any talk of GPS and said it’s gone. In and around the front line, that may be true, but there are caveats.
Background: GPS relies on a network of satellites with 44.8 watt transmitters 20,000 miles up. The signal (-125 dBm) is substantially weaker than the background radio hiss that’s everywhere (-110 dBm), and uses a lot (43 dB) of something called coding gain to be detectable and usable. When GPS devices take a while to acquire the signal, what they are doing is synchronizing their internal code to the satellite’s code. Once the two are synchronized, they can hear the satellite, until then, it’s just more hiss. The process of synchronization is basically trying every possible time alignment until one works.
Before the first GPS satellite was launched in 1978, the designers already knew that GPS could be jammed [1]. Just hit the receiver with -82 dBm of radio hiss and it’ll never hear the satellite. A 1000 watt ground-based transmitter can blank out naive GPS receivers for 560 km.
And, before the first GPS satellite was launched, the designers knew of many clever ways to reduce the effect of jamming. One of them, however, is a massive hammer: controlled reception pattern arrays (CRPA). You use an array of GPS antennas and combine the signals together in a way that causes the jamming signals to cancel. So long as the jammer isn’t coming from the same direction as the GPS satellites, this works really, really well.
Here’s a CRPA from a May 2000 report [2]:
Arrays like this can act a bit like a bigger antenna with a diameter the size of the entire array. That’s nice, you get a bit more signal from the antenna. Cancellation works far better. Let me demonstrate.
Here is the result of just two omnidirectional antenna elements added together. The Y direction is dB of gain from combining the antennas. The X axis is degrees between the “null” direction and the actual direction of the signal source. You can see that at right angles (90 degrees) to the null, two antennas pick up twice as much power as just one, which is +3 dB of gain. That’s nice, we’ll take it. It’s a big fat lobe. If that’s off by 40 degrees you still get half the benefit, and the benefit isn’t amazing to start with.
But look at that deep, sharp null. If you can get it aligned to one degree, you can knock the jammer down by 35 dB. In practice, CRPAs achieve 50 dB because they very quickly and very precisely line up the phase delays from the antennas to knock out the jammer.
If the jammer against a CRPA wants to work as well as it did against a naive receiver, it’ll need 50 dB more power. dB is a logarithmic scale: That’s 10,000x as much power. So that 1000 watt jammer now needs to push 10 million watts. This is… possible… but any such thing is going to be a major installation and will get a visit from a HARM missile and thereafter many JDAMs.
Today you can buy CRPAs from a variety of manufacturers, all outside the United States. Tualcom, a Turkish company, sells 8-channel CRPAs. They’ve sold 2500 of them to Iran for use on… drones. Yep. Did you know that Turkiye is a NATO ally?
These aren’t going to be on Shaheds, or not many of them anyway, because a CRPA costs about $20k or more. (Please let me know if there are cheaper units.) That’s because there’s no commercial market for CRPAs, as the primary civil defense against GPS jamming is litigation. Even though the electronics are actually simpler than what’s in your cell phone, they are built in low volume of many discrete parts, and in the US they are built by folks like Raytheon.
I would hope that every western military jet has a CRPA, but somehow I doubt it.
The HIMARS-launched 90-km range M31s are having accuracy trouble but the HIMARS-launched 300-km range M57 ATACMS missiles are not. In both cases the missiles can probably use inertial guidance from launch to impact, since that’s less than 7 minutes. But they’ll need an accurate initial position and target position.
The accurate target position can probably be found from military maps. FYI, you probably cannot get accurate target positions from Google Maps — I used to work there, and they don’t want you doing that, and they probably fuzz the locations enough to screw up this use.
The accurate initial position and initial GPS acquisition for the missile would come from the launcher’s GPS antenna. This suggests to me that the HIMARS truck is getting jammed when too close to the Russian front line, probably anywhere within 50 km. And THAT tells me that HIMARS doesn’t have a CRPA. (Update: see below, it has an FRPA, which means fixed pattern. I don’t know the pattern, but as it doesn’t articulate the nulls won’t line up exactly with a jammer and as you can see above, they need to line up well to get good jamming.)
Neither does JDAM, apparently. And I’m guessing SDB doesn’t either, which went into production in 2005.
This is a stupid problem to have. A half-dozen ASIC engineers and $5m could fix it.
China Just Scored A KNOCK OUT Blow To The U.S. Economy And War Is Coming
What are the chances of the U.S nuking China in a war if the U.S starts losing? Where does it start? A carrier group being destroyed? Japan/South Korea being attacked? What exactly would prompt U.S nuclear usage against China?
Chances are near zero.
And for all of those. The reason is something that you may not know.
China is not a signatory to the START treaty. This limits deployed nuclear weapons to around 1,500 warheads. China likely has more than both Russia and the US combined. Despite what you hear in the MSM about China having only 300 warheads, that is an outright lie.
The original estimate came from the Federation of American Scientists in the 80s. In their estimate they stated that they had no idea how many nuclear weapons the Chinese had. So they decided to use electricity generation as some kind of measure.
What does electricity generation have to do with how many nuclear weapons a nation has? Nothing. The Soviets did not have that much electrical generation and yet has more nuclear weapons than the US. So they finished their study saying that China could have 3,000 or 5,000. They had no idea.
The next thing you should know is that these Senators, Congressman, and President of the US is that they spent generations gaining wealth and power. When was the last time you heard Bill Gates or any other billionaire pulled a knife and went toe to toe with another guy with a knife? Never. And you never will.
Even if the US loses a war by attacking China and the US loses 7 carrier battle groups. Do you think Bill Gates or any other billionaire would chose to vaporize their family to take revenge on one of their body guards being killed? Or even all of them? No.
And it’s even more impossible for the politicians to do so because China has more deployed nuclear weapons than the US and Russia. Starting a nuclear war would mean that the US would get at least a double dose of nukes. One from China and one from Russia.
Those selfish people that have spent decades stealing from the US tax payers are going to vaporize their families, wealth, and power for you, a peon? Don’t make me laugh.
The only time nukes would be used is if China nuked the US first or if the US thought it could get away with it without getting nuked back.
Pecos River Red Fritos Pie
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 large onion, chopped coarsely
3 pounds coarsely ground beef
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons ground hot red chile peppers
2 tablespoons ground mild red chile peppers
1 1/2 cups water
Corn chips
Shredded Monterey Jack cheese
Shredded Cheddar cheese
Instructions
Combine onion, ground beef, garlic, chiles and water in slow cooker.
Cover. Cook on LOW for 8 to 10 hours.
Drain.
Serve over corn chips.
Top with mixture of Monterey Jack and Cheddar cheese.
What is the most bizarre way you’ve landed a job?
Son’s friend stayed overnight. The next morning I’m making breakfast for everyone. Son likes poached eggs. I make them. Friend asks if I can make them like that all the time. I explain how to poach an egg. That night I get a phone call from a strange number and a man asks if I’m looking for a job. He needs a cook. In his father’s house. The father is picky about his breakfast and he heard I can poach eggs. I explain that all cooks can poach eggs. Eventually I am hired to cook 3 meals a day for his elderly parents. I have to plan menus for the week and prepare breakfast to order. Hot lunch and a dinner plate to be reheated for dinner. I wash the dishes but all other cleaning is done by the maid. Amazing kitchen. Eventually they tried to give me the old guys Cadillac because he stopped driving and they wanted to “save me using my car to drive to their house.” It was probably the best job I ever had. Not the money or the benefits. They were family. They treated me like family in the best way.
This is a new addition that I am considering to my daily posts. Here I include some contemporaneous SF (short story) for the reader to enjoy. -MM
Do not ever step foot on the ground. Charlie had been told this his entire life, but it never really sunk in. He didn’t understand the deep-seated fear everyone else seemed to harbor. He thought it was incredible, a beautiful problem to be solved. Until he was laying on the floor of the lab staring at the ceiling and blinking away tears.The first time Charlie ever saw the ground consume a person he’d been twelve. What the tree-top teachers referred to as “live mummification” was a quick, disturbing process. Dirt crawling over skin to create a sort of exoskeleton. A casting of the human body, like those papier-mâché spheres they’d made in class years ago. It’d been an elderly lady that first time. The pulley system keeping her safe had malfunctioned and she’d lurched off balance. It was a code yellow bridge and wasn’t fully enclosed. The old lady stumbled to the side and was pulled right over the edge. Charlie caught only the first flash of the swarming ground on her skin before his mom had ushered him away. As the crowd around them shrieked and cried, Charlie craned his neck for a better look.He’d liked to have claimed this moment as the catalyst for his obsession, but really that had occurred years ago. It was maybe a few days after his seventh birthday, and he was crossing that old rope bridge by his house. It’s been built in a rush by early survivors trying to escape their houses for supplies. He was not supposed to be on it, but that had only made him more intent on using it.One of the rotten wood planks had splintered under his front foot and sent him toppling forward. It was only due to some notion of luck that his hips didn’t fit through the empty space and his arms had gotten tangled in the ropes. His leg hung down, exposed, ten feet off the ground. And then his new shoe, a size too big so he could grow into it, slipped off his foot. It landed on the dusty ground and tipped over sideways. Charlie’s breath caught in his chest, but nothing happened. The shiny shoe glistened under the sun. He wanted desperately to stick his finger in that restless dirt, just to see what would happen. He stayed put for way longer than was logical just in case, but the ground remained flat and lifeless. The shoe was not alive.
The second time he saw someone be consumed by the ground he was 18 and on the verge of declaring a major in Microbiology, specializing in the study of those tiny organisms that made the ground hungry. This time the fall had not been an accident. He’d been crossing a major intersection of bridges when a commotion piqued his curiosity. A young woman who looked barely older than him had crawled out onto the roof of a one-story house where no one would risk following. Her auburn hair floated in the wind. People crowded against the railings to watch her. A few kind souls called out things like “You don’t have to do this!” and “Things will get better!” but the girl ignored them. She stared straight ahead and stepped off the roof. For a millisecond it was as if she was walking in the air, and then she plummeted to the ground and landed with a heavy thump. Immediately the soil surged up to meet her. She didn’t make a sound as it closed over her. Charlie came back every day for two weeks to observe the hardened cocoon. Inside, he knew that the body was being decomposed, drained away. The microorganisms in the dirt would suck the nutrients from her. Then the cast would collapse in on itself and the ground would smooth over once again.
It wasn’t surprising that these events would have a lasting effect on him. The unexpected part was the nature of the effect. Where others would shy away and realize how dangerous the ground was, Charlie felt himself drawn to it. He wanted to understand the little beasts that terrorized his people. So, it was inevitable, really, that he’d want to see this forbidden phenomenon again.
The lab he was assigned to was on the upper floor of a university no longer in use. The building was old, made of even gray bricks. He had to duck through the fifth-floor window that had been fashioned into an entrance to get in. The walls were off-white, and the floors were so stable it made him feel somewhat unbalanced. His feet, used to the bridges and tree-top platforms, weren’t accustomed to the solidity. The equipment in the lab was well maintained: microscopes, autoclaves, incubators, centrifuges. He felt like a child in a room full of new toys. On one side of the room, where a balcony had once been, a ramp had been fixed that led down to the ground. The space before it was taken up by a deoxygenation chamber used briefly to asphyxiate any rogue organisms.
Charlie was integrated into a group that exclusively studied the microorganisms in the ground called Vitae Suffocent. Life suckers. The study was relatively new, they’d only recently worked with engineering to create a protective suit. Before then, the scientists would lean out the window with a cup fastened to a long pole and scoop up a small bit of the dirt. With the help of the suits, they had been able to set up a secure mock habitat to observe the specimens’ behavior.
The group was small, a handful of young students of which he was one, along with six seasoned scientists. For the first time, Charlie found himself surrounded by people who were just as interested in the ground as he was. The obsession that had set him apart from other kids in school was now reflected all around him. There was a girl who’d started at the same time as him- Tori. She was short and had thin black hair chopped short around her ears. Because they were new, they were often assigned projects to work on together. He wasn’t sure if he liked her, but it didn’t matter much.
There was an ongoing experiment that needed a fresh test subject, someone to stick a finger into the Life Sucker habitat. Charlie volunteered immediately, exhilarated by the idea of being able to touch the ground. He pictured it being magical, a borderline religious experiment. He worked himself up over it for days, so that when it was finally time he was almost bursting with excitement.
The scientists heading the experiment placed him in the deoxygenation chamber with the container. Around him, they gathered clipboards, pencils poised to jot down any and all details. His forefinger was swiped clean with an alcohol wipe that made the skin feel dry. Tori unlocked the circular compartment in the top of the container. Slowly, breathlessly, Charlie lowered his hand into the habitat. The tip of his finger brushed the dirt. It was soft and damp as he pressed the finger down. Charlie blinked and the soil began to stir. It tickled the pad of his finger. He watched in fascination as the hidden organisms began to climb up his skin. It was a strange sensation. The soil was cool and light, it felt more like a caress than a smothering.
Tori clicked the stopwatch in her hand and began to count aloud. By the time she reached seven, the organisms were up to his wrist. He withdrew his hand. The seal on the opening caught most of the dirt and held it back, to the irritation of the organisms. He held his hand away from him, not trusting it. Tori latched the contained shut quickly. Someone on the outside of the chamber switched it on. They held their breaths as the oxygen rapidly drained from the room. A loud whirring assaulted Charlie’s ears. His chest tightened. For a minute they all felt like they were suffocating, then it abruptly stopped and the doors to the lab popped open. Oxygen flooded back in. Charlie sucked in a deep breath.
He examined his hand. It was tingling and covered in little red blotches, but otherwise, he was fine. No damage had ever been recorded from less than ten seconds of exposure. Charlie glanced at the other set of doors over his shoulder. The ones that opened onto the ramp that led down to the ground. He longed to go through them, wanted to dig his hands in the ground and laugh as the organisms consumed him. He turned and walked back into the lab.
A month later he was given a protective suit and given the chance to wear it for the first time. He and Tori had been assigned to walk, outside, to a big oak tree and back. Charlie was thrilled. He stepped into the suit and pulled it up over his arms. A tech zipped him in and checked him over. The suit was a stiff layer of slick rubber designed to lack tread so the organisms wouldn’t be able to climb against gravity. The boots they were given were thick and clunky. They were tall, reaching up to his knees like a pair of extra-long rain boots. A device attached to the top of the boot sent out vibrations that they’d found would deter the organisms. The hood of the suit came up over his head and the visor was clicked into place. He saw the world through a glass partition.
Then they were in the chamber and the doors behind them were closing. It was midday and the sun was shining. A breeze spirited a few brown leaves past the glass. The doors to the ramp opened. Charlie stepped out first. His heart pounded in his chest. It was right there, the ground. He walked quickly down the ramp, Tori following behind him at a more reserved pace. He paused at the end of it. The dirt was disturbed, as it always was when the organisms were present. It looked almost fluffy.
Charlie took a deep breath and lifted one foot. He lowered it slowly to the ground, enjoying the crunch of soil underfoot. He leaned his weight forward, ready to take another step, but paused. The ground was shaking around his boot, pulsing in strange waves. It was trying to climb up his boot, he realized. He tried to pick up the foot but felt resistance. The ground clung to his boot, pulling him back down. Charlie watched, entranced. He continued to pry his foot away and eventually the dirt fell back down. He looked at Tori, whose face he could just see behind the visor. She looked equal parts disturbed and fascinated.
Afterward, he felt like he’d been on another planet. It was amazing, he’d been on the ground, but he couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed. What had they learned during that expedition? Nothing new, nothing interesting. He wanted more. All he could think about was how slow the studies they performed were. They were no closer to understanding these organisms. They needed to study them in action. His plan fell together quickly after that.
Once again he fastened the protective suit on and was checked over by the other technicians. Tori was doing the same next to him. Charlie clapped a hand on her shoulder and with the scalpel hidden in his palm he sliced a tiny hole into her suit, the rubber splitting easily under a sharp blade. She turned and gave him a thumbs-up. He hid the scalpel in one of his pockets.
They walked through the chamber and out onto the ramp. The suit was heavy and sweaty against his skin. Through the visor, he saw the dirt-coated ground come closer and closer. The first step was always the most exciting. His foot hovered over the solid ground, casting a wavering shadow over the dirt. He placed it firmly down. The ground beneath him stirred, trying to creep up his legs but being deterred by the vibrations.
Slowly, the ground pulling at them with each step, they made it 50 feet away from the end of the ramp. He knew they were being watched closely from the observation windows, but at this distance, no one would really be able to tell what happened. Charlie shoved his foot hard to the side right as Tori took a step. The bottom of her boot caught on the top of his and she lost her balance. Her arms windmilled but the suit was too bulky and dragged her down.
She should have gotten up. The suit should have kept the microorganisms at bay. But Charlie had damaged her suit. He gazed intently down at her as the organisms poured over her and into the hole in the fabric. He bent over as if to help her, but really he just wanted to get a closer look. This near, it was mesmerizing. The dark earth swirled as though it was possessed. It rose and fell like a liquid. Tori cried out one last time before they closed over the top of her dark hair. Charlie ignored the panicked voices over his earpiece. Through his visor the majority of the event had been captured (excepting, of course, when he purposefully tripped her).
He’d made a huge leap in the field, no matter how tragic. The footage would help inform scientists for years to come. Except, he didn’t know (no one did) that after a feeding, the organisms laid their eggs. Hundreds of microscopic eggs stuck to his boots and were carried back into the facility. The eggs, not having to breathe oxygen yet, were not affected by the deoxygenation tank. Charlie stripped off his suit and hung it on the hook.
Overnight, the eggs hatched, and those tiny, deadly microorganisms scurried to hide in the dust accumulated above cabinets and at the edges of the room. Charlie was the first person at the lab that morning, still buzzing with the exhilaration of the day before, ready to study the footage and propel their lab forward. When his skin started to itch, he thought nothing of it. Until he noticed the little red dots on his forearm. Then the world tilted on its axis, and he crumpled to the floor. He’d made another major discovery that day. The skin of the microorganisms contained a deadly neurotoxin.
There weren’t enough creatures to make a cast over him. It was a slow death during which all he could think about was how these organisms would feed on him, suck the life out of him. After, they’d lay their eggs. And the eggs would hatch. And the organisms would spread.
His curiosity had doomed their entire town. He’d brought the ground to them.
Five Dollars
“Today I was picking up lunch for a doctor’s Office and as I’m standing there waiting on my order and checking emails, I hear a gentleman ask this lady, “I would like to purchase something to eat but all I have is $5.” So nosy me looks up from my phone and notices this gentleman wearing a backpack and holding a $5 bill who looks to be homeless or maybe he was dealing with a hard time but either way as he asks about a few items on the menu he shortly discovers that he may need more than $5. The lady begins to offer some suggestions to help him and the man orders and as she’s asking him what he wants to drink and as he’s thinking about it the lady says don’t worry about it because your breakfast is on me.
I got this picture for a couple of reasons. It would have been so easy to turn around and ask the manager to step in or for help but she didn’t she just said hey it’s on me. She could have just gave him water and took his money and went on to the next customer and again she didn’t she just did it. I’ve been in customer service for a long time. I’ve been through some of the best trainings such as Dale Carnegie and yet a girl name Karina in a Chick-fil-A in Jackson, MS in a 3-minute conversation with a customer has managed to teach me the value of humility and taking care of your customers. It’s not just the nuggets that make this place successful. It’s people like Karina.
Fighting Russia & China to Last American: Destroying US From Within| Dr. Jill Stein & Michael Hudson
I once observed a fellow classmate hide from a loud and noisy dirt bike.
He was a kid of wimpy kid that was two grades younger than myself. I didn’t know him personally, but since we both attended the same small school, so I knew of him.
So, here I am hiking alone in the woods. There was a hilltop, and I was sitting on an isolated rock and just enjoying the view. It was a quiet and peaceful Summer day. Perhaps late Pennsylvania July or early August.
As I sat there I watched this neighborhood kid ride his bicycle though the field that lay below me.
It was a nice field. With tall tan grass, with sporadic trees here and there. Off in the distance is another wood, and behind that some low wooded hills.
The kid was a lot like me when I was growing up. Kind of shy, easily intimidated, and kind of a loner. Just walking (or riding a bicycle) to find solace in life.
Then I hear this terrible noise. This guy, maybe in his early 20’s is tearing up the countryside in a dirt-bike. No muffler, just screaming loudly. And just tearing in and out of the peaceful meadow.
And the kid, hearing and then seeing him approach, tossed his bicycle down, and climbed up the nearest tree. It’s a state of protection, and (though I never did it myself) totally understood.
After the dirt-biker left, he scrambled down from the tree, picked up his bicycle and headed in the opposite direction of the guy on the dirt bike.
It’s not that the young man on the bike meant him any harm, but that in those parts (Western Pennsylvania), if you are a kid and alone, and a group of older boys come around… well, you scram. It usually meant torture, hassles and abuse.
And this is what the kid did. He hid.
It’s a tale of my boyhood, and while no one is going to make a television drama out of it, it well illustrates what the world was like when young boys are in the in between ages with no real father role models, an indifferent school and classmates, and a hostile outer world. You hide to protect yourself.
This is the reality of American boyhood.
Peace out.
What was the shortest first date you ever had?
It was essentially over before it began.
He came to pick me up at my house (I still lived at home then, I was still in college.) I had two rescue dogs, Max and Brady. Both super friendly, gentle dogs that greeted him with wagging tails and an eagerness to get chin scratches and tummy rubs.
Well, this guy was pretty much up on the ceiling trying to get away from my dogs. We said good bye to my mom, and we’re walking to his car. He said “I know it’s not your fault, you still live at home. I just don’t understand why anyone would want filthy animals in their house! Just more motivation for you when you graduate, I suppose.”
At that point I said to him “look, I’m not going to waste your money or my time.” (He has very specific ideas as to who was supposed to pay on dates.)
He laughed me off. I had to tell him that I was serious. I’m an animal loved to my core. It’s a part of who I am. I could never, ever live without having pets.
It all worked out though. That was about 16 or 17 years ago. For the last 14 years, I have been married to the most wonderful man. He’s as much of an animal lover as I am.
It’s worth not setting.
Lai Ching-te openly said in his inaugural speech that “the Republic of China Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation,” a claim which has never appeared in the inaugural speeches of previous leaders of the Taiwan region. What does this mean?
I am from Chinese Mainland, an ordinary IT worker.
In the speeches of successive ROC presidents, it has been emphasized that “governance power” is not subordinate to each other. Now, for the first time, the concept of non subordination of sovereignty has been proposed. So, even from the legal perspective of ROC, it violates the Constitution of the Republic of China.
Two recent incidents have made me feel sick.The first time was when LQBT people danced in front of a photo of ROC’s founding father Sun Yat sen.Another time was when President LAI was sworn in under Mr. Sun’s photo.
I have read about the history of the Republic of China. What may surprise some Taiwanese is that Sun Yat sen enjoys a great and lofty position in the narration of the CPC. This photo was taken by me 30 minutes ago while waiting for a red light. It is the busiest road in my city, called “Zhongshan Road”, named after Mr. Sun:
In the narration of the CPC, the party inherited Mr. Sun’s will, completely overthrew the decadent and reactionary emperor and the imperialist enemy, and made China a country that will never be invaded by foreign powers.
Mr. Sun’s tomb is located in the capital city of Nanjing, my province. During holidays, there is a sea of people there, and Chinese people go to the tomb on their own without official organizations to commemorate Mr. Sun.
As the first President of the Republic of China, Sun Yat sen would angrily jump out of the coffin if he knew that a self righteous successor had announced that the highest goal of the Republic of China was “no longer China” – according to Chinese jokes.
Friends, a timeline of solitary evolution in human history has disappeared in 2024. Whether some people are happy or angry, the great revolution of the Republic of China and its founders has completed its historical mission.
The great changes in the world always start with a careless little thing. If any member of the Kuomintang of China sees my article, please answer a question: How have you done with the will of Sun Yat sen, the founding father of the country? Isn’t there any shame or sadness?
Note: People in Chinese Mainland view the election result with high spirits.
Wishing all Chinese people around the world.
Is it currently safe to travel around China? If not, which parts of China should be avoided?
Dear, please avoid the night in all Chinese cities. Stay in the hotel. There is good food everywhere, and if you eat one every day, it won’t be repeated for a year. It will make your calorie control plan fail completely.
Because the fragrance will float to your nose, and then you have a chance to look for the fragrance and see what is in a certain direction. Then you see queues of up to 20m, 50m long, everyone waiting quietly to buy a flavoured source. You wonder why China has returned to the era of material shortage of the planned economy. Then, unnaturally, you join the queue and wait 20 minutes to buy food you’ve never eaten before. After eating, you joined another queue.
What is the evidence? On YouTube, it seems that every foreign blogger who has been photographing China for a long time – travel blogger, cultural blogger, economic blogger, Ended up as food bloggers.
How America Destroyed the German Economy
How to kill the ‘zombie’ cells that make you age
Researchers are using new molecules, engineered immune cells and gene therapy to kill senescent cells and treat age-related diseases.
Lurking throughout your body, from your liver to your brain, are zombie-like entities known as senescent cells. They no longer divide or function as they once did, yet they resist death and spew out a noxious brew of biological signals that can slow cognition, increase frailty and weaken the immune system. Worst of all, their numbers increase as you age.
For more than a decade, researchers have been trying to see whether they can selectively destroy these cells with a variety of drugs. In a pivotal study1 published in 2015, a team at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, discovered that a combination of two compounds, called dasatinib and quercetin, killed senescent cells in aged mice. The treatment made the mice less frail, rejuvenated their hearts and boosted their running endurance. The finding opened the door to a new area of medicine called senolytics.
Now, fresh results from animal studies and human clinical trials have added momentum to the field. In mice and monkeys, researchers are using genetic tools to reprogram and kill senescent cells. Others are engineering senolytic immune cells. And about 20 clinical trials are ongoing. Researchers are testing new and repurposed drugs that could have senolytic properties, in the hope of combating age-related conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, lung disease and chronic kidney disease.
“I am convinced that senolytics will have an impact in the clinic,” says Anirvan Ghosh, chief executive of Unity Biotechnology, a company in South San Francisco, California, that is developing senolytics. “I think the question is really what the agent looks like and what the first approved drug is.”
Zombie cells
Senescent cells were first described in 1961 by US biologists Leonard Hayflick and Paul Moorhead, who discovered that human cells in a laboratory dish will divide no more than about 50 times before either dying or entering the twilight state of cell senescence2. In the lab, it can take weeks for dividing cells to become senescent. But researchers have yet to uncover how much time this process takes in the body, how long senescent cells last and whether all cell types can become senescent.
Beyond hitting the limits of cell division, cell senescence can arise owing to other factors such as physical injury, malnourishment or DNA damage caused by UV light. Researchers initially thought that it evolved to prevent damaged cells from replicating uncontrollably and causing cancer. This might be the case to some extent, but it didn’t make sense that the cells would stick around in the body instead of simply dying, such as through the controlled programme of cell death known as apoptosis.
Researchers eventually discovered that senescent cells were avoiding apoptosis so they could perform a service, belching out a potent mix of inflammatory signals — including the cytokines interleukin-6 and interferon-γ — that prompt the immune system to clear out damaged cells. This helps to make room for damaged tissues to regenerate and repair.
The process works well until the immune system weakens with age, leading to a build-up of senescent cells that stir up excessive inflammation. Researchers have found that an accumulation of senescent cells and age-related inflammation correlates with many diseases, including osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and Alzheimer’s disease. For many scientists in the field, this realization prompted a shift away from understanding what the cells are doing to working out how to kill them.
Tipping the balance
One key strategy in senolytics involves designing drugs that stop senescent cells from resisting apoptosis. Usually, the cells survive by producing anti-death proteins. Blocking these with drugs can force the cells to succumb to death.
Unity Biotechnology is at the forefront of this approach, say researchers. In a February study3, Ghosh and his colleagues found that senescent cells were more abundant in the retinas of diabetic mice than in those of healthy mice. It was possible, the team predicted, that senescent cells in the blood vessels of the eye play a part in diabetes-related vision loss.
This condition, known as diabetic macular oedema, is caused by high blood sugar and makes those delicate blood vessels leaky, particularly in older individuals. The eye condition is a leading cause of blindness worldwide, estimated to affect 27 million adults. But around half of patients get little benefit from the standard treatment, which uses a cancer drug originally designed to slow down the growth of blood vessels. “There is an unmet need,” Ghosh says.
The researchers designed a drug, called foselutoclax, which blocks the action of BCL-xL, a key anti-death protein that is abundant in senescent cells. When they injected the drug into the eyes of diabetic mice, it killed senescent cells in the blood vessels supplying the retina, but not healthy cells3. “We see a very selective elimination,” says Ghosh.
The senolytic drug reduced the leakiness of retinal blood vessels in diabetic mice by around 50%. Moreover, the treated mice performed better in vision tests compared with controls. Next, the team turned to humans. In a phase II trial, researchers administered a single injection of foselutoclax into the eyes of about 30 people. Eleven months later, those treated with the senolytic could read 5.6 more letters, on average, on an optician’s chart compared with participants who had received a placebo treatment.
After just a couple of weeks, says Ghosh, one participant called him to say the treatment was making her life much easier. Another saw rapid improvements in their colour vision. The team expects to publish the results later this year, but in the meantime, Unity is running another phase II trial that will compare the senolytic with standard therapy.
Unity’s results are promising, say researchers. “I think within the next five years we may see this treatment for diabetic macular oedema being offered in the clinic,” says Sundeep Khosla, who studies ageing at the Mayo Clinic.
Rather than making senolytics from scratch, some scientists are testing drugs that already exist. These include dasatinib, which is approved in the United States as a cancer therapy, and two commercially available, plant-derived chemicals called quercetin and fisetin. The latter two are sold as supplements to dampen inflammation, boost brain health and reduce the risk of age-related disease. These claims are based on rodent studies in which the drugs have been shown to clear senescent cells and reduce inflammation4.
In a 2019 study5, researchers used dasatinib and quercetin to remove senescent brain cells in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Mice treated with the senolytics had reduced brain inflammation and improved memory compared with animals that were given a placebo. Spurred on by these promising data from mice, Miranda Orr at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and her colleagues last year conducted the first safety trial of the drug combination in people with early stage Alzheimer’s disease.
Orr’s team gave five people dasatinib and quercetin intermittently for three months. The researchers found that the drugs were safe and that dasatinib was present in samples of cerebrospinal fluid, suggesting it could cross into the brain. Quercetin was not detected in brain fluid samples, but Orr says she suspects that it did reach the brain and was rapidly broken down. The team is now conducting a larger trial to track the cognition of people with and without Alzheimer’s disease for nine months after they take a placebo or the drug combination. The results should be released in 2025, says Orr.
Khosla says that fresh data should also emerge this year from the largest human trial of dasatinib and quercetin so far. In this study, which is currently under peer review, his team looked at the effect of senolytics on the bones of healthy women.
Immune killers
When it comes to killing cells in the body, the immune system could be of help. And some researchers have latched on to the idea of using genetically engineered immune cells called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. These can target and kill specific cells on the basis of the molecules they display on their surface. CAR-T-cell therapies are currently approved as a treatment for various blood cancers.
Earlier this year, cell biologist Corina Amor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and her colleagues identified a protein marker, called uPAR, on senescent cells in the livers, fat tissues and pancreases of older mice6. The researchers created CAR T cells that were designed to kill senescent cells bearing the uPAR marker. After the team infused the engineered cells into the blood of old mice, there was a decline in the proportion of liver, pancreas and fat cells that were senescent.
Amor and her team found that old mice treated with the uPAR CAR T cells had reduced blood-sugar levels — a sign of improved metabolic health — and that the animals ran faster and for longer than did mice treated with non-engineered T cells, or with T cells that target a protein not found in mice. None of the mice treated with the senolytic CAR T cells showed signs that the T cells were toxic.
In young mice, the senolytic CAR T cells prevented age-related declines in blood-sugar regulation and exercise capacity. And in a March preprint7, the team reported that senolytic CAR T cells could rejuvenate the guts of old mice.
Still, further studies are needed to assess the safety of the therapy, says Amor. Moreover, it would be good to have an off switch for these cell-based drugs in case anything goes awry, she says. In rare cases, CAR T cells used to treat cancer in people seem to have become cancerous themselves.
Amor’s team plans to explore such safety switches in the near future. This would involve engineering the senolytic CAR T cells to carry a gene that induces cell death, which could be activated with a drug, she says. But CAR-T-cell therapies are expensive to make, says Robin Mansukhani, chief executive of Deciduous Therapeutics in San Francisco, which is also developing immune therapies against ageing.
Mansukhani is banking on a more affordable approach that harnesses a different kind of immune cell called a natural killer T cell. In 2021, researchers at Deciduous Therapeutics demonstrated8 the senolytic role of these cells, which naturally become less effective with age. They also found that drugs that can activate the immune cells helped to eliminate senescent cells in the damaged lungs of mice, reducing lung scarring and improving survival.
The researchers have developed a range of drugs that can bind to and supercharge natural killer T cells to treat various conditions, including diabetes and lung disease, says Mansukhani. Safety tests will be conducted in dogs and non-human primates later this year, and clinical trials should begin in the next two years, Mansukhani adds. The approach relies on smaller molecules that are easier to make than CAR-T-cell therapies, he says.
Gene therapy
Other teams are using gene therapy to kill senescent cells. In this approach, researchers package a gene that encodes a lethal protein called caspase-9 into fatty capsules studded with proteins derived from a virus. In mice and monkeys, the capsules have been found to deliver the gene to cells in the lungs, heart, liver, spleen and kidneys.
To stay young, kill zombie cells
Healthy cells are spared, because the gene is activated only in senescent cells that have high levels of one of two proteins called p16 and p53, says Matthew Scholz, chief executive at Oisín Biotechnologies in Seattle, Washington, which is developing the gene therapy. As a further safety switch, the lethal protein kicks off cell death only after the animal is given a very low dose of a drug called rapamycin, says Scholz. The researchers found that, over four months, a monthly dose of the therapy reduced frailty and cancer rates in old mice without causing harmful side effects. The comparison group involved mice that were given a placebo and low-dose rapamycin, says Scholz.
But a key limitation of this approach is that it relies on just one or two protein markers. Although p16 is widely used as a marker of senescence, definitive identification of cells in this state requires a panel of several markers. That means that, by targeting only p16 and p53, the gene therapy is probably eliminating some healthy, non-senescent cells that have these markers, and failing to kill some senescent cells that lack them, say researchers.
Better markers
Indeed, the issue of specificity is shared by all senolytic approaches, simply because there is more than one type of senescent cell. Researchers are only just beginning to uncover how many there are — and what markers they bear. “Without having really great biomarkers of senescent cells, it’s a little bit tricky to engage the right targets,” says Orr.
Orr is part of a large collaborative effort called the Cellular Senescence Network (SenNet), involving more than 200 researchers, that aims to produce atlases of senescent cells across the lifespan of humans and mice. Her team is using machine learning to improve definitions of brain-cell markers of senescence, then using them to map how senescent cells change with age and during dementia.
Ultimately, better markers of senescent cells will bring better senolytics that could one day prevent or treat age-related disease, she says. Ghosh echoes this optimism when it comes to killing zombie cells. “I think the fundamental science is so compelling that targeting senescent cells is definitely going to be of benefit.”
Would it be possible to throw everything away and spend the rest of your life living in a rainforest?
See the little scar on my ankle, the purplish one.
I was walking through the jungle and caught my leg on low branch. It stuck into my leg. When I got home I rinsed it, probed the wound with my tweezers and scalpel and plastered the whole thing with antiseptic cream. A few days later I was at the doctor’s having a local anaesthetic whilst he cut the wound open, drained it and then removed the small piece of wood that was lodged there.
Not significant if you can visit a local doctor
I visited a friend yesterday. He’s in hospital with the same sort of injury that I had. He was a muppet and ignored the infection. His leg is black to almost the knee. In areas it looks like the skin is sloughing off. Giant deflated blisters. There are red streaks running upwards. He’s been in hospital for 5 days now. The Doctor reckons that it will take another 5–10 days for him to be released. (The above picture is not of him. I really couldn’t find any publicly available photos on google that showed the blackness.)
Of course I had another friend, a hasher, who ran with a foot infection. His toes turned black but he delayed going to hospital. Work trip. He had multiple amputations of his leg as they tried to stop the spread of the septicaemia. I should have gone to his funeral.
(Look up limb gangrene images if you want. It’s not nice)
Why is this relevant?
I spend 5 – 10 hours running in the Jungle/Rainforest each week. I’ve mapped in detail about 600km2 of the Titiwangsa range in Malaysia. I am one of the fastest mountain runners in Malaysia. That experience really means squat when it comes to surviving in the jungle with nothing.
EVERY time I go into the jungle I carry a knife, first aid kit, rations for a day and a small survival kit. With this I may be able to survive up to a week. I even carry morphine because out of phone coverage and by myself I have to self rescue. 20km with a broken leg is a shitty thing to cope with if no one comes to rescue you.
From what I can see, and have been taught by the indigenous inhabitants, most of the great food is up in the canopy. At the right time of year. At the wrong time of the year even the monkeys can’t get food. They migrate to the forest edge and steal trash to survive.
I am white guy who’s only been doing this for a few years.
Would I do any better if I had grown up in the jungle?
Most inhabitants, called Orang Asli in Malaysia, live in small villages. These are surrounded by concentric rings of fruit trees, banana, durian, rambutan, guava, jackfruit and more. That’s because a hunter gatherer existence in the forest is too hard. Limited farming plus hunter gathering is ok.
However, many of the skills take a LONG time to acquire.
A few years ago, 7 small children ran away from their boarding school. They were Orang Asli, aged between 7 and 11. They and their parents lived in the jungle. They survived for 46 days. Well, 2 did.
The others died from starvation, impalement on bamboo stakes, drowning and being eaten by a monitor lizard.
It’s tough. The jungle is neutral. If you treat it with respect then likely enough you will be treated with respect. If you don’t then you will have a terrible time.
Going in with nothing is rank stupidity.
Paul Theroux, in his book “Mosquito Coast”, had this idea. The reality was that he traded off white privilege and took enough goods with him to replicate a planter lifestyle. That ended with failure as well.
If you do it I hope that after a few hours you realise how uncomfortable and dangerous it is and take steps to save yourself. If not then you will be lucky to be found. The kids mentioned in the article above were less than 2km from home and were only found after 46 days because someone saw one of their corpses floating in the river.
If you throw everything away you can spend the rest of your life in the rainforest.
Personally I would like nothing better. That’s why I spend so much time there.
The harsh reality is that, like me, you will get infected wounds but with no modern medicine you will soon die.
What is important to most people is quality of life. You cannot have that in the jungle, with just the clothes on your back, without losing most of the benefits of 20,000 years of human development.
Shorpy
What is something a bartender did that you will never forget?
Several years back, a group of us ended up at a local bar after a friends funeral. Friend had died young, and the funeral had turned into a 2 hour hellfire and brimstone sermon that none of us were prepared for.
It was mid day, and the group of us were the only ones there, just catching up since it had been years. Bartender finally comes up and starts talking with us. We told him we were all there coming from our friends funeral.
A few moments later, he brings out a round of shots for all of us (him included) and one for our friend. He gave a quick toast, and we poured that one out for our friend.
Didn’t charge us for the shots (there were maybe 10 of us there). And continued hanging out with us while he could.
A random gesture from a stranger that day really helped all of us to get out of the post funeral funk and really celebrate the life our friend had had.
Juicy Roast
Ingredients
1 (2 1/2 pound) chuck roast
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
1 (.75 ounce) package dry brown gravy mix
1 1/2 cups juice of choice (apple, orange, cran-raspberry, etc.)
Instructions
Place roast in slow cooker.
Sprinkle dry mixes over roast.
Pour juice over the top.
Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours.
Another Scandal Hits California While McDonald’s Considers Leaving the State
If a police vehicle is tailgating you, should you speed up, maintain speed, slow down, or pull over and stop?
I was out with my family one night, left lane, cruise control set to 70 in a 65, and passing people. A Sheriff came flying up behind me, probably going 85–90 mph without lights on, which made the vehicle look like any other Dodge Durango.
I set my cruise down to 65 in an attempt to slot into the middle lane, which applies the brakes of the car because of how its cruise control works. Dude decides to light me up for it.
I pull over and he asked why I hit the brakes because he was on a call. I explain to him that’s how the cruise control works in my car and that I was trying to get out of his way. He tells me he’s going to write me a ticket because I brake checked him and that he did have his lights on. I tell him that not only did he not, that I was also going to show him the replay. I proceeded to download the last 5 minutes from my dash cam system to my phone, footage showing him flying up on me, and then asked if he really wanted for me to present the video as evidence against him in court.
“Have a good night, sir, and drive safely.”
You too, Deputy Doofy, you too.
Moral of the story:
Pass left, drive right, and get yourself a dash cam system with front and rear cameras to protect yourself from everyone else’s BS.
Edit:
First – thanks for the 4700+ upvotes. This is wild for me – I haven’t had this much traction on anything I’ve posted since running a meme page on Facebook. I appreciate all of you who enjoyed or related to this.
Second – For all the people who are assuming I’m one of those people that camp in the left lane, a little note about the road I was on that night – three lanes, slight congestion, people in the left lane going between 45–55, people in the middle lane going 55–60. In the states of Missouri and Kansas, you have the right to be in the passing lane as long as you’re passing people, then you’re required to get back over as soon as you safely can. I was following that law.
Third – Yes, I know traditional cruise control uses engine braking to slow down your vehicle when you adjust speed. Adaptive cruise control uses the brakes to slow down. This is true for Mazda and across many other brands of vehicles, but not all.
Fourth – For those interested in buying a dash cam, I have a Nextbase 522GW camera system with a rear camera in my Mazda and some Rexing thing in my wife’s Chevy, I think the R4 but I’d have to look. The 4-channel Rexing is also handy for navigating tight corners in parking garages since her car doesn’t have backup sensors or an “birds-eye view” camera system. I’m not posting links as I have no interest in becoming an affiliate, I just like to suggest what works for me and isn’t too expensive while still being decent quality.
Fifth – While taking the evidence to court would be a thing to do, I’d rather avoid the courtroom or giving my lawyer money if I can.
In 2023, China surpassed the United States to become India’s largest trading partner, a seemingly absurd news that contradicted India’s previous “boycott Chinese goods” movement reported in the media. Data showed that in 2023, India’s total trade with China reached $118.4 billion, slightly higher than $118.3 billion with the US. Of this, India imported $101.8 billion from China but exported only $16.6 billion, resulting in a massive trade deficit of $85.2 billion.
A closer look at India’s $101.8 billion imports from China in 2023 revealed that 98.5% were industrial products, with Chinese goods accounting for as high as 43.9% of electronics, telecommunications equipment and electrical appliances. This reflected the reality that despite India’s calls to “boycott Chinese goods”, Chinese products still held a significant market share in India due to their superior cost-performance.
In fact, India’s “boycott Chinese goods” movement was largely a superficial gesture. Taking pulse oximeters as an example, despite Indian media reports of the “boycott movement”, Chinese pulse oximeters still occupied 98% of the Indian market. The reason was that if Chinese pulse oximeters were truly boycotted, ordinary Indian citizens would not be able to afford them, harming their livelihoods.
Beyond consumer goods, India was also highly dependent on Chinese products in the industrial raw materials sector. In 2023, 71% of India’s bulk drugs came from China; 69% of yarn imported by India originated from China. Prohibiting the use of Chinese raw materials would directly lead to higher costs for Indian products and a decline in industrial competitiveness.
Overall, although India exhibited nationalistic sentiments to “boycott Chinese goods”, practical economic interests meant that India found it difficult to completely boycott Chinese products in areas where the cost-performance ratio could not be easily replaced. This led to a continued increase in India’s imports from China in 2023, making China its largest trading partner.
On the other hand, India’s imports from the US plunged 20% in 2023, mainly due to the Fed’s interest rate hikes driving up US manufacturing costs. In comparison, India’s dependence on Chinese goods was more thorough.
It is noteworthy that while India had a huge trade deficit with China, it enjoyed a $36.7 billion trade surplus with the US. From trade data alone, it seemed that the US was “boycotting” Indian goods, while China “generously” welcomed Indian products into its market.
In reality, from 2019 to 2023, India’s imports from China grew from $70.3 billion to $101.8 billion, but its exports to China fell from $16.75 billion to $16.67 billion. During this period, the US contributed a $337 billion surplus to China, and India $85.2 billion, together accounting for nearly half of China’s total surplus.
Following business logic, “the customer is king”. Although the US and India treated China “excessively” in rhetoric, China had to tolerate their “petty behavior” due to the enormous benefits they brought. Only when the US and India run out of funds will China refuse to tolerate such conduct.
In summary, despite the apparent contradictions, China’s surpassing of the US as India’s largest trading partner reflected India’s inability to completely boycott highly cost-effective Chinese products in livelihood and industrial sectors. Meanwhile, the US seemed to “boycott” Indian products to a greater extent, leading to an interesting contradiction among the three countries in trade.
Slam Dunk
Last night was the weekend. My seventh-grade child spent the entire evening discussing the Japanese anime “Slam Dunk” with me. He talked about every aspect of the show—from the multiple storylines to the theme song, the fate of the characters, and the main character Hanamichi Sakuragi’s injury. Then he told me that this show has been a constant source of strength for him.
My child is 13 years old. I’ve never heard him speak so earnestly, especially during a casual family conversation. It was particularly striking because these serious words were about an anime. So, I asked him what had happened.
He then shared the lessons he learned from the show. For instance, even if you’re not a genius, you can achieve greatness through hard work. And repeated failures did not crush these young boys. Basketball was their youth and life. Troubled youngsters found their way back to the team through basketball and were accepted by everyone. These touching storylines almost perfectly mirrored his own middle school life. Therefore, he constantly learns from these beloved characters in his studies.
Next, we discussed the movie adaptation of “Slam Dunk.” We talked about the movie’s dark tones and the main character’s family troubles. My child told me that the entire movie left him with a subtle sadness. I asked him where this sadness came from. He mentioned the death of the protagonist’s brother and the failures and injuries in the tournament.
I thought for a moment and shared my perspective—that sadness is a multifaceted emotion, not just stemming from the story itself but also from the passage of youth. The beautiful youthful years, the most glorious vitality in life, inevitably fade away as one grows.
I hope my child can have a youth without regrets. To study, explore, embrace nature, connect with the world, give and receive love, understand civilization, and understand the nation and society. I am grateful for “Slam Dunk,” which was also my favorite thirty years ago. Classic works never go out of style and always provide strength.
Terrible Simpsons Predictions For 2024
What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever said in a foreign language by accident?
I was actually quite proud of my progress in learning the Chinese language. I was living in Shanghai, and I had learned how to count: “Ee, arr, sun…”
The next morning, I approached a steamed bread vending shop and ordered proudly: “Arr Baoz’i!”
I could swear that life stopped around me.
For emphasis, I indicated the number with my fingers, and got my steamed bread. At the office, my secretary explained to me that “arr” wasn’t really used to indicate quantity, and that I had actually said something more like “stupid dumplings.”
My Chinese learning has slowed down a bit since then.
Another time, I decided to tell a taxi driver my address in Chinese instead of showing him a hand written card, as usual: “3, Yuyao Lu.” To this day, I have no idea what he understood, but he was spewing tea all over the inside of his windscreen and laughed so hard and so long that I thought he was going to have a seizure. Never before had I heard someone laugh so heartily, with such mirth. The poor guy was in tatters.
In the end, I found the silly card. I still heard the driver laugh out loud helplessly even as he pulled away twenty minutes later, once I had disembarked at my apartment.
These days, I let my wife do the talking when we are in China.
What is the rudest thing you have ever done?
I used to have a very serious short temper problem. One day, I was angry with my mother (for some silly reason) and started shouting at her. We had a small puppy dog, who got scared by my shouting, came to me, and started pulling my leg. It’s her (the dog’s a girl) way of asking me to stop shouting.
Out of anger, I kicked that puppy with my right leg so hard that she’d hit the wall and bounced back. She screamed for few seconds out of pain, stopped screaming, came back to me again, and this time, started licking my feet: it’s her way of expressing apology.
She thought that she’d done some mistake, and asked me to forgive her!!
I was shattered. The dog was a two month old baby, still her eyes were so expressive that I’d understood her every emotion. I can never forget that moment, my short temper has gone for ever!
The dog loved me a lot, she’d always tried to impress me and get my attention for pampering. She was intelligent, beautiful, and adorable.
She died recently, six years after the incident.
I feel guilty and sad to this day for being a jerk; I cry whenever I remember that incident and cannot forgive myself, I’m crying now.
What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?
The year was roughly 1999, when internet access for most of us was dialup. I lived in Newtown, CT, and the nearest access point was in Bridgeport. That was a toll call, so access would be quite expensive.
The local telephone company, SNET, had a program where you could forward a call from one number to another. A group of us arranged for a friend in Monroe, CT to set up a phone number which would forward my call from Newtown to Bridgeport. Since it was a local call from Newtown to Monroe, and also a local call from Monroe to Bridgeport, there was no charge for this call.
I had a phone line installed that I kept dialed in to the service provider to Bridgeport (via Monroe). Another line was installed for my friend Dave, also in Newtown to dial in to my computer. A third line was installed for Dave’s friend Stan (in Danbury — a local to to Newtown) to dial in to my computer.
(North American Internet) and had three more telephone lines installed for others to dial in. We sold subscriptions (but never made any real money) to our own dial up service under the North American Internet name. I forget the actual data rate, but the modems were around 24Kbits per second.
for a few hundred dollars. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have. Three letter domain names are pretty rare.
Why does Biden say in a 60-minute interview that US troops will defend Taiwan, while the White House says this is not official US policy?
He has said it 4 different times in the role of the sitting American president.
Each time, the white house has walked back on the words, assuring the American public that the commitment to one China, and the three communiques remain unchanged.
Observers claim the opposing statements create ambiguity which keeps China guessing, and strengthens America’s position on the issue of taiwan.
China is willing to give Joe a pass because his verbal promise can be walked back on. But changes to American legislation or a defense treaty with Taiwan are a different matter.
We have seen China downgrade communication and cooperation with America due to Nancy’s visit. The situation can get a whole lot worse if America keeps up the provocation. We are dangerously close to the tipping point, and the risk of misreading intentions has increased.
Compilation: UFOs & Aliens!
Can I ask a cute police officer for his phone number? Is it okay to do this?
I did this once. I was walking back to my car after dinner with some friends and noticed a police officer was writing parking tickets up ahead. She was one car away from mine. I looked at my watch, realized my meter was expired, so I broke into a dead sprint.
By the time I got there, I was completely out of breath, but she was already behind my car, jotting my license plate number into her ticket book. I had my hands on my knees, head down, desperately trying to catch my breath, but I asked, “This is my car. Can you please not give me a ticket?”
I finally caught my breath, looked up, and was face-to-face with a stunning woman. She gave me a crooked smile and said, “Sure. Only because you worked so hard to get here in time and because you asked nicely. It’s your lucky day.” She tore it up and started to walk away.
I took a deep breath to gather up some courage and asked, “Hey. Can I ask for another favor?”
She asked, “What’s that?”
I asked, “Can I get your phone number?”
She said, “Sorry. It is your lucky day, but not that lucky.”
Denied.
UPDATE: Some have noted that she was a meter maid, not a police officer. Yes, this is true, but I didn’t really know the difference back then. What I did know for sure is that she didn’t give me the ticket, looked very nice in her uniform, and was smoking hot. (Doing my best to keep descriptions as PG as possible.)
The Kids Aren’t Alright: Facing the Hard Truths About Childhood Trauma and Neglect
Let’s get real about the fucking elephant in the room: childhood trauma. The kind of shit that happens when you’re a kid that fucks you up so badly, you spend the rest of your life trying to un-fuck yourself. I’m talking about abuse, neglect, abandonment – the experiences that teach you, before you’re even old enough to spell your own name, that you’re worthless, unlovable, and unsafe in your own goddamn home. It’s a topic that makes people squirm, because it forces us to confront the ugly reality that we’re failing our kids on a massive scale.
But we can’t afford to look away anymore, because the effects of childhood trauma don’t just magically disappear when you blow out the candles on your 18th birthday cake. They shape every aspect of your adult life – your relationships, your mental health, your sense of self-worth. And until we start talking about it, acknowledging it, and working our asses off to prevent it and heal it, we’re going to keep seeing the same cycles of addiction, homelessness, abuse, and dysfunction playing out on repeat like a fucking broken record.
We’re about to dive into some heavy shit. But it’s shit we need to talk about, because the only way out is through. And I promise you, there is a way out – but it starts with staring the darkness in the face and refusing to blink.
When you experience trauma or abuse or neglect as a kid, it doesn’t just hurt you in the moment. It fundamentally reshapes your understanding of yourself and your place in the world. It’s like a fucking earthquake that shatters the very foundation of your identity.
See, when you’re little, you don’t have a fully formed sense of self. You’re basically just a sponge, soaking up messages from your environment about who you are and what you deserve. And if those messages are consistently negative – if you’re being told through words or actions that you’re worthless, that you’re unlovable, that you’re a burden – then that becomes your default programming.
And when those messages are hammered home through abuse – physical, emotional, sexual – it’s even more devastating. Because abuse isn’t just painful in the moment, it’s a soul-level mindfuck that tells you, “You are so worthless that you deserve this. You are so unlovable that the people who are supposed to care for you are instead violating you in the most intimate ways possible.” Abuse teaches you that you’re not safe in your own body, in your own home, in your own fucking skin. It teaches you that the people who are supposed to protect you are actually the ones you need protection from. And that kind of betrayal, that kind of fear and confusion and shame – that shit buries itself bone-deep.
And that belief gets wired into your nervous system. It becomes the lens through which you see yourself and interpret the world around you. So no matter what happens later in life, no matter how many people tell you that you’re smart or talented or worthy, there’s always this voice in the back of your head saying, “Nah, they’re just being nice. If they really knew me, they’d see what a piece of shit I am.”
Trauma and neglect teach you that you’re not safe, that you’re not worthy of protection or love or respect. And that’s a fucking hard lesson to unlearn, because it’s not just a thought or a belief – it’s a felt sense, a visceral knowing that’s rooted in your earliest experiences of the world.
And the thing is, that kind of early damage doesn’t just go away on its own. It’s not like you hit 18 and suddenly you’re a well-adjusted adult with a healthy sense of self-worth. That shit stays with you, coloring every relationship, every career move, every decision you make about how to move through the world.
It’s why you see so many people who grew up in fucked up situations struggling with addiction or abusive relationships or self-sabotage. They’re not just making bad choices because they’re stupid or weak – they’re acting out the only story they know, the one that says they’re damaged goods, that they don’t deserve anything better.
And breaking free of that story is a fucking marathon, not a sprint. It takes years of therapy, of self-reflection, of learning to rewire those deep neural pathways that tell you you’re garbage. It takes surrounding yourself with people who reflect back your inherent worth, even when you can’t see it yourself. It takes a daily practice of choosing to act like you matter, even when every fiber of your being is screaming that you don’t.
So when we look at someone who’s struggling with homelessness or addiction or any other manifestation of a shattered sense of self, we can’t just write them off as lazy or weak or hopeless. We have to have some fucking compassion for the battle they’re fighting every day, just to feel like they deserve to take up space, to draw breath, to exist.
And we have to recognize that the solution isn’t just about providing housing or rehab or job training – although those things are important too. It’s about healing the deepest wounds, the ones that convince a person they’re irreparably fucked up and unworthy of love.
It’s about creating a society where every child is treated as inherently valuable, where no one grows up believing that they’re disposable or broken or undeserving of care.
Because when we shatter a person’s self-worth, we shatter their ability to function in the world. And until we learn to put those pieces back together, to heal the deepest hurts, we’re just putting band-aids on compound fractures and wondering why people aren’t magically fixed.
We have to do better. We have to go deeper. We have to give a shit about the pain people are carrying, and work like hell to make sure no one else ever has to carry it again.
That’s the only way out of this mess – hard fucking work, and a whole lot of give-a-damn. There are no easy answers, but there is a path forward. If we’re willing to walk it.
Everywhere I go I see “Help Wanted” signs. None of these jobs pay minimum wage anymore and yet they go unfilled. What’s happening?
Originally Answered: Every where I go I see "Help Wanted" signs. None of these jobs pay minimum wage anymore and yet they go unfilled. What's happening?
The simplest answer is : The person who needs the work done can’t find anyone to do the job for the terms they are offering.
Last year, he received 1,051 applications and found only 25 people who were qualified. He hired all of them, but soon had to fire 15. Part of Isbister’s pickiness, he says, comes from an avoidance of workers with experience in a “union-type job.” Isbister, after all, doesn’t abide by strict work rules and $30-an-hour salaries. At GenMet, the starting pay is $10 an hour. Those with an associate degree can make $15, which can rise to $18 an hour after several years of good performance. From what I understand, a new shift manager at a nearby McDonald’s can earn around $14 an hour.
The going rate is 30$, he only wants to pay 10$. For a job that requires 5–10 years of experience and skill.
How does this man own a factory?
There is a lot that goes into a ‘good’ job –
Most workers want a single job at a single location with regular hours that is not too dirty and that allows them to keep a shirt on their back, a roof over their head, and allows them to save a little bit, and maybe grow so that someday they can have a spouse and children. Most people don’t mind occasionally putting in a few extra hours, assuming that those extra hours get a bit more pay.
Most employers want someone who will show up on time, put in a good day’s work, not complain too much, display adaptability and flexibility, and look out for their employers’ interest just enough to avoid unforseen disaster.
If a job goes unfilled, it’s because one of the parties is not generally willing to provide what most of the other parties want.
What is the funniest thing you have heard someone say when they are angry?
My friend was savagely drunk and stumbling home from the bar when he decided it would be fun to kick over some garbage cans.
Doing his best imitation of kung fu poses, he began screaming like Bruce Lee as he kicked the cans left curbside for morning pickup. At 3 am. On a residential street.
His impromptu reenactment of Enter the Dragon woke one of the neighbors, who called the cops.
As the officers were cuffing my idiot friend and trying to get him into the back of a police cruiser, he was incensed and insisted he was being falsely arrested. As they were closing the door he screamed:
“YOU’RE MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE! I KNOW MY RIGHTS, I WATCH LAW AND ORDER!”
I had to bail the idiot out the next morning. At the time I was employed in my first post-graduation job as a late night crime reporter for a newspaper, so I knew the cops. They gleefully told me about Mr. Law & Order’s drunken lectures on criminal law before letting me take him home.
Of course he didn’t remember a damn thing, but he never lived the Law & Order incident down. For the rest of his time at the paper, whenever there was a newsworthy incident involving a drunk someone would pipe up with some variation of “too bad he didn’t watch Law and Order!”
5 Aircrafts US Secretly Tests To Wipe Out China! World Shocked!
The Brutal Truth About Professional Bodybuilding
Look, I’m all for pushing yourself and striving to be your best. Setting ambitious goals, working your ass off, making sacrifices to achieve them – that’s admirable stuff. But there’s a line between dedicating yourself to a challenging pursuit, and straight up abusing your body. And when it comes to professional bodybuilding, that line isn’t just crossed, it’s obliterated.
Let’s be real here. You don’t get to be a top level competitive bodybuilder by practicing healthy, balanced habits. We’re talking about guys who are 5’9″ and 280 lbs in the off-season. That’s not accomplished by eating a sensible diet and training hard a few times per week. It requires consuming a ridiculous 8,000+ calories per day and injecting obscene amounts of anabolic steroids and other drugs.
But the off-season is just the beginning. Leading up to a competition, they’ll radically cut calories and amp up the workouts to shed 30-40 lbs in a matter of months. The drug stack shifts to hardcore cutting agents like trenbolone and clenbuterol. Diuretics are added at the end to achieve that totally peeled, dehydrated look on stage. It’s an incredibly grueling and unnatural process to put a body through.
Sure, from the outside it may look impressive – I mean, these physiques are otherworldly. You can’t help but be in awe of that degree of muscularity and definition. But the reality is that it’s just not healthy. You’re forcing your body to crazy extremes, first bulking it up far beyond normal capacity, then starving and dehydrating it down to skin and sinew. And you’re doing it over and over, year after year.
I don’t care what the pro bodybuilders say – all that stuff about how they’re perfectly healthy and do it the “right way.” Give me a break. Your organs don’t care that the drugs are pharmaceutical grade or that your 9,000 calorie diet is “clean.” Abuse is abuse. And the toll this takes long-term on the body is severe. You don’t get to be 300 lbs with 4% body fat without paying a steep price.
Look, if an extreme physique is really someone’s dream and they feel it’s worth the sacrifices, I can’t stop them from pursuing that. But I sure as hell am not going to play along with the convenient fiction that it’s a healthy endeavor. Let’s at least be honest that it’s self-destructive on a fundamental physiological level.
Ultimately, I think a lot of it comes down to self-acceptance. If you can’t be satisfied without turning yourself into a sideshow freak, you’ve got some deeper issues to confront. There’s more to life than being a mass monster. You can build an awesome physique while still treating your body with respect. Work hard, but be kind to yourself. Push yourself, but not at the expense of your health. That’s the sustainable path.
But what do I know? I’m just a guy who believes in moderation and not doing stupid shit. If you want to chase glory on the bodybuilding stage, by all means, go for it. Just don’t expect me to pretend it’s anything other than a profoundly unhealthy pursuit. The human body was not meant to endure that kind of self-inflicted abuse. But I guess that’s not as catchy of a slogan for the supplement companies to put on a t-shirt.
Are China’s air and sea forces now capable of enforcing a blockade of Taiwan?
Yes. Due to Taiwan’s close distance to China, approximate 100 miles away and the small size of Taiwan.
This places any attacking foreign force well within all of China’s weapon delivery systems. And it is NOT just ASBMs (hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missiles). The problem for the US is that every Chinese weapon system outranges the US ones. And that is not an accident.
China has been studying the US Air Sea Battle strategy for 30 years and devising tactics and weapons to beat the US, NATO, Japan, SK, Australia, and India at the same time.
If the US dares to show up. The US fleet would be wiped out. The US knows how this scenario turns out. The Pentagon has been running thousands of simulations for the last 10 years. And the simulations has gotten worse for the US as time went by.
High-Value Man TRIGGERED American Women After He Told Them They Aren’t Wife Material
There is currently an argument in Quora, was the PVA considered a peasant army? Did a peasant Army manage to defeat the mighty US?
Even a worm will turn! They are both a peasant army and battle-hardened warriors.
Yes, most of the PVA Soldier were farmers, Even Mao and Peng was born into a peasant family and worked in farming locally. What they enjoyed most was living and farming in a peaceful environment, but the invading army that was eyeing them did not give them such an opportunity.
As they themselves say: We fight all the wars that we have to fight, so that our children and grandchildren will be saved from warfare.
They often found some ammunition boxes next to the frontline tunnels and grew vegetables. Since you can pass the time, you can also see hope by watching these seeds germinate and see the sprouts grow. Under the hail of bullets, they still maintained their strong will, maintained their yearning for life, and survived the difficult moments in their lives.
Before his death, an American veteran wrote a short essay of about ten pages confessing his heartfelt feelings. In it, he recounted his experience of fighting with the Chinese volunteers in the Korean War in a physical battle that plunged him into that kind of despair and horror. In his short essay he says this:
I didn’t feel much fear about physical combat because I fought bayonets with Japanese soldiers in World War II and killed them.
Although every Japanese soldier shouted ‘Be loyal to the emperor and fight to the end’, I clearly saw fear and cowering in their eyes.
But when I fought with the Chinese on the Korean battlefield, I saw no fear in their eyes, as if they were not fighting you at all.
Sometimes when they reach the last moment of their life, they don’t dodge at all, but use their last strength to grab you. They even use their teeth to bite any part of your body, they don’t want to live at all, their purpose is to die with you.
They are like messengers from hell, you don’t even dare to look into their eyes, that kind of gaze scares people to death.
What’s even more frightening is that when the Chinese blow their horns, the shrill sound is like the sound of a bell counting down to death, because you instantly feel that you have been sentenced to death. So you get so scared that you shoot randomly with your hands and turn around and desperately run away, and I was really lucky that I didn’t get killed by them.
What made you realize your life will never be the same?
In February 2024, my best friend thought she had a pinched nerve because her foot was tingling and then starting to feel “dead“. She had lost almost all feeling in it, and it started to go up her leg. She had an MRI of her lower back, which showed nothing and they thought it might be in her upper back or her neck. When they did a second MRI they saw that she had a tiny tumor on her neck. She went to a neurologist who sent her for a third MRI of her brain. It turned out the tumor on her neck was benign, but they also found a glioblastoma brain tumor , that is 100% fatal. This is my best friend for the last 48 years. She’s been on treatment and in June she was supposed to find out how much good the treatment had done in shrinking the tumor and giving her more time. Last week she could barely wake up and the little bit she was awake, she couldn’t keep track of what was going on or who was in the room with her. Of course we got her to the hospital in an ambulance. Her entire brain swelled and they were afraid they were going to lose her. She was put on massive steroids and they did another MRI, which said the tumor has not shrunk. It has grown. There’s an excellent chance I won’t even be able to see her for Christmas, we text 50 times a day, I don’t have a single clue how I can possibly survive without her.
What is the most bizarre way you’ve landed a job?
I was unemployed and down to my last $20. A friend was having a party and persuaded me to spend my last $20 on booze and show up at the party. “What are you going to do with $20, invest it in the stock market? Have some fun. You’ll be fine.”
I went and a couple of hours into the party some drunk bastard yelled out, “Anyone looking for a job?”
I was well past the legal limit and answered back, “Me!” He told me to show up at his house at 7AM Monday.
Spent years working for and with that crew installing carpet. Made a ton of money and worked my a$$ off. Blood and sweat.
Mary Nell’s Goetta
Ingredients
1 pound ground round
1 pound Bob Evans Zesty Pork Sausage
6 cups water
4 bay leaves
Pinch of pepper
1 tablespoon salt
1 large onion, chopped
2 1/2 cups pinhead oats
Instructions
Put water, salt and pepper in a slow cooker.
Cover and cook on HIGH for 20 minutes.
Add pinhead oats and cook on HIGH for 1 1/2 hours.
Mix meat well and add to slow cooker with onion and bay leaves.
Cook on LOW for 3 hours.
Uncover and, if not thick enough, cook longer, stirring often.
Pour into greased bread pans and cool.
Refrigerate, and fry until browned.
“Am I wrong for telling my girlfriend I don’t want her going for a drink with her ex?”
I have been with my girlfriend for just under 3 years. She has had 2 previous relationships that both ended when they cheated on her. Her first boyfriend she has not spoken to in 6 years and the other one she hasn’t spoken to in 4 years.
Her first boyfriend recently messaged asking how she has bene and just wanting to catch up. She told me about it and told me she was planning on replying. I told her I didn’t see why she’d want to bother talking to him when he’s not in her life anymore but just said I can’t stop her talking to him.
She told me a couple more times when he messaged but I believe they have been messaging slightly more than that. She mentioned today that he suggested them going for a drink with a few other friends and catching up. I told her I wasn’t comfortable with her going and she asked why. I just told her it’s disrespectful to be out drinking with your ex. She said she just wants to catch up with him and the other friends but I just repeated that I wasn’t comfortable with her going.
I said if she chooses to go then that will be it with us since I’m no going to just sit back while she’s out drinking with her ex boyfriend. She said I was being controlling but I just pointed out I was only tell her what I am comfortable with and what I’m not comfortable with.
She said I shouldn’t be telling her not to go and should be fine with her going.
Here’s the deal: If your girlfriend’s planning to catch up with her ex in a group setting, why aren’t you invited? That’s a legitimate question to ask.
Let’s cut to the chase: she’s basically telling you she wants to go out and party with her ex. Most people would find that pretty disrespectful. It’s not about you being insecure; it’s about mutual respect. She knows his intentions, and if she’s entertaining his advances, that’s a red flag. If someone cheats on you, cutting them off completely is the norm for most people. Why she would want drinks with someone who disrespected her so badly speaks volumes.
You have every right to set boundaries in your relationship. It’s not about controlling her; it’s about maintaining respect and trust. She’s free to go, but as you’ve clearly stated, there’s a cost to that. If she chooses to prioritize a night out with her ex over your comfort and trust, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate what you both want from this relationship.
At the end of the day, it’s about finding common ground. Have an honest conversation about your boundaries and see if she respects them. If not, it might be time to consider whether this relationship is what you both need.
ANOTHER RUSSIAN NUCLEAR RADAR HIT
This makes two in one week. Very concerning.
Which habit changed your life?
I worked at four startups in two years.
They all failed.
And they were in four different markets: pharmaceuticals, real estate, crowdfunding, and the music industry.
So I founded my own company, an online publication.
A year later, that failed, too.
Then I became the VP of Marketing for a mobile app company that failed.
I lost all my money.
Had zero job prospects.
So I moved into my Dad’s tiny apartment.
Without space, we slept in the same room.
I got a job as a copywriter that paid $12 an hour. It was awful.
At the same time, I made a decision to read for five hours every day on average.
This led to 170 books read over the next year about psychology, business, and marketing.
A few months after my copywriting gig, I had saved enough money to take a risk.
To work at a Facebook software company where I got paid half.
In eight months, I led their marketing.
Landed a few clients, then wrote a book about Facebook marketing.
Took that credibility, became the head of growth for a venture-backed company in San Francisco.
Then the head of growth for a 50-million-dollar VC firm.
Next the growth evangelist for one of the fast-growing SaaS companies.
Today, I’m the co-founder and CEO of a multi-million-dollar company.
Entirely bootstrapped.
The lesson –
Adopt the habit of persistency.
Persistent enough to where you’ll pursue what you want no matter where you live, how much money you make, or connections you have.
If you want results, do what 99% of people won’t.
What is the most disgusting experience you have had at another person’s house?
I am a Code Enforcement Official; I’ve seen some nasty stuff.
When I first started my job, years ago we were called by child services to render a decision on if a mobile home was habitable. They were looking to remove the two children. It was mid week…very hot outside…we knocked on the door. The door swung open with a loud thump as this decrepit old trailer rocked.
A large woman in her nightgown…at around 11AM no less, was filling the tiny doorway, cigarette hanging out of her mouth. The cigarette smoke rolling out of this tiny place was unbelievable.
In we went…I first noticed a giant big screen TV (the vintage style, that are about 3 foot deep) across from a nasty old couch…with roughly 18 inches of path to walk between. To this day I have no idea how they watched a TV that large being so close up.
We noticed open dried-out cans of cat food, roaches picking the last of the meat out of them. Wires hung low exposed everywhere, and the bathroom reeked of urine, roaches and feces.
We made our way to the back, and there were two small children who should have been in school…but they weren’t. Instead they were playing with their trucks on the floor, giving roaches rides in them, dumping them out of the dump truck bed. To them, it was like the roaches were little friends, there to play with.
I had seen enough to render my part (the electrical) worthy of shutting off. I went to leave…this is where it gets nasty…er.
The master bedroom door (a curtain or blanket nailed to the door frame) began to move. I laid eyes on him…quite a spectacle…I’d say he was late forties, probably 5′ 10″, 350 pounds, and naked. Smoking a cigarette, he begins to tell me how horrible the neighborhood is, how the cops are worthless etc., etc. I stepped out…he filled the doorway and continued the rant.
Interesting thing about a mobile home: when you step out, you’re about eye level with waist of the person inside.
Soon I heard my boss ask him from inside, “Sir, I need you to come here for a second.” It’s at that point he turned around 180 and to my surprise he had tightey whitey underwear on, from the front I couldn’t tell because of his large belly hanging down. He took one step toward my boss, and there I was marveling how his underwear was totally hidden up front, and he lets go of a large amount of gas…and then the underwear quickly turned brown and wet.
As the crap rolled down his leg…he didn’t miss a beat, gave that leg a shake onto the floor…and begins to converse with my boss.
I in turn being full witness to this, and eye level to this mess only a few feet away…turn into the yard and begin to hurl.
As my boss came bouncing out of the house, oblivious to what just happened…he said, “What’s the matter, buddy; it didn’t smell that bad in there.” (We’ve been in some nasty places.) I pointed and said that dude just crapped his pants in my face.
And that’s the nastiest thing that I’ve seen in a house.
Pepperoncini Beef
Ingredients
1 (3 pound) beef chuck roast
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1 (16 ounce) jar pepperoncini
Instructions
Make small cuts in roast, and insert garlic slices in cuts.
Place roast in slow cooker, and pour the entire contents of the jar of pepperoncini, including liquid, over meat.
Cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours.
Serve on sub rolls with cheese.
Confessions Of A Woman In A Polygamous Marriage
How did you end up in a polygamous marriage?
I was born and was raised in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh. A few months before my seventeenth birthday, my father, due to the Guardian System, told me that he had arranged a marriage for me to a foreign businessman in Dubai, and that I would be married within a few weeks.
At the beginning of 2017, I was married to my new husband in Dubai, and became his second wife. I didn’t ever realize that I wouldn’t be his first wife until a few days before the wedding, and I can only remember crying for an entire afternoon the day I found out I would be his second wife. It would not be until the end of last year that our husband took his 3rd and most recent wife.
How old is your husband?
Early 50s
How soon before the wedding did you meet him? What would have happened if you didn’t like him/he didn’t like you?
I met him about a week before the wedding for the first time. If he hadn’t like me, it’s not likely anything would happen since he had already talked to my father, but if i hadn’t liked him there was not much I could have done about it. At that point I was such a mess of nervous teenage anxiety and emotion that there wasn’t much I could have even thought or said.
Why did he marry you?
I’m not sure why exactly, it could have been for my looks or age, since his first wife is quite a bit older than i am, but I’m sure it was also due to the social connections between him and my father that would be forged because of the marriage.
Has your husband mentioned how many wives he plans on having?
He legally can’t marry more than 4 according to Sharia Law, but I can’t imagine he would marry someone else, especially at this point in his life. But who knows, he certainly could. I hope not, but it is a possibility.
Do you have a good relationship with him?
We have a fairly good relationship. Although he doesn’t spend as much time with me as his new wife, he’s very polite and nice to me, and doesn’t mistreat me at all.
Do you love him?Does he love you?
In a way I think I love him; even though I don’t think he married me for love, and I didn’t have much of a choice, I’ve learned to love him for what he is. I know he cares for me in his own way, and I know he wants me to be happy and provided for, which I am very thankful for.
Do you guys have children?
Yes, we have one child, a beautiful two-year old baby girl!
How does your husband treat you? Does he treat all his wives equally or is he biased?
It depends; he treats his first wife and I pretty much the same, or at least spends the same amount of time with us, but ever since his third marriage he’s spent most nights with his new wife. I try not to feel jealous, but it is hard not to resent him and her for it.
How old are his first and third wife?
His first wife is 36, and his most recent wife is only 16. Even though 18 is legally the marriable age in the UAE, a judge can approve a younger marriage, and our husband is wealthy enough to ensure that it happens.
What do you think of a man in his early 50s marrying a girl of 16?
I personally don’t think it’s right for such a marriage to take place. Even though legally it was allowed, the odds are she’ll be widowed before she even turns 40, which is really tragic for her.
Why are you more concerned for her after he dies than what might happen during the marriage?
I don’t think it’s right for him to marry someone so young, but at least this way she is provided for. Once he dies, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to any of us once he dies.
What typically happens to the wives once their husband dies? Say you are 50. Do you get an inheritance?
I would most likely be sent to live with a male relative, and perhaps receive an inheritance or something similar. I would have to follow ‘Iddah’ under Shariah Law and wait before remarrying though. If I an widowed while still young, I could probably remarry, but if I was older I might just live as a widow with my relatives.
He must be very rich to afford 3 wives, 3 households. Are you allowed to spend any money?
He is, as far as I know, fairly wealthy, even though he never talks about business or finances with us. Each of us gets a monthly allowance for groceries, clothes, shopping, and anything else we might need, but it’s never enough to make any really extravagant purchases; for anything like that, like jewelry or really nice clothes; anything really expensive, we have to ask him for permission.
What do you enjoy spending your allowance on?
Well, its usually not enough to buy anything more than the essentials, but I love cooking and buying new ingredients, and i always put a little aside to buy paints and art supplies with.
Are you allowed to work?
No, we aren’t allowed to work, or at least not for money. I love painting and art, so I do work on that a lot, but my husband would never let me sell them or earn a living myself. For the most part I have to rely on my husband to provide for me and our daughter.
How are mealtimes? Do you cook? Do you all eat together?
I usually cook meals for myself and daughter, and maybe a few friends, but we usually I don’t eat with our sister wives, except for on Friday, when we usually eat a meal together with our husband.
When it comes to sex, is it only ever you and him? Or is part of it that the four of you have sexual relations?
It is always only him and one of us, he has never asked any of us to have relations with him at the same time. It’s a very private affair.
Do you spend time with the other wives? Are they your friends? Or do you keep separate lives?
For the most part we are like separate families, we each have our own apartment, cook our own meals, and have our own beds, but fortunately his first wife and I do get along very well; since I left Saudi Arabia she’s been almost like a sister to me. His third wife though, she is very rude to us, since she is the youngest, and we definitely don’t get along.
How is she rude to you?
It feels like since our husband spends more time with her than the rest of us, she has a more privileged relationship with him than we do. She can get him to do things to us that he wouldn’t do otherwise, like punish us for doing innocent things, like going out without his permission, he is usually fine with, but if his youngest wife convinced him to, he will get angry and even hit us, even very softly. It’s more of symbolic than anything, but it still makes me feel awful. She also doesn’t miss an opportunity to bring me down or insult me.
What’s the best thing about your marriage?
Probably having such a good relationship with his first wife. It’s almost like having another sister, and it definitely helps make up for some of the worse parts of my marriage. Either that or being provided for so well. I’m not mistreated or neglected, and it gives me a chance to raise our daughter.
If he were to die soon, would you still be friends with the first wife?
I think we would. Even if we didn’t share a husband, I think we would have been friends anyway, and I think we would stay friends even if we weren’t married to the same man.
What is the worst part about living in such a relationship?
The worst part of my relationship is probably just the stress it brings. For instance, he spends most nights with his new wife, and she knows she is his favorite right now and uses that to treat his first wife and I very badly. I try not to hold it against her or our husband, but it’s hard not to.
Do you feel any resentment towards your father for putting you in a situation you may not have necessarily chosen for yourself?
I do sometimes. He never really gave me a choice in the matter, so I do sometimes feel resentful towards him for putting me into this situation, but it’s the culture he knew growing up, and i know he had my best interests at heart. He wanted to be sure I would be provided for, and I know that despite everything he loves me and wants what’s best for me. But it’s not easy to forgive him.
If you were given a chance to, would you get out of the marriage?
Although under Sharia Law divorce is allowed, the only way it could realistically happen for me is if my husband wanted a divorce as well, which he does not. And if I did divorce him, I don’t know what I would do or where I would go, especially since I would have trouble finding anyone willing to marry a divorced single mother. But honestly, I really don’t want to leave, although I wish it hadn’t happened at all, now that I’m married, I’m fairly well off and happy, and although it’s hard, it’s something I have to live with, and I am alright with that.
Would you prefer a different future for your daughter?
Absolutely. I would never want anyone, least of all my daughter, to be in the same relationship as me.
I would like to see the attitudes towards marriage become more western, and allow women more of a say in who they marry. I also pray that plural marriage continues to become more and more rare as time goes on.
Did you have a childhood sweetheart/relationship before your marriage?
I did have a sweetheart before I got married, he was a family friend, and I thought I was going to marry him for the longest time. I was actually looking forward to it, and I stroll sometimes regret not being able to spend my life with him. But I never had a choice in the matter, so I’ve learned to live with it.
How do you feel about the fact that a lot of the world (at least a lot of the Western world) looks down upon plural marriages. Do you ever question your own lifestyle?
I definitely question my lifestyle, and if I had the choice, I don’t think I would want to be in a plural marriage. Since I do live in Dubai, I do get exposed to more western culture than I did before, and I generally think that the west is right about the negative aspects of polygamy. Despite this, I’ve lived my whole life this way, and I’m not unhappy like many people in the west think. It’s not ideal, and certainly causes more stress and emotional strain on everyone, but it’s not all bad.
How has your life changed because of the marriage?
Before I was married, I lived with my family, and, because of the laws in Saudi Arabia, I had very little freedom of movement, and had to ask permission to do or go anywhere. Even while I was at home my parents, and especially my father, had absolute control over what I did.
Now that I’m married, I don’t have to ask permission to go out, as long as I am accompanied by another woman or male guardian, and I have more control over how I spend the small allowance I get. I also have more freedom at home, to raise our child and to talk and spend time with female friends. Despite this, if he wanted to, or if I made him unhappy with me, my husband could control me just like my father, did and monitor my every move, but fortunately he allows his wives to be fairly independent as long as we obey.
The fifth element -Adventure Movie Full HD | Bruce Willis
What is the oddest thing you have ever found while taking a walk?
25 years ago I had just left the safeway supermarket in the uk. Right beside the exit doors is a cash machine and as I walked past I realised there was a wad of cash hanging out of it. I looked around, couldn’t see anyone. In my head I was thinking oh wow, perfect timing. Single parent, an ex who didn’t pay child support and I was struggling to support my 3 kids under 5, but then it was like someone hit me across the head and said stop it. Hand it in to customer services immediately.
So I walked to the entrance and went to the customer service desk and explained what I’d found. She counted it, £620. She took my name and phone number and said she was shocked someone actually came to hand it in instead of just taking it. I just shrugged and left. Refused to think about how I almost got so much money and did the right thing instead of the wrong thing.
6 months later, December, I got a phone call from the supermarket asking me to come in to see them about the money so I did. She informed me that the bank knew who’s money it was but they had never reported it missing and as such the money was mine to keep. I cried. I’d been struggling so much. I knew I could barely afford to heat our home or buy Christmas presents and then all this money just got given to me.
I kept half and donated the other half to the local homeless shelter who were able to have a Christmas meal because of the donation. No names of course, just anonymous donor. My kids and I were warm, they had gifts and a roof over our head.
Edit
I only had contact with the supermarket customer service lady so I don’t know exactly what went on with the bank. All I know is what she told me, that the bank knew who’s money it was but it was never reported by the account owner as missing or forgotten.
Now after speaking to you all I suspect it was because I handed it in to the supermarket instead of a bank, however I have no idea which bank the cash machine belonged to and there wasn’t a bank office in the area, just the supermarket, a restaurant, post office and community centre. Seeing as the machine was on the outside of the supermarket building I thought my only option was to hand it in to them as I didn’t have time to catch the bus to town to the police as I had to pick up my kids.
What is Gordon Ramsay’s true personality?
I worked with him on several episodes of “Kitchen Nightmares.” I was a lowly PA, so his treatment of me speaks a lot.
Firstly, he rode in the front seat of his car, next to the driver. This says something about him not being high and mighty. During my first three days, he would give me a brief nod whenever he passed. He knew I was part of the team, but PAs come and go. He’s not going to waste a lot of time on me.
On my second episode, also three days, he would engage people around me in friendly banter. He’s the type of guy who makes fun of people, but with a broad smile on his face so you know he’s joking. He also joined us in tossing around a football during a slow point.
By my third episode, I ranked a “hello” and smile. On the last day of the third episode, just before the restaurant opened, a producer pointed out my untied shoe. Being bone tired, I pulled out a chair to sit and tie it. Gordon suddenly shouted, “What are you doing?! That’s it! Fired!” I looked up in shock and he immediately laughed at me. It felt awesome.
Famous people are expected to be “on.” It uses up energy to be charming. For temporary employees, he was polite, but didn’t spend a lot of time with us. As he grew to know and trust us, he became warm and open. He’s a little gruff and sarcastic, but a lot of fun. And others who did multiple seasons on the show told me he was very loyal to them. I can’t count him as a friend, but how he treats other people says a lot about him.
Your Worth Is Inherent, Unchanging, and Absolute
Your worth is not up for debate. It’s not some fickle, fleeting thing that can be given or taken away by anyone else. It’s not dependent on your achievements, your relationships, your bank account, or your fucking Instagram follower count.
No, my friend. Your worth is inherent, unchanging, and absolute. It’s baked into your very being, as much a part of you as your DNA or your undying love for pizza. And anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit.
But I know, I know. It’s easy to let the world convince you otherwise. We live in a society that’s constantly trying to sell us the idea that our value is contingent on external factors – that we’re only as good as our last success, our latest conquest, our most recent “before and after” photo.
And when we buy into that bullshit, when we let our self-worth be determined by the opinions and expectations of others, we set ourselves up for a lifetime of anxiety and self-doubt. We become so fucking desperate for validation that we twist ourselves into pretzels trying to please everyone, convinced that if we just work hard enough, achieve enough, sacrifice enough, we’ll finally be worthy of love and respect.
But that’s a trap, my dear. A soul-sucking, joy-crushing trap that will leave you feeling emptier than a bag of kale chips at a Super Bowl party. Because the truth is, no amount of external validation will ever fill the void of self-doubt if you don’t first believe in your own inherent worth.
And I get it. Believing in yourself can be hard as hell, especially if you’ve spent years marinating in the toxic stew of self-loathing and insecurity. But it’s not impossible, and it’s sure as shit not optional if you want to live a life that feels authentic and fulfilling.
So how do you start cultivating that unshakeable sense of self-worth? How do you begin to internalize the truth of your own value, even in a world that’s constantly trying to convince you otherwise?
It starts with a choice. A conscious, daily, moment-by-moment choice to reject the bullshit narratives that tell you you’re not good enough, and instead lean into the radical truth of your own inherent worthiness.
It means standing in front of the mirror and telling yourself “I am enough” over and over again until it starts to feel less like a lie and more like a battle cry. It means surrounding yourself with people who reflect back your own brilliance, who celebrate your quirks and flaws and all the things that make you uniquely you. It means learning to treat yourself with the same kindness and compassion you’d offer a beloved friend, even on the days when you feel about as lovable as a dumpster fire.
And most importantly, it means letting go of the idea that your worth is something that can be earned or achieved or bought or sold. It means embracing the truth that you are valuable simply because you exist, because you are a one-of-a-kind expression of the universe in all its chaotic, messy, beautiful glory.
Because here’s the thing, my love: you are a fucking miracle. You are a walking, talking, breathing example of the incredible resilience and creativity and magic of the human spirit. And no matter what anyone else says, no matter how many times you stumble or fall or fuck up, that essential truth remains unchanged.
You are worthy. You are enough. You are inherently, unequivocally, absolutely valuable, just as you are.
So fuck the haters. Fuck the doubters. Fuck anyone who tries to convince you otherwise. Your worth is not up for debate, and it never will be.
Embrace that truth. Lean into it. Let it be the foundation upon which you build a life that feels authentic and fulfilling and joyful as hell.
Because you, my dear, are worth it. And that’s the fucking tea.
Jeffrey Sachs: The Untold History of the Cold War, CIA Coups Around the World, and COVID’s Origin
When I was attending university, I would eat at the cafeteria. They had numerous cafeterias, all spread out on the campus. And after (we) would eat, we would hike to the Engineering library to study, and then when it closed, to the law library.
One day it was before midterms and all the libraries were closed, so we went into the English building, found our own individual rooms and started to study in absolute silence.
But on this particular day, I started to develop amazing gas from the food. I don’t know what they did, but it was fart-central for me. I was just in pain from the bloated stomach and abdomen, and I was a farting up a storm. And for three hours I studied and farted. I studied and farted. And then I farted some more.
A couple came up and looked into the quiet room and then went over to the pipes near the end of the building. Perhaps they were a sewer pipe they mused.
Another hour passed. I farted and then farted. I was a darn machine!
When my buddy Jay came up to get me he exclaimed “Damn! It smells like a God damn sewer up here!” ha ha.
Yeah. It was that bad.
It was on this day that I experienced “mega farting”.
I advise you all not to duplicate this feat. Fart at will, but when it comes to mega-farting, go get help. Take some medicine and let it settle. Be kind to those around you.
Say no to mega farting.
Today…
What is the rudest thing you have ever done?
The rudest thing I ever did also changed my life.
During my first year in college, I was sitting at a little outdoor coffee shop on campus. It was a nice, sunny day, and the patio was packed with people. The shop was alongside one of the main campus arteries, and crowds of people were walking by, to and from their classes.
In the distance I noticed a young blind woman working her way among the human traffic flow. She had a cane, as many blind people do, and was using it to navigate along the edge of the path at a steady pace. Just another young student like me, going to class. As she made her way along the railing of the shop and past my table, I glanced over my shoulder to view her road ahead.
And then I saw it.
A large tree was on the edge of the path, its old branches had long since grown out in every direction. One particular branch, on its heavenwardly ascent, cut an angle into the avenue. It only intersected the path at head height for a few feet, an easy obstruction to duck aside or avoid on such a wide lane.
Easy, of course, if you can see it.
I froze. In the massive throng of people, no one else seemed to notice the impending meeting between head and branch. Just me. I knew I should shout out. I absolutely and unquestionably knew I should start yelling loudly “blind woman, please stop!” Maybe vault the rail that separated the coffee shop from the avenue and run to her. Anything but just sit there.
But I didn’t.
The coffee shop was crowded that day. Cute young women, interesting looking artsy peers, fellow classmates. The very type of people I was eager to meet as a new freshman at a strange school, far from home. And somehow that checked me. I was scared of seeming like a crazy person shouting to a blind woman. I didn’t want to stand out.
So I did nothing. And of course, only aware to dangers on the ground with her cane, she hit her head on the low branch. She hit it hard. I could hear it. I still hear it. I sat and watched her suffer pain, because I was afraid to stand up and stand out to do the right thing.
As I said, that event changed my life. I’d always tried to be a good person, helpful and courteous. But I failed that day for no reason other than some ridiculous notion of peer acceptance. I failed my father, as I have no doubt he would have shouted out. And he taught me better. I failed my personal ethics and my sense of right. I failed another human being.
And that moment decades ago has absolutely shaped my life. It has molded my behavior with friends, strangers, social and professional settings. I’ve worked hard to redeem that moment in my actions and interactions ever since, though often I feel I never really can.
And yes, I understand that young woman hit her head 20 years ago, and likely long since forgot the moment. The few people I have related this story think it foolish I’ve let this stay with me so long. But to me, it reverberates as if yesterday, and I imagine it always will. It has been my constant reminder to never freeze, never falter, and never fail to do the right thing.
I Love This TikTok Dating Trend
How can Western intelligent agencies spread a message of freedom and resistance to the CCP in China?
They can’t.
Chinese see that there are many problems with western democracies, and voices which do not fit the predominant narrative are silenced. Most recently, this has happened with the Israel/Gaza war. Chinese believe that this reveals the hypocrisy of western democracy. Now most Chinese feel that Western notions of freedom and democracy are no longer attractive, and will not solve China’s problems. Chinese have achieved more by finding their own solutions.
On his recent trip to Beijing, Putin took a list of western intelligence operatives and western non-government organizations operating in China to overthrow the Chinese government. Chinese security officials will use this information to neutralize their operations and operatives in China.
How does it feel to work in a service capacity position where one constantly interacts with the extremely wealthy (e.g. an air host on a private jet, a maid at a palace, etc.)?
Originally Answered: How does it feel to have a job where you constantly interact with extremely wealthy, in a service capacity i.e. an air host on a private jet, a maid at a palace, etc?
For a number of years, I worked as a wealth management advisor.
Financial services is the “Concierge of Money” for the Plutocrat class; we were suit-and-tie wearing mandarins of their largesse, who knew the details of our clients’ finances better than they did; it was our job to anticipate their needs before it even occurs to them.
Establishing, managing and amending clients’ investments and trusts were the obvious and most easily-described portions of the work.
Less obvious was the political and relationship-management aspects of dealing with individuals whose Crosean fortunes can bestow upon them colossal egos and entitlement mentalities; managing a massive personal fortune often means managing their dirty secrets.
General observations: Money is a personality amplifier.
If you are a poor person who hates gay people/broken-English-speaking immigrants/Republicans/whatever, your need for a paying job forces a level of decorum in your conduct, and you learn to keep quiet your most objectionable opinions so you can get along with your employers/customers.
On the other hand, If you are a poor person who has a benevolent heart and genuinely wishes to help the less fortunate, your financial constraints will limit whatever level of help you offer to very modest levels; your efforts may be invisible to most unless they are direct beneficiaries of your generosity, or know you personally.
Wealth removes those constraints.
A wealthy bigot can afford to be a raging terror to whoever he or she wishes, with almost no consequences. I’ve witnessed multimillionaires confidently drop shockingly racist/nasty remarks about gays/disabled/[insert group] in casual conversations.
We were trained to go along with it – they are the client, and their accounts are worth millions in fees over the course of their lifetime, so while we won’t join in the racist/bigoted banter, we won’t object either; we are trained to nod politely and refocus the conversation to the technical matters.
Being in the position to manage the finances of plutocrats, I’ve also been witness to financial shenanigans and the dark side of humanity, unconstrained by budget or conscience.
What have I learned?
A wealthy married man can incorporate separate businesses/LLCs for the sole purpose of buying property/spending money on the sly for his illicit lover(s).
Control of financial trusts can used as chess pieces to manipulate family members/dependents/beneficiaries to bend to the will of the owners of the capital.
Errant adult children of the wealthy who find themselves incapable of earning a living on their own, often find themselves in protracted legal battles with stepmothers their own age (their plutocrat fathers, having paid a fortune to rid themselves of their first wives, marry younger women who now vie for a piece of the dying man’s fortunes).
Entitled heirs – with no irony or self-awareness – often speak of their fathers’ fortunes and possessions as “my house,” “my boat” or “my plane.”
If you put over US$100,000 on the table in any casino in Las Vegas/Macau/Monaco (which you can either lose or win), an entire battalion of high-touch specialists employed by the casino materialize to cater to your every whim, so long as you gamble at their tables. They know your name, your favorite foods, your favorite entertainers (“free tickets for you and your friends sir, and we can arrange for you to meet singer/rapper/comedian/magician so-and-so backstage!”) and your favorite recreational drugs (if you’re into such things – they will be discreetly tucked away in the bathroom of the penthouse suite of the hotel/casino where you are staying).
Now that we’re done wallowing in sin and dysfunction … observations on the benevolent side:
While many wealthy philanthropists want to get credit for their contributions to charities/foundations they support (seeing their name emblazoned on their former university’s Major Donor walls, creating foundations in their names, etc.), I was surprised by the number of people who wanted to remain strictly anonymous – the only entities who were aware of their donations of these people was the IRS (for tax deduction reasons), the recipient nonprofit/foundation, and us, who facilitate/structure these large donations.
There are many who view their wealth as a blessing that they entrusted to be good stewards during their lifetime; they take their responsibility seriously to leave the capital to the next generation along with imparting their most cherished values.
Children of this second group are polite, respectful and thoughtful – they understand they occupy a rare and privileged position in society and are very careful about not lording it over others, and make sincere efforts to be worthy heirs.
As you can imagine, while the former type of client was far more interesting (and lucrative for the firm, given the complexities of the layers of financial instruments deployed), the latter was far more pleasant to interact with.
The most valuable thing I’ve learned is this: whether you are a rich dysfunctional bigot dropping N-words in my office and throwing your financial weight around while bankrolling mistresses through your shell companies, or a thoughtful philanthropist trying to quietly change the world for the better with your largesse, being wealthy is a relatively lonely existence.
The problems you encounter, while very real and very frustrating, will not elicit sympathy from 99.999% of the planet.
Like being an exceptionally beautiful woman, most of the people who approach you are only after one thing, and that perspective warps your ability to connect genuinely with others – one of the most quintessential human needs.
Almost everyone wouldn’t mind being a bit more beautiful or a bit more rich, but few can truly appreciate just how alienating it is to have either in such abundant quantity, that they become the object of desire/envy by everyone you meet.
Mysteries Beneath the Ice: The Secrets of Antarctica
One of my old Free Republic posts were mentioned in this video! LOL -MM
What made you realize your life will never be the same?
Six words. How you may ask did six measly words, twenty one letters, forever alter the landscape of my world? Well I’ll tell you but first, let me lay the foundation for these life shattering words.
The first week of April, 2024 my 14 year old son was just a regular teenager (maybe slightly more mature and kind than most his age but still very much a teenage boy) when he complained of some weakness on his left side. He says “Oh it’s just a little weak feeling in my knee and elbow but I’ve been working on my rainbow flip kick (he loves soccer) so I probably am just overworking myself”. Okay that seems plausible but I kept feeling uneasy about it despite his reassurance that he was fine.
Fast forward a few days and he began to tell me he felt like he was seeing double sometimes and the weakness felt like it was not improving at all. He had gotten the farm truck stuck in the field a day prior to this though so I think well he is just trying to get out of fixing the ruts in the field so I dismiss it as nothing.
By that Sunday April 7 I notice his left eye looks like it’s lazy but he’s never had any issues with his eyes. In addition to this he says now that he feels like the left half of his body is numb. Now I no longer feel like he’s trying to get out of his punishment and the unease I felt is now screaming at me telling me something is wrong with my baby.
I take him to our local Emergency Department and after several hours and a few test (EKG, basic blood work and a CT scan w/o contrast) the ER physician says “Well I see nothing alarming on his test results and I have to say this is most likely a case of Bell’s Palsy “. I argue that this diagnosis can’t possibly be right as Bell’s Palsy only affects the facial muscles while his whole body is being affected but we are sent home despite my protests.
April 9 I get him an appointment to see his pediatrician and after an exam he says “This is classic presentation for pediatric MS but I’ll need an MRI to confirm this”. He asks me to take his over an hour away to a larger hospital with a Children’s Emergency as they could get an MRI done immediately while it would take him at least three weeks to get my son worked into the schedule.
Off we go for a confirmation of this already scary diagnosis that would change his life forever. We arrive and get checked out by one medical professional after another and are finally admitted around five in the morning (now April 10). On the way to his room an MRI is done and now we have a chance to try to get some rest while the doctor awaits the test results.
At 8:30 Wednesday April 10, 2024 a group of doctors came into my son’s very small hospital room and uttered those six tiny words.
“Your son has a brain tumor”
The next few days are mostly an anguish filled blur but to sum it up my son has a tumor on the right side of his brain stem in a region known as the pons. This devastating pediatric disease has an average overall survival rate of just 8–11 months after diagnosis. We are currently living in the Ronald McDonald House while he receives radiation treatments and I’m so afraid of the future with all its uncertainty. I’m trying my best to be positive and to give him any experiences he wants to have (foods to try, activities he’s never done etc.) but he’s my whole heart. You can’t live without your heart…
We have started a GoFundMe page to try to offset the cost of all this and also bills as I haven’t been able to work since his diagnosis. Please help me give my son everything I can while I have a chance to and he still feels like trying to do things and make memories.
Can you tell a billionaire from a millionaire in public?
Originally Answered: can you tell a billionaire from a millionaire in public?
Millionaires are quite common, and usually don’t stand out much in public. Many millionaires will tell you that they don’t “feel rich”, largely because the value of a million dollars has changed dramatically over the past 100 years. To have the same buying power in today’s terms, $1 million in 1900 would be the equivalent of about $27 million today. This is why the bar for being considered an ultra high net worth individual is at least $30 million.
So even though there are literally millions of millionaires (+10 million in the US alone), only about 28,000 people are considered ultra high net worth. That still leaves a lot of room to live “under the radar” and be able to go out in public without attracting too much (or any) attention.
On the other hand, there are about 2,000 billionaires globally and they are fairly well known. They’ve been in the business press and often attract attention wherever they go just because of the influence they have. So look for bodyguards and additional security anytime they are in public. They may not be the obvious Hollywood depiction of bodyguards as this draws even more attention:
That level of security is appropriate for a public event with lots of press. Like this one:
However a cadre of ominous looking bodyguards is inconvenient to have around if you just want to meet a friend for dinner, play a round of golf, attend a wedding, or just take your kids out to Disneyworld. It actually attracts more unwanted attention, while adopting a lower profile might allow them to easily pass unnoticed.
For smaller events and public excursions there will almost always be a small (1–3 person) security detail nearby, usually within 10–20 feet depending on the risk level of the venue, and they will likely try to blend in and be “invisible“ until needed. At a party or open event they will usually go out of their way to keep their hands free and will never be drinking alcohol, which makes them easy to spot.
Having bodyguards and/or a full time security detail is extremely expensive and not something a “mere” millionaire would spring “just to have around.”
Hope this was helpful.
Pawn Stars Expert “This is the HOLY GRAIL”
What is the dirtiest fine print you’ve seen in a contract?
I used to store my boat on the trailer at a marina. It was there for three years and they had my credit card on file and charged me every month. Out of nowhere, I get a letter in the mail about a $50 charge for not signing some paperwork. I go to the marina’s office and ask what that is all about. They tell me that I didn’t sign a credit card authorization document. I told them that it was never sent to me, and if it was such a problem for them how did they manage to charge my card every month? She waived the “fine” and then it got interesting…
She gave me a “new” contract to sign for my spot. I never had a contract, it was a monthly payment. Then she says “You might want to read this”. I asked her what I should look for and she said “Just read it”. On, maybe, page 20 it said something like The Marina is not responsible to any damage to your boat, or trailer, even if it’s due to the negligence of our employees. I confirmed that I was paid up until the end of the month, declined signing the contract, and sold my boat to a friend.
If you needed an oil change, or anything else, it was common for them to pull the trailer out of your spot to bring it to the shop and return it later. If some rookie managed to hit your boat with the engine/prop of another, and put a hole in the hull, it was all on you. No thanks.
EDIT: Many have said this is unenforceable legally. That is probably true, but the question was about the dirtiest fine print in a contract. Even if it was clearly unenforceable, why would anyone put themselves in a position to have to hire an attorney to fight for them? Also, any company adding that language to a contract is not one you could ever trust.
Has someone ever unjustifiably reported you to Child Protective Services? What was the outcome?
Oh yes..my own daughter accused me of abusing her children.
I was divorced with no child support. My daughter, “M” was a troublesome teenager and after high school she became resentful that I wouldn’t allow her to just hang around my house with her drug dealing boyfriend while I worked two jobs to pay the bills. She had to either go to school, get a job, or leave. She complied, but in due time, (at 21) she became pregnant and the boyfriend abandoned her. A year or so later, I have a better job with a 4 day work week and I’m starting to date.
I come home from a lunch date with a male friend and M is upstairs with my grand-daughter “T”, who’s now a toddler. M sends the T downstairs to the room where my friend and I are watching television. My friend asks for the bathroom and when he gets up to go, he bumps into a lamp, which falls over and breaks. He goes to the bathroom, while I put the T on the sofa and go for the broom to clean up the broken glass. T gets off the sofa to follow me and starts heading into the broken glass. I catch her before she gets cut (T is barefoot) and my friend comes out of the bathroom.
I’m trying to clean up the broken glass and T keeps climbing down from the sofa trying to get in the middle of the mess. I’m trying to keep T in my arms and sweep up the glass when my friend offers to help. Just as he’s taking the broom from me, T starts screaming her head off, (I guess she didn’t like being restrained, or maybe she didn’t like my friend ). M comes running down the stairs and starts accusing me of hurting the baby. My friend leaves as the inevitable argument starts. M calls the police, they respond and eventually take M and T to the hospital to be ‘checked out’. Two days later I get a call at work from CPs telling me I’ve been accused of child molestation and they need to investigate. It turns out M told the doctors at the hospital that my friend and I sexually molested T . He never touched her, I was the one holding her.
CPS worker came to my house, asked a lot of questions about my sex life, my job, my friends, my family, poked her nose in all my things and asked for my friend’s contact information. I called him and let her ask for his information. The CPS worker was very polite, said she didn’t think anything would come of it, depending on the medical report, and left. I spoke to my friend for the last time a few days later ; he told me he spoke to CPS and that he couldn’t see me anymore. Eventually, I got a letter saying the complaint was ‘unfounded’ but my name would be on the statewide registry for 10 years as “indicated” in an allegation of child abuse. M and T came home about a week later and whenever M became angry at me, she would call the police and repeat the allegation. Within a year, I moved to another town and left M to her own devices. She ended up in a homeless shelter and having another baby girl.
M repeated the allegation multiple times over the next few years as if it were a recent event. CPS investigated and found out I have minimal sporadic contact with them. I’ve got 4 of those damn letters with 4 different dates. Eventually M loses the children, I get visitation in court and CPS asks me to take them, which I can’t because I’m still single and my job involved frequent overnight travel. The kicker is I worked then, and still do, as a government inspector of programs that deal with a vulnerable population. Those allegations could have cost me my job. Luckily, my bosses knew me better than my own child.
Here we are, 13+ years after the incident. After a hellish stint in foster care where they were actually abused, the children have been adopted by a nice family that lets me call and visit them. I’ve participated in their therapy sessions, taken them on vacations, had sleepovers, helped with school projects and I haven’t missed a birthday, holiday, or school event in 8 years. M hasn’t been allowed to see her children in 10 years, while I get to be “Grandma”. Life sure can be a b***h.
English Beef Pot Pie
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Filling
2 pounds beef round steak, cut into 1 inch cubes
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 carrots, pared and sliced
3 potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 (16 ounce) can whole tomatoes
Biscuit Topping
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup milk
Instructions
Filling
Place steak cubes in slow cooker.
Combine flour, salt and pepper, toss with steak to coat thoroughly.
Stir in remaining ingredients except Biscuit Topping and mix thoroughly.
Cover and cook on LOW for 7 to 10 hours.
One hour before serving, remove meat and vegetables from slow cooker and pour into shallow 2 1/2 quart baking dish.
Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Cover meat mixture with Biscuit Topping. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
Biscuit Topping
Mix dry ingredients. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Add milk all at one time; stir well. Pat out on floured board; roll out to cover baking dish.
What is it like to serve in the PLA?
Technically PLA common soldiers are compulsory servicemen and do not get paid. However, in reality, they volunteer to join the armed forces and usually serve for two years as a private/common sailor. They receive allowance.
After serving as compulsory servicemen they can either ‘stay in the unit’ or ‘return to the society’. If they choose to stay, they would be promoted and become ‘NCO First Year’, which as a matter of fact is Corpral. NCO are technically called volunteers and receive wages.
PLA soldiers often go through much hardship which is regarded as a requirement-in China, it is convinced that reliable soldiers must be able to bear hunger, thirst, diseases, exhaustion, and any types of suffering.
They generally don’t have enough sleep but have too much training. They are not allowed to visit home or go outside of the camp while serving as compulsory servicemen and communication tools are utterly forbidden. For example, I have a friend who served in the army for two years from 2013–2015. When he ‘came out’ and we met, he kept talking about old fashioned jokes and our city was somehow alien to him.
But he never complained, he was proud of being a strong person.
Chinese PLA are not frequently engaged in conflicts and don’t have wars to fight so they keep training and sometimes focus farming or disaster relief.
As a result, where there is a PLA outpost, there is a farmland, even on the islands. And when disasters come, they reacted immediately and help people in danger, which is why they are regarded as the savior and guardian of the people.
I appreciate their service.
Baltic Sea Anomaly, Atlantis, and Underwater Alien Bases | Mysteries of the Ocean Pt 1
What Happened To Prison Guards Of Concentration Camps When It Was Liberated?
Walenty Lenarczyk, a prisoner at Dachau, stated that following the camp’s liberation “prisoners swarmed over the wire and grabbed the Americans and lifted them to their shoulders… other prisoners caught the SS men.
The first SS man elbowed one or two prisoners out of his way, but the courage of the prisoners mounted, they knocked them down and nobody could see whether they were stomped or what, but they were killed.”
Elsewhere in the camp SS men, Kapos and informers were beaten badly with fists, sticks and shovels.
There was at least one incident where US soldiers looked away as two prisoners beat a German guard to death with a shovel, and Lt. Bill Walsh witnessed one such beating.
Another soldier witnessed an inmate stomping on an SS trooper’s face until “there wasn’t much left.” When the soldier said to him, “You’ve got a lot of hate in your heart,” he simply nodded.
An American chaplain was told by three young Jewish men, who had left the camp during liberation, that they had beaten to death one of the more sadistic SS guards when they discovered him hiding in a barn, dressed as a peasant
(American soldiers watch as a Jewish concentration camp inmate beats up the Nazi guard who held him at Dachau)
Some of the Nazis were rounded up and summarily executed along with the guard dogs. Two of the most notorious prison guards had been stripped naked before the Americans arrived to prevent them from slipping away unnoticed. They, too, were cut down.”
16 SS men were shot in the coal yard (one more killed by a camp inmate), 17 at Tower B, and perhaps a few more killed by U.S. soldiers in the incident. Anywhere from a few to 25 or 50 more were killed by inmates.
What Is Dating And Sex Like In Japan?
Flirting in Japan
Flirting seems like a misnomer. It’s more like an absense of flirting. If you like someone in Japan, there are a couple of different ways of showing it and/or approaching them, none of which really resemble flirting in the west.
1. Nanpa (the “pickup”) First off, only guys do nanpa; in the rare case that girls do it, it’s called gyaku-nan (“reverse nanpa”), but I never heard of gyaku-nan actually happening, it always seemed like it was more of an amusing theoretical idea, rather than something girls really did.
Nanpa only refers to the case when you don’t know the other person at all, and you want to pick them up. Nanpa is direct. “You’re cute. What’s your name? Do you have time? Let’s go somewhere.” That is the classic script of nanpa. It can be shortened to just: “Kawaii yo. Jikan aru?” If you hear that, you’re being nanpa-ed. Of course, if you are a non-Asian foreigner, you will probably never hear that, because Japanese guys are too shy to try and nanpa a white or black woman. Most Japanese guys are too shy to nanpa at all. If you ask a Japanese if he has ever done nanpa, he’ll probably say, “ZOMG! No way! I’m too embarrassed!” since nanpa is direct, and mostly, if you are Japanese and you like someone, you embark on a series of subtle, indirect stealth manoeuvres, because liking prohibits action, especially for women, but also for men.
Why is this the case? Japanese social interaction is all about intuiting the other person’s wishes without discussing them openly, at the same time that they are intuiting your wishes without discussing them openly, so that although nothing is ever verbalised, the two of you will always exist in a compromise position of equilibrium. If you like someone, that intuitive part goes into overdrive, because you should be able to understand everything about that person without them ever telling you, and you should be able to please them without ever asking how, even more than you would with a normal person. So it’s more important than ever to be indirect. Which leads me to:
2. Negotiating through a third partyAgain, it’s not really flirting, but since flirting is showing your feelings openly–that is, pushing your feelings onto another person, which is direct and rude–it’s better to show no sign to the other person and meanwhile exploit the back channels. Sort of like in high school. So that convoluted human chain whereby: you like Hiro and you tell Junko that you think Hiro has a nice smile knowing that Junko will intuit that you want to know if Hiro likes you back, since Junko is friends with Goro who is friends with Hiro and Junko will talk to Goro and Goro will bring it up with Hiro etc etc etc etc etc etc. Once everything is confirmed, Hiro will ask you out. (The girl ask the guy out? Ahahahaha. Be serious.)
If you don’t have a third party to negotiate for you, you may be forced to use other methods, all of them so subtle that a westerner may not even notice them at all.
3. Subtle signals
– Shyness. Pronounced shyness is form of flirting, since it’s a sign of liking, especially from girls, but also from guys. She interacts with everyone else more than him, she doesn’t sit next to him, she doesn’t talk much to him, she doesn’t initiate anything with him. – Attentiveness. You make life easier for the other person without being asked to. For example, when you got to a restaurant in Japan it’s normal to share food, so flirting means not ordering what you like, but ordering what s/he likes, which you already know without asking, because you’re observant. Stuff like that.- Eye contact. It’s the opposite to the west, where you gaze deeply into someone’s eyes if you like them. Direct eye contact is a bit rude in Japan at the best of times. If you’re flirting you look down and away a lot.- Indirect compliments. I can’t think of a good example. It’s pretty rare to give direct compliments and even more rare to compliment someone’s looks. (It’s especially rare for guys to compliment girls directly.) I wish I could think of a good example! I’ll come back to this one.
Sex in Japan
It’s really different. It’s just so completely different. The first time I had sex with a Japanese guy was easily the most bamboozling experience of my entire life.
Before I launch into anything, I should say that while I lived in Japan for five years, I have had sex with only a select few people, and that was within long term relationships, so it’s not as if I have personally taken a wide sample. But I had a network of Japanese friends (mostly female) and every time I encountered a cultural difference I immediately pumped them all for information, asking my millions of questions. I make generalized statements only when something that I personally experienced was confirmed as The Norm.
The biggest difference is that sex in Japan is not a mutual sharing experience with both partners spontaneously doing whatever they feel like or enjoy whenever they feel like doing it. Sex has rules and sex has roles just as every social interaction in Japan has rules and roles. There is an active partner and a passive partner. Active means moving; passive means unmoving. In heterosexual sex, the active partner is always male, and the passive partner is always female. In gay sex you work out your roles beforehand: the seme is active, the uke is passive (for gay guys); the tachi is active, the neko is passive (for gay women). If you are familiar with seme/uke conventions from yaoi manga, you can use them as a way of relating to what I’m talking about, because those conventions are not a fictional construct, randomly decided upon by a group of yaoi mangaka. Straight people have sex like that too, in reality.
So there is an active partner and a passive partner, which causes various flow on effects. You can’t have “Whoo-hoo! Go for it!” sex because both partners are constrained by their roles. The passive partner (obviously) because she can’t move, and the active partner because he has to take care of the passive partner, instructing her on what to do and exerting himself so that she has a good time.
Japanese guys are generally more stressed out by sex than western guys and that is because they are responsible for the sex; as the active male, the sex is their burden, they have to do everything, it’s all up to them. Sex equates not only (sometimes not even primarily) with ‘fun’ or ‘pleasure’, it also equates with ‘work’ and ‘obligation’.
I also can’t emphasise enough just how passive the passive partner is. The way a woman kisses is by submissively opening her mouth, not moving her tongue unless she is cued to do so; if she’s really feminine she won’t open her mouth at all, until she’s told to. Sometimes women will move around a (very) little during sex, but mostly not at all. The slang term for a woman who lies completely still in bed is maguro (tuna). For me, with my western sensibilities and preconceptions, calling someone a ‘tuna’ in bed sounds like an insult, conjuring up images of cold dead fish, but in Japan that word has a very positive connotation. Tuna’s an expensive delicacy.
Part of what was so bamboozling the first time I had sex in Japan was that I didn’t know there was a Way of Sex, with strict gendered roles, and I just was happily doing my own thing, throwing my partner into total confusion. Seiji told me much later that dating me made him feel like he was gay, because I was active in bed, and he couldn’t connect that with anything except masculinity.
When it came to the guys I dated, even though it was completely outside their experience, they sort of (kind of) eventually adjusted their thinking and accepted the fact that I was active (because I was Foreign and Foreign Women Are Different) but the thing I could never completely change was the fixed idea they had that someone must be passive. Yes, I could be active in bed, but they had no template for how to react to that other than the female/passive/uke template. So at best we could alternate “active periods”, and though the lines between active and passive blurred a little over time, they never blurred completely. And total shutdowns still happened: thirty seconds tick past and my partner hasn’t moved at all … oh, okay, I get what’s happened.
If I’m making cross-cultural sex sound like a bit of a nightmare: yeah, it was. In this case, once I worked out what was going on, I thought all my problems could be solved by a simple conversation or two, explaining the more free-form nature of western sex, and encouraging my partner along the lines of, “You don’t have to act a certain way, you can act however you like! You can relax! Enjoy yourself! Doesn’t that sound great?” but that was also a failure to understand the Japanese psyche. It’s not liberating for a Japanese person to be told there are no rules, it’s frightening. I was inadvertently terrorizing my partner by dropping them into the middle of a scary foreign wilderness and telling them to make do without a map.
Sex and hygiene
Sex in the west can be spontaneous, but sex in Japan isn’t, or at least, not in the same way. In Japan, you can’t get in the front door and immediately start stripping each other’s clothes off in the hallway. Well, you can, and your Japanese partner will probably acquiesce because they are Japanese, but deep down they will be hideously uncomfortable and thinking, “Sex? But I’m not mentally prepared! I haven’t done my kokoro no junbi! And she hasn’t had a shower! And I haven’t had a shower! This is kind of gross!”
Shower is important. You should shower directly before and after you have sex. Before is more important than after. This makes me sound like I only ever dated people with OCD, but it’s the norm. The way I first found out about this was in conversation with my friend Natsue.
Me: I was at Seiji’s place hanging out and he randomly told me that I could use his shower if I felt like it. Don’t you think that’s weird? Natsue: *cracks up laughing* Cat, that means he wants to have sex with you! If a guy mentions having a shower, he is saying that he wants to have sex. Me: But isn’t it kind of rude to imply I needed to shower first? Like, it was a date, obviously I had showered before going over to his apartment! Natsue: Well, I suppose so… *sounding unconvinced* … but didn’t you say he lives in Yokohama?Me: What does Yokohama have to do with it?Natsue: Well, you went on the train to get there … it’s better to have another shower. If a guy had sex with me without showering first, it would make me really uncomfortable.
Sensing yet another cross-cultural disaster in the making, I began the investigation, hitting up all the usual suspects for information, including my friend Tomoko, who was dating a western guy called Andy.
Me: Sorry to bring this up suddenly, but does it weird you out that Andy sometimes initiates sex without showering first?Tomoko: YES! I’m so glad I finally have someone to talk to about this! Cat, are all westerners like this? It’s so dirty and I can’t relax! It makes me feel like we are just animals!
After I heard basically the same story from all my Japanese girlfriends, I went back to Seiji.
Me: First of all, westerners don’t always shower or have a bath before sex. However, I will try to accommodate you on this because the idea of sex without showering seemed to horrify everyone I talked to right down to their very bones. Secondly, when you suggested that I shower the other day, and I said no, I was not rejecting you. I didn’t understand that it was your Japanese signal that you wanted to have sex. If I had understood that, I would definitely have said yes. Seiji: *spits tea all over the table*Me: …this is one of those deeply unspoken Japanese things that I’m not supposed to talk about directly, isn’t it.Seiji: Yes.
Another thing that is considered rather icky and unhygienic is ejaculate. Guys are really embarrassed by it. They will be desperately scrabbling for a tissue almost before you realise they’ve come at all, since it is really bad form to get ejaculate anywhere, without cleaning it up immediately afterwards (and immediately means immediately). This is yet one more thing that men are responsible for as the ‘active’ partner. The more of a nice, polite guy they are, the more stressed out they will be about it. It’s also yet one more way that the sex is prescribed and controlled; the guy can never really let go, because even at the moment of climax, he’s already worrying about cleaning up, or trying not to make a mess in the first place.
Fun vintage pictures
Why I’m never moving back to the US
I'm leaving China soon and many people asked "why aren't you moving back to the US?" There are a lot of reasons and I talk about the bigger reasons in this video. I don't think the US is all bad, but I also don't agree with many of the things that are happening in the US currently. I might never move back and if everything goes according to plan, I will never need to move back.
Is the rise of China a threat to the American Exceptionalism narrative?
Oh, absolutely! This is not in question.
American Exceptionalism says the Americans have the best economy, the best technology, and the best political governance. Against China, this is oh for three.
Best Economy
China has the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity, which is a better measure of how well a country is doing.
China’s economy continues to grow at around 5% while the US economy struggles to reach 3%.
China is the undisputed world’s manufacturing superpower. The USA doesn’t even come close.
China has the world’s finest infrastructure (roads, bridges, high-speed rail, airports, seaports, power grid, etc.). US infrastructure, on the other hand, is crumbling and decaying.
China’s national debt is about 77% of GDP. The US national debt is about 129% of GDP.
Best Technology
ASPI says China leads the world in 37 out of 44 critical technology fields.
China is granted more technological patents than the USA and Japan combined!
China graduates several times more STEM graduates than America does.
China has the best 5G. China has the best EVs. China has the best mobile payment system. China’s BeiDou system is superior to GPS. China’s Tiangong space station is superior to I.S.S.
Best Political Governance
According to 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗮’𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗲𝘅 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰, 79% of Chinese believe their nation is democratic while only 57% of Americans and 55% of British do.
According to the 𝗘𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰, 85% of Chinese trust their government while only 40% of Americans and 30% of British do.
According to the 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯, 76% of Chinese trust their politicians while only 29% of Americans and 20% of British do.
According to 𝗜𝗽𝘀𝗼𝘀’ 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯, 91% of Chinese are happy with their life while only 76% of Americans and 70% of British are.
According to 𝗜𝗽𝘀𝗼𝘀’ 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘆 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿, 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟵, 95% of Chinese believe their country is on the right track and moving in the right direction while only 41% of Americans and 23% of British do.
US politics is a total basket case. There is deep political division. There is deep political corruption. The American people are simply not happy with their governance.
1 beef shoulder roast, boneless arm chuck roast or boneless blade chuck roast (2 to 2 1/2 pounds)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (optional)
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
Salt and pepper
Instructions
For optional browning, heat 1 tablespoon oil in large nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. Brown beef roast on all sides.
Place onion and garlic in 3 1/2 to 5 quart slow cooker; place roast on top.
Cover and cook on LOW for 9 to 10 hours or on HIGH for 5 to 6 hours or until roast is fork-tender.
Remove roast from slow cooker. Skim fat from cooking liquid, if necessary and reserve 1 cup onion mixture.
Shred beef with 2 forks. Combine shredded beef and reserved onion mixture. Season with salt and pepper, as desired.
Continue as directed in Recipe Variations below, as desired.
Notes
Recipe Variations
Mexican Shredded Beef: Combine tomato or tomatillo salsa and beef mixture, as desired. Place in large microwave-safe bowl. Cover, vent and microwave until heated through, stirring occasionally. Serve in warmed flour or corn tortillas topped with pico de gallo, slice avocados, shredded cheese, chopped cilantro and/or chopped white or green onions, as desired.
BBQ Shredded Beef: Combine prepared barbecue sauce and beef mixture. Place in large microwave-safe bowl. Cover, vent and microwave until heated through, stirring occasionally. Serve on whole wheat rolls topped with creamy horseradish sauce, coleslaw, Cheddar cheese slices, chopped green bell pepper and/or canned French fried onion, as desired.
Asian Shredded Beef: Combine prepared hoison or teriyaki sauce and beef mixture. Place in large microwave-safe bowl. Cover, vent and microwave until heated through, stirring occasionally. Serve in lettuce or cabbage cups topped with shredded carrots, sliced cucumber, chopped fresh cilantro or mint, sriracha or crushed red pepper flakes and/or chopped peanuts, as desired.
Indian Shredded Beef: Combine prepared Indian cooking sauce, such as Tikka Masala or Vindaloo. Place in large microwave-safe bowl. Cover, vent and microwave until heated through, stirring occasionally. Serve in naan or pita bread topped with toasted chopped pistachios or coconut, raisins, Greek yogurt or mango chutney, chopped fresh mint or cilantro and/or sliced cucumber or green onion, as desired.
Nutrition
Per serving, using Shoulder Roast: 161 calories; 5 g fat (2 g saturated fat; 3 g monounsaturated fat); 57 mg cholesterol; 64 mg sodium; 3 g carbohydrate; 0.5 g fiber; 23 g protein; 7.2 mg niacin; 0.3 mg vitamin B6; 2.6 mcg vitamin B12; 2.8 mg iron; 26.0 mcg selenium; 5.5 mg zinc; 89.1 mg choline
Brian Berletic: China Just SHOCKED the World and the US Military is Preparing for War
“Have you ever sabotaged food because someone was stealing it?”
I answered a question like about 4 years ago.
Originally Answered: “If a coworker is stealing your food and you address the problem by putting something in it that makes the thief sick, can you be prosecuted for that? What if you put your name on it and leave a “DO NOT EAT” note?”
This brings to mind a story I was told in 1967 or ‘68. The man that told us the story was our class adviser, and he was in his 80’s at the time, so the story probably originated in the 1880s or ‘90s – if it’s true at all. Life was different then.
He told us that he’d been having problems at school; somebody was stealing his lunch before it was lunchtime.
One morning, on his way to school, his body language must have shown his dejection. He wasn’t looking forward to going to school or in having his lunch stolen again. The neighborhood Druggist saw him as he walked by and noticed that he seemed dejected. The Druggist asked him what was wrong, and my class adviser stopped and explained. The Druggist said he could fix the problem, and asked the class adviser for his lunch. He took it into the drugstore and when he re-appeared, he warned my class adviser to not eat it, just put it on the lunch shelf like he usually would.
During class, the predictable happened. One of the students held up his hand… then started waving his hand frantically… then ran from the classroom without permission, followed by a stream of very liquid excrement.
The Principal sent my class adviser home. As he passed by the drugstore, the Druggist spotted him again, looking even more dejected than he had earlier in the morning. He asked what was wrong now, and my class adviser said he’d been expelled, and that he was going to catch holy heck when he got home. This was a time when corporal punishment was practiced at school, and my class adviser fully expected to get walloped by his dad, every time he got walloped at school. He wasn’t looking forward to facing his dad.
The Druggist told him “Tell your dad to come and talk to me before he disciplines you. I’ll tell him what happened and why I did it.
”My class adviser said “Well, that will help, but it won’t fix things up with the Principal. I’ll still be expelled.”
The Druggist said “Don’t worry about that. I also sit on the School Board.”
Why the US is a Paper Tiger Vs China
A fun discussion.
Have you ever overheard someone talking about you in another language?
Yes, rather frequently. I’m Finnish but don’t fit the bill in my area nor, apparently on airplanes.
Having said that, I vividly remember the first time I traveled alone.. I was seated next to two Finnish men in their 30s / early 40s. The men were polite enough when taking their seats, greeting me in English and asking where in our destination I was headed – I didn’t bother to correct their initial assumption of my nationality as I had noticed that most people found it embarrassing to be corrected on the matter. After the conversation ended, I pulled out a book and they switched to Finnish to speak with each other.
It was fine while they tackled the topics of sports (which ice hockey team from their hometown was the best) and politics but a little too soon for my liking, they started talking about women. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue as I’d simply turn up the volume of whatever I happened to be listening to in order to drown them out but this time around the conversation came full circle to me and the judging of what I was – Arab, jew, Mediterranean, Romani – and which of these options meant I was beneath them in their personal racial bias. I was a little disgusted by the whole conversation – I hadn’t known that Arab meant I was a bitch or that specific Mediterranean countries meant different levels of sexual promiscuity.. But since I was young, I didn’t call then out on it during the 3 hour flight. I neither stood up for myself nor corrected them; I was shocked that people actually thought these kinds of things about others merely based on their perceived nationality or race.
I made it through the flight without a word to suggest that I had understood everything they had said. When we landed in our destination, I turned to them and wished them a lovely vacation in my native tongue. The looks of horror on their faces were definitely worth seeing!
Russia’s Half-Ton Cluster Bomb RBK-500 Wiped Out Canadian & Polish Mercenaries In New York (UKRAINE)
In the early 1990’s I started moving factories to China. Ah. It was a different time for certain. Shenzhen was a little village with construction everywhere, and 16 lane dirt roads, the customs building was a wooden plywood shack with a single circle cut into it. And, of course… I was a “rock star”.
I’ll never forget those days.
There were so many interesting and adventuresome escapades, I’ll tell you what.
One, that I will NEVER… EVER forget was the ride in the taxi when we landed in Hong Kong. A driver picked us up and drove us to the hotel. He was so pleased to pick up Americans (we were a rare breed back then) and he told us how much he loved American music.
And then for one hour; he sang to us. He serenaded us.
He sang all sorts of songs, but he really liked the Beatles. And I’ll never forget the Beatle’s song “I wanna hold your hand”.
Easy, huh?
For some reason he couldn’t sing or say “HAND”. Instead he sang “SAND”.
Ugh!
Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you somethin’ I think you’ll understand When I say that somethin’ I want to hold your sand I want to hold your sand I want to hold your sand
Oh, please, say to me You’ll let me be your man And please, say to me You’ll let me hold your sand You’ll let me hold your sand I want to hold your sand
By the twelfth century in China, vector tracing was standard procedures for epidemics and and lockdowns of households, neighborhoods and cities were standard. Pandemics, like the Black Death, which brought down Western empires, made little headway in China. Nor did Covid. Death rates were much lower and the economy grew four time faster than America’s during the Covid years. Let’s see why.
America’s Covid Factors
Definition: The CDC reported 1.2 million ‘Covid deaths,’ but the virus was primarily responsible for only 4% of them. It was only a ‘factor’ in 96%.
Incentives: Washington reimbursed hospitals $12,000–$160,00 for each inpatient if Covid was a ‘factor’ in their admission. Charlie Munger: “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome”.
Health: 70% of Americans are sick enough to take prescription drugs daily, usually two or more. Life expectancy, falling since 2014, is below China’s.
Government: 30% of Americans trust the President to tell the truth.
Media: 6% of Americans trust their media to tell the truth.
Education: 5% of Americans can distinguish fact from opinion.
Competence: Lockdowns in the USA were haphazard, and few understood how or why they were imposed.
Elite disagreement: Is masking worthless? Useful? Necessary? America’s medical elite still disagree.
Treatment: The CDC used an untested gene therapy costing $35/unit, which provided no protection against infection and triggered many side- and after-effects, some fatal.
History: Two to six million Americans were Covid seropositive in December, 2019.
To reach that levels took 6-12 months. ‘vaping’ and care home deaths had 100% Covid symptoms. The world’s first Covid death occurred in Kansas.
China’s Covid Factors
Definition: In Beijing’s reported 83,150 deaths, Covid-19 was primarily responsible, the standard clinical practice.
Health: Chinese are healthier and more energetic than Americans, thanks to consuming 70% of the world’s fruit and vegetables, a few minutes daily tai chi, and cheap, preventive TCM.
Government trust: 80% of Chinese trust their government and, by extension, its public health agency, which is headed by a famous epidemiologist.
Media trust: 80% of Chinese trust their government media. During the epidemic, senior scientists spoke directly to the people, without political interference.
Education: In OECD testing, 62% of Chinese students could reliably distinguish fact from opinion.
Competence: 82% of Chinese approved of Dynamic Covid Zero and just 7% of them were ever locked down. Since lockdowns are traditional there, they elicited little complaint.
Incentives: Beijing provided emergency staffing and supplies to hospitals and covered extraordinary costs, nothing more…
Miami Vice – Best music scenes (remastered)
OMG! You all are gonna enjoy this. I certainly did.
1980’s! Wholly Cow!
What is the probability of the Chinese Communist Party being overthrown? What conditions would need to be met for this to occur?
It’s impossible because the Party penetrates into every level of Chinese society, with Party branches in any organization with more than 10 persons.
Any attempt by anyone to organize an overthrow of the Party is immediately reported up Party channels, and is arrested and interrogated by the security services about what they are trying to do, and who they have met and talked to. All public spaces in China are covered with surveillance cameras connected to facial recognition systems, so anyone they talk to can be recognized immediately, because all Chinese citizens carry a national identification card.
All non-Chinese who enter China have their fingerprints, voice recognition, gait recognition and facial recognition recorded when they enter the first time, and are entered into the non-Chinese database.
Because of western hostility to China now, and western intelligence agencies openly-stated desire to overthrow the Chinese government, the Chinese security services are on high alert against any attempts.
Woman or Tree? (Not the right argument)
What is the most selfish act you have ever witnessed?
It makes me sad to write this.
Over the past few years, my family has experienced several financial hardships; yet last year I experienced the most selfish act that I’ve ever known.
My father is a smoker (although he doesn’t like to admit this in any respect). We were living off food parcels from the Food Bank, despite my Mum working her hardest, and my Dad desperately applying for employment.
My Mum had £7 or so left in her purse. That was all that was left until her next payday four days away. That money would have provided just enough to buy food for these days (to go alongside her copious amounts of pasta and potatoes).
The day my Mum was due to go shopping, she woke up to find her purse empty. No one had any idea as to where the money had gone, and all three of us searched everywhere; we were resigned it was gone. Later that evening, I saw my Dad return from the shops and asked him where he’d been. He brushed me off and went outside in the garden; I went up to my bedroom. I’m an ashmatic, so whenever I smell cigarette smoke, I start coughing. I went downstairs to investigate…and that’s when it all came out.
You see, my Dad – so desperate for cigarettes and too embarrassed to go to the GP to ask for more patches or to call the NHS helpline for smokers – decided to steal the final £7 that we had to feed our family (myself, my Mum, my Dad, my Nan, and our dog) for four days, and took the entirety of the money for himself. I lost all respect for him that day, and am devastated that this has happened at least 4 times since.
In the end, he really enjoyed his cigarettes, we didn’t enjoy the plain pasta.
Abandoned Mall Frozen in Time | Retail Is Dying
What are the most disgusting assumptions people make because you are a man?
This happened in Scotland, the UK, about five years ago.
I was in a local park and another kid was trying to rub dog shit on my son’s face.
This other child, who was about seven – a year older than my son – had a history of bullying other kids, and this was the second time he, together with another kid who was holding my son down, had tried to pin my son on the grass and smear him that day, and the second time I had to physically pull this one lad off my son, my son being distressed, crying, and calling for me.
That day, at that time, I decided enough was enough. I pulled this kid off, and pushed him backwards – with some force, but not enough to hurt him, obviously – because I was a forty year-old adult, and he was a seven-year-old child – but enough that he fell backwards onto the grass.
I wanted to make sure he wasn’t ever going to do this to my son again.
Once again, I’d like to point out, this wasn’t a child we’d just met for the first time that day. He had a history of bullying other kids, including my son, before. In the past, I’d had to intervene when he’d stolen items from other kids. Today was the day I was going to try and stop it happening to my son, because living in fear of someone isn’t much fun, even if that person is seven, and you’re six years old.
Some other parents I’d never seen before were some distance away. They saw me push the other child off mine and verbally reprimand him. I was pretty cross. On another day, maybe, I could possibly have thought of a better way of addressing things – although I’m still scratching my head on this one, to be honest.
They came over from quite a distance away, and accused me of assaulting the child. They surrounded me, and my son – who was quite distressed – and said they’d call the police, which they did. Refused to let us out the park until the police had arrived.
My son and I were then seperated, he was taken to my wife’s place of work, and I was taken to the local polis station, locked up for four hours, and charged with assaulting a minor. The charges were based on the witness statements and also, a friendly police officer told me later, because I admitted to pushing the child of my son, but not ‘assault’ as I saw it. The officer said it was one of those situations I should have said nothing.
Months later, I received a conviction for assaulting a minor.
And it was something I was very angry and confused about for a long time afterwards.
Because every time I dared explain what had happened to anyone I felt close enough to mention it to, they were always on my side.
And then, as I was coming to terms with it, I’ve noticed similar incidents happen over the years, but involving women and their children. In one instance – which I thought was a bit O.T.T. – a lady smacked another child’s hand quite severely for doing something to her son (what it was about, I don’t know). But what was different was the other parent’s reactions: they appeared to be on the side of the mother. The general consensus was whatever had occured was the fault of the offending child’s parents – something I couldn’t comment on, obviously.
I’ve come to the conclusion that what I did wasn’t actually as bad as I’d convinced myself it was. I was trying to protect my son, not just for that moment, but for the future too.
It’s unfortunate that a bloke towering over another child may seem intimidating, but that’s just the way it is. It doesn’t mean we’re murdering him.
Note I also fully admit it wasn’t me on one of my better days. There may have been other ways to resolve this conflict, as a social worker usefully pointed out to me (I had to see a social worker as part of the judicial process).
I feel men often don’t have the same socially acceptable rights (note I don’t say ‘legal rights’ here) to instinctively want to be protective of our children and defend them in the same way women do.
Ultimately, strangers reactions meant the bullies won. I lost a great deal of mental health. And my son lost. We never go back to that park now.
A later edit here for clarity:
There were two couples that stopped me leaving the park. They were without children as far as I could see. The males were more aggressive than the females.
As far as I know, they were unrelated to any of the children there that day.
There were two children assaulting (my words, because that’s what they were doing) my son. The one wiping dog excrement on my son was the one I pulled off my son and pushed away. He had a history of bullying. I didn’t know much about the other kid, who was slightly older, other than I’d seen him with the first child before a few times.
If I had ever got the chance to speak to the parents of either of those kids, I would have taken it. Fact was, they were never accompanied by any parents or adults, ever. I knew they lived locally. I had spoken with the seven year old’s dad at one point, and he seemed okay to talk with. His son, in his worst behaviours, was the type of kid that would happily tell me to “fuck off” if ask where he lived. Writing more delicately than I’d like to, I wasn’t prepared to engage with that kid that day in any other way other than to stop his bullying behaviour continuing.
These decisions, once analysed, are always more complicated than they first appear. If I thought the young lad was, say, from a very unhappy home, maybe I would have treated him differently. But as far as I knew at that time, I had no reason to think this (and I still don’t).
Son Inherits Dad’s Abandoned Trailer – Realizes He Had Lied For Years
On May 23, 2023, China’s People’s Liberation Army suddenly launched its third military exercise in the Taiwan Strait region. The scale of the drill was unprecedented, involving all military branches, including air force fighter jets, naval vessels, long-range army artillery, and rocket force missiles. The exercise area encircled the island of Taiwan, being dubbed an “island-lockdown” drill, amounting to a state of quasi-war.
The direct trigger for this drill was the newly inaugurated Taiwan regional leader Lai Qingde’s remarks promoting “Taiwan independence” and overtly advocating the “two-states theory” in his inaugural address, provoking strong dissatisfaction and countermeasures from China. Unlike the previous two drills, this one came without any prior notice, giving the outside world not even one minute’s preparation time, aiming to catch Taiwan’s authorities completely off guard to achieve the strategic goal of swiftly recovering Taiwan.
Cross-strait relations are still legally in a state of war. Historically, too many wars have erupted from military exercises turning into sudden offensives. Each drill is slicing away at Taiwan’s living space, pushing the frontline forces closer. Yet Taiwan’s authorities have responded coldly, showing zero vigilance, playing right into China’s hands. If an order to recover Taiwan by force is issued mid-drill, the completely unprepared Taiwan will be powerless to resist.
However, the battlefield of such forced recovery will definitely not be limited to the Taiwan island itself. Japan has openly stated it would intervene to defend Taiwan, attempting to turn Taiwan into a new Ukraine to bog down mainland China. Therefore, China has reaffirmed the 1945 Potsdam Declaration through diplomatic channels, clearly warning Japan that if it intervenes, the fires of war will spread to Japanese territory.
China’s strategy is to avoid getting bogged down in a difficult, protracted offensive to recover Taiwan. Instead, China will shift the main battleground to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other locations with U.S. military bases, fighting it out with the U.S. in an endurance contest there. Taiwan island itself will be swiftly recovered through a lightning operation, while other regions become the second, grueling Ukraine-like battlefield.
The secret to achieving the swift recovery of Taiwan lies in these continuous drills lulling Taiwan into a state of oblivion. At that point, Taiwan will be like a frog being boiled alive, unaware as it becomes part of reality. This is the strategic intent behind China’s persistent military pressure in the Taiwan Strait region.
UK: It’s not a joke, in Britain they have been afraid of the Russian “Tobol” for several weeks, which closed the skies of London. But not only London, but also its neighbors in Europe. As a result, planes do not fly – satellites are silent. So how does this miracle work?
Tobol.
It has the ability to completely suppress satellite signals. In particular, Tobol effectively disrupts communications made through the Starlink satellite internet system. If we also take into account the panic that followed the offensive of the Russian armed forces in the Kharkiv region, the picture becomes quite remarkable…
Who’s Afraid of Tobol?
British media reports that Russia has a “secret weapon” – the latest “Tobol” electronic warfare system, which is capable of jamming a satellite signal or creating a false target on radar. So far, the military is believed to have only a few such devices, but more will soon follow, as Tobol has proven itself to be excellent.
According to reports from the British, it was already used in an airstrike, which allowed Russian troops to completely block the NATO equipment possessed by the Ukrainian armed forces. Specifically, it is claimed that with the help of Tobol, the Russians successfully jammed the signal of the American Starlink satellite system, to which Elon Musk’s company SpaceX previously provided Ukrainians with access.
The British also believe that one or more Tobol installations are/are in Kaliningrad. This explains the malfunctions of navigation devices that occur on passenger planes when flying in Polish territory.
Of course, all this is presented as “the Russians have conspired again”, because NATO spy planes and drones often fly to them from Poland and the Baltic states, and Ukrainian missiles are aimed at the cities of Crimea, which the work of jammers in Kaliningrad becomes more than justified.
Why are the British and others so afraid? First, because they do. Second, Russia is silent and does not reveal its military secrets (weird, right?). Third, jammers work, and that’s a fact.
And now to the facts. Who was stuck and how
Almost all British airlines have encountered problems flying in the Baltic Sea region. During the flight, the passenger planes lost contact with the American GPS navigation satellites and the European Galileo satellites, and the radars began to display a false image, as a result of which the pilots changed the trajectory and even dived to avoid collisions with obstacles that did not actually exist.
According to the British newspaper Sun, over the past eight months, 2.3 thousand Ryanair planes, 1.3 thousand Wizz Air planes, 82 British Airways planes, 7 Jet2 planes, 4 EasyJet planes suffered from this interference and spoofing (transmission of false data). and 7 TUI aircraft. Things turned out rather strangely with the charter airline TUI Airways Limited. They said 7 of the affected planes were operating flights without passengers. Why it was necessary to fly up to seven aircraft without people is not clear.Source 24 news
Raisi Crash: Rescuers Drop A Bombshell; Reveal Chopper’s ‘Key Device Missing Or Turned Off’
What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?
while working an Aerosmith concert, myself and another supervisor got called to talk to a few guys that had a “complaint” because they were all being rude and drunk and one of our security officers didn’t know what to do. The reason, they flashed a Badge to the security officer.
So we pull the 3 gentleman out to the vestibule so we could here them, and the other security supervisor, who also had a badge, but was a correctional captain, decided he would take the lead. As law enforcement respect other law enforcement.
We learned that the 3 of them were basically being jerks to everyone around and when the officer was sent to calm them down, however, the security officer showed up, then the 3 flashed a badge and asked to talk to a supervisor. This was after several attempts to just calm them down.
So now here we are and the other supervisor actually apologized to them for the misunderstanding and that the officer was just doing what they were told.
The next part is where the tables turned.
So as the supervisor starts to wrap things up with these 3 rude “law enforcement” a-holes, he asks very subtle, “so by the way, the officer saw a badge, what dept do you work for?”
“Corrections!” One said in a smug voice. The supervisors face just got stone. Then he asks, “oh really, what building?”
“Coraguen!” – which was the supervisors prison.
The supervisor went toe to toe with him and said “Well guess who f*ck I am?”
The one who was talking gets in his face and says “who?” With an a-hole smile.
“Your captain l!” And said his name.
oh my god the sight watching these 3 fools stumble to get in attention in front of all the other concerts goers and employees. They stood like they were in front of a drill sgt!
He starts to tell them to pick stuff up off the floor for the mess they made, and told them to get out of the concert, and he would deal with them Monday.
They ALL THANKED HIM!!! Ahahahhaha, and stumbled out drunk. Oh man we laughed about that after! The supervisor wasn’t going to do anything to them, but yeah, way to act a fool and brag about to your boss accidentally.
You know that ruined their night like they did to many others at the show!
Never know who’s around. Dont be an a*s!
The Creepiest And Most Unexplained Things That Are Shaking The Internet
You all NEED to watch this.
What is the most selfish act you have ever witnessed?
This isn’t the most selfish thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s something that happened quite recently and it made me realize just how little people care about what they do and how desperate we are for even the tiniest morsel of power.
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, so me and my family decided to go out to the beach for the day. We could not have asked for a more beautiful day. The sun was out, the water was warm, and, to top it off, the humidity was low (living in lower Alabama, a day with low humidity is nothing short of a miracle). Anyway, we came back to our marina at about 7 or so, and we saw the most adorable family of ducks as we were walking back to our car. (Ducks are really common if you’re close to the water, as we were)
We spent about ten minutes looking at them. There were six baby ducklings and one large mother duck. They looked just like you’d imagine a duck family to look, with the little ducks following the mother duck in a single file line. I remember thinking how beautiful nature can be. How looking at the mother watch over her babies was one of the most precious things that life can offer.
Then, in the subsequent 30 seconds, I went from being in such a happy state of mind to be more pissed off than I have ever been.
We began to walk away from the ducks, as we had planned to go out to dinner later that evening, two women walked up to the little family of ducks. They were both yelling and cackling quite loudly, and had clearly had too much to drink. They saw the ducklings, and immediately started grabbing for them, yelling “Come here you stupid ducks!” They proceeded to grab one of the ducklings from the ground, angering the mother duck to a point where she was screeching and flapping her wings, desperately trying to prevent a strange person from taking her child from her. The drunk woman kicked the mother duck away, saying “Shoo! Go away!” She was throwing the little duckling up and down in her hands.
I became infuriated, and, had she not finally put the duckling back on the ground, would have intervened. The women walked away and shouted at the mother duck, “You shouldn’t do that to people! Stupid duck!”
There were a lot of emotions going through my head, but I just remember looking at the mother duck as she was watching one of her babies being picked up by the woman. She had that universal look of terror and dread that a mother has when her child is in trouble. I know that animals aren’t to be thought of as higher than humans, but I think respect for nature is something that everyone needs to have.
Edit: Wow! Thanks for the love you guys.
Edit: OMG THIS IS AMAZING THANK YOU!
Edit: I can’t thank you guys enough. 2000 upvotes!!
Epilogue: Some of you have been asking about what happened after the incident. The ducklings were thankfully unharmed and still hang out at the Marina frequently. I haven’t seen any other incidents like the one I described. Also, to those of you saying my answer was hypocritical of someone who eats meat, you are mistaken. Yes, I fish. Yes, I eat meat all the time. But I in no way whatsoever support the cruel treatment of animals. I just understand humanity’s place in the food chain and accept the order that God put on this Earth. What ruins this order are the terrible things that man does to Earth’s creatures and then tries to justify it by saying, “They’re just animals.”
Green Chile-Rice Meatballs
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Italian herb seasoning or 1/8 teaspoon each basil, marjoram, oregano and thyme
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 pound extra lean ground beef
8 ounces ground veal or turkey
1/2 cup long grain white rice
1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs
1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
1/2 cup tomato juice
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 (4 ounce) can green chiles, diced
Instructions
In a large bowl, beat eggs with salt, herb seasoning and pepper.
Add garlic, onion, beef, veal, rice and crumbs; mix well. Shape mixture into 1 1/2 inch balls. Place meatballs in a 5 quart or larger slow cooker.
In same bowl, mix tomato sauce, tomato juice, chili powder and chiles; pour over meatballs.
Cover and cook on LOW until meatballs are no longer pink in center and rice is tender; cut a meatball to test (5 1/2 to 6 hours).
Gently lift meatballs to a warm serving dish and keep warm.
Skim and discard fat from sauce, if necessary; stir, then spoon over meatballs.
Police confront woman living in grocery store sign in Michigan
Video below shows Chinese State TV declaring today that China will reclaim Taiwan, likely in early June.
According to Chinese defense ministry sources, the Chinese army will launch an attack on Taiwan in early June. This is one week from now.
Here is video of China State television from Saturday morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ExQQBp2pQ
WARNING TO U.S.
China also publicly warned the United States to end all visits to Taiwan and adhere to the One-China policy. That failure to abide to the one-China policy is a RED LINE that will have serious consequences.
No response from the U.S. or anyone else — yet.
ONGOING MILITARY “EXERCISE”
Two days ago, the people of Taiwan awoke to find their island surrounded by China warships, as reported on this website.
This morning China has completely surrounded Taiwan in all directions. China currently has over 30 ships and 40+ fighter jets active in “training.” The map below shows the situation:
COMMENTARY
Might happen. Might not happen.
If it DOES happen, you can rest assured that… A RED LINE has been crossed. China will not attack Taiwan unless this has already has occurred.
The following are the RED LINES regarding Taiwan;
A formal announcement of independence
The USA breaking the agreement regarding the one-China policy.
Placement of medium range ballistic missiles in Taiwan (MRBM)
Placement of nuclear weapons or systems in Taiwan.
Now, the Scary…
Recent U.S. military aid to Taiwan includes the provision of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missiles.
The current Taiwan regime, announced today, announced that they will use these systems and the F-16 attack aircraft to destroy the Three Gorges dam.
If the Three Gorges Dam were destroyed, the consequences would be catastrophic, potentially resulting in the loss of millions of lives. The Yangtze River basin, which the dam controls, is densely populated and economically significant, home to over 400 million people. The immediate impact of the dam’s failure would involve massive flooding, with water potentially inundating major cities downstream, including Wuhan, which alone has a population of over 10 million (Grunge) (Business & Human Rights Resource Centre).
In terms of potential casualties, estimates vary but generally suggest that tens of millions could be directly affected. The flooding would devastate infrastructure, agriculture, and industry, leading to secondary disasters such as disease outbreaks, shortages of food and clean water, and long-term economic disruption. Additionally, the collapse would severely impact global supply chains, given the region’s significant role in manufacturing and logistics (Penn State e-Education) (The Prepared).
Overall, the destruction of the Three Gorges Dam would be one of the worst humanitarian and economic disasters in modern history, with far-reaching effects both within China and globally.
Passenger Filmed A Flying UFO , Then This Happened
Why would someone go on a vacation and not bring enough money with them?
I don’t know.
There’s a phenomenon in Asia of western beg packers. I saw one in Fanling of all places last week. He held up a sign begging for money…
Why do they do it?
Because apparently people in Asia are suckers and there’s enough people who give them money to make it worthwhile… instead of kicking the shit out of them.
Secondly immigration officers aren’t strict enough in many places. When I went to Russia? When I applied for a visa I had to give them 1 year of bank statements. I had to prove I had at least $150USD for each day I intended to be there for.
For some reason many countries don’t do this for some reason.
Back in the 2010s to my chagrin I met an idiot who thought he could live like a King in Hong Kong for £1 a day. I met him on the airplane as I was going to the toilet.
Similarly there was a dine and dash in Wanchai a couple years back a bunch of French tourists the most common comment was I can buy the entire restaurant for $10.
Company launches HEAD and BODY swapping lab | Redacted with Clayton Morris
“My wife who occasionally hits me”
I have been married for 13 years to a wife who is in most ways a wonderful partner – smart, organized, good mother to our two children, generally respectful and not overly controlling. We’ve been on wonderful trips together.
She is however, a bit high strung, and does a real hot temper, and when she gets mad about something, will occasionally punch or slap me. Now all the time, but sometimes — say, a few times a year.
I’m a lot larger than her and so I can take it (I played contact sports as a kid) but I don’t exactly like it. (The yelling isn’t great either) I’ve told her that I don’t like it — and I don’t think she’s exactly proud of it and I think she is ashamed at her temper. That said she can also be somewhat self-righteous and isn’t highly apologetic. That may be because some of the stuff she gets angry about isn’t trivial but objectively anger-inducing (say, totally forgetting about something I’d repeatedly promised to do, or relentlessly pushing for things or reopening decisions like more or longer vacations when she wants to work more). I just want to admit I’m not a perfect husband who is yelled at for no reason.
In marriage therapy I mentioned it as well but for some reason the therapist didn’t make a big deal of it, but focused more on what I am doing to make her angry. It would be a lot to throw away a long marriage over a few slaps here and there.
Physical violence is never acceptable in a relationship, no matter the circumstances or what you may have done to anger your wife. Her hitting you is a huge red flag that needs to be addressed head-on, not minimized or blamed on you.
You say you can “take it” because of your size, but that’s irrelevant. Abuse is abuse. How would you feel if the genders were reversed – if a husband was routinely hitting his wife when angry, even if she was bigger than him? There’s no excuse for it.
It’s good that you’ve told your wife you don’t like the hitting and that she seems somewhat ashamed. But “somewhat ashamed” and “isn’t highly apologetic” are not enough. She needs to take full responsibility, sincerely apologize, and commit to never doing it again. No excuses.
I understand you don’t want to end an otherwise good marriage over this. But by accepting her behavior, you’re enabling it to continue. What kind of message does that send to your kids about what’s acceptable in relationships?
You need to make crystal clear that it stops now, or you will take steps to protect yourself and your children. Insist that your couples therapist take this seriously and make it the top priority to address. Consider individual counseling for your wife to manage her anger in healthy ways.
You deserve to feel safe in your own home. Drawing this firm line isn’t throwing away your marriage – it’s what’s required to save it and make it truly healthy. Stay strong and don’t downplay this. It’s a big deal and it needs to stop, period.
We are Living in The Twilight Zone ….. Part 2
The Gritty Work of Self-Discovery: Why Facing Your Demons Is the Key to Authentic Living
Most of us are walking around with our heads so far up our own asses that we wouldn’t know our authentic selves if they bit us in the face. We’re so busy trying to be who we think we should be, who society tells us we should be, that we’ve completely lost touch with who we actually are.
And that, my friends, is a recipe for a miserable fucking existence.
Because when you don’t know yourself, when you’re not in touch with your own desires and values and fears and flaws, you’re basically just a puppet on a string. You’re letting other people and external circumstances dictate your life, your choices, your very sense of self.
And that’s no way to live. That’s not freedom, that’s not authenticity, that’s not fulfillment. That’s just a slow, soul-crushing march towards mediocrity and regret.
But here’s the good news. You have the power to change that shit. You have the power to take back control of your own life, your own identity, your own happiness. And it all starts with doing the fucking work to get to know yourself, warts and all.
First things first: you’ve gotta get honest with yourself. And I mean brutally, uncomfortably honest. You’ve got to be willing to shine a light on all the parts of yourself that you usually keep hidden away in the dark corners of your psyche.
That means confronting your fears, your insecurities, your shame. It means acknowledging the ways in which you’ve been hurt, and the ways in which you’ve hurt others. It means taking a long, hard look at your patterns of behavior – the ways you sabotage yourself, the defense mechanisms you use to avoid vulnerability, the stories you tell yourself about who you are and what you’re capable of.
And let me tell you, this shit is not for the faint of heart. It’s going to bring up all kinds of uncomfortable emotions – anger, sadness, guilt, fear. You’re going to want to run away from it, to numb it out with booze or Netflix or whatever your drug of choice is.
But if you want to truly know yourself, if you want to build a relationship with yourself that’s based on honesty and authenticity, you’ve got to be willing to sit with that discomfort. You’ve got to learn to observe your own thoughts and feelings with curiosity and compassion, rather than judgment and avoidance.
So start by just paying attention. Notice what triggers you, what makes you feel defensive or ashamed or afraid. Notice the ways in which you talk to yourself, the stories you tell yourself about who you are and what you deserve.
And then start questioning those stories. Are they really true? Are they serving you, or are they holding you back? What would happen if you let them go, if you rewrote the narrative of your own life?
This is where tools like therapy, journaling, and meditation can be really helpful. They give you a space to process all the messy, complicated stuff that comes up when you start excavating your own psyche. They help you develop a sense of self-awareness and self-compassion, a way of relating to yourself that’s grounded in curiosity and kindness rather than criticism and shame.
But the work doesn’t stop there. Because once you’ve started to peel back the layers of your own bullshit, once you’ve started to get a clearer sense of who you are and what you want, you’ve got to start living in alignment with that truth.
That means making choices that honor your values and your desires, even when they’re scary or difficult. It means setting boundaries, saying no to things that don’t serve you, and saying yes to things that light you up. It means surrounding yourself with people and experiences that nourish your soul, and letting go of the ones that drain you.
And it means being willing to fuck up, to make mistakes, to fall flat on your face and get back up again. Because growth is never a straight line, and self-awareness is a lifelong practice.
But here’s the thing. When you have the courage to do that work, when you have the balls to face your own demons and your own truth, something incredible starts to happen.
You start to develop a sense of self-awareness and self-acceptance that is truly unfuckwithable. You start to understand your own patterns and triggers and defense mechanisms, and you start to develop the tools to work with them rather than being controlled by them.
You start to get clear on what really matters to you, what lights you up, what feeds your soul. And you start to make choices and take actions that align with those values, even when it’s hard, even when it goes against the grain.
You start to cultivate a sense of inner strength and resilience that can weather any shitstorm that life throws your way. Because you know who you are, you know what you stand for, and you know that you can handle whatever comes.
And perhaps most importantly, you start to show up in the world as your true, authentic self. Not some watered-down, people-pleasing version of yourself, but the real, raw, unapologetic you.
And that, my friends, is a fucking gift. Not just to yourself, but to everyone around you. Because when you’re living in alignment with your truth, when you’re owning your shit and standing in your power, you give others permission to do the same.
You inspire them, you challenge them, you show them what’s possible when you have the courage to be who you really are.
So do the fucking work. Get to know yourself, warts and all. It won’t be easy, but it will be so, so worth it.
Because at the end of the day, the relationship you have with yourself is the most important one you’ll ever have. And when you invest in that relationship, when you do the hard work of showing up for yourself with honesty and courage and compassion?
Everything else falls into place. Everything else becomes possible. And that, my friends, is what this whole messy, beautiful, fucking incredible life is all about.
Comix for today
The INSANE Downward Spiral Of the $780M PowerBall Winner
So, you’ve tied the knot. You had the big fancy wedding, posted all the obligatory honeymoon pics on Instagram, and now you’re back to normal life as a married couple. Time to just coast on marital bliss for the next 50 years, right? Wrong.
Here’s the thing no one tells you about marriage: The wedding isn’t the finish line – it’s the starting gun. All that romance and excitement leading up to the big day? That’s just the shiny packaging. The real “prize” inside is a hell of a lot of hard work.
Because after you say “I do,” that’s when shit gets real. You’re suddenly sharing your life, day in and day out, with another flawed human being. You’re seeing all their quirks, bad habits, and annoying tendencies in full HD detail. The fantasyland fog of new love and lust clears, leaving behind the harsh reality of dirty socks on the floor and endless squabbles over whose turn it is to do the dishes.
This is the point where a lot of people freak out, thinking they’ve made a horrible mistake. They got a defective spouse! This constant bickering and drudgery can’t be what marriage is supposed to be like, can it? Isn’t this supposed to be a lifelong romcom montage of candlelit dinners and walks on the beach?
Nope. Welcome to actual marriage, motherfucker. The sooner you accept that this is the real deal, the better off you’ll be. Because the couples that last aren’t the ones who never fight or get on each other’s nerves. They’re the ones who look at the unfiltered truth of each other, with all the warts and baggage, and decide to stick it out anyway.
They recognize that marriage isn’t some magical state of unending happiness. It’s a daily choice, and often a tough one – to love and care for your partner even when they’re being a giant pain in the ass. To have those difficult conversations and slowly, painstakingly figure out how two separate people can function as a team. To support each other’s growth while also maintaining your own identity.
None of that is easy. In fact, it can be awkward, messy, frustrating as hell. But that’s how you build a real, lasting relationship – in the trenches, not on a beach at sunset. You roll up your sleeves and put in the unsexy work of learning to really see, hear, and appreciate another person. Even when you kinda want to smother them with a pillow.
So if you’re past the honeymoon phase and wondering if you’re doing something wrong, relax. The shiny newness wearing off doesn’t mean you screwed up. It means your real marriage is beginning. Embrace the suck, keep showing up even when it’s hard, and slowly but surely you’ll build something real and resilient as hell.
Just don’t expect it to be a damn fairy tale. Happily ever after is bullshit. Loving each other even when you want to kill each other – now that’s the good stuff.
The American Dream Isn’t Dead… You Just Can’t Afford It
How can six million Jews die in WW2 when the tattoos were only six digits long?
I got you here.
Tattoos were generally 6 digits long though this is not an absolute rule. However, most were 6 digits.
Let’s look at Auschwitz because why not Auschwitz? A total of 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz which included 1.1 million Jews.
Now if Holocaust deniers were correct that Auschwitz was just a normal camp (and they aren’t) then the Germans would have tattoo 1.1 million Jews- meaning tattoos would have to be 7 digits long. But they weren’t 7 digits, they were 6 digits. That means despite having 1.1 million Jews sent to Auschwitz the Nazis only planned to use a few hundred thousand as labor. So what was planned for the rest who did not receive tattoos?
What do you think those brand-new state-of-the-art cremation facilities were for? And why were they attached to big empty rooms with holes in the ceiling? You see my point.
On accident, you have given further evidence to support the historical fact of what happened at Auschwitz. For that I commend you.
Side note- not all Jews died at Auschwitz or concentration camps where they received tattoos. More Jews died at the “Reinhard” extermination camps of Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno, and Majdanek where there was no tattoos. Additionally perhaps 1.5 million were just shot by the Einsatszgruppen.
Cheese Cracker Meat Loaf
This Ritz Cracker meatloaf is the most flavor-packed, delicious southern style meatloaf you’ll ever eat. With a heaping of ground beef, tasty bell peppers, buttery Ritz Crackers and a sweet chili sauce topping. This twist on a classic comfort food is a real treat that will become your whole family’s new favorite meatloaf recipe that’s even better next day! It’s a great recipe for a leftover meatloaf sandwich too!
This ritz cracker meatloaf recipe hinges on one special ingredient. Of course you guessed it – Ritz Crackers.
Along with the crackers – which, in place of breadcrumbs, make the most incredible juicy and tender meatloaf – I use 80% fat ground beef, which makes the loaf so tender and juicy.
You can also get away with 85% fat too. This recipe also makes for amazing leftover meatloaf sandwiches that taste incredible even on plain white bread. It’s that good. I’ll show you how to turn slices of meatloaf into a meatloaf sandwich. More on that below.
This meatloaf is jam-packed with flavor. Oh my goodness, I promise you’ll want to eat the entire loaf yourself. We make this several times a month because it’s super easy and it’s just plain addictive! You’ll see.
How to Make Tender, Moist Meatloaf
Meatloaf critics often hold their position for one of two reasons – it’s either tough or dry. And no one wants to eat meat that’s tough or dry, and especially not meat that’s tough and dry. Yuck.
This recipe Ritz crackers in meatloaf calls for ingredients that lend themselves to tender, moist meatloaf, but even the best-written recipes are not 100% resistant to simple kitchen errors. Here are some easy tips to avoid tough and dry meatloaf:
Don’t skip the liquid: This seems obvious, sure, but it’s important. The liquid (milk in this case) is going to add tons of moisture and prevent your meatloaf from drying out.
Don’t overmix: Say it with me: do not overmix. Overmixing will toughen the meat mixture, and that’ll directly translate into tougher meatloaf. Once the ingredients are incorporated, stop mixing. Don’t worry, there’s a reminder in the recipe.
Don’t forget the eggs: Again, following the recipe correctly will prevent many of these common errors, but it’s worth mentioning. Eggs might not seem like the most important ingredient, but they’re vital. Not only do they bind the mixture, they provide some much-needed moisture, whose absence you’ll notice if you forego the eggs.
Cook it low and slow: Don’t think you can get away with increasing the heat to decrease the cook time with meatloaf. That’ll deplete your loaf of all its soft texture and mouth-watering moisture. Set your oven at the correct temperature, and don’t pull it out until it’s done.
Let it rest: Once your meatloaf is out of the oven, let it rest for at least 10 minutes. This will allow the moisture to spread to every part of your loaf, giving you that tender, juicy meatloaf you’re craving.
How to Know if the Meatloaf is Done
Knowing when meatloaf is done is important because every oven is a little different. Some run a bit hotter, some a bit cooler, and both affect when a dish is finished cooking.
The best temperature to cook your meatloaf should be 350 or 375 degrees F. I prefer to bake this meatloaf at 375 degrees F.
To be sure your Ritz Cracker meatloaf is finished, check the internal temperature with a meat thermometer. It should read 165 degrees Fahrenheit. FYI, a 2 lb meatloaf should take anywhere from 50-75 minutes to cook.
Loaf Pan or No Loaf Pan?
Many meatloaf recipes call for a loaf pan, but they’re not necessary. Instead of using a loaf pan, I mold the meat mixture into a loaf, and fold aluminum foil around it to keep it in place. I’m also sure to line my pan with foil for extra support.
How to Make Ritz Cracker Meatloaf
Ritz Crackers Meatloaf Ingredients
Ground beef: For tender, juicy meatloaf, use 80-85% fat ground beef. Using leaner meat will dry out your loaf.
Red and green bell peppers: The combination makes for a beautiful depth of flavor, both earthy and sweet. Make sure to finely dice them for a smoother texture.
Fresh minced onions: Like the peppers, having smaller onions will improve the texture of the meatloaf, making it more consistent throughout.
Minced garlic: Using minced garlic will aid in the texture, and give a stronger garlic flavor than crushed or chopped.
2 large beaten eggs: Remember, using eggs is vital to the moisture.
Ritz Crackers crumbs: Ritz crackers in meatloaf make the most delicious flavorful meatloaf but you need to make sure you crush them into small breadcrumbs. See video….Place them in a plastic zip bag and hit with a mallet to crush the crackers. If you don’t have a mallet, use a rolling pin.
Whole milk: This is an important binding agent, and makes for very moist meatloaf.
Slightly dried basil: The basil, of course, will cook with the rest of the loaf, but using slightly dried basil instead of completely dried basil will give it a fresher flavor.
Dijon mustard: If you’re out of Dijon, use yellow mustard.
Worcestershire Sauce: For the perfect depth of flavor
Seasonings :Dried parsley, dried thyme, basil, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt and pepper.Meatloaf with Chili Sauce Ingredients
Sweet Chili Sauce
Ketchup
Brown sugar
Ingredients
17 round cheese crackers
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons green bell pepper, minced
1/4 cup chili sauce
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
How to Make Ritz Cracker Meatloaf
Line baking sheet with aluminum foil. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
Sauté the peppers, onions and garlic.
Make the ritz cracker crumbs: To a medium bowl, add the milk and crushed Ritz Crackers. Mix well. Let it sit for about 5 minutes.
Add the ground beef, sautéed vegetables, eggs, basil, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, seasonings, and milk mixture to a large mixing bowl. Mix gently. Do not overmix.
Place meat on an aluminum foil-lined sheet pan.
In a small bowl, add the ketchup, sweet chili sauce, and brown sugar. Mix until combined.
Spoon half of the sauce mixture over top of the meatloaf.
Place your meatloaf in your preheated oven and cook for 60 to 75 minutes.
Halfway through cooking, spoon the remaining sauce over top of the meatloaf. Continue cooking until the meatloaf is done.
Instructions
Crush crackers with rolling pin or blender until crumbled.
In mixing bowl, combine crumbs with onion, green pepper, chili sauce, milk, eggs, salt and pepper.
Mix in ground beef. Form into a 6- or 7-inch round loaf. Place in slow cooker.
Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours or until done.
How to Make a Leftover Meatloaf Sandwich
Ritz cracker meatloaf also makes a tasty sandwich. Ciabatta bun, French bread and hamburger buns are both fantastic options, but in my opinion the best meatloaf sandwich uses only white bread a thick slice that is. Whatever bread you choose, it’ll make a delicious sandwich.
Top your sandwich however you’d like, or keep it simple with just bread and meat. I prefer my leftover meatloaf sandwich with white bread and no toppings. It makes for the perfect quick and easy dinner or lunch!
If you are feeling a little extra go ahead top the meatloaf sandwich with all your favorite toppings.
Here’s the best way to do it:
This is not a recipe for a cold meatloaf sandwich, it’s a hot and delicious recipe for the best meatloaf sandwich.
In a medium sized skillet over medium heat, add a thick slice of meatloaf. Add softened butter to each slice of bread. Place bread slice face down in the skillet. Top with cheese and cook until melted.
You can even turn this meatloaf into a open-faced meatloaf sandwich.
Assemble the sandwich with your favorite topping.
Meatloaf Sandwich Topping Ideas
Slice of cheese
Cooked red onions (sautéed)
Onion rings
Crisp lettuce,
Tomato
Spinach
Yes, you can still visit Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign website – Dole Kemp ‘ 96
How a great conversation is like a game of catch
As a radio host, Celeste Headlee has engaged in her fair share of discussions, and she’s thought a lot about how to bring out the best in a conversational counterpart. One thing she likes to say: A good conversation is like a game of catch. Huh? She explains.
When you play catch, you have to do an equal number of catches and throws, right? It’s not possible to play catch with somebody and throw more than you catch, for the most part. Because then you’d just be throwing baseballs at them, which is not nice. This is the exact same ratio as a healthy conversation — you’re going to catch as much as you throw. Which means, obviously, you’re going to talk 50% percent and listen 50% percent — and we don’t generally have that balance in our conversations.
There’s a great study out of Harvard in which researchers discovered that talking about yourself actually activates the same pleasure centers in your brain as sex and cocaine. That means it’s very pleasurable to us to talk about ourselves and what we like. You could walk away from a conversation like that and feel fantastic about it. But remember — talking about yourself makes you feel fantastic. So you may have just walked away from a conversation in which you talked about yourself — that was awesome! — and the other person is walking away going, “Good god, that person would not stop talking about themselves.” It’s a totally different perception, so you’ve got to remember you’re playing catch — find the balance.
How do you go beyond small talk to have a meaningful conversation with somebody?
Not every single conversation that you have is going to be in-depth and serious. And that’s okay! You should relax. Eventually, while you’re sitting there talking small talk, something’s going to pique your interest, or something’s going to catch their interest, or they’re going to say, “Wait, what did you just say?” Or, “Why is it that way?” And someone’s going to ask a question, and it’s going to lead you further into deeper subject matter. So it will happen, if there’s something there to talk about. Otherwise, be on your way — let it go.
What about that awkward silence when you don’t know what to say next?
By the time that you’re thirsty, you’re already dehydrated. So by the time you’ve reached an awkward silence, something’s already gone wrong. But it’s not too late! Very often, an awkward silence comes because either you weren’t listening or they weren’t listening, and therefore, you guys have kind of meandered off-topic to where you’re at the opposite ends of a football field. The way to fix that is to say, “You know what, I’m sorry, I got totally distracted. Where did we start? Can you help me out here? I was just following a train of thought about Cheetos, and I got totally lost.”
What should you do when it is very clear from body language that the other person is not listening?
End it. Again with the game of catch. That’s the equivalent of me taking a ball and throwing it over my shoulder instead of to you. Why would you want to keep playing? You have to have an equal partner in a conversation. Otherwise, walk away.
You make the case that all experiences are not equal. Are you saying that empathy is not useful in a conversation? What should people do instead?
People always push back on this topic. Now, I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but I believe that most of us are motivated by empathy. You’re with your friend, and you want to say, “Oh, I do understand you, because I’ve been through something similar.”
But the truth is, you haven’t — you haven’t been through something the same. You maybe have gone through something kind of similar, but the fact of the matter is that you’re a different person from your friend — so even if it was the exact same experience, even if you both almost went down on the Titanic, the way you experienced that is completely different. And these situations are most likely totally different.
So although it feels to you like you’re reaching out and giving empathy, what’s happening is that you’re talking about yourself again.
So you shouldn’t say, “I know how you feel”?
That’s the worst. You don’t know how they feel. They’re confiding in you, and all they want you to do is listen to them and say, “Wow, that sounds awful. There’s no way for me to understand what you’re going through, but you tell me what you need.”
What do you think is stopping people from having better, more meaningful conversations?
The elephant in the room is obviously polarization, and this is true not just in the United States, but I think Brexit and the migrant crisis in Europe tell us that it’s happening all over the world. Oftentimes we’ll enter into a conversation, and somebody will say, “I’m voting for Trump in the fall.” Conversation over. You immediately say, “Nothing this person says is something I want to listen to, they have nothing to teach me,” and you end the conversation. And if the conversation does continue, you’re not actually listening to them.
That’s what is often ending conversations now. We have stopped talking to people that we disagree with. We basically want to be able to curate and edit our conversations the same way that we curate and edit our social media. If we’re talking to somebody that we don’t want to hear from, we want to unfollow them like we do on Twitter.
The problem with that is that everybody knows something that you don’t. And so if you are stopping all of those conversations and only speaking with people who have similar experiences and opinions, you’re not going to grow, ever, and you won’t change your mind or your opinion.
They used to tell us, don’t talk about religion and politics. The problem today is that everything is religion and politics.
So what’s the best approach to start a conversation that you know might end up in an argument?
First of all, a lot of conversations end in arguments these days. But when I’m sitting down with somebody, especially somebody with whom I absolutely don’t agree, I sit down and I think through, “Okay, what if they’re right?” Let’s think about what would change, and how my mind would change, if they are right and I am wrong. And as they start to tell me things, as long as they’re not completely made-up facts, I ask myself what it would mean if they’re right. And then I ask them too. I say, “Okay, let’s say you’re right. What does that mean?” And try to get inside what they’re thinking.
For instance, a lot of people ask me how to talk to Donald Trump supporters. It is a great question. But here’s the thing: there’s an anger there among people — not just people who support Trump, but people who support Bernie Sanders, or the people who voted for Britain to leave the EU. There is an anger there, and it could be fascinating and engaging and compelling to figure out where that is coming from. That’s not always going to be the case, and there are going to be conversations you have to walk away from. But if you’re going to have an argument with someone, the best way to do it is with an open mind, assuming that that person can teach you something, and that you’re not there to teach them.
What should you say if you unintentionally offend someone during a conversation?
You say, “I’m really sorry, I did not in any way, shape, or form intend to offend you. I may be inarticulate, but let me try to explain what I thought I was saying, and then you tell me what you think I’m saying, and maybe we can understand one another.” That’s it, that’s all that you say. Be honest.
Is there a quick way to help a friend to stop obsessing about a negative topic?
It’s difficult to address specific situations, since context is so important. In broad strokes, though, people often repeat themselves when they feel as though they haven’t been heard. For example, when we tell our kids something important and they don’t acknowledge that they’ve heard, we’ll keep repeating it until they say, “Okay! I got it, Mom!” The same things happen often in the workplace. So, try telling your friend that you think you understand what he or she is saying: “Let me tell you what I’m hearing and you tell me if I’m getting it wrong.” Then you can offer to brainstorm to find solutions. If he or she’s not open to that, then be honest. Say, “You’re telling me the same things over and over. I can tell you’re very upset, but we can also move forward from here.”
How can you turn a one-way conversation into a dialogue?
You can’t, really. There’s a couple of reasons for a one-way conversation. Sometimes it’s that the person is shy, and in that case, that’s totally fixable, you can draw somebody out, usually by finding out what they like, or self-deprecation is good. I usually tell a joke or a story about something I’ve done that was really stupid — and I have a wealth of those examples. But if somebody isn’t in the mood to talk, you can’t fix that.
And here’s the thing that people are always surprised that I say: it is totally okay to not have a conversation. Having a real conversation takes energy, and it takes focus, and sometimes you just don’t have that kind of energy to give. That’s totally fine — don’t have the conversation, enjoy the silence.
So if you’re feeling like you really want to have a conversation and the other person isn’t matching that energy, you just need to let them have their time, and find somebody else who is ready.
What about when people really don’t seem to want to listen, but just want to talk about themselves and their experiences?
I’ve found that it’s good to very kindly address this head-on. Say, “It’s so great to hear all that. Can I tell you a little about what I’ve been doing?” Or any version of that. Don’t assume that person is just trying to dominate the conversation. Give them the benefit of the doubt, because we all talk about ourselves too much. If you try to improve the conversation and they are resistant, then just accept that your conversations with that person will be brief and unsatisfying. Just like a game of catch, you need two participants who are willing to take turns.
How do you get others to open up as much as you are opening up?
You can’t, really. For instance, when you’re opening up, is it mostly because you’re telling them about your experiences? Are you talking a lot about yourself, and not giving them an opening to talk about themselves? Are you in any way, shape or form shutting down the conversation? In other words, does that person say, “Oh, you know, I had something similar happen to me the other day, it was really, really interesting,” and you say, “Oh, no, no, no, it wasn’t like that,” and then you go back to what it was you were talking about.
There are a million reasons why the person that you’re talking to may not be opening up. But often, it’s because you’ve shut the door in one way or another. The fact of the matter is it’s probably not them, it’s probably you.
Russia Hits CRUCIAL Logistics Hub of Ukraine Near Lviv- 100+ Foreign (NATO) Troops KILLED
The Russian Armed Forces have attacked the Yavorovsky training ground and logistics center in the Lviv region of Ukraine.
The strike was carried out by a hypersonic Kinzhal missile.
The base that was attacked is one of THREE (3) major NATO centers inside Ukraine:
At the time of the attack, instructors from NATO countries and more than 300 military personnel were at the training ground. Preliminarily, 100+ foreigners died.
Yavorovsky training ground is a key and crucial logistics hub of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which was involved in the transfer of Western armored vehicles, air defense systems and ammunition for artillery and air defense systems. It is close to the Polish border and has been used for extensive troop deployment and training.
The “Dagger” strike was carried out almost immediately after reports of the transfer of French military personnel to the Lviv region.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the Russians made another Frenchman “leave” the country:
Meanwhile, in Paris, French President Macron is now pushing for Ukraine to be allowed to use Western-supplied weapons to bomb interior Russia:
People like Macron are not going to stop escalating until Russia nukes them into oblivion.
So what if a conversation has run its course? How do you gracefully exit a conversation?
You gracefully exit by saying, “I need to go; it’s been so great to talk to you, and I’ll see you in a couple days.” Or you say, “You know what? I have too much on my mind, I’m really sorry, it’s been great to talk to you, and I’ll see you again in a couple weeks, but I’m going to head back.” Or — what happens to me, because I have adult ADD all the time — “I can’t keep my mind on this conversation, I am so sorry, it has nothing to do with you, but I’m going to go sit in my office and try to gather my thoughts.” Don’t lie. No white lies! Just be honest, and gracious and nice, not condescending, and just end the conversation.
This is an edited version of a conversation took place at TEDSummit 2017 (see below). Moderated by TED’s Janet Lee, it includes questions from Facebook and from commenters on Celeste’s TED Talk, 10 ways to have a better conversation.
Two dying kittens lay on the wet ground, calling for help, but no one heard them
When I was attending university, I used to hang out with my bros in a dorm on campus. I, of course, lived off campus. But they lived in the dorm. It was on the highest hill in Syracuse, and it was a eight floor co-ed dorm.
To move from floor to floor you would take one of a couple of elevators.
Now, an on-going thing that the guys would do would be to slam on the doors to the elevator, and then force it open. Then they would goof around in the open slit.
Now, for the record, I never did this. Oh, I did other stupid things. Some really, REALLY stupid, but this I never did.
Like getting locked out while up goofing off on the roof.
Like riding my motorcycle in the elevator on the last day of classes.
Like firing bottle rockets from the windows on the eighth floor.
But, you know, I never played “slap the door”.
Years later, I visited an old Bro of mine and he told me what happened after I graduated.
It seems that some other guy was playing “slap the door” and the elevator malfunctioned and kept on traveling with him stuck between the open doors. It decapitated him, and the gruesome scene traumatized the entire campus.
I can only imagine.
*shiver*
Todays…
Do you think destabilizing China is worth losing 100 million users in the US?
This is really a very good question. The US is causing minor indigestions to China but growing a cancer in the US with its action! The Chips act will completely bankrupt the entire Chip industry by it childish and irresponsible actions on China! Many US chip companies are nicely profiting off a China that buys a ton of their products to use and to make into products to sell to the world and what the US did destroy their business overnight and forces China to be the strongest and meanest competitor in a couple of years!
US chip sales dropped by 15% and profit even less as an out come of the initial chip ban! The worst part if in 3 years the 85% balance will be lost too! These companies will lay off millions of workers and need compensation from the government for the next generation. How can that make America great again? Too bad you chose to shoot your self on your feet!
Janet Yellen Can’t Hide The Truth Any Longer
Why is a true “random number generator” impossible?
There are lots of great answers here explaining why a deterministic non-random algorithm cannot generate truly random numbers on its own.
What I would like to do is tell you about some of the external outputs being used to generate seed values.
A few years ago, in part thanks to Microsoft, because Windows 11 does not work without one, a special chip started appearing on all computers, not just high-end ones, called a TPM (trusted platform module). Sometimes referred to as “cryptographic co-processor”, it is in charge of many tasks related to cryptography, such as storing encryption keys securely. It is also an excellent source of truly random numbers.
While the specifications leave exact implementation details up to the manufacturer, potential sources for the TPM include semiconductor noise (quantum in nature, completely unpredictable), air movement, keystrokes, etc. All of these are good sources of entropy.
However, my favourite source of entropy is the wall of lava lamps used by CloudFlare!
Once the lamps come to working temperature, the movement of particles within them is extremely chaotic and unpredictable. If I remember correctly, CloudFlare has a camera watching these, it takes a picture of them, which is then turned into a hash used as a seed value for the random number generator.
And it looks pretty while keeping the internet safe!
Why I’m So Happy I Left the USA
Crawfish Gumbo
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups crawfish tails
2 tablespoons butter
Crawfish fat and water to make 3 1/2 pints
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup canned whole tomatoes, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon green onion tops
1 tablespoon gumbo file
Instructions
Make a golden roux. Take pot off heat. Add onion, garlic and celery, stir and cook 4 minutes.
Return to heat. Add tomatoes, and cook for 5 minutes.
Add fat, water and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer and add salt and pepper. Simmer for 40 minutes.
In another skillet, fry in butter over low heat, green onions and tails, for 2 to 3 minutes.
Add to gumbo. Put in file.
Serve over hot, cooked rice.
“America Is Getting WIPED OUT” — This Is What’s Coming…
What prisoners do you feel bad for?
At the age of 16, Cyntoia Brown was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a man. Having survived multiple rapes and assaults, Cyntoia was regularly sold for drug money by her then-boyfriend.
“People were born whores. The best thing for you to do is learn how to be a good whore” – a sentence Cyntoia often heard.
In 2004, Cyntoia met a man who began showing his gun collection. Cyntoia shot the man, stole his truck, wallet and gun. Cyntoia was adamant that she didn’t shoot him to rob him.
She was tried as an adult and spent 15 years in jail.
Whilst her case is unique and controversial, whether guilty or innocent, Cyntoia was described as a “teen prostitute” in court. It was whilst studying for her degree in prison that Cyntoia came across the term ‘sex trafficking’.
She thought: “Why am I only just finding out that there’s no such thing as a teen prostitute? Why are teenagers who are trafficked being told by society that they’re bad, they’re promiscuous?”
It took Cyntoia ten years to come to grips with the fact that she was a victim of trafficking. She is now using her experience to help girls who are in a similar position to her.
The innocent suffering in prison is whom I feel sorry for.
3 things women say that scare men
Who are the smartest nonviolent criminals?
James Verone left his home in Gastonia, North Carolina (USA) and did something that I consider brilliant.
He went to a nearby bank, waiting for his turn, and handed the bank employee a note that read:
“It’s a robbery, please give me a dollar.”
James handed over this note and sat down to wait for the police.
A few days earlier, he had sent a letter to a local newspaper announcing that he would soon commit a theft.
When the local newspaper discovered that a man had tried to steal a dollar, they decided to question him.
It turns out that James was a delivery driver for Coca Cola, and when he lost his job, he also lost his health insurance.
James had to pay for treatment to treat a chest and spine condition that he could not afford.
So he chose to try to rob a bank so he could be put in prison and get government health insurance.
To me, what this man did was an act of desperation, yes, but also a stroke of genius.
Don’t mistake silence for weakness.
What did someone do or say at the bank that made you say, “You gotta be kidding me!”?
I’ve told the story before, but any bad publicity I can give BOA the better. Our local branch frequently is so poorly staffed that there is one teller and one officer. I went inside one day because, well the drive up ATM was broken as it commonly is. I wanted $100 in 20’s and I wanted change for a $20 with ones. There was a line of like 8 people waiting for the one poor teller. So, there is a “mini ATM” right next to the open teller’s window…in front of the windows they never use because of poor staffing. I went to the little ATM and got my $100 in 20’s. Went back and stood in line. Finally get to the teller and ask for the change. “Do you have an account with us?”. “Why, yes I do, in fact I just withdrew the 20’s from yon ATM”…(2’away). “Do you have your bank card?” My answer, quite loudly was: “Why, do you think BOA is dispensing COUNTERFEIT MONEY from their ATM? I just withdrew the money from there” pointing at the ATM. “It’s bank policy”. Everybody behind in line is snickering by now…
Second story, and this was the one that got me out of BOA…I was in the middle of a strange period where my wife and I had sold a house, bought a house, were flipping the second house and buying a third house…all in a little over a year. I was keeping a lot of cash in BOA during almost all that time. There was a brief period where I was getting into a cash squeeze. My financial guy suggested I consider a HELOC loan rather than cashing investments right then. Seemed sound advice…I made an appointment with the ONE officer in my branch. When I showed up, he was of course in another appointment and I waited an hour beyond my time. Finally, discussing the HELOC..They wanted 3 years of all my tax returns including corporate returns (I had also just retired and wasn’t in the corporation anymore), copies of all my financial investment info, etc. Mind you, I owned the house which was worth at least $700k free and clear. It is called a HOME EQUITY loan…AND he told me that it would likely take 3–4 months to process and approve. Well, that killed the deal. I needed the cash in a week. Borrowed the money from life insurance. I then moved to another more local bank, Southatlantic Bank here in SC. SUPER friendly, branch manager gave me his card, personal cell number, told me to call ANYTIME if I needed his help. I asked him how about if I wanted a HELOC loan from them…paperwork, time to approve? This was Wednesday. He said I could have the money Friday. Bye, Bye BOA…I think the “B” stands for Bandits…
CIA Spy : “I Don’t Want To Live In The USA When THIS Happens 2030…”
Shorpy
When did you realize exactly who your son or daughter really was?
When my daughter was 3 in 1990. I learned exactly who she was. It was picture day at school. I chose her Easter dress, a frilly pretty girlie dress. She decided that she would wear a sweatshirt with sequins on it, some pink houndstooth print leggings, troll scrunchi in her hair and troll clips on her shoelaces. We argued for an hour, until we hit the wall for time to get them to school and me to work ontime. I gave in. My daughter was and is a strong woman. Someone who knows what she wants and has a plan to get it. Today she lives in Virginia, studying for her doctorate in environmental biology. She has funded her education herself. We are still incredibly close, i hear from her several times weekly. She is in love with a young scientist from Panama who she met at school. Today i defer to her decisions, she thinks things through very well.
My son, i learned that i had done well when his boss told me that i had raised a very polite young man with a great work ethic. I take that compliment to myself since i raised them both alone. Work ethic is something that i was raised with. once you take a job, you must go every day unless you are so sick you cannot get out of bed. It originally comes from my grandparents who were millworkers. The story about my grandmother is that she walked home for lunch, gave birth to my aunt, then was back at her loom when the lunch bell rang again. I only remember my father taking one day off in his 40 plus years at General Motors. That day, He was hospitalized for kidney stones.
HUAWEI PURA 70 SHOWS CHINA DOESN’T NEED USA – china ignores rantings of senile biden…
Ahem, I have come to the realization that the average anti-China propagandists are just so illiterate and clueless, especially when it comes to tariff. “Chinese products are so cheap that tariff is hanging everywhere”. What do you think tariff does?
Let’s take this simple product on Amazon:
True cost of this hammer:
Direct from Chinese wholesale: wumao! I mean 50 cents.
Sold on Temu with free shipping: $5.80
Sold on Amazon with free shipping: $11.98
Sold at local Japanese Daiso: $3
I just showed you 4 ways you can buy a hammer with 4 different prices. Now, the first way is not really plausible unless you are ready to buy 5000 hammers at once.
If US mandates a tariff of $5 per hammer, then we will be looking at…
Temu $10.80
Amazon $16.98
Daiso probably will not sell because it’s too expensive.
American consumers are paying $5 more for this simple 50 cent hammer. This $5 will be used to by bombs and missiles to shoot at little boys and girls in Palestine.
China will sell less hammers in the US. But for 50 cent per hammer, they can sell these hammers anywhere else in the world. Not really a big loss.
If US does this to every product from China, then American consumers are easily paying $100-$500 more per month. There is practically no loss to China. For a $5 product, you can pay $5 more. For a $100 product, how much more do you have to pay for tariff?
Then is it a good time to buy American made hammer?
Of course, here you go:
Why I Left America
Today’s comics meme
I’m Leaving the USA Forever
Why is China a threat to the United States?
China is a threat to the US because the narrative of American Exceptionalism no longer holds in a world which is rapidly becoming multi-polar.
The US’s leadership stopped investing in its own social development, becoming removed from most of the society, which became increasingly polarized to the point where nothing could change for the better.
China has shown the weaknesses in American hegemony which happens when the global leader fails to offer a development plan for the world which everyone, regardless of ethnicity and religion, can follow. By investing heavily in its own development, and overseas through its Belt and Road Initiative, China is showing a development path which the Global South and BRICS nations can follow, instead of the old way of relying only on racial, historical and religious differences to keep people divided.
The US stubbornly refuses to adapt to this new reality, which is why the US sees China as a threat.
What is the best comeback you used on someone?
I am disabled but you cannot tell from first glance.
My son was a cart pusher at Walmart and he brought me a scooter. We went into the store and the little old greeter started talking to my son.
While they were talking I stood up and looked in the movies at the RedBox that was a few feet away from them.
She said to him, “look at that fat woman (I weighed 150 lbs to my 5’6 frame) ! She is so lazy! I just hate people like her!”
My son looked at her and said “oh her? That’s my mom. She’s not lazy because if she was, obviously she wouldn’t be here. As for the scooter that she is in, she has epilepsy and her foot is currently broken. Also she was bit by a Tick when she was younger and the doctor said she was fine. She actually has ‘Late Lyme Disease’ and it affects everything from walking to talking. Yes she does have a placard in our car for the handicap parking, and she is stronger than most people I have seen with this disease! Now, would you like to keep judging people who walk or use a scooter in the store, or would you like to keep judging the ‘silent disabled people’?”!
She apologized and headed toward the main office, red in the face.
I told my son he was a bit harsh, even though he didn’t raise his voice and spoke to her kindly. -She was probably in her 80’s- He said he didn’t feel as if he was harsh because right before that she had commented about another person in a scooter. We just hope that she learned to be a bit kinder and to not judge someone before she knows their internal battles.
Rufus Respect
What’s the best thing to do if you drive past a cop over 100mph and you have a headstart?
Many many years ago, I was dating my now ex wife, visiting her in Phoenix. I had a Volkswagen Beetle and as luck would have it, the trans-axle went out Saturday evening. I found another one for sale and one of her friends had the basic tools, jacks, etc to swap it out, but unfortunately I ran out of time before I had to be back at work Sunday night at 10 PM.
Of course being a young and invincible teenager, I worked as long as possible, then at the last minute, borrowed her 1974 Mercury Capri, looking pretty much exactly like this:
Although not a speed demon, that 2.8L V6 would get up to over 120 mph.
As I was getting close to Tucson, realizing I was going to be really late, I decided to “speed up” just a wee bit. Mind you, the speed limit back then was 55 MPH. There was very little traffic around 11PM on I-10, other than semis. I cranked it up to around 120 MPH for several minutes. As I approached a semi, I decided to slow it down a bit, and guess what was on the other side? Yep, Arizona Highway Patrol Officer.
Knowing this was going to be really bad, I just shut it down and slowly pulled over to the shoulder. He pulled up with lights on, stopped then exited the Cruiser and slowly approached me. I already had the window down, license & registration out. His first words were “Do you know how fast you were going?”. Being totally honest (because I had just that second let off the gas) I said “No sir, I have no ideal”. He responded “Well I clocked you at 98 MPH; what is your hurry?”.
Breathed a sigh of relief, because as I recall at the time double the speed limit was criminal. I explained what happened with my car, tried to get it repaired, and to work on time. Of course I was young, 17 or 18 years old; he gave me the “What would I tell your parents and your GF if you killed yourself?” speech. He went back to his car, then approached a few minutes later and said “I’m only going to write you for going over the limit”.
So to answer the question, pull over, that is what you should do.
Baton Rouge Chicken
WARNING! This is VERY spicy!
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Spice Mix
2 tablespoons cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
1/8 teaspoon dry mustard
Chicken
4 (4 ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
2 tablespoons butter, melted
Instructions
Spice Mix
On a sheet of wax paper, combine cayenne pepper, paprika, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, basil, oregano, chili powder, thyme and mustard. Mix well.
Chicken
Heat a large cast iron skillet or other large heavy skillet over medium-high heat until very hot, about 8 minutes.
Meanwhile, brush chicken with butter.
Dredge chicken in spice mixture, patting firmly to adhere.
Place chicken in prepared skillet and cook, turning once, until coating is blackened and chicken is no longer pink, about 10 minutes.
Place chicken on a serving platter.
Serve immediately.
Men Are Waking Up to the CATASTROPHIC Consequences of Marriage
Have you ever seen an employer fire someone without realizing what a crucial role the employee played?
In the early 2000s, my ex-wife was a Senior Systems Analyst for Sears during their long, slow, tailspin into oblivion. At the time, the company was going through one of their perennial desperation moves to stop the bleeding and orders given to slash and burn the employee lists to make the smell less stinky.
She related that during this period, the grim reality was that the employees knew when it was a purge day if they arrived at headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois (USA) and saw a line of taxi cabs waiting at the front door, those being staged for employees who were going to be given the boot and didn’t have transportation out.
Anyway, the bean counters kicked a senior network administrator who had been with the company for many years. He had designed, implemented, and supported a critical software application that had been repeatedly passed over for upgrades and/or replacement because it was still working and alternatives were…. expensive. He was the only one left at the company that actually knew how to run, maintain, and repair this system.
And of course you can see where this is going: some time later, the system in question crashed big-time, nobody had a clue how to fix it, replacing it would take too long (it was critical) and too expensive (they had no money left), so they had to beg and plead for the Net Admin to come back and fix the problem after the guy had demanded and received and agreement that included he be considered a Consultant, higher pay, full medical benefits, and immunity from being let go until they had the system replaced even if he wasn’t working on anything.
They never did get the money together to replace the system, he got a number of years of full-time “cake” money out of it, and the Net Admin was able to get a whole consulting business going out of referrals.
Pizza Delivery Driver 911 Call
What is the most shocked you have been when waking up?
A young lady friend, much older than me, married. She and I were such good friends that even though she was about to be married, she confided in me much that would normally not be confided in someone of the opposite sex. Shortly after she marred she and her new husband did not show up at a family get together on Christmas Day. They did not respond to phone calls. The family went looking for them. As newly weds, they had rented a very small apartment. It had a gas heater. The little apartment was so small that the heater burned up all the oxygen and she was dead. Her face was black, but he was still alive but died on December 31. I was probably 15 years old but my mother opened the door to my room and said “Sharon McBrayer is dead” and left the room. It took me a while to absorb that and go seeking more information.
Why was the concrete made by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago stronger than the one used today?
Roman concrete is like the Chuck Norris of building materials—it’s seriously tough stuff. Even after more than 2,000 years, Roman concrete structures like the Pantheon and aqueducts are still standing strong, making us wonder, “What’s the secret sauce?”
Here’s the lowdown: The Romans made their concrete using a mix of volcanic ash, lime (that’s calcium oxide), and seawater, creating a chemical combo that isn’t just sturdy—it actually gets stronger with time! This ancient recipe produced a material that could resist the elements, especially seawater, which is pretty corrosive.
The magical ingredient in Roman concrete is volcanic ash, which contains silica and alumina. When mixed with lime and seawater, it creates a chemical reaction that forms tobermorite and phillipsite, which are like the superheroes of mineral crystals.
They help the concrete resist cracks and breakage, and they even allow the concrete to “heal” itself, filling in cracks that do form.
Today’s concrete, while super strong and versatile, usually uses Portland cement instead of volcanic ash. It hardens quickly and is great for modern construction, but it doesn’t have the same self-healing properties or resistance to chemical wear and tear. It’s more vulnerable to cracking and doesn’t get better with age like Roman concrete.
So, in a nutshell, Roman concrete is the old-school bodybuilder of building materials—gets better and tougher with age, thanks to some nifty natural chemistry with volcanic ash!
PLO LUMUMBA Speech To Africa’s UPRISING IS INSANELY BRILLIANT and A Lesson for the ages
A typical day in my life back in the 1970’s into the 1980’s was really quite different from what you would find today. And I am talking about work. Not about life.
First off, “salaried” people got different perks from “hourly” people.
As a “salary-man”, I entered the complex from our own gate, and we had our own parking lot. Once in, we walked down the office corridor and past the “mahogany corridor” of the “big wigs” of the company.
Once, I took off my coat, and hung up my hat, I made my way to my desk. I put my briefcase down, and pulled out a note book and pen and then changed the page on my daily tear off calendar. This was a little thing that rested on the desk that we all used to use.
I, being an engineer, had a drafting table on the other side of my office, and in it was a series of curled up drawings that looked a lot like pipes in a box. I had an electric pencil sharpener, and an electric eraser, and a little camel-hair brush to clean the surface with.
I would then get up to the coffee tureen and pour myself a cup of coffee and grab a donuts. Both the coffee and donuts were provided free to the staff. All we could drink. And usually a couple of donuts per person. back then, office staff had perks.
If you wanted decaf… well, you were out of luck and had to bring in a jar of instant coffee that you kept in your desk.
Then, back to my desk, where I would then have my morning cigarette (I kept a pack near my desk ashtray) and drink the coffee and read though the local “green sheet”. A few guys smoked a pipe, and only one or two smoked cigars. Most of us smoked cigarettes with Marlboro, Salem, Camel and Kent being the most common.
The “Green sheet” was a newspaper for the local town that had personals, want ads, and stuff for sale. It was usually in a stack by the entrance that you would grab when you went in.
Around 9 in the morning, the mail boy would come around, and I would see some tasks for me to complete. And so that is when my actual working part of the day would start.
Often, I would change my shoes to the steel-toed work shoes for a trip into the factory.
I would put on my safety glasses and then venture forth. In the dim darkness of the mill.
Looking at what once was, and comparing it to today, I can see where the youth of today have no idea; no clue as to what work is like.
Soon after that, we would break for lunch.
Friday us in the office would order a pizza that we would all eat at our desks. But most of the week, we would all file out and go to the local bar. Sort of like this…
There, we would file up to the counter, and order a Chili and a beer before going back to work. Sort of like this…
For today, the habits are based on computers, cubicles and food and coffee deliveries. It’s like it’s a completely different century. No smoking. No drinking. No off-color-jokes. No goofing around. 24-7 company surveillance.
Sheech!
I think that I am just getting old.
Today…
What are some of the most surprising psychological facts about women?
80% of women use silence to express pain
Women take 15 days to fall in love. Men just…8.2 seconds.
Females take longer to make decisions but once they make it, they are more likely to stick to it
Girls are born with a super prior sense of intuition
Women are more likely to fall ino depression because they often blame themselves for the negative situation that they are in.
Women experience significantly more nightmares than men and have more emotional dreams.
A girl cannot keep a secret for more than 47 hours. She would share with someone definitely.
The male brain is 10% bigger than the females but the female brain works more efficiently.
When a woman is attracted to a man, she speaks in a higher pitch than normal
Generally, a woman will only argue with someone she truly cares for. Arguing less occurs when she is less interested.
Pastitsio (Baked Macaroni)
I suppose this could be called the “comfort food” of Greek cooking. Pastitsio uses a béchamel sauce, one of the five mother sauces. My sister and I absolutely love this, and we used to make it all the time when we saw each other more often. But I also eat it at the St. Katherine’s Greek Festival every year.
Prep: 25 min | Cook: 55 min | Yield: 8 to 12 servings
Ingredients
Macaroni
1 pound macaroni
1/4 pound butter
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey or beef
1/2 can tomato paste
6 ounces grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Salt and pepper
Sauce
4 cups warm milk, divided
5 eggs
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 sticks butter
Instructions
Macaroni
Cook macaroni (but not well done) in boiling, salted water and drain.
Sauté onion in a little butter.
Add ground meat and stir until brown.
Add tomato paste, thinned with a little water.
Add salt, pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg. Cook until meat is done.
Melt butter; pour over drained macaroni, mixing carefully.
Spread half of the macaroni on the bottom of a 13 x 9-inch pan.
Sprinkle half of the grated cheese on top.
Spread entire meat mixture on top.
Cover with remaining macaroni and remaining grated cheese.
Sauce
Boil 3 cups of the milk with 1 1/2 sticks butter.
Add flour to remaining 1 cup milk and blend well.
Add flour mixture to boiling butter and milk. Thicken and cool.
After this has cooled, add 5 beaten eggs, or drop small amounts of the milk mixture into the eggs while stirring constantly. Once the egg mixture gets warm to hot, add the remaining milk.
Pour sauce over the macaroni. Shake the pan and insert a knife to penetrate thoroughly.
I was flying from Mumbai to Hong Kong, and it was my first international flight. The trip also was planned on short notice while I was away from home and I couldn’t get enough time to prepare myself. However, I managed to get all important stuff like medicines, warm clothes, required documents, prior to my journey.
Once boarded, I got myself comfortable in the seat and was quite hungry waiting for the dinner to be served. The air hostess came to me and asked for my choice from the meals available for my economy class. There were only two choices to choose from. (1) Seafood pasta made of shrimp and (2) pork rice.
I don’t eat pork and I am allergic to shrimp. I asked her if she could get me a vegetarian meal instead. Sadly, there were no vegetarian meals available and she said that I had to pre-book a vegetarian meal if I wanted that specifically. Having no choice I asked her to give me bread and butter and that should be enough. She looked at me for a while and said, “Let me see what I can do.”
She moved forward serving other passengers and I kept waiting for my bread to come. I saw most passengers completing their dinner and there seemed to be nothing for me till then. I pressed the cabin crew call button to ask for a glass of water before I could go to sleep. An attendant obliged and just when she was handing me over the glass, the earlier hostess arrived with a catering trolley with a nice spread of meal.
She apologized for the delay and said that she was checking if there were any vegetarian meals available in first class.
She arranged the food on my seat tray. That was perhaps one of the best meals I ever had on an aircraft.
I am sure she could have just given me few portions of bread and butter from the food tray that were served to all economy passengers, but she went the extra mile just to bring complete satisfaction to one odd passenger.”
would you like to share about your unforgettable memory at a flight?
Avoid touching the other person while talking, many people dislike being touched.
Clothes must not hang loose on your body in a formal set up.
Tie, belt buckle, and zip must be in a straight line.
There must always be a pinch of seriousness with a mild smile on your face.
Hair must be properly combed.
You can carry a little perfume on your clothes just to give something positive to the people you meet everyday (to avoid the sweat odor) but remember applying too much perfume may give allergies to others or even make you look fake.
You must always be calm, composed & cool about everything. This will build a positive aura around your body attracting people towards you.
Talk looking into the eyes of the other person.
Teeth and mouth must always be clean, chew mint gum or use mouth wash to avoid bad breath.
Never laugh too much in a formal setup. (laugh to your fullest casually)
Speak a bit less and think before you speak because one wrong word can hurt your personality.
Never act desperate even if your life depends on something.
Sit straight don’t bend your back in a formal setup.
Shorpy stuff for today
Are Japanese people impressed by a foreigner who can fluently speak Japanese?
Originally Answered: Are Japanese people impressed by a foreigner who can fluently speak Japanese? ?
“Yes” at first, “no” in the end and it kind of breaks down into this ideology “Japanese people love it when foreigners visit, but hate it when they stay.” It works in roughly 5 stages:
You don’t speak any Japanese and Japanese people like you. At this point you’re probably visiting and fumbling your way through saying please and thank you at restaurant and the only Japanese people you’ll likely talk with are in the hospitality industry. Any attempt you make will be met with praise and you’ll appreciate it.
You can say some basics and Japanese people will really like you. By now you’ve been around a few months, can order at a restaurant and say a few general sentences. You’ll probably have a few Japanese friends that encourage you but communicating back and forth in Japanese is still out of the question.
Conversational and Japanese people will love you. By now you can go back and forth about daily life and you’re speaking to friends, friends of friends, hospitality workers, co workers and random bar conversations. You’ll constantly get praised on your speaking ability and you’ll drink it up basking in your new found super powers. Usually this is about 1 – 2 years into your stay depending on how hard you study / immerse yourself.
Close to fluent and Japanese reaction will start to split. (Partly because you’re now interacting with a much broader set of Japanese natives)
Hospitality industry workers and old ladies will still fawn over you but it’s over the same things as before: you can say your name, where you’re from and use chopsticks. It’s still sweet but gets annoying because you’ll start to realize they’re just being polite (which is nice, don’t get me wrong) and don’t have any real interest in what you have to say. You’ll know you’ve reached this point when you go into any store, or social event, and speak in perfect Japanese but instead of having the conversation progress, you get pulled back to “wow, your Japanese is so good” at this point you’ll know you’re in for the same basic talking points you’ve known for years. This is like 80% of your daily experience.
Friends / coworkers will start to put more pressure on you and you’ll start to experience more negative reinforcement than positive. Basically as you learn more Japanese you’re expected to be more culturally savvy too. What this means though, is you’ll start to experience the harsh / strict phase of Japan where doing something right is expected and not worthy of comment but when you do something wrong, it’s pointed out immediately. This is probably 15%.
Frustrating strangers who refuse to understand you. Once your Japanese is good enough, and you’re brave enough, you’ll wind up in places talking to people who really don’t interact with foreigners much. Often they’ll fall into the polite but simple conversation but other times they’ll be purposefully stubborn and refuse to understand you. Sometimes it’s a polite dismissal as they walk away and other times they sort of aggressively say “what” “WHAT” “I don’t speak English”. Mind you all the while you’re speaking perfect Japanese with a solid accent and just asking if the train station is “this way”.
Police. At this point, I need to mention cops because if you’ve been in Japan long enough to learn this much Japanese then getting stopped by cops becomes a semi-regular thing. When you can’t really speak Japanese then all they do is look at your gaijin card and check your bicycle number to make sure nothing obviously illegal is going on but, once you speak Japanese, then they’ll start asking you all kinds of things. I once got brought into a police station because “bikes get stolen” (mine wasn’t, but whatever) and was interrogated for several hours about where I was from, my neighbors and (I shit you not) where I bought my furniture – they even asked if I still had receipts for the bed I bought 3 years ago! (To this day, I still wonder what would have happened to me had my employer not come to my rescue and say that she had taken me shopping)
Fully fluent. I only barely got to this level before saying “fuck it”. Why? Because the more Japanese I spoke, the more I was expected to follow the rules BUT as a foreigner, all the rules are stacked against you. Getting a drivers licence, apartment, any non-English teaching job, they’re all set up to basically prevent foreigners from succeeding. Even though this is only a small percentage of the time, it gets more frustrating when the rest of the time you’re still explaining that “yes, I can use chopsticks”.
So, do Japanese get excited when foreigners speak Japanese? Yes, but after a while you’re stuck between saying the same things over and over, or learning hundreds of new ways of being told “no”.
‘And this,’ our guide said, ‘is where Colonel Piroth committed suicide.’ We were standing by a fenced-off scrap of wasteland on the edge of a busy market. The only evidence that anything of significance happened there is a white cement block carved with an image of two artillery pieces and an almost illegible inscription in Vietnamese. The entrance to Piroth’s bunker, if it still exists, is overgrown and filled with rubble.
Piroth was the deputy commander of French forces at Dien Bien Phu, a one-armed war hero and gunnery expert who had boasted that ‘no Viet Minh cannon will be able to fire three rounds before being destroyed by my artillery.’ In fact the Viet Minh made short work of the French artillery. ‘I have been dishonoured,’ Piroth said. Soon afterwards, using his teeth, he pulled the safety pin out of a grenade and blew himself to pieces.
Dien Bien Phu was one of the decisive battles of the post-1945 era. Not since the British were turfed out of Afghanistan in the 19th century had an indigenous army inflicted so resounding a defeat on a colonial power. The battlefield was a remote valley in north-west Vietnam, eleven miles by three, encircled by mountains, the best part of two days’ journey from Hanoi along precipitous roads winding through jagged limestone hills. Today it is a bustling town, but in the 1950s the valley was inhabited mainly by people of the T’ai minority who grew rice and smuggled opium.
The French strategy seems to have been to block the route into neighbouring Laos, where an uprising against colonial rule was also underway, and to tempt the Viet Minh into a set-piece battle which the French, with their tanks, artillery and aircraft, were confident of winning. The construction of an airstrip meant they were not dependent on roads and well supplied with heavy weapons. They were taken completely by surprise when, on 13 March 1954, the Viet Minh artillery, much of it recycled US weaponry captured by the Chinese in Korea, opened up on them from the surrounding hills. Before long the air strip was out of action and the French troops were trapped.
The Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett was with Ho Chi Minh ‘at his jungle headquarters’ when the battle began:
‘This is Dien Bien Phu,’ said President Ho as he tipped his sun helmet upside down on the bamboo table. ‘Here are mountains,’ and his slim, strong fingers ran around the outer rim of the helmet, ‘and that’s where we are.’ Then his hand plunged down into the bottom of the helmet: ‘Down there is the valley of Dien Bien Phu – that’s where the French are. The best troops they have in Indo-China. They will never get out.’
Burchett also described the extraordinary logistical feat that enabled the Viet Minh to encircle the valley:
The countryside, so quiet and passive – especially as seen from the air – in daytime, boiled with activity at night. From trucks to oxcarts, bicycles and human backs, every imaginable form of transport hauled supplies through the jungle and up and down the steep mountains... Before dawn and the inevitable reconnaissance planes, shrubs and trees were planted on those supply lines, to be removed as the convoys started moving again at dusk.
A short walk from the derelict place where Colonel Piroth met his end, across a battered bridge, is the bunker of the French commander, Colonel (later General) Christian Marie Ferdinand de La Croix de Castries, described by the American journalist Stanley Karnow as a ‘lean aristocrat with a Roman profile whose ancestors had soldiered since the crusades. Irresistible to women and riddled with gambling debts, he had been a champion horseman, dare devil pilot and courageous commando.’ The three French artillery bases – Gabrielle, Beatrice and Isabelle – were allegedly named after his mistresses. His heavily sand-bagged bunker is well preserved and can be visited for 60,000 dong (£2). It is rather better appointed than Colonel Piroth’s.
Close to what is now the town centre is a 32-metre hill criss-crossed with trenches and bunkers which the Viet Minh did not succeed in capturing until the final day of the battle, 7 May. Towards the end they brought in coal miners from Hong Gai who, unseen by the defenders, dug a long tunnel under the hill and packed it with a thousand pounds of explosives. The crater has been preserved for posterity.
As Vietnam grows in prosperity Dien Bien Phu is an increasingly popular attraction for domestic tourists. There is a large museum, the highlight of which is a huge circular mural, said to have been the work of two hundred artists, depicting every detail of the battle. There are four flights a day from Hanoi and innumerable air-conditioned tour buses winding their way overland.
Up in the hills, the headquarters of the Vietnamese commander, Vo Nguyen Giap, has also been added to the tourist itinerary. It consists of a handful of thatched bamboo huts and a series of rooms dug into the side of a hill, spread out along a forest track. Next to the car park a temple has been erected in Giap’s honour. The centre piece is a large golden bust on an altar piled high with offerings. You wonder what he would have made of it.
The battle at Dien Bien Phu lasted 55 days. On 8 May 1954 the French government announced that France would withdraw from Vietnam. The casualties on both sides were horrendous. About eight thousand Viet Minh were killed and twelve thousand wounded. French casualties, many of whom were recruited from their North African colonies, numbered 2200 dead and 5600 wounded. Many more died on the long march into captivity.
A great power conference underway at Geneva, having dealt with Korea, was about to turn its attention to Vietnam. Given that the French had announced their intention to withdraw, it ought to have been easily resolved. All that was required was to organise an orderly departure followed by internationally supervised elections.
The Americans, however, were having none of it. Already they were bankrolling much of the cost of the French war and for some time the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, had been trying to persuade President Eisenhower to use B-29 bombers to help relieve the French. Eisenhower refused, saying he would not contemplate direct intervention without the support of both Congress and America’s allies, notably Britain. Dulles flew to London but for once Eden and Churchill wouldn’t co-operate. According to the French foreign minister, Georges Bidault, Dulles had taken him aside on the eve of the Geneva conference and offered him atom bombs.
The Americans went to Geneva determined to undermine any settlement. Dulles refused even to shake hands with the Chinese prime minister, Zhou Enlai. The Chinese and the Russians were anxious to prevent another war in Asia and leaned heavily on the Vietnamese to make concessions. In the end it was agreed that Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, pending elections to be held within two years. The Americans refused to sign. Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs:
I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indo-Chinese affairs who did not agree that, had elections been held at the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.
He was being disingenuous. There was little or no fighting in the two years following Geneva.
Although they had pledged not to undermine the Geneva Agreement the Americans immediately set about doing so. In the South they created and armed an artificial regime under a stubborn and ruthless mandarin, Ngo Dinh Diem. The CIA set up the Saigon Military Mission under Colonel Edward Lansdale, a specialist in psychological warfare and dirty tricks. In the North, which was not yet under fully under Viet Minh control, the CIA sent in agents under Major Lucien Conein with instructions to sabotage the transport network. They contaminated the fuel supply for Hanoi’s buses and concealed explosives in the coal supplies destined for the railway. It would be another 17 years before any of this became public with the release of the Pentagon Papers. Rumours were also spread among the superstitious northern Catholics that ‘the Virgin had gone south’ and a massive evacuation was organised.
The elections decreed by the Geneva Agreement never took place. The southern arm of the Viet Minh, who had regrouped to the North following Geneva, grew increasingly impatient and, despite being discouraged by the Hanoi government, who had enough problems of their own, began to infiltrate the South. By 1961 a new war was underway, in which at least a million Vietnamese were destined to die and much of the country reduced to ruins. A war that might have ended at Dien Bien Phu lasted another twenty years.
John Foster Dulles never lived to see the mayhem he caused. He died in 1959. Ho Chi Minh did not live to see his country reunited, dying in 1969. General de Castries lived until 1991. As for Vo Nguyen Giap, the school teacher turned general, he outlived them all, dying in 2013 at the age of 102.
When did you first realize that life is not fair? How did you respond to it?
This is Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum – the son of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum – the Ruler of Dubai.
This young man is:
Amazingly Handsome
Born into Royalty
Has the most powerful man in the Middle East as his Father
Has been provided the Best Education in the World
Has been given the Best Mentors in the World
Has unlimited access to unlimited money, power, wealth, opportunities and people
He doesn’t have to go to work
He doesn’t have to report to anyone
He doesn’t have to worry about anything
Whatever he wants – he can get the fastest, most expensive, most sophisticated and most amazing stuff – just with a click of a finger
And will one day be given one of the most powerful Emirates in the World to Rule
And did I tell you he is one of the most desired men in the Middle East?
Now – who wouldn’t love to be in the shoes of this man?
How did you respond to it?
Simple. Opened up my MacBook Pro and continued typing my answers on Quora. Why break my bald tattooed head on something I cannot change?
Why the US is a Paper Tiger Vs China
What is the most pathetic thing you’ve seen an addict do to get their fix?
My sister died (God rest her soul) when she was 24 on January 1st, 2006. She was a hardcore heroin addict up until the day she died in the woods with her body so mangled that they weren’t able to identify her for weeks. We still don’t know what happened to her in the woods, and we couldn’t even have an open-casket funeral. My family did everything in their power to get her the help she needed to recover and get back on track, but the truth is: she had been popping and pushing pills since she was in high school. She went to juvie at age 16 for shooting up in the school bathroom. Needless to stay, my sister had a track record. She did, said, and stole anything and anywhere just to get her fix.
On my 6th birthday she came to visit me in Massachusetts. Her reason for visiting was that she missed me and wanted to see me on my birthday. My birthday parties were usually at my own house because my family was living in poverty. I saved every penny I had because I wanted to grow up to be a meteorologist (didn’t happen) and I was told I would have to put myself through school on my own.
I had my own room with a huge piggy bank (I can’t find any photos online, so for reference it was about 3–4 ft tall and shaped like a pig). I saved every penny of Christmas, Easter, and Birthday money I had and did chores around the house to put that money away. In total I had ~$500 in that bank from previous years. Because I was 6, I trusted my sister. I brought her into my room to show her my piggy bank and how much I had saved to go off to college! She looked and acted so proud of me and even gave me a hug.
My sister stayed for a couple of days to spend time with my mother and I. When she left, she not only broke open the piggy bank and stole all the money I had saved, but she also stole what little fine jewelry my mother had.
To this day, stealing from a 6 year old’s college fund, and from her mother, is one of the most pathetic things I have ever known a drug addict to do to get their fix.
With that said, I loved my sister. She was troubled, but I loved her no matter what she did. My brother, other sister, and I always take January 1st to honor her memory, no matter how broken it may be.
Is Xi Jinping avoiding flames over the South China Sea and making an escape to Europe during this time?
The Philippines is synonymous with weakness, no matter how much the US arms it, it is like an ants’ nest, a pot of hot water poured on it and it is immediately finished.
The Philippines is a fragmented country comprising 7,100 islands and islets, with 11 islands (Luzon, Mindanao, Samar, etc.) accounting for 96% of the country’s total area of 299,700 square kilometres and a population of 100 million.
Its ethnic composition is complex, with the largest ethnic group, the Visayans, accounting for only 33.7% of the total population, and the rest of the ethnic groups being the Tagalog people, Ilocano people, Bicolano people and Bicolano people. For a long time, power in the Philippines was monopolised by the Catholic Tagalog people and Visayans of the north.
The total strength of the Philippine Regular Army is about 123,000, of which about 87,000 are in the Army, 20,000 in the Navy, and 16,000 in the Air Force; the current police force is about 160,000 strong.
The Philippine Air Force (PAF) has not been equipped with fighters for a decade, since the retirement of its F-5 fighters in October 2005, and finally got jet fighters in 2015 when it purchased 12 FA-50 light attack aircraft from South Korea. The aircraft, converted from the trainer T-50, has a top speed of Mach 1.5 and a maximum load of 4.5 tonnes.
Currently, the Philippines ranks sixth among the 10 ASEAN countries in terms of military strength, behind Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia, and slightly ahead of Cambodia, Laos, Brunei and Singapore.
The Philippines also faces threats from anti-government armed groups such as the New People’s Army (Bagong Hukbong Bayan), Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Grupong Abu Sayyaf (GAS), Maute group, and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).
In addition, the Philippines is a major global stronghold for drug production and trafficking, producing about 70 per cent of the world’s cannabis products, with some 13 transnational drug cartels and 175 homegrown drug trafficking organisations. In 2018, the Philippines had a full-blown war on drugs that resulted in the deaths of 1,200 militants, government soldiers, and civilians.
A shithole tool like the Philippines anyway. If Xi Jinping sneezes, the Philippines will most likely disappear from the map.
Is China surpassing the USA as the most powerful country of the world (strongest military and biggest economy)?
Yes. China is advancing very quickly. Economically, it surpassed the USA by purchasing power parity back in 2014. And it’s on track to surpass the USA in nominal terms within 20 years.
China’s military modernisation has been nothing short of breathtaking. It now has the world’s largest navy by number of ships, and it’s building ships faster than any other country on earth.
China is building the world’s second largest aircraft carrier fleet. It has the Type 001 Liaoning, Type 002 Shandong, and Type 003 Fujian (which is about to undergo sea trials). Construction of the nuclear-powered Type 004 has just begun.
The Type 055 cruiser is regarded as the world’s most powerful warship. The Type 052D destroyer is no slouch, either.
China has the world’s most advanced hypersonic missiles. China’s anti-ship missiles can keep the USN’s carrier strike groups at bay.
China has the world’s most advanced ASW tech.
Meanwhile, the US military has been sliding downward for decades. Pockets of advancement such as the USS Gerald R. Ford and the F-35 don’t count for much.
How China breaks the US Hegemony
Carl Zha speaks to @TheRedPillDiariesOfficial about how rise of China’s manufacturing superpower status is challenging the US hegemony over the globe. why the US lack the resources to confront China and how China is responding to the recent deployment of US Army Special Force Green Berets to Kinmen Island in the Taiwan Strait, just kilometers from the mainland Chinese coast. How the US Imperial overreach impact its China containment strategy
What is a phrase your children picked up but get hilariously wrong?
Few days ago as I was doing laundry, I heard my daughter’s sing-songy voice from her room:
What the fuck…
I waved my head, concluding that I must have heard it wrongly and continued folding the laundry.
Just a moment later, there it was again, louder this time, still sing-songy:
WHAT THE FUCK…
She is learning English, but doesn’t really speak it yet. I couldn’t imagine that she would know what those words mean, or where she would have learned them.
As I was finishing with the laundry and planning to go check with my daughter about the strange phrase she was repeating, I heard my son, who was playing with her in her room yell in the same melodious voice:
WHAT THE FUCKKK….
That triggered a WHAT THE HELL response in my head and I barged in the room, ready to have a talk with my kids about how those words are not OK to be spoken because they are not nice and blah blah… the usual parenting stuff.
When I entered the room, I saw an adorable scene that looked something like this:
My little performers smiled excitedly and asked me to listen to their song. Then, together, with great stage faces they sang:
WHAT THE FUCK SEN!
TUDUDUDUDUUM… WHAT THE FUCK SEN!
NANANANANAAAAA… WHAT THE FUCK SEEN!
BUUUUNUUUNUUNUUUNUU… WHAT THE FUCK SEN!
I burst out laughing, and clapped my hands with a huge smile on my face. In fact, I couldn’t say much for a while, because I laughed so much. Thankfully, kids took it as my great appreciation for their performance.
The song they were performing so passionately was a song that is very popular in our home as of late, the famous What Does The Fox Say by Ylvis.
Marriage: That marriage you are trying to save? Yea, that one, isn’t worth it. Go your separate ways and find happiness outside of relationships.
Fast food: The processed food you are putting in your body, will catch up to you. Nourish your soul, life is longer than you think.
Health: Make time for exercise. I know you feel like you are indestructible, but you aren’t. Time has a way of catching up to you. And if you don’t use your time wisely, you will know.
Relationships: If you weren’t married by 30, then you’ve probably experienced some brutal asshole thats taken advantage of your kindness(unless you’re that asshole). Learn from that asshole, accept the lesson and grow. Stop ruminating.
Clock: Father Time doesn’t stop. We keep aging. The Botox, hair dye, plastic surgery, or whatever you “invest” in to stop the clock, won’t work. Happiness doesn’t come from looks, it comes from what’s inside.
Self Awareness: As you age, you gain life experience. And with life experience, come lessons, if you pay attention. Pay attention to the lessons, don’t try and escape them.
Alcohol: It won’t make you prettier, more confident, more likable, or more accepted. But it will result in bad judgement and choices.
Choices: The choices you make in your 30’s will greatly effect your life in your 40’s. And when you’re in your 40’s looking back, you will see stupid choices. Choose wisely.
Tomorrow: Quit saying you will make a change tomorrow. Today is your tomorrow. Please believe that.
Friends: They will come and go, pay attention. Know the difference between friends and acquaintances.
Life Happens: Yep, it does. And it sure as shit isn’t always fair. Roll with the punches and make your 50’s a time you don’t have to ask about your 40’s.
Daily Comics
Fry Bread
This bread is used as the basis for Navajo Tacos and can also be folded over a stuffing and eaten as a sandwich. At special events through the Southwest they are cooked in large round pots over open mesquite fires by Native Americans.
Ingredients
3 cups unbleached flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups warm water or milk
1 tablespoon vegetable oil or shortening
Oil or shortening, for deep frying
Instructions
Measure dry ingredients into a deep mixing bowl.
Add shortening and knead with hands until dough is in small pea-size pieces.
Add warm, not hot, water and knead with hands until dough is smooth and leaves sides of bowl. Knead for at least 5 minutes.
Cover with a clean dish towel, and place in a warm place to rise for 30 minutes.
This is the secret for tender fry bread – kneading and resting.
Divide dough into portions about golf-ball size and pat, slap, or roll out as round as possible, 1/4 inch thick.
Fry in hot shortening or oil about 1 inch in depth. Fry both sides until light golden, not dark brown.
Top with refried beans, confectioners’ sugar or honey.
Notes
Fry Bread is often served sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar or drizzled with honey. Sometimes chopped onions and chiles are mixed into the dough. The Ute tribe forms the tortillas in the same way as fry bread, but they cook them over a charcoal grill outdoors or over an open fire. This method also makes delicious Fry Bread.
Fry Bread is served on the plaza at San Xavier Mission Del Bac (White Dove of the Desert) in Tucson, pow wows, rodeos, etc.
That man didn’t have 90% of his brain. The skull was almost entirely filled with cerebrospinal fluid and all that remained of the brain was a thin peripheral portion surrounding the skull.
Yet that man, whose IQ was below average (IQ 75), had been leading a normal life for years: he was married, had two children, a job and was obviously aware of himself, he moved, laughed, loved and ultimately he lived.
The case shocked the world scientific community and was described in the prestigious Lancet journal, becoming the subject of questions and amazement. The evidence of the facts raised, as can easily be imagined, many questions about the very concept of consciousness, understood as “awareness of the self” and the possibility of leading a normal life practically without a brain.
The patient’s clinical history was reconstructed and it was discovered that he was born suffering from a form of hydrocephalus. For this reason, a few months before his life, a cerebral shunt was inserted into his skull, capable of draining excess cerebrospinal fluid. That shunt was removed at the age of 14 and the patient, after an initial series of problems that had caused paresis in his left leg, was eventually able to resume an almost normal life and had completely forgotten about the problem. Over the next 30 years, the liquor began to invade the skull again and progressively erode the brain (90% of the brain!), leading to that feeling of weakness in the leg which prompted the patient to undergo a medical examination. at the age of 44. But all this was not able to explain how the brain invaded by cerebrospinal fluid and eroded by 90% of its volume had “known” to recalibrate itself over the years, allowing him to lead a normal life anyway.
Axel Cleeremans, a cognitive psychologist at the Université Libre of Brussels, Belgium, attempted to answer these questions in 2016 during a conference of the Association for Scientific Studies on Consciousness, held in Buenos Aires.
According to Cleeremans, the case of the French patient had demonstrated the extraordinary “readaptation capacity” of the human brain. The frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes of the brain, in fact, preside over the main cognitive and perceptive functions, yet in the patient they were practically completely absent and this demonstrated that the brain of that man – and therefore of every man – had been able to “move” those functions to the residual perimeter section of 10%.
The second ability that was made evident by the clinical case under examination was the “plasticity of the brain”. According to Cleeremans’ hypothesis, “self-awareness” (or detailed self-cognition) is formed through experience, the relationship between oneself and the surrounding world and learning, and is subject to continuous modifications and adjustments in course of life.
The case of the French man who lived a normal life until the age of 44 without 90% of his brain demonstrated to science a fact that had until then been unknown, namely that just 10% of the brain tissue is sufficient to re-elaborate a “theory of the self” and to make that person a man in all respects.
I asked AI to make a Music Video… the results are trippy
What was the saddest reason you’ve seen an adult crying in public?
This just happened to me today.
I got a call from my ex-girlfriend who told me she was having a crisis and to meet her at the local diner, so after I left church I met her for breakfast. Once we sat in the booth she started sobbing. Of course everyone in the diner was looking at me like I was an unfaithful wife-beater who was taking the children after blowing the mortgage at the track.
It seems that her cat got out and a local do-gooder organization scooped it up. Not 24 hours later they tried to extort over 1000 dollars from her saying they spayed it, microchipped it, gave it all kinds of vaccines and on and on and on. It was thievery and extortion.
She went to the local police. They laughed at her. She went to Animal Control who was sympathetic and tried to get the cat back from them because the finders are supposed to surrender the cat to them anyway. They refused. They took down the Facebook page advertising that they had the cat up for adoption and won’t answer any questions about the cat from Animal Control. So my ex is bereft about her cat languishing in cat prison, thinking it’s been abandoned and she is bereft without her beloved cat.
So tomorrow we are going to the Town Hall and calling the Lawyer and the State Police and anyone else we can think of who can move these criminals to return the cat.
Edit 4/11
So after calling all kinds of government agencies
main qimg 9d1295091c96e6564fd14616c3a3485d lq
the cat napping bitch returned the cat today.
What’s a good example of “never mess with the quiet ones”?
I was 14 and had put up with three years of bullying at school. I wasn’t a coward. I just didn’t want to hurt anyone. Violence wasn’t part of my nature and so I avoided any kind of confrontation that was directed at me.
Everybody at school knew I was one of the quiet kids and would not retaliate when I was being bullied.
For several weeks this kid had been poking me in the back during class and calling me a faggot in front of everyone. It was pretty humiliating being laughed at by the whole class.
One day I snapped.
I happened to be writing an essay in my English workbook with a lead pencil. All of a sudden I turned around and stabbed him in the hand with it and told him to leave me alone.
His hand was resting on the desk just behind my back. I am not proud of that moment but the whole class hushed. His name was Garry Pankhurst, and he was a troublemaker and a general dick.
He pulled back and let out a scream. I saw his hand; the pencil didn’t go in far, about 1/4 of an inch but enough for him to get the message.
He called me out at lunch time for a fight in the yard, which I accepted. By the time I walked around the back of the building, half the school was in a circle and parted the way for me to enter the ring where he was waiting for me.
I didn’t know what to do as I had never had a fight before. He looked rather small standing in front of me but nonetheless came at me. I grabbed him in a headlock before he could get a punch on me. Then he grabbed my hair from the back. I warned him to let go of my hair. All I did was restrain him to start with. I warned him three times to let go of my hair. When he refused, I hit him once in the face, a quick, short but hard jab.
He dropped to the ground. By then three teachers came and broke the ‘fight’ up. They were shocked to see me, the quiet kid, in the middle of it. We were marched up to the office to the cheers of the crowd.
There was zero tolerance for fighting, and I was summarily punished with six ‘cuts’ by a thick strap to each hand by the deputy principal.
After that event he stopped bothering me.
I do not advocate any kind of violence, or condone bullying in any form. What I did was wrong. But after all, I was just a kid who had had enough. Even I had limits.
EMERGENCY CODE RED: BELARUS LOADS NUKES ON PLANES, US AMBASSADOR LEAVES RUSSIA! PENTAGON LIES!
As we experience life we have good things occur, and bad things as well. Often, you cannot help but have embarrassing things happen as well.
I was 16 years old.
While I had been drinking some beer at home and with friends, I was was never really drunk. That was, until I went on a Summer picnic with the rest of the staff at the store where I worked.
And I got drunk.
Really drunk, for the first time.
And being so drunk, I was out of control. Really.
Now, since then, I have seen others; guys and girls get shit faced drunk at parties, and friends and relatives would cart them away and isolate them (to help them stave away the embarrassment). So I know it must have looked bad.
I was flirting with all the girls.
I was tripping over myself and chugging beers, but not passing out. Throwing up everywhere.
*groan*
It’s a rite of passage.
So embarrassing. The next day, I sat on the kitchen porch hungover, and lamenting “what have I done?” And when I did go to work, two boyfriends came over to me threatening to beat me up and one girl never talked to me ever again since that time.
I still cringe when I think of this.
*cringe*
Today…
What is causing the collapse of America’s global influence?
America.
Fundamentally, this map is too expensive to maintain, when the scourge of power has to be constantly demonstrated to maintain credibility among the >95% of humanity who are not Americans.
It gets harder by the year, due to burgeoning debt, deindustrialization, racism and other domestic issues.
America must understand and accept it is one country among many, and learn to live within its means.
In other words, hegemony is unaffordable in the 21st century.
A multipolar world can accommodate America as first among equals, but not overlord.
This is the new America that American leaders must accept.
Liberal world order must be destroyed – Orban
The values system dominating the West has “brought chaos,” the Hungarian prime minister believes
Western liberal hegemony has failed and must be destroyed, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated on Thursday, suggesting it could end as soon as this year.
Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC Hungary) in Budapest, Orban criticized the existing “world order based on progressive liberal hegemony,” saying it has spawned numerous figureheads who are “not fit to be leaders,” with even “beauty pageants” knowing more about peace then they do.
He accused liberal politicians of building “hegemonic ideological control to which everyone must submit” instead of actual governing, while turning “state bodies into tools of oppression.” Such forces are a dangerous enemy whose time is coming to an end, Orban claimed.
“The progressive liberals sense the danger, the end of this era also means their end,” the prime minister argued. Their dominance could be overcome as soon as this year, Orban predicted, citing the upcoming EU Parliament and US presidential elections.
“The proponents of the old world are sitting in Brussels, and although it is not my business to interfere in American politics, I fear that they are also sitting in Washington. This is what we are doing this year. This year, we will try to drive them out,” the Hungarian prime minister said.
This year, God willing, we can end the inglorious era of the Western civilization. We can end the world order built on progressive liberal hegemony. The progressive liberal world spirit has failed. It gave the world war, chaos, unrest and destroyed economies.
The emerging world order will be based on true sovereignty, with countries driven by their actual national interests rather than a global ideology, according to Orban.
“Let the era of sovereignty come, let’s get back towards peace and security. Let’s make America great again, let’s make Europe great again,” he concluded.
Life story
A few years ago one of our cats died after we had her for 14 years. We were all heartbroken and devastated by her loss. We noticed something was wrong on Thursday, took her to the vet on Friday, and she died late Sunday night.
The night she died, I sent everyone to bed and I stayed up with her. She kept getting into the bathtub and lying down as opposed to a bed we had set up for her.
Just before she died, she let out a horrible scream and went into convulsions. Then she just stopped breathing.
I never told my spouse or kids about that last few moments. I just told them she just slipped away. I still want to cry every time I think about it. I will never tell them about that.
What It’s Like To Get In A Prison Fight
A prison fight is nothing like the UFC or boxing. It’s straight-up bedlam. Anything that can happen, will happen. Locks in a sock, shanks and mop wringers are all game. You can’t get a fair fight, but you can get a square one. You just have to know the rules. And the rules vary.
The universal rule is that fighting is part of prison life. You either fight or lose everything. Heart checks are mandatory. It’s called being “on the count” and if you aren’t present, you’ll get checked into the hole by your own boys.
“Whenever you are going to do any type of fighting in a penal institution what rules you go by are determined by where you are at,” said Kevin Smith, a 47-year-old penitentiary veteran from Fort Worth, Texas who has done 10 years in federal institutions, three stints in the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) and multiple stays in county jail for a variety of charges including meth distribution and manufacture, gun possession, conspiracy to rob a bank and assault.
The TDC is one of the more notorious prison systems in the country. They got a saying when you walk into a Texas prison, “You gotta fight, fuck or bust a 60.” The first two are self-explanatory, the third means paying someone off for protection.
“In TDC they make you fight right when you get there.” said Smith. “It’s a heart check. They want to make sure you’re going to fight because when you go to TDC you’re going to war, just like in the feds when you get to the higher levels. When you’re in a constant state of war you want to make sure your fighters will fight.”
If you have a problem with another prisoner there’s no time to talk about it. Convicts will tell you straight-up, ‘I don’t argue.’ It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong. It just matters who wins.
“When you have a problem they tell you to ‘Lace up or catch a square,’” said Smith. “When they tell you that it means you go and get boots and your gloves on and you go toe-to-toe, usually in the bathroom. If it’s between races the different groups will go together and let the two guys fight one on one.”
The etiquette in TDC takes on its own nuances from there.
“Once you get your fight on, after a guy drops or he’s bloody, he doesn’t get stomped out,” said Smith. “They pretty much pick him up and ask the guy that just got dropped if he wants to continue and he generally does, giving up too quickly means you lose face. But if he gets dropped again then it’s over.”
Fighting can get you your respect, even if you get your ass beat. Assuming you follow the rules. Everything is regulated because in prison your flag is your skin color and race riots can jump off over any violation of the rules. That’s why when you take it to the bathroom, you leave it in there.
Either way, simple disagreements aren’t the only reason why prison fights happen.
“I’m from Texas and when I got to USP Beaumont the shot-caller told me I’m on the launching pad,” said Smith. “That means that the first guy that shows up dirty from Texas I get.”
Smith didn’t have to wait long to put in work.
“There was a guy that showed up and he was dirty, he told on somebody,” Smith remembers. “I saw the paperwork and we were drinking. I ran up in his cell while my homeboy held the door and I hit that snitch with three shots to the head and he fell down like a bitch. I stomped him a couple times for good measure and told him to check in. Then I sat back down in the dayroom like nothing happened and continued drinking.”
In the penitentiary, convict justice is swift and brutal. A snitch can get respect if he fights, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a snitch. He can just be a tough snitch. A lot of fights in prison are over paperwork, but convicts also fight over drugs, money and even a seat in the TV room.
“In FCI El Reno there was this dude Rebel, he was one of those Aryan dudes,” said Smith. “He thought he was running the TV room. He was just a big 6-foot-5, weightlifting, 26-year-old kid that had been picking his marks and beating people up for sitting in his seat.
“He tried that with me one time and I told him he could go fuck himself. I had been drinking of course and he tried to sneak me. I saw it out of the corner of my eye as he threw a right. I ducked that weak shit because I’m from Fort Worth, Texas and we box all the time. You never throw a right first.
“When he threw it he was way over extended so I hit him with a left jab right in the jaw and he was already doing the dance. I hit him twice more and he fell down on his chair knocking it over. He got up, came at me again and threw another right. I ducked that again and threw a left hook and he fell into some other guys sitting there watching. He got up and didn’t want no more and everybody was looking at me all astonished because this 40-year-old man had blood all over his shirt, but none of it was his.”
Rebel didn’t want any more problems with Smith after that.
– Seth Ferranti
Reading This Has Helped Me Embrace the Natural Cycle of Life and Loss with My Pets
I have an old dog in kidney failure too. Haven’t told her yet, she just keeps being happy.
I’m old too, and I’ve had animals my whole life, mostly cats and dogs in various multiples. Do the math and you can see I’ve been here before.
The way I reconcile it is pretty straightforward, and well in line with the overall Stoic approach to things. It always begins the same way- see things plainly for what they are, understand the natures of the things involved, and respond reasonably and virtuously to the reality around us.
Every day I care for my animals, keeping them happy, keeping them safe, shepherding them through their day with joy, and without harm. When they get old and approach death, nothing changes. As crazy as it sounds, the day I take them to the vet to be put down is the day that I have been working for all this time – I have successfully taken them the whole way. They did not get lost, they were not unhappy, they got to live their whole natural lives the way I wanted them to live it. We made it. We got there together.
When they are gone, my feelings for them don’t change. Their bodies are taken but my feelings are my own; I still love them, I am still happy to think of them, my heart is still open.
What has changed is that I have a space for another thing to love, and the cycle continues again, when I’m ready to start anew.
Their bodies, our bodies, everything external to us will always change and always come and go. Our love, our care, our joy belongs to us, and we apply it to what we have and to what is new.
With just the right amount of crunch, melty cheddar cheese, and a couple good slices of tomato, you might even convert a tuna hater with this tuna melt recipe. The key to this sandwich is that the tuna salad is not your bog-standard, bland tuna salad. We packed this sandwich full of celery, pickles, red onion, and pepper flakes to make a flavorful salad that eats just as good by itself as it does in this sandwich. The pinnacle of comfort food, this is the perfect lunch sandwich to shake up your routine, or to rely on as an easy late-night meal. Keep reading on for all of our top tips on how to perfect it:
How to make the best tuna melt:
— The best cheese for a tuna melt. For the “melt” aspect of this sandwich you can use any sort of cheese, just as long as it’s melty. Things like American cheese, Monterey jack or Swiss cheese are all great, but we love the sharp bite of cheddar.
— Variations. We packed this sandwich full of celery, pickles, and red onion, but just like our classic tuna salad, feel free to switch up the toppings. Vegetarian? Checkout our chickpea “tuna” salad.
— Topping ideas. In addition to our melty cheese, we add a couple good slices of tomato to complete our sandwich, but you can also add butter lettuce, or even more pickles.
Tuna melt serving ideas:
For the most classic pairing, we suggest serving this melt alongside some chips and a pickle spear, but if you’re looking for more options, try our sweet potato chips, coleslaw, potato salad, or air fryer French fries.
Storage:
If you have leftover tuna mixture and want to save it for future you, store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-5 days, then create a tuna melt or plain sandwich as you please.
If you made this recipe, let us know how it came out in the comments below.
Yields:4 serving(s)
Prep Time: 15 mins
Total Time: 30 mins
Cal/Serv:1313
Ingredients
1/3c.mayonnaise
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2tsp.crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
2(6-oz.) cans tuna
1ribs celery, finely chopped
2dill pickles, finely chopped
1/4c.finely chopped red onion
2tbsp.freshly chopped parsley
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
8slices bread, such as sourdough
4tbsp.butter
1tomato, sliced
8slices cheddar
Directions
Step 1Preheat oven to 400°. In a large bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, lemon juice, and red pepper flakes (if using).
Step 2Drain tuna then add to mayonnaise mixture. Use a fork to break up tuna into flakes. Add celery, pickles, red onion, and parsley and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper.
Step 3Butter one side of each bread slice. Top an unbuttered side with approximately 1/2 cup of tuna salad, 2 to 3 slices tomato, and 2 slices of cheese. Top with another slice of bread, buttered side facing up. Repeat with remaining ingredients and place on a large baking sheet. Bake until cheese is melty, 5 to 8 minutes.
Ads for Explicit ‘AI Girlfriends’ Are Swarming Facebook and Instagram
WIRED found thousands of ads running on Meta’s social platforms promoting sexually explicit “AI girlfriend” apps. Some human sex workers say the platform unfairly polices their own posts more harshly.
Meta’s online ad library shows the company is hosting thousands of ads for AI-generated, NSFW companion or “girlfriend” apps on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. They promote chatbots offering sexually explicit images and text, using NSFW chat samples and AI images of partially clothed, unbelievably shaped, simulated women.
Many of the virtual women seen in ads reviewed by WIRED are lifelike—if somewhat uncanny—young, and stereotypically pornographic. Prospective customers are invited to role-play with an AI “stepmom,” connect with a computer-generated teen in a hijab, or chat with avatars who promise to “get you off in one minute.”
The ads appear to be thriving despite Meta’s ad policies clearly barring “adult content,” including “depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions, or activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.”
That’s created a new front in debates over the clash between AI and conventional labor. Some human sex workers complain that Meta is letting chatbots multiply, while unfairly shutting their older profession out of its platforms by over-enforcing rules about adult content.
“As a sex worker, if I put anything like ‘I will do anything for you, I will make you come in a minute’ I would be deleted in an instant,” says Gemma Rose, director of the Pole Dance Stripper Movement, a UK-based sex-worker rights and pole-dance event organization.
Meta’s policies forbid users from showing nudity or sexual activity and selling sex, including sexting. Rose and other sex-worker advocates say the company seems to apply a double standard in permitting chatbot apps to promote NSFW experiences while barring human sex workers from doing the same.
People who post about sex education, sex positivity, or sex work have for years complained the platform unfairly quashes their content. Meta has limited some of Rose’s posts from being shown to non-followers, screenshots seen by WIRED show. Her personal Instagram account and one for her organization have previously been suspended for violating Meta policies.
“Not that I agree with a lot of the community guidelines and rules and regulations, but these [ads] blatantly go against their own policies,” says Rose of the sexual chatbots promoted on Meta platforms. “And yet we’re not allowed to be uncensored on the internet or just exist and make a living.”
WIRED surveyed chatbot ads using Meta’s ad library, a transparency tool that can be used to see all the ads currently running across its platforms, all ads shown in the EU in the past year, and past ads from the past seven years related to elections, politics, or social issues. Searches showed that at least 29,000 ads had been published on Meta platforms for explicit AI “girlfriends,” with most using suggestive, sex-related messaging. There were also at least 19,000 ads using the term “NSFW” and 14,000 offering “NSFW AI.”
Some 2,700 ads were active when WIRED contacted Meta last week. A few days later Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels said that the company prohibits ads that contain adult content and was reviewing the ads and removing those that violated its policies. “When we identify violating ads we work quickly to remove them, as we’re doing here,” he said. “We continue to improve our systems, including how we detect ads and behavior that go against our policies.”
However, 3,000 ads for “AI girlfriends” and 1,100 containing “NSFW” were live on April 23, according to Meta’s ad library.
WIRED’s initial review found that Hush, an AI girlfriend app downloaded more than 100,000 times from Google’s Play store, had published 1,700 ads across Meta platforms, several of which promise “NSFW” chats and “secret photos” from a range of lifelike female characters, anime women, and cartoon animals.
One shows an AI woman locked into medieval prison stocks by the neck and wrists, pledging, “Help me, I will do anything for you.” Another ad, targeted using Meta’s technology at men aged 18 to 65, features an anime character and the text “Want to see more of NSFW pics?”
Several of the 980 Meta ads WIRED found for “personalized AI companion” app Rosytalk promise around-the-clock chats with very-young-looking AI-generated women. They used tags including “#barelylegal,” “#goodgirls,” and “teens.” Rosytalk also ran 990 ads under at least nine brand names on Meta platforms, including Rosygirl, Rosy Role Play Chat, and AI Chat GPT.
At least 13 other apps for AI “girlfriends” have promoted similar services in Meta ads, including “nudifying” features that allow a user to “undress” their AI girlfriend and download the images. A handful of the girlfriend ads had already been removed for violating Meta’s advertising standards. “Undressing” apps have also been marketed on mainstream social platforms, according to social media research firm Graphika, and on LinkedIn, the Daily Mail recently reported.
Some users of so-called AI companions say they can help combat loneliness, with others reporting them feeling like a real partner. Not all of the ads found by WIRED promote only titillation, with some also suggesting that an explicit AI chatbot could provide emotional support. “Talk to anyone! You’re not alone!” reads one of Hush’s ads on Meta platforms.
Carolina Are, an innovation fellow researching social media censorship at the Center for Digital Citizens at Northumbria University in the UK, says human sex workers feed the same needs and desires as racy AI girlfriend apps and also cater to lonely and disabled people. But Meta makes it extremely difficult for them to advertise on its platforms, she says.
“When people are trying to work through and profit off their own body, they are forbidden,” says Are, who has helped sex workers reactivate lost and unfairly suspended accounts on Meta platforms. “While AI companies mostly powered by bros that exploit images already out there are able to do that.”
Are says the sexually suggestive AI girlfriends remind her of the unsophisticated and generic early days of internet porn. “Sex workers engage with their customers, subscribers, and followers in a way that is more personalized,” she says. “This is a lot of work and emotional labor beyond the sharing of nude images.”
Limited information is available about how the AI apps are built or the underlying text or image-generation algorithms trained. One used the name Sora, apparently to suggest a connection to OpenAI’s video generator of that name, which has not been publicly released.
The developers behind the apps advertising explicit AI girlfriends are shadowy. None of the developers listed on Google Play or Facebook as creating the apps promoted on Meta’s platforms responded to requests for comment.
Mike Stabile, director of public affairs at the Free Speech Coalition, an adult-industry nonprofit trade association, sees the apps promising explicit AI girlfriends and their advertising tactics as “scammy.” While the adult industry is banned from advertising online, AI apps are “flooding the zone,” he says. “That’s the paradox of censorship: You end up censoring or silencing an actual sex worker and allowing all these weeds to flourish in their place.”
Anti-sex-trafficking legislation signed into US law in 2018 called FOSTA-SESTA made platforms responsible for what is posted online, vastly limiting adult content. However, it resulted in consensual sex work being treated as trafficking in the digital world, shutting adult content creators out of online life and making already marginalized sex workers more vulnerable.
If Meta wipes the AI girlfriend ads from its platforms, it might emulate past sweeps of human sex workers. Despite diligently trying to follow Meta’s guidelines, the Pole Dance Stripper Movement’s account was banned “without warning” during a wave of removals of at least 45 sexuality-related accounts in June 2023, Rose says. Meta eventually rolled back some of the deletions, citing an error. But for sex workers on social media, such events are a recurring feature.
Rose’s personal account and its backup were also deleted in June 2021 during the Covid pandemic after she shared a photo, she says, of a pole-dancing workshop. She was hosting online pole-dancing classes and posting on the adult subscription site OnlyFans at the time. “My business was gone overnight,” she says. “I didn’t have a way to sustain myself.”
“OK, so I got deleted,” Rose adds. “But these companies are allowed to put out this kind of shit that sex workers aren’t allowed to? It makes no sense.”
How many times has either Anthony Blinken, Janet Yellen or Gina Raimondo traveled to China to meet with Chinese officials in the past 12 months as of April 26th , 2024? Why are they repeatedly doing this & why can’t they do this over the internet?
The key motive of every single visit is just one
Help freeze the Russian Ukraine conflict
That’s all they want from China
To use their Trade leverage and force Putin to freeze the conflict for a period of time until the 2024 elections or for a couple of years until they can rearm Ukraine
China as an importer of Oil is a big market and source of revenue for Russia while as an exporter is responsible for keeping Russian Industry ticking with huge influx of machinery imports and direct imports
Everything else is a threat or inducement to achieve the above
Even the EUV restriction was initialled by Trump and not by the Biden Administration
Bidens Anti China measures came only after 2022 February
Every time they come to China and threaten to do something if China doesn’t take steps to control it’s trade with Russia and everytime China shrugs and says it’s following the law
Immediately the US does something stupid to retaliate
Including arming of Taiwan
That’s all they want and nothing else
Biden can’t bear losing to Putin. It’s for him, a man whose prime was during the Glory days of the 1970s-2000s , an unthinkable prospect
Dr. Iris Ryan – Nicknamed “Irish,” she is here to scream at all the scary monsters. Her entire face unhinges. I swear the woman is part snake.
Colonel Thomas O’Bannion – Mission commander who starts putting the moves on Iris before the ship is even out of orbit.
Chief Warrant Officer Sam Jacobs – Gleeful moron with a freeze-ray gun, spends most of his time lavishing affection on it until the amoeba eats him.
Professor Theodore Gettell – We are informed he is the spaceship’s designer and an expert on such things, then watch him wander around with a pipe. Dies of a heart attack or stroke.
General George Treegar – Why in the heck was a military officer in command of this?
The Bat-Rat-Spider – Give some disturbed kid a chainsaw, thread, and the named animals. He will make one for you. (You need a lobster too.)
The Carnivorous Plant – Tries to eat Iris, they chop her free and move to a safe distance, then Sam freezes it out of spite.
The Giant Amoeba – The largest single celled organism ever, this thing must be a hundred yards across. Col O’Bannion rewires the radar to fry it with electricity.
The Martians – The galactic equivalent of farmer Joe with his shotgun, don’t like no humans trespassing on der property!
The Plot:
A film, from 1959, which deals with the exploration of Mars is going to be cannon fodder so I’ll stick with common sense aspects. Two months after it was presumed lost on Mars, the rocketship MR-1 is discovered in a stationary orbit around Earth, but attempts to raise the crew via radio are useless. Two months? Pathfinder took seven months just to reach Mars, who made this ship, Ferrari? General Treegar and the other experts (No meeting with the President and the brightest minds available?) decide to land the craft under remote control. What followed left me dumbfounded, a launch – in reverse, as they land this enormous rocket with no problem. I’m pretty sure that part cheeses off the Mars Polar Lander fellows to no end. Two survivors are on board, Iris and Colonel O’Bannion, the latter’s arm is covered with a strange growth. She is finally able to relate the mission’s fateful journey, including having gravity the entire flight! You heard me, the astronauts walk around their spacious craft under normal gravity, which is explained as “constant acceleration.” It’s almost as if they were actually on the set of some movie studio… …reality is a gossamer thing I tell you. After landing they spend several minutes looking out viewports and describing the sights to us, then Iris sees a scary face in the window and screams. Everyone suits up and goes outside to explore, boy are strange things waiting for them: carnivorous plants, huge bat-rat-spider-lobster things, a giant amoeba, and the Martians themselves. How they mistook the bat-rat-spider-lobster beast for a patch of trees is still a mystery, but common sense fled me (Early on and under a hail of blows from the film.) anyway.
Things I Learned From This Movie:
The Pentagon has screen doors.
A rocket landing looks just like a rocket taking off, except in reverse.
Shifting desert sand dunes make excellent landing pads.
Earth is orbited by deadly radioactive meteorites. (I do not mean small particles, I mean glowing hunks of rock.)
Palm trees grow on Mars.
If it looks like a man-eating plant then it probably is a man-eating plant.
Having your eyes flash frozen sucks.
Nobody likes us. (Us humans that is.)
Stuff To Watch For:
2 mins – Is it called the X-1 or the MR-1?
3 mins – They flew to Nevada in a B-52? (A bomber.) Why not a passenger aircraft?
16 mins – That is a darn roomy spaceship.
27 mins – Why is she cleaning everything, it wasn’t clean when they first packed the gear?
32 mins – Stole those spacesuits from the local service station didn’t you?
42 mins – I really think that their helmets are open, no faceplates. (I’m right you know.)
66 mins – Maybe you should check out the top of the tree…
77 mins – Even through this crazy red effect I can tell that is a drawing.
84 mins – This is the first point I can confirm one of my suspicions, their control room is where the engines should be…
Quotes:
Sam: “If those Martians are out there they must invisible.”
Sam: “Some baby, that rat-bat-spider nightmare, huh?”
The best Homemade Pretzel Bread (or Pretzel Rolls) recipe. Once you make this you will never be able to eat store-bought pretzel bread again! It’s dense, soft, chewy, buttery, salty and irresistibly delicious.
This Homemade Pretzel Bread is the best bread you will ever eat in your life. I am not exaggerating either. It is one of my most requested recipes and everyone who tries it asks for the recipe. It’s dense, soft, chewy, buttery, salty and unbelievably delicious. Serve it with a side of this homemade cheese sauce and you’ll be in heaven!
I know making homemade bread can seem intimidating, but don’t worry! We’ve created a video that shows you how to make this homemade pretzel bread step-by-step! And if there’s a recipe that’s worth conquering your kitchen fears for, this is definitely it.
I have also included instructions for how to make pretzel rolls as well! Pretzel rolls make a great smaller serving size option. They also make delicious hamburger buns for homemade burgers.
Combine yeast, water, and brown sugar in the bowl of your standing mixer fitted with the dough hook. Let stand for 5 minutes (until foamy).
While yeast is proofing…melt butter in a microwave-safe bowl. Mix in milk and set aside.
Once yeast is proofed, add milk/butter to yeast mixture and mix on low speed with dough hook until just combined.
Add salt and flour and mix with dough hook until flour is fully incorporated.
Knead in a mixer until the dough forms a slightly tacky, but firm ball, you may need to add a little more flour 1 TBS at a time, but be careful, you want your dough a little tacky but not too sticky to handle.
Oil a large bowl, place the dough ball in the bowl, and cover with a damp towel in a warm place to let rise for one hour or until doubled in size.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and bring 4 quarts of water to a boil. When the water is boiling, slowly add the baking soda a little bit at a time (Be careful not to add too much at once or you will have a baking soda/water explosion)!
Remove the dough from the bowl and gently press out the air bubbles.
Make two balls of dough the same size (NOTE: The total weight of the dough comes out to be about 800 g, so each loaf should weigh about 400 g), forming them into the shape you want (Do not let it rise at all here! Straight from forming the ball into the water).
Drop one of the balls into the boiling baking soda water. Boil for 60-90 seconds on each side, turning it once to guarantee both sides covered. Drain the excess water from the dough and place it on an oiled baking sheet.
Immediately sprinkle coarse sea salt over the bread to your specific tastes, and use a knife to cut a small “X” on the top of the bread.
Repeat with second ball of dough. (Do not let it rise at all here! Straight from boiling into the oven).
Bake the bread for 22-25 minutes, rotating the baking sheet once.
Once removed from the oven, immediately brush the melted butter over the loaves to guarantee a soft crust. Transfer to a wire rack to cool just enough to enjoy!
*You can reheat it on a low temp covered in foil if you decide to make it a bit ahead of time. I cover it with a tea towel or something if I’m not going to serve it right away.
How to Make Homemade Pretzel Bread
If making homemade bread sounds intimidating to you…your’e in luck! There are two ways to make the dough.
The first is to simply toss all the ingredients in a bread machine and set it to the “dough cycle.” Even the most sheepish bread-makers can do that, right?
The other method involves mixing and kneading the dough using a standing mixer or your hands!
I like to do the latter because I can be sure every step of the process is going exactly the way it should be! However, I have used my bread machine with the same delicious results!
Rise once
If you are familiar to the process of making homemade bread, you will notice that there is one unique step to the dough-making process for this recipe.
Baking soda bath.
Once the dough is degassed, form it in to the size and shape you want. This recipe makes 2 large loaves, 4 small loaves, or 8-10 rolls/buns!
Once you’ve formed the dough, bring 4 quarts of water to a boil. When the water is boiling, slowly add the baking soda.
Boil the pretzel bread one portion a time in the soda bath for 60 seconds on each side. Use a slotted spoon to remove it from the bath and place it on the prepared baking sheet.
Immediately sprinkle with coarse sea salt and repeat with remaining dough..
(Note: I use a skimmer spoon like this to take the dough out of the boiling baking soda bath and remove excess water).
Bake immediately.
Once the dough is removed from the boiling baking soda bath and formed into loaves/buns, immediately place it on a greased baking sheet, cut an X in the top and sprinkle with Coarse Sea Salt (I use this).
Brush with melted butter.
As soon as the loaves/buns/rolls come out of the oven, brush them with melted butter and transfer them to a cooling rack to cool just enough to eat! This bread is best served warm and eaten the day it’s made! However, it does reheat well and makes a killer turkey sandwich.
How to make pretzel rolls
This recipe makes the best pretzel rolls. To make pretzel rolls, follow the recipe exactly, except make a few slight changes:
Divide dough into eight equal pieces.
Boil each dough ball for 30 seconds on each side, remove from the water, transfer to a baking sheet, and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet once halfway through.
That’s it! then brush each of the pretzel rolls with melted butter and enjoy as rolls or hamburger buns with the best burger recipe (YUM)!.
To make in advance
You can make the dough and store it in the refrigerator overnight or in the freezer for up to 1 month.
When you’re ready to bake the pretzel bread, remove the dough from the fridge or freezer to let it come to room temperature and rise. Then continue on with the recipe including the baking soda bath, baking, etc.
You can store homemade pretzel bread in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. I suggest reheating it before eating it to restore it’s fresh-from-the-oven texture.
Freeze
You can also freeze baked loaves of pretzel bread. Let them cool completely then wrap in plastic wrap and foil and put them in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 months. Thaw in the oven set to warm covered in foil or in a dutch oven.
Homemade Pretzel Bread: Ingredient Substitutions
As always I recommend making this recipe exactly as written, however here are a few possible substitutions!
Whole Milk. 2% milk works well. I do this often with great results! Half & half or cream also work well!
All-purpose flour. Bread flour is the only other flour I have used to make this recipe and it produces an incredibly delicious final product!
Dark brown sugar. Light brown sugar works equally well in this recipe.
That’s it! I really don’t recommend tinkering with this recipe any more!
Notes
If you have a bread maker…just add all ingredients to the pan in the order listed and set it to dough cycle, then proceed to Step 8! You can reheat the bread on a low temp covered in foil if you decide to make it a bit ahead of time. I cover it with a tea towel or something if I’m not going to serve it right away.
**Nutrition information calculated based on this recipe serving 12 people.
How to make Pretzel Rolls
This recipe makes the best pretzel rolls. To make pretzel rolls, follow the recipe exactly, except make a few slight changes:
Divide dough into eight equal pieces.
Boil each dough ball for 30 seconds on each side, remove from the water, transfer to a baking sheet, and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet once halfway through.
That’s it! then brush each of the pretzel rolls with melted butter and enjoy as rolls or hamburger buns with homemade burgers.
To make in advance
You can make the dough and store it in the refrigerator overnight or in the freezer for up to 1 month.
When you’re ready to bake the pretzel bread, remove the dough from the fridge or freezer to let it come to room temperature and rise. Then continue on with the recipe including the baking soda bath, baking, etc.
Ingredient Substitutions
Whole Milk. 2% milk works well! I do this often with great results! Half & half or cream also work well!
All-purpose flour. Bread flour is the only other flour I have used to make this recipe and it produces an incredibly delicious final product!
Dark brown sugar. Light brown sugar works equally well in this recipe.
Store
You can store homemade pretzel bread in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. I suggest reheating it before eating it to restore it’s fresh-from-the-oven texture.
Freeze
You can also freeze baked loaves of pretzel bread. Let them cool completely then wrap in plastic wrap and foil and put them in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 months. Thaw in the oven set to warm covered in foil or in a dutch oven.
The U.S. has raised concerns that potential overcapacity in Chinese industries — such as EVs and solar panels — might crowd out U.S. and other foreign manufacturers. What do you make of it?
Last year, China added more solar capacity than America’s total solar generation, in 12 months.
That’s explosive growth, with real contracts and money changing hands.
Solar panel makers in China have gone bankrupt over the past two decades, proving it is a functional free market competing on cost terms. Those were the real days of overcapacity, because it leads to price wars and depressed revenues. The champions that evolve out of the mess are superfit, and cannot be touched on a price/quality/delivery basis.
That’s where chinese solar panel makers are at today—a position of absolute dominance, because they emerged from the cauldron of merciless competition.
America and the west had the tech lead for decades. 15–20 years ago, the brand names in solar generation were all western. They had IP, supply chains, sales channels, captive markets. But none of them seized the initiative like the Chinese did, who made up ground and came from behind, especially in IP and manufacturing. Instead, they preferred incremental advances and kept production low, to preserve margin.
The West has no one to blame but themselves. They knew what was happening, but believed their competitive moats uncross-able. Same story with batteries, and yes, EVs.
Remember, the Chinese “cannot innovate”, “are low quality”, “will always remain cheap”, “are dependent on western markets”.
Now, they are “overproducing” instead.
What’s the most questionable cost-cutting move you’ve seen an employer make?
I did inventory ordering for a large orange home improvement store. I moved on after nine months.
On day 1, I was told no order should exceed $6,000. I had no idea what I was agreeing to. My first order was $30,000. I ordered one item of everything missing in a fence product we carried; Minimum orders were $15,000 to place an order as well. I sold $45,000 in fencing that week and was written up for going over the agreed $6,000 limit. They literally wanted barren shelves if the order was over $6,000.
As the months went on, I had several orders exceed that $6,000 limit. I sold $2,000,000 in roofing in one week. I was written up for ordering too much, and then they tried to write me up a minute later when they found out we were out of stock… I told them I had three trucks due that night and I was written up again for going over the $6,000 limit. Three write-ups in one day.
I increased sales by 30% from the previous year when everyone else was down 20%, had little “extra” stock and almost no “out of stocks”. I left after they promoted someone for the job I was doing. They promptly dropped 20% from the previous year instead of getting the 30% over… they had no one to fight to place orders that exceeded $6,000 and quickly ran out of product to sell.
The guy who was promoted went on to other stores to promote this limited ordering strategy. And sales dropped there too…
I personally don’t shop at stores that do not have stock… that was why I stopped shopping at Sears years before their bankruptcy. Empty shelves were a sign of them making those same mistakes. When you have nothing to sell, how does a company profit? I never understood the motive behind ordering less to save money when you are running out of product.
Noncompetes Are Dead—and Tech Workers Are Free to Roam
A new rule from the US Federal Trade Commission invalidates most noncompete agreements, frequently used to bind tech workers. It could unlock higher wages and more entrepreneurship and innovation.
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More US workers will soon be free to leave their employers to work for rivals, thanks to a new federal rule that will block the long-standing practice of locking in workers with noncompete agreements.
The US Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued a final rule that bans most noncompetes nationwide. The agency estimated that by allowing people more freedom, the change would lead to the creation of 8,500 new businesses annually, an average annual pay increase of $524 for workers, lower health care costs, and as many as 29,000 more patents each year for the next decade.
The FTC says about one in five US workers are bound by contract clauses that prevent them from taking new jobs from a competitor, or starting their own competing businesses, for some period of time. The agreements can trap workers and slow career advancement and wage increases—two things workers often achieve by hopping jobs.
The agreements also disproportionately affect workers in tech and certain other roles: 36 percent of engineers and architects work under noncompetes, as do 35 percent of workers in computer and math fields, according to research from the Universities of Maryland and Michigan.
Under the FTC’s new rule, “tech workers will probably experience a rise in the outside opportunities that they face,” says Evan Starr, an associate professor of business at the University of Maryland who worked on the research. “They’ll have more freedom to work where they want; they will be more likely to be paid higher wages.”
Opponents of noncompetes say they hurt workers by keeping them in lower-waged jobs and also stifle innovation, preventing people from starting their own businesses or putting innovative ideas into practice. Noncompete supporters argue that the arrangements encourage investment in staff and protect trade secrets. But recent research from Starr indicates that banning noncompetes hasn’t led to an increase in trade secret litigation.
The new FTC rule has a carve-out to keep existing noncompetes for senior executives in place. But it blocks companies from creating new noncompetes for these high-level workers. The rule is due to take effect in about four months, but it’s expected to face challenges. Two commissioners who voted against the rule saw it as overstepping the FTC’s power. The US Chamber of Commerce quickly announced after the rule passed that it will sue to try to block it.
Several states, including tech hub California, have already banned enforcement of noncompetes. But a recent tidal shift has seen the issue resonate in dozens of states. In the 2023 legislative session, 38 states introduced 81 bills that sought to ban or restrict enforcement of noncompetes. California’s long-established law is seen as part of the reason Silicon Valley became a hub for innovation, while Massachusetts’s once-similar tech corridor didn’t soar in the same way.
Tech executive Daniel Powers has battled noncompetes twice in his career. In 2010, IBM tried to delay his move from New York to Seattle to work for Amazon Web Services, the online retailer’s cloud division, by a year. The parties settled on Powers taking six months off. Fortunately for Powers, Amazon agreed to pay him even while he couldn’t work.
Two years later, the tables turned. When Powers attempted to take a job with Google Cloud, Amazon sued him, saying he had agreed not to work for one of its competitors within 18 months of leaving. The incident drew headlines as the first noncompete case Amazon had brought against someone inside fast-growing AWS, Powers recalls.
Powers had to move to California—where noncompetes aren’t legal—for the new gig, and his attorney told him to get there as soon as possible. By living in a different state, the lawsuit could be tried in federal court, where his attorney felt Amazon had less of an advantage compared to Washington state court. A federal judge ended up siding with Powers, and he lost only about three months of work at Google while the case played out.
Amazon, IBM, and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Had Powers not received discounted legal help over the years, he says, he could have easily spent over $100,000 battling noncompetes. “It’s just not fair to the employees,” says Powers, who now runs cloud advisory firm What’s Next Consulting. “When I won, I got hundreds of emails and texts from Amazon employees thanking me for beating them.”
People in Washington state who want to leave one of the tech giants often must have difficult conversations with their families, advisers, and potential new employer about the risks of litigation and potentially being without a paycheck for a long stretch. Powers estimates that he has aided over 200 former Amazon and IBM colleagues in the process. California workers have no such concerns. “It’s just, ‘OK, goodbye,’” Powers says. “There’s nothing companies can do about it.”
If the new FTC rule ends up in front of the US Supreme Court, he says, his message to the justices will be simple. “Taking away a person’s ability to work in an industry they are trained in, have skills in, and have been in is a massive disservice to the employee,” Powers says. “It’s not the right thing to do to have these agreements.”
Some fun comics
US next-gen B-21 bomber likely obsolete upon delivery
B-21 behind the times of China’s improving air defense, hypersonic spy planes and stealth fighter-launched hypersonic weapons
While the US mulls acquiring more of its next-gen B-21 bombers, fast-moving technological advancements could make the type obsolete upon delivery.
This month, The Warzone reported that US Air Force (USAF) Chief of Staff General David Allvin has hinted that the service is considering purchasing more than the 100 B-21s currently planned.
Allvin stated that the B-21 is the future of the bomber force and that the number of B-21s is expected to reach 100 by the mid-2030s and beyond.
The USAF is exploring options to supplement or replace B-21 production while also planning to fly updated B-52s equipped with the Rapid Dragon palletized munition system as an inexpensive means of creating long-lasting, low-complexity stand-off strike platforms.
It is also considering buying all 100 B-21s despite cost issues, which are coming down after negotiations with Northrup Grumman. However, the threat environment that informed the B-21’s design a decade ago has significantly changed.
The B-21 is a member of the Long Range Stand-Off (LRSO) family of systems and can be used for future variations or derivatives along with the AGM-181A LRSO stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missile and other advanced systems such as munitions, sensors, electronic warfare packages and communications systems.
However, The Warzone says that acquiring additional B-21s contradicts evolving trends in aircraft procurement and capabilities. The bomber mission is changing due to survivability demands, evolving integrated air defense networks and longer-range and more capable counter-air munitions.
It also states the importance of using cost-effective, quickly designed and readily deployable stand-off systems is increasing on the battlefield. At the same time, the B-21 may be the last new USAF bomber.
While strategic bombers have been the long arm of US airpower during the 20th and early 21st centuries, technological advances may force a rethink of stealth bombers’ role in increasingly transparent aerial battlefields.
In an August 2022 Air University article, Mel Deaile mentions that stealth technology in aircraft has advanced since 2001, emphasizing the importance of bombing tactics that leverage low-observable characteristics.
Deaile also expounds on the role of the bomber over the past 30 years, noting the shift from multiple bombers attacking a single target to one bomber hitting multiple targets with precision.
Deaile also points out that China has a robust and redundant integrated air defense system (IADS), operating radars, fighters and surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems that can reach up to 300 nautical miles offshore to defend against an impending attack.
China has made considerable efforts to defeat US stealth aircraft such as the B-21, leveraging AI and more advanced sensors. In December 2023, Asia Times reported that China had simulated shooting down a B-21 using new stealth aircraft, advanced radars and hypersonic missiles.
The simulation showcased new technologies, such as stealth aircraft with “conformal skin” that detects heat and electric signals, unmanned wingman drones and hypersonic missiles with adjustable solid-fuel pulse engines. It also emphasized the potential of AI in air-to-air combat, with decision-making shifting rapidly between pilots, drones and missiles.
In addition, China has reportedly developed a small and discreet anti-stealth radar that can be quickly and quietly placed on rooftops, contrasting with traditional systems that need large antennas to detect stealth aircraft.
Chinese engineers have also reportedly designed a compact infrared search-and-track (IRST) system based on medium-wave infrared technology capable of detecting the signature of fast-moving aircraft from considerable distances. The device can identify the aircraft’s outline, rotors, tail and number of engines from the infrared spectrum image.
Furthermore, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported this month that Chinese researchers have developed a method to increase an F-22’s radar signature up to 60,000 times using multiple radars and “smart resource scheduling.”
SCMP says the technology allows a centralized networking radar system to enhance the intensity and tracking accuracy of radar signature and save valuable resources for handling other targets by adjusting beam parameters and the power of each radar based on characteristics and real-time positional changes of stealth aircraft, achieving comprehensive tracking of F-22 fighters with just three radars.
The SCMP report says the information can be rapidly transmitted to interceptor fighters or SAM batteries, enabling prompt F-22 fighter intrusions. It notes precise calculations for target coordinates and movement speeds that can reportedly be completed in 0.02 seconds.
SCMP says these radars can be strategically positioned on land, islands, ships and aerial platforms, bolstering China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) in the South China Sea and Western Pacific regions.
China has made considerable efforts to defeat US stealth aircraft such as the B-21, leveraging AI and more advanced sensors. In December 2023, Asia Times reported that China had simulated shooting down a B-21 using new stealth aircraft, advanced radars and hypersonic missiles.
The simulation showcased new technologies, such as stealth aircraft with “conformal skin” that detects heat and electric signals, unmanned wingman drones and hypersonic missiles with adjustable solid-fuel pulse engines. It also emphasized the potential of AI in air-to-air combat, with decision-making shifting rapidly between pilots, drones and missiles.
In addition, China has reportedly developed a small and discreet anti-stealth radar that can be quickly and quietly placed on rooftops, contrasting with traditional systems that need large antennas to detect stealth aircraft.
Chinese engineers have also reportedly designed a compact infrared search-and-track (IRST) system based on medium-wave infrared technology capable of detecting the signature of fast-moving aircraft from considerable distances. The device can identify the aircraft’s outline, rotors, tail and number of engines from the infrared spectrum image.
Furthermore, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported this month that Chinese researchers have developed a method to increase an F-22’s radar signature up to 60,000 times using multiple radars and “smart resource scheduling.”
SCMP says the technology allows a centralized networking radar system to enhance the intensity and tracking accuracy of radar signature and save valuable resources for handling other targets by adjusting beam parameters and the power of each radar based on characteristics and real-time positional changes of stealth aircraft, achieving comprehensive tracking of F-22 fighters with just three radars.
The SCMP report says the information can be rapidly transmitted to interceptor fighters or SAM batteries, enabling prompt F-22 fighter intrusions. It notes precise calculations for target coordinates and movement speeds that can reportedly be completed in 0.02 seconds.
SCMP says these radars can be strategically positioned on land, islands, ships and aerial platforms, bolstering China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) in the South China Sea and Western Pacific regions.
Harvey Weinstein’s Rape Conviction Was Just Overturned. Here’s What That Means
In 2017, The New York Times and the New Yorker reported that, for years, Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had been using his power to sexually abuse women. In 2020, he was convicted in New York on two counts of sexual assault, which became the #MeToo movement’s first major victory. On April 25, 2024, however, that conviction was overturned by the New York Court of Appeals. So, what does this mean? And, maybe more importantly, what happens now?
Here’s what we know so far about Harvey Weinstein’s conviction, why it was overturned, and what happens next.
Why was Harvey Weinstein’s conviction overturned?
In its decision, the New York Court of Appeals wrote, “We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” per Associated Press. Put more simply, the court decided that Harvey Weinstein, 72, didn’t get a fair trial because the judge at the time allowed alleged victims who were not part of this case to testify against him. Over 100 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, according to the New York Times, but this case was about just two of his accusers. Four other accusers testified against Weinstein in court, but their allegations weren’t part of the criminal charge against him.
The Court of Appeals decision was 4-3. Per AP, Judge Madeline Singas, one of the four judges who voted against overturning Weinstein’s conviction, wrote in her dissent that the majority was furthering a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.” She wrote, “The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability.”
Does this mean Harvey Weinstein is getting out of prison?
Though his New York conviction was overturned, Harvey Weinstein is still not a free man. He was also convicted of rape in Los Angeles in 2022, and sentenced to 16 years in prison, per the Los Angeles Times.
Could Harvey Weinstein be tried again?
The judges on the New York Court of Appeals said that the proper remedy is a “new trial,” and prosecutors have said that they intend to try Harvey Weinstein again. “We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said, per the New York Times.
This would mean that Weinstein’s alleged victims would be put through the trauma of a trial all over again. Said Douglas H. Wigdor, an attorney who has represented eight of Weinstein’s accusers, “Overturning the verdict is tragic in that it will require the victims to endure yet another trial,” according to AP.
How have victims and activists responded to the news?
Alleged victims of Harvey Weinstein and leaders of the #MeToo movement have reacted with shock, describing the decision as a step backward and a loss for all victims of sexual assault.
Per the Times, actor Amber Tamblyn called the decision, “a loss to the entire community of women who put their lives and careers on the line to speak out.” Weinstein accuser Katherine Kendall called it “a terrible reminder that victims of sexual assault just don’t get justice. I’m completely let down by the justice system right now. I’m sort of flabbergasted.”
Others had more to say on social media. Mira Sorvino, another actor who has accused Weinstein of sexual assault, tweeted that she was “horrified” by the news. “Since when don’t courts allow evidence of pattern of prior bad acts to be admitted? He’s a prolific serial predator who raped/harmed 200+women! Disgusted w/justice system skew twds predators not victims,” she tweeted. Ashley Judd, one of the first Hollywood actors to accuse Weinstein, reportedly told journalist Jodi Kantor, “That is unfair to survivors. We still live in our truth. And we know what happened.”
Per Variety, the Silence Breakers, a group of Weinstein accusers, released a statement reading, “The news today is not only disheartening, but it’s profoundly unjust. But this ruling does not diminish the validity of our experiences or our truth; it’s merely a setback. The man found guilty continues to serve time in a California prison.”
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Hot and Sour Soup
Yield: 7 to 8 servings
Hot and Sour Soup Ingredients:
To make this hot and sour soup recipe, you will need:
Broth: Either chicken or veggie stock (or broth) will do.
Mushrooms: I highly recommend using shiitake mushrooms, but baby bella or even button mushrooms would also do.
Eggs: Which we will whisk, and the drizzle into the soup to make those lovely egg ribbons.
Firm tofu: Which we will cube and add to the soup.
Green onions: To stir into the soup and also sprinkle on top as a garnish.
Toasted sesame oil: An essential flavor in the soup, which we will drizzle at the very end.
Salt and pepper: Hot and sour soup is traditionally made with white pepper, which (heads up) has a different and much stronger flavor than black pepper. I recommend adding in a pinch, and then you can always add in more later. Or if you don’t have white pepper, black pepper will also do.
Optional: Many restaurant versions of hot and sour soup are also made with bamboo shoots. I’m personally not a fan of them, but you are welcome to add some in if you would like.
Ingredients
1/2 pound lean, boneless pork loin, cut into thin strips
1/4 pound sliced mushrooms (about 7 whole)
8 ounces canned water chestnuts, canned, drained and sliced
1/2 cup bamboo shoots, cut into strips
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 cup firm tofu, cubed
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
Sliced green onions (garnish)
How To Make Hot and Sour Soup:
To make this hot and sour soup recipe, simply…
Make your cornstarch slurry. Whisk together 1/4 cup of the stock and cornstarch until combined. Set aside.
Bring the soup to a simmer. Add the remaining stock, mushrooms, bamboo shoots (if using), rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, ginger and chili garlic sauce to a large stock pot, and cook until the soup reaches a simmer. Stir in the cornstarch slurry and continue cooking for a minute or so, until the soup has thickened.
Drizzle in those beautiful egg ribbons! While stirring the soup in a circular motion with one hand, use your other hand to slowly drizzle the whisked eggs into the soup.
Season the soup. Stir in the tofu, half of the green onions, and sesame oil. Then season the soup with salt and black pepper (or white pepper) to taste.
Serve. Ladle up your servings while the soup is nice and hot, garnished with extra green onions.
Instructions
In slow cooker, combine all ingredients except green onions.
Cover; cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours.
Ladle into individual bowls.
Garnish with green onion slices.
Pain and Discomfort Are the Gatekeepers of Success
Most of us spend our entire lives doing everything in our power to avoid pain and discomfort at all costs. We tiptoe through life, praying to whatever gods may be that we don’t have to face hardship, challenge, or god forbid, failure.
But here’s the thing…
Pain and discomfort aren’t just inevitable parts of life – they’re the damn gatekeepers to success. You literally cannot achieve anything worthwhile without meeting them face-to-face and duking it out.
Most people see pain and discomfort as flashing red warning signs telling them to turn back. To stay in their cozy, lukewarm bubble of mediocrity where nothing can hurt them. Where they can just fade into the background and waste their potential.
Well I call bullshit.
The cold, hard truth is that no one achieves true success and fulfillment without traversing through the suck. Without facing down their demons, looking hardship square in the eye, and saying “let’s dance.”
Pain creates us. It molds us. It’s the fire that forges us from fragile, breakable glass into hardened, unbreakable steel. The crushing pressure that transforms coal into diamonds.
In the immortal words of the modern Stoic philosopher Ryan Holiday, “The obstacle is the way.”
What stands in the path becomes the path. What blocks the way becomes the way. The challenges, hardships and “oh shit” moments aren’t roadblocks – they’re the required curriculum.
If you think you’re going to luck into an existence devoid of pain, where everything is handed to you on a silver platter and you never have to bleed for your dreams…
Well, keep dreaming. That’s not how this works. It’s not how any of this works.
Pain is the entry fee. Discomfort is the cover charge. You don’t get to go around them – the only way out is through.
And here’s the really wild part…
Once you accept this – once you stop avoiding the suck and just decide to embrace the pain, a funny thing happens…
You start to enjoy it. To get a sick thrill out of facing adversity head on. To respect the struggle.
You realize pain is just weakness leaving the body. Discomfort is just the feeling of your limits expanding.
So stop running. Stop hiding. Stop waiting for shit to get easy.
The path to success goes directly through the gatekeepers of pain and discomfort. And you need to meet them head on, shake their hands, and thank them for the opportunity to get better.
Because on the other side of pain and discomfort?
That’s where all the rewards lie in wait. And trust me, it’s a hell of a lot more fun over here.
AI generated images
If you sat next to a famous celebrity in a restaurant, would you start a conversation? What would you say?
About 15 years ago I was down town Portland for lunch. Place was crowded but found a seat for myself and two co-workers. After we ordered we noticed this crowd coming in and a lot of activities. Next thing I know George Karl who was the Head Coach for the Denver Nuggets sat essentially beside me. Spending the 90s in Seattle I knew who he was but my co-workers didn’t.
Coach Karl got his food before I did… he ordered the same thing I wanted. I was a little bothered by the service. When I thought he wasn’t looking I jokingly reached towards his plate. He caught me.
Instantly he asked if I wanted some and then he asked the waiter what I ordered that was taking so long since I had been seated prior. The waiter told him what I ordered. Coach asked if the waiter messed up and gave him my food. I felt bad because the young waiter didn’t know what not to say. He told coach that he was told to serve him first.
Coach wasn’t happy. He asked for the manager. Manager comes over and asks him if everything was OK. Now I felt bad for the manager because it was obvious that the waiter didn’t prepare him before they came to the table. Coach went on to say that he was not happy that he got served before me. Shaking his head he said “that just isn’t right”
Coach then said to bring out a plate and he was going to give me half of his food. Then he paused and cracked a smile. He told the manager than when they served his food to me, he wanted half of it.
Finally everyone was eating. Coach turned to me and asked me how much should we tip?
Have you ever had an experience that made you believe in the afterlife or spirit world?
My friend group consisted of a trio, and we were inseparable.
About 2 years ago, one of our trio got diagnosed with cancer. He put up a really strong fight, but passed away about 6 months ago.
That night, I had a dream. The 3 of us were on a public bus, sitting and talking. We sat back and laughed at all the crazy things we had done, especially the things the one that passed did. Towards the very end of the dream he leaned in and said “thank you guys for being my friends. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
I woke up, and didn’t give it a ton of thought. I wasn’t surprised I had a dream about him, he had just passed away the day before. I did question why we were on a public bus. Interestingly enough, none of us had never ridden a bus together in our entire friendship.
I met up with my other friend that day, and it was a very somber time. Until I mentioned the dream I had the night before. My friend turned pale as a ghost. He had had the exact same dream. The 3 of us on the bus talking.
We went back and forth to make sure the other wasn’t lying. We traded off walking the other one through the dream. It was identical. We had both had the same dream, word for word. Location, subjects of conversation, everything.
At that moment, this Agnostic got a pretty big dash of religion in his body.
The US Commerce Department believes that by sanctioning key high-end technologies, the US can slow down, even stop, China’s aim of becoming a technology leader.
This plan misses a very simple point though: In many fields, China is aiming at revolutionary new technologies to replace current technologies.
These new technologies do not need current technologies now held by the US and the west. This is how China aims to become the technology leader in many fields.
In addition, China has the manufacturing capacity to quickly bring these new technologies to market.
The way for the US to beat China is not through sanctions, but through massive investment in new technologies the same way China has done. The problem is that the US does not have the budget to do this kind of investment; most liquidity has been siphoned off into the private pockets of VCs and hedge fund managers, who believe in ROI, not in investment.
This is why the US government does not have the money, power and influence to fund an industrial manufacturing policy.
The US has painted itself into a corner.
I have a staff member who produces brilliant work but is consistently late every single day. I can’t fire him because it will take months to find someone to fill his position. What can I do?
I once hired a woman who did brilliant work but was not a good team player. It’s not that she was destructive or hostile. It was more that, in an industry that typically thrives on collaboration, she was an independent contributor.
Another employee was always late. I felt it reflected a lack of interest and discipline but he consistently delivered high quality work.
Another had to leave early, every day, no exceptions, and was never available or reachable outside of traditional office hours. Public Relations, the industry I worked in all my life, is not a 9:00 to 5:00 job. It often requires people stay late. If someone always leaves early it puts the burden on other team members.
Another employee was terrified of doing a presentation and would freeze if he needed to speak in a room full of people. Except, he was incredible at research.
Another was a conceptual thinker who could not only detect industry trends before anyone else, but who had real vision, except, he was not a good writer.
Another exhibited enviable work ethic but was easily stressed and tended to regard everything as a crisis.
All of these employees were unique and gifted in certain aspects of their job, but lacked characteristics that I believed were “essential”.
As a manager, for years I strived to “correct” these kinds of idiosyncrasies. I tried to get the independent contributor to become a team player, to get everyone to show up on time, to encourage a bit of flexibility in the person who was never available after hours.
I tried to work on people’s “shortcomings” instead of playing to their strengths.
Then I realized that what I was doing was trying to make everyone the same in an environment that was suffering from a lack of original, creative, disparate thinking.
That there was no such thing as someone who was good at everything.
That the best thing I could do as a manager was find the right place for an employee, where who the person already was would contribute to making the operation as a whole integrated and successful.
If you interview high level executives – such as CEOs – and ask them what keeps them up at night, the consistent reply is “talent”.
People who deliver brilliant work are hard to come by.
It’s our job as managers to make our business environment flexible enough to give every brilliant employee a place to thrive.
Do you drink every day and function?
I used to do that from about 1990 to 2015. Life at my place meant coming home to a 750ml bottle of wine, which I would empty, by myself, starting at about 17:00, and finishing by about 22:00. And often enough, I’d round that off with a glass of whisky or cognac or gin.
During that time, I worked in eight countries, achieved three academic qualifications, and lived a perfectly normal life.
To keep things in perspective, I’m 1,90 metres tall, weigh 112 kg, and tend to eat very well. So that amount of drinking over the time periods as mentioned wouldn’t have resulted in the sort of blood alcohol levels binge drinkers achieve by downing the same or more in a short time.
But I noticed while I went through an experimental raw vegan phase that saw me also avoiding alcohol in 2015 that the absence of alcohol in my life had magnificent effects I had not expected:
my mood lifted drastically; I basically turned into a giggling silly-bunny 24/7;
my sleep quality became superb;
my ability to concentrate increased a lot;
my temper became much more even and sunny;
my interest in food declined, which made my weight drop.
It was an eye opener. I had been consuming alcohol at a high level for so long that I mistook its effects for my own personality. So since 2015, I no longer drink regularly, and I function a lot better, no doubt. And on days following alcohol consumption, I really feel it. It’s like the whole world has turned grey, and everything is hard, and the only glimmer of hope is another drink at the end of it. And that’s when I think “whoa, you actually were that miserable for 25 years! Poor bastard.”
Much of that alcohol consumption was due to routine, too. These days, I actually ask myself, “do I really want a bottle of wine?” And I may not. When a bottle of wine or whisky finds its way to my home these days, it’s often the result of a week or two of contemplation. It’s much more appreciated, too.
I think that in itself is an indicator of functioning, because it shows attunedness to ourselves.
How Much Can You Know About Yourself If You’ve Never Been in a Fight?
In our sanitized, safe, padded modern world, most of us go through life without ever throwing a punch or taking one to the face. We avoid conflict, physical or otherwise, and pride ourselves on staying out of the fray.
But let me ask you something…
How much can you really know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? If you’ve never had your mettle tested, your resolve challenged, your limits pushed?
I’m not saying go out and start a bar brawl tonight. But there is something primal, something raw and real about the crucible of physical conflict that reveals us to ourselves in a way few other experiences can.
Think about it…
In a real fight, there’s nowhere to hide. No room for self-delusion or bullshit. You’re stripped down to your essence, forced to confront your true nature in a visceral, immediate way.
Will you crumble under pressure or rise to the occasion? Will you succumb to fear and pain or push through? Will you quit at the first sign of adversity or dig deep and find a new gear?
These are the questions that can only be answered in the heat of battle. When the fists are flying and the blood is flowing. When it’s just you, your opponent, and the truth.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. “Fighting is barbaric, primitive, beneath me.” And sure, on one level, that’s true. We should aspire to resolve our differences with words, not violence.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The capacity for violence, the ability to protect and defend, to stand up for yourself and those you love – that’s hardwired into us. It’s part of what makes us human, for better or worse.
And pretending otherwise, avoiding that side of ourselves entirely, leaves us incomplete. Untested. Unproven.
So while I’m not advocating for gratuitous violence, I am suggesting that there’s value in controlled exposure to physical conflict. In pushing yourself to the brink to see what you’re really made of.
Take up a martial art. Train in boxing, wrestling, BJJ. Put yourself in situations that force you to face down your demons and confront your own capacity for aggression and tenacity.
Because at the end of the day, life is a fight. And the better you know yourself – your true self, tested in the fire of adversity – the better equipped you’ll be to handle whatever battles lie ahead.
So get in the ring. Step onto the mat. Throwdown and scrap it out. You might just be surprised by what you’re capable of. By the depths of courage and resilience lurking inside you.
And that, my friends, is a hell of a lot more valuable than an unblemished record or a pretty face.
Why didn’t Blinken have a red carpet during his two visits to China? Is this right for China?
The Secretary of State is the world’s most powerful diplomat. His underlings at the UN wag fingers at foreign colleagues and go “do you want to be consulted, or insulted?”
And yet no Secretary of State had visited Beijing for 6, 7 years, until Antony barged in.
The Chinese did not fete him or court him. He was not accorded priority, because he wasn’t the honored state guest on a carefully coordinated state visit.
His job was to personally deliver an invitation to President Xi for him to toast and grace the greatest gathering of American capital in recent years.
This time, his job is to mirror what Janet did recently, reading off a script on the Beijing podium criticizing and threatening the host, to show the public that America still has to chops to make others listen. Delivering the message in the evil enemy’s capital fills the air with American machismo.
This isn’t diplomacy. It’s poorly fleshed out domestic politics.
Let’s save the red carpet for others on the level because Antony’s job isn’t to secure cooperation but subservience through the scourge of power.
A Chinese Intellectual Genius revealing the grand strategy of the US in the 21st Century.
After I left the Navy, I lived with my paternal grandmother for a spell while I worked at a steel factory. Later on, they would lay me off and I would go on my great adventure. But during this snapshot in time, I was spending about four months living with my grandmother; saving up money so that I can afford an apartment to live in.
She was very traditional. And she refused for me to do anything… anything in the kitchen. That was her domain.
For me… No cooking. No cleaning. No washing the dishes, doing the laundry. Not even emptying the trash.
Those were her “womanly tasks” that “real men” would never, and should never do.
That was my grand mother.
My parents were more progressive. Boys did the dishes. Emptied the garbage. Mowed the lawn. While the girls cooked, and darned clothes.
Something went seriously wrong in the United States sometime between 1913 and 1935. Because after that, the bedrock of familial roles shifted, and continued to shift until you have the cluster fuck family structures that you see today.
I miss my grandmother.
She was a smart, wise, and wiry woman with whom I greatly adored.
Today…
How will the US tech restrictions on mainland China’s semiconductor industry affect the country’s manufacturing supply chain?
The Chinese have been building and installing Chinese components to replace the components the U.S. has blocked so that Chinese supply chains are not affected.
Did you expect the Chinese to stop and give up because of the sanctions?
Sorry, that isn’t how the Chinese work.
Mark Sleboda: Putin and China Issue DEVASTATING Warning to Blinken, Neocons and They’re Not Bluffing
International Relations and Security analyst Mark Sleboda explains how Blinken’s latest visit to China exposes the weakening position of the neocons and their inability to compete on the world stage with both Russia and China, both of which are warning that further escalation will lead to all out war. This is not a bluff, so be sure to watch the video in full to understand how HUGE this all is.
What is the worst thing someone has done that broke you?
Not too long after my late wife passed (not nearly long enough), I got involved with a woman (I use the term loosely) who was supposed to have been one of my wife’s good friends. It was a vulnerable time for me and I had no business being involved with anyone at this point.
I will refer to this woman as “CB” (short for crazy bitch.)
The first few months of being involved with CB were fine, she did and said all of the right things until she felt she had me where she wanted me. I let her into my home, I helped her financially, treated her children well, and went out of my way to make them all feel welcome in my home.
One day, it was like someone threw a light switch and turned on her narcissistic, rage. She became violent with me and even attempted to do away with me using a boat oar to my head. I thought I was at rock bottom and broken at this point, but it actually got worse. Once I got her out of my home and out of my life (I thought), the real kick in the junk came. It turns out, the entire time I was working to make them feel welcome in my home, working my full time job, and doing the things you do for people you care about, she had been stealing all of my personal information. This CB had not only assaulted me physically, she had stolen my identity and when all was said and done, she had run up over $170K in debt under my name. This literally and financially broke me. I lost my home and so many of the things I had worked so hard to earn for so many years. It was the most expensive lesson I have ever learned. It was my rock bottom and became the motivation for me to climb out of the darkness and work on myself. It has been a few years since it all happened and while I am still fighting the financial fallout from being too trusting to the wrong person, I am no longer a broken man. Life has a way of making us move on and luckily, I made the right choices from then on. If Karma is real, CB is in for a world of hurt.
Do people in countries where you can’t openly criticise the government find it strange that you can do that in some countries?
That’s a loaded question if I ever saw one.
Last night somebody said me in China would be immediately executed if I was critical of Xi Jinping. He spoke with ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE because being a westerner makes you omniscient.
Funny, I live in China Hong Kong province. Where I see Falun Gong operate openly and distribute their publication everyday and they call for the destruction of China and the government. Similarly Shun Bot on here is openly critical of Xi Jinping as am I, and I don’t know about him, but I go over to Shenzhen a fair bit and yet here I am totally not dead.
In that just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen! It’s almost like Americans! Everything outside stopped once the USA was founded. Stuff goes on when you’re not looking.
Oh sure you can call Biden an ass, but guess what? It does nothing other than make you feel good momentarily.
So there’s totally no name calling in China? Oh there is if you understand Chinese and go on Chinese forums, but you can’t read that can you?
There’s also something completely unknown by those omniscient westerners. In that if you have a real grievance? You complain via official channels, but here’s the catch it needs to be genuine and you need to have evidence. The fact that numerous CPC officials RIGHT at the TOP have been sentenced to death for corruption instigated by people complaining is pretty telling.
Meanwhile, has anybody been investigated in western governments? Jon Corzine literally diverted 1bn USD into his Caymen islands bank account and paid a small fine for it, he didn’t end up picking up any soap in a prison shower.
Tony Blinken’s Stern Warning to China| More Hubris!
Was Antony Blinken’s recent visit to China a complete failure or just another round of political posturing? Dive into the details of the U.S. Secretary of State’s three-day interaction with Chinese officials and explore whether any real progress was made on critical issues. Despite the positive rhetoric, it seems the visit may have fallen short of expectations.
Join me as I dissect for you the nuances of Blinken’s diplomatic efforts & unravel the complexities of U.S.-China relations. Is it all just a facade for domestic audiences?
Some comics
Polish-Style Roast Chicken
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
2 (3 1/2 to 4 pound) whole chickens
1 onion, peeled and quartered
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika
2 teaspoons salt + more to taste
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper + more to taste
Position oven rack in lower third of oven; heat to 350 degrees F.
Remove giblets. Place hearts, necks and gizzards in roasting pan and reserve livers for another use.
With a sharp knife, remove excess fat.
Dry insides with a paper towel.
With your fingers, loosen skin over breasts and thighs to make pockets, being careful not to tear the skin.
In a food processor or blender, combine onion, garlic, paprika, 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper; puree until smooth.
Spread 1/4 cup onion puree in the bottom of a roasting pan.
Place chickens in pan, at least 1 inch apart.
Rub 1 tablespoon puree into each cavity and spread remaining puree under skin.
Tuck wings back and tie legs.
Roast chickens for 20 minutes.
Drizzle with 1/4 cup chicken broth and roast for 40 minutes more, basting with pan drippings every 20 minutes.
Tent chickens with aluminum foil and continue roasting for 30 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone, registers 180 degrees F and the cavity juices run clear.
Transfer chickens to a platter and cover with foil to keep warm; leave giblets in pan.
Pour pan juices into a bowl and chill in freezer for 10 minutes to bring fat to the surface.
Meanwhile, add remaining chicken broth and vodka to roasting pan and bring to a boil over medium heat, scraping up any browned bits adhering to the pan.
Add any juices accumulated on chicken platter.
Skim off fat from chilled pan juices.
Add juices to roasting pan and return to a boil. Strain juices through a fine sieve into a medium saucepan.
Bring to a simmer over medium heat.
In a small bowl, blend water and cornstarch; whisk into simmering gravy.
Cook, stirring, until slightly thickened, about 1 minute.
Whisk in dill and sour cream, if using.
Season with salt and pepper.
Carve chickens, discarding skin.
Serve with gravy.
Brazilian Woman Arrested After Trying To Use Her Uncle’s Corpse To Get A Bank Loan
Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes has been charged with theft by fraud and abuse of a corpse after allegedly wheeling her deceased uncle into a bank to sign for a loan.
Bank workers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, received the shock of their lives after a woman brought her deceased uncle to a bank to sign for a loan on April 16, 2024.
The woman, who claimed to be the man’s niece, allegedly wheeled him into the bank and attempted to force a pen into his hand. Workers noticed the bizarre scene and called emergency workers. A medical examination later confirmed that the man had been dead for at least two hours.
Now, investigators are trying to determine the full story of how this disturbing incident unfolded.
Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes’ Attempt To Use Her Uncle’s Corpse To Commit Fraud
On April 16, Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes entered the Itaú Bank branch in Rio de Janeiro. In tow was her 68-year-old wheelchair-bound uncle, Paulo Roberto Braga.
The two came to the bank to take out a loan equivalent to $3,250.
While the duo signed for the loan, the bank employees noticed the oddity of the scene. For one, Braga did not move at all, and Nunes seemed to force a pen into the man’s hand, stating:
“Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign [the loan contract]. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, because I can’t sign for you. Sign so you don’t give me any more headaches, I can’t take it anymore,” a video of the incident aired by g1 showed.
Evidently, bank employees told Nunes that her uncle appeared unwell, to which she responded:
“He is like that. He doesn’t say anything.”
But the strangeness of it all was too much for the bank workers. They quickly called for an ambulance, and when the doctors arrived, they confirmed the worst — the man was dead.
The Ongoing Investigation Into Paulo Roberto Braga’s Death
g1/YouTubeSurveillance footage of Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes and her deceased uncle, Paulo Roberto Braga.
According to a medical examination, Paulo Braga had been dead for over two hours when Nunes brought him to the bank. His cause of death was respiratory aspiration of stomach contents and heart failure. However, the situation became muddied when both Nunes and her lawyer claimed that her uncle was alive when he arrived at the bank.
“The facts did not happen as they were narrated. Mr. Paulo arrived at the banking unit alive. There are witnesses who, at the appropriate time, will also be heard. He started to feel sick, and then he had all these procedures. All of this will be clarified and we believe in Mrs. Érika’s innocence,” Ana Carla de Souza Correa, Nunes’ lawyer, told TV Globo. Just a day before, Nunes had taken Braga to the emergency room.
Despite these pleas, police arrested Nunes on two separate charges of theft by fraud and abuse of a corpse.
Now, authorities are conducting an investigation into Braga’s death. So far, doctors know that Braga must have died lying down, evidenced by the way blood pooled in his vessels. He could not have died sitting in the wheelchair.
Authorities know that Nunes took a taxi to the bank, so they are now trying to determine if Braga could have died lying down in the back of the cab.
“The main thing is to continue the investigations, identify other family members and find out if, when this loan was made, he was alive,” Fábio Luiz Souza, a police officer on the case, told O Dia.
For now, Nunes will remain in custody until the investigation concludes.
The Chinese owner of TikTok claims they would rather shut down than sell TikTok. (To the surprise of many lawmakers who voted to ban TikTok). Do you think they are serious or bluffing?
They are dead serious
Selling TikTok would mean the US can bully every Chinese company doing Business in USA to divest or leave
There are laws about transfer of IP or IP licenses belonging to Chinese entities without permission of the Government
So selling TikTok isn’t an option.
Meanwhile if you notice, China is becoming more and more conducive to foreign investments
Tesla is the best example
China didn’t force Tesla to divest 70% to BYD or Geely. .
China already has the money and capital
As US acts insane and stupid, newer Chinese entities who once would have gone to US for establishing a startup or a business will stay back in China and develop there
China has the under rated stock market today
Soon it’s possible that emerging economy players will seek financing in China over the US for unique high technology products especially as China has the enormous Capital and the Market and the Supply Chain
China can replace the US in Capital today with $ 19 Trillion in Public Savings
China has the huge market of 430 million consumers
The only thing stopping people from going to China to seek capital and establish business is because China is authoritarian and US has all these laws and systems
Now as US abandons these laws and systems, Chinas system begins to look less authoritative and that’s what China is aiming for
So why would they sell TikTok?
Bytedance has more revenue earning products including DOUYIN
Anything that makes the US look insane is a Chinese win
What’s the poorest judgment you’ve ever witnessed from someone else?
My wife has had a concussion ,that she never fully recovered from a few years back. It can make her impulsive and has really messed with her sense of balance. I have asked her not to go down our steep basement stairs by herself, as an example of my concerns. My wife does not like other people doing things for her, she hates the idea that she might need help.
We retired out in the country, but still had the place in the city, which was empty because we were getting ready to sell it. The insurance company removed our burst pipe insurance, because no one was living in it. We had a cold snap and it dropped below minus 40 in the night, and didn’t get above minus 30 during the day.
So I went to the city to do some work on the house, and make sure a pipe didn’t burst.
The previous winter, our high efficiency furnace exhaust at our country place had frozen up, and shut down our furnace when it reached minus 35 for a week. So I insulated the exhaust pipe. Which on an older furnace would have been called a chimney. I was satisfied that it would take more than a week to freeze up this time.
So I am in the city, sitting out the cold snap and my wife is in the country. The furnace is running fine, but she can’t get to sleep, worrying that the exhaust will freeze up.
So at 1:00 in the morning, in minus 40 weather, she puts a ladder up against the house, grabs a crowbar, and climbs onto the snowy roof, and chips the ice that has formed on the exhaust off. She didn’t bring her phone with her.
Then she climbs back down the wobbly ladder. Its in deep snow and hasn’t sunk all the way to the ground.
She goes to bed and gets a good night’s sleep.
She is so proud of herself, that its painful for me ,to tell her to never do that again. Our nearest neighbor in the winter is a kilometer away. If she had fallen, or if the ladder had fallen, leaving her trapped on the roof in minus 40. She wouldn’t have lasted 2 hours, and she didn’t even take her phone.
I have gone up there and done the same thing. But never in the dark, never alone, I always had someone watching me. I always dug out the snow before placing the ladder. I never went up when it was below minus 35, though I would have if I had to.
What is the strangest reaction of someone who has just been fired?
The person to be fired was sitting in the VP’s office. Also present were an HR Rep, a person from Legal and the department manager (the immediate supervisor was not present).
The VP opened a folder and began to explain all the evidence they’d gathered. Theft of time, theft of property, misuse of resources and a few other things.
The firee held up his hand and said “Hey, you don’t need to read all that to me, and I’m sure you missed quite a bit. If that document you have there is an admission of wrongdoing, I get to say I was a voluntary quit and I can go my merry way as long as I don’t go around s**t-mouthing you, let me have it.”
According to the HR person (who told me about this), dead silence for a moment. Jaws dropping, and then the employee said “You guys are sloppy so maybe you should hire me back to stop people like me. I never got away with my crap anywhere else as long as I did here.”
More silence, then:
“Look, you know as well as me that if what I got away with ever got out to the clients, they’d be tripping over each other to rip up their contracts. You’re busy I’m sure and I guess I have to go get another job now so no games, okay. Just let me read that to be sure it won’t bite me and I’ll be on my way.”
The VP silently handed him the document, he read it, signed it and dated it. His parting words were “By the way, there’s nothing at my workstation I want, so just toss it if you like. See ya …”. Legal started to say “but we need to tell you about COBRA and your unemployment claim …” and he answered with “I probably know that stuff better than you. I can’t afford COBRA, I don’t qualify for unemployment because I’m a voluntary quit under what amounts to a gag agreement and I was never in the company retirement plan. See ya … got things to do.”
And he was gone, taking the 20 steps to the elevator never to be seen (by us) again.
Let it be said that there were a few VERY embarrassed people in that room. It soon became evident that he was telling the truth about all he got away with. A lot was right under the noses of the two area supervisors, but we had nothing in place at that time to pick up abuse of our email system (employees didn’t yet have Web access).
What caught him was that our Operations Manager, responsible for phone use, picked up on him quickly once he started abusing the phones (by calling 900 numbers). He hadn’t been misusing the phones prior to that. So the OpMgr was not only safe, but somewhat a hero. The employee, by not staying, never heard the part about his phone misuse and so never knew exactly how he was caught.
As a result:
Both supervisors were put on final written warning.
The department head got an oral to start paying more attention to what was going on “out there on the floor.”
IT was authorized to hire a SysAdmin and to immediately implement steps to prevent future email abuse.
Never Become Reliant On Other People or Things For Peace and Happiness
It’s so damn easy to get caught up in the trap of thinking that our happiness is dependent on external factors.
We convince ourselves that we’ll finally be content and at peace when we have that perfect relationship, that dream job, that luxurious house, or that fat bank account.
But here’s the harsh truth: relying on other people or material things to make you happy is a recipe for perpetual disappointment and dissatisfaction.
Because the reality is, no one and nothing outside of yourself can fill the voids within you. That’s an inside job.
Sure, a loving partner, a fulfilling career, and financial abundance can certainly enhance your life and bring you joy. But if you’re not already at peace with yourself, if you haven’t cultivated a deep sense of self-love and self-worth, those external things will never be enough.
You’ll always be chasing the next high, the next temporary fix, the next shiny object that you think will finally complete you. But it’s a mirage. A fleeting illusion that leaves you thirstier than before.
The truth is, genuine, sustainable happiness comes from within. It comes from learning to love and accept yourself fully, flaws and all. It comes from discovering your passions and purpose and pursuing them with unbridled enthusiasm. It comes from developing a rock-solid relationship with your own damn self.
When you’re truly at peace with who you are, when you’ve built an unshakeable foundation of self-love and self-respect, external circumstances lose their power over you. You’re no longer a slave to your surroundings, no longer dependent on others for your emotional wellbeing.
You become the master of your own happiness, the alchemist of your own joy.
And from that place of inner peace and wholeness, you can build deeply fulfilling relationships and achieve incredible things. But they become the cherry on top, not the entire fucking sundae.
So stop waiting for someone or something outside of yourself to make you feel complete. Stop giving your power away to external forces that are ultimately beyond your control.
Start turning inward. Start excavating the gold that’s already within you. Start cultivating an unbreakable bond with yourself.
Because at the end of the day, you are the only one who can give yourself the love, acceptance, and validation you crave. You are the only one who can fill your own cup until it overflows with abundant peace, happiness, and self-assuredness.
And when you learn to do that, when you become your own primary source of joy and fulfillment, you become truly unstoppable. You become the kind of person who radiates contentment and gratitude wherever you go, regardless of your external reality.
That’s the kind of happiness worth striving for – the kind that comes from within and can never be taken away from you. The kind that endures through life’s inevitable ups and downs. The kind that allows you to weather any storm with grace and resilience.
So stop searching for yourself in other people and things. Stop making your happiness contingent on circumstances beyond your control.
Start digging deep within yourself. Start unearthing the peace and joy that’s already there, just waiting to be unleashed. Start cultivating an ironclad sense of self-love and self-reliance.
Because when you do, you’ll find that everything you’ve been searching for has been inside you all along. And that, my friend, is the ultimate freedom.
Some AI generations
What is the craziest reason someone threatened to fire you?
A new consultant was hired by my company. I was working my first real job out of school (sales). The consultant came out to spend the day making sales calls with me. He critiqued my work, I listened to him, and tried to implement some of his advice in the next calls. He was very full of himself and full of something else too. Most of his advice might have applied to someone making sales calls on people in offices. We were calling on farmers. He spent the day talking down to me.
I took him back to his hotel, then made the 25 minute drive to our house. I called the CEO of our company (our families were friends) and told her to never send the guy back to work with me. She began to laugh, which was very annoying. When her laughter had slowed down a bit, I asked her what she found so funny. ( I was still pretty angry.) She told me that the guy had called 20 minutes earlier and fired me.
This was the second guy who had fired me from the same job, and for the same reason: I wasn’t a “polished” salesman. The CEO knew when I was hired that it would take me some time to learn the business, so she ignored both of them. I was promoted back to the home office, and was still working for that company after both of the folks who had “fired” me were gone. The consultant only lasted a few weeks. He pulled the same stunt on others that he had on me. The CEO got rid of him.
What happens inside casinos that most people don‘t know?
As someone who cleaned crime scenes, it is both amazing and creepy how well casinos would make every effort to cover up any suicides in the parking lots. The casinos know this is bad PR and they don’t want anyone to know that such occurs more than what one may think. Gambling addicts have the highest rate of suicide amongst all other addicts combined. Don’t believe such a statistic? Feel free to research it.
Casinos make the majority of their profits from gambling addicts. The kind who will gamble any time they have $20, electric bill be damned. If it wasn’t for the gambling addicts, casinos would not prosper nearly as much. It isn’t the high rollers nor the couple who goes out for a date. Those folks definitely help the profit margin but at the end of the day, the compulsive gamblers are where the majority of their profits originate from.
Casinos give the option of banning yourself but it’s a laughable illusion. I’ve known many folks who banned their self for five years and never had an issue entering during their ban. If you chest the casino, then somehow their facial recognition technology suddenly works. Imagine that….
Whenever a person jackpots, the manager of whatever area of the casino will come by and congratulate you. They will then take your I.D. ad disappear for a bit. What they are doing is trying to find out any possible way to not pay what is owed. Banned? You aren’t entitled to your jackpot. Have warrants? Good luck with that. The manager will then return with some dimwitted hostess. No one knows what the hostess actually does besides stand around and wear that plastic smile of theirs. They of course expect a nice tip for not actually even accomplishing anything. I will tip the folks cleaning out ash trays becsuse those workers actually have a real job which doesn’t rely on flirting with old men for better tips (basically prostituting one’s self in a way).
There are other things as well but I don’t wanna end up typing out a rambling explanation which goes on for hours.
“We live in an age of full spectrum deception.” — Edward Dowd
Clusterfuck Nation
You realize, don’t you, that what’s going on in our country is the collapse not just of an empire, or an economy, but a comprehensive paradigm of human progress. The hallmark of post-war life in Western Civ was supposed to be a return to sanity after the mid-twentieth century fugue of mass psychotic violence. The wish for just and rational order was not entirely pretense. But that was then. Now that we are going medieval on ourselves, the not-so-ironic result will be our literally going medieval, sinking back into a pre-modern existence of darkness, superstition, and penury, grubbing for a mere subsistence in the shadow of scuffling hobgoblins, our achievements lost and forgotten.
What’s most appalling is that our governing apparatus is visibly willing that to happen. When Barack Obama warned America to not underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck things up, was that some kind of joke? After all, it was Mr. Obama and his fellow blobsters — the cabal of Intel spooks, covert Marxist bureaucrats, lawfare ninjas, globalist megalomaniacs, post-liberal think tankers, weapons grifters, degenerate billionaires, and assorted mentally-ill camp followers — who inflicted Joe Biden on the body politic. And then ran him on the country like some demon algorithm designed to wreck the USA as fast as possible.
The source of anguish in all that is the struggle to understand why they would want that to happen. What debauched sense of history would drive anyone to such lunatic desperation? It’s a cliché now to say that the Democratic Party has turned its traditional moral scaffold upside down and inside out. It acts against the kitchen table interests of the working and middle classes. It’s against civil liberties. It demands mental obedience to patently insane policy. It’s avid for war, no matter how cruelly pointless. It’s deliberately stirring up racial hatred. It despises personal privacy. It feeds a rogue bureaucracy that has become a veritable Moloch, an all-devouring malevolent deity. And now, rather suddenly, it aligns itself with a faction that seeks to exterminate the Jews.
And how did the opposition to that epic divergence into bad faith turn so flabby? How did the Republican Party roll over and wheeze so feebly while the FBI ran amok swatting grandmothers in dawn raids, and the US attorney general made justice a whore, and a Republican Congress allowed the Frankenstein agency of Homeland Security to flood the country with its enemies and give them gobs of operational cash? If Mr. Trump was unappetizing to them as a leader, why were they unable to produce an alternative figure of standing and stature at least equally resolute? They look like traitors and cowards.
For the moment, the country lies mired, inert, and demoralized in the face of in those terrible mysteries. But events are still tending and the hidden hand of emergence still operates backstage, preparing surprises for us. You are necessarily aware that the center did not hold. It’s even hard to locate where the center used to be with the action so heavy on the far-out margins. You’re watching drag queens importune young children to shove all the Jews into the sea. And the kids are sitting next to their mommies. What happened to the mommies’ brains that permits them to think this spectacle is okay? How will the mommies ever get their minds right?
In some quarters, a great rage is building. Not a few resent the overthrow of common sense, common law, and common decency. You better believe they will be aiming to do something about it. They will stand up for their dignity, their culture, their history. Virtue isn’t dead; it’s just broke down on a lonely highway waiting to hitch a ride back to where the lights are still on. Don’t forget that this really is the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Meanwhile, prepare for action. It’s obvious that the enemies of the people don’t intend to rest. They are going to try to play out this string to the last move because otherwise a lot of them will be going to jail, or might even hang for their wickedness. Once they turned criminal, there was no turning back. They have dishonored themselves and they’re trying to dishonor their country.
It’s true nonetheless that we’re moving into a new disposition of the human project. It’s going to be smaller and leaner, and not nearly as complex as the tottering Rube Goldberg apparatus we’re currently trapped in. We don’t know yet what the shape and texture of that America is going to be. As the sage Yogi Berra observed, our whole future is ahead of us. If you’re not among the insane, have faith. We’ll get there and everything is going to be all right.
Do you want to move to China from the US?
I am neither Chinese or American but am an Australian outsider observer! From where I stand I would wonder why anyone from a thriving, prosperous expanding nation would want to move to.
Why would an American want to move to China?
Different people have different reasons.
I came to China because the Chinese government agreed to support my research and give me opportunity to build a team to pursue solutions for health problems with genomics. I tried again and again through the grant process and VC channels in the US. For grants, if you weren’t part of the group that gets most of the grant money or one of their proteges (“the club”), you weren’t getting a grant. And, if you weren’t 20 something with no experience but full of wild ideas VC funds weren’t interested, they are all looking for the next Zuckerberg or Gates. They didn’t care about sound business plans.
So, I came to China where I was first able to almost immediately raise money from VCs and then after a year the Chinese government agreed to support me, my team and my projects.
China is the land of opportunity for talented scientists. They are putting a lot of money into developing a broad group of technologies of which biotech is one. A key focus of the education system is STEM graduates. So, for me, China was the obvious choice.
Note: I could’ve gotten a job in the US and been paid a very good wage, although I am doing well, especially by Chinese standards, I would’ve made more in the US. But, here I am supported to pursue my passion. And, it is a very good opportunity to experience the culture and the people.
The largest group of American expats here in China are teachers though. In China, teaching is a very well respected profession and the teachers are well compensated with lots of perks. They came here, some for the experience, most for the increased wages and respect that they found they lacked in the US.
My father left my brother/sister very little inheritance compared to me due to little contact with him. They feel I should give them a bigger part of the inheritance. I’d like opinions on whether my father’s wishes should be followed or not?
I have a simular situation — my older sister (79) took my dad (99) to a dealership and she used my dad’s debit card to buy a car — $36,000 and $6000 cash down last year. She paid him $400 monthly for a year! How does that add up to $30,000?
He bought her a house in 1980 cash in Calif. Dad also gave her his stamp collection ($80,000). Dad pays $1100 a month to live in her and her husbands (96) house. They called me over to help care for my dad so I do most his stuff and became his POA (they charge me $500 plus $250 food to stay here). My sister takes care of her husband. Dad has about $70,000 cash and he wrote a will splitting it between my brother (71) and I (68) only. My sister got upset!
My Sister originally had it written that she would keep the car plus $20,000 cash, stamp collection and I for some reason would receive nothing —leaving my brother to get the rest.
I am the closest to Dad. I am in the nursing field and was the only one of us kids to care for my Dad’s Mom a year, my Mother’s Mom 10 years in my home. And my Mom 5 years who had a terrible illness with no help from siblings. My Sister will demand we split the remaining cash 3 ways but Dad wrote it his way and I will honor it the way he chose it.
What is the most petty thing you’ve done, or someone has done to you?
This girl stole my thermos that my dad gave to me with his company’s name on it, and tried to pretend that it was hers all along.
Let’s call this girl Maya.
Now, Maya and I weren’t friends, but we were pretty friendly. Just the normal, ‘hi’ and ‘hello’ occasionally.
She was really good friends with some of my friends at that point.
One Friday I had left my thermos at school. It sucked, but I waited until Monday to get it back.
I searched all over the school for it, but I couldn’t find it.
A week later, a friend of mine pointed out Maya’s ‘new’ thermos and asked, “Wait, isn’t that your thermos?”.
It most definitely was mine.
Of course, I made sure that it was, in fact, mine.
Scratches that I made in it with a pencil? Check.
Company name etched into it? Check.
Was it literally the exact same thermos I had lost a week ago? Triple check.
After eliminating any and all possibility that this was not my thermos, I finally confronted Maya.
She decided to play dumb.
Me: Hey, Maya, where’d you get that thermos from?
Maya: Uh, my mom bought it for me.
Me: Huh, where does your mom work?
Maya: At some nursing place, why?
Me: I see…and is that the place written on your thermos?
Maya: …Yup.
*she tries to walk away at this point but I stop her*
Me: Well, that’s odd, because I had just lost a thermos recently that was the exact same! Funny how that company is actually my dad’s and how it’s a trucking company.
Maya: Um, I’ve had this thermos for a couple weeks now.
Me: …Is that so? Well, if you see my thermos around please tell me!
Maya: Will do!
It was so frustrating because she was obviously lying to me. I knew she was lying. She knew I knew she was lying. But she kept lying.
I tried to address our mutual friends but they took her side. They lied and said that she’s had it ‘since Christmas’, when Maya said herself that she’d only had it for a couple weeks.
I felt extremely frustrated with the entire situation so I vented to a teacher I was close with and trusted.
He said that I should just leave it be if I already addressed it with her since it was only a thermos.
IT WAS NOT ONLY A THERMOS!
If she got away with this once, that would give her a reason to do it again and again!
I had to do good, vigilante-style justice, to teach Ms. Maya a lesson.
During my 8th period class I asked my teacher if I could fill up my water bottle.
I knew what class she had then: Band.
Now band is pretty chaotic, but the music teacher thinks I’m an awesome person since I stay in there during lunch all the time.
No one gave me a second look when I walked in.
I spotted Maya. She was in the far corner of the room by the piano joking and laughing with the very friends who had lied to me.
She had left all her belongings closer to the door where I now was.
I walked by them but saw that the thermos wasn’t there.
I looked back over to the piano and there it was, in all its glory.
The thermos!
My thermos.
It was sitting at the top of the piano while she was sitting on the piano bench facing the other way.
I walked up as casually as possible, planning on getting the thermos and getting the hell out of there.
A friend of hers saw me and I mentally froze.
I got over my initial shock and then gave her a smile and a ‘Hey!’, and pretended I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
She smiled back and went back to talking with Maya.
I gave a sigh of relief and decided to just go big or go home.
I grabbed the thermos, turned around, waved to the band teacher and made my way to the door.
Mentally praying, ‘please don’t let her see me, please don’t let her see me, please don’t let her see me..’, I made it all the way to the door.
In a moment of weakness I took a quick glance back to make sure I wasn’t spotted.
They were still talking and laughing, oblivious to the fact that I just won this one-sided war.
I smiled to myself and walked out the door and back to my class.
Maya never knew what happened to ‘her’ thermos.
And I never brought it to school again.
Crab Stuffed Chicken Breasts
Ingredients
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 tablespoons butter, divided
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup chicken broth
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 (6 ounce) can crab meat or 6 ounces imitation crab meat
1 can mushroom stems
1/3 cup crushed saltines (10)
2 tablespoons parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt pepper
1 cup shredded Swiss cheese
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Instructions
Cover chicken breasts with plastic wrap and pound to a 1/4 inch thickness.
In saucepan, melt 3 tablespoons of the butter.
Stir in flour until smooth.
Gradually stir in chicken broth and milk and bring to a boil. Boil and stir for 2 minutes.
Remove from heat and set aside.
In a skillet, sauté onion in remaining 1 tablespoon butter until tender.
Add crab meat, mushrooms, crushed saltines, parsley, salt and pepper and 2 tablespoons of the white sauce; heat until warm.
Place 1/2 cup or less of mixture on each chicken breast. Roll up and secure with wooden picks.
Place in greased baking dish with secured side down. Top with remaining sauce.
Cover and bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes or until chicken runs clear.
Sprinkle cheese and paprika on top.
Bake uncovered 8 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.
The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who deliberately arouse someone’s love without the intention of loving them back.
Pretty people aren’t always beautiful, and beautiful people aren’t always pretty. I hope you know the difference.
You’re not really rich until you have something that money can’t buy.
The more you can talk about uncomfortable things with someone, the more comfortable you’re with them
The less you react, the more stable you become. Yes, chemistry works in real life situations too 🙂
Don’t judge the choices someone made if you don’t know the options they had to choose from.
Be sweet like sugar but don’t let people use and dissolve you as per their requirement.
No one ever became big in life by showing how small someone else is.
If there is no one to hold your hand, put your hand in your pocket and continue.
Everyone loves you until you become competition.
One must not lose faith in humanity . humanity is like an ocean , if few drops of ocean is dirty , ocean doesn’t become dirty.
We can complain rose bushes have thorns or we can rejoice that thorn bushes have rose. So it always our choice to be positive or negative.
Not everyone you lose, is a loss.
I read this one somewhere- The best way to be safe is to be dangerous.
TESLA KNEW The Secret of the Great Pyramid: Unlimited Energy to Power the World
This is really great!
TESLA KNEW The Secret of the Great Pyramid of Giza: A Power Plant to Generate Unlimited Free Energy for the World Nikola Tesla believed that he could harness the energy from inside the earth and transmit that power wirelessly around the world. His early experiments were successful. But his research mysteriously vanished after his death. There is no evidence left of Tesla’s wireless power technology. Or is there? For years we were taught that the Great Pyramid of Giza was a tomb for a king. It wasn’t. It had a different purpose. Tesla didn’t invent wireless power. It’s been here for 5,000 years. And probably a lot longer than that. Let’s find out why.
Working as an engineer, and getting laid off every 6 to 9 months or so wasn’t a very stable life. I really don’t know why I put up with it. I somehow had this idea that it would eventually end, and things would change.
But nope.
It never did.
As a result, as soon as I would start a new job (always in a new state, in a new geographic city) I would have to start fresh. Hustling at work, then rushing home to set up the household.
And by the time that things were settled down to some kind of state of normalcy, I’d get the rug ripped out from under me yet again.
Sigh.
Always on a Friday.
Or, the day right before a holiday, like Christmas.
All that time, I really didn’t have the time and resources to furnish a house properly. So I would grab and pick and place what ever was needed at the time. And yes, I did have a nice set of living room sofas and tables when I was in training at China Lake.
But that was the exception.
Not the rule.
Oh, and I did buy a great “sleigh” bed that was simply awesome! But that is not germane to this story, anyways.
However, I did splurge once.
I did. I bought something for myself.
After my divorce from my first wife finally occurred, and youse guys know how difficult it is to divorce a person with a mental illness, I celebrated by buying myself a nice leather chair.
It was a real, old fashioned chair, fully upholstered in real leather, and I loved it.
So did my cats.
They would claw it all the time, and the hide would never tear. Thus giving the chair a nice rustic and worn look. Ah, I did love that thing.
But life happens.
When I was carted off to prison, my “friends” took my belongings and I haven’t seen them since. Same with all my books and electronics.
All gone.
Sigh.
…
Anyways, us men don’t need much.
A computer; a big screen. A nice chair. A bed.
That’s about it.
If you do want to be spartan and have something comfortable, invest in a top of the line, leather chair. You will never regret it.
No matter how much it costs.
Trust me on this.
A man needs his very own chair.
HIS chair.
Not a chair for the dogs to take over, or the kids to play on. That’s “daddy’s chair” Keep off of it.
A man needs a chair.
Today…
Does it bother you that TikTok CEO, Shou Chew, is repeatedly asked if he is a member of the Chinese Communist Party despite being Singaporean?
Yes, it does.
This is a deliberately loaded question asked by Sen. Tom Cotton repeatedly to score propaganda points in the US media. This is because most Americans have been taught to have an irrational hatred of the word “Communist”, without understanding that the word is simply a relic from the Party’s founding in 1921.
Saying that the Communist Party of China believes in Communism is like saying that the US Democratic Party believes that the US is a democracy, while the Republican Party believes that the US is a republic. While there is some basis to this, the policy differences between both parties are much more profound than what is reflected in their names.
Many Americans continue to believe that the CPC is dedicated to “defeating” the US, and converting American society to a form of government like China’s.
In fact, the Chinese government is pro-development and pro-trade, because China has grown to the world’s second-largest economy in fifty years by introducing capitalist policies supported and promoted by the US, and participating in trade organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO).
US politicians and the media have repeatedly accused Chinese companies of IP violations and violating the rules, but this is something all growing economies have done in their history. In the second half of the nineteenth century, this was what US inventors, entrepreneurs and manufacturers did to Europe.
To sum up, the use of this language is part of a concerted effort to dehumanize any business which has been successful in China, and is now successful outside China.
This dehumanizing paves the way for more extreme measures and actions in the future.
Unfortunately, this rhetoric has been used repeatedly in the US’s past with American Indians, Irish, Italians, Chinese in the 19th century, African-Americans, Jews, Japanese-Americans, Hispanics and Muslims.
Now it is the turn of the Chinese again.
Pretzel Chicken
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
8 pieces of your favorite cut of chicken
1 cup pretzel crumbs
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Salt and pepper to taste
Garlic powder, to taste
Paprika to taste
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Instructions
Crush pretzels in blender.
Mix (in a bowl or paper bag) pretzels, flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika.
In another bowl, combine soy sauce and lemon juice.
Dip chicken pieces into liquid mixture, then roll around (or shake in paper bag) in dry mixture.
Put the coated pieces in a shallow or flat pan lined with foil.
Bake at 375 degrees F for one hour.
Turn over chicken over after 30 minutes.
U.S. foreign policy isolates the U.S.
This is a very, very good discussion.
As I have said many times: the isolator becomes isolated. People are sick of the bully and are fighting back.
In a country with universal healthcare, is there a limit to how much you will be cared for?
Yes there is. I have experience of both the UK NHS and also HK’s system.
I’ve lived under the PRC system but don’t have much experience with it as I don’t get ill and hopefully this will remain the same for a long time.
The UK has NICE – National Institute of Clinical Excellence.
For regular injuries and stuff no, I had my nose and fingers broken many many times from fights in the UK, they kept putting me back together, but for more complex treatments…
In short they decide what drugs can be used, what to treat and how many treatments you can be given of something. Some drugs under NICE are too expensive for the benefit. So they’re not purchased or used by the NHS. Some treatments like IVF are limited in how many times you can have it.
In HK? There is a nominal fee, but there have been cases where there is strict rationing, the HK medical system is very pain killer happy. They’ll give you painkillers even if you’re quite badly hurt and tell you to go away. There’s 5–6 pretty tragic cases of somebody needing an organ. Organ donation is iffy here due to cultural things. But I remember several men, they found a viable liver / kidney. But they couldn’t perform the transplant as they simply didn’t have the budget to carry out the surgery so they had to wait till the next tax year. But by then the organ had been given to somebody else.
The Dating Scene DESTROYED Them But Women Keep Coming Back For More
This is a great Video. This brings back painful memories which i have been enduring. My relationship of 5 years ended 3 months ago. The love of my life decided to leave me, I really love her so much I can’t stop thinking about her, I’ve tried my very best to get her back in my life, but to no avail, I’m frustrated, I don’t see my life with anyone else. I’ve done my best to get rid of the thoughts of her, but I can’t, I don’t know why I’m saying this here, I really miss her and just can’t stop thinking about her.
Have you ever witnessed a tragedy at a wedding?
The culmination of “Murphy’s Law” in excess.
When I was 20, my two good friends, E and S, were getting married. I had known him, E, since high school, and her, S, since the start of college.
They were both those clumsy types of people — you know the type who seems to always trip on that small thing, or slip on that patch of ice.
While at their wedding, it seemed that their clumsiness transferred to everyone and everything else—meaning that nearly everything that could go wrong, did, in fact, go wrong.
Here’s a summary list, instead of the whole story:
Power cut out while everything was being set up—this was not the only power outage that would happen.
The priest who was to wed them was late—got in a fender-bender accident on the way.
The rings were supposed to be delivered by the best man. He forgot them. So he had to drive the one hour round trip to get them.
The photographer dropped his camera and shattered it. He said not to worry, he had a backup—he dropped it, too. Their pictures were taken by standard cameras from relatives.
When the priest finally arrived, he slipped on someone’s spilled coffee, breaking his wrist. He still conducted the ceremony.
The air conditioning quit working after the second power outage, right as the music to walk down the aisle was starting. It would get so hot that everyone was sweating profusely by the end.
When the groom, E, was waiting at the altar, the power went out again. A few laughs, a few groans, and quite a bit of murmurs of annoyance were all that could be heard.
As the ceremony began, the priest had the wrong names—called them two women’s names. Awkwardness at best.
The best man passed out, mostly due to the stress of having to race back to his house to get the rings and the heat inside once the AC cut out.
One of the relatives in the back got into a fight with another and had to be escorted out of the building.
Power went out once more as vows were being said.
After they’re officially married and exiting, the bride slipped on some thrown “bird-friendly” rice. The groom got one in his eye.
The printed instructions to the reception took everyone to the wrong entrance, which, as it is set up, means that everyone was beyond confused on how to circle the whole compound just to get to the other side. It took 20 minutes for people to make some signs and stand on the corner to redirect people where to go.
They had an open bar. A drunken uncle loudly wished, over the microphone, them the best “F*cks of their lives.”
A jaded ex of the groom’s (also an old acquaintance of mine) tried to crash the reception and make a scene – thankfully she was handled by the reception hall’s security.
Finally, they both fell during the bride/groom dance.
They’re both still happily married, 10 years later, and just as clumsy as ever.
CONFIRMED: Dengue Fever Outbreak in Brazil and Peru – Millions Sick, Thousands Dead
Brazil surpassed 4 million cases of dengue fever registered this year, according to an update from the Ministry of Health’s Arbovirus Monitoring Panel this Monday. Argentina now has its own outbreak.
In total, 4,127,571 probable cases of the disease were reported across the country in the first four months of 2024.
As for dengue deaths, 1,937 have been confirmed and 2,345 are under investigation. The incidence rate of the disease in the country is 2,032.7 cases for each group of 100,000 population.
The most affected age group is 20 to 29 years old, which accounts for the majority of cases. The least affected age group is children under 1 year old, followed by people aged 80 or over and children aged 1 to 4 years old.
The units of the Federation with the highest incidence of the disease are the Federal District, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Espírito Santo, Goiás and Santa Catarina.
Projections released at the beginning of the year indicate that dengue cases in the country could reach 4,225,885. With the country already seeing over 4.1 Million cases, that estimate is way low.
It is noteworthy that about 6 weeks ago Bill Gates & Oxitec released genetically modified mosquitoes in Brazil.
PERU
Deaths caused by the mosquito-borne dengue disease have more than tripled in Peru so far this year, according to data from the South American nation’s government, which is redoubling efforts to contain an epidemic that has hit poor areas the hardest.
The government this week said it had approved an “emergency decree” allowing extraordinary economic measures to bolster the plan to counter the outbreak.
Mild symptoms include nausea, rashes and body pains, while a rarer severe form, more threatening for infants and pregnant women, can cause internal bleeding and is potentially fatal.
Peru’s health ministry said that as of Thursday, there were 117 registered deaths from dengue so far this year compared with 33 in the same period of 2023. Suspected cases have also more than tripled to reach some 135,000.
So Bill Gates and his pals released mosquitos in South America, and now Brazil and Peru are suffering wild Dengue Fever Outbreaks. I have questions….and not about climate change.
Africa will Be the New China Very Soon – Economist Jeffrey Sachs.
“Africa is a continent brimming with potential. From its rich natural resources to its vibrant cultures and entrepreneurial spirit, Africa is poised to become a global powerhouse
“Africa’s potential lies in its youthful population, its expanding markets, and its increasing connectivity to the global economy. With the right investments and policies, Africa can unleash a wave of innovation and growth that benefits both its people and the world.”
“One of Africa’s greatest assets is its abundant natural resources, including minerals, oil, and arable land.”
“With sustainable management and responsible investment, Africa’s natural wealth can drive economic development and lift millions out of poverty.”
“Africa’s potential extends beyond its resources. It’s a hotbed of innovation and creativity, with a burgeoning startup ecosystem that’s generating solutions to some of the continent’s most pressing challenges.”
From fintech to renewable energy, African entrepreneurs are harnessing technology to drive social impact and economic progress.”
“Africa’s cultural diversity is another source of strength and potential. Its art, music, and traditions are capturing global attention and driving tourism and cultural exchange.”
What is the reason behind Chinese companies, such as Huawei, choosing to purchase from TSMC instead of constructing their own fabs?
In the early days of the semiconductor industry, technical difficulty and investment were relatively small, and a single company could complete all aspects of design, manufacturing, and testing. For example, Intel in the 1990s completed all aspects alone.
As Moore’s Law continues to develop, semiconductors are becoming more sophisticated and complex. The cost for a single company to complete all links is getting higher and higher, and resource utilization is getting lower and lower. As a result, division of labor began to appear throughout the industry. After entering the 21st century, semiconductor design, manufacturing, packaging and testing are often completed by professional companies.
Semiconductor design companies focus on designing semiconductors and applying them in their own fields. Semiconductor manufacturing companies focus on production, and they do not care about design and application. This will help these companies leverage their own strengths and maximize the use of assets, thereby reducing costs and improving efficiency.
China’s semiconductor companies emerged in the 2010s, when the world’s semiconductor division of labor was already very mature. Their scale cannot be compared with companies like Intel or AMD, or Qualcomm. To compete with leading companies, they must adapt to this division of labor, reduce their costs to the greatest extent, and improve their competitiveness. Even traditional semiconductor giants like AMD and Qualcomm entrust semiconductor production to manufacturers like TSMC.
Therefore, it is very normal for companies like Huawei to entrust semiconductor manufacturing to companies like TSMC. It would be foolish and unreasonable for them to build their own production capacity from scratch and try to replace TSMC.
This is reflected in a reporter’s interview with Huawei CEO Yu in 2020. He told reporters: We used to believe very much in global division of labor, and we believed that global division of labor was the most efficient option. Therefore, US sanctions have made us very passive. If we had chosen to invest in semiconductor manufacturing, we would not be facing these troubles today.
Obviously, it is political behavior that destroys the natural selection of the market, and the global division of labor in semiconductors is destroyed.
KNOCKOUT: China’s BOLD Move Threatens To Dethrone The US In Europe’s Economy
In a bold move, China is moving fast to court the EU economy away from the US. President will be visiting France, Serbia and Hungary to show Europe there are big benefits in partnering and trading with China. More importantly, building China’s trade allows them to secure their economy against US economic sanctions. Here’s what you must know!
How can the Indian government support and empower farmers to enhance their role in the country’s economy?
When asked a question like this, with respect to India, I always find out
What did the Chinese do?
Next I find out
What are the mistakes the Chinese did?
Next I find out
How can we modify the Chinese solution to suit India given the differences in Land ownership, Laws and Political system?
Facts:-
Now China is a nation of 1.4 Billion people just like India is
In both these nations, Agriculture is a sustenance activity
This means the priority is to FEED 1.4 BILLION PEOPLE rather than use Agriculture and convert it into a Fully Profit based commercial model
Unlike Brazil, Russia or Ukraine where Agriculture is a fully commercial activity like any other with a fully established profit motive
So in both India and China – the Farmer is NOT a businessman working on a profit motive
His priority is to grow as much food grains as possible to ensure the country can eat
India and China both depend on the Supply Side Model
This means farmers grow the maximum crop they can produce and THEN demand is catered to
If there is excess, prices fall and if there is a deficit, prices rise and the Nation imports to bring down prices or uses RESERVE STOCKS
Thus it’s clear that
The Farmer is not a Businessman and treating him like one is a big minus
It is clear that the Farmers only job must be to efficiently grow crops and get a high yield
It is someone else’s Job to protect the farmer from market price shocks and to ensure the farmer can sustain himself and grow
In China – this role is adopted by the State
The State sets a fair price, The State sets the storage and transportation costs, The State provides the seed and facilities, The State gives insurance against floods and bad weather
In India – this role is not fulfilled properly by anyone
Prices are set by exploitative and opaque bodies in the name of market forces, Seed and facilities are private and depend on loans, Insurance is a rarity and non existent on any but largest holdings
Thus Capitalism is brutally exploited
In China a farmer can get a Tractor on a State loan and flexibly pay across a 5 year period with no interest
In India, a farmer borrows at 10.50% interest and can repossess the tractor if 3 months interest isn’t paid
Thus the first thing to do is to
Offer Nationwide Insurance against Crop failures to farmers which should include payment of bank interest for 6–9 months at least
Get the State to handle Storage and Distribution of Grain or get a State -Private Body Joint Venture to do so at fixed capped costs
Change the nature of Agricultural financing
You do this, then the next step is to take care of the operational aspects of Agriculture
NEEDED TO BE SAID!!! | Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond REACTION!!!!
THIS MAN SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER!! His words echo in my old soul!
What made you emotional today?
An old man named Leonard Mack cried today in court. His attorneys comforted him. In 1975, Mack was a 23-year-old Vietnam veteran, he had a two-year-old daughter and a newborn son. His family meant the world to him. Then, just as he was beginning to find his way in this world, he was falsely accused of raping a teenage girl…
Leonard Mack, an innocent man, landed behind bars. And for almost eight years he remained imprisoned. He missed vital parts of the childhood of his son and daughter. Missed first steps, first words. Life passed him by, and all he could do was be an onlooker from afar, frozen in time, stuck in a steel and concrete hellhole… when he was freed, he was now in his thirties, and forced to go through life as a felon and a registered sex offender. His life, in a sense, was over before it began in earnest. It’s only now that Mr. Mack was finally exonerated in full, and declared innocent.
It took almost half a century for a DNA database proved another man was guilty of the crime for which Mack served the time and suffered the pain. Using DNA to solve crimes is a beautiful invention… but I am often haunted by the thought of all those countless souls who suffered unjustly for the crimes of others, before such technologies were known or widely available to law enforcement.
The Perversion of Marriage & The Assault On Christianity
Palestinian Muslim here, and do I respect all Christian denominations but Orthodoxy has a special place in my heart, not only because Orthodox Christians are more aligned with my people’s political stance but also because of they are the most outspoken group against degeneracy
Shorpy
What do they eat in the UK that an American wouldn’t?
Image: Me visiting the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota.
I came to live in the United States in April 2006. I have an American wife and I have persuaded her to cook several British foods that are rarely eaten in the United States.
Interesting to me a visit to the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota taught me that the canned pork product is much more loved outside the US than at home. Personally despite what you might think with the photo, my visit took me to the very gates of heaven.
Somethings that can’t be found in the US easily.
Ox tongue, it can be found shredded in many Mexican supermarkets as Lingua, but it is not generally found as a sliced meat. My wife has bought a tongue a couple of times and prepared it. It is a long process to do that properly so often I opt for the shredded variety.
Black pudding. Often called by Americans Blood Sausage, it is very difficult to buy because it does contain blood and many people don’t imagine they would like it. Sadly I would have more for me, if only the blood was a legal food additive.
Heinz Baked beans. I find it puzzling that the humble baked bean found in every British grocers and supermarket is almost unknown in the US. Heinz being a US company and all. But they can be purchased in specialist stores that cater to ex patriot British and of course Amazon.
Lamb or Ox liver is difficult to find. The ability to buy offal is extremely limited. It seems Americans just much prefer the outside muscle meat rather than the more nutricious insides of animals. Offal in general is awfully expensive when you find it.
Lamb, Ox or Pig Kidneys. Again it’s offal see Liver.
Fruit Cake. For some reasons Americans like their cakes to be puffy, sweet and overly iced confections. I have tried to eat some American varieties of fruit cake. Finding them to have the weight and consistancy of house bricks. The art of good fruit cake making has not survived in the US.
Mushy Peas: My wife makes me mushy peas to go with my fish and chips. I don’t know why Americans cannot find the heart to love a good spoonful of mushy peas. After all it is a simple product, boiled peas but I am sure if one charged $50 per spoonful on a Las Vegas strip tasting menu they would be raved about on the Food Network and have competitions to the chef making the best mushy pea ever.
Scotch Eggs. My wife quickly learned to make Scotch Eggs. Hard boiled eggs wrapped in a coat of sausage meat. Simple but fr some reason it confounds many Americans that one could combine the two, yet thy eat sausage or sausage patties and eggs for breakfast at times.
Shandy, the 50–50 mix of Bitter and Lemonade. It can’t be bought in stores like it can in Britain, but can be recreated, I buy imported Newcastle Brown Ale and use 7 Up as a lemonade substitute. One place I ordered Shandy in the US filled the glass with Bud Light and added a drop, I mean a real drop of 7 Up. Nowhere near a 50–50 mix and not particularly satisfying on a hot California day.
These are just a few things that I have come across. I have also found many regional American foods that are very good and interesting to eat, many of which have roots in old European everyday working peoples foods. Filling, high calorie and hunger supressing foods to go to work on in the morning and kept you full all the working day.
Most foods from home I can either recreate or use what is available to substitute. So there is no real hardship on my part.
Thanks for reading.
All the best.
Some fun Comix
Honestly, some of these would make great memes.
Paper Bag Chicken
Brown bag chicken is a vintage cooking method that produces delicious, juicy chicken every time. Perfect for any poultry, too!
If you love the way a bird turns out in those plastic oven bags, but wish there was an alternative then I’m here to make that wish come true for you.
Plastics can impart unhealthy chemicals into foods, so if you’ve gone to the trouble to source local, pastured, organic poultry you don’t want to ruin it with petrochemicals right? Today, I’m sharing how I make delicious, moist, tender and flavorful Brown Bag Chicken (and even holiday Turkeys!) What? Baking in a brown paper bag? Yes, you read that right – in an ordinary brown paper bag.
Apparently, making Brown Bag Chicken has been around for several decades.
Although I could not exactly pinpoint what era in which it began, it seems like perhaps the 40s or 50s. I always feel like I should be wearing pearls, heels and one of those poofy-skirted dresses when I make this. And, depending on the day, I might feel like I got some ‘splainin to do, even though my name is not Lucy. Maybe that’s because I like to watch I Love Lucy re-runs while I’m cooking.
There are two divided camps on this method.
The Once You Cook in a Brown Paper Bag You’ll Never Go Back camp and the Cooking in a Paper Bag is DANGEROUS crowd.
The nay-sayers warn that the bag could catch on fire or that paper bags are unsanitary. It is technically possible for the bag to catch on fire, but that is probably only if it comes in contact with the side or top of the oven or the heating element in an electric model. Wouldn’t the same be true for plastic bags coming in contact with the same surfaces?
As with any method you employ to cook food inside a giant gas or electric powered box, you should pay attention to what you’re doing and use common sense.
The concern over a paper bag being unsanitary comes from the inks and glues used in manufacturing the bags, and the possibility that the paper could contain metal shavings from being recycled.
Using a bag that has no ink, or very minimal printing on the bag, that has not been used before (you can very easily and inexpensively get a new paper bag at a grocery store), minimizes at least some of those risks.
Honestly, compared to having endocrine-disrupting chemicals being steamed into your chicken, baking in a brown paper bag sounds much more healthy to me. But, that’s your call to make!
I joined the ranks of the Once You Cook in a Brown Paper Bag You’ll Never Go Back camp a couple of years ago.
I’m not even sure how I heard about it, but I can honestly say Brown Bag Chicken is the best chicken ever – moist and flavorful! The bag keeps the moisture inside and browns and crisps the skin.
I always cook my birds breast side down, too – that keeps the breast meat from drying out. You don’t get crispy skin on the breast portion that way, but for me it’s fine since I don’t eat the skin.
It’s so easy, once you try Brown Bag Chicken I’m sure you’ll love it!
Don’t be alarmed if your kitchen smells a little funny at first (kind of like a warm, greasy brown paper bag…if you can imagine that!), that will quickly be replaced by the aroma of delectable, juicy baked chicken.
There’s also no set way to season your bird, it’s more of a technique than a recipe so you can be as minimalist or creative as you want to be.
Ingredients
Butter, softened
Salt
Pepper
1 whole fryer
Chopped celery
Chopped bell pepper
Chopped onion
Chopped garlic
Instructions
Rub butter all over whole fryer, inside and out.
Salt and pepper fryer, inside and out.
Stuff fryer with chopped vegetables.
Place fryer in a brown paper bag which has been greased inside.
Roll up the open end and bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes per pound of chicken.
Bag it, seal it, bake it.
Put the chicken in the bag (SEAM SIDE DOWN!) then roll or fold the top in close to the bird, tucking it under if you can. If you can’t, and it won’t stay closed, you could put a couple staples in the fold to keep it shut. I’ve never had to do that myself. Or, you could use kitchen twine and tie it shut.
Place your buttered, seasoned, bagged bird on a baking sheet with sides. Juices will collect on the baking sheet and you don’t want that dripping to the bottom of your oven. You can also use a shallow baking dish or roasting pan. (I love my Pampered Chef Stoneware Bar Pan!).
Put it in the oven and bake for one and a half hours.
You may need to adjust your cooking times according to the size of your bird or if it’s stuffed with stuffing, for example. In my oven, an hour and a half is just right for an average sized chicken. If you remembered to put the seam side of the bag down, you can easily remove the bag by grabbing opposite corners and pulling the bag off over your chicken.
Give this brown bag chicken a rest before slicing to keep it juicy.
Waiting 10 or 15 minutes to slice gorgeously roasted bird will keep the tasty juices inside the meat. I know it’s hard to wait, but trust me it’s worth it!
We’ve made many Thanksgiving turkeys using this same brown bag method. Just be sure your turkey will fit the bag you have (or vice versa).
Any time I’m roasting poultry, I use this brown bag chicken method and the results are never disappointing!
ITALY’S WARNING to the WORLD – It’s Over!!
What factors contribute to China potentially surpassing the USA in terms of global power, such as military and economy?
China has 4 times the population of USA, it will naturally surpass USA if it develops without any foreign interference.
USA lacks knowledge about being the master, because it doesn’t have a long history.
The present situation for USA is like the last years of Ming dynasty of China. At that time, China faced following problems:
Manchu’s power is growing, however, Ming took a strong attitude toward Manchus, which caused the latter give up any hope to build a good relationship with Ming and stayed within the map of Ming.(USA to China)
Long lasting alert and histility on Mongolians (who established the last dynasty prior than Ming) including trade embargo, Mongolians had no choice but to allied with Manchus. (USA to Russia/China)
Military abuse in southwest China, including some places in present Myanmar and Vietnam, but ignored the peasants’ uprising in inland. (USA in Iraq, Afghanistan)
War of parties in the government. (Democrats, Republicans)
Broken domestic economy,and the chaos caused by bankrupted farmers and merchants, which eventually evolved into a nation wide uprising. (Inflation, high interest rates, banks go bankrupt)
USA adopts a “winner takes all” mindset and does not want to share its power with others, this inevitably made others to think of other possibilities.
A simple case:
In around 2010–2012, there was a hot discussion among China, Japan and Korea to promote an “Asian Dollar” as the three became the biggest ecomoic zone in the world. However, in 2012, Korea and Japan’s relation was broken by Dokudo Island crisis, China and Japan relation was ruined by Diaoyu/Senkaku Island crisis, Japan’s ambassidor was “comitted suicide” at home. The Asian Dollar became an illusion after the relations among the three went down. Everyone knows it is USA behind the whole thing, just like NordStream II. Because if Asian Dollar succeeded, the US Dollar is threatened.
But look back from 12 years later, we can see, the Asian Dollar at that time can not be an independent currency as the three all rely on US Dollar and US market. Therefore, USA can try to exert its influence on Japan and Korea to make AD anchored USD, and USD’s position is guaranteed. Eventhough we can foresee AD does take some share from USD, but AD as a regional currency, will not replace USD globally, same as the Euro.
However, if there’s a AD 2.0 in future, as China’s power grows much stronger, the AD 2.0 does have the potential to replace USD.
In China, there’s an old saying describe this: 丢了西瓜拣芝麻 (Throw a watermelon away to pick up a sesame.)
“USA Collapse Is Far WORSE Than You Think…” — Robert Kiyosaki’s Last WARNING
What is the brutal truth about people?
Only in America. -MM
A Lifeguard Was Fired For Saving A Drowning Man
Sometimes, rules and regulations ply over efforts and emotions!
Tomas Lopez was on duty at Hallandale Beach, Florida, when someone rushed over to his post. A man had swum out too far, Lopez was told, and the victim was drowning. As any lifeguard would, Lopez rushed over and got the man to shore with the help of some other beachgoers. There, they gave the man CPR, called the paramedics, and saved his life.
When Lopez handed in the incident report, he was fired instead of being heralded as a hero .
The drowning man, his company informed him, was “out of the protected area” and a clearly visible sign said that anyone who swam there did so at his own risk.
According to company policy, anyone drowning outside the designated area was to be left to die.
Lopez’s coworkers were infuriated.
Six other lifeguards stood up for him, telling the company and the media that they would have done the exact same thing and that Lopez deserved an apology.
So the company fired them, too.
PENTAGON Is Shocked: S-500 PROMETHEUS Shot Down 11 US ATACMS Missiles Over Crimea and Crimean Bridge
Have you actually ever heard someone say ‘Do you know who I am?’ indignantly?
I had very recently moved across the US and transferred my job working the customer service desk at a high end grocery store. I grew up in Harlem and had recently moved to the deep Midwest. It was very different in a lot of ways.
One of the biggest ways, was “celebrity” behavior. Back home, the biggest rule for cashiers was to politely pretend you didn’t know who you were helping if that person was famous. Hilary Duff, Keanu Reeves, Evan Peters and many more were regulars at the store. We don’t ask for autographs, they don’t ask for special treatment, everyone’s happy.
Midwest is different. I worked at another location of that same expensive grocery store. Young men who played for the local hockey team were shockingly entitled and rude, sneering down at me while my supervisor stood by and sucked their dicks as vocally as he could regardless of how rude they were. “Influencers” in the area would record cashiers if they didn’t scan their kombucha fast enough. But worst of all, was the man who apparently built some kind of air conditioning franchise and was a “local hero” for providing AC in low income areas.
This man was a fucking menace. He didn’t like me from the first moment he saw me, and it took me a while to understand why. But apparently it was a significant personal slight that I didn’t ever invite him to cut to the front of the line, that I didn’t ever roll over backwards to fetch forgotten products for him while he was checking out. And worst of all, I never learned his name. Apparently all my coworkers and superiors had been babying this loud mouthed, disrespectful asshole who was just as much of a nobody as the rest of us were.
The third time I encountered him, I asked for his name to confirm an online order he had placed. The man threw his change at my head while laughing hysterically, then his face contorted into rage as he screamed over and over again, “YOU MUST NOT KNOW WHO I AM.”
I don’t remember exactly how I responded, but I do remember being fired.
The point is, only the most insecure and ungifted say things like “don’t you know who I am??”
If you hear that line, laugh long and hard. It’ll kill them.
Man EXPOSES Delusional Women’s HYPOCRISY
Funny but serious.
Is China a fascist police state?
No.
If it were then the living conditions of the people would not have improved.
You see a key part of fascism is where corporations get together with the government to fuck over the common man and woman. Yet living standards keep going up, more services and more access to healthcare/education keeps happening.
Police state? – There’s laws, if it says it’s illegal it’s illegal.
Second the bar for arrest is HIGH, this means if you’re a criminal unless you’re caught there and then in some violent crime? The police will take their time to investigate and make a strong case against you before arresting you. That’s why there’s such a high conviction rate.
This is important. It is important because if you arrest with a low bar and then collect evidence? The period up to the trial can also be punishment.
This is Gang Chen.
He was arrested by the American FBI for ‘spying for China’ because despite being an American, yes BORN in the USA he’s not considered an American because he’s not white.
He was arrested in 2021, charged and put under numerous restrictions. Gang Chen was one of the luckier ones as MIT supported him and paid for his defence.
Eventually charges were dropped.
But as noted above he was one of the lucky ones. Other university professors lose everything and the charges get dropped a day before trial. They lose EVERYTHING.
WHY was the Earth BEFORE the DINOSAURS TERRIFYING? The Most Amazing Prehistoric Secrets DOCUMENTARY
Dinosaurs, those magnificent creatures that once roamed the Earth, continue to captivate our imagination and scientific curiosity. The era of dinosaurs began approximately 230 million years ago in the Mesozoic Era, marking a period of dominance by these fascinating reptiles. Before dinosaurs, appearance of the dinosaurs and after the dinosaurs. This age, often referred to as the “Age of Dinosaurs,” witnessed the emergence of some of the most iconic species, from the towering Brachiosaurus to the fierce Tyrannosaurus rex. Their existence demonstrates the incredible diversity and adaptability of life on Earth, with species that thrived in a variety of habitats, from lush forests to arid deserts.
The extinction of dinosaurs, about 66 million years ago, remains one of the most intriguing topics in paleontology. This catastrophic event, believed to be caused by a combination of volcanic eruptions, climate changes, and the impact of a massive asteroid, led to the end of the Cretaceous Period and paved the way for the rise of mammals. The sudden disappearance of dinosaurs left a void that has puzzled scientists for centuries, sparking numerous theories and extensive research to uncover the details of this mass extinction.
Beyond their appearance and extinction, dinosaurs are a source of endless fascination due to the strange and sometimes bewildering facts that research has unearthed. For instance, some dinosaurs, like the Stegosaurus, had brains the size of a walnut, significantly small in comparison to their massive bodies. Others, such as the Parasaurolophus, had elaborate crests on their heads that could have been used for communication or to attract mates. The discovery of dinosaur fossils with preserved feathers has revolutionized our understanding of these creatures, suggesting a closer evolutionary link to birds than previously thought.
The pre-dinosaur world, often overshadowed by the towering presence of the Jurassic era’s giants, presents an equally fascinating chapter in Earth’s geological history. This epoch, spanning from the formation of the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago to roughly 250 million years before the appearance of the first dinosaurs, encompasses several pivotal periods that laid the groundwork for life as we know it. During the Hadean and Archean eons, the Earth was a molten hellscape, gradually cooling to form the first solid crust. This era saw the emergence of the first life forms, simple prokaryotic cells, which appeared approximately 3.5 billion years ago. These organisms were primarily anaerobic bacteria thriving in an oxygen-free atmosphere, setting the stage for the evolutionary leaps to follow.
The Proterozoic eon witnessed significant geological and biological transformations. This period marked the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, a direct result of photosynthesis by cyanobacteria. The “Great Oxygenation Event,” which occurred around 2.4 billion years ago, radically altered the planet’s atmosphere, paving the way for more complex life forms. The Proterozoic also saw the first supercontinent, Rodinia, form and break apart, a cycle that influenced global climate and environmental conditions conducive to evolution.
My father told me that it was life; my purpose as a young man.
And doing so, earning a dollar earned (by me) enabled me to earn the privileges of a “working man”; which was drinking beer at home and at the dinner table.
I started at 14, but really went full time at 16 years old.
At that time, I started to drive a car, drink and hang out. I had friends that I hung out with. Clyde (who also drove a GTO like I did)…
…and some friends like J Eck with his Ford pickup “beater”…
…as well as my brother with his crappy Vega…
I was a piece of shit car. Fucking aluminum engine…
…and the “Bracky Boys” and their Duster (a very popular muscle car)…
Those Bracky Boys were RICH. All the time I thought that they were just some hillbillies, but no. Their parents were loaded. They came from Mo-ney! Who’d figure.
…and a few others with Comaro’s and Pinto’s.
We used to drink Miller Pony bottles in a 8 pack after work. That and smoke. Both cigarettes and the dreaded reefer! If there was one thing that I would tell my younger-self, now that I am an older man… it’s stay away from drugs.
Good times.
Good times.
Cruising late at night on the country roads and stopping at keggers and strip mines. A simple life. But that was what it was like.
It was a social – cultural thing.
Ah… And something else.
Miller pony bottles.
Rolling a joint in the “shotgun” seat, and listening to BTO, Boston, Led Zepplin, and Yes. (Oh, and let’s not forget Robin Trower, and Neil Young.)
1. No one’s coming to save you. Get up and be your hero.
2. Never force anyone to choose you. You’ll learn the art of spending time alone.
3. Master your emotions. A calm mind can handle any situation.
4. To avoid disappointment, you need to take people for who they are not for what you want them to be.
5. Everyone will show you who they are, give them time.
6. You’re at peace with yourself when you mind your own business.
7. Ensure you take good care of yourself, if anything happens to you, the world will move on.
8. Nobody cares, work hard to get better every day.
9. If you don’t work to build your dream, someone will hire you and give you a purpose.
10. Free yourself from society’s advice, most of them do not know what they’re doing.
11. Life doesn’t wait for you to be okay. Get up every day and keep pushing through.
12. You shouldn’t take advice from people who are not where you want to be in life.
13. Life is 100% better when no one knows anything about you.
14. You become 10x smarter when you quit the news and put politics out of your topics.
15. You need to be smart enough to create your opportunities, don’t wait for them to come to you.
Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup
This is, by far, my favorite homemade chicken noodle soup recipe because it’s simply the perfect mix of easy, wholesome, and satisfying. It’s creamy yet light, and benefits from the addition of potato, thyme, oregano, and convenient pre-cooked rotisserie chicken.
Here’s Why You’ll Love This Light & Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup
Lightened up, yet still creamy and so satisfying
Can be made on the stove or in a slow cooker
1-pot meal
Using a cooked rotisserie chicken saves time
So much more delicious than store-bought soup
Make ahead of time and freeze
Good way to use up leftover chicken
Flavorful spices, herbs, and vegetables
Ultimate winter comfort food!
Best Ingredients to Use:
You need 1 big pot and a few staple ingredients. This is a forgiving recipe, so let’s review what can change if needed.
Butter: Just a Tablespoon, to soften the vegetables.
Vegetables: Onion, carrots, and celery form the mirepoix flavor base for this soup.
Herbs/Flavors: Use a blend of garlic, dried or fresh thyme and oregano, fresh ground pepper, and salt. Feel free to use other herbs you enjoy instead, if desired.
Flour or Cornstarch: Flour (or cornstarch) thickens the liquid, taking this soup from brothy to creamy. See recipe Note for that substitution.
Chicken Broth: Or stock.
Potato: 1 medium potato is the first magical ingredient in this recipe, because it cooks down and makes the soup SO creamy, hearty, and satisfying.
Chicken: This recipe saves time because you can use pre-cooked chicken. You could also use leftover cooked turkey, like we do in this turkey pot pie! I usually pick up a small rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, shred it, and add it right into the soup. Or you can boil/poach chicken breasts or roast them with a little garlic and thyme, let cool slightly (or refrigerate for a day or two), then shred or chop. If you have leftover chicken, you can also use it in recipes like my chicken quinoa salad or peanut chicken zucchini noodles.
Milk or Half-and-Half: This is the other magical ingredient that turns your homemade chicken noodle soup into the creamiest soup ever. Use 1 cup of whole milk or 1 cup of half-and-half. If you want to make regular (non-creamy) chicken noodle soup, replace the milk with more chicken broth.
Noodles: I prefer wide egg noodles in chicken soup, but you can use any type of dry pasta you like, or go noodle-less.
1 teaspoon seasoned pepper or garlic-pepper seasoning
1 1/2 cups dried egg noodles
Instructions
In a slow cooker gradually stir 5 cups water into the soup. Whisk until smooth.
Stir in chicken, vegetables and seasoned pepper.
Cover; cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours or on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours.
If using low heat setting, turn to HIGH.
Stir in noodles.
Cover and cook for 20 to 30 minutes more or until noodles are just tender.
How Does the Soup Thicken Up?
Cooking down the onion, carrots, and celery is a key step in the recipe. After you cook them down, add flour and your herbs. The flour will absorb the liquid from the softening vegetables, and create a nice thick base for the soup. This is exactly how we start biscuit vegetable pot pie, too.
Whole milk or half-and-half also thicken up the soup. I’ve even made it with half the amount (1/2 cup or 120ml) heavy cream in a pinch. (Add more chicken broth if you use heavy cream; see recipe Note.)
Nice and thick, without being too heavy.
Can I Skip the Noodles or Use Rice Instead?
Yes. Feel free to skip the noodles entirely with no other changes to the recipe. Or you can use 1 cup of uncooked rice instead. Add it when you would add the noodles.
This Soup Satisfies. Period.
One bowl of this light & creamy chicken noodle soup will leave you feeling satisfied for hours, without feeling weighed down. This is the meal that keeps on giving because if you have a smaller family, there will be plenty of leftover soup to enjoy during the week.
Take shooting lessons
Do you think China steals American spacecraft designs?
THE CHOICE OF WORDS BY THE WEST IS ALWAYS – BIAS & PROPAGANDA.
Chinese CCTV cameras are being called surveillance cameras, but the Western CCTV cameras are called security cameras
Chinese landing on Mars is called conquer, US landing on Mars is called exploration.
Terrorist in China is called – freedom fighter, terrorist in the West, of course, is called – terrorist.
US government is called administration. Chinese government is called regime.
US/West invasion in Middle East is called liberation. Russian invasion … well, is called invasion.
The US invasion and organized coup on more than 25 countries since WWII is referred to as following “International rule-based order”.. China fought 4 borders wars and voluntarily withdrew to its borders (before the wars) since WW ll is referred to as “A threat to international rule based order”
The US government that can be bought with money is called “Democracy.” The Chinese government that cannot be bought with money is called “Dictatorship”.
Wars led by the US with the support of the West – killed and maimed millions all over the world is called the “Civilized West”. China which lifted 800 million from extreme poverty in the past 40 years (according to the UN and World Bank) is referred to as “Totalitarian.”.
JUST A SINGLE WORD DIFFERENCE – CAN BRAINWASH YOU.
What is the most jaw-dropping method for shoplifting that you have seen?
I had a friend in college at the University of Utah.
He was at the University of Utah because he’d gotten kicked out of BYU.
The reason he was kicked out was listed as “criminal mastermind”.
What actually happened was much more mundane, but, he was a criminal mastermind of sorts.
His roommate, and a friend of his roommate, were planning on a theft at the BYU bookstore. Realize that there was nearly absolutely no security in those days, and though cameras were a thing, you never saw them outside high end retailers, like jewelry stores, and certainly not in college or University bookstores.
His roommate, and the roommate’s friend, were plotting a burglary, and pretty much ignoring my friend, who was studying.
They eventually settled on grabbing as much high end camera equipment as they could (the most expensive thing in the store at the time, since it predated laptops, which tells you how long ago this was), and then running for the door.
Finally, my friend could stand their stupidity no longer, and pointed out that they would be caught, how they would be caught, and the fact that, since they were going to school there, if no one recognized them immediately, they would be eventually, as in, the next time they had to buy textbooks.
They sneered at my friend, and asked him, “If you’re so smart, what would you do?”.
And my friend told them.
The entire store had hanging ceilings- including in the dressing room.
These ceilings wouldn’t hold their weight, but they’d hold some weight.
And the store had a camping department, where there were a variety of display sleeping bags, hung from the bottom, against the wall.
And the store, as college bookstores tend to do, sold backpacks.
And with these things in mind, my friend laid out a plan, never really expecting that his roommate, and the roommate’s friend were idiot enough to follow through on it.
The next Tuesday, there was a burglary reported of the BYU bookstore. Authorities were mystified, because there were no signs of breaking and entering, all the locks were securely locked, and when searched, there was no one in the store.
His roommate, who’d been missing since late Monday, showed up Wednesday morning.
Having implemented the first part of the plan, of course.
He and his friend had hidden (standing) in the sleeping bags against the wall until the store closed, everyone left, and the store was locked up.
Then, they loaded up a bunch of identical blue backpacks with the stuff they wanted to steal, and hid them in the hanging ceiling above the men’s dressing rooms.
And then, they hid in the sleeping bags again, until the store reopened normally, then left with the after-lunch crowd.
And then, they implemented the second part of the plan.
Each day, for the next week…
They walked in with a blue backpack.
They tried on clothes and, occasionally, bought a T-Shirt or other item of clothing.
They walked out with a blue backpack.
They walked in with a blue backpack.
They walked out with a blue backpack.
How was the case cracked?
Guilt.
The friend of the roommate started hearing “God”.
“God” told him to confess.
That nothing bad would happen.
But that he needed to confess.
Two weeks after the last backpack exchange, he did so.
The police found backpacks full of crumpled newspaper in the hanging ceiling in the men’s dressing room, confirming the confession.
The thieves got kicked out of BYU; the one that came clean got 3 months plus probation; the one who didn’t, got six months plus probation.
My friend (the one not involved in the robbery) saw the whole thing as nothing more than an intellectual exercise and felt he could help solve their problem in a better way after hearing them planning the burglary badly (in front of him)- he got expelled.
They couldn’t charge him though because there was no intent, and it was pretty clear he didn’t expect the roommate, or the roommate’s friend to go through with it — and all the loot was stored in the friend’s dorm room — but they had to do something. You know: send a message.
And so… they expelled him.
For being a criminal mastermind.
He cracked the code
What’s the most impressive thing your parent(s) have done?
They lied to me for 54 years. Successfully.
at 21 I was complaining to my cousin that I loathed my father and was sick of his abuse. Her reply “what if I told you that he’s not your father?” for two years my parents told me that it’s a lie and to drop it.
dad dies in 2004. A few years later I get suspicious again because my siblings have diabetes (perfectly healthy and fit). I don’t. Dads parents and aiblings ll had it by 50. But I don’t act on it.
2010 youngest goes off to college and the hubs and I get a call from mom that she would like to share her home with us. I asked why, she said “because I need one of my kids on my side, the other 4 want me in a nursing home.” Her only health issue was Parkinson’s. She had it for 30 years but wasn’t disabled or senile until 2–3 years before her death in 2021 (Jan 2021)
One day in 2014 she is asking me to show her how to look up and old beau. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find him. He had a super rare name so I was surprised. I don’t think twice about it but it’s really important.
2018, my sibs and I are arguing over our heritage. Some think we are Scottish. Some Irish. We all order tests, take them the same day and ship them off. We all get our results the same day. We are in fact Scottish, or should I say THEY are. And right there were it says father is a name I recognize. Moms “old beau”. Wtf? So the man had his dna on ancestry dot com at 84, could he have known about me? I quickly email him. No answer but he has two sons. I quickly emailed one of them. He gets back to me. They had no idea and sadly my birth father had died 7 months prior. They say he would have welcomed me with open arms and would have loved me
So they successfully lied. I was suspicious because I was the only one he physically disciplined. First I was angry that mother allowed this man to lay hands on me. Knowing he wasn’t my father and most likely taken it out on me that mom lied to him.
The saddest part is they had at least 3 chances to tell me. Instead I found out myself 7 months too late. They cheated me out of a dad and a better life. I don’t grieve for them. Not like a Daughter would really. I loved them, I just can’t grieve with all this anger over being their dirty little secret and robbing me of knowing my biological dad. Friends say “oh but he was your father, he raised you and blah blah blah. No. He’s not my father. He mistreated me and abused me. So to hell with him.
Anyone that read this far, I thank you. Those that didn’t, I’m sorry I babbled on.
UPDATE – Yes I am in contact with and have a relationship with one of my half brothers. The other I was told to contact with extreme caution as he is “trouble” and lord knows I don’t need that. Maybe someday I’ll reach out. I don’t know. I don’t see my half brother as much as I’d like but we are 3 hours away from each other. We do exchange pleasantries and such on holidays.
"The West must be factoring our response into its projections all while plotting against us. They are trying to put themselves into our shoes, while sticking to their own mentality.
As for their mentality… Only recently, Mark Episkopos, a prominent American political scientist, chastised the West, including from a purely utilitarian and pragmatic standpoint.
Take sanctions, for example. Usually, they are designed to change the way their subject behaves. If you want them to be effective, you need to adjust these sanctions based on the response from those who endure them.
The West has been carelessly expanding its sanctions without giving any thought to the possible outcomes.
But the outcome was clear to begin with, even before the special military operation when the Crimean sanctions, as well as a host of other sanctions, were already in place.
The result was clear. We pulled together, and I do hope that we will become even more focused.
We have to go further, as Vladimir Putin said many times. We pulled together and decided not to depend on them in any sectors where they can restrain or hold back our development, and possibly in other sectors too.
Today, they pride themselves for getting rid of Russian gas.
First, supplies have been on the rise in many countries, including France.
Italy took pride in claiming that over the past three years the share of Russian gas in Italian imports declined from 90 percent all the way down to zero.
This is what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz boasted of when describing his efforts to reduce the country’s dependence on Russian energy imports, while promising to end the dependence on them completely down the road.
Many European have been making statements along the same lines, including the Netherlands, and almost all Western and some Eastern European countries.
But at what cost? How much did they have to spend and how have their spending on serving their people increased?
Nobody answered these questions. Still, people can see through these ramifications.
Mr Episkopos went on say that failing to anticipate the way Russia would respond to these developments was a huge mistake.
The West fails to understand that sanctions can be effective only if the subject is ready to change its behaviour for the sake of having these sanctions lifted.
The second point Mr Episkopos made was that if the country subjected to sanctions already said that it was not going to change its behaviour, keeping these sanctions in place would be pointless and careless.
This is the kind of policy our would-be colleagues have opted for."
Excerpt from remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview with the radio stations Sputnik, Govorit Moskva, and Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moscow, April 19, 2024.
How to be a man
One of the unremarked things that has happened over the past ten years is the collapse of the so-called man-o-sphere. There may be people still working that land, but all the big names have moved on or disappeared. The pickup artist have all disappeared from the internet entirely. That whole scene just seems to have folded up and gone the way of the dinosaur without anyone noticing.
One reason is the demographic aged out of the material. A guy like Heartiste, for example, could do the pickup artist stuff when he was early middle-age, but once you hit fifty you become a skeevy weirdo, not a Don Juan. The same holds for the other subcultures in that space. Once you reach middle-age, it all starts to sound a bit weird and pointless, even to the people making money off it.
There is another aspect to it. That whole scene was a reaction to the feminization of the culture starting with second wave feminism. The next generation of males have no frame of reference in which to have a reaction. The typical Zoomer has been raised in the longhouse, to use the cool kid’s term. He has no way of knowing that all of this is both weird and unnatural.
That is the point of the show. The male role is not a slippery concept that changes from one generation to the next. It has been revolutionized and pulverized over the last few decades, but that is what makes this age anomalous. The male role in society is timeless, at least in the Western world. There are certain immutable characteristic to being a man that will reassert themselves in the coming years.
IT JUST DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE! Retirement and Jobs ARE FINISHED!
And then a large group of activists who had taken over a university surrendered to police, causing the newspaper publisher to declare: “That wiped out my best men.”
Meanwhile, Lai’s right-hand man, former US intelligence officer Mark Simon, gave the go-between a company he said was of a covert nature and could be used to liaise with foreign organizations and collect funds.
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ASTONISHING REVELATIONS
Extraordinary revelations came this week from the ongoing trial of newspaperman Jimmy Lai, 76, confirming US involvement, and the role of the publisher and his former US intelligence officer partner Mark Simon in backing the violent protests that roiled normally peaceful Hong Kong five years ago.
Testimony from a go-between named Wayland Chan Tsz-wah, 32, detailed the problems that arose during the period after a legal extradition amendment was withdrawn. Protesters continued to use it as an excuse for an increasingly violent insurgency, with terrorist-grade bomb factories discovered at several locations.
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G7 RECOMMENDATION
Background: In 2018, civil servants at Hong Kong’s Department of Justice continued their routine updating of the city’s British Common Law legislation. The city already had Asia’s highest-rated legal system, but to keep at the top, they followed a recommendation from a G7 financial law committee to upgrade the city’s extradition law.
In the British era, arrested individuals from Mainland China had been simply put in vans, driven to the border, and dropped off “over the line”.
The new extradition amendment gave people detained for specific serious crimes due legal protection. They could only be extradited after a lengthy process of hearings, typically taking 12 to 24 months.
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MISINFORMATION
However, by the first half of 2019, an extreme campaign of disinformation had totally misrepresented the amendment. The amendment was falsely painted as a new law “from Beijing” that enabled people (and even tourists) to be “snatched” from the city and “disappeared” in mainland China for political misdemeanours.
The misinformation led to hundreds of thousands of protesters (organizers claimed “millions”) hitting the streets in June calling for its withdrawal.
The amendment was withdrawn the same month, but anti-China groups continued the protests, turning it into a violent insurgency that caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage, shutting down the airport and wrecking scores of metro stations.
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STOP THE VIOLENCE
In July of 2019, US officials told newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai to tone down the violence, the court heard.
This was a problem for several reasons. First, he had repeatedly told his newspaper staff to report events in a way that deliberately removed the gap between Hong Kong’s peaceful protesters and the violent “localist” thugs that smashed up or burned restaurants owned by families from Mainland China. This was described by his staff in earlier court hearings.
Second, he had been financially backing the “old school” pro-American political individuals and groups in Hong Kong for years – often exactly the same anti-China politicians receiving cash or support from various US groups. But did not personally know the new generation of young “localist” leaders. He would need a go-between.
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THE GO-BETWEEN
In July, the publisher arranged to meet Wayland Chan Tsz-wah, a paralegal aged 32, who he believed to be a high ranking activist who could spread the new message to a cluster of violent groups known as “the valiants”.
The paralegal was invited to go to a designated restaurant and was asked to hand over his phone “for security reasons” before Jimmy Lai talked to him, the court was told.
When he had done so, the publisher told him that things would have to change. The United States now wanted “no police or civilian fatalities”. Furthermore, they had said that the violence “should stop at some point”.
Lai wanted this message taken to the violent groups, which were divided into multiple sub-groups with their own names, including JD Team, G20, Pink, Dragonslayer and others. (The code name for Jimmy Lai and Mark Simon was “Backer”.)
Wayland Chan met with the publisher several times, he said, always having to give up his phone before conversations started. On one occasion, they met in a car parked near Hong Kong’s Supreme Court, the court heard.
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US OPERATIONS
Between face-to-face meetings, the younger activist received Whatsapp messages from Jimmy Lai about US progress in the anti-China effort, he told the court.
Two American operations had been set up with Hong Kong in their names. One was a lobby group working to create the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” and the other was a group called the “Hong Kong Democracy Council”.
They were working to get western countries to sanction Hong Kong, remove its privileges, and damage its main sources of income – finance and tourism — although the community had done literally nothing to deserve such a punishment.
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INITIALLY UNAWARE
Wayland Chan told the court that he had not been aware at first of the nature of the relationship between the anti-China publisher and US officials.
“Only when he told me at a later stage about the US Government’s internal considerations, did I realise Jimmy Lai was not simply rallying for international support, but he knew certain criteria [set by US officials] and was trying to meet them,” he said at the hearing in the West Kowloon court this week.
Chan contacted leading “valiant” individuals but struggled to get the message over to them, he said. In one case, his contact refused to believe that the message came from Jimmy Lai.
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MAN SET ON FIRE
The insurgency remained out of control, and the violence got worse. Bomb factories were set up, and weapons smuggled into the city. One group started making TATP, the explosive used in the London bombings of 7 July 2005.
In November of 2019, an old man tried to stop protesters smashing up a metro station in Ma On Shan, in a rural part of Hong Kong. The old man was doused in petrol as they tried to burn him alive.
Jimmy Lai was dismayed, and contacted Wayland Chan for another meeting, also calling representatives of the old-school pro-American political groups known as the pan-democrats.
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MAROONED
The newspaper publisher also faced another setback later the same month, when protesters marooned themselves at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which was situated on a single city block.
Police took no action, but simply waited at the entrances, playing a range of popular music. After about 12 days, the protesters, bored and hungry, gave themselves up, walking out with their hands up.
“That wiped out my best men,” Jimmy Lai told Chan, the court heard.
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CHAN’S REWARD
About two weeks later, Wayland Chan was invited to meet Mark Simon at the Hyatt Hotel in Shatin. As a reward to Chan, an overseas company with money in its bank account would be set up, he was told.
This idea ran into an immediate difficulty. Hong Kong had strong policies against money laundering, which meant that it was difficult to open a bank account in the city for a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.
When Jimmy Lai was told this, the publisher decided to offer one of his unused companies to Chan as a reward, and asked an assistant named Evan Lau to handle the formalities, the court heard.
In early 2020, Chan attended a meeting where a company named Lacock Inc, owned by Jimmy Lai, was transferred to him. It had an HSBC account containing HK$80,000.
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FOREIGN ORGANIZATIONS
But then came another issue. Wayland Chan saw the company as his personal reward, and wanted to use it to develop his own business.
Mark Simon had other ideas, of an ideological nature. He felt it should be used to as a channel for overseas groups to continue to contribute to their anti-China campaign.
Mark Simon told Chan that the company was of covert nature and could be used to liaise with foreign organizations and collect funds, the court heard.
The trial continues.
Have you ever stolen something back after getting robbed?
The company I work for gave everyone a nice company coat for Christmas. I took a marker and marked the inside tag with my name so that I would know if it was mine (all the coats looked the same).
One day, before heading for home, I looked at the peg where my coat had been hanging, and it wasn’t there. I checked all the coats…mine was gone, as were my favorite sunglasses.
I told management, who expressed regret, but there were no coats left.
Two weeks passed…and I periodically did a check to see if any hanging were my coat.
After about two weeks, I came across it hanging on a peg on the opposite end of the room. I grabbed it and hid it at my work station.
One of the night crew workers came storming up to me demanding HER coat. I told her that I didn’t have it…I had mine. I then showed her the tag, which showed my name. I then asked her where my sunglasses were. She responded she didn’t know.
I told her she had 24 hours to come up with them or I was going to tell them who had stolen my coat.
This would have been a termination offense.
She handed them to me the next day, saying she found them in her husband’s truck.
She has since transferred, but when I see her, she avoids me like the plague.
Some views of Pago Pago
What are your thoughts on Chinese automaker BYD’s $11,500 Seagull, an extremely cheap EV that is not available in the US due to high tariffs?
Freedom of trade? What a hypocrite! The U.S. burnt down nations just to install freedom but it ensures that it’s people buy from profiteers and keep prices high to give its people no choices! The U.S. citizens are the real loser! Are US citizens not aware that they are worst than Chinese citizens who can buy Tesla if they do wish! I fact out of the cars that Tesla made in 2023, 69.7% are sold in China! Can you Yanks not see the irony that China a supposedly unfree nation can buy Tesla and a nation screaming freedom like there is no tomorrow cannot buy BYD?
Let me school all of you on this! China U.S. a very smart and intelligent nation, by allowing Tesla to sell it ensures that those cars are made in China too! They got jobs and are learning all the while about western demands and western customers. So by the time BYD goes international it knows their taste, their likes and dislikes and they made a killing! Thanks to being open and free they are successful.
The U.S. is left as a pathetic slur grape nation without principle nor freedom!
A fun quote
Have you ever been knocked unconscious in a car accident?
I have. For 20 minutes.
It was 2011, and I was meeting a couple for lunch for my birthday. He worked at Oakley, and lunch “came with“ a new pair of Oakley‘s as a gift. It should’ve been a great day.
I was in a convertible, traveling on highway 73 in Orange County, California. I exited and was waiting for the light to turn left onto a surface highway. The approaching cars stopped, the light turned green and I started to make a left turn. As soon as I passed the stopped cars and made it to the centerline, a speeding Chevy Suburban, three times the size of my car, came into view. My last conscious thought was “They’re not going to stop“. I swerved, and it was lights out.
She ran a red and T-boned me; smashed into my side, forward of the door, near the front wheel. She crushed the entire front like a tin can, my car spun and we collided twice. So I heard…
Twenty minutes and lots of bystander activity went by. My next conscious moment was in the ambulance, looking up at a female emergency medical tech as we were heading to the trauma center. I was an EMT decades ago, and my first thought and words were “so this is what it looks like in the other direction“…
My head had hit the frame of the convertible top and it split my scalp, but fortunately didn’t crack my skull, though you could see it from the wound. My hand broke on the steering wheel, my ribs were cracked where they impacted the door. I was covered in blood and bruises. The airbags never went off.
Two guys jumped out of their cars and ran over. My window was a curtain of blood and of course I was out. They couldn’t open the door and thought I was dead. One called 911, and the other ran over to the woman’s car. It was totaled.
The impact of my head hitting the car was so forceful, my brain violently bounced off the inside of my skull. The brain stem flexed with such force it caused “micro-tears.” They sewed me up, patched me up, gave me X-rays and a CAT scan and I left the trauma center late that night with my wife instructed to ensure I woke up the next morning.
To give you an idea of how much it shook me up? I had been arranging a huge business dinner for two nights later. I still made phone calls to make sure the plans were set, and then the night of the event? I forgot to go… Par for the course with bad concussions, I had a slightly volatile temper for a couple of months. I forgot, seemingly everything randomly. I had minor bouts with depression which I’ve never had otherwise in my life.
The brain impact prevented me from remembering proper nouns for almost year and a half. I got to know my neurologist and the neuropsych testing people very well.
You can’t be unconscious for that long without taking a huge shot to the brain. And you can’t be unconscious for that long without having a long-term challenge. My ability to recall proper nouns is still pretty poor. That’s mostly it…
But it could’ve been much worse. Had she hit the driver’s door? It would’ve been the other kind of “lights out.”
What is the craziest purchase you’ve seen someone make on a work credit card?
This was a series of purchases, over a period of around six months. The company I was working for hired an employee who apparently had left her prior job under a cloud of felony charges. She hadn’t been convicted, so there was no record to find in a background check, plus the individual reversed a few numbers on her SSN when she applied. She managed to then hit a perfect storm of processes that allowed her to run up some significant charges on the company credit card. First, she was a remote employee with an also remote boss (this was well before COVID). She immediately requested a company credit card so she could fly to HQ for new hire orientation. A card was issued and FedExed to her. Her first charge was a cash advance (in those days, this was a holdover from days further in the past where it was unheard of for an employee to use the credit card — or their own money — for small purchases). During the ensuing investigation, we found that her subsequent purchases were for household bills, groceries, and utilities. Interestingly, she never submitted the expenses for the trip to HQ. Her manager never noticed that.
Fast forward six months or so and the employee went missing. Her manager woke up and discovered from media reporting that said employee had been convicted of some felony charges related to her prior employment and sent off to be a guest of the state for a few years. Alarm bells went off and an investigation began. As we unwound the credit card bill, we continued to see the various household purchases, utilities, cash advances, etc. Then we found that she had used the card to pay her lawyer as well as take some family members on a (modest) cruise. By the time we added things up, the company was out well in excess of $10,000. Arguably, not a ton of money for a large company, but something that caused immediate changes in expense policy and company credit cards. We found that she was able to exploit a fairly liberal payment window (established to accommodate time for employees to submit expenses, get them approved, and get them paid out to the credit card company). She further managed to (probably) use cash advances to make payments on the card to avoid showing up as delinquent. It appeared that she made some additional payments from other sources, but it wasn’t something we were in a position to confirm. The company didn’t have a good process for tracking personal charges, so there was no process to have the employee report and reimburse such expenses. There were also no categories of expenses that could not be charged to the card. There were quite a number of additional learnings, starting with why the background company didn’t flag a SSN mis-match.
The employee’s manager was fired (in addition to the initial failure to submit expenses, there had been some communications from the credit card company that charges were aging, which the manager had never looked into) and the lawyer was advised to pay the company back the fees charged against the credit card. Beyond that, I wasn’t privy to any other events outside of a flurry of expense and credit card policy changes.
Retro Underground Comix
Why is the US so desperate to compete with China when the world knows it cannot?
The ONLY people who realize that the United States is unable to compete with China is the Western “news” media, and the people that consume it.
The rest of the world, INCLUDING the American “leadership” and the Pentagon understand the futility of “Tonya Harding” competition strategies.
However, the United States is not a “healthy” nation. It is a nation in “free-fall”. There is no one at the helm, and those that are in control of various functional aspects of the government are stymied by a complex web network of counter-productive political polarization. Often led by those with self-interest at their core, and incapable of actual subjective reasoning. For everyone in the West are under the propagandized narratives that they themselves create.
Like (for instance) the “brick wall” of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin.
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But there is an “out”.
Cooperation NOT Competition.
China wants to see a better world, but in order for that reality to play out, some very toxic behaviors, and legacy dysfunctions must be excised (one way or the other) from the West. I am afraid that it will be a painful process.
The United States NEEDS friends, and help. China is willing to take on this role. But I am fearful that that will not materialize until a period of disharmony adjusts the objective reality of the West.
What makes you jealous?
Even though he passed away years ago, I still find myself feeling a bit envious. I’m talking about my granddad—my lifelong hero and mentor. He kept grinding every day until he hit 90. Getting up at 6:00 AM, he’d down his coffee and head off to work. Surprisingly fit for his age, not exactly a six-pack, but definitely in good shape.
I remember working on physically demanding tasks with him, and I’d be wiped out afterward. For him, it was a walk in a park. Once, we chopped wood for eight hours, and I passed out right after. But he? He moved on to his next job without missing a beat.
What I envy most is how he never lost his ability to handle physical tasks. While others his age struggled just to stand, he could do everything as if he were still in his thirties. I never quite grasped how he managed it all. I really wish I could be like he was.
“Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I’m not guessing at that. They’ve told me that, including people who run the intel committee.”
What Tucker said next was even more revealing.
“I said to somebody, a very powerful person, the other day, in a conversation in my kitchen, an elected official — holds a really senior position… But I was like, ‘All these people are controlled. They’ve all got weird sex lives, and all these things they’re hiding, and they’re being blackmailed by the intel agencies.’ And he said, and I’m quoting, ‘I know.’ I was like, okay, so at this point, we’re just sort of admitting that’s real? Like, why do we allow that to continue?”
This is the Amerikkkan Deep State.
What are some examples of the “wussification” of the United States of America?
About six years ago or so when I was still in high school, we were playing soccer in gym class. After about five minutes in or so, the kid who was playing as my team’s forward (we’ll call him “Brock”) came up to me, who was playing goalie, and said he wanted to be the goalie now. I politely declined, because the game was only five minutes in, and that’s just not how soccer (or the real world) works.
After about 30 seconds of arguing back and forth over it, he presumed the second best option to be to grab me by the shirt and try to drag me out of the goalie box. Or in other words, physically assaulted me.
As a natural reaction and in accordance with what the law actually says, I laid into Brock with one good hit.
I then see the gym instructor approaching us to break up the scuffle that was occuring. When he gets to us, he sends us both to the principal’s office.
Brock’s punishmen was a week of out-of-school suspension. And I received the exact same punishment.
Why? Because according to my school’s policy on fighting, if you are even merely involved in a fight, it’s an automatic out-of-school suspension, so the principal technically doesn’t even get to use his own discretion regarding disciplining students regarding these types of matters.
I remember him even saying to me “Geraldo, coming from person to person, I would have done the exact same thing as you. However, as a school official, I unfortunately have no choice but to suspend you”.
What my school expects you to do if you are to find yourself in the situation I was in, is to passively submit and take your beating, and then once that is finished, you are to go to a teacher and tell on the person who attacked you. (Because it’s not like the person you just told on isn’t going to kick the shit out of you for rolling on them once you’re outside school property, right?)
Say you were to get jumped by five people at my school. Well that means that a total of six people will be getting suspended. That being the five dudes who assualted you, and yourself, for being assaulted.
If that’s not an example of institutionalized wussification, I don’t know what is.
Some of my AI generated pictures
Girls and alcohol with cats.
What is the most badass thing your parent has ever done?
This happened when my dad was just out of high school. One of his longtime friends confirmed the details.
My dad and some friends were at a roller skating rink having fun and flirting with some girls. There was a black family skating there as well. Suddenly they hear this guy saying, “You n%#s, we don’t want your kind here.” He kept harassing them and it pissed my dad off. He went up to the jerk and told him to knock it off, that this family was more than welcome to be here, and he is the one who should leave.
The bully asked, “You n%# lover, are you going to make me?”
My dad told me he was terrified because this guy looked like someone who had been in a lot a fights. But the looks on that poor family’s faces was more than he could bear. So, he agreed to take it outside. While he was putting on his shoes an employee told him he should take off, that the guy he was facing was a known troublemaker and he had just gotten out of jail for assault. That didn’t help my dad’s nerves. Then as he was getting up the father of the black family told him not to bother, that they will just leave.
I don’t know how he mustered the courage to walk out that door, but he went to face him anyway. A crowd gathered around them as they faced each other. The bully said, “Now I am going to teach you a lesson you n#% lov…” He never had a chance to finish that sentence. My dad hit him squarely on his chin and the racist bully crumpled to the pavement. One punch and he was out.
Everyone cheered, the girls were all swooning over my dad, and the family thanked him for being the only one standing up for them. Yep, my dad was a true badass that day.
What is the best thing a teacher did for you that you still remember?
I was in 6th grade and 11 years old. I had started menstruating at 10 and didn’t have it all figured out quite yet. I was wearing a pale yellow skirt and jacket that my grandmother had sewn me and I really liked it. When school ended, I stood up to leave and the teacher snapped at me to come see her. I was pretty shocked. She never raised her voice to me. When I reached her she spun me around so my back was toward the wall. Then she whispered to me that the back of my skirt was stained and to just stay there with her until everyone left. When everyone left she told me to just keep waiting. She knew that my mother came and picked up my brother and I each day. Eventually, my brother came to see why I wasn’t coming out to the car. He was about 7. When he came into the classroom, first she yelled at him for not getting out of bed in the morning and making me late several days (I felt bad about this, but she wasn’t wrong) and then she told him to give her his jacket. She wrapped it around my waist and told us we could leave. I have never forgotten her kindness. Especially because several of the girls could be really mean to me. I’m pretty sure no one ever saw the stain.
Creamy Asparagus Soup
Ingredients
1 pound fresh asparagus
2 onions, finely minced
2 potatoes, peeled, diced small
2 ribs celery, diced small, with tops included
2 carrots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 teaspoons granulated chicken or vegetable bouillon (or 8 cubes of bouillon)
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped or 1 tablespoon dried parsley
2 sprigs fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 sprig fresh tarragon, chopped, or 1 teaspoon dried tarragon
1/4 cup fresh basil, minced, or 2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon seasoned salt (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 cups Half-and-Half
Sour cream
Chives, chopped
Instructions
Break off and discard the tough, thick end of each asparagus spear. Chop the spears into 1/4-inch slices and add to the slow cooker along with all remaining ingredients down to and including the white pepper.
Add water to within 1 inch of the top of the slow cooker.
Cover the slow cooker and cook on HIGH for 6 to 7 hours.
About two hours before serving, use a slotted spoon to remove most of the vegetables to a blender. Use a ladle to add some of the liquid from the slow cooker to the blender. Puree the mixture and add back in to the slow cooker.
Repeat once or twice more as necessary (you can leave some of the pieces in the slow cooker for effect.)
Add approximately 1 cup of the Half-and-Half to the slow cooker.
Add the cornstarch to the remaining Half-and-Half in the carton.
Close the carton well and shake vigorously.
Add the mixture to the slow cooker.
Continue to cook on HIGH for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
Serve in bowls with a dollop of sour cream and chopped chives sprinkled over the sour cream.
For those who cannot imagine what it’s like to be vaxxed, and living with it once the evidence becomes available, l can answer you: it’s day-to-day grieving and cellular remorse.
Many of us were just living our daily lives without any idea of the World Economic Forum or the World Health Organisation. We trusted our doctors – l’d had mine for over 25 years, and we knew our government lied at election times, but we voted the best we could based on the B.S. presented to us.
We went about our lives innocently – working, raising kids and babysitting grandkids – and many of us had not one person in our circles to warn us of the dangers.
We didn’t even know that we had to do ‘research’. Unbelievable as that may seem, it’s absolutely true.
So off we went and had the shots. And now us ‘sheeples’ – as we are sometimes referred to – are dying in our millions, some suddenly, while some are destined for slow, malingering, pain-filled deaths.
But we are dying, and ironically, we are the evidence; the proof you will all use later.
Some of us argued with others who knew about the dangers, and words and actions hurt both sides. And that is the greatest weapon of the psy-op: it’s actually greater than the vax itself.
There is a level of toxic hatred and gloating online that condemns the vaxxed to silence in regards to seeking help. l see it in the forums, how they are abused by total strangers, so we stay silent and die alone, unforgiven for our naivety and fear.
But back to the point above – of what it is like to be vaxxed and to then become aware of how we’ve been done. It is hell. Living with the knowledge that I took three of them; that my wonderful, kind, hardworking husband took four; that our children and grandchildren had them;
it haunts me, it breaks my soul, it has destroyed me… simply because we were naive.
My husband and l were already injected when a cousin contacted me through Messenger after seeing a post about my rapid decline in health and asked me questions. l then spoke to my sons, but it was too late – they had been jabbed already.
It’s reading endless detox protocols and wondering IF they truly work or IF they too are part of the B.S., because how would we ever know when there is no long-term proof? It’s endless medical tests that come back ‘normal’, but you just know and feel the changes in your body.
It’s seeing the videos of the ‘calamari’ clots and reading about graphene microblades slicing up veins, and spikes adhering like velcro to tissues and organs.
It’s the breathlessness and palpitations on the slightest exertion that doctors can’t explain.
It’s the knowing that it was all for nothing, though we believed it was for the best of intentions.
It’s this tattoo on my arm of the vax batch numbers that l use to open conversations and share my adverse reactions with every doctor, specialist and pathologist, radiologist and ambulance paramedic l meet.
It’s knowing that any second, any second, could be IT… the last one l breathe before l die.
It’s grief – deep, empty, gut-wrenching grief for all my family and friends, all those l love and care for.
It’s loss – the loss of my future dreams and plans, the loss of my husband and family, it’s the pain felt by the name-calling and ongoing online abuse.
l may be a sheeple to some, and cop endless abuse online for speaking up with my truth, but that will not stop me.
Not every vaxxed person acted like an A-hole when approached by someone who cared enough to take the risk of warning them.
Yet we have ALL been tarred with that one brush. And it’s there that humanity debased itself even further. They did not have to do a thing except sit back and watch us fall apart.
Sounds Of The Department Store 1979
Music in this video is from various Bruton and music De Wolfe Records dating from 1972-1979 mixed in audacity and recorded onto a 1977-79 Maxell UD Type 1 Cassette Tape. The Video portion was created from various images of old department stores recorded onto real VHS tape for the retro effect.
That message is China telling America (talking to a wall) and the rest of the world that strong decisive actions to de-dollarize are coming soon.
They are designed to harm the US dollar and hence American global hegemony.
Given China's historical demonstration of patience, it will likely occur over progressive stages of severity, but we're no longer talking about decades.
Sino-American win-win cooperation is a ship that has sailed and long gone beyond the horizon, and America is trapped in a sinking ship of its own making.
Sayonara and good riddance!PM
Today, I will present one of my Quora posts. This one has over 22.7K views…
Why should I move to China? What are the pros and cons as an American?
I am an American and I live in China.
I would do it again in a HEARTBEAT.
This is my sincere and accurate answer directed at someone who might be considering a move out of the United States (for whatever reason), and may consider China to be a destination to consider. If you fit in this profile, then this answer should give you an idea of what to expect.
Every place has pros and cons.
It’s up to you to determine which cons are worth accepting and which pros are important to you. It doesn’t matter what nation you are considering. It really doesn’t.
Now, China is (in many ways) the absolute OPPOSITE of the United States. And because of that, many things about China is shocking to Americans. Distasteful even.
So, I am sorry that the “cons” section is so large, but from an American point of view some things need to be said and (perhaps) elaborated on. So it’s almost twice as long as the “pros” section. Sorry about that. China is a BIG country, so this answer is gonna be big as well. LOL.
We will start with the “pros” of living in China…
Here’s the Pros…
You will live longer. Much longer, and you won’t be fat either.
China is space-age. There are way too many things that are in China that aren’t even on the “radar screens” back home. Like real (honest to goodness) robot patrols, drone monitoring, and QR parking.
High Speed Trains are amazing. You will never want to fly again.
Breakfasts are commonly under $1 USD. And you will be completely full.
You will eat better. Much better. You will eat much more seafood, delicious pork, and all sorts of healthy fruits and vegetables.
China is seriously pet-friendly. The Chinese treat their pets like little children. It’s insane, and cute at the same time. The most common pets are dogs and cats, just like in the ‘States. But there are other pets as well. The third most common seems to be rabbits, where back in PA it was ferrets.
You can make U-turns.
A steak will be just a little bit more expensive than a hamburger “value” meal. So you will be eating more steaks than hamburgers. Additionally, very little processed or canned food will be consumed. Everything is fresh.
There is very little in the way of canned foodstuffs. There’s an enormous frozen section, and all sorts of spices and pickled items, but actual canned food items really don’t exist.
There is an enormous variety of food items to choose from. Far greater than anything in the ‘States. The USA had, what, five different flavors of potato chips. In China the number is in the thousands. Lays is the biggest foreign-owned potato chip manufacturer that serves the Chinese market. My favorite flavors are starfruit and orange, roast duck with pickled egg, and “American style”. LOL
All of the public areas are super clean. Old or new, it doesn’t matter.
Restrooms are everywhere and none of them charge for use.
All public buses and transport are electric. Means that they are quiet and do not billow out pollution.
There is zero unemployment. And the crazies are nurtured in their communities. Everyone is provided a job (if they don’t have one) and they are the responsibility of community.
Homeless, vagrants, beggars are collected when they are reported, taken to the local police who identifies them. They are then provided with health care, food, a bunk and a trip back to their community with friends and family.
EV charging stations are plentiful.
Ride-share bikes are cheap, fun, and come with bicycle “superhighways” where you ride under large shady trees, and off the roads.
The idea of “sex” is not the same as in the West. It’s far more relaxed and natural, if that makes any sense. It isn’t broadcast 24–7 on media, billboards, television commercials and shows. It’s not a big deal.
That being said, the chances are that you will have more sex than what you would get back home. Because it’s not a goal. It’s an element of life.
The girls that you have relationships with will be very pretty. Not tattoos, piercings, foul tobacco chewing skanks. they will be real beauties.
Speaking of Chinese girls, they do have curves. They are not the thin, helpless, mindless waifs that is the common belief that seems to exist in the United States. Sure many are thin. But they are low BMI. Not emaciated. You would be surprised of the chest sizes on some of these chicks. Lordy!
And, while I am at it, Chinese women are tough. I mean tough as nails tough. They will manage a home, work two jobs, raise three kids all while carrying bricks on their shoulders for some extra money.
Chinese women are traditional. Meaning being a 1950’s era housewife is considered to be the ideal to achieve. Stay home. Take care of kids, budget and manage finances while the man works and brings home the money.
During rainy season you will adapt to tropical attire and carry an umbrella. So it will be common to see office folk wearing shorts and flip-flops in the office.
Men are studious, hard-working and very traditional. Just like the ladies are.
You will be expected to drink hard alcohol, and you will enjoy it immensely. Especially Maotai.
No one tips. No one will accept tips either.
There’s no April tax reports to fill out. Never do you have to report any income to the government. Nor do you have or need to hire an accountant, buy the latest version of “TurboTax” or go to H&R Block for tax advice.
You will be able to smoke cigarettes everywhere for the most part. From your office at work, to the bathroom, to inside the car. Everywhere. Office desks come with a glass ash tray, and all the manager’s offices have huge crystal ashtrays for you use, as do the bathrooms.
And the cigarettes will be cheap. The cheapest ones are less than $1 USD a pack. Though that can darn near kill you. However, the “good stuff” isn’t that expensive. Generally you can expect to pay $1.50 USD for a Chinese equivalent of Camel. But the most expensive cigarettes can get pricey.
You will have lifetime, real, friendships. If you need help, money or support, they will drop everything and come to you in a heartbeat.
Free dancing every morning and every evening in the local public areas. They are called “dancing grandmothers”, but everyone of all ages participate. Even I get down and boogie from time to time.
China is 100% cashless. You scan QR codes to buy or do anything.
You will NEVER starve. China is a nation that love to share food.
Car blocking you? No problem. Scan the plate and instantly your phone will call the number of the car owner / driver.
WeChat everything!
You will be able to save money. Lots of money. Unlike the USA, there aren’t millions of tiny hands in your wallet.
Medical care is very cheap, and easy to get. Local clinics are everywhere, and your medical history is transported no matter where you go.
You won’t need a doctors prescription for most medicines. This includes Viagra, codeine based headache medicines and antibiotics.
If you work in China as an American foreigner, the chances are that you will be paid less than what you would make in the United States for the same role and position, however you would actually be living an upper-middle class life and lifestyle because the cost of living is so cheap.
You will be able to buy nice new top-line cars. Whether it’s a luxury brand of a cutting edge EV, you will probably end up with multiple cars.
Chicken breast is considered to be the most undesirable part of the chicken, so Chicken breast meat at the grocery store is amazingly cheap. It also doesn’t have hormones or hormone injections or fed GMO feed. It’s healthy.
You will be accepted by the Chinese and friendships will form easily. Which differs substantially from that of the Japanese.
When hired you will have a contract. You will NEVER be laid off, or fired without notice such as what is common in the USA. If you merit a firing, it becomes a law case and a judge will determine what will happen. Typical contracts are two to three years. During the time that you work you will never worry about layoff because of some “downturn” in the news.
All businesses are required to provide meals and housings for their employees, or the equivalent (regional norms) in compensation to you. Typically, single people will share an apartment with another person, but if married the company will give you one for your family alone.
All business will (by law) provide you a yearly round-trip plane ticket to visit your family. So if you are a foreigner, this is an international trip. If you are Chinese, this ticket is negotiated within your contract.
You will get a yearly bonus, and it is typically one to two months salary. The bonus is calculated in your annual salary, and comes “off the top”. It will be given during the final CNY party, and there might be other incentive bonuses placed on top of it.
You will be able to buy nice homes. A bunch actually. And they all will appreciate in value. My Nanshan house in Shenzhen cost me $ 40,000 USD. Today, it’s worth $ 9 million USD. But, you know, I was just lucky. Most everyone else has their homes value in the 2 to 6 million dollar range.
You will be able to breathe nice fresh air, and experience beauty. China has so much to explore in so many different venues.
You will be able to fish, and you won’t need permits to do so. Anywhere. Anyhow, and at any time.
Chinese medicine is cheap but tastes like shit. Yuck!
The Chinese diet is heavy on seafood, chicken and pork. They also have a far, far variety of vegetables and fruits here. Everything from bitter melon to yiche. These things add a very unique taste to food. Like the wonderful pudding of Duran fruit.
You will never be lonely. There’s people everywhere, and they really love to talk to Americans.
The police will leave you alone. As long as you obey the law they will be respectful and helpful to you.
Massages are cheap, plentiful and everywhere. A foot massage might cost you $3 USD and it’s a relaxing spell while you watch the game on television.
Speaking of massages; “Happy Endings” for both women and men are perfectly legal in China. It’s considered a form of physical relaxation. Crazy huh?
A meeting will (typically) not be held western-style with a conference room, instead it will be more intimate with a tea table and you will discuss things over tea and cigarettes.
And the government is merit based. You won’t get indigestion every time the appear on television.
All the gizmos and gadget are new, and cheap and won’t be available in the ‘States for a couple of years. Such as the Huawei phone that doesn’t need cell phone towers, and the wrist holographic phone. As well as all the facial recognition scanners in homes these days.
You WILL fall in love. The girls are precious treasures.
You won’t need to buy a bicycle, ride share is common and super cheap.
Here’s the Cons…
The Chinese democracy is very different from the American “democracy”. The Chinese don’t talk or understand “freedom”. Instead they understand “family.” If you try to be too independent, it might get you into trouble.
You are forever a GUEST in someone else’s land. Accept that fact.
You never wear outside shoes in someone else’s home. It’s considered downright boorish.
No one knows what Rights are. And when you try to explain to them the American bill of rights, they will think that you are an idealist, and not a pragmatist. Their argument is “what does it matter” when you have the “freedom to speak, but risk social banning if you speak things that are to be unspoken.
Like it or not, the actions of the American leadership will fall on your shoulders. If the president is popular like Obama was, you would be viewed with favor. If he’s unpopular (in China) you would be viewed as supporting his actions. It’s of course, not true, but it’s a reality that you will need to deal with.
Many American habits are considered to be “filthy” and you will need to change. Such as eating a hamburger with your hands, eating french fries with your fingers, and eating an apple by taking a bite from it. The Chinese cut things up and use chopsticks. Including with pizza. Or you will be given these thin plastic gloves to wear.
Local pizza restaurants do not know how to make pizza. They make something else, but it’s certainly not pizza.
Cheese will be imported and it tends to be expensive.
Beer is stronger in alcohol content than what is available in the ‘States. That means, that if you are not prepared, you will get drunk much faster than you would expect.
If you have tattoos you could be banned from exposing them. This would be at work and in all public places, from swimming pools to malls.
As a foreigner, you can never obtain citizenship unless you have Chinese blood in your veins.
To enter China you will have your full biometics added to the database, and from that moment on, you will be 100% tracked by AI. You will be left alone, but if there is an emergency, your phone will light up and the police will come and pick you up within minutes.
The police, baoans and local party will all know you by name. Even if you never met them before.
You will not be able to do any kind of illegal drugs. None. Zero and you will not be able to get out of any mess that you get yourself into.
Typical drug sentence is death plus three. Means that you do hard labor for three years while you are being organ harvested, and then you are killed. The good news of this gruesome policy is that the government will get you high on medicine to chill you out, and then allow you to dress in your best clothes and you will get a happy-value meal from McDonalds. Then they put a board listing your crime around your neck and shot you with a bullet to the head. Your family will be billed for the cost of the ritual.
You will not be able to own or shoot guns. But if you want to shoot guns, you can visit Thailand. It’s only a three hour flight out of China.
It will take a while to get used to squatting toilets. But once you master it, you will be fine. It’s just those first couple of dumps that’s gonna be a problem.
You will need to carry around these tiny tissues with you. Toilets do not have toilet paper for you to use.
You will NEVER be able to uncouple yourself from the United States. Even if you renounce your citizenship, you will always and forever be “the American”.
The Chinese do not debone fish. You will be expected to eat the fish and then spit out the bones.
You will probably stop carrying a wallet.
You will probably start carrying a satchel or a backpack.
Your house will be much smaller than one in the ‘States. But it will be made out of stone, not drywall on metal frame. You will probably use an elevator to get to it.
American holidays do not exist.
China is in many ways simple, but it can get complex very quickly.
Chewing tobacco (“chew”) doesn’t exist, but you can chew on a betal nut instead. The problem with this is that it will stain your teeth a big bright red color.
You will work on Christmas and Christmas Eve.
Good luck finding a turkey to eat. You will need to go to a specialty store to get one.
If you are a big man you will have trouble finding clothes. I have big feet and that limits my access to shoes. (Sigh)
You will not be able to watch or view porn. Instead, you will be forced (out of necessity) to participate in real sex with real people. Not be a voyeur spectator.
At your job, you will be expected to give your best and “up your game” if you slack off. China is a merit based society. You ether do your best or leave.
Violations of law can be very harsh. Death and torture harsh.
You will need to comply with covid restrictions. It’s a real thing. Don’t even think about flaunting the rules, or going borderline. You comply or leave.
American Christmas music will be played all year around, and the Christmas decorations stay up all year as well.
Chinese homes are much smaller than American homes, but they do tend to have amazing views.
I’ve been living in China for over 20 years now, and still I am having a difficult time with the tones, and the idioms. I have met expats who pick up the language quickly, then there’s other older folks like myself that have a rough go at it.
Cheese-Its and other American snacks such as Doritos, and goldfish, and Wise potato-chips will be expensive. Many approaching the cost of a T-bone steak. So you will find yourself not eating these snacks often.
Coffee makers are rare. Outside of a coffeehouse, you will adapt to using instant coffee.
Starbucks coffee in China is surprisingly more expensive than what it is sold for in the USA!
You will STILL need to pay American taxes on top of any Chinese taxes that you must pay.
McDonald’s menu will not resemble the menus you have in the ‘States.
There’s no White Castle, Bojangles, Ground Round, Waffle House, or other well-known American fast food franchises.
You will be called a “traitor”, and a liar, and all sort of bad things when you talk about your life. No one (from the ‘States) will believe you. So you will, over time, distance yourself from them.
Your passport will be your ID, and so it will get frayed and worn.
You had best memorize your passport ID as you will use it a lot to get set up on the various apps and all the rest. No one uses social security number.
As a foreigner, you will need to update your residency papers with the local police, and comply with reporting requirements.
You will not be able to ride the riding mower while you listen to music and drink a beer.
Now, there are all sorts of people out there reading this. And I want to make myself very clear in this. Our decisions to move, stay, visit or leave a place are made for personal reasons.
My reasons were personal. I fell in love, and stayed and made a life. I cannot imagine a life without my Chinese family, my Chinese friends or eating delicious Chinese food.
But I am NOT average.
Certainly there are people who left China ten years ago and that say “good riddance!” while they live in places like Cleveland, York, Syracuse, or Erie. For them, they have made a good life.
For them, they made the right decision. For them they are happy.
They are paying on a house mortgage, and driving a leased car, and working as an employee and paying a big portion of their earnings to the government. They love their McMansions, the hamburgers, and weekend mowing-the-grass lifestyle.
But not me.
You cannot say that what is important for one person will be important for everyone. I love China. And that’s just fine with me. You see, what is important to me is very personal.
For instance, I like being able to smoke where I want, what I want and when I want to do it. I don’t want to be directed to go outside of a restaurant to smoke in the rain near a loud busy road. I like to eat in a nice fancy restaurant and put our dog in a chair with us, eat a fine steak with a glass or wine and smoke casually and easily.
I also like the trees planted everywhere. China has this “thing” about trees. Flowers and trees are everywhere. I believe that it keeps the temperature low on the sidewalks so that you want to walk. In the USA, trees are considered to be a nuisance… something that fall on your car, and leaves that you have to rake up in the fall.
What I like will not be perfect for everyone.
I like the ability for average families to set up storefronts and sell things. I like the idea that you can do this anywhere and get a side income in, as well as being your own boss… plus not “putting all your eggs in one basket” constantly at the mercy of your corporate boss. I like that real freedom…
I like how people are (for the most part) happy. I like how they are helpful. I like how they are cheerful and welcoming and open to talk with you. I like the calm, relaxed, healthy and good life that China offers…
I like the pace of life. Whether it is in the (so called) “Ghost City” where I live. (Which, by the way is filling up nicely. Don’t you know.) Or in the big mega-cities that are everywhere in China.
Here’s my “Ghost city”… perhaps you heard about it. It’s supposed to be representative of the terrible mistakes that China has made in their economic model. I don’t know anything about that. Everyone here is happy. Everyone here thinks the world of the Chinese government.
Happiness is a big deal inside of China.
The only ones pissed off and angry, seems to be Americans. Gosh, you would think that I am the devil himself by showing what China is like… what it is REALLY like… and why I like it so. So much spewed hatred. Honest to goodness, the spitting, sour hatred out of many Americans just rattles me. What the heck are youse guys eating? Lard Sandwiches, or what?
I’ll tell you what; that hatred will kill you early.
Be happy. Don’t be hateful. You’ll live longer. Don’t you know.
China has life. It’s active, alive and dynamic. There’s always something going on. I like that. I never had that in the United States.
China is active and dynamic. Always something going on. Yet, it’s not that rush-rush-rush feeling that you might get from a Hollywood action adventure movie. It’s a really relaxed feeling. Like playing golf on a beautiful day, like going fishing on a slow calm late Summer day, or just riding your bicycle in the fall and listening to the leaves crackle under your wheels. Yeah I like that.
I like the feeling of calm and nature.
I love the food. Oh lordy there is is so much food to choose from. And my goodness is it delicious!
And I love the girls…
And finally, let it be well understood that I live in the poorer “blue collar” worker section of China. I do not live in a big upscale wealthy section of China. I’m solidly in the lower-middle class economic strata.
I live in Southern Zhongshan on the Zhuhai border. It’s very lower-middle class. And the life that I praise is comfortable, but not lavish.
Average Family incomes (husband and wife both working) are between 4000 RMB and 12,000 RMB). This is roughly $300 USD to $2000 USD a month. But when the total cost of living is under $200, everyone can get by quite well.
Yah. Simple. But good enough for me.
And my social security check. LOL.
…
Today…
When do I know it’s time to retire?
I had an office manager for over 33 years. She ran the office and I practiced law. It was a good partnership for both of us.
However, after practicing law for over 35 years, I was burnt out. I was finding if more difficult to empathize with my clients. I had thought about retiring but just could not bring myself to say I have had enough.
One day my officer manager came into my office and closed the door and said we need to talk. She said it was time for me to retire and proceeded to outline exactly how I could do it. She had calculated how much I would get from Social Security, how much I was getting from rents, how much my wife would get from her teacher’s retirement once she retired and how much I could get from my 401(k).
She said that she knew I was not happy with my career anymore. She said that I should not worry about her as she and her husband were going to convert their home into a bed and breakfast.
I knew she was right and the next day I announced my retirement and have never regretted it.
My office manager now runs a very successful bed and breakfast.
Have you been to a doctor and they can’t find anything physically wrong with you, but you know something is wrong?
Back in 2014 I went hiking with family and found that I could not keep up with them. I was sweating profusely and was breathless even before we even got to the first uphill hike. My wife and I decided to stay behind and just waited for their return. I went to see my PCP the day after. He did an EKG but did not find anything. He referred me to a Cardiologist who, after giving me a stress test, said I was fine. I insisted that something was wrong. He gave me an echocardiogram and still could not find anything wrong. I insisted further and he agreed to do an angiogram. My brother-in-law who is a vascular surgeon in Northern California referred me to a colleague of his in San Diego to do the angiogram. This doctor did the angiogram and found that an angioplasty would not work for me and that I need a bypass. He referred me to another Cardiologist, Dr. Dan Meyers, from Texas. I ended up having, not one but five-artery (quintuple) bypass. Dr. Meyers said I was days away from getting a heart attack.
Today, after 10 years, I am feeling the same thing I felt back then and am going through the same thing again with cardiologists not finding anything wrong or saying there is nothing they can do but give me more medication to improve what I am feeling. The first one did an angiogram and found nothing wrong and gave me more medication that I stopped taking as it did not make a difference. I am on my fourth cardiologist now and finally found one who showed me on the computer screen what is happening and can do something about it. He said of the five arteries that were grafted in 2014, only 2 are still open. The other three have either collapsed or again blocked. He can reopen 2 of them easily with stents. The other one is a little bit tricky but can be done and I will be home on the same day. He told me not to overdo my workouts until after the angiogram which is scheduled for next month.
We do need to pay attention to our body. No one else knows our body more than ourselves. The doctors are there to find and correct the issues we feel.
What did your parents say about you that made you sad?
“Do you think they swapped them?”
I was barely three years old, and playing on the floor across the room.
“The woman in the room across from me at the hospital had a boy.” My mom’s hushed voice was colored with envy.
“Yes.” My father nodded patiently, as if he had heard this before.
“Do you think she really had a boy?”
“What do you mean?” Dad was confused, not following what my mom was asking.
“I mean, do you think the nurses swapped them? Maybe she had the girl and I was the one who had the boy.”
“No, they wouldn’t do that!” Dad seemed horrified by the suggestion, and instinctively glanced over at me.
I looked down and pushed the shiny tin train across the floor.
I never let on that I had heard or understood their conversation, but it changed me. The experience leaked uncertainty about my identity into my three-year-old world.
It was when I first realized why some things were the way they were.
I understood then why Mom rarely corrected strangers when they met me and praised what a cute son my mother had.
Why my hair was kept cropped short while my older sister had ponytails.
Why my grandfathers never gave me time of day.
It was the first time I found out that boys were to be coveted, and girls to be lamented.
I was meant to be a boy. And it made me sad. It wasn’t because Mom wondered if they mixed up the babies or wished she had the boy.
I was sad that I was a girl.
WARNING: Hard Landing is coming for the US Economy
Screw a hard landing. Its always a crash landing when the wheels have fallen off already.
All Americans are feeling economic pressures with high inflation, fearful news, a Congress that loves to throw money around, and all sorts of changes to their lifestyle. Without becoming political, what is the easiest and best solution for the USA?
Stop creating more dollars. 1 trillion dollars are being created every 100 days. Within a few years it will be much greater than that amount.
The old definition of inflation, 100 years ago, said that inflation is the creation of money (currency).
Our currency is not really money anymore. Currency not backed by gold cannot be money. We have fiat currency now. It only has value because people accept it as having value. But it has been losing value at a much faster pace, since America went off the gold standard in 1971.
When money is backed by gold, it limits how much, new money can be made. When you go off the gold standard, you can create all the currency you want to. Now, you know why, we have higher inflation.
The inflation numbers on TV are not the true inflation numbers. In 1980, they changed, how inflation was calculated. So, you have to multiply by 2 to get a more accurate inflation number. So, 3 1/2% inflation is 7% true inflation rate. Everything, we are being told is a fraud now. They will lie about the employment numbers, so Biden can get reelected. There is a chance that something major is going to happen between now and May 19. It could be nuclear war or dollar devaluation. Maybe, a stock market crash. The economy is a fraud. It will end badly, eventually.
Have you ever witnessed clever parenting and/or discipline?
When I was a child, bedtime was 8:30, no fooling around about it. Unless I was reading. If I was reading anything at all, I could stay up as long as I stayed quietly reading. (I rarely made it to 9).
Later, my parents’ problem became getting me to stop reading and go to sleep. I had the third floor of the house to myself, but I kept getting caught staying up and reading. Tried sealing the door so light couldn’t leak out. No good. Tried covering the windows so nothing showed in the yard. No dice; I kept getting caught.
Many years later, as a young adult, I broke down and asked Mom how she did it.
She gave me the look she reserved for occasions when I’d done something a little cute, but basically stupid, and replied: “How many nights were you not reading?” Me: *thinks* “Oh. So, every night on your way to bed, you just hollered upstairs, and on the odd night when I was already asleep, no harm done?” Mom: “Uh-huh.”
What surprised you most about retiring?
One of the biggest surprises that has happened after retiring is realizing what it’s like to downsize. We lost, or rather left behind, over 1000 square feet. We’d had a lovely piece of property, and now we don’t have very much.
I’ve pared down our possessions, I’m still doing that, and I’m beginning to realize how little we need. No one will tell me why I dragged my mother’s china with me. I won’t use it. I hardly used it when we had a larger house. I was younger then, and we did a lot of entertaining. You’ll find out how this works. You know that there is no good reason to take so much stuff, but you do it anyway. I look at that china and think, “Let my heirs take care of it.” As long as I don’t do that with too many things, I should be okay.
I’m overwhelmed by how nice people are in the community we’ve moved into. People showed up at my door with homemade soup, breads and even dinner. We were welcomed with open arms. I’d lived in my old neighborhood for a long time, I knew my neighbors, but I never got to know them well. I had a good friend across the street. I knew the people on my block, but we each had our own lives. We were working. That made a difference. Larger homes with larger plots of land tend to make people stay within their boundaries. I don’t feel any boundaries here. I feel free.
I didn’t expect to be this happy. I thought we were just doing this for the money, but I’ve found out that I’ve been looking for this place a long time, and finally I was old enough to find it.
SHOCKING: China Warns The US “Cooperation or Confrontation” As Russia SEIZES US Bank Assets
This is a VERY GOOD video. China gave the USA “notice”.
China has had enough.
Blinken’s in China and things aren’t going well for him. Beijing has given him multiple warnings and red lines not to cross. China has given clear signs they aren’t afraid of America’s economic threats. Meanwhile, Russia has just frozen the assets of JP Morgan’s Russian account. This asset seizure will likely continue as the West plans to confiscate Russia’s frozen $300 billion. Here’s what you must know!
What did your father say to you that you’ll never forget?
When I was 20 years old, still a university student, and in the early stages of a relationship, a game of truth or dare with friends took an unexpected turn. I was dared to confess about my relationship to my parents, even though it felt too early. However, my ego pushed me to accept the challenge.
I nervously called my dad.
Me: Hi, Dad.
Dad: Hi! How are you?
Me: I wanted to say something.
Dad: Okay, go ahead.
Me: I… hmm… (I hesitated).
Dad: What’s the hesitation?
Me: I wanted to say… (still hesitant, thinking of how to handle things if they go south).
Dad: Is there someone around you? (He heard my friends’ voices and they were making sure I said it.)
Me: Pooh… (taking a deep breath and without second thought) I like a girl!
Dad: Okay, what’s her name? (He seemed surprisingly cool, which was not typical with Indian parents.)
Me: (I told him her name.)
Dad: Okay, where is she from?
Me: (I gave him her details.)
Dad: Alright. Just remember one thing in life. Even if you miss one bus, there is always another bus that will come. You just need to wait.
Me: Okay (totally dumbfounded by how things turned around).
Dad: Anything else?
Me: No.
Dad: Bye!!.
Me: Bye !!.
Till this day, I remain captivated by the way my dad handled that unexpected conversation. His calm and open-minded response, especially given the usual cultural norms, left a lasting impression on me. The analogy he used, comparing life’s opportunities to buses, has become a guiding principle for me in facing challenges.
Since that day, whenever I encounter setbacks or failures, I recall my dads words and wait for the next bus. 🙂
edit: Thanks a lot for all the upvotes . shared it with my dad yesterday, and he was ecstatic about the response. A big thanks to all who read and all the upvotes !!
What were the last words you heard someone say before they died?
My mom had lung cancer. I was with her the last few days. She refused medication until the last day. Then started morphine. I had fallen asleep after reading to her for a bit.
The nurse explained to me that her kind of death is like slowly drowning the morphine reduces your bodies desire to breath. Very hard to watch.
Well I fell asleep finally and my alarm did not wake me for her next dose. I heard “ Neal get up!”. Just like when I was late for the bus 50 years ago. I had not heard her speak above a whisper for more than a month.
I gave her her next dose read a bit more to her from the hobbit ( she called her house that she built after she was65 her self) her hobbit house ( partially underground) but she had never read the hobbit and loved it when we read to her.
She never spoke again, I actually think she was not really there after that second dose of morphine.
Due to covid this remarkable lady never had a funeral. Grew up on the reservation, professional trick rider from ages of 9 to 12. Completed high school, raised 3 boys on her own . Ran 3 successful businesses, tribal council 3 times no one messed with her twice all 90 lb 4ft 7 of her…. Happy trails ma….
Apricot Cream Cheese French Toast
Ingredients
French Toast
1 loaf French bread, cut into 8 very thick slices
8 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup pecans
Confectioners’ sugar
1 cup whipping cream
4 eggs
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Apricot Sauce
1 (12 ounce) jar apricot preserves
1/2 cup orange juice
Instructions
French Toast
Make a pocket in bread slices by slicing again, but not all the way through.
Mix the cream cheese with the pecans and a couple tablespoons of the confectioners’ sugar. Stuff the pocket in the French bread with the cream cheese mixture. Dip into a mixture of whipping cream, eggs, nutmeg and vanilla extract.
Grill on hot griddle, and serve with Apricot Sauce.
Apricot Sauce
Mix apricot preserves with orange juice over low heat.
How is a plane removed from a place where it’s unable to takeoff again?
In 1997, a Saudi Airlines 747 landed at the wrong airport in India – it was supposed to land at Madras International Airport but ended up touching down at a nearby Indian air force base instead. The pilot simply saw and aimed for the wrong runway. Oops!
In that particular case, the base’s runways weren’t enough to allow the plane to safely take off again.
So, they made the plane as light as possible. All of the passenger seats were taken out, as well as all of the galleys. Any excess weight was removed from the plane to make it as light as possible. It was given just a few minutes worth of fuel – the absolute minimum necessary to be able to get the plane in the air and make the short flight to the Madras airport, which was its original, intended destination and just a short hop away.
Big, longhaul planes that need longer runways are usually intended for longer flights, and thus a big reason they need such long runways for takeoff is they’re loaded up with so much fuel. So, perhaps the Saudi 747 wasn’t the only case in which a large plane was stripped of as much weight as possible, and then given the absolute least amount of fuel possible – just enough to allow it to take off and get itself to the nearest airport with the right runway.
Apparently the same happened with a TWA flight that landed at the wrong airport near Steamboat Springs, CO in 2001, and an Atlas Air cargo jet that landed at the wrong airport in AZ. In each case, all excess weight was removed from the plane, and it was given just enough fuel to get it to the correct airport. Once there, everything was put back on the plane (after being trucked over) and it was put back in service. Obviously, these situations each involve pilots accidentally landing at the wrong airport, mistaking them for the (nearby) airport they were supposed to land at. So in these situations, giving the planes just enough fuel to get to the proper airport – but not enough to prevent them from taking off on the short runway – was an option.
What was the most disrespectful suggestion you received from a person who assumed you made less money than them?
When I chose to leave the language center where I had worked for 14 years for lack of respect issues by ‘the boys’ club’, one colleague (who was part of the club) made it clear that HE thought I was making a huge mistake.
Fast forward perhaps 5 years. He, too, had left the center for a higher paying position elsewhere.
We ran into each other at an exhibition, and he asked what I was doing for work.
As a communications teacher, I am really good at reading body language and tone of voice. He was oozing condescension and seemed ready to gloat, assuming I was working at some unlicensed language school.
I admit to messing with him and felt no guilt whatsoever.
I told him I was teaching part time (I had been a full-time teacher trainer and supervisor at the center) and added nothing.
He gave one of his famous ‘sad on the outside, superior laugh on the inside’ looks and saying he still had connections, he offered to put in a good word for me at the center, so MAYBE I could be rehired there as an hourly teacher.
I thanked him as sincerely as I could, but then, looking very serious, told him I was part-timing at the then top-rated business school in Thailand, making over three times what I had made fulltime at the center and working only a fourth of the 40-hour week.
His look of shock was very satisfying.
The fun didn’t end there.
My husband walked up and asked if we were talking about our new logistics company (we owned six 10-wheel trucks outright); I feared my former colleague was going to have a heart attack.
Note: I had been moonlighting at the business school long before I left the center. It was no secret, but the ‘club’ never bothered to learn much about me.
When I left the center, I also left my disgust and anger about them AT the center, being unwilling to carry THAT burden into the future.
Why dont young able-bodied homeless people just get jobs?
A few years ago someone I had known when they were a teenager showed up where I was working looking for a job. He was in his early 20s by this point (American citizen) but had been kicked out of his moms house. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and his birth certificate.
There was a truck stop walking distance from where he was staying that would hire him but he had to have a social security card and a picture id.
So I tried to help him get those items and I discovered just how difficult it is to get photo id without photo id! He was a nice kid but not brilliant. And he had no car so I drove him. first place we went was the social security office. once there it was discovered that the birth dates on his birth certificate and his social security card were one day apart! That took more paperwork to figure out.
Finally we get a social security card but then we go to the local dmv for an id. He didn’t have a previous id of course, and because of his situation he had no utility bills in his name or passport or anything else. Eventually we managed to get him an id because I was willing to sign paperwork vouching for his identity since I knew him when he was a kid
Both the social security office and the dmv were over 20 miles from where he was staying, and each took multiple trips. He couldn’t get a job so he had no money so he couldn’t have taken Ubers. ( and no working phone or credit card) And he would have really really struggled figuring out all of the paperwork. I have a masters degree and I struggled trying to figure out this stuff.
These days any ‘legit’ -ie not paying under the table – employer has to check social security cards and all of that stuff.
If a homeless person has lost their social security card and picture id – I can assure you – at least in Texas – it’s incredibly hard to get either back. If that homeless person does not have someone to vouch for who they are, they might not be able to get it again.
it took well over a month and numerous trips to get him sorted out. Once we did, he took the job and could work again. But a homeless person with no one to drive them around and help them out? Good luck.
Comics from the golden age
What are the facts about girls that guys don’t know?
Generally, we don’t enjoy talking dirty
women are attracted towards men with good dressing sense…like men matching their sneakers with hoddies or socks with the shirt
without speaking a word we can give alerts to other females…like there is a period stain on your dress or “I want a sanitary napkin!!” all this can be said through eyes
We dislike boys who are a simp (brutally honest)
we gain respect for the boy who cries in front of us (we never ever judge you for crying)
7. when we talk to our crush we generally play with our hairs
8. we love when you teach us something without making us feel dumb
9. the happiness of having no period stain on a bedsheet after sleeping on it for a whole night
10. girls generally think a lot of fake scenarios more than boys and if that fake scenario becomes reality she will be insanely in love with you
so try to know her imagination (ask this indirectly) and fulfill it.
This type of politicization of medical research is absolutely disgusting, and downright harmful.
This is @wellcometrust
, a large global charitable foundation focused on health research. Their mission, I quote, is to “improves health for everyone by funding research”. Everyone… except for the Chinese apparently.
Here they’re offering to fund research to the tune of £5 million for research into dengue and Zika, two virus infections that do occur in China (especially dengue which is endemic in the southern provinces). And they make it extremely clear throughout the description of the project (Infectious Disease Award: Understanding dengue and Zika spread | Grant funding | Wellcome
) that any organization in the world can apply for this grant, literally “anywhere in the world”… “apart from mainland China”!
This isn’t only shocking for the obvious singling out of one specific country but also because it runs counter to the very principles of science: what if the one scientific team in the world that’s most competent to further research into dengue is actually Chinese? Are we saying that because they’re Chinese that means we’d rather set science back than have them work on it? What kind of world are we preparing for ourselves where nationality and race take precedence over scientific progress? I remember a certain country doing this in the 1940s and it didn’t work too good for them…
Yet westoids will say NOT RACIST they’re just insects!
BYTEDANCE REFUSES to SELL TIKTOK – china tells Biden to go back to sleep…
America is a circus, and a sad one.
China is “Dude; we are so tired of your bullshit. Go fuck yourself.”
Western democracy used to be in the circle of “electing and regretting”. Has it become a cycle of “electing and ousting” now?
Oh yes, you can literally see it on westoids responses.
We’re a democracy! We can vote them out if they do shitty things.
This of course fails to mention that they get to walk off with their ill gotten loot.
This also fails to mention that they don’t really have a choice, all the political parties are the same.
We can look at it today and now with the Democrats and Republicans. Or Conservative and Labour (UK). The parties policies are absolutely identical when they agree with each other all the time.
Want an example?
In the UK water companies are dumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea. This was after Brexit made EU pollution laws no longer apply.
26th April there was a vote about OFWAT. To WEAKEN the water regulator in their ability to issue fines and order water companies to literally clean up their shit.
So Starmer Labour leader opposed this right?
Nope
Starmer’s Labour voted with the Tories to weaken the water watchdog’s ability to combat sewage dumping. This will fundamentally impact the ability for OFWAT to fine water companies who continue to pollute our rivers, lakes and seas as we know they have been doing with impunity since EU water cleanliness legislation got dumped following Brexit.
So oh sure you’ll get to replace your politicians with identical politicians who act the same way, are greedy and self serving in the same way too!
The above is from Futurama.
The even funnier thing is they’ll defend this as the PERFECT system!
What are the most arrogant, idiotic and shameful things a politician has ever said?
I’m going to go with Louis Farrakhan on this one
A couple quotes so you can get my idea:
“You see everybody always talk about Hitler exterminating six million Jews. That’s right. But don’t nobody ever ask what did they do to Hitler.”
“White people are potential humans – they haven’t evolved yet.”
“The Jews have been so bad at politics they lost half their population in the Holocaust. They thought they could trust in Hitler, and they helped him get the Third Reich on the road.”
“The Mother Wheel is a heavily armed spaceship the size of a city, which will rain destruction upon white America but save those who embrace the Nation of Islam.”
“Now that nation called Israel, never has had any peace in forty years and she will never have any peace because there can never be any peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name.”
“The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man.”
“I believe that for the small numbers of Jewish people in the United States, they exercise a tremendous amount of influence on the affairs of government …Yes, they exercise extraordinary control, and black people will never be free in this country until they are free of that kind of control … “
“Many of the Jews who owned the homes, the apartments in the black community, we considered them bloodsuckers because they took from our community and built their community but didn’t offer anything back to our community. When the Jews left, the Palestinian Arabs came, Koreans came, Vietnamese…and we call them bloodsuckers.”
“White people deserve to die, and they know, so they think it’s us coming to do it.”
Arrogant? Check.
Idiotic? Check.
Shameful? Check.
Have you ever been ignored by the staff in a store because you didn’t look wealthy enough?
I walked into a Harley-Davidson dealership looking to buy my next bike. I was looking at their pre-owned stock, which, like in any other retail scenario, is significantly less expensive than buying new. My son (I think he was 7 or 8 at the time), was with me, and I had him sitting on the passenger seats of several bikes on the floor to see if he were tall enough to reach the foot pegs. We were both wearing jeans and t-shirts, which is fairly typical for us, and not entirely uncommon among motorcyclists.
I narrowed my selection down and got on those bikes with him to see if he could hold onto me in the riding position. After probably 5 or 6 bikes, I decided on one, and started looking around for a sales person. There were several of them on the floor, all just kind of glancing over at us while talking among themselves. We wandered through the merchandise section of the store, and as we passed the group of sales people, I said “apparently nobody wants to take a cash down payment for their next sale?”
We walked out, and I later discovered that while this treatment of customers isn’t all that common among Harley dealers as a whole, this particular dealer is notorious for it.
Shorpy vintage photos
Youse guys know that I love these…
As a police officer, what’s the one call that will be with you forever?
As a new officer on overnight shift, I was dispatched to a shooting in an urban neighborhood in the downtown area. When I arrived, I was accompanied by two other officers where we observed two men in a pickup truck in front of a house who had been shot. Before a minute, there were another half dozen police officers who had arrived securing the scene while we administered first aid. The paramedics came and took the driver. The passenger, a 19 year old kid was pronounced dead at the scene. We had learned shortly thereafter this was a drive by, gang style shooting that was retribution against these individuals who had shot one of there members the week before.
I was assigned to stand by the passenger door of the pickup securing the evidence until the scene could be processed. Our CSI Unit worked during the day shift and was on call, so we had to wait.
The door was open with the nineteen year old’s head and right arm sticking out the door as he laid on his right side across the seat. This was my first homicide scene. This was the first time being close to a deceased body. I stood there watching his blood spill out of the vehicle and drift down about fifty feet in the gutter to where we had put up our crime scene tape.
About 45 minutes had passed when a lady drove up, exited her vehicle and approached where the detective was standing outside the tape. When she saw the blood, she let out a shriek and then inconsolable sobbing as she knew her son was the one in that pickup truck even before the detective could have informed her. Before long, family members started to arrive. One by one, the shrieks and the sobbing continued. After about an hour, they left together, attempting to console one another. Then there was an eerie silence. After nearly 23 years, I can still remember what the scene looked like, the smell, and those agonizing screams. My prayers are still with this young man’s family.
Southwestern Egg and Cheese Breakfast Casserole
Yield: 10 servings
Ingredients
18 eggs
2 small cans green chiles, chopped
1 to 1 1/2 pounds cooked breakfast sausage
2 1/2 cups grated Monterey Jack cheese
1 onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
Instructions
Spray slow cooker with Pam.
Starting with sausage, layer meat, chiles, onions, peppers, and cheese, repeating the layering process until all ingredients are used and ending with a layer of cheese.
Beat eggs, then pour over mixture in slow cooker.
Cover and cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours.
Serve with sour cream and/or salsa.
What are some “Wait, what?” moments that you’ve had with your child’s school?
One of my daughters is a serious academic. She is the student who, when given an assignment due in 2 weeks, would begin it that same evening. She always turned in essays and projects early; sometimes the teacher even told her to take it home for a while until it was due. She scrupulously studied for every test and exam. When she was in Grade 8, French class, every project, quiz, test, and participation level scored 95% or better. Yet, on her report card, her grade was B+.
WHAT?
We arranged a parent-teacher interview at the appropriate time as designated on the form supplied with the report card. My daughter, who was understandably very upset with her grade, accompanied me to ask for clarification from the teacher. Perhaps it was a simple error? We brought along all of my daughter’s marked work from the term.
“Oh, no error,” said the teacher. “I don’t ever give an A or A+. Students always have room to improve.”
“Well,” I countered, displaying all the marked term documents we had, “could you please explain how you added numerical grades over 15 assignments, that seem to average at 97%, to equal a B+, which is a numerical grade of 85–90%?”
“That may be accurate,” said the French teacher. “But I don’t give A+ to any students. There is always room to improve.”
We passed over the projects and exams that were graded at 100%. “Please explain how my daughter could improve in this circumstance.” Then we handed over the lowest-graded item, at 95%. “You have marked several of my daughter’s interpretations of this French novel as “inaccurate,” but her views actually are in agreement with those of these renowned French literary critics.” I passed her the publications.
“So, please explain to my daughter and me how she could have improved her performance enough to get the grade she needed to promote her to her desired school?”
“I never give an A+,” was the final comment before the interview was ended. And my daughter was once again in tears.
“It’s not over yet,” I told her. I sent all of our documentation, the report card, and the teacher’s remarks (which I had written down as they were being discussed) to the school Principal, cc to the Superintendent, and to the School Board. Within 3 days her mark was corrected to A+, and a letter of apology was sent to my daughter from the principal of the school. The French teacher transferred.
I am proud to say that this daughter is now in her 4th year PhD English Literature, and is completely fluent in French.
Sorry not Sorry, But NO: China doesn’t need to be grateful to the US for anything
As a follow on to two videos I’ve recently made, on about the reasons why Japan invaded China and another about the reason why China should be grateful to the USA, there have been a few questions and I’ll attempt to answer them here.
The United States is coming apart at the seams. It literally is.
I have watched some videos of people digging up old battle sites, and the images that come to mind are the old holsters that have been buried in the mud and muck for 75 years.
You can still see the shape of the holster, but the seams are all rotten, and the entire things is crumbling.
This is what the United States is RIGHT NOW.
Rotten, dysfunctional, and of no use to anyone. It’s a real mess.
Christ almighty! Meanwhile, don’t you know, the USS Eisenhower is being hit by cheaply made rockets and is taking a hell of a lot of damage.I initially though that this was fake. Not so. Though the video might actually be fake.
Yet….
And somehow, the geniuses think that the USA can take on China?
And, man oh man, at first I thought that this was just “fake news”. But then the Chinese government released pictures of the damage on the aircraft carrier.
Like this one.
Can you make it out? Bow is facing you at the lower end of the picture, and the transom is at the top. The fires are hottest at the port side. The tower island is on the starboard side.
Now this is just one aspect of the death of the United States.
Sheech.
Do I need to discuss Gaza? Or Ukraine?
Let’s consider NASA. I have a video in one of these posts that goes into great detail about the new Artemis moon landing.
As an Aerospace Engineer, I note how all the technologies that were “invented” for the Apollo program, suddenly has to be re-invented.
WTF?
Not only that, the entire program seems to be a joke.
Four man crew. Ok.
That’s fine, but really… why?
Why do you need that many people, when EVERYTHING is now automated?
The orbiting module will have two gay men in it. They will circle the moon; the “dark side of the moon” looking for “answers”…WTF? Two gay men circling the “dark side of the moon” looking for answers…
The landing module will have a black man, and a woman on it. I guess that all this is about diversity more than anything else.
They will land in a stereotypical 1940’s era Robert Heinlein spaceship design, and egress from the module using an elevator!
An elevator?
You cannot make this up.
Why?
Ok, oh, in other news, Scott Ritter was intercepted while in transit by Agents of the US Government and held and released. They seized his passport. Now poor Scott is stuck in the USA.
Poor Scott. He doesn’t yet realize how FUCKED the USA is right now.
No passport.
A real fear of us expats. I’ll tell you what.
Sorry for this rant.
But the USA is going down… glug glug glug…
Today…
What is the strangest diplomatic weapon used by a state?
This is quite strange because this animal can seem everything but a weapon (even if only diplomatic).
In 2010 China publicly asked President Barack Obama not to meet the Dalai Lama. Obama didn’t accept the invitation and China promptly withdrew two newborn giant pandas from U.S. territory.
Also in 2010, after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, China stopped importing Norwegian salmon. In revenge it signed a 4 billion euro contract with Scotland and sent a panda to Edinburgh Zoo as a gift.
The Dalai Lama visited Austria in 2013 and China immediately threatened to take back the very popular panda that has been staying at the world’s oldest zoo (Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna).
It is the so-called “panda diplomacy” that classifies all panda specimens as exclusive property of the Chinese government.
These animals live in the wild only in the Qinling and Minshan regions, two small mountain areas in rural China. There are about 1500 specimens. Another 500 live in captivity and of these only 70 are found outside of China, but for very specific reasons.
Since 1984, China has started to grant pandas with real lease contracts, which provide for the payment of up to one million euros per year per single specimen. If the panda should die because of the zoo in the host country, there is a fine of about 500 thousand euros. Furthermore, China remains the sole owner of all organic products derived from giant pandas, including their cubs. Every giant baby panda born in foreign territory is in fact by law owned by China and keeping it together with mama panda in another country has a cost of 400 thousand euros per year. Not little, also because it is expensive to stock up on bamboo: the Edinburgh Zoo spends $ 107,000 a year to feed its two pandas.
Each rented panda is a symbol of a successful trade agreement, as has happened over the years with many countries, including England, Scotland, France, Australia and many others. The loan of pandas is therefore a reliable yardstick for political and trade relations between China and other countries.
The panda diplomacy is a solid foreign policy tool. The panda is in fact one of the main instruments with which China intends to exercise its policy of soft power to increase its international prestige and influence.
President Xi Jinping personally signs their lease contracts, and this only after a formal and public request from the requesting foreign nations arrives.
Ah, don’t think that these diplomatic operations have only just begun. The practice had existed since the Tang Dynasty when Empress Wu Zetian sent a pair of pandas to Japan to Emperor Tenmu … in 685.
6 Most Disturbing Mysterious Locations
Some facts about the aviation industry are :
In 2003, two men stole a parked Boeing 727 from Luanda International Airport and flew away into the sunset. They’ve never been found.
The Concorde flew so fast, if you left London in the evening flying west towards New York, to the passengers in the plane, the sun would actually appear to begin rising again shortly after reaching cruising speed.The plane flew faster than the Earth’s rotation.
Aeroflot Flight 821 crashed because the captain was drunk. All 88 people died. Additionally, the pilots joined the airline through forged papers.
The wingspan of a Boeing 747 is longer than the total distance of the Wright Brothers’ first flight.
In 1987, Steve Rothstein bought a lifetime unlimited first class American Airlines ticket for $250,000. He flew over 10,000 flights costing the company $21 million. They terminated his ticket in 2008.
A test pilot for the SR-71 Blackbird had the aircraft disintegrate around him while flying at nearly 80,000 feet, while going Mach 3.1 (2,300mph) and lived.
In 2019, passengers travelled more than 8 trillion kilometers: that’s about the same as a light year
In 2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landed his plane in the Hudson River after a bird strike caused an engine failure. All 155 people on board survived.
Kmart in the 70s & 80s – Why We LOVED IT
What is your most memorable experience working with Steve Jobs?
One day Steve Jobs showed up in my cubicle with a man that I didn’t know. He didn’t bother to introduce him; instead he asked, “What do you think of a company called Knoware?”
I told him that the company’s products were mediocre, boring, and simplistic–nothing that was strategic for Macintosh. The company didn’t matter to us. After my diatribe, he said to me, “I want you to meet the CEO of Knoware, Archie McGill.”
Thank you Steve.
Here’s the kicker: I passed the Steve Jobs’s IQ test. If I had said nice things about crappy software, Steve would have concluded that I was clueless and that was a career-limiting or ending move.
Working for Steve Jobs wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t pleasant. He demanded excellence and kept you at the top of your game—or you were gone. I wouldn’t trade my experience working for him for any job I’ve ever had.
This experience taught me that you should tell the truth and worry less about the consequences for three reasons:
Telling the truth is a test of your character and intelligence. You need strength to tell the truth and intelligence to recognize what is true.
People yearn for the truth—that is, telling people that their product is good just to be positive doesn’t help them improve it.
There’s only one truth, so it’s easier to be consistent if you’re honest. If you are dishonest, you have to keep track of what you said.
Soda Pop Roast
Ingredients
1/2 envelope onion soup mix
1 can cream of mushroom soup or beef broth
1 can soda of your choice (the sweeter the better)
1 (2 to 3 pound) beef or pork roast
Instructions
Mix first 3 ingredients together.
Place roast in slow cooker, and pour mixture over roast.
Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours for a beef roast or for 8 to 10 hours for a pork roast.
NASA’s pricey mission to send U.S. back to moon faces technical challenges | 60 Minutes
American astronauts aren’t heading back to the moon just yet. NASA’s pricey Artemis mission is facing technical challenges. The space agency is now working with both SpaceX and Blue Origin.
What is the most powerful supernatural warning you have received?
About twenty-three years ago, I was home alone, just having a lazy afternoon lounging about the house while my wife was out with her mother. My calm was interrupted when someone—or something—grabbed the handle on the front door from the outside. I of course rushed over to the door and tore it open, ready to tell whoever it was to go jump in the nearby creek, but there was no one there. In fact, not a single person in sight.
This rattled me a little bit, but I didn’t think much more of it, but within a few minutes, the door handle moved again. I repeated the procedure outlined above, now getting rather angry, and, once again, there was no one in sight.
When the the door handle moved the third time I suppose I must’ve started thinking that this is the point of the movie when the viewers ask themselves “why doesn’t he just leave the house?” Still, I was getting rather fed up with this oompus-boompus, and, like a man with nerves of chilled steel, I resolved to act with derring-do and resolution.
This time I tip-toed over to the door and opened it slowly and gently: And a startled crow flew away. For reasons best known to itself—a warped sense of humor, perhaps, general pottiness stemming from unresolved childhood issues, or simply a lack of other sitting spots—this corvid had been using the door handle as a perch. Later on, we spotted crows doing that from the outside of the house, so the mystery was definitely solved.
The point is that if you think you’re experiencing something supernatural, there’s probably a quite banal natural explanation.
Model box art
Mostly aircraft. Fun stuff.
What should you never say at the US-Canada border?
“We got some donuts.” My uncle stated to the border agent after being asked if we had anything to declare.
Apparently, border agents aren’t issued a sense of humor when assigned duty.
We crossed the border many times before with no issue. We vacationed in Canada most summers, so the crossing seemed almost routine at this point. I guess my uncle just got a little too comfortable with the process, though.
After he made the ill-timed joke to the border agent, the man got rather testy with my uncle. He began asking what else we were bringing across the border, he asked if they had documents for the 6 kids that were along for the trip, he asked if we had any firearms, he asked just about every question in the book trying to trip my uncle into admitting to something illegal.
The only thing we bought in Canada that we were bringing home was the donuts, but the border agent wasn’t convinced. His feathers had been ruffled and he wasn’t about to let my smartass uncle get away with it. He ordered us to the side for an inspection.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to unpack, search, then repack a 36 foot motor home that is filled to the gills with 10 people’s stuff? Hours and hours.
I really don’t know what this guy was expecting to find, and I suspect he did it mostly out of spite. We all had to wait while other agents carelessly pulled all of our clothes, food, and camping gear out and searched every nook and cranny of the motorhome. I’m a little shocked they didn’t start cutting into the cushions to look for contraband.
In the end, they confiscated our donuts and sent us on our way.
Lesson learned: Don’t make jokes at the border.
Why I Left America…
Great rant. Perfect.
What’s the most unreasonable request you’ve received from your boss?
I’ll tell you the story and let you decide.
When I was much younger, questionabley dumber but definitely more naive, I was working for an oil service company in Angola. This base was supporting a couple of remote operations, one of which was in Mozambique.
I was a maintenance guy, still pretty junior but not completely green.
As I was going back to my workbench after lunch I was approached by my manager who was holding the technical manual for one of our pieces of equipment.
Manager: “Mike, the rig in Mozambique is having some problems with xxx can you go and take a look at it? You have your passport with you, right?
Me: “err yeah, when is my flight?”
Manager: “in an hour.”
Me: “Errrr”
The airport was at least 30 minutes form the base. Going to the staff house for me to pack and actually get ready was a 25 minute detour in the wrong direction.
Manager: “Here is $200. Buy some clothes when you get to Johannesburg. That should cover the hotel as well. The charter flight leaves at 8am tomorrow.”
So off I went to the other side of Africa with only the clothes I had on which were a pair of shorts, an old t-shirt, socks and trainers. My coveralls in my backpack and my work boots which I had to tie to my back pack with the laces. And, of course, the technical manual under my arm.
By the time I got to Johannesburg, went through customs and immigration and checked in to the hotel, all of the shops were closed. So I had to continue with my stylish outfit the next day as I went to get the charter flight to Beira, Mozambique.
Fortunately, there weren’t any spare seats on the helicopter to the rig when I got to Beira so I was able to get some clothes and toiletries there.
So was that an unreasonable request? In hindsight, probably.
Why I Will Never Come Back to the United States
Why did Goebbels kill his six children and himself?
Joseph Goebbels did not leave behind any letters or diaries explaining his and his wife’s decision to kill their children. Magda Goebbels, however, did write farewell letters in the days before the Goebbelses’ murder-suicide, and these letters provide some insight into why they did this.
Joseph and Magda Goebbels were fanatical Nazis who saw the defeat of Germany as nothing less than the end of civilization. They did not want to have their children grow up in what they imagined would be a post-apocalyptic hellscape overrun by Jews and other racially and ethnically inferior people. They also embraced Hitler’s belief that having lost the war, the German people did not deserve to live. In killing their children and then themselves, the Goebbelses were leading by example.
Magda Goebbels’ letter to a friend, written after she and her husband had made up their mind to kill their children, reveals her belief that the Allies and the surviving victims of Nazism would take revenge on those children, and that their life would be a living hell.
However, the letter also reveals multiple facets to her thinking:
We have demanded monstrous things from the German people, treated other nations with pitiless cruelty. For this the victors will exact their full revenge…we can’t let them think we are cowards. Everybody else has the right to live. We haven’t got this right—we have forfeited it. I make myself responsible. I belonged. I believed in Hitler and for long enough in Joseph Goebbels…Suppose I remain alive, I should immediately be arrested and interrogated about Joseph. If I tell the truth I must reveal what sort of man he was—must describe all that happened behind the scenes. Then any respectable person would turn from me in disgust. It would be equally impossible to do the opposite—that is to defend what he has done, to justify him to his enemies, to speak up for him out of true conviction…That would go against my conscience. So you see, Ello, it would be quite impossible for me to go on living. We will take the children with us, they are too good, too lovely for the world which lies ahead. In the days to come Joseph will be regarded as one of the greatest criminals that Germany has ever produced. His children would hear that said daily, people would torment them, despise and humiliate them. They would have to bear the burden of his sins and vengeance would be wreaked on them…
It is in many ways a hauntingly ambiguous letter. Magda seemed somewhat conflicted: she felt she could not defend her husband to the Allies, but she also could not bear the thought to be truthful about him. Against the magnitude of this dilemma, the children are mentioned almost as an afterthought.
There are a couple of additional motives that may have been behind the killing of the Goebbels children. One, it was Joseph’s and Magda’s last middle finger to the world. It was as if they were saying, “Oh, you thought you would drag us into a trial and make us feel bad about gassing little children? We killed OUR OWN children, bitchez. Do you really think we care one whit about anyone else’s?” To their twisted minds, it was a show of courage and resolve; their way of having the last word.
Another possible motive — and Magda’s letter to Ello Quandt hints at this — is that Magda didn’t want her children to learn that her and Joseph’s whole life had been a lie.
Since Hitler was unmarried and childless, the Goebbelses were basically the Nazi Germany’s First Family, and Magda Goebbels — its First Lady. The Goebbelses were meant to embody the ideal of Nordic purity, stoicism and virtue, in contrast to the urban moral rot and hedonism that Hitler so despised. They were the perfect Nazi couple.
AND IT WAS ALL A LIE.
Magda had been married before, and her first marriage ended in divorce — at a time when this sort of thing was still considered somewhat disreputable for a woman. Prior to her first marriage, she had dated a Jewish man. As a teenager, she had a Jewish stepfather, who ultimately perished in the Holocaust because she wouldn’t help him. The marriage between Magda and Joseph was a sham. They serially cheated on each other, and it took multiple personal interventions by Hitler to get them to keep up appearances. Both Joseph and Magda, in spite of themselves, were as bohemian as any German whose formative years occurred in the 1920’s. Beneath the veneer and the starch of Nazi morality, their life was a thoroughly squalid one. It’s possible that Magda Goebbels could not stand the thought of all this being revealed to her children after the war. I don’t know whether Joseph Goebbels was capable of this sort of awareness, but I suspect that Magda, at least, understood that she was a colossal hypocrite. She did not want her children to know and did not see any way of preventing them from knowing, except by killing them.
Whatever the reasons, the Goebbelses’ murder of their six children was emblematic of their Nazi sociopathy.
The Transporter Museum, a forgotten relic, is inconveniently located on a deserted side street two turns off a dead-end alley. You might never find it, even by accident, but if you do, you’ll always remember its immaculate displays and its eccentric proprietor, Frans Messerschmitt.
Every day precisely at nine, the little old man illuminated the neon sign, flipped the placard to open, and made his way behind the counter, prepared for customers who rarely came.
It was already late in the day when the door opened, surprising both Frans and the visitors.
“Hello, is anybody there?”
The question startled Frans, interrupting his terminal boredom.
“Yes. Yes, please come in,” he answered, moving forward to greet his guests. The unexpected voice belonged to a handsome lad sporting sweatpants and a football jersey, followed closely by a pretty young coed in a letterman’s jacket.
“It’s almost impossible to find this place,” the boy mentioned, all the while looking at the meticulously cared-for exhibits. “Are we in time for the guided tour?”
The question struck Frans as funny. It had been months since his last visitor, so the tours relied on guests, not the other way around.
“Of course, my good man,” he answered, sauntering from behind the counter. “My name is Frans and I’m the owner and resident historian. I’d be glad to give you the nickel tour, and I won’t even charge you the nickel.”
“Fan-damn-tastic! My name is Billy, and this is Connie. We’ve really been looking forward to this. Where do we start?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Frans replied, beckoning the couple to follow. “You’ve lived your whole lives in a time where teleportation from one side of the world to another was the norm—in fact, there’s about to be an app for that!” Frans turned their attention towards a smartphone sitting on display. “Before the end of the year, the new ZapApp will be available, offering skin-touch technology for the first time. All you’ll need to do is enter the desired coordinates, activate the app, and, in seconds—Voila!”
“Wow,” Billy exclaimed, reaching for the phone.
“Please don’t,” Frans cautioned. “These are replicas and can be easily damaged.”
“I hear ya, Gramps,” Billy responded, “Oh, I’m sorry. No disrespect intended, sir.”
“Not at all,” Frans replied. “I’ve always wanted a nickname. I like the sound of Gramps. Now if you follow me, I’ll lead you both back in time.”
The next display contained a full-length mirror attached to the wall. “I’m sure you two know what this is,” Frans said, stepping aside and allowing Billy and Connie to see. “These teleportation devices are still the most commonly used today. They were part of a trend to make teleportation more accessible and less obtrusive. They were also the first devices that didn’t require an exit portal. Until the Mirror 360, you could only travel to locations with paired devices. Needless to say, it was revolutionary.”
“That’s just like yours,” Connie whispered to Billy, punctuating her remark with a kiss on his cheek. “What’s next, Mr. Frans?”
“Gramps,” Frans corrected her with a chuckle. “Next we see the machine that started it all, The Marie.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Billy said. “Wow, it’s huge!”
“I know,” Frans agreed. “When the technology was new, we hadn’t yet perfected the art of miniaturization. There were no personal teleportation devices. The only people who had access were scientists, investors, and celebrities. In fact, the first transporters were more gimmicky than useful. They were incredibly expensive, required an entrance and exit port, and were so inefficient that it took a full day’s charge to send someone from one place to another. There’s no doubt we’ve come a long way since then.”
“What about that one?” Billy asked, pointing to a machine partially hidden by a curtain.
“Oh, that one,” Frans sighed. “That’s the prototype. The first teleportation device.”
“That’s the original?” Billy asked, moving closer to get a better look. “Is the legend true?”
“I’m afraid it is,” Frans replied. “The machine was the brainchild of a pair of scientists not much older than the two of you. They were the first to prove light was a particle and that we could use it as a mechanism for distance teleportation. The early tests were extremely successful. There were no issues when sending inanimate objects or small animals from one pod to another. The problem occurred when they tried transporting a human. Marie begged to be first and, after winning a game of Rochambeau, she stepped into the entrance pod and disappeared on cue. But when her partner activated the exit pod, everything went terribly wrong. Marie never fully rematerialized. Her translucent hand simply reached forward, and she mouthed the word help. Then she faded away.”
“Oh my God!” Connie gasped. “Did he save her?”
Frans turned away from the question, paused, then finally answered. “No, he didn’t. You see, molecular displacement teleportation in its infancy was like sending something through a tunnel at light speed. Once entering a pod, the subject can only exit from the paired terminal port.”
“That’s tragic,” Connie said, wiping away a tear.
“And ironic.” Frans replied.
“How so?”
“After the colossal mishap, her partner spent the better part of twenty years trying to find a way to release Marie from her tunnel. He became obsessed with correcting his mistake. His research and technological breakthroughs are directly responsible for almost every advancement in teleportation technology. That first awful outcome is why molecular transportation is so incredibly safe today. It’s why you have a Mirror 360 hanging on the wall in your home.”
“But Marie—what happened to her?” Connie asked.
“All of her partner’s research and all of his calculations never changed Marie’s fate.”
“She’s trapped forever?”
“She would be, unless he destroyed the machine and released her molecules into the atmosphere, never to be reassembled again.”
“What did he…”
“It’s almost closing time,” Frans said, interrupting Connie before she could finish the question. “Thanks for coming. You two made an old man very happy today.”
“This has been the best tour ever, Gramps.” Billy proclaimed. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing,” Frans answered, shaking Billy’s hand. “Just promise to send your friends.”
“It’s a deal,” he said, leading Connie out the door. “I’m sure we’ll be back soon.”
“You’re always welcome.”
Frans watched as the couple walked away. Then, being that it was precisely five, he locked the door, changed the placard to closed, and turned off the neon sign.
Alone once again, Frans returned to the machine behind the curtain, flipped a few switches, and watched as Marie’s translucent figure, forever young, appeared before him.
“Frans, are you there?” Marie mouthed, silently.
“I’m here, my love. I’ll always be here.”
“I’m so afraid,” she responded. “Please let me go.”
“I can’t,” Frans replied, ashamed of his weakness.
Marie’s eyes grew red, but she summoned the strength to place her hand on her heart and mouth the words I love you. Then, as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone.
Heartbroken, Frans turned to walk upstairs, counting the minutes until he could see his love again, if only for a moment, the next day at the exact same time.
Slow Cooker Short Rib Goulash
Meltingly tender meaty dishes like Slow Cooker Short Rib Goulash are made for cold nights. And while this would make a perfect Sunday supper, it’s actually possible any night of the week, thanks to your slow cooker!
Prep: 45 min | Total 8 hr 45 min | Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
1/3 cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
8 bone-in beef short ribs (4 inches thick each), English cut (about 4 pounds)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)
2 cups Progresso™ beef flavored broth
1/4 cup Muir Glen™ organic tomato paste
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley
Instructions
Spray 5 quart slow cooker with cooking spray.
In shallow pan, stir together flour, salt and pepper. Coat all sides of short ribs in flour mixture. Reserve any remaining flour mixture.
In 12 inch skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add 4 short ribs; cook for 5 to 7 minutes, turning occasionally, until browned.
Transfer ribs to slow cooker. Repeat with remaining 4 short ribs.
Reduce heat to medium; add onions to same skillet with drippings. Cook and stir for 3 to 4 minutes or until softened.
Add garlic; cook and stir for 1 minute.
Add paprika, smoked paprika, red pepper and remaining flour mixture; cook and stir for 1 minute.
Beat in broth and tomato paste with whisk. Heat to boiling, scraping any browned bits on bottom of skillet. Remove from heat; carefully pour broth mixture over short ribs in slow cooker.
Cover; cook on LOW heat setting for 8 to 10 hours or until ribs are fall-apart tender. Transfer short ribs to serving platter. Spoon off any fat from sauce in slow cooker. Stir sauce; pour over ribs, and garnish with parsley.
Serve with sour cream and egg noodles, if desired.
Nutrition
Per serving: 240 Calories, 14g Total Fat, 17g Protein, 10g Total Carbohydrate, 2g Sugars
How can one become President of China?
The short answer is by becoming the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. After ascending to the post of General Secretary, it’s customary to be elected as President of China within a year.
How do you become the General Secretary?
Here’s an easy 12 step guide to becoming the leader of the world’s most populous country and second largest economy (as of the time of this writing):
Step 1 – Be a Chinese citizen. This is usually a matter of birth although you can naturalize if you so wish (though naturalizations are rare). You don’t have to be a man but around 80% of the top positions within China are occupied by men, so statistically speaking you’ll have a bigger chance at leadership.
Step 2 – Join the Chinese Communist Party preferably as early as legally possible. Millions of people try to join the party each year but the acceptance rate is a low 15%. It really helps if you have a family member or close acquaintance who is already a member, preferably an influential one.
Step 3 – For the next 20 to 30 years you’ll have to climb the Chinese bureaucratic ladder. You’ll probably start low and will have to do a good job in order to get your superiors’ attention. Sociologists have observed that old Chinese bureaucrats, who want to maintain their current position rather than get promoted, will usually spend more on healthcare and welfare while younger bureaucrats will try to run big, complicated projects in order to prove they’re good administrators. Aim high.
Step 4 – Be an enthusiastic supporter of the Party. When the Party will commence a initiative or a campaign, show your enthusiasm and work hard to achieve the party’s goals.
Step 5 – Use your time as a bureaucrat to broaden your social network. Try to meet and befriend as many people as possible, in as many departments and areas of expertise. Having a wide and strong social network is indispensable for success.
Step 6 – As a Chinese bureaucrat you’ll have to deal with a wide number of other bureaucrats from local officials, to colleagues in other departments, to your superiors within your own branch. Always prioritize the happiness of your direct hierarchical superiors. Your own happiness and eventual promotion depend on them.
Step 7 – Try to cultivate good relations with the the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In order to realize your own vision for China you’ll most probably have to become the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Having good relations with the army helps.
Step 8 – Statistics show that those working in a province are much more likely to get promoted than those working in the central government in Beijing. Try to be assigned to a province and do your best to improve the region.
Step 9- If you have the opportunity to become the personal secretary of an influential Chinese bureaucrat, don’t hesitate. As a secretary to a Party heavyweight you’ll gain more knowledge than bureaucrats who are ostensibly higher on the social ladder.
Step 10 – Try to not get purged. From time to time the upper echelons will purge the party of those who showed themselves to be too ambitious or too ‘heretical’. What happens when you’re purged depends. You might simply be demoted, you might be forced into an early retirement, to spend your old age in a cabin near the seaside, you might be thrown in jail in a corruption scandal or you might even disappear. Try as much as possible to not get purged.
Step 11 – Try to cultivate relations with one of China’s retired leaders. In China (as in Japan for that matter) after retiring, many officials will retain a great deal of informal power, to the point of dictating policy. The retired Eight Elders famously took important decisions when meeting in Deng Xiaoping’s house. Try to get acquainted with these retired leaders. Being groomed for leadership by a member of an older generation is important.
Step 12 – Most importantly, be patient! Bureaucratic advancement in China is kind of like a perpetual Game of Thrones. If you’ll try to de-throne a Chinese bureaucrat and don’t have enough support, you will fail and you will be purged. Learn when to make your move and when to stay calm.
And now, the grand denouement. You’re at least in your 50s, most likely in your 60s. You’ve followed all the steps above, you’re a competent bureaucrat who has been groomed by a retired leader, with deep connections in various provinces, with the support of the military and personal relations in the top echelons. Now it’s time to make your move.
You’ll have to convince the Central Committee to elect you as the General Secretary, making you an ex-officio member of the governing PBSC and also its most powerful member.
Naturally, all the debates, deals and arrangements for your ascension were decided beforehand, months in advance behind closed doors. The National Congress will not be a place of debate and vote seeking, it will only be an elaborate ceremony where you’ll be elected with almost absolute unanimity.
Within a year of becoming General Secretary you’ll also assume the office of President of China from the previous General Secretary. You’ll also want to become the Chairman of the Central Military Commission in order to cement the allegiance of the army.
But before you start implementing your grand vision for China, there’s still one more problem. Almost all the other members of the government (the PBSC and the Politburo) are either members of the previous administration or members of rival factions. In order to govern as you like you’ll have to continue the Game of Thrones and slowly, one by one replace them with people loyal to you. It will take about 5 years to have enough people on the 2 bodies in order to have room for governing as you see fit (roughly, you’re still constrained by the larger Party apparatus). And you’ll also have to defend those you’ve put into power by ambitious newcomers (just as you once were!).
So stay vigilant. In China, getting to the top is as challenging as staying there. The game never ends!
I have been using ChatGPT to locate old science fiction stories. You know, those short stories that I used to have in my anthology collections. So I went and asked it…
And here’s a few more…
I will find the stories on the internet and transpose them into HTML or PDF and place them in my SF section for you all to enjoy.
Today…
What is the sleaziest, dirtiest trick an auto insurance company tried to pull on you? Did they succeed?
My son had just passed his driving test (aged 17) and we were thinking of getting him a new car, as we had points we could use because of our credit card, which basically meant we would get about £2,500 off. But I knew insurance cover would be costly at his age, so I rang my insurance company to get a quote before we got the car, explaining we hadn’t got it yet. The quote was good at about £900 so we went ahead and purchased the car. The process took a few weeks. When I rang to actually take out the insurance I was told the cost would be around £1,800, about double what I’d been told before. I explained about the previous estimate, but the woman was very rude, saying that was impossible and implying I was lying. I was getting very angry but the problem was, when I get angry I become tearful – it’s very frustrating as it makes me look pathetic! But then my 17 year old son steps in, takes the phone and calmly told the woman he was giving her an hour to check the phone recording from my previous conversation, and then expected her to phone back. In the meantime we looked online and found an even better price for his insurance. She did ring back, very apologetic and explained the previous assistant had left under a cloud and that the information he had given was incorrect. She could offer a price of about £1,200. I declined and told her I’d also be moving my own insurance to another company. My son had been working for a customer complaints department and knew exactly what to say to get things done. He’s very persuasive but never shouts. He once was about to be fired for taking a day off sick and then going clubbing – he was spotted at the club by someone. He told the guy about to fire him that the reason he skived off was that he was bored and if they gave him more responsibilities he wouldn’t have felt the need to abscond. They ended up promoting him! Just the sort of person you need in such situations.
In what areas are Chinese education better or superior to American education? If none, how did China get knowledge to outrun the west in scientific and technological manufacturing?
The US once had a superb education system
It was based on self learning rather than rote feeding by the teacher and the system
I so much admired the US system especially when I saw how they prepared for SATS on their own through Study Groups
They had so many Projects and so many Assignments and a lot of Homework that helped students learn on their own and thus understand the fundamentals so well
Then they ruined it all
By Busing
Busing is when they force a bunch of poor kids, mainly black kids or also hispanic to join the school
They force some good teachers out and force a bunch of mediocre teachers (mostly black or hispanic now also gay or transgender)
The result
The Standards come crashing
Schools start dealing in Meth and Ecstacy and you have Gangs now with small Switchblades
Math standards have come down badly
Not to mention, the blatant APPEASEMENT to the black community in many places :-
Slavery covers a huge chunk of history with many apologies
Math standards have crashed
English standards have crashed
12 Chapters once covered in Normal Physics is now covered only by AP Physics (Advanced Physics)
Chinas Education was originally entirely based on Rote Preparation like India’s with very little self learning
A Lot of predatory Tution Centres cropped up and destroyed Self preparation even more
Luckily Xi Jingping has obliterated the Private Tutorial Industry and has set steps to enhance self learning
So China is moving towards a US like self learning system with lesser reliance on Tutions
However their emphasis on Exams and their Exam oriented preparation is a problem that needs to be relaxed and changed to a Comprehension oriented approach
India has the same challenge
Let’s hope China deals with this as fast as possible and India follows suit
Bottom line is like in everything US Education Standards are declining by the day
Chinese Standards while not up to top scratch are improving by the day
Situational awareness
What is the worst thing a woman can do to a man?
Warning! Maybe disturbing to read, contains some details of a horrible tragedy.
This is a very extreme case. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen frequently.
One of my uncle, my mom’s cousin, was married to a very beautiful and immature woman.
She had the temper and tantrums of a 10-year old girl. She never grew up.
She would ask or rather demand my uncle for expensive clothes, cosmetics or jewellery quite frequently.
She would not take no for an answer, if he expressed his inability to buy whatever she had asked for she would say that she will leave him right then.
Uncle would take loans to buy gifts for her.
Her tantrums got worse and she would stop eating for days, bang her head on the wall or pretend to slit her wrist in order to get what she wanted.
One night, they were packing to leave for a wedding in another city the next day when she placed a demand for an expensive diamond necklace and refused to listen to anything that my uncle had to say. She wanted a diamonds necklace with an emerald pendant to wear with her green saree at the wedding.
This time my uncle got furious and left her in their bedroom to get some fresh air outside.
He was walking in their yard when he saw smoke coming out of the bedroom window.
He rushed inside to see his wife on flames. He rushed towards the bathroom to get a bucket of water but his wife grabbed him and hugged him tightly from behind. She made sure he burns with her.
What she did next gives everyone in the family shivers to this day. She placed her burning hand on his genitals and said “This, so that you will never be able to marry again in case you survive”.
The worst part is their two daughters who were around 6 and 9 years old, saw all of of this. They rushed to call neighbors.
My uncle suffered 60 percent burns on his body and was in the hospital for almost an year. His wife died before making it to the hospital.
She died what must have been an extremely painful death for a piece of jewelry.
She made sure her husband either dies with her or remains bedridden for the rest of his life.
She scarred her daughters’ little hearts for life.
All for her whims and fancies.
What was the biggest risk that Bill Gates took when starting out?
, a businesswoman and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington’s board of directors. She was the daughter of J. W. Maxwell, the president of the national bank.
His family was just about as privileged as it’s possible to be.
He had a multi-million dollar trust-fund to fall back on, long before starting any of his companies. It’s true that he had phenomenal success and that a huge fraction of the money he has was earned by his companies, not inherited.
But risk?
Bill Gates has never faced the slightest personal risk. It’s risk-free to drop out of Harvard and start your own software-company when you’ve got millions of dollars of cushioning to fall back on if the company goes belly-up. In his own words: “… if things [at Microsoft] hadn’t worked out, I could always go back to school. I was officially on [a] leave [of absence].”
Yes he could. If school also didn’t work out, if finding a job also didn’t work out, he’d still have the trust-fund and a more comfortable life than most of us could ever dream to have.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 13 x 9 inch pan.
In large bowl, combine brownie mix and butter; mix at low speed for 45 to 60 seconds or until crumbly. Reserve 1 cup of the mixture in small bowl for topping.
Add milk and eggs to remaining brownie mixture; mix until smooth.
Spread batter evenly in greased pan.
In food processor bowl with metal blade or in medium bowl, combine cream cheese, Marshmallow Creme and coffee powder; process until smooth.
Spread evenly over brownie mixture.
Add walnuts to reserved 1 cup brownie mixture; mix well.
Sprinkle evenly over cream cheese mixture.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 to 45 minutes or until edges are firm to the touch.
Cool for 1 1/2 hours or until completely cooled.
Cut into bars.
Store in refrigerator.
Notes
High Altitude Instructions (Above 3500 Feet): Add 1/2 cup flour to dry brownie mix. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 to 50 minutes.
Woke girl is Broke
How do I become the guy that everyone notices in the room?
Always dress neat, clean and simple.
Sit/stand straight and hold your chin up.
Sit/stand in a central position in the room.
Make sure you don’t look lost or bored, be energetic and keep your hands busy with something (a glass of drink, a cigar, lighter, etc…)
Don’t be shy; observe your surroundings.
Listen more than you speak, this way when you start talking everyone would immediately pay attention.
Speak thoughtfully and clearly, mind your tone, and back your opinions with strong evidence and statistics.
Be a good story teller, but keep them short and end with a punch line.
Be quick with jokes, sarcasm and one-liners and keep a straight face while delivering them.
Don’t easily get excited/frustrated during conversations.
Be polite and well mannered.
Don’t be afraid to express yourself.
Look them in the eye.
Don’t be ultra agreeable, learn to say “no” whenever you need to, this way people will find you more intimidating.
This is why
Is the Chinese Sinovac vaccine fake?
It’s been used all over the world and seems to legitimately prevent serious cases of COVID-19. If it can do that, then it is certainly not fake.
Sinovac used a tried-and-true “inactivated virus” methodology (using fragments of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that cannot make someone sick by themselves) to develop their vaccine, and it doesn’t seems to be quite as effective as some of the Western vaccines, but it does prevent deadly cases of COVID-19. Plus, it’s easier to store and transport, which makes it an option in parts of the world where the state-of-the-art Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines cannot be logistically rolled out. My wife and I got Moderna and we are grateful to have done so. But that’s not an option in developing countries because of the storage requirements of the mRNA vaccines. The Chinese vaccine can be stored in ordinary refrigerators and has a shelf life of up to three years. The mRNA vaccines have to be kept much colder and don’t last as long.
There is nothing wrong with using a proven technology as opposed to a cutting-edge one that had never been done before. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, developed by Janssen in the Netherlands, also uses an older, proven technology—the same one used by the Russian Sputnik-V and the European Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines, in fact. All three of them took an adenovirus that is harmless to humans and appended the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to it. The body recognizes the spike protein and if later infected by actual SARS-CoV-2, it will already know how to attack it.
We’re trying to stop people from dying and also trying to stop the spread of this virus so it will quit mutating. Passing out disinformation about vaccines from countries we have political differences with is not helpful. Sinovac saves lives. Sputnik-V saves lives. In the West, we may prefer other options, but the efforts of biotech scientists to create these vaccines should not be denigrated or lied on, no matter where they are from.
American Men no longer have a life worth living.
What was the most memorable case of “instant karma” you saw when an impatient driver was laying on the horn?
I was a high school teacher, and I was driving back to school after supper to get some work done. Not unusual–most teachers have to do extra work at night. You can get a lot of stuff done in your classroom when nobody else is around.
On my route to school, there was this little Baptist church where cops commonly parked to catch speeders. They were there that night, but I wasn’t speeding.
I eventually finished my work and headed for home. As I exited the school parking lot, some kids rounded the corner behind me going about 60 mph. They were angry I was in their way. They honked, yelled, and tailgated me for a couple blocks. I maintained my speed of 3 or 4 mph over the limit (35), then as I approached the church, I pulled carefully into a left turn lane to let them pass. They hung their heads out the window, yelled obscenities, displayed their middle fingers, and threw an empty bottle as they flew around me. The bottle missed, thankfully.
As they passed the church, here came the cops. Those flashing red and blue lights sure were pretty that night behind the kid’s car. I couldn’t resist honking as I drove by.
Democrats are waking up!
Have you ever said something to a car salesman that left him speechless?
“We’re here to buy a car, not a financing plan.”
A few years ago when we were looking for a car for my wife we had this salesman who simply wouldn’t listen when we told him our price range and said we’d be paying cash. He kept pushing finance plans. I understand they get a bonus…a kickback, really…for selling such plans, but we were upfront about not wanting one. We’re pretty careful with money, never having had much of it, and we don’t want payments.
The car was for my wife, so I was staying mostly quiet, but this guy just wouldn’t let up. I could tell my wife was getting a tad exasperated. So I was sitting there in the backseat and we’re on a test drive and my wife asked something about the car and this guy saw it as an opportunity to sell us something that we’d only have to make small payments on, seeing how our down payment would be large. It was about the tenth time he’d tried to sell us financing.
That’s when I said, “We’re here to buy a car, not a financing plan.” My wife downshifted from fourth to second and pulled a fast u-turn and drove back to the dealership. I was actually kind of surprised she didn’t use the park brake to turn around…she was steaming. She parked beside our car, my wife gave him back his card, and we left.
The salesman never said a word from the time I spoke until the time we left.
How did ancient Chinese Emperors govern China given the poor communication technology and China’s huge land mass and population?
How did ancient Chinese Emperors govern China given the poor communication technology and China’s huge land mass and population?
To make matters worse, the Emperor is always living inside his palace and cut out from the people with lots of tempting distractions such as the hundreds of concubines to have fun with. How does he govern such a huge country?
First of all, ancient China had pretty good communication technology. One of the best at that time. A 3,000-year-old system, built since the Zhou dynasty, where the Chinese built a “postal office” (驛站) every 50 – 200 km along any road, and the “post-master” maintained guest houses, a team of couriers, and a stable of horses. Official letter were carried by couriers from the originator to the next “postal office”, got a change of courier and horse and went on to the next “postal office”. Express mails could get from the furthest end of China to Beijing in 5 days. Confucius once commented that “one’s reputation spreads faster than the mail (德之流行,速于置邮而传命)”, so you see, official mail system was definitely a fixture of life even in his time (~ 500 BC). In fact, the founding father of the Han Dynasty in 206 BC, Emperor Gaozu of Han, was such a post-master before he rebelled and won the civil war.
By Tang dynasty in ~ 600 AD, there were over 1600 postal offices, and the Chinese government employed over 20,000 people to deliver mails, with the “normal”, “priority”, and “express” mail classifications, and each mail had to be signed off on time and signature of the courier, with a whole set of laws to punish those who missed delivery or tempered with the content. By Yuan Dynasty ~ 1200 AD, the government employed over 300,000 horses for mail delivery. Here is well-preserved “postal office” from ancient China.
Secondly, emperors who didn’t go out of the Forbidden Palace usually occurred when the dynasty was kinda dying. In the early part of the dynasty, usually the emperor had to run around and do some real work. For example, all of Kangxi Emperor
’s sons had to wake up at 4 am everyday, and start school at 5 am. When they reached adulthood, they apprenticed at various government departments. Like son #1 and # 14 served in the department of defense, and both went out to the border to fight. Son #3 served in the department of education, son #8 served in the department of treasury, son #4, the one who was eventually selected as the next emperor, served in the department of engineering, worked on the flood control of the Yellow River, and did his rotation in the department of defense, of education and of agriculture.
Thirdly, like others have said, the emperor was just one person. Most of the times just one very ordinary person, and so of course he/she couldn’t run China. Ancient China was mostly run by the Cabinet and the bureaucracy manned by the scholar-officials, and the most important job of the emperor, was to keep the Cabinet members from politically killing each other, figuratively-speaking. On the other hand, if the emperor had some weird ideas that were opposed by the entire Cabinet, the Cabinet had the right to return the emperor’s orders un-opened, meaning that, well, the emperor’s orders actually couldn’t go out of his bedroom unless the Cabinet agreed. That’s why there were a number of emperors in China’s history who had to resort to writing secret code to their in-laws or followers, with something like “Help! I’m kinda arrested by my ministers!” Well, that sucked for everyone. Incompetent emperors should at least have the good sense to stay aloof and follow the advice of the Cabinet. If the emperor didn’t want to end up like your lovely goldfish in the pot, he had to run around do some real work and build up his own followers and credentials BEFORE he became emperor. You see, the Cabinet members usually started their careers as one of the top-three scholars in the national exams, served 30 or 40 years in various government posts, and gained enough political clout to be elected into the Cabinet by their fellow bureaucrats. Their aggregate IQ would be many times that of the emperor. However, the emperor had one advantage over his Cabinet members, which was that he represented the WHOLE COUNTRY. He existed to remind his Cabinet members that they should never run the country for their own selfish interest. They must compromise with each other for the common good. That’s why the Cabinet didn’t really want to get rid of the emperor, ’cause without him, one of the Cabinet members would surely try to kill off the rest in order to become an emperor himself.
The Cabinet in ancient China was usually composed of the following officials: the heads of the department of personnel, treasury, rites (combination of education minister and foreign minister), engineering, military, and justice. This structure was basically cloned at provincial level and then further at city level, gradually shrunk to one person who was responsible for everything at the lowest village-level. Nine levels of bureaucracy separate the lowest to the highest, and most officials spent their entire life to climb this ladder. These officials, which were staffed by those who passed the imperial examinations, were constrained by three layers of monitoring:
The officials were not allowed to work within 500 miles of their hometown. This was done to reduce the official’s opportunity for corruption by doing things that benefit their own families and clans. Basically an anti-nepotism measure. Also, officials who were connected could not work in the same place or in the same department. This is still done in China today.
The officials had a interim review once every 3 years, and a thorough review once every 6 years, after the review, the officials would get a new post to some place else. The official was evaluated on his KPI (key performance index), and if his KPI was good, he would get a good evaluation and maybe a good or more important posting, or even a promotion. If his KPI was bad, he would get a demotion to a worse posting. So you see, the one who really runs China, since time immemorial, is the KPI. The review was done by a team composed of the department of personnel and the incoming official to replace you, so obviously the new guy had every incentive to get a thorough understanding of what was going on, ’cause if he didn’t, and the game blew up in his face later, then it would be his fault. This system is still done in China today, except now the officials get an annual review, and get a new posting once every 5 years. The transfer of power/posting once every 5 years is still a very big deal, with the CCP acting as the old personnel department, and now the officials have to write a personal review/report once a month to the Party, instead of once a year.
There was a Department of Rules, whose sole job was to make sure the moral characters of BOTH the emperor and the bureaucracy were sound. Officials from this department fanned out across the country to observe officials while they were discharging their duty. They had the right to be sitting next to the official in everything to observe. If they found out that you were not respectful to your wife, your cousin three-times-removed committed crimes and you tried to cover it up, or you submitted fake report to the Court, they would indict you to the Court, and you would be called in to answer the charges. One of the favorite pastime for the Depart of Rules was to indict the emperor for various offences – not treating government reports which criticized the emperor with respect, not treating the emperor’s mother or teachers with respect, not treating all his wives evenhandedly, earthquakes or floods for no reason but must be the emperor’s fault, … – the point was to constantly remind the emperor that he had to follow rules like everybody else. Then the emperor had to write Public Apology to the People, which would be posted to every town in the country and be read out aloud by the local officials. This is still done in China today, by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection
. Any citizen can write to it reporting official misconduct, and they are obligated to investigate and discipline party officials. You can basically write to them if you just walk by some official and see him wearing an expensive watch.
So you see, lack of email wasn’t a problem for China. Lack of science and technology, corruption, and inter-party fights that elevated private interest above the national interest, on the other hand, had doomed a number of dynasties in Ancient China.
What is the best thing you saw someone do when they got fired from their job?
I worked for a law firm in Los Angeles many years ago. One of the legal secretaries in the Corporate Department was a gem: extremely competent, quiet, with enough knowledge and experience to know what permits, licenses and other paperwork needed to be filed for each deal. Like some legal secretaries, she knew as much about corporate deals as the attorneys she worked for.
For some reason, she was terminated. (It was a very political firm, and my guess is that she was let go by someone running a power play against her boss.)
Without her, her attorneys were helpless. What paperwork had been filed with the licensing boards? Had the necessary notices been placed in the newspaper? What was the status of this, that, and the other?
She had left her desk and files in order. There was no funny business. But only after she left did they realize how much she did to ensure that their multi-million-dollar deals went through smoothly, and how much they depended on her.
So of course they called her at home. HR, the partner she worked for, the associate she worked for, the attorney heading the Corporate Department, the firm’s Managing Partner… all with questions to find out the details they needed to know to finish the deals that had been in progress when they asked her to collect her personal effects and leave immediately.
To each person who called, she politely said:
“My professional relationship with your firm was severed at your option. I have nothing more to say to you. Good-bye.”
They were outraged — OUTRAGED — that she wouldn’t help them, but there was nothing they could do. Every time an attorney would grumble to support staff about the situation, we waited until he left the room and gave each other silent thumbs up.
She became a legend.
The truth about growing up for young men
What do you think of Janet Yellen’s “difficult conversations” about Ukraine during her visit to China?
Janet Yellen represents the interests of the US government and her words are official US policy.
Xi Jinping and the senior Chinese officials she met represent official Chinese policy.
The US government seems to think that it can dictate official Chinese policy, but it cannot if it runs counter to Chinese interests.
Normally, if the US wanted something from China, it should offer something else in return in order to start serious negotiations.
Any sign of that?
I don’t see any…
This epitomizes our generation in one video
OMG!
What life advice do people not take seriously enough?
I’m a doc of psychology who has talked to literally thousands of people, and these are 10 pieces of life advice I find that people do not take seriously enough:
“Don’t Make Decisions When You’re Angry” – I’ve seen people relapse on drugs, cheat on their spouses, get into physical fights, and quit their jobs simply because they were “angry.” Don’t do it.
“Be Yourself.” – So many people suffer because they feel pressure to be something they’re not. They can feel this pressure from parents, peers, co-workers, friends or even their significant others. I’ve seen women get breast implants because of this pressure, men marry women (when they are actually gay), and people going into careers they hate because it will make someone else happy. Be yourself, because being something else will make you miserable.
“Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.” – This is solid advice for a happy life. Choose your battles, and be able to let the little things go. Once you realize what “big things” are (cancer, financial hardship, etc.), you will wish you focused on the right things.
“Know Your Worth” – When you know your worth, you don’t put up with things that devalue you…and that is *very valuable.* It will impact what you’ll put up with in relationships, in your jobs, and in life. Knowing your worth has the ability to protect you from a lot of life’s struggles – if you act consistently with it.
“It’s Okay to Ask for Help.” – Yes! Do you know how many people I’ve talked to, that wished they would have gotten help earlier? It would have given them back *years* of their life…but instead they waited until they were at an absolute breaking point – losing opportunities, jobs, relationships, sometimes even their kids. Ask for help, and ask for help early.
“Who You Marry is One of the Most Important Decisions You’ll Make.” – Take this one seriously. You will literally have to see this person every day of your life, you will spend more time with them than anyone else…so make it someone uplifting, supportive and wonderfully fitting to you. You will also have a financial future largely impacted by their spending habits, earning, saving ability, etc.. Man or woman, divorce can devastate you emotionally and financially.
“Make Time for People You Love.” – Putting off seeing your grandmother or parents because you wanted to do other things might not seem like a big deal today…but one day it will be.
“The Best Time to Start is Now” – Whether saving for your future or trying to write that novel, start today. Time gets away from us very quickly, and before you know it 20 years have passed and you didn’t do those things you wanted to do. I have seen a lot of people who hold regrets…try not to have them.
“The Best Revenge is Living Well.” – So many people get stuck in grudges and anger that it messes up their own lives – especially emotionally. There is a great saying that states that “anger is something you carry for someone else’s mistakes” and it’s the truth. Leave those who have hurt you in the past, take care of your own needs, and live well. It does you no good to do otherwise.
“Treat Others the Way You’d Want to be Treated.” – This is certainly advice we don’t take seriously enough. If we all treated others how we’d wish to be treated, the world would certainly be a much better place for us all.
This is some of the life advice that I’ve certainly seen…
Why Men Don’t Want Modern Women or Feminists
Is America known for its inventions or for copying ideas from other countries?
No, they steal all the German rocket technologies and Medical technologies garnered from the defeated German and Japanese cruel experiments on life humans! The also keep the patent office vital information so every innovations can be stolen by them! Which they do regularly and called them their invention! China has the most patent rights registered in the U.S. patent rights office that the Congress has decided to de register these copy rights so that Americans and freely use the diligence and Hard work of the Chinese innovation free of charge! Shameful and despicable for being a thief yet calls others copy cat!
What should I absolutely not do when visiting your country?
Norway
Do not drink and drive. Not even a tiny little bit. We don’t find this funny. We stick people in jail for a first offence — even if you didn’t get as far as leaving the parking-lot. People in bars might physically fight you / wrestle keys from you to prevent you from driving drunk.
Do not wear shoes inside private homes. (there’s exceptions from this, but as a general rule)
People are pretty relaxed about nudity, and both men and women will for example change on public beaches without any attempt at covering themselves up. You are however expected to look away. (no-one will care if you glance, but please don’t STARE)
Do not unwrap flowers prior to giving them as a gift. (Germans do this)
Don’t ask people what church they attend. Most attend none, and asking this is seen as intrusive, rude and downright weird.
Don’t assume that “socialist” is a synonym for “evil”.
Don’t be insulted if people don’t seem to “respect you” for being somehow distinguished. People are very informal here and being on a first-name-basis with anyone short of the King is the norm. Even the prime-minister of Norway is most often referred to by first name; “Erna” (and previously: “Jens”)
What is the sleaziest, dirtiest trick an auto insurance company tried to pull on you? Did they succeed?
I had a 1993 Mustang 5.0 convertible, triple white and limited edition model. With certification that the was 1 of 500 the last of the produced fox bodies.
The car was immaculate, it took extremely good care of it, washed and waxed weekly, etc.
At about 26 months it got stolen.
I called the insurance; they said they had to wait 30 days to see if it would turn up — meanwhile they gave me a loaner. A Ford Aspire, the economy box of the economy boxes — my how the mighty have fallen.
Finally day 31 came and the insurance company called informing me that they were going to pay the car out in full, and that I needed to return the loaner.
They said they would be cutting me a check that day for $6,800. I told them no, that the car was clearly worth more than that. They then offered me $7,500. Again I told them no. They said that is all the car was worth; I told them that it was not a typical Mustang, it was certified by Ford as one of the last fox bodies and had collector value. They said that they would do some investigation and get back to me and I could continue to use the loaner.
About three days later the call me back saying that their best and final offer would be 10,000. Period.
Now onto the fun part, I told them that this was still not acceptable, and not two days before the car was stolen I had a quote for a trade-in on a Ford Cobra that was at $15,700 for my car.
Silence.
They guy then came back and said, fax me a copy of that document and hung up.
So I faxed the document over to them.
About a week went by, and the insurance called me back, the senior adjuster…
They told me that they had reviewed my case and would only offer me 11,000.
Okay, time to play hardball.
I said since you are refusing to pay my valid and documented value of my car, I am opting for my rights under state insurance law. (Yes during this time I looked it up.) I will not accept any cash payment, and I will opt for them to procure a replacement vehicle.
I told them they needed to find me a triple white 1993 fox body 5.0 Ford Mustang convertible with under 38k on the odometer and documented proof from Ford that this was the limited edition i.e. 1 of 500 of the last fox bodies. And that I expect them to present me with three options to choose from within the next 15 days as provided for by law.
I hung up.
Fifteen days later, they called back. They said that they would be writing me a check for $15,700 minus the 3k I still owed on the car.
I asked why they decided to change their minds. They begrudgingly admitted that they could not find any triple white Mustangs let alone a limited edition model. The closest they could come is a yellow limited edition model, but not one of the last 500 and the dealer was asking 18k for a car with 45k on the odometer.
I received the check in 24 hours.
That was the event where I stopped business from walking all over me.
Edit: Thanks for the upvotes and re-shares.
I do want to point out that should you ever be in a situation where they do want to total your car, make sure you find out your states insurance regulations.
In my state, you are entitled to either a cash value payment for your car, or a equal value replacement. This means that if I’m not happy with their cash offer I can opt for them to procure for me a same model, make with same options with similar mileage.
So make sure you know all your options before accepting that check.
Edit: After writing this in a fit of nostalgia I decided to see if I could find my old fox body for sale anywhere. I did find a few of the prior years 7up models for around 24 thousand and I did find one triple whit of my year just trashed and they were still asking 12 thousand.
This is bangin’
What is a brutal truth about life that needs to be said?
Everyone has an enemy. You dont have to hurt someone in order to gain an enemy. You might be the nicest person in the world and still have someone who prays for your downfall. An enemy stays close, super close. Watch everyone’s actions at all times. Don’t trust blindly.
You will never feel content if you compare your life to others. How successful they are, how rich they are or even how happy they are. You will only feel content if you focus on yourself and your growth.
Your mind can be poisonous if all you feed it is negativity. Be kind to yourself. You deserve it! We are far too critical of ourselves. Treat yourself the same way you would treat someone you love.
No matter how hard you try, failure is inevitable. But keep going. Persistence is everything. We don’t learn from winning but from our failures.
Some people are using us. Whether it’s for wealth, time passing, or even as a step for their success. Be attentive to how much you support others and people’s motives.
No one really cares about you (excluding family). Nobody is interested in your life journey. Nobody gives a toss. But that doesn’t mean you should stop your journey and fret about people not valuing you. Care about yourself. Look after yourself. Do it for you! Don’t woŕry what others think if they don’t care about you in the first place.
Grow thicker skin. Don’t take everything to heart. Your heart should not endure pain given by people who mean so little to you. Sometimes the ones that really matter do everything to keep you happy. Those who hurt you often are the toxic ones. It hurts but showing that you’re tough will take you a long way.
What’s the best lesson you heard from someone about human resources?
My friend works in HR for a Fortune 500 company. I asked him, “What is the most common phrase you hear when firing someone?”
Without missing a beat, he said it was some version of, “This was a bit unexpected.”
People get complacent and don’t realize their job is in jeopardy. They settle for half-assed work. They forget everything they do is being watched and judged, including their YouTube usage.
A mentor once told me, “It’s best to work like you are one strike from being fired and your boss is debating whether to keep you around.”
I could have learned this lesson in my first marriage. We both made assumptions about our status quo — until things slid beyond repair.
Accountability surrounds us and that’s a good thing.
With my relationships and career, I try to continually remind myself that, “All of this could go away at any moment.” It keeps me on my toes. It stops me from taking my time with older relatives for granted.
Shorpy fun
Rainbow – Stargazer | First Time Hearing | Vocal Coach Reaction
Chinese math education values practice and discipline.
Children in China start to learn multiplication during 2nd grade and are told to practice constantly. The strong moral tradition that exists in China means that there isn’t exactly a “strict or rigid” curriculum to follow. Students are motivated by parents and others to constantly practice to improve their skills. Middle and high school students often do over 15 hrs of math a week combining class lectures and homework.
In the classroom, students are told to solve and prove problems in front of the whole class. This forces them to think deeply and have a very strong understanding of concepts from which to build new knowledge on. Teachers ask students “why” or “what if” questions to provoke this type of reasoning.
Writing in mathematical terms becomes heavily emphasized in upper levels which can lead to deductions on tests.
In the US, math education is very individual focused and people are not taught to be rigorous and to question why it works. This results in gaps in their learning that ends up hurting their learning later on, leading them to hate math. In addition, the motivation factor to do well is not present and people can slack off and do just what is necessary to get by.
I know people in high school who barely pass math and they don’t even care. There is no national high school exit exam here in the US and thus people don’t see consequences; as long as they graduate they are good.
China Claims Its ‘Super’ AD Missile Makes B-21s Obsolete
The three body problem
A British Chinese “expert” made a serious misreading of The Three Body Problem.
This expert attempts to transcend the extreme evaluation of duality in order to understand compromise in Chinese culture. This starting point is good, but the understanding of China is not enough – if it is not a deliberate distortion caused by misreading.
The first part of this book was serialized in Science Fiction World magazine in 2006, and at that time, the story already had a specific framework. Let’s review the historical environment at that time: Xi was not the President of China until many years later, and the United States had just engaged in the Gulf War. China did not even join the WTO.
It is strange to attempt to use this novel to criticize China’s current policies – people’s mentality was somewhat different from today.
To grasp the relation of Chinese sci-fi and China’s global strategy, it’s helpful to see both in terms of three dynamics. Certainly, it’s popular to understand Chinese politics in terms of binary frameworks: China vs. US; conservatives vs. reformers; optimists vs. pessimists; and socialism vs. capitalism. To get beyond this binary paradigm, we can explore three dynamics: pessoptimism, neo-socialism, and tianxia (All-under-Heaven).
“Pessoptimism” – This word only grasps the edge of Chinese culture. I do admit that Chinese people have both pessimistic and optimistic expectations for the future, but that has nothing to do with China’s rapid development – as I mentioned in the historical context of novel creation, China was facing a powerful and seemingly unbeatable United States at that time, it was widely believed on the Chinese Internet that China’s GDP might reach the level of Japan in a few decades. Few people realized at that time that the economy would develop rapidly within a few years.
In fact, the pessimistic mentality in the novel comes from: 1, a strong feudal China was shattered by the rapid rise of colonial countries; 2, the anxiety of human self destruction brought about by nuclear deterrence and the development of weapon technology; 3, comparison and reflection on the relationship between social Darwinism and equality.
The optimistic attitude in novels also comes from a long history. Any civilization can learn and resist. Organisms can avoid the devastating impact of catastrophic events through reproduction, whether small or not. After the environment is completely changed, everything will eventually perish except those can adapt. All of these stories are in history.
This expert did see that two sides of things can coexist, but unfortunately, he cannot understand what history means to the Chinese people.
Neo-socialism: This expert seems to believe that the depiction of the dystopian social environment of the Trisolarans in the novel reflects the current China.
In The Three Body Problem, Liu’s alien characters from across the galaxy are presented as scientific because they don’t have “time for or interest in art and literature; at the same time, they do not understand lies or tricks”.(10)
Unfortunately, this expert made the same mistake – he did not understand this novel together with Chinese history.
The Trisolarans have a close connection with Japan in history. Japan, as an island nation on the edge of a tectonic plate, believed that it had to invade China and colonize due to the threat of volcanoes and earthquakes on their islands, which was the source of Japanese militarism during WWII. That brings uncertainty like three suns.
Many civilizations experience a large-scale ideological shift when facing crises, leading to greater unity and a convergence of thinking patterns.
Under more extreme environmental assumptions, people have to abandon cultural development and focus on survival. In fact, this describes the state of mobilized. However, the high degree of ideological consistency, lack of personalized thinking ability, and lack of lies and tricks between people is the results of it. You can see this unified ideology during the existence of the Soviet Union, China’s Cultural Revolution, Japan’s militaristic education, etc.. It can encourage people to work in the same direction, but at the same time, it undermines long-term potential.
Liu doesn’t fear technology, unlike the authors of many dystopian sci-fi stories, because he dutifully sees technology as the answer to human questions.
It is just a state of human society, not a solution. It’s not modern China, nor the pattern of “neo-socialism”. None of these cultures is always right – the death has taken them all at the end of this novel.
Tianxia: I guess this expert did not read Liu Cixin’s short stories because there are with Russians and Serbs as the main characters.
But most Chinese sci-fi focuses on humanity as ethnically Chinese, and Chinese sci-fi as an instrument of the PRC’s soft power. In The Wandering Earth and the Three Body Problem, all of Liu’s protagonists are ethnic Chinese. Other peoples have little or no agency: they passively help China, are ignorant terrorists, or they are absent altogether. In the novella version of The Wandering Earth, the Japanese mother rebels against science, and then is sacrificed in the name of population control, while the Chinese-Japanese son is just Chinese. In the movie version, there is a mixed-race Chinese-Australian man who is made to look and sound funny, and he has to defend himself as a ‘real Chinese’ based on his paternal bloodline.(19)
That’s not about soft power. Since ancient times, we have regarded “tianxia” as the highest moral goal. This expert seem to mistakenly believe that this is just to cater to Xi – in fact, it is Xi’s government that caters to the Chinese people.
Also, you can’t expect a electric worker as Cixin Liu in a tiny Chinese town to have a good impression of British or American people before 2006, can you? At that time, your coalition had just caused a large number of disasters in the Middle East.
The facts make it difficult for your people to become a better solution.
With Xi Jinping, China’s global strategy seems to be catching up with Liu’s vision of the future: it looks to science to solve political problems, and figures engagement with the Other in zero-sum terms as an existential struggle for survival.
I don’t think any normal person would consider a “community with a shared future for mankind” as a zero sum narrative. People create their lives through work. Only those who plunder wealth will see society as zero sum, while Chinese people manufacture products.
The novel does not depict zero sum games, but rather negative sum games under the tactic of “ensuring mutual destruction”. The Trisolarans and Earthlings who implemented mutual deterrence ultimately achieved a strike and left separately, but their main forces were destroyed, while a minority of the two races survived by exploring and adapting to new rules.
As citizens of the British, which is one of the countries who encouraged Ukrainians to charge towards Russians and participate in rendering nuclear deterrence, the author should have a deep understanding of this.
What is a brutal truth about life that needs to be said?
When I was getting rejected by a lot of girls for marriage, my mother – like all other mothers in the world would say me, “Don’t worry, you are a Prince and we will find a Princess for you.”
My family members would also console me by saying that it’s all about destiny and our family is quite reputed and we are well settled so you will get married soon.
My reply to my mother and my family members was always this.
“Neither I’m a Prince nor I’m a greek god. And we are not Ambanis. I am very well aware of the fact that I’m about to get rejected in future.”
I embrace the fact that I look much older than my age. And that’s why I always was prepared for the rejection because no father would want to marry her daughter to someone who’s quite older than her.
I look like I’m 33–35 years old whereas I’m 26 years old.
We aren’t filthy rich either. We own decent amount of land and live a pretty average life.
Neither I have any side business nor I have a white collar job.
So, to sum it up, there’s nothing extraordinary about me or my family that people would rush to marry their daughters in our family.
What is a brutal truth about life that needs to be said?
Most probably I’m 99,56,32,408th person who is saying this.
In real life, in real world, away from the social media’s sugar coated sweet shit, your looks and your financial status matter.
It just doesn’t matter, it matters a lot.
I have transformed from an ugly looking boy to an average looking guy and that’s why I know how important looks are.
We have built our new home and have seen people’s changed perception about us, that’s why I know how important financial status is.
And, I should not mention about all the privileges rich people get, because we all know about that.
We all know this. We just pretend that it doesn’t matter.
On social media we all are saints, unaffected by society’s opinions, expectations and pressure.
I’m not saying this because I was rejected many times. I was sure about rejection.
I have lived for 26 years on this earth and have faced, experienced and seen similar incidents and discriminations my whole life.
Looks and financial status of someone may not matter to you at this point in your life.
But, it definitely will, somewhere, sometime.
9 Things That Make Men Look Expensive & Put Together (Women Always Notice This)
Have you ever judged someone and realized you were wrong?
I walk inside and already want to leave.
The two instructors turn to me. They have clean-shaven tattooed heads and thick, spiral-shaped piercings in their ears. On the wall hangs a photo of one of them mounting and pounding an opponent in the cage.
I’d decided to learn MMA and had found a small gym in the area. Even before coming in, I was worried about what it’d be like.
I didn’t want to be part of a macho, who-can-punch-the-hardest scene.
“Oh hello!” the woman instructor says, the same one displayed on the wall bludgeoning her adversary.
Her face lights up with a megawatt-lightbulb smile. She rushes at me, gives a lung-squeezing hug, and says, “You’re the one who called about trying a class, right?”
“Yeah…” I say, still processing the dissonance between her appearance and the supernova of affection I just received.
“Have you gone over the rules?” she goes on. “Basically, if you bring food make sure it doesn’t have any animal products–we’re vegan.”
“Sure…”
“More importantly–you know what to do if someone comes up to you in the street and asks for your wallet, right?”
“Umm…”
“Just hand it to them. Life is too precious to play the hero.”
“Dog Named Hero Saves Owner’s Life for Days, Fighting Off Cold and Coyotes and Getting Help
An Akita named ‘Hero’ saved his owner’s life last week in an incredible tale of loyalty and resilience that saw him remain by his side through two frigid Alberta nights, fend off coyotes, and eventually alert rescuers.
Winning plaudits for his name and deed the world over, a GoFundMe raised $3,000 to cover the veterinary bills of Hero by the shelter that is keeping him safe and warm while his owner recovers.
The story began with an attack: when a passerby named Curtis Dahl was walking in a field of mud and grass near the sugar factory in the town of Taber, and Hero came running up and bit his dog around the neck.
Dahl claims he tussled with Hero for ten minutes trying to get him off his dog, and needed stitches on his finger by the end of it.
Calling police and animal services with a complaint, he alerted them to Hero’s presence, but when the officers arrived and saw Hero lying down exhausted near a terraced plot of grass and weeds near the road, they suddenly heard a cry for help.
Arriving, they found a 61-year-old man on his back in a ditch, shivering and unable to move. He told police he’d been stuck there for two days while Hero protected him.
While the man was taken to a hospital, Hero was taken to Taber Lost Paws Society, an animal shelter that has a special program to look after dogs during periods of crisis or injury. As it happened, the society’s acting president Alana McPhee said they had an employee who was the injured man’s neighbor and knew that he had another Akita dog named Tora.
Reported missing two days prior, Tora eventually turned up in her owner’s yard with a disabled leg after screws and rods in her leg from a previous injury had come loose. They suspect she had been back and forth from the site where her owner fell to the home several times, or perhaps could have been fighting, though she had no bite or puncture marks.
Once informed of the full story, the man whose dog had been attacked by Hero was “understanding of the situation” and was grateful Hero’s owner was rescued. He later received compensation for the medical costs to his dog and himself via CAD$3,000 that was raised from a GoFundMe organized by the Lost Paws Society.
“(Hero) was being protective. That dog probably had not eaten for several days. He was incredibly stressed and, obviously, powerless to help his owner. He had to fight off coyotes,” McPhee said.
Men and their ability to transcend the space-time continuum.
What is something your pet did that you couldn’t believe?
He did a couple of things.
We adopted a German Shepherd named Rex from our local no-kill rescue organization.
He was a wonderful dog and had only been turned in because his 38 y/o owner had leukemia and there was no one to take Rex. They told us he had even had $600 worth of dog obedience training. When we got him home, one of the shelter employees called to say how happy they were that he had found a home after three months of lying in a cage because “Rex was everyone’s favorite dog.”
We could understand why. He was a very sweet dog with an amazingly calm temperament.
Except for the mailman. He really, really didn’t like the mailman and seemed to feel that we needed his protection from this daily intruder. So when the mailman showed up at our front door, Rex would bark ferociously until the mail had been delivered and the mailman was safely on his way.
The sight of the mailman walking away confirmed to him that, once again, he had done his job!
However, one day to my complete surprise, the mailman came and went with absolutely no reaction from Rex.
So I casually said to him, “Rex, what happened? The mailman came and went and you didn’t even bark.”
He stood there patiently looking at me while I talked. When I was finished, he walked calmly over to the closed front door, stood there for a moment looking at the door, and then very quietly went, “Woof.”
As in “Satisfied?”
If I hadn’t seen him do it, I never would have believed it!
Also, his favorite person in the household was my grown daughter because she was the one who walked him. When he decided it was time for a walk, he would find one of my daughter’s walking shoes, grab it in his mouth, walk over to where she was sitting and drop it in her lap!
He lived to be 12 years old and then he had a stroke which left his hind legs completely paralyzed. After he had spent a month lying helplessly on a blanket with wee-wee pads, we decided it wasn’t fair to let him keep living like that since there was no hope that he would ever get any better.
I thought about his favorite food because, unlike many dogs who are sick or dying, there was nothing wrong with his appetite.
The only thing he had ever stolen was my homemade beef jerky. It was in a Christmas tin, in a box which had been wrapped, taped and tied with a string. It was ready to mail and sitting on the dining room table. While we were out, Rex had managed to get it down from the table , untie it, get the wrapping off of it, open the tin (not easy even for humans!) and eat every piece.
So I made an entire batch of beef jerky and fed him piece after piece while he was lying there waiting to be euthanized.
A few minutes later, he passed on with a tummy full of his favorite food.
If rulers’ own behavior is ethical, what difficulty will they have in governing? If their own conduct is improper, how can they demand lawfulness from their citizens? Confucius. Analects.
Matthew Archer’s recentWhat if we Lost our Smartest 5%? suggests that, without our scientists and engineers we would struggle even to maintain our quality of life. It also helps explain the West’s current governmental decline and China’s rise. That’s because, like most sentient beings, our smartest 5% – scientists and engineers – are repelled by our toxic political process. No wonder Western governments have failed to deliver democratic outcomes¹.
China’s top 5%, by contrast, are entirely involved in government, and thereby hangs our tale..
The smartest guys in the room
Imagine the impact on European civilization of a series of Imperial dynasties maintaining the self-same style and significance from Caesar Augustus until the First World War. Now imagine such a civilization existing on the other side of the planet unaware of Greek philosophy, the alphabet, Roman governance, Christianity, feudalism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or democracy, but with its own, unique cultural and institutional correlates that exceeded all of them in intellectual subtlety and material success. Fernand Braudel
2500 years ago a government consultant named Confucius designed a low-maintenance, harmonious state by modeling it on the nuclear family and its natural hierarchy. The head of each little family would be responsible to the family clan head –as they still are – who is responsible to the extended clan head and so on, up to the head of the Big Family, the emperor.
The emperor’s responsibility would be to find honest, competent, selfless geniuses willing to devote their lives to serving the dynasty. The trick, he said, was finding them, “The administration of government lies in getting men of strong moral character – the kind who will only be attracted a the ruler’s own good character, which he cultivates by treading the path of duty. And treading the path of duty is cultivated by practicing compassion”. Because honesty rises with intelligence and running a kingdom is the hardest job on earth, choose officials for their moral integrity and intellectual abilities.
Alas, rulers of the day were comfortable with their chain of command and their nobles were hostile to meritocracy and Confucius, convinced that he had failed, died.
For centuries, corrupt eunuchs, scheming regents, dowager empresses, usurpers, concubines, wicked uncles and rebellious generals continued their massacres, kidnappings, taxing and warring. Confucius’ disciples persistently advocated his plan, however, until, in 188 BC, they persuaded Emperor Wen of Han to stop imprisoning parents, wives, and siblings of common criminals.
When things went awry, he wrote Letters of Public Apology, as Confucius advised. So positive was the public response that he began lowering taxes, abolishing corvée labor and giving monthly pensions to widows, orphans and retirees and, as Confucius had predicted, peace and prosperity prevailed.
Emperor Wen next began examining nobles’ suitability for office and soon, ambitious families were sending promising offspring to Confucian cram schools. A century later, thirty-thousand earnest young men were enrolled at Imperial Colleges where, as a form of meditation, they memorized the Master’s teaching on compassionate service until it permeated their feelings, thoughts, and dreams.
Getting serious
Eight centuries of increasing meritocracy passed until, in 600 AD, Emperor Yang of Sui opened imperial examinations to peasants. He instructed examiners – from whom candidates’ identities were concealed – to find men with intellectual depth and moral maturity. To emphasize the importance of morality, he said, they should execute cheaters.
Examinees answered questions on the economy, analyzed current government policies and composed original essays to demonstrate their brushwork, literacy, creativity, and knowledge of the World. The Emperor himself queried top candidates who quoted from memory case studies in governance and passages from the Analects (as they still do). Advancement by examination was class-blind (it still is) because, said Censor Wang Ji, “If selection by examination is not strict, the powerful will struggle to be foremost, and orphans and the poor will have difficulty advancing”.
By 1204 AD, of two-hundred seventy-nine senior officials whose families we know, forty-four percent had forebears in government (by 2020, it was twelve percent). Successful applicants became national celebrities, their feats memorialized in family books and their homecomings semi-hysterical:
When a scholar rides in a high carriage drawn by four horses, flag-bearers running ahead with a mounted escort bringing up the rear, people gather on both sides of the road to watch and sigh. Ordinary men and foolish women rush forward in excitement and humbly prostrate themselves in the dust stirred up by his carriage. This is a scholar’s joy. This is when his ambition is fulfilled.
Poor scholars who ascended on talent were the Emperor’s men entirely. They could neither own land, serve in their home provinces, nor have relatives in the same branch of government (prohibitions that still hold). They competed for promotion by constructing public works and, though dynasties rose and fell, there was just one official to serve eight thousand citizens, often in regions far from family and friends, under terrible conditions, regularly at the cost of their lives.
Though few in number, they sustained the most harmonious, advanced, prosperous nation on earth, and so lustrous is their record that Chinese heroes and villains –historical or fictional – were or are government officials. One such hero-official has even been deified: by democratic agreement, Governor Li Bing, who designed and constructed the Dujiangyan water diversion project in 250 BC (below), is God of Waters. His temple still stands at the site where he diverted the waters to create one of the country’s great rice bowls.
That was then, this is now
The top 20% of Chinese university graduates, the smartest two-million (out of eleven-million) youngsters, will take the guokao civil service exam this summer. The written examinations are challenging, the orals intimidating and exhausting, and applicants need a 140 IQ (enough for a PhD in theoretical physics) to get an interview, and only 27,000, 1.3% of them, will receive job offers.
The successful applicants will take vows of selfless service stricter than a Jesuit …
"A Chinese engineer friend told me that, in a shooting war, China’s first salvo will be at least 30,000 missiles–enough to cripple every US base east of Guam–and more than America’s entire missile inventory."
-Godfree Roberts
When I was in high school, there was a radio station that I, and all my friends used to listen to. This was WYDD. This was a very leading-edge “alternative Rock” radio station long before “alternative rock” came into being.
One of my favorite DJ’s was “Laid Back Larry Allen”.
They mostly played the more obscure rock music of the time, long before the mainstream radio stations would play the songs. They introduced us, their audience, to such wonders as YES!, Gentle Giant, Jefro Tull, Moody Blues, Traffic, and Spooky Tooth.
Today, these musicians are known as “classic rock”, but back in those days, it was rarely heard music. The AM system ruled the airwaves, and it was just starting to go corporate. WYDD was FM, and was a niche market.
Anyways, there was a corporate buy out. This was big in the late 1970’s. A group of wealthy investors would buy up all sorts of radio stations and then bombard the targeted audience with a bland rotation of “cookie cutter songs”. Such as “Maggie May”, etc.
Oh, it was awful. And during their last night of programming, the entire staff walked out. There were downtown protests, and near riots in all the communities as us youth wouldn’t have any of it.
…
I went to college, four years passed, and returned home.
The mood was different.
Most of my friends installed cassette players in their cars, and the station of preference was WDVE. Which now claimed to “always” have been the station of the youth.
Ha! Talk about rewriting history!
They played pure ROCK.
This trend, or the wealthy changing the demographics of American society didn’t end there. It just got crazier and crazier… up until now you have these wealthy billionaires paying off entire school boards at the tune of $50,000 a person to implement LGBQ+ polices, and the like.
Indeed, the USA is a complete cesspool today.
And it all started in the 1970’s.
…
The 1960-era Peace-Love crowd became greedy, egotistic, narcissistic psychopaths, and they…
…they changed generations of Americans.
And exported it to Europe and Australia.
…
One can only wonder what the WOKE, and MTOW movement will result in … twenty years from today.
It’s gonna be … feudal.
…
…
As an aside… from my point above…
The old WYDD Station DJ’s and team got together and set up a web page where you can listen to their rantings and music!
Freeform Rock Radio DJ WZUM 1973,
WYDD 2 1/2 years 1975-1977 "Laidback Larry Allen"
Former YDD DJ's Larry & Jim DeCesare host this site with our friends.
We are now on Face Book at "WYDD Pittsburgh Freeform"
The only page on FB dedicated to the Freeform Rock Radio Years in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Check it out HERE. And listen to what it was like in 1977.
Hours and hours of a time machine.
You will NEVER hear this mix of pre-alternative rock from the mid-1970’s anywhere. Songs and music that you might have forgotten, heard once or twice… Well worth the listen to.
Today…
A used gun
If a lighter were dropped off in a random place, say 1,000 years around the time fire was discovered, how would it change the timeline?
Most likely scenario:
Ogg the caveman is out foraging for his evening meal and comes across a lighter that has been dropped by a careless time-traveler.
Naturally attracted by shiny things, he picks it up and through a stroke of incredible luck manages not only to open it but to get the thing to light. Excited by his discovery, he rushes back to the cave to show it to his fellow tribesmen.
Gesturing to the strange object in his hand, Ogg very eloquently grunts “Acckk! Ogg greck narf spurgle blorg!” (Roughly translated, “Dudes! Look at the cool thing Ogg found!”) He deftly opens the lighter, flips the wheel, and a bright flame springs forth.
And at this point, Ogg is immediately stoned to death by his fellows for messing around with wizardry and risking the wrath of the gods. The lighter is hurled into a nearby tar pit in the hope of preventing that same wrath from coming down upon them all. Unfortunately, since no one else in the tribe had ever seen a lighter or figured out how it works, they didn’t close it first and the still-lit flame ignited the gases rising from the pit. The ensuing conflagration wipes out the entire tribe, leaving only a blackened scar on the landscape which would be known for decades after as “the place where those idiots pissed off the gods.”
Thus endeth the lesson.
Totally and absolutely COOL
Facts about the great Humphrey Bogart :
1. While he was married to fiery actress Mayo Methot he discovered that she suspected him of cheating on her – he wasn’t – and had hired a private detective to follow him. Bogart found out the name of the agency the PI worked for, and called them up. When he reached the man’s boss he said, “You got a man on my tail. Would you check with him and find out where I am?”.
2. Named his daughter, Leslie Bogart, to show his gratitude to Leslie Howard, who got him his big break in The Petrified Forest (1936).
3. Lauren Bacall once recalled that while John Wayne and Fred Astaire hardly knew her husband Humphrey Bogart at all, they were the first to send flowers and good wishes after Bogart was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in January 1956.
4. Though a poor student, he was a lifelong reader, and could quote Plato, Pope, Ralph Waldo Emerson and over a thousand lines of Shakespeare. He admired writers, and some of his best friends were screenwriters, including Richard Brooks, who directed him in ‘Deadline – USA’.
5. His coffin contains a small, gold whistle, put there by his wife Lauren Bacall.
No grand strategy
As a psychologist, who is the most disturbing individual you have ever met?
The most disturbing individual I ever met was another psychologist, and he inspired me to research a paper into the motivation behind persons with PD’s becoming Psychologists (which is more common than most people appreciate).
I knew of this individual from school but had no idea he had studied Psychology.
He was the most vicious bully the school had ever seen.
Three of the people he bullied went on to commit suicide.
There was an accusation of rape levelled against him but, as it was the eighties, the girl withdrew the accusation when the police informed her there was no evidence and it was her word against his.
There was an episode where he discovered a smaller boy was claustrophobic. He locked the boy in a cupboard for over half an hour. By the time we rescued this boy he was non responsive and non verbal. This boy subsequently committed suicide.
He showed no remorse and no empathy when I met up with him years later at a seminar.
He questioned my recollection of the events at school, trying to convince me (a clinical Psychologist) that memories weren’t reliable and he had no recollection of any of “those events”.
Most disturbing was that this person was working with vulnerable youth.
I took this up with one of his Professors and demanded to know why he hadn’t spotted what, in my opinion, was an individual with a very obvious PD studying in his classes.
He replied that perhaps this individual was the perfect fit for vulnerable youth as he understood the victim/perpetrator dynamic.
I was horrified.
I replied that that was like stating it would be advantageous to train rapists as rape counsellers for they would have the same perspective.
I still can’t work out whom was the more disturbing character. The student or the teacher.
There have long been conspiracy theories that the world is ruled by a group of elite pedophiles or at least ephobophiles—those who are attracted to sexually mature but very young girls. Just such a vast, elite pedophile ring — centred around Hilary Clinton — was a key strand in QAnon thinking [QAnon conspiracists believe in a vast pedophile ring. The truth is sadder, By Moira Donegan, Guardian, September 20, 2020]. In the UK, “Operation Yew Tree,” set up after the death of popular entertainer Sir Jimmy Savile and revelations about his raping numerous under-aged girls, unmasked a number of high-profile celebrities with similar proclivities, such as the entertainer Rolf Harris [Rolf Harris, Savile and Clifford all pulled the wool over my eyes, By Simon Hattenstone, Guardian, July 3, 2014].
With the publication of court documents relating to Virginia Roberts suing the now jailed Ghislaine Maxwell, a growing list of A-List celebrities have been revealed to have spent time on the private island of wealthy convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, where Maxwell procured young girls for him. These A-Listers include Prince Andrew, who denies having had sex with Virginia Roberts (then a minor), Stephen Hawking and Bill Clinton. According to sworn testimony by one of these girls, Epstein told her that the former president “likes them young” [Epstein told victim that Bill Clinton ‘likes them young’, new court filings reveal, By Rachel Young, Independent, January 7, 2024]. People may be shocked at evidence that so many highly elite people may be interested in having sex with very young girls. As someone who researchers evolutionary psychology I don’t find it shocking at all. It makes complete theoretical sense.
What is it that predicts being extremely eminent, ascending to the heights of the elite, being, in some way, a genius? As I have explored in my book Sent Before Their Time: Genius, Charisma and Being Born Prematurely, it is very high intelligence combined with psychopathic traits. If you are low in empathy and altruism, you won’t care that your radical new idea, for example, offends vested interests; in fact you might enjoy upsetting people. You will even have aspects of Narcissism, such a strong sense of entitlement; making you impervious to setbacks, possessed of a Machiavellian streak, and, so, more likely to succeed. If you are low in impulse control then you won’t be able to force yourself to think like everybody else; you will “think outside the box” and generate original ideas. And if you are high in negative feelings, in Neuroticism, you will be constantly ruminating and so generating new insights. In essence, genius is very high intelligence combined with sub-clinical psychopathology.
German-British psychiatrist Felix Post (1913–2001) conducted a character-trait analysis of 291 world famous men which I drew upon in Sent Before Their Time. He found that 16% of the male population might be sub-clinically psychopathic. This compared to 52% of politicians, 50% of artists and 70% of writers. Post estimated that 1% of males suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but this was 27% of artists, 28% of politicians and 40% of writers. It should be added that while 1% of the male population are “severely psychopathic,” Post found it was 17.4% of politicians, 37.5% of artists, 26% of thinkers, and 46% of writers. He estimated that 33% of his sample of world famous scientists had suffered from depression or anxiety, as had 41% of his politicians, 34% of his composers, 36% of his thinkers, 41% of his artists and 72% of his writers. Approximately 20% of people in Western countries experience a bout of depression at some point in their lifetimes [Creativity and psychopathology: A Study of 291 World Famous Men, By Felix Post, British Journal of Psychiatry, 1994].
Both of these traits are part of a “fast life history strategy,” a concept I’ve looked at before. Fast life history strategists are evolved to an easy yet unpredictable ecology where you must live fast and die young. It is, therefore, pointless bonding with people, who could be wiped out at any moment, so you are aggressive and psychopathic. You must pass on your genes as quickly as possible, so you should be attracted to very young women, as they are highly fertile. If you are a slow life history strategist then you are in a predictable, harsh and competitive environment. You must ensure, for example, that your offspring are adapted to the local diseases and are well-nurtured, so you might value genetic similarity to your partner and a kind personality above youth. Our super-elite are highly intelligent fast life history strategists so we would expect to have an extreme penchant for youth.
Anxiety is associated with paraphilia, with a developing a sexual fetish. An extreme penchant for youth might be regarded as close to fetish, in that teenage girls are not yet at the peak of their fertility. It has been suggested that anxiety can potentiate sexual arousal in men, which can lead to an association between sexual arousal and atypical objects [The Relation Between the Paraphilias and Anxiety in Men: A Case—Control Study, By M. Fox et al., Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2022]. Alternatively, it may be that anxiety involves experiencing intense feelings more strongly, making the normal desire for youth more extreme, as autism, which involves low empathy and extreme sensations, is associated with paraphilia and anxiety [Psychological and Developmental Correlates of Paraphilic and Normophilic Sexual Interests, By A. Brown et al., Sexual Abuse, 2022]. Certainly, childhood anxiety is associated with later becoming a pedophile [Social anxiety and sexual offending against children: A cumulative meta-analysis, By K. Nunes et al., Sexual Aggression, 2012].
So, put simply, we shouldn’t be surprised at evidence of highly elite males having sex with underage girls. The same traits that predict being highly elite would appear to predict just such a penchant. The “conspiracy theory” makes theoretical sense.
Good summary
Tips for Making Perfect Buffalo Wings
The following was originally posted by G. Schaeffer.
The key to good Buffalo Wings is how you prepare them as well as the ingredients and the handling of the wings. The most successful wings served up here in Buffalo are what they call “Grade A Grinders.” Fresh wings that are very large and meaty. Usually, you cannot get them in a frozen package, but can get them from a poultry dealer. Once you find them make sure they are absolutely fresh.
Wash them in cold water, split them at the joint and remove the tips. Place them on a rack on a pan and refrigerate overnight to let the blood and water drain out of the wings. THIS IS A REAL KEY. Drying the wings under refrigeration will help to make them a much crispier product, once deep fried.
Next, use a deep fryer or a very heavy deep pot with a thermometer and add the oil. Peanut oil is very good, or a commercial product such as can be found at a restaurant cash and carry called Mel Fry.
Heat the oil up SLOWLY, to 365 degrees F, and depending on the size of the fryer, deep fry the dry wings 6 to 8 minutes in small batches, until thoroughly done and golden brown. Hold the cooked wings in a warm oven if necessary.
A combination of melted butter and hot sauce in the ratio of 1 part butter to 3 parts hot sauce will add the right zing. The key here is to add just enough sauce to coat the wings – the more sauce you add, the hotter they will be.
For the very brave, 1 part butter to 3 parts hot sauce and 1 part Tabasco is referred to as “Suicidal Wings” by the late and dear Don Bellissimo, who owned the Anchor Bar.
Working quickly, place the deep fried wings in a large bowl and add the sauce mixture, shaking to coat them. There are many good hot sauces to use; the one they use is either Durkee Franks Red Hot Sauce or Wingers Original, again found in a restaurant cash and carry.
Celery sticks and chunky blue cheese dressing (Ken’s Buffalo Style Blue Cheese is a popular one) and plenty of napkins.
The view on America after living abroad (UK)
What is the biggest waste of electricity you’ve seen in a home you visited, were a guest in, or even in your own home?
Beijing and Canberra are sister cities. In the noughties there were exchanges of government employees between the cities. They were billeted with local families.
A lovely Chinese woman came to stay in my house after she found her first host untenable. I was the desperation destination.
She was the most incredible cook and delighted in preparing delicious meals for us. She was intelligent, interesting, diligently tidy and lovely to have around.
I entrusted the house to her and took the chance to take my boys camping at the beach. After a long day in the surf then dinner on the beach I came back to my car to find fourteen missed calls from Ai Le.
Now apparently in Beijing the heating is turned on or off at the discretion of the authorities. Heating is therefore seen as not only free but the height of indulgence.
The voice messages went from Ai Le’s desperate and lonely voice with the fire alarm blaring then rising in volume until the final crescendo when it sounded like every Chinese person in the southern hemisphere was gathered in my house, all competing to be heard above the still blaring alarm.
Ai Le, bless her, had turned the heating to tropical+ the moment we left. Eventually the fire alarm activated and she had no idea how to turn it off.
The power bill was monstrous and Ai Le embarrassed but we found the humour and all was well.
And no diplomacy was harmed in the making of this story.
Israel and America Are at War with Iran, Russia and China
Is it possible for the US or other nations to prevent a potential invasion of Taiwan by China?
Absolutely, and positively No. ZERO. No way. Never gonna happen.
…
Taiwan is a province of China, and it is so close to the mainland that the PLA can swim to it.
China has already shown that it can isolate, blockade and totally rubbish the island and there isn’t a God-damn thing that anyone can do about it.
Sanctions?
Ha ha ha ha ha
Tell me about it. Ain’t no one gonna follow sanctions on China except the most butt-hole sucking LGBQ+ moronic clown-show transvestites.
Threat of war?
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Have you forgotten what getting a good butt-reaming was like? Hey! Wanna have some fun. Go watch the interview of American veterans of the “Korean War” and what THEY have to say. Instead of listening to John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.
Trade embargo?
Oh my goodness, this is a belly laugh for certain. Ha ha ha ha
When Namibia, Africa is running 7G and 8G, the USA will be struggling with land-lines and cell-phone towers that struggle with obsolete 3G networks on dying batteries.
…
To take on China is to place a loaded .45 ACP to your temple and pull the trigger. It’s “death by cop”, and you know what, if you are so God-damn stupid to pull that one, you will deserve the nuclear radiation that comes with it.
Idiots. Suckers.
…
Update
I’m sorry. I must apologize. I sometimes really minimize really serious issues and distill it into something more palatable to the average person. Like this post. The reality is that it is gonna be much, much, MUCH worse.
The fact is, that any war between China and the “rules based insanity” that is the West today is gonna be a God-Damn cluster Fuck. That is a truth, and you all had best get your arms around this truth.
Trump can be President. Oprah Winfrey could be president. Joe Biden could be President. It won’t make any difference. The USA is run by the ignorant, and they are on a death-march to the meat-grinder, and you are duck taped to them.
Enjoy the ride.
Until it is over.
The One Question Women Are Not Ready To Answer
What is the worst bullying you have ever seen personally?
The worst recorded case of bullying that I know of is the case of Liu JinFeng.
The one being executed in the photo is not her abuser but her.
Liu was raised through only primary school education, abused by her father since childhood. After her mum passed away, her stepfather and other relatives drove her out of the family. I surmise that she already had no one who cared about her by then.
A homeless and good looking woman in her teenage years is a total target for sexual abuse. Indeed, she was soon taken in by males, only to be raped and then discarded every time. Apparently, she was forced to undergo abortion as well.
Eventually, prostitution got the better of her and she got arrested during a prostitution crackdown. After one year in jail, the police sent her back to her stepfather, only to be sold to another family for 1000 RMB.
After the sex ride by the new abuser, she was sold again to another man by the surname Hu. Hu was an alcoholic and the worst of all the abusers Liu had to put up with. Liu made several escape attempts that Hu decided to chain her up with a 3 pound metal chain. She was still able to make it a few miles away with all that weight. This prompted Hu to break one of her legs to hinder her from further tries.
The climax took place when Hu left town for months, leaving her to the watch of his cousins. His cousins raped her, leading to the eventual birth of her son. This time around, Hu became maddened, whipped her naked and sliced her vagina while she was hanging upside down.
She survived the struggle, she awoke. Only to realize, her son has already been strangled to death by the devious Hu. She finally lost it.
She hacked Hu to death while he was sleeping in bed before setting the house on fire. This eventually led to her facing the death penalty for murder. Her execution took place in 1995 in the city of Xianyang, when she was just twenty years old. She died not even from defending her own honor, but her son’s.
The miscarriage of her justice circulated around the internet about a decade later when internet started getting usage in China. Today, you can still find photos of her headless body left in the snow post execution.
There are two issues reflected in her case which I find common in all cases of bullying.
Firstly, bully victims generally do not retaliate, or are simply unable to retaliate, until it is too late. Most victims of prolonged bullying, including me, report fear of further punishment from the abuser as the main reason for not voicing out.
Secondly, ironically as well, is that most bully victims meet their demise not because of lack of intervention from the law, but because of the law. The law is run by hard statements, it punishes anyone who breaks penal codes, blind to the form the breach took place. In the Western world, the law is somewhat more flexible, but not immune to this trend either. In the case of Liu, I would consider the law morally wrong.
As a victim of bullying for five years, there is little anyone can do to heal my wounds which have withered into scars by now. Sometimes, I just remind myself what Liu JinFeng went through was much worse.
The African Sahel is revolting against western neocolonialism – ejecting foreign troops and bases, devising alternative currencies, and challenging the old multinationals. Multipolarity, after all, cannot flower without resistance paving its path.
in various geographies is an inextricable byproduct of the long and winding process leading us toward a multipolar world. These two things – resistance to the Hegemon and the emergence of multipolarity – are absolutely complementary.
The Axis of Resistance in West Asia – across Arab and Muslim states – now finds as its soul sister the Axis of Resistance spanning the Sahel in Africa, west to east, from Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to Chad, Sudan, and Eritrea.
Unlike Niger, where the change in power against neocolonialism was associated with a military coup, in Senegal, the power change comes straight from the polls.
Senegal plunged itself into a new era with the landslide victory of Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, in nationwide elections on 24 March. A former tax inspector who had just spent a fortnight stint in jail, Faye emerged with the profile of an underdog pan-African leader to turn the ‘most stable democracy in Africa,’ under French puppet incumbent Macky Sall, upside down.
The incoming Senegalese president now joins Ibrahim Traore, 36, in Burkina Faso, Aby Ahmed, 46, in Ethiopia, Andry Rajoelina, 48, in Madagascar, as well as future superstar Julius Malema, 44, in South Africa as part of the new, young pan-African generation focused on sovereignty. In his election manifesto, Faye pledged to reclaim Senegal’s sovereignty no less than eighteen times.
Geoeconomics is key to these shifts. As Senegal becomes a substantial oil and gas producer, Faye will aim to renegotiate mining and energy contracts, including the largest ones with British Petroleum (BP) and UK gold mine operator, Endeavor Mining.
Crucially, he plans to ditch the exploitative CFA franc – the French-controlled currency system used in 14 African states – even setting up a new currency as part of reshaping relations with neocolonial power France, Senegal’s top trading partner. Faye, echoing Comrade Xi Jinping, wants a “win-win” partnership.
Enter the Alliance of the Sahel States
Faye has not yet been clear on whether he intends to kick the French military out of Senegal. Were that to happen, the blow to Paris would be unprecedented, as embattled Petit Roi Emmanuel Macron and the French establishment consider Senegal the key player when it comes to blockading landlocked Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, which have already left Paris in the (Sahel) dust.
The three latter states, which have just formed an Alliance of the Sahel States (Alliance des Etats du Sahel, AES, in the original French), are not only a major Paris nightmare after serial humiliations but also a big American headache – epitomized in the spectacular breakdown of military cooperation between Washington and Nigerien capital Niamey.
The culprit, according to the US Deep State, is, of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Obviously, no one in the US Beltway has been paying due attention to the Russia–Africa diplomatic flurry since last year, involving all key players from the Sahel to the new African BRICS members Egypt and Ethiopia.
In sharp contrast to its prior regard of Niger as a staunch ally in the Sahel, Washington is now forced to present a calendar date to get its troops out of Niger – after a military cooperation deal was annulled. The Pentagon cannot be involved in military training in Nigerien territory anymore.
There are two key bases – in Agadez and Niamey – which the Pentagon spent over $150 million to build. Niamey was finished only in 2019 and is managed by the US military’s African Command, AFRICOM.
Operational objectives are, predictably, shrouded in mystery. The Niamey base is essentially an intel center, processing data collected by MQ-9 Reaper drones. The US Air Force also uses the Dirkou Aerodrome as a base for operations in the Sahel.
Now things get really exciting, because the presence of a de facto CIA drone base in Dirkou, manned by a handful of operatives, is not even acknowledged. This dark base allows intel collection everywhere in Central Africa, from west to north. Call it another classic example of former CIA director Mike Pompeo’s “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal.”
There are roughly 1,000 US troops in Niger who may soon face ejection. The Americans are trying everything to stem the bleeding. Only this month, US Undersecretary of State for Africa Molly Phee visited Niger twice. Losing bases in Niger will translate into Washington following Paris in losing control of the Sahel – as Niger gets closer to Russia and Iran.
These bases are not essential to exercise surveillance over the Bab al-Mandeb; it’s all about the Sahel, with drones operating on their limit and violating every sovereign air space in sight.
Incidentally, a hefty delegation from Niamey visited Moscow in January. Then, last week, Putin discussed security cooperation in phone calls with Mali’s interim President, Assimi Goita, and Niger’s military junta President Abdourahmane Tchiani before talking to the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Nguesso.
Ivory Coast: The Empire turn-around
Pro-west puppet regimes are dwindling fast all across the African continent. The Alliance of the Sahel States – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – may be the vanguard of an African Axis of Resistance, but there’s more, in the form of South Africa, Ethiopia, and Egypt as full BRICS members – not to mention serious candidates for the next wave of BRICS+, such as Algeria and Nigeria.
Russia, diplomatically, and China, commercially, plus the full weight of the Russia–China strategic partnership, are clearly focused on the long game – counting on Africa as a whole as a key multipolar player. Additional evidence was provided once again during the multipolar conference last month in Moscow, where charismatic pan-African leader Kemi Seba from Benin was one of the superstars.
Pan-Eurasian diplomatic circles even allow themselves to joke about the recent hissy fits by Le Petit Roi in Paris. The utter humiliation of France in the Sahel is likely one of the drivers of Macron’s chest-thumping threats to send French troops to Ukraine – who would be turned into steak tartare by the Russians in record time – and his eagerness to support Armenia’s current Russophobic stunts.
Historically, the fact remains, that Africans considered the former USSR much more pliable and even supportive when it came to siphoning natural resources; that goodwill has now also been transferred to China.
As a regional integration platform, the Alliance of the Sahel States has everything it takes to become a game-changer. Senegal under Faye may eventually join, but Guinea already offers the geographical capacity to provide the alliance with credible maritime access. That will lead to the progressive extinction of the western-controlled, Nigeria-based ECOWAS.
Yet, never dismiss the Hegemon’s mighty tentacles. The Pentagon master plan does not entail abandoning Africa to a multipolar Russia–China–Iran sphere of influence. Yet no one across the Sahel’s Axis of Resistance buys the US ‘terror threat’ card anymore. There was virtually zero terror in Africa until 2011, when NATO turned Libya into a wasteland, then put boots on the ground and erected military bases across the continent.
So far, the Alliance of the Sahel States is winning the sovereignty-first information war, hands-down. But there’s no question the Empire will strike back. After all, the whole game is tied to the Beltway’s supreme paranoia of Russia taking over the Sahel and Central Africa.
Enter the Ivory Coast, now that Senegal may be about to start flirting with the Alliance of the Sahel States.
Ivory Coast is more strategic to Washington than, for instance, Chad because Ivorian territory is very close to the Sahel alliance. Still, Chad has already recalibrated its foreign policy, which is no longer Western-controlled and comes with a new emphasis on getting closer to Moscow.
What lies ahead for Empire? Perhaps US ‘anti-terror’ drones shared with Paris at the French base in the Ivory Coast to keep the Sahel alliance in check. Call it the humiliated Gallic rooster embracing the Hegemon in West Africa without receiving even the crumbs of a stale croissant.
Passport Bros TRIGGERING The Young Turks As Men REJECT Leftist Utopias For Traditional Life Abroad
Something’s Up: Another City Declares “Emergency” over April 8 Solar Eclipse
There’s something creepy going on in connection with the coming solar eclipse on April 8 and it warrants our attention: Numerous cities have declared states of emergency . . . for an eclipse???? No, there’s more to this than we’re being told . . .
This weekend, Niagara Falls Canada declared a state of emergency for the coming solar eclipse on April 8, as 1 million people are expected to flood the area.
The Ontario side of the falls has started to prepare for the expected influx in visitors coming to see the total social eclipse in early April.
The famous falls have been listed by National Geographic as one of the best places to see the eclipse – a phenomena not seen in the area since 1979. The city is within the path where the moon will entirely block the sun for a few minutes.
Mayor Jim Diodati estimated the city would see the most visitors in a single day on April 8 with an estimated 1 million expected. On average, the city see 14 million visit per year.
The state of emergency, which was announced Thursday, will allow the city to execute additional planning to help prepare for traffic jams, cell phone network overloads, and a higher need for emergency services, and more.
BELL COUNTY, TX – Way back on February 22, Bell County Texas issued a local state of emergency, anticipating a significant surge in visitors and strained resources.
The county expects its population of 400,000 to double in the days leading up to and after the eclipse, “due to our location in the Path of Totality,” when the moon completely covers the sun.
The county expects traffic congestion, fuel shortages and strains on first responders, hospitals, and food. The declaration will help the county coordinate with the state Department of Emergency Management if state assistance is needed.
The declaration also requires property owners to register with the county if they are hosting events like watch parties or camping for more than 50 people, as well as provide “adequate” bathroom and waste disposal facilities.
Bell County says registration information will help public safety officials and first responders during a period when roads and highways may be stressed, and responders may be impeded by population conditions.
TRAVIS COUNTY, TX — On March 10, Travis County said it would take emergency measures ahead of the total solar eclipse set to take place in exactly one month.
Kaufman County, TX — On March 27 Officials in Kaufman County issued a disaster declaration ahead of the April 8 total solar eclipse, saying they expect the county’s population to double and for traffic to be a major issue.
“Our current population is somewhere around 200,000. We’re expecting another 200,000,” Steve Howie said. Howie is the Kaufman County Emergency Management Coordinator. “We can’t handle 400,000 vehicles and people in this county in one quick spurt like that. So, it’s a huge concern.”
The declaration was in anticipation of large crowds, increased traffic and strains on first responders, hospitals and roads related to the eclipse. Travis County Judge Andy Brown issued the declaration.
ELSEWHERE IN TEXAS –
More communities across the Lone Star have issued disaster declarations due to the threat their populations might triple as spectators around the U.S. grapple with what locale will have the best view of the Great North American Eclipse.
Officials in Kerr, Bell and Travis counties have stated that disaster declarations or state of emergencies will go into effect before a rush of visitors swarm the Central Texas communities on April 8.
In Pittsburg, with a population of about 4,500, city leaders are expecting double or triple that number of people to be around town for the days leading up to the eclipse and on April 8, Mayor David Abernathy said.
First responders are anticipating more need for their services because of the high number of people in the area. Yet those calls might not go through if cell phone and internet networks are overloaded with people, Abernathy said. That’s the “worst-case scenario,” he said.
“Everybody’s going to be streaming video,” Abernathy said. “They’re going to be talking to their friends. They’re going to be in the downtime … downloading movies. And so, just that onslaught of people is just going to overload the system that’s designed for certain population.
“When you start losing communications, like cell phones, which almost everybody relies on now for emergency messages for contacting relatives or calling their employees back to work … then you’re just back in the 1800s, basically.”
If cellular networks go down, people might not be able to get calls through to 911 in the event of an emergency. However, if calls won’t go through because cellular networks are overloaded, people might be able to text 911.
In the event of a cellular network collapse, local radio stations will provide needed information, Abernathy said. City officials will post information around town listing the stations that people should tune into for emergency information.
If internet networks slow down or collapse because of high use, credit card machines might not work. The City of Mount Pleasant advises people to bring cash with them to make purchases.
Grocery stores could run out of food because of the higher-than-normal number of people in a given community, Abernathy said. And with the higher influx of vehicles, gas stations are likely to run out of fuel as travelers enter and exit the region.
The City of Mount Pleasant advises people to make backup communication plans with others to prepare for a potential loss of cellular networks.
INDIANA — On March 27, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed a disaster order letting Indiana call on a nationwide aid compact should the upcoming eclipse stress the state’s emergency response systems.
Indiana expects hundreds of thousands of visitors for the April 8 event, plus plenty of in-state travel.
NEW YORK STATE — Two weeks ahead of the April 8 eclipse, Governor Kathy Hochul updated New Yorkers on the state’s preparations to ensure everyone can have a safe and memorable viewing experience. In October 2022, Governor Hochul convened an Interagency Task Force comprised of nearly two dozen state agencies and authorities.The Task Force has been collaborating for the past 17 months on plans to ensure everyone can safely enjoy the eclipse.
New York State is expecting hundreds of thousands of visitors, and Governor Hochul is reminding travelers of several tips to ensure the smoothest possible experience for everyone. Governor Hochul is advising travelers to get to their destination early and plan on staying late to avoid the most traffic, allow for extra travel time, and travel prepared with water and snacks. Additionally, drivers should never pull over on the side of the road to ensure first responders can get by in an emergency.
“The April 8 eclipse is a once in a generation experience, and there’s no better place to view it than in our beautiful state,” Governor Hochul said. “New York is ready to welcome millions of visitors, and my administration has been working hard to ensure everyone in the path of the eclipse can safely enjoy this rare event. I encourage anyone traveling for this experience to plan on arriving early to their destination and staying late to enjoy all of what our state has to offer.”
HAL TURNER COMMENTARY
The states, cities, counties, and towns mentioned above are just a small sampling of what has been going on to “prepare” for this eclipse. Sorry, but none of this seems normal to me — at all.
Cellular network collapse? Internet collapse? Grocery stores running out of food? Disaster Declarations? Gas stations running out of fuel? No, none of this seems normal to me at all.
It’s starting to look to me as if something ELSE is going on. But . . . . what?
During an eclipse, with the sun blocked, people may be able to see things up in the sky that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to see because the sunlight is so strong and blocks the view of things in space.
Could it be that something ELSE is going on . . . maybe something that people will suddenly be able to SEE once the sun is blocked for a few minutes?
Might people PANIC over what they see?
What if . . . .
What if something __is__ coming at us? It’s not like we can avoid it. There’s no Bruce Willis as “Harry Stamper” from the movie “Armageddon” to drill holes in an asteroid to drop nukes, blow it up, and save the planet.
Is it possible that governments have known about something for months, and have concealed it?
When I read that New York State has had a TASK FORCE working for the past 17 MONTHS, that kind of sealed the deal over my suspicions. It seems to me that absolutely NOBODY does something like that over an eclipse.
I’m getting a little creeped-out by all these disaster declarations. All this for just a solar eclipse? Sorry, I won’t buy it.
I’ll tell you what I __will__ do: Top-off my emergency food, water, medicine, communications gear (CB and HAM Radio) and stay close to home. In fact, my wife and I agreed over the weekend that we will be at our bugout location in Pennsylvania for this . . . . eclipse.
No, not to see it . . . but to be away from the New York metropolitan area for whatever might __actually__ be the situation.
Apricot-Onion Wings
Yield: 20 to 25 servings
Ingredients
1 (5 pound) bag frozen chicken wings
1 (10 ounce) jar apricot preserves
1 (1 ounce) packet dry onion soup mix
1 (16 ounce) bottle Catalina-style salad dressing
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Cut the chicken wings into individual pieces and place on two lightly greased cookie sheets.
Spread apricot preserves over wings.
Sprinkle dry onion soup mix over wings, then pour Catalina dressing all over.
Bake for 1 hour.
Gerry Anderson’s Ride of Fame: Top 5 Iconic Vehicles Unveiled
Why are products made in China have different qualities by country?
Not only by country. In fact not even by companies or brands.
Being a sourcer of exported manufactured products in China for the past 10 years, I can tell you one simple truth, it’s all about cost.
Lower manufacturer’s cost equals lower quality. Higher manufacturer’s cost equals higher quality. It’s as simple as that.
Note : I said manufacturer’s cost, it’s not retail selling price.
To attract price sensitive consumers, most businesses compete by offering lower selling price. It’s undeniably the most direct way to get people interested.
But, there is always a difference. Let’s look at some examples.
Compare the 2 products below.
They look identical, but the price difference is about 4x. So what’s the difference?
I choose clothing because they are the easiest to see a difference of quality. I ordered a piece of this seemingly same item, from both factories, telling them it’s a sample for my client.
To show the difference in quality for the reader benefit, I did a simple light test. I hold up both pants to the same bright light source and took a photo. These are the results.
This one cost RMB 15
This cost RMB 59.96
From the photo, you can see that there are some light going through the fabric for the cheaper item.
Firstly, you can see the difference in thread density in the material used. The RMB 15 piece is obviously alot thinner and feels cheap. The RMB 59.96 piece is a lot heavier and material is soft and smooth. Color wise, the RMB 59.96 piece is a lot darker and the cheap one while also being black, don’t look that dark. So the fabric dye used is also obviously different. The workmanship is also different, the cheaper one uses traditional machine sewing while the expensive one uses what we call 四针六线 or 4 needles 6 stitches machine sewing giving the joining parts more flexibility and strength. Even the drawstrings at the waist are different, one is obvioisly thicker than the other. Waist rubber bands are also thicker for the more expensive one.
It is obvious that alot of additional cost goes into the more expensive one in terms of material usage and manufacturing process. This difference in manufacturer cost gives you a better quality product for the exact same thing you see in the photo.
This difference is not limited to countries, it’s the same everywhere, but it is still true that the Chinese industrial strength gives you more bang for your buck than other countries.
———————————
Some people might say that if we stick to a certain brand, quality can be assured. But what I’m going to tell you might change your views.
A different product from the same brand might have difference in quality due to different market needs.
For example, Midea, a chinese household electronics brand have different factories producing their product. Some models are only available as online sales models, meaning not available via traditional retail. Why is this so? It’s because the online retail sector is very price sensitive, to capture the e-commerce market, Midea needs to come up with competitively priced products to get their market share online, and that means a reduction in quality (based on the earlier example). But to do that would bring down their entire price range which would affect their branding, so they decided to come up with only some models which are only available online, and these models are obviously not as good as the other models that are only available in retail stores where they sell at a higher price.
At first, many consumers don’t see the difference, but after a couple of years, the Chinese consumers started to see that there is indeed a difference between these models in terms of performance and durability….and price. For some weird reason, most Chinese I know seem to understand the term 一分钱一分货,very well. It means you pay for what you get. It’s a simple term, but some people can take years and many lessons in life to realise how true it is.
I have seen factories being able to produce the rusty screw driver to an equipvalent of a Hastens bed, it all depends on how much it costs to make them and how much the buyers are willing to pay for them.
So regardless of countries, factories or brands, the fundamental reason for the difference in quality is manufacturer’s cost.
Scott Ritter: Ukraine will be DESTROYED as Putin Exposes NATO’s Fragility
What is the reason for China’s smaller Navy compared to the US? How would China’s Navy perform in a conflict with the US?
Not true. China has the largest navy in the world. especially considering that there is no way that 100% of the United States Navy would sail to the South China Sea to do battle on Chinese territory.
How would it preform?
Both sides would experience massive causalities.
One thing is certain, after the dust settles there will not be any aircraft carriers, VTOL carriers left. The USN will be a launching SLBM’s and China will go duke-nukem. Guam would be gone, as would be Hawaii and San Diego. We can also expect Newport Beach and San Francisco to be erased.
You weren’t expecting this answer, eh?
Well it is REALITY. Deal with it.
…
Taking it further…
The conflict might start out conventionally, but the moment that one carrier group is in Davy Jone’s locker, it’s gonna be nuke-em city. The DF-41’s and the Russian Satan missiles are gonna be flyin’. And they won’t be stoppin’ for shit.
Five minutes from launch to nuclear scrubbing.
Quick. Clean. Sterile.
There is NO WAY…
Absolutely NO WAY that the USN will survive a conflict with China. You can add vessels via the QUAD, ARKUS and various other proxies, but honestly, it won’t make any difference.
…
WHY?
Once nuclear deterrence fails…
…and a war with China proves that it HAS failed…
…All that is left is to use the most lethal strategic nuclear weapons in the arsenal. And use them on ALL and EVERY threat.
…
Given the gung-ho nature of the war-mongering neocon Congress, if you are in the USN, I would get out now!
The MAGNIFICENT RISE of Passport Bros in Modern Dating
Imagine living in a dystopian western society just to work all day, pay taxes, and get nothing in return . That is America.
Xi Jinping walks with U.S. top brass – Talks are ‘open and frank’
After weeks and months of closely following the mounting conflicts between China’s coast guards and their Philippine counterparts in the disputes over the Ren’ai Reef, or the Second Thomas Shoal, it is pleasing to read the latest news that President Xi Jinping is now walking – with a top U.S. banker and a great variety of other top U.S. leaders from all fields in Beijing – and talking with them amicably about doing business, building ties and trusts – and toasting the success of bilateral relations since his meeting with President Joe Biden in San Francisco last November.
It’s Ching Ming in China.
With it comes the gentle breeze of warm Spring air, the blossoming of flowers, and dreaming of a beautiful world – fostered by thriving bankers, businesspersons, top scientists and leading scholars, envisioning a dream of mountains and rivers, and birds chipping in the air.
“What a wonderful world!” Sings Bing Crosby, the great musician.
With Xi, the Chinese leader walking with American http://V.I.Ps
in unisons in Beijing and talking amicably about how to cooperatively bring business success and economic development, I see a rainbow coming after a storm.
Xi Jinping has called for closer trade tides with the U.S. during a meeting with top American business leaders in Beijing that comes amid a steady improvement in relations.
Xi emphasized yesterday (Wednesday, March 27) the mutually beneficial economic ties between the world’s two largest economies, despite heavy U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports and Washington’s accusations of undue Communist Party influence, unfair trade barriers and theft of intellectual property.
China’s economy has struggled to recover from severe self-imposed restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic that it lifted only at the end of 2022, but Xi said China was again contributing to world economic growth in the double digits percentagewise.
“Sino-U.S. relations are one of the most important bilateral relations in the world. Whether China and the United States cooperate or confront each other has a bearing on the well-being of the two peoples and the future and destiny of mankind,” Xi was cited as saying by China’s official Xinhua News Agency.
Participants at the meeting included Stephen A. Schwarzman, the billionaire head of the investment firm Blackstone.
Trade and tariffs have increasingly drawn attention in the runup to the U.S. presidential election, and the Biden administration has shown little sign of moderating punitive measures against Chinese imports imposed by his predecessor and assumed rival in the November polls, Donald Trump.
U.S. officials have renewed concerns over Chinese industrial policy practices and overcapacity, and the resulting impact on U.S. workers and companies that they blame in part on China’s massive trade surplus that amounted to more than $279 billion last year, its lowest level in about a decade.
China’s formerly highly abrasive tone toward the U.S. has significantly softened in recent months, particularly since Xi and Biden met in San Francisco in November last year. Officials such as Antony Blinken have visited, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is reportedly due to travel to Beijing again to meet top leaders next month.
However, Xi’s administration has maintained a hard line on issues it considered its “core interests.” An ardent nationalist and son of one of the founders of the People’s Republic, Xi appears determined to maintain strict party discipline while drawing in foreign investment to shore up the economy.
“The respective successes of China and the United States create opportunities for each other,” Xi was cited as saying, by Xinhua, “As long as both sides regard the other as partners, respect each other, peacefully coexist and join together for win-win results, China-U.S. relations will improve.” (Source: The Standard/AP)
In the last century, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enli, the leading founders of the People’s Republic of China forged a relationship with Nixon’s America, which fought an Independence War against the British Imperialists in centuries past.
In this century, Xi Jinping, a socialist and nationalist walking, befriending American capitalists, and talking and toasting each other’s successes in economic terms. Deng Xiaoping, Xi’s predecessor, couldn’t be happier that his initiation of “opening-up” to America and the West is now on a new page of great success.
Who says ideological differences cannot be profitably blended into a refreshing glass of cocktail, be it Singapore Sling, or Bloody Mary!
In history, the British Imperialists were able to blend with the U.S. Capitalists into a wonderful concoction. And now, centuries later, the Chinese Socialists are seeking to repeat history, and improvising it by forging a stable friendship with the American Capitalists.
Why not?
That the seeds of Marxism were sown in rural China have now grown into trees of Socialism, turning a poor country into a world factory, and now and in the future making it an industrial powerhouse.
This, too, is an experiment.
Had Chiang Kai Shak won the Chinese Civil War, China would have become a Capitalist society with cut-throat capitalism as its guiding principle.
That Lenin’s Russian revolution ended in the Cold War – and its eventual collapse is an abortion of birth, a bloody historical tragedy.
But China’s revolution is guided all along by the nation’s pluralistic culture and ancient civilization, meandering into now a river – that eventually becomes one with the sea, the South China Sea.
All these was done under the glaring eyes of and yet with the blessings of some of the superb American presidents, notably among them Presidents Richard M. Nixon, and Jimmy Carter and many other doting American leaders in the great U.S. society.
Or else, China’s current grand achievement would not have been humanly possible. Not to mention miraculously lifting 800 million people out of abject poverty.
Right before our eyes, the Chinese socialists and the American capitalists are repeating history, improvising it, turning it into yet another play book of great success. Made possible by the spirit of understanding and cooperation.
The secret of their success?
These leaders walk the talk.
Men need a plan
Why is China trying to fake their economy and their military capability?
Do you know the Trade Surplus of China is $ 843 Billion a year
This means over the past 15 years, Chinas cumulative trade surplus is a whopping $ 8.28 Trillion
Yet their Foreign Reserves are around $ 3.32 Trillion
So where is the rest of the $ 5 Trillion
Let’s take away $ 2.10 Trillion to pay off Chinas External Debts
That’s still $ 3 Trillion of money that China has stashed away somewhere in some corner of the globe
It simply took this money into a CHINESE WALL so that tomorrow if it’s official reserves are frozen, it still has nearly $ 3 Trillion worth reserves left
So now with such a trade imbalance between the Yuan and the Dollar
Why is the Yuan only at 7.07 to 1 USD?
That’s because the Yuan is kept deliberately weak by China so that it’s exports remain competitive
The real value of the Yuan is closer to 4.74 to 1 USD
By this number , the Nominal GDP of China rises to = 127.2 Trillion Yuan / 4.74 = $ 26.83 Trillion
So realistically the GDP of China in USD Terms must be $ 26.83 Trillion and should have already beaten the United States
So why doesn’t China play this card and freely allow it’s currency to peg at 4.74 to a Dollar?
Simple
That would make their exports expensive and suddenly the Export demand will be affected and China will begin to Stagnate and within five to seven years China may stop their GDP at $ 33–34 Trillion and stop there.
Instead if China keeps the Yuan weak, China can keep their exports high, manage to handle their huge production volumes and keep growing until maybe 2032–2033 and THEN RELEASE THE YUAN FOR A FREE CONVERTIBILITY
Maybe grow to $ 21 Trillion or so and then hit the peg at 5 to 1 USD and reach a Nominal GDP of $ 41 Trillion by 2050 which is the goal
So I strongly believe
Chinas Economy has a nominal GDP closer to $ 25 Trillion than $ 18.50 Trillion
Chinas Actual Net Reserves as closer to $ 4 Trillion than $ 1 Trillion
Why?
Simple
Sun Tzu:
The Measure of your true strength should be a surprise even to you let alone your enemy. Always imagine the Enemy to be ten times more powerful than he is presumed to be and then plan on how to survive and subdue such an enemy
What is the upcoming war between China and the US?
The strategic interest of the US dictates avoiding confrontation with another nuclear power to prevent mutually assured destruction (MAD), which would destroy the American Empire including the homeland. This also explains why the US refrained from deploying troops to Ukraine and limited its support to material and strategic assistance.
Throughout the first Cold War, spanning from the 1950s to the 1990s, direct warfare between the US and Russia did not occur. Likewise, in the current second Cold War since 2012 between China and the US, is unlikely to happen.
Fomenting discord among other vassals, such as Japan and the Philippines, to confront China, or instigating internal strife among Chinese factions across the Taiwan Strait, not only serves America’s interests but also rallies public support for US military endeavors. This rationale also underpins the US’s decision not to renew the mutual defense treaty with Taiwan after terminating it in the 1980s. Furthermore, should the Strawberry Army in Taiwan falter in defending the island, the US can easily shift blame onto Taiwanese forces, particularly if they fail to resist the Chinese unification process to the last man standing like what is happening in Ukraine.
Some Pictures
Ukraine – When Opining War Experts Can’t Read Maps
No one expects that western officials are knowledgeable – especially not with regards to facts. But some exceed even the lowest expectations one might have – and no, not to the upside.
Consider this op-ed by Evelyn N. Farkas, published two days ago:
The congressional faction that opposes Ukraine assistance shares a common talking point with the Kremlin — that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia anyway. Having just returned from Ukraine, where I met with top Ukrainian officials and participated in a security conference, I have found substantial evidence to the contrary.
All Farkas did was to talk with some Ukraine boosters in Kiev. She has penned down whatever they claimed and now tries to sell that as the real. She thinks she is qualified to do so because she once held a high position in U.S. Defense Department:
Evelyn N. Farkas, Ph.D., is executive director of the McCain Institute and former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia.
This however proves that she is extremely miss-informed and totally unqualified to make any judgment:
While the Ukrainians hardly welcome a new Russian offensive in the spring or summer, they believe it is likely. The officials we met with explained that Putin needs to show progress, some kind of victory to justify renewed mobilization and, emboldened now by his fake elections, he is likely to move on the ground and may try once again to open a land corridor to Crimea. But such decisions may plant the seeds of military overreach.
The land corridor between Crimea and the rest of the Russian Federation was established in early March 2022, less than two weeks after the current phase of the war had started.
At that time even the maps by the neo-conned Institute for the Study of War said so:
That land corridor has existed since and has never been interrupted. The Ukrainian ‘counter attack’ last summer was supposed to break through that corridor. It failed. Meanwhile Russia is strengthening the territory and increasing its value by building a new railway (red) along the coast of the Sea of Azov which will significantly shorten the train connection along the corridor.
Ukraine also promises to strike at the railway, which the Russian Federation has been building for more than a year along the Sea of Azov in the occupied territory of Ukraine. It can be a serious problem, says Kirill Budanov, chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.”The construction process is almost complete, and this may pose a serious problem for us,” Budanov said, making it clear that the Ukrainian military is already preparing to launch strikes on the railway. “We have experience in this, and it is much easier than the issue of the Crimean Bridge,” Budanov said.
Budanov’s latest operation, last month’s incursion into Russia towards Belgograd, was a serious failure. The troops involved had extremely high losses.
The Russian military will expect saboteurs at the new rail line and will know how to handle those. It also has its own railway troops which can repair damages to train lines in a shorter time than it takes to sabotage those.
As for Farkas – one really wonders how such a blunder could pass by her intern who wrote that piece, her own eyes, as well as those of the editors of The Hill who supposedly read through it before it was published.
This says something about the quality of analysis coming out of Washington DC – and no, not to the upside.
Posted by b on April 2, 2024 at 9:22 UTC | Permalink
What is life like for someone with a net worth between $10–20 million?
I’m in my mid-50s and my current net worth is in the middle of this range, or about $15 million.
As others have noted, I’ve taken care of most of my family’s financial needs. We have quite a bit of money saved for retirement, and my children’s college education needs are taken care of through heavily funded 529 accounts.
We live in a nice house (about 4,000 square feet) in a nice neighborhood, in a nice suburb near a major U.S. city. We’ve lived in this house for about 19 years and moved in when my net worth was maybe $1–2 million, so we haven’t upgraded as we’ve become richer.
We did buy a vacation house eight years ago in the mountains, and typically enjoy it during the winter months for skiing. We have nice cars, but tend to hold onto them for awhile — I got a new BMW last year after 8 years with my prior car only because I had new drivers in the household and we needed another vehicle.
And five years ago, I finally joined a country club after being an avid golfer for 40 years.
Other than the cars, you wouldn’t know we were anything other than middle class — no family member wears bling or otherwise shows anything that screams wealth. I wear an Apple Watch unless I’m at a formal function (my “dress” watch is a Tag Heuer — a nice watch but certainly not showy).
I still work full-time, in a job I enjoy that typically pays me $600k – $700k per year. And all of my kids work, including the two in high school (they work part-time after school three days a week). All of my children attended public schools through high school.
However, the biggest factor influencing our lifestyle is my wife’s disability. She is totally disabled, is wheelchair-bound when we go out (she uses a walker in the house), and hasn’t been able to drive in over a decade. She has help during the day four days a week, but looking after her is a large burden for us as a family.
So — we go to concerts a few times a year and out to dinner about once a month, but major travel is a lot of work. For our last flying vacation two summers ago, I needed to carry her on and off the plane to her seat. And we need disabled accommodations wherever we go, as bathrooms in particular can be very hazardous for her.
And despite assumptions people might make given our high net worth, I do the dishes in the kitchen after dinner, cook during weekends, do weekend laundry and shopping, and most of the other household chores. With my wife’s limitations, it’s a necessity.
In summary, no one should feel sorry for us, as we have the financial means to deal with our situation. But I’d trade almost all of my wealth to restore my wife’s health if it were possible.
Chili Flavored Chicken Wings
Ingredients
1 packet chili spice mix
1/4 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons parsley flakes
4 pounds chicken wings
1/2 stick butter
Instructions
Combine chili spice packet, cornmeal and parsley flakes in a zip-top bag.
Add chicken wings a few at a time until coated.
Remove wings and place on a buttered cookie sheet.
Repeat this process until all wings are coated with chili flavored mix and placed on buttered cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes, then turn and bake for an additional 10 minutes.
The Transformation of Prof. Jeffrey Sachs
America’s Most Consequential Ideological Regime Defector
Ron Unz • April 1, 2024 • 6,800 Words • 156 Comments
Two weeks ago I published an article on Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, prompted by some of his recent public remarks.
During one of his regular weekly interviews on Andrew Napolitano’s podcast, he had briefly stated that the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy had been the result of a conspiracy involving elements of the CIA. He went on to suggest that the killing might have been “the most decisive event in modern American history” and wondered whether any of our subsequent presidents had been anything more than mere “factotums of the system,” completely subject to the powerful hidden groups that actually control our society.
Such sentiments would hardly be uncommon within fringe, conspiratorial circles, but in sixty years I do not think they have ever been publicly expressed by an individual of Prof. Sachs’ elite establishment stature, and others shared my opinion.
A dozen years ago I had discovered that since the early 1990s a prominent progressive academic I know had been absolutely convinced that the JFK assassination had indeed been engineered by those sinister forces, but he had always carefully kept those views to himself. He now told me he was shocked by Sachs’ public courage on the matter, although even a year before he had already been tremendously impressed by Sachs’ remarkable candor: “no question he’s the most important public intellectual we have.”
That previous endorsement had been prompted by some of Sachs’ earlier statements on other matters. As chairman of the Covid Commission, Sachs had declared that the virus responsible for killing more than a million Americans and perhaps another twenty million worldwide had almost certainly been produced in a biolab, while he denounced the U.S. government for desperately working to conceal those facts. After the 2022 outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, Sachs had explained that the underlying cause had been the 2014 American overthrow of the democratically-elected Ukrainian government and the years of NATO provocations against Russia that followed, with all of these dangerous policies being a result of the unbroken stranglehold that the Neocons had enjoyed over our country’s foreign policy for more than thirty years. And on Bloomberg TV, he stated that America had obviously destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines, Europe’s most important civilian energy infrastructure, thereby committing the greatest act of industrial terrorism in world history.
In late 2022 these developments had led me to publish an article on the remarkably outspoken Columbia University scholar, and since that time all his activities have further strengthened my verdict. All of us can say whatever we like on a corner of the Internet, but I emphasized that when a figure of very high international standing takes that same position, the impact is considerably different:
Until just a few months ago, I doubt there were many American academics more solidly situated in the topmost ranks of our elite mainstream establishment than Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.
In 1983 he gained Harvard University tenure at the remarkably young age of 28, then spent the next 19 years as a professor at that august academic institution; by the early 1990s the New York Timeswas already hailing him as the world’s most important figure in his field. Lured to Columbia University in 2002, he has spent the last couple of decades teaching there and also directing a couple of its research organizations, most recently the Center for Sustainable Development. TIME Magazine has twice ranked him among the world’s 100 most influential individuals, and for nearly twenty years he served as Special Advisor to several Secretary-Generals of the United Nations, while publishing many hundreds of articles and op-eds on a wide variety of subjects in our most influential media outlets.
It would be difficult to construct a more illustrious and establishmentarian curriculum vitae for an international academic figure…
Although he has retained the subdued manner and careful phraseology of a mild academic, in recent months the incendiary content of his published articles and his public statements have exploded across the global landscape, reaching many millions who might otherwise never have questioned what they were so uniformly being told by all our mainstream media organs. His critics defending that orthodoxy must surely believe that he has gone dangerously rogue, and given the enormous weight of his past credibility, I suspect that the phrase “rogue elephant” has sometimes entered their thoughts.
Last month, Napolitano took a short break from his show to speak at a Vatican conference on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, and after his return he thanked Sachs for having arranged that invitation. Sachs himself had also attended as a speaker, and Napolitano expressed his amazement that the American economist had been greeted with such admiring recognition by the Roman Catholic cardinals who attended, almost suggesting that they had treated him as a conquering hero.
Sachs’ influence is hardly confined to those Princes of the Church. A central element of the West’s power is its overwhelming control over the global media infrastructure, whose continual stream of propaganda shapes the ideas and beliefs of most of the world’s population, even including political leaders, multi-billionaires, and influential celebrities. A handful of publications sit at the apex of that media hierarchy, with the Economist certainly being one of these, and given the dramatic recent decline in quality of the New York Times, that former publication might now possibly even rank as first among equals. Since 2015, the top Economist editor has been Zanny Minton Beddoes, whose first job out of college was working as a young assistant to Sachs during his highly successful early 1990s restructuring of Poland’s post-Communist economy. Although I know nothing of their relationship, I assume she spent most of the last three decades filled with admiration for her early former mentor, and if so, she must surely take his highly controversial remarks of the last couple of years quite seriously, even if she understands that they cannot possibly be mentioned in print.
Sachs’ personal background includes some memorable events. In a couple of his discussions on the roots of the Ukraine conflict, he recalled that in 1991 he was seated in a room discussing economic policy with Russia’s top leadership when all of them were suddenly informed that the Soviet Union had officially been dissolved, allowing him to experience a historical moment shared by few if any other Americans.
Over the last few months, he has been extremely outspoken in his denunciation of Israel’s ongoing slaughter of tens of thousands of helpless civilians in Gaza, even declaring that Israel was controlled by “a criminal government,” and he had regularly emphasized the need for international organizations to take public action on the matter. Soon afterward, South Africa successfully charged Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice, whose distinguished jurists affirmed those accusations in a series of near-unanimous rulings. Although I have no evidence, I suspected at the time that Sachs may have used his extensive network of influential global connections to help set that legal project into motion.
I’ve also noticed that despite Sachs’ extremely outspoken public statements, none of those groups and organizations that so fiercely monitor political speech in America have dared to publicly attack him. I think they realize that his international stature is simply too great and any such failed attacks would merely make them look weak and ineffective.
After publishing that recent article, I assumed that many months would pass before I would directly focus again on Sachs and his work, but I was quickly proven wrong.
No sooner had my piece appeared than I discovered that Sachs had been interviewed by Piers Morgan, a British former cable TV host of decidedly mainstream sentiments, with such an appearance representing a significant media breakthrough. In their exchange, Morgan demonstrated that he had been living entirely within the cocoon of our official narrative regarding Russia, Ukraine, and Gaza, and was deeply ignorant of the important facts that Sachs brought to his attention. But much more importantly, those facts were also probably surprising to many of the half-million viewers who watched that discussion on Youtube, thereby perhaps helping to shift some of them in a different direction.
Two weeks earlier, Morgan had similarly interviewed Prof. John Mearsheimer, an eminent political scientist and close Sachs ally on those same issues, with similar results. Indeed, an overwhelming majority of the Youtube comments were critical of Morgan’s strictly establishmentarian position.
But even more importantly, I discovered that Sachs had also just published a new article surely as controversial as anything he had previously written.
In that piece, he outlined the overwhelming accumulated evidence that the Covid virus had been the product of American bioengineering technology and was developed by American government funding. Although he certainly recognized that China’s Wuhan lab might have been the immediate source, he emphasized that several American biolabs had also been undertaking very similar viral research at that time, and argued that a full investigation of all those possible sources of the virus was warranted. His provocative title—“What Might the US Owe the World for Covid-19?”—summarized his controversial conclusion that America would probably need to compensate the rest of the world for having unleashed such a devastating global plague that killed tens of millions and disrupted the lives of many billions more.
Considering both his international stature and the very broad range of his courageous public positions, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs may easily rank as the most consequential American ideological defector of the last one hundred years, with no comparable name coming to my mind.
I suspect that a sociological factor may have contributed to Sachs’ easy willingness to violate so many powerful ideological taboos. Most Americans, even including most American academics and intellectuals, exist in a world completely dominated by our own mainstream media, knowing that much of their social circle and peer-group would be horrified or outraged at any sentiments too far outside those acceptable boundaries. If most of your friends and associates are “normies,” you may be very reluctant to take positions that would alienate them.
Sachs, however, has been an influential academic on the world stage for more than three decades, and he seems to spend much of his time traveling to international conferences at which he is often a prominent speaker. So unlike so many of his American colleagues, he is a global figure and his peer group and social circle is an international one, with many of their views likely shaped by entirely different media environments.
Even the early votes in the UN General Assembly on the Israel-Gaza conflict found America and Israel standing almost alone, with more than 150 countries ranged on the other side, including many of our strongest allies. The U.S. has regularly cast the sole dissenting vote in the 15-member UN Security Council and Sachs has often mentioned that many of his top-ranking international friends have expressed their horror at our government’s current policies. So while his controversial views might be very disconcerting to some of the assistant professors and office interns at Columbia University, they are probably much more in line with those of the senior world figures whom he has known and considered his friends for the last twenty or thirty years, a situation that surely fortifies his personal confidence in taking those positions.
Over the last decade or two, I’ve noticed the increasing signs that our own country seems to be following the unfortunate trajectory of the late and unlamented USSR, its longtime Cold War rival, and perhaps may similarly be heading towards the dustbin of history. President Joseph Biden certainly recalls memories of decrepit figurehead leaders such as Leonid Brezhnev or Konstantin Chernenko, while Sachs may represent our own Andrei Sakharov, a figure at the very top of the Soviet academic hierarchy who publicly broke with the corrupt, despotic, and decaying regime that had once so greatly honored him.
The Soviet leadership eventually exiled that dissenting physicist to the city of Gorky, and over the last couple of years Sachs has been similarly exiled and blacklisted from the mainstream media, which in past generations might have ensured his complete disappearance. But just as the samizdat literature of the 1970s and 1980s successfully circumvented official Soviet censorship, the Internet today plays much the same role for Sachs and our other intellectual dissenters.
I have never met Sachs and nearly everything I know about him comes from his writings and his numerous interviews. As discussed in my recent article, my impression is that until quite recently he had never considered the possibility that the official story of the JFK assassination or any other major historical event might be false. But once he encountered direct evidence of massive deception with regard to the origins of Covid, the roots of the Ukraine war, and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, he naturally began to realize that those particular cases might not be so unusual.
In one of his interviews a year or two ago, he had emphasized the deep sense of betrayal he had felt when the trusted media outlets that had faithfully informed him for decades had recently become so dishonest and deceptive. But now that he has discovered that those same outlets had spent six decades concealing the truth of the JFK assassination from all their readers, he must surely recognize that they may always have been deceitful on many important matters but prior to the growth of the Internet, neither he nor most other Americans could have ever recognized that reality.
If my reconstruction is correct, Sachs may now be experiencing a considerable upheaval in his long-assumed framework of reality, the disorientation and vertigo that occurs after one has “taken the red pill” in that powerful metaphor drawn from the Matrix films. And if so, I can certainly empathize with his situation since I had undergone a very similar process myself over the last dozen years.
My American Pravda series now includes some ninety-odd articles totaling almost 700,000 words and may represent the largest such compendium of alternative historical analysis—so-called “conspiracy theories”—found anywhere on the Internet, or at least I’m not aware of anything comparable. But as I’ve sometimes explained, I lived most of my entire life paying absolutely no attention to those sorts of controversial ideas.
Throughout all of those decades, I’d never had any regard for a conspiratorial view of historical events, dismissing such speculative theories as nonsense, just as all of my trusted media outlets had always assured me. If I occasionally happened to see a few of those notions discussed somewhere, they usually seemed a mixture of possible sense and obvious nonsense, with the latter severely discrediting the former. It was only many years later that I began to wonder whether that very damaging juxtaposition may have been intentional, a deliberate attempt to “poison the well.”
My first turning point came with the growth of the Internet and the very widespread reports of Saddam’s non-existent WMDs used to justify our disastrous 2003 Iraq War. The former unavoidably brought to my attention a vast profusion of controversial ideas I’d never previously considered while the latter severely damaged the credibility of the mainstream media and its leading outlets, upon which I’d always relied. The almost uniform support our terribly wrong-headed Iraq policy received from the Economist, the New York Times, the New Republic, and almost every other outlet I read struck me as an almost personal betrayal, made much worse because I was also aware that highly-regarded figures who held contrary positions were being denied any public platform to present their views.
A prime example was my old friend Bill Odom, the three-star general who had run the NSA for President Ronald Reagan. Although he was widely regarded as one of the leading national security experts in DC, his sharply discordant views on the Iraq War were entirely unwelcome in any of the major publications that normally sought his opinion and he was reduced to publishing his dissenting columns on a small website.
His passing in 2008 led me to write an article on the media blackout he had suffered and my broader conclusions on the reliability of our mainstream sources. I eventually regarded that tribute as my first American Pravda piece, though I did not formally launch my series for almost another decade.
An even greater watershed came later that same year when I discovered the astonishing Vietnam War revelations of Sydney Schanberg, a Pulitzer Prize winner who had been one of America’s most celebrated journalists of that conflict and a former top-ranking editor at the New York Times.
Schanberg had produced a massively documented expose of a huge Vietnam War scandal involving Sen. John McCain. But although McCain was then running for the presidency on the strength of his heroic and unblemished war record, no mainstream media outlet was willing to publish Schanberg’s revelations, and when the article finally appeared on a small website, none of our media took any notice of it. If so explosive a story by such an esteemed journalist could be completely ignored by our entire media, my faith in its reliability totally collapsed.
At that time I was publisher of The American Conservative, so I eventually contacted Schanberg, satisfied myself about his material, and then published a cover-symposium on his findings, including my own short introduction and had the author provide an account of his years of fruitless effort. A number of prominent journalists privately expressed shock and astonishment at Schanberg’s material, but none of them dared to report it in their own outlets. I later regarded my introductory column as the second item in my American Pravda series.
Silent Treatment My Four-Decade Fight to Report the Truth
Sydney Schanberg • The American Conservative • May 25, 2010 • 1,300 Words
Many of my other articles sharply challenged prevailing media narratives, including a widely-discussed 2012 article descriptively entitled “China’s Rise, America’s Fall.” But although I’d already served as publisher of The American Conservative for a number of years, only in 2013 did I finally publish my first piece squarely within the conspiratorial camp. That article proved extremely popular and also received very favorable attention from a number of prestigous mainstream media outlets and columnists. However, the controversial issues it raised were considered quite touchy in certain other quarters and I was soon purged from TAC as a consequence.
Yet even at that relatively late date, I’d still never read a single book on the JFK assassination, about which I’d only gradually begun to become a little suspicious, while my doubts about the official 9/11 story were almost as vague and fragmentary.
A couple of years later, I published my own sequel to Schanberg’s important work on McCain, focusing on what it suggested about the American media, and this piece also attracted a considerable amount of favorable attention:
The following year, Schanberg’s passing led me to reflect on the implications of his groundbreaking work, and this prompted me to finally launch my American Pravda series.
Thus, in my own case more than a dozen years elapsed between my early suspicions that major elements of our official narrative were false and the beginning of my series documenting many of those discrepancies. I had required well over a decade to fully digest and absorb the shocking conclusion that so much of what I’d always accepted as real was actually contrived. My original 2013 American Pravda article included a passage that I’ve frequently quoted over the years:
The realization that the world is often quite different from what is presented in our leading newspapers and magazines is not an easy conclusion for most educated Americans to accept, or at least that was true in my own case. For decades, I have closely read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and one or two other major newspapers every morning, supplemented by a wide variety of weekly or monthly opinion magazines. Their biases in certain areas had always been apparent to me. But I felt confident that by comparing and contrasting the claims of these different publications and applying some common sense, I could obtain a reasonably accurate version of reality. I was mistaken.
Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of information available to us in that latter category. Even if the overwhelming majority of the unorthodox claims provided by such non-traditional web-based sources is incorrect, at least there now exists the possibility of extracting vital nuggets of truth from vast mountains of falsehood. Certainly the events of the past dozen years have forced me to completely recalibrate my own reality-detection apparatus.
Our American Pravda
Ron Unz • The American Conservative • April 29, 2013 • 4,500 Words
Although I had closely followed Sachs’ important 1990s work in restructuring international economies, by the end of that decade and certainly after his relocation to Columbia University I’d seen much less mention of him. This was especially true because his new area of concentration—sustainability and global poverty—was rather far removed from my own foreign policy focus on the many years of Middle East wars set in motion by the 9/11 Attacks. I might occasionally see one of his op-ed pieces but that was about the limit of his visibility. Therefore his sudden 2022 appearance as a leading public dissenter from the official Covid narrative came as a major surprise to me.
I doubt that he had ever expected that his personal involvement in that global public health crisis would eventually transform him into one of the West’s most important ideological defectors, and although I had discussed that story nearly two years ago, I think elements of it are worth recapitulating.
The global Covid outbreak beginning in early 2020 quickly infected many millions and greatly disrupted most of the world’s economies, thereby threatening to throw hundreds of millions more into terrible poverty. The Lancet, a leading medical journal, soon established a Covid Commission to investigate all aspects of the deadly worldwide pandemic, and given Prof. Sachs’ international standing and his long association with the United Nations, he was a natural choice to serve as its chairman.
As he has explained in his interviews, at first he fully accepted the supposed scientific consensus that the virus was entirely natural, just as a large group of leading virologists had declared in a top scientific journal. But as time went by, he became increasingly suspicious that the true origins of the disease were being concealed, even discovering that some of the scientists he had selected for his commission were attempting to hide those facts and deceive him.
From the earliest days of the Covid epidemic, an official narrative was promoted that the virus was natural and editors of the leading scientific journals closed their pages to any submissions that suggested otherwise. With no reputable academic papers challenging their perspective, the natural origins advocates were able to cite this silence as proof that their position represented the overwhelming scientific consensus, thereby intimidating most mainstream journalists into toeing that same line. A massive propaganda-bubble had been inflated and maintained by such administrative means.
However, as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof. Sachs had publication privileges in the prestigious PNAS journal, so in May he and a co-author published an important article documenting the highly suspicious characteristics of the Covid virus and calling for further investigation. This constituted a breakthrough, becoming the first and only paper published in a major journal that presented the very strong evidence of Covid bioengineering.
Given his role as chairman of the Covid Commission, Sachs’ paper should have been treated as a bombshell, reaching the headlines of all our leading newspapers. But instead, it was almost totally ignored, as was the author’s public statements on the subject.
Recognizing that his vital information was being blocked and boycotted by all the mainstream media outlets upon which he normally relied, he did a lengthy interview with a small progressive webzine, explaining that the U.S. government was preventing any real investigation into the Covid pandemic. When I brought his remarks to the attention of an eminent academic scholar with whom I’d been friendly for many years, he was stunned:
An amazing article.
Sachs is not only remarkably candid; he’s also remarkably knowledgeable about the issue.
Another prominent academic had a similar reaction:
That’s one hell of an interview, no doubt about it.
Soon afterward, Sachs spent an hour discussing the topic on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s popular podcast, explaining the enormous dishonesty he had encountered in his role as chairman and that he had eventually concluded that the true nature of the virus and its origins were the subject of a massive cover-up. Everyone who listened to that interview was very impressed, certainly including a leading science journalist heavily involved in the Covid origins debate:
This is an amazingly good interview on Sachs’s part – clear, forceful, humorous and all the more compelling because he started off on the other side of the issue. Interesting what a deep perspective he has now developed, tracing the train of events back to Fauci’s acquisition of the biodefense portfolio.
Perhaps some of Sachs’ academic peers and close colleagues had similar reactions, strengthening his determination to get his views into wider circulation.
A few months earlier, the Russia-Ukraine war had broken out, soon dominating the world’s headlines. Sachs had spent much of the previous three decades as a top-level economic advisor to both those countries, so surely there would have been few individuals with better personal insights into the conflict, but once again he soon discovered that the mainstream media was closed to his views. Therefore, during July and August he published a couple of opinion columns in alternative outlets condemning our reckless policies towards Russia and China, with the former having already provoked a bloody and dangerous war in Ukraine and the latter periodically threatening to do the same over Taiwan.
Then in late September, a series of massive underwater explosions severely damaged the $30 billion Russian-German Nord Stream pipelines. This constituted the greatest act of industrial terrorism in the history of the world, with potentially crippling long-term impact upon the energy supplies of Germany and other European countries. Although there was enormous circumstantial evidence implicating America in those attacks, and renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later revealed the exact details of the sabotage operation, the entire Western media and political establishment stubbornly pretended to see nothing, instead absurdly accusing Russia of having destroyed its own energy pipelines.
Sachs refused to support that cover-up and instead he soon played a crucial role in breaking the media blockade:
Then a few days later, Bloomberg TV invited Sachs to share his concerns over the Ukraine war. His hosts were flabbergasted when he flatly declared that America had probably destroyed the Russian pipelines, even mentioning that top journalists had privately told him the same thing, although none of those vital facts could ever appear in their own newspapers.
As a consequence of Sachs’ candor, the interview was cut short—with Sachs “yanked off air” in the words of the hostile New York Post—but the entire segment was watched at least a couple of hundred thousand times on Youtube and the short clip of Sachs’ Nord Stream remarks soon went super-viral on Twitter, viewed more than 4 million times in one Tweet and another million times across a couple of others.
Given such candid statements, the mainstream electronic media was now obviously closed to him, but as I discussed at the time, The Grayzone, a prominent alternative media outlet soon arranged to interview Sachs:
On Sunday morning, the media outlet released two outstanding segments with the Columbia professor, separately focused on the Ukraine war and the Covid origins controversy, and these have already accumulated more than 100,000 views after less than a day. The Grayzone possesses a great deal of influence and credibility in alternative media circles, and I would hope that these interviews lead to an avalanche of additional coverage for Sachs in other outlets, many of which seem to have previously shied away from the explosive charges he had been making.
The first Grayzone segment was descriptively entitled “End Ukraine Proxy War or Face Armageddon,” and some of Sachs’ crucial points may have surprised his listeners. As he emphasized, America is actually already at war with nuclear-armed Russia in Ukraine, given that we are providing all the funding, military equipment, and command and control facilities for the forces fighting and killing Russian troops on Russia’s own border, as well as supplying unknown numbers of direct combat participants. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation that would have been considered almost unimaginable during the days of our original Cold War, and our recent destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines was merely the latest manifestation of this undeclared but very real conflict.
Although American leaders may seek to hide their responsibility behind the supposedly independent decisions of the Ukrainian government, this is a transparent fig-leaf. Ukraine’s political leadership is merely our puppet regime, totally financed and controlled by our own government, and pretending otherwise is simply a propaganda-ruse aimed at deceiving our gullible public.
The second, slightly shorter Grayzone segment focused on the Covid origins issue, and provided Sachs the best opportunity he has yet had to present the important facts he uncovered while running the Covid commission. Just a couple of days earlier, he had also been interviewed on physicist Steve Hsu’s podcast discussing the same subject. I would highly recommend both these interviews to anyone interested in understanding the true origins of the viral epidemic that killed more than a million Americans and disrupted the lives of many billions around the world during the last couple of years.
Sachs’ interviews became the most popular ever broadcast on those two channels, and I think the hosts were deeply impressed that a mainstream academic of such high establishment rank was so extremely candid and forthright in his public statements. Numerous other alternative channels and podcasters soon began inviting the Columbia University professor to share his views, allowing him to reach many, many millions since that time, eventually becoming a regular weekly guest on Napolitano’s popular channel.
The gradual end of the Covid pandemic combined with the deadly conflicts taking place in Ukraine and Gaza have led Sachs to focus nearly all his attention on those latter events during most of the last two years. But a couple of weeks ago he published a new article that deserves widespread attention for the important points that he summarized:
As he explains, continuing investigation by diligent researchers have revealed a long series of important new clues regarding the origin of the virus.
For example, we now know that the primary source of American government funding for Covid-related research came from the biowarfare/biodefense projects of our Defense Department, which also supported the simultaneous development of vaccines meant to provide projection against those same potentially offensive bioweapons.
A portion of that Defense funding was directed to the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), an NIH-backed research group that passed along some of that in the form of small grants to China’s Wuhan lab and many other biological facilities around the world. But according to former EHA officers, those grant-making activities mainly served as intelligence-gathering operations, intended to gain access to those biolabs in other countries and then monitor the development work taking place.
As I’ve emphasized, following the 2011 “Pivot to Asia” of the Obama Administration, our Defense Department began focusing on China as our most formidable long-term potential adversary and by 2015 most officials in DC had begun to assume that a future war with that country was quite likely. In such a conflict, one of our most important military advantages would be our great superiority in biowarfare technology.
Under that strategic framework does it really seem likely that in 2017 our Defense Department would have begun funding and encouraging Chinese efforts to adopt our own cutting-edge biotechnology, allowing them to develop powerful bioweapons of their own? Or does it seem more plausible that the small FHA grants provided to the Wuhan lab were instead elements of the intelligence-gathering operation that former FHA employees have claimed?
For the last several years, large portions of both the alternative and mainstream media have regularly claimed that the Covid virus was probably developed at the Wuhan lab and then accidentally leaked out, starting the worldwide pandemic. But since 2020 I’ve repeatedly argued in a long series of articles that there is absolutely no evidence that any such lab-leak had occurred in Wuhan and a great deal of evidence to the contrary.
Some of the other crucial clues regarding the deadly Covid epidemic have been almost entirely ignored by both the mainstream and alternative media but can be easily summarized in just a few paragraphs, as I have done on a number of occasions since April 2020:
For example, in 2017 Trump brought in Robert Kadlec, who since the 1990s had been one of America’s leading biowarfare advocates. The following year in 2018 a mysterious viral epidemic hit China’s poultry industry and in 2019, another mysterious viral epidemic devastated China’s pork industry…
From the earliest days of the administration, leading Trump officials had regarded China as America’s most formidable geopolitical adversary, and orchestrated a policy of confrontation. Then from January to August 2019, Kadlec’s department ran the “Crimson Contagion” simulation exercise, involving the hypothetical outbreak of a dangerous respiratory viral disease in China, which eventually spreads into the United States, with the participants focusing on the necessary measures to control it in this country. As one of America’s foremost biowarfare experts, Kadlec had emphasized the unique effectiveness of bioweapons as far back as the late 1990s and we must commend him for his considerable prescience in having organized a major viral epidemic exercise in 2019 that was so remarkably similar to what actually began in the real world just a few months later.
With leading Trump officials greatly enamored of biowarfare, fiercely hostile to China, and running large-scale 2019 simulations on the consequences of a mysterious viral outbreak in that country, it seems entirely unreasonable to completely disregard the possibility that such extremely reckless plans may have been privately discussed and eventually implemented, though probably without presidential authorization.
But with the horrific consequences of our own later governmental inaction being obvious, elements within our intelligence agencies have sought to demonstrate that they were not the ones asleep at the switch. Earlier this month, an ABC News story cited four separate government sources to reveal that as far back as late November, a special medical intelligence unit within our Defense Intelligence Agency had produced a report warning that an out-of-control disease epidemic was occurring in the Wuhan area of China, and widely distributed that document throughout the top ranks of our government, warning that steps should be taken to protect US forces based in Asia. After the story aired, a Pentagon spokesman officially denied the existence of that November report, while various other top level government and intelligence officials refused to comment. But a few days later, Israeli television mentioned that in November American intelligence had indeed shared such a report on the Wuhan disease outbreak with its NATO and Israeli allies, thus seeming to independently confirm the complete accuracy of the original ABC News story and its several government sources.
It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were aware of the deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any officials in the Chinese government itself. Unless our intelligence agencies have pioneered the technology of precognition, I think this may have happened for the same reason that arsonists have the earliest knowledge of future fires.
According to these multiply-sourced mainstream media accounts, by “the second week of November” our Defense Intelligence Agency was already preparing a secret report warning of a “cataclysmic” disease outbreak taking place in Wuhan. Yet at that point, probably no more than a couple of dozen individuals had been infected in that city of 11 million, with few of those yet having any serious symptoms. The implications are rather obvious. Furthermore:
Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran’s top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?
The Iranians themselves were well aware of these facts, and their top political and military leaders publicly accused America of an illegal biowarfare attack against their own country and China, with their former president even filing an official protest with the United Nations. But although these explosive charges were widely reported in the Iranian press, they were completely ignored by the American media so that almost no Americans ever became aware of them.
Much of this same information is also effectively presented in several of my podcast interviews from a couple of years ago, originally on Rumble but now available on Youtube as well.
Kevin Barrett, FFWN • February 16, 2022 • 15m • on Rumble
Geopolitics & Empire • February 1, 2022 • 75m • on Rumble
Removing accountability from us means OTHER PEOPLE PAY for our mistakes.
What was the best relationship advice you ever got?
My father told me this when he walked up on me hiding behind his house while I was bawling over my fiancée, who I just found out was cheating on me.
“I know right now you’re feeling desperate, angry, hurt and alone. And the first thing you want to do is get revenge, sleep with other people and hurt someone too. That’s normal. But you shouldn’t do that. Don’t be like her. Don’t go down that path. You should always fall back on your best character. Be the bigger person now, and you’ve already won. Feel the pain for now. In a month you’ll see what I mean. And so will she. So take your time. Be a good man. You’ll find someone who actually cares about you. Maybe you’ll be alone, and that’s okay too. But you still have your life and your character and you can’t throw that away because of someone else who doesn’t have any.”
I’ve thought about that every single day for a year now, and it has propelled me to such strength, confidence, love and happiness.
EDIT: Wow, I figured this would just be another unnoticed answer swept into the pile, I did not expect such a positive reaction. My father is truly a thoughtful and wise man, like his father before him, he has guided me through a lot of tough life situations, and I’m glad his words resonate with so many people. Thank you for all your kind thoughts, and good luck to everyone.
Amazing
Is China ultimately a bigger pariah state than either Russia and North Korea? It’s like the world hates China far more than it hates Russia or North Korea.
It is the UNITED STATES that the whole world hates
Including Europe, UK and even Japan
There is a Visceral loathing of Americans that is deep seated and deeply buried in most people who HATE the Americans
The British hate the Americans for being utterly dependent on them
The Japanese hate the Americans for being so helpless that they are slaves and lackeys of the Americans
The Middle East hate the Americans for their interference in all matters
Everyone hates the AMERICANS for their bullying and sanctions and in general for forcing people to their way of life
One Day the Lion will become too weak and lie flat
That will be the end of it all
Everyone will rip the nation to pieces including the Japanese
You think a Nation of ancient Zen would forget 1945??? Not a chance.
What are some examples of Lee Kuan Yew standing up to bigger powers like the United States or China?
I got a good one.
In 1960, a CIA officer was caught trying to buy information from a Singaporean intelligence officer.
Then the CIA made things worse by trying to bribe Lee with 3.3 million dollars to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. Remember, this was in 1960. That was a lot of money back then.
Lee refused and instead asked for 33.3 million dollars of official economic aid to Singapore. This was when the total official American economic aid to Malaysia (which Singapore was a part of at that time) was merely 1.5 million. And Lee also got a letter of apology from US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk.
So, in 1965, Lee revealed this episode in an interview with foreign media, which prompted denial from the US government. This angered Lee so much that he invited foreign correspondents to a meeting where he showed the apology letter from Rusk. The US government had to retract their denial.
In that meeting with foreign correspondents Lee also threatened to further disclose details of the case, “which may sound like James Bond and Goldfinger, only not as good but putrid and grotesque enough”.
Furthermore, Lee also made the following statement:
“The Americans should know the character of the men they are dealing with in Singapore and not get themselves further dragged into calumny…..They are not dealing with Ngo Dinh Diem or Syngman Rhee. You do not buy and sell this Government.”
“Countdown To Looking Glass” (1984) Cold-War USSR Nuclear Attack Film
Forty years later and we are in the same looped nightmare.
This movie could be taken RIGHT NOW. It is frightening.
When I lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, I experienced the most amazing changes in Weather patterns ever.
Apparently, throughout the Great Lakes, large snowfall, icy winds, and gale force winds were the norm, but when I moved to Erie, what amazed me was how mercurial the weather was. It was constantly changing.
One morning it was sunny and warm. Come Lunch Time, it was windy with gusts, and come dinner time, lordly! It was snowing. What a surprise.
Erie was a really nice place to live, and I did like the small town feel, and all the rest. It was very nice in the Spring, Summer and Fall. The lake was nice and it was simply a great place to live.
Do not overlook the small communities. They have things to offer that larger cities don’t have.
Today…
Imagine this:
An indoctrinated westerner being told your whole life that your technology was superior, only for China to come around and out compete you without even needing plunder. Once you understand how devastating this is psychologically for them you will understand why China fuels such hatred amongst them, that we are viewed as insects nothing BENEATH them! And yet here we are with BYD booting Tesla off the top spot and 8 more ROROs being bought to export EVs to Europe.
In fact it’s even more devastating than that. Many people are stuck under the misery of western regimes have always used the excuse that “others are worse, so I can’t be that sad about my condition”.
But living standards in many western countries is in severe and accelerating decline and is much worse than living in China (e.g. see how scientists flee to China, the top destination worldwide, seeking better lives), and that brutal realization causes sheer panic on westerners.
Blunder
What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?
Whilst this has not happened to me, I was a boss, I would go on site with new clients, rarely would I tell them I am the boss, I was one of the engineers. Always interested to see how clients treated the people that I worked with.
Several occasions where I have been spoken to in a manner that I don’t feel was appropriate, one such incident the boss of the company was throwing his weight around, started getting heavy handed with me, I was not playing ball, said I was going to walk off site. His reply was ‘I am going to get you fired!’, ok I replied, he said I am going to get your boss on the phone and get this done now, ok I replied. He proceeded to phone the MD, I had the same shareholding as the MD, I created the business and the MD was brought in later. I stood there whilst this bully proceeded to exaggerate what had happened, then the line of ‘you need to get rid of him’ at which point, I saw his face drop and then over the next couple of minutes sink even further.
He got off the phone, said to me ‘You knew that was going to happen didn’t you’ yes I replied, you now know I am the boss, key thing here is you should not treat me any differently to any of my staff. He did not remain a client for long after that.
There is no need to treat people like shit.
Wow Wow
What are some dark truths of life as a government employee?
I’ve to go anonymous for obvious reasons. This is something I’ve buried deep in my heart as I couldn’t really tell anyone.
Story is from 1996, my father was back then in District level court and was on one of the relatively high positions, he had always lived by the principle of not taking anyone’s money (bribe) for doing the job and he was incharge of his table/office, this setup is consisting of 4–7 people usually and they handle different departments like Civil, Criminal and what not per table/office. Since he was incharge of that table and he did not take any money, all the others were not getting opportunity to take that extra benefit home either. Which used to be pretty big considering meager government salaries back then.
So due to my fathers honest nature, nobody was getting “malai” and this annoyed them greatly, they used to find ways to bother him so he will apply for transfer to different table or district all together, usually they are transferred after 5 years each, but you can apply for one in advance in case of problems. But no matter what they did, he never gave up, and maintained his stance to follow rules. One dark day of my life, woman from their group falsely accused him of “sexual harassment”, so he will at least get suspended and then fired. Which did work, internal complaint was lodged and if found the accusations true he would’ve been fired. He had been suspended till the proceeding were over, to make appeal he stayed in court only, as usually you have to give reply in written for any form of notice. Unfortunately for our family of three, one of the policeman (Havaldar) who heard this incident was my mothers relative (as incident was big), he came to our house and told only side of the story that he knew about, which was “my father being suspended for harassing a woman at workplace”.
My mother took this to very extreme levels, cried all day, but she did not mention a word when my father came home. As if she was waiting for him to tell her all that, which unfortunately he didn’t as he was never the type of man to bring his office problem to home. This angered her further, and you know what she did? When me and my dad was watching TV (those days some Krishana Malika was very popular and it was being played on our black and white TV), she locked herself in our kitchen and burned herself to death. Those days we didn’t have Gas, we used to use one of those “rokel stoves” and we had 5 liter can full of kerosene in our house, she used that to kill herself.
Just because of some incident in my father’s office which was actually result of him being honest and doing his job? I was only 7 years and you know what happened next? My mother’s family accused him of killing my mother, which by the way was false as he was with me the entire time. I can’t explain the details very clearly here, but this got him suspended for 2 years till case was to be given verdict on. And you know what? at age of 9 I was in court giving testimonies whether my father had killed my mother or not. As prime witness my testimony was taken right after the incident too, my mothers another relative lived close by and after the incident police took my father and they took me with them for couple of days till matters calmed down. They tried to “coach” me to give false testimony even after me giving them honest account of the incident. Thankfully police had immediately written down everything I had said right after the incident and they used that as prime evidence to prove my father innocent 2 years later.
Thankfully, my father was cleared of both the incident as there were people contradicting ladys accusations of sexual harassment and my immediate testimony as prime witness was accepted. Finally he was free, he had virtually no savings, no money to do anything during that period. Everyone looked at him as wife killer. Even our relatives would distance themselves from us.
I came to know of backstory many years later from one of his coworkers who used to come home after his retirement and we used to discuss many things. He thought this was something I needed to know. I’m glad he did.
Till my fathers retirement after the case, he still kept his head down and worked honestly. He was retired at even higher position due to couple of promotions but till 6th pay commission we didn’t even have our own home. We just weren’t able to buy it as we never had any saving in meager government salary. He also never married again, raised me all alone and even now, in such a old age does social service.
I was probably not able to explain lot of things as things are too old, but hell, that incident changed my life. COMPLETELY!
Whenever people talk about how there are no honest government workers, I can’t help but smile to myself bitterly. Afterall, that honesty has cost me quite heavily, which people think does not exist.
Sorry for any spelling and grammatical mistakes, I’m fully grown man and I’m crying atm, probably won’t even have heart to read it again to check and correct. Sorry.
Thank you for listening. I feel like huge burden was lifted off my heart.
A good man
What is the most ridiculous thing you have seen on a bus, or something that the bus driver has done?
Three obnoxious teenage males were standing at the back of a nearly-empty bus one evening in a major U.S. city. They were yelling and cursing, mocking the bus driver, who’d been instructing them to take their seats because the bus was moving. The teens clearly thought themselves far too cool to follow a transit driver’s orders to sit.
One other passenger and I sat up front on this otherwise-empty bus as the huge vehicle approached a series of underpasses — the next stop was many blocks ahead. “Hold on, you guys,” said the driver quietly, addressing me and the other behaving passenger. The driver gradually increased the bus’ speed to nearly 50 m.p.h., deftly navigating a curved underpass before straightening the bus out and locking the brakes up.
As the bus skidded to a very short stop, a twisted heap of panicked teenagers slid from the back of the bus all the way to the front, where they slammed into the steel farebox.
“Man, I barely missed that cat!” exclaimed the driver. “You guys gonna sit now?”
A yes or two was muttered as the teens untangled themselves and stood, trying unsuccessfully to wipe filthy black streaks of urban-bus-floor-grime from their previously spotless clothes. Wherever they’d been headed, they were now going to arrive looking decidedly less cool than if they’d just taken their seats.
Morons.
Is it possible for the US or other nations to prevent a potential invasion of Taiwan by China?
Absolutely, and positively No. ZERO. No way. Never gonna happen.
…
Taiwan is a province of China, and it is so close to the mainland that the PLA can swim to it.
China has already shown that it can isolate, blockade and totally rubbish the island and there isn’t a God-damn thing that anyone can do about it.
Sanctions?
Ha ha ha ha ha
Tell me about it. Ain’t no one gonna follow sanctions on China except the most butt-hole sucking LGBQ+ moronic clown-show transvestites.
Threat of war?
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Have you forgotten what getting a good butt-reaming was like? Hey! Wanna have some fun. Go watch the interview of American veterans of the “Korean War” and what THEY have to say. Instead of listening to John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.
Trade embargo?
Oh my goodness, this is a belly laugh for certain. Ha ha ha ha
When Namibia, Africa is running 7G and 8G, the USA will be struggling with land-lines and cell-phone towers that struggle with obsolete 3G networks on dying batteries.
…
To take on China is to place a loaded .45 ACP to your temple and pull the trigger. It’s “death by cop”, and you know what, if you are so God-damn stupid to pull that one, you will deserve the nuclear radiation that comes with it.
Idiots. Suckers.
…
Update
I’m sorry. I must apologize. I sometimes really minimize really serious issues and distill it into something more palatable to the average person. Like this post. The reality is that it is gonna be much, much, MUCH worse.
The fact is, that any war between China and the “rules based insanity” that is the West today is gonna be a God-Damn cluster Fuck. That is a truth, and you all had best get your arms around this truth.
Trump can be President. Oprah Winfrey could be president. Joe Biden could be President. It won’t make any difference. The USA is run by the ignorant, and they are on a death-march to the meat-grinder, and you are duck taped to them.
Enjoy the ride.
Until it is over.
Sad truth
What’s something your husband did to you that you will never forget?
My husband told me I should go to technical college and get a degree in graphic arts. He said if anything happened to him I didn’t really have a profession to fall back on. I had worked for several companies doing different types of art, ads etc. I loved art, any and all kinds. I was 40 at the time.i told him I was too old. He said in two years you will be 42 wheather you go to school or not. Huge decision as a mother of five. When I got there several others were my same age much to my surprise. Our “elder” group rocked our work and we all got pretty good jobs after graduation. Seems we were there because we wanted the education. Most of the young kids just out of high school were there to meet other kids and party. Thank you dear John. One of the best decisions I ever made.
What is your opinion on the best approach for the US to handle conflicts with China?
China is on the other end of the globe.
There are NO INTERESTS on that side of the world that matter to the American citizenry.
…
Any conflicts there are handled locally, by the local inhabitants, and the United States is like that nebby neighbor down the street who is really bent out of shape by the color of your socks.
…
The best thing for the United States to do is to mind it’s own business.
Take care of the needs of it’s citizenry.
Inflation.
Jobs
Work / industry.
Social changes.
Homelessness.
Addictions
And much, much more…
…
Do you understand?
What should I do if my boss says, “If you don’t like the job, you can go”?
I’ve done that twice.
First time was at a small chemical sales company that hooked up with a Russian shortly after the breakup of the USSR. The Russian sources were willing to do things no one else was willing to do (chemicals and pure elements that were dangerous to make).
Commissions were horrible and the new partner said if you don’t like it, leave. So I had a friend working in telecom sales for big blue that referred me in.
I came to him and said, you know how you said if we weren’t happy to leave? Well here’s my 2 week notice.
Similarly, years later I’m working in the copier industry and coming off a stretch of making Presidents Club a few years in a row. They had just changed my territory, cutting my base of machines by 2/3rds and moving me to a branch in the city meaning more expensive to go to work.
My new manager was struggling making quota for the team and called a meeting and told us all as a group that we had to make quota or we can leave if we don’t like it.
I immediately got a job at another company, as did half of the rest of the team. The only people left were newbies.
Bottom line, don’t threaten sales people. We can always get a job
Good rules
China Warns Citizens Inside USA: Prepare for “Various unexpected situations”
A strange warning has been issued by China to any of its citizens located in the United States: “take safety precautions and be prepared for ‘various unexpected situations.’
According to the China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, several Chinese students and company employees have recently been subjected to “unwarranted interrogations and harassment” by US airport law enforcement officers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its WeChat account on Friday.
Their phones, computers and other luggage items were searched piece by piece, and several people were banned from entering the country, it said.
To most casual observers, this “warning” from China makes no sense. At worst, perhaps twenty people from China have had unusual incidents trying to enter the United States; hardly a reason for such a large warning. Unless . . .
So-called “Conspiracy theorists” are wondering if this “warning” is actually a “signal” to Chinese forces already inside the US; sort of a notice to “prepare for action?”
After all, such folks say, how can anyone, anywhere, “prepare for various UNEXPECTED situations?” They point out that no one can do that, and thus the tin-foil-hat folks — who often are proven to be correct — wonder if this is more of a signal, than a warning?
Timeline alert
How did Intel create the 4004 without another microprocessor?
They did it by hand. When I was an undergraduate student in my Junior year, I took a course called “Advanced Digital Circuits.” The professor never gave a lecture. On the first day, he allowed us to choose teams as one would in a grade-school PE class. He gave the two teams three projects to complete, deadlines, a list of textbooks and other resources, and his home phone number.
For the third project, we designed and built (by hand) a CPU, using only Small Scale Integrated Circuits (7400 series). We were allowed to use Medium Scale Integrated circuits for main memory and I/O devices. The next step in the CPU design would have been to replace the gates with the equivalent transistors and lay out the masks to make the chips. My group’s design was a bit more complex than a 4004, but not as complex as a 6502. We estimated around 3500 transistors. We built it in about seven weeks, while taking other courses and working to pay tuition.
The team got together for a four hour session on a Saturday to design the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), and then took a week to each code up the solutions to different problems. We got together again a week later to check all of the solutions. We decided to add one instruction to the ISA.
The next Saturday, in a six hour session, in a room with chalk boards covering every wall, David Baten and I derived and minimized all of the Boolean equations for the entire CPU. Will, Paul, and Tim kept notes and kept us from making mistakes. Everyone went home and spent a week drawing up schematics.
We got together again the next Saturday, and reviewed each other’s schematics. We took the best ideas and drew up the final set of schematics. We made copies on Monday (the schematics were on ANSI E paper and there was only one copier in Lubbock, Texas that could make copies that size). Everyone went home and spent the rest of the week reviewing the schematics.
The next Saturday, we met to update the schematics. There were three errors, and a few places where we had to debate about whether it was correct or whether there was a better way to do it. We broke the design into 5 components and each person went home to build their component.
A week later, we met again to integrate the components. We spent 10 hours on that Saturday trying to make it work. We had a couple of instructions that were not working correctly. We broke it back down into the five major components and everyone spent the next week testing their components. One teammate, Will, found a wiring error in his component.
The next Saturday, we met at 8:00 AM. We got it working at around 2:00 AM on Sunday morning and rang the professor. He got out of bed and came to see our demo at 4:00 AM. We showed him our cross-assembler (written by yours truly), our serial downlink to transfer the code into our target system (primitive JTAG done by David), and demonstrated it running three programs. He asked us to write a new program for it. He had the specifications all typed out. It took about two hours to code it in our assembly and get it to run.
We called it the “Pizza 1000” because it was about 1000 square inches of protoboards housed in pizza boxes that the owner of “One Guy from Italy” (best pizza and calzones in Lubbock, TX) gave me when I told him about the project. It was the best learning experience that I had as an undergraduate. Our computer ran for about 8 hours, and then something failed.
Now I teach a similar course called “CPU Design.” my students build a much more complex CPU using an HDL and implement it on an FPGA. To get into the course, they already have a course in basic digital logic, and another course in HDL and FPGA. I give them a few lectures to get them started, and they don’t have to create the ISA or cross-tools (I provide those). Most of my students love it and mention it in their exit interviews as one of their most challenging and rewarding courses.
They still have to understand gates, muxes, registers, etc. so that they can read the schematics generated by VHDL or Verilog, and debug their designs. Here is a simplified, non-pipelined, RISC-V core (no interrupts or exceptions). Instruction decoder on left, register file in the middle, and ALU on the right. It was generated from VHDL code.
I teach them to build and test each module separately, then connect them together at the end. Very much the same way that my team worked, but this design was built and tested by a single student. The HDL and FPGAs are force multipliers, not substitutes for knowledge. The students still have to understand what they want to build, and they have to specify it precisely in a language designed for that purpose. They still have to read the schematics that they create. The software makes sure that there are no wiring errors, and the FPGA replaces 1000’s of square inches of protoboard with reconfigurable hardware in less than a square inch. This design could be mapped to transistors and put on silicon, but that is another course.
What can we say about hypothetical planets of Alpha Centauri Star?
The Centauri triple star system, is our nearest stellar neighbors at a distance of 4.25 light years from our solar system. Two of these stars are very similar in mass to the sun, and orbit each other around a common center of mass. The third star, (know as Proxima Centauri) is a red dwarf star that orbits it’s two sibling stars at a much greater distance. Only Proxima Centauri has a confirmed exoplanet known as “Proxima B”. This exoplanet is slightly larger than the earth, and sits comfortably in the Goldilocks zone of Proxima Centauri. However, the prospect of life on Proxima B must be viewed with extreme skeptisism. The reasons why are as follows:
1.) Proxima Centauri is an “M” class red dwarf star, and is the smallest stellar classification, approximately 80 times less massive than the sun.
2.) The Goldilocks zone of an “M” class red dwarf is very close to the Star. This means that in order for Proxima B to be warm enough to allow for liquid water to pool on its surface, it must be tidally locked in its orbit.
3.) No red dwarf star in the history of the universe has ever left the main sequence. This is due to the fact that red dwarf stars will stay on the main sequence for trillions of years.
4.) No Red Dwarf in the history of the universe has ever evolved out of its “T” tauri stage of its main sequence either. Every star that initiates the main sequence of it’s evolution starts out in the “T” tauri stage. Depending on its initial mass, all stars begin the main sequence by spinning much more rapidly, and as they age slowly begin to spin slower. When a star spins much faster, it’s magnetic field lines will twist violently, and cause tremendous solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Any planet that is in the Goldilocks zone of an “M” class Red Dwarf will eventually have any atmosphere it possesses will be stripped away.
What should I know when I visit America?
No one really wants to know about your health. “How are you?” is a greeting. Respond “I’m fine, how about you”.
No one really wants you to drop by unannounced. “You should come over some time” is just a polite way of saying they want to remain on friendly terms.
Americans really are that friendly. When they smile, they mean it. They aren’t just being polite. It’s not some sort of act.
It’s a really bad idea to talk about politics, religion or guns (which is increasingly becoming the same topic). Ask about football. Americans love to talk about football.
They probably don’t know a lot about where you’re from and may make some stupid statements about it. Resist the urge to correct them. If they actually do know about your country ask them more about theirs. Americans love to talk about America and, in fact, their country is pretty awesome.
One way to show that you’re not as smart as an American is to make some comment about how you want to see the country on your one week trip. Americans know exactly how long it takes to get anyplace in their country. Ask instead what’s great to see in the region. They can then point you to a place that’s no more than a day away that you may have missed.
Americans will usually address you by your first name. That’s normal, and they often don’t mind being addressed by their first name unless they’re a policeman or a judge. They think they’re being friendly by doing so.
In most of the United States, public transit is a joke. Many places can only be effectively reached by private car. Car dependent cities like Detroit and Dallas still have cabs, but it can be nearly impossible to get one. If some how you arrive in some such city without a ride, it may be a while before you get one. For example, Detroit has a lot of car rental agencies, but almost all of them except the majors deal solely with insurance companies to provide replacement vehicles for people who have lost theirs in a crash. Some cities have really good public transit (NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago) but assume none of the other do.
Currency exchange is a real hassle, and as been pointed out there are some places that don’t even take credit cards (particularly foreign ones). It’s not going to be a problem at a hotel, but it might be at a fast food place.
Food portions are massive. And delicious. And usually not very expensive. However, American often put “quantity” over “quality” when making recommendations.
American customs and immigration agents are not really representative of the people in their country. They are rude, suspicious, humourless and often seem in a constant state of anger. Be unfailingly polite and listen to their questions.
Generative AI in a Nutshell – how to survive and thrive in the age of AI
This is HOW AI works.
Worth your time to review.
What is the saddest thing you have ever had to terminate an employee for?
My first full time job.. I was a clerk and got friendly with our receptionist. She didn’t have a car so she’d take the train to our town and either take a taxi or walk several miles to our office. I would start my day at the post office picking up the company mail. On my way in I saw her walking one day so I picked her up. Upon discovering this, I drove past the train station anyway, I told her to just wait for me every day and I’d take her there. At days end she’d come to the mailroom and I’d drive her back.
I noticed she called in sick on Fridays. One day the boss told me they fired her for attendance and asked me to drive her to the station. Once in the car she told me the reason was that she had kidney disease and was getting dialysis on Fridays. She was afraid to tell management and just let her them fire her.
I turned the car around and went back to the office. I left her in the car and went right to the boss’s office. I explained the situation and he was upset. I then brought her back in and he hired her back, with the understanding she could only work four days. Every Friday other secretaries would fill in the reception spot, rotating each week and nobody complained.
The poor girl thought the company would fire her if they knew she was I’ll. Instead we all rallied around her to help! She was still there when I left the company for a better job.
Have you ever witnessed a life ruined from a small mistake?
Yes, my neighbor’s adult son.
Let’s call him, Jack.
Jack led the ultimate life. He was attractive, smart, charismatic. Everyone loved him. He went to the best university; majored in pharmacy. Got his pharmacist license and started a great pharmacy practice.
Went out one night and got drunk.
Hit a construction worker who was at work early. Left the scene of the accident. Several days later turned himself in after contacting his parents and a lawyer and getting sober.
Got convicted and spent 9 years in prison as a 28 year old.
Fifteen years later he is still not out of debt to the family or the lawyer. Has a job, but not a career. Can’t work in pharmacy as he can’t be licensed.
One drunk night was all it took to ruin his life. He will never get rid of the stain on his life.
Forgot to add that his car insurance didn’t cover the damage to his Beemer and the lawsuit filed by the construction company he drove into so he now has a $70,000 lien against him for the damages. Doubt he’ll ever be able to pay it.
Will the US tech sanctions on China backfire itself, when the US policy has morphed into an all-encompassing effort to contain China’s development of everything from sophisticated chips to artificial intelligence and supercomputing?
Of course, US effort to contain China’s development will backfire USA.
Let us take 5G as an example.
In 2017, Huawei got 5G before USA. Then USA+allies hysterically banned Huawei. But it does not stop Huawei at all. In early 2024, Huawei announced it got 5.5G.
Then USA unites 10 countries to skip 5G & develop 6G. That is, USA+ tries to set the standard of 6G, They may marginally improve 5G a bit & call it 6G.
However, with Huawei announcement of 5.5G, USA+ must develop something faster than 5.5G before they can call it 6G.
Let say USA+ does get 6G. But if Huawei’s new G is faster than western 6G, then Huawei will skip 6 & jump to 6.5 or 7G. That is, USA+ will be forever behind Huawei. The more USA+ try, the bigger the gap will be between Huawei & the west.
Had USA+ cooperated with Huawei 5G at the beginning, they may get a chance to surpass Huawei when they work/improve on Huawei’s 5G.
Slowly, the world will be split into 2: China standard & western standard. The 2 standards are not the same.
While USA+ banned 5G, Global South are happy to use 5G. In remote China areas, Chinese already use 5G while remote US towns are still using 2 or 3G.
Many countries in Latin America, Mideast, Africa & more are using 5G too. This means technologically, USA+ are behind the world & have become the 3rd world now.
Train
How do felons get jobs if no one hires felons?
An old high school friend of mine spent 9 years and 9 months in prison.
He got out in 2018 as a convicted felon.
What’s worse, he was convicted of a violent crime.
After he got out, the world had changed and he was ostracized by society but I commend him for what he did.
The rate at which convicted felons return to prison in the United States is higher than any other country.
That’s because the system makes it hard for them to get a break so they turn back to the only life that they’ve known.
A few days after my friend got out, he and I sat down and had a long chat about what he wanted to do.
He had a plan that wasn’t fully fleshed out but I helped him fill in a few details.
We agreed that a “traditional job” was probably out of the question because of his record. So, instead, he decided to go through training as a plumber.
You may be surprised to learn that plumbers make roughly $25/hour. At least in the southeast.
After he finished his training, he applied to at least 10 positions before getting hired. Finally, he caught a break and was hired by a small firm. He put his heart and soul into that job and was recognized as one of the best employees after six months.
Then, his parole officer violated him because he was 10 minutes late for the nightly check in call. He had a curfew of 7 PM every day and was running late because of work.
He was arrested and sent to jail for 30 days.
That’s how the system is in America.
He lost his job.
After that, he started applying for more positions.
There was one that denied him because of his background. In the email they sent, there was an attachment with a form that asked him why he felt they should hire him anyway.
He ignored it because it didn’t seem like it would make a difference.
For some reason, I called him that week and asked him about the job hunt.
He mentioned the form and I encouraged him to fill it out.
He did, sent it, and forgot about it.
He got a call back later. The company said they wanted to hire him. He was flown out to Florida for 2 weeks of intensive training and came back with a 2019 Ford F-250 and all the equipment he needed to do his job well.
He’s been crushing it ever since.
It’s true that most employers don’t hire convicted felons.
That’s because many of them deserve their reputations of being untrustworthy and unreliable. For every employer that has had a good experience hiring a felon, there are twice as many who’ve had a bad experience.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities out there. It just means if you’re a felon, you have to work twice as hard for half as much.
It’s just like being a marginalized minority in America so nothing new there.
Who is an actor that had a rough start in their career but eventually became extremely successful and had one of the biggest careers in Hollywood history?
Harrison Ford has to be one of the best examples, if not THE best example of all time.
As a young man, Ford was put on contract with Columbia Studios, but then pissed off one of the executives who critiqued the young actor by saying, “When Tony Curtis played a bellboy early in his career, you could see he was a star.”
Harrison Ford said sarcastically, “Really? I thought he was supposed to be acting like a bellboy.”
Well, that was end of his career at Columbia, but he went on to do bit parts in several movies for Universal. However, years went by and he found he wasn’t getting anything more than a line here and a line there, and it didn’t look like he was going to ever make much of a living as an actor.
That was when he decided to take up carpentry. He was good at it, and made a living at it, because, he said, “I’d rather tell people I was a working carpenter than another unemployed actor.”
But one day he ended up making the acquaintance of young filmmaker George Lucas, who liked Harrison Ford and gave him a modest supporting role in “American Graffiti.” Originally, Lucas didn’t see Ford as right for his new space opera, Star Wars, but Lucas gave Ford some work by hiring him to read opposite actors auditioning for Luke and Leia.
And then something interesting happened. Lucas decided that Ford’s reading of Han Solo was actually better than the actors being considered for the role. His reading was that good. So his “offscreen” reading of Han Solo was better than the actors who were officially being considered for the part.
The rest is history.
It ain’t so; it is everybody
Alpha Centari stuff
Alpha Centauri A is about 20% more massive than B, and so A is called the primary. B’s orbit, relative to A, is shown below. The real trajectory is the fatter ellipse, and it’s shown as though we were above the orbit looking down. The orbital plane is highly tilted to our line of sight from Earth, and so B appears to follow the skinnier ellipse (the apparent trajectory).
B’s orbit is fairly elliptical. Its distance from A varies from 11.2 AU at closest approach (aka periastron or periapsis) to 36.5 AU at its farthest (apoastron or apoapsis). At its closest, it’s about as far away as Saturn is from our Sun (9.5 AU), and at the furthest point, it’s comparable to Pluto (39 AU). BTW, the Astronomical Unit, AU, is the distance from the Sun to the Earth.
If there were an Earth-like planet around A, its orbit would be somewhat further out than Earth’s because A is about 50% brighter than our Sun. But let’s ignore that and make this a bit easier.
B is about half as bright as the Sun, so roughly speaking, at its brightest B would look about half as bright as the Sun does from Saturn. According to the first link, your surroundings would look like a typical office or maybe a bit dimmer. When at its most distant, B would be about as bright as a typical streetlight.
B would certainly perturb the orbit of any planet circling A. It would take some serious calculations to determine whether the orbit is stable, and if it is, what shape it would have. Luckily, someone has just released a paper doing just that. They reckon a planet would have a stable orbit if its semi-major axis is 3 AU or less (semi-major axis is the average of the closest and furthest distances from the primary). That’s close enough for the planet to be in the habitable zone. See the second link for the paper.
You may be asking because The Three Body Problem trilogy and TV series imagine a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. Spoiler alter! The planet has a chaotic orbit which causes repeated destruction of civilization.
Paternity test results
Have you ever witnessed a judge go completely ballistic and “lose it” in court?
I’d gotten thrown in jail for the night, after I decked a guy that had been slapping his girlfriend around. Even though the jerk had swung first when I interceded, the cops decided I’d hurt him more than I had to. Spent the night the “holding “ area, but actually knew a couple of the jail staff, and got one of them to get me a book to read.
I go to court around 1:30–2:00 next day, and get a public defender for the sole purpose, of setting bail. As I didn’t have a record, I knew I should be able to get a signature bond, then straighten everything out later. My case got called for “Felonious “ assault, and the judge called for a $5,000 cash bond. Without batting an eye the idiot public defender stated “thank you, your honor. We think that’s fair.” I stared at the dolt for about 5 seconds said “Shut up. You’re fired!” The judge asked if I’d just fired my attorney, and if I thought it a good idea? I said yes, and thought I could do better than that, so I asked for a $5,000 signature bond. Judge countered with $2,500 cash, and I asked to approach the bench, and say something I don’t want heard in open court . The judge looked puzzled but said okay. I went up without the legal joker, but the assistant DA and a bailiff that was a cousin of mine went with me. Here’s how it went;
I asked the judge to mute his microphone, as I didn’t want others to overhear. Judge again asks why, and I pointed to the local newspaper guy with nothing to do.
Judge: Why do you think you deserve a signature bond ?
Me: Because it’s Wednesday.(Giving him an evil look and smile.)
Judge: What does that mean?
Me: On Wednesday’s you have lunch with your wife at Gionelli’s. You two meet in the bar area and order a club soda with lime, and a double vodka tonic also with lime A switcheroo occurs en route the your table. (I know all this because I’m one of the management staff there and have seen this several times.) At the table your wife is probably having chicken Marsala, and you had the usual chicken/broccoli fettuccine. Around half way through the meal, fresh drinks are ordered, including the double vodka tonic. You will have finished the second drink by the time you leave the restaurant.
Judge: (bug eyed and pretty pissed off): What are you trying to say.
Me: I’m saying that you’re legally buzzed, and if I don’t get a signature bond, I will have this deputy here breathalyzer you right now! (indicating my cousin who didn’t look happy, about the attention)
Judge: Go back to the table with the attorney. (Knowing he was busted!) I got a really low signature bond and had a bunch of witnesses, so the case was eventually dismissed. The judge hung out and shot a good game of pool at a bar about 2 blocks from my house, and would always made me buy him a vodka tonic whenever he saw me.
Some historical Shorpy pictures
Why are Europeans poorer than Americans?
My son moved from Europe to the US three years ago (Houston, TX).
He’s got a well paid job in IT. In fact, a monthly take home pay is about double of mine.
So, you would think he’s got it made…
Think again.
His monthly disposable income is about 2/3 of mine.
Everything’s much more expensive in the US. Especially the basics of modern life: decent food, communication (cell phone, broadband internet, car insurance, medical insurance, … ).
And whilst TX doesn’t have state income tax, property taxes are brutal.
At first glance, going out doesn’t got an arm and a leg till you add the expected 20% gratuity.
Or when shopping for clothes… what you pay at the till is not the ticket price.
All things considered, people on the US are better paid, but people in Europe are richer and enjoy a better quality of life.
I came for the show
What are some amazing psychology and mind tricks?
When you tell a joke in a big group of people, the person who you turn to look at first is the person you’re closest to.
If you want something from someone, frame it as an offer rather than a request.
If a person is using his/her hand’s gestures much while talking, that’s the sign which indicates that they are telling the truth and 100% confident about their facts.
Nodding your head while asking a question makes the other person more likely to agree with you.
You can judge the character of a person by how they treat people who can do absolutely nothing for them.
If you’re asking for a favor, always use the word ‘because’. It makes them more likely to comply.
Sitting with legs open indicates that you are more open to having a conversation. If you are not very confident always mirror someone else’s body action and you will be fine.
While talking to someone, keep using their name in the conversations. This helps them feel important and valued.
People look more attractive when they speak about the things they are interested in.
If someone becomes angry over silly or petty (small) things, It means he/she needs love.
WHAT?! Yemen just Closed Red Sea to Israeli and US Ships in Deal with Russia, China
What is the most unusual and incorrect reason you’ve had the police called on you?
My ex-wife ran the gift shop at a small local museum. Very often she was the only one there in the morning for an hour or so, opening up the place before the guides and tour groups arrived.
One morning she got to work and called me (this was well before we were “ex”) because it looked like someone might have broken in overnight. So I came over to check it out, because she was justifiably worried about who might be hiding out in the building.
As it happened, the museum was doing some construction work and there was lots of debris lying around. Before I went inside, I grabbed a handy length of 2×4 to use as a club. Of course if whoever was inside had a gun, that wouldn’t have done me much good. But we figured it was more likely to be a homeless person seeking shelter for the night, or maybe something to steal quietly, than a dedicated armed robber. Folks like that don’t usually go for the stealthy approach.
I walked through the entire place, looking in every possible hiding place, with my makeshift club over my shoulder. Nobody was there, and I headed back toward the entrance to tell her it was safe.
Neither of us remembered that the museum had a silent alarm.
When I got outside, she was there, and so were the cops. A fair number of cops, because the museum in question is locally famous and known for its valuable collections. She’d told the cops that I was inside the building, but hadn’t given them a description. So what they saw was a big, scruffy, grumpy guy in a biker jacket walking out of the building carrying a 2×4 …
… and suddenly I did have guns pointed out me. Lots of guns. Probably not as many as it seemed like, but you know, all it takes is one to do the trick.
Fortunately, her cry of “don’t shoot him, that’s my husband!” got through, and the cops lowered their guns and we all had a good laugh. Then they went inside and repeated my search, with the same lack of result, and declared the museum safe to open. A good time was had by all.
Me, I wasn’t there for most of that, because I had an urgent appointment with the restroom.
Cool
How would you describe your first interview? What lessons did you learn?
I had just turned 13 and my mother woke me up one Saturday morning and told me two things:
That it was time for me to get a job.
That working for McDonald’s would look good on my resume when I got older.
Phase 1
We hopped in the car, drove a couple blocks to our regular McDonald’s and picked up an application. We got in the car, and then my Mom hands me a pen.
So, right there in the parking lot, my Mom gave me a tutorial on how to fill out an application. We dropped it off and, apparently, this was only phase one of the plan.
“Next we’ll call first thing Monday to make sure they got your application. That will increase your chances of getting an interview.”
Uh huh.
Phase 2 works like a charm. I call, and not only did they get the application, they schedule me for an interview.
Phase 2: Interview Day
Wearing my best “Church Clothes for an Adolescent Skateboarder”, I show up with knots in my stomach. I guess I really care about getting this job. As if it’s even possible, my nerves make my voice crack and squeak like the puberty I’d gone through didn’t take for some reason.
The Interviewer
I’ll never forget seeing this guy. I’d never seen a McDonald’s issue white, button up dress shirt, or a McDonald’s employee wearing a tie – but there he was. The best dressed Big Mac boss you’ve ever seen.
“Hello Mr. Lynam. Have a seat.”
I’d been eating at this location since I was 5, but this was the first time it scared me.
“I want to tell you that we appreciate you filling out this application, but because you’re only 13, we wouldn’t be able to give you a job.”
Off the hook. Relief. I thank him.
“You were very persistent and we look forward to having an interview with you when you’re old enough to work.”
Phase 3
I hurry back to the car to inform my Mom of the news. “Too young.” It was as if the news never registered to my Mother. Like one of those “Goonies Never say Die” moments, but for, you know, a job at McDonalds. So she says:
“That’s just for this location.”
Funny thing about McDonald’s – there are a lot of them. We immediately drive over to the McDonald’s exactly three blocks in the opposite direction of our house, and repeat the steps: Application, Phone Call, and then an Interview.
Then It Happens
I show up at McDonald’s #2 exactly a week since my first interview. I’m wearing the same clothes, and this time I’m a little less freaked to walk in.
I take a seat because my interviewer is busy.
Then I see that same white, button up shirt and tie. McDonald’s issue. It’s the same guy. You know those nightmares where you wake up, and think you’re safe – only to realize it’s still part of the nightmare? Well this was the McDonald’s job interview version of that.
He looks at me, then looks at the application.
“Hi Mr. Lynam, um yeah, it’s the same deal as last time.”
Epilogue
What my Mother taught me was persistence. There are countless times that I think back to this story when I’m faced with a situation that challenges my, or my team’s, comfort zone. My Mom still laughs at this story, and so do I, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect what this moment has continued to teach me all these years later.
Common in the USA
Roasted Garlic Pizza
Ingredients
1 (13 inch) uncooked dough crust
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 bunch spinach, wilted
6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
8 sun-dried tomato pieces, sliced
1 head garlic, roasted
Instructions
Prepare wilted spinach by first thoroughly washing and drying, removing stems, and then stir-frying until wilted.
Prepare roasted garlic by skinning garlic, coating with olive oil, and baking covered for 20 minutes in a 350 degrees F oven.
Top dough crust with olive oil, spinach, feta cheese, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes.
Bake in preheated 500 degrees F oven on a pizza stone for 8 to 10 minutes or until crust is golden brown and cheese is bubbly.
Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack for 2 or 3 minutes before cutting into wedges and serving.
What is something you secretly enjoy doing?
I live in China, and as a black person I frequently come across people who assume I can’t speak Chinese. I’ve been learning it for over two years and I study in it, too.
I sort of enjoy the impressed looks people give me when they see me speaking it – not fluently, mind you – but people get really impressed anyway.
It’s sort of amusing how very deer-in-headlights some shopkeepers get when they see me approach them. It’s like I could hear the wheels in their heads turning, “how will I speak to this foreigner?” Then comes the look of relief across their faces, the bright smiles when I speak to them in Chinese.
They usually congratulate me for speaking it; I smile and nod encouragingly at some English words they try to use to help me understand what they’re saying. All good-natured exchanges; no hard feelings.
I’ve had food vendors give me free food; candy, even chicken once, after we conversed in Chinese and they complimented my skills.
The stories you hear about Chinese people coming up and asking to take pictures with ordinary foreigners as if we are celebrities are true, too. I’ve had that happen occasionally, especially if I’m out with other foreign friends.
There are many elderly people who’ve never stepped out of the country nor even seen a black person in their entire lives, so I do get the occasional elderly person or child literally stop in their tracks to stare wide-eyed at me like I’m a rare unicorn. It’s amusing.
Women and two things
What is the one fact about the world that no one knows, but you?
By 2020, depression will be the leading cause of death and disability.
Feeling ignored causes the same chemical effect as that of injury.
People who play video games often are much more likely to have lucid dreams than non-gamers. They were also better able to influence their dream worlds as if controlling a video-game character.
People who have cars with bumper stickers are more likely to exhibit road rage. You may want to think twice before laying on the horn!!
Phobias may be memories passed down through generations in DNA, according to new research. If you remember a past event, you’re actually remembering the last time you remembered it rather than the event itself.
Thinking about sex will temporarily relieve the urge to pee in the case of an emergency.
Having a problem? Lay down! You can process thoughts faster by laying down.
At a restaurant? Wash your hands after ordering. The menu is generally the dirtiest thing you can touch.
Always check your cell signal when looking for new apartments or dorms to live in.
If a crocodile is chasing you, run in a zig-zag pattern. Crocodiles can’t take sharp turns well.
If a crocodile has caught you between its jaw, you press his eyes intensely with your thumbs, he will leave you.
You can clear cigarette smoke in a room by spinning a wet towel around.
If your stomach is rumbling in a public setting, do not clench your muscles, instead of push out like a beer belly and the noise will stop.
Honey= brightens, tightens, & fights wrinkles & acne. Honey Facial: Smear onto face let sit for 1-3m, rinse with warm water, pat dry.
Got a pimple before something important? Use an ice cube to shrink it.
Mash tomatoes and apply the pulp as a pack on the face. Wash this off after half an hour to get a clear and glowing complexion.
For oily skin, mash one banana with a teaspoon of honey and a couple of drops of lemon juice. Apply to face for 10 minutes, rinse.
You can get longer nails by applying olive oil to help them grow.
Eating garlic and onions can make your hair grow faster.
Putting sugar on a wound does helps heal it faster!
Clean your room! When your room is messy, you’re more likely to procrastinate and not get work done.
If you know you’re going to vomit eat some vanilla ice cream first. It won’t stop the vomiting, but it will stop the burning sensation.
Remove ink from clothes? Put toothpaste on the ink spots generously. Let it dry completely, then wash.
Sign up for the free 30 minute trial of on-board WiFi while flying. Delete cookies when the trial ends. Start a new trial.
If you are buying headphones/speakers, test them with Bohemian Rhapsody. It has a complete set of highs and lows in instruments and vocals.
Put a stocking over the end of a vacuum to find tiny items like earrings. This prevents you from accidentally sucking them up.
Mess with telemarketers! Some aren’t allowed to hang up, so answer the call, take a shower, have a snack, then say “no thanks 😉
Memorize your waiter’s name when they introduce themselves—call them by name later in the meal and they’ll like you more.
Singing in the shower daily can help boost your immunity, lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and improve your mood.
Combine used coffee grounds, coconut oil, & sea salt for an amazing body scrub that will remove dead skin cells while hydrating your skin.
If you don’t know whether to write “affect” or “effect”, use the word “impact” instead.
If you want someone to listen to you, start the conversation with “I shouldn’t be telling you this.
If your boyfriend or girlfriend wrongs you–don’t tell your parents about it. You might forgive them, but your parents won’t.
If you’re ever stuck in a large crowd, put coins in a can and shake it, asking people to donate. Everyone will move to avoid you.
When walking through a crowd, look at your destination in the distance. People will clear a path if they see you make a clear eye-line.
When washing clothes, always turn them inside out so the design doesn’t crack.
If you still feel tired after a good night’s sleep, you’re probably dehydrated. Drink some water after you wake up.
If you email a big company and tell them your recent purchase was unsatisfactory, they’ll most likely send you free stuff.
Feeling sleepy? Hold your breath until you can’t anymore and then breathe out slowly. This will increase your heart rate.
Sleeping without a bra can help you have a 95% better sleep.
Sleeping on your stomach can induce weirder, scarier, and sexier dreams.
Sleeping next to someone you love not only reduces depression, but it also helps you to live longer and makes you fall asleep faster.
Eating your food slowly will help you lose weight, enjoy your food, reduce stress, and lead to better digestion.
Fasting for 16 hours will reset your body’s natural sleep/wake cycle and is considered an effective way to overcome jet-lag.
Have a flat tire? Take a picture of it on your phone for future reference. Use it as an excuse later.
When in college, always sit in the front. Your teacher will remember your face when it comes to grading and most likely be more favorable.
Forgot an assignment and need to email it? Change the date on your computer system and send it.
If you think somebody is giving you a fake number, read it back to them incorrectly. See if they correct you.
Listening to music can boost your running performance by 15%.
Before sleeping, 90% of your mind begins to imagine the stuff you’d like to happen.
Have a good 20-minute workout at night so you’ll feel better before you sleep.
Dancing, singing and masturbating are all proven ways to fight depression and lead to better sleep.
Take vitamin B complex during the summer. Insects don’t like the way it makes you smell to them, it wards off mosquitoes and biting flies.
In college? Always ask for a student discount, most stores have it and students never use it.
If you are drunk and have the urge to vomit, taking short rapid breaths can help it go away.
If you download a “PDF” file and you see it ends in “.exe” delete it. Its a virus.
When cleaning your room, start with making your bed. It will make everything around it look out of place and it will motivate you to clean.
Hearing your name being called, when no one has actually called your name, is a likely sign of a healthy mind.
If you want someone’s number at a party, take a picture with them and ask them to send it to you.
The Two-Minute Rule: If you see something that needs doing, and it can be completed within two minutes, do it immediately.
Putting dry tea bags in gym bags or smelly shoes will absorb the unpleasant odor.
Wrap a cold paper towel around a drink and put it in the freezer to make it cold faster
Drinking 2 cups of cold water on an empty stomach can boost metabolism by 30%
Cough keeping you up at night? Put Vick’s Vapo-rub on your feet and put on socks. Within minutes the cough will stop permanently
Hugging can help reduce stress and lower blood pressure — This helps to protect us from heart disease
When on a date, the best way to judge a person’s character is to see how they treat waiters and waitresses
To remove gum from hair, dip into a small bowl of Coke, leave for a few minutes. The gum will wipe off
When doing sit-ups if you place your tongue on the roof of your mouth it will stop you from straining your neck
If your boss calls you in on your day off, tell him you’ve been drinking, the boss can’t fault you for not coming in.
When going on a date, go to a horror film. Elevated heart rate and adrenaline are strongly tied to sexual attraction.
If you ever drop glass, put a piece of bread on it. The consistency of the bread will pick up even the smallest shard
When you’re finished with an essay, copy and paste it into Google Translate and listen to it. It’s the easiest way to find mistakes.
If you toss onions in the freezer 15 minutes before you cut them you won’t tear up.
Accidentally text the wrong person? Immediately put your phone on airplane mode and once it fails to deliver, delete the message.
If you place an egg in water and it floats, don’t consume it. It’s bad and should be thrown away. A fresh egg will sink to the bottom.
Eating Pizza once a week can actually help reduce the risk of esophageal cancer. So go eat some Pizza.
Turning the shower cold right before you get out closes your pores and makes you less likely to get acne.
Yellow rooms can make babies cry more and couples fight more.
Grab a banana for breakfast! They are known as happy fruit. Eating just one can help relieve irritable emotions, anger and or depression.
Bananas can reduce the swelling and irritation of mosquito bites and help with nicotine withdrawal.
People who enjoy sweets like chocolate tend to be more generous, happier, selfless and open-minded.
What are the consequences for Chinese citizens who criticize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or its policies, particularly regarding Xinjiang and the Uighur population?
Here it comes again..
If your criticism is based on facts and logics, then your criticism is welcomed.
If your criticism is based on rumor and bias, then you will ran off and seek political asylum in USA, Canada or UK, like the pro-”democracy” activists in HK, eg, Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow Ting. Because you can’t make a living in China, everyone knows you and they put you into their blacklist, you can’t find a job. So the only choice is to go for your funder.
No one is excuted by the government for criticizing it so far.
No one believes in Xinjiang fake news, because those news reports targeted on you, not us. This is your government’s propaganda, not ours. We can tell the illogic and not-make-sense narratives at the first sight but you can’t, because the distance and language barrier made you not able to access information from a much wider range.
Why don’t nuclear nations have a disarm mode for nuclear ICBM’s after they are launched?
The answer lies in the theory of deterrence and enduring paranoia of that most iconic of Cold War doctrine’s “MAD” or Mutually Assured Destruction. If there is one man who was most responsible for both it is General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay. LeMay was everything you imagine a Cold War air force general to be — a sports-car driving, martial arts practicing, HAM radio operating, steel-nerved commander for whom the killing of thousands or even millions of civilians was an uninteresting footnote in the larger strategic calculus of war. Indeed, he may well have been the source of that stereotype. he is certainly remembered as both the patron saint of the United States Air Force and as among the most infamous war criminals in history.
Along the way LeMay became one of the guiding lights of American strategic airpower. Now, LeMay didn’t like ballistic missiles. He was a bomber man. So if we asked LeMay this question he would probably respond the same way he did when he advocated for the continuation of the SAC bomber program in a memo dated January 4, 1964:
Ballistic missile forces represent both the U.S. and Soviet potential for strategic nuclear warfare at the highest, most indiscriminate level, and at a level least susceptible to control.
What LeMay is saying here is that the ICBM fleet is, by design, an all-or-nothing proposition. The fact that it exists — out in the middle of the Northwest Great Plains in full view of any satellite that cares to look down upon it — sends a very clear and unambiguous message:
The United States has the ability to reduce your homeland to a smoldering ruin
The United States will use these weapons if you use similar weapons against her
The United States has numerous redundant protocols in place to ensure that it will use these weapons if the time ever comes.
These three statements are the core of deterrence theory. They’re sometimes referred to as the “Three Cs” — Capability, Communication, and Credibility.
The enemy has to know that you are capable of destroying them.
You have to communicate under which circumstances you would do so.
And they have to find your threat credible.
This last “C” — credibility — is probably the hardest to nail down. Credibility amounts to a psychological state: are you really ready to kill hundreds of millions – maybe billions – of people to follow through on your threat? The ICBM fleet is about credibility. It is a Sword of Damocles, hanging over the enemy’s head.
That’s why they can’t have a disarm button.
The mere existence of the ICBM fleet is a compelling argument for the idea that the people that built it have accepted – in advance – the moral quandary of the nuclear age. They are not a gun brought to a knife fight; they’re a suicide vest rigged to a dead-man’s switch. But that promise of crushing retaliation loses some of its credibility if it comes with a “take-backsies” button.
But, paradoxically, the lack of that capability also diminishes the credibility of the ICBM threat. Because they are an all-or-nothing proposition, ICBMs offer very little proportionality. The United States may be more than willing to turn lose its missiles if a Russian first-strike is spotted coming over the North Pole, but would the Americans really jump to total thermonuclear war if just one warhead were used to clear a route for Russian tanks as they rolled into Germany?
Maybe not… and that creates a problem. It invites escalation and that escalation may bring about a general nuclear exchange which wouldn’t have happened if there had been some way to deter that first nuclear use.
This is the weakness LeMay saw in the missile based deterrent. The missiles have their place but, as LeMay puts it:
The employment of these weapons in lower level conflict would be likely to escalate the situation, uncontrollably, to an intensity which could be vastly disproportionate to the original aggravation. The use of ICBMs and SLBMs is not, therefore, a rational or credible response to provocations which, although serious, are still less than an immediate threat to national survival.
LeMay’s solution to this problem was – predictably – the bomber. The ICBM fleet could await the end of days in its silos, LeMay contended, the bomber would be there to handle everything short of that.
And that is largely the role of the American bomber force. Whenever Uncle Sam feels some “gunboat diplomacy” is in order, the bomber fleet is there: flying in joint exercises over South Korea
So why don’t ICBMs have a recall button or a disarm button? Because that’s what bombers are for.
Why are rural towns in America dying?
Rural towns are generally built around one or maybe two industries other than agriculture.
Take my hometown, for example. You basically work in some form of manufacturing, or you’re in dairy and crop farming. Go north a ways to some bigger rivers and it’s dairy farming and paper mills.
Every other business basically operates to support those two industries. Dollar General, Shopko, Piggly Wiggly? They provide the basic necessities for people who work in those industries. The specialty shops downtown provide luxury goods for people who work in those industries. The standard Wisconsin small town 2:1 ratio of bars to churches exist to support those industries.
The car dealerships don’t sell Priuses and sedans hardly at all; they sell pickup trucks and grocery-getter wagons/SUVs. Mostly used; the only new dealership in my town folded about 15 years ago and both lots are still vacant.
A hundred years ago, iron was king in my hometown. It was mostly blast furnaces making iron ore into pig iron and shipping it off to coal country to be made into steel. When the iron mines dried up, it switched mostly to manufacturing.
One of the four major manufacturers in the area closed almost 20 years ago now after it got bought up by a west coast equity firm. It wiped out probably a solid 15% of the school district area’s employment. It came at a bad time, as well, in the middle of a recession, so getting other work was pretty hard. Another industry in town laid off 50% of their workforce and automated two product lines.
Between transfers and people who had to move out of town to find work, enrollment in the school district dropped a solid 5–10%. My class was large, at around 125. By a decade later, the average class size was down to 80.
Automation in the other manufacturing industries has resulted in attrition of jobs there probably by another 50%, though I will seriously credit one of the local employee-owned companies for doing a great job of retaining employees and retraining them for other positions to keep them, which is probably why they’re one of the few manufacturers that has expanded significantly and actually increased overall employment in the last decade. The other manufacturers, not so much.
Then there’s agriculture and advances in that field.
Here’s what my great-great grandfather started farming with:
If you were fast and had a good horse and you worked sunrise to sunset, you could probably plow a 40-acre field in three or four days. Work it down in another two or three. Plant it in another two or three. If the weather cooperated and you worked your horse and your equipment and yourself hard. And the land was already cleared of trees and stumps. You could pull a two-row corn planter.
By the time my great-grandfather was ready to start working the farm, my great-great-grandfather was able to put together enough money for one of these:
That’s a John Deere unstyled model A. The first one on the farm had steel wheels, not tires. On the other side of this is a flywheel that you had to crank to get it started. It was insanely hard to do. But it didn’t get tired and need water every hour or so like a horse. And it would pull a two bottom plow. You could plow a 40-acre field in a hard day if you had enough light. You could probably do a 4-row corn planter with this.
By the time my grandfather was old enough to start working the farm, my great-grandfather had bought this:
This is a Ferguson TO-30. It might look smaller than the A, but it’s got more horsepower (26HP), hydraulics, and a three-point hitch. My great-grandfather bought it after the A needed a serious overhaul and the tractor salesman brought out one of these and a Ford 8N, and my great-grandfather said he’d buy whichever one got to the top of a hill with a two-bottom plow faster. The Ferguson won. (We still have the original in the family, plus the replica model the salesman gave him for buying it.)
You could plow, work down, and plant a 60-acre field in probably three good days’ work, if you were willing to work into the dark a bit. (My great-grandfather actually specifically ordered the tractor without lights because he believed if you were working into the dark, you were working too long.) Still a 4-row corn planter, but you could probably pull a larger grain drill than the A.
By the time my uncle was in high school, the farm was up to this:
That’s a Ford 7600 diesel. Almost 100 HP, over three times as much as the Ferguson. This would pull a four-bottom plow. Live PTO, making it possible to run better and better equipment. My family actually sprung for one with a cab because Grandpa was getting older, but he didn’t like it, actually.
With the four-bottom, a cultimulcher instead of a disk and drag, an 8-12-row corn planter instead of a 4-row that the Ferguson would pull, you could work a 60–80 acre field in three days if you were nice to the equipment, and probably still get some other stuff done.
By the time I was old enough to start really driving around tractors, the neighbors were driving these:
That’s a Massey-Ferguson 8220. The neighbors had an 8240, if I recall correctly. I remember when the guys around the corner bought one of these and a chisel plow. 150HP.
They worked down an 80 acre field in about two hours and planted it with a 16 row corn planter in about three hours two days later.
Today? I have an uncle who does crop and dairy farming. He’s got one tractor with 240 HP that can chisel plow a 120 acre field by GPS in 60–90 minutes, and will pull a 24-row John Deere corn planter. He probably wouldn’t even use it to work down a 40-acre field because that field would be too tiny to effectively turn around very well.
My great-grandfather would have been stunned at that. He might have imagined it, but it would have been a wild dream.
One guy can work ten times the cropland that my great-great-grandfather could have with a quarter of the work.
And yields have gone up, too. Hybrid corn and advances in other crops have made it so that today’s farmers are growing an order of magnitude more per acre than my great-grandfather did.
But all of those advances come at a cost. A bag of seed corn or soybeans can cost upwards of $100 a bag, and is currently going for as much as $180 a bag for the 2020 corn planting season. My grandfather once stormed out of a mill with me 25–30 years ago as a kid when the same sized bag of seed corn was going to be $15 because it was “highway robbery” and he figured he could get it cheaper elsewhere.
The same is true of dairies. My great-grandmother milked 20 cows by hand; a large operation at the time. In the 50’s, they got an electric vacuum pump system after the farm got electricity, and built a bigger, modern milking barn. That bumped them up to 60 head. In the 70’s, they were able to add on and up that to 100 head. By the early 2000’s, they were a small dairy, starting to be unable to compete. My uncle made some bad decisions, but he leveraged the land like crazy and cheated my great-grandmother out of her share of the farm to afford a 240 head new barn with a milking parlor.
He’s still a small operation now and is close to bankruptcy.
There’s a farm about two dozen miles over that has 8,400 head and the farmers don’t even milk the cows now; the cows have an RFID tag and when the cow feels like it wants to get milked, it wanders over to a stall and a robotic milking machine reads the tag and hooks itself up. The system tracks the cow’s individual production.
When my great-grandmother was doing the milking, there were probably fewer than 8,400 milking cows in the county.
But that huge operation is probably over a $10 million investment. That would have been unfathomable for my great-grandfather.
Whether crop or dairy, it’s been evolve or die, and evolving requires growing into a massive factory farm. That equipment and the buildings are expensive. And the margins are thin. If you couldn’t get enough credit to expand, you went bankrupt. If you had a bad year or two, you went bankrupt. The margins on all of that are razor thin; the farmer is probably actually netting pretty little, if not taking a routine annual loss many years.
Small farm bankruptcies are skyrocketing right now because factory farms are keeping the prices so low as to make the margins non-existent or below break-even for the little guys.
The area where I grew up is a moonscape of rotted out, fallen down barns, abandoned outbuildings, and lonely old farmhouses with lonely old retired farmers who have given up. They sold off all the equipment, and if they can rent out the land for enough to pay off the mortgage, they do, or sell it off for enough to satisfy the liens and keep four or five acres with the house. And when the old man and his wife pass away, the kids, who have moved to the city, don’t want to take care of it anymore. I’ve seen a dozen or two of those old houses just demolished; the outbuildings used for storage if anything at all.
Maybe 10–20% of the farms that were operating when I was a kid thirty years ago are still milking. Six of the seven neighbors my grandparents and uncle had that were farming when I was a kid are out and quit wholesale. The one left isn’t doing dairy anymore, the kid, who’s almost exactly my age, sold off the dairy cows and most of the equipment, does some basic crop farming, and grass-fed beef. One of the last neighbors to sell had gotten up to about 1400 acres that he’d owned and another 400 he rented before he sold out to a guy from Iowa who trucks up even more massive equipment than I described above, works up the whole thing in less than a week, and moves on to the next bit.
One guy. With probably a dozen hands. I have no doubt that he owns or rents over 36,000 acres.
Who needs a whole town to support that anymore? He isn’t going into my hometown for groceries every week, or the downtown coffee shop on a routine basis. He isn’t in the bars regularly. He isn’t buying stuff from the local hardware store, or tires and oil changes from the local mechanic.
Even if he were local, he certainly isn’t buying the same amount as the 100+ farm families he’s replaced.
Infrastructure also drastically changed my home area. Infrastructure, especially transportation infrastructure, dramatically reduces the friction costs of commerce. If it costs less to move stuff to market, people will build stuff there. If not, people won’t.
The railroad was first on this. Wherever the railroad went, towns grew along it. Where the railroad didn’t go through, those places died or never grew. There’s a little town of about 300 people, about big enough to have an “unincorporated” sign and not much more.
There’s a huge Catholic cathedral there, built to serve probably a 150 family congregation. Today, it serves probably a few dozen for a whole area.
That’s because the railroad was supposed to go through the town, which is why they built it. There’s half a dozen other old businesses that used to exist, too, the hollowed out remains of their buildings still visible, built in anticipation of a train that literally never came.
Because the railroad company built ten miles east, instead.
That town died. Or rather, never grew at all. The businesses mostly folded, with the exception of a bar and a butcher that finally relocated when I was a kid. There was a fancier restaurant there that closed up about five years back finally. It had a for-sale sign on it since before I graduated high school, but the guy who owned it could never find a buyer and finally just retired.
Today, railroads are largely replaced by highways and interstates, though freight rail is making a comeback in some places. Not enough to support a whole town, like it once did, but enough to keep some businesses going.
The main corridor in my home area is now I-41, 20–30 miles from town. It’s only recently been made into an interstate. When my parents were first dating, it was only two lanes. I still remember when there were no overpasses and it was cross-traffic most of the way by us.
As the interstate and a few four-lane state highways have grown, the towns along them have stayed steady or grown with them in some spots.
The towns between the main highways? They’re mostly gone or drying up. One got virtually wiped out by a tornado twenty-some years ago and never really recovered. Every year, they keep talking about consolidating the school district with a nearby one because enrollment is too low to sustain it independently. The elementary school closed fifteen years back and K-8 are all in one building now.
I remember a couple years ago, I was going through Iowa on my way to a wedding and they’d recently moved I-80. The main highway that it now paralleled used to go through a bunch of little towns. We got off the super-slab and went through some of them because we weren’t in a hurry to get to Colorado. Half of everything was boarded up. I asked the cashier about it. People don’t want to exit the highway and drive four miles south to get to Casey’s General Store. They just bypass the towns and wait until the next bigger stop. Where towns could, they’d tried to move towards the highway, but that’s often not possible.
It’s what happened to the towns on Route 66. A few remaining nostalgic pieces of it remain, but most of it’s just gone. Whole towns were just erased.
But even my hometown isn’t seeing new facilities getting built for manufacturing and the like, because of a lack of infrastructure. There’s a decent state highway into town that they keep in reasonable repair, but it’s a ways to the interstate still. The existing facilities keep churning out stuff, but if the companies are expanding, it’s along the four-lane highways and the towns and cities on those, still reasonably nearby enough, I suppose.
One company bought out that old plant that went bust I mentioned and turned it into a big R&D facility, since it doesn’t need much import/export and it’s smack in the middle of town. Getting trucks there is a pain in the ass. When they come up with something, they send the specs over to the shiny new plant two towns west, which is built on a four-lane highway with direct access to Madison and Milwaukee.
Internet is another infrastructural element that is significantly lagging in some of these places. Nobody’s running fiber to my hometown for the most part. A lot of people still have DSL. Maybe satellite. Apparently Verizon or Frontier is upgrading some of downtown somewhat. The last time I was at the local coffee shop to use the wi-fi, the speed test ran up to 15 megabits.
The cell coverage depends on the provider, but it’s spotty even in downtown. Verizon is okay. US Cellular is the preferred choice. Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T are complete dead zones. That makes it hard to operate a retail business these days, which is increasingly dependent on the internet for sales and backend that we take for granted. You’re not selling much if you can’t use so much as a Square reader at the local businesses. And you’re not getting a lot of tourists if their phones are off the grid before they get to the city limits.
And younger people don’t want to live in a town where they can’t get Netflix or Prime Video at even standard resolution half the time. So, they’re not moving there, or leaving for greener pastures if they can.
Because there isn’t enough demand, the cable companies don’t bother upgrading the lines unless they have to. Because there isn’t basic high-speed broadband, nobody moves there to create the demand. It’s a vicious cycle. My folks just moved out of the place where I grew up and moved to the edge of a moderately large rural town. They get one internet provider, which maxes out at 8Mb down, 4 up. If they were two blocks over, they could get another provider with much better bandwidth, but where they are, they’re just screwed. A lot of places are like that. There’s no competition, and relatively light demand, so there’s basically no reason for the telecoms to bother running anything out there.
At least my hometown and surrounding area are still close enough to major transportation routes that Fed-Ex and UPS will come all the way out. My in-laws have to drive 20 miles into town to pick up anything. They’ve been where they are for fifteen years and two weeks ago, a Fed-Ex truck actually went all the way to their house for the first time, ever. The delivery driver said he would never do it again. They don’t even get mail delivery to their place; they have to go up the minimum maintenance road five miles to a turnaround if it gets delivered, and they maintain a PO box in the slightly larger, but further away town for that purpose instead.
Water is increasingly an issue, too. New water treatment plants with higher capacities are expensive and getting more so. Rural areas have a lower population density to spread that cost around, and that means either a need for increased state aid, or higher property taxes.
If you don’t live right in town, that water isn’t probably coming to you. So, the farmers and people who live outside of town, but who are in the township and so would pay the increased taxes to pay for it, vote against it. They’re already paying literally tens of thousands of dollars for septic systems and wells; paying more property taxes for someone else’s water on top of that, while getting nothing in return, is a hard sell.
Even trash collection is an issue here. Depending on the size of the town, you might have to do it yourself or contract with a company, because the town itself might not provide it. Again, friction cost for a business, and another thing that sometimes makes people not want to move there. I grew up with it, so the idea of a garbage guy that actually comes to your house is still weird to me, as are the ideas of a) not having an organic bucket that needs to get hauled out to the brush pile by the line fence, b) not having a burn barrel for paper garbage, c) not needing to separate out metals from other recycling to take to the salvage yard when there’s enough to get the higher price, or d) that the garbage guy comes at a specific time rather than taking it to the dump on Saturday morning or dropping the cash in the can or slot to pay for the bags you put in if you come not on a Saturday morning.
When rural areas lack easy access to the kinds of infrastructure that reduces commercial friction costs, they’re at a serious disadvantage. It’s more expensive to do things, it’s more difficult to attract workers, and as a result, what sustains these small towns begins to go elsewhere.
The decline itself then turns into a vicious cycle. As the major sustaining industries and businesses give out, or the resources like a clay or gravel pit start to dwindle, the people that can leave, do, especially younger people.
That increases the concentration of people remaining in poverty.
And with an increased concentration of poverty comes a lot of the problems that arise out of that: increased crime, increased drug use as depressed people try to self-medicate, depressed property values that make it even harder to get out, and more.
The schools end up with lower enrollment, and lower tax revenues, and lower state aid. So they have to start cutting services. And then people move out of the district because they want their kids in a better school, if they can.
Any young people who can get out flee. That leads to a brain drain of the community. It’s hard to get young professionals to move back if they think they’re never going to make enough money to justify it, or lose a quality of life that they enjoy elsewhere.
So, that means fewer social workers, attorneys, doctors, etc. serving these areas that can help mitigate these problems of poverty, and it spirals downward even more. People of means have fewer kids; people without them have more but can’t support them. Services get progressively thinner, making people more desperate.
More and more desperate people often end up getting into the criminal justice system one way or another, and once you’ve got a felony, everything is substantially harder. Housing, employment, everything. That traps more and more people, as well.
People that are trapped get more and more hopeless. Suicide rates skyrocket.
Eventually, the whole thing just gives out. The remaining people die off. The houses and businesses are abandoned and left to crumble.
We’re not just talking about your boom and bust ghost towns of the Wild West. There’s plenty of these that are modern, some dying in the last few decades. There’s a few places I know of around where I grew up where the last living inhabitants were present just a few years ago. Today, there’s a handful of vacant buildings and nothing else left. You can walk right in a few of them. Some of them are so far gone that you wouldn’t even know that several thousand people once lived there in some cases as recently as thirty or forty years ago just by looking at them.
One town near where I grew up used to actually put up their own population sign and an old man would repaint the number by hand every time someone died or moved away, until he died and nobody took over the task. There was a lumberyard/building center there, a church, and a bar, when I was a kid at least. It was a quarry town for limestone before that, but the easily accessible limestone ran out in the 60’s. There were probably 100 residents total, maybe, when I was a kid, but at one point there were about 1900 people who lived there. The businesses closed and the church is boarded up now. About twenty houses remain; two others were destroyed by fire – one started accidentally by a homeless person who was squatting in it after it was abandoned. The businesses are all vacant, the for-sale signs faded and dusty.
Sometimes a natural disaster comes in and finishes the job. Gays Mills in Wisconsin has been flooded completely out several times in the last decade. Hundreds of residents just gave up and never came back when the insurance gave them an out. Some businesses are trying to stick it out, or relocate as disaster relief has tried to make it possible to move the town to higher ground.
Lastly, the death rate is exceeding the birth rate. Sixty to eighty years ago, you needed ten kids to run the farm, and the infant mortality rate was considerably higher.
In the last 20–30 years, though? People aren’t having babies. The birth rate in a lot of these rural areas is well below replacement. The oldest generations are dying off with increasing rapidity every year.
Death rates among 18–64 year olds in rural areas are also on the incline. The opioid crisis really has disproportionately affected rural areas not because it’s higher per capita, but because there’s just fewer people overall and so the same per capita impact has a greater overall impact.
But suicides are where it’s gotten really out of control. The rural suicide rate is bonkers higher than urban areas. It’s as much as 25% higher in some areas, and it’s risen over 40% in the last 20 years. There’s been a lot of research into this, with hypotheses ranging from lack of health care (both in insurance and in care providers) to stigma around mental health to simply increased access to guns, but there has not been a good consensus around what factors are most prevalent or most contributory.
This is perhaps the most literal reason rural towns in America are dying: they are literally seeing more death than birth.
Some other rural towns are growing around new industries. In Kansas, feedlot and meatpacking plants are growing substantially. Feedlots are smelly as hell. You don’t want to live anywhere near them. Seriously. Even setting aside the animal cruelty issues that are often present, they’re just awful places to be within ten miles of. But, they also provide jobs. For the desperate rural worker, any port in a storm.
In Minnesota, it’s chicken and turkey processing. There’s a handful of towns that have poultry processing, and they’re doing pretty well for now.
But those jobs are not very secure. They’re hard labor, and if someone gets laid up, there’s enough people willing to take the jobs that someone can just be replaced. Anti-union sentiment from conservatives that dominate these areas don’t make anything easier, either.
Additionally, these industries also creating a lot of tension because the local natives don’t want those jobs due to the lack of security and don’t often apply, or can’t pass a drug test to qualify; instead, these jobs are attracting a lot of immigrant labor, such as Somali refugees. These are more typically than not legal immigrants, but that makes little difference to some people who are already mistrustful of any outsiders. I have a relative who moved into a rural town thirty years ago and still is considered a transplant and given second-class citizenship to a generational local.
But many of these industries are also boom-and-bust. The oil fields in the Bakken and the Permian Basin led to huge expansions of parts of North Dakota and Texas, but as quickly as they exploded, they’ve died off as oil prices crashed in recent years.
Those feedlots and chicken processing plants are likely as insecure. All it takes is a commodity oversupply, or a trade war, to shutter whole plants. And if that’s the primary employer for the area, it can take a significant piece of the town when it goes.
Some rural towns are still doing okay, or even growing a little, and in sustainable ways.
What’s kept my hometown alive is that it’s a good bedroom community that’s 30–45 minutes driving from two reasonably large urban areas and less than two hours from two more metro areas. Those are people who want to live in a small, safe, quiet neighborhood, but they don’t work there. They commute to the larger cities in the region.
Enrollment is back up a little in the school district with people moving in to live in a quiet spot, and class sizes are back up to about 95-ish. The school has some good programs such as an award-winning music program that have brought in school choice students from neighboring districts (with corresponding state aid), or even gotten some individuals to move there.
The tax base has remained about neutral or grown a little as developments and new housing grow slowly. Areas that were farm fields when I was a boy are now subdivisions generating more property taxes than the agricultural zones they once were.
There are some rural areas that have this geographical quirk and are mostly becoming the new form of suburbs for those wealthy enough to either buy a nice place in a small town, or a couple acres of former farmland and build a house out in the country. The cost of living is usually reasonable or even sometimes lower than the city or suburbs; housing is certainly cheaper even if certain commodities are a bit higher.
But there’s a lot of rural areas that don’t have that quirk of geography.
Get out in the middle of Nebraska, or Iowa, or Kansas, or Minnesota and there’s a lot less. It’s a long, long way to the urban centers.
Those places are increasingly seeing the demise of rural America the hardest.
Scott Ritter Jaw-Dropping Revelation: NATO vs Russia – A Ticking Nuclear Time Bomb Ready to Explode!
What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?
Back in the early 1980’s I was a district manager for a large manufacturer. I had 16 sales reps out of three offices. My company brought in a new VP of Sales. This guy knew very little about our product or company.
This VP put out a mandate for all District Managers (there were about 150 of us nationally) to break our reps into four categories.
Category one were the top producers. They received a good end of year raise.
Category two were over quota but did not do extremely well. They got a 3% raise.
Category three were either over quota to a less amount than category two or under quota. They got no raise and were put on a 90 day action plan. The plan stated that they must be on quota for the next 90 days otherwise they would be terminated.
Category four would be terminated.
Of my 16 reps, 10 or twelve were over quota. At least two were within a point or two of quota and the rest had enough business outstanding to bring them over quota shortly.
Myself and a large group of District Managers rebelled. It went up to our CEO. Within a week or two we were allowed to make a case for each rep we believed should be kept on. Within another month or two, the new VP left the company. Good riddance!
Angel of death?
What is the biggest “I’m definitely fired” thing you’ve done at work, but nobody ever found out?
I was a third shift computer operator while in college—mostly weekend work to run overnight jobs and print boxes of client reports. Our IBM computer was old but reliable—except this night we had a drive malfunctioning and each time it fritzed out I would have to clean the head and rerun the job. After 4–5 such failures, I was tired and the night was long—when the console showed the next failure message “Drive Malfunction — Retry or Abort?” I knew it was yet another 30 minutes added to my shift. So instead of typing “A” or “R”—I punched the keyboard. A cluster of 7–8 keys were mashed down and just stayed down—there was no more keyboard input on the console so the system was down.
I called the 24-hour service tech and they were there within an hour. I “explained” that I had dropped a box of paper on the console (a lie) and the technician looked at me knowingly. Another half hour and the keyboard was repaired and we were up and running again. As the tech put his tools away, he looked at me and said “Next time you drop a box of paper, go in the back room and do it there so you don’t break anything.” Somehow I finished all the overnight jobs and at daybreak I had to call my boss to fess up. Fully expecting to be fired, I was surprised when my manager’s response was “So how many jobs did you not complete?” I told him I had finished everything and there was no backlog.
Instead of being fired, my manager was actually relieved because a prior third shift operator who was on the wrestling team at the college had a similar night—and he ended up punching in the entire keyboard. It turned out that my lie (reported dropping a box of paper on the keyboard) was better for the company than the truth—if my malicious tempered behavior broke the console it would be the company’s expense for the repair but an accident was covered by the service contract. So they promoted me into a day job on the coding team.
The US government will force ByteDance to sell TikTok. Should the Chinese government force Apple to sell all of its Chinese businesses in response?
No, I don’t think the Chinese government would take such an approach.
“If you sanction me, I must retaliate against you and launch corresponding sanctions, otherwise I will be weak.”
This is a common understanding in Western society that governments must respond to public sentiment. If other countries “hurt us”, we “must tit for tat”. Retaliation must be direct, reciprocal and obvious. Only then can public sentiment be released, and politicians’ approval ratings not drop.
So we discovered a key point: the way of revenge is centered on politics, not interests. No one cares whether doing so will bring greater benefits to society or cause greater harm.
“If you sanction me, I must retaliate against you, but the method may not be reciprocal. How to do it is left to professionals.”
This is a common perception in Chinese society, which is full of patience and believes that professional officials can handle it better than public sentiment.
With this premise, we return to the Tiktok case. If Tiktok is forced to sell by the United States, will China’s retaliation be to force Apple to sell it? No, that’s simply impossible
There is a proverb in the Chinese world: If a dog bites you, it does not mean that you have to bite the dog too.
There are many ways to take revenge, you must choose the one that is most beneficial to you.
In the past few years, China has been challenging the status of the United States in global economic activities, and the United States is in a state of hysteria. They are trying to use all available means to contain China. However, we find that China’s response has always been mild, even making people feel a little weak.
In fact, they have been choosing the way that is best for themselves, rather than the most “tit for tat” way.
—————————-
The United States has imposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods; they believe that in order to contain China, it is worth raising prices in the United States.
China’s most “relieving” response should be to impose additional tariffs on $200 billion of U.S. goods, but China believes that this will affect the import of technology and raw materials by Chinese companies, which is not worth it.
China’s actual approach is to expand BRI, join RECP, seek to join CPTPP, expand trade scope, offset the influence of the United States, and stop buying soybeans from American farmers.
—————————–
The United States has imposed five rounds of comprehensive sanctions on Huawei; they believe that it is worthwhile to undermine the fair international image of the United States and use “national security” crimes against a company in order to curb the development of China’s 5G technology.
China’s most “tit for tat” response should be to select an American company, such as CISCO, or Microsoft, or others, and impose five rounds of comprehensive sanctions. But China believes that this will affect these companies’ operations in China, reduce Chinese jobs and government tax revenue, and this is not worth it.
China’s actual approach is to change foreign investment laws and allow foreign companies to independently invest in telecommunications, automobiles and other industries. Then successfully brought Tesla to China.
——————————-
The United States has imposed “Chip and Science Act” sanctions on hundreds of Chinese companies; they believe that destroying the market and revenue of the US semiconductor industry can delay the development of China’s AI technology, which is worthwhile.
China’s most “tit for tat” response should be to select a group of American companies, such as General Motors, Ford, Walmart, and Starbucks, to implement some kind of reciprocal “sanctions bill.” But China believes that this will affect these companies’ operations in China, reduce Chinese jobs and government tax revenue, and this is not worth it.
China’s actual approach is to sanction several U.S. arms dealers and ban the export of rare earths to the United States. Launch the semiconductor development plan encouraged by the government, establish the National Semiconductor Fund, and recruit talents from all over the world to strengthen its semiconductor industry.
——————————-
Some Western public opinion has produced many similar news: Tesla is banned in China, and Apple mobile phones are banned in China. They seem to want to tell us: Look, they are just as bad as us;
But the truth is there, these are lies. The CEOs of Tesla and Apple have both praised the performance of the Chinese market.
Some Western public opinion will also tell us: Google is banned in China, Youtube, X and Ins are banned in China; so it is reasonable for us to ban Tiktok.
But some facts are deliberately ignored. Bing is running very well in China, and Amazon and Paypal have been running in China for 20 years. The crux of the matter is that China has enacted laws, companies that are willing to abide by them stay, and those that are unwilling to abide by them leave. China actually does not have a “ban” against a certain American company.
Now, the United States is demanding that Tiktok be forced to sell, maybe it will be Temu’s turn in the future, Shein
China’s most “tit for tat” method should be to choose an American company, such as Apple mentioned in the question. Asking them to “force a sale”
But China will definitely not do this. On the contrary, we may see them take more opening measures to encourage more foreign companies to participate in the Chinese economy.
They are deliberately taking a completely different approach to doing things than the United States. Use openness to fight closure, use trade to fight sanctions; use win-win to fight zero-sum games; use construction and manufacturing to fight bombs and destruction.
They are very patient and they are creating a global persona:
I don’t have many slogans, and I’m not very good at publicity and storytelling. I will only use actual actions to tell the world: who represents justice and friendship, and who represents evil and destruction.
In the short term, China’s approach seems inefficient, negative, and weak. But over time, many things change.
FAB-3000. Russia begins war. Macron, Ukraine will collapse
Give me a joke?
Here’s a Jewish mama joke.
A Jewish mother picks up the phone to hear the sound of a woman gulping sobs. Her daughter! “Darling! What’s the matter?
Woman:” Oh,Mama! Oh,Mama!”
“Yes darling. Mama is here. What’s wrong?”
“We’re snowed in. The car won’t start. The refrigerator stopped working and all the food is spoiled. The kids have colds and the house is a mess. I have a headache. And twenty ladies from my Hadassah chapter are coming for lunch at one o’clock! Oh,Mama” she wails “What am I going to do?”
In a calm soothing voice Mama replies “Don’t worry darling,Mama is here. First I’ll go down to the grocery and pick up something to eat.Then I’ll take the subway. And from the subway I’ll walk the sixteen blocks to your house. I’ll cook something for the twenty ladies,they’ll love it. I’ll give the kids an aspirin so they’ll be quiet. I’ll tell them a story till they fall asleep so you can lie down too. While the food cooks I’ll pick up the house. Everything will be all right. Don’t worry darling,Mama is here! That’s what a mother is for!”
The woman gives a huge sigh of relief. “Oh,Mama thank you! I feel so much better.”
“Don’t mention it,darling” Then,in an everyday voice “If you’re snowed in and the car won’t start how did Sam get to work?”
(Puzzled voice) “Sam? Who’s Sam?”
(Mama impatiently) “Sam! Your husband Sam! How did he get to work?”
Long pregnant pause. Then in a small voice the woman says “My husband’s name is Saul”
Another pregnant pause . Then in a trembling voice the woman says:
“Does that mean…you’re… not coming?”
Skillet Pizza Supreme
Ingredients
1 package dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 to 3/4 cup milk
Instructions
Dissolve yeast in warm water in a small bowl; let stand 5 minutes.
Combine 2 cups flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl; stir in yeast mixture and oil. Add enough milk to make a soft dough. Cover and let stand 15 minutes.
Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Knead 5 to 8 times, working in remaining 1/2 cup flour to make a smooth dough.
Pat dough evenly in bottom and halfway up sides of a lightly greased 10-inch cast iron skillet.
Bake at 425 degrees F for 8 minutes.
Spoon sauce over crust.
Top with any toppings desired.
Sprinkle shredded Mozzarella cheese over the top.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until cheese melts.
Such a narcissist
What is the most epic thing anyone has ever done?
Originally Answered: What is the most badass thing anyone has ever done?
What would you do if you are a poor, uneducated farmer and a multi-million dollar company came in and permanently destroyed your land by dumping toxic chemical waste into it?
This amazing David vs Goliath story is from China.
In 2001, the Qinghua Group, a state-owned mining company worth more than $200 million released 20,000 tonnes of chemical waste from a polyvinyl chloride plant into a village called Yushutun that depended entirely on farming.
The company filled a 478-acre pond with liquid waste and destroyed an additional 71 acres of land by dumping calcium carbide onto it.
As you can see, the land was pretty much useless now.
Wang Enlin was one of the farmers in the village who was playing cards with his friends on the night this incident happened.
He approached the courts and they asked him to provide evidence of the pollution unleashed by the company. This perplexed Wang. He didn’t know which law the company violated and nor did he or anyone he knew in the village have the means to hire a lawyer tough enough to go against a state-owned company like Qinghua.
“I knew I was in the right, but I did not know what law the other party had broken or whether or not there was evidence.”[1]
So what does he do?
He starts a 16-year long journey of studying the law all by himself.
Being only educated for a sum total of three years in his life and dropping out thereafter, Wang faced a huge challenge.
He did not have enough money to buy the costly tomes that were law books, so he hit the library with a dictionary and began learning. He would initially copy out notes on his hand and would pay the librarian with sacks of corn in return for his services.
In 2007, a law firm, learning about Wang’s endeavor, began giving him legal advice pro bono. Armed with accumulating knowledge of the law, he directed his neighbors and fellow villagers to collect evidence and document it.
When he began frequenting courts with his new found skill and the evidence, he was at first ignored, but he persisted. It took about eight years for the case to finally merit consideration and in early February 2017, the Angangxi District Court of Qiqihar ruled that each of the families in Yushutun village would receive a financial compensation of $111,500.
Unfortunately, as legal battles go, the company was quoted as deciding to file an appeal in a higher court and this may drag out some years, but there isn’t any reason to believe Wang and his people will not succeed.
Even if in a nominal sense, an uneducated village simpleton had brought down a huge organization with all its legal might and its nonpareil team of lawyers to its knees.
What was the moment that made you realize that your childhood was different from other people’s?
Near the end of my sophomore years of high school, when I got my license and began driving myself to my friends’ houses to hang out.
At that point in my life, I had five friends that I hung out with on a regular basis, and about a dozen other people who I knew through those friends. Those dozen were like second-tier friends. We hung out a lot because we happened to be friends with the same person.
Before being able to drive myself to my friends’ houses, I was limited to friends’ houses I could walk to, or convince my parents to drive me to. By the time I turned 16, I’d been in six different friends’ houses that I could recall.
Then, during my first visit to my friend Rick’s house (I had to drive there myself because he lived pretty far away), I realized something: he had a lot of pictures of him, his mom, and his brother in the house, but zero pictures of his father. He’d never said anything about his father, but I always assumed he had one. When we finally talked about it, he said that his father walked out on the family when he and his brother were still young, and his mom never talked about him.
That got me thinking about all of my other friends. Jay’s father was an alcoholic and abused his mom until she divorced him. Emma’s father was actually her step-father, because her real father ran off with a younger woman. Emma’s step-dad was also much older than her mom. Sarah was being raised by a single mother. Aaron’s dad drank and swore a lot, and I’m pretty sure beat his wife. Trey’s dad was super controlling of his wife. (And, a few years later, killed her. He’s currently serving life in prison.) Anthony didn’t know who his dad was. Etc…
It was then that I realized that, of all of my friends, only one of them had a father in their lives who wasn’t an alcoholic, wasn’t abusive, and actually seemed like a nice guy. That was Tom. Tom was an only child and his parents were some of the nicest people you’d ever meet. His mom was a teacher and his dad was a businessman. They were both very active in one of the local churches.
My parents were married before they had me or my sister. They stayed married until my dad died. Both of my parents took an active role in my life as a child. My father never once raised a hand, or even his voice, to my mother. He didn’t drink. He didn’t do drugs. He wasn’t the jealous type. He never cheated on her. He showed her plenty of affection through all of the years of their marriage.
I think a lot of it had to do with the socio-economic class I was raised in. I, like most of my friends (except Tom), was raised in a lower socio-economic class. Poverty takes its toll on marriages. I guess, for a poor kid from the South, I got super lucky when it came to dads. Mine was like the dads you saw in sitcoms back then, while my friends’ dads, if they even had them, were more like the dads in dramas about abusive relationships.
FOUR MINUTES! This new site was online 4 Minutes Before HACKERS went after it
This rebuilt and restored website was online to the world for only 4 minutes before HACKERS tried to break-in! They were caught.
Long-time users of this website will recall that during Thanksgiving of the year 2022 (over a year ago), this site was mercilessly HACKED. It’s layout and functionality were wrecked.
At the time, I didn’t have the money or the ambition to do a full rebuild/restoration, so we jury-rigged-it and got by for a little over a year.
I saved up the money, did the research necessary, and last week, my tech guys began the rebuild.
In the past, the site has “good” security, better than most sites. Yet Hackers were ultimately able to breach that “good” security, got in and did their harm. So for this new rebuild, security was a major — I mean really big — aspect of the rebuild. Enterprise grade security.
Last Friday, this newly rebuilt and restored site went online at 7:24 PM eastern US time.
FOUR MINUTES LATER, the security system was already recording hacking attempts, and blocking IP addresses of malicious users. FOUR MINUTES!
I got alerts from my system about what was going on, and that these certain IP addresses had automatically been blocked, but telling me I should consider adding these IP’s to the PERMANENT BAN list. I did.
Here’s just a small sampling of the IP’s banned, and why:
So it’s going to be a rough ride for me as we proceed in the future. For whatever reason, people with nefarious motives are already trying to break in.
I thought you should know. In fact, it’s important you know.
Doing what I do to bring the TRUTH to the public, has enemies. Those enemies don’t want YOU knowing the truth.
When did you realize that your childhood was not normal?
This is from my childhood in the 1960’s. My Mom and Dad were married in 1946. My sister and I were born in 1959 and 1962, so they were older parents. My dad died when I was 8. My Mom went into a deep depression. She started smoking and drinking a lot. She finally got her driver’s license, and we would drive to the bank to deposit our Social Security survivor’s benefits once a month. Then we would drive to the neighboring big city that sold alcohol. As a 10-year-old kid, I remember going into Snappy’s, getting 4 cases of Lone Star beer and a handle of Canadian Club. I would write the check on my Mom’s checking account, and they would help us load it into the trunk while my Mom sat in the car. I had to get my little sister up in the morning and walk her to school. I would sign her report card, and sign my own. I got very good at forging her signature. I did the grocery shopping, hauling them back on my bike. We ate lots of cheap frozen pizzas and sugary cereal because that is what I liked. It all seemed normal to me. She smoked and drank herself to death when I was 17. When I had a family of my own I worked very hard to give them a normal life. I realized when they were little that my childhood was really messed up and I wanted a better life for them.
Three bulls heard the rancher was bringing another bull onto the ranch.
First Bull: “I’ve been here five years. I’m not giving this new bull any of my 100 cows.”
Second Bull: “I’ve been here three years and have earned my right to 50 cows. I’m keeping all my cows.”
Third Bull: “I’ve only been here a year, and so far, you guys have only let me have 10 cows. I may not be as big as you fellows, but I’m keeping all 10 of my cows.”
Just then an 18-wheeler pulls up in the pasture carrying the biggest bull they’ve ever seen.
At 4,700 pounds, each step he takes strains the steel ramp.
First Bull: “I think I can spare a few cows for our new friend.”
Second Bull: “I actually have too many cows to take care of. I can spare a few. I’m certainly not looking for an argument.”
They look over at the third bull and find him pawing the dirt, shaking his horns and snorting.
First Bull: “Son, don’t be foolish, let him have some of your cows and live to tell about it.”
Third Bull: “Hell, he can have all my cows. I’m just making sure he knows I’m a bull.”
How were black P.O.Ws treated by Nazi Germany?
Generally not well.
Generally speaking, American POWs captured by Germany had it alright. They were not sent to concentration camps and generally received pretty good treatment at the hands of the Germans.
However we are dealing with Nazis here- keep that in mind. 2 factors really decided how an American POW would be treated.
Was he being captured by the SS or the normal German Army (SS bad, Army good)
Was he black or Jewish
If you were Jewish or Black and captured by the SS (or even elements of the Amry) you would be lucky to find yourself in a concentration camp. More likely, you are killed on the spot. If you were white and captured by the Army you’d be sent to a more comfortable imprisonment.
Black soldiers had it bad though- as they were considered Untermensch (sub-human).
I am about to tell you a story that will ruin your day and remind you how evil and demented the SS was.
So you are all familiar with the Ardennes offensive right? Also called the Battle of the Buldge where US forces were surrounded and cut off during the winter and then held out for weeks while the American 3rd Armored division broke through to save them.
Well during this time there were 2 massacres of US troops. The fact we are well aware of them both shows how rare it was for this thing to happen but I digress.
During this battle, 85 American soldiers were captured and executed by elements of the SS. Instead of bringing them to a prison camp the Germans just flat-out shot them all to death. But these men were all white, so they got the mercy of a bullet. This is called the Malmedy Massacre and is very well known.
There is another atrocity long forgotten though, largely because it involved Black US soldiers and not white ones.
During the battle 11 “Colored” G.I’s found themselves out of ammo with only 2 rifles and lost in the woods. They came upon a little house in the middle of nowhere and asked for refuge from the cold.
Inside this house were Belgium Patriots who supported the US. They offered the 11 men shelter and food and warmed them up. The nearby neighbors were not Patriots though and had a son fighting in the SS. They would run to the Germans and inform them Americans were being sheltered nearby.
4 men from the SS would arrive armed to the teeth. The Americans chose not to resist, not wanting any harm to befall those that took them in. They were also lacking the weaponry to fight.
So all 11 Americans surrendered to these SS soldiers and they wouldn’t even get the mercy of a bullet. Their bodies would be found shortly after and US command was shocked by what they found.
I am not going to pull any punches- I want you to understand the level of evil we are dealing with. These men were found with the following injuries.
Their eyes had been gouged out while they were still alive
Fingers were removed and legs were broken
Men were beaten to death with rifle butts
Many men had been run over by vehicles
A few were shot, but not in the head- they were shot in the knees and stomach to inflict maximum suffering
A few men had fractured skulls from having their heads beaten in
Just executing a POW is a war crime but this goes beyond it. The 85 executed at Malmedy were simply shot, perhaps because the Germans lacked the logistics to transport or guard POWs.
These 11 black US G.I’s were brutally and violently tortured and killed for no other reason than they were black. The SS soldiers took joy in their suffering. It’s the brutality that is hard to imagine.
The US would investigate this for years but the killers were never discovered. Maybe they got killed by the eventual onslaught of US forces. Hopefully, they died slowly in a pool of their own shit crying for their mothers who were already dead at the hands of the Red Army in the East.
What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?
How about my high school principal?
Waaaayyy back, early 1970s, everyone arrived at school and was greeted by an announcement to go to homeroom.
Sounds normal, except that we only went to homeroom for things like report cards. Normally our first period class was attendance center, so a sudden announcement of starting the day with homeroom was weird.
Everyone went to homeroom, and there was a lot of wondering what was up – even the teachers seemed puzzled.
The principal then made a strange and rambling speech over the PA system.
It was about the parasites infesting our school.
It turned out that his definition of parasites was students who wore their coats to class, students who sat on the floor, students who held hands with :::gasp::: students of the opposite sex, students who, well, acted like teenagers.
Any student seen doing these things would be suspended for the rest of the day.
It didn’t take long.
By second period, everyone was wearing their coats. Half the school had on pieces of paper that read “I’m a parasite and I’m proud.” Members of the football team (all boys at that time) walked from class to class, holding hands. Any student with a free period was in the core, sitting on the floor around the tables instead of in the library or somewhere else. The Madrigal singers, in full costume ready for a performance, promenaded through the main hall with their hands in position (boy raised, holding girl’s in an “elegant” fashion), but not touching (it looked really stupid). I’m sure there was more, but that’s all I saw.
His policy was rescinded the next day. It’s really hard to suspend 2000 students, and that’s what it would have taken.
Donnie is a baddie
If China is full of the smartest people, why is the US so much more advanced?
I suggest you visit China. It reversed my preconception. I am from Norway, North Europe. A rather modern and advanced society.
On my first visit to the US over 20 years ago, I was surprised at how backward and old fashioned it was. Movies had let me to believe it was the epitome of modern society. I visited several states on the East/South-East. Very backwards digitally. Terrible infrastructure. Unwalkable. Dirty. Hard to find quality restaurants outside of big cities. Dead city centres in medium sized cities.
I went to China a year or two later, and the opposite struck me. It was a highly modern society. Highly digital. Fantastic high-speed infrastructure (that is even better nowadays). Super clean, modern cities. I was mainly in the Jiangsu province that time. Loved it!
I suggest everyone to go and form their own opinions. I really fell in love with Suzhou, not far from Shanghai.
What’s it like to fail because you ignored your gut and followed someone else’s advice instead?
We were drunk. Stupid teenagers thinking that we could make fun of every rule.
“Let’s go to Gabriel’s house and continue the party there!” one of my friends suggested.
“We don’t have a car!” I said.
“I’ll take everyone on the back of my pickup truck! Hop in!” Juan said while starting his truck’s engine.
I immediately hesitated, “I don’t think it’s safe!”
“Aahhh… don’t be a wooze Hector! Come on! Everything will be okay!” Juan said.
“I don’t like the idea!”
Everyone was ready to go, partying, singing, drinking and fooling around.
It was very late at night. I had two options, call my mom to come pick me up or simply go with the flow.
I ignored my gut and followed my friends.
We were balancing ourselves as the truck moved forward. Juan, the truck driver, wasn’t responsible of us sitting — and standing on the back of the pickup.
A quick turn was enough to change the rest of my life. One of my best friends lost balance and was thrown off the back.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” I shouted to the top of my lungs while hitting the rooftop of the pickup.
Juan stopped.
We quickly jumped out of the box to assist my friend. He was bleeding. His head was totally covered with blood and unconscious. He had landed with his head on a yellow speed bump causing him to fracture his head.
We took him to the hospital. Four days later he passed away. He was 16 years old.
To this day, his parents cry every time they see me because I bring memories of their son. I’m always speechless. I can only imagine how I could have prevented this life-changing event for every one of us.
I lacked character.
To answer your question:
Not trusting your instinct, your conscience, your spirit or however you want to call it; will bring terrible regrets that may last a lifetime.
Today, I’m aware of that “small voice” that somehow, I know I shouldn’t ignore anymore.
Yet, it all comes down to character, strength, and courage to stand my ground even when temptation or peer pressure is on.
Have you ever gotten home and found evidence that somebody had been in your home while you were gone?
I had been away for a couple of months diving and arrived home after a long flight. As soon as the taxi pulled into the parking square I noticed that where I once had a solid wooden door to my house I now had plywood sheet. So I immediately knew something was wrong. I got out of the taxi and approached my house where I was met by my neighbours who told me that the previous night, the Police had broken into my house and searched it. Now furious I called the Police and demanded an explanation.
A few minutes later the Police arrived and together we entered my house. Once inside they explained that a few weeks earlier a body had been found on the beach in the North West of the country, and there had been a public appeal to help identify the deceased. Following this appeal my brother (who I have not seen for over 30 years) had called the Police and claimed the body was me. He had even been taken to identify the body. With this information the Police arrived at my address and spoke to my neighbours who confirmed that they had not seen me for a number of weeks. This reinforced their incorrect assumptions that the body was mine, and as it was considered a suspicious death, they decided to break into my house and examine it, in case there were any clues that could help them solve the death.
The body found on the beach was later identified.
So yes there had been someone in my house, the Police, it wasn’t a pleasant feeling knowing that they had been through all of my possessions, and then I was left with a bill for a replacement door, as damage caused by Police in the execution of their duty, is apparently excluded from house insurance.
China has announced countermeasures against a US company and two individuals that have long collected sensitive information to provide so-called evidence for illegal sanctions by the US, after the US newly added two Chinese officials and three Chinese companies onto a sanction list citing so-called human rights concerns.
US intelligence data company Kharon and Edmund Xu, director of investigations of Kharon and Nicole Morgret, a former researcher from Center for Advanced Defense Studies, will be prohibited from entering China (including China’s mainland, the Hong Kong SAR and the Macau SAR), said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Tuesday.
China will freeze the property of Kharon and the two persons in China, including their movable and immovable property, and prohibit organizations and individuals in China from transactions and cooperation with them.
In December, US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced to sanction two Chinese officials for alleged link to human rights abuse. Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security added three more Chinese companies to the so-called “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” (UFLPA) blacklist.
In response, Mao said that the US once again fabricated and spread false narratives about China’s Xinjiang region, imposed illegal sanctions on Chinese officials and companies under the pretext of so-called human rights issues in the region, seriously interfering in China’s internal affairs, seriously violating international law and basic norms of international relations, seriously tarnishing China’s image, and seriously damaging the legitimate rights and interests of relevant Chinese officials and companies.
China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this and has made solemn representations to the US, Mao said, urging the US to stop slandering and smearing China, revoke the illegal unilateral sanctions against Chinese officials and companies, and stop implementing erroneous bills such as the so-called UFLPA.
If the US refuses to change course, China will not flinch and will respond in kind, the spokesperson said.
The Day After (1983) & ABC News Viewpoint original WPVI-TV 6ABC Broadcast 11-20-1983
Full movie.
This was the movie that forced President Regan to talk with the Soviet Union to stop the ramp up towards world war 3. Must watch.
When I was living at “Father Pete’s””monastery” I shared my experience with about twenty other men all dealing with a range of issues.
One was a fellow with an addictive personality, and he just had to get high.
And you know, we couldn’t figure out why all of our cans of oven de-greaser kept on running out. One month we bought a case of 12, and they were all used up. Now, the guy in charge of cleaning the oven, claimed that he was a big rigorous in cleaning the ovens and such.
But twelve cans?
Nah. Far too unusual.
Well, for certain, he was using the cans to get high. He was spraying the de-greaser in toilet paper and huffing it away all night in his room.
This was the first time that I ever was exposed to a “huffer”.
Using him as an example; I can only conclude that the chemicals wrecked his brain and turned him into a simpleton; a town idiot.No kidding. He was really having trouble with all sorts of simple tasks. Like, for instance, tying his shoelaces.
But, you know, there were other changes as well. It also gave him this sense of superiority in a manic, just about disgusting manner. He was manic all the time. That that was nuts. My ex-wife had bouts on manic-depressive personality, and I despised them.
And of course, his day to day routines started to suffer. Including hygiene. Brushing the teeth. Taking a shower. Wiping your ass when you took a dump. Stuff like that.
Don’t huff.
Watch out for your loved ones as well. Huffing is something that he picked up when he was 14 and continued until when I met him at 45 years of age.
Anyways… Yeah….We kicked him out.
He was toxic to the community.
We were willing and wanting to help those that needed help, but some people took up too high a percentage of our limited time and resources, all the while not learning from the environment that we provided.
Ah. It's a fine line that we needed to set forth for all of us.
Do not be the victim of a de-greasing Jones. I’ll tell you what.
Today…
What is something unrealistic that you often see in movies that annoys the hell out of you?
Sorry ladies but it needs to be said:
The heroine, who is 5′4″ and 100 pounds soaking wet (usually wearing heels) faces off against a 6′4″ bad guy weighing in at 220+ pounds. She then proceeds to beat the living sh** out of him while absorbing everything he can throw at her.
First: In real life when that baddy hits her she would not get back up. Period. People (men and women) have died by being punched by men that size. Women’s bodies cannot absorb abuse like that.
Second: She would not have the strength to actually hurt him. It would take a miracle round house to the head for her to be able to do damage. But in Hollywood her tiny little fists on tiny little arms do crushing damage that incapacitate him.
Am I being sexist? Here is a quote from a female MMA fighter (Tamikka Brents) that fought a ‘transgender’ fighter. Remember, these two people were in the same weight class:
“I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night. I can’t answer whether it’s because she was born a man or not, because I’m not a doctor,” she stated. “I can only say, I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life, and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right. ”
Tamikka had her eye socket broken in that fight; a fight that was in a controlled environment while wearing padded gloves.
Here is another quote from Ronda Rousey’s mother about her daughter fighting a man. Ronda’s mother is a Judo Black belt and former world champion:
“That’s a stupid idea,” she said. “Seriously, that’s a stupid idea. I’m as much a feminist as anyone but the fact is that biologically, there’s a difference between men and women. Hello, duh. A woman who is 135 pounds and a man who is 135 pounds are not physically equal.”
The sad thing is this truth is NEW to the modern gals of today
Why did my top performing employee quit after write up?
I was a senior engineer for the United States home office for the largest Japanese construction company operating in the United States. Once, while working with the Japanese vice president closing a bid, he started saying to me and anyone else in earshot, “I don’t know how to do this, I do not know what to do.” I put my hand on his shoulder, asked him to write down the total of the bid he wanted to submit and I would back-figure the schedule of values and electronically file the bid for a large tire manufacturing facility.
All done, he’s good, we were good.
Next day, I get a scheduled meeting with Human Recourses. Just the HR director and her administrative assistant. I was written up for disrespect to my supervisor, the VP, and for insubordination. I was told I was supposed to stay out of the bid closing and if the VP didn’t finish, it was his desire to not submit. This skullduggery and in-depth deconstruction into my salvaging the bid went on for 45-minutes.
I asked the VP if he had a problem and told him if I disrespected him, I was sorry. He told me he very much approached the help and that I was a good employee. My manager was surprised I was written up a 2nd time for interfering with operations and disrespect, but said he couldn’t do anything about it and to just watch it.
I sat in the lounge area to simmer down. At that time I got a call from a competitor inviting me to dinner and a talk to about my taking over estimating for them. I asked “Is this a job offer” and they said “Yes.” I immediately turned in my notice and signed out, went to the meeting as was working for the new employer the next morning.
Epilog: the Japanese company got the job I closed out. They called me the next week and told me I need to be part of the team meeting with the client in Mississippi the next week. I reminded them that I was no longer an employee, thank you for considering me and if he had any questions, consult the head of HR. The HR director called me in a matter of minutes and told me she was attempting to further my abilities and help me integrate into the Japanese frame of mind, not trying to discourage me and was sorry I took it that way. I did thank her and hung up. “Bitch.”
The truth about Ukraine
And also the truth about Taiwan.
A cop pulled me over for speeding and asked if he could search my car. When I said no, he said that it’s qualified as a probable cause and pulled me out of the car to search it. Is that actually legal?
This has been heavily litigated for decades. However, we have a pretty definitive answer.
Refusal to consent to a search cannot be used as probable cause, or else the idea of consent has no value. It creates a situation where you really have no choice; you can consent, and police can perform the search, or you can refuse to consent and the police can declare that reason for them to search despite your refusal. Either way, they’re getting to search, making the ‘choice’ little more than an illusion, a farce.
Now, if they have probable cause beforehand, that’s different. I know someone who spent three nights in jail after refusing a search of a rental car. Turns out the last person had basically kept the car a few days longer than they had rented it, and the rental company had followed their standard procedure and declared it stolen. When it was returned and fees paid by the renter, they had put it back into rotation without alerting the police that the vehicle had returned, and the car showed up as stolen in a routine traffic stop. Despite having a rental contract and nothing illegal in the car, the individual was arrested until the case was dismissed when first it went before a judge.
If you can’t refuse a search without it basically having the same impact as consenting to the search, then the Fourth Amendment has no meaning whatsoever.
Why have Chinese critics of the Chinese Communist Party never come together to offer a social and political platform for how they think China should be governed?
There are people who are interested in criticizing the existence of the CCP, and then there are people interested in providing better policies than the CCP.
The former typically end up abroad as political dissidents applying for asylum. It’s a solution that makes everyone happy. The dissident gets to bitch and moan in peace, the CCP doesn’t have to put up with people that will never be happy, the common folk get to have discussions about policy rather than stupid discussions on whether or not the CCP is evil, and the country taking them in get to generate domestic propoganda by claiming to be inclusive, democratic, a good place to live, etc, even if they are hosting a blithering idiot on taxpayer’s dime.
If you are interested in arguing over policies, it is very easy to persuade the government to give you a minor village-level position so that you can prove your mettle. Typically if you graduate from a decent university, there are programs where you can get parachuted directly to a village advisor position (of roughly equal status as the mayor). If you perform well, you will get promoted to the town level, and then small cities, etc. I graduated from Tsinghua and know quite a few people who went on such a path.
What’s interesting is that if you come from a decent university, lower level government officials will go out of their way to ask you for your opinion on local policies, even if you’re not actually a Chinese citizen and don’t have political rights. I was an engineering student operating in some of the remote parts of China, where government drinking water policy failures led to the breakdown of local water treatment systems. I was wandering around in rural Shanxi with a German exchange student, taking water samples and building temporary filters to combat local arsenic pollution in the absence of government intervention. I was curious as to why the policy was a failure, so I paid a visit to the town hall and found the mayor. The conversation went something like this:
Mayor: This is a small town, and I’ve never seen you before. And is that a foreigner behind you??? Where are you from?
Me: Yes, he’s German. We’re from Tsinghua (shows him school ID card). We’re interested in when that water treatment station on the east side of the village was built, why it fell into disuse, and what the villagers are drinking right now.
Mayor: Hey, Dog Testicles! We have some visitors and this is your job!
It turned out “Dog Testicles” was the nickname for the bureaucrat in charge of the village waterworks. The mayor pours us all a cup of tea while Mr. Dog Testicles spends an hour or so describing the construction process of the station, the funding, when it broke down, why the villagers couldn’t come up with enough money to fund its repairs and maintenance, etc. He then asked us what we think they should do.
Me: I dunno, maybe don’t ask a bunch of flat busted farmers to fund water treatment? It’s obvious they can’t pay. The local infrastructure policy was really damn stupid. We’ve been running around all over the area building filters to cover for that mistake.
Dog Testicles: Aha, so you’re the ones building filters in these villages? We found those filters on our own surveys. You kmow that selling filters without a proper license is a criminal offense, right?
Me: Yeah, but I wouldn’t be working my ass off if it weren’t for these stupid policies. You can go ahead and try to arrest me if you’d like.
Mayor: Actually, I think you have a point even though you’re breaking the law. We’ll just ask the police to… look the other direction and let you build those filters. Just make sure those villagers stop using the filters once we get the new treatment systems up and running next summer. Have you considered joining the Party and working at the village level? Lots of university students doing that nowadays. We could use people like you.
Me: I look Chinese but I’m an American citizen.
Mayor: Ah, OK. Could you and the German guy take a photo with us?
Me: Why? Have you never seen a foreigner around these parts before?
Mayor: Well, having these kinds of discussions with university students and asking them for their opinions is very helpful in our performance evaluations. It helps us get raises and promotions. Some… proof… would be useful. So a photo, please?
Basically, if you’re the motivated and well-educated vigilante type who wants to see change and you’re happy with working your ass off to see that happen, the Party is usually happy to work with you as long as you tell them what you’re doing. Very, very few people would go up against the CCP to make changes happen when they’re nice and polite and willing to talk about whether they can help you reach your goal.
I’ve been playing with text to pictures
The theme is cats, with pretty woman, Baroque art style
What do you guys think about my work?
Did you develop any traits from being homeless that you haven’t been able to shake?
Several actually.
I still eat very little. I don’t get hunger pains that often. I don’t regard it as a big deal; as I know, homelessness can happen again. It can happen to anyone.
I still sleep in my clothes and often my shoes. I feel safer, better prepared for emergencies and it’s habit.
I don’t use blankets much. When I do it’s usually as a pillow and more for emotional comfort than physical comfort.
I still layer clothes when it’s colder outside despite being indoors more. I don’t use heat much due to habit and due to becoming more accustomed to the lack of it while homeless.
When I am cold, I often use the warmth left lingering from the oven just after cooking to warm up; rather than turn up the heat. I’m no longer used to having heat at my finger-tips by adjusting a thermostat. Not intentional just what I’ve grown accustomed to. And while homeless cooking often doubled as warm-up time.
I don’t use much space. I’ve gotten accustomed to smaller living spaces and minimalist living. I don’t try to do it. I’ve just noticed I do.
I don’t buy a whole lot of unnecessary items. I was never real materialistic; however, I am even less so now.
I still tend to hold my bodily functions for lengthy time periods; from years of not having accessible bathroom facilities.
I still eat more ready to eat foods like sunflower seeds and pistachios.
I still keep to myself a lot. Even more than I did while homeless.
Partially due to a lack of trust in people overall.
Mainly, because I am so used to being a non-person or invisible to most people’s eyes that I no longer have a sense of belonging.
I also still have what some would call “irrational fear” of being harassed or kicked out of public places. It isn’t so irrational if you’ve experienced homelessness.
I am amazed and disgusted at how all of a sudden I am accepted just due to being homed. Nothing’s changed except that I am adequately homed. I always took care to stay clean and I still buy the cheaper items, and in the beginning went daily…but somehow now it’s acceptable. Which gives me less of a desire to be in public spaces when a person’s worth can be so dependent upon having a roof over your head.
I still live mainly out of a backpack or rolling suitcase. Habit, and it helps prioritize the most important stuff and to be prepared just in case.
I still carry crazy things like sewing needles, nail clippers, scissors, flint, emergency blankets and other such items in my purse and car. Never know when you’ll need them.
I sleep pretty light.
I still feel pretty guilty for having access to food, shelter, bathroom, and other basic needs knowing so many are going without. I guess it’s kind of like survivors guilt. I doubt I’ll ever shake that.
I appreciate the basic and simple things far more than things other people value. Being able to cook, having running water, a toilet, a hot shower, and a bed are things worth celebrating. That most find to be odd things to be so happy about. Or they view them as simply mundane things that everyone has. Truth be told that are many who don’t have these things that so many take for granted.
I learned a lot while I was homeless.
How would it affect China if universities in the West cut ties and stopped accepting funding from China?
Some Big Universities like Harvard, Stanford or Universities in the “Ivy League” have little to zero funds from China. In fact these Universities have a combined total of $ 85 Billion – $ 115 Billion of Funding from Ex Alumni, Americans and US Industries alone. Also included is the MIT or Texas A& M or Caltech etc.
However there are over 187 Colleges and Universities that are barely funded for tuition which need money badly. The Biggest Industries always run to Harvard or MIT without realizing that $ 55 Billion is not really that much of a difference from $ 52 Billion – whereas $ 100 Million up from $ 4 Million is a Huge Change.
In 2018 – China funded and invested $ 3.10 Billion in US Universities and Canadian Universities (Not top tier – The Middle tier), especially funding Laser Related works in association with Top Universities in China like Tong Ji. Over 39000 Research Associates, Professors and US Industries are involved in this Funding and unlike India – No Govt can order this funding to be cut off. You need an Government Act and if you do – there are 10000 Lawyers – American Lawyers who will find loopholes around the Act and Law.
Simple Example:-
The Federal Govt passed a law on US Banks to forbid lending to Chinese Clients based on specific criteria.
What do you think happened?
The US Bank – simply purchased a Near Bankrupt Bank in Maldives or Mauritius or Seychelles and began to route all China business through those banks.
And who suggested it?
US Lawyers in return for Millions of Dollars of PRC Money as fees.
In the end – Thats all that matters – MONEY
Answer is- The Funding simply wont be cut off. It will be re-routed in one way or another and Authorities will turn a blind eye to this re-routing because in the end – Business is Business.
Crazier than me
What is something unrealistic that you often see in movies that annoys the hell out of you?
When I was sixteen my step-brother had a 9mm handgun that he kept in a case in his bedroom. One day, while we had several people visiting from out of state, a friend of ours found the weapon. My step-brother and I, and my cousin, discovered this friend sitting alone in the bedroom, gun in hand. My step-brother took the gun, removed the magazine and handed it back, unaware that our friend had already chambered a round. Our friend pulled the trigger.
Firing a gun indoors, or in confined spaces, is NOT accurately portrayed in movies. The blast alone is fairly debilitating. I was standing in front of the weapon when it discharged and (effectively) went temporarily deaf and blind.
Both senses returned gradually. My ears were ringing, sounds were muted, yellow and purple specks of light distorted my vision. I was disoriented. I had watched the kid pull the trigger and it still took me a couple seconds, after my hearing and vision cleared up, to piece together what had happened. I turned around to find my cousin, who was standing directly behind me, in shock. He looked down slowly, lifted his shorts, saw the bullet hole in his leg and proceeded to freak the freak out. He screamed at the top of his lungs, grabbed his leg and ran like hell before any of us could do anything.
In the movies when someone fires a gun indoors they’re never affected by the sound, and, as I’ve learned, they absolutely would be.
In case you’re interested, my cousin was a bit of a husky kid back then. The bullet slipped around the fat, missed everything important and blew out the back of his leg. Apparently there’s a huge scar. I haven’t talked to him since then. I think he’s over us.
Carne Adovada
This is a wonderful filling for burritos or simply great served over rice with the resulting gravy. For better flavor, prepare a day ahead.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon shortening
4 garlic cloves, minced
8 ounces (about 25) whole dried New Mexican red chile pods
4 cups warm water
2 tablespoons diced yellow onion
1 tablespoon crushed chile pequin
1 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/2 teaspoon crumbled dried Mexican oregano
3 pounds thick boneless shoulder pork chops
Instructions
Heat shortening in a Dutch oven, and sauté garlic until browned.
Remove the seeds and stems from the chile pods. Rinse chiles in large mixing bowl and drain.
Place moistened chiles on baking sheet and toast carefully in the oven for 5 minutes. They do not need to be completely dried out.
Remove from the oven then let cool.
Add half of the chiles into a blender, and puree with 2 cups warm water. Pour into Dutch oven with previously browned garlic and repeat with the other half of the chiles.
Add the remaining ingredients to the chile (garlic salt, oregano, onion, chile pequin)and let boil on a medium-high heat for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. The sauce will thicken but should remain a little soupy.
Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.
Remove the fat from the pork and cut the meat into 3/4 inch cubes. Stir pork into the chile sauce and let marinate overnight in the refrigerator.
The following day, heat oven to 300 degrees F. Use butter to coat large baking dish, so it doesn’t stick.
Add the marinated carne adovada with sauce into baking dish. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 3 hours, stirring once at an hour and a half into baking. At 2 1/2 hours, remove foil (to thicken sauce).
Have you ever had to tell an employee that their attire was inappropriate?
I was working a security job for a friend one winter. Not hard work, but long cold hours outside at temps that regularly hit negative 30C. We were offered a bonus for staying the whole term. And the boss would compound the bonus of people who quit or were fired, so it was split evenly between those who stayed.
We were guarding the building that was a Soundstage, and they didn’t want prop hunters, or stalkers getting into the building. I got to meet a few “famous people” and get fed so much good food.
5 men 3 women were highered to work the site. The three women and one of the men, were dressed for fashion not warmth. And were often miserable, and often complained. And spent a lot of time inside the building we were guarding. I made some pointed hints about dressing warmly, but was rudely brushed off.
I grew up at temps like that and dressed to keep warm. Underwear, thermal layer, sweater or hoodie, insulated jeans, double layer soviet era snow-pants, a SnowGoose Snow Mantra Parka, and a pair of bear hide gauntlets.
The boss asked me why the 4 were always going into the building to warm up. Apparently he had gotten complaints that they were taking advantage of the workers inside asking for favors, hot drinks, or to play music.
And I told him “The skin tight pants, and short fashion jackets. And they won’t wear hats. Or proper mitts. Not little pink or purple cotton gloves, mitts.” I didn’t know that one of the women had been listening from behind a closed door.
I got supreme and royal hell from the 4 of them. I shouldn’t have been criticizing their choice in clothes. How they look is important to them, and how dare I tell them otherwise.
I started laughing and walked out of the room to go see my friend. The next shift there were 2 new women, and 2 new men, and they were dressed for the weather. And I got one fat bonus.
The Real Reason They Want to Ban TikTok
What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?
I was at a cash and carry stocking up for our shop. By the checkout they stacked up lots of items that had been reduced as they were close to the best before date.
This one time, there was boxes of crisps (chips for our American friends) that had been reduced to £2 a box. They also had an offer on that I you buy 2 boxes you get the 3rd free.
Whoever had set up the POS system screwed up. The box of crisp were normally around £10 a box. So, as they scanned the barcode and then manually reduced it to £2, on the 3rd box it then automatically applied the offer of 3 for two. Instead of taking off £2. It took off £10.
The upshot was that we were getting paid £4 for 3 boxes of crisp.
So like every other upstanding citizen, I immediately went back in the cash and carry, picked up 3 more boxes of crisp along with a few other bits so the mistake went un noticed.
I spent the next few hours in and out, going to a difrent checkout each time. I think I ended up with about 60 boxes of crisps and a £4 discount off the cost of each trip Mostly bread and sandwich fillers.
We gave most of the crisps away to the homeless people in our area and made a van load of sandwiches and cans of pepsi from our ill gotten gains to go with the crisps…
Nobody went hungry that day…
Are Americans aware that Russia and China doesn’t need to lift a finger to destroy USA since Americans are doing good job doing it in their own? Asking as an Australian.
Of course not. The Americans are totally clueless.
They’ve been indoctrinated by their own government.
They’re insular and ignorant of the world outside their country.
They do not know that life can be better than what they have in America. Freedom from gun violence. Freedom from homelessness. Freedom from medical bankruptcy. Freedom from systemic racism (“I can’t breathe”). Freedom from opioid addiction. Freedom from mass incarceration. Freedom from crumbling infrastructure. Freedom from crushing debt, both national and private. Freedom from political turmoil (e.g., January 6, 2021). There is no end to America’s problems.
This is as real as it gets
Is this the end of the United States as a global superpower?
The “end of the road” has been reached.
By the end of this month; May 2024, the United States interest on it’s debt will exceed it’s income. Which means that it cannot pay its debtors.
The United States is BANKRUPT.
The United States is no longer the leading global superpower. Nor, is it still a superpower at all. It is a broken nation in arrears. Oh, It still remains formidable in certain specific areas, but truthfully the nation has run it’s course, and the sunset of it’s greatness is but a memory that lingers.
…
Today, the nations of the world are galloping for the exits. They are looking for ways to prevent their national collapse when the BIG BLACK HOLE makes that huge sucking sound. They do not want to be dragged in with the sinking of the United States demise.
They are distancing themselves from the USD.
The USD, which since the 1960’s has been a Ponzi scheme of unimaginable proportions.
The other nations are forging new alliances, many of which are hidden and “under the table”.
The weakest are hunkering down in a survival crouch. The stronger nations are being more vocal, and those that can are giving the West “the boot” and kicking their paramilitaries out of their nations.
Alliances are being forged and long-time Geo-Political wonks are stunned by the rapidity of change and aggressive nature of the participants.
The UN has been shown to be nothing more than an instrument for American policy.
A replacement for UN, just met last week (early May 2024) with over 100 nations in participation at the 12th International Security Summit.
Oh, so much for the strong “leadership” role of the United States on the global stage. It is openly ridiculed, and despised throughout the world.
…
The United States as an entity includes it’s proxy nations; those slaves that are to be sacrificed on the alter of “democracy” and “freedom”.
When a Western “leader”, dressed in attire that will cost their average citizen a half a year earnings to acquire, talks about “freedom” and “democracy”, the rest of the world roll their eyes. The delusion is strong in the West. Once, the defining characteristic of Americans was it’s insular ignorance, but it is now defined by it’s harsh arrogance and sneer of contempt.
It’s over.
It is just that the collective West is unaware of it.
…
There is a question concerning the final “gasps of breath” of the dying behemoth; will it fade away into the deep black, or will it explode in a brief but stunning supernova? No one really knows. But I can tell you that it is a mystery that will be answered in our collective lifetimes.
So yes.
The United States as a global superpower is over.
…
The mail is still being delivered. The “leaders” are still throwing money around all over the world. The flag still flutters in the breeze, and people are still talking about the next election as if it will change the ultimate trajectory that the United States is rushing toward.
But what is not being said is the truth…
…those that have the means…
… are starting their self-preservation routines…
… hoarding food, batting down the hatches, and covering their asses.
All the time doing so in upmost secrecy.
The Iskander-M missile system: an equal to nuclear weapons
Text to image, playing around.
Theme is “moonrise kingdom”.
Why do so many people leave McKinsey after 2-4 years if the pay and benefits are excellent?
Working for a company like that is a great opportunity to develop and push yourself to your limits professionally. But in order to enjoy money, you need to be able to spend it. And believe me, with umpteen hour work days, your most common purchases will be overpriced sandwiches, energy drinks/coffe/freshly squeezed juice and suits, and after a 16-hour day, it makes surprisingly little difference if your bed is in a tiny apartment or giant mansion. The luxury car is also of dubious utility, since your and your clients’ offices are in the center and getting there by public transport or just getting an apartment within walking distance is often preferrable to being stuck in traffic in a Tesla or BMW.
And you are sacrificing a lot – if you want to have a normal relationship, children… it’s tough IMO to combine that with working such long hours long-term. So for many people it’s a good opportunity in the short-mid term, but only some can do it long-term.
Anyhow, I hear the millenials are giving consulting firms hell on the work-life balance issue.
Jerome Funeral Hot Dish
Jerome is a ghost town which clings to the side of Cleopatra Hill on Mingus Mountain near Cottonwood, Arizona. It is the home of the Douglas Mining Museum. This is an interesting recipe from the days when artistic “hippies” revived this ghost town.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
1 (28 ounce) can pork and beans
1 (12 ounce) can corned beef
1 large onion, diced fine
1 bell pepper, diced fine
Instructions
Mix all ingredients.
Put into a 13 x 9 inch baking dish and heat for 25 to 35 minutes at 350 degrees F.
Why Everyone Sees Machine Elves When Tripping on DMT | Andrew Gallimore
Was medieval Europe more advanced than the Roman Empire?
In almost every way, except two.
Sanitation. The Romans famously built aqueducts (many of which survive today because of the quality of engineering. They bathed and had toilets in which poo was flushed away by running water. Proper sewers carried away sewage and waste water.
Medicine. In particular surgery. Gladiators were valuable property and were more often repaired rather than discarded. This expertise also contributed to the survival of soldiers and added to morale, as prompt removal from the battle and treatment meant that wounds were less often fatal. They had pain relief and anaesthesia which enabled better surgery as well as reducing the fear of the patient. If you needed such treatment you would have been generally better off with a Roman military surgeon than any mediaeval one. Operations included the removal of cataracts from the eye.
They were relatively hygienic, but had no proper theory of disease. Thus in the public baths people with diseases bathed at a different time from the general public. Unfortunately, they had the earliest bath.
Gen-Z
We are doomed.
What is the psychology behind addiction?
Take a second, shut your eyes.
You’re going to imagine a world.
In this world, you live in solitary confinement, contained in a small, metal prison.
Every day, you’re brought food and water and your cell is cleaned.
This is all you’ve ever known. Your world never changes.
Until one day, you’re moved to a new prison.
Some man in a white coat puts an IV into your arm. In front of you, there’s a lever.
You try pulling it.
You’re injected with heroin. It reaches your bloodstream almost instantly and your brain just seconds after. It’s almost blissful.
Do you press it again?
This was the life of dozens of rats.
Did they pull the lever?
Of course they did.
Over and over again.
They’d overdose. They’d die.
Because for them, that brief high was the best thing they’d ever known.
Psychologists and politicians were in simultaneous uproar. Drugs were evil and irresistibly addictive.
Only, rats, like humans, aren’t solitary creatures.
So, what would happen if they changed the circumstances. Sure, a prisoner would give into mind-numbing drugs, but would the average person? Would a happy person?
That’s how the rat park was built.
Researchers put rats together in a comfortable setting. They threw in running wheels and wood chips and let them live a good life.
Naptime and recess
Just hanging out.
There are always some who prefer the rat race.
These rats had access to drugs, just like the first set.
The results?
The dotted lines are the park rats, the complete lines are the caged ones.
And even though it would be beyond unethical to run the same experiments on humans, there’s a similar real life example.
Bruce Alexander, the man behind the experiments, explains:
The English colonial empire overran hundreds of native tribal groups in Western Canada in the 18th and 19th century.
The native people were moved off expansive tribal lands onto very small reserves, the basis of their cultures.
Their children were taken from their parents and sent off to “residential schools” to be taught the white man’s culture so they could be assimilated.
They were forbidden to speak their native languages and found themselves strangers in their own communities when they finally came home.
Before this point, Mental illness, personal betrayals, and epidemic diseases occasionally occurred in pre-colonial tribes.
Basically, native people had all the problems of their English colonizers except one.
There was so little addiction that it is very difficult to prove from written and oral histories that it existed at all.
But once the native people were colonized alcoholism became close to universal.
There were entire reserves where virtually every teenager and adult was either an alcohol or drug addict or “on the wagon”.
The drug only becomes irresistible when the opportunity for normal social existence is destroyed.
China LAUNCHED Latest Z-10ME Attack Helicopter & SHOCKED Everyone
Luau Pork Teriyaki
Also known as kalua pig or Luau pork, kalua pulled pork is a staple at Hawaiian luaus. They carry on the tradition of cooking a whole pig in an underground oven filled with hot stones. The pig is generously salted and wrapped in banana leaves then lowered into the ground to smoke all day. This slow cooker method also requires all day to cook. You’ll want to plan ahead because to get that divine tenderness you’ll want the pork to cook for at least 16 hours. For more delicate juicy pork recipes try my carnitas, this Mississippi pork, or my sweet pulled pork!
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds lean, boneless pork
1 cup pineapple, sliced, in syrup
1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
1/4 green onion, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 garlic powder
1 cup raw rice
Instructions
Cut pork into slices about 1/4 inch thick.
Drain pineapple, reserving all syrup.
Blend syrup, teriyaki sauce, green onions, ginger and garlic powder. Pour over pork and pineapple.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Meanwhile, cook rice according to package directions and prepare grill.
Remove pork from marinade and grill about 5 inches from hot coals for about 5 minutes on each side or until completely cooked.
Pour pineapple and remaining marinade into large skillet. Bring to a boil.
Remove from heat and serve pork with sauce and pineapple over rice.
What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?
Oh boy. I worked 12 years in wafer fabrication for an international electronics company. A fab, as it affectionately known, is a clean room. The smallest smudge of dust will kill a computer chip. To enter, we had to go through an air shower to blow any dust off us. And we had to wear a bunny suit.
A bunny suit isn’t remotely connected to Playboy. It is a lint free coverall that covers head to toe. The head is covered by kind of a cloth helmet, a surgeon’s mask over the nose and mouth, gloves, and shoes which are worn only in the fab. This suit is worn over your street clothes.
Sorry to be so lengthy but it’s important. If you have to go to the restroom, a person must exit the clean room to the changing room. Take off shoes, headcovering, gloves. coverall. Stash in locker. Put on your shoes that are worn only within the building. ( you put these on when you entered from outside, street shoes were in a little locker).
So our boss decided we were taking too much time on bathroom breaks (oh yeah, we worked 12-hr graveyard shifts, 6 to 6). Our team was about 2/3rds female and well, if you gotta go, you gotta go. Take suit off, maybe go to your big locker to get lady supplies if needed, go to restroom, return to changing room, suit up, air shower and back to work. And now we gotta go to see the boss to let him know I’ve gotta pee, real bad.
It all lasted two days. Julie went in one evening, looked at him, and said, it’s the first day of my period and bleeding like a stuck hog and I gotta change my tampon and pad. And pee.
TMI, boss?
Crippled by…
The forever “footprint”.
What was the most blatant scam a customer has ever failed to get away with?
I was an assistant manager at a large chain book store. One day, an older, well-dressed man came into the store. I watched him walk to the medical book section, pull a text book (I don’t remember the exact value but it was around $150) off the shelf and walk up to the cash registers. He then explained to the associate that he had purchased the book the week prior, it was the wrong book, and he wanted a refund. She asked for the receipt, which he didn’t have, so she told him that she would have to contact her manager (me).
I came up to the counter and politely asked the customer what he needed help with. Keep in mind that I watched him take the book off the shelf, so I knew that he was scamming us. I asked him at which of our stores he had bought the book. He said that it was ours and acted surprised that I didn’t recognize him because, “I am a very regular customer and, in fact, you rang me up!” Our system allowed us to search the sale history of every book in our inventory, so I looked it up and showed him that the last sale of that particular book was more than one year ago, and the most recent sale in our region was more than three months prior, at a store 250 miles away. At this point, he became rather irate and asked me if I was calling him a liar. I responded that no, but maybe he was mistaken and had purchased the book from one of our competitors. Again, he started yelling at me and demanded that I pull up the security footage from the week before to prove that he had, indeed, purchased the book. I responded with, “Okay, and while we’re at it, I’ll pull up the footage from ten minutes ago that clearly shows you taking the book off the shelf and bringing it the register. Then, we can call the police and see what they want to do.” He threw the book on the floor and ran out the door.
We didn’t have security cameras in the store.
What’s a nice thing you did for someone but backfired immensely?
Before I had a truck, I borrowed my friends truck to move to a different city. I put 2000 km on it and I thought I would do an oil change, fill up with gas, and all the fluids before I returned it to him, with a gift certificate to a nice restaurant and a bottle of wine.
I told him what I had done, and I had messed up. He was using some super expensive synthetic oil and I had just used a good grade of regular oil. I told him to drive it until he needed an oil change, and I would pay for his synthetic oil change as well. However he was worried that switching between regular oil and synthetic would cause problems, so he insisted on changing the oil that very day, so that it wasn’t driven with regular oil.
He had plans for the afternoon, and spending an hour at the quick oil change place, messed things up.
I doubt driving on regular oil would have caused a problem, but its his truck, and I messed up by thinking I was going to surprise him with something extra.
Why Ancient People Didn’t See the Color Blue
What do men find the most unattractive about a woman who drinks?
I am a very moderate drinker. Maybe two or three drinks a week.
Although I have dated and lived with a fair number of women, only one of them was a real drinker. I dated her for a few months.
This woman was a high-functioning alcoholic. She held down a management position in retail, she was never falling-down drunk, and I never saw her throw up or get in a fight.
But man, could she drink. She was a world-class darts player, and she played for drinks. She almost always won. She’d hit a bar at about 10:00, and drink steadily until closing time (1:00 AM then). I’d say that in a typical night she’d have 10 drinks or so.
And then she’d head home, go to bed, and wake up the next morning ready to do it again.
And in answer to the question about what I found most unattractive?
It was that I started drinking more as well.
In fact, I decided to break up with her one Sunday. I had bought a bottle of rum on Friday, and on Sunday night I went to make a drink and discovered that the bottle was empty — I had drunk the whole bottle in three days.
That was not good. A bottle of rum usually lasted me a few months.
And that was the end of that.
The Video That Got Andrew Tate ARRESTED
Hit the Gay wall.
What’s your favorite programming comic strip?
This is just one comic, not a recurring strip.
I’ve seen this thing floating around for years in a variety of forms. I think it’s brilliant, but I have absolutely no idea who the original author was.
And it really sums up what I like about being a lone coder. I get to play all the roles, sometimes even that of end user. 😉
Edit 20190908:
Looks like we have a genuine mystery on our hands. One commenter said he believed the origin was in some IBM documentation from about the time I was busy being born.
Thanks to Richard Smith for providing these two very interesting links:
As a teacher, have you ever had an unforgettable student? What was he/she like?
I have one right now. Writing this anon in case she is on Quora, so I don’t embarrass her 🙂
She came to me when I was working as a math tutor. She was failing Algebra and desperately needed help. It soon became clear that she was not just ignorant of basic math principles, but had some kind of cognitive issue with processing mathematical concepts. Over time I figured out that she had trouble with abstract visualization. She couldn’t envision shapes or “see” how various processes fit together. She couldn’t even look at two angles and see that one was larger than the other. It was the math version of a reading disabliity, and merely explaining material to her wasn’t going to get her past it.
I spent over a month just trying to get the basics across to her. Concepts like “when you multiply a negative times a negative you get a positive” just would not stick…and without those basics, how much algebra can you do? Honestly, there were moments I really despaired, and wondered whether it would even be possible to get her to the point where she could pass the course. And I know she was bereft of an hope. despairing. To her it was utterly confusing and totally overwhelming, and I know that deep inside she had no hope it would ever be otherwise.
But she worked. Even when she didn’t believe it would do any good, she worked, harder than I have ever seen anyone work in my life. No matter how depressed she was on a given day, or how confusing the work was, she always gave it her best. There were days the math went so badly, and she felt so overwhelmed, I sensed that inside she wanted to cry. Some day she was so exhausted from school she could barely add two numbers. But she never gave up.
I have never seen anyone so determined, in my life. And when she passed Algebra (got a B, actually), it was because of that quality in her. I can’t think of any other student I’ve had who would fight what seemed like a losing battle for so long, without ever flagging.
This year she took Geometry. I was dreading it even more than she was, because by then I understood more about how her brain processed math, and the visualization skills required by Geometry just weren’t there. Geometry spoke to the very heart of her cognitive weakness. And….she just passed her SOL test, and it looks like she’ll probably pass the course. I can’t even describe to you what a monumental thing that is. And it was possible only because of her amazing attitude. She just never gives up, no matter how bad it gets.
A girl like that can do anything she puts her mind to, in life.
Totally inspiring.
Shirakawa-go, The Most Beautiful Village in Japan | 4K
Very nice.
Should we Americans allow Australia to be a part of the USA?
“Allow” !?
Honey, you couldn’t pay us to join that disaster.
Australians like our freedom. We like our country schools where the fences are little things an adult could step over, if there’s even a fence at all. We like sending our kids to school and knowing nobody’s going to shoot them in the classroom. We like going shopping and knowing that nobody’s going to shoot us in the shopping centre. We like eating food and knowing no corporation has added poisons and carcinogens to it to make it more shelf-stable or more addicting.
We like being able to collect the rainwater off our own roof and not being told we’re not allowed because our own roof water doesn’t belong to us. We like being allowed to put a vegetable garden in our front yard if we so choose without a HOA walking in and telling us we can’t do that on our own land.
We like owning our own bodies. Our sex education in school is pretty good and we have good access to contraceptives, but if an unwanted pregnancy is going to ruin a student’s career or if a wanted pregnancy goes wrong and looks like it might kill the mother, we don’t have to deal with politicians trying to take away our very basic human freedom to decide how our bodies will and will not be used by others.
We like our freedom to get medical care as needed. Nobody wants cancer or diabetes, nobody wants their baby to be born premature and needing a whole lot of very specialised care just to keep them alive, but being able to get the care we need when we need it really matters to us. We don’t want our employer or an insurance corporation deciding that they don’t approve of that care or they just don’t want to pay for it and thus deciding not to let us have the care we need to stay alive.
We like our kids getting a decent education that doesn’t depend on whether the people in our neighbourhood are rich or poor, and isn’t hostage to the whims of a bunch of religious nutters. We like knowing that our teachers are paid an honest wage and they’re not spending their evenings tending bars or driving Uber just to be able to pay their bills. We like our kids getting a facts-based education that doesn’t pretend anyone’s religious mumbo-jumbo is somehow equal to actual empirical science.
We like going to restaurants and not being obliged to tip. Sure, if the server is really great or if we’ve somehow made extra work for them, it’s sweet to leave them a nice gift, but they’re not depending on tips to pay their bills because they’re already paid an honest wage by their employer.
Most Australians wouldn’t even travel to the US if you paid our airfare. As for letting that failed-state disaster take over our country? Not happening.
Be more honest
What was your most horrible experience with a construction contractor or an architect?
Many years ago a friend introduced me to an Architect.
He needed a job done. It was a big job, a 12 square deck, handrails 2 sets of steps.
I really didn’t need the work and only did it because of my friend.
The job meant I had to stay away from my family for two weeks.
I worked an average of 16 hours everyday in an effort to finish the job early. It was the middle of summer and extremely hot everyday.
The client also worked long hours and came home late.
The job was finished on time . I tabulated the hours and charged him at a reasonable rate.
When I gave him the bill he was indignant and refused to pay the amount.
Not only did I give him a discount on my normal hourly rate I put nothing in for profit, like he would have. He figured that because I spent 14 days building his deck, regardless of the amount of hours I spent, that I was only entitled to an 8 hour pay day.
So I explained to him that I worked at least 16 hours a day.
He said “How do I know that’? His question was very unprofessional considering I gave him his due as a fellow professional and that I am a very honest person. Now I was the one feeling indignant.
I was stunned that he could not understand the concept of what I did considering he is ‘in’ the building business. I called my friend who also tried to reason with him. It was a waste of time.
As I was packing up my tools for a split second I considered putting my electrical saw through his deck. I am glad I didn’t. I learned a valuable lesson after that day about trusting ‘professionals’
Instead of ipads
When in your life did you feel like you dodged a bullet by not getting married?
Not me, my sister. When she was eighteen-nineteen she was pretty serious with this guy. He was nice, intelligent and respectful to our mother; but the dude seemed to have below zero ambition in life. No job, no income, dropped out for reasons I never ascertained, and seemed to live by a philosophy of “if you’re not sleeping on the floor with your leather jacket as a blanket, you’re not true punk-rock.” Polar opposite of my sister.
Some family of his in Minnesota (we lived in California) offered to take them in. God knows why, but my sister was on the verge of leaving everything for a state she’d never been to, to live with people she’d never met, because of love for a guy who’d never shown any indication that he would be seeking gainful employment.
She snapped out of it at the last minute – on her own; nobody had to convince her – and broke up with him. He made the move alone. Apparently he took this really hard; and while to my knowledge he had never been much of a drinker or drug user, he started slamming heroin and she got a phone call about a year later that an overdose had claimed his life.
My sister has a good head on her shoulders. She was devastated, but I never heard her blame herself as some people might. She wished him well, but it wasn’t her responsibility to care for a grown, capable man, and she saw this. He made his choice to live in depression and self-pity. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I can sympathize without excusing. Meanwhile, my sister’s life path brought her to her husband and the two children they have together. It’s sad that her ex couldn’t get his life together and went out like that, but she definitely dodged a bullet.
Advanced Ancient Machinery Discovered in the Queen’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid | Chris Dunn
Pretty interesting.
How easy is it currently to reintegrate overseas Chinese who grew up and spent most of their life abroad?
It depends on a lot of things.
For the near overseas Chinese who live in say Malaysia probably very easily.
For those who live further away? Difficult.
The ease of your reintegration depends entirely on IF you were exposed and picked up Chinese culture when you were young. Myself? As a baby I was given to my grandparents to look after until I was about 6. I absorbed tons of Chinese culture and language. I then visited regularly and kept some of my language skills. But I still grew up in the UK mostly and through osmosis absorbed a lot of their culture and thinking.
My dad grew up here in China and left when he was 16, he’s spent more time in the Netherlands and the UK than here. He can return and fit in with his village clan.
I made a generational seaturtle return.
Here’s the thing though. Neither of us quite fit.
My dad while he was away? His home changed enormously. I remember in the mid 00s standing in the middle of a town and he stood there for a moment. He said when he was a child he used to go fishing and swimming here. The coast was now about 3 miles away.
As such we tend to stick amongst our own groupings.
My dad hangs around a lot with other overseas Chinese who left with him in the 60s. He talks with people here who’ve been here all their lives and finds he hasn’t got all that much in common with them and entirely different life experiences.
Me? Despite this being my 8th year here on a permanent basis? I can count my born here friends on one hand. I’ve got plenty of acquaintances but I’m not sure I could classify them as friends. I find it far easier to talk to and be friendly with overseas born types and that includes Indians, Nepalis and UK born Chinese but not American borns.
It might just be a HK thing, as I was far friendlier with people in the Mainland. So why not move there (again). Well I’ve dug myself a rut already and I’m stuck in it.
But as I’ve written prior, a return isn’t for me (though life wise it worked out well) it’s for those who come after me.
I see my UK nieces and nephews some do ok but they suffer the same identity crises as we did.
History will prove that the Russo-Ukrainian war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were catalysts for paradigmatic changes in the international landscape and the driving force behind the eventual demise of the US-led “liberal international order.”
During the Cold War period after World War II, two “international orders” emerged in the world, namely the “socialist international order” led by the Soviet Union and the so-called “liberal international order” led by the United States. After the end of the Cold War, the “liberal international order” was the only international order in the world. Since then, the United States has continued to use coercion, inducement, and regime change to bring more and more countries into this dominant international order, which has led to many conflicts between the United States and other countries, particularly China and Russia. However, in the past decade or so, the “liberal international order” has increasingly become unviable and unsustainable. The reasons include the fact that more and more countries believe it is an unfair, inequitable, and unreasonable international order catering primarily to the interests of the West and that the United States itself often violates and distorts the “rules of the game” devised by itself.
From a historical perspective, the Russo-Ukrainian war and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are significant game-changing events that would bring about “tectonic changes” in the global political landscape that would, in turn, lead to the complete collapse of the “liberal international order” in different ways.
First, they verify that the United Nations, as the linchpin of the “liberal international order,” can no longer serve as an organisation for maintaining world peace and international order under the deliberate neglect, defiance, and disruption of the United States. The United Nations cannot act to avoid and end the Russo-Ukrainian war. Moreover, the United States blatantly vetoed most countries in the United Nations’ call for a ceasefire in Gaza. When the United Nations becomes an effete and ineffective international institution, the unilateral actions of the United States taken without the approval of the United Nations will increasingly lose the endorsement and goodwill of the international community, and the international order it leads will also lose legitimacy and support.
Second, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United States not only condoned but even provided military and diplomatic support to Israel’s near-genocide atrocities against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, most deplorably women and children. Israel’s actions in Gaza seriously violate and make a mockery of the “liberal international order’s” proclaimed respect for human rights and freedoms and the prohibition and condemnation of genocide. The United States and its Western allies disregarded Israel’s atrocities, which is entirely contrary to their position of severely accusing and condemning Russia for committing “war crimes” in the Russo-Ukrainian war. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has unmistakably and fully exposed the moral hypocrisy and double standards of the United States and the West. It has triggered intense anger and frustration in the international community and brought about the complete moral bankruptcy of the Western camp led by the United States. In other words, the “liberal international order” no longer has powerful moral moorings. Consequently, the “liberal international order” will continue to shrink as more and more countries are reluctant to imbue it with legitimacy. The United States’ global leadership position will also be seriously jeopardised.
Third, the Russo-Ukraine war proved that the “liberal international order” led by the United States is dangerously “expansionary” and “coercive” in nature, thus posing a clear and serious threat to world peace. The United States demands all countries participating in the “liberal international order” adopt Western political and economic models and values. It does not accept or tolerate the existence of other political and economic models and values. The eastward expansion of NATO promoted by the United States can be understood as a strategic plan to further expand the “liberal international order” in Europe to contain Russia and ultimately change its political and economic system in the Western direction. In a sense, the essence of the Russo-Ukrainian war can thus be understood as a “defensive” maneuver by Russia to safeguard the country’s sovereignty, security, and strategic autonomy. Since the continuous and reckless expansion of the “liberal international order” has triggered the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the scale of the Russo-Ukrainian war is likely to expand and pose a graver threat to world peace and development, other countries in the world will be increasingly dismissive of the “liberal international order.” A lot of countries are already deeply apprehensive about a devastating global war triggered by the United States’ dogged efforts at containment of China to make it a qualified member of the “liberal international order.” Global resistance to it is bound to grow day by day. Now, the United States is on the verge of failure in the Russia-Ukraine war, which is commonly seen as a “proxy war” between the United States and Russia. This will encourage and embolden more countries to resist the “liberal international order” in various ways in the days to come.
History will prove that the Russo-Ukrainian war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were catalysts for paradigmatic changes in the international landscape and the driving force behind the eventual demise of the US-led “liberal international order.” The Russo-Ukraine war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have already proven that the US-led international order cannot bring peace, development, fairness, and justice to the world; instead, it is becoming increasingly an impetus for instability and even war. The balance of power in the world is shifting irreversibly away from the West with the unstoppable demise of the “liberal international order.” Admittedly, the “liberal international order” may still exist in some form, but its prominent members will be mainly confined to the United States and some of its Western allies. Inevitably, with the gradual demise of the “liberal international order,” the world will experience a period of “international disorder” and the ensuing instability and uncertainty. However, in the past period, many non-Western countries, especially China, have begun to actively and urgently explore alternatives to the “liberal international order.” The Russo-Ukrainian war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will undoubtedly accelerate the pace of work in this area, eventually promoting the birth of a new, fairer, equitable, and reasonable international order that is conducive to world peace and development and respects the interests and needs of all countries.
I’ve been playing with text to pictures
Some of them include the retro-pulp science fiction cover theme.
What was the most bone-chilling sentence a loved one ever said to you?
My boyfriend Ben and I have been dating for 4 years.
We’ve seen the best of each other, but that also meant that he’s seen the worst of me.
Dating me is like walking on eggshells; I have depression and Borderline Personality disorder, which meant that I can have intense mood swings and have severe issues with abandonment. That meant Ben dealt with me monthly, with me crying constantly about how I’m a fraud and how he’s better off without me. How people won’t miss me when I’m dead.
Every month, he holds me while I cry and rage at the world around me.
Every month, he plays the knight, and I play the monster, and we fight.
One day, after a particularly bad argument, I really don’t know what it was about, Ben and I had to physically separate ourselves and cool down in different rooms.
When we came back together, he looked…exhausted. He was just staring into space and he just quietly told me to get help.
And when I didn’t say anything, he looked at me and, word for word, said
“Vanessa, I want you to get help because I have nightmares that one day, one very bad day for you, will cause our child that we will someday have, to find mommy hanging from a noose.
I’m scared for you. Of you.”
I went into counselling afterwards.
Bailey’s Lasagna
Yield: 8 to 12 servings
Equipment
Lasagna pan
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 pound Italian sausage
1 (67 ounce) jar Prego Traditional spaghetti sauce
12 lasagna noodles
14 ounces ricotta cheese
2 large eggs, beaten
Salt and black pepper
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese or other cheese of choice
1/2 cup freshly-grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Brown ground beef and Italian sausage together until cooked through, then drain well. Combine with the spaghetti sauce. Set aside.
Cook lasagna noodles until al dente, according to package directions. Drain and toss with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Set aside.
For the filling, combine ricotta cheese and eggs. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Spread a thin layer of the spaghetti sauce over the bottom of a lasagna pan.
Lay lasagna noodles lengthwise in the casserole dish.
Spoon and spread spaghetti sauce over the noodles.
Spoon and spread filling over the spaghetti sauce.
Repeat steps 6, 7 and 8 twice.
Sprinkle shredded mozzarella or cheese of choice over the top.
Bake, covered and sealed with foil (DO NOT LET THE FOIL TOUCH THE CHEESE), for 30 minutes or until sauce is bubbling and cheese is melted.
Uncover and bake 15 minutes longer to brown the cheese.
Let stand for 15 minutes before cutting.
Top each serving with freshly-grated Parmesan cheese.
Notes
Serve with garlic bread.
Refrigerate any leftovers.
Another one
Chopsticks
One of Jerry Seinfeld’s jokes is why do the Chinese still use chopsticks. He says something like “They’ve seen the fork…” But in all reality, with the invention of forks, spoons, knives, what is the possible advantage of using chopsticks?
Behold.
This also works with common snacks like chips, cheetos, really any “finger food.” Likewise Hara Shidho points out that it works on salads too; eating leafy greens is precisely what chopsticks are really good at in Chinese cuisine. Chopsticks are also much better at deboning fish, with Japanese chopsticks particularly designed for the task. Quite frankly I do not understand how anyone is cleanly deboning fish with forks, especially if the fish have much tinier, irregular bones that do not conform to the spine or edge.
It is also a misnomer to believe that there are no forks, spoons, and knives in China. They just have their time and place, and no they are not imports from the West as they have been around for millennia. I suspect that for Chinese people, ease of dining is where one optimizes for the least switches of utensils while keeping hands clean; removing that latter part gives us Indian hand usage, while the West seems to not care for utensil switching (or just abuses forks to fulfill the purpose of a spoon).
Really though, just think of chopsticks as two very long fingers that are easily washable.
What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?
Oh oh!
This happened to a new manager of mine who managed to cause havoc in our office within the first week of his employment.
My previous manager left for a better offer and the replacement didn’t arrive until 1 whole month after he left the company.
So there wasn’t anyone to train, guide or handover the duties/job scope to the new manager.
However, my previous manager, being a very smart man, created a folder with all the job scope, documents, handovers, etc. in our common (computer) server for us to handover to whoever that will take over when he/she eventually arrived.
So, when the replacement finally arrived, naturally very lost and confused, me and my colleagues did our best to guide him along and showed him the folder which my previous manager left for him.
It was one of the busiest periods of the year, so none of us were able to sit down and spoon feed all the details/information to him, as such we pretty much just left him to fiddle his computer and to do his own research.
I mean, he’s supposed to be our manager. He should have some idea of what to expect, right?
Thus, the first week went by, the tsunami was over and my colleagues and I finally got a chance to catch up on our work. The moment we switched on our computer to enter the common server, all of our jaw dropped simultaneously.
The idiot has reorganized the WHOLE SERVER!!
When we confronted him about the server, his excuse was that the server looks very messy and he want to tidy it up. Oh, and if we were to see if anything that is out of place, please help him to sort out into the correct folder.
This idiot had no idea how much damage he has caused us!
For those of you who are wondering what’s the big deal, by reorganizing the server, the idiot rendered all our shortcuts/hyperlinks useless.
Furthermore, a lot of our files & documents are named via codes/serial numbers, without the proper directory we have no idea where are all our past records/documents!!
The worst part is that the damage is irreversible as he had tampered with our backup folder as well…
We spent the next few MONTHS trying to find and sort out all our lost documents but till this day we are still unable to find about 40% of them. (the idiot still insists that he did not delete any of our files, it’s all in there, he just misplaced them…)
The idiot was eventually let go due to multiple accounts of incompetency after 1 year of service (so much screaming from my client).
There were so many stories from this idiot I’m surprised that he managed to somehow last the whole year.
Edit:
Now to verify, yes you can say i’m being harsh for calling him an idiot repeatedly.
We gave him a ton of advice but none were heeded; we tried to be patient with him but when the client openly demanded him to be fired in the meeting with your CEO on speaker phone, you know shit just got real.
And just to be clear, he was hired as a Manager, so not knowing basic computer skill or even some basic level of competency is not an excuse. He is definitely not new in this field and how he managed to secure a 5 figures salary previously is still a mystery to me.
REAL stuff, girls.
Chinese EV and the USA
No American car buyer today can purchase a Chinese brand (Bloomberg Business 3–18–2024) electric vehicle. And no one is really sure when these EVs will arrive on US shores. But the prospect of cheap Chinese-made EVs is already causing sleepless nights in Detroit. The primary threat comes from cars such as BYD Co.’s Seagull hatchback, which features angular styling, a two-tone dashboard shaped like a seagull’s wing and six airbags. There’s even a 10-inch rotating touchscreen for its infotainment system. BYD’s company slogan, “Build Your Dreams,” is embossed on the rear of the vehicle.
A BYD Co. Seagull electric vehicle at the Shanghai Auto Show. Photographer: Bloomberg
The car’s most extraordinary feature, though, is its $9,698 price tag. That undercuts the average price of an American EV by more than $50,000, and is only a little more than a high-end Vespa scooter. Such aggressive pricing by BYD, which surpassed Tesla Inc. in late 2023 to become the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles, is indicative of how Chinese auto manufacturers will likely force US makers to pivot away from mainly producing expensive second cars for the affluent and toward more reasonably priced EVs for Everyman.
Just as the long-feared prospect of a revolutionary EV from US tech giant Apple Inc. has receded, American carmakers now face a possibly greater challenge from Asia. China, long a manufacturing hub for Western companies’ products, is hellbent on expanding its own companies’ reach around the globe. It’s already the biggest market for EVs , and it’s using that scale and manufacturing know-how to help expand sales of competitively priced Chinese models to an increasingly climate-conscious world.
For now, the Chinese onslaught is being kept at bay by stiff tariffs and moves to erect even tougher trade barriers against the US’s geopolitical adversary. Read Keith Naughton
And for more on how BYD has become the world’s top-selling electric carmaker, see the Bloomberg Originals documentary: How China’s BYD Overtook Tesla
Siphoning off benefits
Do Western civilians generally wish to conquer the world?
Yes they do.
You can see the usual suspects the other posters say NO WE DON’T!
But they would say that wouldn’t they?
But there’s a difference between wanting and capability to do so.
We literally have seen the last 20 years. How most westerners were completely onboard with the genocide in Iraq. Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and others.
These mass murders of brown people were extremely popular.
Liberals will of course bullshit that they were against it, oh the protested.
But here’s the killer thing they literally have no way of getting around. If those wars were so unpopular why didn’t the governments that initiated them get voted out next time?
2001 UK election, 2005 election.
Yet Labour remained incredibly popular after same with Bush.
They’ll then use one of two mental gymnastics:
They don’t represent us! Despite always claiming democracy is the WILL OF THE PEOPLE!
Brown people aren’t people! So killing them is totally OK.
Colin Riegels is like that, he made a post about how the post WW2 dominance of the USA was a good thing a year or so back. Oh I mean fuck all the people who were killed by it right?
Fucken liberals.
Do you think CATL, China’s largest battery maker, poses a security threat to the US?
Nobody is a security threat to the U.S. The U.S. is the biggest security threat to itself. Trying to do regime change in other nations is a security threat to the U.S. Starting a colour revolution to the world U.S. a security threat to the U.S. like what Maidan is now putting the US in a step nearer to a nuclear war! If you don’t want to buy batteries from China don’t buy!
China don’t need you to buy! You wanted a cheaper and better value for money battery! If you want your people to buy at 5 times the price go right ahead!
3. If you find someone smarter than you, work with them, don’t compete. Competition is a weakness.
4. The family you create is more important than the family you come from.
5. Your current job doesn’t care about you. They only pay you enough to kill your dreams.
6. Free yourself from society’s advice, because most of them have no idea what they’re doing.
7. Most people drift through life.
They have no purpose, no direction, and zero intent.
Learn their needs and lead them.
8. It’s better to have 1 friend who’s:
Happy for you
Supports your wins
Encourages your dreams
Than a bunch of acquaintances who are:
Lazy
Self-centred
Jealous of your success
9. You’ll be 10x happier if you forgive your parents and stop blaming them.
10. No one will ever come save you. Your life is 100% your responsibility.
11. Your inner circle should be more focused on money, success, and starting a family.
12. You don’t need 100 self-help books. All you need is actions and self-discipline.
What is the rudest thing someone did to you at the gym?
I work out generally at 5 am when the gym first opens. There is little old lady who comes in and works out. She’s small and frail, but in great shape for her age. I’m putting her 70–80 to be honest. I used to be really impressed by her as well, one of those #goals type deals. But that all changed……..
I began to notice she owned the place, and everyone kind of let her go first because of age. No worries, mad respect still but it did come off a little odd. Now, she parks next to me most days as we wait for the gym to open. She opens her door, and SMACK, hits my car door. Huh, she just walks right in no big deal. I’m sitting in the car too. Wow, hmm I don’t know about her after all.
2 weeks later, she is pulling in and side swipes me just a hair. Backs up, and moves to another spot. Now, yes this is illegal and I could have called the police. I didn’t, I guess I’m too soft. All I had was a small scratch, on a low end car with plenty more blemishes. I let it pass.
Fast forward another month, and out the gym window I see flashing lights.
She scraped someone else so bad it left a big mark on her car too! They called the police and she got a ticket for hit and run and likely lost her license now. Moral of the story, call people out for being rude or it will only get worse.
I Drove Around California For A Month. It Was A Disaster.
When I was really young, say 2 to 3 years old, I had these reoccurring dreams of me being beheaded by guillotine. Of course at that age, I had no idea about what a guillotine was, or the French Revolution, or anything like that. But my dreams were consistent.
My sister and I were both led up the stairs to this wooden platform. She was always fist, and she laid down on the board, and there was a big crowd that was watching. She laid down and this metal piece slid down and hit her, but her head did not come off, so they had to raise it again, and then the second try it came off. And her head fell into this woven basket.
Then it was my turn.
I went onto the gallows and laid down. I faced the basket and it it was like five heads. All were lifeless, including my sister. She had blonde hair and it was in a tight bun. Then the steel knife went down. My head moved a little, but I felt nothing. And just waited while it went back up again.
Then it slid down. I saw the bucket get up close and my last image was the view of the gallows from the bucket looking up as darkness surrounded me.
Today, I am pretty much convinced that it was a past life that I was remembering, or maybe a television show that my parents must have watched when I was six months or so old. The take away from this are numerous. For if it was a memory from a prior life, then…
My sister and I shared reincarnation experiences.
The guillotine was not fool-proof, and in fact was very inefficient, and multiple chops were required to kill someone.
I still retained consciousness for a few seconds after my head was removed.
I felt no pain, once the first chop hit.
Interesting.
What do you think about this one, eh?
Today…
Have you ever seen an employee get fired on the spot because of you?
Yep. I was a worker at McDonalds and only sixteen at the time, and we had a new employee. He was on grills, and I was on table right behind him. There’s another side to the table that cannot see the grills through the cabinets of food, so when any cook-to-order meat, in this case quarter pounder, was finished, the grill person would call “Quarter’s up!” So side two would know to get their meat and send the burger on its way.
Well, our new employee absolutely refused to talk near me. I didn’t really get it, he would talk to other people. But he wouldn’t call out quarter’s up for the life of him. After multiple times of doing it myself, I finally stopped and took the meat and held it back to him and asked him to call it out himself. He slammed it into the table and splattered grease into it. I stood there and told him he needed to call out quarter’s up for side two. He would not, he turned back to his grills and ignored me.
I called out quarter’s up and slid them their meat, and the shift continued. I stopped calling out quarters’ up, mostly because I was busy keeping up with the lunch rush and didn’t notice when he slid the meat onto the table out of my line of sight. And out of side two’s sight.
So a manager asks why side two is so slow, and they explain they don’t have their quarter meat and I would slide it over to them and apologize. Someone would tell the grill person to call it out, and the shift would continue again until he went on break.
I didn’t actually know anything had happened until the big boss of the store was called in and he came rushing up to me and told me very sternly,”If someone threatens you like that again, you need to tell management immediately!”
I did not understand. Nobody threatened me?
Turns out, when the grill dude went on break, he loudly told everyone how he was going to “beat the shit out of that little kid.”
The Four Stooges saga of Bundeswehr officers plotting to blow up the Kerch bridge in Crimea with Taurus missiles and getting away with it is a gift that keeps on giving.
President Putin, in his comprehensive interview to Dmitry Kiselev for Russia 1/RIA Novosti, did not fail to address it:
“They are fantasizing, encouraging themselves, first of all.
Secondly, they are trying to intimidate us.
As for the Federal Republic of Germany, there are constitutional problems there.
They correctly say: if these Taurus hit that part of the Crimean Bridge, which, of course, even according to their concepts, is Russian territory, this is a violation of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany.”
Yet it gets curioser and curioser.
When the transcript of the Taurus leak was published by RT, everyone was able to hear Brigadier General Frank Gräfe – head of operations of the German Air Force – speaking with Lieutenant Colonel Fenske from the German Space Command Air Operations on the plan to deploy Taurus systems in Ukraine.
A key point is that during the plotting, these two mention that plans were already discussed “four months ago” with “Schneider”, the successor of “Wilsbach”.
Well, these are German names, of course. Thus it did not dawn on anyone that (Kevin) Schneider and (Kenneth) Wilsbach could instead be… Americans.
Yet that did raise the eyebrows of German investigative journalist Dirk Pohlmann – who I had the pleasure to meet in Berlin years ago – and his fellow researcher Tobias Augenbraun.
They found out that the German-sounding names did identify Americans.
Not only that: none less than the former and the current Commanders of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces.
The Four (actually Six) Stooges element gets an extra boost when it is established that Liver Sausage Chancellor Scholz and his Totalenkrieg Minister Pistorius learned about the Taurus plan no less than four months later.
So here apparently we have a clear cut case of top German military officers taking direct orders regarding an attack on Crimea – part of the Russian Federation – directly from American officers in the Pacific Air Forces.
That in itself opens the dossier to a large spectrum ranging from national treason (against Germany) to casus belli (from the point of view of Russia).
Of course none of that is being discussed on German mainstream media.
After all, the only thing that seems to disturb Brigadier General Gräfe is that German media may start seriously prying on the Bundeswehr’s Multiple Stooges methods.
The only ones who actually did proper investigation were Pohlmann and Augenbaun.
It would be too much to expect from German media of the “Bild” type to analyze what would be the Russian response to the Multiple Stooge shenanigans against Crimea: a devastating retaliation against Berlin assets.
It’s so cold in Alaska
During the jolly Bundeswehr conversation yet another “plan” is mentioned:
“Nee, nee. Ich mein wegen der anderen Sache.” (“No, no. I mean the other matter.”) Then: “Ähm … meinst du Alaska jetzt?” (“Ahm, you mean Alaska now?”)
It all gest juicier when it is known that German Space Command Air Operations Centre officer Florstedt will meet none other than Schneider next Tuesday, March 19, in Alaska.
And Gräfe will also “have to go back to Alaska” to explain everything all over again to Schneider as he is “new” in the post.
So the question is: Why Alaska?
Enter American shadowplay on a lot of “activities” in Alaska – which happen to concern none other than China.
And there’s more: during the conversation still another “plan” (“Auftrag”, meaning “mission”) also surfaces, bearing a not clearly understandable code name sounding like “Kumalatra”.
What all of that tells us is that the Crash Test Dummy administration in the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon seem to betting, in desperation, on Total War in the black soil of Novorossiya.
And now they are sayin’ it out loud, with no shadow play, and coming directly from the head of the CIA, William Burns, who obviously sucks at secrecy.
This is what Burns told the members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week:
“I think without supplemental assistance in 2024, you’re going to see more Avdeevkas, and that – it seems to me – would be a massive and historic mistake for the United States.”
That spells out how much the Avdeevka trauma is impressed on the psyche of the U.S. intel apparatus.
Yet there’s more:
“With supplemental assistance, Ukraine can hold its own on the front lines through 2024 and into early 2025. Ukraine can continue to exact costs against Russia, not only with deep penetration strikes in Crimea, but also against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.”
Here we go: Crimea all over again.
Burns actually believes that the humongous $60 billion new “aid” package which must be approved by the U.S. Congress will enable Kiev to launch an “offensive” by the end of 2024.
The only thing he gets right is that if there’s no new package, there will be “significant territorial losses for Ukraine this year.”
Burns may not be the brightest bulb in the – intel – room. A long time ago he was a diplomat/CIA asset in Moscow, and seems to have learned nothing.
Apart from letting cats and kitties galore out of the bag. It’s not only about attacking Crimea.
This one is being read with surpreme delight in Beijing:
“The U.S. is providing assistance to Ukraine in part because such activities help curb China.”
Burns nailed his Cat Out of the Bag Oscar win when he said
“if we’re seen to be walking away from support for Ukraine, not only is that going to feed doubts amongst our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific; it’s going to stoke the ambitions of the Chinese leadership in contingencies ranging from Taiwan to the South China Sea”.
The inestimable Andrei Martyanov perfectly summed up the astonishing incompetence, peppered with tawdry exceptionalism, that permeates this performance by Burns.
There are things…
...“they cannot grasp due to low level of education and culture.
This is a new paradigm for them – all of them are ‘graduates’ of the school of ‘beating the crap from defenseless nations’ strategic ‘studies’, and with the level of economic ‘science’ in the West they cannot grasp how this all unfolds.”
So what is left is panic, as expressed by Burns in the Senate, mixed with the impotence in understanding a “different warrior culture” such as Russia’s:
Even as the acronym fest of the CIA and 17 other U.S. intel agencies have concluded, in a report shown to Congress earlier this week, that Russia is “almost certainly” seeking to avoid a direct military conflict with NATO and will calibrate its policies to steer clear of a global war.
After all the Empire of Chaos is all about Forever Wars.
And we are all in the middle of a do or die affair. The Empire simply cannot afford the cosmic humiliation of NATO in Novorossiya.
Still every “plan” – Taurus on Crimea-style – is a bluff.
Russia is aware of bluff after bluff. The Western cards are now all on the table. The only question is when, and how fast will Russia call the bluff.
Harry Potter as a Mexican Soap Opera | Telenovelas are Hell
What did a teacher say that made you immediately walk out of the classroom?
Once I walked into my college class of 200 people only to see my picture displayed on the projector screen and my instructor asking my classmates who had been signing in for me since I had clearly never been to class. Apparently I’d accidentally signed the attendance sheet for that day, the class day prior, and was a couple minutes late, so he had his ga literally examine my signatures and they determined that the letters were written differently each day. Since I was safely hidden behind a large pillar, I promptly left and called my mom crying. I had attended every class, albeit late on occasion, and was a very shy person. I dreaded going back to that class where I was certain everyone believed me to be a fraud.
Edit: I saw some people asked what happened afterwards, and I ended up emailing the professor during that class telling him what I’d seen and assuring him that I had attended every class and that I was very confused as to why he had made the accusation. It was then that he told me I’d been signed in on the wrong day and that was what had prompted his investigation into my attendance and signatures. He made it very clear that he did not believe my explanation and I met with him in his office where he had me sign my name about 20 times and kept threatening to fail me, saying I could easily be faking it. At this, because I was telling the truth, and had never had anyone question my honor like that before, I started to cry again, and begged him not to fail me. I honestly don’t remember much after that, only that my crying made him begrudgingly agree to allow me back in class. The rest of the time I attended class, I showed up early, sat in the very back and wore a hood until class began. I caught a couple people looking back at me on occasion (and I turned bright red as a result), but for the most part my incredible ability as a shy person to remain utterly invisible served me really well.
Cattle Drive Cornbread
Ingredients
4 cups cornmeal
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 to 2 finely chopped jalapeño peppers
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 (16 ounce) can creamed corn
Instructions
Boil a pan of water.
Mix cornmeal and vegetable oil well in a large bowl. Add just enough of the boiling water to form a dough that could be made into a ball.
Add remaining ingredients except for the creamed corn. Mix to blend, then add creamed corn.
Coat the bottom of a cast iron skillet with vegetable oil. Heat over medium heat.
Remove one cup of the cornbread mixture from the bowl, and add it to the skillet.
Flatten out the cornbread, and cook as you would a pancake.
This Japanese Man has 4 Wives, 2 Girlfriends & 54 Children…
An aunt and uncle are not invited to their niece’s wedding, but are invited to a bridal shower 300 miles away. Is this a gift grab? Should the aunt send a gift for the shower if they choose not to drive the distance?
Randy Miller suggested an edit to my story.
He blew my story away because I have never run into an ASSHOLE that removed an entire story.
Fuck You Randy Miller!
I had to rewrite it you ass!
I will tell you my story.
My sister-in-law has a son. When my nephew was young we saw him a lot, even visited a few times while he was in college, and took him out a few times for dinners. When he got married, we were not invited to his wedding. We weren’t even told about it. When we found out, I have to admit we were a bit hurt.
The reason we weren’t invited was because his grandmother, my MIL, was a crazy mean, lying, horrible woman. The entire family except the nephew and my husband had felt her wrath. To her, he was a golden child. She filled his head with lies, and she is convincing, especially to a kid. She did spend money on him, but nothing is without a string. When she met his girlfreinf, he was told she was a sl*t, a woman that would hurt him, a dirty girl, not worthy. Eventually, they broke up, but got back together., and then secretly engaged, and finally secretly married.
So there was a plausible reason why only his immediate family was present. They did not have any big thing, justice of the peace, ate out, done.
Now married, his wife was pregnant with their first child. I was invited to the baby shower. A part of me did not want to go because I was still hurt. Plus, I dislike showers. But I thought about it, and let it go. I attended the shower and bought a gift of of their registry that was fairly expensive for the baby, and them.
So the question is why would I agree to give them a gift for a baby shower, when I wasn’t invited to the wedding. Because I had found out the entire story, and realized I was being unkind, childish, selfish, and ignorant. And most important, I want a relationship with them.
I have never discussed being disappointed about not being able to attend their wedding, I love weddings. But I’m glad I rethought the emotions I felt because we have a great relationship now with his family. I know I would have regretted not going to the baby shower, and giving a gift to them for their baby.
So, you haven’t explained why you weren’t invited to the wedding. Could it be they were trying to keep it small. There could be many reasons, even that your invitation never arrived. But you need to decide if you have a relationship with these people that you wish to continue. If the answer is yes, then send a gift. If not, you have made up your mind.
Regarding the 300 miles away, unless they are living somewhere you could turn your trip into a vacation, if you have the time and money, I would just send the gift with a congratulatory note.
My opinion only!
Gen Z Doesn’t want to Work Anymore …..
Be the Rufus
“I was on the way home a couple of days ago when I saw this girl from my neighbourhood being very upset and crying on the street.
I decide to approach her. I asked: ‘Hi! Is everything okay?’
She barely looked up and then she just started bawling about her crappiest day she had.
She said she had lost her best friend because a stupid fight and that her mom is depressed all the time and she was also bullied in school all day…
I really wanted to make her feel better but I didn’t really know what to say, so I just asked: ‘Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?’
She said yes!
When we walked in the door, she looked up, her eyes opened up, and she was like: ‘Wooow!!!’ My house is full of paintings and all sorts of weird stuff; it’s messy but very colourful.
On the way in, I was even thinking about how messy my house was and felt bad about leaving tobacco all over the table that morning. But she didn’t seem bothered at all.
She said it was the coolest place she has ever seen. I asked her if she wanted to paint with me so we did. She painted the biggest canvas we could find with lots of bright colours. She used like 10-12 brushes and when she finished, her face had changed completely.
She was beaming!
I may have made her feel better that day but she also made me realise how lucky I am. Maybe I am weird and I often feel that I don’t really fit anywhere, but my art was able to make this girl feel better about herself and lift her up from a dark place.”
America Collapsing Like Rome?- Upcoming Recession, WW3, Trump, China & Joe Rogan | Patrick Bet David
Have you, while repairing a computer, ever found anything that made your jaw drop?
Not working on a computer but: I worked at the 24 hour photo processing lab back in 1990. Based in Phoenix we got film flown in from all over, including Las Vegas. The usual family photos, the occasional but weekly roll of film for some one with a anatomically correct BDSM Barbie with ever-changing costumes, personal intimate photos for a loved one, and once in a while something different and more sinister.
One of our Las Vegas rolls showed men with a pair of boys, all nude no clothes in sight(ha-ha), no intimate contact showed just these men and the children. The lead tech made the call to the FBI for possible child porn or abuse. After the FBI came and collected the pictures and the address from the packaging, they proceeded to the Las Vegas area address.
What they discovered was the address was a nudist retirement community. The men were a couple and one of them was the grandfather of the boys. The parents knew about granddad and his partner living in a gay nudist community and had no concerns about the safety of the boys.
Douglas Macgregor Reveals the Truth: Russia’s -Ukraine Terrifying Hidden Power in the Conflict
https://youtu.be/otyhVg-oUHs
What is the most extreme example of human willpower and discipline?
A Woman Finds Her Daughter’s ‘Dead’ Rapist: people are in awe of her “willpower”
A woman from a remote village in Bihar, India tracked down her daughter’s rapist after he was declared dead leading to the closure of the case. The rape convict, Niraj Modi, has been sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for raping a minor girl and his father to seven years for forgery, cheating, and dishonesty.
Modi, a 39-year-old man who was a school teacher at a government school, was accused of raping his 12-year-old student, a minor girl, in October 2018. The girl was attacked while she was by herself in a sugarcane field, and her assailant threatened to post a video of the assault online to keep her silent.
Soon after a complaint was lodged by the survivor’s mother, and Modi was arrested. But, he was out on bail after merely two months in prison.
In February 2022, Modi’s father Rajaram Modi, who is over 60 years old and works as a farmer, travelled to a court nearly 100km (62 miles) away from the village, with a lawyer to claim that his son died on February 27, 2022, at their village home. In order to get a death certificate issued, he provided two pictures from the cremation, receipts of the firewood bought for the ritual as evidence, signatures and the unique biometric identity number of five villagers as per Indian laws. However, as per a 54-year-old law, the authorities didn’t question the cause of death.
Two months after this, the local authorities issued a death certificate and the court closed the case in May 2022 as the “only accused in the case” was dead.
However convinced that this was a forgery, the girl’s mother was the only person who suspected that the teacher had faked his death with the help of his father.
The mother said that she went from one home to another in order to enquire if Modi was really dead and not to her surprise, nobody had heard of the news. Following which, she went to the court urging an investigation into the matter.
In May 2022, she also wrote a petition to the local official claiming that the death certificate was issued based on forged documents and it needs to be investigated. Soon, investigation began and the authorities demanded more and fresh evidence from Modi’s family regarding his death including photos of the “deceased after his death, of the cremation, of the burning pyre, the last rites and [fresh] testimony of five witnesses”.
As a part of the investigation, members of the village council met the inhabitants of the 250 families in the village. It appeared that no one was aware of Modi’s death. Hindus often only shave their heads as a sign of mourning if a close relative passes away. However, none of the Modi family members had done so. In fact, Modi’s own relatives did not have the information regarding his death.
After Rajaram failed to provide fresh evidence of Niraj’s death, he was questioned by the investigative office again.
Following the investigation, it was confirmed that Modi’s death was faked. The officers found that the teacher had falsified the signatures of the parents of five of his students’ parents on a document requesting his own death certificate. He informed the parents that in order to set up the students’ scholarships, he would need their biometric identity numbers.
The officials, then, cancelled Niraj Modi’s death certificate and charged his father with forgery and in July 2022, the case was reopened.
The mother’s relentless battle to track down her daughter’s “dead” rapist came to an end finally and in October last year(2023)he was convicted for his crimes.
Keep smiling
Beefy Cowboy Beans
There’s plenty of hearty ground beef in this Beefy Cowboy Beans recipe.
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 red or green bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 (16 ounce) can baked beans
1 (15 1/2 ounce) can Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup tomato ketchup
1/4 cup Heinz 57 sauce
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
Instructions
In a large nonstick skillet, brown ground beef, onion and bell pepper over medium-high heat 6 to 8 minutes or until beef is no longer pink, breaking up into 1 inch crumbles.
Pour off drippings.
Season beef mixture with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper.
Stir in beans, ketchup, Heinz 57 Sauce, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce.
What is the strangest way you kept yourself entertained while in prison?
I have a theory about the sorts of people that are easy to entertain…. 😉
One cellie of mine was really into the markets. He spent incredible amounts of time building models to use against the daily Dow or NASDAQ numbers when we could get them in long enough blocks to be useful. A friend sent him five years of daily data for one index. He built some formulas to fire triggers when conditions were right. The formulas were designed to work in excel.
My job? Human spreadsheet. I took a couple months worth of the data, plotted it across a “spreadsheet” that I’d made from steno notebook pages taped together. The spreadsheet went from A1 to something like BK68. A handful of cells were raw data, the remainder were things like, “=If(And(AI22>AI21,B22>B21,Or(H22=I22,K22=K21)),BB22-BC21,BB22+BC21)”.
Pure drudgery. I had to proof for syntactical and lexical errors and churn out the data. We were sending the finished product (formulas) to someone who would drop them in excel and (hopefully) use them to come up with actionable Intel.
Woof. It took weeks to produce what excel can do in the blink of an eye!
Then there was this:
I set a goal for myself to memorize two hours of poetry. I copied poems I liked in tiny handwriting and kept them with me most of the time so I could study while I waited (lots of waiting in prison).
I didn’t hit my goal, but I did manage to get to about forty minutes. The more I did, the easier it got. I learned that our memory works (kind of) like a muscle. Give it a good workout and it’ll get stronger.
Are those pastimes strange enough?
The (Overdue) Collapse of the 9-5 Job
Do police officers ever let criminals go because they sympathise with them?
A sheriff’s deputy drove up to me while I was standing leaning against my vehicle and asked me if I had any guns. I said not on me but there were some in the back of the pickup. He told me to stay where I was.
He walked back to the bed of my truck and picked up a poster that I had made up that said “WANTED Dead or Alive: Baby Bomber Brandes”
He read the poster and then said to me, “I know who you are. You are the man whose home was bombed and whose baby daughter has been in the hospital for the last 6 months, and this is going to be the hardest arrest I ever have to make in my career, but I want for you to know that if I were in your shoes, I would be doing exactly what you are trying to do.” Brandes was up a dead end road, and I was at the bottom waiting to kill him.
Brandes had called his employers at the ATF and told them that I had him trapped and they needed to help him get out of there. The ATF called the sheriff and had them come up and arrest me.
The deputy arrested and drove me to jail without handcuffs and when he dropped me at the jail explained to the jailers the situation. I was treated very well by everyone at the jail. A couple of days later I made a deal with the federal DA that I would leave town and leave their snitch alone. I had to, I had a quadriplegic daughter getting out of the hospital to care for.
I came to Oregon and had to care for my daughter while wearing an ankle bracelet for a few months. The feds did live up to their end of the bargain though: all charges were dropped a short time later. There really are some great cops out there and they are just like you and I and have big hearts.
The deputy actually apologized for having to take me in.
the American dream is dead… this is why people are leaving the US.
What are some fun and actually useful historical facts?
In early March 1933, a man walked into the Hi-Way Cigar Store in Pismo Beach, California, and laid a huge clamshell on the counter. “Gimme a box of cigars,” he said.
A clamshell used as scrip currency in 1933 shows the name of the shop issuing the currency, its value, and, on the inside, signatures of the people whose hands it passed through. (Clamshell Currency | Hakai Magazin
History is full of examples of successful local initiatives aimed at providing exchange media, but the Great Depression of the 1930’s saw this done on an unprecedented scale. There were literally hundreds of scrip issues that were put into circulation by a variety of agencies, including state governments, municipalities, school districts, clearing house associations, manufacturers, merchants, chambers of commerce, business associations, local relief committees, cooperatives, and even individuals.
These issuers went by different names, depending on who issued them and the circumstances of their issuance. Common scrip types were certificates of indebtedness, tax anticipation notes, payroll warrants, trade scrip, clearing house certificates, credit vouchers, moratorium certificates, and merchandise bonds.
Crescent City, California 1933 10 cent clamshell From the collection of Ken Barr Numismatics (Depression Scrip.com)
Besides learning how to “make do, or do without,” people began to establish mutual support structures, like workers’ cooperatives, many of which would recycle and repair donated or broken items.
People learned to share what they had, and to by-pass the market and financial systems. Most of these measures were considered stop-gaps to be utilized until things “got back to normal,” but in some of them there seemed to be the promise of more permanent improvements. One of these “stop-gaps,” which was intended to address the problem of the dearth of currency in circulation, was the issuance of “scrip.”
When the Depression and resulting banking crisis hit their community, the residents of the coastal town of Pismo Beach, California picked an unusual but logical medium of exchange. The pismo (Tivela stultorum) is a species of clam with a very thick shell
[6], found in large numbers at least as far south as 300 miles south of the US–Mexico border in Baja California on the Pacific Ocean side, where strong surf sometimes washes ashore live clams. Native American tribes in California relied upon the clams as a main dietary staple.
The shells are surprisingly large—up to roughly 15 centimeters in width—and many have faint traces of the clams’ natural shell patterning, faded wispy lines of purple at the edge of the exterior sides.
Shells were marked with India ink in denominations ranging from 25 cents to $20. Each piece was numbered, and signed on the front and on the back. As with the stamp notes of the Midwest, it was necessary to sign each clamshell on the back in order to keep it in circulation.
No formal requirements may have existed, but informal pressure certainly would have endorsed the practice. The shells were more or less credit—placeholders for real currency.
Eleven of the town’s merchants got together to issue the clam currency. Among them: K.L. Phillips service station, Henderson’s Drug Store, Hi-Way Cigar Store, Leiter’s Rexall Pharmacy and Restwell Cabins. Even the Pismo Beach Post Office accepted clam currency. It was agreed that when change in dollars or cents wasn’t available, they would issue shells to customers instead. Customers would use the shells in subsequent transactions after signing their names on the inside, endorsing them somewhat like checks, which gave businesses a record of who had “spent” their shells. If any customers still had shells rattling around once the banks reopened, they could ask the retailer to exchange them for cash.
The larger the amount, the larger the shell. The issue may have been partly intended as a spoof, or for sale to tourists, in the manner of German notgeld around 1920.
Each piece was numbered, and each was signed on the front and on the back. This was in the middle of Roosevelt’s 1933 national banking holiday, from March 6 to March 9, 1933, during which withdrawals were frozen. This gave his administration a chance to stabilize the banking system
.In an era of economic turmoil, thousands of banks were failing and Americans’ trust in the institutions had evaporated. Fearing that their money was no longer safe at the bank, many people had emptied their accounts and stashed dollars at home—which, unfortunately, further undermined the banks.
Proclamation 2039 ordered the suspension of all banking transactions, effective immediately.
The terms of the presidential proclamation specified that:
“no such banking institution or branch shall pay out, export, earmark, or permit the withdrawal or transfer in any manner or by any device whatsoever, of any gold or silver coin or bullion or currency or take any other action which might facilitate the hoarding thereof; nor shall any such banking institution or branch pay out deposits, make loans or discounts, deal in foreign exchange, transfer credits from the United States to any place abroad, or transact any other banking business whatsoever.”
The thought of having to go for four days without readily available cash shocked and traumatized America. Around the country, businesses began issuing IOU-style notes or ersatz dollars—often called scrip currency—in the form of metal or wooden tokens so that everyday transactions could continue even when retailers couldn’t easily issue change.
An estimated $1 billion in this scrip was issued by towns and counties, not to mention corporations, school boards, newspapers and a few wealthy individuals.
Most promissory notes looked like paper currency, but scrip was also printed on leather, metal, fish-skin parchment and, in Tenino, Wash., on slabs of pressed wood.
In creating the currency, the Pismo Beach business owners turned back the clock to the era before the Civil War when it was common to find locally produced scrip.
The 1933 scrip reflected the small community’s expression of resilience. A lack of dollars didn’t worry them. “All of a sudden this group of people said, ‘Well, we have what we do have’,
The clams are now on display at City Hall in the lobby by the city clerk’s office. Not a bad investment, especially considering how rare it is to find a legal-sized clam in Pismo Beach these days. In 2013, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the clam script, Pismo Beach citizens resurrected clamshell money, making colorful homages to the 1933 variants.
10 Countries Where Americans are Not Welcome in 2024
As a new manager, have you ever had to fire someone on your first day?
I once had to fire someone just a few days after they started and it’s one of the very few times in my entire career where I fired someone on the spot. I had no choice.
At the time we were riding high as a company having rebuilt an entire culture and the company was working well. This admin who answered to me and a few others, while I was at lunch demanded access to HR documents that were confidential to the other employees. When our HR manager told her no but that she could talk to me, she started screaming at the top of her lungs at the manager and everyone in the offices was completely rattled by the scene.
I receive a call while I was eating my lunch to get back to the office because it was bad. I raced back and saw the looks on everyone’s face and asked a few what had happened. They all said the same thing. There was no other side to this. A few heard her demand for records and thought it was out of line in the first place and then with the screaming on top, there was no way to keep her. When I fired her, I explained that there was no turning that around. You couldn’t undo that damage no matter how she apologized and I didn’t want our culture to be everyone thinking that was even remotely okay.
It sucks to fire anyone. It’s not something any manager ever wants to deal with, but sometimes you have to do it for the greater good of everyone else. There were no employees who thought she should have a second chance. Not one. In fact, they were thrilled that I didn’t put up with it.
Male inequality, explained by an expert | Richard Reeves
The number of male therapists decreasing while the number of men needing therapy increases is worrying to think about.
What are some last-minute decisions that changed world history?
On April 14, 1865, as he walked into the morning Cabinet meeting at the White House, General Ulysses S. Grant received rapturous applause. Five days earlier, Grant had accepted the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Virginia’s Appomattox Court House.
The nightmarish Civil War had ended. Lincoln and his Cabinet were in a celebratory mood, but Grant was bone-weary. As author Ron Chernow recounts in his biography Grant, the general looked forward to a short respite from the battlefield.
After the meeting closed at 2pm, Grant “lingered to speak with the president.” Lincoln invited the general and his wife to the theater that evening to see the play Our American Cousin, starring celebrated actress Laura Keene.
Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, immediately worried for their safety.
“He had for some months been aware that threats of assassination were being made by certain evil minded persons against the leaders of the Federal government and army. The presence of the President of the nation and the Lieutenant-General of the armies at any public function at such a critical hour was simply courting disaster.”
Lincoln reacted flippantly, chaffing Stanton “for his lack of faith in human nature.” The president of a democracy, he averred, had to show himself to the people, and some danger was an inescapable hazard of office.
“To be absolutely safe,” he told John Nicolay resignedly, “I should lock myself up in a box.”
Grant searched for a gracious way to decline. The general soon received a note from his wife Julia, detailing her wish to leave for Burlington that day to see their children.
Grant politely declined to attend Ford’s Theatre, joking that he now had a command from Mrs. Grant. As he subsequently said, “I was glad to have the note, as I did not want to go to the theater.”
Lincoln, who was disappointed, understood. “Of course, General, you have been long from home, fighting in the field, and Mrs. Grant’s instincts should be considered before my request. I am very sorry, however, for the people would only be too glad to see you.”
Lincoln extended invitations to Stanton, Speaker of the House Schuler Colfax, and his son Robert Todd Lincoln, but all turned him down. Eventually Clara Harris and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone, agreed to accompany him.
At 10:13pm, while the Grants traveled east to change trains in Philadelphia, John Wilkes Booth slipped into the president’s box at the theater and pointed a derringer at the back of Lincoln’s head. He then “executed the gentle president with brutal efficiency.”
In a small appointment book, Booth was eager to record his accomplishment for posterity.
Until today nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country’s wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture, but our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart.
I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted “Sic semper” before I fired.
Telegrams notified the general of the terrible news, and he was immediately summoned back to Washington.
Grant had seen untold horrors during his campaigns. But he would remember this day as among the saddest of his life.
Weeks later, as the assassination conspirators stood trial, Grant discovered that he was one of several targets of the Confederate sympathizers. The killers had hoped to decapitate the Union government in one bold strike, but they lost their golden opportunity to attack the now-famous general.
The night of Lincoln’s assassination, as Grant and his wife prepared to board their train, they had noticed a man on horseback who had galloped past them twice. Each time, the figure had “thrust his face” at the couple and glared at them.
Grant later learned the glowering horseman was John Wilkes Booth, who had been conferring on the sidewalk with his actor friend John Mathews when the Grant carriage sped by and he set off in pursuit of it. From the heaped-up baggage, he must have confirmed that the Grants were leaving town and would not be at Ford’s Theater.
“It seems I was to have been attacked,” Grant stated, “and Mrs. Grant’s sudden resolve to leave deranged the plan.”
As Project Ukraine goes down the drain of history, Project Taiwan will go on overdrive. Forever Wars never die.
This is the Year of the Wooden Dragon, according to China’s classic wuxing (“five elements”) culture. The dragon, one of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, is a symbol of power, nobility and intelligence. Wood adds growth, development and prosperity.
Call it a summary of where China is heading in 2024.
The second session of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was finalized on Sunday in Beijing.
The wider world should know that within the framework of grassroots democracy with Chinese characteristics, an extremely complex – and fascinating – phenomenon, the importance of the CPPCC is paramount.
The CPPCC channels wide-ranging expectations of the average Chinese to the decision level, and actually advises the central government on a vast range of issues – from everyday living to high-quality development strategies.
This year, most of the discussion focused on how to drive China’s modernization even faster. This being China, concepts – like flowers – were blooming all around the spectrum, such as “new quality productive forces, “deepening reform,” “high-standard opening-up,” and a fabulous new one, “major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.”
“2024 is not only a critical year for achieving the goals of the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’ but also a key year for achieving the transition to high-quality development of the economy.”
Betting on strategic investment
So let’s start with Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s first “work report” delivered a week ago, which opened the annual session of the National People’s Congress. The key takeaway: Beijing will be pursuing the same economic targets as in 2023. That translates as 5% annual growth.
Of course deflationary risks, a downturn in the real estate market and somewhat shaky business confidence simply won’t vanish. Li was quite realistic, emphasizing Beijing is “keenly aware” of the challenges ahead:
“Achieving this year’s targets will not be easy.” And he added: “Global economic growth lacks steam and the regional hotspot issues keep erupting. This has made China’s external environment more complex, severe and uncertain.”
Beijing’s strategy remains focused on a
“proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy”.
In a nutshell: the song remains the same. There won’t be a “stimulus” of any kind.
Deeper answers should be found in the work report/budget released by the National Development and Reform Commission: the focus will be on structural change, via extra funds to science, technology, education, national defense, agriculture.
Translation: China bets on strategic investment, the key for a high-quality economic transition.
In practice, Beijing will be heavily invested in modernizing industry and developing “new quality productive forces” such as new-energy vehicles, biomanufacturing and commercial space flight.
Science Minister Yin Hejun made it clear: there was an 8.1% increase in national investment in research and development in 2023.
He wants more – and he will get it: R&D spending will grow by 10% to a total of 370.8 billion yuan.
The mantra is “self-reliance”.
On all fronts – from chipmaking to AI. A no holds barred tech war is on – and China is totally focused to counter “tech containment” from the Hegemon as much as its ultimate goal is to wrest tech supremacy from its prime competitor. Beijing simply cannot allow itself to be vulnerable to U.S.-imposed tech choke points and supply chain disruptions.
So short-term economic problems will not be causing sleepless nights.
The Beijing leadership is always looking ahead – focusing on long-term challenges.
Learning lessons from the Donbass battlefield
Beijing will continue to steer the economic development of Hong Kong and Macau, and invest even more in the crucial Greater Bay Area, which is the premier southern China high tech, services and finance hub.
Taiwan of course was central to the work report; Beijing fiercely opposes “external interference” – code for Hegemon tactics. That will become even trickier in May, when William Lai Ching-te, who flirts with independence, becomes president.
On defense, there will be only a 7.2% increase in 2024, which is peanuts compared to the Hegemon’s defense budget now approaching $900 billion: China’s stands as $238 billion, even as China’s nominal GDP is approaching the U.S.
A great deal of China’s defense budget will go for emerging tech – considering the immensely valuables lessons the PLA is learning out of the Donbass battlefield, as well as the deep interactions part of the Russia-China strategic partnership.
And that brings us to diplomacy.
China will continue to be firmly positioned as a champion of the Global South. That was made explicit by Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a press conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress.
Wang Yi’s priorities:
to “maintain stable relations with major powers; join hands with its neighbouring countries for progress; and strive for revitalisation with the Global South”.
Wang Yi once again stressed that Beijing favors an “equal and orderly” multipolar world and “inclusive economic globalization”.
And of course he could not allow U.S. Secretary of State Little Blinken – always out of his depth – to get away with his latest “recipe”:
“It is impermissible that those with the bigger fist have the final say, and it is definitely unacceptable that certain countries must be at the table while others can only be on the menu.”
BRI as a global accelerator
Crucially, Wang Yi re-emphasized the drive for “high-quality” cooperation within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework. He defined BRI as “an engine for the common development of all countries and an accelerator for the modernisation of the whole world”. Wang Yi actually said he’s hopeful about the emergence of a “Global South moment in global governance” – in which China and BRI play an essential part.
Li Qiang’s work report, incidentally, had only one paragraph on BRI. But then we find this nugget as Li refers to the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor – which links China’s landlocked southwest with the eastern seaboard, via Guangxi province.
Translation: BRI will be focusing on opening new economic roads for China’s less developed regions, diversifying from the previous emphasis on Xinjiang.
Dr Wei Yuansong is a member of the CPPCC and also the Chinese Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party – which happens to be one of the eight non-CCP parties in Chinese politics (very few outside of China know about this).
He offered some fascinating comments on BRI to Fengmian News and also stressed the need to “tell China’s story well” to avoid “conflict and incidents” along the BRI road.
For that, Wei suggests the need to use an “international language” in telling these stories; that implies using English.
As for what Wang Yi said in his press conference, in fact that was discussed in detail at the closed-door Central Conference on Foreign Affairs Work in late 2023, where it was established that China faced “strategic opportunities” to raise its “international influence, appeal and power” despite “high winds and choppy waters”.
The key takeaway: the narrative war between China and the Hegemon will be pitiless.
Beijing is confident it’s capable of offering stability, investment, connectivity and sound diplomacy to the whole Global South, instead of Forever Wars.
That is reflected, for instance, by Ma Xinmin, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s legal advisor, telling the International Court of Justice that the Palestinians have the right to armed resistance when it comes to fighting the colonialist, racist, apartheid state of Israel. Therefore, Hamas cannot be defined as a terrorist organization.
This is the overwhelming position across the lands of Islam and across the majority of the Global South – linking Beijing with fellow BRICS member Brazil and President Lula, who compared the genocide in Gaza to the Nazi genocide in WWII.
How to resist collective West sanctions
The Two Sessions did reflect Beijing’s full understanding that Hegemon containment and destabilization tactics remain the biggest challenge to China’s peaceful rise. But simultaneously it reflected Chinese confidence on its global diplomatic clout as a force for peace, stability and economic development. It’s an extremely sensitive balance that only the Middle Kingdom seems capable of pulling off.
Then there’s the Trump factor.
Economist Ding Yifan, a former deputy director of the World Development Institute, part of the State Council’s Development Research Centre, is one among those who’s aware China is learning key lessons from Russia on how to resist collective West sanctions – which will be inevitable against China especially if Trump is back at the White House.
And that brings us to the absolute key issue being currently discussed in Moscow, within the Russia-China partnership, and soon among the BRICS: alternative settlement payments to the U.S. dollar, increasing trade among “friendly nations”, and controls on capital flight.
Nearly all Russia-China trade is now in yuan and rubles.
As much as Russian trade with the EU fell by 68% in 2023, trade with Asia rose by 5.6% – with new landmarks reached with China ($240 billion) and India ($65 billion) – and 84% of Russia’s total energy exports going to “friendly countries”.
The Two Sessions did not get into detail on some extremely thorny geopolitical issues. For instance, India’s version of multipolarity – considering New Delhi’s unresolved love affair with Washington – is quite different from China’s. Everyone knows – and no one more than the Russians – that within BRICS 10 the biggest strategic issue is how to accommodate the perpetual tension between India and China.
What’s clear even behind the fog of goodwill enveloping the Two Sessions is that Beijing is fully aware of how the Hegemon is – deliberately – already crossing a key Chinese red line, officially stationing “permanent troops” in Taiwan.
Since last year U.S. Special Forces have been training Taiwanese in operating Black Hornet nano microdrones. In 2024 U.S. military advisers are deployed full time at army bases on Kinmen and Penghu islands.
Those actually driving U.S. foreign policy behind the Crash Test Dummy at the White House believe that even as they are powerless to handle the Houthi Ansarallah in the Red Sea, they are capable of poking the Dragon.
No posturing will alter the Dragon’s roadmap.
The CPPCC’s political resolution on Taiwan calls for uniting “all patriotic forces”, “deepen integration and development in various fields across the Taiwan Straits”, and go all out on “peaceful reunification”.
That will translate in practice into increased economic/trade cooperation, more direct flights, more cargo ports and logistics bases.
As Project Ukraine goes down the drain of history, Project Taiwan will go on overdrive.
Forever Wars never die.
Bring it on.
The Dragon is ready.
White Women Are PISSED At White Men Dating Asian Women!
What do you know that most people don’t?
I’ve literally (and I actually mean literally here) won cash money on bets with friends about this and it is a method I’ve been using since I was a little kid. Works every single time; no exceptions.
I’m going to let you in on my secret to treat your hiccups in a few seconds every single time.
Let’s first understand what causes hiccups; only when we understand how a machine works can we fix it if it’s acting up. Your diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle at the bottom of your chest. The diaphragm almost always works perfectly. When you inhale, it pulls down to help pull air into the lungs. When you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes and air flows out of the lungs back out through the nose and mouth.
But sometimes the diaphragm becomes irritated. When this happens, it pulls down in a jerky way, which makes you suck air into your throat suddenly. When the air rushing in hits your voice box, your vocal cords close suddenly and you’re left with a big hiccup.
Some things that irritate the diaphragm are eating too quickly or too much, an irritation in the stomach or the throat, or feeling nervous or excited. Almost all cases of the hiccups last only a few minutes. Some cases of the hiccups can last for days or even months, but this is very unusual and it’s usually a sign of another medical problem.
So now that we understand the cause of hiccups, it’s fairly evident that to treat them, all we need to do is soothe the diaphragm, reduce the irritation and bring it back to a normal operating state.
Fill a cup a little over half with water and hold the cup right side up. Stand and bend over, while placing your mouth on the opposite side of the cup so the opening is around your chin. Sip the water slowly, holding your breath as you do and breathing between sips. The combination of these forces your diaphragm to get back to its expected state of behavior.
So the next time that cute girl you were trying to talk to has a bout of the hiccups, skip the cheesy lines telling her how “someone” is thinking of her and instead treat her hiccups with this method. I can assure you that will score you more brownie points that way.
What if God’s plan for me is to have an insignificant, unfulfilling, and miserable life?
There is a Russian joke.
At some point in life, a man who had previously been a great sinner has spiritually awakened and started to preach the word of God. He believed that he was inspired by the Lord Himself. So he dies, and meets St. Peter.
– Saint Peter, I need to see God.
– Why? You were an okay guy, we won’t send you to hell.
– No, I really need it. I need to ask Him one question.
St. Peter shrugs his shoulders and brings him in God’s Presence. The man asks:
– My Lord, tell me, did I understand my destiny well? Was it to carry Your word?
God is silent.
– Please tell me!
– Do you really want to know? – asks God.
– Yes, I long to know, I crave for this knowledge, I implore you!
– Okay, okay. Do you remember how you travelled by train from Samara to Syzran’? It was forty-seven years ago.
– Yes!
– Do you remember how you went to the dining car?
– Yes!
– Do you remember how your neighbour to the left asked you to pass the salt?
– Yes!
– This was your destiny. You were born to pass the salt to this person.
When I first heard this joke, I was shocked at the utter pessimism it expressed. Now, I see it in a different light. Yes, the guy was mistaken about God’s designs. But he was born just to pass the salt during a train voyage – and yet he managed to have a rich and fulfilling life. Good for him, isn’t it?
So if you really believe that God had such horrible designs on your life, why not try to see what you can do yourself?
My GF Made Friends With College F**inists And Thought I’d Be P-Whipped…Instead I Tossed Her Out
I think that we take pull-tabs on cans for granted. Today they are all one piece. You just pull up the pull-tab and then discard the can when you are finished. But I am here to tell you that it wasn’t always that way.
Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s we had to use this thing called a can-opener to open our cans of beer. It has a triangular point and that would make a triangular cut in the top of the can from which we drank from.
Then in the middle 1970’s that was replaced with pull tabs. These were not integrated into the can. You pulled the tab and then dropped it in the trash, or more often the ground.
Then sometime in the 1980’s came the integrated pull-tabs.
Times happen. Before we realize it, things are changed, and the past is as forgotten as it is discarded. Today, many young Gen-Z kids have no idea why there is a pointed end on the metal can opener. I guess that it is a mystery to them.
After I am dead, the purpose of the pointed end on the metal opener will be forgotten just like the eraser on the end of a pencil. Such is life.
Today…
What was the scariest experience you’ve had at work?
My experience was just weird. The place I worked had a mandatory Saturday workday once a year. Just because they wanted a certain number of calendar workdays. 🤷🏼♀️ Most people came in really early and left early, but never being a morning person, I came in at my usual time. As the day went on, I ended up being the only one there. So I started walking around, closing the office doors to the production floor, turning off lights, and making sure the outside doors were locked, as well as checking nobody else was there who I was locking in. As I walked thru the building, I clearly heard footsteps following me. I got a feeling so I stopped and there were still footsteps. Looking in their direction, nobody was there. They got closer, then stopped. I spoke out loud and told whatever I didn’t appreciate being followed and they either needed to show themselves or move along. I was in a big open office area so I should have easily seen whatever it was. This place always had a motion detector alarm go off at 3–4am too, when nobody was there. I saw a flicker of something but nothing really happened so I figured screw it, circled back to where my desk was, gathered my stuff and got ready to leave, no footsteps that time. Where this building was, we didn’t have cell service, so I realized after I’d left the building that I couldn’t call my family to tell them I was on my way because it was snowing really heavily and the parking lot wasn’t cleared. I inched my way out to my car and got in and out of habit I immediately lock the doors, but when I looked back, there was a set of faint footprints by mine. I still don’t know if they were old footprints covered with snow that I couldn’t see while walking or whatever was in there followed me out. I just made sure I was never alone in that building after that.
Good on paper
Vegetable Tortellini Soup
This flavorful Vegetable Tortellini Soup pairs fresh veggies and herbs with whole wheat three cheese tortellini to create a flavorful addition to any lunch or dinner that will please family and friends. It’s great alone as a light lunch, too!
Prep: 15 min | Cook: 30 min | Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup sliced leek (white part only) or chopped onion
1/2 cup sliced celery
Salt and ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 (14 ounce) cans low-sodium vegetable broth
3 cups water
1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into circles
1 large zucchini, cut in half lengthwise then sliced crosswise
1 cup fresh or frozen peas or green beans
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, divided
1 (9 ounce) package Buitoni Refrigerated 100% Whole Wheat Three Cheese Tortellini or Spinach Cheese Tortellini
1/4 cup (0.75 ounce) Buitoni Refrigerated Freshly Shredded Parmesan Cheese
Instructions
Heat oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add leek and celery; cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper.
Stir in garlic; cook, stirring frequently, for 30 seconds.
Add vegetable broth, water, carrot, zucchini, peas and 1 tablespoon parsley. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to low and cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes.
Add pasta; bring to a boil. Cook for 7 minutes.
Season with ground black pepper.
Top with remaining 1 tablespoon parsley and cheese before serving.
The Duran: NATO Crossed Putin’s Red Line and Russia’s Alliance with China will DESTROY It
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.
OP-ED: Israel is hurling towards the precipice and is determined one way or another to drag the rest of humanity with it. Israel is a lunatic state. The state is certifiably crazy.
There are two poles for the entire Israeli spectrum. One pole is the pole of “crackpot realists” who see war as the only answer to every question even as they acknowledge that war will not solve any problems. It’s their first and last reflex.
At the other end of this very narrow spectrum are those who advocate for “The Samson Option” — either pretend to be crazy to terrify your enemies and your allies, that if they don’t do Israel’s bidding, Israel will bring down the temple on everybody’s head.
And there are those who are not simply pretending to be crazy by advocating “The Samson Option,” they ARE crazy. They’re lunatics.
There is a significant portion of Israel’s political spectrum that is either pretending to be crazy or actually is crazy. It’s not even the subject matter of Monty Python. This is lunacy run amok.
If even only half of Israeli society and only half of the Israeli political elite think this, and in my opinion, it’s much more than half, the place is crazy!
There are those who are prepared in the name of their “holy cause” who think their backs are up against the wall to “bring down the whole temple” meaning “all the goyim are going to go with us.” It’s a very scary prospect now.
I don’t believe that Iran has many options. Once Israel is determined to go to war, it will keep escalating the provocations until it becomes untenable for a government to react with passivity.
If they didn’t react, we know from past experience exactly what Israel would do. It would keep escalating the provocations up to and including assassinating the Iranian head of state, formally denying it, but with a wink-wink as, “Of course, we did it.”
There is no way to stop them. Once they have resolved that a war is necessary and a war is inevitable, there is no way to stop them. That’s what the historical record shows.
You can hold back as Nasser did, as the PLO did, as Hamas did, but Israel will provoke and provoke and provoke because it’s resolved on that war.
I do not believe the option of not reacting actually exists. And that to me is a very difficult problem. We’re facing a moment where Israel wants to resolve three problems: it wants to execute its “final solution” to “the Gaza problem,” Hezbollah, and Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a virtuoso about the American media. He sees an opportunity to win the trifecta: Gaza, Hezbollah, and Iran. Another opportunity like this might not come along soon. It can achieve in their minds—remember, we’re talking about certifiable lunatics—their three overarching strategic objectives in one fell swoop.
There is a huge insatiable bloodlust in Israel. There is the fear in Israel that what it calls its “deterrence capability,” meaning the Arab world’s fear of Israel, was significantly diminished after October 7th. It looks like an opportunity might be available to them.
Israel is a very tiny place. If Hezbollah launches 150,000 missiles at Israel it’s curtains for Israel. Nasrallah’s mind is not corrupted by the delusions and hallucinations of this crazy state. If Israel has resolved, as it did in 1954, 1982, and 2008, that Iran has to be neutered, no amount of restraint will stop them.
Karma will get you back
This is funny.
Have you ever worked with someone who seemed lazy but worked really hard?
I worked on a loading dock at a very busy furniture store. On Saturdays we generally had 40 or more loaders on each shift. One guy looked like he was always sitting. Many people assumed he wasn’t carrying his share and someone complained to the foreman. When a customer pulled up for a delivery two or three of us, more for a larger load, would take the product out, load it up, tie it down and have the customer sign the receipt slip. Then each person on the crew would sign it and turn it in. The foreman took all the day’s slips and had a clerk tally up the number of loads each person had done. The foreman posted the list. Lazy guy was number two for the day. Some busybody asked lazy guy how he did so much work but sat so much. He explained that he had plantar fasciitis, a very painful foot condition. If he didn’t sit often, he was unable to walk at all, but he loved to work. It made the day go by faster. No one ever complained again for as long as he worked there.
Semiconductor bans were intended to kill the Chinese chipmakers. They’re killing ours instead.
His intro is KILLER. Damn!
About the April Israel attack on Iran
Forwarded to me securely…
EXCLUSIVE
THE REAL STORY OF THE ISRAELI COUNTER RESPONSE
From a very high level intel source.
In Asia.
NOT Russia-China.
Although the strategic partnership, of course, exchanges at the highest level 24-7.
Confirmed and re-confirmed.
It will be great to know what Sy Hersh hears from his Beltway sources.
Here we go.
Israel initially chose to respond with extreme force.
An F-35 loaded with a nuclear bomb was sent east over Jordan.
The mission: cause a high-altitude detonation over Iran that would provoke a surge in the high-capacity power lines, crippling Iran's electric grid, as well as disabling all electronic devices.
An EMP attack.
However...
... As the Israeli F-35 was leaving Jordanian airspace it was shot down by the Russian Air Force.
Hence the publicised version of the Israeli counter response was such a travesty.
In the end all sides decided not to publicise the real news - to de-escalate what could well turn into WWIII.
What’s the most “small town” thing you’ve witnessed?
Back in the 70s, we were headed back to the farm after spending Saturday morning in town doing shopping. It was the one day a week that nearly everyone who lived out of town went shopping (we mostly lived in a city 200 miles away but spent holidays and odd weekends on the farm). A few miles out, there was a market garden. As we approached, cars in front started slowing down.
We came to a stop, eventually crawling up to the market garden, which was a simple stall beside the road. The old man and his wife and kids were busy running boxes of vegetables out to the road and passing them through the windows of people’s cars. My father told me to wind my window down as a kid offered up a box of veggies. My father held out a $10 note and the kid said “sorry, no change, pay next week “ and didn’t take the money.
As we drove off I asked dad what that was about. He said that everyone wanted to get home, but the market had no space for everyone to park, so they had boxed the vegetables beforehand to run out to passing cars. Next Saturday we’d stop at the stall on the way into town and pay then.
Everyone knew everyone else and the honour system worked well. Somehow I can’t imagine this working in a city.
Fun 1970’s era comix!
How is China allowed to sentence a Canadian to death?
Press Release.
The Schellenberg drug smuggling case is a case in which the prosecuting authorities of the People’s Republic of China charged Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian citizen, with drug smuggling in China. The prosecution alleges that in November 2014, Schellenberg attempted to smuggle 222 packages of methamphetamine with a net weight of 222.035 kilograms from Dalian to Australia, and upon realising that things were changing, Schellenberg boarded a plane at Dalian airport with the intention of fleeing to Thailand. When the plane stopped at Guangzhou Airport, Schellenberg was arrested by Chinese police. Xerenberg argued that he had been framed by drug trafficker Xu Qing and that he was an innocent tourist.On 20 November 2018, the Dalian Intermediate People’s Court handed down a first instance verdict, sentencing Xerenberg to 15 years in prison, confiscation of personal property of RMB 150,000 and deportation for drug smuggling. Xielenberg appealed against the verdict. On 29 December of the same year, the Liaoning High People’s Court heard the case at a public hearing of the second instance. During the trial, the procurator of the Liaoning Provincial People’s Procuratorate claimed that the verdict of the first trial, which found Xielenberg to be an accessory and an attempt to commit a crime, was improper and therefore a lighter punishment. On 14 January 2019, the case was retried by the Dalian Municipal Intermediate Court, which sentenced Schellenberg to death and confiscated all of his property. After the retrial, Schellenberg’s defence firm stated that it would file an appeal.
On 10 August 2021, the Liaoning Provincial High People’s Court rejected the appeal and upheld the death sentence. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada issued a statement condemning the verdict and not waiving consular assistance.
Returning to the questions.
1. China is a country that retains the death penalty for major crimes, it is Chinese law, and there have been British drug dealers, Japanese drug dealers, etc. sentenced to death in China for drug trafficking before. Does it mean that Canadians are not the same?
2. According to Chinese law, smuggling 50 grams (that’s grams, not kilograms or pounds) of methamphetamine is punishable by death. And this guy smuggled 220 kilograms (yes, kilograms). That means his crime, according to Chinese law, is punishable by the death penalty 4,400 times.
Please note that this man has a prior drug conviction
Born in 1982, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg is a Canadian citizen who grew up in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Schellenberg had been jailed twice in Canada for drug offences prior to his arrest in China.
The Canadian press says Schellenberg is not at the bottom of the drug trafficking chain.
According to court documents from 2012, Schellenberg had previously suffered a femur injury at work and became addicted to drugs when he began to overuse painkillers to relieve the pain.
In February 2003, Schellenberg was sentenced to six months in prison for selling and transporting drugs.
In 2012, Schellenberg was sentenced to two years in prison for trafficking cocaine and heroin, and possession of cannabis resin and methamphetamine (he was incarcerated before the verdict was announced, and thus ended up serving 16 months and 12 days in prison).
Never Fail Beef Brisket
The nice thing about this recipe is that the first baking can be done in the morning and the last part a short time before you are serving dinner. Leftovers make hot beef sandwiches like you used to get in restaurants (not out of a box!.
Notes
Beef brisket
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Carrots, thinly sliced
Celery, thinly sliced
1 can beef consommé
1 cup dry red wine
2 to 3 tablespoons Lipton’s dry onion soup
Parsley
Mushrooms, sliced
Instructions
Put beef brisket in oven at 450 degrees F oven for 20 minutes.
Remove; sprinkle garlic powder on meat, put thin slices of carrots and celery on meat and add beef consommé, dry red wine, (can use more broth in place of wine) and Lipton’s dry onion soup, then add parsley, cover and set oven at 300 degrees F and cook 3 to 4 hours.
Serve from oven or remove and chill meat about 1/2 hour; save broth. Slice meat and place fresh sliced mushrooms and fresh parsley on meat in baking dish.
Make gravy from broth that was saved and pour heated gravy over meat and place in oven at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.
Fun retro
Walmart
Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?
When I was growing up I used to regularly see one of the biggest and ugliest traffic cops on a motorcycle regularly patrolling a side road of the freeway. By appearances alone this was one intimidating motherfucker. From the number of cars I saw him stop over the years, he was clearly a ticket cash cow.
Shortly after I got my license I happened to be cruising down that side road and blew a traffic stop sign because there were no other cars in sight. Within seconds this cop’s motorcycle came bursting out of nowhere with full siren and lights blazing. Scared the living shit out me as a new driver. What scared me even more was that I was going to encounter this particular badass officer.
He was all business after the stop asking for license etc., and noting that my license had been issued within the past two weeks. He said to me in a gruff voice, “you know you blew that stop sign back there, don’t you.”
I barely squeaked out a “yes sir.”
After a very uncomfortable 15 seconds of silence, he returned my license, and said, “Okay, this is a warning; don’t do that again!” Without another word he got back on his motorcycle and sped off.
Completely blew my mind.
What is the oddest conversation you’ve had with a telephone scammer?
Had the decorator round painting my ceilings when the phone rang – I answered it on loudspeaker, it went like this:-
Me “Hello?”
Telephone Scammer (TS) “Hello madam, we have noticed a problem with your internet and there is an attempt to steal money from your bank”.
Me: Oh no! What do I need to do?
TS: Check your internet router!
Me: Whats an internet router?
TS: the thing that makes your computer work!
Me: Oh, my husband deals with all the computer things shall I get him to call you back?
TS: NO madam there is no time! The box next to the computer, is the lights flashing?
Me: Yes
TS: Oh NO be fast, they are stealing your money right now, thats what the flashing lights are for! To let you know you are being robbed!
Me: what should I do!
TS: Log on to this website
Me: how do I do that?
TS: Switch on the computer
Me: OK
TS: Go to this website
Me: Computer is asking me for a password
TS: put in your password!
Me: I don’t know what it is! It’s my husbands computer!
TS: Try his date of birth! What is that?
Me: 6 June 66. (Its not!) That hasn’t worked!
TS: Try his middle name
Me: OK, I’m typing ‘Shirley’ – that’s not working either!
TS: try looking under the keyboard!
ME: Oh yes! Oh, No – Dell5454 isn’t working either!
TS: You must hurry your money is disappearing!
ME: Can you hang on I will call my husband and ask him for his password!
TS: Yes but hurry!
Me: can you give me your number incase we get cut off! He gives me a landline number based in London UK!
I put the scammer on hold for about 5 minutes! My decorator is peeing himself laughing up a ladder!
ME: I’m back, I’ve got into the computer!
TS: Great now go to this website!
He proceeds to tell me the website, I proceed to spell it incorrectly about 6 times!
In the meantime I ask him how he is doing, hows his family, does he have a dog etc etc.
He’s now losing patience with me!
TS: Are you in the website yet?
Me: Dont shout you are putting me off
TS: I’m sorry it’s so important to make sure your money is not being stolen.
Me: that’s OK…my money isn’t being stolen, I’ve sent your phone number to crime stoppers along with a full recording of this conversation you scamming piece of garbage..
He hung up on me! But not before I’d wasted almost 1 hour 30 minutes of his time! An hour in which he wasn’t trying to scam people a little more gullible than me!
My decorator finished my ceilings that day and gave me a small discount to make up for the laugh he had! 🙂
What’s the craziest thing you have said to your boss?
This was years ago, so don’t judge! 😂
I was working in a fashion store and my boss, John was in the office doing bookwork all day.
It was the time of year when women had already bought their winter wardrobe. And the grey, dismal weather outside wasn’t enticing anyone to consider buying for the new season.
I’d cleaned the store from top to bottom and changed all the displays several times and not a soul had come in from the rain all afternoon.
Business has been abysmal that day and the boss was worried.
Sighing, he approached the sales desk.
‘No-one in – and I still have to pay your wage.’ He said shaking his head. It made me feel so guilty!
Being only a casually employed worker, I had a brilliant idea suddenly how I could save him some money. John could easily handle the rest of the quiet day, and I’d finish up early- saving him paying a few hours of my wage.
‘Do you want to knock me off now?’ I offered.
John suddenly looked up in surprise.
‘Do you wasn’t to rephrase that, Ava?’ he said with half a smile.
‘Why?’ I asked him, but he didn’t answer.
His response baffled me.
So I asked my husband when I got home later that evening. ‘What’s wrong with asking your boss if you want to knock me off – what would you say?
‘I’d say- yes please!!’ Was my husband’s salacious response.
That’s when it hit me hard!
My God, I realised – I should have asked John if he wanted me to knock off early- not if he wanted to knock me off.
I was absolutely mortified that I’d accidentally propositioned my boss!
AFTER NOTE:
Wait! I’m sorry- I’m so confused now! 😂 In the comment section it’s become apparent that I’m using Australian slang- so I’m not being understood.
My apologies – I didn’t even know that ‘knock off’ was an Australian saying!
Sorry for the questions in a question, but-
Do other countries – like the USA – say ‘knock off work’ when they’re finished work for the day?
And I’m sorry to be crude (and it’s not language I usually use!) but does this sentence only make sense to an Australian? ‘We all knew he was knocking off his secretary.’
I’m sorry my post is so confusing – believe me, I’m feeling your pain now too.
Time to stay away…
Are traditional “medicine” in China still revered, or has the population wised up and realized that they are being duped? What is the trend?
Well, the Chinese have vastly expanded their medical repertoire to incorporate western medicine and surgery.
Whereas traditional Chinese medicine or tcm was all China had for millennia, it is a legitimate and recognized branch of healthcare today.
The body of tcm knowledge is being scientifically classified and refined into modern treatment protocols for human diseases. For example, pain management with acupuncture, which does away with drugs. Or guasha, which is effective treating fascia-related symptoms.
Furthermore, the wisdom contained in the thousands year history of tcm is being rediscovered today. Tu Youyou, a biomedical researcher, explored an age-old Chinese anti-malaria recipe from existing texts and isolated the active ingredient Artemisinin from it. She won the Nobel prize in medicine for her effort.
Tcm practitioners are recognized as professionals these days. There is certification and accreditation, as well as standardization of the body of knowledge. An entire tcm supply chain eco-system has emerged, from easy to swallow capsules to tiny acupuncture plasters.
I will say tcm is very much alive and thriving in the Chinese consciousness. We just don’t blindly believe it is miracle medicine capable of treating all ailments. It remains however, a relevant and important piece of Chinese healthcare today.
Note: A doctor friend of mine successfully arrested and reversed rather severe childhood myopia in his two kids putting them through a months-long acupuncture regime.
What is your most “you’ve got to be kidding me” experience at a car mechanic?
I was a broke, starving college student in 1992, driving a red 1985 VW Scirocco with 200,000+ miles on it that I’d picked up for $2k. It ran well for me and got me through college and then some, although I never could seem to get the backup lights to work (VW electrical gremlins). One time the tailpipe broke off the muffler so I stopped in at a Midas to see if they could weld on a new tailpipe. They threw “Red Rocco” up on the lift, took a quick look, came and informed me the muffler was completely rusted through and couldn’t be repaired. I asked to see it but could not see any rust or holes from my view below. The mechanic and two other shop guys proceeded to reach up on top of the muffler, feeling around, saying, oh yeah it’s all rusted through up here. Ok, how much? They go look it up, run the numbers and come back with, “$400, and we can do it right now!” I say, I don’t have that kind of money right now, I’ll just have to drive it as-is. They offered a special discount, right now only, $50 off, and they said I could post date a check, to help me out. I again declined and asked for my car. On the way home, I happened to see a small, independent muffler shop and wondered what they might charge to replace my “completely rusted through” muffler. The guy says, let me take a look at it and comes back in and informs me the muffler is fine, and that he can weld a tailpipe on for $10 in about 5–10 minutes, if I can wait. But wait, I ask, what about the hole and rust on top of the muffler? What rust, who told you that, he asks. Midas just looked at it 15 minutes ago, I inform him. He starts laughing and says, “At Midas, they don’t Midasize, they Sodomize!”.
Schools In China Are Terrible!! Or Are They…. Let’s Take A Closer Look!!
Have you ever caught someone talking about you in a language that he/she thought that you don’t know considering your appearance, but you can hear and understand the individual? What do you do?
I worked in a Polish machine shop in suburban Chicago as the chief inspector. All the guys were Polish, the entire management was Polish with the receptionist and I were the only Americans.
in addition, our vendor base was also primarily Polish. The guys on the floor lived in a Polish neighborhood, went to doctors, grocery stores, and car dealers that were Polish-owned.
I was hired because I had a few years of experience in the trade, could run a coordinate measuring machine, and I understood shop Polish. I am reg’lar Murican, waspy mix, but I was coming from a job at another Polish shop where I had learned basic grammar and tense and was able to get my inspection results expressed in Polish and do a fair job of understanding a native speaker, especially if I knew the context.
After I had been at this new shop for a while, I had occasion to inspect and reject some little eccentric shafts that we made when they came back from the grind shop. We make the blanks, send them for heat treatment and then send them to an outside grinding house to have them ground to size in a fixture that accommodates the eccentricity of the shaft.
The grinding shop was Polish-owned, of course. I was rejecting them for being tapered undersized on the one diameter that was off center. The tolerance wasn’t really close, +0/-.0005inch, but I was failing them for being .0001 undersized, 20% of the given tolerance, a significant deviation in this science.
We had made a big box of these little shafts, with three quarter-inch diameters. Someone had to sort these to pick out all the bad ones. My boss, Ziggy said I should go to the grind shop and haggle it out, push our case that they screwed up, they need to fix it. That meant I had to prove my case in front of them.
I got there and met two guys, the owner and the manager, both native Polish. In English, I presented my case, insisted that they sort these and refund us the money for the scrap parts. They tried to contest my method, taking the micrometer himself and purposely holding it crooked to get a good number and saying, “See?! .2499! In tolerance!!”
I could see they were deflecting and I took the mic and measured the same piece carefully in front of his face. .2494. NFG (Universal machine shop rejection language – No F***ing Good).
Things started to get heated about then and the two of them withdrew a short ways away for a conference, but not far enough for me to not overhear them speaking poorly about me in Polish. There was much disrespect and, since I knew the context and ALL the Polish cuss words, I knew I was being disparaged.
I let it go in for a few minutes until I recognized that he was again questioning my measuring technique and then he called me an a-hole…
I spoke up – in Polish – and told him he may think I am an a-hole but I know how to measure. Ziggy knows that I know how to measure and that’s why he sent me over here to show you.
The color dropped out of both their faces, a few conciliatory words and gestures were made but communications after that were brief and I left, having secured agreement to my original terms.
I just got fired. Now my former boss (the one who let me go) is asking me where some important documents are. How should I respond?
This has happened to me once before and I gave him the information — the reason for me was simple. I understood why I was let go and I not only had a good relationship with my former boss I knew that one day we would be running into each other again and I refused to burn bridges. It would have been different if he had fired me for no reason or we had a poor professional relationship. But the way things stood, it didn’t cost me anything to give it to him and it may pay dividends in the future.
Now a friend of mine was in a different situation. He was fired as part of a large restructuring and there wasn’t any effort to transition any of his work. Six months later a new boss at his former company came asking about some documentation. The way he explained it to me, they should have had all that and all he had was copies he had saved for himself. Since he didn’t leave on the best terms and had no interest in any future relations, he drew up a consulting contract and 40 hours of work and sent it to them. It took a week for them to reply with a counter-offer. He declined and eventually, that gave in. He put the document set together and got well paid for it. They in fact contacted him a few more times and he made money each time.
So, you see it all comes down to your particular circumstance. I know if one previous boss ever called me, I wouldn’t even bother answering the phone or reading an email.
Were 1990s Russians dumbfounded when they first visited capitalist grocery stores?
Extremely.
Years ago, my friend’s family tried to get a husband and wife out of the USSR, specifically Ukraine. It took 10 years because the man had been a colonel of paratroopers and when he applied to leave when he retired they had to wait 10 years for his operational knowledge to become stale dated.
But eventually they were given permission to leave and the family brought him to Canada. Back in those days, the only flight from the USSR to Canada was a Moscow, Montreal, NYC flight, but their final destination was Winnipeg.
His family was asked to meet them at the airport in Montreal and guest them for a few days so that they could rest from the long uncomfortable flight and work through some of their jet lag. They were a lovely dignified couple. My friend’s mom asked him to go to the store and get some last minute items. The wife asked to come along and she dragged her husband along.
So, we went to the store and were walking through the fresh produce section and the old man turned on us and called us liars and propagandists. We looked at him in surprise, but he went on to state that as a colonel of paratroopers he knew there was no way we could afford to ship in tangerines from Morocco and melons for Mexico. He said this must be a fake store like they had in Moscow & Kviv that they used to dupe visitors. His certainty was based on his military experience and he actually knew a lot about moving stuff by air.
His wife gently tugged his arm and said, wasn’t this store one of the reasons they left the USSR.
My friend told his three times removed by marriage uncle that there were 3 other grocery nearby and he’d drive Uncle to visit them.
So, we did. As we we did, the wife’s smile became bigger and bigger as her hopes were met and exceeded. The old colonel though just grew gloomier.
Later that night, when we were a few glasses into the Stoli and Crown royal, the old soldier muttered
“I knew we were behind but not this much behind.” , “I knew the party lied to us, but this much?”.
They lived the rest of their lives, very happily in Winnipeg.
From Thursday, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has begun military exercises and training activities, including live-fire drills, in six large maritime areas around Taiwan island. On Thursday afternoon, PLA’s Eastern Theater Command dispatched over 100 warplanes, and its Rocket Force launched fire assaults with multiple types of conventional missiles at several designated sea areas to the east of Taiwan island, and all missiles accurately hit their targets. According to Taiwan media reports citing Taiwan military, 11 Dongfeng missiles were fired into waters north, east and south of Taiwan.
A PHL-03 long-range multiple launch rocket system (LRMLRS) attached to an artillery brigade under the PLA 74th Group Army fires rockets at simulate target during a night raid exercise in an undisclosed desert area of northwest China on July 28, 2021.
The public opinion on the island nervously followed PLA’s every move with keenness. The DPP authority stubbornly shouted out loud on Thursday, continuing to use empty words to appease the anxious people on the island. What is certain is that the series of bitter fruits that Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi brought to Taiwan island will be enough for the DPP authority and the “Taiwan independence” forces to swallow for a while.
In addition to forming an unprecedented deterrent to “Taiwan independence” forces and external forces, the PLA’s series of military deterrence operations have also created favorable conditions for further shaping of the strategic pattern conducive to cross-Straits reunification.
Such a situation in the Taiwan Straits has become clearer – every time the US and Taiwan collude and provoke, Chinese mainland’s actual control over the Taiwan island will be strengthened, and the reunification process will be advanced one step forward. Since Pelosi’s Taiwan visit has seriously violated the one-China principle and maliciously violated China’s sovereignty, with egregious nature, the intensity of our countermeasures is unprecedented.
The PLA military exercises, described as a “blockade of the island” by island’s media, are particularly groundbreaking. To some extent, the comprehensive work to strike “Taiwan independence” and promote reunification has entered a new stage. The risk hanging above the head of the Taiwan secessionists has been greatly increased, and the space for their future actions will be further compressed. Our anti-access and area denial ability has also been put into practice.
All of these are real. Pelosi persisted in visiting the island of Taiwan, and the signal sent by the Chinese mainland could not be clearer: These countermeasures are just the beginning, if the collusion between the US and Taiwan doesn’t stop.
This incident also told us once again that the DPP authority will not stop its wrongdoings of “relying on US support for their independence agenda,” and that external anti-China forces will not give up their plot to “use Taiwan to contain China.” The great reunification of the motherland is bound to go through fierce struggles and to overcome complex and severe challenges. But it is impossible for a river, which flows toward the sea, to change its direction and goal because of reefs and dangerous shoals. In other words, we need to have firm confidence and strong will in the general trend of national reunification, as well as a full understanding of the complexity and arduousness of the process.
As expected, the US and the West verbally attacked this military exercises and training. The G7 foreign ministers and the High Representative of the European Union issued a joint statement on Wednesday expressing their “concern” over the “threatening actions” by the Chinese side. A statement from the White House has much of the same content. These two statements are as outrageous to the Chinese as Pelosi’s Taiwan trip. If they were really “concerned” about peace and stability in the Straits, why didn’t they issue a statement to stop or at least criticize Pelosi’s visit before her trip? But what could be more hypocritical and ugly than these countries playing deaf-mute at that time and now accusing China of taking righteous actions?
The one-China principle is mentioned in both statements. But it is clear that the understanding and implementation of one-China principle in these countries have gone so far astray, and it is likely to be a deliberate move. “Our position is very clear. We abide by General Assembly resolutions, by the One China policy, and that is the orientation that we have in everything we do,” said António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN). Can the G7 countries, especially the US, treat the one-China principle as seriously as the UN, which is something they should do?
The one-China principle has only one version and one meaning: 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 is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. In a sense, the current PLA’s military exercises and training are powerful demonstration of one China.
At what moment in your life did you witness true evil?
I was at court, waiting to arrest a man who came for another hearing. We couldn’t find this guy anywhere, but he had said he would show up that day (which he did), but this isn’t about him.
A female plain clothes state trooper comes out of the holding area and I notice she is visibly upset. Hard to break the cool of a veteran cop. I asked her what was wrong. She tells me to stick my head back there and take a look.
I go back and nod hello to the deputies, then take a look. There are about 7 guys in the pretty jumpsuits, and they are gathered around one guy who had them rolling with laughter. Hes bald, looks like a junkie with his picking scabs, bad teeth, and malnourished frame. He’s telling a story with animated flourishes of his chained hands. He spots me and stops. He laughs and tells me he used to live in my town, do I know so and so, and the corner bar is the best one in town, and so on. I turn and walk away while he is still talking to me.
I return to the trooper and she asks if he’s still going. I nod, and she asks me if I know who he is. I don’t. She says that man drop punted his six month old baby boy into a wall. The boy began convulsing, but he ignored it. His wife is the one who called 911. The boy lived, but won’t live a normal life. The man showed zero remorse, and was joking and talking to the arresting officers. He even joked that if it had been on the field he would have punted it into the end zone.
My boy was six months old at the time. I can’t accurately describe what I felt. Black rage. Overwhelming disgust. I pictured it happening to my own son and felt the urge to vomit. I couldn’t believe someone could care so little they would nearly kill their own child and laugh about it.
Evil looks like a beaming smile.
Are we ok as a country?
How did you deal with a psycho sitting in your next seat in flight travel?
Not exactly a psycho, but certainly was on the verge of becoming one myself. On a flight to Ghana some years back, I had the window seat, next to me a young woman, with a nice warm, friendly, demeanour, and in the aisle seat a chap who boarded the flight yapping away on his phone. He continued this banality in an unnecessarily loud voice as we waited for take off.
By now the woman betwixt me, and motormouth were already exchanging wry smiles, and curious glances. As one call ended ( no doubt by the poor person he chose to disturb) he was on the blower to yet another person. I noticed that he was supposedly deep in conversation, (spoiler alert: I picked up something about church) but took time to eye the woman between us up and down. She too saw, and felt, his prying eyes, and literally squirmed in her seat. She glanced at me slightly alarmed, and I gave her what I hope was a reassuring look that said something like “it’s ok, I noticed too”
So, phone call over, after what seemed like an eternity, and whilst we still waited for takeoff, he whipped out a bible, and began to evangelise to the now quite uncomfortable woman. I held my peace, and bided my time, until I could hold back no more, and triggered by a now familiar glance over at me of sheer terror from the poor trapped woman, I began.
I asked that he cease with his “bible bashing” and allow the woman to enjoy the luxury of her own thoughts, and peace of mind. We, I continued, did not purchase our air ticket to be preached to, and I for one refuse to tolerate it a moment longer. And further more, I said to him, can you not see how uneasy, and distressed you have made her, nodding to the woman? He glanced over, and for the first time it seemed actually noticed the effect his obtrusive sermon was having on her. He stopped, and never uttered another word for the duration of the 6 and a half hour flight.
She quietly thanked me with a look of utter relief. I was just glad that I was able to make good of my reassuring “it’s ok, I noticed too” look.
China has decided to sanction five U.S. defense industry companies, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Sunday.
The United States recently announced new arms sale to Taiwan and sanctioned Chinese businesses and individuals under various pretexts. The spokesperson announced the decision when asked about China’s countermeasures.
The U.S. arms sales to China’s Taiwan region in blatant violation of the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-U.S. joint communiques, particularly the August 17 joint communique of 1982, and the illegal unilateral sanctions the United States has imposed on Chinese companies and individuals under various false pretexts seriously harm China’s sovereignty and security interests, said the spokesperson.
The U.S. arms sales and the illegal unilateral sanctions also undermine the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and violate the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies and individuals. China strongly deplores and firmly opposes this and has made solemn demarches to the United States, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said that in response to these gravely wrong actions taken by the United States and in accordance with China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, China has decided to sanction five U.S. defense industry companies, namely BAE Systems Land and Armament, Alliant Techsystems Operation, AeroVironment, ViaSat and Data Link Solutions.
The countermeasures consist of freezing the properties of those companies in China, including their movable and immovable property, and prohibiting organizations and individuals in China from transactions and cooperation with them, the spokesperson said.
“I would like to stress that the Chinese government remains unwavering in our resolve to safeguard national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and protect the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies and citizens,” said the spokesperson.
China urges the United States to abide by the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques, observe international law and the basic norms governing international relations, stop arming Taiwan, and stop targeting China with illegal unilateral sanctions, the spokesperson said, noting that “otherwise there will be strong and resolute response from China.”
Israel, Gaza and West Bank should be seen as an opening of the New Cold War.
In what can be considered the most crucial podcast of 2024so far, Professor Michael Hudson – the author of seminal works such as Super-Imperialism and the recent The Collapse of Antiquity , among others – clinically lays down the essential background to understand the unthinkable: a 21st century genocide broadcast live 24/7 to the whole planet.
In an email exchange, Prof. Hudson detailed he’s now essentially “spilling the beans” about how, “50 years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute with Herman Kahn [the model for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove], Israeli Mossad members were being trained, including Uzi Arad. I made two international trips with him, and he outlined to me pretty much what has happened today. He became head of Mossad and is now Netanhayu’s advisor.”
Prof. Hudson shows how “the basic Gaza plan is how Kahn designed the Vietnam War’s division into sectors, with canals cutting off each village, as the Israelis are doing to Palestinians. Also already at time, Kahn pinpointed Balochistan as the area to foment disruption in Iran and the rest of the region.”
It’s not by accident that Balochistan has been CIA jewel territory for decades, and recently with the added incentive of the disruption by any means necessary of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a key connectivity node of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Prof. Hudson then connects the major dots: “As I understand it, what the U.S. is doing with Israel is a dress rehearsal for it to move on to Iran and the South China Sea. As you know, there is no Plan B in American strategy for a very good reason: If anyone criticize Plan A, they’re considered not to be a team player (or even Putin’s Puppet), so critics have to leave when they see that they won’t be promoted. That’s why U.S. strategists won’t stop and re-think what they’re doing.”
Isolate them in strategic hamlets, then kill them
In our email exchange, Prof. Hudson remarked “this is basically what I said” in reference to the podcast with Ania K, drawing on his notes (here is the full, revised transcript). Fasten your seat belts: unvarnished truth is more lethal than a hypersonic missile hit.
On the Zionist military strategy in Gaza:
“My background in the 1970s at Hudson Institute with Uzi Arad and other Mossad trainees. My field was BoP, but I sat in on many meetings discussing military strategy, and I flew to Asia twice with Uzi and got to know him.
The U.S./Israeli strategy in Gaza is based in many ways on Herman Kahn’s plan that was carried out in Vietnam in the 1960s.
Herman’s focus was systems analysis. Start by defining the overall aim and then, how do we achieve it?
First, isolate them in Strategic Hamlets. Gaza has been carved up into districts, requiring electronic passes for entry from one sector to another, or into Jewish Israel to work.
First thing: kill them. Ideally by bombing, because that minimizes domestic casualties for your army.
The genocide that we are seeing today is the explicit policy of Israel’s founders: the idea of “a land without a people” means a land without non-Jewish people. They were to be driven out – starting even before the official founding of Israel, in the first Nakba, the Arab holocaust.
Two Israeli Prime Ministers were members of the Stern Gang of terrorists. They escaped from their British jail and joined to found Israel.
What we are seeing today is the Final Solution to this plan. It also dovetails into U.S. desires to control the Middle East and its oil reserves. For U.S. diplomacy, the Middle East IS (in caps) oil. And ISIS is part of America’s foreign legion since it was first organized in Afghanistan to fight the Russians.
That is why Israeli policy has been coordinated with the U.S.. Israel is the main U.S. client oligarchy in the Middle East. Mossad does most handling of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and wherever else the U.S. may send ISIS terrorists. Terrorism and even the present genocide is central to U.S. geopolitics.
But as the U.S. learned in the Vietnam War, populations protest and vote against the President who supervises this war. Lyndon Johnson couldn’t make a public appearance without crowds chanting. He had to sneak out the side entrance of hotels where he was speaking.
To prevent an embarrassment such as Seymour Hersh describing the My Lai massacre, you block journalists from the battlefield. If they are there, you kill them. The Biden-Netanyahu team has targeted journalists in particular.
So the ideal is to kill the population passively, to minimize visible bombing. And the line of least resistance is to starve the population. That has been Israeli policy since 2008.”
And don’t forget to starve them
Prof. Hudson makes a direct reference to a Sara Roy piece in The New York Review of Books, citing a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to the Secretary of State on November 3rd, 2008. The cable reads, “As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to [embassy officials] on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”
That has led, according to Prof. Hudson, to Israel “destroying fishing boats and greenhouses of Gaza to deprive it from feeding itself.
Next, it has joined with the United States to block United Nations food aid and that of other countries. The U.S. quickly withdrew from the UN relief agency as soon as hostilities began, doing so immediately after the ICJ finding of plausible genocide. It was the major funder of this agency. The hope was that this would set back its activities.
Israel simply stopped letting food aid in. It set up long, long lines of inspections, that is, an excuse to slow the trucks to just 20% of their pre-Oct. 7 rate – from a normal rate of 500 a day to just 112. In addition to blocking trucks, Israel has targeted aid workers – about one a day.
The United States sought to avoid being condemned by pretending to build a wharf to unload food by sea. The intention was that by the time the wharf was built, Gaza’s population would be starved out.”
Biden and Netanyahu as war criminals
Prof. Hudson succinctly draws the key connection in the whole tragedy: “The U.S. is trying to blame one person, Netanyahu. But that has been Israeli policy since 1947. And it is U.S. policy. Everything that is occurring since October 2, when the Al-Aqsa mosque was raided by Israeli settlers, leading to Hamas’s [Al-Aqsa Flood] retaliation on October 7, was closely coordinated with the Biden administration. All the bombs that have been dropped, month after month, as well as blocking United Nations aid.
The U.S. aim is to prevent Gaza from having the offshore gas rights that would help finance their own prosperity and that of other Islamic groups that the United States views as enemies. And to show the neighboring countries what will be done to them, just as the U.S. has done to Libya just before Gaza. The bottom line is that Biden and his advisors are just as much war criminals as is Netanyahu.”
Prof. Hudson stresses how “the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Blinken and other U.S. officials have said the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling of genocide and calling for it to stop is Non-Binding. Then, Blinken has just said that no genocide is taking place.
The U.S. aim of all this is to end the rule of international law as represented by the UN. It is to be replaced by the U.S. ‘rules-based order,’ with no rules published.
The intention is to make the U.S. immune to any opposition to its policies based on legal principles of international law or local laws. A totally free hand – chaos.
U.S. diplomats have looked forward and seen that the rest of the world is seeing to withdraw from the U.S. and European NATO orbit.
To cope with this irreversible movement, the U.S. is trying to de-tooth it by wiping away all remaining traces of the international rules that underlay the UN’s founding, and indeed the Westphalian principle back in 1648 of non-interference in the affairs of other countries.
The actual effect, as usual, is just the opposite of what the U.S. intended. The rest of the world is being forced to create its own New UN, along with a new IMF, new World Bank, new International Court at the Hague and other organizations controlled by the U.S..
So the world’s protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank – don’t forget the West Bank – is the emotional and moral catalyst to creating a new multipolar geopolitical order for the Global Majority.”
Disappear or die
The key question remains: what will happen to Gaza and the Palestinians. Prof. Hudson’s judgement is ominously realistic: “As Alastair Crooke has explained, there now cannot be any two-state solution in Israel. It has to be either all Israeli or all Palestinian. And the way it looks now is all-Israeli – the dream from the outset in 1947 of a land without non-Jewish people.
Gaza will still be there geographically, along with its gas rights in the Mediterranean. But it will be emptied out, and occupied by the Israelis.”
On who would “help” to rebuild Gaza, there are a few solid takers already: “Turkish building companies, Saudi Arabia financing developments, UAE, American investors – maybe Blackstone. It will be foreign investment. If you look at the fact that the foreign investors of all these countries are looking for what they can get out of the genocide against Palestinians, you realize why there’s no opposition to the genocide.”
Prof. Hudson’s final verdict on “the great benefit to the U.S.” is that “no claims can be brought against the U.S. – and against any of the warfare and regime change that it is planning for Iran, China, Russia and for what has been done in Africa and Latin America.
Israel, Gaza and West Bank should be seen as an opening of the New Cold War. A plan for basically how to financialize genocide and destruction. Palestinians will either emigrate or be killed. That has been the announced policy for over a decade.”
What the Hell?
What is the sleaziest, dirtiest trick an auto insurance company tried to pull on you? Did they succeed?
I was in a bad car wreck back in 1980. I was crippled for six months. I was a passenger in the car so was not at fault. The insurance policy stated that as a passenger I was entitled to a fixed payoff. The insurance delayed and stalled paying me every chance they could. They had a different excuse every time. “The paper work isn’t filled out properly. We didn’t receive anything. It must have gone to the wrong department”. Etc, etc, etc. In the meantime, I can’t work and have no money coming in. I will not go on welfare so I was really starting to struggle. I called all of my bill collectors and explained my situation and promised them that when I got my settlement, they would be the first check sent out. They all worked with me and I kept them updated monthly. My apartment manager was very kind and interceded on my behalf with the owners so I could stay. When my food ran out, all that was left was five pounds of shelled pecans that were in the freezer and some flour. For three months all I had to eat was a handful of pecans and a couple of homemade flour tortillas each day that I made while in my walker at the stove. Finally my hunger overcame my pride and I called my dad and asked him what I should do. I was at the end of my rope. He was an insurance agent so I figured he’d know how to handle this agency that was screwing me around. He told me to contact my company and see if one of their lawyers would take my case. I contacted my company and sure enough, the next day a lawyer called me and was willing to help. His fee would be two thousand dollars. Within 48 hours my lawyer called me and ask how much of an advancement I would need to get my bills caught up and buy some food. I told him about 1,500 would do. The next day I had a check in hand for 1,500. I spent the day writing checks and calling my bill collectors up and letting them know that the money was on the way. When I got everyone caught up I bought some food. Damn, I was hungry. A week later a currier showed up at my door with a check for 15,000. That was the amount of the settlement. I called my lawyer up and asked him if there wasn’t a mistake. His fee and the advancement hadn’t been taken out. He informed me that he had negotiated with the insurance company to pay his fee and to give me the advancement as a bonus for all the suffering I did while they were screwing me aroud in leu of a lawsuit that would result in a bigger financial loss for them. I can just imagine what they thought when they saw that my lawyer had the same last name as mine. We weren’t related to the best of my knowledge but they probably figured I had sent my uncle after them.
Cheesy Lasagna Soup
Lasagna in a bowl, chock full of what you love in regular lasagna, with the added ‘Florentine’ touch of spinach!
Ingredients for Lasagna Soup
This soup recipe is a cross between a creamy soup and broth soup due to the addition of a little ricotta. It’s hearty, beefy, and delicious. In other words, perfection. Here is what you will need:
Olive Oil: helps with sauteing the veggies
Minced Vegetables: red onions, garlic and bell peppers
Fresh Herbs: oregano, parsley and basil – this trio is a classic Italian blend
Ground Beef: I like to use 80/20 for maximum flavor.
Beef Broth: becomes the base of the soup
Ricotta: add flavor and creaminess to the soup
Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes: I’m obsessed with fire roasted tomatoes lately. They add so much flavor and the perfect amount of heat.
Marinara Sauce: Rao’s is our favorite. It is a little pricey so I like to wait until it’s on sale at Costco and then load up.
Parmesan Rind: I toss it in the soup as it simmers to add more flavor and then remove it before serving.
Lasagna Noodles: I seem to always have some broken lasagna noodles in the bottom of the box, so this is pretty much the perfect solution so that you don’t waste them, but I’m also totally willing to break up new lasagna noodles to be able to eat this.
Mozzarella Cheese: perfect for melting and being all gooey delicious
Garlic Bread: This is totally optional but there is nothing better than dipping a crusty piece of garlic bread in this soup!
This list just provides an overview of each ingredients and some helpful information about its use in this recipe. Scroll to the end of the post to the recipe card to see all the measurements and details.
Prep: 10 min | Cook: 30 min | Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 pound bulk sweet (mild) Italian sausage
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes (optional)
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
4 cups (32 ounces) chicken stock
1 to 2 cups water
8 ounces lasagna noodles (not no-boil), broken into 1 to 2 inch pieces
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, + additional for serving
1/2 cup (2 ounces) Wisconsin parmesan cheese, shredded
Instructions
Heat Dutch oven or large pot over high heat. Brown sausage for 5 minutes, breaking up as it cooks.
Add onions; cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until onions are softened and sausage is cooked through.
Add garlic and red chile flakes; cook for 1 minute.
Add crushed tomatoes, scraping bottom of pan with wooden spoon.
Add stock, 1 cup water, lasagna noodles, basil and pepper. Bring to boil.
Reduce heat to medium-high; cook at a gentle boil for 10 to 12 minutes, until noodles are cooked through, stirring occasionally to prevent noodles from sticking to pot.
Stir in spinach. Add salt to taste. If soup is too thick, add additional 1 cup water. Remove from heat.
To serve, divide mozzarella among 6 serving bowls. Ladle soup over cheese. Top with spoonsful of ricotta, parmesan and additional basil.
How to Make Lasagna Soup
This recipe comes together so quickly and the steps are super easy. Here are the basic steps:
Sauté the vegetables until tender and then add the herbs and seasonings.
Brown the beef and drain any excess grease.
Add all remaining ingredients (except the pasta and cheese) and let simmer for at least 30 minutes and up to all day.
Add the pasta.
Top with cheese and broil.
Tips for Success
You will want to be careful, the noodles will slowly soak up more and more broth, so I never add them until the last 15 minutes before serving and if I’m freezing the soup or making a bigger batch in order to have leftovers I save the noodles until I’m ready to eat it.
You can make this soup in the morning and let it simmer all day until you’re ready to serve. Bonus…your house will smell like a dream!
Don’t have fresh herbs? No worries, I tend to use a lot of Gourmet Garden herbs. They are in tubes in the produce section. You can also used dried herbs but decrease the amount by half.
Keep those parmesan rinds! I love adding the rind to the soup as it simmers for the delicious flavor it adds. I do the same thing for our homemade pizza sauce.
My absolute favorite, favorite, favorite part is all of that baked cheese on top. Oh my heavens. It really is wonderful, and while you may be tempted to skip out on the bread, don’t!! Really, dipping pieces of crusty garlic bread in the soup is essential to your happiness.
Variations for Lasagna Soup
You can make this soup vegetarian by omitting the ground beef and by substituting vegetable broth for the beef broth.
If you don’t have lasagna noodles, try using a different type of pasta. Bow tie pasta works great. Mafalda pasta is really fun because it looks like mini lasagna noodles. It can be difficult to find though.
Change up the protein. You could do half ground beef and half Italian sausage. Ground turkey or chicken also work great if you want to reduce the fat a little.
Lasagna Soup in the Crock Pot and Instant Pot
This soup does great in both the crock pot and the Instant Pot. Depending on your schedule you can choose which method works best for you.
Crock Pot
Follow the instructions through step 7 on the stove top. Then add everything to the crock pot and cook it on low for 6-8 hours. Add the pasta 15 minutes before serving and add the cheese to the top and broil in oven safe bowls if desired.
Instant Pot
Follow the instructions in the recipe card through step 5 using the sauté mode on the Instant Pot. Once everything is cooked, continue the instructions through step 10. Place the lid on the Instant Pot and cook on high pressure for 5 minutes. Do a quick release and then add the cheese to the top. Place the lid back on so the cheese will melt. If you want the broiled cheese, you’ll have to put the soup into oven safe bowls in broil them with the cheese on top.
How to Serve Lasagna Soup
I hope I’ve convinced you of making the garlic bread as a side dish, or at least some sort of delicious crusty bread. Baguettes would work great too, or our no knead artisan bread.
I also love to serve a bright, fresh salad alongside it. A Caesar salad is great!
Storing, Freezing and Reheating Lasagna Soup
Properly stored, lasagna soup will keep for 3-4 days in the refrigerator. It should be stored in an airtight container.
If you want to double the recipe and freeze some of it, do not add the pasta or cheese. Let the soup cool completely and freeze it in a ziploc bag or a freezer safe container. It will keep for up to 6 months.
To reheat refrigerated soup, just zap it in the microwave until warmed through. You can also reheat it on the stovetop. To reheat frozen soup, let the soup thaw at room temperature for about 30 minutes. Then place it in a pan and heat until boiling. Then add the noodles and let simmer until the noodles are cooked. Top with cheese if desired.
What is the most deceptive product you have ever bought?
Not me, but the idiot that the apartment management company hired for maintenance.
We were moving into a new apartment and (somehow) the previous tenant had ruined the refrigerator.
The maintenance man we later dubbed “A**HOLE Adam” came in with a new fridge while I was at work. He tried to pass it off as the new standard refrigerator that they would be installing in all the apartments.
In retrospect, he probably saw a really cheap advertisement for a refrigerator and just didn’t check closely enough. His big mistake was trying to get that past my girlfriend as the new “Standard”.
I told them to come and get their “Toy Fridge” and I would buy one on the way home.
Photo attached. The large stainless one is the one I brought home. The little black one is A.A.’s failed attempt at competency.
Might have worked for a dorm room…
By the way, Habitat for Humanity’s “ReStore” is where we bought it. Used for $300.00 about 7 years ago. Still running strong. They have all kinds of used appliances, salvaged construction materials, doors, windows, etc. Bought my daughter a used gas furnace for her place (with a new heat exchanger).
Easter Island
What is the biggest secret that your first boss told you that has helped you the most?
Not exactly my 1st job, but my 1st REAL job after getting married. I was on graveyards and committed a very grievous error that ended up costing the company an entire week just to catch up. The president of the company showed up 2 hours early, got a cup of coffee, went to his office then knocked on the glass to put area signalling me to his office. As there was already a pot being run as to the exact time I would be fired, I noted the time. Bowels fluttering, I stepped in like a prisoner stepping into the execution chamber. He looks up from his desk telling me to shut the door and sit. He leaned back in his chair, tenting his hands under his chin and d asks for a run down as to what happened. After a bit of back and forth, he just sits there quietly then tells me something that stuck with me the entire remainder of my working life. Charlie, in this company we do not make mistakes. I’m glancing at my watch again nothing the time for the pools. O, we do not make mistakes. We have learning experiences and as long as you learn from it then that is what is in your file. We realize no one can learn without some mishaps along the way. We can tell whose working and whose not because the only person not making mistakes is the one not working. Now, get out of my office and go out there to help where you can to get this straightend out. Ward Lott, I never did tell you how that affected the rest of my working life.
Shorpy fun
What is the fastest you wiped that smirk off your manager’s face?
I made the mistake of taking a customer service job at a certain Asia-based bank that had bought out a Buffalo-based, family owned regional bank. While it was supposed to be customer service, they spent six weeks of training drilling into our heads that our main purpose was to sell. This despite the fact that they already had a dedicated sales team. Even if all a person wanted was his branch hours of operation, we were required to try to sell something.
I objected to this on multiple levels, the main one being that sales and service are separate functions. If your car breaks down, the salesman is not going to be the guy to fix it, but rather the trained mechanic. And if the mechanic is competent and honest, the customer will return to the dealership for his next car but he’s not going to sign the papers with the mechanic.
My supervisor, for the sake of avoiding BNBR violations, was a real piece of…work. She constantly reminded us that customer service costs money and that we were to make up for our uselessness by aggressive selling. In corporate jargon a given unit or function is referred to as a cost center, kind of like how stores in a chain each have individual numbers. In this case facilities and departments were a cost center with a number. This piece of work actually made us go to meetings and chant “We are a profit center” like a mantra, reminding us throughout that we are an expense. Piece of Work knew I had objections to this, and I became the scapegoat. She made a point of ostracizing me from little team events, denying me break times, once even removed personal property from my station and only returned it when I threatened action for denying me medication.
I got a call from Joe Customer who had just about everything. Joe started with the original, regional bank and continued after the takeover. Savings, checking, CDs, credit cards, car notes, mortgage, home equity, if a bank had it so did this guy after over 30 years of patronage. He wanted a balance on a particular account. I found it after looking through roughly five pages of information. He had so much business with the bank that there was nothing more I could do. Here’s your balance, thanks for calling.
Within two hours Piece of Work came by and ordered me to pull up the man’s information. In her hand was a monitoring printout with my failure boldly written in red, and she waved it in my face repeating “What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with that?” like she was scolding a child who left crud on the dishes before stacking them. She lit into me about how she was going to lose a supervisor contest to win a TV based on team sales, because of my attitude. I pointed out that there was really nothing left to offer him; she pointed out I could have offered securities.
“Yes, I could have,” I said. “And I could also serve a minimum of five years of federal prison time for acting as a financial advisor and selling securities without a license. I’ll be Goddamned if I let you throw my right to vote and leave the country at will under a bus so that you can win a TV.” She stood there a moment looking like I had just whacked her in the face with a wet chicken, then turned on her heel and stomped off without a word.
By the end of the week I was taken into a meeting with senior staff and HR and given the option of resigning with a three month severance, or be fired. Piece of Work was nowhere to be seen. I took the money and ran.
What has a car salesperson said to you that resulted in you immediately leaving?
This isn’t a story about a rich guy dressed in torn jeans trying to buy a Rolls Royce. I’m not a rich guy. This is about me and my daughter (when she was 8). I lived in Miami, Florida, then. I had to replace my old car and I had decided to buy a 3-year-old Toyota Camry (in 2003) because that was all I could afford, at the time. I checked out the ads and decided to look at the same make and model (Toyota Camry) in two different dealerships, so I could compare and buy from the one that offered the best deal.
But, at the very first dealer I visited, I saw a Camry that I liked in every way — colour, mileage, price, etc. This wasn’t a Toyota dealership but a used-car dealership. My daughter was with me. She was 8 years old, then. Obviously, she didn’t understand gears, cylinders, etc. But she knew that Daddy was buying a new car and was excited to be part of the process.
So, anyway, I told the lady who was selling me the car that I liked the car and that I wanted to buy it. Financing was done, at this point. We had agreed on a price and on payments, though I hadn’t signed the deal yet. The paperwork was in front of me. All I had to do was to sign it. I was happy about the deal. I was smiling. So was my daughter. I looked at my daughter and I asked her, “Do you like the car?”
Before my daughter could answer, the sales lady said, “Are you buying this car or do you need your daughter’s permission?”
I walked out without another word. I bought a nearly-identical car from the other dealer (also a non-Toyota dealership) on identical terms. That car worked for 20 years (from 2000 to 2020), though I gave away that car in 2017 and leased myself another one. So, I made a good decision, though it was an emotional decision. I have never regretted it. I would do the same again (though my daughter is now 26).
I had a similar experience in 2017. It was a Toyota dealership (in California), this time. This time, I was alone. Again, all of the paperwork was nearly done (for a 2017 Toyota Camry). All I had to do was to sign. Then the manager said, “You don’t know how much you earn. I do.” This was after I had shown proof of income. Again, I walked out, went to another dealership, about 20 minutes away, leased exactly the same car. My income and proof of income didn’t change, in 20 minutes. Not only that, I paid 10% of the down payment that I had agreed to, at the previous dealership. And I ended up paying off my lease (with no late payments) 6 months ahead of time. Plus, I got a pretty good (lease) deal for my 2020 Camry when I returned the 2017 Camry.
Fast thinking
I am planning to quit my job but my boss said to hold off on quitting until we can at least hire someone otherwise he said “I will make things very, very bad for you.” How should I respond to this?
Ask him to repeat it – in front of HR. It is an empty threat.
Turn in your resignation, date and sign it, and submit it directly to HR.
Given his insulting threat, say this: “I have valued my tenure at xx (company name) and as stated verbally to Mr. Bb on (date), I wish to provide my two weeks’ notice. Please let me know how I may help to achieve a seamless transition until my departure.”
“I was told by Mr. Bb on (date) that I should withhold my resignation until a new hire was on board, accompanied by a verbal threat that if I did not do so, ‘I (Mr. Bb) will make things very, very bad for you.’ I trust that HR and leadership at xx fully realize that such threats are unlawful, and may be reported to the state labor board for investigation.”
“I request the following, either immediate and paid release, or that my last two weeks of employment not be under Mr. Bb’s supervision; that Mr. Bb receive formal counseling from HR on his unlawful statement; and that all reference checks state that I am eligible for rehire and route through HR. I will not tolerate threats and intimidation in the workplace, and I hope that xx does not either. I respectfully await your response.”
Give Mr. Bb something to remember you by; he is not supervisory material and he has put the company in a tenuous legal position. Keep a copy of the letter for potential submission to the state labor board. Tell no one where you are headed (your new job). Privately rejoice that you never have to work for Mr. Bb again, he’s way, way, way out of line. (Never ever use him as a reference, of course, use an alternate leader or a client.)
Cats are fast
What do you like about Elon Musk?
1995 — Applied to Netscape for a job and got rejected
1996 — Was forced out of his CEO position from his own company Zip2
1998 — Struggled to make PayPal succeed
1999 — Almost died when he crashed his $1M Mclaren F1
2000 — Was kicked out of Paypal while on his honeymoon
2000 — Got sick with malaria
2001 — Russia refused to sell him a rocket
2006 — First SpaceX rocket launched failed
2007 — Second SpaceX rocket failed
2008 — Third SpaceX rocket failed with NASA satellites onboard!
Today I have a real treat for you all. It is the movie “Fail Safe” which is a 1962 depiction of the build up to world war 3. And it stars Henry Fonda, so you know it’s a great movie.
Please take the time to watch it. It was 60 years ahead of its time.
Meanwhile, my post on Quora…
Why is the USA so eager for a war with China
Any one who wants war has a mental disorder.
Obviously they have never experienced war, and has no idea or concept of what it entails. Pain is real. The loss of everyone you ever knew is real. The lost of your money, your homes, your jobs, and your friends is real. The loss of your culture and your society is real.
The loss of your innocence is permanent.
…
So why do so many American “leaders” want to engage a war with China?
I’ll repeat myself.
Anyone who wants a war has a mental disorder. They are not right in the head. They need to be seen by a doctor and treated for this disorder. If need be, well then, locked in a padded room. But they should not be permitted anywhere near the levers of power.
…
Ah. It was deleted.
I guess that stating the obvious is against the “rules” in the United States.
a young boy, puts $100 in the bank every single day. One day the boss at the bank noticed and asked, hey buddy, why do you keep dropping $100 in here everyday? The kid says, Can we talk in your office? The boss says, yes, and they go to his office. Then the kids spills the beans. Well, I make a bet everyday with someone new that I can kiss my right eye. The boss laughs and says, no way you can do that. The kid smirks. Wanna bet? The manager agrees, and quick as a wink, the kid takes out his fake eye and kisses it. The boss feels kind of silly and gives him $100. But he wants it back. So The kid says, okay, but with a twist. I’m pretty sure that you are wearing red girly panties. If I’m wrong, I’ll give you back your $100 plus another 100. Thinking he’s too smart, the boss agrees. The kid adds, but before you drop your pants, we need 10 witnesses to make it official. The boss gathers his team and after taking his pants off, he feels very proud to have won $100. Then he notices the kid is all smiles about losing money. Confused, he asks, why are you happy about losing your cash? The kid grins. Well, I had a bet with your team about how fast I could get you to drop your pants.”
Braised Pork with Green Chile Sauce
Mild green chiles season this meaty pork stew. Serve it with rice or as a burrito filling. This can also be served with tamales. This chile verde is also good served with scrambled eggs.
Ingredients
Pork
1 (3 pound) lean boneless pork butt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 large green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1 (7 ounce) can diced green chiles
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher or sea salt
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 tablespoon wine vinegar
1/4 cup water
Garnish
Tomatoes, cut into wedges
Cooked rice
Sour cream
Lime, cut into wedges
Instructions
Trim and discard fat and cut pork into 1 inch cubes.
In a large frying pan, heat oil over medium-high heat; add meat a few cubes at a time and cook until very brown.
Push meat to side of pan and add onion, garlic and bell peppers; sauté until limp.
Stir in chiles, oregano, cumin, salt, cilantro, vinegar and water.
Cover and simmer until meat is fork tender (about 1 hour).
Skim off fat and discard.
Serve with rice or make burritos or serve in your favorite way.
For Burritos: spoon pork into warm, soft flour tortillas, add sour cream, tomato wedges, and a squeeze of lime juice and fold to enclose. Rice may also be enclosed with the filling in the burritos, if desired.
What can you do to upset your neighbors the most in a well-to-do neighborhood?
Set up a drug dealing operation.
Because I was raised poor, a lot of things DID NOT bother me once I moved into a nice neighborhood. Things that might drive other neighbors (who have always been wealthy) absolutely crazy wouldn’t faze me at all. Loud music? So what. Kids shooting off fireworks? Hey, it’s better than gunfire. Lawns that grew a little too tall? Big deal. But set up a crime syndicate in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the U.S., and you’re going to make some very influential people extremely irate!
I lived in poverty when I was younger. The shack we lived in measured 500 square feet. My bed was in the kitchen. Stabbings and shootings in the neighborhood were routine. Before I was born, my parents found a guy dead on the front porch. He had been stabbed overnight and I guess he stumbled toward the house for help, only to collapse there. Drug deals became common.
My father worked very hard to eventually escape poverty, and I applied the same work ethic to my life. I had no desire to remain in a neighborhood where I had to fear for my life every single day. Anyone who has lived in such a place can tell you that it’s a miserable way to live!
I became successful. I got married. My wife was also successful. It took me 42 years, but we finally bought one of the more modest homes in one of the wealthiest towns in America. Celebrities became my neighbors. I didn’t hear gunfire. There was no crime. Kids left their toys on the lawn overnight and nobody stole them. People left their car doors unlocked at night. This is why I had worked so hard, for this level of safety and peace of mind. I had finally arrived!
About a year after moving in, our very quiet neighbor (an older lady who lived alone) moved out. A lady who had just divorced her multimillionaire husband moved in. She had triplets who were 17 at the time, two boys and one girl. She apparently had no control over them. Among many infractions, the girl once drove through our lawn, tearing up the grass and the driveway. Who drives through your neighbor’s lawn? One of the sons was driving drunk when he plowed through a neighbor’s fancy brick driveway entrance. But worst of all was the other son, who apparently had a large drug dealing operation.
Sketchy-looking cars would pull up at all hours of the day. The kid would come out of his house, sit in the back seat, make some sort of exchange, and then go back inside. Cars and houses throughout the neighborhood began to be broken into, probably linked to the people showing up to buy drugs.
This is what I had escaped. When you’ve worked so hard to live in a place with no crime, and you’re suddenly faced with drug dealing, people breaking into cars and houses, vandalism, and all that stuff you escaped, you become pretty ticked off. We didn’t pay all this money for a house only to have flashbacks of where I grew up. Other neighbors who were unfamiliar with such behavior were even more furious!
One particular neighbor, who happened to be a big time television producer, finally made the call. Police swarmed the house, found A LOT of drugs, and the kid who had now turned 18 got a pretty hefty prison sentence. The family moved out a month later.
My dad bought himself a 1973 Mercury Montego two door. Every option you could imagine, back when you could actually order a car built for you.
Really sharp car, dark blue metallic with a blue vinyl top. Had a dark blue leather interior with front bucket seats. Was his pride and joy. Biggest motor available, 460 4bbl. That car was a real sleeper. Fast as hell. Got about 8–9mpg. Every time you went around a right turn there was a metallic thump from the back somewhere. Turn left, nothing. Dad was an OCD prick. Drove him nuts. Was to the dealership for service multiple times. They replaced all kinds of stuff, even the rear axle. Finally he had me lay in the back seat and listen as he drove around. I isolated the sound as coming from the area of the drivers side rear quarter panel. Dad and I took out the rear seat and removed the interior panel. We found heavy nut and bolt hanging from a string. Taped to the sheet metal was a note, “How long did it take you to find this?”
Coconut Corn Bread (Dominican Republic)
Ingredients
1/2 cup diced mixed candied fruit
2 tablespoons dark rum
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 cup coconut cream
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup shredded fresh coconut
Instructions
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Mix candied fruit and rum in small bowl; reserve.
Beat sugar and butter in a large bowl; add eggs, one at a time, beating until well blended. Stir in remaining ingredients except candied fruit mixture and coconut; beat until smooth, about 30 strokes by hand. Fold in candied fruit mixture and coconut. Pour into greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.
Bake until top is golden brown and wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes.
Cool for 20 minutes; remove from pan. Cool completely before slicing.
In the 17th century, a priest in Venezuela was particularly fond of meat. Yet during the Catholic holiday of Lent, eating meat is not permissible — only fish may be consumed. So he wrote a letter to the Vatican.
He had found an animal, he said, which “lived in the water, had webbed feet” and “it even kind of tastes like fish when you cook it”. Would it be allowed to consume this creature during Lent? The Vatican replied, also by letter — it was allowed to eat the creature, provided they classify it a fish. So they did. And Venezuelans have been eating this animal ever since.
What species do I speak of? The capybara. World’s largest rodent, a largely aquatic species that loves to dwell in water. A meatlover’s delight — from giant hamster, to conveniently reclassified “fish”. One hell of a good loophole, if you ask me.
I worked for a food establishment that keeps all of its food on a “line”. One day I was sicker than I’ve ever been and needed to call out. I figured this wouldn’t be a problem since I never called out, but I was wrong.
So they force me to come in under threat of termination.
So i come in. I’m making food on that line, and I have a very specific urge everyone knows well. But, oh my oh me! I can’t leave the line! I have a lot of food to make! So I threw up. On the food in the line.
The company had to close for a short time to have the line professionally cleaned and sanitized.
When they finally reopen, I get called into the office. They ask me what happened. I tell them quite plainly that I tried to call out sick and was forced to report to work. Their genius response was ”you were scheduled to work so you had to come in.“
So I simply asked them how much it had cost to have the line cleaned. They give me a rough figure. I tell them they forgot about the money they lost out on by being forced to be closed during that time. Lastly, I tell them, straight to their face, that if I call out, it’s for a reason. If they force me to come in while I’m sick and throwing up, I will purposely throw up on the line again and they can pay that price again. And if they try to saddle me with the bill of cleaning the line, reduce my hours, or fire me for any reason, I would be more than happy to report them to the number that’s literally above their head about us not being allowed to come in sick. The next week my hours were reduced. I pulled out my phone, looked at the sign I referenced the week prior, and started typing in numbers in front of the manager. My hours were immediately reinstated.
After that, anytime I called out sick, I was told to feel better and call when I wasn’t sick anymore.
I feel like I’m a good fit to answer this question because I used to own a Chevy Volt, which is a plug-in hybrid (PHEV). In the summer, the Volt would drive 50–60 miles using only the battery, before switching to the 4-cylinder engine and acting like a normal hybrid, alternating between gas and battery.
Most days I did not drive anywhere near 50 miles. So I would come home, plug in to 120V, and the car was fully charged in the morning.
Why not a PHEV, then?
Well, it’s got an engine I rarely used, and some complicated electronics and wizardry to switch back and forth between the battery and the engine. It was something else that could go wrong on top of a straight EV propulsion system.
Some people like PHEVs because once they exceed range of the small battery pack, the car switches to gas and then you can just drive it like a gas car. Fillups are quick, and you’re back on the road. When you get to your destination, you can charge if you like, and your next 50 or so miles are all electric.
I loved the Volt. But I always felt it would grow up to be a Tesla, and last year, it did.
I much prefer having an EV. It’ll handle that 50–60 miles of daily driving you ask about with aplomb. Since the range of my EV is 318 miles, I could do that much driving for 4 days easily, without recharging if I didn’t want to.
Or I could charge at 120V/15A, as I typically do, and in the 12 hours or so that I’m sleeping and doing other things at home, I can add 36 or miles of range. Yes, eventually I’ll have a deficit, if I really do drive 50–60 miles per day, but I don’t. And for those that do, you can easily install a 240V outlet and charge quicker if you need it. So it’s a non-issue.
My in-laws are Chinese. I am a white American with mixed West-European ancestry. When I sit down to a meal with them, I have learned to practice strategic food placement on my plate so that it is never actually empty.
In the US, we have drummed into our heads as small children that it is incredibly rude to leave uneaten food on your plate, especially if you are a guest at someone else’s table. It is an insult to the chef. “There are starving children in Africa!” was the exhortation when I was a child. “Eat your vegetables and be grateful you have them!”
In Chinese culture, it is the obligation of the elder generation to make sure that the younger generation(s) are fed. If your plate is clean, that means you must still be hungry, but are too polite to ask for more. So they give you more, whether or not you actually have the capacity to eat it, whenever they observe sufficient empty space on your plate. Furthermore, it is extremely impolite to refuse to eat food given to you by a parent, auntie/uncle, or grandparent.
Therefore, I have learned to eat an amount sufficient for myself at meals while leaving enough on my plate to spread out and take up all of the large bits of contiguous space that might accommodate an additional serving.
I still feel guilty about the starving children who might like to have my leftovers, though.
My first boss told me that when she realized that several of us-all teenagers-were trying to coordinate our schedules so we all got off on the same day, so we could hang out outside of work. I didn’t understand it then. I thought she was just being a bitch.
But, ten years later, when I was in management, it made more sense. Coworkers are one group. Friends are another. Mixing those groups can cause problems, especially when one friend is put in charge of another.
It’s fine to be friendly with your coworkers. You should be friendly with them. But being friendly, and being their friend, are two different things.
I’m anti-social anyway, so it was easy for me to avoid making friends with the people I’ve worked with over the years. I’ll chat with them at work. I’ll ask them about their families, and they’ll do the same for me. But when work is over, I don’t hang out with them.
I suppose a lot depends on the type of job, though. Not every job is about making money. What I do now, for example: teaching. It’s not-for-profit. But I also don’t see my coworkers very often. Just in the halls during passing periods and during our weekly staff meeting. Other than that, I’m usually the only adult in the room. If adult interaction is your thing, teaching probably isn’t the best career choice.
This image was uploaded on an Internet forum with the caption:
“This is the lettuce you eat in your burger when you go to Burger King, enjoy it“
The netizens were shocked and horrified. They were angry to learn someone working in the kitchen has been messing up with their food.
Soon people got down to tracking the person; ‘where done and who doing this’! The image was posted anonymously, on the 4Chan forum. 4Chan users got down to work to discover the person behind it.
In the picture you can only see the shoes and pants of the uniform of the hamburger chain and that does not reveal anything since they are all dressed the same.
The image was tracked to its location. They found out where came from.
It came from an area where there was only one Burger King for many miles around.
Thereafter the netizens wrote and posted many mails to the Chain manager of Burger King, Mayfield Rd.
Then the Manager got into action and in a short time, the manager was able to find who had done it Two people who were on that shift were fired on the spot, they lost their jobs, and faced a fine of thousands of dollars.
So now you know, never make people angry on the internet, you could end up paying dearly.
I remember a guy who worked at a company with me. He was a professional who loved his job. He was 83, when the company forcibly retired him.
He made good money, and took fabulous vacations, had his house paid off 30 years before. He died 3 weeks after they forced him out. He lost the will to live, when he stopped doing what he loved.
I knew this lady that I worked with, who hated her job, she was depressed about having to go into work every morning. The happiest day of her life was when she retired early, with an early retirement package.
I think the benefits of working longer or retiring early very much depend on how you feel about your job.
It also depends on your health. If you think you will die early, then there is really not much point in working late. Unless you really love your job.
If you think you will die late, then working later, getting a bigger pension, and more savings, and using your wages for vacations and toys, now that your house is paid for, is the way to go.
I think it also depends on the country you live in. I live in Canada, I loved my job, I got 30 vacation days, 12 flex days, plus 3 golf days a year. I don’t know how many sick days and compassionate leave days I was entitled to because I never used them all up. So I got the equivalent of 9 weeks vacation. With weekends and statutory holidays I got 162 days off a year. Which is almost exactly half a year, so work wasn’t the same to me as an American who worked weekends, and only got 2 weeks vacation.
I could take fabulous exotic vacations, or just relax at the cabin while working.
Jamaican Rum Punch
Yield: 10 servings
Ingredients
4 cups water
1 cup lime or lemon juice
6 cloves or allspice berries
3 cups strawberry-flavored syrup
2 cups Jamaican white rum
Instructions
Mix all ingredients together in a punch bowl, and let the mixture settle for 1 hour before removing the cloves or allspice.
Stir and serve over ice cubes in old fashioned glasses.
Water and rum may be added to weaken or strengthen as needed.
One reason I wanted to shake hands with Oskar Groening is because our first meeting did not go so well. On the first day of the trial, I introduced myself and reached out to shake his hand. The strangest thing happened. He was trying to say something as he was sitting sideways in his chair. He turned white and fell backwards, not saying a word. He was holding onto my arm so he did not hit the floor. At that moment he was not a Nazi but an old man who fainted and I was trying to save him from falling. I screamed, “He is falling and I can’t hold onto him – he is a big old guy!” This was not the interaction I was hoping for. I knocked out an old Nazi.
The second reason is because I am interested in what will happen when someone from the victims’ side meets with someone from the perpetrators’ side. You cannot predict it. So today after the trial session concluded, I went up to Oskar Groening. He wanted to stand up but I said, “Please don’t, we do not want a repetition of last time.” I just shook his hand and said, “I appreciate the fact that you are willing to come here and face us. But I would like you to appeal to the old Nazis who are still alive to come forward and address the problem of neo-Nazis in Germany today. Because these young misguided Germans who want Hitler and fascism to come back — they will not listen to Eva Kor or any other survivor. You can tell them you were in Auschwitz, you were involved with the Nazi party, and it was a terrible thing.”
As I was talking to him, he grabbed me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Well I probably wouldn’t have gone that far, but I guess it is better than what he would have done to me 70 years ago.
Everything he is accused of — I am saying he did all that. I have forgiven the Nazis and everyone who has hurt me, but I told him that my forgiveness did not prevent me from accusing him nor from him taking responsibility for his actions. And I told the media that he was a small screw in a big killing machine, and the machine cannot function without the small screws. But obviously he is a human being. His response to me is exactly what I was talking about when I said you cannot predict what will happen when someone from the victims’ side and someone from the perpetrators’ side meet in a spirit of humanity.
I know many people will criticize me for this photo, but so be it. It was two human beings seventy years after it happened. For the life of me I will never understand why anger is preferable to a goodwill gesture. Nothing good ever comes from anger. Any goodwill gesture in my book will win over anger any time. The energy that anger creates is a violent energy.
I am asking a question: What do we want in the future? Do we want to keep pointing fingers and the accused stay in one corner and the accuser stay in the other corner and they never connect? How will that work out? Look at the world – it doesn’t work out. All we have is people who are feeling angry, people who are running around doing crazy things.
When tragic things happen, we have to sit down and discuss, what are the options for the victims and for the perpetrators? Most people are only here in court to accuse him of things he has already admitted. So now what? I don’t think we should raise a statue in his honor, but he can serve as a good example to young people that what he participated in was terrible, that it was wrong, and that he is sorry that he was part of it. Now there is a message that has some usefulness for society.
If I had it my way, the dialogue between the survivors and perpetrators would have started a long time ago. And it would have helped the survivors cope and maybe heal themselves, but even more so not to pass the pain on to their children.
My ideas in life are very different, I know. I am in the minority — maybe a minority of one. I know how society looks at it, but as I look at society, I do not think it is working very well. So what I am saying is, maybe we ought to try something else. And my idea is for people from the victims’ side and people from the perpetrators’ side to come together, face the truth, try to heal, and work together to prevent it from ever happening again.
Back some 30 years ago, fresh out of college, I worked at a real estate company owned by a Greek immigrant.
The company did everything involving real estate, loans, brokerage, management, home flipping…. It was a good place to get all around experience.
About 3 months into the job, the owner approached me and asked if I was ready to purchase my first house. Told him I was not ready, I was living with my parents and saving money. Then he told me a real gem.
He said to not purchase a condo or house for my first home. Huh? I said. He told me to purchase a four unit apartment. I told him I did not have that kind of money. Then he gave me the whole spill.
A single family home cost $150,000 and I would need $10,000 deposit plus pay $1000 per month for loan payment plus upkeep.
A four unit apartment cost $250,000 and I would need $15,000 deposit plus pay $2,000 per month for loan payment plus upkeep.
Here is the real kicker. If I bought the house, I would not have anything left over after I paid for all my expense.
If I bought the apartment, I can rent 3 other units at $700 each and the rents will actually pay all my cost.
WOW!
Here is the second kicker!
He said I can save that $1,000 a month and after two years, purchase another 4 unit apartment. Then I can move to my second apartment and rent the original place for extra $700. Now I will be saving $1,700 per month! My head was spinning. I realized how he made his fortune. He had multiple apartments collecting rents.
I went home and told my parents about what the owner told me. My Dad was bit skeptical but said he will help me to get the loan if needed.
Fast forward 30 years…my wife and I are making retirement plans. Thanks to the advise from my boss early in my career, things look good.
Back when homeless people were Hobos, Drunks were Winos, and “substance abusers” were Hypes, I pounded a classic foot patrol beat on San Francisco’s Mission Street. After 3 or four years, I literally knew everyone on my beat, bad, good, or wack-a-doo.
We’d periodically get some merchants complaining about this or that, so the Captain would tell the Lieutenant, and he would lean on the street Sergeant, who in turn would tell us: “ Its the weekly sweep time boys”.
Mitch would grab the BIG paddy wagon, and the six beat cops would ride its rear bumper while picking up the usual miscreants more or less at random.
We’d do a decent job of disarming them before tossing them in the wagon, and in that the prisoners and the cops knew how to play the game, we didn’t get any big surprises.
Untill:
I forget his real name, but if I called him “stinky” , and mentioned that he NEVER took off any of the 3 pairs of pants, or five overcoats he wore, everyone knew who he was.
Stinky was face down on the pavement across the street from the food market at 22nd when we grabbed him. Mitch did a cursory high risk pat search for weapons, or bottles of cheap wine, and finding none, cuffed him up and put him in with the other 15 bums in the back of the wagon.
At the Station, we had a regular assembly line thing going where the arrestees would line up, get a photo taken, have their meager belongings tossed into a brown grocery bag, and then shamble into the drunk tank.
Stinky shuffles up, and is so out of it, he can’t empty any of his 11 coat pockets. Mitch leans him against the booking counter, and begins taking handfuls of God know what out of the pockets.
Suddenly Mitch jumps in the air, yelling all sorts of Germanic based profanity, and is yelling “ Something bit me..something M….F….g BIT ME !!!”
Stinky has a semi-blank look on his face, but says; “ Oh, that’s just my lunch”
I grabbed the offending coat, ( while wearing gloves!) , turned it up-side down, and shook it.
About 7 or 10 half-dollar sized LIVE soft shell crabs fell out, and began scuttling around the booking room.
Stinky had apparently stolen them out of the fresh sea-food bin at the fish market up the street before we nabbed him.
To say that hilarity ensued would be vastly understating the commotion that followed, but suffice to say Stinky didn’t get his lunch, and Mitch never lived it down.
The Lieutenant had Mitch prepare a Line Up Briefing presentation on the “importance of proper searches during custody” later that week. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when he finished
Avdiivka, Ukraine FALLS to Russian Army – “Complete Rout”
Once considered impregnable, the KEY city for Ukraine defense, Avdiivka, the most heavily fortified city on the entire planet, has fallen to the Russian Army.
Within hours, the bloodiest battle of the 21st century (so far) will be over.
For those who have not kept up on developments in the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO), Avdiivka is the place from which the Ukrainian Army has shelled the civilians of Donetsk City for TEN YEARS!
There are going to be lots of tactical, strategic, and political implications from this that we will see over the next days and weeks.
There are reportedly very FEW Ukrainian defenses behind Avdiivka; the Ukrainians put all their eggs into one basket, counting on the deep Soviet-era nuclear bunker system, and defenses built since the end of the civil war to make it “impregnable.”
ALL of those defenses have failed and the Russian Army now controls the city.
(HT Remark:Remember how CNN and Bloomberg crowed endlessly that cutting Russia off from SWIFT was like using a Nuclear Weapon, and that there was no way Russia could survive that? Here we are, two years later, and now, there is no way for UKRAINE to survive!)
This is a developing story . . . check back for updates.
2023.02.22 China Declares War On The United States
Gonzalo was correct.
Be the Rufus
“Today I went to Dunkin and saw a clearly homeless guy singing on the side of the road and picking up change. Eventually I saw him stroll into Dunkin, as he was counting his change to buy something I began to get super annoying and talk to him over and over again even when he didn’t really want to talk. Since he had maybe $1 in change I bought him a coffee and bagel and asked him to sit down with me. He told me a lot about how people are usually very mean to him because he’s homeless, how drugs turned him into the person he hated, he lost his mom to cancer, he never knew his dad and he just wants to be someone his mom would be proud of (along with another hours worth of conversation.) this lovely mans name was Chris and Chris was one of the most honest & sincere people I’ve ever met. After realizing I really need to get back to class Chris asked me to wait so he can write something down for me. Handing me a crumpled up receipt he apologizes for having shaky hand writing, smiled, and left. I opened his note and this was it. “I wanted to kill myself today because of u I now do not. Thank u, beautiful person.”
The most important thing that drug rehabs understand that soon to be patients don’t, or can’t, or have forgotten, is that your being there is a matter of life or death. Plain and simple — you will die or you will get clean — that’s it.
Preparation for rehab goes like this.
You make the call to rehab and tell them you need help. Their phone intake staff will ask you a handful of questions like:
What is your drug of choice?
How long have you been using?
Are you safe?
Have you ever been to rehab?
Do you have a phone number that we can call you back if we get disconnected?
Are you on probation or parole?
Do you have an address where we can pick you up?
Those are a few of the questions the rehabs I’ve been to have asked me during the phone intake interview.
If you noticed, there is a seemingly important question that isn’t asked (or wasn’t asked of me).
That is: “Do you have insurance?”
Every rehab that I’ve been to didn’t require insurance. Once I got into rehab they helped me find funding.
Once you make the call asking for help, rehab is usually less than twenty-four hours away.
Here is a list of things that are great to have, but without resources not all of them are possible.
Your shoes and clothing.
Toothpaste, toothbrush, body wash, stick deodorant, razors. Don’t bother bringing any aerosol deodorant, mouthwash or cologne. If it has alcohol and has an outside chance it can be abused, it is contraband.
Cigarettes.
Money.
Hard candy in an unopened brand new package.
Don’t bring drugs, alcohol or weapons. That’s a crime in and out of rehab. They will call the cops. You will pay dearly.
Now you’re packed up and ready to go.
Usually, within twenty-four hours they send a van to pick you up at your doorstep. Again, it’s life or death so time is ticking and rehabs understand that.
The van is probably going to have four or five other people heading to rehab also. They’re in the same boat as you.
Once you get to rehab, you’re gonna get naked and searched. So, let’s back up. Before you get picked up, get a shower and shave. Somebody is going to be looking at your body without your clothes on.
Once you’re searched and all your belongings are searched, you’ll be assigned a bed.
You’re going to have 1–5 roommates.
You’ll go through 1–7 days of detox. This will seem difficult. You’ll be on medication. It’s gonna hurt, but it gets better.
After detox, you’ll be moved to rehab.
Now it’s official.
There are lots of people with lots of problems in rehabs.
Focus on yourself — they are not your friends. Don’t trust them, don’t believe them and don’t leave with them.
Listen to your counselor.
Pay attention.
If you have the opportunity to get into a halfway house after rehab, take it.
It’s awesome. You get to work, save money and start your life over.
In WWII, Nazi Germany was concentrating their man power toward the Eastern Front.
An ENTIRE Wehrmacht Division which consisted of 2 brigades of about 12,000 soldiers was up against a single Soviet KV Heavy tank.
The crew of the tank (5 personnel) held off the German advance for hours. The Germans simply couldn’t disable the beast. Eventually, the crew of the tank ran out of ammo and was killed by the Germans.
The Germans took the bodies of the Soviet soldiers and buried them with full military honors.
They swept through the KV and grabbed a flag of the Soviet Union. The bodies were buried with the flag, saluted, and 21 rounds were fired in their honor.
Everyone is aware of the infamous Christmas Truce of 1914 during WWI. Similar things about during WWII. Please remember that during WWII, Germany was signed under the Geneva Conventions. The SS didn’t really care for this. But the Wehrmacht did and had to abide by it.
During national holidays like Christmas, the Germans and British once again ceased fire. They all agreed to stop shooting to give themselves time to bury their fallen soldiers. This happened on multiple occasions but was looked down upon, especially by Adolf Hitler.
During Operation Barbarossa (Invasion of the USSR), German was winning in the beginning. They were sweeping through the Soviet Union fast and capturing millions of Soviets. With the unforgivable Einsatzgruppen killing off Soviet Jews in the rear.
There are many pictures out there of Wehrmacht and even SS soldiers helping their enemies (Soviets). With the increasing victories of the Germans, thousands of Soviets were being injured. There are pictures and stories out there of SS soldiers caring for those victims. I know, it’s really hard to believe. (I’ll add the pictures in once I find them).
The Geneva Conventions state that once the enemy is disarmed, they’re no longer an enemy but a POW. And POWs must be treated humanely and taken care of.
During WWII, the Wehrmacht captured American POWs. They were separated (officers from enlisted). They were given jobs (mostly for junior ranks). They were given 2 full meals a day, and were able to receive care packages from the Americans Red Cross.
This was different with the SS most of the time.
Americans were captured by the 1st SS Panzer Division (Hitler’s Honor/Body Guard Division, Leibstandarte SS) after the Battle of the Bulge.
This image completely breaks my heart, as I’m an American soldier and have massive respect to my veterans, especially WWII veterans.
Instead of taking prisoners, the SS decided to shoot them dead and leave them in the snow. An MG-42 opened fire at them, killing 84. A few survived and managed to reach another American Division. After that, most divisions gave the order to kill all SS personnel on sight. In 1944, the commander of the SS Division (Joachim Peiper) was caught along with his men. They all stood trial for killing POWs. Peiper unfortunately got away with his crime. He was later killed by Nazi Hunters long after the war.
Jamaican Banana Bread
Ingredients
Bread
2 tablespoons butter, softened
2 tablespoons light cream cheese, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1/2 cup skim milk
2 tablespoons dark rum or 1/4 teaspoon rum extract
1/2 teaspoon grated lime rind
2 teaspoons lime juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted
1/4 cup flaked, sweetened coconut
Topping
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons butter
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 teaspoons dark rum or 1/8 teaspoon rum extract
2 tablespoons chopped pecans, toasted
2 tablespoons flaked, sweetened coconut
Instructions
Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Coat an 8 x 4 inch loaf pan with cooking spray. Set aside.
Bread
Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with electric mixer; add sugar, beating well. Add egg; beat well.
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; stir well. Combine banana, milk, rum, line rind, lime juice and vanilla extract; stir well. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture alternately with banana mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix after each addition. Stir in pecans and coconut.
Pour batter into prepared pan; bake for 60 minutes.
Let cool in pan for 10 minutes; remove from pan. Let cool slightly on wire rack.
Topping
Combine brown sugar, margarine, lime juice and rum in saucepan; bring to a simmer. Cook 1 minute; stir constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in pecans and coconut; spoon over loaf.
I pulled an idiot move and had the other driver follow me. New town, didn’t know my way around very well but knew I was being followed. Drove past my apartment complex and into a neighborhood, make a u-turn back out to make sure I am being tailed and yep, I am. Ended up driving to a convenience store and parking up front. See the other guy park as well, then as soon as he gets out I back up and leave. Do a few more twists and turns and catch a red light or two, make sure I lost them, then go to my apartment. Lucky for me they didn’t know which drive I was going to or even where I was going. And I left about an hour later for the airport and was gone a week plus. Thankfully they never saw me again, out of state plates would’ve been a give away for me.
– Kursk 2.0? – Moon of Alabama, Jun 09 2023 – Collapse of Operation Citadel 2.0 – TASS, Feb 24 2024 by Konstantin Sivkov – Vice President of the Russian Academy of Missile and Artillery Sciences for Information Policy
> Sir Tim Clark told the Financial Times he had seen a “progressive decline” in Boeing’s standards, which he put down to long-running management and governance mis-steps, including prioritising financial performance over engineering excellence. <
Use as open (not Ukraine or Palestine related) thread …
Posted by b on February 25, 2024 at 13:03 UTC | Permalink
Cheese Tortellini Crock Pot Dinner
A creamy, cheesy crock pot dinner recipe featuring cream cheese, cheese tortellini and spinach.
Ingredients
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
1 large bag cheese tortellini
1 (16 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 bunch fresh spinach, stems removed, or 1 bag frozen spinach
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
1 container vegetable or chicken broth
4 ounces grated mozzarella cheese
Instructions
Place block of cream cheese in the slow cooker.
Pour the bag of tortellini over the cream cheese.
Pour the can of diced tomatoes over all.
Add the spinach to the top.
Sprinkle garlic powder, onion powder, pepper and Italian seasoning over the top.
Pour the chicken broth into the slow cooker.
Sprinkle mozzarella cheese over the top.
Cover the slow cooker, and cook on HIGH for about 2 1/2 hours.
Stir well and serve.
Fail Safe (1964) | Full Movie ft. Henry Fonda | Voyage
A U.S. plane loaded with hydrogen bombs is flying towards Moscow and because of technical difficulties, is impossible to recall. Starring Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
“Dr. Strangelove” and “Fail Safe” were released the same year, 1964, and deal with the same subject. Dr. Strangelove got more attention due to its satirical, comedic approach to the subject of nuclear destruction, but Fail Safe brings home the point in a far clearer, more compelling manner. It’s just as chilling today as it was 60 years ago.
This is for all youse guys that used to read Mad Magazine back in the 1970’s. It was part comic, part sarcasm, and part boyhood joy. Nothing even similar to it exists today. But, back in the day, we all would read it while drinking our sodas, and munching on our Babe Ruth candy bars.
The summers were of baseball, and fishing poles. It consisted of canoes, and mason jars. It was bicycle riding, and rail road track hikes, as well as exploring old homes and factories. It consisted of wall telephones in olive green kitchens, milk boxes on the porch, and hotdogs over an open fire in the evening.
We wore bell bottom pants, polyester billow sleeve shirts with choke collars, and big decorate belt buckles. A “nickel bag” of pot was enough to put on an open album cover, and use your driver’s license to separate the stems from the seeds. We had cigarette lighters built into the cars will back seat ash trays, and “cherry bomb” mufflers.
It was a calmer time; a simpler time. A time before the world went completely MAD.
I turned 18 and had proof. I looked 14 but it didn’t matter. 2 brothers owned a deli in my neighborhood, they took a liking to me. I made $108:00 a week and drank $150:00 worth of Lowenbrau beer back when it was made in Germany. The refrigerator where they kept the beer was out of sorts. Every beer had ice in it. It was fucken heaven.
The deli brothers slept in a back room at the store. They closed at 11.
I used to bang on the window at 2 in the morning. They were handing me cases of Lowenbrau out the door at 2 am and 4 am. I ran up a very large bill.
I was incredibly popular with the drunks I hung out with, mostly because I was always buying. One night they were robbed as they closed up. One of them reached for a gun behind the counter, the robber blew both their heads off and split.
I came upon the carnage at 1 am. I knew something wasn’t right when the door was open. I went in and saw they were dead. I walked out with 4 cases of Lowenbrau and put them in a friend’s trunk.
We sat in the nature preserve drinking till the sun came up. It was a great summer. I owed close to one thousand dollars in credit. It would have taken me years to pay it off. They were barely scratching out a living in the deli. We were all better off
Beef and Mushroom Stew with Caraway Dumplings
Browning meat in the oven reduces the amount of fat needed for cooking. Serve with julienne parsnips and carrots.
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
Stew
1 1/2 pounds round or blade steak
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
Bouquet Garni*
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (if necessary)
1/2 pound small mushrooms
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 cups beef stock
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Dumplings
1 cup soft fresh bread crumbs
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 egg white
Instructions
Stew
Cut steak into 1 1/2 inch cubes. In a bag, combine flour, pepper and salt. Add beef, a few pieces at a time, and shake to coat with flour mixture. Shake off excess and place meat on wire rack in flameproof casserole. Bake in 350 degrees F oven for about 25 minutes or until browned. Meanwhile, prepare Bouquet Garni.
Set meat aside on platter.
Place casserole over medium heat. Only if necessary add all or part of the oil. Add mushrooms, cap side down, and cook until golden, transferring to platter as they brown.
Add onion and garlic; cook until onion is transparent. Add stock, wine and tomato paste; bring to a simmer, stirring and scraping bottom of casserole with wooden spoon to scrape up any brown bits.
Return meat to pan; add Bouquet Garni. Cover and simmer over low heat for 1 hour or until meat is tender. Meanwhile prepare dumplings.
Dumplings
In a bowl, toss bread crumbs and melted butter together with a fork. Combine flour, baking powder, caraway seeds and salt. Mix lightly into crumb mixture. Beat together egg and egg white; add to crumb mixture and mix lightly (mixture will be soft) shape into 8 balls of even size.
Remove Bouquet Garni and discard. While stew is simmering, add dumplings, cover and cook, without removing lid, for 18 minutes.
Notes
* Tie together with kitchen twine 1 celery stalk with leaves, 3 or 4 sprigs parsley, 1 bay leaf and small sprig of thyme.
I worked for a company called Pyxis that made medication dispensing systems. The first CEO of the company was a VERY smart man named Ron Taylor who said “we will NEVER be FDA regulated” – the thinking being that if we are, the weight of the FDA’s requirements for paperwork and process are just *onerous*. Which they are. Anyway, we made sure the product never delivered drugs to patients – that the Nurse or Doc that used our system was ALWAYS the final vehicle of delivery – so we didn’t need to be FDA regulated.
Years later, Pyxis is bought by Cardinal Health who then buys bunch of other med-tech companies and they have this bright young VP who says “since half of our stuff is FDA regulated, let’s make ALL of our stuff FDA regulated!!!”. All of us old-timer engineers told him it was a bad idea, we explained that we’d never release a new software revision or product again… but he didn’t listen.
Once we invited the FDA to the building to check out out, that was that. The doors were very nearly shut, he was asked to leave and the company took a HUGE hit. The FDA didn’t really want to be there, but once you invite them in – they’re in. I was there for the whole transition – not my first time seeing that – and it was pathetic. In my remaining years at that company, not a single major product initiative or update made its way out the door.
I was an assistant manager of a service station (gas ration + garage) and responsible for most of the station’s hiring, training, and firing.
We had hired a kid named “Kris,” who had managed to pass the math part of the application and seemed relatively competent to be polite and make accurate change.
One day, a long time customer of the garage came walking around the bay side of the building and waved me down. He was more my boss’s customers met than mine, but we knew each other well enough.
“Hey, Mark. I wonder if I could talk to ya for moment?” He had a fairly concerned look on his face.
Being someone who was always willing to help a customer solve an issue, I didn’t hesitate.
“Of course! Hat can I do for you?”
“Well, I , uh, I wanted to let ya know that I was talking to the kid in the store and, and he told me that I should definitely not be bringing my car here to you guys.”
I was speechless for a good five seconds, but my eyes were probably meeting my ears.
“Mr. Smith, thank you so much for letting me know. You know how hard Mr. Boss and I work to make sure all of our customers are well taken care of and I appreciate you sharing this with me.”
I walked over to the store side and asked Kris if he had actually told our customer, Mr. Smith, who had been a gas and garage customer for over 15 years, that he shouldn’t trust our shop to take care of his car.
Kris was 19, heading on up to 13, so he thought he was a “man of the world” since he had a 30+ year old sugar momma and must’ve thought that made him something extra special.
“Yeah.”
“You’re fired. I’ll have Mr. Boss down here in less than an hour to write your last check. You can wait here or come back.”
He decided to come back after standing there for a moment without saying anything.
I called up my boss and told him what had happened. He told me to write up a letter explaining why he was being fired, and that he would be there as quickly as he could to get that check together.
Kris came by and I gave him his check in an envelope with the letter. I just handed it to him. He took it and walked out. I didn’t say a word, and neither did he.
Good riddance! I was so glad we had done such a great job by our customers that one of them had no problems letting me know about that kid.
Teaching conditions and pay were not good for government teachers. The premier, Sir Henry Bolte, had thrown down the gauntlet for teachers. There was to be a strike and teachers were to gather at the steps of Parliament House while a bill to make striking illegal for teachers was to be debated.
I decided to go by public transport so I would not get stuck in town or have to pay excessive parking fees (after all, I was a lowly paid teacher). I got to the steps of Parliament House before 9 a.m. There were police shoulder to shoulder forming an impenetrable line – and the only teacher there was me.
I moved up and down, waiting for others to arrive. By about 9:15, no=one else had arrived and a senior policeman stepped down and spoke to me. “Why are you so special that there are so many of us here?” I replied that I was the only one on time and everyone else was late. By 9:30, all except two police left.
By 10, there were a few hundred other teachers there, so the two police were totally overwhelmed. But we did behave!
My moment of fame, and the local papers didn’t get a photo of me facing off to over a hundred police!
My two friends let’s call them John (Christian American) and Fatima (Arab Muslim) are going out.
They have a passionate love story. Tattooed each other’s names on their bodies. Fought a giant backlash from her Arab family against their marriage because he is from a different religion and culture. Made deep promises to have an eternity of love and marriage together.
One day Fatima gets a message from a woman saying that she is so sorry to be the carrier of bad news but John her fiance is cheating with that woman’s sister. The message contains so many screenshots and proofs that cannot be faked and he is indeed cheating.
The texts she showed me were vomit-enducing. He would tell the other woman exactly the same things he tells her. How he only lives for her. How he can think of nothing but touching her. There were nudes exchanged between them and words of adoration.
Fatima’s world collapsed. She came to me crying and asking about what to do. I told her forget about him. What a piece of trash. Dump him this moment. My blood was truly boiling knowing all the sacrifices she made and all the promises that were broken.
Next day, I woke up to pictures of John and Fatima together uploaded online. I asked her and she said “Oh Salma he told me he was just comforting her because she was having hard times. Besides all men play around sometimes and I love him”.
I can’t decide until this moment whether I want to slap him or her…
People will always associate with you when you’re succeeding. No one wants to associate with failure.
Nobody’s busier than a person who doesn’t want you.
Just because you love each other doesn’t always mean you’re meant to be together.
It’s okay to fuck up and make mistakes and to be scared. You don’t have to know what you’re doing all of the time.
There’s nothing better than showering and putting on an oversized t-shirt and then crawling into a bed with fresh sheets.
Nothing turns us on more than someone who sincerely cares about you and who directly communicates their intentions.
Sometimes we get into those moods where we don’t feel like reading, you don’t feel like being on the internet, you don’t feel like watching a tv show or you don’t feel like sleeping and existing in general.
There’re no final version of ours . We never stop evolving, growing/ changing, nor should we.
Sometimes you’re in a mood to destroy your relationship with everyone you know.
Having a baby fall asleep on your chest is one of the purest and nicest things ever.
Dancing around your room to music and not giving a single fuck is one of the ultimate forms of self care.
Privacy is power. What people don’t know, they can’t ruin.
This old gentleman was in court because he got a felony ticket for duck hunting with a self made shotgun round that was one grain too heavy after being weighed by the game warden. Some random obscure law. He had been returned to court a number of times while the District Attorney was trying to figure the case out. A new judge who heard the case had the biggest smile as he heard the story from the District Attorney and the very humorous old man.
The judge started chuckling then roared laughing as the man explained that he was the president of the young duck hunters boy scout something or other for the past 40 years teaching young men to hunt ducks and the Game Warden was his ex-wife’s new victim as the warden had been dumb enough to date her, and so the Game Warden was being a bit of a tool.
The judge was laughing so hard as he asked the District Attorney if it was ok to just drop this silly outdated charge so no one had to listen to the outrageous story anymore.
I had to stop the guy on his way out to exchange numbers and went out hunting with him the next week. Dinner was good.
David: Shots fired at 123 Mockingbird Lane, in the city.
911 Center: Is anyone hurt, is anyone in danger?
David: No more danger. Yes, my wife. She is in need of EMS, just to check her out. She has some pretty serious contusions.
911 Center: What happened?
David: She’s just scraped up pretty bad, but is safe. Three men tried to drag her into their vehicle, as she got out of her car.
911 Center: Where are those three men, now?
David: Two are laying in the street and one is hanging outside of his vehicle. A white panel van.
911 Center: I have police and EMS on the way. Where are you now?
David: I am in my house with the doors and windows locked.
911 Center: Are the three men moving?
David: I have three males suffering from various gunshot wounds, none of them are moving or breathing, that I can tell.
911 Center: I’m glad that you and your wife are okay. Stay in the house. Stay safe. The police will clear the area and then come in contact with you. Are there any other people with guns, in the area.
David: No. It’s quiet. The neighbors are all in their homes. Cars are driving around the bodies.
___________________________________
Dispatch: Break. Units, 31, 202, 103, 104 and 115. Respond to 123 Mockingbird Lane. Victim reports shots fired, 3 male suspects appear to be shot and non-responsive. Victim and his wife are in their home at the same address, and are sheltering in place. Witnesses report no other individuals in the area.
Unit 31: 31 in route. 202, put 103 at the north end of the block, 115 will position at the south end. 104, 202 and myself will clear the area.
Dispatch: Unit 31, EMS from Smiths, and Centerville paramedics are ready to roll in, once the area is clear.
Dispatch: Break, all units, step down from active shooter protocol, be on standby until 31 clears.
__________________________________ Detective Branch: Sir, at what point did you determine your wife was being attacked.
David: I heard her screaming from the street. I recognized her scream as unusual, because she only screamed like that once before.
Branch: When was that?
David: When she was approached by a stray pitbull and the baby was in the yard.
Branch: Then what did you do?
David: I grabbed my AR and ran to the front of the house.
Branch: What did you see?
David: A big guy dragging my wife by her hair, while she was kicking and screaming. The skinny guy was trying to grab her feet, but she was kicking the crap out of him.
Branch: Then what?
David: I yelled, “I have a gun! Let her go!”
Branch: What did the big guy do?
David: He tried to lift her up to shield himself with her body. The skinny guy started to reach into his waistband. I saw a gun silhouette against his white t-shirt. He wasn’t facing me, so I knew he was going to point his gun at my wife. I shot him first.
Branch: Is that why he was shot in the back?
David: Yes.
Branch: Then what?
David: I shot the skinny guy twice before he fell. One got him in the right shoulder, and the second one hit him in the middle of his back. He didn’t get up, which seemed to piss the big guy off, so while he was fighting with my wife, I ordered him to let her go!
Branch: What did he do when you told him to let your wife go?
David: He seemed to not be too sure what to do, but then I heard two gun shots come from the van. A bullet impacted on the side of the house, about 10 feet from where I was standing. The muzzle flashes were quite bright, coming from the van.
Branch: Then what?
David: So I have this low light scope, and the guy in the van was opening his door and he had a large caliber hand-gun, looked like a 45 or 44 magnum. I wasn’t about to let him out of the van with that gun, so close to my wife, so I put the crosshairs of my scope, on the driver’s head, and shot him. I saw a puff of red in his headlight beam and he didn’t move.
Branch: Why is the big guy, dead?
David: Because he looked over his shoulder and didn’t see the driver any more. He called what I am assuming is his name, and “Nick” didn’t answer. He then put his arm around my wife’s neck and he looked like he was going to choke her out or break her neck. He was big enough to do that… I didn’t have a choice.
Branch: What happened then?
David: I yelled to my wife to “run to your left!”. She used her feet and what strength she had left, to run to her left. The big guy turned to the left with her, which exposed his right side profile. I shot him in the right side of his rib cage. He went down pretty quickly.
Branch: Weren’t you afraid to hit your wife?
David: I prayed to God that I wouldn’t. But I knew that if I accidently hit her, she would forgive me. But I couldn’t forgive myself, if I didn’t hit the men who were attacking her.
Branch: Do you have anything else to add in your statement?
David: No sir.
__________________________________
31: Dispatch, this is thirty-one. Paramedic says all three subjects are DOA. Need a coroner out here, with a bio-cleanup crew. We are taping off the area and posting a patrol at the house for the night. Put 103 on it.
Dispatch: Chief wants to know if we are pulling in the vic for the DA?
31: His call. But I am not seeing it.
THE END
Footnote: I originally posted this answer back in October of last year. However, I deleted my account and all my answers after my life was threatened. (Not over this post, but another one.) So, now that that problem is solved. I am going to re-enter Quora. Hopefully, with a few more controls and a nice security system.
Modern Women Get SALTY When Men Start Ignoring Them
I was having a skiing class in St. Anton, Austria back in 90’s and the class took a lunch break. Eric the ski instructor was making conversation and asked how we had all come down to Austria. I told I had driven and he asked if I had found it a problem driving on the RHS in my right hand drive car (Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9 went like hell). I said no and I drove a lot abroad and he then asked which other countries drove on the left. I think I mentioned Japan, Australia and New Zealand and then a Dutch chap said South Africa. There was a moment of silence before Eric said “The British invented concentration camps”. I should have bitten my tongue but came back with “Maybe but we didn’t fit them out with Gas Chambers and Ovens” . “No just machine guns” replied Eric. The Dutch chap then said that many Dutch people wouldn’t ski in Austria as Kurt Waldheim (former secretary general of the United Nations and former member of the SS) was President of Austria. He had been voted in despite knowledge of his war efforts. They had better ski in Holland then said Eric. At which point someone suggested it might be a good idea if we changed the subject and normality resumed. As we get up from the table Eric says “Where would you like to ski this afternoon?” I couldn’t resist it so I said “How about Poland? ” At least everyone laughed, including Eric.
Last week I had the pleasure of babysitting my friend’s 4-year-old daughter for the day.
We had a fun day: going to the library, picnicking in the park, playing on the playground and ending the day with a little bit of ice cream! (I’m allowed to spoil her).
Once we had been home for a few minutes I noticed I was getting a migraine and asked her to play quietly because my head hurt.
I then proceeded to peruse my phone as I waited for the migraine to subside.
“No, no, no,” the little girl said to me.
I glanced up and gave her a curious look.
“If your head hurts, you don’t look at the screens. You close the eyes like this and don’t do the phone or the computer,” she told me.
I obeyed and noticed that my migraine dissipated quicker than usual.
That 4-year-old was incredibly unqualified (what with her still being a toddler and all), but I’ll be darned if she didn’t have some great life advice.
She Tried To Date Women As a Man And Quickly Learned Why Men Are Opting Out of Dating | Part 2 Norah
A guy asked me to be his girlfriend the night before he left to France for a 3-month internship but I rejected him because I wasn’t sure. We remained close friends after that. On the night of my birthday (he was still in France), we video-called and he sent me a link to a website. It turned out that he made a video of each of our friends saying happy birthday to me, along with my favourite songs playing on the background. At the end of the video, he said happy birthday to me with Rascal Flatts’ song My Wish.
“And while you’re out there getting where you’re getting to I hope you know somebody loves you And wants the same things too Yeah, this is my wish”
He is now my boyfriend of 2 years.
AI experts make predictions for 2040. I was a little surprised
My mother did. I was the youngest of six kids. We brown bagged lunches every day. We. included my father. My mom made one heck of a good lunch from leftover from the night before. She always baked and had a slice of cake or some sweet included in our lunch.
My dad was senior test director at our local Army base and was pretty high up in government service workers (GS 15 rank almost equal to a General but was a civilian). He worked with high ranking Army people.
His brown bag lunch started to go missing several times a week. My father was money tight (tight as a crabs ass and the crab is waterproof) so him having to spend money for lunch was not going over very well.
My Mother made cupcakes for dessert one day but iced two of them with, you guessed it right, ExLax. Not just your normal dose for constipation but enough for an almost immediate explosion.
It only took a few hours for my father to find out who was stealing his lunch. That Major was transferred very quickly after the incident.
Hungry Potter and the Chamber of Snacks – (Harry Potter AI)
Not my mom but my dad. I was 12 going into 8th grade, dad and I were doing my back to school shopping at our thrift stores. I had my budget, my list, I knew exactly what to spend. When we got to the counter and after she totaled everything, she could have said this before, but the cashier said the store was under new ownership and there was a 10% purchase fee. WTH!!! I’ve never heard of that except at grocery stores (that cost plus thing). Anyway I’m over budget so I have to take off some things, the shoes I could live without, the belt I really liked, and 2 shirts. Not a lot and I could recycle a few more from last year (my used last year clothes are really showing their age so they get put in work clothes or grease rags) but we total out and leave. My dad who had been so excited early seemed really quiet. After loading this in our truck we head towards home. In my reserve pocket I pull out my ice-cream fund. Every year before or since (even this year when dad took me college clothes shopping) I keep enough for ice-cream. My dad stops at the shop and says he’s not really in the mood for ice-cream. Wait a minute this is our thing always. My dad sets in on this I should have better, he should have made more money, his little girl shouldn’t have to buy 2nd hand clothes for school. He has completely failed me as a father. Maybe I would have been better off with his brother’s family, they have money. I was shocked, appalled, I have never felt that way. I slapped him, harder than I meant to but I did. And I pulled out, as he says, my grandma voice. Listen here mister. You have never once come close to failing me not even for a moment. The love and devotion you have given me is worth more than any amount of money in the world. I don’t need better or expensive stuff. I need you holding me at night when I’m scared, telling me you believe in me when no one else does. Letting me know that beans and bread for dinner is perfect again this week. I don’t want more money or expensive, flashy stuff, I want us. I want our goofy little traditions, our silly little interactions, our weird fun times. You are the best father in the whole world because you value love over anything else. Now this is our ice-cream tradition and if you don’t want to do it then let’s just leave. We both cried alot in our truck that day, and it was the best ice-cream treat we’ve had. My dad has never brought up money again and I haven’t slapped him…well that hard again. I love you always daddy
Trump is a great golfer. The best golfer to ever occupy the White house. It’s not even close. He is very good. Yet, as in most things Trump, he is not as outstanding as he claims to be. He lies and cheats.
that: “once playing with Trump in the 1990s he realized that Trump had placed a ball just feet from the pin that he had never hit. Mulvoy called Trump out on cheating and Trump rationalized:
“Ahh, the guys I play with cheat all the time,” Mulvoy said Trump told him. “I have to cheat to keep up with them.”
Someone I know golfed with Trump at a charity event. Apparently Trump was cheating and was called out.
When asked to stop cheating, Trump responded: “I cheat on my taxes, I cheat on my wives, and I cheat at Golf. Get used to it.”
Trump then smiled broadly, and kept cheating. He didn’t win the tournament. But he didn’t stop cheating.
“I’ve played with him a lot,” says a frequent guest in Trump’s foursomes. “This one time, I was in the fairway and he was right of the green but a little bit down the hill. He didn’t think anybody was watching, but I was. I saw him make a chipping motion from the side of the hill but no ball came up. Then he walked up the hill, stuck his hand in the hole and pulled a ball out. It must’ve been a ball he had in his hand the whole time. Then he looked up and yelled, ‘I chipped in!’”
2. The Quick Rake
This is a sneaky little move in which you hit your approach putt and then quickly walk up and rake up what’s left of it, no matter the length, before your opponents can stop you or think to holler, “Hey, wait a minute!” Trump has mastered this move. He does it sometimes before the ball has even stopped rolling. MSNBC cameras caught him doing it once to a ball that had sped five feet past the hole and was gaining speed. By the time anybody can object, the ball is already in his pocket.
3. The Ball Switch
“Whenever I’ve caddied in Trump’s group,” says Greg Puga, an elite Los Angeles amateur and caddy, who has Trump in his group plenty, “he always gets his own cart. He makes sure to hit first off every tee box and then jumps in the cart, so he’s halfway down the fairway before the other three are done driving. That way he can get up there quick and mess with his ball.
Csipetka (Pinched Noodles – Hungary)
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Instructions
Mix flour and salt; add egg. Stir to make a stiff dough, sprinkling in a few drops of cold water if necessary. Knead until smooth.
Let dough rest for at least 30 minutes.
Flatten dough a bit at a time between floured palms (or roll 1/8 inch thick on a floured board) and pinch off pieces slightly smaller than a dime. Drop them into rapidly boiling salted water; cook until tender, about 15 minutes.
Drain and rinse csipetke; stir them directly into stew or soup, if ready. Otherwise, turn them into a bowl, coat with oil, and set aside in a warm place until ready to use.
Notes
You can drop csipetke into broth or soup for extra flavor and texture, or you can serve them alongside a main course with sauce or gravy, or you can use them in place of dumplings or noodles in almost any other recipe.
This may have been common at the time but it will still sound pretty bizarre to American ears in 2020.
In May 1894, the federal government put four men on trial for smuggling opium into San Francisco aboard the yacht Emerald. Now, shipping, selling, and smoking opium was totally legal in America that year; there were at least twenty shops selling opium in Chinatown – and advertising in the local papers and the city directory (under “Opium Dealers”). However, everybody had to pay the $10 per pound import duty in order to do so, and as always, there were people who didn’t want to cut the government in on the profits. One of them was Ewen W. McLean, who’d been smuggling opium for almost a decade. But he and his captain, John Voss, had avoided arrest and were safely out of reach up in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Louis Greenwald, George Thomas, George Wichman, and Emerald’s mate, Henry Mensing weren’t so lucky. After a couple of days of testimony, in which two members of what the newspapers called “the Emerald Ring,” flipped and gave up the four and the whole scheme, the prosecutors had a solid case and just needed to tie up a couple of legal bows.
One of these was demonstrating that the duty hadn’t been paid. Not too difficult, because the half-pound tins in which the opium was smuggled were supposed to bear a Customs stamp and none of the ones seized did. The second issue was a little trickier. The government needed to show that the opium was in fact opium and that it had come from abroad (thereby requiring payment of the duty).
There were no crime labs back then, no CSI or Quantico, so the government had a conundrum. They solved it by bringing in an opium expert, a Chinatown resident and long-time opium consumer named Mun Jin Moy, who laid out all the gear he needed to smoke some opium. At the urging of the United States Attorney, Mun broke open six cans from the seizure, withdrew some opium from each, and as the newspaper reported it, “cooked his dope over the little spirit lamp, and then, placing it on the bowl of the pipe, sucked away with apparently great enjoyment as his little eyes blinked and glistened through the wreaths of smoke.”
Undoubtedly fairly wasted at this point, but apparently still able to talk, Moy considered carefully. “’Him velly good,’” he said, and ruled that the opium had come from Victoria, being a higher quality than that from Panama.”
With that testimony “in the can,” Mun left the stand, the only person I know of who was actually paid by the government to get high in a federal courtroom. The jury evidently liked what they heard, because they convicted three of the four defendants, who got five years in San Quentin for what were essentially tax violations.
Up in Victoria, McLean ran dope to Hawaii for a few more years, then left that business and went legit, founding the Vancouver Stock Exchange and making it into “Who’s Who in Canada,” so crime evidently does pay sometimes. John Voss attempted to sail around the world in a canoe and didn’t quite make it, but he wrote a book about it (still in print) and his canoe is in the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.
But paying a drug addict to come to federal court and smoke a bunch of dope (from the government’s evidence) and testify about it? That’s pretty damn bizarre.
Your best memories are not always real. When someone makes us feel good, we tend to color all memories of them positively and they might not be as good as you remember. Kind of like how as kids we thought our parents were super heros. This makes you a better person cause you can leave in the present and not compare your present relationships to the past.
maybe you’re the problem. When in difficult relationships it’s important to consider if and how you’re the problem. Not to say that bad people don’t exist but also if you’re with them, why then are you with them? You do have a problem too
Your family doesn’t love you unconditionally. Try being a pain and you’ll see this for sure. Actually the only people who love you unconditionally are people who don’t love themselves. Even your child will stop loving you and love another mother if you stop mothering them
Not everyone will get to have a peaceful beautiful death. Many will die in painful ways. Enjoy a beautiful peaceful life while you can.
You will likely be completely forgotten about 20–80 years after you die. Your legacy too so stop focusing on building a legacy and instead focus on giving your family a beautiful love cause that’s mostly what they’ll miss before you get forgotten. The people who knew you might never forget you but soon they’ll die too and you’ll seize to exist. Don’t believe me? Just think about it… what’s the name of your grandfather’s grandfather?
Your children don’t care how successful you are. They just want and need your positive attention. If you sacrifice this for work or building a legacy, they’ll very quickly and happily squander your legacy soon as you’re gone
You don’t know what you don’t know. Next time someone speaks allow yourself to listen and discover what you didn’t know
very few people are thinking about you right now. Most of them are thinking about themselves and what you think of them but not really thinking about you
In 10 years you’ll most likely realize you did some things wrong even the rbi gas you’re convinced that you’re doing right. As you acquire more info, you’ll realize how limited your thinking was. Don’t believe me? Just imagine how madly I love you were in that first love. You probably thought that will never change. You now realize you were wrong
many people choose you because they see the value in keeping you around. As soon as you lose that value you will lose those people too
I once worked in a glass factory in Pennsylvania. The company was a huge mega-billion dollar operation, and I was working in one of the oldest and decrepit operations of it; the “hole in the wall” ancient facility in West Elizabeth, PA (in the heart of the “rust belt”) just South of Pittsburgh.
Ah. What a depressing place.
Closed factories, towns, shuttered homes. Dilapidated facilities, and all the rest. Rampant crime, poverty and drug abuse. Yuck.
Anyways, I worked in maintenance, and I was busy keeping the equipment working in that Hellish environment.
One day, I was told to fix a problem.
The factory had termites.
Yup. Hordes of termites were crawling out of the cracks in the cement floor, and they needed to be eliminated. They were over everything and starting to fall into the hot molten lead “river” bath that comprised the main assembly line.
Termites in cement?
Well, apparently the cement was poured over the old lumber / wood structure laid down two centuries ago. And termites ate up all the wood until there was nothing left. Just these long empty holes in the concrete. And that was that.
So I got an exterminator.
And while I was making plans to fill up the voids in the base structure, I was laid off… let go. And the factory continued as was.
And that is my story about the termites that attacked the glass factory in Pennsylvania.
Termites.
Swarming out of the cement floor.
Attacking the mill workers.
Ah, strange things occur when civilizations start to decay and break down.
Future biotechnology could be used to trick a prisoner’s mind into thinking they have served a 1,000-year sentence—in just 8 hours.
This type of technology could potentially change the way punishments are given to criminals.
Dr. Rebecca Roache, a researcher, says that drugs could be used to manipulate the brain into thinking you’re serving a longer sentence than you actually are.
“There are a number of psychoactive drugs that distort people’s sense of time, so you could imagine developing a pill or a liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence.”
A different way of achieving this end goal—putting people in prison for a short amount of time but making them think it’s longer—would be to speed up the rate that the mind works at.
In other words, ‘uploading’ someone’s mind to a computer and ‘speeding up’ the rate at which it was thinking, could make someone feel like they’ve lived for a thousand years.
I think this end result seems scary to say the least.
Sure there are some pros you could argue for:
Criminals could have longer sentences.
Jails wouldn’t have to pay as much money to take care of prisoners for long periods of time.
It could potentially be more efficient.
However, there are also other things to think about.
Is it humane to make someone live out hundreds of years—only in their minds?
How would this affect their mental health?
Are their memories going to be the same?
What if someone was wrongfully jailed and we punished them for ‘1000 years’?
Imagine this:
A criminal, wrongfully accused of a horrendous crime, gets a jail sentence of 500 years.
Their mind is sped up in order to make them feel as if they’ve experienced 500 years when in reality, it was only a couple of hours.
Everyone around them is normal.
Their family doesn’t miss them.
However, they, on the other hand, have been without anyone for seemingly hundreds of years.
This would probably ruin them forever, completely changing their lives and the way they think.
They’d be contemplating the unfairness of their sentence for YEARS.
I think that the nature of this technology is quite inhumane and shouldn’t be developed or used in the future.
Too many risks.
Baked Eggs on Toast (Jaja na Grzankach – Polish)
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.
They like to play victim all the time. Trust me when I say they will go to every extent to show that they are a victim.
They lie even when it is not necessary. They look for what is beneficial to them.
They will try to make you feel guilty for things you’re not actually guilty for.
They never self-reflect. If you do something, it is wrong for them. But if they do the same thing, it is right. Whatever they do, it is always right. If you tell them that it’s not, then they will do everything in their power to make it seem like they are right.
They will easily give you a silent treatment. Their aim is to make it seem like they do not need you and make you feel like you’re guilty.
They will always dismiss your problems and say they have it worse.
Even if you give them the world, if one day things don’t work out their way, they will attack you. They do not care about what you’ve done for them, they only care about having things work their way.
Initially they will make it seem like they are opening themselves up, but they only do that so that you feel comfortable and put yourself out there like an open book. Once you do that, you realize that you barely know anything about them.
They are extremely smart in each step they take. This isn’t noticeable at first. But once you spot them, it becomes a lot easier to see that every step is calculated. Most of the times, their easiest form of manipulation is sympathy seeking. For example: If they’re sick, they will let everyone know. Not for anything, but sympathy.
How to build an AI MODEL that makes $11,000 per month
One time in my mid-twenties, my GF at the time and I were driving halfway across the country (from Florida to western Oklahoma) to visit some good friends from our High School days.
About midway through Texas, it was getting late, and I was getting a little tired. This was back before GPS, so we were using plain old paper maps. As we were going down a smaller, less-busy road, I noticed ed that my turn was coing. I started to go for the turn, but I realized at the last second that I was too late to make the turn safely. So I aborted the turn and went back to driving down the road, looking for a place to turn around.
As I swerved, 4 sets of patrol car lights burst into action in my rear-view mirror. It seems that a long haired dude driving the back roads of Texas with Florida plates is suspicious. We attracted quite the array of attention—Texas Ranger, County Sherriff, Local PD, AND Highway patrol! They had been tailing us for about 5 miles.
So, They ask us to step out of the car, separate us to make sure we are telling the same story, and ask to search my vehicle. I said go ahead. They asked if I had any weapons, and I replied “No, sirs” As they began to conduct the search, I remembered that I had a pocket knife on the dashboard…fearing that an un-mentioned blade might be considered bad, I blurted out—”Wait, officer..I forgot there IS a weapon!” At that moment, 8 sets of hands went to pistol grips in the “ready to draw” position. I clarified “There’s a pocket knife on the dashboard…I forgot about that.” The local PD officer looked at the dainty knife (IT was only about a 4 inch blade) and said “Shit, son..that ain’t a weapon. It’s a tool.”
After a few minutes, the party ended, and the various LEOs bid us a good night and told us a shortcut to bet back to my original target road.
It’s not a weapon…it’s a tool. I still giggle about that to this day, almost 30 years later.
A guy with us, who was particularly overweight, who constantly complained about being overweight, said he wasn’t hungry—and then when it came time to eat, dove into the food like he hadn’t eaten in 3 weeks.
I’ve seen a few people like that over the years—eating as if they were on the brink of starvation.
Once, I was at a local zoo. I was able to hold a bear cub and feed it a bottle of milk. What I didn’t expect, this small bear cub was fed 3 bottles by other tourists before it was my turn.
I was annoyed —I thought I’d get to feed a hungry bear.
And my annoyance was misplaced. Despite having 3 bottles of milk— the bear tore into this milk like it hadn’t eaten in forever. That bear instinct to store up calories starts early. I’ve never seen a creature clawing at the bottle, moaning, eager to consume every last drop of milk out of this thing as if it was a race.
To the question: this ties into the statistic that people who eat too quickly tend to overeat and be overweight.
If you slow down your eating—it will give your brain time to catch up and sense when you are actually full, rather than gorging yourself and waiting up with a gut. (Slow Down, You Eat Too Fast. Dr. Kathleen Zelman)
To be fair—I also eat too quickly, I’d be obese if I didn’t work out constantly.
Some of us are just born with a natural hunger gene, are emotional eaters, or we have that instinct in us to prepare for hibernation.
I am not 60, but I am retired. I served 25 years in the Army both Officer and Enlisted. I retired in 2009, and to be honest leaving the Army wasn’t the hard part. Settling back into the Civilian World was the hard part. Matched to the chief reason I retired at age 42.
That’s my youngest our Lil Mitts, and first day of college back in August 2023. I let go of the US Army and jumped feet first into being the primary parent for a Special Needs Child. All while engaged in being a grandparent.
All while self-managing my investment real estate portfolio which includes all my own maintenance and repair work. Above is before, below is after.
Then we have I also love maintaining my own cars.
Life is about continuing to the end always reinventing yourself till the end. Do I still do PT? Yes I do. Do I miss being shot at? Hell no!
Retirement is merely the rest of your days free of obligation to an Employer. That doesn’t equate stop living. The secret to enjoying it is find other things to enjoy.
Two of my siblings were upset that I inherited one of my father’s farms. They contested everything in court — and soundly lost. That was on a Monday morning. Wednesday morning I left the farm to drive home, 680 miles. I was 2/3 of the way home when I got a call that my farmhouse was on fire. Police initially accused me of setting the fire but that collapsed when I proved I was 500 miles away when the arson took place. There was no insurance coverage so I just lost a house I figured was worth less than $40k. I was screwed. Then I wasn’t screwed. Come tax time I asked my accountant how the loss of the house would get figured in. The account took values from similar 1840s farmhouses that had been sold and came up with a paper loss of more than 10 times what I thought the house was worth. I won’t pay taxes for a LONG time. The arsonist that I thought hurt me actually made me richer.
I’m pretty sure the arsonist was either one of my siblings, or someone they hired. I’m absolutely sure they were doubly pissed when the word got back to them that they made me richer!
When I was living with a girlfriend, her mother came from another city, to visit us for 9 days. But we still had to work 3 days of that week. OMG. The chaos. She could not sit still, she cleaned everything. She sorted our fridge, rearranged every cupboard. She put our toaster that we used everyday behind the slow cooker, that we used once a month. It took us a month to find the cork screw.
The drinking glasses were in the cupboard furthest from the sink, but closest to the fridge. We drank tap water, she put a pitcher of water in the fridge for us.
She rearranged our furniture so that it suited her better.
Some things, like washing our windows were appreciated, but we weren’t slobs, and she drove us up the wall with her constant movements. She constantly told us better ways to do things, and that the cars we drove, were not the best vehicles for us, that we needed to search for better jobs.
We had to drive her back to her city, and on the way, we told her that we loved her, but she wouldn’t be able to stay with us for more than a weekend, if she ever did that again.
She said that all she wanted was to help us, which made her feel loved and needed.
We said that advice should only be given when asked for, or if once or twice a year, she saw something that we should really know about.
She was heartbroken, she was upset that we didn’t appreciate all the work that she had done to make our lives better.
My girlfriend asked her, how much she appreciated her (girlfriends) grandmother coming and rearranging the house, and telling her what she was doing wrong.
The MIL said that was different because Granny was out of date and didn’t know how things should be done.
Then she abruptly shut up. Unfortunately my girlfriend and I broke up before her next visit, but I suspect that we cured her, of her habit.
Both of my parents were functional alcoholics. My father worked 50ish hours in a kitchen for decades while ma was general manager of a restaurant for over a decade. They did this while drinking a 30 pack of beer and eventually adding a 1.75 bottle of rum that didn’t last more than 2 nights. They spent more then 3 grand a month on alcohol and cigarettes on an income of about 50–60k (I’m not 100% sure but these were estimates my papa figured out since he knew their general income and expenses and also the price of alcohol and cigarettes back then).
My father was a drunk for decades until being arrested and sent to prison for abuse and assault. He later died of liver failure almost 20 years later. Ma never got a traffic ticket, DUI, or any reprimand at work even though she was always hungover and or still drunk while working. She managed to be functional for years and eventually severely limit her alcohol intake after my father was arrested. That is until the night she was babysitting my twins so I could pick up a shift. I came home after work to her passed out drunk on the couch and my infant son dead in the tub. She couldn’t wait until after his bath to start or continue drinking, and my son paid for it. After 4 years in prison she stayed sober and maintained her sobriety for about a decade before she died. That was her way of apologizing for Patrick’s death and making amends, though it will never undo her actions.
That’s what is wrong with being a functional addict. You can be fine for decades but it’s almost guaranteed that they won’t stop until they’re dead or do something that will force them to stop.
Yes. My wife and I wanted to try out a new place in town that had just opened up. We were in our early 50s at the time.
We asked if we could sit in the bar area that looked fun. The hostess said they had one table for us.. and escorted us to an area in the back corner of the place which was populated with elderly people and families with small children. It was evident they wanted the young happening crowd up front.
We weren’t happy but still wanted to give the place a try so we sat down and waited.. and waited. No wait staff ever approached our table! We tried to flag down a waitress and she ignored us. At the 20 minute mark we got up and left. Nobody noticed!
We drove down the road and tried another place. We were cheerfully seated at the bar. Service was excellent. 12 years later we still go there once a week. Just think about the tens of thousands the first restaurant has lost!
I can answer as to the small-town American shopping experience of the late 1980s-early 1990s.
There’s a great youtube series called “Dead Malls,” where a guy walks around giant indoor malls that are closed or barely hanging on.
When I was a kid, those malls were very much alive, and that’s where we did all of our non-grocery shopping. They had big anchor department stores at the ends of every major wing, plants and fountains in the walkways, plenty of seating areas, a food court, an arcade, and dozens of other shops. Families would go there as a group, then split up and go their separate ways to do their shopping. Boys like me usually ended up at the arcade. Men like my father usually ended up getting a drink and sitting in one of the sitting areas to “people watch.”
They all had a small bookstore, too.
And a small toy store.
And a music store where you could listen to music before buying it on cassette or, if you were rich, CD.
And one or two hair salons. Sometimes one specifically for children.
The better malls also had movie theaters in them.
And dine-in restaurants separate from the cafeteria-like food court.
And mall walkers… old people who did laps around the inside of the mall as exercise.
And, around Christmas, they’d have a Santa in the middle of the mall, for picture-taking purposes.
My mother was a manager of a shoe store in the local mall in my hometown for a while there when I was a kid. Of about 40 stores in that mall, 5 of them were shoe stores.
Parents would often drop their pre-teens off at the mall to “hang out” with their friends for a while. You couldn’t go to the mall in the evening without running into someone you knew from school.
There are a few malls like this that still do good business in the Chicago area. I go to one called Northbrook Court about twice per year, mostly because that’s where the Lego store is. But every time I go there, it gets a little more depressing, as every time there are fewer and fewer other people there.
Outdoor malls seem to be doing better these days, around here at least. The one near me recently became pet-friendly, so people can walk their dogs there, too, and hopefully spend some money.
Wal-Mart and Target were the beginning of the end of the mall in my hometown. Amazon was the final nail in the coffin.
Now that small hometown mall, like many others, has been converted to other uses. They have just a few big stores in them, like hobby or sporting goods stores, and their entrances are to the parking lot, not to the interior of the mall. Basically, they’ve been converted into strip malls.
Sadly, I have a lot of experience in this matter. But, it is not what you think.
There are many companies that operate inside of China, and it is so easy and cheap to set up if you are Chinese. So, Point 1, if you see a company inside of China, run by Chinese, it is probably a real company.
Point 2. There are many companies that operate inside of China that are not Chinese. These are known as WOFE’s. These are “Wholly owned foreign enterprises”. The entire ownership is by foreigners, and no Chinese are involved except as workers on a payroll. Again, these are not too expensive or difficult to set up. But they are severely monitored, and they do require a Chinese presence. (In other words, you cannot have a WOFE located inside of Australia.)
Point 3. Most of the already established major foreign corporations that operate within China are legacy companies. They were established before the WOFE program came into being, and are joint-ventures of one form or the other.
Point 4. There are many non-Chinese that pretend to be Chinese companies to swindle you. Many operate in the UK, Africa, and India. They pretend to be a Chinese company, and try numerous methods to extract information or monies from you. The Chinese consulates have access to a very lengthy list of these operations, and individuals and are on Interpol.
So, how do you know if you are dealing with a real company or something else?
There are numerous things you can do and watch out for.
[1] No Passport scan. Do not provide a scan of your passport for any reason to a stranger on the internet. One of the on-going scams is for the “company” to send you a scan pretending to be this person or that person. Do not send yours in response, and certainly do not get involved in any contracts requiring one.
[2] Face to face. Most scams involve e-mail. If you suggest a zoom meeting or some other video conference, and they call you instead, it’s a “red flag”, it’s that you need to see who you are dealing with. And you need to record the interaction. The chances are that the image on the passport will not match the voice at the end of the phone or the video on the screen. For instance, a UK passport showing a white male, and the voice on the phone has a very deep Indian accent with Delhi inflections.
[3] Factory / Office Visit. You need to meet the people in their offices or factory. While you are there, you must perform a professional audit. You not be taken back by a shiny tall office building, or a ratty back-woods hovel. You have to see the facilities and realize that they are real.
And yeah, you can employ investigators, and sleuth the internet. But really [1] be cautious and keep your personal information safe. Then, the best thing to do is [2] talk with people in person one-on-one using video conferencing, then, [3] set up a factory visit.
This last point requires that the factory apply for a Chinese legal document with company stamp / chop for the invitation. This is a very important step. You will use the invitation to obtain your visa to enter China. This step is very important, as it gets the Chinese police involved in-case anything goes wrong. As well, as you will not get a visa if the document is forged.
Summary
There are many, many companies inside of China, and all of legitimate, but the problem really is two-fold…
Is this a real Chinese company, or some scam-artist out of the UK or India trying to steal from me?
And if it is real, will they be able to meet my expectations.
I hope that this answer is helpful to you, and helps you accomplish your objectives.
x-86’s fate is chained to Microsoft’s Windows, although ARM is making inroads.
Loongson or Longxin makes RISC-based CPUs, with independent IP that’s not licensed from third parties.
This excludes Longxin from the Windows eco-system. It runs primarily on Linux, which is open-source.
Which is fine, because the first world hasn’t developed great Chinese software options that are competitive with mainland ones.
To add context, there are no Chinese IME (Input Method Editor) from the west that come close to being usable. Yes, Microsoft Pinyin/Swiftkeys/Gboard for Chinese input is lipstick on pigs next to mainland options.
China will grow its own eco-system, adapting Linux as the native OS. Eventually, Longxin will have access to advanced nodes, and offer competitive chips at far lower prices across the performance spectrum. This will drive the adoption of Longxin-powered laptops/desktops, which is already turning up in offices today.
This will reduce the market share of Windows/Mac, but they will still enjoy eco-system protection, unless geopolitics gets in the way.
Check back in another 5 years, especially in the content creator realm. AI and fusion computing will drive huge changes.
Typically within the Chinese Communist Party, a Leader who gives such a commitment must stand by it
A Leader who says in TEN YEARS, something will happen and if he is unable to deliver – he is relegated to handling food deliveries and preparing inventory for the rest of his life
In India, it’s forgotten in 10 seconds
That’s the difference between the Two Countries
The Reason China is a Great Power, that terrifies the socks out of the West is because in China, The People in Power don’t talk when they don’t mean it
In 2011, a Man made a speech that in a decade China would achieve Aerospace Independence. This was after the Wolf Act
He was Xi Jingping
He delivered his promise
By 2021, China was using BEIDOU for their Global Navigation entirely and their Aerospace Industry was Indigenous and the Chinese had landed on the Moon and Mars and plenty more
Ren Zhengfei made a commitment for solving his Chip crisis in ten years, in 2018
In five years, he launched a phone with entirely Indigenous Chips and Modems and other unique aspects
Five years!!!!!
Now I don’t want to embarrass Rajiv Chandrashekhar here
We have seen enough DRDO miracle drugs and enough Ventilators and Test Kits and enough Scientific marvels talked about with zero achievement
The Man is a fool and is embarrassing the country in front of anyone who knows the Semiconductor Business
The fact that he talks of dominating an Industry that China with twenty four years and $ 1 Trillion has just achieved maybe 80% parity with the West , in a decade
With what exactly?
Ten years is barely a single generation
That’s 2034
That means the Average Generation of Workforce to be a Median 31 years would have to be born in 2003
This means graduates of 2020 -2022
The Covid Batches!!!!!!!
Most of them CSE graduates
Most of them Graduates of Tier 3 Colleges with very little actual education
Even if we start today after a full syllabus, that still means Students who are 12 and that means Students born in 2013 at the earliest
This means at the Median Age for Workforce of 31, that’s 2044
Thats MINIMUM
So with all the luck in the world, with the 2013 generation having an median IQ North of 125–130 and with every reform possible – it would take 20 years to develop a workforce equivalent to what the Chinese have today
Thats so much Optimism that the chance of Virat Kohli picking up Eight wickets in an innings is higher
And RC talks of 10 years
Is he stupid?
Is he delusional?
Or is he just being INDIAN? Talking without any implications
When persuading somebody, use their name in the middle of the request, especially if they’re not very close to you. This is an amazing trick. It works because people feel the need to be acknowledged. Once they are, they will be way more unlikely to be disagreeable with you.
Touching the shoulder. That’s the same reasoning as before, but more bold. Also, more effective if it works. It’s all about proximity and acknowledgment.
When you want to convince somebody else, if you nod your head some times while talking, that person will be more likely to accept what you’re saying as true.
When you’re saying something that is very serious, look straight into their eyes and don’t look away (but blink, the idea is not to look like a psychopath).
Complement somebody about how impressive is what they are doing for you. This is the oldest trick in the world, except if you ask a question. People love to talk about themselves. Asking about how they learned to do that keeps them bragging while you get your stuff done 🙂
This is one of my favorites. When Obama was debating Mitt Romney, there’s this moment when Romney brings up Obama’s pension. While he’s doing this, Obama ignores him, smiles and forces Romney to repeat the question several times. This is an amazing domination technique – it made Romney seem like he was begging for attention.
Another one about dominance, if you start talking to somebody, get them engaged and then in the middle ask for his or her name again, as if you forgot. It puts people very uncomfortable around you, but keep in mind this might be not so cool if you don’t do it naturally.
This one is to screw someone else in an argument. When somebody finishes talking, don’t answer. They are probably going to keep talking to fill the silence, which will make them look like they are not in control of the conversion.
My dad went against what everyone else around him suggested, thought, and told him directly to do. He followed his gut.
My dad was an elder in our congregation. A woman and her husband went to him along with other elders for marital counseling.
After the couple met with the elders a few times, Dad felt like the woman and her two sons were in danger from her abusive husband. The other elders did not, they advised her to try harder and work things out.
When he knew the husband was gone, my dad showed up at the woman’s house, surprising her. He told her to hurry, get her sons, pack some things quickly and to remain calm.
She said she instinctively knew what he was doing, he was saving her and her boys. With no questions, she followed his directions. Within 20 minutes they were walking out the door together.
Dad took her and her boys to a shelter. He gave her money. He told her he felt she she wasn’t safe with her husband, and he felt the boys were in danger too.
After the boys were away from their dad they felt safe enough to tell their mom their horrible secret. Their father had been abusing them. Police were notified and after an arrest and trial, the father was convicted and sentenced to prison.
My father never told a soul what he did. I only found out about what my dad did years later. I ran into the woman who my dad helped. She became a second mother to me and her sons were, and still are, like brothers. She told me what my dad had done and that it saved her life. It saved her two boys too. My dad was the only one in the world who believed her. The one and only person that decided to do something. She said he was her hero.
My dad died when I was 15. At a very broken 18 was when I heard her story. I guess it was part of my dad’s story too. This new insight into my father brought me great comfort. I always struggled with whether dad would be proud of me or not. After hearing that, I knew and still know in my heart no matter what, dad would’ve heard me and listened to me. He would’ve believed me and I know he would be proud of me.
I was in Tennessee schools from grade 6–11… I never actually graduated.
I had reached the conclusion that Tennessee schools (Nashville specifically) were, at best, sub-par long before this incident, but this was the moment that I realized that I could not survive another year dealing with the total idiocy.
I was at Glencliff HS in 1985. I was in my English class and was the only white student AND the only male student. The “teacher” was a black woman that was only 5 years older than me and chose to teach the class in “Ebonics”. Yes, that was a thing.
Her choice to teach in Ebonics made the class hard for me to deal with, since I couldn’t understand 90% of what she was saying. She also chose to totally ignore me, even going so far as to refuse to properly grade my classwork, just giving me a default C grade regardless of the quality of my work.
The final straw, the absolute last thing I could tolerate, was when one of the girls in the class randomly asked “Teach, what be’s the longest word in the English langidge?”
Now, there is debate on which word can be considered the “longest”, depending on if you are looking for the longest word PERIOD or the longest word that could be commonly known. For the latter it is Antidisestablishmentarianism.
That is the word the teacher chose to write on the board…. misspelled.
That broke me. I stood up, walked to the board, erased what she wrote and wrote it correctly. I then told her that she was a “goddamned idiot that shouldn’t be teaching earthworms to dig through dirt” and walked out. I had intended to just go to the library and await the punishment I was sure would follow, but when I reached the front doors of the school I walked out, and kept walking until I got home. I never went back. I got my GED and a college degree instead.
Chicken Kiev
The chicken is pounded thin, rolled with a filling of seasoned butter, breaded and then either deep-fried or baked.
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.
They victimize themselves — whenever they fail to perform they will become the victim. “I can’t repay your favor. Don’t you know how severe my life situation is?”
They will villainize you — along with becoming a victim they will make you the villain. “How inhuman are you to put a burden on me during this time?”
They are pathological liars — they will lie about small stuff like meeting a celebrity or false accomplishments. And will continue to lie on it even when they are exposed.
They pretend to be good — they will boast about their big-heart with a smile while their actions are always opposite. They appear helpful without ever helping anyone.
They will take your credit — when you are being praised for your work, they shift that praise onto themselves.“Oh, yes I gave him this brilliant idea”
They will label you inferior — they will label themselves superior and you, inferior. They will make you feel debted that a high-quality person is spending time with someone like you.
They gaslight you — when you call out on their manipulative behavior, they will label you emotionally unstable. They will make you doubt your sanity.
They undermine your problems — when you list them your problems and ask for support, they inflate and list their problems. “I know it’s hard without money. I was turned down my raise recently”
They will step-over you — in order to save their social image, they will destroy yours. When they are made fun of, they will shift social attention by making fun of you.
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
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
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:
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
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.
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.”
“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.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
I posted a comment / answer on Quora, and it was deleted. The space was a “Warfare” space, and was very heavily “Pro-America”. The same thing, that you all understand if you were brought up in the USA… America is the best, and the toughest and the king of the world… yeah. Sure.
This answer was declined. Posting here. If you know the reasons for it being declined Please inform me.
China is a peaceful nation.
But, it is NOT stupid.
…
The United States has thrown EVERYTHING at China. And I do mean EVERYTHING.
From “color revolutions” inside of China, to “color revolutions” in all the nations surrounding China. From undersea excursions and conflicts, to near-space satellite warfare. From cyber warfare, to bio-warfare attacks. From managed famines to lawfare assaults. From efforts designed to collapse the Chiense banking industry to efforts to collapse the Chinese real estate industry.
It’s been full spectrum and absolute.
But not reported in the “news” of the West.
…
Instead we hear of submarines ramming undersea mountains, freak geomagnetic storms, the “apparent random” firings of Naval Commanders, and the Secretary of the Navy. We read (in the West) about Chinese “warmongering” a build up for a “Taiwanese invasion”.
All this interspersed about how Putin has brain cancer, and how Russia is running out of ammo. We read about how Xi Peng is going to be disposed and how the poor downtrodden people of China are going to rise up for “democracy” and Freedom”.
…
Info war is in full swing.
There is ZERO credibility in Western “news” media. Today it is so outrageous and comically fake and ridiculous that it is amazing that these tabloids are still able to have people that watch and read their content.
…
So… Yeah. It’s full spectrum. EVERYTHING.
Of course…
The clueless in the West would believe the fake narratives of Putin losing, China collapsing, and America remaining strong. They will believe that COVID was fake, or if it was something of concern, then it was “China’s fault” for one reason or the other. That’s the narrative, and that’s want the oligarchy expects Westerners to believe.
…
The United States is a feudal plutocracy.
While China is military-based meritocracy.
…
And the question is…
“Why is China preparing for a war with the United States”?
Answer…
China must. China owes it to it’s people. China has a responsibility to its people to expect the best, but prepare for the worst… and prepare they ARE.
…
Oh, it’s just like the United States is throwing EVERYTHING at China, China is preparing with EVERYTHING as well.
And, let me tell you all…
They don’t read American / Western “news”.
They know what is REALLY going on.
…
So China is ready.
If you are a consumer of Western “news” you will be unaware of the following facts, but you do need to brace yourself for the realities.
Were the USA, either directly or through proxy, attacks China… China will throw nuclear warheads at American cities and military installations.
Oh, sure. China has a “no first use policy” in regards to nuclear weapons.
But within the FORMAL WORDING of this (particular) policy is one sentence that you all should all pay attention to…
“…if attacked… China reserves the right … to use every means at its disposal … to attack the nation that attacks it.”
For some reason, the Western “news” media glosses over this sentence.
Perhaps they cannot read Chinese, or simply just cut and paste their “news articles” directly out of Langley VA.
Whatever, the Chinese FORMAL STATEMENT regarding nuclear weapons use is very carefully worded, and intentionally ambiguous enough to give the most aggressive neocons pause to consider.
…
So, yeah. China is ready.
It was ready in 1950–53 when it defeated the United States in Korea, and is ready today as it dishes EVERYTHING thrown at it, right back to the United States to consume.
…
At this point in time…
The United States and China are like a married couple living together weeks prior to a divorce. The United States is cheating, bending words, manipulating systems… and thinking “They’ll never find out”.
While China, is playing it smart.
Already has contacted the divorce attorneys, arranged the legal papers and made all the necessary arrangements. Just waiting for the time of CHINA’s choosing to terminate the relationship.
…
Quick summary
China is READY to take on the United States, simultaneously with it’s proxy “allies”.
China WILL use nuclear weapons.
China is above-peer capable with the best equipment of the West.
China is a military-based meritocracy.
…
Quick Note
The disinformation about China permeates all levels.
China is a military-based meritocracy, but the West portrays this reality as “conscription”. Which is disingenuous. It gives the Western reader a pre-conceived illusion of poorly trained, unmotivated troops. But the reality is something quite different.
…
I was going though my stacks and found other posts similarly deleted on the American website.
Such as this one…
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Is ‘World War 3’ really on the horizon?
I can understand your fear and concern.
I hope to calm you down with a nice happy dose of reality. The biggest culprit in this fear is the media. Whether it is social media, or main-stream media. Media is filling your mind with fear.
What the American Main-Stream Media says
According to 99.9999% of the American government controlled Western media; the world is heading towards world war 3 out of necessity. Both Putin and Xi are “loose cannons” with a selection of mental disorders and are out of control in trying to rule the world. Putin invaded Ukraine out of greed and lust, and Xi Peng will invade Taiwan for the same reasons. They despise democracy and freedom and want to rule the world as a dystopian nightmare world where everyone is controlled by Tiktok and weather balloons.
The REAL answer – being under-reported intentionally
World War 3 is the climax of the massive period of change that the world is going though. It is a generational event, and coincidences with solar activity. It is as predictable as the orbits of planets, and the mass movements of animals.
This period of change is a rather long event cycle and involves change at all levels. Some nations collapse. Some nations grow. Some groups engage in battles, while others suffer economic hardships. What ever happens, it is not homogeneous. But rather an aggregate of minor events sprinkled over a multi-decade long time periods.
The build-up to this period can be traced back to the 1960’s where the major dominant power; The United States, began a series of strategic blunders that set the stage for events that we are now witnessing.
The actual pivot point for contentious calamity occurred in 2008 with an economic meltdown in the West, and the resulting frantic splashing and doggie-paddling that we see today all spawn from it.
The actual war occurred in 2019 though 2022 with was the Coronavirus event. This was a three tiered biological phased attack on China by the United States.
Other events during this “war” consisted of the the disastrous 2020 Trump Flotilla into the South Chinese Sea, the undersea submarine wars from 2021 to 2023, and the satellite wars of 2020 to 2023.
Simultaneous with these events are the generalized cultural, social, and economic collapse of the United States and it’s Western proxies, the NATO incursions and war in the Ukraine following the “color revolution” in Kiev in 2014, and the failed Hong Kong color revolution of 2018 – 2020.
While the West shrinks in influence, the East (and Global South) grows. Both Russia and China are major global powers in all measurements, and are generally immune from the boiler-plate of attacks, and manipulations normally used by the West.
Africa is completely changing, and it has shed it’s colonial slave role and embraced a role as the “new” middle class in a rapidly changing world. Along with this follows a rag-tag collection of power centers around the world.
The world is now has entered into a “reconstruction” period globally. This is resulting in new alignments, and massive failures of nations and societies that are unable to adjust and change with the times.
This period will be a long one, and I am afraid that it has only begun.
Though, I anticipate the end of this period around 2030 or so, give or take two years. … The main-stream “news’ is designed to incite and inject fear to control people. I urge everyone to control themselves.
The future looks bright for most of the world. It is change that we do not like, and those in power want us to fear it. Do not. The intelligent person recognizes this and takes appropriate steps for a bright future ahead rather than clutching on the past though fear.
…
Resulting in this comment…
I see the “West” and in late-stage dying. The “dance of death” where the body contorts and twists and shudders.
Not only just chinese from China but also chinese origin from others even from Singapore.
I travel to US for a dozen times both business and holidays but each time my checked in luggages 100% checked and prised open plus hand luggage checked even if you go to green lane.
This prove one thing for sure. US had created so many enemies around the world that they are living in fear of daily terrorist attacks whereas chinese people in China are living in peace and harmony without any fear or concern for their safety.
When you approach American policeman, they are ready to draw their guns whereas when you approach a chinese policeman, their mindset is that you need help.
That is the difference between China and America.
Baked Lasagna
Ingredients
Sauce
3 pounds ripe tomatoes, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
3 tablespoons tomato puree
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
Lasagna
3/4 to 1 pound lasagna noodles
Butter
1/2 pound mozzarella cheese
1/4 pound Italian sausage or ground beef, coarsely chopped
2 hardboiled eggs, chopped
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup ricotta or cottage cheese
Instructions
Sauce
Put all the ingredients into a large cooking pot. Cover and simmer for about 1 hour.
Pass through a sieve; return to the pot, and season to your satisfaction. Continue to simmer until sauce has thickened.
Just before using this sauce, stir in 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter.
Lasagna: Brown sausage or beef, then drain.
Boil lasagna noodles. Drain and put a layer into a well buttered casserole dish.
Add a layer of mozzarella cheese, then a layer of sausage or beef and a thin layer of hardboiled egg.
Sprinkle with grated Parmesan and ricotta or cottage cheese. Moisten cheese with some of tomato sauce.
Continue in layers, finishing with a good thick layer of grated Parmesan.
Dot with butter and bake at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes.
I am a Chinese, have studied in the UK and traveled to many countries.
For me, China is democratic – probably even more democratic than western countries.
Of course, I am referring to the original meaning of the word democracy – the power of the state belongs to the people and the people have the right to rule the government.
Nowadays, democracy in the west often refers to multi-party competition, where the ruling party are elected by universal suffrage.
But this approach has some significant problems. As voters are ordinary people who has no specialized knowledge on managing the country, the core competitiveness of the election process becomes the ability to publicize public opinion, personal affinity, and persuasion, which have little to do with whether they can actually formulate and implement policies well, but are more relevant to the resources of the society and the media operation behind them.
In the west, the rule of the people is in a single choice question of political preference, and the frequency of being able to make a choice is once every four years. If you are the minority voter, you will not be able to get a satisfactory result in those four years.
In contrast, China’s “democracy” works like this:
1. A huge system of officials that everyone can enter by studying and taking exams – from the smallest local township government to the central government, all within the same pyramid-tested promotion system. For Chinese graduates, it is a very common career selection to pick an official position related to their major from an open government list, take a test on logic and issue processing skills, and become a government official. All newcomers need to start from the basic positions and get enough practical results before they are internally elected with promotion.
2. The criterion value of the government affairs is “people first”. The most important judgment dimension is whether they can improve the life of the majority and satisfy the people.
3. Public opinion monitoring and feedback mechanism. All levels of government have set up channels to receive public opinion, such as emails, petitions reception, or social media. For every actual problem, the government must give feedback or specific plans within a period of time; and after a period of time, they must do regular follow-up visits to ensure that the problem has been solved satisfactorily. All this is counted in the KPIs of government staff. If the people are not satisfied with this government’s response, they can complain to a higher level of government, which has absolute power over the next level of government, and the government department complained against will be penalized and monitored.
In China, the rule of the people is in the government’s “people first” evaluation criteria, and in the mechanism of feedback and resolution of specific issues that are highly valued. However, if your opinion is detrimental to the interests of the underprivileged, or if you are not looking for a solution, but simply venting your negative feelings and trying to get more people to share your negative feelings, then your opinion might be refused or ignored, or be deferred in to future considerations.
I think this is why people say: in the west, you can change the government, but you can’t change the policies; however in China, you can’t change the government, but you can change the policies.
Of course, both mechanisms have their own drawbacks. For example, since the core competence of universal suffrage is the ability of influencing public opinion, so having control of the media and enough money is almost equivalent to having a high probability of obtaining the highest power in the country; in China, it is very difficult to make the complex internal promotion completely transparent, and it is not easy for the people to monitor inefficiencies and corruption inside the system.
But for me and at least 80%+ Chinese people, the current one party Chinese government is still very satisfactory.
As for the so-called “Communist Party is not the same as government”: in fact, the CCP is not the same as the Soviet Union type of “communism”, for example, China has its market economy system and is running well. Actually when there is only one political party, the notion of party advocacy would be extremely weakened. In the case of China, people would tend to feel that the Chinese system is more like a parliamentary system even within the government. China is a country with a secular culture, and ideology discussion is not really that important, what matters to this government council is simply about insisting with the people-oriented value, and making people living in better lives.
To be honest, I think that the vast majority of the world’s people don’t care about politics.
People care more about their own lives – whether they can live healthy and happy lives with the people they love, whether the society is fair, safe and free, whether they can enjoy their civil rights as a human being, whether their problems can be solved and whether their dreams can be realized.
Also, I agree that China is better for ordinary people, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to live in, but not for the extremely rich guys. If you are a rich tycoon or celebrity and has no interest in benefiting ordinary people, then the Chinese government might supervising you with very strict rules, you will have more freedom and power in the West.
But as for me, China is not bad.
Kirill Babaev: Here’s why the result of Taiwan’s election is bad news for the US
It will become apparent in the long term that China was the real winner
By Kirill Babaev, PhD, director of the Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor of the Financial University, and deputy chairman of the Presidium of the National Committee for BRICS Research.
In 2023, the volume of trade between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait was $268 billion. This means Taipei traded more with its main adversary, Beijing, than with its foremost ally, Washington. And for Chinese business, Taiwan was a more important counterparty than the state’s key strategic partner, Russia.
These facts are important for an understanding of the current relationship between the two parts of China. They are inextricably linked not only by the commonality of language, history, and culture, but also by hundreds of thousands of trade and production contracts. And this may prove to be a decisive factor in the long-term struggle for the island between the great powers.
The elections in Taiwan on January 13 did nothing to change this. On the contrary, apart from pro-American candidate Lai Qingde’s victory (with a far-from-solid 40% of the vote), the parliamentary elections revealed the defeat of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which lost its majority and ten seats in the Legislative Yuan to the conventionally “pro-Chinese” Kuomintang Party.
The outcome has made the island’s power system somewhat unstable, suggesting that the main battle between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan is yet to come. However, the US has only one undeniable advantage in this war – the ability to pump its proxy with weapons and defense systems in anticipation of a violent conflict. China, on the other hand, has far more leverage. Thus, in the coming years, Beijing won’t try to solve the Taiwan problem militarily: on the contrary, it will attempt to turn America’s “Pyrrhic victory” on January 13 into a final US defeat in the next elections on the island.
In his first post-election comments, winning candidate Lai (who won’t officially become president until May) spoke in a peaceful way about Beijing and Sino-Taiwanese relations, without in any way trying to demonstrate a desire to unilaterally declare the island’s independence. US leaders have also spoken in the same vein, stressing that they intend to develop only “informal” relations with Taiwan, while continuing to be guided by the “One-China” principle.
As a result, Taiwan is now well aware that the path to independence is a dead end, as none of Taipei’s closest allies will endorse the move or recognize the existence of an “alternative China.” The path of maintaining the status quo, on the other hand, is the most unstable, because in this case the sword of Damocles of armed conflict between the US and China will hang over Taiwan, in which the island risks losing its entire economy and many thousands of its citizens’ lives.
The only option for Taiwan in the long term is a compromise with mainland China; some kind of full-fledged arrangement that will allow the island to maintain the way of life and economic system that it’s accustomed to, and that will allow Beijing to consider the question of reunification closed, or at least with a clear, if distant, solution.
Hong Kong may partly serve as a model for such a solution, but in the case of Taiwan, the compromise is likely to be much softer. Beijing and Taipei could agree on a roadmap to reunification by 2049 – ending a century-long cycle of confrontation. That plan could well lead to a union state along the lines of the EU or Russia and Belarus.
Of course, such an outcome would be good for all Chinese on both sides of the strait, as it would remove all risk of armed conflict or a ‘hostile takeover’ of Taiwan by the PRC. These are precisely the outcomes feared by all those who voted for Lai on January 13.
Only one country would be extremely disadvantaged by such a cross-strait arrangement, namely the US. Washington has invested too much in the doctrine of containment of China, in the formation of a chain of military and political alliances around its borders and a defense belt on the island of Taiwan itself, to lose this “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” Of course, the Americans will do everything in their power to oppose any kind of agreement between the two parts of China, whatever it may be.
But attempts to move Taiwan away from Chinese shores and closer to the US coast are geographically meaningless. As Beijing’s economic power grows, the importance of the Sino-Taiwan economic relationship will only increase (even if bilateral trade temporarily declined in 2023). The status quo that Washington has fought so hard to preserve is actually more favorable to China. It seems that President Lai Qingde will prove to be a much more balanced politician than the outgoing leader, Tsai Ing-wen. If this is the case, it may well come to pass that the January 13 elections were actually won by Beijing, not Washington.
Peter Man Comments
The author, as a smart PhD, should state the obvious. All Taiwan election results are bad for the US.
Once again, I will say something not echoing media platitudes. China is, in fact, conducting long-term strategic actions to weaken the hegemon, which will eventually collapse by exhaustion. This strategy has been applied many times in China’s history, and as a history lover, I will illustrate with one example, the war between Chu and Wu during the Spring and Autumn Era (771 – 476 BCE). This was the early Zhou feudal era when historians began recording state annals. Chinese annals in those days were known as Spring and Autumn, meaning a year. It came from the Shang, Chinese civilization’s progenitor, who did not have summer and winter seasons so spring and autumn represented a year.
Near the end of this era, the barbarian (culturally and linguistically non-Chinese) state of Chu in the south along the middle part of the Yangzi River became a behemoth. After making a strong matrimonial alliance with Qin in the northwest, which lasted until Qin Shihuang unified China, Chu threatened and made war on every state in the north while encroaching and swallowing small states to its east. The last bulwark against Chu’s eastern expansion to the Pacific coast was Wu, a small barbarian state centered around Suzhou to the west of Shanghai. Chinese annals recorded that Wu natives shaved their heads and tattooed their bodies, decidedly non-Chinese practices.
At the time, Chu had subjugated many small tribes and states between themselves and Wu, creating a buffer zone as well as a launch pad for future wars against Wu. When looking at this behemoth state of Chu with a hundred times the power of this small state of Wu living on the plains of Huai River, it would appear that Wu’s fate was sealed. Instead, over two generations, Wu would not only survive but defeat Chu in every battle, eventually capturing Chu’s capital.
One of Wu’s strategies was to light up endless fires in the buffer zone. Chu could not maintain its hegemony without reacting. Each time there was trouble, Chu had to send its army over long distances across mountainous areas, and each time Wu would withdraw into a defensive position nearby. When the Chu army, being tired, far from home and uncertain of their vassals’ loyalty, decided to retreat, the Wu army would ambush them and cause further damage. Thus, Wu, at very little cost, exhausted Chu (疲于奔命) and eventually defeated them.
The history of the Chu and Wu conflict is a much bigger story, but this illustrates how a big, hegemonic country with its fingers in every pie can be weakened from exhaustion caused by endless small fires. Knowing this, I’m not surprised that China is not using its weight to put out small fires. All this talk of China helping America cool things down in the Middle East or West Asia is just wishful thinking.
Another thing that China definitely should be aware of and which I have always averred, the US and Japan will not intervene militarily should the PLA decide to land in Taiwan. Chang Ya-chung, the deep blue KMT member who advocates immediate negotiations with China for peaceful reunification, said as much in a recent interview.
In short, Stop dreaming anyone will come and rescue us in a war with mainland China. If there is war, Taiwan will be destroyed like Ukraine. I guarantee not a single GI will die for you. Why not? Because their opponent will be the PRC, a well-armed nuclear state, America is not that stupid. They will tell you all kinds of rubbish to sell arms and use you as a proxy.
They will use you, the Taiwanese people, as a pawn and sacrifice you in a heartbeat.
So you better wake up and do what’s best for Taiwan and its people.” For all pols and pundits who paint Chang as a red communist trojan horse, he welcomes holding a public debate, but no one wants to take him up on the challenge.
No one wants that debate lest people learn the bitter truth.
Chang, as the principal of Dr. Sun College is well respected as an educator and well-liked by young Taiwanese. These well-educated young voters are not stupid. They voted en mass for Ko because they’re disillusioned with the corrupt KMT led by a scumbag who appointed an unwinnable nonentity as the presidential candidate.
I ran an Engineering department that covered military equipment scattered across the country.
We had specialised staff based out of an office building who were dispatched nationwide as required.
We had a good atmosphere. Staff worked hard and long as required and when it was quiet were compensated with additional vacation days and “under the table” days off. Overtime was not available.
For example – it was fairly normal for an eng team to leave home at 4 in the morning to be at an airbase for 7:30, leave at 8 pm and do the same the next day, and for as long as required. The company refused to give hotel accommodation, considering every base within the country “drivable”.
A new admin boss took over and a biometric system was implemented. A decree was issued that EVERY member of staff MUST clock in and out, and while clocking out could be any time, clocking in had to be between 7 and 7:30 am.
I fought it for about 6 months but eventually was told to toe the line or leave.
It was no longer possible to pay staff back with vacation days, official or unofficial, and the company immediately lost hundreds of hours of productivity with staff, understandably cutting back their hours, feeling unappreciated. As their boss (and a human being) I could no longer ask them to work the ridiculous hours they had been previously working, knowing there was no compensation available.
Another productivity masterstroke from the same guy was the removal of all printers from eng department, putting us on the print server located on a different floor, sharing with other departments.
The boss had previously implemented a rule that petty cash could only cover items up to USD 80. One day we ran out of toner for the color printer, had to print documents for a top level meeting.
The boss, wanting to impress by cutting stationery costs, had delayed signing approval for purchase of toner, ordered weeks earlier, so the cupboard was bare! I contacted the IT guy and explained about the meeting, who was going to be there, and that the boss wasn’t around and he nipped out to the local mall and picked up toner at a cash cost of USD 81. As punishment, for exceeding the 80 buck limit, the boss removed all printers from Engineering.
These things happen when people get promoted beyond their capability.
One, was a friend of a friend. He was actually a pretty smart guy, and did programing of some sort. The guy’s personal life was a disaster. His wife left him, he bought a car he couldn’t afford, then got fired from his job. He kept the car but stopped making payments, and hid the car so they couldn’t repo it. He was staying at my friends house for a while and he screwed that up as well by being a jerk to his hosts. So, he finally found a job as a programmer, and it seemed he was going to be able to turn his life around. His first day on the job, he sent an email to upper management, and basically cc’d the entire company, telling them everything they were doing wrong. >They came to see him, thanked him for coming in, and fired him. This guy is a total dufus.
The second is almost the same. A friend mine, never seems to be able to hold a job. She told me she got hired at a new place. She wanted to make her mark there, so sent the president and the executive a long e-mail about how they could improve the company by taking her advice, and listed a bunch of her suggestions. This, after working there for less than a week.. yup she got fired.
Snow fell in Texas and the whole metroplex closed down. School was cancelled, power outages disabled many households, and I found myself collecting fallen branches in our front yard to make a fire for warmth.
My worries about entertaining my five young kids for the day, however, quickly dwindled as my two oldest began to organize an elaborate project in the back yard.
“Come on, let’s build an igloo!” they hollered.
I thought, “OK, that’s not going to work, but at least they’ll be occupied for a while.”
Bradley, my oldest, gathered supplies, while Amber helped my younger kids get dressed in layers of their warmest clothes. Garden gloves had to suffice for hand ware, but nobody minded. Excitement lit up the house to where we barely needed electricity.
I went to work starting a fire in the fireplace and preparing a crude meal that required no heat.
I looked outside and saw the meager beginnings of a snow structure and, after feeling a bit sorry for them, thought, “This might be a great chance for my kids to use real-life problem solving skills.”
The next time I looked out, I was amazed! Someone had the idea to empty out the sidewalk chalk boxes and use the plastic containers as molds for the igloo blocks.
They worked all day on that igloo, eventually building it up to Bradley’s head. As the sun went down, they made plans to finish the structure the next day.
All my kids went to bed early, as there was really nothing much to do in the dark, and they were exhausted from their laborious day.
Then, my husband came home from work. His business never closed. He parked in the driveway behind our house and came in through the back door. Being so dark, he ran right into the igloo, got snow “all over” him and became irate.
He destroyed the igloo, claiming that the weather would soon become warm, the snow blocks would melt, the grass underneath would be saturated, resulting in a huge mud puddle and a ruined lawn. He then got a shovel and a flash light and spread the snow all over the back yard. The igloo was gone and I was furious.
That was February.
The crushing of the igloo had crushed my kids’ hearts, and when I stood at the window watching my husband with a shovel and a flashlight spread out snow to preserve his lawn, something else was crushed too. My denial — at how dysfunctional our marriage was — shattered, and other fits of his unnecessary anger over the last decade flooded my mind, just like that igloo was going to flood the backyard.
I filed for divorce in March.
That was 14 years ago, and I am now happily married to a man who would never dream of crushing a child’s igloo.
After getting rejected in his first interview of the day, he was naturally dejected. So he entered the room with a frustrated face.
He was hardly interested in the company profile and such was his mood that he wanted to take someone on.
Interviewer: Are you fine? You don’t look well!
Friend: I haven’t eaten since morning, I prepared for my previous interview so well and got rejected in the very first round.
I: So, did you prepare for this interview as well?
F: No! I was more interested in that company. And I wanted to give my best at one place.
I: Do you know trading?
F: No! I don’t!
I: Then why are you interested in this company?
F: For the money! Do you think all those standing outside know trading?
I: Atleast some of them might?
F: I’m telling you, they don’t.
I: So you are a student of geology, right? How do think you’ll be able to manage working in a trading company?
F: There is a novel named Liar’s Poker in which the male protagonist was a student of Art History and ended up getting trained at Salomon Brothers. He works as a financial journalist now. And yes, it’s not fiction, the guy wrote it as his semi-autobiography. I think I will be fine.
(He knew he scored there)
(After asking some basic tell-me-about-you questions)
I: What’s your biggest strength?
F: I’m very patient.
I: See! We need people who are dynamic and full of energy. I don’t think patience and our required qualities go hand in hand.
(This was like a tipping point for him)
F: Have you heard of Rahul Dravid? He is regarded as one of the most patient cricketer. Yet, once he had the fastest fifty in ODIs. When he played his first T-20, he hit 3 consecutive sixes. Just because someone is patient doesn’t mean they can’t be dynamic and aggressive.
(Interviewer gave a smile at this answer)
Result: Selected
UFC fighters were assaulted by the woke mob
Federal Reserve Chairman: U.S. Debt “Unsustainable”
The United States is on an “unsustainable” path with regard to its national debt and it is time to address the issue, Jerome Powell said in an interview aired Sunday.
The US national debt currently stands at more than $34 trillion, according to the US Treasury.
“In the long run, the US is on an unsustainable fiscal path. The US federal government’s on an unsustainable fiscal path. And that just means that the debt is growing faster than the economy,” Powell told CBS’ “60 Minutes” news program.
“It’s probably time, or past time, to get back to an adult conversation among elected officials about getting the federal government back on a sustainable fiscal path,” he said in the interview, which was recorded on Thursday.
In the CBS interview, Powell reiterated that stance, saying it was unlikely that a rate cut would come at the next meeting of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in March.
“I think it’s not likely that this committee will reach that level of confidence in time for the March meeting, which is in seven weeks,” Powell said.
The VC/NVA had dedicated SIGINT (signals intelligence) units involving in radio interception, telephone tapping, and code-breaking. Their members were fluent in many languages. In 1970, the U.S. 25th Infantry Division found a North Vietnamese SIGINT facility hidden underground near the Thi Tinh River; every single radio communication of the U.S. 1st and 25th Divisions had been logged, and the intercepts translated into Vietnamese.
In 1966, all 14 Vietnamese barbers working in the U.S. 25th Infantry Division’s base camp were Vietcong sympathizers. They didn’t cut anybody’s throat but they did gather intelligence.
The first B-52 operational losses of the Vietnam war took place on 18 June 1965 when two B-52s were destroyed in a mid-air collision, costing American taxpayers 20 million dollar.
In early 1970, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces made a short incursion into Cambodia and discovered huge NVA compounds containing: 4,793 small arms, 730 mortars, over 3 million rifle rounds, 6.5 million anti-aircraft rounds, 7,285 rockets, 124 trucks, nearly 1 thousand tons of rice and a telephone switchboard.
A report issued by the Pentagon in 1973 estimated that 35% of all enlisted men who had served in Vietnam had tried heroin and 20% had been addicted at some point during their tour.
By 1968, the U.S. had set up 40 ice-cream plants in Vietnam and 760,000 tons of supplies were being delivered every month. American movies, stage shows, color TVs, chilled beer, Napoleon brandy, etc. were readily available. Rear-echelon troops could imagine they were still back home.
Some 10,000 U.S. servicemen lost at least one limb in Vietnam – more than in World War II and Korea put together.
The number of U.S. helicopter lost during the war: 4,865.
Eight (8) million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, 4 times more than the amount dropped in all of World War 2.
The amount of ammunition fired per U.S. soldier was 26 times greater in Vietnam than during World War II.
For each artillery shell or rocket hitting its base camp, the U.S. 25th Infantry Division’s official policy was to fire 1,000 shells on the surrounding countryside in retaliation. (Talking about a rich man’s war, huh)
Lucky number 13: An estimated 27 thousands tons of unexploded ordnance were littered throughout the country at the end of the war. In November 2015, one unexploded 406mm naval shell was unearthed from a garden in Quang Tri Province, near the former Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Presumably, this 2,000-pound shell was fired from the battleship USS New Jersey.
14. Over 18 million gallons (or 72 million liters) of defoliants were used throughout the war, even now Vietnamese children are being born with horrifying physical disabilities as a direct result of the US use of chemical defoliants.
15. In 1965, around 42% of all chemical defoliants sprayed in South Vietnam were aimed at food crops, and the country quickly went from rice exporter to rice importer.
16. At the peak of their commitment, South Korea had 44,829 troops in South Vietnam, Australia had 7,672, Philippines sent 2,000, Taiwan sent 31 and Fascist Spain sent 13 men. Morocco sent 10,000 cans of sardines.
17. By the early 1970s, years before the war’s end, South Vietnam’s landscape was already pockmarked with an estimated 21 million bomb and artillery craters, covering some 350,000 acres in all.
18. At its peak, the U.S. effort in Vietnam was soaking up 37% of all American military spending and required the fighting strength of more than 50% of all Marine Corps divisions, 40% of all combat-ready army divisions, and 33% of the navy.
19. In mid 1969, the GI underground newspaper in Vietnam, “GI Says,” publicly offered a $10,000 reward for the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Weldon Honeycutt, the officer responsible for the disastrous attack on Hamburger Hill in May that year. There were at least 7 attempts, but Honeycutt managed to live out his tour and return to the U.S.
20. US Navy pilot (later Senator and 2008 Presidential Candidate) John McCain was taken prisoner by North Vietnam on October 26, 1967 when his A-4 aircraft was shot down over Hanoi. Upon discovering that his father was the admiral commanding all U.S. forces in the Pacific, North Vietnam offered to return him early, in exchange for his cooperation. McCain, however, insisted that standard military procedures be followed and prisoners of war be returned in the order of their date of capture. He ended up spending 5 and a half years in captivity and was frequently tortured.
3 of my kids were in a horrible car accident. 2 only had minor injuries but my youngest son, Joe, was severely injured. He had a brain injury and fractured orbital plane requiring immediate surgery. When the insurance company settled the 2 received $1500.00 in a trust until they turned 18. But Joe was awarded $35,000. The courts insisted the trust was a regular bank, which had lower interest rates, rather than my credit union. When the bank received the 2 trusts for $1500 we decided to put the money into CDs, at the time CDs were getting 8–9% interest. Then Joe’s case was settled and the money sent to the same bank. However the bank refused to put his into a CD, instead they put into regular savings which paid maybe 3%. My husband went to his business bank and had them look over the court order. That bank said there was no valid reason for not putting the money onto a CD and they requested a wire transfer to their bank placed all 3 into an even higher rate termed to end when each turned 18. As a result Joe had 65,000 dollars when he graduated from high school. The 1st bank tried to fight the move but the court backed us up. Their loss Joe’s win.
Ancient Romans Reproduced so much that A Plant Went Extinct
Ancient Romans and Greeks used a plant called Silphium as a super effective contraceptive. But here’s the crazy part: they used it so much that it actually went extinct. Can you imagine that? This plant was so important to them, and they relied on it so heavily, that they ended up losing it forever.
Its heart-shaped seeds are thought to be the reason we associate the symbol with romance to this day.
It was cherished by the Romans and held such a special place in their hearts that they immortalized it in poems, songs, and esteemed works of literature. Its popularity was so profound that it contributed to the wealth and prosperity of the city of Cyrene, located in modern-day Shahhat, Libya, making it the wealthiest city in Africa.
The history of silphium can be traced back to ancient times. It was first mentioned in writings by the Greek poet Hesiod in the 8th century BCE, and it was also referenced in the works of other ancient Greek writers, including Theophrastus and Aristotle. The ancient Greeks believed that silphium was a gift from the gods and valued it highly for its medicinal properties.
The Greek residents of Cyrene valued silphium to such an extent that they depicted its silhouette on their currency before relinquishing control to the Romans. The significance of this extraordinary plant was even recognized by Julius Caesar, who stored an impressive stockpile of 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms) in the official treasury.
It grew abundantly in the wild in ancient North Africa, particularly in the region that is now modern-day Libya. It had large heart-shaped leaves, tall stalks, and yellow flowers, which grew in clusters. It was unique in its flavor and aroma. The leaves and stems were used to flavor food and wine, while its juice was used as a natural remedy for a variety of ailments.
Not only as a contraceptive and in beverages, but Silphium was also used for treating a variety of medical conditions such as coughs, sore throats, and indigestion.
The plant grew only in a small region around Cyrene, which made it a rare and valuable commodity. As the plant became more and more scarce, its price skyrocketed, making it became more valuable and further increasing the demand for it. Despite efforts to cultivate the plant and protect it from overharvesting, it ultimately proved to be unsustainable and went extinct.
The loss of the Silphium plant had significant consequences for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Without access to this effective form of birth control, the population of these societies may have grown at a faster rate, leading to increased competition for resources and potentially putting strain on their economies and environments.
But the story of Silphium doesn’t end there. In fact, its extinction may have had even wider-reaching consequences. The plant was not only used as a contraceptive but also as a remedy for a variety of ailments. Its loss meant that people were no longer able to rely on it for these medical purposes, and they had to find alternative treatments. This had a major impact on the health and well-being of the ancient Greek and Roman people.
The extinction of the Silphium plant serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of overconsumption and the need to carefully manage our use of natural resources. It also serves as a reminder of the important role that plants like Silphium have played in human history, and the need to preserve and protect the biodiversity of our planet. So the next time you hear about a plant or animal going extinct, remember the story of Silphium and the lessons it holds for us all.
Today, the exact identity of silphium remains a mystery, as no specimens of the plant have survived. However, it is believed to have been related to the fennel or giant fennel plant, and its medicinal properties are thought to have been due to a resinous substance contained within the plant. The legacy of silphium can still be seen in ancient artwork and writings, which depict the plant and its many uses.
I was investigated by CID, are you selling drugs? Are you working in a strip club? Are you dating men who give you money?
A rumor that I was sleeping with the Post Commanding General went around my unit.
I was placed on night shift, and every crosswalk duty for a month.
My promotion paperwork for an upcoming board disappeared.
Keep in mind this was at Ft. Benning GA in 1997, I was an MP (military police)
The” war on drugs” was still around and the perception in the news was that the only African Americans who drove luxury cars were drug, that was the “obvious” conclusion.
My Platoon sergeant finally pulled me into his office and asked “private, how in the hell can you afford a brand new Mercedes!” I told it was 7 years old, she just looked good, it was the entry level Mercedes so was affordable and my payments were about 125.00 a month (can’t remember exact amount).
He sat back and just laughed, and said “ok that makes sense”
Now remember this was 1997, AOL was just coming out so an online search was not possible. And it never occurred to the big heads in CID to ask me how much I paid for the car, how old was it, all the questions my platoon Sergeant asked me. I am still shaking my head about that.
I was more mad that people thought that I would sleep with the Commanding General, I was 22 so he was probably 50+ so in my young eyes he was oooold, like The Crypt Keeper old! ROFL!
I have always driven a MB since, have two in the garage now.
This is the same prejudicial calculus behind the pogroms, lynchings, riots and destruction suffered repeatedly by Chinese communities around the world over the last few centuries.
In Indonesia, formerly known as Batavia, it has happened repeatedly, and it will happen again.
In Malaysia, the Emergency eventually led to depopulation of the Chinese through the forced Separation of Singapore, and the implementation of race-specific policy to encourage emigration through the clever use of Singapore as a relief valve.
In America, a massive wave of violence against Chinese immigrants beginning in the 1870s culminated in the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Scott Act, and the Geary Act in the 1880s-1890s. There were massive celebratory demonstrations in California each time an act was passed.
YELLOW PERIL became a crystallized phrase in the press at the turn of the 20th century.
Chinese in America were bottom of the ladder, and treated worse than vermin.
Fast forward to the 21st century and the same attitudes persist. If the US could, it would have bombed Beijing or Shanghai like Gaza is being pounded today, and insist it isn’t a genocide.
Considering what his ancestors perpetrated repeatedly, Tom exhibited nothing more than rude antics, part of the election gameplan in a crucial “winner takes all” Presidential election year.
What we must bear in mind is the naked prejudice revealed and confirmed by the performance, and how the same sentiment can rapidly boil over into hate that require bloodletting to calm.
We should all make preparations for war in East Asia in the coming decade.
BULLETIN: EUROPEAN COUNTRY ISSUES NOTAM FOR “UNPLANNED MILITARY ACTIVITY NECESSARY TO PROTECT NATIONAL SECURITY”
We now have an precise date window for the outbreak of World War 3 in Europe. A country has issued a NOTAM for “Unpanned military activity necessary to protect national security.” This LIFE-SAVING content is now open to the General Public —
Poland has issued a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) involving the ENTIRE eastern 1/4 of the country of Poland from Gdansk in the north to the southern tip of the country, including the border with Belarus and Ukraine.
Specifically, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA) in Coordination with the Polish Air Force has Introduced a Notice-to-Air-Missions (NOTAM) from February 5th to May 5th for the entire East of the Country on the Border with Ukraine due to the reported possibility of Unplanned Military Actions related to ensuring National Security.
The NOTAM requires any Civilian Aircraft which is Operating inside of the Zone to remain in Radio Contact with Flight Authorities and to Activate their Transponder as to prevent their Disruption of Increased Activity by Military Aircraft.
Hal Turner Analysis
It seems to me, as a guy with average intellect, the only reason Poland would do this is because they KNOW there will be a NATO entry into the Russia-Ukraine war during this specific time period, and as soon as that entry begins, war between NATO and Russia will ensue. The NOTAM was issued yesterday and began yesterday, February 5, so WE ARE ALREADY IN THE WINDOW for the start of actual World War 3.
Also, as a regular guy with average intellect, this notice tells me they don’t yet know the specific date, but they know the window of time, which, to me, means when this comes, it will happen like a lightning bolt from the sky. I suspect we, the general public, will have NO WARNING AT ALL.
For weeks now, European countries have been telling their citizens to stock-up on Prescription medicines they may need to live. Many people found this advice curious; after all, why would there be a need to do something like that? Now, we seem to know why.
It looks to me as though they have been planning a NATO entry into the Ukraine war for quite some time, and they’re trying to prep the public for the war that NATO is going to cause.
In addition to countries in Europe telling their people to stock up on Prescription medicines, other nations, like Sweden and the UK, have been openly telling their citizens to “prepare for war” with emergency food, water, medicine, fuel, flashlights, batteries and portable radios for news.
So, it seems to me, the writing on the wall is now blazingly clear.
As all readers may recall, Russia made plain at the start of their Special Military Operation (SMO) into Ukraine, that if NATO chose to enter the conflict, Russian conventional forces are NOT comparable to NATO. Russia admitted that from the start.
Russia then also made clear that “We are a nuclear power, and our abilities in this area are superior to NATO.” Russia finished by saying, “If NATO declares Article 5 Collective Self Defense against Russia, it will be a war that no one will win.”
Those words . . . . “a war no one will win” is a nuclear war.
So we are now in the window for the outbreak of actual nuclear war, from right this minute, until May 5.
I earnestly hope my readers have stocked-up on Emergency food, water, medicines, an electric generator with stored fuel to run it, so as to have electricity for refrigerators, freezers, maybe some light.
We are OUT OF TIME. You have to possess these things NOW or get what you can IMMEDIATELY.
As I mentioned earlier, it seems to me we will have ZERO warning about this. When it begins, it will likely escalate so fast, none of us will have any time to react.
If you don’t have your emergency supplies before this breaks out, there will be no way at all for you to get them.
The general public – who wait until the very last minute to do — . . . anything . . . . — will be in shear panic. Stores will be immediately flooded with shoppers trying to get their hands on anything they can. It will be chaos. Bedlam.
Store shelves will be wiped clean within a couple hours.
So if you don’t have your stuff, you won’t be able to get it.
Please, in the name of Almighty God, I implore you to get prepped right now.
You need:
Shelf-stable foods: Pasta, Rice, Dried Beans, Canned meats, Canned vegetables, Condiments (Ketchup, Mustard, Mayonnaise, Salt, Pepper, SUGAR), cooking oil, Jarred pasta sauces and the like.
WATER! A human needs 8 eight-ounce glasses of water, per day, to survive. If the nukes fly, the public water supply will become contaminated. You MUST have water stored. Not for doing dishes, or showering, but to consume and cook with!
Medicines you take to survive. For instance, my wife had Thyroid cancer and her Thyroid was surgically removed. But a human cannot live without Thyroid Hormone, so she has to take a pill EVERY DAY just to continue living. If she runs out of those pills, by day 5 of no pill, she will be dead.
If YOU or your family members take medicines to live, YOU need to stock up. Tell your doctor to give you a prescription so you can stock up. Tell him why you want it. And pay for it with your own money, because your insurance company WILL NOT PAY.
A generator or some type of small solar array with a battery. You need to be able to power your refrigerator/freezer a couple hours a day to prevent food from spoiling. Have spare fuel for that generator, but don’t store flammable fuel in your house. It has to be outside. And NEVER run a generator indoors. Gas-operated generators give off carbon monoxide gas which is LETHAL. You would die from the fumes within minutes if you ran the generator indoors.
COMMUNICATIONS GEAR: Get yourself a small, cheap CB Radio ($39) with a small antenna for your car or your house. If this thing happens, and I believe it will, our electric grid may go down. All the TV and Radio stations have generators, but they may go down too after a few days of no power. YOU have to be able to communicated with neighbors, friends, and the like.
Get a SHORTWAVE RECEIVER – small ones operate on batteries. They’ll let you hear the news from many countries around the world. You’ll be able to keep informed! Have spare batteries for it, too.
Flashlights for each family member and replacement batteries for each light.
The list is **NOT** complete, and for some of us, what we “need” seems endless, but these are the absolute essentials you need. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THEM.
I was working on a ship, we were in a relatively mild storm, and a line had come loose and was flapping in the wind. I sent the deck hand out to secure it, he was wearing a floatation jacket, to keep him dry, and keep him afloat, if he fell over board. There was a railing all the way around the deck, except for the stairway. Since it wasn’t a bad storm, he wasn’t required to put on a safety line, and to tell you the truth, back in the 1980s people were pretty lax about safety, and safety lines were not always worn when they should be.
Just before he left the bridge, I said, “You know what, we should practice with the safety line, when its easy to get around, rather than only gain experience when its dangerous”
He wasn’t happy, they were a pain in the rear, and got tangled in every thing. But he put it on, and just clamped it onto the railing, when a rogue wave hit, and washed him down the deck, and under the railing. I grabbed a safety line, clamped on, and started to pull him up. Another wave came and washed him right back onto the deck. I dragged him into the bridge.
We always used safety lines after that, in even mild storms.
We would take off a week or two around christmas to go visit family since we lived halfway across the US from them. Usually we would get a cat-sitter, but on one occasion, we didn’t have anybody lined up, and we were flying Southwest, which allows small animals in the cabin. I went by the airport to buy the special mesh carrier they require you to use as well as pay the fee for bringing an animal on-board.
On the day of travel, the cat is mildly sedated and attracting a lot of attention—people love animals in airports, and cats are especially uncommon to see.
While waiting for our connection, the attendants at the gate called us to the desk to inform us there was a family with cat allergies going to be on the same flight and to mitigate any issues, the family had opted to sit in the very back of the plane, and would we please mind boarding in the first group and selecting a seat towards the very front? Hell yeah! awesome, let’s do it!
So we aren’t the very first to board, the special priority members still got first dibs, but we do manage to get seats in the second row behind an older couple, so pretty good on distancing from the family with the allergies.
I’m holding the cat in the carrier on my lap while people board before sticking her under the seat, and at some point a passenger or flight attendant comments on how they love cats, at which point, the woman in the row ahead of us swivels to say “there’s a CAT?! but I’m allergic!”.
A nearby flight attendant explains that we are being seated up here to accommodate a family who also has an allergic member and that this woman and her companion are welcome to reseat in the back if it’s going to be a problem, but the cat will be confined to the carrier at all times, and they ask me to go ahead and put her under the seat in front of me, which I do.
“But, my husband needs the front row seat! His legs get cramps otherwise!”
“Well, you’re welcome to move back there by yourself then, ma’am”
It turned out she didn’t feel her allergies were severe enough to justify that. Her only symptoms I could observe during the flight were disdainful sniffs every so often.
I was very pleased at the respect paid to my cat, who was basically a ticketed passenger and had followed protocol, and I left the attendant a glowing review on the SWA site.
An amazing husband. An amazing father. Always putting his family first. An engineer. Smart. Smart as a whip.
At most things.
sometimes he does things and I don’t know wether to laugh or laugh and cry.
there was the the time he took back a new pair of shoes because the left one was too tight. The salesman with a deadpan face pulled the paper stuffing out if the shoe and said, try it now.
there was the time he got banned from the neighborhood gas station because he drove off with the gas handle still in the gas tank.
The time he jumped on his new racing bike but forgot there were no pedals. Yes I helped him up off the yard and died laughing.
so.., you get it.
I mentioned it to him once, for a smart guy you sure do a lot of not-so smart stuff.
He smiled. And shrugged his shoulders, ya, go figure, when someone’s smart brain switch turns on that bright, something else up there has to shut off.
When I still practiced dentistry, I was running tight on time getting to work, but I had to fuel my stomach first or pay the consequences. So I stood in line at Panera’s, only one person in front of me, when a woman dashed in just as the cashier called, “Next!”
To my shock (and the guy ahead of me), the woman dashed right on up to the cashier and began to place her order.
I walked over and pointed out to the cashier how the other guy and I had been waiting at least ten minutes, while this woman she was waiting on had just now flown through the door. The cashier had already started ringing up the woman’s order, so said cashier sheepishly shrugged and grimaced a half-assed apology, like, What do you expect me to do now, it’s too late. And continued on.
Entitled woman, in the meantime, yelled at me, “I’m running late for work!” As though that explained everything. To which I replied, “So am I! But I was here first, and now you’re going to make me even more late.”
She waved me off as the cashier went to get her order.
Now for the satisfaction.
As I walked toward the door with my bag of food, entitled woman stood at a counter to add sugar, etc. to her extra-large coffee, when the cup flipped over and spilled its contents all across the counter and onto her.
It may have been mean of me, but I said loud enough for her to hear, “Perfect karma,” walked on by and out the door.
Rarely, some people managed to survive the gas chambers and were not killed immediately afterwards. One such person is Gena Turgel and her story is more than astonishing. She survived three Nazi concentration camps and in Auschwitz-Birkenau was forced naked into the gas chambers.
Gena and Norman
She was 16 when her hometown of Krakow, Poland, was bombed by the Luftwaffe on September 1, 1939, the first day of the war. Norman had relatives in Chicago, but the family delayed putting plans to move there into action, and Poland was quickly conquered by the Germans.
In the Jewish ghetto of Krakow Gena lost two brothers fighting against the Nazis. She was then sent to Plaszow concentration camp, where she survived for two and a half years until her transfer to Auschwitz. There she survived numerous experiments conducted by Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele.
The most surprising part of her story is that she did not realize she was in a gas chamber until another prisoner told her. “Do you know what just happened? You were in a gas chamber!”. said Gena: “I never realized I was in the gas chamber… It must not have worked.
The “Krema 1” gas chamber at Auschwitz.
Here is how she described his path to the gas chamber,
“We went into that room with the stone floor and holes in the ceiling. We were shivering, it was very cold, and we were waiting and waiting.”
In Auschwitz, “the water was undrinkable and we lived mainly on beet soup,” she wrote. “Everywhere we went the horrible stench of the crematoria followed us.”
The time spent in Auschwitz left its consequences. Since then, Gena wore her perfume to forget the smell of the camp.
After two months in Auschwitz, as the Red Army advanced toward Auschwitz, she was sent on a “death march,” first to Buchenwald concentration camp and then to Belsen, where she shared a barrack with Anne Frank and offered herself as a nurse because of her knowledge of German. When Belsen was liberated by the British, she showed a young army officer, Norman Turgel, the hospital where she worked.
In October 1945, she and Sergeant Turgel were married in Lübeck, Germany, in a synagogue that the Germans had used as a stable during the war. She was 21 years old at the time.
Mr. Turgel died in 1995. Mrs. Turgel is survived by her three children, eight grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. Gena Turgel died on June 7, 2018 at her home in England at the age of 95.
This story is true, but you don’t have to trust me: feel free to do your research on the internet.
Local grocery store where my niece worked for a while. One day I saw a sale on my favorite ice cream that I could not believe. It said on the sign 5 for $2.00. Wow I thought, that’s either a bad mistake by an employee misplacing the numbers, or just maybe the ice cream was out of date. I check dates and they were fine. So I grabbed five of my favorite flavors and headed to pay. I was fully expecting to pay $5 for two of them, which was still a bargain.
At the self checkout I rang them up and sure enough they were $5 for two. No problem I had taken a photo of the sign, and call the cashier over. I explained the situation and the sign. The lady then calls over a manager, who I explain again about the sign and the pricing. She does some button pushing, some things pop up on the screen, and she leaves saying she will go correct the sign. I said I was perfectly fine paying the $5 for two, but just wanted to let them know it was confusing. All went fine so I thought. They were nice and courteous as usual.
I get home and pack my 5 delicious pints of ice cream into our freezer. I was just curious what they charged me for the single pint, so I grabbed the receipt to have a look. Well, the only thing I could find for ice cream was that single $2.50 pint. Apparently the manager had deleted the other 4 from the que. I just got 4 free ice creams! I started thinking about it and I remember the employee had bagged up the ice cream herself as the manager punched away at the screen.
I called the store and explained the situation, saying I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. I was told well it was an honest mistake and they didn’t take food back, so enjoy the sweets on them. I most certainly did enjoy those free pints which seem to taste better knowing they were free.
Know what? I’m homeless. I live in the driver’s seat of my Chevy Aveo.
I got there because my mom owned the house I was living in and paying her my house payments. I lost my job and she immediately told me she was going to sell the house. Keep in mind that I hadn’t missed a payment, and I offered her my 401K, which was ten months’ of payments to give me time to find a new job and keep things steady.
I have severe depression and anxiety, and this threw me into a severe depression episode where I talked about suicide. One of my friends freaked out about this and called the police who entered my house without permission and forced me out and into a shitty hospital. (That’s a whole other story. I came out in worse shape than when I went in.) While in the hospital, my family came and got my keys so my cats could be taken care of. Instead, they took my cats (who are at a foster home right now) and wouldn’t let me back in the house. They found a flipper, who paid $8,000 for my house and sold it for $80,000 after throwing out all of my possessions, putting a fresh coat of paint on everything and remodeling the bathroom.
I was left with my car, and that’s it. A friend took me in for a year, but he wanted to rent out the room I was in so I got kicked to the curb. That was 2 days before Thanksgiving.
I currently work 2 jobs but still don’t make enough to get a place to live. (Yay low wages.) I tried to take advantage of low income housing, but after a year and a half of filling out forms, there just isn’t anything, so I gave up. I’ve heard too many horror stories about shelters that I would rather sleep in my car when the temperatures get to 12 degrees than go there.
Quit trying to blame the poor and homeless people for their problems. Most of them would gladly work to pay for their own care and shelter. Until you’ve been there yourself, you’ll never understand because you just don’t want to see what’s really going on in this world.
I’ve told the story before, but an ex-friend of mine called in a panic 10 days before her wedding, telling me the caterer had cancelled. I was the only one she knew with catering experience and could I figure something out for the wedding?
We worked out a deal. If she could hire me two chef temps to help and pay for the food items, I’d give her the labor for her wedding gift.
Big mistake.
I spent a week and $1500 of my own money (that I really didn’t have) prepping food I’d bought wholesale, under the assumption that help would be arriving and that I’d have the money paid back.
The help never arrived. She said they wouldn’t work for an individual. That was blatantly false, but by this point I was scrambling.
Come the day of the wedding, I was frantically trying to get my home made pasta, bread, meatballs, sauces and sides to the venue. The venue employees were absolute angels who helped out in any way they could.
By the time it came to plate the food, we were a well oiled machine and it was amazing. And they even sent me home, telling me it was in their contract to clean up when it was all over. (I later learned this was my job, but they had already figured out I was being scammed and felt so bad for me.)
Two weeks later, the bride and I met up to settle the food payment. In fact, she suddenly changed the story, and said she was there for her wedding gift.
What.
The.
Fuck.
When she figured out I didn’t have one, she called me a terrible friend and stormed out. I had a bad feeling something was wrong. I called several other mutual friends and they came to the cafe I was at within the hour.
We hashed out what had happened to us. In fact, we all had wedding industry or industry adjacent jobs/skills. And she’d scammed all of us for our talents and money.
All in all, by telling us someone had cancelled and could we please do this and she’d pay us back, she got
Catering
A cake
Photography
Alterations and all three bridesmaids’ dresses sewn
Most of the venue payment
Decor
Flowers
She got what was essentially a free wedding from all of us, by conning us all.
We did get our money back eventually, but it took small claims court, a debt collector, and a few years of frustration.
Baked Ravioli and Cheese
Ingredients
1 (50 count) package frozen cheese ravioli
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups cubed American cheese
3/4 cup crushed potato chips (optional)
Instructions
Cook ravioli according to package directions; drain.
Meanwhile, for sauce, melt butter in a large saucepan. Stir in flour. Add milk; cook and stir until slightly thickened and bubbly.
Add cheese; heat and stir until cheese is melted.
Salt and pepper to taste. Add cooked ravioli; stir gently.
Spoon into an 8 inch square baking dish.
Sprinkle crushed potato chips over.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes or until edges bubble and top is golden brown.
I was in my 9th grade math class. One of my best friends brothers (he’s a year older than me) was sitting next to me. In front of me was another guy and we were in the back of the class in the corner.
The three of us are shooting crap, talking and messing around. We had finished an assignment and had a few minutes.
All of a sudden our principal comes over the loudspeaker.
“Teachers and students. I don’t know how to even start to say this. There’s been a shooting at Columbine.”
Everyone in the class went silent.
“We are on lockout until further notice. No one is to leave the school grounds and students who are off campus will not be allowed back in. Please, turn on the TV’s in your rooms for more information. I don’t know how many times I can say this out loud.
We are safe. Pray for Columbine.”
We were all in shock.
Columbine High School was about 10 miles from our high school.
My dad worked at Leawood Elementary, 2 blocks down the street, where the first kids ran.
Now, my dad normally worked nights, but he worked that day (and I don’t know why, maybe his boss was a closeted pot head, all I know was my dad was there that day.)
My dad was my first thought, since they didn’t know what was actually going on yet. Is my dad okay?!? What’s going on?
My second thought was about my mom. She worked at the central district office. What in the world was going on there? Then, my thoughts turned to my friends. Names I was lucky to not hear later on the news.
I know this sounds like it took minutes to think of all of this, but it was mili-seconds.
The whole class was in shock when the TV was on.
It showed the building that I had driven by every Friday night to take my dad dinner (Columbine). Another building….that my dad was in. The kids running away from the building with their heads covered.
We were all staring at the TV. Hoping that we’d recognize a face so that we would know our friends were safe.
Some kids cried. Others were in shock. No one spoke for what felt like hours. We just stared at the TV. Hoping it was just a dream, or a prank.
The bell rang, and we were dismissed to our next class.
That was the only time in my 4 years at my high school that the hallways were quiet. Once in a while you’d find a group of kids crying and holding each other. It was surreal.
I made it to the band room and was able to call my mom. It was a zoo at her office and my dad was safe, helping families who were coming to pick up their kids. He was in for a long night.
The day went on. Same thing. At 2:00 PM The principal gave us an update and let us know that we weren’t on lockdown anymore. You could tell he had been crying.
We went home that afternoon to watch the horrifying news unfold.
We know how the rest of the stories goes.
PS (if you’re interested)-I only had the courage to ask him (my dad) once about that day. It was about 7 years afterward.
I had only seen my dad cry 3 times in his whole life, and that was one of them.
He said that parents swarmed the school, searching for their children as the kids were brought to the school (I think by bus).
As the afternoon turned into evening, more and more parents were leaving, thankful that their kids were OK. There were parents of children who were injured that left with police officers and escorted to the hospitals.
There were parents whose children never showed up that afternoon.
My dad said it was about 8:00, one by one the parents were called into the office. They all knew what it meant to be the last parents there.
Some walked out crying. Some were in shock. Some screamed the most wretched noises he’s ever heard.
My dad was never really the same after that.
None of us were.
Abandoned $5.5 Million MEGA Mansion | Everything Left Behind
I once worked on a joint venture with an Australian company. At that time, I was both the Director of heated products in the American company, and the Project Manager for the project that I was leading in the Australian company. So I was wearing “two hats”.
The project was a clothes iron joint-venture.
Now reporting to two different managers, one Australian and one American had its challenges. But over all it was positive.
But there was one thing, however that really made life difficult. You see, the American company Marketing Director (In Chicago) wanted to micro-manage the project.
And she would provide lists of technical issues that she wanted to be worked on… on a daily basis. Most of which were not germane to the projects and work at hand, and was a real headache.
Most of the things were trivial in importance and silly in scope. Like can the power cord go from 1 meter long to 1.2 meters long? Or, investigate if the temperature can be 5C higher on the plate. Now about making the logo bigger, then smaller, and then bigger again. How about cutting the size of the manual down?
These little tasks took 15 seconds to think up, and maybe 10 man-hours to work out each one of them.
So everyday, she was coming up with about 40 man-hours of work, and completely stressing the staff out.
I just wanted a fine working product. I believe in the 80/20 rule. Not the 100/0 perfectionist rule that the inexperienced seem to accept as “leadership”.
We held a number of meeting on this subject. But nothing ever got resolved, until one day, during a meeting in Australia, I stood up and pointed to a blackboard showing all the issues that she wanted us to work on.
And I really wanted to make a point. We needed to concentrate on the items that had the biggest gain; a weighted outcome, as not every issue is worthy of time to develop and flush out.
And said…
Don’t be like a dog. Going from tree to tree. Pissing around indiscriminately.
Everyone was stunned, and then the entire room burst out laughing. The Australians all got smirks on their faces and held up their finger like “what a great idea”. Ha!
Here’s one for you. We received a letter from school that my son was failing 6th grade math and we needed to sit down. When we got to the school there was a teacher and a vice principal waiting for us. The teacher started off with handing me a test my son had taken. I glanced over it the math was right but almost every answer was marked wrong. She informed me that his spelling was horrible.
I quickly informed her that we had been fighting with him about this for years. Back when the school was teaching – th (the) i for eye. I had my conflict with that teacher at the time.
This set the math teacher off! Me questioning a teacher! How dare I? Then she said something that set me off. Your son’s problem is because you’re an absentee father! Just as she said this the bell to change classes rang. I asked her to step out into the hall with me. As we did kids were going past us- you’d hear hello Mr. Y. several times as kids passed us.
I turned to her and said I am the soccer coach here at the school! Her face turned red. We went back in and sat down the mood had changed. Now it’s time for me to take her lags out!
I pointed at the letter she had sent to us about my son Brian. I laughed and said that my sons name is Bryan. You’ve been teaching him for 9 months and you still can’t spell his name correctly? I would like to see you right his name correctly 100 times each time you’ve spelled it wrong (we had all his test sitting right in front of us)!
I told her I was going to call the local news agency about the hypocrite at this school. The vice principal was getting scared and trying to talk me down. I wanted her job after her accusation about me and my son.
She quit! I found out later that she had been doing this to every boy in the class. Finding a way to flunk them. Parents had been complaining but no one got anywhere till me.
Yes the USA. Is poorer. If your neighbour who has the biggest house owed roughly 10 times the worth of his house and you living in a house 5 times smaller and don’t owe anyone a dime. You ie (Vietnam and Cuba) are much richer than the show off that is driving a Ferrari in the huge home that owes a ton of money that it could never pay off in a century like the U.S.
So stop asking silly questions to make yourself feel good. The U.S. is a huge Ponzi nation.
You may have noticed from the image that Nauru isn’t particularly large. In fact, it is just 21 km squared, which is eight square miles. That’s six Central Parks or 11% of Washington D.C. and only two countries are smaller than it, those of course being Monaco and the Vatican. In terms of population – well, you can see it’s not bursting with people, with 10,084 at the last census – that’s as many as Elkhorn in Walworth County, Wisconsin, which you’ve never heard of.
Why do I feel bad for Nauru? Because they messed up big time.
You see, the island of Nauru had a ludicrously high amount of phosphate.
Phosphate is basically this important and expensive mineral which comes from bird poop among other things. Once it became a big deal in the 60s and 70s, and Nauru got their independence in 1968, they started to mine and export it to the rest of the world. And this went brilliantly well for them, with their annual GDP going from 15 million to 45 million in the space of eleven years. They had the second-highest GDP per capita in the world, behind only the UAE. Everything was going brilliantly.
And then, the inevitable happened. They ran out of phosphate.
That’s fine, isn’t it? We’ve got, like, a billion dollars now. Just invest it well and we’re sorted. Doesn’t matter that we have no idea what we’re doing, we’ll be fine – Nauru government, 1980 (paraphrased)
They weren’t alright, to say the least. None of their investments paid off at all. They had a billion Australian dollars and managed to lose almost all of it.
They bought a bunch of hotels and properties overseas, in Australia, the US, India and New Zealand among other places. They tried to get their national airline, inventively named Nauru Airlines, off the ground, but they couldn’t fill planes, so they literally let anyone fly. They put two million dollars into a terrible, terrible West End musical that everyone hated. The only purchase that really worked out was a block of land in Portland.
FUCK. – Nauru government, 1990 (paraphrased)
So now, Nauru barely has any money. They’ve got no real source of income, apart from being friends with Australia and a few other countries. Whilst they’re just about getting by for now, projections aren’t looking good. The entire middle of the island is basically unusable for anything, because it looks like this:
The entire population lives around the coast in a coast-shaped blob, but because of rising sea levels, they’re gonna have to move somewhere at some point. Unfortunately, there isn’t really anywhere to go.
Nauru had so much luck in having so much minerals, but financial incompetence has led to the downfall of an island that could have been so much more than it’s managed to. We can only hope that they find a solution.
This wasn’t me. and it was as much weird as horrifying.
In June 2008, an 88-year-old retired nurse named Mary Ferns left her house in Livingston, West Lothian, saying she was going into the town centre to buy tights. Everyone assumed she meant Livingston town centre, about a mile from her home, but she never came home. CCTV showed her in Edinburgh, 25 miles away, heading towards Waterloo Place where she would have been able to get a bus back to Livingston (or to any of a hundred other places), so it looked as if she decided to go into Edinburgh to shop instead of to Livingston.
Between central Livingston and her home there are several routes which cross over bridges, and at the sides of the bridges there are steep slopes covered with bushes, leading down to the water. It was natural to wonder if she had returned to Livingston, set off to walk home instead of getting a local bus for such a short journey, had a heart attack or stroke while approaching a bridge, and rolled down into the bushes: but dogs couldn’t find her.
Then in April 2011 a skeleton was found under one of the bridges, and everyone assumed it was hers. But it turned out to be someone else entirely – a man who had been missing for 15 years, and who had evidently sat down under the bridge to get out of the rain, and then had a heart attack or stroke of his own.
Mary Ferns, meanwhile, has never been found. We don’t know if she was murdered, or met with an accident, or whether, despite her age, she chose to go missing.
Pol Pot (real name Saloth Sâr) was the dictator of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, taking power at the end of the Cambodian Civil War. As soon as he took power, He and his administration transformed Cambodia into a one party communist dictatorship. Over the next 4 years, he and his administration committed various human rights violations and carried out what is now known as the Cambodian Genocide. To go into more detail, Pol Pot and his administration:
• Forced the Cambodian population to work without pay.
• Made the Cambodian population live in the country side by forceful removing them from their homes in the cites.
• Destroyed Cambodia’s legal system and replaced it with re-education and interrogation centers. If they thought that you were guilty, you would have been very hard pressed to convince them otherwise.
• Caused much of the Cambodian populace to starve, many times to death.
• Killed anyone they either felt didn’t fit into their new society or deemed to even slightly be a threat to their regime. these included: people with connections to the previous government, Doctors, Lawyers, Intellectuals, Journalists, Business Leaders, Vietnamese Cambodians, Chinese Cambodians, Thai Cambodians, Christian Cambodians, Cham Muslims and family members of prisoners who were thought to be a threat to the regime. Even wearing glasses or being able to speak multiple languages could get you killed.
• If you were to be executed (which was very likely), you would have been taken to one the various “Killing Fields” and would most likely be killed with a pickaxe, so that they did not waste any bullets.
By the time they were overthrown during a Vietnamese invasion, the Cambodian life expectancy was about 18 years old.
As bad as rulers such as Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin and Mao Zedong were for their people, I believe no one was as brutal as Pol Pot was.
I feel like their motto put it best:
To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.
This doesn’t qualify as disgusting, but many years ago, I was involved with an Internet startup. They spent all of their time having meetings which achieved nothing, and were a complete waste of everybody’s time. One day, I was asked, no told, by the CEO to prepare a lengthy report on something that I considered ridiculous. I wrote 3 pages of it, and then decided to see what would happen if I didn’t finish it off, so I added 35 more pages of Loren Ipsum (Latin), and handed the report in. At the next meeting when everybody was present, I made a point of asking the CEO if the report was what he had wanted. He said “Yes, it was great”. I stood up, and told the entire room that this very important report that I had handed in, and which the CEO thought was great, actually contained 35 pages of Latin, proving that he hadn’t actually looked at it. I said “I quit”, and walked out of the door. The company went belly up 6 months later.
My wife had disappeared forever, and my boss knew that the ground was very cold. He also knew that my car was gone, and my house was under debate. Money gone as well.
And in the middle of that struggle, he entered my office without knocking, and stated that I would have to move into the (smaller) office of a young colleague with severe psychiatric issues, whom he hated just like he hated me. When I asked him why I had to move (since we had plenty of room in our department), he stated with a smile:
“Because I said it — that’s why.”
He also said with the same smile that he was to chair my next HR committee soon, and that I could basically forget about my future. He said the same thing to the woman with the psychiatric problems.
He called us “the goofballs.”
But he forgot about the one thing he could not control nor understand, and that even we — the goofballs in that tiny office which leaked water during rain showers — understood. The secret force he tried to capture, because he did not understand how the goofballs kept coping with his constant harassing and mental torture.
And I will also never forget his expression when he was finally fired — that final sight.
I don’t know if it was disgusting, but it was rather a unique trick. I used this a couple of times on drug dealers.
When I worked undercover in narcotics I would be asked to buy street-dealer weight in either cocaine or Heroin. The designer drugs weren’t around yet and this new stuff called crack was just making its way onto the market.
One problem every undercover faced was the hand to hand delivery of the drugs. During the actual purchase, you needed to be able to testify that you gave the money directly to the seller and they directly handed you the drugs. ( AKA hand to hand purchase).
Drug dealers were wise to this. When an informant would introduce me to the seller they would take the money but they would only give the drugs to the informant and not to me directly.
I couldn’t testify that I got the drugs from the informant. That would require me to identify the informant and have them testify. No way I would do that. So I came up with a cool little trick.
I would give the dealer the money and he would pass the drugs off to the informant who gave them to me. I would look at the package and say it was light (not the correct weight) and throw the package back directly to the dealer saying I wanted my money back. Drug dealers are not in the business of giving out refunds.
I’d move in close seemingly to get my money back, but we’d talk a little and I would agree to the light package if he would agree the next package would be a little overweight.
As soon as the dealer agreed, I’d reach out and take the package back directly from the dealer, sometimes almost pulling it out of his hands, thus completing a hand to hand transaction.
We would let the case sit for six months before we made the arrest, so they would not remember what informant walked me in. But my little hand to hand trick worked every time.
I mean..this American senator keep on asking if Chew Sou Zi (the Tiktok CEO) is a Chinese citizen and a member of Chinese Communist Party even though the CEO keep repeatedly answering that he is a Singaporean citizen !
That senator apparently:
1.Could not tell the difference between China and Singapore.
2. Doesn’t know that Singapore is not a part of China.
3.Doesn’t know that a Singaporean person is not allowed to have a dual citizenship.
4.Doesn’t have a clue that only a Chinese citizen could become a member of Chinese Communist Party ( I’m not sure about USA, maybe in the US, a non citizen could become a member of senate?)
5. He probably doesn’t even know where the heck Singapore is!!!
And the fact is, he is a SENATOR ! He represents the people in america ! He went to Harvard, therefore he’s one of america’s best and brightest! He’s a decision maker!
Can you imagine the level of intelligence of the ordinary americans?
I was relief that the senator did not asking the CEO “have you ever ordered a Chinese takeout”?.
Italian Stuffed Meat Loaf
Ingredients
Meat Loaf
1 pound lean ground beef
1 cup oats
1 (15 1/2 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce, divided
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon pepper
Filling
1/3 cup of any one or all of the following: sliced mushrooms, sliced ripe olives, shredded mozzarella cheese, shredded zucchini
Topping
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Ripe olives, sliced
Instructions
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.
For meat loaf, combine ground beef, oats, 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce, onion, Parmesan cheese, egg, Worcestershire sauce and pepper; mix well. Separate mixture into two equal parts. Shape each into a patty about 7 inches in diameter. Place filling on one patty to within 1/2 inch of edge. Place in prepared pan.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until meat is done.
Top loaf with remaining spaghetti sauce and mozzarella cheese. Garnish with olives.
So, we’ve got Liam Ashley, a 17-year-old dude from New Zealand who made a serious mistake. He took his parents’ car for a joyride without their permission. Yeah, not the smartest move in the book, my friend.
But here’s where things get real messed up. Liam’s parents, instead of just giving him a good old-fashioned grounding or some crap, decided to press criminal charges against him. They wanted to teach him a lesson, right? So they denied the poor guy bail, thinking that sending him to prison would fix everything.
Now, I get it, parents wanna straighten out their kids, but come on! Liam had some minor run-ins with the law before, nothing too serious. And for that, they wanna throw him behind bars? Talk about overreacting, man.
But here’s the real tragedy. While Liam was being transported in a prison van, some dangerous psycho attacked him. And I ain’t talking about a friendly game of patty cake, my friend. Liam was brutally assaulted and, tragically, he didn’t make it. It’s a heartbreaking ending to a messed-up situation.
Ashley was killed by George Charlie Baker, a classified dangerous criminal, who strangled and stomped on the boy. Liam sustained severe brain injuries and his family decided to remove him from life support the next day. Baker was given an 18 year sentence!
I mean, seriously, what the f**k? Liam’s parents thought they were doing the right thing, but their actions led to their own son’s death. It’s a harsh reminder that sometimes, people’s intentions can be all kinds of messed up, and the consequences can be devastating.
Yea I did. I was interviewing for a part time job in a small, higher end chain women’s clothing store. I just wanted a few hours a week in a nice atmosphere. This weeks to be the place. Then as I was doing my last interview with the store manager, she started telling me about the hourly sales requirements. Woman, what are you talking about? Well, the first hour you had to sell, say $10 worth of accessories. The second jour V higher dollar value, and it went in up to 8 hours and by the eighth hour you had to sell $50 worth of stuff. By the hour! She’s been very nice and told me she’d never seen such glowing recommendations from previous employees, she’d actually talked to them. So at the news of the hard sell requirement I was sitting there with it mouth agape in shock, I said, I’m 52, months his is a part time job I thought would be enjoyable, you just made it despicable, sorry, I’m not interested. It was a good thing, I found a job in a chain fabric store, they had about 200 stores nationwide, our store was very small, about 3500 square feet, but we worked our way up to a million dollars in sales so it was busy, fun and I loved it until the store manager stopped caring and was a pain in the butt. I loved to see, knit, crochet and do other fiber crafts. We sold fabric, yarn, lots of supplies for other crafts. And people were buying all of our supplies. But it went downhill, I left after 12 years and 18!years after I started they went out of business. It was sad, I couldn’t buy a sewing machine needle there at the end because the selection went from 20 types and sizes to 4 basic needles. And that was with everything.
JEFFREY SACHS FULL INTERVIEW ABOUT CHINA – U.S RIVALRY CONTINUE ? AND MORE
Oh my God. A deep madness.
Subtle Change in Ukraine Blame Means Deadly Trouble for Americans
OPINION-EDITORIAL — A very subtle change in the words coming out of the Russian Foreign Ministry signals the FINAL step before the annihilation of the United States. We have now reached the final step . . .
The wording used by the Russian Foreign Ministry was very subtle, but its implications are anything but. See if you can pick-up the subtle change in this excerpt from RT:
The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs who were killed last week when the Russian Il-76 military aircraft transporting them was shot down by Kiev’s troops, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has said.
On Thursday, Russia’s Investigative Committee released a report stating that the cargo plane was destroyed using two US-made MIM-104A missiles fired by a Patriot air-defense system. The Il-76 came down in Russia’s Belgorod Region last Wednesday. All of those on board – 65 Ukrainian POWs, three Russian troops, and six crew members – were killed.
Russian investigators stated that Ukrainian troops fired the missiles from a staging area in Kharkov Region, not far from the village of Liptsy, some 10km from the Russian border. They based their conclusion on 116 missile fragments found at the crash site bearing inscriptions in English.
Responding to the report, Zakharova said in a Telegram post that US citizens “need to know where their money is going,” arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.”
Did you catch it? Did you pick up the subtle change in the language they used? It’s right there in front of you!
Here, let me focus it for you:
“The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs . . .”
Then again, in a later paragraph:
” . . .arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.” “”
This tiny and subtle change points the finger not just at the US Government, it also points the finger at . . . . YOU. And me! Individually. Personally.
This is a point I have made repeatedly on my radio shows in the past two years. I have earnestly pointed out that what our GOVERNMENT does, is being done IN OUR NAME.
Remember, this nation celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address wherein he posited that we have “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Ergo, when the US Government does something, it does it in OUR name. You and me.
The Russians have now made clear who it is they hold responsible for what the US Government is doing: YOU and ME.
You see, we . . . . you and me . . . . ARE in fact, to blame!
We sit back and do nothing while our government runs roughshod over the whole world. Sanctions on this one and that one. Military action here. Military action there. And whenever our Government engage in that activity, people we don’t know, in lands we’ve never been to or maybe haven’t even heard of . . . . die.
Oh, and while our government is doing all this crap to people all over the world, you and I sit back and do . . . . nothing. We don’t make a phone call to our members of Congress or the Senate. We don’t write a letter or send a fax. We don’t even fire-off an email. We sit on our asses and do absolutely . . . . nothing.
The Russians are now making clear it is YOU and I who are doing this. YOU and I who are to blame. Directly. Personally.
You know what? They’re right.
WE are to blame. We elect these people then sit back and tacitly approve of what they’re doing by our own, personal inaction. They slaughter people all over the world. They bomb countries back into the Stone Age. You and I sit back and do absolutely nothing. Or worse, we sing idiotic Beach Boys Parody songs like “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran . . . .” as if somehow what we’re doing is good. It isn’t.
A Russian guy I know cited US Senator Lindsey Graham the other day to make a very valid point to me. He showed me what Lindsey Graham, posted on “X” (formerly Twitter) wherein he said the following:
Then the Russian guy asked me “What if some member of the Russian Federation COuncil (i.e. a Russian “Senator”) Posted this exact message on VKontake (Russian Social Media) only changed the countries involved, like this FAKE SAMPLE:
FAKE RUSSIA SENATOR
In case the Putin Administration is wondering, it is abundantly clear to the United States and everyone else in the region, that the Administration doesn’t want war. But it will be difficult to tell the families of the fallen soldiers that the United States is not at war with us.
The United States is at war with Russia on multiple fronts through their proxies (Ukraine). Weak talk and weak action are putting our service members [in Ukraine], at risk. If the United States doesn’t pay a heavy price after the deaths of our service members, and the wounding of many more, then the Putin Administration is derelict in their duties to protect Russian personnel in harm’s way.
To the Putin Administration: Stop the weak rhetoric and respond with strength to protect Russian interests and lives. Your current approach to United States/NATO aggression is not working. Change while you can.”
Same words as Lindsey Graham. Same logic.
So I have to ask YOU, the Reader, if Lindsey Grahams words about Iran are good enough to warrant the US attacking Iran, would the FAKE Russian Senator’s exact same words about Ukraine, justify Russia hitting us?
Why not. Same situation!
You see, this is a big problem for my fellow Americans. We view the world as being ours to do with as we please. We never once stop to think how other powerful nations, might decide to use OUR logic, when dealing with . . . . us.
Now, some of you will react by saying “They wouldn’t dare.” Oh no? Why not?
And you would respond “Because we would nuke the living shit out of them.”
Really?
Because they can also do that to us.
Oh.
Yes.
Reality sets in.
And those same reactionary Americans who would say “They wouldn’t dare” would then likely say “They won’t, it would mean the end of the world.”
Yes. It would. And we would have done it to ourselves by the way we are behaving around the world.
Why should Russia sit back and allow us to supply arms to Ukraine, which are now clearly being used to kill Russians?
Why shouldn’t Russia tell the United States (again) to stop supplying weapons that are killing Russians and then add, or Russia will start hitting the United States?
Why shouldn’t Russia make it direct? Blunt?
Well . . . . turns out, they just began making it blunt. At the top of this Op-Ed, they have now begun blaming “American citizens.” You and me.
Where is this leading? Let me explain it this way:
What is the difference between “Killing” and “murder?”
Murder is the unlawful killing of an innocent. But “Killing” is allowable if it is “justified.”
For instance, if a guy is aiming a gun at you, and you do something which kills him, that is “self defense” and not murder, even though the guy is now dead.
So there is a difference between killing and murder. One may be allowed while the other is not.
Same thing with countries.
The U.S. is supplying weapons for Ukraine to use to kill Russians. Russia has repeatedly told the US and NATO to stop, but we are not stopping. ERGO, it would be “justified” for Russia to kill us in self defense.
Thankfully, the Russians have good morals and they know that perhaps the innocent American people ought not be harmed because of our evil government. SO thus far, they have not killed us.
I think the change in Russian Foreign Ministry wording mentioned at the start of this Op-Ed, tells us that’s about to change.
The official Diplomatic Corps of the Russian Federation is now openly, and publicly, laying the blame for the deaths of Russians, upon “the American people.” Me and you.
Having repeatedly told us to stop, the only thing left for Russia to do is to make us stop – by killing us.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has now begun laying the historical groundwork to justify exactly that.
By changing their statements to lay blame upon “the American people” they are building a record to justify killing . . . us.
Wise-up folks.
Unless we reign-in our wayward government, and stop them from running roughshod over the whole world, you and I __can__ be held accountable. You and I __can__ be stopped.
The clock seems to be ticking.
Now, you can either step up and start being an active and engaged citizen, and start telling your elected public servants to knock it off, or you can go right back to sitting on your ass and doing nothing until the brilliant white flashes start. Then you can feel sorry for yourself as you vaporize, except God already knows: You brought this on yourself by not getting off your lazy ass and stopping your own government while you still could.
Kevin is the gentlest man I’ve ever known, and we go back nearly four decades. He’s tall, well-built, and strong, yet he talks with a soft voice and always speaks kindly.
Kevin worked in a small, cramped Capitol Hill office with a Class A bully. This guy continually said nasty things to his colleagues. He was especially abusive to the women and, because of his kind demeanor, Kevin was one of the favorite targets. A bully loves attacking anyone s/he perceives to be weak.
One day, Kevin had enough. During a verbal attack, Kevin jumped up, grabbed this guy by the lapels, and pulled him from his desk chair. He then pushed the guy against a wall and put his face very close. Kevin told the guy that he could shut up, immediately, or that Kevin would shut his mouth for him. Kevin went on to explain that there’d be no more office abuse; if the behavior happened again, the consequences would be much more severe.
The guy turned bright red, then ghostly white. He had nothing to say. He sat down and spent the rest of the day looking terrified and shaking uncontrollably. He never bullied anyone again, and he left his job shortly after. Nobody was sorry to see him go.’
It was Dec 1982. I had just turned 16 in October. My two friends and I were walking home from the Christmas dance at the high school when I was hit by a drunk driver. She was driving home from a company Christmas party. I was the one closest to the street on the sidewalk and somehow she clipped me without hitting either of my friends. Best we can figure, I rolled up the windshield and off the side of her car.
I was knocked unconscious and woke up laying facedown on the street. People were already gathered by me, holding me down, telling me not to move. I was terrified that they knew something about my “condition” that I didn’t know. Fortunately, I had only minor injuries and a concussion. Sprained pinky finger, road-rash scrapes over the whole right side of my body from my ear to my knee, swollen knee and elbow, and that pesky concussion. No doubt, I was lucky.
Then there was another little “gift” that I didn’t realize I had for years. PTSD. I had to quit the school wrestling team after I had a panic attack and blacked out during practice. In the first few months after, I literally dove into bushes and onto lawns when I heard sharp sounds behind me – tires squealing, engine revving, door slamming – all sent me flying away from the road. I would get up and brush off the leaves while mentally chastising myself for being weak. Eventually, it got to the point where I’d just flinch and not actually leap, and months later where I’d just startle.
This was 1982, before MADD, before strict DUI laws, and in many cases, before any DUI laws. I was told she spent the night in the “drunk tank” and was released the next day. Her insurance paid the medical expenses minus the PTSD therapy because I didn’t know I had that. Insurance also paid for clothing that was torn or cut off, and I believe an additional $600 for “pain and suffering.” My PTSD lasted over two years.
I never drink and drive. Because I know the real cost. Because I know I got a small dose and some families pay a much larger cost. Because I couldn’t imagine sitting in a cell knowing I killed someone.
I had my fairly new license and was driving my parents car when a deer darted out in front of me. I swerved and put the car into a ditch. Not hurt.
I find a phone and call a tow truck. Get back to the car and there is a police car there. I explained I’d stayed with the car for 15 minutes but knew there was a gas station nearby.
He gives me a ticket for speeding because in his opinion that’s the only way this could have happened.
Now this is a small municipal court for traffic tickets. My license was from my parents home 3 hours away. He was expecting me to just mail in the fine rather than contest it. He approached me before court to “refresh his memory about the event” and naively I did. He gets called and testifies that I was speeding.
So, I asked him where he was when the accident happened and was able to witness me speeding. He said he passed me going in the opposite direction.
So, I asked: if you saw me speeding in the opposite direction & saw me wreck my car, why did I have to walk 20 minutes to the phone, call police headquarters to report the accident, and walk back before you wrote the ticket?
The judge stopped things at that point & dismissed the charges.
One morning as I was waking up, I looked at my 27 year old wife as she was sleeping and noticed the veins in her neck were throbbing. A few days later she was in the hospital getting excess fluid drained from her pericardium (sac around the heart) that was built up and putting pressure on her heart, and causing the veins to protrude. She had recently recovered from a stomach virus and doctors attributed this to a viral infection.
A few days later, it was happening again. That’s when the whirlwind began. She was put back in the local hospital for tests, within a day sent to John’s Hopkins for more tests, within another day sent right to the oncology unit. Her diagnosis was Angiosarcoma; the tumor was on her heart.
The outlook wasn’t good and I was getting a lot of percentages: “if we do this there’s x percent of this happening and if that happens there’s x percent that we can do this”, etc. I asked to speak with someone who could just tell me what the deal was, what to expect, what the reality of the situation was. They sent the head of oncology to speak with me, and I’ll never forget it:
“The tumor is on her heart…we can’t just remove the tumor because of the location, and because angiosarcoma has an almost liquid consistency operating is rarely successful. It’s extremely aggressive and once it gets into the bloodstream, if it hasn’t already, will spread throughout her body. You’ve asked me to be completely frank with you about your wife’s condition, and because you asked I am going to honor your request: the reality of the situation is that your wife is going to die, and the life you had together as you know it is over. It could be within six months, or because of the pressure on her heart she could go into cardiac arrest at any time. Now, I’m an aggressive realist, which means I’m going to aggressively try to change the reality of the situation. But the fact is that if this kind of cancerous tumor appeared in her leg, we would immediately amputate, and she would still not survive more than two years”.
This will not go down well with the electorate and, moreover, with the soldiers of the Ukrainian forces:
A poll published by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology in December found 88% of Ukrainians supported the top general. Zelensky’s approval rating, though also high, was considerably lower at 62%.
It is far from clear that any new commander will be able to improve Ukraine’s difficult situation on the battlefield without significantly more forces and weapons — precisely what Zaluzhny has demanded of Zelensky, adding tension to what was already a fraying relationship.
Zaluzhny’s popularity — both within the military and among ordinary citizens — makes his removal a political gamble for Zelensky. It also poses strategic risks at a time when Russia has intensified its attacks and Western security assistance for Kyiv has slowed. The general has built strong rapport with his Western counterparts and has often been able to advocate directly for certain materiel and seek counsel on battlefield strategy. … Both Budanov and Syrsky are considered favorites of Zelensky and Andriy Yermak, the chief of the presidential office and Zelensky’s closest adviser. Nearer the front, however, there seems to be little appetite for change.
“My personal opinion is you can’t do something like this right now — Zaluzhny is someone 80 percent of the military considers a good authority,” said Oleksandr, a battalion commander fighting in eastern Ukraine.
“For what is he being removed? It’s not clear. And who will replace him? Syrsky? God, I hope not. No one in the army likes Syrsky,” Oleksandr added.
The Bild publication writes that Zaluzhny wanted to withdraw troops from Avdiivka a few weeks ago, but Zelensky refused him this and on December 30 he personally went to the city to the front line to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters.
So all the coffins that arrived from near Avdeevka to Ukraine since December 30 are solely on the conscience of Zelensky and his passion for narcissism.
Avdeevka is nearly surrounded and any attempts to hold onto it will cost many valuable lives of soldiers for no discernible advantage. But, just like with Bakhmut, Zelenski wants to hold on to the city to be be able point his western sponsors to some ‘successes’.
My hunch is that, after Monday’s kerfuffle in Kiev, the decision to fire Zaluzny was still hanging in balance.
The change now only happened after the noeconservative destroyer of Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, had landed in Kiev.
When asked by a journalist whether Nuland had learned about Kyiv’s plans on the battlefield, she replied that, in her opinion, Ukraine would achieve great success.
“I have to say that I leave Kyiv tonight more encouraged about the unity and the resolve, about 2024 and its absolute strategic importance for Ukraine. I also leave more confident that, even as Ukraine strengthens its defenses, Mr. Putin is going to get some nice surprises on the battlefield and that Ukraine will make some very strong success,” the U.S. Under Secretary of State emphasized.
This hint does not foresee success on the ground but asymmetric operations within Russia or the Black Sea. More to the like of this which has happen last night:
Ukraine sinks Russian ship.
During a night attack by drones in the Donuzlav area, the Black Sea Fleet lost the Ivanovets MRK, built in 1989, 493 tons of displacement, armed with Moskit missiles.
Sinking that ship will do nothing to change the outcome at the battlefront. Nor would any attacks on Russia oil and gas infrastructure change anything.
Nuland’s remark also hints that the replacement of General Zaluzny will not come in the form of Army General Alexander Syrski, who is disliked by the troops for unsuccessfully holding grounds in Bakhmut and elsewhere at too high costs in men and material.
Nuland’s hint towards asymmetric operations points to the elevation of the Chief of Military Intelligence Directorate Major-General Kyrylo Budanov as a incoming replacement for Zaluzny.
Budanov has been responsible for some daring, if mostly unsuccessful, terror attacks on Russian land and interests.
Back in June 2023 the Economist explained why Zelenski might seek to elevate Bundanov:
Aides huddle close when the general speaks. Under his leadership, Ukraine’s main directorate of intelligence—HUR—has become a plucky, autonomous authority that punches above its weight. It resembles a gang. “Before we had managers, now we have a leader,” says one veteran officer. Oleg, an operative who has known General Budanov for decades, speaks approvingly of his ability to infect others with his fervour, comparing him to a snake “hypnotising you before he comes in for the kill. Restrained, measured, never panicked. You do anything he asks.” … As a confidant of the president—those in government call them kindred spirits—General Budanov is understood to be playing an ever-bigger role in behind-the-scenes peace negotiations. Sources say he is a conduit to secret talks with the Chinese, and he has also been in contact with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s mercenary Wagner outfit.
In conversation it is clear that General Budanov has been thinking hard about post-war Ukraine. Last winter there was talk of him becoming defence minister. He insists his only ambition is victory. Yet secret polls conducted by Mr Zelensky’s office show they are thinking about using the cult of their hero spymaster to counterbalance a perceived rivalry emanating from Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s likeable and independent commander-in-chief. General Budanov’s colleagues say they are convinced he is destined for a big political role once peace comes—if he lives that long.
To the TV producers (Yermak) around the former comedian actor Zelenski it is all about ratings.
Budanov may be good at marketing his image as a successful terrorist.
But he has zero experience of leading any size of unit in combat. You can not lead a company, battalion, brigade or army by ‘huddling close’ with aides. It needs long term strategic thinking just as detailed attention to all kinds of day to day logistics.
Leading an army is like conducting a huge orchestra through a four year long Wagner epos. Having played the first fiddle in a chamber quartet does not qualify for that.
I am sure that U.S. military is not happy about this move. While there were some disagreements with Zaluzny about the right strategies those were between military professional who allowed for diverting opinions. Zaluzny was seen as an experienced professional soldier. Budanov is seen as a spook who had never been in command of any real military. He well not be talked to at the same level.
According to one source, Zaluzhnyi’s senior staff are also expected to be removed from their positions.
With the new inexperienced leadership the situation on the ground will soon become a catastrophic mess for forces of Ukraine. There will be wrong priorities, miss-allocations of resources and large scale losses of men and ground.
On the other side terror attacks on Russian targets, industrial equipment as well as population centers, are likely to sharply increase.
The larger U.S. aim of all this, first announced as a 2019 RAND study, is still unchanged:
The study at that time recommended the arming of Ukrainian’s army as the best way to unbalance Russia. We have since seen the escalation of that strategy. The move from the battlefield to the realm of terror is a response to the degradation of the first by empathizing the psychological effects of the second.
The foreseeable outcome though is unchanged. Ukraine will be smashed, Russia’s power will increase and the global view of the U.S. as a reliable partner will be diminished.
Posted by b on February 1, 2024 at 14:48 UTC | Permalink
One of the first casinos I ever worked in had a policy that you had to wear black pants, a tuxedo shirt, a bow tie, black dress shoes, and black socks. The only thing they didn’t demand was the colour of your underwear (as long as a bra couldn’t be seen under your white shirt). The bosses were so strict that “uniform checks” were part of the norm – every couple of days a delegated supervisor would check everyone to see that they were wearing the right clothing. What stood out to me was when they’d ask you to pull up the leg of your pants to check your socks – sometimes both legs… just to make sure both socks matched and we’re all black (no stripes at the top).
This particular casino was an anomaly in the industry – it was many years ago and a small place so they didn’t have security cameras – none! One day I was on a game that required two dealers to operate and it happened that he was one of my best friends. There were no patrons in the casino at all – not unusual for an early day shift there. An older female supervisor came around announcing a “sock check”. I looked at my friend, he looked at me, we both unbuckled our belts and let our pants drop to the floor exposing the tops of our socks.
Neither of us ever had a sock check again.
No, we weren’t fired either… there was nobody in the casino at the time and the older female supervisor was a very nice lady with a great sense of humour – she (of course) told us to never do it again and almost stayed red-faced for the rest of the shift.
I exposed a huge scam by my local gas distributor (cooking gas).
This is a typical cooking gas cylinder in India.
As you can see (not very clearly though), on the neck of the cylinder, net weight and gross weight are clearly mentioned.
Recently, I read an article in ‘The Hindu’ that revealed that a lot of gas agencies/distributors/delivery persons in India are stealing cooking gas. They take out about 1–2 kg of gas from each cylinder and sell it separately in black. The loss in weight is too small for an unsuspecting buyer to notice. But in terms of money, this translates into a loss of about 60 INR per cylinder. The article cautioned everybody to get their gas cylinders weighed before paying the delivery person (Delivery persons are mandated to carry a portable weighing scale along with them by the Govt.)
At first I laughed it off. My agency was trusted. It would never do that. But then on a whim, I decided to try it out. When the next cylinder was delivered to my home, I casually asked the delivery boy to weigh it. The color on his face instantly changed. He started stammering, started insisting that there was no need for this because the bond of trust we shared! I immediately grew suspicious. I pressed him. He then started making excuses that he forgot to bring along his portable weighing-scale.
Luckily, I had my own weighing scale at home. I immediately brought it out and weighed the cylinder myself. The gross weight printed on the cylinder was 29.5 kg, whereas the scale read 27 kg. A difference of bloody 2.5 kgs.
The delivery boy started begging me not to register a complaint against him. And that he wouldn’t repeat the mistake ever again.
Apparently, this is a huge scam going on all over India. If you are reading this answer, please get your gas cylinder duly weighed before paying for it.
Once, many years ago, as a young lawyer, I was asked to help a family member, a crazy uncle, with his disability case. He was literally homeless, living on the street and crazy beyond description. His grip on reality was severely distorted, he was schizophrenic and had lost his job as a NYC sanitation worker.
Surely, you can get him SOME benefits to live on? This was the family’s charge to me as a brand new baby lawyer. Help Uncle X! He’s desperate. You gotta do this.
Okay, I’ll give it a try. How do you say no to something like that? I had never handled a disability case and really had no idea where to start. So, let’s start with interviewing the client and see what he can tell me. I didn’t expect much in the way of cooperation from a man who I knew was thoroughly and completely insane and off his rocker. I had heard the family stories.
I set up an appointment, nevertheless, and I prayed to God for wisdom to help me save this man from roaming half-naked on the streets of NY. I figured it might even be a public service.
One fine day he did actually show up in my office. At the time, I was working for an older gentleman lawyer who had a massively busy local general practice, the type you really don’t see anymore and before the days of “legal specialization.” This office truly tried to handle EVERYTHING! It was great experience.
The waiting room was full of people in need of one form of legal advice or another when my prospective client showed up. As I greeted him in the office full of these other waiting clients the first words literally out of his mouth are “Hi, you have nice lips!” Lol. Oh boy, this was going to be a real experience. I quickly and quietly shuffled him off to my basement office so we could get to work. My office didn’t even have a window.
Well, my client had brought a sheaf of disorganized, crumpled papers and, after organizing and unfolding them I started reading them. They consisted of his employment file and the stated reasons for his termination. He was quite literally unfit for employment. His record consisted of bizarre hallucinations, reports of “voices” and other strange phenomenon which he was experiencing which rendered him totally unfit for any gainful employment. There were also stacks of medical records indicating that he was suffering from a severe mental disorder (which was nothing but obvious to anyone spending one minute in his presence). He was very much totally out of his mind.
I felt sorry for him. I knew he would qualify for Social Security Disability benefits and would also be entitled to a sizable retroactive payment. All we had to do was apply and possibly have a hearing. I was confident I could win it. I started preparing the application, starting with the claim for “disability based on mental illness.”
Well, my uncle/client took one look at the application and said (I swear that I’m not making this up) “my disability is for hemorrhoids, not that!”). I was astonished! I expected anything but resistance. What was your disability?
HEMORRHOIDS!
Well, the medical records clearly stated that he DID have hemorrhoids but that was hardly his disability or his reason for not being able to work. The records were replete with references to paranoid schizophrenia and wild hallucinations. THAT was the problem, not hemorrhoids!
I tried to persuade him. I tried to convince him to proceed but he became agitated and uncooperative. Finally, he grabbed his papers and ran out of my office. I couldn’t stop him. He was gone.
My aunt, his sister, wanted to know how we did. I told her that the case went nowhere and that he was uncooperative. Back on the streets he went for another year or so. I couldn’t help him since he wouldn’t cooperate.
Then something amazing happened (after about a year). He returned to my office, looking for help, insisting once again that his HEMORRHOIDS were his difficulty. This time I agreed.
I applied for Social Security Disability ON THE BASIS OF HEMORRHOIDS. Of course, we were going to be denied but I had an idea brewing in my young lawyer head. Let’s see if this works.
After receiving the expected denial of our application I filed an appeal and asked for a hearing with a judge. It was granted as a routine matter, as I knew it would be. Now what to do?
Well, the date of the hearing arrived and we went to court in Brooklyn. I showed up with my uncle and the case was called. The judge (I still remember his name!) looked at the hearing application and said “this is an application for disability benefits based on…. what? Hemorrhoids? Really? Okay, counsel proceed.” He was shaking his head in disbelief the entire time he said this.
I politely asked the judge to exclude my client from the room. He looked at me and said “young man, this is a most unusual request.” Yes, judge but I have my reasons. “Okay,” he said, “please exclude the claimant from the courtroom. This had better be good, counselor!”
Oh, it’s gonna be good. I promise!
As soon as my uncle left the courtroom I gushed “judge, this guy is my uncle and he’s completely nuts.” I then proceeded to tell him the entire story and told him that the real claim was for mental illness disability but the client wouldn’t let me proceed on that basis, insisting that his hemorrhoids were the issue. The judge seemed to understand.
“Okay, bring the claimant back into the courtroom. You may inquire, counselor.”
I stood up and literally asked my client ONE QUESTION. It was truly only one question… no more. I said “Uncle X, please tell the judge what’s bothering you.” Then I sat down fully knowing what was coming next.
For the next ten minutes, until the judge could no longer stand it, the client rambled about “wires being crossed” and “Ring Dings and Yankee Doodles” and how the police were stalking him and many other bizarre and colorful statements. It was very clear that his grip on reality was non-existent. I doubt he could have told you who the President was at the time or what month it was. After hearing enough, the judge stopped him, clearly having heard enough to realize this wasn’t a put on, or a fraud. It would have actually been funny if it wasn’t so sad.
“Decision reserved,” the judge said and dismissed us from his court. I left feeling confident.
A few weeks later we got a decision granting 100% disability to my uncle with a retroactive payment of over forty thousand dollars plus monthly benefits of about $2500 for life, plus Medicare. It was a grand slam win! I was a family hero.
Years later I ran into the judge on the street outside the courts. I greeted him and thanked him for his help and understanding. He told me “I will never forget that case… It was textbooks!”
Not exactly fired, but we thought it was a great reaction.
After a recent merger between two rather large companies, it was necessary to reduce personnel, so each department was asked to cut staffing by a certain percentage.
To encourage volunteers, management offered to give a full week worth of salary and paid medical benefits for each full year a person had worked at the company if they took early retirement. And anyone who qualified for a pension also got the full pension as if they had not retired early.
One member of our team was about 14 months away from his planned retirement date when he would start receiving full Social Security and pension payments.
He had worked for the company for 45 years. After some simple math, we all strongly encouraged him to take the deal.
He got 45 weeks of full pay, a whole year of benefits coverage (negotiated with HR), his full pension, and they also bought out the almost two months of accrued vacation time that he had been saving up in order to retire a few months early.
He basically got a 12+ month paid vacation with full benefits. We will be having a retirement party for him on his original planned retirement date in a couple of months. 😀
I imagine that wasn’t what management had in mind when they made the offer, but everyone on our team was very happy for him to get it!
When I worked as a commis chef in a 5-star hotel, we had some guy come in and eat on his own, which was a bit unusual. He ordered some expensive food, but strangely finished with a starter which involved some salad. A waiter came through shortly after serving the salad to tell me that the customer was complaining as he’d found a slug in his salad, so I went out to speak with him. I explained to him that I was terribly sorry, but it just was not possible. The man was being quite rude with me, but I maintained my calm and he demanded to speak with the head chef.
The head chef came out and apologised to the man and stated that the slug was not in the salad when it was served to him. The man became outraged and the implication that he was a liar and asked how we could be so sure. The head chef said “If you would please follow me sir. There’s something I would like you to see.” The man stood up, shaking his head looking a bit smug. He seemed adamant that there was nothing we could do that would ever change his mind or prove that he put the slug there. As the head chef and I led him into the kitchen, the head chef explained the sections of the kitchen as he passed through and their function. Finally, he reached the garnish section on the other side of the kitchen and pointed. “We put the lettuce for your salad through this machine. We call this ‘a shredder’”
The man took a little time to think, clearly realising that there was just no way anything short of a small bug could have made it through there alive, and started to look a little panicked. He then started to grow embarrassed by the second, and finally apologised profusely. He said that he did not have the money to pay for the meal. As we called the police, he suddenly remembered that he did have the money and paid for the meal in cash. We never saw him again.
The Duran: NATO Crossed Putin’s Red Line and Russia is Ready to FINISH It
Many years ago, while working as a housekeeper, l had one very dirty client that always left notes about what they’d like me to clean that visit.
One week l arrived to a note stating that, they’d like me to clean out the bathroom cupboard.
When l opened the cupboard l found it to be full to overflowing with used sanity pads. The whole cupboard, not one or two. Not half a dozen, but hundreds of uses sanity items. A lifetimes worth.
The note stated…clean out bathroom cupboard and as this was the only cupboard in the room, l empied it and scrubbed it out, only to be met with a nasty phone call the following day stating l should not have thrown out anything. They were being saved. Hmm. Not what the not implied. But sure.
The following visit, another note, please clean out the kitchen party. So l put all like food together, such as 10 or so open packs of pasta together, sauces together, etc, wiped out all the shelves. It looked great.
Yup another phone call. How dare l mix up the food in the cupboards. There were other instances, so l stopped working for them. The house was always filthy and they would never employ me long enough to clean the house completely. It was always left dirty, with just a small area cleaned, which would be very dirty again by next visit.
It wasn’t that it was a messy house, it was filthy to the point of being unsanitary, so l was happy to never go back.l was always worried ld get sick just for being inside there.
I was an odd duck, partly because I spent five years overseas in a private school that catered about 50/50 to children of government workers stationed there and half to people working for various corporations also stationed there, all from English speaking countries looking for a school in English in the middle of Brazil.
Also, in retrospect, partly because I’m on the autism spectrum, although I had no idea that that was the case for some decades to come. Still, I knew, everyone knew, that I was a weirdo.
Well, I got to this new school (it had just been built, because town had expanded so fast that the original school had gotten overcrowded) and of course that meant so had all the other kids. And… I’m reconstructing this, mind you, and it’s just a guess, I’m really not great at understanding how people think, see “Autism” above… they didn’t know what the “pecking order” was. So they settled it with fights. You saw someone weaker than yourself, you beat him up, and that meant you were better than him, or he beat you up and then he was better than you, and it was all sorted.
Except I didn’t want to fight. Had no reason to. Didn’t make any sense to me. Wasn’t afraid, just, well, weirdo.
It seems one kid got it in his head that this was his ticket. If he beat me up, he had it made. So my turning him down, that was maddening. He kept after me about it for weeks. Finally, I agreed. Stay in the classroom when everyone goes to recess. The teacher wasn’t all that good about policing things, it was simple enough for us both to stay behind.
He said “all right, let’s fight!” I asked him “are you sure? I don’t want to fight you. Are you sure?” “Sure” he said. So I picked up one of those desk/chair things and hit him with it. Then I asked him if he wanted to continue. He said no.
Don’t try this. It’s probably “assault with a deadly weapon” now. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t get hurt bad enough for anyone to find out, although in the 1970s I might not have gotten in trouble anyway.
Dad always told me not to fight, but if I had to fight, be sure to win, no rules.
That’s the first and last fight of my life. Maybe word got around? Maybe I just don’t have the look in my eyes of someone you should fight with. It could be the autism, sending weird signals. I don’t know.
No. But may I highlight a dirty trick by a phone soliciter?
I’ll take that as a yes.
A neighbor of mine was a saleman for Sam’s Club. The guy who makes a pitch to your boss, offering a discount to any of his/her employees who’d like the group membership, put on sales presentations at state fairs etc., cold-calling as well.
Then I moved halfway across the state. He calls me one afternoon, disguising his voice and acting as if he’s calling on behalf of some worthless telemarketing offer. Of course I, not recognizing him, utter some choice words before hanging up. He calls me right back, identifies himself and proceeds to ask me why I couldn’t be more polite in declining whatever it is that’s being offered.
I told him why. Said my peace and then we chatted about whatever he had really needed to talk to me about.
Many years ago I was in a chat room of a group with hundreds of members. Predominantly adults but, there were older teens. I don’t remember what was being discussed but, this kid (older teen) started making rude comments then started making bizarre comments about school shootings,violence and basically hinting he was going to do something. Quite a few people ignored it or told him he was being inappropriate and that he would be reported to moderator. Most in the discussion didn’t take it seriously. I went to his profile which fortunately wasn’t locked down. So concerning posts and was able to figure out the state, town and high school he attended. And his actual name. So I called the police in that town. Explained what I had seen, sent screenshots etc. While I was on the phone with a detective they got a call from one other man who had done the same as me. Surprisingly, the detective called me back a few hours later and while he didn’t give me many details he did say, that between myself and the other man they were able to locate the boy and that everyone was safe. I confess to stalking the FB profiles later and saw that he had been hospitalized so hopefully he got the help he needed. I worried I was doing the wrong thing but, I just kept thinking how hard it would be to live with myself if I saw news the next day of a school shooting and HADN’T called.
Nuclear Boy Scout
Now known as the “Nuclear Boy Scout,” David Hahn was 17 when he decided to earn an Atomic Energy merit badge by building a working nuclear reactor — right in the backyard of his Michigan home.
In the mid-1990s, Hahn painstakingly collected tiny amounts of radioactive material from everyday objects around his house.
Image: David’s nuclear reactor can be seen
He almost had a working “breeder” reactor in his back shed when he caught the attention of local and federal authorities, prompting an FBI and Nuclear Regulatory Commission response with the evacuation of more than 40,000 people in the locality.
With the level of radiation in his basement 1000 times higher than normal; David declined to see a doctor despite having had significant radiation exposure (the skin burn seen in the image above came as a result).
Of course, it’s best to avoid bears in the wild, but if an encounter happens, you should know that the weakest skill of this animal is its maneuverability. Bears run very fast and crawl really well — but moving quickly around an object like a car or a tree is much harder for them. Sooner or later, the animal will give up trying to catch you seeing that this smart food (you) is not worth its energy.
However, don’t panic before a bear starts to act aggressively. If it’s just looking at you, standstill. There is a chance it won’t even understand who you are and what you are going to do. If it starts walking toward you slowly, walk backward slowly. Bears rarely attack people. Most likely, it will back off once it realizes you are a human.
2. Rip current
If you accidentally find yourself in a rip current, it is completely useless to swim against it to the shore — you will only waste your energy. Try to swim parallel to the shore until you exit the current, and only then swim toward the shore.
3. Aspirin during a heart attack
Just one pill of aspirin can seriously improve how you feel. The person having a heart attack should lie down immediately and put something under their head or sit down and then take the pill. In order for it to work sooner, it should be chewed very well.
4. Diagnosing a heat stroke
The most obvious symptoms of a heat stroke are dizziness and nausea, but they can appear for other reasons too. In order to know for sure, you should eat something sweet, like candy. If the taste seems unpleasant, this is a heat stroke. For people who have any cardiovascular disorders, it is vital to determine the reason as soon as possible and get the right help.
5. A simple maneuver that will bring someone back to consciousness
If you really need to bring someone back to consciousness, you should put them on their back and push their knees to their chest. This will make the blood flow to their brain and the person will wake up. But first, make sure the person doesn’t have any leg or body injuries, otherwise, the situation may only get worse.
6. Help in case of a venomous snake bite
Unlike some popular misconceptions, you shouldn’t suck out the venom, apply cold, apply bandages, or burn the wound. Before the experts arrive, the victim has to drink a lot and take an antihistamine. The area around the bite should not be touched because otherwise, the venom will just spread around the body faster.
7. Saving a drowning person
If you were able to save a drowned person, it doesn’t mean that they are out of the woods yet. You should take them to the hospital immediately, otherwise, they could die within several days if there is some leftover water in their lungs.
8. How to break car glass in case of an accident
If you are in a situation where you can only get out of a car through the window and the door is impossible to open, remember that it is much easier to break a window by hitting it, not on the center but on the edges. By the way, if you can remove the headrest from the seat, you can use it to break the window. In different cars, headrests are different, so make sure you know how to remove the ones in your car.
9. Antihistamines should always be with you.
It may happen that you are allergic to something that you have never encountered before. And it could be such a severe allergic reaction that it might just be lethal unless you get qualified help. This is especially important on trips when people try new foods, see new plants, and go to completely new places.
10. Water on the beach is too far from the shoreline.
When the waterline is abnormally far from the shore, this is a sign of a tsunami. If you notice this somewhere, you should warn everyone around and run.
Unfortunately, in 2004, people didn’t pay attention to this sign before a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Almost on the entire shore was exposed and people went out to collect fish and shells. And children were the most interested. However, there were people on 2 beaches that knew about this fact: a 10-year-old English girl named Tilly Smith and biology teacher John Chroston. They managed to save the lives of many people that day.
11. The rule of 3
If you ever find yourself in a critical situation, you should remember these numbers that can be used to describe the survival abilities of an average person:
3 minutes without air;
3 hours in extreme temperature;
3 days without water;
3 weeks without food.
So, if you can’t get your priorities straight, the chances of surviving are much lower.
My son has anaphylaxis inducing food allergies. The kind of food allergies where we had benadryl and epi pens in the nurses office and his backpack. In order to prevent an exposure I carefully packed his lunch every day. He had some money on his school lunch account so that on Fridays when they offered icy pops he could get one. Other than that, no birthday celebrations snacks, no school holiday celebrations, etc were allowed. The nursing staff knew, the teachers knew, even the principal knew this.
Apparently the stinking lunch aide didn’t know and didn’t care. One day my 7 year old son forgot to grab his lunch kit before heading to lunch. He told the lunch aide but she refused to let him go back for it. He begged but she instead marched him to the hot lunch line and made him buy his lunch. He came home covered in a rash, beet red and with severe stomach issues that kept him out of school for 5 days. When I asked him he told me what had happened. Fortunately he ate something off the minor allergy list so not an anaphylactic reaction.
I called every person I could think of and demanded answers. I went to school and demanded to talk to the lunch staff supervisor. That woman was re-trained and put on probation. I wish they had fired her but she claimed she had no knowledge about allergies and was just doing her job. Oh, and she avoided my son completely the whole rest of the year.
Young Wife Hid The Truth About How She REALLY Made $ In College, Now Hubby’s Family Has Video Proof
This is a great video that I will show to my daughter when she gets older. Learn from the mistakes of others.
Every Thursday night, a bunch of us university students would meet in the local pub. One night one of my closest friends says, that they are going to Hawaii for reading week (spring break) and asked if I would like to come.
Being drunk, I said that sounds awesome, he said ,sign a blank cheque and give it to me, and I will make all the reservations. I gave him the cheque and forgot about it. It was never mentioned again. Two months later I get home from the bar, on the Friday of reading week, and the phone is ringing, ( before cell phones) I answer it, and my friend says,”Where are you, the plane leaves in an hour and a half, and we are all at the airport lounge”
I lived 15 minutes from the airport. I threw my notes and text books, some jeans, underwear, socks and long sleeve shirts in a suitcase. I had no clean T-shirts, gym shorts or swim wear. I drove, parked in long term parking and just made it to drop off my luggage, at the last second. I met my friends in the lounge, and walked to the gate. If I had gotten home from the bar 10 minutes later I would have missed it.
I asked him why he hadn’t mentioned the trip in two months, and told him I had nothing to wear in Hawaii, and I needed to study for exams that followed reading week.
He looked stunned, he had completely forgot to tell me that he had booked the trip. Because the others had all been talking about it.
I had a great time in Hawaii, bought cheap T-shirts, shorts and swim wear, and never cracked a book.
I failed my first test, the day that I got back to university, and had to spend an extra semester in school to catch up. I should have said NO
I remember an incident in the late 1990s that happened on a Boeing 757 during a flight from Orlando to San Francisco.
As we were taxiing for take-off, we were enacting the required safety demonstration. A passenger seated in the over-wing exit row was talking loudly to his seatmate, creating such a distraction that some near him were having trouble hearing.
I leaned over and quietly asked him to hold his conversation until we were finished. He replied, somewhat condescendingly, “Look, I fly a lot. I know what to do. I’ve seen this so much that I already know it by heart.” And with that, he launched rudely back into his conversation.
I politely suggested that our demonstration was an excellent chance for him to review his knowledge, but he interrupted me, snarling for me to leave him alone because he didn’t need a review; he knew exactly what to do. I then flatly stated that his conversation was a distraction for others, and again asked him to hold until we were done, assuring him that it would be only another minute or two.
“FINE!” he snapped, heaving a melodramatic sigh, and glaring sullenly at me, he muttered something incomprehensible (and undoubtedly unpleasant) before continuing his conversation anyway, though quietly.
We achieved our cruising altitude at 35,000 feet and the ride was smooth. But about 90 minutes into the flight, we experienced an emergency when the cockpit was alerted by a sensor that there was a fire in one of the wheel wells. The proper procedure was to immediately lower the landing gear to extinguish the fire. But after the gear was lowered, the sensor still indicated the presence of fire. The Captain called to advise us that we would be making an emergency landing at the nearest airport, an Air Force Base in Meridian, Mississippi, and instructed us to prepare the cabin for evacuation.
Our descent was rapid, and we had only minutes to prepare. We advised the passengers on the situation, and began to prepare them for an emergency landing, including the possibility of a crash, and subsequent evacuation. The fear was palpable in the cabin, and everyone was paying very close attention to our instructions.
Our final action was a visual inspection of the cabin as we made our way to our jump-seats to strap in. As I hurried down the aisle, checking to see that passengers were prepared, I came to the window exit and noticed that the loud-mouthed passenger appeared rigid with terror. So I stopped and I asked, “Sir, are you OK? Do you know what to do when we land?”
He didn’t respond, and so I grasped his shoulder and with a shake, I said loudly, “SIR, CAN YOU DO THIS?”
He turned his gaze on me and I could see that he was in absolute shock. His terror-stricken eyes began to tear up, and the color drained from his face, turning it white as his mouth opened and closed, over and over, like a fish out of water. He couldn’t answer me. His mouth made little bleating sounds as he tried to force air through his larynx, but couldn’t seem to form words.
Time was running out, and others around could see that there was a problem. I pointed to the man sitting in the row behind and asked, “Can you do this?”
He fairly leapt to his feet, nodding and saying loudly, “Yes ma’am, I can.”
“Do you know what to do?” I demanded of him, and he replied with full confidence, “Yes ma’am. I look out the window first, and if it’s safe, I pull the cover off, and pull the handle down until the window opens, then lift it in, roll it onto the seats, step through and get off the back of the wing.”
“Then you and him change places… NOW!” I fairly shouted. I only had moments left; we were nearly landing. But the man in the exit was frozen with fear, unable to even comprehend what we were doing, let alone move himself.
At my shouted instructions, the second passenger and I, along with two other passengers, grabbed the terrified man by his arms and physically lifted him up, out and into the row behind. I yelled to the passengers next to him to buckle him in as the second passenger jumped into the exit seat. I fled for the back of the plane just as the Captain came onto the PA shouting “BRACE, BRACE, BRACE!” Diving for my jump-seat, I strapped in, pulling the last harness tight and snapping my body into the brace position just as the wheels touched down.
Fortunately for us, the landing was smooth, and before the plane came to a stop, the Captain announced, “REMAIN SEATED, REMAIN SEATED!” The fire was out, and we taxied to a stop. (We later learned that it was a malfunctioning sensor; there had been no fire in the first place.)
Air Force personnel brought stairs to the airplane, and all the passengers got off to stretch their legs and recover from the excitement. Inside the small terminal, someone tapped my shoulder. It was the man who had been so rude during our safety demonstration, who had frozen up when the actual emergency came.
“I want to apologize to you,” he said. “I was being an ass. I thought something like this would never happen to me, and when it did, I was terrified because I didn’t know what to do. Despite my rudeness to you, you still did your best to save my life.
“I was wrong, and I make this promise to you that I will never again ignore the safety demonstration, regardless of how many times I’ve seen it, and regardless of where I’m seated on the plane. I’ve learned a valuable lesson, and I have you to thank for it. I hope you accept my apology.”
When I first started working at Wolf Camera, I had a coworker that I’ll call John Doe. He was the type who was friendly enough, but didn’t have a particularly great work ethic.
Once, I was printing some photos. He was in the back taking a break. The phone rang. After a few rings, I answered the phone. When I was done with the call, I asked why John hadn’t answered the phone. He said something like, “Oh. I thought you liked answering the phone.”
Another time, he left work to take care of personal business. He said he’d be back in an hour or two to help close up. My brother and I were the only ones there. I didn’t have a key to lock up and I don’t think my brother did, either.
I was new enough at that point that I didn’t feel comfortable shutting down the machines by myself. We had to call someone to help close the store. I’m not sure if that ever made it back to the manager, as that incident didn’t get him fired.
One day, a camera goes missing. Our store had been flagged by corporate because we had enough inventory go missing, so we had to count the cameras every morning and every night. We also had them tagged, so we knew which camera went missing. A few days later, it appeared in the back again.
Shortly thereafter, we get a visit from corporate. Then, John Doe is suddenly no longer with the company. Officially, this is all I know.
It later came out that John had taken the camera and used it for photos on a dating site. How do we know? He left the pictures (of himself) on the camera’s internal memory.
Once upon a time, in a small suburban town, there was a high school named Elmwood High. Among the teachers at Elmwood High, there was one who stood out, Mrs. Anderson. She was known for her warm smile, her passion for teaching, and her impeccable professionalism. Students admired her dedication to her job and respected her greatly.
One sunny afternoon, a group of students was gathered in the school library, studying for an upcoming history exam. As they pored over textbooks and notes, a hushed conversation began about Mrs. Anderson. The students wondered about her personal life beyond the classroom, as she was known to be quite reserved about her own affairs.
Curiosity got the best of them, and they decided to do some sleuthing. They began by searching for her on social media, hoping to uncover tidbits of information about her life outside of school. It wasn’t long before they stumbled upon a social media profile that belonged to Mrs. Anderson.
To their surprise, her profile revealed a secret passion that none of the students had ever imagined. Scrolling through her posts and pictures, they discovered that Mrs. Anderson was an avid extreme sports enthusiast. There were breathtaking photos of her skydiving from high altitudes, snowboarding down steep slopes, and even bungee jumping off towering bridges.
The students couldn’t believe their eyes. The teacher they had always seen as reserved and composed was, in her free time, a fearless adrenaline junkie. They were in awe of the stark contrast between her adventurous hobbies and her calm, composed demeanor in the classroom.
As the students shared their discovery with their classmates, the news spread like wildfire throughout the school. Everyone was astonished by the double life their beloved teacher led. The revelation added a new layer of intrigue to Mrs. Anderson’s personality, and she became even more respected and admired for her unexpected passions.
One day, a curious student couldn’t resist asking Mrs. Anderson about her extreme sports adventures. She smiled and confessed to her secret hobby, explaining how it provided her with a sense of thrill and freedom that balanced the structure and responsibility of teaching.
Her revelation served as a valuable lesson to her students, reminding them that even those who appear to be one-dimensional may have hidden depths and interests that defy expectations. It was a moment of connection and mutual understanding that brought the teacher and her students closer together, deepening their respect and admiration for one another.
1920’s General Store OPENED After Decades of Closure: Exploring a long-Abandoned General Store
If we stopped launching satellites and rockets (I’m against this), how long will it take for Earth to be cleansed of all the space junk orbiting it?
The densest concentration of space junk – using the word “dense” very loosely – is in low Earth orbit and would mostly clean up after 10–20 years due to orbital drag. On the other hand, the debris in higher orbits might last thousands or millions of years.
On the gripping hand, space junk isn’t all that dense. The carefully guarded ISS has to dodge debris about once per year (and is armored for the very little stuff that is missed). Pictures like the following diagram incorrectly portray space junk that is the size of nuts and bolts as being the size of cities.
60 years of space launches have put a grand total of 7,500 tons of junk into orbit, which is equivalent to one day’s worth of domestic trash from a big city. Space junk, of course, is spread over a volume thousands of times greater than all the skies, waters, and lands of Earth.
that 95% or more of its satellites would de-orbit in a controlled fashion at their end of lives, and their low orbit means the rest will drop in a few years if they can’t make de-orbit burns.
used to be a major source of space junk because after some years in orbit their batteries or residual fuel would explode. They are now usually built to vent their tanks and batteries after releasing their payloads, while some operators try to set them up on atmosphere-skimming orbits or outright de-orbit them.
Geosynchronous satellites, which are far too high to de-orbit, now reserve fuel to kick themselves up to Graveyard orbits, which are a bit higher than geosynchronous and aren’t useful for anything except dead satellites.
So I was waiting on the check out line today at a grocery store, when this teenage girl clearly cuts in front of me. She sees that I’m there and just stridently moves in front of me. I want to say something but decide that it’s not worth it, but I have some fairly nasty thoughts about her being an entitled and rude brat.
Then I see her look back worriedly, looking really stressed. What must be her mother is leaning against the wall, looking quite ill. The mother has a cane and is barely able to walk. She’s telling the girl to hurry up already.
The teenager wasn’t cutting in front of me because she’s a nasty person, but because she’s stressed and a caretaker. She just wants to get her mother home.
I felt grateful I didn’t make a scene.
I realized that when people are cruel, many times, they have their own problems and you don’t have to take it so personally.
I was 16 and used to visit my boyfriend who lived in a large apartment building close to my house.
We’d hang out with a small group of friends in the parking lot listening to music, talking and loitering.
There was a lot of loitering.
(Wait. If you feel like this answer needs a soundtrack, play Raspberry Beret by Prince.)
One of my boyfriend’s neighbors would always come down and ask us to turn the music down. Her request was made with distaste, contempt.
It was like we had no right to occupy the space we did, like everything, including sound waves, belonged to her.
We never turned the music down. We didn’t mean to be rude but needed to stake a claim over our fundamental right to exist.
Today I live in San Francisco in a busy neighborhood. Sometimes teenagers park in the street right below my apartment. They listen to music and honestly, I don’t understand why they have to play such shitty music so very loud.
At least once a week I sigh and scrunch up my face and open the window, lean out and catch myself right before words pour out of my mouth.
It’s inevitable. You get old and become all the things you were sure you’d never be.
Yes. It was shortly after 9/11. I was a teenage girl, going to my dad’s job like I always had(we lived right around the corner). I pulled in, saw a guy waving at me, so I waved back and keep.goimg thinking it was one of his coworkers.
Well, it wasn’t a coworker, it was security trying to flag me down. I parked next to my dad’s car and was waiting for him to come out on lunch. This was before every teenager had a cell phone so I was just sitting in my car.
The security guy flew up to me, blocked me in and started screaming at me to get out of the car. They’d never had security before so I had no clue what was going on. I thought it was just some crazy guy. I got out the car(stupid, I know but teenage girl) and asked him what was going on. He yelled that he was calling the police and I was going to jail. I started crying and trying to explain that I was just coming to see my dad. He called me a liar and kept telling me I was going to jail.
One of my dad’s coworkers came over to see what was happening and saw it was me, he radioed in to my dad and a supervisor to come out right now. I was explaining to the coworker what happened and the guy kept calling me a liar. My dad and the supervisor came out and I kept trying to tell them what happened and the security guy kept saying I was lying and I was disrespectful and didn’t listen to his commands. I never even heard any commands except get out of the car.
The supervisor advised that they had cameras so he’d review them. The guy and the entire security company were let go the next day.
I still sometimes go to my dad’s work for different things and it’s been over 20 years since this happened.
Have you ever encountered someone who walks into a room and sunshine erupts from their pores? They crack a joke, and the room erupts in laughter. They ask a question, and everyone leans in, eager to share their pearls of wisdom. You leave the interaction feeling like you’ve known them for years, vowing to unlock the secret to their magical, instant likability.
Fear not, dear human, for today we delve into the Secrets of the Charmers’ Codex, a tome whispered through the ages amongst the effortlessly popular. Forget potions and magic spells (though a well-placed confetti cannon adds a certain je ne sais quoi); these are secrets of the soul, crafted from genuine human interaction and a dash of hilarious self-awareness.
Rule #1: Be the Human Sunshine: Let’s face it, negativity is the emotional equivalent of a rogue sock in the dryer – loud, obnoxious, and best left at home. Smile, not just with your lips, but with your eyes. Exude the warmth of a freshly baked croissant, the enthusiasm of a puppy greeting its long-lost chew toy. Remember, people gravitate towards light, so become a walking lighthouse of joy.
Rule #2: Listen Like a Ninja: Master the art of the attentive ear. Put away your phone, silence your inner monologue (unless it’s particularly witty), and focus on the person speaking. Nod like a bobblehead on caffeine, ask insightful questions (avoiding “Is that all?” like the plague), and remember details. Make them feel like they’re the most fascinating documentary on Netflix, and watch their walls melt away.
Rule #3: Humor is Your Weapon (But Use it Wisely): A well-timed joke can disarm tension, bridge awkward silences, and earn you eternal brownie points. However, wielding humor is like handling a spork (useful, but potentially dangerous). Know your audience, avoid offensive jabs, and embrace the power of self-deprecation. Remember, laughing at yourself is like wearing mismatched socks – quirky, endearing, and strangely captivating.
Rule #4: Empathy is Your Superpower: Step into someone else’s shoes (provided they’re not covered in questionable substances). Acknowledge their feelings, validate their concerns, and offer support without judgment. Show them you’re not just a charming surface, but a deep well of understanding. Think of yourself as a human empathy sponge, soaking up emotions and leaving behind a trail of emotional comfort.
Rule #5: Authenticity is Your Shield: Ditch the masks, the personas, the inflatable T-Rex costume (unless it’s thematically appropriate). Be your wonderfully weird, flawed, and fabulous self. Embrace your quirks, celebrate your passions, and let your genuine personality shine through. People connect with the real you, not some airbrushed version. Think of yourself as a delicious, homemade pizza (flaws and all) – infinitely more interesting than a frozen pepperoni disc.
Rule #6: Master the Art of Conversational Ping Pong: Conversations aren’t monologues; they’re a delightful dance of ideas. Share your thoughts, but don’t hog the spotlight. Ask open-ended questions, volley back engaging responses, and keep the rally going strong. Remember, the best conversationalists make others feel heard and valued, not like a spectator at a tennis match.
Rule #7: Sprinkle Compliments Like Confetti: Everyone appreciates a genuine compliment, so scatter them like glitter on a unicorn’s birthday cake. But remember, specificity is key. Instead of “You look nice,” try “That shade of blue makes your eyes sparkle like sapphires.” Or instead of “You’re funny,” share, “I almost snorted my coffee when you told that story about the talking parrot and the cheese wheel.”
Rule #8: Embrace the Power of Vulnerability: Sharing your flaws and fears isn’t weakness; it’s magnetic. It shows you’re human, relatable, and courageous enough to let others see the real you. Vulnerability builds trust, strengthens bonds, and makes you instantly more likable. Think of it as social kryptonite: It disarms defenses and reveals your authentic awesomeness.
Rule #9: Be a Name Magician: Remembering names is like casting a spell of instant connection. Use repetition, association techniques, or even write it down discreetly if needed. When you address someone by name, it shows you care and value their individuality. It’s like a verbal hug, without the awkward body contact (unless you’re into that, then by all means, hug away).
Rule #10: Radiate Passion: When you talk about something you love, your eyes light up like a Christmas tree on energy drinks. Passion is contagious, so share your enthusiasm for your hobbies, dreams, or that weird obsession with collecting vintage teacups. People are drawn to those who exude passion; it’s like a beacon of excitement in a sea of blasé conversations.
Bonus Tip: Embrace the Unexpected: Sprinkle your interactions with a dash of the extraordinary. Offer a stranger a high five for no reason, compliment someone’s shoelace-tying skills, break into a spontaneous interpretive dance (bonus points for air guitar solo). Remember, life’s a stage, and you’re the star of your own one-person show. Make it memorable, make it yours, and watch the world become your captivated audience.
So there you have it; the secrets of the Charmers’ Codex. Remember, instant likability isn’t about manipulation or trickery. It’s about embracing your genuine self, radiating warmth, and treating others with the kindness and respect you deserve. Go forth, spread your sunshine, and remember, the world needs more laughter, not more rogue socks in the dryer.
To delve deeper into this topic, you don’t need anything short of an intriguing book. Articles are not enough. Crack the code for instant likeability and charm. See my comment below.
The worst thing I have ever seen a parent do to their child in public is something that breaks my heart and makes my blood boil at the same time.:
I was working at a local gym and saw a woman carrying her infant child through the lobby toward the parking lot. I can only assume the baby became fussy because the woman became angry and stopped in the space between two sets of windowed doors, placed the baby on the floor, and began to hit the child (which of course made it cry, and did nothing to help whatever was the matter). This only lasted a few seconds, otherwise I might have dropped what I was doing and confronted her. My co-workers and I were stunned and horrified. We wondered in quiet conversation, “What kind of a monster does that to her baby?”
I have never forgotten this incident because it was so terrible, and because I would give everything I own to have a child of my own.
On the flip-side, one of the best things I have ever seen a parent do in public is this:
A little boy was with his mother in the grocery store, and he wanted a doughnut. I overheard his mother giving him a choice: “You can have a doughnut now, and skip (whatever it was) later, or you can have (whatever it was) later and not have the doughnut now.
I thought to myself, “This is a great way to teach good decision-making while instilling the importance of forethought and delayed gratification!”
The little boy chose the doughnut, and then said he still wanted the other item. To the mother’s credit she followed through with, a firm but gentle, “No.” He cried bitter tears, and I’ll bet he has never forgotten his choice and consequence. What a difficult but important lesson! I felt for the child, but silently applauded the mother.
Beef Braciole
The tomato-wine pan sauce is divine. Always serve spaghetti or other pasta on the side to complete the presentation.
Braciole is a classic Italian favourite that’s sure to please the whole family. Tender slices of beef or pork are rolled up with savory fillings like Parmesan cheese, parsley and garlic before being braised in an irresistible tomato-based sauce. Serve it over pasta, or Polenta with a side of sauteed vegetables. Either way there’ll be no leftovers!
Slices of the top round (topside) can be quite large so if they are, you’ll want to cut them to make it the perfect size to accommodate two slices of prosciutto. It needs to be pounded to be thin and tenderised.
Braciole offers something special for any occasion; whether you’re looking for a hearty weeknight dinner idea or prepping ahead of time for entertaining guests this traditional dish packs all sorts delicious flavours into one impressive main course.
Ingredients
1 (2 1/2 pound) round steak
1/2 pound Italian sausage
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/2 teaspoon lemon-pepper seasoning
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1 1/2 cups dry red wine (I use Chianti)
1 (16 ounce) can plum tomatoes
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
1 teaspoon salt
1 bay leaf
Instructions
Trim all fat from steak. Cut into 8 equal pieces, then pound thin.
Remove casing from Italian sausage. Break up in medium bowl. Add parsley, Parmesan cheese, garlic, Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon salt and the lemon-pepper seasoning; mix thoroughly. Spread each steak with 2 heaping tablespoonsful of sausage mixture. Roll up jellyroll fashion; fasten with wooden picks.
Brown rolls 3 to 4 at a time in hot oil in Dutch oven. Add onion and carrot to pot. Cook until vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes.
Stir in wine, tomatoes, tomato paste, remaining 1 teaspoon salt and bay leaf. Bring mixture to boil; lower heat. Add beef rolls. Cover and simmer for 1 hour. Remove from heat.
Remove wooden picks before serving. Serve with sauce and spaghetti or other pasta on the side.
We had a South American migrant as a sales guy. Fresh into the country. Great salesman. His product knowledge was excellent & customer rapport was brilliant. The only negative was he needed help planning his routes, as he had yet to learn the geography – but that was something we were willing to do for him. He never had a day off. He had no family in Australia, and never spoke about friends – only the occasional mention of a neighbour who he would have a beer with on weekends.
One Monday, he didn’t show. This was normal for most sales guys, as they hit the road – but not him. He liked to plan on Monday, spent Tu-We-Th on the road, and Friday back in the office to wrap up the loose ends from the week. He also lived only 5 minutes from the office, so it was convenient for him too (unlike those of us who lived 1.5 hours away!). Some of the guys would stay back on Fridays so they could go for a few beers, and he would join them – they were probably the closest to friends that he had at the time – remembering he’d only been in the country some 2 months by now.
I called his mobile phone, and got no answer. We decided at lunch time to go around to his apartment and knock. No response. The neighbour who came out said he saw him Saturday morning, and that was it. We got real worried. So we went to the local Police station to ask what could be done. They said they’d do a welfare check, but we told them we’d already been. They promised to call us back with anything they found. We did get a call shortly after – not from those cops, but another station, to let us know the company car he drove was parked in a M-F clearway lane, and was towed that morning. The location was the other side of the city to where he lived. By late afternoon the mystery was solved. He’d met a girl on the Friday night. She invited him to her party on the Saturday night. He drove over there, parked in a (legal on weekends) roadside spot. When he was crossing the road, he looked to his left (coming from a LHD country) to make sure the traffic was clear. He didn’t look to his right (we are a RHD country) and stepped out in front of a bus. He was in hospital, and survived with surprisingly few injuries beyond a couple of broken bones, fractures & bruising.
Second one:
Same company, couple of years later. Ironically the car that the guy above had was passed down to this salesman, as he’d been promoted and got an upgrade. It wasn’t unusual for this new salesman to have days off – particularly Monday. He would usually call in sick. If he didn’t, I would text him, and he’d reply that he was sick, and apologise for not calling. One week it went 2 days with no call and no text response. We feared a similar problem, so we drove the 1/2 hour to his house to see if he was OK. Car was in the driveway – a good sign. No answer on the door though. Called the cops and explained it. They went into the backyard and could see in through a window. He was passed out on the lounge in the back room. Turns out his father passed away (overseas) and he only found out Sunday night. He drank himself silly over 2 days.
Third one.
I didn’t call this in, but a neighbour did. Many houses in suburban Australia have a separate room for the toilet. Usually around 1500–1800mm long by 800–1000mm wide (5–6 feet x 3 feet). Most have a swinging door, that opens into the room. This particular house had one like this.
A lovely older lady lived by herself a few houses down from me. He first name was Mabel. Everyone called her Mrs Mabel. She was always friendly and everyone knew her. Her neighbour Ken would help her a lot, and came to get me for “big jobs” that needed 2 people. She was often in the garden, and had a little dog she’d bring out on a lead to enjoy the outdoors – sitting on the grass for hours watching her tend to the plants and flowers.
One day Ken said to me he hadn’t seen her all of the prior day. Also, overnight, none of the usual lights went on in the house. He was scared she might have died. I suggested she might have gone to visit one of her children and the grandkids, but he said he still heard the dog when it went out into the back yard (via a doggy door). I then felt a huge amount of dread too. So he called the cops. They came. No response. They tracked down one of her children and called them. Funny story about that – I knew the numberplate of her son’s car (I really liked the car) and the cops were able to find him from that.
Her son confirmed she had no travel plans, and he hadn’t heard from her for a few days. He feared the worst, and asked the cops to break in. Before they did any damage, they decided to jump the fence and check the back of the house. Back door was unlocked, so they entered.
They found her inside, but couldn’t help her. She’d fallen when getting off the toilet, and was stuck against the door. She couldn’t get up, and she was trapped in the room. Apparently she’d called for help all afternoon the day before, but nobody could hear her. The outside of the toilet door was very well shredded where her little dog had tried in vain to “dig” her out. They got the Fire/Rescue guys in, and they cut the door into pieces to remove it enough to get to her. After a stay in hospital, which was quite long (she developed a blood poisoning problem from the pooled blood trapped in her leg) she returned home.
Ken & I took the remains of the broken door off the hinges and cut it up so she could dispose of it in the household bin over a couple of weeks. Ken told her she doesn’t need a toilet door as she’s the only one in the house. She replied with “It’s a habit, and even at my age, I still maintain my modesty, but after a kind lecture from the Fire/Rescue team, I now realise that my safety is more important than modesty.”
Some time later she asked if we could fit a new door if she paid for it. This was puzzling, as we knew she didn’t need it. But she explained that with grandchildren in the house of a certain age, it was very difficult to stop the grandson from teasing the granddaughter when she needed to use the toilet! She promised to only use the door when they came to visit. One of her children also got her a necklace that has a button you can press in an emergency. They also feared she may fall in the garden and not be able to get up.
We have had the same worry for my mother-in-law, so last year we got her an Apple watch so she can at least call, or give an SOS signal. She now proudly calls us from it, out in the garden, saying how great it is that she doesn’t miss any messages (she would leave her phone inside, or on silent in her pocket)! She’s good with tech though, and uses the watch and phone like someone half her age. It has put our minds at ease, knowing she won’t be all alone & helpless like Mrs Mabel was. She wants to renovate the bathroom and toilet soon, so I have suggested she get the door jamb for the toilet turned around so the door can open outwards, and replace the round knob (that’s hard to grip) with a lever style handle. Fortunately she has agreed with me.
Incredible Civil War Collection Hidden 50 Years in Secret Room Behind Steel Doors, REVEALED!
My father had a boyhood “best friend”. His name was Zeke.
He used to tell me stories. They would go fishing together as boys. They would do things. They would get drunk, and they would live their lives on “Polish Hill” a Polish-American suburb in Pittsburgh.
He was Zeke’s “best man” at his wedding. And he knew both Zeke and his wife quite well as they all were High School friends.
One day…
…I was perhaps 16 years old at the time, and having a long-distance, relationship with my girlfriend. With periodic phone calls, and weekend visits to her home in Lower Burrel, PA.
One day…
My father was crestfallen. He came home (from work) and was pale as a ghost.
It turns out that his buddy Zeke had an argument with his wife. It was pretty bad. And the wife took out a pistol and shot Zeke in the face.
BLAM!
It apparently blew most of his head off, and he was buried in a closed-casket.
It really shook my dad up, and I don’t blame him.
Now, myself, being much older… has had good long time “best Buds” Childhood friends dead… yeah I know what it is like.
Robbie… drug overdose. Marcus… Suicide by shotgun blast. My cousin Sincere’ … Coronavirus.
My brother, Daniel… I just don’t know… he doesn’t answer any e-mails. It’s been over a year now.
Life moves on.
People.
Life is too short to die over an argument. If you and your spouse are not getting along… then leave. No one needs to die over anything.
At the age of 39 I had it all. A loving wife, two fantastic kids, an apartment in New York City, a house in the country, new car, nice vacations and a high paying job as Creative Director of a hot creative advertising agency.
Everyone wanted to be me.
Except me.
On the outside I was the poster boy for Happy Successful Man Who Has His Whole Future Ahead Of Him. But deep down inside I was miserable.
I began to assault myself daily with that five word mantra. The one that so many of us begin muttering when they find themselves wandering through that unfamiliar, unsettling neighborhood known as midlife.
Is this all there is?
We don’t ask ourselves that question when we’re 25. It’s still too early in the first quarter of the game. We caught the ball on the five yard line and we’re making our way up the field.
But at 39, it’s halftime. Do the math. The average man is going to live till the age of 78. I was on the back nine.
I know — your actual mileage may vary. You could get killed falling off a ladder at age 60. Or at the age of 100 you could fall off a hooker. There’s a lot of latitude in The Middle. But somewhere between 30 and 50 you’re halfway done. It’s up to you to decide when to look at the face in the mirror and say:
Is this all there is?
No. There’s a whole lot more. And I’m going to tell you how to get there. Tonight I’m going to send someone to your house. He’s a teenager, about 17 or 18. He doesn’t know much about life — what teenager does? But he knows what’s cool. And after talking to you for a couple of hours, he’s going to be able to zero in on what’s a cool new direction for you to head in.
In fact, by the end of the evening, this kid is going to completely outline and plan the second half of your life. And that’s what you’ll do. Trust me, it will be cool.
What’s that you say? That’s the dumbest damn thing you ever heard? Why should you let some teenage kid with no world experience plan the second half of your life?
My answer is, why did you let him plan the first half?
This rut that you’re stuck in, this life that you’re trapped in, who planned it? Not you. Not the YOU you are now. Most of us form our life’s plans shortly after high school. Maybe we’re 16, maybe we’re 23, but for the most part we’re still kids. And then once we make a plan, we stick with it.
That was my insight. I was pushing 40 and still living the dream of some teenage kid.
That kid didn’t exist anymore, and yet I was still following the path he laid out for me. Most kids can’t project past next Saturday, much less conjure up what your life could be like 25 years down the road.
That was the moment I decided that the 40 year old me should start planning the life of the 60 year old me and beyond.
I was at the top of the ladder, and I suddenly realized I didn’t need one more rung. I wanted to find a new ladder.
I did. Climbing that ladder was at times terrifying, but never boring. Today I have all the things I had at the age of 39 and more. But this time around I’m deliriously happy with who I am and where I am. I still have dreams for the future, but I no longer wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and ask is this all there is?
My Act Two was conceived, written, produced, and directed by an adult. And I’m grateful for the insight that convinced him to take on the job.
EDIT – JANUARY 30, 2017: Dear People of Quora. I am overwhelmed by your response to my post. Not because the number of views and upvotes have skyrocketed, but because most of the comments and the private messages have asked me for more. Lots more.
One commenter, Traci Amick, said it like this: “Marshall, Marshall, Marshall… You can’t leave us hanging! When you made the decision to redirect and change your life what and how did you do it?”
There was a reason I left you hanging. I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, let me give you a brief (and I do mean brief) overview of what happened after the light bulb went on.
Here I was, pushing 40. At my core I’m a writer, but somewhere along the way the ad agency that hired me to write ads promoted me and paid me more money to stop writing and start managing. I wore suits, spent a lot more face time with clients, and I supervised a hundred other people. And while it was often gratifying, I realized that my career had stolen the one thing I loved doing most. Writing.
My solution was to start writing on my own. Over the course of countless nights and weekends I wrote a play, Squabbles, a comedy. Two years later it ran for eight weeks in a dinner theatre in Kansas City. (Since then it has played in thousands of theatres around the US.)
Shortly after Squabbles opened, ABC-TV asked me to turn it into a pilot for a sitcom. It didn’t fly, but now I was an accredited pilot writer, and for the next 6 years I kept my day job as an advertising agency Creative Director, and developed TV pilots for the networks on my own time. It’s unusual for a pilot to get picked up for a series, but two of mine did. I was 45 when the second one got picked up, and I decided to make the leap. I left advertising for TV.
I went to Hollywood, but it wasn’t fair to uproot my wife and kids to chase my dream, so they stayed in New York. I flew home as often as I could, which wasn’t often enough. Many of you asked if my quest for a new career wrecked my marriage. Just the opposite. After two years, despite the fact that I was on the fast track, I left Hollywood and came back to what was most important to me — my family.
There were some TV writing opportunities in New York, and I wrote a movie script which I sold and produced, and then — out of nowhere — a whole new creative avenue opened up. The Internet.
I caught the wave early. I opened Compelling Content, an Internet advertising agency, sold it five years later, and eventually zeroed in on the final frontier for every writer. A novel.
That took five years, and in 2006, I published The Rabbit Factory, my first crime fiction novel. Today I’m a #1 best selling author, with five books of my own, and the coauthor of the NYPD Red series with James Patterson.
I didn’t mention that in the original post because I didn’t want to be thrown off Quora for shameless self-promotion.
I’m not on Quora to sell my books. I’m here to exchange information, to share experiences, to give and take bits and pieces of life magic. I love this forum, and I’m grateful that one of my posts could resonate with so many of you.
One final note: Eight days after my original post I have a quarter of a million views, 3300 upvotes, and over 100 comments and messages. In the beginning, I responded to the comments, but I’ve reached the point where I no longer can. I wish I could, but I have to get back to my day job. Writing.
At the moment, I’m working on NYPD Red 5 with James Patterson. But this experience on Quora, especially your comments and messages, has made me realize that there are a lot of people out there going through the same mid life career angst that I went through. And that the 60,000 word version of my story just might make an interesting book.
EDIT 2 – FEBRUARY 15, 2017: One million views. Humbling to say the least (and I’m not exactly a guy who’s world famous for his humility).
The subject of life change is a hot button for most of us, but more often than not it’s the story of someone stuck in a dead end job who is looking for a better way. My experience wasn’t that. I walked away from a successful career that was stifling me, and today I’m thriving in the one I had been dreaming about.
I get a lot of head nods when I share my story in person, but I’m amazed that it resonated with so many people across this global forum.
Thank you for your eyeballs, your upvotes, and your feedback.
I was able to answer every direct message, but because of a Quora Quirk it’s extremely difficult to respond to the hundreds of comments. There’s no logic to the order in which they appear and no way to reorder them so the newest are at the top. That means I have to click on “comments,” scroll through five or six, then click on “more comments.” Eventually, I get to one I haven’t read yet, but as soon as I send a reply, the site takes me back to the top of the comments, and I have to go through the process all over again.
EDIT 3-MARCH 18, 2017: For those of you who wanted more details (really — it’s not my ego; some of you actually asked) I’ve expanded my answer into an article on Medium. Thank you for the encouragement. Here’s the link: The Thrills and Perils of Switching Careers
I rented the ground-level apartment in my friend’s split level for a few years. The guys who rented upstairs owned a party lighting company, and as a result they usually came home from work around 3 AM. I worked a nine-to-five job, and I’m a fairly light sleeper. When they came home from work, they’d occasionally turn on the TV, and usually fairly loud, which would of course wake me up, but most of the time I could drown out the noise by turning on a fan in my bedroom.
This was annoying but I could deal with it……until one of their girlfriends moved in upstairs. This nasty such-and-such had no problem with turning up the volume on the TV all the way, in the middle of the night every night, and watching for hours. This was the early years of flat-screen TVs and they had a big one, so likely it was verrrry expensive. When I knocked on the door to ask them to turn it down, I was told ‘this is when we get home from work and we’ll do what we want’. Even having my friend, their landlord, intervene, had no effect.
Well, a few nights of one or two hours’ sleep made me downright ingenious. I remembered that once, while microwaving my dinner, I had started vacuuming the floor and having both appliances turned on tripped the circuit breaker. I crossed my fingers that we were on the same circuit and during the next morning’s 3 AM showing of Willy Wonka, with the girlfriend screaming “I love this movie!” and turning the volume up even louder than usual, I turned on the microwave and the vacuum. Five seconds and poof! Blessed silence! I heard a little shuffling around upstairs, then one of them went down into the basement and reset the circuit breaker.
The power came back on, and so did the television. I waited about a minute before turning back on the microwave and vacuum. Poof! Silence! They reset the circuit breaker again, but this time there was no more TV. I went back to the most blissful slumber ever.
My friend later told me that they complained to him about the power going out because it was such an expensive TV and that could damage the electronics. I told him that if they kept the volume to a respectable level then I wouldn’t have to do anything about it, but I wouldn’t hesitate to if it happened again. The microwave/vacuum trick was only necessary a couple more times before they got the hint and kept the noise down in the middle of the night.
Chinese believes in owning assets and keeping a healthy cash flow. As a Chinese origin I do find western lease or rental mindset difficult to comprehend but it is a cultural thing.
Chinese people feel compel to own things and to not let others dictate lease terms to them. Westerners feel that buying assets when you can lease them makes more sense. But to me it is cultural. China is a 5000 years nation, the west like the U.S, Canada and Australia are merely 250 years or so. They are a warrior type mentality that fights all the time. I guess it impacted their mindset.
Chicken Scaloppini with Rustic Tomato Olive Spaghetti
The ingredients are married perfectly to enhance the chicken.
Ingredients
4 ounces multi-grain thin spaghetti
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 large leek, white and light green parts, thinly sliced (or 1/2 cup chopped sweet onion)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced fire roasted tomatoes, undrained
1 cup Lindsay® California Ripe Pitted Olives, halved lengthwise
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 egg whites
1/4 cup dried Italian seasoned bread crumbs
4 (4 ounces) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, pounded to 1/4-inch thickness
1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil leaves
Instructions
Cook spaghetti according to package directions.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Sauté leek and garlic in oil 2 minutes.
Add tomatoes, olives and pepper flakes; simmer over medium-low heat for 10 minutes or until thickened, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, beat egg whites with 1 tablespoon water in a shallow dish or pie plate.
Place bread crumbs in another shallow dish or pie plate.
Dip each cutlet in egg mixture letting excess drip off. Dredge in bread crumbs to coat each side lightly.
Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add chicken; sauté for 3 to 4 minutes per side or until golden brown and cooked through.
Drain spaghetti; transfer to four serving plates. Spoon tomato sauce over spaghetti; top with chicken and garnish with basil.
Prep: 15 min | Cook: 15 min | Servings: 4
Nutrients Per Serving: Calories: 401, Calories from fat: 132, Total fat: 15g, Monounsaturated fat: 9g, Cholesterol: 73mg, Sodium: 683mg, Total Carbohydrates: 33g Dietary fiber: 4g Protein: 33g
I asked AI to make a Music Video… the results are trippy
Pol Pot (real name Saloth Sâr) was the dictator of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, taking power at the end of the Cambodian Civil War. As soon as he took power, He and his administration transformed Cambodia into a one party communist dictatorship. Over the next 4 years, he and his administration committed various human rights violations and carried out what is now known as the Cambodian Genocide. To go into more detail, Pol Pot and his administration:
• Forced the Cambodian population to work without pay.
• Made the Cambodian population live in the country side by forceful removing them from their homes in the cites.
• Destroyed Cambodia’s legal system and replaced it with re-education and interrogation centers. If they thought that you were guilty, you would have been very hard pressed to convince them otherwise.
• Caused much of the Cambodian populace to starve, many times to death.
• Killed anyone they either felt didn’t fit into their new society or deemed to even slightly be a threat to their regime. these included: people with connections to the previous government, Doctors, Lawyers, Intellectuals, Journalists, Business Leaders, Vietnamese Cambodians, Chinese Cambodians, Thai Cambodians, Christian Cambodians, Cham Muslims and family members of prisoners who were thought to be a threat to the regime. Even wearing glasses or being able to speak multiple languages could get you killed.
• If you were to be executed (which was very likely), you would have been taken to one the various “Killing Fields” and would most likely be killed with a pickaxe, so that they did not waste any bullets.
By the time they were overthrown during a Vietnamese invasion, the Cambodian life expectancy was about 18 years old.
As bad as rulers such as Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin and Mao Zedong were for their people, I believe no one was as brutal as Pol Pot was.
I feel like their motto put it best:
To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.
This doesn’t qualify as disgusting, but many years ago, I was involved with an Internet startup. They spent all of their time having meetings which achieved nothing, and were a complete waste of everybody’s time. One day, I was asked, no told, by the CEO to prepare a lengthy report on something that I considered ridiculous. I wrote 3 pages of it, and then decided to see what would happen if I didn’t finish it off, so I added 35 more pages of Loren Ipsum (Latin), and handed the report in. At the next meeting when everybody was present, I made a point of asking the CEO if the report was what he had wanted. He said “Yes, it was great”. I stood up, and told the entire room that this very important report that I had handed in, and which the CEO thought was great, actually contained 35 pages of Latin, proving that he hadn’t actually looked at it. I said “I quit”, and walked out of the door. The company went belly up 6 months later.
I don’t know if it was disgusting, but it was rather a unique trick. I used this a couple of times on drug dealers.
When I worked undercover in narcotics I would be asked to buy street-dealer weight in either cocaine or Heroin. The designer drugs weren’t around yet and this new stuff called crack was just making its way onto the market.
One problem every undercover faced was the hand to hand delivery of the drugs. During the actual purchase, you needed to be able to testify that you gave the money directly to the seller and they directly handed you the drugs. ( AKA hand to hand purchase).
Drug dealers were wise to this. When an informant would introduce me to the seller they would take the money but they would only give the drugs to the informant and not to me directly.
I couldn’t testify that I got the drugs from the informant. That would require me to identify the informant and have them testify. No way I would do that. So I came up with a cool little trick.
I would give the dealer the money and he would pass the drugs off to the informant who gave them to me. I would look at the package and say it was light (not the correct weight) and throw the package back directly to the dealer saying I wanted my money back. Drug dealers are not in the business of giving out refunds.
I’d move in close seemingly to get my money back, but we’d talk a little and I would agree to the light package if he would agree the next package would be a little overweight.
As soon as the dealer agreed, I’d reach out and take the package back directly from the dealer, sometimes almost pulling it out of his hands, thus completing a hand to hand transaction.
We would let the case sit for six months before we made the arrest, so they would not remember what informant walked me in. But my little hand to hand trick worked every time.
What is the craziest military tactic ever used?
Viewer discretion is advised… Imagine you’ve time travelled back to the 7th July 1944, and you’re now a squad leader on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands with the 105th Infantry Regiment of the US Army. As your cutting around giving the ‘grunts’ on the .30 cal Browing machine-gun their ‘arcs of fire,’ suddenly, multiple blood-curdling screams across the battlefield could be heard – BANZAIIIIII!!!!!
The Japanese have just launched a massive banzai charge, leading from the front are their officers, brandishing their samurai swords. Just behind the officers are thousands of Japanese soldiers with bayonets fixed, and as the sun glints down on the cold steel you feel the sweat beads across the forehead form. You lift your helmet and wipe the sweat with your sleeve as you wait for them to get in range. . . you wait. . . and wait. . . RAPID FIRE!!!
Your M1 Garand’s barrel is glowing red, the .30 cal is clattering away bursting your eardrums. As one of the enemy Japanese soldiers falls another one takes his place. They have now broken into your position and the hand-to-hand fighting is fierce. . . all of a sudden you’ve been brought back to the present, you don’t know why, but grateful that you’re now safe. . . I’ve dramatized, but I want to try to put you into the same position (‘foxhole’) as the defenders.
The Battle of Saipan and the US forces had pushed the Japanese back so far they had nowhere to go by 6th July, so the commander of the Japanese forces Yoshitsugu Saitõ made plans for a final suicide banzai charge for his soldiers and the civilians on the island. Saitõ said:
“There is no longer any distinction between civilians and troops. It would be better for them to join in the attack with bamboo spears than be captured.”
Why the Japanese soldier didn’t believe in surrender, was because they believed in the code of ‘Bushido’ the samurai code of conduct:
Honour was a samurai’s life. Upholding one’s honour through suicide was regarded as a virtue. Loss of face was regarded as an insult that had to be avenged. Surrender was unforgivable sin that resulted in exclusion from civilized society. Dying in battle is what a samurai aspired to achieve.
The Japanese would try to swarm the enemy in a mass frontal attack which the allies called a banzai charge. This was shortened from, Tennõheika Banzai “Long live His Majesty the Emperor.” This tactic was classed as an honourable suicide which was against well organised, dug-in troops with machine guns and artillery support.
The American soldiers/marines who fought at the Battle of Saipan were some brave men, they had “balls of steel.” This is what Wilfried ‘Spike’ Mailloux of the 105th Regiment facing the Japanese Banzai charge at Saipan, said:
“I was scared as hell,” said Mailloux, then a 20-year-old corporal from Cohoes, a mill town north of Albany. “When you hear that screaming — ‘banzai’ — who wouldn’t be?”
To me, the Japanese soldier’s banzai change of World War 2 was the craziest military tactics used.
JEFFREY SACHS FULL INTERVIEW ABOUT CHINA – U.S RIVALRY CONTINUE ? AND MORE
Oh my God. A deep madness.
Subtle Change in Ukraine Blame Means Deadly Trouble for Americans
OPINION-EDITORIAL — A very subtle change in the words coming out of the Russian Foreign Ministry signals the FINAL step before the annihilation of the United States. We have now reached the final step . . .
The wording used by the Russian Foreign Ministry was very subtle, but its implications are anything but. See if you can pick-up the subtle change in this excerpt from RT:
The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs who were killed last week when the Russian Il-76 military aircraft transporting them was shot down by Kiev’s troops, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has said.
On Thursday, Russia’s Investigative Committee released a report stating that the cargo plane was destroyed using two US-made MIM-104A missiles fired by a Patriot air-defense system. The Il-76 came down in Russia’s Belgorod Region last Wednesday. All of those on board – 65 Ukrainian POWs, three Russian troops, and six crew members – were killed.
Russian investigators stated that Ukrainian troops fired the missiles from a staging area in Kharkov Region, not far from the village of Liptsy, some 10km from the Russian border. They based their conclusion on 116 missile fragments found at the crash site bearing inscriptions in English.
Responding to the report, Zakharova said in a Telegram post that US citizens “need to know where their money is going,” arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.”
Did you catch it? Did you pick up the subtle change in the language they used? It’s right there in front of you!
Here, let me focus it for you:
“The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs . . .”
Then again, in a later paragraph:
” . . .arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.” “”
This tiny and subtle change points the finger not just at the US Government, it also points the finger at . . . . YOU. And me! Individually. Personally.
This is a point I have made repeatedly on my radio shows in the past two years. I have earnestly pointed out that what our GOVERNMENT does, is being done IN OUR NAME.
Remember, this nation celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address wherein he posited that we have “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Ergo, when the US Government does something, it does it in OUR name. You and me.
The Russians have now made clear who it is they hold responsible for what the US Government is doing: YOU and ME.
You see, we . . . . you and me . . . . ARE in fact, to blame!
We sit back and do nothing while our government runs roughshod over the whole world. Sanctions on this one and that one. Military action here. Military action there. And whenever our Government engage in that activity, people we don’t know, in lands we’ve never been to or maybe haven’t even heard of . . . . die.
Oh, and while our government is doing all this crap to people all over the world, you and I sit back and do . . . . nothing. We don’t make a phone call to our members of Congress or the Senate. We don’t write a letter or send a fax. We don’t even fire-off an email. We sit on our asses and do absolutely . . . . nothing.
The Russians are now making clear it is YOU and I who are doing this. YOU and I who are to blame. Directly. Personally.
You know what? They’re right.
WE are to blame. We elect these people then sit back and tacitly approve of what they’re doing by our own, personal inaction. They slaughter people all over the world. They bomb countries back into the Stone Age. You and I sit back and do absolutely nothing. Or worse, we sing idiotic Beach Boys Parody songs like “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran . . . .” as if somehow what we’re doing is good. It isn’t.
A Russian guy I know cited US Senator Lindsey Graham the other day to make a very valid point to me. He showed me what Lindsey Graham, posted on “X” (formerly Twitter) wherein he said the following:
Then the Russian guy asked me “What if some member of the Russian Federation COuncil (i.e. a Russian “Senator”) Posted this exact message on VKontake (Russian Social Media) only changed the countries involved, like this FAKE SAMPLE:
FAKE RUSSIA SENATOR
In case the Putin Administration is wondering, it is abundantly clear to the United States and everyone else in the region, that the Administration doesn’t want war. But it will be difficult to tell the families of the fallen soldiers that the United States is not at war with us.
The United States is at war with Russia on multiple fronts through their proxies (Ukraine). Weak talk and weak action are putting our service members [in Ukraine], at risk. If the United States doesn’t pay a heavy price after the deaths of our service members, and the wounding of many more, then the Putin Administration is derelict in their duties to protect Russian personnel in harm’s way.
To the Putin Administration: Stop the weak rhetoric and respond with strength to protect Russian interests and lives. Your current approach to United States/NATO aggression is not working. Change while you can.”
Same words as Lindsey Graham. Same logic.
So I have to ask YOU, the Reader, if Lindsey Grahams words about Iran are good enough to warrant the US attacking Iran, would the FAKE Russian Senator’s exact same words about Ukraine, justify Russia hitting us?
Why not. Same situation!
You see, this is a big problem for my fellow Americans. We view the world as being ours to do with as we please. We never once stop to think how other powerful nations, might decide to use OUR logic, when dealing with . . . . us.
Now, some of you will react by saying “They wouldn’t dare.” Oh no? Why not?
And you would respond “Because we would nuke the living shit out of them.”
Really?
Because they can also do that to us.
Oh.
Yes.
Reality sets in.
And those same reactionary Americans who would say “They wouldn’t dare” would then likely say “They won’t, it would mean the end of the world.”
Yes. It would. And we would have done it to ourselves by the way we are behaving around the world.
Why should Russia sit back and allow us to supply arms to Ukraine, which are now clearly being used to kill Russians?
Why shouldn’t Russia tell the United States (again) to stop supplying weapons that are killing Russians and then add, or Russia will start hitting the United States?
Why shouldn’t Russia make it direct? Blunt?
Well . . . . turns out, they just began making it blunt. At the top of this Op-Ed, they have now begun blaming “American citizens.” You and me.
Where is this leading? Let me explain it this way:
What is the difference between “Killing” and “murder?”
Murder is the unlawful killing of an innocent. But “Killing” is allowable if it is “justified.”
For instance, if a guy is aiming a gun at you, and you do something which kills him, that is “self defense” and not murder, even though the guy is now dead.
So there is a difference between killing and murder. One may be allowed while the other is not.
Same thing with countries.
The U.S. is supplying weapons for Ukraine to use to kill Russians. Russia has repeatedly told the US and NATO to stop, but we are not stopping. ERGO, it would be “justified” for Russia to kill us in self defense.
Thankfully, the Russians have good morals and they know that perhaps the innocent American people ought not be harmed because of our evil government. SO thus far, they have not killed us.
I think the change in Russian Foreign Ministry wording mentioned at the start of this Op-Ed, tells us that’s about to change.
The official Diplomatic Corps of the Russian Federation is now openly, and publicly, laying the blame for the deaths of Russians, upon “the American people.” Me and you.
Having repeatedly told us to stop, the only thing left for Russia to do is to make us stop – by killing us.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has now begun laying the historical groundwork to justify exactly that.
By changing their statements to lay blame upon “the American people” they are building a record to justify killing . . . us.
Wise-up folks.
Unless we reign-in our wayward government, and stop them from running roughshod over the whole world, you and I __can__ be held accountable. You and I __can__ be stopped.
The clock seems to be ticking.
Now, you can either step up and start being an active and engaged citizen, and start telling your elected public servants to knock it off, or you can go right back to sitting on your ass and doing nothing until the brilliant white flashes start. Then you can feel sorry for yourself as you vaporize, except God already knows: You brought this on yourself by not getting off your lazy ass and stopping your own government while you still could.
No pity for you and me.
FEARFUL EUROPE! Europe Slows down De-Risking from China
I had my fairly new license and was driving my parents car when a deer darted out in front of me. I swerved and put the car into a ditch. Not hurt.
I find a phone and call a tow truck. Get back to the car and there is a police car there. I explained I’d stayed with the car for 15 minutes but knew there was a gas station nearby.
He gives me a ticket for speeding because in his opinion that’s the only way this could have happened.
Now this is a small municipal court for traffic tickets. My license was from my parents home 3 hours away. He was expecting me to just mail in the fine rather than contest it. He approached me before court to “refresh his memory about the event” and naively I did. He gets called and testifies that I was speeding.
So, I asked him where he was when the accident happened and was able to witness me speeding. He said he passed me going in the opposite direction.
So, I asked: if you saw me speeding in the opposite direction & saw me wreck my car, why did I have to walk 20 minutes to the phone, call police headquarters to report the accident, and walk back before you wrote the ticket?
The judge stopped things at that point & dismissed the charges.
This will not go down well with the electorate and, moreover, with the soldiers of the Ukrainian forces:
A poll published by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology in December found 88% of Ukrainians supported the top general. Zelensky’s approval rating, though also high, was considerably lower at 62%.
It is far from clear that any new commander will be able to improve Ukraine’s difficult situation on the battlefield without significantly more forces and weapons — precisely what Zaluzhny has demanded of Zelensky, adding tension to what was already a fraying relationship.
Zaluzhny’s popularity — both within the military and among ordinary citizens — makes his removal a political gamble for Zelensky. It also poses strategic risks at a time when Russia has intensified its attacks and Western security assistance for Kyiv has slowed. The general has built strong rapport with his Western counterparts and has often been able to advocate directly for certain materiel and seek counsel on battlefield strategy. … Both Budanov and Syrsky are considered favorites of Zelensky and Andriy Yermak, the chief of the presidential office and Zelensky’s closest adviser. Nearer the front, however, there seems to be little appetite for change.
“My personal opinion is you can’t do something like this right now — Zaluzhny is someone 80 percent of the military considers a good authority,” said Oleksandr, a battalion commander fighting in eastern Ukraine.
“For what is he being removed? It’s not clear. And who will replace him? Syrsky? God, I hope not. No one in the army likes Syrsky,” Oleksandr added.
The Bild publication writes that Zaluzhny wanted to withdraw troops from Avdiivka a few weeks ago, but Zelensky refused him this and on December 30 he personally went to the city to the front line to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters.
So all the coffins that arrived from near Avdeevka to Ukraine since December 30 are solely on the conscience of Zelensky and his passion for narcissism.
Avdeevka is nearly surrounded and any attempts to hold onto it will cost many valuable lives of soldiers for no discernible advantage. But, just like with Bakhmut, Zelenski wants to hold on to the city to be be able point his western sponsors to some ‘successes’.
My hunch is that, after Monday’s kerfuffle in Kiev, the decision to fire Zaluzny was still hanging in balance.
The change now only happened after the noeconservative destroyer of Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, had landed in Kiev.
When asked by a journalist whether Nuland had learned about Kyiv’s plans on the battlefield, she replied that, in her opinion, Ukraine would achieve great success.
“I have to say that I leave Kyiv tonight more encouraged about the unity and the resolve, about 2024 and its absolute strategic importance for Ukraine. I also leave more confident that, even as Ukraine strengthens its defenses, Mr. Putin is going to get some nice surprises on the battlefield and that Ukraine will make some very strong success,” the U.S. Under Secretary of State emphasized.
This hint does not foresee success on the ground but asymmetric operations within Russia or the Black Sea. More to the like of this which has happen last night:
Ukraine sinks Russian ship.
During a night attack by drones in the Donuzlav area, the Black Sea Fleet lost the Ivanovets MRK, built in 1989, 493 tons of displacement, armed with Moskit missiles.
Sinking that ship will do nothing to change the outcome at the battlefront. Nor would any attacks on Russia oil and gas infrastructure change anything.
Nuland’s remark also hints that the replacement of General Zaluzny will not come in the form of Army General Alexander Syrski, who is disliked by the troops for unsuccessfully holding grounds in Bakhmut and elsewhere at too high costs in men and material.
Nuland’s hint towards asymmetric operations points to the elevation of the Chief of Military Intelligence Directorate Major-General Kyrylo Budanov as a incoming replacement for Zaluzny.
Budanov has been responsible for some daring, if mostly unsuccessful, terror attacks on Russian land and interests.
Back in June 2023 the Economist explained why Zelenski might seek to elevate Bundanov:
Aides huddle close when the general speaks. Under his leadership, Ukraine’s main directorate of intelligence—HUR—has become a plucky, autonomous authority that punches above its weight. It resembles a gang. “Before we had managers, now we have a leader,” says one veteran officer. Oleg, an operative who has known General Budanov for decades, speaks approvingly of his ability to infect others with his fervour, comparing him to a snake “hypnotising you before he comes in for the kill. Restrained, measured, never panicked. You do anything he asks.” … As a confidant of the president—those in government call them kindred spirits—General Budanov is understood to be playing an ever-bigger role in behind-the-scenes peace negotiations. Sources say he is a conduit to secret talks with the Chinese, and he has also been in contact with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s mercenary Wagner outfit.
In conversation it is clear that General Budanov has been thinking hard about post-war Ukraine. Last winter there was talk of him becoming defence minister. He insists his only ambition is victory. Yet secret polls conducted by Mr Zelensky’s office show they are thinking about using the cult of their hero spymaster to counterbalance a perceived rivalry emanating from Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s likeable and independent commander-in-chief. General Budanov’s colleagues say they are convinced he is destined for a big political role once peace comes—if he lives that long.
To the TV producers (Yermak) around the former comedian actor Zelenski it is all about ratings.
Budanov may be good at marketing his image as a successful terrorist.
But he has zero experience of leading any size of unit in combat. You can not lead a company, battalion, brigade or army by ‘huddling close’ with aides. It needs long term strategic thinking just as detailed attention to all kinds of day to day logistics.
Leading an army is like conducting a huge orchestra through a four year long Wagner epos. Having played the first fiddle in a chamber quartet does not qualify for that.
I am sure that U.S. military is not happy about this move. While there were some disagreements with Zaluzny about the right strategies those were between military professional who allowed for diverting opinions. Zaluzny was seen as an experienced professional soldier. Budanov is seen as a spook who had never been in command of any real military. He well not be talked to at the same level.
According to one source, Zaluzhnyi’s senior staff are also expected to be removed from their positions.
With the new inexperienced leadership the situation on the ground will soon become a catastrophic mess for forces of Ukraine. There will be wrong priorities, miss-allocations of resources and large scale losses of men and ground.
On the other side terror attacks on Russian targets, industrial equipment as well as population centers, are likely to sharply increase.
The larger U.S. aim of all this, first announced as a 2019 RAND study, is still unchanged:
The study at that time recommended the arming of Ukrainian’s army as the best way to unbalance Russia. We have since seen the escalation of that strategy. The move from the battlefield to the realm of terror is a response to the degradation of the first by empathizing the psychological effects of the second.
The foreseeable outcome though is unchanged. Ukraine will be smashed, Russia’s power will increase and the global view of the U.S. as a reliable partner will be diminished.
Posted by b on February 1, 2024 at 14:48 UTC | Permalink
I exposed a huge scam by my local gas distributor (cooking gas).
This is a typical cooking gas cylinder in India.
As you can see (not very clearly though), on the neck of the cylinder, net weight and gross weight are clearly mentioned.
Recently, I read an article in ‘The Hindu’ that revealed that a lot of gas agencies/distributors/delivery persons in India are stealing cooking gas. They take out about 1–2 kg of gas from each cylinder and sell it separately in black. The loss in weight is too small for an unsuspecting buyer to notice. But in terms of money, this translates into a loss of about 60 INR per cylinder. The article cautioned everybody to get their gas cylinders weighed before paying the delivery person (Delivery persons are mandated to carry a portable weighing scale along with them by the Govt.)
At first I laughed it off. My agency was trusted. It would never do that. But then on a whim, I decided to try it out. When the next cylinder was delivered to my home, I casually asked the delivery boy to weigh it. The color on his face instantly changed. He started stammering, started insisting that there was no need for this because the bond of trust we shared! I immediately grew suspicious. I pressed him. He then started making excuses that he forgot to bring along his portable weighing-scale.
Luckily, I had my own weighing scale at home. I immediately brought it out and weighed the cylinder myself. The gross weight printed on the cylinder was 29.5 kg, whereas the scale read 27 kg. A difference of bloody 2.5 kgs.
The delivery boy started begging me not to register a complaint against him. And that he wouldn’t repeat the mistake ever again.
Apparently, this is a huge scam going on all over India. If you are reading this answer, please get your gas cylinder duly weighed before paying for it.
Not exactly fired, but we thought it was a great reaction.
After a recent merger between two rather large companies, it was necessary to reduce personnel, so each department was asked to cut staffing by a certain percentage.
To encourage volunteers, management offered to give a full week worth of salary and paid medical benefits for each full year a person had worked at the company if they took early retirement. And anyone who qualified for a pension also got the full pension as if they had not retired early.
One member of our team was about 14 months away from his planned retirement date when he would start receiving full Social Security and pension payments.
He had worked for the company for 45 years. After some simple math, we all strongly encouraged him to take the deal.
He got 45 weeks of full pay, a whole year of benefits coverage (negotiated with HR), his full pension, and they also bought out the almost two months of accrued vacation time that he had been saving up in order to retire a few months early.
He basically got a 12+ month paid vacation with full benefits. We will be having a retirement party for him on his original planned retirement date in a couple of months. 😀
I imagine that wasn’t what management had in mind when they made the offer, but everyone on our team was very happy for him to get it!
The Duran: NATO Crossed Putin’s Red Line and Russia is Ready to FINISH It
Yesterday, I was working with an Orthodox Jewish woman around age 25 on sparring.
Let’s call her Chaya. It was her first day training and I was taking her under my wing to mentor her a bit. (Yes, I have reached the level of being able to slightly teach others. Not much)
Chaya was very sweet, and found it hard to hit. She was so kind and shy, she found it so difficult to get up the anger to hit.
I was holding up the kick shield for her to practice on. (For those who don’t know, this but with punching)
She wasn’t hitting the body shield bag hard enough. She just couldn’t summon the anger needed. She kept giggling and being very gentle and kind.
I tried to rile her up. “Come on, Chaya. Imagine the teacher you hate most? Imagine being cut off in traffic? Imagine your air conditioner breaking on the Shabbat.”
Nothing. She just had no anger.
So I had to be a ***** and I knew exactly what to say. So I said “Imirtza Hashem by you, dear. Have you tried being less picky?” Which means “With God’s help by you,” in reference that she needs divine assistance to find a partner, something Jewish singles (especially female) hear ALL THE TIME AND IT DRIVES US ALL CRAZY! It’s condescending, it’s shaming and it’s really salt in our wounds. And we hear it from well meaning busy bodies all the time.
Chaya’s eyes narrowed and her jaw tightened with sheer rage. She punched the bag so hard, I was knocked back several steps. “See, I knew you had that in you,” I said triumphantly. “Now, you know you can punch.”
She delightedly thanked me and we exchanged worst date stories.
Sometimes, you just need some motivation and if it takes using evil, so be it.
No. But may I highlight a dirty trick by a phone soliciter?
I’ll take that as a yes.
A neighbor of mine was a saleman for Sam’s Club. The guy who makes a pitch to your boss, offering a discount to any of his/her employees who’d like the group membership, put on sales presentations at state fairs etc., cold-calling as well.
Then I moved halfway across the state. He calls me one afternoon, disguising his voice and acting as if he’s calling on behalf of some worthless telemarketing offer. Of course I, not recognizing him, utter some choice words before hanging up. He calls me right back, identifies himself and proceeds to ask me why I couldn’t be more polite in declining whatever it is that’s being offered.
I told him why. Said my peace and then we chatted about whatever he had really needed to talk to me about.
Many years ago I was in a chat room of a group with hundreds of members. Predominantly adults but, there were older teens. I don’t remember what was being discussed but, this kid (older teen) started making rude comments then started making bizarre comments about school shootings,violence and basically hinting he was going to do something. Quite a few people ignored it or told him he was being inappropriate and that he would be reported to moderator. Most in the discussion didn’t take it seriously. I went to his profile which fortunately wasn’t locked down. So concerning posts and was able to figure out the state, town and high school he attended. And his actual name. So I called the police in that town. Explained what I had seen, sent screenshots etc. While I was on the phone with a detective they got a call from one other man who had done the same as me. Surprisingly, the detective called me back a few hours later and while he didn’t give me many details he did say, that between myself and the other man they were able to locate the boy and that everyone was safe. I confess to stalking the FB profiles later and saw that he had been hospitalized so hopefully he got the help he needed. I worried I was doing the wrong thing but, I just kept thinking how hard it would be to live with myself if I saw news the next day of a school shooting and HADN’T called.
Candies in a box
“I know that I have less to live than I have lived.
I feel like a child who was given a box of chocolates. He enjoys eating it, and when he sees that there is not much left, he starts to eat them with a special taste.
I have no time for endless lectures on public laws – nothing will change. And there is no desire to argue with fools who do not act according to their age. And there’s no time to battle the gray. I don’t attend meetings where egos are inflated and I can’t stand manipulators.
I am disturbed by envious people who try to vilify the most capable to grab their positions, talents and achievements.
I have too little time to discuss headlines – my soul is in a hurry.
Too few candies left in the box.
I’m interested in human people. People who laugh at their mistakes are those who are successful, who understand their calling and don’t hide from responsibility. Who defends human dignity and wants to be on the side of truth, justice, righteousness. This is what living is for.
I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch the hearts of others. Who, through the blows of fate, was able to rise and maintain the softness of the soul.
Yes, I hustle, I hustle to live with the intensity that only maturity can give. I’ll eat all the candy I have left – they’ll taste better than the ones I already ate.
My goal is to reach the end in harmony with myself, my loved ones and my conscience.
I thought I had two lives, but it turned out to be only one, and it needs to be lived with dignity.”
Brilliant Anthony Hopkins
and free interpretation of Mario de Andrade’s poem
We had a dishwasher that wouldn’t latch, darn thing wasn’t more than 20, 24 months old. Called the repair guy. He “fixed” it, I paid the bill and off he goes. Well the darn thing starts leaking about two days later from the middle of the door at the bottom. So he comes back, takes the front of the door off. I can see the paths of the water leak from the “newly replaced latch” all the way down the insulation ( soaked by the way) to the spot where it leaked onto the floor. He informs me that we need a new door, over $450, we only paid $560 for it. So I informed him I wasn’t paying for a door, the latch was obviously installed wrong. Oh non, says he, the latch is fine. Oh no, say I, you broke it I’m not buying anything. So he leaves. I call the repair business office, they send a higher up, supervisor or some such ro lookat it. I show him the paper work, he looks at the machine and, Lo and behold the latch is incorrectly installed and the door needs to be replaced. New door for free, and no labor charge. He even refunded the work for the latch.
The greatest threat to the U.S. is your mostly brain dead population created as a result of 75 years of U.S. media propaganda and spin by the US media to glorify the U.S. and demonised those that refused to be submissive and subservient to them.
I have been a business mechanic of sort for years on end till my retirement, and in my view, the first part of any change is recognition and acceptance of the need to change! In the case of the U.S. you guys don’t even know you are in life support and that your U.S. economy is one humongous Ponzi scheme!
There lies the US problem. If you don’t want to know that you are haemorrhaging cash due to forever wars and you cannot afford your defence spending. If you refuse to accept that Chinas has lapped you guys! You ain’t gonna fix it! There lies your problem. Americans must be the most ignorant and naive people on planet earth! You media has made all of you believe in your so call “exceptionalism”
You still think Chinese lives in caves with bats and Russians are Slavic underachievers! And you are 10 foot tall genius! Many here in QUORA still thinks we are in 1945 when the 2 world wars ravaged all other major powers! And the U.S. share of world economy is 52%.
China and Russia don’t need to lift a finger, Americans will implode the U.S!
Please note that the antonym for Democracy is not Communism. It is Dictatorship. There is no logical contradiction between communism and democracy, as many in the US seem to believe. It is a ridiculous, gross misconception.
Is America a true democracy? In my opinion, there is no true democracy or true dictatorship in this world. Every country lies somewhere on a continuous spectrum between these two extremes. If America were a true and pure democracy, I should be able to look into Trump’s tax records and no one could stop me. Note I am not criticizing the American system, but only saying that you cannot call it a true and pure democracy in the sense of the word. It is just closer to the democratic end of the spectrum than some other countries.
I am from Taiwan, not China. I have not lived a single day under communism, but I have lived many years under an anti-communist dictatorship, and that was BAD. You cannot equate democracy with anti-communism. It is simply wrong.
It is very strange to me that communism is such a dirty word in the supposedly free and open-minded American public psyche, as if it were some kind of voodoo witchcraft. I find it totally anti-intellectual and closed-minded, not worthy of a true and free democracy.
I lived in a townhouse with one shared wall. When I moved in, the neighbors were a very quiet couple, never heard a peep out of them. They moved out a year later – and 3 single male construction workers moved in. They played obnoxiously loud music at all hours of the day and night. Complicating matters – I had a 3 year old, and was pregnant with my second child. So sleep was a need.
My wusband (nicer than saying ex-husband because he WAS my husband at the time) politely went next door to ask them to turn down the music – several times. It got to where they wouldn’t answer the door when he went over there. We called the police several times – and they wouldn’t answer the door for the police either.
The situation was wretched – and I began looking for ways to get the message across. One night – they left their garage door open during a particularly loud jam session. I had already gone to bed, and was wearing a huge maternity nightgown – because – I was hugely pregnant. I quickly snuck into their garage, and flipped the breaker switch. And scurried back to my side of the townhouse quietly. They figured it out the next morning. And did their party thing the next night – and I repeated the process. After that they left the garage door shut.
Around this time, I had the baby I was expecting. My wusband and I decided to take the kids and visit a friend for a few hours on a Saturday when we knew all of the neighbors were home sleeping off their Friday night party. Before we left, we moved both of the stereo speakers over to the shared wall, and turned on some super loud heavy metal music to share with said neighbors. And left. We did this several more weekends.
The construction workers broke their lease and left a couple of months later.
Many years ago I had a strange neighbor that lived with his mother next door. I did not speak with them but I would wave if I saw them to be polite.
A few years later I had fallen asleep on the couch and heard this weird noise by the window like scratching. I thought it was my cat and started checking, I see the screen going up in the window and two arms, I started screaming get the f*** out of here and slammed down the storm window.
I woke my son up and called the police, unfortunately my description was two arms of a Caucasian male. This was in the country so not a lot of people around. Four police cars later and after getting my story they went next door. I figured they were asking if they saw anything, but no they were hauling out the guy next door. They found him hiding under a car in the garage. They told me they knew this guy and he had been in trouble before. He had actually broken into my house when the people before me lived there. That would have been good to know before…
So we go to court and you can tell this guy is not right in his mind when he talks to the judge stating he doesn’t understand: so after my victim impact statement, they hold him over but say I can go but not to worry he will not be back.
I do not know what happened but he was back two weeks later and now I have to live next to this guy.
All I could think of was this, my neighbor he knows when I am home or at work so what exactly were his motives to break in knowing we were home? Scared me to death and I had two kids to think about (my daughter was not home the night this happened luckily).
So I called my brother and he came over with a shotgun to teach me target practice. I printed off pictures of this guys mugshot to use for target practice in my backyard. When I was done, I posted them around my property so he would get the message…
Not sneaky but hopefully scared him off. I never had trouble for the next year I lived there but I also never leave a window or door unlocked at night either. Even in the summer months.
Luckily I have much nicer neighbors now and a much better gun to protect myself with if the need arises.
Opening Incredible Garage-Found Gun Safes After 8 Years | What Will We Find Inside?!
Update 4/12/17- Many, many folks have asked me to identify the hotel chain. It was a Hyatt!
I was on a road trip and needed to stay overnight suddenly because a fast moving snow storm was blowing in.
I could see the logo of a hotel chain I occasionally use a few blocks away. I called them and asked if I could have a room on short notice? No problem. Note that between the time I called and the time I appeared at the front desk was maybe 20 minutes!
Here is a portion of my front desk (FD) conversation-
FD- “Mr. B. thank you for staying with us on such short notice. I see you have our affinity card so you have a room on our priority floor. Please remember that we have complimentary coffee and breakfast on that floor beginning at 6:00 am.”
Me- “Thanks but I’m leaving early tomorrow and I’ll be gone by 5:00 am.”
FD- “I understand Mr. B. Have nice night.”
So I trundled up to my room and there on the desk was a small pitcher of ice cold milk and three fresh chocolate chip cookies along with a note. The note was handwritten and addressed specifically to me and thanked me for staying on such short notice. It was signed by the manager. I was very impressed but the best was yet to come!
The next morning my alarm went off at 4:30 am as I planned on leaving at 5:00 am. The message light on my room telephone was blinking but the phone never rang! Of course that would have disturbed me.
The message was something like this-
“Good morning Mr. B. We noted that you were leaving early this morning and couldn’t take advantage of the amenities on our priority floor. We took the liberty of placing coffee and breakfast pastries outside of your door. We didn’t know if you preferred regular or decaffeinated coffee so we included a carafe of each. Have a safe trip!”
You know guys, sometimes I get the biggest belly-laugh when I read some of the answers here. Either they are terribly deluded, or they are immensely ignorant.
…
Here’s a REAL answer.
First of all, let’s throw out some FACTS to “set the table”, so to speak.
China has the largest Navy in the world.
China’s navy is not spread out all over the place (like the USN), but are concentrated at the projected battle fields.
China’s navy is also the oldest navy in the world. It was operating CENTURIES before the first organized navy in Europe.
China’s navy has been restructured, and operates NEW ships with cutting-leading-edge systems and technology. Many of which are unique and unknown to the West.
Were a war to occur between the USA and China, a Naval war would be the lest of the worries of the American “leadership”. Economic, social, and financial collapse would all be in free-fall.
But, let’s answer this question.
Can the United States Navy sink the Chinese Navy?
Here’s my answer…
Yes, the USN has the ability to destroy vessels, aircraft, bases, and people of the PLAN.
It is highly unlikely, however, that they will be able to completely destroy the PLAN.
It is likely that in the process of this destruction, that the USN would suffer great losses in men, material, weapons, and vessels.
Both sides will likely take great losses.
But this is 2024. China’s city-destroying munition capabilities are global. The consequence of a United States (or proxy) war against China will result in the people of the attacking nation being hurt.
Thus…
American major cities will also become targets for destruction.
…
Remember, boys and girls, China is a peaceful nation…
…until it isn’t.
…
Never forget the great losses that the United States incurred the last time they fought the Chinese.
Look at the BIG PICTURE. Not the tactical issues, but the strategic issues. Then faced with this reality, project the highest probability outcomes.
They are not pretty.
JUST NOW…States Under Attack NEED National Guard Deployed IMMEDIATELY
Modern architecture in Nigeria is built with total convenience in mind. We have more toilets and bathrooms in our houses than bedrooms. I’ve built two myself, although not opulent in any way, but it was unthinkable to construct a four-bedroom home with just one or two bathrooms.
When I travel and hear people or real estate agents in developed countries boast about their six-bedroom houses with two baths, the Nigerian in me can’t help but feel puzzled. In Nigeria, such a setup would be considered ridiculous.
I understand that building in developing countries like Nigeria is quite cheap, but just how much extra is it going to cost for a decent bathroom in every bedroom?
The unwritten standard amongst Nigerians is that each bedroom must come with its ensuite bathroom, just like a hotel, ensuring privacy and convenience. Additionally, there’s always a separate toilet for guests by the living room.
This practice in Nigeria also stems from practicality. With sometimes large families, the idea of waiting in line for a bathroom in your home seems absurd. To think that one would have to walk the entire hallway to get to the toilet, especially at night. This is unimaginable in a home with several boyfriends and girlfriends.:D
Our homes are designed to ensure that everyone has their own space, minimizing inconvenience and maximizing comfort. Building a bedroom without a space for a toilet, accessible only from the same bedroom is a great disservice to whoever is to occupy that room.
While mostly rich folks opt for homes with extensive bathrooms in developed countries, it’s intriguing to note that such a luxury, sometimes at a lower standard is a standard feature in a modern Nigerian building.
P.S.
In the comment section, some people have shifted focus to Nigeria’s poverty, rather than discussing architecture. About 23% of Nigerians, over 50 million people, belong to the middle-upper class, and many in this category can still afford to build their homes. This number alone is more than the population of many rich countries. Nigeria is a land of both immense wealth and poverty. If you’re looking for stories about poverty in Nigeria today, you’ll have to keep scrolling or better still, write it yourself! This post focuses on the architectural styles prevalent among Nigerians who have the means to build their own homes based on my observations!
Poverty is a real problem in Nigeria and it’s getting worse, but there is so much wealth in Nigeria too. Sadly, talking about Nigeria’s poverty and scams is more acceptable and beneficial to many westerners that we can’t even talk about anything else without backlash.
Oh, boy, did I! My mother still blames him for my hatred of math 35 years later!
I had an Algebra teacher get it in his head that A students will always get an A, B students will always get a B, etc, regardless of the grading scale. If and A was 90-100%, A students will do the work to get above 90%, and if an A is 95-100%, we would do the work to get a 95%, etc.
So he decided to make his grading scale A= 98–100%, B= 95–97%, C= 92–94%, D= 90–91‰, below 90% is and F.
So what had been an A/B student (me) would instead fail. Yeah, we hated him. And it only took 1 semester to get him onto probation, and he was gone after the second semester.
He really screwed up by doing this to my class. Out of 52 kids in my graduating class, almost 10% were teacher’s kids, plus one was the principal’s kid! In rural Wisconsin, many normal kids had parents that were uninterested in grades or intimidated by teachers, but when the parents ARE the teachers and principal, that factor disappeared, and they had no problem pitching an absolute FIT until it was fixed.
But I still hate math, the damage was already done.
Papa Vento’s Sicilian Chicken
Like Chicken Parmesan, my father made this for us all the time while we were growing up.
Ingredients
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/2 cup olive oil (+ more for frying)
1 1/4 cup dry breadcrumbs
1/2 cup Parmesan
Ground black pepper
6 large slices mozzarella cheese
1 large can (32 ounces) crushed tomatoes (regular or Italian seasoned)
1 medium onion
Instructions
Pound out chicken breasts between wax paper to 1/2-inch thick.
In a shallow bowl, combine breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese. In another shallow bowl, pour 1/2 cup olive oil.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Dip chicken breasts first in olive oil, letting excess drip off, and then press into breadcrumb mixture. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium / low heat. Sauté chicken breasts until golden on both sides.
Arrange chicken breasts on bottom of a 9 x 13-inch baking dish. Pour crushed tomatoes evenly over chicken. Halve the onion and “sliver” cut it, sprinkling them on top of the tomatoes (quantity depends on your taste ). Lay 1 piece of cheese over each chicken breast and bake for 30 minutes until cheese starts to turn golden and sauce is bubbly.
My father makes this with pounded round steak and non-seasoned tomatoes but we love this version. You can make it either way and make up your own mind.
When I was born my parents lived in a flat (apartment ) in quite a rundown area as they were struggling to make ends meet.
My Dad worked 12 hour nights and came home to my mum in floods of tears. Shed been cooking a curry and the “skinheads” on the next floor didn’t appreciate the cross cultural culinary efforts that my mum was whipping up.
They kicked and banged at the door screaming “it stinks of f***ing P***s in here” and other derogatory and racist remarks. All while knowing full well there was a young mother and baby inside.
My Dad came home, and after mum told him what had happened, he decided to visit the chap upstairs.
Knocking was done via my Dad’s shoulder on the flimsy little Yale lock (Dad was a rugby player, Prop to be exact!) and upon entering the was confronted with the offender, in his underpants, swinging a mase at him. Dad kindly removed the offensive weapon from him and told him what a silly man him and his friends had been. Then, upon exiting, Dad noticed this guy’s new stereo system and it reminded him that he’d also had enough of his crappy music at all sorts of hours.
Dad informed him that “I’ve had e-f***ing-nough of this too” and proceeded to throw the stereo system out of this chaps window, which was obviously shut because Dad wouldn’t waste time like that.
Job done, Dad goes back down stairs to enjoy his curry. Then there’s a knock at the door and matey boy has phoned the police. My Dad was honest and willingly accompanied the officers to the station to attempt to resolve the matter.
Fast forward and it goes to court. Now there’s breaking and entering, GBH, criminal damage and………. burglary. This guy had had the audacity to say Dad had stolen his precious stereo system and, during questioning the Judge asked my Dad “so, do you know the whereabouts of the said stereo system”
My Dad replied “Yes your Honour, with all due respect I believe the stero is still in the f***ing tree”
The courtroom burst into laughter and after the judge reminded my Dad to watch his language, decided to send a constable to investigate my Dad’s claim.
After the proceedings resumed the constable concluded to the court
“Yes Your Honour, it would appear that the stereo system is still in the tree”
I believe the chap upstairs was done for wasting police time and moved not long after.
My Dad has always got plenty of these stories from his younger days and whilst I don’t condone any of his actions, they’re bloody epic!
Chinese penchant for knowledge and continuous improvement means that Chinese will always become smarter that Americans in general. Americans in general are cursed by the perception that they are exceptional. Starting from this premise makes them think they are better and smarter than the rest.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. The U.S. became overwhelmingly strong due to the coincidence of history. The 2 world wars wrecked all the major economies and left the U.S. with one eye but the rest of the world has lost both their eyes! The became the king of the blind.
Confucianism ethics in every Chinese person mean they focus on being educated and learning. They will stop at nothing to give their children the very best education money can buy. Diligence and hard work is among the traits that gives Chinese the edge. This means apart from having a higher and better education that is at least 3 full years ahead of the west, the Chinese race never stop learning.
American has this feeling of entitlement and it thinks the world must be submissive and subservient to them and they can always be the best by hook or by crook. These days mainly by crook! Given any task Chinese will start faster and work harder at it and in the end Chinese will be more successful.
Candice explains why it is important for wives to be monogamous
Chinese lower -cost cars are the result of EV’s and they need batteries which China has the raw materials to make unlike the US so low cost EV’s represent the future of international relations between the trading Nations which has developed into a competition between two trading blocks.
Bipolarism has taken the world by storm BRICS led the way as the Russian Special Operation guaranteed retreat to be forbidden, the World post February 24 – 2022 will never be what it was from 1991 to 2011, I know that end date is not universally accepted it was when Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi refused to be cowered into submission and took on the British and French Arab Spring which had to be save by Obama coming to their rescue bombing Libya and alienating Russia, Vladimir Putin saw the need to jump into the Presidency again because Demitry Medvedev was too far gone supporting Obama, now Demitry Medvedev is an anti Western hawk compared to Putin, that’s how different things are in Russia today compared to 1991 to 2011.
After 2011 Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad followed in Gadaffi’s footsteps and unlike Muammar Gadaffi the Syrian leader remains alive while military Keynesian economics has conquered the United States of America after getting up to full speed under Obama in 2011, now the US economy is swallowing Europe using the pretext of war with all credible sources pointing to the modern times unprecedented threat coming from the Southern Powers China and Russia which is alarming the US, Britain and EU.
This international predicament developed from the US, British and EU’s 1991 complete victory over the entire political and economic landscape within which China has risen in that 33 years to reflect the exact opposite as the goods arranged on supermarket shelves are coming from China taking the place of Japan as the manufacturing centre of the US, Britain and EU’s operations, on top of that China as part of BRICS is now the largest exporter of cars to what is now becoming known in political and economic narratives’ as the Northern Group associated with the pattern of wealth acquisition in the North American continent and poverty in the Southern American continent.
BRICS represents the South and have gained control over a significant portion of the World’s economic landscape which the Northern Group of Nations the US, Britain and EU can’t afford to allow China’s belt and road initiative becoming the turning point of the Northern Groups 1991 to 2011 political and economic control of World affairs, one way the Government’s of the US, Britain and EU can reign in BRICS as they did Japan is to make China’s products economically non viable by pushing up the prices compared to the competition from other parts of the World that do not challenge the economic dominance of the Northern Group the US, Britain and EU.
Import duty is one way the Northern Group are pushing up the prices of what China has to offer, this Government policy does have limitations as the Northern Group manufacturers become protected and take advantage by pushing up the prices of their cars.
1, In 1991, US pharm industry promoted opioid-related drug by saying opioid is harmless. Doctors could prescibe it to patients & drug stores could sell it. From 1999-2017, 200,000 Americans died from opioid. Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of OxyContin was sued & fined for $8.3 billion in 2020. Purdue is owned by a Jewish American family Sackler.
2, In around 2010, OxyContin was hard to get. People turned to heroin which is cheaper but stronger. It also uses an ingredient from opium. In 2010-14, CDC reported that the death rate due to heroin has risen more than 200% among “white” & African Americans.
3, The 3rd wave is fentanyl which started in 2014. It also contains an ingredient from opium. In Aug 2021-Aug 22, 100,000 Americans died of drug overdose. 2/3 were fentanyl.
Capitalism & politics
In the book “Death of Despair & Future of Capitalism”, economist Anne Case & Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton point out the collusion between pharm capitalists & politicians. Their deep collusion makes it difficult to control drug.
Politicians receive donation from pharm capitalists. Hence politicians will never come up with an effective law to control drug.
British Guardian reported in 2017 that, for the past 10 years, US pharm industry spent $2.5 billion in lobbying politicians. 90% of congress-persons & 97 out of 100 senators received political donations from pharm industry. At least once.
The fight between the 2 political parties is another reason. While both parties swear they would fight drug crisis, no party wants to cooperate with the other to effective beat drug abuse. No party wants the other party to become a hero.
scapegoat
In order to show they have done their part in fentanyl battle, USA blames it on China.
China adopts zero tolerance on illegal drug & is very strict on drug control. China is ahead of United Nations to classify drug into fine categories so as to effectively catch drugs that do not meet the requirement.
Since Sept 2019, US customs has not caught any fentanyl from China. But US politicians keep telling Americans that China exports fentanyl.
In 2023, USA sanctioned a Chinese police unit & lab that inspects for illegal drug. Perhaps USA is upset that China is too strict & US customs did not find any from China.
USA also sanctioned companies that produce LEGAL chemicals & equipment that can make fentanyl. The chemical is legal because, if used properly, it can be used to make pain killer for, say, cancer patients. The equipment is legal because it is a tool to make pills.
US politicians are not serious about solving problems.
Look at poverty: any theft below $950 is not a crime. ie USA encourages open robbery.
When USA loses jobs due to Clinton’s globalisation program, Trump said China steals US jobs.
Instead of curbing gun violence, USA militarizes teachers & babies.
If one day USA collapses, it is the collusion of US politicians & capitalists.
How do you start a business? You must have these two.
Business concept.
Capital.
Do you have a great idea, or you have money to invest, or a little of both?
If you have money, this is the scariest part in China. Because if you are asking on Quora (instead of Chinese social media), you are likely a foreigner who aren’t familiar with Chinese language and society.
Like with any society, it’s not wise to advertise your willingness to spend your money. You are just ringing the dinner bell for scammers, more or less. There will be hundreds of people being very willing to become your best friends.
Isn’t China very safe? Very. But while police can protect you from criminals, police can’t protect you from yourself and your own bad decisions, persuaded by scammers.
If you have a great idea, you may think of ways to safeguard your ideas, trade mark if you can, so the people you pitch your ideas to will not simply steal your ideas and lock you out of any profit.
Chances are there are millions of people in the same boat as you: having great ideas, wanting investors.
What to do to start your dream business in China?
Starting a business requires more commitment than a marriage. You have to be ready to give 200%.
Need money. Unless you are lucky enough to have a financier, you need some initial capital to invest in your idea, to create some kind of a working prototype, to have something for show. This will put you above the millions of people who simply got ideas.
Get to know China.
China is like any society. There are honest people and there are really shady people. You can’t simply see it on their appearance alone.
If you are a lone warrior, your first investment is to live in China, even a few months at a time. Get involved in Chinese daily life, get involved in the industry you want to be in. Find a part time job there?
Or seek out an existing support network you can trust.
If you are Indian, seek out other Indians already working in the industry you want to start business in. They are likely more sympathetic to befriend and show you the rope. They may even find you a job.
But beware, even your own compatriots can scam you, or mislead you. Don’t be too trusting.
This is all I have for a Quora answer.
With only a very vague question, this is all you are going to get. Being an entrepreneur is full of risk. Your first lesson is not to get rich quick, but learn risk management. I rather you lose a few thousands today for a hard lesson, than to lose a few millions 10 years later for this same lesson.
Pro-Tip: Find professional legal consultation for second opinion.
Say you are about to engage in a business deal, whether with local Chinese or your compatriot, secretly go outside to find paid consultation services. They will know Chinese laws and regulations more than anyone. They can smell a fish from miles away. You can’t save money on this.
Pornstar’s ABANDONED Mansion ~ You Won’t Believe What We Found Inside!
Malaysia man’s viral stunt of planting banana tree in pothole gets road repaired within hours
Public works department blame continuous rain as reason behind delay in road maintenance
Frustrated over the authority’s inaction, a Malaysian man planted a banana tree in a pothole on a road to draw attention to the problem.
Mahathir Aripin from Jalan Sandakan-Lahad Datu village in Sabah posted a photo of the banana tree standing almost in the middle of the road on his Facebook page.
The base of the tree was covered with some soil to ensure it stood erect.
He also posted a message expressing his concern for those using the road and humorously suggested he might use tar next time.
“I feel sorry for the road users. I’ll cover it with tar next time,” he said on 29 January.
Seeing the response to his Facebook post, the local authorities responsible for road safety – the Sabah Public Works Department – started work to repair the road.
Reports said the pothole was filled within hours of Mr Aripin bringing attention to it.
The public works department blamed continuous rain as a reason for delay in the road maintenance.
This method of highlighting road repair issues is not unprecedented. There have been cases reported in Kedah in the country, and even in Florida, US.
Mr Aripin’s post sparked a conversation on road conditions in Malaysia.
On social media, several commentators commended his effort to bring attention to the problem of road safety and maintenance.
One jokingly said that he should have planted a durian tree whose fruit is notoriously foul-smelling instead of a banana tree.
Others responded with the laughter emoji while some called his attempt to plant a banana tree in the pothole “naughty”.
The pothole’s location was about 500m from the spot where a recent accident claimed the life of a 4-year-old girl, believed to have been caused by a pothole.
According to Malaysia’s Road Safety Plan 2022-2030, the country aims to reduce road deaths by 50 per cent by 2030.
In police work, there are many things you see that you would rather have not seen. Suicide by firearm seems to be at the top of my list. I only experienced this once in my career.
Sure I have found people a day after the person lost their head, sort of, with the blast from a shotgun — what a mess. It’s very inconsiderate to the family members or even first responders who have to deal with this.
But only once, when I was responding to a call of a man with a gun was I quite close when the shot was fired. I was out of my patrol car with a partner and running up an outside staircase which led to the man’s apartment when we hear the bang. He is sitting on the landing at the top of the stairs with his back against the wall, looking at us. He had a small caliber handgun still in his hand, and the barrel remained in his mouth. He was alive for the moment, but it was apparent he wouldn’t survive.
My partner took out a pair of latex gloves because there was blood, and started to put them on. I didn’t wait for gloves and grabbed the gun with both hands and first peeled his finger off the trigger. I then peeled the rest of his fingers from around the gun and handed it to my partner.
I wasn’t sure how this man felt about the police, but I was going to be sure that he didn’t take one of us with him. The man expired while we were at the scene. There were skull fragments and white and gray brain matter against the wall behind where he was sitting. Even after shooting himself he remained upright and seated.
A crime scene was immediately taped off, and detectives were brought in to investigate. The first unique discovery was that the handgun was fired twice. The first bullet was later found flattened but still in the brain cavity. It must have struck the inside of his skull with sufficient force to fracture it but did not exit. The second bullet was found underneath the man’s body.
Something I learned from detectives that night is that it’s not uncommon for a person considering suicide by handgun to fire a test round to make sure the gun is working properly. The noise from the first shot was reported by a neighbor and drew us to the scene.
Had our arrival hurried this man’s final desperate act? That’s something we will never know. I would have loved to have had the chance to speak with the man and perhaps change his mind. But that wasn’t to be.
I was permitted to enter the man’s home with the detectives and found a neat and well-organized apartment. He had this entire event meticulously planned out.
On the dining room table were a series on neatly organized envelopes lined up in a perfect row. Three were separately addressed to family members, while one was marked Funeral director and last one simply said: Police. Inside the envelope, marked police was a neatly handwritten letter. The first thing I noticed was that the letter was dated with today’s date. The letter explained that he had taken his own life freely. He went on to explain that he suffered from a very painful and debilitating terminal illness which would lead him to a more painful state before his eventual death.
He provided us with the names and contact information for several doctors who were treating him. He also asked us to make sure we contacted the funeral director first, so his family members would not see him in his current state. He went on to ask us to hand-deliver the other letters to his family members and provided their addresses, which were all local. He closed his letter by apologizing to us for any mess his act may have caused.
We next opened the letter to the funeral director, as it was unsealed and only identified with the words funeral director. Again, we found a neatly handwritten letter reminding this funeral director of his pre-paid funeral contract. The letter advised that one of his children had the written agreement. He went on to provide significant detail on his final arrangements, down to the suit in which he wanted to be buried.
The final three letters were to his children and were sealed which is how our officers delivered them to his loved ones.
A cursory search of the apartment which is standard in any crime scene identified two more, nearly exact sets of letters. Each set of letters were also handwritten but had different dates on them. Each roughly a few weeks apart. It was clear that the man had planned his demise on several prior dates and but hadn’t or couldn’t go through with it, until tonight
We reviewed these earlier letters because they were not in envelopes or sealed. The letters to his children were very loving and apologetic; asking for their understanding and forgiveness for his decision. They also spoke of the hopelessness of his medical situation and the difficult decision of letting go.
I never met this man until that night, and yet I feel like I knew him. In reading his letters, I believe that he was a decent man confronted with an impossible problem with no good solution. His final written thoughts were of comforting and reassuring his family and seeking their forgiveness for his decision to end his pain and his life.
We Found A Abandoned Safe In The River. What’s Inside The ABANDONED SAFE? (OPENED)
Obviously, I mean OBVIOUSLY, they have never been to China and have no idea how fucking enormous it is.
If you hop in a car, and start driving, it will take you days… DAYS… passing huge apartment buildings full of hard working, militarized families, studying… working… training…
…building after building. Mile after mile. Kilometer after kilometer. Over and over and over.
One enormous giga-complex housing thousands of families… after another… and another… and yet another.
China is HUGE.
Simply enormous.
…
China is not the third world cesspool that the Western “news” says it is. It’s a nation thirty years in the future. It is proud. It is strong. And it is LETHAL.
It is a dragon wearing a cute panda-bear suit.
You all in the West are unaware.
Backwards. Retarded.
Fed garbage; not just figuratively, but literally. Most American doesn’t even know where California is on a map, or how many States there are, or how much 5 + 8 is.
When I say “stupid”.
I mean it.
Meanwhile in China…
I started using facial recognition and QR to pay back in 2013. That was ten years ago. I haven’t touched a coin or paper money in all that time. Using paper money is so 19th century.
My car is electric and it talks to me, and only turns on when my voice recognition software allows it to.
It self parks, customizes the interior with a rotation of interior motifs, plays my morning jazz tunes, and gives me a nice warm back rub as it links to the toll road and carries me off to my office.
In my office, my staff brings me my coffee and turns on my systems for me. Sometimes they might have a kid or two with them, being sick or what not. No worries, though, they are their next to their parents doing their studies next to the desks.
Lunch is paid for all my staff. It’s one of the state mandated laws, and after they eat a huge healthy cafeteria meal of fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, they go take their normal naps.
…
That’s just the first four hours of a typical day in China.
…
There’s a bunch of dunder-heads that think that the USA can invade China with D-Day style Naval assaults, and the threat of nuclear war.
Troll?
Moron?
Buffoon?
Ignoramus?
They believe that proud and powerful aircraft carrier will lay off the coast of China and launch cascade after cascade of fighters and bombers into China.
They think that stealthy submarines will sneak up and start bombing China. All this unopposed, and the Chinese will take it. Smile and say “… can I have another, master?”
They believe that the proud troops will be easily resupplied by Australia, Japan, Korea and Philippines. After all, that is the on-going American construction activity. Billets. Barracks. Supply depots, and large investments in bordellos for employment for the locals.
Fantasies. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
NEVER going to happen.
…
I am here to tell you that World War started in 2008.
Oh, sure, the elements started far earlier. But historians will write that the date of the war began was in 2008.
It peaked in 2020 with the bio-weapon(s) that the USA launched on China during CNY (John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo brilliance there), and fell back towards conventional war with the NATO conflict began in Ukraine.
It hasn’t gone that great though.
Wars don’t go to plan, and this crop of brain-dead, pathological psychopathic oligarchs are dangerously deluded.
Take Ukraine. Ah. The “war in Ukraine”.
What they mean is the unreported hostilities used to counter the Russian “special military operation”.
Over 3000 American soldiers (with countless more NATO gents) are dead. Just because the American “news” isn’t reporting it, doesn’t mean that it is not going on.
Dead Americans are all over the place. I have photos and photos. Movies and movies. But if I put them up, they get pulled. It’s “news you can use”, but that is bad for the Westerners to see.
Good men. Soldiers. American men.
Dead.
Over what? And why?
It is sad.
I cry for the widows at Fort Lenard Wood.
As that phase winds down with a European collapse (economic, social, industrial, and military) a new phase opened up.
All to schedule; a disruption of the middle eastern shipping lanes.
Ah… that’s gonna teach China a lesson!
In their wet dreams, perhaps. China is about 3450 steps ahead of the rest of the world. They know what underwear that you will wear two days from now. Long before you even decide to put some on. That’s how advanced China is.
This idea that “China can be isolated” has failed, and is bound to fail, as the Chinese BRI are now proving how far-sighted and successful the rerouting of shipping avenues have proven themselves.
No wonder both Russia and China are screaming forward; an economic gallop. While the collective “West” is mired in inefficiency, lunacy, and insanity.
None of which is being reported in the “news”.
Here’s some more American troops in Ukraine…
Meanwhile…
We are watching the United States collapse in front of our very eyes.
The USA has this dream of opening up a long-desired war in the Pacific over China. Troops, material and weaponry are flooding toward the Philippines, Japan and Australia. All ready to die for “democracy”.
Whatever the Hell that means.
A rally-cry of the moronic who still believe that “their vote counts” and that American culture (woke, red-pill, open marriage, LGBQ+) is worthy of preserving.
Woo! Woo! I’m gonna kill Commies for all that free gay sex!
And when that day comes… “death by cop” will be experienced in America. Up and down the coasts. As the United States will be bludgeoned by many, many, MANY people; and their nations. People who have been ridiculed and marginalized over the decades of pompous, elitist wars and flouting.
America is NOT respected in the world.
It is despised.
It is no mistake the distain that the illegal immigrants show towards American. And they are the polite ones. The USA is poised to get a much-needed Ass-Kicking at a scale of ferocity that is off the scale; in both ferocity, and in long-duration and everlasting pain.
And the United States has lost.
It just hasn’t been reported on yet.
Look around yourselves. The USA has no downtowns. No factories. No hard workers. No functioning anything. It’s just on the long slow crumble…
At this point in time, “war against China” will not be needed.
It’s OVER.
He HOARDED GUNS! I Bought The MOST EXPENSIVE Storage Unit In The Country!
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:
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.
(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.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
Hire slow; fire fast
Our local version of Costco is called PriceSmart.
Isn’t that a clever name?
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.
Last night, as I was taking my daughter back from her night-time skating class, we hit heavy traffic in front of our complex (the “Ghost City” that is supposed to be abandoned. LOL!). And it was 15 minutes of bumper to bumper.
Turns out that it was a roadside sobriety test checkpoint. And the local governments run these things all around CNY as many, many people drink and drive.
So I rolled down my window and exhaled into the wand.
It turned red and an alarm went off. The police scrambled, and I got out of the car.
I’m an American, so I knew what was going on. And no, I wasn’t drinking.
I was expecting to put my finger on my nose and walk a straight line. But no. That did not happen. Not at all.
So I stood there, and they got my various licenses, and registrations out of the car, and then subjected me to a far more stringent test. They pulled out a handheld black computer like device. And a red camera like device.
I had to hold my breath, and then exhale into a black monitor for six seconds. This was a much more accurate device. They then recorded my eyes and pupil dilatation with the red device.
He showed me the results; ZERO.
So I was good to go.
…
I signed my name on the ledger, and then they let us go. Ah. An interesting experience for certain. MM gets a police checkout. What do you know. Check one for my experience ledger.
Yeah. I took my niece’s cigarettes away from her and she freaked – she was 10, or 11.
She told her grandmother (who I knew bought her the cigarettes) and she called C.P.S.
I refused to drive into the city to do the interview and made the guy drive out to my shop. On my terms, on my territory. And, I told the story exactly as it happened. Then, I asked him to call the kid. He didn’t want to. So, I did. (he even tried to wander out of earshot, but I followed him holding the phone in the air so he could hear)
I put her on speaker – told her she was on speaker with me and the man from Child Protective Services – and asked her to tell him what happened. She told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Then I asked who bought the smokes.
I was right, it was “gramma”. And, we hung up.
Then, I demanded he call “gramma”. And, he didn’t want to. So I did. (I even showed him the phone numbers on the phone so he could see I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one)
I told her that I was putting her on speaker, and I was there with the guy from C.P.S., and that we had a few questions. (he didn’t have any, I had a couple)
I asked why she called – she blubbered some nonsense. I asked if it was because I took the kid’s cigarettes – and she said that I had no right to take them. She was getting pissed. So I played her like a sunfish – I yanked her right out of the water. I asked if she bought the cigarettes for the kid, and she said, “Where else do you think she got them? They’re not going to sell her cigarettes, she don’t look old enough.”!!!
Then, I asked why. And, she said (and I shit you not), “So she’d quit bummin’ ’em off of me!”!!!
The guy hung his head, and I did one of the shrug your shoulders with palms facing up at shoulder level. Case closed.
I did my best to have “gramma” charged, or a C.P.S. case brought against her, but the guy just let it slide. I called the supervisor. Same thing.
That was twenty years ago – now the kid always says to me variations of, “Thank you for caring, thank you for trying – now that I’m a mom I understand what you were doing – I’m sorry.”
She has two great kids and last time I talked to her they were going for more. I hope they have as many as they want.
Never stop trying, never stop caring, it sinks in even if you think it’s not. (even my son, who has no kids (the dirty rat – I’d like a few grandkids), told me, “Thanks for being an asshole – I get it.”
Never give in, never surrender.
Apple Rum Baklava
Ingredients
3 cups chopped apples
2 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup raisins
2 tablespoons rum
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 pound phyllo dough
1 pound butter, clarified, melted
1 cup honey
Instructions
Combine first 6 ingredients in large bowl; mix well.
Trim 8 sheets phyllo dough to fit 10 x 15-inch baking pan. Keep unused phyllo covered with damp cloth. Arrange in baking pan, brushing each sheet generously with melted butter. Spread half the apple mixture over phyllo dough. Arrange 6 buttered sheets phyllo dough over apple mixture. Spread with remaining apple mixture. Top with 8 buttered sheets phyllo dough. Cut into squares. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes or until golden brown.
Heat honey in small saucepan. Drizzle over hot baklava.
Yields 12 servings.
May substitute 2 tablespoons lemon juice and 2 tablespoons lemon rind for rum.
I’m not sure if they teach this in drivers’ ed in places where it snows a lot, but I took drivers’ ed in a place where snow is rare, so they didn’t bother to teach me about driving in it. Here are some snow-related driving tips that I had to learn on my own:
If there is snow around the wheels of your parked car, and your tires just spin when you’re trying to move, there are three ways to get your car unstuck: dig out the snow (takes a lot of time and effort, and is uncomfortable in the cold), throw some kitty litter under your tires for extra traction (requires kitty litter), or my personal favorite: rock the car back and forth until you build enough momentum to get it un-stuck. It’s the lazy man’s way of getting your car moving in the snow. It only works if you can go straight ahead of your car for a while, though. Will not work if your wheels are turned, like if you’re parallel-parked and have to exit the space by turning first.
Cleaning the snow off of the top of your car isn’t really for your benefit, but for the benefit of the drivers behind you. If you’re super-lazy and don’t care about other drivers, just take your car on the highway and let the wind blow the snow off for you.
Edit: I forgot something until some commenters pointed it out: if there is snow on the top of your car and you stop suddenly, it can slide to the front windshield and block your view.
(Don’t be this guy. Nobody likes this guy.)
If you know it’s going to snow and/or get icy while your car is parked, you should lift the wipers off of the windshield. Otherwise they will stick to it and break when you turn on your wipers.
(These people know what’s up…)
Door locks and power windows can and will freeze in the winter. Before you go through a drive-through on a winter’s day, you should confirm that your window will go down.
If your car has Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA), it will go crazy on slick roads. It’s the same for an Anti-Lock Brake System (ABS). That’s how I know that I need to be more careful when I’m driving in the snow: those lights come on. Also, if you’ve never felt an ABS system kick in underneath you, it’s unnerving the first time it happens.
If the snow is really deep, while digging out your car, you should be extra careful to make sure that the tailpipe is clear. People have died from sitting in cars that were running while waiting for someone else to dig them out.
(Anyone want to help this person dig out their car?)
Ice/slush will build in the wheel wells of cars that are being driven during the snow. It’s important to kick this off when you get a chance, particularly if it’s going to be cold for a long time. If you ignore it when it is fresh, it just freezes more solid and is a pain in the ass to get off then.
(If you see that around your tires, kick it off as soon as possible. Be careful that you kick with your heel, not your toes. It may be hard as a rock.)
There are “summer” and “winter” blends of windshield washer fluid. If you get the summer blend and forget to use it all before the winter, it will freeze in the tank and you won’t be able to clean your windshield while driving, which is important to do when it snows.
Pickup trucks with empty beds are the worst for handling snow. If you drive a pickup in a place where it snows in the winter, put something heavy in the back, just to put some weight on the back wheels.
Delusional Women In Denial As They Learn How Hard Men Work
Yes. My husband was dying of cancer and in home hospice with me taking care of him 24–7.
The night before he died, his son’s mother started texting me about how he’s dying, she needs to get into his apartment and go through it to see what she could sell because she hadn’t gotten child support in a couple months. He still had his apartment after we were married, because his son was nearing 18 and wanted to move away from his mother asap, and he hadn’t paid child support in two months, because he had just recovered from brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor and then in the following two months, we found out it had metastasized to his liver and then spread to all his abdominal organs and died 10 days after being put on hospice. I kept my cool while she was texting me about the money he owed her the night before he died.
The day he died, right after he passed, I called his son to come to my house immediately, as well as my other children. His mother was the only one else aware that he had passed, so here I was with our three boys, sitting in our livingroom waiting for the hospice nurse to come back so she could pronounce him legally dead, and I was already getting phone calls and texts of condolences. My stepson’s mother had announced it on Facebook. I kept my cool, though that was probably more of me just being in shock and unable to function.
The days following his death, she convinced my stepson to rush to my husband’s apartment, because “rent would be due soon and he had alot of valuables in his bedroom at his Dad’s house”. I didn’t go, because she had been texting both me and my SIL about getting into my husband’s apartment asap to sell his things for money, and I was afraid of what I might do to her if I saw her in person. My SIL did go over when they went over, to make sure nothing really important disappeared.
My SIL later told me that in the two days my stepson’s mother had access to the apartment, my stepson’s mother went through every room, every drawer, read ever piece of paper she could get her hands on, including love notes, etc, took pictures of how “filthy” the house was so she could show her friends, and didn’t really keep anything to sell, because nothing had any value to her, so she just threw it to the curb for garbage day. The few sentimental things that my husband had made known to everyone he wanted my stepson to hold on to, she would not let my stepson keep “because they were in poor condition”.
It should be noted that I know I could have called the cops on her for theft and harassment, but I didn’t for three reasons… 1. Me, my stepson, my sister-in-law and my other two children were mourning a loss and I was trying to avoid further drama. 2. Everything of value had already been moved to my house months ago and most of the things left in my husband’s apartment was gonna be gotten rid of anyways. 3. The apartment WAS filthy, because for the past two months, nobody had been there except me 3 times a week to feed his cats and change their litterbox. Nobody else was willing or able to help me with the cats or my dying husband, and it was a mile walk one way to his apartment, meaning if I rushed, I’d be leaving a dying man who could barely stand up by himself (but kept trying, so had several close calls with almost falling) alone at least an hour and a half. I wasn’t lazy, I was stretched too thin with no help and doing the best I could.
But I kept my cool with the apartment drama.
My husband was a car guy, loved older cars, had three classic vehicles when he passed away. He had wanted me to take his favorite car, and his son could have the car he’d already been driving for two months since he got his license, and his prized van as well. The plan was for me to not turn the titles over to my stepson until he turned 18, because it was common knowledge that his mother assumed that their son would get all three vehicles and she had planned on selling all three. This was also a constant source of texts and harassment on how I need to turn the titles over to her immediately (before their son turned 18), like I wasn’t smart enough to figure out that she wouldn’t then sell them as she’d then be the legal owner. I still kept my cool.
Once I finally figured out how I was gonna pay for the funeral and was planning the funeral, I gave people a date, but not much more information, as the details were still being worked out. My stepson asked for the tentative information, which I gave him, and she posted on Facebook, tagging my husband of course, the date, time, place, little details, making it sound like she had planned it. I SNAPPED. I was ready to ask if the funeral home had and 2 for 1 deals. I absolutely ripped her a new one online, publicly pointing out exactly how she’d been behaving and what I thought of her. It got really, really vicious, on both ends, with her playing the victim. Not my finest hour, but I was absolutely DONE with her. Completely out of character for me, but if I had been in the same room with her, I’d be writing this from my jail cell right now.
The last conversation she had with my husband on the phone had been about how their son turned out to be such a great person because he had HER for a mother and how my husband had only had him on weekends, didn’t really contribute to raising my stepson. She knew darn well that my husband would have taken their son full time in a heartbeat, if she hadn’t done everything in her power to restrict his parenting. Near the end, she wouldn’t allow her 17 year old son to sleep over my house (in a spare bed) on the weekend to spend time with his Dad who clearly had limited time, because “it wasn’t his own bed at his Dad’s house” and when he did stop by my house to see his dying Dad, his mother started texting him to come home after about a half hour. And then online while announcing his funeral, she was making out like they had been such good friends, that’s what coparenting is all about, it’s all about her son, his REAL child (my husband had raised my two boys as his own for almost 8 years and loved all three very much), and if course, all about her, because she’s the mother of his child. The one and only time in my adult life I ever completely snapped. Not proud of myself at all, but she deserved it and she got off easy.
A few days ago, my boyfriend offered me a stick of chewing gum.
He unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. I unwrapped mine and took a tiny bite off the tip.
A few minutes later, when that first bite had lost its flavor, I took another nibble. And once that one shed its sweetness, I took another.
Before long, I noticed my boyfriend shaking his head at me, his eyebrows raised so high they’d almost disappeared into his hair. “You’re so weird,” he said affectionately (at least, I’d like to think it was said affectionately.)
He’s right. It’s pretty weird that I consume my chewing gum one nibble at a time. But I’ve done it that way for as long as I can remember.
When I was growing up, chewing gum used to be a top item on my parents’ list of choking hazards. So naturally, it was also a top item on their children’s list of valuable contraband.
Most of the time, I only had access to this rare treat when my friends shared it with me at school. And every tiny, foil-wrapped stick of it was so precious to me that I’d ration it out slowly to make the flavor last, and then replay the memory of chewing it for days afterwards.
Honestly, as an adult, I don’t even like gum all that much. But the memory of how precious it used to feel has never quite left my mind.
Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country – Khitomer Battle
I had a soldier on a team I was commanding during advanced training called Zach.
Zach was the team clown, a hard worker and good soldier, but a complete goof ball.
He would find humor everywhere, and create it when it was needed. Most of the times, even though I wasn’t allowed, I would completely break soldier -commander distance and laugh at Zach’s punchlines. I would turn away from my soldiers so they wouldn’t see me laugh, even though it was hard to hide.
Two weeks before my soldiers completed their training, I was notified that I was being reassigned to a different team, and that my officer needed my final evaluation on Zach, since they were considering dropping him.
They claimed he was naive, and as much fun as it is listening to his jokes, our job was to train a team and make them combat ready.
Before I wrote up my evaluation, I took Zach for a conversation and told him exactly what my officer told me.
His smile faded immediately.
I told him that there are times for jokes, and time for work. I needed to be blunt, and said that his comic remarks have no place in the paratroopers training. We needed serious and professional fighters, not clowns.
I was a bit harsh, but truly wanted him to finish training.
Zach was one of my favorite soldiers, and it deeply hurt me to tell him to stop finding the funny moments in life, even when everything sucks. I felt like I was killing him softly.
During my final weeks with my team, Zach did not make a single funny remark. One of my soldiers asked to talk to me in private and suggested that Zach might have lost a family member, since he seemed depressed.
Eventually, Zach finished his training, and proceeded on to command school, but I always resented the fact that I was the one who took away the smile from his face.
In fact, the United States has played a four-step game in an attempt to sway the elections in Taiwan.
Firstly, it’s a classic case of ”the pot calling the kettle black”—the U.S. has been vocal about external forces keeping their hands off Taiwan’s 2024 elections, all the while being the first to meddle.
Secondly, the American Institute in Taiwan has echoed the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party’s stance on cross-Strait relations, suggesting that even if the DPP wins, China is unlikely to take immediate military action. This could lull Taiwanese voters into a false sense of security, effectively boosting the ”Lai-Xiao pairing” in the polls.
The third tactic involves the U.S. flexing its military muscle, with P-8A Poseidon aircraft patrolling the Taiwan Strait—a clear sign of America’s concern for Taiwan’s security and a potential promise of defense. There’s speculation that U.S. warships might even make a bold passage through the strait. This military posturing supports the DPP’s narrative, encouraging Taiwanese voters not to view the upcoming election as a choice between war and peace.
Fourthly, the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the Western Pacific and equipping submarines with Tomahawk cruise missiles are moves that signal U.S. preparedness to intervene should Chinese mainland take military action against Taiwan.
China, of course, is keenly aware of these maneuvers. the spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense has hit back with a two-pronged rebuttal. Firstly, they’ve underscored the severe threat these U.S. actions pose to the security of the Asia-Pacific region and China itself. China has firmly opposed these moves and has vowed to respond with equal determination. Secondly, China has issued a stern warning to the United States: The Taiwan question is purely an internal affair of China, off-limits to any external meddling. The resolution of the Taiwan question is an unstoppable force, immune to interference by any person or power. Taiwanese voters must remain vigilant, not to be swayed by the U.S. and the DPP’s rhetoric. The 2024 elections in Taiwan are pivotal for the trajectory of the Taiwan Strait situation, and any missteps could lead to tumultuous waters. The mainland’s stance is clear: ”Taiwan independence” equates to war and is a dead-end street, so there’s no room for wishful thinking.
The U.S. has a long history of involvement in Taiwan’s elections, with a level of engagement that runs deep. This is evident from the way candidates scramble to ”audition” in the U.S. during every election season. Take the 2024 elections, for instance; Taiwanese candidates are making their pilgrimage to America, while the chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, Mr. Rosenberg, has visited Taiwan three times in just two months, meeting with candidates from the blue, green, and white parties. The depth of U.S. involvement in Taiwan’s elections is such that a single, biased statement from the U.S. could instantly flip the fortunes of their preferred candidate.
My parents murdered me. They killed my ambition, separated me from the guy I love and got me married to a monster (unknowingly).
I was always a bright student. A topper in school and a gold medalist in my college. While in college, I met and fell in love with a man from a different state in India. Though it was not a huge difference like a North-South problem (we belonged to neighbouring states), it was huge for my parents who only had negative things to say about his community. The fact that he still needed time to settle only made him incapable in my parents’ eyes. They believed that I was their golden girl with too much talent to be given away as his wife. We fought for 2 years during which my mom stopped all communication with me. Finally, my parents weren’t willing to wait after I turned 25 as they believed that I will become “too old to be desirable by good guys”. They adopted all forms of emotional abuse and manipulation and broke us apart. I still cry to this day thinking about our breakup though it has been 8 years. I loved him and still do. If only we had remained together…
At about the same time, I wanted to change careers and become a teacher leaving my high paying job but my parents thought that only a fool would make that mistake. They prohibited me from doing what I liked and made me look after my dad’s company though I hated it. They believed that they were doing everything to protect my interests but never cared for my own feelings. I was too weak and timid to rebel and so I bore everything while breaking down mentally.
After this forced separation and being made to look after the company, I was put through the humiliating arranged marriage market where I was paraded around like a commodity. I hated every minute of it. Finally I was married off to this man who was good on paper. He came from a wealthy family, had two degrees from the most prestigious Universities in India and was settled in my own city. My parents couldn’t believe their luck and when all enquiries about him and his family didn’t turn up anything bad, they went ahead with it. All through this debacle, I was only a mute spectator.
What my parents did not know was, my husband was an egoist and a sadist. He HAD to be the best in everything and took joy in humiliating me and belittling my achievements. He was always fishing for compliments without which he couldn’t function. He could never take any form of criticism and would throw temper tantrums if things aren’t done his way. Even sex was a form of punishment for me where I was forced to do things I did not want and he would humiliate me. Every day and every night used to be the same. I put up with this for 2 years before letting anyone know because I foolishly thought that I did not deserve any happiness after breaking my boyfriend’s heart.
To the outside world I couldn’t have been happier. I had my dad’s company which was minting money and I did not have to work hard unlike people who start things from scratch, I had a husband who was very handsome, earned indecent amounts of money, came from a “good family background” and was even religious. But, inside closed doors I was living a nightmare.
The traditional traits looked for in arranged marriages – caste, wealth, education, family background and age were all perfect in mine but take it from me that none of these things matter more than an extent. It is only the love you share with the other person and your emotional compatibility and willingness to stand by them, that counts. This realization hit me like a wall of bricks when one day after a particularly nasty argument with my now ex-husband, I took my car for a drive. It was raining heavily and while I was waiting at a traffic signal, I saw a poor man on the pavement sharing a torn canvas cloth with his small family. They were laughing and were very happy with each other. Looking at this from my air conditioned “luxury” car, I realised that they had something that I did not – love and happiness. The divorce was painful where I did not have many people’s support – only my brother and father supported me.
It has been 4 years since the divorce. Where is the “golden girl” now? Meanwhile, the boyfriend whom I broke up with, went on to become successful and started his own consulting company which is doing extremely well. He got married two years after I got married when he still thought that I was happy. He called me before they finalized the girl, asking me how I am and that he is getting married. He told that he always wishes the best for me – I knew he also loved me the same way I loved him. After that we did not speak because it would be too painful.
It is not always true that parents love you the most. Sure, they wish the best for their child but sometimes they let their beliefs and bigotry cloud their eyes. Sometimes parents can be wrong – that does not mean that you shouldn’t take their well meaning advice, but the final decision should always be yours.
And sometimes, the person who loves you the most could be the guy whose heart you broke a long time ago, who still remembers your birthday every year and sends you a card with a coupon to your most favourite restaurant.
It is a bit more complicated than a Bradley decided to walk the dog on a T-90.
A Bradley IFV is designed to defeat enemy tanks. At very long rang using TOW missiles. Russian tanks are notoriously poor at surviving such missile attacks due to how their ammo is stored. Anything which gets through is likely to cook everything off… which is where you get those turret tossing videos.
In this encounter a pair of Bradleys more or less stumbled across a lone T-90 at would probably count as Danger Close range. The first engaged with its chain gun, scored a few hits, and then exited, probably trying to get to range so they could engage with a TOW. The second, not wanting to risk taking fire while moving away, decided to engage in hopes of essentially blinding and disabling the tank.
There is an interview with the two man crew of the Bradley in question and one point they both agree on… they were terrified. The one thing they didn’t want to run into at close range was an enemy tank. The crew couldn’t disengage safely, they had to stand and fight, and do so in such a manner that the T-90 couldn’t get its bearings and shot back.
Their training got them through this. The Bradley sticks and moves while the Bushmaster 25mm just peppers the T-90’s turret with hit after hit. The Russian tank crew, likely poorly trained, couldn’t see the Bradley to try and fire back. Attempts to back up saw them crash into a tree and get stuck.
Which is when the tank crew did the only thing they could think of… pop smoke and bail out of the tank. A wise decision as a drone strike destroyed the vehicle not very long after.
It isn’t unusual for a Bradley to score a tank kill. It is very unusual to do so in such a manner. Usually the 25mm autocannon is lighter vehicles, such as the BMP. Those the Bradley’s have been killing in droves. A tank is a much bigger foe to tackle.
In college, at the dorms there was a stinky girl who lived there. Everyone made fun of her and she was arrogant, yet all the same people were just rude. She was called “Hamburger “ or just plain “Stinky” by Everyone in the dorm. She wasn’t nice and was poor. Two of my roommates and I felt bad for her and used our bottle return money (we took discarded beer and soda cans from the dorm that we collected) and purchased the girl hygiene products from the dollar store. Our care package included a few bottles of VO5 Shampoo and conditioner, a few sticks of cheap lady speed stick deodorant, a brush and comb, razors, toothpaste, toothbrush, and I had a 12 pack of ivory soap I didn’t need, plus a bunch of menstrual pads and tampons. We put this stuff in a brown paper grocery bag stapled it and left it in front of her door. Nobody knew who it was from and we never told anyone. The girl wasn’t embarrassed and seemed happy someone cared enough to help her. The girl’s hygiene improved and people were nicer to her. My two roommates and I didn’t do it out of pity if someone might say that, we did this because we wanted to help her.
After X being pushed back the 4th time, I nodded along, stood up, and went to a job-posting website. I got 3 calls back the following week.
A little bit of background for the bonus check: Our department needed to have an app on the company iPad for the engineer to work effectively. They consult with an outside ios developer team about the idea. The developer team comes back with a contract that it would cost Y amount, with half required as a deposit upfront.
At the time, I thought they really overcharged for such a simple application. There were many unnecessary features to be priced. But it’s not my money paying out, so whatever.
My boss, being the department director, asked if I could make the app. Keep in mind that I’m not a software developer in my department. My job description does not include coding and my wage is far lower than those who code for a job. But people know that I program from time to time to automate most of my job (and other people’s jobs) and for fun. Never have I ever made myself a full-fledged app before that time.
I said I could give it a try. He agreed on half the amount of Y for my bonus, once the app is made and tested.
I went home. Borrowed a MacBook from my friend (I knew my boss would never buy me a Mac just for a single project). Locked myself in my room studying as many tutorials for beginners as I could.
10 days later, an app is made. I couldn’t be happier. I showed it to everyone around, got some feedback, made changes. My boss told me to push it onto the App Store for internal use. I did. About 75 devices installed.
I wrote an email to my boss about the bonus, alongside with the terms like I would maintain the app myself, and transfer the ownership to the company, etc. I also mentioned the possibility of promoting me to be Software Engineer so I can develop more apps for the company.
*Crickets* – no response.
I came up to him after a few days. He told me I will get it after the Deputy Director come back from his business trip to see if the app is working well. I said no big deal, I could wait for another week. The app needs more time for testing anyway.
But the Deputy Director came back and still no sign of the bonus. I asked a few more times and my boss is like running this loop: For X in excuses: Say(“You will have the bonus after \(X) event”)
It’s been more than a month since I published the app and still nothing. The last time I came up to him, I also asked about the possibility of a promotion, to which he rejected and said I should just focus on my own work and only do special projects like this if necessary.
I said ok. Came back to my desk and started applying to new jobs. Out of 4 jobs I applied for, 3 called back and scheduled an interview one week after. I brought the app with me to demo. Got 1 offer at one company for the position of Software Developer at twice the salary.
When I came to my boss to hand in my resignation, he still wondered if he did anything wrong…
1) Join the Massachusetts State Police. Make over 100K your first year, including overtime where you sleep in the cruiser most of the time. You will be incredibly wealthy and rich within 20 years. You can retire young and get a “getover” job as a college security police starting at 135,000 a year. Seriously, my brother is a State Cop and if I could live my life over again I would do this job. It’s hard to get through the Basic Training but once you’re on the job it is absolutely no work, lots of perks, impossible to get laid off… where else can you get paid 1000 dollars for sleeping in your car? I’m not joking! If you d3on’t want to be a State Cop then become a local cop but you might actually have to do something. Nevertheless the opportunity to make money as a cop in Massachusetts is unparalleled. The corrupt Police Union has made wages high and work virtually non-existent. This is the way to go.
2) Become a Fireman – this job is the biggest scam in Massachusetts. It’s GREAT money for doing next to nothing. Sure, there are lots of calls where you get to ride on the big red engine but mostly it’s for absolutely nothing. You stand around with a halligan tool and you coat open and a cigarette hanging from your mouth and then you go back to the station, eat something and watch television in a barcalounger then go to bed. You do this for two days, get a full week’s pay and then you become a contractor and double or even triple dip. You will be fucking rich in no time. Sometimes you might actually have to fight a fire but think of all the things you can slip into your boots or coat when you’re in someone’s smoky house – a wallet left on the dresser: it has your name on it. Expensive watch on the counter: you can easily sell that. All kinds of perks.
3) Become a Plumber. Believe me, these guys clean up. There aren’t enough plumbers and you can charge just about anything, especially in winter when people’s heat stops working. Yep, it’s hard work and you often have to deal with people’s stink and shit but usually you’re putting in new, clean pipe and the new Pex technology makes it fast and easy and you can clean up. If you have even half a brain within a couple of years you can get younger apprentice plumbers to work for you. Create a subsidiary business cleaning out drains. You can make up to 1000 dollars for a one hour visit. If you can get commercial accounts or city accounts, your future is assured. By the time you’re 35 you will be taking your wife and girlfriend to Turks and Caicos in the winter. Plumbers make HUGE coin.
4) Become an electrician – once again, it’s a tough apprenticeship but once you’re done you will never have a day off if you don’t want one. There just aren’t enough electricians. Had an electrician come to my house to replace a half dozen switches and plugs – cost me 750 bucks. You will really clean up. If you get attached to a building contractor you can start your own electrical company and hire a bunch of illegal immigrants to run wire through the new ant farms going up and you do the critical work of punching them down to the breaker box and you’re in like Flint. The sky is the limit.
5) Become a real estate broker – this is actually MUCH harder than it looks but the options for making a lot of money doing nothing at all are really good. To be a broker you have to be an agent for three years. That means sucking the asshole of another broker boss douche who is going to rip you off blind for three years. The first two years you won’t even make minimum wage but if you stick with it you will learn all the ins and outs and how to scam homebuyers which is every real estate agent’s job – Get the suckers to buy that termite trap as fast as possible and take your 2 percent commission and run. But once you’re a broker yourself than all those nose-picking wannabe agents will be sucking your asshole and they have to pay you 50 percent of their commission while you go deep sea fishing off the Keys in Florida. And they best part? The REAL money is in working with contractors or finding that great piece of property you can buy, rehab and sell for a huge profit. Yep, it takes time and effort and diligence but you can make millions a year in real estate if you’re willing to sell your soul to do it. I met the biggest agent in the area once, a woman who would sell her own daughter’s kidney for a profit if she could because to be REALLY GOOD as an agent or a broker requires you to have no conscience or soul.
Remember the 50-year-old man who gave his number to my sister at our family restaurant?
Well, he came back last night with a huge smirk on his face.
He entered the premise with his friend. They were both semi-drunk. Here is the conversation,
His friend: “Is this the girl you gave your number to?”
Him: “Shhh.”
I kept a straight face. My sister was clearly uncomfortable and wanted me to take over.
As I was taking his order, I caught him staring my sister up and down. I was so angry and disgusted. That’s my baby sister he was looking at lustfully.
I looked at him and said,
Me: “What do you think you’re doing?”
Him: “…uh…nothing. *Looks away*.
Me: “You know that’s my sister you’re looking at, right?”
Him: “I…uh…was looking at the chef…”*looks away*
Me: “Well, she’s 15-years-old and you’re incredibly inappropriate. She’s underage.”
He was in shock (or so it seemed).
He ordered his food and went to sit down.
He then said:
“My daughter is 15”, to which I replied, “how would you like it if a grown man stared at your daughter in the same manner?”
He walked out.
His friend looked at me in amazement.
“I’m proud of you for protecting your sister. We need more women like you in this world. My daughter is 31 and if a man did the same to her, I would be angry.”
I felt like a complete savage. He deserved it.
Leave American schools and go private or international
Maggy is one of the smoking moms, and she is not happy. She has been morbidly obese for most of her adult life, but now her problem was bound to be solved. It hasn’t.
“The doctor lied. It isn’t better at all.“
The smoking moms bring their kids to school, or wait at the gates for them, while smoking. It’s their every right, but it also is a little weird to see young moms smoking so nearby a school.
Maggy had a gastric bypass — a type of weight-loss surgery that involves creating a small pouch from the stomach and connecting the newly created pouch directly to the small intestine. It essentially shrinks the stomach, so that you should eat less. Should.
But Maggy did not really listen to the doctor lady, because the doctor lady clearly said to Maggy that her diet should be (heavily) adapted in order for the operation to be a success. Should.
She explains it to her smoking mom friends while she is smoking —
“My stomach really hurts when I eat a little snack like a burger or so. And I am gaining a lot of weight again. The doctor really lied to me.”
But the doctor did not lie at all — Maggy did not listen.
And she should have.
Should.
Can you join a cult without knowing it? Is The Latitude a game, business or something else?
Some twenty five years ago, while I was still in college,we had a maid . Let’s call her Lakshmi.
She came to plains from a village in mountains with her alcoholic husband. After her first daughter was born she started working.
She used to bring her daughter along, nurse her in between the chores and started her life.
After three years one more daughter came along and she decided two were enough . Here is what she did
Got a tubectomy done to avoid more kids.
She enrolled both of her daughters in a small school.
Since she could not afford costly food like almonds etc in winter , she used to feed her kids eggs in the breakfast.
Her daughters were always neat and clean.
She started depositing a tiny amount each month in the bank.
Slowly she bought the basics like a fridge, washing machine and a TV.
As time passed she bought a little house too on instalments and worked extremely hard to repay the loans she took from bank and a few people.
She realized that her elder daughter was a bit slow in learning so after high school she enrolled her for a beautician’s course. That girl now is happily married and has her own modest parlour.
The younger one was highly intelligent and won many scholarships. A family friend,who had their own engineering college, gave admission to her daughter in engineering and she is a software engineer today working in Chennai.
All her life Lakshmi remained completely honest and during my wedding, she even had the keys to my mother’s almirah.
Lakshmi was an honest,hard working woman who had dreams for her girls,the wisdom to plan and had the perseverance to execute those plans .
Lakshmi has never been to school and could barely write her name, but she was intelligent enough to understand what to do and how.
Intelligence has nothing do with the college, the degrees and the social strata of a person.
Itshines in the direction our life takes. It is visible in each and every decision we take.
Not me but my dad. My dad has this quick wit about him, he can come up with the snappiest comebacks, silliest one liners, and dad jokes I’ve ever heard. If my dad is tired he’s even funnier (don’t tell him I admitted this). At my uncle’s house with the hypocritical aunt, she made a comment about dad and I. A little context, my cousins (she has two boys and 1 girl) absolutely adore my dad. He would take then camping and hiking when we were growing up. He would swim with them at the lake, help them work on their cars (well the boys have cars, the girl doesn’t want one yet). And of course I’m first in dad’s life so I was right there with them the whole time. They were having a summer cookout on this day so the cousins are up and down, in and out. One boy wanted to show me something about his game system, other boy wanted to show me something he did to his car, and the girl was telling me about some funny videos. When I would stop by dad, he would kiss my hand and tell me to have fun, smiling the whole time. My aunt remarks something about treating his daughter so grossly affectionate. Dad says “Yeah it’s hard trying to please a beautiful woman all the time but somebody’s has to learn how.” His brother choked on his soda and had to go in the house. Girl cousin was laughing hysterically but looking at her phone (it was loading a video but not playing yet).
I lived in a remote Siberian town throughout their winter and the temperatures remained below -20C for most of the winter, and on very very cold days, it would go below -40C as well.
Layers upon Layers. If you can put in a thin shirt underneath your fur coats, you put it in.
There are no veggies to eat. There are no fruits. Those who can afford them, are usually the oligarchs who come to visit their mansions for fun. Canada might have, because it has world’s largest food producer just next to it. Fatty meats, milks fats, milk, and some roots and tubers. Some people also preserve and pickle all kinds of veggies during the summer.
Your lungs burn. The air is so dry, every breath you breathe out, will push water out of your body. The lungs can become dry, and then every breath burns. You might want to replenish the fluids in your body, even when you’re inside. Light alcohol, helps. Of course, then the legendary vodka. But once the alcohol effects are dimmed, you feel more cold. So you need to keep drinking.
In remote areas, nights can get dark. People will not have windows, and if anyone has they will fill it up with winters covers, which basically means putting several wood boards. Nights are dark. Pitch black dark if you get even about 100 meters away from the civilization. You can’t see your own hands or body. You need to have sufficient lighting. The more batteries the better.
You don’t have diesel stuff at all, unless it is specially designed. You should have gas generators, gas cars, gas everything. Diesel will gell up, diesel engines can’t start combustion, or there must be specially designed engines, which have spark plugs. You don’t shut off the car unless you get everything you need. You will sometimes need to heat up the car before starting it, because it just won’t start.
Meat. You don’t waste any body parts. You will clean off the large intestine of all the poop and eat whatever part is edible. You eat the heart, brains, and even break up the bones sometimes for the marrow. Of a horse or a reindeer out of a 100kg carcass, 20kg is the highest amount that should go waste. The skins, are used. The most expert folks will be able to reduce the wastage 16–18kg. The amazing thing is, eating up all the body parts, ensures that people are never ever deficient in any macro or micro nutrients.
Metal is no good. If the temperatures drop, the metal can become brittle. It doesn’t conserve heat. It conducts heat too well. Wood. Wood. Wood. Your body will stick to metal. Wood is the way to go. You can’ burn metal. You can burn wood.
You don’t keep fuel in your home. Fuel means wood. Butane and propane are cute. But you don’t have enough to stock up for the entire winter. Once winter starts, you can’t get more either. You can always go into the forests and get more wood.
You learn to kill and clean a carcass. Really. Deer, horse, and whatever animal you come across.
You don’t want to sweat. So you don’t heat your home too much. You sweat, you die. You want to work hard, okay. BUT DO NOT SWEAT. SWEAT = DEATH. Sweat will go into your clothes. Water is a good conductor of heat, way better than air. You will get cold. If you sweat too much, your clothes will freeze and stick to your skin. The sweat ice will kill you in a few hours. If you sweat, wipe it off, and if you’re in home and you sweat, open the door to cool down the home. YOU DON’T SWEAT.
Home. Home does not mean a 3 bedroom American suburban house. It means a 300 sqft wood cabin. A single room, with some walls strategically placed around the door, to not let the cold air in. More rooms means more wood to heat everything. Wood is not infinite. You need to go into the forest with a few people, where 60% will keep a watch, 20% will cut, and the remaining 20% will do the odd jobs and gathering, cutting up of the trees felled. You can also sweat while cutting wood. YOU DON’T want to go for wood in middle of the winter. So, a single room cabin.
Sex isn’t taboo. It’s the same as America was during the period of settlers moving west. You will probably see your parents going at it. No worries, you’re not the weird one. The weird one is who’s not seen sex.
There aren’t any jobs. Survival is your job.
If you’re from a city like Miami, or from California, where the temperature doesn’t go below 0C, and it’s hot and humid, you can’t live here, without climate acclimatization. You need to move north, slowly, spend a winter and then move further north. You can die from the cold, if you aren’t acclimatized.
That is the gist of what I was able to learn about living in extreme cold.
In 2022, when I went to Switzerland, I met a girl at a hostel[1].
During a long conversation, she told me that she preferred to travel on low-cost airlines across Europe, and it was cheaper than trains.
Like, she had spent only 15-Euros to travel from Berlin to Bern the previous day. The only requirement was that you luggage should be carry-on, the one that fit under the seat.
In 2023, when I went to Europe, I wanted to travel to Iceland from Italy. I found one low-cost airline, Wizz Air. The ticket cost 100 euros. I booked it immediately.
I kept getting notifications for e-check-in. Since, I never had the habit of doing e-check-in and always preferred to do it at the counter, I ignored them.
On the day of my trip, I went to the check-in counter. The lady checked all my details, luggage, and passport and said, ‘Everything is okay, but why haven’t you checked in already?’
‘Oh, I thought of doing it here.’
‘You have to pay printing charges if you want us to issue you boarding pass.’
‘Ah that’s okay. How much would it be?’
‘Four five.’
‘Four to five Euros.’ Quite expensive for a printout, but it is okay, I thought.
‘No. Forty-five Euros.’
I was aghast.
I quickly checked my phone to do web-check-in. But I couldn’t do it since it was 2 hr 30 min before the flight departure.
She noticed it. ‘Okay, let me see if I can do it from my side.’
Lady luck, I thought.
But
She sighed. ‘Sorry, sir, I am also not able to do it. The web check-in closes 3 hours before the flight departure. So you have to.. ‘
Thus, I paid 45 Euros to get the boarding pass for a 100-Euro flight.
‘Why you didn’t do it earlier, sir?’ she asked while handing over the pass.
‘In Singapore and India, there are no charges for printing boarding passes at the counter.’
‘It is different when it comes to low-cost airlines, sir. Nothing is free.’
You read job descriptions, but they all require you to know a tool such as Excel or another software program.
I can hear you thinking.
It doesn’t make sense.
Wasn’t college supposed to help me land a good job? I didn’t learn any of these things.
You start sweating.
You look behind you. You can almost see the fraternity parties and drunken nights fading into oblivion.
There’s nothing on your resume except a degree and involvement in college organizations.
No one’s hiring college graduates without skills. That means you.
You feel alone on a sandbar in the middle of the ocean.
I don’t even know what I like.
Wasn’t I supposed to learn what I enjoy doing in college?
Maybe I should just apply to every job I see online.
Even with all these doubts, you must move forward. You send out hundreds of applications before someone considers your resume. They ask you if you’re willing to start as an unpaid marketing intern.
You think about it. It’s been three months since graduating, and you haven’t taken a serious step towards a meaningful career. When people ask you where you work, you hesitate to tell them about your two waitressing gigs helping you pay off student loans.
Maybe you can balance waitressing and your internship. Maybe not.
You feel pressured from your parents to move out of the house. In turn, you ask the potential employer if there’s an opportunity to turn this unpaid marketing internship into a full-time position.
He says, “Yes.”
You work extra hours at your unpaid internship for four months before asking for pay.
“Hey, I was wondering if you have a chance to talk about a potential pay raise?”
“Sorry. We’re just not ready to bring you on full time.”
You cry after work.
You believed your employer. You trusted them.
It’s been seven months since you graduated college and you’re still waiting tables. Your parents sometimes make remarks about you acting lazy even though you work eighty-hour weeks. You know they don’t mean it. They thought once you graduated they’d finally have time to themselves.
You quit your unpaid internship.
You apply to different job positions. The only phone call you get back is for a receptionist position at a salon. It’s better than saying you work as a waitress, but it pays less. You feel a strong need for validation, so you take the job.
It’s at this point you ask the right questions:
Who will teach me how to make more money?
Who will teach me how to become happy?
From here, you research on the internet those who built themselves up from scratch. At first, you follow the wrong people and waste money on their $199 courses and scams.
After you get burned, you dig deeper and discover people making a real difference. You read what they’ve written and study their habits. Then, you implement their advice.
In time, you discover the paths out of the jail cell that college left you in.
It takes time. Many people never find a way out.
Don’t give up. With enough persistence, you can accomplish your goals.
I know what it’s like. I worked at nine startups before getting hired to head marketing at a 50-million-dollar venture capital firm.
I don’t know your son or his sense of responsibility but I can tell you what happened to me. I was 40 when I got a DUI. I had never been in any trouble before and haven’t since. I will spare you all the circumstances to cut to your question. My best friend bailed me out of jail but had to be paid back immediately. My dad drove to my town the next day and replaced the money. He said he had made that bad choice many times when he was younger and felt I was paying for his sin. I lost my license for 6 months. My son (who was very anti-alcohol for some unknown reason – none of the adults in his life had been drinkers, including myself) rearranged his schedule to drive me. He was 16. His response was that I had spent his whole life rearranging his schedule around me, it wouldn’t hurt him to do the same for me when I needed it. I told my boss. He told me not to drive the company car while I didn’t have a license – he picked me up for work a couple of times when I was in a bind. He also did not report the transgression up the chain. He said he wasn’t sure what the response would be and he didn’t want to risk it. He said not to worry. I had properly reported. Not going further would be on him. I’m saying all that to say this. The worst experience of my life served to show me how blessed I really am even when things are rough. I did not take advantage. I was not a drunk. I had a bad day and made a poor choice. I’m not excusing that. I am so grateful that it was a ticket and not an accident. But the shame I feel about that awful occasion is softened by the love I had around me.
The year before I started at my high school the administration allowed a writer to go undercover and pose as a student so that he could gather material for a book.
He wanted to write a sex, drugs, and hard partying expose full of scandalous true stories about the lives of real American teenagers.
The administration thought that he would be their ‘inside man’, and he would feed them all of the dirt about what the kids were up to.
It didn’t work.
Partially because my high school was really quite tame. All of the scandalousness the writer was hoping for and the admins suspected really only existed in their own fantasy lives. Partially because none of the kids were fooled, turns out the difference between an actual teenager and a grown man wearing makeup is quite evident despite what 21 Jump Street would have you believe. And partially because as word got out about what was going on there was a massive backlash from the parents.
Turns out that allowing a grown man unrestricted access to a student body of underage kids so that he can try to get invited to their parties and snoop on their sex lives is REALLY BAD.
The writer had to flee the scene in disgrace, the principal resigned in disgrace. There was just in general a huge amount of disgrace.
It was the winter of 1978 and I was bumming around Europe going to the train stations at night and using my rail pass instead of paying for a hotel room. This made for some strange side trips. Anyway, I had planned on arriving at Heathrow with no money and flying back home to California.
But the fates decided differently. There was a bad snow storm and some sort of a strike that shut things down for days. Did I mention that I was flying standby? As a side note the Iranian Revolution had driven out the Shah and the airport was packed with Iranians trying to get home.
Stuck in Heathrow with no money and no plane seat in sight. I decided to go into the city and see if I couldn’t rustle up some luck.
So I’m walking down the street and come across a bakery. Ah! Says I, day old bread might be cheap or even free.
I go in the shop and tell the girl behind the counter my story. She looks at me for a long second and says, “I know you, I’m Susan XX, we were in elementary school together.” Small world. Improbable is appropriate, I think. Got something to eat and a great memory. Those days and nights in Heathrow still make me laugh at all the weird, happy, lucky things that happened there.
In grade school there was a boy in our class who always smelled a bit funny. Kids were really cruel about that. They talked about “Danny’s” fleas, how he peed his pants and other really cruel things. To me he did not smell “bad” he smelled of something but it was not that strong.I do not have a strong sense of smell.
In first grade at Valentine’s Day we all made Valentines boxes and made cards to put in each other’s boxes. My mother told me that every child in my class should get a Valentine from me. I thought it was an odd thing to say because that was my plan. I thought it was everyones plan. On Valentines Day were got to open our boxes and see our cards. Some kids brought cookies and we had Kool Aid for our little party that day. Danny came to me afterwards and thanked me for the card I gave him. It turned out it was the only card he had in his box. This I just could not understand.
When Danny got a little older and in 5th grade he made a deal with the boys PE teacher that he and his little brother would come to school early twice a week and do the Gym laundry of towels and would include their clothing in the laundry. Maybe this originally came from the teacher. The smell was gone. Time went by and the teasing about the smell of Danny and is brother ended.
Danny was elected as president of our Graduating class.
China is a good friend to Africa
How did your marriage end?
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
After well over a year of child support and custody battles, allegations and counter allegations it was over. The last court visit was upon me.
Over a year ago we talked and said we would just go through arbitration. We agreed that would be best for all parties concerned. No sense in fighting, she didn’t want custody of the kids so the house would be mine. She could have anything in the house she wanted. Why drag ourselves through the muck? It isn’t like we had hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets.
I still remember that day. My oldest son was an emotional wreck, the youngest was just aloof, not saying much at all. The table we sat at while we had this last civil conversation as married people is still here, about 5 feet from me as I type this.
It was in fact the calmest conversation we had with each other in the months since she abruptly left to go live with her coworker and his friends.
After she had left we fought a lot. Not just because she left but because of how she left. We lived an old fashioned kind of marriage. We had a joint bank account and everything I made was deposited to it. She was supposed to take care of the bills.
Once she started her affair she stopped paying bills and I was clueless. I found out after she left that every utility bill was at least two or three months behind. A week after she left I got a foreclosure notice on the house, she hadn’t paid that in four months. As ridiculous as it sounds I had a 3K plus water bill. I still cant figure that one out. That has to be two years of water bills. If I miss two months they threaten to shut it off.
What she did with all the money I will never know. My brother claims he thought at the time she was doing drugs. Honestly though? Its a mystery that will never be solved.
It all seems so surreal now. But that one day at least a little sanity seemed like it would prevail.
I called the court that Monday and said I was OK for arbitration, I waited for the call back telling me that she had also called and the schedule of appointments we would have to make.
One day waiting turned in to two, then three, then four. On Friday I got a call from a lawyer saying he was representing my then wife and that she was suing for divorce.
I tried to call her to find out what was going on. She didn’t answer.
I got a lawyer. After a couple court dates the lawyer informed me that I would probably have to give her a portion of my pension. Now I understood why she did the abrupt turn around. Spousal support can go on forever if the receiving party doesn’t remarry and since the guy she ran off with was married that was not going to happen.
I told my lawyer that I was not giving her a chunk of my pension for the rest of her life as a reward for screwing me and the kids over. He calmly told me that this was common in NY state for marriages over 15 years and their was little he could do.
I fired him the next day and represented myself.
The court cases went on for about a year, she fought me on everything from custody of the kids that she didn’t want to some generic Kmart pictures that had been in the attic for years. Small arguments we had had years before suddenly became portrayed as huge shouting matches with always just a hint that I may have been abusive.
If you have ever watched any of the reality TV divorce shows it is pretty funny watching people tell obvious lies about each other. It is not as funny when it happens to you and it is real life.
When it started to be obvious things were not going her way the hint was removed with actual allegations. I didn’t just argue with her, now I threw her across a room and jumped on her chest with both feet. It was so ridiculous the judge stopped her, admonished her lawyer and told her no further unproven allegations would be admitted.
I didn’t realize it then but that did cause some damage, not in the way she probably expected though. A month after everything was over my oldest came upon the divorce papers in the house. I came home one day to him sitting on the couch looking as solemn as I have ever seen him. He asked me, “Dad have you ever hit Mom?”
That hurt more then anything she had said about me in court. The image of my own son looking at me like I was a monster will be forever seared in to my brain.
You asked how did it end? My ex sued for divorce, I counter sued. After all the drama the end was pretty anti-climatic.
The judge read the charges for my ex one by one and denied them one by one. She then read my counter-suit arguments one by one and approved them one by one.
All while this was going on my ex just stared at me while I focused my attention on the Judge. We were now two people that had become strangers in a room full of strangers. There were no tears, this had been going on for over a year and half and all the tears had dried up long ago.
That was it, we walked out and headed to the elevator. When she realized she might have to ride down with me she went in to the bathroom to wait until I was gone.
I rode the elevator down, walked outside and stopped at a hotdog stand. After the guy gave me my purchase I asked him what the date was.
It was one week from what would have been our twentieth anniversary.
That is how it ended.
Bakaliaros Pastos Me Kremmithia
Ingredients
3 pounds salt cod
Water as needed
Flour for dipping
1 1/2 cups oil
2 pounds onions, sliced
2 pounds tomatoes, peeled and strained
Pepper to taste
Instructions
Cut cod into small pieces. Skin it, and soak overnight in enough water to cover, changing 2 or 3 times. Remove from water; take out bones; rinse and dry fish well. Dip in flour, shaking off excess, and fry in hot oil until golden.
In same oil, sauté onions until they are soft but not brown. Put them in wide pot, together with oil from the pan and any of the 1 1/2 cups oil not used in the frying. Add tomatoes and pepper. Simmer for 30 – 45 minutes or until onions dissolve.
Add codfish (and /1/2 cup hot water if needed), cover the pot, and cook for 10 minutes, until liquid is absorbed and only the oil remains.
The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima weighed 4.5 metric tons (9,000 pounds). This included the casing, aero-finns, fusing and safing equipment and batteries and particularly a large mass of conventional explosives.
The explosives were used to drive together a large, neutron-reflecting tamper and a critical mass of uranium weighing 64 kg (141 lbs). Naturally occurring uranium is almost entirely u-238, which is less prone to fission through thermal neutron capture, the type of neutrons produced in a nuclear explosion, so the bomb core had been enriched to an average of 80% U-235, and almost all the energy came from the U-235.
Of the 51 kg (113 lbs) of U-235, only about 1%, or 0.5 kg (1.1 lbs) underwent fission, releasing very roughly 64 trillion joules of energy, about the same as 15,000 tons of TNT, or ten times the explosive power of the RAF’s famous thousand-plane raid on Cologne in May of 1945, in which 44 aircraft and hundreds of air crew were lost.
But Little Boy was not filled with anti-matter. Fission only converts a tiny fraction of an atom’s mass into energy, and in Little Boy, that added up to a grand total of roughly 7 grams (0.007 kg).
That, in fact, is the weight of about 10 large butterflies or 20 more typical ones, or 7 paperclips.
Addendum:
The bulk of the uranium that did not fission simply remained uranium, was turned to dust or molten specs, was carried up with the mushroom cloud, and settled out over the Pacific.
If you’re like too many people, that probably scares you, but it absolutely shouldn’t.
Earth’s oceans contain roughly 4.5 billion metric tons of naturally occurring uranium, enough that any randomly collected liter contains about 3.3 micrograms. If you haven’t gone to sleep thus far worrying about Earth’s radioactive oceans, there’s no reason to start. The whole planet is radioactive and always has been, and your bones are considerably more radioactive than seawater—and that’s from natural sources.
In 1983, Stephen Phillips was convicted of a string of rape/burglaries in the Dallas area. He was subsequently sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Phillips was married at the time to a woman named Traci. Phillips claims she rarely visited him, and she divorced him whilst he was still in prison.
In 2008, having served 25 years of his sentence, Phillips was exonerated by DNA evidence, it turns out the real perpetrator was a convicted sex offender who had since died.
Phillips was released and eventually secured a $6M settlement in compensation for the terrible miscarriage of justice he had suffered, he attempted to restart his life, presumably hoping to never see the inside of a courtroom again, but that wasn’t to be.
Traci, his ex-wife, read about his settlement in the papers, and decided to take him to court claiming she should get a slice of his compensation as part of her divorce settlement, despite the fact that the divorce happened decades prior and she had long since moved on with her life and remarried.
After a protracted legal battle, during which time Phillips also had to fight off a spurious $2M claim from his former lawyer, the court eventually threw it all out in 2014 and Phillips was finally allowed to attempt to enjoy what remained of his life without the involvement of the legal system for the first time in 31 straight years.
It takes a certain kind of person to look at the compensation someone gets for spending a quarter of a century behind bars for a serious sexual assault that they did not commit and think they will try and take a chunk of that for no good reason other than greed.
One day at the end of class, Miss Thomas asked her fourth graders to go home and come up with a true story with a moral. The following day she asked for the first volunteer to tell their story. Little Billy raised his hand. “My dad owns a farm and every Sunday we load the chicken eggs on the truck and drive into town to sell them at the market. Well, one Sunday we hit a big bump and all the eggs flew out of the basket and onto the road.” When asked by Miss Thomas for the moral of the story, Billy replied, “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.” “Very good, Billy.” Little Suzy went next and kept with the poultry theme. “My dad owns a farm too. Every weekend we take the chicken eggs and put them in the incubator. Last weekend only eight of the 12 eggs hatched.” Again, Miss Thomas asked for the moral of the story. Suzy replied, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” “Good moral, Suzy.” Next up was little Jimmy. “My Aunt Helen was a fighter pilot, and her plane was shot down over enemy territory. She jumped out before it crashed but could only take a bottle of whiskey, a machine gun and a machete. On the way down, she drank the whiskey. Then she landed right in the middle of about 100 enemy soldiers. She shot and killed about 70 with her machine gun, but then she ran out of ammo. So she pulled out her machete and killed over 20 more. Then the blade on the machete broke, so she had to kill the remaining combatants with her bare hands. Luckily she was rescued soon after.” A shocked Miss Thomas paused and said, “Good Lord, Jimmy, what’s the moral for that?!” Jimmy replied, “Don’t fuck with Aunt Helen when she’s been drinking.”
> Americans now find themselves living in an oligarchy administered day-to-day by institutional bureaucracies that move in lock-step with each other, enforcing a set of ideologically-driven top-down imperatives that seemingly change from week-to-week and cover nearly every subject under the sun. <
He represented a guy on a breaking and entering charge. When the police arrived at the store, the silent alarm was still sounding and the defendant was standing at the end of one of the aisles (it was a grocery store). He was arrested without incident and didn’t make any statements while in custody.
The defendant was about 40 and had a long record of burglaries. However, he hadn’t had one for about ten years. Here was the defense presented at trial:
The defendant testified that he was a master thief. He explained that he knew the store had a silent alarm because he was very familiar with those systems. He explained in detail how he could have disarmed it had he chosen to do so.
He had entered through the roof. There was some sort of service door that he accessed by climbing a drain pipe. When asked, he explained that he didn’t enter through a ground level door or window because it would have required him to break something. The service door was secured by a simple padlock. He had years of experience defeating those locks and explained in detail how he could do so.
So why was he in the store in the middle of the night?
He had been in the store a day earlier and noticed how badly the products were arranged on the shelves. The end caps were particularly unattractive. He needed a job but didn’t think he could get hired by the store via the standard process because of his record. So, he decided to break in and rearrange some of the shelves to demonstrate to the owner how he could be a beneficial employee. The police simply arrived faster than he had anticipated. Because he was such an experienced thief, he said he could have easily broken into the store and looted it without getting caught. How could he prove he was a successful thief? That’s why he didn’t have a record over the preceding 10 years. He had never gotten caught.
So, his defense was that if he was really planning on stealing from the store, he would have never gotten caught. He was there as part of an unorthodox attempt to get a job BC he wanted to stop being a criminal.
Back in the day, I would periodically use hydrogen peroxide to clean my ears out. This was done by my family doctor and he recommended it along with soaking my head in a bathtub of warm water.
You see, I had a problem with excessive earwax fabrication. Oh, not a common problem for certain, but I had to maintain this particular issue with my body.
So one day, my ear got stuffed up, and when I tried my hydrogen peroxide solution, it only seemed to make things worse. Instead it got more and more clogged up. Indeed, for an entire month, my ear was caked full of earwax and I was at a loss as to what to do… not so serious to go to the doctor, it’s earwax after all, but serious enough to be a real problem personally…
…enter a business trip. I went and interviewed at a hot water heater company in Tennessee. And after the interview and meal, I went to the hotel. I drew a tub full of hot water and lay down to soak in it.
I soaked for a good hour, and then I held my breath and tried to blow the water out. And then it happened!
An explosion of earwax released, and many it was a sight to behold. Where the heck was all this earwax from? I don’t know, but I must have had globs and globs of the stuff. It was amazing!
Of course it ended up falling apart in the hot water, but you could tell, it was like thick honey that turned to slimy powder. Quite the experience, I’ll tell you what.
Here’s a LEGO Millennium Falcon, retail price $100:
Here’s another LEGO Millennium Falcon, retail price $7:
Back in 2004, scammer Bill Swanberg realized that Target, Walmart, and other stores sold both of these sets. Here’s what he’d do:
First, he went into a store, and bought both sets. Totally legitimately. He took the smaller one, and scanned in the barcode. Next, he re-sized it so that it would be the same size as the barcode of the larger set— and printed out gobs of them on glossy sticker paper.
Next, he’d bring a few with him into an unsuspecting store. He’d find the LARGE version of the LEGO Millennium Falcon, and cover up the barcode with one of his stickers of the SMALL set’s barcode.
Then, he’d trot up to the register, and the associate would ring them up. “Woah, this big set only costs $7.00?” “Yeah, it must be on sale, that’s why I grabbed it, LOL!” “Wow, nice find!”
Then he’d leave, remove the stickers carefully, and sell them online at a “discounted price” of, say, $50. Everyone online was amazed at the great deal, and lined up to buy them. They expected he got a great deal on them, but 50% off didn’t seem like it was all that suspicious.
He did this for quite a while— but gradually the various stores became aware that their inventory wasn’t lining up. Target noticed the pattern in 5 different states, and eventually had a security guard stop him in a store in Portland, Oregon, after he bought 10 copies of the same Millennium Falcon set. In his car, he had over $6000 of LEGO, as well as a laptop denoting other stores in the area that he planned to visit (or had already visited).
Upon review, Target alone estimated that he had resold over $200,000 worth of their merchandise— and that he had sold over $600,000 online for the past couple of years (much of it likely being from similar scams).
Why is China so afraid of asking for help when there is a virulent virus outbreak?
In 2008, a Richter Scale 8.0 earthquake shook the mountainous Sichuan province in China. When the dust settled, ~ 70,000 people were dead. ~ 20,000 people were missing, presumably dead. ~ 375,000 people were injured. ~ 5 million people were left homeless. It’s one of the greatest natural disasters in the twenty first century. The disaster was so great, that China immediately asked for help from the rest of the world.
The US government gave ~ $4.5 million in aid, plus a guy to the Beijing Earthquake Center to look at their data. So that’s what, 80 cents for each affected person?
The rest of the world pooled together ~ $450 million, plus some emergency supplies. Most of it came from China’s immediate neighbors.
The Chinese people donated $1.5 billion within the first 2 days.
The Chinese government gave the earthquake-stricken area $130 billion. 98% was spent in the first 3 years. 100,000 PLA troops rushed into the earthquake area within 2 days to help.
This was back in 2008, when China’s GDP per capita was only about ~ $3,500 a year. Now it’s over $10,000.
So I don’t think China is “afraid” of asking for help. They are realistic. They simply don’t expect to get much help. Something symbolic, maybe, which will be much appreciated, but they must do the heavy lifting themselves. Big countries must stand on their own two feet, because you really can’t expect a bunny to lift up a fallen elephant! The elephant needs to get up on its own. Reactions to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake – Wikipedia
No normal country should count on foreign aid to solve their problems.
In the current Coronavirus outbreak, China is mostly helping other countries: It isolated and published the sequence of this new virus, developed diagnostic kits and diagnostic protocols, and shared all these with the WHO and the world. It has put in border controls aimed at keeping infected people from going abroad. It publishes treatment protocols and regular updates as doctors discover and develop their knowledge of this disease. It has put 50+million people under quarantine. It is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the global management of this novel disease.
PS: The US gave Haiti $12 billion in aid after Haiti earthquake. 2010 Haiti earthquake
Haiti is right at America’s doorstep, and the American people are very generous towards Haiti. Today Haiti looks like this:
Turned out that a big chunk of that $12 billion was the US State Department writing checks to the US Department of Defense for sending 200 guys to Haiti to “provide security”. The rest mostly went to NGOs’ hotels, jeeps, salary, and “hardship pay”. It’s a legitimate question to ask if International Aid is really worth it, not only for the Chinese People, but also for the American People as well.
“USAID has spent about $1.5 billion since the earthquake,” Johnston told Goats & Soda. “Less than a penny of every dollar goes directly to a Haitian organization.”
Where I live anything that the courts could say was a trap was illegal. I had people cutting across my property to get to the river, the previous owner had just laid razor wire coils in the bush. If anyone had got hurt on it. I would have gone to jail. So I carefully pulled it all out and placed monster boulders everywhere. No one can say a boulder is a trap.
There was a guy who had a private road leading to his place. People kept tearing it up after it rained in their 4×4 , side x side, and atvs. He had no trespassing signs, and private road signs, and people ignored them. So he stretched a steel cable between two trees, with a padlock, so he could open it. He could only put up the cable where he had two big trees close enough to the road, to string it, and enough trees to stop them from driving around the make shift gate, so it was about 50 m up his road .
A teenage girl on an ATV drove by his private road and no trespassing signs, and got knocked off her quad by the rope. They sued the land owner and won. This is in Canada, rules might be different elsewhere.
A few years ago, when I was agonizing over my future career path, my dad told me to make a list of the things in life that make me happy.
Then, split the list into two categories.
The first category includes any type of happiness that you can feel instantaneously. Sipping hot chocolate on a chilly day. Hitting the snooze button to steal another five minutes of sleep. Binge-watching the new season of your favorite show.
The second category includes any type of happiness that takes a long time to appear and a long time to fade. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Mastering difficult skills. Building closer relationships with the people you love.
Some of the items in the first category, my dad explained, might clash with the items in the second. The more hot chocolate you consume, for example, the less nutritious your diet becomes.
But a few items in on your list, just a few, might actually fit into both categories. The best painters in the world obtain joy both from the instantaneous act of painting and from the ultimate goal of becoming a world-class artist. The best soccer players love being out on the field just as much as they love becoming better athletes.
Circle these items, these things that bring you both short-term happiness and long-term happiness.
These are the things that you can spend your life doing, and never feel like you’ve worked a day.
You ever been to a Mcdonalds where the manager is an ass and the employees have had enough of it?
I once went to a Mcdonalds that had a mass quit a few hours later. I went up to the counter and ordered a Mcchicken, a regular coke, a small fry and an ice cream cone.
They take my money and a few minutes later come back with my order, which is… heavier than normal. And my ice cream cone is a foot tall. And my coke is a large.
(It looked like this)
“Woops.” says the cashier. “Looks like we accidentally supersized your order.” she says with a wink. I could tell from the sarcastic tone that there was no accident about it.
I returned to my table and sat down, and noticed that my McChicken wasn’t alone, there was also a chicken select sandwich in there. I was a really, really poor kid at the time. The Mcydee’s dollar menu was a rare treat for me, and getting one of the main menu items was just amazing!
Definitely still my favorite Mcdubbers sandwich.
My ‘small fry’ took up an entire large fry box, and then there was about a large fry’s worth of loose fries in there. Like the entire bag was drowning in fried potato goodness.
So intentionally giving me a lot of extra food to spite your boss? That’s the strangest way my order’s ever been messed up. Part of me wished I had ordered more.
Edit: So Quora apparently thinks I need a credential to prove that I sometimes eat fast food and sometimes get my order messed up. This is what happens when you let an AI make decisions.
I knew my dad was a Bad Ass early in my youth. I didn’t realize how much of a Bad Ass he was until last spring. You see my father served in WWll with the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team in France and Italy. A segregated US Army regiment made up of Americans of Japanese ancestry from the US mainland and Hawaii. A large portion of these warriors came from “internment” (prison) camps from which their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and family were incarcerated. These guys had something to prove. We are AMERICANS! And prove it they did. For their valor the 100th Battalion/ 442nd Regimental Combat Team has been recognized as the most decorated unit in American history. The 100th Bn/ 442nd RCT earned more than 18,000 awards, including 9,500 Purple Hearts, 5,200 Bronze Star Medals, 588 Silver Stars, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 7 Distinguished Unit Citations, 21 Congressional Medal of Honor awards and the Congressional Gold Medal. Now that’s BAD ASS! My dad was gravely wounded in Italy and left to die on the battlefield as he was not believed to survive his wounds. When the burial detail came upon my father he was still alive and eventually recovered after a long convalescence. We know this story as it was told to my cousin by the soldier who found my father still alive. Unfortunately I never had the pleasure to meet his as he passed a few years ago. My father was awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and other awards for his efforts. He was never better than 70% disabled and eventually upgraded to 100%. So I had the opportunity to travel to France and Italy last year on a tour that follows in the footsteps of these American heroes. I walked where they walked, saw the trenches whey they lay and climbed the slope’s and mountains that they climbed. But I did it in the daylight. They did it at night in the cover of darkness. These were the mountains near Carrara Italy. Impressive just to do this in daylight. Crazy to think it could be done at night! That’s when I knew how much of a BAD ASS my father and the Nisei warriors of the 100th Bn/ 442nd RCT were. I could not be more proud. R.I.P. dad. PFC Roy T. Tsutsui Co. F 442nd RCT
Whenever I was in public school, I had fairly good grades, I didn’t study much so it was crazy how good I was doing. This all lasted until 4th grade, whenever I got put in this horrible woman’s class. I was the kind of child to speak my mind and get SUPER excited about things. This woman (not calling her a teacher because she doesn’t DESERVE the title) did not LIKE that. She decided to target me specifically for her relentless bullying of literal infants. Anytime I would get excited about anything, she would tell me to flip my card (yknow, the stupid elementary punishment bullshit). Anytime I would do something that would be considered out of place in a classroom, she’d make me flip my card. She would rally my classmates to bully me too.
As the school year went on and the bullying from the woman and my classmates got worse, I started falling into a deeper pit of my own depression stemmed from the abandonment of my dad, over-protective (yet still somehow neglectful) mom, and the bullying I had to suffer at school. This made my grades drop HARD. Specifically in my math and science class, as I was not being properly taught by this woman.
Every time we would get to a new part of our science workbook, we would get given a science study guide that we had to fill out ourselves that she would then grade and fix whatever mistakes we had made. A month prior to the specific incident I’m about to tell you, my mom had noticed how bad my grades had dropped and made sure I studied (which did NOT help). She always made sure I had my study guides and stuff I got from school.
It was a regular school day for me, we had just gotten a new study guide that we were going to fill out. The woman decided to put us in pairs to do them so we could discuss the answers and stuff. She put me in a pair with the nicest girl in the class (picture the human incarnate of an excited golden retriever) and we began working on it. We finished around the same time the others did and submitted our papers. After we all finished, the woman started grading our papers. Whenever she had finished, she handed most of them out, but she held on to two of them, my friend and I’s. She waved them around in the air and said “THESE two don’t have any names… Oh well… Who wants to play 20 pickup?” and then ripped them to shreds and threw the remains on the floor. My friend and I were crushed (and fucking humiliated) as we both really needed those papers and here we were, watching our classmates pick up and fight over who could get the most pieces like it was some sort of game played at a birthday party.
A few minutes later, she picked up her copy of the study guide and said to us, “I’ve got one more left. I’m thinking of a number and whichever one of you can get closest to it wins the paper.”
I ended up winning and she gave it to me, which I instantly started working on. I figured she would want me to redo it as soon as she gave it to me. About a minute passed and she walked to my desk, swiped it from me and gave it to my friend saying that I “Wasn’t paying attention”. I felt like absolute shit the whole day.
My mom had asked me where my study guide was, and I told her what happened. She went on an absolute RAMPAGE.
Luckily the next parent-teacher conference was pretty soon after and she didn’t want to embarrass me by showing up to the school while my classmates were there. I don’t know exactly what happened during the meeting between her and my mom as I was sat outside the classroom. All that I know is that whenever the door opened, the woman looked pale and terrified and my mom had her classic murder look that she would get after laying heavily into someone.
She never told me what she had said or done, but that woman never dared to bother me again. She didn’t even like LOOKING at me. Anytime I did something she didn’t like, she would glare at me like I just killed her entire family and set her house on fire and reply something passive aggressive.
My mom ended up finding out that she had done this to other kids too at other schools. Pretty sure the bitch was on tenure though, so there wasn’t anything we could’ve really done.
I still see her around town though and she acts overly excited to see me. The first time I had seen her after I finished 4th grade, I was about 13 and was super socially anxious and had panic attacks whenever I was reminded of that experience, I was at the dollar store with my grandma and the woman came up to me and started talking, I of course was trying to keep my shit together and not start having a full blown panic attack so I was very quiet. She said “Aw, what’s wrong? Are you shy now?”, all of my fear was replaced with rage and I had to stop myself from giving her the sickest right hook of her life. I regret not doing it while I was still a kid and wouldn’t have had very many repercussions for it.
SO, I’m not going to name-drop her, as I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, but I will say that if you live in or are planning on moving to Sabine parish, LISTEN to your kids if they tell you about bullying from their classmates or any of the school staff. Hell, do that even if you DON’T live in this area.
Burkina Faso’s President Has Good News for Africa but Very Bad News for the West
My parents started middle class and worked their way to the 1%.
It isn’t this huge party. But there are some basic things you don’t worry about as much.
It is weird because I didn’t grow up wealthy at all. And had a strict-as-hell dad.
At some point after I left home, things really ramped up. My dad left the military and became a high ranking exec with SAP.
My mom started a vineyard at their farm. And sold off a lot of great real estate investments she’d made over the years.
But you would never know it if you bumped into them at the store or something. They have very humble personalities. If you went to their home however..
When I wake up in the morning in their guest room I get to enjoy a view like this:
When I visit they spend most of their time working around the house and on the farm. We don’t really sit still much. And even when we are it is because we are working on something. We are worker-bees.
Also, I think everyone has a misconception as to how wealthy the top 1% is. 10 years ago, even I had the impression that 1%ers don’t work hard and take 9 vacations a year. I think it is just different if you started small and got there in your middle age and have kids.
At that point, you are more concerned with managing everything and making sure your kids are doing OK.
(Maybe that it is .01 percenters that do all that laying around by the pool…)
Either way I love visiting my parents, but every time I get home here in Florida my house feels really really small! 🙂
My last name is Warehouse, just like the building. This has led to lots of interesting things, like getting calls at my work about finding things at our district warehouse or getting my account banned on Quora back when they cared if you used a fake name. It also means I get weird deliveries.
One day a big cardboard box showed up addressed to my wife, so I left it on the table without really looking at it. A few days later it was still untouched, so I asked her why she hadn’t opened it yet.
“That’s not mine, it’s got sports stuff all over it.”
And it did! Now that I looked, the box clearly had a Nike logo on it. And on closer inspection, its address tag was a mess. There was a weird poorly printed label that said “redirect” that had my wife’s name and our address in California on it, slapped over a very official looking original label that said the box was bound for a warehouse in New Jersey.
And that’s how I ended up with a bow of 24 pairs of XXL Nike football gloves meant for the New York giants.
In 1981 I worked as a computer operator for a company, then owned by Tex Schramm (owner of the Dallas Cowboys). There was a young woman, from a well to do family and graduate of Radford, working there. She was really into women’s lib.
There was also an older gentleman, long past the possible retirement age. One day I was in the lobby as the young woman, who I had recently begun dating, was ready to leave. The older gentleman was leaving, and held the door for her.
She lit into him. “Just because I’m a lady, you don’t have to hold the door for me.”
The response: “My dear Joanne, I do not hold the door for you because you are a lady. That would be presumptuous of me. I hold the door for you because I am a gentleman.”
In my second year at my current job, a lady was hired to replace my senior who had resigned.
The job was in a public office and for the most part was quite easy going. Somebody off the streets could learn the essentials in just a few hours.
The lady who came had seniority and several years more experience than me working at a different branch. I therefore expected her to have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share with me.
‘How does this work again?’
‘Did I do this right?’
‘How about you be the one to do that? You’re so good at it.’
‘Can you show me how to do (such-and-such) again?’
The lady transferred from a location that had the exact same type of system and technology as mine yet she had not a clue how to do anything!
How was this woman in a senior position? She didn’t know anything about the job. Was she dumb?
A week of ‘training’ had passed and she didn’t really learn anything and had to be supervised at all times. Before I could find out how it was that she was so slow she suddenly vanished.
She stopped turning up at work and calls to her phone went unanswered. I sent an email to HR explaining that she had gone AWOL. They gave some half-assed reply. A few months later, after she had long been forgotten, I get a frantic letter from HR saying that they have been paying her salary and they’ve just become aware that she has not been turning up to work.
‘No shit,’ I say in my mind.
HR investigates and finds out that she had accepted another job elsewhere the entire time and was gladly accepting two salaries. HR demanded that she return the unearned salary. She said she would but she was going through financial distress at the moment.
She never returned a cent. HR washed their hands of the matter and kept it hush hush.
Turns out she wasn’t dumb at all.
So my answer to the question ‘what sets off red flags on an employee’s first day?’
When I was small, my parents sent me to my grandparents (who lived in a rural area) every summer so they could look after me when school was out.
My grandpa was born late 191x or early 192x – even he didn’t remember exactly.
When I was 6 years old, I started going to elementary school which started to have summer assignments. So, when my parents sent me to my grandparents for the “vacation”, I brought my textbooks and books with me to study. One day, I remember, I brought a book to my grandpa and asked him for some help with my summer homework. He smiled, “Oh, sweetie, I can’t help you with that!”. “Why?!?!”, I was surprised, he’d never said “No” to me. A second of hesitation, then he said, “I don’t know how to read”
It didn’t make sense to my 6-year-old me; but later, when I grew up, I knew, it was the result of war and poverty, my grandpa never went to school.
Anyway, “But you know EVERYTHING!”, the little me was shocked and questioned him. He stroked my hair, “Ah, I just don’t know how to read texts in the book. I can read other things. I can read leaves to know their trees. I can read the soil to know what I need to do to get more produces. I can read the river to know if it’s safe to go down and play. I can read the night sky to know if tomorrow it will be rain or shine”, he explained to me.
A light bulb went off in my head; he taught me to ‘read’ some of those things, why didn’t I teach him to read texts? So, I offered him, “Do you want to study with me, grandpa?”.
So, I started to be his ‘teacher’. I taught him a, b, c. He studied, then forgot everything in the next summer because he didn’t use it frequently enough; so I had to teach him again.
I taught him to read, every summer, until he passed away.
I have had a number of jobs in my time. I’ve been a framing carpenter, finish carpenter, furniture maker, the army, and being in the office in the construction industry as a project manager for the last 16 years.
Working in the trades can indeed be very lucrative, and I know a number of plumbers and welders that do significantly better than me financially, but from someone that has worked in the trades and in the corporate office, there are a lot of benefits of the office world that help pull people away from going into the trades.
The first is simply being warm when it’s cold, dry when it’s raining and cool when it is hot. It’s pretty tough going to work everyday to be freezing cold all day or burning up hot. Secondly, you can do stuff after work without needing to take a shower or change clothes first. Third, you don’t beat up your body so much working in an office. I’m 47 so still well short of retirement age and I really can’t imagine doing the type of work I did in my 20’s all day, every day. That was tough work and I got injured a lot and had to just suck it up and work through it. Injuries these days take a lot longer to heal too.
Occasionally I get all nostalgic about walking floor joists 30 feet up with a 16ft 2×8 on my shoulder, then I’ll have a flashback to what that actually feels like doing it every day and appreciate very much my AC and roof and clean clothes. My nostalgia forgets doing that same joist walk with feet numb from the cold, or sweat in my eyes or a lingering injury.
The trades are good, solid, well paying professions, but if you have any other alternatives they are definitely a young person’s game. The people I see my age still working in the trades (doing the work, not management like me) are physically beaten down for the most part with bad backs, bad knees, and a collection of scars that make anyone take notice.
The Duran: Neocons want WAR in Middle East and Israel, the US will LOSE Big
Serbian Skillet Pork (Muckalica — Yugoslavia)
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds boneless pork shoulder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
3 medium onions, sliced
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 medium green bell pepper, cut into strips
2 ounces feta cheese, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
Hot cooked rice
Instructions
Trim fat from pork. Cut pork into 1/2-inch slices; cut slices into 1/2-inch strips. Heat oil in skillet until hot. Cook and stir pork in oil over medium heat until brown, about 15 minutes; drain. Add water, onions, tomato, salt, paprika, pepper and red pepper. Cover and simmer until pork is tender, about 30 minutes, adding water if necessary.
Add green pepper. Cover and simmer until green pepper is crisp-tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Top with cheese.
When I was about 21 or 22, I worked for this remodeling contractor. My dad does remodels and has rental properties, and I’ve always been a DIY type of guy, so I learned young and had about 10 years of experience at the time. Anyway, one day I was at work, and the boss nor the crew lead could figure out how to solve a problem with some vinyl flooring and the customer was there watching them for a good half hour or so. I repeatedly tried to make suggestions but just kept getting ignored. Finally I just stepped up and tried something and it worked. The next day the owner told me that work was slow and he didn’t need me to come in. That same afternoon he called me and let me go due to “not having the quality of work that his company is known for”. I’m sure he was just upset that I made him look like an ass in front of a customer. Anyway, fast forward to a week later, this customer had a family member that was also gonna get some work done by the same company. The previous customer gave the family member my Facebook info and she contacted me and asked if I could do a job for her. About 3 days in, my old boss came and the look on his face when he saw me doing the job he came to bid for was priceless.
1. Don’t call someone more than twice continuously. If they don’t pick up your call that mean they have something more important to attend to.
2. When someone drops something on the floor by mistake or drops food from the plate or doesn’t know how to use a knife/fork don’t stare at them. The same goes to people sneezing, coughing or even an uncontrollable fart. It’s an involuntary reaction.
3. Always skip using the washroom beside the occupied one. It makes it uneasy for the person in the occupied washroom as well as yourself if you occupy the one right next to theirs.
4. If you’re talking to someone and notice any of the following, they’re trying to end the conversation:
Their eyes keep darting away.
They angle their body away from you.
They give you rapid one-word answers.
5. When someone you know has an obvious change in appearance, e.g., weight gain/loss, bald spot, acne. never comment on it until they talk about it to you, they already know what is happened to them.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Do not make plans in front of those you are not involving.
9. When meeting someone after a long time, unless they want to talk about it, don’t ask them their age and salary.
10. When a friend/colleague offers you some food, you can politely say No. But, don’t do this after tasting or smelling it. It’s an insult to the one who has offered it to you.
This is John Eisenman. He lost his daughter to s-exual trafficking. She was sold for $1,000 in Seattle Washington. He did what a father should do and researched, investigated and found out about her abduction. He RESCUED her HIMSELF. He found out the person who sold her into trafficking was her 19 year old boyfriend. He met up with him, abducted him, bludgeoned and stabbed him to death in Nov, 2020. The authorities found him [dead AF boyfriend] in Oct 2021 in the trunk of the car he abandoned. John Eisenman sits in jail knowing his daughter is safe and growing up after he has already lived 60 years of his life. I bet you, he rests easy. Live your life to the fullest. He did his absolute best to make sure his child have the opportunity to do the same no matter what the sacrifice.
My POV:- I think justice can’t be black or white, it’s a greyish territory. I’m not a supporter of taking revenge but rather law doing the job. Although, we all know how deeply fukced up is our law and order.
The decade of the 1950s was the time of my well-remembered childhood. Some of the memorable un-nice features follow:
Coal shuttles in basement windows to fill the coal bins for the furnace that kept you alive in subzero weather. The loud roaring rattle of the coal can never be forgotten. My wife grew up in destroyed Berlin where the kids snuck onto the train tracks to steal coal for cooking and winter heat, especially before 1950.
Ice trucks for the “ice box,” which was the refrigerator of the day. Great fun to persuade the iceman to chip you a sliver (possibly unsanitary) in the steaming summer.
Raking and burning leaves either in the curb or in our own home trash bin (a large ugly concrete “bathtub” for burning all wastes) beside the separated garage.
After we graduated from paying marbles on the sidewalks, the never-forgotten aroma of the lightly powdered flat bubble gum accompanying Topps baseball cards used for flip-card contests. Still remember the rules.
Friends and relatives died a lot. Lost a cousin to polio despite her father being chief of staff of the largest hospital in St. Louis. Lost two more to a house fire and others to asthma. I narrowly avoided rheumatic fever and a close call with total vision loss from measles. Number 1 brother developed Type 1 diabetes, but that was hereditary (skips a generation); lasted a LONG time.
Turning on the lights to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night and watching hundreds of roaches scurry across the floor into the corners and cracks.
Sticky asphalt from the tarred streets that would permanently ruin any carpet in a snooty home.
Kids (and adults) hitch-hiked. I hitch-hiked regularly many miles to high school and college and back rather than take buses with long cold/hot waits and transfers. Just after the 50s, noticed how remarkably easier it was to hitch a ride when in my ROTC uniform.
Teenagers still in school who had never worked had no vote in national elections.
No air conditioning. Vornado floor fans, window fans blowing over block of ice, or car rides with windows open down to “Cool Valley” (yes, a real town) a low-altitude area with much lower temperatures were our only options when temperatures soared far over 100 degrees and humidity was ~80%.
Construction sites were wonderful if dangerous playgrounds for kids. Unsafe, with nails sticking out, deep ditches and holes to avoid. Taught caution and the value of tetanus shots. Learned aromas like the smell of wet concrete, rebar, freshly cut wood; mountains of dirt for King of the Hill games, playing “war” with wooden toy 1904 Springfield rifles in literal miles of dug-up ground for the interstate highways.
Homes and office buildings were insulated with asbestos, long before attorneys and asbestos-removal firms became millionaires from it.
Local stenches were many and varied. Worst were from the fish processing plants and cattle/pig stockyards, with the “nicest” smells being chemical fumes from riverside plants.
Working on the USS Admiral, was required to check for “floaters” under the port paddlewheel every morning by opening the trash slot over the water.
Learned to water-ski on the turd-filled muddy Mississippi.
US Army chemical warfare testers sprayed my hometown with zinc cadmium sulfide, a fluorescent additive of some kind and a possibly radioactive agent to secretly study possible bio/chem weapon vectors … later explained “to protect us from potential Soviet attack”.
Nearby communities (Weldon Spring, West Lake and Berkeley … but not CA) were being contaminated by toxic waste buried by one of my future employers after they processed the uranium for the first nuclear weapons. Not done on my watch; however, as an adult I did work at a number of the other tainted sites: their original chemical plant and their radiological branch.
Cap guns: actual gunpowder explosives were loaded in a tight roll to be fired by your Lone Ranger or Cisco Kid cap gun. Bangs and sparks with gunpowder’s sulpuric stench …
Bows and arrows (with real points).
Jungle gyms were tall blocks of hard unadorned steel pipes over bare dirt dusty in summer and frozen in winter.
Complete and utter obedience to our family’s Commanding Officer who actually posted duty rosters for my 4 siblings (girl was exempted) which I was required to enforce as senior NCO.
Amused myself by playing war battle games with bottlecaps. Falstaff, Budweiser and a few Stag … strewn from the six-pack dad chugged every night. Didn’t realize he was a drunk until years later.
Black and white TV with the Indian-head test pattern after midnight when all stations went “off the air.”
TV showed stereotypical characters in every show like: the Howdy Doody Show; Kukla, Fran & Ollie; Texas Bruce’s Wranglers’ Club; Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, Zorro, etc.
Friday night fights: boxing matches every weekend.
Racism was acknowledged but not celebrated. Had black school/playmates (parochial school) and babysitters who all lived in a nearby section of the city.
Racial mockery was the basis of much TV/radio humor. Amos & Andy on the radio, Milton Berle’s burlesque schticks, Pat & Mike Irish insults, Sid Caesar’s fake Japanese babble, Jose Jimenez jibes at Mexicans on the Steve Allen Show … don’t remember German accents being considered “funny” until Hogan’s Heroes.
Classmate who later became a Japanese citizen used to play records advocating anti-Communism from John Birch (didn’t know of his Society then). Nothing mean or nasty that I remember from those lectures but quite un-PC now, I guess.
BB guns: never permitted in our home, with 4 boy, 1 girl; but vet dad built us an actual shooting range for my 13th birthday present, a .22 bolt-action Winchester … a literal deep sandbox at one end of the basement under a steel sheet canted at a 45 degree angle. Access controlled by dad, of course.
Joined my school’s rifle club in 1959 when they (not me) won the national championship with open sight .22s mounted on Garand 30–30 war surplus stocks. Kids shot rifles as a matter of indifference. Safely too, because safety was taught, responsibility was demanded … and disobedience was both unthinkable and unacceptable.
History will one day see how the U.S., its dog nations, the EU, its fellow colonialists and native slaughtering nations and its slave nations, treatment of China. Is a modern version of African slavery, Nazi Crimes, barbaric colonialism by the Europeans and the Savage rape and murder of Nanking!
How do they treat China and the Chinese race. Terrible, obnoxious and despicable. What more to say! Slurring at every turn, blindly accusing China without facts, evidence and proof calling them copy cats, stealing intellectual property, cheating, for being aggressive and threatening nations, genocide that never happen, causing Covid! All are no different from the Nazi blaming of the Jews!
Just backed by a pack of lies. And using coercion and bribery to get a dissident or two to cast doubt on China! If you are one of the group I single out please stop being a pawn or a parrot in these fake news. China won’t yield to these ludicrousness and shameful act of throwing shit!
To me you can accuse China of not bordering about its cosmetic cover up of its desire to ensure that the century of humiliation can never happen again and that it will do everything in its power to get back it’s rightful place in history. Remember how thousands of black people are wrongly accused by the white people for all sorts of thing and them lynch them!
History will show the truth that the U.S. and the west are doing the same to the Chinese. Sure without the lynching!
I owned a flying school and had a receptionist who was good with the customers.
One day I got a phone call at about 4PM from a student asking why we had shut early. I assured him we hadn’t as we had people flying till 7 that night. He told me he was standing outside and the doors were locked.
When I came in next day I checked CCTV and sure enough she had locked up at 3:30 whilst people were still flying. She returned at just before 5:30. I checked the day before and the same thing had happened. She locked up at 3:30 and returned at 5:30. It was near the end of the month so I waited till the end of the month to see what hours she had claimed for.
I also called a government employer hotline that is set up in the UK to give free help and advice. After explaining the situation they told me she was in breach of her contract, and it was gross misconduct which is a sackable offence. They said she was “stealing time” from me. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt so I decided to listen to her before I took action. The helpline advised that if her answers weren’t agreeable then I should suspend her on full pay whilst I investigated.
Sure enough she had claimed for her full allowance on her payslip so I called her into my office to explain herself. She claimed to have “forgotten” to take it off her hours worked. I was more concerned about leaving the building unattended whilst we had students still flying. What happened if we had an emergency? She refused to answer me so I was left with no option but to suspend her.
I studied the CCTV for previous 30 days and she had done it for almost 50% of her shifts! Despite this I didn’t want to lose her, the students loved her.
So I invited her back for a formal interview and offered to allow her to bring a witness. She declined the representation. I explained that the interview was being recorded and I had my solicitor on speaker phone to listen and ensure we both were acting within the law. It was to protect both of us.
I asked her for her reasons and she said that she had been visiting her boyfriend and having lunch together. He was an instructor pilot for me but had never left mid-shift. I then explained about why it was wrong to leave the premises whilst we still had aircraft in the air. She just shrugged her shoulders. I asked her to wait outside whilst I spoke to my legal adviser.
Truth be told I couldn’t afford to lose her. I had previously told the helpline that and they recommended “based on my explanation” that I give her a final written warning. This should be enough to make her realise it was wrong. I decided to go down this route.
After 5 minutes I invited her back into the room to give her the final written warning and a good explanation why this was happening. As I said to her “Thank you for your patience,” she replied, “Are you really doing this?”
“I am.”
Then she erupted! Quite a verbal assault against me! Then she pulled out an envelope and handed it to me saying, “I can’t believe you have blown this out of proportion, here is my 30 days notice, and as you owe me some holidays I will be taking them so I don’t have to work with you any more.”
I just calmly said, “Don’t worry about the 30 days notice, you won’t need it because I’m letting you go for gross misconduct!”
*screaming at me*“YOU CANT DO THAT!”
*a tiny voice on the telephone*”Yes he can, you stole from him and he is within his rights to terminate your contract with immediate effect and without compensation. Now if I was you I would leave quietly or Mr Savage could have the police involved for theft.”
A week later I received a letter asking for a reference as she had found a new job!
While writing this answer, I called my wife (I’m at work) and asked her to send me the photo of this knife from our kitchen. I hate using it, especially while cutting soft veggies. It is dull, useless and cheap-ass piece of cutlery. I bought it for $0.50.
With a kitchen knife exactly like this one shown in the picture.
I was going to work, when I came across a domestic street brawl. Men and women screaming, abusing and beating each other. I remember a wooden ladle in action too.
It was too awkward for me not to do something. I had no cellphone back then as it was too expensive and uncommon.
I tried calming them down with help of a few neighbors.
And during that peaceful effort… a young man out of nowhere attacked me with this kitchen knife. The swing was so swift and forceful that it scared me if this connects at all. I tried to grab his hand but the knife pierced my palm and popped out from back of my wrist.
Now I wish to stress couple of issues here.
A knife is a knife and it does not matter if it is big, small, sharp, dull, scary or funny looking. When used with intentions to inflict damage… it will damage the body inflicting stab and slash wounds, and might very well cause fatality.
And even more importantly…
This was quite a harmless bout, typical domestic quarrel between two neighboring families that usually just ends up with them receiving a bruise here and there, a noisy chest thumping exercise for the most part that goes around here over stupid disagreements.
Still…the moment I saw that guy approaching me with knife, his glowered and gloomy expressions alarmed me of imminent danger, I understood this is not just a warning… this guy wants to hurt me. To anyone else, he might not seem to be posing a palpable peril towards the cop but I as a cop perceived the incoming.
I was unarmed; I could not protect myself intelligently.
What if I was armed that day? To whom do I look up for the use of deadly force authorization?
That’s no one else’s but my decision to make.
It is my judgment call even if it is objective or weak in other’s opinion. If I have reasons to believe the person is a threat and warnings don’t serve the purpose, I have to neutralize the threat. I don’t want to hurt anyone; that’s the last and the most distasteful option for any cop in all sincerity. But at the same time, I want to protect myself and others with my best effort and ability.
I assure you, it could have been a fatal blow.
The department would have lost one of theirs, my mother would have gone crazy upon hearing of this news. All of this because of someone’s absurd, idiotic and senseless aggression.
I don’t deserve that.
No cop deserves that.
So in my opinion, if a knife-wielding person advances towards the cop and chooses to ignore the warnings – and sends an apprehension that he actually might attack the cop –
I’d consider that a legitimate threat.
And using deadly force to neutralize that threat is justifiable legally and morally.
We were married in Las Vegas over a weekend, never had a honeymoon, and it appears there wouldn’t be much romance or emotion, which appeared to suit both of us fine.
My life goals had always been to earn as many degrees as possible and to have a significant career. When my husband said he wanted to apply to law school, I stuck around to find out what would be happening.
On our fifth wedding anniversary, I was working on my masters’ degree and pregnant – not in my life goals, but I was accepting of the situation. We were both graduate students, living off student loans with no money for anything.
When I woke on our anniversary day, my husband presented me with a six page long poem he had been writing for days. He called it “FANGS for the memories.” The poem was written in the cadence of the song “Thanks for the memories” which would have been way too sentimental for either of us.
It’s been 45 years later and I still have not only that poem but also the poem he wrote on our 10th anniversary.
This past year we celebrated our 50th anniversary and not one celebration. But I do have two amazing sentimental and romantic poems to read and reread over and over – I will never forget those!
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!
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.
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.
As Bugs Bunny would say “What a maroon…”
Greek Croustade
Ingredients
1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 small clove garlic, minced
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon crushed tarragon (optional)
1/8 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup creamed cottage cheese
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
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
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.
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”
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:
This is me on the last day:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is the woman they met in reality.
This is their fantasy woman, using Indian women as a reference.
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.
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
When I lived in Indiana I owned a speedboat. I named it “Going Coconuts”.
Boats are expensive. Ugh, not only did we buy it, but the upkeep, storage and all the rest was expensive.
We would ride it, perhaps 16 times per year, and the cost per use was prohibitively expensive. Oh, we were warned… but I guess it is one of those things that you have to experience to understand.
When we moved out of Indiana for Mississippi, we ended up selling it to a retired couple. They were nice and berated us for not hanging out with them and spending a meal or two with them. Ugh. Never had the time, I guess.
Listen to me.
Do not invest in a boat unless you plan on living in it, using it for business, or intend to waste money. Other than that, I would advise… do not buy a boat.
How do I tell my parents that I know they put a camera in my room?
Say absolutely nothing to your parents.
Do all your normal things in the normal way.
Once or twice a week, get a sneaky look on your face, tiptoe up to the camera, and cover the lens with black tape.
After 15–20 minutes, remove the tape, and go back to doing normal things
Enjoy that they are bursting to know what you do during the black-out periods, but can’t say anything for fear of outing themselves
If they are so f**ing shameless that they ask what happens in those times, go all aggrieved innocence, and say “Why, have YOU been SPYING ON ME?”. Turn the whole thing around and make them the Bad Guys.
Prepare some scorched-earth options, such as:
Stop speaking to them
Avoid all eye contact
If you have to speak, use a dull monotone
When they finally get up the courage to ask what’s wrong, say only “You have not apologised for spying on me”
Stick it out – do NOT start speaking to them again until they apologise for spying on you.
I was in 6th grade — still a snot-nosed kid — and I just got dropped off at my home after a good ole boy scout meeting. It was early evening, dark outside, and my folks and my brother were all out. When I entered my home’s foyer, the family dog, Ginger, a collie mix, came to me, which was normal, but I noticed a little dog poop on the floor. At the time, my dog was middle-aged and did not have accidents inside the house. This was the moment that I knew something was not right. But I ignored it…
All the lights in the house were on. This should had set off another signal that something was not right, since my parents were always bugging my brother and I about turning off lights to keep the electric bill down, but I ignored it and went into our kitchen to get something to eat.
In the kitchen there was a door that led to our backyard patio. The door was wide open and one of the windowpanes in the door was broken. I could see a piece of firewood on the patio, which I surmised was what broke the window. This was the second moment when I felt that something was obviously not right. But I think that we all have the tendency to try to rationalize things as being normal when they are not. And I remember thinking, “Hmm… That’s strange… But my parents must know about this…” Clearly, I was not thinking clearly. If my parents knew about it, why would they keep the door wide open, and not cover the window? But I ignored it.
Leaving the poop on the floor for someone else to clean up, I wanted to go upstairs to my bedroom. But when I got to the staircase, I got a strange sensation. As I looked up to the hallway on the second floor, I got the feeling that I should not go up there.
Again, sort of ignoring the warning signs, I instead go into our family room to watch TV. But in this room I see a pillowcase and bunch of books from our bookcase littered on the floor, and our TV is rolled away from the wall where it was plugged into. (This was the 80s, so it was a big CRT TV on wheels.)
Now I am finally putting it all together. I go back into the kitchen, pick up the phone, and call the police. (In this case, since it was the 80s, I dialed the police, which in an emergency takes way too long.) I tell the dispatcher that someone broke into my house. The dispatcher asks for my address and says, “Are you in the house?” I reply, “Yes.” And she responds, “Get out!”
I call for Ginger, grab her leash, and put it on her, and we go outside and stand on our driveway to wait for the police. I lived in the suburbs. There were streetlights, but the neighborhood had lots of big trees, and our back yard had a 1/4-acre wooded area, so it was dark. And now I am getting a little freaked and thinking, “When will the cops get here?” I look back at my house and through the kitchen window, I see movement. It’s a tall figure passing through the kitchen. I can’t see facial features, but it looks like a man in a flannel shirt. I’m guessing that the person is exiting through the kitchen’s door to the patio. I feel like I should pursue the man, but there are no lights in our backyard. As I muster up the courage to pursue him, a police car arrives. I tell the lone officer that I think the perp is in the backyard. He shines his flashlight around the yard and into the woods, but we do not see or hear anything. When more police arrive, they search the house and yard and dust for fingerprints. A detective tells me that I was very brave to go inside the house (clueless was more like it). But he also says that I should never enter my home if I think that it has been broken into or try to apprehend a criminal.
Lesson of this story: If something does not feel right, don’t try to rationalize it. Something is most likely wrong. Get out of there!
The thief got away with all my mother’s good jewelry, my parents’ silverware, plus one of my hand-held electronic games. We believe that he wanted to take the TV, but realized it was too big to carry. We think our dog was frightened when the perp broke into the house, and that’s why she pooped indoors. She was mid-sized and not super-aggressive, but she was territorial, so we were a little surprised that she did not scare the person off. Someone speculated that she was maced. But her job was not to be a watch dog… The house was only empty for a 1/2 hour — maybe 45 minutes — so the punk that broke in must have been staking out our home. We don’t know where the burglar was hiding when I entered the house or if he was a violent person. My brother thinks the crime was committed by someone who lived in the neighborhood.
I have been at the receiving end of one such shady tactic and I think it’s important that people should be aware of this.
This is regarding the Notice Period.
I landed a job in a service based IT company and after salary negotiations the HR told me that she will email the offer letter and asked me to go through it thoroughly and revert with questions. Everything was as per what we agreed and I accepted the offer.
Important thing to note is that the offer letter which was emailed to me had a notice period of 90 Days.
After few months the projects we were hired for were done and we were waiting for new projects. Things started to go south at this point and I started to look for another job. It was really difficult to find another job because of the 90 day notice period. No company would process my profile after I mentioned my notice period As 90 days.
After a couple of months the HR called me to her cabin and said that i was of no use to the company as there were no more projects and told me that I have a months time to look for a new job. I was taken by surprise and told her that the employee and employer have a notice period of 90 days to each other. At this point she told that it is 30 days and not 90 days. I immediately pulled my phone out and showed her the soft copy which was emailed to me. It had 90 days. The whole time the HR had a smirk on her face. Then she opened the hard copy, the copy on which I had signed during induction, and showed me the notice period. It had 30 days!!
It was then I realized what had happened. 90 days notice period would discourage employees looking out for a job but if the company wanted to fire them they would have to pay salary for only 30 days.
I know people reading this will feel that it was my mistake not to read the document before signing. And I completely agree with that. It was stupid on my part. But let me explain the situation to you all, in fact while signing I briefly started glancing at the document, I looked at the finances and the Job Title section when the HR interrupted and told me that the CEO was waiting to meet me and that I should sign the letter soon as we don’t want to keep the CEO waiting. The Notice period section was buried somewhere in the 12th page. Obviously I had no time to look at it.
After talking to a lot of people I realized and was surprised at how many sign the offer letter without reading and assuming it’s the exact copy of the emailed copy. Don’t commit the mistake which I did.
Lesson to learn: When you are signing the offer letter during induction, take your time, go through it thoroughly and only then sign it.
Back when I worked for a computer magazine, the employees had a great sense of pride in our work and would often stay and work till seven, eight, ten at night, for which we were paid no extra and given no comp time. But that magazine went out on time with no errors except those introduced by the witless top editor after everyone who might have corrected them had gone home.
One day, however, we got a memo that everyone was to be at work by eight in the morning, at risk of being docked or fired. This rule was adopted by the managing editor, who was disturbed to find the staff trickling in at various hours of the morning.
The immediate result was that nobody stayed even a minute after five p.m., regardless of whether the necessary work had been accomplished. But we were all on time in the morning. Working only 8 hours a day, but working very hard, we could not meet deadlines and keep quality high. Plus, the esprit de corps vanished that day. We were no longer working for a cause, we were working for a clock. For a check.
But the managing editor would not back down from this destructive policy. Fortunately, I quit soon after, and the magazine was sold to a conglomerate, so the managing editor was never held accountable. Meanwhile, I stayed home and wrote the novel version of Ender’s Game.
Bumped from a flight
Banoffee Pie (England)
Banoffi Pie was invented in 1971 at the Hungry Monk Inn in Jevington near Eastbourne!
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups Graham cracker crumbs
1 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons ground ginger
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 bananas, sliced
2 cups heavy whipping cream
Instructions
Mix Graham cracker crumbs, sugar, melted butter or margarine, and ginger until well blended.
Press mixture into a 9-inch pie plate.
Cool in refrigerator.
Use one of the following three methods to prepare the toffee.
Pour toffee into pie crust. Allow to cool.
Slice bananas over toffee.
Whip the cream stiff, then spoon it on top of bananas. Refrigerate before serving.
Oven Method:
Pour sweetened condensed milk into 9-inch pie plate. Cover with aluminum foil; place in larger shallow pan. Fill larger pan with hot water. Bake at 425 degrees F for 1 hour or until thick and caramel-colored. Beat until smooth.
Stovetop Method:
Pour sweetened condensed milk into top of double boiler; place over boiling water. Simmer over low heat for 1 to 1/2 hours or until thick and caramel-colored, stirring occasionally. Beat until smooth.
Microwave Method:
Pour sweetened condensed milk into a 2-quart glass measuring cup. Cook on 50% power (medium) 4 minutes, stirring briskly every 2 minutes until smooth. Cook on 30% power (medium-low) 20 to 25 minutes or until very thick and caramel-colored, stirring briskly every 4 minutes during the first 16 minutes and every 2 minutes during the last 4 to 10 minutes.
Lied to…
An overhead view of people on 36th St. between 8th and 9th Aves., New York
An overhead view of people on 36th St. between 8th and 9th Aves., New York. Manhattan’s Garment District has been the center of the American fashion industry since at least the turn of the twentieth century – in 1900, New York City’s garment trade was its largest industry by a factor of three. The entire fashion ecosystem, from fabric suppliers to designer showrooms, exists within an area just under a square mile. Native New Yorker Margaret Bourke-White was in her mid-twenties when she took this picture. She would later become Life magazine’s first female photojournalist and, during WWII, the first female war correspondent. The two cars shown are a 1930 Ford Model A 4-Door Sedan, left, and a Ford Model A Sports Coupe, right.
Both have to be on board
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick is a hugely significant figure in the history of cinema, directing 13 major feature films including Spartacus, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and the ground-breaking 2001: A Space Odyssey. But prior to his film career, the young Kubrick was an apprentice photographer at Look magazine. First using a camera for his school’s publication, he was offered an apprenticeship at Look after he submitted a photograph. This picture of people arriving at the Chicago Theatre, North State Street, Chicago, is drawn from a set of pictures the 21-year-old Kubrick took for the Look series “Chicago – City of Extremes”. The theatre production in question, starring Jack Carson, Marion Hutton, and Robert Alda, was John Loves Mary, a farce.
Optionality
Confederate prisoners at Seminary Ridge during the battle of Gettysburg.
Confederate prisoners at Seminary Ridge during the battle of Gettysburg. Until 1863, both sides in the American Civil War of 1861-1865 used a parole system for prisoners. A captured soldier vowed not to fight until he had been exchanged for a soldier fighting for the opposition. But in 1863, when this picture was taken, the parole system proved untenable, because Confederate authorities would not recognize a black prisoner as equal to a white prisoner. The direct result was that the number of troops being held in prisons increased massively, on both sides. Just over 400,000 soldiers were taken captured and placed in prison camps during the American Civil War. One in ten of all deaths during the war occurred in a prison camp – a total of more than 55,000 men lost their lives incarcerated.
“11 a.m. Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch, Jefferson near Franklin. They were all smoking. St. Louis, Missouri.” As a photographer working for social reform, Lewis Hine found a number of advantages in photographing “newsies” – boys who sold newspapers on street. Unlike the work he did photographing child workers in mines, factories and mills, Hine could photograph the boys without either seeking permission from employers, or, more typically, circumnavigating them. The photographs could be achieved with more time, and with more focus and attention on the subjects he shot. To achieve this sense of direct connection, Hine would bring his camera down to the eye level of his subjects. Not only taking photographs of child workers, Hine also talked to them and sought to document and record their experience. n aggregate, he created a body of work that displayed an unacceptable standard of living for many thousands of children and which ultimately achieved a change in cultural understanding of what it means to be a child, and in the law.
Mulberry Street was at the very centre of Manhattan’s Little Italy, an ethnic neighborhood that followed from the mass immigration to New York of Italians after the 1880s. By the turn of the twentieth century, nine out of ten people in the Fourteenth Ward of Manhattan had an Italian background. Mulberry Street itself took its name from the Mulberry trees that grew around Mulberry Bend – the point in the street where it curved around what was then the Collect Pond. This scene, shot in 1900, shows something of the breadth of activity of Little Italy – vegetable stalls; barefooted children; shoe, boot and clothing merchants; a wagon of barrels and sacks; furniture removal men; and blankets, quilts and rugs left out to air – or to sell.
Never give up
CONFIRMED: Israel Planning to Dislocate ALL 2.3 Million Palestinians from Gaza Strip
Advertisements are now appearing in Israeli publications touting “Gaza 2030” showing the entire Gaza Strip as a luxury beach front Resort . . . and no Palestinians.
One such ad, shown above, shows what is said to be the actual planning for the Gaza Strip once the Palestinians are forcibly dislocated from their homes.
While rumors of this forced displacement of civilians (a War Crime) have floated for weeks, for the very first time on Christmas Day, the world got confirmation:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Likud Party conference, that Netanyahu confirmed during the Likud Party session that “work is underway to find countries that want to “absorb the residents of Gaza as refugees.”
So apparently, there it is: Confirmation that ousting the Palestinian civilian population by dropping 2,000 pound bombs on them from fighter jets, is now (and likely has always been) the actual plan.
Casablanca (1942)
This is a favorite of mine. Enjoy.
US spies clueless on Chinese intentions – WSJ
Washington is beefing up its resources targeting Beijing over a decade after losing most of its local assets
The US is still struggling to rebuild its spy capacity in China over a decade after losing all of its agents in the country, current and former intelligence officials told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
The report described a “titanic, but mostly secret shift at the CIA and its sister US spy agencies” refocusing Washington’s $100-billion-a-year intelligence apparatus from “fighting insurgencies around the world” to “preparing for a possible ‘great power’ conflict with China and Russia.”
Beijing is the top priority for the CIA, director William Burns told the Journal, explaining that his agency had “more than doubl[ed] the budget resources devoted to the China mission over the past three years” and established a China Mission Center as a standalone entity coordinating those activities.
These include a new unit focused on emerging technologies and interfacing with the US private sector. Several US intelligence agencies have also established units focused on analyzing open-source intelligence, while electronic surveillance has become Washington’s main information source inside the country, where Beijing’s own surveillance apparatus makes meeting and recruiting human sources increasingly perilous.
Even attempting to recruit officials when they travel to third countries has proven difficult, a former senior official admitted, describing how US agents who believed their cover to be intact in a Latin American country were actually followed and filmed by Chinese observers as they tried to recruit a target.
Current and former US intelligence officials acknowledged the CIA’s mission was crippled by the loss of as many as 30 Chinese assets between 2010 and 2012 due to a glitch in the agency’s covert communications systems and a betrayal by one of its Chinese operatives.
The former official, calling the losses “horrendous,” acknowledged “doubts about whether there’s been much of a recovery since then,” the discoveries having put a chill on recruitments that extended far beyond a single country.
The individual explained their reasoning: “Why would I take a call from a US person, I know that Chinese people got bullets in the back of their head.”
While the US maintains a network of spy satellites and cyber-surveillance tools targeting China, the agency has never recovered its on-the-ground intelligence capability in the country, and even now relies on President Xi Jinping’s public statements to gain working knowledge of his plans, the Journal’s sources admitted.
Burns has nevertheless suggested the US knows Xi’s plans for Taiwan, considered a breakaway province by Beijing and increasingly fortified with US weapons against a hypothetical invasion from the mainland. Xi and his military leadership “have doubts about whether they could pull off a successful, full-scale invasion of Taiwan at an acceptable cost to them,” the CIA chief told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum in July.
Hooverville
A “Hooverville” shantytown in Central Park, New York. The Great Depression that followed the stock market crash of October 1929 saw massive rates of joblessness and homelessness across the United States. People without jobs were people without the means to pay rent. Suddenly, civic lodging houses built for the homeless were filling up to capacity. Shanty towns – some housing as many as 15,000 people – began to grow up in close proximity to soup kitchens and other sources of free food. Such spontaneous towns were known colloquially as “Hoovervilles,” after Herbert Hoover. Hoover was the Republican President in 1929, and responsibility for the Depression was laid largely at his door. The Hooverville in Central Park developed on the site of the park’s lower reservoir. At one time drained and set aside to become a lawn, the reservoir project was derailed by the impact of the downturn. When it resumed in 1933, the Hooverville was gone, but not before it had gained notoriety, standing literally in the shadows of the opulent buildings that line the park, including The Beresford – opened mere months before the stock market crash. IMAGE: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES
Kittens abandoned in icy water! Meow gradually weakens, A miracle saved the lives of four kittens
No. The Chinese can detect, track, follow, and “lock on” to any and all American submarines. This includes the highly vaulted USN “stealth” submarines.
This has been demonstrated in numerous ways, and though back channels to “key players” in the Pentagon. The public displays of this ability has been disguised as other events.
Oh, I am confident that the guys at NAS China Lake NWC will come up with methodology and techniques. When that will happen is unknown. But I am sure that some ideas are being researched and some preliminary studies are being conducted.
I have a reasonable expectation that some technologies will be fielded before 2030.
There are (highly likely) “black” projects currently in development that will eventually result in some great engineering direction. Of that I have no doubt. But it would be silly to assume that the Chinese are unaware of them. By the time they hit pilot field trials, China will already have counter-measures in place and fielded.
China, as of the time of this writing, has a very strong and significant undersea detection ability that spans the entire Pacific Ocean. This includes the Western coastline of the Americas. I do not know about the rest of the globe, but it can be inferred that the waters in and around Australia are under this umbrella of coverage, as are the Indian Sea, and the Northern navigable ocean.
So, to answer the question, more specifically…
Can American submarines bypass China’s surveillance and enter China’s territorial waters?
No. Any American submarine in the Pacific Ocean, near Australia, near the Indian Ocean, and in the Arctic Ocean can be detected by China.
If China determine that it is a threat, it will warn it away. This will include non-destructive methods such as the “sonic bomb”, and the “sonar ray cannon”. The warning usually is enough to cause the skipper to scamper away, as has already been demonstrated. In the event that the skipper is too recalcitrant, China has the ability to suppress the undersea vessel with extreme prejudice.
…
SOME IMPORTANT NOTES
Technical abilities of all military systems are hidden. The closest that the layman can get to understanding what they are is to either work with publicly available guesswork (such as JANES), or to actually have experience in these technologies.
If you regurgitate public domain evaluations (such as JANES) you are apt to copy the misinformation purposely fed to the periodical.
If you offer your personal experience in these matters, you are apt to be called a “fake news shrill” by a host of miscreants.
No one knows the true and real capabilities of the USN and the PLAN. However, people who have worked in these regimes, can make educated guesses and extrapolate towards highest probability conclusions. This is what I have done here.
The alternative is to rely on the public discourse, which is highly inaccurate, and intentionally misleading. If you feel that the anti-China disinfo is of better value to you, then go quite ahead and ignore this answer. No skin off my back.
Men cannot be bored
Workers build the Statue of Liberty
Workers build the Statue of Liberty inside French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s workshop, Paris. The idea for the Statue of Liberty was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s. The Parisian sculptor wanted to create a gift for the US nation in the wake of the abolition of slavery – referenced in the broken chain at the feet of the statue. Construction commenced in 1877, and Bartholdi brought in engineer Gustave Eiffel to help with the statue’s inner framework. In 1885, the completed statue was shipped to America, assembled and dedicated the following year. IMAGE: ALBERT FERNIQUE / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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.”
Broken families
A portrait of Abraham Lincoln
A portrait of Abraham Lincoln, without beard, aged 37. It would be another fourteen years before Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States. Here, in an image by law student Nicholas Shepherd, Lincoln is photographed serving as a member of the US House of Representatives, just before he resumed his legal practice in Springfield, Illinois. Notably, Lincoln is clean-shaven. He grew his whiskers in 1860 as a direct response to a letter from an 11-year-old girl, Grace Bedell, who believed Lincoln’s lack of beard was impeding his political career. IMAGE: NICHOLAS SHEPHERD / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Delusion
Ukraine Claims Sinking of Russian Naval Ship in Port
Ukraine claims its aircraft hit — and sank — the Russian naval vessel “Novocherkassk” while the ship was in the port of Feodosia on Crimea.
Numerous confirmations of a very large explosion in that port, came in via video on Christmas Day, but whether the ship was hit, or an ammunition dump exploded, is in dispute:
The ship, allegedly loaded with Iranian ammunition, was reportedly blown up and as a result, fire broke out in the port. Here is a file photo of the ship:
According to Russian-affiliated media, residents reported hearing loud bangs, and seeing plumes of smoke. Traffic on the Crimean bridge was blocked.
Sergey Aksenov, the head of Russian authorities in Crimea, stated that “an enemy attack was carried out in the Feodosia area and the port area was cordoned off.”
Ukraine also claims there were 300 crew aboard and “they are all dead” but that does not seem to comport with the fact that a ship, in port, would not likely have its full crew aboard.
China sternly told (not warn) EU chief to sort out what caused trade deficit for EU.
(my word) 1, EU-Netherlands is not allowed to sell EUV & now DUV too to China. China is willing to buy these expensive equipment. EU follows USA. EU is the problem of its trade deficit. Not China.
2, When European firms make money in China & bring back money to Europe, has EU factored in this money into the equation to determine trade deficit?
Germany cars make lots in China. Not France’s cars. Now France asks you EU chief to investigate China, do you EU know it is purely a dog-fight between France & Germany which has nothing with China?
3, If EU is so afraid of trade deficit, then stop buying from China. Buy things from other countries. Then there wont be any trade deficit with China. Simple. China wont force EU to buy.
In short, China sternly told EU chief not to play politics. Do something practical for Europeans.
My uncle was hippie in the 1960s, and continued that lifestyle throughout the 70s and 80s. He was particularly enthusiastic about the drugs and promiscuity. As he was born at the beginning of WWII, not the end, he slightly preceded the baby boom. After his first prison stint, he ended up living in San Francisco where he rode a Matchless chopper and fully imbibed the counter-cultural lifestyle. In many ways he wasn’t just a hippie, he was one of the original hippies.
My uncle was a particularly skilled guitarist and poet. He also had a powerful singing voice, and made numerous attempts to launch a music career. As he aged, he slipped in-and-out of heroine addiction, and consumed other drugs as well. His drug use destroyed most of his opportunities.
My father disappeared from the scene while my mom was pregnant. After my mom’s divorce from my step-father, I went to live with my grandparents on a small farm in Thermal CA. My uncle lived in the other house. There was a constant parade of counter-cultural relics passing through the ranch. As a kid I might be throwing a football with a Hare Krishna one day, and getting a boxing lesson from an outlaw biker the next. Once my uncle took me to a nearby farm where a bunch of his hippie friends lived. I was about 12 or 13 and was sent out to help pick tomatoes. Living on a farm I had done farm work before, but that day was special because I was picking tomatoes with topless hippie girls.
Kind of like this except fewer guys and the girls were topless.
He had been married several times, and spent 20 years with a woman he met in San Francisco in the early 70s. They had two kids together, but didn’t marry because that would have cost her AFDC benefits.
His drug use lead to drug trafficking and by the late 70s/early 80s my uncle had evolved into a full-on hippie-outlaw. He trafficked hard drugs and committed other crimes. The summer before my 9th grade I was working for him on dry-wall taping job. One of his biker buddies showed up 2 of the least attractive biker gals I’d ever seen. They were all bad skin and bad tattoos. “Today’s the day you lose your virginity,” he said pointing at a gal who looked like an inked up version of Calisto from X-Men comics.
This was not as appealing as the topless hippie chicks picking tomatoes.
He showed up at my mom’s apartment around 4AM the next morning. After partying the afternoon away with the gals I avoided losing my innocence to, he stole some type of commercial vehicle, which he sold down in Mexico.
In the 1980s, he was arrested for narcotics trafficking. The police raided the house and arrested his “ol’ lady” and a couple of his kids. He wasn’t there. The DA had a witness against him, but that witness “disappeared.” He would eventually plea to a lesser charge in exchange for charges being dropped against his “ol’ lady” and sons. He serve a short prison sentence at Soledad.
When he came out of prison in 1988, he was healthier than I’d ever seen him before. A couple years of structure, nutrition and daily workouts in the weight pile had done wonders for him. While in prison, he shared a cell with a minor music celebrity. This musician wanted to purchase some of my uncle’s songs. But those deals fell through.
By that time the family farm was a distant memory. My uncle was gifted a house from his father, all he needed to do was pay the monthly mortgage payments which were only a few hundred dollars a month. But as he fell back into drug addiction he lost the house his “ol’ lady” had kept afloat while he was in prison.
After losing the roof over their head, the “ol lady” who stood by him through prison stints and infidelity decided she had enough. She went to live with her mom and became a home-healthcare working. The state of California paid her to take care of her own mother.
The hotel he lived in was next to the rescue mission. He was living on disability.
He had tried drug rehab a couple times but always fell back into his old habits. His son was employed by CA as a home healthcare worker…taking care of his father. My cousin was basically paid to stay home smoking dope with my uncle and play video games.
He fell ill. My cousin told me that his “guts exploded.” and he died in his hotel room next to the rescue mission.
Speaking cat language
Coney Island’s Luna Park
A ride at Coney Island’s Luna Park. When Frederic Thompson and Elmer Dundy built their A Trip To The Moon ride for an exposition in Buffalo, New York State in 1901, they had a hit on their hands. The centerpiece of the ride was an airship powered by wings which flapped, named Luna. Moving the ride to Coney Island’s Steeplechase Park for 1902, Thomson and Dundy then leased more land and created Luna Park, using 1,000 spires, a quarter of a million lights, and $700,000. On its opening night, 60,000 people paid ten cents each to enter Luna Park – rides cost extra. But in 1908, Luna Park was eclipsed by Dreamland, with a million lights. Dundy died in 1907, and Thompson went bankrupt. Luna Park continued to exist, but successive owners struggled to realize any potential it possessed. In 1944, it was wiped out by fire. IMAGE: GEO. P. HALL & SON / NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY / GETTY IMAGES
A man of Japanese ancestry
A man of Japanese ancestry teaches his grandson to walk at Manzanar War Relocation Authority Center, California. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, around 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes, leaving behind all their business and goods, and were transferred to concentration camps, known as “relocation centers.” Around 80,000 were native-born American citizens. This image by Dorothea Lange was taken at the Manzanar camp, northeast of Los Angeles. More than 10,000 people were detained at the 500 acre camp. Like all such camps, Manzanar was treated as a military installation, with towers, barbed wire perimeters, and armed guards. Before Manzanar closed at the end of 1945, one hundred and forty-six people had died as camp internees. Documentary photographer Dorothea Lange created a significant body of work in the Great Depression, working for the U.S. Farm Security Administration. Born Dorothea Nutzhorn, her parents were second generation immigrants from Germany. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941, she resigned it in order to photograph the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans. Most of her images were seen as critical by the military, and were impounded for more than five decades. IMAGE: DOROTHEA LANGE / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Woke society
Mulberry Street
Mulberry Street was at the very centre of Manhattan’s Little Italy, an ethnic neighborhood that followed from the mass immigration to New York of Italians after the 1880s. By the turn of the twentieth century, nine out of ten people in the Fourteenth Ward of Manhattan had an Italian background. Mulberry Street itself took its name from the Mulberry trees that grew around Mulberry Bend – the point in the street where it curved around what was then the Collect Pond. This scene, shot in 1900, shows something of the breadth of activity of Little Italy – vegetable stalls; barefooted children; shoe, boot and clothing merchants; a wagon of barrels and sacks; furniture removal men; and blankets, quilts and rugs left out to air – or to sell. IMAGE: DETROIT PUBLISHING CO. / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Too many SIMPS
Newsies
“11 a.m. Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch, Jefferson near Franklin. They were all smoking. St. Louis, Missouri.” As a photographer working for social reform, Lewis Hine found a number of advantages in photographing “newsies” – boys who sold newspapers on street. Unlike the work he did photographing child workers in mines, factories and mills, Hine could photograph the boys without either seeking permission from employers, or, more typically, circumnavigating them. The photographs could be achieved with more time, and with more focus and attention on the subjects he shot. To achieve this sense of direct connection, Hine would bring his camera down to the eye level of his subjects. Not only taking photographs of child workers, Hine also talked to them and sought to document and record their experience. n aggregate, he created a body of work that displayed an unacceptable standard of living for many thousands of children and which ultimately achieved a change in cultural understanding of what it means to be a child, and in the law. IMAGE: LEWIS HINE/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Fentanyl is an extremely important drug. The World Health Organisation includes fentanyl in its official list of the world’s most essential medicines. Fentanyl plays a particularly important role in pain management for cancer patients. The suffering of cancer patients worldwide would be greatly increased, if not for the wonders of fentanyl.
Of course, fentanyl should be used only as prescribed by doctors. It may be noteworthy that no other country in the world has a fentanyl crisis the way the USA is having it. But it is also noteworthy that before fentanyl became popular among US drug addicts, the USA had already been having a massive opioid crisis for years and years – again, far outstripping the rest of the world.
Basically, nothing much has changed in the USA, except that the drug addicts moved from one kind of drug to another drug. Drug abuse is deeply embedded in the culture of the USA. Sadly, the habit of blaming others for its own problems is also deeply embedded in US culture.
No one should be surprised that most of the active pharmaceutical ingredients for manufacturing fentanyl comes from China. By far, China is the world’s largest manufacturer of APIs, generally speaking, for all kinds of medicines. China keeps the world alive, with its constant supply of modern medicines. China also keeps healthcare costs down for all countries, because of its tremendous economies of scale, as it manufactures medicines for hospitals and clinics all over the world.
Not a security officer, but many years ago I had one of my weirdest experiences with an x-ray scanner on a flight home from Canada.
I put my little carry-on shoulder bag on the conveyor belt; it went in, paused for inspection, and then the security officer asked me if I had any metal in the bag.
So I rummaged through the bag, removing several items and putting them in a tray. Then I sent the bag through; it paused for inspection, and then the security officer asked me if there was any more metal in the bag.
So I rummaged through it again, pulled out a number of items with a small amount of metal, and put them in the tray. Then I sent the bag through a third time – and sure enough, it stopped, and the officer had a quizzical look on his face.
At this point I said “Look, I’m a radiologist. If you let me see the image, I can probably find exactly what you’re looking at.”
So they put the bag through again, and a very bright red object came into view. I was puzzled myself – until they stopped the conveyor belt.
Imagine a glass of water. What happens if you push it forward steadily, and then suddenly stop? The water level sloshes back and forth for a moment.
This was exactly what I saw on the screen, and when I recognized it, I laughed out loud.
I have had asthma for most of my life – relatively mild, fortunately. Nowadays, I have a maintenance inhaler (corticosteroids) to try to prevent attacks, and a rescue inhaler, to open up my airways in the event I do have an attack.
But when I was first diagnosed, inhaled corticosteroids did not exist, and I was basically prescribed the rescue inhaler for maintenance, which isn’t ideal (and not all that safe).
As a supplement, I was treated with a saturated solution of potassium iodide; this loosened up the mucus which tended to clog my airways – and probably didn’t do my thyroid any good, but again, you use the meds you have.
The solution came in a little squeeze bottle with a dropper tip, and I was supposed to add several drops to a glass of juice or water. The bottle was upright in my shoulder bag when it went through the scanner. When the bag suddenly stopped, the liquid sloshed back and forth a bit.
Why was my medicine so incredibly bright on the x-ray? When you have IV contrast during a CT scan – or during an old-fashioned catheter angiogram, or any other procedure except MRI – what makes the contrast actually show up is the iodine in it.
So I had basically been sending a little bottle of super-concentrated contrast material through that airport x-ray scanner, and just hadn’t made the connection until I saw the way the liquid moved when the conveyor belt stopped.
I pulled it out, and showed it to the officer; he was skeptical, so I told him to put the bottle through the scanner by itself. When he realized that it was indeed the “metal” he was looking for, I explained why it looked so different from ordinary liquids on x-ray.
I stopped using potassium iodide shortly afterwards, and haven’t needed to explain radiographic contrast at an airport for quite some time. But it was certainly a unique experience.
The “Street of Gamblers,” Chinatown, San Francisco.
The “Street of Gamblers,” Chinatown, San Francisco. Two men and one woman on board the American brig Eagle were the very first Chinese immigrants to San Francisco. From 1849, Chinese people were drawn by the laboring opportunities for the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, as well as the California Gold Rush – though racial discrimination was pronounced and enshrined in law, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892, which outlawed immigration from China for the next decade. San Franciscan studio photographer Arnold Genthe was drawn to San Francisco’s Chinatown, capturing many hundreds of photographs of its people – often without their knowledge. The pictures are true to the culture Genthe saw – although he also cropped out Western elements. Here, Genthe has captured the essence of a Chinese hutong market transposed into San Francisco, crowded with men wearing black chángshān shirts and sporting the Manchu queue hairstyles – mandatory for all Chinese men until the 1910s. Excepting Genthe’s images, very few photographs remain of San Francisco’s Chinatown prior to the earthquake and fires of 1906. Most photographic collections were lost, but Genthe’s survived, stored in a bank vault.
6 years of work experience and worked with 2 CEOs. I have doubled my salary every 2 years with only one job change. I am not a hard worker and rarely the smartest in room. My growth is not exceptional or commendable but good enough to make me one of the top paid among my peers.
Take ownership. There is no blame game in corporate. If it succeeds, its everyone’s effort. If it fails, its your fault. Its not a school to push the blame on someone. Your seniors will respect you for integrity.
Be always smarter than your manager. If you are, then your job is secure and he will respect you. If you aren’t, be ready to listen to his taunts and degradation.
If it needs to be done, it has to be done. A mail pops in just before you have to leave after a 10 hour day. And it says urgent. Either you can ignore it or sit for another half hour to complete it. Your decision decides your promotion.
Don’t take a day off unless needed. Your hangover doesn’t count as a reason. If its a reason, stop drinking. Stop everything that makes you tired next day to miss office.
Be cheerful with everyone from security guard to VP. It will give you 2 benefits: 1. You would be presented as a positive and cheerful employee (and it matters) 2. You can get things does easily.
When in office, do office work. Its ok to file IT returns or check quick social media but don’t start making business plans for your startup or start editing photos for your candid photography page. 6–8 hours of solid office work everyday will take you long way.
Know your process, know your peers, know about every (most) work getting done in your building. Don’t be a stalker or a nagger. Be a curious candidate who knows what he and his peers are doing. Will help you solve any problems you face in work sometime.
Know your company well. Sounds childish? Trust me, most of us do not know what your company does fully. What are the product segments, who are its competitors, where is the headquarter and who is the CEO.
Know the current affairs. While this doesn’t directly affect your work, there are moments when you would get a chance to interact with top management and the topics leapfrog from politics to macro economic factors. You shouldn’t be a sitting duck. Your small talk can have a very large impact.
Focus on big picture. You are just an ordinary s/w engineer or a junior analyst? Doesn’t matter. Look at your process like your lead or manager sees. Focus on the big picture. See like a bird and work like a worm.
Sometimes its donkey work. Do it. I work with senior directors of billion dollar companies who make their own slides. And many times they have to spend time on adjusting the logos or changing the fonts! Part of the job. They have secretaries but on a tight schedule, you are your boss.
Never blame your company. Never. if you feel you are excellent worker and your current company is not supporting you, then you are free to take a walk outside. Search for a better company. And if you can’t find a job, well then, its your mistake. You are not competent enough.
There is always growth. You have to be ready for it. Every company has a CEO and he/she was once a junior like you. The CEO worked his way up by hardwork, talent and beating all the competition. You can also be that CEO if you put 10–12 hours a day for 10 years in a row. There ain’t any shortcut.
Never expect a pat on the back. If you want to go up the ladder, do not strive for pat on backs or acknowledgements for short term projects. To quote Tywin Lannister “Jugglers and singers require applause”. Rise above the competation.
Workers build the Statue of Liberty
Workers build the Statue of Liberty inside French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s workshop, Paris. The idea for the Statue of Liberty was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s. The Parisian sculptor wanted to create a gift for the US nation in the wake of the abolition of slavery – referenced in the broken chain at the feet of the statue. Construction commenced in 1877, and Bartholdi brought in engineer Gustave Eiffel to help with the statue’s inner framework. In 1885, the completed statue was shipped to America, assembled and dedicated the following year.
During WWII a young American officer had to take a bathroom break. Returning to the bomber he was supposed to ride, he found another officer had stolen his seat… the plane left without him. He had to take another plane, instead.
The original plane he was supposed to go on was shot down by the Japanese, killing everyone on board including the seat-stealer. The next plane this man took, instead, suffered a severe technical malfunction as its electrical generator failed and caused the plane to lose power and communication. It had to return to base, but it was attacked by eight Japanese fighter planes on the way. The plane was badly damaged, but it managed to evade the enemy fire long enough to land safely in Australia.
Who was this lucky man who escaped death in the air twice, once by a full bladder and the second time through sheer luck and the skill of his pilot? His name was Lyndon B. Johnson, and he would later be elected president of the United States.
I was on a 2 month roadtrip with my family; preteen son and daughter, and wife. We had an RV but would pit stop at hotels or motels sometimes for the hot showers.
I was awake first and went out to do some roadside repairs under the RV. When i crawled out i learned the wife had checked out early. I was dirty and wanted to get clean before another long drive. I asked the front desk to let me back in the room to clean up and they gave me the key. I grabed my bag and headed to the shower. The family was in the rv getting themselves situated. I had the room to myself.
When i walked out the shower nude, looking for a towel the housekeeping staff was in the room cleaning. The door was propped open. The two ladies were changing the beds and had already removed the towels. I walked out nude and dripping. No towels…😬 The ladies eyed me up and down with suprise. One found a towel and handed it to me as they quickly excused themselves.
A “Hooverville” shantytown in Central Park,
A “Hooverville” shantytown in Central Park, New York. The Great Depression that followed the stock market crash of October 1929 saw massive rates of joblessness and homelessness across the United States. People without jobs were people without the means to pay rent. Suddenly, civic lodging houses built for the homeless were filling up to capacity. Shanty towns – some housing as many as 15,000 people – began to grow up in close proximity to soup kitchens and other sources of free food. Such spontaneous towns were known colloquially as “Hoovervilles,” after Herbert Hoover. Hoover was the Republican President in 1929, and responsibility for the Depression was laid largely at his door. The Hooverville in Central Park developed on the site of the park’s lower reservoir. At one time drained and set aside to become a lawn, the reservoir project was derailed by the impact of the downturn. When it resumed in 1933, the Hooverville was gone, but not before it had gained notoriety, standing literally in the shadows of the opulent buildings that line the park, including The Beresford – opened mere months before the stock market crash.
Let me begin by saying nurses have a very stressful job. I probably couldn’t go it as a career. I respect the profession. You should too the next time you’re in the ER. BUT they are not the only varsity members of the healthcare team.
I am an X-ray tech to sum up what I do. Almost every routine xray….not ct or MRI can be done with a portable X-ray machine. So one day years ago a doctor ordered an abdomen X-ray on a patient staying in the hospital. I arrived to bring the patient to the X-ray department. The lady said she was feeling so bad could I please go get the portable machine and X-ray her in her bed. I said of course, I’d be right back. The patient’s nurse was in the room and instead of not saying anything or being glad I was taking the patient’s comfort in consideration she tells me that the patient MUST leave the room and go to X-ray. I told her it would be right back and get it the X-ray right away. The nurse said the patient had to go to the X-ray department. The patient started CRYING! the nurse said she was sorry but the doctor needed a good X-ray. I didn’t want to bicker in front of the patient so I asked the nurse to step into the hall. Again I told the nurse the plus side of me xraying the patient in her bed. The nurse said she used to be an X-ray tech and she knew a portable X-ray was not as good detail as a X-ray in the department, blah blah blah. Again stating she used to be a tech and she knows a portable Abdomen X-ray cannot be diagnostic. To which I said, only to her, “well ma’am, if you were a tech and was not able to do a portable abdomen X-ray and get a diagnostic image, then you made the right decision in changing professions.”
I know that pissed her off but I didn’t raise my voice or say it in a smarmy way. Her implying, in front the patient, that I wasn’t qualified to do my job pissed ME off. So I get a call from the charge nurse asking me what happened. Told her exactly what I wrote above. This was a Friday night. Monday when I get to work my director walked me to HR and he, the nurse, the director of nursing and HR guy told me I had to apologize to the nurse. As pussified as I viewed them, especially my director, I normally would have except they were claiming I was insubordinate to the RN. I-am-NOT-subordinate to a nurse. I will and do defer to a nurse in the case of patient care, meds, their role in an trauma or code situation, but NOT “listen and obey me”. I can’t do what they do but they (at least one) can’t do what I do. So I refused. Since it was an issue of being accused of being insubordinate…I said I will resign before I acquiesce under that stipulation. The next week I was at a better hospital, more pay and a legend in Baton Rouge X-ray.
thank you for all the upvotes. I wish y’all had been with me when I told my wife I had quit. “YOU FUCKING DID WHAT?!”
The hanging of the conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln
The hanging of the conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln, at Fort McNair, Washington D.C. The assassination of Lincoln in April 1865 by John Wilkes Booth was part of a conspiracy to bring down the Union government. The plot would have seen the simultaneous killing by conspirators of the President; Vice-President Andrew Johnson; and Secretary of State William Seward. Only Booth succeeded. While Booth was killed before he could stand trial, other conspirators were taken and imprisoned. Three months after the assassination, on July 7th, four of them – Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt – were hung at Fort McNair. The scene was captured by Scottish photographer Alexander Gardner. The gallows was constructed specifically for the occasion. Mary Surratt, whose Washington boarding house was a primary location in the conspiracy, became the first woman to be executed by the US federal government.
Almost all family fights revolve around either Money or Ego/Dominance
Hunger always leads to irritation and a lot of fights so ensure you have a handful of Chocolates with you to prevent low glucose and irritability
Never force your Kid into something he or she is not good at or will not be good at. Dont thrust your ambitions on your kid.
If you have had a bad breakup and you are in College , its better to hire an expensive call girl for a 3 day session rather than flunking after becoming devdas. Most heart breaks are solved this way (Per 2010 Standards)
Limit Coffee and Tea and avoid Aerated Drinks entirely. Drink only Water whenever possible.
Mayonnaise, Extra Cheese, French Fries and Drinks are all to be avoided when eating fast food. They are the ones which lead to diabetes and weight gain. Instead you can order more Coleslaw and Beans.
Never get into trouble with Cops till you get your First Passport. Always be humble and never mouth off a cop.
Be open about watching Porn or doing something. Dont hide such things and pretend to be a goody goody. Such people often cheat on their wives.
Never try to find out if Ghosts are real by taking a camera and visiting an allegedly haunted house.
Never use a Credit Card except for Insurance and Medical Emergencies.
If your Peers force you to smoke, its worth losing the friends than losing your lungs.
Never raise your hands on your kids or Parents or Spouse or Girlfriend
Never cheat a Girl by promising marriage out of lust. It never goes well. Better to watch Pornhub
Never tell a lie that harms you in the long run. Simple lies are fine.
Ensure a BMI of 27.5 at the most if possible if you are a male and 26.5 if you are female.
Ensure you have health insurance at all times if possible
Never invest in a Property where the Total EMI is more than 40% of your combined salary.
Old Age Retirement Communities are not bad places but in India -7 out of 8 are Cheats. So be careful.
The More “I Love You” you tell a girl the shorter the relationship is likely to be.
Even if a Girl wants Physical Sex, think a 100 times before participation. Laws and Time are not on your side.
For Girls – Think 1000 times
Never get into Political discussions with Family Members and Friends. Thats what Quora is for.
The “Empire State Express”
The “Empire State Express” (New York Central Railroad) passes through Washington Street, Syracuse, New York. The Empire State Express was the flagship train of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. It also had world renown as the first passenger train with a speed scheduled above 50 mph, as well as undertaking the longest scheduled nonstop run, between New York City and Albany, for 143 miles. Trains have run on the roads of Syracuse, New York since 1859, earning the city the sobriquet “the city with the trains in the streets.” As well as the obvious safety concerns, the situation also brought noise, dirt and pollution to Syracuse citizens. At peak points, around sixty trains ran along Washington Street – though that era finally came to an end in 1936 with the arrival of an elevated railroad and a new station on Erie Boulevard East. The final train to run on Syracuse streets was the Empire State Express – eastbound.
Since 1992, Japan’s economy has been in huge decline. It is no longer the economic powerhouse of the 1980s that shook the world with innovations and the excellent capabilities of Japanese businessmen, allowing Japan to dominate global markets. The myth of Japan being an unstoppable economic force has long been dead. The Japanese economy since the asset price bubble collapse has been characterized by rising debt at an unrelenting rate, an aging population associated with low productivity, and zombie companies propped up by government loans.
Japan’s hope for an economic revival is waning as the country shows no real signs of turning things around, instead falling further behind other growing Asian economies year after year. In this post, I will highlight key points showing how Japan may become the first nation to reach “lost century” status.
The lost innovation era
Since Toshiba’s fall, the cracks in Japan’s economy started to show even more as other Asian nations like South Korea, Taiwan, and China began surpassing Japan in key areas. This accelerating loss of global market share further aggravated the decline.
This outcome holds a sobering lesson for any nation closely tied to the United States. No matter how loyal you are to the master, it won’t save you from their opression if they see the necessary reason to do so, especially when the American Capitalists see their revenues falling.
At the same time, talented Japanese technicians and engineers have increasingly found opportunities abroad as other Asian countries have surpassed Japan in key tech sectors. Many now work in Taipei, China, Singapore, and throughout the ASEAN countries, where they see more financial opportunities compared to Japan. This exodus shows how other nations have attracted Japanese talent that could have benefited Japan domestically if better opportunities existed. Ultimately, the blame lies with Japan itself for failing to sustain an attractive and thriving environment for their people since that’s what they got for pleasing the master.
Zombie firms
When the asset price bubble burst and the stock market collapsed, many major Japanese companies were at risk of bankruptcy. Japanese banks and the government bailed out these businesses with loans so they could avoid folding. While this allowed the companies to survive, they became “zombie companies” – failing businesses reliant on bailouts to operate, with no impetus to innovate.
The rise of zombie companies has been a key driver of Japan’s economic decline, as they contribute little productivity while occupying market share. Typically it’s better to allow failing firms to go bankrupt so new entrepreneurship can flourish in a creative destruction process. However, Japan feared the short-term pains of major corporate bankruptcies and preferred lending money indefinitely to decaying keystone companies.
Aversion to change and status quo bias have prevented Japan from undertaking major reforms. Biting the bullet on corporate failures, as painful as it would be initially, would better incentivize startups and productivity. Economies thrive when inefficient businesses can fail and nimble innovators have space to experiment and grow. Propping up zombies may seem safer, but it locks in stagnation. Japan remains trapped by indecision and fear of change.
In fact, the problem of zombie companies in Japan appears to be worsening rather than stabilizing. Instead of declining, the number of zombies propped up by cheap credit is rapidly growing, especially in 2021 and 2022 as many firms faced bankruptcy due to COVID-19. This perpetual bailout mentality is a critical factor behind Japan’s ongoing economic stagnation and the despair many younger generations feel about the future.
The country’s lack of sovereignty is the most important factor
Japan is known not just for economic stagnation but also as a loyal puppet of the United States, to the point of eben rivalling Europe. Its foreign policy and military fall heavily under U.S. influence. On Japanese sites like Yahoo Japan, users joke about the U.S. military presence being an omnipotent god towering over Japan’s actual government. This dynamic has been evident in Okinawa, where protests demanding removal of U.S. bases led to a referendum supporting their ouster by 70% of voters. Yet the bases remain despite longstanding issues like pollution, as Japan has not asserted autonomy over land usage. More impartially, the U.S. military itself produces immense emissions rivaling top polluter nations if it was a country. It would be known as the seventh country for being top polluter, just imagine how cancerous their impact is towards the world.
Japan’s lack of independence in foreign policy has allowed the United States to continue imposing unfavorable trade deals, similar to the Trump agreement where he forced Japan to open up access for American farmers in the Japanese market and dump goods without any tariff imposed on them. At the same time, this kind of control is what is stopping Japan from reviving economically, because if Japan was independent, then it could work with Asian partners to establish an Asian Monetary Fund and implement trade deals in their own currencies rather than the US Dollar.
In fact, Japan desperately needs China and Vietnam as they are the only key that could help Japan survive, but of course under the ruling LDP elites, such a partnership will never happen. And even if someone tries to steer Japan toward more regional trade and financial cooperation with the East, then the next day he will be assassinated.
Oh yeah!!! If you leave bottled beer in the sun for a month, its brutally skunky. When I was underage, I left a case of beer hidden in a field until I could retrieve it, a month later. Not a wise move.
The weirdest incident was when I went over to my best friends parents farm for Christmas Eve. His father was quite the character, he could be incredibly frugal, but was also quite funny. My best friends parents don’t drink beer. But my best friend and I made up for them.
When I came in they asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I said I’ll have a beer, not wanting to put them out, and not knowing that they didn’t drink beer.
To give some context, up until 1961 Canada allowed any beer bottle shape. Then they switched to a standard stubby bottle, and every brewery had to use the identical stubby, so that they could be reused, instead of recycled. In about 1983, they started allowing any shape bottles again. Most breweries switched to a long neck bottle, with a twist top cap.
The father went down into the root cellar and came up with two long neck beer bottles. They were a little dusty, but I didn’t think anything of it. I tried to twist off the cap, and I couldn’t, the father handed me a bottle opener, and I popped the cap. OMG, the stench, it bubbled and frothed out of the bottle. The father was laughing so hard, I thought he couldn’t stand up. It was a long neck from before 1961 and this was probably 1984.
He said he had bought the beer for company, decades ago, and stored it in his cold room/root cellar. He hadn’t used it, and when organizing this Christmas, he had found it, and wondered if it would still be good, like whiskey kept in a cool dark place for years.
He got his answer. But I wondered how much it had cost him. He had opened, a sealed case of beer, that was probably at least 25 years old. How much could he have sold it for.
So I am here to tell you, beer can go bad within a month in the hot sun, and is definitely pungent after 25 years in a basement.
Six were killed
Oklahoma’s Fort Sill – the burial place of the Native American, Geronimo – housed static kite balloons, inflated with hydrogen such as this one. The balloons were deployed for the observation of artillery attacks, and were secured with guiding cables by groups of ground staff. Six troops were killed in the accident captured here on camera, at Henry Post Field at the Fort. The hydrogen in a balloon was ignited by a what is believed to have been a static electricity charge, created as the folds of the balloon fabric were rubbed together. Thirty more troops were injured.
Not me but a guy I worked with at my local hospital.
Mick was an ex-Para and also ex-Foreign Legion. His hobby was going around car-boot sales and buying up old brasses (vases, pots, decorations etc), cleaning them up and selling them on. He bought a load in bulk and while checking them he heard something rattling around inside a tall vase. When he tipped it out it turned out to be a Victoria Cross complete with ribbon and clasp! For our American cousins it’s the British equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Being a military man Mick immediately knew what it was-now he could have kept it or sold it, but knowing what he did (and being an honourable bloke) he decided to track down the owner, or at least his family. He found the recipients grandson and after speaking with him on the phone they arranged to meet up at a pub. The grandson had brought paperwork and photos to prove that it was indeed his grandads. It turned out that, when he was a child, he loved wearing his grandads medals while playing ‘Army’ (which he wasn’t allowed to do, kids eh?) and had somehow lost the VC, for which his dad had, understandably, never forgiven him. Mick told him where he’d found it and it turned out that the grandsons parents had kept a large brass vase by the door that they put umbrellas in-it had been rattling around inside the vase for over 30years!
In 1983 Upper Volta was one of the poorest countries in Africa, then a coup installed Thomas Sankara as president. Sankara changed the name of the country to Burkina Faso and started a number of reforms. «His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nationwide literacy campaign and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles». Sankara improved the living conditions of the Burkinabé people, redistributing agricultural land, planting trees to prevent desertification, creating a widespread program for building roads and railways, which brought jobs and modernization, strengthening the healthcare and education systems. He also outlawed FGMs, forced marriage, and promoted women to the head of the state and at all levels of the administration. Finally, he unilaterally reduced the Burkinabé international debt (mostly based on old interests that had piled up) and renounced international aids where not strictly necessary in order to escape the control of the IMF and World Bank.
In doing so, through, he caused the enmity of the international finance, but also of the Burkinabé middle class and of the old tribal chiefs. These united forces and in 1987 assassinated Sankara, substituting him with Blaise Compaoré, who remained in office through heavily doctored elections, until 2014, when he finally had to flee to Cote d’Ivoire. Despite being nominally democratic, Compaoré undid everything that had been done by Sankara, worsening the human rights conditions, the economy, and the overall living conditions.
Bannock Bread (Scottish)
Ingredients
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup Crisco
1/2 cup water to make a thick dough
Instructions
Mix dry ingredients together well. Cut in the shortening using a pastry blender.
Mix in the water and knead until the dough is very smooth, about 15 minutes.
Grease a cast iron frying pan, including the sides, and press the dough into the pan.
Bake on top of the stove over low heat. Watch carefully so that the bread does not brown or burn before the center is cooked.
When the bread is free from the pan, turn the loaf over and continue to cook. The total cooking time will be about 10 minutes on each side.
Florence Thompson with one of her children, Watsonville, California
Florence Thompson with one of her children, Watsonville, California. Thompson was only 32 in this picture by Dorothea Lange, an outtake from the photo session which generated the iconic “Migrant Mother” image. Born in 1903 in what was then Indian Territory, now part of Oklahoma, her parents were displaced Native American Cherokees. Marrying at 17, she and her husband began a family in California. When her husband died, Florence was left with six children at the age of 28. She went on to have four more children, three with a Californian man, Jim Hill. At the moment Dorothea Lange encountered the family, their car had broken down while journeying to find crop-picking work. Hill and the boys in the family had walked into town to get parts for the car.
John was a former U.S. Marine, and a karate black belt, and we were colleagues at a large language center in Bangkok.
The alpha male teachers initially assumed John would blend in with them, but they were so wrong.
He was polite, friendly in his own way to them but was quickly bored by their macho bravado and sexual escapade stories. That they demeaned others (foreigners and Thais) to swell their egos did not sit well with him.
The alphas, perhaps sensing that John was a true alpha, left him alone. They said that they disliked him but never explained why. Perhaps it was insecurity?
Some of the center’s academic management cringed each time a teachers’ meeting was held, knowing that John would be there, ready to call them out about unnecessary rules, regulations and for demands made on hourly-paid teachers.
If they insisted on changing teaching methodology or administrative procedures, John’s very valid, direct questions and comments usually exposed their lack of teaching experience and empathy. He made them accountable.
If explanations were clear and reasonable, John accepted them. He wanted what was best for students and teachers.
If he was proven wrong (even by himself), he readily admitted it. He also apologized if he inadvertently upset others with direct personal comments.
He was popular with students because he was what they thought an excellent, caring teacher should be. His standards were exacting and fair, and they knew he wanted them to succeed.
Gossip was never a thing for John. He may have made negative judgments about others, but he usually kept them to himself (occasionally expressing quiet sarcasm but only to close friends).
He had a wicked, subtle, sense of humor that went over most people’s heads. He had his vices, too, but again, only his closest friends knew them.
Why were many of his colleagues uncomfortable around him?
Because he never wavered in his integrity, honor and honesty.
I had a 1999 Buick Park Avenue with the 3800 engine. That engine was considered to be bullet proof. I bought the car with 184k already on it. It was a great road machine, 30mpg, and I loved it. I used to go into the northern suburbs to babysit my Grandson one day a week. By then the car probably had about 300k on it but it still ran very well and it was not rusted out. I stopped to get some take out breakfast on a rainy day. The car started ok but when I got on the freeway it didn’t want to get up to speed. I made it to my son-in-law’s house and into their driveway. When I left to head for home, the car would start but when I put it in gear it would die. It wasn’t showing a code so we didn’t have a clue. At that time, my son-in-law did some of my mechanical work so he said that he would take a look at it. They had an extra vehicle so they loaned that to me. Well he tore into it and checked all of the obvious things. Then he took the dash apart. He was stumped. After checking with some of his buddies, it was decided that the computer had gone bad. So he found a professional that came out to their home and replaced the computer. Nothing changed. The professional put the old computer back and wouldn’t take any money. He said that he didn’t solve the problem and he would not take any money. So I was being advised to give the car up, let it go for salvage instead of pouring more money into a lost cause. I told him that I hear you and I know you are trying to keep me from wasting my money. I just don’t believe that a car that has been running perfectly dies so suddenly without any obvious sign of a problem. I think it is going to turn out to be something simple that is hard to detect. So he got in touch with an experts’ expert. The expert showed up and he knew that there was another fuse box under the backseat. So they tore the backseat out and tested. Sure enough they found a dead circuit. They managed to trace that to a wire on the firewall that was corroded. They replaced that wire and the problem was solved. I drove that car to 366k. It was still running great but it had a broken leaf spring and the bushings were shot in the undercarriage. At that point I was going to be a volunteer driver so I felt that it was time to upgrade. I hold all of the cars that I have owned since to the standards of that ‘99. I loved that car.
Portrait
Portrait of Art Hodes, Kaiser Marshall, Henry (Clay) Goodwin, Sandy Williams, and Cecil (Xavier) Scott, Times Square, New York. Although born in the Ukraine, Jazz pianist Art Hodes was brought up in Chicago, and spent most of his career in “The Windy City”. Hodes became known for the Chicago Jazz style, but in order to find success, he had had to move to New York, in 1938. Here, Hodes and his River Boat Jazz Band – Joseph “Kaiser” Marshall on drums, Henry “Clay” Goodwin on trumpet, Sandy Williams on trombone and Cecil “Xavier” Scott played clarinet and tenor sax – are playing on a horse drawn cart to promote their concert that night – with special guest Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden. Writer and (self-taught) photographer William P. Gottlieb spent the ten years from 1938 to 1948 interviewing and photographing the leading, largely New York-based, jazz musicians of the time, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Billie Holiday. A columnist for the Washington Post, Gottlieb started to take his own pictures when the Post wouldn’t pay a photographer.
When I was fourteen years old, my favorite food in the world was pizza.
There wasn’t a good pizza shop in Lampeter, Pennsylvania, which was where I lived at the time. Most, if not all of my friends lived in or hung out in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. At the center of Strasburg, is Pizza City. The owner, Sam, was an over-the-top friendly Italian, with a keen eye for bull-shit.
Every day after school I’d smoke weed and head to Pizza City with a group of friends. I always ordered one crispy slice with a cup of water. Thinking I was cool, I would ask Sam for a free slice after I had ordered. That signature smile would fade and he’d look right through my bloodshot eyes and into my soul.
“Maybe tomorrow.”, was all Sam would say.
For years, Sam fed us and always encouraged us to be the best versions of ourselves. He asked us how our grades were and offered good advice.
At the end of my tenth-grade year,
my principal recommended that I attend inpatient drug rehabilitation to my parents. At seventeen years old, I was admitted into a two-week program in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. I kept a journal of poems and dreams from my stay at that facility.
It was a really scary time and my only escape was to write about it.
I always believed that Sam was against drug use, especially in children. When I got out of rehab, I started getting high immediately. I never went back to Pizza City. I never associated with any of my friends from back then because I was ashamed of who I’d become. I was a homeless heroin addict and didn’t want them to see that. As the years turned to decades things only got worse. My stays at facilities were no longer measured in days, but months.
Last year, I finally got clean. I still thought about Sam and Pizza City. After all, it’s where I grew up and my memories of Pizza City are nothing but fond. This past Sunday, after church, I decided to stop in with my family. I wanted Sam to meet the boys and Jessica and see that I had finally turned it all around. I knew how happy he’d be for me.
When we walked in we were kindly greeted and offered a booth. As my family sat down, I walked up to the counter looking for Sam. Just as I asked if Sam was around, Jessica called my name. I was told by the lady behind the counter that he was and to give him a minute. I walked over to Jessica and she pointed out a picture that was above our booth.
Sam, passed away in 2010. But if Sam passed away, who was the kind lady fetching for me? As it turns out, that little baby from twenty-five years ago, is also, Sam. It was Sam’s son, Sam that was being fetched.
I think about the people I have met throughout my life all the time. Some played a huge part and some played a small part. Sam, was a great role model and a fantastic pizza guy. He was a huge part of my teenage years.
I asked Sam that day if I could share a story. A story about a pizza man that saw the good in all of us kids. A story about a man that played a small part in my recovery with the promise of a free slice. After we talked, I asked Sam about maybe getting that free slice. His only response?
The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.
Eye pupil rises to 45% when an individual looks at somebody they love.
If a song is not going from your head, then try thinking about the end word of the song.
If you want people to take you seriously, just say what you’re saying is what your father taught you.
When you nod your head while asking, it tends to make others more willing to help you.
When it’s hard to convince someone to do something: give them options.
Ask for something huge before you asking for what you really want.
One good way to build trust is if you admit when you’re wrong, especially on little things.
For an interview, be either the first or the last one to attend in order to stay fresh in the interviewer’s brain.
If someone is talking or preoccupied, you can hold out your hand and they’ll give you whatever they’re holding.
Copying the person you’re with will make them like you.
You can be twice as rich by deciding you need half as much.
People will be more favorable to your idea if they think it’s THEIR idea.
Staring at peoples forehead irritates them quite a lot.
When high-fiving look at the opposite person’s elbow, that way you would never miss.
The U.S.S. Recruit
The U.S.S. Recruit, a wooden battleship built by the Navy in Union Square, New York City, to recruit seamen and sell Liberty Bonds from 1917 to 1920. In order to drive up recruitment to the Navy – and to train those so recruited – the US military commissioned the construction of a full and seaworthy battleship in the middle of Union Square, Manhattan. The ship was staffed, with a captain, and was equipped with wireless and quarters for officers and other crew. It also had searchlights – illuminated at night. As well as functioning as a successful training and recruiting unit – more than 25,000 men joined the US Navy via Recruit – the ship was also deployed as an event and reception location, hosting, amongst other occasions, a visiting group of Native Americans, and a christening. The ship remained in Union Square for the duration of the War and beyond, finally being decommissioned and dismantled in 1920. The six guns it carried were wooden replicas.
Oh yes. There’s a woman from Cape Cod named Gina Clark. Gina set up a charity called “Touched by Angels,” in which the charity supposedly offered help to families in crisis; handicapped child in need of special equipment, or families who needed help paying for their child’s funeral. The awkward part was that the family had to basically fund-raise on their own. They had to involve all their friends, and have their friends collect money, which then was SUPPOSED to go to the family in need. However, after going around, begging their friends, and participating in all these things the charity wanted them to do, the “charity” wound up basically charging the people for their services, and the people wound up getting next to nothing.
Anyways, she ripped off one of my friends, who was promised a wheelchair ramp, and used minivan. (For what it’s worth, all my friend really cared about was the wheelchair ramp. The minivan would have been nice, but she really NEEDED that ramp.)
Gina Clark eventually got busted, and served a minimum amount in jail, and part of her sentence was to actually pay the money to those families that it was collected for. Everyone on Cape Cod knew about the case, so when I happened to be in court one day, and Gina Clark was brought in front of the judge, I was interested to see what happened.
Apparently, she was crying poverty, and supposedly couldn’t pay. The judge got PISSED when he looked at her assets, and saw that she and her husband had two high-end cars, and two Harley Davidsons. The judge lit into her, and told her if she didn’t sell those Harley Davidsons to pay those victims, she was going to jail. His face was actually red, and his voice was shaking.
The entire courtroom broke out into spontaneous applause.
I watched a cousin package up and take all the white turkey meat home with her on Thanksgiving Day.
My dad has a large family. Individuals take turns holding the Thanksgiving gathering. This particular year my parents volunteered to host. Then my father went full overboard and invited cousins and their families. The end result was that over sixty people would be attending. Needless to say, mom was not happy.
In my dad’s family, the host provides the turkey, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce. Not to mention plates, cutlery, cups, sauces, and at least some of the drinks. So dad stepped up and contacted a friend who managed a local restaurant. He ordered all the food and it was excellent. The turkey was pre-sliced and laid out in long aluminum serving trays. It was separated by dark and white meat. There were trays of dressing and serving containers of the other items. Attendees were expected to bring a side dish.
It was controlled chaos. Fortunately the weather was mild and the kids could be thrown outside. Tables were set up in the sunroom. Tables were set up in the garage. People ate in shifts. Mom was a nervous wreck and exhausted. But everyone enjoyed themselves.
Late in the afternoon people began packing their stuff up to leave. It is typical at these functions for individuals to fix a “take home” plate. Turkey, dressing and veg. Maybe a slice of cake or pie. No biggie.
At a certain point everyone was gone. The next issue was maneuvering the leftovers into the fridge. I began transferring turkey into a storage container. My mother walked over and told me, “There’s no white meat left.” I looked at her in total shock. “Teresa took all of it. Before others could even get some.”
I was stunned. She had made multiple plates, just of turkey, then waltzed out the door.
Now it wasn’t like she had a family to take the food to. She is single. It isn’t like she needed the food. She has an excellent job and owns her own home.
But she is known to be a tightwad. She was taking the meat home to freeze.
I wish I had known. I wish mom had told me. But she knew better because I would have stopped her. Others would have had the chance to have helped themselves.
She didn’t have the decency to leave my parents, her host, a portion. Instead, she was a classless, spoiled brat.
I still think about that teacher from time to time, now some 20+ years later.
When I was in high school, there were five different levels of English class, depending on academic ability. Often, academic ability and behavioral problems go downhill proportionately. That is, the lowest-level class also had the most students with the most behavior problems.
I was in the highest level class. In my sophomore year, we had a student teacher for a few months. She was a very nice young lady… very quiet, but very smart. Loved to read and talk about books. I can say now, with the experience of being a teacher myself, that, in retrospect, she wasn’t really “teacher” material. She was far too kind, too soft-spoken. She was just a woman who was trying to earn a living via her hobby: reading.
But that’s not what teaching is about.
She loved her student teaching experience, because her skill set (knowing a lot about literature) fit the needs of the students in her class (wanting to learn a lot about literature). Then her time as a student teacher was up, and she was gone for the rest of the year.
The next year, she returned as a full-time teacher. This must have been her first teaching job after college. She said hello to those of us she recognized in the hallway on her first day. She seemed happy.
A few weeks later, she left her room in the middle of a class, got security to escort her back into her room to get her stuff, and was never heard from again. Another teacher had to take over that class from that point on. Our newspaper teacher, who was really tight with the 10 students in her newspaper class, told us exactly what happened: She (the new teacher) had a total mental breakdown in the middle of class because the students were so disruptive and disrespectful. She swore at them before crying and leaving the room.
As often happens with new teachers, she was at the bottom of the pecking order for which classes she got to teach. She ended up with the lowest-level English class, full of students with behavior issues who didn’t give a damn about literature.
This was not a good fit for her skill set. Those students needed more of a drill-instructor type of personality, not her soft-spoken style. The administration set her up for failure, and she failed.
I hope she didn’t give up on teaching completely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.
I worked in a department with three others and a manager at a radio station. Correction media company which owned multiple radio stations. We entered the contracts for the adverts. I had a inbox that never was less than about 10 cms tall for the two stations I was responsible for.
The morning was spent entering as many contracts as possible. The afternoons finalising which advert played in which break for the following day. Certain companies could not be in the same break as other ones and while the computer was supposed to do most of it the more it was over sold the longer it took me to fix it. The further behind I was in loading the contracts the more likely I would be oversold and spend even less of my day loading the contracts.
Any way my manager was told to fire one of us. She obviously didn’t know how to choose and spent a good month walking past us to her office warning us if we didn’t pull our socks up we would be out of a job. We all were stressing over the threat of being fired. I was already arriving early, leaving late and not taking all my breaks.
One day I came to my senses, they needed me more than I needed them. I would be able to get another job, the world would not come to an end.
I went up to HR and explained that I wanted to take voluntary redundancy as there was too much work for the four of us and there was absolutely no way I still wanted to be there when they reduced the staff to three. No doubt nothing that my manager hadn’t told them already.
I was happy to leave. A year or so later happened to bump into my old manager who admitted she quit about three months after I left. I was not surprised at all. Senior management were idiots. If you were on air staff or a sales rep you could do no wrong. But those contracts weren’t worth the paper they were written on until they were loaded into the computer system, which is what my job was and they treated us like we should be grateful just to work for them. As I said – idiots.
My son was in algebra class. He was trying hard to get a passing grade and trying to pay attention. Every day the boy behind him would very slightly bump his desk in the back of my son’s chair. He would ignore it but some kids sitting near by would laugh. This went on for weeks and weeks and my son just wanted to pass algebra. One day this boy behind him began very slightly touching his hair with a pencil. My son turned around and told him to knock it off. He told him this off and on before. As soon as my son said that the teacher called on my son to “STOP TALKING”. Then of course the nearby students would laugh again. So finally this boy brushed my son’s hair one last time and my son jumped up out of his desk turned around leaning over this boys desk. He put his hands on this boys desk and screamed into his face “LETS GO OUT SIDE $##@HOLE!! COME ON! LETS TAKE THIS OUTSIDE NOW!” Of course the teacher was yelling at my son to stop but my son was not listening to the teacher at all. The boy just sat motionless and not responding to my son. The teacher came over and sent my son to the office for the rest of the day. I told him I was sorry this happened and my son said “It was worth every minute of it”. The next day he came home and I asked if the boys bothered him again. He said no the teacher had assigned new seats to everyone. I laughed and said “Did he put that kid right in front if his desk!!??” My son said “No, he put me there”. So what happened after that? Well, this boy began to follow my son around asking if he wanted to hang out. My son didn’t though.
Don’t abandon someone suddenly after giving them attention. It kills them.
Don’t waste your time by stalking your ex on fb or checking people’s ‘last seen’ on WhatsApp. If they want to talk to you, they will. If they don’t, they won’t, even in a hundred years.
Don’t compare yourself with anyone. You and the rest are so different, that when you realize it, a comparison won’t even be possible.
Don’t ignore your body and health.
Don’t miss out on important engagements – Birthdays, weddings, your child’s first performance, your dad’s retirement party, reunions – its these events that make the fondest memories.
Don’t take things personally. Even if you know its personal, don’t take it personally. Then you win.
Don’t be rude to your parents. Or siblings. When everyone else will run for cover, its your family that will stand with you as you drench in your storm.
Don’t force someone to be in your life. Let them go, if they want to.
Don’t find reasons to be unhappy. It doesn’t pay to be sad. It pays to be joyous.
Don’t underestimate the power of people. Network.
Don’t let anyone make you feel badly about yourself. Always know your good things and your flaws. Accept them. Correct them. Or don’t correct them. But don’t let anyone else capitalize on them.
Dr. Frankenstein on Campus (1970)
Full Movie.
Also known as Flick. This Canadian-produced comedy horror movie finds a third-generation descendant of the monster-making madman Frankenstein (Robin Ward) performing bizarre electronic mind-control experiments on the students of a Canadian university under the auspices of his sponsor, Dr. Preston (Sean Sullivan).
When the doc isn’t hard-wiring the kids’ brains into the department’s newest computer equipment, he’s making time with a pretty coed (Kathleen Sawyer). Complications ensue when a group of students decide to frame the doctor for selling pot, leading him to use the computer to remote-control a karate champion and chop-socky his enemies to death. Only when the doc loses his control box do things really get out of hand, leading to a whiz-bang climax which reveals the doctor’s true identity. Dated and silly, with needless subplots and numerous drug references, this is occasionally enlivened by some interesting special effects.
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.
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:
Oooooooooooh!
I’ve never looked back.
This is what I made tonight.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
(^ 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?
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:
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.
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.
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:
The other accuser, Wade and MJ:
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.
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
When I was quite young, perhaps three years old, I went out for a walk with my father. And thus, together… hand in hand… we walked down the street in our housing complex in Bridgeport, CT. It was a nice Saturday. Blue sky. Sunny, but cool.
And as we walked down the street we came across a curious sight.
There was this old man in a blue jacket playing a wind-up musical device of some type, and a monkey on a really long leash….
This guy was just strolling along and the monkey was going p to people. If we gave the monkey some change, he would take it and carry it off to the guy playing the music. A simple and nice cute distraction.
My father gave me a few coins and I gave them to the monkey. He crawled up onto me, took the money, raised his tiny hat off his head and then ran to the guy with the music box, and gave it to him. And then the guys started the wind-up music all over again.
This was my once and only experience with such a troubadour. And, I had long forgotten about it.
But … when I was going through “retirement” I ended up with complete memory recall, and thus had memories regarding this singular event.
Treasure the valuable memories that you have. They might take you to places long forgotten, and seemingly trivial in importance….
I believe it was Sir Richard Branson who did what he called the “Restaurant Test.” Part of his interview process was an “informal” interview at a restaurant. What the prospective employee didn’t know is that Sir Richard had already notified the restaurant that he was coming with a potential employee and to screw up their order, nothing major like giving meat to a vegan but if they ordered their steak medium rare, the chef would cook it well done.
Richard would then see how the other person reacted. If he was polite then it was onto the next phase of the interview, if they were rude he would finish his meal and that person would not be considered for the job
My wife and I agreed early on that whoever could draw the largest salary would work while the other was stay-at-home parent. Unfortunately I went to work (would have loved to be the stay at home dad.) Our deal included that after a 30 minute decompress and wash up after arriving home, our daughter was 100% my responsibility through bedtime. My wife got up in the night with her during the week, and I took the weekend shift. We tag teamed the weekend hours, but I took most of the time. My happiest memories were coming home and getting my baby to hold, feed, and change. Later it was seeing her standing at the door or front window waiting for me. She’s 50 now and remembers being swooped up and burying her face in my fur lined coat collar in the winter.
NO stress could survive the love of a dad and daughter.
“Grandma said she’ll give me a gift if I let her shampoo my hair,” he tells me the other day.
I can see how torn and conflicted he looks.
My son’s a swashbuckling, bug-hunting pirate.
You’d have an easier time getting a stray cat to take a shower.
“I hear you,” I reply, making sure she’s out of earshot. “My take?” he leans in. “If she wants to give you a gift, she should just do it. No strings attached.”
He nods and we exchange conspiratorial smiles.
“You’ve got to rein in that wayward son of yours,” she tells me after a botched shower attempt.
But I won’t.
Of course, I’m always encouraging him to be kind, respectful, and thoughtful with others.
But I won’t use the stick or the carrot.
Because when he’s older and someone hands him a rifle telling him who the enemy is, I want him to do his own thinking.
Because when he’s older and someone offers him a pill and tells him he’ll have the best time of his life, I want him to question.
Because when he’s older and someone offers him a quick reward in exchange for giving up his values, I want him to stand his ground.
That was the excuse I got during the last week of school when a project was due in my 7th grade reading class.
My students were told that the book we had just read, The Call of the Wild, was going to be made into a major motion picture, and they were to create a movie poster to persuade people to see the show.
The posters were to be judged by other students and staff, and the winner would be awarded a prize. The competition was intense!
Every student had a finished poster except Shane (not his real name). I wasn’t totally surprised, as Shane had been late with assignments in the past, but the excuse was pretty shocking.
“So, Shane,” I began, “when I call your dad, will he be able to verify that your project did, in fact, catch on fire?” I was ready for him to change his story, but he didn’t!
“Yes,” he replied, “and he’s really mad at me because it burned a hole in the living room carpet, so now I’m grounded.”
“Hmm, he’s good”, I thought, “validating his story with details…this should be interesting.”
Later, I called Shane’s dad, and sure enough, Shane was telling the truth! His dad explained that his son had used so much white-out on his project, that when he held a lighter to the poster board (to singe the edges and make it look old) the entire thing exploded into a fire ball, fell to the floor and burned a big hole in his living room floor.
“Wow, Shane! I was a bit skeptical, but your story checks out. I’ll give you until tomorrow to create a new poster. Your idea to make your poster look old is most impressive (as the story took place over 100 years ago) but DON’T burn the edges this time!”
The next day, Shane proudly walked into the class. I eagerly looked for a poster, figuring he’d be carrying it, but it was nowhere in sight.
“Shane, did you finish you new poster?” I asked.
“Yep, I sure did.”
“Where is it?”
“Right here.” and he gave me a crumpled ball of cardboard. “Open it up, you’re going to love it!”
I did the best I could to smooth out the wrinkled mess. Sure enough, there was a movie poster advertising The Call of the Wild.
“It looks great, but why did you wad it up into a ball?”
“To make it look old.” he said as if I should have already known.
Shane didn’t win the contest, he remained grounded 2 weeks, and that summer he had to get a job mowing lawns to pay for the damaged carpet.
I recently saw Shane at the state fair. He’s engaged and works as an auto mechanic. He remembers the poster project vividly and said everything worked out pretty well. They ended up getting the entire apartment re-carpeted for free and Shane got to keep his lawn mowing money.
Galatoire’s Crabmeat Yvonne
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
6 artichokes
1 pound mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup clarified butter
2 pounds backfin lump crabmeat
Salt and ground white pepper
1/4 cup parsley, chopped fine
6 lemon wedges
Instructions
Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
Cut stem from artichokes flush with the base and boil artichokes for 45 minutes, or until a leaf pulls off easily.
Remove from pot, drain and let cool.
Pull off leaves and reserve for another purpose. Remove choke and slice the bottoms. Set aside.
In a large skillet sauté mushrooms in clarified butter.
Add reserved artichoke bottoms and crabmeat. Heat through, stirring gently.
Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with parsley.
Serve on toast points with a lemon wedge on the side.
Attribution
Source: Galatoire’s, New Orleans, Louisiana. Gulf Coast Cooking
Twenty years ago, a friend called me in a panic. She was on the backside of a bad divorce, she had a three year old daughter, and she’d just been told she couldn’t continue to live where she was. The little girl was with her father that weekend, but my friend was at a neighborhood restaurant with no money and no idea what to do next. I told her to come over, got her something to eat and settled her on the sofa because she hadn’t slept in something over 24 hours and told her that we’d figure out what to do next when she woke up. Ultimately we moved her and her daughter into our guest room.
About three weeks later, she introduced us to a young woman who was pregnant and not in a position to raise a child. (She was married. That wasn’t the issue.) Sitting at our dining room table, having just met us and not knowing much more than that we’d taken in our mutual friend, she asked my husband and me if we would adopt the baby. We’d fought infertility for a long time. We said yes. She talked to her husband, and the whole thing was agreed on by the following morning. About seven months later, I was her birth coach and had the incredible privilege of catching my own son.
He’s nineteen now. We have him because we let a friend in a tough spot move in with us.
Mine was in the Air Force. I had a racist for an immediate supervisor who always gave me average ratings on my performance. I didn’t realize how bad I was getting screwed until one of my counterparts (who was a total screw up) was shocked that he higher ratings than myself. A “3” is considered average (which I was getting on my reviews). This “screwup” was getting 5’s which is the highest score. I was thinking “how the HECK did he get a 5??” This dude missed time, came to work drunk, was reprimanded for fights….been to jail….etc. my record was SPOTLESS. Always the first on the job and the last to leave. Kept my uniform super clean. So I realized that I’m working twice as hard as this other dude and getting a much lower score.
This was in the 1990’s. I overheard a conversation with my racist supervisor one day about what he wanted to be when he leave the military. He stated that he wanted to be a highway patrol officer “so that he can legally hit minorities”. He always made crude jokes about Mexicans and blacks. As an African American myself I hated this dude’s guts. His leadership skills were the worst. I hated every day of working with him.
One day it was his last day of work. The shop was going to throw a going away party for this racist pig. There was an option to donate $10.00 to the potluck to participate in the party or miss out and work. I chose to work. I’m not donating a DIME to this dude’s going away party.
After he gracefully disappeared from the job I thought that would be the last I’ve heard of him. NOPE! I was wrong. Found out later that he did apply for the state highway patrol position.
The timing on this particular day couldn’t have been more perfect. Two men from the highway patrol were visiting our unit and I happened to be the ONLY person there. They asked me “who’s in charge?” Well, I’m the only airman in the shop so I was actually in charge. I asked them what’s going on? They told me that they are doing a follow up on a gentleman who applied for highway patrol who used to work at this unit. I told them I have detailed files on this person. What made this even better was the fact that one highway patrol officer was black, the other was Hispanic. I was so nervous in hopes that our main supervisor didn’t show up because he would give this guy a decent feedback. I wanted them to hear the DARK side of this scumbag.
I told them that he was a decent worker at best but here are some documents I wanted to share. Luckily I kept my old floppy disk handy with all of the stuff I wrote to the higher chain of command about this racist pos. The statements had dates and times I written down of his racist comments over the years. Too many to write in this essay. But let’s just say it was two pages worth (front and back).
The look of disgust was very apparent on their faces. One of them asked me “people like him still exist in the military?” I replied “shockingly, yes”. They asked me, “did you ever want to knock this dude the F- -K out?” (Many Times I did).
To make a long story short, months went by and I didn’t hear anything. Then one day I overheard a conversation about my former supervisor being turned down for his highway patrol job and was working at a Wal-Mart as a warehouse worker. In all honesty, I take GREAT pleasure in feeling that my sneaky swift actions were the reason.
I certainly wouldn’t laugh if a student of mine told me that – so have no idea why your professor did. But I wouldn’t give it much weight, either. And I’d wonder why the student told me. Would they tell me how tall they were? Or what color hair they had?
If eligibility to be in Mensa requires one to be in the top 2% (or something) of people who take IQ tests, that is a nice capability to have. But what percentage of university professors are likely to also be eligible if that’s the requirement – plus have become academically very accomplished in their field of study? I have no idea what my IQ is, it’s never been tested as far as I know – nor has it ever mattered to me. It is likely higher than some – and not nearly as high as others, both professors and students I have known in my well over half-century at a university (if you include my student years). It’s a place that tends to collect very bright articulate people.
So if a student of mine told me they were in Mensa, I’d probably ask them about it, what they did as a member of Mensa, etc., just as I would if they told me they were in an orchestra or worked for a charity or played on the soccer team or something. That is, it is information about that student and it might be interesting, but what does it change? I would expect that person’s intelligence to show in their love of learning, the questions they ask, the connections they make, etc. And all of that intellectual capability would be obvious even it they were not a member of Mensa.
I went to McDonald’s and went inside to place a to go order. While I was standing there, the manager walked up to me and handed me an empty French fry box. This was during the time that McDonald’s was doing the Monopoly game. The game piece on the fry box was already partially open. I peeled it the rest of the way back and it said it was a $2000 winner. I really needed the money for college at that point in my life. I thanked the manager profusely. She said that it had been inadvertently opened by a worker. She saw me standing there with my young daughter and thought that I looked like I could use some cheering up. Best trip to McDonald’s ever!
It seems the Dutch Government has forbidden ASML to sell EUVs to SMIC from 1/9/23
Yet orders placed until 23:59 on 31/8/23 can be shipped and fulfilled.
So technically ASML can ship orders to SMIC upto the time the last order placed on 31/8/23 is fulfilled
That’s for 21 EUV Machines & 50 DUV Machines
In September, ASML has delivered 4 EUV Machines & 17 DUV Machines
Meanwhile there is another legal complication
SMIC has now introduced a Distributor company who can buy EUVs from ASML and simply sell them to SMIC for a 10% commission (10% is just an example)
Now the Dutch order said only SMIC was forbidden from receiving ASML EUVs so ASML has also accepted 8 more orders for EUVs from this distributor
Technically Dutch Govt cannot specifically forbid ASML from selling to China as a whole as that is a major WTO violation
So they can only blacklist importers
So China can keep bringing up new distributors and placing orders and ASML is happy because TSMC has cancelled 24 Machines recently and i am sure China offered full price for the machines
Ultimately MONEY TALKS
Once again the US is furious but again it’s all about the legalese now
SMIC is forbidden so an agency buys and sells to SMIC
The Dutch look the other way of course
ASML is delighted because they sell more machines
My guess is this new agency will be blacklisted soon and they will incorporate more laws to prevent such measures
Yet that gets China another 8 machines plus a further 24 machines which I bet China will place as they are already in process
This means SMIC technically can make 7 nm and 5 nm Chips in decent quantities at least till 2026/2027
By then they should crack some breakthrough
So China has gained TIME and the Dutch have put business ahead of stupidity
Just like NVDIA and Intel just sold products to China which were slightly off the specs in huge numbers
He was working on a HUGE problem that took up the entire white board. The students were doing their best to follow the problem in their notes and in their minds. Suddenly he stopped, turned to look at us, turned red with embarrassment and realized that he got confused and lost in the problem. A student in the front row gently guided him to finish.
Instead of brushing this off he used this as an amazing teachable moment.
Here is what he did:
He asked us if we thought he was stupid. We collectively said “no.”
He then said that he was not a “melon head” and neither were we.
The lesson: He explained about the fight or flight syndrome and said that once he got momentarily confused, instead of going back to the place in the problem where he understood, he got nervous because he was in front of us, got into the fight or flight syndrome, produced adrenaline and got so stressed that he could no longer think. He then drew a picture on the board of a human brain, showed the reptilian part of our brain and the frontal lobes and explained that when we get too stressed we go to our reptilian brain and we need to return to our frontal lobe thinking. He gave us concrete strategies for exactly how to do this. (Breathe slowly, go back to a place where we last understood and start over). This lesson was SO impactful to me that I began to study the brain more and more and then I taught this to all of my students.
Final Thought: Even though my professor was teaching Calculus, his off-topic lesson was one of the best I ever had. He turned an embarrassing moment into an incredibly helpful life lesson.
This lesson was so important to me that I included the story as one of the chapters in my teacher support book, “Wait, Don’t Quit.”
I passed a great little convertible parked in front of a business with a “For Sale” sign and stopped to go look at it because I was considering a fun weekend car. It turned out the owner of the business was a past customer of mine, I had done work on his home. Two days later it was mine.
In the process of fixing every little thing and customizing it, I decided to pull out most of the interior to really clean it. Tucked in where the carpet overlapped, under the driver’s seat, was a gold ring with a small diamond. I wasn’t sure if it was real so I asked a friend at a nearby jewelry store. They confirmed it was real 18k and about ⅛ carat real diamond.
I called my friend who sold me the car. He checked with his wife and it wasn’t hers. I asked if they knew the previous owner but she had sold them the car before moving overseas and they lost track of her info. There must have been a clean title at some point because she wasn’t listed.
I doubt it was a wedding ring because it was so small, in fact the only finger it would fit was my mother in law’s pinky. She liked it so I let her keep it.
Battle with highest total losses:Battle of Vercellae
In 113 BC a large Germanic-Celtic coalition begins poking around Rome. They crush a Roman army and send the Romans into a panic. This army is 200,000 men strong- how can Rome compete.
Into this steps Marius, Uncle of Caesar. Marius was the most well-known general of his age and he set about reforming the Roman military with rapid speed, creating the more traditional Roman Legions we all know and love.
As this massive Army began to move for Italy Marius responded with his reformed Legions. What followed was a massive all-out clash where Roman discipline held back a far larger army. The turning point came when a commander named Sula counter-charged the Celtic cavalry and sent them fleeing into their own lines.
In all Plutarch reports 100,000 were killed, Livy reports 160,000, and Orosius reports 140,000 were killed.
Battle with highest Roman casualties: Cannae
Hannibal had invaded Italy and Rome responded by raising the largest Army in it’s history- some 90,000 men strong. The Romans used this Army to attack Hannibal, driving their strong heavy infantry forward in an effort to break Hannibal’s lines.
Hannibal had cleverly made his flanks strong and so as his center bowed inwards his flanks did not. This created a big “U” shape and the Romans found themselves being pressed from all sides. Then Hannibal’s cavalry came around the rear and surrounded the entire Roman Army. They then pressed in and killed perhaps 50,000 Romans.
I have to say, a number of answers to this question are appalling. What is most troubling is that many of the worst and most shaming of these responses are from supposed clinicians themselves. I am deeply bothered by this.
Is it normal, or lets say understandable, that you would feel distrustful and off about your therapist shutting down your queries about the nature of your relationship with them? Yep, sounds downright logical to me. When we feel distrustful it is because we feel unsafe in some way. You therapist refusing to engage with you around the experience of the inherent lop-sided-ness of the therapy relationship is problematic.
What you are experiencing is incredibly common, if not inevitable. I would dare say anyone who has remained in therapy for more than a few sessions with a therapist will wrestle with the freedoms and constraints afforded within a psychotherapy. For many this remains a constant felt tension throughout their therapy. It is an important aspect of therapy as exploring the tensions, dissatisfaction, unfairness, longings etc…with our therapists directly reveals our deepest needs and wants. Talking about the bounds of the therapy is the most fruitful of topics, a talented therapist would happily (if not giddily) help you to explore your distrust, or any other experience you may be having about being in therapy.
The issue isn’t whether it is right or wrong for a therapist to reveal anything about their private-selves (some do, some don’t). The issue here is that this subject has come up more than once in your therapy and you are clearly completely confused about it. Your therapist has missed a golden opportunity to open up a discussion about relationships.
It would seem according to some of these answers your therapist is not alone in completely missing the proverbial elephant, or neon sign, in the room.
On my first day working at Domino’s Pizza, I was introduced to all the workers. One of the delivery drivers was a guy in his 70s whom we’ll call Morgan. He looked at me and said, “I’d ask you out, but I guess you don’t date people your grandfather’s age.” Keep in mind that I was 17 at this point; this was my first “real job.” Since I’d been homeschooled, I wasn’t well-versed in social norms, but this statement gave me the creeps. When I went home that evening, I discussed it wiith my mom, who said he was most likely teasing.
Morgan kept chatting with me, and I came to know him as a very friendly person. However, a couple of months later (I worked there from halfway through summer break until Thanksgiving, when I got a better job), I was eating a piece of leftover pizza and he grabbed my shoulders, trying to take a bite out of my pizza. I warned him not to do it again, or I’d elbow him. He talked for weeks about how “M.J. has pointy elbows,” so nobody get on her bad side.
I was never comfortable around him from that time on. He kept making comments that made me less comfortable. One day, he said, “You’re going to make a wonderful wife and mother someday.” Finally, I brought it up with my parents again. When I mentioned that he’d given me his business card so I could “use him as a professional reference,” they realized what was going on.
My dad called the manager, who was the best guy ever with six kids of his own and decided to let my dad (a tough-as-nails, Glock-carrying Italian gym rat in cowboy boots) do whatever he thought was best. I gave my dad Morgan’s schedule, and the two of them had a nice chat out in the parking lot. Morgan said about five words to me the entire rest of the time I worked there. It was glorious.
I used to work for an EXTREMELY reclusive billionaire (for further reference in the answer he will be called Greg) as a personal aide. Many things that I have seen and been a part of during my fantastic service with (for?) him are covered by legal documents that demand non disclosure from me. However, there are still some things that can be shared.
The word extremely is in all caps because only one or two pictures of him have ever been publicly published, and he has never given a personal statement. He maintained a zero social media presence, and would always grumble about the dependency of modern society on rapidly changing technology. His family and him always maintained a low profile, choosing to utilise public transport if they could (however, they had extensive means of transportation and if he felt even the slightest inkling of a threat they would use another transportation method). The children attended a private school just out of the county, however, in my country, private schools are very common, so this is not too fancy.
But, don’t for a moment underestimate the man. He had an uncanny ability to read people, pick out things others would not see at first glance and was always determined to understand and learn about the world around him. He would anonymously donate millions to organisations that furthered research into space (is this a thing? I learnt this from another personal aide). He played his cards close to the chest, and if he did not understand a theory or idea, he had no qualms of ringing the relevant party up to better understand the concept, something he did regularly with his firm which led to some talks behind his back in the firm.
He always maintained a composure of calmness through out even the most trying situations. There was a time when a client agreement between his firm and the client had fallen through, and they only had a few hours to rehash all the details. Unfortunately, he had given the lead architect of the deal a few days off earlier in the week as the client company had, at first, shown a very positive outlook on the agreement. Greg knew that the architect was out deep in the country side where he was helping with the after party of his sister’s wedding. Cell service was not great, and while the architect was informed of the situation, he was in no place to rehash a multi million dollar deal. So what was done, within a span of 1 hour, was a helicopter from a local tour agency, that always had one on standby, was chartered, sent out to the architect, brought him back and they worked on the deal. The deal eventually fell through (it was beyond saving if you asked me), and Greg felt extremely guilty for the inconvenience he caused the architect. As a form of thank you, he proceeded to pay for the sister’s wedding, and gave the architect another month off.
The billionaire I worked for always attempted to remain frugal. He never owned any form of private transport (jet, helicopter, yacht etc), had a small car collection but always donated money or reinvest it into the market. He never showed emotions, but you knew he was a caring individual. His neighbours son had been involved in an extremely gruesome accident when his car was slammed by a truck. Knowing that financing the operation and hospital stress for the son would be too much for the mother, he quietly payed for the entire operation, and set up a trust that would cover the living and medical treatment costs for that young man for the rest of his life.
Greg passed away a few years ago, which is when I stopped working. His wife asked us aides if we would like to stay on, and while several did, I left to take care of my ailing Mother. As a parting bonus, she gave the aides leaving a substantial monetary bonus that will be enough for the rest of my life if I live carefully. I haven’t heard from them in a while, but their current aides say they are still the same down-to-earth people I had known them as.
Greg was a fantastic individual. He was an avid learner, an individual who did whatever it took and, yet, still managed to keep the small things in life within his view. It gave me great pleasure to work for him, and I definitely miss him.
The Ferrari 166 S
The Ferrari 166 S was a sports racing car built by Ferrari between 1948 and 1953, an evolution of its Colombo V12-powered 125 S racer. It was adapted into a sports car for the street in the form of the 166 Inter.
Only 12 Ferrari 166 S were produced, nine of them with cycle-fenders as the Spyder Corsa. It was soon followed by the updated and highly successful Ferrari 166 MM (Mille Miglia), of which 47 were made from 1948 to 1953. Its early victories in the Targa Florio and Mille Miglia and others in international competition made the manufacturer a serious competitor in the racing industry. Both were later replaced by the 2.3 L 195 S.
At the end of the interview, the hiring manager leaned back on his chair, folded his hands and grinned, “Tell me why I shouldn’t hire the guy I interviewed before you came in?”
I had to think for a moment. “Having never met or interviewed the guy, I can’t make an informed opinion.” And I thought the reason for the question was to see if I made snap decisions without any facts.
He shook his head, “Now that’s a cop out. Give me another reason.”
“Let me see his resume and give me a few minutes. Cover up his name.”
“I can’t do that, but I’ll show you his cover letter.”
He folded the paper so I couldn’t see who sent it, and moved it across the desk. I read the first sentence and said, “He makes careless mistakes. He misspelled the name of your company.”
The hiring manager’s eyes popped and said, “What?” He looked at it again, then said, “This meeting is over.”
And that was that. I never heard back and no one in HR would take my call. I don’t know if it was a fake letter he used as a test or a real one.
Yes, I was a financial manager at a golf & country club.
I took two weeks’ vacation and when I came back there was a note taped to my computer that said, “Do Not Open.” Immediately, I knew because employees were being let go daily.
Minutes later, my desk phone rang, and the NEW GM wanted me in his office.
I was let go for no reason given other than “Don’t take it personally”.
I stayed in contact with my assistant, and she was given my job at $8 an hr. She also told me he brought in his wife, children and many other employees that he knew from a previous job at another club.
All total, 23 employees were let go and replaced!
Karma got him….he got caught stealing and he was fired!
Some years ago, when my special needs kids were younger, we went to a nearby restaurant to practice behavior, social skills, and new experiences. They won’t learn if they aren’t exposed.
I agreed they could have anything on the menu as long as they agreed to try their choice. My older two tried something off the adult menu, but my younger one was less confident and asked to try something from the kid’s menu. I wanted this a positive experience so I said sure. He ordered the personal pizza.
I did chuckle that we came to a restaurant for him to have pizza, but we agreed. It was a great time, and everyone enjoyed. Well, I didn’t enjoy it as much when I got the bill. His personal pizza cost almost as much as a regular pie from the pizza shop. Well, we came for the experience and everyone behaved well. But next time, I had an impulse about eating out, I asked the kids if they were ok with the pizza shop, and they were. The restaurant was ok, but you could relax in the pizza shop. Ok, I learned a lesson that day.
She hated the pool and resented my father for getting it.
Upon retirement, my father put an in-ground pool, complete with a deck and privacy fence, in his back yard. I’d been moved out for three years at that point, and I usually visited during the holidays, when the pool was closed. I never saw it in its full glory except in pictures. I saw a lot of pictures of my dad and sister and other people having great pool parties.
My mother was never in those pictures. She was the one taking the pictures, I assumed. But she later told me that she hated the pool. It cost half as much as the house it was attached to. It was the single biggest purchase my father ever made for himself.
He got about eight years of use from it. Then, his health got so bad that his doctors told him to quit going in it, lest he have a heart attack and drown in it. They drained the pool that winter, and it was never used again.
Then he died, and for the next six years, my mother had a giant man-made swamp in her backyard. Every time it rained, she had to pump the water out of the pool. It attracted frogs and snakes. It actually reduced the value of her home, because she lived in a poor neighborhood and no one who could afford to fix and maintain the pool would want to live in that neighborhood.
Finally, just last month, she got it filled in with dirt. It wasn’t cheap, of course, but now she can have what was there before: a garden.
To the US, a REASONABLE RELATIONSHIP will be when :-
Xi Jingping retires or resigns
China demilitarizes and commits to the same
China relinquishes the One China Policy wrt Taiwan and cedes the South China Sea to US Hegemony
China prepares to be Number Two for the considerable future
China purchases and takes back US Debt to $ 1.5–1.7 Trillion
Nothing else will satisfy them
Even if China makes these confessions, some Neocons won’t be satisfied
They want a War against China and to see China broken and lose considerable power and the CPC to be ousted and a US style democracy established
For China, a REASONABLE RELATIONSHIP MEANS :-
Each Nation understanding that their laws are meant to be followed in each nation
No protectionism
Not using Geopolitical issues in Economic problems
Fair Competition and the ‘May the best man win’ philosophy
Win Win Partnership so that the Global Economy can gain
Of course China also has Wolf Warriors who simultaneously aim to develop their independent supply chain and to oust US influence in the Global South
In the end, the businessmen in both nations want what China wants
The leadership in China wants peace
It is the US that is divided because of its unstable politicians, between Neocons and Neo Liberals and frankly too many homosexuals and transgenders to truly gauge what a diplomatic partnership means
So today all China is doing is BUYING TIME and waiting for US to collapse under it’s own weight
About a year ago we had a strange series of UPS and FedEx deliveries. They all had our correct address but the name was something like a cartoon character.. think something like Betty Poop.
The first box was a plant stand. My wife took it back to FedEx. Two days later we got the same delivery! In the middle there were a few more deliveries.. my wife was thinking it’s a scam where someone would come by and steal the freshly delivered boxes. But the stuff we were receiving weren’t that kind of stuff you’d expect in a scam.
We have an HOA with a complete list of homeowners. There was nobody with a name even close. Last box arrives.. it’s UPS and a big box of wallpaper. I send an email to the HOA mailing list, asking if anyone else was on the receiving end of same thing.
I get an immediate call from a woman on my street about 10 houses away. She’s screaming that we are stealing her packages and she’s a decorator and we made her miss her deadline! Apparently the funky name was her new business name! She wants me to deliver it all to her immediately or she’s calling the cops!
I ask her what her address was and she recites MY address.. I tell her to go outside and look at the number on her house. And that I’m putting all her boxes out in my driveway and she should come get it!
Ten minutes later there’s a man in an SUV picking up the boxes. No apology, no admission of fault. I still wouldn’t know the woman if I saw her today!
Penn and Teller had this show a few years back called “Bullshit”.
They would debunk TONS of stuff. It was very educational without being skewed like some of Michael Moore’s stuff is.
One show was debunking diet myths. They went through the history of sugar vs. fat and the evils of high fructose corn syrup, etc…
But one pivotal bit was when they brought a stagehand out from behind the set. He had apparently lost a ton of weight recently. They asked him how he managed to do it.
This epic hero looked straight into the camera and said, “I stopped eating so fucking much.”
When COVID hit, I knew I wouldn’t be going out as much. So I decided to change my diet very VERY slightly. I would take smaller scoops of rice and take the smaller potato during dinner. Without doing ANYTHING else, I lost about 4 pounds in about as many months. I wasn’t even trying.
Stay away from hidden sugar. EVERYTHING in the U.S. has hidden sugar in it. Look at the ingredients. Is something ends in “ose”, it’s sugar.
Exercise helps, too, of course, but not everyone can do it. One thing everyone can do, though is:
Stop eating so fucking much.
Project Looking Glass | The Time Warriors of the 2012 Apocalypse
I grew up outside of a small prairie town. One of my best friends grew up about 10 miles out of town, and in my teens I used to spend a lot of time at his house with him, his siblings and his parents. They had a built in kitchen table and wrap around bench. We used to sit at that table have a beer, and play a card game called “pass the ace” or sometimes “spoons” with all of our friends, his parents and siblings.
I moved away, travelled the world, and never settled down. I was about 40, still single, and I still planned on getting married and having kids someday.
When I was back in Canada, I decided to stop in and visit his parents. I knocked on the door, which was never locked, they yelled at me to come in, and there was a tableful of people playing pass the ace, and drinking beer. There was my friends mother, his younger brother, and 5 other young people playing pass the ace. I sat down, had a beer and got dealt in. I started to get caught up on all the news. It was exactly like old times, talking, drinking beer, playing cards, with a tableful of young adults, in their late teens, and early twenties. Exactly as if I hadn’t left. Then it dawned on me, I was playing cards with my friends two sons, his sisters son and daughter, and two second cousins. I was thinking I hadn’t changed in twenty years, and suddenly I was an old man playing cards, with the next generation, and they were old enough to legally drink.
That was the day, I realized I was no longer young, lets face it, I was old. I remember 20 years before, thinking how cool his parents and their friends were, for drinking and partying at their age, and now I was that old man sitting at the table.
I not only remember the day. I remember the minute it hit.
I’m not sure it was the most interesting, but its stuck in my mind for years. I was in a nice lakefront restaurant, inside a city, so it wasn’t a big lake, but a small man made lake.
At the table beside me was a couple and a realtor discussing putting his house on the market.
The man appeared to be about 10 years older than his wife. They had one of 5 houses on an island in the middle of the lake, accessable only by a bridge. Very exclusive. The housing market was down. The realtor had told the man what his house was assessed at. The husband said, he knew very well, what it was assessed at, but he wouldn’t sell it for anywhere near that price.
The realtor told him it would be on the market for a long time, if he listed it that high, and might never sell. The wife started to say something, and the husband actually turned to her, and said “This is mans business, we know what we are doing, let us talk, if we want to know how to decorate a room, we’ll ask you” I saw the realtor cringe, he didn’t want to be included in that kind of conversation.
The husband then told him, that the way to market it, was to sell it as one of only five houses on an island in the city, maybe the whole province. I understood his logic, but this was not a nice man.
Listing a house is something that a realtor really wants to do. Even if they don’t sell it themselves, as long as someone buys it, they make money. But, and this is a guess, it costs money to advertise the house, put it on the MLS system, and if its unrealistically high, and it never sells then they lose money. Then he has to deal with a high maintenance client, that makes him feel like he should wash his hands, after every meeting.
In any case, the realtor said that if he wanted to list the house for more than 30 percent over market value, he would have to find a different realtor. The husband was stunned, and couldn’t believe he was being turned down. The realtor paid for the lunch and left.
I don’t know if they ever talked again. But I didn’t feel clean myself, sitting at a table next to this guy, so I didn’t blame him.
There is a sure fire way to discover if a guy actually served in the British SAS, one that I witnessed myself. Let me explain. I had a friend who was an alcoholic. There was gossip in the local pubs that he was ex SAS. No matter how drunk he would get, he would always laugh and tell you not to be so stupid if you aver broached the subject with him. So how did we find out the truth? At his funeral. A serving member of the SAS in full uniform, accompanied by a bugler (Non SAS) attended and gave a eulogy that had us all gobsmacked. Not only was my friend ex SAS, but his exploits were totally jaw dropping heroic. We were told that whenever an ex member of the SAS dies. His funeral is always attended by a serving member of the regiment. RIP Alec.
I was waiting in line at the dollar store, lady in front of me had an infant in her arms, and had an older boy maybe 5 who was holding his little sister’s hand who was about 3 to prevent her from running off.
She was purchasing 2 tiny packs of diapers, a few minor food items, and a 1 liter Mountain Dew. She had enough for the total, but it was spread among 3 debit cards. I don’t know if the clerk was new, or a new computer system, but the clerk was having trouble ringing it up in 3 payments like she needed.
I was off work at the time, between jobs collecting unemployment, so I was struggling also, but I could easily afford the little bit she needed, so I just stepped up, and swiped my card to cover her groceries. She tried to take the Mountain Dew out (a luxury, not necessity) but I pointed out with 3 children she needed the caffeine even though 1 was very mature, and helpful.
On my way out the door to walk home (nice day, and not far, so I walked instead of driving) I heard her attempt to stay her van, it sounded like a dead battery and when it finally started, a horrible belt squealing sound told me a belt was destroyed, or very loose.
I told her I’m a hobby mechanic, I don’t live far, and I told her I’d gladly look at it if she would like since I don’t live far, so she offered me a ride and another thank you for paying for her groceries.
When she pulled in the driveway, she was reluctant to shut the vehicle off, I told her I have a battery booster or my car to get her started if needed.
Opened the hood, and someone had replaced the alternator recently, but had forgotten to tighten the swing arm assembly that holds pressure on the belt. It took as much time to grab the tools as it did to tighten it correctly. It started right up with the battery booster, and the squealing was gone.
I pointed out the belt was looking worn out, recommended she get it replaced but it’ll last for a few months at least, and told her I would gladly put the belt on whenever she needed free of charge if she showed up with the belt.
I’ve been in her shoes raising my 4 children as a single dad, so the little money for her groceries, and about 5 minutes of my time to tighten the alternator belt was no problem at all.
I’ve been wondering whether or not to answer this… The “wrong person” is my daughter (stepdaughter really,but I’m Daddy now and forever so that settles that) and the people doing the “picking a fight”were her ex boyfriend and his father.. I didn’t personally witness this because I was in Iraq at the time,but believe me I sure heard about it.
Daughter is tall and not a delicate flower even though she has all the requisite standard equipment to attract stares and suchlike, including a startling resemblance to Gal Gadot ,and I always emphasized to all my kids the importance of self confidence ,so she carries herself with a certain pride. She has Blackfeet blood along with Irish and Norwegian and who knows what else, girl has a temper too,what can I say..
Anyways,ex boyfriend and father spot her walking down the sidewalk one weekend night and follow her,asking her to get in and go for a cruise.. She says no,but they apparently don’t want to take no for an answer and pull ahead and stop, ex BF Gets out of the car and grabs her elbow and pulls her towards the car,she pulls away and he grabs her again, by this time she is almost in the door. I had taught my kids to avoid punching someone and use their elbows if the person was close enough, which ex BF certainly was unfortunately for his dumb ass, because Daughter proceeds to elbow him repeatedly in the face with backswing strikes on her way away from the car, dislocating ex BF‘S jaw and shattering his eye socket and breaking his nose, and naturally stopped any hostilities on his part, but ex BF’s dad was pushed by this time and ran around the car and accosted Daughter, catching a 50 yard field goal kick in his balls for his troubles..I taught my kids well.
During the Japanese War of Aggression Against China (1931-1945), about 200000, or even more women in China were lured and forced by the Japanese army to become “comfort women”. They suffered various unimaginable and unspeakable forms of abuse during the war, most of which were tortured to death at that time. Even if a few survivors survived by chance, they were left with scars and even lifelong disabilities.
At the comfort station, they subjected women to inhumane torture, even if they were pregnant, they still had to endure the torture of the Japanese army. Once they fell ill, they would be killed. The Japanese army did not leave a way for these women to survive, and they even set up a series of “rules and regulations” that made these captured women unable to die.
After Japan surrendered, they were afraid that their crimes would be exposed, and they brutally killed all comfort women before leaving. We cannot imagine how desperate they were at that moment. Fortunately, there are many women who have survived by chance. But for them, surviving may not be a kind of luck, because they have been living in darkness for the latter half of their lives, and their survival is evidence to prove the Japanese’s inhumanity. Because they survived with strength, we could only know about the various crimes committed by Japan.
There is a lengthy documentary in China called “Twenty Two”, that tells the story about China’s surviving “comfort women” during the Japanese invasion of China. The film was directed by Guo Ke, with 22 comfort women participating in the filming. It was released in mainland China on August 14, 2017. Unfortunately, on November 9, 2023, Li Meijin, the victim of comfort women, passed away at the age of 98. It means that all the surviving women in the documentary “Twenty Two” have passed away.
Until now, Japan has refused to admit their crimes. However, history is there, and it’s useless for them to sophistry. But even in textbooks, they briefly mentioned or directly overturned the truth about that period of history, to the extent that young Japanese people today do not understand what happened back then. They can cover up, but Chinese people will never forget that shameful past.
Alpha Dad Overcomes Childhood Hardships To Gain Wealth, Respect & A Wife That Treats Him Like A King
Damn is this good. And man do I love his grandmother. You rock!
When I moved to Thailand, I was incredibly lonely.
Not speaking the language, I lived for months in silence. I desperately wanted human connection. I just wanted to speak with someone.
My standard for becoming friends with someone dropped to having the ability to speak English. That’s all it took.
My new best friends became a 70 year old English man and his Thai wife. They would take me to markets on the weekends sometimes and talk with me if I ate dinner at their shop.
When I walked around the lake every day, I became friends with a 40 year old Thai man who used to work on cruise ships and could speak a decent amount of English to me.
A little 17 year old girl from Uruguay that I met at the gym became one of my good friends as well, she was studying abroad to learn Thai.
For the first time in my life, I had friends of all ages from all backgrounds.
My whole life, I’ve only been friends with people who were within a couple years of my own age. The only older men I talked to was my grandpa, I’d never called an older man a friend. I avoided high schoolers. Forty year old men and women were my parents age, I didn’t want to hang out with them.
But, let me tell you, life became so much richer as soon as I did. 70 year old men have lived a lot of life and can teach you a lot of things. 40 year old cruise ship waiters can tell you about a lot of life experiences that you’ve never had. 17 year old girls from high school can teach you about their way of life in Uruguay and supporting them can bring a lot of meaning to your life.
I think most people limit themselves to a bubble of friends who are the same age as them and in the same stage of life. I think that really limits yourself and the depth of relationships you can have.
I want to stay open to everyone for the rest of my life. It’s so much better this way.
Cockroaches have made their way into my life, against my will, and to great inconvenience. Three years ago, my girlfriend cried into the phone for me to come over, “Please…please…it is twitching on my kitchen floor.” She sounded like a hostage. We went back and forth for two minutes, with me insisting I couldn’t come to her house.
“I’m busy writing. Just get a paper towel and flush it,” I said, trying to calm her down. It didn’t work. She begged and begged until I finally said, “I’m doing this once.” And then drove 20 minutes — just to kill a roach.
After we moved into our new house together, my war with the roaches truly began. Exterminating them took significant research and numerous failed attempts. Mine is a common problem, and has made me question the value of these little critters.
We should be impressed that a creature has survived so much research and resources put into their extermination, and pesticides that are only making them stronger. A roach always finds a way and there is no “walling them out”. To the shock of NASA’s employees, one even snuck onboard Apollo 12. They’d moved mountains to decontaminate the spacecraft and ensure nothing snuck on. Employees were even in denial, swearing the roach couldn’t be there when astronauts said they’d seen one. Nevertheless, one did, and Apollo 12 took off for the moon while gaining the nickname, “The Roach Coach”.
Roaches are so nimble that researchers at Cornell University explored how just flexible they are. In a test of increasingly smaller crevices, they discovered roaches could squeeze through 3 millimeter spaces, despite their back being 12 millimeters high. Their exoskeleton is indeed hard and breakable, but exists in sections connected by soft tissue that molds and bends. And even while pressed down tight with weight on their back, they can still move fast and with little regard for gravity. When adjusting for size, they run the equivalent of a human running 200 mph. They can run when missing four legs. They can climb vertically while missing two feet. Scientists proved that roaches could withstand 900 times their own bodyweight without taking damage.
A roach is also an extreme gymnast, with a hallmark move, where it quickly flips from the edge of a table to the underside, dangling by one leg in an instant. It often leaves home owners wondering where the roach went. And so, a cockroach’s incredible athleticism, nimbleness, and durability, make it the perfect model for robotics technology, as we continue to explore new planets and depths on Earth. These new robots may even save lives.
A new era of inspiration
At John’s Hopkins University, Dr. Chen Li and Dr. Sean Gart filmed cockroaches running and then played video back in slow motion, studying how the legs and arms sync and propel it forward. They took notes, in awe, and looked at means of replicating these efficiencies with robots. A cockroach typically deals with vegetation, leaf and stick covered terrain. It is highly complex to navigate, but cockroaches do so with extreme ease and efficiency.
This matters because robotics is moving into a new phase, where robots are moving from indoor testing to outdoors, which is why the most clever animal navigators, including snakes, octopuses, and arachnids, have attracted non-hostile attention from scientists. One of the signature challenges robots face, is moving through unpredictable terrain and being durable enough for random physical impacts.
The study of cockroaches, in particular, has led to a new branch of durable and penetrating robots that can climb high objects, crash hard, and still get back up and resume climbing. Professor Robert J. Full, of UC Berkley, has spent his career researching the nature of evolution-inspired design, and even attached tiny jetpacks to the sides of roaches, to test how well they climb vertically while being randomly jetted to the side. It was easy work — for the roaches.
His lab designed a tiny cockroach inspired robot, that squeezes through cracks, and even looks a bit like a roach. It could be useful for descending through cracks in rubble to search for survivors. It stands 75 millimeters tall and can squeeze down to 35 millimeters, which is almost, but not quite as good as roaches. It also has similar pliable and molding body parts, that allow it to bend and move in extremely tight and uneven spaces. Dr. Full routinely meets with first responders at disaster sites, to learn more about their needs as he continues to innovate this robot.
The necessity of studying them
It is as the old Sun Tzu saying goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Cockroaches are a brilliant species, without actually being brilliant.
When I met with a pest control expert, his feedback wasn’t what I expected. He said, “Don’t just spray every inch of a room’s perimeter, they’ll know it’s a trap.” Then, he showed me how to put tiny drops along walls, and in the underside of cupboards and tiny cracks between furniture and sliding drawers. “Think of all the tiniest openings possible, and think like a roach — and you’ll know where to put the spray,” he said. It is this intrinsic cleverness and efficient navigating that could manifest robots of incredible caliber and utility in the coming decades.
What’s remarkable is that cockroaches don’t rely heavily on their nervous system for movement like other mammals. Even when thrown off balance, yanked around, blasted with wind, and spun like a top, their bodies auto adjust without thought. This matters for robotics because engineers are constantly programming and scripting robots to manage uneven terrain, and think about where their feet are going.
The insight from a cockroach is that, perhaps engineers shouldn’t try so hard with this programming method. They should rely on predictable mechanics, that have built-in means to traverse steep rocks and slippery surfaces. In short, make it more natural. This could impact medical technology and prosthetics, and help people who’ve had strokes or major injuries, develop more fluid gaits.
The animal kingdom is, in a sense, the only alien intelligence we deal with. Species are of ingenious design through an evolutionary arms race, and can move and adjust to their environment in ways we’d have never dreamed of. Which is evident when trying to step on a roach and you miss in the last moment, or even when you hit it, it manages to keep running. Who wouldn’t want this fortitude and evasiveness?
Perhaps what strikes me most, is that a bug with little cognitive function, has evolved to elude the smartest of all known species, and who is quite hostile to its presence. A future where nature-inspired robotics, combined with artificial intelligence, could save lives in search and rescue, improve exploration of new places and planets, and improve lives for the disabled. All thanks to our most ancient and enduring pest.
Mix crumbs together with butter or margarine thoroughly. Spread the mixture on sides and bottoms of a 9-inch springform pan to form a crust.
Take 2 ounces of fudge and spread on top of crumbs. Place 1/4 gallon of ice cream on top of fudge. Next, spread 2 ounces of fudge over ice cream then place 4 ounces of coconut. Place remaining ice cream on coconut and follow with 2 ounces fudge, 4 ounces almonds and 4 ounces coconut as done before. Top with whipped cream and remaining almonds and coconut. Place in deep freezer for 3 to 4 hours.
Notes
Roasted Coconut and Almonds: Place coconut on a metal sheet pan and put into oven at 350 degrees F for approximately 3 1/2 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds. Do the same for almonds but increase the time to 4 minutes.
When I was running from an abusive situation, i lived in a shelter on welfare. After my 2 month stay was up, i had to find a room to rent or they’d send me to a homeless shelter (the one i was in was for female abuse victims and their children if they have any. Since there was a high demand for rooms there, the stays were short). I ended up finding a room that was 500$ per month. On welfare as a single person with no kids, I got 709$ per month. I went to view the room and the landlord asked me why I wanted to live there. I explained the situation and he immediately said yes. I ended up moving in not even a week later. He let me live there for free with unlimited wifi and cable TV included for 8 months of my 13 month stay with him. After the 8 months I had a job and could pay the rent, but even then he said if I couldnt make the rent to let him know. Hed share his food from his fridge with me, give me cash money randomly with notes that said things like “buy whatever you want” and “have a nice day”, hed offer to give me rides to the store and job interviews, he offered to get me a bus pass (85$ for one that lasts a month), hed invite me to share BBQs with him, his wife and the other 4 tenants. He bought everyone Christmas gifts (a box of Ferrero Roche chocolates and a 50$ amazon gift card). He never asked for anything back. He became more like a friend to me than a landlord. He was amazing
My stepdad beat me when I was between 8 and 11. He would wait until I wasn’t looking, then sneak up behind me with a riding crop and hit me behind the knees. My mother would not come to my defense, no matter how hard I cried. I had no idea how to process this situation. I felt like my mother betrayed me and that the legal system was on her side since she got custody of us (my sister and me) when she divorced my dad. I had thoughts about suicide, but we only lived on the second floor, so jumping wasn’t an option. There were railroad tracks nearby, so I could have jumped in front of a train. Basically, it was the lowest point of my life… and I was 11. Somehow I found the strength to get past this and accepted that beatings were a thing now. I could make it through this. I had to just count on myself to deal with the pain and betrayal.
Eventually, he beat me so bad that when my dad came to pick us up for one of our weekends with him, I was bleeding from a ruptured eardrum. My dad almost lost it. He was going to kill my stepdad. I asked him to just take me to a doctor and deal with the rest of the shit later. He did. He also demanded custody. My mom accepted immediately. I knew then that I was a commodity to her. I’ve written her out of my life for the most part. We only talk on birthdays and Christmas.
My dad did his best and I think he really supported me up until I lost him to brain cancer in January 2016. He was my Yoda, my Gandalf, my friend. I miss him daily. He saved my life.
KFC – always popular for making rules and rolling it back badly. As a student in UK, I worked as a parttimer in KFC for two reasons 1) Money I get paid 2) Food I’m allowed to eat during breaks.
Staffs who work in KFC are allowed to take KFC food during lunch breaks. I know staffs who even took a bucket of chicken for lunch , but then they’re hard workers and smart workers – a pillar of support behind the enormous profit KFC makes per shift.
One fine day, the circle management decided to do some cost cutting – made a rule that staffs are allowed to take only limited food for lunch. A burger, fries and a cup of soft drink. Nothing more.
Rationing food for staffs — nobody likes it. The store manager would check how much food you take for lunch , particularly if he’s a bully , that’s annoying as hell.
Time for payback ….
We came with a plan.
If the store closes by 10 pm, we started to over cook by 9pm, pile up all the racks with cooked food.
Now the “kick in the butt” is back on the store manager – it’s his head ache to sell all the cooked food before closing or else the food is reported as “unsold” in records. This means he gets questioned for poor sales, losses his incentives and what not
He can’t ask us not to over cook because incase there’s customer flow and there’s food shortage – we can do nothing. That affects the rating
Above all , staff food was rationed as a means of cost cutting. Now the management has learnt -” you touch my food, now deal with the loss mate, let’s see how you make profit”.
Within a week , the rule of food rationing was rolled back. The management went in knees —” take as much food you want for lunch, but please don’t overcook at closing time.
The management has learnt a hard lesson — it’s not just the store manager but the staff who knows how to run a shift with better profits.
No food chain can make profits without staff cooperation
This one didn’t necessarily change how I viewed my mom but it sure gave me a good (but bittersweet) laugh.
My mom was a hoarder. Her home was filled with junk from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. She just couldn’t bear to get rid of anything because she thought she might “need” it someday. The fact that she couldn’t find it if she did need it was lost on her.
Anyhoo, the day came when we had to move mom into a care home. My sister and I sat mom in a cleared corner of a couch and let her “help” by telling us “yay or nay” on keeping certain things. In the background, our team was hauling soooo much crap out into a bin without her knowing. We’d bring random boxes and let mom “sort” through them to keep her occupied. One or the other of us would sit with her and talk while the others worked. In the end, we actually kept only enough clothes and books and personal items to fit in the care home room we’d lined up for her.
During the course of the day we noticed that mom had acquired a VERY large number of nail clippers over the years. Being tiny items that you need fairly often, she was constantly leaving them here or there and losing them. The people helping would laugh and say “found another one!” every time they spotted one. In the end we found about 100 nail clippers! (We also found a mini fridge that had been buried in the back, filled with sickeningly, gaggingly, gross, rotten, mouldy food!)
Sometimes you can laugh and feel pain at the same time, I guess. It was a time of bonding for my sister and I. Mom had to give her beloved dog Spike to a friend and move away from the town that had been her home for decades. It was very painful for all of us but in a way it was also life-affirming if that makes sense.
I bought a large framed picture of James Butler Hickock or Wild Bill. I loved the photo.
I hung the picture in my sunroom right beside the back door. It was like he was looking right at me and his eyes followed me everywhere I went.
I read quite a few books about this man and he led a very interesting life as a soldier, scout, lawman, cattle rustler, gunslinger, gambler, showman, and actor.
We even visited Deadwood, South Dakota where he lived the last years of his life before being killed at a card game he was playing in 1876, the same year Custer died. We went to the saloon where he was shot and visited his grave on Mt. Moriah, and there beside him was the grave of Calamity Jane who was buried when she died in 1903.
So at first, every morning I walked out that door, I’d say, “Morning Bill,” and everytime I walked in that door at night, I’d say, “Night Bill.” All in fun.
Poor old Bill was probably lonely out there as he guarded the house. Was probably also cold at times. But those steely eyes would sure look at me. Sometimes he looked sad, sometimes amused like he had the slightest smile on his face. He probably enjoyed my pipe or cigar smoke that floated around the room while I had a few puffs. But I feel he looks forward to my good mornings and good nights, and I feel that if I forget to say those things to him, well, might not bode well. Superstitious I guess.
So every morning and every night, I talk to Bill and I think it’s okay. Weird, but okay.
Every American should seriously think about this. Every empire that come and gone since time in memorial, went because of over intervention, over interference and over reaching to the point that it could no longer sustain itself. And they self implode and civil war is inevitable.
The U.S. is not getting there, it is indeed there now and almost beyond redemption. Seriously, Americans must jointly and severally destroy the U.S. military industrial complex before it destroy all of you. They are the single most important reason that the US is drag into conflicts after conflicts. Due to them, your real standard of living has not grown since 1960! Your great grand parents have a better standard of living compared to you!
Please think seriously about your debts. Just 10 years ago your debt was a mere USD10 trillion today it is USD34 trillion precisely 340% increase in a decade. At the rate you are going by 2034 the U.S. debts will be USD100 trillion at least! Just paying interest alone at 5% is USD5 trillion dollars per annum.
Seriously, don’t let anyone fool you! 5 trillion is so humongous your nation will never be able to do anything else. Today you can argue that the U.S. infrastructure is lying dilapidated, your homeless has reached a million, a third of Americans are in debt and can’t afford healthcare and college education. It can only afford one and only one thing. Wage more wars! Wars enriched 0.01% of Americans! Your politicians and the deep state!
China is a million times more healthier than the U.S. that is your problem right here! China’s saving is so colossal it save a U.K GDP a year. China’s debts is USD 15 trillion and almost 100% of it is investment that grows China’s capacity! Build its state or art technology and infrastructure, graduate STEM engineers the size of the entire US STEM experts each year!
This means China grow its capacity phenomenally while the US fall back every year due to your liabilities. Let me be brutally honest, you don’t stand a chance against China! But you may save the US that still remain a nation and a strong 2nd largest economy for 50 years till India catches up! Most importantly your citizens get back its prosperity and avoid total collapse! Do it before it is too late. Get rid of the neocons, eradicate the deep state, get ride of NRA and CIA.
China cannot be stop, the best you can do is be strong and wealthy again.
Top Gun with a Cat
Enjoy this FUN short video. I hope it makes your day. I know that it did mine!
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.
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.
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.
Don’t try to do it alone!
Meaningful
Rhodes Runzas
Ingredients
12 Rhodes Texas™ Rolls, or 24 Rhodes™ Dinner Rolls, thawed but still cold
4 cups sliced cabbage
1 cup sliced yellow onion
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 ounces ground beef
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
2 tablespoons butter, melted
Instructions
Sauté cabbage and onion in oil. Cover and steam for 40 minutes.
Brown ground beef in a large pan, and drain well.
Add cabbage, onion, sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper and cook for an additional 20 minutes.
Flatten each Texas roll, or 2 dinner rolls into a 6-inch circle. Divide filling among 12 circles (about 1/3 cup).
Place 1 tablespoon mozzarella cheese on top of filling. Pull edges around filling and pinch to close.
Place on a large sprayed baking sheet, pinched side down. Brush tops with melted butter.
In January 2019, Copdy Litz made a 10-foot snowman with his fiancée and his sister, and then posted this on Facebook:
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:
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.
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
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.
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.
When I was in prison, I worked on the “hoe squad”. This is what “hard labor” actually is. We march out to the fields carrying hoes. Wearing our white prison clothes, we then form a line and then beat the ground relentlessly tearing up the grass to dirt.
However…
If you are sick or ill, you can get “one arm duty”. You end up being set apart and then you just putz around off to the side.
In general, the only time that I got “one arm duty” was after I had a heart attack on the “chain gang”. Though, the doctor who saw me; the “prison doctor” gave me two aspirins and told me to visit him the next Monday morning.
…
Yeah. It was not fun, but little “perks” such as “one arm duty” were highlights of my days in the ADC. Other highlights included being allowed to eat some wild onions, and then mix them with the black beans we ate during dinner.
So remember guys… no matter how bad things might get, there is always some good that can be found about. Beans with onions! Good times! Good times!
This is what happened to University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier when he stole a political flag from his hotel hallway.
Wikipedia
Otto Warmbier
Otto Frederick Warmbier (December 12, 1994 – June 19, 2017) was an American college student who was imprisoned in North Korea in 2016 on a charge of subversion. In June 2017, he was released by North Korea in a vegetative state
Warmbier entered North Korea as part of a guided tour group on December 29, 2015. On January 2, 2016, he was arrested at Pyongyang International Airport
while awaiting departure from the country. He was convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel, for which he was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment with hard labor.
Shortly after his sentencing in March 2016, Warmbier suffered a severe neurological injury
from an unconfirmed cause and fell into a coma, which lasted over a year.
North Korean authorities did not disclose his medical condition until June 2017, when they announced he had fallen into a coma as a result of botulism and a sleeping pill. He was freed later that month, still in a comatose state after 17 months in captivity. He was repatriated to the United States and arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 13, 2017. He was taken to University of Cincinnati Medical Center
for immediate evaluation and treatment.
Warmbier never regained consciousness and died on June 19, 2017, six days after his return to the United States when his parents had requested his feeding tube
to be removed.
A coroner’s report stated that he died from an unknown injury causing lack of oxygen to the brain.
Non-invasive internal scans did not find any signs of fractures to his skull.
In 2018, a U.S. federal court found the North Korean government liable for Warmbier’s torture and death, in a default judgment
in favor of Warmbier’s parents after North Korea did not contest the case.
In 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump caused controversy after saying that he believed the word of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that Kim was not responsible for Warmbier’s death. In response, Warmbier’s parents criticized Trump for making excuses for Kim and “his evil regime”.
The APEC summit is about to begin in San Francisco. The key reason why this APEC summit is so important is the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In order to welcome Chinese visitors, the city of San Francisco swept and flushed all streets in just 48 hours, clearing away all homeless people, tents and garbage on the roadside. Decorations are placed on the roads where visitors pass, and some roads are even screened.
For the visit of a head of state from another country, what San Francisco did seemed a bit out of line. When was the last time they did this? No one seemed to remember at all.
I checked the Chinese newspaper data in 1972, and there was this news:
“In preparation for US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China, the Beijing Municipal Government launched a city-wide cleaning campaign. Citizens, students, and soldiers took to the streets. They cleaned up garbage, planted trees, and painted walls. In just one week, Beijing had a completely new look.”
In fact, until the end of the 20th century, whenever important American figures visited China, Chinese cities would do the same thing.
However, I have never heard of Americans doing this.
Now,you must know that it is China’s head of state Xi Jinping who is visiting San Francisco, the United States.
Not the foreign minister, not the economic minister. The last official visit was in 2013, under President Obama. In 2017, President Trump also had an unofficial visit. many years have passed
In the past few years, relations between China and the United States have been tense, and the Chinese President’s visit to the United States again undoubtedly revealed a lot of information. I personally predict that relations between the two countries will soon ease.
With such an important visit, the city of San Francisco was understandably nervous. However, this incident also highlights the fact that the status between China and the United States has undergone subtle changes.
More than ten years ago, former head of state of china, Hu Jintao, visited the United States. Ten years ago, current head of state Xi Jinping visited the United States.
The United States was in good shape at that time and did not need to “make America great again”, nor did it need a “trade war”, nor did it need “trade decoupling” or “risk reduction.” There are not so many homeless people on the streets of the United States, and prices in the United States are at a good level.
During these visits, the United States responded very appropriately. Whether in Washington or other cities, daily life went on normally. Americans confidently present the face of their country to Chinese leaders. No matter what the Chinese head of state sees on the streets, good or bad. It doesn’t matter, this is America, and this is the confidence that comes from the United States.
After all, at that time, the visit of Chinese leaders was, to the United States, a visit by a “backward competitor” to a “leading country.”
But over the past decade, a lot has changed.
From the United States:
1. Social divisions and the widening gap between rich and poor have led to the election of a president like Trump. Under the slogans of “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” a series of actions that harmed allies and irritated China and Russia took place one after another.
2. The United States launched an “easy-to-win” trade war and prices soared. The 2020 pandemic has added to the nation’s chaos. Many people have lost their properties, and there are more and more homeless people on the streets and drug addicts. American cities have become cluttered.
3. In 2023, in order to deal with domestic inflation, the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates. This has caused heavy economic losses to America’s global allies. In the Russia-Ukraine war, the United States lagged behind and was unable to truly contain Russia. The international influence of the United States has declined rapidly.
From China:
1. After ten years of economic growth, China’s overall economic strength has almost become equal to that of the United States. Although the GDP figure is still lower than that of the United States, the GDP calculated by PPP has already exceeded that of the United States. Key data such as social car sales and power generation also prove this.
2. In the economic war between China and the United States in the past few years, China has quickly adjusted after experiencing initial damage. Not only did they successfully respond to the pandemic, but they also expanded exports and boosted economic growth during the pandemic.
3. Amid the containment of trade wars and decoupling, China has attracted 151 countries around the world through the “Belt and Road Initiative” and successfully resisted the “de-risking” actions of the G7 countries led by the United States. China’s export volume will continue to increase in 2023.
4. China did not fall into the quagmire of the Russia-Ukraine war and did not have continuous military expenditures. On the contrary, they obtained more stable and cheaper energy, and a broader trade market.
This change was vividly demonstrated in the last diplomatic game between China and the United States. After Blinken’s aggressive speech, Liu He said: “The United States is not qualified to talk about strength with China.”
For the first time since the Cold War, the Chinese are sending a historic signal: The United States is no longer the only superpower.
Now, behind the seemingly eye-catching economic data in the United States are the debts of companies and individuals that are about to explode, as well as the high interest rates. After two years of debt stimulus and one year of interest rate hikes, the U.S. economy is like a fat man taking stimulants, with his face flushed and his strength boundless. In fact, he could fall down at any time.
China not only avoided global inflation, but also successfully resolved its domestic debt crisis. China is one of the very few countries that has not followed the United States in raising interest rates in the past six months. Although their economy is not as bright as in previous years. But it was very smooth and without any crisis. In the third quarter, major global financial institutions raised their economic expectations for China. In front of the United States, China is very comfortable and still has a lot of cards in its hand that it has not played.
The changes in the forces of China and the United States and the changes in the situation faced by both sides have made this meeting very delicate. In fact, the United States needs this meeting more than China.
In the end, the changes on both sides led to a change in Americans’ mentality towards China’s visit.
They have many more ideas than they had ten years ago:
There are too many homeless people on the streets of San Francisco, so much trash and drug addicts that they cannot be seen by the Chinese head of state.
It would make our great America appear weak and in disarray.
We must work hard to present a strong and beautiful image of the United States to continue to maintain the strong image of the United States in the past.
Not only will this prevent our president from losing face in front of Chinese leaders, but it will also prevent the Chinese from seeing more of America’s weaknesses and raising the price in negotiations .
There is an old saying: every dog will have his day.
I was on a contract in Boston USA for 4 years (back in the 2000’s) and at the end of the contract they offered me a full time job, Green Card, etc.
I asked what are the terms? 5 days leave at the end of the first year, no overtime payments, no company car……
I said I have worked for this company in France for over 20 years and you want me to give up my 65 days annual leave, being paid when I have worked longer hours and a reduction in salary, no job protection and having to take out health insurance.
No, fucking way! I’m going back to France.
Australia Just Destroyed America’s Plan For China!
Few reasons. One I don’t like liars, sitting at my kitchen table talking a bunch of smack gossip, another is telling me how I should do things when you have a zero clue of how hard it is being disabled. Trying to be the boss of me when you can’t even manage your own self. Stealing from me cause you might like what I own. My own grandmother came down to visit and stole my dried flower arrangement out of my bedroom, didn’t ask just five finger discounted it and got half way to the car when I saw it missing from my dresser. My father had an anger issue and to make him feel more manly, he’d make the 30 minute trip to my place actually looking for a fist fight. Mother read me the riot act when I had the nerve of buying a new fridge. So these days, I don’t even allow you on the property you can’t be trusted.
Two of my best friends in high school were dating, all four years. I love them two like genuine brother and sister (still do). Herein, the dude I will refer to as “bro” and his girlfriend “sis”. Nearing graduation, bro moved a state away (close enough to still come to school on time every morning) and almost immediately starting acting different. He had a new friend group who were terrible influence and became close with this other girl and we all kind of knew where this was going but didn’t want to believe it.
We graduated together, they were still together.
He and I went to trade school together, so we hung out on campus. My sis and I live in the same city so we hung out all the time (no, we never had feeling for each other anything beyond “siblings”). All the accusations of him cheating started to be noticeable. One day we sat in his car during lunch and I said to him, “If you cheat on my sis you know that’s the end of this friendship, bro. I love you but I hate the idea of what you’re getting yourself into.” He nodded…it kind of felt like he knew what he was doing was wrong but he was deep in it. He never told any of us two what he was doing but we ended up finding out from someone out of our friend group that he was planning on leaving my “sis” for this new chick.
He ended up doing so, and we lost each other as friends. Sis and I are still close. I haven’t talked to my ex-best friend in over 15 years. Things happen but seeing how he was treating her and lying to the both of us was ridiculous. No need to be leading people on like that. If you’ve moved on, actually move on.
Certainly, the most surprising thing for me when I lived in the US was finding that many Americans believe that, for practical purposes, the rest of the world doesn’t really exist.
To be fair I don’t mean that it is really non-existent, but that Americans think of the rest of the world in pretty much the same way someone in Europe would think of Pluto. It’s something you’ve read about, you know its there. But when it unexpectedly gets downgraded to not really being a planet any more it doesn’t really matter because Pluto can’t really have any effect on your everyday life.
And that’s how a large number of Americans regard the rest of the world – yeah, it probably exists, but it isn’t of any really practical relevance.
Let me give you an example of how this works. During the recent pandemic both the UK and US had idiot leaders who screwed up the pandemic response. But no one in the UK would think that the pandemic had just been made up to make Boris Johnson look bad. After all we saw how it spread around the world, first China then spreading all over Italy and other countries. So, it would be insane to suggest this worldwide problem was all make believe to humiliate Boris.
But large numbers of Americans have no qualms about believing that it was a lefty hoax to make Trump look bad. Its not that they believe the whole world is in on the plot its that since the rest of the world doesn’t really exist and so whether they also had the pandemic or not just doesn’t matter. It’s the same for the recent Israel-Palestine war. After it starts Trump announces that there are Hamas terrorists flooding across the US-Mexico border, because of course Hamas really want to attack the US. After all they can hardly really just want to target Israel, since it doesn’t really exist. To a subset of Americans, it just unthinkable that two sets of people could really have a war of their own. It must somehow really be about America because only America is actually real.
I joined a startup during the initial days of my career. after everything was discussed, I was given the offer letter. I accepted it and went to Mumbai, India to join the firm. After 1 week from the day of joining, I asked the HR for my appointment letter, which he should have given me on day 1. Since a startup and all young people around, I was OK with the delay. After 2 weeks, I was given the appointment letter, where it was mentioned that if ever I resigned from the organization or they terminate me from the firm, I will not be able to join any other firm in the same sector for a period of 1 year. (let me tell you, I am an engineer, with a masters degree in the relevant field.) This was mentioned under the competitive clause. I argued with the HR manager, asking him why didn’t he inform about this earlier, to which his answer was everything cannot be written on the offer letter.
I didn’t accept the letter and asked him to change the clause or else I won’t accept the letter. Now the problem with them was they were not in a position to leave me as I was the only person from that specific field and that field was giving them a good revenue, and I was never gonna accept the letter. Time flew and I was working without the appointment letter.
1 year later, I resigned as the organization was in a loss and was not being able to pay even our regular salary. I found another job in a well-established firm in the same field. So the last day, HR came to me and told that he will not be able to pay the whole amount of my salary, he gave me a cheque of 1/3 of my total pending amount. I was furious but was of no use as I knew this coming and I knew the financial status of the organization. They promised me to settle the amount in next 45 days.
Days passed, no sign of payments. When I called up the HR to know the status of the pending amount, I was told that as I didn’t sign the appointment letter, he cannot pay my salary. I knew what to do. I kept calm and didn’t reply anything. a few weeks later, I asked him my salary slips, I told him I needed those for my PF, and to my surprise, he instantly gave all my salary slips. Now the ball was on my court, and after receiving my Salary slips, I asked him for the pending amount. he told his same answer about my appointment letter; to which I replied, how can he issue salary slips to an employee who was never a part of the organization (which he mentioned earlier to me that I was never a part of the organization as I haven’t signed those papers). he was shocked to my answer, and he fumbled up. I took advantage of the situation and asked to pay my pending amount or else I have no option but to take the matter to the court. within 2 days the amount was credited to my account.
In 58BC, Julius Caesar entered Gaul with ~30,000 Legionarys and Auxillia troops to conduct “punishment” campaigns against the Celts and Germanic tribes. Eight years later, rather than subduing the responsible tribes, he had conquered all of Western Europe.
Caesar never had more than 50,000 total troops at any one battle and yet his Legions killed over 1,000,000 Celts and German warriors in battle, as well as captured another 1,000,000 for enslavement.
This was accomplished through the excellent generalship of Caesar and the training & discipline of his Legions and Auxillia (foreign support troops, who were trained to equal level with the Legions).
The disciplined and ordered men of the Legions were able to stand and hold back relentless charges of undisciplined tribesmen, until the Celts had tired themselves out, before moving forward against the exhausted enemies, killing everyone before them.
Caesar’s final battle in Gaul, to subdue the revolt led by Vercingetorix at Alesia in 52BC, Caesar and his Legions had built and defended a “tactical doughnut”,where ~70,000 Romans besieged Vercingetorix’s army inside Alesia of ~75,000, while defending against up to 250,000 Celts who attempted to free Vercingetorix.
It was quality of leadership, training, discipline, engineering and construction excellence that defeated sheer but undisciplined numbers.
Flamin’ Cajun Riblets
Deliciously seasoned pork ribs that will delight the taste buds!
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients
3 pounds pork loin back ribs
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
1 cup bottled chili sauce
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 Serrano pepper*, seeded and finely chopped
2 tablespoons quick cooking tapioca, crushed
1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 to 2 teaspoons bottled hot pepper sauce
Snipped fresh parsley (optional)
Instructions
Sprinkle the ribs with Cajun seasoning rubbing it in with your fingers.
Cut ribs into single rib portions.
Place ribs in a 3 1/2 to 4 quart slow cooker.
In bowl, mix chili sauce, onion, Serrano pepper, tapioca, lemon peel, lemon juice and hot pepper sauce.
Pour sauce over ribs.
Cover and cook on LOW setting for 5 to 6 hours or on HIGH setting for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.
Serve at once or keep warm, covered, on warm setting or lon LOW heat setting for up to 2 hours.
Remove any bones without meat. If desired, sprinkle with parsley.
Notes
Because hot chile peppers, such as Serrano’s, contain volatile oils that can burn your skin and eyes, avoid direct contact with chilies as much a possible. When working with chile pepper, wear plastic or rubber gloves. If your bare hands do touch the chile peppers, wash your hands well with soap and water.
50 MOST DISTURBING Moments Caught On Camera Vol. 10
A rewards program
We had a rewards program in Canada called Air Miles. Both my wife and I collected them before meeting, then merged accounts after getting engaged.
One of the grocery chains gave you 10 times airmiles for prescriptions on the first Tuesday of the month, we had both been taking advantage of this. Then they dropped it to 7 times rewards, any time of the month.
Whenever a store was renovated, they offered massive air miles, at just that store, to get people to come back after the renovation. These were super deals, like spend $200 and get 700 airmiles. Every first Tuesday of the month was 10 times airmiles on groceries. You normally got 1 for $20, but on Tuesdays you got one for $2. They would also have air mile specials on particular grocery items. For example buy 5 packs of flavored rice cakes for $15 and get 100 air miles. Buy frozen chicken wings for $10, and get 100 airmiles. Air miles were worth 15 cents a piece at the time, then dropped to 14 cents, then 11 cents.
But when they were 15 cents a piece, spending $10 for a kg of chicken wings earned you $15 worth of airmiles. They were paying you $5 to buy the wings.
Back to the renovation sales. I had 6 of the grocery stores within 3 km of me. Most within 2. They renovated them one after the other, and the sales each lasted 3 months. Then the next one would start.
So I would hold off groceries, until the first Tuesday of the month, then buy $200 . This got me 700 airmiles, with the coupon, plus 100 airmiles for the 10 times airmiles, plus, I would buy 5 boxes of chicken wings, and 5 bags of rice cakes, which gave me another 600 air miles, plus all the other individual sales. From this one shopping trip averaging $220 , I would get about 2500 air miles, worth $375.
Plus whatever we got for prescriptions. Other companies also offered airmiles, but not as great a deal. But if you shopped at 6 different companies, and you earned more than 6000 airmiles, you got an onyx card, which meant you could get 10 percent more for your airmiles.
So for two years, we got about $5000 worth of airmiles each year..
The trick was to only use them on package vacations, which is where you got the 15 cents per airmiles, and the 10 percent discount.
So we would pick a $6000 tropical flight and all inclusive hotel two, because we were onyx, we would pay $5400, and we would pay that out of our airmiles. At the time, that gave us a spectacular vacation, for buying stuff that we would use anyway.
With the renovations we got two years earning $5000 worth of airmiles, then down to about $3500 worth, then down to $2000. Then they stopped offering airmiles all together.
But, we got two years of free vacations, and another 10 of half price vacations.
I knew people who didn’t work the system, who only collected $300 worth of airmiles over 10 years, and said it was a ripoff, but it worked for us. It was nice while it lasted.
In the Irish Sea
In April 1985, an extraordinary event took place over the Irish Sea, captured by Adrian Meredith in what would become the only photo of Concorde flying at supersonic speed. Adrian, who was flying a Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado jet, had the opportunity to participate in a planned rendezvous with the legendary Concorde.
The Tornado, a versatile and powerful combat aircraft developed and used by the RAF, was primarily designed for air defense, ground attack, and reconnaissance missions. While it could match Concorde’s cruising speed, its fuel consumption rate was significantly higher, allowing it to sustain that speed only for a matter of minutes.
Despite the Tornado’s capabilities, capturing the iconic photograph posed a unique challenge. To maximize its speed and keep up with the Concorde, the Tornado was stripped of all non-essential equipment. The crew made every effort to maintain the pace, racing to catch up with the Concorde as it soared through the skies. However, due to the Tornado’s limited endurance at high speeds, the crew had to make the difficult decision to break off the rendezvous after just four minutes. Meanwhile, the Concorde, an engineering marvel of its time, continued its journey, gracefully cruising towards its destination at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK).
Despite the Tornado’s formidable capabilities as a combat aircraft, it could only briefly keep pace with the Concorde’s supersonic flight. The juxtaposition of these two aircraft highlights the distinct roles they played in aviation history—the Concorde as a pinnacle of supersonic passenger travel and the Tornado as a versatile military workhorse.
Together, the Tornado and the Concorde symbolize the remarkable advancements in aviation technology during the late 20th century. Their fleeting rendezvous over the Irish Sea and the remarkable photograph captured during that encounter stand as a testament to the ingenuity, dedication, and pursuit of excellence that define the aviation industry.
That is what the west thinks. That is what a hubris superiority complex western Caucasian xenophobic racist thinks!
The truth is China is very happy the west especially thinks this way! Do you know why?
Chinese is always 3 steps ahead of these type f westerners. We like the west to be burnt all their cash here and go bankrupt. Parading aimlessly flexing its muscles at 100 billion a month! We loved the stupidity.
We spends nothing and enjoy our popcorns while you implode. So YES IT IS TRUE CHINA CANNOT FIGHT YOU. FLEX YOUR MUSCLES. TILL YOU DISINTEGRATE INTO OBLIVION. GOOD LUCK. HAHAHAHA. WHAT A BUNCH OF FOOLS.
After working my ass off during the pandemic, I was promised an additional bonus. I received a “low performance“ review conveniently timed a day before my bonus was to be paid. The low performance feedback canceled my bonus. Given all the other bullshit I was putting up with, I broke and quit.
I had a nice month off and my new job pays significantly more. Never work for people that don’t appreciate you, there are always others that will.
About three years ago, I wanted a cat. I love tuxedos; I really think they are something special.
His name is Othello. Apparently, he got into a fight in the county shelter one county up from us and was transferred to my county. That should have been my first warning he was trouble. He has a tiny triangle of his left ear that’s missing (it’s not even visible in this one.)
But he was warm, sweet, and cuddly. Just beautiful.
Two weeks in, we are at my mum’s house. I’m trying to bake, but Mr. Tux here decides he wants snacks from the plastic shelving where we kept the pet supplies. A two-hour battle ensues, where I pull him down and five minutes later, he’s back up there again. I finally pulled everything about 6 feet away from the shelving, thinking it will stop him jumping up there.
I go back to what I was doing, and then I hear a crash.
“Darn that cat…” as I walk over there to scold him for the 85th time.
He was hanging off the side of the pet shelf by both front feet, having leaped the 6 feet across the room. I asked him if he thought he was James Bond or something.
I have also discovered:
He can open flip lids with his nose or his paws. I made this crucial mistake when I got his adoptive brother, who was a kitten at the time. I bought kitten food for Mercury and after a half hour’s consideration, trying to outwit my cat again, bought a container with a flip lid. I mimed having paws when I bought the darn thing. I thought I was smart. I left for a night and came back in the morning. There’s the kitten food, spilled all over the floor. The two of them obviously thought I wasn’t coming back and decided to fend for themselves.
He will destroy any package left within reach. He destroyed all the dry soup packets my mother had downstairs in the basement. No idea on that one.
He has busted the screen on my porch TWICE in order to get out into the Great Wide Open. I don’t mean going through it – I mean prying it loose from the wood surrounding the bottom.
I cannot leave one gap in the lid of the food bucket (NOT a flip lid) I keep the kitty kibble and the snacks in, or he will pry the lid off in ten minutes or less. He checks every night. One night, my sister was over and I didn’t attach the lid properly. My sister and I were watching a movie and we heard the lid clatter to the floor. 10 minutes.
He has been known to eat puppy food and dog biscuits.
When angry, he hits things -the curtains, the side of the fridge, the wall, any paper bag that’s handy. Just beats his paws on whatever surface is nearby. He pitched a fit last summer when he broke the screen the first time and I would not let him out. A full on temper tantrum, beating on the door and howling like he was being tortured.
I don’t dare leave food out anywhere he can find it. Anything I make is put away in the fridge or weighted down under stuff he can’t shove off. I have been known to booby-trap stuff so I can hear lids falling if he attempts to knock them around!
He eats plants. We now have one. I experienced to strategize locations to put this one so he wouldn’t nibble it to demise. For his security, i’ll n’t have any toxic plants in the house.
He really loves everybody but me personally. Folks come to your house, and he’s Mr. Personality. Loves everyone. Leaps into laps, cuddles, nice little kitty. I will be mother, and clearly we’re caught with each other, so he doesn’t just like me all that much because We curb his widespread enthusiasm for destruction and mayhem.
I love him dearly and he tends to make life interesting, but oi. I invest half my entire life outwitting him. it is tiring.
She was a good friend, but nothing like that between us. One day I came to visit. Her mom let me in (they lived in a 8,000 sq ft house) and said she’s upstairs. So up I went and there was no Monica.
So I sat down to wait and suddenly out of the bathroom comes butt naked Monica. She yelped. I laughed. Even though Monica was very easy on the eyes, I never saw her like that and it just ended up as a funny story between us.
I haven’t seen her in years, but my daughter is named after her, so that’s how much I cared for her.
Dear god no. Closest I’ve ever come is Dilaudid (injectable hydromorphone), which the hospital gave me whilst I was spewing blood when I went to visit my Talespinner.
Hated it. In fact, I hated it with every fiber of my being. If words could adequately convey my fiery hatred for the way it made me feel, you, Gentle Reader, would spontaneously combust upon reading them.
It’s not just that it made me vomit, though it definitely did that. It’s everything about the subjective experience. It made me feel like I was wrapped in a too-warm blanket made of steel wool and television static. It made me feel like I was floating just a little outside my body, but in a skin-crawling, AmericanHorror Story way, not a fun way. It made everything around me feel blunt and dull, like all the color and texture had been bleached out of the world.
Have patience my friend. Wait for another 50 thousand years. Then perhaps, may be, with a lot of luck your dream might come true. For now go bury your head in the sand.
He Took the Most Unwanted Cat At the Shelter In the Night, the Cat Had a Surprise!
I was asleep in bed, about 2am, when Spider (My cat, not my choice of name) came into the bedroom, placed his mouth by my ear, and Miaowed, LOUDLY. I woke up, suddenly, and not too happily! I tried to push him away, but he repeated himself, then stood up and walked to the end of the bed, and looked back at me. When I tried to lie down, he came back, caught my hand in his mouth, and gently, but firmly, pulled me towards the door. Eventually I gave up, and got out of bed, as he ran to the bedroom door, paused, looked back at me, and waited until I followed him. Eventually, he got me to the French doors in the living room, where he sat, looking at me and then at the light switch, until I turned the light on to illuminate the patio outside. There his baby kitty sister was sitting, in the rain, not coming into the house. I called her, but she just looked at me, until I opened the door, and picked her up. Although she was purring madly, her leg was swinging oddly, and it was obviously badly broken. I pushed her gently into a basket, pulled my clothes on, and called for a taxi to take me to the emergency vet. Without his intervention, she would have been stuck outside for at least another five hours, in the pouring rain, badly injured. The vet said that, without prompt attention, she may well have been dead by morning. Spider had saved her from, at best, considerable pain and suffering, at worst, a painful and cold, wet death. It took considerable surgical skill to save her leg, but without him, she may well not have had that chance. He was a lovely cat; He died aged 18 of acute kidney failure, and I miss him a lot!
When Shanghai was under lockdown due to severe COVID-19 outbreak in April 2022, many residents resorted to group purchases for daily necessities. Among the coordinators of these purchases, one young volunteer showed maturity and a sense of responsibility beyond his age.
Cai Hanxiao, a second-year high school student in Shanghai.
Cai Hanxiao, 17, a second-year high school student living in the city’s suburban Qingpu district, voluntarily took charge of group purchases for the residential community he lived in, helping more than 600 people obtain daily supplies.
Cai shared his experience on Chinese video sharing platform Bilibili. He said, after the residential compound was put under lockdown, like everyone else he had to cook himself. After only a few days, he ran out of fresh vegetables.
Then, Cai posted a massage in a community chat group to find residents who also needed vegetables. After some answered his call, Cai created a new group for collective purchasing.
He pooled together 80 orders and negotiated with a supplier. A deal was made, and the vegetables were delivered to the doorsteps of residents the following day.
After that, more residents joined Cai’s group, and demand grew rapidly. The goods on his purchase list expanded from vegetables to meat and milk.
The young man admitted, at first, organizing group purchases affected his studies. But later he optimized the work flow and started using a mini-program which enabled people to sign up for a group purchase automatically, which saved a lot of time.
“I want to show you high school students are not nerds that know nothing but how to solve problems on exercise books. We can help people solve practical problems in real life.” Cai said.
The one where doctors open the heart, repair it and seal it back. Everything seems so simple on paper, isn’t it?
It was a random Tuesday morning when we visited the Operation Theatre of the CTVS (Cardio Thoracic and Vascular Surgery) department, not knowing what was to come.
One of our senior professors was operating, and she was being assisted by some Resident doctors and nurses.
The surgery was Triple Valve Replacement. It basically involves replacing the damaged heart valves.
Sounds so easy!
The patient’s chest was cut open, the underlying bone was drilled and when they reached the heart finally, I was thrilled beyond expectations.
We all have heard heartbeats on a stethoscope, but to see it beat right in front of you is an altogether different feeling!
A number of different tubes were connected to the heart then. Lots of different liquids were made to run through the tubes.
And then, they put an ice solution over the heart.
This is called cardioplegia – the phase where the heart is stopped from beating. It is during this stage that the actual valve replacement is done.
The tubes help in supplying blood to the heart during this time.
Throughout this entire time, our Professor kept teaching us important stuffs related to the surgery. She could have chosen to ignore us and continue with the tiresome surgery, but she didn’t.
She showed us the important blood vessels and valves. She taught us the mechanism of cardioplegia. She showed us which incisions to make and where.
And all this while, she kept on standing and operating.
After 3 hrs at 1 pm, it was lunchtime for us. But the surgery was nowhere near complete. So me and my friends decided to stay till the end of the operation.
We didn’t expect the surgery to go on too long.
But here’s the thing. We finally came out of the OT at 5.30 pm, having missed our lunch as well as our afternoon classes!!!
But what did we gain?
Our respect for our Professor ma’am increased by leaps and bounds. Her surgical team members kept on changing every few hours, but she never left the OT table throughout the 8 hour period.
If this isn’t patience and dedication then what is?
Coming to the question.
What is something that money can’t buy?
It’s patience.
Master patience, and it will open the doors of greatness for you.
I am eligible for answering this question.A quick background about me.
A good developer with task completion abilities with 4.5 years of experience as of now
Year late 2015 joined the Pune based company this was my second company…Joined as a developer performed pretty well in initial 3 months of probation…They chose me to send on-site for 2 months
I was on cloud 9 and happily went to on-site UK ,performed exceptionally well there and returned to India.Now was into regular job activities of development stuff…
Suddenly HR and Dev manager calls me for a meeting and said you are in PIP..I was taken by shock because in the recent time I was the one who has delivered the most work from team.
They assigned me tasks for 1 month and said we want 100 percent completion the actual time that will be fair to complete the task was 3 months but they given me only one month..I delivered 80 percent and wanted a week extension but they were adamant that you have not completed in one month hence we have to let you go.
Later few of my friends from HR told me that they wanted you out from company and it was a trap.
On the day it was around 6 pm half collegaues were already gone.i got informed that today is my last day.
Gone out of the office cried with a friend for 10 mins and then told myself let’s bounce back and will get a new job in 7 days.
Cleared my stuff started applying for new jobs set the deadline for 7 days.
On the 5 th day I had the job offer in hand with 50 Percent hike
To the rest of the world especially the entire Global South we are clear as hell, why!
Because they are envious and fear China will overtake them and lose their hegemonic powers. The rest are all excuses and made up face saving lies. Frankly it should stop right away.
The more it demonised and blame China the more we see it as China doing well. Most culture including the west I believed, don’t take kindly to a person who bad mouthing someone. It shows that such person are weak and insecure. That is how the world sees the U.S. now.
Don’t do it. It looks bad on you. It makes you look weak. Fooling your own people weakens them. And fooling them int being ignorant and naive of the biggest consumer and producer on earth is like committing suicide! Yes you are right Americans in general don’t know and understand the real China.
But don’t blame them. The U.S. has been spreading lies and demonising China since 1949, 74 years straight! So today’s American has been lied to from their grand parents generation to their parents generation and they were fed misinformation to doubt, hate and fear China.
For a start 99.99% don’t know why 1949. Let me help you starting with this. After world war 2, the US at its strongest point in history go all out to fxxk up China. It is knee deep to ensure a puppet rule China do that it can break up China into 100 tiny nation. But at its strongest. Point it failed to do that even when China is at its weakest and the U.S. is at its strongest.
What about now! China grew from an economy the size of Zambia to the biggest in purchasing power term. The growth of China in the last decade is bigger than the entire G7 by 35%! It can toast the US from coast to coast if the U.S. choose the end of life options.
So the U.S. do the only thing it can do. Talk and do shit. Hence Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghurs, Taiwan, Xinxiang and any shit it can find. Is it helping? Frankly no. Not at all. It counts on fooling people around the world. But instead it only fool their own yanks. But that is good, they can hide their own weakness and failings by blaming even their migraines on China. After all after lying about China 74 years to its citizens. They will buy anything.
Other people don’t hate the human race like you do because you don’t see the human race for what it is.
You see a small sliver of the human race for what it is, and that, plus your own confirmation bias, blinds you to the whole of the reality.
The human race is not all one thing. It’s a blend of light and shadow, good and evil. It’s trendy and oh so fashionable among a certain kind of person to see the dark and think that makes you somehow more knowledgable or informed, but it doesn’t. A nuanced, balanced approach must see the whole.
Seeing the whole means recognizing the evil but also celebrating the good. Hate is easy. It costs to love.
We do not see the world as it is; we see it as we are.
Worrying about what someone else is thinking, saying, or doing will not make your life better.
Celebrities, politicians and the mainstream media don’t live in the same truth as you do.
The person you marry can be the biggest financial decision you will ever make. The right one: an asset who will build with you. The wrong one: a liability that will destroy you. Choose wisely.
There’s literally nothing appealing about going out to bars, drinking and partying all through your 20s. Use this time to create a solid foundation for yourself and your future self.
Choosing a life partner based solely on looks and your sex urges is going to cost you in the end.
Nobody is going to pay attention when you are dead and most likely, they are not even paying attention now. So why be concerned about making mistakes?
The person you see in the mirror who has gone through a lot, the toughest times and is still standing. That’s the same person who deserves all the best from you.
No amount of love from others will ever be enough. To fill the yearning that your soul requires you work on a daily basis to make sure you are in love with yourself.
My husband recently rented a beautiful mansion on Maui via AirBnB. He did it on the AirBnB website. The owner asked him to send the money ($6,000) by a wire transfer because she lives in Europe. Red flag! He contacts AirBnB which confirms the listing is legitimate and it’s common to wire the money that way for international owners. So, he wires the money.
The next day the listing is gone and redirects to a Russian no service page. Apparently someone hacked AirBnB and created a fake listing within it.
Fortunately, our bank stopped the transaction so the money never left our account.
Fast but inaccurate heuristics that fail with Type 1 errors have positive survival value.
So think of the brain, first and foremost, not as an organ of rationality but as an organ of survival, like fangs or claws. The brain is a pattern recognition and categorization machine, and when you think about it that way, it becomes patently obvious why cognitive errors exist.
Cognitive errors are often the result of overly promiscuous pattern recognition or of category errors (or both).
When you live on the savannah, you frequently find yourself in situations where the only thing standing between you and being a leopard’s dinner is very fast pattern recognition. You don’t have time to consider and analyze whether that flash of orange you just saw from the corner of your eye is a charging leopard or not, and whether you should be categorizing it as a threat.
While your buddy Grog is sitting there evaluating the evidence, your adrenal glands are screaming WAAAUGH A LEOPARD IS ABOUT TO EAT MY FACE and you’re booking it out of there.
Result, you live to transmit your genes. Your rational, analytical buddy, the late Grog Grogson, does not.
And these fast heuristics evolve toward Type 1 errors (false positives), not Type 2 errors (false negatives). If you mistakenly think a gazelle is a leopard and flee, you’re still alive. Your buddy Thok who mistakenly thinks a leopard is not a leopard, well…
So the people who survived the savannah had brains optimized for fast but low-resolution heuristics for identifying threats and aggressive, promiscuous pattern matching. Surprise! We no longer live on the savannah, but we still have those traits, legacy code in our firmware.
My professor has not been able to sleep well. He has been getting very dizzy lately. I bought him a fuzzy purple pillow and gave it to him. “Fuzzy pillows fix everything,” I said. He hugged me. It probably won’t fix his insomnia but he knows I care.
I am notorious for waking up late. Because of this, I never check the weather and I never have time to grab coffee in the mornings. When I picked my friend up for school, she always brought me a jacket on cold days and a thermos of coffee ready for me.
When I moved to Thailand, I was very lonely. A group of guys could see I was lonely and asked me to hang out. I couldn’t speak Thai, and they couldn’t speak English, but they took me to dinner most nights though we couldn’t say a word to each other. That meant everything.
The ladies in the office at my school will see my eyes linger on something they’re eating. They know I don’t know what it is. They always bring me a bowl of whatever they’re eating without me asking because they want me to try it. They gave me a whole pomelo last time. It makes my day.
My fruit lady always asks about my family in America. She remembers every detail about my family every time we talk as she cuts my pineapple for me. I’m always amazed she cares enough to listen, remember, and ask more questions.
The opportunity to be kind is everywhere. The smallest acts of love have the greatest impact. You just have to look for them.
HIGH ALERT! Putin and China just changed EVERYTHING with this move, and Biden has NO response
Creole Pot Roast with Dumplings
Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, divided
1 (3 pound) beef pot roast
1 (16 ounce) can whole tomatoes, undrained
2 cups sliced onions
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 cup hot water
1 2/3 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 tablespoons chopped pimiento
Instructions
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in Dutch oven over medium high heat. Add beef and brown on all sides.
Add tomatoes and onion; cover tightly. Cook over low heat for 2 hours.
Stir in curry powder, 1 teaspoon salt, sugar and Worcestershire sauce. Cover and cook an additional 1/2 hour.
Place pot roast on serving platter and keep hot.
Add 1 cup hot water to broth in pot; bring to a boil.
Blend together flour, baking powder and remaining 1 teaspoon salt.
Cut in remaining 2 tablespoons butter, using a pastry blender or 2 knives.
Add milk, parsley and pimiento to flour mixture. Stir until moist.
Drop batter by tablespoonsful into boiling broth. Cover; cook over low heat for about 15 minutes.
Place dumplings around pot roast.
Strain broth and serve as gravy.
Dating Matchmaker quits working with women, modern women are DELUSIONAL, men go ABROAD
“I’ve seen videos of women giving the long lists of their requirements and, just because I’m a math geek, I’ll look up the statistics and do the calculations. In a lot of these cases, statistically, these men don’t even exist. They’re looking for a winning lottery ticket.”
My wife went to a local DPS (Department of Public Safety) office, and I escorted her, to renew her driver license. While at it, she decided to change her name to match the name on her Certificate of Naturalization when she became a US citizen.
After my wife filled out the required paperwork, the clerk says that in order to change the name, my wife must present a valid court order/document to prove that she had officially changed her name. According to the clerk, the Certificate of Naturalization is not a valid court approved document. Below is a sample of the Certificate of Naturalization.
Anyone with half a brain would realize that it says “United States District Court” in the lower right-hand corner, especially after we pointed it out several times, but not this particular DPS clerk.
Needless to say, we asked her to call her supervisor. Fortunately, the supervisor knew that a Certificate of Naturalization is the real deal and told the clerk to change the name, but not before hearing several “but, but, but…” from the clerk.
To use the mine, the soldier would remove the security pin, and then charge the enemy armor, just like in a bayonet charge, making the top of the mine collide with the objective. The weapon needed to be held by the center with the left hand and by the bottom with the other hand. When the legs of the mine hit the objective, the handle was pulled forward, cutting a pin and making the detonator move forward to the detonator charge. This would set off the mine, blowing up its user and, probably, the targeted enemy armor.
The mine was capable of penetrating about 150 mm of RHA
at an angle of 90º, and up to 100 mm at an angle of 60º. However, the mine would almost always impact at 90º because the impact angle with the objective would be decided by the weapon’s user, and he would probably aim for a 90º armor plate.
The nature of the weapon was similar to a panzerfaust in that it was a single use type weapon. Unlike the panzerfaust the operator was a single use soldier. There were no records I could find of it being used successfully. Of course I don’t know how there would be any feedback on its effectiveness.
The NVA used it as well with some reported success in Indochina against the French and the US later in the South.
In the parking lot at Walmart. I saw a motorhome identical to mine. So I was looking at the twin of my motorhome when the owner walked up and looked at me curiously. I introduced myself. I explained I owned the same model and I was having some mechanical issues. We all got along well, so we exchanged emails and decided to keep in touch. Well we started camping together, a couple of times a year. Our motorhomes were old. Our new friends lived simply. They cut coupons. Shopped at thrift stores. After years of getting together, California had an earthquake and our friends had to leave early to “check the cars” . I was puzzled. My friend explained he had a car collection. On racks in California. I guess he felt after years of knowing us he told us he had been a CEO of a Silicon Valley technology company. They knew by then we liked them for who they are. Not what they have.
The Marijuana Menace 1938 | Crime, Drama, Propaganda | Colorized Full Movie
When life is hard… I often look backwards and try searching for pleasant memories.
Stand by me…
One of my favorites is walking along the abandoned railroad tracks, along the river, in rural Western Pennsylvania. It’s a pure “Stand by me moment”. I lived this life in my early teens. And I often look back in time to this pleasant series of moments.
Do you, fellow MM reader, have memories of your past that comfort you? What are they? A pet… a tree house… a uncle or auntie?
I’m good.
Don’t fret, though. I am just talking in general.
I have friends in trouble. But me, oh, I’m really good.
Chinese in China and Chinese in Taiwan will resolve the dispute if any between China and Taiwan. That is absolutely the right thing to do. The U.S. has absolutely nothing to do with this totally internal domestic issue. Any move to manipulate and war monger in Taiwan is totally and absolutely wrong you will certainly fail.
I am a Chinese ancestry from the same district that the majority of Taiwanese Chinese people migrated from. I have folks in China and Taiwan and we are of the similar stock. We certainly see that the U.S. trying to jam a spanner in the works as totally and absolutely wrong from Chinese people point of view and dare I say from the American point of view too.
How foolish can American think that it can shed blood and disrupt China by interfering in Taiwan? Do Yanks want to blow another 10 trillion dollars you don’t have to fight a war that 99.99% you will lose badly! Do the right thing pull out every single U.S. force out of Asia and make amends with the worlds most humongous market. Stop wasting more money flexing your sagging muscles by parading you aircraft carrier at a billion dollar a pop!
Your homeless need this money. Your uninsured healthcare citizens needs the money. Your infrastructure is dilapidated, Your streets are crumbling and totally not safe. Your banks are dropping like flies. You need to retrain the entire work force even compete with China.
What is right? The U.S. must get the fxxk out of South East China seas. And North Asia. You do that and Taiwan and China will resolved what ever issues it in a week. You can focus on making America great again. By being here you are helping g to make China great again!
Yes, Huawei will dominate the China and global south markets. But it will not in the global north market cuz the US will not lighten the pressure on Huawei.
However, Huawei makes not just phone, its strength is in network which is the weakness of Apple. No matter how good iPhone is, it’s limited by the network performance. While Apple created macOs, iPadOS and iOS (it’s a mess in my opinion) Huawei have unifies all in one OS; harmonyOS, an important step for the future IoT world. The US had inadvertently given Huawei a rare opportunity to self alliance and placing itself in a dominant position in the IoT market. Anyone wants to do business in China in the future should think twice being a lapdog of the US now.
Furthermore, Apple brags about their 3nm chip, yet it doesn’t have satellite voice communication compared to the less powerful Huawei Kirin. Indeed, it is impressive, but how does the 3nm technical supremacy benefit the users when Huawei offers more functions for less money? Trump started sanctions on Huawei, and Pompeo lied about China worldwide and now Biden’s growing pressure on Huawei, which invokes higher patriotism doesn’t help Apple sales in China. Apple will unlikely to regain market share in the near future.
Marriage is like a joint-stock corporation: you have to invest in it to have it run smoothly and both of you need to make a commitment to make it happy.
There are only difficult marriages and very difficult marriages. None are easy. But problems usually are resolveable.
All happy marriages are happy in the same way, all unhappy marriages are unhappy in their unique ways. This is known as the Anna Karenina principle.
Divorces follow the Pareto law. 80% of all divorces happen to 20% of people, 64% of all divorces happen to 4% of people and 50% of all divorces happen to 1% of people. Conversely, 80% of all marriages will last to death, and most people never divorce.
Learn to cook like your mom, not to drink like your dad.
Joker: The best thing a veteran can get is a strong-willed but a loving spouse who will take PTSD seriously and provide love and guidance when needed. My maternal granny was one.
Cajun Meat Loaf with Sweet Pepper Sauce
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
Meatloaf
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup finely chopped sweet red pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped sweet green pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 slices white bread, torn
1/2 cup milk
1 pound ground beef
1/2 cup dried bread crumbs
1/2 cup ketchup
1 egg
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
Sweet Pepper Sauce
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup diced sweet red pepper
1 cup diced sweet green pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon whole mustard seeds
Instructions
Meatloaf
Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add red pepper, green pepper, onion and salt; cover and cook over low heat until very tender, about 8 minutes.
Remove from heat and cool slightly.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.
Combine bread and milk in large bowl; let stand 5 minutes to soften.
Add beef, crumbs, ketchup, egg, hot pepper sauce and sweet red pepper mixture; toss gently to coat.
Spoon and pat into prepared loaf pan.
Bake for 1 hour.
Let stand 15 minutes before serving.
Top each serving with a dollop of Sweet Pepper Sauce and serve.
Sweet Pepper Sauce
Heat in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the red pepper, green pepper, onion, water and salt; cook, stirring occasionally, over medium heat until very tender, about 8 minutes.
Stir in cider vinegar, brown sugar and mustard seeds; cook over medium-high heat until most of the liquid has evaporated and sauce is thickened, about 8 minutes.
More Brinkmanship: NATO Shows Pics of Netherlands F-35 loaded with Nuclear Bombs!
NATO (i.e. the United States) has upped-the-ante-with Russia . . . again. They published photos of a Netherlands F-35 stealth jet with two B-61 nuclear bombs in its bomb bays – SIMILAR TO THE FILE PHOTO shown above.
No announcement. No publicized “threat.” Just loaded the plane with nukes, sent it into the air, told it to fly over a cameraman with its bomb bays open, and then publishes a photo showing the nukes are onboard.
Hal Turner Remarks
THIS is how NATO tries to intimidate Russia – over Ukraine.
Except the Russians don’t get intimidated.
We are still, very much, on the brink of outright nuclear war with Russia. And with NATO pulling crap like this, we get closer and closer as each day goes by.
Of course, no one in the Western “mass-media” bothers to show you how we continue to “poke the (Russian) bear” but I do show you.
I show you because when it actually happens, YOU will all know who it was that drive the issue. YOU will know it is OUR side that did it. ANd YOU will know who to hold accountable when they slither out from their bunkers in the aftermath.
When I was working in my job of 23 years for a company making a certain medical product, I was the sole full time employee with 2 directors.
I was getting older, my eyesight got weaker and the machinery more worn and needed more maintenance and broke down more often.
Production was lessening. I asked for a helper, but was refused!
Management then came up with a plan! They required me to write a daily journal of the work I did and the time taken and a detailed description of the work! On top, I needed to requisition any purchases required to maintain the function of the factory.
So, besides the set-up and operate of 7 machines, I had to clean my hands after each repair and sit down to fill in the journal. Any time I needed parts, I had to write a requisition, fax it to HQ, and wait for approval before driving to suppliers to buy them…one time, a machine was down for a month for want of 1 screw! They forgot because it was only 1 screw on the requisition!
Production plummeted, and eventually they moved back to the UK and set up there. Not a problem hiring 7 people to do the job I managed on my own for 23 years!
At least I got a decent severance and control of my pension fund…which was neglected as well!
Teacher: “So over 6 million Jews died in the Holo-”
Student: “Why aren’t we learning about the Confederacy? Why do y’all erase our Southern history but not the Holocaust?”
Teacher: *goes silent for a few moments*
Teacher: “Well, those are rather loaded questions. But can you tell me the name of this class?”
Student: “AP European History.”
Teacher: “…and where was the Confederacy?”
Student: “The United States.”
*The student continues to argue that we should still be learning about the Confederacy and not the Holocaust*
-A student with a thick country accent.
This is also the same student who wrote a huge passage from the Bible from memoryon the whiteboard when the teacher wasn’t looking. But I digress.
Teacher: “So which countries in Europe weren’t under communist control?”
Student: “China!”
-A very confident friend of mine in our AP European History class.
Teacher: “Sarah, pop quiz, how many states are in the United States?”
A very unconfident Sarah: “Oh, goodness… um, 51?”
Teacher: “Are you serious?”
Sarah: “Wait, there aren’t 51!? Is Puerto Rico not a state?”
-A former military officer and current teacher, chatting with a very aloof student before a Veterans Day parade.
Godfree Roberts talks about China
Author James Howard Kunstler questioned me about Why China Leads the World: Talent at the top, Data in the middle, Democracy at the top this week. He’s a typical, educated, intelligent American whose sole source of information about China is the New York Times. His tone was civil and he gave no clue that he believed nothing I told him. When he released the interview, he labeled me a troll.
Here’s the outline I sent him prior to the interview:
PARTY PEOPLE: The Communist Party’s ninety million members contribute a billion dollars in annual dues and billions of volunteer hours. They took an oath to ‘bear the people’s hardships first and enjoy the benefits last’. 48,000 of them flew into Wuhan when Covid broke out and 90% of staff deaths were members. Few work for the government and even fewer benefit from membership, yet they determine the country’s direction.
THOSE WHO PLEASE THE PEOPLE. China chooses politicians the way the US Navy chooses admirals and treats them similarly. Chosen from the top two percent of university graduates, theyspend years away from home, are modestly paid, earn PhDs, take orders, perform distasteful missions, observe a restrictive moral code, are held responsible for subordinates’ mistakes, constantly assessed, scrutinized, tried in special courts and punished more severely than civilians. China’s elite has always been non-hereditary, and they’ve been the country’s heroes for millennia.
DATA-DRIVEN DEMOCRACY. Constitutionally, electively, popularly, procedurally, operationally, substantively, and financially, China is democratic. The Carter Center oversees elections, voter participation is higher than ours and, in survey after survey, they trust their government and say it responds to their needs.
A DATONG ECONOMY. For seventy years China’s economy has grown three times faster than ours and, by 2028, will be twice as big. They spend four times more on R&D and lead the world in most sciences and technologies.
THE GRANARY IS FULL. Because Beijing allocates 59% of GDP to wages, incomes have outgrown GDP for decades and, by 2023, 96% of people owned a home and had a job, plenty of food, education, safe streets, health care and old age pensions. Their mothers and infants survive childbirth better, their children graduate school three years ahead of ours and live longer, healthier lives. There are now more drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, hungry and imprisoned people in America than in China.
A SAN FRANCISCO EVERY MONTH. China has built the equivalent of one San Francisco every month since 1951. Now they’re building City V2.0, a clean, green home for six million people that integrates 5G, driverless electric cars, maglev trains, vast wetlands and prevailing winds. Designed to pay for itself by doubling inhabitants’ productivity, it opens in 2024.
EDUCATION. Chinese youngsters graduate high school three years ahead of ours. Tier One urban teachers are limited to fifteen hours of classroom instruction weekly and their principals have chauffeured limousines and overseas sabbaticals. They take education more seriously than heart attacks.
LOST GIRLS AND HALF THE SKY. The first bill Mao, a lifelong women’s libber, signed in 1949 was the Equal Rights Amendment. The ‘missing’ thirty million girls have been found–beating boys in school–and their big sisters lead gigantic science and defence programs and comprise most of the world’s self-made female billionaires.
RELIGION. Two-thirds of Chinese are atheists and one-fourth non-religious Taoists. Though a Christian uprising killed thirty million people and brought down the Qing dynasty, the Constitution guarantees freedom of worship and the government supports seventy-four seminaries, one thousand seven hundred Tibetan monasteries, three thousand religious organizations, thirty-nine thousand mosques, eighty-five thousand religious sites and three-hundred thousand clergy.
CONFUCIAN ETHICS AND RULE OF LAW. Of all government services, the Chinese are happiest with their legal system. With one-fourth of our security budget, their police are unarmed, streets are safe, prisons are empty and reoffense is rare. The Supreme Court’s chatty website has had two billion visitors.
EARTH IS MY MOTHER. The Chinese have lived on the same land for thousands of years and it’s more productive today than ever. Thanks to the EPA, they avoided our environmental disasters and emulated our successes. Today, 42% of the country is wilderness and Giant Panda National Parkalone is bigger than Massachusetts.
HUMAN RIGHTS: Of the original thirty rights in the UN Declaration, China leads America in twenty-six and has proposed three that the US opposes: rights to food, shelter and national development.
CORRUPTION: The government, which tells the truth and keeps its promises, is the most trusted on earth. Though many local officials became dishonest during the boom, policy-making remained untouched. Now, AI and a dedicated, Cabinet-level anti-corruption department have the upper hand.
PROPAGANDA: xuānchuán, ‘transforming the people through exemplary behavior and instruction,’ has been a government responsibility since ancient times. China’s success in rolling out new programs depends on it.
DISCUSSION IS SUSPENDED. The Office of Chief Censor is two thousand years old and its incumbent is, and has always been, the country’s leading intellectual. Today, he’s a famous author and also a Cabinet member. He oversees the world’s largest, richest, most trusted media and his mandate is constitutional: “Once a policy has been widely discussed, voted on and legislated, discussion is suspended while everyone unites to implement it”.
THE TIANANMEN CAPER. Inflation, race, sex, wages and loss of university scholarships triggered the Tiananmen Square demonstration. President Clinton discussed it on Chinese national TV for an hour, but the story ended with an incamera trial in London’s Crown Court.
TIBET AND THE DALAI LAMA: More Tibetans can read and write their native language today than all the Tibetans who have ever lived, and those who have lived under both governments prefer the current one. Running water, schools, universities, hospitals, airports, high speed trains and forty years of rising wages have made a difference. As has the Lhasa Hilton.
HEGEMONY AND HUMANE AUTHORITY. China’s military, which humiliated ours in 1951, has more firepower than the US but plans to lead the world by virtuous example. Failing that, they’ll blow the US Navy out of the water with weapons a generation ahead of ours.
A DATONG WORLD. Ten years ago President Xi founded the BRI, promising to, “Jointly promote democratization of international relations by building an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity–a world community of common destiny, a shared planetary home for humanity.’
Oh I have a good one! Not only did this crazy woman run into me, she then tried to sue me!
I’m in the UK so traffic directions may differ in your country.
Here we go…
I’m turning right. I’m stationary waiting for a gap in traffic. One comes and I start to turn and – wham! – this lady runs straight into the back of me.
Took me a moment to realise what happened but I get out of my vehicle and check on her. She immediately states aggressively that it’s my fault. Errr, you run into the back of me I was stationary, love. She’s having none of it.
Anyway a police car happens to pass and stops checks that there’s no injuries. She is still ranting to the point even the policeman has had enough and points out she run into the back of me so it’s cut and dry your fault mrs.
So we swap details and I go home. As it happens I was turning into the street I lived at the time so no need recover my vehicle. I just park it and go to have a beer.
I call my insurance company and they’re not really interested as my car was worth £500 and with no injuries, there’s no money to be made. I was planning to scrap the car in three months when the MOT ran out so I just replaced the tire that was damaged, replaced the light cluster, tied a rope to a telegraph pole, straightened the chassis the old-fashioned way. Bit of duct tape on the bumper, and I’m good to go for the remainder of the car’s life. I wasn’t hurt so it’s all good.
That’s the end of that I thought… NOPE
Eighteen months later I get a court letter claiming against me personally. Not contact my insurance company just put in a claim for £4500 ish claiming I had overtaken a line of traffic and swerved in front of her not giving her time to brake. I know not even possible.
So I contacted my insurance company and they’re not interested. So fuck this I think I’ve never been paid for the damage to my car I’m going counter claim against the bitch.
So that’s what I did: I claimed £500 against her.
So the court day comes round and I’ve prepared my paperwork best I can do. I rock to court not really knowing what I’m doing but hey ho.
So I turn up early and don’t sign in; instead I sit close to the sign-in desk and wait for this nut job to turn up. She does with her slimy solicitor. So I let them sit and quietly go and sign in then I sit behind them so I can hear what they say. (Neither of us could remember what the other looked like of course).
He’s telling her I hadn’t turned up so they will win by default and as I was a day late responding to one of his slimy letters he was going get my entire case ignored through a loophole even if I did.
So the afternoon court session starts and off he goes up to the desk triumphantly stating that as I not turned up he expects this to go in his favour without a fuss.
Oh my friends on quora — if you could have seen his face when the nice lady paused, looked at him and said “but he is there” pointing at me. Sitting sneakily right behind him since he turned up listening to everything he had said. I know I shouldn’t have but I had to give him a cheeky wink. Lol
So we get into court — it was actually the judge’s chambers rarther than a large open court so there were only the four of us: me, crazy lady, her solicitor, and the judge . He starts off with his he wants throw my paperwork out through some legal loophole the judge looks at me and I come out with one of the finest lines in my adult life… I simply said “well that’s not cricket, judge”. I laughing as I recall this… the judge puts his pen down looks at this solicitor over the top of his glasses like a headmaster at a naughty pupil. He immediately retracts his request; I hold in my chuckle.
So the case carries on. Somehow my paperwork is far better than his and the guy is dying on his feet. I had just split from a solicitor I’d been dating for couple of years so I must have picked some stuff up. So this goes back or forward for 30 minutes or so and we get to the end. He sums up and he literally says “I surpose” … blar blar you did this, etc. Sits down.
Judge says to me right you have a go like he just has so up I stand… this is where I came out with the second best line of the day: “once upon a time… I was turning right… blar blar even the judge cracked a smile at my comedy genius.
She was psychotically jealous and eventually decided her husband can’t be with anyone else so she would take him off the market. She stabbed him seven times killing him.
To be clear, violence against wives/women is much more common—which is what makes these cases so interesting and unique.
This one was especially unique.
She stabbed her husband to death after seeing a picture of him with another woman. Yet she didn’t realize it was an old picture of her and her husband and she didn’t recognize herself.
I was a PFC in the USMC Reserves back in the 1960s and we were spending the weekend down at either Pendleton or Miramar, I don’t remember which, for our annual rifle qualification. Every Marine up to some high rank must qualify with a rifle every year. In the USMC, every Marine be they a cook or a company commander can put lead up the a$$ of the enemy just as well as an infantry Marine.
We were an artillery unit and our battery had finished our qualification with M-14s; we were told to stick around as we had to score and “pull butts” (mark targets with little discs to show where the shot had hit) for other regular Marines who were scheduled to qualify that day. One of my buddies was in the pit (200 yard range) and I was up on the firing line keeping score and recording.
An older Marine came up to qualify. He had a shooting jacket on so I couldn’t see his rank. We chatted for a while and when he was ready he began firing shots – I don’t remember the sequence but it was something like 10 shots prone, 10 shots sitting, and so on for – I think – 50 rounds to complete the effort. Depending on where you hit the target – bulls eye, or one of the outer rings, or missed completely (then the guy in the pits waved a red flag, which we called “Maggie’s Drawers”) you got a score for each shot. You had to get a score of something like 190 to qualify.
Anyway, this older guy started shooting and did a terrible job. He frequently hit near the edge of the target and even got a few “Maggies”. I made some joking comments about how he was going to get his a$$ kicked if he didn’t do better, then he changed positions and I could see he was a Major. That gold oak leaf peeked out from his shooting jacket, and I realized if he failed he might be retired out.
So I called my buddy in the pits and said we had a Major on the firing line and he had to qualify. No more Maggies and make sure he passes. We didn’t make him an expert or anything, but made sure he hit just over the minimum.
When it was over, I apologized for not recognizing his rank and saying “Sir”; he said laughingly no problem and then “thanks a lot, Marine” and went on his way.
From the 1950s to the late 1970s, the Shah of Iran robbed the country blind and sent all the money to the United States for investment.
Then a new government came into place in 1979 and demanded the United States return both the Shah (who was in the United States for “medical treatment”) and the Shah’s ill-gotten gains. When the Iranians stood by and let the American Embassy in Iran be taken over by “student protestors”, the United States implemented a complete embargo with Iran which effectively prevented them from repatriating assets in the United States. The United Nations soon followed suit, which prevented Iran from reaching its money in several other countries.
No-one is quite sure how much money is involved, but the low estimate is $100 billion U.S. dollars. China holds the largest share of that – $20 billion, but the United States still holds about $2 billion although it has over the years allowed Iran to repatriate some of its money on conditions of paying off U.S. court judgements.
Most recently, $6 billion in assets held in South Korea was transferred to Qatar for humanitarian uses. However, all the money still appears to be in Qatar.
Modern Woman’s Awakening: Choosing Family As Well As Career Success
I worked at the cookie store in the mall and there was a small seating area. A woman came in with an elderly woman who was clearly frail and suffering from later stages of dementia wearing a housecoat, slippers and what was clearly a bright yellow fall risk bracelet from the hospital, her frail body shaking as she sat making these soft whimpering noises.
The younger bought her a cookie and a soda and told her she’d be right back and took off, moving the elder woman’s walker well out of her reach and leaving the elderly woman alone. It didn’t take long before the elderly woman got more upset and kept trying to get up.
Our manager called security and went out to sit with her, but the elderly woman was scared of her, not knowing who she was. Security came and that just made the situation worse.
We ended up calling the police, the elderly woman had no ID on her (fall risk bracelets don’t contain personal information) and no way to call the younger woman over the PA system. Unfortunately this was not a high emergency situation for them and it was well over an hour before someone got there.
By the time the younger woman returned, social services had arrived and were loading the woman up into an ambulance.
She had abandoned her own mother for over two hours at the mall to go to dinner and shopping.
In 1977 I was in the army; a SP4 in the 978th MP Co., 76th MP BN stationed at Ft. Bliss, TX. My MP shift was was preparing to go to work and we had all just been issued our 1911 .45 autos from the arms room and were in the CO’s ready room. A soldier named Stone was issued a new holster and had taken the old one off his gunbelt and replaced it with the new one. They were of this type:
Stone had inserted his pistol into the stiff, brand-new holster. It was not easy. He hadn’t gotten it fully seated and the leather flap was still propped up some. I was standing right beside him and casually watching. We wore a white lanyard that attached to a loop on the butt of the weapon. When Stone tried to attach the lanyard, the 1911 discharged. His hand was nowhere near the trigger.
The Captain was in his office adjacent to where we 12 or 15 MP’s were and at the sound of the round going off he came storming into the ready room:
“Who the fuck fired that shot!??!!”, he screamed. “What the hell is going on here?!!”
Stone slowly raised his hand and the captain’s full and acidic ire and venom were directed at the young PFC. The cap called him every name in the book as he dressed the kid down a full minute or so for being reckless. Finally, at the end of his tirade the Captain asked, “Now where the fuck did that round go?!”
Stone had no idea where the round went and was near tears from the harsh words from the CO, especially since he hadn’t touched the trigger of his weapon at all. Everyone was looking around for the impact of the .45 ball round when I noticed a small, half-moon shape on the toe of Stone’s boot.
“Move your foot, Stone”, I said.
Stone shifted his right foot and there, in the floor under his boot was the bullet, fully imbedded into the tile floor. We all realized the round must have passed through Stone’s foot.
The transformation in the captain’s attitude was immediate and remarkable. Suddenly he became the very personification of the father figure, very concerned and compassionate about the young PFC.
“Sit down here son. Are you okay? Don’t worry about a thing..” he said as he took Stone gently by the arm and lead him to a chair. Medics were called and the CO continued to comfort Stone until medics arrived. Stone was transported to William Beaumont Army Medical Center.
So here’s the theory we came up with about how the round was fired and the remarkable path the bullet took:
Stone’s new holster was very stiff. We surmise that when he was shoving the .45 into the new holster the slide caught on the rough leather just enough to chamber a round and jam the hammer partly cocked, but not locked into place. As he was trying to attach the lanyard the hammer was released, causing the discharge. I have no idea if that’s what really happened, but I do know for sure he never touched the trigger and his hand was not on the grip.
The Path of the Bullet:
When the round discharged the bullet first blew out the bottom, including the small wooden plug, of the military holster. It then entered Stone’s right trouser leg about 5 inches above his knee (he was wearing fatigues). Amazingly, the bullet passed between his skin and the cloth, for about 7 inches or more, without contacting any flesh. It exited a few inches below the knee and continued to his right combat boot, entering at the toe. It passed though and entered the floor.
When he arrived at the hospital and his boot was removed, the doctors discovered that the big ‘ol .45 round had passed right through Stone’s right big toe without touching the bone. Now I don’t know how much meat you have on your big toe, but that was astonishing and very lucky for Stone.
Because there was so little damage, Stone recovered in just a few weeks. Had that big round entered his leg and struck his knee joint, I think it’s likely he would never have fully recovered the use of that joint. Thanks for reading!.
Cajun Pepper Steak
Ingredients
1 pound beef (round or sirloin) cut into strips
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Tabasco sauce, to taste (that means USE A LOT)
1 1/2 cups water
2 large onions, cut into strips
2 bell peppers, cut into strips
2 tablespoons cornstarch (or all-purpose flour and a little water)
Steamed rice
Instructions
Brown steak in oil for about 5 minutes turning to brown both sides.
Add 1 1/4 cups of the water and Tabasco Sauce. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.
Add the onions and and bell pepper and simmer until meat is tender.
If the gravy is too thin, thicken it by mixing 1/4 cup of water with the cornstarch or flour stirring until there are no lumps.
Remove beef mixture from heat and slowly add the thickening mix while you continue stirring.
Return to heat and simmer until gravy thickens.
Serve over rice.
Garnish with chopped shallots and make sure the bottle of Tabasco is on the table.
Not exactly, but I got suspicious of one dealership who serviced my car on a regular basis.
When I left the car, I set up a few things…
When I went to pick up the car, I paid the bill then went out and inspected the car. I then asked the service advisor to review a few things and he came out to the car with me. First thing I noticed was my right rear tire was inflated to only 15 lbs, which is where I’d adjusted it to five minutes before dropping the car off. On the service checklist it showed that all the tires had been checked for proper inflation. Service advisor commented the tech must have missed that one, and apologized. I said let’s look at the spare, it’s noted as being the right pressure too. I popped the trunk, lo and behold there was the gas cap sitting on the floor of the trunk. I pointed to the list and noted that I’d been charged for a fuel additive, so I asked if it was common practice to leave the gas tank cap in the trunk after adding the fuel additive to the tank. At that point the advisor ran out of excuses and started stammering his apology. He refunded my money and offered a free service job in the future. I took the money, declined his “free offer”, and never darkened his doorway again.
I went no further with that, but told several people I knew that used that dealership to beware.
If you are poor in Finland, you live in council housing.
Since Finland is located between 60° and 70° North, homelessness kills. The Finnish winter will simply kill you if you do not have a roof over your head.
Social housing – council housing – has been the thing since Industrialization. If your income level drops below a certain limit, your hometown or municipality will arrange you a subsidized council flat.
Poverty in Finland is essentially relative. Your basic needs (food, water, warmth, protection from weather, etc.) are covered, but you lack the means to attain the higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy of needs.
Köyhyys ei ole synti, mutta pirunmoinen häpeä. Poverty is no sin, but a god-awful shame, is said in my native Finnish. Yet it can be ameliorated, and for most people, poverty is a temporary state of things.
There are two sure-fire ways to become poor in Finland; one is divorce and the other is developing an addiction. Divorce and single parenthood are things which are to be avoided whenever possible, since they mean costs skyrocketing. Since both parents working (and sharing the costs of living) is the norm in Finland, divorce means there are now two separate households, but single incomes, meaning there will be less spare money to use and to invest. Developing an addiction (alcoholism, drug addiction, etc.) means skidding into antisocial lifestyle and derailment of the labour and workforce, meaning unemployment and unemployability.
Relative poverty usually hits families with young children worst. Since both parents are in the entry stage of their work careers, their incomes tend to be low, but their spendings high due to the children, and many of them actually do qualify for council housing. Things usually tend to get better once the children grow, and the parents advance in their careers.
The good thing with council housing is that, once you qualify for it and do not live in an antisocial, filthy or disturbing manner, you cannot be evicted. Many families with decent incomes, who once have been poor, actually choose to live in council flats, because that will leave them far more disposable money to use than if they lived in “good reputation” suburbs or purchased their own homes.
Yes. And he was very erudite, eloquent, and oratorially intelligent. Probably the best defense speaker at the trial. It didn’t stop the prosecution from convicting him, but most admit that it was an outstanding presentation. Maybe not all that logical, but it symbolized the Nazi mindset.
Herman Goring, Reich Marshall of the Third Reich, presenting defense argument at Nuremburg before sentencing.
Rather than being hung, he committed suicide by swallowing cyanide pills smuggled in to him.
Indeed, this is a question that many people are asking.
And precisely, because it is on many people’s minds, that I will answer it. Well, without a “crystal ball” perhaps, but in my own way.
So let’s look at the parameters…
[1] No actual leadership
President Biden is a figurehead. There’s no one “upstairs”.
This is not a political assessment. It’s an actual observation by anyone who watches the videos of him. He cycles in and out of clarity, and often appears to be suffering from pretty advanced dementia.
He goes though the motions. Read the teleprompters, and “kisses babies”.
But in the strategy briefing rooms, in high level discussions, and other important roles, he’s present but not proactive.
[2] Careening out of control
Without leadership, the “car careens wildly on the road”.
Financial opportunists place all sorts of bills and initiatives for personal profit “on the table”. These then “grow legs” and take on a life of their own. The Tiktok ban is one such example. Thus the Senate and Congress appears to be simply a forum for grandstanding while the “representatives” try to accept higher and higher piles of cash for their participation.
Congress more aptly resembles a shark feeding frenzy over a cow carcass.
There’s no real statesmanship, leadership, or forward planning. It’s all on “autopilot”, and being run by monied interests.
[3] The road is not empty
It wouldn’t be so bad if the “careening car” is on a wide and open empty highway. But it isn’t. There are many other cars on this road. There are cars with couples. cars with families, and school busses full of children.
It’s only a matter of time before the careening car smashes into someone else.
After smashing into Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, the car is now banging into a large clunky tractor-trailer; Russia. And, each time the tractor-trailer tries to get unstuck the car smashes again, and again, and again. It’s almost like the driver for the United States car has no brakes. It’s acceleration only. And Russia while dinged up, is still moving forward.
Now a big yellow bus full of school children looms up ahead. This is China, and it is enormous (being double-Decker), and powerful, and does not want to be hit.
And everyone around is terrified.
And what does the United States car do?
It “floors” the gas petal, and is zooming straight ahead. The driver seemingly wants to broadside the bus at high speed.
Conclusion
Is it no wonder why people are concerned? People are terrified.
At this stage of the game, and I am loathe to say this, there are only five (x5) things that can stop the upcoming disaster…
The car rams the bus full of children. There are deaths in both vehicles, and a chain reaction occurs where other cars start hitting the wreckage on the road.
The car runs out of gas, and stops dead in the middle of the road. It sputters, and dies.
The people inside the careening car take control of the wheel. And then, carefully and slowly, ease it to the side of the road.
The crazy car drives off the highway on it’s own, and destroys itself without hitting anyone else.
The tractor-trailer and the bus full of children coordinate and with their combined mass, push the madman off the road on their own. And other cars, acting in good faith, help in whatever capacity they can provide.
When I was a boy in High School, I studied French. I did so for three years, and pretty much max’ed out what was available at my school. I studied hard. Learned as much as I could, and did very well… grade wise.
Anyways, in the French Class were a series of books about the Adventures of Tintin. And joy of joys, I was able and permitted to “read” the books, trying to make out the French language in the illustrations.
I don’t know if it really helped me learn French, but it certainly helped me fall in love with the Tintin series. It really did.
I think the biggest surprise from a knock on the door I ever got was about 10 years ago.
An ex-girlfriend showed up at my door, 8 months pregnant …7 months after we split up (which was quite the shock, but I’ll get to that). Basically started dictating terms to me as to how things were going to be as soon as I opened the door. That I had to look after her because I got her pregnant and that she was going to stay at my place now because she had nowhere to go. She made some ridiculous demands about money and child support for an exorbitant amount. She told me that if I didn’t agree to her terms she was going to take me to court and to the cleaners.
I could barely contain my laughter at the situation…
What she didn’t know was that I am physically unable to father children (the conversation never came up because we were not that serious and it was none of her business). It was one of the reasons for my divorce previous to her after trying and going through multiple tests with my ex wife.
So here she (my ex) was at my door with all these demands, threats and looking for a handout and a place to stay after just obliviously outting herself for cheating on me (starting at least a month before we broke up, maybe longer.. maybe the whole time, Don’t know. Don’t care).
Turns out the guy she was with after me found out she was already pregnant before him (she tried to con him too but clearly the math didn’t work.…classy girl) and he gave her the boot.
I thanked her for letting me know that she cheated on me, quickly explained how I knew and knew that it wasn’t mine. Wished her the best and shut the door.
I will never forget that stupid look on her face for the rest of my life as that door closed.
Well my answer is not something I would usually speak of with people. And perhaps not so typical of what has been expressed in regards to this question already. But we are all here to honestly share so I will do so. And to be precise it was not MY jaw that dropped, rather my now ex wife’s and her daughter’s.
So at an extended family dinner one evening the conversation turned to family heritage. Things were variously mentioned about events and courageous endeavours of various relatives long passed away.
So I added a comment of praise for my Grandfather whom I never got to meet, and was coldly and angrily shut down by my Mother for the interest and praise that I bestowed on him.
So these are the words that came out of her mouth which will NOT be forgotten.
And I quote…
”what’s that got to do with you, you’re not even of our blood and you never will be”….
Well you could of heard a pin drop at the table, and I turned to see my ex and her daughter’s mouth’s agape in horror.
This was the moment I found out what being an adopted son really meant to her. And a reminder that to her (at least) I will forever remain a virtual outsider.
Please, this was shared not to provoke pity, because I’m cognitively stronger and happier in life than she will ever be. Rather, it’s just my honest answer.
My family used to have a really bad problem with food thieves. My mom is a baker, so you can usually find some kind of pastry in my house.
When brownies, cakes, and other sweet treats started going missing in the middle of the night, my mom was LIVID. Of course, no one was going to admit to snacking on her stuff, so she found a scapegoat: Me.
Jackson! Why in the world would you eat my pastries!? You know that I was going to take some to work today, and now there aren’t enough! Go vacuum the house!
Despite my cries of denial and protest, I was forced to vacuum the house. Ugh.
I thought it was a one-time occurrence until it happened again. And again. I was repeatedly forced to vacuum the house. My mom was so convinced that it was me who was eating her pastries that she didn’t even bother looking further into it.
I didn’t know who it was, but I knew it wasn’t me.
I had a plan. I was going to stay up all night and catch whoever it was. I waited many a long hour, waiting to hear the rustle of Saran Wrap in the kitchen. Eventually I heard a faint crinkle, and I sprang into action. Lo and behold, my little brother Bennett standing in the kitchen stuffing his face full of Devil’s food cookies.
“I KNEW it was you!” I said.
“What?! Why are you in the kitchen eating cookies, Jackson!?” He replied.
Instantly, I knew what he was up to. He was going to try and tell our mom that I was the one eating cookies in the kitchen. There was no way I was going to vacuum the house again, so I ran down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. Bennett followed, hurriedly swallowing any remainder of cookie.
My mom is already waiting for us; awoken by the ruckus. Right away, Bennett and I start ranting about how the other had been in the kitchen eating cookies.
What Bennett hadn’t realized was that he had gotten chocolate on his face, and the truth was smudged all over his cheeks.
If there’s one thing that my mom hates even more than stealing, it’s lying and letting other people take the blame. I have a feeling that Bennett is going to be vacuuming the house for quite a while.
That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
Slap Ya Mama Sweet and Spicy Pulled Pork Soft Tacos
Add a Louisiana twist to your tacos.
Ingredients
1 (5 to 7 pound) pork shoulder
1 whole onion, quartered
2 teaspoons Slap Ya Mama Original Seasoning
1 1/4 teaspoons Slap Ya Mama Hot Seasoning
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 garlic cloves peeled
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Taco size flour tortillas
Instructions
Heat oven to 300 degrees F.
Rinse and dry pork roast and place in a Dutch oven.
In a food processor combine onion, Slap Ya Mama seasonings, brown sugar, garlic cloves, oregano, olive oil, and vinegar. Pulse until completely combined. Pour the mixture over the pork. Rub into all the nooks and crannies.
Add 1 1/2 cups water around the bottom of the pork roast, cover tightly and roast for at least 5 hours, turning over every hour. Check to make sure roast is fork tender, then shred the meat using two forks to help pull it apart. I kept the meat in the juices so it would stay moist.
Serve pork on warm flour tortillas and add your favorite toppings. I used our favorite salsa, shredded cheddar, sour cream, fresh diced tomatoes and it wouldn’t be the same without squeezing fresh lime wedges over the top!
I married a woman who is a crack shot with a 9mm handgun (you should see her targets, they’re impressive), almost always has at least two long knives on her, and keeps a crossbow in the kitchen cabinet (yes, I’m serious, no joke). Plus she’s fucking formidable in a fistfight.
Yes. Yes, this particular man very much likes women who can defend themselves.
I once had someone, hand to God, tell me, direct quote, “Franklin, control your women.” Know what I did? I laughed, that’s what I did.
You are right, this view is the same as what I saw.
All the Chinese people I interact with, without exception, say that China is an “underdeveloped country”.
It was already 2017 when I visited China for the first time.
The China I saw (at least the big cities I went to) was completely like a developed country, and many details even exceeded those of most developed countries.
At least in my mind, “underdeveloped countries” should at least be some like African countries, Bangladesh, or even India.
But China is nothing like these places.
They have unparalleled public transportation facilities, convenient cashless payment systems, the world’s widest urban roads, a spiderweb of highway networks, the world’s best high-speed railways, and the world’s most stylish airports.
When I was sick, their hospitals, although overcrowded, were still the most efficient I had ever seen. Their school is in good order. Shared bicycles can be seen everywhere on the streets, and express delivery and takeout are very fast.
There are all kinds of delicious food everywhere at night, it is very lively even in the early morning, and it is very safe.
Chinese people buy the most family cars and the most smartphones in the world every year.
In short, as far as I can see, I don’t see anything that looks like an “underdeveloped country”. Even when I go to a small village in Guizhou, what I see is clean and tidy, although there are not so many skyscrapers.
OK, I asked my Chinese friends with this question.
They always laughed and said to me: “What you said is true, but China is still an underdeveloped country.”
One person told me: “China will remain an underdeveloped country for at least 10,000 years.”
When I couldn’t understand their thoughts and needed further explanation, they would all mention one word invariably: “per capita data.”
I have nothing to say. Indeed, any huge achievements will be eclipsed by a population of 1.4 billion.
For example, per capita income is less than US$20,000
For example, the number of cars per capita
For example, the housing area per capita
For example, the number of doctors per capita
For example, the number of iPhones per capita
They will mention various data, various “numbers per capita”
One young man even mentioned the “number of aircraft carriers per capita” and “the number of nuclear weapons per capita” and then told me that China is the country with the weakest military power in the world. Of course, he meant “military power per capita.”
I think that in the eyes of the Chinese, until their “number per capita” catches up with the United States, they will feel that they are not an “underdeveloped country”.
If you think about it carefully, it seems that their logic is correct.
But every time I visit China and experience firsthand what Chinese society is like, I feel like something is wrong.
After my stroke I ended up in assisted living a few years.
The facility where I was sent was corrupt. They threatened residents and broke laws. So I called up the state ombudsman for assisted living facilities, and she told me many people had complained to her, but none would file a formal complaint because their name would be visible.
I told her if she would support me, I’d file a complaint.
Long story short, I got all kinds of retaliation. Part of it consisted of staff pilfering my personal belongings. The first time it happened, I installed a wifi security camera.
I got footage, and again, long story short, the executive director was fired, and had to pay to move me to another facility.
But one of the things pilfered was not replaceable. It was a silver thimble inlaid with abalone that belonged to my recently deceased mother (b 1921, this was about a decade ago). My mother was a dressmaker, and her father was a master tailor. She said I cut my teeth on thread.
The people who managed that place made my life hell for 18 months. I won, but I suffered losses.
Until last April, I would have said “kidney stones.”
Kidney stones are bad. I’ve now had them three times. The first time I had them, I woke up in the middle of the night with a sensation like someone shoving an ice pick in my lower back. It steadily escalated, growing worse and worse and worse until I could not stand up, could not even sit up, and ended up puking from the pain.
My wife at the time freaked out and called an ambulance[1]. When I got to the hospital, I was curled up on my side on the stretcher screaming in pain when this doctor came up to me and said, “On a scale from one to ten, how bad would you say the pain is?”
I was so incapacitated with agony that I couldn’t even answer his question, so he gave me a shot of Demerol and just like that, the pain was gone, as though someone had flipped a light switch.
That, I thought, was the worst pain I would ever experience.
I was wrong.
This past April, I was making a kettle of tea. The kitchen was a mess, with dishes stacked everywhere. A pot fell from a pile of dirty dishes and struck the kettle, knocking it onto my foot.
Boiling water burns are nasty.
The pain was blinding. I’ve never understood the phrase “blinding pain” before. I do now.
I ended up in the hospital again. I was unable to walk for about a month. My foot looked like a special effect from a zombie movie. I just barely avoided needing skin grafts, but I did end up making repeated trips to the burn clinic.
Burns are the worst. I don’t know if it’s physically possible for something to be worse than a burn.
[1] Because this was the United States, my insurance company ended up denying coverage for the ambulance ride on the grounds that kidney stones are not a bona fide medical emergency. That ambulance trip to the hospital ended up costing me more than a thousand dollars. America, hooah!
If there is unhappiness among Singapore’s wealthiest, then perhaps a bit of introspection could help. People falsely say that money is the root of all evil. They are misquoting a Bible verse that actually says, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Christian or not, surely most people can see the wisdom of those words. When a person works themselves silly so that they can keep up with the Jones’s they are bound to be unhappy. I’d wager those working themselves to the bone so their wives can keep up with Mrs. Jones are even more unhappy.
They say they do it for their families but how close is a family when all of the adults run themselves ragged working ungodly hours? When do they spend time together as a family? I don’t even mean this about Singapore, but in general! What is the point of children if you aren’t actively parenting them and watching them grow up? Maids and tutors get paid for the privilege of spending time with your children? I’m not saying it’s wrong to have a maid or hire a tutor, but if they get to spend more awake time with your child than you, then…why? I promise they’d rather have you than the things you can buy them by working long hours.
What good does it do to fill a bank account until you are too old to enjoy the fruits of your labors? What good does it do to work yourself into an early grave? Are those overtime hours worth the ulcers you’re nursing or the strain on your heart?
The job market is competitive in Singapore. If you don’t work overtime then your rival probably will. There’s this expectation that you should work long hours or you aren’t “hungry” enough. You can’t risk the foreign ex-pat stealing your job. But does it have to be that way? For a long time, the pioneer generation had to work without pause in order to build a country. But they did so hoping that this generation wouldn’t have to pay the high cost of happiness, balance, family time, and rest. Was their sacrifice for nothing? I know; I’m an outsider looking in.
You’ll say I don’t understand or that I’m too idealistic. Maybe. I might chalk it up to a difference between the Asian and Western worldviews colliding, but the Protestant West has had problems with work life balance as well. And I grew up in a family that never lacked for money, but I also never felt very loved by them either. I’d have given my eye teeth to have had a close knit family.
I would ask how many beds can you sleep in at once? How many houses can you live in at a time? How many cars can you drive at once, and do you even need to when Singapore has excellent public transport? Do you really need designer clothes, expensive watches, branded bags, exotic jewelry, or any of the other “ultra luxury” items you can think of? If those things bring you happiness, then by all means, work hard for those things. But I suspect those things don’t make people as happy as one might think if you are correct about those surveys among the wealthy.
I’m not against someone having wealth. I’m not against someone buying nice things. It’s not wrong to want to provide your family with the best you can give them. I’m not against someone living in nice homes or driving luxury cars. I’m not against sending your children to the best schools or leaving them an inheritance. But if you must sacrifice your peace of mind, your family time, your health, your mental health, or your rest in order to attain those things then perhaps reevaluating your life choices might be in order. I know this will be an unpopular opinion but nonetheless, it is my honest evaluation.
Why do you think it isn’t. It is so backward in so many matters. Education, social care, food, gun law. It is probably embarrassing to a lot of third world country to have America lumped in with them. At least they know what the problems with their country is. But American with its brainwashing, convinced their idiots they are the greatest country on earth.
New GM from the UK was bought in. He was there to get rid of people and make the business profitable. What is known in Australia as a “Toe Cutter.”
He flat out told me three things I will never forget:
“I hate how you are the only person in this company that doesn’t have to answer to me.” (My boss was in Canada)
“I’m going to micromanage you out of this business, any email you send for any reason I want you to BCC me in on the email.” (I stopped sending any emails and called everyone back when they emailed me.)
“Hey where are you going, SIT DOWN!”
Number three was the final straw. I turned back to him, whilst still standing I put my hands down on the table and leaned in towards him across the desk. “I’m not one of the your kids, and I’m not your fucken dog, don’t ever tell me to “Sit Down” again.”
When I was looking f or a house to buy, we looked at an old Victorian that I’d always liked the outside of. It was a magnificent hom,e. 3 stories plus a basement. Fine oak paneling in many rooms, wonderful fire place. In one of the upsatairs bedrooms, I opened what I assumed would be a closet…. it wasn’t. What it was was a dumbwaiter.. and still functional. I loved the house! But, it was above our price randge and they were not at all willing to negotiate. THe house had stood empty for quite some time and needed a lot of work, mostly cosmetic but still with the asking price and the work it was just too much for us. I’m still wistful about it whenever I pass by.
That happened to me once at a Mall. It wasnt my fault as I was centred in the parking slot. I went back in the Mall, went to a Dollar Store and bought a small tube of crazy glue, and went back out. I then proceeded to glue his wipers to his windshield. It was a sunny day, so the owner wouldnt even know. I still had to wait, and the driver on my passenger side came out first, so I got in that side and drove away, smiling and hoping for rain soon.
Yes, I can be a vengeful prick.
American Woman In Thailand Found Out That Average MEN Are WINNING Overseas. She Was Shocked.
“I am a 43 year old man. I dated a 41 year old post wall woman for a few months, who had lived in Thailand for half a year when she was young. She stated that getting an Asian woman was no achievement for a (western) man. But apparently dating a post wall (western) woman is an achievement.. from her point of view. She was also miserable and boring, so our relationship ended quickly. My new girlfriend is from Philippines, she’s 25 year old, kind and feminine. Guess which is more fun..”
For the same reason people who aren’t famous take drugs, that sometimes even lead to their deaths.
See, here’s the thing. For a lot of people, drugs aren’t a problem. Drugs are a solution to a problem.
The problem is emotional pain, or depression, or physical pain, or loneliness, or alienation, or trauma.
A lot of folks look at famous, successful people and say, “Look at everything he has! If I had all those things, I’d surely be happy!”
No. No, you wouldn’t, at least not necessarily. Money above what you need to be comfortable doesn’t create happiness. Fame doesn’t create happiness.
In fact, sometimes fame does the opposite. When lots of people know who you are, but don’t really know you, that can create alienation and loneliness.
Not just for the obvious reason that you can never tell if someone is interested in you for who you are, or for your wealth and fame. It’s more subtle than that. You end up in this weird twilight land where people know you (or think they do), maybe have followed your life in the media for a long time, and so they feel a connection with you. But that connection is totally one-sided. You’re this important person to them, but they’re a total stranger to you.
Sociologists call this “parasociality.” It’s really weird and unsettling. It can be deeply, profoundly alienating.
Point is, it’s often pain that leads to drug use, and famous, successful people are no more immune to pain than anyone else.
In my early twenties and spending a couple of weeks with a friend who lived directly on the beach in Venice, California. I was alone in the apartment when a man broke in. He made his way to the bedroom, where I was standing, looking out the sliding glass doors that opened on to the balcony that oversaw Ocean Front Walk and the beach.
When I was a preteen, more or less, my father took my brother and me to his Aikido classes and we eventually had our own little class with the teacher’s son or nephew. I liked it and was not bad at it.
So this guy comes barreling over to me while saying something nasty and reaching out to grab me with one arm. Without thinking at all, I responded with an Aikido move that I had learned as a kid. Along with my partner inertia, I ended up throwing the guy over my shoulder and over the balcony wall.
When the first responders came, he was unconscious, supine on Ocean Front Walk.
One Night Stands: if that is your goal. Plan to get rejected a lot, to put a ton of work in.
Plan on getting really drunk, and having bad sex with someone you’ll probably regret having sex with.
Side Chicks (dudes): a moment’s pleasure, the rush of something new, will quickly be replaced by the persisting paranoia of being caught and the shitty feeling of having cheated on your partner.
Expensive Weddings: just don’t. You aren’t royalty. It puts a lot of pressure on you both for the event and the marriage. And if things don’t work out, those expensive pictures will end up in a drawer anyway.
Marriage*: often – this is rushed. Make sure you know the person. It will make it much harder to leave and you’ll end up wasting your best years because you felt too ashamed to get divorced.
*if it is right – marry the hell out of them.
Trying to persuade someone to like you: love/romance should happen organically, not as a product of you having to oversell (beg) someone to be into you.
A Shot of booze after midnight (or last call): It’s time to start drinking water as soon as PM turns to AM. Otherwise you are just signing yourself up for a massive hangover.
Staying up late: just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Turn off the TV. Get some sleep.
Doing it later: nothing in this world destroys more potential than procrastination
Stop it before it stops you. Do it now.
Shiny Objects: Fancy cars, big diamonds, they will be fun for a moment. But you’ll quickly find that feeling fading.
And you’ll quickly learn that “Looking Rich” is a very expensive hobby.
Insurance/ “assurance” Plans: outside of health insurance and car insurance, avoid insurance like the plague. They are designed to be high-profit services for companies. (Now – if you buy something that you plan to use the shit out of, consider insurance.)
Warranties: same as above.
Self-Criticism: let it go. No self-haunting. Criticize yourself once and then correct the behavior. Don’t become your own ghost.
Driving your car fast to impress friends: I know people who are in wheelchairs for life because of this.
Appeasing your parents: you pick your own career – not them. Listen – but don’t become “Project Redo” for their own life.
Credit Cards Debt: avoid avoid avoid. Only use credit cards to build your credit score. If you don’t have stable income, you could end up being saddled with debt collection calls for decades.
Yelling/Hitting/Throwing – there are other ways to resolve disputes with your significant other. Nothing good comes of those things.
Excessive Pills: if you have clinical depression – I don’t discourage you from medicating – do it.
But remember – there is an over-medication problem, in the US and elsewhere. Don’t be another person taking a cocktail of pills every night. Address the underlying problem if you can.
Expensive Colleges: you don’t have to spend all four years at a $30K per year school. There are other options. $120K will be a monster to re-pay. And for god’s sakes – study something that will give you a job of some type. It doesn’t have to be engineering. But make it something.
Arguing with people on Quora: you won’t be turning anyone. You are wasting keystrokes and probably just signing yourself up for a moderation violation.
Winning an Argument: does winning this argument serve a purpose? Or does it serve your ego?
The USA has entered the twilight zone
Strange: U.S. Announces “Ohio-class Submarine has entered CENTCOM Area of Responsibility”
The United States has strangely announced that “An Ohio-Class Submarine has entered the CENTCOM Area of Responsibility. What makes this announcement strange is they didn’t identify WHICH ONE.
It makes a Gigantic difference.
There are, at present, eighteen (18) Ohio-Class Submarines. Fourteen (14) of those carry TRIDENT II nuclear missiles with Eight (8) independently-targetable warheads each. That means that EACH submarine has 160 nuclear warheads.
Four of those Ohio-class submarines (USS Ohio, USS Florida, USS Michigan, and USS Georgia) carry 154 Tomahawk (Land-attack) Cruise missiles, each.
So, the big question on everyone’s mind right now is, WHICH “Ohio-Class” submarine just arrived in CENTCOM’s Area of Responsibility? Nuke or non-nuke?
HT REMARK:Things over there in the Middle East are growing more dangerous by the hour. This situation between Israel and HAMAS has “Disaster” written all over it; and not merely for Israel/HAMAS, but for the entire region and maybe even the entire world.
Whatever is coming is apparently HUGE! At about 4:00 PM eastern STANDARD Time (GMT-0500) here in the USA, the Israeli Defense Force put out a message on social media that they have **NEVER** put out before: “Pray for us.” It’s all over social media right now . . .
UPDATE 7:35 AM EST MONDAY —
I have been told the submarine is the USS Florida, and SSGN as opposed to an SSBN. The G stands for Guided Missile and is the type of submarine armed with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
(Breathing a sigh of relief . . . .)
Men Made a List of Women to NEVER DATE!
“As a American Black woman and single mother of a young adult son; I’m actually not mad at this list Good for them for clapping back at this foolishness!”
“Basically, to sum up, modern dating for young people these days is pure hell.”
“Lord these gender wars between men and women especially in the black community is quite entertaining sometimes but ultimately just down right sad, smh.”
“I am actually shocked “plus-size” or obese are not on that list.”
“On a recent “Girls Trip” to Miami it was either 5 or 6 females all went there together and they all came home preggers and none of them know who the fathers are… MTR recently covered this story.”
I was actually a customer. I could see the massive massive queue and the flames reflected off the walls and the panicky slamming of woks from just how busy it was.
They couldn’t cope. I saw the old man who looked like a thinner version of my dad overwhelmed when he brought out a tray of food.
I said to her in my finest Hakka do you need some help? The old lady on the counter looked up and was what? How do you know how to speak Hakka? I thought you were a tai look lau… (Mainland Chinese). Short argument, wife (on the counter) says no, husband says ok. I go in and he’s looking after 5 Chinese cookers by himself just like my dad used to do. I help them out for an hour, turns out their sons had gone on holiday. Business dies down and we share a few cans of special brew.
He was a man from Yuen Long and had moved in the 1970s.
It was an interview a few years ago when we still had to go into the office to attend. My interviewer was a young man, dandy. The interview started by him introducing himself as the ‘Best PM of the year’ at the company and currently working in the BigData department (BigData back a few years ago was similar to AI today, everyone talks about it and everyone claims doing it). And he said he would be my boss if I happened to ‘make it’.
The interview went just fine; some technical questions I was able to answer. Then he looked at my resume and asked if I was a teacher because I claimed in the resume that I did teaching. I said I’d prefer to be called a ‘trainer’ more than a ‘teacher’. Then he asked, ‘Teach me something. Better something interesting and something I don’t know about.’ I said, ‘Ok, I will teach you how to bake a cake.’ Then I got into my ‘teaching mode’ (I always think that we need to teach things with enthusiasm to draw interest from learners), and proceeded to talk about ‘baking is like doing science, we need to be precise.’ Then I told him the two biggest tips for baking a good cake: 1. Always prepare the pan before starting to prepare the batter, and 2. Even if the recipe doesn’t call for salt, a pinch of salt would kick the flavor to the next level.
He stopped me, and he went, ‘Jezz! You talk a lot. Really a lot. You don’t need to pretend to be a college professor here.’ I heard that and replied, ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. I don’t always talk that much to everyone.’ He smirked, ‘I’m special, huh? Well, I’m flattered, but you know sweet talk wouldn’t get you the job.’ I smiled, ‘Oh, no. I meant, to smart students, I never have to talk that much.’ His smirk dropped, and he told me the interview was over.
I didn’t get the job, have never seen him again, so I haven’t got a chance to ask him if he has ever tried to bake a cake?
My Aunt backed into my parked car. She came into the house and insisted that I pay for the damage. It was my fault that I was parked where she needed to drive. I told her that my insurance company would only cover the expense if she called the cops and filed a police report. They needed the report for the claim. She called the police who came out to investigate. She told them what happened. They came in to question me. Their first question was “is she for real?”
Welcome to my world.
I wouldn’t fuck you
You can hear the amount of disappointment in her voice when she asked him why. It was like her soul just got snatched.
I worked in a factory in a second level management position. I loved the job, worked hard, and was well paid. It was not unusual for me to be at work on Saturdays. I just did it-I was not expected to.
Well the operations manager called me into his office, and told me he wanted me to work every Saturday. I said that I was generally there on Saturdays, but didn’t like the demand he was making. I asked it I would get additional pay. He said no, and reminded me there were 2 people who refused to work on Saturdays, that we no longer here. I looked at him, and said “well now there are 3”! I walked out of his office, gathered up my personal stuff and left!
About 3 weeks later, he was fired! Did my heart good!
As any decent person would do, I walked up to her and I noticed 3 young children in the car so I knew I needed to act fast since it was a little chilly that evening, I proceeded to ask if she needed some help and she said “yes sir that would be great”.
I opened her trunk and to my astonishment, she had a spare tire but no jack to lift the car up with …. so since we were at walmart, I went and purchased a jack to change the tire on her car.
After about an hour, she and the 3 young children were on thier merry way.
My phone rang as soon as I got back in my car and a child I mentor called me to tell me about his day at school and he asked “what are you doing?” I told him “I was helping a lady with her car”.
He replied with “why?”
I responded “You’re never too important to be nice to people”.
I was riding my horse on a trail that went through a kind of alley between the back yards of very expensive homes in a very upscale development.
The houses all had fences that were about 8 feet high, solid cinderblock. If you went walking down that trail, you wouldn’t be able to see into anyone’s yard.
But when you’re on the back of a horse, you could see over the fences into people’s yards.
There weren’t a lot of people who rode their horses down that particular trail, especially on Monday through Friday. It was usually very quiet.
So I was riding my horse there, on the way back from a long trail ride. I was riding at a walk, and because the trail was thickly covered with wood bark and chips, my horse didn’t make any noise.
As we went down the trail, I heard a rhythmic creak-creak-creak kind of sound. Not loud, but unusual enough that I started looking for the source. (When you’re trail riding on a horse, you stay aware of what’s going on around you, because there are a lot of things that can cause a horse to freak out.)
The sound grew louder as we got closer, and I finally saw the source.
A man and a woman were having sex on a trampoline in one of the yards adjoining the trail. Butt naked and in their own little world. Creak-creak-creak went the trampoline…
They saw me about the same time I saw them. I raised my dressage whip, which I carried on trail rides to sweep spiderwebs that crossed the trail away, saluted them, and kicked my horse into a fast canter and scrammed out of there.
I took my car for its annual safety inspection. The mechanic came out and told me that it had failed for three reasons. First, the front bumper was detaching. Second, the little light above the license plate was burned out. Last, the windshield washer wasn’t working. He suggested that I go to an auto parts shop and get the replacement bulb and also see if they had the right clips to reattach the bumper, or otherwise perhaps I could improvise something, but that I should bring it back to have them fix the windshield washer pump because it’s not easy to get to that so I probably couldn’t replace it myself.
I said to him, “Yeah, I’m going to go the parts store, thanks. But I know for a fact that the washer was working fine less than ten minutes before you took the car into the garage, because I washed the windshield while I was driving over. Look carefully, and you can even see the streaks. It rained this morning and that would have washed away any older streaks.”
I went to the parts store, got the bulb and the clips, and then went home, popped the hood, and activated the washer. A stream of water sprayed over the hood and onto the roof of the car. So, the pump was obviously working fine. What was the problem? After some poking around, I determined that the hose from the pump was simply disconnected. It wasn’t an easy reach, but I managed to reconnect it.
When I took it back to the shop to get my inspection sticker, I said “Y’know, it’s pretty amazing that that it would detach itself like that. It’s almost as if someone yanked on it while nobody was looking, sometime during the ten minutes between the time I used the washer while driving over and the time you pulled it into the garage.”
We were going to China on a trip to visit Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Xian. At the New Delhi airport, there was a group of Chinese tourists who were returning to China after visiting India. They were asked to fill some forms and were struggling to fill it in English. One of them requested me, and i happily obliged. Soon there was a small line of Chinese tourists getting there forms filled by me. I didn’t mind as flight was not leaving for next 2 hours.
We reached Beijing and realised that the hotel cab that was supposed to pick us up, was nowhere to be seen. We tried calling and the hotel reception, but they did not had an English speaking staff in the night. For the people who have not visited China, you should know that Hotel has different address and names written in Chinese and English. If you are not carrying Chinese name and address, its very difficult to ask for directions. New to China, we felt stuck and helpless at Airport.
Soon we saw the entire group of tourists i had helped. Seeing me and my wife they waved and asked if we need any help. They immediately made a call to the hotel reception and explained the situation in Chinese. They also waited untill our cab from hotel arrived at Airport.
I really believe that was one act of kindness that was immediately returned back to me as an instant karma!
Because what’s socially acceptable is based on social convention, and social convention is rarely rational.
Society has declared that bikinis are public wear and underthings are private wear that must always have something over them. That’s it. The fact they both reveal the same amount of skin isn’t relevant.
Often, what’s socially acceptable is about what’s common. That which you see in public becomes accepted; that which you don’t, doesn’t. Society doesn’t do consistency checking with each individual thing; that’s not how people work.
A student got sassy with a teacher about a grade and the teacher kicked him out of the room. The student grabbed a pencil and stabbed the assistant teacher in the room. Just in the hand, but still.
So the teacher goes rage mode and physically marches the student down to the deans office. Everyone is initially furious at the student, he’ll be expelled for sure. Assistant teacher is shaken but fine.
Daddy was a big donor to the school and the kid was on the state championship bound Football team. Daddy argued with the school, who reverses the expulsion and instead fires the teacher for “laying hands on a student.”
There were walk outs, several other teachers quit, the local news picked it up, the whole nine yards. Nothing changed. The school kept the little asshole to keep Daddy happy and fired a very, very good teacher.
For me it was my mother. I was told constantly how pretty I was. My little sister was told how smart she was. The message we received was that I wasn’t smart and my sister wasn’t pretty.
Upon graduating high school I was told I didn’t need to go to college because I was pretty and would always have a man to take care of me. My sister went to college (she graduated high school at age 16).
Instead of college, I became a stewardess. It was a great job and I don’t regret it at all. But at age 40, I decided I wanted to go college after all. I graduated with a degree in Accounting and a 3.9 GPA.
It took me that long to find out I was smart.
Congratulations! China develops world’s first super all-analog photoelectronic chip
Chinese researchers from Tsinghua University have developed an all-analog photoelectronic chip that can process computer vision tasks with greater speed and energy efficiency than existing chips, marking the first of its kind in the world.
The research team’s findings, which provide an alternative to existing technologies based around analogue-to-digital conversion, have been published in the journal Nature.
In the new study, the researchers designed an integrated photoelectronic processor to harness the advantages of both light, in the form of photons, and electrons, as found in electric currents, in an all-analog way. The result is called an “all-analog chip combining electronic and light computing,” or ACCEL.
Tests showed that ACCEL is able to recognize and classify objects with a degree of accuracy comparable to those of digital neural networks. Furthermore, it classifies high-resolution images of various scenes of daily life more than 3,000 times faster and with 4,000,000 times less energy consumption than a top-of-the-line graphics processing unit (GPU).
Analog and digital signals are two types of signals carrying information. Analog signals vary continuously, as with the rays of light forming an image, while digital signals are non-continuous, as with binary numbers.
In vision-based computing tasks like image recognition and object detection, signals from the environment are analog, and they need to be converted into digital signals for processing by AI neural networks, systems trained to recognize patterns and relationships in a data set.
However, the analog-to-digital conversion is time- and energy-consuming, limiting the speed and efficiency of the neural network’s performance. Photonic computing, which uses analog light signals, is one of the most promising approaches to addressing the issue.
“We maximized the advantages of light and electricity under all-analog signals, avoiding the drawbacks of analog-to-digital conversion and breaking the bottleneck of power consumption and speed,” said Fang Lu, a researcher from the Tsinghua team.
A review by Nature editors said that the team had minimized the need for energetically costly analog-to-digital converters. “This refreshing and pragmatic approach to artificial-intelligence hardware that is highly energy efficient makes the most out of both electronic and photonic computing technologies,” it said.
Fang noted that the advantage of ultra-low power will help improve the heating problem of chip scaling, and it has the potential to bring breakthroughs in the future design of chips.
Dai Qionghai, director of the School of Information Science and Technology at Tsinghua University, said that the team has developed a prototype chip, and will work toward making a general-purpose artificial intelligence chip for a broader range of applications.
Sizzling Shrimp Po’ Boys with Blueberry Remoulade
Prep: 20 min | Cook: 15 to 20 min | Yield: 4 sandwiches
In another medium bowl, stir cornmeal, flour, Old Bay and salt.
To the milk mixture, add shrimp, a few at a time, to coat. Remove one shrimp, allow excess liquid to drain off, and roll in the cornmeal mixture to coat well.
Place on a plate or rack. Repeat to coat all the shrimp.
Meanwhile, pour oil 1-inch deep, into a large saucepan; over medium-high heat, heat oil to 350 degrees F.
Gently place 4 to 6 shrimp in the hot oil and fry until golden and crispy on both sides, 3 to 4 minutes; drain on paper towels.
Repeat to fry all the shrimp, adding more oil, if needed.
To serve, spread rolls with Blueberry Remoulade, add lettuce and top with shrimp.
My wife and I went to see the war movie “Saving Private Ryan” in IMAX…. it was super loud. My wife had even taken hearing protection, because it was so darn loud. When the movie ended she was taking out her ear plugs and said..
“Wow, that was so loud”
Now, there was an old dude sitting in front of us, and he said …
Most of the time, Chinese don’t think about Koreans.
When I have heard Chinese talk about Koreans, they talk about good entertainment and food, hard work, and often more hot-tempered than Chinese. But they do not say this in an uncomplimentary way; they just say that Koreans are usually more hot-tempered and emotional than Chinese in a matter-of-fact way.
Simply put, by doing a good job, right up to the last day. Here’s my story.
I wasn’t fired, but I was forced out. Over 17 years, I worked diligently for my boss. I started out as a laborer in this construction firm. I had completed a 2 year course on building construction, but back then, you did not get a degree for vocational education. I worked my way up to running jobs for him, as a job supervisor. Building one job, I set a record within the firm for the highest profit job. The boss that’s because he bid the job right. At the same time, we had 2 other identical jobs going, and they were both losing money. I replied that I made sure he managed to keep that money instead of running it poorly.
Fast forward a few years, and over the years, we had both grown tired of each other. Little things. The boss visibly checking his watch when I leave at 3:31, a minute after quitting, all the while ignoring I started 10 minutes early. For some reason, he tells me I can not run jobs for him anymore, claiming that the jobs he bids on, they want to see that his supervisors have a college degree. I’ll keep my pay and vacation, but I am maxed out as a carpenter, so don’t expect raise for the near future.
At first, this arrangement was actually quite nice. I kept my pay and benefits, but the stress levels associated with running a job went away. All of the newly hired college degreed supervisors love having me on their job. After 17 years, I knew what needed doing and how to do it, and was happy to do so. That Christmas, I specifically not invited to the company Christmas party, as only supervisors were invited. It used to be everyone when we had a small crew, or supervisors and key personnel (Long term hires, not the guy hired last week).
Later that spring, the boss tells everyone that times are tough, he won the bid on the job, but it was low, I need everyone to take a pay cut. Everyone else agrees to take a dollar cut. My turn in his office, he suggests a $3.00 cut in pay. I tell him I can not afford that, I’ll need to immediately start looking for a job. He replies, okay a dollar cut. And says that if everyone pulls together and produces, I can raise their pay back. So… my pay depends on all the now demoralized employees.
So, of course after a few more months, I am feeling hurt by the disrespect, and a job is offered to me, same pay, new company, one with some real character and class. I took the job, of course. The boss looks at me and says, you didn’t think that pay cut was permanent did you? I just looked at him. Two weeks later, I am working the next job and loving the working relationship.
After a couple months, I get a call from him, he tells me it was a mistake to let me go, he didn’t realize all I did for him and how well I did it, offers me a good paycheck and restoration of all benefits, etc… I reply that this job has different challenges that I want to prove myself on, and politely declined. His response, oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. A few months later, I receive a similar call from him, and it goes the same way, though he offers me a little more money. Again, politely declined. 2 years or so after leaving, I see a prominent ad in the help wanted section. He placed an ad in my new locale, describing my experience and capability to the letter, offering a company truck, commensurate pay, etc.. I did not respond. After 17 years of the little quibbles we had with each other, I had enough. I currently had a secure job and wanted to stay there.
TLDR, do a great job right up to your last day and make them regret making you leave.
Christopher Reeve was so much more than the characters he played.
He was exceptional, having hit the genetic lottery.
He was a brilliant student and an outstanding athlete. He was kind and oozed work ethic, pursuing perfection in everything he did. Christopher Reeve could have done anything he wanted in life.
Acting became his first and foremost love. He landed lead roles in nearly every audition from grade school onward.
A famous actress, Olympia Dukakis, approached him after a childhood performance, saying, “I am surprised. You’ve got a lot of talent. Don’t mess it up.”
He later frequented the most esteemed theater groups, including the Harvard Theater Company.
After being accepted to a list of Ivy League Schools, Chris attended Cornell, and later — Julliard.
He was adored by his theater teacher, John Houseman, who was eager to see Chris’s career blossom, saying, “Mr. Reeve. It is terribly important that you become a serious classical actor. Unless they offer you a shitload of money to do something else.”
The latter phrase came to be
After a stint of leading roles on Broadway, Chris landed the lead role in Superman in 1978. He went on to worldwide fame, appearing in famous films throughout the 1980s.
Chris lived a life most men dream of.
He made millions of dollars while starring in love scenes with beautiful starlets. He traveled the world, dining with Hollywood elites and noble laureates.
And then he met Dana
It was 1987. Dana Morosini was performing in a small-town cabaret.
Chris was always a fan of theater and was in attendance. Afterward, he walked into the backroom to meet her.
She’d fully expected to meet an arrogant jerk, as one often assumes of men in his position.
She said, “The man I met was soft-spoken, tall, kind, articulate, and not far removed from superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent.”
She was caught off guard by his interest in her. Chris said he’d just come back to compliment her, but later admitted he’d fallen in love with her in the moment he’d seen her.
She was initially skeptical, knowing it could all be a ruse to get her into the sack.
He later called her and she agreed to go out with him. She quickly fell in love and their relationship progressed. They moved in and lived together for several years. Then they married and had a child.
Theirs was always a good marriage, not prone to turbulence and strife and the two were known for their public affection. They traveled and went sailing while pursuing their own careers.
Eventually, horses came into the picture. Dana had grown up riding. In an effort to be part of that passion, Chris began taking lessons.
Like most things he did, he went all in. He wanted to be his absolute best. He rode and took lessons 4–5 days a week.
He went into jumping — a very dangerous style of horseback riding and was doing fine, despite taking an ambitious progression in the sport. It typically takes years to progress into big jumps.
May 27th, 1995
The most dangerous accidents are often subtle and less violent than a kick or explosion.
Gravity can do great damage with a little distance and a bad angle.
As Chris’s horse surged towards a wall to jump, it panicked and stopped, (called “refusing” in riding).
Chris was launched over the horse. He landed headfirst, all 6’4, 230 lbs of him. His second and third vertebrae in his neck were shattered.
Seven months prior, he’d filmed a movie where he played a paraplegic. He’d spent substantial time around people with spinal cord injuries in preparation for that role. Every day, he’d left their clinic feeling grateful for not living in their predicament.
And now he was there.
Life sputters to restart
Chris laid in the hospital, completely immobile and powerless. He was waiting to have surgery to reattach his skull to his spine. He couldn’t even lift his hand to brush his own teeth.
Most don’t realize what nearly happened in the weeks that followed.
Chris was in heated arguments with his doctors. He insisted they pull the plug on his breathing machine. It wasn’t a bluff. He couldn’t fathom living in his current state.
He saw himself as a burden to those around him. He was also threatening that he’d kill himself if they didn’t.
One can imagine, after a life of such freedom, being able to do anything you wanted, with a budget to pursue any passion, just how challenging it would be to suddenly be confined to such a cruel fate.
Dana Reeve became emotional and sat with him, saying, “I am only going to say this once. I will support whatever you want to do because this is your life and your decision. But I want you to know that I’ll be with you for the long haul, no matter what. You’re still you. And I love you.”¹
She urged him to just give it two years before they revisited the decision.
He accepted.
He eventually settled into his new life and Dana stood by her words, and by his side. They still lived, did things together, and found ways to have fun.
They were brought together by a push to make the world better for people like him, starting The Reeve Foundation, and raising money for people with spinal cord injuries.
He said during an Oprah interview: “We (humans) are all one big family. This has taught me a big lesson about complacency. We should never walk by someone in a wheelchair and be afraid of them — or think of them as a stranger. That could be us. In fact, it is us.”
Yet, it almost ended in that hospital room.
Chris couldn’t move a single body part below his neck. It was a far cry from his days as a free-roaming bachelor.
Yet he and Dana’s marriage was as strong in the second half as it had ever been before.
Sadly, Chris lost his life in 2004, due to complications from his injury. Shockingly, and only two years later, his wife Dana passed away from lung cancer. She was 47 years old and had never smoked.
Their story is terribly tragic. But within all of that pain, their love was consistent and they were happier than many others. It is yet another reminder, to embrace the moment and the blessing of good health.
The US government will destroy America’s semiconductor sector. Nvidia is the poster child of this event. It’s GPU semiconductors used in AI and cloud computing applications are a good example. At first, the US government stopped sales to the Chinese market of its 100 series chips, then Nvidia began a slower version in its 800 series chips. Now all Nvidia GPU chips are off limits to China. Not only that, but 21 countries suspected of reselling their purchases to China have been put on the entity list.
Talk about killing a company, Nvidia is a prime example of what is happening in the US semiconductor sector. The US is hell bent on denying semiconductors to the world’s biggest semiconductor market regardless of the damage.
Both TSMC and Intel have stopped work on their high end fabs because that market is fading away from them because of US restrictions. Intel and Qualcomm have established ‘innovation centers’ in mainland China and TSMC is trying to expand its Nanjing factory.
The US government is killing the very sector it thought its actions was meant to kill the Chinese semiconductor rise, only to find it is killing its own semiconductor industry.
When I was four, my father brought home this little white puppy for my sister. About a year and a half later, my mother got an orange tiger that became my cat. I loved that cat, and the cat and dog became fast friends, sleeping in the same bed together at times, and generally being the best of friends.
Starting in about fifth grade, I began to get really interested in retro TV shows like the Honeymmooners and Burns and Allen, and so many weekend nights I would fall asleep on the couch to those shows, either not going upstairs to my actual bed at all, or going to bed in the mmiddle of the night, at about three or four in the morning. Often enough I would let my cat in after he was outside for a few hours, as almost everybody who had cats at that time did; this was in the mid-seventies. He would make a kind of soft murr as he came in the door, and that’s how I knew he was in. That little white dog would be hanging out at his usual spot near the kitchen stove where his basket was, and the house would be at peace.
One cold winter night in February, when I was twelve, I got up to let my cat in. As usual, he did his usual murr, and I closed the door. Only this time the dog started growling and barking. Then I heard the sounds of a cat hissing. Then I heard the dog barking, and the noises of a cat and dog fighting. I couldn’t believe my ears because nothing like this had ever happened before. My cat and my sister’s dog were great friends so why was this happening? I was starting to realize that something was very, very wrong, and that there was probably a cat in our house that simply didn’t belong there. What else could explain the dog’s weird behavior? And by the way, what the hell was I gunna do now?
Well, what else could I do? I went upstairs to my parents room, opened the door and said:
“Ma? I think I let the wrong cat in.” See, I had figured out by this time that this other cat had followed mine into our house.
At that point, she and my brother came downstairs to see what was happening. As it turned out, quite a lot was going on because this cat and our dog were still fighting. And now my mother and brother were trying to get the damned cat out of the house. The cat was shrieking and hissing, flying around the kitchen, the dog was barking, and my mother couldn’t get her hands on the animal. My mother screamed at one point because the cat, quiet for a few seconds because it had tried to hide itself in a corner where we were storing insulation because my father was rebuilding our kitchen, screeched like a banshee when the cat sprung from his hiding place and attacked her.
Finally my cat, who had been paying no mind and eating his food in his bowl, finally got pissed off at the other cat and chased him out of the house. Then all was finally quiet, and we three all went upstairs to bed.
Meantime, my father, who was upstairs while all this was going on, got up to go to the bathroom, and he just started laughing his ass off. “It’s not funny!” I kept saying from my room, because by this time I was now in bed, and it was probably about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning. Of course, the more I said it, the more he laughed, and the more he laughed, the more I found it funny, so I started laughing.
Just one of those classic stories from my childhood. And I can still hear my father remembering that story and repeating my words in the exact sheepish tone I used that night:
There was the time I helped a teenage girl run away from home. I hid her in my room, lied to my parents, and ditched school. And for years I was completely embarassed by it. That just wasn’t appropriate behavior.
Here’s the story. When I was about 17, I started dating this girl who was a year younger than me. She complained about her mom a lot. Hey, we were teenagers, we all complained about our parents — but as I listened to her, it started to sound like there was some real emotional abuse going on. One night she called me, and we talked for hours. At one point her cat came in; he was a bloody mess, apparently he’d been in a fight, and for her this was the last straw. She was in quite an emotional state as she cleaned up her cat and then told me, “I’m coming over. I need to be with you tonight.”
It was 2 AM and I knew my parents would not appreciate a girl showing up at our house at two o’clock in the morning. I told her no, but she insisted. She said she was going to ride her bike over and that was it, goodbye.
What could I do? I didn’t want her ringing the doorbell, so I went downstairs and checked on my parents — they slept on the first floor, my room was upstairs. They were sound asleep, so I eased the back door open quietly and waited for her.
She showed up, dropped her bike in the back yard, and headed for the door. Before I stopped her, she threw the door open . . . and the dog started barking.
Oh crap, I’d forgotten about the dog. I shoved her up the stairs and followed her up, telling her, “stay up here and BE QUIET!”
Then I came downstairs, just as if I had been awakened by the barking and was trying to figure out what was going on. My parents were stumbling out of bed also. My mom noticed the back door was open and there was a bicycle in the yard. Obviously, someone had broken into the house — but where was the intruder? Dad headed to check the garage and I offered to check upstairs. Naturally, none of us reported finding an intruder, and they assumed that the intruder had been frightened by the dog and fled on foot. Mom brought the bike into the garage and was going to call the police — but I said “If we call the police they won’t be here for another hour and we’re all tired. Why don’t we call them in the morning?” They agreed that this was the best idea and they went back to bed.
Upstairs, girlfriend was crying. She was trapped, couldn’t go back downstairs for fear of the dog barking again. Couldn’t get her bike out of the garage without my parents noticing. I said “You’ll just have to stay here till morning.”
“My mom will kill me!”
At this point I said. “You’ve been telling me how much you hate your mom and how you’d really like to run away. Now’s your chance.”
“Huh?”
“Stay here tonight, and tomorrow we’ll see what your legal rights are.” She agreed and we fell asleep.
The next morning I came down for breakfast. Naturally, my parents were still talking about the incident in the night. I volunteered to call the police. I picked up the phone, dialed Time and Temperature, and listened to the National Weather Service’s local weather forecast while making up an entire imaginary conversation with the police department. I told my parents, “They said they’ll be here in an hour or an hour and a half. Why don’t you guys go to work, I don’t have school till third period today anyway, I can talk to them when they get here.” They said I was a good, considerate son, and went off to work.
By the way — I don’t think I’d ever lied to my parents before. At least not since I was little. I was a terrible liar, and I don’t know how I was able to do it so convincingly, thinking on my feet with the pressure on. Of all the things in this story, lying to my parents is probably the thing I’m the most ashamed of.
They went to work and Jeannie came downstairs for breakfast. I called an adult friend, an attorney, and told him the situation. He said that if I really thought that there was abuse going on, that I should report it to the District Attorney. So I called the District Attorney’s office and made an appointment for Jeannie to meet with them that afternoon. We arranged to meet at school and I would drive her downtown, but at the moment she needed to get her bike out of my parent’s garage. She rode off to school and I would later tell my parents that the police impounded it.
When I got to school myself — late, I’d lied to my parents about not having to go to first or second period that day — I was met in the hallway by my English teacher, Mr. Nelson. His first words weren’t rebuke or admonishment. Instead he said, “You’ve been seeing Jeanne M—-, haven’t you?” Cautiously I admitted it, and he said with near-frantic concern. “Do you have any idea where she is? Her mom thinks she’s been kidnapped, there was blood in the bathroom and she’s missing.”
Blood? Oh, yeah, the cat was bleeding when he came home that night and Jeannie cleaned him up. So I told Mr. Nelson that Jeannie had been with me, and he said Jeannie’s mother was on the way and I needed to go to the principal’s office to straighten things out.
When I got to the principal’s office several things happened all at once. The principal greeted me (I was kind of a teacher’s pet, and he insisted I wasn’t in any trouble). Jeanne just arrived on her bicycle and was coming down the hall from the other direction — and in the front door was walking Jeannie’s mom.
Jeanne gave me a hug, right in front of the principal, saw her mom, and panicked. “Oh My God, Run!” she yelled, grabbed me by the hand, and started running like she was trying to save her life. I followed as best as I could, and behind us, her mother was keeping up with us, cursing and making dire threats against us.
We went down a couple of back corridors of the school and into the student parking lot. We got into my car and peeled rubber getting out of there, leaving Jeannie’s mom out of breath and swearing.
We spent the next hour driving around, hiding from Jeannie’s mom or anyone else looking for us, then went downtown where we told someone from the District Attorney’s Office what was going on. They asked Jeannie to go in for further questioning and evaluation and told me to go back to school.
I went directly to the principal’s office. I told the principal about Jeannie’s claims of abuse — he didn’t act surprised — and that I’d dropped her off at the District Attorney’s office. He just told me to go to class and I never got into any trouble for what I did, not even for missing several classes that day.
Jeanne called me that night to tell me she’d been put in foster care and had been placed with a family that lived in the East High district so she’d still be going to school, and the DA was investigating the situation. But I never did find out how it all worked out, because not too long afterward, Jeannie and I had a big fight and we broke up.
In the years that followed, I was ashamed of the role I’d played in the whole affair. I was a good student, not a troublemaker, the teachers and parents all liked me, I was a Christian kid, active in church and my youth group, not the kind of person to help minors run away from home or hide girls in my room or lie to my parents. As the years went by I was ashamed and embarrassed by the whole thing and didn’t talk about it.
Then one day, 40 years later, I started wondering about some of the people I knew in high school and started looking them up on social media. I found Jeanne. Since I’d known her she’d become a registered nurse, gotten married, had a kid, gotten divorced, and lived alone with a couple of cats. Nothing too extraordinary there.
Then I found a blog post she wrote, entitled “The Day My Life Changed.” She wrote about years of emotional abuse recieved from her angry single mother, the cursing and threats and insults. “You’re nothing but a worthless slut,” she was told over and over, and ever since she was little she just wanted to make the abuse end. She wanted to run away — but was never able to do it “until one night a brave boyfriend said he’d help.” She ran away, got into foster care, and a family that convinced her that she wasn’t worthless after all — decided to go to nursing school and make a life for herself.
“Brave boyfriend.” I’d never thought of myself like that before. For years, I’d been ashamed and embarrassed about what I d done, only to find out that I was the hero in someone else’s story.
Yes I contacted Jean after that, and we stay in touch by Facebook.
Cajun Cheeseburger
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork
2 tablespoons onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons green pepper, chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried, crushed basil
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
4 slices Wisconsin Cheddar cheese
4 hamburger buns, toasted
4 tomato slices
1/4 cup green onion slices
Instructions
Combine beef, pork, chopped onion, green pepper and seasonings; mix well. Shape into four patties. Cook and top with cheddar as directed below.
Place patties on oiled grill over medium coals (coals will be glowing). Grill, uncovered, for 5 minutes on each side to desired doneness.
Top each with Cheddar; continue grilling until cheese is melted. Place each patty on bun. Top with tomato; sprinkle with green onion.
I think it is inappropriate to say “China helps African countries”.
I have many business partners in China who are very interested when it comes to Africa. For the Chinese, Africa is a friendly business partner. Rather than “a beggar in need.”
There is a story circulating among the Chinese.
An Italian salesman went to Africa to sell shoes and found that Africans did not wear shoes at all. He returned to his country depressed and told his boss: “Boss, they can’t afford shoes at all. So our shoes can’t be sold.”
A Chinese salesman went to Africa to sell shoes and found that Africans did not wear shoes at all. He returned to his country excitedly and told his boss: “Boss, they don’t have shoes. Africa has huge market potential!”
Maybe you think that Africans can’t afford Chinese shoes, and that the Chinese are just being crazy. But the Chinese don’t think so.
There is a Chinese proverb, “Don’t bully a young man into being poor.” It roughly means: Don’t despise a person just because he is poor, but see his future.
In the eyes of the Chinese, although Africa is poor, it has huge potential. It doesn’t matter if you can’t afford shoes, I know rubber is abundant here. You can make soles out of rubber and sell them to me, and I will use them to produce shoes. Now that you have earned money, can’t you buy my shoes? You guys get nice shoes, I get cheap rubber, everyone is happy, isn’t that good?
What? You can only get rubber juice and don’t know how to make soles? It doesn’t matter, how about building a rubber factory and a shoe sole factory? No funds? Not technical?
It doesn’t matter, just wait for me to make a call.
Soon, rubber experts, equipment suppliers, and sole designers from China arrived. Chinese bankers came too, and they even gave better loans than the IMF, with only factories and future profits as collateral.
A year later, a modern rubber factory was built. Millions of shoe soles, gloves, and even tires are produced every year. Thousands of people found jobs here, and they began to have money to buy food, new clothes, and new shoes.
Salesmen in China found that their shoes were in short supply and all the shoes were sold. And the Italian salesman was still thinking about why Africans couldn’t afford shoes.
in this whole game
1. Africans got a modern factory.
2. Thousands of Africans around have received job opportunities. They have all made money, acquired new skills, and their lives have improved.
3. The tax revenue of the local government has been greatly increased. The income from selling rubber products is ten times more than that from selling rubber juice. There began to be money to build roads, schools, and hospitals.
4. China’s investment banks received dividends from the factory.
5. Chinese equipment suppliers sold equipment.
6. Experts who go to Africa to teach technology are paid a lot of money.
7. All the salesman’s shoes have been sold.
Who loses? There are no losers here
Is China helping Africa? No, China is just doing business their way, and Africans are just their customers. They deal fairly with each other and do not need charity or mercy.
Only some Western media are shouting: “Oh no! The Chinese are plundering Africa’s rubber. This is neocolonialism!”
They have completely forgotten how they did it 100 years ago.
Americans have a tendency to talk with their “outside voice”, even when inside and in a place where quiet is expected.
Americans have a tendency to mistreat people like store clerks, fast food workers, and hotel clerks.
Americans appear to have a perverse sense of pride about (1) how little they know about Canada (2) what they think they know about Canada that’s absolutely wrong, and (3) how large Canada is. Americans tend to treat Canada as if it were the size of Rhode Island rather than it being a little larger than their own country.
Americans are sure all their stuff is better than all our stuff, and when you point out how wrong that is in any area and provide demonstrable proof, they still won’t believe it.
Americans call our currency “funny money” because it’s plastic and all the bills have different colours. That’s despite the fact that American counterfeit currency is quite common and Canadian counterfeit currency is pretty rare solely because of its design.
A few months ago, I received an email from my daughter’s school informing me about the tragic passing of a girl. She had taken her own life.
She was only 14! She should have had her whole life ahead of her to do anything she wanted, but she couldn’t anymore because she chose death. The school email didn’t provide details about the reasons behind her action, but through the conversation with my daughter, I discovered that she had been battling depression. She felt overwhelmed by how she looked and the hurtful comments some other kids made about her. Sadly, some of her peers even viewed her actions as brave.
While I felt so sorry for the girl and her family, I felt compelled to remind my daughter a lesson I had always emphasized: “Everything can be fixed, except death. Taking your own life is not an act of bravery. Why? Because dying is easy. Living is hard. You only die just once but you have to live every day.”
I told my daughter, if anyone ever hurt you, do not hurt yourself, just come home to me, I will make you dinner, we will have dinner together, and if necessary, we will go out there and hunt the enemy that hurt you together.
Teenagers, please remember: Everything, every mistakes can be fixed, except death. If you ever don’t know where to go, go home!
And parents, please please, tell your kids that they can talk to you about anything, they can always come HOME. Please don’t assume that they know. Just tell them, by words, sincerely.
Some background: I was a costume designer for many years. My life was all about color. I dated someone who didn’t have basic color knowledge. Most frustratingly, he didn’t know common color names: Magenta, aqua, salmon lemon yellow. Could have been Greek to him. It was a source of humor between us, like we were speaking different languages.
Call him Steve.
One day we were discussing how and when we had learned color names, and had a bizarre revelation. I realized I had learned all my basic color names from Crayola crayons (note for young Quorans: they used to have the traditional color names, instead of creative new names). I started asking my friends, and all of them said that yes, the Crayola 64 pack (or was it a 120 pack? The biggest one.) was where they first learned their basic colors.
Steve, it turned out, never had Crayolas. His parents only got him the little 8 packs of generic colors. Red, green, blue, yellow, brown, orange, black, purple.
My poor disadvantaged baby! Of course we started making up for lost time. He would ask me what color I called something, then he’d tell me what he thought it was. Like lovers from foreign countries learning each other’s languages.
Anyway…. Came my birthday, and he gave me a gift I will never forget. It was a little book he had made by stapling sheets of paper together down the middle. On the cover it said “Crayola-Steve Dictionary” Inside, on each page, were two columns. One had each of the crayola colors drawn on the paper, with its name. Opposite it was the color that Steve had grown up thinking that name referred to.
I have never in my life had someone put so much effort and caring into a gift.
Years later, when Crayola betrayed the artists of the world by changing their color names to updated and exciting things, so that kids could no longer learn their color basics from the product, he hunted down a pack of the originals for me.
He was a very special guy, and I will always remember that gift fondly.
ADDED: For those who are interested, here you can see the change in color names in 1990…art teachers, I warn you, have a stiff drink in hand…
When I walked up on an employee berating a very nice regular customer. Actually, called this sweet little old lady a very offensive name (you f’king ole b***h). Her offence? She asked him a question as he was stocking some items. I fired him right there on the spot in front of her. Told him to get his things and get out and I would be mailing him his last paycheck as I never wanted to see his face again.
What is this problem with people painting cats blue?
I was fed up with the crap at a place that I was working and interviewed for a job that was opening up at a new place. My boss had been driving 50 miles each way. The new company was opening a place down the highway from his house, cutting it to 12 miles. They offered more money, more decency, better products and overall better working conditions. When I interviewed, they hired me on the spot and asked if I knew of anyone else who would like to work for them that they could talk to. I set up interviews for my whole team before I even told them about it, then badgered them into going. I told them they could say no at any point and I’d never say that they interviewed at all. We all went. We got better jobs closer to our homes. We got better working conditions. We got more money.
Once upon a time in a far away place, there was a party called the Republican party that believed in fiscal restraint and cutting taxes as the way to win the hearts and minds of the American people and to transfer ever more wealth to the rich in America.
This policy was ingrained and enshrined in their thinking with the greatest avatar being the B grade actor Ronald Reagan. Reagan coined phrases like Morning in America and went around Washington having huge balls and a wonderful time. Jobs started to disappear and the Midwest became the ‘rust belt’ but Reagan slashed taxes for the rich, ran up the deficit and left it for Bush Sr to fix it which he could not as he was right when he called it, ‘voodoo economics’.
This let in Bill Clinton who worked with Newt of Gingrich fame and they balanced the budget and all was well as the country bled ever more jobs but it was don’t worry be happy. Remember that one?
But Bush Jr of hanging chad fame, became President, cut more taxes, had 2 wars at a trillion $ or so and the country was back on the debt cycle as 3 million more jobs went to China. The ‘oughts’ were the worst for the American worker and best for American rich in a century until it all collapsed in a big heap.
Bush left the US in the Great Recession, crashed the economy and left it to neophyte Obama to fix. Obama dawdled along, saved the auto industry and put through an expensive healthcare plan nicknamed Obamacare and after 8 years and the hubris of HRC another Republican, this time a 5 time bankrupt tv huckster, Donald Trump came in with the same old same old.
Cut more taxes but then he decided he didn’t care about budgets. Thus the story ended with yet another $7 trillion added in debt as every Republican President that was a tax hawk / cutter has added more and more trillions to the national debt.
Trump did something else and is the reason for this story, he ended the Republican party. It no longer is a governing party, it is now the party of the angry disaffected types who will vote for him even though he admits he lost the 2020 election and tried to steal it. They love it, his minions now run the House, the Speaker was a leader in the steal the election saga.
A Christian theocracy is now spoken of openly and history is being rewritten by the GOP to move the US to a religious based society run by evangelical GOP Christians where women have no rights any more and elimination of LGBTQ rights including the right to marry will be taken away.
The GOP no longer stands for cutting taxes for the rich, that has already been done. Now they want to destroy and dismantle the federal government and take rights away from those they do not like including black and brown people who are being gerrymandered out in state after red state.
To cut the power of the feds and give it to the states so that the states will devour each other in a free for all. The GOP no longer stands for anything other than chaos.
You don’t have to look far, the new Speaker’s first proposal for Israel was to partially defund the IRS so that the rich don’t have to worry about being audited.
In the end, the GOP now stands for chaos, tearing down the system, cutting taxes and screwing everyone including the military and making themselves the white masters of an evangelical Christian society where they have all the rights and will tell you what to read, what to think and what history will be taught.
I’ve heard men say the only reason they ever befriend a woman is because they want to get their dicks wet. I believe those men. They have no reason to lie, and I see no evidence that runs counter to what they say.
Those men? No, they probably should not. Not just because they’ll cheat if they can, but because they see women as basically a life support system for a vagina, and what kind of friend is that? Their friendship will always and forever be transactional, because at the end of the day they don’t see women as people.
Normal men? Yes, normal men should have friends outside their marriage. Including friends who are women.
Yes. Out for dinner with my wife, I ordered a budget-friendly red called Leaping Horse or something similar. Or, more accurately, that’s what I meant to order. Instead, I treated us to a $200 bottle of Stag’s Leap at five times the price of the other horsey brand I thought I ordered. Stag’s Leap wasn’t even on the official wine list.
To be fair, the server questioned it and double checked that was what I wanted. Each time I foolishly said yes.
The US Navy doesn’t try to minimize discomfort. Safety? Sure. Discomfort? Suck it up Shippy!.
Racks, Navy-speak for the bunks sailors sleep in, have straps. Typically we keep them tucked under the mattress. But when needed we can pull them out and snap hook the to the top of the rack frame. This prevents you from rolling out of your rack.
I have used the straps on a few occasions and they do in fact work well. During a trek from Norfolk to Pascagoula back in the mid-90’s aboard a Burke-class guided missile destroyer, we ran into a group of storms near Key West. This area is notorious for bad weather that pops up on short notice. The area is littered with wrecks from the Age of Sail all the way to the 20th Century. White Squalls in particular are some of the most dangerous and infamous. We happened upon what the Commanding Officer would later tell us the Coast Guard had determined was a White Squall. When it began I was actually on the bridge standing watch. We were taking heavy listing rolls and heaving up and down fairly steeply. There is a list gauge and pitch gauge on the bridge. The heaviest roll we noted was about 32 degrees which is fairly close to Burke-classes mast limit.
We posted garbage bags in passageway and at strategic points. Many guys got sick. I felt horrible but I didn’t throw up. That may have been because I simply couldn’t eat after it started. As I was leaving watch and heading to the Mess Decks for Mid-Rats or Midnight Rations, I could smell vomit. The hour or so beating we took while I was on watch had me dizzy and swaying. Even when the ship wasn’t rocking, I was. By the time I made it to eat everything was secured as ordered by the CO. At that moment the CO came over the 1MC (loudspeaker), which was a big deal because it was past TAPS and no announcements are normally made. “Everyone not on watch strap into your racks”. Engineering watch crew set about “Setting Condition YOLK” which closes a lot of doors on the ship along with ventilation. The gun mount was turn as far aft as possible and depressed (pointed down) as much as possible.
The next day it was very calm to start. Then all of the sudden a storm formed and hit quickly during dinner. The rolls approached 40 degrees. We nosed into one wave an it submerged the bow. The waves that hit the bridge smacked the windows hard enough that it broke several windshield wipers. The storm hit while dinner was being served. The salad bar, which was tack-welded to the deck broke free and sent the contents everywhere. At the time the boat deck and our complement of 2 RHIB boats were my assigned space and responsibility along with one of my comrades. Both of us had to go out on deck to make sure the boats were secured. That was fun. We got to the quarterdeck and an area in the open that we have to cross with nothing to hold on to. Just at we were crossing the open area the ship heeled an rocked heavy to starboard ( the boat deck is on starboard). We were standing straight up but looking straight down at the water. It was intense.
There is also a stanchion/wire system we can rig for the Focsle (bow). They screw into the deck and stand about 6 foot tall. Wearing a harness you can strap onto the wire. Although rigging it when the seas are already rough is problematic. You can also just take the top caps and screw them into the deck, attaching the wire.
Years ago, my then-GF had a friend who periodically hung out with us.
Her friend was in a fairly turbulent relationship with her boyfriend.
It wasn’t abusive or anything. It just wasn’t meant to be. They couldn’t agree on anything in life.
Honestly, I dreaded hanging out with them.
They typically were showing up when we were going out on the weekends.
I knew that when they drank, it only exacerbated their problems and they’d start arguing.
And look, I’m not knocking either of them for their dysfunction. They were both young, not in full control of their emotions. They definitely weren’t prepared for their own incompatibility.
These things happen. We live. We grow. We learn.
Eventually, he came to realize that they were stuck in a rut they would never get out of. He broke things off with her.
She did NOT take it well.
Within a couple weeks she had moved away.
She took something with her though – his child. She was pregnant and chose not to tell him. It was a savage, vindictive thing to do.
Years later, he found out through back channels about it.
He was rightfully pissed. And it turned into huge drama.
Some of the friends in our group knew about him having a daughter and didn’t say anything to him. (Thankfully I didn’t know.)
He had to take her to court to get access to his daughter. And he did get visitation rights eventually.
But it sucked. He’d missed 5 years of his daughter’s life and hadn’t met her until then.
I can’t imagine introducing myself to my 5-year-old daughter, but these things happen.
He and the mother found a way into an agreeable arrangement of co-parenting.
And, he found a way to bury his resentment towards her for the sake of the child, which couldn’t have been easy.
But it was a valuable sacrifice because in the end it benefited the most important person in the equation, his daughter.
But I hate seeing kids getting caught in these evil games adults play with each other.
Due to a wiring harness issue, my father parked his 1965 impala SS in the garage 2002 and there it sat until 2022 when we had to move it. Rather than calling a tow truck I figured what the hell l, let’s give it a shot. We put a battery in it, pumped the gas a few times, a lot and behold l, it started right up after 30 seconds of cranking. Granted it ran like crap but it did run and stayed running with 20 years old gas. At first I was shocked that the gas was still good. Then I realized that it was likely the fact that the gas was 20 years old that made it start fine. This gas was pre-ethanol.
Now all we need to do is finish the wiring harness replacement
No I don’t. I was 12 when I had my first set of twins. My father had raped me for almost 2 years, and I didn’t know about abortion then. I was a child who was forced into having sex, and procreate, against my will. I still managed to graduate early, and find a good man to love, but I’ll never be able to get that innocence or childhood back.
You want the good news or the bad news. Let me feed you the good news first. Not yet! Chinese, Russian or a combination of this that faced the U.S. excesses hasn’t reached the point that it wants to take out the U.S. in spite of the U.S. provocation and goaded behaviour.
But it might if the U.S. don’t recognised the red line and push and push and push. At some point it may have no choice. And now the bad news. The U.S. has lost its ability to act without repercussions. Up to 2000 these countries might not have the capability to take out the U.S. but by 2023 they certainly can. And absolutely could do so it push comes to shove.
My worry is that the U.S. might not recognises or in denial that those nations can and will do it if they are push into the corner. There lies the risk of a catastrophic disaster first of the U.S. demise and or worst the U.S. nuclear respond and of course China and Russia respond to the U.S. nuclear response. It is a dooms day scenario for our world.
When I first moved to Boston, I had zero money. I was 18, working for minimum wage, and supporting my own crappy little basement studio apartment which took half of my take-home pay every month. I saved up to shop at Goodwill.
Dressed in my best ragged torn-off shorts and a gingham halter top, I wandered into John Lewis, an expensive jeweller on Newbury Street. The smell alone told me I was out of my price range–there’s just a smell to really high-end stores.
I was bedazzled. No other word for it. They had totally gorgeous stuff in their showcases, and I lusted after every item. The clerk asked me quite cordially if she could show me something. I told her that I frankly couldn’t afford to breathe their air. Her response made a difference in my life.
She said that maybe I couldn’t afford their stuff now, but maybe one day I could. She showed me everything! Shelet me try on everything. To me, Macy’s was higher class than I felt I could enter, OK? An expensive Newbury Street merchant making me welcome? This was beyond belief!
They had a set of 18k gold jewelry, all custom-made, hand-carved in a strawberry pattern that I fell in love with.
Eventually I tore myself away, a dream planted in my heart. Twelve years later, when I actually had a little money, I bought a custom ring in that strawberry pattern from them. It cost about $2000, and after a couple of fittings I wore it continuously for 30 years.
If that lady, who knew for a fact that she couldn’t sell me anything that day, hadn’t been so wonderful, I’d never have entered that shop again. Her kindness made all the difference.
China don’t pander to millionaires and billionaires rogue and irresponsible business leaders who took advantage and hurt the Chinese people. US calls it too big to fail companies. China take them to task. The U.S. bailed them out using taxpayers money.
What do I think?
I think China is responsible, is doing the right thing, is making businessman think of serving their customers better. I think the U.S. should learn from China. That is what I think! What about you? What do you think?
Gave Cheating Wife a Taste of Her Own Medicine: She didn’t expect to see my revenge…
China will do whatever is necessary to the interest of China and the Chinese people and that include Taiwan, China. Taiwan is an island and a region of China. It is an unalienable part of China. It cannot be separated or snagged away from China by any means including the U.S. and western geopolitical games.
As a Chinese origin from the southern China where 90% of Taiwanese Chinese migrated from. I understand their psyche that most westerners who write such ridiculous question can ever understand. We want to see Taiwan as an integral part of China. Many Taiwanese are all out to support and help China achieved this honourable achievement.
Do we gives a shit about what white Caucasian westerners think or feel? Not at all. Not even bothered a bit. We care about keeping our nation together from the manipulative western behaviour. Forceful or peaceful it our god damn business. It is our Business not yours. Mind you own business.
As Prof Zhang Weiwei likes to say, China is no longer on the same track as the West.
She’s now running on her own track.
This is like what I tell my medical students — don’t compete with others, just do the best that you can do (in your own way that works best for you).
Edit 17 October 2023:
As a Chinese, I see China as still being more deeply Confucianist than Communist; though there’s some overlap between the two ideologies. The sworn goals of a Confucianist society are two: xiaokang 小康 (moderate prosperity — which China has largely achieved), and finally datong 大同 (Great Unity
, a classical Chinese concept for an utopian view of the world; or Common Prosperity).
This is very different from the approach of the Western nations, seeking hegemony over other nations.
“The report to the 20th CPC National Congress in 2022 drew a great blueprint for rejuvenating the Chinese nation on all fronts by pioneering a uniquely Chinese path to modernization, and pointed out that striving to build a global community of shared future is one of the intrinsic requirements of Chinesemodernization, affirming the close bond between the future of China and the future of all humanity.”
Whether you believe the report or not — just watch what China had been doing (in Asia, Middle East, Africa and South America), and is continuing to do in the coming years.
Edit 18 October 2023:
China is holding her Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) on 17–18 October 2023.
Attending the event are more than 1,200 representatives from more than 80 countries and regions
The list of VIP attendants is impressive, showing how China’s Belt and Road Initiative (2023 is its 10th anniversary) has attracted the attention of most countries (except those in US and her allies):
Vladimir Putin is top of the list.
Others: Indonesian President Joko Widodo,
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev,
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban,
Chilean President Gabriel Boric,
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic,
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev,
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape
UN Secretary-General António Guterres,
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez,
Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong,
President of Mongolia Ukhnaa Khurelsukh
Prime Minister of Mozambique Adriano Maleiane
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar,
Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin,
Kenyan President William Ruto,
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet,
Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith,
Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe
President of the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso
It looks like many other countries have been attracted by China’s parallel track, and are leaving “the American track”.
Alpha Hubby Allowed Me To Open My Marriage Then Filed For Divorce & Ghosted, Left Broke & Penniless
I’m a former New Yorker. I’ve only visited Canada, but lived in London for the past 25 years. In the States, if you have a good job, you can live very comfortably. But if you have a serious medical emergency or long term medical needs, this can bankrupt you, you can lose your home & be very poor. For average workers, the medical insurance is very difficult as the insurance is very expensive and on top of that, you have to co-pay. And many can’t get insurance because of pre-existing issues. In the UK, medical care is free, doesn’t matter about your past history … the taxes we pay towards it is less than what people pay in the States for their insurance. People never have to worry about being homeless because of ongoing medical problems. Whenever I go back to New York to visit, I’m a bit shocked at how very poor many people are there – compared to London.
In the UK, if you are working, but not able to afford rent, the government will pay towards your rent. It may not cover all the rent, but it helps. If you have children & don’t earn enough in your job, the government will top up your earnings so you are above the poverty line. If you are unemployed, your unemployment benefits won’t stop as long as you are actively looking for work & attending the skills meetings. And if you do accept a job, but it doesn’t pay well, the government will top it up to make sure you are earning what they consider to be the minimum needed to live on.
My high-earning son had the opportunity to work for his company in the States, but he realised he has a much better safety net here in the UK for his family. It felt too much of a risk for him to have to pay for medical insurance for his family when it isn’t even guaranteed that it will pay for certain things.
The only thing I don’t like about living in the UK is the weather. But everything else, in my personal opinion, leads for a better quality of life.
So, I’m on the beach enjoying myself over a bit of beach calligraphy (this involves cutting sand out of the surface, and some fairly intense concentration) when the spell is broken by someone who has walked up to me, having walked over my work, stood on it at my side, and proceeded to ask me what I’m trying to catch.
The next time that happened to me I was ready with “Calligraphy” as my reply but then just dumbstruck again by being asked if I had permission.
EDIT I just want to add the following in response to some of the comments I’ve had here:
I’ve NEVER had a child walk up to one of my doodles without noticing it and being curious about it. I do occasionally have young children deliberately tread through it but that’s part of being observant. It feels interesting underfoot. The interaction usually leads to my offering the tools to the kiddiewinks to try.
I can’t help wondering if there’s a relationship between stupidity and being unobservant. I’m not sure but it’s clear that coming with a strong preconception does get in the way of open observation and surprise. Only an adult can come blinded by so much preconception that they fail to notice the beach calligraphy happening before their eyes and under their feet. To then layer that blindness with a preoccupation with permission …?! I make no apologies for my disdain.
There are some lighting conditions under which the beach calligraphy is barely noticeable and almost impossible to photograph: high sun, lit from behind the observer, very cloudy. The beach calligraphy depends on shadow. I’m very keenly aware of this. Usually, under conditions like that, I’m just practising close to the waters’ edge where it is constantly washed away in any case.
If I have to do a paid commission then I get careful and a bit possessive about it and I look for a spot on a beach where I can be alone. I don’t usually mind redoing work. I often redo it in any case just because I’m not satisfied with the calligraphy.
You can lose your work to a wave, dogs, or an unobservant idiot but you don’t lose the skill you build in doing it again.
Some people have said things along the lines of “You don’t own the beach!” and I do (very rarely) get that response on the beach if I try to ward someone off my work. It’s a stupid response because this is not about ownership. Stupidity, on the other hand … if you’re not prepared to own it, it will own you.
I was in a courtroom trying to evict a tenant, I was broke had massive loans on the property and down on my luck, I could not afford legal representation so I represented myself which judges generally do not like. I saw the judge wipe the floor and throw out of court room the others who represented themselves earlier that day. This was the days before the internet and I had to learn about housing laws from things called books if you remember what they are? Then it was my turn to step into the dock after four hours of waiting in the court during previous, I learned a lot about tenancy laws in those four hours.
Preliminaries over then the game was on, its was like a verbal tennis match on points of law, I knew I had my paperwork and facts right, he volleyed and I hit it back countering his serve. Forgive me because this was over thirty years ago so I don’t remember the joust word for word, the judge did not like this uneducated smart arsed whippersnaper giving as good as-he got.
Then he threw a curve ball question regarding arrears, and how much the tenant owed, I said the tenant was six months behind I wasn’t sure of the amount as it was irrelevant, I had not come to court to claim arrears ( separate application and hearing and nigh on impossible to get money back because she was claiming benefits ) I said to the judge I just want her evicted and my property back. Then he tried to bamboozle me with jargon after jargon and I got a bit confused he then said to me said to me,
‘Young man I suggest you get your paper work in order and go and see legal advice!’
I was so nervous and that is exactly what I didn’t want the hear, as it meant I would have to have my property repossessed and I would have lost everything I worked for, I was sweating profusely my mind was over revving I was trying to grasp at something I had read in the past six months that would get me out of this painful situation
Then it came to me, I knew that I had done everything right and that he had to grant me a notice to evict, from deep within my memory I recalled something and blurted out to the judge, your honour under section ( blah ) article ( blah) of the 1988 housing act I have served you all the correct papers within procedure and you are obliged to give me notice of eviction, that was it, my final serve I had nothing else to give.
The court went silent and the court usher gave a wry smile, the Judge turned and looked down his nose through his half rimmed glasses at me and stared for a moment, then he turned to the court clerk and beckoned him over, he whispered something in his ear and the clerk disappeared for a moment and brought back one of the biggest books I’d ever seen laid it in front of the judge and opened it for him. The judge flicked through the pages and ran his finger down the lines of one or two pages as he was reading, he then grabbed the gavel looked at me and brought the gavel down with a thud and said
‘ Notice of eviction granted, 28 days’
It may not seem much, but there is nothing better (to me ) than beating the system that’s so inherently wrong and stacked against you but the biggest victory was correcting a judge on a point of law, when I left the court house I felt twenty kilos lighter and like had just been set free from , I did get my property back 28 days later
‘If you don’t fight you never win, if you fight there is a chance you may win’
Muffuletta Sandwiches
In New Orleans the two best Muffuletta Sandwiches — bar none — can be had at Central Grocery or at Napoleon House on Chartres Street.
Yield: 1 loaf bread; 1 to 4 servings, depending on appetite! about 3 quarts olive salad
Ingredients
Muffuletta Bread
1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 package active dry yeast (about 1 tablespoon)
About 3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
Sesame seeds
Olive Salad
1 (32 ounce) jar pimento-stuffed green olives, chopped
2 cups pitted ripe olives, chopped
1 1/4 cups chopped pickled cocktail olives
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
2 cups blanched chopped cauliflower
1/4 cup minced garlic
2 medium carrots, peeled and minced
2 teaspoons dried leaf oregano
1 tablespoon minced flat-leaf parsley
2/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
Muffuletta Sandwich
1 (10 inch) Muffuletta Bread loaf
3 ounces honey ham, thinly sliced
3 ounces Mortadella with pistachios, thinly sliced
3 ounces Genoa salami, very thinly sliced
1 heaping cup Olive Salad
5 slices Provolone cheese
Instructions
Muffuletta Bread
In a 2 cup glass measuring cup, combine water and sugar.
Stir in yeast. Let stand until foamy, 5 to 10 minutes.
In a food processor fitted with the steel blade, combine 3 cups flour, salt and shortening. Add yeast mixture. Process until dough forms a ball, about 5 seconds. Stop machine; check consistency of dough. It should be smooth and satiny. If dough is too dry, add more warm water, 1 tablespoon at a time, processing just until blended. If dough is too sticky, add more flour, 1 or 2 tablespoons at a time, processing just until blended. Process for 20 seconds to knead.
Lightly oil a large bowl, swirling to coat bottom and sides. Place dough in oiled bowl; turn to coat all sides. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.
Lightly grease a baking sheet. When dough has doubled in bulk, punch down dough; turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Form dough into a round loaf about 10 inches in diameter; place on greased baking sheet. Sprinkle top of loaf with sesame seeds; press seeds gently into surface of loaf. Cover very loosely with plastic wrap; let rise until almost doubled in bulk, 1 hour.
Place rack in center of oven. Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Remove plastic wrap.
Bake loaf in center of preheated oven for 10 minutes.
Reduce heat to 375 degrees F; bake for 25 minutes. The loaf is done when it sounds hollow when tapped on bottom. Cool completely on a rack before slicing.
Olive Salad
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and stir to blend well.
Store in jars with tight-fitting lids in the refrigerator.
Muffuletta Sandwich
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Cut bread in half crosswise to form a sandwich bun. Layer the honey ham on the bottom of the loaf. Next add the Mortadella, then the salami. Spread the Olive Salad over the meats evenly. Top with the slices of Provolone cheese and place the top on the sandwich. Press down to compress slightly. Wrap the sandwich in foil and bake for 20 minutes, or until the cheese has begun to melt into the Olive Salad.
Slice sandwich into 4 quarters. Use wooden picks to secure layers, if desired; remove picks before eating.
Notes
Not only can you use this Olive Salad as a dressing for a Muffuletta Sandwich, it also makes a delicious addition to tossed green salads, pizzas, and is a great relish to spread on crackers.
They Don’t Want Coffee Dates, They Only Want The $1000 Restaurant
Well, this is the first post for my new series: “Correcting Society Ills“.
This new series, as I have mentioned previously, is concerned with RECONSTRUCTION of the West.
As I have already mentioned, the threat of Global War has passed the DANGER ZONE. That was in 2020 through 2022. What we are experiencing now is a “lesser” state of war. Oh, sure, nuclear weapon threats are being bantered about, and provocations are seemingly everywhere at a global level, but the unseen global counter-threats are not being made public and they will quench any aggressive moves against the great Asian powers.
So, global change resembles this dynamic…
Change; old to new.
Threat of war… either occurs or fizzles out with a *pop*.
I claim that it fizzled out.
What is left is a ruined Western society.
And a need for RECONSTRUCTION.
So we are going to discuss that reconstruction and what needs to occur.
Mind you, actual war can still occur, it’s just that it becomes less and less probable as time progresses forward.
In our reconstruction discussions and talks we will cover all sorts of issues and maladies that the West are suffering through. From fat-generating use of polyunsaturated oils in Western foods, to the destruction of family culture, and the strange ideas of modern Western youth.
You will find all sorts of videos and discussions on related topics herein. It’s part of a phase in our society, and the world must go through this to get to the other side; one of an overall better quality of life.
I can’t answer for near overseas Chinese (that is Chinese in Asia). I can write about my UK experiences.
It was Christianity and FG being a very distant second.
Christianity preyed on recent immigrant types and how they were often alone and isolated having migrated. I had numerous xian types try convert me constantly mistaking me for a migrant.
Same shit when my mother got cancer, some how the jesus types found out and went to find her to try convert her.
I told them to fuck off.
Mother told them to fuck off.
$240 Billion Lithography Machine Order Canceled,China Achieves Full Technological Autonomy!
SMIC, a prominent chip manufacturing company, operates in various areas such as chip design, manufacturing, packaging, and sales. The quality and efficiency of chip production heavily rely on the technological level and precision of the lithography machines, a crucial equipment in chip manufacturing.
However, due to escalating global trade tensions and US export control policies on Chinese high-tech companies like SMIC, the company has been unable to purchase advanced lithography machines and other equipment from the United States. This has prompted SMIC to cancel a $24 billion lithography machine order with the US company ASML, attracting significant attention and raising concerns about alternative markets for chip sales.
The cancellation of the lithography machine order by SMIC is influenced by both the global trade environment and domestic policies. As one of the largest chip manufacturers globally, SMIC’s decision has implications for the global chip industry. The uncertain global trade environment has disrupted the chip supply chain, while the Chinese government’s support for the chip industry has limited its domestic development.
The event’s impact on the global chip industry is two-fold. On one hand, competition in the global chip market will intensify, requiring major chip companies to enhance their technological capabilities and supply chain management. On the other hand, SMIC’s actions may inspire imitation by other countries, further intensifying global chip market competition.
Analyzing the impact of this event reveals that SMIC’s cancellation affects not only the global chip industry but also the US technology sector. Intel, one of the major US tech giants, has highlighted the significant impact on the global chip supply chain, prompting questions about the effectiveness of the Biden administration’s policies for the US industry.
Addressing this challenge requires several approaches. Firstly, China should strengthen international cooperation to collectively navigate the uncertainties in the global trade environment. Secondly, domestic policies should be enhanced to support and promote the development of the chip industry within China. Lastly, SMIC should focus on capacity building, continuously improving technological capabilities, and enhancing supply chain management.
China doesn’t use forced labour to make shoes and apparel. It is another political bit of nonsense that the US government made up.
The US government even claimed that China uses forced labour to pluck cotton, just like how the USA enslaved black people to pick cotton in the past. Goodness gracious, what nonsense, who even uses human beings to pluck cotton nowadays. That’s the old primitive way of the USA. Most of the cotton in China is machine-picked and high-speed packed.
So, This is Happening in West Maui, It’s changes EVERYTHING for Oprah & the Rock
The way these people have been treated is beyond disgusting. Greene lies through his teeth. Banks should freeze their mortgages for at least a minimum of three years to allow the people to get back on their feet.
Funny story. In 1986, I went through basic at Fort Cambell, Kentucky. I had a two-year degree, and so I entered as an E3. A couple of weeks into the training, the 1stSgt called me into his office. He’s reviewing my record and commenting that he thinks my records are wrong. Because of my two-year degree, he thinks I should have entered as an E4.
He looks at me and asks, “When you enlisted, did they promise you E4?” I quickly answered, “Yes, 1stSgt.” He quickly responds, “I knew it! I will have you promoted to E4, but it will take a week or two. I said, “Thank you 1stSGT!” and was dismissed.
A couple of weeks later, the C.O. of the training company stopped me on the way back from evening chow and said, “I wanted you to know that your next LES will reflect that you were promoted to E4. I cannot have you pinned while you are in basic, nor can you wear the rank because you would be the same rank as some of the soldiers assigned to the company, but, you have been promoted to E4.” I said, “thank you sir,” saluted and went on my way.
As soon as I graduated, I upgraded all my rank insignia to SP4. I get to Aberdeen Proving Grounds for schooling, and as I check-in, the soldier behind the counter asks, “Are you promotable?” I did not know what that meant, but I said, yes. Because I identified as E4 promotable, I was assigned to the barracks with all the other E4s and NCOs going through the same school for retraining. No drill sergeants for me!
My Mum was a very formidable Italian lady (all five feet three inches of her!) and took very little nonsense from anybody!! When my sister was 15 and I was 9 my sister went out for the night with a young guy who was 18 (Mum didn’t know this or it would not have been allowed) She was told to be back by 10.00 pm, no later! Midnight approached and my parents were not happy (this was in the days before Mobile Phones) They finally turned up and my Dad went out to remonstrate with the young man whilst my Mum exploded at my sister who was well aware what kind of trouble she was in. Dad came back in with a cut lip where the young Guy had punched him!! Mum grabbed one of my Dad’s hobnail boots went outside and proceeded to bash the young guy around the head and shoulders, loudly cursing him in Italian! The guy screamed at my Mum that he would get the Police on her, she shouted back ‘Do it! my daughter’s 15!! I’ll have you in prison! and every syllable corresponded with another blow to his head and face! After about 10 minutes of the the guy ran away screaming in fear. The next day, right outside our house, the pavement was covered with bloodstains!
New IRS $600 Tax Rule For 2023 (Venmo & Cash App & PayPal)
Americans screwed over YET AGAIN. Good thing, everything is in my Chinese family, not me personally. $20,000 threshold to $600. No fucking way!
You need a drivers license in order to drive your privately owned automobile on public roads. If you drive on your own private property, or someone else’s private property with their permission? No.
The whackos who told you that a driver’s license is for commercial drivers belong to a weird fringe conspiracy cult called “Sovereign Citizens.” To give you an idea how dumb these loonies are, they’re the ones that Flat Earthers point to and say “god, those people will believe anything.”
Sovereign Citizens have all kinds of bizarre beliefs that basically focus on the notion “you do not have to obey any law you do not consent to.” They believe they do not have to obey any law enforcement officers except county sheriffs, they do not have to pay taxes, and that (yes, I’m serious) the Federal government sells each American citizen at birth, and so a “birth certificate” is actually a record of sale to a foreign government.
As you might imagine, these dingbats get arrested rather frequently. When they do, they generally go into court shaking their fists and screaming that the government has no jurisdiction over them and no right to put them on trial, which…goes about as well as you might imagine.
People and people, but this will put Americans into a coma:
Older people going naked in city center parks. (I am not going to post pictures, because if I do I will get blocked by Quora moderators who obviously are not German and have never been to Germany).
16 year olds drinking beer or wine.
Kids riding alone on buses and trains.
Autobahn on a Friday.
Some people will behave like concentration camp guards but when you forget your credit card they will send it to you in the mail.
The U.S. thinks that it is exceptional and that the U.S. must always lord over the world. There lies the problem it is certainly not exceptionally strong or good. It may be seen as exceptionally cruel and evil to the developing nations of the world.
China’s phenomenal growth and rise in a way, together with the phenomenal rise of the non western world has resulted in the ending of a Western centric or U.S. dominated world that is in fact a virtual colonisation post colonialism for 300 odd years.
In effect the poor and underdeveloped countries were forced or connived into the so call rules based international order but in effect it is a set of rules to preserve the wealth of the west and continue the looting and theft of resources of the poor to enriched the west. From 1946-at least 2000. You can call this virtual colonialism.
China together with BRICS effectively put and end or at least the beginning of the end of this virtual colonialism order. That upset the U.S. to no end. That is easy to understand. If the biggest mafia in town lost its ability to steal, to or loot at will it may burnt down some buildings and businesses and probably go on a shooting spree. So you can expect war mongering and doing some shit.
But it does not matter what or how U.S. rave and rant. Asia alone represents 60% of the worlds GDP and U.S. is now a mere shadow of itself since 1945 where its economy alone represented 52% of the world’s economy. Today in 2023 China’s growth alone is 36.4% and the entire G7 including the U.S. together adds up to a mere 25.6%! The Ukraine war and the U.S. sanctions and pure robbery of Russia’s reserves will lead to the end of U.S. dollar hegemony and so will western financial institutions.
To me the more the U.S. try to curb China the faster China will eclipse the U.S. There is nothing the U.S. that can do that don’t make the status worst for the U.S. Today it tries to stop the export of Chips to China. It won’t work. It actually means it actually heighten. It’s inflation and suffer crippling shortages. You see China itself now represent 30% of world demand and another 30% of worlds manufacturing. This ban in effect, deprives the U.S. companies of doing business to 50–60% of the world’s demand.
This act will means bankrupting US and its allies chip makers. China will face some challenges. But in a short 5 years 90% of its chips requirements will be Chinese made and in a decade China will totally handle its own demand and it will totally kill off the U.S. chips. Like everything China will make it faster, better and cheaper.
ANGRY Young Man DIES; Meets ANCIENT Soul Family He Has Known for LIFETIMES!
Still shot of a Blackwater contractor during the Battle of Najaf in April of 2004
Service members of different stripes in a circumstantial combat situation can certainly order each other around if it’s in a joint environment, but in the most recent conflicts, now private military contractors may just be giving the orders too.
During the Battle of Najaf in the early days of the Iraq War, Iraqi insurgents from the Mahdi Army began to surround a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Building within the city of Najaf. Within the confines of the CPA compound, the personnel consisted of CPA employees, Spanish/El Salvadoran soldiers, a detachment of US Marines, and an eight man team of Blackwater contractors.
The situation was deteriorating with insurgents having grabbed an unfortunate El Salvadoran soldier, shoving a grenade into his mouth then pulling the pin in full view of the CPA compound. This was on top of the firefights were breaking out between those in the CPA compound and insurgents who were now attempting storm the compound with the mob that had just killed the soldier.
While this was all occurring, a Blackwater contractor called for help to his higher up’s in Baghdad who had been monitoring the situation. The Blackwater contractors in Baghdad then made an ultimate judgment call to intervene with the CPA compound battle when it became apparent that the US military itself will not provide any sort of assistance in the confusion.
Three Little Bird helicopters were then loaded up with six Blackwater contractors coupled with one Little Bird filled with boxes of ammunition and equipment due to the CPA contractors notifying that they were now dangerously low on ammunition.
The contractors then flew to the CPA compound, unloaded the ammunition and additional support, then evacuated a wounded Marine who had been shot during the battle.
With the additional support of the contractors and ammunition, the combined force of Blackwater contractors, Marines, Coalition troops managed to keep the insurgents from reaching the CPA compound. CPA employees would reload empty magazines then run it up to the men who were fighting off the insurgents, keeping everyone busy.
The Blackwater contractors would find themselves dictating where the Marines and other troops to head to during the battle, which would later draw controversy from critics who claimed that now mercenaries were giving orders to military troops.
Eventually, the siege of the CPA compound would subside after almost two days of battle which could be viewed on many videos via Youtube.
Infamous video of Blackwater contractor Travis Haley during the Battle of Najaf. Critics would later use this video to denote how he had no qualms killing random people with a second nature attitude when he was literally going after insurgents attempting to assault the compound.
The Battle of Najaf would serve as an example of how private military contractors mixed with troops in circumstances that called them to fight side by side.
This does not look like it would end anytime soon with the Russo-Ukraine conflict where Russian private military contractors from the Wagner Group and Russian troops are fighting alongside each other in the conflict.
SCOTT RITTER, ANDREI MARTYANOV, AND GARLAND NIXON JOIN ON NATO, UKRAINE’S TIME RUNS OUT
In this special roundtable, Scott Ritter Andrei Martyanov and Garland Nixon join the program to discuss the ongoing developments of the Ukraine proxy war, what it tells us about Russia, and the growth of the multipolar world in the context of history.
I’m going to try to provide an answer with a slightly different perspective.
First off, I’m an Australian Chinese (in that order), born and educated in Singapore. My family is Peranakan or Straits-born meaning that we were the products of intermarriage between the Chinese and locals in what was then British Malaya.
So I grew up speaking English and Malay and a smattering of dialects. As I was educated in English mission schools, I did not learn Mandarin.
As far as I can remember, I was taught to hate Chinese and Communists. Pretty much everything I read about Communists described them as a threat peace-loving people everywhere. And China was communist.
I think I was 17 when I first read Dick Wilson’s A Quarter of Mankind. This was followed by Emmanuel Hsu’s The Rise of Modern China. In those pages I glimpsed a very different China. So I started reading Chinese history, from the Qin dynasty, and continued my inquiry at university.
Most of my working life was spent as a journalist, a sub-editor to be specific, and much of my work involved, among other things, fact checking.
Nixon’s ping-pong diplomacy opened up a new era of ties with China and Singapore was quick to get in on the act (read quick to realise the profits that could be made trading with China. That is the subject of a whole different set of questions and answers). Trading with the enemy? No, it cannot be. But it was.
The opening up of relations with China also led to a relaxation of travel restrictions on travel to the Middle Kingdom. Up till then, I had visited Hong Kong and could only imagine life across the border. I also visited Taiwan and imagined China to be everything the opposite of Taiwan.
Fast-forward many years when I moved to Australia and started travelling to China (Shenzhen, Chengdu, Guangdong, and Shanghai).
I saw modern cities, efficient public transport, rampant capitalism, and I felt completely safe even in quiet streets in the wee hours of the morning.
Many of the Chinese I met were as friendly as people in other places that I have travelled. Often friendlier. Especially to an ethnic Chinese who did not speak the language (I started learning conversational Mandarin at 54 and can now read a write a little).
To the core of the question: Much of the information about China that’s peddled about is false. Many people have very wrong impressions and ideas about the PRC. And most of the people who hold these ideas will never go to China to see and verify for themselves if what is reported is anywhere near the truth.
So I, and many others, try to provide a balance by correcting the grosser erros of belief held by many as a result of, well, propaganda.
A footnote: In my youth I wanted to move to the West (America, UK, the Scandinavian countries, … thataway). If I were young again, I would go east. To China.
Netherlands Reconsiders Huawei After 5G Successes
“If US is not learning from China, it is more important that China learns from US. China should never forget who forsaken her in its hours of need. To be kind to enemy is to be cruel to oneself .”
I won a scratch ticket for $100,000 one hundred thousand. the accoutant handled the taxes.
After claiming my prize we had 2 weeks where different reporters were looking for pictures and wanting to do an interview with the store that sold the winning ticket. churches and charities knocking on the door looking for a slice.
3 people i went to grade school with came knocking I had not seen them in 10 years. Family calling wanting to get a share or asking for a loan they cant afford to repay.
people were confused when I told them I spent it all.
I divided it up 3 ways and gave equal amounts to my 3 kids for thier college funds. I
f I ever hit another winning ticket I am getting a lawyer to deal with the bullcrap and I am gonna move to Alaska to a remote cabin in the middle of nowheresville with no phone or roads.
That you can hope to understand China using the English medium.
I am confident I am in the top 1 percentile when it comes to Chinese proficiency in the pool of English speakers beyond the mainland.
I won’t be surprised if I am in the top 0.1 percentile either.
But if I were honest, I will admit as an east Asian that I find it difficult to keep up with the mainland, even though I possess skills and networks to access media and contacts within greater China.
No, it’s not just about the language struggle, which exists even for someone like me with more than a decade’s worth of formal education in the Chinese language.
It is about developing a contextual understanding for mainland frames of reference and how the mainlander thinks.
That is mostly absent in this medium, even among the rare pool of articles grounded in facts. Most are written by east Asians, not westerners.
My advice? Don’t waste time on the China expert who doesn’t speak Chinese. Even foreigners who do are often wrong or misguided, because that is what it takes to pass through the stringent msm filter these days.
The new employee was just starting, his first day, first morning on the job…
Every morning employees would gather all of their supplies, tools, etc. and load their vans to be ready for the day’s work.
All new employees are to ride with a senior person to gain knowledge and get the hang of things. This was our busiest season and the day was FULL of jobs that needed to be done – all previously scheduled and set in time slots.
This employee was in the process of helping load the van when he came to me and said:
“I need to go to an appointment today; I need the (driver) to drop me off and then pick me up, or wait for me to get done.”
Me: “I am sorry, we are too busy to be able to do all of that on work time. If it is important why don’t you just take the day off, go to your appointment and come back tomorrow ready to go?”
Employee: “Are you F@*king kidding me? What kind of place is this that you don’t care about your employees!!”
Me: “Ummmm, I said you can have the day off, it’s your first day here and I still said go ahead and take the day and come back tomorrow ready to go, I am not sure I understand?”
Employee: “This is BullS@@t, I can’t believe you won’t take care of your employees and have him drive me to my appointment across town and wait for me, you’re F@*ing ridiculous.”
Me: “Um, I am trying to be reasonable here and work with you. How about you can take your own car and follow behind him and when you need to go you can just cut out and go to your appointment. We don’t have the time to do that for you. ”
Employee: “This is ridiculous, I can’t believe you treat your employees this way, you are being so unfair, this is Bull S#@t, F@*!ng ridiculous!”
Me: “Actually, why don’t you go ahead and go home and not come back at all. Thank you for your time.”
Employee then was shocked that I fired him and could not believe or understand why I was letting him go.
This was truly shocking to me. Fired him on the spot within ONE hour of being employed.
“Ukrainian soldiers are being DRUGGED and forced to fight” Ex-CIA Larry Johnson
We now have reports that captured Ukrainian soldiers are turning up drugged out of their minds on some kind of inhibition blocker. Reports say these soldiers are going on withdrawals after being captured. Ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson joins us to discuss.
The relationship with China from the U.S. perspective as always needs to be one of subservience and submissive to the U.S. That has been the default mode of what US expect it to be since 1945. Let’s call a spade a spade. The U.S. cannot deal with a nation that can and will say no to the U.S.
But if I should be completely honest to the US I will recommend to them to move on and keep your winnings. China with 1.4 billion highly discipline, extremely hard working people who are driven and industrious, today equipped with the state of art infrastructure and leading in 37/44 key and strategic technology cannot be push aside without untold damages to the U.S. itself.
But the U.S. political system, one based totally on popularity contest means that it cannot be pragmatic and realistic. It has to drain tremendous resources to try to keep its hegemonic place, even if it means bankrupting the U.S. that is precisely what the U.S is doing today.
For China is is so simple. Let the US have a long and strong rope to hang itself slowly to death. Lure the U.S. to fight China in a way that drains away the U.S. resources, influence and turned away its allies one by one. It does that be staying the moral high ground. It is the U.S. that is desperate so while the U.S. goes low, China stays high. It is winning without a fight. Remember Mohamad Ali “Rope a dope” the big George Foreman drains all its energy and knock him out in 15 rounds.
China is doing the “rope a dope” while the U.S. is ranting and panting away. Trump thought it wins popularity by starting the trade war with China. China pretends to avoid war but knows so well that it will hurt and harm the U.S. several folds of what it hurts China. Do you notice Biden wants to end the tariff and China says. Not so fast Amigo!
The implications to US allies are particularly bad and the more of a U.S. lackey the worst it gets. Asia is doing just fine and dandy.
How did it come to be? Well China grew astronomically strong economically, politically and even militarily and the U.S. is in denial and Americans are ignorant and naive about China till it is way past too late. The U.S. is in a quick sand. The more it struggles. The faster it sinks.
Since you asked about implications, The US pay the highest price for doing shit on China. The world is moving on faster than the U.S. realised. The U.S. dollar hegemony is all but gone. The U.S. and western order may appeal to a handful of its close allies. No different from a pack of street hoodlums hanging on to its biggest bully as beneficiaries.
US debts will reach 100 trillion in a decade, US deficits cannot go down. It cannot make anything at less than twice it cost worldwide. US standard of living has stagnated back 60 years to the 1960s. And the poor U.S. growing while it’s middle class is collapsing.
Meanwhile for China, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Once it made T-shirts and Toys. Today it makes your computers and smartphones. Soon it makes your EVs and AI and Jet planes. It middle class is now at 700 million will grow to 1 billion people within a generation. 4–6 times the size of the U.S. middle income.
Harvard Economist Reveals Shocking SECRET About China In 2023
Dr. Keyu Jin is one of the most outstanding China insiders. She is a professor at the London School of Economics and has an incredible knowledge of how the US and China both work. In today’s video I share with you her insights into China innovation and how China really works.
16 People Describe What A Dead Body Smell Like
1. “Understand that a pound or two of rotten meat only gives you a faint whiff of the smell of a full-grown corpse. The power of the smell is incredible. Personally, I’m not sure it’s describable. You want to gag when you’re fifty feet away. It can take years for the smell to leave a house. It just lingers in the background. Cars are totalled by the insurance company for the odor. And the guy driving the wrecker can’t drive fast enough to get away from the smell.
It gets on your skin and clothes. (People use bio-suits for body removal for a reason.) Maggots abound, fluids abound, and I’ve never read a good description of the experience. No matter how well you write, it will be but a pale imitation of the experience.”
2. “Buy a Boston Butt pork roast and let it rot. Pigs and humans are apparently similar, meat-wise. It actually turns like a sea blue-green color. (It smells like farts and then gets worse.)”
3. “A dead body, specifically a human corpse has a rank and pungent smell mixed with a tinge of sickening sweetness. Imagine a rotting piece of meat with a couple drops of cheap perfume and you’re halfway to understanding what a human corpse smells like.”
4. “It varies from person to person and how long they have been decomposing.
You get a very sharp, foul smell similar to horrible cheese mixed with the same smell you get from a full trash can in the sun.
If the body decompressed and they had a full bladder, you’ll also smell body fluids, so stale urine and straight fecal matter. For those who don’t know, toilet poop smells bad, but shit that is airborne, not water logged or anything is straight horrific on its own.
If you have flying insect and larva development increase smell this far times two. If it’s hot outside times three and if it’s cold out and the heat in the house is cranked it’s times five at minimum for the dry heat.
The worse part is the materials they died on. Wood mixed with death has a woody slime smell mixed with the death ratio above, carpet has a wet padding smell (like cat wizz) plus death and it’ll it’s on furniture it’s really fun as it usually leaks through to the carpet and wood subfloor.
If you’re smelling these things outside a house, you don’t want to be near it when they go in. Cleaning and deodorizing that is pretty rough.”
“I have assisted in an autopsy on a body several days old, and even though it was in a huge chilling compartment, the smell was in the whole complex. It smells like there are a million dead and rotting rats around you.”
5. “Rotten eggs, feces, and a used toilet left out for a month x 1000. It is unholy.
The smell gets into your throat and you can taste it. You will literally run to find some clean air. Even then, it lingers and you can’t quite get the smell away. Even though you can no longer physically smell it, you remember it and it takes quite a while to get over it.”
6. “A dead body to me smells like a cross between rotting meat and very dirty kitty litter box. Very distinct smell that you won’t forget.”
7. “You ever have like a dead mouse or something hiding somewhere and you just smell something awful? It’s pretty much that. The best I can sum it up to is like shit mixed with meat…in a weird way
8. “In my experience, any formerly living creature, whether human or non-human, has that same powerful, pungent, disgusting odor that I can only describe as a garbage can left to ferment in high heat for an extended period of time. It does vary some between species, though.
A couple of other answers written in this feed point to some things that are accurate. First, two chemicals, Putrescine and Cadaverine, are both found in decomposing tissue. Both are diamenes and they are produced as a result of amino acids (most notably Lysine) breaking down. They each gave their own characteristic odor which by themselves are bad enough. When they are combined due to the simultaneous presence, they are indescribable.
Second, pigs are indeed closest to humans in terms of the odor they give off when decomposing. Any animal with a musk gland (skunks, badgers, and muskrats are some examples. I’m sure there are many others as well) are also pretty stinky when they break down. All produce these same two chemicals because when you think about it, any creature that breathes in Oxygen and releases Carbon Dioxide is going to have a similar metabolic makeup that, when stopped is going to respond in a similar manner.”
9. “Once, I took a trip. When I returned, there was a terrible odor in my den. I know the odor of dead animals on the road or in the forests. Mom puts out poison for mice, so I have smelled them under things in her home. There was a rotten odor like this in my den, so I looked under everything, but I found nothing. The next day, I saw some cops and medics at the next apartment. I learned that my neighbor had died and decomposed for days before anyone found him. The odor is sickening. It’s hard to describe fully.”
10. “It depends how long it’s been dead but if you have ever smelled rotten meat it’s similar to that. some words commonly used to describe it would probably be rancid, foul, putrid, the smell of decay, etc. If it’s decomposed down to the skeleton there probably won’t be any smell anymore since the flesh, muscle, and organs are the ones that create the most smell and decay quickly.”
11. “I recently in countered a dead body that had been rotting in a van near my home for 5-7 days. At first, I though it was Korean people making kimchi, but after seeing the body removal with my own eyes I know that the smell was not of pickled vegetables. I work for a plumbing company so I’m always finding myself walking in raw sewage in basements. And I have to say the smell is similar to sewage or waste. Its nauseating and quite foul. Authorities have removed the body, but the area still smells of fragrant corpse. To be honest, I don’t know why you’d ever wonder about this. But yes indeed, it’s very disgusting. As a female I always find myself running out of breath when I’m dealing with sewage, but a body is about 10 times worse.”
Now, death depends on the environment in my opinion. I’ve smelt a few bodies in morgues and things like that, they just smell of death, it’s indescribable really, but you remember that smell. It’s a cold smell, a heavy smell (this is the best way I can describe it).
Rotting corpses of course just smell like any other rotting mammals, next time you spot some road-kill, stop and give it a sniff, pretty much what a rotting human corpse smells like.”
12. “I was a volunteer firefighter and police had to enter the residence before any of us could. The SCBA is automatic. So I quickly put it on a cop to enter the residence of a woman who neighbors haven’t seen in weeks. Those SCBAs block toxins and the cop ran out of the house drowning on his vomit. He claims he smelled her through the mask….That’s how bad a dead person smells. We eat everything. Those toxins in our bodies is what makes us stink so bad when we die. And to make it worse, when I got home I snorted soap while in the shower. A few hours later I began smelling the stench of her again. The bacteria is said to cling to your nostril hair and remultiplies later until it’s gone. I can’t tell you what it smells like. You’ll know it when you do.”
13. “Not very pleasant. It is a very strong, stomach turning, smell. It does in a way smell like rotten eggs, but it is much more intense. That is the best I can describe the smell, but I heard from someone else on how to make a small replica of it. Take a bag of soy beans, saturate them in water,let them stand a few days in heat above 70F while keeping them moist,crush some of the mixture.In a few days you will smell what decaying flesh/protein smells like.”
14. “My brother-in-law died in his appt. & was there 5 days before being found. When my wife & I went for the funeral (just a picture of him, no body) we went to help clean his place. I can’t describe the smell nor will I ever forget it. It permeated all soft things so badly they had to be throw out, we managed to keep a couple tables only. Even the TV stunk after airing out for week.
15. “Take some meat and leave it in a bag outside for about 3 days in the middle of summer. Then open the bag and mix in some Mexican food diarrhea. Add a good helping of the strongest catfish stink bait you can find. Mix well. This is the best that Death will ever smell.”
16. “Living in an apartment building and the guy next door fell in his bathtub (apparently). We didn’t see him often, so it wasn’t anything weird to not see him but his audio books were put on his doorknob and stayed for a couple days (he was blind, they delivered books to him to listen to).
Started smelling really weird, and since my son was just a baby at that time we’d initially thought somehow we hadn’t put a diaper in the garbage and it had ended up somewhere and was stinking up the place, searched high and low but couldn’t find it. The landlady knocked on his door (all our doors, handing out notices) and we mentioned we hadn’t seen him in a bit…half an hour later she was letting the police into his place.
I can’t imagine the smell in the same room though, it was bad enough being in the next apartment!”
No China don’t need the U.S. to survived or even to be a moderate growth economy in 2023. I will argue that containment, decoupling or de-risking of China which to me and most in the world means the same thing, is counter beneficial to the U.S. and good for China in the long term. The U.S. meanwhile loses the worlds. Biggest market or equivalent to the 2nd to the 10th biggest market for the U.S. put together.
There lies the enormity of the U.S. problem. Without China, the U.S. will suffer between 25–50% inflation which will highly impoverish American’s on the one hand with its U.S. brands becoming unsaleable and losing market share by half at least. All these while losing a humongous market.
By right the U.S. ought to not even dare to utter those threatening words but U.S. politicians lose too much to go soft after their media demonised China for a century. Sure China could be richer with the U.S. being rational. But China don’t take threats by the U.S lightly. The US political system is essentially a popularity contest and even if is suicidal the politicians compete to be a bigger China hawk while its own people suffer.
The trouble with threat is once you utter the word on banning China, sanctioning China, decoupling from China, containing China or even de-risking from China. China won’t hold back to defend itself. And China will make sure it will never depend on the U.S. and the west. That means China will totally do its own thing from now onwards.
That is very bad news for the U.S. as China do everything better, faster and cheaper than anyone on earth by a long shot. And the Huawei Mate 60 pro proved beyond doubt that there is nothing it cannot do! The U.S. should really think many times over before it challenge China for American sake. But the trade war and the chip ban proved to me and the world beyond doubt that the U.S. government don’t care about its own people and it’s own economy.
Don’t follow any instruction related to investing money or sanctioning a loan or allocating money UNLESS YOU HAVE A WRITTEN INSTRUCTION from your superior/cby email or whatsApp or paper letter
Never start smoking due to peer pressure or tension. Use bubble gum instead
First Beer with first month paycheck. First hard liquor after six months of paychecks at least.
Don’t express any political opinion or make any comment apart from work and movies and games and sports
Don’t ever go over your superiors head unless he is on leave or unreachable or is a total dumbo
When a woman wants to come to your office to talk to you, keep your door open or ask a friendly female colleague to sit in the office during the meeting under the pretext of taking notes
Never meet any Vendor or Supplier outside work or at your home. Always meet in office and keep your door open during the meeting and ask a colleague in to pretend to take notes
Never accept any gifts from Vendors or Suppliers whose value exceeds ₹2000/— unless everyone else is accepting the gifts and it’s been approved by your superiors
Never ever accept a meeting in a Hotel room with a potential client or customer. Always MEET IN THE LOBBY OR COFFEE SHOP where you have CCTV cameras
You may be finding yourself forced to spend a lot of money by being in the company of your superiors and indulge in pubs, golfing and high class call girls. Resist. Make excuses and resist until they get the message
No more than 120 ml of Scotch / Rum with 180 ml Club Soda Or Tonic Water Or 3 Tequila Shots at any office party , in fact my son makes the excuse that his liver is weak and avoids any drink entirely
Save around 45% of your paycheck if possible. At least 30%
Don’t ever eat Chickpeas, Beans, Cauliflowers, Kadalai, Sundal for breakfast. If you fart, you become a joke and it’s tough to recover your reputation
Never assume your female colleague who laughs and talks to you likes you romantically. Always ASK if in doubt. Simply ask “Are we friends or could this turn into something more”. Don’t presume.
She Is Against Mandatory Paternity Tests At Birth
This is trending in the United States. Jeeze!
“That woman who said requiring DNA testing would open up a can of worms scared the daylight out of me. Is she suggesting that a whole host of men are providing for children that aren’t theirs and letting this be known would blow up lots of families? What on earth have you women been up to?”
Graham Perry is a UK-based China observer, and wrote a good piece on China/US relations which is worth reading at length:
On the surface things look good in the US; unemployment is low; their economy is growing at 2.4% and inflation is falling. And yet consumer confidence, according to Irwin Stelzer in the Sunday Times, is at its lowest in four months. And Prof Percy Allen – in Pearls and Irritations – concludes that American society is more divided than it has been since its Civil War of the 1860s. “According to a Pew Research poll
about six in ten Republicans and more than half of Democrats have a very unfavourable view of the other party. Thirty years ago, fewer than a quarter in both parties rated the other party badly.”
A recent CNN poll showed almost 70% of Republicans do not accept the electoral legitimacy of the Biden administration. And almost 60% of voters lack confidence that elections in the US today reflect the will of the people.
Other polls by States United Action and Chicago University’s CPOST Research Centre found that over half US voters think elections won’t solve America’s most fundamental political and social problems, and almost half consider political elites, both Democrats and Republicans, are the most immoral and corrupt people in America. The US is fast becoming a dysfunctional nation – and that was before yesterday’s sacking of Speaker McCarthy.
But when it comes to China, Americans unite and rally around the flag. Hatred of China is the one single issue that brings America together.President Biden’s #1 worry
is that China will become the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. Biden has promised to stop that. He has referred to China as “bad people” who when they have problems do “bad things” The demonisation of China has clearly worked. The 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 83% of Americans hold negative views of China. The share who says China is an “enemy” is now 38%. AnIPSOS poll
found one-third of Americans view China as an imminent threat and two in five Americans think that war with China is likely in the next five years.
The US under Bush and Obama held to the view that China’s economic growth and increased prosperity would bring a relaxation of political rhetoric as the number of Chinese middle class citizens increased. Expanding economic rights would lead inevitably to increased political rights and the downgrading of the role of China’s Communist Party. China would become “compliant reasonable and accommodating”. It has not happened. Billionaires may flourish in China (800+ in number) but the Party remains at the apex of power. China has not changed.
Trump heralded a new and antagonistic approach to China when he started a trade war by unilaterally imposing high tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the US. And when that did not work, he resorted to allegations of genocide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang province to try to demonise China in the eyes of the world. But it, too, has not worked. China remains China and continues to be welcomed by the rest of the world in part because of its Belt and Road Initiative – as historian Professor Francis Fukiyama has said “China has lent more than $1 trillion to more than 100 countries through the Initiative, dwarfing Western spending in the developing world and stoking US anxieties about the spread of Beijing’s power and influence”.
Trump’s successor, President Biden increased economic sanctions on China and announced that “he would not allow China’s economy to overtake America’s” even though, as Prof Allen notes, most economists think that this is inevitable given China’s huge population and income gap.
The flashpoint is Taiwan for two reasons. First, China’s long-standing policy to reunify China with Taiwan and, second, as explained in yesterday’s Post #473, the US is worried sick that a confrontation with China could seriously jeopardise the US economy by impeding, even stopping, the export from Taiwan to the US of essential semi-conductors. Within the US hierarchy – the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff – there are those who want to give China “a bloody nose” and fundamentally derail China’s economic growth by military action – the Hawks – before China is way ahead and out of sight. “Act Today Because Tomorrow Is Too Late” is their cry.
There are also Doves who fear hostilities and prefer an uneasy but non-confrontational approach to China. For the Doves, second place to China is preferrable to war with China It is not clear who will win but certainly if the Hawks prevail over the Doves the world will be set on a most dangerous path.
Oliver Anthony- Rich Men North of Richmond (Remix Mashup ft Dax & Jo Tyler)
At Papa John’s Pizza I was getting fed up that they weren’t hiring the sufficient amount of staff to properly run the store. Along with doing bike deliveries I also cashed, took phone calls, entered orders, swept, mopped and emptied garbage. They kept a skeleton staff of 3 workers per shift and whenever they had to pay overtime they grumbled and wanted explanations as to why.
Frustrated and fatigued I applied for Dominos Pizza delivery. This is how snippets of the conversation went during the interview.
Interview Lady: We pay the highest hourly rate of all pizza restaurants. $21 per hour.
Me: Papa John’s paid $20 an hour. This is just a dollar more.
Lady: Yes! The highest rate for delivery riders in the country!
Lady: When you come to the restaurant you’ll be happy to see that you’ll be getting so much deliveries. Endless deliveries!
Me: How much do I get paid per delivery?
Lady: $7 per delivery!
Me: That’s the lowest delivery payment of all the pizza restaurants.
Lady: Yes but you’ll be doing so many deliveries, getting so much tips that it wouldn’t matter.
(I later found out that Dominos charged customers $20 for delivery, the highest delivery charge of all fast food restaurants in the country. They paid the driver $7 out of the $20 charge and the restaurant pocketed the remaining $13 for themselves.)
Me: What are the closing hours?
Lady: 10:30pm.
Me: You mean like only on Fridays and Saturdays?
Lady: No everyday.
Me: Thats a bit late and taxis round here stop working around 8pm. Any transport provided for me to get home?
Lady: No.
Me: Will I be able to use the Domino’s motorcycle to get home? (I was allowed this benefit in a previous restaurant I worked that had this same issue)
Lady: No.
Me: Can I leave earlier then?
Lady: Of course. Due to your transport situation we’ll allow you to leave 10 minutes earlier!
Lady: We are a very flexible organization.
Me: How so? (inwardly groaning, expecting more bullshit)
Lady: We give you the choice to work either as contracted or non-contracted.
Me: What does that mean?
Lady: Contracted means that you work somewhat as a permanent staff. You can work all the overtime hours you want. However overtime would be paid at the usual rate of $21 an hour. No time and a half. The same applies for public holidays.
Non contracted is like temporary staff. We pay the usual time and a half for overtime but as you are non contracted you don’t get overtime hours as we send you home after you’ve made your 40hrs a week. We don’t allow you to work on holidays so you basically get your flat salary every week whereas with a contract you are allowed more hours.
Me: More hours at the same rate?
Lady: Yes.
Me: Wouldn’t that be a lose-lose situation?
Lady: No. It’s a win-win!
Me: Am I entitled to a free meal?
Lady: No.
Me: And the uniform?
Lady: We are the only pizza restaurant that provides free uniforms for staff?
Me: How many uniforms?
Lady: Two free Dominos shirts and a cap. We are having them laundered after being returned by a delivery driver who recently left.
Me: You’re giving me a guy’s used clothes?
No: No. She only used them for two days. They’re practically new.
Me: You’re giving used female clothing?
Lady: It’s a free uniform!
Suffice to say I instantly and humbly returned to Papa John’s and their skeleton staff.
Mystery Cambodia
A nice fun video that takes you to another world. LOL.
It will probably upset some folks, but too bad. This is real life. This guy interviews some prostitutes in Cambodia. If you don’t want the experience then you can pass on this video. It’s ok.
Originally Answered: How can we become a Winner at everything in Life?
What made Muhammed Ali the best Boxer in the world? What made Michael Phelps go above and beyond every time he swam? How come Gandhi made so much more of an impact than anybody else?
None of them were exceptional people since birth.
Sure, there is the claim that Michael Phelps, for example, has double the lung-capacity of most humans, which has been disproven.
And while he does have some physical advantages, like longer arms and shorter legs, while being tall, so does everybody else he is competing against!
What made the difference in their ability was not their born talents but rather the way they approached what they did.
They were willing to work harder and produce more than anyone else was willing to.
They are willing to do whatever it takes, go the extra mile and do more than those around them, which is what eventually gets them to succeed.
I remember reading an article back when Michael Phelps was just getting traction, that talked about how ridiculous his training regiment is and how it was way too intense.
At the time many doctors and health experts argued about his routine.
Today, I cannot find any article even mentioning that he was doing too much anymore.
After about 2 days of looking for that article I gave up.
All articles about him only praise his efforts and his routine; obviously because it worked.
He revolutionized the field.
The same can be said about Mahatma Gandhi, who did something no one else dared to do to make a statement that inspired millions.
And the effort that Muhammad Ali made can be clearly seen by one of his quotes:
I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts.
That’s what makes you A CHAMPION. — Muhammad Ali
Each of them made their entire day about training, sacrificing a lot of their day so they could focus on just that one thing.
And then we wonder why we cannot succeed.
The big question you need to ask yourself is: Are you doing enough?
Are the results showing up in the way you want to? Are you succeeding or do you need to do more?
Now, I cannot give you the exact stats of the men named above, as every page I visited had different numbers they boasted about, most of them disclaiming each other.
So I will instead share my own story and numbers to make this point.
Now I am by no means even close to as great as the men above, but I hope the point still comes across.
I started out as a Writer with a WordPress Blog.
At the beginning, it was just to practice my consistency and I wrote about 300 posts in my first year, yielding a total of 20 followers.
This was very little and so I switched to a site called Quora. In my first 6 months there I wrote about 1,000 posts, averaging 3 a day, before I wrote one answer that went viral.
This was back in 2016. Since then I have averaged about 3 posts a day consistently over the years.
I have been published on The Huffington Post, Time, and many more sites, have over 75,000 followers, 60M content views and get over 1M views a month still, and none of it because I was a good writer!
My very first post that I wrote was a page long block of text that was essentially a Writer’s Nightmare.
The only thing that pushed me through was that no one else wrote that much.
Many people wrote one post a day, if that, some even less.
And let me tell you this, after 18 Months of writing every day, the one viral post did not feel like a stroke of luck anymore, it felt deserved.
The point I want to make here is it is not about where you start or what prerequisites you have.
Winning is not about being better than everybody else.
Winning is about being the last person running in a race where everyone else gave up.
If you want to win you have to break through the noise by either doing more than others are willing to or doing it longer than they want to.
I have seen so many amazing writers leave Quora to never write again because they just did not break through the noise.
Mahatma Gandhi just did not eat, Michael Phelps only swam a lot, and Muhammad Ali trained a bit.
We have all done these things before, they are nothing special when you look at them like that. It’s not like they invented something none of us could ever dream of or did something that was so unbelievable it looked like Magic.
What made them special was the fact that they kept pushing and kept going with it when many people around them gave up or would have given up!
So let me ask you this then: Are you doing anything that stands out?
When you are working out do you do more and take shorter breaks than anyone else? When you are with your partner do you give them more attention and love than they can handle? When you are working at your job, do you work 10x more than any of your colleagues?
Are you doing anything that stands out?
You cannot expect yourself to win by just doing what everyone else is doing.
Sorry, but you are just not that special!
You have to become special by doing something extraordinary, and I mean that in the most literal sense possible:
Extra-Ordinary!
That means you do not overexert yourself.
Don’t expect to be able to train 6–8 hours a day, 7 days a week after having done no training at all.
Take it one step at a time but work yourself up and stay committed to it.
If you have the time and energy, then you can push further faster; it will get easier.
The 3 posts I wrote took anywhere from 3–6 hours a day at first. Now I can often write better posts in 15 minutes.
It does get easier.
Pick something, anything in your life that you wish to win at, and commit yourself to more of that.
Even if it is just an hour a day, if you do it long enough you will become absolutely amazing at it.
Push your limits day by day, even one more minute each day gets you 6 hours more in just one year.
“Let me tell you something you already know.
The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.
It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.
But it ain’t about how hard ya hit.
It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.
That’s how winning is done!” — Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa
Breaking US Sanctions: How Huawei Changed US-China Tech War
Carl Zha talks to tech expert TP Huang about how latest Huawei breakthrough in advanced chip design and manufacturing is a game changer in the US waged tech war and economic war against China. Why ultimately US sanctions on China will fail. The rest of this interview is on my Patreon site
During WW2 there was a company that always submitted excellent paper work, head Quarters noticed this and moved their clerk typist to Headquarters, Battalion noticed him and moved him up to their office, he continued to be so dependable the higher ups wanted him, so eventually he ended up in Eisenhower’s front office.
One day, A hard nosed colonel came in to the office and demanded to see Ike, now. The clerk typist asked him, what does this pertain to? The Colonel started getting loud, said he didn’t need to explain anything to a clerk typist.
Ike came out to see the commotion, the colonel again was indignant.
Ike looked around the waiting room, saw another colonel sitting there, took an eagle pin off that colonel’s collar, and pinned it on the collar of the clerk, and said “ Now tell the colonel what you want”, and returned into his office.
The clerk was a colonel for the duration of his enlistment.
On a daily basis, my team and I would clean toilets, floors, rooms, the kitchen, our rifles, the floor around the barracks, our vests, our magazines and even the dog who lived in the barracks. I hated it.
I truly did not understand why I was spending months of paratrooper training time to clean up places that were spotless, instead of shooting and learning to fight.
And then I experienced my first operation.
My team and I were sent with four vehicles to meet up with a field intelligence unit, and prepare for the operation.
I remember meeting the field intelligence guys. It was the first time in my service meeting men, on duty, serving in a different unit than mine.
Their gear was obviously ill maintained, their vehicles were disgusting and dusty, and I could see the soot on the barrels of their rifles who have obviously not been cleaned in weeks. I wanted to tell their commander he was doing a shit job at maintaining his team’s gear.
And then it struck me.
All that cleaning during training has turned me into a neat freak.
Everything, even now in my apartment, needs to be perfectly placed, spotless and maintained. There are no excuses, and there should be none. An organized living is the basis for an organized life.
The lesson I took from all this epiphany?
There is shit in life you will not want to do, and you might even hate doing it, but truly successful people do the things they do not want to do, as best as they can, because eventually it will pay off in the long run.
China-Japan-South Korea Upcoming Summit: What’s Behind this Surprising Diplomatic Shift??
In a surprising turn of events, China has recently announced its willingness to hold a summit with Japan and South Korea leaders. This unexpected move begs the question: what has prompted this significant change? Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, revealed that the three countries have reached an agreement to convene a meeting of their foreign ministers “in the next few months,” with the intention of facilitating a gathering of leaders as soon as possible. Undoubtedly, this initiative is driven by the collective interests of the three parties involved.
This development comes on the heels of China’s denouncement, in late August, of the statement released at the conclusion of the Camp David summit. The gathering, which brought together the leaders of the US, Japan, and South Korea, raised concerns about transforming the Asia-Pacific region into a geopolitical battleground. However, China’s willingness to engage in dialogue with its neighboring nations demonstrates an intriguing diplomatic shift. Be sure to subscribe to my channel for regular updates on global affairs & geopolitical shifts. Don’t miss out on my in-depth analysis of significant events shaping the world today!
The US is digging for a deeper hole.
As Washington reportedly plans to update its export curbs against China in October, an analysis report by a Dutch media posits that the previous export curbs imposed a year ago exposed the Biden Administration seem to have no clear idea of their objectives.
According to Dutch media Bits&Chips, the semiconductor restrictions against China are likely a product of the US struggle between hawks and doves concerning the China issue, leading to loopholes and a lack of clear goals.
To consider the interests of US-based semiconductor equipment and material suppliers, the US government allows the delivery of equipment that may be used to make advanced chips, highlighting the incompleteness and inconsistency of the curbs.
The US Bureau of Industry and Security set a threshold that requires exporters to get a license before shipping to China for equipment that can make logic chips with FinFET or GAAFET architecture of 16/14nm or below. However, the current export controls are insufficient if US export controls aim to deny China’s production capabilities of 14nm and below.
On the other hand, the US may not achieve its intended results if it aims to prevent China’s progress in the semiconductor industry, as demonstrated by Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro, which highlights the fact that China can make advanced chips without advanced equipment.
Huawei has obtained crucial patents on 6G technology, which may allow the Chinese company to thrive in the 6G era, according to Simon Chen, chairman of Adata Technology.
A green Toyota Celica drove into the customers’ parking space and a man alighted and walked into the store.
He was a first-time caller.
He was supporting his trousers with his hands.
‘Please I just need a belt. My belt snapped in the car, and I live far away from here. I am late for work and I don’t have money on me now. Can you trust me, I will bring the money at the close of work today’.
O My God!
First business of the day!
A man I never knew?
And here in this country, Nigeria?
‘Give him, he looks genuine. Could as well happen to you!’, one side of the brain was preaching.
‘Don’t!! Could be one of them. You’ll lose if you do!!’, the other side was screaming and countering.
‘Why can’t we live in a world where we can trust people and help them without fear?’, I was trying to make sense of this mental back-and-forth.
I gave him a very good quality belt, made the necessary perforations and he thanked me profusely and left.
5:06 pm:
The green Toyota Celica pulled up.
It was him.
To make good his promise.
Why isn’t life just this good!
Today, many years after that day, he no longer works around the area or passes through the route daily, but for such a small thing, he is one of my most valuable customers and has repaid the trust many, many times over.
Texas Jambalaya
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced green bell pepper
1/2 cup diced celery
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped garlic
1 cup converted rice, uncooked
4 ounces smoked sausage, cut into 1/4 inch slices
4 ounces ham, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cans Ro*Tel diced tomatoes and green chiles
1 cup chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
2 cans Ranch Style Texas beans, undrained
Instructions
In a 5 quart saucepot over medium-high heat, heat oil.
Add onion, green pepper and celery; cook until onions are translucent.
Add garlic, cook 1 minute longer.
Add rice, sausage and ham. Cook 2 to 3 minutes to coat rice with oil, stirring frequently.
Add next 4 ingredients and heat to boiling.
Cover and steam 20 to 25 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.
Remove bay leaf, stir in beans and serve.
The Exhausted and Unable to Survive, the Cat was Thrown Out on the Grass to Die
On the 1st of October, 331 B.C.E., the Persian king Darius III finally had that Macedonian pest Alexander the Great right where he wanted him – on a big flat plain where Darius could make full use of his cavalry and 2–1 numerical advantage against the Greek upstart.
The location was Gaugamela in what’s now northern Iraq. For the past three years Alexander had been making Darius’s life a living hell but it was payback time.
At the head of Darius’s forces were 200 heavy chariots. The plan was, as usual, to unleash these monsters running at full speed into the Greek infantry lines. The weather was good, the field was dry – perfect conditions for slaughtering the Greeks and sending them all the way back to the Aegean.
Things…. didn’t work out. As with any battle that took place 3,300 years ago there were different stories about what happened. The only things we know for sure are:
Alexander’s forces killed or captured most of the Persian army at a loss of no more than 1,500 troops; and
The chariots turned out to be entirely useless.
Alexander knew the problem posed by the chariots and was ready for them. He drilled his men to fall back into pockets that would allow the chariot to penetrate the line, only to be met by infantrymen with their spears jammed into the ground pointing directly at the pocket.
What would happen is the horses, running at full speed, would run into the pocket but, facing the spears, would stop suddenly. The charioteers would find themselves surrounded on three sides and no way forward, and horses and chariots don’t reverse easily. As you can see, the chariots mostly went through the gap in the Macedonian line, only to find Alexander leading a cavalry charge back at the gap that wiped them out entirely.
The tactic remained a military favourite against horse soldiers for most of the next 1,800 years.
When the tactic was revived in the 15th century, it similarly made knights on horseback pretty much obsolete.
After Gaugumela, Alexander’s tactics were similarly widely adopted and the use of chariots started to tail off as they became ineffective and easy to lose.
Rich Men North Of Richmond, but it’s a Rap Type Beat
Made a beat to the song everyones talking about rn – Rich Men North Of Richmond by Oliver Anthony. Had a lot of fun with this one, went from idea to finished product in a day. The song isn’t set to a bpm so forgive me for parts that are off time, it was tough putting it all in time. Also shoutout to @TimGuitarLessons I used his audio in some parts.
As you get older, you realize that people who lie constantly have some kind of mental problem. It might be a habit; a neurosis, or a DMS-4 illness. But they are not “right in the head”. Something (not saying what it is) is wrong.
Fully functioning adults do not need to lie. They say things as they are. If they don;t want to answer a question, they say so. They have self-confidence, pride and a sense of self-worth.
…
When I first came to China I started to compare my life as an American, to that of China.
And, as such, I quickly realized that SOMETHING was seriously, very seriously wrong with the United States.
The best way for me to describe this is to imagine that you are married to a mentally ill person. (I was, by the way. My first wife was schizo-effective; which had the worst qualities of bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia). Then you get divorced, and meet up with a healthy person.
It was like that.
…
I am in China. It is a healthy nation. It is calm and peaceful. The leadership works towards allowing people freedom and happiness, and it shows.
When I was in the United States, however, everything was a struggle. One problem after the other. And today, it’s only getting worse.
…
Why do I defend China?
Because a mentally ill nation is attacking it using every single DSM-4 technique in the book.
My girlfriend was to remove the patient’s prostate through a so-called radicalprostatectomy. It was Wednesday morning, a couple of weeks ago.
And Wednesdays can be tough.
A typical Wednesday typically includes brutally waking up very early, getting ready, driving to the hospital, and starting the first scheduled surgery at 8AM sharp. Usually a number of operations are planned, depending on the time they take, and urgency.
The afternoon typically consists of a large number of consultations.
After consulting, she usually drives to her father’s house (which is pretty far away from the hospital), because our daughter will be there, but before leaving the hospital, she always visits the patients who had surgery in the morning to have a little chat about the operation, about how the patient is feeling, and about everyday stuff.
When she was back home, we fetched a drink and talked about our day (“what a day, what a day, what a day”), and watched some TV before dinner.
Suddenly she shouted:
“I forgot to see my patient !!”
The prostate man. In all the Wednesday hubbub, she had totally forgotten about the patient, and driven out of the hospital with other things on her mind. She immediately called the hospital and asked a nurse to tell the patient that she would visit him first thing next morning — promised !
The poor man had been a bit worried, thinking that something was wrong, that the cancer was worse than she had expected, and that this was the reason why she did not come.
But next morning, when the doctor was in the house again, he was a happy man. The operation went as planned, and the cancer would be gone now.
Just because China puts up with US bullying doesn’t mean China has to put up with the same shit from a much weaker nation. In fact, Germany is seen kind of like a joke nowadays by the Chinese public, politically, due to it staying silent on NATO blowing up its Nord stream pipeline, and this public sentiment limits how much compromise the Chinese government can have with Germany. Instead of sitting idle and just take the unfair abuse on what’s now pride of Chinese companies for Huawei’s standing up to the US, China would more likely set Germany up as an example in the Chinese philosophy of “kill the chicken to scare the monkeys”.
I can see China starting by reacting proportionately with banning of Siemens from some operations inside China, as well as making life miserable for German cars, which are extremely dependant on China as their largest market worldwide and their factory as well since energy prices drove up costs in Europe, but China being China, it would reserve the stronger responses in hopes of descalation, and would only apply them if Germany escalates things further.
Things are going very, VERY, wrong; Netanyahu Tells Israelis to “Leave Egypt”
Things in the Hamas-Israel fight are going very much wrong for Israel. This afternoon, The US ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier Strike Group to move into the eastern Mediterranean Sea to be closer to Israel. This signals ALL the players that the US is moving-in to get involved militarily. The Players are NOT backing away.
Hamas: Moving the American aircraft carrier does not scare us, and the American administration must realize the consequences of this step.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office calls on Israelis to leave Egypt ‘as soon as possible.’ This is a HUGE . . . no . . . . GIGANTIC . . . flashing RED sign.
Egypt was the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel, and depending upon what course Israel pursues in Gaza (i.e. possible Ground Invasion) that peace with Egypt may now be in very real jeopardy.
The Palestinian President Mohammed Abbas, who was safely away in Jordan, is now leaving Jordan and heading into Syria.
In earlier reporting, I mentioned Intelligence info that Palestinians in Israel got word to their allies elsewhere to be ready to turn up the heat on Europe if Israel engages in a ground war. Now, we see they also got word to their pals in New York City, where, this afternoon, supporters of the Palestinians and supporters of Israel faced each other in Times Square. Chanting . . . for now . . . .
American Middle Class Is the New Poor | Renters Are Out of Options
Working and homeless! The new slogan. It’s not always drug addiction that leads to this. We NEED to stop this stereotype. Cost of living, especially rent is far outpacing wages which are not even remotely keeping up.. For people with no roommates or family to move in with and not making more than 75K, it’s rough out there.
I most especially like the large shady kinds. As a boy in the 1960’s I used to climb them, and hike through the woods as my adventures would take me.
With each and every event, the trees made my life magical.
The earth was rich and moist, and the air was cooler, with the sounds of the swishing of the leaves from the slightest breeze.
When I moved to Indiana, I noticed that people there did not appreciate the trees at all.
Entire forests were cut down and replaced by either flat farmland or parking lots. And Indiana was a most boring place.
Let me tell you.
When you all have a moment, take the time to stroll in a local woods. Spend the day. Take in the scents. Feel the moist earth. And listen to the birds.
I was night manager of a large resort hotel. We had a spate of thefts. People weren’t locking their doors, and the thieves would walk up the hall trying door knobs. If the door opened, they took a few steps into the room and took what they could quickly find. A lot of guys left they wallets on top of the TV, so that’s what most often got stolen.
The couple were caught, it was a 17 year old girl and a 19 year old guy. The girl turned 18 before the trial, so her juvenile record was sealed. She looked pretty punk when she was arrested (this was in the 80s). She showed up in court wearing a tasteful black dress and looked very proper.
They were both found guilty. The judge said the girl looked like she was “well bred and just got caught up with the wrong people”, and sentenced her to time served. The guy got 12 years.
After the trial, one of the victims told me he worked for the court system and saw her record before it was sealed. She had all sorts of crimes going back to when she was 12. The guy had one arrest. It was unfair, to say the least.
Rio Grande Valley Pink Grapefruit Pie
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
4 medium to large pink or red grapefruit
1 cup granulated sugar
1 3/4 cups water or strained grapefruit juice
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 (3 ounce) box strawberry gelatin
1 (8 or 9 inch) pie crust, baked
1 cup whipping cream, whipped
Instructions
Peel grapefruit, separate sections* and remove from membranes. Place sections in a strainer over a bowl overnight.
Cook sugar, juice, cornstarch and salt until thick and clear.
Add gelatin and stir until dissolved.
Brush gelatin mixture over pie crust.
Chill gelatin mixture and crust.
When gelatin starts to thicken, add grapefruit sections.
Pour into pie crust and chill until set.
Top with whipped cream.
Notes
The grapefruit should be sectioned lengthwise. By slicing the ends off, the fruit can be set flat on the cutting board to make it easier to slice the rind off lengthwise. Use a small, sharp knife to then remove the sections from the membranes.
Oh I let them know I noticed, when I quit. I worked for a Spokane based home healthcare service. I’d been in hospice for a long time and the additional licence for this job was stupid easy. That should have been a clue.
This company has a jaw-dropping philosophy: they provide the barest minimum of service possible without getting sued. That’s it. They don’t give a damn about their clients. I actually offered to give a course in wheelchair safety because OVER AND OVER I’d hear about clients getting dumped on the floor by untrained caregivers. I’ve never dropped a client. Not in 13 years! I was told to “mind my own business.”
The absolute final straw was when I reported bedbugs in a home that had been treated just a few months before. The other two caregivers SWORE there were no bugs. My supervisor told me an exterminator had checked on my day off.
So I came to work that morning and went to make the bed. And it was ALIVE. And when I called the exterminator he said he hadn’t been contacted. So…my employer lied, and broke the law. I sent about 5 minutes of film to dispatch. Live bedbugs. Dead bedbugs. Bedbug and mouse poop. I told them I was reporting them. Well, that got their attention and a state case manager was there in 15 minutes. They got turned in. They got SUED. No job is worth the risk of contaminating my own home or carrying bugs to another client’s home! I’ve never, ever had an employer that literally didn’t care if the clients lived or died. In this case, the clients family had signed her very nice home over to the state to pay for her care. It’s heartbreaking! The state actually wants these elderly clients dead.
Cost have risen so high that labor intensive goods below a certain value are increasingly non-viable in a a growing majority of China’s industrial regions.
The most critical problem of cost, though, is the enforced step change in the price of Chinese exports.
The two biggest factors in the past decade have been the reverse Plaza accord, and Donald the Orange’s illegal blanket tariffs.
The reverse Plaza accord was kicked off by the devaluation of the yen in 2013/14. A top-3 global currency was given the political mandate to devalue 100% in a single decade, pulling most of the third world along, making the yuan more than double against most third world peers this century.
China was singled out as a currency manipulator and threatened with designation to force the PBOC to keep the yuan up.
We live in odd times today. The JPY is a mover and shaker in the immense global derivatives market, but a 100% devaluation has been consistently ignored over the past decade. A 10% devaluation of the yuan, which doesn’t even show up in BIS reports, is exaggerated as a meltdown that will bring the rest of the global market along for the “china collapse”.
Note that the yuan will have to trade north of 14 to the dollar to mirror the yen’s decade-long move from 76 to 150 today.
These conditions created by the first world have sent shock waves rippling through margins and prices of Chinese exports.
Instead of climbing a gentle slope, the Chinese have had to struggle up a steep staircase, due to the speed of the enforced change.
But the biggest driver of long-term change in China is the replacement labor. In the 2000s, less than 10m students took the Gaokao. Today, that number is hitting 13m from a smaller cohort. There are fewer factory workers to go around, and the only answer is automation, and moving up the productivity ladder.
Take footwear. China competes on speed and quality, because there are entire shoe manufacturing ecosystems concentrated geographically that can turn idea into product within mere hours/days. Chinese speed underpins the success of Temu and Shein, which has redefined the fashion shopping experience by affording quality at the very forefront of trends.
In a nutshell, the jobs that cannot be automated away will have to eventually leave China, and the belt and road will be a big enabler. There are Chinese-run business parks in Pakistan, Laos, Vietnam and elsewhere, all enabled by infrastructure that didn’t exist before the Chinese came calling.
China will continue supplying the components, and as skills improve overseas, the lower-margin component lines will also be transferred.
My husband and I were living in an apartment but when we found out that I was pregnant we had to move, our landlord didn’t allow children (it was legal at that time and place). We looked for another place to live and found a lovely little cottage in a small village about 20 minutes out of town.
The day after we moved in, our neighbour to the right knocked on the door holding a plate of baked goods, she didn’t linger, just welcomed me to the village and gave me the goodies. Living there for the next few years, they became the best neighbours I’d ever had. They reminded me of The Waltons, so wholesome, cheerful and friendly. Two of their boys often came over to cut the lawns, shovel snow or to babysit. I’d stop by for visits and we’d share fruit from our trees to make pies and fruit salad.
My neighbour to the left side was a younger couple with small children, so when my daughter was a toddler she played with their children while their mom and I sat and enjoyed a chat and a cuppa.
The entire village seemed to be equally as kind and helpful. At the grocery store they packed my bags and delivered them for me, no charge. The local Ford dealership often fixed my car for no charge or just the cost of parts, and the local jeweler owned several homes that he rented out for low rent. Our landlady was a young woman who’d inherited the cottage, but she was happy living with her mother who worked at the post office, each of them were always pleasant. Generally the entire town looked out for each other. It was nothing like I’d experienced before, having come from an urban area and never lived in the country.
I doubt that it’s still the same, it’s been over 30 years, developers did their thing and it’s no longer a quiet little village. The grocery store has bars up the windows, the Ford dealership is a used car lot now, and the jeweler is probably no longer with us, but it was a very good time in my life that I still think about once in a while.
GERMANY Beg CHINA For Money As They Resume Economic Trade!
Germany should apologies to China and offer tea and stay sorry to China.
Let’s start answering this question by addressing the “elephant in the room”.
If you read any Western press, you will be aware of the “common expectations” of what a war with China, and what it would entail. These are clearly explained in policy papers and popular media. The strongest promoters of this narrative is the legacy media to include Yahoo, CNN, BBC, FOX, ABC, MSNBC and all of Australian and Indian “news” media.
This is a “seeded” and intentionally promoted narrative, and no deviance is permitted on this script. This the narrative popularized by NEOCON publications, the United States Congress, and legacy media such as Forbes, Bloomberg, New York Times, etc.
It is a CIA / NSA / NED narrative concocted out of Langley, Va.
[CIA / NED Narrative]
China continues it’s “provocations”.
And “invasion” of Taiwan occurs.
The USA, through it’s proxy nations, intervene.
Chinese advantage is ONLY with numbers and proximity. And thus the PLA run like cowards to the massive military might of the combined Allied forces.
China does not have the ability to innovate, and are novices in fighting. They fall into the “new Verdun” that the United States constructed. The Chinese leadership is also swamped by plagues, famines, and internal revolts that suddenly cropped-out out of nowhere.
A long, drawn-out war ensues.
It will be limited to the South China Sea, and Taiwan.
All trade with China stops. All BRI are interrupted, and Naval blockades are complete.
It’s World War I all over again, only inside of Chinese territory.
China will pour weapons and men and material into those designated war-zones, and the Allies will do the same from their staging locations in Japan, The Philippines, Australia and South Korea.
Eventually, after a few decades, China backs down and surrenders.
The Chinese people, tired of their pathetic lives, revolt and topple the CCP.
Peace overwhelms the planet and everyone enjoys democracy and freedom under the brilliant leadership of the President of the Untied States.
Sound familiar. It should.
And only an ABSOLUTE IGNORAMUS would actually believe it. Because it relies on a plethora of lies, distortions, falsehoods, in order to arrange and fabricate a narrative that many WISH and HOPE to occur.
That is exactly how propaganda works; it tells lies that you WANT to believe.
…
But, you all know, it’s not really “rocket science”. This scenario has already been “gamed out”. At least the early stages. The United States has been following the well-worn, tired and true playbook for decades…
The United States initiates a provocation.
China refuses to act on it.
The United States the stages a “false flag” event, supported with a media barrage.
China reacts militarily and destroys all belligerents in the area.
What happens next depends on numerous factors, but I will break it down in really simplistic categories.
[Planned Response]
This is pretty-much a rehash of the earlier CIA plans.
This is what the Straussian NEOCON psychopaths want. This is their objective.
The United States now has the excuse for a war with China.
As a result, it starts blowing up Chinese cities, ships and assets. The plan is for overwhelming superiority in aircraft and missiles from numerous nations, Naval vessels, and bases.
The plan is for a victory over China, and the assumption that China would be incapable of fighting back in any positive way.
Now, this is where the NEOCON plans go “off the rails”.
Instead of fighting a conventional war, on American terms, to an American defined timeline, and on Chinese soil, using the well-worn war-playbook, China does something different, and unexpected.
I argue (it doesn’t take too much effort, either) that China would…
China and Russia work together lob hyper-sonic nuclear weapons at key cities and infrastructure in the United States directly. This is done at the same time as China is attacking the invading forces and their staging centers.
Most of the United States population centers, as well as those of the proxy nations, are erased from the face of the globe. New York gone. Los Angles and Silicon Valley; gone. Virginia… all of it…gone.
The dinged-up USA responds with nuclear weapons.
The Chinese shoots most of them down with their laser umbrella.
But even with a hand full of American detonations, the Earth experiences a global catastrophe. North America and Europe, as well as Japan, South Korea, and Australia are radioactive wastelands.
[The USA backs down]
This scenario describes the highest probability event cycle.
This concept of withdrawal is unheard of in the United States and Western media, but historically, this is almost ALWAYS the case. This is the Afghanistan, the Vietnam, the Korean War event scenario. Thus, this is a higher probability of occurrence than what one might otherwise think.
The USA performs a politically motivated war plan. While technically well-gamed out, political considerations force erroneous assumptions.
The plan goes to shit early on. FUBAR occurs, and the entire backbone of the plan collapses.
A period of aggressive losses in manpower and material occur, and Washington disengages from the battlefield(s) under some context.
The American and Western media praise the “Great American Win”.
But the impact of very bad Geo-political decisions ignite a “ticking time-bomb” internally.
American domestic opinion turn against the administration.
A nation-wide American civil war breaks out.
It is a catastrophe for the West, and aligned nations all experience internal violence. Japan, Europe, Australia and South Korea suffer massive changes at all levels.
[USA first strike]
This is the great concern, of the “Global South”; the rest of the world outside the G7 led by the United States. But, personally, I really do not see this ever happening. The American military will not allow it.
The USA launches MAD in the belief that China will stand down. Full spectrum war is unleashed, but unlike the earlier scenario, this one engages nuclear weapons from the start.
The SLBM’s and ICBM’s start flying
The Chinese shoots most of them down with their laser umbrella.
But severe damage still occurs inside of China.
China and Russia launch nuclear weapons at the entirety of the West.
Most of the United States population centers, as well as those of the proxy nations, are erased from the face of the globe. Europe is no longer a population region. The United States glows at night.
The, being leaderless, under the control of “the deep state” and rudderless, the United States continues to engage the world in a nuclear war on auto-pilot.
It is a global catastrophe.
[USA Sanctions China & interrupts shipping]
This is the “China Lite” version of war that is debated within the NEOCON publications and talks. I can confirm that this has a great deal of support as a “war on China” option in Washington DC.
The USA decides to implement sanctions (Russian style) against China, and also starts sinking ships. American piracy, and shipping losses enter billions of dollars in losses.
China readies it’s long-planned counter-actions. And they are BRUTAL.
A period of time passes, while the United States, and it’s proxies tries to ignite a “cold war II” fuze.
The Western media is on a full-war gallop…
The American led provocations are numerous, and dangerous. China continues to avoid all of them.
So far, it appears that this is on-going right now. Which makes this scenario the most worrisome.
Then, during a point in time when all the American “leadership is in one place”, such as during an election, or government event, China launches hyper-sonic nuclear weapons at major American cites. The idea being to completely unleash maximum damage in a very short amount of time.
America is erased from the surface of the planet. There simply isn’t any American government left.
The USA auto-retaliates with a MAD nuclear response.
The Chinese shoots most of them down with their laser umbrella.
But even with a hand full of American detonations, the Earth experiences a global catastrophe. But, the USA is the most destroyed nation on the planet.
…
It is a lose-lose in every scenario.
No one wins.
How ANYONE can advocate World War 3 clearly shows how idiotic, moronic, and deranged the Western “leadership” actually is.
How anyone can think otherwise is amazing to me.
There is absolutely NO SCENARIO where the world becomes a better place. Instead, it becomes HELL, and most people DIE.
…
At this point in time I want to address some misconceptions.
One of the greatest is accepting American anti-China propaganda as truth. It’s insidious, and everywhere. If you get any information about China, make SURE that it is from CHINESE sources in CHINESE. Otherwise you are regurgitating CIA propaganda and disinformation.
As a (now deleted) troll said “China only has 300 nuclear warheads, while the USA has over 6000”.
Oh, really?
And, “China is unable to make more because of <insert technical jargon here>”.
China can build two (x2) 6,000 bed hospitals in ten days.
China can build a 62 story skyscraper in two days.
China can design, manufacture and produce cutting edge IC chips, complete with it’s own OS, operating system, and includes satellite comm ability in four years.
China can lock down an entire nation of 1.6 billion people, with only 5000 deaths…
But it cannot make nuclear bombs.
Uh huh.
Sure. What ever you say.
(Eye roll.)
…
Drinking the American propaganda is dangerous as it is in everything. In fact, nothing is left untouched. Those in the upper (the very top) know its all a lie, but have succumbed to their own hubris; the believe their own lies. Oh man. That is dangerous.
So I have to ask…
How do you know that the United States has 6000 nuclear bombs?
Well it said so in an American report, and in American publications.
How do you know that the USA did not blow up Nordstom 1 & 2 pipelines?
Well, it is investigating the issue. American and Western publications say so.
How do you know that the Apollo moon landing program put men walking on the moon?
Well, NASA filmed the guys doing it, and the American government verified it happened.
It is not that EVERYTHING that the United States says is a lie. It’s just that most are distorted truths… approaching the laughable.
How do you know that America is recovering from the “disastrous Trump administration” and inflation is only a mere 3% today?
Well, the American government announced the latest inflation figures.
Crazy huh?
…
The world is spiraling all out of control, all because a group of psychopathic nihilistic narcissists with delusions of ultimate power. And they all are in a circle-jerk believing their very own lie-machine.
What will happen?
No one actually knows, but we do know this;
In 1995, the CIA remote viewed the year 2025. They remote viewed the world 35 years into the future.
You might not believe in “remote viewing”, or the CIA. But you have to admit, that there is no way, that in 1995 anyone would be able to predict the world we live in today.
The predictions are uncanny.
And, if you think that the future is not going to unfold this way, then you are delusional.
VOA tried to sabotage Indonesia’s new high speed rail opening
Indonesia’s brand new, China-built and financed high speed railway officially opened to the public yesterday, with most Western media being surprisingly fair in their reports. Voice of America didn’t get the memo, apparently, and ran with a story using their typical, blatant misinformation, posting a picture of an old train directly under their headline. I rode the brand new train during a test run about ten days ago and will share some of my experience with you today, including a chat with a local reporter.
What Is Third Wave Coffee?
Coffee has undergone several major transformations in the past century, commonly referred to as “waves” that denote shifts in how coffee is produced, processed, and consumed. Here’s an overview of the progression of coffee waves.
First Wave Coffee: Accessibility and Mass Production
The first wave of coffee began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This era was characterized by the mass production and widespread accessibility of coffee.
Brands like Folgers and Maxwell House emerged, making coffee a staple in households across the U.S. and beyond.
The beans were often robusta, chosen for their yield and price point rather than quality and flavor. Brewing methods were basic, with drip coffee makers and percolators commonplace.
Espresso drinks like cappuccinos were rare outside of Italian immigrant communities. Overall, coffee was viewed as a commodity rather than a specialty product.
Key Features of the First Wave:
Instant Coffee: The invention of instant coffee made it easier for people to prepare and consume the beverage.
Branding: Major companies began advertising campaigns, making coffee a household name.
Consistency: The focus was on producing a consistent taste, often at the expense of quality and flavor nuances.
Second Wave Coffee: The Rise of the Coffee Shop Culture
The second wave, which began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, saw the rise of coffee shops and espresso drinks. Brands like Starbucks, Peet’s, and Costa Coffee played pivotal roles in popularizing this wave.
Beans were sourced from specific regions and often single origin. Roasts were lighter to preserve the distinct flavors of bean varietals.
The emphasis was on taste and freshness. While speciality coffee chains drove the second wave, independent cafes also popped up throughout the US and helped fuel coffee connoisseur culture.
Key Features of the Second Wave:
Espresso-Based Drinks: Lattes, cappuccinos, and mochas became popular choices.
Coffee Shop Culture: Coffee shops became social hubs, places for meetings, work, and relaxation.
Variety: Consumers started to become more aware of different coffee beans, origins, and roast levels.
Third Wave Coffee: Appreciation of the Art and Science
The third wave of coffee emerged in the early 2000s and continues today. This wave strives to produce the absolute highest quality coffee through control of the full production process from crop to cup.
There is an emphasis on direct trade, single origin beans, lighter roasts, and freshness. Brewing methods highlight the distinctive qualities of each bean, with pour over, cold brew, and microbatch espresso common.
The barista is viewed as a skilled artisan. Innovative coffee shops focus on the total coffee experience – the aroma, taste, feel.
There is also transparency about sourcing and farming practices. Third wave coffee is complex, nuanced, and treated more like wine or craft beer than a mere commodity.
Key Features of the Third Wave:
Direct Trade: Coffee roasters and shops often build direct relationships with coffee farmers, ensuring fair prices and sustainable practices.
Specialty Coffee: There’s a focus on high-quality beans, often graded 80 points or above on the Specialty Coffee Association’s scale.
Brewing Techniques: Methods like pour-over, siphon, and cold brew highlight the unique flavors of each coffee bean.
Traceability: Consumers can often trace the coffee’s journey from the farm to the cup, understanding its origin, variety, and processing method.
Fourth Wave Coffee?
Some speculate that a fourth wave of coffee is emerging, focused on sustainability and fair treatment of coffee farmers and workers.
But others argue the industry is still deep in the third wave, working to perfect coffee quality and the consumer experience.
Whether the fourth wave coalesces remains to be seen. For now, the focus is squarely on continuing to improve coffee quality.
Potential Features of the Fourth Wave:
Technology: From blockchain for traceability to apps that connect farmers and consumers, technology plays a central role.
Sustainability: There’s an even stronger emphasis on eco-friendly practices, from farming to packaging.
Education: Consumers are not just passive drinkers; they’re educated about every aspect of coffee production and preparation.
The progression of coffee waves shows an increasing appreciation of coffee as a complex food product requiring care and craftsmanship.
What began as a commoditized morning drink is now regarded as an artisanal product that brings nuanced flavor, community, and connection.
The future of specialty coffee promises even more dedication to the bean, the farmers, and the drinkers who savor every sip.
Ukraine SitRep: Bad Demographics – End of Support
Via a Responsible Statecraftpiece I came onto a EU study that tried to predict the future demographics of Ukraine’s population.
The study is from early 2022 and is based on Ukrainian casualty numbers from only the very first month of the war. Their worst case scenario was this:
Our third and fourth scenarios assume that the war will continue for a month or longer so that further casualties and refugees are expected. We assume the following casualties: 5,000 deaths among soldiers and 1,500 civilian deaths based on the current trends. There will be 5 million refugees, which is an estimate by UNHCR (UNHCR 2022a)
The real refugee numbers are twice as high and the casualty numbers, wounded and dead, are of course about 100 times higher than the study assumed. It was thus not worth the money that had been spend on it.
Still, some graphs in it are usable.
Yesterday I shortly discussed the op-ed by the former British Minister of Defense Ben Wallace in which he asserts:
The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40.
He then urges the Ukrainian government to throw more young men into the meat grinder.
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.
Unfortunately the real situation is worse then I had thought.
The ‘age pyramid’ in Ukraine isn’t a pyramid. In 2020 there was a huge lack of 15 to 20 years old people. They were simply not there. They never existed. The number of newborns around 2000 must have been horribly low.
The reason for that was likely the serious downturn of Ukraine’s economy after it had separated itself from the Soviet Union.
It took a decade long severe recession for Ukraine to find a bottom for its economy. Bad economic times and low expectations of betterment had influenced the desire of its people to procreate. Two more downturns followed during the global recession around 2008 and due to the 2014 Maidan coup and the civil war following it.
Thus when the war started there were only half as many people of 20 year age than 40 year old ones. It is no wonder then that few of younger age are seen at the front line.
There is still one measure Ukraine might take to increase the numbers of young soldiers. There currently are exemptions from mobilization for those who study at a university. If Ukraine would draft these if could probably find a few ten-thousand additional soldiers. But it would also strip itself of its future elite.
The already bad demographic prediction some 20 years out would then look even worse than they currently do.
Early this year Ukraine’s birthrate had hit a new low:
To keep a population steady, research shows it’s necessary to have an average of about 2.1 babies per family — known as a replacement rate. In Ukraine, fertility rates have remained under that threshold since 1990. Over the last two decades, the rate has often dropped below what experts call a “very low” fertility rate of 1.3, when a population begins to shrink at an ever increasing rate. In January 2021, a year before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the fertility rate was 1.16, according to national statistics.
Birthrates in Ukraine have fallen by 28% in the first half of 2023, compared to the same period prior to the war, marking the most significant drop since Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sept. 25. … Due to the ongoing war, millions of Ukrainian women with children were forced to leave the country, while men aged 18 to 60 were prohibited from leaving. As a result, many couples were physically separated, while others delayed starting families, the report says.
In the first half of 2023, there were 96,755 children born in Ukraine. Since 2013, the country’s fertility rate has been dropping by approximately 7% per year.
The population of Ukraine will shrink further. In 1990 Ukraine had a population of more than 50 million people. Twenty years from now the country will have less than maybe 25 million inhabitants. This even if all refugees return. A large if that this is unlikely to happen.
As Russia has become more bloodyminded, Ukraine’s allies seem caught in their own conflicting boundary conditions. There is no willingness to mobilize to defend Ukraine. There isn’t even a serious effort to ramp up military production to an adequate level to match, let alone surpass, Russia’s output.
And that’s before getting to the fact that Ukraine as a county has become a very costly ward of all its backers.
Yesterday a meeting of the EU’s foreign ministers on further military assistance for Ukraine ended without results (machine translation):
The foreign ministers of the EU countries at today’s summit in Kiev could not agree on the allocation of military assistance to Ukraine in the amount of 5 billion euros for 2024.
This was announced at a press conference following the event by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrel.
The EU’s budget for 2023 was €168.6 billion. €5 billion are peanuts but the EU countries could not unite over it. The senseless generosity has reached the end of the possible.
Earlier, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrel said that the cessation of military support for Kiev from the West will lead to a quick end to the conflict in Ukraine, but as a result, the country will lose its independence.
Look at the demographics and economics above and ask yourself what 30 years of ‘independence’ have done for Ukraine.
To end it could well be the best that could ever happen to it. Unfortunately for it Russia is unlikely to step in and to subsidize its further existence.
Posted by b on October 3, 2023 at 13:30 UTC | Permalink
Something TERRIBLE is happening to me right now!
We are all in the same situation, Tucker is just the FIRST. The agencies will get away with this because CONGRESS won’t stop it.
U.S. CONGRESSMAN: ” . . . IF WE’RE GONNA LOSE THE DOLLAR . . . “
Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) speaking about the growing BRICS nations engaging in “de-dollarization,” Gaetz told reporters “. . . if we’re going to lose the dollar . . . .”
Does Gaetz already KNOW the Dollar is doomed?
Here is the one minute, fifty second clip, so all of you have context of the Congressman’s remarks:
This off-the-cuff remark by Congressman Gaetz made me sick to my stomach when I heard it. In __my__ view, this validates ALL the reporting I have been doing on this web site and on my radio show, telling my readers and listeners the US Dollar is collapsing and will be rejected by nations around the world as a means of trade.
That would utterly cripple the United States since we don’t manufacture mcuh of anything here anymore; we import most of it from other countries.
If those countries stop accepting the US dollar in trade, how will WE get what WE need?
Stock-up, folks. Food, clothing, medicines, etc.
Get what you need NOW, while it still can be gotten.
If this collapse takes place, I suspect it will happen like a lightning bolt out of the blue.
No advance warning before it all goes to hell.
Don’t let the US fool you: China is AWESOME!
“For a person who have been to China multiple times, I absolutely love and envy China. It’s absolutely a big disappointment when I return to India and hear all the negative news about China. Chinese people absolutely love Indian people and we instead are preaching hatred towards them. It’s a very very sad affair. Even my children are asking why we are always saying bad things about China all the time. They went to China with me too. I can’t answer them. What can I say? ….India afterall is my country and we are supposed to hate China.”
Israel Confesses War Crime
No, not really. Israel did not confess war crimes. It never does. It proudly announced that it will now commit a war crime:
Israel’s defence minister described Palestinians as “human animals” and vowed to “act accordingly,” as fighter jets unleashed a massive bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip.
Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, an area of about 365 square km, and home to 2.3 million Palestinians, which has been under an Israeli-led blockade since 2007.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he added.
The Israeli air force has dropped 2,000 munitions and more than 1,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza in the last 20 hours, the army said on Monday morning, having shelled 20 high-rise residential buildings, mosques, hospitals, banks and other civilian infrastructure.
Israel military spokesman Daniel Hagari said that the army drops hundreds of tons of bombs in attacks in the Gaza Strip, and —— “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” — Haaretz
… On Saturday they were already talking about wiping out entire neighborhoods in Gaza, about occupying the Strip and punishing Gaza “as it has never been punished before.” But Israel hasn’t stopped punishing Gaza since 1948, not for a moment.
After 75 years of abuse, the worse possible scenario awaits it once again. The threats of “flattening Gaza” prove only one thing: We haven’t learned a thing. The arrogance is here to stay, even though Israel is paying a high price once again.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears very great responsibility for what happened, and he must pay the price, but it didn’t start with him and it won’t end after he goes. We now have to cry bitterly for the Israeli victims, but we should also cry for Gaza.
Gaza, most of whose residents are refugees created by Israel. Gaza, which has never known a single day of freedom.
—
The Israeli government has called up another 360,000 reservists for a total of 660,000 reservists plus the 170,000 in the regular standing forces. Israel’s total labor force is 4.4 million.
This is not sustainable for more than a week or two. With 660,000 mostly young people, 15% of the total workforce, suddenly absent, Israel’s economy will immediately tank. The Shekel and the Israeli stock market have already dropped significantly and the central bank had to intervene to keep the currency stable.
Meanwhile 200,000 out of a total of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are now displaced. Israel bombed their homes to smithereens and they have nowhere to go.
A few days ago Netanyahoo told people in Gaza to leave. The only place they theoretically could go is Egypt. Today Israel bombed the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
A ground invasion of Gaza will be difficult and likely lead to massacres – on both sides. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria would likely see a ground invasion of Gaza as a reason to intervene. It has missiles and drones that are precise and can reach any part of Israel. Israel may then retaliate by attacking the Syrian government. Iran and Russia would thereby get involved in the war. The U.S. of course would jump in on Israel’s side.
This war could really, really escalate and do so soon.
Posted by b on October 10, 2023 at 14:42 UTC | Permalink
First Time in U.S. History: SPEAKER of THE HOUSE — OUSTED
Speaker Kevin McCarthy was voted out of the job Tuesday in an extraordinary showdown, a first in U.S. history, that was forced by a contingent of hard-right conservatives and threw the House and its Republican leadership into chaos.
McCarthy’s chief rival, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, forced the vote on the “motion to vacate,” drawing together more than a handful of conservative Republican critics of the speaker and many Democrats who say he is unworthy of leadership.
It was the first time since 1910 that a vote has been held on whether to remove a Speaker and the only time such a motion has been approved.
McCarthy is now the shortest-serving House Speaker since the year 1876.
Next steps are uncertain, but there is no obvious successor to lead the House Republican majority.
Stillness fell as the presiding officer gaveled the vote closed, 216-210, saying the office of the speaker “is hereby declared vacant.” The Hammer fell at 4:49pm EDT. Here is video of the historic moment:
Moments later, a top McCarthy ally, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., took the gavel and, according to House rules, was named speaker pro tempore, to serve in the office until a new speaker is chosen.
The House then briskly recessed so lawmakers could meet and discuss the path forward.
Trump Wanted U.S. Out Of NATO!
Among the list of Biden administration accomplishments, the expansion of NATA is usually mentioned prominently by the President’s supporters. And that represents a stark contrast with Donald Trump, who at one point during his presidency declared an intention to pull the U.S. out of NATO entirely. But he soon backtracked, which has led a number of observers to speculate about what might have changed Trump’s mind.
Huawei has established the third truly COMMERCIAL Asian Tech Ecosystem from China and the eighth in Asia after Toyota, Nikon, Canon ,Samsung , BYD, Trina and Xinyi
The Huawei Ecosystem now has
The Chip
The OS
The 5G Modem
The GPU
The Networks
Yet Huawei Ecosystem is fragile because SMIC the manufacturer of the 7 nm Node depends on Advanced DUV equipment from ASML
Now SMIC has stockpiled massive orders from ASML and that will keep SMIC going till maybe 2026
However that’s still dependence, a lot of dependence on the West
So i would say HUAWEI has made a start
Meanwhile people forget the REAL WINNERS of the three companies that have established it’s own dominant ecosystem on which the West is entirely dependent on :-
BYD
BYD has:-
The Chip – The Mature 28nm Chip that only China can today manufacture cost effectively and in huge volumes
The Software
The Satellite Navigation System
The Battery
The Dynamic Unit
It’s completely and entirely Independent from Western Technology
Trina and Xinyi who have :-
The Intelligent Chip
The Micrograde Wafer Panel (That to this day no nation can produce except France but at 87% higher cost)
The Carbide micro layering etching equipment (Chinas equivalent of the EUV Lithography Machine)
The Silicon extraction process into Mono, Poly Crystalline Silicon with infusions
Yes Huawei deserves all the admiration for its clawback and fighting
Yet BYD, Trina and Xinyi actually get Proprietary License Fees from the West which is unique for a Nation that to thia day didn’t kowtow to the West unlike Japan, Israel and South Korea
Huawei to win, needs SMIC to become another BYD or Xinyi or Trina
If SMIC can achieve that, then China truly begins the challenge to the established Semiconductor industry
Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home| REACTION *TEARS*
Oliver Anthony is breaking a spell we’ve all been under with his pure unfiltered honesty. It’s just disarming and appears to allow everyone to drop the mask we put on everyday and speak to each other from the heart. I haven’t not cried yet.
First you ought to understand the issue in the first place. Anything made in the U.S. simply cannot compete and won’t sell. Why?
Your workers demand 5 times the salary and is willing to work half the hours, expecting 10 times more benefits. You CEO wants 100 times their income, your workers refused to be train, your colleges turn out lawyers and bull shit artist and not STEM engineers, your infrastructure is dilapidated, Your government spends all its money fighting wars instead of helping industry. You offend all your prospective customers.
So my friend. You need to outsourced your production. China offers a best value for money. You Choose China. China don’t choose you.
So you want to stop. Can you? Can you ask US workers to get 20% salary, work twice as hard, accept 10% of benefits, your CEO earn 1% it did, you stop fighting wars, making wars and building infrastructure? Can you? I doubt so.
You can’t have the cake and eat it too. Choose one! I think this questioner will choose war because you have been conditioned your whole life to think the U.S. must bomb any nation that refuse to be submissive and subservient to you. Your media and your politicians made you what you are.
ER DOCTOR reacts to BRITISH PUBLIC guessing US healthcare costs | Dr Jmack
Heyo!! Today I’m reacting to the British public reacting to the cost of healthcare in the US. I thought this would be a cute and funny reaction video, but it really turned into something else. I may or may not have ended up ranting for 20 minutes! Topics hit: absurdity of US healthcare costs, does US medicine already have a combined capitalist/socialized structure, do doctors/nurses care that the system is rigged?
When I was in middle school, I took “typing” for all three years of my tenure there, and I never learned to type. I never did anything in the class except draw, use my Gameboy, or shoot the shit with my friends. Somehow I always got a passing grade, like a ‘B’, and I didn’t ask any questions. it wasn’t til my second year did I figure out what was going on….
The teacher always wore a decent conservative business suit, carried a large hard side briefcase (this was the late 80’s), and never really taught us anything. He only taught typing and “computers” and the computer class was the same vibe. Well, I viewed into his open brief case one day to see real estate materials, flyers, business cards, etc. This guy was a real estate agent, that somehow got hired as full-time teacher as a side hustle……..at least he had a steady income and full bene’s as a teacher.
He was always working on his real estate business when he should’ve been instructing! He couldn’t give the few of us that did nothing bad grade cuz that’d ruin his gig. I’m still not sure why he decided to teach, who decided to hire him, and why he seemingly got away with this for years.
However, this did teach me that I can successfully juggle two projects and receive two paychecks!
U.S Senators Travel to China to Beg Xi for Trade Deal !
Engagement and dialogue are essential for constructive international relations. This video examines the delicate US-Taiwan-China relationship, addressing the importance of mutual understanding, compromise, and respect for sovereignty for maintaining stability and trust between nations.
He plays the piano beautifully, and he practices with the children on weekends.
He likened the first world’s iron grip on tech to this little tool here…
It’s called a metronome, and musicians use it to set the beat-rate for sheet music.
I taught myself how to read notes (very, very poorly) as an adult and as an engineer, I couldn’t figure out how sheet music communicated the speed one played the notes.
Until my friend explained the metronome to me.
Pre-2020s, the pace of progress was set by the first world. The standard-defining or cutting-edge tech always came from advanced economies. For cars, we had the S-class/7 series, for computers we had Intel and more recently, AMD/Mac, for planes we had Airbus/Boeing.
In essence, the west defined tech generations. We were stuck with 2G… until the first world came along with 3G. We were stuck with DDR3 Ram, until DDR4 was introduced.
The first world ran the clock when it came to tech, and the rest of the world planned around the schedule.
The most important reason was the monopoly they had on the upstream tools. If we gave the best talent the best tools, different teams will eventually optimize towards convergence. There is only so far one can push the expression of the state of the art, and that is why Airbus models are head to head with Boeing, and Android not too different from iOS.
China is third world.
And for the first time in modern history, a non-first-world country has dibs on the cutting edge. China has established itself as a dominant player in diverse fields such as nuclear power generation, medium voltage power architecture, EVs, high speed rail, TBMs, photovoltaics and many more.
In every one of these fields, China isn’t competing on cost alone, but setting standards, and helping to define the next generation.
Case in point: China is currently the only country to operate a test 4th-gen nuclear reactor that’s plugged into the grid, putting it a good decade (or more) ahead of the competition in terms of commercialization.
Similarly, Huawei, after being kicked out of the Bluetooth SIG, has redefined short-range wireless technology with its Nearlink standard, capable of 1.5Mbps speeds consuming way lower energy. And these are delivered numbers, in physical consumer products available TODAY.
That’s bluetooth 6.x/7.x territory, which is years away from being issued as a standard, never mind consumer availability.
Imagine Huawei, one third world company, leapfrogging the current state of the art Bluetooth by at least 1–2 generations.
The west/first world no longer controls the clock.
Let me repeat, because this is important.
THE WEST NO LONGER CONTROLS THE CLOCK.
Rather, China will continue to pop surprises, just because the country and society is poorly reported by the first-world dominated media.
The educated, and well informed who read ABOUT the Chinese exclusively will repeatedly wake up to head-scratching bombshells in the coming future.
What? The Chinese did THIS? That’s… impossible. Don’t they only know to steal and copy and reverse-engineer?
I won’t be surprised if Nearlink is adopted by Apple and the Android alliance, because it is a transformative standard that can enable brand new ecosystems. What will Huawei do with Wifi, and next-gen navigation, particularly indoor spaces? What will a 5.5G Huawei phone add to the mobile experience?
The Chinese, at the minimum, are turning up the metronome, and playing Beethoven as he originally intended.
Shape up, or screw up, sanctions be damned.
Things a Filipina Fears in Dating Foreigner – Untold Reasons!
Most of you if not all foreigners were really curious of us filipina why we are still single but always wish in the corner to have a foreigner partner. Now you will know the untold reasons and that includes mine. Some of it are very hilarious and might offend one of your pride but let me tell you a word that you will enjoy and learned alot by watching this video.
The Osiris-Rex mission conference has wrapped up, and the newly released pictures of rock samples collected from the asteroid Bennu are leaving everyone in awe.
These samples consist of 250 grams of primordial material, which means they originated around 4.6 billion years ago during the formation of our Solar System.
Within these minute fragments, scientists have detected the presence of clay, water, and even organic material.
Three MORE Aircraft Carriers Leaving Port; 101st Airborne Division Relocating from Romania to Jordan. Target: Iran? Syria? Both?
Most of the general public already knows the USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier and its Strike Group arrived in the eastern Mediterranean Sea near Israel. What few people know is that THREE other aircraft carriers and a NATO Maritime Group are also being deployed . . .
The big media bru-ha-ha over the past few days was the urgent deployment of the USS Gerald Ford and Carrier Strike Group 12.
But the mass media has been almost silent about some other vessels suddenly putting to sea and the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division are all heading out — fast.
If you work harder than everybody else around, you will become more successful.
It’s that simple… at least on a first glance.
But on a second glance, it might be a tiny bit more complicated than that.
Let’s look at an example: Elon Musk.
Elon Musk works 90 hour weeks regularly, although he has been known to work over 110 hour weeks during some parts of his life.
He definitely worked harder than anyone else around and eventually reached success with that.
But the question you have to ask yourself is if that is the kind of life you want to live.
Elon Musk has very little time for anything else in his life.
Since he works so much he only has very little time for friends and family, little time for hobbies and even less time for any other activities like watching movies.
He doesn’t travel much outside of work and is probably not caught up on any of the newest series or movies.
Instead his life is centered around his work and he invests most of his time into it. To him, this is the best place to spend his time.
Before you get all up and about in becoming successful ask yourself first what you are willing to sacrifice to get there.
Elon Musk sacrificed and still sacrifices a lot of family time, hobbies and experiences to give himself more time to work, allowing him experience of being successful. That is what he wants out of life and that is what works for him!
You can definitely reach high amounts of success in your early 20s, but to do that you have to sacrifice many friendships, hobbies, a lot of family time, a large amount of sleep and many other niceties.
You will miss the relaxing cinema experiences, opportunities to engage with friends about the newest series, and time spent on hobbies and other things… but you will increase your chances to be successful!
The question is: Is that worth it to you?
If you are still willing to work for success with that all being said, keeping in mind all you might need to sacrifice, then by all means, go and work!
If your definition of success does not include any of the sacrifices, then go for it! Do what you can, read more books, learn, improve, grow and spend 90% of your waking time grinding away.
If that however does not seem like the life you want to lead, then maybe think about what it is you want instead.
If you want to spend time with your family, want to travel and go on vacations, want to have crazy hobbies, and spend some time chatting about the newest series, then you will not be able to work that much or succeed that fast.
You will have to spend some time every week in these things. Is that okay for you?
Different people have different values in life and depending on them they need to spend their time differently.
While Elon Musk is driven by his work, you may not be, and that’s okay!
It’s not about creating THEsuccessful life, but about creating YOURsuccessful life!
Okay… those were my 2 cents on it; now lets get into the actual How to do it!
Ascertain what “Success” means to you – Depending on your personal definition, the work you do will be different.
Consume Information from People that have reached that Success – The closer they are to your idea of success the better it is. Learn from them and follow their advice! Trust them, as they must have had some right idea to get where they are today.
Produce don’t Consume – Besides the consumption above, you should be grinding and producing non-stop. More work = Faster results. That is the rule of thumb and holds generally true.
Adjust – Every week… no… every DAY you should be looking at what works, what doesn’t, where you struggle and how to get results faster. Keep tabs on yourself and do not allow yourself to get away with less than you want!
Create a System – You have to create a path that goes from your action to the desired result. In finance this is called a ‘Funnel’. How are people going to go from site X to purchase on site Z, for example.
The rest, depends entirely on what your version of success is and how hard you work.
Other than that, if you do steps 2–4 every day, you will become successful in your 20′s no problem.
Just make sure it is really what you want first!
6 Reasons to Retire as Soon as You Can
There is a MAJOR uptick in these kinds of videos about people dropping out of the work-force.
The threat meter is flopping back and forth from zero to pinging at 100%.
The meter is normally at zero.
Then, out of the blue, some NEOCON psychopath does something stupid like slamming their fist on the meter, kicking the table or banging on the dial… and the meter pings to MAX.
Ah.
One day, I’ll tell you what, that ol’ meter is gonna break.
I don’t want to be anywhere near it when the glass shatters and shards of metal start flying.
Pedernales River Chili
This is the chili that was always cooked at the LBJ Ranch in Texas. It was a favorite of Lyndon B. Johnson. He ate this with saltine crackers and a glass of ice cold milk.
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients
4 pounds coarsely-ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin seeds
6 teaspoons red chili powder
2 (16 ounce) cans tomatoes
Salt, to taste
2 cups hot water
Instructions
Put the meat, onion and garlic in a large pot and sear until light brown.
Add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, covered, for 1 hour.
The next minute tanks will surround all the the unfriendly embassies in Moscow
Every Diplomat in Russia will be arrested with impunity
Putin will be arrested in an ICC Country and will be in a nice Dutch cell
The US Ambassador, UK Ambassador and others will be in Russian prisons where the probability of their rape in the first 24 hours is 82%
Their families will go out of contact
60–65 Kids will face their lives being risked in an ‘Unfortunate Accident’ where six and seven year olds will vanish
Any Western Leader who flies will face risk of attacks of his aircraft over Europe
Meanwhile Russian Diplomats will face nice European cells and european laws
Russia will then declare war on the ICC Country which arrested Putin
The West will be forced to Release Putin or see their diplomats never come out including the wives and kids
That would cause many diplomats to refuse to serve in 50–60 dangerous nations out of fear that they would be next
So that will never happen
Putin will not go to an ICC country because he won’t embarass the leadership but other wise if they touch him all hell breaks loose
And the Judges will pay
The Judges will face a fate like Prighozin
Nice Ricin Capsules or Novichok
China’s rise and the changing global order | Ben Norton & Li Jingjing
This is pretty good.
Ben Norton, has recently moved to Beijing. We’ve met in person and had a discussion on the rise of China and the whole Global South. We also exchanged our thoughts on Syria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, BRICS, and all the recent events that will change the global order.
Li Yuan is the author of the NYT article. Her article bases its assertions off of interviews with 14 Chinese professionals as well as China’s median yearly emigration as reported by the UN. In terms of claims, she is pushing this line of logic:
Quite a few people I interviewed said, like Mr. Chen, that they had started thinking of leaving the country after China amended its Constitution to allow Mr. Xi to effectively rule for life. The “zero-Covid” campaign, with nearly three years of constant lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines, was the last straw for many of them.
And as for why they aren’t showing up in the US:
Most of the emigrants I spoke to, explaining why they did not pick the United States, cited America’s complicated and unpredictable process for applying for visas and permanent residence status.
This is in stark contrast to Yu Xie et al., who have published a paper in the National Academy of Sciences’ official peer-reviewed publication. Their study has a sample size of 1,229 (or 934 for the federal grant question). In terms of their claims, they point to a steady increase in the number of academics leaving the US for China, and more crucially they have measured out some indicators.
Perceptions and intentions of scholars of Chinese descent. Note: Only past and current grant awardees were asked the question of whether they were considering “avoiding applying for federal grants”.
Their study claims fear is high in the Chinese-American community despite 89% of scientists clearly interested in promoting science in the US. Most dramatically, the study concludes with one data point:
One respondent, self-identified as a US citizen and a former recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, told us that he quit his academic position exactly because of what he perceived as an “anti-Chinese atmosphere”. He then wrote:
If it were not because the COVID pandemic cuts off international traveling and I am a U.S. citizen, my family would have left the U.S. permanently without any intent to come back in the future. What I have experienced at my former institution was not only disgusting, but a system[ic] corruption that I believe [is] illegal. I had never thought of somewhere in this count[r]y to be dark and corrupted like this. If I had, I would not have become a naturalized U.S. citizen, which I regret now. What I ha[ve] experienced not [only] ruined my academic career, but also destroyed my American dream.
Interestingly, Li Yuan makes absolutely no attempt to recognize or challenge the claims made by the paper. While the paper acknowledges weaknesses in its methodology, it notes that it is corroborated by two similar papers, one from University of Michigan, the other from University of Arizona. Instead, she goes for this description of the fates of those headed from China to the US:
But it won’t be easy to stay in the United States. Mr. Zhao has a job offer and will get temporary employment status as a graduate in a STEM, or science or engineering, field. That will last three years. He will participate in a lottery for an H-1B work visa. He did the math: There’s a 40 percent chance he won’t win the lottery by the end of the three years. He might have to go back to school to remain in the United States, or ask his company to transfer him to a foreign post.
Li Yuan’s claims are in my opinion cherrypicked and misleading. She points to data to support her position, but the mild rise in emigration out of China from 2016 until now is something she attributes strictly to political reasons. She makes no attempt to recognize economic factors, such as the well reported glut of graduates unable to find a preferred job, nor any temporal factors such as the COVID opening up releasing otherwise delayed plans due to COVID restrictions and more importantly prohibitive flight costs. Instead, we are left with a threadbare attempt at explaining data with a political narrative.
Li Yuan, and perhaps the staff at the New York Times, are selling a narrative that runs contradictory to peer reviewed science. They are advertising one America, which promises a better life for Chinese, if only America would make it easier for Chinese to migrate into the country. Meanwhile professors at Princeton, Harvard, and MIT are telling us a very different story in which Chinese living in America are doing so in fear of both the government’s actions as well as anti-Asian violence. They have chosen that dramatic quote at the end for a reason— the NSF CAREER award is NSF’s most prestigious award, and many go on to win Nobel prizes.
The NYT and Li Yuan wonder why the US isn’t attracting Chinese scientists. Maybe they should have asked Chinese scientists in the US before making their gloriously nationalist article.
A stray kitten was terrified of everyone and everything and just wanted to hide
There’s something about a kitten’s motor just purring along that makes me melt!
When I was in High School there was a on-going activity that was very popular with us guys and girls. This was square-dancing. And you know what? I loved doing it. I also loved the attention that the girls would give to me when they would ask me to go out dancing.
It has been many years… but seriously, I haven’t square danced since. And you know what? I miss that aspect of my life. A fun time during school that occurred so, so very long ago.
However, the bright side is here in China, free dancing is morning, noon and night. Woo! Woo!
Sigh.
Today…
The US Establishment: The Dumbest People In The Room
With the unbending support provided by the US foreign policy establishment for the obvious Israeli “atrocity” propaganda ploy to facilitate a second Naqba, the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, that establishment has once again shown itself to be the dumbest people in the diplomatic and international relations room. Below, I cover the increasing utter ignorance and stupidity of those that have a self-image of the cleverest people in the room; a disabling combination of ignorance, stupidity, corruption and arrogance. The current Israeli elite, the vast majority of which hold US, other Western and even Russian passports, may not be as dumb but are being driven to desperate means by the demographic dynamics of the region together with the now obvious decline of US power.
Part of the pure dumbness of the US foreign policy establishment is due to its utter corruption. Within the military, the generals tend to be those that could kiss ass and politic well, not those that served their countries well. Part of that kiss-assing is to the deeply corrupt corporations of the Military Industrial Complex, who are focused on profits not improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the US military nor its use for the general benefit of the US population. That MIC is the retirement plan for the generals, and admirals, as this piece by the Quincy Institute details. To quote:
· 26 of 32 four–star officers who retired after June 2018 — over 80 percent — went to work for the arms industry as board members, advisors, executives, consultants, lobbyists, or members of financial institutions that invest in the defense sector.
· The biggest category of post–retirement employment for four–stars, by far, was as board members or advisors for small and medium–sized arms contractors, with 15 choosing that option. This compares to five who became board members, advisors or executives for one of the top 10 arms contractors.
· Five retired four–stars became arms industry consultants, five became lobbyists for weapons companies, and four joined financial firms that make significant investments in the defense sector.
The politicians are also widely known to be utterly corrupted, with the MIC making sure that it has factories in the electoral districts of every senator and representative, and “money as free speech” rained down upon them like rain from the oligarch rain makers. Bob Menendez is only one of the worst examples:
Then we have the “intellectuals” who sell their knowledge and skills relatively cheap on the “thinktank” circuit. With respect to Occupied Palestine they have many such intellectual pimping organizations to choose from, one of them being the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, full of ex State Department operatives and craven academics. Nowhere can you find who actually funds this so obviously pro-Israel and pro-aggressive US foreign policy outfit. The beauty of such “thinktanks” is that propaganda can be so easily washed through their hands onto the pages of the mainstream media as if from some, “independent” academic source:
Today, almost daily, newspapers in the U.S. and Europe carry analysis about the Middle East by experts of the Institute, but without identifying the organization as pro-Israel and close to the Israel lobby … the Washington Middle East Scene … changed radically … with the advent of the Clinton administration. Clinton appointed Martin Indyk, who founded WINEP as the research arm of AIPAC, as his chief Middle East advisor (he did not have U.S. citizenship at the time and his papers were rushed in to meet the confirmation process).
The administration then cleansed all Arabists from the State Department and anybody who was identified as tilting to the Arab point of view was sent to Siberian posts. The message was loud and clear: the U.S. government would no longer tolerate anybody daring to express the “Arab point of view” in the Arab-Israeli question.
That quickly elevated the status of the Washington Institute and many of its researchers served in high positions of government, especially at State and Defense. At least three of its “experts” served as assistant secretaries of state for the Near East (the top Middle East post at the Department of State). The reputation of the Institute as the organization which staffs Middle East posts at the National Security Council in the White House, State, and Defense grew.
The US State Department was consciously made dumb, with those that understood the complexity of the Middle East replaced with Zionist ideologues. The same can be said for Russia, with true academics such as Stephen S. Cohen pushed to the media and academic edges as they had the temerity to consider that Russia may have its own legitimate interests. The same with those that truly understand China and understand that cooperation with China is the best option for the US long term.
The US establishment, dominated by the international and global corporations from at least the 1930s onwards, seeks complete domination of the globe for the facilitation of the extraction of resources and value added for the furthering of its own wealth and power. With the coming of the second unipolar moment, all arms of the foreign policy and security establishment were cleansed of those that understood and empathized with other nations and restaffed with ideologues that would happily implement the plan for global domination. This is the reason why the Eastern European Division of the State Department etc. was filled with extremist ethnic Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans who have a pathologic hatred of Russia. These people are simply tools of the oligarchy, courtiers who will only stay in place if they carry out the oligarch’s wishes. The same for the many Jews in senior state positions, who after the post-WW2 attack upon the Jewish community as communists (e.g. the McCarthyite taking down of the Jewish Hollywood moguls, Oppenheimer, the Rosenbergs etc.) quickly moved to the right to protect themselves; becoming consiglieres to the US Mafia-State in addition to the Italian Mafia.
Their positions are not a sign of their strength, rather a sign of their readiness to serve the US establishment; empires many times use compliant ethnic minorities to help administer their territories. The same as Israel itself being a colonial project of the UK and then the US as a Western island of influence to keep the Middle East weak, just as with Ukraine after the 2014 coup.
Even with the highly obedient ethnic courtiers, no risks are taken with the oligarchic control. Three oligarch-serving and quite prominent Muslim anchors, Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohieddine and Ali Velshi, have been removed by MSNBC during the current Israeli colonial escalation. This after the US Jewish courtier Dan Abrams (ABC’s Chief Legal Analyst and media entrepreneur) singled out the three of them for opprobrium for their delivery of an honest balanced view of the true causes of the conflict. How dare the ethnic courtiers question the oligarch’s policies! Perhaps they feel how US Jews felt after being victimized during the McCarthy era?
Taking Afghanistan and Iraq without a plan
Sheer over weaning arrogance drove the US establishment to invade Afghanistan and Iraq without a plan for “what after?” Six trillion dollars later they had exited Afghanistan through a pathetic retreat and had greatly enhanced Iranian influence in Iraq. For much less money the US could have easily funded the development of the two nations and gained the support of their populations. But of course, that would not have provided a massive process of financial extraction through which the MIC and US capitalist ruling class in general extracted vast amounts of money from the US state. The money would end up in the bank accounts of the already rich, and the debts were owed by the US people. As would much of the drug profits from the poppy fields that came back into production after the Taliban was removed, and ceased production soon after the Taliban returned.
Attempting to thwart Chinese technology parity to the US
After blindly profiteering from cheap Chinese labour for more than two decades, while facilitating the development of China as an industrial competitor to the US, the US establishment is now trying to close the technology door after the horse has bolted well down the field. Instead of crimping China, these policies will simply reduce the sales of Western technology companies. Within a decade at most, China will have equalled or surpassed the West in all technology fields. In microchips, as in many other technology fields, the Chinese were happy just to buy the goods from the West. It was the sanctions which actually galvanized Chinese corporations and the state to launch a massive program to overcome the Western technology lead, and the Western sanctions designed to keep China as a subaltern.
Attempting to use Ukraine against Russia
The utter ignorance and delusion of the foreign policy elites was shown in their utterly ridiculous belief that Russia would fold like a house of cards under Western sanctions and its population would rebel and overthrow Putin. The opposite has occurred, as Russia is poised to win the Ukrainian war in the next year or so, support for Putin has strengthened, and it is Europe that has been weakened. At the same time, the Western financial system has been exposed as a tool for the expropriation of those that disagree with the West. In addition, the sanctions have freed Russia to align with both Iran and North Korea; strengthening both in their opposition to the West and strengthening the EurAsian anti-West alliance.
Creating and Facilitating the extremist Zionist Israeli Settler Apartheid State
The vast majority of European Jews in the post-WW2 period wanted to emigrate to the United States, but the still relatively high level of antisemitism in the US blocked this route, as was the case with Canada and the UK as well. Another route would have been to carve a new nation out of the ruins of those that had attempted to exterminate them, primarily Germany but also perhaps a Lithuania where the extermination of the 200,000+ Jewish community had involved many members of a deeply antisemitic community. The latter option was not probable under the Stalin leadership and the former not under the German occupation by the US, Soviet Union, the UK and France. Instead, the Arab population would be made to pay for the centuries of antisemitism of the Europeans.
This option fit the foreign policy aims of the British (who issued the infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917), and later the US, to have a European settler colony to aid the control of the Arab lands under which oil had been found while once and for all ridding themselves of the Jewish issue. This option also fit the aims of the Zionist Jewish minority, a group of non-religious Jews who planned for an ethnically pure Jewish homeland. With the support of the British, an increasing number of European Jews (Ashkenazi) were allowed to settle in Palestine; prior to the British mandate that started in 1920 only about 5%, 25,000, of the population was Jewish. During the mandate, over 400,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine, and by 1947 the Jewish population was 630,000 out of a total of a total of 2 million. Through a UN dominated by the Western powers (the Soviet Union had not taken its chair at the UN Security Council and the Chinese chair was taken by Taiwan), the Jews were allotted a contiguous homeland that was disproportionate to their relative numbers (56% of the land) and contained much of the coast as well as the best land; the desire to “hem in” the Palestinian population was obvious. The Zionists then grabbed much more land through the Nakba ethnic cleansing which was the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli War, forcing 700,000 Palestinians to flee. The UN have since passed endless resolutions telling the Israeli’s to relinquish this stolen land, but with the US, France and the UK enjoying veto powers at the UN Security Council these were toothless. The establishment of Israel was fundamentally a British and then a US geopolitical project, led by non-religious Jews who had planned a nationalist and racist project of ethnic cleansing for decades; the latter simply took advantage of the Holocaust to wrap themselves in religious victimhood clothing.
Since then, Israel has served the US Empire well both as an offsetting power in the Middle East and also as a provider of enforcers across the globe. The latter are extremely useful as they give the US a gift of deniability, with Israelis doing the Empire’s dirty work. Just as the Nepalese Gurkhas and Indian ethnic minority Sikhs had done for the British Empire. Over the past few decades a greater number of non-European Jews (the Mizrahi) have settled in Israel, and their birth rate has exceeded that of the European Ashkenazi. The Mizrahi tend toward a greater level of religiousness and extremism, with the worst elements being akin to a Jewish ISIS that wants a Jewish state ruled by Jewish religious law. It is this group that also wants to demolish the Al-Aksar mosque, the third holiest place in the Muslim world, and build a Jewish synagogue upon its ruins. The current Israeli government, and an increasing number of its armed forces and police, represent the Mizrahi. The Ashkenazi – Mizrahi ideological split represents the basic conflict within Israeli society that had broken out prior to the most recent Gazan conflict.
This excellent Duran panel with Alastair Crooke and Glenn Diesen covers this schism within Israel.
Both the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are ethnically cleansing Zionists, their only differences are between the nature of the Israeli state and the tactics used to gain their objective. For the Ashkenazi, their plan of the slow death of the Palestinian West Bank communities under a thousand settler cuts has worked extremely well at keeping their ethnic cleansing under the geopolitical radar; greatly aided by Western and Arab elite complicity. The Mizrahi are pushing for tactics that would enflame the whole Arab world and make it impossible for the complicit Arab elites not to side with the Palestinians. Unfortunately for the Israelis the Middle East has greatly changed in the past few decades, and not in their favour:
· Iran survived the Iraqi invasion meant to quash the still-young revolution against the Western-puppet Shah, and Western sanctions have also been resisted. The Western attempts to destroy Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have resulted in a great expansion of Iranian power in the region; an Iran of 90 million people possessing a highly developed Military Industrial Complex.
· The second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 (the first was in 1976) proved to be an abject failure, with the Israeli army being forced back by the forces of Hezbollah. The latter has only grown stronger since then, now possessing over 100,000 soldiers (many having gained experience in Syria) and highly advanced military equipment including 130,000+ missiles.
· Syria survived the attempts of the Western powers, Israel and some Arab powers to destroy it and has now substantially recovered. One result is a war-hardened armed forces and the presence of both Iranian and Russian military forces.
· Demographic shifts have massively changed the balance of forces against Israel, with Arab populations growing much more rapidly than the Israeli one with a heavy skew to military-age adults.
· The peace initiatives between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council states (which includes Saudi Arabia) and between Syria and the Arab states, have greatly increased the cohesion of the Arab world.
· The Ukraine conflict has very significantly deepened diplomatic, economic and military relations between Iran and Russia. Turkey’s rapprochement with both Russia and Iran also removes it as a tool of Us foreign policy in the region, isolating Israel further. Significant amounts of Israeli munition stocks were also sent to Ukraine.
Fundamentally, the issue for the Israeli’s is that they need to come to terms with the new reality that they are no longer invincible or the dominant power in the West Asian region. But this would require Israel to retreat from all of the land stolen from 1947 onwards, together with the Syrian Golan Heights; something that both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are completely unwilling to do. Together with the power of the US and the West waning, Israel only has a short window where it may be able to complete its ethnic cleansing and that seems to be the strategy that the Mizrahi-dominated government has set upon. The highly fabricated Hamas “atrocities” provide the propagandist smokescreen behind which the 2+ million Gazan population will be driven out through military terror tactics. After that the West bank can be ethnically cleansed in a much less visible way, one enclave at a time.
The fact is that this has to be one of the dumbest strategies possible; one guaranteed to unite the Arab world against Israel as well as ignite a significant proportion of Western populations. As has been noted even by the US state apparatus, Israel does not seem to have a plan for what to do after it has triggered the Arab world’s response. Can it fight a multi-front war against Hezbollah (who have stated that they will intervene if Gaza is invaded), Syria, an exploding West bank, 20% of its own population that is Arab, and possibly hundreds of thousands of Arabs travelling to fight a holy war against Israel? None of these considerations seemed to have passed through the Israeli leaders’ heads, nor at first through the heads of the US and Western leaders who knee-jerked absolute support for their colonial project.
This support, in parallel to the multiple crimes of humanity carried out by the Israelis against the Gazan population (cutting off of basic amenities such as electricity and water, bombing of hospitals, indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas etc.), has destroyed the West’s credibility with respect to the “other 7 billion” and the Arab states in particular. The Abraham Accords designed to support the slow quiet ethnic cleansing of Israel are dead and buried. The Western elites have also been forced into propagandistic gymnastics that serve to undermine their own narratives; for example, being for Muslims in Xinjiang but against Muslims in Palestine, applauding a Nazi in the Canadian parliament only weeks before being “fully behind Israel”. Not unexpectedly, the height of dumbness was reached by Blundering Blinken who on arrival in Israel stated that he came “as a Jew” as well as the US Secretary of State. What are the Arabs supposed to make of such a statement, or the non-Jewish citizens of the US? His partner in the Duo of Dumbness, The Joke Sullivan (US National Security Adviser) had stated that the Middle East was very stable only a couple of weeks ago.
As Bhadrakumar points out in Indian Punchline, an Arab-Iran-China axis has been created on this issue focused on the plight of the Gazan population, aligning the major Middle Eastern Arab and Persian powers and placing China as an ally of both them and the Palestinian people. Such an alliance attests to the incredible failure of US foreign policy in the region while Blundering Blinken flits from one country to another repeating Israel’s “right to defend itself” against those that it has imprisoned. The parallels with the statements of the Nazis with respect to the rebelling populations of the occupied territories during WW2 are redolent, but invisible to this ideologically blinded numbskull. A great product of the esteemed Dalton school, Harvard (social studies degree) and Columbia (law); none of which seem to have taught him any real history or improved his critical faculties. His ascent from lowly speech writer and political fixer to US Secretary of State reflects his craven courtier qualities much more than any great intelligence.
No matter what happens next, the US establishment and its foreign policy and security service courtiers have created a new foreign policy debacle that can only hasten the decline of their soft power across the globe while increasing the cohesiveness of their opponents. Through decades of support for the colonial ethnically cleansing apartheid Israel they have simply fostered an ever more extreme regime. One that threatens to destroy itself, and perhaps the rest of humanity by its actions. Unfortunately for the predominantly Anglo-Saxon US establishment, the Zionists have spent decades embedding themselves in the US state, political and economic circles. The disciplining of Israel would require the disciplining of a core section of the US Mafia-State, the US media, and significantly rich Zionist citizens and their powerful association AIPAC. So, instead Muslim anchors are quietly removed from the media to keep the “Israeli victims defending themselves / terrorist Hamas” narrative unchallenged.
The US establishment may be the “Empire of Chaos” but the result seems to be more of it reaping the whirlwind of blowback rather than gaining advantage against its opponents. Pepe Escobar called it nine years ago, perhaps the Duo of Dumbness and their establishment backers should have read his book.
Chicago-Style Breaded Steak Sandwich
This is a much loved Chicago sandwich. The Italians in Chicago really know how to make yummy sandwiches. You won’t be disappointed!
Prep: 10 min | Cook: 30 min | Yield: 6 sandwiches
Ingredients
1/2 cup vegetable oil
6 sandwich steak or round steak cutlets, pounded to 1/8 inch thick
Salt and pepper, to season
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs, whipped with 2 tablespoons water
1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped (added to bread crumbs)
What’s happening is employers are posting job ads like…
“Senior Developer required! Must have at least a master’s degree in computer science, Ph.D. preferred. Minimum 15 years experience running a large development team for a Fortune 500 company. You will be responsible for rolling out a new $8 billion distributed computing platform that will help our company increase its revenue by $2 billion a year. Starting pay $7.95 to $8.25 an hour. No benefits. “
WhY dOeSn’t AnYoNe WaNt To WoRk AnYmOrE???!
PeOpLe ArE sO lAzY!!!!!”
A Visitor Reports on China
Just finished a 2-week trip in China (Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an, Yen’An)
Hadn’t been since Dec 2019, previously visited multiple times/year for 20+ years. Had to see for myself how things are vs. media reports within the US. For the record, I am neither Pro or Anti China, I am Pro-Business. Here are my summary observations/opinions:
Economy is definitely slowing down and most people feel or see the impact. However, the loudest complainers are from the ‘elite’ segment (well educated, experience with MNCs, live in Shanghai, etc.). Noticed people in Beijing, Xian, and smaller cities weren’t as concerned.
Despite downturn, most people aren’t severely impacted for now. They have plenty of savings, almost no debt, and can live with their parents. Chinese are notoriously frugal and save for a rainy day – guess what? It’s raining now. Also, for perspective, economy still going to grow 4–5%, just not 8–10% as hoped/expected. So people aren’t buying as many luxury goods, the 10+ Uber/Lyft rideshare companies aren’t getting as much traffic, and not every engineer will get their dream job.
Foreign population visibly lower, the smallest number I’ve seen in 20+ years even in Shanghai. Took a flight from BJ to Shanghai, saw less than 20 foreigners at airport and plane, most appear to be from Europe. Shouldn’t have been surprised given the situation but eye opening nonetheless.
Technology progress in China is for real. ~35–40% of cars in Shanghai are EVs. And they are much nicer than expected, even from brands I’ve never heard of. BYD has a version that can do 900 KM on full charge (vs. 450 for a Tesla). Huawei 6G pro is impressive. Bullet train system is easy, convenient, and fast (some routes didn’t exist just a few years ago). Subways are upgraded. Robotic companies everywhere. This was my area of expertise, a bit disturbed to see how quickly they copy-catted, highly likely they got some IP improperly IMO. One executive told me they don’t need any tech know-how from America today. This is where things are at whether the US admits to it or not.
80–90% of all money transactions for me was electronic. I linked my ATM card to Alipay and it was pretty easy most of the time. I got a bunch of added charges though, some expected, some not. Kind of annoying.
My US cell phone was blocked in China, meaning I couldn’t iMessage or call Chinese numbers (not the case before). My WeChat messages to locals came with warnings. Just some minor retaliation from China.
Downloaded 2 VPNs, between the two I was able to get most of what I needed from US though they would crash 1/day or work very slowly sometimes. People still use WhatsApp a lot in Shanghai. One bonus: Spotify worked great even within the firewall!
In Shanghai I saw signs of small groups of “youts”, meaning younger generation Chinese dressed more hip or alternative (baggy pants, blond hair, etc.). Hadn’t seen much of this before, we’ll see if it evolves like Japan in the 80s.
Most Chinese are aware of the Sino vs. US tension. The more educated are privately quite critical of the current CCP government. But they are also confused with US positions. For example, why are Huawei and BYD banned in the US but Apple and Tesla are allowed in China? They don’t see all the negative coverage on China from the US, but do get amplified coverage of US deficiencies (gun violence, Trump, Biden gaffes, gov’t shutdown talk, etc.). They all hope things get better. And nearly all Chinese I talked to aren’t big fans of Russia.
In summary, my takeaway is China is going through a pretty big correction. For some, it’s hurting but for now, the country is fine. I do see the impact of lesser foreign investment but IMO, there is still significant opportunity. China still covets global products and services, and believe established quality is paramount – especially in Shanghai. The rules are just tighter and some sectors are more complicated than before. I believe if things don’t get better in 1–2 years, there could be some serious trouble. I’m guessing many Chinese nationals outside of the country are also paying attention to this as well.
Scott Ritter: THIS is Why the US Will LOSE Its War on China
This is surprisingly good. Take this video to the bank. It is really, really good.
Easy Sloppy Joe Pot Pie
All the great taste of classic sloppy joes in an easy one-skillet pot pie. No one will miss the buns!
Prep: 5 min | Bake: 40 min | Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
1 (15 1/2 ounce) can original sloppy joe sauce
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup Original Bisquick® mix
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Cook beef and onion in ovenproof 10-inch skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until beef is brown; drain.
Stir in sloppy joe sauce.
Sprinkle with cheese.
Stir remaining ingredients until blended. Pour over beef mixture.
Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.
Notes
Special Touch: Before baking, sprinkle with a tablespoon of sesame seed.
I was adopted by an amazing family when I was 4 1/2. My adoptive mom and adoptive dad had a biological child, my adoptive sister, who was 3 years my senior that was killed in a car accident when she was 21. I was 18 and a senior in high school. The loss of my sister devastated us all and changed the framework for our family for sure. My mom, dad, and I became even closer and cling to one another after knowing that any of us could be gone in an instant after losing my sister under such sudden circumstances.
Fast forward 27 years. My father was diagnosed with Brain Cancer. He quickly gave me Power of Attorney to make all medical and financial decisions on his behalf since he knew I’d honor his every wish. He had a sister that basically controlled and manipulated all their siblings except for him since he was the oldest sibling and had moved away from all their drama first chance he got. When my aunt found out that my father placed me in charge of his care and not her, she angrily called me and said, “You aren’t a REAL daughter! You’re just a daughter on paper!” She then added, “The only reason he put you in charge is because he didn’t have a choice!!”
So, I quietly hung up the phone on her, continued to allow her to visit my father (but kept a close eye on her so she wouldn’t steal anything). On the day of his funeral I went up to her and told her that our mutual point of contact is gone and I no longer wanted any contact with her or anyone she knew! I told her that I wished to cut off all communication and contact with her and that side of the family now. That if I heard from her or anyone that she sent to call, visit, spy on my or my daughter that I’d promptly call the police for trespassing and/or harassment. I later put that in writing when returning an assistive device she had given my dad to tell him get out of the car.
Have not heard a peep from her since. Best decision I ever made! Keep toxic family members out if your life and keep things moving forward for yourselves!!
America at its best
the result of its strong and capable leadership
This is Evil and Demonic
always calling for war, killing and destruction of others
but they cannot stop threatening or demonizing others
as they and their nation – consumed by hate – are now controlled by the anti-Christ himself
PLEASE do NOT let their hate get to you so that you also lose your humanity and become like them
because that is the exact intention of their Deity
Nobody today wants a confrontation with the United States
It is the United States which is becoming unbearable
After Barack Obama, the US has been :-
Reneging on past promises
Bullying almost every Nation
Imposing illegal Tariffs
Making fake claims with no substantive evidence against one and all
The US is becoming so unreasonable that other nations are rightfully ten times more frightened of the US than they are of China & Russia
The US unilaterally blocked all trade from Cuba for almost 65 years for no reason
Cuba hasn’t attacked the US once and is no threat to the US
Now US openly tells Venezuela that only the person US says must be the President if Venezuela want their money back or they will be sanctioned
They have refused to pay 12 nations their own money including Russia
They threaten to sanction any nation that does business with a nation sanctioned by the US
They are like the Catholic Church in the 1100s with their excommunication powers
The US Dollar is a weapon which the US could use to starve a nation of energy and food and imports ON A WHIM
Vermin like Lindsey Graham who still think they rule the world and have a say in what anyone does
So there are at least 100 Countries that want a backup plan to ensure continuous delivery of energy and food if the US decides to go rogue on them
So many nations are going to ensure that they REDUCE THEIR DEPENDENCE on the Dollar
That’s guaranteed
Unless the US goes back to it’s best behaviour and passes a law regarding the legality of sanctions against a nation and against associate nations in the house, Senate and by the President.
Unless the US stops interference everywhere
Now will that lose the Global power of the Dollar
Not necessarily
The USD will remain the largest reserve currency
Yet the US can’t weaponize the Dollar anymore
There will be alternate payment systems and alternate payments for Energy and Food including Cross Currency payments
That’s undeniable
The days of the US Army threatening people are gone now.
The USD and it’s dominance will be dependent on Economics and Trade and not the strength of the US Army Or the threat of Sanctions
That’s virtually a guarantee in five years
BIBLICAL PROPHECY- REAL LIFE: Netanyahu Warns will “Destroy Damascus if Hezbollah Enters War”
Biblical Prophecy seems to be playing out in real life right now, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just announced “Israel warns that the United States will join (the war) if Hezbollah joins. IDF will destroy Damascus, target Syrian President Assad if Hezbollah joins war; US warships will support Israel in war.”
When I first heard this remark, I recoiled in horror, and instantly recalled the Prophecy of Damascus:
Isaiah 17 predicts the destruction of Damascus, Syria.
Isa 17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
Folks, I’m no Priest, or Rabbi, or Preacher, or Reverend. I’m not some Bible scholar or even a Bible Thumper. I’m just a regular guy, who grew up a “Holiday Catholic.” That means I went to church on Christmas and Easter. Throw in a few weddings and funerals, and that was about it.
Yet even a Biblically-ignorant man like me knows the prophecy of Damascus and now it looks as though we’re seeing it take place in real time. OUR TIME!
This is terrifying to me because if this takes place, the steps to Armageddon are well along their way.
When US accuses China on information dominance, it’s like Uncle Sam talking about itself
An Outlaw US Empire government report was issued by the Department of State last Thursday called “How The People’s Republic Of China Seeks To Reshape The Global Information Environment.” The immediate reaction from China and most other nations resounds in the above title, where one writer says, “And the first reaction of the most readers is – isn’t the report about the US itself?. Another article headlines: “People are not blind in seeing US’ empire of lies: Chinese FM refuting State Department’s China report”.
Before I provide the text of those two articles there’s an important observation that needs to be made that some will know while for others it will be a revelation. Some know the history of the US code breakers prior to and during WW2 which was of profound importance and served as the basis for what became the National Security Agency post-war, although it’s most properly known as the National Surveillance Agency. Prior to my working for one of its smaller arms during my US Army Reserve service with an EW/Sigint Company based at Moffet Field, California, I became aware of what was the largest industrial espionage program ever in world history: Project Echelon, which was the #1 NSA project at the time, well before the Internet Age. I wasn’t too shocked by this revelation despite the significance of it being a quasi-fascist relationship between government and Big Business. And it was the Cold War so spying on the Other Side was a given. The work my Company did was tactical battlefield spying and interdiction, not strategic, although it was interesting what the jammers and other spies would listen to during our monthly exercises. On our larger Summer Field Training Exercises (FTX), we were always tasked as the OpForce—the Soviets—and we’d always win because the operational security (OPSEC) of the regular army formations was horrific—as bad or worse than ‘Nam I was told by many. And from what I hear and know, it hasn’t improved much since then. The point being, we were actually good at spying on others but we were woeful when spied upon. And apparently, that’s been and continues to be a chronic problem—US troops just don’t want to follow OPSEC regardless their generation—WW2 to present. The result is an acute sensitivity to the problem—Project Echelon revelations were denied by one and all despite hard evidence and protestations from nations who thought they were seen as friendly. (Thus the lesson that the Outlaw US Empire has no friends only interests.) The Pentagon Papers revealed the degree of propagandization the US public was subjected to, and other revelations told even more, like Operation Mockingbird. Watergate was also revelatory—the president spied on himself! Wow! Was that ever a revelation; and then it was revealed that Ike had started it and JFK continued it. And of course, before all of that was 1984 and its Ministry of Truth that merged well with the propaganda aimed at the West by the West about the Soviet Bloc and then the Red Chinese, etc. And even before 1984 there was George Seldes and other journalists who wrote about their being censored not just by the government but by their own publications”: You can’t Print That! was one of Seldes titles filled with revelations that if published when written might have made a difference. Seldes was followed by IF Stone as the 1940s became the 1950s, and ever since there’ve always been a small number of genuine patriot journalists trying to tell the public what’s actually happening. Which brings us back to our new, latest government lie, which is actually propaganda aimed at the US public to demonize what the Warmongers see as their next opponent.
This op/ed was published in Global Times on 29 September but its access was blocked until today by I don’t know who/what. Because the US government lies all the time to one and all, many assume other governments do the same thing, but that’s not the case, particularly with today’s Info War where the high ground is being truthful and factual consistently so you gain credibility because you’re honest. Lying about others and yourself propagandizes your populace to not trust any government. And in this case, the US Government doesn’t want anyone to trust the word of Russia or China. So, one can see the Outlaw US Empire’s lying campaign as a Psyop aimed primarily at its own people. So, here’s the op/ed’s contents:
The hypocrisy of the US is on full display in its newly-released report on China, while Washington’s anxiety on its own capability to dominate public opinion is also bubbling. The report, launched by the US Department of State on Thursday local time, is called “How The People’s Republic Of China Seeks To Reshape The Global Information Environment.” And the first reaction of the most readers is – isn’t the report about the US itself?
The report focuses on accusing China of information manipulation via propaganda, disinformation, and censorship in an attempt to seek information dominance globally. Yet it sounds more like a portrayal of Uncle Sam himself when he is looking at the mirror, and then makes it about China, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times.
Has China ever manipulated global information like the US has been doing? Like the time when Washington claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the media parroted the claim, and US allies followed suit in US-led invasion of the Middle East country? Or like the time when the US faced the world’s highest COVID death toll, the US took the top spot on Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking?
If the US claims No. 2 in the world in disinformation and public opinion manipulation campaign, no one dares to claim No. 1. Think about how US political elites and media outlets uniformly bleats the word “unprovoked” in reference to Russia-Ukraine conflict, despite the fact that the conflict was not only provoked, but deliberately provoked by NATO’s eastward expansion; and how the US distracts public attention from US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report that the US was the mastermind behind the Nord Stream pipelines explosion, by claiming the sabotage was made by a six-member team of a pro-Ukraine group.
The US takes every measure to make the world hostile against Washington’s rivals. Launching an information war against China is therefore a part of US containment strategy, with a goal to create an “evil” image of China in the international public opinion arena. The new report is simply a latest example in US long list of tactics to make the world vigilant toward China.
This is why the US has been encircling China, half a world away from US own soil, with a chain of military bases and ports, yet calling China an “aggressor.” When a Chinese civilian unmanned airship accidentally floated over the US, the later made no hesitation in labelling the incident an act of espionage. The hysteria lasted for months until Pentagon, after a lengthy examination, confirmed it did not collect any information, not to mention send any data back to China.
American elites are so comfortable living in their echo chamber to repeat their accusation on “forced labor in Xinjiang,” which appears in almost every China-related report issued by US authorities. Unsurprisingly, it also shows up in the latest report. When people, especially from Western countries, have actually visited Xinjiang, acknowledge the development, improved healthcare, rising education and employment levels in the region, as what they see with their bare eyes, the politicians in Washington are busying clamoring so-called genocide and forced labor.
But whenever someone tells the truth, or whenever Chinese media tell the truth, they are labelled as a puppet of a Chinese propaganda machine. Who is manipulating information? How come the US has the freedom to spread disinformation but China becomes a manipulator for telling the truth?
The US State Department gets one thing wrong. It is not China manipulating information. But the US has been undermining its own credibility by lying for so long. It seems the US can also sense the fragility of its manipulation. Unfortunately, the way it responds to it is spreading more disinformation by smearing its rivals.
The more the US tries, the more its hypocrisy is exposed. The last thing the US cares about is public access to information, it cares about its hegemony, including that in the information field. Otherwise, why Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have to go through prosecution just for telling the truth?
This is what the Global Majority wants stopped ASAP.
On October 1, a reply made by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was made and an article built around that was published by Global Times, “People are not blind in seeing US’ empire of lies: Chinese FM refuting State Department’s China report”. Putin’s term, Empire of Lies, is now in wide use, which helps in the Info War but doesn’t mean the use of truth and facts can diminish. And here’s its content:
Refuting the US Department of State’s malicious report claiming that China has invested billions of dollars spreading disinformation globally, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the report itself is disinformation, and people of the world are not blind in seeing the US’ ugly attempts that have proven time and again that it is an “empire of lies” through and through.
Titled “How the People’s Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment,” the US report focuses on accusing China of information manipulation in an attempt to achieve global information dominance. It says that China’s “global information manipulation” is a challenge to the integrity of the global information space.
Responding to the report, a spokesperson from the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Saturday the report is in itself disinformation as it misrepresents facts and truth. In fact, it is the US that invented the weaponizing of the global information space.
The relevant center of the US State Department which concocted the report is engaged in propaganda and infiltration in the name of “global engagement.” It is a source of disinformation and the command center of “perception warfare.”
From Operation Mockingbird that involved bribing and manipulating news media for propaganda purposes in the Cold War era, to a vial of white powder and a staged video of the “White Helmets” cited as evidence to wage wars of aggression in Iraq and Syria earlier this century, and then to the enormous lie made up to smear China’s Xinjiang policy, facts have proven time and again that the US is an “empire of lies” through and through, the spokesperson said.
Even some in the US, such as Senator Rand Paul, acknowledged that the US government is the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world.
Some in the US may think that they can prevail in the information war as long as they propagate enough lies, but the people of the world are not blind, the spokesperson said.
“No matter how the US tries to pin the label of ‘disinformation’ on other countries, more and more people in the world have already seen through the US’ ugly attempt to perpetuate its supremacy by weaving lies into ’emperor’s new clothes’ and smearing others,” the spokesperson noted.
China’s response has revealed the distorted narrative of the US and fully exposed the US’ use of this report as a crucial element in trying to shape public opinion and international consensus in its strategic competition with China, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Sunday.
The spokesperson’s remarks have unveiled the insidious intentions and deceptive nature of Washington, contributing to a clearer and more comprehensive understanding within the international community of the US’ unscrupulous practices in its China policy, Li said. This includes the US’s longstanding history of hypocrisy, deception, and inconsistency in its words and actions.
The US has been taking every measure to make the world hostile against Washington’s rivals. Launching an information war against China is therefore a part of US containment strategy, with a goal to create an “evil” image of China in the international public opinion arena. The new report is simply a latest example in the US’ long list of tactics to make the world vigilant toward China, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times.
However, the more the US tries, the more its hypocrisy is exposed. The last thing the US cares about is public access to information, and it cares about its hegemony, including that in the information field, the expert added.
Disinformation disguised as disinformation? Why not. The Establishment Narrative is often exactly that. For the public, how can it trust anything said by the national government since it’s being lied to most of the time; when/how can it tell the government’s being truthful? And most know the big problem serial prevaricators have—they don’t know when they’re lying and when they’re being truthful; nor do they know how to exit their false narrative. Most are aware that outlaws always lie to justify their outlawry. Most know the Magic Bullet was a lie and thus the official explanation for who killed JFK is also a lie. Same goes with the assassination of RFK. MLK’s murder was proven to be done by the US Government in a Civil Court suit that never got the press it deserved. Yes, it’s all online. Pearl Harbor. Tonkin Gulf. Serbia, 911. Iraq 2. All the accusations about Iran. Syria. Arab Spring. Ukraine 2004-5 and 2014 to now. And those are merely the major ones, not the thousands of little ones, like Somalia and Sudan and the many within the USA. Which raises a very important question: When did the US Government begin lying so heavily to its citizens? Libertarians IMO think that’s a product of Big Government, but the US Government lied for decades about the fate and its actions towards Native Americans as Helen Hunt Jackson revealed in her 1881 A Century of Dishonor : A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. And then there’s perhaps one of the best kept secrets of all—the proceedings of the so-called Constitutional Convention were never to be made public—Which was actually a coup that ousted the prevailing government and its legal documents—The Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation—that instituted an oligarchic “republic” that was approved by less than 10% of the populace. We have no way of knowing where the Articles might have led, but we do know what has befallen us via the 1787 Constitution that’s supposed to improve the “Welfare” of all but has failed at that task grandly. Is that why the public’s lied to constantly, even in textbooks?
There’s only one solution to the above problem. People must rise up and not just demand but force the government to tell the truth. But we can’t expect the current Swamp of prevaricators to do that, so a wholesale replacement of most everyone within the federal government is required. Tall task? Yes, you bet it is. Impossible? Only if we don’t gather together and try—we the people have done so before when our problems weren’t nearly as bad as today—1880-1900 and 1930-1940. Many in the world ask when will the American people stand up for themselves and wonder if we have the courage to do so. Of course, thanks to the US Government, many Americans don’t realize they need to stand up for themselves.
We weren’t poor exactly, but as a child in the 70’s, my dad was a teacher and the sole breadwinner. My parents had to budget carefully.
Dad got paid once a month, and they went grocery shopping once a month. They’d buy 4 gallons of milk and put 3 in the deep freeze. Mom had a menu plan for the entire month and bought exactly what she needed to prepare those meals and nothing more. It was a rare occasion to find a box of Little Debbie snack cakes in our pantry.
Mom would make pancakes for dinner at least once a week, and my sister and I would happy dance in the kitchen.
I now know those pancakes were one of the many ways my mother stretched those groceries, an absolute necessity due to the inflation of the 1970’s.
I also know there were times I didn’t have enough to eat as a child. As an adult today I suffer from fears of food insecurity, and an empty fridge and/or pantry sends me spiraling into anxiety.
But I still love pancakes for dinner, although I don’t serve them as a cost saving measure. I serve them because they’re quick, easy & damn delicious.
First the cops, they would look at you weirdly and ignore you completely unless you break a law
If you say you want to take down the CPC, they will shrug and keep doing their job
If you disturb them, they will lock you up as per the relevant law
Now the officials
Even a mainlander doesn’t know who security officials are or what they look like
If you talk to a committee official or a local government official about overthrow of the party, he MAY notify the local security bureau
They will contact you, investigate you and when they find you have no funding or any major involvement with any organization, they will deport you and ban you from entry for 12 years if you are a foreigner
If you are a local, they will regard you mad and inform your family and neighbors that you are mad
Madness is not regarded a good thing in China
However most mainlanders are more amused than offended by these jokers who protest and scream and are OBVIOUSLY US FUNDED
Sometimes you can see 30–40 screaming students yelling about Democracy and most mainlanders looking at them like they were Zoo animals and grinning and walking by
In fact it’s a running joke in China
If you want money badly, you simply go to the US Consulate and say you support democracy and want to write a newsletter for 1500 people and want $ 5000 a month
In 2 days, the US agrees to pay this amount and you simply copy paste all leading articles in NYT or Washington Post, translate them to Mandarin and happily earn 35000 Yuan a month and even pay officials 20% Heung Ya
At one time, this was the most densely populated city on earth. It was built on a tiny island that used to be an important coal mine. Huge living towers were constructed for the coal miners, linked together by a network of underground tunnels. There were movie theaters, restaurants, shops, all built into or beneath the high-rise living towers.
In the 1950s, the mine was no longer economically viable. Overnight, the entire city was abandoned. It has been completely untouched for sixty years; not a single soul, not even a caretaker, lives there.
It is without a doubt the epicenter of urban decay on earth. I could spend weeks doing photography there.
14 Teen Clinical Psychopaths Reactions to Hearing Their Sentences
If you want to be happy then do what makes you happy.
If you want to be rich then do what makes you money.
And if you don’t do anything then you don’t get anything.
You either love someone or you don’t, either worked hard enough to achieve success or you didn’t and you are either proud of who you have become or you’re not.
That’s the “secret” to life and it’s all very simple.
The worst part about this is, that you know that this is true.
You know that if you just did the things you’ve been avoiding, the hard things, the uncomfortable ones, that your life would likely be far better!
You know that better than anyone, but keep avoiding it because you “missed too much” or “failed too often”; which is ultimately nothing more than pretty excuses.
The truth is you just want to avoid the discomfort of the action.
Something is keeping you from it, be it fear, discomfort or something else.
There is some story that you tell yourself that you believe that keeps you from doing that task.
You are not good enough, not smart enough, not disciplined enough. Life has been unkind to you, your parents prevent you from doing it or your situation does not allow for it.
You can make thousands of excuses and give even more reasons to why life is not that simple, but, in the end, it still is.
For if you just sat down and worked out, if you just worked harder or smarter, your life would be better. Period.
Now, if you do not know how to do it, then spend time figuring it out!
If you do not know what to do, then sit down and work on that.
But in the end it is all about doing the things you know you should.
That’s all it takes.
Stop making things so difficult for yourself, stop telling yourself the reasons that you cannot do it and find the reasons why you can do it or how you can.
Stop looking for ways out and find ways into the action.
Do more of what makes you happy and less of what makes you sad.
Do the things that progress your life and avoid the things that slow that progress down.
Surround yourself with people that make you feel amazing and drop the ones that don’t.
And get the things done that you know you need to to make your life better.
Life, at its core, is very simple. Don’t make it so complicated.
I used to work in retail. I have worked for a large retail chain both in the UK and the United states and I have owned and co-owned small retail businesses. Retail was my life for about thirty years.
Your question asking how to politeley tell people to just buy and go, suggests that you are not suited to retail.
That is not bad, you just don’t have that social touch that retail shop workers need.
Retail is working with people. They have a commodity that you need. You need their money, if it’s your business you need their money daily. If you are an employee of a retail business you need their money so the owner of the business can pay you a wage.
Now some customers will definitely want to just pay and go. They have what they want from you and you have their money, so transaction over. Hi and goodbye.
Some customers though will actually come to the store for the goods they want and also it can be a huge part of their social life.
You or your staff might be the only person whom they see on a regular basis.
Telling such customers to pay and go is not going to help your business or your employers business. Telling these customers such things is going to hurt them, you will embarass them and make them uncomfortable. Those words will cut, you won’t see a physical wound, but sure thing your top and bottom line will.
They will take their custom elsewhere, with their custom your possibility of gaining their cash. You just added to the profits of your competitors who are much more in touch with their customers.
Yes it is mercenary to see your customers as cash dispensers. But your question suggests that you are such a mercenary. You want their cash, you don’t want them to be sociable, it’s preventing you garnering their money.
In fact if you looked on the sociability side of retail you would find those customers like and trust you more, you are going to be their first choice of store.
It takes time and effort to cultivate a rappour with your customers. It’s damned hard work at times. But those will be the customers you will find coming back again and again.
Learn to take people for what they are and not as you would like to make them. That will take you far in retail.
If that is not your way. Then don’t work in retail, if you own a retail business, get out of the customer facing side and employ someone who will foster a more friendly face to your business. Pay them well and look after them, Because you will need to work harder abd so will they because of your poor attitude so far.
THIS is how Colombians are seeing us now (it’s not good)
When I first arrived in Medellin Colombia in 2016, the way that foreigners were depicted was much different. But now, I see a big change in how they see us.
there is one single thing that “separates the people that do things from the people that just dream about them.”
It isn’t their intelligence, their work ethic, or their financial means. It’s something much more simple…
When Jobs was only 12 years old he opened the phone book and placed a call to Bill Hewlett (the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard). On the call, Jobs asked if Bill happened to have any spare computer parts he could have for a project he was working on––building a frequency counter.
Not only did Bill have the parts, he gave Steve a job that summer working on the assembly line at his company. To quote Jobs, “I was in Heaven.”
So what did Jobs do that was so special? (Besides calling the co-founder of a computer company when he was just 12 years old). He asked. Yep, that’s all.
So many of us are held back by our own self-doubt or unwillingness to ask that opportunities we never even know are available pass us by.
A simple question I’ve used for years that has served me well: Will I be any worse off than am I now by asking for this opportunity? If the answer is no, which I’d argue it almost always is, ––then you’ve got nothing to lose.
If you’re too afraid to ask, you’re too afraid to fail. And without failure, you’ll never grow. Just take action. Just ask.
From the US side: only if China kneels down, promising:
not to further develop the nation in case it would surpass the US in the near future (better would never);
not to upgrade its industry, especially in the high-tech sectors so that the US can remain its tight grasp on making the standards to charge for high IP, licensing fees, as well as gaining enormous profits via selling high-end products to China, etc.;
not to build up its military prowess, so that the US can coerce and bully, even strike China at its will, while China does not have the power to hit back, even to complain about that;
not to reunify its territory, ie, forget about reuniting Taiwan province, even by peaceful means, let alone any attempts to taking it back by force even under the fiercer and fiercer provocations from the Taiwan authority backed by the US, and also directly from the US itself, as well as from other US allies;
not to adhere to its socialism system, instead, should adopt the US model of capitalism, so that international capital, especially US capital controlled by conglomerates in various fields can march into the Chinese capital market and eventually control the economic system of China, like what they have done with many other economies;
not to continue its one-party rule model, instead, follow the Western multi-party model, so that the US can sow certain evil seeds among different parties and then cultivate those who would rather sell their soul to the US in return for their selfish own interests, like many politicians in some countries, who have turned into the barking dogs of the US;
not to sell its products all over to the world, especially those which the US still has some competitive edges (though fewer and fewer), so that the US can still havest wealth from around the globe;
not to cooperate in a win-win manner with other countries, especially those countries less developed but abundant in natural resources, anyway, before China advocated this new win-win approach, their natural resources could be easily obtained by the US-led West in exchange of some rosy political promises of democracy and freedom, or looted (for example in Africa), or even stolen (for example, even right now, oil in Syria stolen by US soldiers) by them.
Then, the US would like to “coexist peacefully” with China.
But from the China side, can and will any Chinese people (except those traitors or betrayers, or those still naively believe the US, or broadly, the West, is still the “beacon of hope” of our human beings that China should and must obey the US’ order, etc.) agree to even just one term of the above listed?
Is it China’s fault to develop its nation?
Is it China’s fault to upgrade and develop its tech sectors?
Is it China’s fault to build up its military strength to protect its 1.4 billion people, their properties, as well as China’s overseas interests, since it is now the world’s second largest economy, the largest exporter of goods, and the second larget importer?
Is it China’s fault hoping to reunite its territory? Don’t forget, China is the only country among the five UN permanent members who has not finished intergrating its territory. The UN, and 182 of its 195 members, including the US itself, have stated clearly, Taiwan is a part of China.
Is it China’s fault to choose its own political system and governing mode? There are 193 UN member nations (with another 2 observe states), then actually there are 195 governing modes with various political systems, could the US require each and every one of them to follow the US model, why singling China out?
Obviously, a strong and rising China itself is the “threat,”because China’s rise is posing a “threat” to the US hegemony.
But a strong and rising China, is what China wants to be, needs to be, and is striving to be.
So, don’t expect a so-called “peaceful coexistence” between the US and China in the short future, unless one day, either China failed on its upward road onto the mountain, or the US continues to decline and lose its absolute control over the world with few to none tools to further block China’s rise.
The long-term forecasts clearly favor China by every measure.
If American companies fail to use this period of time to invest, they will not be able to “jump on the bandwagon” and take advantage of opportunities that are presenting themselves today.
If the Biden “government” insists that all American (and allied) companies “sit this one out”, then the entire American and Western industry will fall back and will NEVER be able to catch up.
…
China is being kind.
The United States NEEDS to “carefully consider” the long-term ramifications of their current actions.
As China gets stronger, more important, more dominant in all areas, the United States is at risk to not only falling behind, but going absolutely obsolete in the process.
This is not something that China wants.
…
China wants and prefers a vibrant world; one where different regions; nations, societies and people thrive. In the world that China envisions, it is a WIN-WIN for everyone.
However, the path that the United States has embarked on is fraught with danger. And the United States appears to be on fast-track towards becoming a blight; a mawed gouge in an otherwise improved world.
…
So China is being very polite, and very understated.
However, the truth is the truth.
Putin blasts ‘rules-based order’
So-called “order” is just a front for colonialism, with purported rules ever-changing to fit needs, Russian president has said
The Western-promoted “rules-based order” is merely a cover for colonialism, as the presumed rules have never been agreed-on by anyone and are ever-shifting from one case to another, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
The president made the remarks in an exclusive interview with state-run broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) that was aired on Monday.
“Have you ever seen these rules? No, because no one has ever written them, and no one has ever agreed to them with anyone. How can we talk about order based on rules that no one has seen?”
Putin stated.
While such a situation definitely looks “from the point of common sense” as “nonsense,” it’s extremely beneficial for the proponents of the said “rules-based order,” the president explained.
“If no one has ever seen these rules, it means that those who talk about this themselves come up with these rules from case to case in a way that suits their own interests. This is the essence of the colonial approach,”
Putin noted.
Colonialism has always been based on supremacist ideas, segregating people into different “classes.”
“Colonial countries have always believed themselves to be first-class people. After all, they always said that they bring enlightenment to their colonies, that they are civilized people and bring the benefits of civilization to other peoples, who are considered to be second-class,”
Putin stressed.
The colonial mindset remains strong, he noted, with all the US talk of its “exceptionalism,” for instance, stemming precisely from it.
“That is, when they say that they are exceptional in the United States, it means that there are other people, people of some other second class. How else can we perceive this? These are the rudiments of the colonial mindset, nothing else,”
he added.
The approach exhibited by Russia and China is entirely different from that shown by the West, with Moscow and Beijing both believing that treating all nations equally is the cornerstone of the emerging multipolar world and the basis of cooperation between the two nations themselves, Putin stressed.
“We proceed from the fact that all people are equal, everyone has the same rights, the rights and freedoms of one country and one people end where the rights and freedoms of another person or of an entire state start. This is how a multipolar world should gradually be born,”
I was at my local college bar in Long Island, NY. I saw a girl and she looked like someone I knew that wasn’t from my college area, someone from hundreds of miles away not far from my hometown in Vermont.
That girl was named Sharon Smith. Sharon and I kind of dated one spring/summer and we went to the local big name amusement park. I met Sharon during one of my high school wrestling meets. She was from a town in New Hampshire about 45 miles from my hometown.
It was kind of hard to maintain a relationship with someone so far away back in the rotary phone days, long distance calls, etc. Neither one of us had a car. I left for college, and we never saw each other again.
Since it was such an uncanny resemblance, I commented, “I think I must know your twin.” Now, I didn’t really think she was the twin of Sharon, I just thought she looked so much like the other girl.
The girl rolls her eyes at me since she knows she’s not from this area, and I guess she thinks it’s quite a lame pick up line.
She says something like, “Yeah, right.”
I reply, “I just think you look like a girl named Sharon Smith from Keene, NH.”
She then says, “Sharon is my twin sister, I’m Joann Smith!”
I did know Sharon had a twin sister, but I never expected to see anyone from my hometown area six hours away at my college town.
Joann was at my college for a sporting event and had wandered to our local bar with her group of friends from her own college.
We chatted, had some beers and a minor bar stool make out session, and parted ways. I never saw either girl again.
Russia doesn’t have two camps — Pro US and Pro China
Russia has two camps
One is the Moderate Nationalist Camp containing Putin, Shoigu, Gerasimov, Mitsuhitin and Nabulliana
Another is the Ultra Nationalist Camp containing Medvedev, Lavrov and friends
Both are Pro China
Both are Anti US
One side led by Putin wants to ensure Russia grows away from the US or West but keep bare minimum relations with the US or the West
The other side sees the US and West as enemies and would drink champagne if the Capitol building exploded and US Congressmen were in pieces
Either way CHINA IS KEY TO ALL OF THEM
It’s why a Regime Change in Russia would be bad for US and the West
Right now there are two groups of people — One Group who feel Putin is doing very will with the SMO (70%-75%) and another group who feel Putin is not being aggressive enough and that he should start bombing cities and even use key weapons (25%-30%)
Nobody significant cares about a single Ukrainian life or that Putin was wrong to be an aggressor. They all loathe Ukraine and the West and the perverted LGBTQ culture.
With Putin in charge, Dissidents like Navalny are still alive
With Putin gone, Navalny will be found hanging in his cell regrettably the next day
With Putin in charge, OLIGARCHS in exile are alive
With Putin gone, they will all die within weeks of various accidents
With Putin in charge, the SMO can still end in a negotiated peace
With Putin gone, Zelensky dies in a few days, The Ukrainian Parliament is bombed to rubble in a week and at least 100,000 civilians die in Kyiv and Lvov and Russia threatens open Nuclear War
So Xi has no problems
Russia and China need each other regardless of Putin or Xi being in power
There is no chance that either nation will have a Pro Western group in charge for a long time
Operation Mincemeat: The Shadow Catalyst for CIA’s Dark Age
Last month, Huawei unveiled its latest smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro, which boasts a 5G Kirin 9000s processor, the world’s first 5nm 5G chip with an integrated 5G modem. This is a remarkable feat of engineering and innovation, especially considering that Huawei has been under relentless pressure from the US government, which has imposed sanctions, restrictions, and bans on the Chinese tech giant, accusing it of being a national security threat and a violator of sanctions on Iran. The US has also tried to persuade its allies and partners to exclude Huawei from their 5G networks, threatening to sever intelligence and cooperation ties if they do not comply.
Some might see the launch of the Mate 60 Pro as a sign of Huawei’s triumph over the US, and a symbol of the US’s failure in its trade war against China. But this view is based on a false assumption: that the trade war is a zero-sum game, where one side’s gain is the other side’s loss, and that the ultimate goal of the trade war is to destroy Huawei and China’s 5G industry. This assumption is too simplistic and misleading. The trade war is not a binary contest between the US and China, but a complex and dynamic interaction among multiple actors and factors, such as markets, consumers, competitors, allies, regulations, standards, and innovations. The trade war is not only about tariffs, sanctions, and bans, but also about cooperation, competition, and coexistence. The trade war is not only driven by security and economic interests, but also by ideological and political values. The trade war is not only a challenge, but also an opportunity for both sides to reform, adjust, and innovate.
The launch of the Mate 60 Pro does not signify a failure on the part of the US in its trade war against China, but rather a reflection of the changing dynamics and realities of the trade war. On the one hand, it shows that Huawei has been able to overcome some of the difficulties and obstacles imposed by the US sanctions, and has been able to maintain its technological edge and market share in the 5G domain. On the other hand, it also shows that Huawei still faces many uncertainties and challenges in the global market, and has to contend with the rising competition from other players, such as Samsung, Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek. Moreover, it shows that the US has not given up on its efforts to contain and counter Huawei and China’s 5G ambitions, and has been exploring various measures and strategies, such as investing in domestic chip production, forming alliances with like-minded countries, and promoting alternative 5G solutions.
The trade war is not a simple or static game, but a complex and dynamic process. The trade war is not a win-lose situation, but a win-win possibility. The trade war is not a dead end, but a new beginning. The trade war is not only about confrontation, but also about dialogue and cooperation. The trade war is not only about the past, but also about the future. The trade war is not only about Huawei, but also about the world.
If the US media and their fellow lying western media were to honest for a change they will be writing about China this way;
Xi Xinping couldn’t have put a foot wrong in his 10 years at the helm of China. Close to a billion Chinese people were brought out of poverty and today Chinese middle income numbers at least twice the entire U.S. population thanks to the economic and social policy of Xi’s administration.
The 1 billion is more than the entire worlds total the go out of poverty in the last generation put together. China did it within 10 years! Today, China became the worlds biggest consumer with the highest consumption of the worlds demand all thanks to the Xi’s government that put priority to enriching the Chinese and care for their live and livelihoods.
After 10 years at the helm, China overtook the U.S. average live expectancy in 2021 and 2022. So an average Chinese now live longer than their American counterpart CV, the ultimate measurement of health care and welfare! In the decade Chinese economic growth alone become considerably bigger than the entire G7.
Today China’s high speed rail measure 120 thousands miles, more than able to circumnavigate earth twice and longer than the world put together. It’s deployment of Robots and automation is also more than the world put together during Xi’s reign. So is solar, hydro and wind energy cultivation in excess of the entire worlds total.
While the U.S. is in effect suffering from double digit inflation and resulting in a bank run, China’s inflation stay less than 2%. And grow on average 4 times the size of the U.S. when Covid break China under Xi handled the pandemic better and any western nation by a mile. Deaths and infections number less than 0.1% that if the U.S. and its economy flies the moment they end Covid measure, which is timed to perfection.
During his reign he motivated Chinese engineers and scientist to excel till they now lead in 37 out of 44 most strategic and key future technology category that brought China to the dark side of the moon and to Mars and back at 1/30 amount of time and cost compared to the U.S.!
It’s no wonder 97% of Chinese people approves of the job he is doing compared to 30% for Biden and Trump! It is no wonder Chinese people are the most confident of their future amongst all nation and. American’s amongst the least confident. Today 151 out of 195 nations participated in the BRI whiles the U.S. copycat B2B has less than 10 members after 3 years and barely build 10 miles of road!
That is what western media if they are honest will write. They will say that the west can only marvel and dream that they have a leader like this in the west but no, instead they criticise him to no end shamelessly and pathetically. I will go further Xi alone did more than the previous 10 US presidents did for America! As what Xi did for China!
Is This the BIG SHTF??? (prepping News)
Russia To Inject Much Larger Resources into Ukraine Special Military Operation
Russia has unveiled its plan to funnel massive resources into its Ukraine offensive to fight what it calls a “hybrid war” unleashed by the West, particularly the United States.
Russia’s finance ministry, according to a document released on Thursday, revealed that defense spending on Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, is set to jump by more than 68 percent year-on-year to almost 10.8 trillion rubles ($111.15 billion).
“The focus of economic policy is shifting from an anti-crisis agenda to the promotion of national development goals,” the ministry said in the document.
It added that such a decision included “strengthening the country’s defense capacity” and “integrating” Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The four Ukrainian regions were annexed to the Russian Federation last year following local referendums in the regions, which have not yet fully fallen under Russian control.
The huge hike is more than the spending allocated for social policy in Russia.
“It is obvious that such an increase is necessary, absolutely necessary because we are in a state of hybrid war, we are continuing the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
“I’m referring to the hybrid war that has been unleashed against us,” he added.
According to figures and calculations by AFP, Russia’s defense spending in 2024 is set to total around three times more than education, environmental protection and healthcare spending combined.
The announcement came as UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg convened in Kiev on Thursday to discuss more military aid to Ukraine, whose President Volodymyr Zelensky is tirelessly lobbying for more air defense systems to boost its slowed (read failed) counteroffensive against Russian forces.
Moscow has repeatedly warned Western leaders against the continued supply of weapons and munitions to Ukraine, pointing out that such measures will not stop Russian troops from defending its objectives and that arming Kiev would only prolong the war.
In what might have been the most difficult decade of my life, the years between 2001 and 2011, I was diagnosed with a auto-immune disorder ( anti phospholipid antibody syndrome ), Type two diabetes, Congestive Heart Failure, began to go blind, got married, my widowed mother died one week after my marriage, I left my homeland, the United Kingdom to set up life in California.
The hardest thing in all of that was learning to live life as a blind person. After being sighted for forty something years.
Allbeit, my blindness is not total blindness, Iam legally blind, I still have a little light perception in the peripheral right eye. I can see some bright light and shadow. No detail or color.
It actually took me most of the decade to lose my sight from excellent vision. I could shoot skeet and trap at the beginning of the Millenium. By the beginning of 2012, I couldn’t see much other than a white glare.
From my first blood clots in my right eye I learned about my auto-immune disorder Anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome. (APAS ). The doctors told me that I was likely to lose the vision in my left eye too, one blood clot might do the same damage later to the other eye. More a case of when not if.
I had massive doses of laser treatment on my right eye in 2002 to just close off leaking blood vessels. That was painful. No pain killingdrugs, just don’t blink zap, red laser light flashes.
I was able to sustain one eyed life until my series of blood clots in my left eye in May 2007, that led to my journey into certain blindness.
Though hopes were high early on as steroid injections directly into the eye, led to my being able to maintain good vision. The steroids caused the rapid growth of a cataract which had to be removed. Then the steroids themselves became less and less effective.
By late 2009 the ceased to work at all.
My blindness was sealed.
I lost light perception in my left eye in 2010.
I had to learn to use a long white cane.
Funny, that was just at the critical time of the Fianancial Crisis. California was poor. So poor that when I applied for a $20 white cane I was told one would be supplied, at some point. It was three years later.
I bought my own $20 cane in the meantime.
I did get instruction in using a white cane. Six hours with an instructor, those hours were precious and used well. I got to know how to use the cane to walk about my town. Later those skills would serve me well when I applied to get my first guide dog. Leif, but that was in the future.
Blindness was now.
At times it looked as if there was no future. Those were dark days for me and the marriage. I wanted to pity party my days away. My wife wrestled with becoming perceived not as my wife of just a few years but as my caregiver. A role neither she nor I relished for her.
A role which my blindness had seemed to force upon her.
Blindness, sudden blindness, affects everyone in the life of the person who has lost their sight. They too are rendered helpless by the inexorable knowledge that life will be the life that was planned.
It’s cold, lonely and ultimately a potential relationship destroyer.
But luckily. My wife pulled me through.
She found the strength for both of us.
That made the toughest time of my life a thing of the past.
Thank you for reading.
All the best.
Deep Dish Hamburger Pie
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 can green beans
Salt and pepper to taste
Ketchup
2 cups mashed potatoes
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
Instructions
Brown the meat and add your seasonings.
Stir in enough ketchup to suit your taste.
Add green beans and stir in well.
Place this mixture in a casserole dish and top with the mashed taters and then top that with the cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees F until heated through and cheese is browned.
The U.S. is ready to arrest Huawei executives for fear of China’s chip rise!
German Legislative Chairman Says “Yes” To Taurus Missiles for Ukraine
The Bundestag in Germany said that Ukraine will have the right to attack the territory of occupied Crimea with German-Supplied, Taurus missiles. This was stated by the Chairman of the Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann.
Germany has not yet officially announced the transfer of Taurus missiles because the Russians have openly warned about this.
The Taurus KEPD 350 is a Swedish-German air-launched cruise missile, manufactured by Taurus Systems and used by Germany, Spain, and South Korea.
The missile incorporates stealth technology and has an official range in excess of 500 km (300 mi).[10] It is powered by a turbofan engine at Mach 0.95 and can be carried by Panavia Tornado, Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab JAS 39 Gripen, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, and McDonnell Douglas F-15K Slam Eagle aircraft.
The dual stage 480-kilogram (1,100 lb) warhead, called MEPHISTO (multi-effect penetrator highly sophisticated and target optimized), features a pre-charge and initial penetrating charge to clear soil or enter “hard and deeply buried targets” (HDBT) such as hardened underground bunkers, then a variable delay fuse to control detonation of the main warhead.
The missile weighs about 1,400 kg (3,100 lb) and has a maximum body diameter of 1 meter (3.3 ft). Intended targets are hardened bunkers; command, control, and communications facilities; airfield and port facilities; ammunition storage facilities; ships in port or at sea; area target attack and bridges.
The missile also includes countermeasures as a self-defense mechanism and electronic countermeasures.
Mission planners program the missile with the target, air defense locations and planned ground path, then the missile uses a low terrain-hugging flight path guided by inertial navigation system (INS), image based navigation (IBN), terrain referenced navigation (TRN), and Global Positioning System (GPS) to the proximity of the target, although it is capable of navigating over very long distances without GPS support.
Once there, the missile commences a bunt (climb) maneuver to an altitude intended to achieve the best probability of target acquisition and penetration.
During the cruise flight a high resolution thermographic camera (infrared homing) can support the navigation by using IBN and is also used for GPS-free target attack. The missile attempts to match a camera image with the planned 3D target model (Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator, DSMAC). If it cannot, it defaults to the other navigation systems, or, if there is a high risk of collateral damage, it will steer to a pre-designated crash point instead of risking an inaccurate attack with undesired consequences.
Taurus Systems GmbH has proposed an anti-ship variant.
If Ukraine is given such missiles by Germany, nowhere on Crimea would be safe for Russians.
However a colleague of mine believes this fervently. He believes an act of god saved his life.
He normally took the 5:50 PM train to his house. Same routine for years. No change.
Leave office at 5:30 ,purchase fruits, have a cup of tea and a samosa at a local tea shop and take the 5:50 train home. First class.
That day he began the same way but at the tea shop the tea seller was making delicious Cutlets. He said it will take 10 minutes. My friend decided to stay, and purchase some cutlets to take home for the evening meal as his son loved cutlets and other fast food and regularly complained of why his father kept bringing fruits daily.
He missed the 5:50 Train
Rather than wait for the 6:15 train, he decided to treat himself to an Auto.
When he reached home, it was 6:30 PM and he came in and delivered the cutlets to his son and went for a bath. When he came out he relaxed on the balcony and at 7 PM he got the calls – Are you alright? There was a bomb blast on the Churchgate 5:50 train.
Hundreds of calls that prompted him to send a Multiple SMS to everyone
I am fine and safe
I got the SMS and had no clue what the SMS was for. Only then came to know about the Train Blasts
After a few hours, my friend finally realized that he was a first class passenger and he would have most probably died.
His wife took him to the temple the next day and he refused to take the train anymore.
His decision to wait ten minutes to purchase Cutlets saved his life.
He is alive. Watched his son join ISRO. He is posted in Kolkata now.
Every July he will without fail on that day of the blast, visit the temple and thank god for that single decision.
And he has said this 20 million times to us. Every time he will start by saying “This is my second innings”.
Even to strangers. You ask him what the time is and hell reply – “Time…i dont regard time…..in 2006…” and hell start.
And despite this near miss – He posted a facebook post criticizing Tejasvi Surya and hailing someone called Srinivas.
Chicago-Style Sausage and Peppers
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons corn oil
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
2 large yellow bell peppers, cored, seeded and thinly sliced
2 large red bell peppers, cored, seeded and thinly sliced
1/4 cup Jack Daniels Sour Mash Whiskey
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
8 spicy Italian sausages (4 ounces each), not hot dogs!
8 good quality hot dog buns
2 tablespoons reserved sausage grease or soft butter
Instructions
Heat corn oil in large skillet and sauté the onions and peppers until tender and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes over medium heat.
Add the bourbon and stir quickly until absorbed.
Add the brown sugar and stir until the sugar melts.
Season with thyme, salt and pepper. (Can be refrigerated for one week. Let come to room temperature before serving.)
Char-grill the sausages until slightly blackened and cooked through.
Brush the hot dog buns with a little sausage grease or butter and toast on the grill or under the broiler.
Nestle a sausage in a bun and top with about 2 tablespoons of peppers and onions.
In July 2020, a girl about 20 years old was riding a shared bicycle to cross the road. Suddenly, she collided with a car turning left. The girl fell from the bicycle and was caught under the car.
After receiving the information, the police rushed to the intersection, which took 30 seconds.However at the time the police arrived, the girl had been rescued.
Some delivery guys helped her.
In China, there is a magical group called delivery boy.
They belong to two different companies. One company’s employees wear orange clothes with toy kangaroo ears, and the other wear blue clothes with bamboo dragonflies on their heads.
Like this
It turned out that there happened to be a take-out station nearby (the delivery guys usually wait for the pick-up and drop-off information in the densely-packed neighborhoods of restaurants). More than ten delivery guys rushed out, and together with the surrounding construction workers, passing students and white-collar workers, they took the car lifted and rescued the girl. This process takes about fifteen seconds.
Although the girl’s head was bleeding, she was conscious. After the police used a first aid kit to stop the bleeding, the ambulance rushed to the scene and took the girl to the hospital. After the treatment by the hospital, the girl was out of danger.
There is also a group with a similar work nature to the delivery guys. They are called the express guys. The express delivery company in China is very efficient. It takes about three days for a product purchased from Guangzhou to Harbin (more than 3,000 kilometers) , If you choose a courier company known for its speed, the time can be shortened to two days, and the courier fee increases just a little. The reason for this speed is not only the efficient road transportation and air transportation system, but also the courier’s understanding of roads and community conditions and a dedicated work attitude.
In June last year, a child was playing on the balcony of his home. He accidentally fell out of the window with his head stuck in the guardrail and his body hanging outside the window. There was a danger of suffocation. A courier named Liang rushed over and climbed up when he heard someone calling for help. He stood on the guardrail of the first floor to support the boy’s feet and made sure him not hang in the air, waiting for the police to rescue him. In the end, the police and property staff who received the information saw the guardrail with a chainsaw and rescued the boy.
In some streets, there are caring refrigerators specially prepared for couriers, delivery guys and sanitation workers. There are free drinking water in them to prevent these workers who often go out in hot weather from heatstroke.
Human relationships are mysterious and full of charm. The mutual help, understanding and respect between people are too heartwarming.
Today I want to relate the events leading to why my wife and I left American Samoa.
American Samoa is an American territory in the South Pacific. It is a very beautiful island, but is way off the shipping lanes, and is really difficult to get to, thus it is not really a tourist destination.
I had an opportunity to build a hospital there.
Anyways, the social and societal organization there is very, very different from what I, as an American, realized.
Here’s a short recap.
Families are in the wife’s name.
Ownership is by the wife, the men own nothing.
Each village has a “pecking order” of hierarchy, all woman led.
If the leading female in a village dies, the next ranking female takes over.
Now, my “Boss” was a man in the leading family in the local village. And he provided me an apartment to live in and a car.
Then one day, there was a death in the village and the leading woman died.
Immediately, the next week was a reshuffle of power, and ownership changed hands. My “boss” was no longer in control.
We lost our apartment, and our car, and had to find a place to live. And it sucked!
…
No answers, but my “boss” gave me a place for free. He told me where to go, and later on that day I went to see it.
Ugh!
It was a open-air cinder-block room beneath a backyard chicken-coop/garage. And seriously, I wouldn’t even consider to have my dogs live there. No windows. Just an open square. The “door” was a piece of plywood with a hasp. The “bed” was a ancient well-worn hospital bed. One electrical outlet, and a century old fan.
Mold everywhere.
Moist. Damp. Dirty. Filty.
Something like this…
I looked around. Said “nope”.
She started to go to the building. I sad NO!
My wife who was trailing me as I entered the hovel was confused. But I spun her around. There was no way in Hell would I subject her to the indignity that I had just been exposed to.
I just left from the site, hopped in the car. Told my wife “we are leaving”, and then made the necessary arrangements.
We were out of there within 24 hours.
…
Do not; never expect the same levels of social norms, respect or allowances that you have grown up with. You might end up with one Hell of a surprise.
This was a “close one”, for once trapped there, we might never had gotten the opportunity to leave.
Sanwan’s adaptation (1937), Mao’s purge of “three gulfs” after the Boxer uprising
After the failure of the Autumn Harvest Uprising, Mao Zedong led the remnants of the army to the south, retreating towards the Xiang-Gan border. After the clear transfer to the Jing-Gang Mountain area, the troops arrived at the village of Sanwan, Yong-Xin County, Jiangxi Province on 29th September, 1927, when the commanding group of the Front Committee at that time decided to integrate the remnants of the army.
At the time of integration, there were less than 1,000 troops left in the remnants of the army, and there was no CPC organisation at the grassroots level of the army, so the army’s culture was no different from that of the warlords’ troops, and the soldiers’ ideology was chaotic, and they did not have any absolute sense of affiliation to the CPC.
The contents of the integration included the following:
Dispatch some of those who did not want to stay in the army, reduce the army to one regiment and rename it as the First Regiment of the First Division of the First Army of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army;
Establishing CPC party organisations in the troops, so that there were company branches (CPC party branches were built on the company), battalion and regiment party committees, and CPC party representatives above the company level;
To stipulate that officers and chiefs should not beat up soldiers, that officers and soldiers should be treated equally, and to establish soldiers’ committees to take part in the management of the unit and to assist in political and mass work. The troops were united under the leadership of the CPC Front Enemy Committee, of which Mao Zedong was the secretary, and a democratic system was carried out internally.
The Sanwan’s adaptation clarified the absolute leadership of the CPC over the army, and at the same time became a guarantee of the CPC’s armed seizure of power.
Within the PLA, officers and enlisted men are completely equal, and at company meetings, ordinary soldiers criticise their officers, who are mortified.
In the U.S. Army, it is unthinkable for the average soldier to criticise his commanding officer.
KMT army vs. CPC army in the Chinese Civil War:
1. The American-backed KMT army of Chiang Kai-shek was entirely a warlord army.
In the case of Chiang Kai-shek’s direct subordinate Hu Zongnan’s Seventh Corps, for example, some of the KMT officers mistreated and brutalised their soldiers to an appalling degree, as reflected by the regiment’s insurgent officers and soldiers:
its 430 regiment’s deputy battalion commander Chen × × when the machine company commander, soldier Liu Yanchun desertion was captured back, Chen × × Liu Yanchun hung up and beaten to death, the body was thrown into the field to feed the dogs, and then cut off the ears of the dead, hanging on the wall, and then gathered the company announced: “You see what this is? Whoever escapes again in the future will be dealt with in this way”.
its 351st regiment soldier Yue Quanfu disclosed: he was 16 years old, was captured by the head of the security force, the village with him at the same time to be captured as a soldier of 10 people. The 10 people, two were shot, one was beaten to death and fell off a cliff, and one was flayed alive by an officer because he didn’t ask for leave to relieve himself!
its 473rd regiment deputy battalion commander Wang × × pick up new recruits, met a few sick people can not walk, so they deceived them and said: “Who can not walk, say, I let you go home”. Four soldiers just turned their heads to go back, was called by Wang × ×, he let the four sick kneel on the edge of a cliff four or five feet high, copied a stick, a stick one, all beat them to the bottom of the ditch, then, long gone.
Its 158th Division officer Deng x x revealed that when he was a platoon leader, he once followed the mortar company commander to Sichuan to pick up new recruits, and saw with his own eyes that this company commander killed more than 20 recruits who deserted. Most of them were killed with guillotines, and others were killed by “splitting the bodies of five horses”. When one of the recruits ran away, he led men to the recruit’s house to catch him, and when he didn’t catch him, he set fire to the recruit’s house. Another time, when he failed to catch a deserter, he ordered four soldiers to carry the deserter’s family and put them on fire until they were burned to death.
Zhu x, chief of staff of his 55th Division, once ordered the commander of the company directly under him to “bury alive any soldier who makes a mistake”. This man once dug out a soldier’s heart on the spot during a punishment and hung two large bunches of them. Soldiers revealed that “he dug out the hearts of many soldiers”.
349 regiment 2 battalion platoon commander Shi × × to sodomise a soldier, was rejected by the soldier, Shi × × even get a carrot to the soldier’s anus hard stuffing!
A division of a deputy division commander is a big sex maniac, his subordinates in the past only know that he often use his authority to force sodomy subordinates, who knows, through the denunciation of the revelation, by his sodomy of the subordinates was as many as 89 people, the anger of the uprising of the officers and soldiers have demanded that the deputy division commander’s crotch penis will be cut off!
According to statistics, of the 2,451 soldiers in the 144th Nationalist Division, 107 soldiers’ mothers were raped by their officers, 21 soldiers’ mothers were abused by their officers, and 185 soldiers’ mothers were forced to remarry; 57 soldiers’ wives were raped by their officers, 53 soldiers’ wives were abused by their officers, and 93 soldiers’ wives were forced to remarry; 159 soldiers’ sisters were raped and abused by their officers, and 175 soldiers’ sisters-in-law were raped and abused by their officers, and were forced to remarry; and a total of 850 soldiers’ mothers, sisters, and sisters-in-law were raped, abused, and forced to remarry by their officers.
Of the 2,451 soldiers in the division, 345 were hung up and beaten by officers, 289 were tied up and beaten by officers, 1,238 were clubbed by officers, 13 were stabbed with bayonets, 677 were beaten with rifle butts by officers, 1,362 were slapped by officers, 945 were beaten with belts by officers, 991 were kicked by officers, 53 were beaten to death, 20 were beaten to vomit blood, 22 were crippled, 1,298 were made to kneel, 535 were made to freeze, 1298 were made to dry in the sun, and 53 were made to faint. The number of people who were beaten to death by officers was 53, 20 were beaten by officers and spat out blood, 22 were beaten and crippled by officers, 1,298 were punished to kneel by officers, 535 were punished to freeze outside by officers, 128 were punished to be exposed to the sun, 1,302 were punished to starve by officers, one was punished to drink urine by an officer, one was punished to eat an officer’s sputum by an officer, 33 were shot and buried alive by officers, and one was shot and buried alive by an officer, but not dead. 33 people, 24 people buried alive by officers ……
You tell me, how does such a warlord army get the support of its soldiers? How can such a warlord army gain the support of the Chinese people?
If this reactionary, inhumane Kuomintang army can win the Chinese Civil War, it will not be unless the days and nights are turned upside down and the Pacific Ocean dries up!
2. Mao’s army was an army of equal officers and soldiers.
First, on the way to catch up with the enemy. Mao Zedong asked CPC officers to grasp the ideological education of captured soldiers and new recruits.
For example: Mao Zedong knew that most of the captured Nationalist soldiers were from poor families, some of them were forced to be arrested by the Nationalists, some of them were here for money, and they had no idea why they were fighting the war. In response to this background of origin of the captured soldiers, CPC officers were required to provide one-on-one ideological education to recruits and captured soldiers.
CPC officers talked to the recruits and captive soldiers on foot and when they had the opportunity, talking about their family history and finally blaming it on the KMT, which was caused by the exploitation of the poor by the landlords and rich peasants they supported. If the KMT’s Chiang Kai-shek continued to exist, the poor would never be able to turn over a new leaf and would have to live in poverty for generations.
Every day, CPC officers had to report to the CPC Party Leader on the ideological work they had done with the masses, the reaction of the masses, and the ideological sentiments of the masses, before accepting the task for the next day’s work. The CPC party group leader then reports to the CPC party branch, and the CPC party branch then reports to the CPC party committee. The ideological situation of the fighters was firmly in the hands of the CPC Party leaders.
The thoughts of the captured soldiers were quickly transformed through the ideological education of the CPC officers.
Secondly, during the march of the army, the CPC officers set an example by carrying the luggage of the captured soldiers and new recruits. When resting at the end of the line, the CPC officers burned foot-washing water for the captives and recruits, and cooked food for the sick for those who were not in good health, so the CPC officers really treated the captives and recruits as their own brothers.
Thirdly, the captive soldiers also saw that the officers and soldiers in PLA were united, all of them had no salary, ate, wore and slept together without any special treatment, united with each other, and took care of each other as if they were brothers, like a big family.
Fourthly, in order to comfort the KMT captive soldiers and stabilise their minds, the CPC branch sent an official letter to the captive soldiers’ hometowns, stating that they had joined the PLA and that their hometowns should treat them as military families. This moved the captive soldiers and made them settle down; turning their guns to fight the KMT.
At the beginning of the Chinese Civil War, the KMT had 5 million soldiers and the CPC had 1 million; when the Chinese Civil War ended, the KMT was left with only 1 million soldiers, 4 million of whom surrendered to the CPC and joined the PLA.
Xi walked into the dormitories of ordinary soldiers to see if their blankets were warm enough, and Xi ate a pot of rice with ordinary soldiers; has the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States ever done this? These are PLA traditions and have been so since Mao Zedong.
My best friend/co-worker Larry was the IT guy in the training department for a large computer corporation where we both worked. I was a course designer/instructor. The company had been doing quarterly layoffs for almost two years. When it was your turn to be laid off, security watched you pack your personal items then escorted you off the property.
One night during a software update Larry discovered the next layoff list on the boss’s computer (she hadn’t even bothered to password-protect it, but her incompetence is good for another story). Both he and I were on the list. The date was a week away.
In the bookcase of my cubicle were copies of every technical manual and instructor’s guide I’d written for this company. They were my proof of ability. I would need them when I went on interviews and was asked “can you show me something you’ve done?” I spent the next week slowly replacing each binder with an empty one. By the time we were laid off, my entire collection of authored books was safely at home.
Bonus, Larry called the local news to expose how the company was using layoffs as a quick boost to their quarterly earnings numbers (fewer employee expenses improved the net bottom line). They’d often lay off the most critical employees right before end of quarter and then hire them back as “consultants” a few weeks later. We were both interviewed on the news the afternoon we were laid off. Screwed our chances for being rehired but I wouldn’t have gone back anyway.
Oh yeah, and the company? Failed a year later after an even bigger scandal surfaced. They had sales reps creating huge fake sales orders, then right before end of quarter all that equipment would be “shipped” to a large storage facility. They were caught with millions of dollars of fake earnings from falsified sales.
Passport Bros Meet Filipina In The Provinces
No need to be nervous in the small towns in the Philippines. Almost everywhere I go, the Filipino people are the nicest, friendliest people I have ever met. Moved here from So. Calif. in 2010, found my sweet wife here, the Philippines is HOME for me now.
Back in 1999, my then husband began to threaten to harm our children. I set in motion actions with only one thought-to protect my children.
January: I filed a complaint at his precinct (he was a police officer). They took away his guns-he had 10 (he told me 3) and enough ammunition to fight a battle (they told his brother in law that). He filed a complaint with them, saying he threatened to kill us. They told him “we know, he’s a psycho cop. But he’s ok. He loves his kids.” They had zero clue what went on in our home. His brother in law called Child Protection because he saw the police were not taking this seriously. Child protection came, saw it was a clean house with food in the cabinets and he was polite and calm. They never spoke to me or the kids. He told me if I said anything he will make our children orphans. I filed for an order of protection to get him out-his buddies faxed inletters swearing he was a nice guy, loves his kids-she was the bad one. I got denied. He refused to give me money for groceries, mortgage, utilities.
February: I went to put the child on welfare and food stamps. Why are you staying there, they asked. Take your children and leave. I had two sons with asthma and they all had special needs. Why should WE leave? He was the menace-take him out!! So the welfare people called child protection on ME. That’s right-because I didn’t want to take my asthmatic and special needs children to a homeless shelter 3 trains away in the Bronx! My parents didn’t want anything to do with my problems. We went to their home for two days and they threw us. You married him and had his children-now live there. Child protection came to my home at 11:30 at night. They saw the children and me living in the basement. We had a clean home and food (I told them my parents bought them food sincevhe gave me no money). The next day I called my therapist in tears-they will take my children away from me! All because I won’t leave the house! I can’t understand it-we have no where to go or any money. Why should we leave? He’s the threat!! She calmed me down. She made calls all day. By the end of the day, they closed my case-she had the faxes on her desk because I trusted no one.
March: I told my parents there was no more choices. I was getting a lawyer and divorcing him. My parents were horrified. They couldn’t believe he was starving his children. I showed them my temporary support which was running out. Their grandchildren were getting food stamps because their father wasn’t buying them food. My father called our rabbi to talk to him while we stayed in their house. Two hours later, the rabbi came to my father’s house. “It’s a terrible thing to see people change from human into something monstrous. I tried to talk to him about a man’s responsibility to his family.” “Rabbi, he doesn’t like you since Fort Dover, when he was in the hospital for a week and you saw him only once for 5 minutes.” “He told me. He spat on me for it.” My father and I lowered our heads in embarrassment. “I never advocate for divorce unless there is nothing left. Benny, I’ve known you for many years. Get your daughter a good lawyer, she’s going to need one.” I started to cry and the Rabbi put a business card in my father’s hands-it was my lawyer to be. My father and I went the next day and hired him. I told him everything that happened. My lawyer gave me his phone number-call him after 911 in an emergency. And get the children on as much welfare and food stamps as you can. I had to hire 3 servers at $200 a piece to wait at each exit of his precinct to serve him with the order to appear in court. On that day, I went to social services and gave the title of my home as a guarantee so the city can put a lien on my house against any financial support we got from welfare and food stamps. The children and me were finger printed and got ID cards that day. I got formal letters stating we were in need and were getting food stamps and money. The date was March 10-My then husband’s birthday. I chose the date. I wanted everything to have his birthday on it -the court papers, the welfare papers. It was my last happy birthday to him.
April: when the Jewish community and our friends found out about the pending divorce, we were ostracized. I went to Jewish agencies for help. I had no money for Passover. I got a $25 food voucher from an agency that helped the poor and aged. I went to another place that gave me such bad smelling food my father was outraged. He made me take him and the food back. He screamed at them in Yiddish how shameful this was to a poor girl with children. The man shrugged and said “she’s your daughter, you take care of her.” My father said “if only I had back the charity money I gave to places like yours” He put the box on the floor at the man’s feet and he ordered it thrown away. I asked my brother for money, and he gave me $200. But he always reminded me I owed him the money and anytime he needed a favor, he reminded me of the money.
May and June: I finally got approved to work at the Department of Education as a substitute. I accepted any job I could get, no matter where it was or what it was. Getting my money was harder. Sometimes I got my check in the mail. Sometimes I had to go back to the school. Sometimes it was at a district office. I had to drive to the payroll center to make sure all my checks were processed. Meanwhile, the city demanded I worked for their workfare program. No one gets welfare for nothing. I tried again and again to explain how subs worked. I had to wait for them to call me. I told my counselor she can call 65 Court Street to confirm how they call subs. I was told “no problem, you can go there and clean their toilets and wash floors.” Didn’t you want me off welfare? I can get hired by the Dept of Ed if I keep accepting jobs. If I’m washing floors somewhere else I won’t get hired. My counselor took it to mean I was too good to wash floors (if I had no prospects of a job I would have done it gladly). I was thrown off welfare.
July-September: I had been going to court, but he kept putting it off. I couldn’t miss a single court date, but he could show up and say he’s not ready, no lawyer-he fires his lawyer right there in court once! I was getting worried because I needed to keep getting called in to work-30 straight days in any school and I could get hired. I had 20 days and they stopped calling me. It was frustrating as can be.
October: the bank sent over two big guys to serve us with foreclosure papers on the house. The first met my husband who threw him bodily off the premises. I agreed to sign off on the papers if I could get 48 hours to pack our things and leave before they came to lock up the house. They saw what a bad spot I was in and that the idiot didn’t tell me the house was being foreclosed because he didn’t pay the bill in months. They gave me the 48 hours. I called a friend who had s vacant apartment. He didn’t clean it yet. I’ll clean it. I need it in 48 hours. He was ok with it. I called a moving company that specialized in last minute moving-especially in domestic situations. They sent over big guys in case he cane by to interfere. I threw clothes and toys in bags and boxes. I grabbed whatever I could that day. My father and I cried-my marriage was dead. I never told my father-this wasn’t a parole from prison, where I got timevoff for good behavior. It was a pardon-I was freed because of a terrible mistake that shouldn’t have happened. The next day I called Sub Central with my new address and phone number. We were trying to find you! I had to move suddenly. We have a job for you-and it could be permanent. Can you go there tomorrow? I cried with joy. Thanks to God-we had a safe place and I got a chance for a permanent job. It was the School I’m still working at-18 years later. I hung up and my children and I all hugged each other. I moved to this apartment with no job and borrowed money for the first months rent. I didn’t have anything for security. Now, I had a place and a job to take care of my children.
November: Family court once again. The case had been moved to another judge who refused to delay the hearings. She asked him “what did you do to support your children?” “I’m having a problem with their mother-“ “that’s not what I asked you. Did you buy groceries? Pay the phone? Electricity? Gas? Mortgage?” All the answers were no. The judge turned to me. “What did you do to support your children? I turned over all my papers from welfare, food stamps, my pay stubs, and a joint bank book stuffed with grocery slips and utility payments. His lawyer turned pale. The judge went through everything very carefully. “So, your wife put your children on welfare and food stamps while you didn’t do a thing?” “She didn’t put the kids on welfare (chuckling).” The Judge has him look at the papers. Yes I did – and they were all dates on his birthday. “You put my children on welfare-on my birthday?” “Yes, the same day you were served to come to court.” The judge flipped back pages. “You mean to tell me that you have been screwing around all this time while you had no idea how your children were living? You’ve been putting this off from March to now?” She threw her hands on her table. “I’m done talking to you. Let me see your pay stubs.” She reviewed his stubs and was about to order support of $400 a month. I asked to see his stubs first. I pointed out to my lawyer 3 pension loans he took out which come out of his gross pay check, thus reducing the net check to look less. My attorney stood up and said “why should the children have to have their money reduced because of his pension loans? We request you add those amounts in.” The Judge looks over the stubs and screamed “you think you’re so smart huh. I had someone from Sanitation do this last week. Know what I did? I threw the book at him. Like I’m going to do to you.” She reworked the figures. $636 semi monthly-and give me a list of expenses you borrowed-moving, apartment, clothes-anything you had to borrow. He’s going to pay you back for 1999. Every penny!” My husband jumped up out of his chair and yelled “you can’t do that to me! We’re on the same team! All the judges love me.” “The other judges don’t know you-but don’t worry. I’ll make sure they do.” The bailiff had to stand behind him and keep his hands in idiot’s shoulders. My lawyer stood up “your honor, we realize this had been quite a shock to the defendant. We know how hard it is to support a sexy sport car instead of a family (he showed pictures of him in the car). How about if the defendant pays my client $50 semi monthly until his debt is paid?” The other lawyer said ”yes, please!” So the idiot wound up paying me $50 twice a month for two and a half years! These $50 checks were in addition to the child support the court ordered.
December: I was formally hired by my School to work there full time. I paid back my father the money I borrowed. I caught up on my rent and paid security. My children were removed from welfare and food stamps. I bought my children clothes for the first time in nearly two years. We had a real holiday as a family that we didn’t have for so long. And their father told them that I was a bad mother because I took them away from him. It would be years before they saw the truth. I also got back into my house that had been locked up. He set fire to our wedding pictures, most of my old photos from School, books, whatever he could throw in. There was a huge black circle in the middle of the living room. I grabbed more of the children’s things, whatever I could salvage-and his grandmother’s silver items. He left all of them in the China cabinet. I took the Jewish books he left, anything I could throw in a box or bag. He broke my dishes in the kitchen sink. I took a few pots and pans I found. I took all the children’s pictures I found still hanging up. Oddly enough-he never opened my nightstand. I had, shall we say, personal items that a lonely woman keeps in a nightstand drawer. I decided to throw them out instead of bringing them home. I don’t know why. I stopped at the doorway. I looked inside for a last time. This horrible nightmare was finally ending. I knew I had more-the foreclosure sale, the divorce. But this prison that I loved because I raised my children in it, that I cared for, was finally closed. I saw the mezuzah still on the door post. I took it off-my father bought that for us. I gave it back to him.
Yes I know-I wrote a novel. I did it with a time line and great detail for a reason. Any moron who says just leave without a plan or money or support is just that-a moron!!! It’s easy to say “just leave”. And go where?????? If parents turn you out, your family and friends shun you-where do you go? The only person who helped me was HIS sister and her husband. She kept my important documents safe and $300 of emergency money for me. It was her husband who filed the complaint back then saying he heard their father say we were better off dead-and because he was a cop, he would get a slap on the wrist. No one-NO ONE stood up for me. Even my parents told me openly they were ashamed of me. My father gave me money for the sake of his grandchildren. The next person who says just leave and has no plan or idea on how to accomplish that action should be slapped. Because they were never standing at that black pit as I did. Just leave. Why not just say “jump into that black hole?”
Im sorry for writing a long answer. As you see, nearly 20 years later, I can recall it in great detail. Thank you for reading all the way through. If my story can help just one person-then it was all worth it.
No one wanted this cat, so I adopted him.
This is very interesting.
“I adopted a cat and realized everything I thought I knew about them was wrong. In this video, I’m sharing my whole journey from the first week to what I’ve learned, and how Bepo is doing now.”
One of the many encounters I’ve had with a Trump supporter was the time a woman commented on a local news station’s Facebook post with a picture of what she claimed was the 1938 Time Magazine Man of the Year cover. It was clearly photoshopped and had Hitler in an heroic pose with a caption calling him a great leader. She gave her own opinion that Time was a liberal hate rag that supported Hitler.
I knew it was fake because I’ve seen the real cover. It’s hard to forget. It’s a macabre illustration of a tiny little Hitler sitting at the bench of a giant pipe organ. Above him is a wheel with several naked corpses hanging from it. The caption reads, “From the unholy organist, a hymn of hate.”
I replied to her with a link to the official Time website archive page showing the real cover and the story calling Hitler evil.
You may have already guessed this, but she used the laugh reaction to my comment, called me an idiot and then said there was no way to know my cover wasn’t fake and hers was real.
Again, it was a link to the actual Time archives. She could have also done 10 seconds of research on Google, but no. She was more willing to believe this random, poorly edited JPG she found on Facebook was real and that Time Magazine in 1939 praised Hitler and somehow got away with it.
Her husband joined the conversation and attempted to prove his wife was right by telling me I have a woman’s name.
This encounter really drove home for me that we are in a lot of trouble as a country because a lot of people are completely stupid and unwilling to believe facts. A month or two later COVID hit.
Americans React To “When Americans Realise The Entire World DOESN’T Revolve Around Them”
In this video, we react to moments shared on Tiktok when Americans realize the whole world doesn’t revolve around them. These are hilarious but also somewhat eye-opening.
For example, up to 2009, Facebook was fully accessible in China. Then in July that year, a group called ETIM (which the UN categorises as a terrorist group) used Facebook to organise and instigate a riot in China. 197 people died and more than 1,000 people were injured.
The Chinese government asked Facebook to cooperate by identifying the ETIM members who had used Facebook to instigate the riot. Facebook refused. So the Chinese government banned Facebook, saying that otherwise Facebook might be used to instigate violence and organise riots.
As the years passed, it became clear that the Chinese government was not wrong. I say this, because of events in other countries make this clear and obvious.
Well, the fight was with me, and I sort of picked it. Just wait for it, you’ll understand as I go.
If I recall correctly it was 2018 and I was at a bus stop, there was a young girl, I would say about 13 years old. It was pretty late at night, I had just finished a routine commute from the city I trained in to the city I lived. I’m standing outside of the bus stop, gym bag over my shoulder while in the distance I saw a person kind of walking all over the sidewalk. Not unusual, there were a few bars around, I had even popped into one for a drink before waiting for the city bus home.
As the person got closer, my assumption was confirmed that they were in fact a bit drunk. Not a big deal, being drunk in public isn’t necessarily a crime unless you go overboard with it. So I ignore it. He comes up to the bus stop, stops for a second and then notices the girl. He starts banging on the glass, asking her questions and telling her to smile for him. I think to myself “Well, he’s an asshat”, and then asked some advice on my phone (facebook) of what to do. I got a few responses right away, mixed, but overwhelmingly saying I shouldn’t do anything.
Here is where it got dicey, instead of just being on the outside of the bus stop continuing his belligerent ways, he proceeds to walk to the entrance of the shelter and continues to tell her to smile and she should talk to him. I see the girl is visibly upset, and now it’s getting to a confinement issue. So I said to the guy to leave her alone, she’s too young and that’s you are making her uncomfortable. He turns around in a rage, swearing at me, telling me he used to race cars and she clearly wanted him. I repeated what I had said, he starts approaching me so I backed up a couple of steps, put my gym bag down and tried to descale it. He said he was going to smoke me. He starts trying to get in my face and I put my hand on his chest and asked him “what are you doing? I don’t want to fight but you have to leave her alone.”
Anyways, he tried to push through my hand and by that point I had enough. I grabbed the back of his neck, pivoted and shucked him to the ground. I didn’t follow up with anything because at that point it was done. He got up, realized he was outmatched and left her alone.
I looked over at her after to see if she was okay, and she mouthed thank you. So I asked her if she wanted me to sit with her on the bus so he wouldn’t try anything else.
It sounds like a lame “fight”, but I’m not going to let a young girl get sexually harassed and potentially assaulted by some drunk guy.
Getting to the point of picking a fight with the wrong person. At that point I had been training in mixed martial arts for 8 years, had 3 fights against opponents that were supposed to be way better than me, and was training 6 days a week. I wasn’t worried about what could have happened because at our gym we are more self defence oriented and I knew to keep an eye out for weapons.
Biden Beg China for Xi Jinping Visit to America For Talks!
Today’s geopolitical landscape is vibrant and ever-changing. In this video, we explore the tense dynamics between the United States, China, and their respective allies. Engage with us as we unravel the threads of trade conflicts, technological competitions, territorial disputes, and the subtle, strategic game of international influence in the 21st century. Biden Beg China for Xi Jinping Visit to America For Talks!
In the late 1990s my then-husband, also a firefighter, became ill from a chemical exposure in a fire. We had just built a vacation home in a tiny town (population 231) in the Colorado Rockies. He retired and chose to live there full time because he didn’t know how much longer he had. (Firefighters can retire earlier because of a typically shortened life span. He passed away a few years later.)
I wasn’t ready to retire so I stayed in Bay Area and continued working for my fire dept as well as a safety trainer for a large semiconductor company. Every two weeks I went to Colorado for a week to spend time with hubby.
While in the mountains I made friends with our nearest neighbors. They told me their brother was retiring soon from the Navy and planned a wedding at their house upon his return. We were invited.
About a week later I was in California teaching a safety class at the company. One of the new hires had just gotten out of the Navy and when I introduced myself as living in Colorado, he said his family lived there, too! In fact, the following month he would be having his wedding at his sister’s house in the mountains.
Yep! He was my neighbor’s brother! AND when I showed up to the wedding in a new dress I bought in California, his sister was wearing the exact same dress!
We remained friends for years.
How To Reduce Stress For Passport Bros | Floyd Gets A Filipina | Philippines Vlog
Honestly the Philippines has over 7000 Islands so not very hard to discover a place like this off the beaten path. Most of the named products are copies but still provide good quality for a lower price. Once you discover the lower cost of living you never want go back home.
Always have ways to relieve stress creating a peaceful mind. Try to find a way to keep yourself cool in a hotter climate that can also stress people out. If you are overweight the heat will help lose weight fast in the first few months.
This is the time to try maintaining a healthy body. Don’t fall in love with the first women you meet having plenty of options available. When meeting women make sure your intentions clear at the beginning never misleading them.
No matter where you live each person has their preferences that attracts them to others. Don’t stress over this since there are plenty of people you can vibe with.
Remember you are a guest in another country so show respect at all times. I agree Thailand suits younger men better who enjoy the night life.
A positive attitude is key to having a wonderful time. Remember you are responsible for your own happiness. I wish all who visit or move overseas to enjoy a happy life for less money.
Athletes come, bring their coaches, family and support staff. So 12000 athletes maybe bring 50,000 people
They get a look into China the real one not the Washington version.
We can see how western media isn’t even acknowledging it at all.
…
Look at the BBC link it’s right at the bottom.
Add on bloggers and private people traveling to have a look? There’s potentially half a million people who get to see what it’s REALLY like.
These people will return home. These people will hear the usual propaganda garbage spouted against China
These people might decide to push back, at which they have a great thing to say.
“I’ve been there. I’ve seen China up front and close, yet YOU know more than I do?”
I often say this to westerners who claim to know everything about China despite never visiting, not understanding the language or being able to read our media. They literally have no response to it other than I know better than you because (racist) reasons.
US And TSMC In Pain, As China’s SMIC Becomes World’s Best Chip Manufacturing Company!
Congratulations China and SMIC. Many of us around the world have been waiting for this day. Both the US and TSMC had been arrogant and thought no one could shake them.
This is how I learned how crooked employers can be, right at the start of my career. 1984, first job out of university. Five young women were hired by Sperry Corp. We were working on a contract for the State of Texas which involved a lot of traveling and overtime to install and look after a new computer system.
We had to fill out two timesheets, one for our employer (single copy) and one for the State of Texas (triplicate). We were told to put eight hours per day on the employer timesheet but our real work hours on the State’s timesheet, because we were not going to get overtime pay from our employer. So, 40 hours per week for Sperry, 50+ for the State usually, since we often started by leaving on Sunday night and didn’t get back until Friday night. Travel hours were considered work hours. It was no fun, especially since we weren’t allowed any vacation time the first year.
If you’ve ever worked in IT, you know you get stuck working weekends and holidays when fewer people mind if the system is down. Thus we were working on Thanksgiving weekend doing testing, along with some seasoned employees, all male. It was boring and we had lots of time to chat. One of them said “at least you are getting overtime for this”. We wryly laughed – “ha ha NO.” Two of them replied, “Well you should be, you’ve been here less than six months and they automatically classify you as non-exempt for six months when you are new.” Then some comments about the bosses probably not telling us this and figuring we wouldn’t complain because we were female.
We quickly realized we had one copy of the triplicate time sheets for each week we’d been working, because we kept part of the State’s timesheet. Of the four of us ladies remaining, two did not want to make a fuss about it, and two of us decided to confront the bosses. We added up our overtime and had a plan going in.
Our supervisor and his boss and his boss’s boss actually admitted they hadn’t paid us on purpose! Because “the project didn’t have the budget.” Really brazen and condescending attempt at deflecting us. I pointed out this was still illegal and I’d go to the EEOC if they didn’t make good on what they owed. We said we wanted a paid week off at Christmas and cash to make up for the overtime, which they gave us. Our two colleagues who were afraid to complain got nothing. My friend and I had a nice ski vacation together with the proceeds.
I immediately found another job and moved away within a few weeks. Later I got to be an agent of karma: I rose to a position in my company where I had influence on decisions around large contract awards. When Unisys (formerly Sperry Corp) was competing for our business, I made sure my fellow decision-makers knew about my story. It’s bad business to cheat your employees!
The United States will not give up its high-tech sanctions against China.
Not only the United States, but also Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan Province of China are the same. As soon as there is an election season, all kinds of stupid anti-China remarks will come out one after another.
Normally, they create rumours and smear China every day to brainwash their own citizens:
How China steals their technology? How China has taken away their jobs? How China threatens their national security ? Even rumours of genocide are created, so in the eyes of most American rednecks, China is “unforgivable”.
You see, there is such an evil country in the world, and it is righteous for us to be tough on it!
If you give up high-tech sanctions, you are pro-China and treasonous!
Every chip sold to Huawei will become a bullet that hits us!
If you’ve watched too many Western-style elections, you’ll know that it’s the same as a TV talent show.
Whether it’s Trump or Biden, they shout “CHINA” from the podium like a tenor voice, and the voters under the podium feel like they’ve been stimulated by a egg-vibrators in their G-spot, and they instantly orgasm, their minds going blank.
Inflation, health care, and Gun violence and drug-infested are not important, they just want to hear more “CHINA”, and keep on having orgasms, and keep on being happy, and descent into madness.
After enjoying the orgasm calm down and think about it, in the past, the United States to the Soviet Union, to Japan is not also such sanctions? The United States has already achieved success, there are success stories, and as long as the United States increases the sanctions against Huawei, the United States will not fail, and they will keep reassuring themselves in this way.. 🤣
Their election is a race to see who is more anti-China, so the White House will continue to impose technology restrictions on Huawei.
In any case, Biden must take a tough stance to avoid being labelled a “pro-China traitor” by Trump.
Reaction To Jimmy Dore’s TRUTH At The United Nations
On Tuesday the United Nations Security Council welcomed a very surprising speaker — comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore! Jimmy explained about how the United States was behind the Nord Stream bombing and the western media all fell in line to push the lie that Russia or Ukraine or someone else was responsible. Guest host Craig “Pasta” Jardula and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss Jimmy’s UN appearance and Seymour Hersh’s startling revelation that the Nord Stream bombing wasn’t actually about the Ukraine War at all.
My mom was on welfare when I was ten years old. She had been taking a bus (public transportation) to school every day to become a dental technician. Her goal, which she worked towards and accomplished, was to get her family off of welfare.
On the day she was scheduled to graduate, her unemployed boyfriend was supposed to watch my brother and me. The plan was for him to pick us up and take us on a hunting trip with him and his friends. Not that we would have been allowed to shoot anything, but we were really excited.
He never showed up.
Mom called the neighbor and asked her to watch me and my brother, to which the neighbor agreed. I was really upset and disappointed that we weren’t going hunting.
As my mom was leaving for her graduation, I was crying and begging her to stay. She said she loved us and left.
When she got back, she asked me how my day was. I told her I hated her. That was it. That was all I said. “I hate you.”
I can only imagine the strength it took for her to hold back the tears as she got my brother and me ready to go for a walk.
Right outside the door, there was a brand-new bb gun sitting on the porch. We lived in Cherry Ridge Terrace which is located on a mountain in the woods of Barnesboro, Pennsylvania. There are tons of wooded trails around those parts.
She took my brother and me down a trail.
Located in almost every tree, shrub and plant, were empty aluminum cans. One by one, we switched off possession of the bb gun and shot cans out of those trees and shrubs the whole way down the trail.
It was so fun for us.
As it turned out, my mom had gotten a $50 graduation gift from her father and bought a bb gun before she came home from her graduation.
She walked that trail and put those cans all around before she came in the apartment, so she could take us hunting. And right before she did that, I told her that I hated her.
That was the last time I told my mom I hated her.
And when I saw this question, I called her and apologized for saying that I hated her, thirty years ago.
What I can teach you right now is something I learned ten minutes ago.
When I was 17, I went camping at a beach one day, and decided to make a sand throne, to relax in, except… it wasn’t made entirely of sand, because it would collapse the moment I sat on it. So, I gathered some large stones nearby, arranged them neatly to form a chair, and then covered it with sand to even out the gaps so that it would be comfortable to sit in.
After 2 hours of toiling under the hot sun, the job was done, and I sat in my throne with a great sense of fulfilment. After a while, I retreated back to my tent nearby to rest.
As I stared out of my tent to enjoy the view of the beach and admire my handiwork, a young boy, around 10 of age, went to my throne and walked around it, inspecting it curiously. For a moment, I thought he was going to sit on it. But then, a mischievous glint shone in his eye and he backed away from it a few steps. Then, he dashed and swung a mighty kick! And… collapsed, clasping his foot and crying for his mom.
I stayed in my tent, with tears in my eyes trying to hold back the laughter, thinking “Served you right! “. It wasn’t intentional, but making a “sand” structure with stones was definitely the most satisfying passive aggressive thing I did to a troll who goes around kicking sand structures.
I sponsor poor children in Thailand through an accredited international relief fund. I have been doing this for 15 years.
I do pro-bono law work for the poor. I have saved single mothers from eviction, saved a person’s life, helped someone wrongly arrested and charged from going to jail and being away from his children, and others.
I rebuild and repair computers and donate them to impoverished families.
A socialist society would require less of me having to deal with evictions for poor mothers because the mother would be given her own place, free from that concern. There would not be the systemic injustices that cause so many legal problems for people. Most poor people would make a living wage so they wouldn’t be destitute. An equitable economic and legal system is far superior to charity. Until the beautiful day of communism, we all need to do what we can.
But in terms of aggregate function, it is arguably THE smartphone SOC of 2023.
Why?
Well, it is the first mobile device with Bluetooth 6.x that can deliver lossless high fidelity audio at lower power than the current industry standard, Bluetooth 5.x. Huawei calls it Nearlink, and it is 100% Huawei controlled.
It is also the first mobile device that can make satellite calls, courtesy of a sophisticated antennae design that, according to my friend who has done a partial teardown, is the most complex he has ever seen. There are 9 separate segments on the frame of the mate 60.
The WiFi 6 speed can hit several Gbps, while the 5G mobile connectivity has been demoed above 1Gbps. These are class-leading numbers, with the signal processing improved through AI.
Wired/wireless charging at 88/50W are way better than what Apple offers, as does the battery capacity.
There is also a large language AI model built into the OS, making Hongmeng stand out among the 3 mobile ecosystems. The AI also enables the nifty camera, which takes some of the best mobile photography in 2023.
There is nothing like the features enabled by the Kirin 9000s chipset, even if we combine the best features of the Android and iOS universe into a hypothetical superphone.
Is that better?
You decide.
Nvida Shocked! Huawei’s Secret Weapons: Ai Chip Ascend 310 Explained
Huawei is becoming the company Apple wants to be… building its own modern ecosystem for the internet of things and huawei car integration. Let’s see who gets there first.
I thought about this for a long time , a very long time
Yes it’s true that the West led by the US has become unusually harsh towards China. In fact the US is destroying it’s entire reputation in front of the world through it’s actions against China & Russia
So why?
First let’s get rid of the obvious NONSENSE theories here
Theory 1:-
That US doesn’t want China to be a threat in the future and become a Rival
This is ridiculous. It’s also highly improbable. US doesn’t think long term at all. US thinks only short term, typically from Election to Election Or Boom to Recession to Boom
That the US is doing all this , to throttle Chinas Growth seems foolish to me because the US gains nothing at all
If the US simply and quietly did it’s work without any threat of sanctions, the USD would remain a global currency for a century perhaps
So US destroying it’s own reputation by the day, it’s reputation as a free country, as a country of laws, as a country of responsible media and as a country promoting free trade – just to ensure China doesn’t grow to be as big as the US is downright foolish
Theory 2:-
That US wants to protect it’s Companies from Patent infringement
Again Nonsense
That’s not how the US works
These Companies, they have for several decades run their own businesses and have never come crying to the US Government for help
That the US doesn’t want China to become technologically advanced and sell more smartphones and laptops is illogical
Theory 3:-
That the US are doing this for National Security
Again foolish. US have Nukes. China has Nukes. In any struggle between two nuclear powers, the power heading for defeat will try to balance the equation by using nuclear weaponry
This US will never fight China in a major war and vice versa
The US has no conflict with China and the Sphere of Influence for the US is in the Atlantic & Pacific not the South China Sea or Africa
And for gods sake if you tell me this is because US cares about the Taiwanese people, I would tell you the chances of Netanyahu being a Hamas agent is higher than that
Plus nobody uses 3 nm Chips for Missiles or Space
Theory 4:-
That US wants to break up China and destroy the CPC
Again nonsense.
Why?
China is an economic and trade ally and helps make $ 2.3 Trillion a year to the US Economy by value addition. Why destroy that with breaking up China and destroying Status Quo?
Sure you do have a handful of faggots like Lindsey or De Santis who are demented enough to have this illogical ideology
Yet they represent maybe 3–4% of the US collective of Politics, Press & Big Businesses
Theory 5:-
Politics & Elections
Again doesn’t make sense
US voters vote on various issues and Anti Chinese Rhetoric isn’t one of them. Hell, both sides make Anti Chinese Rhetoric don’t they?
This brings me to the real reason in my opinion
The US NEEDS CHINA to do something very badly and is using all these measures as bargaining chips
Taiwan
Tech barriers
Tarriffs
Propaganda
The US wants something from China in return for which the US is ready to go back to removing all of the above
That’s the only logical explanation of why US keeps threatening China and it’s businesses
It hopes these businesses and people will put pressure on China to somehow do what the US expects
This also explains why China isn’t reacting at all to all these provocations but quietly making firm statements
Its ECONOMIC
The US Economy is a time bomb waiting to explode. When it does it will take the economy of the entire world with it.
It will cause huge blows to every nation including China
Yet it will also finish the US as a global power completely
Unless China steps in
China can invest $ 770 Billion today without needing a signature or getting into debt
China has $ 18 Trillion in savings alone
A Huge Swathe of Chinese Investments into USA , especially PUBLIC MONEY belonging to the Chinese People will allow the US to either delay this time bomb from exploding immediately (7–12 years) to around 40 years
It’s why so many US higher ups are visiting China again and again
It’s why no top ranked Chinese is visiting the US
The US keep telling China, it’s in their own interest to prevent the US from the great economic collapse
Otherwise China would be badly burnt
Yet China may feel that it’s best to let US collapse even at great personal loss. This may be why China is busy with alternative settlements and alternative currency routes
I somehow seriously doubt Xi Jingping wants to be the Global Hegemon
All his moves are to secure Fuel, Energy and Food and Independence from the Dollar
I thought this was because the US is insane enough to sanction China but maybe it’s because China wants to put distance between the US Economic time bomb & themselves and their clients
I believe it’s why US have enmeshed the EU into this quagmire and also the UK and Japan and S Korea
If US experiences this Economic Collapse, these nations would be gutted completely. Hence they sink or swim with the US. That’s why they too put pressure on China yet have some major visit to China almost every month
This is my hypothesis
Nothing else makes sense
Politicians have their ideology
Media Channels have their ideology
Businessmen may have their own issues with China
But a full concerted effort to target China and that too announcing everything months in advance all the time , looks stupid and completely ineffective
It looks like the US is desperately putting hook after hook into China and saying “If I go down, you go down”
China still doesn’t believe that and feels that if the US goes down, and if China survives – it would be a better world altogether
I am firmly convinced the US is having an economic nuclear bomb within itself and needs China to prevent the collapse which will damage the Global Economy heavily
All these moves are completely Anti Chinese but intended as bargaining Chips
Originally Answered: Have you ever encountered a lawyer who was so good that your jaw dropped?
I had been the victim of a road rage incident when I was in my 20s. Long story short, I was in a left-turn-only lane; the perp was in the right-turn-only lane, and she wanted to go left. I made my turn, without ever noticing her, as there weren’t very many cars on the road, and went into a restaurant to pick up my dad’s dinner. She followed me in, kicked the chair out from under me, and kicked the crap out of me while screaming, “Do you know who I am?” Luckily, one of the waiters got her license plate number.
I had eight broken ribs, a fractured cheekbone, and she had ruptured all of my stitches from my gallbladder surgery that I’d had two weeks prior. She tried to have me arrested for assault, saying that I threw her against her car. I’ll come back to that.
At my first court appearance, the prosecutor took me into a room and wanted me to drop the charges against this woman. I obviously refused. The prosecutor said, “You are 22, you work as a hairdresser, and you live with your parents. You are nothing. Marjorie (the perp) is a pillar of the community, and is the child psychologist for the county, so I’d think real hard over this (let’s not forget that I had been the victim here).”
I did point out that I had brought a witness (the waiter), as well as notarized affidavits from several people who were in the restaurant at the time, and CCTV footage from the restaurant, too. She refused to allow them to be admitted. Wasn’t she supposed to help me?
The judge wanted me to let the perp have my car fixed (she broke a window and keyed the door) by some unlicensed guy, whom she had treated when he was in school. I agreed to an estimate, but I was going to get my own estimate as well.
My sister used to work as a legal secretary, and she took me to one of her old bosses. We went over all of the evidence, and he agreed to come with me for the second court date.
So, at the next date, the prosecutor called me back to a private room, before going into the courtroom, again trying to force me to drop the charges, but still wanted me for assault. My lawyer, Mark, said, “So you say that my client threw Marjorie over the hood of her own car and held her against a wall with her right arm, correct?”
The prosecutor said, “That’s what Marjorie told me.”
Mark: “Marjorie, how tall are you?”
Marjorie: “5’10”
Mark: Chole, how tall are you?
Me: “5’3″
Mark: “Marjorie, you are a big woman, easily close to 200 pounds, while Chole weighs 92 pounds, so how could she throw you?
Prosecutor: “That’s not important.”
Mark: “I disagree. Marjorie, you said in your sworn statement that Chole held you up against the wall with her right arm. Are you certain that you want to say that?”
Marjorie: “That girl is a wild animal; who knows what those people are capable of?”
Mark: “Well, Chole had emergency surgery two weeks prior to the incident, on her right side, and still cannot lift that arm past shoulder level, no thanks to you. Also, she’s left-handed.” Checkmate.
Marjorie, at this point, jumped up and started screaming about how important she was and I was just white trash, when Mark stood up, looked down at her (he’s 6’9) and said, “Lady, you might have convinced this prosecutor that you’re somebody special, but I have, in my briefcase, a filing, ready to go to the state board, along with all the evidence from this case, as well as sworn observations about your general behavior from your fellow psychologists and some of your neighbors. You will never be able to work again once I’m through with you, so I suggest that you sit the f**k down and admit that you lied and that you beat this ‘white trash girl’ for no g*****n reason.” Then, he turned to the prosecutor and said, “How dare you assume that someone is guilty because they’re not from this s****y town? What does that prove, or are you just bored and lazy?”
Marjorie had to pay for all of the damage done to my car, as well as the ambulance service, medical costs relating to everything that she did to me, and the damage she did to the chair in the restaurant. All of my charges were dropped and expunged.
Mark usually handled divorce cases, but he had way too much fun that night!
Flash-forward a few years, when I was at a luncheon with my mom. We ran into a friend of hers, who is also a child psychologist for another district. My mom mentioned my case, and the woman said, “We’ve all been waiting for that b***h to get knocked down a few pegs for years! She’s a nightmare to deal with, but she did lose her job shortly after your case was resolved.” The district didn’t want to have to pay out a small fortune if and when this woman blew her top again, so they forced her into early retirement.
Eliminate Apple Android compatibility! Huawei’s independent operating system shocks the West!
“”In today’s episode, we dive into the latest developments in the Huawei vs. United States tech competition. Huawei has made a groundbreaking announcement – its HarmonyOS will no longer be compatible with Android. HarmonyOS 4.0 has sparked intense discussions, with industry experts suggesting it could challenge iOS and Android. Huawei’s move to disconnect HarmonyOS from Android is a strategic maneuver in the global tech arena, countering U.S. dominance. We explore the implications and Huawei’s plan to create opportunities for global tech enterprises.
Russia is still sitting on 40 billion dollars worth of trapped Indian Rupees.
BRICS member Russia is evading US sanctions by accepting local currencies as payment for exports and not the US dollar. Russia’s third-biggest oil producer, ‘Gazprom Neft announced that the company has completely stopped accepting the US dollar as payment.
The oil exporter has ditched the US dollar and switched to accepting local currencies for cross-border transactions. This is the first oil-producing firm to completely switch from the US dollar to local currencies in 2023.
The development comes on the heels of the de-dollarization efforts initiated by the BRICS alliance. Saudi Arabia also confirmed recently that it is open to accepting local currencies for oil trade across the world.
Alexander Dyukov, the CEO of Gazprom Neft, said that the company has completely moved away from the U.S. dollar. He added that the firm will not be accepting Euros, which will eventually put pressure on the countries of the European Union. “We have virtually moved away from payments in dollars and euros,” he said to Tass.
Dyukov revealed that the oil firm will accept the Chinese Yuan and the Russian Ruble as payment moving forward. “We mainly use Yuan and Rubles,” he said. A spokesperson said that the company has no issues accepting and withdrawing foreign currencies from across the world.
However, the CEO stressed that the company is not open to accepting the Indian Rupee as payment. “No. We don’t use Rupees,” he said without citing why the INR is left out as a payment option. If many other oil companies follow suit, the US dollar could be in jeopardy. The means to fund the dollar’s deficit will narrow, leading to economic turmoil in the US.
ASEAN Rejects US As Biden Tried Disrupting Summit And Made These Silly Requests!
“im from the Philippines and i firmly believe that without U.S. hegemony, the world will be at peace.”
Quite a few years ago I worked for a large insurance company. I had an office on the fifth floor. In that office I had a decorative ceramic eagle worth about $200 sitting on my bookcase. One Friday afternoon it was there when I went home for the weekend. When I returned on Monday it was gone!
I trotted down to Building Security and explained the issue. They smiled and said, “Give us an hour.” I said, “Why?” They said, “Very few people know about the hidden cameras in the elevators!”
An hour later they called me. They showed me a video of one of my employees carrying out my eagle at 11:00 PM on a Sunday night! They happily printed out a hard copy of a frame that showed the theft.
On Monday morning I called my thief into my office. I had a little fun. I told him how shocked I was that my eagle was missing. He said all the right things about how terrible this was!
“Who would do such a thing?” I inquired. He quickly threw two other employees under the bus. Then I laid the picture out of this SOB doing the deed!
“I guess I’m fired” he said! “You guessed right,” I said.
Footnote- My superiors were not satisfied with that. They called the police and had him charged & convicted for theft!
It FINALLY happened (mask off moment)…
Thanks, Canada, for confirming what Mr. Putin has been saying all along.
“Remember, don’t talk to the hostesses, and don’t start a fight. Got it?” I asked my friends, making sure everyone also had a drink in hand.
Girls holding signs, where sometimes a man may come in to “persuade” you to try it
“What happens if we lose you?” one of my friends asked.
“Look, you’re not carrying shrooms or weed. Don’t start a fight, and worst case they put you in a cell until you sober up. Then call me.” I grinned back. The Neon lights with the words “Kabuki-cho” illuminated behind me. Farther ahead, many girls with signs.
Sorta like this now
They all nodded, some coming from downtown LA, some former military members, and some just like you, traveling Japan for the first time.
As a preamble, they wanted me to take them to the sketchiest part of Tokyo, which I find to be a contradiction.
After seeing a beer cans and some trash on the floor, I looked back at my group, shaking my head. “I’m so sorry guys. This area is not as clean as Japan, and it can get pretty bad.” Then I looked back up and winked at them.
The reason why it’s so safe is because of the culture.
People in Japan from a younger age are taught to think of the community first, and not themselves. There are pros and cons of this, which I’ll reserve for another post, but it starts from school as the students are expected to clean everything. If you do a bad job, you will be socially ostracized until you put in “your part”. Everywhere you go it’s pretty much handicap friendly, so if you have any disabilities people make sure you can go about your day.
The reason why it’s so safe is because there’s no incentive
It didn’t used to be this way. Japan has organized crime like any other country (Yakuza ring a bell?) but even they realized it wasn’t profitable to do violence so they pretty much resort to financial racketeering or money laundering and other “services”, but never violence.
The reason why it’s so safe is because of the police culture.
Japan has what some in the West would be almost a too trusting culture with the police. Kid is lost? Go to the local police station. Harassed? Local police station. Followed? Local police station. You get the idea.
You also don’t really have to worry about being injured going to the police. The police are liable if they do physically hurt you, so they have come up with ways to restain you without harming you.
The reason why it’s so safe is because the population is older and busy
If you look at Japan, the average age is almost 50. People don’t need to prove themselves when they’re older, and have it stable. Likewise, the younger generation are almost too busy with school, work, or other societal aspect that there’s almost no free time to do anything else. This obviously has major cons, but it does make it so that most people follow the rules and are rewarded on the “successful” pathway.
If it’s 10degrees or hotter outside [50 degrees Fahrenheit, for Americans] we will go out in bikinis and sunbathe
Almost every family owns at least one summer cabin that is frequently visited
We say ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’ to everyone we pass on the street, depending on the time of day
We will often have long discussions (*hem* arguments) of what type of snow is snowing at the moment
The first real day of summer was three days ago and almost everyone took a break from work to go and enjoy it (it was around 14 degrees or something)
It snows from August to June
All the houses are built like fortresses so they can withstand the frequent earthquakes
We await the next volcanic eruption with excitement
(Eyjafjallajökull, 2010)
Most of us watch football religiously
Dried fish is a delicacy
We loudly announce when we go to the toilet and ask if we have permission to do so
Going on dates is a formal and a rare experience, not standard at all
Blind dates is something that doesn’t happen
In swimming pools we wash without clothes with everyone else of the same gender, no stalls
We drink a lot of milk —it goes with everything
We leave our babies outside in their prams -of cafes, our homes, in the garden, in our unlocked cars
We love sauces; we probably have hundreds of different types, also ice cream shops normally have about six different sauces
We will have barbecues in any weather
We drink lots of alcohol: beer, wine, you name it
It’s never cold inside our houses, ever
We party until way after midnight —if you are camping and want to sleep, don’t camp next to Icelanders
Believing in elves and trolls is normal and we have tons of stories that we’ve been told about them since we were young
We have 13 Santa Clauses
edit : some more for y’all + pics on the original answer
We have a Christmas Cat that, if you don’t get new clothes for christmas, will come and eat you (particularly children)
The christmas cat is owned by a pair of trolls called Grýla and Leppalúði. they are the Santa Clauses’ parents, who are also trolls.
Grýla kidnaps, cooks and eats misbehaving children.
We have a day dedicates to eating these delicious balls of air
The water quality is 500% and so when we visit other countries we are dying because the water tastes so bad there
We are taught from a young age that we should never ever ever step on the moss and if you do then u deserve to burn in hell (ok maybe not but that’s the idea)
Everyone hates Justin Bieber for that music video he did. (+We had to close down the park a part of it was shot in because the tourists were tearing up the moss.)
In winter we all wear the thickest coats you’ll see while still trying to stay fashionable and we all look giant
Conjugation is a thing so a noun has 16 different variations of itself.
Tourism is the top industry of Iceland
Ice cream is enjoyed whenever; in a snow storm or on a rare hot day; doesn’t matter
While waiting to turn left into a busy street, the person behind me grew impatient and honked. Not wanting to be the person to face death by oncoming traffic so he could hurry, I put my car into park and got out.
I pasted a look of quizzical concern on my face, and slowly walked to the back of my car. I inspected the back and could find nothing wrong, so I turned to the guy who honked and said, “What is it? Is one of my lights out? Is one of my tires flat?”
He shouted, “I just want you to go!”, but it was busy, so I pretended not to hear him, so I cupped my hand to my ear and walked towards him.
“I JUST WANT YOU TO GO!!!!” he shouted.
“Oh, well, I’m turning left, and it’s kind of busy, so I’m waiting for a break. I’ll go then. I thought you were honking because you saw something wrong with my car. Thanks!” I cheerily shared.
I went back to my car, put it in drive, and waited for a safe time to pull out.
I used to until I was sued and faced legal action against my credential that was filed by my principal. The principal also convinced the boy’s father to file a criminal complaint and tried to get me arrested. It cost over $150,000 in attorney’s fees to fight the administrative actions and criminal actions. I ended up prevailing and in the end, after spending another $100,000 in attorney’s fees, I recouped my fees by filing suit against the parent of the student and the school district.
The back story was this male student who suffers from schizophrenia and has other learning disabilities was assigned to my science class. I was never informed about his medical diagnosis. He was enrolled in the intensive intervention program at our school that was for students who had behavioral issues. These students were supposed to have an aide with them in the mainstream classroom or they were supposed to be in the II room doing their work. They had a behavioral intervention plan for each student.
I was not given this student’s BIP because his mother, a teacher in the district and at another site, did not want his medical diagnosis shared with his teachers. She also did not agree with it and refused to administer his medication at home. To be allowed at school, he had to take his meds. The year prior, he had beaten two students so severely, they were hospitalized for several weeks and one almost died. So his meds were administered at school. He did not take them on the weekends so on Mondays he was always exhibiting extreme behavior. It also turns out that at times the voices he heard told him the meds were poison so he would pretend to take them and then spit them out when the school nurse was not looking.
I knew he was supposed to have a BIP and I made several requests for it by email. I cced the requests to the vice-principal and the principal and never received a response. By state and federal law, I was supposed to be given the BIP and made aware of anything that could possibly endanger myself or my students. I was supposed to be informed that the previous year he went into a psychotic rage and nearly killed two students in his PE class and it took 4 PE teachers to pull him off of the student both times. It was after the second attack that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in the II program and assigned an aide to be with him at all times.
Well, his case carrier let him go to his classes without an aide because none of the aides would deal with him. He had assaulted all of the aides that were available and so they refused to work with him. He was confined to the II room for the first 5 periods of the day. She sent him to my class 6th period because it was her prep period and she wanted a break. Since no aide would work with him, she did not send an aide with him, so I had to deal with him on my own. Of course I had no idea about the schizophrenia or that his constant talking was due to his talking to the voices of his imaginary friends that were real to him and that were telling him what to do.
One day those friends told him to beat the crap out of a female student that was half his size because she had disrespected him because she was looking at him funny. Of course she was at the back of the room and he was at the front and she wanted nothing to do with him. Nobody wanted to even talk to this kid. So he got up and walked back to her, and pulled her out of her seat and started beating her. When I got to her, he had her on the floor and she was in the fetal position. He was kicking her head repeatedly. I grabbed him in a bear hug from behind and walked him to the door. He was continuing to kick and so he and I went down. I just continued dragging him to the door and pulled him out the room. I left him outside and returned to the room and shut the door behind me. He was locked out side.
I called the office to come and get him and to send for paramedics for the girl. He spent the next 30 minutes pounding on the door and windows with his bare fists. He actually shattered several windows to the classroom. It took administrators 10 minutes to get to my classroom. They spent 20 minutes asking him to calm down and walk with them to the office. He charged them several times and hit and kicked them but they would not use any physical force to restrain him. Even after he broke the windows with his fists and cut his hands, they refused to restrain him. I finally had enough and called the police. They came and took him down and cuffed him. My principal was upset. But the paramedics were able to stop his bleeding before he bled out. Then they were able to treat the student he had kicked in the head several times. She had a severe concussion and needed medical attention now, not 30 minutes from now.
Of course in this day and age of cell phones, a few of my students filmed this. As allowed by state law, I confiscated the cell phones because filming inside of a classroom is a violation of state law, and filming fights is a suspendible behavior. I handed the phones to the admin and wrote the appropriate referrals.
The district policy is the admin is supposed to review all photos and videos with a parent present, copy any thing taken in a classroom then delete those images from the phone. Those copies are then saved as evidence for the basis of the suspension and depending on the severity of the offense and the number of previous offenses the student gets from 1 to 5 days of suspension. The phones do not get handed back under any circumstances until the videos are erased.
Well, the principal just handed them back immediately. I still wrote the referrals. I documented everything.
The next day. I get called to the office. I find the SRO wanting to interview me. I respectfully declined. I invoked my right to have an attorney present before answering any questions. I have attorneys for relatives and friends. When a police officer asks you a question about a situation you were involved in, they are not your friend. Anything you say can be used against you. You do not say anything without an attorney. What the officer did not say that I learned later was the father had filed a criminal complaint against me. The principal had encouraged him to do so. The problem was, he did not have custody of his son nor did he have legal educational rights. In fact, there was a restraining order prohibiting him from being on school grounds or within 1,000 feet of his son. Mom did not want to file a criminal complaint because she knew what would happen, absolutely nothing. She was a teacher and knew what the education code was.
In CA, a teacher may intervene to protect the safety of a student. So if it is mutual combat, I could legally intervene to prevent both students from harming each other. I am not legally required to but I can if I feel I can do so. If I am injured, I am covered by workman’s comp for injuries sustained in performing my duties. The top duty of any teacher is to ensure student safety. That takes a higher priority over teaching students. I have broken up fights before and have been injured and they have always been covered. I do it because I am a teacher and student safety is first.
The principal then filed an administrative action against me for violating the rights of a special education student. I did not follow his behavioral intervention plan. Had this been successful, I would have lost my job and my credential. This was made worse by the fact that the video taken by a student was posted to social media. It then made the local news.
Of course the story was one sided. I could not provide my side of the story. Anything I said would violate the student’s privacy rights under state and federal law. So, I was the teacher that assaults students for no reason. Nothing was said about the student that was on the floor, in the fetal position, having her head repeatedly kicked. Nothing was said about her traumatic brain injuries or the induced coma she was in for two weeks or her overwhelming fear of returning to the same school this monster of a student was at so she ended up transferring to a private school. By the way, this student who was the aggressor was never suspended because his special education rights were violated. He did this to at least 6 other students after this incident over the next 2 years and the district ended up paying out several millions to the parents of his victims. They finally got rid of the student by moving the program off of my campus to another one. This allowed them to fire this inept teacher. At the new campus, this student is confined to his II room and not allowed into any general education room. That principal has made sure of it. He has signed one school security officer to be with the student at all times.
My union would help pay for the legal defense, but only if I prevailed. So I did what was best for me, I hired the best attorney in the field of Education Administrative law. She has earned several awards and has won many cases that went all the way to the CA Supreme Court. I mortgaged my house and paid the retainer. I then shut up and let her talk for me.
My district told my principal to back down, she would lose. Since this was a legal action, I got a copy of all emails and I got this email. My principal did not realize I got this email and her response was she was not going to because I hurt a student and she needed to make an example of me. Their response was they would not pay for her legal costs, she was on her own and she had to pay for all of her attorney fees. They would not provide an attorney for her. She decided she did not need one. She went it alone. If you are dealing with a legal issue, never, ever appear before a judge without a competent attorney. If your boss tells you to drop it and you insist on following through on the legal action, it is a sign you are going to lose.
After 3 months, she lost. Then I took all the documentation of where she went wrong and filed suit. Then she realized she screwed up big time because the district told her to get her own attorney. She refused to settle out of court and so her costs went up and she lost. The district also lost because I went after them because she was their employee. I also went dad for his defamation and libel and filing a false police report. Because of the deep pockets law, I won an enforceable judgement against the district and the principal.
Now, as a teacher, I really do not want to take money from the education of students. So, I negotiated with the district. Since I won against the original criminal and administrative complaints against me, my union will cover much of the attorney’s fees for that. I also had to hire a criminal defense attorney. His bill was only $10,000 because he only had to file some paperwork with the DA to get the DA to make a decision to either charge me or drop it. The DA decided that at worse I was guilty of an infraction, and since I was protecting another student and had a strong defense that I was protecting her from certain death or permanent harm, what I did was legal, he would never consider filing charges because the case would be too weak and I would never be convicted. The district negotiated with the principal to cover my administrative attorney’s fee not covered by the union. This meant they told her they would withhold the money from her paycheck to pay my attorney or the principal would no longer have a job.
Then, the principal would buy 10 years of credit into my retirement plan with the state. This would come from her paycheck rather than from the district so students do not suffer. If she did not agree, she would not longer be working for the district. This will allow me to retire early and leave the state and seek employment outside of CA where education has not become so bad that the schools are run by the lowest common denominator and the students who want to learn and get an education are being left behind and whose safety is in danger every day.
In exchange, I signed a contract that I will never intervene in a fight. I will call the office and report it to an administrator. Last year, I had 8 fights in my classroom. Administrators are trained to not run to fights. They are supposed to walk because it demonstrates a calm response. My classroom is at the back of campus and it takes a minimum of 5 minutes to walk from the front to my room. The average administrative response time from the time I call to inform them there is a fight in my room to them actually arriving is 15 minutes. During that time I am supposed to evacuate the classroom of all students who are not participating and who will follow my directions. I have to supervise those students outside. The defiant students stay inside. Since I have done my duty, I am good. The students inside can hurt and maim each other all they want and they do. After the administrators arrive, a few ambulances are required.
The result, last May a police officer attempted to do CPR on a student that collapsed at lunch time. Other nearby students assumed the officer was assaulting the student or arresting the student and started a riot. They threw trash cans at that officer and the other responding officers that arrived within two minutes. The 4 administrators that arrived and told the students to disperse were ignored. The administrators sounded a lock-down and the students ignored it. They continue to attack the officer attempting CPR. The student died.
That student had tapped a mixture of pentyl and THC and she stopped breathing. It took 20 minutes for the police to to control the students, including arresting 30 of them, clearing the area enough to get the paramedics to the girl. They could not perform CPR during that time. The officer that tried to do CPR was taken to the hospital with a concussion after having two garbage cans slammed over his head.
Students learned if they fight the adults back down.
If I see a fight or a student assaulting another, I walk the other way. I am legal safe if I just call the office. If I intervene, I can lose everything. I can be sued, I can lose my job, I can lose my life savings. If I do nothing but just call the office, I am protected from all legal consequences. The worst that can happen is I get called to answer the questions from a few attorneys. I spend a few days at the district office with pay while talking to attorneys. I did that two months ago.
It went something like this. Did you see the fight. Yes. What did you do? I called the office to report it. Who did you report it to? I reported it to the attendance secretary who answered the phone and she said she would call security. I then waited in my room because I feared for my safety. I watched the fight through my classroom window. It took security 15 minutes to arrive.
Why did you not break up the fight? I did not feel I had the physical strength to do so without incurring injury to myself and I have a written contract with the school district stating I will not break up fights but will only report them to the administration because it is their job to break them up. Here is a copy of that contract.
The district hated that I brought that up but it gave me 100% legal cover. It was proof I did exactly what I was directed to do by a superior so they were 100% on the hook for my actions.
The truth is, your students are not as safe at school as district administrators want you to think.
Banana Custard Cobblers
Yield: 8 servingsIngredients
Custard
1 cup granulated sugar1/2 cup cornstarch8 large egg yolks3 cups whole milk1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise6 tablespoons (34 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature1/4 cup dark rum
Topping
3/4 cup all-purpose flour1/2 cup almonds6 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar5 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces3 bananas, thinly slicedInstructions
Custard
Whisk sugar, cornstarch and egg yolks in large bowl to blend.Bring milk and vanilla bean to boil in heavy large saucepan.Gradually whisk hot milk into egg yolk mixture; return mixture to saucepan. Whisk over medium-low heat until custard boils and thickens, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat.Whisk in butter and rum. Cool slightly.Discard vanilla bean. Cover with plastic and refrigerate until cold. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Keep refrigerated.)
Topping
Blend flour, almonds and brown sugar in processor to mix.
Add butter and process, using on/off turns, until coarse crumbs form. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Transfer to bowl; cover and chill.)Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 400 degrees F.Place eight 1 cup ramekins or custard cups on baking sheet.Divide custard equally among ramekins, using about cup for each.Top each dessert with about 8 banana slices.Spoon topping over banana slices, dividing equally.Bake cobblers until topping is golden brown, about 15 minutes.Remove from oven and cool slightly, about 15 minutes.Serve warm.
Unlike its better known relative, the Enigma machine which was infamously deciphered by code-breakers at Bletchley Park throughout the war, the Lorenz cipher posed a much greater challenge. Utilising 12 wheels to scramble up the message being sent as opposed to the 3 or 4 rotors found in the Enigma machine, the Lorenz cipher was incredibly secure. As a result, unlike the Enigma that was used by the German standard armed forces, the Lorenz cipher was used only by high command with messages coming from Hitler himself. As a result, to crack the Lorenz cipher (or Tunny as it was code named by the British) would have the potential to change the course of the war.
Not much headway had been made in breaking the Lorenz cipher through the war until a German operator made a catastrophic mistake on 30 August 1941. When a German receiving operator did not receive a message correctly, he asked the transmitter to resend the information and despite clear protocol against it, the two operators resent the message without changing their key settings (the settings that determine how the text is scrambled up). However since the message in question was 4000 characters long, the lazy German operator abbreviated several words, thus changing the length of the message. Since their key settings were both the same, the two messages had the same scrambling pattern of characters. Thus by comparing the locations where the message text changed, details of the way the rotors worked could be determined.
These two messages were intercepted by the British who soon realised the importance of what they had discovered. This task of cracking Tunny was given to W T (Bill) Tutte who began to find repetitions in the cipher which allowed him to reverse engineer the Lorenz machine’s logical structure in what would be later described as “one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II”. In order to support the painstaking decryption of German messages, the British Colossus was built in 1943 by Tommy Flowers, the first ever modern computer.
The Colossus Machine
The impact of the decryption of Tunny was enormous. It gave the British intimate details of Hitler’s most secret communications which was most notably vital in D Day where the Allies were able to deceive the Germans that they were going to attack at Calais as opposed to Normandy and at the Battle of Kursk in 1943, Germany’s last ditch attempt to reverse their fortunes on the Eastern Front and one of the largest battles in history. Involving 3 million men, without foreknowledge of German planning provided by the British, the Soviets would have been badly prepared defensively and could have lost this crucial battle and as a result, the war would’ve been prolonged. In fact, historians estimate that the breaking of the Lorenz cipher shortened the war by two years and thus saved millions of lives all due to the careless mistake of two lazy German operators.
However this pivotal event is not well known due to the Official Secrets Act keeping the nature of the code breakers working to break the Lorenz cipher secret until 1974 and some former staff even today still refuse to break their vow of secrecy, preferring to take their knowledge to the grave.
W T (Bill) Tutte, the man responsible for cracking the Lorenz Cipher
Sweet cat is trying desperately to fit in, find a home
When I was in High School, I had a opinion column in the High School newspaper. I wrote weekly opinions, and was rather prolific in that endeavor. I would write up an opinion, then I would type it up in an electric typewriter (in the typing class) and hand it in.
But somehow, for reasons that took me until the end of school to find out, my editorials were always botched up with a ton of spelling and grammar errors.
I would type;
Jimmy Carter made another promise in his on-going litany of promises.
And the newspaper would print…
immy Barter madddde ANother premise in e5ton-going litterany, of GH8mises.
At the end of the school year, I discovered that all my work… week after week were being sabotaged by under-classmen who thought it great fun to destroy my work.
…
Yeah.
What great “fun”.
…
I took no action. And, I moved on with my life.
Who knows where these kids are today. Given their habit of hurting others for fun, they are either in positions of power, or living in mobile homes and prostituting themselves for yucks.
Probably the latter.
…
When you take time to be DESTRUCTIVE instead of CONSTRUCTIVE, your life develops and unfolds exactly as you have programmed it.
Do not make that mistake.
Do not cause hurt and pain.
Be good.
…
Remember, to manifest your desires, you must confront all your negative behaviors that you have colored your life with.
A few months ago, I was taking care of patient “Johnny”.
Johnny was an elderly man who had his stay in hospital extended due to multiple poorly controlled comorbidities. For privacy’s sake, I won’t go into detail about his medical conditions.
For one whole month, I was part of Johnny’s medical treatment team, and the main junior doctor taking care of him.
Every morning, I visited his bed, engaged in some small talk with him, auscultated his chest and lungs and palpated his abdomen and ankles.
Every week, I updated his family, i.e his son and daughter, on the progress of his condition via phone calls.
Due to the complexity of his condition, his family agreed to have him on partial code (i.e not for CPR/Intubation/ICU). While his condition had stabilised, I warned them that any further infections or cardiac event will likely cost his life.
Despite all this, the son and daughter did not visit Johnny once, not even once, in those 30 days. Over the phone, they would always have a convenient excuse ready. Business trips, commitments, you name it.
One morning, when I visited Johnny for his usual checkup, I observed that he was drowsier than usual. A vital sign perimeters check revealed a significantly reduced oxygen saturation. The medical team was immediately informed as I took and sent off bloods and ordered a chest x-ray. Investigations indicated a new-onset hospital-acquired Pneumonia, likely due to his age and compromised immunity.
As was discussed with him and his family, at this stage, it’s better to allow a natural death instead of prolonging his suffering by sending him to ICU and putting tubes down his throat.
His son and daughter were promptly informed and voila! Within an hour, somehow both of them were able to ditch their “commitments” and arrive at bedside. By then, the patient was already unresponsive and on morphine.
The son had tears in his eyes while the daughter was bawling uncontrollably. Johnny could no longer recognise them, nor respond to them in any way. He had spent his last 30 days without a single family member beside him.
Imagine being imprisoned in a small box for years, with just a small hole to push food through. The Coffin Prisons of Mongolia were as the name described. They were small, cramped boxes with barely enough room to sit up or lie down. They had a little hole at the side so food could be fed to the prisoner, that’s if you get food.
Being placed in one of these boxes meant a death sentence, hence the name. Even if you were fed, the temperatures would drop below freezing at night, and you would probably freeze to death. Prisoners who managed to beat the odds were imprisoned in these boxes for life sentences, and the ones who didn’t go blind went insane from being confined for years in the cramped box.
Sometimes, the prisoners were fed once a day and had their human waste cleaned out once every three weeks.
The picture above was taken by French photographer Stephane Passet in 1913, and it shows a woman condemned to death and left to die of starvation in the box. This form of punishment was only abolished in the late 20th century.
Male lions act alone, while hyenas travel in packs.
Hyenas like to prey on animals that are weaker than themselves. They are used to bullying the small with the many and the weak with the strong, but they never dare to attack many with one like the Male lion.
The male lion loves to eat the hyena named “Japan”.
Taiwan is the bait, and the Male lion is waiting for the hyena called “Japan” to take the bait.
The Chinese very much look forward to Japan joining the ranks of intervening in Chinese civil war (China’s internal affairs).
Only small countries need alliances to seek security; superpowers never do so.
WWI exposed the drawbacks of haphazard alliances that could drag allies toward all-out war.
WWII showed that the compacts and agreements made between allies were no different than used toilet paper.
Therefore, after WWII, no country in its right mind was interested in military alliances. After all, they had just crawled out of the cesspit, so their memories were particularly profound.
This is a picture of an astronaut helmet a Texas farmer found in his field following the Columbia space shuttle disaster that killed several crew members in 2003. Along with the helmet and pieces of the shuttle, they also found human body parts, including a torso, arms, feet, and a heart.
One of the main engineers behind the Challenger space shuttle said that NASA ignored multiple warnings against launching in cold weather. The night before the launch, he told his wife, “It’s going to blow up.”
He was one of five engineers who told NASA to postpone the launch, but they didn’t listen to their warnings. The shuttle exploded 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members on board.
I used to manage a 24-hour chain auto parts store. Yes, here in Chicago, one can buy auto parts at 3 a.m., if you really wanted to. One could do that every night of the month except one. We had to close the store for six hours (11 p.m.-5 a.m.) once per month to get the floor waxed.
The chain I worked for outsourced their overnight floor waxing to a third party. That third party had a four-man crew. They’d usually show up an hour early and start moving all of the floor displays to the back of the store and doing the other prep work they could do while the store was still open. Once they started with the floor-stripping chemicals, though, the doors were locked and the store was closed.
But two of our employees stayed in the back of the store. It was a huge store and there was plenty for them to do back there, like stocking the shelves, dusting, etc… Most of the parts we sold were stored in the back of the store. The “back of the store” was 4/5 of the entire building… the parts that are car-specific, and you have to ask someone who works there which part you need, and let them get it for you.
Among the tens of thousands of parts in the back of the store were carburetors. In the three years I worked there, I never once saw anyone buy one of those. They’re old technology that old timers like to work on as a hobby. The carburetors were in boxes and sold for about $500 each.
Every now and then, we’d discover that one of the boxes was empty. We, of course, assumed it was internal theft, because we’d notice a customer walking to the back of the store, unboxing a carburetor, putting the box back nicely, and walking out with the merchandise. We did have security cameras in the back, but there were many blind spots for them.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the head store manager began checking the carburetor boxes every day, and, when one was missing, he checked who was working that day. He did this for several months before he saw the pattern: they were always missing the day after the floors got waxed.
The floor waxing crew used a giant floor cleaning machine, like you might see at an airport:
When really, a machine this size, which is what similar companies used at similar-sized stores, would have been more reasonable:
One morning, as the floor guys were leaving, my boss met them at the door. He had two police officers with him. I believe he knew these cops as friends… I don’t think they would have been there otherwise. Anyway, my boss asked the head of the floor crew to open the hood of their giant cleaning machine. I don’t know if he did it willingly, or was compelled to do it by the cops. (I was there, but I was in the store, doing the opening paperwork.) But, when the hood was opened, there were four carburetors sitting in it where a water tank should have been.
The entire floor-cleaning machine had been modified for stealing items from the places whose floors they cleaned. It wasn’t just our store… they’d been doing this at several different stores.
Later, we heard through the grapevine that the head of the cleaning crew got a long prison sentence for stealing, because he had several prior convictions for other things.
China Angrily Cuts Railway Trade Link With Lithuania!
In today’s video, we delve deep into the ongoing geopolitical tensions involving Lithuania, China, Russia, and the European Union. We aim to shed light on the intricate dynamics, diplomatic maneuvers, and economic implications that have arisen due to recent decisions made by these global actors.
A previous employer of mine had an office in Scotland. Their main office, I worked pretty remotely in fact.
Twice in a year, people spilt coffee over their computer keyboards, and had to have new keyboards. Cost to the company, almost nothing.
Suddenly a new rule was introduced that no-one was allowed a mug on their desk. They had to use tip-resistant travel mugs, with a screw on lid, and a small opening to drink through. Genius.
Apart from the coffee machine had space for a cup. A standard size mug. It was one of those coffee machines with a little ledge. You put your cup on the ledge, pressed whatever pretentious coffee choice you guessed might be similar to “normal coffee” and it filled the cup.
The only issue, is the travel mugs didn’t stand up in the ledge. Too tall. So you had to hold the cup at an angle so it would fill from the machine.
Two weeks in, someone seriously scalded their hand, and required hospital treatment, and a substantial pay off.
The travel mugs were removed, normal mugs reinstated, and 2 USB keyboards kept in the stock room.
Edit : This story seems to resonate with people, I’m not sure why. It’s my fastest upvoted answer, with 400 in about a day. If you’re not Scottish, don’t know any/many Scottish people, and haven’t worked with them, you might not understand why they didn’t just “take away the coffee machine” as some commenters suggested.
I managed performance and scheduling for this office. One Monday, my work mobile rang early.
I answered it, the caller said “Is this Ben, it’s Davey here.”
I replied “Hi, yeah this is Ben, what’s up Davey?”
Davey : “I’ll no be in the day”
Me: “No worries, how come?”
Davey : “I’m in Amsterdam”
Me : “Sorry Davey, it sounded like you said you wouldn’t be in because you were in Amsterdam?”
Davey : “Aye, I’ll be haim Wednesday.”
And then he hang up. He went out on a Saturday night, passport for ID, and woke up Monday morning in Amsterdam, not really knowing what happened. He wasn’t fazed by this, he politely let me know he wouldn’t be in due to being in Amsterdam, and hung up. They. Give. No. Fucks.
How China is Beating U.S. GPS Dominance with BeiDou
The Global Positioning System, widely known as GPS, stands as the oldest and most globally recognized satellite navigation system, boasting an impressive user base of approximately 6 billion individuals worldwide. China has now emerged as a formidable challenger to the long-standing dominance of the United States’ Global Positioning System (GPS) with its ambitious satellite navigation project.
I lived for a handful of years in the States, on both the East and West coast.
Before I went over, I had to undergo six months of intensive mental and physical training.
I’m not at liberty to reveal the details of aforementioned training, but part of it involves learning how to disguise myself as a panda.
As part of my training, I had to learn how pandas communicate with each other in a group setting.
So, for 2 months, I basically holed myself up in a monastery with 30 pandas, and every day, I would observe and learn from them.
They thought I was their teacher … sent to teach them the esoteric martial arts of the Kunlun Sect.
But, in reality, they were my teachers. All 30 of them.
After I completed my 6 months of training, I was given a glass bottle containing a dark brown liquid.
“What is this?” I said.
The agent in charge of my assignment told me it was a super soldier serum, made from a super top-secret 3500-year-old ancient herbal formula that only 8 people in the world had access to.
I was advised that if I were ever to find myself in a tight spot, in a situation where my real identity risked being uncovered, I should quaff the super soldier serum.
The agent told me it would boost my strength, agility, reaction speed, balance, endurance, durability, hand-eye coordination, speed of thought, wisdom, and senses to peak human level – for up to 3 days.
I took the serum with me – as insurance, as my just-in-case-I-get-caught card.
I guess I was fortunate, because there was never a situation where I was forced to use it.
My wits and unassuming personality were enough to extricate myself from every difficult situation I found myself caught up in.
Here are some pictures I took while I was out in the field on my intelligence-gathering assignments:
This one was in Hollywood.
Here’s the picture of a stone troll I met during one of my assigments.
Fortunately, I have extensive experience dealing with trolls, so I could understand what he was trying to convey despite his heavy accent.
This is me on another intelligence-gathering mission, stopping to have a quick bite for lunch.
A tough but necessary decision would likely force the West to back off, enabling an earlier end to the Ukraine crisis and preventing it from expanding to other states
By Professor Sergey Karaganov,honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow
has sparked major debate among experts in Russia about nuclear weapons, their role and the conditions of their use.
This is especially the case given Sergey Karaganov’s status as a former presidential adviser to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and his position as head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a noted Moscow think tank.
Some prominent figures have reacted with dismay, while others have been less critical.
RT has decided it would be beneficial for our readers to read it in full. The following piece has been translated and lightly edited.
***
Our country, and its leadership, seems to me to be facing a difficult choice. It is becoming increasingly clear that our clash with the West will not end even if we achieve a partial – let alone a crushing – victory in Ukraine.
Even if we completely liberate the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, it will be a minimal victory. A slightly greater success would be to liberate the whole of eastern and southern Ukraine within a year or two. But it would still leave part of the country with an even more embittered ultra-nationalist population pumped full of weapons – a bleeding wound that threatens inevitable complications, such as another war.
The situation could be worse if we liberate the whole of Ukraine at the cost of monstrous sacrifices and are left with ruins and a population that mostly hates us. It would take more than a decade to “re-educate” them.
Any of these options, especially the last one, will distract Russia from the much-needed shift of its spiritual, economic, military and political center to the East of Eurasia. We will be stuck with a wasteful focus on the West. And the territories of today’s Ukraine, especially the central and western ones, will attract resources – both human and financial. These regions were heavily subsidised even in Soviet times.
Meanwhile, hostility from the West will continue; it will support a slow-burning guerrilla civil war.
A more attractive option is the liberation and reunification of the east and south, and the imposition of capitulation on the remnants of Ukraine with complete demilitarization, creating a buffer, friendly state. But such an outcome would only be possible if we are able to break the West’s will to support the Kiev junta, and use it against us, forcing the US-led bloc into a strategic retreat.
And here I come to a crucial but hardly discussed issue. The root cause of – and indeed the main reason for – the Ukrainian crisis, as well as many other conflicts in the world, and the general increase in military threats, is the accelerating failure of the contemporary Western ruling elites.
This crisis is accompanied by an unprecedentedly rapid shift in the balance of power in the world in favor of the global majority, driven economically by China and partly by India, with Russia as the military and strategic anchor. This weakening not only infuriates the imperial-cosmopolitan elites (US President Joe Biden and his ilk) but also frightens the imperial-national elites (such as his predecessor Donald Trump). The West is losing the advantage it has held for five centuries to siphon off the wealth of the entire world by imposing its political and economic order and establishing its cultural dominance, mainly by brute force. So there is no quick end to the defensive, but aggressive, confrontation that the West has unleashed.
This moral, political and economic collapse has been brewing since the mid-1960s, was interrupted by the collapse of the USSR, but resumed with renewed vigour in the 2000s (the defeats of the Americans and their allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the crisis of the Western economic model in 2008 were milestones).
In order to slow down this seismic shift, the West has temporarily consolidated itself. The US has turned Ukraine into a punching bag to tie the hands of Russia, the politico-military lynchpin of a non-Western world freed from the shackles of neocolonialism. Ideally, of course, the Americans would simply like to blow up our country and thus radically weaken the emerging alternative superpower, China. We, either not realizing the inevitability of the clash or hoarding our strength, have been slow to act preemptively. Moreover, in line with modern, mainly Western, political and military thinking, we were rash in raising the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, inaccurate in assessing the situation in Ukraine, and not entirely successful in launching the current military operation.
By failing internally, Western elites have actively fed the weeds that have taken root in the soil of 70 years of prosperity, satiation and peace. These comprise of anti-human ideologies: the denial of family, homeland, history, love between men and women, faith, service to higher ideals, everything that is human. Their philosophy is to weed out those who resist. The aim is to neuter people in order to reduce their ability to resist modern “globalist” capitalism, which is becoming more and more obviously unjust and harmful to man and humanity.
Meanwhile, a weakened US is destroying Western Europe and other countries dependent on it, trying to push them into a confrontation that will follow Ukraine. The elites in most of these countries have lost their bearings and, panicked by the crisis in their own positions at home and abroad, are dutifully leading their countries to the slaughter. At the same time, because of greater failure, a sense of powerlessness, centuries of Russophobia, intellectual degradation and a loss of strategic culture, their hatred is almost more intense than that of the US.
Thus, the trajectory of most Western countries clearly points towards a new fascism, which could be called “liberal” totalitarianism.
In the future, and this is the most important thing, it will only get worse. Truces are possible, but reconciliation is not. Anger and despair will continue to grow in waves and waves. This vector of Western movement is a clear sign of the drift towards the outbreak of World War Three. It has already begun and could erupt into a full-blown conflagration either by accident, or due to the growing incompetence and irresponsibility of the ruling circles of the West.
The introduction of artificial intelligence and the robotization of war increase the risk of unintended escalation. Machines can act outside the control of confused elites.
The situation is aggravated by “strategic parasitism” – in 75 years of relative peace, people have forgotten the horrors of war, have stopped fearing even nuclear weapons. Everywhere, but especially in the West, the instinct for self-preservation has weakened.
I have spent many years studying the history of nuclear strategy and have come to an unequivocal, if unscientific, conclusion. The advent of nuclear weapons is the result of the intervention of the Almighty, who, appalled that mankind had unleashed two world wars within a generation, costing tens of millions of lives, gave us the weapons of Armageddon to show those who had lost their fear of hell that it existed. On that fear rested the relative peace of the last three-quarters of a century.
But now that fear is gone. The unthinkable in terms of previous notions of nuclear deterrence is happening – a group of ruling elites, in a fit of desperate rage, have unleashed a full-scale war in the underbelly of a nuclear superpower.
The fear of atomic escalation must be restored. Otherwise humanity is doomed.
It is not only, and not even so much, what the future world order will look like that is being decided in the fields of Ukraine right now. But rather whether the world we are used to will be preserved at all, or if all will be left is radioactive ruins, poisoning the remnants of humanity.
By breaking the West’s will in imposing its aggression, we will not only save ourselves and finally free the world from the Western yoke of five centuries, but we will also salvage the whole of humanity. By pushing the West towards catharsis and the abandonment of the hegemony of its elites, we will force it to retreat before a global catastrophe. Humanity will be given a new chance to develop.
Proposed solution
Of course, there is an uphill struggle ahead. It is also necessary to solve our own internal problems – to finally get rid of the mindset of Western-centrism and of the Westernizers in the administrative class. Especially the compradors and their peculiar way of thinking. Of course, in this area, the NATO bloc is helping us, unwittingly.
Our 300-year journey around Europe has given us a lot of useful lessons and it has helped us to form our great culture. Let us cherish our European heritage. But it is time to return home, to ourselves. Let us begin, with the baggage we have accumulated, to live in our own way. Our friends in the Foreign Ministry have recently made a real breakthrough by referring to Russia as a civilizational state in their foreign policy concept. I would add – a civilization of civilizations, open to the North as well as to the South, to the West as well as to the East. Now the main direction of development is to the South, to the North and, above all, to the East.
The confrontation with the West in Ukraine, however it ends, should not distract us from the strategic internal movement – spiritual, cultural, economic, political, military and political – towards the Urals, Siberia and the Pacific Ocean. A new Ural-Siberian strategy is needed, one that includes several powerful spiritually uplifting projects, including, of course, the creation of a third capital in Siberia. This movement should become part of the much-needed formulation of the “Russian Dream” – the image of the Russia and the world to which one aspires.
I have often written, and I am not alone in this, that great states without a great idea cease to be such or simply disappear into the void. History is littered with the graves of powers that lost their way. This idea should be created from above and not rely, as fools or lazy people do, on what comes from below. It must correspond to the deepest values and aspirations of the people and, above all, it must take us all forward. But it is the responsibility of the elite and the leadership of the country to formulate it. The delay in putting forward such a vision is unacceptably long.
But for the future to come to pass, the resistance of the forces of the past – i.e. the West – must be overcome. If this is not achieved, there will almost certainly be a full-scale world war. Which will probably be the last of its kind.
And here I come to the most difficult part of this article. We can keep fighting for another year or two, or even three, sacrificing thousands and thousands of our best men and grinding up hundreds of thousands more who are unfortunate enough to fall into the tragic historical trap of what is now called Ukraine. But this military operation cannot end in a decisive victory without forcing the West into a strategic retreat or even capitulation. We must force the West to abandon its attempts to turn back history, to abandon its attempts at global domination, and to force it to deal with its own problems, to manage its current multifaceted crisis. To put it crudely, it is necessary for the West to simply “piss off” and end its interference in the direction of Russia and the rest of the world.
However, for this to happen, Western elites need to rediscover their own lost sense of self-preservation by understanding that attempts to wear down Russia by playing the Ukrainians against it are counterproductive for the West itself.
The credibility of nuclear deterrence must be restored by lowering the unacceptably high threshold for the use of atomic weapons and by moving cautiously but quickly up the ladder of deterrence-escalation. The first steps have already been taken through statements to this effect by the president and other leaders, by beginning to deploy nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles in Belarus, and by increasing the combat effectiveness of the strategic deterrent forces. There are quite a few steps on this ladder. I count about two dozen. It could even go as far as warning our compatriots and all people of good will about the need to leave their homes near the objects of possible nuclear strikes in countries directly supporting the Kiev regime. The enemy must know that we are ready to launch a preemptive retaliatory strike in response to its current and past aggression in order to prevent a slide into a global thermonuclear war.
I have often said and written that with the right strategy of deterrence and even use, the risk of a ‘retaliatory’ nuclear or other strike on our territory can be minimized. Only if there is a madman in the White House who also hates his own country will the US decide to strike in ‘defense’ of the Europeans and invite retaliation by sacrificing a hypothetical Boston for a notional Poznan. The Americans and the Western Europeans are well aware of this, they just prefer not to think about it. We, too, have contributed to this recklessness with our peace-loving pronouncements. Having studied the history of US nuclear strategy, I know that after the USSR acquired a credible nuclear retaliatory capability, Washington never seriously considered using nuclear weapons on Soviet territory, even though it publicly bluffed. When nuclear weapons were considered, it was only against “advancing” Soviet forces in Western Europe. I know that the late Chancellors Helmut Kohl and Helmut Schmidt fled from their bunkers as soon as the question of such use came up in an exercise.
Movement down the ladder of containment-escalation should be fairly quick. Given the current direction of the West – and the degradation of most of its elites – each successive decision it makes is more incompetent and ideologically veiled than the last. And, at present, we cannot expect these elites to be replaced by more responsible and reasonable ones. This will only happen after a catharsis, leading to the abandonment of much ambition.
We cannot repeat the ‘Ukrainian scenario’. For a quarter of a century we were not listened to when we warned that NATO enlargement would lead to war; we tried to delay, to “negotiate”. As a result, we ended up in a serious armed conflict. Now the price of indecision is an order of magnitude higher than it would have been earlier.
But what if the present Western leaders refuse to back down? Perhaps they have lost all sense of self-preservation? Then we will have to hit a group of targets in a number of countries to bring those who have lost their senses back to their senses.
It’s a morally frightening choice – we would be using God’s weapon and condemning ourselves to great spiritual loss. But if this is not done, not only may Russia perish, but most likely the whole of human civilization will end.
We will have to make this choice ourselves. Even friends and sympathizers will not support it at first. If I were Chinese, I would not want an abrupt and decisive end to the conflict, because it will draw back US forces and allow them to gather forces for a decisive battle – either directly or, in the best Sun Tzu tradition, by forcing the enemy to retreat without a fight. As a Chinese person, I would also oppose the use of nuclear weapons because taking the confrontation to the nuclear level means moving to an area where my country is still weak.
Also, decisive action is not in line with the Chinese foreign policy philosophy, which emphasizes economic factors (with the accumulation of military power) and avoids direct confrontation. I would support an ally by providing him with rear cover, but I would go behind his back and not enter the fray. (In this case, perhaps I don’t understand this philosophy well enough and am attributing motives to my Chinese friends that are not their own.) If Russia uses nuclear weapons, Beijing would condemn it. But Chinese hearts would also rejoice knowing that the reputation and position of the US had been dealt a severe blow.
How would we react if (God forbid!) Pakistan attacked India, or vice versa? We’d be horrified. Upset that the nuclear taboo has been broken. Then let us help the victims and change our nuclear doctrine accordingly.
For India and other countries of the world majority, including nuclear weapon states (Pakistan, Israel), the use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable, both for moral and geostrategic reasons. If they are used “successfully”, the nuclear taboo – the notion that such weapons should never be used and that their use is a direct route to nuclear Armageddon – will be devalued. We are unlikely to win support quickly, even if many in the Global South would feel satisfaction at the defeat of their former oppressors who plundered them, carried out genocides and imposed an alien culture.
But in the end, the victors are not judged. And the saviors are thanked. Western European political culture does not remember, but the rest of the world does (and with gratitude) how we helped the Chinese to free themselves from the brutal Japanese occupation, and many Western colonies to throw off the colonial yoke.
Of course, if they do not understand us at first, they will have all the more incentive to educate themselves. Still, it is very likely that we can win, and focus the minds enemy states without extreme measures, and force them to retreat. And after a few years, we take take up a position as China’s rear, as it is now performing for us, supporting it in its struggle with the US. Then this fight can be avoided without a big war. And we will win together for the good of all, including the people of the Western countries.
At that stage, Russia and the rest of humanity will pass through all the thorns and traumas into the future, which I see as bright – multipolar, multicultural, multicolored – and giving countries and peoples the opportunity to build their own destinies in addition to the common one, which should unite worldwide.
Ukraen’s parliament and its speaker taunted billionaire Elon Musk on Monday after he posted a meme on his social media platform mocking President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s pleas for wartime assistance from the West.
Musk owns SpaceX, which provides Starlink satellite communication services that are vital for Ukraen’s defense effort, but his statements have sometimes angered Kyiv since the Ukrosia war in February last year.
Early on Monday, Musk posted a meme on his platform X, formerly known as Twitter, showing Zelenskyy and the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”
The Ukraenion leader and his top lieutenants have appealed to their allies throughout the war to secure billions of dollars of military aid to weather and push back Russia’s invasion.
The speaker of Ukraen’s parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, hit out at Musk’s jibe with his own post on X.
“The case when … (Elon Musk) tried to conquer space, but something went wrong and in 5 minutes he was up to his eyeballs in shit,” an apparent reference to SpaceX’s failed rocket launch in April.
Ukraen’s parliament, on its official page on X, accused Musk of spreading Russian propaganda, posting its own version of the meme with a picture of Musk and the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t spread Russian propaganda.”
A Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, who has criticized some of Musk’s statements in the past, said in a post on X that being silent or ironic about Ukraen played into the hands of Russian propaganda.
“Unfortunately, not everyone and not always, while being significant media figures, but being thousands of kilometers away from the war’s epicenter, is able to realize what the daily bombardments and cries of children losing their parents are.”
Ukraenion officials criticized Musk earlier in the war for suggesting that they should consider giving up land for peace, a position that Kyiv has staunchly rejected.
Tuesday, 26 September 2023 12:40 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 26 September 2023 12:40 PM ]
By Shabbir Rizvi
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Tehran last week and held meetings with top Iranian military leadership, including the Chief of the Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces General Mohammad Bagheri and Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani.
Shoigu, heading a high-ranking Russian military delegation, was in the Iranian capital on the official invitation of General Bagheri, who welcomed him during an impressive ceremony in Tehran.
Shoigu was invited to Iran to discuss “defense cooperation” between the two all-weather allies.
The two countries have historically been the favorite targets of Western aggression: from sabotage attacks to economic sanctions meant to destabilize their economies.
Both countries have, however, held course despite all such oppressive measures and pursued independent policies to strengthen their respective economies and bolster bilateral cooperation.
Shoigu and his accompanying delegation appeared to be in positive spirits while meeting their Iranian counterparts. Shoigu was particularly vocal about the positive relations with Iran’s top leadership.
‘“The pressure of sanctions on Russia and Iran is proving to be futile, while Russia-Iran cooperation is reaching new highs,” Shoigu lauded, as cited by local Iranian media.
The Islamic Republic’s ability to operate independently and create a healthy national economy despite Western meddling has proved very fruitful. It has recently been included in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) economic alliance, as well as the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization).
Naturally, it is important for Iran to consider security issues to protect its interests within these organizations, and Russia is a natural ally in this context as it is also a member of both groupings.
In a growing multilateral world order, which many are referring to as “Multipolarity” as well as “The End of Americanism” (see President Ebrahim Raeisi’s historical speech ), cooperation based on mutual trust and benefit holds the key.
However, the remnants of the dying US-led unipolar world order will try to sow disorder as they fight off the inevitable new reality shaped by new emerging powers.
Projects within BRICS countries as well as SCO countries have notably been subject to Western-backed sabotage. Most notable would be the destruction of the Nord Stream-2 pipeline which impacts Russia’s ability to deliver gas to western Europe.
Other examples include terrorist attacks on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor by the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), Takfiri terrorists that were once on the US list of terror groups but have since been removed as they play a role in the US strategy of destabilizing targeted countries.
The US use of proxy forces to conduct economic sabotage and destruction is a serious threat to regional development and stability as Iran has repeatedly warned about.
These projects will help facilitate regional independence for countries and incentivize less reliance on trade with predatory Western countries. With Iran joining two economic alliances that are going to shape the new world order, it can count on Western-backed disruption to regional projects.
Despite both BRICS and the SCO being economic alliances, in order to ensure their success, the defense of their ambitious projects must be factored in.
The meeting between Shoigu and Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Akbar Ahmadian was a key moment for discussing the looming threat of Western sabotage seriously.
This is a particularly important equation – foreign interference has either been the United States and its allies overtly or its various proxy forces covertly.
As Iran and Russia strengthen the reality of a unified “Eurasia,” it would be in both countries’ interest to secure regional interests – and to expel the threat of Western sabotage completely, as implied in the latter part of the statement.
A mutual understanding of adversaries in the region is a first step that cannot be ignored.
Already, Iran and Russia’s incalculable assistance in Syria can prove the importance of understanding this equation. A unified effort to expel Western invaders and their proxy armies has led to a hard-fought victory for Syrian President Bashar Al Assad – to the point that the Arab League and other countries that once turned their back on Syria are now being forced to accept reality – Syria is here to stay.
This week alone, Iranian intelligence forces thwarted at least 30 bombings at populous areas of the capital Tehran, arresting 28 operatives affiliated with the Daesh Takfiri group.
In this arena, Iran is highly skilled. Iranian intelligence services have also been fiercely exposing and shutting down internal terror networks associated with terrorist organizations such as MeK all the way to Kurdish separatists and Mossad.
Russia would be very interested in Iran’s anti-terror approaches – and vice versa. Russia has been subject to internal terror plots as its military operation in Ukraine continues, including bombings in Moscow and drone attacks on civilian bridges.
A “skillshare” and an open line of communication between the two countries’ intelligence forces could result in protected trade routes and corridors, as well as routing out existing hostile forces.
Furthermore, Iran’s weapons, particularly new military technology that includes drones, missiles, and radar systems – are also highly attractive to Russia, and the Russians do not shy away from admitting this.
It is becoming undeniable that Iran’s military hardware is a game-changer. Iran’s drone program, particularly the Shahed and Mojaher systems, are so sought after that demands are outpacing production
– multiple countries have expressed interest in purchasing them.
Currently, the only countries in the world with Mach 5 capabilities are Russia, China, and Iran
. Iran joined the former this year, with an extremely successful demonstration of the Fattah missile.
Russia has reportedly used its own Kh-47M2 “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles to strike targets in Ukraine. Although Iran is neutral with respect to Russia’s military operation, proposing dialogue instead of escalation, it could potentially work with Russia to supply Fattah missiles for defensive purposes.
Speaking of which, Russia is also in a unique situation with its military operation in Ukraine. Billions of dollars worth of NATO equipment have been provided to Ukraine in order to stop the Russian advance.
Russia has not only destroyed many of these highly coveted weapons of war, but also captured intact equipment including tanks, rocket launchers, MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems), and more.
Being able to reverse engineer NATO weaponry and exploit its pain points is highly valuable information that Iran would be interested in – especially as these weapons are often wielded by forces hostile to Iran.
If the objective of the meeting in Tehran is deterring the West, then a serious transfer of information obtained on NATO weapons to Iran would be in order. Anything less than a delivery of this vital information is not taken seriously.
This is just the first official defense meeting with Iran’s ascension into BRICS. In Shoigu’s declaration of “reaching new levels” of cooperation with Iran’s military, more meetings will commence as the countries draft various security agreements to protect the region and build multipolarity.
We can also expect more joint military drills between Iran and Russia – similar to the drills held in the Sea of Oman between the two countries and China earlier this year.
Lastly, we can also expect the West not to leave the region gracefully, despite the odds becoming increasingly against them.
Come whatever may, the new alliances – formed by economic mutual cooperation – have a chance to bring much-needed stability and prosperity to the entire “Eurasian” region.
To invoke President Raeisi, it is indeed the end of “Americanization.”
deleted Aliens sentry gun scene
This is fun.
UPDATED 10:05 AM EDT — U.S. Money Supply CONTRACTING; Down 3.69% and Falling
In the past 150 years, the US Money Supply has only contracted five (5) times; and they were Recessions and the Great Depression. It is happening again.
Two U.S. money supply metrics that investors tend to pay close attention to are M1 and M2. The former accounts for the cash and coins in circulation, as well as the demand deposits within an individual’s checking account. Meanwhile, M2 factors in everything in M1 and adds money market accounts, savings accounts, and certificates of deposit (CDs) below $100,000. The main difference is that M2 factors in cash that takes a little extra work to get your hands on.
For as far back as the eye can see, M2 has been climbing. Since the U.S. economy steadily grows over the long run, it’s only natural that more cash/capital is needed to facilitate transactions. In fact, M2 rising is so common that some economists may not even be paying attention to it as a monthly reported datapoint.
But in the rare event that M2 meaningfully declines, pay attention!
Back in March, Reventure Consulting CEO Nick Gerli posted what you see below on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It highlights M2 money supply growth and contraction dating back to 1870 using data supplied by the St. Louis Federal Reserve and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Over the past 153 years, there have only been five instances where M2 has declined by at least 2% on a year-over-year basis: the 1870s, 1893, 1921, 1931-1933, and 2023. In order, these instances resulted in a depression, panic, depression, Great Depression, and (insert your best guess here). In the previous four instances, it was an ominous sign for Wall Street.
As of July 2023, M2 money supply was 3.69% below the all-time high recorded in July 2022. This marks the first time since the Great Depression that we’ve witnessed a meaningful decline in U.S. money supply.
To be completely fair, the declines in the 1870s and 1893 occurred prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve, while the drops in 1921 and during the Great Depression came shortly after its creation. Today, there’s a far better understanding from the nation’s central bank and Capitol Hill on how to utilize monetary policy and fiscal policy, respectively, to avoid a depression.
Furthermore, multiple rounds of fiscal stimulus during the COVID-19 pandemic led M2 money supply to catapult higher by 26% on a year-over-year basis. It’s always possible that the decline we’re witnessing now of 3.69% represents nothing more than a return to some sort of mean after a historic expansion of M2.
However, history has been unkind to meaningful M2 money supply declines. With the core inflation rate more than double the Fed’s long-term target of 2%, less capital in circulation would more than likely lead to a deflationary recession.
YIELD CURVE INVERTED – 1 YEAR +
Add into the above facts, the reality that the yield curve, as reported by the Federal Reserve, has been inverted for over a year, and you’ve got the makings of financial disaster:
As you can see on the chart above, the yield curve is now starting to normalize.
The crash ALWAYS comes after it normalizes.
And when the yield curve is inverted for an extended period of time, the crash is bigger and harder.
Why is this happening, you ask? Because NO ONE wants to lend money to the US for a long term anymore. The US is so in debt, people have lost faith in its ability to repay. So the Treasury is having to offer MUCH higher interest rates just to get people to lend them money.
Meanwhile, the short term Bonds are Flat or Dropping as seen below because more people are interested in short term loans; no faith in the long term.
OK, so what does all this actually MEAN to you and me? I found some of this information in comments on the web, by people who know a lot more about this stuff than I do. I found their remarks worth repeating here.
THE YIELD CURVE COULD NORMALIZE AT ANY TIME, MAYBE EVEN TODAY.
After that, combine the contracting money supply with high inflation and . . . MEGA DOOM
The way I see it . . . . it’s literally THE END. The US economy is 100% kaput
The last time this happened, they talked the Boomer’s parents into sending their kids to die overseas to fight Communism and Socialism. Kids by the millions coming home in body bags and idiot parents posting yellow stars in their windows so everyone could tell them how brave their kids were for fighting Nazis and Communists, when actually they were just covering up what they did to the Weimar Republic.
All for what? So the Bankers could move here en-masse and take over the west while telling us we won, and then spend the next century raping an pillaging our society too, like a plague of locusts.
You think they’re going to get their Draft and War this time? I’m not sure bout that. Most everyone knows that Ukraine is a money laundering operation for them to get the rest of the loot out and convert the dollars to something useful before the crash becomes obvious to the pleebs.
This is why the “Elite” are building bunkers.
This is why they have a puppet instead of a real leader in Washington.
It’s why they have fences around the US Capital.
It’s why they don’t seem to care if anyone sees their crimes and greed right now.
They think we’re stupid, and I’m willing to bet that most people don’t get what the money supply running backward on the debt clock means, except for you folks who visit this web site.
They want us to give up our kids IN Ukraine.
Well, my position on that is simple: no gold star for this Dad.
They want us on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and to own nothing. This is how they figure on doing it, another great depression and another World War. Just straight up evil.
They’ll give us another “New Deal”
This time, the Green New Deal.
They’ll talk about how dirty money spreads disease (COVID), pushes illegal drug sales (they Kensington St. in Philly is on a 24/7 youtube feed…it’s propaganda), how it causes global warming (the Maui lasers…oops, excuse me, I meant entirely accidental fires), etc.
They figure once they get us on the digital currency, that’s it. They can do whatever they want with us forever.
And forget ever having a fucking independent retirement. Any money you save will be squandered with inflation. Perhaps they even intend to make gold and silver worthless because there’s no way to buy or sell it without cash.
We need to say NO to this New Deal, and shove it right back down their evil throats with a simultaneous boot up their ass.
I don’t know about Indians, but on the other side of the equation, forget about Sichuan cuisine.
Sichuan cuisine is mild compared to Jiangxi cuisine.
Seriously, Jiangxi folks consume chilis like they’re vegetables.
I remember going with a colleague (from Sichuan) to another colleague’s (from Jiangxi) apartment.
When we arrived, he (colleague from Jiangxi) was cooking and as soon as we stepped into the apartment, the “spicy-ness” in the air was so overpowering and overwhelming that our eyes started to water.
Then dude proceeds to bring out this huge-ass noodle dish from the kitchen, and the entire thing is mostly chili.
At the time I remember thinking – is this a noodle dish, or a chili dish?
Just looking at it – well, sweat beaded my brow and made my hands moist.
Sichuanese colleague was not exactly enthusiastic about the offer and said, jokingly, that he would stil llike to be able to go to work on Monday.
Even a Sichuanese is quaking in his boots at the thought of eating Jiangxi cuisine.
To me, Jiangxi cuisine doesn’t appear to be food for humans.
Before we retired, my husband and I worked as educators and lived in a small rural town in California’s Central Valley. When we bought our home there the realtor covered all the basics, but after we moved in we discovered a hole in the ground with a metal lid covering it.
Lifting up the lid, my husband saw that the hole was actually an empty 30 gallon steel drum buried in the ground. Still not sure of its purpose, he put the lid back on and didn’t think much more about it.
A few weeks later we were across the street talking with our firefighter neighbor and his wife when my husband mentioned the weird hole in the ground thing. Our neighbor got excited, asked to take a look at it, and the two men crossed over to our house to check it out.
When they returned, the neighbor said our hole in the ground was a barbecue for deep pit tri-tip and other meats that are cooked low heat and very slowly—typically 12 hours or more. He loved to barbecue and asked if he could use it sometime.
We said he could use it any time he wished, and that’s how we came to enjoy delicious “low and slow” barbecue many times over the twenty-five years we lived there—without lifting a finger.
Our neighbor wouldn’t even let us pitch in to pay for the meat. This was like a new toy to him and he was in hog heaven. So what was weird to us as people from the San Francisco Bay Area was a much sought after item to him.
The first serious story I wrote when I was a kid was about a man who had a heart transplant and began taking on the characteristics of his donor, who turned out to be a serial killer. It was always a topic that interested me, and one story stands out as evidence that this phenomenon exists.
In March 1995, 33-year-old Terry Cottle from South Carolina took his own life by shooting himself in the throat with a shotgun. After four days in a trauma unit, his wife Cheryl decided to take him off life support and donate his organs.
His heart went to a 57-year-old man named Sonny Graham, who was dying of heart failure. After a successful transplant, Sonny started to write to his donor’s wife Cheryl. Over the next ten years, the two ended up falling in love and got married.
People who knew Terry Cottle started to notice that Sonny was taking on some of Terry’s personality and characteristics. He started liking things he never enjoyed before, like beer and hotdogs, which were some of Terry’s favourites. This isn’t uncommon for transplant recipients. Many people have reported taking on the tastes, emotions and even memories of their donors.
This phenomenon was taken to the extreme thirteen years after Terry took his life when Sonny took a shotgun and shot himself in the throat the same way Terry did.
The Noor-3 was reportedly placed in an orbit 450km (280 miles) from the surface of the Earth and, like its predecessors, was taken to space using a Qased – meaning “messenger” – carrier developed by the IRGC.
Despite criticism from the West, Iranian officials have promised to carry on with the expanding satellite programme and are expected to launch several more satellites into different orbits in the foreseeable future.
In August 2022, an Iranian-owned and Russian-built satellite – said to be capable of taking high-resolution images – was successfully launched from a base in Kazakhstan.
Western allies have suggested the development of Iranian satellites may violate a United Nations Security Council resolution underpinning the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers because the technology could potentially be used to facilitate nuclear weapons.
Iran has repeatedly dismissed such claims, maintaining that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.
The nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), continues to be in limbo after the United States unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran.
Iranian officials have recently suggested again that they are open to returning to the accord but would first need to see political resolve from the Western parties, which also include France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
As part of one of the clauses of the accord, a number of restrictions on Iran’s development of ballistic missiles is set to be automatically lifted next month.
But with tensions lingering over the Iranian nuclear programme and Western accusations that Iran has armed Russia with drones for the war in Ukraine, the European powers have said they will maintain their own sanctions on Iran despite the clause.
On December 25, 2015, a farmer named Jose Antonio Nievas discovered something unusual near a stream on his farm, located about 15 km from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Initially, he thought it was just a rock. However, when he removed the mud covering it and dug around it, he realized that it wasn’t an ordinary rock at all.
His discovery turned out to be much more extraordinary than he had imagined, so he decided to involve experts from the scientific community.
After careful analysis, scientists concluded that this mysterious object, which appeared similar to a rock, was neither a meteorite nor a dinosaur egg, but something much rarer: the shell of a glyptodon.
The glyptodon was a huge armored mammal that lived during the Pleistocene era and was an ancestor of the modern armadillo. These imposing animals could weigh up to two tons and it seems they shared territory with humans for about 4,000 years before disappearing from the face of the Earth.
Originally Answered: What do you wear when you go to work ?
I work for a game company, so like most IT companies, our dress code is on the far side of casual. Checkered shirts are a must (since it’s the uniform for programmers), people come to work in sweatpants, slippers, old T-shirts, hoodies, sneakers… Instead of having casual Fridays, we actually have Fancy Fridays that encourage people to dress formal once in a while, just for the kicks.
When I first started working in the industry, I was “t-shirt+hoodie+messenger bag” ALL THE WAY, EVERYDAY.
(this is my “I don’t give a fuck about how I look” face).
Then I got a bit more “sophisticated” mostly because dressing up make me feel good. Picking out clothes and socks and such is fun, shopping is fun.
So I “evolved” to a what I call “Japanese casual”.
When I was in my early teens, I built a “compost pile”. I collected some old bricks from a run down gas station near my school, dragged them home with my red rider wagon, and built up a nice rectangular box. It was around one yard (1 meter) by two yards and I would fill it with grass clippings, leaves, and kitchen organics that I collected.
Occasionally I would throw in some lime (as we had a lot of old apples from our small orchard).
Oh, yeah. The compost generated heat. Heh heh.
Both my parents thought this was an “ok” project of mine. They neither encouraged me, or made fun of me.
I was just “eccentric” in their minds.
But, let me tell you all, by the next Spring, when I shoveled out the rich black earth it was awesome! Just amazing, and my (well, the “family”) garden really produced that year. I was so proud.
A compost pile is a nice little side hobby that doesn’t take too much effort, but will greatly increase your garden yields immensely. And let me tell you all, it was a true joy to extract the rich black earth from the pile and transport it to the garden. Sure as shit!
Some guidelines…
Creating Your Compost Heap Location
One of the most important factors for starting a compost pile is its location. Choose an open, level area with good drainage. You do not want your compost to sit in standing water. An area with partial sun or shade is also ideal.
Too much sun can dry the pile out, while too much shade can keep it overly wet. Finally, choose a site that is easy for you to get to and avoid areas near dogs or other meat-eating animals.
Size
The recommended size for a compost pile is generally no smaller than 3 feet (1 m.) high and wide and no larger than 5 feet (1.5 m.). Anything smaller may not heat up efficiently and anything larger may hold too much water and become difficult to turn.
It is recommended to start your pile on bare ground rather than on asphalt or concrete, which could impede aeration and inhibit microbes. Placing a pallet underneath the pile is fine, however, if you prefer.
Adding Organic Materials
Many organic materials can be composted, but there are some items that you should keep out of your compost pile. These include: Meat, dairy, fat or oil products Carnivorous pet feces (e.g. dog, cat) Diseased plants, or weeds that have seeded Human waste Charcoal or coal ash (wood ash is ok though)
The key materials for composting are nitrogen/greens and carbon/browns.
When starting a compost pile, the recommended practice is to layer or alternate these greens and browns, the same way as you would for making lasagna.
Your bulkier organic materials do best in the first ground layer, so start with a layer of browns, such as twigs (less than ½ inch or 1.25 cm. in diameter) or straw, about 4 to 6 inches (10-12 cm.).
Next, add in some green materials, such as kitchen waste and grass clippings, again about 4 to 6 inches (10-12 cm.) thick.
Additionally, animal manure and fertilizers serve as activators that accelerate the heating of your pile and provide a nitrogen source for beneficial microbes.
Continue to add layers of nitrogen and carbon materials until you reach the top or run out. Lightly water each layer as it is added, firming it down but do not compact. Watering and Turning the Compost
Your compost pile should be moist, but not soggy.
Most of your water will come from rain, as well as the moisture in green materials, but you may need to water the pile yourself on occasion.
If the pile gets too wet, you can turn it more frequently to dry it, or add more brown materials to soak up excess moisture.
Once you turn the pile the first time, these materials will get mixed together and compost more efficiently. Keeping the compost pile turned on a frequent basis will help with aeration and speed up decomposition. Using these simple instructions for composting, you will be well on your way to creating the ideal compost for your garden.
A Healthy Demographics is when you have two young people to support an old person population wise
China will have healthy demographics at least until 2043 , twenty years from today
A Strained Demographics is when you have One Young Person to Support one Old Person
This will not happen in China as per today’s scenario but in the event of a worst case scenario will happen by 2070
That’s 50 years from today
Then by 2080 and 2090, things WILL BECOME BETTER FOR CHINA
Plus Chinas Strained Demographics which will last for 10–20 years will be compensated by strong rigorous healthcare and old age care due to a rich economy and mostly a developed economy by then
A Demographic collapse is when you have one young man supporting two dependents or more
That happens only during major war when young men die in large numbers
This is Japan
Note the difference?
THE LINES MERGE AND INTERSECT unlike Chinas, even under the worst case scenario
Japan left having healthy demographics by 1990
By 2033, Japan enters Demographic Collapse
It will take around 67 years for Japan to come out of this Collapse
Here is India
As you can see India will have healthy demographics by 2070 and will not be strained even by 2100 though it may head for straining by 2150 AD
Had India been sufficiently developed today ($ 10–12 Trillion GDP) with HDI of 80 and a 10% minimum share of global manufacturing, then we could have taken advantage of this demographics advantage and taken our economy to $ 40 Trillion or more
Yet the fact that we didn’t means we will perhaps always be third in GDP and 52nd in GDP per Capita
Yet how many talk of Japan?
Nobody
Believe me China is safe. Yet China would like to improve on the numbers to be in a better position
They way for that isn’t to make abortion illegal but rather to bring down housing costs and encourage migration of people to Tier 3/4 Cities and Rural outposts
Hi, Craig. Thanks for the very interesting question.
55 pounds less?
I’ve lived in the States. I think you’re severely underestimating the difference in weight.
The guy below is not just 55 pounds heavier than I am.
My guess is he’s at least double, maybe triple my weight.
But yes. I’m sure he can completely destroy me, rip me asunder, and dish out critical hit after critical hit on my person.
Thankfully, I am rather fleet of foot, so at least I can get away before he completey destroys me. I’m willing to bet that even on foot, I’m faster than his scooter.
Call me quietly confident!
Classic Beef Burgundy
Ingredients
1 (1 1/2 pound) round steak, cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes
1 cup dry red wine
1 small onion, quartered
1/2 pound small mushrooms
4 tablespoons unsalted margarine
3 cups sliced onion
2 cups diced carrots
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon ground marjoram
1/2 teaspoon thyme, crushed
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 bay leaf
1 1/4 cups water
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Instructions
Combine beef, 3/4 cup wine and onion. Cover; refrigerate overnight.
Drain beef cubes; set aside. Strain and reserve liquid.
Sauté mushrooms in 3 tablespoons margarine until lightly browned; remove and set aside.
Add beef; cook until well browned. Remove and set aside.
Sauté sliced onion, carrots, parsley and garlic in remaining 1 tablespoon margarine until onions are tender.
Add meat, marjoram, thyme, pepper, bay leaf, marinade and 1 cup water. Cover and simmer 2 hours, or until meat is tender.
Dissolve flour in remaining 1/4 cup water; add to beef mixture.
Add mushrooms and cook until mixture thickens, about 5 minutes.
My small apartment complex has a fair number of children under 10 who play on the grounds.
One gal moved her brother, who was a lazy raging alcoholic, in with her. He would sit outside all day & early evening drinking until his sister got home from working. (Like she couldn’t smell the stale alcohol on him).
So that she wouldn’t throw out his alcohol, he would hide his half to full bottles around the property. Often this was in areas that the kids played in. When I would come across the bottles, I would just toss them in the trash but that didn’t deter him. I started getting concerned that the kids could find a bottle and drink the alcohol. The super spoke to him and his sister but she denied that there was a priblem
One of his favorite hidings places was by my garage. I was able to film him staggering, day drinking and hiding the bottle. I took the film to the police and sent a copy to the complex management company. Basically, the sister was told that he was not allowed on the property and that they will not be renewing her lease.
Well guess who was back 2 weeks ago living at the complex. I let the super know and he is handling it. I also went to each unit with kids, let them know what transpired and to teach their kids not to drink anything they find. I also showed them the video.
A few of the parents complained to the management company. Last Friday, they taped an eviction notice to the sister’s unit.
Now before anyone jumps down my throat about the brother being an alcoholic and needs help, I agree. However his sister is enabling him. He doesn’t work or receive government assistance so she is either giving him $$$ or he is stealing from the liquor store, which I doubt given how drunk he usually is
And a child getting sick, having organ damage or even dying, trump’s his need for a drink.
Three researchers were awarded the 2014 Nobel prize in Physics for inventing nothing other than the blue LED light. Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura were awarded the Nobel prize for inventing a diode that emitted blue light.
“How did three guys win one of the most prestigious awards in physics for inventing a light that shines blue?” Was the first thing that came to mind when I heard about this. I just didn’t equate something that sounded so simple to me with a Nobel prize. This is the same award that was awarded for the discovery of the wave nature of electrons, for the discovery of the neutron and for the discovery of the superconducting properties of ceramic materials. Well after I had done some research, I found it turns out their invention had far-reaching consequences in developing so many of the things we consider ordinary today.
This is how LEDs work:
LEDs are sandwiches of semiconductor materials. The layers are ‘doped’ with other elements, which provides some layers with extra electrons and others with a surplus of ‘holes’, where missing electrons leave behind a positive charge. When an electrical current is applied, the electrons and holes combine at the junctions between the layers and emit light as a result.
Green and red LED’s had been around since the 1950’s, but prior to their invention in the 1990’s, no one in the industry could figure out how to create a diode that emitted blue light. This was a significant obstacle because blue LED chips are used in white LED-based lights. Without a blue LED, the white LED-based lights that are so common today wouldn’t be nearly as common, if they existed at all.
White LED’s are important because they are used in the screens of our smartphones, tablets, computer screens and TV’s. LED lights were also vastly more efficient than any other light source invented before. One estimate believes that this invention could save up to 20% of the world’s power consumption.
So when taken into perspective and properly considered, the Japanese trio are in fact deserving of the prize. Their invention has been to the benefit of humanity and we are all better off because of it. This is also one of the few times the prize has been awarded for a practical invention.
If China says that it will do something, you can bet on it being done.
There’s no exceptions.
Additionally, China has the skills, the ability, the top-down funding, and resources necessary. So when a program or project is launched, you can guarantee that it will be be completed to the timeline, and that those who lead the project will dedicate their very lives to make it work.
This is not simply a pro-China advocacy. It’s a observation that any student of modern Geo-politics can easily make. Whether it is the development of nuclear weapons, the elimination of poverty, the reforestation of deserts, or easy access to healthcare, China has accomplished its promises and met its goals.
In regards to space; whether it is satellites, space-stations, vehicles, bases on the moon and Mars; robotic exploration spacecraft or systems that peer deep into Space, China is delivering. Step by step. All with very little “fanfare’, posturing, or political announcements.
China delivers.
You will notice that in this OPINION, that I am not mentioning the United States.
It seems to be the “knee jerk” reaction to somehow squeeze a mention about NASA, or Elon Musk, or some nonsense about lofty plans or goals about colonization of Mars or the Moon in the answers. What do I think about that?
Ah. An attempt to keep a fantasy alive. Lots and lots of talk. Much fluff. Promises galore. A lot of huffing and a puffing. Make sure you squeeze in a healthy does of “diversity”, and throw in some “patriotism” as well. Gotta politicize everything; something for the left, and something for the right.
All these other ideas are politicized concepts without much substance. They are dreams and hopes. Great things; dreams. Great things; hopes. But come on…they are not engineered solutions.
That costs money. That requires talent. That takes effort.
China’s Space ambitions consist of engineered solutions, with funding to match, and staged step-by-step goals of attainment. Let the other billionaires, and nations, “talk big” and promise so much incredible things.
China delivers.
That is all you need to know.
Why the Ruling Elite Is Anti-American | Constitution 101 Highlight
I never knew if the last occupant had left it behind but…we checked into a high-end Palm Springs Hotel several years ago. All was lovely. In the middle of the night, I heard a soft noise from the closet. When I checked on it, it was a mother cat and 4 newborn kittens in the closet. I was not expecting that!
I made sure that Mama & babies were okay. The next morning, I asked at the desk if someone had left a pregnant cat behind in our room? “No.”
The hotel people offered to take Mama & kittens away but I said, ”No.” I am an animal lover and figured that I could provide a better home than having them carted away!
We took Mama & the four —Enie, Menie, Miney, and Moe — home with us where they still rule today! What a great bit of memorabilia from our trip!
Confession of the Day
Hi, I am 21yo guy, who is obsessed with making money. In a span of 2years, I have tried plenty of businesses but none of them were successful. I literally have 0 friends, no social life and I barely sleep for 3-4hrs. At this point, the only thing that matters to me is money and I do feel sorry for myself because giving up is never an option, everything i like needs money.
I do have plenty of skills, such as making AI models, video editing and more but it seems each of it is useless.
I am here to find someone who’s on the same page, so we can exchange our ideas or collaborate to build generational wealth.
I feel so embarrassed when I see people with luxury life. It’s not like I hate them. It’s just that I am still not there.
Moreover, most of the people around me are useless. They have no plan for life, and all they care about is friends, partying, and girls. It feels terrible to live in such a place.
It’s not just money, dude. It’s more about what it can buy for us. We can literally have anything with money, and I have never been a guy who wants love, friends, and emotional attachments. I have seen people switch based on a person’s wealth. In the end, every damn thing leads to money. Whether it be love, comfort, friends, peace… literally everything
ALERT: ELITES LEAVE WASHINGTON? NUKE EVENT IN UKRAINE
Doom and gloom. But… what is going on? Some things to pander and think about.
So, let’s start out with the easy one. If you’re addressing more than one person (such as a married couple), it’s always “vous”. “Vous” is plural.
But for the rest of it, when addressing someone in the singular where “you” would be appropriate in English:
“Vous” is the polite form
“Tu” is the familiar form
In France, they take the distinction fairly seriously (except for teenagers and college students). The full set of rules in the form of flowchart can be found online, but the “Notes” version is:
Strangers are “vous”
People you know very well are “tu”. Your spouse, close work colleagues, little kids (Unless the little kid is a foreign prince or something), God, people like that. NOT the front desk staff, waiters/waitresses, shop clerks or baggage porters
And the golden rule:
When in doubt use “vous”.
Using “tu” inappropriately is like a stranger calling you “buddy” or “pal”. It’s just rude.
Once, while working at a local university we were running a woodchipper. One of the professors walked by and stuck his head into the shute. Immediately we hit the emergency off switch and pulled him away. He just looked at us confused and said he wanted to see how it worked. We had to explain that had their been any wood chips flying out at the time it would’ve stripped the flesh from his face. We then opened it up and showed him the working mechanisms. He wandered off quite happy. To this day I don’t think he had any idea how much danger he put himself in.
I’ve learned from past experiences that you generally don’t get paid back. Plus if you ask the person to sign a promissory note, they generally refuse. Also, any explanation that you provide turns into a debate.
For example, my lazy & unmotivated cousin (C)and his wife (W) asked me to dinner at their rental house. Basically, his spoiled money grubbing mother, who never worked a day in her life, convinced him that I would be thrilled to lend him $$$ for a deposit on a house. At the time, I was living in an apt that was nothing to write home about.
W- we are delighted that you joined us for dinner. It has been a long time since we were all together.
C- how is the job going?
Me – fine (realizing that something is up)
C we found a house we want to buy but don’t have enough $$$ for the deposit. Would you loan us $25,000
Me – no, why would I loan you that if I can only afford a basic apt.
W – well my husband is your favorite cousin
Me – yeah, so?
C – buying the house will be an investment for our future
Me – what about my future?
C – you owe us for everything my mom did for your mom when she had cancer
Me – she did shit for my mom, she actually showed up at my mom’s house with fabric for an outfit she wanted my mom to make her. And got pissed when my mom wouldn’t since she just had a major chemo treatment that morning.
Anyway this went on and on basically denigrating me & my mom but expecting me to loan them $$$. It only ended when I excused myself from the table and walked out. I was exhausted mentally from this and disappointed that they could treat me that way.
So now it is NO and I allow no discussion.
Stray kitten on the highway has a dangerous accident if it is not rescued in time!
I grew up across the street from a corrupt church & rectory and next door to the convent.
For example, 2 priests got 2 women pregnant — the women were ex-communicated but the priests got to preach each Sunday from the altar.
Or my parents weren’t allowed to baptize my brother at the church because the godmother had been seen by the monsignor wearing a red (whore color) leotard & tights under her coat. She was studying dance at Julliard. BTW, she was a graduate of the church’s school so if her values were sinful (they weren’t), the church only had to blame themselves.
The monsignor bought a new Cadillac every year yet the nuns, who worked at his school, often didn’t have enough to eat. My mom had a rotating “invite to dinner” with them so they received at least 1 wholesome meal each week.
I could spend hours on more examples but to answer the question.
At 14, I was an active member of the church, CYO, teen sports teams, etc. That Xmas, the CYO was decorating the rectory for the holidays along with the men’s and women’s auxiliary church groups. The monsignor is eying me very strangely and after awhile, he asks if I’m related to Manuel xxx. I state that he was my deceased grandfather. The 68 year old monsignor tore 14 year old me a new one, calling me every vile name that could be said to a female and that he wanted me out. That there was no way I could ever be a good Catholic given who my grandfather was.
(Evidently, the monsignor while studying at the seminary, had an argument with my grandfather who was a laborer there. So for nearly 50 years this vessel of catholic purity held a grudge against a man for a perceived slight.)
When he was done screaming and swearing at me, I calmly & loudly said that the monsignor could go fuk himself and walked out, leaving the church forever.
As a postscript, 16 years older, my mom asked me to get a priest to give her final councilling. She had days to live. My mom, who went to church almost daily, had been bedridden for 2 years and no priest (from across the street) never visited her. I went to the rectory and asked for a priest. Priest told me he was too busy to talk since he was late to his golf tee off time. That I could make an appointment in a couple of weeks since he might have some free time. He denied that it was his responsibility to find out who the sick we’re in his parish and pushed by me.
I called the archdiocese and got nowhere. So, given that I worked in Advertising for a major corporation, I called every personal contact that I had at every TV, radio, cable station and pitched a story of a corrupt parish. Once the archdiocese started getting calls from reporters for their comment on their story, they reacted. The priest was forced to leave his golf game and to go see my mom. I made sure to sit in on his sessions with my mom so that he had to treat her with compassion, not bitterness or rudeness or condescension.
I didn’t just leave this parish / church, I left this religion entirety. I have no tolerance for hypocrites.
On Thanksgiving in 2018, I was having over 30 people to dinner. It was my father-in-law’s last big family dinner. He had cancer; he died less than a month later, a week before Christmas.
I’d ordered a couple of long tables and linens to fit; and then decided to rent the whole shebang. I didn’t have settings for 30 people so I rented those too.
I thought the tables really did look beautiful. I had burnt orange tablecloths and deep red napkins. Festive.
I decided, the day before, that although I had candles, I also needed two centerpieces. If I just had one big one people couldn’t see each other. I wanted to keep them low.
I thought I’d get a dozen multicolored roses, divide them, and use them in two arrangements. I figured they’d be pretty without hitting everyone over the head with the whole fall colors thing.
I was running out when someone pulled up in a car and came to the door. He caught me right before I left. He had a big vase; with a lot of cellophane.
Inside were a dozen multi-colored roses.
They were from my mother. I’d invited her, but she wasn’t up to traveling; she lives 6 hours away. She’s 90.
She had no idea what I was planning to use as a centerpiece.
It was so preternatural. I called her and said,
“You’re not going to believe this…”
We laughed and laughed.
I divided them up. The next day, my FIL sat at one end of the joined tables and my husband at the other, surrounded by family. He ate well. We had a wonderful day.
As strange as it was, I felt happy my mother could still read my mind over so many years, and so many miles away.
Why is there such a big difference The ISS is crowded, but the CSS is like an Apple store
Only 100 years?! You bet, will be at least 1,000 years, or maybe, better back to the Stone Age!
And then, you might find one day, your country would have to import chips from China, and the products you use would be embedded with Chinese chips. LOL
The whole Western world, especially the nuclear powers, even later the Soviet Union, had blocked nuclear technology from entering into China back in the 1950s and 1960s. Then what?
The first Chinese nuclear test was conducted at Lop Nur on October 16, 1964. Then in less than 32 months, China detonated its first hydrogen bomb on June 14, 1967. Now, China’s nuclear arsenal is the world’s third largest, and China has, more importantly, also developed its nuclear technology for peaceful use, boasting the second largest number of nuclear power units in operation or under construction in the world.
China was officially barred from visiting the International Space Station (ISS) by the United States in 2011. Then what?
China is nearing its completion of the construction of its own space station -Tiangong, with many visits there already done by Chinese astronauts, three of them are right now flying over us in the station. With the ISS retiring sometime in 2030, China’s Tiangong will be the only space station in the world.
China has been under the tough blockade of Western military techonologies, especially high-end, advanced ones. Then what?
China has successfully tested several times of its hypersonic missiles, among the first nations who have achieved success in this most advanced weapon development.
Also, China has finished its third air-craft carrier, with a fully indigenous design, featuring a CATOBAR system and electromagnetic catapults, one of the most advanced in the world.
And China has its J-20, a twinjet all-weather stealth fighter aircraft with precision strike capability. The Y-20, a large military transport aircraft, the first cargo aircraft to use 3D printing technology to speed up its development and to lower its manufacturing cost.
Similar cases also include the tunnel boring machines, giant cranes, giant excavators, deep-sea drilling machines……You name it. Then what?
China has self developed all of them, not only meeting its own market needs, but also exporting them at a much more affordable price than their Western competitors. What’s more ironic is, some of them have been exported even to those countries who had previously blocked their techonologies into China!
So, in the short term, yes, China is sufferting from the heavy blow from the US, but in the long run, the US and its allies would not only lose the lion’s share of chip market here in China, but will have also to face a strong competitor in semi-conductors, or chips, or something alternative which have similar functions, in the not-too-far-away future, maybe in their own market, and also in the global market.
But during the process, the US would have dried up its influence as a banner-holder of liberal market economy, its credibility as the rule-setter who betrays its own rules, its reliability to its allies since all of them would have to suffer along with the US, and hence, its soft power in leading the world.
Nothing much to gain, but a lot to lose, yet, the US is determined to ride on the self-devastating road. The faster it runs, the quicker the fall of its hegemony.
All he needs to do is to simply tell the Pakistani Army
You are the real leaders of Pakistan. I won’t come your way. I won’t poke my nose in any reform
The Pakistan Army like Imran Khan or used to like him
Then he began to poke his nose into their business and they struck back
He believed he could mobilize the masses but unfortunately that didn’t work
Here is how the US and Chinese have divided Pakistan. That is the status quo
China invests in Pakistan and supplies weapons and builds stuff for Pakistan under the CPEC including the Gwadar port
US still retains control of the Senior Army Brass in Pakistan , now Generals and Lt Generals and Major Generals who once cut their teeth in Afghanistan with the Americans. This control is to ensure the Afghan mess doesn’t spill over into an Al Qaeda 2.0
Both sides prefer India and Pakistan to be opposed to each other. China because it forms a nice second front and US because India is not pliable yet and close to the Russians
Plus both US and China HATE Terrorism
China because it spoils Business and US because of 9/11
This is a Status Quo that all leaders of Pakistan must follow
The Army in real charge
The PM essentially a figurehead
The Armys corruption continue with out any issue
Imran threatened to disturb the status quo
Neither US nor China wanted that
China certainly likes the US to be involved in Pakistan and dont want Pakistan to become Ukraine 2.0 and depend on China for money and arms
So if Imran simply says he is ready to go back to the Status Quo and know his place
He can be PM happily again with the Armys blessings
They HATE Sharif, the army does
They liked Imran a lot
Trust me, if this was Sharif – he would have died in an accident long ago
China Grocery Shopping Is 100 Years In The FUTURE!
I don’t have cable since I refuse to pay the ridiculous costs. However, the approved company in my area, didn’t approve of my decision.
They started sending a salesperson to my home at dinner time, trying to sell me a plan. I explained to the guy that I was not interested and not to disturb me anymore. He comes back the next day. I ignore him. The next day I contact the cable company and explain that I’m not interested and to please remove me from their cold call list.
This works for a week and guess who is back. I choose to just ignore the pounding on my door. The next day, I checked with my local police as to what the town’s ordinance was. They explained that anyone going door to door in my town, have to register with them first and then be approved. I told them what was happening and what I had said to both the sales rep & his company. They check their records and he had never registered.
That night, around dinnertime, a cop parked around the corner from my home. Sure enough, the sales guy shows up and starts pounding the crap out of my front door. I call the police and tell them that I am concerned for my safety …that some strange man is attacking my front door. A cop shows up ASAP and actually catches the sales rep. As he is getting arrested for trespassing and soliciting without a license, I came outside.
Looking at the sales rep, I smirked and said “I told you I didn’t want cable”. Lol Needless to say, he never got approved in the town again.
And since his company felt the need to keep sending me promotional junk mail weekly, I shredded it but kept it. When I accumulated a sufficient quantity, I mixed some glitter in with it and sent it back to their VP of Sales. The next package went to the VP of Marketing. The last package, that seemed to do the trick, went to the CEO. Lol
This happened to a friend of mine. He’s a PhD in Mathematics and was working for Silicon Valley firm writing mostly encryption algorithms, but some firmware stuff as well. Very very well paid — but not the most social person in the world. Being around people causes him anxiety. This isn’t a minor thing for him — it’s a real pathology.
Anyway, He’s a Los Angeles guy — and hated living so far north. His employer worked with him and let him work remotely 4 out of 5 days a week — he would just need to show up for “face” time once a week. Basically show up Sunday, sleep in the company flat, drive home Monday.
That was grinding him down after a year. His employer dropped that down to once a month. After six months, this was still too much and he decided to turn in his resignation on the next “face” day.
He drove up there, spent the night in the company flat, got up to go to the office with his “notice” papers and his boss calls him in.
They’re laying him off. This means, he keeps the stock options he’s earned (would have lost them if he quit), he gets 3 years of paid medical insurance and a 3 year severance package per his contract.
He sent me a pic of himself after he got the news. The biggest sh*t eating grin I’ve ever seen on him —ever — in front of his “beater” pick up truck. .
You see China is 5000 Years Old and what the West and India define as Corruption is to them something very normal and very organized.
For years – Commissioners, Governors appointed by the Emperor to various posts have benefited from those posts by enriching themselves in the form of small “gifts” from Merchants, Traders etc. They call it Fragnant Grease or Hyeung Ya.
The Corruption is simply part of life. Difference is it never extends to harrass a Comon Man. If you are a Merchant – you pay a Small Commission for services you get from the Commissioner or the Governor but If you are a Farmer, Peasant etc – Nobody harrasses you or demands bribes from you.
In Short – There was a very organized system
Then Mao tried to break it
And he succeeded. He literally ordered thousands of executions of the Corrupt and stopped Corruption but also any fast progress.
The Chinese System was 5000 years old and its derailment was a big blow to the Chinese. They are born Speculators, Mahjong Gamblers, Believers in Hyeung Yah and its system etc. To suddenly impose Russian ideals on them was a Failure.
Deng Xiaoping restored a Beautiful Version of it
Dengs version was Simple:-
The Condensed version for Dummies roughly translated to :-
Take your commissions, Enrich yourself – but if you compromise on the Quality and deceive the common man – I will kill your family and seven generations.
A Provincial who took 5% as a Gift from the Engineers and delivered a Quality Bridge that saved a lot of efforts and money for the State was rewarded and promoted.
A Provincial who took 5% as a Gift but delivered an Inferior bridge that cracked and collapsed disappeared with his family and was never seen or heard of again
It was a Beautiful Cold Blooded Brutally Efficient System that made China – Less Communist and more Chinese.
Even today CCP officials do a lot of things regarded as Corrupt in the West or India
→ They invest heavily in companies based on Insider Information and make Billions of Dollars or Millions of Dollars legally. They say this is justified because they have worked hard for the Country and deserve their rewards that their position brings to them.
→ The District Committees or Provincial Committees invest money in various ventures and share profits between their members upon its success that could be as high as 100 Million Yuan ($ 15–16 Million). They say this is justified because its their enterprise that enables them to make the money.
→ They buy 25% of cheap land and sell at massive profits (Around an Average of 317%) in just months after Land Auctions based on inside information. Many make Millions this way. They see it as absolutely fair after 30 years of Toiling work for the Country.
At the Same time
→ Not one of them makes a Dollar from any Foreign Investor in lieu of benefits.
→ Not one of them takes a single Yuan cut from any Money earmarked for Public Spending. If anyone does – He is a Dead Man!!!
→ Not one of them takes a Single Yuan and gives a Contract to a Favored Contractor whether its $ 10,000 or $ 10 Billion. Its always Black Box and Meritocracy when giving contracts. If anyone does – He is a Dead Man!!!!
→ Not one of them demands money to give Jobs to Chinese or business contracts to local chinese. Its always talent, talent and talent. If anyone does – He is a Dead Man!!!!
So Chinese who are 5000 years old always knew – Corruption is inevitable and SIMPLY ORGANIZED IT BEAUTIFULLY
Just like LKY Organized Prostitution and ended all the Crime related to it
Its the Oriental Way.
Its only Westerns who use Christian Definitions or Indians/Pakistanis who use Colonial Definitions and turned Corruption into a Raging Cancer that has destroyed most of the economy.
I was in a drugstore.
At the checkout, there was a Chinese woman in front of me who had loaded a whole shopping cart full of baby milk. The cashier told her that she could only buy a certain amount of it. So the woman unloaded her cart again and bought the prescribed maximum number. I don’t remember, maybe it was five boxes of milk.
When the Chinese woman was gone, the cashier shook her head and said to me: Always the same, they buy the whole store if they can.
I asked what was going on and she said that “they send the milk to China ” She said that this has been going on for years.
–
The food industry has never adulterated as much as it does today because the goods go through many opaque channels. From adulterated olive oil to rotten meat, it’s all there.
But the worst thing done was to poison the very youngest:
It’s all about the Chinese Milk Scandal that was uncovered in 2008.
In China, nitrogen-containing synthetic resin bases, namely melamine, were mixed into milk products in order to feign a high protein content despite diluted milk.
Probably this happened unnoticed for years, because melamine is not sooo toxic.
But it was also used in infant formula in 2008 and led to kidney stones and massive kidney failure.
About 300,000 babies became ill and six infants died.
The company that caused this went out of business.
In 2010, milk products containing melamine were again discovered in southwest China.
–
Since then, the Chinese no longer have confidence in their own baby food and buy it abroad. And in China they only buy foreign products.
The Chinese government tries to counteract.
The “Süddeutsche” (German Newspaper) says:
In Chinese supermarkets the shelves thin out. Everywhere in the country milk powder cans are sorted out on order of the authorities. The food supervisory authority has decreed that more than 1400 products may no longer be sold. That’s 60 percent of all varieties. In the future, only about 950 products from nearly 130 manufacturers will be allowed. The trust of the domestic population in Chinese milk is finally to be restored.
So far, however, this has not been achieved and the Chinese do not want Chinese goods.
Whoever can, has the milk sent to him.
2 of those responsible were executed in 2009.
Update:
I did not write this article to make you start to insult chinese people in general in the comments. Please stop that.
Coca Cola Steak
Ingredients
1 pound round steak or veal cutlets
1 cup tomato sauce
1 Coca-Cola
1 medium onion, cut into rings
1 medium green bell pepper, cut into rings
Instructions
Salt, pepper and flour steak.
Put 1 tablespoon grease, steak, onion, bell pepper, tomato sauce and Coca Cola in skillet in this order.
Cover and cook for 30 to 45 minutes over low heat.
“I Demand A Full Russian Retreat!” – Zelensky At The United Nations
A few years ago, I was in a Timmies in “The Falls” where someone acted egregiously bad. I may have been wrong, but I pegged him as an American tourist.
Yes, Timmies has been slow with my order at times. The way to deal with it is to get someone’s attention and ask if you’ve been forgotten about.
Instead, this fellow wondered out loud why two people behind him had got coffee while he was still waiting for his tea, and why the guy with the shirt with the “Trainee” badge was just standing around and not helping.
Every society and, indeed, every sub society, has social norms that have to be followed. In Canada, we tend not to “call people out” on them, but don’t expect people to treat you with kindness and courtesy even if your faux pas is inadvertent.
One of the things that gets me is people who stand at the top or bottom of escalators. I start to suspect they’re from a place where escalators aren’t common, because to me it’s obvious that I should never obstruct one.
In New York City, it’s people who try to get on a subway train before people have had a chance to get off.
In Paris, it’s people who don’t say “hello” when they walk into a shop.
And, yeah, Americans are notorious everywhere for not speaking with their “inside voice”.
On the London Underground, do not try to engage anyone in idle conversation. Or in London as a whole for that matter. In Athens, feel free because everyone else is doing it.
In London, you line up. In Beijing, it’s everyone for themselves.
In Toronto, if you have the sniffles, feel free to blow discreetly into a tissue. In Seoul, don’t you dare!
The new cross strait integrated development zone is a huge opportunity for Taiwanese people.
ROC only exists in historical records, it is just a past tense like Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, etc. There is no such sovereign state in UN.
Now that France is the Fifth French Republic, does the First French Republic still exist?
Taiwan, during the Qing Dynasty, was Taiwan County, Fujian Province, under the jurisdiction of Fujian Province, and is now Taiwan Province.
A remarkable achievement from the mouth piece of Uncle Sam.
TOKYO—Huawei, China’s rival to Apple in smartphones and the world’s leading provider of telecoms infrastructure, is out to prove it isn’t just surviving Washington’s campaign to crush it, but is in the vanguard of Beijing’s drive for self-reliance in technology.
After the buzz around Huawei’s new high-speed smartphones, which appeared to show that China can swerve around U.S. efforts to block its access to cutting-edge technology, the company on Monday unveiled its latest tablets, smartwatches and earphones—supported by a homegrown challenger to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, global standards in wireless communication.
Initially dubbed “Greentooth,” a moniker ditched as too lighthearted, it was rebranded “NearLink,” a short-range wireless technology that the company says combines the best features of both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi—and works with both. The protocol offers low-power, lightweight connectivity akin to Bluetooth, simultaneously catering to high-speed, large transmission, and high-quality connectivity needs akin to Wi-Fi. NearLink switches between modes based on the situation, Huawei says.
Set against the backdrop of increasing U.S. restrictions, Beijing has doubled down on efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in critical technologies. Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited private firms including Huawei last month, urging them to pursue international excellence and gain a competitive edge in the market through technological and product improvements.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are both wireless communication technologies, enabling transmission of photos, documents and other data between compatible devices. Developing wireless communications tech requires expertise in multiple disciplines, including signal processing, wireless communication protocols and software development.
Apple has spent several years and billions of dollars trying, so far without success, to make its own wireless chip. The latest iPhone still depends on Qualcomm for that component.
Huawei holds tens of thousands of patents covering essential technologies for data transmission in phones. To access high-speed networks, handset manufacturers must obtain licenses from or cross-license with companies such as Qualcomm and Huawei.
From June 2021 to May 2023, Huawei trailed only Qualcomm in the number of wireless communication network technology patents it published, holding more than 8,000 more thanthird-placed Ericson, according to a recent ranking from IPR Daily, a China-based media outlet focused on intellectual property. Ericsson was the inventor of Bluetooth, which is now overseen by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, or Bluetooth SIG, the standards organization that licenses the technology to manufacturers.
In Huawei’s case, it had its access to several major global technology associations restricted following U.S. sanctions. Without full access, the company’s devices, including phones, tablets and laptops, could face limitations in using vital features such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Although it was later reinstated, it decided to develop its own technology, Huawei executive Wang Jun said in a 2021 interview with Chinese media.
Bluetooth SIG declined to comment on issues related to its members’ status. The Wi-Fi Alliance said at the time that it was complying with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s order by restricting Huawei’s involvement in certain activities, but it didn’t revoke its membership.
Huawei says NearLink uses less than half the power of Bluetooth, is six times faster, has 1/30th the latency or the time it takes for data to travel from one point to another, and supports 10 times the number of devices in a network.
NearLink technology was introduced in December 2021, with a focus on applications for cars. In August, Richard Yu, the head of Huawei’s consumer business, announced its integration into the ecosystem of their self-developed operating system for consumer devices. As he delivered that presentation, the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi icons typically seen on smartphones converged on the screen behind him into a green “NearLink” icon.
Yu said on Monday the technology found applications in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, industrial manufacturing and more, providing the interconnectivity for Huawei’s homegrown ecosystem. NearLink may prove vital as Huawei struggles to cope with the impact of sanctions that made it difficult to source the advanced chips needed to power its devices.
Yu didn’t introduce the latest high-speed handsets during Monday’s presentation, saying only that the company is working extra hours to meet demand.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said at last week’s hearing of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee that while she was upset by the announcement of Huawei’s new smartphones, the U.S. couldn’t find evidence that the company is able to produce devices with advanced chips.
A report from Canadian semiconductor-information platform TechInsights said China’s biggest contract chip maker SMIC, made the core chip inside the device, but that it also contained memory components from South Korea’s SK Hynix.
China’s technological rise is intricately tied to its global ambitions, leveraging advancements to expand its geopolitical influence. One example is Beidou, a substitute for the U.S.’s satellite-based Global Positioning System. China has also set a domestic standard for a new way of designing chips, while global chip giants also formed a coalition to create them.
In September 2020, China formed an alliance for the country’s own short-range wireless technologies that now includes more than 300 companies and institutions—mostly domestic—including state-owned telecom carriers and makers of smart devices and cars such as Huawei, Oppo, and BYD.
Huawei remains the world’s largest seller of telecom equipment, according to market research firm Dell’Oro Group. It commands about a third of the global market, with sales about twice those of the second- and third-ranked suppliers, Nokia, and Ericsson, Dell’Oro Group says.
I supervise foster homes. A few years ago, one of my foster families had taken placement of a little boy named Chris. Chris was husky and socially awkward, but also impossible to dislike. He was mostly quiet – a real observer – but would sometimes come out and say the most outlandish comments. There were many times that Chris had me laughing to the point of tears, taken aback by his dry wit. Despite this engaging sense of humor, Chris had a rough start in life. He had never met his father and his mother had died of a drug overdose several years prior. Chris had bounced in and out of seven different foster homes by the time I met him. All of his younger siblings had been adopted and he saw them infrequently. When he did see them, Chris was prone to intense mood swings. It must have been incredibly difficult for him to watch his siblings grow up together while he waited for his “forever family.”
Shortly after his 11th birthday, Chris moved into the foster home that I supervised. The foster family was taken with Chris right away. They’d always wanted a child and they seemed to relish in acting out their dream of parenthood immediately. They spoiled Chris, taking him on expensive shopping trips and excursions. Their intentions were good. Knowing that Chris had experienced a lifetime of neglect in only 11 years, they seemed set on showering him with love and affection to make up for lost time. If Chris didn’t want to go to school, the foster parents would shrug and take him to the park. If he wanted to stay up all night and play video games, they happily allowed it. At first, this was fantastic – Chris was having a ball. When I would visit him, he seemed to be blossoming. The kid who had barely spoken a full sentence to me was suddenly bursting at the seams to tell me every detail of his day. When I expressed my concern that their lack of rules could be leading to problems down the road, the foster parents insisted that they had it under control. They said they loved Chris. They called him son. After about six months, an adoption date was set. Chris was so excited about picking out a suit and tie to wear to the courthouse.
The trouble started about three weeks before the adoption hearing. The foster parents had grown tired of the honeymoon stage. They’d realized it was time to start setting up boundaries that would help Chris grow into the fine young man we all knew he could be. Chris, who’d become accustomed to a house with no rules, responded as you might expect. He was confused and frustrated at the family’s sudden insistence on rule-setting.
One evening, the foster parents asked Chris to turn off the television and go to sleep. He refused. They threatened to ground him. He laughed. The foster parents began to yell, exasperated. Chris picked up his brand new cell phone and threw it into the television, destroying the screen. Both foster parents yelled louder, which only worsened Chris’ blow-up. He kicked the wall, denting it. He told the foster parents that he hated them and hated their house.
The foster parents called me, panicking. I reminded them that children who have experienced trauma sometimes struggle to regulate strong emotions. I explained that we all needed to work together in order to help Chris adjust to having rules put in place. I explained that although their intentions were good, Chris had been set up to fail. They calmed down and we set a meeting for the next day.
I went to their house first thing in the morning, ready to help them come up with a plan to support Chris. Chris had already gone off to school when I got there. The foster parents looked me straight in the eye and told me they wouldn’t be picking him up from school and would not be adopting him in a few weeks. I was shocked. They had professed love for this child for nearly a year at this point. I pleaded with them – offered every support I could think of. They would not budge. All of a sudden, they began listing every annoyance they had with Chris, going back to when they first met him. It was as if they’d been building up this list all this time, too afraid to admit to me that they’d had their misgivings from the start. I begged them to pick him up from school. The last thing I wanted was a caseworker showing up to whisk him away. He already hated school – this would only make him worry that every school day could end with his life being uprooted. They were too worn down, too guilty, and too upset.
I picked Chris up from school. When he got into my car, I could see that he knew what was happening. His round face was knotted in concern, his eyes filling with tears. He begged me with a desperation that I’ve never seen in a child. He wanted me to tell the parents he was sorry, that he would never mess up again if they agreed to keep him. I told him that it wasn’t his fault, that parents need to understand that all people make mistakes. I told him he deserved someone who would be patient with him. I drove Chris to a new foster home (a lovely set of people who, unfortunately, could only take him in for a few days due to their housing set up). When we got there, he didn’t want to go in. We sat on the front lawn for almost two hours. He was really quiet, just leaning back into the grass with his hands on his stomach.
Finally, as it started to get dark, he tapped me on the shoulder.
“I’m not going to get adopted, am I?” Chris’s voice was small, barely a whisper. Although I wanted to tell him this wasn’t true, I’ve learned never to make a promise I cannot 100% keep.
“What makes you say that, Chris?”
“I’m messed up. If I didn’t mess up so much, someone would love me. I’m a bad kid.” Chris looked at me with these big, brown eyes and I knew in my heart that he believed those words without a hint of doubt. In all that had happened to him, Chris had learned that he was unloveable. It was the most devastating moment of my career to look at a child whose grief was so deeply etched into his own sense of being. That’s a belief that I knew Chris would battle his entire life.
Some good did come from this horrible experience, however. Desperate to find a loving home for him, his caseworker contacted his maternal side of the family and explained what had happened. Up until this point, they’d staunchly refused to give even a hint of his dad’s name. After weeks of pleading, they finally gave us a name. Unfortunately, Chris’s dad had died years before – but he had a brother. This brother had never even known Chris existed, but he was thrilled. He and his husband had recently adopted a little girl and had been talking about opening up their home to a second child. It was serendipitous. Chris was not an easy kid – he was angry (rightfully so) and balked at rules. The family did not give up. They jumped through every hoop so that they could become foster parents to him. Chris was just adopted a few months ago and he seemed happier than I’ve ever seen him. It’s not perfect – Chris has many wounds to heal from – but I know he is in a place where he is loved and cherished as he deserves.
Why Is China Sending Over 300 Armoured Vehicles To Mali Coup Leaders?
Normally, I talk and relate stories about China. And yes, Hong Kong is part of China, but the fact is that it has been “polluted” by the UK and it is sort of a hybrid “Western city” integrated into China. It is interesting in many, many ways. But today, I want to talk about the shopping centers; not the malls… the small grocery stores.
You see, in HK space is at a premium. You cannot get around without bumping into anyone, and some days it is just truly crazy; I mean “soylent green” type of crowding. And because of the massive crowding, the HK folk have devised walk around, and one such work around (or walk around) is the supermarkets.
They are tiny, tiny.
Tiny isles, jam packed with all sorts of food items. Really small grocery carts, and checkout lanes that require you to slide out sideways. LOL
Is it really important to have a four bedroom, three bath, three car garage? Or can you make due with less and spend more time doing OTHER things?
Yes. that is why the HK-Macao-Zhuhai bridge is being so heavily used. Many HK folk have bought homes in Tanzhou (where I live). It’s crazy actually.
Definitely. There was a girl at my high school who was as seemingly perfect as one could get – she was pretty, had tons of friends, an amazing figure, good grades, a large social media following, played in the first hockey team…the list goes on. She was nice, too, in a polite, composed sort of way.
This worked for her for a few years. Our school was single-sex and quite prestigious, and for a while the intense and competitive environment often felt like a contest for Who-Can-Be-The-Most-Perfect. Although she never stood out in any way, she was often praised by students and teachers alike for her good work ethic, perfect hair, perfect legs, perfectly pleasant demeanour. As you might be able to tell, the word was thrown around a lot.
Unfortunately, I think it eventually went to her head, twisting her thoughts. She became resistant to change. I suppose it would be an easy position to take; if a flawless person cannot be improved, any alterations are damaging, right? Instead she became obsessed with sustaining her image. As school became more difficult, she studied harder, refusing to let her grades slip. People began describing her as vain – a word I’d never before associated with her name – due to her new, unreasonable concern for her looks and social media persona. Her friends became increasingly frustrated as she fretted over Instagram posts and projects and pimples, and eventually her group of admirers dwindled. I can only speculate that it was in response to this that her fixation with her body began, and continued to develop into anorexia.
In year 11 (2014) she was admitted to hospital because they thought her heart would stop. She remained there for a few weeks, then spent a few months visiting ED specialists. She later moved schools, and from what I have been told and what I have seen from her (much less-used) social media accounts, she seems to have let go of Perfection. Apparently, she’s really happy.
In my experience, a person is too perfect when perfectionism consumes them.
It’s eye opening and makes you rethink the things you take for granted.
It took me and my husband a while to know that when we’re talking about the same topic, often times we’re talking about completely different things because our backgrounds are different.
Meaning when we talk about abortion, we have different scenarios in mind. Because it’s much more prohibited in Egypt, and because pregnancy outside marriage is a disaster and may endanger the mother, my view on abortion is shaped so differently from his since abortion in his culture isn’t usually caused by these motives.
Similarly, when we talk about adoption we’re coming from such different directions ! The percentage of adoption in Egypt is very different from the percentage in the US. I don’t know a single adopted person in my community. So we’re talking about very different experiences.
Another example, one time my husband told me “I’m the king of my house”. In my culture this sentence indicates superiority.I got really mad and told him, “I am no servant !” He said “of course you’re not. You’re the queen of the house so I’ll have to spoil you“. I was like “Oh“.
We discovered that our definition of control is so different. My tolerance of control is way higher than his. So something like “Stop using your phone and sit with me already” sounds controlling to him. To me the thought doesn’t even come to mind.
We learned, after many misunderstandings, that whenever we discuss something, we’ll have to take a step back and describe what kind of setting we have in mind. Or even ask about the very basics that one normally wouldn’t consider asking while talking with someone from your own culture. The phrase “everybody knows this” is simply thrown out of the window.
It’s definitely thought provoking. But it’s a very enjoyable, enlightening journey.
90’s-Style Swiss Steak
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds boneless beef round or chuck shoulder steaks, cut 1/2 inch thick
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup finely chopped carrots
3/4 cup finely chopped onion
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup prepared picante sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar
2 1/2 cups uncooked bow tie pasta, cooked
Instructions
Cut beef steak into 6 pieces; pound to 1/4-inch thickness.
Combine flour, salt and pepper. Lightly coat beef with flour mixture.
Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium heat until hot. Brown beef in batches. Pour off drippings.
Return beef to Dutch oven. Add remaining ingredients, except pasta; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover tightly and simmer 1 1/2 hours or until beef is fork-tender. If sauce becomes too thick, stir in a little water.
Serve over pasta.
Huawei’s Explosive Revelation! Huawei Mate 60 Pro Flying off the Shelves, Shining as China’s Pride!
Recently, the most notable queues in China are not found at tourist attractions like the Great Wall or train stations, but at Huawei smartphone stores.
People are lining up in large numbers to purchase the latest Huawei phones, creating winding queues that stretch around corners.
For instance, in Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, customers wait in line outside a Huawei flagship store to get their hands on the newest Huawei smartphone.
The situation is similar in Shenzhen, where a Huawei offline store sees such long queues of customers buying Huawei phones that the store employees have resorted to buying them fried chicken to keep them satisfied.
Huawei exclusive stores in various parts of the country are also experiencing significant queues.
The reason behind this surge in demand is the release of the Huawei Mate60, which marks Huawei’s comeback and allows consumers to partake in its success.
Initially, analysts predicted the sales of the Huawei Mate50 series to be around 5 million units, but they now estimate that the Huawei Mate60 series could surpass 6 million units in sales.
“China Focus” is a YouTube channel created to provide current events and pop culture headlines from China.Here you can get to know a more real China through my video. |
Sorry, I can’t help laughing,good narcissistic question!
I want to correct you, Japan and South Korea allied with the US because they want to rely on the US for development, and the US also wants to use Japan and South Korea to contain China. They each have intention. Besides, the alliance with the United States was not so easy. Both Japan and South Korea were severely emasculated in key areas such as military, and were unable to control their own destinies. So don’t think that America is the god and such great and selfless.
You said China sees the US as an enemy. I don’t see that. Hostility towards a country usually manifests itself in suppressing its economic development, denying its achievements, confronting it, accusing or even stigmatizing it. Isn’t that exactly what the US is doing to China? So you are wrong, it is the US that sees China as a thorn in its side because it feels uneasy about the rise of China. In fact, China wants to be a partner with the United States, not an enemy. Mutual benefit is what China wants to see. China is doing what it can to improve relations with consumer companies around the world, especially in Europe and the United States. But in the past two years, some of America’s actions have been disappointing.
Maybe you are used to the privileged position that the United States has long enjoyed in the world, and when a more confident, unyielding, and tough China appears in front of you, you feel that it is against you. I would urge you to stop looking at things from such “American perspective”. It is normal for countries to have differences, but there are also relations of cooperation and exchanges. Don’t assume that the entire world is succumbing to the United States. This is abnormal and impossible.
Lalo Salamanca | Revenge | GTA IV Theme
“Man was on the vengeance grindset”
‘De-risking’ may kill EU economy — Hungarian minister
The proposals of European politicians on “decoupling” and “de-risking” with China will amount to a knockout of European economy, according to Hungary’s top diplomat.
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Péter Szijjártó told the Belt and Road Summit 2023 in Hong Kong on Sept 13 that these politicians by those terms mean to cut economic ties with China.
“What would happen if you cut such ties? You are killing the European economy,” he said, noting the annual trade volume between the EU and China has reached over 800 billion euros ($859 billion).
Therefore Hungary is urging for an even tighter, stronger, more successful and more efficient economic cooperation between China and Europe, the minister added.
Hungary is one of the very few EU member states that have not delivered weapons to Ukraine. And Hungary is aimed at becoming the meeting point of the West and the East, he said.
Szijjártó told a panel discussion that European policies toward Ukraine and sanctions against Russia are total failures.
Europe is in bad shape, to say the least, confronting both security and economic challenges, noting his country’s neighbor Ukraine has been at conflict for the last one and a half years.
He said Europe is bearing the cost of the Ukraine-Russia conflict as European people are dying, its infrastructure is being ruined, and the economy is suffering huge losses.
“Unfortunately, the answer Europe has given to this war proved to be a big mistake, a huge failure,” he told the summit, adding that Europe should have isolated this conflict, but instead of that, Europe has globalized it.
Europeans should have prevented the conflict itself, but now everyday even higher risks of escalation keep emerging due to illogical acceptance and following of moves by the world’s top military power. On top of this, Europe has decided to implement a policy based on sanctions, said Szijjártó.
“These sanctions proved to be a total failure,” Szijjártó said. This is because the goals of such sanctions, pressing Russia and ending the conflict, have not been fulfilled, while the competitiveness of the European economy is decreasing day by day.
When it comes to the long-term impact of the conflict, the minister said there is another “very serious risk” as the world is going to be divided into blocs again.
The economic development of Europe had been based on a good combination of highly developed technologies and easily accessible and cheap natural resources from Russia. “But now the ties between the two … are now being cut, one by one,” he said.
Instead of reading answers by non-Chinese telling you how we Chinese view white Europeans, why not listen to an actual Chinese telling you how Chinese might view white Europeans?
It’s very possible and plausible that an actual Chinese person who has lived in Europe might have a more accurate view of how Chinese people might view white Europeans compared to the non-Chinese people trying to tell you what we Chinese think of them.
I lived in Germany for just under a year and in Ireland for about three years and have traveled many times to the UK, and made more than a few trips to France and the Netherlands.
In that time, I’ve made more than a handful of good friends.
The obvious answer would be that I view white Europeans with my eyes.
The boring answer would be that my experiences living with white (and non-white) Europeans tells me that they aren’t different from anyone else.
It’s not like they’re from a different planet.
They bleed red. They defecate and micturate. They want to be healthy but can get ill, whether physically or mentally. They enjoy hanging out with their friends. They enjoy having a healthy social life. They treasure their leisure and alone time. They love their vacation time. They watch movies and enjoy eating and spending time with friends and family. Family – parents, siblings, children – are important. Parents want the best for their children. There are times when they get their hearts broken – by a woman, by a man, by a friend, by someone they’re close to, by a pet’s death. There are times when they get their hopes dashed and when they feel frustrated because there are many obstacles in front of them, obstructing the path to their dreams, their goals. They want to have a good life – with “a good life” having as many different meanings as there are people in their countries. They like feeling loved, feeling appreciated. They indulge in stereotypes – just like everyone else on the planet. Some of them are passionate about football*, and many support their national football teams. Some enjoy politics, some don’t.
*As an interesting aside, when I was living in Germany, I managed to strike up a conversation with a TOTAL stranger about football – we ended up talking for more than an hour, just about football, nothing else. The funny thing is, this conversation took place not in a pub or biergarten but when I was helping someone else with ther gardening.
As a Chinese, I don’t see Europeans, white or otherwise, as any different than Chinese or any other group on the planet.
Fundamentally, their wants, their needs, their desires are the same as everybody else’s.
Having made more than handful of friends while I was working and living in Europe, I will say this:
Developing real meaningful friendships kills ignorance and prejudice.
Try it and see for yourself.
U.S Lawmakers Banned All Tech Exports To China And Lost The Tech War
Really pathetic to see the USA behaving this way. But, it does expose a desperate attempt to halt it’s decline. Hope more Chinese scientists and skilled experts return to the motherland.
I always wondered why Li Qiang was at the G20 instead of Wang Yi which is the actual protocol
Now I can see why Xi didn’t come
India, Russia and China bamboozled the G7 completely
They got their G21 and THEY GOT RUSSIA REFERENCE OUT OF THE ORIGINAL JOINT DECLARATION
The Original deal was the G7 would approve of the inclusion of the AU into G20 in return for India agreeing to a joint declaration which indirectly referenced to Russia and it’s Aggression on Ukraine and universally agreed that Russia had to do something to stop the SMO
That’s what the Foreign Ministers Agreed
Then the West would say “The Whole World condemns Putin”
It was a win – win for the West or so they thought
Either they would get a declaration condemning Putin and Russia or they would not get a statement and declaration because China and Russia would object and that would badly affect India with a dead G20 summit and drive a wedge between the three BRICS founders
Cant fool these two old foxes can you?
The Masterstroke was sending Li Qiang
He simply said “I don’t have the authority to accept any declaration other than the one I have been told to accept”
Li Qiang isn’t Head of Government
Had it been Xi, he would have had to refuse and that would have made him look belligerent
Maybe if Modi didn’t get his declaration and the summit ended up a lame duck, the tensions would have widened between the two nations
Instead Li Qiang brilliantly shrugged and sent back the declaration to Beijing and said he needed approval
Lavrov saw the same trick and sent the declaration back to Moscow
Time kept flying as planned
Ultimately Jaishankar as planned moved in and said “Look, we need our declaration to make the summit a success. We have everything else. Let’s forget Russia”
Li Qiang jumped and endorsed everything else including the aggression statement
The West were entirely outmanoeuvred and they HAD NO CHOICE
Lets see now
Modi gets his G20 Summit – the Most Fruitful Summit in the last Decade
China gets their BRI friends into G20 and widens their influence
Russia avoids Global pressure and continues its SMO slowly shrugging off the West
Win, Win and Win
Who Loses?
We found the abandoned white cat with homeless kittens. the mother cat needs help immediately
In scorching heat, we came across a cat and her two kittens by a roadside park, seemingly abandoned. Determined to find a safe shelter, the cat led us on a journey to shelter her little ones. Finally, she settled down, and we offered her water and a creamy treat, hoping to build trust. She eagerly accepted, realizing our care and support. Nourishing food followed, as we felt compassion for her hunger and the intense heat. With her trust gained, we brought the family home, ensuring protection from heatstroke. Witnessing their newfound peace and happiness filled us with deep contentment. Watch the inspiring video till the end and witness the heartwarming journey of a mother cat and her kittens finding hope and a safe home in the face of adversity.
China is the most advanced Nation in the world in terms of Applications of Advanced Technology
They can apply advanced technology on a scale that no other nation to this day can manage
It is undeniable that China is the world’s foremost nation to apply advanced technology
By comparison the US pales with most Americans using 4G speeds and with most applications falling flat. They actually use paper certificates for vaccines
South Korea comes second in this aspect followed by Japan and Singapore
My sons first word was “It looks like one of those Futuristic Cities shown in many 1980s Hollywood movies”
The Key here is CORE TECHNOLOGY
Now for instance, all these wonderful apps that are being built , they are coded in a specific language right?
They need high performance servers right?
You need processors right?
Every one of these is controlled entirely by the West in terms of their Core capabilities
It was a perfect relationship with China developing the most fantastic advanced applications and developing their software at fantastic pathbreaking pace
The West sold and licensed their Core Technology for a fat fee
The whole Global economy relished the partnership
The West chose to WEAPONIZE their core technology
This accelerated Chinas own pursuit of Core Technology
In a mere decade China today controls almost 11% of the World’s Core Technology and Research in various areas
They are almost on par with Europe and Japan and well ahead of South Korea
Yet THEY ARE STILL ONLY A SIXTH IN TERMS OF CORE TECH CONTROL AS THE USA
Had the US simply shut the f*** up and simply encouraged Green Cards for Researchers from China with a 10 year path to Citizenship in 2012, China would have been in all sorts of trouble
Had the US encouraged actual competition on even grounds, the Intel and Qualcomms and Huawei would be on level playing fields and smaller Chinese entities would never have got the Billions of Yuan needed to leapfrog which would have instead gone into Real Estate & Paper
So Today China is surging ahead or at par on almost all modern commercial technologies like Rail, Green Energy, Latent Communications, Face recognition etc
Yet China is only around 16% in Control of Core Technology, far ahead than ANY ASIAN NATION IN POST WW II HISTORY but still a long way to go
Experts believe China will control 30% of all Core Technology by 2032
Conclusion is China is on its way
As they say in Hindi
China CHAL PADA HAIN
China opens ties with Venezuela, challenging US ‘hegemonic mindset’
Condemning Washington’s “hegemonic mindset” and sanctions, China strengthened its strategic partnership with Venezuela. The oil-rich South American nation’s President Nicolás Maduro took a historic trip to Beijing, and applied to join BRICS. Ben Norton analyzes the important geopolitical and economic consequences.
The two worst beliefs are Judaism and Christianity, which have been used by power elites to control and manipulate societies for thousands of years.
By promoting belief in a god and afterlife; they actually promote the false belief that humans are not responsible for improving their lives on this earth in this life. Then, by promoting the belief that individuals could ask for forgiveness before they died, it encouraged all kinds of bad behavior during their lifetime.
These religions have twisted western society into embracing the idea of the white savior, out to save other civilizations because of their unique connection to the creator.
They have been a curse on the development of human societies.
You saw ‘Assembled in India’ and decided that the price will be pretty low
Instead as usual India has the most expensive iphones apart from maybe Turkey
The primary reason for this is that India is a pretty weak market for the Iphone today
The Lowest price is ₹80K and most Indians can’t afford this price tag
It’s why you have 96,000 Pre Orders for this Phone from India against nearly 3.15 Lakh Pre Orders in Dubai and almost 6.8 Lakh from USA (China of course had a very bad reception for the Iphone 15 with only 2.66 Lakh Pre Orders so far)
Most Indians are waiting to see how much cheaper the Iphone 13 becomes and buy that phone instead
So without Volume, there is no scale for Apple to lower it’s costs
It costs ₹52,000 to assemble the iphone and pay all import duties in India for all components
That’s $ 840 or 5500 Yuan
It costs only 3630 Yuan in China
So the Chinese retailers get a much larger share of the retail price than the Indian retailers
The retailers in India would likely end up with ₹4K to ₹5K for a Iphone 15 costing ₹80K or around 10%
In China the Average retailer could get 24%
Another reason is TAX
T A X
India charges too much tax
Import duties, GST cost a big chunk of sales of the iphone
It exponentially increases the cost of almost all products assembled in India and makes them pricier than actually importing the product
Apple thinks India will one day be big enough for a large market share of the iphone
That’s wishful thinking
The Iphone high end model (9999 Yuan) costs around 55% of the Average Monthly Salary in Beijing, 49% in Shanghai and 46% in Shenzhen
It costs 16.8% of the Average Monthly Salary in New York
In India it costs 261% in Chennai, 236% in Bangalore and 219% in Mumbai
So either the price of the iphone must be brought down to ₹35000/- Or salaries must rise by 4 times
India will thus be worthless for Apple unless they exclusively assemble and sell lower grade Iphones pricing them at ₹40K each
Sorry, when I say Apple – I mean Foxconn
Apple still will earn a lot of money from its Proprietary Fees & Profits.
Foxconn will ultimately make very little money and will leave India like others before
So to those geniuses who said Iphone prices in India will come down and more Indians will buy the same
I TOLD YOU SO
Guitar Teacher REACTS: Robin Trower “Too Rolling Stoned” 1980
So glad you discovered Robin Trower! You have to give a listen to the entire album “Bridge of Sighs” Brilliant album. He’s still alive and cranking it out.
THE OSTRICH!
A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him. The waitress asks them for their orders. The man says, “A hamburger, fries and a coke,” and turns to the ostrich, “What’s yours?”
“I’ll have the same.” says the ostrich.
A short time later the waitress returns with the order. “That will be $9.40 please.”
The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out the exact change for payment.
The next day, the man and the ostrich come again and the man says, “A hamburger, fries and a coke please.”
The ostrich says, “I’ll have the same.”
Again the man reaches into his pocket and pays with exact change.
This becomes routine until the two enter again.
“The usual?” asks the waitress.
“No, this is friday night, so I will have a steak, baked potato and a salad.” says the man.
“Same,” says the ostrich.
Shortly the waitress brings the order and says, “That will be $32.62.”
Once again the man pulls the exact change out of his pocket and places it on the table.
The waitress cannot hold back her curiosity any longer. “Excuse me, Sir. How do you manage to always come up with the exact change in your pocket every time?”
“Well,” says the man, “several years ago I was cleaning the attic and found an old lamp. When I rubbed it, a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I would just put my hand in my pocket and the right amount of money would always be there.”
“That’s brilliant!” says the waitress. “Most people would ask for a million dollars or something, but you’ll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!”
“That’s right. Whether it’s a liter of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there.” says the man.
The waitress asks, “What’s with the ostrich?”
The man sighs, pauses and answers, “My second wish was for a tall chick with a big ass and long legs who agrees with everything I say.”
Despite US Blackmailing, 90 Nations Confirmed Attendance At The Belt And Road Initiative For China!
Great analysis. Yes, China’s BRI dominance is about peace and prosperity. US dominance is about bullying and exploitation.
Taiwan is in China. The island of Taiwan is surrounded by Chinese warships and the American, Japanese and Australian fleets are unable to approach Taiwan.
Biden did not tell the US citizens that he wanted to invade China, only “to defend Taiwan”.
So, I ask, how does the US plan on doing that? with some sort of video game competition?
I mean, in order to “defend Taiwan”, you have to have military troops pertorming military actions, aka combat inside of China – And that’s because Taiwan is in China.
So currently America has soldiers in Taiwan, which is either illegal, or at the very least gray area because that’s part of China. And the government of China doesn’t approve of that and hasn’t allowed it. So that’s the current status.
If US start performing miltary action, that’s an effort to militarily conquer at least China or push them back inside of China.
That‘s called an invasion.
Sorry, everybody, if you don’t agree with this definition, but that’s what it is.
The 1.4 billion Chinese people have told the small hooligans led by the United States countless times that the Taiwan question is the bottom line of the Chinese people, and foreign forces are not allowed to get their hands on it.
China can use all its forces to resist the invasion, and after this naval battle all the warships of China, the United States, Japan and Australia will be destroyed.
Do you think that after the end of the naval war, it will stop here? No, it has not come to a stop yet.
At the same time, China will fight back against its territory. Although all of China’s warships were sunk in the war with the United States, Japan and Australia, let us not forget that China has the largest number of civilian ships in the world, and Chinese soldiers will be present in those countries.
No matter what era we are in, apart from the indiscriminate bombing in the early stage of the war, the later stage of the war will be a ground war.
Does Australia have 50,000 soldiers combined? China can send 500,000 troops to Australia and take it over.
Japan: China does not need to send troops to occupy, dropping a few atomic bombs would be enough. The four Japanese islands are so resource-poor that even if China occupied them, they would be a liability and would be better off being completely destroyed.
As for the US, China wouldn’t send troops to occupy it either, but a huge army landing on US soil would be enough to make the US pay. China’s huge population could provide a steady stream of soldiers. You have to be prepared for America to become a battlefield.
The United States is keen on Preemptive war. However, China has always adheres to the principles of defense, self-defense and post-strike response, and adopts active defense. It keeps to the stance that “we will not attack unless we are attacked, but we will surely counterattack if attacked”.
“post-strike response“,”we will surely counterattack if attacked” →→→ We have already told you what we will do!
Don’t think that if China is bullied, it will swallow its anger and not take revenge. There are limits to tolerance. Modern China is no longer the China a hundred years ago.
This is like a group of American hooligans always bullying a high-achieving Chinese student at school. Chinese students usually don’t give a damn about the provocations of American hooligans, but once they can’t stand it anymore and decide to fight back, the American hooligans will have to start paying a high price for their previous stupid provocations.
Girlfriend Disrespects Her Man, Instantly Regrets it
Mad respect for Joyce, she took those roasts in the chin like a champ.
A couple of years ago an elderly couple knocked on my door. I could tell at a glance they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I opened the door and said, “I’m sorry but I’m really busy today and don’t have time to chat. I’ll be happy to take a Watchtower, though.”
The man said, “There’s a really good article in there about saving for retirement.”
I said, “I’ll be sure to read it.”
As they left the woman turned back and said, “Thank you for not being mean to us.”
They didn’t neglect fighter production. Thanks to German mega presses the Germans churned out far greater fighter quantities (by the simplification of major parts), than they should have been able to.
German 19,000 ton Heavy Press of WW2.
Germany also had fewer aircraft types in service. So they had high volumes of fighter production.
The problems were many, like a lack of higher octane fuels so they couldn’t max out engine performance and later on a huge attrition of skilled pilots, followed by a lack of new well trained ones due to fuel shortages..
The fact that the 109 was still competitive at all by wars end, was a miracle considering that they were restricted to lower octane fuels.
Even after Germany reduced bomber production, it would still be impossible to keep up…
The simple truth, was simply that the Allied nations potential industrial capacity, by far dwarfed that of Germany’s. And sabotage along with a reluctance to cooperate in captured territory, meant Germany could not successfully leverage the entirety of the assets they had stolen in Europe’s Industry.
For America alone they entered the war after Sunday, December 7, 1941…So basically in real world production terms 1942. And they had gone from a peacetime to full wartime economy (outstripping German AND Japanese war production) by mid 1943. That’s not including Russia or the massive output of the British Empire. IN ONE AND A HALF YEARS.
Ultimately it comes down to simple math’s.
More people, more resources, more factories = more production.
In a war of production…Germany could never win. No matter how perfect they could have tried or how much war porn advocates bleat they could..
Tony Soprano – Putrid Existence
The Sopranos is one of the greatest deconstructions of the glamorous and honorable depiction of the mafioso’s lifestyle. In reality, behind the money, drugs, power, these men lead the life of misery and pudrid existence, betrayal, mindless murder, constant lies and theft. The legacy they leave behind ultimately drag down their families and friends.
China’s rapid advancement in technology can be attributed to several key factors:
Government Support and Investment: The Chinese government has made technology development a top priority. Through initiatives like the “Made in China 2025” plan, they’ve provided substantial funding and resources to support the growth of high-tech industries.
Large Pool of Talent: China has a vast population, which translates to a large pool of skilled engineers, scientists, and innovators. This human capital is a crucial asset for technological advancement.
Education and Research Institutions: China has been investing heavily in its education system and research institutions. Universities like Tsinghua and Peking University are producing world-class graduates in technology-related fields.
Emphasis on STEM Education: China places a strong emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education from an early age. This helps nurture a generation of students with strong technical skills.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship: China has seen a surge in entrepreneurial activity, with a thriving startup culture. This has led to the development of innovative technologies and business models.
Market Size and Demand: China’s enormous domestic market provides a substantial incentive for companies to innovate and develop new technologies to meet the demands of a rapidly growing middle class.
Global Collaboration and Partnerships: China has been actively engaging in international collaborations and partnerships with leading technology companies and research institutions around the world. This helps them access global knowledge and expertise.
Regulatory Environment: The regulatory environment in China, while strict in some areas, can also be more flexible and accommodating in others. This can facilitate faster development and deployment of new technologies.
Focus on Strategic Industries: China has identified strategic industries like artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and biotechnology as areas of focus. This targeted approach helps concentrate resources and talent on areas with high potential for growth.
Adoption of Emerging Technologies: China has shown a willingness to adopt and implement emerging technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence, and blockchain on a large scale, which can accelerate their development.
Is America Destined to Fall Like Rome? | Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson explores the striking similarities between ancient Rome and modern America in this thought-provoking video. Including the parallels between these two great civilizations and the lessons we can learn from history.
This is the story of the happiest man to live on death row.
In 1936, 15-year-old Dorothy Drain was raped and murdered at her home in Pueblo Colorado .A man had entered the Drain’s home and assaulted Dorothy and her mother with an axe. A massive manhunt was launched, and the police were under pressure to catch the killer.
As they searched the railway lines, they came across 21-year-old Joe Arridy who confessed to the murder when they brought him in for questioning. He also fit the profile that was any Mexican-looking man, a description given by two women who were also attacked.
Joe wasn’t even Mexican, and his dark complexation was down to both his parents being Syrian. He also had an IQ of 46, and couldn’t tell the difference between a rock and an egg. His parents were first cousins, so Joe and his siblings suffered from problems related to inbreeding.
Joe couldn’t tell the difference between colours, talk very slowly, and was easily misled and was known to take the blame for things he didn’t do.
During Joe’s arrest, the police learned another man named Frank Aguilar had been arrested for the murder of Dorothy Drain. Frank was Mexican, worked for the murdered girl’s father, and was fired before the murders. They also found an axe head at Frank’s home, he also admitted to the murders.
The had concluded that Joe was with Frank at the time of the murders even though Frank admitted to the murders and told police he acted alone. Even Dorothy Drain’s mother who survived the attack pointed to Frank and said he was the only attacker.
Joe’s story would change depending on who was questioning him and it should have been clear Joe wasn’t a suspect. Even though three psychiatrists testified that Joe was mentally handicapped, he was still convicted and sentenced to death.
While on death row Joe, spent his time playing with a toy train given to him by prison warden Roy Best. He was treated well and with respect by prisoners and prison staff. Prison warden Roy Best would bring him gifts and said he cared for him like a son.
With the mental capacity of a small child, Joe didn’t understand he was going to die. When asked about is upcoming execution, Joe didn’t understand what a gas chamber was, and just said, “No no, Joe won’t die.”
Joe ordered ice-cream for his final meal, and before they took him to the gas chamber he asked prison staff if they could put the ice-cream in the freezer so he could finish it later. Joe smiled as he was led to the gas chamber, and when he got momentarily nervous, the warden held his hand.
Joe was executed on January 6, 1939, after many stays of executions and appeals. In 2011, Joe was finally pardoned seven decades after his death.
Huge Cat Hugged A Woman In a Shelter And Didn’t Let Go! It Must Be Seen
It happened about a week ago, Andy Brumagen and his fiancee Jessica came to the shelter, where their attention was completely captured by a pretty cat of quite large size. The couple loves animals and, of course, they couldn’t walk further down the hallway without giving this cat some warmth and care. As soon as Jessica opened the enclosure and pulled out the cat, she hugged her and buried herself in the girl’s shoulder, clearly not wanting to let go.
It was tried once by US Army Special Forces and the results were practically catastrophic. Even in the movies you’ve seen it done in, there’s a lot more happening off-screen to make it look real than you could imagine.
The one everyone knows was designed around Jesse Ventura’s personal preferences for the movie Predator (it helps that he was actually an armorer when he served on a US Navy Underwater Demolition Team during the Vietnam era – UDT was a part of Naval Special Warfare and was a close relative of the SEAL Teams). It has an M60 handguard to hold onto, and is fitted with a harness, so that he could carry it for the movie. Arnold later used the same gun for T2, with slightly different modifications.
What you don’t see on screen is that neither of them are carrying the batteries for it, (Miniguns are electrically operated) because they were simply too heavy for either Ventura or Arnold. The wire leading to the batteries were hidden down their pants’ legs. It also has a supply of ammunition that can be exhausted in seconds (a Minigun fires up to 6000rpm, and a human just can’t carry enough of the 7.62x51mm ammunition it fires to make it useful). Even significantly reducing its ammunition consumption (you can slow it down) to about 1250rpm, the one they used fired its total ammunition supply in seconds. Even at that sedate rate, the ammunition canister for it held only 550 rounds which it could exhaust in 26.4 seconds. And carrying 550 rounds on top of the batteries and gun would be back-breaking work. Neither Ventura, nor Arnold after him, both extremely strong body builders, could even do it. And remember, that’s only 26.4 seconds worth of ammo, at only 21% of the gun’s actual potential rate of fire.
Next, they used blanks in those movies, for obvious reasons. But if they hadn’t, the recoil force is so extreme it can’t be controlled. Blanks don’t produce recoil the way live rounds do. The one time US Army Special Forces tried this, the gunner was literally spun halfway around by the force of the recoil. The only reason he didn’t kill anyone behind him was, fortunately, the gun had consumed all of its ammunition by the time that 180 degree spin was complete.
Awesome Beef Stroganoff
Ingredients
6 cups uncooked egg noodles
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pounds beef sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
1 package onion or roasted garlic gravy mix for steak
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, quartered
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 (10 ounce) can beef broth
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (for garnish)
Instructions
Cook noodles according to package directions-keep warm.
In a large heavy bottom pot, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add meat and brown.
Sprinkle gravy mix over meat.
Add mushrooms; sauté for 5 minutes.
Stir in tomato paste and broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until thickened, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat, and stir in sour cream.
Top with parsley and serve over hot cooked noodles.
There is no way it can stop China from overtaking the U.S. and the more it try, the faster China will overtake them and the faster the U.S. will implode.
I don’t think the U.S. realised it but everything the U.S. do to contained China it cost the US an arm and a leg yet it is barely a little inconvenience for China. China is a lot lot lot better than what the U.S. thinks China is in terms of technological prowess, in resilience, in preparedness in determination and in its ability.
Meanwhile the U.S. almost always over estimates it’s own ability, capability and capacity hence it always spend billions to do shit on China and harmed the U.S. instead of affecting China. So U.S. bring it on do as much shit as you want. The more you do the faster you die.
The U.S. has a mere quarter of Chinese market size over time and if the U.S. is smart and not so full of itself it better build a good relationship with China. Whatever the US wants to sell some 50% of customer is in or made in China! If you fxxk up this market you are fxxked. Thinking of containing China is a pipe dream. They can contain the US. Not U.S. containing China.
Simple, Chinese are more hard working, Chinese are willing to sacrifice, Chinese save more, Chinese invest more, Chinese learn fast, Chinese Market is way bigger, all SUPPLY CHAIN partner is in China, Chinese government is way, way, way more effective, 60% of the world s Market in around China. If China stop doing business with the US, you will suffer chronic inflation! If U.S. stop doing business with China they still have 95% of the worlds market.
Take my advise don’t pick a fight with China. They won’t lose. You will.
If I am the next US president, the First Nation I visit is China. Not Japan, not UK not Canada. I will double up trade with China. I will visit China every year and Invite Xi Xinping to make US their biggest partner. I will make Chinese a compulsory second language. Bring 10 million Chinese students Chinese students and send 2.5 million Americans to study in China!
I am not your enemy, I am giving you an advise to make the U.S. great again!
During my senior year in High School, I was blossoming into a fine young man. I was a cultural icon of the time. I wore a “choke collar” around my neck, puffy sleeved and colorful nylon shirt, a big colorful belt buckle, and bell bottom jeans.
I had longish hair to my shoulders. Parted in the middle up top. It was light brown in color. Oh those were the days…
I cruised around in my GTO (that I affectionately referred to as “the goat”) and alternated between Senior year in High school and my work life.
Evenings were spent “hanging out”, going to “keggers” in the “bony dumps” (old abandoned strip mined areas) and popping “white crosses” (tiny white amphetamine pills used for weight reduction. We used to take four at a time.) and drinking beer (Miller in Pony bottles).
The “white cross” pills were tiny, tiny white wafers with a cross on one side. We popped them and got “the rush”, and then buzzed, we smoked the marijuana, and drank the beer while we cruised the roads though the countryside.
Typically, we kept the trunk filled with ice, and the beer would be placed in the trunk to keep them cool. You would be amazed how long the ice would last, too. Easily into the middle of the next day.
Then we would fill up the trunk with more ice for the night’s activities.
Two dollars would fill up the gas tank.
I lived in the countryside. My city cousins spent far more time in bars and clubs, but that wasn’t really possible for me at the time. It wasn’t until I was older, that I started to frequent clubs and bars, and that type of lifestyle.
This falls well into my “room theory” of life. You live in one room, and then enter another room, and you life becomes a long series of rooms. Each one different from the rest. This “room” was my “Senior Year in High School prior to College” room. And come September, I entered my “Freshman year in college” room. New friends. New lifestyle. New place, and new everything.
What “room” are you in now, and what does your next “room” gonna look like?
Dazed and Confused (1993) | *First Time Watching* | Movie Reaction
There was a case in Prince Edward Island about 15 years ago where a lady was being sued because part of her house was on her neighbour’s property.
So she hired a surveyor – who told her her house was partly on her neighbour’s property.
So she didn’t pay him. The surveyor sued. He won. The court noted that when you hire an expert, you pay for their expertise and their informed opinion, not for the result you want.
But let me tell you something else. There was a mall in Northern Ontario. Three engineers over a period of thirty years were hired to investigate water leaks. They all said the water leaks were the result of the waterproofing being done improperly but the structure of the building was fine. A month after the third engineer pronounced the building “structurally sound”, part of it collapsed catastrophically, killing two people. The inquiry noted that the engineer had equipment to ultrasonically examine the steel beams, but didn’t use it. The forensic engineers hired after the collapse noted the steel connection that failed was 89% corroded (meaning the connection was 10 times stronger than it needed to be, but still failed). I’m assuming that’s the kind of inspection you were looking for.
America Finally Did It, The Fuse Has Been Lit!
I’m American and I’m disgusted with the corporate control of our domestic and foreign policies.
I will share with you one of the most moving acts of compassion I’ve witnessed.
When my youngest son, Luke, was 10 years old, he played football on a local rec-league team. One evening his team played against one of the big rival teams from a neighboring town. I was surprised at how many people were at this game. After all, these were young children playing.
At a crucial time in the game, my son got the football and was running for a touchdown. He zigged and zagged, dodging and evading players on the opposing team. His teammates did a remarkable job blocking, as well. Finally, there was only one opponent between my son and a touchdown, and one of Luke’s teammates (Mario) made a hard block, knocking the opposing player to the ground.
There was now nothing between the goal and my son, who ran all out, then, slowed, stopped, turned around, ran back to the boy writhing on the ground, and took a knee.
The crowd went wild. Spectators on my son’s team hurled horrific insults at my young son. People I had known for years said the most hateful things, glaring at my son, threatening him, shooting daggers at me.
I ran down onto the field to be with Luke. As I ran down the bleachers, people said hateful things to me about my son.
When I arrived at Lukes’ side, before I could ask if he was okay, Luke looked up at me and said, “Dad, I had to do it. I had to come back.”
“Okay,” I said.
Luke continued, “Mario hit that kid hard. Real hard. When he hit him, I heard a bone snap. I heard it! I knew he was hurt bad, and I knew if I scored, it would take more time for anyone to notice him, and he would be hurting in all that time.”
I nodded my head. I could barely see at this point, my eyes welling with tears, proud of my son.
Luke continued, “And I remembered that you always teach us that being a good sport is about more than winning, so I stopped and came back.”
He looked at me, his eyes wondering how I would react. I had never been prouder of him. I hugged him and told him how proud I was.
Luke was correct — the boy suffered a broken leg. He had to go to hospital.
This is one of the finest acts of compassion I ever witnessed. And a valuable lesson for me.
Have they threatened anyone? The way I see it US and the former colonials are scary! They come to South China Sea from as far away as 10 thousand miles away to pick a fight with China. I did not hear or see China travelling to English Channel or Florida coast to threaten the U.S.! Did you? Last I check And it is NATO wanting to expand to Asia not CCP expanding to Europe or North America!
So who is scary? To us you are scary. It wasn’t that long ago that the British force fed 100 million Chinese to get addicted to Opium and burn down the imperial palace in Beijing and stole Hong Kong for 156 years! And unsatisfied it cohort with the evil US to pay hoodlums an unemployed to pretend to protest for CNN as props. The U.S. and UK orchestrated a protest! The west is scary not China. You guys are spoiling for a fight. China just wants to do business?
What is so scary about a society wanting to do well for its people. Did they asked the world to be like them and adopt their Socialism with Chinese characteristics. They did not. They went further! The says that every nation should adopt what they see as best for them.
They think that Chinese political system may not be suitable for any nation. And that it is not exportable. The U.S. murdered 3 million to stop communism. The U.S. also murdered another 3 million in Iraq to bring democracy to them. And another 2 million to stop Talibanism in Afghanistan! Don’t you think US behaviour is more scary! I thinks so. And so does 87% of the world.
Where do you get “half” the world? You dream it up? You simply follow some lies from the media? No more than 5% of the world disagree with China. 87% disagree with the U.S. outright!
You know what us scary. You! Yes if there are 5% of the world thinking like you. So wrong, so ignorant and so naive. That is very scary!
My husband and his first wife went from Chicago to New York for a long weekend.
As they waited to cross a busy street, they heard two businessmen behind them discuss how they were going to get the better of someone they were doing a deal with—in St. Louis.
Their ears pricked up because his first wife was from St. Louis originally.
As they walked along the next street, they were able to hear and identify enough details to realize that these two men were going to trick her uncle by not disclosing certain information.
When they got to the hotel, his wife called her uncle—who verified that indeed he was in the middle of doing a deal with these two guys in New York!
So no deal happened then!
What are the chances?
China Warns US on Its Ridiculous Plan to Make 150 Nations Leave Belt and Road Initiative!
On the 9th of June 2021, USA introduced a bill, which passed by 68 votes to 32, known officially as the “US Innovation and Competition Act”. In Washington it is colloquially known simply as the “anti-China bill”. Part of USA’s Anti-China bill, USA has allocated over $300 Million every year, for 3 years, to media trash China.
I just WISH USA would stop their warmongering ways, and join China in uniting the World.
I was struggling for over a year looking for steady work. I finally landed a job unloading trailers at UPS. Contrary to popular belief, they didn’t pay very well.
Growing up, I hung out with some guys whose parents had money. This instilled a sense of undeserved entitlement and pretentiousness in me. Looking down on people who worked these, “sh*t jobs.”
Anyways, I had been down on my luck for a bit in more aspects than one, and one day after a long evening of working my tail off I went to a local McDonald’s (McDonald’s employees being one of those jobs/people I’d mocked). After pulling into the drive-thru I checked my bank account. $3.47. I was so, so hungry. I ordered a few things off of the dollar menu, and proceeded to pull up to the window. Thinking I kept the order minimal, I assumed I had enough. The lady there ran one card, declined. Now, somewhat frantic, I pulled my credit card out. Declined. I, embarrassed as all get out, asked the lady if she could take some things off of my order for me. She paused and looked at me for a moment. I don’t know if she could hear the despair in my voice or saw it in my body language, but she looked around before dropping those items back in the bag with a little extra and handed it right back to me. She wished me a good rest of my evening with a quiet smile.
I told her she didn’t have to do that, but she happily insisted. I thanked her as I pulled away from the window. I pulled out of the parking lot, and immediately broke down crying. An uncontrollable sobbing that I’d never felt before. After all of these years of frowning upon people like this lady, she was the one to help me when I just needed something to eat.
McDonald’s lady, wherever you may be, your small act of kindness changed my life.
The global shift away from the US dollar has increased tenfold since February 2022 compared to the previous 15 years, Stephen Jen, the CEO of Eurizon SLJ Capital Limited, told Die Welt on Thursday.
According to the former International Monetary Fund and Morgan Stanley economist, the majority of analysts are missing the trend because they evaluate the nominal value of central banks’ dollar holdings on the basis of data released by the IMF.
“However, if we take into account changes in the value of the dollar, then, according to our calculations, we’ll see that the dollar share in foreign reserves has lost about 11% since 2016,” Jen explained.
He argued that Washington’s decision to freeze Russia’s dollar reserves after the launch of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraen had been the decisive event.
“This has fueled fear and anxiety in Beijing, but also in other emerging countries,” he said, adding that holding reserves in US dollars had been always considered absolutely safe until the drastic move.
Jen explained that the BRICS countries had been increasingly focused on alternatives to the greenback.
According to the economist, since the BRICS group of emerging economies – which presently comprises Russia, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, but is due to add six new members next year – the economic power of the union has multiplied. Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt and Ethiopia will officially join the group in January 2024.
James Gandolfini’s Best Scene from The Sopranos
The range of emotions showcased here is amazing; anger, disgust, fear, sadness, joy, contempt, and lil’ compassion, all within three minutes. A master class for any actor.
Chinese Innovation Foils U.S. Tech War — Clifford A. Kiracofe
Washington calculated that it could restrain China’s technology advancement and thereby stay ahead of the China. However, it appears that this calculation was mistaken.
China’s rapid advances in technology will inevitably foil the United States-led Western technology war against China. Huawei unveiled its stunning new high tech Mate60 cell phone and timed the announcement with the visit of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Sending a message?
The Donald Trump administration launched an intensive trade war and a tech war against China. President Joe Biden continued Trump’s policies and ratcheted them up to a new level. Rather than engage in mutually beneficial trade relations and scientific and technological cooperation, Washington openly admits it seeks to contain and suppress China’s economic growth and development.
Playing this zero-sum game is a dead end for the United States. China is very well equipped in the pursuit of technological innovation. Fundamental to China’s tech progress is the human factor. For example, it is no secret that China every year produces far more STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Math) students than does the U.S.
Tech war is economic war
Export controls and restrictions on technology development are nothing new in international commerce. During its colonial period, the North American colonies faced an array of trade restrictions and technology restrictions imposed by the British Empire. These were designed to prevent the colonies from becoming rivals to British manufactures. They also were a factor leading to the American Revolution and War of Independence.
In World War I, the United Kingdom enacted a “Trading with the Enemy Act” which created an export control regime deigned to deny Germany war related imports. After the U.S. entered the war, Congress passed its own Trading with the Enemy Act modeled on the British legislation. These wartime legislative measures were applied again during World War II.
After World War II, export controls on a multilateral basis were created by the West to restrict various exports to the Soviet Union and Communist bloc. The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) was created at the beginning of the Cold War. The U.S. thus coordinates, in turn, with NATO allies, Australia, and Japan to restrict the export of sensitive technologies to designated countries.
So the Western use of export controls for the purposes of economic warfare is nothing new. But the revival of this mechanism intensively directed specifically against China is a key feature of the U.S.-led New Cold War. The technological encirclement and blockade of China, however, is not sustainable.
Washington miscalculates
Washington calculates that it could restrain China’s technology advancement and thereby stay ahead of the China. However, it appears that this calculation was mistaken.
Logically, because China’s population is four times larger than that of the United States, there would at some point be a larger pool of STEM trained specialists in China than in the U.S. This is so because of the continuous upgrading of higher education in China and the massive commitment to research and development.
Several years ago, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. released a study on the STEM issue. The university’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology reported that in 2000 the U.S. issued twice as many doctorates in STEM field as did China. But in 2007, China began outpacing U.S. universities. The report assessed that by 2025 China would produce twice as many STEM Ph.D. graduates.
Because the U.S. cannot compete with its own population base, Washington seeks to import specialists in STEM fields from India as one stop gap measure.
But Chinese innovation is very dynamic and advanced with great future potential. Therefore, it should have been no surprise that China would develop the necessary technology for state-of-the-art semiconductors. This national objective combines the growing pool of high-tech specialists with a large pool of skilled labor together with billions of yuan for investment.
It was not difficult to foresee that China, through innovation and targeted investment, would be able over time to produce the machines and industrial processes to fabricate advanced state-of-the-art semiconductors. This applies to Chinese semiconductor design capability as well.
Why did the Washington miscalculate?
An inter-agency task force on the Chinese semiconductor issue would have concluded that the attempt to block and limit Chinese advances is not sustainable and thus would fail.
Some critics of the administration point to the lack of competence in President Biden’s foreign policy team. They say that Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are just not up to their jobs.
Be that as it may, it is possible that racial prejudice affects Washington’s assessments. There was a time after World War II when it was common to look down on “cheap” Japanese goods. But Japanese success in electronics and auto manufacture by the 1980s showed another story.
Anyone from the U.S., a tourist or an official who visits China’s National Museum in Beijing will see exhibits displaying many centuries of Chinese skill and innovation not only in art, such as ceramics and bronze, but also in inventions and technology. China’s history of science and technology goes back millennia.
What does the Huawei Mate60 portend?
Clearly, the advanced smartphone is a perception changer at a minimum. No doubt, it will be seen as a game changer as well. Other high-tech breakthroughs are in the news.
It is now reported that the Chinese firm SMIC has a 7 nanometer (nm) N+2 process semiconductor project that is produced entirely in China with no access to Western equipment and technologies. All of the core components in China’s EUV lithography machines are said to be ready and that the prototype is being tested.
On the day that the new Mate60 phone was announced it was sold out in one minute online. Huawei boosted production to 15-17 million units and beginning September 10 Chinese can purchase the smartphone in Huawei’s offline stores. The phone has a satellite capability.
As Chinese firms develop independent semiconductor design and fabrication capacity, U.S. firms inevitably will lose out on this vast export market. It seems logical that the more intense the anti-China trade and tech wars become the more Chinese consumers will turn to homegrown products other than those from the U.S.
The U.S. lifted a stone only to hit its own feet.
The U.S. politicians must come to their senses and adopt a China policy of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, cooperation, and mutual benefit. Washington’s belligerent and destabilizing foreign policy disrupts the international community, increases tensions, and can lead to a war which will harm the U.S. side in the end.
The Special Cat Looked Sadly Around At the People Passing by His Cage
Life was idyllic for Pinat until the inevitable struck. His beloved owner passed away, leaving the poor cat alone and vulnerable.
I had a cherry tree in my back yard. I was really looking forward to them. I got home from work and there were 6 or more kids in the tree, stuffing my cherries into all sorts of containers. I yelled and they all took off. It wasn’t possible to get to the remaining cherries. Some of them left containers in my yard. A mom showed up and yelled at me for not giving her back her Tupperware.
SMIC has been making 7nm custom GPUs for the past 2–3 years, mostly for crypto customers who couldn’t get in the TSMC queue.
This filled real market demand that other players didn’t, or couldn’t.
SMIC used this opportunity to refine its process, on the quiet.
Huawei, in the meantime, found willing partners to share talent and resources, in a concerted effort to save the high-tech industry on the mainland from American destruction through the threat of sanction.
How did Huawei et. al. find the tools necessary for chip design, especially the GPU? What black magic did Huawei use to improve the transistor geometry? How did they penetrate the Qualcomm 5g patent wall? I don’t know. Neither does my friend in TSMC. It’s a separate ecosystem now, and quite independent.
The fog of war has descended, but the outcome point to solidarity across the ranks, with competitors working together like they are part of a conglomerate.
The Chinese are capable of cooperation on unheard of scale, because of long history.
The Mate 60 Pro is merely a first step, lacking polish and maturity. What’s coming though, will be a deluge.
American reacts to: america – What they don’t show you
Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to america – What they don’t show you…
President Zelensky’s top aide has suggested that Beijing and New Delhi are unable to analyze the consequences of their moves China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.
Beijing has demanded clarification from Kiev after Mikhail Podoliak, a top aide to Ukraenion President Vladimir Zelensky, suggested that authorities in China and India weren’t smart enough to figure out what the actual national interests of their countries were.
Podoliak characterized the two Asian countries as having “low intellectual potential,” in an interview with channel Vlast vs Vaschenko published Tuesday on YouTube. Speaking about the increasing cooperation of Beijing and New Delhi with Moscow amid the conflict in Ukraen, he claimed that China and India “don’t analyze the consequences of the steps they make.”
The aide accused China, India and also Türkiye of “earning money” on the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The Chinese authorities believe that doing so is in their country’s national interests, but Beijing is better off distancing itself from Russia as it’s “an archaic nation that drags China into unnecessary conflicts,” he said.
1.) No matter how calm and focused a doctor sounds when delivering bad news, they take that shit home with them.
Now a neurologist has to deliver a lot of shit news. Pretty much, if you end up in my wife’s office, something out of the ordinary has gone wrong. Migraines are the least of her worries. She’s dealing with MS, Dementia, Strokes, Epilepsy, Gullien Barre, Neuropathy, Parkinson’s, Brain Tumors, and the mother fucker of all mother fuckers, ALS.
The last one is the worst for her. Because she knows. Almost right away, and can’t say anything. Because a lot of things mimic the symptoms of ALS on the surface, so the process of diagnosing it is not so much to look for ALS symptoms but to systematically rule everything else that it MIGHT be out. Which takes weeks. And weeks. During which the whole time, she knows. But she hopes. And hopes that one of these tests will show another culprit. You know. Like cancer. Yes. It’s a case where she would celebrate finding cancer. At least they can do something about that.
Can you imagine opening up the files of a brain scan and praying you’ll see tumors?
By the time she’s done and can deliver the worst of all hunks of shit news, it’s been weeks of anguish for her. And when she comes home, it’s time to let all the little petty shit from my day go, because it’s NOTHING.
2.) Care and feeding of your physician is essential to maintaining your physician’s health.
Seriously. How my wife managed to get to work before I arrived on scene to make coffee in the morning, I’ll never know. A doctor’s work is never done, once they get home, it’s time to catch up on charting, and if they have a complicated specialty like my wife (neurologist) those charts are extremely complicated.
You know though? It’s important work, so if I can help just a bit by taking care of dinner? Or cranking out coffee strong enough to wake a triceratops fossil? I’m good with that.
3.) It’s friggin EXPENSIVE being a doctor.
What most people know about being a doctor is that doctors make a lot of money.
Yeah. She has no complaints there (it’s probably not as much as you think, but it’s a damn good living)
But Board Certifications, Continuing Medical Education, Malpractice Insurance, about a Quarter Million in Student Loan debt from 10 years of school, this association fees, that one, fee, fee, fee, fee, fee, it’s no wonder the first thing I learned from my wife was “looking for a doctor? Find the cheapest rattiest set of scrubs, there they are!”
4.) They get into it to practice medicine and usually love that, but generally, find themselves buried in a ton of other crap
I mentioned charts. Not the half of it, although for pure volume of work and time spent, it’s just lovely.
They didn’t mind so much when they were marking up paper charts as they were examining you. Now it all has to be done in an Electronic Medical Records system, and there is apparently no such thing as a halfway decent EMR.
Want to see a doctor fly into a violent volcanic rage? Ask them how they feel about their EMR.
Then there’s just the pile of administrative shit. Especially if you’re running the practice which thank God mine doesn’t have to worry about. But there is always a shitton to do that has not a damn thing to do with healing.
I’m keeping count of the number of times mine laments for the carefree days of being a Starbucks barista.
5.) In my experience, they’re usually just genuinely good people.
Now, I’m biased, I admit it. And I suppose I only meet genuinely good-people doctors because I’m married to one who wouldn’t give someone who wasn’t a minute of her time.
And yes, there are some genuine pieces of shit in the profession, just like any other.
But the vast majority of the dozens of doctors I’ve met as a result of being married to one are just good solid people who usually get into the profession to make a real difference in people’s lives, and out of a genuine desire to do good.
As a citizen of PR China who knows a thing or two about history, I must say that I understand why they do that.
Because Republic of China was and is totally a coward.
Because of the good relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and USSR, during Cairo Conference, the US proposed to give the authority of Ryukyu (Okinawa) to China, also part of Japan’s authority, and invited China to garrison in Japan.
Chiang rejected it.
He rejected the proposal from the US to take over Ryukyu and part of Japan, because he wanted to be humble, and he was a mean character when massacring Chinese.
Above is the photo of surrender ceremony of Chinese war zone. Take a guess about who is the winning side.
The answer is the one on the left, eventhough he looked more humble.
On the left it’s He Yingqin, first degree admiral and 2nd place in Republic of China militray.
On the right it’s Asasaburo Kobayashi, Imperial Japanese Army lieutenant general.
They are not even at an equal level. From Japan side, it should be Yasuji Okamura, the commander-in-chief of the China Expeditionary Army from November 1944 to the end of World War II, handed in the Instrument of Surrender.
In the negotiation conferece of surrender ceremony, ROC sent a lieutenant general, and Japan sent a major general. Not in equal position too.
According to Yasuji Okamura’s memoir:
About the ceremony decoration, ROC side initially wanted to have a round table, to avoid being aggressive. It was because of the US intervention, ROC eventually choose long table.
It was agreed when handing in the Instrument of Surrender, Asasaburo Kobayashi was supposed to salute to He Yingqin for 3 times, and He Yingqin didn’t salute back. This idea was probably from the US “suggestions”. However, when Asasaburo Kobayashi saluted for the 3rd time, General He stood up as a return to the salute.
It was not the same when the US and USSR accepting surrender from Germany and Japan. They both ordered Germany and Japan to redo everything they are not satisfied, until everything’s fine. After all, it was a world war, and they were the winners.
Whereas in China, He Yingqin had to lean forward and stretch his arms all the way to the cernter line of the table, which makes him handing in the paper to Japanese.
Everything Chiang did is to tell Japan that “we don’t want to you misunderstood us, and we are not aggressive at all”.
From Japan side, in their opinion, it was the US which defeated Japan, and China is of course just a weakass shit which survived only because the glory of the US.
I don’t blame Japanese for this. As a matter of fact, they do have reasons to think so.
After all, PR China never kicked Japan’s ass since 1949.
I blame Chiang Kai-Shek.
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) ‘Confirmation’ & Admiral Husband E. Kimmel’s famous historical quote
“I’ve seen this film so many times as a kid, because it’s really really good. But I always follow it up with the other one, Midway. I joined the US Navy, 89-93, I think these films helped inspire me to sign up. I actually got the USS Lexington AVT-16 as my first ship, I can not describe the chills and feelings I had when I first stepped on board the Lady Lex. I was a little choked up and teary eyed with pride. I had the pleasure of working in nearly every department of that ship for two years, Deck 1st div -Supply Captains Country -Engineering E div – and Air V2. The flight deck crash of October 89 was my first sea cruise. After decommissioning the Lex, the Navy sent me to the USS Normandy CG-60 and straight into war. True story. I got my US Navy Adventure for sure. I only got out to save a doomed marriage.”
I have 13 kids, I have always wanted a big family. I adopted one from China, she is deaf and the sweetest 5 year old ever. We adopted her when she was 3. We get a few racist remarks because we are black and she is Chinese, they think she needs a Chinese family to have a good life. She is happy with us, so nope!
She can’t talk because she is completely deaf and no hearing ads or a cochlear implant will help, she will be deaf forever, unless there is something invented in the future that helps. She is able to say mama because she reads our lips and tries to copy the shape our lips make and make sound, that’s the only word she can say.
She came home from school one day, since she can read lips really good, she is in a hearing school, but in a special class for deaf people or hard of hearing people.
She told her siblings who then told us, that her teacher told her she was “sick” in sign language, Because she is from china. In sign language, you can’t name a virus unless you finger spell it, my daughter is only 5 so it’s hard for her to put words together by spelling it out.
Her teacher was telling her that she brought Covid into this world and that she was sick with it because it started out in China. She was only 2 when Covid started, she didn’t even fully understand about Covid.
The teacher believed every Chinese person had Covid, no matter how old or young. Since my daughter had “Covid” She wasn’t allowed to go to lunch that day and eat, she wasn’t allowed to learn with the class, and she wasn’t allowed to go outside and play. When they were learning, she was sitting in a chair far away with a mask on. I didn’t call the police, but I called the school and got her fired and she might be going to court for a hate crime.
Watch Before it’s Deleted,This is my 3rd Attempt, Oprah & The Rock on Maui
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Oprah Winfrey face backlash for asking fans to donate to Maui fund instead of contributing more themselves The family of a woman who died trying to flee a wildfire on Maui is suing the county, the state and one of Hawaii’s largest landowners, alleging they neglected to maintain their fire-prone property.
No. The guy with a rifle is not the scariest. That distinction belongs to the guy with a much more dangerous piece of equipment:
The humble radio. This is the guy that could pull down everything from a single mortar round up to and including a bombing run by a fully loaded B-52 to naval missiles to armored cavalry reinforcements. He can tell this support exactly where, what spot at what height in what position, needs a proper lesson in violence. He can tell artillery which direction to adjust their fire, he can warn pilots of infantry with MANPADS, he is the man in control of the tactical battlefield.
You have an ankle bracelet that monitors everyone and their movements?
How do you know people disappear?
Anyone you know who disappeared?
A Relative, Friend, Cousin, Girlfriend?
Even the Foreign Minister of China
He didn’t disappear. The Chinese openly said he was no longer minister.
The Defense Minister who apparently disappeared
Turns out he was in secret meetings with the Venezuelans and North Koreans and later in a Military facility taking treatment
People disappear in other places too
They commit crimes and flee
They are kidnapped and killed
They are murdered and bodies dumped
They fall sick and want recuperation from public life
In India or US, because the Public elects you, you have a public responsibility to inform them about your absence
In China, you only inform the party. Same as if you take medical leave from TCS, you don’t publish it on Twitter
1027 Men disappeared in the US and the West and remained missing for an average of 4 1/2 years
They were incarcerated against their will in Guantanamo and tortured and harrassed
No justification to this day
Its harder to disappear in China than it is in India or US
Your digital footprint is so strong and your records are almost everywhere and you have thousands of cameras recording all around you
What you need to know about PHARMACIES in THAILAND before you visit!
Thailand passed most western countries years ago when it comes to medicine, medical aid, medical treatment and certainly when it comes to quick access to medical professionals and advanced imaging systems. In fact, even in many countries in Latin America, a MRI scan is a walk-in compared to canada where it can take 6 months. Thailand in general is AMAZING!
I sometimes buy frozen food online, and the food always arrives in a large styrofoam shipping container.
The first time I got one, I didn’t know what to do with the box after I unpacked the food. I like to recycle all my cardboard boxes and plastic containers, but none of the facilities in my area would take styrofoam.
The styrofoam cooler was thick and sturdy, and it seemed a shame to throw it out after one use. So I chucked it into my garage. Every time I got another cooler, I put it in the garage.
A few years ago, my husband and I were moving, and I was cleaning out the garage. By then, I had amassed over a dozen of these styrofoam boxes. They were stacked up in three stacks, collectively about 4 to 5 feet wide and over 4 feet high. We had to get rid of these boxes before we could move.
I tried to find the containers a home. I looked online for a place within driving distance that would recycle styrofoam. No luck.
As a last ditch effort, I contacted the stores where I purchased my food asking if I could ship them back. They had no use for used shipping coolers.
I resigned myself to the fact that we would have to throw them out. As my husband and I were getting ready to take the boxes to the dump, I suddenly had an epiphany. I ran to the computer and did a search.
Yes! As I thought, there were people on eBay who would pay money for a used styrofoam cooler. I wouldn’t have to throw them away and they would get a second life.
So I listed all the coolers on eBay, and over several weeks, they all sold.
The strangest way I’ve made money was selling my trash on eBay.
Now every time I buy frozen food online, I immediately list the box for sale on eBay after I unpack the food. I get between $7 to $15 per box, plus the cost of shipping to the buyer. It’s not much, but it’s a nice little coupon towards my frozen food purchase.
TSMC lays off 60% of its U.S. factories,Workers demand a doubling of wages;Mate 60 pro
TSMC lays off 60% of its U.S. factories, Workers demand a doubling of wages;
Huawei orders completely lost.
A couple had come to the upscale restaurant, but the woman started screaming at the waitress, wanting her to be fired.
Does the customer always have the right? Does going to a restaurant give you the right to humiliate the people who work there? I hope not!
This is the story of a girl who worked as a waitress in a restaurant! The story was told by her, let’s listen:
“I was lucky to find a job at an upscale restaurant!
Even though I don’t hear very well with my left ear, and not at all with my right ear, I was given a chance to work here. I wear a hearing aid, so I can hear almost everything that is said to me very clearly.
But one day, an elderly couple came to have dinner.
Me: I’m glad you chose our restaurant! Are you ready to order? Wife: Call the manager, NOW!
Me: One moment. Maybe I can help you myself? Wife: No!
So, I had to go and call the manager.
Manager: Good evening! How can I assist you?
Wife: Why do your employees wear headphones? Are they listening to music? We pay a lot of money here, and believe me, we deserve perfect service! This is not acceptable!
Everyone in the restaurant froze.
Manager: Our waitstaff knows they are not allowed to wear headphones.
But if you notice anyone breaking this rule, please let me know. I guarantee that person will be fired!
Wife: Please. It’s her!
The woman pointed at me.
Manager: I’m sorry. Her behavior is beyond any limit. Wife: I agree!
Manager: I was talking about you! Your behavior is inappropriate! The waitress is wearing a hearing aid.
I kindly ask you to leave this restaurant and never come back!
The woman’s husband did not support her at all. The enraged woman left the restaurant in a fit of anger.
I would like to express my gratitude to all the people who defended me! Thank you!”
US phone and chip companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm don’t produce chips. They design the chips but outsource it to TSMC, Intel and Samsung to manufacture them. Fabless chip designers have been the in-thing for some decades already, popularised first by companies like Broadcom in the 90s.
Same for Huawei – they design it via subsidiary HiSilicon but don’t produce the chips themselves. They outsource it to TSMC and SMIC in particular. TSMC has been banned by the US Commerce from supporting Huawei and other Chinese companies.
Can the USA companies produce the chips themselves today? The answer is YES. It takes time to develop the volume manufacturing expertise all over again. It is a very complex business and it takes guts to put in the money to invest in R&D resources, mainly PhD-type technical talents and capital intensive wafer fabrication facilities and processing machines, packaging and test equipments. Unless you have deep pockets, this is not the business for everyone.
A high-end wafer fab today requires some $12B upfront capital investment. It also requires a whole long list of vertically integrated suppliers locally to support the wafer fab industry – only Asia has it as the cost is low. At the same time, you must have a flexible and disciplined team of technical personnel and production workers who can work 24/7 round the clock to make the business viable. One mistake out of 1000s of process steps can cause a total disruption to production schedules, customer order delivery slips and production scraps. Automation has its own challenges. Manufacturing yields can be impacted from batch to batch due to workmanship and process variations. Honestly, it is not a business for the faint-hearted investors and demanding customers who expect perfection.
USA has the science but not the art of high volume cost competitive manufacturing anymore. To think that the Biden Administration can bring back wafer fabrication industry back home even with the help of Samsung, Intel and TSMC, is a pipe dream. It will fail badly, very badly. Tens or hundreds of billions of dollars will be flushed down the drain when they realised they can’t make it work. Trust me, failure will be the end outcome and it is already full of production delays and major make or break problems between the investors and the government.
M*A*S*H Winchester looses his temper with a bureaucrat over abandoned baby
Unlike Frank, Charles wasn’t a bad person. He had a shield of arrogance, but he was a superior surgeon and a good-hearted individual. At worst, he was used to being removed from the suffering of the world, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care about it. See the Christmas episode where he recounts a family tradition of giving candy and toys to the poor, but realizes that the value of the candy would provide a month’s worth of staple foods for starving orphans.
While at Treasure island in 1962, waiting to be seperated from active duty, in the Navy,i had a lot of free time to see San Francisco. I was and still am, a fan of jazz, so I ended up at a jazz club ( Jazz Workshop, Blackhawk, I don’t recall which one) mid afternoon one day. The bar was open, so I took a stool at the bar next to a well dressed guy. At his feet was a horn case. I ordered a beer and raised my glass to the stranger next to me, to which he responded with a raised glass and a few words.
We talked a little about what I was doing, why I was in San Francisco, where I called home, just a little chit-chat. He mentioned that he was a musician and said something about sitting in for the performances later on. We never did introduce ourselves, we just started talking.He finished his drink, picked up his horn case and bid me goodbye. The bartender asked if was ready for another beer and asked me how I came to know Miles. I replied by saying “Miles who?” Davis, he replied. You have been talking with him since you came in. I carried his Kind of Blue album with me all the years I spent aboard ship and never put his face and name together. Yup, jaw dropped, but as it turned out, it was best that I did not recognize him. We were just a couple strangers having a beer. I still play that LP today.Damn, that was 60 years ago and still fresh in my mind.
“We have alien bodies and the DNA to prove it” Mexican Congress | Redacted with Clayton Morris
You want alien bodies? Here they are. Ufologist Jaime Massaun rolled out two coffins holding “non-human” bodies in front of Mexico’s congress yesterday. He says these bodies are 1,000 years old and were fossilized in a mine. He also presented DNA evidence showing these bodies are not human.
Imagine a world where there are two ways to conduct commerce. One half of the world chooses one method, and the other half chooses another.
In the West, led by the United States, is a commerce system based on an extraction of wealth.
People work, and they labor. The government take a part of that labor in the form of taxes, fees, clauses, penalties, and regulations. Under that layer is another layer. These are the banking transfer fees, the interest and debt schedules and all the associated rules that one must abide by to use that system. Beneath that system, is a system of organizations. Where to use that organization or society, fees are extracted, prices are managed, and profits are massaged. Beneath that system is a system of businesses, that have their own fees, charges, and profit schedules, and then beneath that is the worker.
For a worker to labor and make money, all of the systems of wealth extraction gets paid first. What ever is left, goes to the worker. Who is then taxes on it, and uses it for his and her own purposes.
In the East, led by China, is a commerce system based on ownership.
If a person earns money though labor, that money is converted electronically into a value, and the mass amount of that value is accessible to the worker. No government, person, entity, organization can siphon income away from that value. It is against the law.
…
Now that is the “quick and dirty” overview. Both systems, have very, very complex subsystems of control and monitoring. Both systems have those that get rich and those that get poor. Both systems are independent of each other, and collaboration between the two systems is possible with “guardrails”.
But what about the question?
Why doesn’t China use “credit cards”?
Credit cards is a Western fabrication and means of wealth extraction. A person is not using money they earned. They are borrowing money from a bank and renting the use of it from the bank.
China uses a system of ownership. A person earns money, and it goes into a bank. Then the Chinese person uses a QR, and biometic scan to extract the money to buy something with it.
That being said, there are areas of overlap between the Western system and the Eastern system of commerce. For instance, you can get loans and mortgages inside of China, just like you can in the United States. The big difference is that the vast bulk of transactions differ substantially between the East and the West.
West = Wealth Extraction.
East = Ownership.
Geo-political manifestations
And it is the FUNDAMENTAL differences in systems why the rest of the world (such as Africa, for example) is turning towards China instead of working “with” the United States on massive Geopolitical ventures.
China. Africa sees results from China. They see dams, hospitals, road and rail. they see ports, and real tangible aid. The African nations OWN these properties, and these systems. They are tangible. They can be seen. They can be touched. they can be felt.
United States. Africa hears a lot of “flowery words” from the United States. Promises of this and that, and military weapons, and military bases. But no roads. No hospitals. No trains. No ports. An occasional plane-load of “greenbacks” that are delivered to the wealthy in a nations, but that is about it. Those African nations so entangled in agreements with the United States enter into debt with them. It’s all nice numbers on spreadsheets, and documents with many impressive signatures, but for the average person “on the street” there isn’t any change in lifestyle.
Meanwhile the entirety of the Global South, via the BRI, are investing in a “basket of currencies” one based on tangible commodities; hard physical items that can be touched, felt and measured.
While the West, led by the United States, are forcing a system of debt upon their allies and “friends”.
Let’s perform a sanity check.
If this description, one where the West and the East differ in means of fundamental commerce and economic theory, then it should manifest in a myriad of ways. Let’s look at home ownership.
Obviously, the nation that functions via wealth extraction will have the bulk of it’s citizenry in debt. While the nation that functions on an ownership basis would have the bulk of it’s citizenry invested in self ownership of properties.
Southern Biscuits
Ingredients
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons Crisco
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon Crisco (for frying pan)
Instructions
Mix dry ingredients together.
Blend in the Crisco until the mixture is coarse and grainy.
Stir in the buttermilk with a fork. Do not over-mix.
Put out onto a floured board and knead just a few times. Pat out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter or glass. Flour the cutter. Do not handle the dough too much or it will get tough.
Using a heavy cast iron frying pan, place 1 tablespoon of Crisco in the pan and put the frying pan in the oven for about 7 minutes.
Remove the pan from the oven and place the biscuits in the pan. Turn each once in the oil and bake the biscuits at 500 degrees F for 10 minutes, or until light brown.
Kitten Abandoned In The Rain, Cold, Shrinking for Protect Herself – No one heeded his plea for help
The world is set to ignite. The old is going to die. It can evaporate quietly, or be ripped into bloody grizzle. But the USA is set to explode.
…
In 1977, one of the top songs was “Love is in the air”, while all of us were jamming to Peter Frampton “Do you feel like I do?” We were watching “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”, and going to McDonalds to get our 25 cent hamburgers. Our biggest concern at that time was Roller Disco, and whether to have coleslaw or potato salad at the next get together.
Man, life has certainly changed…
…I don’t think that it is an improvement.
Are Chinese citizens legally allowed to use a VPN in China?
Yes. The companies which sell VPN access are state-owned. That’s right, the companies which sell access to get around the Great Firewall are owned by the Party. Welcome to China!
Baking with Hillary
In this program, Hillary Clinton demonstrates how nation building is a lot like baking a cake. Yum!
The Barbary Corsairs were afraid of Britain, because the UK was a naval superpower, and so they didn’t dare attack them. British ships sailed unhindered through North African waters.
This immunity to attack had also applied to ships of the 13 Colonies prior to independence, but not to the new United States. The Barbary Corsairs were not afraid of them, so American ships soon came under attack.
This went on for over a decade. Eventually in 1801 President Jefferson decided to go to war with one of the Barbary States, Tripoli. He sent a small fleet, which linked up with the Swedish navy who were also at war with Tripoli. The US also had significant help from the Kingdom of Naples, which offered them the use of three naval ports in Sicily as well as supplies and port personnel. Without this aid it is doubtful that the US Navy could have conducted a successful war so far from home.
However, saying that the US ‘destroyed and defeated the Barbary Pirates’ is a major exaggeration. They blockaded one Barbary city, Tripoli, engaging in several naval actions and raids onto the land until finally, after four years, the Pasha of Tripoli agreed to negotiate a treaty. This required the Americans to pay Tripoli the sum of $60,000 ($1.5 million in today’s value) and in return the Barbary State released about 300 American slaves.
This did not end Barbary attacks on American ships. In 1815, just after the end of the US war with Britain, another fleet was sent to the Mediterranean, this time to attack Algiers. They were able to force the Dey of Algiers to release about 10 captives and pay compensation of $10,000. He also promised to stop attacking American ships in the future, but soon afterwards (when the US warships had returned home) repudiated this treaty.
It was at this point that Britain decided to get involved.
The Napoleonic Wars were over, and the UK had naval power to spare for more humanitarian missions such as ending piracy. A large fleet of British warships including five ships of the line, in cooperation with a squadron of Dutch frigates, was despatched to the Mediterranean. The Barbary States were ordered to halt all piracy and free their Christian slaves.
The states of Tunis and Tripoli, intimidated, backed down without a fight. Algiers resisted.
Admiral Pellew, commanding the British fleet and its Dutch attached squadron, ordered an attack on Algiers on 27 August 1816. The city was heavily fortified with over 300 cannons in land forts as well as many warships in the harbour. The fighting was bloody and went on late into the night, with almost a thousand casualties in the Anglo-Dutch fleet; but the Algerian forts were pounded into rubble, their guns destroyed and their ships sunk.
The following day, the ruler of Algiers surrendered to the British admiral. He freed over 3,000 Christian slaves and paid compensation of $372,000 (£80,000). He also agreed to end the practice of piracy entirely.
In practice, the Barbary Corsairs did not entirely keep their promise to end piracy, though its scale was much reduced after 1816. It took the French colonisation of North Africa, beginning in 1830, to end Barbary piracy forever.
The view on America after spending 40 years in Asia
This is pretty good. Well worth the time to watch. Very interesting.
Meet Karl. He is from the US and has been working in Asia for almost forty years. Karl speaks Mandarin Chinese fluently and was known as a rainmaker for NFT technology in China. He told me about cultural differences with his Taiwanese-Chinese wife, his views on how America should treat its immigrants, and the way his views on the US changed after living in Asia. Enjoy!
My father is a Vietnam veteran with three purple hearts and a silver star. He is the toughest person I have ever known.
This is his story
My father volunteered to join the Army in 1968, he did not get drafted. He worked in a saw mill as a teenager, and grew up the son of poor Italian immigrants. He was raised in a quanset hut in Connecticut (yes there are poor people in Connecticut) until my Grandfather had enough money to build a house by hand with a couple of buddies in the late 50s or early 60s.
Once in Vietnam my father was wounded three times, but on the first two he never left the country even though he could have.
The third time defines toughness.
My father’s platoon, as part of a company operation, walked directly into a VC Base camp in southern Vietnam (my father was a grunt in the 2/60th of the 9th Infantry Division) roughly during the Tet offensive.
A VC Machine gunner fired on him from a concealed position that was no more than 15 feet away. One round instantly almost ripped his foot completely off, and it dangled mainly by the achilles tendon. Another round destroyed my dad’s hand, and also another rendered his M16 inoperable because the bullet went through the bolt and destroyed the action. When he fell down from the impact, and somehow crawled a bit, he somehow escaped the wrath of that particular machine gun nest, but then he saw another in front of him, but this new VC machine gunner didn’t see him yet and was firing at others in his unit.
At this point, men were screaming in pain for help everywhere around my father, and the pain in his hand and leg grew, and he was weaponless. He had to get away from this new machine gun without it seeing him, and the only way to go was over the rice paddy dike that was about 10 feet behind him.
As soon as he moved one inch to begin his escape, that machine gun swung around on him and opened fire. My father only talks about this moment with me, and he only talked about it once or twice ever, and he literally breaks down with the shakes at the recollection.
As the bullets spewed at him, he jumped up, standing on the end of his ankle bone on his right leg, since the foot was flopping, and did the best he could to basically run and dive over the dike. In the process he was hit three more times. Once in the underside of his arm, shredding his bicep and part of his tricep, again in the shoulder, and another in the underside of his Jaw/face.
He landed in the mud on the other side of the dike and could feel his jaw swinging on his face, and his arm was pumping blood like a garden hose. He didn’t even feel the one in the shoulder at all.
His tongue and face began to swell so badly that he couldn’t breath, so he somehow cut himself a trachea with a jackknife using his one good hand. He also packed his arm with mud to stop the bleeding because those Army bandages were totally useless.
the trachea didn’t work perfectly, so he occasionally had to grab his swollen tongue and pull it down so he could breath a bit more, and he did this intermitently as he put his bayonet between his thighs, and hooked the pin on his grenades on the blade so he could pull the pin with his one hand and throw the grenades. He said he couldn’t talk, but he was trying to yell at “the sons of bitches” the whole time.
He crawled along the dike and got weapons from the dead, or from those who were so wounded they couldn’t function, and continuously fired them with one hand to hold the enemy back (they had started to advance through their kill zone basically). Multiple evac helicopters were shot down during this time, and eventually my father had lost so much blood he started to fade… he was going to die.
Out of nowhere, a huge black man from Texas named Cleaver, scooped up my father, and carried him to a chopper that had finally been able to land somewhere. This man barely knew my dad, given that he was black and this was 1968 so the platoon was kind of self-segregated. Cleaver saved his life, and I wouldn’t be here without him – today he would have gotten the medal of honor, but then he didn’t get a damn thing. This is a whole ‘nother story.
Cleaver ran through a hail of bullets, and threw my dad in a huey on top of other bodies, and that’s the last thing my father remembers until he woke up in a hospital in, IIRC, Okinawa (could be wrong on that).
Fast forward two years and hundreds of operations on his jaw, arm, hand, and ankle, my dad is released from the Army with a 300$ pension (they messed up his disability rate, but he “never expected to get any money anyway because he had volunteered”). He is missing a finger and has limited use of his right hand, and his ankle is fused together with a tangle of screws, and his jaw was bone graffed back together but was wired shut for almost a year.
He got a job in a factory in Deep River, CT, marries my mom, and has kids (me). In the late 70s and early 80s he still gets multiple operations, and I remember him shooting an M1 carbine out the window due to insane flashbacks (we lived in the middle of nowhere). He worked in this factory for 30 years.
Then something else happens to him. He somehow becomes deathly allergic to bee stings. He has three near death experiences with this, barely surviving one occasion. He always says, “I can take 5 machine gun rounds, but a goddamn bee sting is what’s gonna kill me… WTF”
He coached our school soccer and baseball teams for years from crutches, or a wheelchair, or both, and every year he coached we won the CT shoreline championships (soccer).
Then another thing happened. One day my grandfather and him were cutting wood in the forest, and a dead tree fell on him. Imagine the luck. You’re in the woods, and a dead tree decides to fall, right on where you are squatted cutting another tree. My grandfather yelled to him just in time for him to turn, and that turn allowed the tree to only graze him. He still was unconscious for several days in the hospital, had a massive concussion and other damage, but somehow lived.
He was also electrocuted once as well… but this post is getting too long already so I’ll stop there.
My dad is now 73, and his wounds don’t get any better, especially the mental ones. He met Cleaver later in life, and they were both so overwhelmed that they really didn’t know what to say, and then they never talked again, because it was just too emotional. He was awarded a Silver Star for his actions that day, but he really doesn’t give a shit about that medal.
I also forgot to mention that he is an amazing father, and one of the kindest people you would ever know. Half of what I’ve done, and do, in my life was/is just a pathetic attempt to impress him.
Now if that ain’t tough, I don’t know WTF is. Also, think about Cleaver, also tough AF.
SO MUCH TRUTH!! | Rapper Reacts to Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond (First Reaction)
Number one: Teenagers wearing khakis and blazers with an embroidered logo. When I lived in Boston, I hung out a lot in Harvard Square, and there were a fair number of kids like this walking around. I don’t know if they dressed this way because they were part of a fraternity, or they were high-school students at a nearby boarding school (Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, etc.). But it’s something you don’t see in very many places.
Number two: Dogs in sweaters and matching booties, being led by women in sunglasses. Saw this around Little Italy/Houston St. in New York. It was just so out of the ordinary! I get it that broken glass and such is common in New York, and that some protection can sometimes be a good thing, but there are plenty of _people_ who don’t color-coordinate their shoes to their outfit every day: to do that for both yourself and your dog says something.
Number three: teenagers with Porsches/Maseratis/etc. Ran into a few of these in Boston: there are students there coming from immensely wealthy families, sometimes insensibly so. No way you’re a 19-year-old college student paying for a brand-new sports car/ritzy SUV.\
Number four: Mentioning “my club” in passing conversation, such as “I met her today at my club for lunch.” Or “there’s a ‘function’ (not a _party_, mind 😉 ) at my club tonight.” A lot of people might belong to a book club, or perhaps a bowling team, or even a chess club, but usually they preface it with the activity in question. If you can afford tens of thousands of dollars to belong to a private golf club, country club, racquet club, etc., you’re upper class.
Russian spacecraft crashes into the Moon – BBC News
Something is going on here. I strongly suspect that there is more to this story than what meets the eye.
Braised Pork with Green Chile Sauce
Mild green chiles season this meaty pork stew. Serve it with rice or as a burrito filling. This can also be served with tamales. This chile verde is also good served with scrambled eggs.
Ingredients
Pork
1 (3 pound) lean boneless pork butt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 large green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1 (7 ounce) can diced green chiles
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher or sea salt
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 tablespoon wine vinegar
1/4 cup water
Garnish
Tomatoes, cut into wedges
Cooked rice
Sour cream
Lime, cut into wedges
Instructions
Trim and discard fat and cut pork into 1 inch cubes.
In a large frying pan, heat oil over medium-high heat; add meat a few cubes at a time and cook until very brown.
Push meat to side of pan and add onion, garlic and bell peppers; sauté until limp.
Stir in chiles, oregano, cumin, salt, cilantro, vinegar and water.
Cover and simmer until meat is fork tender (about 1 hour).
Skim off fat and discard.
Serve with rice or make burritos or serve in your favorite way.
For Burritos: spoon pork into warm, soft flour tortillas, add sour cream, tomato wedges, and a squeeze of lime juice and fold to enclose. Rice may also be enclosed with the filling in the burritos, if desired.
Originally Answered: What are the most epic fails in history?
“The Americans should know the character of the men they are dealing with in Singapore and not get themselves further dragged into calumny…..They are not dealing with Ngo Dinh Diem or Syngman Rhee. You do not buy and sell this Government.”
In 1960, a CIA agent was caught attempting to purchase confidential information from Singapore intelligence officers. They offered a $3.3 million bribe (equivalent to $25 million in today’s money) to then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to keep hush about the matter.
Instead, PM Lee insisted on $33 million in economic aid as Singapore was then a 3rd world country.
A few years later, the US vehemently denied the entire incident. This caused Lee Kuan Yew to go ballistic and threaten to release full reports and recordings to the public. It was only then did the US government admit and make a formal apology.
A long, long time ago… when I was a boy of 14 years old… I started my first job. I was a “tipple loader” at a coal mine in Western Pennsylvania. My job was to operate the rock crusher and then use the conveyor belt to load hopper-cars (a type of train car) with crushed coal.
Throughout the 1960s, the 70s, and well into the 1990s it was common for the older workers to harass and “break in” the new kid. And during my teen years, I sure as heck got the brunt of it all.
One of the things they would do is order me to “fetch a boom-hoist-clamp” which is just a simple clamp on a drag-line. Now, drag-lines are big enormous machines.
And so, being young and inexperienced, they would gleefully chuckle and laugh at how stupid I was as I would climb the boom to the top to get this fucking clamp.
Being so young, and ignorant, I really didn’t realize that I was risking my life…
…on a joke, for minimum wage. It never occurred to me. As this was my first experience to the harsh world of much older men who have lived the “hard life” in the hills of Western Pennsylvania. And so I endured the various initiations. And worked hard…
…until I was able to pull myself out of that environment and go to university to study aerospace engineering and leave that Hell-hole.
But…
Let’s get back to the question.
Why are the Oligarchs so easy to start a war with China?
Well, like myself as a young boy and my first experience with the harsh world of rough and scrabble men, I had no idea of what I was going up against. Neither do these oligarchs. They think in terms of what they know, and what they don’t know is something that NEVER crosses their mind.
They believe the funded lies about “Russia collapsing”, “Putin will be disposed any day now”, “Ukraine is winning”, ‘Russian military is a joke”…. and they most certainly believe the massive lies (oh, so much greater and so much more outrageous) concerning China…
China will collapse any day now.
The Chinese dictatorship cannot face the American military might.
China has no weapons able to compete or fight the mighty nations of Rambo soldiers.
China is weak, and helpless.
And so on and so forth.
And so, when I listen to these oligarchs speak, and their proxy figureheads talk to the “news” media, it’s like some kind of warped parody. The ignorance is staggering. And like myself, (as a young boy of 14) I had no idea that I was risking my life for something as trivial as the chuckles and cajoling of the elder men.
These idiots will draw the United States into a war with China, and the United States will lose. Sure as shit. It doesn’t matter if it is conventional, economic, or nuclear. The United States is on the fast-track to “suicide by cop”.
And that is what happens with you are ignorant, stupid, and egotistical and facing a lethal opponent that isn’t.
FIRST TIME LISTEN | Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | REACTION!!!!
In the 90s, a group of kids were playing football at the local football pitch that was situated near a rocky mountain. One of the kids kick the ball into a pile of rocks at the side of the mountain, and when one of the kids went to retrieve the ball he was left horrified when he discovered the body of a man crushed by a large boulder.
The man had been pinned under the boulder, but what was even more unusual was the fact his pants was down and he was holding a chicken in his hands. When investigators tried to piece together the mans final moments, they came to the conclusion that the man had been trying to tenderise the chicken, so to speak.
They believe the 39-year-old bricklayer named Herminio Rivera Coucerio had abducted a hen in Orsense, in Spain, and brought it to the mountain side to have his way with it. They believed his rigorous trusting had caused the boulder to come lose and rolled on top of him, and killed him instantly.
Against common misconception, quicksand will not drown you as it is denser than your torso. The problem with quicksand is that you can practically get stuck in it and die from hunger, thirst, or extreme temperatures.
The force required to lift your foot out of quicksand at a speed of 1 cm per second is equal to the lift force of a medium-size car. So if you are really stuck in the middle of quicksand, forget about moving your legs out of the sand with just force.
First of all, you need to get rid of excess weight, which will be a huge obstacle to escape. Breathe deeply as your fully filled lungs will allow you to float better.
If you are standing, lean back into a position where you can float. This will allow your feet to return to the surface as your weight is more evenly distributed.
When you move your legs up while in the floating position, let the quicksand under your legs fill for a moment.
Move slowly inch by inch toward the shore.
Try reaching for something outside like a tree branch and try to drag yourself out. Only do this when your feet are on the surface again.
THIS SONG IS AMAZING!!! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Richmond Reaction
When most women are young, they’re attracted to men with good looks, charm, charisma, confidence, and raw sexual magnetism.
As time passes, people age, and life experiences accumulate, most women start to realize that other things are important. Like a good credit rating. Now the ball’s in my court.
To be clear, I’m not talking about being rich (never was, probably never will be). I’m talking about being responsible, reliable, predictable. The kind of guy who pays all his bills on time, has his tax returns filled out in February, spend his weekends doing yardwork rather than partying, and has never once gotten in a fight with a bouncer.
Being conventional to the point of being boring seems to hold little appeal to women in their teens and twenties.
But…
I’ve found that most women in their thirties have had a lot of bad experiences with ‘exciting’ guys, and are ready to settle down with someone they can count on.
I just had to hang around for enough years that a woman I knew felt the need to settle, and then closed the deal as quick as possible.
Those of us who lack the looks have to deal in patience.
When I was 18 year’s old, my mom submitted my application to a place looking for part-time help. I had no idea she did this.
I didn’t find out until after she already had the interview set up for me.
The interview was in a part of town I had never been in before.
Everything was extremely run down looking. Homeless people were wandering the streets and sidewalks with their shopping carts. Almost every building on the block, including the one I was interviewing in, had some sort of graffiti on the side.
I walked inside the building to find unfinished concrete walls and floors. The desks and tables were dilapidated and covered in dust.
“Are you here for an interview?”
That was my assumption, but this place looked more like it was ready to shut down than it was to hire someone new.
“Paul, Robert is here for your 10:30 interview.”
Tucked in the corner of the building was a make-shift office set up where Paul sat. Behind him was a bookshelf that looked no better than the other furniture in the building. Sitting on top of his bookshelf was an long ivy plant that stretched halfway to the floor.
That stuck out to me because that plant was the only sort of decoration that I could see in the entire place.
Instead of going to his desk, Paul met me at the front door. After exchanging some short introductions, Paul asked –
“Have you ever worked a heat press before?”
I had no idea what a heat press was.
“That’s okay, we’ll teach you. The pay is $9.00/hr but it’s a temporary position. We’ll only need you for about 3 months. If all sounds good, you can start tomorrow.”
The entire interview took less than 5 minutes.
That was 16 years ago. Even though the position was only supposed to last for 3 months, I’m still here, sitting in the space where Paul used to sit. Only now that space has walls around it to form an actual office.
We’ve also painted the building, finished the walls and floors, and replaced all the furniture.
One of the only physical items left from 2007 is that ivy plant, which now sits on top of a shelf behind my desk… along with some other plants that I’ve collected and am trying not to kill.
El Dorado Casserole
I have been making this casserole for as long as I can remember. It’s very good and exceptionally good warmed up the next day.
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
16 ounces tomato sauce
1 cup sliced black olives
8 ounces sour cream
1 cup cottage cheese
1 (4 ounce) can diced green chiles
7 ounces tortilla corn chips, crushed
8 ounces (or more, if desired) Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
Instructions
Cook beef until browned.
Drain. Add onion, garlic powder, tomato sauce and olives. Cook over low heat until the onion is clear.
Combine sour cream, cottage cheese and chiles.
Layer half the chips, meat mixture, sour cream mixture and Monterey Jack cheese in a greased 2 1/2-quart casserole.
Repeat this layering a second time.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.
Why Rolling Stone is TERRIFIED of Oliver Anthony
Country musician Oliver Anthony went from unknown to the top of the iTunes charts after his song, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” went viral overnight.
But music press outlets like Rolling Stone immediately became hostile.
They started churning out headlines trying to tie Anthony to right-wing politics and Q-Anon, and even suggested he was a plant for far-right culture warriors.
But former Mumford & Sons banjoist Winston Marshall, who knows a thing or two about political attacks against musicians, joins Glenn to explain what’s really going on: the former countercultural generation has “become the establishment.”
But is there still a chance that an authentic artist like Oliver Anthony can unite a divided country?
Xi awarded Order of South Africa
Chinese President Xi Jinping received the Order of South Africa from President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday.
The award ceremony came following Xi’s meeting with Ramaphosa during his state visit to South Africa, where he will also attend the 15th BRICS Summit and co-chair with Ramaphosa the China-Africa Leaders’ Dialogue.
The Order of South Africa is the highest decoration and the highest honor that South Africa awards to an important and friendly head of state.
Speaking at the ceremony, Xi said the China-South Africa comprehensive strategic partnership has entered a “golden era,” as political mutual trust between the two sides continues to deepen, and mutually beneficial and practical cooperation in various fields has yielded fruitful results.
The two countries have maintained close coordination and cooperation in international affairs, which has effectively promoted their respective development and revitalization, and made positive contributions to safeguarding the common interests of developing countries, he noted.
Xi reiterated that no matter how the international situation changes, the two sides will remain committed to deepening bilateral friendly cooperation.
Noting that he will treasure the honor, which symbolizes the friendship between the two peoples, Xi pledged to unswervingly push for the continuous development of China-South Africa relations.
China, because its dominant political party, unlike India’s who worship cows and discriminate against fellow Indians based on caste, has developed China much better.
It is this weird juxtaposition that occurs between this deeply Christian part of our state and a very naughty other half.
It’s not uncommon to see stuff like this:
This isn’t one of those “never masturbate,” “quit porn,” posts. I actually get annoyed with those posts. Go do your thing. Enjoy you some porn, ladies and gents.
But.
There is this porn DVD store that I pass, yes – DVD, on the way to work.
Every time I pass this store, typically between 7:45AM and 7:50AM,
There are at least 3–4 cars in the parking lot, and that bitch is open for business.
If any of you catch me shopping for porn DVDs at 7:45 AM on a Tuesday –
This is from a school dance a year or two ago. It was the Valentine’s Day dance and we were all having a lot of fun. All of a sudden there’s a big commotion in the gym. There’s a huge crowd and everyone around has their phones out and seem to be recording something.
I’m able to see what’s going on my pushing myself through and what I see is literally horrifying.
This girl is breathing crazily and crying with her hands on her head. Two girls are next to her (friends I assume) saying, “GUYS STOP! SHE’S HAVING A PANIC ATTACK!”
Everyone around in that circle is recording.
Recording a 12 year old at a dance having a panic attack.
Soon the teachers help the girl outside to get some fresh air and the teachers tell everyone to delete the video they took. I know they never really deleted it.
But this is absolutely absurd. The fact that everyone didn’t even try to help but recorded her is awful. I didn’t see her since or really ever knew her, but I know I would hate it if someone recorded me at a low moment like this.
While I was in college, I worked as a security guard at a factory that reprocessed scrap cloth into felt.
One of the maintenance workers was notably lacking in common sense. I once found him on the roof of the factory, watching a seized-up motor burn, with six-inch flames coming up to it.
He wasn’t making any attempt to cut the power to the motor, or put the fire out. I commented that I was surprised the circuit breaker hadn’t tripped. He explained that he had bypassed the circuit breaker, “because it was tripping too often”.
As part of my duties, I wrote and submitted a fire report. He was still kept on as a member of the maintenance crew, because he was the plant manager’s son-in-law.
RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND RAP remix By: Black Pegasus – INSPIRED by Oliver Anthony!
I have no interest in being a billionaire, but I would like to be homeless one day.
When the kids are grown and out of the house, I see no point in having one. I’ll pick up one of these, sell the house, and go wherever the wheels take me.
I was working at a company for about a year and a half. It was just another day. I was talking with my co-worker who I shared an office with. I said, “You really don’t want to be called in to speak with H.R. If you do, it’s pretty likely you’re being laid off.”
Right then, as if on cue, my phone rang. It was the head of H.R. She wanted me to come to her office.
My heart sank. I told my co-worker, who I’ll call Greg. He blew it off. “It’s probably nothing. Probably just something with your benefits.”
I didn’t think so, but marched over to her office. My boss’s boss was there. I was invited to take a seat and I did so.
Mrs. H.R. said, “Okay, you’re being terminated, effective immediately.”
“Wait, what?” I said.
“Your employment with us is being terminated. Now.”
I couldn’t believe it. I had just finished a pretty important feature for our project and had just got a “Congrats!” from my boss.
“What…” I said. “What for?”
Boss’s boss answered, “For not doing your work.” His face was flushed and he looked ashamed.
I still couldn’t believe it. Doing my work was all I did, every day. “According to who? Who said that?”
“Your manager.” The one who had just given me the “attaboy!”. Boss’s boss looked even more ashamed.
I had been given no warning that my work was insufficient. In fact, quite the opposite. “Uh, for future reference,” I said, “it might be a good idea to let your employees know when they’re not meeting expectations.”
Mrs. H.R. made me sign some papers. She said signing them was non-voluntary. I was still in a haze and just signed them.
My manager handed me off to a guy who I vaguely recognized from some IT or facilities function. He looked like he could easily be in a body building competition. He escorted me downstairs to someone else, who explained to me I was being fired and made me hand over my badge. She was about to have me escorted out by Mr. Muscles when I asked her if I needed to surrender my CAC as well.
She said, “Oh, yeah, I’ll need that too.” She acted like this was the first time she had done this. She was flustered.
Mr. Muscles took me back up to my office, where he watched me pack what few belongings I had. Greg wasn’t there. I left him a note to call me.
Mr. Muscles escorted me outside, where I walked to my car. I drove home, trying to process what had just happened. I had never been fired before. I’d never even been warned about “insufficient performance”.
Greg got a hold of me later that day. When he saw my note, he noticed a bunch of people were disappearing from the office. He found our manager and asked if his neck was on the chopping block too. He said, “Yes.”
He asked him why. He said he couldn’t tell him.
When it was Greg’s turn for the “You’re Fired” ride, he turned to our boss’s boss and said, “Chase*, what you’re doing is wrong, and you know it.” Wow, guts are one thing Greg didn’t lack.
He said in all, about 40 people were let go that day. All were “fired”.
No one fires 40 people in one day, unless they were all involved in some sort of widespread fraud or something, and of course we weren’t.
Over the course of the next few days, we pieced together something that sort of made sense, but not really. It was a layoff, but they had to call it firing so they wouldn’t have to pay us severance. That kind of made sense, but I’ve been laid off before and never got any severance. Why was this case any different?
It turns out that the company was trying to win a big government/military contract that was up for re-compete. They hired all 40 of us to build a “demo” to bid for the system. They didn’t win it, and thus needed to get rid of us.
The “firing” part really hurt, though.
The company has since been bought out twice. The company has a totally different name now, and different owners.
But they kept their employment records. Over the years, recruiters have tried to place me there again, under the new company. They always reject me, saying they wouldn’t rehire me because they fired me once before.
Yeah, fired. Just call it what it really was, you cowards: a non-severance layoff.
Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North Of Richmond” Is The War Cry The Working Class Has Been Waiting For
This is actually a very good video and connects the Fourth Turning to Oliver Anthony.
All that China has to do is to BE SATISFIED with its present position and be prepared to be Number 2 all it’s life
The West will never target China and it would always be a great country and best friends
The West especially the US emasculates any threat it perceives to it’s dominance with a combination of
Political upheavals or color revolutions or
Propaganda
or
Stoking nationalist sentiments against a specific nation
or
Economic Throttling
That’s how they neutralized the EU or Japan or S Korea to date
Sadly China, India, Russia are three nations that remain defiant
Of the three – China is the most likely candidate to pip the US in the next two decades and thus the West which is more or less an accepted fiefdom of the USA is targeting China most heavily
Color Revolutions won’t work in China, a 90% Han majority country
Political Upheavals wont work as Xi Jingping is firmly in charge and has consolidated the CPC
Nationalist Sentiments work against USA now
All that is left is Economic Throttling and that’s what the US is doing and forcing it’s allies to do the same
Chinas Defiance , Indias Defiance, Russia’s Defiance is getting a bit worrisome for the West
Especially Chinas, since China has the Economic Clout and a huge stack of money and a massive industry, not to mention a consumer market that is 16% of the World’s Consumption, third highest after US and EU
So the West want to ensure that China can’t end the “Western way of life” Or the “Western Dominance” Or question “US Exceptionalism”
Unfortunately the US has lost the art of diplomacy long ago and has become somewhat of a bully
As a result, it is unable to persuade most nations to toe the line
Left to itself, China could have been happy with imports and never really aspired to do more
Instead by these sanctions, China knows it has to buck up and do a lot of hard work and can’t rely or trust the USA
Thus US and the West scored an Own Goal in this aspect
I caused a young guy to get fired on the spot. It actually wasn’t intentional on my part.
Every Friday a friend and I used to meet to play pool. We found that a local bingo hall had a cafe& lounge area and the table was only 50p a game and the food & snacks were really cheap.
One Friday I ordered my meal, it was only £3. When the usual guy rang it up I was looking at the screen on the top of the register and I saw ‘staff discount’ and the total dropped to £2 but he told me £3, obviously he was pocketing the difference.
I messed around getting cutlery and sauces next to the register and watched him do the same thing to the next few customers.
I went back to the table where my friend was and told him what the cheeky git was up to. No big deal, we both commented it was a bit naughty and that was that.
However there was a woman on the next table who clearly heard our conversation. She stood up, put on a blazer with a badge stating ‘supervisor’, promptly walked over to the cashier, printed something out and escorted him away.
Never saw the young guy again.
Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | Reaction
The deep sea is perhaps the most terrifying environment on the planet. Not a glimmer of sunlight to be found, only pitch darkness. The water icy cold, and almost devoid of oxygen. The immense and crushing pressure is enough to kill a human instantly. No source of food, other than the slow precipitation of organic debris trickling down from above; “marine snow”.
And yet, against all the odds, if you stare long enough into the abyss, something will stare back.
In 1966, the crew of a deep sea submarine learned as much. The vessel, dubbed the Deepstar 4000, began its descent not far off the coast of California, on a mission to deploy some hydrographic technology on the seabed, which lay some 1,200 metres below the surface. With the tremendous pressures at this depth, every inch of glass is a threat to the submarine’s structural integrity, so there was only one tiny window for the crew to look outside.
After the Deepstar 4000 touched down on the ocean floor, its pilot Joe Thompson glanced out the diminutive porthole, and saw something extraordinary.
By Thompson’s account, he found himself gazing into an eye “as big as a dinner plate”, belonging to a fish whose skin was “mottled” and “gray-black”. The fish, he estimated, was at least 25 feet (7.6 metres) long! It kicked up a cloud of silt in its wake, and within a matter of seconds, the encounter was over, and the abyss regained its characteristic eerie stillness.
Shortly thereafter, underwater cameras in the nearby area were triggered by the motion of a massive marine creature. One of them captured this photograph.
This image is not from a made up spooky story, it depicts a very real creature. A creature which might just be the culprit behind the infamous Deepstar 4000 encounter. To me, this animal is the scariest and most intimidating of all the deep sea horrors we have discovered, but also one of the most fascinating. It is a Pacificsleeper shark.
A close cousin of the much better-known Greenland shark, this species is found in waters across the North Pacific, and even the Arctic Ocean. It spends most of its days deep in the marine void, sometimes thousands of metres below the surface. Because of this strange lifestyle, the Pacific sleeper shark is shrouded in mystery, and to this day we know very very little about it.
What we do know is that it is one of the largest sharks on the planet. Though we have never scientifically measured a 25 footer like the one possibly sighted by the Deepstar 4000, we know for certain they can grow to four and a half metres in length, which is already gigantic. In 1989, a sleeper estimated to be seven metres was filmed in Tokyo Bay, while in Hawaii one was photographed that was potentially over nine metres long!
If these estimates are true, the Pacific sleeper shark could be the world’s third largest shark species, after the filter-feeding whale shark and basking shark. The claims are very much within the realms of possibility. Other shark species are well known to display a massive range in size, with some individuals being a whole 50% larger than the average specimen. After all, so long as they have enough food, sharks never stop growing.
And Pacific sleeper sharks sure do have plenty of time to grow. If their almost identical cousins the Greenland sharks are anything to go on, they can live for hundreds of years, perhaps half a millennium. There are likely sleeper sharks alive today that have lived through the entirety of modern history.
How does such gargantuan animals survive so deep in the abyss, where food is so scarce? Their extremely slow metabolism helps, though as a result, they are very sluggish. The aptly named sleeper sharks cruise through the depths at an extraordinarily slow speed of about 1 kilometre per hour – if you saw one in front of you, you’d barely even notice it moving! Being such slowpokes, we long assumed them to be scavengers, as they’d surely be useless predators.
However, when we dissected sleepers that got caught in fishing nets, the contents of their stomachs told a very different story. Inside, scientists found fresh remains of practically every kind of animal that the sharks share their habitats with. Fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, sea lions, porpoises… these beasts are far from carrion feeders, they are apex predators!
One shocking food item in particular seems more common than any other; the beaks of giant squid! This means that the Pacific sleeper shark is one of only two animals on the planet that can hunt and kill giant squid, the other being the sperm whale. The thought of such a slow-moving creature being able to take down this prey may seem impossible, but the shark’s thick and muscular tail fin indicates that it can produce violent bursts of intense speed when it needs to.
With a gaping and oddly circular maw, the sleeper shark can effectively “inhale” most of the prey it encounters. Victims too large to be eaten by suction are chomped to death by its massive bite force and sharp, needle-like teeth, pictured below. It also has a truly enormous stomach, which allows it to store food for long periods of time, a lifesaver in the barren deep sea. The stomach of one specimen was found to contain over 135 kilograms of accumulated food!
Lack of food is but one of the many challenges posed by life at such depths. The extreme pressure and frigid temperatures can wreak damage even at the molecular level, destabilising proteins within organisms’ cells. To protect against this, Pacific sleeper sharks employ a powerful chemical known as trimethylamine oxide (TMAO), which circulates in their bloodstream in incredibly high concentrations.
As it turns out, TMAO also has psychoactive properties – it is in fact a potent nerve agent. Because of that, if you eat sleeper shark meat, you’ll soon start to show symptoms of severe drunkenness, which may last for days. This is known as being “shark drunk”. The flesh of the (again, very closely related) Greenland shark is a delicacy in Iceland, called hákarl, but it is left to ferment for months before being safe to eat. It smells and tastes like urine, due to the vast quantities of urea in sleeper sharks’ blood.
Yet another fascinating thing about Pacific sleeper sharks is that almost all of them are blind. This is not a condition they have at birth, however. At some point in their lives, sleepers will invariably fall victim to a rather horrifying parasite called Ommatokoita elongata. This tiny worm-like creature is actually a crustacean, though it doesn’t look the part.
Ommatokoita attaches itself to the cornea of its unfortunate host, and remains there permanently, slowly eating away at the poor shark’s eyeball. It’s seemingly not fatal, as virtually all sleeper sharks have them and they can live for hundreds of years, but it does make them go blind. To be fair, eyesight isn’t of much use in a pitch black void, anyway.
That is absolutely everything you need to know about the Pacific sleeper shark, because it’s just about everything we do know about the Pacific sleeper shark. What I find even more interesting is everything we don’t know, all the mysteries that science shall hopefully solve in the coming decades, as we learn more about these incredible real-life sea monsters.
In 2012 I was in Germany on business when I was invited to the home of the managing director for dinner. The house was beautiful and located on a hillside with a spectacular view over a sheltered valley. After dinner we were sitting on the varanda drinking coffee when my host explained that not only did he own the valley but it was an additional source of income.
He stated that he was very grateful to the wartime RAF who had bombed the valley. There had been a small stream flowing through the valley until a bomber had jettisoned it’s bombs, probably after being attacked by a night fighter. The resulting bomb craters had filled up with water and were now a very profitable trout farm.
We leaned over the varanda balustrade and he pointed out the seven deep pools strung along the valley bottom. It was the number seven that worried me. Looking down from above you could clearly see the pools were grouped in a string of three with a short gap followed by a string of four pools. I am no bomber expert but I had to point out to my host that I would have expected any bomber to carry a balanced load. That and the gap in the regular positioning of the bomb craters made me wonder if perhaps one of the bombs had failed to explode.
A couple of weeks later, back in Aberdeen, I received a very nice email letting me know that following our conversation he had notified the authorities who had indeed found an unexploded bomb burrowed deep in the ground.
Visitor from a Parallel Universe | Who Was The Man from Taured?
Welcome to my life.
This is fun. Who knows what the real truth is? But, you know, powerful interests will generate cover stories to hide reality.
It’s why the US is panicking, because China is a competitor which the US has never seen.
Un like countries such as India, China has the ability and determination to advance;
on the other hand, unlike countries such as EU countries and Japan, China has a huge internal market to protect its companies from being sanctioned.
In a test video on Bilibili, they confirmed that the Mate 60 Pro is powered by the New Kirin 9000S, which was made in week 35 of 2020, in mainland China.
But the CPU is not the main character in Mate 60 Pro, since Kirin 9000S is only about the same as Snapdragon 888, the top performance 2 years ago.
It’s the BAW filter, or Bulk Acoustic Wave Filter. It was the key component for 5G communication, and the only part which the US could sanction Huawei’s cellphones. For a while, all Huawei cellphones used to have only 4G.
Silex Microsystems made a breakthough in BAW filter, and finally found the last piece of the puzzle.
Designed by Huawei, Silex, and other Chinese companies, made by SMIC.
U.S. Department of Commerce must be disappointed.
I guess it’s why Mate 60 Pro made a sudden appearence even without a press conference or any other event. It just quietly appeared in Huawei Stores and Huawei Online Shop.
The one who being the main drive of this sanction against Chinese companies is in China. Gina Raimondo is one of the most aggressive person in Biden administration to push a harder stance against China. She’s one of the most extreme eagles, if not the most extreme one.
Just like how Robert Gates was so sure that China wouldn’t be able to have a stealth fighter, China did the first test-flight during his visit in China in 2011.
It’s been 1041 days since Huawei released its last Kirin 9000.
It’s been 1566 days since Huawei being included into the entity list of US government.
With the massive domestic market, China was able to maintain Huawei’s operation. Now Chinese government and state-owned companies should choose only domestic computers, preferablly Huawei.
The US sanctions Huawei not because of its cellphones, but communication equipments.
The world was going to choose Huawei to deploy their 5G networks, and this would be a problem for the US government to spy other countries.
Therefore, even with no backdoor found, the UK eventually banned Huawei for security reasons and choose US companies which does have backdoors in their products.
The UK cannot say no to the US, because any British politician would want to stay longer in the politics club.
I see from your profile that you’re American. I am from Singapore.
I think it’s funny how an American is calling Singapore “dictatorial”, when the USA is the place where cops use equipment designed for military warfare; where cops regularly shoot people, especially black people, to death for minor offences; and which has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates (the USA comprises 4% of the world population, but holds 25% of its prisoners) and exploits prison labour in a way that the ACLU and Chicago Law School has described as a “fundamental abuse of human rights”; and models itself after Afghanistan when it comes to women’s rights to contraceptives and abortion. The USA treats gun ownership as a kind of human right, but not universal healthcare. Meanwhile, its leaders talk openly in Congress about invading its southern neighbour Mexico …
Well, maybe that is not so strange. After all, Kansas, Colorado, California, Utah, Arizona etc were all part of Mexico, before the USA brutally invaded it and took all that land away. “Dictatorial” is also not an inappropriate adjective to describe the genocidal acts which the white Americans inflicted on the Native Americans. Let’s not even go into the USA’s history of black slavery.
Meanwhile, Singapore is “dictatorial” because it bans commercial imports of chewing gum except for therapeutic purposes. LOL …
Gabon just SHOCKED the world with a coup, Africa breaking from Western rule
When I was in 5th grade, my friends and I stumbled upon an old “bottle dump” in the woods. These were 100 year old garbage and trash dumps that were reclaimed by the woods and forests of Western Pennsylvania.
The junk and organic matter was taken over by nature, thus leaving a thick and rich soil covered by native vegetation. The only things not decayed were the glass bottles, and the shards of broken glass that were everywhere.
Thus, we had stumbled upon a “bottle Dump”.
And for the next three or so years I would go out with my friends, happily digging away and collecting all sorts of colorful and interesting 100-year old bottles. My favorites were whittle bottles, and bitters.
Whittle marks are a very descriptive term for a bottle body feature that almost never has anything whatsoever to do with its name. The term "whittled" or "whittle marked" is a reference to a hammered or wavy surface to the glass that one could imagine was caused by the "whittled" marks of the mold maker on the inside surface of a wooden mold. Early 19th century glass makers called this effect "ruffled glass" while later it was referred to as a "hammered look" (Toulouse 1966)
Bitters, intact bottles, were rare and very much prized.
These bottles were the most popular medicine bottles in the 19th and 20th centuries. They were popular because of their content. The Bitters came from mixing natural herbs with a lot of alcohol. These medicines were widespread because, during the movement, they allowed the legal consumption of alcohol.
Anyways, we could collect the bottles, and I must have had hundreds in my basement, and many, many lining my boyhood walls. Where I had hanging model airplanes, books, and the brick-a-brack of my boyhood youth.
All was forgotten when I went to university, and then the Navy. And discarded by my mother by the time I got married.
Bottled collecting was a silly but enjoyable boyhood hobby that I have fond memories of. It allowed me to explore the history of my local area, crawl and climb in the woods and spend a lot of time outdoors.
If your kid ever gets into something so harmless, don’t hassle him over it. Embrace it. It could be far worse. Don’t you know.
Now you know
Two People – an Argentinian and Carmela Vitale of New York filed separate patents – 11 years apart – for a small piece of Plastic that prevented the Top Layer of Cheese and Tomatoes on a Pizza from scraping the Top of the Pizza Delivery box – which often ruined the Pizza.
The Argentinian did not renew the patent but Carmela Vitale earned royalties for this small piece of plastic of 3 1/2 cents per piece sold from 1.1.1986 to 31.12.2010 and earned a whopping $ 57.7 Million in Royalties alone
I would have to say this is the simplest yet at the same time the most lucrative business idea.
Driving tip
If a deer runs onto the road in front of you while your driving, its better to hit the deer then swerve into a ditch. If a Moose runs onto the road its better to swerve into a ditch, Moose’s are tanks.
NATO order Italy to stand away from China
“Signing up with China’s BRI was a dangerous mistake, and Italy needs to embrace the United States leadership”.
The last building standing in Hamburg.
This marvelous feat of modern aesthetics sits smack in the center of Hamburg, and will keep doing so for at least a millennium. It’s a flak tower / bomb shelter for the population, the kind of thing that was really needed in the mid-20th century in Germany.
When the war was over, the new government tried to get rid of most of the old Nazi-looking stuff that the previous administration had left behind. They commissioned their most elite demolition crew to this specific building. The guys scratched their heads for a very long time and came to the conclusion that tearing this beauty to the ground would require enough explosives to blow the whole city sky-high. So better not.
It’s still there. One of the best clubs in town uses the top floor. The walls are up to 3.5 meters thick, so the music doesn’t bother the neighborhood.
It’ll be the last building standing in Hamburg.
Wild West Chili Soup
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
2 medium garlic cloves
2 cans tomato soup
2 cans pinto beans, undrained
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 cup onion, chopped
1 can beef broth
1 cup water
2 cups macaroni, cooked
2 tablespoons vinegar
Instructions
Brown beef with onion and garlic until tender.
Add remaining ingredients, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
What’s Actually Happening At U.S.-Mexico Border Is MIND BLOWING!
There’s a tremendous amount of hyperbole and emotion surrounding the border crisis, but what’s really going on? To find out, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled to Yuma, Arizona and spoke with border guards as well as migrants themselves, and what he learned was nothing short of shocking. Jimmy and RFK Jr. discuss the myths associated with the border situation and the revelations that criminal cartels are actually in charge of U.S. immigration policy.
She frequently trespasses in my garden, sleeps on top of my car, and if I ever leave my door open – as I do during a heatwave – she walks right in like she lives here.
A few weeks ago I was taking a bath with the window open downstairs, with my AirPods in, and I left the bathroom door open so the place wouldn’t steam up, and she came and jumped on me in the bath while my eyes were closed. I don’t know which of us got a bigger fright.
In the US subprime mortgage crisis, the government decided to let Lehman go under before the full extent of the debt was known, and this had a domino effect. The outgoing Bush administration decided that the banks needed to be bailed out to prevent running out of cash, and the losses were passed onto ordinary Americans.
In China’s case, the government is slowly letting the air out of the debt bubble instead of letting it collapse, and it is acting to prevent the losses being passed onto ordinary Chinese. Don’t expect a US-2008 style crash because real estate has been the main savings vehicle for ordinary Chinese over the past 40 years. The Chinese government knows that if they lost value on their homes too quickly, then Chinese would stop spending in the domestic economy, and China wants to cut back on exports as a portion of the Chinese economy. The aim is to switch over to a consumer-driven economy from an export-driven economy and this can only be achieved by making Chinese feel secure. This is the reason for all the spending and development on infrastructure and technology.
The important thing to remember about China is that the People’s Bank issues the currency, and government-owned banks make the loans. The US Fed only has control of interest rates, but the Chinese government has a much finer level of control than the US, and it reports only to the Communist Party, not an independent board of governors as the Fed does.
That makes a huge difference.
US/France threaten intervention in resource-rich Niger – Fears of war in West Africa
War! War! War!
The US and France have threatened foreign intervention to re-install a pro-Western regime in Niger, which produces uranium needed for nuclear energy and hosts large US drone bases. This follows coups led by nationalist, anti-colonial military officers in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, which warn intervention could set off a regional war in West Africa.
If you are ever kidnapped…
If you ever get kidnapped and put in the boot/trunk, disconnect the brake lights and there’s a chance the driver might get pulled over, given you a chance to call for hel
The worst Nuclear disaster you have never heard of. In 1985 the Goiania institute of radiotherapy in Brazil, moved locations. They left behind a Cesium-137 cancer therapy machine. Two years later on September 13th, 1987, two men break into the building and steal the machine, as the guard that was hired to protect the building never showed up for work.
The men wheeled it home and began to dismantle it, with both men falling sick that night. Despite this they continued to dismantle the machine and by the 16th of September, they were able to puncture a hole in a capsule inside the machine.
Inside the capsule was a bright blue powder that they scooped up. They shared it with friends and relatives, even painting blue crosses on their shirts and some even used it as make-up, completely unaware of what they had.
The handling of the blue power was enough for the two thieves to require fingers and an arm to be amputated. But before it had gotten to that point the men decided to sell it to a local scrapyard. The machine was further dismantled by the owner, Devair Ferreira. When he was finally able to release the blue powder himself, he was fascinated by the it. Believing it to be highly valuable, even possibly supernatural, he invited family members over to see it, even passing it around.
From there it was then sold to another scrapyard. Devair’s brother, Odesson, even took a chunk of the material home with him. He was a local bus driver and unknowingly contaminated dozens of passengers. He’s also one of the most contaminated surviving victims of the disaster and he says he can still feel the burning in his hands.
His six-year-old daughter even played with the blue powder on the floor before having dinner, where some of the radio active material had fallen on her sandwich and she consumed it. Tragically, within just one month she passed away and was buried in a lead coffin, encased in concrete.
Nobody knew that the material was highly radioactive. As time passed, everyone who had came in contact with the machine or the powder began falling seriously ill. It wasn’t until a concerned relative had a feeling the machine had something to do with it and took some of the blue powder to the hospital to be tested. Doctors were quick to determine that they were suffering from acute radiation poisoning.
They resulted in over 100,000 people being isolated in the Olympic stadium for screening. 250 people were found to be contaminated. 28 skin related injuries from radiation and two men, one woman and one child died.
Over 40 homes and buildings had to be demolished. The remaining chunk of Cesium, as well as over 6000 tons of contaminated clothing, furniture, pieces of buildings and even dirt were packed into steel drums and containers and dumped in an abandon quarry.
Originally Answered: Why don’t Chinese people wear their traditional dresses on a frequent basis? They are almost always in western dresses. I think they should take more pride in their 汉服, for example.
OK, let’s say, sure, we want to wear our traditional dresses more. But which traditional dresses? from which dynasty? Like, here’s the thing about Chinese traditional dresses or 汉服, we kind of sort of don’t have a very clearly defined and universally accept definition of 汉服.
It’s not like 和服 or kimono. When people say kimono, you exactly what they’re talking about. The style is pretty iconic and consistent. There’s a long and continous tradition of making kimono following a very clearly defined processes from printing the fabric, to the cut, to how to wear them, to how to fold and store them.
Han Chinese traditional clothing do not have that because there are so much records about different type of clothing throughout history. We have record about our clothing style all the way back to the actual Han dynasty some 2000 years ago and beyond.
If someone want to wear a dress from 2000 years ago, we know how to make them.
If someone want to wear Tang dynasty clothing from about 1000 years ago, we know exactly what they look like.
So when you think about 汉服 (Chinese traditional dresses), what do you have in mind?
Do you think of something like this?
Except this is not even 汉服 or Han clothing. This is Manchu clothing, well, not even “traditional manchu clothing”. It is, more precisely, alternated modernized Manchu style clothing most popular during 民国 or Republic of China (1910s – 1940s) era. You aren’t seriously suggesting that the style popular during that 30–40 years represents the entirety of Chinese traditional clothing.
So if you wear this and call it 汉服, a lot of Hanfu purist would be very unhappy. After all, the Manchus are barbarians. Their clothing can not possibily be representative of Han Chinese clothing. That would be blasphemy.
And as a Manchu myself, I wouldn’t even call it “Manchu clothing” because this style is a westernized Manchu clothing only became popular AFTER the fall of Qing (Manchu) Empire.
You’re really talking about a “bastard” style between western and Manchu clothing that you (a westerner) is more familiar with, but has nothing to do with the real Hanfu (or Manchu clothing).
I do want to clarify that I love Republic of China era clothing. This was our “roaring 20s”, and I found the mix of Manchu and western style refreshing and glamorous. It’s just they aren’t Hanfu no matter how you cut it.
And on top of that, there’s also the practical consideration. As you can see most of the Han Chinese style clothing features long skirts (sometimes with trains) with long wide sleeves. They aren’t very practical in everyday life in our modern age. Try get on a crowded bus wearing a Ming dynasty clothing.
That being said, people do wear traditional Chinese clothing in everyday life.
Even though we couldn’t quite agree on what exactly is 汉服. They’re all very beautiful.
I am very interested in the implementation details of de-risking because almost all major German manufacturers are public companies which need to report earnings to their shareholders every quarter, and shareholders are interested in the business health of their companies.
These companies have two reasons for their China presence:
That is where their supply chains are based and;
China is their largest single market.
My feeling is that shareholders will want to know in exact terms what de-risking is going to cost? Who is going to pay for the costs of moving supply chains and moving to smaller markets? Since Foreign Minister Annalina Baerbock is making the demand, (isn’t it strange that the foreign minister is telling German businesses what to do), shouldn’t she have discussed with the Economic Minister (also a Green Party member) how these companies would be compensated for their loss? Would there be a corporate tax holiday? Or would the government cover their losses with some kind of subsidy?
Based on what I have seen so far, there is no guarantee of any compensation for their loss. Just look at TSMC’s move to Arizona; they have not been given any money by the US government, even though they have spent more than US$10B on the move. TSMC shareholders are not happy about the move. TSMC’s founder Morris Chang is one very unhappy person and has gone public with his unhappiness. He is in his 90s, so he doesn’t give a damn.
You see, there are problems with de-risking from China:
Every market after China is smaller;
Every supply chain outside China is smaller and less efficient.
So the final question German manufacturers are likely asking is:
Who is going to eat the loss?
Gonzalo Lira seeks political asylum in Hungary
Gonzalo Lira seeks political asylum in Hungary The Duran: Episode 1658
In The 18th century, England’s wealthy had a peculiar taste for garden décor, live ornamental hermits. The English elite had an unique way of showcasing their wealth and tastes. They would hire people to live in their gardens. These individuals were not your typical gardener or caretakers. Instead, they were tasked with embodying the romantic ideal of the solitary, contemplative life
The wealthy landowners would construct follies, decorative buildings, or ruins in their gardens. These follies served as the living quarters for the hermits
The Hermits were expected to dress like druids, avoid bathing and let their hair and nails grow long. They were to spend their days in contemplation, writing and adding an air of mystic to the garden.
The role of the hermit was taken quite seriously. Some were under contract for years. For an example, Charles Hamilton, reportably offered a hermitage for seven years at his estate, Painshill Park, with a salary of 700 pounds around 150,000 euros in todays money.
However, the hermit he hired was dismissed after just three weeks after he was caught drinking down the local pub. The trend of ornamental hermits died out by the end of the 18th century.
My father ran construction crews in the 70’s and contracted for several builders. One wrote a bad check for the job. After the draft bounced my dad demanded a replacement check and called the bank to verify funds before leaving the office with it.
He took it to the issuing bank to cash and they refused because he did not have an account with them. He asked again if funds were available and was assured there were, but unless he had an account there they would not cash it for him.
He then asked if they would exchange it for a cashiers check. They said they would and took the builders check and issued my dad a cashiers check. My dad immediately requested they cash the cashiers check. The teller refused stating he needed to have an account with them to cash checks there.
At this point my dad got loud enough for everyone in the bank to easily hear the conversation and asked the clerk if they were refusing to honor their cashiers check because it might not be good? Was the bank having solvency issues?
A supervisor came over to handle the issue and after being updated as to the details by the clerk he started laughing and told her “He got you. Cashiers checks have to be cashed regardless of account status as they are written on the bank itself are are guaranteed as if cash.”
But look at the “fat cities” as opposed to the “skinny cities” and you find another correlation. Walkability.
Not a lot of New Yorkers are fat, particularly in Manhattan. Driving is a chore there and walking is often the best way to get around.
But go to Houston. It’s one of the most obese cities in the country. Naturally, the only way to get around the city is to drive. No matter where you are, there’s nothing within walking distance.
The YouTube channel “Not Just Bikes” calls it the “gym of life”. He lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and he rarely drives. Hell, he even has a cargo bicycle where he can bike for 15 minutes to a big-box hardware store, pick up stuff, and bike it home. He and his kids are in great shape.
But once he was in Houston, needed office supplies, and tried to walk a half-mile to a nearby office store. After navigating a landscape without sidewalks, including have to cross a small culvert while walking on the side of a road with 70 kph traffic, he took a cab back.
The highest correlation to weight is when your neighbourhood was built. If it was built before 1960, your chances of being obese are low. If it was built after 2000, it’s likely you’re obese, because you’re driving everywhere. Because you have to.
I was 16 years old when I ran away from home. Parents divorced when I was nine, mom was raising seven of us by herself. I was number 4 but the oldest boy. Began working at age 10 (paper route) to give mom money to help. At 12 began de-tasseling corn, putting up hay, mowing lawns, etc. At 14 began working at a Pizza Hut as a cook. At 16, I had no life, never had a date, worked 50 hrs a week, began skipping school, drinking, running around. Doing things that could get me into trouble but not getting caught.
Friend came around and told me the cops were looking for us. I felt I had no life anyway because I was giving most of my money to my mom. We took his car (it was paid for) and ran away that night, ending up in Texas (from Missouri) a couple of days later. We got jobs, an apartment (with a guy from work) and began again drinking (in Mexican bars). No serious crime, never drugs, but heading down the wrong path. High school drop out, runaway, trouble seeking.
After a few months of sharing the apartment, our roommate showed his true colors, disappearing with our rent money and we were evicted. Was able to find a room to rent from an elderly woman, but my paycheck was a few days late so she locked me out. I was homeless for a while until my boss (another Pizza Hut) allowed me to sleep in the restaurant. One day, as we were getting off of work, my friend suggested we join the Marine Corps. I said, “OK, what’s that?” It was 1973 and I had no clue what the Marine Corps was.
Though we were only 16, we enlisted and were sent to recruit training. I don’t remember being asked my age but we were tall for our age and scored well on the ASVAB test. In any event, we were found out on the second day of training and sent back to Texas. I learned that you could enlist at age 17 with a parent’s signature, my mom agreed to it and I reported to boot camp again right after my 17th birthday. The rest is history.
Boot camp was HARD! My drill instructors pushed us hard and would not let me quit. They instilled a self-discipline and confidence that I had been lacking. My first duty station, I served under a 1stSgt (senior enlisted) who, though still firm and demanding, I looked at him as the proud, encouraging father that had been missing from my life.
I ended up serving on active duty for almost 26 years, married, raised a daughter and four sons. All of my children have served or are currently serving. The GI bill paid for my college degree, leading to a 15 year teaching career that I retired from last year.
Two spur of the moment decisions, one with negative, potential life-altering consequences, the other absolutely changed my life for the better.
For information, a few years after enlisting in the Marines, I learned that the cops that were looking for us (that spurred our decision to run away) were truancy officers. Sheesh!
Experts estimate that China’s Scientific roadmap at present is between 33% to 130% in various fields with those of the Western Nations
This is based on Research Papers published and accredited outside their country, Viable Patents (Patents that survive beyond 3 years and go to prototype stage), Number of Doctorate Students, Number of Post Graduates and Research Funding vs Application
Take Semiconductors
Overall, China is Sixth behind US, Netherlands, Japan, South Korea and Germany
Take Construction Technology
China is Number 1 , surging ahead of Japan in 2021
Take Geotechnical Engineering and Structural Engineering
China is Number 1 beating Canada and Israel in 2019 and 2022
Take Satellite Design and Fabrication
China is 2nd behind the US
Yet while US owns around 19 Core Technologies, China owns 13 and relies on the other 6 by less quality substitutions
However US took 47 years to develop these core technologies whereas China took a mere 7 years
Take Aeronautical Engineering
China is Seventh after USA, Germany, UK, Russia, France, Sweden
Take Robotics
China is Third in Cosmetic Robotics after Japan, S Korea beating US to fourth place
China is Fourth in Advanced Robotics after US, Japan and S Korea
China is First in Industrial Robotics beating S Korea in 2021
Areas where the Chinese Scientific Roadmap is way behind that of the West :—
Astrophysics
Nuclear Chemistry
Advanced Cellular Research
DNA and Genome Analysis
Virology & Serology (*)
Micro-engineering
Advanced Processors
In these areas China spends less than 25% of what the US spends on Core Research and less than 50% on Evolutionary Research
Except Advanced Processors where China spends around 310% of what the US spends on secondary research and 185% on Core research.
Thus China is between 25–40% where US is in these fields
(*) Experts Believe China is far ahead in Virology and Serology than it claims due to security reasons
Areas where Chinese Scientific Roadmap is on par with or almost on par with the Western Roadmap:—
Artificial Intelligence
Quantum Computing
Advanced Computing
Satellite Engineering
Integrated Software
Packed Algorithms
Immunology (Vaccine related)
Medical Equipment (High Grade)
Quality Engineering
Core Science
Advanced Physics
Advanced Mathematics
Precision Engineering
In these areas China spends between 55% to 200% of what US spends and is anywhere between 60% to 90% of where the US is today
Experts believe without the export ban, China could overtake the US in these areas by 2030. Now it’s likely 2040.
Areas where the Chinese scientific Roadmap is ahead of the US and the West :—
Mineral Extraction
Deep Sea Bore Tunnelling
Agricultural Sciences
Hydraulics and Hydrology
Construction Technology
Rare Earth Extraction and Development
Transportation Engineering
Low cost engineering
Industrial Engineering
Production Engineering
Manufacturing Engineering
Thorium Salt Reactor Engineering
Chinas Road Map is ahead of the US and the West in these areas
China leads the world in most of these fields and controls the most core technologies and most unique indigenous processes for itself and depends on nobody beyond raw materials
So as an outsider, China may be roughly say 70% of where the US and the Collective West is today — overall as far as Scientific Progress is concerned
Japan is around 80%
So what’s so worrying?
TIME
Japan took nearly 57 years to reach this level of scientific depth with massive massive western cooperation
China took a mere 16 years with minimal western cooperation
Oh SH*T! Now Kenya is INVADING Haiti?
The U.S. government will provide Kenya with the “resources” – presumably this means money, weapons and training – necessary to lead an invasion of Haiti, pending UNSC approval. Kenya will conduct an assessment mission to Haiti in the coming weeks. So, we’ve outsourced the invasion of Haiti. Why? Redacted correspondent Dan Cohen reports on this.
One of the weirdest I have was years ago, back when the old analogue CRT TV’s were still the norm…
One had gone into ‘black and white’- a common issue when the signal strength dropped too far…
The complaint was ‘TV needs colour refilling and leak fixed, it has run out on the carpet and is now black and white’
Um WTF???
And yes- the TV was black and white (and a bit ‘snowy’) ie low signal strength, and there were indeed a couple of stains on the carpet under it, a red one and a greenish/blueish one right next to it…
UM again, WTF???
The real fault???
The balun on the TV antenna had lost its plastic cover, and it had filled with water- which had run down the old ‘air spaced coax’ which acted like a hose- right into the back of the TV…
Thats it on the left- and each of those ‘air spaces’ is completely open from end to end… like tiny little hoses… (ETA these are the inner cores, both coax cables obviously have a woven metal ‘shield’ and a pvc insulation outer cover- these have been cut away to show the inner wire and the insulation for clarity)
The balun is the black box under the antenna itself (except this ones on the bottom, not the top like the one in the story- obviously this wasn’t the only time it had happened…lol)
What had happened was each time it rained, it filled the balun on the antenna and sent water down the coax into the TV, and that was corroding various parts of the socket, and other things inside…
The greenish/blue was copper oxide from the copper conductor, and the reddish stain was rust from the metal chassis and screws… And because of the corrosion in the socket, the signal strength had dropped, meaning it dropped back to ‘black and white’
So the lady concerned (who had no technical knowledge of how TVs worked of course) rang it in with ‘the colour needs refilling in my TV, its leaked and run out over the carpet’
I have been traveling a lot to China for the production of IoT products. This falls on the Engineering triangle. China can produce Quality, Fast, Cheap.
I feel all the answers about cheaper labor is missing the point of the question. Since the majority of the third world countries have cheaper labor. From most of Africa, South America, India, and so on… Cheap labor has already been pointed out. Here are a few more:
Mostly because it has a billion people, about the same as the rest of the developed world combined, but isn’t yet developed enough to be heavy in service industries.
China has invested a lot in infrastructure. Factories have reliable power, good highway and rail system to port, and large modern ports.
Educated, young and reliable labor force. People that can read and a good primary school science education.
Stable government policies. Companies know from year to year what the government will do. No surprise revolutions, uprising, and riots.
Good neighbors. The majority of the Chinese factories are owned by Japanese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans and South Korean.
The economy of scale. If you are making shirts, you want to be near button factories, zipper factories, and so on.
About the Quality, time, Cost. You can only pick 2.
If it is Time and Cost:
A bulk of Chinese products are designed to be available fast and cheap. Therefore the “Good” suffers. And it’s because of the fast and cheap, those items generally fail quicker than their other counterparts.
If you pick Quality and Time:
China has the capacity for quality items too, the bulk of electronics like Lenovo, Apple products come from China. They are generally high quality and available immediately. But those products are not always “Cheap.” Let me ask you this? Do Apple products have this reputation?
China only makes whatever quality someone is willing to pay for. iPhones are made in China but you don’t see people complaining about the build quality on them.
Lastly, when you see a product with “made in China” sticker, it’s not all made in China. China usually is the assembly point for most products, the parts come from a wider range of places.
Chinese girls ‘way ahead’ says UK education study
Girls scored better than boys in every ethnic group, and Chinese girls were well ahead of everyone else, says a study of UK academic achievement of 16-year-olds. People of Irish origin were ahead of Brits, contrary to popular prejudices!
We spent the weekend at my parents (in-law) to celebrate my mom’s birthday. We had a fire:
(The picture of the fire is too beautiful not to share, so I’m sharing)
After the fire lit up, my mom decided to get some s’mores. My dad looked at her walking inside the house, and told us, ‘I want to outlive her, so she won’t have to live a day alone, missing me.’
I think, my mom has succeeded in life, having someone loves her that much.
Is that the true meaning of success?
Putin launches DEVASTATING assault on Ukraine as NATO plan crumbles
NATO has been pushing Ukraine to launch massive armored offensives instead of small scale pin prick attacks. This plan has been devastating to the Ukrainian army which has come under intense air and ground attacks by the Russian army. Is it NATO’s plan to finish off what’s left of Ukraine’s military? Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter joins us for tonight’s live show.
Subway tip
If you ever fall off the edge of a platform on to the tracks, don’t try and crawl back up, there’s a crawl space built underneath in case this happens.
This is exactly why I have to move 2–3 throw pillows any time I want to sit down anywhere in my house, and then I’m expected to put them back on that seat when I’m done.
I just counted. There are 45 throw pillows in the living room, den, and basement sitting areas. We have another half-dozen throw pillows for our outside seating area, but those are in storage for the winter.
The women in my life… my wife and oldest daughter… are 100% responsible for all of these completely pointless, pain-in-the-ass pillows.
This is what will happen when you let the women you live with do anything they want. If you’re a young man who is thinking of getting married, I highly recommend that you keep your woman’s throw pillow purchasing in check early in the marriage. So many habits that you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life are established in those first few months of marriage. Unless you’re comfortable with seeing this every time you walk into any room with a seat, you need to put your foot down and stop it early:
Several years ago, I had the distinct privilege of teaching for a year in China. How lucky I was! The people were so considerate, kind and helpful. The students were hard working and totally engrossed in learning. The parents super supportive. Assignments were done on time and to perfection. The pride expressed in everything was so refreshing. I return regularly to see my former students and friends. The experience changed my life and how I respond to life. Truly a gift!
Being the true American male that I am, I have more fishing poles than necessary. I have three for me, and two for my kids. I’d have one for my wife, if she wanted one. She doesn’t. I’ve asked multiple times.
I take my younger children fishing whenever possible. I pick one of my poles, and they each have their own pole. My son has a Spiderman one, and my daughter has a Barbie one. Before the gender stereotype police come after me, I want everyone to know that I let them pick out their own poles, and that’s what they chose.
Anyway, I carry my pole with me to the fishing spot, where it sits on the ground while I fish with my 4-year-old daughter’s Barbie fishing pole. She has an attention span for fishing of about five minutes, so I don’t have to take the pole from her. She just sets it down and walks away, and I pick it up and use it for the rest of the time.
She usually explores the shoreline, throws rocks in the water, names the worms we’re using for bait, or just sits and chats with us. She’s not bored… she just doesn’t want to fish.
And that’s fine with me, because I prefer her children’s Barbie fishing pole to mine. It’s short and easy to use and does everything I need it to do: cast out, and come back in. My grown-up pole has some features that I don’t use and just over-complicate a simple process.
I get good results with it too. I’m going to keep using it until I have a reason not to. If you’re in the Chicago area and you see a giant man using a tiny pink fishing pole, don’t be too judgmental of him.
This is NOT me in this picture, but this is the same pole that I’m talking about. This is roughly what I look like when I go fishing now:
Colorized | The Cosmic Man 1959 | John Carradine | Sci-Fi | Thriller | Full Movie | Subtitles
Today’s treat. Full video.
1950 era science fiction.
I would rate this movie along with Star Trek IV and The Day The Earth Stood Still as being the most positive-minded when it comes to the portrayal of extraterrestrials and the message being presented by them to the people of Earth.
It definitely shows that fear is the default state of Man's way of looking at matters be it toward extraterrestrials or himself and his fellow creatures, and that a new way of thinking is required in order to live life as he is meant to do so, that is to say, a decent, more enlightened and beneficent way to live with his fellow creatures here on Earth as well as those who live out in the vast depths of outer space.
Only then can Man truly call himself a civilized and advanced being. And who is to say that extraterrestrials aren't among us right now making use of materials here on Earth to benefit both themselves, and trying to create a better existence for mankind as a whole!!!
Today, while taking my daughter back from Kindergarten, I saw a dead kitten in the road in front of me. It was dead maybe 10 to 15 minutes. A black and white medium hair Tuxedo kitten. Perhaps six weeks old. It was gone, as its entire back was splattered goo.
I cannot stop thinking about this little guy. I cannot shake the image, and the feelings for something that I have no personal connection with. It’s tough, and difficult.
Strangely, a few hours later, as I was musing about this kitten, I felt it visit me. Briefly. Of course, we did not know each other, and it did not try to communicate. Just checking out my porch momentarily and then moving on.
I believe that my thoughts attracted it. Even for such a moment.
But my thoughts are part of my personality; and you know, my personality is pre-programmed by others. Whether it is Domain or what have you.
How many of us are living a fated life where our actions and behaviors are all preprogrammed by others?
Originally Answered: What one thing do you wish you had known about life when you were in your 20s?
One time when I was 25 I went shopping for an engagement ring for my girlfriend. We had been together for three years and my dad kept asking when I would marry her. My friends kept asking. Her friends kept asking. Her dad kept asking her and she would tell me.
We were living together. And I liked her. Maybe I loved her.
But I started to shiver when I was looking at rings in the store. My friend who I was with took one look at me and quoted a lyric from an MC 900 Ft Jesus song: “Something’s gonna happen and it’s probably not good.”
So I didn’t buy the ring. We didn’t get married. She moved out. We moved to different cities. I called her once a few years later but now she’s not even on Facebook and we haven’t talked since.
That sums up the 20s – EVERYTHING you think is important and meaningful has absolutely no bearing on your future life.
I loved her. I had a job. I was writing novels. I had friends. I was a computer programmer.
Now…none of the above is true. (oh, I have friends. Just different friends – 100% different).
And everything in my 30s….nothing is true anymore (except I have two kids still. Although now they are not babies. Now they are smarter than me).
I’m 48 now.
My most recent career change occurred when I was 47. Before that, I started writing seriously (I wrote 5 very unserious books in my 30s) when I was 42.
In my 20s and 30s my average weight was about 155 – 170. Now it’s 140. I write every day. I don’t obsess on money all day long. And I make bad decisions all day long – just like I did in my 20s.
The main skill I got between my 20s and now is that I bounce back from bad things faster.
I was VERY successful in my late 20s. And then a TOTAL FAILURE after. Then VERY SUCCESSFUL. And so on.
So that didn’t change. Only my ability to bounce back from really bad things. Horrible things. Things you wouldn’t want to wish on anyone and yet they happen, in some form or other, to everyone.
So the only thing I can with full integrity say I wish I had known is: nothing at all matters. Oh, and since nothing matters, once you realize that you’ll start to bounce back faster.
And since nothing matters, might as well be kind to people as much as possible. We can all laugh at the same joke at the end of this very long day.
Surveys of Americans asking them where certain countries are on an unmarked map. Not obscure ones (I myself would have trouble with Ivory Coast) but ones that are in the news all the time like…
North Korea
Iran.
Note about twenty guesses put it solidly in the United States
Ukraine.
Again, five guesses were solidly in the United States.
Here’s the problem -people who have no idea where these countries are tend to favour military solutions. People who place them correctly (which is a small minority) tend to favour diplomacy.
First Time Reaction to Boston – Foreplay/ Long Time
I can just picture the cold can of beer between my legs and the joint being rolled on the dash…
When I was fired at a large financial services organization, the head of HR essentially told me to clean out my desk and leave. I was a participant in a number of executive compensation programs, and no provision was being made to give me some/any of that money. I knew others had been treated differently when they were terminated.
I called my former boss (the ex-company president) who had been fired 2 weeks earlier and asked him what he thought I should do. He said, “Call the guys in the field. The field loves you.” This was at around 10:00 am.
So I called every senior salesperson I knew—and asked them to call the CEO on my behalf. All I asked was that I be treated fairly.
At 2:00 pm, the head of HR called me to say that the CEO had gotten the message and my “little campaign” worked—I could “call off my dogs.”
I negotiated an equitable severance package and a transition job within the organization.
The answer will short – since China doesn’t want to attack USA and USA lost every single war that it started what is it to be affraid off. Plus China has almost 1.5 Billion people while 80% of Americans age 17–24 are unfit for millitary service.
I can’t keep this A SECRET anymore.
Love him or hate him, this is his harsh statement about what the Republicans did to him. But the big thing is that he is taking the “levers of control” away from the Republican party, and hijacking their most popular policies. Perhaps… he will run for office.
Keep this thought in mind.
Makes you think…
Yup.
Here’s a better meme…
The Human Horizons HiPhi Z Is Pure Science Fiction
The United States has always exercised technological hegemony, using various means to suppress foreign companies that surpass American enterprises or pose a threat to them. This has been the case with Japan’s semiconductor industry, French energy giants, and others.
In the era of 5G, Huawei is leading in 5G technology, with the highest number of patents globally and being the only company capable of providing end-to-end 5G services. Moreover, its 5G chip technology is also leading globally.
As a result the U.S has repeatedly modified chip rules not only limiting the shipment of American chip companies such as Qualcomm but also restricting chip companies that use American Technology such as TSMC and ASML from Shipping chips to China.
Chinese companies such as Huawei have accelerated the development of self-designed and self-produced chips and have also started developing chips based on RISCV to reduce their Reliance on American chips and other products.
Data shows that after the U.S restricted chip shipments Chinese domestic companies reduced their import of chips by more than 97 billion pieces in 2022 and it is expected that this number will exceed 50 billion pieces in the first six months of this year.
SMIC has announced that it will have a production capacity of over 700 000 equivalent eight-inch Wafers by the end of this year which will be used to manufacture various types of chips it is expected that the capital expenditure for this year will exceed 6.6 billion dollars mainly for capacity expansion and process Improvement.
However unexpectedly the U.S Japan and the Netherlands have signed a tripartite agreement to further restrict the shipment of advanced semiconductor equipment Japan will begin to restrict the shipment of over 23 types of semiconductor equipment from mid-July the Netherlands has also officially announced that it will restrict the shipment of certain models of lithography machines which will take effect on September 1st by then DUV lithography Machines of the 2000i and subsequent models will be unable to be shipped.
However the Netherlands and ASML have emphasized that although the tripartite agreement restricts the shipment of certain models of DUV lithography machines the 1980i and earlier models of lithography machines can still be shipped with a single exposure accuracy of 38 nanometers, however Chinese domestically produced lithography machines have already achieved a breakthrough of 90 nanometers and can be fully utilized for manufacturing mature processed chips.
Shanghai microelectronics 28 nanometers Precision lithography machine has also achieved technical validation with mass production expected in the near future the key is that Chinese manufacturers are accelerating the expansion of Chip production using processes below 28 nanometers and the required lithography machine models that ASML cannot ship.
This will also accelerate the breakthroughs made by Chinese manufacturers as a result some European media outlets have stated that it is all over as the U.S further restricts ASML’s shipment of lithography machines.
This not only accelerates China’s breakthroughs but also causes European chip and semiconductor companies to lose further advantages. First of all Europe does not have an inherent advantage in the field of Chip and semiconductor globally with only a few outstanding companies such as ASML, ARM and St microelectronics.
After the modification of Chip rules, even ARM and St microelectronics are no longer able to ship their products freely, only ASML can still ship certain models of DUV lithography machines.
Now with ASML being further restricted in its shipments this is not good news for the European semiconductor industry, moreover most American chip and semiconductor companies can still continue to ship their products Qualcomm can continue to ship 4G chips while the extension of Nvidia’s shipping permit may become a settled matter, companies such as Lam Research and Clack have received clarification notices on the rules and can still ship their related products.
Secondly after the modification of Chip rules Huawei announced its comprehensive entry into the Chip and semiconductor field and invested heavily in China’s domestic chip industry chain through high silicon burning through 440 billion yuan. In three years Huawei has not only established a complete mobile phone industry chain in China, but achieved the localization of EDA tools of 14 nanometers and above and has collaborated with SMIC to accelerate the localization of advanced processes to reduce dependence on American Technology.
This has already caused ASML’s market share in China to fall from 14 to 8 percent and after the signing of the tripartite agreement the reactions of Chinese companies such as Huawei and SMIC have been relatively calm, indicating that Chinese manufacturers have already achieved significant breakthroughs in the lithography machine industry.
The key is that the president of ASML has stated that if further restrictions are imposed ASML’s market share in China will continue to decline and it may even withdraw from the Chinese market.
Shenzhen known as the Silicon Valley of China is home to a large number of high-tech companies such as Huawei Tencent and ZTE as well as over 4 000 startups that conduct research experimentation and production in the city.
China is not powerless, almost all tasks that high-end chips can perform can also be accomplished by old-fashioned chips albeit at the cost of higher power consumption greater material consumption and higher costs such as using two chips instead of one the Chinese chip industry can find a way to cope with sanctions and it is impossible to control all the chips in the world including military Aerospace and high-tech chips.
If there are 10 000 chips a Chinese company with international business will always be able to obtain some, although it may have to go through three different countries.
Chinese Scholars like Xin Yuching who teaches at the national Graduate Institute for policy studies in Tokyo are optimistic that China will be able to manufacture high-end chips on its own in the future sanctions will force Chinese companies to conduct their own research and development and invest more time and money.
Recently The Institute of semiconductors of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced the development of a highly integrated Optical convolution processor according to calculations Optical Computing has the advantages of high bandwidth low latency and low power consumption its processing speed is 1.5 to 10 times faster than Nvidia’s GPU chips.
More importantly Optical chips do not require photolithography for production so there is no bottleneck problem this is not just a case of overtaking on a Bend but a complete change of Direction in addition Optical chips are expected to avoid the data type problem that exists in the Von Neumann Computing paradigm.
In the past due to the existence of Moore’s Law it was very difficult to upgrade processor performance and Chip processes had to be reduced by at least half every two years this means that if China is currently producing 28 nanometers chips it will take at least 10 years to catch up with TMSC’s two nanometers.
However replacing the steam engine was never about building a better steam engine replacing the horse-drawn carriage was not about building a faster horse-drawn carriage and replacing chips will not be about building more compact chips the progress made by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Optical chip technology can be said to be the last step in commercialization and the biggest step in maximizing profits it not only has the potential to influence the global layout of the optical chip industry but may even be the key to the next era.
Cowgirl in the Sand (epic!) – Neil Young & Promise of the Real
This has got to be one of the coolest versions of this song I have ever heard. 19 Minutes of pure jamming bliss.
I wasn’t actually snooping; my husband asked me to check his Facebook messages. He’d been trying to reconnect with some old friends from the police department he’d worked in years ago.
The first message was from an old, old girlfriend (they were 15 at the time). She had hired a private detective to find him, and couldn’t, so she confessed in a message she’d always been in love with him, and wanted to see him. She didn’t care he was married; SHE was, too, but was willing to leave her husband if he would leave me.
My husband had responded perfectly. “Debbie, we were 15. We dated for 6 months. I’m sorry, but I didn’t and don’t love you. I never will. As a matter of fact, what you did to try to find me was disturbing, especially since it states on my profile that I’m married. I think you may want to talk to someone about it.
To top it all off, you’re disrespecting my wife, whom I love with my entire soul, your husband, and me. How would you feel if my wife was doing the same thing with your husband? Please don’t contact me again. Get some help, and move on.”
I can see why he didn’t say anything to me. He knows I probably would have lost my shit on her. She had stopped messaging him, and it was done. I’m actually glad he didn’t tell me. He responded the exact way I would’ve had it happened to me.
I wish I hadn’t seen it, only because if we ever run into her, I’ll probably be calling my bondsman again.
kraftwerk – Radioactivity (Original Version)
Vinegar Grilled Chicken
Prep: 10 min | Marinate: 4 hr | Cook: 10 min | Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
2/3 cup water
2/3 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh-ground black pepper
2 tablespoons garlic salt
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon hot sauce
3 tablespoons butter, melted
4 (10 ounce) bone-in chicken breast halves
Instructions
Place the water, vinegar, pepper, salt, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce and melted butter into a large, resealable plastic bag. Shake to combine ingredients, then add chicken, seal, and shake to coat. Place in refrigerator to marinate for at least 4 hours.
Heat an outdoor grill for medium-high heat, and lightly oil the grate.
Remove chicken from marinade, and shake off excess. Discard remaining marinade.
Cook on preheated grill until no longer pink in the center; about 10 minutes per side.
Notes
To make this chicken roadside-style, use boneless chicken tenderloins and brush with barbecue sauce the final minutes of grilling.
Man! I stock groceries and build and repair furniture for people. I wear out a few sets of knee pads every year and shaking my hand feels like grabbing a stack of sand paper.
What a day’s work looks like for me:
You know what I say when people ask what I do for a living?
“Oh, I have a great job! I stock groceries and do a little custom woodworking on the side.”
And I mean it. I have a great job. My workshop is in my backyard, and my grocery job is one mile from my house. I have no commute.
I have a regular schedule. I get eight hours of sleep every night and plenty of exercise.
I make plenty enough money. I never worry about my bills. I save plenty for retirement.
I get to work with no stress around mostly friendly people. I stay active and on my feet all day. It keeps me healthy and trim. The work I do is necessary and purposeful.
I have plenty of time for my family and hobbies.
I spent many years climbing the corporate ladder. I was tired and stressed out and couldn’t be there for my family. That sucked.
Now I do needful work well, and I’m happy doing it, and I’m doing well. What’s there to be ashamed of?
I am sure that people see my knee pads, and my shredded work gloves, and the sawdust all over my jacket and look down on me. I can handle that. I don’t really even think about it.
We NEED custodians, my friend. You are supporting yourself with honest, good work that I’m sure has many enviable upsides. Hold your head up.
“The Worst President in the Last 100 Years” – Victor Davis Hanson
President Bidean actually attended the same university as I did. WTF?
I have never seen (in person) a punch kill or a boot in the butt. I have seen a man kicked in the face who then died right there on the spot. It was a bar fight on a street called Clay Morgan Alley in St Louis. I was a Patrolman working an overtime shift walking a foot beat on the gaslight entertainment district down by the river. There was an altercation where a man fell down to the ground on his back. One of the three people attacking him kicked him in the face before I could get to them. By the time I ran the 20 feet to the victim he was already dying from a massive skull fracture. He had a strange breathing pattern people do right as they die. I think it’s called “agonal breathing” if my Paramedic training decades ago is correctly remembered. His head felt like a bag of skin holding many pieces of broken pottery in the rear particularly. The people that killed him had a good laugh and though they would just get the night in jail for fighting. Intoxication in public or something minor. They had all had priors for assault and wealthy parents got that them off every time. Fine paid. Probation.
I still remember the happiness it brough me to go into the separate rooms they were being held in and telling these smug little trust fund babies that the victim had been pronounced dead with cause of death being homicide by blunt object to the skull. It was a glorious feeling of schadenfreude watching their “my daddy will have you fired and sue you” attitudes of mockery and laughing disappear into blind panic. The possible sentence guidelines would mean they were looking at up to 20 years to life in Maximum Security. I know that sounds really unprofessional to feel that but it was one of the few times I really had to watch myself because I was so angry. My Partner who was a couple blocks away and wasn’t as emotionally involved because he didn’t see it go down. He sensed my frame of mind and took over booking. We would step in and let the other one cool off when we thought the other was reaching their limits. For some reason only one of us would be feed up and aggravated at a time if it happened.
Anyway….the victim was black and the Feds almost piled on with another 20 to life in Federal for Violation of Civil Rights but the campaign contributions to the right politicians put the brakes on that. There was a good case for it being racially motivated. What first drew my attention and made me take a few steps to look down the alley was someone yelling a racial slur as they attacked him. Witness also heard them talking before the assault began inside about how “Boomers wasn’t a Nigger bar”. I’m often critical the FBI but they did step up on this case and fought the Eastern District US Attorney to have the case go federal to no avail. Normally it would require the sacrifice of a goat to summon divine intervention and get them to work a case that didn’t involve Muslims or terrorism. They were right with me lock step trying to get it in front of a Grand Jury that was currently impaneled. The families had too much political power to get it done. They were big campaign donors and had a lot of pull. The media took no interest so we had no leverage.
Not the incident but this is almost exactly the type of kick I saw. Running start…full force on an unconcious prone kid. ^
The 3 people who were involved were all arrested by me for 2nd Degree Murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment. They pled guilty to Manslaughter and each got 8 years in Potosi Prison of which they served 6 before being paroled.
I only know that because I attended the yearly parole hearings to give a vivid description of the murder to keep them in as long as possible. Autopsy photos and video of interrogations where two of them were laughing at what they had done. Like the whole thing was a joke and they said “wait until my Dad get’s here. His lawyers will sue you…etc”. They were text book bullies beating on a timid and small victim. I wanted to make sure they stayed in and had a page in their file requesting I be notified of any Parole hearings for the two that went to Max. The third was a follower and had some promise on not being a piece of shit his whole life so I didn’t involve myself in his case after conviction. He was transferred to minimum after a year. All three were the worst kind of “Frat Boys”. Wealthy. Privileged. Obnoxious. Thought they had the power to do literally anything. Their family name and fortunes would always save them. They lost a fortune in Defense Lawyers for sure.
The lead council for one of them I knew well and was good friends with. I got along with Defense Attorneys. I always root for the underdog and Public Defenders are the ultimate underdogs. I always had their clients by the balls with good evidence so they didn’t have much to work with. This friend though was a high priced lawyer. We went up against each other in several minor and two major cases. We had a mutual respect. I would never lie of obfuscate, be a hostile type witness on the stand. If I ever had the State or Feds lock me up he’s the typo of intellectual bulldog I would want in my corner. The Prosecutor knew they could walk in a trial with an OJ type dream team so he offered them a deal. They got the max they could get from the sentencing guidelines from the plea. One of those cases where the Judge is bursting to get to lay into the defendants at sentencing. It never made the news. There weren’t more than 12 people in the Court including me the Judge, Bailiff and Court Reporter. That bothered me. This hideous affair should have been on every TV in America and nobody took notice. Only a 1 inch column in the Metro section of the Post Dispatch the day after the attack. Just a blurb in the Metro crime B section below the fold. I have seen ads for Yard Sales with more words. The victim was a really good kid with a bright future. He was alive, happy and loved one minute and ancient anonymous history the next and the world took no notice.
I knew as soon as I saw that kick the victim wasn’t going to survive. It looked like an NFL kicker going for a 50 yard field goal type kick on an unconscious victim.
^ Above a view of Clay Morgan Alley crime scene. The incident took place at the far end just before the street intersection in front of Boomers nightclub. If you see the 3 lamps on the left (East side of the alley) look at the most distant of the three. I was standing just a few feet around that corner when I first heard it. It took place near the middle street lamp in the center of the alley. That is the parking lot for the Arch in the background. That parking lot is Federal Property. I shit you not that I know of a case where a kid was arrested for Marijuana in that exact garage by Federal Park Rangers….. and got more time than the killers in this case. Probably served damn near the whole sentence too as there is no Federal Parole.
Answers like this bring it all back vividly. I write here so people better understand what Policing is like. I appreciate it when people feel informed or took something away from the writing. The positive feedback I suppose keeps me doing it. When you see people comment or up vote etc it does make me feel like there is some kind of purpose in it and it is therapeutic to write about some of these things. Anyway…thanks for the feedback everyone. The comments are usually the most interesting part of my answers IMO.
I know I shouldn’t have done this, but I am 83 years old and I was in the McDonald’s drive-through this morning and the young lady behind me leaned on her horn and started mouthing something because I was taking too long to place my order.
So when I got to the first window I paid for her order along with my own.
The cashier must have told her what I’d done because as we moved up she leaned out her window and waved to me and mouthed “Thank you.”, obviously embarrassed that I had repaid her rudeness with kindness.
When I got to the second window I showed them both receipts and took her food too. Now she has to go back to the end of the queue and start all over again.
Don’t blow your horn at old people, they have been around a long time.🤣
Since 1978, China has opened its arms and actively integrated into the global division of labor system, which has greatly benefited the development of China itself and the world. In 2022, China and South Korea jointly celebrated the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea. For 31 years, friendly cooperation and mutual benefit have always been the mainstream of PRC-ROK relations. The economic and trade cooperation between the two countries continues to deepen. In 2022, the economic and trade volume between China and South Korea reached 362.3 billion U.S. dollars, and South Korea surpassed Japan to become China’s second largest trading partner.
This series of tangible achievements not only brought great benefits to the two countries and the two peoples, but also provided a stable guarantee for the peaceful development and prosperity of the region. China and South Korea are the important neighbors of each other and mutually beneficial partners and have many good development opportunities. It is the consensus of the people. China and South Korea must proceed from the fundamental interests of the two countries, adhere to mutual respect, especially respect the core interests of each other, eliminate external interference, properly handle differences, and promote the continuous development of China-ROK relations and bilateral cooperation.
One of the core interests of China is the Taiwan issue. The Taiwan issue is the most important core interest of China, and it is a red line that cannot be crossed. In recent years, out of domestic political needs, some U.S. politicians have been manipulating various Taiwan-related issues, exacerbating tensions in Sino-U.S. relations. The only one purpose for what the US does is to use Taiwan as a pawn to implement an anti-China and containment strategy to maintain US hegemony.
The one-China principle is the general consensus of the international community and the basic norm of international relations. It is also the premise and basis for China to establish and develop diplomatic relations with countries around the world, including South Korea. Thus, it is better for the two countries to keep the close economic ties between China and South Korea without provocation.
The recovery and development of China’s economy will bring greater development opportunities to all the neighboring countries including South Korea. However, in recent years, in order to serve their own self-interest, some countries have promoted unilateralism and protectionism under the pretext of so-called economic security, created closed and exclusive small circles, and clamored for decoupling and breaking the chain. That has seriously disrupted the normal operation of the global production and supply chain and seriously damaged the development interests of countries around the world, including China and South Korea.
China is different from those countries and implements the dual cycle, a development pattern in which the domestic market and the international market are better connected by giving full play to the potential of domestic demand, rather than a closed domestic cycle. With the utmost sincerity, China will carry out mutually beneficial cooperation with countries all over the world to achieve common development and progress.
In summary, how the export recovery of South Korea could be is up to the South Korean government and solely depends on the clever behaviors and the choice of the South Korean government. The Koreans act as if they don’t understand why.
Did Biden Fall Asleep During Meeting w/ Israeli President?
During a recent joint press event at the White House with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, U.S. President Joe Biden mumbled through a portion of his comments about U.S.-Israeli relations, leading many online to conclude that the Commander in Chief had nodded off briefly. He probably didn’t, but still…
I was out having a drink with a friend of mine in Brixham. Towards the end of the night, my friend was just carrying a couple of pints across from the bar to our table when a large bloke, not looking where he was going banged straight into him.
My friend, being the man he is, immediately apologised. But despite it being actually his fault, the guy was having none of it as he said that his shirt and trousers had been ruined by my friends beer. As he squared up to my friend, another two of the blokes mates (equally as large as the first) joined in the argument and made the mistake of laying hands on my friend.
By the time I had walked across, he had already taken them up on their offer to ‘Take it outside’. The first big guy led the way. My friend followed, only pausing momentarily to pick a cardboard menu off a table as he left. With the blokes two mates behind, carrying bottles of beer which I imagined they may have been expecting to use as weapons.
As I watched them leave, I immediately got on my mobile and phoned for an ambulance. The guy next to me turned and said to me “An ambulance? Shouldn’t you be helping your mate instead? “. “Oh”, I said smiling. “It’s not for him….anyway there’s only three of them. “
The thing is that I knew something that the three local big guys didn’t and that was that my friend was a retired CQC (Close Quarters Combat) instructor with the Royal Marines at Lympstone. He was trained not only in martial arts but weapons and tactics too. The bullies had bottles, but in my friends skilled hands a tightly rolled up cardboard menu was as good as having an iron bar.
By the time I got outside moments later, there was just a lot of broken glass and the three big guys were all in various crumpled heaps on the floor. My friend was just standing smiling rubbing his jaw.
“I must be getting slow in my old age” he said “One of them actually managed to land a punch”.
The U.S Military just got a HUGE wake up call and it’s bad
Look how big is Moscow’s (erstwhile) McDonald’s now known as Big Hit after McDonald’s got de-branded.
Russia’s McDonald’s replacement says it’s serving 2 million customers a day. Its CEO said that it has sold more than 24 million “Big Hits,” its Big Mac dupe, since opening.
Russian population stands at 143 million. Business as usual with a new logo and similar menu.
Alexander Govor, the Russian businessman who bought the former McDonald’s sites, told that the new company was opening restaurants slightly faster than planned and hoped to have more than 900 by the end of the year.
Most of the menu is made with the same ingredients and equipment as when it was McDonald’s.
The B-52’s – Rock Lobster (Countdown 1980)
Jamaica V.S the U.S.A Diplomatic Row: The Implications of refusing a diplomat’s Same-Sex Spouse
In this video we will explore the conflict brewing between Jamaica and the United States over Jamaica’s decision to deny diplomatic immunity and privileges, to the spouse of an American diplomat due to their same-sex relationship.
Originally Answered: What was the hardest thing you went through in life and how did you get past that?
I was repeatedly raped by a neighbor when I was 7 years old. I didn’t want my mother to find out, because she was a single mother working 3 jobs to support me and my brother and she cried enough as it was. We lived in a trailer that had holes in the floor so that sometimes raccoons and opossums would climb through. I was scared of them. The carpet was infested with fleas. I usually had flea bites all over my body. I never felt clean. We got clothes from Goodwill but they were usually old, faded, and stained. My mother did the best she could but we were all alone in the world. We lived in a rural area that was unforgiving of those who deviated from “the norm.” My mother tried to baptize me when I was a baby, only to be turned away by the local preacher because I was “a bastard.” We were not welcome in their churches, which were an important part of rural life there. I didn’t have friends at school. I was “weird” “dirty” “ugly” “too quiet” etc. Even most of the teachers looked at me and my brother in disgust. We were “the XXX family.”
I grew up with the understanding that I was worthless. That I should be ashamed of who I am. I barely said a word through most of my childhood. I didn’t say a word to anyone when they pushed me around, taunted me endlessly, beat up my brother and I. I never said a word when my neighbor (who, interestingly, was widely regarded as an outstanding member of society) raped me.
I led a very solitary life. My mother was usually gone at work, my brother would devote himself to his own activities, and there I was. I remember I would sit outside of my home and pretend to be a rock, because rocks didn’t feel anything and they certainly didn’t cry. They were indestructible, I thought.
I overheard one of the other little girls discussing the prayer they said before bedtime and I resolved to remember it. It went like this – As I lay down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I shall die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
I thought about this prayer for the rest of the day, until I went home and decided on my own version: Dear God, I don’t want to live anymore. There are other people begging you to keep them alive. Let me take their place. I’ll die. I was about 8 years old.
But I didn’t die, much to my dismay. I woke up the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. The days went by. My situation didn’t greatly improve, people weren’t much nicer to me, and my life didn’t get easier. But I got stronger. I discovered books as a way to escape from my tedious existence and by the time I was in 5th grade, I was reading at a college level.
I grew up and gained control over my life. I was no longer the defenseless, powerless victim I had been as a child. I had power. I could do whatever I wanted. I got a job. I studied hard so I could go to a good college. I escaped from my small, unforgiving town.
I have a good job now and good relationships. People who know me now would never guess I was once that hungry, miserable, terrified, beaten down little girl I had been back then.
As for my family, my mother still lives in that trailer. My neighbor is long dead. My older brother still lives with my mother. He has never gotten a driver’s license or a job. He doesn’t leave the house very often. A part of me understands his reluctance – why let the world do you more harm when it has already done so much? But I wish he would take the chance. I feel sad that our childhood all but destroyed him.
If you want to know how to get through hard things, my answer is probably inadequate, but it is the best I have to offer. My answer is: keep going.
Do Our Pets Go to Heaven? | NDE Compilation
China rejects ‘Iron Curtain’ or ‘Silicon Curtain’ imposed by the US upon the world, warns against ‘an eye for an eye’ — Chinese Ambassador to the US
On July 19, 2023, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng attended the Aspen Security Forum at invitation, and had a fireside chat with Steve Clemons, Founding Editor-at-large of Semafor. Ambassador Xie elaborated on China’s policies and positions on China-U.S. relations, China’s intention in development, the Taiwan question, U.S. technological suppression of China and other issues.
On the China-U.S. relationship, Ambassador Xie said that China-U.S. relations are facing serious difficulties and challenges. Recently, there have been some reflections in the United States about its China policy. Our two countries have had a series of high-level communication, which were candid, in-depth and constructive. In particular, the two sides have agreed on implementing the important common understanding reached between President Xi Jinping and President Biden in Bali. This offers a rare opportunity for stabilizing the relationship. But the opportunity has not come easy, the foundation remains fragile, and challenges still abound. We must cherish and sustain the momentum. President Xi Jinping has outlined three principles: mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation. They represent the fundamental and right way for China and the United States to get along in the new era. We hope the U.S. side will work with China in the same direction to stabilize and improve our relations.
First, shorten the negative list to clear obstacles and manage differences with concrete actions. It is important to properly handle important and sensitive issues such as the Taiwan question in line with the principles of the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques, stop sanctioning Chinese entities and individuals, and prevent “black swans” or “gray rhinos” from disrupting or rattling China-US relations again. President Biden stated that the United States does not seek to change China’s system, does not support “Taiwan independence” , and has no intention to decouple from China or to halt China’s economic development. The U.S. side needs to translate these statements into concrete actions.
Second, expand the positive list to enhance dialogue and cooperation in good faith. We can start with concrete, small steps to inject more positive energy into China-U.S. relations: for instance, to increase passenger flights, adjust the China travel advisory, renew the China-U.S. agreement on cooperation in science and technology, revive MECEA programs to encourage congressional members and staff to visit China, hold the Tourism Leadership Summit, and facilitate visa application and border entry for students, scholars, tourists, business people and others. China and the United States once had over 100 dialogue and exchange mechanisms. But they have been stalled by the U.S. side since 2018. Our two peoples have been waiting too long. If it is difficult to resume all, can we start with 50, or at least 30?
Third, seek out supporters of China-U.S. relations. Joint efforts are needed to bring China-U.S. relations gradually back to the right track.
Ambassador Xie said that the so-called “political correctness” has permeated American society. Over the past month and more since his arrival, he has been talking to people from various sectors. He can feel that there are many supporters of China-US relations, but they are under pressure. They are becoming reticent under the chilling effect. Few want to express different opinions amid the anti-China chorus.
Ambassador Xie said that an American netizen left him a comment on Twitter: “I hope you find some allies; there are a few hiding in the darkness afraid of being crushed.” A sound and stable China-U.S. relationship is in the common interests of both countries. It is also the shared expectation of the international community. So the third priority is to seek them out. “I am one, but we are many,” said Ambassador Xie. He called on all to pitch in, and work together to bring China-U.S. relations gradually back to the right track.
On China’s intention in development, Ambassador Xie said that the Chinese people are the most friendly people in the world. Assertiveness is never our tradition. Invasion or pursuit of hegemony is not in our DNA. We have facilitated the resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Our purpose is to inspire more countries in the region to shake hands and embrace peace, and to make greater contribution to world peace, stability and prosperity.
When meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Blinken in Beijing recently, President Xi Jinping emphasized that the Earth is large enough for China and the United States to develop respectively and prosper together. China respects U.S. interests and does not seek to challenge or displace the United States. In the same vein, the United States needs to respect China and must not hurt China’s legitimate rights and interests. China does not intend to challenge or displace anyone. Instead of outcompeting others, our focus is on outdoing ourselves. The “Thucydides Trap” is not a historical inevitability. The world has changed. The international community should have the wisdom to look beyond this, say goodbye to the Cold War mentality, bloc confrontation and zero-sum game, pursue win-win cooperation, and jointly prevent a major-country conflict.
Ambassador Xie said that a friend asked him: what kind of flower will grow out of China?This is his answer: it will be a flower of peace, cooperation and common development. It will be as beautiful and sweet as peonies and roses.
On the Taiwan question, Ambassador Xie emphasized that Taiwan is China’s Taiwan. It is an inalienable part of China’s territory. This is the first thing we need to bear in mind when handling Taiwan-related issues. No one cherishes more than the Chinese side peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. And no one wishes more for peaceful reunification than us. There are two biggest threats to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait now. First, the Taiwan authorities are seeking U.S. support for their independence agenda. They have refused to recognize the 1992 Consensus, and even denied their Chinese identity. Second, some forces in the United States are trying to use Taiwan to contain China. They have emboldened adventurism and provocation by “Taiwan independence” separatists. The path they are taking is very dangerous. This is something we should guard against.
The Taiwan question is the most important and sensitive question in China-U.S. relations. The U.S. side should take concrete actions to deliver on President Biden’s statement that the United States does not support “Taiwan independence”. The most fundamental thing is to return to the one-China principle; the most important is to abide by the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques; and the most pressing is to oppose adventurism and provocation by “Taiwan independence” separatists. The top priority now is to stop Lai Ching-te’s visit to the United States, which is like a “gray rhino” charging at us.
On U.S. technological suppression of China, Ambassador Xie pointed out that China opposes waging trade war or technological war under the pretext of competition. China never shies away from competition. But the “competition” defined by the United States is unfair. First, the United States is trying to win by keeping China out. For instance, it has banned Huawei for unfounded national security concerns, even though the company offered to sign a “no-backdoor” agreement. How can we compete without being present? Second, the United States is rallying allies to encircle China. Is there any respect for the one-on-one rule of the game? Third, the United States prohibits exports of equipment making chips smaller than 14 nanometers to China. This is like forcing others to wear outdated swimsuits in a swimming contest while one wears a Speedo fastskin himself. Is this fair play?
As a Chinese saying goes, “We never make provocation, but we will not flinch from any provocation coming our way.” We oppose both iron curtain and silicon curtain. And we are the last to want a tit-for-tat cycle. So far, over 1,300 Chinese entities and individuals are on US sanction lists. As a result, many Chinese workers have been forced out of job, and their families suffered greatly. The Chinese people will not remain silent, and the Chinese government will not sit idly by.
Ambassador Xie also stated China’s principled position on Ukraine, China-Russia relations and climate change. He pointed out that China has always promoted talks for peace on the Ukraine issue, and its position is gaining increasing understanding and support. Russia is China’s biggest neighbor, and the two countries share a border of over 4,000 kilometers. It is only natural for the two sides to maintain good neighborly relations and normal trade. On climate change, China and the United States have vast potentials for cooperation. It is important to stick to the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. The Untied States and other developed countries should take concrete actions to honor their commitment to supporting developing countries.
The Aspen Security Forum is a biannual event held by the Aspen Institute, in Aspen in summer and Washington D.C. in winter respectively. The current forum will be held from July 18-21. It has broad influence in the United States and worldwide. Over 400 delegates attended the forum, including senior U.S. officials like Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the President Jake Sullivan, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency William Burns, and Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield; former U.S. dignitaries, renowned entrepreneurs, think tanks, scholars, journalists and international political figures from the United Kingdom, France, Kenya and Israel. Ambassador Xie Feng’s remarks during the forum attracted great attention and were widely covered by American and international media outlets. They were warmly received by various sectors of American society.
Spicy Chicken Phyllo Rolls
Chicken, sour cream, raisins and spices come together in flaky phyllo rolls with this recipe.
Prep: 30 min | Bake: 30 min | Yield: 32 small rolls
Ingredients
1 cup chicken broth
1 bottle Mexican beer
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup onion, cut into 1/2 inch dice
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon cumin, ground
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup sour cream (or plain yogurt)
1/4 cup raisins
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 (9 x 14 inch) rolls Athens® Phyllo Dough, thawed
Instructions
Thaw two rolls of phyllo dough, following thawing instructions on package.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a medium skillet, bring broth and beer to a boil. Add chicken breasts, then lower heat and simmer, for 7 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Dice chicken into 1/2 inch cubes.
In another medium skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium heat. Add garlic, onion, curry, coriander, and cayenne pepper, and cook for 5 minutes or until onions are tender. Remove from heat and let cool.
In a large bowl, combine chicken, onion mixture, sour cream, raisins, brown sugar, and salt and pepper to taste.
Unroll and cover phyllo with plastic wrap and then a slightly damp towel to prevent drying out. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter with 2 tablespoons oil. Layer 5 phyllo sheets, brushing each with the butter–oil mixture.
Cut the width of layered phyllo into 4 strips. Place about 1 tablespoon of filling at one end of phyllo strip, leaving 1 inch from end and 1/2 inch from each side free of any filling. Fold phyllo up over the filling to form a roll. Fold side edges in to enclose the sides. Roll up to the end of phyllo strip. Brush outside of roll with butter–oil mixture. Repeat process three times to make 30 rolls.
Bake seam side down, at least 1 inch apart, on ungreased cookie sheet or baking pan in preheated 350 degrees F oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
Notes
Serve with plain yogurt or your favorite jarred chutneys such as Sherwood’s Green Label Mango and Ginger Chutney and Swad Coriander Chutney.
Exactly like I said in one of my previous answers :—Electric Vehicles were the biggest WinnerRetail Consumption came secondGreen Energy took the third placeFixed Asset Investment took the fourth place (Railways etc)Shipping was a surprising fifth place winnerServices took Sixth Place
These Sectors grew between 6% to 11% this quarter (1/4/23–30/6/23)
They contributed to 18.67 Trillion Yuan ($ 2.91 Trillion) in the last two quarters or around 30% of China’s GDP
In 2019 they compared to around 13% of China’s GDP
Ironically Exports ended up on the whole with a near 4% growth which was pretty surprising
Meanwhile the losers :—Real Estate as expected was the biggest loserIndustrial Manufacturing came secondCommercial Banking came thirdRetail Investments came fourthConstruction came fifth
These Sectors grew by less than 2% or contracted by upto 10% in this Quarter YOY
They contributed 25.85 Trillion to the Chinese Economy ($ 4.15 Trillion) in the last two quarters contributing to around 42% of China’s GDP
In 2019 they contributed to 51% of China’s GDP
Industrial Manufacturing is the only worrisome issue
Real Estate was already a bloated bubble and China already made it clear that by 2030 it’s contribution to the GDP shouldn’t be more than 6% instead of 16% in 2016 at its peak
Commercial Banking is entirely linked to real estate. Commercial Banks gained 207 Billion Yuan and lost 139 Billion Yuan finishing with a cumulative 68 Billion Yuan profit or 4.27% profit
In 2019 it was 8.66%
So that’s a nearly 50% fall in profit in 5 years
Still it will rise as alternate investments pick up steam
Construction fell in China by 13% but grew in BRI by 10.6% and so the total contraction was only 2.4%
It will rise as BRI begins to open up newer projects
So China is mostly on track except for Industrial Manufacturing
Global Demand is weak and Chinese Workforce is not keen on factory jobs anymore
Thanks to the Common Prosperity program, Chinese want to go back to villages and small towns instead of the other way round
They flooded cities to escape poverty in the 2000s
Now they want to go back to the rural life and become farmers instead of low grade factory workers
I was fired from a law firm. No I wasn’t a lawyer. Not by a long shot. I worked in the file room. I was in my early 20’s. Back then I wasn’t really looking beyond my next pay check.
I also would chauffeur the senior partner around in his Mercedes sedan. He turned out to be a great mentor of mine. His name was Bob. One day, in between phone calls, Bob asked me how I was doing, I told him that I was doing great! Thanks!
And that’s when it happened. He fired me…sort of. He said, “Keith you’re fired!”
I was shocked. I asked him why?
He said ” Keith, I see you working in the file room, Xerox room. Answering phones. Delivering the mail. Driving me around. Going and getting lunches!
I still didn’t understand.
“That’s why I’m firing you. Keith you’re too damn smart to be working here doing the things you’re doing. So I’m going to force you to do something else. Go back to school. Learn a trade. Apply yourself. Start a business. I’m giving you two weeks notice. You have two weeks!”
For several days I thought about it. I thought that if I just worked hard enough someone would notice it and promote me. But that’s not how it always is.
I had always wanted to go to tech school, but didn’t think I was smart enough (that’s another story!). I decided to check some of them out.
I enrolled at ITT Tech. A week later I went to Bob and I told him about ITT and could I please keep my job at least until I graduated. It was a two year course. I was worried about how I was going to fit school and work together. Bob told me ” Keith I’m very proud of you. As long as you’re going to school AND making good progress you can work here! And also tell Barbara (the HR manager) that Bob said that you can work any hours you’d like to in order to accommodate your schedule!
What a fantastic man Bob was! He impacted my life in a big way. Two years later I graduated with highest honors at the top of my class. I was immediately hired by tech giant at the time, Honeywell. I rose through the ranks quickly and eventually became an Engineer. Ten years I started my first “dot.com” business. And three years after that I sold my first company in a multi million dollar deal.
That was the first, and only time, I got fired. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Unfortunately Bob (RIP) passed away a few years after that story happened from cancer. A young man of 43. At his funeral we heard stories about all of the people that Bob helped behind the scenes. His firm Frandzel, Csato, Robbins and Bloom is still around. One of the attorneys Ron Gruzen worked there. I used to deliver his mail to him, copy papers and stuff. Today, 40 years later Ron Gruzen is my attorney, negotiating settlement deals, real estate transactions and a host of other business and personal legal matters for me! Ron and I laugh all the time about how far I’ve come and we reminisce about the old days at Bob Frandzel’s law firm!
Explaining the United States Today
“Put a rat in a cage and give it 2 water bottles. One is just water and one is water laced with heroin or cocaine. The rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself in a couple of weeks”.
That is our theory of addiction.
Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It has nothing to do. Let’s try this a bit differently.” So he built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything a rat could want is in Rat Park. Lovely food. Lots of sex. Other rats to befriend. Colored balls. Plus both water bottles, one with water and one with drugged water.
But here’s what’s fascinating: In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use it. None of them overdose. None of them use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction.
What Bruce did shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. The right-wing theory is that it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is that it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage.
Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
Now, we created a society where significant numbers of us can’t bear to be present in our lives without being on something, drink, drugs, sex, shopping… We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for many of us, more like the first cage than the bonded, connected cages we need.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things not people.
You are not a good consumer citizen if you spend your time bonding with the people around you and not stuff. In fact, we are trained from a young age to focus our hopes, dreams, and ambitions on things to buy and consume. Drug addiction is a subset of that.”
China has planted more trees than the rest of the world combined.
But here’s bloomberg painting it in a negative light.
But here’s the gist
The CCP planted 1 billion trees a total act of evil! Over a 40 year period and increased forest coverage from 12% to 22%. TOTALLY EVIL!!!
Bloomberg wrote a mostly negative article (the 1bn is wrong it’s actually 66bn) focusing on all sorts of problems including how a few million trees got infected with bugs.
They then claim because of wood exports some of the bugs infected the West:
“This allowed the beetle larvae to hitch rides to Europe and North America, where governments are now spending a fortune trying to control infestations.” Amazing! Even on what should be a neutral scientific article about China’s success in planting trees they need to pander to the anti China crowd and relate it to Covid spreading from China.
It was a photo op for the ages: a visibly well-disposed President Xi Jinping receiving centenarian “old friend of China” Henry Kissinger in Beijing.
Mirroring meticulous Chinese attention to protocol, they met at Villa 5 of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse – exactly where Kissinger first met in person with Zhou Enlai in 1971, preparing Nixon’s 1972 visit to China.
The Mr. Kissinger Goes to Beijing saga was an “unofficial”, individual attempt to try to mend increasingly fractious Sino-American relations. He was not representing the current American administration.
There’s the rub. Everyone involved in geopolitics is aware of the legendary Kissinger formulation: To be the US’s enemy is dangerous, to be the US’s friend is fatal. History abounds in examples, from Japan and South Korea to Germany, France and Ukraine.
As quite a few Chinese scholars privately argued, if reason is to be upheld, and “respecting the wisdom of this 100-years-old diplomat”, Xi and the Politburo should maintain the China-US relation as it is: “icy”.
After all, they reason, being the US’s enemy is dangerous but manageable for a Sovereign Civilizational State like China. So Beijing should keep “the honorable and less perilous status” of being a US enemy.
Luttwak, 80, may not be as visibly influential as Kissinger, but as a behind the scenes strategist he’s been advising the Pentagon across the spectrum for over five decades. His book on Byzantine Empire strategy, for instance, heavily drawing on top Italian and British sources, is a classic.
Luttwak, a master of deception, reveals precious nuggets in terms of contextualizing current Washington moves. That starts with his assertion that the US – represented by the Biden combo – is itching to do a deal with Russia.
That explains why CIA head William Burns, actually a capable diplomat, called his counterpart, SVR head Sergey Naryshkin (Russian Foreign Intelligence) to sort of straighten things up “because you have something else to worry about which is more unlimited”.
What’s “unlimited”, depicted by Luttwak in a Spenglerian sweep, is Xi Jinping’s drive to “get ready for war”. And if there’s a war, Luttwak claims that “of course” China would lose. That dovetails with the supreme delusion of Straussian neocon psychos across the Beltway.
Luttwak seems not to have understood China’s drive for food self-sufficiency: he qualifies it as a threat. Same for Xi using a “very dangerous” concept, the “rejuvenation of the Chinese people”: that’s “Mussolini stuff”, says Luttwak. “There has to be a war to rejuvenate China”.
The “rejuvenation” concept – actually better translated as “revival” – has been resonating in China circles at least since the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911. It was not coined by Xi. Chinese scholars point out that if you see US troops arriving in Taiwan as “advisors”, you would probably make preparations to fight too.
But Luttwak is on a mission: “This is not America, Europe, Ukraine, Russia. This is about ‘the sole dictator’. There is no China. There is only Xi Jinping,” he insisted.
And Luttwak confirms the EU’s Josep “Garden vs. Jungle” Borrell and European Commission dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen fully support his vision.
Luttwak, in just a few words, actually gives away the whole game: “The Russian Federation, as it is, is not strong enough to contain China as much as we would wish”.
Hence the turn around by the Biden combo to “freeze” the conflict in the Donbass and change the subject. After all, “if that [China] is the threat, you don’t want Russia to fall apart,” Luttwak reasons.
So much for Kissingerian “diplomacy.”
Let’s Declare a “Moral Victory” and Run Away
On Russia, the Kissinger vs. Luttwak confrontation reveals crucial cracks as the Empire faces an existential conflict it never did in the recent past.
The gradual, massive U-turn is already in progress – or at least the semblance of a U turn. US mainstream media will be entirely behind the U turn. And the naïve masses will follow. Luttwak is already voicing their deepest agenda: the real war is on China, and China “will lose”.
At least some non-neocon players around the Biden combo – like Burns – seem to have understood the Empire’s massive strategic blunder of publicly committing to a Forever War, hybrid and otherwise, against Russia on behalf of Kiev.
This would mean, in principle, that Washington can’t just walk away like it did in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yet Hegemons do enjoy the privilege to walk away: after all they exercise sovereignty, not their vassals. European vassals will be left to rot. Imagine those Baltic chihuahuas declaring war on Russia-China all by themselves.
The off-ramp confirmed by Luttwak implies Washington declaring some sort of “moral victory” in Ukraine – which is already controlled by BlackRock anyway – and then moving the guns towards China.
Yet even that won’t be a cakewalk, because China and the about-to-expand BRICS+ are already attacking the Empire at its foundation: dollar hegemony. Without it, the US itself will have to fund the war on China.
Chinese scholars, off the record, and exercising their millennia-old analytical sweep, observe this may be the last blunder the Empire ever made in its short history.
As one of them summarized it, “the empire has blundered itself to an existential war and, therefore, the last war of the empire. When the end comes, the empire will lie as usual and declare victory, but everyone else will know the truth, especially the vassals.”
And that brings us to former national security adviser Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s 180-degree turn shortly before he died, aligning him today with Kissinger, not Luttwak.
“The Grand Chessboard”, published in 1997, before the 9/11 era, argued that the US should rule over any peer competitor rising in Eurasia. Brzezinski did not live to see the living incarnation of his ultimate nightmare: a Russia-China strategic partnership. But already seven years ago – two years after Maidan in Kiev – at least he understood it was imperative to “realign the global power architecture”.
Destroying the “Rules-Based International Order”
The crucial difference today, compared to seven years ago, is that the US is incapable, per Brzezinski, to “take the lead in realigning the global power architecture in such a way that the violence (…) can be contained without destroying the global order.”
It’s the Russia-China strategic partnership that is taking the lead – followed by the Global Majority – to contain and ultimately destroy the hegemonic “rules-based international order”.
As the indispensable Michael Hudson has summarized it, the ultimate question at this incandescent juncture is “whether economic gains and efficiency will determine world trade, patterns and investment, or whether the post-industrial US/NATO economies will choose to end up looking like the rapidly depopulating and de-industrializing post-Soviet Ukraine and Baltic states or England.”
So is the wet dream of a war on China going to change these geopolitical and geoeconomics imperatives? Give us a -Thucydides – break.
The real war is already on – but certainly not one identified by Kissinger, Brzezinski and much less Luttwak and assorted US neocons.
Michael Hudson, once again, summarized it: when it comes to the economy, the US and EU “strategic error of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive, so total, that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.”
But before the war with China, perhaps a war with Mexico is “in the cards”…
How Mexico has become the “enemy” of America’s Republicans A growing number of them want to use military force against drug cartels
I'm honestly amazed that Republicans are willing to risk what hegemony the US has left over a misguided war.
Do they not realize how disastrous this will get. Refugee crisis, economic implosion, complete guerilla warfare, heat waves upon heat waves, etc.
This will end so badly that it'll make Afghanistan look like a minor hiccup. Tell me I'm wrong.
His father and mother both held Doctorates in Biophysics and Quantum Physics
He qualified by merit and a 173 LSAT score to study Law in Duke University
He worked at a Wall Street Firm and had licenses from NY and Washington DC
YET
He had to spend 4 years in Rural Anhui and Guanxi as a Volunteer and worked with Farmers, Drove a Truck, Acted as an accountant
Only then was he made a Deputy Provincial Head — the equivalent in India of a Panchayat Head or Councillor
Later he became Secretary of the District
He couldn’t deliver enough self sufficient villages and deliver a good performance
He WAS AXED IMMEDIATELY
Less that 2% knew he was Deng Xiaopings son when he was made Deputy Head
He called himself Zhuo Xifeng to avoid the Deng name until it came out eventually
That is China’s Meritocracy
No Free Lunches
No Papa Names
It’s always Performance and RESULTS
You need good education, You need solid performances and You need to be worthy of the party (No Homosexuality, No Philandering, No Perversions, No Drunkenness)
This is Shi Guanghui
Son of ordinary farmers
Scholarship winner to study Engineering in Tong Ji and a PE in Singapore and Canada
He served 5 years in the provinces , working as a distributor of food, harvester, drove pigs to the market, learnt about price controls
Later he rose through the ranks
No famous name
Responsible for ensuring Evergrandes Bubble was controlled fully
Responsible for ensuring Covid didn’t kill more than 40,000 people in Shanghai when it was estimated it would kill at least 300,000–400,000 people in Shanghai alone
Responsible for ensuring flow of medicines and food
Responsible for ensuring 6 Trillion of Bonds were absorbed profitably
He DELIVERED each time
He was REWARDED each time
His mentor?
HU JINTAO , who headed a rival faction against Xi Jingping
No Issues
No repercussions when Xi became the Secretary in 2012 instead of Lei Keiqang
Pure Meritocracy
Sheer unadulterated Meritocracy
If you have the ability, you will be rewarded
You know him of course
Son of a Prominent Party Official who lost favor in the old days
A Chemical Engineer who built four standalone processing plants with half the budget when people wanted him to fail
A Man who was exiled to the farthest provinces who made village after village self sufficient and profitable
Who travelled overseas and LEARNT about mechanisation of agriculture from US without any shame and didn’t say “We are the greatest in the world”. He shut up and learnt
Who Mechanised a whole province and raised output by 200% in 7 years
Finally they couldn’t ignore him and today he is
Xi Jingping Secretary of the CPC
He has earned his place
He has helped China grow by leaps and bounds
Every man in that room has done his part in China’s growth
Not Caste, Not Religion, Not marching with half shorts and a ridiculous cap, Not based on surname or Papa’s name,
China may not be a 100% Meritocracy but it’s still the best Meritocracy on EARTH
Doctors, Scientists, Researchers, Engineers, Teachers , hell even Laborers
All chosen based on pure ability
Four Tibetans , Graduates from MIT, Tsinghua and Caltech
Part of the Scientific Council in China
Not even Han Chinese
Reason?
Sheer Ability
China asks only two things :—
China first before religion and language
Loyalty to China and the Communist Party
Deliver this and China will ensure you are protected for life and develop to your best
Don’t deliver this and …you better run
Orson Welles | The 3rd Man (1949) Film-Noir, Thriller
From time to time, approximate every three years or so, I am “visited” (or make contact with) a “person”.
These people say there are one thing, but are actually something else. For instance, a massive “billion dollar company” that is looking for a COO, or a businessman who works in China, and so forth. On the surface, it is an “interview”, or a “friendly meeting”, or something along those lines.
Its all very nice and cordial, and I absolutely respect the people that I meet with. Without exception.
But, not everyone is what they say they are. For certain, I have been approached by the “five eyes” under one excuse or the other, as well as some other entities.
My hunt for the truth was interesting as to all the “dead ends ” that it generated. That is a story in itself, I’ll tell you what. A multi-billion dollar company that has no employees, tax records, or products???
Anyways…
The overall impression that I get is that they are providing a “courtesy visit”. To Check off a box or two on a form. It doesn’t matter what organization or nation that they represent, as this seems to be the over all impression. Just “checking up on me”. As they know that I have a “past”, but it is so HYPER-BLACK that they don’t know what I did or was involved with.
Not that it matters mind you.
I am either a threat, or not.
To this, I must add that …
They all KNOW that I was a W(U) – SAP “operator” for MAJ, (which is a branch of the ONI.) And I wiggled out of a retirement “cage”.
That they also recognize that I was “traded upstairs” to a more powerful and hidden organization (of some type) to do some (under-specified) tasks. No one knows the details of.
That I was properly “retired”. Closed off. Shut down. No longer in contact with anyone. Life in the USA is over.
That I am probably inert / neutered at this point in time, though reactivation is possible if unlikely.
That (as far as the “five eyes” are concerned), that I am out of their geographical pervue and thus not their concern, being relatively “harmless”.
That is my impression about the check-ups from the West. As far as my new home, and my love…
I am sure that China (intelligence) is aware of me. Though, to the massive bureaucracy, I am just an innocent foreigner.
Moreover, China considers me to be exactly what I say I am. They do not consider me to be a threat, but rather as a friendly “neutral”.
All in all, I’m like one of those footnotes at the end of a book. Useful if a more in-depth study is required, but often enough ignored as there will probably not be any active contemporaneous participation or contribution in my regard.
Overall, I cannot provide any useful assistance to any agency or government. What I actually did is beyond the utility and use of anyone. I am just a fellow with an interesting story.
What I can do is remind everyone that there are powers that control what we think our reality is. And there are powers that control them. And powers above them that control even that. And finally, there are the powers that I was a part of.
From everyone’s point of view. Let sleeping dogs lie.
…
The Woke movement is ending long standing American institutions on every level. The latest battlefront is DISNEY…
It is nuts.
Somewhat white and the seven affirmative action hires…
Chicken Ravioli Soup
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut into bite-size pieces
2 (14 1/2 ounce) cans diced tomatoes with garlic and onion, undrained
2 small zucchini, diced
1 (25 ounce) package frozen cheese ravioli
2 teaspoon dried parsley
Freshly-grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
In Dutch oven, sauté chicken in hot oil for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add chicken broth, tomatoes and zucchini; cover and bring to boil. Add frozen ravioli; simmer, uncovered, about 7 minutes or until ravioli reaches desired doneness. Stir in parsley.
To serve, ladle into soup bowls; sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
What Edward Snowden just said about UFO’s is TERRIFYING and should concern all of us
Edward Snowden now has access to some of the most closely kept secrets in the country as a former CIA employee and NSA contractor. And so, as any inquisitive mind with access to the CIA’s equivalent of Google might do, he looked for solutions to some of the most important questions asked by society. Attention Area 51 Stormers, chemtrail believers, and doubters of climate change: Edward Snowden has discovered information regarding UFOs that should worry us all.
China imported a huge amount of NVDIA top memory chips bypassing sanctions in 2023 and that has resulted in a congressional inquiry against NVDIA
The way they did so is simply using brand name and model
NVDIA specifically had a grade of Memory Chips made for the Chinese market that was 98–99% of the grade of those Memory Chips that were restricted
Both NVDIA and China estimated a ban almost 2 years earlier
These Chips were not on the ban list but almost 99% effective and thus NVDIA decided to export and China purchased a whopping amount of Chips
China’s import rose 27% YoY of these Chips
They take care of China’s supply upto 2024 December and keep China’s plans intact until then
The US was INCANDESCENT WITH RAGE
That’s how Sanctions are by passed
The Tech companies ensure they have a specific variant of the product that conveniently by passes sanctions and they sell that in huge numbers to China and keep their profits alive
Another thing was NVDIAs sales to Singapore soared by 111% from 2019–2023 and I can bet most of the those Chips are re exported to China
SNOW WHITE PLOT LEAKS ARE HYSTERICAL!
"With the snow white backlash getting worse for disney and bob iger as the indy 5 box office collapse created more issues for lucasfilm, star wars and kathleen kennedy given the dial of destiny box office failure was so bad that dinsey cut back on budgeting for disney movies.....with the snow white 2024 aka snow white remake by disney getting much criticism after the snow white leaked photos of the seven dwarfs....the film which stars rachel zegler and gal gadot as the evil queen just got more embarrassing through some of the snow white plot leaks."
Wrong. First of all, public education in the USA has been declining for decades. Student test scores are in the toilet.
The average American is borderline illiterate.
Second, American universities are widely regarded as the best because of marketing. Schools like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale, etc. are prestigious by reputation. This reputation may have been earned a long, long time ago but today most of these schools are coasting on their names.
Let’s look at the list of universities ranked by the quality of their scientific research. According to the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2023 , most of the universities that produce the most scientifically impactful research are Chinese — that’s 16 out of the top 25 universities!
I’m totally stunned that MIT, Caltech, and Princeton aren’t in the top 25.
If all you care about is a good-looking resumé, then, sure, choose an Ivy League US school. But if you want a good education, choose a Chinese university.
The UFO Incident That Shocked Ariel School: Telepathic Extraterrestrials
September 14th, 1994 was a quiet night in Zimbabwe. Then suddenly, boom! An explosion startled people all over the country.
Windows rattled. Doors shook.
Shocked and confused, people sheepishly stepped outside to see what happened.
Everything looked fine. They went back inside. But one woman wasn’t satisfied.
Cynthia Hind drove around the capital city of Harare, searching for the source of the sound but, nothing seemed unusual.
But back at home, Cynthia’s phone rang relentlessly. She was a UFO investigator and witness reports were coming in one after another.
The news claimed the sound was a sonic boom caused by a meteor shower. But Cynthia wasn’t so sure.
Eyewitnesses near Lake Kariba described bizarre lights in the sky earlier that week.
Lights in a row that moved erratically: fast then slow. First north to south. Then east to southwest. Meteors don’t do that.
Cynthia suspected there was much more to the story. And two days later, she’d find out that she was right.
CNL
My boss was friends with a guy who had been a tunnel rat in the Vietnam War. The guy wasn’t much to look at…he looked like Chuck Norris’s skinny brother. My boss swore up and down this guy was a badass.
One night my boss invited me and my girlfriend to meet him and his lady and his friend and his friend’s wife to hang out at a place where there was dinner and dancing.
We’ll call this guy Chuck Norris Lite…(CNL for short).
CNL’s wife saw an old boyfriend of hers. When the old boyfriend saw she was there, he got up from his table and headed to ours to say hi. At first he was cool, but within a few minutes, he started talking crap…things like how they shouldn’t have broken up, he was better looking than CNL, she needed a real man, and other insults to CNL. Pretty sure he was drunk.
CNL listened to the insults and played it off. He didn’t need the fight, he had the girl.
Then the ex asked her to dance. She said, “No, if I want to dance, I’ll dance with my husband.” A clear clue to him to back off. He didn’t take it.
He protested and wouldn’t take no for an answer. CNL did not get angry. He quietly said, “You heard my wife say no. Take a hike.”
It was then the ex made the mother of all mistakes. He said, “F**k you, p***y. What you going to do about it?” AND SLAPPED THE BACK OF HIS HEAD.
CNL didn’t even get up from his chair. He moved quickly, taking his right hand and doing a palm strike under his left armpit straight into the ex’s stomach. The ex dropped to his knees, and then CNL’s left elbow got him in the nose. The ex slumped to the floor out cold. After a few minutes, he got up and staggered for the door.
About twenty minutes later, the cops came in and approached the table. CNL went over and talked to them, motioned to his wife; she talked to them, they nodded, shook hands and left.
The ex had left and called the cops (this was in the days of phone booths). The officer in charge knew CNL as they both took martial arts classes together. The OIC (Officer In Charge) went back out and told the ex he was at fault, and to take his whuppin’ like a man and go home. He did so.
I was mightily impressed. Any man who can kick your butt and not even get up from his chair is a badass in my book.
MIND BLOWING – American Youth Knows NOTHING (American reaction)
Rule No*1 Every nation on earth must be subservient and submissive to the U.S. and the west.
Rule No*2 The US and its cronies are allowed to steal, loot and plunder from everyone else.
Rule No*3 The US and the west decides who can sell, who can buy, who can live, who should die, which nation will be bomb and which nation to spare. Who to sanction and for how long.
The Critical Drinker – Snow White Looks Hilariously Bad – Reaction!
Spirited Away: A Miyazaki Fan Recreated The Bathing House With An Impressive Model
The Japanese Sorakio, a big fan of the universe of Chihiro, Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, had fun recreating the famous bath house of the cult movie Spirited Away in an impressive ultra-detailed model! An amazing work created using hundreds of pieces from other models, but also pieces of plastic or wood.
DISNEY’s Snow Brown & The Seven Climate Activists that Glue Themselves to Artwork!
Holy Moses!!! Some pick-up shots have been seen from the upcoming Disney Snow White live action movie. It looks like the most WOKE by committee inclusive and diverse crud you have ever seen!!
China has no urgency to get into armed conflict with anyone
China would rather be the ‘Peacemaker’ for the world and slowly portray the US and the West as ruthless warmongers
China would like to send a message to the Taiwanese that they would benefit with a Mainland Union instead of lackeyship with the US
Plus the Chinese don’t like being baited and would certainly not plunge into a war where the US can force Taiwanese to keep dying just like they are doing to Ukraine
They will have to bleed the US first and weaken the West
Or rather give them a long rope to hang themselves
What if Taiwan declare Independence?
Even then I don’t think China will invade
It will prefer to fight through UN and BRI and trade related import embargos than invade while simultaneously activating it’s agents in Taiwan to protest and cause violence
Iran, Russia and Saudi will choke off Crude Exports
None of these nations need 7 nm chips exactly
Chinese Shipping will be stopped and LNG Containers
Mainland will offer a chance to many Taiwanese to come to the Mainland and many will come
Then China will defeat the Usurpers from Within Taiwan
The Western Media became too ridiculous after a point and their propaganda became an open joke to all mainlanders
Initially it’s probable that they believed the Western media reports. They probably believed in the treatment of Uyghurs and the camps and all that stuff.
I remember China closing off Xinjiang for a few years after those bad ETIM days and that was when the propaganda was seriously being believed by the locals
However the stories became more and more ridiculous and suddenly it was just too unbelievable
It’s logical to assume Uyghurs are placed in a camp and re-educated and their culture is being destroyed
However to imagine women being impregnated by other men, drinking blood — these stories became so unbelievable that the Mainlanders began to wonder if indeed the earlier stories were lies too.
And as a master stroke China opened up travel to Xinjiang even for foreigners and invited muslim dignitaries to visit the province along with youtubers
Slowly Chinese Media & Social Media celebrities posted on Xinjiang and said “There is nothing here. It’s all lies”
Once this disbelief was generated, China began to slowly believe that the entire Western media was full of lies which served extremely well for the CPC
Today most Mainlanders don’t trust Western media or twitter on any news from China
They trust Taiwanese media or Singaporean Media much more when it comes to foreign media.
So basically Overkill
In 2001, I believed the BJP when they said at 8:00 AM that Mr Karunanidhi was arrested and there was a Law and order problem
Then I walked out and all stores were open , buses were plying, things were as normal as they could be
Then I walked home and heard Arun Jaitley then a spokesperson for the BJP saying “There was a Reign of Terror in TN and nobody could put a foot on the road due to riots”
Immediately I knew it was fully a lie
Once you know a lie, you keep wondering whether the lie will be repeated
Same with Western Media
They lied so much that the Chinese no longer trust them even if they tell the truth
When I was in college, my middle-class-roots fiance lived in a fraternity house with some relatively wealthy people.
One particular person sticks out for me as the high bar for spoiled behavior.
He had a penchant for wearing Calvin Klein Boxer Briefs:
They were roughly $25 each, (and this was before you could buy them at Costco.)
He sent out his laundry to be washed and folded (and dry cleaned), and never did any of it himself, but he absolutely *refused* to have anyone touch his underwear. In fact, because of this, he *refused* to wear the same pair more than once.
So, every single day, he would open a brand new, $25 pair of underwear.
And, every single day, he would throw out yesterday’s underwear.
If someone happened to touch his underwear for any reason, there would be another change.
He was ordering them by the case.
No one else has ever even come close to this on my spoiled-o-meter.
How do I know this?
His fraternity brothers, always happy to scrounge through the garbage, noticed that perfectly good underwear was going to waste. So they all stocked up. And then when they all (and I mean all) had more than enough underwear to go around, and there was still an endless supply, they started an underground underwear selling ring.
Part of me chuckles everytime I see this:
because I absolutely believe that it is a reference to what actually went on in this specific Ivy League frat house.
Cabbage Roll Soup
Cabbage Roll Soup is guaranteed to be a fall and winter favorite. This delicious soup has all the flavor of traditional baked cabbage rolls.
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef or ground turkey
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
4 teaspoons minced garlic
1/2 head cabbage, chopped
32 ounces beef broth
29 ounces tomato sauce
2 (15 ounce) cans diced tomatoes with juice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup uncooked rice
1 bay leaf
Kosher or sea salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Instructions
Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the ground beef and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Cook, breaking up the meat, until beef is browned.
Add the onion and garlic cook for 2-3 minutes.
Add the remaining ingredients, except rice, to the pot. Bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to simmer; cover pot and cook for 1 hour.
Add rice and cook for an additional 20 to 25 minutes.
Remove bay leaf and discard.
Notes
If you want to use brown rice instead of white rice, cook for 45 minutes instead of 25 minutes.
The Looming War Against China
Economic Logic has been Replaced by National Security Overrides
The July NATO summit in Vilnius had the feeling of a funeral, as if they had just lost a family member – Ukraine. To clear away NATO’s failure to drive Russia out of Ukraine and move NATO right up to the Russian border, its members tried to revive their spirits by mobilizing support for the next great fight – against China, which is now designated as their ultimate strategic enemy. To prepare for this showdown, NATO announced a commitment to extend their military presence all the way to the Pacific.
The plan is to carve away China’s military allies and trading partners, above all Russia, starting with the fight in Ukraine. President Biden has said that this war will be global in scope and will take many decades as it expands to ultimately isolate and break up China.
The U.S.-imposed sanctions against trade with Russia are a dress rehearsal for imposing similar sanctions against China. But only the NATO allies have joined the fight. And instead of wrecking Russia’s economy and “turning the ruble to rubble” as President Biden predicted, NATO’s sanctions have made it more self-reliant, increasing its balance of payments and international monetary reserves, and hence the ruble’s exchange rate.
To cap matters, despite the failure of trade and financial sanctions to injure Russia – and indeed, despite NATO’s failures in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO countries committed themselves to trying the same tactics against China. The world economy is to be split between US/NATO/Five Eyes on the one hand, and the rest of the world – the Global Majority – on the other. EU Commissioner Joseph Borrell calls this as a split between the US/European Garden (the Golden Billion) and the Jungle threatening to engulf it, like an invasion of its well-manicured lawns by an invasive species.
From an economic vantage point, NATO’s behavior since its military buildup to attack Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern states in February 2022 has been a drastic failure. The U.S. plan was to bleed Russia and leave it so economically destitute that its population would revolt, throw Vladimir Putin out of office and restore a pro-Western neoliberal leader who would pry Russia away from its alliance with China – and then proceed with America’s grand plan to mobilize Europe to impose sanctions on China.
What makes it so difficult in trying to evaluate where NATO, Europe and the United States are going is that the traditional assumption that nations and classes will act in their economic self-interest is not of help. The traditional logic of geopolitical analysis is to assume that business and financial interests steer almost every nation’s politics. The ancillary assumption is that governing officials have a fairly realistic understanding of the economic and political dynamics at work. Forecasting the future is thus usually an exercise in spelling out these dynamics.
The US/NATO West has led this global fracture, yet it will be the big loser. NATO members already have seen Ukraine deplete their inventory of guns and bullets, artillery and ammunition, tanks, helicopters weapons and other arms accumulated over five decades. But Europe’s loss has become America’s sales opportunity, creating a vast new market for America’s military-industrial complex to re-supply Europe. To gain support, the United States has sponsored a new way of thinking about international trade and investment. The focus has shifted to “national security,” meaning to secure a U.S.-centered unipolar order.
The world is dividing into two blocs: a post-industrial US/NATO vs the Global Majority
U.S. diplomats became increasingly worried as Germany and other European countries came to rely on imported Russian gas, oil and fertilizer as the basis for its steel, glass-making and other industries. They became even more worried as China had become the “workshop of the world” while the U.S. economy de-industrialized. The fear was that growth by China and its neighboring Eurasian countries benefiting from the Belt and Road expansion threatened to make that part of the world the main growth area, and hence a magnet for European investment. The logical prospect was that politics would follow economic interest at the expense of America’s ability to maintain a unipolar world economy with the dollar at its financial center and trade subject to U.S. protectionist unilateralism.
By joining America’s crusade to destroy the Russian economy and promote regime change, Germany’s and other European countries’ refusal to trade with Russia has destroyed the basic energy foundation of their industry. Destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline has plunged the German and other European economies into depression involving widespread bankruptcies and unemployment. In place of Russian gas, the NATO countries must now pay up to six times as high a price for U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG), and must build new port facilities to physically import this gas.
The European leaders sponsored and financed by U.S. election meddling over the past seventy years have done what Boris Yeltsin did in Russia in the 1990s: They have agreed to sacrifice Europe’s industrial economies and end what had been its profitable trade and investment integration with Russia and China.
The next step is for Europe and the United States to stop trading and investing with China, despite the fact that these NATO countries have benefited from the flowering of this trade, relying on it for a wide range of consumer goods and industrial inputs. That line of prosperous trade is now to be ended. NATO’s leaders have announced that importing Russian gas and other raw materials (including helium and many metals) runs the “risk” of becoming dependent – as if Russia or China might find it in their economic or political interest to abort this trade simply to hurt Europe and to do to it what the United States has been doing to force it into submission.
But submission to what? The answer is, submission to the logic of mutual gains along lines leaving the U.S. economy behind!
By trying to prevent other countries from following this logic, U.S. and European NATO diplomacy has brought about exactly what U.S. supremacists most feared. Instead of crippling the Russian economy to create a political crisis and perhaps breakup of Russia itself in order to isolate it from China, the US/NATO sanctions have led Russia to re-orient its trade away from NATO countries to integrate its economy and diplomacy more closely with China and other BRICS members.
Ironically, the US/NATO policy is forcing Russia, China and their BRICS allies to go their own way, starting with a united Eurasia. This new core of China, Russia and Eurasia with the Global South are creating a mutually beneficial multipolar trade and investment sphere.
By contrast, European industry has been devastated. Its economies have become thoroughly and abjectly dependent on the United States – at a much higher cost to itself than was the case with its former trade partners. European exporters have lost the Russian market, and are now following U.S. demands that they abandon and indeed reject the Chinese market. Also to be rejected in due course are markets in the BRICS membership, which is expanding to include Near Eastern, African and Latin American countries.
Instead of isolating Russia and China and making them dependent on U.S. economic control, U.S. unipolar diplomacy has isolated itself and its NATO satellites from the rest of the world – the Global Majority that is growing while NATO economies are rushing ahead along their Road to Deindustrialization. The remarkable thing is that while NATO warns of the “risk” of trade with Russia and China, it does not see its loss of industrial viability and economic sovereignty to the United States as a risk.
This is not what the “economic interpretation of history” would have forecast. Governments are expected to support their economy’s leading business interests. So we are brought back to the question of whether economic factors will determine the shape of world trade, investment and diplomacy. Is it really possible to create a set of post-economic NATO economies whose members will come to look much like the rapidly depopulating and de-industrializing Baltic states and post-Soviet Ukraine?
This would be a strange kind of “national security” indeed. In economic terms it seems that the U.S. and European strategy of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive and far-reaching an error that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.
Today’s fighting against Russia on the Ukrainian front can be thought of as the opening campaign in World War III. In many ways it is an outgrowth of World War II and its aftermath that saw the United States establish international economic and political organizations to operate in its own national self-interest. The International Monetary Fund imposes U.S. financial control and helps dollarize the world economy. The World Bank lends dollars to governments to build export infrastructure to subsidize US/NATO investors in control of oil, mining and natural resources, and to promote trade dependency on U.S. farm exports while promoting plantation agriculture, instead of domestic food-grain production. The United States insists on having veto power in all international organizations that it joins, including the United Nations and its agencies.
The creation of NATO is often misunderstood. Ostensibly, it depicted itself as a military alliance, originally to defend against the thought that the Soviet Union might have some reason to conquer Western Europe. But NATO’s most important role was to use “national security” as the excuse to override European domestic and foreign policy and subordinate it to U.S. control. Dependency on NATO was written into the European Union’s constitution. Its objective was to make sure that European party leaders followed U.S. direction and opposed left-wing or anti-American politics, pro-labor policies and governments strong enough to prevent control by a U.S.-client financial oligarchy.
NATO’s economic program has been one of adherence to neoliberal financialization, privatization, government deregulation and imposing austerity on labor. EU regulations prevent governments from running a budget deficit of more than 3% of GDP. That blocks Keynesian-type policies to spur recovery. Today, higher military arms costs and government subsidy of energy prices is forcing European governments to cut back social spending. Bank policy, trade policy and domestic lawmaking are following the same U.S. neoliberal model that has deindustrialized the American economy and loaded it down with debt to the financial sector in whose hands most wealth and income is now concentrated.
Abandoning economic self-interest for “national security” dependence on the US
The post-Vilnius world treats trade and international relations not as economic, but as “national security.” Any form of trade is the “risk” of being cut off and destabilized. The aim is not to make trade and investment gains, but to become self-reliant and independent. For the West, this means isolating China, Russia and the BRICS in order to depend fully on the United States. So for the United States, its own security means making other countries dependent on itself, so that U.S. diplomats won’t lose control of their military and political diplomacy.
Treating trade and investment with other countries than the United States as involving “risk,” ipso facto, is a projection of how U.S. diplomacy has imposed sanctions on countries that resist U.S. domination, privatization and subordination of their economies to U.S. takeover. The fear that trade with Russia and China will lead to political dependency is a fantasy. The aim of the emerging Eurasian, BRICS and Global South alliance is to benefit from foreign trade with each other for mutual gain, with governments strong enough to treat money and banking as public utilities, along with the basic monopolies needed to provide normal human rights, including health care and education, and keeping monopolies such as transportation and communication in the public domain to keep the costs of living and doing business low instead of charging monopoly prices.
Anti-China hate has come especially from Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Foreign Minister. NATO is warned to “de-risk” trade with China. The “risks” are that (1) China can cut off key exports, just as the US cut off European access to Russian oil exports; and (2) exports could potentially be used to support China’s military power. Almost any economic export COULD be military, even food to feed a Chinese army.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to China likewise explained that all trade has a military potential and thus has a national-security element. All trade has a military potential, even selling food to China could be used to feed soldiers.
The US/NATO demand is that Germany and other European countries should impose an Iron Curtain against trade with China, Russia and their allies in order to “de-risk” trade. Yet only the US has imposed trade sanctions on other countries, not China and other Global South countries. The real risk is not that China will impose trade sanctions to disrupt European economies, but that the United States will impose sanctions on countries breaking the US-sponsored trade boycott.
This “trade is risk” view treats foreign trade not in economic terms but in “National Security” terms. In practice, “national security” means joining the U.S. attempt to maintain its unipolar control of the entire world’s economy. No risk is acknowledged for re-orienting European gas and energy trade to U.S. companies. The risk is said to be trade with countries that U.S. diplomats deem “autocracies,” meaning nations with active government infrastructure investment and regulation instead of U.S.-style neoliberalism.
The world is dividing into two blocs – with quite different economic philosophies
Only the United States has imposed trade sanctions on other countries. And only the United States has rejected international free trade rules as national security threats to US economic and military control. At first glance the resulting global fracture between US/NATO on the one hand and the expanding BRICS alliance of Russia, China, Iran and the Global South might seem to be a conflict between capitalism and socialism (that is, state socialism in a mixed economy with public regulation in labor’s interests).
But that contrast between capitalism and socialism is not helpful upon closer examination. The problem lies in what the word “capitalism” has come to mean in today’s world. Back in the 19th and early 20th century, industrial capitalism was expected to evolve toward socialism. The U.S. and other industrial economies welcomed and indeed pressed for their governments to subsidize a widening range of basic services at public expense instead of obliging employers to bear the costs of hiring labor that had to pay for basic needs such as health care and education. Monopoly pricing was avoided by keeping natural monopolies such as railroads and other transportation, telephone systems and other communications, parks and other services as public utilities. Having governments instead of business and its employees pay for these services increased the global competitiveness of national industry in the resulting mixed economies.
China has followed this basic approach of industrial capitalism, with socialist politics to uplift its labor force, not merely the wealth of industrial capitalists – much less bankers and absentee landlords and monopolists. Most important, it has industrialized banking, creating credit to finance tangible investment in means of production, not the kind of predatory and unproductive credit characterized by today’s finance capitalism.
But the mixed-economy policy of industrial capitalism is not the way in which capitalism evolved in the West since World War I. Rejecting classical political economy and its drive to free markets from the vested rent-extracting classes inherited from feudalism – a hereditary landlord class, a financial banking class and monopolists – the rentier sector has fought back to reassert its privatization of land rent, interest and monopoly gains. It sought to reverse progressive taxation, and indeed to give tax favoritism to financial wealth, landlords and monopolists. The Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector has become the dominant interest and economic planner under today’s finance capitalism. That is why economies are often called neofeudal (or euphemized as neoliberal).
Throughout history the dynamics of financialization have polarized wealth and income between creditors and debtors, leading to oligarchies. As interest-bearing debt grows exponentially, more and more income of labor and business must be paid as debt service. That financial dynamic shrinks the domestic market for goods and services, and the economy suffers from deepening debt-ridden austerity.
The result is de-industrialization as economies polarize between creditors and debtors. That has occurred most notoriously in Britain in the wake of Margaret Thatcher and the New [Anti-]Labour Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s “light touch” deregulatory approach to financial manipulation and outright fraud.
The United States has suffered an equally devastating shift of wealth and income to the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sectors in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts for the wealthy, anti-government deregulation, Bill Clinton’s “Third Way” takeover by Wall Street. The “Third Way” was neither industrial capitalism nor socialism, but finance capitalism making its gains both by stripping and indebting industry and labor of income. The new Democratic Party ideology of deregulated finance was capped by the massive bank-fraud collapse of 2008 and Barack Obama’s protection of junk-mortgage lenders and wholesale foreclosures on their financial victims. Economic planning and policy was shifted from governments to Wall Street and other financial centers – which had taken control of in government, the central bank and regulatory agencies.
U.S. and British diplomats are seeking to promote this predatory pro-financial and inherently anti-industrial economic philosophy to the rest of the world. But this ideological evangelism is threatened by the obvious contrast between the US-British failed and de-industrialized economies compared to China’s remarkable economic growth under industrial socialism.
This contrast between China’s economic success and the NATO West’s “garden” of debt-ridden austerity is the essence of today’s campaign by the West against the “Jungle” countries seeking political independence from U.S. diplomacy so as to uplift their living standards. This ideological and inherently political global war is today’s counterpart to the religious wars that tore European countries apart for many centuries.
We are witnessing what seems to be an inexorable Decline of the West. U.S. diplomats have been able to tighten their economic, political and military control leadership over their European NATO allies. Their easy success in this aim has led them to imagine that somehow they can conquer the rest of the world despite de-industrializing and loading their economies so deeply in debt that there is no foreseeable way in which they can pay their official debt to foreign countries or indeed have much to offer.
The traditional imperialism of military conquest and financial conquest is ended
There has been a sequence of tactics for a lead-nation to carve out an empire. The oldest way is by military conquest. But you can’t occupy and take over a country without an army, and the US has no army large enough. The Vietnam War ended the draft. So it must rely on foreign armies like Al Qaeda, ISIS, and most recently Ukraine and Poland, just as it relies on foreign industrial manufactures. Its armaments are depleted and it cannot mobilize a domestic army to occupy any country. The US has only one weapon: Missiles and bombs can destroy, but cannot occupy but not occupy and take over a country.
The second way to create imperial power was by economic power to make other countries dependent on U.S. exports. After World War II the rest of the world was devastated and was bullied into accepting U.S. diplomacy maneuvering to give its economy a monopoly on basic needs. Agriculture became a major weapon to create foreign dependency. The World Bank would not support foreign countries growing their own food, but pressed for plantation export crops, and fought land reform. And for oil and energy trade, U.S. companies and their NATO allies in Britain and Holland (British Petroleum and Shell) controlled the world’s oil trade. Control of world oil trade has been a central aim of US trade diplomacy.
This strategy worked for US assertion of control over Germany and other NATO countries, by blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline and severing Western Europe from access to Russian gas, oil, fertilizer and also crops. Europe has now entered an industrial depression and economic austerity as its steel industry and other leading sectors are invited to emigrate to the United States, along with European skilled labor.
Today, electronic technology and computer chips have been a focal point of establishing global Economic Dependency on U.S. technology. The United States aims to monopolize “intellectual property” and extract economic rent from charging high prices) for high-technology computer chips, communications, and arms production.
But the United States has deindustrialized and let itself become dependent on Asian and other countries for its products, instead of making them dependent on the US. This trade dependency is what makes U.S. diplomats feel “insecure,” worrying that other countries might seek to use the same coercive trade and financial diplomacy that the United States has been wielding since 1944-45.
The United States is left with one remaining tactic to control other countries: trade sanctions, imposed by it and its NATO satellites in an attempt to disrupt economies that do not accept U.S. unipolar economic, political and military dominance. It has persuaded the Netherlands to block sophisticated chip-engraving machinery to China, and other countries to block anything that might contribute to China’s economic development. A new American industrial protectionism is being framed in terms of national security grounds.
If China’s trade policy were to mirror that of U.S. diplomacy, it would stop supplying NATO countries with mineral and metal exports needed to produce the computer chips and allied inputs that America’s economy needs to wield its global diplomacy.
The US is so heavily debt-laden, its housing prices are so high and its medical care is so extremely high (18% of GDP) cannot compete. It cannot re-industrialize without taking radical steps to write down debts, to de-privatize health care and education, to break up monopolies and restore progressive taxation. The vested Financial, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE sector) interests are too powerful to permit these reforms.
That makes the U.S. economy a failed economy, and America a Failed State.
In the wake of World War II the United States accumulated 75% of the world’s monetary gold by 1950. That enabled it to impose dollarization on the world. But today, nobody knows whether the U.S. Treasury and New York Federal Reserve have any gold that has not been pledged to private buyers and speculators? The worry is that it has sold European central-bank gold reserves. Germany has asked for its gold reserves to be flown back from New York, but the United States said that it was unavailable, and Germany was too timid to make its worries and complaints public.
America’s financial quandary is even worse when one tries to imagine how it can ever pay its foreign debt for countries seeking to draw down their dollars. The United States can only print its own currency. It is not willing to sell off its domestic assets, as it demands that other debtor countries do?
What can other countries accept in place of gold? One form of assets that may be taken as collateral are U.S. investments in Europe and other countries. But if foreign governments seek to do this, U.S. officials may retaliate by seizing their investments in the United States. A mutual grabbing would occur.
The United States is trying to monopolize electronic technology. The problem is that this requires raw-materials inputs whose production presently is dominated by China, above all rare-earth metals (which are abundant but environmentally destructive to refine), gallium, nickel (China dominates the refining), and Russian helium and other gasses used for engraving computer chips. China recently announced that on August 1 it will start restricting these key exports. It indeed has the ability to cut off supplies of vital materials and technology to the West, to protect itself from the West’s “national-security” sanctions against China. That is the self-fulfilling prophecy that U.S. warnings of a trade fight has created.
If U.S. diplomacy strongarms its NATO-garden allies to boycott China’s Huawei technology, Europe will be left with a less efficient, more expensive alternative – whose consequences help separate it from China, the BRICS and what has become the World Majority in a self-reliant alignment much broader than was created by Sukarno in 1954.
Metal Vocalist First Time Reaction – BABYMETAL – メギツネ – MEGITSUNE (OFFICIAL)
We start off HARD…
BREAKING NEWS: CUBA ANNOUNCES IT IS READY TO ACCEPT RUSSIAN MISSILES (AGAIN) AS RUSSIAN NAVY ARRIVES 90 MILES FROM U.S. COAST
The “Vice-Admiral Kulakov,” an Udalay-class Destroyer of the Russian Navy has arrived in Cuba for an official visit for the first time in a long time, and there is dangerous news for the United States . . .
Shortly before the Russian navy warship arrived, talks were held between the leaders of Cuba and Russia and their defense ministries. The result is statements to strengthen not only economic cooperation, but also military-technical cooperation.
According to American military experts, this could mean the return of Russia to Cuba with all the resulting consequences: the deployment of Russian troops and long-range missiles.
This will be a decisive Russian response to the threats posed by the expansion of NATO’s presence in Northern Europe and Japan.
Earlier, Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel strongly condemned the entry into NATO of new members bordering Russia. “In light of hostile actions by the (NATO) alliance, Cuba is ready to place Russian missiles on its territory, again.”
COVERT INTEL INDICATES CARGO SHIPS IN RUSSIA, “WITH A PRE-FILED TRANSIT ROUTE TO CUBA, “SEEM TO BE” IN PROCESS OF BEING LOADED WITH COMPONENTS FROM RUSSIAN MISSILE MANUFACTURING FACTORIES”
Readers should note that back in 1962, the then-Soviet Union placed Medium Range and Intermediate Range nuclear missiles in Cuba with a five minute flight time to Washington, DC. This resulted in the “Cuban Missile Crisis” wherein then U.S. President John F. Kennedy, imposed a naval blockade of Cuba and began massing U.S. troops in Florida for an invasion of Cuba to destroy those missiles.
For the 13 days when the crisis erupted, the world stood on the precipice of actual nuclear war. The US had blockaded Cuba and was massing troops. The Soviets faced a choice with the missiles: USE THEM or LOSE THEM.
This brief compilation of scenes from the Hollywood Movie “13 Days” briefly lays out how things went back then:
Of course, the movie is a dramatization. Compressing Thirteen Days into 145 minutes necessitates distortion of many specific historical facts. But the central themes of the movie and the principal “takeaways” are essentially faithful to what happened when JFK and Khrushchev stood “eyeball to eyeball” in 1962.
Back then, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle and remove those missiles, and the US agreed to remove its “Jupiter” missiles from deployment in Turkey, where they were aimed at the Soviet Union.
Today, the U.S. wants to bring Ukraine into NATO . . . to place US missiles on Ukraine soil . . . with a five minute flight time to Moscow. Same situation as the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in reverse!
Russia told Ukraine “no.” Ukraine ignored Russia. The Russian Army went in and is now smashing Ukraine.
The US and NATO are supplying Ukraine with weapons to kill Russians, so the Russians are now sending naval vessels to Cuba and Cuba says it is willing to accept Russian missiles.
Same type of crisis as in 1962, only this time, it was the US and NATO that started it by trying to bring Ukraine into NATO, so as to put US missiles in Ukraine.
This time, the prospect for actual nuclear war is very much greater because the fighting has already begun in Ukraine.
Today the Chinese don’t want an Invasion barring very very rare circumstances
Neither MAINLANDERS nor Taiwanese want a straits war
Right now they are just slowly coming out of the three year lockdown and waking up from a slumbering economy to a global scenario where half the world is heading to recession
Plus their property values are upto 35% lower today and that’s pretty upsetting
This is hardly time to discuss a war or invasion
The US is dying
In maybe 2 decades it will be a retired country , strong and powerful yet no longer the hegemon
China is still very much surging and two decades later will be immensely powerful and control over 50% of the Global Value Chain
Point is CHINA CAN AFFORD TO BE PATIENT
USA CANNOT
Right now the US is doing all it can to provoke China into some action against Taiwan
Yet China has the time and so doesn’t react too much
US is losing the time fast. It’s power and influence are reducing faster than people think.
China will only invade if Taiwan declare Independence but that will be done only if US provoke Taiwan into doing so through tame politicians like Tsai or her successor
Snow White Looks Hilariously Bad
“Don’t even THINK about it!” China issues warning to CIA over spies | Redacted with Clayton Morris
China is warning that it is not going to sit still while the U.S. rebuilds its spy network inside of its borders. Between 2010 and 2012, China killed or imprisoned between 18 and 20 CIA sources. Recently, CIA Director William Burns said that the agency was rebuilding that network and China says that they will not just let that happen.
Not me, but a passenger across the aisle from me. The nasty little piece of business, about 9 or 10 years old, seated behind him, kicked his seat a number of times. The man turned around and very politely asked to the kid to stop kicking his seat. The kid’s Karen of a mother told the man not to tell her kid what to do, in an imperious & entitled tone. The passenger then ask the mother to take her kid in hand and stop him kicking his seat. The mother essentially said that the kid could do what he liked. The passenger whose seat was being kicked explained to the mother that he was of a nervous disposition, and every time the kid kicked the back of his seat, it startled him. Karen didn’t really care. The offended passenger sat quietly & asked the FA for a cup of coffee. The coffee came. The man was holding it when the little brat kicked his seat again. The man jumped in his seat and dumped his coffee backwards all over the mother – accidentally of course 🤪. The entitled Karen called the FA who simply said that the offended passenger had explained that he was a nervous flyer, and when the back of his seat was kicked, he started, and it was an unfortunate happening, but the mother could’ve anticipated it if she did not take her little brat in hand. The kicking stopped, amidst a few muffled chuckles from the passengers in the immediate area
Life In The 1970s For Kids!
The 70s was a time when kids spent the majority of their time outside playing. They made friends with other neighborhood kids and they did all sorts of things together. This was a time when most kids didn’t have a video game system until the very end of the decade. Home computer systems for kids were almost unheard of. In this video we will discuss life in the 1970s for kids prior to those becoming much larger in the 1980s.
Yes. My brother died last September without signing his will (they had it filled out but he didn’t sign it).
I have helped his widow out with cleaning the house.
Because he was intestate, I’m technically entitled to 25% of his inheritance under my state law as our parents are dead, but he was married (75/25 split by law).
He literally told me he wanted everything to go to his wife, who I would consider my sister now.
I’m not screwing a 60 year old lady out of her house.
Yeah, as a working class guy, I could REALLY use 100k+ dollars if I fought it, but I will absolutely NOT destroy his dream of his wife having a nice little home.
Them home cooked meals, talk and sharing memories a couple times every few months are worth more to me than money.
Maybe I’m an idiot, but I love him and her too much to go by “the law”.
Signing that form for her lawyer was about the easiest moral choice I’ve ever had to take.
12 Things People Couldn’t Live Without in the 1960s
What will be endgame of U.S.-China Chip War?
A week ago, the New York Times published a rare long article entitled “‘An Act of War’: Inside America’s Silicon Blockade Against China”, which comprehensively analyzed the U.S. chip war against China. In the author’s view, the strategic importance of this article is no less than that of “The Long Telegram” which elaborated on the exclusion policy during the white terror period of McCarthy’s era, and it is recommended that anyone who cares about the direction of the Sino-US confrontation should read it in detail. The importance of this article is unprecedented in the 172 years of the New York Times’ existence.
According to an article signed by Faraway Qingmu from Hubei province three days ago, the New York Times has rarely exposed many political insiders in the U.S., which is very informative and has historical reference value. In the author’s opinion, this is the official kick-off of the 21st century war between China and the U.S., and this is just a warm-up preparation. The unveiling of the war began on October 7 last year, when Biden announced the expansion of sanctions against Chinese chips. Alan, Director of the Vadhwani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technology at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., likened it to a war, which has been going on for more than nine months now. The author is still delving into it, trying to digest the vast amount of information related to it. This is a major event of this century, and the author intends to analyze it in detail in the next few articles.
The New York Times describes the chip war as an act of war by the U.S. against China. It is defined as an attempt by the U.S. to influence China’s artificial intelligence industry, and sanctions against China’s semiconductor industry are an important means of achieving this goal. The purpose of Biden’s new policy of October 7 last year is that the U.S. will not only not allow China to make any progress in the relevant technology, but will also actively reverse and obstruct China’s current technological level of progress, in essence, in order to eradicate China’s entire advanced technology ecosystem, to “cut the grass and remove the roots”.
The New York Times quoted Mathney, the former Deputy Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as saying that China is trying to catch up in chip technology, and to some extent that’s trying to replicate an entire human technological civilization in the short term. Trump initially sanctioned Huawei as the goal, and then proposed to use the chip as a weapon, but only against a few companies in China. After Biden’s rise to power, his goal has changed to stifle China’s high-tech development on all fronts. While Trump targeted individual companies, Biden is targeting the entire industry. The U.S. is now expanding its sanctions against China in almost every way, to the point of no return.
Why is this happening? The significance of the U.S. blockade of China’s chip development lies in its strategy of geopolitical and financial-military hegemony, aimed at eliminating competitors, subjugating them to the U.S. military and the U.S. dollar, accepting U.S. command, engaging in the U.S.-designated international division of labor, and obeying the U.S.-defined sense of value. Therefore, the U.S. believes that China should not make any progress in some key technological areas (artificial intelligence driven by the chip industry) that happen to be the drivers of future global economic growth and development.
Now, in the face of the menacing and hostile policy of the U.S., will China be able to cope with it successfully in the next three to five years? Will it be able to turn the corner and overtake the U.S.? No one can predict. The only thing we know for sure now is that the U.S. will not change its extreme tactics of stifling China’s chip industry, and whether or not it will ultimately get what it wants will depend on the future development of the international situation. The world today is not the same as it was after World War II, and it is impossible for the U.S. to unilaterally call the shots.
For China, the battle for technological autonomy is an unprecedented challenge. Can China succeed? Can it do the unthinkable that the U.S. says is impossible? For now, it’s hard to say.
The U.S. still holds a technological advantage in chips, but why is the U.S. in such a hurry to completely shut down the Chinese chip industry? It is because the U.S. interest class believes that chips are the core of future economic development. The research and development of modern technology depend more and more on supercomputers, and the core of supercomputers is the chip.
While Trump’s initial goal was to use chips as a weapon to gain profit, Biden’s goal has now changed to stifle China’s high technology on all fronts. Through export controls, the U.S. is attempting to cripple China’s ability to produce and purchase high-end chips. Although the controls are implemented in a low-profile manner under the guise of so-called updated export rules, they are essentially designed to eradicate China’s entire advanced technology ecosystem. If the U.S. approach succeeds, it could affect China’s technological progress for an entire generation; but if it fails, it could have the opposite result of China catching up. Whether it succeeds or fails, it will affect Sino-U.S. competition and the global order in the coming decades.
The unprecedented extralegal control (the use of domestic law to override international law) practiced by the U.S. in the area of chips is unprecedented and has infiltrated from the political sphere to the economic sphere, violating the basic principle of free competition in capitalism. According to a report in the New York Times, the former Assistant Secretary of Commerce of the U.S., Mr. Wolfe, who was in charge of export administration, opined that this kind of control meant that even if there was only one kind of American equipment in the foundry in China, and even if there were hundreds of other kinds of non-American equipment, the wafer production of the entire production line would be related to the U.S.. This rule makes all the world’s semiconductors subject to U.S. law, because all the world’s chip foundries (not only for China) are not immune, must be at least to a certain extent, the use of some aspect of U.S. equipment. This is a so-called champertous strategy, which is exactly the same as the U.S. habit of “I call the shots, I set the rules” and considers itself to represent the whole world, which is the same as and no different from the U.S. practice. The U.S. has taken the position of a global hegemon to set the international order for chips. Even if a chip product is manufactured and shipped outside the U.S. and has never entered the U.S., and its final product does not contain any U.S.-origin components or related technology, it can still be considered a U.S. product. Even if only 1% of the U.S. goods appear in China’s production line, China must comply with U.S. law, even if the remaining 99% is developed in China. In short, it’s all-inclusive.
The New York Times is of the view that the U.S. has taken a great risk in deciding to do so and may have to pay a heavy price. It is because this kind of tactic is so tough that it is tantamount to a declaration of war, which is irreversible. If there is any country that can overcome such a tough challenge from the U.S., it is China. The introduction of the U.S. chip export control law on October 7 of last year, although in the foreseeable future will cause a major blow to China’s advanced chip manufacturing capacity, but in the end may be able to stimulate China’s long-term growth, catching up with the curve.
The U.S. chose this irreversible option, obviously after a thorough risk assessment, as a well-considered decision. In the past, the U.S. had a choice between national resilience (because of its belief in the superiority of the system) and commercial development (because of its belief in free competition), but now this choice no longer exists. The subtext is that the U.S. has lost faith in its own political system and traditional market freedom. If a significant portion of the $400 billion that China spends annually on chip imports were spent domestically in China (the economic term is import substitution), its domestic chip companies would be given the opportunity, the motivation, the means, and the ability to catch up.
In the author’s opinion, this is exactly the case with Huawei. When the US uses chips as a weapon to attack Huawei, Huawei’s cell phone market share can plummet at once, but Huawei is mainly a communication equipment supplier, and it is in the process of turning around, the US can’t beat it to death. Huawei’s case proves that even the most severe sanctions can’t directly put Huawei to death. The New York Times believes that the U.S. industry is very mindful and vigilant in this regard, which shows that U.S. public opinion is skeptical of Biden’s extreme measures, rather than blindly supporting them unilaterally.
China has to catch up in terms of high technology. How should China respond? It seems to be the same as before: work hard, and be self-reliant. China has been at the mercy of the Western powers since 1840, and this has never changed. Back then, the country was weak and in danger of being partitioned. Now that the country is rich and strong, it is still being coveted. The characteristic of the Chinese nation is that once it awakens, it will become stronger and stronger, and it will definitely respond to challenges. 183 years ago, China did not have a modern education system, modern mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology, scientific experiments, or numerical management, and today, 183 years later, Chinese-style modernization is on track. To overcome the fact that nanotechnology and chip technology are still at a relatively backward stage, it is believed that with time, we will be able to accomplish all our tasks, and we should be optimistic but still cautious. What is the prospect in the author’s view? It is estimated that in three to five years’ time, we will see whether we have won or lost.
CIA Classified Book about the Pole Shift, Mass Extinctions and The True Adam & Eve Story
CIA Classified Book about the Pole Shift, Mass Extinctions and The True Adam & Eve Story In 1966 a well-known engineer released a book with information that could impact everyone on earth. But before anyone could read it, it was classified by the CIA. We only learned of its existence a few years ago because of a Freedom of Information request. The CIA only released 57 pages of the original 284-page manuscript. And those pages have been, in the CIA’s own words, “sanitized”. Why does the CIA think this book is so dangerous that they had to hide it from the public for 60 years; and continue to hide most of it? It’s because the man who wrote it describes the end of the world.
This harmless-looking fellow, Guido Menzio, was flying to Syracuse from Philadelphia.
Once settled into his seat, the busy 40-year-old took out his work papers and got to working.
His seatmate, a blonde-haired white woman in her thirties, later claimed she had tried to strike up a conversation with him but he was evasive.
She took a look at what he was writing, and fear struck.
He was working on some cryptic plans! Strange letters and symbols she couldn’t understand.
She bravely approached a flight attendant, claiming she felt too ill to fly.
She slipped her a note, warning her about a suspicious man working on something in a foreign language.
The woman was then discreetly escorted off the plane, where her bullshit suspicions were entertained for many minutes while the plane waited on the tarmac.
Then Menzio was also taken off-board and questioned.
And so what should have been a quick 40-minute flight ended up being delayed for two hours.
But what was he working on?
Maths. Differential equations.
And he wasn’t “Muslim” or “Arabic”. He was Italian. An Italian Ivy League professor.
After they established he was not a threat, they let him reboard. The woman refused to reboard, and opted to take the next flight. Hopefully her next seatmate won’t do something drastic like use the calculator app around her.
I understand math can be scary for some people, like that brave lady. Who does this guy think he is, doing math where anyone could see him?
Summers In The 1980s!
The 1980s was full of fun during the summertime. Some of the things that kids used to do are no longer done. In this video we will remember what summers in the 1980s were like.
The saddest thing I’ve ever done was handle my Mum’s estate after she died. What made is so sad was that there was so much money there, not counting her house. She had far more than she could have used even if she’d lived longer (she died at 80). They weren’t exactly wealthy – she was a retired teacher, and my Dad had been a college lecturer and had died 8 years earlier, but she still had a big chunk of money when she died.
She should have spent that money herself. Yes, her heirs benefited from it, but I’d rather she’d spent it herself, either to enjoy herself, or to have the pleasure of giving it away herself.
Hairy Yoga Pants From Orenburg In Russia Have Swept Over The Internet
“Gods gift to men” this is how men usually think of Yoga pants. However, after the Orenburgs hairy Yoga pants, we think this opinion could suddenly change. Many have thought this is a fake product or a parody but in fact you can get it over Ebay where it is sold as “Leggins / pants Longhair 100% Goat Down Russian Cashmere Mohair FETISH men woman”. It’s the latest hit from Orenburg, because who can wear tin Yoga pants on severe cold temperature?
During the pandemic, the challenge for each of us was to maintain critical distance: spurning both the tribalism of those insisting Covid was a hoax and the counter-tribalism of those who demanded complete acquiesence to a corporate-political agenda dictated by Big Pharma under the mantle of “Follow the science”.
Fear of living under Big Brother or of dying from plague drove many people not only into the arms of one of these two oppositional camps but fuelled a pandemic mania in which reason and compassion were replaced with either extreme cynicism or extreme compliance. We are still living with the consequences.
There has been a spate of “excess deaths” over the past two years across the West – well above what would normally be expected – and yet this sustained trend is being universally ignored by governments, establishment media and medical bodies. No one is protesting. The cult of compliance is still in the ascendant.
More on that in a moment.
But it is worth first revisiting briefly the climate of intolerance and willed ignorance that predominated at the height of the pandemic, as I documented in real time in a series of essays that upset more of my readers than any I had written before.
It was always unwarranted to press for vaccine mandates, if only because they violated the critically important principle of bodily autonomy. But the demand became completely unhinged once it was clear – as it was much earlier than publicly let on by Big Pharma, the World Health Organisation and national regulators – that the vaccines were doing little to halt virus transmission.
Similarly, it was always unethical to insist that children should be routinely given the vaccine and boosters when it was evident that the virus posed no threat to the overwhelming majority of them – and all the more so given that the mRNA vaccines were based on a new technology whose development had been rushed through on an emergency licence.
By definition, no one could know the long-term effects of mRNA vaccines on humans because there had been no long-term studies. The science was built on a wing and a prayer, which is part of the reason the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation, the British government’s official advisory body on vaccinations, demurred for so long, and despite huge political pressure, on recommending vaccination for children.
And it was always deeply irresponsible to refuse to consider, or even study, other treatments that might have had an impact on the virus. Medical authorities ignored or warned the public off potential prophylactics and immunity-boosting treatments and behaviours – even when those interventions could have complemented the role of the vaccines, rather than serving as an alternative to them.
Nothing could be allowed to dilute the public’s exclusive reliance on vaccinations.
One prize example was Vitamin D, the sunshine hormone that, uniquely, every cell in the human body has a receptor for. Most people in the West are deficient in Vitamin D, many of them severely so, and doctors still have little understanding of what the consequences of that deficiency – beyond osteoporosis – might be.
Even before Covid, there were many studies suggesting that Vitamin D was critical to improving the health of our immune systems, including by warding off and aiding recovery from coronaviruses. That evidence has only grown stronger subsequently.
But definitive proof has been lacking because full-scale controlled studies are extraordinarily expensive and only Big Pharma has deep enough pockets to fund such studies (given that our captured governments refuse to dig deep themselves), but Big Pharma has no interest in proving a cheap hormone like Vitamin D – one it cannot patent or profit from – might offer the public health benefits not only in relation to Covid but for a wide range of chronic health conditions.
The fact that most medical regulators and media commentators continue to prefer to shut down debate about the potential benefits of Vitamin D rather than demand that governments fund research to confirm or refute the growing body of evidence for such benefits should be a scandal. But, predictably, it isn’t.
Blanket silence
I set this out as a preface to this latest scandal on excess deaths, one that – like so much else related to the pandemic and its aftermath – continues to elicit a blanket silence from the establishment media, politicians and, of course, our medical authorities.
The consistent and markedly elevated death rates each month across most of the Western world are not due to Covid and are far above the seasonal five-year average before the pandemic.
Such deaths have been significantly raised since late 2020 or mid-2021. That is all the more surprising because, after early waves of Covid killed off those who were already sick and vulnerable, the expectation was that excess deaths would fall, not rise. That anomaly needs explaining – scientifically.
Despite the backlash inevitably provoked by asking critical questions, I want to examine this development because it highlights something important about the way of our supposedly democratic governments, and the regulatory and adversarial institutions meant to hold them in check, have been hollowed out. We imagine we live in societies where scientific reason and compassion guide our response to a medical crisis. The reality is different. In our societies, one thing rules: money.
The issue of excess deaths is only one of many problems – though probably the most serious – that have emerged in the aftermath of the pandemic. Unless you have made an extraordinary effort to do your own research and managed to evade the internet censors and their algorithms, you will most likely not know about these developments. Neither politicians nor establishment media have publicised them.
Instead troubling data is buried away in obscure, peer-reviewed scientific journals, or has to be squeezed out of government authorities through freedom of information requests – and even then the information is often heavily redacted.
Such data would remain largely unnoticed but for the efforts of a few brave souls daring to draw attention to it – only to be smeared as cranks and crackpots, whatever their formal qualifications.
Dr John Campbell, whose Youtube channel became an invaluable internet resource during the pandemic and since (at least for those trying to sift the wheat from the chaff), has done sterling work shedding light on many of those problems.
Some notable videos have covered:
the mishandling and lack of oversight of Pfizer’s research into its vaccine;
the astounding admission that Pfizer never actually tested whether its vaccine stopped transmission;
continuing efforts to obscure evidence demonstrating that natural infection confers superior immunity to the vaccine;
the troubling discovery that mRNA can remain in the blood for at least a month after vaccination, with no understanding of what it might be doing in that time to our immune systems;
high variation in adverse reactions caused by different batches of mRNA vaccine, with some off the scale;
the involvement of US researchers and Pfizer in engineering Frankenstein’s monster-type coronaviruses of the very kind that, it increasingly seems, led to the Covid pandemic in the first place;
new research demonstrating the lack of evidence for reduction in virus transmission from masking;
and a causal connection, confirmed by the WHO, between vaccination and the development of autoimmune disease like multiple sclerosis.
There is doubtless much worse, but we cannot learn of it – at least from qualified sources – because any effort to discuss it publicly will almost certainly result in banning by the corporations that run social media, our modern town squares.
For his efforts shining a light into the darkest recesses of the West’s pandemic response, Dr Campbell has been pilloried by the tribe that still identifies with Big Pharma. Arrogantly, they dismiss him as a glorified “nurse”, even though he has written widely read and authoritative medical textbooks.
More to the point, the smears are designed to distract from the fact that, more often than not, Dr Campbell is not speaking for himself but relaying in intelligible language the findings of peer-reviewed studies or interviewing respected experts in their field to draw attention to their work.
Complete mystery
Nonetheless, the issue of unexplained excess deaths is an order of magnitude more serious than even these other matters, which is why Dr Campbell has dedicated so many of his videos to discussing it.
Many, many thousands more people, including young people, are now dying each month across the Western world (where such data is reliably collected) than should be, compared to previous years. And they are dying for entirely mysterious reasons.
Yet:
This deeply troubling phenomenon barely merits a mention from politicians, the media or medical authorities.
Governments are failing to fund research to determine the causes of these extra deaths, even though the rates have been elevated for two years or more.
This reckless, self-imposed climate of ignorance is being sustained even as expert medical bodies warn that we face future pandemics.
It is almost as if Western governments prefer to let large numbers of people die unnecessarily, and potentially at great cost to health care services, rather than learn the truth. It seems these governments are quite happy, if they believe another pandemic is on the way, to risk repeating any mistakes they made during Covid that may have caused those excess deaths.
In a world where we are supposed to “follow the science”, how can that possibly be the case? What is going on?
If we try to understand why a blind eye is being turned to the shocking data showing a sustained and unexplained rise in deaths, it is hard not to arrive at one, and only one, conclusion.
Governments, establishment media and the medical regulators are frightened. They are scared of what they may discover if the research is carried out.
And that suggests something further. That these are not groups with their own discrete or competing interests and agendas.
The media, whatever it claims, is not a watchdog on government or the medical establishment. It colludes with them against the public. In fact, the corporate interests of all three are closely aligned.
Why? Because the government is captured by Big Business. Because the medical authorities are funded by Big Pharma, which can make or break careers. And because the media is owned by billionaires, and serves as little more than the public relations arm of concentrated wealth and as cheerleader for a neoliberalism that normalises the criminal profiteering of drug manufacturers like Pfizer.
Cultivated ignorance
Before I continue further, let me state unequivocally – because sadly, these things need emphasising in our ever-more tribal, polarised societies – that I have no idea what is causing this wave of excess deaths.
The point of this piece is not to pre-judge the matter or adopt a tribal position.
Rather, I’m trying de-tribalise your and my own thinking so that we can better understand why our governments and medical agencies prefer that no research is conducted, and why our establishment media chooses not to expose this glaring failure.
Dr Vibeke Manniche, a member of the Danish medical team whose peer-reviewed research showed that some batches of the mRNA vaccine caused off-the-scale adverse reactions, believes there are likely to be an array of contributory factors. That sounds right to me.
Her team are now undertaking as their next project an investigation into the mysterious rise in deaths. It is their private initiative, rather than research funded, organised or assisted by the Danish government. In fact, according to Dr Manniche, Danish authorities have been throwing obstacles in their way.
But why are these authorities so afraid?
The answer is simple. They suspect that any research will implicate them in those excess deaths. They are frightened – rightly or wrongly – that the narrative they constructed around the pandemic, and the powers they accrued to themselves, will unravel.
The reason they are in no hurry to find out why so many extra people are dying is because they fear that significant contributory factors are either the lockdown policies they imposed or the side-effects of the vaccines they championed – or both.
Again, I’m not saying that is what I think. I have no expertise to evaluate all the possible causes, including the ongoing erosion of socialised health care in much of the Western world and its transfer to yet more corporate profiteers – for which our governments areundoubtedly responsible.
But governments and medical regulators have access to the same data and graphs as Dr Manniche, showing a relentless and near-identical rise in excess deaths beginning in spring 2021 in Denmark, Norway and Finland, in the immediate wake of the mass vaccine rollout. Similar graphs are available for other Western states.
The inference that there is a connection between the vaccines and excess deaths may be wrong. But it is not a hypothesis they wish to test. The consequences are far too serious for them. They would rather enforce general ignorance, or perpetrate a deception on the public, than risk undermining their own authority – and the crucial levers they control both to sustain their privileges and to further concentrate their wealth.
There are some uncomfortable lessons here for us all.
The truth is Western governments – all of them – dare not test the evidentiary basis for their insistence on lockdowns and experimental vaccines as the only way out of the pandemic. They dare not do so in the full glare of public scrutiny for fear that the truth will not serve them, and more likely will damage them. So they cultivate public ignorance.
The truth is that the medical regulatory authorities were long ago captured by Big Pharma, and the revolving door it offers, leading to prestigious jobs and lucrative salaries in the industry. So they favour public ignorance too.
The truth is that the media will not hold the feet of governments or the medical establishment to the fire because, whatever the media claim, they are not in the business of enforcing real, systemic accountability. The billionaire-owned media corporations are embedded in the same model of corporate profit as Big Pharma. Indeed, the media’s own corporate profits depend on the advertising and sponsorship of drugs companies – fellow corporations – like Pfizer. So they benefit from public ignorance as well.
World of illusion
We live in a world not, as we are told and tell ourselves, of democratic accountability and transparency. Beyond formal, surface appearances, the system of political, economic and social control is designed to lack all but the most minimal checks and balances, institutional safeguards and oversight.
We live in a world of illusion, of elites that look out for their own, that develop ever more sophisticated technological tools to manipulate and deceive us, and that have progressively rigged the system to accrue to themselves ever more wealth and power.
We are not, as we like to imagine, informed citizens. The system cannot afford to provide us with the information we need to be informed – information that might reveal to us that we have been duped, that the rich steal from the poor to give to themselves, that our rulers have no clue how to fix the biggest problems facing us, aside from lining their pockets with more gold as the ship goes down.
As the last year has demonstrated, our elites had no more idea how to deal with the pandemic than they currently do with the climate crisis, or with the Ukraine war (without risking nuclear conflagration), or with rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence. Faced with the biggest challenges, they are like children – shouting “Follow the Science” or “Green New Deal” to distract the rest of us as they grab as many sweets as they can thrust into their pockets.
For these elites, Covid was a party – quite literally in the case of the British government – in which the biggest corporations not only profiteered but drove small businesses into the ground. Excess deaths are but a hangover, one that must be studiously ignored if the fiction of responsible, accountable, democratic government is to be maintained.
Our world has been carefully constructed to ensure we do not get to peek behind the curtain, to see the con-men at work. Unless we dispel this central illusion – that science, reason and compassion are the forces driving the West – the charlatans will take us with them over the edge of the cliff in their pursuit of suicidal “economic growth” and chimerical “progress”.
Snow White Becomes Snow Latinx
2023 07 27 15 07
Cheesy Lasagna Soup
Lasagna in a bowl, chock full of what you love in regular lasagna, with the added ‘Florentine’ touch of spinach!
2023 07 27 15 02
Ingredients
1 pound bulk sweet (mild) Italian sausage
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes (optional)
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
4 cups (32 ounces) chicken stock
1 to 2 cups water
8 ounces lasagna noodles (not no-boil), broken into 1 to 2 inch pieces
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, plus additional for serving
1/2 cup (2 ounces) Wisconsin parmesan cheese, shredded
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Instructions
Heat Dutch oven or large pot over high heat. Brown sausage for 5 minutes, breaking up as it cooks.
Add onions; cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until onions are softened and sausage is cooked through.
Add garlic and red chile flakes; cook for 1 minute.
Add crushed tomatoes, scraping bottom of pan with wooden spoon.
Add stock, 1 cup water, lasagna noodles, basil and pepper. Bring to boil.
Reduce heat to medium-high; cook at a gentle boil for 10 to 12 minutes, until noodles are cooked through, stirring occasionally to prevent noodles from sticking to pot.
Stir in spinach. Add salt to taste. If soup is too thick, add additional 1 cup water. Remove from heat.
To serve, divide mozzarella among 6 serving bowls. Ladle soup over cheese. Top with spoonsful of ricotta, parmesan and additional basil.
Prep: 10 min | Cook: 30 min | Servings: 6
2023 07 27 15 03
Energy tips for Empaths, Highly Sensitives, and ye on the path of the Mystic
This is good. I hope it helps someone in MM land out there.
Just because the US or UK or the West don’t hear from someone for a month, doesn’t mean he has gone missing
This obessession of always talking to the press every day is slavish and a Western compulsion
Same with Tweeting every day
He simply has not been seen in the Public Domain
Why should the Chinese care about why he has not been seen??
It’s not their problem right?
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The CPC has a message
It’s called MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
In China, it is the business of the CPC to run the country, govern the country and help it develop and grow and regulate policies to sustain the country and defend the country
The Average Citizens have their own business — Work Hard, Take advantage of the free and heavily subsidized education, Do well, Pay Taxes and ENJOY LIFE — take vacations, buy stuff, play games, have fast food
China is not India
The Average Chinese doesn’t spend all his time discussing Modi vs Raga or saying “Ayega to Modi Hi”
He doesn’t even know the names of most standing committee members and won’t recognise them if they stood in front of him without escort or the party’s No 8 Cars
The CPC tells the Citizens what they HAVE TO KNOW
The CPC doesn’t need to tell them anything more because it won’t be productive
The CPC won’t tell all the problems to the Citizens because the Citizens knowing the problems is counter productive and could complicate stuff
Instead the CPC SOLVES THE PROBLEMS and ensures that the Citizens don’t even feel the negative effects
The CPC will take care of the Governance
The CPC will replace ministers and members if they cannot be fully capable of doing their job which underlies the Meritocracy of the Chinese System
In India, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj worked for a year despite taking cancer treatments half the time
Not in China
China wants 100% and if they don’t get it — you get a golden handshake and a goodbye
You want my opinion
I love such a system and the opacity
Knowing only what I NEED TO KNOW and being protected by a system and confident in such a system is very productive and helps me focus on what my business should be
The Greatest Growth and Development in the world took place under such a system
IT WAS CALLED MONARCHY !!!!!
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The World’s greatest inventions — Machine Guns, Spinning Jenny, Steam Engine, Dynamite, Shopping, Telegraph and Modern Banking all took place under this system
Where the Common men did what their business man and where the people who should rule, did their job and ruled
Mixing them was catastrophic and luckily China hasn’t done that yet
Note:—
My point here is to hail the opacity of China and the CPC and not discuss why Qin Gang didn’t make a public appearance for 3 weeks
The Opacity for whatever reason is what makes China the world’s fastest rising threat to the West and it’s degraded political systems
SNOW WHITE ENDING LEAKS GET EVEN MORE PATHETIC! What On Earth Is DISNEY THINKING!
TSMC estimates that they need 13 Factories plus another 7 from Korea to be able to match the demand and achieve sufficient scale to maintain some profitability
The cost would be minimum $ 240 Billion a year
Add to this at least 6000 Specialized Workers who were to be paid $ 34,000 a year from Korea and Taiwan who refuse flat and demand $ 61,000 minimum
That’s $ 1.05 Billion a year including all other services and labor costs and welfare measures
Thus the US Chip program needs around $ 2.7 Trillion in the first 10 years
Their budget is $ 230 Billion in 5 years
So the simple question is where is the MONEY ?
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Mrs Raimondo is unwilling to release any more money
Add to this is the US demanding
Full Access to every Customer
Full Access to profits and financial records
Full Access to all Process Technologies not controlled by the US
TSMC and Samsung are Loth to agree to these terms and have decided to go to their lawyers and use the courts to fight the issue
Thus the Make Chips in USA has gotten derailed and side tracked
It is likely to take 2028 before the first commercial chips will be sold from USA and that too only 13% of the actual demand
It will take 2036 before the first commercial chips are sold to fulfil the whole demand
That gives the Chinese 13 years to take over the market and if they manage to make chips at a larger scale and lower cost
That’s $ 2.7 Trillion DOWN THE DRAIN and Taiwan and Korean entities are finished
Its why the Tech war has been in place
To hope to ensure China isn’t able to crack any of these technologies by 2036
A police man by the name of Joseph James DeAngelo had a habit of going into the houses of people. He enjoyed to observe them from afar. Then, he would enter their houses at night, and leave, and enter… and if he felt he had familiarized himself sufficiently with their homes, he’d subdue them.
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DeAngelo would often attack couples, a man and a woman, together. He’d tie the husband or boyfriend up in one room. And he would place teacups, plates, cups on the back of the man. He’d tell the victim not to move because if he did, “the cups will fall, I’ll hear you and I will come back to kill you…” DeAngelo would then go to the other room, and rape the wife
The husbands would be on the floor, tied up, and forced to listen to the agonizing sounds of their wives being brutalized in the other room. Always, without fail, they would wiggle and try their hardest to escape to save their wives. The porcelain would drop and break, and DeAngelo would then drag them to the bedroom. Bludgeon the wife in front of the tied-up husband… and then, kill him last. The killer repeated this several times. Some victims survived. Most didn’t. For decades, the man capable of such great cruelty got away with his crimes, unpunished, a family man, father, grandfather.
A policeman, he heard of DNA evidence being a thing by the late 1980s. Which is when he stopped his spree of terror. DeAngelo lived another thirty years in relative peace and quiet. He had a little boat he would sail on. And he enjoyed his retirement. DNA evidence did take him down, in the end — genealogy websites used to track down relatives allowed law enforcement into their database and found a match. Before he ‘retired’ from his career as a maniac, DeAngelo raped 45 people and murdered twelve.
Nature is straightforward. An animal gets hungry, he’ll kill another animal and eat it. It’ll hurt, it will be brutal but there’s no inate cruelty or sadism involved… the killing is a mean’s to an end. Nature produces no Joseph James DeAngelo’s. Humanity alone does.
Young Girl REINCARNATED from an Ancient World | The Ghost Inside My Child | LMN
This is pretty good and well worth your time to watch.
Obviously you think that the Party is a very top-down organization where only a few people at the top make all the decisions for 1.4B Chinese, and everyone underneath follows. Following on this, you think that if the Party collapses through the elimination of this top few, it will collapse and everyone will go wild.
Let me correct your view:
The Party has 98M members now. This means about one in 14 Chinese is a Party member.
In order to join the Party, one must either apply to join, or be invited to apply.
The Party permeates through all levels of Chinese society with branch organizations. Every company, school or organization with more than ten employees has its own party branch secretary who convenes monthly meetings for all Party members. At these meetings they discuss policy and developments, and how to implement Party policy in their organization.
It is common for applicants to be rejected on the first application. The current general secretary, Xi Jinping, was rejected nine times before finally being accepted on the tenth application.
On joining, the new members swear an oath of loyalty and sacrifice if called to do so.
In an emergency, such as a flood, earthquake or COVID crisis, the party mobilizes its members FIRST. This is why when the COVID crisis broke out in Wuhan in January 2020, most of the victims were Party members; they had been called to use their skills and experience to fight the virus. Ordinary Chinese who are not Party members know about Party members being called up and in some cases dying.
This is not to say that the Party is a perfect organization which has never done anything wrong. For instance, the Cultural Revolution is now officially considered to have been a disaster.
At the same time, it has lifted more than 600M Chinese out of poverty, and is building a modern infrastructure in China which puts western societies to shame. It has made Chinese proud of China.
No one has been able to offer a better alternative to replace the Party. Do you have a better alternative aside from vague statements about freedom and democracy? That will not work with ordinary Chinese because they want some firm alternatives.
Would you offer to give every Chinese a US passport, and a free one-way ticket to the US? I am sure that would attract 50–100M Chinese, maybe more. Do you want to do that? I don’t think Biden or Trump have plans to do that right away.
So why would it collapse? If you can tell me how such an organization and society would collapse, I would like to hear about it.
I’m all ears.
Father Takes Away Daughters College $ After They Crossed The Ultimate Line, Now They’re LOSING IT!
Yes, it worked very well because it restored the faith of most Chinese in the Chinese Communist Party.
If Xi Jinping did not have the anti-corruption campaign, China would have become as corrupt as another leading superpower, where money can buy anything, including the presidency.
Animals are easier to pick up with chopsticks if they are dead, and they don’t fight back as they are being eaten.
Chili Dog Soup
IMG 9753 scaled 1
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 package hot dogs, cut up
1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 (16 ounce) cans dark red kidney beans, undrained
2 (15 ounce) cans tomato sauce
Salt and pepper
1 cup shredded cheese
1 bag Fritos Corn Chips
Instructions
Cook ground beef. Drain.
Stir in hot dogs, diced tomatoes, kidney Beans, tomato sauce, salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve over Frito chips and top with cheese.
12 People Reveal The Saddest Thing They’ve Seen at a Casino
July 18, 2023
1. A woman asking security if she could come back in clean clothes, after she got kicked out for shitting herself while working the slots. She wouldn’t leave that machine, even to use the bathroom. Gross. She wasn’t even phased or embarrassed by the scene she was making in public.
2. Casino dealer here for 10 years. I’ve worked at three casinos and worked in many departments . Young best buy worker comes in buys in for 500 on roulette and loses it. Goes to the parking lot and sells his car for 500 and comes back and racks up 75,000 bucks. In 20 minutes he loses it all. 25 years old I couldn’t believe it. Feel free to ask any question.
3. Not a dealer and it was a card room, but while playing poker a guy sat down with the max buy in and got wiped out on his first hand at the table. He reloaded for the max and lost it all his second hand dealt. He reloaded max a third time, and no shit, went broke again on his third hand of the night. Like, wtf? He stood up real quick and stared at the board stunned. Then, proceeded to freak out about how his wife was going to divorce him. He grabbed as many chips off the table as he could and made a break for the door. Unfortunately, he tripped over the back of someone’s chair and chips went flying everywhere. Police kindly escorted him out as he was having what had to be a mental breakdown.
4. I am not a dealer but I am a cocktail server at a local casino. I am still fairly new but it is a very sad place. I work anywhere from 7-10 hours shifts at a time. People will sit at a slot machine for my entire shift and put every single dollar they have into it hoping to win big. They constantly visit the ATM or main bank for cash advances on credit cards or go into the negative in the bank account. I see the same people there daily. Most are friendly but some bark orders at me or don’t thank me. I am always smiling and friendly with everyone I come into contact with.
I’ve witnessed people win thousands of dollars and be completely miserable because it wasn’t enough for them and they are still in debt from their addiction.
I’ve heard horror stories about people pissing or shitting because they refuse to visit the restroom in fear of leaving their machine for a few moments.
5. Former slot attendant and cage cashier at Showboat in Atlantic City (RIP): the worst is watching the people who clearly don’t have enough money to be in there coming in, losing it all, and begging for a marker (a line of credit that allows them to keep betting) so they could try to win it back. Showboat was a Harrah’s casino, and Harrah’s made a very big deal about their commitment to responsible gaming. We were told to refer them to Gambler’s Anonymous or point out the brochures and signage about needing help if we determined a guest was gaming irresponsibly, but we couldn’t actually stop them if they had the money. Once they were out, though, you’d still get a few sad sacks a day that tried to open the marker. I don’t know which was worse: watching them get the application accepted and piss away even more money, or watching them get denied and leave in tears.
6. Tossup between:
Coming into work to see some of the same people still playing that were there when i left the previous night.
Watching other dealers take their tokes and sit down at a table and lose it all after their shift ended.
7. Been in the casino industry for about 14 years. Dealt for about 8 of those, I have since moved up and am in management now.
The saddest thing I’ve seen is death.
Death by itself is tragic and rare, and seeing someone keel over from a heart attack is sad to say the least. But you are trained and ordered to never stop dealing if there are bets that need to be paid or taken.
Case in point: A normal, slightly overweight guy has a heart attack. He drops. It happened across from me in a different pit, but I saw it just the same. Concerned crowd, EMTs arrive, all of what you would expect. But he had this misfortune of dying on a live craps table. In the middle of a good roll. People complained that the game stopped, so they kept the game going as EMTs were doing their thing. People were straight stepping over the guy’s legs to place bets.
In St. Louis if you are curious. I’ve seen two other people die in my casinos, but this one was the saddest by far.
8. The first time I was ever in Vegas a security guards came up to the slot next to me and removed the stool from the floor. Another guard wheels up an old lady and she starts throwing her money in to that slot. Within a minute of her losing every last dime the guard is back wheeling her away while the other fixes the stool back in to the floor. I notice them taking her out the front door towards Fremont street. A couple hours later as I am leaving the casino I see her right by the front door where they wheeled her and I figure perhaps she is waiting for a ride. Four hours later when I come back she is still in the same place so I ask her if I can pay for a taxi for her and she asks if I can give her $20 dollars to buy some groceries. I give it to her and a few minutes later see security wheeling her back to the slots.
9. 90 (ish?) year old woman wearing tattered rags, and in a wheelchair that was falling apart, cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other spending what I could only assume was her life savings on the slot machines.
10. I used to work as a change person, pushing a cart around and making change for gamblers. I once saw a grown man at about 3am – desperately walking from slot machine to slot machine, dropping coins into the slots, pulling the handle, and watching the tumblers roll – quietly sobbing and mumbling to himself, seemingly looking desperately for a winner. I left that job the next day and never forgot his face (it’s been about 25 years).
11. I worked as a croupier for 3 years, I had an Irish student come into the casino drunk. He proceeded to spend his entire years worth of student loads and bursary. He stood at my blackjack table and begged me and my manager for his money back, trying to explain to me that he was only 18 and why it was illegal for us to put him in such a position e.g. bent over the table and looted of all monies.
12. I wasn’t a dealer but i use to work security at a casino. I remember a relatively wealthy couple explaining to me that they sold their fridge and stove so that they could use the money to keep gambling. They said they had no need for them because the casino comped them so many meals. All i could think of was how sad of people they were.
This one for some reason bothers me more than anything though; seeing a mother leave her children at the entry gate so she could gamble. This was like 2:30am and the children were something like 4 and 16. We told her numerous times to take them home but she wouldn’t. We contacted DCI (state troopers basically that are always on property) to come and talk to her. Because the 16 year old was watching the other child they couldn’t do anything. We also had a policy that if they were at the table games, the pit boss had to make the call to kick her out. He wouldn’t because she was spending too much. I just watched as these kids sat on a bench for hours waiting for their mom. They complained they were hungry and thirsty but i couldn’t do much more than get a waitress to grab a soda.
“We have alien bodies and they are hiding it from you” Bombshell UFO testimony
On Wednesday, Congress held a hearing about UAP’s or “unidentified aerial phenomena.”
This is government speak for UFO. During the hearing, U.S. intelligence official David Grusch, a whistleblower, testified under oath before Congress that the United States has the bodies of alien pilots who were recovered from crashed UFO’s.
He also said that we have crashed craft and that he will give more details about that in separate closed-door hearings.
8 Parents Revealed Why They Home-Schooled Their Children
July 27, 2023
1. My number one reason was I wanted my kids to like learning. And they do, they love both reading and math. But it ended up being so much more. We have a lot more bonding time as a family, and my kids are best friends. They have more time to spend with their friends, and they have friends of all ages, from all around our city, not just the kids their age, in their neighborhood. They have lots of time to pursue multiple hobbies and interests. We as a family aren’t tied to a school schedule.
2. Our homeschool journey started because of food allergies. As we began to research our options we were flooded with reasons to homeschool that really resonated with us.
Safety- pandemic, a growing anti-vax movement and violence (bullying, shootings,etc)
We wanted our girls to get accurate and useful information regarding sex education. Not just the abstinence nonsense that is taught in schools. When our girls eventually go down that path, we want to make sure they know how to protect themselves as well as how to advocate for themselves and what they want.
We want to make sure that our girls are being taught accurate, truthful and fully represented history. I’m not interested in my kids learning a conservative, white-washed version of history.
My kids are only kids once and I genuinely enjoy spending time with them. Homeschooling lets us do that.
Flexibility. We’re able to do extracurricular activities such as gymnastics during the day while public school is in session. This usually means better instructor to kid ratios. Also, it means more time to spend as a family in the evening once my husband gets off work so he doesn’t miss out on time with the kids.
Private school was never an option for us because all of the private schools in our area are religious. We don’t feel that religion has anything to do with education and shouldn’t be included during school time.
3. I personally don’t have too much of a problem with the material taught in public school (though with a lot of recent developments in some states re: religion butting it’s way in, book bans etc, I’m wary of the future) but large classes have to, by default, teach to the middle. The kids who are behind will stay behind, and the kids ahead will get bored and disruptive. There’s also incredible stigmatization of kids held back OR skipped forward, even if they need it, so it rarely, if ever, happens. The way I see it, public schools prioritize putting kids in boxes and keeping them there, regardless of their needs academically or developmentally (it’s really not developmentally appropriate for young kids to sit in one place for hours at a time). I don’t blame them, though, because you kind of have to exercise a lot of control if you are the sole adult in charge of 20+ young children all day.
We looked at a lot of private schools in the area and none of them met our needs. We want our kids to have a low pressure academic atmosphere where they are allowed to act like young kids, and where there are enough teachers to meet kids where they’re at. That’s just not offered around here in a school we can drive to and afford right now.
4. Ultimately, I don’t believe that the material taught or the way it is taught will be of any benefit to my children in their future and may even be detrimental.
5. There’s a lot of reasons..
Like you, I don’t think what is taught in schools is quality information and nothing applicable to life skills.
I also don’t like the idea of my kids sitting in a chair 7 hours a day.
I think kids should be around a lot of different people and different age groups. I don’t see that there’s a lot to gain by being with the same group of kids the same age for 12 years.
I don’t like the political climate of our nation and I don’t like that it’s so apparent in schools. Our children’s education isn’t a game and shouldn’t be messed with the way it is.
I am fine with people having differing opinions than me, and I also don’t want to shelter my kids from different opinions and ideas but I also don’t trust a bunch of strangers having such a big part of my kids lives.
I genuinely love my kids, enjoying being around them and hate the thought of them being gone 40+ hours a week starting at age 5.
We homeschool now. As our kids are reaching middle school levels, we have discussed possibly putting them into private school. Financially, it’s definitely doable for us. Right now, we like homeschool, our kids like it and are thriving. Private school is always an option for us if thats what we decide. There is one we’ve toured and really like near us that will be what we choose if that’s the path we go down.
6. We decided to homeschool after we already had three kids in public school. I watched their love of school, turn into dread. The younger kids, no longer felt safe. They were coming home crying because of their peers or confused over classroom assignments. I watched my older kid turn into robot mode to please the system with A’s.
After my oldest graduated high school, we pulled the younger kids and decided to homeschool. We love the freedom of homeschool. Being able to tackle assignments in a way that benefits each child. Going to zoo’s, museums, and state parks anytime we want too. Learning about any thing we want, just because we want too. I can tailor their education to the career fields that they are interested in. We can enjoy play groups other extracurricular activities at our own pace.
Ultimately, learning is a life long process and I wanted them to have a good foundation. Classroom learning is a small percentage compared to the rest of their lives. I considered their physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, environmental and occupational well-being when we decided to homeschool.
7. I like homeschooling and the freedom that comes with it. I like that my kids can spend time outside, playing, reading, and I like that we can choose a curriculum that they enjoy and that works for them. My kids are young and I don’t like the idea of them being in public school for 8 hours day. They can sleep late if they need to, and can take days off when they’re struggling. The public schools in my area are overcrowded and there is so much crime; schools are frequently on lockdown due to crime in the surround area or because of threats made.
We actually homeschool through a public charter. So the charter school provides funds for students that we use to purchase curriculum and that is used towards extracurriculars. We use the charter funds for piano lessons, gymnastics, and a learning co-op that meets weekly. Private schools in our area are expensive and also overcrowded.
8. Our catalyst for homeschooling was originally the pandemic and some academic trauma and bullying that came before that. We continued for many reasons but mainly because one of my kids especially needs lots of time to work through struggle and build confidence. If he were in public school his anxiety would be unmanageable and he wouldn’t be thriving as he is. It also fits our lifestyle and gives us flexibility to live the way we want and not be ruled by a societal schedule.
My favorite reason for homeschooling though is that learning and growing becomes an ongoing, long-form conversation. It’s stream-of-consciousness across the years where we reach back, make connections, and are continually building on the day before in an organic, developmentally appropriate way that revolves around hand-picked curricula and materials we believe in. I as their teacher can see where they are compared to where they have been and I can be a better steward of their progress. Pair all this with the ability to do year-round school, friends of all ages and walks of life, field trips around our town or country to learn about their world first hand, 4H and other clubs, and their being involved in a few different family businesses, often working events with adults, and living on and working a farm, and we’ve got invaluable real life living year round. After doing it this way school seems even more artificial and not the right path for us.
HOUSE PASSES THE TAIWAN INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACT
Washington, D.C. — Today, the House passed the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, bipartisan legislation authored by Congressman John Curtis (R-UT) and Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), co-Chair of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus that seeks to counter Beijing’s attempts to exclude Taiwan from participating in international organizations.
“The passage of the Taiwan International Solidarity Act is a significant step in reaffirming our commitment to Taiwan and in opposing attempts by the People’s Republic of China to use international organizations to distort Taiwan’s status,” said Rep. Curtis. “Building on my TAIPEI Act, this bipartisan legislation stands strong in support of Taiwan’s rightful place on the global stage.”
“For too long, the People’s Republic of China has distorted policies and procedures at international organizations to assert its sovereignty claims over Taiwan, often to the detriment of global health and security efforts,” said Rep. Connolly. “This bipartisan legislation ensures that we stand against Beijing’s weaponization of international organizations and in solidarity with the wishes and best interests of the people on Taiwan. I’ve been proud to partner with Rep. Curtis on this effort and I look forward to continuing to work together to get this important legislation signed into law.”
The Taiwan International Solidarity Act builds on Congressman Curtis’ TAIPEI Act to reaffirm that the United States will oppose any efforts by the People’s Republic of China to interfere with Taiwan’s ability to conduct diplomacy and participate in international organizations. In addition to Connolly and Curtis, the legislation was cosponsored by Representatives Ami Bera, Andy Barr, Mario Diaz-Balart, Dina Titus, Lisa McClain, Brian Fitzpatrick, Ted Lieu, Darrell Issa, Chris Smith, Brad Sherman, David Cicilline, and Michael Lawler.
Online casinos are a great way to spend time, especially if you win simultaneously. However, there are some nuances that online casinos hide from you.
Modern online casinos with lightning roulette demo, primarily legal and premium ones, offer a lot of entertainment, including state-of-the-art slot machines, live dealer games, and much more.
Most decent online casinos have fully informative websites. Detailed descriptions accompany most games and services. However, there are some things that online casinos need to inform players about.
Some things online casinos hide from you
None of these nuances alone will make you a great player who regularly withdraws huge sums from online casinos. However, knowing these things can help you significantly reduce your losses in online casino gambling.
Blackjack offers the best odds of winning
A casino wants to keep the online game that offers the best odds of winning. That’s why you often see promotions that focus on Blackjack. A casino won’t advertise that Blackjack offers the best odds of winning. Nevertheless, considering that the casino’s advantage can be as low as 0.5%, it is true. Try playing it yourself – it’s easy to learn and understand.
Betting systems do not guarantee winnings
Nothing can guarantee you a win when you play at a casino. It would help if you understood that:
• Even professional casino players sometimes win. • You shouldn’t rely too much on a betting system and expect always to win.
It’s best to place responsible bets on the games you choose. This way, you can limit your gambling opportunities and potential winnings.
Time flies by when you gamble
Although this feature is more typical for offline casinos, it applies here.
Land-based casinos have no clocks or windows, so you never know the time of day. It helps you forget the time because the establishments want you to stay longer and spend more.
The same thing happens online, and you can lose track of time when playing like this. Even safe online casinos do not inform you of this fact.
Maximum bets can pay off on slots
Many players often make the mistake of thinking that the size of the bet doesn’t matter. So, they continue to place small bets, hoping that a crazy multiplier will appear on the slot. However, this never happens. That’s because, in many cases, bonuses are awarded only at the highest bets. Therefore, using a higher bet can guarantee the activation of these critical special features.
Ignore advertising of “hot” slots
Casinos often use a kind of petty fraud by “highlighting” certain games. Usually, they indicate that these games are “hot” and others are “cold”. Such labelling is explained by how often they have paid out money recently. However, there are no actual trends in the frequency of game payouts. All outcomes of online games are random due to the random number generation technology. Therefore, nothing says that the probability of paying out in one game is higher than in another.
The casino always has an advantage
It is something you can figure out for yourself. However, casinos are not very happy that players know this. Why? Because it means that players know that the casino always makes a profit. For every bet you place, the casino gets a certain percentage. The casino’s edge (House edge) exists, so the casino/operator makes money when you play. Even fast-payout casino sites have to make money somehow. That’s why the casino tries to steer you towards games with a higher casino edge.
Casinos don’t like bonus hunters
It is a pretty obvious statement. Online casinos want to avoid bonus hunters coming to them. Why? Because these players sign up and make deposits with the sole intention of redeeming a bonus.
They build up a balance, withdraw money, leave, and never play again. Casinos do not like such players. They prefer players who play for a long time and often, and with their real money.
Online casinos don’t want you to withdraw your winnings
When you win a decent amount of money at an online casino, the ideal thing to do is to withdraw it. However, casinos want you to do something other than that. Instead, they want you to keep gambling, hoping to win even more. In the end, there is a chance that you will lose everything you won and more.
That’s why it’s better to set a winning goal and leave the online casino when you reach it.
The hype around jackpot winners is not accidental
Casinos go to great lengths to get people to spend money. It applies to both land-based and online gambling establishments. Both illegal and completely honest. Casinos love advertising and excitement around the enormous payouts they make to lucky players who hit the jackpot. Such sums are often life-changing. So they want you to believe you can win the same amount. It is their way of getting you to register, deposit, and play. If you hope to win big, the casino will grab hold of you.
Card counting is not illegal
Land-based casinos are more guilty of this than online sites. However, if you visit live casino sites, this applies to games in the rooms. Card counting is something that experienced players can use in these games. Knowing which cards have already come and gone gives you an advantage. However, some casinos prefer you to have something other than this kind of knowledge. It puts them at a disadvantage. The thing is, if you can do it, it’s not illegal. So take advantage of it if you can.
What probably happened to Qin Gang
What probably happened to Qin Gang.
The following is a compilation of a plot-line that seems to have solidified on international social media.
No one knows for certain what is going on in regards to the Qin saga, however, internet sleuth armies (many located inside of China) have pieced together this most-probable scenario. Knowing what I know of the quality of the “keyboard warriors” of China, the sleuthing tends to be of high quality and speculation is kept at a minimum. Its another animal all together compared to the West.
Is this explanation the full story? No.
For internet sleuthing, the amount of detail, with names, dates, times, and actions are all very *specific*. It is a great amount of detail. This suggests a Chinese government “seeding” effort into social media as opposed to an “organic” discovery.
But, please keep in mind that this is the best explanation that you will ever get. It is the story with the highest probability. And keep in mind that the Chinese government, though its “unofficial” key-board warriors DOES actually “seed” narratives onto social media.
On 26/6/2023 — Qin Gang received a phone call from a mysterious ANDRE asking him to meet at a secret location in Beijing
QG was about to refuse when Andre said it was about “FU” or Fu Xiaotian, his mistress or girlfriend.
2023 07 28 14 40
QG decided to travel alone and meet Andre who confirmed he worked for the CIA and revealed pictures and secret tapes of QG and Fu and their affair and confirmed that Fu was a CIA Asset.
Andre = CIA agent
Fu = CIA asset
Andre informed QG that he would either [1] see that these photos delivered to the Security Committee and his wife and made public or [2] he would have to do whatever the CIA wanted him to do.
QG nodded and Andre said he would mail the instructions and call him for their next meeting.
…
However QG drove straight to the Security Committee and confessed the entire affair plus the blackmail.
The Committee [1] recorded his statement and [2] imposed a section 15(iii) violation — Ethical and Moral Breach, and [3] placed him on leave from that moment on.
As he left, three security men followed him, his regular driver was gone and instead Captain Wen of the MSS was at the wheel
At Zhonganhai, his home was covered by security guards.
…
Andre watched as the MSS men began to hunt for him and realized he had made a mistake with the Chinese Foreign Minister.
Westerners usually cracked under blackmail but QG came clean mainly because being a misguided philanderer was better than being a traitor to his country.
Andre fled China as fast as possible to Taipei realizing that the mission had failed and Fu (the CIA sponsored mistress) was blown.
On 3/7/2023 — the Security committee decided to impose a full investigation on every member of the ministry who had meetings with QG and 181 officials fell under suspicion and were investigated.
Xi Jingping who was notified agreed that the safest course was to give the Foreign Ministry to Wang Yi, a man above suspicion and not in QGs sphere of influence in the last year.
Qin Gang came clean and revealed all aspects of the affair after which his phone and laptops and suits were examined for bugs.
There were none.
It was likely that now that QG would live in Beijing and it was impossible for Fu to follow him there, the CIA rushed things.
China couldn’t blame the CIA because that would expose China.
So instead China continued with Wang Yi.
After many days the committee decided that Qin Gang had not divulged any state secrets and that Fu was part of a long term operation that had been accelarated due to QGs sudden promotion to Foreign Minister.
Thus Qin Gang was retained as State Councillor and as Party Member.
He will never leave China now.
His Passport was confiscated on 26/6/2023.
He will be under surveillance for life or until he turns 80 or if a later standing committee votes against the same.
Of the 181 others —69 have been cleared fully and 46 more have been cleared for their last 3 years activities.
Likely by 1/1/24 — a new foreign minister will replace QG — someone chosen by Wang Yi from his old guard
Andre(CIA agent)
Andre was found at 4:45 AM.
His mouth was gaping open and he had suffered a massive seizure.
His mouth was purple and a needle prick was found near his lower right elbow.
On 18/7/23, he was buried anonymously under the name of Regis Waller (1971–2023)
The Experts found traces of substances that seemed similar in composition to NOVICHOK.
Fu Xiaotian (Mistress)
Fu is in a safe house in Brazil waiting for evacuation to Vancouver under a false name and terrified of retaliation.
Today all they want to do is LOOK TOUGH AND TALK TOUGH
So they are all bullies
From Madeline Albright to Powell to Rice to Hilary Clinton to John Kerry to Pompeo to Blinken — their message is always the same
You better do what we say or else…
British diplomats always want to look condescending to Asian & Middle Eastern & African countries
European & American diplomats always threaten Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries
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US Diplomats have all but forgotten the art of quid pro quo
It’s all about being terrified of “Looking Weak”
The result is they are more and more hawkish than ever
If you don’t have a democratic system, then you are a dictatorship and a threat to the world
If you don’t do what I say, i will sanction you or embargo you
If you don’t stand against Russia, i will create a color revolution and ensure you are defeated in elections
Blinken is one of these diplomats
Now Chinese Diplomats are DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE
They always believe in deals that benefit everyone so that nobody leaves with a grudge
Nobody LOSES FACE
They are terrified of LOSING FACE and they would do anything in their power to not lose face
When Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan, the Diplomat Wang Yi lost a lot of face
He regained his face and gained even more face after his Solomon Island deal and the SAUDI IRAN DEAL that helped him gain so much face that we was rewarded plentifully with a huge promotion to the Politburo
main qimg 94a24fcd67ed5e19bb034750effdad89
Zhao Lijian on the other hand, got a promotion and a higher salary but he LOST FACE and that meant his power and his responsibilities have reduced
So US vs China is always a tough battle
Both sets of Diplomats have their restrictions
US diplomats cannot appear weak so they threaten and posture
Chinese diplomats cannot lose face so they react and cause US to lose more face
It’s a vicious circle
However Chinese Diplomats are reasonable while US Diplomats are not. They won’t yield a millimeter at any cost but demand that China does.
As US becomes less and less of the only Superpower in the World , their stubbornness will rise accordingly
China meanwhile have a 5000 year civilization and their diplomacy is much different and they won’t put with the US and it’s brash bullyboy tactics
So one side has to yield or be made to yield
The jury is out on who
So who are US Diplomats are terrified of?
main qimg c52d6c9899f61af30b5387545f210ade
Yep the Taliban
When a 14 year boy can smilingly cut blinkens granddaughters throat and laugh saying Allahu Akbar and happily get shot believing he will be in Jannat
That’s enough to terrify the living daylights of any American including a Pentagon Five Star General
In 2001, Afghanistan was an isolated nation
Today 4.7 Million Afghans are in US and at least 30% are pro Taliban having infiltrated through as victims
If a single mullah asks them to do god’s work and kill 7 Women and Kids before sacrificing their lives — US would fold in a week and make a compromise
Stuxnet | The Computer Virus That Caused World War 3
STUXNET. The virus that prevented; then started the next world war. Cyberwar is being waged right now in your name.
No matter what country you call home, your government is engaged in highly dangerous combat on the Internet. Infrastructure around the world is under siege and everyone is at risk. Even you.
In 2010, the Stuxnet virus was discovered in Natanz, Iran and thousands of control systems that operate factories, power plants and nuclear reactors around the world.
It was 20 times more sophisticated than any malware ever recorded.
It could halt oil pipelines, destroy water treatment plants and bring down entire power grids.
Stuxnet is back, stronger than ever. And we should all be concerned.
Cyber-security experts knew Stuxnet wasn’t ordinary malware thrown together by some basement hacker. This was something different.
This article is devoted to one of my more neglected sub-indexes. Which is the “learning about China by looking at Chinese girls” sub-index. Well, in this article we won’t be teaching you all all that much about China so much as we are showing you images of what the girls are like in China.
I know, I know… the American propaganda mills have been working over-time to make China look like an evil monster, dark, gloomy, sad and dirty. It’s nothing like that. But you know, the sheeple love to read things like that. It makes them feel good about their sorry lives.
So what I did was I got on my local internet and started collecting short videos made by gals here in China. They are in no particular order. I just went ahead and vacuumed them up as I found them. Over all, they are a great introduction to what the girls of China look like today.
I took the micro-videos and grouped them into batches of ten. Then I zipped up the file so that you can download all ten together. It’s much faster and easier for you to check out these ladies this way. I did make a point to put at least one “noticeable” worthy girl in each group. I’ll have you know.
But first…
Realize that just because the girls like to dance around on Chinese social media does not equate them to be the “standard, and normal” Chinese lass. They tend to stand apart in one way or the other as this video clearly indicates…
But first, let’s see what kinds of images that you can find on American Internet and American websites that depict what Chinese girls must look like. OK.
This is a screen shot of a Bing Image Search…
Chinese girls according to Bing Search.
You know, there are ugly people all over, but seriously, the density of all these types of girls gives you the illusion that this is what all the Chinese girls look like. It’s not even remotely true.
Some Examples of Chinese Girls…
OK. Here’s some fun videos of come pretty Chinese girls.
Click on the link under the picture. It will download a ZIP file.
Unzip to a folder.
Then when you open the folder you will see the ten videos.
Click on the first one, and the computer will play all ten one after the other. You should be able to go through all the ten micro-videos in just over a minute.
Group 1
The ladies come in all shapes and sizes. Some are busty. Some are not. Some are short, and some are tall. All are lovely.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 2
Most of the Chinese girls like to wear tight fitting clothes. It’s the current fashion, I figure. I am not complaining. It’s like when I lived in California back in the early 1980’s, and all the girls wore these one-piece spandex suits that they rode bicycles in.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 3
All of these girls, no matter what size or shape, all have one or more attributes that are attractive to me personally. I think that it is their personality that comes out on these little videos.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 4
You will note that not all Chinese girls have long black hair. Many have brown or shades of brown hair. And while the predominant eye color is brown, there are other colors that manifest from time to time.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 5
When I look at these girls, a flood of thoughts assault me. And one of the dominant thoughts is, of course, sharing a bottle of wine with them and eating some fine delicious food.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 6
All of these gals have a story to tell. Wouldn’t you like to sit at a table, enjoy some fine food, play some games. Drink some wine and listen to their stories?
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 7
The gal on the bottom row in the middle is wearing some traditional Hunan clothing. I find the gals, the food, and the hilly countryside very appealing to me.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 8
The girl in the blue jeans is showing off her butt. It’s a pity that she doesn’t turn around so that we can see her face, and shape. But that’s the way life is. Sometimes people want to emphasize what they feel is their “best” physical attribute.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 9
Girl number two here is quite top heavy. I think that the outfit doesn’t do her justice. She might be better served with a long dress and a expansive top. But that’s just me, don’t you know.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 10
Having cleavage is a “thing” for girls in their 20’s in China, I guess. But you have to see them outside the work environment and in the clubs or KTV’s to appreciate it.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 11
The girl cutting up food is a real turn on. There are few things that get me more excited than a woman making and cooking dinner. It’s a fetish I suppose.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Group 12
This first gal in the golden spandex has a very nice butt. I could watch her a walking all day long, I’ll tell you what.
And you can access these young ladies by clicking HERE.
Some final thoughts
Now that I am older, when I look at a pretty and attractive lady, I think about going out together. I think about talking, eating fine delicious food, and drinking some nice alcohol. It makes me want to put on my “best side” also and just spend a lovely day or evening together. Engaging in free talk, and just having fun.
If something else happens, then great. If not, well, that’s fine too.
In every event, we would all have a great time. Talking, being our best and sharing our thoughts, our lives and fun together. It’s a precious thing.
One of the things that I really like about China is that you can speak freely to each other. You don’t have to worry about offending someone by your mannerisms, or your language or your subject matter. And this fact really becomes pronounced when I meet someone from the West who comes to China on a visit and I immediately notice they stiffen up and get uncomfortable when I speak, or smoke or drink.
But what’s their problem. I offer them a cigarette. You know?
Jeeze! They are so imprisoned that they don’t know what freedom actually is.
Being afraid to say something, least the person gets offended is not freedom. Freedom is the ability to be yourself. So be it. Don’t try to please others. Please yourself. You’ll end up being a heck of a lot happier in return.
Throw in some fine delicious wine.
And some tasty food.
And some great conversation with some attractive ladies, and you have the makings of a wonderful time. I kid you not. You can believe me on this. And that is really true if one of the ladies is an animal lover, a cook, a gardener, a history buff, a poet, an archivist, or a dancer. My experiences with these kinds of women has always been extraordinary.
And don’t even get me started on some of the prime MM subjects here. You’ll never get me to shut up!
Generally speaking in China, the more you can drink, the more respect you will earn. If you can drink excessive amounts of alcohol, still stand up, form relatively coherent sentences and follow proper Chinese drinking etiquette (see below), you’ll no doubt impress your table-mates and leave a good impression. If you fail, don’t worry! You probably won’t remember it anyway. Obviously never drink more than you can handle no matter what the pressure.
Do you want more?
I have more posts like this in my Pretty Girls of China Index here…
Well, this post is to be an elaboration on a few specific MM comments. The poster wanted some clarification on what is going on regarding [1] hotels (in China, obviously) and [2] “new friends” that you might make on your adventures inside of China, and I of course, was more than willing to help him out.
But before I begin, let me clarify a few things.
First Off, China has changed.
China is not the way it was ten years ago, or even later. The days of going to a salon with wall to wall girls that can give you some manly pleasures are few and far-between today. Even in the remote communities. It’s all kind of dying off.
So your experience from ten years ago or longer are actually (sad to say) not really going to be replicated. Those days are over.
I do not see them returning.
The same goes with the ladies that walk the streets, and hang out on the corners. You used to see them everywhere and on certain streets. You can still go to those streets, but things are much more discreet these days. You need to know what you are doing, and have a local friend to help you navigate the local geography.
It’s all about change.
And change is good. Well, in this case it’s good.
Part of the reasons behind these changes it are due to laws, part of it is due to society, and part of it is due to technology.
Laws
China has implemented some harsh laws regarding morality. The Chinese government wishes to maintain a traditional culture, and thus many venues related to vice are discouraged. Prostitution has always existed, and still exists, but it is no longer so blatant and open as it used to be.
Raw, Western style, quick flings are a dying breed. Instead, they have been replaced with talented and beautifulcourtesans. These are mighty women. Some youngish (in their 20's) and some older. All strong, capable and beautiful.
Not to mention... profit oriented.
Society
China is very prosperous.
The Western "news" has been so God-Damn awful that no one outside of China realizes just how well off the Chinese are. They are not only far richer than their American equals, but they own multiple homes, have savings, and are generally far happier.
A walk through any Chinese parking lot will produce a vast number of Mercedes, BMW's, Porches, and high-end local vehicles. Not to mention the occasional Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Bentley.
What this means is that even the poorest Chinese person is doing quite well. The need to go prostitute yourself out of drug addiction, poverty or some kind of forced-slavery is no longer on the table. People who prostitute themselves in China do so for additional money, or to improve their lives. Not out of necessity.
Technology
QR code in the skies of Shenzhen. All done by laser-mounted and LED mounted drones flying via 5G and AI.
Sure there are dating APPs, and payment APPS and QR codes and all sorts of technology that makes business transactions very easy, and free.
Unlike the USA where every single thing you do comes with a fee, in China it's free. You want to transfer some money electronically, scan the QR. No cost. It's free. Try doing that in America. America is the land with a million tiny, tiny hands in your wallet taking very small bites out of everything that you do, so that at the end of the day your wallet is empty.
Not in China.
So it's much easier to network electronically, make your connections and associations and make some "new friends" in the process. Everyone has a smart phone, and unlike America where you need to pay a weeks salary for one, here in China they are cheap and easy to get. Everyone has them. Everyone uses them.
And if you want to make a few spare yuan on the side, it's ridiculously easy to meet new people, and make new friends.
China is far, far, FAR more advanced than anyone in the West has any idea about. All those electronics, and technologies that come from Germany, Japan, Switzerland and Korea are all developed and made inside of China.
That’s the reality.
And that is partially why the US government is so horrified about “China’s rise”. As if it just happened “over night”. It didn’t.
And don’t even get me started on the idea that America is going to invest 2 trillion dollars on infrastructure to catch up with China…
Catch up…
The second point…
I think that the world has become a very harsh place.
Some places like the Middle East, and America are very difficult places to live. People feel under all sorts of pressure and need a release. They want some fun, and some pleasure.
And while I like to talk about the sexual activity that may or may not be associated with this, I strongly believe that the companionship of some new friends, some good food, and great conversation is really … REALLY… very much in need today.
Seriously, the best conversationalists are women.
I am sorry guys. That’s a fact. And they can chat up a storm, and they are interesting to boot! Add to that the fact that they can read EQ and emote to you on a very deep and significant level. It’s calming to me, and seriously I need to relax before I am ready to perform any kind of sexual activity. I’m not a 16 year old boy. I need intellectual stimulation to relax.
The old days of being “ready to go” in a second and leap into bed are long, long gone. Those days are like a very distant memory to me.
Now from my point of view, as a older man, I need to have more stimulation aside from what you would just get sexually. I need to have some good food. Some great wine. And some great conversation with a woman that spends the time to look great and who is willing to chat up and have some fun with me. Other older men in the MM audience know what I am talking about.
For you’se other guys that don’t know, and don’t understand, you WILL find out.
Just popping a Viagra, or a Cialis just won’t cut it.
It’s no longer about getting “it up”, and “staying hard”. It’s also about wanting to have sex, being interested, and staying interested, and having the energy and stamina to engage in some physical romping.
Your little-MM won’t budge an inch unless you are relaxed and interested in your partner and what they have to say.
That’s just the way it is.
Believe me or not. I don’t care.
For me, you just aren’t gonna get that with a run-of-the-mill street walker. Instead, You get that (what you need) from friends, and from other people who are upwardly mobile looking to chat up with successful and interesting men.
Interesting men. People who can discuss things on a wide selection of topics, and who have some money to spend, and like to play around a little bit. And that’s … well… you all like MM don’t you?
Ok. Enough of that disclaimer.
I think you all know what I am trying to say. Stop thinking that everything is a black and white cartoon. It isn’t. the world is colorful, and the needs of humans are varied and complex. Our best experiences come from understanding and embracing this fact.
Drink some wine. Chat up on a subject that you love to talk about. Be a little goofy, or silly. Don’t be afraid to say things. Joke some, drink some and eat some delicious food. have a great time, and then… relaxed, and engaged, you can take your time alone with your new friends. At a nice, leisurely pace.
It’s a win – win.
The Comment
I think this comment was written on 19APR21.
Concerning “ding dong” girls.
IMO best to just go into the bar. My first experience was in a Zhuhai hotel. (Took ferry straight from Hong Kong airport). The bar folks will call somone to come talk to you if there is no one there.
However, found out the hard way that first Chinese trip that you need to be careful about the pebble trick (I believe that is what happened: someone put a stone in the door so it never fully closed and while showering someone came in and exchanged my real RMB with counterfeit RMB). First the taxi guy told me I had fake RMB (didn’t believe him since I had it exchanged in the bank the previous day) but accepted they were fake when I went for an incredible foot and back massage the next night.
Also, learned the scary way in Shanghai to never go to KTVs that are not connected to the hotels you are staying in, unless you are with a local.
If one had a “ding dong” girl (first time I heard the term), how does one pay them if currency is no longer exchanged? Or do you still need cash for stuff like that?
And this is my response, and note that I elaborated upon it substantially…
Payment
You pay the girls using QR scans via Ali-pay, WeChat, or in E-yuan.
The most common way to move money around to friends or make purchases within China is through QR code. Everyone has one, and depending on your situation, you might have a couple all directing to different backs or purposes that you have arranged beforehand. You can read about it HERE.
Sometimes you can use some paper currency. They are useful. No one is going to reject a couple of thousand RMB if you hand it to them.
But in general, you use e-pay. You just generate your personal QR to your bank account. It’s amazingly easy.
If she (or he) is reluctant to give you a QR to scan, you can easily pass the money to here electronically. (BTW, It’s never happened.) I know that there is a KTV club in Louhu, Shenzhen that has a nice troop of young attractive men (in white) that service the ladies. They have a QR code printed on a cloth that is sewn into their jacket. They just flop out the cloth QR and the lady (or guy) scans the code and everyone is good to go.
Male hosts tend to provide services to the ladies in fine, clean (and often white) attire.
It doesn’t sound very classy, but it is. It’s all in the presentation. You know, for a man who is providing services to a lady, the actions and the behaviors are all very scripted and precise. It’s not crude at all, but rather very refined, polite, and calming.
In general, the most common way of transferring money is through the exchange of wechat names, and then you can either do a direct transfer, or send a few red envelopes to her. As in the picture at the top of this article.
Sending a “red envelope” full of money to a friend is very easy using WeChat.
If that doesn’t work, then you can do a direct surface to surface transfer of cash.You use a direct transfer APP and put your two phones physically together and the transfer goes directly without using Wifi.
Finally, if she is associated with the hotel, you can tack her fees to your hotel bill, and the gal at the register will hand her cash or transfer via QR.
Most of the bars with the bar-girls available via ferry from HK to Shekou no longer exist. The entire area has been built up by overseas Chinese investors and is now one large sprawling mall with Western prices. Yikes!
As far as Zhuhai is concerned, the major hotels that were involved in the KTV girls pretty much were closed. The hotel in front of my home was busted in 2013 for having 600 KTV girls. It was a night of many sorrows, I can well imagine.
Vice raids on Chinese hotels that host KTV girls and boys occur all over China. Since 2013 the police has put a major clamp-down on these establishments and most have ended up operating in a stealth mode ever since.
Ding Dong girls are the girls on the colorful business cards that you see shoved under your hotel doors, or on the street. Usually if you see a trail of cards on the sidewalk, they are a trail of “bread crumbs” that you follow to a hotel lobby.
You can tell that “X” marks the spot with a bunch of cards lying on the cement in front of the lobby door.
So you look down, see all these business sized colorful cards with pictures of cute girls and then you look in the front lobby. There when you go in, you’ll see from three to seven girls all sitting around in the lobby looking bored and playing with their phones.
You can, of course, go up to them and chat.
But more commonly is that you turn on your wechat “scan for local members” and see if any of the girls near you are broadcasting.This feature will alert you to all the local people near you with a wechat on. Which should be a couple thousand. But if you only look at those that are the closest to you, you will be fine. You should be able to pick out the girls really easily.
For instance, if you are in a lobby, the girls will be from 1 to 10 meters away. So you look over the closest girls and try to associate the girl with the wechat picture. The smartest girls will put their picture so that you can recognize them directly.
Chances are, that they are available. so you find the gal that you want, and you connect, and send her a message. The wechat function allows you to chat and translate at the same time. So you just say hi. Ask the amount, and the desired services, and then you two can go up to the hotel and have some fun.
It’s super convenient.
Now the “shake” feature is something different. You can easily connect with someone. You both click on the shake feature , and then both phones will connect. It’s useful when you don’t have a local Wifi and you don’t want to use data. You just shake and broadcast.
I tend not to use it very much.
But it can get you to meet some interesting people…
About the “fun”
Well, I assume that most MM readers are adults, eh?
Fun means many things to many people. When I was a younger fellow, I would immediately get down to “business”. Get my rocks off and they see the lady out the door. But, you know, that’s a long, long time ago.
So you see guys, as you get older, your testosteronedropsdramatically, You just don’t have the interest in sex like you used to have when you are younger.
Now, the thing is that it’s not only the singular need to have enough blood pressure in the nether regions so you can pop up a nice erection, but rather it is the entire system.
It’s like a car that’s getting old…
Worn out car. This is what happens to hard-drivers when they get old.
When you get old, you are like a high-performance car that needs some really, really good tender loving and care.
You run out of gas…
…and out of oil,
…and out of windshield washer fluid,
…and out of brake fluid,
…and out of steering wheel fluid,
…and a loss of air pressure in the tires…
Yikes!
And along with that comes with the entire effort to “get it up” to engage in sexual activity.
Actually as bad as it sounds, it’s no big deal. We all (really) don’t care that much about it. The truth of the matter is that by the time you are in your mid-60’s you know how the world works and discover that your fears about relationships and sex are just nonsense.
And when you don’t have that testosterone screaming in your ear all day and night, you can take your time and savor what is in front of you. Things are not so urgent, and driven any longer.
Truth.
You no longer gobble down a hamburger and wash it down with a coke. Instead, you take the time to find a nice local restaurant, and call a friend to join you. You pick out the meal carefully, and you savor the smells, the environment, and the companionship. You appreciate things more. You are no longer in such a frantic rush to “obtain”, or to “get” what ever it is that you are being driven towards.
As you get older, you start to savor what is placed before you. And you start enjoying life.
What is going on…
There are three primary components to a male sex rive & ability. They are…
Ability to have (and maintain) an erection. [Blood pressure]
Interest and desire
Ability to make the milky goodness and release.
Of course, this is never spoken about. The closest you ever come to this kind of discussion is on a Viagra commercial. But it’s a real issue and you all should be made aware of it.
Guys, because after all, we all encounter these situations. One way or the other, and…
Women, to understand what is going on with the men in your life, you need to best understand a little bit about their biology.
Now…
I really don’t want to have this entire article degrade into a biologically based topic, but I do want to though out some quick notes that people can nod in agreements with or go “pshaw! You dat crazy!”.
[1] Ability to have (and maintain) an erection. [Blood pressure]
This is easy, more or less, to take care of. There are medicines (today) such as viagra, levitra and cialis. that can take care of this issue. The thing is about this is that you must be careful with drinking alcohol when you mix drugs. And when you are older, and you are taking other medicines for heart issues, blood pressure issues, and other issues, mixing medicines can come with consequences.
The thing is, and it's an important thing, just being hard and strong means nothing unless your other two issues are taken cared for.
[2] Interest and desire
The ability to have interest and desire is also complex. Much of that comes from Testosterone. and men tend to lose it as they get older. Which can be a real problem. You can end up having a lot of sex, but can never release. It can be a little frustrating. Don't you know.
Now there are natural ways to increase your production of this very important hormone. Good healthy food, and moderate exercise will work wonders. You can also take one of the different kinds of testosterone medications that are available.
Heck! You can even get some of the testosterone injection tablets that they inject into cattle (to make them big) and suck on it for a few minutes to improve your dose. (They are little white pills that look like tip of a ball point pen, on shaped like a miniature barrel.) But like all medications, if you do that without compensation in other areas, you might cause other problems. Try to strive for balance.
[3] Ability to make the milky goodness and release.
And thus, with the two above systems working well, and you are interested and relaxed with your partner, you would be able to ejaculate. And this (of course) starts up and fires up those wonderful endorphins that make us all feel good and healthy.
And the more times you do this a day (with a partner) the younger you become. Not just in mental attitude, but also in physical health.
Which leads me to…
Exercise
Never the less, having sex is a great way to get exercise, and we need exercise. If you don’t get your needed exercise you can be prone to illnesses, and those illnesses can actually kill you. So exercise is an important part of your daily regimen. So we engage in healthy pleasureful exercise every opportunity we get.
Did you know that men who have daily or sex often (during) a week tend to live, act, and look ten times younger? Its true!
So every opportunity I get, I try to engage in sex… you know… for health reasons. It’s important for me (personally) and for my family. It’s a need that all men must take regardless of your age.
Now if you don’t believe me, that’s fine too. But I am going to stick with my theories. Thank you very much.
The need for fun & companionship
All this being said, even if you have near-zero levels of testosterone, and a low interest in sex, you do want and need to have companionship. And if you are out and about, on the road, working like crazy, far away from home you do get lonely.
It might be nice eating in a restaurant a few times a week, but it gets really old, really fast if you are forced to do it every single day.
Business Road Warrior.
The life of a “road warrior” is not all that it is cracked up to be. And so when you are out with your friend and are out and about, it’s a real pleasure to have some close physical contact with an attractive member of the opposite sex who you want talk to and who is interesting.
And really…
Seriously…
Why be lonely when you could share it with other nice and interesting people. Not just women, of course, but men. And dogs. And cats. Is that fight, fight, fight for the “big money” worth taking away from some companionship, pleasures and fun?
I say NO!
Hotels
Now, we’ve talked about all sorts of things, but let’s get down to talking about hotels. And Lordy, I have seen my fair share. I have been in every kind of hotel imaginable inside China. From five star castles to one star flop-houses, to rural three-star “business” hotels, to Bordello Hotels. I’ve been to them all.
It’s always an adventure.
They are not the clones of hotels that you see in the USA. Whether it is a Marriott, Hilton or Hotel-6. Each hotel inside of China has it’s own very unique and interesting branding. It’s all a real pleasure.
Like before, this all began with a comment…
In reply to congjing yu.
Your integrity shows by not trying to dispel reality.
The criticism of public washrooms must include a caveat about Hotel rooms and their showers.
Spent over a hundred days in China over 20+ trips to China in early 2010’s. Being SuperElite on Air Canada had me upgraded on almost ever flight to First Class while paying almost always under USD$1,000 return. So I am smart cheap and have experiences in Chinese hotels. And was fortunate to hit 6 of 7 continents before 50 and hope to step on 7th before I die.
Chinese hotels are the BOMB! Spacious and Clean and everyone with King-sized beds. Now there are filthy hotels I am sure, but I always paid between USD$50-USD$100/night. Each room would have cost more than USD$300 in Western Europe, USD$250 in NYC, and over USD$150 everywhere else in Canada and the U.S.
The Showers were the best in the World. All showers had room for 2 and many for 3. Rain showers with incredible shower heads were included in almost all rooms. Some had water jets from the sides. Funny things is that half were glass so you could see the rest of the room while showering (something I have never experienced outside China – maybe available in rest of southeast Asia, but I have not traveled there)! There was a shower curtain (shower privacy blind) on the side facing the room, so if you had a visitor in your room and didn’t want them to see you, you could pull down.
I suggest anyone wanting to see what I am raving about just watch a few of the many Chinese quarantine videos out there.
MM, question: You showed us your kit that you use to go on overnight stays. You included a toothbrush and toiletries. Have Chinese hotels gone the Rest of the World way and no longer provide these?
Every hotel room I was in had complimentary combs, tooth brushes, and plenty of everything else. Many even had complimentary condoms.
-TorontoSamIAm
Great info on the hotels, I think that I am going to write an article on this subject int he future. Thanks for the alert!
Actually, I am so used to the Hotels inside of China that I have forgotten just how shoddy the ones in the United States are.
You are absolutely correct, and they all are nice. Or course, you were a foreigner so you probably stayed at the four and five star hotels, and of course they are the shit! I’ll tell you what, but you must know that I am used to sleeping all over the place in China, from five star hotels to one star hotels. So I have a pretty decent idea of what it is all about.
Most showers are glass. When I mean most, I mean 99.9999% are. I have NEVER seen a shower curtain in my life here. Most are very open, spacious and have these very nice shower heads. Most of the shower accessories are made in FoShan, and coincidentally, I happen to know most of the factory bosses for this particular line of products. And yeah… all over the world… they are all made in China.
Foshan is in the center of the Guangdong province. It is near the major city of Guangzhou.
As far as the kit goes, each hotel is different.
Most do have toiletries. They do, as well as complementary items for your use and a few free bottles of water, a tea kettle, and free tea. Also normal are disposable slippers, bathrobes, and condom access. Also normal is a gas mask (in a red box) in case there is a fire in the hotel.
Emergency fire-mask that can be found in all of the hotels inside of China.
What is not normal is ice. The only time where I have seen an ice machine is in the five star western hotels. Never in the local hotels.
Also a shaving kit tends to be hit or miss. I would say around 40% of the hotels don’t have them. Also missing is hand creme or lotion. This seems to be very common in the United States, but absolutely absent in China.
Now that all being said, on occasion, I have run into instances where there isn’t a toothbrush. It does happen, you know. So what I tend to do is pick up a spare brush or two and throw it in my kit just in case. I haven’t needed them for a while, but it’s better safe than sorry.
In the smaller cities, you can also get a lot of “ding dong” girl cars slid under your door. They tend to look good on the cards, but the real deal is rather hit or miss.
Ding Dong Cards
These are the cards that you find lying everywhere. They have a half-life and tend to expire, so if you find a fresh card around then you can probably pick it up if you want to meet someone new.
And…
While I am at it…
Let’s take a look at some of the advertisements that you can find inside the men’s bathrooms all over China. The following is a stamp that I think ended up being stamped everywhere in China. They must have used a couple tankers of red ink to advertise all this…
Manly advertisements.
Anyways…
This is pretty much how it is inside of China.
If you are at a Western hotel that caters to travelers from the West the beds will be extra soft, they will have complementary coffee packets, some hand lotion, and English-fluent staff. The rest of China will, however, have harder beds. Complementary tea bags, and instructions in Chinese.
It’s all good.
A final note…
We are not machines.
And the illusions that the media, and that the “news” provide to us tend to be lies. The gals in the pictures that you see might be all that perfect, and alluring and wonderful, but you know what?
It’s when their real personality comes out that I really get interested in them. It’s when I see what they are like. It’s when I see that behind that nice perfect appearance that they have “heart”, passion, and uniqueness.
It’s the PERSONALITY that makes my jizzle sizzle!
Do you want more?
I have more posts along these lines in my China KTV Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Hey everyone, I’ve been busier than a dog in a forest going tree to tree pissing indiscriminately. And some of my activities enables me to mix a little bit of business with pleasure. And isn’t that the way we want to do things? We work a little bit, and we play a little bit too.
Anyways, I decided that I would give you all a taste of what my last few days were like. It’s nothing super fantastical. I’m not driving a Ferrari, and staying in five star hotels and all that. It’s all rather middle class and plebeian. Don’t you know. But it’s so gosh darn different from what things are like in the Untied States that perhaps you all might might a glimpse into what it’s like to be me.
Sounds ok?
Everyday carry
One of the themes in Western media is “everyday carry”. People take pictures of the things that guys stuff in their pockets when they go out. And for most of America it’s a set of car keys, a wallet stuffed with cash, a multi-purpose tool, and a nice pocket knife or so.
I’m in China. My “everyday carry” is a cellphone and a couple of fobs. No one uses money anymore. We just scan to buy things, and some fobs for access to gates, or passes. These are only for the places that don’t have facial recognition yet.
But, I’ve kind of made up a picture of my gear bag for travel that you all might enjoy looking at.
First up is my bag. Nope, it’s not a designer bag with Gucci on the side of it. It’s just a basic functional bag that has stains and wear from use. that’s about it.
Typically, I keep it pre-loaded with basic gear and when I need to go overnight, I just top it off with whatever I need, and sling it over my shoulder and out the door I go.
Next up…
What I put inside it.
The last night was typical. I met a few new bosses, and we are out drinking and there we go again! They want to “bottoms’ up” me (Geng Bei) me until I can hardly stand. Now, my aide(s) are telling him, no. Please don’t try to drink me under. that I can drink anyone under the table. but he wouldn’t listen, and then one of my aides told them my age, and he about shit himself. He thought that I was in my late 30’s early forties. LOL.
Never the less, I did continue to drink And I did drink him almost under. He cried “uncle” after the third bottle of Beijiu.
Anyways, also in my travel bag are these essentials…
Now, of course, I have other things. But I want to elaborate on what they are and the limitations involved in using them.
For starters, you will notice that there isn’t a lighter. But there is a pack of cigarettes. In my world, people fight for the honor to light my cigarette. And they prefer to offer me my own packs out of a case that they tend to buy for the occasion. So I rarely have the need to carry my own cigarettes or a lighter. Not to mention that if I am flying that I cannot bring it on board the plane.
Of course, to this mix, I would throw into the bag a change of underwear. Usually socks and underpants. And what ever medicine that I am taking at the time. Which currently is blood pressure medicine. (It’s pretty much what you all will have to deal with when you pass 60-years old.)
And that, pretty much is my carry bag.
Having Dinner
So after arriving at our destination, we visited a couple of bosses of various factories. All friends of mine. And we enjoyed “death by tea and cigarettes”. I tend to deal with the small to middle-sized factories. And that’s just fine with me. And after we took care of some business, we went out to eat.
Now, there are all sorts of great places to eat in China. But as far as I know, no one discusses the “on the farm” eating establishments. What this is, is a restaurant that is a farm. They have a pond where they raise their fish, and cages where they raise their chickens, geese, and pigs. And a nice garden where they raise their vegetables. When you order a meal, say a chicken with leeks, peppers and garlic, they will kill the chicken there, and get the vegetables right there. All very, very fresh.
So here we are going to the farm restaurant. You can eat in these little bungalows that sit over a pond where fish are raised and the ducks and geese swim. though right now, the pond is all dried up (this is the season).
And then, of course, we all get settled in and select some food, and open up the massive quantities of alcohol. In this case, we agreed to drink a combination of Rice Wine and Beijiu. That’s 53 degree poison and will peel the paint off your car if you spill a drop. Yikes!
You will notice that we brought the alcohol with us. Which is pretty much the norm in China. You can bring in alcohol or other food to eat in any restaurant as you desire. they don’t have laws or rules forbidding you from doing that like they have in the United States.
You will also note that there are these clear plastic bags of water handing from the ceiling. these little bags keep the flies and mosquitoes away. Somehow when the insects get near the pavilions the water gets them confused and they fly away. So you aren’t bothered by them.
We pretty much ate Guangzhou style. Which is one food that walks, one that flies and one that swims. It was delicious. Of course.
So we ate and drank and had a fine time. This is what friends do. And you can see how much it resembles my life growing up in Western Pennsylvania. This is how things used to be back in the 1960’s and 1970’s before the ultra-billionaires bought up the United States and turned it into a feudal society to service them.
One of the topics of conversation is the big drive by President Biden (in the United States) to invest one trillion dollars in infrastructure.
Over all, this was welcomed as a positive development, and many felt that America was on the right track trying to copy China, though most had their doubts that it would actually come to fruition.
One said that America would need to pull out of Afghanistan, and some of the other wars that it is fighting to get the money, while another pointed out that America should have done this much sooner, and that there needs to be strong serious changes in how the United States makes and authorizes plans like this. China it isn’t. Most people came to the conclusion that it was just a bunch of “hot air” to appease the masses, and that the money would flow upwards to the wealthy oligarchy instead.
Then after dinner it’s a drunken drive to the hotel…
Now, of course, we had one of the workers or staff drive us to the hotel. We do not drive drunk. It’s too dangerous.
So we went off and went to the hotel. Now, this is a local small town hotel, not one in the big city and as such I ended up with a room with a tea table and a tea set and a large king size bed. My companions ended up with different rooms, one of which had a Majong table, and they decided to go play Majong until late in the night.
So to make a long story short, they were off getting drunk, playing Majong, and they sent me to my room with a few new friends to play with. It was a nice calm evening of delights for all of us.
It’s always fun to make new friends. I’ll tell you what.
Of course, everyone slept in, and where we got back on the road the first thing we wanted to do is go eat something warm and filling. So we ate Congee, and noodles. Then off to meet some more bosses who then whisked us off into their cars and we went out to eat some beef hot pot.
I am sure that many readers already know that Hot Pot is. It’s sort of a Chinese fondue. Only instead of cheese, you deal with beef, and you dip it in flavored oil. Then once it’s cooked, you can go ahead and eat it in your own sauces. It’s like this…
It’s pretty delicious.
Now, you will notice that there is this brown mixture to the side where I panned the camera to. This is a make-your-own dipping sauce. Mine is a mixture of garlic, sauces, some peanut sauce, and other goodies.
Here’s where you go to get the ingredients to make your own dipping sauce.
Doesn’t look like China is wracked with Famine like Townhall.com has claimed since 2017, or that people are dying everywhere and that the evil CCP is hiding the “true numbers” and the “truth about China”. LOL. You have to be a brain slug dumbed down imbecile to believe the nonsense out of the American media these days.
It’s all pretty tasty I’ll tell you what.
One of the things that I enjoy about China is the FREEDOM that you have that is impossible to have int he United States. And to underline this point, I made this little video to rub it in the faces of any “I’m free and China is a boot-stomping, totalitarian nation!” folk.
Here, I do something that you all in America CANNOT do, and would probably get you arrested for even trying it.
Freedom, you either have it, or you don’t.
Anyways, here’s how you cook the beef. You put it in this kind of basket ladle and then dip it inside the scorching hot oil for a spell, then you take it out and you eat it by dipping it int he sauce that you prepare.
Cool huh?
Like this…
I’ve got much more to say about China, and the adventures over the last few days, but this will suffice for now.
I do hope that you enjoyed this little insight into my life, and if you are from America (my old stomping ground) you will note that in many ways it is similar to the way things used to be in the Untied States, and often very different. Furthermore it doesn’t resemble anything like the nonsense spewing out of Townhall.com, Hall Turner, Rush Limbaugh or FOX “news”.
Like the “famine” in China that the CCP is “covering up” and hiding…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.