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.
I have been playing around with making short comic videos.
I use AI to generate a script, then use AI to generate pictures. Finally I use AI to generate small segments and then, once completed, I compile them together in a video editing software. I hope you like them. I’m still learning.
Check this out. All 10 seconds or so of it.
Today…
Love bonding
Why does diversity never include Asians?
Lots of answers, very few Asians. As usual.
The reality is that white people think we don’t need help because we happen to be richer (in this particular moment) on the books and better at getting into universities (in this particular moment). They don’t realize that this is a very temporary effect due to strategic immigration policy specifically designed to brain drain and create dissidents to attack Asian countries (especially China). Sadly, they think they can speak for us. And they almost always get away with it.
What we need is political power, soft power, and the breaking of the bamboo ceiling. We just can’t create consequences when people do horrendously racist/discriminatory things against us, unlike most other groups (natives have it worse). We are more of a function of foreign policy than the other groups, and yet we have minimal say in that as well.
None of this is convenient to the purpose of “diversity” in US politics, which is to prove the moral character of the leadership and thus their “validity.” It tends to be a farce anyways. Minorities who chase this “diversity” are really just fighting over table scraps. The majority leadership will never allow it to go against their interests in the first place.
If you think minorities have it good, imagine losing control of your narrative. That’s the baseline. You don’t get to correct people when they BS about you, because you don’t have power. From there stems much of the tyranny and real losses in life.
Lisa’s Crispy Chops
pork chops
Ingredients
6 pork chops
3 eggs, beaten slightly
2 cups crushed soda crackers
1 1/2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 1/2 tablespoons dried minced onion
1 teaspoon each salt and pepper
Instructions
Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl.
Dip pork chops into egg, then roll in dry mixture.
Fry over medium heat in a small amount of oil until dark, crispy brown.
This is evil
When you went to the hospital, did the staff not take you seriously and you ended up deathly sick as a result?
I had a cardiologist tell me. repeatedly, that I had panic attacks. He said I didn’t have angina. He sent me for a stress test, which I could not do from “imaginary” chest pain. I insisted on a angiogram. He mocked me and scoffed. I was desperate at this point and kept insisting. He angrily ordered one and told me it was a waste of time and what I really needed was a psychiatrist.
I showed up for my 7 AM Friday appointment at Broward General. I don’t know what he had written or told them, but I sat there for the entire day. Finally, about 5 PM, I went in. (I actually have no memory of anything after flicking a cigarette away at 7, when I arrived.) I woke up Monday in terrible pain. I had no idea what had happened. My wife told me that after just a few minutes, the doctor had come out and said they could not complete the angiogram because of severely clogged arteries, (including the one that causes the “widowmaker”. They put me in cardiac ICU and kept me heavily sedated until Monday, when they could operate. I had a triple bypass. The cardiologist told me I was very lucky to be alive.
Oh, and that cigarette I flicked away was my last one. I can take a hint. (That was Jan 2011.)
Ugh!!!!!!
Men need “nothing time”.
Is China’s current economic situation very good?
It is going through a slow-down caused by the trade war through the US, and it is also going through economic and social transformation, caused by the widespread adoption of AI and automation technologies.
For this reason, it is really hard to say what is caused by an economic slowdown, and how growth is being affected by economic and social transformation.
We should have a better picture in the next few years of how it is performing. The big question is what will happen to the people whose jobs have been replaced by automation and AI.
For this reason, I expect the Chinese government to test something like Universal Basic Income (UBI), and which has been supported by US Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, in some of the inland regions of China to see how it works. As always in China, if it is successful, it will be promoted on a larger scale in other regions of China.
I expect China to leap far ahead of the US in AI and automation technology, and in healthcare, and also in the adoption of UBI.
Tipping in the USA
What foods are man-made?
Year: 1905
Location: San Francisco
It was winter. Frank Epperson was thirsty.
He decided to make himself a drink. He took a flavored sugar mix, put it in a cup, stirred it with a brown stirring stick.
After playing outside, he forgot he’d left his drink on the front lawn.
He then went inside and went to bed. When he came back out the following morning, he saw his cup sitting there with frozen liquid.
Picking it up, he pulled the stick out, the frozen sugar water was attached to it. In true kid fashion, without worrying if it was dirty, Frank ate the frozen liquid—and loved it.
He realized he was on to something.
And so he started putting more cups out, with the wooden sticks in them and began selling what he called the Epsicle. His entrepreneurial take on the lemonade stand.
Sales started in his neighborhood and then expanded outward.
Eventually, he renamed the product to Popsicle.
And thus, a new popular trend was born.
An accidental invention.
Unconscious
What’s the best example of leadership you have seen in real life?
About two decades ago, a woman I know lost her father.
A day or two later, she found out her husband was sentenced to prison.
A couple of days later, her daughter-in-law decided to get a divorce.
Those few days COMPLETELY turned this woman’s life around.
The next day, a Monday, she went to work as normal, didn’t tell her colleagues a thing, put on a brave face.
When she came home, her husband wasn’t around as he was in prison.
She went about her usual business as if nothing had happened – cooking food and stuff.
She had a chat with her kids, including the eldest going through his divorce, told them all would be fine, lifted their spirits.
The following day, she went back to work.
She opened up about her experience to me and someone else a few weeks ago – I mean, everyone in my social circle knew about the events – but she had never discussed how she experienced it – how she coped, her motivation, which was to protect her kids.
I only then really realised why her kids, all of whom I have known since I was a child, have done so incredibly well – they had grown up with this woman as their leader.
No complaints, no self-pity, selfless. Being the example she wanted her kids to be.
This is the best example I have seen of leadership.
And, frankly, the type only a woman is capable of.
Patara’s Response to State of Union Address
That was not a state of the union address. It was a declaration of war on the American people.
What is something in history that you strongly feel was lied about or exaggerated?
The French aristocracy pre-Revolution weren’t the careless, luxurious bastards lording over everyone cruelly as they are made out to be. This is demonstrated most perfectly by the fact that many of the most prominent revolutionaries were, themselves, noblemen.
In the same vein, Louis XVI wasn’t overthrown because he was a tyrant, he was overthrown because he was NOT a tyrant. If anything him being friendly, indecisive and soft-willed moreso than his war-minded predecessors Louis XV and Louis XIV, made him into a target. The Kings before him stayed reasonably popular. By going to war a lot and spending obscene amounts of money that would ultimately lead to the Kingdom’s downfall, these rulers were generally rather respected by much of the population. Much like with the last Tsar of Russia, the King who ended up losing his head to the guillotine was a pretty chill, open-minded fellow open to reforms.
There’s this stereotype of these lavishly spoiled big spenders in powdered wigs, Marie-Antoinette telling the hungry should just “go eat cake”, completely removed from reality… and truthfully, this is bullshit. A ton of noblemen were social reformers, generous to the poor, conscientious and cared deeply for the common man. The revolutionaries who took over, quite a few of them were blue-blooded themselves. And were far worse than the elites they ended up killing.
Captain Kirk Meets Gary Seven
Do you know anyone who is low key filthy rich?
Oh, definitely. I think my old manager, David Filo fits that to a tee. He often sat around barefoot while coding; and when he was wearing shoes, they were ten-year-old sneakers, starting to show holes in them.
He drove an old Datsun for the longest time, full of random crap. Old software manuals, books, pizza boxes. When a bomb scare was called in at work, one day, the bomb squad searched the campus; they eventually called a mostly-all-clear; they’d only found one suspicious object, and cordoned it off. It was my boss’s car, dilapidated and so full of junk as to be suspiciously possible as to be harboring a bomb. (It wasn’t; as the founder of the company, he would never have done anything to harm it like that). (I think Rolling Stone gave a very apt description of his car, many years ago: “a battered Datsun filled from top to bottom with junk, including enough lumber to build several sets of bookshelves. (“If we were living in the 16th century, David would be a monk,” says Yang of his partner’s asceticism.) He bought the car while in high school in Lake Charles, LA. As a student at Tulane University, he totaled it, bought it back from the insurance company for $300 and then had it rebuilt at a local prison, where the inmates were studying auto repair.” — from Yahoo!)
And yet, he was worth about $5 billion at the time. Depending on the market shifts, he might gain or lose half a billion dollars from one day to the next. It made no difference to him; he was the same focused engineer, working hard to make sure everything was running smoothly.
He did eventually get a new car, but only after the board of directors insisted, because the insurance company would no longer provide insurance for them until he drove something considered less risky.
As a multi-billionaire, he definitely qualifies as filthy rich; and yet I’ve never seen him act that way, not even once. A truly class act, all around.
1 am at Tokyo’s Super Mysterious Adult zone
It Started: America on BILL STRIKE | 75M Stop Paying
What was the date of the end of the Western Roman Empire? Who officially abolished it?
There are three possible interpretations of the “end” of the Roman Empire in the West, and all are equally correct, depending on one’s point of view.
The most common one you read is that it ended on 4 September AD 476, when the German magister militum Odoacer overthrew Romulus Augustus, who was the Emperor ruling in Ravenna (the Western capital of the time, not Rome), and took control himself. He sent a letter back to Emperor Zeno in Constantinople, stating that the Empire needed only one Emperor, and sent back the western imperial regalia. Zeno accepted this (although he continued to recognize another man as Emperor; read on) and granted him patrician rank. Odoacer declared himself “King of Italy” and ruled for the next 17 years.
Another interpretation is based on the historical fact that Romulus Augustus was both a usurper and a puppet emperor set up by his father, the barbarian general Orestes, in 475, and was never recognized by Zeno as the legitimate Emperor. The actual Emperor, Julius Nepos, fled from Ravenna and set up court in Dalmatia, where he reigned, still recognized by Zeno, until 9 May 480, when he was assassinated by political enemies. Before this, Odoacer actually struck coins in Roman mints recognizing him as Emperor, accepting him as titular Emperor in the West as long as Nepos didn’t attempt to actually retake Italy. Odoacer occupied Dalmatia himself about a year later.
A third possibility lies in the fact that even after 9 May 480, there was a part of the old Western Empire that still gave allegiance directly to the Emperor. This was a substantial part of northern Gaul (France) under the control of a Roman general named Syagrius. Historians call it the “Kingdom of Soissons,” after the city that Syagrius governed from. He controlled this land from 464 to 486:
Syagrius’ problem was that he had an ally in a Frankish king, Childeric, who supported him in conflicts and had no desire to annex the area. But he died in 481 and was succeeded by his ambitious son Chlodovech, who is known to history as Clovis. Sometime in 486, we are not sure of the date, Chlodovech attacked Syagrius and defeated him in a battle near Soissons. He annexed the region to the growing Frankish Kingdom. And with that ended the final vestige of the Roman Empire in the West.
Stressful Travel To Mainland China
What is the most improbable thing people have ever seen?
I walked into a convenience store in Venice, CA and ran into a cute girl with an English accent. She says to me, “Excuse me, but were you in Vegas last weekend?”
I thought for a second and realized I had gone to a friend’s bachelor party the previous weekend. “Yes,” I said, “do I know you?”
She says, “I have a photo of us.”
She then pulls her digital camera out of her bag and proceeds to show me several pictures of her and me dancing quite inappropriately at the club in Hard Rock Hotel.
I ask her if she lives in Vegas or Los Angeles. She lives in England and is just visiting the states on holiday. Somehow, I managed to dance with this girl all night in Vegas and then run into her 300 miles away in Venice five days later.
10 Harshest Truths About Women That Men Learn Too Late
Why is Australia trying so hard to be anti-China in order to please USA at a time when USA is heading toward isolationism?
Just reading through the other answers, there is a LOT of anti-China sentiment and justified by the “Chinese have so many spies here blah blah blah Influence the Government blah blah blah etc etc” Well it’s the same here in New Zealand and so far there hasn’t been one shred of evidence to back up these claims of spying and espionage and influence. This includes the Huawei 5G backdoor thing. No evidence at all.
As an example here. A well known University Professor who wrote a book about the above subject has claimed to have had her house broken into a number of times (by Chinese spies), her car tampered with (by Chinese spies) to try to kill her. The media is outraged and other University Professors are signing protests to China letters to our Government, but it’s all fake and made up. She is either delusional or trying to sell more books. The police have investigated and come up with no evidence at all. But does that matter? Not one bit. Are the Police going to out her? Of course not, that’s not PC to shame a mad woman. The public is still rabidly anti China because the fake story that paints a villain is way more appealing than actual facts. And yes that’s my fault too, because what makes news is clicks and I click on Trump stories and help to make his bullshit get to the top of the front page.
So in answer to your question, in some ways we are trying to please USA – per the 5 eyes thing and US paranoid spy agencies sending the info/alarmism/ anti China rhetoric our way. In some ways we are just jumping on the same nationalist bandwagon that most developed western democracies seem to be jumping on. In other ways we see our house prices going up and like to blame the Chinese rather than our own shortsightedness in failing to build enough homes the last couple of decades. Finally, same as Australia, our mad political system gives a big voice to a small and xenophobic party.
Cats can take it all away
How does the US military currently compare against the Chinese military?
I think system to system comparisons are meaningless when comparing the PRC’s military to the US. F-22 vs J-20 type comparisons make no sense when those fighters have very specific roles to play in the very different air combat philosophies of the USAF and PLAAF. If I was to hazard a guess I would say the F-22 would be fulfilling it’s designed role as an air superiority fighter while the J-20 would be deployed to use it’s stealth to destroy US surveillance, EW and AWACs platforms in contested airspace, a much more niche role.
Both of these platforms would be considered great if they meet the mission they were designed for rather than who wins some hypothetical air to air engagement.
So this answer is going to avoid most of these platform comparisons and try to take a higher level look at how the military postures of both countries compare within the context of technology, doctrines, military industries and objectives.
Joint Operations
The US excels in these. Recall that back in WW2, the French had better tanks and aircraft than the Germans but still lost their short war with Germany because their officer corp just didn’t know how to put them all together to conduct effective military operations.
The US has a effective Joint Chiefs of Staff committee to ensure the armed elements of the US military play nice with each other and can execute integrated battle plans effectively.
The Chinese are new to this. They realized how far ahead the US was in this field when they witnesses the US military’s capabilities in 1991 in the first Gulf war as well as the frustration of the 1996 US carrier pass.
At the moment, one thing the Chinese military is planning for is that rather than try to catch up to the US in terms of integrated systems and operations which would take a loooong time to do (they also don’t have the rich combat history and experience of the US military), what they can do is engage in something called ‘System Destruction’.
That is, the Chinese military should focus on degrading and pulling apart the overall US military system.
So if the US military has a Recon Strike Complex, the Chinese focus on taking away their recon ability. This has been demonstrated by their endeavors to develop ASAT capabilities and soft kill capabilities with lasers and EW. Alongside developing small satellites that can be launched into space and maneuvered close to American satellites to destroy them.
Similarly, the US is built heavily around the idea of Airpower dominance over it’s foes and the Chinese Strategic Support Force (the ex-Rocket Force) is specifically designed to nullify this advantage by training and equipping to use ballistic missiles to take out air bases from which the bulk of USAF activity will be based.
However, the conclusion here is that the US is still pretty ahead in terms of Joint Operations and while the PRC military is building up the capability to disrupt them, in order to take advantage of these disruptions, they need to up the scale and pace of their own Joint Operations capability.
The Ballistic Missile threat
The PRC ballistic missile force’s primary goal is to make US bases unusable. The short range missiles are aimed at the US bases in Okinawa while the more medium range missiles are designed to disrupt operations from bases in Japan.
And the DF-26 is designed to make even operations from bases like Guam risky if not maybe as disrupted as the other bases.
The PRC ballistic missile threat is in part inspired by the US military’s failure to effectively hunt and destroy SCUDs in Iraq during the first Gulf War. Which leads the PRC to believe that if they have mobile, solid fueled missile systems, they would not be as prone to destruction from US military forces and pose a considerable threat for the duration of any war with the US. These kinds of missiles are hard to hunt, can quickly break from cover, set up and fire before the enemy can fire back at them.
With a mobile missile system like the SCUD, you have a 15 minute window to detect and destroy it once it breaks from cover. This is currently not within the capability of the US military.
The Drone Threat
The Chinese don’t have as much loitering munition drones as the US so they definitely do lag here. They have gotten the Israeli Harpy drone, which costs less than half a million bucks but has a longer range than the F-35. These drones can be sent out by the Chinese to search for threats, locate and scan airfields in prep work for artillery and missile bombardment. IF they can make it into a defended air space.
This is completely out of date. -MM
Space
The ability of space based platforms to provide you imaging (visual or infrared) across the planet + put SAR radars on small satellites means that your ability to locate and track objects from space for a military purpose is growing rapidly. This is the kind of ability the Chinese are building up in space.
Now you still cant track aircraft but for fixed targets or large naval targets like a carrier, in conjunction with autonomous terrestrial systems you have a much better capability to locate and target naval assets. So you could use space based assets to locate naval surface targets and use them to maneuver autonomous systems like the Israeli Harop drone munition into the area where a carrier might be. And then the Harop’s own sensors take over and actively hunt in the area. (Again, assuming it can make it through contested space).
In the near future, we might have 10–15,000 satellites doing this in space and you could of course blow the whole orbit up and deny this capability to both the US and China but short of that, what the two countries are positioning themselves for is not just having these assets in space but being able to replace them once an adversary has destroyed them.
The problem with the US side is that they have a good ability to replace military satellites but in space, both civil and military capabilities operate in conjunction. So if the Chinese switch from targeting military to civil satellites, the US doesn’t have rapid replacement in place for them. And these are satellites that operate critical infrastructure like bank transactions etc.
At the moment the Chinese have quantity while the US has quality when it comes to space based assets but the US has the added advantage of commercial space launch capability as well with technologies ranging from 3D printed rockets etc. that China doesn’t have to the same scale.
Naval comparisons
The PLAN is now the largest navy in the world and while on general, the USN has better quality ships, the new PLAN destroyers like the Type 55 are fairly at par with the USN equivalent ships. Same with the stealth fighters, the question is how quickly they can approach the USN in terms of significant scale of deployment in the active military.
Underwater warfare, the USN has a clear lead and the PLAN is not close at all to bridging that gap. The PLAN is responding by seeding a huge network of sensors in the South China sea to weed out USN submarines so the USN would probably have to respond with unmanned autonomous subs in the area, turning the underwater war largely into an unmanned one.
Carrier warfare, the US has a lead as well but this lead is somewhat meaningless if we talk about a war near China. If anyone thinks the USN is going to send their carriers into the range of Chinese MRBMs and H-6 Bombers carrying extended range cruise missiles, I would highly suggest alternative thinking here. The PRC has specifically developed this extended range weapons to force the USN carriers back and nullify their advantages at close range to the Chinese seaboard.
This is based around the Chinese doctrine of ‘Counter Intervention’ which is specifically designed to force US assets like Carriers away from the Chinese shoreline.
So this creates an interesting situation where the Chinese have forced the carriers out of the first Island Chain so it’s mostly USN subs and surface vessels that would operate in the contest areas closer to the Chinese seaboard. Where the Chinese are catching up in surface vessels. For underwater, if the USN is willing to risk full subs in sensor rich environments, that’s up to them but I think they might pull even the USN subs out of the south China sea at least and be forced to replace them with autonomous underwater subs to fight against Chinese autonomous underwater subs.
Production
At the October Plenum of 2020, the PRC moved up the date for military modernization by saying they wanted a modern Chinese military by 2027.
This has accelerated their military production targets and they are currently ahead of the US in:
Ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in both numbers and quality (the ballistic missiles lead might not mean much since the US doesn’t really utilize them in a battlefield context).
They have a much more massive ship building program ongoing compared to the USN.
They are ahead in Air defense systems while making good use of old ones.
The Chinese are also pushing ahead with a concept called ‘Civil-Military Fusion’ which is designed to integrate their civilian technology base with their military tech base (Sorta similar to how the US has it set up as well). Which is important because it means it won’t just be government led efforts that lead to tech advances only, but that Chinese private firms will sometimes even take the lead in military advances in AI, computing, autonomous systems, biotech, information tech, advanced material manufacturing, 5G and in the future 6G.
There is an issue however that the Chinese government, in an attempt to assert control and monitoring over the civil tech space, is pushing a bureaucratic layer on top of it which is expected to slow down the pace of Chinese technology than before. To compensate for this, the CPC will also push additional funding to the civilian tech space engaged in military tech development. So there’s a careful balancing act that needs to be done there. Also, the US is also vulnerable to this: Anyone familiar with the Pentagon’s bureaucratic policies would be familiar with how it introduces massive delays and cost overspends.
The Chinese have struggled with Aircraft engines and currently a lot of their aircraft projects have the Russians or Ukrainians as subcontractors to provide the engines. Russian engines by the way, are unusable after 500 hours. For military aircraft that might be ok but for civilian ones it’s a no-go so if the Chinese have any military platforms like EW and AWACs on civilian aircraft with Russian engines, it raises the question of availability.
Funnily enough, while the US has no issue with aircraft engines and can produce very high quality engines, they just cant make a lot of them at the same time. The F-35 production line right now is 15 aircraft a month at peak production. This is considered low by some standards but to be honest, considering that it’s a very advanced fighter it doesn’t seem to matter much. The problem however, is that this is under the assumption that every single F-35 produced will be deployed against China which is not true because the US has to manage multiple theaters (Russia-Europe, Home Air Bases etc.).
Also, the F-35 is a multi national project, so those 15 F-35s being made every month have to shared between 12 Airforces, 1 Marine Corp and 2 Navies across the planet. Further reducing the number of stealth fighters the US can deploy against China.
Stealth Fighters
The Stealth fighter question is actually pretty interesting and I kinda wanna build on that from what we discussed in the production line section discussed above.
First, given the limited peak production rate and distribution of F-35s among multiple partners, we might only see limited numbers deployed in the Chinese theater. But every stealth fighter the Chinese develop will be available to fight in the first Island chain theater.
The Chinese have some advanced fighters like the J-20 and J-31 which seem pretty advanced but their level of production is not close to what the US has for it’s stealth fighters at the moment. So they do lag in that respect. The US is also superior in the electronics and engines that go into their stealth aircraft although this is a gap that might close in the near future.
However, the US lead in stealth has some major problems that should be addressed. The problem is the basing of these stealth fighters. The US has 6 major bases in Japan and 1 in Guam. The USAF does not use the 80–90 airbases that the Japanese air force uses, and this might be because of how the US wants to control access to it’s stealth fighters but also because it has to equip its bases with perform the complex maintenance that it’s stealth fighters require.
So in theory, there’s only 7 total major bases you can place your stealth fighters at where you can control access to them and also do the whole fancy maintenance they require like re-applying coating etc.
That is…not good, because it means the Chinese don’t have to worry about shooting down these stealth fighters. They just need to concentrate their ballistic missile bombardment on those 7 bases with stealth fighters to knock those bases out or at least interdict operations out of them.
The USAF has realized this problem and are trying to see if they can spread the fighters out a bit more to the 90 bases the Japanese operate but it’s still a work in progress.
There is one other thing: There’s something called the “German Disease” where you get trapped in the idea that as long as you make a VERY high quality platform, it’s gonna be worth 10 of the enemy’s platforms and that’s better than matching the enemy head to head. This is very seductive thinking for a wealthier, more technically advanced power. But it means you are fighting a war with platforms you aren’t willing to lose which is not a good proposition.
The F-22 is a bit of a German Disease for the USAF because there’s only like 170 of them left and they aren’t making any more of them. Each F-22 lost is a permanent loss for the USAF and if a war against China drags on and attrition becomes a factor, a lot of these very high quality assets that the USAF isn’t willing to lose will need to be pulled from the theater after a while once their losses reach 33% per squadron. Now, no one has ever fought the US in a conventional war since Vietnam and managed to drag it out.
But if that does happen, and the US is losing say 2 F-22s a day on average from ballistic missile strikes on bases, losses due to accidents, very rare occasions when an F-22 is show down by the Chinese, this kind of loss rate might start to hurt a month into the conflict. And the USAF would have to withdraw the F-22s at some point so they still have some left in reserve and put the 4.5+ Gens into the missions the F-22s were doing. Very rare a war would last that long with China and for that high a loss rate, but you never know. The F-22s would primarily suffer more from being forced away from their 7 bases in the first island chain and being forced to operate at their max ranges from second island chain bases, but the loss rate from conflict as well in a long war cant be ignored.
Land
Apart from the strategic support force and the mobile missile systems, Land is pretty irrelevant. Invading China by land is delusional and nearly all serious US military experts have ruled it out. So the PLA and its size and it’s equipment and their comparison with the US Army are really irrelevant to this conversation.
Military Re-Organization
Similar to how the US is re-organizing their Space Force as a separate force apart from the USAF, the Chinese have broken the power of the PLA on military planning and production and reformed it into 5 Joint Commands or Theater commands.
They have to figure out how these theater commands work, something the US already has figured out.
But more importantly, the PLAF, the PLAN and the Strategic Support Force (formerly known as the Strategic Rocket Force) have become more prominent in operation planning.
I should mention that the Strategic Rocket Force of China has no equivalent in the US so they have that going for them. I mentioned before how the force is designed to nullify the USAF advantage in air dominance but that would be selling it short since they also have mission capabilities in EW, Cyber, Space and Information Warfare.
All of these missions falling under one, separate armed force definitely increases the organizational and operational efficiency (same as how the US made a separate Space Force to fully allow it to develop as a proper capability). I think they have a 4 star general leading this force and if you have all of this capability in one organization as a separate force away from PLAN, PLAF and the PLA, its definitely a more modern force structure similar to the US.
And of course, the reorganization of the PLA into 5 Theater commands is a good step as noted before but the PRC military arms need to up their joint operations capability to take advantage of this military organization.
Also a good point to mention here is that the US Space force is very newly created and even they have to work out the kinks in how to have this force integrate with the rest of the US military capability, particularly Cyber. So it’s not just China that has to figure out it’s military re-organization.
Operational Capability
The PRC has enough capability right now to contest much of the first Island chain, deal damage in the second island chain and even maybe reach the US homeland (Hawaii) via submarine mines, long range cruise missiles or ‘missiles in a box’ (The Russian concept of using commercial container ships loaded with missiles). But the idea of reaching Hawaii is not taken very seriously because the survivability of these assets against a alert USN and USAF is next to zero.
So the First Island Chain is where the bulk of the Chinese military potency will be concentrated.
Since the US has allied bases in the region and near global capability to project power, it’s assumed that they can reach any part of China they want as long as their military assets can survive their journey to their targets. But for the most part, the US military will also be focused on establishing control over the first island chain.
The Carrier Question and Scenario Planning
The USN Carriers figure prominently into the US military equation and China is no different. The problem is that the capabilities developed by the Chinese have boxed the carriers out of the first Island chain and the question is as they get pushed further and further away, how effective would they be in a war against China? There’s already a hit implied to the range of the F-35 if it has to fly from the second island chain to the engage in combat in the first island chain (or the Chinese mainland).
Currently, the carrier programs are baked deep into the USN and American military economy. Even if the US stopped building carriers today after the Miller and Ford class programs were completed, they would still have 7 carriers by 2045 and 4 by 2070.
But Large surface combatants will be prime targets in any war with China. And herein lies a big problem facing the US military vs the Chinese:
First: The US military is carrying over programs started before the Chinese even began to be considered a threat (some of these from the 80s and 90s). These programs are starting to deliver assets that would have limited if any use against the Chinese military of today. What good is the B-21 Raider going to do against China? The carrier programs already begun will not have to continue to their logical conclusion since so much money has been spent designing and producing the first entries that it’s a tremendous loss if you cancel them now. The F-35s were initially thought up of in the 80s and 90s as short ranged fighters to dominate the European battlefield in a conflict against the USSR/Russia. Are we sure they will have the operational capability to deliver effective missions in the China theater?
The Chinese however, have a blank slate. They saw the capabilities of the US military in the 90s and had a fresh start in thinking about how to design their military to beat the US military specifically without their production lines and budgets tied up for programs that weren’t specific to the US.
Second: The US must fight and win wars all across the planet. Whether it’s the Russians invading the Baltics, ISIS in the middle east, Iran with a nuclear program, African Islamist groups or what not. The Chinese only have to win in the South China Sea/The First Island Chain. This is something I see Patrick Dugan has also pointed out in the answers on this thread.
The US is spending 700–800 billion dollars a year for all the scenarios they have in their operational planning. The Chinese are spending maybe 200 billion USD for the one fight in the first island chain. In terms of budgetary comparisons, the disparity might not be as big as one might initially think.
This is causing problems to the US because currently, military tech is going through something called the “revolution of many” where a lot of countries are wondering why you cant have smaller, cheaper platforms armed with munitions thrown at your enemies in a way that would overwhelm large platforms like carriers and so on.
To the US’s defense, there are limits to what you can do with such swarms in the deep waters of the Pacific and carriers can be used in a way that complements your own swarm or even serve as the platform for it. But in the first island chain, near the Chinese seaboard, these smaller, cheaper, mobile armed small platforms will be at their most effective. And the USN has no equivalent to this.
The USN as mentioned before is baked into the carrier strategy and armament program which is not in line with the kind of conflict expectation there is in the first island chain.
And this is brings us to the idea that having better systems than your enemy is great, you have F-18s, F-22s, Carriers, JDAMs and M1Abrams and all that cool jazz. But within the specific operational theater of the first island chain in a war with China, how well will your platforms perform? The US military hardware and their doctrines have carry over legacies from the US military introspection of the 1970s after witnessing the shocking levels of fast paced, mechanized, high casualty rate action of the Yom Kippur war. A lot of the current US military systems of today like the M1 Abrams, the F-16s, F-15s, F-22s were developed as a part of how the US understood a war with USSR would be conducted after the Yom Kippur war lessons were understood (the war would be fast, rapid and there might not be enough time for the US military to bring it’s superior production to bear across from the Atlantic).
To the US’s defense again, when this hardware was deployed in the first Gulf War, it performed well and gave the US military a good confidence boost that their current platforms and strategies would apply well across the globe. But the South China sea might be a different ball game. US Air power might be greatly interdicted not by air defenses but by ballistic missile strikes on their airbases. Carriers might not have free reign of the waters in the theater. The US has superiority in underwater platforms but what good are they if PLAN just pulls back close to the shore and doesn’t send out surface combatants against the USN that would allow for their targeting by USN subs.
3rd Offset
The above discussion about carriers was meant to segue way into the US military’s emerging strategy of 3rd Offset.
In a nutshell, the strategy pushes for the idea that instead of going directly at your enemy in a fight, you use an offset. What this strategy means from a military equipment POV is that instead of sending an F-22 or a fully manned sub to engage the Chinese military, the F-22 sends it’s ‘Loyal Wingman’ AI driven UCAV at the PLAAF and the USN sends an unmanned underwater platform to engage the PLAN.
Basically, the US military is also trying to fight China in an asymmetric fashion the same way the Chinese are trying to fight the US military with their own asymmetric techniques. So missiles vs ships rather than ship to ship combat. Drones vs planes rather than air to air manned combat.
Speaking to the USN specifically, what the US navy planners want to do is that for 25% of the price of a US navy carrier and it’s air wing, you could instead have nearly 2000 missiles spread across 40 containerized missile ships. The good thing about these ships also is, is that they are replaceable unlike a carrier. You can make and deploy more with more missiles as the war drags on and losses mount.
So instead of having a carrier being boxed out of the South China sea due to the Chinese missile threat, whose air wing has limited utility due to it carrying mostly short ranged (albeit capable) fighters: Instead have 40 ships with 2000 missiles that have the range for you to safely engage targets in the South China Sea without worrying too much about the Chinese strategic support force and it’s ballistic missiles.
Now, it might seem like I’m laying the blame for all of this carrier fixation on the US military planners. I’m not. I’m laying the blame on Congress.
You see, the USN has no issue with scaling back on their carriers from maybe 12 super carriers to a smaller number like 6 if it means that would give them the fiscal and budgetary space to develop smaller platforms that can operate in swarms in the first island chain and bear acceptable losses.
The problem is that congressmen block this because the USN carriers are intimately tied to the wellbeing of certain congressional districts. A single USN carrier means 10,000 jobs in a USN port because of all the economic activity around the crew members, their families, the facilities they require like sports facilities etc.
The US navy’s manufacturing facilities for carriers are all inland (North Carolina, South Carolina, Pittsburgh, Colorado). That’s where all the major manufacturing plants are that make these super carriers. No congressman or woman is gonna sign off on closing off not just these inland jobs but the port jobs as well.
Which cycles us back to the following problems for the US military:
They can’t seem to get too much of their funding away from legacy systems that may not perform well in the China theater because those legacy systems are tied to certain congressional district economies.
This means the US military can’t fully capitalize on the “Revolution of Many” and the increasing shift towards autonomous combat platforms that operate in swarms and have a high tolerance for losses, they way they have laid out in their 3rd Offset strategy. I mean they will eventually with enough funding, it’s just that the Chinese are moving faster and the US military might not have an edge over the Chinese in the China specific theater in the near future.
The thing is, the US has built up their military for Global operations and expect it to perform in every single theater on the planet whether it’s Africa or Europe or the Gulf or the South China Sea.
The US military would benefit a lot of someone said “Hey lets take our worse case scenarios, conflicts with near peer adversaries like Russia and China. We plan two operational scenarios for each. And we build our military around that. And maybe leave out these other missions or hope our military can perform there with whatever assets it has built from the 2 core scenarios”.
This isn’t the best idea, I know, because the 40 container missile ships built to fight in the south china sea while bearing fire from Chinese ballistic missiles might not have much use in Africa or the Gulf where you might need a carrier or helicopter ship or amphibious warfare ships.
And so the US military has a limited budget it must use to fulfill the gap everywhere. But the Chinese only have to build and train for the one scenario they plan to face.
The US has begun the third offset but because they must split their budget between what goes into third offset and what goes into legacy systems, the Chinese capability to respond to the third offset in a meaningful manner is pretty significant.
3rd Offset and the threat to it from Chinese EW
It’s interesting to see how the Chinese EW capability can interfere with 3rd Offset.
The Chinese strategic support force has actual EW troop formations which the US has no equivalent to. So they have deployed EW capability that can seriously interfere with the operations of all the unmanned vehicles the US plans to have as the tip of their spear into the first island chain. The US has no EW troops and if you don’t have that, no matter how good your tech is, you don’t have any effective formations capable of delivering the product to the battlefield. The US really needs to have dedicated EW troop formations IMO to meet the threat from Chinese EW to their 3rd Offset Autonomous platforms.
But, I’m gonna go against this point as well: The Russian EW capability in the recent Azerbaijan-Armenia war showed how they could deploy EW to interfere with remote controlled drones. Autonomous drones are more resistant to EW interference because they are GPS independent. So these drones with their own sensors and AI don’t really need to have a dedicated signal link the way a remote controlled drone works and can operate in a heavy EW environment.
I’m just curious on how willing the US would be to unleash AI controlled drones with no over rides from a human operator in the South China sea during a war with China.
To conclude, I think the US military has major advantages still. They have better quality sensors and electronics, better materials and fabrication. Their ability to fuse data from different sources into meaningful insights for AI and operations is better.
But I think once we move past the point of simply comparing the F-22 with the J-20, and look at it from a high at how both militaries are posturing themselves for a future conflict, it seems like the gap is not as big as I thought it would be. The US has an edge but an eroding one.
And it’s mostly a problem of the US’s own making where they have boxed in the US military into legacy platforms that were thought up of in the 80s and 90s and are baked into the US military-political complex of congressional spending. While the Chinese have started from a blank slate and have specifically designed solutions around a conflict in the 1st Island Chain compared to the US which has spread itself out.
I think as it stands, the US might still prevail in the next couple of years should a conflict break out. They might prevail even a few years after that if they are willing to shoulder the losses. But the Chinese are moving in a rapid, focused manner and war is a very unpredictable exercise. And the US’s hamstringing of their own military’s evolution might cost them in the future.
Academic Sources: Col. Thomas Hammes, Michael Kofman.
GLEEFULLAND Dystopian film
What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?
1- I was assigned to the inmate reception center of the jail. My friend, Jesse, was assigned to classification, in the same unit. Classification is where inmates are interviewed to determine if they are going into general population, or one of the more secure units.
While Jesse was seated at his computer with the inmate sitting next to him, the inmate said and immediately did something that’s been forgotten in the past three and a half decades. Whatever it was, without moving from his seat, Jesse floored the guy, out of his seat, with a kick to the side of his face.
Jesse looked down at the guy from his chair and asked, “We done?”
The inmate, rubbed the side of his face, looked up and said, “Yes Sir.”
“Them take your seat and let’s finish.”
Jesse was the amateur California state kickboxing champ and was trained by Benny Urquidez.
2- in the army, soldier A got angry at soldier B for talking to a girl they both liked. Soldier A stomped up to soldier Band challenged him to fight. Soldier B stood, smiled and, with has down by his pockets, tried to talk some sense into soldier A not understanding why he was so angry. Soldier A wasn’t having it and made five, quick, consecutive punches at soldier B’s head using alternating fists, which soldier B easily slipped,while smiling and without raising his hands.
Soldier A took a step back and looked at soldier B, obviously reevaluating him. Meanwhile a couple dozen other soldiers had quickly encircled the two and were loudly urging soldier B to strike back. Soldier B, still smiling and with hands near his pockets, looked around at the crowd and said, “I don’t want to hit him. Leave us be and let me talk to him.”
As he spoke he was turning his head to look at everyone. Just as he was beginning to turn his attention back to soldier A, Soldier A punched again, this time connecting with soldier B’s jaw.
Soldier B turned back to face soldier, unfazed by the punch, still with hands by his pockets, but no longer smiling. He was a little angry that soldier B, who he had always been on friendly terms with, would sucker punch him
The two stood silently facing each other, soldier A in a fighting stance, fists up. Soldier B standing as if in conversation with hand down. After a couple of seconds, soldier A began to take another swing. Soldier B’s right hand struck like a snake, going from the side of his pocket and connecting with soldierA’s jaw in a split second, before snapping back to its position next to Soldier A’s pocket. SoldierA’s head snapped back, his eyes went wide and stumbled back a few steps before landing on his ass and elbows.
Soldier A shook his head quickly and scrambled clumsily to his feet, as he held up his hands, palms out and began profusely apologizing.
Soldier B looked at him silently, shook his head, turned his back and walked away.
What is the most ridiculous reason for which you have been fired?
I was in sales and almost got fired for having too high a gross profit! I was at a stereo chain that opened a new store and because I was the most knowledgeable in the stereo area I was sent over for two or three weeks to set up the audio department. After the store opening (I made the first sale when we opened, a pair of car speakers) and working in the new store for a few months, I was called in by the manager and learned my gross profit was too high. I said, “What?” how is that a problem? This store had loss leaders that had very small profit that were advertised and they thought I was refusing customers or trying too hard to “step” them up to a higher priced product and pissing them off.
I made three points that saved my job: I reminded them that I was very good with stereo equipment, knew what EVERY single button did on EVERY product and I proved it by letting them test me, I was very good at letting customers know why they should buy better equipment and that is why I had few of the “basic” equipment in my sales. I also reminded them that I was the guy who set the audio department up, showing I had the skills to sell better equipment. Number two: I asked them how I could be number 1 or 2 every month in sales if I was “blowing people off”? How could I have done that every month? (They went away, checked, came back and started to come around.)
The manager was starting to have faith in me but still had to deal with my numbers and corporate and how could he get them to back off. Number 3: I remembered a few customers who would come in and buy cheap blank tapes that were low profit and no one wanted to help them. I had everyone send them to me in the future. Within a few months my numbers lowered just enough to get the big guys off our backs.
Isn’t that one of the stupidest things you ever heard? Almost getting fired for being too good a salesman!
Elections have consequences
Have you ever walked into a funeral or funeral home and realized something wasn’t right? If so, what happened?
Years ago, as a police officer in small town Wisconsin, I was checking business doorknobs at night. Walked up to the one and only funeral home, turned the knob….open! Damn! Summoned my partner (checking across the street) and in we go…..
No idea where the light switches were and our plan was to step in, turn around and leave…….indeed, we had requisitely “checked” the place. Right? Nope. We turned to leave just as we heard a crashing sound behind us. Playing our flashlight about, we found the business cash box laying on the floor in the office. Just then, we heard sound coming from downstairs…..where the casket showroom and embalming room (behind closed doors) were to be found.
Huddled together, my partner and I descended the stairs only to have our flashlights show a casket lid close across the room! We hatched a plan whereby I would stand behind the casket, reach over it, pull it open and my partner —- standing in front of it —- would then arrest the purported cashbox thief. Nervous as we both could be in the darkened room, I pulled open the lid and the perp leaped out of the casket like a jack-in-the-box! Partner dropped his flashlight and revolver and the casket occupant blew by me, up the stairs, out the door —— never to caught!
Needless to write, much more circumspect checking there, again!
So Funny (All gone?)
Can the US government do anything to protect Hong Konger Jimmy Lai?
Remember Justin Trudeau? He was thrown under the bus by Trump once Trump got what he wanted. Now, How Jimmy Lai’s value as an asset is compared to Trudeau? Let’s check it out.
Trudeau is a Head of State, Lai is not. Trudeau is white, Lai is yellow. In the US’s playbook, Lai isn’t even at the level that makes him fit to shine Trudeau’s shoes.
Trudeau maybe not a patriot but certainly, he is no traitor. Lai is a traitor who did not hesitate to collude with a foreign power to go against his own country and people. Traitors are garbage nobody wants anything to do with once their mission objective value is no longer there.
So basically, Jimmy Lai is only a leftover from the shit that failed to hit the fan in Hong Kong. A shit stain to be precise. Nobody would pick up a shit stain, but flush it down the toilet hole.
If Jimmy Lai’s last resort is for the US to come to his rescue, oh he is fucked.
Vitamin D
What’s the most savage way you’ve seen someone get fired?
Me.
I was working for a Fortune 500 company as a sales rep, making my quota every year, except my first, for 10 years. A new management team comes in. The new National Sales Manager, Mr. Smith, was unhappy with my image. I was 40, obese and had prematurely grey hair. He liked ‘young, lean and hungry’. Well, I’m good at hungry.
In February the company has its sales meeting. They fly us all into the little airport nearest corporate headquarters, in New England. Itinerary promises luxury hotel, 2 days of training with an awards dinner for all the quota busters (about 90 of 170 of us).
Mr. Smith meets me at the airport, asks for my customer list and price book. Then he hands me a return ticket, through a circuitous route home (it might have been cheaper) that leaves at 5pm, he says this at 7:30am. I got home at 11 pm, I could’ve driven home in 8–9 hours.
As he hands me the ticket he says,”It’s non-changeable, non-refundable. At least for the next 9 hours I’ll know where you are.” I did not call in very often, unless my clients had an issue, or an opportunity. When I did I spoke to customer service and we would resolve almost all of issues without involving higher ups. I should’ve been tooting my own horn, getting Mr. Smith involved seemed senseless. I thought the numbers would speak for me.
Sitting in the airport I decided to start my own business, independent sales representative. Took 6 months to get clients, training and start making sales on straight commission. Took 3 years to get my income above poverty level, my supportive wife sustained us. Then I started making twice the income. Never looked back. Next to marrying my wife, probably the best thing that happened to me. Definitely top 5.
FORGOTTEN CITY – 1966 Retro Pulp Science Fiction by Skyward, Photo Booth Processing, 110/35mm Film
This is fun.
Is it true that the Chinese government would have implemented the national security law in Hong Kong regardless of whether there were protests/riots there?
Depends on your time line. Eventually, and I’m talking 2047 territory something would have been put in place. But lets time travel back to 2010. I say 2010 because the seeds of the riot were after the Pan Dems refused the changes in the voting system that would allow more direct elections.
Wong Sing Chi – Nelson Wong the Pan Dem founder was kicked out because he wanted compromise. The first riots started in 2014 and were a test to see what would happen. The not very much happening meant the bigger 2019 riots happened.
Article 23 was impossible to put into place due to protests against it, strong unions and lots of LegCO seats opposing it. You had well still have two factions, yellows anti government everything and blues. The thing is the blues weren’t rubber stampers. They were mostly meh and wanted things to stay the same.
You can literally see prominent blues actually support the anti extradition protests that were initially at the start of 2019 before the violence ramped up. Many of the blues would go no way that goes too far!
Raam Beart, Nury Vitachi pretty much have this angle. There wasn’t the support for anything NSL or article 23 at all.
But then the Yellows went nuts. Wide spread violence, dehumanisation and discrimination against anybody who opposed the yellows.
This pushed the previously meh blues to give support to the government to end the madness. I mean shit you were on the bus in 2019 going into town. You’d see everything smashed up and Chinese people here were attacked by them. I was attacked, numerous quorans who I know are real people were attacked.
So the riots going violent suddenly gave a support base for NSL and eventually article 23.
Article 23. My personal feeling? Is that I wish we could go back to life in 2017 or so. I guess I’m old. I don’t like change. I still use cash! Even in Shenzhen. Anyway where’s the shit posting? Ah yes this. Article 23 penalties. Do note these are the absolute maximum possible. We’ve of course seen in Hong Kong that maximum sentences are very rarely given. Very recently a Hong Kong bomb maker was sentenced to just under 6 years. Funny… had he not run off to Shenzhen he would be out in 2025 probably. Yet again where’s the shit posting? This The sentences for this were far harsher. Looking into it. 60% of 1309 arrested and charged to-date have received custodial sentences. Enrique Tarrio (sp?) 22 years. Edthan Nordean – 18 years. Stuart Rhodes – 18 years Zach Rehl 15 years Dan Rodriguez 12 years
https://qr.ae/pshZlU
Some of us discuss it here and in the comments. That we wished things had stayed the same but the riots pushed us into this direction.
Here’s the ultimate irony.
If the yellows sat on their hands and went home after May 2019 the last of the mostly peaceful protests when the extradition treaty law was shelved…
The yellows would have won a majority in LegCo in the 2020 elections.
NSL would never have been implemented
Article 23 would still just be something talked about on RTHK and nothing would have changed.
Very interesting
Why don’t many European Union leaders complain about paying high price to American gas but make a lot of noise about affordable Chinese electric cars? Are they simply that incompetent or simply corrupt?
Protectionism
Plain and Simple
In 2015 – the EU Players – Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Citroen together combined had a market share of
40.28% in China
29.76% across the World
Life was good
For every Volkswagen sold – China made around $ 18 for every $ 82 that Germany ultimately earned
China got only assembly cost and low grade supplies and equipment
The Chinese brands had a market share of 15.70% in China and 2.33% across the World
India at 3.25% had a higher Global Share
Guess how much the Auto Industry and Ancillary Industry for Autos contribute to the European Economy?
Almost 4%
Thats nearly $ 800 Billion
Including $ 279 Billion in Germany Alone
In 2023 – the EU Players – Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Citroen together combined had a market share of
18.73% in the Chinese market with only BMW continuing the same market share and VW falling by 38% from 2015, Mercedes by 27% and Citroen by 82%
26.62% in the Global Market
That’s a huge fall of nearly 55% in China and barely keeping their old market share for 8 years
Now their European Sales are crashing
The Chinese products have superior design, superior quality and affordable price being almost 20% cheaper on road
In the last four months of 2023 – European Brands saw a sales drop of 21.5% while Chinese Brands saw a surge of 67.6% in their numbers
Take out the Russian market and the numbers still show a 8.1% drop for European Brands and 26.1% gain for Chinese Brands
Solution?
It’s simple protectionism
Plain and simple
Paying High Prices for Russian Gas
That’s because if Europe keeps relying on Russian Gas, the day Russia cuts off Gas suddenly , Germany could be screwed as could the rest of Europe
Once Russia went to ‘Dangerous Enemy’, decoupling was a security move even at higher expense to the economy
A Better move would have been peace and diversification but Europeans don’t have brains unfortunately
Vassal states, satellites – in other words the butlers of international relations, the minders of the royal stool – are a rarely respected lot. In Australia’s case, being Washington’s butler is hardly like being Jeeves to Bertie Wooster. Jeeves is, after all, a near omniscient being, a confidant who rescues his master from ridiculous situations and offers sound advice to avoid them.
The Canberra wonks, bureaucrats and politicians are in no equivalent position, weak, impotent, and ever reliant on the good grace of the US Congress, the US President and the entire military complex that pillows them.
The latest announcement about delays and dysfunction in the US submarine base should further confirm that the AUKUS security agreement is risky, costly and self-defeating. The security pact, which is primarily focused on technological transfer and the provision of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, is proving, yet again, to be a shaky affair.
The developments are hardly surprising.
US shipyards are simply not keeping up with the production line. Roping in the Australian taxpayer into this mess means that money will be going to funding a foreign defence force without any guarantee of the submarines promised to Canberra. Superb if you are working in the Pentagon, disastrous if you are an Australian policy maker.
The latest Fiscal Year 2025 budget request from the US Department of Defence has again shown an industry in stuttering health. The US Navy’s intention to cut a submarine already paid for and built featured prominently in the plans. The implication for this, and AUKUS, is that the number of submarines relevant to the pact will be halved.
Congressman Joe Courtney, ranking Democrat member of the House Seapower and Project Forces Subcommittee, was far from impressed, saying as much in a released statement.
“If such a cut is actually enacted it will remove one more attack submarine from a fleet that is already 17 submarines below the Navy’s long stated requirement of 66.”
This measure would place the commitment made by the Pentagon and Congress to furnish three submarines to the Royal Australian Navy in doubt.
“This deviation from last year’s projected Future Years Defence Program (FYDP) contradicts the Department’s own National Defence Industries Strategy issued on January 11, 2024, which identified ‘procurement stability’ as critical to achieve resilient supply chains.”
In January, Courtney, along with the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers, Chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee Trent Kelly, and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith, wrote to President Joe Biden arguing
“that the US Navy and Congress maintain continued procurement of two Virginia-class submarines per year, as detailed in the Navy’s FY2024 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan.”
The Congressmen had no reason to doubt such a rate of procurement, given the investments from the Navy and Congress
“in workforce and supply development over the last five years.” It was “imperative to maintain a steady two-per-year procurement rate to assure our partners in our ability to meet commitments and address concerns about our nation’s undersea capabilities.”
The obsession with the two-submarine annual procurement rate, assessed at 2.33, has been a lingering one with Congress, but there is much to suggest that Courtney and his colleagues had been engaged in an act of wishful thinking. Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, for instance, found the production rate to be a warranted one in a July 16, 2023 contribution to the Wall Street Journal, but worried about how this would work within the context of AUKUS arrangements.
“As it stands, the AUKUS plan would transfer US Virginia-class submarines to a partner nation even before we have met our own Navy’s requirements.”
This is also not helped by the US Navy’s ongoing plans to design and develop 12 new SSBNs of the Columbia (SSBN-826) Class to replace the current, aging fleet of 14 Ohio-class SSBNs. A report from the Congressional Research Service published in January notes the Navy’s revised procurement rate of 2.33 Virginia-class submarines plus one Colombia-class boat, something Courtney might have heeded.
In December 2022, Democratic Senator Jack Reed and an outgoing Republican Senator James Inhofe authored a letter to Biden expressing their worries
“about the state of the US submarine industrial base as well as its ability to support the desired AUKUS SSN [nuclear sub] end state.” Current conditions, the senators went on to describe, required “a sober assessment of the facts to avoid stressing the US submarine industrial base to the breaking point.”
Sobriety, it would seem, has come biting in stinging fashion.
A deluded, crippling subservience is to be found everywhere. Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, should be hysterical with concern, his increasingly coloured skin turning pallid. Instead, he is trying to keep a brave face by foolishly claiming to speak for all powers in the trilateral alliance.
“As we approach the one-year anniversary of AUKUS, Australia, the United States and United Kingdom remain steadfast in our commitment to the pathway announced last March, which will see Australia acquire conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines.”
Such ill-informed confidence also pervades the Alice in Aukusland mentality, marked by such punditry as that of retired submarine specialist Peter Briggs. Australia, suggests Briggs, should seize the day on submarine construction in taking “an active role in the design and procurement process” for the SSN. But control can only be exerted with a degree of power and experience in the field of nuclear propulsion, something the Australian Navy has little to no experience in.
“The reality is the Americans are not going to make their submarine deficit worse than it is already by giving or selling submarines to Australia and the AUKUS legislation actually sets that out specifically.”
Australia had been “mugged by reality”, its sovereignty surrendered, its fate left like a cork bobbing at sea.
Whoever occupies the White House or Congress, the America First mantra prevails: first, Washington’s interests, marked by its own weaknesses and troubles; then, should they matter, those of allies, however loyal and ingratiating.
AUKUS has become a stillborn project.
Join US you’ll be on its dinnertable, join China you’ll have a win-win
Blinken is crass. Period. His behaviour is not worthy of that of a diplomat.
Why is it that I have the strong feeling that, here on Quora, topics and responses on China are sponsored by the Chinese government?
Damn you’ve found us out…
It’s time for the truth to be revealed.
I am not in fact the blonde girl in the picture.
I am a highly advanced AI program sent to Quora to find and answer questions about China that only paints the great homeland in a positive light. Forever may the glory of the People’s Republic of China shine like a beacon on —
Oh WAIT
They don’t need an artificial intelligence to do that. Anyone with normal intelligence could tell you that China kicks ass.
Look, no country is perfect and China has its own issues it needs to deal with. But don’t worry about China or the fact that informed people have an increasingly positive opinion of the country.
Work on improving your own country, then people might write nice things about you as well.
What is the most improbable thing people have ever seen?
I was sitting in my very first Computer Science class at Princeton. My Professor, Brian Kernighan (who is a brilliant and exciting teacher, even for non-CS students like myself), had pulled up an image of Eric Schmidt on the projector screen.
At this point in time, Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Google, although his fame was nowhere near what it is today. I remember Professor Kernighan saying that Eric Schmidt was likely someone that none of us had ever heard of, but was filling a role that would greatly affect each and every one of our lives. I can’t recall exactly what he said, but the gist was that while computer science may not be a very glorious subject, it has profound implications on our lives. Remember, this was Intro to CS. He was trying to hook us on to the subject; to convince us that we shouldn’t all try to be Econ majors and land jobs on Wall Street. Each point he made revolved around Eric Schmidt, whose image remained front and center.
Anyways, after about five or ten minutes of describing Computer Science through the lens of Eric Schmidt, a hand was raised in the middle of the classroom.
“So, this is kind of awkward, but are you done talking about my dad?”
Eric Schmidt’s daughter had been sitting there quietly the whole time. The room erupted in laughter, as Prof. Kernighan apologized profusely. He had no idea that the daughter of the subject of his lecture was in the classroom.
She ended up being in a Creative Writing class of mine as well; a very impressive girl at the time, and I’m sure a much more impressive woman now.
Mysterious Videos That Will Blow Your Mind
First video is a teleportation. I discussed this previously in great detail.
With President Trump now the Presumptive Nominee for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States, he and his campaign earned the right to staff the Republican National Committee (RNC)
Today, they FIRED 60 people from RNC jobs!
This was long overdue.
The RNC was filled with anti-Trump, globalist, NWO-types who were selling this country out in every way they could. Mental Weaklings who thought they should go along to get along . . . . and losing race after race. That was all brought to an abrupt end today.
I am told “More firings are coming.”
This, too, will be a welcome change.
ANY person who made even a single utterance against Trump or his “America First” policies, need to be shown the door. The one thing the NWO Globalist types have shown, is they are SNEAKS. They talk a good story but when they think no one hears, or no one is looking, they sabotage, back-bite, and sew discord. OUT THE DOOR with all of them!
These people get it
Slovakia Prime Minister . . .”Lie Doomed on our Balcony . . . waiting for World Apocalypse”
“All We Can Do is Lie Doomed On The Balcony With A Cognac And A Cigar, Waiting For The World Apocalypse”
Slovak Prime Minister Fico: “The West sees that, despite significant assistance, despite anti-Russian sanctions, Ukraine is simply not capable of winning. And if we send military personnel from the EU and NATO to Ukraine, all we can do is lie doomed on the balcony with cognac and a cigar, waiting for the world apocalypse.”
Hal Turner Analysis
The fact that the Prime Minister of Slovakia said these words Sunday evening is proof that the “idea” of French President Macron, for NATO member countries to send their troops into Ukraine under “Bi-lateral Security Agreements” was far more than just bluster or posturing. Clearly, the suggestion of the French President is under active consideration.
Were it anything else, there would be no reason for the Prime Minister to make such a statement.
The world is moving faster and faster toward an actual nuclear conflict with Russia. The general public in Europe and the United States remain blissfully unaware because the mass media has utterly failed in its job to report the serious and world-changing events developing in Ukraine.
I have done, and continue to do, my best, to keep you informed of the important developments overseas.
These comments by the Prime Minister of Slovakia cannot be taken lightly – at all.
Intention
UPDATED 3-12-2024 — Rest Easy Britain; THIS is what’s protecting you!
The Military sales pitch doesn’t match the reality. That’s a conclusion being drawn by many after seeing what happened to a “Challenger 2” Tank on the Battlefields of Ukraine: Russia eats them for breakfast!
Challenger 2 tank Ukraine1 large
Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land is a large Defense Contractor. They make various types of equipment and tout the reliability of that equipment. Here’s what they say they do:
As an integrated technology group, the listed company Rheinmetall AG, headquartered in Düsseldorf, stands for a company that is as strong in substance as it is successful internationally, and that is active in various markets with an innovative range of products and services. Rheinmetall is a leading international systems supplier in the defence industry and at the same time a driver of forward-looking technological and industrial innovations in the civilian markets. The focus on sustainability is an integral part of Rheinmetall’s strategy. The company aims to achieve CO2 neutrality by 2035.
Through our work in various fields, we at Rheinmetall take on responsibility in a dramatically changing world. With our technologies, products and systems, we create the indispensable basis for peace, freedom and sustainable development: security.
They manufacture the “Challenger 2” Tank.
Here’s how they advertise some of it:
Challenger 2 Sales pitch 2
The sales pitch is straight forward:
Challenger 2 price
But the Sales Pitch doesn’t seem to match the reality.
Here’s the reality from the battlefields of Ukraine:
Challenger 2 tank Ukraine
That is a “Challenger 2” Main Battle Tank built by Rheinmetall / BAE Systems Land.
The sales pitch says it can operate in “high intensity conflict.” In reality . . . . apparently not so much.
Wow! Turret blasted out of the hole in the center top of the tank, where it used to rest. Wheels blown off and/or melted. Tracks destroyed. Side armor over tracks and wheels blown to smitherines.
Somehow, this does not look as one might expect a “main battle tank” to look, on a battlefield.
What did this tank encounter that killed it? The Russian Army.
If this is the best that NATO has to offer, then as a layman, I can’t help but feel NATO is sadly lacking. Deluding themselves as to the “superiority” of their forces.
If these are what would be put up against Russia, it seems to me NATO doesn’t have a chance!
But that’s not __really__ the point, now, is it?
The actual point is how much these tanks cost taxpayers, and how much the military-industrial-complex (MIC) can pocket. I asked Google “How much does a Challenger 2 tank cost.
So presuming Google is correct, for $4.9 MILLION dollars each, taxpayers can rest easy knowing this is “protecting” them.
Or . . . maybe not rest so easy after seeing what happens in the real world!
OK, to heck with resting easy, just pay the money and buy more tanks . . . the MIC has to earn profit! They have to donate to political campaigns so the politicians they get elected can . . . buy more tanks!
You really shouldn’t be paying attention to stories like this; might be bad for Rheinmetall/ BAE Systems Land, sales.
Large Number of E-6B “Doomsday” Planes Airborne over CONUS
Six e-6B “Mercury” aircraft are airborne over the continental United States (CONUS) today. Each is a Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications plane!
The E-6B Mercury is a communications relay and strategic airborne command post aircraft. It provides survivable, reliable, and endurable airborne Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) for the president, secretary of defense and U.S. Strategic Command. Two operational squadrons (“Ironmen” of VQ-3 and “Shadows” of VQ-4) deploy from their main Operating Base at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, supported by the TACAMO Weapons School and the fleet replacement squadron (the “Roughnecks” of VQ-7). They deploy aircrews to Forward Operating Bases at Travis Air Force Base, California; Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska; Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.; and other locations, as directed.
Here are the E-6 planes over the continental United States March 12, 2024:
e 6B list 03 12 2024
Boeing derived the E-6A from its commercial 707 to replace the aging EC-130Q in the performance of the Navy’s TACAMO mission. TACAMO links the National Command Authority (NCA) with naval ballistic missile forces during times of crisis. The aircraft carries a Very Low Frequency communication system with dual trailing wire antennas. The Navy accepted the first E-6A in August 1989.
The E-6B was conceived as a replacement for the Air Force’s Airborne Command Post due to the age of the EC-135 fleet. The E-6B modified an E-6A by adding battlestaff positions and other specialized equipment. The E-6B is a dual-mission aircraft capable of fulfilling either the no-fail TACAMO mission or the Looking Glass mission, which facilitates the launch of U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles using an airborne launch control system (ALCS). The Navy accepted the first E-6B aircraft in December 1997 and the E-6B assumed its dual operational mission in October 1998. The E-6 fleet was completely modified to the E-6B configuration in 2003.
Why there are SIX of these aircraft operating over CONUS today, is unknown. Drill? Threat?
Salsa Jim’s Pork Tenderloin
This is a recipe “invented” by my late friend “Salsa” Jim. Jim was a graduate of Scottsdale Culinary Institute. He loved to dream up new recipes. In addition, he entered the Salsa Challenge in Scottsdale, Arizona, every year. I was always there to support him and to help him work the booth. The “Challenge” is for the benefit of the Hemophilia Association which was Salsa Jim’s favorite charity.
exps146210 THHC2377560B02 28 4b WEB 9
Ingredients
1 (4 pound) pork tenderloin
5 ribs celery, cut 3 inches long
5 carrots, cut 3 inches long
3 onions, cut into quarters
1 (15 ounce) can pineapple juice
8 ounces brown sugar
Water as needed
Salt and pepper as needed
Instructions
Heat oven to 300 degrees F.
Place vegetables in roasting pan; add juice, brown sugar, water and pork loin (you may need to truss the pork). Salt and pepper top as needed. Cover with foil. You want to cook this slowly, about 25 to 30 minutes per pound, and it will be very tender.
With the juice in the pan, you can make a gravy. For a good gravy you should make a roux which is equal parts flour to butter or margarine. Make the roux ahead of time and add to the hot liquid, stirring with a whip. Let cook for about 30 minutes to cook out flour.
Notes
“This gravy will surprise everyone. Most people can’t figure what is in it, + it’s delicious!” ~ Jim
What are some fascinating psychological facts about attracting people?
1. Symmetrical Faces
Studies show that people with symmetrical faces are thought to be the most attractive compared to asymmetrical faces. If you find yourself attracted to someone with a symmetrical face, blame it on biology
2. Parental Resemblance
Also known as the Oedipus Syndrome, research shows that 90% of people are attracted to others who resemble their parents. If your parents we young when you were born, you will find younger people attractive. If you had older parents when you were born, you will find older face
3. Wearing Red
Studies show that wearing red color clothing will make people attracted to you. This is true for both men and women because the color red is considered superior. Another study also shows that the attraction to red is unconscious so if you are trying to attract that special someone, why not take out that sexy red dress!
4. Smiling
Research suggest that men find women very attractive when they smile while women find men who smile less often more attractive. If you are a gal, try smiling more, and if you are a guy, stay stern!
5. Higher Pitched Voices
If a woman finds a man attractive, she will automatically and unconsciously begin to speak in a very high pitched voice. Try not to let him know that you have a crush by lowering
6. Weight & Height
Studies show that women who weigh 10 kilograms more than they should find a harder time finding dates. Men on the other hand are less attractive if they are shorter than they should be by a few inches. Start losing some of those extra pounds girls and guys, try wearing some shoe pads.
7. Large Boobs
Studies show that men are more attracted to women with large boobs. Some researchers believe that this is because women with larger breasts produce more milk for their offsprings.
8. Beards
Many studies show that women find men with long beards more attractive than men with none. They also state that this is because men with beards look stronger and more responsible. Other studies show that men with beards make better parents.
9. Younger & Older
Studies show that women are more attracted to older men while men are more attracted to younger women. This is because men find women who are younger to be more fertile while women find men who are older to be more caring, Research shows that men with large bellies are found less attractive and vice versa. Try getting rid of that belly fat!Research shows that men with large bellies are found less attractive and vice versa. Try getting rid of that belly fat!
10. Competing
Studies show that people find others attractive when they see that the person is getting attention from others. If a man sees a woman being smiled at by another man, he will automatically find that woman attractive as well. This is because humans are born competitive
11. Large Belly
Research shows that men with large bellies are found less attractive and vice versa. Try getting rid of that belly fat!
12. Copying
Studies show that when two people are in love or attracted to each other, they will begin to copy each other’s actions.
13. Money
Research shows that women are more attracted to men with wealth while men are attracted to women of youth and beauty.
14. First Move
If you met someone who thought that you were attractive while he or she was drunk or drinking, you need to evaluate your encounter. Research shows that people who are drunk tend to find everyone attractive that the person who makes the first move in a relationship is the one who is more attractive and feels the most attraction.
15. Adrenaline’
Research shows that adrenaline has a lot to do with attraction! Apparently, people find others more attractive when they themselves are experiencing an adrenaline rush!
16. Alcohol
If you met someone who thought that you were attractive while he or she was drunk or drinking, you need to evaluate your encounter. Research shows that people who are drunk tend to find everyone attractive
17.Flexing
Research shows that if a man is attracted to a woman, he will unconsciously begin to flex his body or position himself in a way that will show off his best features.
Conclusion
Now you understand the psychological facts about the attraction between two people.
See me…
What is a disturbing fact most people are unaware of?
60-year-old mechanic Philip Hoe was admitted to hospital with a serious skin condition.
He was, however, a heavy (I’m talking 20-a-day) smoker, and wasn’t quite ready to give that up just yet. Unfortunately, this craving led to a pivotal moment in his life—and not in a good way.
A few years prior, he was receiving skin treatment at a hospital, but went into the toilets to have a smoke—which wasn’t allowed in the hospital.
Doing this, he managed to burn his dressing gown—but nothing that posed a threat to his life.
[1] But a similar situation struck in 2006, and he wouldn’t be able to cheat death so easily this time.
He was now at Doncaster Royal Infirmary, yet again getting more treatment for his psoriasis. His nurse had moisturised his body by smearing him with several ointments, which was meant to soothe the skin.
Hoe had then been warned not to smoke, as it was not permitted in the hospital—and to add to that, it really wouldn’t have been a good idea when he was covered head to toe in liquid paraffin.
[2] But when no-one was around, Hoe snuck out onto the hospital fire escape (the access of which was prohibited) to have a quick smoke—almost like the plot to a tragic comedy.
‘The victim, obviously a smoker, had slipped away from a ward for a crafty fag and was in the enclosed stairwell of a fire escape.’
But this cigarette craving would prove to be fatal.
Percy Smith, another patient at the hospital, who was watching Emmerdale at the time, suddenly heard shouts from the stairwell:
‘… I heard a male shouting help me. The shouting was over and over again. He was screaming as if he was in a lot of pain.’
A gust of wind had caused the cigarette flame to spread to his entire body, and set him alight like a human bonfire.
‘His body was engulfed from head to foot in flames. He was stood upright not moving, just screaming for help.’
Immediately a student nurse and sister grabbed a fire extinguisher and tried to douse the flames, but he was left with 90 percent of his body with third-degree burns.
He was transferred to another hospital but died shortly after.
This isn’t at all a unique, stand-alone case—the BBC led an investigation in 2017 and found that skin creams containing paraffin were linked to several fire deaths across the UK—a fact uncommon, but still disturbing.
Hoe’s life came to a bitter and unfortunate end—albeit preventable, if he had not acted on his impulse to smoke—although that is, to be fair, easier said than done.
If someone calls your job and asks for you by name, what should you say?
Nothing with “yes” in the response. I learned that one the hard way. They asked for a guy who had passed away 5 years previously.
“Is this [Company Name]?” (after I had already greeted them with the company name)
“Yes, it is.”
“Hi, Dan. This is [rep from some telecom company I’ve never heard of]” (why would someone assume that the person who answers the phone is the person they want to talk with?)
“Dan is longer with us.”
“Oh, well, who am I speaking to?” (not knowing any better, I give them my name)
“What is this regarding?”
“Like, I said, I’m calling on behalf of [our provider] to offer a better rate than your current provider. (then goes on with their spiel regarding their “exclusive” rates, not letting me a word in to tell them to add us to their do not call list) Sounds good, right? I’ll pass you through to our confirmation department to get you signed up.”
“But…”
“This is the confirmation department. Am I speaking to [Me]?”
“Yes, but…”
“And I have you as the person who makes the decisions on your telecom services?”
“No.”
“May I speak to Dan, then?”
“Put us on your do not call list.”
“Was there something we said or did?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t let me talk. I was patched through without getting a chance to say that we already use the provider you’re trying to switch us to. Plus, Dan died 5 years ago.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry. We’ll get this taken care of for you.”
2 weeks later, we received bill from the no-name place for a new number with a ton of features we would never use, even if we had ordered a new number. My boss called them, and they played the call they made to Dan but with my voice “agreeing” to everything they were offering. I was in trouble for it, until you could hear the same background noise from the radio for each “yes” they played. We reported them to the FCC and AG but no idea what came of it other than receiving no bills from them after that.
China LATEST Hypersonic Missiles Can Reach Up To 6500 MPH & Impossible To Stop
As a police officer, what is the one moment where you thought “I might not survive this”?
I had stopped a car for a speeding violation. The second I put my car in park, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Of a countless number of traffic stops I made, never had this happened to me. I was actually scared and didn’t know why. I finally approached the vehicle. The guy driving never spoke a word, kept looking forward and never took his hands off the wheel. Until he retrieved his license and registration, then he was back to his frozen state. Not moving, not talking.
I was scared to death and finally got back to my car, and wrote this guy a couple of tickets. The feeling of fear never went away. Wrote the tickets, and approached the vehicle again, had him sign his tickets. Normally I would tell them to slow down or make repairs before court and start back to my car.
However, this guy had me freaked out. And all I could say was, you need to leave right now. I took a few steps back and he started to drive off. As he went around a curve and his tail lights disappeared, the feeling of fear was gone, my hair laid down, and I felt fine.
Court rolls around and he was not in court but his attorney was. I testified. The attorney asked no questions and the judge asked where his client was.
The attorney informed the judge that his client was in jail for pending murder charges. The attorney went on to say the night I had stopped the guy, he had just murdered his wife and kids and was on the way to kill his parents when I pulled him over.
The neighboring state never sent any information to anyone. Even though they were aware he was going to drive through part of my state to get to his parents.
Luckily once he returned to the neighboring state, they had officers there waiting for him. So he never made it to mom and dad.
Redneck boy
What are some unwritten rules of everyday life?
1. Don’t call someone continuously more than once unless it’s a really urgent matter and if they don’t pick up, wait until they return the call. They might be sleeping, sick, busy, or have something important going on.
. 2. When someone treats you to lunch or dinner, don’t buy the most expensive dish on the menu. Also, treat them the next time.
3.Only suggest splitting the cheque evenly if your dish is the least expensive among the rest.
4.Don’t lend out what you borrowed. If it is not yours, don’t act as if it is.
5. If you borrow money from someone, return it, even before they ask for it.
6. If you borrow someone’s car, fill up the tank before you return it.
7. Say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’
8. Be nice and kind to waiters, cleaners, helpers, drivers, or anyone offering you a service and treat them with the same respect you’d give a manager or a CEO
9. Don’t interrupt the person speaking. Wait until they finish then say what you want.
10. When someone is speaking directly to you, give them your attention.
11. Two things you shouldn’t offer unless you are asked, an opinion and advice.
12. Respect others’ personal space and privacy
13. If someone shows you a photo on their phone, don’t swipe left or right. If they want to show you what’s next they’ll do it.
14. When you wrong someone, say ‘Sorry’ and don’t ruin your apology with unnecessary excuses just to justify what you’ve done.
15. Don’t break your promise, or don’t make one if you are not sure you can keep it.
16. When someone tells you a secret, take it with you to your grave, even if you wake up as enemies the next morning.
17. Don’t make plans in front of those you are not willing to invite, especially if it is at your place, your birthday, or a special occasion.
18. Don’t whisper something to someone when it is only one more person sitting with you two.
19. Never go to someone’s place uninvited or without letting them know you are passing by in advance.
His dad was an abusive alcoholic who killed himself. He hated his mother for many reasons — perhaps in part because she dressed him like a girl when he was a boy — and he blamed her for the suicide of his father and resented her for it for his entire adult life. He expressed thoughts about killing both of his parents at different points in his childhood.
Allegedly, 3 of his siblings also committed suicide throughout their lives.
Still, Hemingway managed to do quite well for himself.
As an adult, he lived a hyper-masculine, womanizing, adventurous life. He was in both world wars, survived 2 plane crashes, and held a lifelong obsession with bullfighting. He also was one of the successful writers of the early 1900s. He’s a legend when it comes to writing.
But his personal life was not good. His actions affected other people very negatively.
He married 4 times and dealt with lifelong alcohol dependence. He was a cheater, a womanizer, brilliant, and likely manic bipolar like his father — although it was never diagnosed.
He committed suicide by gunshot in middle age — just like his father.
But did Hemingway ever really have a chance?
His mother dressed him as a girl when he was in his earliest years and in the process of forming his identity. It’s no wonder he ended up going down a hyper-masculine route. He was abused, traumatized, and watched people around him kill themselves for his entire life.
He was obsessed with death and suicide. He thought about it often.
He also dealt with chronic pain, alcoholism (that he never got under control), PTSD, and after the plane crashes in Africa, a fractured skull among other injuries.
Yes — Hemingway was a great writer — but did he ever have a chance of being “happy”? Of living a normal life? I’m not sure.
The kind of pain that he experienced takes generations to unweave. In terms of having a happy and stable life, Hemingway was playing the game short-handed for his entire existence.
He didn’t win, and he brought a lot of people down with him.
Is it fair for us to blame Hemingway for everything that happened in his life? I don’t know.
What I do know is that life isn’t fair.
Friends for life
Does the loss of a fourth Abrams tank to the Russians confirm the poor performance of these machines?
All four have been lost within days or hours of them being deployed in active fighting which doesn't seem very good to me.
main qimg d4b5803c82ea2ec89353974e99139c4e
The battlefield has become much deadlier for tanks in recent years. When the US’s M1 Abrams made its combat debut in Operation Desert Storm, it seemed like an invincible steel beast. In the conflict, Abrams easily decimated Iraqi formations of Soviet tanks, creating a perception that the US military and the systems that made it up were unbeatable. In reality, the Abrams was about a generation ahead of the tanks that it faced in the deserts of Iraq, allowing it easy victories.
Today, 30 years after Desert Storm, the Russians have developed counters to Western tanks like the Abrams. The most important development in armored warfare over the past three decades has been the development and proliferation of modern anti-tank missiles and drones. All tanks have their weak spots. Tanks are generally designed to be most heavily protected from the front. However, the armor on top and sides of tanks tends to be relatively thin. In recent years, a new generation of weapons has come out to exploit those weak spots. Drones and top-attack anti-tank missiles are designed to punch through this weaker armor on the sides and top. Thousands of armored vehicles have been damaged or destroyed by these new weapons in Ukraine.
Despite the fact that the Abrams is one of the best armored tanks in the world at the moment, it has not fared significantly better than the other tanks in the conflict. The M1 was not designed to face drones and top-attack anti-tank missiles. Rather, it was designed to face Soviet armored columns. As such, it has thinner armor on the top and sides like most tanks. In Ukraine Abrams crews are falling prey to the same weapons that have knocked out thousands of Soviet-designed and produced tanks.
The battlefield has shifted in general against tanks since the Abrams made its combat debut. While many in the West hoped that the deployment of Abrams tanks to the conflict would make a significant impact, Abrams have the same weaknesses of many of the other tanks in the conflict. It’s hardly surprising that they are meeting the same fate as every other tank in the conflict.
What’s the best way to go to jail?
I don’t remember his name; he was my very first cellie.
He was probably in his early seventies, thin, tall, and in excellent shape. His bunk looked ready for military inspection at all times — not a wrinkle anywhere — crisp, sharp folds.
main qimg 3571d4bc3d8a0a2cbd63eb6fff91f036 lq
He arrived just a few hours behind me. After making his bed up, he launched into an exercise routine.
I learned later that he had spent forty-seven years behind bars, more time incarcerated than I had been alive at that point. He started off with some minor infraction while in the military, and was sentenced to the brig. When he got out, his dishonorable discharge made it hard to fit back in. He would commit offense after offense and be sent back for increasingly long periods of time.
Life on the installment plan they call it.
He was institutionalized. He couldn’t survive out in “the real world.” Nothing in forty-seven years of prison had ever taught him how to hold down a job or make ends meet on a paycheck.
I suspect he had never known a woman’s love.
He missed the structure, and the… freedom of prison. He didn’t have to work in prison, didn’t have to worry about money or where his next meal would come from.
For this older man, it was a no-brainer. He would just catch a ride in a cop car back to prison. But, how to do that? What would be the quickest and best way back to his cold comfort of bars and bunks?
This man was an expert in that area. If your intent is to catch a charge that will land you in the stony lonesome, I suggest you follow his lead. His method is the answer to this question:
He walked into a bank (federally insured by the FDIC) and presented a note to the teller, “This is a robbery. Please place money in a bag.”
The teller handed him a bag of money, and I can imagine him smiling and giving a wink as he calmly walked out.
Outside, he sat down on the curb, money bag in his lap, and waited for the cops.
By robbing a bank covered by the FDIC, he knows he’s going to a federal prison. These are generally better run than state prisons. By using just a note with no weapon whatsoever, he knows that he’ll go to a lower custody facility.
This is the reality of what prison does. Anyone who believes that a couple decades behind bars will “teach someone a lesson” is right. The lesson is that the world is a dangerous place full of people who don’t want you in it. And, once you’ve been to prison, you might just as well stay there.
Where??? (She’s so confused)
Have you ever met a celebrity who asked you, “Do you know who I am?” and you said no?
I’ve met two celebrities (three, sort of) and one celebrity couple.
Had coffee a few times with Walter Matthau at a drug store soda fountain in Nevada when he was filming Charley Varrick in our community. He didn’t need any intruduction.
Met Clint Eastwood a couple of times when he was hiking trails near Lake Tahoe. I was a forestry officer at the time. We chatted briefly on both occasions. He didn’t need any introduction.
Having coffee at the soda fountain mentioned above, when Carol O’Connor stopped in to but a box of cigars (this was an old fashioned drugstore….lol) and decided to have some coffee before continuing his drive to Lake Tahoe. I didn’t talk to him as he was sitting at the far end of the counter when he struck up a little chat with couple of other local gents. Seemed like a regular guy. He didn’t need any introduction, I sort of count him as a third….lol.
The celebrity couple was the Captain and Tennile. They threw a neighborhood party after a big wildland fire at Glenbrook threatened their home and several others. The party was to thank the firefighters, I was involved in suppressing that fire. Very nice people. They didn’t need any introduction.
I lived in northern Nevada from the mid 50’s to the mid 80’s. There were a lot of celebrities around in those years, most of them were pretty regular people, who appreciated being treated as regular people.
So, quite the opposite of this question. Sorry if you were looking for negative answers.
Ten things
Was there a time in US history when politics were as uncivil as they are now?
On May 20, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner, a Republican from Massachusetts, had just finished a marathon address railing against the depredations of pro-slavery Border Ruffians in the Territory of Kansas. Sumner, the most outspoken anti-slavery voice in the Senate, had among his arguments against pro-slavery forces in Kansas, thrown a number of insults at fellow Senators hailing from slave states. Among the insults hurled during his address was a specific barb at Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, insinuating that Butler sought to preserve the institution of slavery so he could maintain pliant sexual outlets among his female slaves.
Two days later, May 22, 1856, Butler’s cousin and Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, grabbed his gutta-percha cane with a gold head and entered the Senate Chamber, flanked by two allies, Representatives Laurence M. Keitt and Henry A. Edmundson (also of South Carolina). The three men waited for the galleries to clear out, ensuring that all the ladies were out of the chamber before making their move.
Brooks approached Senator Sumner, who was at that moment seated close behind a his heavy wooden desk attending to some papers or such, not looking up. Brooks, in a low voice, addressed Sumner with the words: “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.”
Sumner made as if to stand and address Brooks. It should be noted here that Sumner was a tall man, and well built. He stood substantially taller than the diminutive Brooks. Before Sumner could reach his feet, Brooks raised the gold-tipped cane and brought it swiftly down on Sumner’s head. Thereafter he continued to rain blows down upon Sumner as the latter fell, and became trapped between the desk and the chair he had so recently been seated in. Initially his hands raised in his own defense, but as the blows continued he became more and more senseless from them, and still Brooks continued striking him.
Several witnesses stepped forward to Sumner’s aide, but Representative Keitt brandished a pistol at anyone who drew too near, snarling at the bystanders to “Let them alone, God damn you, let them alone!”
Brooks continued raining blows on Sumner even after the man had freed himself from his desk and chair, and attempted to flee from him. Blinded by his own blood and knocked senseless by the thrashing, Sumner toppled in one of the aisles in the chamber, where Brooks continued hitting him. Even after the thick cane snapped in twain from the force of the blows, Brooks continued. It was only when two onlookers managed to get past Edmundson and Keitt and restrain him that Brooks collected himself, and exited the chamber.
For his cowardly assault on a defenseless man (with two armed accomplices, no less), Brooks was arrested, tried, and given a $300 fine.
I love the expressions
Have you ever had a bad seatmate on an airplane? What did they do, and how did you deal with it?
A couple of years ago — 2013 if I recall — my family and I were on a flight to the USA for a family holiday.
We were flying on a plane with a 3-a-side seating arrangement, which is not ideal for a family of 4. Unfortunately for me, I had a reputation for being absorbed in books for 100% of a flight and not minding being sat next to strangers, so I was on my own, with my family across the aisle and one row in front of me.
This was in the run up to university admissions, so I was reading A Brief History of Time, since it’s something you feel you should read when applying for a physics degree!
About 20 minutes into this 10 hour flight, the guy in the seat next to me noticed what I was reading, and engaged me in conversation.
We had a fairly pleasant conversation, he was a teacher, and asked me how my university application was going, and so on and so forth — I asked him about his school (which was somewhere in London, if memory serves).
That’s where things started to go downhill.
See, it turns out that this guy wasn’t just a teacher, he was a super racist teacher.
He spent the next half an hour or so ranting about all the “useless brown kids” in his school, how they were all filthy and smelly, that they were all lazy, that their families were (amusingly) simultaneously taking all the benefits and all the local jobs. They were all extremists and terrorists, and he was sure at least two of them had been googling how to build a bomb in one of his classes.
It was like a caricature of a cartoon racist. It was every stereotype all rolled into one.
I was…slightly dumbstruck. What the hell do you say? I was stuck next to this guy for 9 more hours.
I tried to feign disinterest, to try to return to my book, in the hopes that he would shut up. He didn’t, if anything, he got louder to try to get my attention. I’m genuinely not sure what he thought my reaction was.
Luckily, his weak-ass racist bladder came to the rescue, and he had to go to the toilet, as I got up to let him out, I caught the eye of the guy on the other side of the aisle to me (behind my parents) — who was clearly of Middle-Eastern descent.
After my ‘friend’ left, I learned quite how loudly he was talking, because the guy across the aisle turned to me, and asked “is that guy for real?” We had a bit of a chat about what a monumental bellend this guy was, and how sad it was that he was a teacher, an educator, an influencer of young minds. Tragic.
Unfortunately, we were still chatting across the aisle when my new friend returned. As I stood up to let him back in, he noticed who I was talking to, and after we sat down, he asked me if I knew the guy across the aisle.
Sure, I said. He’s my stepdad.
My friend didn’t say another word. For nine, blessed hours.
If you cross them the wrong way, how can a parole or probation officer really mess up your life?
If you were supervising a department full of probation officers, how would you assess their performance?
Ideally, we’d judge how well a PO was doing by how his or her charges were doing. Do they integrate successfully back into the world? Are they all working? Current on their bills? Have they stayed away from whatever got them jammed up in the legal system the last time around?
But, judging a PO this way creates a perverse incentive. It’s like saying, “The less problems you find with your people, the better.” This would quickly morph into POs thinking, “Maybe I shouldn’t be looking too hard at these guys?” And finally, “Well if I do find something, I sure as hell don’t want to report it.”
So, that’s not going to work.
Here’s something the manager can judge POs on: “How many ex-cons did you send back to prison this year?” That’s a goal everyone can feel good about, right?
Just like cops supposedly don’t have quotas, I’m sure POs don’t have this goal *officially* written into their job description. But, if you’re clever, I bet you can find it lurking between the lines.
When I first got out of the halfway house, I was working in a place that was populated 100% by felons, or people who’d had some kind of related rough ride. In spite of being told not to associate with other felons, we all go from halfway houses to crappy jobs being done by people who are just passing through. They’re either looking for something better, or looking to get back into prison.
A woman I worked with lived in a flop house, but her car was her real home. The flop house was just a place to collect mail and make it look semi-stable for when her PO came around.
Her car was everything. It was the one thing that allowed her to function in society. It kept her moving and kept her safe.
Unfortunately, it had problems A faulty thermostat was causing wild temperature swings. At our minimum wage job, neither of us had the money to hire a mechanic. But, I did have a garage and suggested we could replace the thermostat ourselves.
Now… We’re both felons. We’re not *supposed* to “associate.” But, if we don’t help one another, who the hell will?
So, one weekend, she brought her car over and I got the wrenches out. I’m not a great mechanic… I’m not even a good mechanic. Mostly I just enjoy cussing at the thing while working on it, but given enough time I usually get it done.
Her car was right about the half-way point when my PO showed up.
My PO was actually always honest and fair with me. Because of my interactions with the system, I expected the worst. But, true to her word, she never lied to me and treated me with respect at all times. But, she did want to know who the woman was that had suddenly showed up at my apartment with an obviously broken car.
I explained that we were fixing her thermostat. My PO asked her, “Are you on supervision.”
A slight pause, then meekly, “Yes.”
My PO didn’t have any problems with me helping this woman and said so. But, she was required by protocol to contact my friend’s state PO.
The state PO wasn’t nearly so understanding. “You are not to associate with other felons. How many times do I have to say it?”
We did replace the thermostat that day, but the frequent temperature swings had caused the heads to warp. The engine was leaking coolant and possibly some was seeping into the oil. I was no longer an option for her. She had to find someone else (without a record) to help.
She did. She met a guy who agreed to work on her car.
He tore it apart, and then made it clear he wanted sex before he’d put it back together.
Somewhere out there is a state PO who is very bad at her job.
Rude Girlfriend Picks Fight In McDonald’s Only To Be Left Behind & Kicked Out Of BF’s House!
What are some behaviors that indicates you’re dealing with a mature person?
HERE ARE THE “TOP 3″ BEHAVIORS THAT A TRULY MATURE & WISE PERSON WILL EXHIBIT.
They will admit when they are wrong or make a mistake no matter how big or small.
The easiest way to determine whether someone is mature as well as honest is how they react to criticism and being wrong. If the person is able to own up to their mistakes without so much as an attitude then you have yourself a wise and truly mature individual. Those of us that arent ashamed to admit we don’t know everything aren’t phased by failure or criticism.
If they have a disagreement with someone they stay calm and listen intently to the opposing persons viewpoint and why they are upset.
They do so in order to learn from the conflict and gain a more in depth understanding of the person they are conflicted with. A truly mature and wise person will never scream pointless and hurtful insults at someone as the only thing it accomplishes is to harm both parties. Logic and reason trumps all in their eyes.
You wont catch them talking badly about their peers behind their back.
Wise and mature people don’t talk down about people to anyone other than the person they believe has a behavior they need to work on. Talking badly behind anyones back solves nothing and the only thing it shows is that the person talkiing down is immature and shallow. Wise and mature people seek to enlighten those around them the best they can in order to help make the world a more wholesome place.
What was the stupidest thing someone has called the police on you for?
The father of my son called the police on me 5 times in a week while he was trying to manipulate the circumstances so he could find grounds to modify custody. He called saying I didn’t dress our 9-month-old son in cute enough clothes, I had expired tags (3 months expired), no insurance (I did have insurance), and that I wasn’t responding to his messages within 4 minutes. The officers came out to do a well-check the first night. They reported the child in great condition and comfortably sleeping in his crib. That didn’t fit his narrative so, he called the next day for another well-check… he did this every day for a week. After all, said and done, the police started calling me instead of showing up at my door. They saw me drive my expired car tags to drop my kids off at school and never once did they pull me over. They always gave friendly smile and wave. The responding officer said it best “I don’t think he knows how custody or well-checks work.”
Reality hits hard
Humor: What are some of the greatest examples of presence of mind?
I came across one article on Internet and I felt that it was much related to this question but not humorous :—
Fourteen years ago, a massive earthquake hit beneath the Indian ocean, that had triggered a tsunami that claimed over two million lives. It was one of the most destructive natural disasters ever, that devastated parts of Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India.
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While no one – not even the meteorological department – could foresee the deadly waves, a 10-year-old girl spotted the unusual signals of tsunami and saved a 100 people, including her family, from dying.
Hailed as the miracle girl, here’s the story of Tilly Smith’s courage, foresight and presence of mind:-
She was on vaction with her parents and sibling on Maikhov beach in Phuket where she spotted an unusual behaviour of tides and stretched her brain more deep into thoughts as she had seen this kind of thing happening before.
Finally she recalled that this kind of unusual behavior of waves was shown to her by her teacher in Geography class.
That is when she started shouting:
"Tsunami, there’s going to be a tsunami. We have to get off, we have to run."
Seeing her panic her father alarmed Security Guards about the fizzing sea waves. The guard was instantly alarmed as he was aware of the earthquake that had occurred in the Indian Ocean.He asked everyone on the beach to run towards the hotel.
Tilly asked everyone to stay on the high ground.
As a result, everyone on the beach was saved.
When her parents learned about the disaster’s magnitude through Television reports, they realized that if they hadn’t listened to Tilly, all of them would have died.
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The girl on the leftmost corner is Tilly Smith.
Tilly was named Child of the Year by a French children’s newspaper, and United Nations invited her to meet Bill Clinton, then the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Relief.
Thus her presence of mind and courage helped her save lives of 100 people on beach.
Originally Answered: What makes you mad in your every day life?
Have you ever heard of “Begpackers”?
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They’re really common in Southeast Asia.
These people fly to different countries and beg for money from the locals to continue traveling.
Generally, the purpose of tourism, especially in a developing country like Thailand, is to bring money into their economy and improve their standard of living. That’s why they allow you in here. You get a nice trip and an insight to their culture while they get cash flow into their country.
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However, these people bring no money into the country. The locals, who are often less fortunate than them, give to them out of the kindness of their hearts and from the shock factor of seeing a white person beg in their country. These Begpackers greedily take and give nothing back to the country they’re in.
The worst part is, in Thailand, these Begpackers often post themselves outside of temples. In Buddhism, Thais like to do good deeds to “make merit”. It is similar to building up karma or good works in their religion.
So these Begpackers purposely take advantage of Thai religious practices by posting themselves outside of temples where they know they’ll get a good profit from religious Thais.
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It’s honestly gross. Thailand just enacted a law this month to make it illegal for foreigners to beg (jail time for up to a month) and for local Thais to give to them (500 THB fine). We’ll see if it’s enforced.
She broke the code!
What is the difference between Americans, Canadians, Australians and the British?
OK, I didn’t write this, it has been circulating online for at least 20 years, but it’s still pretty good:
Aussies: Believe you should look out for your mates.
Brits: Believe that you should look out for those people who belong to your club.
Americans: Believe that people should look out for and take care of themselves.
Canadians: Believe that’s the government’s job.
Aussies: Dislike being mistaken for Pommies (Brits) when abroad.
Canadians: Are rather indignant about being mistaken for Americans when abroad.
Americans: Encourage being mistaken for Canadians when abroad.
Brits: Can’t possibly be mistaken for anyone else when abroad.
Canadians: Endure bitterly cold winters and are proud of it.
Brits: Endure oppressively wet and dreary winters and are proud of it.
Americans: Don’t have to do either, and couldn’t care less.
Aussies: Don’t understand what inclement weather means.
Americans: Drink weak, pissy-tasting beer.
Canadians: Drink strong, pissy-tasting beer.
Brits: Drink warm, beery-tasting piss.
Aussies: Drink anything with alcohol in it.
Brits: Drink in proper pubs.
Americans: Drink in soulless bars with big TVs.
Canadians: Drink in places that look like proper British pubs from the outside but feel like soulless American bars inside.
Australians: Think none of this matters as long as beer is served.
Americans: Seem to think that poverty and failure are morally suspect.
Canadians: Seem to believe that wealth and success are morally suspect.
Brits: Seem to believe that wealth, poverty, success, and failure are inherited.
Aussies: Seem to think that none of this matters after several beers.
Brits: Have produced many great comedians, celebrated by Canadians, ignored by Americans, and therefore not rich.
Aussies: Have produced comedians like Paul Hogan and Yahoo Serious.
Canadians: Have produced many great comedians such as John Candy, Martin Short, Jim Carrey, Dan Aykroyd.
Americans: Think that all these people are American!
Americans: Spend most of their lives glued to the idiot box.
Canadians: Don’t, but only because they can’t get more American channels.
Brits: Pay a tax just so they can watch 4 channels.
Aussies: Export all their crappy programs, which no one there watches, to Britain, where everybody loves them.
Americans: Will jabber on incessantly about football, baseball and basketball.
Brits: Will jabber on incessantly about cricket, soccer and rugby.
Canadians: Will jabber on incessantly about hockey, hockey and hockey
Aussies: Will jabber on incessantly about how they beat the Poms in every sport they played them in.
Aussies: Are extremely patriotic about their beer.
Americans: Are flag-waving, anthem-singing, and obsessively patriotic to the point of blindness.
Canadians: Can’t agree on the words to their anthem, in either language, when they can be bothered to sing them.
Brits: Do not sing at all but prefer a large brass band to perform the anthem.
Brits: Shop at home and have goods imported because they live on an island.
Australians: Shop at home and have goods imported because they live on an island.
Americans: Cross their southern border for cheap shopping, gas and liquor in a backwards country.
Canadians: Cross their southern border for cheap shopping, gas and liquor in a backwards country.
Brits: Are justifiably proud of the accomplishments of their past citizens.
Americans: Are justifiably proud of the accomplishments of their present citizens.
Canadians: Prattle on about how some of those great Americans were once Canadian.
Aussies: Waffle on about how some of their past citizens were once Outlaw Pommies, but none of that matters after several beers.
Why do Chinese people often feel they are part of Japan?
They don’t.
Some people do because some Japanese things are cool as they have soft cultural power.
A LOT of Chinese grew up watching Japanese cartoons and animation.
Doremon (which I remember always as Ding Dong) originated from Japan. It’s rather popular in China.
Oh and porn. Production and distribution of porn is illegal in China (possession is a grey area). Japan produces a lot of porn. So much that Japanese AV stars will come to China now and again to do burlesque dance shows, or do hugs and photos for money.
Pre Covid you’d get Japanese AV stars appear in Macau every month or so they’d do some sort of dance show and you could pay a lot of money to get your photo taken with them.
Intolerance
Which is the most stupid lawsuit that you have ever seen?
It’s the closest to a My Cousin Vinny as I can get.. A guy I was seeing only practiced real estate law when the public defender didn’t show up for a defendent and they were going to rearange the court date and this person (who granted, I would never pay for and know their father paid for them to get them past the bar exam) took the case on scene and the defendant complied. The lady was trying to sue the bf for child support purposes, which he had no problem about as long as he had 50/50 custody, but she wanted more money if he wanted half time custody so he asked for a paternity test .. he said it didn’t matter, just to prove that he was willing to go above and beyond for his son. It turned out, the baby wasn’t his.. he still offered to take care of him.. so for the agreement, she filed suit wanting 50 percent of all marital assets, the bank account, his family jewelry (his grandmothers ring he wanted back), schooling for the son that wasn’t his after the affair and full alimony payments after it was proven it wasn’t his child, but her ex bf’s child who she still hung out with that was currently in jail.
bright side? this guy still hung around for this kid and he still calls him dad. He never got his grandma’s ring back but doesn’t even care. One day I wish he would take this woman to court, I honestly feel that he admits he’s afraid to date again gives her pleasure. She knows hes alone.. so it’s just her and his family and the son he loves so much that isn’t even his but he will always claim as his own.
I have continued to play with text to image creations. Lately I have been generating women with vegetables. Here’s some of my works. What do you think?
Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she has 0(1)Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she is 0(4)Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she is 3(3)Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she is 3(2)Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she is 1(1)Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she is 0Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she is 2(5)Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she has 3Default a beautiful stunning woman wearing satin dress she has 2(3)
My favorite Internet kitty
What’s an experience you had in a hotel you’ll never forget?
I was island hopping in the Caribbean, and I had prebooked a mid priced hotel for my stay in Puerto Rico.
I fly in after dark and get to my hotel and evidently they were overbooked, they told me that they would upgrade me to a better hotel. I am deeply suspicious, because its been my experience, if you get moved its to a worse hotel.
Still, its after dark, I’m in a strange place for the first time, I let them move me. We get it to my new hotel, which is beach front, as opposed to the block from the beach one I had booked. It had a huge arena/auditorium/entertainment center that had an ice capades like show that night. My room is about the cheapest in an upscale hotel, so not to shabby.
Lots of nice restaurants, great pools etc. The next day they have a circus move into the entertainment center, and I think I will go see that later in the evening.
I go to the pool, and this guy comes in, leading two tiger cubs on leashes. He takes them to the edge of the pool, and takes off the leashes, and they jump in with me.
I end up playing with two tiger cubs for the afternoon.
It was awesome. I will never forget it.
Breaking Bad | Combo’s Death
What is the most brilliant example of taking advantage of a loophole you have ever witnessed?
I was a maintenance worker on a paint line, working a 4-day work week. Monday through Thursday, 10 hours per day. This day, a slow Thursday, I was greasing the wheels on the chain as it passed through the line.
A top manager was passing through, steamed off for some reason. He noticed the line was running with no work on it, and he screamed at the line leader, “Why is this line running with no work?! He (pointing at me) gets three days off with no pay!” and stormed off with no explanation.
After he was gone, the line leader came up to me and said, “You heard the man. Three days off with no pay. Let’s make it this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. OK?”
Wow! Half a day, and already almost 500 upvotes. Thanks, everyone.
Fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, But…”| Why Putin’s War Has Jolted Ukraine’s “Foreign Fighters”
Chicken Diable
Chicken Diable makes a wonderful sauce, and it is delicious served over rice.
chickendiable C
Prep: 10 min | Bake: 1 hr 30 min | Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (3 pound) frying chicken
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup wet mustard
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Cut frying chicken into large pieces.
Melt butter and add honey, mustard, curry powder and salt. Coat chicken pieces with the sauce and place in a baking pan (do not stack).
Bake at 350 degrees F for 1 1/2 hours, tightly covered.
Can China maintain its leading role in EV and lithium battery technology?
Yes
Unless other nations understand and introduce Socialist elements and State Subsidies into their EV architecture
China can make the best batteries and best integrated platform – two most crucial elements of an EV at a cost that is 65% of the next cheapest manufacturer in South Korea
The Americans make far lower quality batteries at a 170% higher price
This puts a Chinese EV at $ 30,500 with a nice profit to the Brand versus the same American EV made in USA at a minimum of $ 52,000 at a lower quality
You just can’t compete
It’s why the US is so keen on keeping China out
It’s why no other nation is building Charging Infrastructure so comprehensively like China is doing
China has such a vast charging infrastructure that it is easy and quick to charge your EVs
Yet the Infrastructure network is only 6% profitable
No issues because it’s State Subsidized
And that’s 6% at such a huge scale
At a fifth of this scale, a charging infrastructure of so much quality would make a loss of at least 10% to 12%
Do you think a single private player would take such a risk?
Nopes
Ultimately the EV Maker has to provide the charging infrastructure like Musk is doing
Yet Musks profits from EV sales are shrinking due to his losses in the charging infrastructure
This ain’t new
The US heavily subsidized it’s industries for the earliest motor cars
Back then you had Hansom cabs driven by Horses and roads were paved with bricks not with Tar
The US Government floated almost $ 36 Million of Bonds to build Roads in various cities and State Governments floated another $ 40 Million
To build tarred roads for Cars owned by Ford and Others who incidentally didn’t chip in a penny
Likewise you had a 30 year tax subsidy from 1907–1937 afforded to six car makers to enable them to keep the costs of their engines as low as possible
An Engine could cost $ 100-125 to make, almost 4/5 of the value of the car
Yet the companies pumped back a share of their profits and kept the engine cost lower and lower until by the 1920s the cost of the engine dropped to around 1/2 the value of the car and later to around 40%
It’s why US had a lead in Cars
It’s why Germany had a lead in Engines
Today they may rant about Free markets but all these countries had subsidies in their early days and protectionism
US imposed an import duty of 67% on Cars from UK and Germany until the Mid 1970s
So as on date, China is gaining huge traction for EVs
They are discarding the Lithium Battery in the next five years or so for the next generation batteries
Their charging infrastructure is very strong and fast, fastest in the world
The others who can compete include
Korea – $ 110 Billion in Subsidies to make Batteries
Japan – $ 15 Billion in Private Research Funds to make Batteries
Yet China has more engineers and more money in subsidies ($ 250 Billion) for battery technology alone
So i feel China will have a lead in EVs for at least half a decade or maybe longer
Coconut life
Do you have to pay for food in prison?
Have you ever read a nutritional content label and wondered what a 2000 calorie diet would be like? In prison you get to find out.
The government says 2000 calories are what you need, so that’s what they provide to inmates. You can inflate that number some with carbs or roughage.
Here’s how it worked at CCA (the for-profit privately run prison): the US Marshalls defined what a detainee’s diet should look like. CCA would design meals around those goals, then turn the food service over to a sub-contractor. The sub would get a fixed amount for every meal produced. Ahha! Every dollar we save by skimping on ingredients is a dollar in the sub’s pocket. We can all see where that’s headed…
In federal prison the food was much better because there were no sub contractors. In this situation, the inmates are their own worst enemies. The kitchen would make sheet cake without any sugar. Why? Inmates stole it all! Same for spices.
The federal low had two lines that inmates would shuffle through for each meal. All items that were costly for the prison (protein) were dished out to the inmates from behind the counter. Low cost items like rice, those nasty grease pad potatoes, and lettuce would be “on the bar” where you could take as much as you want.
All of this is “free.”
You can pay for food. You can buy stuff on commissary, or you can buy the stuff that’s being cooked in the units. This is usually a mix of items stolen from the kitchen and things bought on commissary. It’s always better than what comes out of the kitchen.
Teachers Are SICK Of Dumb Gen Alpha Kids..
What is something a guest in your house did that made your jaw drop? How did you react?
Ok warning this is GROSS!!!!!!!!!!
A co-worker of my now ex-husband came over with his “side piece” (was not thrilled about that as it was condoning this behavior but I go off topic) and she asked to use the bathroom, we told her where the guest bathroom was and thought she went into there. While they were leaving I went through our bedroom into our bathroom. I then noticed she didn’t use the guest bathroom but had been in our room b/c things were out of place and that where my jewelry box was had been opened and gone through. I went into the bathroom really fast to see if some other personal items were missing I noticed that this nasty girl used a…feminine cleaning product (BARF) and MY wash cloth to “clean up”. Luckily they were still outside talking when I went out there and lost my fking mind!! I tossed a plastic bag with MY wash cloth and the empty product at her (I WAS WEARING 2 PAIRS OF GLOVES AND HAD A BAG OVER THE OTHER BAG I PUT EVERYTHING IN) and then told her to empty her purse and pockets. Now, the guys were at first shocked and then my now ex-husband was embarrassed by my “request” and behavior and his co-worker was pissed that his “friend” was being treated in such a manner. When she finally did what I “asked” there were 2 pairs of earrings (pearls, and black diamonds), a custom made pearl ring I got from my father, a gold pinky ring my grandfather had custom made for me, the onyx and diamond ring, pearl necklace and matching bracelet I got for my first communion and confirmation as well as my pearl drop. I told them to get the fk off our property and they were never allowed back or I would call the police. I recorded the whole encounter outside. Now I did NOT yell at them, I was pissed the fk off but the neighborhood did not need to know what was going on.
Brazil reality
Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?
Not accidentally found out, but figured out months in advance that my entire department was going to be laid off. I basically followed a bunch of clues.
This was way back in 1998 when I started working at Kodak. Kodak is headquartered in Rochester, New York. One of the managers convinced higher-ups that Kodak should open a software development center in Washington, D.C., because of availability of software engineers in the area. There were many people against it, but she got approval to head a development center in the D.C. metro area. The development center was called Washington Development Center (WDC for short).
So, she came to D.C., found an office in Maryland, did a bunch of hiring. I was hired as part of that. Eventually, after six years, she found a better position in Kodak. So, she left. They got a guy who was completely against WDC to manage WDC. This was clue #1. Let’s call him Mike.
The first thing Mike did was give everyone raises. He said the previous manager was underpaying everyone. Everyone was happy. I thought “Why? No one asked for a raise. Everyone is happy here.” A couple of months later, I saw several projects moving away from us. I went to my boss and asked him. He said, “The way Kodak works is that business units control the money. BUs propose projects, and development centers bid on them. Since we have higher real estate costs than Rochester, we bid higher.” I asked him, “Were the recent raises a factor?” He basically shrugged.
Clue #2: Making us uncompetitive by giving raises. Actually, I have to say it’s a touch of genius right there. We used to be competitive before because we didn’t pay people as much, which offset our real estate costs.
So, then the question became, “Should we move to a new location?” My boss found a location in Virginia where the rent was low. What Mike did was put the idea of moving to Virginia up for a vote. Most employees in this location lived in Maryland. They would have to commute an hour to get to Virgonia. So, most of them voted against it.
Clue #3: Mike knew how the vote would go. His job was to make the right call even if it was an unpopular one. By having employees make the wrong decision, he absolved himself of all responsibility.
Clue #4: Then there was a re-organization, and Mike got a new boss: let’s call him Jake. First thing Jake did was to meet everyone in his new organization. They planned for him to visit us. We all prepared presentations for him to show our technical strengths. He slept through 75% of the presentations. I didn’t realize this until I started my presentation. I walked up, started talking, and then looked at him and saw his eyes were closed. I stopped short because tears were coming in my eyes. Everyone else was saying “Go on. Go on. It’s OK.” I felt like wadding up some paper and throwing at his bald head, but didn’t.
We gradually kept losing projects. Eventually, a lot of people weren’t doing anything. One day, I went to the break room to get some coffee. There were two people in the break room chatting. These two people were the ring leaders in getting everyone to vote against the move to Virginia. They asked “Hey, how’s it going, Jayesh?” I replied, “Oh, nothing. Just waiting to get laid off.” They were looking at me with their eyes wide as I walked back.
A few months later they announced that we are getting laid off. We were given options: a) Voluntarily accept to get laid off now and get severance b) wait till the last day. If you waited, you might be offered a job in Rochester that you could work remotely. If you were not offered a job, you would get a slightly better severance. If you were offered a job, and you refused, then you don’t get severance (you are technically resigning, not getting laid off). I knew I would be offered a job, because I knew the ins and outs of a critical project. So I said “Lay me off! Lay me off, please!” My boss got offered a job because he was the second person who knew about that project.
Oh there was a guy, who had been in Kodak for 29 years 6 months. When he had joined, Kodak offered pension, if you stayed in Kodak for 30 years. Six months more and he would have been set for life. He wasn’t offered a job and got a severance pay for five years. He was probably around 55. If he had been offered a job, he could have stuck around for six months more and gotten a pension for life. He was one of the people who didn’t want to move to Virginia. I was thinking if we had moved to Virginia, we could have staved off the inevitable for at least a year or so. He would have been set for life.
I still have respect for Mike for engineering our closure so beautifully. He did it in a way that he doesn’t get the blame; instead, he was able to show how he saved Kodak lot of money. I was merely a by-stander. He was the puppet master. He used people’s inclinations against them. Pure evil genius. Respect.
Funny and odd thing about this. The video is glitching out!
Can I ask a parked police car why it’s posted on my street days in a row? Can they opt to not to give any information or ignore you, or are they obligated to disclose information?
There once was a plain unmarked van parked directly in front of my house for about one week during the daytime. It had tinted front and side windows. One day, I decided to walk closer so that I could see the license plates. They were VA (Veteran’s Administration) plates. That gave me the impression that federal law enforcement had borrowed that vehicle to use on a stake out. And since they were parked directly in front of my house, I assumed I was not their target. So I went back to my house instead of seeing if anyone was inside the van and blowing their cover. Then after about one week, the van was gone. Then after another week, all hell broke loose. Marked and unmarked police cars surrounded a neighbor’s house across the street and even drove on their lawn. There were many men dressed in black uniforms with POLICE on their backs carrying what looked like automatic weapons. After things calmed down, I went up to one of the officers to ask what is happening. All he would admit to is that they were conducting an investigation. Not satisfied with that answer, I wrote a letter to our Chief of Police. He did admit it was a drug raid but offered no other details. He also said to contact him if I have any questions about police activity in the future. Unfortunately, he retired a short time later so I lost my contact.
Many years later, one morning, I looked out my living room window and was shocked to see the street in front of my house filled with black SUV’s and men dressed in black standing around their vehicles. Once again, the men had POLICE on their backs and were holding automatic weapons. I got scared thinking they were about to burst into my home. But after a few minutes, there was no knock at my door. So I peeked out the window and the officers I saw seemed relaxed. So I opened up the front door and started to exit to find out what is going on. That’s when one of the officers waved at me to go back inside which I did. I eventually discovered it was another drug raid, but at a neighbor’s house on the same side of the street as my house, just two doors away. I think it is time for me to move.
A nice technique
Why won’t the Chinese premier Li Qiang face reporters for the duration of his term, which runs until 2028?
That’s not his job, and not in his remit.
Yes, Zhu Rongji began the tradition of meeting the press during the two meetings. This has been retained by his successors, but the PM is not obligated to give press conferences. His job is to deliver the nation’s progress report and announce Beijing’s economic and social targets for the coming year during the two meetings.
We are entering an era of America pushing for war, and this is but another sign of the Chinese closing ranks.
Entertaining foreigners is best left to the experts at the foreign ministry who train a lifetime to accommodate them.
There is Wang Yi, who just concluded his 90 minute long press conference, and there is the daily press conference helmed by a senior foreign ministry spokesperson that can be up to vice-minister seniority.
To my knowledge, China is the ONLY government that provides this level of open access to foreign journalists year-round.
This is how all America feels
What is something that most people don’t know?
You can taste garlic with your feet.
When you speak inside your mind small muscles in your throat mimic the formation of each word.
When you lose weight, most of it ends up as carbon dioxide which is exhaled from your lungs.
Prince Charles has a car fueled by wine.
Polar Bears aren’t white, they’re just glowing.
The raptor sounds in Jurassic Park are actually mating tortoises.
Pirates wore eye patches to increase night vision, not cover a missing eye.
Parts of Canada have less gravity than the rest of the planet.
1 teaspoon of honey is the lifework of 12 bees.
A small fraction of the static on your tv is radiation left over from the Big Bang.
Your ears and nose are connected to your tear ducts.
Once Charlie Chaplin entered a contest for “Charlie Chaplin look-alikes” and he came in third.
People in the southern hemisphere see the moon upside down compared to the north.
Humans have patterns (like stripes, spots and geometric shapes) on our bodies that are invisible to us but cats can see them.
There are 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible arrangements of a 52-card deck.
Whats going on with this?
Why is Toyota so hesitant to build electric cars?
Profitability!!!!
Always Profitability
Same reason why most of the world cannot manufacture EVs on China’s scale
You see Japan has a fully integrated supply chain for ICE Vehicles. From the Engines to the Chassis to the Intelligent systems to the Fuel Injection
So Japanese Cars can make a lot of profit
Same for Hybrids
Japan has the entire supply chain for Hybrids and the best quality in the world
So Japanese Hybrids are very profitable
EVs are a different kettle of fish
China thanks to ten years of ENORMOUS SUBSIDIES by the State amounting to almost $ 600 Billion (4 Trillion RMB) have managed to scale up and keep refining the quality of EVs, Solar Panels and Wind Turbines until they completely control the supply chain and technology on a scale that NO CAPITALIST ECONOMY CAN MANAGE
It’s easy for BYD to invest 10 years in making EVs and researching and refining EV Quality because China always cut them a cheque to ensure BYD stayed in Business for 7 1/2 years until they finally produced the most efficient and best technology
For Tata?
For Toyota?
For Honda?
Impossible
India doesn’t have the money to subsidise anything and Japan is capitalist
You certainly can’t expect Honda or Toyota to invest 10 years perfecting their batteries and integrated platforms when they don’t get any profits right?
Same for Tata or Hyundai
Right now the best batteries are Chinese, platforms Chinese, Chassis and Components Chinese and all of them well ahead of any other nation
So if Japan makes EVs using Chinese Basic Components, the Japanese companies will barely make profit while the cream will be taken by the Chinese players like CATL Or Korean players like SK
So Japanese Car Makers have put up around $ 15 Billion and have been trying to develop Hydrogen Cell powered cars as a Rival to EVs
Of course China has already pumped up another 380 Billion RMB ($ 55 Billion) of Subsidies and their Hydrogen Fuel Cells are surging rapidly
They plan to power trucks and trains using Hydrogen powered cells
$55 Billion in China is nearly the same as $ 130 Billion in Japan against a mere $ 15 Billion
Eight times more investment
In the Capitalist world, Profitability is what drives everything else
New Technology won’t be explored unless it can be profitable
In the Chinese Model,Necessity and Demand drives everything else
The State will fund things and players until they finally are able to develop the core technology and ensure a commercial production model that is a generation better than anyone else
It’s why, after Iphones & galaxy , when Alcatel and many phone makers simply abandoned further development and research – China kept going on and on and on with their smartphone models even if it meant paying the cream to the American entities like Qualcomm or Intel or other such entities
So that one day they could crack the supply chain and then build their own superior and most cost effective supply chain and indigenous technology
Fish gangs
What was the strangest thing that happened to you as a foreigner in Japan?
I arrived in Tokyo with a terrible stomach ache and followed by bad diarrhea. For the first 2 days I could barely walk and only eat very little.
I then decided to go see a doctor, my wife called her friend who lives in Tokyo to ask about the closest hospital etc. He and his girlfriend showed up in our apartment, taking me to the closest clinic just in case the nurse/doctor don’t speak any English.
It was a normal clinic routine, I (or was it my wife?) filled up a form with my names etc, we wait and then saw a doctor. True enough, the doctor doesn’t speak English well, so he communicated with my friend while sometimes punching some keys on his phone for English translation to say things to me. By this time I feel really bad for my wife’s friend as he has to translate what i feel, in detail, to the doctor, about my diarrhea. It’s probably his worst first conversation with someone ever!
All good, he prescribed medicine, while explaining to my friend what and how much to take when. The doctor was very very responsible, he found translations on his phone again to write the name of the medicine and what each pill is for etc in English.
The strange thing comes when I want to pay the bill. The nurse said that the cashier was closed on weekends (it was Saturday), she estimated that the cost would be around JPY 10,000 or less. So, she asked me to give her JPY 5,000 and comeback on Monday to settle the rest with the cashier.
The strangest thing is, I told her that Monday is my schedule to take my kid to Disneyland and Tuesday to Disney Sea, to which she replied (translated by my wife’s dear friend, obviously) “ok, come whenever you have time, it’s OK”
I was dumbfounded by her answer, I asked again to confirm and she said yes.
I mean they know that I don’t live in Japan, nor do they ask my friend’s number/ address. My wife’s friend, my savior, then explained to me that it is quite normal in Japan because Japanese people are very responsible and honest, so they always pay what is due.
Big respect for their culture.
PS: I ended up paying the balance on Thursday, it was around JPY 3,500 🙂
Forbidden books
Where is the most dangerous island in the world?
Personally, I think it’s the Pitcairn Islands.
But not for the reasons you may think.
Globe
For those of you who don’t know, the Pitcairn Islands are a British Overseas Territory in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s one of the most isolated places in the world, and only has a population of 47 people, most of whom are descended from the nine people who originally settled the islands. They’re also all mostly interrelated, in one way or another.
The territory is owned by the United Kingdom, but governed by New Zealand’s British High Commissioner. They rarely visit, and ships only come to the islands about two dozen times a year.
[1] So I think it’s fair to say that the Pitcairn Islands are very isolated from the rest of society. The 47 residents of the Islands don’t have too much contact with the outside world.
But that’s precisely what makes it so dangerous.
In 1999, a policeman from Kent, England was serving an assignment on the islands, when he started to uncover some sinister things going on. He started uncovering allegations of sexual abuse, including against children.
An Australian pastor visited the island around that time, and made some shocking observations
“I noticed worrying signs such as inexplicable mood swings,” he says. “It took me three months to realise they were being abused. I tried to raise the subject at a meeting of the island council, and one gentleman replied: ‘Look, the age of consent has always been 12 and it doesn’t hurt them.'” [2]
When further questioned, residents of the island basically said “that’s just how it is here”. Girls would get into relationships at a disturbingly young age on the island, and nobody really noticed from the outside for a long time. Most girls had their first child between ages 12 and 15.
That’s pretty messed up. As it turns out, the remoteness of the island had allowed a disturbing culture of sexuality to develop. The policeman started questioning every single woman who lived on the island, and they all saw nothing wrong with it.
But British officials definitely saw something wrong with it, and pressed charges against seven men. That may not seem like a lot, but consider that that was most of the island’s adult male population at the time, including the mayor of the islands.
This was a huge scandal, and raised a lot of questions about extraterritoriality and law and stuff. During the trial, they had to fly in policemen, judges, lawyers, journalists and other court staff; from the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
This effectively doubled the island’s population during the trial.
Lawyers for the defendants made a strange argument in order to try and get their sentences reduced: they argued that if they were imprisoned, the island would cease to function. And they had a point. When an island has a population as small as the Pitcairn Islands, locking up seven able-bodied men has a huge impact.
Four defendants got reduced sentences because of the unique nature of the island’s population. Two were spared from jail entirely, and one was acquitted.
This is what I think makes it one of the most dangerous islands in the world. Not the wildlife, not the flora and fauna, but the people living there.
The same way anonymity can make people cruel and immoral, isolation can do the same thing, allowing cultures of abuse and mistreatment to develop. In my opinion, this case is no different to cases of abuse within cults. Both involved small groups of people and corrupt leadership, who basically created a little realm in which they could get away with horrible things.
China’s Military Aircraft Can Vanish ‘Off The Radar’ As Scientist Developed Plasma Device
In another remarkable leap forward in the realm of military technology, Chinese scientists have unveiled a groundbreaking development that is sure to revolutionize aerial warfare: a new plasma stealth device that could render Chinese aircraft virtually invisible to enemy radar systems. You heard that right! We might see the time where Chinese aircraft will go undetected on enemy radar systems and in turn inflict a plethora of damage. Today’s episode will uncover the new development of Chinese scientists that might make Chinese aircraft invisible in the future. https://youtu.be/TD20CoQ1dPA
What are the consequences the world faces if China goes for war over Taiwan?
India may suffer massive shortages
Luckily not of food products but many other things.
Electric Vehicles , Electronics, Vehicles, Smartphons, Pumps – will all reduce significantly as they primarily depend on Chinese Components and Import Substitution is impossible due to the Ukranian Crisis.
The Biggest problem is ANTIBIOTICS, PAINKILLERS, ANTIVIRALS
India manufactures a lot of these but 80% Pharma Raw Stock comes from China
A Blockade by US could prevent Crucial Antibiotics from being delivered to more than 60% of the Countries in the World (95% Developing Countries)
Globally the Biggest Problem will be – CHIPS
Taiwan exports 93% of its Chips and controls 70% of the Global Supply Chain
A Blockade on the Taiwan Straits by China could result in an existing supply crunch intensifying several times over.
As on date only 7 Stacks of Chips are being delivered for every 12 Stacks of Chips relative to 2019 Globally -ie:- only around 60% of the Global Supply
If Taiwan joins in then you could have 7 Stacks for every 36 -48 Stacks or only around 15%-20% of the Global Supply
That would impact many many Industries
ASEAN Nations will lose Big
The Seas are very profitable for Trade. Those routes are disturbed – it will lead to a Supply Crisis like EU is experiencing.
And the Western Economies will crumble even worse
A Lot of their Hedge Funds invest in Chip Manufacturing Entities and a Huge Shortfal market could collapse such funds by as much as 40%-60%
It will all pass…
Do you think China has the guts to attack Taiwan, or are they just lame threats?
Its not a Question of Guts
Its a Question of having the ability to follow through
War is a drain on everything and fighting a War against several enemies could be a huge obstacle to any country.
Every repurcussion has to be planned , anticipated and handled
Putin took 8 years and even then it was a Weak Joe Biden that finally moved him into the Ukraine Conflict.
8 years of planning, contingencies, new alliances
Has the US ever fought a Conflict or War where there is a threat of either China or Russia coming for a defensive battle?
Not since the 1960s
Same Reason.
Attacking Taiwan is a 2 Week Job, 4 weeks Tops
Taiwan cannot hold against China and no amount of alliances can hold a Determined China from hoding Taiwan
The Political Repurcussions, Global Repurcussions, Financial Repurcussions – these are Chinas largest obstacles.
China has to plan for these and how to counter these
Strong Alliances are crucial here
China already has Russia and Central Asia
Turkey mostly will not condemn China in any way
However ASEAN?
ASEAN nations are headless chickens and if pushed and pressurized heavily could create problems for China
Long story short – China will attack Tiwan only if threatened beyond anything we have seen until today
What is the most shocking thing that’s ever happened on live TV?
In 1997, Gay Byrne was hosting the Late Late Show.
His two guests of the evening were a nun and Irish poet, Brendan Kennelly.
The night was going well – at the midpoint of each episode, they usually hosted a phone-in competition. You know the format; they ask an unbelievably easy question, get people to send in the answer, and they pick one person to call and tell them congratulations! you’ve won a prize!
This evening was no different.
The prize of the evening was a new car and Byrne dials the lucky winner.
Ring ring.
Ring ring.
The phone is answered by a quiet sounding woman. She sounded meek, even when told she had won.
“Are you happy, Rita?”
“Yes,” Rita replies quietly.
“Are you watching the show tonight?”
“I wasn’t”, Rita replies …
… “my daughter died last night”.
News
Instantly there were gasps and Byrne’s face drops and his tone changes.
“Oh no. Oh dear Rita, I’m very sorry.”
You have to remember that this was live TV. Thousands of people, including a studio audience full of people, were sat in front of him. Byrne probably also had his studio team giving him instructions in his ear. So, he flubbed, and very inelegantly asked:
“And why did she die?”
“Are you being funny?” she shot back.
“She got knocked down. She was in a car crash last night.”
It turned out that it was Rita’s daughter who had entered the competition – she was so hoping to win a car and it was a car that ended her life only a day before.
Byrne, being the fantastic host that he was, realised that he should really give Rita, the poor woman, an out if she wanted it.
“Good heavens. Well Rita, I don’t think we can continue with this in the circumstances. Do you want to?”
“I do.”
This led to applause from the audience and Rita continued.
The first guest, the nun, offered her some consolation, saying that it surely was no accident that the postcard was picked tonight.
Next, it was passed to the poet, Kennelly, who recited one of his most famous poems, “Begin,” from memory:
“Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.”
Towards the end, Rita was quietly weeping.
Byrne then tells her that she has the support and prayers of the entire country, and Rita, in turn, told Byrne that she felt it was important to stay on the line for her daughter, that she was accepting the prize “for her”.
I’m describing this clip because I can’t find the full version of it anywhere.
Graham Norton, the extremely popular Irish chat show host of his own show on the BBC, actually once said that this moment inspired him to move into chat shows.
Gay Byrne died recently at the age of 85, after a short illness battling cancer.
He will forever be missed and remembered fondly by Irish people of a certain age.
Edit: It turns out that the video in that article has since been removed, which must have only happened in the last few days — unfortunately.
Also, many people have pointed out how I feel like this was more shocking than events like Budd Dwyer’s suicide.
I knew these would be discussed in-depth, so I figured I’d go with an event I knew most people wouldn’t have heard of.
On February 14, there was an incident between a Taiwan coast guard ship and Chinese fishing boats in the waters off Kinmen, a very short distance from Xiamen. In this incident, the Chinese fishing boat was hit by the Taiwan coast guard ship and capsized. Two of the Chinese fishermen drowned.
Since then, there have been 15 rounds of discussions between the Chinese authorities and the Taiwan authorities. The Chinese side has demanded compensation and an apology to the fishermen from the Taiwan side; Taiwan has refused. The DPP, which controls the Taiwan government, has refused any responsibility for the action, and claims that there is no video recording of the incident It has appealed to the US to become involved in the discussions, which the US so far has ignored.
The incident has received widespread coverage in China, and this has led to a hardening of Chinese popular opinion, and the government’s stance to Taiwan. Chinese public opinion feels that the Chinese authorities have been too accommodating to Taiwan for too long, and instead of treating Taiwan as “fellow Chinese”, they should be treated as an enemy. For a long time, PRC Chinese considered the DPP and KMT to be hostile to the PRC, but that ordinary Taiwanese were decent Chinese who wanted to be re-united with China. Now that view is dismissed as a fantasy which should be rejected.
The Chinese government closely follows public opinion from online media, and has shifted its public stance during the Two Congresses meeting in Beijing. When discussing Taiwan, there is no more talk of an appeal to our “Taiwan compatriots”. Instead the talk is of reunification, without specifying whether it should be done peacefully or by military means.
As the PRC increases its military patrols in the Taiwan straits and around Taiwan, it is likely that the PLA forces will ignore Taiwan’s demarcation lines for the sea and air. The DPP government is likely to look to the US for support in enforcing these demarcation lines, and the US will need to decide how far it wants to go in supporting the Taiwan authorities.
On the military front, the US is thinly spread with the Ukraine war, which may escalate into a more direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, and the Israel/Hamas war, which may evolved into a multi-front war for Israel, involving the Houthis in the Red Sea and Yemen, the continuing war in Gaza, and a possible northern front including Lebanon and Syria involving Hizbollah. The longer the war lasts, the greater the damage for Israel’s economy, which has already lost 20% of its GDP since October 7.
This presents a major dilemma for the US: it already has two major wars on its hands, and it needs time to build up its military for a possible major confrontation with China. But the US won’t be able to fully prepare itself for military confrontation through re-armament until 2027. If the US confronts China militarily before then, it is likely to lose.
Economically, China is on the move by selling products which are just as good as American products, if not better, at much lower prices. Notable areas are solar panels and EVs, where western manufacturers and exporters cannot compete.
As if that were not enough, we face a re-run of the Biden-Trump battle for the presidency in November. If Trump is elected, he is likely to disengage on the foreign policy front, and will tell Putin that he can have Ukraine, and maybe Europe. NATO will only exist on paper.
He has talked about raising tariffs on Chinese imports to the US to 60%.
Interesting times indeed.
Chicken farmers in Australia be like…
If money is not an issue, would you rather live in Miami, the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, or New York?
New York is an absolute no no
Too many blacks at night everywhere and 90% of them wearing hoodies and giving the “mugger vibe”
And not the Good African blacks or the blacks you see in UK
The Stereotype 1990s blacks depicted in family guy
You may think you landed in Lagos
Except Manhattan and i dont like Apartment living too much.
Miami?
I have never been to Miami. In Florida, I have been only to Orlando.
SF Bay Area
Sorry
Too many Homosexuals
I went there twice and both times, you had many men holding hands and resting heads on shoulders and giving you the shudders
Beautiful place though
Like South Mumbai to a certain extent
Los Angeles?
Again I have been to LA only to go to Universal Studios and Rodeo Drive and when I land in US
No idea how life in LA can be
In the US, I would prefer living in New Rochelle in Westchester County Or some of those nice Suburban communities, ones where Indians are not discriminated against
Or even San Jose
My Son lived in a place called Los Gatos and he was told all the white guys were uppity people who would be racist to Indians. That never happened. Good people, Friendly people
My idea of a money no limit place would be :-
One Acre minimum property
Excellent Medical Facilities nearby where the Labs process results in a day and not four days
Where a Specialist makes an appointment to see you, the next day and not next Thursday
At least two Indian eateries in a 1 Km radius. Not the Naan, Roti one but the South Indian one which is rarer in the US
Low rate of crime
Accessibility to a City for emergency
The Answer was Westchester County
I advised my sons to consider this place as a final retirement place in the days when US was a better country than it is today
My wife is already not too pleased about one son settling in China and has warned me “You kept praising China, and now our younger son is in China. Now you are praising Russia. If the elder one settles down in Russia, you can live with him and I am out of here”
Meanwhile in Texas
Do you know anyone who had a good heart who went to prison?
I’ve known men who had good hearts and went to prison.
Where they lost them.
I’ve met men who went to prison and grew larger hearts, just like the Grinch.
I’ve met men who never had good hearts and never will.
And, I’ve met men who managed to hold on to their good hearts in spite of it all.
Shortly after arriving at the facility where I did the bulk of my time, I met a man who was almost the same age as my father. This was a spry fellow, slender, medium height, and bearded.
He had been in Vietnam.
He was just a kid when he went to war. While away he kept an unusually candid journal. Later in life he transcribed the journal faithfully into a book and self-published a small number of copies. It must’ve been tempting to edit out the parts that made him look like the stupid teenager he was, but he didn’t. The journal and the book tell the same story without so much as a spelling correction.
He allowed me to read his journal.
It was filled with the concerns of an eighteen year old boy, “Does she love me? What did she mean when she said that? What should I tell her about John?” All these normal, adolescent, girl-centric concerns projected against a backdrop of horror.
On his first day of patrol in Vietnam, his outfit marched into a village and demanded to know where the Viet Cong were. One bad apple threatened a woman by holding her infant over a well and screaming for answers about the VC.
The sergeant saw this and said, “C’mon Smith. Let it go.” Smith (or whatever his name was) dropped the baby into the well. The sergeant calmly walked over, pulled out a hand grenade, removed the pin, and dropped the grenade into the well after the baby.
After the explosion he said, “Don’t have to worry about that fucker.”
This was day one of patrol. Imagine the shock. Imagine being ripped out of your Mid-West suburban utopia and being cast into this asylum for the chronically cruel.
The entire course of this young man’s life was forever altered. His experiences at war led to a drinking problem. The drinking led to DUIs. Three DUIs became a felony conviction. His father’s guns still in his home became “felon in possession of a firearm.”
This was a good man. His heart was in pain for his entire adulthood as a result of the things he saw.
Instead of offering him help, we locked him up.
Oh baby…
Senior Russian Military Colonel: Possibility of full-scale war in Europe “not ruled out – growing significantly”
A senior Russian military officer warns that the conflict in #Ukraine could escalate into a full-scale war in #Europe and says the probability of Moscow’s forces becoming involved in a new conflict is increasing “significantly.” Colonel-General Vladimir Zarudnitsky, head of the Russian army’s Military Academy of the General Staff, made the comments in an article for “Military Thought”, a defense ministry publication, the state RIA news agency reported on Thursday. “The possibility of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine – from the expansion of participants in ‘proxy forces’ used for military confrontation with Russia to a large-scale war in Europe – cannot be ruled out,” RIA cited him a saying. “The main source of military threats to our state is the anti-Russian policy of the United States and its allies, who are conducting a new type of hybrid warfare in order to weaken Russia in every possible way, limit its sovereignty and destroy its territorial integrity,” he was quoted as saying. “The likelihood of our state being purposefully drawn into new military conflicts is significantly increasing.” The war in Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Russia’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and President Vladimir Putin has warned that the West risks provoking a nuclear war if it sends troops to fight in Ukraine. Putin has cast his decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 as a special military operation designed to secure Russia’s own security against an increasingly hostile US-backed Ukrainian leadership. Kyiv says it is defending itself against an imperial-style war of conquest designed to erase its national identity. Zarudnitsky’s comments come at a time when the West is scrambling to help Ukraine with more arms and financing after Kyiv’s failed counteroffensive last summer and after Russian forces regained the initiative on the battlefield. Zarudnitsky advocated a number of changes in the way Russia organizes its military and security, RIA added, including placing greater emphasis on relying on what he called friendly countries to ensure Russia’s own security and consolidating the whole of Russian society around its defense needs.
Fathers be like
Apricot Chicken
apricot chicken 2
Ingredients
Chicken
4 to 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 (13 ounce) jar apricot preserves
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
3/4 cup water
1 1/4 cups Russian dressing or use store-bought
Russian Dressing
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup chili sauce (or ketchup)
3 teaspoons prepared horseradish (or to taste)
1 teaspoon hot sauce
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
Instructions
If using homemade Russian Dressing, prepare it first. If using store bought Russian dressing, proceed with the recipe.
Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Chicken
Wash and place chicken breasts in a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
In a medium size bowl, mix together preserves, dry onion soup mix, water and Russian dressing. Pour over the chicken breasts. Bake for 1 hour.
Russian Dressing
Place onion in a small bowl and mash to create a paste. Stir in the mayonnaise, chili sauce, horseradish, hot sauce, Worcestershire, paprika and salt.
Stability
What habits did you pick up in prison that non prisoners don’t understand?
Don’t make eye contact. If you happen to, do not smile. The general friendliness we see as acceptable and desirable in the real world (except France) can get you into trouble in prison.
Look in every trashcan. I still can’t break this habit. Prison is a constant state of want. You learn to make do or do without. There’s stuff in there that you need.
Trust no one. Eventually you will come to know one or two well enough to exempt them from this rule… but even with these select few, you still shouldn’t lean on them. Practice solidarity with yourself.
Don’t ask questions. You’ve no right to know, and asking can cause problems with inmates and guards alike.
Lock up everything. It only takes a moment for someone to walk off with whatever you hold dear. If it’s further than arm’s reach, it’s at risk.
Beware the quiet. If you’ve been reading and suddenly realize that the normal background idiocy has mysteriously squelched, pay attention. There’s a reason, and it’s probably not good.
Don’t stand out. Don’t ask for special privileges, don’t complain, and don’t go around trying to make friends. Squeaky wheels get greased with blood.
Stockpile books. You never know when you’ll be in lockdown for a fortnight. You’ll be grateful if you’ve got something to do besides another game of cards.
A warning from veteran who went to Ukraine
Is Britain’s idea of using frozen Russian assets as collateral for a loan to Ukraine any less illegal than simply stealing them, and how would this affect London’s reputation as a financial centre?
It’s literally stealing.
You can make all the olympic level mental gymnastics you want, oh it’s only stealing from bad people. But all in all it’s still stealing, it’s taking stuff that isn’t yours.
Oh sure you can of course decide that it is yours or make contrivances and change the law so that it becomes ‘legal’. But in the end it’s intentionally depriving somebody of their property on a permanent basis thus means theft.
affect London’s reputation as a financial centre?
It will affect confidence, in that if you can steal theirs or change the rules so that they can take it legally, what stops you from doing it to others?
If anything the UK is doing this over and over.
They’ve literally refused to give Venezuela’s gold back to them.
But it goes back to this:
affect London’s reputation as a financial centre?
London’s reputation as a financial centre is evaporating. EU passporting is ending in 2024 😀
So they’re literally resorting to looting.
That’s not particularly surprising as most of them why pay for something if you can steal it?
Ukraine War: Irish fighter ‘Rambo’ describes ‘terrifying’ Russian tank chase
What can I learn in one minute that will be useful for the rest of my life?
Adjust a picture frame at your desk so you can see behind you with the reflection of the glass.
In a pinch, the seatbelt in your car can be used as a bottle opener.
Balance an empty can on the doorknob to alert you if someone tries to open the door while you’re elsewhere in the house.
Anything you say before the word “but” does not count.
Suspect someone’s giving you the wrong phone number? Read it back to them incorrectly, if they correct you, it’s legit.
Windows key + E to open My Computer.
To confirm which circuit breaker is associated with an outlet, plug in a hairdryer and turn the volume up before you flip the circuit breaker.
When you want to cross words out you don’t want to be legible, instead of scribbling over them, write random letters and words over the original.
Using ‘~ ‘ before a word in Google searches includes synonyms of that word in your search.
When filling your car with gas, hold the trigger halfway. You’ll get more gas and less air in the tank.
Have an Excel file too big to e-mail? Save it as an xlsb it shrinks the size by 50-75%.
When you’re on an elevator, the floor with the star next to it is the one that leads outside.
Save the job description when you start a new job. It makes updating your resume a lot easier.
When showing people pictures on your phone, zoom in a little bit so they can’t easily swipe to other pictures.
Can’t decide if you’re hungry? Ask yourself if you want an apple. If you answer no, then you’re not actually hungry.
This is what a “real” man does…
How can we remind Russians we have no problems with them? We have a problem with their despot.
You don’t. You have problems with Russians now.
There are many dimensions of current conflict between Russia and collective West or whatever you call Russian opponents. Anyway the U.S. are the main enemy and there would be no conflict without their involvement. A lot has been said and written on the matter so I won’t delve into it further.
Now comes the definition part. Who are “you”? Ok, I assume you are talking about people of collective West. Not governments, not military industry lobbies, not bankers, not oil traders, not oligarchs. Just people.
Why do you have problems with Russians? Because your countries are our enemies. And no sweet words will change that simple fact.
Could this be different? Yes. Your countries made a plethora of pointless, stupid and self-contradicting decisions.
Yet, the most stupid of those decision was the decision to attempt economic isolation of Russia.
This:
1) Made Russian people your enemies
2) Forced modernization of Russian industry and economy at unprecedented rate
3) Boosted Russian military-industrial complex
4) Resulted in further consolidation of Russians around Putin
5) Destroyed all “soft influence” that you had in Russia through your corporations and business ties
The list is long.
Now a small personal story.
By February 2022 I was mainly working for a couple U.S. corporations (Intel and HP if you are interested) as lead localizer / reviewer of Russian content (freelance).
I was generally sympathizing Americans and Europeans and had no communication problems. I was quite against any confrontation. However, actions of European and American governments made me lose these jobs and, naturally, my attitude to them has seriously changed.
You made a Western-minded person in Russia angry about “the West”. There were millions of Russians like me who had ties with the Western world or who earned their income working for Western companies. Actions of U.S. and European governments made you lose our sympathies and lose any leverage the West had in Russian society.
Not that we would work against Russia or became “the fifth column”, but had this “economic blockade” remained a threat, we would surely push for decisions that would help us save our jobs and sources of income.
Now it is just too late. Pro-Western people in Russia were forced to adapt and vast majority of them are no longer pro-Western. Sure, some just fled Russia but even then, this didn’t have any noticeable impact on Russian economy and Russian society.
To sum it up, you had your influence in Russia but lost it. You earned money in Russia but lost it. Even your cultural influence is fading. Simply because Russians are no longer looking on your content through rosy glasses. And well, TBH your media entertainment content in last few years mostly sucks.
Maybe your own audience is brainwashed enough to push any “agendas” but I don’t remember any new Hollywood blockbusters in last few years that would be really appealing to Russian or any other third-world audience. I haven’t even feel the desire to watch anything like that.
Moreover, your “brands” are rapidly losing value in eyes of Russians and more and more Russians look at them with disdain.
Moreover, Russia is setting the example for “Global South” demonstrating that a large part of your “superiority” was just imaginary. The further our hostilities go, the greater is this understanding. Especially when it comes to “cultural superiority”.
Still… if you are talking about people… many Russian still don’t think categories. Most of us still don’t assume that every American or European is an enemy. Yet, we assume that most of you are simply brainwashed about Russia, Russian people and Russian so-called “despot”.
A side note for more context. I do support the ruling party of Russia but I don’t support President Putin. I am a big fan of Russian Prime Minister and other efficient administrators from United Russia team.
So enjoy your “politically correct” remakes, dull comics that are indistinguishable from each other and reanimation of long-dead franchises that can’t be saved even with once great actors.
Las Vegas babysitter who beat 5-year-old boy to death sentenced to life in prison
Horrific.
Terrible.
What is the most disgusting thing that someone has done in a restaurant?
I have a three-way-tie. We had a family come in with a baby, toddler, and a small child, maybe 6 or 7. I noticed the baby didn’t look well to begin with. You could just look at this kid and tell she was miserable and running fever. I asked if she was alright and the mom assured me she was just tired.
The toddler decided to suck the sauce off her noodles and stick them to the wall. Mom and dad said nothing. A little while later the older child put her hands in the baby’s diaper and announced to everyone “Ewww! Chrissy’s got runny poo!” She wiped her hand on the white tablecloth. Mom pushes plates aside and changes this horrendously smelly, runny diaper right on the table. She couldn’t understand why I was making a big deal out of it when I asked her to take the baby to the bathroom.
Next we have the lady who ordered a huge meal and requested a large, empty to go cup. It wasn’t until after she left that I realized what she was doing. She was chewing her food and spitting it in the cup instead of swallowing it. I’m pretty sure she had an eating disorder. It’s none of my business if she did or didn’t, I’m not judging, but it would have been nice if she had thrown her cup of chewed food out herself instead of leaving it for me to deal with.
Finally, we have the man who decided that instead of using his big boy words to show his displeasure at being denied a take out box for an all-you-can-eat meal (There were signs and the menu stated no to go boxes on it) that he would urinate in my lobby. He did this right in front of a cop that was dining with us. The guy was not too bright. Yes, the cop took action.
Let’s see something nicer.
The internet found her and destroyed her
She was deserving.
When have you cheaply or inexpensively fixed an item someone thought unrepairable?
Not exactly unrepairable but definitely expensive.
I recently treated myself to a used luxury automobile because I’m getting old and wanted to splurge. I had it less than 2 weeks when the power driver’s seat wouldn’t move forward or backwards. Unfortunately it was frozen slightly too far back so I really had to stretch to reach the pedals … not a very safe way to drive.
The dealer looked sad when I brought it in. He said this was a common problem with my model, but the “repair” involved replacing the whole motor assembly under the seat, it would cost upwards of $3k, and extended warranties almost never covered it.
I went home and contacted my insurer who said they didn’t know if it was covered, I should have the $200 diagnostic done and then the dealer would present a claim for the repair on my behalf and they would “work it out”.
The night before my follow-up appointment, my husband (not a mechanic) looked under the seat with a flashlight. The gear to move the seat had come out of its track. He hit it a few times just so and the gear popped back into place. Now the seat works perfectly again.
My mother’s husband after my (birth) parents got their divorce, was a man of great local wealth. A “big man” in the local community. He was quite the character.
He had 15 sons, and one girl. He was Catholic.
Don’t you know.
Anyways, after he passed on he give my brother a gift in his will.
No one knew what it was, and when we all took the truck to get it, we were all surprised.
It was a home liquor bar from the 1960’s during the Playboy age.
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It has girly glasses, swizzle sticks, and was able to control lighting with velvet and mirrors inside the cabinet. We boys all thought it was cool as fuck.
My sisters thought that it was stupid; old antique furniture. something that should be given away at a thrift store.
My mother… well she just *sighed*.
Gave it to my brother.
It looked a little bit like this, only shorter with more drawers, and a built in ashtray.
Still, my mother wanted us to throw it away.
Ugh! She didn’t appreciate it’s value like we (my brother and I) did.
Often my brother and I would muse about being a “playboy” like 007, and seducing women in our bachelor pad.
the playboy club bachelor pad
He has it today.
It’s in his “game room” / study. Perhaps, he goes to it every now and then and mixed up a Tom Collins, or a Whiskey Sour.
Today…
Rights in the United States
How do servers feel when someone only orders the cheapest item on the menu?
The cheapest item on a menu is often the most profitable. That is no coincidence. At the top of the menu will be a prime rib roast for $60. At the bottom is the fettuccine Alfredo for $17.99. The prime rib is called the anchor item. Believe me, it is there to scare you. They sell very few of them and don’t make much profit because of the high cost of the raw materials. So now, they’ve coaxed you to look at the cheapest item, the Alfredo. One chef revealed that a pasta dish at the bottom of his menu cost only 98 cents in ingredients, but was $17.99 on the menu. It was the most profitable item on the list, and the most popular dish they sell, especially when compared to the $60 steak that only brought in a couple of bucks profit.
Then there’s the wine list. It was designed by a restaurant psychologist. They know that a couple on a date will order a bottle of wine. But the guy doesn’t want to look cheap, so he orders the second cheapest wine. But guess what else? The owner knows that too, and the second cheapest wine has the highest margin!
A menu is full of tricks. Many of them funny, like no dollar signs and no decimals. Or burying the price in the description rather than putting it on a column to the right, where prices are easier to compare.
There are many, many more. Try searching “restaurant menu tricks”. Here’s one of them:
Do you sleep with your bedroom door open or closed? Why?
Until May 12, 2007, I didn’t worry whether my bedroom door was open or closed while I slept. Now, my bedroom door is closed and locked every night.
Tenth-grader Alec Kreider, entered the Haines’ family home while all were asleep and stabbed them. All their bedroom doors were open and their garage door was up.
When you look at his photo, Alec was just a kid.
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The only person to escape was the 19-year-old daughter. Alec didn’t know she’d returned from college that evening.
The Haines’ house was less than a mile from ours.
The police were at a loss to find the killer or even a motive for why this family had been killed. The police were vocal about what the area residents should do until the case was resolved.
It was during that month that we started locking the bedroom door. Finally, it became a habit that we continued even after Alec’s father drove his son to police headquarters.
Alec never disclosed why he killed a good friend of his and the parents. He pleaded guilty and there was no trial.
Edit:
Someone commented that the photo of Alec may have been when he was younger than the date of his arrest. I copied and pasted a photo so you could see how he looked on that day.
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Decline
What are good skills to learn before going to prison?
If you’re going to prison, you need to learn how to shut up. It’s normal that when we see injustice, we want to fix it. Did you see someone steal another man’s shoes while he slept? Just mind your own business. Learn to lock up your own shoes, or make them not worth stealing.
Confronting the thief is a bad idea. Maybe you’re pretty good in a scrap and think you could take the scumbag down.
Maybe you can. But what will you do when three of them show up at your bunk at 2:30 in the morning with their padlocks inside socks? Those heavy chunks of metal, swung at high speed inside the sock, hit hard. It’s an impromptu weapon that works just as well as something from a medieval battlefield. The only thing it lacks are the spikes, but the inmates will compensate for that with enthusiasm.
Next, you need to learn that your case is nobody’s business. Period. It’s tempting to want to talk about what you’ve been through.
Don’t.
Just don’t.
The reverse is even more true. Do not ask anyone else about their case. It’s none of your business, and the asking invites trouble.
Prison is a primitive culture. It’s all based on power and social status. In a way, it’s like we’ve never built a civilization at all, and are stuck in our shared simian ancestry without the civilizing influences of the feminine gender. Ask yourself, “What would Jane Goodall do?”
Observe. Understand. Don’t get involved.
Learn to lose yourself in an activity. If you’re not much of a reader, learn to become one.
Learn some useful skills. Learn to sew. The ability to repair your own things will save you money, and can make you useful to others.
Learn to make do.
Two years later, I still catch myself glancing in trash cans for useful things.
Learn introspection. Learn to understand who you are so that essence can be preserved. Your time in prison is temporary. One day, you will be headed either to the streets, or to the hereafter. Either way, you want to leave as a civilized human being the least scarred as possible.
My goodness!
Southern Afghanistan 2008.
Group of Taliban fighters ambushed a squad of Marines in my platoon on a night patrol. We were engaged in a firefight with them during the day and a squad was pushed out to search for them. Traditionally the Taliban would not engage us at night because we “own the night”.
This time however, when the Marines got close they lit multiple stacks of dried vegetation on fire washing out our NVGs with light. They also engaged the Marines with RPGs and automatic weapons from rather well hidden positions that were only a stone’s throw away. In fact, they happened to throw back grenades that were thrown in their direction. I was pushed up from the rear as aid and litter to retrieve a wounded Marine and the light show I saw that night was like watching star wars space battle.
The green and red tracers being exchanged over the sight and sound of explosions, smell of burning fuel and large flames was all so astonishing to experience. The Taliban impressed me that day. In my experience that was one of only the handful of times I experienced a night battle in my year and a half total of combat zone time. Their success was short lived however, you can imagine who eventually won that fight.
When you are on the way up…
The Mughal Empire was ruled by only one dynasty, but why doesn’t anyone call it the “Mughal dynasty”?
There is no word “empire” in ancient Chinese history
This word was introduced to China by Westerners, and then the Chinese began to use it.
Therefore, the Chinese customarily refer to all their ancient regimes as “dynasties” rather than “empires”
Now, there are some new changes in the definition of ancient Chinese regimes in academic circles.
Some scholars began to try to distinguish between “empires” and “dynasties” in ancient China
They called some powerful regimes that ruled the whole of China “empires,” while they called some small regimes that only controlled local areas “dynasties.”
For example, “Ming Empire”, “Tang Empire”, “Song Dynasty” and “Shang Dynasty”.
They believe that many large empires and more small dynasties were born in ancient China. Their reason is that with every regime established, the name of the country changes. There has never been a regime named “Middle Kingdom” or “Middle Empire” in Chinese history.
Some scholars also believe that according to Western definitions, China established its empire in 211 BC and lasted until 1912. During these 2000 years, China had only one empire. All regime changes are “dynasties” within this empire. The change of dynasties is actually the continuous collapse and reconstruction of this empire.
Their reason is: the establishment of each dynasty claimed to have inherited the “mandate of heaven” from the previous dynasty. They even passed down the seal made by the first emperor as a symbol of legitimate power.
I think there is no standard answer to this question, just a customary name
Important
When is China expected to surpass the USA economically? Will they also become a military superpower at the same time?
Wake up it has already!
China has a bigger economy based on the flawed GDP PPP measurement that favours the west measurement of values of smokes and bubbles. Such as Wall Street values and not real tangible human values. Yet even in this flawed and skewed to the west measurement China has already overtaken them since 2014. China have more men, more ships more planes more ammunitions and it has vital new technologies such as hypersonic missiles and superior drone and sonar technologies that render most of U.S. weapons useless for at least a decade now!
Interstellar | “Tidal Wave” Full Scene (Anne Hathaway, Matthew McConaughey) | Paramount Movies
Doesn’t Putin realize he will be VAPORIZED 15 to 20 minutes after he launches his first missile?
How exactly?
Let’s say Putin nukes Kiev tomorrow
Do you think anyone would retaliate?
No
That’s because nobody would want the risk of Russia launching Nukes against them in a counter strike
The attitude of NATO would be
“Boy he is ready to launch nukes and annihilate everyone. If we launch a nuke against Putin, the world will be annihilated”
So the West won’t launch nukes and would do their best and prevent war
Even the Neocons would be stunned enough to sue for peace
It’s what Medvedev would have done
Launch a small low yield nuke capable of killing maybe 100,000 Ukranians in Kyiv and getting peace
Let’s say Putin nukes France
Half a Dozen Satans, destroying and vaporizing the entire nation
Would UK Or US risk launching nukes against Putin?
They would know for certain that if they did, Russia will launch a counter strike and millions and millions of their people will die including Mrs Biden or the Biden Grandkids or Mrs Sunak Or the Sunak Kids
I don’t think they will
They will have all their nukes ready for launch but will ensure that they somehow de escalate from a full on nuclear war
So i dont think any NATO nation will retaliate against Putin on behalf of another Nation because that would be certain death
Unless Putin hits US or US hits Putin, the risk of MAD is very little
Putin can destroy any other nation in the planet without fear of consequences of nuclear retaliation
Maybe China is too large and has a strong enough AD to manage to defend itself
So how to ensure there is no nuclear confrontation?
Each side has enough Pentagon or Kremlin Brass who know when to draw a line and prevent nuclear escalation
I love this
What are some psychological facts about girls?
People who understand sarcasm well are often good at reading peoples MIND.
A survey says that a person who likes to do the things which are “asked not to be done,” are sugar lovers. They like sweets more than anything in this world. 😉 If you know someone who is fond of sweets, get ready to face adventures.
68% of the people suffer from Phantom Vibration Syndrome, the feeling that one’s phone is vibrating when it’s not.
Depression can affect other parts of your body, potentially leading to other diseases, especially cardiovascular-related diseases.
Being alone for a long time or smoking 15 cigarettes a day, both are equally dangerous.
If someone is being a dick, tell them they have something in their teeth. That will make them feel self-conscious and weird, and should end their dickness. Works every time.
Unless you make peace with your past, you can never pave your future… so leave things that trouble you behind and focus on the future.
Having negative friends is linked to depression, lowered self-esteem, insomnia and anxiety. Positive friends promote good overall health.
While walking on a crowded street, keep looking to the path you want to go, most people will avoid getting in your way.
If you always thinking about someone and sometimes they randomly pop up in your head, they miss you and you are also on their mind 🙂
People who get angry very fast are under deep stress at that time and they need love and belonging immediately.
I heard this the other day. Apparently if you pick a word someone is using and smile each time they say that particular word, they will start to say the word more often.For example, someone is talking about dogs, and if you smile when they say *dog*, then they’ll say *dog* more often.
According to psychology, two effective ways to fight depression are exercising and spending time with pets.
Psychopaths say “um” more frequently in order to appear like a normal person.
If you announce your goals or tell someone else about them, you are less likely to accomplish them because of the lack of motivation and interest that now result from someone else being aware of your goals. Keep them to yourself!
People who talk to themselves are smart by nature.
If a girl is really into you then she will look at you secretly when the people around you both are laughing.
For developing a new habit, follow it for 21 days, it will eventually become a routine.
Most marriages are failing faster these days than at any other period in history, and most people actually believe that marriages don’t work anymore. According to studies, marrying your best friend eliminates the risk of divorce by over 70% and such marriages are more likely to last a lifetime.
Smoking tobacco and having an unhealthy diet causes cancer more than alcohol would.
One minute of anger weakens the immune system for 4–5 hours. One minute of laughter boosts the immune system for 24 hours.
Girls: An average man gets bored after 26 mins of shopping.
If you believe you are not good looking, you never will be good looking to others. (Seriously. It is like the Law of Attraction is in play a bit here.)
The closer you are in a relationship, the more you can read the other’s mind.
Family isn’t always blood. It’s the people in your life who want you in there. The ones who accept you for who you’re.
Fuck Dude!
What was the stupidest thing someone has called the police on you for?
My ex-wife became convinced that I was hacking her home computer.
(Well, technically it was my computer, but it was an older one I’d left for her use after I’d moved out – a long, unhappy story.)
Among the many stupid parts of this claim, is that it was in the days of dial-up modems, where she could easily disconnect the computer from the internet. Hacking instantly prevented!
And, at that time, I don’t think’ spy-ware’ of that type even existed.
Also her son-in-law worked in IT, and could have easily installed standard security software for her. But I suspect he actually did that, and that she still thought she was being hacked.
The sad reality of the story is that she suffered from mental health issues, and constantly thought people were “out to get” her. Neighbours, (ex-)friends, co-workers, fellow church-members, etc.
Still, I was kind of surprised, 6 months after I’d moved out, when the police called to question me about “tampering” with her computer. They didn’t seem to give this much credibility, but I think they were obliged to follow-up, even know it was a waste of everyone’s time.
The irony is SHE had previously hacked MY email account, because she thought I had a secret girlfriend on the side. Nope, sorry – I was faithful to the bitter end.
(She also told people I was secretly gay – so which is it?)
What was your most embarrassing moment as a foreigner in another country?
6 months back, I was on a trip to China (related to work).
One fine day, I got late while coming back from work to my hotel. It was 9 PM.
An old lady called for me. She was sitting on the stones near footpath. When I approached her, she asked about where I was going. I told her that I was going to my hotel. She asked if she could come along.
I thought she might be worried because it was cloudy and dark. I agreed. We reached hotel and she followed me in. I thought she might be a guest at the hotel. But then she tried getting into my room as well on which I objected.
I had a feeling that something was wrong, as we had been communicating mostly in sign language as she spoke very little English. I called reception and asked them for help ASAP.
The reception guy came. I told him that I found this granny while coming to the hotel. But she’s following me every where. It would be nice if he could translate for me. He said something to her in Chinese and started giggling. He asked her to follow him.
I went downstairs for dinner in 20 minutes. The girls at the dining space started laughing when they saw me. I smiled back.
After my dinner, I went to the reception guy to ask why everyone was laughing at me. He told me that the granny was a call girl. And I was innocent enough not to understand that.
He told me that the girls were not laughing but feeling amused at my innocence. What a nice way to tell someone he messed up big.
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of U.S. Victoria Nuland has retired. according to a statement issued by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Victoria Nuland has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – a role in which she has personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy and revitalize America’s global leadership at a crucial time for our nation and the world. Victoria’s tenure caps three and a half decades of remarkable public service under six Presidents and ten Secretaries of State,” was noted in the Statement. (HT REMARK:The Witch is out . . . . this seems extremely peculiar to me; especially the timing of it, given the Ukraine-Russia thing going on. Perhaps this is a sign the entire Ukraine fiasco is going to be brought to an abrupt end???)
Bravery
What’s the most incompetent instance of bullying you’ve ever seen?
Actually, it happened to me.
I was a tiny ten-year-old and was often mistaken for eight. My bully was about twelve and was big for his age. He beat me up almost every day on the way home from school. One day, I’d had enough.
He came after me. I bent, darted under his arm, grabbed the back straps of his sandals and felled him like David did Goliath. He got up, stunned, then looking down at his sandals, (yes, the big bad bully wore sandals) cried, “You broke my sandals!” and began to cry and ran, I assumed, home. But that’s not the best part.
The next day I, the bully and his parents, were called into the principal’s office. When his parents saw me, their jaws dropped. There sits their big, strapping son, and I, a tiny, tiny blonde little girl. Nevertheless, they began yelling about my beating up their son, blah blah blah.
Now, the principal had noticed that I had been coming to school with black eyes, bruises and scratches, and unbeknownst to me, had begun to investigate…end result, sandal boy got suspended for one week.
Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of victory! He never bullied me again – nor did anyone else!
Good Advice
Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin
Mustard Pork
Ingredients
Pork
1 pound pork tenderloin
Glaze
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoons mustard
1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper
Instructions
Place pork on a greased rack in a baking pan lined with foil.
Combine glaze ingredients in a bowl, set aside 3 tablespoons glaze. Spoon remaining glaze over pork.
Bake uncovered at 400 degrees F for 28 minutes or until done, basting occasionally with reserved glaze.
Let stand for 5 minutes before slicing.
Fun Facts
Your tongue length is related to your sexual curiosity. Those who can lick their elbows are more willing to try new experiences.
If you have a crush on someone, your brain will find it impossible to lie to that person.
People who understand sarcasm well are often good at reading people’s minds.
The way you dress is linked with your mood. So dressing well most often helps in keeping you more stably happy.
Women with higher IQs have a harder time finding a mate.
The cells in your body react to everything your mind says. So negativity brings down your immune system and you feel sick.
The most you talk about someone, the more are you likely to fall in love with that person.
We believe what we WANT to believe.
Men are not funnier than women: they just make more jokes, not caring whether other people like their humor or not.
Listening to high-frequency music makes you feel calm, relaxed, and happy.
Dogs being dogs
Why did the rapid rise of China catch many in the west by surprise?
The West had a good nice plan for China
Give them all the Capitalism they needed, flood them with Dollars, bring them into the WTO, flush their economy with green currency, create more billionaires
Then ultimately use that Capital and those billions to control the country
They had a ready made plan
Chinese would have all the money they wanted
China would be dependent on the US system
China would make their currency convertible
Slowly US Institutions would buy shares and stakes in Chinese Banks, Chinese Companies
Slowly US would invest into the Chinese stock markets and make the Shanghai bourse dependent on Wall Street
The ultimate plan was to make China – a mirror of South Korea
An Economy fully controlled by Western Capitalism like most of the other Lackey economies
In fact a US Think Tank American Foreign Policy Council set out objectives of this nature as early as in 1994
They expected China to be fully enmeshed to the US Capitalist system by 2019 , ie:- in Twenty Five years
Xi Jingping stunned them
He regulated the tap of capitalism flowing into China
Rather than creating more billionaires, he ensured the capitalism and capital flow benefited more middle class Chinese and Rural Chinese
Rather than build a castle based on speculation, he ended speculation and focused on building actual development
He diverted all that green money into SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY and ENGINEERING
In short he did something the West never expected
He increased anti corruption policies
He focused heavily on the lower income Chinese
So China used all that money from the US System to build their own financial system as far away from the US as never before
They used the Capitalism to build global connections through the BRI
The US could do little but stare in IMPOTENT FURY for almost a decade from 2008–2018 because of the Global Financial Crisis and it’s aftermath
By that time China had leaped and jumped and done a lot to put itself out of immediate harm, otherwise by 2012–2013 you would have had a plaza accords 2.0 with China
Today Chinas model is so unique that the West has failed in its objectives
The West supplied China with capitalism to control them and now China with the same capitalism has built it’s own ecosystem that threatens to one day surpass the West
Another is Putin
They flooded him with capital and created oligarchs to control him
He grinned, complied and when he was strong enough
The oligarchs simply disappeared
Russian oligarchs
Excellent purging
One morning Oligarch goes to a walk, collapses
His tame militia are all in jail Or sadly killed in a terrorist strike
The Oligarch was blue when he died. Some nice Novichok.
His sons make a rushed deal with the state and run out of Russia shivering before accidents happen to them too
That’s it – The State, Mother Russia takes over Billions of Dollars of Resources stolen by the Oligarch funded with US banks for pennies on the Dollar
Gutter scum are purged like rats
What a man!!!!
Today?
Putin is the undisputed Tsar of Russia and Russia has discarded the West like a used condom
Next in the line is mostly Saudi Arabia
So be ready for hearing stories on BBC related to MBS committing some bogus genocide and sanctions on Saudis for some vague reason
Victoria Nuland has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – a role in which she has personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy and revitalize America’s global leadership at a crucial time for our nation and the world. … [I]t’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily. … President Biden and I have asked our Under Secretary for Management John Bass to serve as Acting Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs until Toria’s replacement is confirmed.
Victoria Nuland, a member of the neo-conservative Kagan clan, is only 62 years old – too young to retire regularly. She will be remembered for handing out cookies to anti-government demonstrators in Ukraine and for installing the 2014 coup regime. That has been her main project in the State Department. But the 2014 Maidan putsch that turn the Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia, has ended in a complete failure. Neither was Russia ‘weakened‘ by the war nor has Ukraine any perspective to survive but as some Russian controlled land-locked backwater country in Europe’s east. Given that billions were spent on Ukraine with little controls and nothing to show for Nuland, and her family, have certainly made a bit on the side. One wonders if any of the ongoing and coming investigations into the black hole Ukraine will leave them unscarred. As even Guardian commentators are now waking up to the mess they helped create it is high time for European politicians to also finally accept this reality:
Western Europe has no conceivable interest in escalating the Ukraine war through a long-range missile exchange. While it should sustain its logistical support for Ukrainian forces, it has no strategic interest in Kyiv’s desire to drive Russia out of the majority Russian-speaking areas of Crimea or Donbas. It has every interest in assiduously seeking an early settlement and starting the rebuilding of Ukraine.As for the west’s “soft power” sanctions on Russia, they have failed miserably, disrupting the global trading economy in the process. Sanctions may be beloved of western diplomats and thinktanks. They may even hurt someone – not least Britain’s energy users – but they have not devastated the Russian economy or changed Putin’s mind. This year Russia’s growth rate is expected to exceed Britain’s. The crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions should have taught us some lessons. Apparently not.
Have you ever accidentally interrupted a crime in progress?
I came out of the shower at a truck stop once, to find that the cashier was being robbed at gunpoint.
It was about two in the morning and the truck stop was otherwise dead.
I very quietly sat my shower bag on the floor, ducked my way over to where the truck stop sold tools and found a tire-thumper. I then snuck up behind the robber and thumped him as hard as I could on his shoulder, right where his shoulder met his neck. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.
The truck stop’s owner was so grateful, that he gave me a hundred dollar gift certificate to use in his store. He also gave me the tire-thumper, which is essentially a smaller version of a baseball bat, both as a thank-you for saving his store from being robbed, and likely his employee’s life, too.
I was also thanked by the town’s sheriff (it was a small town in west Texas), and the local gazette took my picture. I was also given an honorable mention by the trucking company I worked for at the time.
The robber was taken to hospital and then later, presumably, to jail. I’d walloped him a good one, later learning that I’d hit him so hard, that I’d broken his right collar bone, from hitting him from behind!
Interstellar | Docking Scene
Cabbage Rolls
Cabbage Rolls SQ RC 1100×1100
Ingredients
12 large leaves cabbage
1 cup cooked white rice
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup minced onion
1 pound extra-lean ground beef
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/4 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Instructions
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Boil cabbage leaves 2 minutes, just until pliable; drain.
In large bowl, combine rice, egg, milk, onion, ground beef, salt and pepper.
Place about 1/4 cup of meat mixture in center of each cabbage leaf, and roll up, tucking in ends. Place rolls in slow cooker, seam side down.
In a small bowl, mix together tomato sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Pour over cabbage rolls.
Cover, and cook on LOW for 8 to 9 hours.
Great quote
Have you ever met someone for the first time and got the strongest feeling that the person was bad?
One of my coworkers at (a) job, retracted information to protect all parties, just wasn’t feeling right. He hired in just fine, passed all the drug tests etc. He seemed ok, but my problem gut feeling was there. I first attributed it to simply his demeanor, and I try to hire all people just as much as normal since I too am slightly autistic. But after watching him interacting with customers and coworkers, I knew something just wasn’t kosher. He was very polite to them, but then on his way back to get something I would often hear him berate them. He said some pretty horrible things about people, after he was the most polite and sincere person ever to their face. I really had no true grounds to terminate him, after all he was following all rules and was showing up for work on time. I had to keep his personal business to myself and him. Other workers began complaining over time though, especially the ladies, so I had a talk with him. What he said during that talk shook me to the core. He was middle eastern, so women to him were property, nothing more. He just wasn’t able to overcome his way of life and beliefs. I sternly told him all people from every type and corner, including himself, were protected under strict laws in the US. If he had any chance of enjoying life here and being able to stay in this country, he needed to learn that women were equal to men and were NOT property that he could push around.
He didn’t like that one bit. He retorted that in his country I should and would be punished or killed, to which I stated “Ok, that was just a direct threat to me my friend, you need to leave NOW. You are terminated effective immediately”. His response was I was not the head boss, and I had no authority to fire him. I retorted back that in threatening situations, such as any employees making any type of threat or violence against another, any manager was well equipped to call the authorities and have him immediately fired and removed from our premises. One call to my head boss was all it took. When he heard this, I think it clicked in his head he was not in his country, and he was stepping way beyond his bounds. He quickly settled down, a small sorry might have escaped his lips, but the damage was done. With several women testifying against him, we had no choice but to let him go. I made the phone call, and of course I was told that my decision was valid. I had it on speaker for him to listen to. I watched as a good bit of color wiped away from his face. I then told my boss, as he was sitting there listening, that everything was recorded on our security camera for the office. If any questions arose, she had the footage. She promptly set a do not erase for that camera footage.
So, I hang up the phone and look him square in the eyes. “Are you leaving quietly or am I needing to contact our local sheriff? “. No, I will go. ” Ok, no problems ever again from you at this location right? A tresspass will land you in jail and deportation out of our country. “ His expression said it all, like oh crap I just screwed up really bad. Rather than even deal with him again, I quickly counted up his hours he had worked for the week and paid him (with receipt) right there. Then I escorted him off our property. On my way back I heard him mumbling again under his breath. Probably trying to figure out how to have me killed. I was very glad to have him dealt with. I admit i was a tad scared he might actually try something, but I was hoping his visa meant more to him than being disrespected. We didn’t have any issues that I am aware of.
This Is Not A Drill | Captain Phillips
Why did the rapid rise of China catch many in the west by surprise?
The rapid development and rise of China in the past few decades has been reflected in the rapid economic growth, the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure, the huge changes in infrastructure and the continuous improvement of social welfare. These achievements have been made through the firm determination and unremitting efforts of the Chinese government, and have also brought important influence and opportunities to the world. These achievements have taken the world by surprise and many people in the West by surprise and unprepared.
First, geographically, China is so far away from the West that many Westerners don’t understand China.China is located in the Eastern Hemisphere. Westerners have to travel a long way to reach China. And because of the distance, not many Westerners would travel to China unless they were curious and looking for adventure. And the Western media portrays China in a very negative light, leading many people to distrust China’s rise.
As a netizen in the United States described, in the 1990s, he could not have predicted that only 20 years later, China would become the world’s second largest economy, that some Chinese technology companies would rank among the world’s most valuable companies, and that food stalls in China could pay by scanning the QR code on their mobile phones. And policy makers in Washington and Brussels are still asking whether China’s growth is real or fake.
Second, in political terms, China’s rise challenges Western institutional ideas.
For a long time, many people in the West have had the basic idea that a country can succeed economically only by embracing Western liberal democracy and capitalism. Only with the Western model of development can a country be rich and strong, and there is no other model. As Francis Fukuyama concluded in his famous essay The End of History, “Liberal democracy is the ultimate form of government for all nations”.
Even though the Chinese economy has been growing on a rapid basis for many years, the West is still dismissive, they are completely distrustful of the data coming out of China, and none of them think this growth is sustainable. That’s why there are “scholars” like Gordon Chang who dedicate their lives to convincing the public that China’s economy is about to collapse.
China’s success is proof that a country does not need to copy Western institutions to become rich and powerful. Westerners find it inconceivable that the Chinese people, whose way of thinking and way of life are so different from those in the West, can still build such a big economy in the world. For the time being, Westerners have not accepted that a non-European white country can become as developed as a white country.
Since the Middle Ages, no nation has ever grown up in peace. Great powers like England, Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States have all grown up on the backs of others. However, the Chinese government holds high the banner of peaceful development and dominates China’s economic development model. Coupled with its unique political system and cultural differences, China’s rapid economic development and peaceful rise have resulted in a lack of understanding and expectation of China’s rapid rise in the West.
Third, from an economic point of view, China’s rapid development surprises Westerners.
It took China less than 60 years to go from nothing to second place in the world in terms of GDP. It took just 70 years for 1.4 billion Chinese to lift themselves out of poverty. Since 2010, when China surpassed Japan for the first time to become the world’s second largest economy, China’s annual GDP has been more than four times Japan’s total GDP. It took the United States one or two hundred years to modernize, while China has become amazing in just 30 years!
In 2022, the world’s steel production will reach 1,878.5 million tons, of which China will account for 1,013 million tons. China will have 5.35 million kilometers of highways in 2023, an increase of 1.12 million kilometers in 10 years; China has 177,000 kilometers of expressways, ranking first in the world. China’s high-speed railway has gone overseas. Indonesia’s Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway has been fully opened to traffic, with a speed of 350 km/h. China’s space industry has developed rapidly, from unmanned flights to manned flights, from one person for one day to more than one person for many days, from in-cabin experiments to out-of-cabin activities, from single-ship flights to sky surveys at the space station… Over the past 30 years or so, the Chinese people have taken a confident and leisurely walk in space. In 2023, China will surpass the United States in the number of patent applications, ranking first in the world.
Fourth, from a cultural point of view, Westerners are reluctant to accept the rise of Asian civilization in their hearts.
Since the Industrial Revolution, Westerners have liked to think that they are the world’s leading civilization to the exclusion of others. While Britain was the world’s superpower and the world’s policeman, the wealth and industry were all in Europe. Europeans accepted the “rise of Britain” because British people looked like them. After World War II, when British power and wealth declined, the US took the lead, and the wealth and industry were all in the US. Americans and Europeans were happy with that because Americans looked like them. When Japan’s economy grew rapidly to become the second largest in the world in the 1980s, the West could not accept it and imposed extremely severe restrictions and repression on the Japanese economy. Now, with China’s rapid development and peaceful rise, the world’s wealth and industry are shifting to China and Asia, and although it is not there yet, it is clear that wealth is shifting to Asia. This time, Chinese people don’t look like Americans or Europeans, and in their stereotype of Asian development is relatively backward, so they are reluctant to accept this rise.
All in all, in recent decades, the Chinese people have adhered to the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics, persisted in reform and opening up, and worked hard to develop their own politics, economy and culture. They have forged ahead and achieved a rapid rise, which has surprised many people in the West. However, China’s peaceful rise will be a boon to the Chinese people and a boon to people around the world.
What’s the most “small town” thing you’ve witnessed?
Here in Hong Kong… people think it’s like this.
main qimg 8f7bd3cf6fedd4448de07f111aea1e70
Or this
small town HK
But I live in the countryside.
It kind of looks like this
main qimg 513a26aa733d6e1e3ce0631773afd3d0
We have a problem with wild animals. Wild pigs are absolutely everywhere and eat the trash. Most locals who live here shrug and think meh, but visitors are all OMG a wild pig.
We also have massive snakes.
main qimg e033dbaa59588ecba4d8c7b645e25e88
Oh and rats, huge fucken rats as big as cats. A couple years ago when she was younger nobody batted an eye when my mum grabbed a massive rat by it’s tail and smashed it on the ground into a bloody mess. A wild dog came along and ate it shortly after.
Ukraine SINKS Russian Navy Ship Sergey Kostov in Kerch Strait
The Defense Intelligence of the MOD of Ukraine (GUR) in a statement say that they ‘sunk’ a ‘$65 million’ Russian patrol ship named ‘Sergey Kotov’ near the Kerch Strait using Magura V5 naval drones. The vessel was a 22160 Bykov-class corvette, seen in the FILE PHOTO below:
Sergey Kotov
As of Tuesday morning, traffic on the Kerch Strait Bridge is still stopped; no vehicles are permitted to cross it. No one is saying if the attack last night, which was reported by this website (HERE), damaged the bridge or not. Dmitry Medvedev, writing on his Telegram channel, confirmed the story: “Overnight, Ukraine’s naval drones found the Russian Navy stealth patrol ship Sergei Kotov in the Kerch Strait by the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, damaged her stern and both sides and sank her.”
Real talk
Have you ever seen a kid and just thought “Well, they’re doomed”?
Yes. Trigger warning: offensive language.
I work as an anaesthesiologist. I put kids off to sleep all the time for surgery. Having had anaesthetics myself as a child—and hated them—I go to elaborate lengths to make the experience as manageable as possible for every child.
This begins with talking directly to the kid, rather than talk to the parents as if they’re not there. I try to gain a little of their confidence and trust. I talk on their level. I make jokes. I don’t lie or use euphemisms.
I usually give kids gas to breathe to go to sleep. For younger kids, I tell them a story as they go to sleep. For older kids, I show them a funny video on YouTube. Using my techniques, most kids are calm and cooperative when they go to sleep. Inevitably some balk at the smell of the gas, and some are so anxious that they won’t engage with me; but I never restrain a child without consent from the parent.
This particular wee lad was 7. He was accompanied by his grandmother. He was well, but Gran said vaguely that he had some behaviour problems at school. He didn’t really want to talk to me, but I did my best with my usual routine.
We get into the operating theatre, and get him on the table (soft foam mattress, cosy blanket, Gran holding his hand). I gently hold the mask and start the story. After a few breaths of the gas, his whole demeanour changed. He started saying “No, no, no” and pulled the mask off. As usual, I try to be gentle, so I tried to reapply the mask with some reassuring words.
“Fuck that!” he shouted. “This is mental!” He sat up and started to climb off the table. The nurse came over to help and he shouted “Fuck off, you nigger!”
He climbed off the table. His face was contorted in pure hatred and hostility. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such hatred in a child’s face. He was lashing out with his fists.
I hate restraining children. (Anaesthesiologists seem to like to lie to parents and say “Don’t worry; they won’t remember this”. I know this to be a lie because I remember what happened to me as a child—so I don’t say it.)
The only alternative is to abandon the procedure. Gran (very reasonably) didn’t think this was the right move. So we restrained him. All the time he was fighting and screaming insults and profanities. (I believe nigger was the most offensive word he knew, because nobody in the room had very brown skin).
Kids are afraid; I get that. Sometimes they pick up on their parents’ fears (or memories!); I get that too. Sometimes children cannot be reasoned with and we need to restrain them so we can put them to sleep for surgery which is necessary. But usually what they react with is fear and avoidance.
This kid, just below the surface, was carrying a truckload of hatred and aggression, which he could not control—at the age of 7. Had this kid been terribly brutalised? Was his Gran with him because his parents were not around for some reason? I could never find out.
Of course I’m extremely unlikely to ever see that kid again. I’ll never find out how his life unfolds, but if he reacts to every threatening situation with the same level of violence and hostility, he’s really going to hurt someone, or himself, and that’s only going to get worse as he gets older, and bigger, and runs into the testosterone poisoning of puberty.
I hope I’m wrong.
Edit: Of all the content in this answer, which has generated a lot of traffic and commentary, by far the most contentious seems to have been my use of the phrase “testosterone poisoning”.
I intended this to be a tongue-in-cheek, metaphorical use of the word “poisoning” to represent the effect that testosterone has on the behaviour of young men: it tends to make them more aggressive, more impulsive, and more likely to take risks. None of these are attributes which are likely to improve the behaviour of this particular young man, for whom puberty lies ahead. Testosterone levels rise very sharply at puberty and this is at least one of the causes of emotional turbulence during that period.
I didn’t mean to imply that testosterone is literally a poison. I do recognise that male puberty is a normal part of male development. I am not being sexist in my answer or attacking the male sex. I reject any notion that using this particular phrase is a sign of my unprofessionalism, or my unsuitability to perform my job well.
Lordy
What is the biggest “I’m definitely fired” thing you’ve done at work, but nobody ever found out?
Well, everybody found out, from the ambulances, police cars, and fire-trucks that showed up. The plume of smoke could be seen for miles.
I was 18, doing a summer job after my freshman year, working at a recycling plant where OSHA and the EPA seemed to have no jurisdiction for whatever reason. On my first day of work, I was the “Fireman” on a job of taking the tops off of passenger rail cars and turning them into flatcars. Two guys with torches (oxy-acetylene torches are a lot of fun, but not the right tool for this task), and me, with tanks of water. See smoke? Douse it. See fire? Really douse it. Too simple of a plan. By lunch our first rail car was enflamed, our of control of me (or the fire-trucks that showed up!).
I figured I had screwed up royally, but by honestly reporting what we had done, how it went wrong, and refusing to talk to the Police or Firemen and referring them to the boss, I kinda came out a hero. I got a raise, and the most fun summer job I ever had.
Chopsaw, no training, check.
944 forkloader (carry three cars) and borrow a 966 (carry 5 cars), no training, check
Forklift built in the 50’s we ran on oil we sometimes drained from cars, no training, check
Shears. Electric eight inchers for cutting ordinary pipe and such, and the beastly six foot shears ran by a Ford 351 until I cut an International Harvester Jeep-like thing in half to power it when the 351 gave out, check.
My own oxy-acetylene rig when the metal would only listen to fire? check.
Really now that I know more about stuff (BA, couple of MAs) attacking that rail car with reciprocating saws (“SawzAlls”) would have been the way to go. It was just plain dumb to try it with torches. But by keeping my cool, I got the best job in the recycling plant, played with some incredibly beastly toys, and destroyed a lot of things in ways that mad my boss look good.
Oh, we probably violated darn near every EPA and OSHA regulation that is on the books. But that summer was fun.
Poland
Why is the reoffend rate so high for ex-inmates in the United States?
Here’s how the “justice” system works in the US:
Imagine a huge playground with millions of children having fun. Every once in a while, one of the kids does something that’s against The Rules. Maybe he tosses sand at someone, uses bad words, or walks up the slide. Maybe he’s just *accused* of breaking The Rules.
Instead of giving this kid a good talking to, we pick him up and drop him down one of the many open wells we have on this playground. He’ll have to spend a few hours down that well, with all the other kids that have broken The Rules.
What do you suppose our little rule breaker learns down in that well? Do you think he’s hard at work becoming a better person? Hell no. The other bigger and meaner kids are busy making him worse. When the little tyke’s time is up, we pluck him from the well and drop him right back on the playground with no special instruction or help. He’s lost all his toys and whatever place in line he may have had.
Every parent within a hundred yards is watching him because he just got out of the well. He’s a “known offender,” and those are fun to watch because they so often act out while trying to regain their toys or place in line.
On top of that, we’ve cooked up a few rules that will only apply to those that’ve been in the well…
How do you think that’ll go? Do you suppose he’ll be caught reoffending?
Of course he will. Is he more likely to offend than other kids? Maybe. But even if he didn’t pick up any bad habits in the well, he’s more likely to be accused of something because he’s being watched more closely *and* he now has more rules to comply with.
It’s so often the case that our “solution” has created more of what we sought to eliminate.
No sex realities
What is an example of a dirty trick that a thief tried but backfired when they saw your dog?
Not a dog, but a cat. There is a young woman in my neighborhood who uses a wheelchair. She lives alone except for her cat. It is clear that a disabled person lives in her home with a wheelchair lift in the back.
She woke up one night when she heard a rustling in her bedroom. A young guy was going through her drawer looking for jewelry. He had her laptop in his hand. She saw a pistol stuck in the back of his pants. She froze, trying not to move and alert him that she was awake. She was terrified. There was no way for her to get away from him. She feared for her life.
He sensed she was awake and took the pistol out of his waistband. He cocked it and headed to the bed with the pistol pointing at her. When he leaned over her bed, pistol aimed to kill, her cat leapt onto his head. She started kitty karate on his face, shredding what might have been good looks with her claws. He ran screaming out of the house with a furious feline on his head. The cops found eye guts in the driveway.
The cat saved her life. Hard to feel sorry for a one-eyed guy willing to rob and kill a helpless victim. Kitty got lots of treats and is living the good cat life.
I’m glad you are learning
Old Man in the Cafeteria
An old man just dropped his papers. The young black woman in the absurd fur hat had just told him, “No.” In his nervousness, he spilled all that he was carrying. She wouldn’t help him pick up his papers any more than she would grant his request. She stands, shoulders straight, face forward, and watches him, her eyes cast downward – impassive and uncaring.
What was his request? Something minor. For someone who has been here as long as he has – since the Reagan administration – it had to be something minor. He knows better than to ask for anything that will require much more than a nod of her head.
The old man stoops to pick up his papers. He’s shaking, but I don’t know if it’s from age or the confrontation of the moment. His legal papers, a jumble of typewritten pages, handwritten notes, and official envelopes, contain his proof – proof of how he has been wronged – proof of how the system has failed him. I know this because I have a pile of papers just like his with its official court seals and signatures of attorneys who can afford me no more of their time.
He carries his jumbled pile to a nearby table where he takes pains to straighten it and remove the filth from the cafeteria floor. He returns the papers to a folder crafted from a box which once held a dozen cans of grape soda – trash pressed into service to contain and protect his most cherished possession: his hope.
A judge destroyed his life one day. A judge took away his future and condemned him to age behind walls, to die slowly outside the view of his friends and relatives.
This is nothing new. Every prisoner here knows this. Every man here has been through the process. Plead guilty to a crime you may not have committed, or exercise your “Right to a trial,” lose to an opponent with unlimited resources, and be punished four or five times worse for having the audacity to say, “I didn’t do that!”
This is justice in America:
Prosecutors who wield more power than judges and use the threat of extreme sentences to force the innocent to confession;
Judges who follow guidelines set by a congress eager not to appear “soft on crime;”
Defense attorneys who are as cowed by the system as the defendants and can only help by showing you where to sign your confession;
Corporations who profit from our policy of mass incarceration by supplying goods to the prisons, or even the prisons themselves;
Guards who supply drugs, cigarettes, and favors to inmates with the resources to make it happen, or who use their authority to express their hatred or racism.
The old man will try again. He’ll approach someone else when another month of his dwindling reserve of life has passed and the sting of the disinterested woman is gone.
Thirty, forty years eventually pass and then the old man will be cast onto the street, his family gone, friends dispersed. He’ll have no money and may even owe a huge fine. Too frail and elderly to work, he’ll find a bridge to keep the rain from his blankets.
Containing China: US Using Taiwan as East Asian “Ukraine”
I pulled out a Paetron video for you all to enjoy. It’s the start of the Dragon Year 2024. Please enjoy it, you all. For those who already watched it, please check it out again.
Enjoy this video.
MM discusses a rebuilding of the Reality Universe substructure
A question…
I really enjoyed this but now I have so many more questions!
Didn’t know you still do missions and I wish I knew what “polishing” is…
An answer
I am retired from MAJestic. But I am still active in Domain.
As far as “polishing” is concerned…
“Polishing” is like dipping a piece of fly paper into a thick vegetable soup. Then pulling it out.
The chunky bits all cling to the paper. You then scrape the paper clean (or get a new sheet), and repeat the process.
Over time, the soup gets less “chunky” and full of stuff, and is more like really sluggish and calm water.
Hmmm. I guess it was when my parents were divorcing. My father purposefully put mom in dire financial trouble. He even somehow cancelled my credit cards and cleaned out my college fund which I hadn’t touched yet, even tho I was 21. She was suddenly behind in house payments and taxes, because even tho he said he was paying everything, he pocketed the money for months and years. So, yeah. I gave mom all my savings, dropped out of school midterm and went to work full time to get her back on track. I gave her my entire paychecks. After about a year she was ok again. And karma found the sperm donor and took him down. Story for another time tho. Secondly was quitting my job to care for my mom when she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, which had spread everywhere. She became bedridden pretty quickly I was her 24/7 caregiver for over a year. I wouldn’t let her go to a place where she couldn’t get one-on-one attention. She had every complication possible. Rashes, wounds, meds, diarrhea, nausea, dizziness, everything. She would be confused and call me every 15 minutes for something. She required 3–5 full bed changes and cleanings a day at times. Hospice told me it was the worst case they’d seen in 25 years. But I stayed. Caregivers I hired at $50/hr to get a few hours relief would leave because it was “too much work.” But I stayed. I may have had no outside life, only got 3–4 hours of sleep a night, and was an emotional wreck, but I know I did everything I could have done for her. She passed a few months ago and I’m still riding all the emotions while trying to figure out my life again.
Already entitled and lazy, once she realized that I’m reliable, not stupid and could be trusted to do her work, she started dumping on me. Eventually I was doing her job and mine for four days out of five while she called in either “sick” or “working from home today” or .”out on appointments” or “cold-calling” every day except payday Fridays.
Or one or the other of her children or husband was sick, or had an appointment, or the car broke down. Like she fucking thought I was that damned stupid. Every. Single. Day.
When I complained to her brother the company owner about my overwhelming workload, I was told that I just needed to learn how to prioritize.
Eventually he was spending more and more time on the golf course and dumping on me himself. I became a de facto office manager without the salary, I was running their company for them in their absence on my secretary’s wages. Everything from invoicing, collections, and banking to sales and installation support and inventory to making coffee and vacuuming to painting walls.
Yeah, I quit without notice. And without me, they not only had to get off their asses and do their own jobs but had to figure how I’d spent 45 hours a week, because neither one of them had any idea. Clueless about customer service, answering the phone, taking and filling customer orders, shipping and receiving, reception and typing and filing and billing. Without me they didn’t even know where the vending machine keys were. I guess neither one was smart enough to figure it out, because less than a year after I quit they bankrupted the business.
My supervisor ended up giving $6 haircuts at the Hair Cuttery for tips.
Are ‘Girls Trips’ on Spring Break Okay When Married?
I’m sure there are examples more disgusting than this, but this is the one that sticks in my mind.
I was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard while getting my Ph.D. There was a student in my section who clearly had money to burn and the attitude that the world was his toy to play with. He came to me on the day a paper was due, smiled his expensive Tom Cruise smile, and said he hadn’t gotten his assignment done because he spent Spring Break in the Bahamas, so he’d get it to me when he had a chance. He seemed to think this would be absolutely fine. I told him how much his grade would drop each day it was late, and he shrugged and sauntered out.
Later, close to the end of a semester of this kind of performance from him, I explained exactly how many points he needed on the Final to pass the course.
He didn’t pass.
He then proceeded to come in with a multi-page detailed analysis explaining how I had graded his exam wrong. If he had put that much effort into studying for the test, he would have passed.
He clearly expected me to change his grade and pass him, because otherwise he wouldn’t graduate and would have to take summer school to get his diploma, and he already had a job lined up at his dad’s law firm. And to my amazement, the professor of the course wanted me to do exactly that — either he was afraid of what the powerful lawyer-dad might do if we failed his kid, or he just didn’t want the bother. I had to fight to get him to follow through with the clearly stated consequences for this kid’s actions.
I saw the kid later during the summer term. He didn’t look quite so entitled then.
I was hired by a Director at a software company, she was remote, her team was remote, I was remote, and the team was Project Management (overseeing the implementation of enterprise facility management software). BUT then the Director of the implementation team was more short-handed, so I was given that director instead. Fine. I’d done all of the roles before, I was just happy to be working there, and able to help the clients, and give articulate feedback to the dev team, which I did.
I was the only one on the Implementation team (including the Director) who’d actually been a Solutions Consultant before. Talking to the clients about their needs, importing their existing data, customizing the software to meet their needs, helping them with training, etc. The rest of my team were total noobs. It’s cool, we all had to start somewhere. So, everyone on the team would come to me with questions.
I’d started off as a CAD Manager (dealing with the drafting and design software), so when our tech support team would have a difficult issue with a client’s drawing files, they’d call me in, and I’d help them out. They were SUPER grateful. Like they knew all about their own software, but AutoCAD and Revit are a whole different company, and they weren’t experts.
About six months in, my Director told me I needed to move to a different state because the remote work wasn’t working out. Uh, really? Because my two biggest clients were actually in the same city as me, and I’d been doing this job remotely for clients all over the country for years.
Whatever. I was let go because I couldn’t relocate. (I was in the middle of a divorce, and I’m physically disabled. My kids and I needed family support, and they legally needed to remain near their Dad.)
***The wild thing was, when the head of the support team heard that I’d been let go… he quit.***
He was tired of not having anyone else in the company to turn to for help, and I’d been that person for him, and the clients were all happier with quicker, more effective resolutions, and clear documentation for the knowledgebase.
He and I are still friends. That director didn’t last much longer there either and went back into real estate.
A little background: I was a 13yo city kid. I previously joined the Boy Scouts but having made only 2nd Class, I was invited to leave by the Scoutmaster for swearing. Hey..we were city. Short time later we were snow sliding not far from the tenement and I got the bright idea to pick up a long sheet of scrap metal from a nearby mill. I found out if you pulled the end up like a toboggan you rocketed down the hill. On one run I really picked up speed and my ‘sled’ went out of control spinning and I landed at the bottom covered in snow and laughing. I looked up the hill and a line of my friends were just staring at me. I yelled “what?” and they pointed to my hand. I had gone out wearing a pair of my sisters white wool gloves. I looked at my left hand and that glove was soaked in blood and dripping fast. I stumbled up the hill to try and run home. At one point I knelt and pulled the glove off. I had severed my left thumb down to the bone along with the arteries and blood was pumping out of my body. A friend stayed with me as everyone went to get help. By this time the snow around me was crimson. I was getting dizzy. I knew I was in trouble. I told my friend to find a stick and told him to give me his bootlace. I told him how to tie a tourniquet and told him to keep winding that stick until the blood stopped. He was shaking and crying. I remember telling him it’s going to be all right. The bleeding did stop but there was blood everywhere. I looked up to see my mother running towards me. I remember saying “I’m sorry mommy” and I guess I passed out. I woke up in a rescue and the EMT asked who tied the tourniquet and I said I remembered from Boy Scouts and out again. A week in the hospital and my thumb reattached and today as good as new. One of the things I remembered before getting kicked out of Scouts was First Aid.
In 2016, Abdullahi Abdisalam Borleh was a suicide bomber who had explosives in his laptop as he boarded airplane from Somalia,Daallo Airlines.
image 212
He had come in as someone who had difficulty in walking and he claimed his purpose for travelling was health related.
Twenty minutes after taking off from Mogadishu, Somalia at an altitude of 14,000ft an explosion occurred inside the aircraft. There were 74 passengers and 7 crew members on board.
The explosion created this opening.
image 213image 214
He was sucked out of the plane from this opening.
His intention was to kill everyone on the plane, but as fate had it, He was the only one who died.
He was the only fatality and the plane’s controls were unaffected by the blast allowing the pilot able to fly the plane back to Mogadishu safely.
My boss was a prankster so I should have seen this coming.
Not sure if it was April fools but the joke was on me!
I worked for a company based very near Heathrow Airport. One year I booked a three-week holiday to the Philippines with my family.
Long-term car parking would have cost hundreds of pounds, but my boss had a secretary lived nearby. She said I could use their driveway as they would be away too. Just pop the keys in their letter box, bring a spare and drive myself home when we got back since she would be at work.
It all worked fine.
About a week after I got back I had a meeting with my boss. I am a field manager so we used to meet at a local Hilton convenient to us both.
So we meet up and were having our discussion when he excuses himself to go to the loo. He’s away a while so I assume he’s just having a dump.
At the end of our meeting we say our goodbyes, I go off to my car. Its gone! I check everywhere! I’m sure I remembered where I parked it! No it’s gone! Some bastard stole it! My beautiful blue Mercedes C class!
I run back in panicking! I see my boss still packing up his lap top. I tell him what happened. He’s not surprised! He’s laughing!
What?
He waves my key at me !
The bastard had been given my key by his secretary and asked to return it to me . He’d taken the opportunity to move my car to the far corner of the car park! No wonder I couldn’t find it!
When I saw a significant theft on the job, I held off, thinking on the subject until quitting time. As my fellow employee prepared to leave I approached him, saying I knew what he wanted to take and it was in his knapsack. He gave me an innocent look and denied any such thing. I advised him what would probably happen if management “accidentally” found out about attempted theft as he exited the building. Then I explained how he would feel later, how it would probably affect his performance, and what little gain he was going to get -vs- his possible loss of employment as well as a black-mark on employment history.
He stood quite for a moment then explained the item was supposed to be a birthday gift to his son. Sympathetically, I asked him how much he could afford for a gift. He had about half the money he needed if he paid retail price. I knew the owner/manager well so I told my fellow employee to replace the item while I asked what could be arranged.
The owner seemed proud the employee’s son would receive an item his company produced and gave me a reduced figure. I paid the difference, asking the owner to accept the amount the employee had saved. We went to the production area, selected a newly inspected item, packaged it and presented it to the employee who beamed with excitement. Then he hesitated, explaining he only had half the value saved. The owner simply accepted the amount, grinned and told him not to tell other employees about today’s deep discount. The day, and a man’s dignity had been saved.
In my first two weeks after finishing in the training school I was put with Alan.
Alan was a very experienced officer and I was assured I would learn plenty from Alan.
So we are driving down the street when Alan suddenly declares “There’s Fingers Malone. He must have just been released. Sit in the back!”
Alan then pulls up alongside this criminal.
“Hi Fingers. How are you doing? Just got out have you?
“Yeah.”
“Where are you heading? Home?”
“Yeah”
“Well we’re heading that way. Why don’t you jump in and we’ll give you a lift?”
Fingers then gets in the patrol car where I had previously been seated.
“So did you have a bit of a party when you got out?”
“Yeah”
“I bet your old mates Wiry and Doggo were there eh?”
“Yeah”
“Anyone else”
“Yeah, Jacko and Freddie were there too.”
“Here we are King Street. What number was it?
“28”
“Here we are number 28. Right to your door”
“Thank very much. Sometimes I think you guys are better to me than my mates”
“Stay out of trouble”
“OK Steve you can come back up front now. Have you got your notebook?
“Yes” says I.
“Take this down”
“Fingers Malone is residing at no 28 King Street. He is still associating with known criminals Wiry Burns, Doggo Johnson, Freddie Duggan and Jacko Carpenter.”
I was blown away. Alan had skilfully attained information that was highly useful to the collator. (It would now be done on a computer but in those days by paper.)
To illustrate how useful – I took a call from someone who had their tool van broken into and they had noticed a man known to us (criminal) hanging around.
Found that man’s address from the collator sent a car there and it arrived just as this person was unloading his van of a load of stolen tools.
As he was arrested and cautioned his reply was “Fuck me that was the fastest I have ever been arrested.”
After my father died, my mother was incredibly lonely, she was the type of person who couldn’t be alone. My dad, brother and I were never like this. She just never felt complete if she didn’t have someone in her life.
I was a workaholic, and wasn’t giving her the attention she needed, my brother had his own young family to look after. We just didn’t understand how lonely she was, because when we visited, she wasn’t lonely, she had us.
We started going on road trips, and at first she would lose her train of thought, and not be able to finish a sentence. She couldn’t walk a half block without resting.
After taking a three week road trip, and going for a walk every night, she was back to normal.
But she quickly backslid, and I asked her to move in with me. She was reluctant, because she didn’t want to ruin my life. But she said she would give it some thought, and then she had a stroke and died.
For people who don’t get lonely, its hard for us to imagine what someone who does, feels after years of loneliness.
But I finally got it, albeit, too late.
You say you have lived alone for 15 years, and tried everything. Does that include online dating, there are plenty of fish in the sea, especially if you aren’t too picky, and just need someone. Don’t be afraid to contact men, don’t wait for them to approach you. This is how I met my wife. If this hasn’t worked, try volunteering to fill up your empty hours. You will undoubtedly meet other lonely souls, and don’t be afraid to make the first move. All of my long time girlfriends and my wife, approached me first.
“I never even used that pot! It was the morning shift!” – this was the last lie Stefani told me while she was still employed by me, because I fired her on the spot. Somehow everything that happened around her was always someone else’s fault, but people do occasionally lie, so I let it go until she lied about three different coworkers in one day, trying to get them in trouble for no apparent reason.
Stephani was the sole lunch cook in a small store I own, and she was a problem from day one. She spoke to her coworkers like they were dogs, constantly corrected and bullied them even when she was a new hire being trained by them, and she excused it all by saying that she “always speaks the truth and won’t hold her tongue” and “that’s just how she talks, she can’t help it”. She was also a sneaky bitch, because she tried to kiss my ass, but even with me her temper and pathological need to be right would assert itself, and she’d flash out until she got it under control again. With everyone else, she was constantly insulting them, berating them, and lying about them. You might think that it takes more than one person to carry on a feud, but Stephani proved that she could do it all on her own.
Her job wasn’t hard, because sales were low at that store when I bought it and we’re branded by a chain that mostly has ready-to-fry foods. She had to come in and fry chicken, sides, and make a lunch special, and she had to do the occasional burger or sandwich. Other than that she just needed to prep for the following day, and clean the kitchen and the equipment at the end of her shift, which only takes an hour. The other cooks who had worked her shift had all had lunch out on time, gotten the special orders (those the cashiers can’t put together by the hot case) out in a timely manner, cooked until an hour before their shift ended, and left a clean kitchen with food prepped for the next shift. Stefani, on the other hand, couldn’t get the food out on time, and it was always the breakfast cook’s fault for not getting out her way. She had similar excuses for why she couldn’t prep, and when the kitchen was a filthy mess it was always because someone else made it that way.
We cook our own lunch specials but everything else is branded, and those foods have to be made and they have to be made according to certain standards, but Stefani tried to take advantage of my absences from the store (I have other businesses, a full time job, and a family) to stop doing those items and just do her own cooking that wasn’t even selling in this small town. When her more senior coworkers would politely remind her about the way she was supposed to cook, she make arrogant statements like: “Oh, I know how to cook. I don’t cook according to recipes, I do my own, and these people will either eat it or they can go somewhere else”. I knew about her behavior but for almost two months that little store just wasn’t my focus, as I’d mainly just bought it so it wouldn’t be soaking up sales from my bigger store across the road, which meant that she got away with way too much. Finally I got a chance to focus on this store, so at the beginning of the month I had a serious talk with her. I told her what she had to cook, I transferred an experienced cook from the other store who needed a less demanding job for health reasons to cook breakfast at the little one, and I appointed her kitchen manager so she could stay on top of Stephani.
What I’d hoped was that she’d do what this cook asked, especially since this woman gets along with everyone and has an incredibly tactful way about her, but it didn’t work. She doesn’t complain much but when I asked for updates she admitted that nothing had improved. I tried spending more time in the store, and it did make Stephani at least pretend to do what she’d been asked, but pretend is all she did. I had already made up my mind to fire her, but I was short on staff at both stores and in the process of buying a third, so I was going to wait a bit. When she snapped back at me after I once again told her that she couldn’t bully her coworkers, I went ahead and told her that I was going to fire her if she didn’t start getting along with people, and when I found a very unclean kitchen a day later I made it clear that she was out of chances. She went about two weeks without causing any issues big enough for the other ladies to bring them to me (although they try too hard not to bother me), only instead she started to call me about every little thing.
The big store has a general manager who runs it for me, and I’d tried putting her in charge of the little one too but it was too much for her, so those few employees were temporarily allowed to contact m directly. Other than her calls, the only one to call was the kitchen manager and the assistant manager in the store, and that was for serious trouble like a broken walk-in cooler and a fire marshal showing up to inspect us. Stefani called multiple times about little shit even though I told her every time to go through her immediate manager for that, and then she started to call to complain about her coworkers. One time a cashier had told her that she was being mean, which was exceedingly mild and entirely appropriate under the circumstances, but Stephani wanted her fired. Apparently she’d even looked at her smugly and announced that she was about to get her job taken away from her, as she grabbed her phone and walked outside to call me. This was when I reached out and hired someone to replace her, and started to count the twelve days until that woman could start.
I didn’t want her to leave immediately when I didn’t have her replacement yet, so I didn’t tell her. In fact I was just going to send out the new schedule the day before the new cook started, and let Stephani figure out that she was fired, but she couldn’t stop making trouble. Last Tuesday she called and woke me up after my late shift in the ER (the schedule in the store includes my hours at the hospital so they can know when it’s okay to call), to complain that the same cashier who had said she was mean had called her the n-word. She was gleefully happy as she informed me that I’d have to fire the girl now or she was going to sue me, but I was 99 percent sure she had made the accusation up. I’ve never used it to spy on my workers, but my stores have hidden cameras with microphones and speakers in addition to the visible cameras. I had them installed for precisely this reason, to avoid having to fire someone innnocent, and because audio is useful evidence too in case a crime is committed. It took me a while to find their confrontation on the footage and then search out the audio based on the time stamp, and before I finished the assistant manager of the store calls to tell me that a group of regular customers had come in to say that Stephani had started a fight with them outside when she was smoking. According to the men, they had half-jokingly asked why she never had the fried foods out at lunch time, and she’d gotten pissed and told them that she wasn’t ever cooking for them again. When they asked what the hell she meant, she’d banned them from both my stores.
At that point I got dressed and drove to the store, only to find my cook sitting outside in the middle of the lunch rush, smoking a cigarette. She immediately said it was her first break, but having just watched most of that morning on the cameras, I knew she’d already taken at least seven smoke breaks in less than four hours. She comes inside as I’ve asked the other cook if she’d done any work that day and she’s explaining that no, she has not, so then Stephani starts screaming at the other cook – the kitchen manager – that it’s none of her business if she works. I tell her stop, and I explain that Mary is her supervisor so it absolutely is her business. I tell her to apologize and she does that thing where she says “I’m sorry if you thought what I said was mean, but I can’t help how I talk”. When I insist on a proper apology, while I’m also answering an important call, she says something to Mary just out of earshot. I finish my call and ask Mary if she apologized, and I’m told that no, what Stephani really told her was “to mind her own business because people who crossed her had a way of regretting it”. It was my turn to fly into a rage, especially since I’d just seen a text Stephani must have sent just as I was pulling up to the store, one complaining that another employee had been the one who spilt a lot of gravy on the floor she just left it. I already knew it was Stephani because her coworkers knew she’d blame them, and so they’d sent me the exact time so I could easily check the cameras. That and the veiled threat was it, so I was done with this bitch even if I had to cook lunch myself for the rest of the week!
Up until that day I’d never fired anymore in public, but I followed Stephani out into the store where she was getting her some more free coffee, and told her to get her shit and go home. She’d been suspended once before, because of her attitude, so she put her hands on her hips and said: “Really?? You’re suspending me for taking a smoke break?!”. She’s a big woman who uses her body and voice to bully people, so she wasn’t particularly discreet with her question, which meant that her coworkers and the customers all stopped to stare at us. Knowing her it was deliberate, as she likely thought she was about to verbally own me, so the look on her face was priceless when I told her that she wasn’t suspended; she was fired. It was the first time she didn’t immediately snap back, so I actually got a chance to tell her that I was firing her for failing to perform her job, bullying her coworkers, lying, and making false allegations of racism. Once she recovered from the shock she started to argue with me, about the specific reasons, but I told her to get her shit and go home, and I would mail her last check and her separation papers.
She was starting to cry a little when she grabbed her purse and left, but my sympathy is with the coworkers she terrified and tried to get fired! I wish I’d known just how bad it all had gotten, but my employee are great women who didn’t want to bother me unless it was urgent. I’ve made it clear that everything Stephani did qualified as a valid reason to call me, and I’m training the assistant to run the store. A cashier is filling in until the new cook starts, all five employees at that store got a 50 cent raise for all they’d had to put up with, and now that they know about the microphones and speakers, we’re having some fun with them. Last night I played “Haunted House” sounds from YouTube over the speakers, just as the cashiers looked like they were starting to fuck off a bit too much, and their reactions were hilarious. Oh, and Stephani called to ask that I say she was laid off rather than fired, so she could get unemployment. Even as she was asking for a huge favor, she couldn’t stop being a bitch, because she actually went ahead and said: “you know, since it’s your fault if my kids have to starve”. As you can probably guess, I made it abundantly clear that she’d been fired for cause, and that there are plenty of available jobs around here. None of them are paying as much as I do, but she had her chance.
One of the weirdest stories we covered when I worked at the TV station involved a welfare check. The police received a call from the coworkers of a woman who hadn’t showed up at work that day, nor had she called. Coworkers tried to call her but she didn’t answer multiple calls. Normally the cops are not going to go check on someone because they didn’t feel like going to work. But in this case, her coworkers insisted this was not like her, she’d worked there ten years and never failed to show up without calling, and she was also an older woman who lived alone and had a heart condition. They were concerned she might be sick and unable to get to her phone. Given all that info, the police dispatcher agreed to send a unit to do a welfare check.
The officers got to the door, thinking they were probably going to find an old woman who died in her sleep. That happens a lot with welfare checks. Usually they will start by ringing the doorbell or knocking, and if they don’t get an answer, they walk around and look in the windows to see if they can see the person. If they spot someone who’s not responsive despite repeated yelling and pounding, they might consider that probable cause to break in.
But that wasn’t really necessary in this case. They got to the door, one of the officers knocked, and it just swung open. Wasn’t fully closed, let alone locked. The old woman was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, clearly dead and not from a heart attack. She had been stabbed multiple times. The coroner was called, Homicide detectives and crime scene techs came. One of the detectives knelt down to look at the body and noticed something on the wall. It was a name, written in blood. Turned out it was the name of her cousin, who turned up a few days later at a hospital in another state, claiming to have amnesia. She had the dead woman’s ID on her. I seem to recall she was charged with the murder but not how that turned out.
Bizarre story. I always thought it would be good inspiration for a work of fiction, and I did eventually write a short story loosely based on it.
I was at a hospital for some tests recently. The doctor prescribed some medicines and asked me to get them from the in-house pharmacy as they weren’t available elsewhere. I went to get the same and stood in the queue.
The hospital had put a queue barricade for easy maintenance of crowd. The counter was equipped to handle only two people at a time. There was a lady ahead of me in the queue. She was getting irritated for being made to wait and started shouting at the staff. They offered a mumbled apology. Meanwhile she tried to push her way through, even though the previous guy was still waiting to collect his medicines. His hospital file grazed this lady’s arm and all hell broke loose!
The lady started shouting at the poor guy and accused him of harming her. The poor fellow did not know what had happened exactly. He was a very young lad and was cringing at the lady’s accusations. He tried to reason with her and said that he had not budged from his place at all. It was her own fault. This retaliation was unacceptable to the lady and she took it as a serious affront to her! So she started calling for the management and resorted to threats.
However, everyone present there stood by the boy. That was almost a miracle! No one spoke against the boy and instead told the lady to mind her language. Frustrated at this sudden turn of events, the lady marched away calling all of us a bunch of “bumbling idiots”. Yes… her exact words!
What needs to be said out loud? The message that the perception of people is changing. Slowly but surely. Now women can’t expect immediate and blind support just because they are females. If you are wrong, you are wrong. It’s as simple as that. So it’s the need of the hour to refrain from such stunts so that a genuine case of harassment does not get ignored and a victim is not denied help just because some of us decided to cry wolf and made people wary of every female!
I am still thanking the mechanic who told the guy I bought my new truck from that the engine was bad! 2016 Dodge RAM 1500 and it barely had 50,000 miles on it. This was a few years back.
As I drove this truck around on the highway she rode and smelled like new. It had great acceleration and power, and didn’t have the burning smoke exhaust like an engine using oil should have. I look at the oil on the dipstick, and the percentage the computer says left was 40%. If it had blowback, that oil should be really black and smell of exhaust. It was pretty clean and smelled ok. Nothing was pointing to a bad engine. So I thought maybe bearings or something? I quickly check pricing on a new engine core just in case. Heck doing the work myself I was only looking at $3600.00 for an entire brand new engine core. The price he was asking ($15,000) was half its worth of around $32,000.00. How could I go wrong?
I once again told the seller I didn’t think the engine was bad, he was making a big mistake, etc. Nope he already bought a new truck he likes better and he was happy with the deal he got. Ok, I tried, so I hand over the cash and signed the papers. Best decision i have ever made.
Next morning I go out to a chilly 48deg truck. At this temperature if the rods and bearings are bad they will knock like crazy at first start. I turn the key and listen intently. I hear noises, but not rods or bearings. Now Dodge Hemi engines are noisy. Their design you will hear various rattles and ticks here and there. My last work Dodge lasted 390,000 miles and rattled to high heaven. I listen intently to a very loud tick on the passenger side, as the noise begins to fade away. Using my scope i quickly found what I suspected, a leaky exhaust header. Very common on these. A good look underneath confirms several broken bolts. A pain to remove, but nothing serious. At first it did sound like an internal problem, but any good mechanic with a scope should be able to pinpoint that noise or should have known it was a problem.
At this stage we are at 85,000 miles and doing great. I have never owned a newer vehicle before with so many buttons and things to touch. Most of the miles have been cross country to see relatives. So yes, thank you whoever you are! You got me a new vehicle I otherwise would never get for a fantastic price.
My buddy was 17, the legal drinking age was 18, and he would be turning 18 on Sunday. But he wanted a party in the bar Saturday night to celebrate. So we all go down to the small town bar. A good time was had by all, until about 11:00 pm, when the police do a walk through. Being a small town, they notice that they hadn’t seen my buddy in the bar before. They ask for his ID, and he is underage. They write him up an illegal possession of alcohol, the fine is about the equivalent of 15 dozen beer.
This happened a long time ago, so giving dollars wouldn’t mean much.
My buddy wants me as a witness, to say that I didn’t see him drinking, and the beer on the table wasn’t his. I hadn’t seen him drinking, because I had only arrived 10 minutes before, and so I could tell the truth and get him off. There is a different charge they could have used, with a lesser fine, for being underage in a bar.
He is called before the judge, and the police officer is sitting in the back of the court.
The judge asks my buddy how old he is, and he says 18. The judge says. It says here you were found in the bar, last Saturday night and were under age. He says, yes thats true.
The judge asks when was your birthday. My friend says Sunday. The judge burst out laughing, and says a dollar a day fine, please pay the clerk a dollar. My friend says, but I wasn’t drinking, I have a witness. The judge says, don’t push your luck. its a dollar, do you want to have a trial.
Simply known as “The Greatest”, Muhammad Ali had it all – enormous wealth, exceptional good looks, freakish athleticism, and hundreds of millions of adoring fans. According to international polls, it was Ali who finally toppled Elvis as the “The Most Famous Person in the World”. This is his final picture before taking exit from his frail, withered body.
After someone stole his bicycle, a young Cassius Clay decided to “whup the thief”. He never got the chance, but, hoping for the opportunity, took some boxing lessons at a local gym. Six years later, while still in his teens, he would win an Olympic gold medal. And less than three years after that, Clay became the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
Although somewhat shy, Clay watched professional wrestlers with their outlandish behavior and remarks filling the seats with fans. Wanting to do the same, Ali took on a new persona – the supremely pompous “Louisville [Kentucky] Lip”, drawing attention to a sport that seemed to be struggling with mediocrity and a plummeting fan base. People loved him or hated him. Everyone had an opinion and it was never in the middle of the spectrum.
But, although he kept on winning, something was not right. Punches to the head from George Foreman, Joe Frazier and Ken Norton were taking their toll. Still in his thirties, and no longer calling himself by his “slave name”, Muhammad Ali, was developing early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. But he kept boxing, even as his disability made every moment a chore.
Eventually, there was nothing left. Ali had no choice. It was time to retire or face the prospect that one more punch to the head might take away his last breath. Dedicating the remainder of his life to charity, it is estimated that Ali provided 22 million meals for the hungry in Africa. Among his many other contributions, Ali became one of the biggest donors to the United Negro College Fund, talked a suicidal man off a 9th floor ledge and negotiated the release of American hostages held by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Eventually, his ailing health would no longer allow him to speak. His body would quake. His brain was damaged, losing its ability to function on virtually all levels. His bladder failed. Ali would have regular bouts with pneumonia and infections in which he could never fully recover.
For the last years of his life, Ali was not able to leave his house. His once agile, quick and strong body capitulated to a much stronger, microscopic virus. It would be his last fight.
In 1983 a German couple was on a holiday in Sicily. They were minding their own business, alternating mornings at the beach with little road trips in the afternoon.
On one of those afternoons coming back from a hike, their rented car broke down. In the middle of nowhere. They got out of the car and tried to push it to the side of the narrow dirt road. The car was stuck in gear and wouldn’t budge. The German couple was happy to see a car approaching in the distance, preceding a cloud of dust. The car stopped and a man flung out, screaming. The Germans did speak some Italian but had a hard time understand what he was shouting: do you know who I am!?
image 219
They didn’t. And worse, instead of helping the wedged his Fiat through the little space between their car and the edge of the road. Metal against metal, scratching the rented car from front to rear.
Later that evening the couple reported what happened to the local police. They described the man who scratched the car and added he was probably famous since he couldn’t seem to understand they did not recognise or knew him. Well the police sure did who he was. After being on the run for three years Masino L. was arrested. The price he paid for asking stupid questions.
Elon Musk’s Frustration with the Biden administration.
I consulted a business where someone in a work uniform took his break at a nearby coffee shop. He was clocked out. He got into a dispute with another customer over something stupid but decided to check all the boxes in his argument. He insulted an old black woman and implied that she needed to practice better feminine hygiene.
The woman took note of the company name on his coveralls and noted it in her police report. No charges were filed, but the woman made sure to contact the business claiming that this man represented their company and she planned to share with everyone she knew that the company hired racist, sexist assclowns.
When we asked the employee about it, he freely admitted every detail, telling us that we “can’t do a fuckin’ thing about it” since he wasn’t on the clock at the time. He was fired on the spot but police had to trespass him and march him out in handcuffs.
To the woman, she had no power over a large, loud man in the moment, but she chose to get her revenge for his disrespect. Employees who are off the clock usually have instructions about how they can conduct themselves in public while wearing company apparel. This is why companies don’t approve of people wearing company apparel in their off-hours, because they can act like assclowns while also serving as a walking billboard for the company that pays them.
Boring most of the time. After I got out of the military I went to work for a small town of 1000 residents. We had three officers, one for the day, mid day, and night. I was chief of police there and took the day shift. Most of the things that happened were an occasional stop sign violation, a domestic once in a while, and just keeping things safe.
Kids were kids, always trying to get a beer or two past me. Not always successful too. When I would catch a minor with booze, I would take them to the office, sit them down and call parents to come get them. However I did not arrest them as here was the deal. Parents and child could decide if I took the kid to jail, booked them in, gave them a police record, and have them spend time behind bars for their stupidity. OR….they could show up each weekend for the next year, Pick up trash in the park, sweep the sidewalks downtown, Paint the fire hydrants, Plant flowers on the corners downtown, etc. I had the prettiest park, corners, and hydrants in the state. The kids learned a lesson and knew if they did it again they would go right to jail, no parents involved. Which did happen I think three times. After word got around in the younger citizens I and my fellow officers were treated with respect and as a friend of the younger people and parents.
The only bad thing I can think of was the small town politics, When I started I was handed a piece of paper with names and addresses on it as to who to arrest, who not to arrest, who to trust and who to do every thing possible to get to move out of town. After reading the list, I tore it up right in front of the city council meeting, told them I do not discriminate, do not do what they wanted, but I enforce the law equally of all citizens.
I lasted there for two years and when I arrested the Mayors daughter for possession of drugs, with intent to distribute ( $75000 worth of meth, $100000 worth of coke, and more, The city council fired me., She still went to jail, found guilty and spent 5 to 10 behind bars. I went on to a sheriffs dept in the same county and later even arrested the mayor of the town on similar charges. After which I was asked to come back to the town to work and I refused.
So small towns are quiet, boring most of the time, but occasionally have some excitement and danger.
. In addition to its civilian population, Santo Tomas became the initial internment camp for both the army and navy nurses, with the army nurses remaining there until their liberation.“
“Capt. Maude C. Davison, 57 years old and with 20 years of service experience, took command of the nurses, maintained a regular schedule of nursing duty, and insisted that all nurses wear their khaki blouses and skirts while on duty. She worked with Josephine Nesbit.”
At Los Baños
“In May 1943, the navy nurses, still under the command of Lt. Cobb
, were transferred to a new internment camp at Los Baños, where they established a new infirmary and continued working as a nursing unit.“
“At Los Baños they came to be known as “the sacred eleven.”
On the Home Front
“While the capture of the nurses was widely publicized in the U.S., little specific information was known of their fate until they were liberated.
, one of the few nurses to escape, published a memoir of her experiences on Bataan in 1943 that concluded with a dramatic reminder that her colleagues were still prisoners.“
“The nurses’ story was dramatized in several wartime movies, including:
“When So Proudly We Hail was shown in the theaters, a recruitment booth staffed with Red Cross volunteers was set up in the lobby.“
Final year of Internment
“In January 1944, control of the Santo Tomas Internment Camp changed from Japanese civil authorities to the Imperial Japanese Army
, with whom it remained until the camp was liberated.“
“Access to outside food sources was curtailed, the diet of the internees was reduced to 960 calories per person per day by November 1944, and further reduced to 700 calories per person per day by January 1945.“
“A Department of Veterans Affairs study released in April, 2002 found that the nurses lost, on average, 30% of their body weight during internment, and subsequently experienced a degree of service-connected disability “virtually the same as the male ex-POW’s of the Pacific Theater.”
“ Maude C. Davison’s body weight dropped from 156 lbs. to 80 lbs.”
A few years ago I’m in Uganda and we drive through a village. Everyone is running out of their houses with spears and machetes (they call panga), knives and pitchforks. So, I ask the driver to stop and ask the mob WTF is happening.
Within a few seconds, we’re surrounded by about 200 people who look fucking mad as hell.
They tell the driver that some dude just stole a motorcycle and that they’re going to hunt him down and chop him up into lots of tiny pieces. Our curiosity satisfied, we thanked them and continued on with the journey.
image 223
Naturally, I had questions for the driver on the way:
if the guy has a bike will they catch him. He says yes. They normally catch people within 24 hours.
I pointed out that the border to the Congo is less than 24 hours away by bike. He says people have tried that in the past and they still get killed.
I ask why the police aren’t going after this guy. He says that the police only catch a guy if they’re paid to. The village is poor and can’t afford the bribes.
And that was that. I had witnessed the beginning of murder, but glad I wasn’t there to see it happen. I know they would have gutted him like an animal. And he must have known this too since he lived in that village. How desperate must that man have been to take such a risk?
When surrounded by a mob and you have a fully loaded pistol, what would you suggest: to fire in the air or fire on people?
If that happened I’d just tuck the pistol in my belt. If the mob is after someone else, they don’t give a fuck about me. If they’re after me, I’m already dead.
Edit: That was the nicest image I could find. A lot of the other ones show the person being chopped up – no censorship. Brutal.
Edit: For those people in the comments trying to turn this answer into a culture war, I recommend you educate yourself about the history of Africa before you call them savages. The most savage thing done to Africa was by Westerners – lest we wilfully forget, yet again.
10k bonus edit:
So, something like this has happened to me before. 1997, Edinburgh, Scotland, during the day. I’m waiting at a bus stop when two young guys come up and offer me a swig of wine. I look at it and say, no thanks. Then they demand, “DRINK IT”. So I take a swig and hand it back. Then one of them comes up to me and says, “Give me all your money or I’ll cut your fucking throat.”
I look down at his hands to see if he has a knife, but he has no hands, just stumps. So I ask him, “how are you going to hold a knife?” He puts one stump behind his back and says he has a knife in his back pocket. Now I only had 53 pence and the bus ticket was going to cost 50 pence, so I told them to “get tae fuck” and walked along the road to the next bus stop while they shouted after me that they were going to murder me.
I just can’t take anyone seriously if they don’t have any hands.
Having been a boss for several decades I feel qualified to give an answer here.
I am smart enough to realise that I am unlikely to attract extremely high intelligence employees to mix detergent! I own two chemical manufacturing companies. So I am talking about normal everyday people with this answer.
For me a good employee is one that is consistent. In other words they produce the same quality and quantity of work/results every day consistently. They are set and forget with little to no effort required from me or their supervisor. I don’t need them to be a superstar. I am happy with them giving me 80% of what a superstar could give me in theory because I know I am always going to get it from them and I can more easily predict business/job outcomes as a result.
This doesn’t mean I don’t try to get them to 85% or greater, of course I try.
The above employee tends to arrive on time and have less than average personal/sick leave too in my experience.
By contrast, the mediocre employee is brilliant one day and off with the fairies for the next three days, then rounds out the week with a day off for a sprained eyelash!
Mediocre employees work output is up and down and hard to predict resulting in far more time spent supervising them. This adds cost and complexity to the business as a result.
So if you want to impress a boss – work consistently. Produce at the same level everyday and try and find ways to gradually improve or become more efficient.
Russia Launch on Feb 9 Causes U.S. National Security “Threat” Today
Five days ago, on February 9, Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, conducted a rocket launch into space carrying cardo for the Russian Ministry of Defense. Today, February 14, Americans are being told of a new “threat” described as “destabilizing.”
Earlier today, February 14, U.S. Congressman Mike Turner (R-OH) head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), announced to the nation a new “Destabilizing threat to national security” and revealed all members of Congress are now able to go into the secure House Briefing area to learn details.
HPSCI notice
Within the offices of the US House of Representatives is a SCIF: Segmented, Compartmentalized, Information Facility. Anyone entering the SCIF is searched for any electronic devices, which are forbidden. Entrants are also barred from taking any notes. They are “read-in” on the Classified Material and when they depart the facility, they are reminded they are forbidden to talk to anyone about what they have learned under Penalty of prison.
Congressman Turner issued the following notice to fellow members of Congress:
In the notice above, the words “destabilizing foreign military capability.” “Destabilizing” means it is a power THEY have, but which we DO NOT have. That’s what “destabilizing” means in this context.
CNN and other media outlets are claiming this has something to do with Russia. It may.
On February 9th, the Cosmos-2575 Mission was launched by Roskosmos using a Soyuz-2 Rocket carrying an “Unknown Payload into Space for the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is almost guaranteed our spy satellites and ground-based information gathering capabilities have kept close watch on whatever went up.
Based on our current capabilities for intel-gathering, it seems likely (to me) that we now have some idea of what it is — or possibly know EXACTLY what it is. So here we are, just 5 days later, being told there is some new, “destabilizing” foreign military capability.
My personal layman’s FIRST guess: Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) weaponry.
FOBS are space-based nuclear bombs (actual warheads) that can be released at ANY time, orbit the earth several times under their own power for months or years (or just once), then come down anywhere on the planet with ZERO advance warning to the intended target.
A particular city in a particular country would go from happy-go-lucky to vaporized with ZERO warning.
There is no defense to such weaponry.
My SECOND guess:
Iran may now be confirmed to have a working nuclear bomb.
Of course, it is common knowledge that Mike Turner is a RINO, he supports the aid package for Ukraine and Israel (but NOT our own Border), he wants to push the Ukraine support, end of story. SO coming up with some new Russian “threat” may be the impetus to get that passed.
Ukraine sinks another Russian Ship 02 14 2024 large
Ukraine has attacked and sunk another Russian navy ship in the Black Sea; this one the “Cezar Kunikov“ shown in a file photo above.
According to information released by the Ukraine armed forces, “Magura V5” drones sank the Russian warship near Alupka, Crimea as shown on the map below:
Map Crimea Ship Sunk 02 14 2024
Below, after being hit by THREE sea drones, the ship listed onto its side and sank.
Ukraine sinks another Russian Ship 02 14 2024 2
It’s the fourth landing ship from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet that Ukrainian military has sunk since the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation. The Caesar Kunikov was a large landing ship with a crew comprising 87 personnel.
BUILT IN 86 ….38 years old
Class and type: Ropucha-class landing ship Displacement 2,768 long tons (2,812 t) standard 4,012 long tons (4,076 t) full load Length 112.5 m (369 ft 1 in) Beam 15.01 m (49 ft 3 in) Draught 4.26 m (14 ft 0 in) Ramps Over bows and at stern Installed power 3 × 750 kW (1,006 hp) diesel generators Propulsion 2 × 9,600 hp (7,159 kW) Zgoda-Sulzer 16ZVB40/48 diesel engines Speed 17.59 knots (32.58 km/h; 20.24 mph) Range 6,000 nmi (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) 3,500 nmi (6,500 km; 4,000 mi) at 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph) Endurance 30 days
CAN CARRY 10 TANKS AND 340 SOLDIERS
This Clip Will Disillusion All Young Men
Escalation In Northern Palestine
The situation on the northern Israeli border is escalating. It is likely to soon evolve into a full fledged war. The situation is already increasing the economic price Israel has to pay for its misdeeds.
The international rating agency Moody’s has downgraded Israel’s credit rating. This will lead to higher interest payments on Israeli government debt:
In a report dated last Friday but not issued until Saturday, the Jewish sabbath, the agency officially reduced Israel’s rating from A1 to A2, and added pointers of further downgrading to come. The Anglo-American press immediately reacted against Moody’s.
“Israel hits back”, the Financial Timesheadlined. The newspaper added: “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, in a rare statement over the Jewish Sabbath, said: ‘The rating downgrade is not connected to the economy, it is entirely due to the fact that we are in a war. The rating will go back up the moment we win the war — and we will win the war.’” In the Associated Press report, “Israel’s finance minister blasts Moody’s downgrade”. Rupert Murdoch’s platform Fox claimed: “Israel has a strong, open economy despite Moody’s downgrade”. “Israel’s creditworthiness remains high,” according to the New York Times, “but the rating agency noted that the outlook for the country was negative… A rating of A2 is still a high rating.”
There are several negative issues that could lead to a further downgrading:
According to Moody’s report, “downside risks remain at the A2 rating level. In particular, the risk of an escalation involving Hezbollah in the North of Israel remains, which would have a potentially much more negative impact on the economy than currently assumed under Moody’s baseline scenario. Government finances would also be under more intense pressure in such a scenario.”
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah reiterated that Hezbollah will continue its border offensive against the Israeli occupation sites near Lebanon border till the Zionist barbaric war on Gaza ends.
“When the aggression on Gaza stops fire will be ceased in South Lebanon,” Sayyed Nasrallah said. … Hezbollah Secretary General commented on the recent threats made by the Zionist defense minister Yoav Gallant who said that the IOF will not stop aggression on South Lebanon even after Gaza ceasefire, stressing that, then, Hezbollah will continue its offensive.
“When the war on Gaza ends, we will stop our offensive. If the enemy resumes its hostilities, we will, act in light of the rules and the formulas.”
Nasrallah rejected western demands, passed through the Lebanese government, to pull back Hizbullah’s forces and to cease fire:
It is Hezbollah duty and responsibility to deter the enemy and prevent the assault on Lebanon, Sayyed Nasrallah affirmed, adding that the Resistance responses will be proportionate, yet effective and productive.
Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the hundreds of thousands of settlers already displaced from the North will not be able to return to their homes in case of escalation.
‘Israel’ must prepare shelters, basements, hotels and schools to house 2 million settlers who will be displaced from northern Palestine if it expands the war zone, Sayyed Nasrallah warned.
If the Israeli enemy expands its war zone against Lebanon, Hezbollah will do too, Sayyed Nasrallah emphasized. … “It is easier to move Litani River forward to the borders than pushing back Hezbollah fighters from the borders to the Litani River,” Sayyed Nasrallah said.
More will be announced later:
Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that ‘Israel’ has failed over 130 days to achieve any target in Gaza war, except the monstrous attacks on the civilians.
Concerning the Zionist war on Gaza, Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that he will address more details about during a speech he is scheduled to deliver on Friday (February 16) the anniversary of Hezbollah Martyr Commanders.
The resistance in Southern Lebanon, has so far attacked:
HQ of the Northern Region Command in Safad.
Command HQ of the 91st Galilee Division in “Branit”
HQ of the 769th Eastern Brigade in Kiryat Shmona.
Meron Air command and control base
Beit Hillel IOF base
Training camp in Kela, in the occupied Golan Heights
Ma’ale Golan IOF base on Mount Hermon
Most artillery positions along the rear front and military concentrations
Every single border military IOF sites
All of these attacks carried out by the resistance confirm that all military and fire pressure and Israeli threats will not deter it from continuing its operations. The resistance is proceeding with full confidence, first relaying on God, and then its military capabilities, the spirit of its fighters, and the resilience of its people.
The Safad headquarter site was only hit this morning. This followed after more Israeli attacks had hit civilian structures in southern Lebanon.
URGENT: #Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets targeting an army base #Israel’s northern city of Safed. One reportedly killed & eight wounded, one in serious condition. The IDF said some of the rockets hit the Northern Command headquarters base in #Safed, some 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the Lebanese border.
Hitting Safad was a (mild) escalation after previous attacks.
Unlike the daily Palestinian victims of Israel’s brutality, the Israeli casualties of the strike created headlines in Israel:
An Israeli woman was killed and eight others were wounded as a barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon slammed into Safed and an army base in the northern city, the military and medical officials said.
In response to the attack, the IDF said it launched “widespread” airstrikes in Lebanon.
There was no immediate claim for the rocket fire, although it was believed to have been carried out by the Hezbollah terror group, which has been launching daily rocket, missile, and drone attacks on northern Israel in recent months, saying it is doing so in support of the Hamas terror group in Gaza, against whom Israel is waging war.
The Israel Defense Forces and Safed’s municipality said rockets hit an army base in the area, some 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the Lebanon border.
The casualty count on Israel’s northern border is still very uneven:
So far, the skirmishes on the border have resulted in six civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of at least nine IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 194 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 29 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and some two dozen civilians, three of whom were journalists, have been killed.
If Israel does not evacuated more settlers, at high economic costs, the casualty ratio is likely to change.
The Lebanese Hezbollah expert Amal Saad, who is currently teaching in Cardiff, Britain, explained Hizbullah’s thinking:
There are several messages behind Hizbullah’s qualitatively different strike on Safed this morning, which Israel is treating as the gravest attack since the start of the war, with Ben Gvir calling it a “declaration of war”.
At the forefront, is Hizbullah’s message that it won’t capitulate to Israeli and western demands that it cease hostilities across the border, as per Nasrallah’s speech yesterday. It’s also a response to several Israeli assassination strikes in South Lebanon, reaching as deep as Sidon.
But the timing of this escalation also appears to be related to Netanyahu’s scuppering of the Paris cease-fire proposal and his government’s threats to invade Rafah, which in turn, would make a full-out attack on Lebanon more likely. Hizbullah is giving Israel a taster of the type of strikes and casualty tolls its military will have to bear, should Netanyahu continue to reject a cease-fire.
Predictably the Israeli occupation forces responded to the strike on Safad by escalating further:
The Israeli military said Wednesday its fighter jets “began a series of strikes in Lebanon”, raising fears of a war between the two countries after months of cross-border fire.
The military gave no further details of the air strikes, while Lebanese media reported air raids on southern villages including Adchit, Sawwaneh and Shihabiyeh.
The strikes came hours after fire from Lebanon wounded multiple people in northern Israel, according to medics. … Fears have been growing of another full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, with tens of thousands displaced on both sides of the border and regional tensions soaring.
“I don’t know when the war in the north is, I can tell you that the likelihood of it happening in the coming months is much higher than it was in the past,” Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi said last month.
Following the last Israeli strikes, the Lebanese side said that four civilians had been killed or wounded by them.
The increase of hostility is getting to a point where there will no longer be the question “if” another war between Israel and Hizbullah will occur but only the question of “when”.
Posted by b on February 14, 2024 at 15:23 UTC | Permalink
Yes. This past week. She is a lot older than me but our personalities clicked. We met at work and were really close for 7 years. We both left the department we met in for new jobs but still met up every month. I supported her through breast cancer. Then we both got offered promotions in our old department. Both accepted and were so excited to be working together again. She started a month before me and struggled to settle back in, feeling old colleagues were freezing her out. I comforted her as she sobbed down the phone to me and helped her talk things through with them. Then last week I started back. One particular colleague was very angry I was back as I had given evidence in a bullying case against her involving another colleague and she got very nasty, even refusing to sit beside me in the office and screaming at caretakers to move her desk on my first day. I was very upset and intimidated. I shared my feelings with my friend. Her response was that SHE didn’t feel any toxicity and I needed to just stay away from people. Also she and this woman had now bonded because they were both new grandmothers. I was crushed and texted her about it later, saying I was hurt by what she had said. Her response was to tell me to never text her again. Fine. I figured I’d leave her to cool off and then maybe we could talk.
A couple of days later I developed chest pains in the office. It was early morning and my manager wasn’t in so I left a message on her desk and went for an Emergancy GP appointment. He sent me straight to the hospital. On the way there I was trying to get through to our office to let my manager know what was happening, but couldn’t get through on the office line. So I phoned my friend, told her I was having an emergency and couldn’t get through and asked her to tell the manager what had happened.
She said no, she couldn’t do that. And then hung up. And blocked me.
And now I’m done. Because whether we were fighting or not, I would have taken the call and helped her.
Thankfully I’m ok, it was just a torn chest muscle and pluerasy but I learned that day that some people only like you when you’re the one carrying them. And frankly, she doesn’t deserve my friendship. Don’t waste time trying to heal relationships with people who don’t value you.
Japanese-Peruvian Marino Morikawa found that his childhood lake was contaminated and decided to put his master’s degree and Ph.D. to work. His goal was to change a plant-covered, unsanitary swamp into a place that animals and people could use.
He began by taking a break from school and taking a loan from the bank. He wanted to create something that could clean the lake. He had to use several different methods to get there, though, and research took 6 months.
One tool he tried was microbubbles. Microbubbles are tiny bubbles invisible to the naked eye. Morikawa put them into water. As they traveled up, they caught diseases and other harmful elements, acting like a spider web. Once they finally reached the surface, the bacteria were killed and the bubbles were destroyed by ultraviolet lights. Unfortunately, bubbles take hours to rise due to their size.
Another tool he used was biofilters. Biofilters work by bringing foul pollutants to the surface of a lake while leaving clean water and useful organisms at the bottom. He made his ceramic biofilters by himself in a pottery class.
Eventually, Morikawa created an organic nanotechnology compote to clean dirty water. The compote was so natural that it was even edible! Morikawa admits that it is quite expensive, but he believes that it is worth it.
To use it, one simply had to put it in dirty water and wait for about 15 minutes. This is what the water looks like before and after treatment:
image 224
Look, I’m on TV! Hi mom!
Once he had done the hardest part of the work, he was ready to clean his lake. Using homemade biofilters, the compote, and science, he was able to clean the lake in 15 days (although other sources say that cleaning the entire wetlands took 4 months).
As a result of cleaning the lake, people, over 40 species of birds, and 10 species of fish came back to inhabit it. This man should truly be respected. His efforts are not for money or fame; he simply wants to make the world a better place.
And he still wants to do more, zoning in on other polluted lakes and prioritizing Lake Titicaca. With his intelligence, passion, funding, and ingenious technologies, I think he may just be able to do it.
Nana’s Spinach and Sausage Pies
This spinach pie is a family recipe passed down for generations. It stems from a traditional Greek (or in our case Albanian) recipe. It calls for homemade crust, and is truly wonderful when the time is taken to make it from scratch! But if you’d like you can substitute homemade crust for store bought Phyllo dough.
My grandmother would make this spinach pie every New Year’s day. She would wrap a quarter or silver dollar in wax paper, and place it near the crust. Whoever received the lucky dollar would be blessed with good luck for the year! Before you start baking, mark the quarter with a toothpick so you know where it is and it stays in the slice. Cut the pie, take the toothpick out, and randomly provide everyone with a slice. Everyone uses a fork to poke through their slice to find the lucky dollar. Don’t start eating until you find the lucky dollar, or it could become an unlucky choking hazard!
If you’d like to skip making your own dough, purchase Phyllo (not country style) dough for this crust. It’s more and more common in grocery stores these days. It can be very thin, so use up to 10 layers on for your crust.
For homemade dough mix flour, salt, water for dough with your hands until soft. Knead for 5 minutes. Then place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap for 10 minutes.
Divide the dough in half, roll it out until thin and spread with melted butter well. Fold the sides to the center and butter again. Now fold one half over the other and butter and fold in the opposite direction until you have a 5 inch folded square formed. Butter the top and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 12-15 minutes (or overnight if you’d like) and do the same with the other half.
Now it’s time to make your filling! Just add all your filling ingredients into a bowl and mix well to make your filling.
Remove your dough from the fridge and roll out to the size of your square or round buttered pan. A 12–15-inch pan is perfect. Place the dough on the bottom of the pan with a ½ overlap around the edges. Add your filling and cover with more dough. Wrap the edges of the dough into a crust and bake uncovered at 350˚ for 30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and a bit crispy.
I will never forget my wonderful Nana Tefta, and all the ways she showed her love. Cooking this family recipe and giving us the joy of finding a lucky quarter was just one of the many ways she did that.
2024 02 13 17 09
Ingredients
1 pound sweet Italian sausage links, casing removed
10 to 11 ounces piecrust mix or 2 (9-inch) deep dish pie crusts
Instructions
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Crumble sausage in a medium skillet and brown meat over medium heat, breaking up with a spoon. Drain on paper towels.
If using fresh spinach, bring a large pot of water to a boil and put spinach in water. Boil 1 minute and drain; squeeze dry.
Separate 1 egg. Combine 5 eggs with 1 egg white, sausage, spinach mozzarella, ricotta and pepper and set aside.
Prepare pie crust mix if using. Lay 1 pie crust in pie pan and spoon mixture into it. Lay another crust on top and flute with a stand-up edge. Carefully cut a 2-inch circle out of the top crust.
Mix egg yolk with 1 tablespoon water and brush on top of pie. (Can decorate with scraps of dough.)
Bake for 1 hour, 10 minutes until golden and bubbly. Check crust after 1 hour and put foil on edges to prevent over-browning.
Let stand for 10 minutes and cut OR chill uncovered until cold; cover and refrigerate until serving cold.
When I was 15 our cleaner invited our whole family to her wedding and reception. We were friendly with her as she’d given one of our puppies a home when our dog had a litter, but we hadn’t known her long. Being 15 I didn’t really want to go, but my mum said we wouldn’t have to stay long and we would just go for the reception, dance a bit and come home. It was in the Town Hall, a big, grand room in the nearby town.
When we got there we saw the bride and groom dancing, but hardly anyone else in the room. My mum checked the time thinking we were early or late but it turns out no one had turned up! There were my parents, my two brothers and me, and then no more than 7 other people in this huge, heavily decorated room with a large buffet that would have fed around 100 people.
We felt bad for the bride and groom so tried to make up for the lack of people by dancing and eating a lot, but they were acting as if it was totally normal. They seemed to be having a really good time. After a while a couple of people left and the 5 of us in my family made up half of the guests! I felt very awkward, and instead of staying an hour or two we had to stay the whole night, all the while pretending we were having a great time.
We found out later the reason no one had showed – it turns out that the bride and groom had been married before. In fact, they’d been married and divorced 9 times! The reception we went to was their tenth wedding… which explains why none of their family and friends wanted to waste anymore time on them. A match made in heaven! I wonder if they are still married, or how many more weddings they’ve racked up now…
Putin on the Collapse of the Dollar as the World’s Reserve Currency
I was at a thrift store, just looking around for anything interesting.
Standing in the entrance area was a mother with a baby and a toddler, and a large toy chest she had just purchased, which was sitting in her cart.
Thus she had a dilemna.
The baby was too small to walk, so she had to carry the baby. The toy chest was too big to carry one-handed, and too big to allow the baby to sit in the cart with it. Even if she could carry the baby and the toy chest, the toddler’s hand needed held in this busy parking lot.
What to do?
The thrift store was especially busy that day. People walked in, gave her situation a glance, and kept walking. She stood there for at least five minutes (which doesn’t seem very long, but it seems like a long time if you’re just standing there), occasionally trying to pick up the chest. Not a single person stopped to help.
A family walked into the store. They all gave the woman a glance and kept walking, just as the others had.
Well, most of the family kept walking.
A teenager slipped away from the family and went up to the woman.
“Hey. You need some help?”
The teen carried that toy chest all the way to the woman’s car. I saw the woman pull out her wallet, and the teenager backed away, waving their hands.
Any show of kindness is great in the eye of the recipient.
One and only time I ever left a job because of a boss was when I was doing software engineering at a major aerospace company on contract.
The direct manager was a micro-manager and apparently didn’t have a life outside of work.
He would take home the code listings of that day’s work from his team members to do “code reviews.’
The next morning you would get back your listings with “suggested changes” in red pencil.
You would dutifully spend the first half of the day coding and testing the suggested changes then try and make some new progress before turning the day’s listing back to the boss.
The next day it would start all over again except, more often than not, the day’s “suggested changes” basically had you putting the code back to the way you had it to begin with.
I implemented my own code management system so I could easily roll back changes.
I lasted all of a year before finding a new job.
When I became a people manager some years later I used the experience as a life lesson of the kind of manager NOT to become.
The Pathology of America: Dehumanization, Greed, and the Decline of Empire
Actually it is sad, and when I peer into the future, it is absolutely worrying. Please be safe everyone.
Lots of videos today, but most are super short.
Enjoy…
Western Diplomacy is ‘Primitive’
Russians have had to dumb down their speeches at the UN so other countries can understand them, deputy representative Dmitry Polyansky has said.
Russian diplomats perceive their Western counterparts’ approach to international affairs to be “quite primitive,” Moscow’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, has said. Moscow’s representatives are not certain what caused this, but have simplified their messaging in response, he added.
Polyansky made remarks about the quality of the Western diplomatic corps in an interview with RIA Novosti published on Monday, based on his personal experience at the UN. He expressed concern about Anglophone speakers at the forum selectively ignoring the context of particular situations for their own benefit.
”They pick an arbitrary point in time and claim nothing happened before it. They try to blame a nation for its actions regardless of prior events or the general context,” he explained.
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The diplomat cited the Ukraine conflict as an example. The US and its allies have been describing Moscow’s military action against Kiev as “unprovoked” and supposedly motivated by “imperial ambitions,” and have pressured other nations to frame it in the same way. As they learn more about the conflict, however, those parties realize how much the general context and Western actions since Ukraine gained its independence matter, he added.
”This trick does not always work, but it is a trend. I don’t know if it’s some deeper trend or just something typical for some people coming from [Western] schools of diplomacy,” Polyansky said. “Having a dialogue with them is challenging because they show certain superficiality, tunnel vision, and unwillingness to seek the core causes of conflicts. No solutions can be found without [such analysis].”
The office of the Russian envoy to the UN has been simplifying its addresses due to uncertainty over how their words are understood, he said. Russian diplomats used to quote foreign and Russian classics in speeches, but are no longer using this rhetorical device as much, Polyansky said.
”Times dictate things. Our partners may now be less well-read individuals, so occasionally we want to speak in plainer terms to make sure our signal comes through,” he explained.
Reality
A New Civil War is A Very Real Prospect for the US
It has long been on the minds of doomsday preppers and fiction media creators alike – but how likely is it, really?
Let’s sketch a big country in three broad strokes:
First, its population is over 333 million. These citizens privately own about (or at least) 339 million guns. They are unique in that no other state in the world has more private guns than people. They easily outdistance, for instance, Yemen, a country with a martial culture that has gone through years of civil war and yet there are only about 53 firearms per 100 inhabitants.
Second, polarization is unusually high and virulent: As of 2020 already, a political scientist at one of America’s most prestigious universities, found that “political polarization among Americans has grown rapidly in the last 40 years — more than in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia or Germany,” for instance. The result: America is special, but not in a good way. “None of the wealthy, consolidated democracies of East Asia, Oceania, or Western Europe,” a 2022 paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace pointed out, “have faced similar levels of polarization for such an extended period.”
Last year, another Carnegie Endowment paper found that even while some of the perception of polarization on specific policy questions (such as gun control or abortion) is exaggerated, that perception itself is detrimental to the country’s cohesion. Because “the people who are most involved in civic and political life hold the least accurate [here meaning: highly negative] views of the other side’s beliefs” and there is a high degree of what political scientists call “affective polarization.” Put simply, all or many of those citizens, collectively hoarding so many guns that over 40% of households are armed in one way or the other, do not like or even merely respect “the other side” of the political spectrum – not at all and ever less.
Third, the country also displays a pronounced cultural preoccupation, really almost obsession, not merely with the idea of civil war as such or the specific history of its own very bloody civil war in the nineteenth century. Rather its elites and general population are fixated on a coming civil war, which, as of 2022, a whopping 43 percent considered likely in the next ten years. Debates, high-brow books, articles, and popular culture feature this fantasy prominently and persistently.
We are talking, of course, about the United States of America. While it would be easy to adduce more criteria and data points, there is no need. The above is sufficient to demonstrate that it would be shortsighted to pooh-pooh the risk of a second civil war in America, for two reasons: It is not a mere fantasy, owing its current national resonance to “hype” and the titillation of imagining a liberatingly apocalyptic future of chaos and every man and woman for themselves (and, in the US, I guess, every other gender that wishes to participate).
Smart Americans realize this as well. Barbara F. Walter, for instance, is a prominent political scientist who has worked extensively with the CIA to develop a model of civil war predictors, for any country but the US, of course. She has now come to warn that the model begins to fit America itself disturbingly well. She may have her centrist biases – the usual exaggeration of “Russian influence” included – but her core points are valid: The US is turning into an anocracy, that is, in essence, a regime that only pretends to be a democracy. (In fact, that is what it has always been, I would contend.) And there is a substantial constituency of those who feel threatened by losing their former social status and preeminence. Those happen to be phenomena strongly correlated with a risk of civil war.
Let’s also not forget that America is proving its enormous capacity for global disruption every day, even without civil war at home. While some observers may – even gleefully – hope that Americans fighting each other would finally have to let go of the rest of us, that is a very dicey bet. With an elite narcissistically obsessed with global “primacy” and “indispensability,” about 800 bases worldwide, an arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads, and a nasty habit of blaming others for its own failures, a new American civil war would not exclude aggression abroad. Moreover, declining as it is, the US is still a key part of the global economy, much more so than in 1860, when its first civil war already had serious repercussions for the rest of the world.
In sum, it may attract preppers with camo baseball hats, beards, and pump guns, but don’t let that fool you: American Civil War 2.0 is a serious issue. So, what about it? What can we reasonably guess about how likely it really is and what shape it might take if it happens?
To start with the latter question, perhaps the first thing to note is that big civil wars can start small and local. That is, by the way, the real significance of the recent, open tensions over migration and border control between the state of Texas and the federal government in Washington. They did involve armed forces and much foreboding rhetoric, but, fortunately, no shots were fired. Yet those glibly dismissing the incident as mere political theater are wrong. Because, as the New York Times has noted, it was not only Texas that defied the US government. Rather, “many Republican state leaders publicly expressed defiance in terms that echoed armed conflicts.”
Indeed, the second thing to note is that, due to America’s federal structure, a new civil war would most likely begin with secession. In the fracas between Washington and Texas, 25 Republican governors openly sided with rebellious Texas. This was a perfect illustration of how one local flashpoint could quickly suck in the rest of the country by creating a logic of ultimate polarization and then secession. This logic has not yet fully unfolded. Its contours, however, have emerged clearly.
It is worth noting that many of the fiction narratives about Civil War 2.0 make the same point: Whether it is the cult graphic novel series “DMZ,” the bitterly ironic novel “American War” (it’s obvious in-joke is that it has some Americans treat other Americans the way Americans and Israelis now treat Palestinians, Iraqis, or Syrians), the small-budget yet clever movie “Bushwick,” or the big-budget “Civil War” about to hit American cinemas now: Again and again the basic premise is a scenario of secession escalating into massive domestic warfare.
Third, while the humongous pile of private firearms would certainly play a large role in a new civil war, it would be misguided to assume that such a fight would only pit gangs of private citizens, organized in militias, against official police and military forces. In reality, a dynamic of secession, once set in motion would lead to parts of the US’s manifold “siloviki” choosing their own allegiance, splitting, and starting to fight each other. If you believe that, in such a situation, the formal chains of command ultimately linking them all back to Washington would remain intact, I have a whole-and-indivisible Yugoslavia to sell you.
And, last but not least, in such a development, the war would be both severe and long. In that respect, it would resemble the first Civil War. Although, due to advanced technologies and declining inhibitions, it could be even more devastating and cruel. In Netflix’s recent and tellingly successful “Leave the World Behind,” the protagonists never learn who exactly is blowing up their country, but by the end of the movie two things seem reasonably clear: No, it’s not enemies from outside, but an inside job, and nukes are being used. That, by the way, was the premise as well of the earlier, initially unsuccessful but now cult television show “Jericho.”
How likely is such a dark future? Obviously, we do not know. But let’s note two things: We could, a priori, be looking at an America where no one is much interested in thinking about it. Yet we are seeing the opposite. If you think that means nothing, fine. Just don’t mistake your guess for a good policy or planning basis.
There are, of course, alternatives to civil war. One is peaceful de-polarization under the current anocratic conditions, which, hypothetically, can happen. The other is full-blown authoritarianism: one way to suppress the possibility of a civil war is to impose dictatorship.
But here’s the catch: A country can end up with both civil war and dictatorship. Ask the ancient Romans. Those Romans, that is, who were so much on the mind of the founders of the American Republic.
It has long been on the minds of doomsday preppers and fiction media creators alike – but how likely is it, really?
If you are greeting four people standing in a group, at least smile at the fifth person standing along with them, whom you don’t know, so that they don’t feel disrespected.
Whenever you ask someone to do something for you, even if they are ought to do it, frame it as a question to boost their self-esteem. ‘Can you please get my pen from the table?’ sounds much soothing than ‘Go, get my pen’.
People in hurry, appear too irritating, but they may be anxious about something or facing an emergency, don’t bother much, just give them a way and ignore, and even if someone is just too impatient, that’s something to pity.
You desperately want to interrupt someone, may be they are completely wrong, but at least let them finish a sentence, so that you don’t appear even worse than them.
When you finish eating, pick the little pieces of food fallen around your plate and put them on your plate and throw them, it shows immense maturity.
Don’t wait for someone, standing in front of the opposite sex wash room, because when the gate opens again and again, it can be quite embarrasing, and also people may question your integrity.
When you disagree with someone, it doesn’t make them a criminal. Respect their opinion, and realise the fact that your thoughts may also be your opinion and not a fact. ‘Argue with respect.’
Whenever you break a line, you become a teacher for countless innocent people, this isn’t something great to give back to the society, respect a line.
Not liking to be touched is not arrogance, it’s a natural trait of most people, avoid touching people as much as possible to protect your self-esteem and respect theirs.
When you shout at someone, all you are doing is wasting your energy, misusing your larynx, and showing immaturity, learn to take boldest of actions and give harshest of warnings, keeping a smile.
Italian Oven Chowder
To enjoy this hearty chowder as the Italians do, be sure to include the oysters.
Creamy Italian Seafood Chowder 4
What is Creamy Italian Seafood Chowder?
If you are a seafood lover – this Creamy Italian Seafood Chowder is for you!
Sometimes called an Italian “white” seafood chowder – a delicious variety of seafood and vegetables are suspended in a cream-based broth that really allows the flavors of the seafood to shine through. (You can also make a “red” seafood chowder with a tomato-based broth.)
Some Italian families serve this seafood chowder on Christmas Eve for the traditional Feast of Seven Fishes, but we love it anytime of the year – especially with fresh-caught seafood in the summer.
Why you’ll love Creamy Italian Seafood Chowder
It’s chock full of a variety of fresh seafood – and you can vary it depending on the catch of the day, or to suit your family’s tastes.
This chowder is hearty and delicious, and it makes for a very satisfying meal.
You can prepare it ahead of time (but be sure to read our tips below in the Frequently Asked Question to avoid overcooking the seafood if you make it ahead).
Ingredients
4 slices bacon
2 large carrots, sliced 1/2 inch thick
2 medium parsnips, sliced 1/2 inch thick, cutting larger pieces in half
In a 4-quart Dutch oven cook bacon until crisp. Remove bacon, reserving 1 tablespoon drippings in the pan. Drain bacon on paper towels; crumble and set aside.
Add carrots, parsnips, and onions to Dutch oven. Cook over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes or until brown, stirring occasionally.
Add potatoes, chicken broth, garlic salt and pepper. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. (At this point the soup can be cooled, covered, and chilled in the refrigerator overnight.)
In a small mixing bowl stir together melted margarine or butter and flour. Stir flour-margarine mixture, milk, and corn into chowder mixture in Dutch oven. Cook and stir over medium heat until slightly thickened. If desired, add oysters and liquid to soup; heat through.
Sprinkle each serving with crumbled bacon and chives or parsley, if desired.
Key Ingredients & Substitutions
Salt Pork and Bacon – These two ingredients are an easy way to add delicious flavor to any soup or chowder – the rendered fat is used to sauté vegetables, so you won’t need to add other fats. While we use both salt pork and bacon, you could easily just use all of one or the other – the salt pork adds a nice salty flavor, while the bacon adds a smokey taste.
Seafood – Buy a total of four pounds of seafood. We made our chowder with fresh haddock, chopped fresh clams, shell-on shrimp (frozen shrimp is fine), fresh scallops, and crab meat. You can substitute any of these varieties of seafood, or use all of one or the other, just as long as the total weight equals four pounds.
Clam juice – Look for bottled clam juice at the supermarket – sometimes sold near the seafood counter. Other times, you can find it near the soup aisle.
Dairy – Heavy cream makes up the broth, along with the clam juice and a broth from the shrimp shells. Unsalted butter smooths things out and adds more flavor. You could lighten this soup up a bit with light cream or half and half – but it won’t be quite the same.
Tomato – Buy canned whole and peeled San Marzano tomatoes. You’ll break up the tomato pieces into the soup and reduce the juices to create a serving sauce that garnishes each portion.
Other Vegetables – Peeled and diced russet potatoes are the best for this seafood chowder, plus diced onion and celery, and minced garlic.
Herbs and spices – You’ll use a variety of herbs and spices including bay leaves, fresh basil, fresh mint, dried oregano, kosher salt, black pepper, and fresh thyme.
I was 27 when my husband (29) passed away unexpectedly while stationed overseas. It took 3 weeks for the army to bring his corpse back to the US and a week after the arrival his church service and funeral took place. A week after the burial, I traveled back to my country of origin for only one week. My daddy, who was extremely fond of my late husband, and who couldn’t attend the funeral due to work obligations and visa lasting procedures, had an open-hearted conversation with me. He said that all of us will die. And many of us will go unexpectedly. That there was a divine reason why all of what happened had happened and that I would need to eventually come to peace with losing him. I needed to see my story with my husband as a chapter of my book that ended. I needed to turn the page to the next chapter for my own benefit, if not, instead of having one dead in the family, they were going to have two. Because that’s who I was going to turn into. A dead living woman.
I listened to his words which made sense, but I didn’t want my life to make sense so quickly so I forgot about them until after I dragged myself into an alcohol addiction for months. And one day, I remembered his wise words and between that and the help of a close friend, I realized my daddy was right. Either I got over my husband’s passing or I was going to stay dead myself.
200 Times Wife Has a MELTDOWN After Getting Caught Cheating #2
Aging is a natural process, but there are steps you can take to maintain a youthful appearance and overall well-being in your 70s and 80s. Here are some tips to help you look and feel young:
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1. Stay Active: Regular exercise is crucial for maintaining muscle strength, flexibility, and overall health. Low-impact activities like walking, swimming, and yoga can be excellent choices.
2. Eat a Balanced Diet: A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats can support your skin, hair, and overall health.
3. Stay Hydrated: Proper hydration is essential for skin health. Drink enough water to keep your skin hydrated.
4. Protect Your Skin: Use sunscreen to protect your skin from the sun’s harmful UV rays, which can cause premature aging. Moisturize your skin regularly to keep it hydrated.
5. Get Sufficient Sleep: Quality sleep is essential for overall health. Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep per night.
6. Manage Stress: High-stress levels can lead to premature aging. Practice stress-reduction techniques like meditation, deep breathing, or yoga.
7. Regular Checkups: Visit your healthcare provider for regular checkups to address any health concerns promptly.
8. Stay Socially Active: Maintaining social connections can contribute to mental and emotional well-being, which can affect your overall appearance.
9. Mental Stimulation: Keep your mind active with puzzles, games, or learning new skills. It can help maintain cognitive function and a youthful spirit.
10. Good Skincare: Use skincare products suitable for your skin type and age. A good skincare routine can make a difference in maintaining healthy skin.
11. Fashion and Style: Update your wardrobe with clothing that makes you feel confident and stylish. How you dress can impact your overall look.
12. Hair Care: Consider a hairstyle that suits your face shape and is easy to maintain. Many people embrace their natural gray hair, which can be quite attractive.
13. Regular Dental Care: Don’t neglect your dental health. Regular dental checkups and good oral hygiene can help maintain a youthful appearance.
Remember that aging is a natural part of life, and it’s essential to embrace the wisdom and experiences that come with it. Looking and feeling young is about maintaining your health and self-confidence as you age.
I was working at this shipping company, I think it was.
The boss was one of those who would bully his subordinates. He often made several employees cry.
Anyway, we were in a meeting. It was more like a bitching session.
The boss spent the meeting screaming at everyone, calling us lazy and insisting we were the worst employees ever. He was screaming at us and I felt I had to say something.
So I did.
The boss got right in my face. I mean, like a few inches from me. He started screaming right in my face and I simply stood my ground.
The boss screamed at me to get out, that I was fired.
Then he screamed at everyone else, calling them lazy and telling everyone to get out if they didn’t like the way he was running things.
Each and every person followed me out the door. This literally meant there was no staff to get any work done.
Not surprisingly, the boss ended up getting fired.
I was turning 30. I had planned a party for me and my going to be 12 year old daughter. It was a Saturday. My sister and I went with our kids to Mom and Dad’s for the regular Saturday bagel routine. Dad was at his parents’ house mowing their lawn. He had called me earlier with a, “Happy Birthday Robbio, See Yah later”. I responded, “Love you Daddio”. About 45 minutes into our bagel breakfast, the phone rang and my mother answered. The color completely drained from her face. She kept repeating, “A stroke? A stroke?” It was my grandfather. My father was in the hospital. My then husband and brother-in-law raced to my mother’s side and my sister and I loaded the kids into my car and sped to our grandparents. I played the game in my head, If I get all green lights he’s fine. If I see kids playing he’s fine….etc. It was a warm September day. The windows on the car were open. As we approached the house, we could hear what only could be described as wailing. It was Grandma. I have never, ever heard such a sorrowful, painful sound. My daughter found my Dad’s smashed glasses on the lawn. My grandfather returned from the hospital, just shaking his head. He said nothing. Shortly the family showed up. My dad had died. He had a massive heart attack. The sanitation workers picking up trash had jumped off of the truck to help my grandfather apply CPR, but to no avail. He was basically dead before he hit the ground. For the next fifteen years, no one and I mean no one could say, “Happy Birthday” to me. I forbade it and if someone accidentally said it, they got schooled. I still can’t really celebrate my birthday, even though it’s been 36 years. I do have a major amount of respect for sanitation workers though.
Five days after moving into a new (to me and my wife) home our neighbor, Lee, showed up at our door to borrow my weedeater. He’d seen me using it in my backyard the day before and said he wanted to do some “cleanup” around his yard. I told him that I was sorry but I had a firm policy against loaning my tools or equipment out. I also mentioned that I’d bought the weedeater at a local home improvement store for around $75. He replied that he wouldn’t use it that often so he didn’t see the point of buying one.
End of story, right?
Not quite.
The guy pretty much avoided me after I denied his request; if I came outside while he was in his driveway or yard, he’d ignore me, or just give a cursory wave before turning away. Over time I became friendly with Mack, my neighbor across the street, and one evening we were in his backyard, staining his deck, when he said that he didn’t think I was a bad guy, at all. I asked him to explain and he told me that my next door neighbor, Lee, had told him and a couple of other neighbors that I was an asshole who didn’t want to help anyone out. Because I wouldn’t lend him my weedeater.
I told Mack that Lee struck me as being something of an opportunist and con man, and Mack admitted that Lee did have those tendencies. That convinced me that I’d been right to refuse to lend him my weedeater. He was just angry at me because I didn’t buy his BS.
I couldn’t say how friendly German women as a whole were to American troops; (although sometimes they were very friendly indeed, I’ve often read, lol)…but I can relate a story my dad told me about an interaction he once had with a German woman towards the very end of the Third Reich.
My dad was a medic in the 3rd Armored Division. He landed on Omaha beach, fought all through France, drove through the carnage and destruction of the Falaise pocket, was in Belgium at the Battle of the Bulge and was in Germany at the Battle of the Hurtgen forest. He was also at the liberation of the Nordhausen forced labor camp, where V-2 rockets were being constructed by slave labor…Poles, Jews, Czechs and Russians. My father was in the Ruhr pocket in Rhine-North Westphalia, Germany when the war ended.
It really didn’t dawn on me until much later in life what a living repository of history my dad was, and how present he had been at and for so much history. He told me many truly amazing stories, and as I was always pretty much the only one among my siblings who ever showed any interest in my dad’s WW II service, I wrote everything he told me down and have it archived on my computer. (And even as a child, I was fascinated by my father’s stories and recognized them for the real family and WW II history they were). I really wish I had tape recorded my dad telling these stories when he was still alive, and always meant to…but life and time got in the way (as it often does) and I never got around to it. Still, though…I’ve got them all down in print.
This happened shortly after the 3rd Armored had crossed into Germany proper. My dad told me;
“Often,when we moved into and occupied these towns,of course we would sometimes take a break for chow.And invariably, little French or Belgian or in this case Germankids wouldcluster around, watching us getting ready to eat and hoping for some food.All of these children had been living in occupied or food-rationed countries for years now; they were often terribly thin and pale.And they’d gather around, smelling the cooking food and shyly watching us with big eyes.
And of course…we shared. I mean…how the heck could you eat while being watched by hungry kids? Anybody with a heart would’ve shared, and we always did.
And in this particular town, there was a little fella watching us. He had a beat-up, moth-eaten black coat on, and a little black cap on his head. Short pants and knee socks…legs like pipe cleaners…like sticks.
So I decided right then and there to make sure this little guy got fed well.
I grabbed him by the hand, took him to the head of the chow line and told the guy filling our kits, “C’mon, pal. Load this little guy up. Load‘im up.Looks like he hasn’t had a decent meal in years.”And he hunted up an aluminum tray, and piled it high with corned-beef hash and beans and white bread. I dug a D-bar out of my pocket and also put some chewing gum on the tray, too. I knelt down and put the tray and food into the boy’s hands.
You should’ve seen this kid’s face. (Laughs). His eyes nearly popped out of his head! “Danke schoen, Herr Soldaten!’’, he said to me politely and wonderingly. I found an empty packing crate in the street, led him over to some steps in front of a house, propped up the crate and helped him put the tray on it and sit down, and stuck a tin spoon in his hand. In German, I told him to help himself and eat up. Eagerly, he began to dig in.
But as the boy began to bring the first spoonful of food to his mouth…a door to a house on the other side of the street flew open, and a matronly “hausfrau“ maybe sixty years old or so came storming out of the house and across the street to us, snatched the spoon right outta the kid’s hand, grabbed the tray of food and hurled it to the ground.
“ALBERNES KIND!” (FOOLISH CHILD!), she yelled at the boy.“Do you notknow, have you not heard?These American soldiers are all CHICAGO GANGSTERS!! They will kill you!! That food is poisoned!! And yet you are blockhead enough to eat ofit??!!”
Viciously jerking the boy up off the stairs by his arm, she swatted his ass good and turned to march with him back to the house across the street.As the kid started bawling, I grabbed her by the arm to try to stop her and explain things to her. I spoke and understood the Deutsch pretty damned well by then, and I knew exactly what she’d said; and I was very much dismayed that she actually believed I, or we as Americans, would really try to poison her child…or grandchild, most likely. And I desperately wanted her to understand that this wasn’t the case.
And besides…I wasn’t even from Chicago! (Laughs).
So Itried to talk to her, addressing her as ‘’gnadige frau” (gracious lady) and telling her, “The food is not poisoned! Look!”And I bent over and picked up the tray, and actually scooped up a handful of hash off the ground and ate it right in front of her!“Nicht giftig!”, I kept repeating to her, “nicht giftig!” (Not poisoned!)
Unfortunately, she was having none of it. With a glare at me and a sniff of her upturned nose, she turned away and dragged the bawling kid across the street and into the house and slammed the door behind them.
I felt bad that the little guy never got his chow, and that these people had been so ingrained to hate and distrust us by Nazi propaganda.
But not all the German people were that way. Many of them were quite friendly and distinctly glad to see us…as opposed to the Russians.”
My father told me lots of other stories, some funny, many quite tragic, which I’ll be submitting to Quora in the future. My first story of his got an overwhelming response, and I was glad so many people enjoyed it. I fancy myself a student of WW II, and it really made me pleased that so many other people find so much interest in my dad’s war tales. Thanks to everyone for your views and comments…more to come if you’re interested!
I went to the drive up window at our pharmacy to pick up my script. It was a very blustery day. As I went to put my $20 in the drawer a gust of wind blew it out of my hand. After paying with my ATM card I pulled away and parked. Got out of the car and searched the area but no luck. My thought was I hope whoever found it needed it more than me and drove home. During the next week or so I was in and out of my car including the trunk several times.
I had a bag full of clothes to donate to Goodwill. In order to get to the Goodwill near me I had to drive to the intersection near my pharmacy, turn left, travel about half mile, turn right onto a busy highway, drive another half mile and turn left into the Goodwill parking lot, drive to the back of the store to deliver my donation. The rear parking lot backed up to a wooded area. I took the clothes out of the trunk of my car and deposited them in the bin provided.
Just as I walked to the back of my car a $20 bill blew right up to my feet. I just couldn’t believe it. The bill looked like it had been out in weather for a while. Was it my bill from the pharmacy. Was it somehow stuck to my car or trunk. But how could that be. I had driven my car quite a bit and had been in and out of my car and trunk several times during that week. In any event I was so happy because I sure needed that $20.
When Delusional Woke People Get OWNED
https://youtu.be/TNtVDYnSxh0
TO THE MOM AT THE SCHOOL DROP OFF THIS MORNING
Today I walked my son to his kindergarten class. It was cold and we were huddled together like sardines as we stood outside the door waiting for the bell to ring.
I saw you with your little boy just a few feet from us, and I looked down when I realized you were looking at us. I hoped you didn’t know who we were. I hoped you didn’t know my son was “that kid.” The one who’s not transitioning well in this school year.
I know what the kids say about my son. They go home and tell their parents my kid is bad. Sometimes he pushes and hits. Sometimes he is defiant and refuses to sit down, be quiet, or stay in line.
I know because the kids tell him what they think of him on the playground. “Mark said I’m bad today.” Or “Aiden’s dad said I can’t play with him anymore.” And my heart hurts, because I know he’s struggling in school. And we are working every angle… in school with a specialist, at home, and through classes, books and resources.
Today, you looked at me, then at my son. “You must be K,” you said to my son. And I looked up and smiled sheepishly. It was an apologetic smile. Almost a “I’m sorry you know his name” smile, because that means you’ve heard the stories.
I said to you, “Yes, this is him.”
I whispered when my son stepped away that we are aware he’s causing some trouble and we are working on it. That we take his behavior very seriously.
And then you did something I never expected. I don’t know if I was waiting for you to tell me what you heard K did to your son, or just tell me off. But instead you told me about your older son who struggled with similar problems at this age. You told me that now he’s in high school and he’s a straight A student.
Instead of tearing me down, you lifted me up. You gave me hope. And you handed me an olive branch so I know that I do have an ally during school drop off. An ally I never expected.
You didn’t have to make that connection. You could have ignored us or pretended not to know us. Or yes — you could have told me what you think of my son (you would not be the first). But you didn’t. You showed me grace and kindness and you uplifted me more than I could possibly describe in words.
I told you I would love to learn more about steps you took with your older son. I would love suggestions and guidance and that I would call you. And you know what? I will call you. Even if no suggestions or guidance is ever exchanged. I will call you because you are a friend I want to have. You are a good person.
Supporting evidence: Having spent more than 5 years at TCS I thought employees must accept their manager’s decision, no questions asked. After I moved to Australia I took up a casual hour based contract job. I didn’t mind the pay (which was less than what my experience could get me) because I loved the team. My manager believed in giving credit where it was due and soon the top management wanted to offer a fixed term contract which meant I could take paid leaves. I was so grateful and was about to sign the contract when my manager asked, “Aren’t you going to ask for a raise?”
“But this is so nice of them and I don’t want to make it awkward. What if they think I’m being greedy?”, I asked.
My manager laughed but looked at me seriously as she said, “Ruchika, if you don’t ask, you don’t get! You know you can get more money outside and they know it too. Don’t let them get away with it. Show them you know your worth.”
I nodded and wrote an email only to please my manager. I was so surprised at the response because the higher step pay was granted to me, just like that.
After some time, the management decided to offer me an ongoing permanent position and offered me the topmost step pay in the band. I was about to sign the offer letter as my manager reminded me to ask for a raise again. “But they are already offering me the topmost level in my band and they can’t change the band for this job, so I’m not sure what they can do.”, I responded.
“They will figure out a way if they want to. I know they will because they know you’re good and wouldn’t want to lose you. However, if they can’t, the worse that’ll happen is, they’ll refuse. I can’t see what you have to lose.”
Cursing the awkward situation I was in, I wrote an email trying to sound grateful and confident at the same time. My manager approved the draft and I hit send. By the end of the day, the General Manager asked HR to add a special loading to my pay package, which meant I was earning pretty much the same as the next band without undergoing any admin headache.
The thing is the company knows their good employees and understands, like all relationships, this association needs to be beneficial to both the parties. So if there’s something that you know will help you perform better for your company… just ask!
Boss asked me to train a newly hired paralegal graduate to do my job in one week as she was going to be my backup while I was on vacation.
I asked him how do I train 35 years of experience in a fresh paralegal graduate? I did my best to cram the information before I left for vacation.
She was inattentive and I had grave concerns since she refused to take notes.
Upon my return, I got the blame for every mistake she made during my absence. Each attorney gave me a list of their grievances.
I defended myself and was scolded for insubordination and told my services were no longer required.
So I left, turning in my keys. 4 hours later I receive a text stating that I misunderstood our conversation and that it was not their intention to terminate me.
5 hours later, I receive another text stating that he was no longer firing me but I needed to be less reactive and more understanding of the firm needs.
I decided to help clarify the situation and informed him that my text response confirms the separation terms.
And if you are a teacher, you might be cranky after reading this. It does not put teenage me in a flattering light.
When I was in high school, you had to take 2 years of gym in order to graduate. May I just say, over 30 years later, the most frequent recurring nightmare I have is not having enough of the right credits to graduate high school.
This plagued me.
I hated gym. I wasn’t athletic. I was not a group anything, and was particularly awful at group sports. I’m very tall, so you’d think I’d be good at volleyball. Nope. Into the net every time.
I despised everything about gym, because I was an outsider. Outsiders are most vulnerable in gym class. I just wanted to be alone & read books & listen to Bowie records.
Plus, I hated my body. I thought I was supposed to look like Farrah Fawcett. I did not look like Farrah. I was fat, and in particular I hated my legs.
Back then, you were required to do certain things to pass gym. One of those things was called dressing out. We also had to participate in class, then take a shower & dress for our next class, all in six or seven minutes at the end.
As you can see, this was a lot of body exposure for someone who hated their body so much. Every part of it was a humiliation to me.
I have a picture of myself in a swimsuit after my senior year. Thing is, my body was fine. I’d be delighted to have that body again.
(So if you are a teenager and hate your body, stop it. You are more fabulous than you know.)
Dressing out was changing out of our school clothes & putting on our gym clothes, which was basically a polyester onesie. Navy shorts attached to a navy & white horizontally striped shirt which zipped up the front to our neck.
It was just heinous. See?
image 176
(Photo courtesy of Google images)
I just wouldn’t do it. I’d plead not feeling well & wonder why putting on this onesie & playing dodgeball could possibly advance our lives in any way. I sat on the sidelines staring at the antics of class with great disdain. And I seemed to be getting away with it.
I was not getting away with it.
One day, our gym teacher, Mrs. K, walked over to me. She had a very pleased with herself expression on her face. She was smirking.
Because kids like me were the bane of existence to teachers like her. I had a bad attitude.
Once in a while, teachers will one-up kids like me. My antennae went up. The smirk worried me.
I need to talk to you, she said.
I stood up and gazed at my foe, with her Hamill haircut and velour track suit in a particularly unflattering shade of mauve.
I have to tell you, she said, almost unable to contain her glee, that you are failing gym. There’s no way for you to pass. None. I have told you over and over you have to dress out and participate. You haven’t done either. So, she continued, delivering her coup de grace, unless you go to summer school, you will not graduate with your class.
SUMMER SCHOOL? Oh, HELL no.
I do believe I cried. She was unmoved, giving the standard line that eff-ups like me hear time and time again:
There are consequences to our actions!
It was unbearable.
I did feel ashamed. It was just so stupid and avoidable. I’d truly screwed myself this time.
Two things were certain.
I was not going to summer school.
I was not being left behind a year. Impossible.
So I had to put my thinking cap on & figure this mess out.
Okay. What does she want? What do teachers like her want from students? Above all else?
The answer was clear. The problem was the execution of the plan. She would be suspicious. I had to deliver this perfectly.
The next day, I showed up at gym class. I put on the wretched gym suit. I participated in calisthenics and dodgeball. I showered & dressed for class. I saw her looking at me with my peripheral vision; I did not turn my head or make eye contact.
Me & my new, improved attitude were docile. Subdued. One of the herd.
Next day, I came back. Did the same thing. Participated. Laughed along with the other students. Plays well with others, check.
I knew the fatal flaw would be to ask her to pass me. So I didn’t. Nothing happened. A week went by.
Then one day she calls my name after class. I trot up to her. I keep my eyes big and innocent. I say Yes m’am.
I’ve noticed, she starts, that you’ve been dressing out & participating for a week. Without a reward in sight.
That’s right, I think, keep going…
You have had a real change of attitude.
It’s actually worked, I think, this is just thrilling.
So, she continues, kind now; dare I say moved? If you continue to dress out every day & write a two-page report on the importance of dressing out, I will pass you.
YES
But you have to do it every day, she warns, letting me know not to test her benevolence.
Ah, bien sur, Madame. I give effusive & grateful thanks.
I walk out of there like a boss. I can barely contain my joy. No summer school. I graduate with my class.
I tell my best friend, howling with glee, about how my attitude had changed.
Unbelievable, says my friend T, with more than a little disgust.
What do teachers want most? They want to make a difference in a kid’s life. I let her think she had changed me; that she’d taught me the importance of a good attitude.
What are most people surprised to hear about Australia?
the crustaceans we put on barbeques are called “prawns”, not “shrimp”.
I had never heard of Steve Irwin until after he become famous overseas — he was not that well-known here before he became famous overseas
Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee are anything but “typical Australians” — typical Australians live in cities, like Sydney and Melbourne and the other state, territory, and federal capitals
we rarely see dangerous animals or insects — Australia is not particularly dangerous and we have a long life expectancy
we don’t see many kangaroos or other native animals unless we live well outside the big cities
Pavlovas — you must eat one
Australian confectionery is very good, at least compared to American confectionery
Australian food (meat, vegetables, fruit) is fresh and generally of a high quality
most Australians live near the ocean — the interior is relatively empty (and dry, as in desert)
Australia does not have a lot of Mexican restaurants because we don’t live next door to Mexico — it is a long way from here
Australians do not like Starbucks, and do not have “Burger King” — we call it Hungry Jacks because of a court case run by a business here that already had the name “Burger King”
our Woolworths has no relation to American Woolworths … except our Woolworths stole the name before the American Woolworths tried to open stores here (Woolworths Group (Australia) – Wikipedia
)Australians drive on the left — like the British, Japanese, New Zealanders, Indians, and many other people in this part of the worldwe have winter in June, July, and August, and summer in December, January, and February … and no, we don’t think that is strangeit gets cold here in winter, especially because we build our houses to be cool in summer … and then freeze in winter if we don’t have heaters and woolly jumpers (sweaters).
If you only bring summer clothes to Australia you will suffer during winter months.we have Christmas in summer (December) … because Christmas is not a celebration of winter, it is a celebration set on 25 December
Australians write dates as day/month/year not month/day/yearthe Australian accent is different to the New Zealand accent — just ask a New Zealander to say “fish and chips”: if they say “fush end chups” they are from New Zealand. It is definitely different to any British accent.Australians use A4 paper, not “Letter size”; we use the metric system; our currency is the Australian dollar … and we changed all of those things in my lifetime.our temperature is in Celsius.
No, we don’t understand Fahrenheit, we have to convert it to Celsius first.we put “petrol” in our cars, not “gas” … unless your car has been converted to use liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), in which case we say “LPG”, not “gas”. Petrol is not a gas, it is a liquid.
One boss asked a subordinate to review sick leave usage. The subordinate reported that 40% of all sick leave was taken in conjunction with a weekend. He took it as proof that people were abusing the sick leave system.
The boss ordered all supervisors to require a doctor’s note when someone took sick leave in conjunction with a weekend.
I did a quick analysis of his order and responded, “Monday and Friday are each one fifth of the work week, or 20% of the work week each. Together they add up to 40% of the week. If people get sick at random, they will call in evenly over the work week. You should expect to see an even distribution of 20% of sick leave taken on any given work day. The fact that only 40% call in on Monday and Friday (20% each) proves that no one is abusing sick leave.”
So I was working with this Car Dealership in the States for quite a while, about 4–5 years. Made good money and we had relatively good business practices, which isn’t common in car sales anywhere, and I ended up liking it alot. Anyway, they had this page in the employee handbook that states essentially that if your fired, quit, etc before commission is paid out on the 15th of each month then they were not required to pay you your commission. And that instead of $15 an hour your paychecks were retroactively reduced to minimum wage of $7.75. So, in this dirtiest of fine prints, what it didn’t tell you is that if they fired you on the 14th, which happened ALOT, then instead of getting your commission check, you were handed a bill that you owed them. Unless you worked an impossible amount of hours, you’d never be able to break the “Draw pay” or the money they front you weekly, $600 weekly. You would have to sell an absurd amount of cars, which case your not fired no matter how much you suck, or work 100+ hours a week to cover it. It was just cruel and dirty. I watched many folk get fired on the 14th and on the 15th have a letter from accounting stating that you ower them $300-$500 due in less than 30 days. Everyone screamed it was illegal, but “You signed the agreement” was always the answer. Somebody sued them for it once, and if memory serves me right they dragged it out for about 2 years and settled on not nearly enough money to cover lawyers and court costs. Dirty fine print at its best.
In 2012 a man was traveling in a Suzuki car with 3 others in Patna. He was driving at a speed of 100 kmph on an empty highway. Soon an SUV passed them at a very high speed. The SUV was so fast that it almost got out of control and was about to hit the Suzuki.
To save the accident, the driver of Suzuki tried to move away from the passing SUV. Doing so, the Suzuki got out of control and overturned and hit the corner of the road.
image 177
(photo for illustration only)
Four people in the car were badly injured, but narrowly escaped. The SUV driver fled after the accident and there was no one else on the road. Suzuki’s driver was badly injured and he got out of the car and sat on the middle of the road, shouting “Save!”.
It was 36 degree heat and the road was scorching. The driver lay on the road thinking that he was about to die. He wanted to help the other 3 passengers, who were still inside the car and were moaning in pain.
A few minutes later a car arrived. The man who got out of the car made a video of the accident with his phone. Then he took a closeup of the driver, whose face was covered in blood. Then this person sat in his car and left from there.
A few more minutes passed and the other car stopped. A middle-class couple came out and saw the driver lying on the hot road. The couple went back to their car and came back with a sheet.
To protect the injured driver from the scorching sun, the couple shed a sheet over him and stood up. They both stood in the sun. The husband then called emergency health services and asked them to come to the scene immediately.
They both stood there giving shade to the injured driver for almost 70 minutes! So long in the sun!
After the ambulance arrived, the couple took two other passengers in their car along with the ambulance.
The couple left the hospital after the four injured were admitted to the ICU. The driver narrated this story after recovering from an injured condition for several months, but he could not meet the noble couple.
China is militarily aggressive towards Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
China is a dictatorship.
China is trapping developing countries in debt with the Belt and Road Initiative.
There are many, many more lies. They could fill a book, so it’s not appropriate to expound on all of it in a Quora answer.
Some food for thought…
China has fought no wars since 1979. How many wars has America fought?
China has legitimate maritime disputes in the South China Sea, just like USA and Canada have no fewer than five maritime disputes.
China does not sanction other countries, nor interfere in their politics, nor overthrow their governments. America has done all of this.
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 85% of Chinese trust their government. Only 40% of Americans do, and 30% of Brits do.
image 13
According to Latana’s Democracy Perception Index (which measures what people think of their political system), China is the sixth most democratic country, well ahead of Canada, UK, and USA.
image 178image 179
The Global South gives overwhelming support to the Belt and Road Initiative. Over 150 countries participate!
Married Women Held Accountable for Late Night Encounters with Under Age Boys
At 4pm he told us to compile a report and action plan ready for tomorrow’s 830am meeting. Now to do this properly would take each of us a full day’s work. All 7 of us protested, and asked for more time. I asked when he expected us to find the time, and he told us to work on it that night at home. I openly said “sorry, that’s unreasonable. I have a 90 minute drive home, then I’ll be cooking dinner, and then helping with showers and homework. When that’s done I have about an hour before I’m ready to fall asleep. His reply? “Get your wife to make the dinner and shower the kids while you work on the report.” And then he left the room. So we all united and decided not to do it.
He went off his tree at 830am the next morning when nothing was done. I had a word to the very nice HR lady, about what he said, along with the list of people in the room who witnessed it. When he blew his gasket and wanted HR to issue warnings, she simply told him to reschedule the meeting for the following day, and let us work all day uninterrupted to prepare for it, in work time.
My ex worked at a Friendlies restaurant. They had that wonderful phenomena with the Sunday morning church crowd. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, ask anyone who works Sunday morning at low-end restaurants.
This one family was notorious for demanding exemplary service, running the servers ragged and not tipping. On my ex’s last day of work, they showed up and did their usual. Rather than not tipping, they left a little card that said “I’ve given your tip to Jesus!” She balled up the card, followed them out into the parking lot, threw it at the dad and said “Jesus doesn’t pay my fucking rent!”
The dad flew back into the restaurant and demanded she be fired. The manager said it was her last day, and maybe things like this wouldn’t happen if you tipped the server. It was golden.
70% of people keep things to themselves to avoid being judged by others.
People between the ages of 18–33 are the most stressed in the world After the age of 48, stress level tends to reduce.
The most common lie said by humans is ” I’m fine”
Pretty people are automatically more acceptable by people. Average looking people have to do something above average to get accepted and ugly people have to do something extraordinary!
Always tell the truth. So when you have to tell a lie, people are more likely to believe you.
More you talk about a person to others, more you fall in love with that person.
If you announce your goals or tell someone else about them, you are less likely to accomplish them because of lack of motivation interest since you have nothing to prove.
A true friend who understands your troubles is far more valuable than a hundred friends who only show up for your smile.
We tend to behave better when we are being watched.
Happier is not the one who has more money, but the one who has more money than his neighbor.
Anger increases the desire of possession in people. People make more efforts to obtain the object that is associated with angry faces.
‘Maturity’ has no connection with ‘Age’. Yes, age is just a number…you can find more maturity in a child, than a person in his 50’s. Maturity comes with ‘Empathy’.
Intelligent people tend to have fewer friends.
We want more choices, but choose better with fewer options.
I’ll admit that when I conducted interviews — either alone or as part of a panel — there were times when I liked, or disliked, a candidate early on. That’s why I came up with a series of questions to ask and made sure to ask them all: I wanted to give the candidate an opportunity to change my mind, one way or the other.
I will say that my initial impression was right about 70% of the time but ending an interview after five minutes would be a waste of the candidate’s and, more importantly, my time. In my 50+ years in the work force, there was only one occassion when I ended an interview prematurely. When I owned a security guard company I interviewed a woman for a job as Operations Manager. When she sat down she said that she’d heard good things about my company and she really wanted the job. Then she stood up and leaned on my desk, so I could see down her blouse, and said she’d do anything to get the job. I looked at her and smiled, and she repeated, Anything.
I ended the interview at that point, after less than ten minutes, and thanked her for coming in. I told her I planned on making a decision before the weekend (she’d come in on Tuesday) and I would let her know what is was. I had my assistant call her two days later and tell her another candidate had been hired. That chick was a lawsuit waiting to happen and I wanted no part of her.
When I’ve approached a table and before I’ve even said hello I’ve been met with ‘just so you know, we are on tripadvisor’. *sigh*. I can tell straight away I’m going to get AT LEAST one complaint about food/service/drinks/the colour of the tablecloths or whatever other excuses they want to make in order to receive a discount or face a terrible review.
We have a group of women who come in twice a month. There are always between 8-10 of them. They are taken care of as well as we take care of all our other guests. The fact you leave reviews on tripadvisor is not special and you will not be treated any differently. Every time they come in they order the same lamb dish. Everytime they ALL complain about the lamb dish.
The first time I was apologetic and gave a good discount on the bill. Two weeks later it happened again I gave a discount but started to suspect something when other patrons complimented the lamb and I had watched them talking for a good 15 minutes after food was served before complaining the food was cold. The third time it happened I was pissed off. Not only were they generally rude to the staff but when they paid the bill they would make a big deal out of saying they left a little extra for the server and it has never been more than 5 pence. Luckily we are in a country where we don’t rely on tips to earn a living.
So this third time they come in; as usual they want lamb and as usual they complain about it. When it comes time to pay I take the complete bill over, no discount.
The chief moaner said that as they hadn’t enjoyed the lamb they should get some discount. I was once again reminded they were on tripadvisor. I proceeded to tell them that they had been here twice now, ordered the same thing and complained about it both times. They were choosing to come here and if the food was that bad they didn’t need to come back. They were more than welcome to leave a terrible review and in exchange we didn’t have to give them free food every other week or put up with their terrible attitude and it was a worthwhile trade.
Shockingly they didn’t argue back just paid the bill and left. Also shockingly they came back two weeks later like normal and ordered the lamb, which when asked if everything was okay with their meals it was ‘delicious’ or ‘lovely, thank you’.
They still come every fortnight and we never got a negative review on tripadvisor.
She Sells Her Soul For 50 Years Of Pleasure, But When The Devil Comes For Her, She Outwits Him
In 2022, I visited New York City to take a training for my job.
I set aside the day before the training started as a sightseeing day. I knew I wanted to visit Ellis Island and the 9–11 Museum, so I bought a package ticket for both through the website where I booked my flight and hotel.
On my sightseeing day, I took the subway from my hotel down to Battery Park and met my tour group there. The tour guide, who was wonderfully intelligent, knowledgeable and interesting, took us to the ferry, which took us to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
After the ferry returned, it turned out that I was the only one of the group who had also signed up to go to the 9–11 Museum. The tour guide walked me down there, saying it was only a few blocks away.
I’m 63 years old, and not in very good physical condition. The temperature was over 90 degrees, and I do not do well in the heat. So it was a long walk for me, and I had to take frequent rest breaks. The tour guide was quite patient with me, and we had a really great conversation during this walk.
At one point in the conversation, I mentioned my husband. The tour guide said to me, “Your husband must be very smart. I know this because you are very smart, and I can tell you would never put up with a guy who wasn’t as smart as you. You would have him for breakfast.”
I will never forget that complement!
P. S. FYI, my husband IS very smart.
Italian Wedding Soup
This Italian Wedding Soup Recipe is simply the best! Made with acini de pepe, beef and pork meatballs, carrots, celery, greens, and Parmesan cheese. This soup is SO flavorful! Serve with crusty bread and a glass of wine and enjoy!
Packed with onions and carrots, spinach and pasta and meatballs, this hearty soup is perfect for chilly winter nights. Serve a big bowl of wedding soup with crusty rolls for a satisfying meal.
Italian Wedding Soup 33 1 of 1
Yield: 29 cups; about 16 (12 ounce) servings
Ingredients
Meatballs
2 hamburger rolls or 4 slices white bread
2/3 cup milk
1 large egg
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 pounds ground beef or meatloaf mix
1 medium onion, grated or very finely diced
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan or Asiago cheese
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried parsley
Soup
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, diced; about 2 cups
2 cups finely diced carrots, about 3 large carrots
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and minced
4 to 4 1/2 quarts (16 to 18 cups) chicken broth, homemade or purchased
1 1/2 teaspoons dried Italian herbs or 3/4 teaspoon each dried oregano and dried basil
10-ounce box frozen chopped spinach
1 teaspoon salt, to taste
1/2 to 1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper, to taste
2 2/3 cups uncooked orzo, ditalini, or other small, roundish pasta
Instructions
Meatballs
Combine the bread, egg, milk, and salt, stirring until everything is well moistened. Allow to sit for about 10 minutes to soften.
Add the ground meat, onion, cheese, and herbs. Mix gently until thoroughly combined.
Shape tiny meatballs, (about 1 inch diameter or less). Using a level teaspoon scoop (which volume-wise is actually 2 level measuring teaspoons) makes about the right size. Place the meatballs on a parchment-lined or lightly greased cookie sheet, and refrigerate them while you prepare the soup.
Soup
Get out a large pot, at least 6 quart capacity. Pour the olive oil into the bottom of the pot, and add the onions and carrots. Sauté, stirring frequently, until the onions are translucent and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, and cook for another couple of minutes.
Add the broth and herbs, bring to a simmer, and cook gently for 10 minutes.
Add the frozen chopped spinach, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, total; the soup will take awhile to come back to a simmer, due to the frozen spinach. Help it along by breaking it up with a fork as it cooks.
Gently drop the meatballs into the soup. Simmer the soup for 30 minutes or so, then stir in the pasta, cooking until it’s al dente. For orzo, this will take about 8 minutes or so.
Add salt and pepper to taste; using reduced-salt canned chicken broth, we added 1 teaspoon salt; and 1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper.
Serve the soup garnished with freshly grated Parmesan or Asiago cheese.
When I was a Probation and Parole officer I had this guy on parole and probation at the same time. He had several positive cocaine drug tests. Usually three positive tests was where they would be arrested. Larry was uniquely qualified for extra chances. I can’t remember the fourth reason, but it most have been pretty good for me to have given him the pass. Then he got his fifth positive test. As much as I liked him I felt like I had to arrest him then. So, I confronted him about the positive test, and instead of denying it like most parolees did he said, “Officer Davis, I was this woman, and she poured cocaine all over her breasts and p**sy, and said, Larry go down on all this stuff.” Then he looked at me like a five year old child would, even though he was a forty some year ago man and said, “Officer Davis, what did you expect me to do?”
I never new if that story was true or not, I’m pretty sure it is, but anyway it was such a good story that Larry got another chance and completed hi probation and parole, with a little help from me.
Older Woman Leaves Her Good Husband And Can’t COPE With The CONSEQUENCES
This was back around the mid-90’s in So Cal. We were having dinner with serveral of my husband’s coworkers and their spouses. It was a fairly well-known Italian place, I ordered shrimp and broccoli pasta. I took a few bites, and there was a large curled up caterpillar (I later learned was a “tomato horn worm”). It was the size of the shrimp, but not quite a brilliant green like the broccoli.
I didn’t want to make a huge fuss, so I pushed food around the plate. The server came around, and noticed that my plate was still mostly full. He asked if there was something wrong, and I pointed to the caterpillar. He went kind of pale, and quickly whisked my plate off the table. My husband noticed, but with the rest of the table eating and conversing, no one else did.
The owner of the place came over and very quietly apologized, and offered me another item. I no longer had much appetite. He asked if I would like a dessert, but no, I just couldn’t. You could tell he was genuinely aghast. I didn’t make any announcement to the rest of the table, but just said I was full. They didn’t know anything until they were told that the entire table’s bill was comped.
We still laugh about that “green” shrimp. And yes, that restaurant is still in business.
Irishman here. About 25 years ago, our next door neighbour went on holidays to Spain for 2 weeks leaving their 16 year old son behind. The son had a series of parties all week and I called in to him to have words with him. When I called in, there were a group of kids there and when I was talking to him, I noticed from his eyes that I may have done better talking to the dog. He was as high as a kite and you could see and smell the drugs. I reported it the Gardai (Irish Police) who called out to him, but did nothing.
Friday of the week came and the party was beginning to grow with loads of people and loud music. I couldn’t take it any longer and my wife, kids and I went to our holiday home in Wexford for the weekend. Before we left, we informed the Gardai and some neighbours.
The following morning, we got a call to say the house next door went on fire and we had a lot of fire damage in our house. We came home to chaos.
The young lad next door moved in with some relatives nearby and they refused to ring his parents in Spain to tell them in case it would ruin their holiday.
When they came home, we spoke to them and they refused to accept any responsibility and we had to put it through our insurance. At the time, I was very naive regarding putting in an insurance claim and missed out on a lot. I should have replaced stuff where I just got them repaired and made do with a lot of other stuff. In short, I only claimed for half of what I should have and in saying that, my insurance increased for the next 5 years and affected our no claims bonus for 7 years. It cost me 10s of thousands of Punts.
The next door neighbours got their house completely gutted and rebuilt. Essentially a new house. The only thing that remained of the original house were the 4 walls, All concrete. They then moved out to a new house elsewhere.
In answer to your question: Yes they should pay and carry out a clean up. But it didn’t happen in my case.
When my son was in 8th grade, he refused to get in my ex’s car when she came to pick him up. I never found out why.
We took him to counseling, she had him meet with her minister (I took him over). In all cases, he sat there for over an hour and never said a word.
Eventually, she sued me for not forcing him to go with her. Judge took testimony. Told him all the things that we had tried to find out what was going on. Judge decided to take a crack at it. Spent 15 minutes chatting with him in chambers. Judge found him personable and likeable, but when he brought up why he wanted nothing to do with his mother, my son shut down and refused to interact with him.
Judge’s decision was that my son had veto powers over any custody agreement. My son never talked with his mother again until after high school graduation. He is 25 years now, he still has a bad relationship with his mother, and I still don’t know why.
1968. Single Mom, very poor. So poor I couldn’t afford needle & thread to sew my good blouse with a torn sleeve at shoulder. Worked for GSA, government with 2 other office ladies. Main Secretary had to have major surgery; off several weeks. The other lady became ill & took extended leave also. Left me to do all the work.
I didn’t mind as all the custodial/maintenance persons told me what a great job I was doing. They all said my annual appraisal warranted an outstanding rating; meaning a bonus of $200.
My boss called me in for the appraisal and his words: “I think you deserve an excellent rating but if I give it to you, I will have to fill out a lot of paper work. Then what will you have to work for next year”.
I was crushed and dumbfounded. It was unbelievable to the others persons as well. Within a few months, I found another job. Karma stepped in. Boss called me within a month and asked me to return as the other gals were leaving.
I was 16 years old and had an appointment my mother made because I was bleeding from my rectum. I was a 16 year old who thought it was all so dumb and wasn’t this doctors appointment just stupid and why mom did you bring me here… I was vocalizing all of this and my mom was crying and I was being awful. Finally I hear, “Shut up you little bitch!”
I was stunned. My mother probably wanted to applaud the man and I don’t blame her.
That doctor found very active ulcerative colitis. I was pretty sick. Pretty dumb too. To that end he went on to become my doctor for the next 20 years or until he retired. We had a real bond because of his big mouth.
On the day of his retirement he gave me a big hug and told me that I’d come a long way from the little brat he had met at first. He told me I was his favorite patient now. Good thing he was the best doctor I ever had.
He never apologized for saying that to me, but I did apologize for acting like a little bitch. Entitled one at that. Lol. You go Dr. Cocco!
*****PS. For anyone that thinks this behavior was wrong for a doctor. Maybe. However in this case I was bleeding actively from the inside out. This doctor could tell that with no exam really. All a person in GI bleed status has to do is fart and if you are in the medical profession you know what it smells like and tastes like pretty much without a “guaiac” or test. In this case the doctor could tell that I was mega non compliant as I was 16 and you don’t die at 16. So he stunned me into submission to get me out of there and to a hospital.
My mother had a child die from a bowel that was twisted and maybe she did or did not know what was going on. This was a whole different era. She was probably afraid it was happening again. In any event I was a bitchy little entitled brat back then. Even if it wasn’t emergent she should or would have clapped. Lord knows she tried everything else.
Just so you all know the rest of it maybe you’ll get more of the big picture.
I’ve been pretty busy as of late, and I had another blood pressure scare. I was terribly uncomfortable, and the stress of Tanzhou driving was going to have me pop.
Stage two hypertension. Not a good thing.
But I fixed it on my own.
What I did was started doing arm curls with weights. I do a couple of reps each and every day.
50 reps each arm with 5kg. Nothing too strenuous.
Guess what?
Yup, my blood pressure goes down to that of me in my 20’s.
120 BP
…
I mean, I’m not doing a 20 to 30 minute routine. I am only doing five minutes a day.
Yet… it works!
I’m averaging 120 BP. Rather than the 160 – 170 that I was dealing with.
I also cut out my morning coffee, and all caffeinated drinks. Oh, I will get a coffee from time to time with the Mrs at a restaurant, but the days of the drive-through habit are over.
Motherfucker does not mean what most people think.
Before the American Civil War white males would visit “Pleasure Houses” to have sex with the slaves. As slaves these women would have no choice but to do whatever the man wanted.
But some would, somehow, be more abusive than the slave owner could tolerate. Basically beating the slave to the point she couldn’t be used for a while.
The men who had a reputation for this were only allowed to have sex with the former “Breeding Stock”. The older slaves who had already given birth to several new slaves.
These men were called “Motherfuckers” for the obvious reason. They were so low that slave owners cared more about their slaves (who they didn’t think as fully human) than them.
In WWII the meaning shifted. As Americans retook France, many French women were generally appreciative, and showed the GIs their appreciation. But that only goes so far. There were some guys that couldn’t get laid even by women who would, “Support the troops” so to speak.
For these men they could use the generous food rations the US Army gave to give a starving widow’s family a few days worth of food for a quickie.
So it referred to guys who were such losers they could only get laid if the woman’s choice was to sleep with them or let her children starve.
So the “mother” being referred to in the cuss, is a woman who’s in such desperate straits she would do anything, even sleep with the “motherfucker”. The implication being they couldn’t get a legitimate prostitute to sleep with them.
An American Civil war?
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Medvedev:
“The formation of the Texas People’s Republic is becoming increasingly realistic. What I wrote about at the end of the year before last in a joking prediction.
The American administration demonstrates complete incapacity to handle the migration crisis that has erupted in one of the largest states in the USA. Its governor boldly ignores the White House’s position with the feeble old man Biden and starts rebuilding barbed wire barriers. Anything to defend against the influx of migrants who are crossing the southern border uncontrollably. Another vivid example of the weakening of U.S. hegemony, occurring from within due to the actions of Americans themselves.
Official Washington, so enthusiastically supporting Kiev’s neo-Nazis and seemingly noticing nothing else, has shown itself to be impotent on matters of domestic policy. The scholastic decisions of the Supreme Court that migration issues fall under the jurisdiction of federal authorities, not the state, are detached from reality. Due to their inaction, these authorities may finally push the population of Texas, which is already seriously considering secession, to the breaking point. History knows cases where individual states attempted to part ways with the United States and form a confederation. All of this led to a bloody civil war, claiming the lives of thousands and thousands of people.
One way or another, America may face an irresolvable constitutional crisis and plunge into a prolonged abyss of a new, possibly even more destructive, civil confrontation. The Western world will watch with bated breath, fearing the American mess. However, these are their problems.
And although the turmoil in the USA poses significant risks to global stability, the rest of the world, munching on popcorn, observes with some schadenfreude the onset of the bad illness of Pindostan.”
Sinister Parodies Of Classic Children’s Books
Oh baby, here we are going to take a trip down the twisted mind of an artist. He’s got this gig of parody artwork that gave me a few chuckles, and repelled me as well. Anyway, it’s a quaint diversion, and I hope you all appreciate it.
“Bad Children’s Books” or the classic children’s books from 1940’s to 1960’s hijacked by illustrator Bob Staak. Subversive, disturbed, twisted, but full of humor!
Why did Phoenicians start forming the colonies so late? They have been on the Mediterranean since 1500 and developed active sea trade between late Bronze Age civilizations not long after?
Well. There were these guys called the Sea Peoples. They weren’t very nice at all. They raped, killed, pillaged & burned all the civilizations in the Mediterranean c.1200 B.C. They wiped out the Mycenaean Greeks, Minoans, Hittites, Trojans & Ugarit. The only ones to survive were the Egyptians & Phoenicians. It’s kind of hard to build a trading empire with these guys rampaging all over. It’s better to wait & let them fizzle out after a few centuries.
The guys got no marbles
Vulture Mine Tostadas
This is my own creation. I named it for a mine near Wickenburg right here in Arizona. I’ve been making it for a number of years. It’s a good cooler weather dinner. Instead of making the chili as instructed, you can use your favorite chili – even store-bought chili – and prepare the potatoes portion of the recipe, serving your chili over the mashed potatoes.
viva
Prep: 15 min | Cook: 1 hr | Yield: 4 large “tostadas”
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef or ground turkey
1 1/4 cups minced raw onion
1 can pinto beans
1 1/3 cups tomato sauce
2 tablespoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin (comino)
1 cup water
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
8 cups mashed potatoes
4 cups shredded lettuce (optional)
1/2 cup chopped raw onion
3/4 cup grated longhorn or Cheddar
Instructions
Brown ground beef and onion, draining fat. Add pinto beans and tomato sauce, cooking for 15 minutes.
Combine chili powder, flour, water and a little salt; blend this paste into previous mixture. Cook for 45 minutes over low heat, stirring frequently.
Meanwhile, prepare mashed potatoes with butter, milk and black pepper, adding only enough milk to ensure rather stiff mashed potatoes.
To serve, spread mashed potatoes in dinner plate to resemble a 2-inch thick tostada (with a rim around the outer edge). Spoon chili into depression and top with lettuce, onion and cheese.
Ukr Bad Day: Putin Calls Macron Bluff, No West Troops Ukr; Belgorod Disaster; Rus Chasov Yar Canal
What was the strangest way an embezzler was caught?
My father was a store construction field supervisor for The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P Grocery Stores) during the early ‘50s. During his understudy period, his supervisor regaled him with amusing stories of his days with the company that stretched back more than 40 years. One story was about less than expected sales at a brand new store.
Below, a typically thrilled crowd packed in tightly at a new A&P Supermarket Grand Opening:
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The new store was a success: larger, better stocked, off-street parking, new and exciting interior. Sales were way up over the old store it replaced, but not nearly as much as other new stores in similar neighborhoods. Because it was at the low end of sales and profit increases, it got extra scrutiny.
Secret shoppers reported that the store was open and thriving during its assigned hours. That the shelves were stocked. That the customers were jamming the aisles. That the shopping carts were being heaped high. That the employees seemed diligent in monitoring for shrinkage, yet shrinkage was determined to be sky high. Auditors were sent in to check receipts. The eight registers were being fully and completely tallied. Secreted observers with binoculars saw no evidence of vehicles driving off with bulk loads of merchandise. Shoplifting seemed to be in line with other stores. The manager was reported to be present, engaged, and energetic in his duties.
The fellow my father worked for was asked to review the layout of the store to see if something was wrong with how shoppers were being navigated through it. He went in and walked the aisles, saw nothing unusual. He followed numerous shoppers through the store and through the checkout lanes and out to the parking lots… nothing amiss. He was standing in line at one of the checkout counters one day about a week into his sleuthing and analysis when out of boredom he idly counted the checkout lines. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Nine. Wait. What?
He left the store and informed his Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company bosses that the store’s layout was indeed the issue: the manager was embezzling by having installed a bootleg ninth line but was reporting only the sales of the authorized eight. My dad’s supervisor swore that he’d told his bosses, “well, either we need to fire the manager or else put up a new sign that says A&P&Fred’s Supermarket”.
They went with “fire Fred”, naturally.
What do you think?
Has a customer ever intervened on your behalf when you were being treated poorly by a co-worker or boss?
No, but I’ve intervened. I was at a Quiznos. The only people there were the owner and a young girl. As she was making my sandwich, the owner kept up a stream of insults and criticism.
By the time she went to ring me up, the poor thing was in tears. I asked her if she was new, and she said it was her first day and first job. I said I don’t usually give advice to strangers, but no one in any job needs to put up with abuse by a boss, and she should walk.
She said her parents would be mad, so I recommended that she explain to her parents exactly what her boss said.
I even gave her my card and said if her parents wanted a witness as to how poorly her boss treated her, to have them call me.
Her boss heard what I said and started giving me shit. I told him he was a horrible boss, and probably a horrible human, and that I’d would let everyone I knew not to give him their business.
The girl walked out with me and I escorted her to her car.
I never heard from the girl’s parents, but the place was closed a month or so later. This was when Quiznos was doing well
What are some mind-blowing facts about food?
1.Potatoes can be used to remove rust. Simply cut it in half, add salt to the surface and there you go. Rub it against any corroded objects.
2.Vinegar, Ketchup, lemon juice, can also remove rust. Basically any food with oxalic acid/citric acid will do. Save yourself some money from buying rust removers.
3. Lemon juice can be used to remove highlighter strains. Get some juice on a piece of cotton, rub it on the highlighted text and the color will fade.
4. Your average apple is a year old. Most apples are picked slightly unripe, treated with chemicals and stored in warehouses for 9–12 months.
5. Banana candies are what bananas used to taste like. Ever wondered why banana candies taste nothing like bananas? That’s because it was based off the Gros Michel banana, which was completely wiped out by the Panama disease (fungus), after that we are left with our replacement bananas.
6. Red bell peppers are simply ripen green bell peppers. Yellow or orange bell peppers are also different stages of the bell pepper. They are the same fruit.
7. Popsicles are invented by an 11-year-old. He invented the popsicle by accident when a drink he made was frozen with the stir stick stucked between.
8. Almond allergens can be transferred through sex. If you have an almond allergy, and your partner have just eaten almonds, don’t have sex.
9. You can make diamonds with peanut butter. Peanut butter is a carbon-rich material, imerge it through enough pressure and it becomes diamonds. I wonder where diamond shops get their diamonds from…
10. The original Coca-Cola contains cocaine. The name basically comes from it’s two main ingredients, Coca leaf and Kola nuts. Coca leaf contains cocaine.
11. Fruit stickers are edible. So is the glue used to glue it. But unless you like eating stickers I’ll advice you to peel it off.
12. Bananas, cucumbers and kiwis are berries, while strawberries, blackberries, raspberries not berries but aggregate fruit.
I’m not stopping
What is the best comeback you used on someone?
I left home one evening to go to the post office and the supermarket after that.
It’s winter, it’s cold, so the car has to warm up a bit, but after a few seconds I put it in drive and got to the post office in a few seconds. I just need to go in, open my P.O. box, get the mail and get back to the car. The engine wasn’t warmed up yet – my dad told me it not too good to turn it off so soon when it’s still cold – so I left it running for half a minute, tops.
By the way, I live in a very small town (village) north of the big city.
Miss Karen Knowitall comes in as I get back to the car and tells me I should have shut the engine off when I got out. She doesn’t like to breathe car exhaust when she leaves the city to go to the country side.
As I got in the car, I just answered: “Ah yes, I know the feeling! I moved to this town to get away from the condescending a$$h0le$ of the city …
But, hey! You can’t always get what you want, ma’am. Right?
And I drove off !
Japan – Tokyo Suburbs: Walking around Yotsugi • 4K HDR
Notice no con-trails. They are just not anywhere in Asia. Only in America and Europe.
It is called mancinella (Hippomane mancinella) and is considered the most dangerous tree in the world, as well as the most poisonous. It is a plant native to the Americas, with particular reference to Florida, the United States and Central America.
Its venom is so powerful that it is advisable to stay a couple of meters away from it. Its fruits are similar to small and tempting apples, but even a few bites could be lethal.
Christopher Columbus had nicknamed the fruit of the mancinella, “little apple of death”.
It seems that this plant drove the horses who ate it crazy. Hence the word Hippomaniac.
The white resin of the mancinella is very caustic and poisonous. A single drop can cause severe skin irritation, with swelling, dermatitis and burns. Even raindrops coming from the branches of the mancinella can damage the skin or even make you blind if they get into your eyes.
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Even the bark is toxic. Burning it causes the release of harmful substances that can cause temporary, and in some cases permanent, blindness. The combination of risks associated with the mancinella have allowed it to win and maintain the Guinness Book of Records as the most dangerous tree in the world.
Men Are Oppressed Not Women (They’ve Been Lying To You)
What firearm would you recommend for defense against home invaders?
“What firearm would you recommend for defense against home invaders?”
Paintball.
Yes, yes, I know you’re going to say it’s not a ‘firearm’, but you haven’t thought things through.
If someone enters your house at night and you wake up, you think ‘intruder’ and you fire that Desert Eagle Penile Compensation piece in your dark bedroom — without donning your hearing protection (because, who is going to have hearing protection with that Desert Eagle on their nightstand, right?) — fire that piece in the darkness at the shadow in the doorway, you know what will happen. The noise will replace your hearing with a loud ‘iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii’ and your retina will be sporting these muzzle flash afterimages of your wife crumpling in the doorway. Or, in the unlikely event that it’s not your teenage daughter sneaking back into the house after leaving through her bedroom window, but an axe murderer — you just rendered yourself too blind and deaf to re-aim and shoot again.
Now, reconsider my suggestion and imagine you have a paintball gun on your nightstand.
First of all, no flashes and noise to mess with your night vision and hearing. Just a ‘pffft’ and angry cursing from the shadow in the doorway as he’s trying to wipe paint from his eyes. Because you know that just like you don’t have hearing protection on your nightstand, he sure as hell isn’t wearing paintball protection on his nocturnal visits. Paintballs on your unprotected body hurt like fuck. And the intruder won’t know what’s happening. No muzzle flashes or loud noises, just the sound of a blowdart and getting stung and wet all over — that’s unnerving, man, and I’d like to see the intruder who wouldn’t scamper back to whatever rock he crawled out from under. (Did I say that right? Sounds right…)
And while he runs like fuck from the stinging wet paint, you call the cops and tell them there’s an intruder running around your neighbourhood, a man splattered with purple paint. However incompetent the police are in your area, they should still be able to find someone covered in paintball paint.
Plus, if you make a mistake and confuse family members with intruders, you don’t have to take them to the ER (or bury them), but you simply apologize and help them wash off the paint.
So, forget about all those macho handcannons and just get yourself a paintball gun for home defense. Your NRA neighbour might laugh at you, but he’s going to be the one with the axe buried between his starry eyes from the muzzle flash, while there’s still an almost full magazine in his Desert Eagle.
A lot of people respond that my answer is ridiculous and dangerous. And they might be right — pelting an intruder armed with an assault rifle with paint balls might well result in getting you killed. However, I posted this answer not to promote paintball guns for home defence, but to think ‘outside the box’. In the comments, a lot of people also offered their own alternative solutions — shotguns loaded with rock salt, pepperballs, et cetera — and that was my intention: instead of looking to use lethal force, what alternatives are there?
Also, many commenters seem to believe that I would just shoot at an intruder with paintballs and then wait for them to respond. I guess they haven’t read my other answers and don’t know about my experience with violence. I can’t blame them, but, no, I wouldn’t just stand there like an idiot, but use the paintball attack to close the distance to blade range.
And another edit:
Some commenters say that defending your house with firearms is a Christian duty and that the Ten Commandments don’t say ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, but ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’. My thoughts on that subject:
I’m raised Christian, but became agnostic because of the hypocrisy of organised religion. However, even if these commenters are right, using a lethal weapon to repel an intruder (99% of intruders are after possessions, not looking to murder you in your sleep) is not exactly ‘Christian’: even a casual reader of the gospel would understand that Jesus Christ himself would not condone the spilling of blood over mere possessions. Therefore, arming yourself with lethal weapons in order to repel intruders is premeditated killing, i.e. murder. There are plenty of effective non-lethal weapons (tasers, for instance) that can be used without killing the intruder.
But what about the killers and rapists?
If there is a high rate of homicidal intruders in your neighbourhood, high enough to warrant the stockpiling of lethal weapons for ‘home defence’, you might want to look into relocating your family. Chances are that the ‘reporting’ on these ‘deadly home invasions’ is merely scare tactics by groups like the NRA in order to sell more guns. In reality, getting killed by an intruder is as unlikely as getting killed by a Great White shark.
In reality, most child rapists do not jump from bushes or climb into the bedroom window — in the majority of child rape cases, the rapist is familiar to the child, i.e. family members, daycare staff, teachers, priests*, and baby sitters. In other words, the people to whom we entrust our children.
(* Personally, I loathe the people citing the Catholic catechism to morally justify using deadly force defending their children from getting raped by intruders. If you want to keep your children from getting raped, keep them far away from Catholic priests.)
Women Got Shocked After Hearing These Stats Of The Ideal Man
I want to tell you all about a little “family issue” that I have had and how I dealt with it.
When I fell in love with my wife (in China), I had to “jump though some hoops” to show my value and worth. And part of this was to buy her a house.
It’s a common thing in China, and my wife’s family expected it.
Now, there was more detailed issues and complexities involved. As Wenzhou has their own quirks. But let’s keep this simple.
I bought a house in Shenzhen when Shenzhen was just a small dirt city in the early 2000’s.
Not a big house. Not a great house. But a good real home.
Cost me all that I had, too.
Well, over the years that little house grew up in value.
I paid $40,000 for it in 2003.
In 2007 they put a subway near it. And it’s value increased to $2M.
In 2013, they built a subway UNDER it, and the value went to $10M.
…
Yuppur. Best thing I ever did!
…
But wait.
Meanwhile, her father was trying to get his business get off the ground and was burrowing money left and right. He had taken something like $24M from various investors, and was showing nothing.
Nothing.
Turns out, when a cousin went to audit his “factory”, he discovered that it was all a sham. The father was playing the futures market and burning though the money like toilet paper. The last straw was when family all put up their homes for mortgages to “keep his business going”.
It was a lie.
Everyone gathered the “emergency money” to help him “keep the business going”. But it didn’t happen.
He just inserted $10 into the “wish machine” and it ate it all, and left him with nothing.
…
Enter me.
Well, since I am a foreigner, and all the rest, the father and mother had this great scheme to take our home, and our savings, and also take out a mortgage off that home that was ours and then give all the money to them… “for the business”.
I about had a heart attack, and for the first time… my Chinese wife had to say NO!
She had to.
Our child’s education, life and our future would have been absolutely eviscerated.
NO FUCKING WAY!
…
Chaos ensued.
So she called the extended relatives. All wealthy. All owning businesses and fully knowledgeable and they all went together to sort the entire mess out. The father had set up “the factory” in a distant region. So they all boarded planes to visit the factory.
And so they arrived there at that city. And they all got in cars and drove to “the factory”.
No factory.
No building.
No employees.
Just a garage with a roll down garage door. A computer, with a chair and a modem, and a cot along the wall. Empty. Desolate. Pathetic.
The relatives were furious.
So…
They seized the father’s debts. Everyone contributed a few million each. To do so, many had to sell their homes and vehicles and stop their children’s education. He is now the pariah of the family.
Saved.
But, shunned.
…
We kept our house, and my wife told the father…
Here is one million.
That is it.
Do not ask us for anything else. EVER. This is the end.
You are now out of debt, you need to get a job... any job. And stop saying that you are too good to work for someone else.
You burned though $20M in ten minutes. ENOUGH!
It was “pay off money” to get them off our back.
Do not think that MM has it easy. Family is family, and we all inherit the problems of others when we merge families.
That is my debt NOW that I will spend the rest of my life paying off.
THE REST OF MY FUCKING LIFE.
For my wife’s gambling futures father who thought that he was too good to work a “real job”. Sheech!
Digging way back into my memories. I grew up pretty much like other children. Had english friends even went out (as much as children not teenagers can) with the daughter of a hippy… (checks online goddam she’s still banging hot in her 40s).
I remember some big and significant turning points.
In school the teacher looked at me and said what are you a p*ki or a n*gger. That’s stuck with me for 35+ years. The other event was a nose bleed, had a nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. The doctor assumed I’d been beaten up by my dad.
Children calling names was a thing, then violence in high school.
I like to think of highschool as kind of innocent as children don’t have their view of the world fully formed. How did I cope? By clapping back at them so somebody calls you a slur? You call them back a worse one. Somebody punches you? You punch them back.
My mid teen years were the roughest. In short I was beaten to an absolute pulp by 10+ twats. I remember my vision going pink and fading out as they stomped me to bits. My dad ran out of his home and literally started breaking them in half to save me. I spent quite a lot of time in hospital from that.
The group that attacked me? I apparently got the last laugh as they were all labeled cowards. Even evil has standards as fighting more than 1 on 1 was and is considered incredibly cowardly. We moved away at that point to somewhere different. My dad took me shooting and I kept a shotgun at home.
The big change was when I got my drivers license. In short the racism was avoided by simply driving everywhere. Less chance to interact with them, I had been lured into a false sense of security well into my 30s. Brexit vote came around, car was being repaired and I had a yoof try smash my head in with a brick and he tried to laugh it off as a joke. I joked back at him and smashed his head in even when he was crying and begging me to stop. I continued to pummel him. He met me at a bad time as that was when I was at the absolute strongest.
Another attack happened shortly after and after being victim blamed… I thought fuck… do I want my children to grow up in a place like this?
Lunar surface has a phenomenon called sugar frosting, soil on the surface of the moon is dense, with a layer of light-colored soil on the surface and dark soil on the inside. After digging out or walking over, dark soil will be brought out, but as time goes by, There will be a fading and lighter frosting phenomenon.
You can easily see the dark path by Chinese Rover.
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American rover…
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Chinese rover…
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The peculiar phenomenon of “frosting” discoloration appeared on the lunar soil once on the back of the moon and twice or three times on the front. It can be seen that it should be relatively common on the lunar surface.
However no US Apollo rover trail has indicating the same phenomenon.
The “sugar frosting” phenomenon confirmed by Chang’e experts.
So the moon soil that got dig out will be dark and it will turn bright in time.
You cannot see this in the NASA “moon landing photos”…
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But the Chinese rover clearly show something different….
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US moon soil look like earth soil right?
See the dark soil is a new unearthed soil. after sometime it will become brighter and undistinguishable from the surrounding.
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When Chang’e when just landed.
Now look at the 1969 NASA moon “landing”…
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Chang’e after a while landing. look at the surrounding of the leg, gradually become as the same as surrounding.
this phenomenon can only be known if you have landed on the moon, this phenomenon is impossible to be recreated on earth.
As I sat in my M1A1 main battle tank and watched the streets of Shir Ghazay, Helmand, Afghanistan put themselves to sleep, I wondered what exactly we were doing there.
I knew my mission. My company was assisting building Route Red to connect the Musa Quelah province with the surrounding provinces to improve the economy for the locals and win their hearts and minds and all that. But it wasn’t clear to me what the end-goal was. It was late 2011 and elections approached in the US. Operations start to slow down; can’t have a bunch of Marines die right before the election…that wouldn’t look good.
My 4 tank calls me over the radio to tell me he sees something unusual. Looks like a couple dudes who were out on a scooter man-date decided to ditch their bike and start checking out the suitability of the middle of our newly built road for…agricultural purposes, I’m sure.
I tell him to get ready to engage. We need to make sure to gain positive identification of hostile acts and/or intent before feeding people our lead sandwiches.
It occurs to me that these dudes are probably locals. They were probably bullied into digging a hole for one of the region’s bomb-experts to emplace an IED into later. Maybe they hate America, but more likely they are just trying to survive. Unfortunately for them, we are better at surviving on this particular night.
Asymmetrical warfare means your enemies don’t go toe to toe with you. It means they sneak and harass and threaten villagers. It means they work without uniforms and without abiding by the rules of armed conflict.
So this night we killed a couple guys trying to put a bomb into the middle of our humanitarian road. And the villagers probably hated us for it. Later in our deployment, we came across another road that was paralleling ours. It looked like it had about 30 years of disuse. We realized that we were building a road on top of the same spot that the Russians tried to in the 80s.
It was probably the same spot that Alexander the great tried to when he came through Afghanistan. The Afghan people simply don’t want us there. They don’t use the roads we build them and they prove to us time and again that they don’t have the will to fight for their own country and take it back from the drug-lords and the Taliban.
The last thing I’ll say is that good men died fighting in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan. 99% of the time it was due to a cowardly enemy that would not fight us, but would rather put bombs into the ground and risk killing civilians, women, and children to possibly injure one servicemember.
I’ll take a fight against your ‘real enemy’ any day.
Edit: It seems a few folks have taken issue with me calling the Taliban cowards. Some have even implied that me and my brethren were the true cowards. Everyone gets their opinion, I suppose.
The Taliban could conduct an insurgency that is honorable and respects the lives of non-combatants, but they do not do so. It would be less expedient and more dangerous for them. Being a coward means that you are unwilling to face dangerous and unpleasant things.
Lastly, if you have never stood up and faced dangerous things in your life, but are willing to call others cowards on social media platforms who have, I think that says a lot more about you than the subjects of your accusations.
Final Edit: Read this if you want to better understand frustrations of fighting in Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria The Plunging Morale of America’s Service Members. I don’t endorse or agree with all of it, but it does an excellent job conveying what it feels like to be a service member in today’s environment.
Yes be logical and pragmatic. China has 1.4 billion citizens, 4 times the US. Close to a billion now can afford minimum good living, over 750 million is equivalent to U.S. middle class. Admittedly they are not so spend thrift as American’s and certainly less wasteful. Those are good Confucianism values.
China may not have your 1% super rich American way overboard wasteful and insanely rich but those are again a good thing that a tiny proportion of Chinese is not abusing the rest like in the U.S. At least 3 times of US middle class and growing in China makes China very huge and humongous. It is probably bigger than the next 10 nations biggest markets put together.
A dollar in U.S. say Washington, cannot buy even a third of the same items say a McDonald’s of 7 RMB or a dollar current exchange rate in Beijing. Hence in reality either US dollar is 3 times over value or RMB is 3 times undervalue vis-a-vis USD.
Hence in purchasing power parity or PPP China U.S. already way bigger that the USA. Probably close to twice. That is why sanctioning China don’t work. Only collaboration with China to be a good second biggest market is the best U.S. can do.
He tried it once, and it didn’t happen a second time.
You see, it takes a hell of a lot to embarrass me. I have noticed that a lot of parents hesitate to discipline their kids in public because they don’t want to be judged by other people. I am NOT one of those parents.
I have also never spanked my kid.
About once a month I will spring a surprise outing on my son, something fun that we both enjoy, sometimes it involves food, a trip to a park or bookstore, a pre arranged playdate, stuff like that.
These started when he was about 6.
We caught the bus to this new play ground. I still don’t know what was wrong with him that day but he was acting like a jerk. Then he made some random comment and called me a dumbass.
“ WHAT did you just call me”, I asked.
“A dumbass “ he replied, with a smirk
I didn’t reply, I just rang the bell to indicate that we would be getting off at the next stop.
His jaw dropped, “ What about our outing?” He asked me.
“ By speaking in that disrespectful way you have missed out on a special outing today, we will be getting off at the next stop and walking home”
He started crying and acting out.
Like I said, I don’t embarrass easily.
As we got off the bus a little old lady who was sitting a short distance away from us caught my eye and nodded her approval, the bus driver was chuckling as we got off and said “ good on ya luv”.
Initially, My husband’s parents didn’t appprove of our relationship .
I lost my parents while I was young..
Later,upon seeing him in depression they finally gave in . So, now we are happily married for three years.
Two years passed by… Our parents asked us now and then about KIDS… My in-laws are conservative. As most of the Indian parents, they too feel that kids complete the family. They suggested us to consult a doctor.
Everyone suggested indeed.
At the very sight of the hospital, my husband stopped the car to a side.. he held me by the hand and said…
“ Do we really need children? Look.. My first ever kid is YOU… You complete me…I’m fine with one.. ” he said in a dejected tone.. ALL I COULD DO WAS SMILE….. thanking the almighty for giving me the most heartful thing ever lived.
But this did not end here… We went through the checkup
The reports are out… The doctor revealed in a dejected tone that I CANNOT CONCEIVE….(harmonal problems… Pitutary gland malfunction) Tears floooded my eyes… That moment, I collapsed to the ground in tears.
I’m unable to see anything. Tears obscured my vision …All I remember was him carefully carrying me to the car in his hands..
We went home.. I went to our bedroom and locked the door.
I cried.. I cried..
Later in the evening my mother-in-law came to our room.
She didn’t say anything…
After fifteen minutes of complete silence she said, “ I’m sorry beta. We never knew this thing about Akansh..”
She broke down and left in tears..
I was left in an utter dismay. Later upon asking him, he said “ I will never cause any pain to you by any means…”
I was speechless.
…
He lied his parents that the problem lies within him.
“What did I do to deserve him?”
He knows that I could not bear that guilt for longer. He immediately applied for a position in abroad in the same company on a two year contract and here we are… in LONDON ..away from home.. away from everything..
This was a simple one, but it did the trick for me. Back in 2018, I was sixteen years old, and I was skipping class with a friend of mine. We were sitting in the storm drains, just chilling, talking and hiding from the teacher they planted to catch kids skipping.
We were talking about girls and how I hate myself, as an emo sixteen year old tends to do. And during this conversation, she decided that all the girls I get with aren’t up to what she decided my standards are.
And she was eating a kit Kat while we had this conversation.
She told me to know my worth or something and stop going for trash girls.
She ripped off a kit Kat column and took a bite out of it the way nobody should ever bite out a kit Kat.
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Then she said
“See this? This represents the girls you’ve been going for. Absolute trash, right?”
“Yeah, don’t ever bite a kit Kat like that again.”
Then she took the decimated kit Kat column and held it up. Then she tore off a kit Kat column from the rest. This time she tore it the right way, immaculate, perfect chocolate symmetry. Then she said
“This is what you should be gunning for. Raise your standards”
And in conclusion, I miss having friends like that in my life.
This so-called doctor threatened to sterilize me. I was 15 years old and told my Mother, who pulled him off my case. Years later, when I was a nursing student, I was doing rotation through surgery, and one of the operations was upon a little 14-year-old black girl.
The name of the doctor seemed vaguely familiar, but I dismissed it, as non-essential information. The poor patient was undergoing a catastrophic procedure for any female of any age, a complete hysterectomy. I mourned for this baby’s loss and presumption she had cancer.
Upon completion of the surgery, our instructor gathered us together. Despite the mask, I could see she was fuming. In her hands, she held the containers with the specimens for the lab. “Nurses,” she ordered, “come here and look closely. What you are seeing are perfectly HEALTHY! There was no reason for Jack to gut this child except she was poor and black and he’s a despicable racist, who is hell bent on sterilizing any female he doesn’t feel is worthy of motherhood. Goddamn Bastard!”
I now remembered and as soon as I got out of scrubs told my superior of my, personal, incident with this butcher. He was eventually brought up on charges, served jail time, and lost his license permanently. Though not enough punishment to equal the crime.
We had an older neighbor kitty-corner from us on our street. We had lived there for over 20 years.
He slowly rode bikes around and picked up the pecans that grew from our trees.
He was reclusive and very much kept to himself. We would not see him in the winter for months.
He didn’t like Halloween or little kids, so we kept ours away from him.
One day, the police came by and asked if we had seen him anytime soon.
We had not, so they decided to break open the door as his out-of-state daughter could not find him.
Since I knew him the most, I went with the police.
They broke the door open, and the most awful smell came out.
They found a suicide note. He had been dead for almost a month in the sweltering Texas heat with no AC.
We felt like very bad neighbors because we didn’t check on him, but the police said he had carefully planned it so no one would know. I will never forget that smell.
I think it’s fair to say that in terms of attractiveness, I’m punching above my weight with regards my wife. She’s very attractive, gets frequent comments from other men, turns heads, and generally impresses people.
I’m a geek. If I turn heads, it’s because I’m drunk and being too loud. Not because people want to look at me.
I often wonder how I managed to create such a situation where such an attractiveness disparity happened. I think there is something in the idea that personality counts. When I put my mind to it, I can be tremendously entertaining, and I think my wife enjoys that.
As to the benefits conferred by having an attractive wife, there are none that wouldn’t be there were she not as attractive, at least as long as you genuinely love your wife.
A few years into our marriage, my wife got cancer. As she was going through chemotherapy, all the usual things happened, weight gain (they give you a lot of steroids), hair loss etc. She didn’t look her best. If she turned heads, it was to look at the bald woman.
What difference did that make?
None. She was still tremendous. I was still incredibly lucky to be married to her. I still made her laugh because of my dumb antics. We still got served in restaurants. We still had to pay.
Then she got better. She looks stunning again. She is still tremendous. I am still incredibly lucky to be married to her. I still make her laugh because of my dumb antics. We still get served in restaurants. We still have to pay.
Freshman year of high school. I ended up in after school detention.
We were all in individual desks. Three seats to my left was the biggest douchebag I’ve ever met. He looked 20, he was privileged, an addict and was known for bullying freshmen pretty relentlessly.
He started throwing stuff at me, paper wads, pencils… whatever he could find. I didn’t acknowledge what he was doing, I just kept focused on my homework.
There was a well built black girl between us. She was obviously more hardened and a “take no BS” kind of gal. Nice, unless reasonably provoked.
So I acted as if he’s not there. Next thing I know there was a huge THUD. I looked over in time to see one of those hard cover, thick text books sliding off this girl’s head. I remember this part in slow motion. He was aiming for me, but dumbshit missed.
After lifting her head for a moment of silence she leaps up and throws a desk over to stand over him and call him out. She absolutely destroyed him. She was asking him to stand up and fight and talking about how he’s been fucking with me and being a piece of shit. This girl was seriously ready to throw down.
So douchebag cowers and gets all red in the face looking scared. That was one powerful woman he pissed off.
Edit: 9/12/2018
I was in 6th grade computer class when 9/11 happened. Teacher had the news on, lights out with no assignments other than watching the news.
I was pretty introvert and came from a different school district. So I didn’t know anyone in class and kept to myself.
For the last half of that class period, the boy behind me would kick my chair pretty hard and whisper “oops, a plane just crashed into you” amongst other silly things. Sometimes I’d look back and he’d jump as if he was going to hit me. I never said anything to this kid ever. I didn’t say anything as he continuously kicked my chair. But inside I was boiling. Not because of 9/11 and his plane crash comments. I was too young to really understand the gravity of what we were watching on the news. I was boiling from frustration and disrespect. This was the first time I had ever been messed with so relentlessly.
Now I’m not a fighter or had any brothers to wrestle and fight with. But he was shorter and skinnier. But I don’t remember planning to do what I did.
The bell rang, I immediately stood up facing him. As soon as he got up I started pushing him. I kept pushing him multiple times as hard as I could until he lost balance and fall completely over his desk onto the floor creating a huge commotion. At first he put his 3 ring binder up as if he was blocking an oncoming punch. It was very satisfying to watch him fall all over the desk. Again, I remember this part in slow motion.
They ended up putting him in a different class after I explained everything to the teacher. I never really ran into him again until 8th grade waiting for parent pick up. I didn’t say anything to him, we locked eyes, he looked like a deer in headlights. I’m pretty sure I could see his feelings, he knew he made a big mistake on 9/11. So now every time I think about that terrible day in New York, I can’t help but to remember the lamest instance of bullying I’ve experienced.
My sister and I were the youngest, and usually the smallest and nerdiest kids in our classes, so we were more concerned with not getting beat up rather than beating up anyone else.
Actually in our small school, physical violence was pretty much unknown. I had some jerk put glue in my braid once, and another time someone slipped a toy snake into my sister’s purse, but that was usually as far as it went. The bullying in our school was mostly just verbal jokes and insults.
There was one real knucklehead that started causing trouble, and he actually got into a physical altercation with another knucklehead, but since they both were knuckleheads, nobody made a big deal of it.
However, there was one guy in our school that nobody messed with, and I think even the teachers were intimidated by him. He wasn’t a bully, didn’t cause trouble, pretty much kept to himself, and was actually very bright. But there are some people you just don’t mess with, and this guy was definitely one of those people.
His name was Fenrisúlfr, which is a variation of Fenrir, the giant wolf that killed the great god Odin during Ragnarök. Fenrir was one bad arse wolf. And to make his name even better, Fenrisúlfr, can be translated not just as wolf, but more properly, Wolf from Hell. And anyone that has the name Wolf from Hell, definitely isn’t someone to mess with.
Fenrisúlfr’s father was a member of the elite Víkingasveitin, or Viking Squad, a sort of super swat, anti terrorism team that Iceland has. The ultimate Icelandic bad arses, and definitely not people you should mess with.
Fenrisúlfr didn’t talk about his father much, but of course there were all kinds of stories and rumors about what exactly he did. In fact there were even lots of rumors about Fenrisúlfr, like he killed a polar bear with his bare hands.
Of course nobody really believed that, but if Fenrisúlfr ever did get into a fight with a polar bear, I would probably end up feeling sorry for the bear.
One day my sister and I were eating lunch alone like we usually did. Just talking quietly and not bothering anyone. However a couple of idiots at the next table decided they wanted to have some fun. So they took the mushed turnips that were served that day, put them on a spoon, and sort of catapulted them in our direction.
My sister and I learned to be observant, and I saw the idiot out of the corner of my eye. So I ducked and the mushed turnips went right by me. And hit Fenrisúlfr right in the back of his head.
The whole cafeteria suddenly got very, very quiet as Fenrisúlfr slowly got up. He first looked at us, but quickly realized that we would never do anything like that. But then he very slowly shifted his eyes to the two idiots at the next table, and I could see the two idiots freeze and turn white as Fenrisúlfr walked toward them.
Fenrisúlfr didn’t say anything but as he got to their table, grabbed their heads, knocked them together, and then pushed their faces into their mushed turnips.
Then without saying a word, Fenrisúlfr returned to his table and finished his meal.
The next day at lunch, the two idiots decided to sit as far away from us, and Fenrisúlfr, as possible. And we decided it was a good idea to sit as close to Fenrisúlfr as possible, and over the semester we became friends with him. He was actually a very nice, if scary looking guy. He even took us over his house, and we got to meet his father, who was even scarier looking than Fenrisúlfr.
So we never actually beat up the school bully, or anyone else for that matter. But when you have a friend named, The Wolf from Hell, we didn’t have to. :-))
February 2016. My boyfriend at the time had started to feel unwell on a Friday. By Monday he was very sick and when he went to the GP he was diagnosed with pneumonia (just one side at that point), got given antibiotics and was sent home. By Wednesday he was even sicker, not better. So I persuaded him to go back to the GP. He was always very independent but I had to help him get inside the Dr’s office. When it was his turn I insisted I went with him, and when the GP checked him she said it was now bi-lateral pneumonia and she was going to prescribe him different antibiotics. At this point I spoke up and said that I felt he needed more than that, and so she offered to refer him to A&E. He was debating it, and I was not having any of that, and said Yes please! Took him straight to the hospital.
His oxygen level on arriving was below 70% and despite him getting extra oxygen it wasn’t going up. After x-rays the doctor at A&E said it was the worst case of pneumonia he had seen in a long time in a healthy, young adult. Turned out he had swine flu, double bacterial pneumonia and in the following days he developed sepsis and was borderline in kidney failure. It was touch and go for several days, on pressurised oxygen, IV antibiotics, tamiflu, fluids and other meds, heavily monitored and I had to stay in the hospital overnight for a bit as he was calmer when I was with him, but he recovered.
Several doctors and nurses at the High Dependecy Unit told me that if we would have waited one more day in getting him to hospital the outcome would have most likely been very different.
As I have been working in healthcare for several years I have learned to trust my gut instinct, and I am so glad I did exactly that.
I have a friend who works as a lawyer. He told me this story about one of his clients, who ruined his life with one stupid decision.
The client was a successful businessman, who owned several car dealerships in the area. He had a beautiful wife, two kids, and a mansion. He was living the American dream.
But he also had a secret. He was addicted to gambling. He would go to casinos every weekend, and bet thousands of dollars on roulette, blackjack, and poker. He was convinced that he had a system, and that he could beat the house.
He was wrong.
He started losing money, a lot of money. He maxed out his credit cards, took out loans from shady lenders, and even embezzled funds from his own business. He was in deep trouble, but he couldn’t stop.
One day, he got a call from one of his creditors. They told him that they wanted their money back, or else. They threatened to hurt him and his family if he didn’t pay up.
He panicked. He didn’t have the money. He didn’t know what to do.
He decided to make one last gamble.
He went to his office, grabbed a suitcase full of cash that he had stashed away for emergencies, and drove to the nearest casino. He walked up to the roulette table, and put all the money on black.
He was hoping for a miracle.
He watched as the wheel spun, and the ball bounced around. He prayed that it would land on black.
It didn’t.
It landed on red.
He lost everything.
He collapsed on the floor, sobbing. He realized that he had just destroyed his entire life with one simple mistake.
The casino security escorted him out. The police arrested him for fraud and embezzlement. His wife divorced him and took the kids. His business went bankrupt. His creditors sued him and seized his assets. He ended up in prison, broke and alone.
Here are some sad and strange facts about relationships:
The Fade Away: It’s a sad reality that sometimes, instead of openly communicating their feelings, people choose to slowly distance themselves from their partner, leading to a slow and painful breakup.
Mismatched Timing: Timing can be a cruel factor in relationships. You might meet someone amazing, but if you’re not at the same stage in life, it can lead to heartbreak.
Ghosting: In the digital age, it’s become strangely common for someone to suddenly cut off all communication without explanation, leaving the other person in a state of confusion and sadness.
Unrequited Love: One of the saddest aspects of relationships is when one person’s feelings are not reciprocated, and they have to grapple with the pain of unrequited love.
Love vs. Infatuation: It’s strange how sometimes people mistake infatuation for love, leading to intense emotions that fade as quickly as they came.
The Fear of Vulnerability: Many individuals struggle to open up and be vulnerable in relationships due to past traumas or fears, making it difficult to build a deep connection.
Staying in Unhealthy Relationships: Some people stay in toxic relationships because they fear being alone or believe they can change their partner.
I abandoned/disowned/renounced/rejected my mother when I was 17 years old, but only because she abandoned my siblings and I first.
My dad was diagnosed with ALS when I was five or six years old. He worked two jobs prior to that to support my mom, sister, brother, and I but he eventually reached the point where he spent much of his time in a hospital. My mom got a job, at a local dime store, and became friendly with a male coworker. During one of my dad’s hospital stays she took my siblings and I, and left town with the man.
We spent a couple of months in a two-room apartment in Philadelphia before mom realized it wasn’t the best environment for us — the man didn’t like or want kids around — so mom took us to her parents’ house. She swore she would have nothing more to do with the man but, less than a week later, she disappeared after telling her folks she was going out with a high school girlfriend.
My siblings and I were sent to live with my dad who, by this time, had lost the use of his arms and legs and was confined to a wheelchair, and was living with his mother in rural Arkansas. I spent three years watching that man die and when he was gone, my mom’s parents took us in again. My paternal grandmother was in her 70s and too old to handle three kids.
My mom’s name was never mentioned and I’d put her out of my mind until, one day, she was back. Her mom had died by then but my sister, brother and I still lived with her dad. My siblings went to live with her immediately but I wanted nothing to do with her. I had one, brief, conversation with her when she returned and she claimed her folks knew where she was, and that she’d eventually come back. I didn’t believe her and told her so.
Two years after returning she was dead from lung cancer, and I always wondered if she came back because the man she’d abandoned us for wouldn’t take care of her. I felt that he was that type of guy, selfish and cowardly. But my mom was a coward — and about 1,000 other bad words — for leaving my dad when he got sick, so she got what she deserved as far as I was concerned. I didn’t even go to her funeral.
Hang on! Why are there HIDDEN Jewish Tunnels in New York City?
Going anonymous for my friend’s sake. This was in the US about 6 years ago when he was 17 years old.
When he was younger, he would counterfeit small denomination bills ($10s and $20s), go to shops, buy small items with the counterfeit bills, and get real change back.
Most of the time he’d dress up in a button up shirt and a pair of slacks so that he looked presentable, and put a smile on his face so that people would think he was just an honest, friendly person, even though he was scamming them. One scam in particular was at the mall just before closing. It was a pretty populated mall, and there was a jewelry store attendant standing outside the jewelry store.
He said to the attendant, “I lost a bet with my friend, and I owe him $10, but all I have is this $20 bill”. She didn’t know it was counterfeit, and she didn’t even look at it, because he was dressed nicely and smiled at her.
She walked into the jewelry store with him (plenty of surveillance cameras, mind you), and exchanged the counterfeit $20 for a real $10. My friend was $10 richer.
Another scam was pretty simple: he would order a takeout pizza, walk into the pizza place, pay for the pizza, and be about $10 – $15 richer, and get a free pizza out of it.
Never got caught. Almost once, though. Before I tell that story, here’s how he made the bills:
He’d print them out on his normal inkjet printer at home, spray them with hairspray for texture, and wrinkle them up pretty good. Voila. While the bill definitely wouldn’t pass any sort of close inspection, the smile on the face and general psychological trickery is what made the scam successful.
So, into the story of almost getting caught:
He walked into a gas station in shorts and a t-shirt (this was his first attempt at the scam, and the bill was noticeably smaller than it should’ve been). He mixed it in with another real bill, and handed it to the cashier. He forgot to smile and dress nicely. She looked at the bills, looked at him, and said “sorry, I can’t accept this, it looks like it’s fake.”
In a fake outrage, he said, “well I just got it from the bank! What should I do? Should I go back to the bank and tell them they gave me fake money?”
He and the cashier both agreed that this was the best solution, and they were both “angry” that the bank had given him counterfeit money.
How could the bank do such a thing?!
Edit
He should be $20 richer…yes or no? I mean the shop lady would give him two 10’s for the 20, otherwise she would suspect a con. Nobody trades a real 20 for one real 10.
Thank you to those who pointed out this same thing (it was a typo). It was an exchange of one $20 for two $10 bills, with the idea that he owed his friend $10, but only had the $20 bill and needed to split it into lower denominations. Good catch!
Boys do not have a single clue. Let me try this again: they don’t get it. Or at least he doesn’t get it. And it’s not for lack of me trying to educate him. He’s a corporate business attorney, so it’s not for lack of smarts. He just goes, “Oh, cool!” and then goes back to doing whatever he was doing.
The only thing that rattled him was contouring and extensions. He was like, “DO ALL GIRLS DO THAT” and I said, “No, I don’t because I don’t have time.” and he goes, “DO YOU HAVE EXTENSIONS” (this was after I got my hair cut into a bob..so he clearly didn’t pay attention to what extensions actually are[1]).
Boys and men are not socially conditioned to care about appearance 1/20th as much as girls and women. They care so, so much less than any girl or woman could even conceive of when it comes down to it. There are the Kanye Wests out there, and I won’t deny that, who want a well manicured woman at all hours.
But honestly, for the vast majority of men and boys the response is, “Huh? Ok!”
For the really awesome Smashbox eyeshadow limited edition palette I found on sale at Sephora the response I got was, “Your eyes look cool today.”
No comprenden←, truly.
The preference doesn’t exist for the vast majority of them because they just haven’t thought deeply about it before.
[1] You could get extensions and then get them cut to increase volume in your hair but c’mon I don’t have that kind of cash to blow. If I get extensions it’s to make my hair long.
L’Odyssée du Tartare. AI sci-fi merging styles of Méliès, Jodorowsky, & others; unedited footage
I was in the Coast Guard on my way to see my Mom and Dad. The closer I got to their home, I got a feeling I had to get to their Cottage on Lake Erie.
I got there about 11PM but couldn’t shake the feeling of needing to get to the cottage.
I originally thought it was just the need to finish painting I had started on the exterior.
At 1AM, I couldn’t settle down and apologized for having to leave.
I got there and had a fitful bit of sleep and woke up to a windy, wavy day.
At about 11AM, I heard screaming from the lake.
Grabbed my life jacket I kept in my kayak, ran to the beach and saw 3 young girls that had been knocked down by a large wave and getting pulled out by a strong rip current.
I ran into the water and got to 2 girls easily but the smaller, lighter one was dragged further out.
Just before I got to her she went under but I managed to grab her and get her head above water.
The rip current was so bad it took me a good 15 minutes to get us back to the beach a few hundred feet further down the beach, all the while being puked on with orange crush the girl had drank earlier.
I still get chills but am amazed I was directed to be there at that time so that 3 lives could be saved and possibly a 4th as another person was going to try the rescue without a live jacket, but I had motioned to him to stay on the beach.
Thus occurred August of 1993, at Morgan’s Point, Ontario Canada.
I was a Marine Recruiter in 1992 and I walked into the Social Security Office to get a SSN verification for one of my recruits.
The guy behind the counter tells me that he was a Force Recon Marine and I told him that I was a Recon Marine as well. We start comparing stories and he had been to Amphibious Recon School, Scout Swimmer, Scuba, Jump, Free-fall.
As it turned-out he knew quite a few people that I knew who were sort of legends in the Recon Community.
I asked him how long he had been in? He told me, “8 years.” Then I asked him,” Why did you get out if you already did two enlistments? “
He said that he got out to join the French Foreign Legion. I said, “How was that?”
He said verbatim, “It made Force [Recon] seem like Sunday School. “
He said that he had to do everything all over again Infantry, Jump, Scuba, Free fall. He told me that he he eventually made into the Parachute Commando Regiment.
*UPDATE EDIT. I remember an incident that I witnessed in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
We were waiting in line to take field showers at the Division Service Support Group (DSSG) area when a group of Legionaries drove up in their rickety jeeps.
One of the junior guys is so excited to be getting a shower, that he hops in line with us while forgetting to take his rifle with him.
A few moments later, his Sergeant comes running-up and starts yelling at him in French. Then, he proceeds to start beating the guy. He almost beat the dude unconscious at which point a whole bunch of Marines intervened.
As a LCpl, I was pretty shocked by what I witnessed. I’m pretty sure that the rest of us Marines were stunned including several Staff NCO’s and Officers who also happened to be standing in line.
I saw a couple of FFL Officers drive-up soon after and they were yelling at the Sergeant in French and then they all get in their vehicles and drove off.
My assumption is what we witnessed wasn’t supposed to have occurred in public and that it was supposed to have taken place “behind closed doors.”
In desperation, Tinder creates a ‘VIP’ membership to crush even more men’s hopes.
5 years ago I worked at a little shop called “Forever 21” When our Manager got a promotion we had a new Manager come in and take over and she was awful!! The only reason I can think of as to why she was so horrible is that she wanted to make everyone as miserable and she was. She had had two back to back pregnancies so she was dealing with a one year old and a two year old and she was constantly complaining about her life to our other managers. In General she just seemed unhappy.
One time she grabbed all of the employees closing and put us in a group and asked us for resignations because she was “sick of our sh*t” No one said anything, as no one was ready to resign, obviously. We were all broke college students who needed the job. She was the only manager that was constantly on everyone’s back. Our store was in downtown where we had to pay for our parking, as a result the store payed about a dollar more per hour than usual for that very reason, as soon as she got there she cut everyone’s pay down to regular pay, she said we didn’t deserve it.
After a few months of this abuse, all of the employees were getting sick of it so we conspired to write a letter to HR with all of the abuse we had been enduring and we were all going to sign it. Well, word got around and got back to her. She pulled all the weakest people she thought had something to with the letter and met with them, according to the other managers that were present, she screamed at them and bullied them into quitting, she said they could either put their two weeks in or she would fire them within the next week. They didn’t want to be fired so they put in their two weeks! I was fuming!
Then came my turn to meet with her. She did not yell at me or even threaten me. She said that she had heard about the letter and thought of me as a “fire starter” I looked at her and smile and said “I have no idea what you are talking about, now let me get back to work so we can get out of here on time” I think she knew the bullying wasn’t going to work with me.
Now, here is where I had enough! When she started there as the manager she had put in place a new rule where anyone who was clocking in at 10am (when the store opened) could not arrive into the store any earlier than 9:58. At this point I was going through a lot in my life and had a lot on my mind so I forgot all about this new rule. I was very used to going in early to lock my stuff up in the lockers, use the restroom and then head to clock in. When i arrived it was 9:50, I stepped into the store and I was no more than 2 steps in when I hear her yelling across the room “YOU NEED TO LEAVE NOW!! COME BACK WHEN YOUR SHFT STARTS!!!” I froze in my steps. There were other people in the store such as other Managers and the merchandise reps who had started early, they all stopped and stared at me. she repeated what she said once more and i turned around left! The whole situation was upsetting. I think I had a lot of second hand embarrassment. This is the manger I work for? This is how a “manager” represents her self and deals with her employees? how does a manger not know that the best way to address something to an employee is to pull them aside and talk to them in private not scream it across the store? How someone like her got to be a manager is beyond me, and that’s when I got to thinking.
Is this job really worth all the trouble and abuse I am suffering? NO, definitely not.
I got into my car and went home. When I got home I saw I had a voicemail on my cellphone. It was one of the other managers, I would call him one of the butt kissers for sure. He said that if I was going to quit and not show up for my shift then I should at least had the Courtesy to give them a 2 weeks notice!
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.
Let’s go back to my 8th grade year and there was a kid who really struggled with their mental health.
They were a class reject, she had friends but wasn’t popular. She was apart of the “gay” kids group. People used to call them fags and say that they will turn others gay.
She cut her arms, and she wanted to die everyday. So a few kids decided to start a bet. When will she kill herself.
We all knew one day she wouldn’t come to school and be dead by suicide. So we watched everyday watching her slowly suffer more and more in her own world.
She used to pass out a lot because of an eating disorder. She used to go to the bathroom after lunch and purge everything whenever anything passed her lips. She had a couple meltdowns in school and we all looked at her like she was retarded. We used to say it to her face. Small things like treating her like a child to degrade her every single day.
Then one day she didn’t come to school. Or the next, or for the rest of the year.
But she wasn’t dead.
On April 20th 2022, She left for Orange county california to a residential treatment facility, and she was gone till January 4th 2023.
That kid was me. My parents don’t know the details about how sucky my 8th grade school year was or how people used to make bets about when I was successfully gonna to kill myself. It was a struggle everyday to go to school when my mental health was slowly deteriorating everyday.
Right now, I am 2 1/2 months out of all mental health treatment. 2 months clean of self harm, and 2 months free of purging. I am happy with my life. And I love going to school everyday (I changed schools). I’m apart of the track team and I absolutely LOVE it.
I’m honestly not sure if my classmates at my old school think I’m dead or not. I’m not at their mercy. I am stronger than their words. And I will succeed in my life.
Stay Gold ponyboy Stay gold
-Eli
Edit: To be honest, I wonder how many of you at first thought I bullied a depressed autistic kid in 8th grade-
Edit: 411 upvotes?! Mom I’m famous :0
Im kidding, thank you for the support everyone.
Edit (4/20/23): Thank you so much for 1.6k upvotes. I reread the comments a lot, it gives me inspiration to keep going.
(I wanted to write a long reflection letter, however life happens and I got a concussion. So I’m not writing it as “thoroughly” as I wanted to.)
Today is April 20th 2023, exactly a year ago today, I was on a plane going to Orange County California. I went to Newport academy, which was the start of my 9 month treatment journey. It’s crazy reflecting on how much I changed in just 12 months but I am proud of myself for it. Exactly a year ago, I was basically throwing tantrums everyday and my parents had to deal with the bull crap sometimes 3 times a day. I was severely depressed, Self harm everyday, and I was miserable with life. That includes making family issues unbearable for everyone in my family.
Exactly a year ago, I said I didn’t need help. Exactly a year ago, I said I was fine, exactly a year ago I was attention seeking for everything. But reflecting now, I was in denial. I’m proud of myself where I came from.
My first day in treatment, I refused to go through the doors of Ranch House. It’s crazy to think that everyday for a month, I cried to my parents begging for them to let me go home when I was first admitted into youth care.
The last few days, I learned an important lesson. You really don’t know what everyone is going through. I learned the most outgoing, extroverted girl in my class was in 2 mental hospitals. I also learned my favorite teacher was in a mental hospital for 2 months when she was 12. I realized in that moment, “in the real world”, everyone struggles. Usually, I avoid talking about where I was for 9 months, but last week, I started to own my story. I won’t ever just “forget” what it was like to be that kid in treatment, and I shouldn’t. I do know where I need to go from now, to continue to be the best person I want to be.
The last rec therapy I did was a goals board for the new year. My goals were to get my drivers permit (I got it two months ago!). Transition into my new school (all though I might not have friends, I’m content with school), join the track team (I PRed at my last meet and now I’m triple jumping varsity distance. I also PR my pole vault and I’m allowed to start bending the pole after I get cleared from my concussion), get clean (3 months clean as of 3 days ago), stop purging (I don’t remember the last time I purged), and to continue to work on my family life.
And I did it, I’ve done all of it and I’m fucking happy for once. I’ve come a long way from where I was. I might not announce to everyone that I was in treatment, nor should I, but I’m not embarrassed by it anymore either.
I honestly don’t know where I would be without having the support system I did have in treatment. Thank you.
It’s been a wild ride this past year, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
When will we upload our consciousness to the cloud?
It wasn’t morning, it was lunchtime out with my kids at a pub to celebrate my birthday. Both girls had left home long since. I was 68, still working and intending to continue until April 2022 in order to complete 50 years at the same job.
Older daughter hands me a card saying “Happy Birthday Grandpa.” There was a copy of an ultrasound scan showing first grandchild.
So I said without any hesitation “I’m going to quit.” I called my employers (I had 4 at the time) that afternoon and simply said I finish October 31st. They whined, begged me to stay but I was adamant and finished on the due date. Grandson was born Dec 27th. Never made a better decision in my life.
EDIT
Life continues to amaze. Daughter told us a couple of weeks ago that, to use an English expression, “there’s another one in the oven” due March/April.
EDIT New one arrived Easter Momday. Everyone except me was convinced it was a boy based on scan. However beautiful Emily Grace proved the others wrong!
Brutal Data For Young Men In The Dating Scene I Was Genuinely SHOCKED To Read This
Empirically, I, as a 220 lb man, will weigh close to a ton at 9 Gs. That alone would make it hard to sustain that pull but there are other things going on that make a 9G pull a VERY temporary state.
First for the blood. Since your G vector is down, that’s where your blood is being pulled; your feet and legs swell very quickly with all the blood rushing in. That’s a problem because you need to be able to think but the blood is being pulled away from your brain. The first thing that typically goes before you lose consciousness is your peripheral vision and so we’re taught to do some clenching moves with our legs and stomach to try and push the blood back up before G onset (our G suit also offers about 3 additional G tolerance compared to resting state). But no G clenches in the world are going to keep you going for long at 9 Gs. You’re going night night (GLOC…G induced loss of consciousness) if you don’t stop pulling fairly quickly.
G cough. These are fun. If you pull too long, some of the delicate tissue in your lungs get damaged and you’ll begin literally hacking up a lung. Doesn’t happen all the time but if you’re in a prolonged fight, be prepared.
And finally, my favorite: G measles. I only got these in the centrifuge and that was only because I was at 9 Gs for about 15 seconds (that’s a lot longer than it sounds). What happens is that some of your capillaries (mine were in my arm) burst and you get splotches on your skin from the burst capillaries. It looks like you have measles, hence the name. And they itch like crazy! And to make matters worse, they do what always happens when you have blood leaking out of the veins/arteries: they turn into bruises. After my trip through the centrifuge, my arms were all bruised up for about 4 days.
So to summarize, pulling 9 Gs feels like an elephant is standing on your chest and it very quickly begins damaging your body. Reversible damage, but damage nonetheless.
PAY ATTENTION! Something VERY strange is happening in Poland
On our trip to Pago Pago, American Samoa, we had a layover in Fiji. Nice nation. Beautiful island chain. Actually really nice.
fiji
The thing is, we arrived in the Spring. And the trees and flowers were all in bloom. It was stunning and so beautiful. Smelled wonderful… BUT… it turns out that I was allergic to the trees. The entire time we were there I was sneezing and coughing with blurry and watery eyes.
Ugh.
fiji 2
Pretty, but not for me. Oh well…
Life can be silly. I really wonder what the Hell I was thinking when I decided to incarnate.
Years ago I moved into an apartment/flat. I was on the 2nd floor and shared a long balcony with my neighbor. It was just us two on the floor in that building. The balcony didn’t have a divider between us but it was a long length balcony. I put a small patio table and chair right by my door to relax on the balcony early mornings with tea or evenings to enjoy a book. Well, one morning I went out to sit on the chair by the small table. What did I see? The table was full of beer cans and a huge ashtray full of cigarette butts. The only person that could have done that is my neighbor. It annoyed me. It was one thing to use my patio table and chair without permission, but to leave a disgusting mess for me is another thing. I picked up the cans and ashtray and put them on the ground right in front of her door. Although I never spoke to her I had seen her. I wiped off my table and wrote out a note that said this, “Please ask for permission before using my table and chair. This table and chair are not community property. They belong to me. If you get permission to sit here, please clean up your mess. I am not your maid. Thank you”. I left the note taped on the table. Guess what? You guessed it. The next morning I found another load of beer cans and a full ashtray on the table. Same thing as the day before. Only this time, the table had a beer and food mess. I lost it. I grabbed the beer cans that were not all empty and the full ashtray with cigarette butts and ashes. I walked to her door and spilled beer all in front of her door on the concrete. I then poured the full ashtray all in the beer and it made a yucky mess on the concrete. She’d have to step in it going out the door. I then wiped down the table and folded it up along with the chair and put them by the wall next to the front door inside my apartment. This meant I would have to put them up outside every time I used them. It was a pain in the ass but I did it. She could get her own and clean up her own mess. Didn’t have any issues once I removed the table and chair. A few months later she moved out. Someone else moved in a couple of weeks later. A cop and his wife. The new neighbors were polite. So back out for good my patio table and chair went. Thank goodness.
**EDITED: Response to people commenting why I didn’t just knock on her door and talk to her**
People on the ground floor of the building said she was very rude like that to them as well. One time she took someone’s clothes out of the washing machine and threw them on the ground so she could use the washing machine. She had a bad reputation for not being one to reason with. I wasn’t going to waste my time trying to talk with her to try to come to a resolution. She wasn’t one to compromise with. So, therefore, I did what I felt was best how to deal with a person like that. Another person said she was also a bit violent. So to be honest, I didn’t want to put myself in the position to be physically attacked by her. I would have likely hurt her trying to defend myself because I am trained in martial arts. See what I mean?
Put in the work
I think it is an uneven pair-bonding.
Best Bohemian Kolaches
Kolaches are a type of pastry that holds a dollop of fruit rimmed by a puffy pillow of supple dough.
Bohemian Kolaches
Ingredients
Dough
8 teaspoons dry yeast, dissolved in 1 cup warm water and 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 cups 2% milk, scalded
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
10 to 11 cups flour (don’t make dough too stiff)
Prune Filling
1 pound pitted prunes
Sugar to taste
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Apricot Filling
1 pound apricots
Sugar to taste
Cottage Cheese Filling
1 (16 ounce) container cottage cheese
1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
Dash of nutmeg
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup raisins
1 teaspoon flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
Poppy Seed Filling
1 (2 pound) container poppy seed filling from a bakery
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup granulated sugar
Cream
Instructions
Dough: Dissolve yeast in water until foamy.
Heat milk, pour over butter and sugar. Stir until melted. Add 2 cups flour, then beat until smooth. Add yeast, eggs and salt. Add flour until a soft ball forms. Grease top; let rise. Punch down and let rise again.
Stretch dough on floured board to about 1/2-inch thickness. Cut into rounds using a soup can. Put on greased pans and let rise. When nice and puffy, make indentations in center and fill with favorite filling like prune, apricot, cottage cheese or poppy seed. When risen to a nice puffy look, bake at 375 degrees F until a golden color.
Prune Filling: Cook prunes until soft. Grind and add sugar, vanilla extract and cinnamon. Stir well.
Apricot Filling: Cook apricots until soft. Grind and add sugar. Sweeter is better. Stir well.
Cottage Cheese Filling: Put cottage cheese in blender. Add egg yolk, lemon juice, nutmeg and 4 tablespoons flour and blend some more. Take out of blender and add raisins. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon flour and sugar.
Poppy Seed Filling: Mix together. Use enough cream to make it easier to put into kolaches.
I’m almost out of the door to buy groceries, and I saw this question, and I have to say something.
…deep breath…
WHAT THE FUCK WITH THIS OBSESSION OVER WAR?!
I’ve seen this type of hypothetical war question all the fucking time on social media (not just on Quora). And it’s always hypothetical wars between nuclear powers. It used to be the US vs USSR. Now it’s US vs China. Every single fucking year, you guys come back with the same zeal asking who would win in various hypothetical scenarios.
What do you think war is? Civilization V?! Colorful avatars on a digital map?! You move your troops forward, and boom, the city is yours?!
I swear you armchair general manchildren are the fucking worst! You want war so much, why don’t you enlist? You think you’re fucking military expert because you played Call of Duty, and you know what a battleground feels like?! You can hide behind cover and breath heavily for a few seconds and recover from bullethole in your fucking stomach?
You know, I don’t mind actual military experts theorizing potential wars. That’s kind of their job, to think of the worst scenario so we can be prepared. I get that. But you lot ain’t experts. You are doing it because it is fun and exciting for you. It makes you feel powerful the same way playing Civilization V makes you feel powerful.
You never thought about what war actually means to the people it impacted (yes, that includes you, too, you moron!) There’s no glory in bloodshed over nationalism or fighting over resources.
But sure, let me answer your question: can China win a war against the US over Taiwan? Depending on how you define “winning.” The most likely scenario we have is a Vietnam War V2. The US throws its weight around, and millions of young people die on both sides, fighting in the fucking jungle. Taiwan, once named the “Island of Treasures,” was decimated. Its factories were destroyed. Its beautiful forests and coasts were poisoned by chemical weapons. The price of PCs and other electronics skyrocketed because Taiwan is the world’s largest producer of semiconductors, producing over 60% of the world’s semiconductors and over 90% of the most advanced ones.
After years of death, destruction, and misery, the US finally decided to withdraw its troops, and Taiwan became a province of China.
And that is the best scenario you could hope for, you moron. The worst scenario is both US and China decide to use nuclear weapons, and we all fucking die in the fucking nuclear winter.
Still feeling good about yourself? Still think this is a fucking video game?!
Fuck all of you war fanatics! Go read another book about WWII and fuck all the way off my feed.
I’ll leave you with this poem: 劝君莫论封侯事，一将功成万骨枯
“Please do not speak of getting noble titles (through war). One general’s success was built upon millions of corpses.“
Unsurprisingly, I got several comments saying China is an authoritarian state and has been threatening Taiwan for years.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that what you said is true, that China is indeed an authoritarian state and China has been “threatening” Taiwan for years.
So? SO? What’s your point? That China, a country of 1.5 billion people, most of these 1.5 billion people live peacefully and minding their own business, deserve to be destroyed because… you do not agree with how an independent sovereign nation governs itself?
OK, by that logic, can China start a war attacking the US because everything the US did in the fast 70 years, including invading Iraq on a lie, created several coups in South America for the sole purpose of destabilizing the local economy and forcing these countries to rely on the US for their survival, and systemic racism, persecution of homosexual people and trans people, drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya…
I mean, if we want to compare fucking skeletons in the fucking closet, we can go all the way back to Operation Paperclip. Better yet, let’s go all the way back to colonialism and chattel slavery. The US is covered, head to toe, with innocent blood. If there is one country that deserves to be destroyed, according to your logic, the US would be the first in line.
So perhaps get off your moral high horse and shut the fuck up.
We were ROBBED in Finland! (Let’s Go Back to China!)
I was a male waiter at a diner in Hillbillyville. I got very few tips because tips were for making passes at waitresses. Working the late shift, I dealt with more than my share of drunks and as well as the ordinary assholes. From teens squirting full ketchup bottles on their dinnerware and tables after their meal, to those who would fall into a drunken coma at my tables.
The one that stands out to me was a retired farmer who would come in every Sunday night with his wife and another couple. They had all been drinking. But the retired farmer, who had a reputation for being a loud-mouth know-nothing decided to harass the help (me and the cook) throughout their meal. He and his entourage thought it was very funny to disrespect us.
After their meal and lots of juvenile remarks, it was dessert time. They all ordered. The retired farmer decided he wanted a hot fudge sundae, which he knew we did not offer.
I told him “We do not have hot fudge sundaes.”
He replied, “Do you have ice cream?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have chocolate syrup?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a microwave?”
”Yes.”
“Then heat up some frickin’ chocolate sauce and put it on my ice cream!” His group suddenly went quiet, realizing he had just crossed a boundary not even they would accept.
I put my hands on their table, leaned across to the foul farmer and said, “Would you liked crushed nuts with that?”
He went silent as the others at the table burst into laughter… especially his wife! They believed he had it coming… probably for years!
Dickhead left me a nice tip that night and had a new demeanor every time he stopped to eat.
I was pleased with myself. Other customers as well as staff openly approved of the way I handled this little turd.
I fired a friend who worked closely with me in the forge. He’d set up some of the equipment, and knew how to maintain it. He was a good solid productive worker, and a lot of fun to work with.
He also drank.
I told him he could not drink on company property, and he could not come in drunk to work.
He did it anyway. Repeatedly. Hid it. More than one warning.
Then I fired him.
He said I couldn’t, that I needed him, that I didn’t know how to maintain the equipment, it would cripple my business to lose him.
He was right.
And yet… I still had to do it. He was a hazard to himself, and to the business. At one of the venues I vend at, they have a clear written rule forbidding this, and he was violating it, and I could have lost my business there (and it’s responsible for 75% of my annual income)
I bent over backwards to avoid doing this, and when I finally did, it was every bit as bad as he thought it would be.
Production dropped by more than half. A couple of the tools got ruined. I learned how to maintain the others, and gradually got things back into shape, but it took many months.
But I can’t honestly say I didn’t know what was going to happen when I did it. I just didn’t have any other choice.
I have friends who never understand how I can take a costco rotisserie chicken for $5.00 and make it into a week’s worth of meals, including using the bones and meat chips from the carcass for bone broth to make soup. I can pick a chicken or turkey bonee clean of meat long after others would have given up. I use veggies and eggs to extend it to omelelets, wraps, chicken fritattas, tacos, chicken salad with mayo, stir fry, topping on regular salad with dressing, an entree, and then finally soup. I buy the large quantity of meat on mark down and make four or five different meals, freezing several. That way I always rotate the meat or meal we eat during the week, and we feel like we never have to be without meat except our once a week vegetarian meal. I made ham and bean soup the other day with the Christmas ham leftover scraps and the ham bone. My mom fed a family of seven with groceries she bought while a grocery store meat wrapper. My dad worked in produce. We had cans with no labels she bought for 10 cents. We had a cat and a dog, but never knew which vegetable or animal food was in the can until we opened it.
I always eat the free meal buffet at hotels and take extra fruit to my room. There will always be a bag of dried beans, box of pasta, and cans of tuna in my pantry ‘just in case’. I had some for the lunch the other day because it was getting close to expiration. I drive around town on errands and find myself noticing open public bathrooms, places where people could park overnight, etc ‘just in case’, even though I’ve never been homeless. I’ve been scared when I was close. I go into survival mode as soon as an extra expense happens even if I am prepared.
I use coupons, shop the sale items, and overstock my pantry. My mom taught me back when rebates were constantly available. We had ‘FHB’ or ‘family hold back’ meals where extra bread was added to the table if someone stopped by unexpectedly. It was the signal for the family to fill up on bread and ‘hold back’ from eating so the guests were satisfied. I still fill out restaurant and fast food surveys for the free meal. I’m the one willing to pick up the company meals nearby, so I get the rewards. People think I’m just being nice or someone in the office is taking advantage of me. I go to the extra early sales to get the extra $10 coupon for the first 100 in line. Early in my career, I used to use the ‘free reward’ items from ordering office supplies to sell at yard sales.
My partner understood before he passed. He had used cracker packets and ketchup packets from fast food with a cup of hot water to make ‘tomato soup’. He had had it worse than us growing up. Most people will never understand.
Our son has never known true hunger, but he has seen enough scrimping that he knows not to waste. As a teen, I gave him the coupons, the sale paper, and $10 with a shopping list. I taught him to use the ‘money back rewards’ with double coupons and buy one get one sale items for anti perspirants, etc to buy the extra milk and things he needed for the week. Even today, I will invite him to a restaurant and he will ask if it can be another day, because he has xxx leftovers to finish before they go bad. You keep the mentality.
Oh and the hand me downs. I wore the same homemade dress in four different sizes. My mom had made each of her five girls tge same blue dress with three buttons. My one sister was so much larger than me hers couldn’t be altered enough or I would have had five. I was thrilled to get a new outfit at Christmas when my sisters were growing up and moving out. There was a little more money then. I quizzed every sister how much their bills were and wrote a budget. I owned everything to move out by 16, down to a vegetable peeler. I wasn’t taking any chances. I used my babysitting and yard work money earned from neighbors. Once I could work fast food, I lied to my parents that I was over a friend’s house when I really worked a full week with overtime all summer long. The child labor laws apparently didn’t check much in those days. I had discovered making money. I was the only kid I knew that lied about having fun so I could work. I worked hard enough to become management before graduating high school. I just wanted to keep earning and saving the most I could. I always worked two jobs until my son was born. You take every chance you get.
I come from a very dignified and respectable family. My parents always taught me values and how I should be respectful of other.
I was asked out on a date by a coworker. He was older to me by 8 years, nevertheless he was charming and spoke very well. I thought he seemed like a nice, family man.
We ended our date after a meal at a restaurant and he offered to pay. I asked him if he wanted to share the tab but he declined. Afterwards we both were walking towards the car parking area. There was an ATM kiosk.
He tried to withdraw some cash from his card but told me that there was some problem with his card. He then did something weird. He asked my card and my PIN number. And me, like an idiot told him.
He took my purse from me, took the card, punched the PIN number and withdrew a 1000 INR. He took the cash, put it in his pocket and continued walking.
I asked him what he did. To which he replied “oh that was for the dinner and the rest of it is for the petrol I will be spending dropping you back at home”.
Back in 2015, I’d been dating my then-fiance for some time. We got engaged super early, so it wasn’t exactly “a while,” but it had been at least three months and let me reiterate: we were engaged to be married.
Blake Diamond and I had already sent out requests for our bridal party hopeful-members to become actual-members, and one person said to me how odd the name sounded. “It almost sounds fake, don’t you think?” he asked.
“I mean… maybe?” I said. “I knew a guy in high school with the last name Diamond, and Blake is a name that I’m familiar with, so maybe it’s not that unlikely.”
Several weeks passed and as I began to get deeper and deeper into wedding planning, I needed to know his parents’ address so that I could send things to his family. “I’d rather keep this under wraps. They don’t need to know about all the planning yet. Plus, their last name is Bingham,” he said to me one night.
“Bingham? That’s odd. Yours is… different?”
“Oh, that’s, uh… maybe I didn’t tell you,” he conceded. “Blake G. Diamond III is my online alias.”
I… what?
“What? Why did I not… know that… before you asked me to marry you?”
“I like to go by Blake Diamond, not by my real name.”
He still was hesitant to spill the beans, but when I became inconsolably irate after several minutes of arguing, he finally gave in:
“No I didn’t. I can save money to buy another one for you if you want.”
“You think I want it from you? I raised a dumbass for a son. Leo, I know you did it.”
“I swear I didn’t.”
“So you’re the only on in the roo-”
“I was asleep on the sofa. I didn’t do i-”
“Just watch, when I come home with your mother you will admit to it.”
I began to laugh, “Good luck. Know what? Take your fucking time coming home.”
And that’s it. I turned off the phone and went to my room, and angrily waited for them to come home. I awoke from the sofa earlier and found the T.V broken. Absolutely crushed.
I called my dad and he was quick to point the finger at me. Which makes sense, the T.V didn’t break itself and I was the only one in the room. Though the truth is that I didn’t do it.
I shouldn’t have been such a fucking snob with my response because they never came home after that.
A knock came at the door and I stomped over, ready to face a loud scolding. But the person at the door wasn’t my dad, or anyone I know. He is wearing a police badge and a police car with our states name written across it is outside the front door. I figured that my dad must have called the cops to see who broke the T.V after realizing it wasn’t me. “Yes?”
“Is this the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Alexandric?”
“Yes.”
“And are you Leonardo?”
“I-yes.”
“Would you like to take a seat?”
All at once my entire body stiffens. “No. Why are you here? What happened?”The T.V is broken. That’s all. Nothing’s wrong. I kept telling myself. But the truth was, everything was wrong.
“Your parents. They’re dead.”
The frankness of his words and shock of it all is too much and I begin to laugh. He looks calmly at me, like he’s used to this type of reaction. He probably was.
“You didn’t answer my second question. What happened?” My voice is shaking and I knew I was on the verge of tears.
“Son, your parents are dead. They got shot. That’s all there is to tell you.”
I stay frozen at the door saying nothing.
“We called your Aunt and Uncle. They’ll be here shortly. Meanwhile, I’m supposed to make sure you’re safe.”
I nod and open the door for him to come inside. I’m too shocked and lost to ask for proof or a warrant of some kind. I just stand at the door and glare at the man until my aunt comes.
She comes with my uncle and she’s screaming, acting hysterical. She grabs me in a hug and doesn’t let go until she faints from exhaustion. That was the last conversation I had with my father.
I never cried about their death, it’s made me colder. I just feel numb thinking about it. I thought it was my fault for the longest time. I did this, I told him not to come back. I know that it’s not true now but it still haunts me.
Please do me a favor and go tell you parents that you love them. Don’t be stupid like me, because no matter how stable everything seems, no one knows when death will strike.
This is a true story that happend to a friend of mine.
He was fairly new in Japan and went to Yoyogi Park, the most popular and well-known park in Tokyo.
He was playing some sport with his friends for a while, and went home as it started raining.
On his way back to his house, he realized that he forgot his iPad on a bench at the park.
He felt hopeless as the electronics left in public quickly get lost, at least that was the commonsense we generally have, but he went back anyway to where he was in the park.
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Photo: Wikimedia
He looked at the bench where he left his iPad, and saw a newspaper.
He removed the newspaper, and there it was. His iPad was sitting there intact! But why was there a newspaper on iPad?
Well, apparently, a kind-hearted anonymous person thought the beautiful iPad shouldn’t get wet in the rain.
My friend calls that an “only-in-Japan” experience. However, as myself being Japanese, I wasn’t surprised.
I’ve lost my iPhone twice on the train (yes, twice..) and found both times at Lost & Found of the railway company.
One learning from my friend’s story and my own experience is “don’t give up finding it when you lose your gadget in Japan!” 🙂
Mike has never put more than 40% effort into anything in school.
He sits in the back of the class. He never listens. He figures out how to sleep with his eyes open, or hide under his desk to take naps.
Maybe his dad abandoned him. Maybe his parents never motivated him. Or maybe he’s just plain lazy.
Who knows the reasons. But the effort isn’t there.
Nothing his teachers or parents have ever said or done have been able to turn the fire that burns within him into anything more than a low smolder.
He goes through his early years, turning in the minimum grades to squeak by in everything.
One day, as he shrugs off another bad grade, the teacher stands up at the front of the class.
The teacher points at Mike.
“Study hard – or you’ll end up like Mike there. Dim, lazy, and on the path to flipping burgers for a living.”
A certifiable asshole comment by a teacher.
Mike, typically thick-skinned and nonchalant about life, is pissed.
An authority figure publicly branding him in front of the class, the class laughing, and the obvious implication that a good majority of them shared the teacher’s view of Mike was too much.
He’d had enough.
Deep down he knew he was lazy. But he wasn’t stupid. And he sure as hell wouldn’t be flipping burgers.
That day forward Mike starts studying.
It hurts his brain at first to think and concentrate so much. It’s almost like going to the gym for the first time.
He keeps going. Each day he gets better at it. The rust comes off, those sleepy neurons start to light up between his ears.
Quickly – he gets into a groove. His grades pick up.
They get better. They get better. He learns a couple study tricks he should have known years ago.
Cute girls are suddenly asking him for help in school.
He realizes school isn’t that hard. He realizes what he already knew – he wasn’t dumb.
In fact, he realizes, he’s a lot smarter than he thought he was.
Suddenly, he’s getting the top grades in his class.
Mike – was so much more than even he ever thought.
He’d been a darkhorse scholar in his class.
He is acing test after test. He dethroned the former smart kid who now eyes him with jealousy.
And one day – his teacher asks him to stay after class.
His teacher comes over, sits on a table across from him.
He stares at Mike.
He walks over, reaches out and shakes Mike’s hand, saying, “Mike – I apologize. You had it in you all along. I never knew”
Mike, your quintessential, stereotypical gifted slacker, had announced his arrival.
I’ve found that harsh criticisms can cut deep particularly if there is a grain of truth to them.
The knee-jerk reaction is often to punch back, recoil, bury yourself away from it.
The next time a criticism cuts deep, step forward and into it.
Look within the pain rather than react to it. What does it show you?
Are your talents being buried by inaction? By weakness?
Look at it.
It is right there.
Do something about it.
If someone shines a light on your demons, don’t flip the light off, expel the demons.
If someone mislabels you, sells you short of what you are, what you are capable of, do something about it.
Show them the truth.
You’ll enjoy it.
Nothing beats proving people wrong.
Real Living Cost In Shenzhen, China Will Shock You
Dell was doing horrendously bad and it’s sales in China is almost non existent when it thought playing the hate China can can win sales in U.S. and its cronies.
Well the result is it got even worst.
China’s market itself is close to 30% of the world’s market. And it can make everything. Better and faster at half the cost anywhere else. With that China help you earn heaps of money! Without China you go broke. With China you laugh all the way to the bank.
99.999% of US businessman wants to stay perpetually in China if they can. US business people are smart. US politicians have only one objective. To stay in power. To do that do shit and talk shit on China can get you there.
Americans are so unbelievably ignorant and naive after 24/7, 365 days a year 74 straight years of demonising And fabrications of lies by the U.S media on China. do you blame the Yanks. Imagine going to school, college and university that teaches you white is black and right is wrong that long!
Worked at Burger King when I was around 16, and I put up with a lot of abuse from a few managers (including one guy in his 30s constantly getting aggressive with me for no reason, just started happening one day and didn’t quit) because in spite of them, the rm and a few of the other managers were really cool. Flash forward about a year and I was one of three people working in the restaurant and the other two people were the aggressive manager and a new manager who was abusing her power. I made all the food correctly, labeled it correctly and put it on hot table for them to bag( it was the middle of a rush) both of them were bagging the food incorrectly, telling me a made the things wrong when I know I didn’t, I knew they weren’t paying attention they were just bagging stuff up and customer kept coming back angry and I had to remake the food. After a few hours, when the rush hit it got worse. And they were still blaming me for their mistakes, but when the aggressive manager went off on me, I literally just walked over and clocked out and told them I’m quitting, to have fun for the rest of their shift because you’ll be the only ones here for the remainder of the day. I dont work fast food anymore, the thought just makes me angry. I’m not saying I’m better than those workers, or smarter, just that I won’t work in the food industry ever again. I was 16, they should’ve picked a target that was older, less likely to quit because they had bills/ kids to take care of, I didn’t.
The likelihood of surviving a plane accident is around 95.7%. However, around 16% of accidents are fatal. Of all modern transport-category planes, the one with the worst safety record is the Concorde, yet it only had one fatal accident, this is because of its limited service history.*
Afghanistan’s literacy rate is around 29%.
Labor Day was an event conceived to cover up some pretty brutal massacres of American workers.
The sun is one star in 300 sextillion (or 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.)
After suffering a knife wound whilst giving fellatio a woman became pregnant… even despite being born without a vagina.
Britain’s youngest grandfather was 29 at the time of birth.
The total weight of all the Earth’s ants is around the same of all the humans.
Because ants are so small they can survive a session in a microwave by dodging the rays.
When you sneeze your heart stops for a millisecond- hence the term bless you.
At 2000 km long, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth.
Polar bears can run at 25 kmph and jump around 6 feet high.
There are 62,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body, so they could stretch around the Earth 2.5 times.
If you were to drill a tunnel straight through the centre of the Earth it would take you precisely 42 minutes and 12 seconds to get to the bottom if you jumped… but you’d be dead before you got there.
The strongest creature on Earth, gonorrhea bacteria, can pull 100,000 times their body weight.
If you apply an electric current to a pickle it will react with the salt, causing the pickle to glow.
image 53
The speed of Neptune’s wind breaks the sound barrier.
Picasso was a suspect in the 1911 Mona Lisa theft.
The Queen owns one-sixth of the Earth’s land surface.
On August 27th of 1896, Britain and Zanzibar fought a war. It lasted 36 minutes.
The U.S. produces 90,000,000 acres of corn per annum.
Warner’s Bros. was founded before the Ottoman Empire fell.
Calculations determine that, in the last 3,500 years, there have been 260 years of peace.
In 2005 a man threw a grenade at George W. Bush and it didn’t explode.
If the figures are correct humans were first on Earth 200,000 years ago, and written records of life were first found from 6,000 years ago, 97% of history is lost.
You can swim through some of the arteries in a blue whale’s heart.
Thomas Edison’s last breath is in a tube, in Detroit’s Henry Ford museum.
Most canned laughter was recorded in the 1950’s, so most of those laughs re from dead people.
A single crayon burns for half an hour.
image 52
In Detroit, 70% of murders go unsolved.
Excite turned Google down in 1999 when they were willing to sell the company for $1,000,000
Ronald Wayne sold his stake in Apple for $800 dollars in 1976.
‘No melon, no lemon’ spelt backwards is ‘No melon, no lemon.’
If you spell out every number you won’t use an A until you reach one thousand.
Marie Curie’s work is still radioactive enough to make you sick, so you must sign a disclaimer to view them.
Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing the the building of the Great Pyramid.
Half of the humans ever to live have died from malaria.
Charlie Chaplin’s remains were stolen and held for ransom. See chaplin.
**
If you could fold paper 42 times it would reach the moon.
If there was no space between the atoms on Earth it would be the size of a regular baseball.
Ireland’s population is still 2,000,000 less than it was before the potato famine.
You have a 0.5% chance of being related to Genghis Khan.
A banana is a berry and a strawberry isn’t.
Nelson Mandela wasn’t removed from the U.S. terror watch-list until 2008.
Jimmy Carter, the genius that he is, sent a jacket to his cleaner with nuclear launch codes and secrets in the pocket.
Quentin Tarantino played an Elvis impersonator in the Golden Girls.
image 51
**Charlie Chaplin fact courtesy of Murray Robinson. Thanks Murray. 🙂
The heat of the sun’s core is so hot that if you put a pinhead on Earth which was as hot you could kill a person 160 km away.
Irish poet Brendan Behan was a confirmed alcoholic at the age of eight.
Sunandha Kumariratana the Queen of Thailand forbid her subjects from touching her and so they were all forced to look on as she drowned.
Fleas can jump around 200 times their height.
A seahorse moves through the waters at about 0.01 mph.
A giraffe’s spots are truly unique- no two giraffes have the same spots, also you can determine their age from the darkness of their spots.
Giraffes learn to stand after 30 minutes and can run with their mothers after 10 hours.
Scientists have submitted papers to exhume and examine the body of shakespeare to see if he smoked marijuana.
Blue jeans are now banned in North Korea for being a sign of American imperialism.
Shopping carts have more saliva, faecal matter, and bacteria on them than most bathrooms.
Barry Manilow didn’t write his song “I Write the Songs.”
President John Tyler still has two surviving grandchildren, despite being born some 221 years ago.
1/3 of all the U.K. divorce filings included the word ‘Facebook’.
image 50
There was a counting horse called Stanley from Liverpool, who could multiply, divide, add and subtract as well as calculate mileage, it also performed in a theatre production in the Anglican cathedral… he was trained by my Grandfather. 🙂
I had a very snooty classmate, mummy and daddy had more money than sense, and whenever we passed a homeless person she was sniff and say “dirty scroungers, get a job!”
My dad on the other hand would always pass the time of day and give them some money. One day we met him on the way home from school, the girl saw dad give a man a few coins and demanded “why give him your money. He needs a job!”
“Yes.”Dad agreed, “and a home, and a nice loving family. Can you give him that? Just as Scaz is my child, that man is somebody’s child. If we all remembered that everyone is somebody’s baby, we would all be happier! When you look at him, you think begger. When I look at him I think “There but for the grace of God go I.”
When we got home, dad sat me down and said “if you remember nothing else, remember this. When someone hits rock bottom, there is only one way left. Up.
If you can’t find a kind person, BE a kind person. When someone hits rock bottom, be the hand pulling them back up, for God knows one day you’ll need someone to do it for you “
Here are 8 useful psychological tricks you can use in daily life:
1.When people tell you things you don’t agree with
Don’t object to them firmly.
First acknowledge what they say with words like, “I see what you mean” and continue with your own opinion asking “but have you ever thought about this part of it?” That approach will help you make your point without being interrupted or having someone oppose you.
2. Toimprove your mood
You can Write down negative thoughts and tossing them in a trash can.
And if you are angry, draw lines. Simple patterns relax you. If you feel sad, paint a rainbow.
3. If you want someone to carry something for you
Hand it over to them while talking. Most people won’t notice that you’re handing them something and they will take it.
But note that this trick may not work on people who are naturally more attentive as well as less close to you.
4. To make yourself look like a naturally good listener, even if you aren’t one
Paraphrase what someone else has just said and say it again. Remember to not be too obvious though.
5. To get friendlier with a person
Emphasize your shared values. In other words, try finding a point of similarity between the two of you and then highlight it.
This is according to the “similarity-attraction effect”, stating that you are more attracted to those who are similar to you.
6. To give someone positive memories of your conversation or interaction
Let them talk about themselves. One study showed that when people talked about themselves, the reward system of the brain became activated, meaning talking about oneself felt actually rewarding.
7. When two people eat together, if you want to know if the other person has a potential affection for you (friendship and love apply)
Pick up a cup and take a sip of water. If the other person also subconsciously picks up his glass and drinks water, he or she is more likely to have a potential interest in you. Related article you may want to read: 20 signs to tell if someone likes you.
8. To immediately feel confident
You may be surprised by the effectiveness of adopting the “power stance”, i.e. standing with your legs apart and your arms spread out so that you cover as much space as possible. If you do this for just two minutes, you flood your body with testosterone and will instantly feel more self-assured.
An earthquake occurred at 4:00 pm, The Self-Defense Forces were still eating, drinking and having fun to celebrate the New Year that night. They did not set out to the disaster area until noon the next day. It took 5 or 6 days after the disaster to complete the operation. There were only 2,000 food supplies for more than 10,000 people and no water for one day., only get one rice ball.
China :
At 23:59 on December 18, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake occurred in Jishishan County, Gansu Province, my country;
Just 3 minutes after the earthquake, fire trucks and ambulances appeared on the streets;
20 minutes after the earthquake, Gansu and Qinghai launched emergency plans at the same time;
37 minutes after the earthquake, the fire rescue teams from Lanzhou, Wuwei and Baiyin had already assembled and went to the scene for disaster relief;
81 minutes after the earthquake, the first trapped person was rescued;
160 minutes after the earthquake, the provincial party committee secretaries and governors from Gansu and Qinghai arrived at the disaster area to guide the rescue;
At four o’clock in the morning, the first batch of 300 rescue troops from the People’s Liberation Army arrived in the disaster area and began relief;
In the early morning of that day, the People’s Liberation Army cooking truck began to make breakfast for the affected people;
At 15:00 that day, the official announced that the earthquake rescue work was basically completed, and the focus of the work shifted to the treatment of the wounded and the living arrangements of the affected people.
In other words, from 23:59 on the evening of the 18th to 15:00 on the 19th, China completed the entire earthquake rescue work in only 15 hours. The affected people even had hot meals in the morning as usual.
image 62
a tweet from a Japanese comparing two disaster rescue mission.
image 61
do you understand picture above?
Author Note : China is not a perfect country, a smart society has it owns problem. However I notice that they are very optimistic about their economy prospect compared with the rest of the world and second they really proud on how disaster management they have.
Ignore the single dimension inaccurate GDP! It measures hot air bubble like Wall Street and bloated U.S. greed such as pharmaceutical companies!
China for all intent and purpose has overtaken the U.S. for at least a decade now. Financially, politically, economically and militarily since 2014.
China won’t do the shit that the U.S. do foolishly acting as a worldwide police man that no one wanted and nobody is willing to pay a cent for. The only gain for the US is universal hate and disdain. The U.S. appears to prefer to implode its economy and impoverish its people by paying for Ukraine instead of helping its own poor.
China is very clear it will do everything to make Chinese people live a better life, healthier living and better livelihood over interference, intervention and chaos and coup financing and orchestrating. That is a U.S. thing. American must stand up to stop your corrupt officials from bankrupting your nation and destroying your future.
It was dark at the restaurant’s parking lot. I was a young boy in the back seat of my Father’s Thunderbird. My older brother and I were kneeling on the car seat, watching a frightening scene unfold through the rear window. My Mother was in the front seat holding our baby sister while keeping an eye on us and repeatedly ordering us to stay in the car and to not open any doors. (In the 1960’s child-proof locks didn’t exist)
Outside, a loud, angry man walked towards my Father. He was enraged. He pointed at my Father as he screamed profanities and threats. He kept advancing and made it perfectly clear to my Father he was going to kill him. I think the man was upset that my Father had inadvertently pulled into a parking spot he wanted.
My Father stood still.
Although the parking lot was only barely illuminated by a small lamppost, I could still see the vehemence in this man’s face. The shadows the overhead lamp created made him look even more demonic as he kept getting closer. The man pulled an object from his pocket and with some fancy wrist flicks flipped it open and exposed a blade. It looked like this:
image 10
Image Source: Google images
It’s called a balisong. The American version is called a butterfly knife.
“I’m going to slice your guts open,” I heard the man say.
“Is that what you wanted? You want a knife fight?” my Father asked. He opened the car’s trunk.
We briefly lost sight of the angry man. Only after my Father shut the trunk did we see what was happening again. We saw the man with the knife. Except now he was much further away; running, stumbling in panic, screaming apologies and running some more.
My Father wasn’t too far behind and closing in with a samurai sword.
I lost track of my Father and the man after they rounded the corner of the restaurant. I don’t think my Father killed him, though, as I didn’t see any blood on his clothes or on the sword in his hand as he calmly walked back to the car. He slid the sword back into its sheath and lowered the trunk door.
“Let’s eat,” he casually said.
During WWII, my Father was a member of Marking’s Regiment, a guerilla unit. They took part in several fights, most of which were in thick jungles which involved a lot of ambushes and hand-to-hand combat. (They also fought alongside American units in several operations. Here’s one of them
[1]) The article written by David Lash mentions them in a couple of places. The article’s several pages long though, so I extracted some excerpts:
The Americans were greatly helped by Filipino guerrillas. From the very beginning of the Japanese occupation, numerous bands had been active throughout the Philippines. They ran the gamut from highly effective, disciplined groups to common criminals. But one of the outfits most useful to the Americans was Marking’s Fil-American Yay Regiment, better known as Marking Regiment, a group of Filipino guerrillas about 3,000 strong. This group was headed by Colonel Marcus V. Augustin, a former Manila-Antipolo bus driver who had escaped Bataan and chosen “Marking” as his guerilla name.
Marking’s Regiment would be under the direction of Brig. Gen. Alexander Stark, the assistant commander of the 43rd. Its role was to attack the northern flank, largely as a feint to confuse the Japanese. Because of this secondary status, there were no plans to give it significant artillery or air support.
The regiment would be split into a North Force and a South Force of about 1,500 men each.
(Before I continue I want to respectfully say “Thank you” to all the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces – past and present, Thank you for your service.)
My Father was decorated with several battle scars. The one that pertains to this story though, at a separate battle from the one mentioned above, is a long scar above his chest, right below his neck. It was courtesy of a Japanese officer in one of their several run-ins. My Father killed him with a bolo (a type of machete) after the officer’s swing and near miss at decapitation. He claimed the dead man’s sword after the fight was over and all the enemy combatants were dead. (They had a tendency to refuse surrender, which was fine by the guerrillas.)
The man with a 5-inch blade had no effect on my Father other than to produce a disdainful sneer. Without seeing his face I know he sneered. I know the man.
Below is a photo of the actual sword my Father chased the man with that night. My Father donated it to a WW II museum before old age finally claimed him. I took a picture of his sword when I went back home for his funeral. He was buried with full military honors.
Post Script added 4/5/20 :
My Father was well aware of the value of the samurai sword. He was an executive officer of the Philippines Veterans Museum and played an instrumental part in the creation and building of the museum. After he retired from his law practice, he dedicated the remainder of his life to the welfare of veterans and worked tirelessly for their benefit. He had housing units, similar to barracks, built for homeless or financially needy veterans and their families to live in cost free for as long as they needed.
The monetary value of the sword, to him, was insignificant. Income generated from the museum were used for expenses related to the housing units as well as for the education of the children and descendants of poor veterans. So the value of the sword was not lost, but repurposed to benefit the needy.
The funniest joke I have ever heard (and what makes it even more hilarious is the fact that I am blind) is the one about the man who takes his Seeing Eye dog into a bar. He picks the dog up by the tail and swings him around his head in a circle. “What are you doing?” the bar tender asks. “I’m just looking around.” he replies.
Another is about a blind man who goes to Texas. He feels the bus seat in Texas and says, “This seat is huge!” “Everything’s bigger in Texas.” the bus driver says. “Have a seat.” So the blind man sits down and the bus arrives at a bar later on. The guy gets off and goes inside.
When he sits down, the bar tender pours him a glas. The blind man feels it and says, “This glass is humongus.” “Everything is bigger in Texas.” the bar tender replies. A few minutes pass and the blind guy is hammered. He asks the tender where the rest room is. “It’s the third door on your right down that hallway to the left of you.” the bar tender replies, and the blind man gets up and advances toward the bathroom. Well, along the way, he trips over a fan cord and as a result, he oversteps and goes out the fourth door instead. He falls into the club swimming pool, and the whole time he’s standing in water up to his chest, he’s screaming, “Don’t flush! Don’t flush! Please, God, no!”
1. If you have a few hours to kill on the airplane, delete pictures from your phone.
2. Use your travel toiletries at home the night before you leave for a long trip.
3. Sign out of Netflix when checking out of an Airbnb or hotel.
4. When using a grocery delivery service, tip a set amount, not a percentage.
5. Waving someone through a stop sign when they stopped after you is not doing anybody a favour and most competent drivers are just annoyed at you for behaving unpredictably.
6. If you need to memorize information, read it, record it and play it quietly at night.
7. Save your PowerPoint presentation as a .ppsx file that starts automatically when opened.
8. Marry someone who will always have your back, even when they’re mad at you.
9. If you find a faster way to do something at your work, keep it a secret from your manager.
10. Your company didn’t know you existed before you applied and won’t notice you when you’re gone. Take care of yourself.
11. Before buying something, ask yourself two questions: “Where will I store this thing?” and “How difficult will it be to clean this thing?”
12. If the person you are dating invites you over for a home cooked meal, take the initiative and just start doing the dishes without asking. You can thank me later.
13. Ask the person you are dating the non-negotiables of yours in the first few weeks.
14. If you know how late you are going to be, add an extra 5-10 minutes to it. It might be annoying for the people when you say it initially, but when you come before the time you said, it will evoke a far more positive reaction than underestimating the lateness time.
15. Pay Attention to the smell of your home when you come back from a trip. That’s what it smells like to guests all the time, you just get used to it.
16. Do not try to be the man your father would want you to be. Be the man you would like your son to be be.
I was new to a school. New year for everyone else.
If you thought this was yet another story from my dramatic teenage years, you were wrong. I was seven.
There was a boy in this class. Let’s call him Lewis. Lewis was… let’s just say he wasn’t very popular. He wasn’t bullied, he wasn’t hated, he was just a loner. The sort of kid who no one really talked to, and who didn’t really talk to anyone (he would grow up to be the most mad cap son of a bitch I know).
One day Lewis decides to read a book. I cannot recall what book, only that it had a bright pink cover.
Another kid, let’s call him Darren, decides that this is a perfect opportunity to do what kids do best: be cruel. So he goes to mock Lewis.
‘You’re reading a girls book. You like girly things!’
I’ve been observing Lewis for several days now. I’ve always liked to observe those that stood out to me. Even at my age I was able to tell that Lewis was not the sort of kid who would be able to respond well to that.
Except I was wrong.
‘Yeah I’m reading a girly book. I also like fairy cakes. And I love my mum. What are you going to do about it?’
Y’all know what sort of person I am. Now. But this kid was 7 years old and totally owned who he was. Not only that, but he took what must’ve been the greatest risk I’d ever seen right there.
Back in the late ‘90s, I began my time at a Ford dealership as a technician. (I had been working on vehicles/machinery since a kid, so, it was a good fit)
One day, right at closing time, a lady came in from about 50 miles away. She had a brand new first generation Ford Escape (it had only come out maybe a month prior) with less than 500 miles on the odometer.
She complained about a shimmy/wobble from the front end and steering wheel vibration. Ok. So, preliminary check while parked outside and her watching, I look at the vehicle head-on and noticed the driver’s front wheel out of alignment, seriously out of alignment. I take a closer look and pop the center cap off the wheel, exposing the hub and axle assembly (this was a front wheel drive vehicle) and what I saw blew me away.
There was no axle nut holding the hub to the threaded axle shaft. Judging from the condition of the hub, no witness marks and the absence of the nut itself, the retainer nut was never installed on this vehicle from the factory.
This customer had driven all that way with only the caliper and brake disk assembly holding the wheel onto the vehicle. This one disturbed me just thinking what could have happened had the brake disk or the caliper failed during her commute.
Kings in the middle ages did impregnate servants BUT those servants were freqently of noble or “gentle” birth themselves. The daughters of knights, at the least.
Why mess with the runny-nosed maid scrubbing the privy floor when there were wall-to-wall ladies-in-waiting doing the less grubby jobs of helping the queen and princesses dress, doing their hair, mending their clothes, and serving their meals? Not to mention the daughters and sisters of the noblemen serving the king?
The children from those affairs didn’t become princes and princesses because they weren’t in the line of inheritance. But their mothers were often married off to someone with money and who wanted to be in the king’s favour. The king might acknowledge a daughter with an estate and minor title at some point to get her a better marriage or acknowledge a competent young son with a title, an estate and a military command.
In Norman tradition, it was common to give an illegitimate child the surname starting with “Fitz.” Giles Fitzgerald would be the illegitimate son of a nobleman named Gerald of Whatever, while Gerald’s legitimate son William would be William of Whatever. Fitzroy was reserved for the son of the king. There were lots of Fitzroys around sometimes.
William the Conqueror was illegitimate, but since his father, Robert, Duke of Normandy, had no legitimate sons, he picked William to be his heir. William of Normandy, later King William I of England, still got stuck with the name “William the Bastard” by his detractors.
Henry I of England had 25 known illegitimate children by several noble mistresses. He made one of his nine illegitimate sons the Earl of Gloucester and another the Earl of Cornwall. Others (mostly named Fitzroy) were given smaller estates and/or military commands, and at least one went into the church. And although Henry lost both his legitimate sons young, the earls of Cornwall and Gloucester backed up their legitimate sister Matilda’s claim to the throne. Of his daughters, one became an abbess and most of the rest married well — one was a countess, another a duchess, and another the queen of Scotland.
And what did the queens think of this? In the middle ages, they didn’t have much to say, unless they were Queen Regnant like Joanna of Castille, who, when her handsome husband, Philip Duke of Austria, messed with some of her ladies-in-waiting, cut off their hair and spread it across his pillow as a warning.
We worked at a battery manufacturing plant in a small town in Iowa. One of the primary hazards was lead contamination, so we had to have our blood lead levels checked frequently to be certain they didn’t hit truly hazardous levels (but, working in such a place, your levels were *never* zero).
One day a coworker just slipped in the door & managed to clock in on time, so others asked him why was running so late. He said that he’d overslept & so had been egregiously speeding trying to make it when he was pulled over by Iowa State Patrol.
When the officer asked him why he was going so fast, he looked at him & said “Sorry, officer, but I work at Exide.”
“So what does that have to do you speeding?”
“It’s my blood levels, sir. All the lead makes my foot heavy!”
Apparently, the cop got a good laugh at the excuse & let him go with a warning.
Gary was a really enthusiastic teacher. He spent a lot of his free time pouring over ‘How to teach’ texts, grammar explanations and games (for grammar and English communications).
He took lesson planning and student evaluations very (too?) seriously.
He talked of little else.
I liked him and could relate to his passion for teaching.
We were all teaching part-time in a small, uni-sponsored English language program and rarely saw each other since all classes were off-campus.
The director’s secretary called me, asking if I knew of a school that would hire Gary, stating that the director had to let him go for over-achieving.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???
Gary had been sent to a high-end accounting firm to improve the English language skills of ten people who were scheduled for promotion to senior auditors IF they exhibited a high level of ability in various skills.
Gary went into overdrive in determining their needs (annoying HR and Training with non-stop questions) and planning accordingly.
He decided that the 30-hour course wasn’t sufficient and approached our director AND the company’s HR. He was told to stick to the schedule.
BUT he (on his own) added an unpaid, extra half hour or more to each class period.
The students were appreciative, but the company and our director took a dim view. The company, like many places we taught, expected the staff to study at 5 p.m. and then put in overtime after class.
Gary’s class extensions were affecting projects, customer relations and students’ output.
The director, although Gary did NOT ask for extra pay, saw this as a financial loss, a practice that none of the other teachers would be willing to do, AND a deterrent to future classes with this company.
He tried explaining and reasoning with Gary with little success. He finally had to order Gary to stop the extra teaching or give up the class.
The company was notified with apologies (our director was an amazing smoozer) and that was the end of it.
But…no.
Gary continued to sneak in extra time, 10-15 minutes or so, and added homework.
When the course finished, the students praised Gary for his concern and gave him high evaluations but quietly asked HR to request a different teacher.
Note: Gary was later hired at a different university as full-time staff, often tutoring students for free.
What an epic marina to enjoy rich lifestyle with a palm-fringed shoreline, roads congested with sports cars, and beautiful women in bikinis sunbathing on a white sand beach.…Not.
Russian steel and mining oligarch Alexey Mordashov’s superyacht Nord has just been re-registered in grim and brutalsky Vladivostok, Russia. It’s been docked in Golden Horn Bay near the borders with friendly countries, North Korea and China, for over a year.
The region is known for its large reserves of tin and tungsten. It’s also rich in copper, fluorite, and coal. Collectors value agates, sapphires, and precious opals that are held in high esteem. It doesn’t manufacture or design absolutely anything of economic value.
The super yacht costs 5 annual city budgets of Vladivostok, which skyline you can see in the photo above.
Having escaped by the skin of Mordashov’s American dental work from being impounded in Italy, the captain turned the transponder off and went AWOL for one full year. All this time, Mordashov desperately tried to negotiate political asylum for his boat in Asian countries – any would do as long as he didn’t have to return to his homeland.
Putin started the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the West retaliated with a barrage of sanctions targeting his inner circle, and oligarchs like Modrashov discovered that they have about as much agency outside of Putin’s diktat and Western playbook as a cockroach about to be sprayed with DDT.
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Indonesia and Malaysia told Mordashov off and to head up Nord, which he did. Hong Kong reacted to the man on the run’s request for sanctuary just as they did to Edward Snowden’s:
“We not gonna have reputational risks and jeopardize our dodgy financial schemes and money laundering hub for the sake of your narcissistic self-aggrandizements. Can we recommend a country where you gonna fit right in – Russia?”
The super-yacht was built in Germany and was registered in the Cayman Islands, whose flag features The British Union Jack in the corner, a country that has provided Urkaine with cruise missiles that have sunk at least two Russian warships in the Black Sea, including the fleet’s flagship Moskva.
Launched just two years before the full-scale invasion, Nord spent a third of its lifespan on the run, and a third docked in Vladivostok. Mordashov should convert it to an icebreaker as the only route left for him to take is the Arctic Ocean.
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Mordashov is also free to play Tschaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with artillery and all and wait for the end of the hostilities at the other end of Russia to cease.
It doesn’t matter which side is going to win though, Mordashov’s is stuck in Vladivostok forever. I would recommend scuttling and selling tickets to a most expensive private yacht shipwreck diving spot. Chinese millionaires across the border might show interest in buying tours.
Al Capone had balls the size of Texas. He allegedly did not fear anyone or anything EXCEPT the little Polish guy from Chicago.
Weiss had bad headaches and fainting spells. It was probably a brain tumor. Certain he was not going to live into his 30’s, Weiss had balls the size of Alaska. He feared nothing, including the godfather of Chicago’s South Side, Al Capone.
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The son of poor Italian immigrants, Capone would rule the biggest criminal empire in American history. Although prostitution, gambling and bootlegging were the moneymakers, killing opponents came with the territory.
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The North Side Gang was a mix of Poles, Jews and Irishmen. The South Side Gang was Italians, run by Capone and Johnny Torrio. They did not like each other. Capone decided to delete the head of the North Side; Dean O’Banion was shot dead on November 10, 1924.
Weiss took control of the North Side Gang. He shot up Capone’s limousine, but Capone was not in the vehicle at the time. He then went over to visit Johnny Torrio at his house and peppered him full of bullets. Weiss did not like the Sicilian mafia either, so he stopped by to see Angelo Genna, too. Weiss killed him.
Weiss did his own killing; it was his hobby.
Capone was nervous. His days were numbered, so he contacted Weiss and requested a truce. A meeting was held.
Weiss demanded that the two men who shot O’Banion be delivered for his own personal afternoon of “entertainment”. Either that or he would kill Capone, too.
Capone could not accept the offer. Those two were the best hit men in Capone’s private collection.
As Weiss went to the flower shop where he often slept and where O’Banion was killed, two men, one with a machine gun and the other with a shotgun, opened fire. Weiss, the only man that Al Capone feared, was dead of a bullet wound to the head at the age of 28.
Several years ago I was working for a company doing home theatre installs. Often when walk-ins bought TVs they’d ask to have it installed (and mounted). A good customer of ours came in and bought a new TV. At the time this 60″ plasma was going out the door for about $8k. We (I) installed it, mounted it on the wall in their basement. It had been recommended that they purchase a UPS / battery backup /spike protector. They declined. After I finished the install I recommended the same (I was paid salary, so selling stuff wasn’t part of my compensation and didn’t matter except for the obvious protection of this equipment). I didn’t plug the TV into the wall, the customer did that after declining the UPS.
2 weeks later they called stating their satellite dish tower was struck by lightning and the new TV wasn’t coming on. I was sent to evaluate. You could smell the ozone smell, the magic smoke smell even a day later. Warranty doesn’t cover this. They buy a new TV.. the new models just came out and they popped for a 75″… and a UPS this time. I had a helper with me to install the new one, and they asked us to dispose of the baked TV. I called the office and they said load it up and take it away to be disposed, don’t even bring it to the office. Instead of taking it 45 minutes to the E-waste disposal site, I put it in the back of my truck and dumped it on my back porch. It sat there for a couple years. When Covid hit and everything shut down I did what everyone else did… started purging stuff. I looked at this TV and decided to take a look-see before tossing it. After laying it on the counter and getting the back off it, I exposed 3 PCBs. 2 were almost identical, as I looked first at one and then the next I realized that the PCB on the right had a pile of charcoal where a small blue MoV should have been (MoV’s are the protection device in Surge protector bars). I went down to my dead devices pile and grabbed an old dead Bell Sat receiver and found the same part. Unsoldered it and installed it into the TV. As soon as I plugged it in, the screen came on and the audio started hissing that white noise from not being tuned to a channel.
I’m using that TV for over 2 years now without any further issues.
Had to fire one engineer for watching porn on the company computer. Worst part? He sued because he wasn’t given a warning…the State Labor board agreed…we had to cover his salary for six months. Despite being clearly covered in the employee handbook as a “no-no”, we apparently couldn’t just fire him. We figured it was just the cost of doing business to rid ourselves of such an individual.
Fired one young lady on the second shift who was “entertaining gentlemen” in her van during lunch hour. If she’d been doing it up on the berm of the State highway it would have been a public matter, but she was parked on company property…with surveillance cameras catching everything.
Fired upwards of a hundred over the years for drug and alcohol abuse on the job.
Some more I knew about (but wasn’t the firing supervisor)…
There were two executives caught “in the act” on the boardroom table. Not a great career choice in general, particularly bad when the CEO is a born again Christian.
Knew another executive who got a job at a private firm…and decided it was a bright idea to share the spreadsheet of bids of all the competitors with the government. Their first act was to fire him, the second was to call the FBI and the Inspector General. He’s doing time in Federal prison.
More “rank and file” firings for time card theft, attempted embezzlement, stealing company property, deliberate destruction of company property, and aggravated assault on a co-worker.
One day I was walking in my building when a girl in my neighborhood, pushed me from behind.
I looked around at her, tried to reason with her but she snapped at me saying I wasn’t looking where I was going.
She was plain rude.
Stop for a moment.
What do you think of that girl now?
Mean? Obnoxious?
Let’s see what actually happened:
I had my earphones on when I was walking so I couldn’t hear the girl walking behind me.
I slowed down suddenly and that’s when that girl bumped into me.
I got annoyed and asked her what her problem was. That’s when she got angry and asked me to watch where I was going.
Okay. Same story, two narrations.
The above incident didn’t really happen but I wanted to illustrate something:
In the first story, I never mentioned I had my earphones on.
In the first story, I said that the girl was the one who pushed me.
In fact, I even wrote that I “tried to reason with her” when I had actually blamed her even though I was the one at fault.
I left out the details which could make me look bad and exaggerated the parts which blamed the other person.
Just like, if a person goes ahead and says how all oftheir exes were crazy and they were the innocent victims, there’s a high chance that the story is manipulated.
Here’s the thing: Every story has two sides.
So, you can never form a judgement by hearing just one side of it.
What things should you never do?
Well, let’s start with, not believing every random thing you hear.
China will not fight decoupling. It is good for China. It gives impetus for Chinese innovation and Chinese self sustenance.
Most of all it helps China grow healthily and steadily. At 3–4 times that of the U.S. It is good for keeping in check over growth that may be bad for environment and China can cultivate its domestic market. Though it slows down China say 1–2% GDP so will be the U.S. take this year for example. China will likely grow by 6% in spite of all the shit the U.S. throw at China! And the U.S. will hardly hit even 2% growth.
6% is a wet dream for western economies to have. These day UK is set for a negative growth of -3%. And the rest of EU are barely faring better.
Decoupling is a suicide for the west. But hubris and supremacists thinking probably encourage the U.S. on. Frankly the rest of the Global South are ready to decouple from the west. We are ready. Please keep your outdated and irrelevant technologies to screw yourself.
Imagine:You are trapped on your stomach, walls all around you. Each time you inhale, your ribs touch the top of the space you are enclosed in. You can only wiggle forward, inching towards freedom. Oh, yeah-don’t forget: The walls might crumble down on you, killing you instantly. Worse yet, you might get trapped, stuck in a tiny, enclosed space, unable to move as you slowly die of thirst.
Doesn’t that sound like fun?
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Spelunking, otherwise known as cave crawling, is the ‘sport’ for people with a death wish. Essentially, you mash your body through tiny cave crevices that have the chance of leading to a larger cave. It’s a claustrophobic’s nightmare come to life.
You might think that it’s safe? Absolutely not. The only equipment you have is a helmet. If you think:
Well, with my trusty hard hat, what’s there to worry about? It’ll protect me if the cave comes crumbling down!
Then you might want to go “spelunking” in a padded room with no windows.
The Nutty Putty Cave incident made international headlines.
Spelunker John Jones was well familiar with spelunking. As a child, he had often spelunked with his father, and when he was 23 years old, he descended into the depths of Nutty Putty Cave in Utah. The cave had seen over 5000 visitors a year for decades, and was assumed to be fairly safe.
John went into the cave with his brother Josh and some other friends, totally unaware of what would happen next. At one point, John thought he was in a part of the cave called the Birth Canal, but in reality, he had ventured into uncharted sections of the cave near “Ed’s Push”. He went to climb through a small gap- and found himself seriously stuck. Even worse- he was almost entirely upside-down.
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Several rescue attempts failed, and John died of cardiac arrest after being stuck in the cave for over 27 hours. Officials couldn’t even retrieve his body, and Nutty Putty Cave was forever sealed off.
There have been countless other deaths in cave systems around the world. Drowning, starvation, noxious gas- you name it. Spelunking just doesn’t sound appealing.
I don’t see how the mashing yourself through tiny crevices is worth the chance of dying an awful death. I’ll fling myself out of a plane, dive down into the depths of the ocean, scale cliff faces- but there’s absolutely no way in the world I’m ever going spelunking.
Yet most of our Industries are rapidly buying more and more Chinese machinery when the time for replacement comes
This year the demand for Chinese CNC machinery for India surged rapidly
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Machines are more affordable and better quality
One Importer said he had less than 15% orders from China in 2015 but now has almost 70% orders from China
The Biggest problem for Chinese Machines in India was RESALE
A Major Industry could buy 50 Chinese Machines but reselling them in the second hand market was a huge problem as they barely fetched 10% of their value against almost 30% for Japanese & Korean and 40% for Western Machines
Yet now Chinese Machines fetch 25% of their value in resale and the biggest part is the same machines can be resold to other countries in Africa
Indian Industries save almost 18% of their production costs that increases their profit plus the re exporting of second hand Chinese machinery brings export revenue
It’s a WIN WIN relationship
China has this Win Win relationship with most nations in the world
Even the West, which is why despite all the rhetoric, decoupling is not feasible
When Goods worth $ 100 Billion is imported from China, they create finished goods worth $ 200–400 Billion or sell for $ 200–400 Billion in Western Economies
This leads to VALUE CREATION
This contributes to between 13% to 33% of the economic growth of Western economies
When $ 100 worth of components are assembled to sell a final product for $ 300 – that creates an additional $ 200 of value
This helps Countries with value enhancement plus even exports
Due to this Win Win relationship, despite all the efforts of the West, China is an integral cog in the Global Economy
It’s why many nations visit China and pledge allegiance and friendship every year
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In 2023 – 81 Foreign Delegations visited China against a mere 12 Chinese Delegations visiting other countries
160+ Trade Delegations visited China versus a mere 30+ Trade delegations from China visiting other countries
Every Economy needs China for its sustained growth especially Western ones
So the world is not turning against China in any way
Not even the United States is
All these so called Anti China policies are purely ECONOMIC
If Chinese Products now of high quality flood the global markets, it’s likely 50% of the Western Brands will collapse in a decade
NEVs are the best example
Likewise if China manages to make 3 nm chips, they can outprice the entire Western supply by 60% and finish the market of every single Western designer and fabrication industry
Thus they are being throttled
China already finished the markets for all Western chipmakers who sold 450–45 nm Chips
Yet China was necessary to bring down costs in the first place
Hence the Anti Chinese Propaganda
To combat the transformation of China from a Cheap Producer to a High Quality Industrialized Nation
Trust me, tomorrow if China scales back down on their transformation and goes back to Pre 2015 mode, Xi Jingping will become a great statesman and China will be the friend of the world to the US Media again
Nobody sees them as the Great Satan
That’s reserved for the USA
Even Phillipinos or Taiwanese don’t see China as a great satan despite the recent issues
To the world China is a Country capable of delivering a Win Win relationship
The U.S. never had any evidence nor even factual information it just make up lies as it goes a long. China steal intellectual property? China is aggressive, China carry out “genocide”, China is authoritarian, China create debt trap and a whole set of narratives dream up to demonise and cause mistrust and fear.
It is very despicable frankly. But what can you expect from a nation that started by the mass murder and genocide of its natives. Then this nation murdered and tortured up to 30 million Africans to slave and built the U.S. This nation is the only one that nuke to murder 200 thousands due to their skin colour, this same nation also murdered and slaughter up to 100 million innocent civilians or caused it through interference, war mongering and chaos and coup orchestrating.
China and the world knows the U.S. hypocrisy and its despicable nature but talking shit is all it can do and frankly it hurts US economy more than it can ever hurt China. To most nation lying and fabricating to demonise another nation is simply hypocritical and obnoxious and that what the global community sees the U.S. By not lashing back China keeps its moral high ground. And even US slave vassal states and cronies cannot but feel a shame of US behaviour but their short term gain is paramount.
Hence the pretence and the intentional concurrence of the back boneless nations. Shameful.
In the late 80’s I had been working as a Technician for a Saab dealership in Denver… I grew very fond of the Saab brand and enjoyed working on them….Unfortunately the Dealership closed and I had to go back to working on the poorly engineered and built garbage that was coming out of Detroit in the 80’s so I packed up my $90K worth of tools, into my dads garage, went out and bought a big ol Freightliner and took to the highways…Fast forward to the 90’s….Im (http://90’s….Im) cruising down the highway one fine day, and come up on a pretty little red Saab 900 convertible on the roadside, hood up and steaming away, I wasnt in a big hurry so I pulled over, and took a little walk back to the car where I found a very distraught middle aged lady, and her elderly mother….As (http://mother….As) I walked up I said,”It must be your lucky day, I just happen to be a former Saab mechanic” Can I help you?…She almost kissed me!!!
She stated,” I just picked it up from the repair shop, It cost me $800 to have the radiator replaced, and now its overheating again” I’ve got my mother with me and we are late for a family function…. I immediately knew what was wrong, and told her, I’ll have you on your way in 5 minutes….Went and grabbed my 10mm wrench and a gallon of water,popped the coolant bleeder valve open, told her if you dont get all the air out of the system a big ol air bubble will form inside your water pump, and here you sit….BURP out comes a big blast of air, Let me pay you!!! I said my mother would never allow that and you ladies enjoy your afternoon….Then she says to me, “well it must be YOUR lucky day” as she hands me her business card…..Turns out, shes the Vice President of Transportation for Proctor & Gamble and Sir, any time you EVER get somewhere and need a load, YOU call ME !!!! Over the next 15 years I cant count the times she fixed me up with a good paying load wherever I happened to be…..
At age 60 I was feeling run down & fatigued for a while, attributing it to age & not enough exercise. I decided to check my blood pressure at home and it was quite high despite the blood pressure medication I was taking, so I called my doctor’s office. They were concerned & told me to come into the office right away & they would fit me in.
My BP was still high in the doctor’s office, so my doctor sent me to the lab for a lot of blood work. That afternoon I started getting texts with some of the results of the lab work & I saw that I was anemic. Well that explained a lot & I figured I would need iron supplements.
The next morning my doctor calls me first thing. She tells me that she is admitting me to hospital in order to fully diagnose what is going on with me. I am scared, call my boss to tell her I am being admitted, but I really do not know what is wrong.
Once in the hospital I learned that I had kidney disease, and I was in kidney failure! Never saw that coming! I had to begin dialysis immediately, which made me ill & caused low blood pressure.
I was on dialysis for 7 months, with 5 months of home hemo dialysis. I felt ill and was exhausted all the time, with little appetite & unable to return to work.
Both of my adult children offered to be tested to be living donors. My son was tested first as he lives in the same city and he turned out to be a match!!
I was extremely fortunate to have my 24 year old son donate a kidney to me. He truly saved my life & I am forever grateful for his sacrifice. My new kidney is working well, and my son is doing well too.
Unfortunately I have developed several autoimmune illnesses that I am trying to get under control, but thankfully I do not have to have dialysis.
Kidney disease is horrible. Please consider being a living donor, there is a registry & they can find a match if you do not have someone in particular that you are wanting to help. It is truly life saving.
My parents were left of left of left. “Those who have more should be required to share with those who have less” kind of left.
I heard that as far back as I can remember. One day when I was in the fourth grade, my grandfather gave me a dollar. A fair amount in 1958. It was hot the next day, and a lot of my friends at school couldn’t afford an ice cream bar from the cafeteria.
Hey, I had more than they did, so I bought several of them a 14-cent ice cream in addition to getting one for me. My teacher found me and gave me back about sixty cents, saying that she had made four of my friends take back their unopened bars. She also contacted my parents.
When I said that I had more and they had less, my parents said that the dollar was for me. They didn’t want to hear about people with less, as we were not rich. They also didn’t want to hear about how it pleased me to give some friends a treat they couldn’t afford.
After that I watched. While my mother did put some of her money where her mouth was to buy a few things for some Head Start centers she helped set up, they didn’t give much else. What was theirs was theirs, and only who they called wealthy were berated in our household for not sharing. Today, by their standards, I would be called wealthy, even though I’m barely in the top 10% in the US.
My parents had some friends who were wealthy by my parents’ standards. They were also exempt because they were “in the cause” of making the other wealthy people pay.
The secret was that they were completely hypocritical about what they taught me. What it changed was that I became somewhat more conservative, and gave way more to charity than they did. I did follow some of their examples, though. My mother worked as a public health nurse with the Hmong immigrants when they flooded in and actually caught a G-I disease doing it. I have volunteered to do things like building a home for homeless boys in Fiji based on her example.
But when it came to finances, their example of “what’s mine is mine, and what’s theirs is mine, too” stayed with me the rest of my life as an example of what not to think.
Not me but a close friend. She worked with a mid sized oil exploration company and was being paid secretary wages for doing the drunk Geologists job, she did the office work and actually went out and did the field work at times. At the urging of another close friend and myself she asked for a raise and got berated for it and basically told like what you got because that’s all you are worth.
3 weeks later she interviewed with Elf Aquitaine ( French oil company ). She was offered double her current salary with a guaranteed raise after 90 days and salary reviews every 6 months, benefits paid by company and generous matching on savings, offered a opportunity to go to the home office in France for 6 months all expenses paid, encouraged to learn French and was very well treated.
During the interview her new boss said she was the most knowledgeable Geologist they had ever met and that they would pay for her to get her degree since she didn’t have one.
It also helped that she knew all the reports backwards and forwards along with the legal side. She had worked at the exploration company for over 10 years and they just kept adding to her jobs as she mastered more and more of them. They genuinely thought she would never quit and were amazed at what Elf offered, her starting pay was as much as her old bosses, she made enough that she retired at 55 and traveled to world with her husband.
She currently lives in Houston and is an amazing person.
I was 15 years old. I was staying with my aunt yet again as my mother decided she needed another break from me and went on another bender.
My aunt was more of a mom to me. As a result I was very close to her family and called her mom Grandma and her sister Aunt. Anyway Grandma was living with my Aunt. She had dementia and was having a particularly bad day. My aunt asked me to pick up my 10 year cousin from school which was only a block away. I did this often as my aunt tried to shield my cousin from her mothers episodes. She gave me some cash to stop at the small ice cream place near her school to keep her away longer.
I got to my cousins school expecting to see her on the playground where all the kids played while waiting to get picked up. She wasn’t there but I wasn’t worried as I knew she sometimes helped the teacher clean up the classroom after school. I went to her classroom and she wasn’t there either! No one was.
Starting to get worried I started roaming the hallways peeking in the classrooms looking for her. She was nowhere to be found!
I ran to the principals office freaked out by then and told the secretary I couldn’t find her! The secretary immediately made an announcement over the PA system telling my cousin to come to the office. 10 minutes passed. She never came.
We went to the teachers lounge and got the teachers to help look for her. I’ve never been so scared! My aunt trusted me with her daughter and I didn’t know how to call her and tell her she was gone.
30 minutes later we heard a shout. One of the teachers had found her. She was in the library reading. She had gone to check out a book when school had let out without telling anyone and the librarian had locked her in.
I hugged her hard and told her to always tell someone where she was going. It was for her safety. She started crying and apologizing over and over. I told her it was okay. Her principal gave her the same lecture and we left.
My aunt hadn’t called yet to say it was safe to come home so we went for ice cream and then to the local park. An hour later my aunt called and told us to come on home. Grandma finally went to sleep.
After my cousin went to bed that night I told my aunt what had happened. At first she seemed upset but then said they were lucky to have me there. I was shocked. I didn’t receive compliments very often. She gave me a hug told me I was a good person and a great sister to my cousin.
My cousin always made sure she was on the playground after school after that.
He became my feline friend one day when I was working on my patio. I looked up to find a bedraggled, starving and dehydrated cat four feet from me, crying for help. I went and got him some water and a can of tuna, and set it out for him. I eventually got some additional food and a water bowl, and set it out for him. At first, he was pretty skittish, but after a month he would let me pet him. I started moving his bowls toward my patio door, and after three months, he would come in to be fed.
One day he showed up with blood on his face, and we decided he had to go to the vet. He ended up getting antibiotics, and had a drain and the cone of shame. We had him chipped and neutered.
image 55
He was still an outdoor cat, and would periodically get in fights, earning his name “Scrappy”. At one point, he was tested for FIV and tested positive. At that point, our vet said that if we wanted to properly care for him, he should cease his outside existence, as he would be susceptible to infections that could kill him. He was also X-rayed, and found that his left front leg was kind of a mess, having been broken/infected and healed at some point, but with reduced mobility.
We decided to turn him into a 100% indoor cat. He did not like it for the first two weeks.
But he lived. He was safe. He was happy. Occasionally he would get out. He’d usually sit on the patio if it was sunny. If it was rainy, he would turn around and come right back into the house.
Without our intervention he would have died. Instead, he lived for another decade.
Life in the wild for cats is dangerous and short. We have foxes, skunks, raccoons and coyotes in our neighborhood. As well as cars and dogs.
We currently have two other adopted ferals. Their sister (whom we call Patchoulli) is still an outdoor cat, but she sleeps in our garage and we feed her twice daily and see that she gets to the vet and has flea medication. Her brother occasionally joins her outside and catches the odd mouse, but he’s happy to be back inside, usually within an hour.
My wife and I work fairly diligently to provide an engaging environment for our little furry friends, and by virtue of our care, they will enjoy that environment for several times longer than they would be if they were feral.
At one point, I was visiting my mom and step-dad. I asked about the 12HP, 3 blade, 42″ cut riding mower sitting out front at the neighbor’s house. Turned out he had run it out of oil, and the engine seized up. He put oil in after-the-fact, but of course it was too late. He’d bought a new one and the dealer had offered to dispose of the old one for him. I asked if I could try to fix it and he said, GO ahead, they’re not giving me anything for it.
We wheeled it into step-dad’s work shop. The piston was vertical stroke, so the spark plug was on top. We poured some new oil through the spark plug hole and went to get lunch. When we came back, we put a socket on the flywheel nut, and a breaker bar on the socket. It broke loose! So we started it up and ran it. It took a couple minutes to burn all the oil out of the top of the cylinder, but then it was fine. My grandfather had been using a really old, 7HP, single blade, 26″ mower to mower about an acre of lawn. I gave it to him. He loved it and used it until he died.
One afternoon, we walked into our Econometrics lecture and found a shopping cart full of tennis balls in front of the door. A second, empty shopping cart stood in the back corner.
The professor waited patiently for us to file into our seats. Then he cleared his throat and announced, “I’m going to need two volunteers today.”
Two hands went up. He handed them each a bucket.
“All right,” he said, “Our two brave volunteers are going to fill up their buckets with tennis balls, carry them across the room, and dump the balls into the other shopping cart. Then they’ll run back and do it again, and again, and again, until all of the balls have been moved.”
We nodded, still confused. This still sounded more like P.E. than Econometrics.
“Before we start this little experiment,” continued our professor, “I want all of you to guess how long this process is going to take. Go onto the class website and type in your guesses – I’ll give a candy bar to the student who gets closest to the actual answer.”
I had no idea what to guess. How many buckets’ worth tennis balls could fit in a shopping cart? How long would it even take to carry a full bucket across the classroom?
In the end, I just took a stab at it and typed in 42 seconds.
“All right,” he said, after we’d all made our guesses. “Are we ready? On your mark…get set…go!”
The process ended up taking 162 seconds.
Then we all went online together to look at our guesses.
There were about eighty students in the class, and I wasn’t the only one who’d been completely wrong – our guesses were all over the place. Some of us had guessed that it would take less than 20 seconds; others had guessed that it would take nearly ten minutes.
Then we looked at the average of all of our guesses.
157 seconds.
Our collective guess, as a group, was closer to the correct answer than 98%of our individual guesses.
It was the first time I’d witnessed a “wisdom of crowds” moment in action. At that moment, all I could think was, Hot damn. Statistics is so cool.
He’d run this experiment every semester, and more often than not, the collective guess would have won the candy bar. This class was one of the reasons I decided to major in economics.
Me (over phone) : The movie has started, where the heck are you?
Kirti : Just in 2 minutes.
Me : I’m watching it for the fourth time I could afford to be late. But a first timer, really?
Kirti : Just shut up.
She disconnected. Finally she reached.
Kirti : Hey, see I told you two minutes.
(I started leaving).
Kirti : Where, you going?
Me : I was watching Interstellar again to experience time dilation in a movie. But when fifteen minutes of mine are equal to two minutes of yours, then it’s time dilation in reality. Thank you.
As I was leaving, she stood unmoved and kept looking at me.
Kirti : Do you want me to say sorry?
Me : I was just kidding. Let’s go watch the movie.
Kirti : Let’s hurry up.
Me : And hey, in case I raised my voice while on phone, sorry for that.
Kirti : It’s okay.
When Kirti became my girlfriend.
It was a different cinema, different movie, same Kirti, same me, but a different demeanour.
Me (over phone) : Hey, where the hell are you?
Kirti : Just in.
She comes.
Me : You need to understand I’m not your puppet, I got my time and priorities.
Kirti : I’m so sorry. Please don’t shout like this.
Me : Just shut up, already.
Previously she shut me up and now I did.
I forgot that she had said yes to me when the world was chasing her.
I would say sorry to her a thousand times when she was my crush and now she is the one saying sorry.
One day, it got real ugly and she ditched me in the heat of the moment but forever. I deserved it.
BYD makes most of the batteries used in the world today. Tesla do not make batteries themselves It leads in EV buses and truck world wide and now EV cars itself. It is a highly profitable company but based on Wall Street valuation it is worth 10% of Tesla! Even Warren Buffet who is probably the world’s most savvy investor invested in BYD!
The difference is one is listed and it’s stock is listed in Wall Street while the other is listed and sold in Hong Kong! That is why the GDP of the U.S. is full of hot air bubble! It will come crashing down! For me Tesla is highly overrated and over valued while BYD is highly undervalued!
Now let us look at the number. BYD hardly sell in the U.S. and Europe yet it sold the most EV worldwide this means the Global South market is humongous and the U.S. and EU are small potatoes these days! Both the U.S. and EU are depriving their citizens from benefiting from value for money technology and a cleaner environment. Whatever happen to freedom of choice? What about free market mechanism? Thrown out of your window?
BYD sells very well world wide because of value for money. Tesla profiteers and it is mostly made in China with many parts and technologies from China. Yet it sells at a huge profit. But the U.S. prefers to let its citizens be abused by corporations rather than helping them reduce their living cost!
“I’m moving to Texas to be with my fiancée. I can either move and work for somebody else; or I can move and continue working for you remotely.”
After she graduated from college, my fiancée moved to Texas to start work with NASA. We had lived apart for almost a year.
I was determined to be with her. So, I planned my move to Texas. After three months of planning, I had some money saved up and a couple of job prospects in mind.
I walked into my boss’s office fully expecting to walk out without a job or my notice given. But, I decided to try something I thought of the night before, instead.
After some small talk, I said “I’m moving to Texas to be with my fiancée. I can either move and work for somebody else; or I can move and continue working for you remotely.”
He sat there quietly for almost a full minute. I’m normally not one to get uncomfortable with silence; but this was unexpected. He was actually thinking about it!
I hid my excitement and let him think.
Finally, he asked “What part of Texas?”
I answered.
He went on to explain that there would have to be a change in my status. Payroll would have to do things so I was taxed for the proper locale, etc.
I was the first person in our group to be a full time telecommuter. This was in 2001.
I’ve gone through six bosses since then and I’m still working from home! Today, most of my team works from home too!
If you ever get caught sleeping at your desk at work just say “they told me at the Blood Bank that this would happen.
When the power goes out search for wifi networks on your phone to see if everyones power is out.
Quelling road rage by pretending that every asshole driver really has to poop.
If you want to maintain good posture, pretend your nipples have lasers that shoot out of them and you have to keep them aimed at people’s heads.
Wiping the water off of your body with your hands in the shower before getting out and towel-drying.
If your car is overheating, turn your heat on full blast. When you turn the heat on in a car, it pulls heat from the engine into the cab, thus cooling the engine.
Hit “s” while watching Netflix on a computer to skip the intro.
If you don’t know whether you should use the word effect or affect, simply use impact.
When buying bedsheets, look for striped ones. It will make it much easier to find the long and short sides.
If you accidentally press the spacebar and scroll down the page, you can press Shift+Space and go back to where you were.
Don’t save your banking information on online stores. Makes impulse buying much more difficult if you have to track down your wallet.
If you keep a baseball bat in your car for protection, put a sock over it. If they grab the bat, they will only get the sock, and you will get another swing.
Filling in the ‘to’ field of an email last.
When buying online, leave items in the shopping cart for awhile. There is a good chance that the website is tracking this, and will lower the price overtime to entice you into buying.
If your coworker ever calls in sick for work, you can do the same 1-3 days later. Your boss will think you have the same thing and it’s “going around the office.”
Blink eyes rapidly for a minute before bed to tire yourself out.
When lending a pen or marker hand it over without the cap, you are much more likely to get it back.
If you have somewhat of a double chin or you want your jawline to be more defined in a picture, put your tongue on the roof of your mouth.
Whenever you accidentally set off your smoke alarm, give your pets a treat so they learn to come to you when there actually is a fire and you need to escape.
Remember that one 18-inch pizza is more pizza than two 12-inch pizzas.
Is Family Law the Main Reason Men Are Going Their Own Way?
4 days after my son and i moved into a townhome I rented, we were physically attacked by 2 women that live behind us. Okay, long story short (ish): school started for my son (6th grade) the day after we moved in. That day, my son had an altercation with a child on the bus. Apparently the kid was saying to my son that his mom was a “Karen” for some unknown reason. We JUST moved in and hadn’t had time or the chance to interact with anyone in the neighborhood, so My guess is as good as any. I havent a clue. Anyway my son verbally defended me and told him to stop. Next day, the child punched my son 3 times in the shoulder and back while passing him in the hallway, which was caught on camera and dealt with by the administrator at his school. The other child was given in-school suspension and the parents were called about what transpired. The video showed the child hitting my son and my son continue to walk and then run away. So, my son wasn’t punished. The following day, after putting my son on the bus I hear someone banging on my front door- and i opened it to 2 grown women demanding that i come outside. Being alone, I refused and called the police. The police show up and talk to both of us and say that the women are now calm and suggest i get some cameras in case something happens, etc. I decided to stay with family members that night and about 5 hours later, we left. We stopped to get gas and check my mail at the old house on the way. As my son got out of the car to check the mail i noticed a car parked directly behind mine in the driveway. The women hopped out and assaulted my son and me with a weapon and left. I managed to get their tag number and called the police. Turns out it was the parents of the kid who attacked my son at school. Needless to say they’re facing multiple felonies and roughly 15–20 years in prison. Craziest shit ive ever experienced in my life!
Idiots holding placards is the Western style of democracy
If one set of idiots hold placards, tomorrow another set of idiots will hold placards for another issue and the entire country will be reduced to holding placards for the rest of their lives
Chinas democracy is a Government for the people
Keeping food prices low
Ensuring housing for everyone
Ensuring energy for everyone
Keeping inflation as low as possible
Protection of Middle Class Investors
Good Healthcare plan for every Citizen
Providing high quality roads and transportation
Ultimately I believe a Government for the People triumphs a Government by the people
Meanwhile the West is the opposite:-
Rising inflation falling savings
Printing money to help Ukraine over Americans
Declining Healthcare program with uninsured rising by 23% in the last three years
Poor quality infrastructure
Sacrificing the Middle Class to keep the upper classes and rich
So the Chinese are right when they say China respects Democracy
It’s a different definition from the hypocritcal one the West made up.
China’s Newest Tank is Doing the Opposite of Everyone Else
I went through a divorce from my wife of 5 years. I was young, broke and (as the saying goes) stupid. She left and went on to live with her parents and I was stuck with the apartment contract and all other monthly bills. Also a truck that was in both of our names, broken engine, and was $5,000 into a loan. I also was buried in debt from student loans $42,000 and a credit card $9,500.
I fell into ddepression and a solace that can only be explained by living in a state of vacuum. None of what I did would have any effect on my personal economy, or my emotions, or my connections with others. But I tried my best.
One day I started to reach out to old friends only to realize that they had moved on, didn’t care or just didn’t want to associate.
I was broken, and I was in pain. And I was done with my family, and with people, and with the world as I knew it.
I worked hard. No one cared. I cried hard. No one cared. I paid my debts, got off the grip of the financial abominate soul-consuming xenomorphic monster called the United States Department of Education when I sent the last check and demanded a paid in full notification sent to me.
I made new friends, and created a new path with a different vision. I transformed my life around, and declared freedom. I don’t care if no one cares. I do. My life, my business.
Russian President Lays Out His Judgment on the Continued Existence of the US and Europe
In a speech in Russia today, Vladimir Putin laid out his Judgment on the continued Existence of the US and the EU. “The concepts of honor, trust, and decency, are not for them.” and ” . . . they got used to spitting on the whole world.” He went on: “Indeed the Western elites have become a symbol of total, unprincipled lies.”
An excerpt from today’s speech appears with English sub-titles below. To even the most dense viewer, it should occur that this man is laying out the reasons the United States and Europe should no longer exist.
That’s a hell of an ugly reality coming from a man whose country literally has the ability to wipe us all out. It is almost as if he is priming the world for what may be coming, soon . . .
Here’s the speech:
Hal Turner Editorial Opinion
The reason the elites of the west have become “a symbol of total, unprincipled, lies” is because to date, there have been absolutely NO CONSEQUENCES FOR THEM as they go about all their total, unprincipled lying. No one gets fired. No one gets prosecuted. No one gets thrown in jail. This needs to change, but it WON’T because the very people who CAN fire, prosecute, and jail the liars, ARE the people doing all the lying!
If what the Russian President was talking about merely affected those doing the unprincipled lying, that would be one thing, but he’s not talking about affecting only them, what he’s talking about would affect the rest of US too.
We have the right to defend ourselves from the horrifying wreckage, death, and destruction, these western elites will cause to be heaped upon us. It’s time to begin doing just that; while we still can.
Last night, The Teenager and I were cuddling on the couch when she asked me, “Mom, do you want me to become an extraordinary person?”. I was a bit surprised by the question, “Erm, I’ve never thought about that. Since you were born, I’ve always just wanted you to be healthy”, I told her.
“I had a talk with my friends today at lunch”, The Teenager said, “Everyone wants to become Someone in the future. Wants to stand out. Wants to be different. Wants to be a big deal. I mean, why someone always needs to be extraordinary to be ‘good’? Being ordinary person is also good. The Earth has 8 billion people. Am I lame if I just want to be a normal person, and has a normal life?”, she asked me.
I hugged her, “No, sweetie, of course not. As long as you are healthy and happy, being normal is extraordinary in its own way.”
And that, made me thinking. Is that the thing we usually underestimate? Being just an ordinary person leading an ordinary life.
My dad had a big scar on the side of his face. I didn’t think anything of it as a kid, since I had seen it all my life. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and studying history that it came to mean something.
Dad fought in WW2. He was a captain in the mechanized cavalry and commanded tanks under Patton. Apparently, when there was fog and the driver couldn’t see clearly, it was SOP for someone to open the hatch and sit with his feet on the driver’s shoulders, giving directions by touch.
A German artillery shell hit his tank one foggy day when he was in that position. If it had hit about six inches higher, i wouldn’t be typing this message. He took a massive load of shrapnel in his face and hands. His goggles saved his eyes, but one of his ears was blown off and later surgically reconstructed. He was in the hospital for over a year. They left a lot of the smaller pieces of shrapnel in his hands and I remember him having several episodes when one would decide to come back out years later.
I could rarely get him to talk about the war. He’d gladly tell stories about the mounted cavalry days, but would rarely talk about combat. When he died in 1990, I found his medals stored in a box and he had a shitload of them.
2 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled
1/4 cup chopped almonds
Confectioners’ sugar
Instructions
Mix almond paste, chocolate and almonds thoroughly. Knead on surface sprinkled with 1 to 2 tablespoons confectioners sugar until of uniform color and consistency. Shape into 6-inch long roll; roll in confectioners’ sugar. Wrap in plastic wrap; refrigerate at least 12 hours.
Years ago I had an employee call loudly, “hey asshole”! It was heard by at least 10 other people. I was the CEO of the company. I had one choice. I fired him that instant and had Security remove him from the property. You see he had other options. He chose the one with a severe penalty. All of my employees know that they are free to come to my office, anytime I’m alone, close the door and call me an asshole and I’ll give him the opportunity to tell me why he feels that way. We can discuss the problem and I will explain it from my perspective. Obviously the same latitude isn’t given for public insubordination. Now during our private meeting we may reach an agreement, or we’ll be unable to. The employee had the option of meeting with me. If he and I deadlocked, one of us has to go!
Jason & The Argonauts | Full Movie | Creature Features
A real treat for today. This is a great lazy afternoon movie for your enjoyment.
I have said this many times before. But I want to underline some things today.
When I was a senior in High School, I proudly wore a choker collar, puffy sleeved polyester printed shirts with a wide collar, and elephant bell-bottom jeans. Oh, and I also wore earth shoes, and rock-star boots. I was so fashionable!
That was me in purple
I also drove a orange “goat” GTO.
d64e71566d097b96b830a8d8f0ea97e5
And that was my life then.
Today, I am really different, as is my life.
Life changes. You will change.
ADVICE…
Embrace your moments. Savor your experiences. Remember that they will wane over time. So please treasure them.
When I was a teenager I was bullied by a local group of kids, all of them a few years older than me. Two of them were particularly vile. I am changing the names. One was Patrick and the other was Gavin. Patrick was a horrible weasel who basically incited the others to beat the crap out of me, and rarely got his own hands dirty. Gavin was a sociopath who rarely showed any emotion whatsoever. One particular time me and friends were playing near a train track (as kids did in the 90s), and I heard Patrick’s voice saying “Hey Gavin there he is he wants to fight you.” Sure enough along walks Gavin and grabs me and says “I hear you want to fight me….” I assured him this wasn’t the case, but he proceeded to knock the shit out of me. And I don’t just mean a few punches in the ribs. He pummelled my face multiple times. I am pretty sure I had concussion. Anyway, halfway through the beating I hear the unmistakeable sound of a train coming. Gavin hears it too. “Come on, we’re both going to die.” and he begins dragging me onto the tracks. And he was correct, in that we both would have been killed. He clearly didn’t care. The only thing that saved me was that I was able to grab hold of a length of builder’s wire that was half buried in the ground, and must have been attached to a lump of buried concrete because miraculously it held firm. Gavin was straining with every ounce of his strength to drag me and him into the path of the train. I vividly remember the train zooming past and I looked at Gavin, his teeth bared in anger as he tried to dislodge me. I remember giggling because Gavin was closer to the train than me. If my t shirt had torn, or if the wire had come loose, then Gavin would surely have fallen under the train first. Gavin eventually tired of beating me after the train was gone and I stumbled home, sore, ashamed and shaken. My face was so badly battered that when I told my father that I had fallen off some scaffolding while playing at a building site, he believed me. Both my eyes were so badly bloodshot that my eyeball went red. I had black eyes and bruises all across my face and neck and ribs. The bullying wasn’t a once off, but that was one of the worst instances of it for me.
Polish Cinnamon Cake
Polish Cinnamon Cake
Ingredients
12 tablespoons butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
3 teaspoons cinnamon
A grating of fresh nutmeg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
Beat the butter until it is soft and fluffy. Add 3/4 cup of the sugar and the egg and continue beating. Add 2 teaspoons of the cinnamon, the nutmeg and flour, and beat until well mixed.
Spread about 1/3 of the batter on an ungreased baking sheet, forming a rectangle about 10 x 12 inches and bake in a preheated 400 degrees F oven for 8 minutes, until lightly browned.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Repeat two more times with the remaining batter.
Whip the cream until stiff, and fold in the remaining 1/4 cup sugar, the remaining 1 teaspoon cinnamon and the vanilla extract. Spread a thin layer of whipped cream on one of the cakes, top with another cake, and repeat.
Spread remaining whipped cream on the top and serve immediately.
We lived in Base Housing, kids all over the place, filling the sandbox, fighting, arguing, being nice, being nasty. My four-year-old was a little redhead like his mommy and, like his mommy, often in trouble. Or, if not in trouble, causing it.
One day, another mommy, who was often irate because someone had wronged her little golden-curled darling who had the demeanor of an angel and the personality of a wasp, came to me with her howling little guy. His tears looked genuine. So did her anger.
“Your child needs to be controlled,” she said, “he bit Tony. Look!” She dragged Tony’s plump little arm out to show me four perfect tooth marks.
I said, “Are you sure it was Brian?”
She snarled, “Of course I’m sure. I saw him do it. He sank his teeth right into Tony’s arm.”
I said, “Bri, did you bite Tony?” He shook his head.
Mama Bear, filled with righteous fury, shrieked that he was a liar and my husband would be hearing from the CO if we didn’t teach our child civilized manners.
I just said, “Brian, smile at the lady.” Because he was an obliging child who genuinely liked people, he willing smiled at the lady—with his three front teeth, two on the bottom, one on the top, gleaming in the sunshine. His left top incisor had been knocked out when he was acting the fool in the bathtub about six months before. She didn’t even apologize to him, just stomped off, dragging poor, injured little Tony behind her like a pull toy.
Well, you shouldn’t be. At least not yet. Let me tell you the whole truth first. Because once I do that, you aren’t going to be just shocked. You would be horrified, outraged, possibly traumatized for life.
I’ve been working in the tech world for quite a while now, and the wealth of “insider secrets” that I’ve accumulated along the way would be sufficient to fill a book in itself. But nothing comes close to this one single revelation, that I can positively say, has destroyed my faith in humanity. Once you finish this answer, you are not going to be the same person anymore, that much I can promise.
Let me ask you a very simple question –
How do you think the login process works?
Let’s say you want to open your Facebook.
You go to the login page.
You enter your username.
You then enter your password, which appears in all asterisks to prevent any unwanted ‘shoulder-surfing’. That’s crude. But effective too. And necessary. You see, the First Law of Passwords (okay, I just made up that phrase) states that there should be only one entity in the entire universe that should have access to your password – your brain. If a second copy of your password exists somewhere – say, on a piece of paper where you casually wrote it down thinking it’ll help you remember later, or in the password box where you just entered it, or engraved on a rock on planet Jupiter; somebody might be able to access it (theoretically speaking) and your security would be completely compromised. So, only one copy. Ever. Remember that.
Now, you press the Submit button.
But Abhimanyu, wait a minute! After I just pressed the Submit button, I got logged in. This means that some system on the other side must have verified that what I entered was indeed my password. But then, this system must have access to my correct password too! Otherwise, what will it compare my input with? Facebook must keep a second copy of my password somewhere!!!
The host website needs a copy of the password!
You are right. That’s a problem indeed. You might think that this is kind of okay since this second copy would exist with Facebook, which is the website that hosts your account in the first place. They would keep it safe, wouldn’t they?
But think about it.
Facebook, as an organization, is made up of humans just like you and me. What if some employee at Facebook has access to this code and could see your password? What if this was your bank account instead. What if Facebook was hacked and the hacker could see this code that has your password in it. Imagine the havoc this person might cause.
So a second copy is never okay, even if it exists on the parent website itself!
But then how would the website log you in? If it does not know your correct password, what will it compare your input to? How will it verify that you’re you?
That’s precisely the problem our engineering godfathers faced when they set out to design the entire system of passwords. And these guys were smart! They come up with an ingenious idea that would beautifully solve the problem.
The idea of Hash Functions.
The concept is extremely simple. A hash function is just a mathematical function. You input any word into it and it generates an output that looks like complete garbage.
But the devil, as they say, lies in the details –
The same word would always give rise to the same garbage.
Two different words would (almost) always lead to two completely different garbages.
There’s no way to look at the garbage and tell what the original word was. And just to be clear, this is not for the lack of trying. No. This is a fundamental mathematically restriction on the nature of hash functions. They are not invertible. They work one-way only. There’s no way to reverse engineer the garbage and get a peek at the word that produced it. Not even when you know the exact hash function.
Fun fact – This garbage is called the ‘hash’ of the input word.
Here’s how Hashes are used in login systems –
When you first create your account, you choose a password. This password is never stored by the website as it is. Rather, the website first hashes your password and then stores this hash in its database.
Now, when you try to log in the next time, the input you enter in your password box is first hashed, and then sent to the website. If your entered password is the correct one, this incoming hash would be the same as the hash the website had earlier stored in its database. That’s because the same word always gives the same hash (Rule 1 above). On the other hand, if you entered something different, the incoming hash would be different from the one that the website has got stored in its database next to your name (Rule 2 above).
The website compares the two, and if they match, bingo! You are logged in.
Now even if someone hacked into Facebook and copied the entire database, all they would see are these garbage hashes stored next to the usernames. They wouldn’t be able to deduce the original password from these hashes (Rule 3 above).
What if they tried to copy your hash from the database, open Facebook login page in their browser, and then enter the copied hash in the password field as it is (along with your username in the username field)?
Since Facebook’s login flow always hashes the incoming input, it would hash this hash too, and that would produce something completely different. On matching that with what is stored in the database, a big fat fuck-you would be returned.
So even when the hacker has got the entire user table, he still can’t do any damage!
Beautiful concept, isn’t it?
Except that it’s a complete pain in the ass for companies to implement and manage.
For starters, you have to integrate the hashing mechanism in your login flow which leads to considerable overhead. Actually, with modern libraries and frameworks, this part is no longer that big of a deal. The real pain lies in providing technical support to the customers.
Let’s say you are Flipkart.
A customer calls in to complain that he is unable to add a certain item to his cart.
The customer’s issue is escalated to the development team, where you, the poor developer, just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and lo and behold! The issue gets assigned to you.
All you know is that there’s a certain customer with this particular customer id and he’s unable to add an item to his cart.
That’s it.
That’s all you know.
Remember, the user can see the issue happening on his device in real time, but you can’t. You don’t have access to his account.
So, you send a request to the server team to access the error logs from the server, all the while praying to God that you find something useful in those logs – something that will nudge you in the right direction. But you have to be extremely lucky to find something helpful. More often than not, the issue would turn out to be a ghost issue that occurred because the user was doing something stupid, and you would spend an entire night on a wild goose-chase.
If you do manage to learn something helpful from the logs, you would then have to create a test account and try to replicate the issue there, which is just the beginning of the long and tedious process we call bug-hunting.
Either way, it’s going to be a long night.
But what if, let’s say, you did have access to user’s password? (Imagine a red devil sitting on your shoulder whispering this entire paragraph in your ear). You could simply log into his account and check if it’s a ghost issue. You’d be done in like five minutes. Even if it turns out to be a legitimate issue, you can trigger it again from the user’s account itself, and get a much quicker lead on the location of the bug!
The convenience is just too much to ignore!
You begin to get lusty.
Your mouth begins to drool.
And you give in.
Most of the companies in the IT industry that are customer-facing, store your passwords in their database in clear text. Without hashing!
Most of the clients that I’ve worked with as a penetration-tester, most of the companies I’ve done projects for, most of the websites I’ve hacked – all were storing passwords in stark naked clear-text. Plain as the day. Sitting right there for any employee or hacker to see.
I have seen database tables – with rows upon rows of clear text passwords – hundreds of thousands of them – all visible to the naked eye – ripe, juicy, ready to be exploited – their owners completely unaware, utterly naive, sleeping peacefully in their beds without a care in the world.
Now in all fairness, I must admit here that I’m sure none of the top-tier websites are doing this stupidity. Google isn’t doing it. Facebook isn’t doing it. Flipkart isn’t doing it. Your bank, definitely not.
But tier-two and three websites? They are. Startups? You bet your ass they are.
But that’s not all –
Most people, in an act of supreme foolishness, set the same password for all their accounts.
Because let’s face it, they’re the same. Aren’t they?
All I have to do is hack this le random website, which is going to be a piece of cake. Sites like these are not big on security. As soon as I get into their database, I’ll have access to thousands of email id and password pairs, most of which will work verbatim on Gmail.
If you’re extremely unlucky, they’ll work on Paytm too.
And if with some cruel and twisted idea of fun in mind, your fate decided to truly fuck you over, they would work on your Bank’s website too !
Not me but my father in law. In 1957 he got out of the Army and first thing he did was buy a new Plymouth Fury. Not being a car guy he just picked the first one on the lot and drove it home. He had moved back in with his parents and his dad still had a curfue for him. One night he was going to be late so he opened it up to get home faster. He soon saw flashing lights in his rear view mirror but soon lost them and made it home in time. A few minutes after he got home a police car pulled up in the yard. Small town and the cop had recognized his car. Instead of getting arrested the cop told him to be at the start of Nine Mile Road at 9:00 the next night. This road had a long straight part through a swamp with no side roads. So he shows up and county police have set up a drag race. They had stopped traffic at both ends of the straight and the cop with the fastest cruiser lined up beside him. They had new Plymouth Furys with the police engine option. They take off and are neck and neck until the police car tops out and my father in law’s car keeps pulling away. He was fully stopped and out of his car at the other end before the cop car got there.
The cop comes up and ask him what modifications he has made to the car. He tells them he hasn’t even opened the hood since he bought it. They then open the hood and instead of the standard 301 Plymouth engine it had a 392 Chrysler Hemi.
One day my Mom asked me where to go to replace a broken window on her car. When I asked what happened to the window, she said someone threw a brick through it. She was driving through an area with a lot of gangs and saw 2 guys chasing 1 guy. She didn’t like the odds, so pulled her car onto the sidewalk between the guy being chased and the guys doing the chasing. That gave the guy being chased enough of a lead that he got away. The guys who were chasing him weren’t happy about being stopped. They threw anything they could grab at Mom’s car, and a brick went through a window as she drove off. And that’s how Mom got a broken window on her car.
My Dad was also a badass, but in different ways. He was a veteran, but never told us about his military service until he was dying of cancer. He couldn’t see or hear anymore, but he could talk. He told us “funny stories” that were just plain crazy.
Elleigh was a mouthy Little darling from ages 4-10. She just said anything that came to her mind, and sometimes, those things were hilarious. Elleigh once said:
“What’s up boys, take me out to dinner.”
I’m “unstopaddle.”
“You’re old!”
“Daddy looks like Mr. Clean.”
“Me: What’s your dad’s name? (Elleigh: Tyrell)”
*Doing her hair* “Oh, but I’ll look like a jerry.”
“Why was I in your tummy and Leo was in your gyna?” (She was delivered by a c-section, Leo was natural).
“Thong Thong Thong up your heiny.”
“I just had to itch my butt.”
“Ok boss!”
Me: Alright, let’s call… (Elleigh: Punk!)”
“Mommy, you don’t run, you gallop.”
“You did not do sports today because I was with you all day. Ooo, it’s just a joke.”
“I’m constipation” (we were doing affirmations).
“Stop annoying me. Excuse me, you’re not supposed to be talking to me, you’re a stranger.”
Me: You’re going to school. (Elleigh: Yeah, why?) Me: Because that’s what you do every morning. (Elleigh: Are you going to the gym every morning?”
“This dang deer.”
“This is not her real hair, her just put extensions in it. long extensions.”
Me: What’s your favorite kind of food? (Elleigh: Fruit). Me: What kind of fruit? (Elleigh: Fruit loops).
When she was really little, she would call a computer a “cubidiger.”
She would say “feel good” as “fuck you” (really threw people off sometimes).
I don’t know why I have so many footages of her saying these kinds of things.
I had been there three years. Since I disliked the job and had strange vibes for the last 3 months, when I was told I shrugged and said “If that’s the way you feel.” They wanted me to sign a release. I was 61–1/2, Social Security at reduced benefits wouldn’t start until I was 63. I said I wanted my attorney to look at it before I signed, picked up the paper and walked to my office where I packed up my stuff. I kept nothing personal there except safety shoes for walking on the manufacturing floor (I got laughed at a lot because nobody wore safety shoes even though they’re required at most manufacturing facilities), my prescription safety glasses , a sweater, my favorite (and personally purchased) mechanical pencils and left.
My attorney said to sign the release after he crossed out two clauses noting the employment statues they were violating, and faxed it to them. I got a nice settlement and was able to collect unemployment for the 18 months until my 63rd birthday. This was in 2008/2009 when we had up to 100 weeks of unemployment due to recession.
Before anybody calls me a piker for collecting all that UI, I was offered two positions during that time. Each would have required a 100 mile round trip commute daily and only paid about 75% of what I had been making. The Unemployment Service said I was not under an obligation to accept either.
I used to own a small tavern. We had a guy who started hanging out there quite regularly. Nice guy, played darts with the other regulars, bought rounds in order , but didn’t talk much about himself or his past. But it’s a bar, so no one cares. We’ll call him Danny.
He was in early one night around 7pm. My staff is all away on lunch, partner wouldn’t be back til 10pm. I’m all alone. Usually not a big deal. This night, a couple of college jocks got way out of hand and started tearing the place up – breaking cue sticks and tossing around empty kegs. It’s just Danny, me and the college boys. I’m trying to de-escalate and get them to leave. Then, one of the big guys starts pushing me and throwing punches. I’m screwed. That is, until Danny steps in and beats the shit out of two guys much bigger than himself. I was completely shocked! We toss the guys out and he tells me not to call the police. He leaves shortly afterwards.
Next time I see Danny, I want to pick up his tab and chat. He asks me not to tell anyone or talk about it. I figure he’s ex-military and a private guy. He becomes pretty scarce. We’re looking for him, but he doesn’t come around anymore.
About a year later, we see his pic in the paper. He’s on trial for a pair of mob related murders. Turns out he might be responsible for more than a couple of these. I’m very glad he liked me.
There was a time while I was in college that I could only afford to spend about $3 per day on food. Needless to say it wasn’t an easy time.
One day, I spent part of my daily ration on a granola bar. As I walked out of the grocery store, a homeless woman asked me if I had any spare change. I told her I didn’t have any money to spare so instead split my granola bar with her and sat down to have a chat. She continued to ask people for change as we talked. After observing the responses, I asked her: “Would you rather people ignore your question, or say ‘no’ as meanly and rudely as they possibly could?”
She responded without hesitation: “I’d rather have the mean ‘no.’ At least they’re treating me like I’m a person, more than a piece of trash lying on the street.”
I’ll never forget that. I wouldn’t have been able to rationalize it myself, but it makes perfect sense. Her name was Anne.
When I was a much younger airline copilot, I flew with this Syrian captain. He was a Muslim and had flown F-4s for the U.S. Navy. He was a nice guy but kind of kept to himself mostly. I would always ask about the religion and how it was living in Syria and he gradually warmed up to me.
image 35
One day I was complaining about a relationship with a woman and he turned to me and said:
“Randy, I am going to give you two words that will ensure that you will have a long and prosperous marriage. It will end your problems in this relationship and any in the future. It is very old Islamic advice that has stood for centuries, long before the great advances in mathematics. It is among the oldest of all Middle Eastern knowledge”
“If you follow these two words. You will increase your happiness by a factor of 1000. Your wife will adore you and you will live in peace and harmony until you finally die and she mourns your death forever.”
“These two words? Obey and Relax”
“Randy, simply follow these two words in all of your interactions. Obey her demands and then simply relax. The West has not yet discovered this fundamental truth. If you just obey and relax, you will always be happy.”
Edit 1:
This guy was funny.
One day we were talking about his home life and he said: “Randy, Allah came to me before I was born and he told me I was a very bad man. He said I must be punished so he gave me a choice. I could live for ten-thousand years in hell or I could marry this woman. Like a fool, I marry woman!
I guess he didn’t follow his own advice. I heard he finally divorced. Even with this outcome, I still try to follow his advice and it works pretty well.
My wife and I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas three years ago. For anyone wondering, our new town is Grass Valley, pop. 13,000.
Coming from the dining heaven that is the San Francisco area, we set out to find some special occasion restaurants nearby. We were not disappointed.
Our favorite go-to fancy place is called Lola’s, in neighboring Nevada City. It’s comparatively pricy—$250 is the typical check, including tip, for the two of us. It’s located in the Gold Rush-era National Hotel.
We went recently for an anniversary. It was a Wednesday evening and the restaurant was not particularly busy, although there was some kind of event beginning to happen in the attached lounge.
We waited for an unusually long time, but we had no place to be, and we enjoy each other’s company. The server finally came to our table, apologizing, and took our drink order. After about ten minutes, she came by and told us our drinks would be out any minute.
We got our appetizers and waited a long time again for the entrees. The server apologized again and said our drinks would be on the house. We had not complained or looked dissatisfied, but it was a nice gesture on the restaurant’s part. We ordered a second round of cocktails.
The activity in the lounge explained the delays: they had a combination burlesque show and lottery going on. Everyone was having a boisterous good time. Evidently, they swamped the bar and the kitchen.
When our entrees arrived after another unusually long wait, the server apologized again and told us our entire meal and drinks were being comped because of the slow service. We were flabbergasted but happy to have a $200 meal comped. This was all the restaurant’s initiative; we did not complain or even look dissatisfied.
We ordered desserts, one of the many things this restaurant does extremely well. The total bill came to $26.00 for the desserts. The total bill would have been $250.
We tipped 20% of the whole amount. Our server was attentive and even embarrassed at the long delay. We would have been perfectly happy even if we’d paid the whole bill.
That’s the first time I’ve ever had an entire satisfactory meal comped. But it was a good illustration of this restaurant’s commitment to excellence in food quality and service.
Here are 12 tricks I learned from the book ‘12 rules for life an antidote to chaos’, written by psychologist Jodan B Peterson. These life rules really help me a lot:
1: Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back
If you present yourself as defeated, then people will react to you as if you are losing. If you start to straighten up, then people will look at and treat you differently.
So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them — at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.
2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping
We deserve some respect. You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued.
3: Make Friends with People Who Want the Best For You
This is similar to the idea that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Don’t think that it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It’s not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person. Have some humility. Have some courage. Use your judgment, and protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity.
4: Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not Who Someone Else is Today
We only see what we aim at. The rest of the world (and that’s most of it) is hidden. If we start aiming at something different — something like I want my life to be better” — our minds will start presenting us with new information, derived from the previously hidden world, to aid us in that pursuit.
Then we can put that information to use and move, and act, and observe, and improve. And, after doing so, after improving, we might pursue something different, or higher — something like, I want whatever might be better than just my life being better.” And then we enter a more elevated and more complete reality.
“What could I do, that I would do, to make Life a little better?”
The content is too long, so I put the rest rules here
JEFFREY SACHS HONEST INTERVIEW ABOUT NATO ARROGANCE ON RUSSIA, SUPERPOWER WAR IN UKRAINE, CHINA RISE
I was selling cars and my friends mother said I should have a job that pays a salary and commission and not just straight commission. She suggested a software company and the one she worked at had a position available. I had no background in software or computers at all but I sent in a CV and called the Sales Manager and left a message. Then I would keep calling all day seeing if he would pick up the phone. Around 12 additional times.
On the 3rd he picked up and said NOBODY has ever called him so much in his entire life. I asked if he looked at my CV and he said yes, but there was no experience in computers and software. He even asked some basic questions which I failed miserably.
He finally said that I was obviously persistent and if I read some books about computing I could probably get a job in this industry. I asked which books and he suggested two. I told him I would read both, memorize them and call him back in 2 weeks where he could quiz me about anything. He was incredulous and said ya sure.
Well I bought those books that day and in 2 weeks had them memorized, with yellow highlighter throughout both of them. I could tell you what chapter something was in and the next point the author made. That’s how well I learned them.
2 weeks to the day I called and he picked up on the first 2 rings. I was very nervous and told him I had those books down cold and he could quiz me about anything.
He said to come in on Monday at 9 am. I said how long would the quiz take and he said, “There isn’t a quiz. You start your new job on Monday at 9 am”
I am happy to say I stayed in the computer software industry for 20 years.
I was on a plane once, flying across the US. The guy next to me (in the middle seat) just kept talking nonstop. Eventually the person in the window seat said something back to him. This set the guy off, he told him everything he knew about Australia, what a great country it was, how much he liked Australians. Then he asked what part of Australia the guy was from. He replied that he was from Wales.
Middle seat guy said he loved New South Wales. The Sydney opera house was his favorite piece of architecture in the world.
Window seat guy, replies, No, I am Welsh, from the British Isles.
Middle seat guy, just wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to know why someone from the UK spoke with an Australian accent. Eventually window seat guy lost his patience, and pointedly pulled out a book and started to read.
So, I would say you don’t ask someone from Wales, why they speak with an Australian accent.
I was recently divorced and working for a company that had just opened a branch in Germany. My boss told me four interns were coming from Germany. “You’re a supervisor,” he said. “This is a very big deal, so make sure they are comfortable and happy here.”
But there was a problem. We had three shifts, and I was on the second shift—by which time my boss was long gone for the day, so he couldn’t introduce me in person. When I got to work I found only a list of four first names and the desks they were sitting at. And then when I got to that part of the office, there were only three guys.
I went over and talked to them for a bit, tried to make them feel welcome, made sure they had everything they needed. I was hoping one of them would mention the fourth fellow, but nobody did. I figured he’d be sitting somewhere else, so I excused myself and went to look around.
Then I heard a guy speaking German. Bingo, I thought. I sneaked a look at the name on his desk: Arnold, same first name as the missing fourth fellow, and a German last name. This was him! He turned out to be much nicer than the other three and we had quite a good talk. His English was excellent.
In the following weeks I saw Arnold often and talked to him for a little while each time. The other three were polite, but distant. So when a fax came in written in German, I knew which one to take it to for translation.
When I handed him the fax, he looked at it for a long time. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My German isn’t really good enough to read this.”
And so it turned out that this Arnold wasn’t the fourth German at all—that particular Arnold, the intern my boss was so concerned about, had been out getting a sandwich the afternoon I came to meet them. Then he’d gone home to Germany a week or two later for some unrelated reason.
The Arnold I’d made friends with was an American with a German father—who had taught him just enough to get by in conversation. They’d spent plenty of time in Germany—so when I’d asked him questions about what it was like there, he knew all the answers. And living with his dad had given Arnold just a trace of German accent in his English.
That was 20 years ago. Arnold and I are still having good talks daily—in spite of being married.
In the Army I served, simply asking that question would disqualify you from service.
They don’t want gun nuts. They want you to have the weapon issued, nothing else; unauthorised weapons on military grounds is a lengthy prison sentence, if you survive. The guards are armed, you know, and authorised to fire when they identify a threat. An unauthorised firearm is a threat.
They want you to fire your weapon when ordered to do so, and only when ordered to do so. Unless given that order, you don’t even have access to your weapon.
A pen knife, possibly. Extra supplies – food, yes. Nothing else. Protective gear – buster, you dress in the uniform issued, nothing else is allowed to be visible (so you’re allowed your own underwear). Ammunition – see above re. “identify a threat”.
The military take weapons seriously. It’s dangerous stuff, and they don’t want them fired except under strictly controlled circumstances.
And during my year in the Army, I did, in fact, not even once see an armed officer. Unless you count the Captain’s ceremonial sabre, which he dismissed, along with his entire parade uniform, as a “bloody spectacle”.
I have a friend that makes $200,000,000 annually. He lives in a $3,000,000 house that he probably paid $1,200,000 for. He drives a five year old Toyota. (He owns and runs a fund…was voted the best in the world at his profession not too long ago)
I have a friend that lives in a $4,000,000 condo downtown. He flies in his $17,000,000 jet and drives a $2,000 old pickup truck to his $60,000,000 ranch. (He sold his business to a bank/insurance company for huge money and has grown his wealth rapidly since the sale)
I know of another extremely wealthy family that when we took our kids to get treats after an event, their kids would ask for toppings on their ice cream. The mom kindly told her children, “no, we don’t spurge like that”. I thought, “what?” You own the entire mall that we are eating ice cream in. (He owns malls and resorts globally)
I don’t know of any that live like they are poor, they just live well within their means. They have different financial priorities than many people.
I hope you like really hot, spicy food. Pack up some tasty leftover meat, veggies and rice or potatoes in a take- out tub – then add a full quarter cup of Tabasco, Psycho Bitch or Dave’s Killer hot sauce to it. People usually have a pretty good idea of who is stealing their lunches so, when the suspect heads for the lunchroom, follow them, hang around nearby and wait for the fun to begin. (Hot sauce is food, so you can’t be accused of trying to poison your co-worker.)
I was being tried on a driving charge (i.e.. “recklessly causing an accident”).
Where I live, people being tried for “minor” offences will be assigned a common courtroom (i.e., Courtroom 335 12PM July 5, 1923).
I was in my courtroom waiting for my trial to begin when I was approached by an officer and asked to leave the courtroom.
In the hallway, I was told to go to another courtroom (no explanation).
The other courtroom was practically empty. A judge sat on the bench, one suit was standing behind the crown’s desk and one suit was standing behind the defense’s desk. Court reporters were present.
I was urged to stand at the defense’s desk and, at that point, I accepted the suit standing at the defense’s desk as my legal representative.
When I got to the desk, there was a short conversation between the judge and the suits. It took about a minute (maybe less).
And then I was told that I was “Free to go”.
And everybody just left the courtroom.
PS: The “accident” was, I think, a fraud. By the time I got to trial, nobody cared (and not even the police showed up to swear evidence … nobody in that courtroom was involved, in any way, with the case).
I was “constructively dismissed” by a new owner. I was offering my opinion as a good manager should and was told “shut up, sit down and do what I say; or leave”. To everyone else’s dismay, I left; I was off the property less than an hour later.
About two weeks later, I received a call from the controller desparately asking me for the admin passwords for the company’s mainframe (I was the one and only “unofficial” IT administrator for about three years) as it had crashed. I told him I couldn’t help him as my current employment contract prohibits me from directly assisting them (within 1/2 hour of driving off the lot and calling my wife to tell her I had left, I had already received calls from three competitors offering me a job. I had accepted an offer with their biggest rival); but that he could try contacting my current employer to “purchase” my services (there was no such condition, but I reported the contact to my current employer who was ecstatically happy to play along). They did, and was charged $5,000 for my single visit of less than an hour; to type in the master password and let them change it (1/2 of that fee was paid to me as a bonus).
I later found out that my former employer also had to pay over $20,000 in OT to recover the system, as there was no current tape backup. At the time, I was also the only one that was responsible for managing the daily tape backups; specifically inserting a new tape cartridge every morning. There were two daytime receptionists that I had trained to cover for me on my days off and when I went on vacation, but the full-time one was let go only a few days prior to me leaving, and the part-time one had quit in protest of being asked to work 7 days a week until a new full-time one was hired and trained. They had to manually re-enter two weeks of parts invoices and service work orders, while at the same time work off manual invoices and work orders until the system was caught up.
That owner didn’t last long; three years after I left, the franchise agreement was yanked by the manufacturer and the dealership closed permanently.
Because talking to a stranger is actually easier than you think it is.
Commit to the five seconds rule – my personal ace in the hole. I approached 100 women in 40 days with this trick. All it involves is that you make a decision on the first five seconds of seeing the stranger whether you are approaching or not. At first, I kept saying no, not yet, next time and then one day I just said fuck it! I’m doing this and I did. Don’t ask me how it turned out.
Use the universal opener and stop thinking – yes our mind is the great storyteller and a perfectionist one at that. If you give yourself too much time to think, you will end up not approaching the stranger so do what I did. Use the universal opener. It’s something called Hello. I think you’ve heard about it.
Avoid the alpha male trap – I know some people will tell you dress up, look cool, beef up and hold a wine glass standing by the corner, that advice is the worse shit in the world. It’s what I call the alpha male trap, feeling so confident in yourself that you don’t wanna talk with anyone and you expect them to feel your vibe and gravitate towards you. Avoid practicing this, calm down! Relax and smile when you are out there.
Open up! – still on the same point. Avoid closing up your body language by holding something in front of you such as your phone or glass bottle. Make sure in social settings, your body is open and you appear calm and relaxed. Please don’t ever approach anyone with the wrong body language. Research shows we process body language faster than sounds(as little as 0.2sec).
Smile like a lotto winner – one crazy genius called Ralph Waldo Emerson made the great statement that “the whole world loves a lover”, damn but he was right. The key to people’s heart is positivity if you are not aware. You just have to know that most people are not comfortable with meeting new people. So you have to put their minds to rest that you’re harmless and you want nothing but a good nice conversation. Smiling and exuding positivity does this perfectly.
Ask for the name and use it – I read this in Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends & Influence People, and it has never failed me. When you meet a stranger, make sure you get the name and use it repeatedly in the first conversation.
Watch comedy shows – apart from the added benefit of this improving your overall life happiness exponentially, this will add a funny tint to your conversations. People love humor you know.
Observe the rules – the thing about social situations is that there are no universal rules anywhere. How you should behave depends on where you are – you have to behave differently in a church compared to a networking party. The Super trick is to take some time to observe how people are acting around you, are if they are being upbeat or cool headed. Don’t bring noise into a cool environment or calm into a sizzling energetic room. Observe the rules and play by them. Then you win!
Go radical truth on them – out of those 100 women I approached, the ones who became my closest friends were those I went total truth on. Here’s what I mean; I approach them and said hello, then told them I’m a shy guy on a mission to approach 100 girls to build his confidence and that she is my number 41. This perks them up and they usually laugh, then they look at my face, see that I am serious and then we have a wonderful conversation and I always get their numbers. Crazy, right?
Guess – a lot of strangers are really not cool with you offloading a truckload of questions on them. They close up quickly and excuse themselves and that’s why I use guessing at times. I read about it in a blog post that I can’t really remember. It goes like this – during the conversation, instead of asking “where are you from”, observe them and say something like “you look like a new yorker”. Or instead of “what do you do”, say “something tells me you’re a fun person” or “something tells me you stay indoors a lot”. You get the Gist already.
Prepare to be human – I still approach women and get rejected, I still try to make friends on the bus, parties, church, etc, and get rubbed on. You just have to be ready for being a human, not everyone is going to like you or want to talk to you. Accept this and when the time comes that someone rejects you, remember that it’s normal and go find someone else to talk to.
Several years ago, I was on the ladder working on the roof of my shed. Off in the distance there were some people shooting. This is common here as I live in the South (of America). Most people around are fairly safe with their practice shooting. While on the ladder, I heard what sounded like a hummingbird fly by. I looked around for him/her and couldn’t find it. I heard another and another. It dawned on me that these were not hummingbirds, but bullets. I got off the ladder, and yelled as loud as I could that they were shooting towards my house. A few more shots and I went inside and called the sheriff department to go by and tell them they were shooting at my house. I waited a couple hours and heard the shots again. I got in the truck, drove around to the property behind mine and pulled up. The guy and some friends were out shooting targets. I introduced myself and we talked a bit about guns. Then I pointed out that behind their fence was my house about 500 yrs through the woods. I had been up on a ladder and several of their rounds had come near me. They were horrified. I told them to point toward the sand plant since it was closed on the weekend or build a berm to shoot into. they apologized and changed where they were shooting.
I’m Jewish and was marrying a Roman Catholic woman. My parents were vehemently against it, but they also demanded that it be a civil ceremony. My bride wanted the church wedding.
I told her if she wanted the church wedding, that’s what we’ll do. I was not really practicing Jewish traditions, I wasn’t going to synagogue, I routinely worked on Saturdays if my job called for it, and didn’t keep kosher. In fact, since leaving my parents’ home at age 20, I had eaten a cheeseburger for the first time in my life, and had a milk shake along with it!
My parents tried to pressure me to pressure her to at least make it a civil ceremony. I had never even discussed it with her. I told them I would ask, but if she said she wanted the church wedding, then that was the way it would be. They told me they were severing all communication with me. I told them that was okay. They were north of 60 and 70, and living across the ocean, so I replied that I would have to get used to not having them around eventually and I might as well start.
I never backed down, and never regretted it. It set the tone for our future dealings. They knew I was immune to any bullying or any pressure they could bring to bear. If they wanted me to do something, they were going to have to be reasonable and try to convince me with valid argument and not arbitrary stubbornness.
My husband is more approachable than they are, more down to earth.
We married in our 40’s after failed marriages, so we had a civil wedding with my step kids as our witnesses. They were excited to have me in their family, and I was happy to be their stepmom.
He rarely spoke of the rest of his family and I didn’t meet them until after we were married.
I moved to his hometown which was an hour away and where the family lives.
I was a wreck when Christmas rolled around. The few encounters I had with these people were not welcoming. In fact, they completely ignored me.
I went shopping with my husband to buy gifts for everyone, and the spirit of Christmas eased my fears.
When we arrived I felt the chill. I spoke directly to several people and they didn’t acknowledge me in any way.
So, with my Christmas spirit extinguished, I reluctantly sat by the Christmas tree to open gifts.
After the presents were all passed out, I sat and tried to not act surprised by not having anything to open.
In reality, I was totally embarrassed and fighting back the tears.
My family always bought a few extra gifts in case someone unexpectedly joined us.
I wasn’t expecting much, but I never dreamed they would be so rude.
“Eat the frog”. Write down 1 task that you must absolutely perform in order for the day to be a success, and do it first when you get to work.
Send 1 call/text/email to an old friend or colleague that you haven’t spoken with in a while. Over one year, that adds up to 365 reignited relationships (or 61 relationships reignited six times apiece).
End the day with fewer emails in your inbox than you started with. Repeat until you get to inbox zero.
Give away / donate one item in your household every single day. Repeat until you have an uncluttered, restful home.
Answer one question on Quora per day. Work on your writing ability while contributing to the organization of the world’s knowledge.
Walk to and from work, if possible. Exercise! Sunshine!
Eat at least one fruit or vegetable each day. Sure, you should probably eat a half-dozen servings of each. But things can get really screwed up when you are eating zero fruits and veggies. Start small and be consistent.
Express gratitude. My days go so much smoother when I remind myself: “dude, you could just as easily have been born in a Sudanese refugee camp. You’re one lucky mo-fo.”
Spend at least 20 minutes reading something that is completely unrelated to your career (or “personal development”). Creative thinking requires varied inputs. If you have monofocus (e.g. only read about startups all day), you’re severely limiting the amount of interesting ideas you can come up with.
Get uncomfortable at least 1x per day (ideally 3x or 5x). By “get uncomfortable” I mean “summon the courage to do something that makes you anxious”. Speak up during the work conference call. Say hi to the pretty girl or fella standing next to you in line. Run 4 miles instead of 3. Et cetera. Remember: “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Addair
Polenta with Cheese (Mamaliga — Rumania)
how to cook polenta 3
Ingredients
1 cup yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup water
3 1/4 cups boiling water
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup shredded Swiss or Kashkaval cheese
Instructions
Mix cornmeal and 3/4 cup water in 2-quart saucepan. Stir in 3 1/4 cups water and the salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils; reduce heat. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes.
Remove from heat; stir until smooth. Spread 1/3 of the mixture in greased 1 1/2-quart casserole. Dot with 1/3 of the butter; sprinkle with 1/3 of the Parmesan cheese. Repeat twice. Sprinkle with Swiss cheese. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F until hot and bubbly, 15 to 20 minutes.
Fried Cornmeal Mush
Omit butter and the grated Parmesan and Swiss cheeses. After cooking 10 minutes, spread in greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Cover and refrigerate until firm, at least 12 hours. Invert pan to unmold; cut into 1/2-inch slices.
Heat 2 tablespoons butter in skillet until melted. Coat slices with flour; cook uncovered in butter over low heat until brown, about 5 minutes on each side. Serve with molasses, jam, maple syrup or sour cream if desired.
After my first wife and I divorced, I joined a website “match.com” and started dating other women. I met all kinds of girls. Many of the dates were just a nice meal, or coffee. Some resulted in hook-ups, and a few were girls that I would end up spending a lot of time with.
One time, I dated a girl who was an assistant professor at Tufts University. Which is a pretty well-known university in the Boston area. And she was part of the Woman’s Studies program.
The date started off well enough, but our conversations kept on turning to what was wrong with the world and why men were the root of all evil.
Honestly, looking back, I get the impression that the ONLY reason why she went out with me was to somehow torture me for her pent up anger and unhappiness in her life. But I really don’t know for sure.
Anyways, after about an hour long bitch-fest, I finally managed to have an opportunity to talk.
She asked me “oh, so tell me about your life”. And I was pretty upset (but not showing it) by then.
So I remembered a line from a movie that I once watched.
I told her that I was born with a tail. And that my mother had the doctor cut it off when I was just a baby. I told her that it was kept in a jar of formaldehyde in the guest bathroom mirror, and that I personally believed that the tail was the reason why I was born with the ability to put curses on people.
After that, she didn’t know what to say, and we finished the meal quickly… yelling “I’ve gotta run. I’ll call you”.
Every now and again, I get a chuckle out of that memory. Remembering well, the puckered up expression on her face, and how she practically galloped out of the door.
My husband and I were away on a trip, and our older kids were holding down the fort (including our son who was home on leave from the Marine Corps). About 5:00 in the morning (2:00 a.m. at home), I sat straight up out of a dead sleep with one terrified thought: something was wrong at home.
My husband had been married to me over 20 years by then, and knew better than I did to never question when I got that instinct. He handed me the phone to call. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Just call. You’ll figure it out”, he responded.
The overwhelming feeling that something was very wrong wouldn’t let up. I called our daughter. She laughed and said everything was fine. I asked her to humor me and just go check. She said kids were asleep, so I asked her to go check the kitchen. Still chuckling at me she checked the stove and oven and declared them turned off. She looked about the rest of the kitchen until she turned in the direction facing the front doors. We have a large arctic entry so there are two front doors on each side of it so we come in from the cold and close one door and then open the second door to come to the house.
“Oh my God!” She cried out, and the phone went dead. I frantically tried calling back.
When she finally answered again, she told me both doors were wide open, so she called her Marine brother to come down from the upstairs apartment and he raced down. He did a security sweep of the house then the perimeter where he found evidence of bear on each side of the house. We question if the door was slightly ajar and the bear just pushed the doors open and started to come into the house until the phone rang.
That same mom vibe served me well when my Marines were deployed. I always seemed to know when to pray. It got to the point that whenever there was an incident, my other Marine son said he wouldn’t worry. Even when trapped in a doorway during a fire fight for five hours… because he knew his mom “knew” and was praying. Oddly enough, he was right. Thus another story.
A Cuban Sandwich
This is a labor-intensive recipe, but so delicious. You can opt to replace the Pan Cubano with ready-made bread, if desired.
2024 02 18 09 02
Yield: 6 sandwiches, 12 servings
Ingredients
Pan Cubano
4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 teaspoons instant or active dry yeast
3 tablespoons fresh lard, cut into small pieces
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) water
Roast Pork and Marinade
1 (1 1/4 pound) boneless pork roast or pork tenderloin
3 tablespoons minced garlic
3 tablespoons minced parsley
1 tablespoon paprika (preferably hot)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
Sandwich Assembly
Sliced roast pork
3/4 pound thinly sliced smoked ham
3/4 pound thinly sliced Swiss cheese (or other melty cheese)
4 dill pickles, sliced
3 tablespoons butter or olive oil
Instructions
Pan Cubano
Manual Method
In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients and stir until the dough starts to leave the sides of the bowl. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased surface, oil your hands, and knead it for 6 to 8 minutes, or until it begins to become smooth and supple.
Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl or dough-rising bucket, cover the bowl or bucket, and allow the dough to rise until puffy though not necessarily doubled in bulk, about 1 hour, depending on the warmth of your kitchen. Gently fold the dough in upon itself and turn it upside down after 30 minutes; this “turn” helps eliminate some of the excess carbon dioxide and redistributes the yeast’s food, both imperative for optimum yeast growth.
Mixer Method
Combine the ingredients as directed at left, using a flat beater paddle or beaters, then switch to the dough hook(s) and knead for 5 to 8 minutes.
Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl or dough-rising bucket, cover the bowl or bucket, and allow the dough to rise, with a turn, as directed above.
Bread Machine Method
Place all of the ingredients into the pan of your machine, program the machine for Manual or Dough, and press Start. Examine the dough about 10 minutes before the end of the final kneading cycle, and adjust its consistency with additional water or flour as needed, to produce a smooth, supple dough. Allow the machine to complete its cycle.
Divide the dough into six pieces, and shape each piece into a rough log. Let the logs rest for 15 minutes, covered, then shape each piece into a smooth batard shape (a log about 8 inches long, slightly tapered at each end). Sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal, and place the loaves on the baking sheet.
Let the loaves rise, covered, for 1 hour. Brush or spray them with water, and slash one long lengthwise slit down the middle of each loaf.
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F while the loaves are rising.
Transfer the loaves from the cornmeal-sprinkled pan to your oven stone (if you have one), or leave them on the pan and place them in the preheated oven (if baked on a sheet pan, the loaves will be slightly less puffy). Bake the bread for 16 to 18 minutes, or until it’s golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and cool it on a wire rack. The loaves may be made one day in advance and stored at room temperature, or several weeks in advance and frozen. Yield: 6 sandwich loaves.
Roast Pork and Marinade
Mix all of the marinade ingredients together (all of the ingredients except the pork), and rub this mixture over all surfaces of the pork. Cover well, and refrigerate for 6 to 24 hours.
Place the pork in a roasting pan or ovenproof dish, and roast it in a preheated 425 degrees F oven for 30 to 40 minutes, basting occasionally with the pan juices, until a meat thermometer inserted into the center of the roast registers 160 degrees F. Remove the pork from the oven, and cool it completely before slicing thinly.
Sandwich Assembly
Slice the Cuban loaves in half horizontally. Brush the cut surfaces of the rolls with olive oil, soft butter or the remaining pan juices. Layer the sandwiches as follows: Swiss cheese, sliced pickle, ham, sliced roast pork, then additional cheese.
Now comes the somewhat challenging part. You want to grill these sandwiches, top and bottom, while at the same time flattening them slightly. This helps meld all of the filling ingredients. Heat two large skillets, or a grill and one skillet, to medium-hot. Lightly grease the grill and/or skillets. Place the sandwiches in the greased pan(s). Top them with a piece of parchment paper, then the remaining skillet (or flat sheet pan, or other heavy, flat, non-meltable object — the point is to weigh them down). Press down firmly on the top pan, and weigh it down. A tea kettle filled with water makes a good weight, as does a clean brick wrapped in aluminum foil.
Grill the sandwiches for 5 to 8 minutes over medium heat, checking often to make sure the bottoms aren’t burning (we burned our first attempts to a crisp). Adjust the heat downward if the bottoms are becoming brown after only a couple of minutes. Turn the sandwiches over and grill for several more minutes, until they’re crisp on both sides.
I disturbed a burglar when I was about 19. He froze and I was so confused I initially thought it was my father (who I’d seen go to bed an hour earlier) pulling out drawers in the dark. When I got my wits about me I turned on the light, told him to stand up, and told him to turn out his pockets (which he did, returning a few items). I then told him to walk out on to our patio and sit down. The moment he got outside he ran, and I pursued half-heartedly as I didn’t really want to catch him by myself.
He vaulted over our back fence and landed almost on top of my brother and his friend who (unknown to me) had sneaked out for a secret cigarette before bed. The burglar said to him “don’t worry I’m just going home”, about two seconds before my brother and his friend sat on him.
They brought him around to the front of our house, and we (including my father who’d been awakened by my shouts during the “chase”) sat him on our front wall until the police arrived. It was cold and the burglar seemed a bit worked up so my mother made him a cup of tea.
No guns or weapons of any kind were involved. We live in England.
Why Most Men Have No Chance In Short-Term Dating – @hoe_math
The best example I can think of would be L. Ron Hubbard. Prolific science fiction writer turned dangerous cult leader. In a way, it’s hard not to admire the man for his honesty — because he did give the world the best quote ever on cults and shady false preachers:
“You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
It’s fun, having your own religion. You can do whatever you want. You can say whatever you want. And since you’re the one and only “enlightened one”, the Great Messenger, no one can question you. Hubbard started off as a conman, but eventually came to believe his own nonsense. He was deeply mentally ill.
I remember Tom Cruise divorcing Nicole Kidman in the year 2001. One of the reasons for the divorce? Her father was a psychiatrist. And psychiatrists are “the enemy” according to Scientology, Hubbard’s invented faith. Not only because they would have told the great founder he was insane, but because they would have told his followers the same. Which would mean a loss of power.
Imagine creating a religion that thinks psychiatry is “evil”. Because your deeply mentally ill Messiah hated admitting he was deeply mentally ill, rather than a visionary. Decades after his death, your followers still hate psychiatry. They hate everyone and everything that might point out the absurdity in their views. It’s crazy, like Hubbard. But also impressive, like Hubbard.
HOE Math Explains Perfectly Why Men Love Inexperienced Women!
“Stuck on your highest setting,” is a brilliant way to describe the current female dating outlook.
Hoemath having his work vindicated in real time. Absolutely amazing.
Women don’t gain experience over the years they acquire trauma.
I drove up from Florida, in route to Atlanta, to visit family, and had tickets to see a Too Short show with my Sister.
Got pulled over in Newton County, GA cuzz, “my taillight was out?”
The female officer said, that my license were suspended ?
The male officer, told the female officer that the suspension didn’t look right, and could be a mistake.
Then the male officer, turned and asked me if I owed any back child support?
I said, “No, I’ve never had to pay child support.”
The female cop, asked for permission to search my vehicle, I said, yes.
She found one rusted up Coors light can thrown into the truckbed I was driving.
She told me to turn around, handcuffed me, and took me to jail charged with, suspended license, taillight, and open container.
So, I spent the night in jail and froze to death the whole time.
The next morning, I went in front of the jail judge, and he dropped all of the charges, except the open container.
The jail judge took me back to where the police were, and asked me if I had $20.00 cash? I said, “Yes.”
The judge told the officers to let me out of jail, ordered them to take the cuffs off me me and to not put me back into that jail cell, and to give me my belongings.
So, I paid $20.00 cash, then $200.00 to get the truck out, and I took the truck to the closest auto shop to get the taillight repaired.
Well, guess what ? The taillight wasn’t broken, and was in proper working condition. The auto dude couldnt give me proof of that bc he said, I could have went somewhere else and had it fixed.
When I went to court for the open container, the court judge charged me with suspended license, taillight, and open container.
My public defender showed the judge the proof I had from the Florida DMV, that my license were never suspended, he told the Judge that I had no prior convictions, not even a speeding ticket, and the jail judge has already dropped those charges.
The court judge looked at me finded me almost $1,900.00, a year probation or 10 days in jail.
Then the court judge told me, that he had authority over the jail judge so whatever charges he dropped will not be dismissed.
Then the court judge told me, “No one drives thru his county with a suspended license!”
He said pay your $1,900.00 fine, and we will take you off probation, or we can put you in jail for 10 days, if you have anything further to say.
I paid my fine and the charges were dropped so my record is clean but it was an awful night and it took me a while to get back on track financially, not to mention all the stress and trips back up to Georgia to straighten the shit out.
It is a huge money scam, tow truck people are all in on it, and there is nothing you can do about it!
I didn’t miss the Too Short show tho and me and my Sister had a blast!
Cops suck ass! They are lazy and they lie too much. Anything to meet that quota! They don’t care about you losing your job, missing a show, staying in jail cause you can’t afford to pay the bail. They don’t give one fuck.
Protect and serve my ass!!!
They are bullies with badges, and can fuck your life up, even when you’re an innocent law abisding citizen, it’s all legal and it’s getting worse.
Fuck’em!
Conservatives INSANE reaction to Gen Z Hating the 40 Hour Work Week
I was 17, driving my Dad’s Mercedes, drunk. A cop pulled me over, told me to exit the vehicle, and walk to the back of my car. I leaned against the trunk lid. The cop asked, “Where were you tonight?” I said, “At a party.” He asked, “Are you carrying any drugs or paraphernalia?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Toss it down by my feet.”
i did. It was a little pot and a pipe. He asked, “Have you had anything to drink?” I said, “Yes.” Then he asked me, “In an ideal world, what would you like to happen now?” I said, “I’d like to drive home and never do this again.”
The cop said, “I believe you. You’ve been completely honest with me. Drive straight home.” He got back in his car, and drove off. He never even knew who I was. He didn’t ask for my driver’s licence or even my name!
You don’t always need to be around people. People will want to be with you when you are happy by yourself.
People love boldness. You will be respected when you become a straight talker. Example: If you can’t provide a favor, say no instead of trying to please them.
If you don’t like yourself, no one else will. You must change what you don’t like about yourself and accept what you can’t change.
Swallow your pride and always accept your mistake. Deflecting blame is always seen as a weakness.
When you listen more instead of talking people feel special. In return, they will make you feel special.
When you share a few uncomfortable truths about yourself, people will feel comfortable and reciprocate. Example: When talking to someone new, share the truth about your nervousness.
Gen Zer explains why her generation is screwed when it comes to Dating & Marriage
Lavrov’s Remarks and Answers to Questions at the Conference Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Coup d’état in Ukraine
Karl Sanchez
There are times when it’s hard to tell if Sergey Lavrov is angry or not. Most of what he said, including in his answers, he’s said many times before. I know he must keep up decorum, but when you read the text it’s easy to see him fed up with having to say whatever it is once again. Maybe his blood was already boiling since he addressed the conference on Neocolonialism before this forum. In print, when he discusses anything related to the West, there’s nothing good to be expected from it. Yes, we must understand that this pot’s been coming to a boil for many years now, since before Maidan, and not everything that could be cited is anymore. I recall the tense seriousness of his discussions with Putin, the government and the Security Council that began in September 2021 and culminated in his verdict in January that the Outlaw US Empire would refuse the December security proposals and thus the military technical operation would need to commence. In November, it was decided at a tense meeting of the government that what was happening Donbass was Genocide and something needed to be done and very soon. Putin agreed Genocide was indeed happening, and we know the subsequent formulations. I covered all that while writing at my VK platform that remains operational. My opinion is Team Putin never anticipated that their European counterparts could be as evil as they’ve become—IMO, it’s very important that the word evil is almost never mentioned by Team Putin and other descriptions are invoked instead, while the accusations coming from the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals are usually 100% projection. However, in the following, Lavrov uses the term Nazi as an adjective twice, which is synonymous with evil and diabolical and close to universally agreed upon by Humanity.
This much longer than usual preamble perhaps serves to provide more context for Lavrov’s words, or maybe it’s because I need to provide some justification for essentially repeating a story I’ve heard too many times, and every time it merely raises my angst against the Outlaws who stole my nation and have caused so much grief in the world over my lifetime. Enough from me; here’s Lavrov. All emphasis mine:
Dear Colleagues,
I am sure that those present here are well aware of the current situation in Ukraine, who was in charge of the process, and what methods were used.
On February 9, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, once again
gavea detailed account of the story. If we talk about the geopolitical aspects and consequences of the coup in Kiev, first of all,
I would like to say that what is happening is yet another result of the policy of “divide and rule”, pitting different countries and peoples against each other, and provoking interstate conflicts. This policy has long been pursued in various regions of the world by the “collective West” led by the United States, or rather, with the Anglo-Saxons.The role that England is playing in current events is more aggressive and sophisticated in its provocative assertiveness than any other participant, including the United States.
When the Americans and their satellites proclaimed themselves the winners of the Cold War, they set a course for NATO expansion, ignoring all their obligations not to expand the North Atlantic Alliance and not to deploy significant combat forces on the territory of new members, given (orally and in writing) to the Soviet and then Russian leadership. That was the next stage. The block began to expand. But even then we agreed to sign
an agreementon the establishment of the Russia-NATO Council. Once again, we made a concession. The fact of expansion was acknowledged. In response, the alliance pledged not to deploy significant combat forces on the territory of new members.
This
Acthas not been repealed. Look at what’s happening now. On the territory of the new members, more and more large groups equipped with modern weapons began to train right on our borders.
If we talk about the position of the West towards Russia, then since gaining independence, Ukraine has always been considered by it as an anti-Russian bridgehead. In 2004, in fact, the first coup d’état took place. It was bloodless, but unconstitutional. When Viktor Yanukovych won in the second round, the West forced the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to issue a verdict on the need to hold a third round, which is not provided for by the Constitution. That’s how they “wrung their hands.” How did it all end? They were playing democracy. But the games of democracy, even according to their rules, did not help in 2010, when the people (primarily the votes of the south and southeast of Ukraine) elected Viktor Yanukovych.
Then the West began to prepare a coup in such a way that there would be no more “misfires”. To destroy the opposition once and for all, which has been happening for many years since the February 2014 coup.
In the same year, a coup d’état took place in a country called Yemen, which now also often flashes on the pages of newspapers and TV screens. President Abdel Abdullah al-Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia. For many years after that, the West unanimously demanded the return of the legitimate president of Yemen to its country and only then begin negotiations on a settlement with the opposition.
In the case of Viktor Yanukovych, we drew the attention of the French, Germans and Poles (who guaranteed the peace agreement that was broken the next morning) to the need to “reason with the opposition.” What did they sign up for? That there will be early elections, and a government of national unity will be formed for the period until the elections. And the morning after the coup d’état, Arseniy Yatsenyuk (there was such a leader among them) went to the Maidan and said that he congratulated everyone, that they had won and created a “government of winners.” Does no one see the difference between national unity and winners? So there are losers. You all know how the situation developed later. Those who did not accept the result of this putsch were declared terrorists and an “operation” was launched against them. There were such brutal episodes in this tragedy as the burning of 48 civilians in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, the bombing of Lugansk and other cities of Donbass by military aircraft. The DPR and LPR declared independence. But even then there was still room for agreement.
Some time later, in the second half of 2014 (after Kiev announced an “anti-terrorist operation”), a meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia (represented by yours truly), the United States, Ukraine and the European Union took place in Geneva.
At that time, Oleksandr Deshchytsia was acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and had powers from the authorities that illegally reigned in Kiev. We have agreed on the statement. Unfortunately, it was not published by agreement, as it was agreed that Oleksandr Deshchytsia would “check” in her capital. The statement, in addition to a clear call for de-escalation and an end to violence, called for the start of a broad national dialogue in Ukraine with the participation of all regions of the country, with an eye to its federalization. Despite our reminders, the participants of this meeting then “walked away” from the publication of this statement. Instead, Kiev began to solve the “Donbass problem” (as they called it) by force.
In fact, it set the same goal as Adolf Hitler when he announced the need for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”
Once again, we began to look for ways to cooperate to overcome the crisis. We persuaded Donbass not to abandon negotiations. President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke about this in detail.
As a result, a year after the coup in February 2015, the agreements of the same name were signed in Minsk. Subsequently, you all know how then President of Ukraine Petr Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of France Francois Hollande, who signed these agreements with Vladimir Putin, cynically and even proudly stated that they had no intention of fulfilling them. It took time to pump Ukraine with weapons against Russia.
This is a “stunning” confession – a “confession”, in fact. As a consequence of the fact that the West is using Ukraine in every sense to contain Russia and, as they now say, inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia, to prevent it from playing the role on the world stage that it rightfully deserves.
As a result, Ukraine, which received the richest industrial potential from the USSR and the Russian Empire,turned into the poorest state in Europe, into a territory, without exaggeration, dying. The Kiev authorities are already a universally recognized international beggar.
Ukraine’s independence is gone. Even before the coup of February 2014, starting with the Maidan, or even earlier,American and British advisers were sitting in most departments (including the Security Service of Ukraine). Now this is a standard, unsurprising practice.
They sit and make sure that money is not stolen, although no one will ever stop stealing. How will the West demand that Ukraine not steal the money it provides it with, if it is stealing our money? They are already openly discussing how to do it better so as not to violate their “moral” principles and not to create a precedent.
This is a vivid example of what “flirting” with the West and the thoughtless desire to integrate into its system of political and economic coordinates in any way leads to.There is no doubt that the West has declared war against us.
They don’t hide it.Although they say that they are only arming Ukraine, and it is the Ukraine itself that is fighting. Everyone understands that this is a lie. Western instructors monitor how the planning of the General Staff of Ukraine is carried out, help to guide to targets (we are 100% sure of this) and do much more. According to our information, the European External Action Service has made recommendations for Ukraine, which proceed from the fact that it will not be possible to win with the methods that Ukraine is currently fighting, and it will lose. Therefore, it is necessary to rely on the transfer of even more long-range weapons to this country so that they reach the “heart” of Russia (as the European Union describes it). In this way, they will once again sow confusion and panic and undermine the trust of the people.
Isn’t that direct participation in the war? Of course. In war, the main thing is strategy, and it is not in Kyiv, but far away.
Europe, eager to do something as soon as possible to end this drama with the defeat of Russia, in fact, serves the interests of the United States, does not care about its own interests at all. Look at the economic indicators, the negative growth, the recession in the leading European economies. President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke about this in detail. Everything will probably become clear. All this is humiliated and accepted without complaint. There are no objections. Recall how after US President Joe Biden’s Nord Stream bombings announced in advance, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went to Washington to bow down, where, apparently, he was told not to make any noise, and he returned without any news conference.
I would like to say that they are now trying to “gloom” (there is no other word for it) all the countries of the global majority, including those represented here (we are very glad to see you here), and to “drag” them into supporting Vladimir Zelensky’s completely dead-end “peace formula”. Its essence is that Russia must capitulate, go beyond the borders of 1991, and the Russian leadership must go to the tribunal and pay reparations. Everyone understands that this is a “dummy” and, at the very least, an unwise initiative.
But in order to lure normal countries that understand what is happening, in addition to the points I mentioned, they threw in supposedly neutral provisions: food security, energy security, nuclear security, prisoner exchange, and humanitarian issues. In total, there are 10 points in the formula, half of them are supposedly neutral.
Clearly, this is seen as a whole. When the countries of the Global South and the Global East are lured to “gatherings” that are organized to promote this “peace formula,” they are told that they understand that they do not like it, they understand their position that it is pointless to discuss anything without Russia. But they then say, they must support food security and sign up to “one” paragraph. As we say, these are “thimble makers”, as we say. I don’t know how it translates into English, but it’s an absolute “cheat” (there’s no other way to put it).
In Davos, there was another “gathering” on this “formula” of Vladimir Zelensky. The main thing they were interested in was a “group photo”. This is actually true. This is the EU’s recommendation to Ukraine: they say, do not go too far, do not force neutral participants, whom we are dragging into this process, to condemn Russia, the main thing is that “there is a photo.” I’m not kidding.
When I was in New York on January 23 of this year for the UN Security Council meetings on Palestine, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignores Cassis asked for
a meetingand suggested that Switzerland become the venue for the peace conference. In his conversation with me, he emphasised in every possible way that in Davos, after the meeting on the peace formula, he said at a news conference that it was necessary to solve problems involving Russia. I replied that if he said so, it means that he is sure of it, and then why did they gather without Russia?
This is not serious from the point of view of diplomacy of any country, and for the West to say that this is the only way forward, I think it is a shame.President of Russia Vladimir Putin,
commenting onthe results of his contacts with Tucker Carlson and during
the West must admit that it has taken a wrong course that has failed.Let the West look for a way out of the situation without losing face.
Vladimir Putin stressed that the West must return to the art of diplomacy, and the art of diplomacy, like the art of politics, is the art of compromise.
It is clear that all this unequivocally presupposes the recognition of the legitimacy of our demands, non-bloc status, the rejection of any NATO advance, the rejection of the militarization of Ukraine as a threat to the Russian Federation, and
the cessation of the Nazi policy of extermination, both legally and physically, of Russians and Russian-speaking citizens on the territory of Ukraine.
Remember, back in November 2021, before the decision to launch a special military operation, before the West rejected our initiative on European security, a journalist asked Vladimir Zelensky how he felt about the people living in Donbass, on the other side of the contact line. Vladimir Zelensky thoughtfully and artistically said that there are people and there are “specimens”. And he also said earlier that if someone lives in Ukraine, but feels involved in Russian culture, Russian civilization, then for the sake of their children and grandchildren, let them “fail” to go to Russia.
This was said by the president, who was elected under the slogans, firstly, of a peaceful settlement, and secondly, of the protection of the Russian language in Ukraine. He called for “falling behind” the Russians, allowing them to continue speaking their native language in Ukraine, as they had done for centuries. That’s how he changed his views back in 2021.
And the final touch. He stated that he would never implement the Minsk agreements. It was clear that they were stalling. From February 2015 to 2019, there were no positive developments, only the bombing of Donbass in violation of all the requirements of this document. In December 2019, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of France Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky
metin Paris at the initiative of the French and Germans, where they spoke in favour of “reconfirming” the Minsk Agreements, first of all, regarding the need for a direct dialogue between Minsk and Donetsk and Lugansk, and, secondly (no less important), in terms of enshrine their special status on a permanent basis in the Constitution of Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky signed it. Some time later, when the events of February 2022 began, Oleksandr Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that Vladimir Zelensky had signed “just like that” so that they would fall behind. He wasn’t going to do anything. Like, they deceived us and “squeezed” us out of more time. This is the whole characteristic of the “characters” who now rule Ukraine and the West is betting on them in order to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. If you want to go to the battlefield, it’s up to you.
Question: As you know, there are many mercenaries from Latin America on Kiev’s side. Do you think they pose a threat to democracy in these regions? Is there a security dialogue with the Latin American countries where they come from?
Sergey Lavrov: This topic is relevant not only for the situation in Ukraine.
It is known that mercenaries, including those from the Middle East, are actively used in the African region. In Ukraine, they are also fighting, including members of terrorist organizations like the Islamic State.
The Islamic State and its representatives are under the tutelage of the United States at the illegally occupied al-Tanf base in eastern Syria. Everyone knows this very well.The Islamic State itself came into being as a result of an attack on Iraq under false pretenses by the United States. Then the United States took over the administration of Iraq. They had the Gauleiter, the Governor-General (whatever you want to call him), Paul Bremer, who dissolved all the structures of the Baath Party. I just let it go. They were based on the Sunni branch of Islam. The backbone of the Islamic State was made up of officers of Saddam Hussein’s army, who had nothing to live on.
And the U.S. had a direct hand in this.It is interesting to see what the Americans have achieved in Iraq. The goals set are a complete failure.
Now, for the umpteenth time, the Iraqi government is asking them to withdraw their troops, but the U.S. is unwilling. That’s how big the Democrats are.
Al-Qaeda emerged after the Afghan saga, which also ended badly and shamefully. And after the invasion of Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra appeared, which later became known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Whatever you call them, they are “mercenaries.” The same members of the Islamic State are sent for money to various hot spots. They’re paid thousands of dollars to do their jobs.
Clearly, this is a dangerous practice. Eventually, when their mission in a country is over, they will have to go somewhere else (they don’t know how to do anything else but organize terrorist attacks, shoot, kill people).
If people go there from Colombia or other Latin American countries, one day they will have an epiphany. Many American and British mercenaries have already said publicly on camera that they are completely disappointed in what is happening there, in these lofty “democratic” goals proclaimed by the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors. Some are returning to their home countries.
But if the people who remain in this war waged against us by the West go through a military phase in their lives, it is likely that they will return to it, especially since in Colombia there is someone to argue with and there has always been someone to compete with.
We hope that the Colombian leadership is well aware of this, as are the leaders of other countries. After all, what is the problem? In many respects, this process is connected with the gross violation
of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relationsby Ukrainian embassies. It is outrageous that there are offers to be recruited for war on their websites. Several times we have drawn the attention of the Western masters of this regime so that they would “reason” with them. Nothing happens. Somewhere it quieted down, and then the recruitment activity continues again.
Everyone should be aware that a neutral position and a call for a settlement are good. We appreciate that. This is the position of the World Majority (with the rarest of exceptions). No one has joined the anti-Russian sanctions. But when the countries of the global majority try to “frown” by convening meetings under the slogan of Vladimir Zelensky’s “peace formula” as the only approach to a settlement, it is necessary (at least) to show that everyone understands everything and does not want to play this game.
Mercenary activities are part of the problem. This must be fought. There were thousands of mercenaries in Ukraine. According to our military, now there are less than half of them. The rest either left or met their inglorious end. [Lavrov could have gone much deeper and mentioned the Outlaw US Empire’s longstanding use of its Terrorist Foreign Legion to attain its goals in South America where it has a very long history going back to the 1850s.]
Question: Against the backdrop of President Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson, the rating of Republicans in the United States is generally rising. The opinion of the people in the West about Russia is changing dramatically. Previously, they did not know about what was happening in our country because it was not covered. How do you see the prospects for restoring relations with the West in the event of a change of government, especially in the United States (if Donald Trump becomes president)? Will they recognize the new territories? Will there be a resumption of cooperation?
Sergey Lavrov: Regarding the position of the Republicans and the “epiphany” that suddenly appeared in American society after President Vladimir Putin’s
interviewwith Tucker Carlson. For me, the main thing is that, as it turned out, US citizens live in a complete information blockade. They are “fed” with the internal narrative, primarily of the Democratic Party. Fox News is the only exponent of Republican sentiments, but after the departure of T. Carlson, the tone has also changed.
It turns out that there is no question of any freedom of speech. Although the American Constitution requires that there be access to any information. But in addition to this, there are also commitments made within the framework of the OSCE in 1991 inMoscow. At the initiative of the West, it was written in black and white (and the Soviet Union signed the demands): to ensure free, unrestricted access to information in each member state of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Special mention is made of information that originates both inside and outside the country concerned. This is a direct requirement.
Our friends from the diplomatic corps and all Russian citizens see in the news that “a good half” is a story about the position of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union on Ukraine or any other international event.
Our public is familiar with the point of view of the West. Yes, in most cases this is criticized, but everyone is free to draw their own conclusions. We do not censor what is said in the West.All this is shown, and then political scientists discuss it.
As for the restoration of relations, President of Russia Vladimir Putin also spoke about this in
He explained that the West must admit its mistake and find a convenient way out. But with the full understanding that the problem of Ukraine, as we have identified it, must be resolved. He added that someday relations will be restored. When this happens is not up to us.
That’s their problem.President Vladimir Putin recalled that we had made so many concessions and gestures of goodwill. The limit has already been reached.
On their part, in response to our good deeds, we saw other gestures on one hand.
Question: What are the main consequences of the Euromaidan protest for the ordinary population of Ukraine? How to restore relations in the future?
Sergey Lavrov: There are living witnesses of those events here. I think they can describe it in brighter colors. But it is written in Ukrainian laws that a course has been taken to destroy everything Russian.
“Euromaidan” affected everyday life, access to information, education in the Russian language, which was used by more than half of the citizens. According to some estimates, 80% of the population of Ukraine feels that the Russian language is more comfortable in communication. All this is forbidden by law. Up to everyday situations: the saleswoman may refuse to serve if you address her in Russian. A few months ago, Kiev Mayor Viktor Klitschko issued a city regulation banning all cultural events in the capital: exhibitions, performances, film screenings, etc.
When this word was mentioned in the context of the
the policy pursued by the Kiev Nazi regime towards Donbass and Russians in general,Ukraine filed a lawsuit against Russia in the International Court of Justice. By demanding that the court recognise the groundlessness of the accusations of the Zelensky regime of carrying out a policy of genocide.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has concluded a decades-long debate. It made a verdict that we did not violate any conventions. Moreover, it rejected the Ukrainian claim that they were fighting terrorist regimes in Donetsk and Luhansk. The entire ideological basis of the “anti-terrorist operation” that Kiev launched after the coup d’état and then continued contrary to
the Minsk agreementshas been debunked. Now there are “local assaults on people” – they can pull them out from anywhere (from a cinema or a bathhouse) and send them to the “slaughter”. Bad consequences.
Millions of Ukrainians have found their shelter in our country. Here they are perceived as absolutely equal to us. Brothers, sisters, people with whom we have shared joy and sorrow. We have families on both sides. Rosbrothers. Both in Ukraine and in the Russian Federation. They are at home here. And the main thing is that those who come to us feel at home themselves. We will do everything we can to make them feel this way.
Question: The other day, the US government asked Congress for $100 billion: $65 billion for Ukraine, $15 billion for Israel and $20 billion for Taiwan. They will enact this sooner or later. Several European countries have begun to say that Ukraine should be part of NATO. Where are we going? Are there any possibilities for a peace conference?
Sergey Lavrov: This is not a question for us. We have answered it many times. President of Russia Vladimir Putin touched upon this issue. In April 2022, there was an agreement that has already become the talk of the town. The Anglo-Saxons forbade Vladimir Zelensky to sign the agreed agreement, which was acceptable to both the Ukrainian and Russian delegations. And so it happened.
To reiterate, there is a decree issued by Vladimir Zelensky prohibiting talks with Vladimir Putin’s government. When the West raised such questions, our President repeatedly said that it was necessary to force him to cancel this decree and say so publicly. The ball is not in our court. Everyone understands this very well.
At the same time, it is said that the Swiss are announcing a peace conference. But at the same time, the West unanimously declares that it is only on the basis of Vladimir Zelensky’s formula. Therefore, friends from Asia, Africa, and Latin America should choose the most “innocuous” points from these ten points (food or energy security), and the Westerners will write them down to participate in a “collective photo” in support of this “formula.” What kind of diplomacy is this?
They have not been engaged in diplomacy for a long time. Instead, there is blackmail and sanctions. Any issue that seems important to the West is never the subject of an honest discussion.
The UN Charter states that the United Nations is based on the sovereign equality of States. The most important point. Imagine retrospectively the various conflicts that have taken place since the creation of the World Organization in 1945. There is not a single conflict in history in which the West has been involved, either before or after the creation of the Organization, in which the United States and its allies have observed the principle of sovereign equality, and this obligation is enshrined in the Charter – to respect the sovereign equality of states. Therefore, the conference is apparently understood as a “collective photograph”, the participants of which will later say that there is a “formula” of Vladimir Zelensky, and that on this basis they invite Russia. I think it will be humiliating for them. Most people are well aware that this is neither diplomacy nor politics. So we don’t have the ball.
Question: In view of the fact that after the end of the
special military operation(even if not now), there is a transformation of the world order and international relations in general. Are there any plans to reform the UN, in particular the Security Council, under the auspices and within the framework of the initiatives and efforts of the Russian Federation, which is its permanent member? In view of the fact that we have repeatedly sent inquiries and requested various sessions to consider the terrorist attacks that took place on the territory of our country, in particular in Belgorod. Just yesterday. Will we somehow advance these efforts so that the UN Security Council acquires a new character and international law is respected?
Sergey Lavrov: Reform of the UN has been discussed for a long time. It’s overdue. For me, there are two main aspects of this reform. One is conceptual, the other is practical.
We are convinced that theUN Chartercontains all the necessary principles, respect for which will ensure peace and security.I gave an example that when the Americans need something, they look at what principle of the Charter to take as a justification for their actions. When it was necessary to declare Kosovo’s independence unilaterally, they said that it was based on the principle of self-determination of peoples enshrined in the UN Charter. When an open, transparent referendum in Crimea with the participation of many international observers decided to reunite with Russia, they did not accept it, condemned it and said that it violated the principle of territorial integrity.
Since the inception of the United Nations, there have been debates about whether the self-determination of peoples or territorial integrity is more important. Self-determination of peoples is mentioned earlier in the UN Charter. But a multi-year negotiation process was initiated, culminating in the adoption of the Declaration
sovereign and independent States which observe in their actions the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples as set forth above, and, consequently, have governments which represent, without distinction as to race, creed or colour, all the people inhabiting the territory.” After the coup d’état, did the Kiev regime represent the population, a huge part of Ukraine? Of course not. So it’s conceptual.
A fundamental part of our position is that the UN Charter should remain at the heart of all the activities of the legal community, but with the understanding that its principles should be applied in their entirety and in all their interrelatedness.
The practical judgment is (there are many aspects of reform now) that everyone is primarily interested in the reform of the UN Security Council. This topic is in the public eye all the time. The prestige of the countries that want to get into this body on a permanent basis is directly related to this. The reform should unequivocally eliminate historical injustices and ensure fair representation of the countries of the global majority – Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The current composition of the UN Security Council was formed at a time when the consequences of decolonization had not yet been realized, when the newly liberated free and independent countries were just arranging their own internal lives and getting used to the new quality. It is clear that the situation on the world stage is radically different now. Economic giants such as China, India, and Brazil are on the rise. In Africa, there is a movement towards the realization of its own identity and in favor of rejecting the rudiments of colonial policy, when resources are pumped out of Africa, and all the added value is produced in the former metropolises and the main profits are generated there. It is necessary to ensure the admission of representatives of the developing world to the UN Security Council. We have publicly said that we support India and Brazil as candidates for permanent membership in the UN Security Council, with the understanding that at the same time a similar additional presence in Africa will be ensured.
We have warned our Indian and Brazilian friends (and we explain this at every turn) that it is unacceptable for us to replenish the UN Security Council with any new representative of the West. Currently, six of the fifteen members of the UN Security Council represent Western countries. Sometimes Japan is added, pursuing a purely Western policy. Granting more seats to the western group would only mean deepening the injustice. Germany and Japan aspire to “infiltrate” the Security Council together with India and Brazil, but they will not succeed. From a purely arithmetical point of view, the West is already disproportionately represented.
Now to the point. Name at least one issue of international politics in recent years on which Germany or Japan would have taken a stand. Any. All of them are “built” by the West. There’s nothing you can do about it.
There were sensible ideas about leaving one seat in the UN Security Council for the “collective West,” for NATO.
You mentioned the UN Security Council’s consideration of various crisis situations, including terrorist acts carried out by the Ukrainian regime on a regular basis and to which the West is pushing it to continue. I quoted the EU’s instruction to Kiev in which direction it should “work”.
A few days ago, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron unleashed a neo-colonial “mantra” urging people not to abandon Ukraine under any circumstances. Vice versa. It is necessary, they say, to “pump” it with the most modern weapons as much as possible. Condemnation of such terrorist acts is possible only with the consent of all members of the UN Security Council. In most cases, the Americans “shield” the Kiev regime and do not “pass” these resolutions.
There is a lot of talk about proposals to abolish the veto.This is what many developing countries have been saying in discussions on Security Council reform.
The right of veto is not a privilege, but a tool for ensuring well-considered decisions and preventing unilateral resolutions that can bring imbalance to world politics.
The West has practically lost the culture of work in the UN Security Council, which has always relied on the ability of the five permanent members, each of whom has the right of veto, to come to an agreement, to seek compromises on any complex issue and never to provoke a veto by putting to a vote resolutions that are unacceptable to any of the five members.
We have always been ready for this kind of work. The Americans, along with the British and French, have chosen a different style that is detrimental to the UN.
It is unrealistic to abandon the veto. Then the United Nations, like the League of Nations, will turn into a useless structure that will only further escalate confrontation.
Reform is a long process. It should reflect a common understanding at this stage of the tectonic changes taking place in the world in the context of multipolarity processes.
I know Lavrov wants to remain optimistic, but the realities against that are formidable. Yes, Russia and the Global Majority will continue to grow stronger, but the planet will remain chaotic as long as the Outlaws exist. And remember, they are Nazi-like and thus extremely diabolical—they will continue to attain their objective no matter the cost as all means justify their goal which is to keep their hegemony. All sorts of reality can, and has been, thrown in their faces, but they are blind to it and can only see their goal. Those hiding behind the Front Men and Women must be exposed and made visible in the public’s eyes—the Bidens, Trumps Kennedys, and their ilk are screens to shield. That’s why policy is contiguous—it matters not which flavor is in charge anymore, although there’s currently a theatre ongoing to make it seem otherwise.
I made one parenthetical comment and could have provided more. Lavrov provided a warning to fence-sitting nations that even what appears to be a safe position actually isn’t, that joint, in resolute solidarity, resistance to the West is the only real path forward. In his talk yesterday, Lavrov expressed the idea that regional solidarity will meld into global solidarity and regional organizations will then become global. That’s the only real way to control the Global Fracture that’s now occurring. There’s more to be said about the historic Global Big Picture that shows a distinct continuity over the last 4,000+ years where the great mass of people have tried again and again to establish a fair social contract with rulers/governments. Today’s conflict is all about ending the one last Great Tyranny, which as mentioned is the same Tyranny that’s been existing and plaguing Humanity for centuries.
I’ll tell you a story about respecting the court. My step daughter was a young teen and had some case against her. On the day of court she got up and put on jeans and a t-shirt I told her to change into a nice Sunday church dress with no heels. She wasn’t happy but did it. We were towards the end of the docket. All the other defendeants that got up were dressed similarly as she had been initially. The judge made a stern ruling quickly and moved on. When it was her turn and she stood he stopped. Talk to her about what she did wrong and about how she looked like she probably learned a lesson and he let her off pretty easy, a little community service. The lawyer even told us that wasn’t his normal but he’s sure it was because of how she was dressed. So if you want to go in and not stand, show disrespect to the court don’t expect things to go favorably for you. And consequences can be contempt of court with jail time, dismissing your case until you can be respectful or loosing your case to getting a harsher sentence. So think about that before you decide to do something so stupid
I worked at a mom and pop home center. Like a small Home Depot, but privately owned. An older gentleman came in a lot to buy small stuff. I spent time with him, took him outside to look at lumber, cut a few boards to size. One so he could build a bird house. Not money making at all. I even hauled a few boards to his house in my own truck on my lunch break, it was on the way. Boss had told me to knock it off, I was costing him too much money. A week or so later the guy comes in, we talk, he leaves. Boss is pissed, wants to know WTF he wants this time? “ Oh he wanted to give us this” I handed the boss a check for $25,000. Seems the man was building house, hired the builder I introduced him to, and based on his and my relationship, he intended to buy building materials from us. Cash up front. When the $25,000 was used up, he left more, until the house was done.
As I child I remember a time where I had built sandcastles, left for a few minutes, only to find a group of kids kicking down my creations. So what I did was build them on top of large rocks. I left again. When I came back I watched them kick the sand castles down again. They immediately stopped after one of them broke their foot on a rock.
The lessen is that sometimes you have to outfox people to teach them a lesson. Deception and misinformation is key. It’s not hard to punish someone who steals an idea from you. If you get a little creative, you can deeply embarrass the culprit, even destroy their career. Don’t be alarmed when they steal your work, act like you are gullible, stupid, and didn’t even notice so that they’ll do it again. Hide a watermark or code or leave your name in metadata some where so they don’t notice. Then once they’ve done it again you’ve got your watermark to prove it was your work, then go to HR with documentation exposing their fraudulent behavior. It’s fun to outsmart such people because they tend to be Narcissists and they will have an existential crisis once they realize they’ve been outwitted. They absolutely cannot stand being bested by someone else, especially in the manipulation department.
Hot and Spicy Cubano Sandwich
Cubano Sandwiches main
Prep: 15 min | Cook: 90 min | Yield: 8 servings
Cuban Sandwich Recipe
Cuban sandwiches are one of my favorite indulgences. They hit all the right spots and then some. I wanted to create a Cuban sandwich recipe that would make any Cubano connoisseur proud – and I think this recipe does just that. At least both my foodie critic husband and I couldn’t stop stuffing our faces as he repeatedly awed “these are so good!”
After experimenting, I stumbled upon a few key elements that make the best Cuban Sandwich recipe. I’ll go into greater detail below, but for starters, you need the best Cuban Mojo Roast Pork for the best Cuban sandwiches! It is all about the pork. I posted my mojo pork recipe separately because it is stand alone delicious and absolutely hypnotic in these Cubanos. If you don’t use the mojo pork recipe, I cannot guarantee epic delicious results. Plus, you can prep the pork days ahead for stress free Cubano assembly.
Second, use the right filling ingredients. Aged Gruyere Swiss cheese (not the rubbery Americanized version) and Black Forest ham add dimensions of gourmet flavor and thinly slicing whole dill pickles delivers the perfect thickness so all the ingredients beautifully meld together.
Lastly, you might be wondering if you can achieve the coveted buttery, golden crispy crust characteristic to Cuban sandwiches without a plancha or paninin press – the answer is yes! No press, no problem! The inside of the bread is first toasted (no soggy Cubanos here!) and then slathered in a mustard sauce spiked with some reserved mojo marinade. This amps up the flavor again. Next we create our own panini press by placing the bread in a buttered skillet or grill pan and top it with another heavy skillet to weigh it down. The resulting Cubano sandwiches are buttery, crispy and compressed – just like the restaurants. Or better.
I’m going to go into more details about Cuban sandwiches from their history to specifics on ingredients to step by step instructions. Read on or use the “jump to recipe” button at the top of the post. I hope you love this Cuban sandwich recipe as much as us! Happy eating!
What is a Cuban sandwich?
The Cuban sandwich, better known as a Cubano in the US and simply sandwich in Cuba, is a decadent Cuban grilled ham and cheese sandwich that has reached mainstream popularity all over the US. It is the ultimate sandwich for every pork lover and a must for every non-pork lover alike.
The Cubano begins with hearty yet soft, slightly sweet Cuban bread slathered with yellow mustard then loaded with layers of Swiss cheese, tangy pickles, sliced mojo pork, smoked ham and more cheese, then buttered, grilled and pressed to create a super crispy exterior and cheesy interior.
There’s nothing fancy or difficult about making the Cuban Sandwich, but the varying layers create a symphony of flavors and textures with each element filling a specific roll. It’s tangy and tart from the pickles and mustard, smokey and salty from the ham, zesty, citrusy and herbaceous from the mojo pork, buttery and slightly sweet from the bread all sandwiched together to create soft, crunchy, melty cheesy textures. Are you drooling yet? With one bite you will be. If you’re planning to devour just one half of a Cubano, heaven help you, you’ll need will power of steel.
MIAMI VS TAMPA CUBAN SANDWICHES
Both Miami and Tampa claim to have the best version of the Cubano Sandwich. The difference between the two Cubano variations is minimal. Both Miami and Tampa versions share the classic Cubano structure discussed above of Cuban bread, ham, Cuban roast pork, Swiss cheese, and pickles, but the Tampa version features a layer of Genoa salami, the Miami version does not.
Genoa salami is a kind of salami believed to have originated in Genoa, Italy. It is seasoned with garlic, salt, black and white pepper, and red or white wine. The Tampa contingent believes salami adds yet another layer of salty flavor to the already decadent sandwich, which makes their version superior. To prove their point, the Historic Tampa Cuban Sandwich was designated the “signature sandwich of the city of Tampa” by the Tampa City Council in 2012. Miami, on the other hand, stands by their Cuban Sandwich motto that simple is superior.
So how did salami become a staple in Cuban Sandwiches in Tampa? In the early 1900s, Tampa was the home to both many Cuban and Italian immigrants. As the people and cultures mingled, so did their foods and eventually, salami, a staple on Italian sandwiches,became a staple on Cubano Sandwiches in Tampa.
As far as which is better? We know what Tampa and Miami will say, but in the end, it comes down to personal preference. I personally think salami makes everything better, even Cubano Sandwiches. So, if you like salami, chances are you will love it on Cubanos; if the jury is still out, it’s better to omit the salami because it’s not a subtle addition.
Ingredients
2 pound boneless pork loin roast
1 pound honey ham, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup Chinese mustard, divided
8 whole wheat submarine rolls, sweet rolls, or 7 to 8 inch sections of French or Italian bread
3/4 cup red plum, red currant, or raspberry jam or jelly
8 slices Swiss cheese
2 (7 ounce) cans green chiles, drained and sliced
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
Instructions
Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
In a small bowl, combine salt, pepper and 1/4 cup of the mustard. Spread mixture on all sides of the pork. Place pork, fat side up, in a shallow roasting pan and roast for 15 minutes.
Reduce oven to 350 degrees F and continue roasting for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 145 degrees F (medium rare) to 160 degrees F (medium).
Remove roast from oven and let rest 10 minutes.
Slice very thinly and set slices aside.
To prepare the sandwiches, halve the rolls, laying all 16 halves out, and butter the outside of each of them. On half of the halves, spread the remaining mustard (1 1/2 tablespoons). On the other half of the sandwich halves, spread 1 1/2 tablespoons of jam. Arrange ham, roast pork, cheese, and chiles on the mustard halves of each sandwich, then top with the jam halves.
Prepare a grill to medium-hot heat. Lay a double layer of foil on the grill, large enough to hold the sandwiches. Place sandwiches on the foil, place bricks over the sandwiches (2 sandwiches per brick), and press down gently.
Grill until the bottom of the bread is browned and cheese starts to melt, 2 to 3 minutes. Turn, replace the bricks, and grill for 2 minutes more.
Cut sandwiches in half and serve.
Notes
You can also cook the sandwiches on a stovetop griddle or grill—weigh them down with foil-wrapped bricks or other heavy objects, like a plate of canned goods. If you want to make less than 8 sandwiches, use less of everything except for the roast ingredients—then save the leftover roast for another use. And if you like things extra-spicy, try substituting sliced pickled jalapeños for the chiles.
When I was twenty my parents, who had divorced but were now living together, asked me to go on a weekend trip with them.
I was amazed my father would even ask. We weren’t close, I barely spoke to him! He had been physically abusive to my mom, siblings, and especially me my whole life.
I ran away from home at 13, married at 16 so I’d never be under his thumb again. Yet suddenly he wants to be cozy! My mom was a sweet but weak woman! She just never knew when to get out.
This invitation came on the weekend of my 20th birthday, my dad was insistent I go. I came up with all sorts of excuses. I had to work, my husband had to work, dad was fine with the latter excuse (said just the 3 of us would be great). I knew it was a rotten idea from the beginning, he’d get drunk, they’d fight, I’d be referee. No way!
The more he pushed the idea the worse I felt about it, I just knew something was wrong. I finally just said there was no way I’d go we’d already made plans for a birthday party with friends so they went alone.
Two days later on my 20th birthday the State Police came to tell me my parents were dead, my father had killed my mother and then committed suicide. From a note he had left it was quite clear why he was so adamant that I came along. My instincts that day told me the trip was a bad idea and yes I was right.
I had told mom after the divorce to never let him back in her life but she always thought he would change. I have posted parts of this answer before and just want to say in advance that I am fine with my life. I am happily married to the love of my life with a amazing grown son and grandchildren. I’ve had a lovely full life filled with great times! Unfortunately my sibs are all gone after failed marriages, drugs, and alcohol. They chose to be victims and spend their lives blaming our parents for all that’s gone wrong in life, where I chose to learn and never make the mistakes they did! Not sure if I am editing this in the correct manner to add a afterthought but here goes anyway! I am surprised by the number of views and upvotes, personally I didn’t think anyone would even care. I mean it happened so long ago and as the only survivior I am long over the whole thing. But at times I do wonder if others out there experienced the double murder or murder suicide of parents and also survived relatively unscathed or if because of the abuse I’m simply detached from the situation. Just something I think about! Please excuse my run on sentences, its just how my thought process works. Thanks for all the kind thoughts.
Yesterday, out of the blue at dinner time, a delivery man came to our door with a bouquet of lilies. Not for me. Not for the kids. Not for the wife. Mistake, I guess. But the address was exactly our address.
Strange.
A lily flower has different significance in China than it does in the USA. In the USA, lilies are associated with death and funerals.
So obviously, I looked at the delivery guy with a big exclamation point and question mark over his head. Wouldn’t you? Especially since I was in MAJ. Things that make you go hum…
Anyways…
I asked the Domain Commander about this.
DC told me that it was a real accident and not to worry. Sure there are elements in the world that would like me to die and collapse in a most horrible way, but they are far removed from me, and that I am protected. That I should not let my fears grasp my emotions.
The funny thing is, I hadn’t met girls or women who I’d consider shallow until I began my PhD. Most of the girls and women in my life were strong, independent, no nonsense girls, who took their lives on by the horns.
However, once I started my PhD, it was as though I was overcompensated for what I had missed out all along. There was a flurry of girls and women I kept bumping into, who made me question their true worth and leave me in total disgust.
Well, without much ado, here’s introducing the creme de la creme
A top woman scientist who told me to do an MBA after my PhD because girls only marry men with fat wallets because sex is not everything
A PhD research scholar who intends to marry a man who earns at least ₹500000 (~$8000) a month so that he could spend at least half of that on her
Another PhD scholar who plans to quit working after she got married because it was her husband’s duty to take care of her
A research scholar who blows up about ₹25,000 a month on partying, clothes, and weekend holidays and then takes another ₹10,000 from home because she’s the only daughter and it was “her right” to be pampered
Research scholars who even in their 3rd year of research do not possess fundamental concepts of their research because, “we’re not nerds like you!”
A research scholar who called her roommate’s mother a whore just for speaking to a guy outside their apartment. Her roomie’s mother had passed away a few months back to cancer
Another PhD scholar who said “I’m a Lingayat,” when I asked her if she was non-vegetarian. Lingayat, turns out, is a caste quite popular in Karnataka and I had no idea until she laughed when I asked her what that was
Another research scholar who’d draw a stipend from her supervisor’s project and yet work entirely for someone else because she had the support of a lot of higher ups
A research scholar who threatened a guy who kept asking her a genuine scientific doubt during one of her presentations. She wasn’t able to answer the question properly and was subsequently cross questioned. Frustrated, she said “I’ll file a harassment charge with the police. I’m a girl and my father has money. Let’s see who they believe.”
Wow! I just realized I could keep going at this. It’s crazy the number of PhD’s who think and speak this way.
What’s the use of having an education when you’re not one bit educated!
I see so much in this kitten that reminds me of my deceased dog
Spareribs and Cabbage (Zeberka Wieprzowena z Kapusta — Poland)
Serve with mashed or boiled potatoes.
zeberka z kapusta przepis 1778 4 3
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
4 1/2 pounds fresh pork spareribs, cut into 6 pieces
1 large onion, sliced
1 large carrot, sliced
2 teaspoons instant beef bouillon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon caraway seed
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
1 bay leaf
2 cups water
1/2 cup vinegar
1 small head green cabbage, cut into 6 wedges
Freshly-ground pepper
Instructions
Heat oil in Dutch oven until hot. Cook pork spareribs, a few pieces at a time, over medium heat until brown on all sides, about 15 minutes; drain fat.
Add onion, carrot, bouillon, salt, caraway seed, 1/4 teaspoon pepper and the bay leaf.
Pour water and vinegar over pork mixture. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.
Add cabbage; sprinkle with pepper. Cover and simmer until cabbage is tender, about 45 minutes.
Remove bay leaf.
Arrange spareribs and vegetables on serving platter.
Garnish with minced parsley if desired.
Waiting to Be Put to Sleep, She Sat Crying Silently in Her Cage At the Shelter
A large company you have heard of needed to lay some people off. There was this one guy who always came in, went to his office, did who knows what all day, then went home. Nobody really knew what he did. His manager had been replaced with a new guy who was still figuring out which way is up. He had to lay off X number of people from his group. He laid off this guy.
Then they found out what he did, because it wasn’t being done anymore. Turns out he was providing exclusive customized support to a very large customer on a very lucrative contract.
The customer was not happy. They were no longer getting the support they were paying for.
I know other people who work at the same company. Management knows what they do, so their jobs are secure. It’s amazing how your job security depends on the right people knowing what you do.
2) Someone I know worked for a company that provides services to the military. The company was bought by another company, which put in management that had college degrees but no knowledge or experience in that field. The existing management, which had specific knowledge and experience, was laid off because they did not have college degrees.
That company was known by the military to be able to complete contracts that other companies had failed to complete.
With the team of experts gone, they could no longer complete contracts or train new hires. They had laid off their key people.
Meanwhile, the experts got jobs with competing companies, who were now able to complete contracts.
As contractor pay has stagnated, companies have been sold, and management has been unable to pay decently. A welder or electrician can make 400% more working anywhere else.
The team of experts has bounced from company to company. Whichever company they’re with is able to complete contracts.
How does this story end? That remains to be seen.
In the meantime, we have a navy ship that has been in for repairs for over two years, for work that should have taken only six months.
50% is terrible odds
16 mind-blowing psychology facts you should know:
Hearing your name when on one is calling you, is actually a sign of a healthy brian.
Sleep directly after studying, you will remember what you have learned better.
Don’t argue through text messages. The lack of tone decreases the meaning of the words.
People are more honest when physically tired. This is why most people confess things during late night conversations.
Those who look outside, dream. Those who look inside, awaken.
Cherophobia: the fear of happiness. People with this cherophobia believe that every time they feel happy, something bad will happen and ruin it.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
The most powerful way to win an argument is by asking questions. It can make people see the flaws in their logic.
It’s possible to die from a broken heart. It’s called Stress Cardiomypathy.
Being forgetful can be a sign of a higher intelligence.
Athazagoraphobia: the fear of being forgotten or ignored by someone who you strongly care about.
When ignored by someone who means a lot to you, the reaction in your brain is similar to physical pain.
Boys are actually more emotionally affected by relationship troubles than girls. They just know how to hide it well.
You’re more likely to be easily attracted to someone you have no chance with.
The average man gets bored of shopping after 26 minutes.
If you want someone to listen to you, start the conversation with” I shouldn’t be telling you this”
The Most Paranormal Place On Earth – What’s Happening on Mount Shasta?
This happened a week back exactly and it’s been running on my mind ever since then. I never thought something like this would happen to me, don’t know why.
Last week, I was on a business trip to Berlin and I went to Amsterdam for the weekend, for a short vacation. My return flight to India was from Berlin and so I took a bus from Amsterdam to Berlin Tegel airport (bus because it was cheaper!). I had to switch buses at a place called Hamburg and I had a layover of almost 3 hours.
These 3 hours were the most tiring 3 hours of my life because it was from 10–1 in the night and it was freezing cold outside. And, I was standing alone for so long. Finally the bus came at 12.45 and I was the last one to board the bus. The bus was full and all the seats were taken in the lower deck. The upper deck had only 3 seats.
Super exhausted, I politely ask this girl if I can take the vacant seat next to her and this is how the conversation goes –
Me – Hi, can I please sit here?
Girl – No
Me – I’m sorry, excuse me?
Girl – I want to sit alone. Find another place
I ask the girl in the front seat if I can sit next to her and she was like, “this seat is taken”
Me, again to the girl from before –
Me – There’s no other seat. Can I sit here?
Girl – Go see if there are any seats down
*She was getting on to my nerves*
Me – I’m coming from down, there’s no seat. I’m sorry
Girl – Ask the girl in the front
Me – I just asked her, she said it’s taken. If you want, go ahead and ask her
*By now, people were already looking at me and I was feeling embarrassed. I ignored her and took the seat*
Girl (after 5 mins) – Actually, I don’t feel comfortable about you sitting next to me
Me (I was shocked) – Sorry?
Girl – I feel very uncomfortable about you sitting next to me. Please understand. Don’t sit here, go away!
Me (I lost it) – You know what? There’s no other place. Shut the fuck up and sit! Don’t irritate the fuck out of me!
I don’t think I have ever been this rude to anyone in my life. But, I don’t feel bad about saying it and I never will. I said it, I was rude to her, like she was rude to me. But, I was shocked even after that, my eyes welled up.
For the entire 3 hours, she was giving all these reactions and making faces like she was sitting next to someone disgusting.
And the worst part was, the vacant seat in the front, itwas taken by none.
I don’t know if this is racism and if this happened to me because I’m brown and not white. But, this same female was okay with another white girl sitting next to her. While I was walking towards the seat, another white girl was going to sit there but she found another seat.
When I told this incident to a colleague of mine, he told me that I’m jumping into a conclusion that this is racism.
I don’t know if it could be anything else. Because I was dressed up well. I’m someone who gives importance to getting dressed up. This picture below is from the same day morning. I was in the same attire, maybe with a coat on top of it –
A girl I graduated high school with got a full scholarship to The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. That’s the big UNC… The world-renowned UNC… The one that most of my graduating class was trying to get into. She not only got in, but had a free ride thanks to a combination of cheerleading scholarships and needs-based grants.
She drank and partied her way to failure her first semester, was put on academic probation, didn’t recover, and was back home living with her parents and working as a waitress by the time she was 20.
She was still smoking hott* though, and it all worked out for her. “It” tends to work out for women like her… Women with model-quality looks and bubbly personalities. She married a lawyer and is now a stay-at-home (a beach house, no less) mother who, judging from what she posts on Facebook, lives an enviable life.
As for me, I have one huge wasted opportunity that I know about.
When I was 23, I’d already spent years working for families with special needs children in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago. I ended up with a job as a special needs assistant for the local school district… a very desirable school district for teachers. Also one of the hardest school districts in which to get hired for any position. I only got hired as an aide because one of the parents on the school board knew me because I sometimes took care of his special-needs kid.
Most of the other aides were teachers-in-training. I hadn’t considered going back to school to be a teacher at that point in my life. An opportunity to go to work for a friend in the auto parts business and make slightly more money presented itself, and I quit my job with the school district mid-year.
That’s a huge no-no in education. You never quit mid-year. I burned that bridge to the ground. I lost contact with all of the people I knew in the district. Dozens of networking opportunities squandered, all for about $100 extra dollars per month.
Years later, I finally went back to college and got my teaching certificate. I was 30 by then, and I struggled to find a teaching job. It was all about who you knew that could get your resume in front of the principals, and I didn’t know anyone who could do that anymore.
Had I been patient and stayed on as an aide for a few more years, I would have been first in line for an open teaching position in that district when they became available.
If this were my 10th year of teaching in that district, I’d be making three times what I make now, and have a lot more perks.
Oh well. Youthful impatience has done a lot worse to other people.
Chimps are not monogamous. In fact, they gang-rape each female. The females do this so that no male knows who the father is, preventing the infant from being killed. Just because animals do it doesn’t mean we should.
Gorillas have harems. Most males never mate, those that do dominate a group of females and have exclusive rights to them. This precludes equal rights for females. Go to a harem model, and you’ve just undone the basic premise for women’s rights.
Monogamy and systematic encouragement of it forced men to treat their only sexual partner with decency and respect for their quality of life. This is why only the Christian West gave women equal legal rights to men across the board. If men can have sex outside of marriage, whether sex slaves or prostitutes, the woman’s social status goes down.
Society has a vested interest in monogamy. Single mothers are even in the rich West at greater odds of poverty. Even worse is the three to four times greater odds of bad life outcomes for their kids. From drug addiction to joining a gang to not finishing school to committing suicide to being a single teen mother, the odds are 3–4 times greater if raised by a single mother.
If society wants to reduce criminal behavior, reliance on welfare (if it exists) and dependent adults, it has to encourage monogamy. The group cannot afford to encourage the breakdown of the family. You don’t get happy hippie communes; you get violent inner cities with stubborn inter-generational poverty in communities that used to have declining poverty rates.
Yes, humanity is biologically transitioning from “harem/free sex” to “monogamous”, so we have conflicting impulses. But we’ve been moving toward monogamy for literally millions of years. We know that because women are only 20% smaller than men versus half the size of a male as occurs in gorillas. It is driven by our higher intelligence and the longer dependent period of human infants.
Monogamy is in our best interest as individuals, as parents and as a society. And that’s why we encourage it.
I had eye surgery in winter 2019, and had to wear dark glasses (the ones in my pic) for a bit.
My eyesight is terrible anyway, but for a couple of months l could barely see.
One evening, as usual, I was taking a long walk in London – couldn’t run, I’d have been running in to street furniture- for exercise. Earbuds in, listening to music.
A beggar stepped in front if me & said something about money. I put my hand in my pocket, handed him a quid.
He said something about wanting more, l couldn’t really hear him too well over Black Grape, but this pissed me off.
“Fuck off”, I said, “you can have a quid and like it”
“Gimme more. I want all your money”
“You cheeky cunt. Fuck off or I’ll take the quid back and kick your arse” l said.
He made angry gestures and stormed off.
A bloke came up beside me…. “…mate, are you ok?” he said.
“Yeah… why?”
“He had a knife”.
Oh. Not beggar; mugger. I hadn’t seen the knife.
The mugger must have thought I was like Chuck Norris, fronting him out like that.
New Upgrade: China J-35 Fighter JET To Fly From Aircraft Carrier
Not a General (or Admiral in this case, since I served in the Navy), but a Captain (equivalent of a full bird Colonel in the other services).
I joined on the delayed entry program when I was still a senior in high school. Toward the end of my senior year, I was awarded a scholarship to state university. There was a banquet to honor all the scholarship recipients.
Even though I knew I couldn’t accept the scholarship because I was already set to go into the Navy, I thought it would be fun and interesting to attend a banquet that was being held partly in my honor.
At the banquet, I met and made small talk with a Navy Captain. I told him about how I wouldn’t be able to use the scholarship because I had already enlisted via the delayed entry program. I never got his name and never heard from, nor spoke with, him ever again after that night.
So technically, I don’t know with any certainty that he was the one who did anything for me. But 30+ years later, it’s still the only explanation that makes any sense.
A week or two after the banquet, I got a phone call from the recruiting office. They wanted me to come in and sign some paperwork. When I arrived, they had two “identical” enlistment packets sitting on a table. The recruiter explained to me that they were going to let me out of my enlistment contract and go into the reserves instead so that I could go to college.
Even at 17 years old, I knew that the government never just lets anyone cancel a legal and binding contract. This was a really huge deal. Somebody pulled some serious strings.
I have told this story before, but I got married young at 24. We were in med school. We did not have a honeymoon, and it was a major fight to get the weekend off and permission to take an exam a day early. Then in residency we both worked 100 + hours per week for years. YEARS. We were not guaranteed to get vacation on the same week. We were not guaranteed a single day off in the month, including weekends. One of my fellow residents gave birth to premature twins. The babies were in an ICU in another STATE so her parents could be in the hospital because there was no family leave. I was repeatedly told not to get pregnant, which would be hard to do if you never sleep, let alone sleep in the same room on the same night as your partner.
Fast forward to maybe age 30. I saw a TV commercial about “the best part of waking up” and it showed a couple on their porch watching the sun rise and drinking some brand of coffee. I started to cry because I had never sat with my husband on my porch or had coffee in the morning together. That was kind of the moment I realized exactly what I had signed up for.
I think things are getting much better for young doctors but for us it was not great. People have NO IDEA what some of us have gone through to be “rich doctors.” Especially if you started out poor and had no outside help or support from family.
I worked for a ‘charity’ in Wakefield, England. A miserable place with many dubious business practices, run by a egotistical idiot. One day most of my team – conspicuously all those of a particular ethnicity – was pulled into his office and told we would probably be losing our jobs and would have to reapply for them. Given the decisive nature of who had been picked, it was obvious we wouldn’t get them when we ‘reapplied’: the company is notorious for their nepotism and they no doubt had replacements – friends and family – already lined up. Needless to say, the mood turned sour in the room. Then the kicker – the absolute collosal utter bellend of a boss legitimately couldn’t tell why we were angry. His exact words: “Come on guys, why are you so down? Let’s have a good day. Big smiles guys, big smiles.”
Had a stressful month looking for work afterward, but now in a great job and glad to see the back of that dump. And of course the people he lined up to fill our posts made a right mess of it (though sadly the company survived).
Can US citizens do 4 times better than Chinese citizens?
Think about this from 1980 to 2020 alone, China grew 30 times in 40 years in real income! What will happen between 2020 to 2060? Say it just grow 10 times that of 2020! It will leave the US trailing miles away!
Chinese people are innovating more, Chinese produce more STEM engineers a year more that the entire U.S. STEM sector! Chinese works twice as hard as American’s, they are highly intelligent and very productive and discipline. Every years China’s savings alone is as big as the entire UK economy! It already has the best infrastructure amongst major economies.
For China to stay still is never going to happen. Period. To me China will grow to 5–6 times the U.S. in real economy!
Expert REVEALS Evidence of Super ADVANCED LOST Ancient Technology!
It didn’t happen right away, but a year or so later, I met her again, and after some standard comical clumsiness, I asked her out.
Knowing based on what she did for a living that she was science nerdy like me, I planned a date to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science
. (Note to guys, this is a BRILLIANT idea. It’s not just that you’re showing respect for her intellect, it also gives you several hours to walk around, have a TON of stimulating things to talk about, and get to know each other.)
Day of the date arrives, her Dad’s in the hospital, so we agree to meet there, so I can visit him too. Hilarious side story, as we’re about to leave, she says, Ok, Dad, see you later, do you want me to turn off your light? “No,” Dad says, “Chris can turn it off when he leaves.” Uh, Bob?” I replied “….(Extended awkward pause….) I’m going with her….”
So we decide to leave her car in the Hospital parking lot and take my car to the museum. Get in the car, turn it on, doors lock, car goes into drive and starts rolling and I say:
“So you know I’m still married, right?”
Have you ever heard that metaphorical record scratch in real life?
Well. I QUICKLY explained to her that we had been separated for about 8 years, that the upcoming law called “The Affordable Care Act” would make it so that she could get insurance despite her pre-existing neuro-vascular disease, and that the only reason we were still married was so that she could stay on my corporate health insurance until that was the case. (In other words, I QUICKLY demonstrated that “I’m a VERY nice guy.”)
It calmed the fire down to the point where we were able to have a VERY nice date…didnt’ QUITE get together just then… a few breaks…not the right time…I was seeing someone else…then she was…and then…
The Stars Aligned.
Yup. I married the Girl who listened to me drop the WORST line you could possibly drop on a first date.
C’est l’amour, no?
Sanctioning China? US is as stupid as the Qing Dynasty Emperor
When you sign up for anything online, put the website’s name as your middle name. That way when you receive spam/advert email, you will know who sold your information.
If you’re on a first date and aren’t connecting with the other person or feel they’re dull, ask them what job they’d choose if money wasn’t an issue. It initiates a talk about one’s passions, which are rarely dull and are simple to connect.
Do not try to be the man your father would want you to be. Be the man you would like your son to be be. It more clearly defines your own convictions, desires, goals, and motivates you to be your best.
Pay Attention to the smell of your home when you come back from a trip – that’s what it smells like to guests all the time, you just get used to it.
When a friend is upset, ask them one simple question before saying anything else: ‘Do you want to talk about it or do you want to be distracted from it?’
No matter how much your workplace pushes “team building” and “family culture” – remember, they’re not your friends and it’s still a workplace.
If you’re stuck on an annoying call, put your phone on airplane mode instead of just hanging up. The other person will see “call failed” instead of “call ended”.
If you want to learn a new language, figure out the 100 most frequently used words and start with them. Those words make up about 50% of everyday speech, and should be a very solid basis.
The Circleville Letters Mystery | Why can’t we solve this?
Pork Sausage Loaf (Hungary)
Pork Sausage Loaf Hungary
Ingredients
1 cup diced mushrooms
2 tablespoons butter
1 egg, beaten
1 pound fresh bulk pork sausage
2 cups dry bread crumbs
1 teaspoon paprika
Instructions
Melt butter in a skillet and add mushrooms. Sauté.
Combine sausage, mushrooms, egg and crumbs and shape into a loaf. Sprinkle with paprika. Place in a small roaster; cover.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 1/2 hour.
Uncover, return to oven, and bake 30 more minutes.
Serves 4
10+ Mind-Blowing Psychological Tricks & Facts That Everyone Should Know
Here are 17 psychological tricks to be more likable and 16 psychology facts you should know:
Posture matters: If you stand up straight and make an eye contact while talking to the people you are attracted to, will make you more confident and attractive.
Have a strong sense of humor: It is thought to be a sign of intelligence. this is why, when assessing a potential partnepsyr, we tend to be more attracted to those who are funny.
Start the conversation first: Women are automatically attracted to guys who start the conversation, take initiative, and make them laugh.
…and always be the one to pull away from the conversation: It shows that you value your time and have other stuff to do. If you cut short your conversation, the other person always wants more of it. It creates attraction.
Deeper voice: Men with deeper voices are more likely to make a lasting impression on women than men with higher voices.
Create sexual tension without touching: It is done subtly, and by flirting. It creates instant attraction if you do it correctly.
7. Never approach women from behind or from her sides. It looks sneaky. Approach her face-to-face. It displays more confidence.
8. Wear red: People subconsciously believe that women who wear red are more attractive and sexy, in 2010, Eliot confirmed that people will sit closer to women who wear red dresses.
9. Let others talk about themselves – it’s as rewarding as sex: If you want to make your conversation partner feel good, get them talking about themselves and their interests. Which will make people feel valued and they will be more impressed by you
10. If you’re a woman, a man will like you if you can make him feel masculine. No instructions, no advice and give him ample space.
11. If you’re a man, a woman will like you if you can make her feel beautiful, not just sexy. A high emotional quotient is also critical for a woman.
12. Do not speak badly about others as this creates distrust.
13. Do not spread false rumors and do not make accusations.
14. When with a group of people, including everyone in the conversation. Never leave anybody out.
15. Share the little you have with those who have nothing.
16. Become a happy person and wear a smile always.
17. Laugh with all. Don’t discriminate. Be gender sensitive.
US Heartbreak: Mexico Chooses China for Auto Future – Is It the End?
When I worked at the local university bar there was this guy called Mick. He was a down to earth guy who spoke in a working class accent. He always said that his dad was a miner. We socialised quite a bit over the three years that he studied for his degree. Then when it was his graduation I was invited and I met and sat with his parents. Obviously well off by the clothes that they wore. Anyhow, Mick’s mother was chatting to me and aske me who I was I told her that I was her son’s barman for the past three years. She asked “did he tell you that his father owns six mines in Yorkshire?”
I replied “no”. She said, “He’s such an inverted snob, How did you find him?”
I replied that I found him sociable, down to earth and a decent guy. I got a hug for that and an invitation to their home in the summer break.
It was like a bloody castle with footmen and butlers.
But, yes they were such a lovely, nice, down to earth family.
I’m standing by my Dad as I am casually playing on my phone.
Suddenly, he reaches over and snatches my phone out of my hands, eyeing the screen.
“Dad what are you doing?” I ask, surprised.
“Just checking” he replies, handing it back over to me.
“I’m so sick of dealing with Amy.
I wish I could just dump her at the doctors so they can take care of her.”
I’m frozen in place as I overhear my Mum talking to my Dad. I run back to my room and I find myself having a panic attack.
I’m laying in bed, “asleep”, when I hear my Dad walk up beside my bed. I peek out of my eye slightly, and see the light of my phone screen illuminate the room.
My Dad is standing there, looking at my notifications.
I start to wake up, and he quickly covers himself, saying he was just “seeing if it needed charging for tomorrow”.
These happened a long time ago, and to this day they continue to prove to me that they can’t be trusted and that they lie to me all the time.
They tell me I can trust them. They tell me that they will always support me. They tell me that they’ll always have my side. They have even told me that they will give me privacy.
But actions speak louder than words.
The Cat Knew That They Had Come to Put Him to Sleep! So Be It, For the Mistress Was Gone!
When I was in 8th grade, a classmate along with my sister tore up a painting that I had spent three months working on.
Her name was Rita.
High School / Middle School head games.
But it was cruel. I spent a long time to make that artwork so that it would be displayed in a art fair. And then with pride, the day before the event, I proudly saw it hung on the wall in the fair… located in the High School gym.
But that night, they came in from Cheerleader practice. Got in the gym. Took my picture off the wall. And then carried to school the next day.
My picture wasn’t entered in the fair. It was missing.
When I went into my “home room” the next day, Rita and my sister came up to me, and the class and right before me tore my precious artwork into a million pieces and threw them in my face. Like confetti.
I was in shock.
The class laughed.
The teacher did nothing.
And (later on when I was at home) my mother told me that I “shouldn’t get angry over it”. Just move on she argued. While my father told me “you are the oldest … you have to take the hits”.
…
Who in the fuck convinced me to accept this God Damn life? What the Hell?
The other countries are sanction and embargo proof their economies. From keeping it’s reserves in non western banks to digitising their currencies, to trading via currency swap arrangement, or paying by other currencies than the dollar and U.S. cronies currencies. Sanctions will be totally a thing of the past within a decade at most.
The world is already broken into 2 groups now. One are US, it’s slave vassal nations, the U.S. fellow native slaughterers, the U.S. fellow despicable colonial masters, the few tiny nations around Europe that has be coerce to do shit for the west. This group is less than 2 dozen nation or you can say the minority group. It’s GDP as a group is also coming to 40% and falling fast of the world and in population less than 13%.
The majority group is call the Global South. It include most of Asia, Latin America and Oceania, and all of Middle East, Central Asia and the Caribbean. These nations add up to. At least 175 out of the world’s 195 nations. Or 87% of the world, 60% of the world’s GDP and growing fast and probably 90% or real purchasing power PPP on planet earth.
The first group either has no choice or succumbed to threat by the U.S to support and defend the western so call rules base international order. And sink and swim in it. The second group through the BRICS and SCO will successfully withdraw from the rules based international order but by bit.
Try to imagine a balloon. If you prick it with a pin the balloon will burst and if flies off and the air inside the balloon is gone for good. Now try imagining that the air is the wealth and reserves trapped in side the balloon. This 2nd group is sucking up its air but by bit, little by little till what is left belongs to the 1st group. By that time in a decade or so what will be left is a balloon that is at least half its size.
So within a decade U.S. dollars, SWIFT, Western Institutions, Western Systems, western rating agencies, western exchanges, world bank, IMF and many others that together represent the world order will still be there but only serve the west. The U.S. wants decoupling, the U.S. is getting it. The world is decoupling from the west.
Welcome to the new world.
Mind Virus
Women want Leaders. But the current 20-something group of women do not want to take the follower role. Thus they can never fit with the men that they desire.
I remember a lovely patient who had a very swollen abdomen due to ascites, a complication of cirrhosis of the liver.
Every day in the hospital, I would hang a bag of albumin and chat as I drained fluid from the swollen belly. This was in the day when liver transplants were rare and not for people who had developed cirrhosis from alcohol use.
When it was time for the patient to leave, I was given a very expensive bottle of red wine. I think it came from the patient’s extensive collection of wines. The family was wealthy. We both knew that the cirrhosis was not cureable. I wondered if all the wine was given away before the patient passed. The patient had a wistful smile and explained a bit about the wine that could never again be tasted. I was young and did not know anything about fine wines.
My husband and I shared the wine on our anniversary when we were interns.
Sometimes it is the things we love the most that cause us the greatest pain.
I am a welder with a specific set of specialized skills as an ironworker. I earned about $35 an hour on the lower end with my last job in the union. Im the guy walking on ibeams on skyscrappers hanging off the side welding moment welds. One company wanted to pay me less than McDonald’s to weld.
Recently, however, I have quit this line of work to make time for college. In doing so I was searching for lower paying but more reasonable hours and location. Going to work at the same place for 40 hours a week was my plan. I was having trouble doing this since most companies are wanting me to work lots of overtime.
One day I had scheduled an interview for a job which said I wouldn’t be asked to work over 40 hours a week and it was relatively close to my home. Inquiring about the pay they just said it depended on my skills but it would be very good. I didn’t press further for detsils. On interview weld test day I accidentally left much too early. Realizing I would be 45 minutes early I decided to stop for lunch at a McDonald’s. When I was there I noticed they were offering $22/hour for a maintenance position. I spoke with the manager about it but told them I could probably make more money welding in a shop.
I went to my interview and was asked to take a weld test that took about 2 hours. At the end of the weld test one of the managers took me to a table in the office and saw I was asking for $28 an hour, really I was hoping for closer to $30. He told me the most he would be able to pay was 19 or maybe 20.
“I don’t appreciate all of my time you’ve wasted here, sir. The McDonald’s down the road pays better than this.”
I was quite pissed that I had just wasted well over 2 hours of my time with the drive there, back, and other things I did to prepare for that interview.
The shop welding jobs are paying an average of $25 an hour around here, so I’ll be working at McDonald’s until these cheap asses pay what it’s worth to weld. Why should I do a skilled job when McDonald’s pays nearly the same? I wish more welders would refuse to work for peanuts and maybe we could get some decent wages.
Of course, China have slavery like the US in … errr … emmm … yep … about 3,000 years ago, after Zhou Dynasty established in 1046 BC, Chinese slavery was ended.
Slaves made a great contributions in the war of Zhou rebels to overthrow the Shang Dynasty. In return, the first monarch of the Zhou Dynasty ordered the permanent abolition of slavery, and this order was maintain by all following Chinese dynasties, because that monarch is seen as saint and model of a virtuous ruler for all Chinese rulers, including barbarian born Chinese rulers. Even Mongolian emperors in Yuan dynasty would go to his tomb to worship him in every years, no need to mention others.
In the following 3000 years, although there were several barbarian born monarchs reintroducing slavery into China, but none of their regimes could survive over more than 50 years.
And strictly speaking, the Qing Dynasty had slavery, but their slavery was somewhat distorted because it only existed among the Manchus. The Manchu Eight Banners Army was actually a slave army, with soldiers and officers were actually slaves belongs to the banner lord. They fought in banner lords’ commanding for generations.
But the Manchus seem to regard this slave status as an honor, so you can see that when Manchus write letters to the emperor or their banner lord, they would call themselves something like “a humble slave greeting to my dear lord” in the beginning.
And when some Han favored officials of certain emperors also write like this, the emperor will directly reply to him, saying, “Please call yourself a vassal, you are my Han vassal, not my slaves in banner”.
So, for the Qing Dynasty, slaves in the Manchu system were more like hereditary family of attendants, who established a generational contract. Becoming slaves to the banner lord was not shameful for the Manchus, but rather an honor accepted and protected by banner lords, and all banner lords are royal members.
It was a letter from governer of Hu province and Guang province (This is a very big official position, ruling lands almost over two modern France), a Han official Yang ZongRen, to the YongZheng Emperor of Qing Dynasty, those black writting was Yang’s original writting, red one were the reply of the Emperor.
image 55
In this letter, Yang called himself “the slave”, and Yongzheng Emperor strike out that word, and changed it to “vassal”, and noted that “claiming to be a vassal” is more appropriate.
Of course, this is actually just a Han governor in flattering the emperor. The emperor himself was very happy on that, but still remembered to correct it for him, because it’s not appropriate.
oh … btw, about this letter, except the stroke and note in the right, the left red paragh is:
I am fine (reply the greeting of Yang), although you just arrived in this official position for no long, what you reported and what you did, has already pleased my wish, you are worthy of being a high-ranking governer, so today I leading civil service officials and military officials decided to award you xxxxxx (I don’t know how to translate this, you can think it’s some kind of medal), to recognize your excellent work.
Just let the person know politely. If they refuse to move or try to get you to do a seat swap, and if you don’t want, simply say no, I.dont want to trade seats, please get up. If the person won’t move, push the call button for the flight attendant. Do not move, or let anyone behind you get to their seat. The flight attendant will take care of it more quickly, if the boarding process, is at a stand still.
Happened to me once. I was treating myself to First Class. The First Class section had to rows on the left, but only onecrow on the right. Meaning, those seats were a window/aisle/and had no seat mate. I also, had, the last seat in the row so, nobody behind me. This group of six traveling together, got on first, and all wanted to sit together, took my seat.
The person in my seat redirected me to, a seat on the otherside of the plane, someone had the window seat already. I said, no, I’d like my seat please. They group looked at eachother, the guy in my seat, acted like he wasn’t budging. I didn’t let the people behind me go around me. The flight attendant immediately asked if everything was ok. I said, just waiting for him to get out of my seat, I asked nicely once already. She told him to move, and that he was holding up the boarding process.
You don’t have close friends just friends. Most of the people you are around, are only there because of circumstances not really related to you in anyway.
The sooner you start focusing and planning on your life goals the easier it will be achieving them.
One of the most important thing you can teach yourself during your 20’s is self discipline. This is the first thing we should learn and crave to achieve.
Life moves very fast, do things you enjoy at the moment cause our situations tend to also change as fast then we later feel like we missed out on somethings.
The more you expose yourself to the world around you, the more you expand your thinking horizons. Travel, socialize and live life don’t lock yourself out of these important things.
Learn to cook a variety of menu’s of proper home meals. Cooking is a very important skills much more as an adult.
You start using drugs as curiosity soon it becomes for fun later it becomes a dependency. The transition is so fast you barely realize it.
Learn about proper workout routines you can do to energize your body. You don’t have to do hard excercise even if its just yoga. Its more about something you can commit to that benefits you.
Reading and getting creative are ways to keep your brain sharp and generate new ideas. Make sure you read novels and try out the different forms of art around you.
Don’t be selfish in your 20’s, most of the things we hold on to are barely important in our 30’s. Stuff like money, food, material possessions. Learn to share cause these memories are the ones that we keep. Be real with every real person around you.
This takes me back a few years. The Philadelphia DA felt he caught “Streets” workers at extreme wage theft.
The city had gone through a series of bad snow storms requiring both city employees and contractors running snowplow on the streets for over a week.
A few months later the DA holds a press conference that a particular employee is being charged with felonies related to false time sheets (getting paid for time not worked). It might have been the soft kick-off to their campaign for mayor or governor — showing how they could fix problems like this.
In next day or two the employee is arraigned in court with lawyers from the union. The DA (usually an assistant associate low level attorney handles these hearings) give a speech about how it was not humanly possible for the employee to have worked the hours claimed (from memory: between 120 and 160 hours in a week) so they had to be sleeping on the job — “stealing from the taxpayers of our fine city, this just shows how the union abuses the city.”
Union attorney gets to say their piece. A few flowery words about clueless wealthy elected officials overreaching. Then the attorney drops the appropriate section of the contract (again: from old memory so not exact quote) “so long as any contractor truck is on the road performing snow removal and an employee is *available* for work, they shall be paid.”
This was exactly the situation covered by the contract. It was written that way so the city could bring in help for emergency-level snows but not outsource the employees.
A bit of evidence how the employee *worked* a lot of hours and then slept “on-site” (where they would normally pick up their truck) so they were clearly “available”.
The criminal case was thrown out. There may have been a $ settlement to the employee for false arrest and the DA’s political career petered out.
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.
mushroom beef blog
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
* Tie together with kitchen twine 1 celery stalk with leaves, 3 or 4 sprigs parsley, 1 bay leaf and small sprig of thyme
Dumplings
1 cup soft fresh bread crumbs
1/4 cup melted margarine or 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 degree 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 margarine 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.
I had a scheduled interview for an OFFICE job! Up to that point I had been doing piecework sewing, processing chickens, and guarding slabs of foam rubber… This was a HUGE step up!
During the night before the interview, it snowed 4 inches in Baltimore. Now this is not that big a deal… except in Baltimore, it IS. Public transport did not run. Traffic was pretty sparse first thing in the work day… I decided to walk the 3 miles to the interview. I got there in plenty of time, changed my hiking boots for heels in the ladies’ room, and went to the office where the interview was to be held.
Nobody home.
A guy showed up and asked what I was doing standing in the hall. I explained I was there to interview as an accountant’s assistant. He asked how I got there. When I said I walked, he looked dubiously at my heels. He said, “In THOSE shoes?” I admitted my boots were in the ladies’ room. He asked to see the boots, so I went and got them. As soon as he saw that I really did have boots I was hired. I had not yet even entered the offices.
I always field strip my cigarettes and stick butts in my pocket. Yes, it smells disgusting.
I have a P38 on my keychain. This is a tiny can opener used to open cans of C-rations. It even gets used once in a while.
image 571
5. Take my hat off when going indoors. Because of this, I rarely wear a hat.
6. When a passenger in a vehicle, I act as “assistant driver.” I let driver know if it is clear or not on my side.
7. I act as a ground guide for people backing up. I will often ask people to ground guide me when I am backing up, often to their puzzlement. Of course, they do not know the correct hand signs to use and those I am helping often don’t understand the signs I give them.
8. I scan the side of roads more than necessary in the US. Not too many IEDs on our roads.
9. I say, “I got your back” or “Do you have my six?” too much.
10. I use the military phonetic alphabet. D is for Delta, not Dog.
11. I use the word “task” a lot.
12. I tend to try to help people with what the military calls hip pocket training. Many people find this annoying and would prefer to screw something up than get some quick pointers.
13. Finally, I learned to never put more than eight words on a power point slide because the Army puts hundreds of words on one slide. Along with this, I also learned to NEVER ask someone to read a power point slide with hundreds of words on it.
China would be burning a lot of bridges if they do and China is hesitant to do that
The West knows it’s dying and is thus ready to inflict every horror on it’s population
They are prepared to subject their population to everything from inflation to starvation knowing that they have tamed their population sufficiently through propaganda
They can cause China to lose quite a bit of money if they invade Taiwan and that could make a lot of Chinese unhappy and cause some strife within the country
Plus more importantly, China believe Taiwanese are their brothers and killing them is a no no because at least 30% Mainlanders have family in Taiwan
So that’s what’s stopping China
Otherwise if China decide that they don’t care, China can pulverize and decimate Taiwan into a graveyard overnight and nobody can do a thing to stop them without risking WWIII
Yep, my brother fell out of a Huey. He was in Nam and the radio went wild, with troops needing to be evacuated from a hot zone. He jumped in as the M-60 machine gunner. It was the first time he flew into a hot zone. His adrenaline was high. Because of that, he forgot to strap in. The Huey headed out over the paddies and couldn’t land because there was a nest of Charlies that needed to be taken out first. The pilot banked to the left super hard so my brother could shoot the 60 down at Charlie’s nest. The pilot banked too hard and my brother fell out right on top of two Charlies. The wind was knocked out of all three of them. My brother was the first to come to his senses, and realized he didn’t have a weapon. He looked around and found one of the Charlie’s AK and as they started to get up he blasted them both. Killed them dead, he did. The chopper picked the GIs up and then came back and rescued my brother. When he got back to the base, the pilot said, “That is the bravest thing I have ever seen, jumping unarmed out of a Huey, kill two gooks, and saved a squad. Boy I am going to put you in for a Silver Star.” My brother told him, “I fell out and was just trying to save my ass.” He still got the Star. Analyse and improvise. A motto to live by!
The first time a European owned company announced a round of layoffs in a month. I was the new guy in the group and figured I was disposable. The day of the announced layoffs I went into work wearing my “Gone With The Wind” tie.
When I was summoned to the boss’ office, my desk had been cleared of all personal effects. My pulled out a paper and made to read it. I stopped him and said, “I know I’m being laid off. What are the details?” Boss was rather startled and we started talking about it.
I told him that he had a good old boys club where engineers from headquarters would rotate in then return for a raise & promotion. U.S. employees were treated as second rate. Thanks for the layoff. I was pretty disappointed in the company.
When he asked how I knew that I would be laid off, I told him that the company had announced the layoffs a month earlier. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that I was one of the newest people in the group and not part of the “club”. Of course I was the easiest to lay off.
I also told him that it was pretty stupid to announce the layoffs a month previous. Everyone quits working and it encourages mischief. Oh they hadn’t thought of that.
The bosses were gone within 3 months.
The other was a company where I was the entire engineering department. My boss & I were always at odds. He wanted to get rid of the product line. I’m sure the fact that his brother worked for a competitor had nothing to do with his decision.
The company staged an ambush layoff on January 2nd. Oh well, at least they didn’t screw up the holidays.
Although they offered $10k, I refused to sign their termination agreement and collected unemployment all through the covid lunacy. Made out like a bandit.
Why sex is important.
Men know this instinctively. Modern 20-something, 30-something women, are having trouble with this.
I was at home, having broken my foot in a stupid accident, when the head of HR was “in the area” and wanted to see me. After the pleasantries, she told me that I was being made redundant and my job no longer existed.
In the UK, firing someone is not easy or cheap. A company can find itself in court and it can all get a bit grubby. So a more usual tactic is to say that the employees job is no longer needed. Employers like this, because it saves it all getting public, legal and unpleasant, and employees like it because the employer has to pay to make it all go away.
So we negotiated a redundancy fee and the next day a car came with my personal things from my office. I trousered the (generous) cheque and picked up the phone.
The irony was that I had just had an exceptional year. I had won a load of creative awards (I was a creative director at Saatchi and Saatchi) including a Cannes Gold. I have no idea why they wanted me out. To this day I don’t know.
Two weeks later I signed a contract with a rival company for a bigger salary.
The local supermarket includes a hot table where they sell hot cooked chickens for $10.99 It’s a good deal – I’ll get one occasionally. It looks like this; if this is unfamiliar in your area:
image 570
The pack includes a cardboard handle for easy carrying.
One day, I noticed that whoever had labeled the latest batch of chickens had made a mistake. Instead of $10.99, they were labeled as $0.99. Cool! Cheap chicken! lol. Not really – I like the folks there and quickly let the lady in the meat line know. The chickens had only just come out; no loss to anyone.
Except – I was not the only one that had found it. A woman of – how do I say this – limited intelligence saw it and began screeching at the top of her lungs “Chicken for a buck! CHICKEN FOR A BUUUUUCK!!!” and began loading her cart.
The manager arrived right at that moment, apologized and began to correct the matter.
The woman went ballistic; screaming, shouting bloody blue murder, accusing him of stealing, of trying to starve her to death, etc. etc. etc. The price was 99 cents dammit, she deserved chicken for 99 cents!
The manager, in an effort to ease the situation, agreed. He told her that alright; she had ‘found’ the error; she could have a chicken for 99 cents.
There was a long pause as the woman looked dumbfounded. Then she launched herself at the table, screeching, trying to grab every chicken she could possibly get her hands on. Chickens were falling everywhere; spilling onto the floor. The manager tried to intervene but no help – she was grabbing, stuffing, howling; it was a disgusting display of a complete lack of dignity.
She was taken out of the store in handcuffs; without her 99 cent chicken. The entire batch of roast chicken was destroyed.
Of course I agree with you absolutely, and any person could see it unless you are in denial or made brain dead by the western media.
They offer consistency and continuity in their policies to investors and business yet the protect their citizens against the ills of raw capitalism. In other words Socialism with Chinese characteristics takes the best of both worlds and rejects the flaws of both systems.
Hence the growth of both economies of China and Vietnam both grow phenomenally and consistently. For decades and now generations through ups and downs of the economic cycle. Westerners scream democratic and freedom but ignores the fallacy of this costly, inefficient and mostly corrupt system that put their people at the mercy raw capitalism.
If you look at the U.S. for example, 1% have more money than they ever need, 10% are wasteful and selfish but can afford to live comfortably , while 70% are poorer than most advance economies and in fact are like the majority of Chinese except that the Americans has to bear the burden of it’s weaker purchasing power in their country. The majority of Chinese has high disposable income. And while Chinese cut out the destitute poor in the past 10 years, the U.S. raw capitalism allowed the 19% in Americans to have to worry where their next meal is coming from and they barely have 500 dollars to their name!
A government role in a society is surely to bring prosperity, peace and harmony and healthy living for everyone. From that count the Chinese population enjoys that. Western liberal democracy allows the rich to get richer and the poor to be destitute. But because they wrongly thinks they need to overlord the entire world, they barely have enough money left to pay for infrastructure, college education or healthcare. So they fail the poor and pamper the rich!
Are you surprised that according to western surveys, 91% of Chinese favour their government and 36% of Americans favour their government! I am not! Are you?
My son was given a car for his birthday. We bought it. It was nice little car that had been wrecked and was repaired and had a salvage title. That meant that a previous insurance carrier had totalled it following the wreck, and it had been repaired and state certified to be safe.
Anyway, he had been driving it for several months to school and to work after school. This one day he was in his way to work and came to a stop sign. Stopped, insured the traffic was clear and went to make a left turn. Older lady than him (he was 17, she was 36) had stopped at the opposite stop sign and gunned it, hitting my son’s car in the back quarter panel and rear door on the passenger side. He called me and I went to the scene. The accident was on state highway, inside city limits. I had the option to have the highway patrol called to work the accident, however I decided to just let the local police work it. I spoke with the lady and she was all apologetic and saying she’d take off it…yeah, right…
She took care it alright. She whines and said that it wasn’t her fault, that kid just stomped on the gas and caused the accident. They took her word for it. Even though you could about tell from my son’s damage that she caused the accident.
So the next day, my son is home in bed sick. I’ve medicated him and he’s sleeping. The phone rings, it’s the insurance adjuster from her insurance. Absolutely demands to speak with my son. I tell him no, that my son is sick, had been medicated and it’s sleeping, and that I won’t wake him. Adjuster didn’t like that and was insistent. Well he woke Mama Bear…I told him that my son was 17, still a minor, and that he (the adjuster) would wait until I said that my son could talk with him, then I hung up.
Could days go by. Another phone call from someone else in that company. Says that my son was assigned 50% blame (no fault state here) because he turned into a four lane road and didn’t stay in the closest lane. I laughed and asked what town did your adjuster go to? My town has zero four lane roads, only part of the highway with a center turn lane, that ended 2 blocks before the intersection where the accident happened. They wouldn’t budge, so I said fine whatever, just cut me a check. BTW, they wouldn’t pay for a rental since my son wasn’t 21, and wouldn’t get one for me so I could let my son have my car, since I wasn’t in the accident… we only had liability insurance on my son’s car as it was so expensive, so they couldn’t do anything.
So I took pictures and sent them to the insurance adjuster and asked him to show me where the four lanes were. He tried to say the wide shoulder was a lane, yeah.. No.
Get another call, they do they’ll cut a check for less than half what we paid for the car, since it had a previous salvage title. Even with the salvage title, this care was with 4 times what they offered and twice what I paid. I only wanted them to pay what I had bought the car for. They refused, so I told them I’d let my attorney handle it from there on out. That gal said, “go ahead, we hear that all the time”. I said that fine, but do you hear this “I’m the biggest bitch in the state and I mean what I say”. She started spluttering and I just hung up.
We engage our attorney. The vehicle was towed to an indoor storage facility (the window was busted and the interior would have been exposed to weather). In the meantime, my son graduates high school and joined the army. After several months our attorney calls and says that the insurance company wants me to release the car to them as it’s racking up a huge bill. I asked if they were giving me what I wanted, he said no, they’d only come up to about 3/4 of my demands. I laughed and said no.
Another few months go by. Now my son has graduated basic and is almost finished with his advanced training and is days away from getting married. Insurance is whining about the storage fees again. Again they don’t want to pay. Of course once I hired our attorney, the suit included the insurance paying my attorney as well as the storage fees and the original cost of the car. So again I say no. I got a call from the storage facility. The was a tow truck there for the car. I drove there and told the driver nope, you can’t have it. He tried to say that he had orders to impound it… I laughed at I called my attorney.
So now it’s been over 2 years since the accident. My son and his wife are in Germany. I get a call from my attorney. He’s laughing his ass off. Said he had a check for me, $500 more than I asked for and all storage fees and his fees as well. Said the person he had been dealing with was whining about how hard I was to deal with and that I should have compromised sooner. Attorney told him that had I been given what I asked for at the get go, it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper. Was told that since hardly anyone actually engages an attorney, it’s the risk they take, and since their attorneys were on staff, they didn’t cost anything extra.
So because they wouldn’t pay out a measly $5400…it finally cost them almost $30,000.
I kept the extra $500 and sent the $5400 to my son.
So it might not have hurt the insurance company to shell out that $30k, but to me it was the principal. They thought because he was 17 that they could take advantage of him. They didn’t count on me.
I see a couple of answers that are good but don’t answer the whole question. Manufacturing is important but it is more than just that, but they are good at manufacturing.
1 – SpaceX has a strong bias toward action. Elon wants it done tomorrow and he expects you to work all night if you have to in order to make it. They definitely push action now. (Blue Origin started before them and still hasn’t made it to orbit. SpaceX did in 2008).
2 – SpaceX has a willingness to learn. They test early and often to learn about basic design flaws early. An example is the Starhopper. It was the simplest version you could ever build of a Starship. It was a tin can (actually fuel tanks) with an engine and a flight computer. They tested the engine and the control algorithm using that.
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3 – SpaceX has a bias toward simplicity. One of Elon’s favorite sayings is “The best part if no part”. In other words they always look for ways to eliminate whole systems. Starship and the “catch” is an example of that. They eliminated landing gear and a few thousand pounds of structure to support it.
4 – SpaceX is willing to dream big and innovate. In 2010 when Elon said they would land boosters on the Falcon 9 and reuse them people laughed at him. That is impossible! They lost a couple figuring it out but they have now landed 239 of them as of 12/19/2023 according to their website. I assume that is updated for last night’s launch. (They launch a couple of times a week). For Starship they will catch the rocket during a controlled descent!
5 – SpaceX understands where the real cost of space travel comes from and avoid it. They try not to drop millions of dollars of flight hardware in the ocean. They also launch often to avoid accumulating costs (salaries) without income (launches) and are moving to improve both with Starship.
6 – They avoid silly costs like buying multi-million dollar NASA certified flight components. Instead they usually build their own from off-the-shelf commercial components and save millions.
The end result is they are doing things no one else can or will ever do. Next stop Mars!
My wife and I were visiting friends, and we’d all been joking around for a couple of hours. Some of the jokes were “mean” in the “I’m just busting your balls” sense, but I didn’t think there was any genuine meanness going on.
On the way home, my wife got really quiet. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, “You really don’t know, do you?” She then told me I’d seriously hurt her feelings.
My heart sank. That’s the one thing I never, ever want to do. She’s my best friend, and causing her pain is unforgivable. But, no, I didn’t know what I did. I had no idea what she was referring to.
She found this hard to believe, because, from her point of view, I embarrassed her in front of our friends by, out of the blue, accusing her of being “bad” in a very specific way (which I won’t go into here, because I’d hate to humiliate her, again).
Immediately, I remembered saying it, but … but … it had been a joke! We’d all been joking around, in a cutting sort of way, and I’d just joined in.
My wife said, “It didn’t sound like a joke!”
“But why would I purposefully want to hurt you?”
“I don’t know. I was flabbergasted when you said it. I guess you must resent me.”
I apologized. I hate it when people make excuses for themselves while apologizing (“I really, really meant it as a joke!”), so I didn’t. I said “I’m very sorry. I should never hurt you. That’s terrible. I love you.”
She gradually got over it—or pretended to—but I didn’t. I realized this has happened to me before, and, a few days later, I discussed this with my wife, being careful not to make anything sound like an excuse.
“I think sometimes, when I’m joking, I don’t signal the fact with an ‘I’m just kidding’ voice. Would you say that’s true?”
“Yes,” she said. “You have a very dry sense of humor. It’s often hard to tell if you’re joking or not. Sometimes I have to explain to people that you’re joking.”
I’m autistic, and though (after decades of work), my social skills are mostly indistinguishable from a non-autistic person, that’s one way I screw up. When joking, I have a totally flat affect. I don’t realize it at the time. I don’t feel like I have a dry sense of humor. In my head, I’m goofy, not dry, but the goofiness doesn’t always translate.
Once, at work, when, at the end of a meeting, my boss asked “What will you be working on tomorrow?”
I said, “I don’t plan on coming to work tomorrow. I think I’ve worked enough for one lifetime. I’m going to stay home from now on. That sounds like more fun.”
There was a long pause. Everyone stared at me. Finally, in a really quiet voice, someone asked “Are you joking?”
To me, it was obvious I was joking. But I was in a minority of one. And this wasn’t in a stodgy, conservative office. This was a partying crowd. (Part of the problem is that I tend to joke when I feel like it. I don’t wait until there’s a general “we’re joking now” vibe. This mistake isn’t terribly conscious on my part, but I’m vaguely aware that I do it.)
In addition to being autistic, I come from a part of the midwest where people naturally have a flat affect. I grew up around folks who sounded a little bit robotic, and I inherited their tendency to talk without much vocal music. (If you’ve heard Martin Starr’s voice on “Silicon Valley,” you know what I’m talking about.)
I thought more about that night, with my wife and our friends, and realized I’d been trying to impress them. Once the jokes got started, I wanted to out-joke everyone else, and I stopped caring about who I trampled on. While I hadn’t purposefully hurt my wife’s feelings, I had used her to get a cheap laugh.
And then I thought some more about it. The thing I’d “jokingly” accused her of was something about her that irritated me at times. Had I acted out, in a passive-aggressive way, instead of talking to her, directly? I can’t discount that possibility. If that’s what I did, I was an asshole.
I went camping with my dog. We arrived at night and ended up in a remote area. I managed to get the tent up, get a fire going, plopped myself down with my dog at my side on a leash.
Suddenly she jumped and barked at something, I then smelled this weird smell, it was a grassy metallic smell that stung my nostrils. In that second i didn’t realize it was fresh skunk odor. My dog startled and lunged at the skunk and sprayed my girl right in the face, her eyes were slammed shut.
I had to take her to the water pump and wash her eyes out and wash her face and head as best as I could late at night.
Then I had another problem, where would my dog sleep ? I couldn’t leave her tied up outside due to the skunk and/or bears. If I left her in my car I would never get the smell out. So she slept in the tent and stunk the tent up.
I stuck it out, gave her several baths of dish soap,.hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. Still took,.weeks for the smell to go away.
She has a thick coat and for months I brushed or.petted her the skunk smell would drift out of her coat.
I never forgot that grassy metallic smell of fresh skunk odor and I hate skunk smell.
I’m originally from Edinburgh, Scotland but now live in Perth, Australia. I had decided one day to visit AQUA which is Perth’s aquarium and was using a bus instead of driving. When we arrived at the stop for AQUA a young male and female were getting off too and asked the driver how to get to the aquarium ( it’s at the far end of a complex with shops, cafes, beachside etc) so I said I was going there too and would show them the way.
On walking we chatted and I realised the girl was Scottish and asked whether she was here on holiday. They both were and we discussed where she was from ..it was St Andrews. Further conversation re courses at Uni etc and she said she was studying Physics and Space Science at Edinburgh University. That was a coincidence as my niece had done a very similar course at Leicester Uni as Edinburgh didn’t have that course when my niece was at Uni. I told her my niece had done the course at Leicester and she said a friend of hers had also gone to Leicester. I mentioned my niece by Christian name and was asked what her surname was. The friend was my niece. Then I remembered my sister and her OH had friends who lived in St Andrews. This girl was the friend’s daughter and was only in Perth for a few days as she and her b/f were having a tour round Australia.
This girl’s father had been my sister and her OH’s best man at their wedding. If I hadn’t been on that bus on that particular day or if I hadn’t overheard them ask exactly where the aquarium was we would never have known the connection. Quite the coincidence.
If war means China going to the U.S. to fight America, then you are right. But it is a not factor. China does not want to do that unless the U.S. hit China. China won’t be the first to lay its hands by
If war means China fighting off U.S. in China which include Taiwan, China then let me make it super clear. China is super duper ready now to give the U.S. such a hiding it will collapse the U.S. financially, economically, politically and militarily that the U.S. will never be the same again. Don’t even think about it. Your media, your politician and say what you like but if we have to sink all you dozen aircraft carriers we will in the defence of the motherland.
I think the U.S. knows that, that is why it won’t dare. But god help the U.S. if move beyond talking shit.
The research company I worked for was downsizing. My previous boss had already been let go and my new boss kept sending his employees to learn everything in my department. Well one fave employee thought she was better at my job and kept trying to change our protocols. She never actually did any work, just made our lives miserable.
Then the day came where new boss walked in and started handing out moving boxes. He didn’t even say a word, just passed out the boxes. We all packed up and left. Now my lab was a resource lab that did a ton of work for the other labs. Suddenly me and all my staff were let go and the new boss handed it over to his people.
Guess what? They had never done these procedures, used the high tech equipment or even understood the complicated algorithms to process the data. First week I get 9 phone calls asking for help. That was met with a big NOPE. Then I get a call that the favorite employee had mishandled one of the very expensive robot units and it was out of order. They wanted ME to come in and reprogram it and get them back up and running. Oh heck no! I never went back and never helped.
Lesson of my story is don’t play favorites and make sure you have the staff to accomplish the job.
It was in the 90’s on an international flight. There was a middle aged lady with a Gameboy playing a game at full volume after the lights went out and most of the passengers were sleeping.
People were asking her, then telling her, to shut off the sound. It appeared as though she did not speak English. So one guy rang the flight attendant, who came quickly, but could not communicate with the lady. She got another flight attendant who spoke the woman’s language, who seemingly asked her very politely to turn off the sound. Sorry, I don’t know what language it was. And if I did I wouldn’t say.
As soon as the flight attendant walked away, she started another game. Beep, beep, boing.
Angry passengers were yelling at her. Her husband got up to defend her. Someone rang the flight attendant again. You could tell by the exasperated sigh of the flight attendant that she knew what was going on.
She scolded the woman (assuming from her tone), who pretended to be hurt. It just kept getting stranger and stranger.
The woman shut off the Gameboy and put it away. But as soon as the flight attended walked away, she pulled it out and started another game. Beep, beep, boing. Here we go again.
Finally, a big burly man walked over, put his big hand on the husband’s shoulder and warned him, “I have no problem with you, but you better sit down if you know what’s good for you.” The husband might not have spoken English, but he sat down.
The big man pulled the Gameboy out of the woman’s hands, pulled off the back, took the batteries out, and gave it back to her. She was now screaming in a language I did not understand.
“You’ll get the batteries back when we land. If you had just turned down the sound this wouldn’t have happened.” He was raising his voice, partially because he was angry, but partially because he thought she didn’t speak English.
Finally, as he went back to his seat, she stood up and yelled in perfect English, “F**K YOU!!! IT’S NOT AS FUN WITHOUT THE SOUND!!!”
I once offered $5,000 toward state-of-the-art proton beam radiotherapy to a very good friend of mine. After speaking with his mother, he told me no, because she had advised him that, when he was unable to pay me back, I would sue him.
I, in fact, never made this $5,000 loan. — That he turned it down made him, in a way, a stranger to me; it’s almost impossible to go from a state of literally talking about everything little thing of the day with your buddy to … in all likelihood, slowly, he is dying of cancer; he probably won’t be here in five years.
I hope he’ll be here in 20. — For a cancer that is only responsive to surgery yet located in a place that barely tolerates any surgery, much less surgical resection, — for a cancer that has no effective chemotherapy treatments, curative or palliative; that, even for proton beam therapy, it’s probably not going to work.
And, you only get one shot (pretty much). — Getting the proton beam therapy twice carries about the same risk of catching another fatal cancer, so the utility-maximizing function aspect of this changes.
The part of my brain that is finance-oriented — that manifold — expects a forecast of a certain result, and deviation from that result, whether up or down, is necessarily bad.
If you forecast profits of $0, and in reality, you received $100,000, then great, but it’s still a problem from a risk perspective.
People do small things now. They will choose not to homestead their homes. I don’t know why; always reason. Perhaps… not planning on staying here all that long. Yes, but the money you’d save in taxes would… pay for the radiotherapy.
Do you see where this is going?
The whole new-money/old-money part of the film, Titanic, is interesting in how correct it is, and how misleading it is.
Rose is everything great about old money with none. Jack, of course, is fictional.
—
Jack woulda lost the best. Jack woulda died under the bridge.
Jack would’ve been of a mindset that you could not trust him with a blue diamond necklace but for if he were even accused of stealing it, he would never see the light of day again. — William Blake writes of circumstances like this (see: end of Auguries of Innocence).
This person and his mother are not crazy. There is no reason to think they would not be able to understand that you cannot sue someone for return of a gift.
But, it would take someone, for lack of a better term — like me —, to explain this to him/them, and they don’t want to believe it. I don’t know.
Maybe $5,000 was never enough. — Or, maybe we should not second-guess people. I know what they said.
Hungarian Stew with Noodles
Hungarian Stew with Noodles
Ingredients
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 large garlic clove
5 pounds beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch cubes
4 medium onions, sliced
3 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste
2 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 bay leaf
1 (16 ounce) package bow tie macaroni
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon minced parsley
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
1/2 teaspoon caraway seed
Instructions
In an 8-quart Dutch oven over medium heat in hot oil, cook garlic 1 minute (discard), add stew meat and onions. Cook until meat is lightly browned.
Stir in tomato paste, water, paprika, salt, pepper and bay leaf. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 2 hours or until fork-tender, stirring often.
Cook noodles, drain and toss with butter and parsley.
To serve, sprinkle stew with lemon peel and caraway seed.
You need to be able to read through English and dissect what CNN says
In most of the Media propaganda, they generally don’t lie about the content, they mislead people through the Headline and the Conclusion
For instance, they say Chinas Economic Growth will decline
It will
China grew at 7.41% from 2013–2023 and now will grow at around a worst case of 3.93% from 2023–2033
That is a decline in growth by 47%
Any non economist who reads this will say the same thing
However let’s look at 2003–2013
Chinas average growth was 11.21% from 2003–2013
Thus Chinas growth rate ALSO declined from 2003–2013 to 2013–2023 by 34%
Now let’s see another thing
How much population growth contributed to GDP growth in each decade
2003–2013 – it was 4.9%
2013–2023 – it is 0.8%
2023–2033 – it is going to be 0%
How much Government spending contributed to GDP each decade?
2003–2013 – It was 13.90%
2013–2023 – It is 6.30%
2023–2033 – It’s going to be 3%
How much will Real Estate contribute to GDP growth each decade?
2003–2013 – It was 15.75%
2013–2023 – It is 10.77%
2023–2033 – It will be 0%
What do you see here?
You see that the GDP Growth for China from 2023–2033 will be entirely from solid areas instead of paper growth
High Technology Manufacture & Domestic Consumption which accounted for 1% in 2003–2013, 3.1% in 2013–2023 will account for 14% of Chinas GDP Growth in 2023–2033
So Chinas 3.93% will almost entirely build it’s foundation economy and not it perceptionary economy
By 2033, China will have an immensely strong economy and resilient one
I had a classmate who must have married a rich guy. I didn’t even try to keep in touch with her after high school. But we ended up friends on Facebook. That was the time I just accepted every friend request from everybody I’d ever met in life.
After a while, she started to get on my nerves. She constantly complained about her upper class problems.
I don’t think I have time to get the cabin ready for summer. All the linens I ordered haven’t come in yet. I want to kids to sleep on new sheets, not last year’s garbage.
Paris was great, but now we don’t have enough time to get the boat ready for the lake.
I just hope the new furniture arrives at the cabin on time.
The painters came on the wrong day. They were supposed to come before the new carpet, and before the furniture arrived. So we had to put our new living room furniture in the theater room. It’s so inconvenient.
Can somebody teach me how to use the navigation system in my new Mercedes S Class? I miss my BMW 740i. I just can’t learn a new navigation system every year like this.
Just got back from Hawaii for Christmas. Now I have to supervise these caterers for the New Year party.
I later found out that they had a second mortgage on the house, credit card debt, and they were a month away from foreclosure. That didn’t make me happy, but it explained why she was always complaining about her problems. She was trying to make people that she hadn’t seen in a decade think that she was doing fine.
I was given a notice that I was going to be let go and a slap-in-the-face job offer from the same employer in the same week! let me explain….
I had been working for the same employer for years (on and off) and my group was getting a little light on work, although there was a lot more work on the horizon. One day, I was pulled into the Manager’s office and was notified that I would be laid off in 2 weeks. I wasn’t really shocked, as I could see the writing on the wall due to light workload. I was offered 2 months severance at my current salary and would be paid out my remaining vacation time. Considering that I was being fired, the severance package offered was pretty good. I signed on the dotted line!
With my impending unemployment looming in the distance, I began working my network for a new gig. After about a week, I had a few interesting local prospects. It was then that a supervisor in another part of the company that I was being let go from contacted me. He said that they would like to retain me and rip up my forced resignation letter, but only if I would agree to a 20% pay cut and a relocation. I had 5 days to decide, which was pretty stressful, considering that I had a family to support and potentially uproot.
I was slightly insulted and my soon to be former co-workers thought it was a big slap-in-the-face, considering that I had been slated for a lot of future work at my current salary. Come to find out, the company had realized that I was needed, but wanted to make some extra coin off me by paying me less and billing me at my previous higher rate to clients. After all my years of service, commendations, and happy clients, the company I had worked weekends for, neglected my friends and family for, and sacrificed my time with my kids for, was trying to take advantage of me by trying to put me in a bind and forcing me to decide quickly on a bad offer.
Anyhow, a direct competitor was interested in my services and immediately offered me a slightly better salary than I was currently making with better benefits. They wanted to scoop me up before I accepted the bad deal. I turned down the 20% pay cut offer, accepted my resignation and 2 months severance package and took a wonderful 1 month vacation. After a month, I began working for my new employer, which happened to be across the street from my former employer. Within a year, my former employer was bought by a huge international company and a lot of people quit or were fired. I am very happy with my new employer.
I worked in admin with only men in my departement in a company that worked at airplane propellor⁹ services, a very strickt environment. I needed a better chair and some cabinets. The head of the supply departement, a gorilla type man, accompanied me to a shack on the premesis. We went inside and he locked the door with a padlock. I acted like I hadn’t noticed. I babbled along about what I thought was suitable, testing some chairs, opening cabinets, heart pounding! Meanwhile he laid out some flat cartboard boxes on the floor. I knew if he’d assault me I could never win. Again I pretended not to notice and asked about his kids who were back in school after the summer holidays. That made him snap out of it. I asked him to load up a few items and he did. He opened the padlock and we went back into the main building. I went straight to HR. I told the shocked woman over there I wanted him to be warned because he had a family but never let him be alone with a woman again! He was mad at me for making him look bad ‘because nothing had happened’. My direct supervisor let everybody know what happened and all the men took my side. He was not fired (my request, everybody needs a second chance) but they added a black page in his file.
My husband and I were coming home from Puerto Rico, flying into Pittsburgh that night. A small, stereotypical family sat in front of us: attractive father, beautiful young mother, and two adorable kids, one still an infant and the other a toddler. We’re minding our own business when, out of the corner of my eye, I see the toddler looking at me from the openings between the seats.
“Hi!”
I smiled and said hello, and she took that as an opportunity to tell me literally everything about her life. Her mom kept giving me this patronizing look (like, “God, I’m so sorry she’s talking to you; if I could get her to shut up I totally would”) and saying “Maggie, let’s leave them alone and sit in our seats, OK?”
She told me her name was Maggie and she likes pink, blue, and black. She’s 3 years old, and how old are we? “You’re 22? And he (my husband, Joe) is 24? So you’re both 22. OK!” Maggie lives in Ithaca, New York, and loves flowers like the ones I have on my arms (tattoos) but “you shouldn’t draw on yourself with markers so much Miss Katie!” While she was in PR she “did some bad but also cool things,” and she’s going home to see Uncle Mark, who’s sick right now, so she isn’t going to hug him. “Who’s that guy with you? Joe? So Mr. Joe is your son, right? Miss Katie, can you tell your son to wake up? I’d like to talk to him.”
This carried on for the entirety of the two and a half hour flight we were on. I loved her, but my husband wasn’t so fond: she really liked him for some reason or another, and he wanted to sleep. Maggie’s mom kept telling her to turn around because, as Maggie had already put it, “the sun was going into the water so it’s almost bedtime for my brother. Do you want to see my brother? He’s a baby still.” At which point she proceeded to pull her infant brother’s foot over to the side of the plane by the window and show him to me through the cracks of the seats. I cackled.
Joe kept trying to sleep. He had headphones on, and she told him that she liked his earmuffs, but hers were nicer because they’re pink and black but she only wears them in the winter. As my husband drifted off to sleep, she yelled, “Wake up Joe!” I cackled some more, and she kept playing with him, poking him and saying that she “got him,” and asking Mr. Joe questions about his games and what movies he likes.
Meanwhile, her parents were asking the entire time for her to leave us alone, stop bothering them, “Maggie, do you want to color? Maybe if you’re quiet and color you can show them a picture when you’re done!” and all sorts of other mom things. Once, Maggie left for a few minutes and distracted herself with a game, but came back after a bit and said over the top of the seat, “I know I left, but I came back because I like you guys. You’re very fun!”
I loved Maggie. She kinda grew on my husband towards the end there, and I think he actually liked the attention. After the flight, her parents turned to us and introduced themselves, and apologized for her bothering us the whole flight. I said it was fine, not to worry about it, and that she certainly wasn’t bothering us. They thanked me for being so nice to her, and her mom said, “Yeah, but I want you to know that now, you both will be members of our household for the next two months. She’s going to go to bed every night and say, ‘Momma, do you remember Mr. Joe and Miss Katie? Can you tell me a bedtime story about them?’”
I think about Maggie often and hope that one day her mom tells her about Mr. Joe and Miss Katie from the flight back from Puerto Rico. I miss her sometimes, especially since she was better at waking my husband up than I am.
Ambush | Full Movie (action Movie with Nicolas Cage)
Back in the 1970’s there was this fad. It was the CB Radio fad, and everyone seemed to end up with a Citizens’ Band radio in the car. Ah. We all had slang that we would use, and there were many a useless discussion over the air that we all endured.
I had one. My brother had one. My parents had one. My friends all had one.
It was so “hip” at the time, don’t you know.
CB radio
Now, we have cell phones, social media and all the rest. But every now and then, I get an itching to reach for the CB to find out what is going on regarding an accident that I just passed on the road.
Fads come and go.
And everything that we consider normal today, will eventually be viewed as a strange fad by others. Enjoy them while you have them.
Yes. The paramedics brought her in from a nursing home and they had been doing CPR for a while. The patient had been in and out of perfusing rhythms the entire time. She looked very old and frail and chronically ill. I asked the medics if she had a DNR order and they just rolled their eyes. The lead medic told me that they asked the same thing but the nursing home staff couldn’t locate the paperwork and because they couldn’t be sure they initiated resuscitation.
We didn’t have anything on record either but I wasn’t really committed to CPR and shocking and all the drugs necessary to keep this poor woman alive when her quality of life was likely so bad. I decided to give one round of drugs and then stop if there was no response. We did just that and much to my surprise she responded. Her heart started out slowly and gained momentum. Within a couple minutes she had a stable blood pressure. After a while she even began to attempt breathing on her own.
It wasn’t long before the family arrived and told us that the patient’s wishes were to NOT be resuscitated. They told us that she would never want to be kept alive this way and demanded that we stop the ventilator and medicines. So, I did. Despite stopping all support she continued to live. Ultimately, we admitted her to the hospital and she continued on in a sort of half-life state. This went on for days. Days!
I went to see her and the family a few times when they were there in the hospital and just felt terrible for them all. They were unhappy with me but they also understood why we did what we did. Ultimately, they sort of took it out on the nursing home staff and not the medics or me.
In the end, she died with her family all around her. Several members were able to travel in to say goodbye before she passed because of the hospital course. I suppose it all worked out the way it was supposed to. I still regretted it though.
Maybe it wasn’t rediculous as you mean but it was the biggest and it was Mine. I was representing a 15 year old pregnant girl. CPS wanted her sent to a reformatory. I wanted her sent to a girls school. The CPS worker testified that the girl should go to jail because when she was 5 yes five she seduced her father ( an executive with a big company). The girl had been raped by her father for years.
The girl said to me “ you told me that wasn’t my fault.” In the courtroom before God Judge and country I grabbed that CPS worker and tried to pound her into the floor.
It wasn’t looking good for me but the judge made an immediate order. He ordered the CPS worker to personally pay for the girl to go to the private girls school. (about 3times her annual salary) . I waited all day to be arrested. Finally a call came that I was wanted back in court.
It was announced that no charges would be brought against me and the order against the CPS worker was dropped and the order to pay made against the agency. The CP S worker was also to resign.
I’m not a violent person but only so much can be let go I guess at time I lost sight of my life and career and could only see my client.
I have gotten some nice comments. I need to add that before I went for this person the judge asked her if she had done everything she could for the girl. Her response was “I have been wonderful”. I am not proud of getting violent. It is very rare in my life. I was happy with the outcome but I risked getting my license and going to jail. I need to make a clarification here. I was in law school then. i was representing her as her probation officer. It was in the early 70s. A child’s right to an attorney was based on the parents ability to afford one. I was the closest thing to a lawyer she had.
PS. if you read about incest cases, or any sexual abuse cases of very young children, the children are usually taught by their abusers how to “please” them. they are basically taught to mimic seductive behavior. They are not seductive. They are merely mimicking what they have been taught to do, but not everybody sees it that way. many overtly seductive Teenagers have been molested in this manner as a child, but they are just labeled as seductresses. I guess it is easier for some people to blame a child than it is for them to take the time to learn about the effects of abuse on children. I was often called in by other probation officers when they had an uncomfortable feeling about a case because I could see these types of behaviors even minor ones. i’ll never know how many cases I didn’t catch, but I was never wrong when I called it.
Killer Thinks He Got Away With Murder – Doesn’t Know 5 YO Survived | The Morrissey Family Case
Not quite fitting in, this applies to ALL overseas types, near ones (Malaysia, Singapore) and far ones. USA, Europe.
An example is this
image 498
vs this
image 497
Superficially we look similar but we’re quite different.
You stand me next to some China born Chinese and you’ll feel there’s something off.
The foreign diet in our formative years changes us. I was a LOT fatter (though thing for westerners) and had a rounder chunkier face.
The life experiences also make us stand differently. I’ve written previously that in the UK if you’re weak (doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Indian or Chinese) people will pick on you. So there’s an outward portray of aggression already… probably why cops stop me so much.
That’s just the visual things.
Then we’ve got psychology, culture and language.
All of which means you fit in even less. You can as again fit in on a superficial level but go any deeper and you’re spotted.
Being different leads to disimilar treatment sometimes, sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad.
My wife and I brought her car in for service at the dealership and we’re looking around while waiting. A young salesman asked if he could show us around. I said we are just there for service.
After talking a while about their new cars, he went to get “the closer” a big fellow who obviously had been there for a while. He began to say things like what would I need to do to get you into this vehicle and make me an offer. I told him we weren’t in the market for a car; I research such matters before making such a purchase; and, for me to buy a car today, he would probably have to nearly give it to me. I told him if I made him an offer, I was sure he would find it insulting.
I did let him pull my credit. This would have made it very clear that I was highly successful in financial services sales. Which is what makes his subsequent rudeness particularly inconceivable.
He continues to insist that I make an offer. I finally offer him probably half of what the car is worth (because I would have bought it on the spot at that price). He is insulted.
He then leans over me (with my wife still sitting next to me) and says:
“At some point in your life, you’re going to have to become man enough to be able to make a decision.”
I instantly replied:
“It’s not my manhood in question here; I’m not the one who can’t close this deal.”
I only saw the stunned look on his face for a moment before he turned to walk away.
June 2nd, Midnight; a 15 yo boy Zohaib posted a suicide note over social media; stating he’s going to end his life today.
image 495
I browsed through a lot of tweets posted from other users on the topic, and learned that the boy lives in my city on XYZ road. That’s it.
The problem is that, on the said ‘miles long’ road there are dozens of towns and neighborhoods interconnected, I mean, that is very incomplete piece of information to effectively and timely counter such an issue of extraordinary sensitive nature.
I responded to him immediately, and also requested public to send me any information or clue they might have about this boy.
image 494
And that interaction of mine resulted in one of the most burdensome barrage of tweets and DMs I’ve ever received as social media handler of city police, the number was literally in thousands. That kid’s name was trending nationwide on twitter during this fiasco. But sadly, nothing useful came out of this interaction tsunami, all I had was first name of the boy and that he lives somewhere in my city.
I calmly reviewed the situation for a minute; I mean our field officers are ‘head to toe’ engaged with crime fighting day in & day out, responding to the calls, handling cases one over the other, and now comparatively… I have this first of its kind situation where a boy wants to commit suicide about whom we know nothing… could even be a prank for goodness sake.
Nope. I told myself.
We should find and rescue him, no matter what it takes…we gotta!
I got Police Chief in the loop, by his orders Police command & Control was now at my disposal. Which I believe is the most sophisticated and comprehensive system of surveillance, communication and patrolling all across the country. We were about to to execute a time sensitive search and rescue task. Our officers responded to the given locations and secured the entry exit points; while being on the look out.
And that minute, I learned over social media that the boy has fled home, he’s on the loose!
Holy cow!
We didn’t panic with the thought of him doing something foolish while on the run, though it was a legitimate concern. We kept striving, I dispatched teams here and there upon receiving bits of information from concerned twitter users, and then the magic happened…. we got his address. Somebody finally recognized him I guess even though there was no display picture or anything else but the that helped us greatly. Now that is something, I can work with.
He wasn’t home but now we knew who he is. So technical resources along with human intelligence played the good part, he was tracked and in minutes… secured!
And all of this happened under an hour.
He was anxious and nervous… but otherwise fine and safe. His parents thanked the Police, the situation came back to normal.
Next day while I was at work, various news teams arrived at my office and I was genuinely surprised to learn that this episode has made to the news, even to BBC. I was directed to speak a few words on camera, which I did even though I hate to.
image 493
Those of you who know me for a long time, I really do not appreciate the idea of being on the limelight for many reasons. I have politely excused out of numerous feature stories and interviews all these years.
I’m not a celebrity, never was. Super hero, Yes. But not a show off… for that is not what cops are meant to be. That is why you see the big-ass mask on me even though I was requested twice that it is perfectly alright to slide it down a little during the talk. Nope!
Do police officers care about you? YES. Dogmatically!
I’ll do whatever it takes to protect and serve you, I will put my life on the line to save yours! And here “I” stands for Police officers you see daily around you no matter wherever you are.
Start your journey
Not wealth, but really in the things that matter to you.
Figgy Pudding
Figgy Pudding is a type of Christmas pudding which was originally made with figs. It may be baked, steamed in the oven, boiled or fried. Figgy Pudding dates back to 16th century England.
istock 000018579358 large
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
300ml (1/2 pint) milk (10 fluid ounces)
225g (8 ounces) flour (2 cups)
175g (6 ounces) dried figs
150ml (1/4 pint) Brandy (5 fluid ounces)
110g (4 ounces) suet
110g (4 ounces) prunes
85g (3 ounces) raisins or sultanas
50g (2 ounces) dried apricots
50g (2 ounces) dates
25g (1 ounce) dried apples
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions
On the day before making the pudding, place the dried apricots, prunes and apples to soak in water and place the raisins or sultanas to soak in the brandy.
Remove the stones from of the dates and prunes.
Butter a large pudding basin or double boiler bowl.
Sift flour into a bowl.
Stir in suet and mix to a fairly soft dough with cold water.
Turn out on to a floured surface. Lightly knead until smooth.
Roll out two-thirds of pastry into a round and use to line a well-greased 2-pint pudding basin (or double boiler bowl).
Melt the honey and stir in the ginger and cinnamon. Add to the soaked fruits and brandy mixture. Mix well and place into the pastry lined bowl. Moisten edges of pastry with water. Cover with lid, rolled from remainder of the pastry. Press edges well together to seal. Cover securely with greased greaseproof paper or aluminum foil.
Steam steadily for 2 hours. Ensure that the water does not evaporate, topping it up from time to time with boiling water.
Three years back, in 2013, one evening, I was having casual discussions with my friend, lets call him “Mr.S”. We were discussing on different topics like current trends, jobs, future life, family and friends, money. At that time, I was working in a software company with little experience of 1.5 years and some cash in my account. S was studying hard to clear his remaining subject which forced him to take a year gap. And same was the case with “Mr.P” too, he is the third character in my story.
Let me tell you, we all are intelligent students. But because of some mistakes and their habit of taking things lightly cost them a year gap. In fact, Mr.P was smarter than me in every department. Mr.S was not good at academics but he was too good at marketing and some other “special” skills.
We three were together from last 7.5 years. We sat on one bench. We studied together. We stayed together. We tripped together. We partied together. We lived together. We participated and won lots of competitions together. And most important – we dreamed together. Everyone from our batch including teachers used to tell us — you 3 idiots are awesome.
Everything in life was going in a right direction. But let me remind you one of the laws of Mr.Murphy, “In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right, something is wrong.” [src: http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-laws.html]. And exactly, same thing happened with us.
Lately, I was thinking a lot about starting a business. Starting a start-up. Starting an IT Company. Starting an IT Training institute. Starting something related to IT. I discussed these thoughts with Mr.S. And guess what, he completely agreed with my ideas and within a few minutes we were business partners! I started giving more time to the thoughts on business. Within some days, we decided to include Mr.P in our team, as he was our best friend and also a sound person with technical knowledge. We shared all these thoughts with Mr.P and he also agreed to join us on the long adventure. But assured us that he’ll join the company after a few months.
So basically everything needed to start a startup was ready. We had a team. Me as a sole investor, lead technical person and of course, the CEO. Along with that I also had a role of Software Engineer in the company where I was working concurrently. It was a big task for me to handle both the tasks – a job and a start up.
My job was the main source of finance for my family and for the startup also. Mr.S was assigned the role of getting assignments and marketing department, while Mr. P was going to look after the training and in-house development. We also had few projects to start with. We also hired 2 people to work with us.
After few months, I made an investment of ₹2 lac (~$3000) and bought 4 advanced PCs, also rented out a small place to start our work in. And, within a span of 4 months, our small startup was on its way onto a long journey. We held a small inaugural function and celebrated. Yeah, that was quite an achievement for us. We started our working together.
But there was a small problem, Mr.P was yet to join the company. He earlier promised us to join the company, yet after 3 months, he was not interested in joining the company. After thinking a lot, I decided to talk to him about his decision and why he was not joining office. His answers gave me the biggest shock of my life. He refused to join the company. His reasons were like, “I am not seeing future in your company. Another friend of us started another startup and he is taking me in his team. I need money right now.” Guys, let me tell you, I also offered him mighty amount of salary. But still, he refused my invitation politely and sent a long message reasoning why he won’t join the company. Most of the reasons were BS. And story of Mr.P was finished. Completely.
Lesson#1 learned [in a hard way]: Do not trust the promises of everyone. Everybody is not loyal to his/her own words.
I was shell shocked, shattered, and quiet depressed after hearing his decision and answer. I was scattered from inside. I decided to keep the work running with Mr.S along with the two hired people. Things were getting more and more difficult.
Fast forward 4-5 months.
Mr.S was looking after the marketing and product sales things, he was the main guy our customers were dealing with. Whereas I was busy in development and resource management.
One day, while managing balance sheets, I figured out there was a record missing for a sum of ₹20000 (~$300). Out of curiosity, when I asked Mr.S about the missing ₹20000, his answers were not logical. They were irrelevant. They were lies. I got to know that he was playing some tricks and using the company’s money for his own personal use. His most funny reply was, “Dude, chalta hai… busy log hain hum, chhoti chhoti details par dhyan nahi rakhte“. [Dude, We are too busy people, we should not focus on such small details]. For him ₹20K was a small amount, but it wasn’t for me.
We had a bitter argument on this and it resulted into disagreement. And we decided to separate. Decided to drive on our separate ways. But he put one condition. He will retain the “business name“. As he was looking after the marketing and other things, he decided to go after the name and customers. And in such way, my first startup was dead.
Lesson#2 learned [in a harder way]: Be careful who you bring to the top with you, not everyone is loyal.
Image Source : Google
P.S. I allowed him to use the business name, because of two reasons:
I was ready to work with anyone, but not with a treacherous friend.
I trust myself, I was alone at the start and will fight the battle alone, will re-build everything from scratch. One can delay me, but can never stop me from achieving my dreams.
Edit 1: From last 2 years, we 3 have never met, talked or discussed about each other.
In June, 1954, US Senator Lester C. Hunt (D-WY) shot himself to death with a rifle at his desk in his US Senate office in Washington, DC. Senator Hunt had been despondent over threats he had received – from Sen. Joe McCarthy and two Republican colleagues, Senator Herman Welker (R-ID) and Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) – that lurid reports of the arrest of Hunt’s son the previous year would be made public, both in Washington and in his home state of Wyoming, embarrassing Hunt and putting his upcoming reelection bid in peril. The younger Hunt had been arrested and charged with soliciting sex from a male police officer, who was working a sting operation in a Washington park. The charges were later dismissed, but McCarthy and his cronies discovered the fact, and pressured the police department into refiling the charges. Hunt was under great pressure from McCarthy, demanding that he resign, which would have effectively given the Republicans control of the Senate. At the time, Democrats controlled the US Senate by just one vote, and a Hunt resignation would have put the Senate into a tie, enabling the Republicans to gain control, since then-Vice President Richard Nixon would serve as tiebreaker. After Hunt’s death, the Republican governor of Wyoming appointed a Republican to fill Hunt’s unexpired term, who in turn declined to run for the seat in that fall’s election, a race that was won by a Democrat. Unfortunately, the Republicans flipped other Senate seats in 1954, and took control on their own. This scandal was downplayed for many years, but it also occurred in the shadow of the Army-McCarthy hearings, which were going on at the time of Hunt’s death. Even today, there is little awareness of the scandal in Wyoming, and few Americans know that it took place at all. Interestingly, though, Hunt is known as the driving force behind Wyoming’s famous “bucking bronco” license plate emblem, having commissioned the artist to create the design during his years as Governor of Wyoming.
I went to a famous pancake restaurant that was promoting its new burgers. I saw an ad offering them for $5.99 with unlimited fries and a free drink. I pointed to the jalapeno kick burger and asked the waitress to verify that this burger was, in fact, part of the $5.99 special. When she said, “yes,” I then ordered this burger. I had a $10 gift card, and my intention was to tip the waitress the remaining amount after taxes, which would have made it a 50% tip.
However, when I got the bill, I saw was charged $9.29 for the burger. When I called the waitress over to tell her about the mistake, she said that the burger I chose was not included in the special and that I needed to pay regular price. Naturally, I told her that I deliberately asked her if this burger was included before I ordered it and that she confirmed me it was. Her response was that she didn’t understand what burger I wanted.
I explained the situation to the manager, saying I would not have ordered it if the waitress did not tell me it was part of the special, that they cannot charge me for the server’s mistake. The manager called the server over and she had the nerve to deny that I even asked her about the burger being a part of the promotion. Unbelievably, the manager said she must take the server’s word for it.
In front of the waitress, I presented my $10 gift card, telling the manager, I was going to give the waitress what would have remained from my $5.99 burger, which would have been a nice tip. However, since she won’t own up to her mistake, she will now receive what is left from my $9.29 burger (which after taxes was about a nickel).
Waiting in line at an auto parts store and the guy in front of me sets down an alternator and asked the clerk for a water pump. The clerk naturally is confused and asks about the alternator. The guy tells him it’s a water pump and that’s why he asked for a water pump.
The clerk tries nicely to correct him, even shows the guy a picture of an alternator vs. a water pump for his specific car. To no avail the guy “knows more” than this poor clerk. Who I might add is 100% correct that the alternator is NOT a water pump. The power connections kind of gives it away specially when there are no hose attachments for it to pump coolant a.k.a. water.
Anyway, the guy just goes nuts. Throws the alternator at the poor clerk luckily missing his intended target. Makes huge threats about calling corporate; of course he has tons of friends on social media so he threatens to close the store down. On and on this guy goes about how much smarter he is than anyone behind the counter, how they always give him the wrong part. I swear it lasted 20 minutes. Anyway, the manager was in the back counting out the money or stocking something, not really sure, but she was in the back. She comes out, picks up the alternator, sets it on the counter, and asks the guy why he is throwing such a temper tantrum over an alternator.
Oh here we go again! How dare a woman correct him. She doesn’t know shit about cars. What’s a woman doing working at an auto parts store. The vile shit just kept going. Well, during ALL of this mess someone in the oil section decided to call the cops. At some point the cops sneak in and are right behind me and this entire mess. I’m gently pushed aside and they yell, “Sir!” real loudly. He turns and goes ghostly white. The cops start asking about the situation. One has taken the rest of us aside, found the caller, and we are telling them what we witnessed. The other officer is talking with mister alternator/water pump.
Next thing you know he is under arrest and as they are escorting him out we hear one officer tell the other officer that arguing about alternators was the dumbest thing they have witnessed all month. To which the guy yells, “It’s a fucking water pump!”
When my son was in elementary school he was beaten up by two older students to the point he required hospital care. Since the two boys were going into high school next year and it was the last day of school both the principal and superintendent said there was nothing they could do. I called the police and had them charged. One officer went to the hospital and saw my son and two more took the boys away in handcuffs at the school. When the case went to court I told my son to be honest and don’t guess. The boys had been in trouble before so the parents hired a good criminal lawyer.
My son was on the stand for over an hour being grilled by the lawyer and the judge was getting fed up. The lawyer asked my son how he knew who was kicking him. Basically he said “ I was being kicked by a Doc Martin shoe which was on a foot which was on a leg which was on a body and his head was on it” I could see the judge shaking in silent laughter and the stenographer laughing in her Dictaphone. The courtroom was silent with muffled laughter. The lawyer also stood away from my son and holding his ear said he had bad hearing and to speak up. My son was very nervous and scared showing it by speaking very quietly. Finally my son turned to the judge and said could he ask a question. The judge said sure. My son said “in which ear is he hard of hearing because he is going back and forth between both ears”. Same muffled laughter. The judge glared at my son and said “if his hearing is that bad he will be ending his questioning” with a wink to my son he told me later.
Apparently this went on with all the other witnesses and the case was dismissed from all the conflicting statements. This lawyer must have cost the parents a bundle. The police officer in charge of the case visited us about a month later to see how my son was doing. He also said that he was impressed with my son in court and gave him his card. All our children make us proud.
During my college, I took a course called entrepreneurial marketing.
The professor gave one interesting perspective regarding billing and customer experience:
When booking a flight ticket, if the price is $220 instead of $210, the customer wouldn’t feel anything. The $10 on the top of $210 he is paying seems insignificant.
But if you charge him $210 at the beginning and later ask him to pay $5 if wants a water bottle onboard, he might find the experience disappointing. One, he thinks $5 is too expensive for a water bottle. Two, he has to check if he has the cash. Three, he has to worry about conversion charges if it is the card. Overall, there are so many things that make the experience complicated.
So just add $10 more on the flight ticket and give him two water bottles if you are keen on giving a comfortable experience.
Same thing with star hotels. Just charge $20 more on the $150 per night and give complimentary water, canned drinks, and coffee rather than billing for every item inside the mini-fridge.
The same logic applies to tipping.
When you go to a restaurant for a pleasant dining experience, you are made to do all sorts of calculations for taxes and add them to the amount in the menu. On top of this, you have to do calculations for tips and then add to the final amount to see if the item is really worth that price or not.
It ruins the whole experience.
Secondly, this tipping is completely optional. It is in the customer’s hands whether to pay it or not. And if he wants to, whether it is 5% or 15% is also his choice. There is no guarantee that the one who did the best service will get the maximum tip.
Thirdly, does anyone who what is best service universally? For me, not bothering me by enquiring every five minutes ‘Do you need anything else?’ or standing beside my table is a better service. For someone, being approachable by waiting near his table is better service. It varies from person to person and it is near impossible for the waiter to figure this out.
Fourthly, the tip for bringing $50 for 100ml single malt is more than $5 1L water bottle, when the former requires less energy. Is there any logic here?
And lastly, the owner thinks that waiters get high tips and pay them low salaries. The customer thinks that the waiters are anyway paid and hence don’t give them tips. So the waiters are at a complete loss here.
The best way to solve this is to treat waiters like any other worker- chef, security guard, delivery guy or equipment operator. Pay them market salary rather than putting their livelihood at the mercy of the customers. Why do you need to tip waiters, when you don’t tip nurses, delivery guys, security guard, police, or janitors when they are also doing service?
English Muffins
English Muffins
Ingredients
1 cake or package yeast
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 1/2 cups milk, scalded
1/4 cup melted shortening
1 teaspoon salt
6 cups flour
Instructions
After kneading, place in greased bowl and let rise until double.
Roll out to 3/4-inch thick. Cut with 3-inch cutter. Cover circles and let rise until very light.
Bake on greased electric skillet or at 375 degrees F in the oven.
Don’t comb your hair on the table at the restaurant. I don’t want your hair-strands in my food. I prefer that you use the restroom even if you want to touch up your lipstick.
If you know that you have smelly feet and that you have not washed your socks in several weeks, don’t take off your shoes in crowded places. Not even in the aircraft. You should have thought about this before you boarded the plane.
Let people who are sitting in the front of the aircraft deplane first! If you have a connecting flight, you can politely ask them to let you deplane first.
Let people exit the elevator/train/bus before rushing in.
Follow the queue. Yes, even in the washroom. Just don’t stand in front of the bathroom stall when 572 people are waiting in the queue.
Buy earphones, or headphones. Whatever you prefer. Because I don’t want to listen to rock music during my morning commute.
Give your seat to the pregnant lady. Or the lady carrying a small child. Or the old lady/gentleman. If you are a young lady in perfect health condition, this applies to you as well. Not just the boys.
Wear washed clothes, because the smell of the sweat sticks. Use deodorant. Specially applies when you are traveling by public transport.
Also, don’t keep your clothes next to the kitchen area, as the smell from spices sticks.
Don’t leave the texts as “seen” or with the “blue ticks”. Either respond, or never respond. Don’t respond to a text which was sent 4 days ago. Just be honest and tell them “that you are busy” or that “you don’t feel like talking to them”.
Show up with a gift. Don’t come empty-handed, after all the host took the time to invite you and do the preparation, didn’t they?
Don’t dump your negativity onto others. Not many people are accepting of it.
I had stopped dating someone who had just been divorced and wasn’t ready to settle (and wasn’t right for me). I had been invited to a party but didn’t want to go. I’m not going, I decided. Finally, two hours after the party had started, I went, alone. The loft owner’s friend opened the door — and we started talking. He was sweet, funny, had just graduated from college, was 7 years younger than me, was planning to move cross country in 2 days. We hung out at the party and then he asked if he could walk me home. We’d walked 2 blocks, making all sorts of witty comments about street signs,etc., and I thought, “This guy is so different than the ones I usually like…he’s not all dark and dramatic (which usually hooked me)…he’s like being with a best friend.” And then I asked myself, “Why shouldn’t I be in a relationship with a guy who treats me as well as my best female friend does??” I remember my small decision precisely: deciding that I’d be open to this…even had a mental metaphor of it being like a Japanese paper lamp I’d hold gently…not try to force anything…but just be open to connecting with someone who made life fun, who was kind, who wanted to know about me and share himself.
He’s been an extraordinary husband and father and after more than 30 years, is still the most fun person to hang out with. We’ve traveled all over the world, gotten grad degrees after the kids were born, created books and apps and games, gone through family stresses and losses, relationship issues, gone through everyday boring ol’ life.
It was a small decision I made, but a profound one: to love myself. To allow myself to be loved by someone who treated me (and others) well. To let myself be with someone whose company I flat-out enjoyed. It wasn’t sudden roses and symphonies…it was playful and sweet. But I see the depth and beauty now. I so wish everyone this.
Maybe it wasn’t rediculous as you mean but it was the biggest and it was Mine. I was representing a 15 year old pregnant girl. CPS wanted her sent to a reformatory. I wanted her sent to a girls school. The CPS worker testified that the girl should go to jail because when she was 5 yes five she seduced her father ( an executive with a big company). The girl had been raped by her father for years.
The girl said to me “ you told me that wasn’t my fault.” In the courtroom before God Judge and country I grabbed that CPS worker and tried to pound her into the floor.
It wasn’t looking good for me but the judge made an immediate order. He ordered the CPS worker to personally pay for the girl to go to the private girls school. (about 3times her annual salary) . I waited all day to be arrested. Finally a call came that I was wanted back in court.
It was announced that no charges would be brought against me and the order against the CPS worker was dropped and the order to pay made against the agency. The CP S worker was also to resign.
I’m not a violent person but only so much can be let go I guess at time I lost sight of my life and career and could only see my client.
I have gotten some nice comments. I need to add that before I went for this person the judge asked her if she had done everything she could for the girl. Her response was “I have been wonderful”. I am not proud of getting violent. It is very rare in my life. I was happy with the outcome but I risked getting my license and going to jail. I need to make a clarification here. I was in law school then. i was representing her as her probation officer. It was in the early 70s. A child’s right to an attorney was based on the parents ability to afford one. I was the closest thing to a lawyer she had.
PS. if you read about incest cases, or any sexual abuse cases of very young children, the children are usually taught by their abusers how to “please” them. they are basically taught to mimic seductive behavior. They are not seductive. They are merely mimicking what they have been taught to do, but not everybody sees it that way. many overtly seductive Teenagers have been molested in this manner as a child, but they are just labeled as seductresses. I guess it is easier for some people to blame a child than it is for them to take the time to learn about the effects of abuse on children. I was often called in by other probation officers when they had an uncomfortable feeling about a case because I could see these types of behaviors even minor ones. i’ll never know how many cases I didn’t catch, but I was never wrong when I called it.
Few people walk into a recruiting station and tell them they want to leave that afternoon. You do have to chat with a recruiter for a while. Granted, they’ll tell you the Army line. Rarely will they lie but they will leave stuff out.
For a lot of people, the Army sounds way better than the situation they’re in. In my first meeting with the recruiter, he told me the Army would train me in life skills (HAHA, at least, not from my MOS), they’d cloth you and give you everything you needed, I’d get a bed, desk, and wall locker, they’d feed me as much as I wanted to eat, I got to choose me MOS (This is where you need to do your research), they’d let me blow stuff up and play with some of the biggest toys the Army has, they’d give me $15K for college, and they’d pay me on top of it.
To a seventeen-year-old kid who’d worked a dirt farm in N. Colorado his entire life, that sounded pretty good. The Army helped get me my Eagle Scout and gave me some perks for that. The recruiter worked with the school to make sure I’d graduate. I was failing a class, and I told my recruiter I wouldn’t graduate. He went to the school and talked to the admin and they made sure I’d pass.
Researching your MOS and the Army is a good idea, but nothing prepares you for stepping off the bus. I have a Ranger buddy whose son just went through basic. He had his son meet with all the vets he could find and we gave our experiences. That wasn’t enough to keep him from calling home and wanting to come home.
No matter how prepared you are, once you get boots on the ground and jump down the rabbit hole, you’re in for a ride. I think people with less prep do better as they have no idea what to expect and they just roll with it instead of standing around thinking this is nothing like what everyone said.
That was when my first wife and I were traveling the country and hovering around the poverty level, often dipping below it.
Often enough, we would be between work and thus pretty much starving. Going weeks between eating. Those were hard days. Those were difficult weeks. Those were really hard times.
But every now and then we would come near an orange grove, or see a house that had a lemon tree in it’s yard. Thus, by asking permission, we were able to get FOOOOOD!
And so we were kept alive.
Eating lemons all day for a month, or grapefruit all the time for a month or longer.
Man, oh man.
It felt like our teeth were getting loose, and going to fall out. And aside from that, we were still weak. Ugh. It’s something that I just don’t recommend for others to do.
Please, heed my advice.
A diet of citrus should be a last resort. Nothing less.
How about a million times better? How about CPC is about the most well organized and most successful organization on earth! Think about results. Surely results matter. And results are every thing right?
In 1949 CPC started governing China. At that time it’s life expectancy is 39 years old. Today in 2023 it is 78 years old. Chinese out live the U.S. citizens on average by 2 full years!
CPC reduce its hardcore poor by 1 billion people by 2022! The U.S. not only not reduced it’s poor to day 1 million Americans living live in tents homeless throughout the U.S. China has ZERO HOMELESS!
China has built high speed rail that cross China for trains travelling 3 times the speed of U.S. trains! US has less than 100 km of high speed railway lines compared to 45 thousand km throughout China!
China provides universal healthcare and charge what you can afford for 100% of its citizens and free college education for those who qualify while in the U.S. kids get into unplayable debts before starting life paying astronomical tuition fees and a third of American’s cannot afford to buy health care insurance.
China’s healthcare and pharmaceutical companies charge its citizens 0.95 trillion dollars for its 1.4 billion citizens. And the U.S. charged its citizens 5.9 trillion for its 330 million citizens! So on average Americans are forced to pay an average of 17.9 thousand dollars per annum while China charge its citizens 678 dollars a person a year. So the U.S. charge its citizens 27 times more to live 2 years less!
Chinese can walk freely at 3.00 am on any street anywhere in China and a week of U.S. random mass shooting is equivalent to China’s decade! China has 11% of US prisoners population per million people! In the U.S. there are many no go areas and people get necked to death all due to their skin colour!
CPC knew that STEM engineers and specialist number is the key technological prowess and being a technological leader. A year of Chinese STEM graduates equate to the entire U.S. STEM specialist and to day China has 100:1 advantage over the U.S.! Hence according to ASPI China today leads in 37 out of the 44 fields of key strategic technologies and the U.S. leads in only 7/44!
So you still want to compare? So U.S. is the David and China is the Goliath. China through merit gets the very best to lead. US gets the most popular! No comparison who gets the result.
My 98 year old grandmother just passed this past Christmas. As I was cleaning out her apartment and sorting the junk from the priceless junk (amazing how much a 98 y/o woman can stuff into a 400 s.f. apartment), I came across a folded stack of notebook paper- it actually looked more like the paper torn out of a “Big Chief” tablet. On the outside was written, “Mrs. Ronzel Bailey, Orma WV” in my grandfather’s handwriting.
So, what’s so weird about that, you ask?
The paper was old and yellowed. As I opened it, I read the date- 1942. My grandparents had been married in 1938. My grandfather was a Lt. Commander in the Navy and on a ship in the Mediterranean in 1942. As I read the letter, the writing was in a very strange, detached voice. It told her how lost she must feel and how she must take care of herself primarily and then take care of my father (born in 1939). It then went on to tell her that she should buy a house on the outskirts of a small town and watch out for those who would take advantage of her.
I then got to a part where he instructed her to use her own judgement as to whether or not she taught my father about him. At this point I was thinking he was divorcing her! I got mad (even though I knew they were never divorced- they were married until he died in 1993- 55 years!). But, mad I was!
As I read further, it finally dawned on me that this letter was his final instructions to her in the event he was killed in action during WWII. It was difficult to hold back the tears as I read that she should not waste resources in trying to bring his body home.
This letter that I had just finished reading was what he wanted to tell her – make sure that she could move on and give her hope and comfort.
How she ended up with this letter, I will never know since he wasn’t killed in WWII and came home for another 50 years of marriage.
Two police officers with sober faces stared at me and I knew the news couldn’t be good.
They described a car that had just been in an accident, and the license plate. My wife’s mini-van had collided, burst into flames and everyone inside it died.
I’m doing a mental inventory about now. My wife, three children, and two nieces.
My legs turned wobbly. You can’t imagine what was going through my head. Because of the fire, they couldn’t find any useful identification but explained they could identify everyone both by DNA and by dental records. They wanted a DNA sample from me.
I guess they could verify my kids were mine, and that the adult was their mother. A nice, neat little bow.
Can you imagine? They’ve just told you that your whole family is dead, and —- I told them I would come down and give them a sample.
Getting ready to leave, my cell phone is buzzing. It’s my wife. What? Hard tingles are on my spine, like she’s calling from the grave.
“Our van was stolen from the parking lot….”
Were the sweetest words I could’ve ever heard. Yeah it was my wife’s car, but they won’t need any DNA sample from me today.
EDIT – to address some of the mysteries in the comments
I learned later that three people were in the van when it collided. A man, woman, and younger person, which they presumed was a child of the drivers. The police said everyone died, but they had a different human inventory than my own. I also learned they were part of a ring of car thieves, and the accident was not their fault. Another car ran a light and hit them broadside. No fatalities and only minor injuries in the other car.
My wife had organized a birthday outing for our oldest. All the necessary shops, restaurant, and theater were inside the mall. It would be several hours before it was time to leave again. The thieves had plenty of time to get away if they hadn’t been hit.
Chinese Sweet and Sour Meatloaf
Sweet and sour
Ingredients
Sauce
2/3 cup ketchup
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup vinegar
2 tablespoons FINELY minced ginger
4 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon mustard
Meat Loaf
1 pound ground beef
3/4 pound ground pork (approximation)
1/3 cup finely chopped green onion(white and green parts)
3/4 cup bread crumbs
2 eggs
2 tablespoons rice wine or any dry white wine
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
Mix all sauce ingredients thoroughly. Set aside to allow flavors to marry.
Next, combine all meat loaf ingredients except cornstarch. Take 1 cup of sauce AND mix it into meat. Follow this step with evenly sprinkling cornstarch over meat and thoroughly mixing it in.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Place meat in loaf pan and pack it down. Bake covered with foil for about 30 minutes. During last 10 minutes of initial 30-minute baking cycle, remove meat loaf from oven, drain fat and slice into several serving-size slices. Pour about 1/2 cup of sauce over meat, making sure some of sauce runs down into cracks. Bake uncovered for about 15 more minutes.
Meanwhile, if you want, you can heat and thicken leftover sauce with about 1 teaspoon cornstarch and an equal amount of water. As sauce starts to thicken, you can add about 2 teaspoons hot oil to sauce.
This recipe makes a lot of sauce, so leftover heated sauce can be spooned over individual meatloaf servings if desired.
If you want a browner meatloaf, bake covered for about 20 minutes and uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes. Then drain fat, slice meatloaf and pour sauce over it.
As a person who has lived in GERMANY for 10 years, I can tell you what Germany offers and you can decide good and bad depending on your priorities. Germany offers the following:
Its a Democracy.
We have only 1 planet, so Environment is a priority.
There is no conflict among political parties over scientifically proven facts like climate change and global warming. Everybody accepts these proven facts.
Around 30% of all Energy is produced from renewable sources like wind & solar and is still on the rise . Eight of the seventeen operating nuclear reactors in Germany were permanently shut down following Fukushima in 2011. In 2011, Angela Merkel’s government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022.
Plastic bottles are to be returned once used and all trash has to be separated in categories before putting in dumpsters for respective categories of trash.
Germany has the highest Current account surplus in the world i.e. its earnings from exports exceed its expenses from imports.
People don’t carry guns around. Probability of that happening is 1 in 3 million.
People are learning slowly about foreign cultures, but are very friendly when you get to know them better. Contrary to International belief, I never came across a racist person during my long stay.
Citizens vote for higher taxes, this enables country to give top healthcare to its citizens and also maintain good infrastructure. So, healthcare system is very efficient, you can visit doctor without worrying about huge bills as you already pay the insurance cost as percentage of your salary.
Refugees are given refuge, if in genuine distress and are willing to integrate.
Education is free ranging from School to University level. So, average German person is very well educated. Therefore, Students are debt free at the end of their university studies with degree in hand.
Full-Time working hours are 35–40 Hours per week.
All Full-Time employees get 20–30 paid Holidays a year. Sick leave days might not have a limit if you have a prescription.
Inflation is kept under check, so pay raises are low but stuff you wanna buy is still affordable.
Maternity leave (12 months) and 2 months paternity leave are officially granted. There are 14 months of paid parental leave if the father takes at least 2 of them (12 if not). However the 14 months can be divided as seen fit e.g. 7 + 7 months for each parent.
There is no speed limit on Freeways as the roads are good and drivers are trained with long theory lessons and practical training until driving skill reaches adequate level. Hence there is no road rage.
Super rich are taxed higher than low and middle income people.
Unemployed citizens get unemployment allowance (including heating allowance and house rent) till they get a job.
Govt offers Retirement allowance for retired people and veterans.
Teaching good values to children is important, so people with Children never J-walk. That also goes for people who are standing next to people with children before traffic lights.
Food Factor:
Beer is the Best in the world without question and its low priced.
Though Italian and French wines are popular, German Gengenbacher wine from Blackforest is my all time favorite.
Bakeries are the best as well.
Everyday food in canteen/mensa is normally Italian and French stuff plus some salads. You always have to do a little bit of research before you find a place that serves authentic German cuisine.
German Football team is best from my personal perspective as they are A REAL TEAM and not a cult formed around a star player.
Limitations in Germany:
Though the new generation speaks English, language of communication in most work places is majorly German.
This is not a limitation for local professional working locally. However, it might limit the ability of a German professional to market his/her skills at global level. Skills of German professionals can help the entire world but lesser knowledge of English limit the possibilities of International cooperation.
High Skilled professionals who are looking to migrate to Germany must consider learning German or migrate to some other country which has more familiar language as the basis. As except for the startups or jobs in software & IT industries, German is first language at workplace. This might slow down their career growth if they fail to learn the language.
For closer integration in German society you get better and faster response if you speak German. Unless people know the language life can be comparatively difficult. Since, I knew the language it was fairly easier for me to get everything organized & get cooperation as compared to other people with same nationality and economic standing.
As Germany is slowly opening to attract foreign High-Skilled professionals as it is required due to economic reasons, the language situation is slowly changing but it requires time. Government offices in the city of Düsseldorf have adopted English as an additional language for official purposes and the new generation is adopting English as the second language in schools but the overall transformation will require more time.
Rules are governed by institutions & organizations and therefore are very rigid. Rules might ignore genuine trouble of some people from time to time and may seem illogical.
Local Trains and public transport as well as the ticketing system are managed differently by each city in a different way, there is no standard best practice.
Like a lot of misinformation about radioactivity and radiation, that too was simply wrong.
The actual radiation from the Hiroshima blast was not nearly what some people thought it would be because they were looking at the results of the Trinity explosion in New Mexico. But the trinity explosion was on a tower a hundred feet high and not 2,000 feet in the air. As a result, the Trinity blast generated a lot of residual radioactivity from the dirt that was within the fireball. Even that didn’t last as long as some thought it might.
The Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, exploded 2,000 feet in the air and the fireball didn’t touch the ground. As a result, although there was a lot of radiation, the only radioactive materials generated came from the components of the bomb itself. Due to the intense heat, much of the radioactive material was carried into the stratosphere and carried away by the wind. The material that descended onto Hiroshima, although highly radioactive, was short lived. You have to understand that if a radioactive material has a short half life, it will be highly radioactive, but only for a short period of time before it has decayed.
The result was that the intense burst of radiation from the bomb was one source of lethal ionizing radiation, but the “black rain” that fell carried some of the short lived, but rapidly decaying material down upon the people.
Today, the background radiation at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki is normal. There is no danger from radiation in either city.
Muslims controlled parts of Spain, Portugal and Italy in the 11th century, before the Crusades. They had been in these countries for 300 years and 200 years respectively.
However, by the time the First Crusade was called in 1095:
Sicily had already fallen to the Normans, ending Muslim power in Italy
Muslim Al-Andalus (Spain, Portugal) had already collapsed and splintered into competing states. It was already losing ground to the Christian kingdoms of Castille and Aragon. Toledo fell in 1085 to the Christians.
The premise of this question is false because Islam wasn’t spreading in Europe at the time. On the contrary, it was in serious decline.
But what about the Turks?
The only area where Islam was spreading was in Asia, not Europe. The expansion of the Seljuk Turks from Central Asia into the territory of the Christian Eastern Roman Empire prompted emperor Alexios I Komnenos to ask Pope Urban II for help. This was what triggered the First Crusade.
The Seljuk Turks never reached Europe. Even without the Crusades, it’s highly unlikely that they could have. Horse nomads are not known for their skill at crossing the sea, nor are they famous for taking heavily fortified cities like Constantinople.
Okay, but what about the Ottoman Empire?
The Ottoman Empire conquered large parts of Europe in the 14th to 17th centuries, after the Crusades
So this question couldn’t be more wrong.
Islam was declining, not expanding, in Europe before the Crusades
After the Crusades, Islam expanded into Europe
Conclusion
The Crusades may have encouraged the spread of Islam in Europe, rather than stopping it.
This is because the Fourth Crusade of 1204 famously destroyed the Christian Eastern Roman Empire, doing far more harm to the cause of Christianity in the Near East than any previous event. And it was the weakness of Byzantium that in turn allowed the Ottomans to expand into Europe.
Without the Crusades, the Ottomans would never have existed. Let alone crossed into Europe.
Tldr: the Crusades caused the expansion of Islam into Europe, rather than ‘stopping’ it…
image 321
Italian artist Fabbio Fabbi (1861 – 1946) painted many delightful Orientalist scenes, such as this one. One has to be aware that these may not be strictly accurate, (and the concept of the harem is actually dark if one considers the details), but they are pretty to look at…
WARNING: GRAPHIC STORY INVOLVING SERIOUS INJURIES. IF THAT BOTHERS YOU DO NOT PROCEED READING THIS ACCOUNT!
I know of two times when boobytraps were used with sickening efficiency. In Canada the law is explicit: any type of booby trap is illegal plain and simple.
An individual I knew had been broken into three times through the same basement window and all attempts to reenforce it was met by the burglars taking the challenge and doing increasingly more damage. By the third time there wasn’t anything of value so they did damage and perpetrated some absolutely foul actions involving feces, etc. As I said in Canada booby traps are illegal plain and simple but an item that was designed for something else that caused damage to a uninvited guest was that person’s problem.
This man took a 3′x3′ piece of particle board and drilled about 100 drywall screws into it, after that at the the bottom of the board he assigned values 10, 20 etc. creating a Pachinko game, then “absent-mindedly” left it under the window. About a week later he arrived home to a frightening scene of blood EVERYWHERE. He called the police who attended and investigated.They surmised that the uninvited guest had broken the window and climbed in, dropping to the floor and landing on the Pachinko game. He must have yelled for help and a second uninvited genius came to his aid and in doing so put himself in the same predicament.They freed themselves then left via the front door.
The officers attended the nearest hospital where they found a couple of meth heads with injuries similar to what the B&E guys would have. When questioned, they said it was a construction injury and the officers didn’t push it. They didn’t stay in the hospital as they were tweaking pretty hard. The homeowner faced no legal repercussions but was told that a second Pachinko accident may not be viewed as an accident a second time.The tweakers moved on.
Problem solved. I have a nastier story that if so desired I can relay but I want to see how this story goes over.
There was a dumb immature football player in high school who liked a lot of girls. I was one that he liked. He ended up getting a college scholarship to play football. I never thought he would make it past his junior year. There was another football player that I knew who he was but, didn’t know him that also got a football scholarship. I never thought he would make it past his junior year either. A few years later I was in the break room at my miserable job. The NFL draft was on. I wasn’t really paying attention. Then I saw both of them announced as first round draft picks. Each had a $7,000,000 contract. I was in shock! Several years later I became friends with the one who liked me on Facebook. He quickly started messaging me asking if I was single and wanted my phone number. He started calling me several times a day. He was basically inviting himself to come visit me. We lived 2 hours away from each other. When I let him know that I wasn’t interested he got mad. He told me that I should have gotten with him in high school. He then said that he bets if I would have known how he was going to turn out that I would have gotten with him. I said YEAH!I think he was trying to go back in time and hook up with all the different girls he liked and couldn’t get in high school. He told me he acted the way he did in high school because he wasn’t getting any. I told him the reason he wasn’t getting any is because of the way he acted.
There is no such thing as the world’s best? Each country ought to have what they each see as the best for their nation and their people under different circumstances unique for them, over a development level that is different from country to country.
You can say every nation thinks they have the world’s best for themselves. They ought to be. Otherwise why would they choose it? Surely they all want to do the best for themselves right?
These words or symbols or slurs such as Communism or Democracy or Socialism are tags for various purpose. Some times to simplify some times to discriminate one against another or worst to slur and demonised. These labels meant nothing more, as each nation is shade of grey and not black or white.
The U.S. for example calls itself Liberal democracy. But in reality it is neither democratic nor liberal at all. Is 0.8% of the rich or and powerful decides that the 60 odd % of their people who bother to vote have only two choice Biden a senile or Trump a perpetual liar to choose from, surely that is not democracy!
The U.S. with a mere 4% of world’s population has 25% of the world’s prisoner’s population, surely it cannot liberal nor free? But U.S. can called itself whatever it wants!
China calls itself socialism with Chinese characteristics but the U.S. insists on the label. “Communism” for worst connotations to cast fear and hate on them! If you repeat it like this questioner do, it simply help your media cast hates on China.
To me if the west can call the U.S. a Liberal Democracy why can’t they tern China as Socialism with Chinese characteristics? It is no different from Western media calling Palestinians as “terrorist” and Isreal as freedom “fighter” These slurs and suggesting good is clearly a set. narrative!
Back in my previous incarnation, I worked in collections for the law firm I worked for – drafting legal documents, preparing for hearings, and then taking enforcement steps once we obtained judgment. Yes, we sometimes collected money, but it was usually frustrating and fruitless.
Once, a client offered to pay $2,000 on a $5,000 bill. The lawyer (now a judge) asked my advice. I told her my usual recovery on a judgement was zero. We took the $2,000 and called it a day.
The real problem is that lawyers often start doing work without regard for the client’s ability to pay, they don’t bill regularly and they keep working on files even though there are unpaid bills. I was never involved in one of my firm’s biggest cases – a lengthy patent suit where the client was billed monthly and paid pretty much when it received the bill.
At first, most of the work was centered around clients whose assets we had grossly overestimated. This was very true in family law litigation. However, we often had cases where we simply did too much work for very little return for the client. I remember meeting one client who had met with “other Steve” (who did the collections calls) who complained that the entire amount of the judgement went to pay taxes she owned on the settlement. I told other Steve to write off the bill.
There was the odd client who had the wherewithal to pay, but just didn’t. In a lot of cases they were asset rich and cash poor. They often lived excessive lifestyles even though their income had dropped severely (not our fault by the way). We had a client who owed us about $70,000 and was getting about $100,000 a year from a rich person’s estate. However, that money couldn’t be “attached” by a judgement so we went unpaid.
My uncle retired from the Dept. of Agriculture after a long career. He was headhunted by a couple of guys with land who wanted to set up a seed testing company. (If you want to claim something about seeds that you sell, someone independent has to test that.) He set up the program, and had contacts in the industry so that the two guys ended up with all their land in use. A year later the guys looked at their books and realized he was the highest paid person, and that all that he was doing, was signing off that the teenagers taking the readings, etc. and were doing the job right. They could do that.
They called my uncle in and offered him a severance package. He smiled, took the offer, and went home. Next month, they were frantic when they called him. After they had sent out the documentation with their signatures, every company that they were doing business with had called them and sent certified letters. They hadn’t understood that someone qualified as an expert witness needed to be signing those documents. The list of people qualified in that field is short. They had no choice but to hire him back, at an increased salary.
I was a 16 year old American girl. Our family was living in Brazil due to my father’s employment. My family had gone to the beach for the day and had hauled along a 19 year old acquaintance from church. While at the beach, a woman had swum out too far and she was drowning. The 19 year old and myself swam out to help her. The tide was turning, the waves were really rough, and she was trying to climb up on us in order to not drown. She was so desperate. The situation with the waves, the changing tide, and her extreme emotional state was so dire that the 19 year old looked at me and said, “It is better for her to die than for all three of us to die while trying to save her”. He swam back to shore.
I realized that I would rather die trying to save her than live the rest of my life knowing that I abandoned someone in need. I could not leave her. I just could not do it.
I had taken a Junior Life Saving Course as a 10 or 11 year old. I remembered just enough to know not to let her grab me. I got my elbow around her neck and made her float on her back. I worked on calming her down. I tried to work with the waves instead of against them. It took a while, but we both got back to shore. She was vomiting up water, but she was alive. We both were. My family packed up and we drove home. There were no accolades.
I am 55 years old now, and that event at the age of 16 was a turning point in my life. The experience let me know that I could put my life on the line and do hard things.
Over the years, I have volunteered and donated and done some nice things, but that was the nicest thing I ever did.
Can Taiwan with the QUAD backing it, defeat China
No.
Not even close.
…
Consider this mix…
USA, Taiwan, QUAD, The Philippines, all of NATO vs China. Who would win?
China would win.
…
How? Why? What is the reasoning?
Well…
Let me engage you in some creative illustrations. Because anyone even contemplating such a ludicrous question is completely ignorant of China; China’s history, and China’s massive military capabilities.
A tale of mountains
Imagine, China as a huge; just massive mountain. And on that mountain are thousands, maybe even millions of ant hills. Every meter or yard or so, you see another ant hill. And amongst all those ant hills a dangerous and lethal fire ants. Their bite is painful, and nasty.
The fire ants are organized, communicate by scent, and are completely willing to die on the spot to preserve their colony.
The individual bite of a single ant is painful, but will not really kill any large animal. But if ten ants bite an animal, then you can expect some serious harm to come to that animal. Including death.
…
Now imagine a pack of dogs. Each dog has his own hill to live upon. One dog, the biggest of them all; an old and mangy mutt lives on a mountain, roughly the same size as the Chinese mountain. The other dogs, of various types and sizes and breeds live on an array of different hills and much smaller mountains. One is a husky, another is a German Shepard. One is a poodle, while another one is a lean greyhound.
This pack of dogs like to travel around in a great big pack. They are pretty good at it, running about, digging holes,, barking at everyone.
…
One day, the biggest dog tells the poodle and the beagle to go to the Chinese mountain and start digging and raising a fuss…
And they go up there and run about. Barking. Trampling all over the anthills. They dig into the ground and ants go a flying about. They are so happy that other dogs of the pack join in, and before you know it, all the dogs are running about all over the mountain and tossing the tiny ants everywhere.
Then…
(And anyone who has encountered fire ants knows)
… all at once, simultaneously swarms of fire ants bite in unison every single dog. They flood in from all over. They come from everywhere. And the dogs start running away, but the ants are still clinging to their fur and riding the yelling dogs back to their home mountains.
Some of the smaller dogs die in place. They never leave the China mountain.
The medium sized dogs make it home, where they lay in absolute agony and howl in pain and agony. The large dog collapses and winces and twitches as the fire ants relentlessly bite him over and over.
…
The ants that rode the dogs to their home now are establishing ant colonies there, and they grow and expand even as the dogs dies and their carcasses rot to bleached bones.
The ants in the China mountain rebuild and in no time at all, have bigger and more elaborate ant colonies. And the reign of the dog pack ends.
Replaced with a world run by a peaceful, but lethal fire ant horde.
…
This is the reality of a war with China. Are you ready to watch it happen?
The woman living next door sent sweet bread for me yesterday.
She’s maybe 20 years old, mother of a toddler. It’s been a year they moved in as tenants and aren’t exactly the “hey, how are ya neighbor” type of folks and firmly practice minding their own business.
Last night, as I was back from work and having dinner. My wife brought a plate of sweet bread and said that Faiza (name changed) brought some sweet bread today and sat for a chat; it was delicious and kids loved it. We ate it while she was still here And after noticing the empty plate, she went back and brought some more, saying…
I’m glad you liked it. Here… I have brought some more for brother Neman. He should have some of it too.
And I thought… wow!
I tasted it and yeah it was nice. Sweet and crispy.
Later, I went to the other room and fired up my laptop.
I sat there and thought of her. Faiza.
A short brick wall separates our yards. I hear them all the time. She yells a lot at her husband and vice versa. She says “F” words to him which is quite uncommon. She sobs and nags. A poverty-stricken and miserable woman, indeed.
Worst of all… she curses her own son sometimes. I hear her saying “Drop dead” or “Why don’t you just die” to her own son. Downright awful.
Strangely… I didn’t hate her.
I would have hated anyone else in this situation. But not her. In fact, I felt for her. I remember seeing her as a toddler years back, running in the streets barefoot and playing with clay pots. She grew in this neighborhood.
It is complicated to explain to you, Quorans that in our lower-middle class culture… we just cannot go and tell people to behave on their personal matters. It can be considered rude and might actually trigger an irreversible chain of events that lead to “why did I do it in the first place” .
Believe it or not… I spoke to her one day. I initiated that neighborly talk and told her that I remember her as a toddler, playing in front of my house.
She smiled.
That’s what I was hoping for. A smile.
“I hear you cursing your son, Faiza. Trust me… he’ll remember it when he grows older. You love your child, I know. Do you want him to hate and abandon you as soon he can? It’s not his fault for whatever troubles you’re in”.
And that was it.
A few days later, I was home alone, opened my door upon hearing a knock and found her holding a piece of paper. It was the first time… she actually came to our door. She requested me to have her husband’s character certificate stamped by the local police as he’s applying for a security guard’s job.
I got it done.
It’s been weeks. Yelling between them is there but not so much, I would say. And certainly no more cursing towards her own son. I think… the kid has started going to play group. I saw him in his cute uniform.
I was on a general medicine ward earlier this year where I met a patient who we will call Mrs X.
She had agreed to be a teaching patient. This was because she has peripheral vascular disease (the arteries in her legs weren’t working so well) so she had some good signs and symptoms.
While taking the history and exam I got to know this beautiful character very well. She was bright, energetic, witty and very funny!
She made jokes at her own expense, wasn’t afraid to rip into me (I did a little bit back to her too), and despite her rather poor medical state she had a great outlook on life.
Several months go by and I cycle through different specialities.
It was my first day on the geriatric ward and I got assigned my long case. This is a patient I’ll follow for the entirety of my placement. Writing about their medical history and progress.
Guess who I get assigned? It’s Mrs X!
She had undergone a double above knee amputation due to her peripheral vascular disease.
As soon as she saw me she smiled and said;
Mrs X:“Well I’ll be dammed! Who let this packet of trouble in here, how are you Carter?”.
I smiled, her cheeky wit was all to familiar and lovely to see.
Me: “I know right! Can’t get rid of me that easily. Hopefully you will be able to keep up with my banter still Mrs X”.
Mrs X: “Oh I will. No going easy just because I’ve no longer got a leg to stand on”.
From her cheeky grin erupted a heavy belly laugh. Only she could joke about a double amputation.
Me: “I would never, and I’m not giving you one of mine to stand on either!”.
We then proceeded to give each other a hug and catch up on the last few months.
Sometimes humour really is the best form of medicine.
The first time I saw my ex’s new partner, she stepped out of my old marital home with her child and stared at me blankly on the doorstep when I was picking up my son. It was odd, to say the least, to be standing outside my own house (effectively)and being introduced to his new flame. I hugged and kissed her hello and said ‘’Nice to meet you.’ Then walked away feeling surreal and asking myself ‘’What the hell is happening here?’
I was married for 18 years. We had a fairytale relationship. There were only three certainties in life: taxes, death and the fact that we would be together for the rest of our lives. But, things ended.
A reasonable adult will accept that the relationship ended for good reasons and that things just weren’t working anymore. But when your ex finds a new partner, that’s a whole different story. When he introduces his new partner to mutual friends as ‘’the love of his life,’ you find yourself having the petty, angry feelings a teenager would have. Then you chastise yourself for becoming THAT person.
And the day your 8 year old tells you that his suit for the wedding is too tight and you look at him bemused because you have no idea what he’s on about, and he looks back at you like a deer in headlights because he assumed you knew, you feel like you have been punched in the stomach. And weeks later, when you receive a text from an aquaintance asking ‘You okay?’ and it turns out she’s referring to the wedding photo just posted on social media, you feel you never existed. That’s when you realise those 18 years of love, support, fidelity, encouragement and accomplishment meant absolutely nothing to your ex. Or his family.
So you spend the next couple of years in a haze of various emotions (hatred, resentment, anger, jealousy, insecurity, despair) until one day you realise you’ve not thought about it much lately. And although the hurt will never disappear entirely, eventually it makes more sense to just accept it.
Why people divorce
Pretty good explanation.
In the USA…
Ohio, USA auctioned off 393,000 pieces of protective clothing for only $2451, and eventually threw away 7.2 million pieces of protective clothing as well as expired masks, gloves, and other materials. These soon to expire supplies cost approximately $29 million in federal funds.
Vermont sold 105,000 boot covers for $82.50 and thousands of safety goggles for 29 cents.
A survey by the Associated Press found that at least 15 states from Alaska to Vermont have abandoned some of their personal protective equipment due to expiration, surplus, and lack of willing buyers.
More than 18 million masks, 22 million protective suits, 500,000 gloves, and more have all been thrown into the trash can. This does not include states that have not provided accurate numbers to the Associated Press or responded through case studies or other measurement methods. Rhode Island states that it has crushed and recycled 829 tons of personal protective equipment. Maryland processed over $93 million in supplies.
The entire article is too long and there is a lot of material waste. I have only cited a small part of it. And that’s just what the US has calculated by itself.
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In the past three years, countless people around the world have lost their parents, children, and partners. These life-saving supplies are just rotting here. Tell me, who is the one who does not respect human rights?
At the same time as these things happen, Washington was doing this. No party has done better.
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The economic structure of this world is a joke, your society is a joke, and I watch it with tears in my eyes.
It needs to be changed. It can be changed. It must be changed.
Zones v3 – The most useful relationship map in history
“It’s really more of an in-person kind of explanation,” he demured, then suggested a dinner date.
I hesitated. Normally I don’t meet my online dates until significantly more text and phone contact. Partly for safety reasons, partly because I don’t want to waste my time on guys I know will not work out. But mostly because I have been on A LOT of bad dates.
He said he was living in his friend’s spare room because he’d hit a few “speed bumps,” in life. I totally got that. I’m the queen of speed bumps myself. I let myself dare to hope maybe— just maybe— I had found a kindred spirit. I agreed to the date. And just like that, there I was, listening to him tell his story from across the candlelit table.
”About a year ago, I went out with some friends after work,” he began, and I smiled and nodded to let him know he had my attention. “I met a girl at a bar and we really hit it off. We ended up going home together. Next day, there’s a cop on my doorstep. And yada, yada, yada… long story short, she didn’t LOOK sixteen.”
I stiffened. Did she look 30? Because you’re 44, dude.
“So,” he continued, “I have a felony on my record. I was put on probation, and my job fired me. And then, just to kick me when I’m down” —and this is my favorite part— “my wife left me.”
?!??!!
“Bummer,” I said, because what else is there to say?
“So I was out of work, and my mom and I couldn’t live off her social security check alone, so she started driving for Uber…
So you have an adult sister with autism, and you resent her living with your parents and, from your perspective, “doing nothing”.
You obviously don’t live with your parents and sister.
Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that there is a very wide range of capability and deficits. If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person. What one person with autism does has no bearing on what another person with autism can or will do.
Do you know anything about what your sister is capable of? Perhaps she had difficulty with language, making any interaction with the public impossible. Perhaps she has extreme sensory issues, making leaving her home environment an exercise in pain and anxiety. Autistic people can be intellectually disabled, or intellectually gifted. And both extremes tend to struggle with the social rules of conversation and interaction.
I would suggest that you find out more about your sister, without judgement. Ask questions with an open mind. Attend doctor’s appointments with your parents. Get to know your sister, on a personal level, without expectation of what she “should” be doing.
It’s perfectly normal, and even typical, for adults with autism to live with parents. They may lack the necessary mental skills to manage schedules, financial decisions, even cooking a meal or basic hygiene. While being able to discuss the intricacies of rainforest habitats.
However, your parents will not be able to care for her forever. And she is your sister. Eventually she may need you to help. So lose the attitude and get informed. That way you can be a loving, caring sibling, rather than a jealous, resentful one.
That’s three spaceX raptor engines, on a regular ass flatbed trailer, being towed around by a ford.
ULA and all of the other legacy launch providers would have built some bespoke vehicle at the cost of millions of dollars to do this job.
I can think of few other images that capture in one shot the difference in philosophy at play here. SpaceX acts like it’s stuff is commodity, yet tough hardware, and that it can be treated as such.
It’s a rocket engine. If it can’t survive being towed around by a ford, it’s probably not going to survive flying to mars, landing, and taking off again with minimal human interaction.
The entire south Texas facility looks like a construction site that might be dedicated to the oil and gas sector (which is no surprise, given as that’s the sector that largely built it), not some hyper-clean room high tech facility that looks like it’s primarily built to host congressional delegations. The equipment used is overwhelmingly the sort of stuff that one sees at any industrial facility where you have to worry about cost, rather than the taxpayer subsidized specials that legacy companies seem to be addicted too.
When I was still dating Ebba, she warned me for her father on several occasions. That he was a difficult man, that he was incapable of listening to other people, and that he constantly complained about my trees being too high. And that he would never stop.
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Her words turned out to be augural signs for what was to come.
Have your neighbors ever called the cops on you for something ridiculous ?
Yes, all the time.
It started with nagging. Nagging about my hedge which was too high, nagging about my backyard birches whose leaves fell into his garden (and those tiny, tiny twigs), then about an old elder tree that (slightly) leaned over on his side of the fence, then about a Christmas tree that would grow too big in the future, then about all the shadow which is cast on his property.
Nagging, nagging, nagging.
So he contacted the community officer to complain, and that kind man patiently tried to explain that on the countryside, trees and hedges are a normal thing, and so are leaves and the like. He did not listen.
Some time later, we came back from abroad near the end of Eastern holidays, and our beautiful Christmas tree — the one that “would grow too big in the future” — had been cut. The bully admitted without any shame that he had done it.
The community officer tried to explain to my neighbor that this was not done, but again the bully did not listen.
And so it began, and proceeded.
Then envelopes came. With pictures of all the leaves and twigs that fell into their garden, and of all the fictional damage that they had done.
Then he sued us in a Justice of Peace court because of our trees, and the judge himself came by to check on his complaints. And he did not agree, on all accounts. He explained the bully that leaves and twigs are a part of country life, and that he would have to live with that. (He did not listen.)
The bully then nearly physically attacked me, and threw his entire repertoire of vile words in my face (and some of it also in my ear). He was heavily reprimanded by the judge. (He did not listen.)
Since then, he called the community officer again, and was again reprimanded and asked to stop. (He did not listen.)
Ebba was right indeed — her father will never stop.
So we planted a seedling of a giant sequoia in our frontyard.
It is a direct descendant of a 500-year-old Californian giant, and it grows ferociously. Last year, it doubled in volume and added more than two feet to its height, and it will keep on doing that until it towers above all the neighborhood trees in no time.
On my second day in my new job, I was summoned to a meeting with the director. He told me that the person I had been hired to replace, as the top finance person in the company, had accepted an offer to stay, and that I would therefore not be made permanent.
Aside from some curiosity about this development, which he declined to gratify, my reaction was being absolutely fine. Just another curveball in the strangest year of my life.
As I got up to leave, my chair knocked over the fan behind me.
“Just because you’re being let go, doesn’t mean you can start trashing the place!” he said, and we both laughed.
Added:
Ten days later, I had lunch with the man who had replaced me at my previous job, as we had become friends during the handover. He asked me to come back and work with him. I accepted. A few weeks after that I fell in love with him. Last month we celebrated a year together. Funny what life throws at you.
When I was 18, I had a job as a receptionist in a small doctor’s office in a rural area. There were three doctors who were based in another community. Their hours at this clinic were sporadic. This was when our healthcare system was in transition and many of the rural people didn’t understand the complicated new changes.
I noticed that the head doctor, who owned the business, was doing some dodgy things. He was billing the government for treatment, and then charged the rural people cash for the same visit. For example, a girl who had saved up money came in to have her ears pierced, was charged cash. The doctor then billed the province for an “ear infection.”
This same doctor opened an x-ray clinic in his own community, and apparently almost everyone who came through the door “needed” x-rays.
There’s more. In those days, the family doctor went all the way with his pregnant patients, from a positive pregnancy test, to delivery. Except this doctor was a no show, every time. Sometimes he went golfing after getting these calls! Sometimes he walked his dogs instead of attending the birth, birth after birth. Most times he got the message and simply ignored it.
This was awful! These poor rural people were being cheated, and the pregnant moms, too.
So, I took photocopies of government billing and the receipts for cash. I had lots.
I began telling these pregnant clients the truth, and they started going elsewhere for treatment.
I was at a loss as to what to do next, so I took all my photocopies to the mayor of the closest large community. He thought they were interesting. I was so pleased. However, the mayor didn’t tell me what would happen next…
I went to work the next day and the day after that. THEN, I got a call from the wife of the doctor, firing me. She didn’t say why, it was a short call. I’d never been fired before, and I had such hurt feelings that I actually cried. I felt so terribly unwanted.
Then I got a call from an employee at the other clinic. She said there were two mean guys from the government there who showed up with some kind of paper that said they could search through all the files. Later I learned that the doctor lost all his hospital privileges in the provinces. A couple of years later, he closed his business and left the country.
Rationally speaking, China or the Qing Dynasty was ruined by its own problems, and the British were only the fuse that ignited them.
In fact, with the wealth and potential that China has, it is difficult for any other country to really challenge it as long as it is on a normal track, having long occupied a quarter of the world’s population and wealth, reaching half at its peak. Such a country could only be destroyed from within. Several vulnerable periods in China have been marked by various unresolvable structural contradictions:
First of all the Song dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, since the Song dynasty was a local power, it had no control over the north and was caught in a long war with Jin and Liao, even so, the Song was the last large country to be conquered by the Mongols, after the Mongols had conquered most of Eurasia, they concentrated their forces of half of the continent to attack the Song dynasty, even so, the war lasted almost 50 years, it was not easy for the Mongols and As Mongol Khan died in Sichuan, it forced Mongolia to stop its conquest of Europe and led to the division of the Mongol Empire.
Then came the Manchu invasion. The problem of the Ming Dynasty was the successive famines during the Little Ice Age and the failed fiscal policies that led to a high concentration of wealth to the bureaucratic class, with officials getting rich and the country not collecting taxes. The corrupt bureaucrats had no regard for the survival of the country before their personal interests, and the Ming Dynasty collapsed after a massive peasant uprising broke out, at which point the warlords in the north also colluded with the Manchus for their own benefit and gave China away.
The structural contradiction of the late Qing dynasty was that it was a minority regime, which meant that the rulers saw the state as their property and the people as their slaves, and they were more afraid of having their rights taken away by the people as opposed to being afraid of foreign invaders; after all, foreigners wanted only property (territory) and the people wanted their lives. Therefore, the Manchu rulers did not dare to mobilize the power of the people and let them master advanced productivity and technology. As a result, Japan in the same period could modernize rapidly on a much worse basis, while the Manchu aristocracy could only make do.
There are many uncanny but thought-provoking phenomena in the Opium Wars that illustrate these issues.
The British did not initially sell opium to China; since they had already succeeded in the Industrial Revolution, they believed their greatest advantage was industrial consumer goods, which could be industrially mass produced at low cost, and through which they believed they could succeed in China.
And then they failed.
Haha, yes, because China was in a small peasant economy, with little economic circulation and no modernization, the peasants did not need these consumer goods at all, nor could they afford them. For food, they grew their own, for clothing, the price of Chinese cloth was even lower, and the most demand was for spices, a few agricultural tools, and only the high officials and the rich consumed those “magical gadgets”.
Well, the British adjusted their strategy and they started selling Indian spices to the Chinese, but that’s when a new problem arose, and that was the balance of trade. Due to the extensive trade, Chinese porcelain, silk and tea flooded into Europe, fostering European consumption habits, especially tea, which was literally gold growing out of the ground. Europeans have always suffered from the local water quality problems, due to industrial pollution, and no modern tap water system, Europeans have long endured the bitterness of drinking water, tea is simply a savior. At that time, people did not know that the soil had the problem of acidity and alkalinity, and they thought that only China could produce good tea. Therefore tea became the core of the world’s trade at that time, for the profiteering of tea, the British shipped almost all the world’s silver to China, which led to the silver crisis in Europe, that is, severe deflation.
To balance trade, British merchants packaged opium to sell to China as medicine, which opened the door to a new world, yes, the door to nightmares.
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Opium was a perfect trade good, a product that could be manufactured in large quantities and that consumers could not get rid of after forming a habit, but none of this is the core of the problem, the most crucial point is that opium was banned in China. You must think I’ve said something wrong, but no, the logic goes like these:
Since opium was banned, Chinese farmers could not grow it, so this meant that China’s greatest advantage, the cost advantage, was gone, something that had not been the case with previous agricultural products.
Because opium was banned, it could not be imported through normal channels, was not taxable, and because the trade between China and abroad was monopolized by a few individuals who were thus sufficiently profitable, there was sufficient incentive for Chinese and foreign trading merchants to collude and buy officials to smuggle large quantities of opium. When the supervising officials essentially became accomplices of the smugglers, and there was no channel to respond to the ruling class about the actual situation, the opium trade became a mutually agreeable existence.
Since there was no supervision, everyone became complicit, forming a wide class of interests, so much so that it was even more impossible to contain, and the profitable officials made money to share the profits with their superiors, so that the senior officials were also deeply involved, so much so that the emperor was aware of the situation at a later stage but still could not stop it, because even the emperor himself could not resist the temptation brought by profits.
When the opium trade grew exponentially, problems arose, the people took a lot of opium, a large number of refugees emerged who were bankrupted by opium, the army took a lot of opium opium and lost its fighting strength, and the most crucial problem was the same as the situation in Europe before, the outflow of silver. At this point, the emperor finally realized the problem, yes, the emperor never worried about the miserable situation his people were in, he only cared about himself and his property, that is, silver.
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At this point, the “smart” officials came up with a solution, the same as the current North American policy on marijuana, if you can not prohibit, simply liberalize.
Well, the nightmare really came. Due to the huge profits of opium, farmers stopped growing grain and they grew opium, domestic opium quickly took over the market, opium prices plummeted, more people started smoking opium, the market became bigger, so much so that smugglers could still make a lot of money even if they paid taxes legally and provided the officials with kickbacks as much as they should, and instead of balancing the trade, the open door policy made opium even more unstoppable.
When the Qing government once again made up its mind to ban opium, it was too late. The harsh policy not only failed to solve the problem, but also angered British businessmen, who spent a lot of money to convince the British Parliament to vote to declare war on the Qing Empire, a vote in favor of which was narrowly won by only nine votes. This meant that even at the time, when Britain was at its strongest, they did not have enough confidence to defeat China halfway across the world, tens of thousands of kilometers away. The parliamentary lords took the money and sent a small expeditionary force to try, at least they knew that the Qing did not have enough naval forces to retaliate against them.
At this point, the ignorance and lack of understanding of the other side on both sides of the battlefield is mind-boggling to people today.
The Qing emperor had always arrogantly believed that he was the ruler of the world and that the British were just some barbarians. He regarded the British attack as a historical harassment of China by barbarians from the north, as if the British army would immediately surrender and kneel down and beg for mercy as soon as he gave the order for the Chinese army to attack, which was not the funniest thing, the funniest thing was that the initial reaction of the British army seemed to confirm his judgment.
Surprisingly, the British fleet did not dare to attack and only cruised in the outer sea. The Qing generals holding on to the shore batteries even became bored, thinking that the British were bluffing and how they dared to fight against the armies of Heaven.
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Do you know what the British think? The British think they are “blockading the port”. I have to say, I really laughed, “blockade of ports”? They didn’t even know that the Chinese had no concept of trade or sea power at that time, and all trade was packaged by officials as “tribute” from the surrounding barbarians to the central state, which had everything and didn’t need to trade at all, but only to show appreciation and give gifts to the “tribute”.
In fact, it was when the British fleet prepared to blockade the Yangtze northward and began to move deeper inland that the real battle took place, a process that shocked both sides.
British naval guns were surprisingly farther-ranged and more powerful than the Chinese shore guns
The Qing shore guns were surprisingly all fixed guns, unable to adjust their angles or aim, and could only probabilistically kill.
The Qing army’s jingalls were surprisingly unable to inflict fatal wounds on the British.
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The British tactic of suppressing fire with naval guns and attacking with small units around the flank and rear was surprisingly easy to make the Qing defenses collapse. And this simple tactic seemed to work forever; the Qing army seemed to have absolutely no reconnaissance capability.
The Chinese population around the battlefield simply watched both sides perform, and even applauded the British victory, as they were apparently more oppressed by the Qing officials.
In the end, this turned into an almost one-sided massacre.
At the same time, the message to the palace is a lot of good news. The officials could not explain such an incredible defeat, and they could only cajole the emperor that although the Qing army had been winning, the harassment of the British brought a huge financial burden. How about giving the “barbarians” a sum of money to meet their trade requests and induce the British to retreat? They even falsely claimed that the defeated British army knelt outside the city gates and prayed for the mercy of heaven, which was moving.
Coincidentally, this was the time when, due to a massive outbreak of plague among the British army, more people died of disease than died in battle, and the British army was unable to fight, so a consensus was reached. The officials and the emperor saved face and the British got the benefit. The first unequal treaty in modern Chinese history, the Treaty of Nanking, was signed in such a confused manner, which started the prelude to China’s “hundred years of humiliation”. And this war even too small to be worth mentioning in the history of the British.
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What, if anything, can be learned from this history? I would end this article with a quote from the Chinese author Liu Cixin in The Three-Body Problem.
Weakness and ignorance are never an obstacle to survival, but arrogance is.
This statement is not only addressed to the Chinese, but also to the many Westerners who currently know nothing about China but are happy to teach the Chinese how to behave. Hopefully, as mature civilizations, we should all refrain from repeating the mistakes of the past.
I had an employee in her late 30s that kept missing work. She called in with lots of excuses. Vandalized car, stolen keys. I put her on a performance plan (first step to termination). So, she reported to HR that she was an alcoholic. I, according to HR, could no longer terminate her. So, I (the company) continued to pay her while she spent 3 days in jail. I paid for her to be off work for a month, while she attended out-patient rehab. During her time off for rehab, she got pregnant. I paid for her to have a baby and 8 weeks off work. She continued to miss work…probation appointment, broken car-start-breathalyzer. Her work was terrible, she antagonized the other employees and spent a good part of her workday outside smoking cigarettes. She eventually quit. I never was allowed to fire her.
However, I had another employee that I did fire…for smoking marijuana during her time off work. She was selected for random drug testing. She failed for marijuana. Even though she was not using at work, and she was a good employee, I was required to fire her. She was in her 60s. She apologized to me as I was terminating her. I went back to my office and cried after she left. I felt so terrible for what I had done to her.
So, smoking tobacco leaves and drinking alcohol to the point of complete failure to perform….ok! Smoking marijuana leaves during your time off, while doing a good job at work…b-bye.
I get to New York City, by hitchhiking if need be.
I go to the New York library and find the name of a good patent attorney.
I visit his office and show him the phone.
His jaw drops to the floor. He knows he’s looking at nothing that can be built in 1969.
Then I tell him there’s nothing in that phone I know how to patent, but I know a lot about the broad evolution of technology over the next 50 years across semiconductors, computers, programming, biology, material science, etc.
He takes another look at what is obviously the most powerful supercomputer on the planet…
Then I say: “I need a place to stay and a little spending money while we figure out how to build a company that’s going to own the most important intellectual property portfolio the world has ever seen. We’ll need scientists, engineers, investors, and lawyers working together. You in?”
You want a patent attorney, they see the possibilities.
Oh yes! Back in the day (early 2000’s) when I lived in Los Angeles I worked in the accounting department for a catering company. After a few months I was doing ok but I was aware that my immediate supervisor (we will call him Javier) was not very fond of me. (Well, actually he had been WAY too fond of me at first but once I turned him down it was downhill for me in that office. But that’s a separate story and I don’t mean to digress.)
One day the phone at my desk rings and I answer it. The young lady on the other line tells me she is answering the add she read in the paper (yup, newspaper ads! I am that old!) about the job opening and she is interested to set up an interview. Yes you read correctly: Those idiots had placed an ad in the newspapers for MY job and had given the phone number at MY desk as the contact by mistake. I was very pleasant to the young lady on the phone as well as the other dozen or so that called until Javier made it in later that day. I went into his office with a big smile and handed him his messages and said something along the lines of ‘oh and these messages are from people answering the want ad. You know, the ones that want to interview for my job.’ He looked at me in complete shock and embarrassment since I had just called him a complete idiot and he was left speechless which is essentially what had happened. I mean, what could he say? That was on a Friday and the owner of the company (who was completely unaware) was in Hawaii and would not return to the office until Monday. The owner came back on Monday livid that this had happened, was embarrassed and apologised for causing me any discomfort. Javier didn’t apologise as much as he said that California was an ‘at-will’ state which meant that one could be fired for no reason at all, blah, blah and that he really wasn’t a bad guy (only an idiot!). I didn’t have another job lined up so I let it go.
Fast forward about about 2 months later. Again a Friday and in the morning my phone rings. The young lady on the other end wanted to confirm her interview appointment for 3 PM that day. Again, for MY job! I responded ‘sure, no problem! See you then!’ After lunch my co-worker (who I though was my friend but turns out he wanted to safeguard his own position so he sided with Javier) says something like ‘hey Christian, there isn’t much left to do today. Why don’t you go home?’. I responded with a ‘naw, I have so much to do with blah blah…’ Half hour later Javier comes to me with the same question. I said ‘oh no, I want to get ahead with blah blah…’ 3 PM comes around, bell rings and in comes in the young lady. I sat her ass down in my seat, got her some coffee and told her I would let Javier know. I go to his office and announce ‘Mary is here for her interview for my job. I got her some coffee. I’m going home like you suggested. Have a great weekend!’ They once again found themselves speechless at their own idiocy. She turned them down.
A few weeks later I landed my dream job during the catering company’s busiest time period. My new job told me they needed me to start immediately. I told them that even though Javier had treated me like homemade dog piss, I was still going to give them a 2-week notice because that was the correct thing to do. The following day I walked into Javier’s office and gave my notice. He begged me to please stay for at least a couple of more months until the busy period subsided and they did not have someone to do my job. I said I could not and that the 2 weeks was all that I could give them. I left with my head held high and worked at the other company for 10 years until I moved to Europe. Moral of the story: When someone treats you like dog crap do not sink to their level and don’t forget your self respect by teaching them a lesson on what human decency is all about because sooner or later karma will still find those Mother Fuckers.
When I signed up with my US health insurer, Humana, the first thing they did was assign me to a different doctor than the one I had been seeing for fifteen years. I called them and told them to put me back with my regular doctor. In April of 2023, I recived a new insurance card with a different doctor’s name and a letter informing me of a change in my primary care physician. Again, I called them and told them to put me back with my previous doctor. In June of 2023, I recived a new insurance card with a different doctor’s name and a letter informing me of a change in my primary care physician. Once again, I called them and told them to put me back with my previous doctor. In September of 2023, I recived a new insurance card with a different doctor’s name and a letter informing me of a change in my primary care physician. I no longer have Humana as my insurer.
So don’t tell me that as an American I have the ability to choose my own doctor when my insurance company keeps trying to deny me that choice.
American health insurance is shit.
EDIT: I should point out that my original primary doctor was and is in Humana’s “network” to begin with. Their insistence on assigning me to another doctor was either some kind of bureaucratic nonsense or they were just fucking with me. Either way, there was no reason for them to keep reassigning me when I clearly stated my preference time and again.
One day dad and I went into a deep conversation about various aspects of life. Topics like meaning of life, life after death, role of luck in success etc.
Conversation went deep and we kept discussing and I was all ears to grasp whatever wisdom he had to offer.
Then I asked him “Dad if you have to give one solid advice to me that I should always follow, what should be it. Just one?”
He thought for a while and then asked me, “What is your utmost priority in life”?
I gave a grin smile and said, “My Career”…..I was 28 then.
To which he replied, “Suppose you earn $ 10,000 + in a month some years from now, for that obviously you have to trade time for money and you ignore everything to earn money. By the time you turn 40/45 you have all the money in the world and are financially secure. You have a house of your own, a car and all luxuries. But since you have traded time with money, you didn’t focus on your health and now you are obese and have a weight of 90 Kgs and is catching with some diseases such as diabetes, obesity, joints pain etc.
Why did you earn so much money? To buy luxuries and to enjoy them. Now even if you have all the luxuries in the world, you can’t enjoy them as you ignored your health, and now your body is ignoring you. Even if you want to enjoy the travel, food etc that money has to offer but you can’t utilize luxuries to the fullest.
One line he said that I will never forget – “You can work hard and with your skillset you can earn money anytime but once health is lost, it becomes quite difficult to regain back your health.”
So my son, never ignore your health for anything. Health is wealth. If you have health, you can enjoy life till your last breath.
Even if he is 65 now, he never misses taking care of his health for 2 hours a day at least and plays table tennis better than people in their 30s at his place. I have not seen missing him his workout for more than 3/4 days at a stretch for the last 35 odd years. Even after retirement he was of the view that I must not pass time rather being a good cook, he started his own youtube channel – “RAVI SISODIYA”
and is doing well. Enjoys his passion and interaction with subscribers.
I was not regular at that time and then decided to keep my health a number one priority.
Whatever your profession be, never ignore your health for more days in a row. Respect your body and mind and you will get the same in return.
First, it makes the absurdity of the “island chain containment” plain and obvious.
It is no longer this map keeping the Pentagon awake at night:
image 343
but these:
image 28image 5
That is a whole lot more real estate, with few american base assets in sight.
The combined Chinese and Russian fleet this year is sizable, at 11. More tellingly, the US sent 4 Arleigh Burke destroyers and a P-8 in response, rather than rely on the Coast Guard like last year.
The diversion of 4 destroyers from regular operations opens up a 16% operational hole for a navy that is already stretched thin trying to match the operational tempo of the PLAN in the Western Pacific.
This is an important development on the chessboard, because the psychology has shifted.
The US can no longer plan around concentrating assets along the Western Pacific, because the Pacific and Arctic are huge playgrounds.
What will make it even more interesting is the presence of Chinese naval aviation when the emals carriers enter service. America will have to send a CBG or two in response, but there is the type 055’s formidable VLS battery to contend with, and so on. Fascinating calculus, if you are a wargaming nuthead.
That will upend the already stretched resources of the USN.
In other words, nightmare-inducing calculus for Americans, who will not be able to accept the Chinese conducting Sigint flights off its own coast, like it has been doing for decades on the other side of the ocean.
The Pacific is not America’s backyard. Neither is Pearl Harbor the keystone.
Time to tear up old maps and make new ones, at least where deployment of forces and chinks in the armor are concerned.
The Pacific is where Chinese power projection will develop, not Oceania, the Indian Ocean and elsewhere.
Note: Currently, more than 70 percent of the USN’s deployed assets are allocated to the 7th fleet and Indopacom, and they are concentrated in the waters around the island chains. In other words, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Fleets share ~30 deployable ships.
But they have a great advantage, almost not lying.
I mean that they also have political prejudice, and they will also have strong ideological comments, and there will also be a degradation of competitors. But they always state exact facts. If some things are included in the unhappy scope, or things are not really determined, their choices are not reported, but they will not choose to lie.
Let me give an example:
Some people found several corpses in a car, looking like Asians, but without any identity proof, the police had been involved in the investigation.
Report by BBC CNN NYT:
1. Insiders revealed that several drug dealers from China died of attacking each other because they were unevenly split.
2. Several Asians were found to die in the car, and they may be a smuggler from Vietnam.
3. Our reporter was at the scene, and some residents told us that several Koreans died here. They come from a mysterious underground church, perhaps in a certain ceremony.
Are you familiar with it?
CNTV report:
Police found several men dying in the car, and their identities have not been found. Please pay attention to the safety of the surrounding residents. If you have a clue, please notify the police.
Is it boring?
we know. The mainstream Western media often lie, and they will report some things to catch the wind, even the news and hearing news. When one thing is proved to be false, they only need to apologize or revoke the article. After all: freedom of speech.
However, China’s official media are different. Chinese public opinion has strict bottom line requirements for official media: not lying.
In the Internet era, it is almost impossible to completely deceive everyone. In China’s official media, when a news report or video finally proves that the fabricated lies, the person in charge of the official media will immediately fall into a scandal. Waiting for them is generally withdrawal and reputation sweeping the floor. Apology does not have any effect.
However, there are also many unofficial media in China, and their content is much confusing. In addition to being limited in political content, they often lie in a row to catch the wind and catch the wind to attract attention.
Because they are conservative and boring, they only tell you that they are very limited before without exact facts. Therefore, Chinese official media often difficult to attract people’s attention, and their click rate and dissemination on the Internet are also very low.
Volkswagen media is more popular because it has more curiosity and entertainment.
But in China, when people want to know the truth of major events, they often believe in the official media and complain why the official media is so slow that there is no more detailed news.
I grew up on a farm. There was a small forest, which we called “the woods,” on one end of the farm. Every year, my father would post “No Hunting” signs around the woods. But every year hunters would still come there, as the woods were filled with rabbit, pheasant, deer, and other game. When he saw them, my father would go out to the woods and explain to the hunter that these were his woods, he did not allow hunting, and they would have to leave.
One time, when I was four, my father was with my brother, who was six, when they saw a hunter at the edge of the woods, looking into the woods for something to shoot. My father took my brother’s hand, walked over to the hunter, and said “These are my woods. I don’t allow hunting. You’ll have to leave.” The hunter turned around, pointed his shotgun at my six year old brother’s chest, and said “I’ll hunt wherever I damn well please.” My father slowly backed away with my brother and went back to the house.
A few minutes later, he came out again. But instead of crossing the field that led from the house to the woods, he went to the side, where a chicken coop extended to the edge of the woods. He walked quietly behind the chicken coop, until he came to the edge of the woods, about twenty feet from the hunter, who was still intently looking into the woods for something to shoot. My father said to the hunter “Drop the gun and leave immediately.” Except this time, when the hunter turned around, instead of my father holding the hand of a six year old boy, he was holding a .38 revolver…which was pointed at the hunter’s head. As soon as he started to turn around, my father said simply “Drop it or die.”
My father died four years ago. It had been almost sixty years since this happened. When I went to clean out his house, the hunter’s shotgun was still in his closet.
In the 90s I was the parts secretary at a Ford dealership. We had a few parking spaces for office staff close to our entrance. We often hauled in office supplies, food and boxes of promotional materials for sales, and we often left after dark.
A young, cocky new salesman was hired and started parking (his Ford pickup) in our spots. I politely explained to him why it was it was important to keep those spaces open for us. He shrugged and continued to park there.
I confronted him again with a firmer tone. “You gotta stop parking there man!” With two little words he sealed his fate. “Or, what?” Sweetie. Snookums. I got a truckload of what.
In those days a Ford dealership could get any information they wanted on a Ford. With his VIN number I made a duplicate key. When he parked in our spots I moved his truck to the back corner of the lot where new deliveries would bury it and he’d have to move several cars to get his. I didn’t stop there though.
Anytime I saw his truck anywhere I’d move it. Shopping Center? Moved. Street parking for a restaurant? Moved. That kid was looking for his car several times a week!
Eventually he came in to our office grovelling and pleading with me to stop. He promised to never park in our spots again.
EDIT: Wow! Now I see why there are always edits on these! Some of you are apoplectic that I “got away” with a heinous crime. It’s occurred to me that you are extremely fortunate to have never been the victim of domestic violence, stalking, rape, burglary or actual car theft. If you had you’d know that police aren’t much help in any of the above situations and perpetrators are rarely arrested.
Could I have, with righteous indignation, insisted he be formally reprimanded? Yeah. But who wants to be that bitch? Not me. He learned a lesson in a fun way. He took it in stride. He likely doesn’t remember my name (I don’t remember his) but he likely remembers me and this story as fondly as I do. And maybe, just maybe, he has a little more respect for how clever women can be instead of seeing us as spiteful hags. Lighten up!
Went to Motor Vehicles Today to Have LIENHOLDER Removed from Car Titles – Wait til you hear THIS . . . .
Today I went to New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) on Summit Avenue in Jersey City, NJ to have the LIENHOLDER info removed from two vehicle Titles since I’ve paid the car loans off. You’re not gonna BELIEVE what happened . . .
Firstly, after the COVID scam, New Jersey Motor Vehicle has NOT done away with the requirement to make an appointment to go to one of their offices to have paperwork done. So I had to schedule today’s appointment last weekend, and I did.
I get there, walk in, and there’s two security guards who ask “Do you have an appointment? I reply “yes” and they ask to see the appointment confirmation from online! I brought it with me just in case, and gave it to them. They tell me, go in and see the Receptionist on the left. I go in.
I get to the Receptionist who asks me, “What are you here to do today?” I reply “Have the LIENHOLDERS removed from the Title on two vehicles I’ve paid off.” He hands me two application forms to go fill out.
I go fill them out, return the Receptionist’s pen that he graciously lent to me and he then says, now go onto the “ID CHECK” line to the left. ID Check??????? I go ahead and do that. Two people ahead of me.
When it’s my turn, I go up too the guy in the little booth– I think he was Hindu or whatever the folks are, who have the Dot on their forehead — and hand him the filled-out applications to have the Titles re-issued and he says “You know, this is going to cost you $60 each to have the LIENHOLDER Removed.” I replied “Yes, I know.” He then says, “I can get this done for free.”
Uhhhhhhh, I was not expecting this . . . . my Spidey Sense started tingling. So I ask him “How?”
GET THIS: He replies “I can have my Boss delete the LIENHOLDER in our computer system, then you walk out with the same Title, instead of a new one.”
I think to myself: “Then I won’t have any way to PROVE the LIEN has been released” So I respond to him “No thanks, I want the re-issued Titles without the LIENHOLDER on them.” He says, “Well, I’m just trying to save you money.”
He takes a staple remover and separates the Titles from the Lender Loan-Satisfaction, notarized letters, hands everything back to me with a card containing a number on it: “K117” and tells me, take a seat over there and you’ll hear your number called, telling you which counter to go to.
I go sit down.
About five minutes later, the computer voice over the PA Speaker calls “K117, Counter Ten”
So I get up and walk over to counter 10 and the nice Spanish lady behind the counter takes my paperwork.
To my utter shock, SHE then says to me, “It will cost you $60 each to have these LIENHOLDERS Cleared from the Title, . . . . but I can get it done for you for free.”
I’m now kind of stunned because this is now two separate Employees of the Motor Vehicle Commission saying the same thing. So I play along and ask her “How?”
She says, I will have the Supervisor come over, delete the LIENHOLDER from our Computer, but you leave here with the exact same Title.“
I thought to myself “Holy shit, they’re all “in-on-it” for the “Great Taking.”” I went on to think to myself “These people are working for the Bankers, so the Bankers can grab everybody’s stuff; just as I learned from the video “The Great Taking”
So I told the woman, “But then I would have no proof that the Bank no longer has a LIEN.” She responded, right, but you’ll save $120 on the Two Titles!
So I responded “No, I want the LIENHOLDER removed and I want the new, re-issued Titles without the Bank name on them”
She reiterated “But that will cost you $60 each, a total of $120” and I responded “I don’t care. I want the re-issued Titles.”
She put on a smug face as if to say “Oh this guy must have money, he doesn’t care about the $120.”
She processes the deletion of the LIENHOLDER info and then asks “Will you be paying by Credit Card, Check, or Legal Tender?”
“LEGAL TENDER????????????” Nobody says that outside of you know . . . . us . . . . .
I reply, “Legal Tender; Federal Reserve Notes.”
I hand the cash to her and she finishes the transaction, which prints the receipt.
But it’s all the same computer . . . . so If I agreed to “let them do it for free” they could NOT have removed the LIENHOLDER because the system requires the money be paid before it will complete the action ! ! ! ! ! If I had not paid, the computer could not have deleted the LIENHOLDER info! ! !
You know what I think? I personally think the whole offer to “get it done free” was a SCAM . . . . designed to deliberately mislead people into THINKING the LIEN had been removed, when, in fact, it has NOT been removed. And it COULD NOT HAVE BEEN REMOVED unless and until payment was tendered because the computer won’t process the removal unless payment has been made.
That leaves those poor suckers who THOUGHT they were getting it done “free” — open to the Banks coming and taking everything from THEM because all the official paperwork still shows the LIENS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
How many thousands of people have believed this scam over the years?
I’m telling you, folks, I am totally shocked by this happening at two separate employees in a State Motor Vehicle Commission facility.
I now think the “States” are “in-on-it” too and all of them are working in lockstep with the Bankers to achieve their goal: You will own nothing . . . . and be happy.”
Not me! I have the Re-issued Titles without the LIENHOLDER info on them. These vehicles are, in fact, MINE, and I can prove it with the Titles.
I was born at night . . . . but not last night. They aren’t getting-over on me!
A businessman went to a shoe store to purchase a new pair of shoes. He was a prominent person in that town. After selecting a pair of shoes with size 8 he asked the salesperson to pack it. The salesperson had just started his career and joined the shoe store a few days back.
The businessman soon discovered that he had left his wallet at home. He told the salesperson that he would take the shoes with him and make the payment the next day. The salesperson being new to business excused himself in order to discuss this matter with the store manager. The manager knew that the customer is an eminent businessman; however, was reluctant to deliver the shoes without payment. At the same time, he was not ready to lose a sale too. He advised the salesperson to handle the situation in the best manner possible and left the place.
The salesperson stood there frozen for a few minutes unable to decide. He then returned to the customer, started packing the shoes and handed the package to the customer.
The next day the customer arrived at the store with the shoes he had purchased, made the payment for his purchase and told the salesperson that “After opening the package I found one shoe with size 8 and the other with size 7. Maybe you packed them by mistake. Can I have the shoes with size 8 please?” The salesperson apologized for the inconvenience caused and replaced the wrong size shoe with the correct one. The customer collected his shoes and left the store with satisfaction.
The manager happened to overhear their conversation and realized that the salesperson had used his presence of mind and handled the situation very well. They didn’t lose their business as well as the customer.
Moral
It is by the presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested. If an individual has a calm state of mind, his attitude and views will be calm and tranquil even in the presence of great agitation.
I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture given by the late Prof. Hawking on the campus of the University of Berkeley; I say “given”; Hawking rolled onto the stage, and the lecture he so painstakingly prepared was delivered by the machine he used to speak with. I never heard him repeat this quote, so I will have to take it on faith that this is something he actually said.
I’ll be PC here, and substitute “average” for dumb; average people are not necessarily “dumb”, but the difference between them and very intelligent people is that they are far less intellectually curious, and tend not to question their own beliefs, or look beneath the surface of phenomena they encounter every day. For the average, smart people are not necessarily “crazy”, but they do come across as weird. If I were to tell an average person that they like doughnuts because simple carbohydrates and fat were rare and valuable nutrients on the African savannah 70,000 years ago, they would look at me like I was mad. They would say something like “I enjoy doughnuts because they taste good”; it wouldn’t occur to them to ask the fundamental question of why they taste good to us.
image 27
A graph showing the “bell curve” distribution of IQ.
As shown in the graph above, 68.2% of people are in the average range of IQ between 85–115 (using IQ as a proxy for general intelligence. The number of people with an IQ higher than 115 becomes increasingly rare with the increasing level of IQ, so those with 140+ are very rare indeed, so it should not surprising that those who are in this high range will often come across as “odd” to the average majority. There is a qualitative difference in the cognition of the highly gifted, compared to the cognitive style of the average; the more intelligent one is, the less “obvious” things seem to be.
In evolutionary terms, our “purpose” as humans is to survive and reproduce, functions for which the average level of intelligence is sufficient; humans evolved to be as intelligent as they needed to be in order to successfully carry out these biological functions, so it is not surprising that most of us are not smarter than we are. As social animals, we tend not to be too fond of “weirdos” who question the existing social order, and the way things have always been done, hence the existence of terms like “nerd” and “geek” for those whose manner of thought and speech is contrary to the norm. At the same time, it had to have been the prehistoric nerds and geeks who came up with technologies like the bow and arrow, and poison darts, which were beneficial for the survival of humans as a whole, by allowing us to hunt otherwise inaccessible game animals. One can just imagine the jeers of the normies when the first geek smeared some tree sap on a dart, and walked off with his blowpipe, saying “I’m going hunting by myself.”
As someone who has been accused of being smart, I’ve had to learn to self-censor in order to “fit in”, and not be ostracized as a “weirdo” by the general population. “Be yourself” is incredibly stupid advice if one happens to be an intellectual outlier, since “yourself” is likely to be regarded as strange, and even threatening by the majority. Hawking was right, and I reserve my unfiltered self for a select few IRL, plus, of course, anyone who chooses to read my apophenic ravings on Quora.
He was my first love. We dated for 3 years and got married because I was pregnant. Worst mistake of my life.
By the time I had the baby, I could almost feel it. The loneliness. The emptiness. He became a totally different person. He complained that I was fat and unattractive. I was depressed and lonely. He knew that I enjoyed to have sex, so he withheld it from me to hurt me.
I had a startup business and was struggling to balance work and family. To make matters worse, I got pregnant somehow with the second child. He didn’t want to have the child so he asked me to have an abortion. I refused. He totally disconnected at this point. My business also went into the abyss as I was struggling to provide for myself, my daughter and unborn son. I hid and cried in the bathroom every night.
A couple of months after my son was born, a woman called and told me she’s sharing him with me and they have kids together. I confronted him and he didn’t deny it. A part of me literally died that day. Everyone around me seemed to know and I didn’t. What hurt me the most is that I stupidly still loved this man. He told me he didn’t want me anymore. He asked me to leave and leave his kids behind. I left with my kids and moved in with my sister. I had no job and 2 kids to look after.
To cut the long story short, we went through a really bad divorce, but it was freedom for me. I emigrated to another country, got a better life and job, got into great shape, and basically got my shit together. Am very thankful that I got this far. I never smoked, drank or did anything harmful to myself when I was at my lowest. My mistake gave me a chance to realize that you can pick yourself up after hitting rock bottom. KARMA IS REAL. I found out last year that the woman my ex chose over me left him for another man. Oh how did I forget? She also told my ex that the kids are not his. Thank you
Having just informed me that 167 hours of work she had made me do would not be paid, my boss told me to prepare exams not just for my class, but for all the students. Unsurprisingly, I said no.
This boss had stopped me from teaching one of my usual classes on a Monday afternoon (without consulting me) and arranged for me to teach the same number of hours on some Saturday mornings and weekday evenings instead. She pretended that she was doing this to make my life easier, since Mondays were a heavy teaching day. She then insisted that I use the time I had off on Monday afternoons to do some of her administration for her, without telling me that this work would all be unpaid. She gradually added more and more of her work to my workload.
For the entire term I thought I was being paid to do the administration work. She only told me I wasn’t at the end of the semester, by which time I had chalked up 167 hours of her administration work plus 10 hours of extra teaching) that she wouldn’t pay me for.
Then, immediately after telling me all this work was unpaid, she told me to prepare some exams, something the other teachers didn’t have to do. I said no, obviously. She stormed off to Human Resources to complain about me. When she came back she told me how upset she was that they didn’t support her. She was actually crying a little, I’m not sure whether because of rage or if she was really hurt. I was called up to HR and asked how many hours I had done unpaid. My boss had a track record of not paying me, so I had noted every task and all the hours done in my diary. I was paid for everything I did and my boss was told that all our work had to be paid for.
I just wish I had learned to say no sooner – and I really appreciated the honesty of our HR manager.
It’s a fun story! To me at least. I’m cool that way.
Technically “London” didn’t become the capital until after the 16th Century. What we now call “the City of London”, the ancient square mile that Rome founded, was an entity of its own. And in many ways still is. It was a centre of power and money, even before the Norman Conquest.
Up through the Middle Ages there was no fixed “capital” per se. The kings didn’t stay put, they moved around, so the capital was essentially where they were, not necessarily where the government was. The government being those ministers of the king who administered (get it?) the day to day workings.
During the reign of the Wessex kings, Winchester was the closest thing to an English capital.
So, back to London. The kings had no real power over London. Edward the Confessor, who was technically of the Wessex blood line but spent his formative years across the Channel and didn’t really have a sentimental attachment to Winchester, built an abbey in Westminster, which was west of London. He also built a palace for the seat of government. With these he hoped to draw power and wealth from that citadel to the east protected by a massive wall.
Edward died in January 1066. In October, Duke William of Normandy arrived to take what he felt was his by right. After the Battle of Hastings he headed toward London, that centre of power. Not to London, mind you. Toward it. He circled round, burning his way around it. But he knew he couldn’t breach the wall. He made a deal with the London peeps that in exchange for recognising him as their king, they would retain their special privileges. This arrangement has been in place ever since.
Now, thanks to Edward the Confessor, there was a ready-made power base just to the west of London. William was duly crowned king in Westminster Abbey. Over time, the Treasury was moved from Winchester, which became that historic city with one train station (London now has over 600 train and underground stations). Meanwhile, houses were built between the cities of Westminster and London and a Greater London was formed, eventually swallowing up towns and villages in a 600 square mile area.
Note, though, that the City of London has no national government facilities in it, save the Bank of England, which is separate. Government (Parliament, Whitehall, Downing Street, etc…), the Palace, the national entities are in Westminster, but as that is in what became the megapolis of “London”, London is the capital.
But we was excited last year, we had put in a lot of work to reach the goal that would make a bonus possible.
We where all called to a end of year quarterly meeting where the ceo would go over the figures and give us a chance to ask questions and share ideas.
Instead the owner of the main company was standing there and the ceo a bit to the side. First case of worry, but it could be a good thing right?
It starts and the owner takes the word. And it just goes downhill from there.
The board and investors are not happy, they are firing the ceo and the owner steps out of the board to take direct control of the company, they will reorganize the whole flow and all that modern jazz for making your work day a living hell the next half year.
Adding there wont be a bonus and we will stop having a bonus at all in the future.
A year later and everyone have turned sour many have left and those that remains are becoming more and more unmotivated.
We are close at needing a new firing round too. and nothing have really become better since the change, only more cumbersome and annoying with no gain. 2 years and no raise makes for grumpy workers, when then removing the carrot all together the last drive disappears..
Even overtime must be agreed upon before you get pay for it.
So the bonus was a year in hell that seems to continue unless I am lucky and can find another job that pay the same or better.
Worst part is, the owner got a social and public image as a good and sensible businessman that are very round handed with spending. But when it comes to the company he is a scrounge mcduck, as he dont wanna spend a single dime, even though it cost to make changes, and he want those changes.
So nobody believe us when we tell how he is at work, as everyone got another opinion of him from the local news…
True story: I had never eaten at a Chick-fil-A before last weekend (Saturday, March 9, 2019). In the past, if I’d wanted a chicken sandwich, which I don’t often do, I’ve gone to McDonald’s. But this time I was in a different shopping center, one without a McDonald’s but with a Chick-fil-A next door.
Side note: I’d had their sandwiches before, but at wrestling tournaments. The sandwiches would be brought in in these temperature-controlled bags, and then sold by members of the Booster’s Club. I wasn’t really impressed. The sandwiches cost more than McDonald’s and they were soggy.
But here I was in a shopping center with a Chick-fil-A next door. Oh, well, I figured. I could see the place was crowded, too. Lots of cars, and a long double-line of cars going through the carry-out.
I went inside and the place smelled good. Not like McDonald’s. The menu items were all clearly posted. At McDonald’s, there are these electronic screens that’ll show a handful of items for maybe 10 seconds, then rotate to another set of items. I liked the clear posting.
After looking over the posted menu, I decided to get a spicy chicken sandwich. Not the whole meal, just the sandwich. There wasn’t a line; people were being served as they stepped up to order. At McDonald’s, I could have waited 5 minutes behind just one or two people. (Maybe they’d ordered fries or coffee, and were waiting on the next batch of fries or the next pot of coffee to finish brewing.) I ordered the sandwich and the person behind the counter asked what sauce I’d like with that. I asked what sauces they had.
At McDonald’s, that would have been greeted with a rapid-fire blur of sauces. Or the person would point to that electronic board where the sauces had to cycle through to be displayed. By now, the McDonald’s employee would have forgotten whether I’d ordered the sandwich or the meal. The McDonald’s employee also would have forgotten whether I was eating in or carrying out.
At Chick-fil-A, they had all the sauces out on display. The counter person pointed to them and suggested that since I seemed to like spicy foods, I might enjoy the Buffalo sauce. Sounded good to me.
She handed me a tall plastic colored cone with sauce packets inside. She told me to find a seat anywhere and they’d bring the sandwich over. Wow! At McDonald’s, I’d have to stand near the ear-splitting ice-grinding machine, waiting for my number to be called. She didn’t have to ask again whether I was eating in or carrying out.
I found a seat and, quite promptly, someone came over with the sandwich, wrapped, and asked: “Don? Spicy chicken?” Yup, that was me. The chicken was crispy, steaming, and hot. Tasty. A bit of a surprise, since my only prior experience had been at the wrestling tournaments where they were soggy. If it had been McDonald’s, the sandwich would have been soggy, too. Are they ever crisp there?
A family was seated at the next table. At some point, the dad asked one of the Chick-fil-A employees for a refill on a beverage. The employee said sure, and in about 30 seconds was back with a refill. Nothing like that at McDonald’s.
When I was finished, I started picking up the debris (the sandwich wrapping, the packet of hot sauce, the napkin. Before I’d even gotten it all together, a Chick-fil-A employee came over and said, “Oh, are you leaving? If so, I can take all that.” And he did. Wow! At McDonald’s, I would have gathered all that stuff, taken it over to a trash can, tried to slide it all into the trash can (those paper liners always stick to the tray!), and put the tray on the tray holder.
I have written on this before. When I was married to my ex, his daughter lived with us . Her and her husband came over to visit with their children. We also had a friend of ours over . She was very disrespectful to her dad and our friend told her that. About two months later she asked to take my youngest for a few days and I said no. She then said that our family friend had touched my son , while she was in the room. I gathered my kids and asked them and all three said nothing ever happened. She called back and was upset and said she knew I wouldn’t do anything and would be turning me into social services and she did!!! A case worker came out and took my kids and asked a lot of questions. Then we talked and this man was amazing!!! I explained that my kids were never left alone with anyone and always knew they could tell me anything and his daughter was upset with me , for telling her no. He told me she wanted to get even with me for being with her dad and this was vengeance towards me. I encouraged her Dad to continue a relationship with her but she would no longer be able to come in our home. This was so scary for me , and I could have lost my children. My relationship with her was over , and our friend was also worried. I’m so very grateful I got a wonderful case worker. He understood .
I was in a relationship with my boyfriend (Let’s call him A) for 2 years. It was the perfect relationship everyone dreams about. But that changed soon.
One day, I was at my friend’s house (Let’s call her B) to take some notes because exams were coming up. I didn’t tell him about it. After half an hour, B receives a call so she goes outside to answer it as she didn’t want to bother me. But after a minute, she comes back in, puts the phone’s speaker on and the convo went something like this.
B- Sorry, I didn’t catch that. What did you say?
The voice on the other end said: “I love you”.
I recognised the voice. It was him. I looked at B as if everything was over. But she continued talking to him.
B- But what about your girlfriend? This would break her.
A- We don’t need to tell her anything. It’ll be our secret.
I felt like my heart would give out. I wanted to scream or do anything just to relieve me from the pain I was experiencing. To think that the two years we spent together was a lie was too much to handle. I called him after I calmed down a bit. He said he did that because B’s boyfriend wanted to test her loyalty. I didn’t buy that and we broke up that day.
A friend and I were driving uhaul box trucks when we decided to stop at a gas station to get snacks and drinks. When pulling in, I saw a car parked parallel across 3 parking spaces. Without even taking about it, I parked directly in front of the offending car while my friend parked directly behind it. We got out, smiled at each other over our telepathic decision to mess with the offender, and went inside.
The car’s owner was apparently going out as we were going in, saw how we were parked, and followed us back in and started yelling at us, demanding we move.
Me: No
Bad Parker: I will call the cops is you don’t!
Friend: Ok.
BP: Don’t try me! Move your damned trucks!
Me: Naw, go ahead and call the cops.
Friend: Yeah, we’ll wait. We’re going to eat in, anyway. (The gas station has an Arby’s attached. We weren’t originally, btw, but you know how it goes.)
Me: It’ll be fun watching you have your embolism when they ticket you for parking like that.
We went and got our food, to our time eating and left. During that time, BP apparently tried getting to station manager to make us move and kept yelling and screaming until we were finally done. As we were leaving, BP yelled at us some incoherent crap that I don’t really remember. My friend returned a parting comment about BP’s horrible parking, and we left.
All in all, we were at the gas station about a 45 minutes longer than we’d initially planned. We don’t know what, if any, trouble BP got into it if he ever did it again. We stopped at the same station on the return trip, in the off chances that BP was a local and would return, but he didn’t while we were there.
We had an employee who didn’t just say something that got him fired, he immediately followed it up with an action that also would have gotten him fired on its own.
I work for a vets office. We had a new tech that seemed afraid to do anything. He claimed most animals were aggressive and just wouldn’t touch them. Well we don’t allow techs to do injections until they are comfortable doing simply things like taking temperatures and checking heart rates which he still couldn’t do.
One day, we get a cat in for a tech appointment. Notes said “allergy shot.” For most cats, this mean a depo injection but you always ask the doctor what you should give. He did not. Instead he took the appointment himself, big no no at this stage and strike one. He brought the cat back and told another tech the cat needed a cytopoint injection. Strike two, he doesn’t get to make medication/ injection calls. The other tech asked if he was sure as that sounded wrong and he said “yes, that’s what the doctor told me.”
Ya see, cytopoint can be deadly to cats and is for dogs only. So the tech asked again, “are you sure that’s what the doctor said?” He got annoyed, told her that what the doc said and he got the cytopoint himself and injected it himself. Strike three. You’re out.
He was fired. The cat did almost die and we ended up having to give them free care for about six months for all their pets to make up for it. The cat survived but now has health issues.
One of my colleagues was almost impossible to layoff. She was pregnant during a round of layoffs, and took maternity leave a week earlier than expected, and was gone for a full year, she came back expecting the layoffs would be over, but after a couple of months, they announced that there were new layoffs the next week. She called in sick Monday through Thursday, and on Thursday, they called her and said unless her doctor faxed in a note on Friday, she had to come in. By then everybody had been laid off, except her. She checked in and made sure everyone saw her, and then disappeared.
Her boss looked high and low for her, and eventually found a locked stall in the washroom. She looked under, and saw her shoes. She had to fire her through the bathroom door.
My colleagues only response was, I knew I should have lifted my feet.
She became a legend in the company. The nail in the coffin was not lifting her feet.
Which became a phrase everyone used when they got caught doing something wrong.
Went to Vegas . Won around $17000 . The wife and I split it between ourselves before the cdn border. Declared it and got home. Reminded her to put her cash in the safe. Few days later, I went in to grab all of it to deposit in our US acct and just found my part in it. Asked her about it. She couldn’t find it. Looked sll over. Than she thought she might had left it in the taxi on the way home. FUCK!! $9000 USD gone. So, a couple years later. We’re getting rid of her old car and im just going thru it, and lo and behold, it’s in between the seats in the car. She had put it there for safekeeping cause she went grocery shopping and didn’t wanna take all that in her purse. Why she didn’t remember that 2 yrs prior, I’ll never know. 😔 But I’ve learned to live with my wife’s poor memory. She was born without a thyroid and takes meds for that but it causes a horrible memory sometimes..
I’ve written about this before, but I think it bears repeating.
I learned how to cook very early on. My mother was working one Thanksgiving when I was 12. I volunteered to cook the dinner. She’d be home around 5 or so. Dinnertime had not been specified. Turkey went in the oven that morning. Since it was a day off school and I was a kid, I grabbed my bike and went riding all around town. I remember a fun, free-wheeling day until I got home.
I got back around 4:30 and realized I had to hurry. My brothers and father laid around and watched me as I hurried to prepare the meal. There wasn’t much to do if they had pitched in: boil potatoes, heat up rolls, boil the frozen corn, etc. But they didn’t. My mom walked in while I was peeling potatoes. She stopped dead in her tracks. “Dinner’s not ready?” I said “It will be ready in a few minutes.” I wasn’t lying. It would have been 20 minutes max. She threw up her hands like I told her I was a pregnant 12-year-old crackhead. She started screaming at me. Dad came running in to see what the fuss was. He took off his belt and whipped me violently right there in the kitchen, potato peeler still in my hand, for not having everything ready “on time” (again, we didn’t know exactly when she would be home, and no dinnertime had been set). My brothers just watched. I was sent to my room in the basement for the night. I don’t know who finished cooking, probably my mother in her martyrdom.
Here’s how it could (should) have gone down:
Scenario One: I come home at 4:30. Dad: “You’re cutting it close. Boys, go help your sister.”
Scenario Two: Mom comes home at 5:00. I’m peeling potatoes. “Dinner’s not ready?” “It will be ready in a few minutes.” “Okay, good, I’m starving. I’m going to take a shower/change/lie down for a few minutes. Call me when it’s ready.”
Scenario Three: Mom come home at 5:00. She starts yelling. Dad comes in. “Calm down, it’ll only be a few minutes. Here, let me take your stuff. Come in and lie down for a few minutes.” (to my brothers) “Get in here and help your sister.”
It took me many years to realize this day was an example of so, so many things. Dysfunction, piss-poor communication, child abuse, sexism, Old-World parenting (as in 1800s bullshit), knee-jerk reactions, and so much more. My family was fucked up, to say the least.
And I don’t care if that was the way they were raised. I am not a believer in the cycle-of-abuse crap. They were adults, they had brains to think with, they could make rational adult decisions. They knew better.
Edit: I think I need to address that there was a dried-up old bitch of a troll who left a comment that it was my fault, I was deservedly punished, I should have stayed home all day and had dinner ready, my poor poor mother, I was martyring myself, shame on me. Yes, that comment really happened (I deleted it and told her to fuck off). I wasn’t only abused at home, and this wasn’t the first or last time. I was bullied mercilessly at school. To have a day away from bullies at school was a real treat, so yes, I was going to take my bike and go have some fun while the turkey cooked. I was a kid. I wasn’t 20. And yes, I screwed up and mismanaged my time. Again—I was a kid. And my parents wildly overreacted—with violence against a child— instead of keeping calm and reacting reasonably. If someone told me they were cooking me dinner, but when I came home it was going to be 20 minutes late, I’d say “Okay, cool” and either jump in the shower or flop down and watch TV. I wouldn’t start screaming and whipping them with a belt. So again, troll: Fuck off. If you have kids, I sincerely feel sorry for them and I hope CPS is keeping an eye on you, old twat. You’re the reason child protection agencies exist.
Almost every Chinese City beats Indian Cities hollow in terms of Cleanliness, Safety and Development
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There are Primarily three reasons for this :-
A. One Party Meritocracy & Funds
In China, fund allocation for Cities and their overall Urban development is based on the Urban Development Index (UDI) plus between 15% upto 46% of the revenue generated by a City is used by the Local Government of that Province and the Administration of that City to develop the place
There is no political rivalries or party based discrimination between Fund Allocation and Revenue sharing
It’s all about How much the City develops and how well maintained the City is
In India, funding is a nightmare because the State themselves have no claim over the money they generate as revenue. Everything is handed over to the Centre which then decides how much each State should get and then the State decides how much each City should get
China has 20 times the provincial autonomy than an Indian State
B. Continuous Development to prevent overcrowding
India keeps on dumping on the same city again and again for year after year. Thus every such city attracts migrants like flies and that leads to overcrowding of the worst order
China keeps developing and expanding new Cities regularly
Chengdu, Chongqing etc were small towns a decade or so ago that are now bustling cities, brimming with Prosperity
Urumqi was once a town , now it’s classified as a Tier 3 City
Thus if you notice Shanghai and Beijing both lost 4% and 5.6% of the population due to migration between 2013–2023 whereas Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad netted between 7.6% and 12% SURPLUS population by migration between 2008–2023
C. Chinas Housing Policy
Everyone living with a proper Job in a City in China MUST have housing
This is a law from the time of Chairman Mao and when it’s a Chairman Mao law, it’s enforcement is very strict
Public Housing is thus available for every single resident of the city including the poorest of them
Only Shanghai and Beijing has slums today , which existed before the 1998 law and thus can’t be torn down
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If you have a legitimate job in CQ City, you get a Public Apartment of 39–52 Square Meters with indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning and gas and electricity and drinking water for a mere 78 RMB / month
Of course many Chinese become prosperous enough to rent much nicer places and sub lease their public homes for which they pay rent of 78 RMB/ month for 400–500 RMB / month
During Covid 19, many such people were discovered and fined very heavily (30, 000 RMB plus 60 months rent or 100 Days in Prison)
A Fourth reason is the fact that Migration into Cities is heavily controlled
You just can’t come to a City that easily without housing or a job unless you are a tourist there
In India it’s the opposite
You can flood into cities and sleep on the roads and everywhere else and even defecate
It’s like a Zoo
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So it’s the Chinese System
They may have their flaws but by God they have excellent City maintenance and keep themselves very clean
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Their Air Quality improvement in a mere decade is something every nation takes notes on
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Primarily another reason is the Chinese are proud of their country and love their country
Not the bogus love that Indians show which translates into defending India for all it’s weaknesses, glorifying mediocrities as superheroes, forcing people to stand up for the National Anthem etcetera
The genuine love that ensures they actively take pride in their development and their cities
Declining population is not just a Chinese problem; but rather it is a worldwide problem. Most developed or developing countries have seen significant decreases in birth rates that coincide with an ever aging demographic.
Importing people from other countries is certainly an option. Especially considering how men vastly outnumber women in China. But I think it will require more than bringing in more people. China needs to tackle this problem on two fronts.
Firstly, building society with the mindset that the elderly need to be taken care of, whether that be through family or through a skilled nursing facility. China should look into building these all over the country. They don’t have to be as bleak as some in the U.S., but there needs to be a safety net for a vulnerable aging population in the event their children can’t or won’t care for their needs.
The second front is low birth rate. China’s work culture isn’t conducive to motherhood right now. 996 doesn’t make women want to get pregnant. Women also need paid maternity leave for at least a year.
The government can subsidize kindergartens and ensure that the education they’re receiving is at an appropriate standard. Families can be provided with subsidies for each child for a certain number of years.
China has a planned economy so if they begin implementing such plans in upcoming five year plenary sessions then perhaps they can be one of the first countries to find a solution to this worldwide problem.
My mom was an RN, and wore a white uniform with starched cap every night when she went to work. When she got home in the morning she’d go straight to bed, and then get up around 3 p.m., dressed in capri pants (also called “pedal pushers”) or shorts in the summer, along with a blouse, often sleeveless, and canvas sneakers. Never any jewelry around the house or on quick trips to the store; that, and dresses and low-heeled pumps, were reserved for special occasions. For a really special occasion, like a trip to NYC to see a Broadway show, she added a hat to her outfit, and she and I wore short white cotton gloves. For school, I and all the other little girls wore shirtwaist dresses with petticoats, and the boys wore long pants and button-up shirts, with clip-on ties for school picture day. Up until a certain age, I wore my brother’s hand-me-down shorts and tee shirts for after-school play clothes.
None of us had as many clothes as we do today; our small closets were plenty big enough for our wardrobes (some of which were sewn or knitted by our mothers). But the quality of what we wore was higher, and we tended to wear everything until it wore out or we outgrew them.
Looking crisp and put together was important for our parents, since most of them had grown up during the Great Depression, when having raggedy clothing was a sign of poverty. Since synthetic blends didn’t become readily available until the very end of the 1950s, everything had to be ironed and/or starched. It was a chore my mother absolutely hated, so she was an early devotee of polyester blends when they came out.
Had she lived to this decade, she would have been baffled by people paying high prices for strategically ripped jeans, as well as the upper-class preference for “natural” fabrics like cotton and linen, which must be ironed!
There is a law that says if any person is caught with possession of Marijuana (Cannabis) while entering China (Airports or Borders) then he faces Life Imprisonment if he carries more than 50 GRAMS
Yet ONCE IN CHINA if a person gets caught with the same cannabis or Marijuana, as long as the Marijuana on his possession is within 300 grams, he gets 15 Days Imprisonment, 45 Days Mandatory State Rehabilitation plus a fine
So technically if you smuggle 100 grams into China, you face life in jail yet if you succeed and get past the customs and manage to cross 300–400 feet and then get caught, you face 15 Days Jail and a fine
Plus no law about what happens when you possess less than 50 grams of cannabis
So as on date if someone smuggles less than 50 grams of cannabis into China and is caught – He is merely deported and the smuggled cannabis is destroyed
Next thing is Cultivation of Marijuana is not illegal in China
So if you are caught with 1 Kilogram of Cannabis and you can prove it is grown in China and explain that you are in possession of 1 Kilogram of Cannabis / Marijuana for medical purposes – YOU CAN ACTUALLY GET OFF WITHOUT ANY PUNISHMENT
The authorities have to prove you possess the Marijuana for intent to distribute as a Narcotic substance to charge you
For a Westerner who possesses 1 Kilogram Marijuana though, he cannot prove its grown in China or that he is in possession for Industrial or Medical purposes
So with Westerners the law assumes he is distributing as a narcotic substance and if so HE FACES THE DEATH PENALTY
Summary
To the best of my study of drug laws:-
< 50 grams smuggled – Deportation & Destruction of the Drug
>= 50 grams smuggled –Life Imprisonment
<= 300 grams possession inside China – 15 Days Imprisonment , 45 Days Rehabilitation (Optional), Fine
>300 grams possession inside China proven as grown in China by Mainland Citizen – No Punishment likely beyond censure and monitoring without proof of distribution or intent
>300 grams possession inside China by a foreigner – Death Penalty unless he can prove the same drug originated from local cultivation for industrial or medical purposes
Plus China has another law
Any Person in whose PREMISES consumption of Marijuana takes place regardless of quantity or fore knowledge will face 3 Years Mandatory Jail plus 50,000 RMB fine
This is called SHELTER LAW
Thus if you are a landlord and a tenant smokes Marijuana in your apartment that you have leased out – YOU WON’T BE CHARGED BY THE SHELTER LAW
However if your friend smokes Marijuana in your flat that you lease or own – You face 3 years Jail
At the age of 11 my mother forced me to accompany my sister (17) whenever she went outside.
I was obviously reluctant at first but finally agreed. I used to sit behind the activa while she rode to the grocery store, shopping mall etc.
It was all good until the following incident took place.
It was around 7 pm and we were coming back from the supermarket.
Two boys with covered faces stopped their bike in front of us, passed an inappropriate comment and disappeared before we could think of anything.
I was perplexed. I was shocked. I felt helpless. I felt weak. I knew the meaning of that comment.
I didn’t eat properly that night. I was sleepless for a few days. Mom noticed a change in my behaviour.
Mom: Is something bothering you? You don’t seem fine.
Me: I was waiting to share it with someone. The stress was enormous and I told her exactly what I felt.
Mom: Did you talk to your sister after the incident?
Me: No maa!! If I felt helpless and weak, I can’t even imagine what she would have felt.
Mom: This is why I told you to accompany her. See, you are going to be a teenager soon and perhaps you’ll think that it’s cool to follow a girl or pass some comments. Even some of your friends might force you. They’ll tell you that it’s ok.
But now you know that it is not. I’m sure you wouldn’t want any girl to feel like the way your sister did.
And she was right. The people close to me know that I’ve severed friendships, raised my voice but I never compromised on this fact.
I would never ever want any girl to feel the way my sister did.
If you’ve ever been to a Chick Fil A, you’ve probably noticed their menu is pretty chicken-centric. That isn’t accidental, and it isn’t just a branding gimmick; there’s actually a history behind it.
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Their commitment to chicken goes all the way back to the founder, S. Truett Cathy. He opened his first diner in the 1940s and spent years perfecting the pressure fryer to cook his chicken sandwich faster than anyone could cook a hamburger. This was the birth of what ultimately became Chick Fil A’s signature menu item: the original chicken sandwich.
At the root of it, Chick Fil A doesn’t serve beef because they don’t have to. Their identity is so closely tied to chicken that serving beef would be like McDonald’s suddenly deciding to specialize in vegan food. It would throw people for a loop.
Chick Fil A’s boneless breast of chicken sandwich made its debut in 1964 with great success, paving the way for the first Chick Fil A restaurant that opened in 1967. Cathy even made a play on words with “Chick” to emphasize chicken and play down beef. This is a differentiation strategy. Just like you wouldn’t go to Burger King for a taco or to Taco Bell for a fish and chips plate, you wouldn’t go to Chick Fil A for a beef burger.
There’s also the branding component, right? You’ve seen the billboards with the cows painting “Eat Mor Chikin,” pushing the chicken agenda while steering people away from their own kind. It’s a brilliant marketing strategy that reinforces the no-beef policy.
While there’s no formal manifesto on why they don’t serve beef, the logic is clear: specialization. In a world where you can get a burger at every highway exit, being the go-to chicken spot sets you apart.
Staying in their lane has allowed Chick Fil A to perfect their products, focus on their poultry niche, and maintain the consistency and quality that has customers loyally returning to their restaurants. For many businesses, it’s a scary thing to put all your eggs (or chickens) in one basket, but for Chick Fil A, doing just that has been the secret sauce to their success.
So, in Portland, OR, where I’m based, if I’m craving chicken, it’s pretty neat knowing I can swing by Chick Fil A and get that same sandwich that put them on the map all those years ago, while also being assured that there won’t be a burger in sight. They’ve stayed true to the original plan for over half a century, and it’s working wonders for them.
It took a long time, but it is finally happening. China’s gloves are coming off, and it is getting tough on Taiwan and the west.
For Taiwan, the Commerce Ministry has decided that Taiwan’s government has unfairly blocked the sale of many PRC products in Taiwan. For a long time, the PRC had allowed Taiwan imports to the PRC in the hope that Taiwan would eventually open up to PRC products on a reciprocal basis, but that has not happened, even when Taiwan has had food shortages. The Commerce Ministry will shortly announce which Taiwan products will be blocked from being sold in the PRC, which is the single largest market for many local Taiwan products.
For the west, China is now blocking the sale of rare-earth processing technologies to the west. This is a field essential for semiconductor manufacturing and defense technologies, and will hit Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the US especially hard as they try to develop their own independent supply chains free from Chinese components and raw materials.
For 2024, I am expecting an avalanche of new patents from Huawei for new technologies which leapfrog current western technologies. Western governments and companies will be faced with a difficult choice: Will they pay licensing fees to Huawei and other Chinese companies for these technologies, or will they insist on developing their own technologies and components using their own capabilities?
This is a very tough choice because investing in their own non-Chinese research and development will take at least five years, and will likely take more than ten years. Then, when that issue is resolved, where will they do the manufacturing? China has the best and most modern infrastructure and supply chains, so there will be a huge cost penalty for doing it on their own. When it comes to lower costs, the Chinese are masters of the game.
An even more important question: Where is the largest market for these products? Most likely, it will be China. So these products won’t be sold in China to Chinese? So where will it be sold?
The entire hospital’s blood bank supply. We had to send to nearby centers for more. We had to put our own trauma center on ambulance diversion until more arrived.
After forty units, the chance of survival drops precipitously. The chance over a hundred— who knows? Past diminishingly small. Unreported, possibly. The physiologic derangement is simply too great. Banked blood is not like our own. It is cool, watery, weak and deficient. And this toxic cocktail had washed out every native red cell in her body, splashed out itself, and been poured back in again.
Every raw surface had begun to ooze.
We had already coded her twice.
With the blood welling up in spite of my every effort, I threw packs of thick cotton gauze in her chest, trying to stem the torrent. Trying to buy a moment to think. She had the same injury that killed Princess Diana. My partner looked across the table at me, a slight shake to her head. The probe at the head of the bed beeping out a constant register of oxygen saturation suddenly dipped in tone. I glanced, alarmed, over the drape and saw, unmistakably, her eyes opened, her teeth gripping the tube, her lips forming words to the anesthesiologist who hurried to medicate her. A tear sliding down her cheek towards her ear.
She’s neuro intact.
“She’s neuro intact,” I said, this time aloud, as my eyes reconnected with my partner’s. “She’s neuro intact,” I repeated, as a kind of mantra.
My partner nodded. “Okay, let’s keep going then,” and pulled the packs out.
She was forty-five.
Previously healthy.
And all there.
When I reviewed the case later before a panel of my peers, I argued this made her somehow salvageable. They scoffed. I reconsidered. So why, then, had I “wasted” so many resources on one woman with such devastating injuries, who ultimately died, as I knew she would?
Because I couldn’t look her in the eye and tell her no more.
Cut meat across the grain into thin strips 1 1/2 inches long.
Combine 1/2 tablespoon of the soy sauce, vinegar and egg white in medium bowl; beat lightly with fork until foamy. Mix in meat. Cover and let stand 2 hours.
Cut celery into 1/2-inch diagonal slices.
Combine celery, 1 cup of the water and the salt in saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until boiling. Boil 3 minutes.
Drain celery.
Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in wok over high heat.
Drain meat and add to wok. Stir fry until meat is brown, about 5 minutes. Remove meat from wok. Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil to wok. Add celery, onions, ginger and garlic. Stir fry 1 minute. Return meat to wok; mix well.
Combine remaining 1/2 cup water, 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce, the sherry, cornstarch and oyster sauce. Pour over meat-vegetable mixture. Cook and stir until liquid boils and thickens.
When driving a Private Hire Taxi to help pay my way through University one night I had to swerve to miss a guy staggering into the road. I thought he was a drunk but pulled up just to check he was OK. He staggered up to the passenger side window and slumped against it. He murmured for help, at that same moment I saw blood smeared all down the window. I saw another figure approaching the car, I was horrified to see he appeared to be carrying a huge knife. I opened the rear door and pulled the injured guy in. There was a lot of blood and I wasn’t sure he would make it. I drove off as the pursuer closed up. I radioed base and told them I had a seriously injured stabbing victim in the car. They called the hospital and the police. I sped to the emergency dept. on the way being picked out by a police car as I (very carefully) jumped a red light. They knew the situation and gave me an escort to the hospital. They were ready and waiting for him when we arrived.
The guy survived. The car was a total mess, but putting everything in perspective, a small price to pay.
He survived with 2 or 3 life-threatening wounds, making a full recovery, the police and the medics told me I’d saved his life.
I was later thanked by both him and, believe it or not the perpetrator, who received a jail sentence far shorter than he would have got for murder. Apparently they were friends and a disagreement over rent had got out of all proportion leading to the incident. Had I not had the feeling this was not just another drunk staggering around in the dark, a lot of lives would have changed that night.
As a newly hired IT Director in a City, I discovered one programmer who had been there for a number of years had no real assignments. He came in each morning, read the paper, then put his feet up and took a nap.
I promptly gave him an assignment and watched as he did nothing. I met with him numerous times and he finally mentioned that I couldn’t do anything because he had been there so long, he couldn’t be fired – certainly not by a new manager like me!
Challenge!
I documented my meetings and his comment and went to HR. They told me he was likely correct as he was a union steward, as well. I escalated to a HR Supervisor who suggested I build a file then apply progressive discipline.
And so it began. I gave him an assignment in writing. I had him agree, in writing, that he understood the project and how long it should take to complete. I set weekly goals for him to accomplish and when he didn’t, I applied progressive discipline. The first time, I issued a written reprimands warning that he could be terminated if this continued. Next, a written disciplinary memo. After that, I sent him home for a day with no pay. He immediately appealed.
At the appeal hearing, he brought a union lawyer, who claimed the project was too difficult and he needed additional training. That was BS, IMO, for a Senior Programmer with 8 years experience. However, the mediator suggested providing the training.
He began two weeks of training the following Monday. I found out he skipped several days and the instructor told me he knew the material going in and we were wasting taxpayer money to send him.
He continued to miss assignments, and I wrote several more written reprimands before suspending him with a 3 day unpaid suspension. He filed another appeal.
In this hearing, the union Attorney suggested that he occasionally fell asleep because he had kids who occasionally kept him up late at home. The mediator supported the suspension. When he returned, we sent him to the City Doctor for a “fit to work” physical exam. The Doctor determined he had sleep apnea and said he should spend a month at home using a CPAP machine for a month before returning for another physical (with full pay, of course). While he was gone, I gave his assignment to another programmer who knocked it out in 3 days.
When he finally came back to , I gave him another assignment with specific written instructions. Within a week, he violated the instructions and made an unauthorized and undocumented change to the system that opened the City up to several million dollars of legal liability.
I issued a written suspension for two weeks without pay and began the termination paperwork. At the end of the two weeks, he came in and gave me his written resignation.
Game over in 10 months.
During this period, he constantly complained to other staff, hurting morale. I even got a phone call from his wife telling me how cruel I was because he liked his job and asking why I hated her husband.
Because there was no India before 1947, it was just a colonial area composed of hundreds of small kingdoms forcibly annexed by the British. Maybe you would say that there were many countries in South Asia with large territories before Britain, but no former Indian country had a territory as large as India now. In particular, even though North India was often unified into one Greater India, South India and Northeast India were almost never ruled by North India. Therefore, there is no definite border line between China and India.
image 26
2 China was once very friendly and hoped to peacefully demarcate the Sino-Indian border.
India became independent in 1947. New China was founded in 1949. China and India are both third world countries. China wants to maintain good relations with India, so it wants to delimit the Sino-Indian border through peaceful negotiations with India. China says that we do not accept the boundary lines privately drawn by the colonists and that we can resolve them through negotiation. Our border areas are all no-man’s land, and the disputed areas on our borders total 120,000 square kilometers. According to the current actual control areas of both parties, China can recognize that 90,000 square kilometers of southern Tibet (now called Arunachal) belongs to India. India recognized that 30,000 kilometers of Aksai Chin belongs to China, and we signed a boundary agreement on this basis. From then on, both sides have an undisputed boundary line, and there will be no disputes or wars. From then on, friendly relations between China and India became the first Brotherly countries in the three worlds.
However, India firmly rejected any plan from China. It took the map drawn by the British and told China that this is the new India. You must fully accept that southern Tibet and Aksai Chin are mine. Because the Indians continued the arrogance of the colonizers. It has not learned to get along well with its neighbors, so this is the most important reason why India has poor relations with all its neighbors.
3. The reasons and purposes of the 1962 Sino-Indian War.
The reason is that India’s forward policy has invaded Chinese territory and challenged China’s bottom line.
The purpose is to make India understand that it must stop when China says to stop.
In 1962, India hoped to invade China step by step through the Forward Policy. The so-called forward policy is to advance the Indian barracks one kilometer towards Chinese territory every day, and then claim that this is India’s territorial scope. China has repeatedly warned India not to challenge China. But India ignored China’s anger and continued to invade China, even crossing the northern part of the McMahon Line claimed by India and entering undisputed Chinese territory. Therefore, China must use a language that Indians can understand to let India understand that the bottom line of the Chinese cannot be breached. This term is military power.
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Indian prisoners in 1962
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4 Why did China withdraw from the battle after winning the battle?
A Because China’s war goals were achieved, this is the most important reason.
From the beginning, China just wanted to teach the Indians a lesson, to let them recognize the reality, not to be too greedy, and not to ignore China’s warnings. When China says that LAC is the bottom line, don’t challenge China’s bottom line and don’t cross the LAC. When you really cross the LAC, China has enough strength to beat you back. So after China taught the Indians a lesson, China felt that was enough, so it returned to the state before the war and returned to the original line of actual control.
Maximizing revenue B
Simply put, it means achieving the highest benefit with the lowest cost.
If the Indians crossed one kilometer of LAC and China counterattacked 20 kilometers and stayed to occupy the land, it would definitely cause India to expand the war regardless of the cost, and the war would not stop lightly.
It would be unwise to plunge two countries with hundreds of millions of people into endless war.
It would be unwise to plunge two countries with hundreds of millions of people into an ongoing war over mostly uninhabited mountainous and desert areas.
War costs huge amounts of money. OThe value of a cannonball fired in one hour is enough to feed the residents of a small town for a year. In 1962, both China and India were quite poor countries, especially China. 1962 was the hungriest year in the history of New China. It would be very unfavorable for China to fall into a long-term war at this time.
China has pushed its battle line to the Indian plains. If China insists on fighting here, it will be at a huge disadvantage, because to transport an artillery shell from a Chinese factory here, it requires the use of donkeys to climb dozens of mountains over 3,000 meters. , spanning thousands of kilometers, requires a huge amount of transportation energy. Even if a 10-dollar artillery shell costs $1,000 here, Indian artillery shells can be transported directly by truck, and a 10-dollar artillery shell is worth at most $100. In other words, the cost in China is at least 10 times more expensive than in India. This is an asymmetric war. If China continues to fight here, the original victory will turn into a defeat, or a tragic victory. As a master of war, the Chinese will not make such mistakes. Therefore, China decisively returned to the LAC before the war.
In the 1962 war, from the perspective of territorial acquisition, China did not gain more territory than before the war. But the benefits are still huge.
The biggest benefit is that in the decades after 1962, Indians no longer dared to cross the LAC lightly and no longer dared to advance policies. In other words, Indians have heartily accepted that LAC is the default boundary line between China and India. This won decades of peace along China’s southwestern border.
The border conflict in 1967 was only a few days of minor fighting over the dispute between China and India over the LAC demarcation line at Nathu La Pass. At that time (32 Chinese soldiers died and 101 Indian soldiers died)
image 327image 326image 325
Indian prisoners in 1967
Maybe 1962 has passed too long, maybe Indians feel that India in 2020 is no longer the India in 1962, so the Indians crossed the LAC again in 2020, so China was forced to take action again to teach the Indians a lesson. I hope Indians understand that although India is not the India of 1962, China is not the China of 1962. China was in its poorest period in 1962, when China’s GDP was even lower than India’s. China GDP in 2020 is five times larger than India. Don’t provoke China, China is more powerful than you think.
She’s lying. She has no idea what to do. What she’s trying to selli is the idea that she does.
Here’s the problem. Americans want fentanyl. Enough Americans want fentanyl as to make it worth the enormous risk of smuggling either it, or the raw materials to make it, into the United States. Capitalism 101. And there is no way to stop that. None. Every attempt we’ve ever made to stop drug use by prohibition has been not only an utter failure, but has caused us more trouble than the actual problem we were trying to fix.
There’s a deeper problem. Fentanyl is a symptom, not a cause. And that cause is the utter hopelessness and the lack of resources for the poor in the US. We’ve literally criminalized poverty. We have the weakest social safety net in the industrial world, and we’ve decided that a tax structure that makes it possible for a handful of men to amass fortunes that can buy them freedom from the law, is a good thing even if it leaves 20% of the country living below the poverty line in an information and resource vacuum that leaves most trapped.
Preying on the poor is hugely profitable, and the capitalists have risen to the task. We choose to look away and complain.
I once worked for a dental lab as part of a “back-to-work” rehab program after a work injury. I was working late one Friday and took a delivery into the mail room for shipment the next day. The mail room was adjacent to the owner’s office and I overheard him and his wife (his accountant) and the office manager planning on replacing some 60% of the staff with high-school kids in work-study programs. The boss, Rick, heard me taping up the box and came in, asking what I was doing and if I heard them, to which I said no. He told me I wasn’t supposed to work late and leave the package for the next day.
On Monday I was called into a meeting with Rick, his wife and my rehab consultant about missing many hours of work. He slid three altered times cards across the table as proof, not realizing I had copies of all my time cards as required by the work comp insurer. I pulled them from my bag and told him he was lying and falsified the cards because I overheard him planning on firing staff. He fired me anyway so as I left, I walked into the large work area and announced loudly, “Rick is going to replace most of you with high-school kids and he just fired me because I overheard him planning it.”
Two weeks later he let nine people go, replacing them with high-school kids. By the end of the month another six employees left for the competition and without experienced employees, he went out of business by the end of the year. I actually ran into him at the grocery store the following year and asked him how his business was going. He said, “Go f*ck yourself!” Best. Vindication. Ever. 🙂
This goes back fifty years, but I will never forget it.
My mother’s aunt and uncle (Annie and Homer) were married for over fifty years. They never had any biological children, but did adopt a daughter (Mary Catherine) and raised her as their own.
MC grew up, got married, and moved out of state with her husband. (The parents lived in Memphis, and the daughter lived in southeastern Missouri, about a five-hour drive apart.)
Being much younger, I only met the daughter a couple of times while I was growing up. She didn’t visit Memphis often.
Aunt Annie fell and broke her hip in an accident in her early-80’s. She survived the fall, but lapsed into dementia and died about two years later. Mary Catherine didn’t attend the funeral. (When I asked why, none of the adults in my family would talk about it.)
Uncle Homer lived another few years. His mind was sharp, but his physical health started failing. During the last year of his life, he was bedridden at home and required regular nursing visits during the day.
One afternoon, Uncle Homer called our house all frantic, asking my mother to come to his house. She and I drove over, a trip that took about fifteen minutes.
When we arrived, he was yelling and crying. His nurse had also arrived, but wasn’t able to calm him down.
When he saw my mom, Uncle Homer told us the story: Mary Catherine and her husband had shown up, and cleaned out the house of everything they wanted.
He had yelled and screamed, and had fallen out of bed trying to stop them, but they both just laughed at his efforts and took everything of value. He had gotten his gun out from the beside table, but his nurse had removed the bullets from it long beforehand.
The daughter and husband left before Uncle Homer called us, so we never saw them.
My grandfather had the daughter’s number in Missouri and called her that evening. She was not at all repentant and argued that the stuff she took was her just reward for putting up with her parents for decades. Apparently, she was upset because they had “lived too long.” She also let him know that she expected to get Uncle Homer’s house when he was gone.
Uncle Homer didn’t call the police on his daughter, but he was clearly heartbroken after this incident. His life spark and sense of humor were gone. He lasted about three more months, and passed away at age 92.
After he died, Mary Catherine didn’t attend the funeral, but did come back to deal with her inheritance. It turned out that Uncle Homer had altered his will and gave his house to his nurse, a widow who had been living in a rented place nearby.
The value of the house was a lot greater than the stuff that the daughter had stolen.
There was that girl that had been lonely all her life. People, especially in school, disliked her because she was “strange”, “a nerd”, “too quiet” and just “different”.
One day she decided to talk to her teachers during the breaks instead of trying to fit in where she didn’t. She always acted older than her age and her teachers liked her, so they usually didn’t send her away, but had a friendly chat with her ever so often instead.
By tenth grade, she had almost developed some kind of friendship to a few of her teachers. When she got the “strictest teacher of the school” as her major course teacher in grade eleven, it took her mere weeks to find out that he actually wasn’t so strict at all.
They talked for at least half an hour after the lessons. About science, about our society, the people in school and whatever came to mind. Those two thought quite alike, despite an age difference of 34 years, and the girl now almost a woman could for the first time in years really live her passion for learning. Her teacher was highly intelligent and very knowledgeable, having not only written a dissertation in the past and worked in research for years but also being interested in a broad spectrum of topics.
Well, doesn’t sound so bad, now does it? So what happened?
Well, because teenagers are teenagers, it took about half a year for people to start whispering about the girl and her teacher. It started off lightly, she was still strange and why would she even talk to him?
But a few months after that, some people thought it to be funny to make up a non-existent romantic relationship between teacher and student. Despite that girl having been very close to other teachers before, but now that it was a male teacher, it suddenly was completely different. Because people of opposite gender can’t just see each other as friends, right? They just have to be in love to even think about talking to each other.
A less than funny “joke” became something way bigger. After two weeks, all of the 1600 students knew about this. And most didn’t know that it was a joke. People were laughing and pointing at her, throwing insults at the girl for something that never happened.
Finally, after about three months of dealing with it alone, she had the heart to tell her teacher. They decided to never talk to each other outside of class again, to prevent the teacher from getting problems with the school. While it was just a rumour, that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t lead to problems.
Both of them lost a friend on the day they made this decision. And the student lost a person she saw as a second father – her father barely ever was at home and her teacher had been one of three people (the other ones being her best friend and a female teacher she knew since fifth grade) she ever fully trusted. It might not have been cruel at the first glance, but it hurt her in more ways than the others students could’ve ever imagined.
As a 12 year old, he came to the auditions of Britain’s Got Talent.
You should go and get a singing teacher.
He was told by David Walliams
and that hurt the 12 year old kid. So much so that when he came for auditions 2 years later, he mentioned this on the stage again. David obviously did not remember the incident.
Kyle had taken it to his heart that ‘he was not good enough’ and had worked hard on his singing for the past 2 years.
Kyle sang that day with his heart out and the entire auditorium rose up to appreciate his talent. Everyone was moved and David Walliams somewhere realized how big a mistake he had done for hurting Kyle.
image 374
David pressed the golden buzzer, which meant Kyle went to the live shows directly. (Every judge has only one golden buzzer to use in one season.)
David came up to the stage and hugged Kyle.
Kyle transformed his embarrassment and made himself more than able in a period of 2 years.
He forced the man who had underestimated him to accept his mistake.
For me, that is the best form of revenge.
Turn your haters into your fans.
Film-Noir | Impact (1949) | Brian Donlevy, Helen Walker, Ella Raines | Movie, subtitles
Oh, I have a lot of regrets. Though, I try to minimize the mountain of built-up and pent-up regrets and memories. Often enough, though distraction and labor. In one way or the other.
Some of the regrets are silly.
Here’s a silly regret.
When I lived in Boston, I used to go into the thrift stores, and antique stores and browse around. Over time, I would often find this kind of heavy (smash on the table) white coffee cup. And it would be cheap. 25 cents more often than not. These things were great, and were really popular in the United States say up until the late 1960’s.
mug
Many had logos, and designs. Often symbols. All nicely done. Like for Naval Ships. Or for government agencies. Or for awards and events. Like a bridge opening in 1954.
So I had amassed quite a collection of them. I loved them. I had, maybe, about 35 of these things.
Later on, when I was living in Arkansas, and going though a nasty divorce with the witch that was poisoning me and who eventually got me sent to prison, I left the state with just a few items of clothing and my books.
When the time came to pack up the mugs, however, on a whim, I decided to leave them behind.
I guess that I was too upset, and too lethargic over everything to take them with me.
I shouldn’t have done that.
And now I have regrets.
…
Do not allow emotion…
…tiredness…
…frustration…
…stress…
…to allow you to make hasty and ill-advised decisions.
…
You will egret them in the future.
(A word to the wise.)
Today…
BULLETIN: Russian Forces Hit NATO Operations Center Inside Ukraine!
BULLETIN: 2:49 PM EDT 16 December 2023 — Starokonstantinov, Ukraine — Russian Aerospace Forces have struck a NATO Operations center with a Kinzhal Hypersonic Missile.
Russian Forces report and confirm the destruction of a NATO operation center in Starokonstantinov, Ukraine, by a Kinzhal hypersonic missile strike!!
Initial reports say Ukrainian suffered 28 casualties and NATO lost at least 12 officers!!
The Ukrainian forces have given no statement and have disabled communication in the region to prevent information from getting out!! They’re too late.
The US and NATO are now directly involved in Ukrainian combat operations against Russia in Ukraine!!
Riding a camel is quite an experience. It’s not like hopping onto a horse or sitting on a bike.
First off, before you even get to the exciting part, you’re going to face the camel’s getting-up process. Camels are tall creatures and they rise in stages—back legs first—which can leave you feeling like you’re about to be catapulted over their head. Holding on during that initial lurch is key.
Once you’re in motion, the rhythm is unlike any other. Camels have a swaying gait, and it can take a moment to find your balance with the camel’s oscillating movement (they often walk in a ‘pace’, moving both legs on one side of their body simultaneously). Think of it like a boat slowly rocking side to side—you need to relax and go with the flow.
The height can be disconcerting too—you’re way up there. A camel’s back is a lofty perch compared to the average horse. This means you get quite a vantage point; it’s like sitting on a slow-moving balcony. For me, here in Portland, OR, the tallest I usually get is standing up on Mount Tabor, which is nothing compared to being atop a camel, I’d bet.
But it’s not an amusement park ride. Expect some discomfort, especially if you’re not used to riding animals. The saddle, often just a blanket or a simple framework, isn’t the epitome of comfort, and it’s going to test your core strength and your backside.
Now, let’s talk about the personality of your ride. Camels can be temperamental. They’re known for being a bit…
Well, let’s say they have their own minds. They might decide to stop and refuse to move. Or they might express their displeasure in a more vocal way. Yep, they can spit if they’re really pushed. But mostly, they’re majestic creatures—stoic and adapted perfectly to their environment.
Here’s a pro tip: wear long trousers and maybe even some padding. You’ll thank me later when you’ve avoided chafing and can still walk normally the next day.
Lastly, enjoy the quirks. It’s an ancient mode of transportation, a connection to a different way of life. Riding a camel can be an opportunity to take in the landscape at a slower pace, from the deserts of the Middle East to the wilds of Australia, or even special tours elsewhere.
All told, it’s about embracing a unique adventure, one sway at a time.
Have you noticed that most public doors open outwards?
Picture this:
You’re at the cinema with your family or friends, enjoying a spectacular movie by some of your favourite actors.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fire breaks out and the fire alarm rings.
At first people are confused, but very quickly they catch on. In chaotic unison, everyone suddenly starts to panic.
And like a herd of buffalo that have just spotted a lion, everyone darts towards the door. You’re in the lead.
You reach the door first and quickly try to push it open. But it doesn’t budge. It’s a “pull” door.
Realizing your mistake, you quickly try to pull it open. But it’s too late. Everyone’s already at the door trying desperately to push through.
You can’t pull the door back, because everyone is pushing you against it and cramming at the entrance.
At the same time, people are yelling at you.
“OPEN THE DOOR!!!”
“JUST PUSH IT YOU F*CKING IDIOT!”
“PLEASE, I HAVE A BABY!”
But you can’t.
You can’t even move. Your body is being crushed against the door by the panicking crowd. Combine that with the smoke and you can’t breathe.
You’re suffocating.
This was someone’s reality in the Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903.
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The deadliest theatre fire and deadliest single-building fire in United States history. Resulting in over 602 deaths.
Luckily, by chance a passing railroad agent saw the crowd pressing against the door and unfastened the hinges from the outside using tools that he normally carried with him, allowing the actors and stagehands to escape.
Because of this incident, most public doors now open outwards or are bidirectional.
And this is why a fire exit in particular will most likely open outwards.
Not so much a mass exodus but a full team exodus – five of us. I was team leader but my elder mum (we lived together) was extremely ill, and it was clear to me that very soon the diagnosis would be one of terminal cancer, so I asked my Manager for a change in working hours so I could go home every lunch time to make sure she ate and was okay. I lived a 25 minute drive away so my intention was I would be absent 12 – 2 and make up the missing hour (1 of the hours being my lunch hour) by doing work at home that evening. Now bear in mind that for the entire 7 years I had worked for that company, and been team leader for 4 years, I had often gone in of a weekend UNPAID for at least a couple of hours to ensure that all was up to date, or took work home to do during the evening UNPAID. My team had a reputation for being fast, efficient, and friendly. We exceeded our targets every single year and received handsome bonuses.
My boss said NO. His only reason being that if he did it for me he would have to do it for others. The fact that this was exceptional circumstances and, as far as I could see, it would not be longer than a year or so (in fact, my mum died in the March of the following year, I had made my request in the July). I had already been headhunted by another local firm much nearer to my home (10 mins walk maximum) so I went back to them and they offered me a job. My boss was gobsmacked but still would not offer a change to my working hours, so I took the other job offer.
Well as soon as they knew I was leaving, my entire team started looking elsewhere and within a matter of months the entire team was gone! In fact, one member of the team actually came with me to my new employer :-D.
We sold a used car to a man who claimed that it was for his 16 year old daughter’s birthday that was the next day. He didn’t have all of the money, but said he would bring us the rest after he got his next paycheck. My heart went out to him, so I gave him the car with just a partial deposit. No surprises…he took the car and never came back. This was in Los Angeles.
Flash forward a few months, we were in downtown Las Vegas when who do I see but the thief who still owed us the money. My husband insisted it wasn’t him. I knew it was. I marched right up to him and demanded our money. The man was clearly caught off guard and then said that he didn’t have it on him. I said, “That’s okay, we’ll walk with you to the nearest ATM.” And that’s how we got the money that was owed to us.
Funny side note… the FBI called me a few months after that to see if I recognized anyone in a line up. There he was again! Turned out that he was part of an organized auto theft / chop shop ring. So much for my gut instincts!
This is one of those “Yes but / However comma” answers.
Civilians with no military experience get hung up on this idea a lot, because they don’t understand two concepts that are pretty fundamental to how the US military (and most Western-style militaries, for that matter) operate: rank is not the same thing as authority, and officers and NCOs have fundamentally different jobs and responsibilities.
Caveat that I’m coming at this question from the perspective of the Navy. An officer or NCO from another service might things somewhat differently, but I’m trying to give as ecumenical an answer as possible.
A junior officer in the O-1 pay grade* is first and foremost an apprentice officer. Everyone understands this – the JO, his NCOs, his superior officers, etc. If a new 2nd Lt or Ensign doesn’t understand this, then his instructors at his commissioning source failed to do some pretty basic education. The new butterbar is there to learn how to be a leader; the philosophy of the US military is the best way to learn is by doing. So he or she is placed in a position of leadership and, at least by the pay grade table, outranks even the saltiest E-9.
*It’s different with officers commissioned from the ranks – the Navy calls them “mustangs” – and that’s a whole different discussion outside the scope of the OP’s question
This is where the however comma bit comes in. By matter of long service and experience, the NCOs in a unit have greater informal authority. The O-1 is there to learn from them. It’s supposed to be a good working partnership that combines mentorship, OJT, and maintaining unit discipline and morale. The officer should demonstrate willingness to listen and learn and respect for the NCOs’ experience and authority over the more junior enlisted; the NCO should demonstrate patience and good mentorship while respecting the officer’s rank and extending them the courtesy due that rank. An officer who confuses his pay grade with authority undermines the NCO in front of the junior E’s. An NCO who demeans or disregards the officer undermines the officer and fails in his duty to form the young officer into the kind of leader he’d want to work for.
Of course, people are people, in uniform and not, and it doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to. Sometimes a new officer doesn’t know what to do with their by-rank authority but tries to hide it (which is silly, nobody expects a brand new officer to know how to do everything) by blindly issuing orders without listening to his NCOs, or trying to be chummy with the junior E’s (who are probably closer to his age), or masking their insecurity about their inexperience with arrogance, etc. Not all NCOs are created equal. Some don’t have the patience to mentor an officer, or the desire. Those are the “go away and let me do my job…sir” NCOs. And some NCOs are just plain incompetent, or might have been great technical specialists but with no talent for leadership. The military promotion system is, to say the least, by no means perfect.
When it works as designed though, it works well for everyone involved.
This wasn’t when we were fighting for custody, but when I was trying to have our custody case transferred to a different courts jurisdiction.
The judge asked me why I wanted the change. I told him that the kids and I had moved to the jurisdiction of the other court and I planned on asking for a change to our custody case. I had no car and with the way the public transportation ran, I had to come up with the kids the night before court and stay the night at a friends house to be able to make it to court on time and then the kids would all miss a full day of school. The judge then asked their dad why he didn’t want the change to happen. He told the judge that it would inconvenience him (even though he had a car). I had never seen a judge yell at anyone before that day. He was screaming at my ex “How does your inconvenience trump your kids missing school, spending the night away from home, spending hours on a bus?!”
If it’s a “mind game” to shut down a “mind game,” yes. I got quite blunt:
Interviewer: “You’ve proven to me you are an excellent designer; but you haven’t proven your writing skills. Here is a writing assignment. Work on it tonight and bring it to me tomorrow at 2 and I will give you your portfolio back then.” THANK YOU, NO.
Interviewer: “Do you have any idea who would buy our product? I’m thinking salesmen. But I’m not sure. Do you have any ideas? Maybe we could write some down.” THANK YOU, NO.
Interviewer: “It’s only a one-day assignment, but we have a zero-tolerance policy, you we will need a urine test from you before we will consider hiring you.” THANK YOU, NO.
Interviewer: “I need to test you. Here’s a written exam (!). You have :30 to finish it.” (I realize the “exam” is an article the hiring company needs for a trade-industry magazine.) THANK YOU, NO.
The worst mind game played on me was by a nice, professional man who I liked instantly. I arranged to meet him after the staff went home, because I was still working a full-time job. This position was for a temporary marketing person that would cover a specific 3-month project. There was the possibility it could become permanent. We had a lovely chat, and he seemed ready to hire me. He said “let me show you around.” After we toured the work area (and he showed me “my” desk), he said “Can you come back on Tuesday? I just want to introduce you to a few co-workers.” (I’m thinking he’s hired me; I lied to my current boss so I had all Tuesday morning.) On Tuesday morning, I arrived all relaxed and confident. I asked to see Mr. Manager (who was oh so nice, did I mention?). The receptionist said “Mr. Manager isn’t in today.” Me: “I’m sorry, he was interviewing me for the marketing position. I must have confused the day.” “No; said the receptionist. Follow me.” She led me into a huge conference room with six large banquet tables arranged so it was one big table. People started filing in… 7, 11, 12… I lost count. They were “the executive board” and they started peppering me with questions. I did my best to answer, but my anger at Mr. Nice Manager was boiling over. So he deliberately lied to me to presumably see how I acted “under pressure” and didn’t have the decency to even be there. Sorry, I won’t work for someone who would do that to a person. This was years ago, but I still see the company’s vans and I cringe; what did they do to the guys that drive the vans, hold them out a window by the ankles? I fell flat on my face in that interview. Maybe that’s my fault, but that is the definition of a mind game, and I didn’t want any part of someone who would do that to a prospective employee.
In short, most of my mind game interviewers are trying to get work done for free or betray a weird corporate culture (OK, you have a zero drug policy for a one-day temp job and you can’t find anyone pre-screened and in-house?). A few interviewers have left me waiting for :45 to over an hour; if they were “tricking me” or just disrespectful of me and my time, I didn’t really care because I left.
TL/DR: Pay attention to how you’re treated in an interview because whatever game they’re playing is going to get exponentially worse if they hire you. An interview goes both ways. Plus, if they’re obviously playing you, you have every right to “play” back.
I still enjoy going to theaters with my girlfriend—sometimes. It gives us an excuse to get out of the house and focus on a movie with no distractions.
It’s gotten remarkably expensive. The last time we went, tickets were nearly $25 each.
But the biggest problem is the people. There is constant talking and playing on phones.
We had teenage girls sitting in the front row during a showing of Dune. Their screens were flashing in the front row. They were sprinting in and out of the theater like hyper children.
My girlfriend left halfway through the movie to use the bathroom.
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She bumped into the teenagers and called them out for ruining the movie for everyone and they didn’t come back.
She got back from her bathroom break and said, “Don’t worry about those girls. I took care of it.”
For a brief second, I was worried she’d killed them.
Sadly, in the past three out of four movie dates we’ve been on, there has been some sort of incident. It’s making movie theaters damn near impossible to enjoy.
I’m hoping it’s just bad luck on our part. It wasn’t always like this.
Yes, indeed. Behold the HTRE-3 nuclear aircraft engine.
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Yes, this is real. Yes, the military was crazy enough to think this was a good idea.
In principle, it’s straightforward. A jet engine is just a heat engine. You suck cold air in the front, you heat it up, you spew the hot air out the back. What we normally think of as a “jet engine” heats the air up by burning jet fuel. But the heat can come from anywhere. A nuclear reactor? No sweat. They get plenty hot.
Thing is, it’s easy to make a lightweight nuclear reactor that gets as hot as you want it to. The heavy part of a reactor isn’t the core, it’s the radiation shielding around the core.
So. What do you notice is missing in this picture?
Core’s looking a bit exposed, innit?
The US military built and flew these engines [edit: an experimental reactor similar to the one designed to drive these engines, not the engines themselves: see comments!] in a test aircraft.
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They produce a lot of radiation, and you can’t easily shield them if you want them light enough to fly a plane. Which creates quite a problem for handling and servicing these things.
They considered a modular design where you could just undock the crew bits from the nasty radioactive bits…
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…and then just reprocess it or, I don’t know, throw it away or something.
Then some engineer somewhere said “you guys do realize this idea is both crazy and stupid, right?” and the idea went away.
Originally Answered: What’s the most pretentious thing you’ve ever seen on a resume?
I received a resume from someone who had recently graduated from high school. They had one job on the resume and their job title was Director in Charge of Company Morale at a prestigious local law firm.
The resume lacked all the things I was looking for, but the job title listed intrigued me. I set the interview and was waiting to hear a litany of lies.
On the day of the interview this cleancut sharp dressed young man showed up. After brief small talk I asked about the prior job and what it entailed.
Turns out his Director in Charge of Company Morale Position entailed him going out each morning and getting coffee for all the partners. He said without their morning coffee, morale was very low.
Best belly laugh in an interview ever. I hired him. And he worked out well because he found a way to place a positive attitude on everything he did, however menial the task.
Edit: I am honored that so many people like my answer. Thank you all.
Update: I’ve had several people suggest editing the gender from “they” to “he”. At the time I read the resume and set the appointment, I had no idea if the applicant was male or female. Gender was not a decision point in our hiring process. This is why I have left the answer unedited. Thank you all again for the overwhelming response.
Filipino Egg Pie
filipino egg pie
Ingredients
6 large eggs yolks
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup warm evaporated milk
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large egg whites
1 (9 inch) pie crust
Instructions
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, beat 6 large egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk, warm evaporated milk, nutmeg, vanilla extract and salt until mixed well.
Whip egg whites in a separate bowl until they form stiff peaks.
Add the whipped egg white to the milk mixture slowly until well incorporated. Pour into pie shell and bake for 45 to 50 minutes until the center is set.
Let pie cool completely before serving.
Attribution
Recipe and photo used with permission from: American Egg Board Recipe created in partnership with @thetastebud
I had a very rocky second marriage, but I loved him so kept going back for more of the same bad treatment. (I have learned better behavior now!) Our marriage consisted of lots of comings and goings, and we split up with each other quite frequently because we were really incompatible. Being around each other all the time was a trial.
He was a big time gambler and many other things besides, and I couldn’t cope with all of his bad habits. I dare say I had some bad habits, but I didn’t have any addictions, thankfully.
One time, the last time, I left home and went to stay with a friend, my husband and I talked very frequently on the phone and missed each other’s company. It was a very strange affair.
Anyway, I decided to move back in for good and went back to the house one day with all my luggage. I got to our home and went in, and what do you know, I heard a familiar sound coming from our bedroom that was on the third floor. When I climbed the stairs, I realized what was happening. Despite the fact that my husband knew I was coming home, he was up in our bedroom making love to another woman.
Needless to say, that was grounds for divorce. He caught Covid in prison and died two years ago.
My pastor and his wife tried to convince me to stay with my abusive husband and just live separately until our children were both adults and then start living like a married couple again. Why would we have to live separately you ask? Well, that would be because a few days before this conversation I had Child Protective Services (or CPS for short), the San Berdarnio County Sherifs Office, Fort Irwin (I and my ex-husband were both in the Army at the time) Military Police, and Fort Irwin Criminal Investigation Department (or CID) at my door at 10 at night trying to take my kids away from me because he FINALLY got caught beating my son. (Before this point I could not prove it as there were never bruises or marks) But this time he threw a phone at my sons face because he did not get up at 5 in the morning when his 4 year old sister had to get up to go to daycare (My son was 12 at the time) and it “wasn’t fair that she had to get up that early and he didn’t so I make them both get up”. My son did not have to be to school until 830. My daughter had to go to daycare before we both started work in the morning but got to go back to sleep at daycare so can’t figure out where fairness comes in to play.
Anyway, the pastor and his wife call and say that divorce is against the Bible and we should stay married and live apart until the kids are adults and can move out and then we continue, at that point to live together. I told them flatly no because he was also abusive to me and oh, by the way that woman he has been bringing to church as a “friend?”, yeah he has been having an affair with her for over 2 years. So, tell me again about what the Bible says? I also may have threw in there about how the Bible says there are a few reasons why divorce is accepted and a couple of those just happen to be abuse and adultery. I may have also mentioned that they have no room to talk when their own daughter was getting divorced from her husband because he came out and told her he was gay and that is NOT an acceptable reason (for that religion) to get a divorce.
I often ghostwrite for executives. My job is to help tell their story, either in book or article form. The more I learn, the more I feel bad for them.
Not one of the CEOs I’ve written for looks back fondly on the actual day-to-day CEO experience.
They loved being CEO. But they hated the job. Their phone was ringing at all hours. Every problem rolled up to them.
They had to decide the fate of many people’s careers and lives. There was immense pressure on them from stakeholders and owners. The hours they put in were beyond intense.
Most are now very wealthy — but they were undoubtedly aged by the job. It changed them.
When I was in finance, I worked alongside a senior VP and sat in on many of the executive meetings, taking notes for my boss. This was not a room full of happy people.
When you start making $200K, $300K, and up, you can expect to pay a steep price and often get a target on your back.
It is constant worry and emails and people problems.
The idea of the CEO who kicks back, smokes cigars, and yells “mush” couldn’t be further from the actual job.
Just for reference: India ($2036), Vietnam ($2551), Mongolia ($4026), Albania ($5289), South Africa ($6377). Note that all the listed are poorer than Tibet ($6550, 3m people) and Xinjiang ($7476, 24m) in term of GDP per capita.
We will look at these provinces and see what China has done specifically to develop these poor provinces.
This will be an extremely long post. Please read at your discretion. But if you read on, I’m sure you will learn a lot of new things about China:
1. Gansu province
Gansu is poor for a reason. On one side, you have the massive freezing Tibetan Plateau. On the other side, you have the deadly Gobi Desert.
God doesn’t want you to live here. But you insisted.
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Image credit: 地球知识局
What kind of environment are we talking about? Have a look at the following picture. This is what a typical village in Gansu looks like.
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Red stones, golden sands and deep valleys. Gansu is the Nevada State of China. There are a lot of sites just like the death valley and red canyon in the USA.
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The Taolai River Gorge at Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu
Imagine you are living here. You grow your food in the valleys but you have virtually no rainfall at all. Even if you managed to grow a few tons of wheat magically, where you do sell? To the nearest city? That’s fine. Please drive 5 hours out of this god damn dry mountains.
Even if you manage to find a customer to buy your wheat. He will buy your wheat for $150 per ton. But your transport and fuel cost to move the wheat out of these mountains has exceeded $100 per ton. Considering other costs, okay … , so do you grow wheat just for losing money?
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A mountain road in Jingtai County, Gansu
So you have no choice but to leave the village and become a Foxconn worker in Zhengzhou and spent your days making iPhones. That’s what most Gansu people would choose to do. As most people are leaving the rugged land to the cities, your village becomes deserted just like this:
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An abandoned village in Dingxi County, Gansu
What has the Chinese government done to address this problem?
For the 13th Five Year Plan (2016–2020), the central government has poured a huge amount of money in building expressways and railways across these God damn hills. And what’s more, they are not building “Level 5” bridges just enough for people to move. Instead, they are building “Level 50” shiny and massive bridges.
What are the differences between a “Level 5” bridge and “Level 50” bridge?
Here is an example of a “Level 5” bridge in France. Short in length and height. You have to rush down, cross the bridge and climb up the mountains.
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Here is an example of a “Level 50” bridge in Gansu. All you need to do is to pass through at the speed of 120km/h.
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Tian Ning Gou Bridge in Gansu, Tianyong expressway
These “level 50” bridges are indeed very expensive to build. But, on the other hand, they are very cost effective if you consider the amount of fuel saved for trucks, trains, and cars! You don’t have to go down and up again and again.
Even if there is already a “level 5” road along the valleys, the government is still not satisfied. They want to build another high-speed “level 50” expressway along with it. In order to run at 120km/h across the mountains and valleys, the expressway has to be filled with tunnels and bridges so that it is more stretched. This makes trucks and cars to drive faster with less distance. So the fuel cost and transport costs can be reduced significantly.
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Provincial expressways S2 in construction in Gansu (35°21’14.3″N 102°49’02.0″E)
In 2019, the total “Level 50” expressway length in Gansu has exceeded 4242km [1] (speed limit 120km/h), which is even longer than Mexico. And it is almost three times longer than India’s total length. Not only expressways but Gansu also has 4 lines of high-speed railways running at 250km/h to 350km/h (宝兰，成兰，兰新，兰渝).
In the next 14th Five Year Plan (2021–2025), the government will promise to connect every prefecture city of Gansu with high-speed railways and expressways.
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Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railways
Why are “Level 50” bridges, roads and railways are so useful?
Imagine you are the farmer mentioned above, thanks to the village road built around you, you can transport your crops to your nearest city faster and also at a lower cost. The distributor in your nearest city can also find customers in a province that is even further away. People who are at 2000km away can buy your wheat at a higher price, thanks to the giant expressway network. Overall, you can finally make profits in growing wheat in Gansu!
Still think what I said is made-up or propaganda?
Well, here is another real-life example. Imagine you live in a distant village in Gansu and you want to buy a mobile phone from Taobao (Chinese Amazon), what does it cost to ship a package of 1kg from Shenzhen to Dunhuang in Gansu in 2019? Note that the total distance is around 3500km.
You can use this Chinese website for shipping cost calculation: 快递价格和网点查询 – 快递小帮手
image 200
According to the website, the total cost for shipping over the 3500km is 15RMB ($2.2) and it promises to arrive in 3 days.
For comparison, the total cost for shipping one 1kg package from Boston to Reno in Nevada (a similar 4000km) in the USA is $26.13 according to the UPS shipping price calculator under the UPS 3-day service.
Therefore in the USA, it requires 10x more money to do the same thing! And note that they are both counted in the GDP calculation in both countries. Is it fair? Of course not. This applies to other services too.
That means Gansu is not that “poor” as we originally thought.
Instead, Gansu is also blessed with the richness in “green” natural resources. On one side, you have the freezing Tibetan plateau. On the other side, you have the hot Gobi desert. Boom! The temperature difference causes constant wind blowing. God doesn’t want you to live here but he really gives you another gift: the wind power.
Therefore, Gansu is the leader in its renewable energy sector. It has the world’s largest on-shore wind farm:
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Gansu Jiuquan Windfarm 40°40’31.2″N 95°24’44.5″E
There are so many on-shore solar farms in Gansu as well. I am not sure if it is the world’s largest. But you can spot them everywhere on Google Earth.
If you can’t grow crops on the land, then just grow solar panels.
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Gansu Wuwei Solarfarm 38°06’05.1″N 102°18’00.2″E
image 197
God also said, “Let Gansu be light”. Thanks to the Chinese, do you see the holy light?
However, despite China’s “great leap forward” in solar farm construction, they are faced with severe problems in Gansu. They are generating too much electricity and it is much more than the Gansu people can consume. The private sector is also investing heavily in Gansu, making the government unable to control the overall supply of the solar power in Gansu.
As a result, it is estimated 40% of the wind and solar electricity is wasted in Gansu [2]. We could not store the energy because currently, we don’t have giant batteries. Storing a huge amount of energy remains a problem to be solved by future technology.
The remaining choice is to transmit this huge amount of electricity through the ultra-high voltage power grid to the power-hungry Eastern China. However, building a 3000km power grid is not an easy task and people along the grid would complain about the danger and radiation above their houses. I will write about this on-going Chinese mega project and its achievements and problems in another answer.
In summary, these conclude the development in the poorest province of China —Gansu. The GDP growth for Gansu province in 2018 is 10.54% [3]. And it is still far from enough compared to other provinces because we still have a lot of distant villages in Gansu that are yet covered by decent roads and bridges. We will wait and see how China continues to eliminate poverty here.
2. Yunnan & Guizhou province
The next three poorest provinces: Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi are next to each other in the Southwest of China. There are around 140 million people living here.
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Image Credit: 地球知识局
Yunnan & Guizhou are poor for the same reason. So let’s look at them together and later we discuss Guangxi specifically.
If you have already been there, you might have already enjoyed those amazing tourist attractions in these areas. But they do not represent the majority of the people nor the whole poverty situation.
What is the real situation?
As the Indian subcontinent continues to squeeze, terrains around here are becoming more and more similar to “wrinkles”, as mountains are squeezed higher and the rivers continue to carve valleys deeper.
Yes, it is like the wrinkles of the skin.
image 194
Imagine you are living in the middle of the “wrinkle”. You would be surrounded by tall mountains and deep valleys.
It is nearly impossible to move around without flying. Building roads is also nearly impossible. You would be isolated for your whole life. To get a taste of what it is like, you can just go to Google Earth and experience it. (26°12’28.4″N 99°07’57.1″E)
image 193
Even if you can climb across the mountains to the other side, you have to climb up and down another three similar mountains in order to reach a nearby city.
As a farmer, can you get rich if you live here? That’s nearly impossible. If you are ill, you have to call a helicopter to fly to the nearest hospital. But you have to be rich to afford a mobile phone. No signals? Oh, why not just wait and die?
Ping-tang Bridge, Liutong, Guizhou (World’s largest viaduct bridge, to be completed later in 2019)
A similar and smaller viaduct bridge can be found in Hunan as well. Here is the video for the beer:
The Chinese said: “Hold up. There are ten more to come in the next five years”.
image 186
A high-speed railway arch bridge in Guizhou. Bullet trains pass through this bridge at the speed of 250km/h.
For comparison, a similar railway bridge is also being built in India. It is the Chenab Railway Bridge in J&K. Chenab Bridge – Wikipedia
However, this bridge started in 2003 and it was originally intended to be completed in December 2009. But ten years passed the Indian people have still not finished it.
image 185
If the Indian engineers wanted to delay for another 2 years, the bridge would no longer be the world’s tallest railway arch bridge. The new King will be crown to the Sichuan-Tibet railway bridge.
. Basically nearly the world’s top 100 highest bridges are all from Yunan and Guizhou (I’m not talking about China. Just the two provinces).
And we are not comparing the length of the bridge, because expressways in Yunnan and Guizhou are pretty much always in bridges or tunnels. So it is pointless to compare their length.
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The takeaway for this section is that please don’t take for granted if you see the expressway network like this in Yunnan and Guizhou.
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Think about their terrain and imagine how difficult it is to build expressways here.
image 182
Now back to Yunnan and Guizhou. What kind of other developments that are worth mentioning?
4G Network Coverage
image 180
Even in the most distant village with no good roads, you can always find 4G base stations installed. In terms of 4G, no other countries in the world can be compared with China. Not a single developed country like the USA, UK nor Japan can be comparable in such a scale.
According to the Ministry of Industry and IT in China [7], there are 1.204 billion users connected to 4G stations in China. There are 3.72 million 4G base stations installed in China, exceeding 20% more than the rest of the world combined. Guizhou has achieved 100% 4G coverage in all its 10k villages and Yunnan reaches 65% in its progress.
In 2019, the package price for unlimited 4G internet is 98rmb ($14.5) for one person and 134 rmb ($20) for a family of three. Compared to the USA, you have to spend $40 in T-Mobile just to have a 10GB of internet. Compared to India, although India has much cheaper Internet than China, their 4G coverage is relatively low compared to China.
Why does the 4G access useful? Well, this is another answer I will write. But just to draw your curiosity, do you notice that there are more and more Youtubers from Yunnan and Guizhou broadcasting their daily farming life?
Making Toufu online?
Picking tea leaves online?
image 179
Hydroelectricity
Of course, 4G signals are inseparable from the electricity. Yunnan and Guizhou are also blessed with the hydropower. Most of the worlds’ largest dams and power stations listed here are from Yunnan and Guizhou. List of largest hydroelectric power stations – Wikipedia
. They contribute to 30% of the hydroelectricity generated in China.
Just follow along the four major rivers in Yunnan from Google Earth. You can find many stages of Dam on the same river. For example, the Jinsha River (Yangtze) has nine stages of dams.
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A dam along the Jin Sha River 26°48’23.9″N 100°26’46.4″E
Compared to the power transmission and storage problem in Gansu, hydroelectricity generated in Yunan and Guizhou are directly transmitted to power up the Guangdong province and Hong Kong, because China has already built the ultra-high voltage power transmission line.
image 176
That means a fraction of your made-in-China products are actually manufactured using the hydro-power from Yunnan.
Data centres
Thanks to the abundance of electricity and water resources for cooling, the Chinese government has chosen Guizhou as its most important base for data centres.
Deep in the caves of Guizhou, lies the Tencent T-Block data centre (腾讯七星数据中心). This is the place where the data of all Chinese Wechat/Tencent Video (Chinese Netflix) users are stored.
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In 2018, Apple has also decided to place its iCloud (China) data centre in Guizhou. This is where all Chinese apple users information are stored in China.
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Now pretty much every important IT company has set their data centres in Guizhou, such as Alibaba, Huawei, China Mobile, etc.
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Why do most companies choose Guizhou, such a poor place, to be the destination for data centres? Why not other places?
Because Xi Jinping wants it. He recommends IT companies to place their data centres in Guizhou to enjoy cuts in taxes and electricity bills. As Guizhou have more data centres, it finally has something to focus for its own to develop.
Why does Xi Jinping think Guizhou is so special?
Because Xi found that the leader of Guizhou, Chen Min’er, was exceptionally capable. It was Chen who led Guizhou to attract so many investments and called for IT companies to setup big data centre installations in Guizhou. Thanks to Chen’s excellent governing skill in Guizhou, he is now promoted to the Mayor of Chongqing.
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I think he will be the next president of China after Xi Jinping (if he continues to demonstrate his governance skills).
On the other hand, China can finally build its Great Data Bank of China in Guizhou so that the Chinese government can regulate API usage based on Chinese laws and validation using Chinese government licensed blockchain E-authentication.
Yes, this is really the authoritarian style of development in the Internet area. New forms of democracy are created: the government can instantly sample on what do the citizen feel from their mobile phones (like instant vote).
3. Guangxi province
Guangxi and Northen Vietnam are actually very similar in terms of geographic positions and terrains. They both have plenty of flooded plains, hilly mountains and coastal areas. Their cultures are actually very similar. Both are the descendants of the Nanyue Kingdom.
image 170
In theory, their GDP per capita should be similar but Vietnam suffers many wars compared to Guangxi. Now Guangxi GDP per capita is $6270 and Vietnam is $2557.
Compared to Northern Vietnam, the main problem for Guangxi is that all of its tributary rivers are flowing east instead of heading the south to the sea. These tributary rivers are then forming into one giant Pearl River at Wuzhou and then reaches the South China Sea in Canton.
image 169
Even for today in China, there are still a lot of heavyweight goods shipped through the rivers because of its cheap costs. This becomes really a problem for Guangxi. Since all its rivers flow directly to the east, all river-based shipment from Guangxi has to go through Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
image 168
From the above picture, the biggest embarrassment for its Capital Nanning is that ships have to travel 1000km to the east to reach the sea, even though Nanning is only 100km away from the coast in the south. Just imagine the extra cost added for the Guangxi people for international shipment!
A similar terrain can be found in Brazil. A huge mountain can be seen blocking the coast. This is really a curse from God. That’s why the Brazilian economy is not so good and could not develop manufacturing.
image 167
Guangxi is slightly better but shipping costs in Guangxi are more expensive compared to other coastal provinces in China. Due to the high costs, investments and talents would not come and it suffers the severe brain drain from the nearby Canton. This is the ultimate reason why Guangxi is poor.
On the contrary, if you look at Northern Vietnam, they are blessed with a wide natural river — the Red River. 5000-ton ships can easily reach Hanoi from Hai Phong. Low-cost transportation gives Vietnam the destiny to be the next center of low-end manufacturing. With the current US-China trade war, Vietnam would receive more foreign investments and its economy would be sky-rocketing.
Hopefully, if the Vietnamese government could follow the same approach as the Chinese government and massively expand its infrastructure and energy sectors, Hanoi-Hai Phong (the red river delta) would become the next mega metropolis around this region and they may experience over 10% growth over the next three decades.
Therefore Guangxi people have to be aware that Vietnam people are catching up quickly. What they need to do is to try everything best to improve its infrastructure and attract shipment from Chongqing and Kunming.
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For the above map, you can see that it is actually closer for Kunming to go through Vietnam to reach the sea. If the Vietnam government is really clever, they should reduce the shipping costs (by improving road quality) and attract goods from Kunming and Tibet and use Hanoi port. This would make Hanoi to become the next logistic center for international shipping.
That’s why it is vital for the Guangxi government to counterbalance Vietnam and promote its connections to Yunan and Chongqing.
However, in the past two decades, the Guangxi CCP government have gone in the wrong direction. They’ve built three giant international ports along the coast. But not many people and ships wanted to use them. The combined port shipment volume is only 200million tons, which ranked at 18th among all ports in China.
Originally for Kunming and Chongqing, it is always cheaper and easier to go through Guangzhou instead of coming here. And what’s worse. You made all your three ports (Fang-cheng-gang, Qinzhou, Beihai) compete with each other, instead of focusing on building a combined giant port.
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Image: A massive expansion in Fangchenggang port. Now it is pretty much a “ghost port”. 21°33’59.4″N 108°22’37.0″E
And what’s worse. The top CCP leader in Guangxi focused on building expressway and railway connections to Guangdong and ignored the roads to Kunming and Chongqing. As a result, more Guangxi people are drawn by the gravity from Guangdong and they are not coming back. This causes a severe brain drain in Guangxi.
People are leaving and ships are not coming. That’s why the Guangxi CCP leader did not get promoted. However, Guangxi is not a province, but it is an autonomous region in China. So it has its own laws and regulations. One of its regulation is that the Guangxi leader must be a Zhuang entity Zhuang people – Wikipedia
. This race-based selection obviously breaks the meritocracy system of CCP. And I think this is probably the reason why Guangxi is not developed so well. That’s why I suggest to remove the “autonomous” status and make Guangxi a province.
Lucky the current CCP leader in Guangxi has realized the problem and focus on promoting connections between Yunnan and Guizhou. And also they proposed to
Build Canals!
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For the 13th Five Year Plan in Guangxi, the CCP is planning to “evaluate” the possibility of the Ping-Lu Canal (平陆运河) that connects the Pingtang river to the Qinjiang river in the south.
image 163
The canal is 20km long and it is very expensive to build. For reference, it is half the length of the Kra Canal in Thailand. It requires a lot of in-depth studies before the CCP finally decides to spend billions of RMB to build the canal. Whether it is worthwhile, it remains to be seen.
If it were built, it would be truly a significant boost to the Guangxi economy. With connected water, ships can then carry extra-heavy machinery and goods across most of the river network in Guangxi. It would finally solve the Guangxi problem!
image 162
For the road and railway network, Guangxi still has a lot of rooms to improve in terms of density and accessibility. I’m not listing their detailed projects because they are similar to Yunan and Guizhou.
Conclusion
After this extremely long post, I hope you can know something about the on-going developments in the four poorest provinces of China. The take away is that China invests much more domestically than abroad. These are all in the news but people just don’t pay attention to them.
And also note that most of the above projects are led by Chinese state enterprises. They lose money for doing this. But they bring huge social benefits to the general people. This is called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and it is working. That’s why the West such as the USA and Europe could not achieve nor even consider doing it.
Finally, let’s finish up with a view of the expressway in Guangxi province. Thank you for taking the time to read this extremely long posts.
image 161
Please enjoy the real China 🙂
College-Age Carousel Rider Tries Lecturing Men That A “High Body Count Should NEVER Matter”
I was at a mall today, paying bills, having lunch and planning on a visit to the gym (pat on the back: I did all three!).
As I walked to the bank, I noticed an older man sitting by a water feature, dipping his fingers in the pool. This was unusual as people here in Thailand rarely do this in a mall.
When I passed him again 10 minutes later, he was standing in the middle of the walkway, searching to his left, then to his right, over and over, looking distressed.
I was about to approach him when a group of (uniformed and backpacked) high school students got to him first. They spoke to him respectfully and quickly realized that he didn’t know where he was or who should be with him.
One young man sprinted off to Information while the others tried to distract the old man to calm him.
A few moments later, a female security guard approached the group, having been notified by Information. She told the kids they could leave, but they refused, feeling they should stay and keep ‘grandfather’ happy.
An announcement was made, and within a few minutes, a very worried, middle-aged couple rushed over to the old man, and although they fussed at him for disappearing, they were clearly relieved.
The high school students were thanked, and then they respectfully took their leave.
The old man watched them go, turned to the couple and asked, “Where are the grandkids going?”
The couple smiled at him and gently said, “It’s ok, Father. They are going to school.”
The old man replied, “They are such good kids. You raised them well.”
Yesterday, I met a journalist friend who had just arrived from Avdiivka and we were talking about this issue.
Although this city in the Donetsk region is at the risk of encirclement by the Russian army and there’s no electricity and no internet, there are still some civilians living there.
My friend visited some of them in a bomb shelter and while he was doing his interviews, a woman in the shelter died.
Not from old age (she was fifty) or a sickness but because she had drunk hand sanitizer. Some people there are so poor that they cannot afford to buy alcohol so they drink disinfectants.
image 156
Avdiivka, Ukraine. (Picture: Forbes)
There are obviously two kinds of hand sanitizers, the clear one and the colored one, and one of them is extremely poisonous. The woman drank the wrong one, started sh*tting blood and died a few hours later.
Of course, not every civilian who stays behind in a war zone is a complete alcoholic but a lot of them are old, sick, or suffer from mental disorders.
Many of the civilians in Donetsk are also of Russian origin and wouldn’t feel much at home if they were to evacuate to Western or Central Ukraine.
Their lives were already screwed up long before the war and now, they simply don’t care anymore.
We take our exams in the classroom, where there is a projector that looks like this. It’s hanging from the ceiling and underneath it, there was a shiny piece of plastic that the school had never bothered to remove.
image 155
One of my friends, who sat directly below the projector, looked up to see the bottom of the projector in the middle of a Chinese exam. He was that friend who struggled a lot with Chinese, and guess what he saw at that moment?
The answers of the guy who sat next to him, reflecting off that shiny plastic.
The projector itself was black, so he could see the white exam paper easily. He copied down the answers, which was easier to do because that exam was multiple choice.
A few days later, we got our papers back and he was copying the answers off the wrong page, but in the next exam he used the same trick and made sure that he was on the same page as the person next to him (who was smart).
We don’t use that classroom now because we moved to a different building, but this “cheating hack” was passed down to the next generation and I’ve heard that they now fight for the seat underneath the projector. The teachers never found out.
The Yuppies of American Psycho (and similar characters in the Ellisverse) are the Masters of American Consumerist Culture. They are the, in a sense, heroes of the Consumerist Myth. Rich, powerful, beautiful, and crushingly successful at everything they put their mind to.
So successful at consumption are they that they have moved beyond merely consuming things; they consume people and souls.
image 153
Fight Club could easily be put in the same universe. But instead of looking at the Masters of said Universe, Fight Club looks at its losers. The men who weren’t born to wealth and didn’t make it up the ladder.
The movie, through Tyler Durden, constantly points out the failures of these men to reach the levels of the Patrick Batemans of the world. Here is one particularly blunt, powerful scene:
Of course, Durden is also a consumer — in that he is actually consuming Jack and plans on erasing him entirely. He also “consumes” Marla, and eventually holds most of the Fight Club men in an iron grip. He even begins to morph into a “Master of the Universe” like-figure.
Notice the comments on the male model. In the Ellisverse, models are of the Elite.
Notice here that not only does Durden look like a male fashion model, he states that it’s exactly what Jack wishes he could look like and how he could live. And he’s not wrong, obviously. “All the ways you wish you could be? That’s me.”
As I see it, while Durden and Bateman would absolutely be opposed to each other’s “political” goals, such as they are, a Durden victory would be a “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” kind of thing at core.
Basically: Patrick Bateman and Tyler Durden really aren’t that different. If Durden were born in Bateman’s world he would be another Bateman; if Bateman were born in Durden’s world he would be another Durden (might sound implausible but remember, Bateman is crushingly charismatic, intelligent, and quite driven when he wants to be).
While Bateman is more openly aristocratic, Durden fairly quickly sets himself up as the undisputed King of Fight Club and clearly sets himself apart from the other men. I can’t find the video but there is a scene in the movie where the men dig ditches while Durden yells at them through a megaphone. He’s not in the ditch with them.
Durden presents himself as a hero of the common man… but he isn’t a common man himself. And the fact that he isn’t, makes him far more appealing. Because who wants to be the common man?
So.
They are the Elites of their Universes. All the women want them and the men want to be them. So of course many male viewers would admire them both and ignore their drawbacks. The political stuff is immaterial — at core they represent the same desires that many men have.
An inmate at a certain prison in the western US claimed that he was allergic to sodium. Now, this is ridiculous because, as my freshman chemistry teacher once pointed out, sodium is in everything.
Inmates with special diets (medical, dental, allergies, etc.) would go at the end of the line after everyone else had gotten their meal trays. Sodium guy would go last of all and put on a performance that was annoying and stupid but oddly comforting because of its predictability.
Prison staff mostly want things to go smoothly. Nobody was yanking this guy’s chain or trying to piss him off. At each meal they genuinely tried to come up with something he could eat. And at each meal, when his tray slid out the window, he would look at it and say (or scream), “I can’t eat this! It’s got sodium in it!” And he would slide it back into the window. This happened every time. Eventually he would eat something.
image 212
Once I saw him drinking a half-pint of milk. Showing him the ingredient list, I pointed out that it had sodium in it.
“That’s OK,” he said. “The sugar counteracts the sodium.”
I was required to issue a monthly report of sales by geographic region, listing each project.
One was a project in China sold to New Sun (China) Energy. I dutifully indicated the sale was in Asia.
My boss protested. “No!” said he. “You need to report that in Europe.”
I blinked and said, “But it’s in China.”
“Yes,” said he. “China’s in Europe.”
“Um…no.. China’s in Asia.”
He slammed his hand on his desk and said, “China’s a state of Germany, now report it in Europe.”
Me: “Ok” while silently muttering dumbass.
We had another dispute over Egypt. Apparently Egypt is also in Europe.
I had a grand time explaining to our lead sales person (a Chinese lady citizen of China) and our production manager (a German citizen) that Germany had expanded its population by a billion with this master stroke of geopolitical theater. They both rolled their eyes.
They weren’t obsolete after WW2. They still occurred over Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, and Israel.
In Korea – There were no good air-to-air missiles yet, so jet aircraft had to close in to within gunnery range to shoot each other down. There were some pretty epic dogfights in Mig Alley, over the Yalu River.
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In Vietnam – Missiles were now available, and the “clever fellows up on high” declared the dogfight was dead because jets could now fly at Mach 2, too fast for dogfights. That meant the F-4 Phantom was fielded with 8 missiles…and no gun. Well, turns out the dogfight wasn’t actually dead yet, and while the missiles of the time were “adequate” for downing bombers flying straight and level, they were pretty lousy against maneuvering fighters. And the ROE (Rules Of Engagement) for Phantoms required a visual ID, eliminating the BVR capability of their Sparrow missiles. So, dogfights were in fact…not obsolete.
image 14
In the Falklands 1982 – Dogfights still weren’t dead, and there were some pretty intense battles between British Sea Harriers and Argentinian Mirages/Daggers. But, we could see the beginning of the obsolescence of dogfighting because of the AIM-9L Sidewinder.
While still an Infrared Homing (Heatseeker) missile, the “Lima” Sidewinder no longer required getting on a opponent’s 6 o’clock so the heatseeker would home on a hot tailpipe. The Lima Sidewinder was all-aspect, meaning it could get a lock from any angle…even head-on, completely changing the nature of dogfighting.
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Even, now with missiles such as the AIM-9X, Meteor, R-77–1, and the AMRAAM, which do not require being within dogfighting range (WVR—Within Visual Range) to score kills, I am reticent to claim the dogfight is dead. I’ll say it no longer will be the bread and butter of aerial combat, but won’t go so far to say the dogfight is obsolete.
It still may happen. Let’s see what happens when Ukraine finally gets their F-16s, and make a decision then. I expect most kills will still occur at BVR, but we may still see genuine dogfights once more. And when both sides are operating stealth aircraft, who knows what we’ll see?
Disrespectful?? Weird absolutely. About 8 months ago flying from Portland Or to Amsterdam Ne.
Woman behind my seat has a infant 6–10 months old. Infant cries and cries and cries. I put in ear plugs. I doze off. About an hour later she taps me on the shoulder and hands me said infant. “I need to talk to my husband in first class, you watch her”. She hands me the baby and is gone about 3 hours. Eventually the cabin staff goes and finds her. She is angry because she is hauled back to her seat. I hand her her child and she is upset.
To this day I wonder why she would hand off a perfectly good infant to a total stranger and wander off.
Candy Cane Fudge
candy cane fudge
Yield: 24 pieces
Ingredients
2 cups white chocolate chips or semisweet chocolate chips
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup crushed candy canes
Instructions
Line an 8 inch square dish with parchment paper, making a sling to lift the fuge out when ready to cut.
In a medium glass bowl, combine the chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk.
Microwave on 50% heat in 30 second intervals until fully melted and combined. Be sure to stir well in between each interval.
Transfer melted mixture into the prepared pan.
Sprinkle on crushed candy canes and slightly press into the top.
Refrigerate for at least 4 to 6 hours to set or freeze for 2 to 4 hours (allow to thaw for 30 minutes before cutting).
When I was a Senior in High School I was “big” into weight-lifting. I was “pumped” and I was quite an “amazing specimen.”
In fact, during the class physical check-up for us boys, the female doctor and the female nurse asked me to go to the back room (in my underwear) and pose for them. They just smiled and looked on.
I, being young and a dumb shit, didn’t know what was going on.
Anyways, some friends offered some steroids to me to help me get and build up mass. I thought about it, but you know, I was concerned about this. So I made a doctor’s appointment, though my mother, and went to the doctor.
When the doctor asked me what was wrong I had a trouble answering. I did a lot of hemming and humming.
Finally I asked about steroids, and the doctor (a woman) told me that it was a serious, SERIOUS issue and that I should not do it.
She saw me off, and then her son (who was in my class) brought me an envelope filled with papers about the dangers of steroids. She also continued to check in on me. She did this over the next five months. And she checked up on me though my mother.
Well, I really didn’t need a follow up.
I just didn’t do any steroids.
It was one of the BEST things that I ever did. And honestly, I am so happy that I lived in a small town and community. Access for these kinds of medicines was difficult and I did not pursue them. Thank JESUS!
Our decisions ALWAYS possess late-game impact.
You are the sum total of your previous behaviors. And that is why it takes a while for the affirmation campaigns to work. You have to untangle decades of previous verbalizations.
Smile. All of you are doing great right now. I believe in you all.
The best food in France ever is the Jambon Beurre.
image
But that’s just a ham sandwich, and you’re correct, it’s a ham sandwich, but not just a ham sandwich. The jambon beurre is a gastronomic lesson. It exemplifies how to make great food: take the best possible ingredients and prepare them with great technique, and no unnecessary fluff. The jambon beurre is simply a freshly baked baguette, delicious jambon de Paris and creamy 85% fat butter. Sometimes you’ll see sweet and sour cornichons or a few slices of cheese, but nothing else. No lettuce, tomatoes, onions, jalapeños or overpowering Subway styles sauces or dressings. This sandwich is just an assembly of three fine ingredients and it is divine.
Jambon Beurre
Quality ingredients and good technique are the keys to great food. French cuisine taught us that lesson and the jambon beurre shows us it is true.
Wendelstein Church on Wendelstein Mountain, Bavarian Alps.
The global financial landscape is witnessing a seismic shift as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) boldly moves away from the US dollar in its oil trade dealings.
This strategic pivot aligns with the broader ambitions of the BRICS economic alliance, of which the UAE is a recent addition.
The changeover, involving the transition to local currencies for oil transactions, marks a significant departure from the long-established dollar dominance in the global oil market.
The BRICS bloc, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, recently expanded its membership to include the UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and Argentina.
This expansion signifies a growing inclination towards de-dollarization among these nations, a move that challenges the traditional hegemony of the US dollar in international trade.
The UAE’s decision to prioritize local currency over the US dollar in new oil deals is a clear reflection of this sentiment. This move isn’t just a mere policy shift; it’s a strategic maneuver in the complex chess game of global economics.
By aligning with the BRICS nations, the UAE is not only diversifying its economic partnerships but also reinforcing its position as a global oil powerhouse.
This change could potentially reshuffle the cards in the international oil trade, impacting the dollar’s stronghold and introducing a new era of currency dynamics in oil transactions.
ONGOING CATASTROPHE FOR USA
The shift away from the U.S. dollar is not some distant, arcane, thing which doesn’t affect YOU. It is affecting YOU already and it is going to get worse. Much worse. In fact, it’s going to be a catastrophe.
You see, since the 1970’s, ALL sales of oil, worldwide, have been transacted in “Dollars.” Everyone who sells it, sells in dollars. Everyone who buys it, buys in dollars.
In order to do that, every country on earth needs to hold “dollars” in its central bank.
Now that countries are starting to sell oil in currencies OTHER THAN Dollars, the central banks around the world won’t need to hold all those dollars. They will start to send those dollars BACK to the United States and say convert these back to OUR currency.
As dollars come back to the U.S. and other countries currencies are exchanged, THEIR currency will rise in value compared to ours. Our currency will FALL in value compared to others.
Now, we don’t manufacture much of anything here in America anymore; we import a lot of what we need/want.
So as we need to import, the value of OUR money is going to be worth less, and less compared to foreign countries, meaning what we need will cost VERY VERY MUCH MORE.
Inflation will hit the US in almost every sector because the things we need to import cost more and more dollars that are worth less and less.
So if you think things have gotten expensive this year, hold on to your hat; it’s going to get a LOT worse.
Moreover, at some point, countries may decide that the U.S., being so far in debt, makes our currency worthless. They may decide to STOP selling anything to us in US Dollars.
Despite being universally accepted nowadays, the fear of our currency becoming worthless is real because there is literally nothing backing our currency. Government keeps going farther and farther into debt until at some point, people around the world will simply NOT take our money anymore.
When THAT happens, the shortages and “supply chain disruption” seen during COVID-19, will look like kid games.
GOVERNMENT TO BLAME
The sole entity responsible for all this trouble is the US federal government; specifically, YOUR member of the US House of Representatives and YOUR US Senators.
It has been these people who have literally spent the country into oblivion. THEY voted for each and every dollar spent which had to be borrowed.
So as they come back from Washington to back-slap, glad-hand, and kiss babies, know that it is THESE PEOPLE who are personally responsible for wrecking this nation, and ruining everything you and your family has worked all your lives for.
More importantly, it is THESE PEOPLE who have mis-used their positions to impose “economic sanctions” on country after country around the world; telling those countries, “If you don’t do what we want, then you cannot use OUR money in YOUR trade.”
All those countries are tired of US meddling in THEIR internal affairs.
So they’re moving away from using US dollars, so that the US cannot sanction them anymore.
The result will be hyper-inflation for us, and wrecking of our country. All because THEY will not stop meddling in other people’s business.
1939 Delahaye Type 165
1939 Delahaye Type 165 is viewed by many as the most beautiful French car of the 1930s, only 5 of them were ever made with this one having been fatefully chosen by the French government to represent France at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
I was once the daytime caregiver for a little boy with a massive brain injury. The damage was so extensive that a large part of his right brain had been surgically removed. He was paralyzed on his left side. He also probably suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but the doctors were unsure. He hoarded food, because he had gone hungry many times in his earlier life. Altogether a really lousy start.
I was pushing little X in his stroller. He was about three years old at this point. We were walking toward the high school, and there was a group of girls on the sidewalk. Black clothes, black hair, smoking, swearing girls.
X was a bit unusual looking, due to his injuries. I was thinking that these girls were going to laugh at him, or tease him, or something. I was getting tense and defensive.
As X and I get close, he hollers out, “HI”, which was his only word at the time. I was not expecting the response he got from those girls.
They were totally sweet. They were all saying hi back and asking his name and saying how cute he was. One asked me about his injuries, and I gave her the short version. She started to cry, and then I did, too. It was hard for me to talk about his history. We ended up hugging each other.
I have always remembered that group of girls, and how completely wrong I was about them.
They remind me often not to judge people by their appearance.
Copeland’s of New Orleans the Guitreau
Copelands of New Orleans the Guitreau
Ingredients
4 ounces butter
4 ounces chopped onions
5 single mushrooms
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
8 ounces fish fillet (red or black drum recommended)
4 ounces crawfish tails
4 ounces 90-100 size shrimp
Instructions
Cook fish on grill approximately three minutes on each side.
While fish is cooking, sauté shrimp and crawfish tails for about one minute. At this point, everything else may be added. Cook until vegetables are translucent. If mixture is too thick, add a splash of dry white wine. If too thin, turn the heat up and cook down until the right consistency.
South Korea, Japan BETRAY and ABANDON U.S, Rush to CHINA!
Breakup of antiwar coalition on Taiwan Island brings war clouds closer to East Asia
Taiwan is not Ukraine. The Taiwanese army is compulsory conscription for one year, extended by Tsai Ing-wen from the previous four months, making her extremely unpopular. No one in Taiwan has the delusion that Westerners have that the Taiwanese army can withstand the PLA for more than a day.
Most of them will tell you the PLA takeover will last only a few hours.
The reason is none of these young men want to die fighting the PLA, not even the deepest Green. Many street interviews of youngsters in the deep Green country of south Taiwan have shown as much: don’t know history, don’t understand why Taiwan is the Republic of China and its airline is China Airlines, don’t like China, don’t want war with China, won’t fight the PLA to defend Taiwan.
In truth, most of them will simply surrender, because those who do not will be tried for treason or, as a minimum, carry a black mark for themselves and their family so that none of them or their offspring will enjoy the privilege of say working in government jobs or state corporations.
Don’t forget that Taiwan is an island. The shortest distance from China to Taiwan is about 220 km. Hawaii is 8500 km away and the American west coast is 11,000 km. People on the island can’t run off to Poland. No one is going to save them when the PLA lands. Taiwanese people understand this but try explaining it to people like Mearsheimer.
Another thing about America arming Taiwan. It’s a scam. Taiwan is going to get antiquated equipment at exorbitant prices. Taiwanese people also know about this because it is not new. It happened before. The US is worried there may be many Yifu Lin types in Taiwan, taking the latest US war technologies to join China. The last time they armed the Nationalists during the Chinese Civil War, the PLA got their hands on a large amount of the latest American weapons.
America is really good at lying. The country is built on lies. Ask any native American how many times the white man has lied to them and they will tell you as numerous as the stars in the sky. It’s too late for the natives, but we can learn something. Don’t trust any words or narratives that come from the direction of the hegemon.
You met a girl. You smiled. She liked. You gave her compliments. She liked you more. You used every textbook trick to impress and voila! She indeed was impressed.
Time flew. Your mask fell off.
Now, she hates you.
Persuasion techniques are, at times, indeed useful. But if you want relationships that last, always be real. These techniques may capture someone’s head, but being who you are will capture their hearts.
That genuineness and sincerity, my friend, will always be cool! 🙂
A friend and I had plans to hang out. For whatever reason, she couldn’t make it and canceled. I didn’t want to hang around the house and went out anyway. As I approached the car, I got an uneasy feeling. I opted to take the other car; I still got an uneasy feeling, but it wasn’t as intense. I got in the car and left the house. Thirty minutes later the car was totalled; I didn’t even see it coming. When I came to, the car was upside down. I was still in the car, but laying on the roof. Had I take the initial car, I probably would have been dead or severely injured at best. I literally got up and walked away from the car on my own (I did pass out a couple times while the ambulance was en route). I broke my ankle and sternum and needed a couple stitches.
Chimney Sweep, outside 97th General Hospital, Frankfurt.
When my husband had been a consultant for about a year, and had been traveling 80% of the time for a job that he absolutely loved.
He came home one weekend and said, “Yesterday I was sitting at a table with five other consultants, and one of them told the group that I was on my first wife.
They all laughed and said, ‘That won’t last long!’ Two of them are on their third wife! That’s when I knew for sure that I have to change jobs.”
And that’s when I knew for sure that he would always put me first.
That we would always put each other first.
We’ve been married more than 40 years, and we’re still putting each other first. (He has since had several jobs that he enjoyed as much as that one, I’m glad to say. I wouldn’t want him to be unhappy at work because of me! I’ve always supported him in whatever his work choices have been, and he has been supportive of my career too.)
I didn’t technically “meet” the guy. But when I was about 10yo & my mom asked me to run to the donut shop before going to school (it was less than a block from our apartment), I was so stoked, I ran the entire way!
As I went to pull the door open at the donut shop, this big grisly bear of a man sorta stumbled towards me from me pulling the door open so fast.
I looked him right in the eyes & got The biggest shot of freezing cold fear through me, turned right around & ran straight back home.
When my mom asked why I didn’t get any donuts, it took me a minute to answer. I asked if she remembered the creepy old big guy from the show we were watching last night & my mom replied “you mean Americas Most Wanted?”!
I said yes, she said “yeah, and?” I told her I’d ran straight into the featured criminal that was a father who raped & molested his daughters & their friends for years & was on the run with his wife (she said she didn’t believe her daughters or their friends, eww)!
My mom asked if I was sure & I was absolutely sure it was him. My mom called the tip line immediately & they said I wasn’t the first to report seeing him at that donut shop. That couple got so spooked by my reaction that they apparently immediately went back on the run. I believe they gave chase for a bit but somehow evaded police, but were later found dead from self inflicted injuries. I was told my report was the final “straw” for cops to believe it was a legit sighting.
No joke that when I say I felt straight evil from him, the burning ice cold feeling his eyes gave me, I will unfortunately never forget it.
Always, ALWAYS trust your “gut”! That intuition is inside us all for a very good reason.
Chinese journalist Liu Xin: DON’T MESS WITH CHINA!
Some years back, a close friend of mine, let’s call her Jane, underwent a significant surgery. She lived alone, and the recovery period was expected to be long and challenging. Jane’s sister, who lived in a different city, offered to take her in during the recovery. The sister had a spacious home and a supportive family, making it an ideal environment for Jane’s recuperation.
Jane, always mindful of not imposing, devised thoughtful ways to contribute to the household. Since she couldn’t engage in physical activities initially, she used her skills as a seasoned graphic designer to help her niece with a school project, creating an impressive presentation. This gesture was immensely appreciated and brought her closer to her niece.
As she regained strength, Jane took up the responsibility of managing the family’s online affairs. She organized digital photo albums, set up an efficient bill payment system, and even taught her sister and brother-in-law how to use various apps to streamline their daily tasks. These small yet significant contributions made her feel useful and less like a burden.
Additionally, Jane used her savings to occasionally treat the family to meals from their favorite restaurants, understanding that her presence had increased the household expenses. She also made it a point to maintain her space meticulously, ensuring that her temporary stay caused minimal disruption in their routine.
When Jane finally returned to her home, her relationship with her sister’s family had deepened. They had not only supported her through a challenging time but had also received her gratitude and contributions in a way that enriched their lives. This experience, my friend often reflects, taught her the importance of giving back, even in times of personal difficulty.
The best relationship advice I ever got was from my grandma years ago, while we were sitting on our back porch swing. There was a thunderstorm going on, and we were enjoying the rain and swinging and talking and nothing was off limits.
At one point, Grandma said, “When we stop expecting someone to be perfect, we can begin to appreciate them for who they really are. No one can ever be perfect. That’s just the way things are.
Crying is okay, too. Sometimes, love is just too big for words …”
The way you treat yourself is the standard you set for others.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend . A successful woman is one who can find such a man .
Sometimes following your heart means losing your mind.
The most beautiful woman is someone who’s happy and is always smiling.
The sexiest thing about a woman is not in the clothes she wears , the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair but Confidence in a humble way, not in an arrogant way. Sense of humour is definitely important.
The biggest asset in the world is your mindset.
Good looking people are trusted quicker by the subconscious mind. No clue why ? But there’re many good looking manipulators. Trust by character not appearance.
Someone you’ve only known for ten days could have better intentions for you than someone you’ve known for ten years. Time means nothing; character does.
Don’t let the world define your identity for you . They don’t know you and likely they don’t care about you.
After twenty years of marriage I got crippled up by arthritis and my wife came to me and asked for a divorce so she could go out and live her life.
I pointed to the door.
Signed the divorce papers for her so she saved some costs. I got no child support even though both our kids stayed with me. Actually they gave her half the house I had built and the entire time I was building it she didn’t want me too because I was “wasting” money on it.
A few months after the divorce was final she actually told me I was going to have to marry her back. Right.
I said no.
Today I’ve been married to a wonderful woman who’s supportive and I enjoy every day.
I did recover from being crippled with a lot of rehab and I made sure to tell my wife to be that I could never guarantee that being crippled wouldn’t recur.
Then a couple years after we married she had to have open heart surgery to repair a bad heart valve and I was there taking care of her with no complaints while she recovered. She’s always doing things to make my life easier. It’s what marriage is all about. Teamwork.
Many years ago, I was approached by a woman I knew through our homeowners’ association, and she asked to talk to me. She said that she was getting ready to leave her husband, who was a brutal and abusive alcoholic. She had a tiny puppy — a little fluffy mix that was mostly Yorkie and Pomeranian — that he was kicking and mistreating, and she wanted to get it to safety as soon as possible before he either damaged her or killed her.
She knew I was a dog lover, so she proposed that she leave her back gate unlocked, and after she was sure her husband had passed out, she would put the puppy on the back porch behind the unlocked gate. I could take the puppy, and disappear into the night.
I lived a distance from the woman’s home, so there was no danger the puppy would ever be seen by her husband. So, I agreed. We decided to do it that night.
The arranged dognapping went off without a hitch, and Rita made her home with us for many years. The woman also escaped her husband, as planned.
I buried my wife a week ago today. Alzheimer’s disease is a terrible way to die. She was diagnosed in 2013. She died October 10, 2023. I delayed her services until one of her siblings returned from a cruise. Since she chose cremation long ago, there was no urgency to bury her in my family’s grave plots.
She was an RNC – BSN in Labor and Delivery. Dedicated her life managing a 40 bed LDRP unit with NICU.
The Hospice nurse thought she was stable earlier in the day, but she later observed a change that I probably would not have recognized. The Hospice nurse told me I should come. She had been non verbal for about a year. Had to be fed, and was in a special Hospice provided wheel chair when out of her bed.
I knew as a lifelong nurse she did not want to live like that, but a DNR covers no cardiac crash cart intervention and no tube feeding. It is way above my pay grade to opine that her quality of life was near zero. A Hospice nurse knows when there is more brain activity than many of us might think.
She had been in a nursing home exactly three years. When she first arrived, she never stopped nursing, looking after those residents who were no longer ambulatory. In fact, she thought she was in charge of the nursing home because she was a Director of Women’s Health before she retired. At the peak of her career, she had 150 employees and a seven figure annual budget. A few years later, she could not balance her check book.
The Hospice nurse told me the last thing to go with an Alzheimer’s victim is their hearing, so even though she looked comatose, the nurse convinced me she could hear me.
I believe her. No finger squeezing, no eye movement, nothing but labored breathing. I told her I loved her, and that I would have been nothing without her.
Thinking she was stable for maybe another day, I went home to get something to eat. Hospice called and said she was gone before I got back to the nursing home. We would have been married 51 years December 30. Planned our wedding around an OU Sugar Bowl game in 1972.
I hated myself for leaving the nursing home for what seemed like only a short time, but maybe she knew I had been there, and she was tired of the pain. Maybe she held on just long enough to see me or hear me one last time.
I’ll forever regret not spending more time with her. I honestly did not think she knew I was there during visits the last year, but now I know she knew I was there near the end, so she probably knew I was there during those times when I thought there was little brain function remaining.
I regret not spending more time with her excellent Hospice caregivers, to better understand that though my wife seemed near comatose for over a year, she would know I was there if I had spent more time with her.
Always pay attention to the Hospice nurses. Milk them for more knowledge about how it will probably end.
I am forever indebted to the Hospice nurses who cared for my wife. Hospice was there when I could not be there. No one should die alone.
Not long ago, Western media were promoting “the Chinese Air Force intercepted a Canadian aircraft.” But they don’t tell you that this interception took place in the northern part of the Taiwan Strait, only dozens of kilometers away from the coast of China.
Now, the Western media is once again propagating that “the Chinese Navy is unprofessional towards Australian warships.” Okay, let’s look at the truth of the matter again.
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The “exclusive economic zones” of China and Japan overlap on a large scale, and the overlapping area is closer to China’s territorial waters.
First, Australia claimed that “the warship is located within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.” It seems to tell us that they are near Japanese territorial waters. But is this true?
Let’s take a look at how big Japan’s “exclusive economic zone” is. As we all know, Japan’s “exclusive economic zone” was set unilaterally by Japan. It has a large number of overlapping areas with mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, and North Korea, and is not recognized at all in East Asia.
Therefore, the fact that the Australian warship is “located within Japan’s exclusive economic zone” does not mean that it is “close to Japan”. On the contrary, it is likely to be close to China’s territorial waters, has entered China’s exclusive economic zone or even approached China’s territorial waters. This is also the reason for this type of incident. normal. The Chinese almost never go far from their shores on such missions.
Secondly, the news that the Chinese Navy’s use of “sonar” caused “slight injuries” to divers is not credible at all. According to news reports, the warship that intercepted the Australian Navy was the Chinese Navy No. 139 Ningbo Ship. This is a modern-class destroyer with a full load displacement of 8,500 tons and an old Soviet warship. According to public information, the sonar equipped on this destroyer is the MGK-335 hull-acoustic hull sonar. This is an active high-power sonar designed for deep-sea nuclear submarines, with a peak operating power of hundreds of kilowatts.
The shock waves it emits can hit the submarine’s hull several kilometers away and detect the echoes. There is no point in turning on sonar for surface ship monitoring.
Because this type of sonar is powerful enough to cause injury to large marine life such as dolphins and whales, it is generally not turned on. When the warships of both sides are approaching, if the Chinese Navy really turns on this sonar, then the diver will not suffer just a “slight injury”, it will shatter people’s internal organs.
Therefore, the real situation may be that the diver suffered minor injuries due to other reasons in the process of rushing to shore. After all, the Australian Toowoomba is just a 3,600-ton frigate. When facing an 8,500-ton Chinese warship, a hasty retreat is a normal reaction.
There are a few more noteworthy keywords
2. Sanctions tasks of the United Nations
This statement is the same as that of the Canadian military aircraft, which also claimed to be carrying out “UN sanctions supervision against North Korea.” But they flew to the northern part of the Taiwan Strait.
China has publicly stated many times that the United Nations has never authorized such a mission. As one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, China’s statement is credible, and other countries have not raised any objections.
Therefore, the Australian warship’s so-called “implementation of United Nations sanctions and supervision of North Korea” is just a farce written and directed by several countries led by the United States.
3. The fishing net entangled the propeller
It shows that the Australian warship has entered the fishing area instead of the normal route. This will cause disruption to both Chinese and Japanese fishermen. Whether it is Japan’s exclusive economic zone or China’s exclusive economic zone, it is undeniable that it is more than 1,000 kilometers away from Australia. That is China’s doorstep, not Australia’s.
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The incident took place so far away from Australia. What was the Australian Navy thinking when it sent a small warship to the coast of a nuclear-armed superpower to show off? If the opponent was the United States or Russia, they would have been sunk long ago.
4. Unprofessional
The Chinese Navy’s approach to foreign warships approaching China’s territorial waters has always been to “identify, warn and drive away”. This is their “professionalism”. There was no warning of weapons and no active collision, indicating that the Chinese navy was restrained. It makes no sense for the Australians to use the excuse “sonar harms divers” to divert attention.
There have been several over my long life but the one that still hurts the most was when my family decided to do a family photo.
For context:
my parents (mom and dad), 4 others siblings with their spouse and child(ren)
18 people total including myself and husband.
I’ve always been a coordinator of events and the like so I offered to find and buy all the children’s outfits so they match/color coordinate.
All the adults wore coordinating colors. We planned on having an outdoor spring photo shoot and I purchased all items to stage the pictures (included a setee, velvet arm chairs, Persian rug….you get the idea not just outside but staged. We hired a professional photographer with each of us paying $200
to cover the bill.
A week before the photos were supposed to be done, my older sister comes over and says my parents want our children but not myself and husband in the pictures. I say nothing, think about it an day and then call my dad. I ask him did he and my mother say we were not to be in pics? He never gives me a direct answer. Says they really just pics of the grandkids, I ask him then why is everyone else included besides my husband and myself? -he gives Half answers until I say I have to go-I sent all of them an email laying out how hurt we were and Don’t understand what we could have down to be excluded like this. Not one response.
Picture day:
My older sister had the audacity to call me and ask if my kids were ready and she was on the way to pick them up. I told her Nope and hung up.
That is the last one I ever spoke to or heard from any of them. Family should never hurt like that
My generation, the boomers, was encouraged to take risks and accomplish great things. We were told that we could do anything and should. We had people like JFK pushing us to go to the moon.
I grew up in a violent, terrifying and poor household where I felt great responsibility for the younger children. I felt no love from my parents. I was just scared all the time. I subsequently had little energy left for doing well in school. I had only one friend. I was always afraid of authority and had no self-confidence. I was not equipped for adulthood and most of it was a struggle to do well at whatever job I held.
When I retired, due to my great fear of poverty, i had plenty of money saved and my own home. I also realized something important. I didn’t have to have regrets even though I had not taken risks or accomplished great things.
I had survived. I had accomplished something important. I was safe. I had made it through all the troubles and fear. I had gritted my teeth and pushed through all the pain and loneliness and self-loathing that comes with being treated badly.
I am old but I have many years to go and I’ll spend them being proud of myself for making it through to safety. This might not seem like much of a goal to most people but it was what I dreamed of for myself and unwittingly worked hard for. I have no regrets.
She ran a very successful Dentist as Practice Manager…she has been a Dental Nurse since the early 90s and worked her way up.
Probably about 80% of the role was managing the staff…whereas 80% should have been running the regulatory side of the business….unfortunately, that meant that the regulatory side had to be done after hours.
She would put in 12 hour days, come home, have dinner, then start again and not stop until near midnight, nightly!
Now the business owner and principle knew HE could not manage the staff, but he then started demanding that she was ‘front of house’ due to her professionalism…even though others were just as capable…so of course, that meant other things started to suffer…initially her health, but she persevered…she ‘loved her job’!
But then, the inevitable happened…he ‘decided’, without any consultation, that her role was now ‘salaried’ and he would no longer pay overtime.
Now, there’s a rock and a hard place…the regulatory side could not be undertaken during the day, would not be compensated, and was a legal requirement for the Practice to operate; so she took the only option available; she resigned (her health was deteriorating anyway…and that was due to the stress of the job!)
6 months later, she is in a far better place physically. The business she left is on its knees. All the staff had left, and it is now – just about – scraping by as a single dentist practice (there had been 10 dentists and 26 support staff!).
I reckon that it has 3–4 months left before it goes completely under….all because he started interfering in the staff roles and didn’t want to pay a little overtime.
Lets do what China or Singapore is doing and ensuring that their police remain tough but relatively free from any corruption and actually follow the law
Pay
India pay their policemen a pittance. I am talking about the rank and file cops. If you look at Comparative Median Income- a Middle ranking Indian policeman (Non IPS) gets only 1.06 times the Median income compared to 1.41 times for a Chinese Cop and 1.83 times for a Singaporean Cop and 1.82 times for a US Cop from NYPD or CPD. A 41% Pay raise for Middle Ranking Cops and allowance raise and upto 77% Pay raise for the Rank and file would work wonders.
Housing and Allowances
China, Hong Kong have police departments which purchase their own lands and commercially build apartments and sell them at zero interest to Cops and retired cops. 2,3,4 BHK Apartments with all the luxuries like a Swimming Pool, Gymnasium etc provided.
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Hamara Bharat – How a Police Quarters looks like in Bharat with Inspectors living in this dilapidated building. The Toilets are particularly a bonanza. Departments have to beg and beg for the most basic of maintenance and painting.
Death Insurance
In India a Cop shot and killed while on Duty will get a flat sum of Rs. 18 Lakhs to Rs. 85 Lakhs depending on City and State with Mumbai and Delhi paying the highest.
85 Lakhs sounds good right?
Sorry. First the money is taxable, Second the average time to get this money is 17 – 24 months if you are lucky and third – an Insurance company pays this sum and it will dodge and demand a lot of documentation like death report etc etc etc.
A woman called Gurbachan Kaur who was supposed to get Rs. 78 Lakhs for her husbands death (He was Senior Inspector of Police) is yet to get any money after 1 1/2 years and after taxes and deductions – she is expected to net Rs. 58 Lakhs. Its around 5.25 times his median annual income. Even this sum is in doubt as the Insurance company is now saying the man died of a heart attack which means natural death (Far low payout).
Lets take China or HK – the sum for death of a Similar rank is around 8.25 times the Median Income and NO TAX. And you get the money within 60 days. Its a law. If you dont get the money in China within 60 days – the Department will be questioned and the LEPPA laws will be applied and No insurance company – money belongs to the Department directly
And many others – Good Healthcare plans, Good Education Plans, Education Trusts for Kids of Cops, Free Education etc.
The Cops are taken care of decently and so they do their job well.
Then there is the question of Punishment. Cops who break the law are brutally punished. In China except the Political Police – all other cops can be punished brutally for Bribery or for Public Abuse or false cases etc. The LEPPA which applies only to cops and can put a cop for 15–25 years for a custodial death within 3 months through special courts.
Its the Double Edged Sword – Good Incentives but Brutal Punishments
Its what India should do
PS This only applies to officers. Chinese Constables are very less paid (Same as Indian PCS) but they get commissions (Hyeung Ya or Golden Fragrance) of 55% – 150% of their monthly salaries. Legal commissions on which they have to pay tax.
Our Poor Havildars have no such incentives and can get a CBI Case for a mere Rs. 500/- bribe.
Weißer Turm (The White Tower), Galgengasse, Rothenburg.
An expensive education system that does not give people the most basic knowledge.
The world’s largest prison system.
An expensive healthcare system that is against disease prevention. And which gives decreasing life expectancy.
A colossal big expensive army which is not able to overcome the Taliban. And the army’s expenses are poorly documented.
The judiciary is large and expensive.
The financial sector is filled with at least 90% air, which will give rise to a new financial bubble, which will empty people’s pensions.
The two identical parties present only the interests of the rich. And yet they are extremely hostile to each other.
Real wages for the middle class have not increased since the 1970s.
Many of the politicians stand with one foot in the grave, so it will never be them themselves who will pay back the country’s debt. Their goal is to survive only four more years.
I could make several points. But why do you think it is difficult to sell this system, Western Democracy to the Chinese?!
Wasn’t it a better idea to sell Chinese socialism to the Americans?! Who wants a government that will multiply your hourly wage?!
The bloody history has told every Chinese: China’s peace today is not because the invaders abandoned evil and turned to good, but because of the powerful PLA.
Mike Tyson is the father of my favorite sports quote. Reporters were questioning him about his new opponent. They were building up the rivalry, talking about how dangerous this fighter was, how he planned to keep Tyson at a distance with his jab, how he planned to wear him down.
Getting annoyed with the questions, Mike looked up from tying his shoes and said, “Everyone has a plan — until they get hit.” It’s so perfectly translatable to life. Everyone is on a diet, until they get hungry. Everyone wants good grades, until it’s time to study. Aspirations and reality are often star-crossed lovers: desperate to be together but doomed to be apart.
We don’t like what most goals entail. There’s a way to make things easier. It starts with understanding the process of productivity.
Slow down your mind to produce more
In a 2013 experiment, scientists showed flashing images to young mice for six hours a day for ten days straight. The changing images emulated cell phones and TVs. Those mice later displayed significant difficulties getting through mazes and finishing cognitive tasks versus non-stimulated mice. Science has long known overstimulation leads to deficits in cognition and attention span.
More plainly, when you are bored with a task, you are often overstimulated. It’s worse than most people realize. Our minds are lost in thought for roughly 47% of our day.
Concentrative meditation, a focus on one specific thing, is proven to boost your focus over time, even if you only do it for five minutes a day. Letting too many voices in your head drowns out those that need to be heard. It’s counterintuitive to think that slowing down your mind increases its potency. The brain is like a lightbulb: too much energy makes it shine less.
If you are feeling ambitious, a Harvard study found that 27-minutes of meditation per day led to increased gray-matter density in the hippocampus, resulting in improved learning, empathy, and memory.
Start easier by creating mental opposition
My girlfriend works in academia and occasionally writes huge, thickly worded papers. On the scale of writing projects, it’s one of the most nightmarish. She was working herself up over a paper last month. She talked about it all week, dreading it, venting about it. She was eventually in full-blown tears, despite not having written a single word.
I’m a fairly patient guy but I do have limits. I finally said, “I need you to do a favor for both of us and get this done. Do it for me, please.” Her dread was bleeding into our relationship. Seeing my point, and to her credit, she powered through it and was a new person afterward.
Procrastination is the hellspawn of anticipation. We expend so much energy thinking about doing something, building up the tension, contemplating the boredom and pain involved. Our energy is sapped before we even begin.
Defeat it by inverting your thoughts
The next time you are putting something off, pay attention to your thoughts. Notice when you have a ‘dread’ thought, “This is going to be so hard.” Notice how you feel heavier. I can literally feel my body getting more immobile when I catch those thoughts.
The trick is to invert that process. I write for a living. When my keyboard is roaring at me like a 101-toothed monster, I’ll itemize reasons I should write. For example:
If I write now, I’ll have free time later.
It will be fun to discover which words show up on the page.
The show I’m watching is useless and boring.
I’ll make more money if I spend more time writing.
It’s going to ruin my mood if I keep procrastinating.
Make it a game to verbally list as many reasons as possible. This will magnetize your motivations. Actions are an extension of our thoughts. Starting is often the hardest part of productivity.
How to stay in the pocket after you start
When I was a swimmer, I didn’t have aquatic headphones to get me through a workout. Swimming is an exhausting exercise in sensory deprivation. You can only see the bottom of the pool and hear the water in your ears. Workouts were miserable and every stroke invites you to slack off.
The key was to stay focused at the moment. I did this in two ways. First, I focused on my technique, giving 100% of my focus to my coach’s instructions. When that technique crumbled, I fell back into reminding myself of my goals. I singularly focused on them, much like you would with concentrative meditation.
Remind yourself that you want to get promoted and get a raise. Reflect on sub-goals. Reflect on what happens if you quit now and flake out. Thoughts can be weaponized against laziness. Productivity is a battle in your mind. If you let weakening thoughts run about unchallenged, you are doomed. Focus on perfection and your attention to detail.
The takeaway and tying it all together
Remember, productivity has three key elements:
Convince yourself to start.
Stay focused despite distractions.
Continue working when you don’t feel like it.
Convince yourself to start by being cognizant of detractor thoughts. Dismiss them quickly and list out reasons to start.
To avoid distractions, practice slowing down your mind with meditation. Additionally, make a mental note of every time you lose focus. When I start getting sloppy, I’ll keep a piece of paper and make a line every time I catch my mind drifting.
Lastly, to get through arduous, monotonous tasks, focus on being present in the moment. Focus on the details. Think about your goals. But never dread the painful aspects of your tasks. Motivation is war. Know how to rally your troops.
Roman Empire and Chill
Dinardo’s Italian Restaurant Creole Carbonara
Creole Carbonara
Ingredients
1/2 cup chicken thigh meat
2 1/2 tablespoons Creole seasoning
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 ounces andouille sausage, chopped
8 ounces medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/4 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Dash of Tabasco
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 pound fettuccine, cooked
Instructions
Coat the chicken with one teaspoon of the Creole seasoning.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and sauté chicken for approximately one minute.
Add andouille and continue cooking one additional minute.
Season shrimp with remaining Creole seasoning, add to chicken/andouille mixture and cook until shrimp are pink and curled.
Add green onions, garlic and whipping cream. Bring mixture to a boil then reduce heat to medium.
Add Worcestershire, Tabasco, salt and half of the Parmesan cheese.
Coat fettuccine with sauce and top with remaining cheese.
West Germany.
19 5
Appreciation
***** REAL ****** Trouble: No One Buying US Treasuries
Nobody wants U.S. Treasury bonds. Bond Sales are in the worst stretch since the Civil War. The federal government has run up so much debt that few if any around the world, want to lend them money anymore. This cannot end well.
Once a symbol of America’s economic might and accepted as a global coin of the realm, US Treasuries have fallen badly out of favor, with serious consequences for taxpayers, investors, and financial markets.
Elementary economic forces — too much supply and not enough demand — have collided to create the worst stretch for U.S. government bonds since the Civil War. The government keeps borrowing to cover its budget deficits, while once-reliable buyers of that debt, both at home and abroad, have pulled back.
The result: Investors are demanding the steepest yields since 2007. Auctions of fresh bonds that were once routine are now going terribly. And bond portfolios are getting absolutely hammered. The longest-dated Treasury bonds are in a bear market worse than the dot-com bust and almost as bad as 2008.
Already 2.5% of the U.S.’s economic output is going to service its existing debts, a number that some analysts expect to hit 4% by 2030. Already running huge deficits, the only way for Treasury to pay the interest — along with ambitious spending programs like the CHIPS Act and student-loan forgiveness — is to keep borrowing.
They are now TRAPPED in a vicious spiral that can ONLY lead to financial death for the country. There is no other possible outcome because the government will not stop spending.
He worked in a private local company. At the end of 2017 the owner of the company changed which means the head of the board of directors changed (let’s call the new guy Jim). Obviously, Jim wanted to make some changes himself, mostly to establish dominance and show he’s the new sheriff in town. Rumors say he promised to double company’s profit in a single year (remember this). There’s a thin line between ambitious and cocky.
The first move he made didn’t have anything to do with the increasing work efficiency or meeting heads of departments or actually know the work that is done in that company. Jim had installed one of those time clock machines where employees check in when they get to work and check out when they’re done. Something like this:
only they didn’t have tokens, but cards. Installation and writing guidelines took about a week after which he announced to heads of departments that every employee must check in and check out themself even when they’re going out just for a break. Also, heads of departments should’ve forward these news to employees. The thing officially started second or third week in January of 2018.
At first, employees didn’t take it so seriously and some of them didn’t check in/out every day or didn’t (sometimes even forgot to) note down their breaks. At the end of the week, Jim would go through every employee’s record to see does any of them have less than 40 hours. (Notice he wasn’t interested in those who had more than 40 hours.) Friend told me that most of employees were in the range 38–45 working hours and a very few around 37 but none under 37. Jim called for a meeting with heads of departments every Friday to inform them about the records and to warn those who work less. Also, there was no compensation for those who work more (stay late or work on weekends).
Employees protested about that kind of behavior and wanted time clock out. That only made Jim to push that thing even more and convinced the board of directors and the owner that the time clock is necessary. So it passed.
The thing is that the work climate has changed. Everyone was more concentrated on if they checked in and if they worked enough than the actual work and the pressure started to build up. The thing went on for two whole months until the most of the employees (friend said 80% but maybe he exaggerated a bit) decided to come to work, check in, work their 8 hours at a moderate pace, check out and head home. No overtime, no working weekends, if the clock hit 16:00 people would leave midwork or in the middle of the meeting not giving a shred of an F. Their excuse was that they did their 8 hours and if they want them to stay, they want a written notice (which is a proof of working overtime and must be paid).
This way every single employee had 40 working hours a week and not a minute more or less. But you know what? Jim wasn’t satisfied. Why? Because work suffered. He made the employees numbers and working slaves that have only one purpose – to work. This killed all the passion people had towards the job they were doing. It demoralized people. They had a feeling that someone is standing above their head every second of the day. And the time clock might not be a bad thing to check employees every once in a while, but to terrorize them like Jim did made them do anything just in spite of that work regime.
After 3 and a half months, the moment of truth came. The first quartal report came. It was a bit better than the last year so Jim stayed at his position. Employees continued with their strike. The second quartal report came and the profit was ~8% less than the same period of previous year (maybe 9% I don’t remember). Jim ascribed it to a bad economy in the country and stayed at his position. Employees were informed about the drop in profit which made them to continue their strike. The third quartal report came. The company’s profit was down by amazing 34% compared to the same period of the previous year. Jim was fired on the spot (even though his mandate supposed to last 5 years) and time clock was left just to control employees every now and then.
Conclusion: Treat your employees as humans which they are and maybe consult someone about your radical actions.
Many decades ago my Dad was a high school teacher in the inner city of Boston.
One of the students in his class was a nationally ranked Judo practitioner who competed at the national level. This young man might miss weeks of school to attend an event around the world. IIRC he may have been part of the US Judo team at the time.
This young man was very quiet and kept to himself generally head down looking at a book at his desk. However he would sometimes be taunted by other students and generally would ignore the idiots.
One day Dad is writing something on the blackboard and behind him he hears one of the jerks taunting. He hears things like “You gonna show me some of that kung fu shit” and then he hears “Let’s see you block this punch”.
Dad hears a small amount of noise and turns around. This is a matter of seconds. The Asian Judo practitioner is sitting in his chair, head down reading a book. And the jerk kid is unconscious on the floor peeing his pants.
The jerk on the floor starts coming around. Dad tells his friends to get him back in his seat. And everyone starts laughing at the jerk because of the giant pee stain on his crotch.
That seemingly ended the attempted bullying. Everyone realized that this kid could kick everyone’s ass if needed.
I love a happy ending!
On Mount Wendelstein.
6 12
Wife Cheats On Work Trip And Now Is Losing Her Mind That Her Marriage Is IMPLODING
Her: I ripped the soul out of my husband through betrayal.
Also her: I made him coffee and did some chores. We should be all good, right?
When I was a teenager, there was a flood along the river where we lived. A large number of mobile homes that were located on the shores of the river were taken out, and destroyed. And six people were missing.
2023 11 27 17 19
One day after the grand storm, I was walking alongside the tracks beside the river. I was in a remote section of the track. Perhaps two miles away from the town, and in the woods.
Eventually I came across a section that smelled really, REALLY bad. It was so foul that I got off the tracks and went to the edge of the river, where the smell was so damn intense.
I couldn’t see anything, and left. But that afternoon, I later discovered that a body was found at the exact location where I was standing looking for the body.
When I was around 11 I was snooping around in my parents room and saw their bank passbook sitting on their dresser. I opened it up expecting to see a healthy sum of money. Instead there was less than $30 in it. I saw the weekly deposits from my dad’s work and regular withdrawals for cash.
even at that young age I realized that we were poor and what little we had got spent on us kids. I felt terrible when I thought of all the times I’d pushed my folks to spend what they had on treats for me and my sister and brother.
A year ago, filled with a longing for Western freedom and democracy, I applied to the University of Auckland, thinking that it would be great if I could stay and work or live in New Zealand after graduation.
Now, I am firmly convinced that I should return to China after my graduation because:
1.The salary here is not as high as what I can earn in China,
2.The best city here is only equivalent to a third-tier city in China. Shopping and daily life are not as convenient as in China, and the cost of living is four times higher.
3.The knowledge taught in universities here, I can learn for free on Chinese websites, and it’s richer and more advanced.
4. I participated in two research projects at the University of Auckland and found that the level of research and development here is behind that of equivalent universities in China. I realized that by studying here, I probably won’t be able to bring back advanced knowledge. Therefore, I am considering returning to a Chinese university to further my education.
5. Moreover, I can feel that the majority of people in Western countries still believe they are more developed than China. This is the general perception, and I don’t need to explain it. I’ll just return to China and quietly contribute my strength there.
6. Western culture, there seems to be a preference for those who are boastful and talkative rather than those who are low-key and pragmatic. Coincidentally, as a Chinese person, I am not good at boasting, and I prefer to fulfill my responsibilities and then rest. The Chinese workplace is more accommodating to someone with my traits.
In fact, I spent hundreds of thousands of RMB to come to New Zealand, to see the real Western world, improve my English, and then met a group of Chinese students and a few friendly foreign students, and ate food that I wasn’t quite used to for a year.
I’m not a parent, but as a teacher I had to explain to a mother about bedtimes and sleep for a seven year old.
Her son was always tired and had difficulty staying awake during class. He was not working to his potential.
His mom came to discuss his poor grades. Come to find out, she was under the impression that he slept too much. So, she kept him up to midnight and had him get up at 6:00 a.m. No wonder the poor lad was always tired. I would be, too.
So, I explained to her that growing children needed at least 10 hours of sleep nightly as their bodies were growing and sleeping gave their bodies time to rest, heal, and grow.
She started having him go to bed at 8:00, especially on school nights. Within a week, he was brighter, more chipper, and the quality of his work improved immensely.
The interesting part? About a month later, he gave me a big hug and thanked me for telling his mom he needed to go to bed earlier.
I took my nice little VW Beetle Diesel to a mechanic for an oil change. After they got the car on the rack, the service advisor came out “Your car has a really bad oil leak.”
Before you go farther, bear in mind: This was a diesel. This comes in important later.
I go back to the bay and take a look at the purported oil leak. The bottom half of the back of the engine was covered in fresh, amber colored oil. “Oh, you’ve got a huge oil leak. You need to pay us $200 to diagnose the problem.” I called for the shop manager.
“Your employee claims that this car has an oil leak.”
He looks under there. “Yup. Sure does.”
“You know this is a diesel.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Have you ever seen the oil drained from a diesel?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know that if I put fresh oil in this engine and drive the car three blocks, that oil will be as black as the Ace of Spades. This supposed oil leak, which is in a place oil can’t leak out of, is fresh oil.”
“Umm…”
“Listen. Clean all the oil he sprayed on my engine off it right now so I can go somewhere honest.”
The climate. Finland is located between 60th and 70th North, which makes the climate absolutely miserable.
image 163
The location means the winters are long, dark and miserable – sun rising at Christmas only at 09:00 in Helsinki and setting at 15:00. The situation isn’t exactly improved by the fact that Finland is located at the occlusion zone of Ferrel cell, which means the whole Atlantic comes down from the sky each Spring and Autumn. (Oh, Autumn is really Fall – I mean, rainfall. Finnish rain is not the warm shower as the Mediterranean rains, it is hard, cold and scourging.)
Finland has the worst of both littoral and continental climate: cool summers and freezing winters. Oh, and did I mention rasputitsa? Yup, we have it too.
image 162
The cold and miserable weather and the long and dark winter has left its permanent mark on our national soul. Finns tend to be emotionally cold, dour and close-minded. Not rude nor impolite, but cold. Sorry, no jolly reggae tunes here. Hero metal, power metal, black metal and prog metal. If your playing sucks, turn on more overdrive.
Which leads to another problem. Alcohol use is commonplace. Simply to carry over the worst. Getting hammered is a method to cope with the cold, dark and miserable winter.
Which leads to another problem. Suicides tend to be common, but not as common as they used to be. Many people simply cannot stand it all and quit their living.
Atheism is in Scandinavia a far older phenomenon than science. When the soil is poor, weather hostile and everything in the climate tries to kill you, you relate to supernatural as enemies and any deities as intolerable cosmic oppressors. The divine is not seen as a provider, but oppressor – as something which attempts to make living even more miserable than it already is. This is one reason why the Scandinavians are so hostile to religion and spirituality they tend to be. Already the Hrafnkell’s saga from 10th century tells of a Viking chieftain who ditches the Viking gods and becomes godhlauss, Atheist.
I wish I had wings so I could fly to Spain for winter like the migratory birds.
A bit of background: My parents recently got divorced and my dad got most of the money, furniture and he got the house. My brother (10) and I (13) only see our mom every second weekend and sometimes my dad just keeps us for the weekend. I always stop by my moms After school everyday to let her dog out and clean up any messes she made (She’s 17 and black lab). I usually wait there for bit until I have to pick up my brother.
Anyways, one day, my math teacher asked me to stay behind for a few minute so to talk about an opportunity to compete in a math contest. It was country wide and was for grade ten and eleven math. I’m grade seven but he said that’s he talked to the people who were running it. They said I could try but might have some trouble with it. I really like math so I said yes.
Fast forward two weeks and I’m sitting in the cafeteria with a bunch of really tall people. They hand out the papers and say go. I finish in about half an hour and turn mine in.
About a month ago i got the results and i placed third in the country. Apparently, there was a prize and i won three hundred dollars.
Now, my mom has been struggling financially although she didn’t tell us, I figured it out. Every time I stop by her house, I put some of the money in her jar and she hasn’t but noticed. I know it’s probably not a lot but I like to think I’m helping a at least a little bit. I can’t legally work yet…
When my due date was getting very close, I told my 3 and a half year old daughter that her little brother is afraid to come out of my belly. He thinks to himself: Oh, its a big scary world out there. Who knows what is awaiting for me outside. I’m just a little baby boy. I don’t want to go out and live with big grown up people all by myself.. Who will understand me and help me when I’m outside? Oh how I wish there was a little girl out there who would be my sister, so we can grow up together…
She was deeply moved when she heard this. She put her little hand gently on my belly, and whispered to her brother with a voice filled with tenderness. Come out little brother. I am your sister M. and I will always take care of you. You don’t have to be afraid. Few days after this, her brother came, and the love and connection that the two of them have is something I, as an only child, never imagined could exist. The way they cherish one another, help, encourage and comfort along the way is truly amazing.
It’s not going to eliminate the difference at all. However, it could help the less rich kids to maintain their dignity.
image 160
This is the most common school uniform in China. It’s ugly, oversized, and appeard since my school ages, but totally affordable. It wouldn’t change the fact that some kids have a poor family background, but it could reduce the possibility of students getting isolated in schools for either being too poor or rich. Trust me that kids do that all the time, and it could be quite hurtful sometimes.
image 161
Besides, with an ugly uniform, how one looks like purely relys on face. Dad’s mercedes or even GTR wouldn’t save it.
I am a welder and applied to a job through a temp agency. Their ad said hiring welders from $23 to $26 an hour depending on experience. They gave me a weld test and decided to hire me at $23. I told them I want $26 because that’s what their add said. I was told that was dependent on experience. Well I have 24 years of experience and I want 26. In the end I agreed to work for 25.
On my first night it was time to clock out so I went to the time clock and clocked out. I noticed all the other welders were still there cleaning up their work areas. I shouted at them so they could hear me, “hey it’s time to go. What are you all still doing here?”
I didn’t get an answer and left. Coming in the next day I asked them about this and they said they cleaned up the shop after hours on their time. With all the workers around and the boss I told everyone, “I don’t work for free. This mess wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been here working. I won’t be cleaning the shop for free. I am loud quitting boss” as I made eye contact with the foreman, “when my shift is over I am clocking out and going home. I will have my area cleaned up before then.”
That night was the first night they did weld testing because new clients demanded all their welders were certified welders.
The next morning the temp agency called me and asked me not to go back to the job because I had been terminated for not listening.
The morning after I was called back again. I was the only person on 2nd shift who passed the weld test and many on first shift also failed.
Company representative: “Would you come back to work for us, please?”
Me: “OK but I want $28 an hour and switched to 1st shift.”
In Vietnam, when we meet someone for the first time in the new (lunar) year, we usually give each other a red envelope with some lucky money – as a good wish for a bright and happy new year.
I was in 11th grade in high school. We were just back from the Lunar New Year holiday (”Tết” holiday in Vietnamese), happily exchanging red envelopes and good wishes. Coincidentally, it was also Valentine’s Day that year. But, 20 years ago, I had no idea about that, so when this boy handed me the red envelope with a chocolate bar, “Happy Valentine!”, I happily took it, “Thank you! You’re so sweet!”, and I gave him a big hug.
Before he could say anything else, I opened the chocolate bar, broke it into pieces, and… shared it with the whole class, everyone got a piece. I couldn’t explain the emotion in his eyes when he watched that happened.
Years later, every time we meet up for our class reunion, he always brings this story up and we laugh. Still can’t believe I missed that hint.
CIA
Back in the late 70’s I found myself between jobs. I had 10 years as the GM of aof a chain of convenience stores which had been sold and that ended my job! My parents lived in the Washington DC area and one of their neighbors, who I had known for many years, worked for the CIA. At a neighborhood gathering while I was visiting I mentioned to him that I was job hunting and asked if he had any connections in the CIA. After we had returned home I got a call asking if I would like to interview so I flew back up and stayed with my parents for a week.
I was instructed to report to a building in Rosslyn VA which is across the Potomac River from DC. I remember having a hard time finding the address I was given because there was no name or numbers on the building. Maybe that was my first test! In any case, the interview lasted all week. One thing that I remember was is how low key the whole process was. Mostly a series of different people asking me a lot of questions about myself. What my hobbies were, favorite foods. etc. It reminded me of shooting the breeze with a bunch of strangers at a college mixer. Not much in writing, no physicals, drug tests, etc. Not many probing questions, very relaxed. Definitely the strangest interview I’ve ever had, and this went on for 5 days.
There was one woman who was my primary contact. From the beginning to the end, she was the one who was always there at the end of an interview and introduced me to the next person. Never their last name or title, just a first name, always in the same room, never in their office. On the 5th and final day, she brought me into her office and said that they would like me to work for them as an operative. I had never heard that term before, but knew that it meant that the CIA wanted me to be a spy. Immediate visions of James Bond came to mind. Fast cars, nice clothes, A GUN…all the things that we associate with being a spy. Obviously I was very interested.
I had a bunch of questions but the two that I remember were: 1. Where would I be stationed? and 2. What did they want me to do? I was married with two young children, and I was thinking maybe they wanted me in Europe where I had spent many years as a boy. WRONG! They wanted me to operate a small grocery store in PAGO PAGO! I had never even heard of Pago Pago, let alone knew that there was a large US Navy Base there. Out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from everything and everyone we know, it was out of the question.
That was the end of my spy recruitment.
LOL. All, I do mean ALL of the stores in Pago Pago are owned by Chinese nationals. No fucking shit. -MM
I was a semi-freshly divorced single mom working in a chain of gas stations. It was my job to cover if someone called off and to run the money every day.
I had a reliable car only because my parents both took the time to teach me about cars including how to find a good used one and repair it when it broke.
I was enrolled in college. One class at a time is all I could squeeze in my schedule and budget.
My child was suffering under a rural southern school district. She is gifted and they had refused to set an IEP, refused to challenge her, and in fact persecuted her and myself due to our religion. We were told more than once we were going to Hell by school officials.
It was an uphill battle with them that required an attorney who volunteered his services. I couldn’t have afforded him otherwise.
Despite these difficulties, life was OK. We were surviving. We had food, shelter, and running water. My child never went to bed hungry or cold.
Then I started getting tired. Abnormally tired. I didn’t have the energy to function. My mother forced me to go to her doctor. She paid for the visit because I didn’t have insurance.
The doctor called me at work two days later and asked me to come in. I made arrangements for my child after school and I went.
He told me I was sick. Very sick. The tiredness was a symptom of this. It wasn’t just lack of proper nutrition or being over worked. This wasn’t something that could be fixed with a pill.
I started treatment the next week. I still went to work. I still took care of my child. I had to drop my class and adjust my schedule. I had to fight — and fight I did.
Then the medical bills started coming in. Uninsured and dead broke, I almost gave up. The state said I did not qualify for assistance of any kind because I made too much money.
If I had another child, I’d be at the income threshold. If I had another child, I could collect benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance.
If the state would have straightened out the child support instead of counting it against my income, I might have been able to pay a little bit of the medical bills.
I made arrangements for my child’s care after I passed. I had a small life insurance policy that would cover my final expenses. I managed to keep fighting.
The medical bills kept coming as did the phone calls from debt collectors. The threatening letters. The calls to my work. To say it was stressful is an understatement.
Until one day they stopped. The medical bills still came but showed a zero balance. The bills that had gone into collections were paid in full.
My rabbi approached me one night after services. He told me that a member of our shul had paid everything on the caveats I finish school and don’t stop.
I begged him to tell me who but he would NOT budge. He just said, “Finish your education and don’t stop.”
Finish school and don’t stop.
I still do not know who. I’ve had my suspicions, but I keep them to myself.
I have graduated but haven’t finished my education. (That is something that is never going to be finished.)
I haven’t stopped.
Smart Cat
Downtown Grill Catfish LaFitte
This is one of my favorite ways to prepare catfish. Even those who dislike catfish love it fixed this way.
Marks Catfish Lafitte
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
2 large eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons salt, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons ground red pepper, divided (may need 2 1/2 teaspoons)
4 farm-raised catfish fillets, about 1 1/2 pounds
Vegetable oil
12 large fresh shrimp, unpeeled
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/4 cup sweet vermouth
2 cups whipping cream
1/4 cup chopped green onions, divided
2 teaspoons lemon juice
3 very thin cooked ham slices, cut into strips
Garnish: lemon wedges
Instructions
Combine eggs and milk, stirring until well blended.
Combine flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon red pepper in a shallow dish. Dredge fish in flour mixture; dip in milk mixture. Dredge again in flour mixture.
Pour oil to a depth of 3 inches into a Dutch oven; heat to 360 degrees F. Fry fish for 5 to 6 minutes or until golden; drain on paper towels. Keep warm.
Peel shrimp; devein, if desired. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat; add shrimp and garlic, and cook until shrimp turn pink, stirring often. Remove shrimp, reserving drippings.
Stir vermouth into reserved drippings; bring to a boil, and cook 1 minute. Add whipping cream, 2 tablespoons green onions, lemon juice, remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt, and remaining 1 to 2 teaspoons red pepper; cook 12 to 15 minutes or until sauce is thickened, stirring often.
Place catfish on a serving plate, and drizzle with sauce. Top with shrimp and ham; sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons green onions. Garnish, if desired.
Notes
I make the sauce first and keep it warm. I then fry the fish and finish the dish.
The Big Lie that Women Keep Believing in Modern Dating
As a 31-year-old Chinese person who lived in China for 30 years and has been living in New Zealand for a year, I find that this question seems to be of particular concern to people in the Western world, while we ourselves are not so concerned about it. I have also thought about this for a long time, and I would like to give a rather serious answer.
When I was living in China, politics really didn’t have much to do with our lives. In the daily routine of a normal person, we were essentially free and democratic. Moreover, from childhood, we learned about both Chinese culture and Western culture. We were quite familiar with the Western world from our media, and we knew roughly what the world was like. After going abroad, it was also easy for us to embrace Western culture.
However, after coming to New Zealand, I found that the Western media is full of prejudice against China and North Korea, while reporting differently on East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea. In fact, I particularly want to tell many Western friends who have never been to China that it is easy for us to accept Western civilization, but your points of concern about China seem to differ from what we care about ourselves.
Historically, China has never actively pursued religion, so how could it be actively enamored with politics? As long as the party does not disturb the people, we won’t pay too much attention to it, and a political party is the least intrusive solution. China is a country that has been agriculturally based for thousands of years. Our ancestors loved the land that could grow crops, and this love has flowed into our blood. The charming land that produces enchanting crops makes us ordinary people happy. China is large enough that whether at the top or among ordinary people, everyone can find their own focus in life, everyone takes responsibility for their own duties, rather than thinking about taking advantage of others or stealing from others. This is more efficient and safe.
If the leadership does not perform well, the people will resist together, and our history has always been this way. An ordinary person can grow to be a top figure in the country, or a top figure over a piece of land. With 5,000 years of detailed recorded history, many historically high-ranking people came from common families. So, when you ask if Chinese people want to live in a democratic country, I want to say that we have always been democratic. Every Chinese person knows: “The noble and the humble have no determined lineage,” but as a culturally united nation, if we are in a high position and do not make the contributions we should, we will be shamefully recorded in history, which is as important as life itself to every Chinese person. Thus, even though we have equal opportunities to become influential figures, not everyone wants to be the most powerful because that also means taking on more responsibilities, which can be more tiring (the positions of emperor, prime minister, and general in Chinese history were high-stress jobs). So usually for us, enjoying the life of an ordinary person also seems more relaxing.
However, it seems that Western politicians do not have the same immense pressures as Chinese leaders, nor do they have the same sense of responsibility. Your leaders seem very relaxed, speaking eloquently with expressive gestures, whereas our leaders are sparing with words, and mostly very serious. How should I put it? They are also under great work pressure, as they are not only supervised by hundreds of millions of common people but also by their competitors. But from my heart, I like this Chinese style where everyone has their role and does not interfere with others.
Compared to many Western countries, China is very open. I grew up in a very ordinary family in China, reading masterpieces from all over the world from a young age, experiencing different cultures, which is why I chose to go abroad after getting married and having children. I have also read modern and ancient Chinese books, which enables me to answer this question today.
For foreign friends curious about China, if you want to understand China, you are sincerely welcome to visit, especially if your daily exposure is only to English media. Because they seem to be the most heavily brainwashed region at the moment.
Somewhere in my graduate school years I noticed a trend.
An undergraduate philosophy major will sound absolutely brilliant. They often speak in a jargon-dense diction, delivered at high velocity, one idea bouncing off another to produce a spiderweb of spiraling associations. The effect, rhetorically and aesthetically, is often overwhelming. Logic doesn’t really play a role because one hardly knows what they are saying. The unwitting listener feels himself outmatched, drowned and blinded by the naked light of unbridled genius.
The graduate student is a much dimmer light. He is still full of abstract phrases and obscure references, but he is someone who is starting to sound, again, like a human being — explaining things, pausing, asking questions to insure the listener is following. This is not nearly as impressive as the undergraduate, but it does have the virtue of allowing the ordinary among us to understand what is being said.
The professor sounds like your basic “dad,” albeit one with a lot to say. He can at times seem unsure of himself. He pauses to define his terms and to add qualifications to his statements. He speaks carefully. He might even speak slowly. He explains as he goes, almost apologizing for whatever obscurities he falls into. His manner of speech is, well… designed to communicate! A quite boring and not evidently bright fellow, you almost feel embarrassed for him.
In light of these observations, I was forced to conclude that there is either something terribly wrong with our educational system — since the higher people go the dumber they get — or intelligence is not quite what we sometimes think it is.
In my van. We would drive away with the pedal to the metal. In 30 minutes, I could expect to get at least 50 kilometres away, and that ought to be far enough to be safe. Moreover, the van has a Diesel engine, so it does not need electricity to function – it will run as long as there is fuel and air.
If it was summer, I would drive to our yacht, put SCUBA gear on, and dive in the sea in the marina. There is enough oxygen to survive the blast underwater. Most radiation is absorbed in the sea, and the shock wave would not get to the water.
I dated a girl for a few years and we lived together for the last half of the relationship. Things hadn’t been great for several months before I decided to break it off, but it was a single statement she made that convinced me it was time.
The yard was in serious need of some attention. The grass was a bit high and we hadn’t done weeding in a few weeks. So I decided to spend my day off working in the yard.
I mowed the grass and edged the walks, I weeded all the flower beds, watered and fertilized our plants, got some new plants to fill in the beds. After I was done with all that, I decided to do some cleaning. I power washed the driveway and the house. The concrete looked brand new.
I finished shortly before she got home from work. When she got in, I was in the backyard admiring my handiwork. I was proud of how the yard looked. It hadn’t looked that nice in quite a while.
When she came into the backyard, I motioned towards all my hard work with my hands as if to says “look what I did!”.
The only thing she had to say about it was “You forgot to sweep behind the chiminea.” and pointed to a small pile of leaves off in the corner of our yard. Then went inside to take a shower.
Something snapped in my brain. All the times she had criticized stupid things just to have something to criticize came flooding back. I suddenly realized the obvious pattern that had been there all along. She didn’t just do it to me either. It was just who she was to everyone. She just enjoyed criticizing people.
I knew I couldn’t live life like that. I knew that if I stuck around, she would keep doing that for the rest of our lives and it would make me miserable.
I had just spent my entire day doing yard work in the middle of June and she couldn’t find one positive thing to say about it. I left that evening and stayed with a friend. The next day, I came home and broke it off with her.
I was about 10 years old, and in bed – about 11pm. I was supposed to be asleep, but as usual, I was reading by the light of my nightlight. I heard my dad slam the front door, and my mom yell. This wasn’t normal behavior, so I went into the living room.
The police were called, and my dad told me the story. Mom and Dad were in the living room, and heard a knock at the front door. We lived out in the country, and the neighbors all knew Dad was a doctor, so Dad thought it might be a neighbor needing help. When Dad opened the door, he saw a man with a mask standing there with one hand behind his back. Our super friendly, loved everybody German Shorthair, Ringo, followed Dad to the door. As soon as she saw the man, she gave a huge bark, and lunged for the guy. Dad said that 3 things happened nearly simultaneously – 1) he grabbed Ringo’s collar, 2) the guy pointed a gun at Dad (it was in the hand behind his back), 3) the man shot the gun. Dad slammed and locked the door. Dad was unhurt.
When the police arrived, they spent a long time looking opposite the door to try to find a bullet hole. At one point, one of the officers said that maybe it was a blank. But eventually, one of the policemen noticed that the row of art books we had on the bookshelf facing the door wasn’t completely even; one of them was pushed back about an inch. He peered closely at it, and noticed something odd about the O (it might have been Michelangelo) in the title – it had a hole in the middle of the O. He opened up the book, and sure enough, the bullet was nestled in the pages.
Needless to say, there was a rule in our house after that – don’t open the door at night without asking “Who’s there” first!
I used to own a small tavern. We had a guy who started hanging out there quite regularly. Nice guy, played darts with the other regulars, bought rounds in order , but didn’t talk much about himself or his past. But it’s a bar, so no one cares. We’ll call him John.
He was in early one night around 7pm. My staff is all away on lunch, partner wouldn’t be back til 10pm. I’m all alone. Usually not a big deal. This night, a couple of college jocks got way out of hand and started tearing the place up – breaking cue sticks and tossing around empty kegs. It’s just John, me and the college boys. I’m trying to de-escalate and get them to leave. Then, one of the big guys starts pushing me and throwing punches. I’m screwed. That is, until John steps in and beats the shit out of two guys much bigger than himself. I was completely shocked! We toss the guys out and he tells me not to call the police. He leaves shortly afterwards.
Next time I see John, I want to pick up his tab and chat. He asks me not to tell anyone or talk about it. I figure he’s ex-military and a private guy. He becomes pretty scarce. We’re looking for him, but he doesn’t come around anymore.
About a year later, we see his pic in the paper. He’s on trial for a pair of mob related murders. Turns out he might be responsible for more than a couple of these. I’m very glad he liked me.
US Ambassador threaten to shut Ghana’s economy down if Anti-Gay bill pass
I lived in northern Manitoba and southern Ontario, both in Canada, for about 25 years before I moved to southern Maryland. Snowmageddon struck in January-February of 2010. Everything was shut down for 10 days or so. Finally, I ventured out onto the roads.
My apartment complex fronted a 4 lane divided roadway, which was a designated Snow Emergency Route. The left lane was bare, the right lane was still covered with ice and slush. Both lanes were blocked where an SUV had gotten stuck then started to slide into the ditch to the right of the road. Pickup trucks, cars, other SUVs, vans, all were parked higgly jiggly and tall, brawny men were attempting to get the vehicle out.
I parked well back, walked to the crowd in my Canadian snow boots, and offered to help. They all had a good laugh, then turned away. I tapped on a man’s arm, “I grew up in Wisconsin and lived in Canada for 25 years. I know snow.”
“Hey, let the little lady here give it a try!”
I cleared them away from the car, crunched around it, repositioned the men, instructed the driver to straighten her wheels and put it into LOW gear, no gas! Told the men to push again, rocking, and told the driver to release the brakes.
The SUV popped right out of the icy ruts and kept going. Silently, the men returned to their cars and left. Too cold for crickets, I guess…
I was interviewing for a Canadian regional sales manager’s job for a company that sold patent medicines, made in Saudi Arabia. (Yes, I wrote the correct country name.)
After having introduced ourselves the interviewer handed me a package of papers, about ten pages thick.
“I’ll be quiet for a few minutes until you have read and signed this.”
It was the most horrible secrecy agreement you could imagine. If I break this, my grandson’s firstborn would be burned on the stake, or something along those lines.
I put it down, and politely bade my adieus.
The interviewer followed me all the way to the elevator door, trying to explain that not all was cast in stone. Some details could be negotiated.
I entered the elevator and left.
My next job was selling industrial valves, no secrecy agreement required. (I stayed there 9.5 years.)
The school arranged for a bus load of junior high students to go to a live play in the city.
This was the second bus trip in a month. The first one had gotten a little steamy on the ride back to the school in the dark. But not so bad it stopped the second one from happening.
The second trip, stopped all future bus trips, and caused a general assembly to be called. The principal and vice principal were dismissed at the end of the school year.
I didn’t have a girlfriend, and my best friends sister wanted to make out with me, but I knew that would end my friendship with my best friend. She wasn’t attractive enough to risk that.
In the back row, you could only see two guys sitting up, one in each seat. There had been girls sitting beside them when we left for the school.
What brought it to a head, was that the majority of students had hickies that were visible to their parents when they got home from the school trip.
There were a lot of phone calls leading up to the general assembly. It was amazing how many students had purple splotches, vainly trying to be covered with turtle necks, and long sleeves, and they had to sit in the front row of the general assembly, as we were told the consequences of our actions.
One day, she came home with a bruise on her cheek – just a small one, but it was a bruise. I asked what happened to her? She told me that a patient’s son hit her in the face because he thought she was ignoring his father – who was in pain while actually she was busy with another patient who was more critical. I asked her what happened next? She told me: “Oh, I came to that patient as soon as I finished with the one I was working on. Talked to him, comforted him and gave him some meds. Then I explained the situation to the son, and he apologized”. 7 year old me that day got angry and asked: “Why? You’re the best nurse, why didn’t you let someone else deal with that patient? His son hit you. He didn’t deserve your care!”
And my mom’s answer that day became one of the most important lessons I carry with myself through life: “Sweetie, you should never let someone’s bad action to be the reason for your own. Fixing something wrong by doing something wrong will never work. That man hit me may have been wrong, but if I hadn’t taken care of his father, I wouldn’t have been right. Moreover, it was the son who made the mistake, why should the father has to face the consequences? Your mom is the best nurse, so I do the best, right?”
So, if my neighbor never says hello to me first? That doesn’t stop me from saying hello and wishing them a good day.
I still believe that in this world full of sad/angry people, it’s much better if we’re sweet to each other, even just a littleeeeeee bit.
I strongly condemn Chinese military using sonar of mass destruction near Chinese coast which caused damage to Australian soldiers close Australian coast.
Wait… the Australians were near Chinese coast.
Oh… so you were their collecting seabed information, right?
In case of WWIII, it would be useful to intercept Chinese submarines.
International water or not, it’s definitely a hostile activity against China.
I can already make the draft about the same thing but reversed, i.e. PLAN soldiers got hurt by Australian sonar near Australian coast.
There is no “pro-China government in Australia”.
We know that already.
Stop lying.
Miao Ethnic Group
This is one of the 65 recognized ethnic groups in China.
The flags for the cars at my mother-in-laws funeral.
Well, they tried.
When they were doing their consult, they went over about a million things with my wife, and her brother. Both of whom were pretty deep in grief as they had just lost their mother. This woman was more of a mother to me than my own, so I wasn’t exactly NOT grieving.
Before my wife signed on the dotted line, she asked me to look the paperwork over. I saw a HUGE line item, it was around $2000, and just listed as “flags”. I asked the wife about it, and I asked the brother-in-law. Both had no idea what it was. I asked the representative from the funeral home, and they said it was for the funeral flags for the cars. The little magnetic “flags” that say “FUNERAL” on them. They are plastic, and have a magnetic base on them and you put them on your front fenders. If you have seen a few funeral processions, I’m sure you have seen them.
So I asked why we were paying $2000 for these.
I was told we had estimated 100 people, and they charge $10 per flag, and 2 per car. so 100x2x$10=$2000.
I asked if these were required, or if they thought that literally every single person was going to be driving their own car, or, the pretty obvious question, would this get re-rated based on how many people ACTUALLY showed up and needed a flag.
I was told that no, they were not ‘required’ but that they were recommended to make it more visible, and that wouldn’t my MIL want that item? They would re-estimate based on how many cars I expected (yeah, they KNEW that the estimate of how many guests was NOT the same as how many cars there would be), but that once the order was put in, it was non-refundable, and that if we didn’t use them all, then that was just how it was. They were basically being paid to make them available.
I went back to the wife and BIL, and explained, they agreed, nope, not necessary. I told them we didn’t need this, and to remove it immediately. They acted like that was some manner of travesty, and basically implied that people would think poorly of us for it. I knew my MIL, and KNEW she would have spit her teeth out if we had wasted $2k on this. There was a lot of shade from the funeral people for this.
Strangely enough, day of, not a single person asked about the flags. We turned out headlights on, and drove in procession with absolutely no problems whatsoever. Ironically, the only vehicle with the flags was the hearse, it had them permanently attached to it. We weren’t charged for that.
The funeral industry literally preys on people at their most vulnerable. They prey on your emotions, and your fears and insecurities. They have no trouble manipulating you into paying more than is necessary, and they will pad that bill out to match any insurance you might have. Do NOT just give them the insurance information, magically, if you have $35000 in insurance, they will eat every penny of it up. We had, $0 and paid every penny out of pocket… They still tried to pad the bill at every turn.
“What is the most absurd thing you’ve been charged for on a bill?”
edit
yes, these ARE reusable, and yes, they are returned after the procession, and yes, that does make it so much worse.
Good men won’t stick around if they are unwanted
Canadian “Mercenary” Killed By Russian Army in Ukraine
When I decided to move halfway across the Earth, from Vietnam to the U.S. to marry my (then) boyfriend, the only ‘condition’ I made my boyfriend agree to was I wanted him to move closer to his parents. My reason was that I would be in a new country, I wanted to stay close to our family. He agreed.
So, when The Teenager & I moved over, we settled down in a place within one hour drive from our parents.
Then came the first meet-up, we invited a few other family friends over. My mom & I were in the kitchen preparing food when a lady came in. She saw me, smiled, and asked my mom, “So, here is your daughter-in-law hah?” My mom smiled back at her, “No. She is my daughter in love.”
That sentence struck a harmonious chord within me and made my heart sing.
My wife and I were living in our first house in Oklahoma City. One day while we were both at work, the city sewer department tore down all the fences in the rear of the houses on our block to replace the sewer main. When we got home from work we were heartbroken because we had had our young dog in the backyard and now he was nowhere to be found. We searched the area for days and put up notices but to no avail.
We were starting to believe that we would never see our dog again. My wife was so upset she decided to call the city to “give them a piece of her mind” about the lack of notification on the sewer work causing us to lose our dog.
So she gets a person on the phone from the city’s Ombudsman Department. My wife explains the situation and tells the person that we loved that dog and had paid good money for him because he was a registered Irish setter. The person asks where we live and my wife gives our address. The person says “Well that’s amazing. I live about a half mile from you and there’s been an Irish setter hanging around lately.” My wife tells me the address and when I got to the person’s house, there’s our dog.
Oklahoma City is a big metropolitan area. Of all the people in the metro area my wife might have got on the phone, our dog happened to be at that person’s house.
I managed a cookie shop once. It was in a college town, and was open til 11:30 pm. At the end of the night, a homeless person showed up asking for cookies. I gave him some.
the next night, he brought 3 friends. There were just enough cookies for them. The next night, I was swamped. Literally dozens showed up. I didn’t have enough cookies for all of them. The crowd became enraged. They started yelling at me, then they started throwing things at me.
i told them not to come around again, there would be no more free cookies. I had to take a cab home that night, it was unsafe for me to walk.
The next night, a few of them started following me as I walked home. They were loudly talking about how they were going to rape and kill me. I ducked into an open business and called a cab home again. I was very young, and made just over minimum wage. I couldn’t afford to take a cab every night, but I had to for weeks.
I did make arrangements with a night nurse, who worked at a local hospital. She dropped by at closing every night on her way to work, and picked up the last cookies to take to the break room.
Having had that experience, I would never give food from a restaurant to homeless people again. Many years later, I owned a bakery, but still remembered my lesson.
The UFO Incident That Shocked Ariel School: Telepathic Extraterrestrials (Re-Edit)
“It’s like story time for grown-ups. I really appreciate this channel. Hecklefish is my spirit animal.”
I was banned from my local Walmart because I miss scanned an item. I went to self checkout one day because I had 4 items and wanted to teach my sons how to scan items. To make the story easier to understand, I had a tshirt, set of bras, shorts and some socks. While scanning, we had accidently double scanned the bras rather than scan the shorts, honest mistake. We finish up and as we are heading out, loss protection stops me and says “My name is XXX I’m with loss prevention please come with us” I was genuinely confused, my son got scared because of how aggressive they were but we complied. While in the security room they proceeded to rummage thru my bags and asked to search my purse. Again, I complied, but they never explained why I was pulled in. They searched cameras for probabaly 20 minutes. At one point, I hear one of the workers call across the radio “We need security detail for an escort.” I started getting REALLY scared and demanded an answer. Finally, they explain I miss scanned an item, because of this I am being escorted out of the building and will not be allowed back on property, should I step foot on property I will be arrested. I was baffled! They didn’t even give me a chance to fix my honest mistake! Needless to say, again I complied, but I put in a call the corporate after leaving, they reached out to me and lifted the banned immediately, apologized, and fired the entire loss prevention team. It wasn’t the first time they had abused power!
Every shit that the US does on China, the Chinese can do even more, faster cheaper and more painful to the U.S.
China prefers not to but it is always ready. Chinese people has a saying. If you do it on the 1st Luna calendar. We will reciprocate on the 15th. You mentioned rare earth but this is just one out of a thousand measure. It could checkmate the US. Don’t even think about it. Every hurt on China will be returned by several fold hurt on the U.S.
After I had disconnected the call, I thought – What if it was a call from my best friend, would my response have been the same?
The answer was a big no and I was unable to figure out why. This restlessness drove me to call him again.
Dad: What happened? Are you ok, son?
Me: Yes, I’m fine, Dad. Just, missing you a lot.
He was surprised at first and thought I needed money.
Soon after, I began cracking few jokes (lame ones) to which he laughed his heart out. We talked for straight 40-45 minutes, engaging in topics we had never discussed before.
Strangely enough, I felt like talking to a different person. The person whom I had spent my life with, yet knew so little about.
The blissful conversation ended with a ‛Khush Raho’ (Stay Blessed!) from his side and a wide smile from mine.
And so, I realised, not taking your dear ones for granted and making a deliberate effort to know them is something worth consider doing.
In ancient China, common people had the following ways to meet the emperor.
1. The imperial examination. The final stage of the imperial examination is the palace examination, which is personally supervised by the emperor.
2. Assassination. The emperor went out to patrol and ambushed him by the roadside. Even if the assassination fails, before being executed, the emperor will personally question you, who is behind the scenes?
3. Emperor Banquets Centenarians. This is a large-scale honoring and respecting activity for the elderly where the emperor invites centenarians to participate in the royal banquet. But the prerequisite is that you must be able to live healthily to a very old age despite the lack of medical treatment and medicine in ancient times.
4. Become a eunuch. This is not recommended because ancient castration surgery was very risky.
5. Becoming a famous prostitute. Although the emperor had many wives, he would never refuse beautiful women.
When I was in Malaysia, during breakfast they served dim sum in addition to other traditional breakfast foods and it was very nice. However, Malaysia is a country with a 20% Chinese population. Back here in the West we don’t have a high percentage of Chinese people. There are some Westerners like myself who would enjoy Chinese food, but the majority of people who would eat it would be Chinese people themselves. The lack of demand means there is little incentive to supply it.
1999. I had a four-year-old Internet advertising agency with 15 employees. A global corporation was buying it.
Weeks before the sale was finalized I had an early morning doctor’s appointment and saw these cups in her bathroom marked URINE SPECIMEN.
I took a bunch of cups, got into the office before any of my employees arrived, left a cup on each person’s desk with a memo that said the buyer required a urine test from everyone in the company before the sale could be approved. A nurse would arrive at noon to test the samples.
One by one they trickled in and proceeded to go batshit. Violation of my rights. They can’t do this. My personal life is my personal life.
I commiserated, but reminded them that if I didn’t sell the company, we’d probably go belly up, and we’d all be out of a job.
Not a lick of work got done all morning. Finally, at noon we all gathered in the reception area, each of us holding a full urine specimen cup.
I spoke to the group. “Guys, I hate this as much as you do.” I looked at my cup. “And I really hate my sample. The color of this piss is terrible. I think I’ll run it through one more time.”
And then I drank it.
I didn’t have to tell them it was Peach Snapple. They knew they’d been had.
15 people. 45 man-hours (and woman-hours) wasted. Pissed away, so to speak. And I loved every second of it. Best. Prank. Ever.
“Hey guys, it’s Heather. I’m running a bit late, but I should be there in a…..”
There was absolute silence in the room.
“Message received: September 3rd at 11:55 am.”
Not a word was spoken among the three of us listening to the message and none of us could muster anything useful to say afterwards other than a very weak, “save that message”.
It was September 5th. In less than 24 hours, we would be going to Heather’s funeral. Her car had been t-boned by a large truck and she had been killed instantly.
The police report showed that the accident had happened on the 3rd. Slightly before noon.
Try to fully understand China. Unless you do you will always have imaginary Chinese action. Let me help you. To China currency is meant to help transaction and to store wealth not trade currency for currency sake.
To China and to BRICS the SWIFT and its manipulative money trading scheme is just another western conspiracy to destroy countries by a stroke of a pen. China will not and will never play a meaningless game it is stacked against. China. So
it will not internationalise RMB or the Yuan. It will not try to helped prop it currencies artificially and it wanted a real currency value that. Is sustainable trusted. Playing Russian roulette’s with its 1.4 billion people’s wealth is not what China will do.The U.S. dollar used to be able to buy 100 items to day a mere 78 years later it can buy 3 of the same item. That is not good for Americans.
In fact between 1980–2020 Real Chinese income grew 30 times and the U.S. during the same time frame not only not grow. It went back to the 1960 level. So try imagine this. American today is doing worst than their grandpa! China wants its currency to buy roughly the same 78 years later. And an average Chinese have 50 times more Yuan.
What’s the funniest reason you’ve been called in to school to collect your child?
We were called to get our 16 yo boy. He had drunk a bottle of some alcohol during the lunch break. Then during the relaxation class, he fell asleep. When we got there around 90 minutes later, the high school was closed. We couldn’t get there any earlier as both of us worked around 70kms away.
We discovered from the cleaner he had been taken to the police station as they couldn’t depend on when we would get there.
Unfortunately, the police [ it was a small unit] had been called out to a large bushfire. So they put him in the outside exercise yard. The problem was it didn’t have a roof. When our boy saw us coming he climbed the chain wall and high-tailed it.
He slept at a mate’s place that night. The next day the high school said they were going to have him placed under care. His mum also a school principal said, “ over my dead body”.
We came and collected him. He was terrified his mum was going to hit the roof. Which she did.
We got called by the police to discuss his behaviour as they wanted to know how he had purchased the bottle. We counted with how could you lose our son when he is in your care. In the end nothing became of it and our son grew up and gained some brains.
As my first son learned to crawl and then walk, my wife and I played mantras to him, meditated by his side, and lit sacred sandalwood incense around him.
We co-slept and in the day he was always strapped to one of us, skin to skin.
He was breastfed exclusively for nearly a year and then given only organic, vegetarian food.
We didn’t buy him any guns or other toy weapons, only simple wooden and cloth playthings.
He was so peaceful that he radiated a tangible serenity.
Which made her happy—and me—because we wanted him to be calm, loving, and spiritual.
He’s seven years old now.
His favorite dish is a medium rare burger, he knows an embarrassing number of juicy curse words, and he’s obsessed with Nerf guns.
He likes to listen to rap music with phat bass lines, he finds talk of spirituality to be boring, and is not in the least bit interested in receiving affection.
But everyone is impressed by how determined, free-spirited, and bright he is.
And between you and me, I’m kind of happy he chose to do his own thing, to be his own being.
We love him more intensely than the blazing of the sun.
It took me a long time to realize that you can spend years and years of your life aiming for a particular outcome, just to have things turn out wildly different than you anticipated.
It took me a long time to realize that life is like a wild animal, like my son—fierce and free and beautiful, but ultimately, unpredictable, untamable, and unruly.
And I have the feeling it might take me the rest of my life to fully realize that this built-in uncertainty gives life a unique flavor that, after being acquired, tastes exquisitely delicious.
It could be because a lot of older people have tooth problems. An older relative, has dentures, I suggested that we go for steak, and she countered with a fish place, so she could be sure, that she wouldn’t embarrass herself having problems eating a tough steak.
The next time she was over, I had bought tenderloin steaks, and I cooked hers medium, which wasn’t as well done as she would have liked it, but was still pretty tender. Ours were medium rare.
She was upset with me, saying that she wouldn’t be able to eat the steak.
I showed her I could cut mine with my fork. She took one bite and was in love. She hadn’t had a steak she could eat in 10 years. She finished the whole steak, which she had said was too much, when she was looking at it. But once she started eating she couldn’t stop.
Every time we eat at restaurant, we have to make sure there is something on the menu that is soft for her.
So this is one possible reason.
Swarms of drones – kamikazes – attacked USS Thomas Hudner
The USS Hudner (DDG-116), an Arleigh Burke-Class Destroyer of the United States Navy, was attacked by a swarm of drones this morning, while patrolling the Red Sea. The ship sustained no damage or injuries to its crew.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported the incident after Houthis in the country of Yemen, took credit for launching the attack.
Houthis are now attacking United States Naval vessels over US Support for Israel, as the Israeli government engages in conflict with the Municipal Government HAMAS of the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis launched swarms of Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones in an unprecedented act of war.
Yemeni rebels who have become a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East, attempted to sink the U.S. vessel.
Not much more than a few thousand, which is surprisingly small. This is based on our DNA.
Unlike our chimpanzee cousins, all humans today have virtually identical DNA. In fact, one group of chimps can have more genetic diversity than all 8 billion humans.
Our minuscule genetic diversity indicates that at some stage, around 70,000 years ago, the human population dwindled to a very low level — maybe 2,000. In fact, it looks like we came close to extinction.
It was also around this time that our ancestors began migrating out of Africa.
This suggests there were dramatic changes to our traditional environment, possibly caused by the Toba supervolcano eruption 74,000 years ago, the biggest eruption in 2 million years, which left entire regions devastated by ash and climate change.
It’s 1964. Republicans are sane and intelligent. But they just got handed one of the largest losses in modern history, with LBJ winning the largest popular vote majority since James Monroe in 1820. Desperate for votes, they start pandering to racists who are upset about the Civil Rights Act and desegregation.
It’s 1974. Republicans just had their President outed as a criminal. They need an edge to get back in power. They start pandering to evangelicals, hoping their ability to believe in things they can’t see will make them easy targets for brainwashing.
It’s 1984. Republicans are scoring big points thanks to looking like the tough guys in the Cold War. They double down on the idea of growing the defense budget.
It’s 1994. Republican economic policies are dividing conservatives and just cost them the White House. They launch a 24-hour fake news channel to keep their base uninformed.
It’s 2004. Democrats have nominated a war hero for President and he should easily defeat the Republican incumbent. It’s time to start lying about his war record. Disinformation becomes the new norm.
It’s 2014. The economy is good. The nation is safe. But the President is black. Republicans dig up the 1964 playbook and capitalize on racism in their base.
It’s 2024. Sixty years of tactics have produced Republican voters who are racist, uninformed, misinformed, brainwashed, and violent. Now these people aren’t just voters anymore. They’re in Congress.
The president of the United States
China’s New Subs and Sonars Challenge Supremacy of US Silent Hunter Fleets
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surpassed the US Navy in total number of warships in late 2021. Technologically too, China has made major strides, including in the area of submarine construction and detection. These advances have sparked concerns from observers that America’s powerful fleets could be left dead in the water in a crisis.
The PLAN’s military and technological prowess against the US Navy in the field of submarine construction and anti-submarine warfare is progressing apace, and the “era of total US submarine dominance” over the People’s Republic of China is reaching its end.
That’s the conclusion reached by one of America’s top cited business newspapers in a piece focused on the Asian nation’s scientific and industrial advances for naval warfare. China, the paper pointed out, is gradually “narrowing” the gap between itself and the United States in the highly complex fields of submarine technology and undersea detection.
These developments not only threaten the Pentagon’s regional strategy of hemming China into its home ports, but could challenge US naval supremacy globally over the long term.
Earlier this year, for instance, research by the US Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute pointed to Chinese advances in efficient nuclear reactors, quiet-running pump-jet propulsion systems and internal quieting devices, the latter based on “imitative innovation” of Russian technology, predicting that the PLAN’s latest nuclear-powered subs will be much harder to track than before.
Additionally, analyses of satellite photos of the Huludao Shipyard in Liaoning, northeastern China taken last year showed the construction of sections of submarine hulls larger than anything US analysts have ever seen in a Chinese sub, along with what seemed to be plans to increase production capacity.
US media citing leaked US Navy intelligence already sounded the alarm about China’s impressive shipbuilding capacity this past fall, which at 23.2 million tons per year, compared with 100,000 tons per year in the US, gives the People’s Republic the ability to build warships at a rate some 200 times greater than the US in a pinch.
On top of that, the PLAN’s rapid construction of a vast network of underwater sensors in the South China Sea and other areas along the Chinese coast known as the “Underwater Great Wall”, to look out for sub, surface warship and aerial activity, means that the Pentagon will find it more difficult to place its warships, subs and aircraft in areas around the Asian nation. The Underwater Great Wall’s construction is reportedly nearing its completion, and includes a vast network of passive and active sonar sensors, plus remote controlled underwater and surface drones which can look out for enemy activity.
China is reportedly also “getting better” at finding silent-running US attack and cruise missile subs sneaking around near its home waters, combining buoy and drone-based monitoring with the use of patrol aircraft and helicopters, for example.
In addition are the PLAN’s growing number of exercises with Russia, which, it can be assumed not only increases the Chinese Navy’s ability to coordinate with its northern neighbor in the event of an emergency, but allows it to learn from the Russian Navy’s half century-plus year experience as a major global naval power rivaled only to the US.
“The implications for the US and our Pacific allies will be profound,” former US Navy officer Christopher Carlson said, pointing to the headaches the US Navy will face, and the additional resources it will need, to locate and keep track of China’s new generation of quiet-running nuclear subs.
Strategically, the outlet noted, maneuvers that the US once took for granted, like the ability to approach close China’s home shores, will now no longer be a given, with the PLAN’s nuclear-powered attack subs able to pick off approaching American warships before they could reach Taiwan in a crisis, for example.
On top of that is the Chinese sub-based ballistic missile threat to the US homeland –a threat Washington has long been used to meting out, but not experiencing itself, in relation to the Asian giant.
“Finding a boat this quiet is going to be really hard,” Carlson said of the Chinese sub threat, predicting the new Chinese boats will probably be about as quiet as the Project 971 Shchuka-B (NATO reporting name Akula, or “Shark”) class fourth generation nuclear-powered attack subs which the Soviet Union and then Russia started fielding in the 1980s and 1990s.
China’s fleet of 79 submarines includes at least 16 nuclear-powered attack and ballistic missile subs, including six Type 093 (NATO reporting name Shang class) attack subs and six Type 094 (NATO reporting name Jin) ballistic missile boats operating “near-continuous” patrols between Hainan Island and the South China Sea. But Carlson warned that the Asian nation could build up to triple the current US rate averaging 1.2 subs per year.
Costly as Aircraft Carriers, Difficult to Build
“Submarine-building is the pinnacle of technological excellence in economics and industry, and only a few countries have mastered the technologies which China has now broken into – France, Britain, the Soviet Union/Russia, and the United States,” Vasily Dandykin, a veteran Russian military analyst and retired Russian Navy Captain 1stRank, told Sputnik.
Several factors account for the US’ slowing pace when it comes to the construction of new submarines, according to the observer, starting with Washington’s decision to rest on its laurels after the end of the Cold War, to the drop in the number of high-class specialists in the field.
“The downtime” in the US’ submarine-related programs resulted from “complacency after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” when “not just America, but also Europe rested on their laurels,” according to Dandykin. “The Americans have the world’s largest military budget, which exceeds those of all other countries in the world. That means that somewhere they got carried away with such gigantic and expensive projects which did not justify their cost,” the analyst said, pointing to out of control spending on novelties like the $8 billion-per ship Zumwalt class of destroyers.
“There were a lot of such projects that sucked up a lot of money. And now it turns out that all of these experiments boil down to the fact that they’re 10 years behind Russia in the creation of a new fourth-generation strategic nuclear submarine,” made possible, according to the analyst, thanks to the backlog of revolutionary Soviet sub designs that Russian builders have been able to develop and build on.
“The ‘downtime’ that occurred had an impact in this area, not just with submarines, but the construction of the surface fleet, the entire American fleet. Here, without a doubt, China’s pace has been impressive, first and foremost in terms of the construction of large ships for the surface fleet. But I think they will push themselves and try to build up their nuclear submarine fleet as quickly as possible,” Dandykin predicted.
As far as China’s subs themselves go, Dandykin pointed out that for the moment, the majority of the PLAN’s fleet still consists of diesel-electric subs, and for them to reach the same technological level as the US, as they have already done when it comes to ships like universal landing ships and destroyers, will take time. The PLAN’s current nuclear-powered ballistic missile-launching subs belong to the second generation at best, in the retired naval officer’s estimation, and the newest efforts are aimed at the creation of third-generation vessels.
Accordingly, Dandykin believes US efforts to hype up the “Chinese threat” are “a little disingenuous,” and designed mainly to lobby for the allocation of even more resources for US sub-building efforts – a titanic effort equivalent, more or less, to the construction of an aircraft carrier in both technological and financial terms.
Surreal. Uncanny. Deja vu. That’s how I felt as I looked down on Southeast Asia from my seat aboard an airplane. The feelings intensified the longer I was there. While my friends made me feel so very welcome, even in my time alone the feeling never left me.
I began the first leg of my long journey back home by crying into my teacup in a cafe in Changi Airport. My heart felt heavy. I was glad to go home to my daughter but if she’d been with me on the trip I’m not sure I’d have returned to the U.S. willingly.
I have said that when I die I want my ashes to be scattered in China, because America is the place of my birth but China holds my heart. There’s something about the Asian region that draws me deeply. I have no Asian background or ancestry so I can’t rationalize it. It’s just how I felt.
I was fired after 11 years in a PR firm. I never clicked with the owner, and the feeling was mutual. I loved my colleagues, got along well with everyone, and consider them friends to this day.
I had just come off of a very trying time related to a proposal I was writing, had slept little, was burned out and mentioned to a colleague that I wasn’t sure I belonged there anymore.
Soon afterward, the boss took me into his office and said nobody wanted to work with me and that we had just lost a client that reduced our budget. His second in command sat through this with his head in his hands the whole time. He helped me clean out my office the next day.
There were other things going on at the firm. The owner was advancing in age and had promised a succession plan. He never delivered. One by one, after my firing, everyone quit. His firm, started in the mid-80s and one of the most prominent in the city, was done.
Two people told me that my firing was the trigger that made people start thinking about whether they wanted to be there anymore. I can’t take the credit or the blame for what happened, but the exodus was fast and devastating.
The public image of a celebrity can often be quite different from their true character. Take Ellen Degeneres, for example. On her show and in interviews, she appears to be a lovable, down-to-earth aunt-like figure. However, there have been numerous accounts from staff and crew members claiming that she is actually a nightmare to work with and a terrible person. So, which version is the truth?
Then there’s Sean Penn, who was once in a relationship with Madonna. It has been alleged that he kidnapped and raped her during the 80s. Additionally, Penn has been involved in some truly awful activities throughout his life. On the flip side, he is also the CEO of a large charity and engages in humanitarian work.
Another celebrity, Mark Wahlberg, is often seen as an extraordinary role model and a decent guy. However, it is important to note that he blinded a Vietnamese man during a fight and is a high school dropout. Please note that the mention of being a high school dropout does not imply that it automatically makes someone a terrible person, but it is worth considering when evaluating their status as a role model.
Tim Allen, known for his lovable and funny dad roles, has a dark side. Despite making people laugh out loud with his jokes, he has been described as a severe asshole who disrespects those around him. Furthermore, he was caught smuggling a kilo of cocaine in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and served time for it.
On the other hand, we have Danny Trejo, who was once involved in drug running for a cartel and had a long history of violence and addiction. However, he has transformed himself into a humble and honest man who actively tries to steer kids away from his former lifestyle. In person, he is charming and genuine.
Slave nations like Germany and Japan wrap themselves around US and western economic orbit. And the U.S. increase interest it destroy their banks and industry. Not China. China is in its own stable orbit. Today the U.S. interest is between 3–5% and China stays under 1% or so. It do its own thing.
US banks are dropping like flies. China’s bank is loaded with Cash. Chinese citizen on average save 35% of their income in Chinese banks. The U.S. citizens meanwhile saved in average less than 4%. So every year the Chinese add another 6–7 trillion dollars into their wealth and funds.
On FDI if the west reduce other nations made up for it and China’s own investment is so humongous. FDI from west means nothing.
I grew up in the USA. In high school, the lunch period was 25 minutes. On a normal day I washed down three peanut butter sandwiches and half a dozen cookies with a quart of milk and headed to the break room.
At least my parents enforced a family sit-down dinner, though it didn’t last long either.
My eating behaviour in college and working part time jobs was not any better, though the food choices were smarter and more varied.
When I started working in sales after college, I graduated to fast food eaten in the car.
At restaurants, servers were all over me, trying to turn the table in 45 minutes or less.
For me, eating was like putting gas in my car. Get it over and move on to the rest of life.
Then I moved to Germany. It was a shock. The canteen served excellent full hot meals and everyone took their time eating, chatting (but not about work), and taking turns buying coffee for the table.
It was impossible to get out of a sit-down restaurant in under 90 minutes without pushing the staff.
Dinner at friends was a four-hour affair.
I learned to love food and the community of sharing it with others. It wasn’t uncommon for less formal outdoor restaurants to seat me with other diners. I met dozens of fascinating people in that manner.
Ten years later I moved to France and learned that the French take mealtime even more seriously than the Germans. Employers even subsidise the canteen or pay part of the meal vouchers for each worker.
I think this question might be better phrased if it asked “What are the influences of culture on food?”
While the food does vary from country to country, I have little trouble in Europe to eat exactly what I ate in the USA. That’s why I don’t think it’s the food that matters.
Instead I think it’s the value people place on taking the time to savour their meals and those they share them with.
Zelenogradsk: What does a Russian city of CATS look like?
They are literally everywhere: occupying benches at observation decks, sitting next to tourists at restaurant terraces, strolling along pedestrian streets and (alright, fine) allowing you to take photos of them. Let’s pay them a little visit?
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You can definitely call the small city of Zelenogradsk (pop. 16,000) in Kaliningrad Region the “cat capital” of Russia. Everything there is dedicated to these furry animals, from souvenirs to… traffic lights!
The many cats of this city will gladly show a tourist the best photo spots (and the best lunch spots!). But, how did it come to this?
Zelenogradsk (Cranz until 1946) is an old resort city at the shore of the Baltic Sea. Cats usually like to settle in such seaside towns, closer to fishermen, fish and vacationers. But, in Zelenogradsk, they have become a real attraction of the city.
According to legend, centuries ago, cats saved the city from rodents that were destroying their food supply and spreading disease. Caring for stray cats is the locals’ way of expressing gratitude.
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Cats have always been living in Zelenogradsk. But, it was only recently that the city itself became the “cat capital”. It all started with the Murarium Museum in an old 1905 water tower. Local inhabitant Irina Klochkova decided to set up an exhibition hall for her cat statuette collection in the unused tower in 2012.
Real cats also live in the museum, with ginger-furred ‘Semyon Semyonovich’ chief among them. He became the prototype for the first museum souvenirs. ‘Murarium’ gained a lot of popularity among tourists; soon after, a lot of everything “cat-themed” began to appear in the city.
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As soon as you visit, you’ll immediately notice an incredible amount of cat graffiti on buildings. Souvenir stores, on every corner it seems, sell anything from keychains and magnets to shopping bags and mugs with cats on them.
The city’s central street, Kurortny Prospekt, even has mini-benches for cats, little traffic lights with flashing cats, as well as vending machines where you can buy cat food. The city administration even has the position of cat chief, a cat caretaker. Their responsibilities include feeding and taking care of cats.
And for those tourists who decide to have lunch on an open terrace of any cafe, just know you won’t be able to so in peace and quiet! The local cats will always investigate and will not be against the idea of sharing a meal with you.
By the way, there are plenty of dogs in the city, as well, but they seemingly maintain a neutrality with the cats. There are literally no fights or altercations to speak of these days.
There are two approaches to an answer, one superficial.
I’ll begin with the superficial.
Democracy, or one man one vote, is practiced by the Chinese. They have found the process is good at selecting leaders from small groups that work or live closely together. In fact, this is how the President is selected among the Politburo, and so on.
Unfortunately, one man one vote can and has been hijacked, particularly if money and power enters the equation. There are innumerable tales of village/town leadership seizing power through the “democratic process” and terrorizing “voters” for years on end.
When groups grow too large, voting among strangers can lead to undesirable outcomes.
That’s the modern Chinese experience.
Unfortunately, “Western democracy” isn’t just voting systems. It is a system of values and beliefs built on the foundation of western prosperity. For the past 5–600 years, it has been the absolute dominance in technology that has kept the West on top. That is how the top 12% of humanity today maintain radically different standards of living from the rest of the 88.
Until the emergence of China, only willing acolytes of the “Western model” made the leap into the first world, leaving has-beens by the wayside. All of them, to a fault, adopted Western-style constitutions, governments, legislation and thoroughly reformed society, in order to qualify for membership into the “globalized world”. In return, their economies boomed, powered by export-led demand from the first world.
Along came China, which is distinctly different, especially in the post-Soviet age of “the end of history”. Unfortunately, Communist China has succeeded wildly, way beyond the imagination of the “last man”.
Herein lies the rub. Chinese leaders had enough self confidence decades ago that the Western highway to prosperity wasn’t exclusive. Today, Chinese society is increasingly convinced their leaders were right, because they are living the best times in the sum history of Chinese civilization, a realized boast that reverberates through 4 millennia and >100 generations.
Western prosperity in the 21st century is no longer the shining city on the hill, cities of the future one can only dream of being teleported back home. A Chinese tourist visiting NYC, London, Paris and Berlin will be nonplussed by the sights, and perhaps repulsed by the smell and experience. Chinese cities have the same modern hardware, and services is rapidly catching up. And Chinese cities are evolving rapid improvement in quality of life metrics, while the west is stagnating, or worse, regressing.
The Chinese will go, that’s “Western democracy”, “in God We Trust”, and “all men created equal”?
Thanks, but no thanks.
Communism has our vote, because we live and breathe its outcomes.
Ukr Hard Day: Avdeyevka Cauldron, Kherson Bridgehead Cut Off, Wilders Wins; Biden BRICS Gaza Plan
She came to the surgery OPD by mistake on a day when our Plastic Surgery OPD was closed.
She had her face covered with a dupatta. I was immediately aware that she had some disfigurement that she was trying to conceal but it was only when I saw her treatment card that I realised what the reason behind it was.
I read the entire card and slowly looked up at her. She was looking at me with one eye while she kept the rest of her face covered.
“I was asked to come after 4 weeks. Here I am.” She told me quietly.
“Yes, I see it written here, ma’m, but our plastic surgery OPDs are on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I am afraid, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Can’t you or the doctors here do anything about this?”
“We can but we are not plastic surgeons. We are not experts and we are not the best people to help you.”
“No one can help me, doctor. You know it.”
I had no answer to that.
“If there’s anything else I can do for you…” I said.
“What can you do? My life is ruined. All I do is travel between my home, the hospital and the court. The last few of weeks my life have been hell. The pain has been unbearable. I can’t even look into the mirror anymore. What do you think you CAN do? Can you get me to look like before?”, she said, her eye moist and a hint of desperation in her voice.
I was trying hard to act professional.
I wanted to say that I was sorry that this happened to her. I wanted to tell her that I felt a burning hatred for the person or persons who did this to her. I wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t give up because her life wasn’t over.
Yet, I didn’t say anything. Everything that came into my head began to sound empty as I was about to say it out loud. My words all seemed so woefully inadequate to offer any kind of assurance to her.
That’s why I was trying to be calm and professional. No pity, no sadness, no anger. I was just trying to do what I was there for: my job which was to try and help her.
“I’ll try to call the Plastic Surgery resident to see if he can come here and take a look at you. I can’t promise that he will but I will give him a call.”
“Thank you.” She said quietly.
Nodding, I took out my phone to call the resident.
“I shouldn’t have spoken like that to you.” She said, looking straight at me.
“It’s completely fine.” I said immediately. The last thing I wanted was for her to feel bad for me.
“No, it’s not. I know what it feels like to be spoken to like this, especially if you haven’t done anything to deserve it.”
“Really, ma’m, you do not need to apologise at all. It’s okay-”
“You know, what hurts the most? Before this I was recently-”
Married? Did the husband abandon her? That was the first thought that came to my head.
“-promoted. I was a receptionist in a famous hotel. I was good at my job. People speak to us rudely all the time but I was really good at handling them. There wasn’t a single complaint against me to my manager in the one and a half years that I had the job.”
She paused, looking down at her feet.
“It’s all gone now. They won’t let me work with this…face. It doesn’t matter how well I handle our customers if they can’t handle my face.”, she said, in a voice that was so matter-of-fact that my heart felt like it was being stabbed.
This was a woman who had been serious about her job. She had been excited about her future. She had been independent. The first thing she told me about her life was that she had lost the job she had worked so hard at.
I don’t know why but this case affected me so much more than other cases. Medically, there exist even more severe cases in which acid attacks have caused complete blindness, paralysis or in the inability to eat or swallow.
I know, of course, that you can’t quantify suffering and everyone has their own battles but this one…this one made me want to stop doing my work and go cry in a corner.
I forced myself to look away and called the resident. I managed to convince him to come and examine her.
“He’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Please wait outside.”, I said with difficulty because I felt a lump in my throat.
“Thank you.”, she said softly and left the room.
When you throw acid on someone’s face and they survive the attack, you take from them much of what we consider “life”. You take away choices, opportunities, self-respect and throw them into a world of such suffering that they have never known before.
My grandfather was once a lightweight boxing champ. He was healthy most of his life, but like everyone, he grew old. At 90 years old, though, he still liked to go dancing. He took his girlfriend to their elder community’s weekly dance. We went to join them for dinner and just visit them a while.
While I was up getting them plates from the buffet, two scummy men came in. They had been drinking and were looking for some old people to bully – no joke. They were in their late 30s/early 40s. They stopped at my grandpa’s table and started talking about his girlfriend. My grandpa stood up and told them to leave. I looked over and saw this jerk spit on the floor and shove my 90 year old grandpa.
I saw my grandpa stumble backwards against the wall, and I dropped the food tray and started moving towards him. It felt like slow motion.
Before I could get there, I saw my grandpa push off the wall and punch the guy square in the jaw. The man landed on his butt and slid backwards nearly all the way across the room! No one could believe what we saw, especially not the two creeps. His friend went over and helped him up, and everyone watched them leave with their tails between their legs.
I finally went back and got the food for them, and we sat and talked about what happened while they ate. After a bit, the two idiots came back with the police. They pointed by grandpa out to the officers.
The police didn’t believe their story, and we all acted like we didn’t know what they were talking about.
In last two decades hundreds of millions of Chinese have travelled overseas. Annually about 130 million Chinese travel outside of their country. So by now most of them may have realised that most of the rest of the world is very backward and not as advanced as they used to think.
And secondly they have their own continent sized country to travel and explore and will probably take a lifetime to explore fully. And every kind of tourist related attractions are within their own country be it tourist spots, beaches, deserts, cultural and historical sites, valleys, grasslands, snow and glaciers means in short every experience and to say the least their excellent infrastructure that makes travelling within China indeed a cakewalk.
If a Muslim unknowingly eats pork it isn’t a terrible problem. That doesn’t mean they won’t be upset though.
Regardless of how they feel about the pork, they will probably be more upset with you. Letting them unknowingly eat pork as a joke is a dick move of the highest order. I would recommend that you never tell them, if you want to maintain the relationship you have with them. If you tell them and laugh about it, no one is going to blame them for hating you forever. Others might join their camp.
Like I said, it’s a dick move, so proceed at your own risk.
Hoo boy. This is going to be one rough ride for humanity.
If we act fast, there is a chance that our species might survive for the long term, but we’re going to have to do things quickly. As soon as the Earth starts to move away from the Sun, things are going to cool off. A lot depends on exactly the trajectory, but even with a conservative estimate, we’re facing a snowball Earth scenario within a matter of years, when the surface of the planet can no longer support liquid water. It won’t take long for everything living on the surface to die.
However, not all hope is lost. The oceans will freeze from the surface downward, and as they freeze over they will in fact insulate the deeper layers. It could take hundreds of thousands of years before the oceans freeze solid, meaning some life may still manage to hold on in the deeper parts of the oceans for millennia, particularly where there is active volcanism going on, keeping things (relatively) warm. In theory, given enough time, we might be able to construct underwater habitats in the deep oceans as a refuge for humanity.
Another option is to simply go underground. On average, the temperature increases by about 25C for every kilometer we go down into the ground. Even when the surface temperatures have plummeted to -200C (when we’ve wandered out past Pluto), we “only” have to dig down a handful of kilometers before we can bask in the relative heat from the heart of our planet.
That heat from the planet’s core is what might ultimately provide the salvation for the species. While the rest of the energy sources we have available to us are ultimately based on solar radiation and will be forfeit once we’ve drifted from the Sun, our planet’s core is powered by radioactive decay and will keep on cooking for billions of years to come. We can harness this either directly via fission reactors, or indirectly through geothermal energy sources.
So here’s the scenario we might enact to provide for the continuation of humanity.
First, we determine what capacity we have for tunneling down into the crust and excavating areas large enough to create underground settlements. Perhaps the Boring Company will be in high demand in this scenario! Governments across the world pool their resources and a number of candidate sites around the globe are selected. Access to existing geothermal energy sources might be a good starting point.
Then we start digging. Temporary “camps” are excavated at shallower depths while digging proceeds ahead for future movements. In the meantime, each of these future colonies is prepared with resources that they’ll need to survive. Deep underground, some of the challenges will be oxygen and clean water; however, with artificial sunlight and proper preparation it should be possible to grow crops even underground. We’ll probably have to say goodbye to eating meat as raising animals for food won’t be an efficient use of resources, though we might keep some animals around for the sake of having animals.
At some point there’s going to be some kind of selection process for who gets to go down and survive. This won’t be pretty. Most of us will be left on the surface to freeze to death. But once it’s done, the selected groups can descend into the bowels of the Earth and begin a new subterranean existence.
Would it succeed? It’s hard to say. They have to dig deep enough, and that presents dangers in and of itself. Colonies could be destroyed by seismic activity that collapses them. In those kinds of close quarters, a disease outbreak could prove fatal to the whole group. Issues with food supply or water supply could doom a group. There are many ways in which any underground colony could fail, and it is almost a given some of them would.
But with enough luck, persistence and hard work, some of them might make it, and over the generations adapt to this new lifestyle. Maybe they’d even thrive to the point they could send excursions back out to the surface, exploring the frozen wasteland, travelling across the ice to visit other underground colonies. Maybe even once again find ways to build ships to leave the planet and try to find someplace nicer to take the family, so to speak.
From the Bayou Crawfish Louisianne
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Yield: 4 to 6 generous servings
Ingredients
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
1/2 cup chopped andouille sausage
3/4 cup chopped bell pepper (can mix the colors)
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
1/2 to 3/4 cup whipping cream
1 pound crawfish tails
1 quart peanut oil
4 to 6 catfish fillets (2 to 3 ounces each)
Egg wash (egg white, water, milk)
Seasoned flour
Seasoning to taste
Cajun seasoning, pepper, red pepper and garlic powder
Instructions
In a small saucepan, melt butter. Add andouille, peppers, onions and Italian seasoning and sauté until tender (about 5 minutes.) Add mushrooms just before completion.
Add whipping cream, and reduce the sauce over medium heat.
Add crawfish, and cook for 3 minutes. Adjust seasoning.
Heat oil in a large saucepan.
Dredge fish in egg wash and then season with flour.
Make decisions for yourself and do not follow the opinions or actions of others.
Have a clear sense of who you are and what you stand for.
Spend time reflecting on your thoughts and emotions and deeply understand yourself.
Be capable of taking care of yourself and do not rely on others for support.
Enjoy spending time alone and find it more fulfilling than being with others.
Have a few close friends or family members and do not rely on the need for an extensive social network.
Enjoy exploring ideas and concepts and be comfortable contemplating complex topics.
Do not seek validation from others and be comfortable relying on yourself.
Have a unique perspective and approach to life and be confident going against the crowd.
Do not conform to societal norms or expectations and march to the beat of your drum.
The Chinese warship sonar incident
This mature and analytical write-up by John Menadue, November 23 is very constructive and logical.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
…
“What a feast of anti-China stories we have had again from the Coalition and our media over the incident between HMAS Toowoomba and a Chinese PLA-N destroyer.
The whole issue really looks to be overblown – and seeded by some in the Sinophobia school who are worried about where Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong may be headed. The idea of “stabilisation” scares them, so they react by promoting some destabilisers.
The proposition that the Chinese warship was directed by Beijing – let alone President Xi – to initiate such “aggressive” action beggars belief. Like the ‘spy’ balloon exercise, where it seems clear enough that President Xi initially knew little about the whole thing.
Our ‘spooks’ depend on the CIA for about 90% of their overseas information and the Pentagon is building a network in our Department of Defence. I would very much doubt whether Albanese and Wong really know what ‘information’ the CIA and the Pentagon are feeding into our spooks.
The US expects that a pliant ally like Australia will do what it is told. It is concerned at recent events and prefers that we do not stabilise our relations with China. So this incident is a great opportunity for some destabilisation. And our poorly informed media tag along as always.
Given the unsurprising PLA comments the chances of misunderstanding the message or even miscommunication would have to rate high. If the PLA ship had been shadowing the RAN ship, which then decided to stop dead in the water to check for nets, would the Commander of the PLA ship not be a bit suspicious about what the RAN was up to and activate some of his intel alerts including special sonar to try to find out more? In any event presumably he would have had some of his sonar devices running while he was sailing anyway? Even if the PLA just happened on the RAN in the middle of the sea (electronically of course) would its initial reaction not be one of suspicion?
We probably will never get the real story of the actual communications between the two ships, but language problems cannot be excluded.
But Albanese and Marles (again and again) have been panicked into hasty responses for which we will pay. Marles should have tried to hose things down, but he invariably sings from the US song sheet. Albanese should stick to the line of not commenting in detail on his private conversations with world leaders. Blinken did this repeatedly over questions about the Xi-Biden talk. If necessary, the government can call in the Chinese Ambassador at Secretary level to make the point.
It is strange why Marles would want to play this up right now. The incident was not in the SCS but in Japan’s EEZ heading towards Japan. This could be in the contested area of the East China Sea, south of Okinawa.
It is also not clear what UN sanctions RAN was monitoring unless they were part of the regular monitoring of UN sanctions against North Korea. We have been doing that in the Sea of Japan further north.
These incidents should be sorted out by military to military communications and not as a stick for those who want to destabilise our improving relationship with China.
We would be more concerned if this incident occurred in waters adjacent to Australia and not in waters adjacent to China, which is already encircled by scores of US military bases. China would understandably be very sensitive about what happens in its proximity.
In any event, this incident is minor compared with the aggressive things we do that are hostile to China. RAAF P8 aircraft operating out of the Philippines drop Sonar buoys in the SCS to monitor Chinese submarines. This is not for the defence of Australia but to support the US in a possible conflict with China over Taiwan.
Our media have shown no interest in this issue. It does not fit the Western ‘China threat’ narrative that our White Man’s Media works so hard to construct and maintain, and so is ignored.”
If you’ve worked retail long enough, even if you’re amazing, you have one of these.
I work retail pharmacy. I had a woman come up to the sales counter with her adult daughter, wanting to buy a large quantity of Sudafed, but within the legal limit. Both of them were planning to buy, and they happened to mention that they were buying it for the woman’s mother, both of them. This is illegal, as in my state you must purchase it for yourself or your minor child. You actually sign an electronic document stating so.
I apologize to the women and tell them I can’t complete the transaction, and explain why, that it is against state and federal law.
Immediate attitude, along the lines of “Who do you think you are, you low born classless person to tell me and my daughter, with our bleach blonde hair and snooty attitudes ‘no!’”
The mother demands to speak with the manager, who isn’t there, we just have a staff pharmacist who’s witnessed the whole thing. She tells the woman that I can complete the sale.
I stare at her for a second before asking the pharmacist if she intends to pay my legal fees to reinstate my pharmacy tech liscense, and tell the pharmacist that if she wants to process the transaction she can, but that I WILL NOT.
She demands my register login and codes, because she’s not a regular pharmacist at my store. I refuse to give them to her, as that is a fireable offense.
The customer is staring at us, red faced and ready to burst, and demands I listen to the pharmacist, then demands I page store management when I explain that the pharmacist cannot compel me to break the law.
I page store management, and my favorite assistant manager comes over and asks what’s going on. By this point, the woman is using abusive language, and exclaims “This f*ggot won’t sell me Sudafed that is for me!”
At that point the manager raises an eyebrow and tells the woman she’s going to have to move her car.
Woman asks why.
“Because our parking is for customers only. You need to leave now. Our customers know they can’t talk to people like that.”
The woman throws a shrieking fit, shoving over a display of medication… which her adult daughter stops to pick up, apologizing the whole time.
The pharmacist in question got written up by corporate for an Ethics violation, and when my Pharmacy Manager told me I should just turn my ears off and not listen to conversations at the register and do my job, he got an Ethics violation that has left him stuck as a pharmacy manager.
The woman emailed the corporate office, and I got to see the reply which was basically ‘We’re sorry you had that experience, but our stores are committed to following state and federal law’ and they attached the laws in question, highlighted.
It was nice to be vindicated and defended for once, instead of thrown under that well known bus.
I was in a hospital, here at Rome, to visit a friend, and when I was going away I saw two American girls, one could hardly walk because she had fell and hurted badly her leg. I helped them to call someone to bring a wheel chair and they went to emergency. I went with them to help because they didn’t speak italian well. I asked why they didn’t call for an ambulance and they said they didn’t want t to spend too much money. They were worried about how much they would have to pay at the hospital too. I explained them, in Italy, the ambulance is free, and so the hospital. Even if she would have to stay there for days or weeks. No one in Italy could dare to ask a girl with a broken leg for money. Nobody could leave her without medical care even if the didn’t have money.
They couldn’t believe me . They continued asking if the hospital was going to send bills later. If they could pay later in installments.
The girls wanted to ask the administrative employee too, because they wanted to be sure. He gave them the same answer and they were very surprised.
Later the girls left the hospital, one had a cast on her leg but they had big, beautiful smiles!
Not me, but my mother. She was visiting the US for a ski holiday in New England and had a bad fall that resulted in a broken bone. As a result, she had to spend a bit of time in a hospital. Her stay was fortunately paid for by Canadian health insurance; can’t imagine how US citizens who don’t have or can’t afford coverage manage to pay for their care.
Anyway, I was curious to see what it cost after she got home, so she showed me the detailed bill. The total was shockingly high, no surprise, but one thing caught my eye. She’d been invoiced for 3X “helically wound cellulose absorbent matrix units” at $48 each. Curious, I contacted the hospital to ask what these could be. Can you guess?
They turned out to be rolls of bog-standard toilet paper, the number she was tracked as having consumed during her stay.
This was a Church of England (Christian) secondary school (ages 11-18) in the late ‘80s and the dress code was quite strict. Among the many rules was one that boys weren’t allowed to have long hair.
There was this old-fashioned teacher (Mr. Barabell) who’d been teaching there for ~30 years already by that point and was well-known for being strict but fair.
Anyway, there was this one boy (Luke) who decided that he wanted to grow long hair and he wasn’t going to let a stupid school rule stop him, and so he just let it grow. Initially he started getting comments from teachers about being “scruffy” etc. but eventually the situation came to a head in Mr. Barabell’s class:
A confrontation begins with the teacher telling Luke off— “There are school standards to maintain, “ and, “Does he think that he’s special, ” and so on. Well Luke—smart alec that he was—has a pre-prepared answer ready to go:
“But sir, Jesus had long hair didn’t he?“
As this point the class is completely silent waiting for a response, but instead of answering Mr. Barabell says, “Right, everyone come with me now,” and he turns and exits the class room. We all follow, including Luke, wondering what on Earth is going on.
Eventually we reach the school swimming pool and gather around. Then Mr. Barabell turns to Luke, points to the swimming pool and says, “Walk!”.
Luke is just standing there kind of shaking his head (knowing that he’s defeated) and the whole rest of the class is cracking up.
The teacher finishes with, “When you can walk on water, you can have long hair at school.”
Americans foolishly screamed and shout that they are the leader of the free world without ever questioning if it is even remotely true or not! Please don’t be angry or upset if I help you guys since I understand you can pretend to be free or even dare says you are ordained by god to spread democracy and freedom but you Americans are one of the least free country on earth.
Let me help you good American. So first I like to explain how unfree you guys are.
35% of you cannot get health care when you fall sick! The most basic of freedom is the freedom to see a doctor and get cure when you fall sick. At least 100 million Americans don’t have this basic of basics of freedom.
Next 1 million Americans are homeless and don’t have another basic of basics of freedom. The freedom to have a roof over their head.! They have to live in makeshift tents on the streets.
20% of Americans don’t have 500 dollars to their name and don’t know where their next meal is coming from! Surely everyone must have the freedom to have a hot meal to stay alive!
USA with about 4% of world population has 25% of the worlds prisoners population! Think about this my American friends, prisoners are certainly. Not free. Many of them coloured people thrown into jail for the slightest reason. How on earth can you keep a straight face to say U.S. is the leader of the free world. No one know!
In many cities in the U.S. one cannot go to certain parts of the inner city like the Queens in New York. As crimes are rampant. So normal innocent and good Americans like you have to avoid that part of America! Surely freedom means you can go to anywhere or any part of America.
Kids and parents suffers the mental turmoils daily for just going to school. Many got shot to death in schools, public places, cinemas and even in Capitol Hill! Is that freedom? Even your kids are not free to go to school without a random mass shooter lurking with military grade weapons to murder them! Is this freedom?
If you are not fortunate to have a white skin you could be necked to death in the bright daylight of even driving a good car may be be shot to death just for suspected of stealing the car! Everyday you live in fear of a white policeman! Is that freedom to live? Freedom to avoid death at the racist inclination of the white racist? Surely not.
Freedom means you can choose who you really want to be your leader. Only 30% choose Biden. Or 35% choose Trump! Why are they your president? Your system allowed 0.8% of the richest and most influential people to choose your candidates! Surely this is not political freedom. This is far from democracy. How on earth can you call yourself the “beacon of democracy” who in a sane mind can claim that?
Oh today you country stop the Americans from having access to best 5G technology, Smartphone, best EV’s, drones and others for some geopolitical nonsense! Is this freedom? Freedom to be deprived? Let me help you understand. You are deprived from buying a 10 bucks EV. And need to be charged once a week but you are not allowed to! You cannot buy your Tesla like for half the price! Just to support your too big to fail auto industry paying 100 million bonus doing shit for good Americans!
But to me EVs and Drones are just the top of the iceberg of your draconian and suicide policies that takes away the freedom of Americans like you. Think about Jullien Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden! Freedom? American is anything but free.
It was 2016 in Bruges, Belgium. I was with my parents and we had just hailed a cab that somehow turned into a ride-share with this British family.
All was well in the van until about three minutes in, when I heard the lady say: “These people look a bit funny, don’t they?”. I looked up to notice that they were talking about my family. In plain English.
I stayed silent as much as I could, as they went on discussing among themselves and chuckling over how we were so bundled up (It was in the middle of a freezing winter and I live in the freaking equator!) even though it wasn’t that cold for them, or how they couldn’t figure out where we’re from because apparently we didn’t look Chinese enough nor Middle Eastern enough for them (Answer: Neither – we’re Indonesian) and all. During the whole ride, they were mocking us.
My mother must’ve seen me giving them a death stare and asked if anything was wrong, in Indonesian. Topping it all off, they were of course chuckling at how my mom was talking really funny. I couldn’t stand it any more, so I answered my mom in English, making sure the British family heard me well:
“Yes there is a problem here. Some people actually still think that English isn’t a universal language by now, and think that it’s good fun to mock and make fun of other people just because of how they look”.
I spent the rest of the cab ride watching the blood drain from their faces. At least I was no longer the one being uncomfortable in that cab.
Feeling sad after making a decision doesn’t mean it was the wrong decision.
Life is not tiring. Wanting life to be a certain way but not having the confidence to make it that way, is tiring.
Self-awareness is realising that there is no opponent -you’re fighting against yourself.
Sometimes saying ‘goodbye’ doesn’t mean you don’t love something, it just means you love yourself too.
That lesson will repeat itself until you learn it.
If you keep one hand on your past and one hand on your future you’ll never have either. To embrace tomorrow, you must let go of yesterday.
The world starts and ends entirely inside your mind. No matter where you end up, no matter how rich, or successful you become, you won’t enjoy any of it if you get there at the expense of your mental health.
As a teenager, I worked in a gas station for a couple of years. A younger kid got hired who had some odd work habits. When the station owner would leave, the kid would just go sit down in the office. Meanwhile, I’d be pumping gas, changing oil, or mounting tires. I had no authority over this kid.
A few days after he was hired, I told the owner what was going on. An hour or two later the owner mentioned he was going home for an hour or two. He departed, the kid sat down in the office, while I finished doing an oil change and waited on customers at the pumps.
Ten minutes later, the boss walked out the alley where he’d parked his truck out of sight, and stood quietly in the shadows, watching me work, and the kid sitting on his butt. A few minutes later, the kid was fired. Word got around our small town pretty quickly, I don’t think this kid could find another job that summer.
Years ago I strained a tendon in my thumb. I went to one of those jenky quick service medical clinics to have it looked at and a person, who I assumed had some training in doctoring or nursing, prescribed me ibuprofen and put my hand in a brace.
I paid them like 50 bucks and went on my way.
A few weeks later I got a bill for the brace from a medical billing company in Texas. They assigned a cost of $750 to the brace, and only the brace, claimed to have billed my insurance for $450 and expect the rest from me. Of course, I sent them nothing, and the bills kept coming. The brace was essentially the same as one you’d buy at the drug store for about $35. It was nothing special and there was no way I was sending them any money. I tried to call them, but no one ever answered their phone.
Once my tendon healed, I put the brace in a box, along with a copy of their bill and mailed it to them. I never received anther bill afterwards.
In fact, there is no eternal empire in human history. From Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, Ottoman, Russia. The lifespan of any empire established by a civilization is limited. In other words, crashes are bound to happen.
But the difference between China and other empires is that most ancient empires collapse only once. Because the collapsed empire can never be rebuilt again. But China has such a magical power that no matter how it collapses, it will always be reunified after a period of time, and then climb to the peak again.
image 14
This picture shows the whole history of China. The crown represents peace and unity, and the sword represents division and war.
So much so that the opening sentence of the famous ancient Chinese novel “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” reads: “The general trend of the world is that if it is divided for a long time, it will be united, and if it is united for a long time, it will be divided.”
Why China has such magic power, historians have many opinions.
One of the more widely recognized statements is this:
4,000 years ago, the Chinese were born on a land suitable for farming. Since the earliest civilized countries were established, they have been a typical agricultural civilization.
From the earliest recorded history of China, they have faced the threat from the north. That is the nomadic civilization galloping on the grasslands. In the early historical documents of Chinese dynasties, the invasion of nomadic civilization was recorded many times, and even the most brilliant Western Zhou Dynasty perished because of the invasion of nomadic civilization.
The ancestors of the Chinese discovered that the agricultural civilization, which is good at farming and construction, cannot compete with the nomadic civilization, which is good at riding and archery, in war. (Infantry can hardly defeat cavalry). But as long as they are united, they will become more powerful. If 1 person can’t defeat the enemy, then 3 people; if 3 people can’t, then 10 people. Since agricultural civilization can breed more wealth and population, once China is united, the nomads are no match at all.
In 221 BC, the Qin Empire unified China for the first time, defeated the Xiongnu in war, and built the Great Wall to keep them out of the cold north. The Han Empire went a step further and formed a professional army of hundreds of thousands of people, went on an expedition to the desert, and completely defeated the Xiongnu. A unified and strong state always protects its people from harm. And when the empire crumbles and divides, China becomes weak. For example, the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period were all like this. At this time, the enemy from the north invaded, the internal war was in chaos, and the society was dark. People cannot live a normal life, and starvation and death become the norm. Every round of imperial collapse and division in Chinese history will be accompanied by wars and a significant reduction in population. The lessons of history have engraved this truth deeply in the hearts of the Chinese people—unity is justice and light, and division is evil and darkness. The Chinese yearning for unity transcends history, time, religion, and nationality.
Therefore, the ultimate political goal of every careerist who wished to seize power in ancient China was the same: to unify the country and obtain the “sky destiny”. Only in this way can we gain the support of the people.
Imagine if in Europe, every German thought the German government was evil, the British thought the British government was dark, and the French thought the French government was corrupt. These governments should all be overthrown. As for the reason, there is only one: they don’t want to unify Europe, which is not the right direction.
What a terrible and incredible power this is, but the Chinese have such power.
I used to date an American. At the time I lived on an estate where to get out, you had to drive under a railway bridge arch. He got annoyed with having to wait for oncoming traffic to clear and demanded to know “why the hell didn’t they build this with two lanes?” I said it was built 150 years ago for stagecoaches, before cars were even invented. Americans forget how old England is.
I asked a cycle rickshaw driver in India if I could have a turn. “This’ll be as easy as riding a bicycle,” I thought.
Technically, that’s exactly what it is. Only that you’re pulling someone else’s weight as well. Or even that of several people.
His face had all those deep grooves from the harsh sun beating down on him all day. His arms and legs were as thin as twigs. His ribcage bulged through a sweat-drenched tanktop.
I was less than half his age and enjoyed the kind of nutrition he could only dream of.
“You’re a tourist,” he protested.
But I insisted and he sat on the vinyl seat in the back.
I mounted the driver’s seat brimming with confidence and pressed down on the pedal.
It didn’t even budge.
I stood up and pushed down with all my might.
The rickshaw squeaked forward a couple inches.
By this point, the driver was laughing hysterically.
I conceded defeat, we changed positions, and he sailed down the street with an ease I could not even begin to fathom.
And while he was no industry-disrupting maverick, he was solving a real problem—helping people get from A to B.
My view of manual laborers was forever changed.
I learned that technique always trumps strength.
And that every honest line of work deserves our utmost respect.
There’s a lot of people chatting about “reptilians”. My (MM) opinion is that (as far as the Earth is concerned), our environment is not conducive and supportive of a human-sized intelligent reptilian extraterrestrial. The size betrays the need for large amounts of oxygen and that impacts the brains size and cavity.
Reptilians can exist, mind you, but not as intelligent beings. Not around our star, and within our present environment.
I had the opportunity to inquire to the Domain Commander about this issue on a chat that I had while riding the public bus. (Yup, welcome to MM land.)
There ARE extraterrestrials that have a reptilian form, and they are intelligent.
They however, are unable to operate within this solar system effectively.
Thus, any extraterrestrial beings that operate within our Earth environment take on other “forms”. Not reptilian.
That being said, one should not discount the reports that reptilians and shape-changing beings are common in the earth environment. They are not. What is instead being reported is a cloaked image that presents a reptilian image directly keyed to satiate the observer.
The primeval state is insectoid. Not reptilian, however, many human observers would find a projection of a large insect far too disturbing for purposes of contact, thus a reptilian image is preferred.
Better to see a human-sized lizard, than a giraffe sized preying mantis. Don’t you know.
Back when I was in college (early ‘70s) everyone hitchhiked. I would hitchhike alone or with friends almost every other weekend in upstate New York (yes, I’m a guy). Our trips were always taken on part of the NYS Thruway, and there were unwritten rules that hitchhikers followed. There were usually three, four or more hitchhikers just before the toll booths, each person or group would be spread out 20 or so feet apart. We would all have signs for where we wanted to go, usually the city/town/exit we wanted to get dropped off. The person/group that was closest to the toll booths had priority for being picked up, if you were just getting to the thruway entrance, you took the spot farthest away. As people got picked up, your place in the queue got better.
My friend and I actually started a small business. We got large pieces of white oaktag (two feet wide) and created stencils that we would spray paint with dayglow orange paint. We would sell them to people who were going to hitchhike, they were always the best signs of anybody looking for a ride, they loved them. We also made copies of tips and rules (we would always be amazed at stupid ways people dressed to be standing outside, sometimes in the snow/rain for hours). I’d say we got a ride 95% of the time, we never had any problems.
The topper though was: “You will have to wait until Monday.”
Er, no I don’t.
I paraded in front of that branch with a sign stating the facts – this branch did not have $1000 on hand – causing quite the queue to form….of demanding account holders.
Presto. $1000 cash appeared, with no delivery that I observed, nothing.
Dude, age 37, sexist as hell, has a theory that only very few women are smart. Very few. He could maybe count them on one hand.
He, on the other hand, is the love child of Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein high on NZT.
We are at a party, all PhD students, the women’s section seriously looked down on by this Dude. He of course has to start an intellectual fight over something one of the girls is majoring in. He dies to prove that she has grey spots in her logic/theory. Girl is super chill, Dude makes very little sense actually. He is mostly arrogant. Finally he names a study written by a female author, says Girl should only talk with such confidence if she is as smart as that woman. Yeah, the author lady is one of the few super intelligent “females” he would be able to accept as a partner in all terms.
Girl laughs and pulls out her laptop to show Dude how the study is actually her own article. She wrote it. She is the super intelligent author lady.
Laugh rumbles for minutes, Dude leaves a contrail behind in his rush to get out, trying to act hurt.
I was 19 and doing my internship in a midsize Pune based CA firm. My boss and I were working until around 8:30 p.m. Other employees had already left.
My Boss: Vikas, we should leave now, it’s 8:30 p.m.
In an attempt to impress my boss, with how dedicated and hard working I am, Isaid “Sir, you leave. I will finish drafting that partnership deed and then go.”
My Boss: Are you sure? It can take 2 hours.
Me: No problem, Sir. I’ll finish it this evening and set the copy on your desk before leaving.
My Boss: OK. Lock the office carefully.
Here is the catch, I had already drafted that deed, and it was ready to be printed out. I went to my desk, waited few minutes, ensured boss had left his cabin, then took printouts, neatly placed it on my boss’s table. Switch off lights and locked the office. Went down the cafeteria downstairs and started having my food.
But I forgot, there’s a balcony adjacent to my boss’s cabin. He was actually in the balcony talking on a phone, while I locked him in his own office.
But that’s only half part of embarrassment story.
My boss realised I’ve locked him in, saw the partnership deed print outs on his desk, he understood the entire matter (he was a smart and jolly person in 30s, who has gone through that same phase of internship).
He called me : Vikas, where are you? what are you doing?
Me: Sir I am in office, typing that partnership deed.
Boss : There’s no need to type that deed. I’m in my cabin now, holding the printout of that same partnership deed.
Me:……………!
Boss : So please come to the office, unlock the door, let me go home!
If he had scolded me, then okay. But he never said a word about my oversmartness.
It was a second date, and we went to an Indian restaurant. The waiter made a mistake with our order, and instead of causing a scene I was apparently completely sympathetic and understanding.
I say “apparently” because I don’t actually remember this at all, since being nice to waiters is my default mode, but my date really noticed. It seems that almost everyone else she’d dated would put on some kind of show in order to show how assertive and macho they were, no matter that it involved humiliating someone for a mistake anyone could have made – and she said that that was the precise point when she thought that I might have long-term relationship potential.
Fifteenth wedding anniversary this month. Moral: be nice to waiters.
My father was a very distinguished British judge and widely recognised as one of the finest legal minds of his generation.
Whenever he bought a car, he set up a savings account to pay for the eventual replacement. The account was with a major international banking group.
When the time came to replace his car, he discovered that this type of account had been mothballed, and no interest had been paid for years. He’d overlooked the notification small print amongst the endless stream of marketing bumf from the bank.
His initial complaint was rejected. So my father wrote directly to the Chair of the Board, pointing out that this policy discriminated against the bank’s most vulnerable customers, with an incisively argued opinion that the policy was illegal under EC consumer law.
Not long afterwards he received a personal letter from the Chair. After apologising profusely, he assured my father that the policy would be changed, and that many thousands of customers of discontinued accounts would have their interest paid in full plus additional compensation. This will have cost them many millions.
It’s not often that a single customer complaint changes the policy of a major corporation. Their lawyers must have checked my father’s reputation and realised that they were on a legal hiding to nothing.
They tangled with the wrong guy!
Copeland’s of New Orleans Bananas Foster
New Orleans Bananas Foster
Ingredients
1/2 cup (1 stick) whole butter
4 whole bananas, peeled and cut into fourths
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup light cream or Half-and-Half
1 ounce banana liqueur
1 ounce rum
Instructions
Place half of the butter in a heavy gauge skillet over medium heat and melt. Add the sugar and cream. Cook for approximately 2 minutes until the sugar is dissolved.
Add cut bananas and the cinnamon to the skillet and stir to coat.
Remove the skillet from the flame. Add the rum and the banana liqueur.
Swirl to incorporate and place the skillet back on the flame. (**Be careful because the alcohol may ignite when you place it back on the flame.)
Add the remaining butter and swirl to incorporate.
Serve over your favorite ice cream, pound cake, or biscuits.
They had a warrant for the guy related to money laundering and racketeering, but they knew he was a hit man too. They were going to hit his house early one morning. The bust crew staged around the corner, and my dad said he would cruise by the house to check for any unforeseen circumstances, and verify the street address. My dad pulled up in an unmarked suberban, and stopped briefly in front of the guys house. At that moment, hit man dude walks out in his bath robe to get the morning newspaper. My dad (in plain clothes) said “excuse me, can I ask you a quick question?” Dude said sure. He walked up to my dads window. My dad says aren’t you so-and-so? Guy says yes i am. Dad flashed his badge and says sir, i got a warrant for your arrest. Dude looks around, then said really? Dad says yes sir, put your hands on my hood please. And handcuffed him right there in his bathrobe. Then called the bust crew and told them “well, i got him. He is in custody “.
Dude was actually super cool. Said he was gonna need a few minutes to explain this to his wife because she had no idea about this part of his life. They gave him that courtesy
When I was younger I had been babysitting for my nephew but they had recently moved to a new apartment in a part of the city I didn’t know. My parents had drawn a map to get me there, but I ended up not quite getting the same route back. It was gone 2am and I emerged onto a little roundabout from a different road than expected so I went around twice to get my bearings. And of course a cop car just happened to see it and pulled me over.
They asked me why, I told the truth and showed them the paper map. They asked me if I’d anything alcoholic to drink and again I truthfully said no. I don’t blame him for not believing me, given the time, a Saturday night and the situation so I took the breathalyser. I knew it would come back totally negative so I wasn’t worried. So of course it did, and they let me go. But before they left, the officer looked at me and very honestly and earnestly thanked me for my polite, respectful, courteous and cooperative attitude.
Apparently they don’t get pleasant, polite attitudes from the people they encounter very often and it was nice for them.
Not too long ago, I was “de-marketized” by my former bank, Royal Bank of Canada, for accepting too many payments from companies I work for from PayPal.
from the Financial Times
This is one of Canada’s Big 5 banks, and I had been banking with them for well over 30 years. I had actually spoken to their security department about this as they wanted to confirm that all of my transactions were legal and not something out of fraud or whatever, which I didn’t mind being audited on as all of my work was legal, just not paid through the usual ways.
The bank’s security had cleared me, but they were then overruled by some other department in their head office, and suddenly I get a letter saying I was being “de-marketized” which involves having ALL of my accounts, investments, retirement funds and so on be shut down and be forced to move to another bank. There was no way to appeal, no way to complain and no act I could do to stop this. So having exhausted almost all of the avenues of redress (there’s still the Federal banking ombudsman), I had to scramble to get all of my accounts out to another bank.
Now normally I would say, “good riddance” as I’ve found that the service at my new bank far superior than what I’ve encountered with RBC. RBC put me through essentially bureaucratic hell for a month as I had to fill out this form and that form…. but now you’re probably wondering where I’m going with all this.
Well, when I had moved my investment accounts (my retirement funds) out to another bank, they had the gall to charge me $150 for the priviledge to MOVE THE MONEY OUT despite them FORCING ME OUT. And worse, if I hadn’t screamed absolute murder to the highest mountains, they tried to RETURN MY RETIREMENT SAVINGS STRAIGHT TO ME AS CASH. To do this would AUTOMATICALLY incur an instant 25–30% INCOME TAX CUT OFF THE FUNDS, which would have been in the THOUSANDS of dollars! If it wasn’t for my new bank instructing me EXACTLY what I needed to do to avoid incurring the loss and telling them I was absolutely ready to put this whole mess on LOCAL NEWS, they wouldn’t have “suddenly” discover that there was a way for me to transfer the money without the tax implications.
So in the end, I still only got hit by the $150 transfer fee, but this was absolutely absurb as I never would have been hit with this if they didn’t force me out in the FIRST PLACE.
High Alert! China Is Now Launching Their ‘Submarine Killer’ To Counter US Nuclear Submarine
China commands one of the best naval powers in the world. With modern naval vessels, advanced naval technology with no rival, a majestic naval infrastructure and the largest commanding navy in the world, the PLA Navy is by no means playing around. A recent development has come into light which reveals China’s plans of developing a next generation naval demolisher that will definitely be a force to be reckoned with.
My husband was the 82nd paratrooper with the tweaked shoulder, I was the new wife hip deep in a Ford Pinto doing an oil change and tune-up at the Hobby Shop on post. He was an E-5 Sergeant, we didn’t have money for someone else to work on our cars, so “we” were working on the Pinto of Many Colors (think primer on all four fenders in four different colors — not me, I swear!) This particular Pinto we’d paid $186 for because the little old lady who sold it to us took $14 off because we’d have to register it — 94,000 miles later, I figured we got our money’s worth. But it did require maintenance.
Hubby was handing me tools one-handed. I asked for an extension for a stubborn spark plug and he went to “check it out” which you could do at the post Hobby Shop.
Someone from the next bay handed me the tool and said, “Try this one.”
I took it and said, “Thank-you, kindly.”
There was some inconsequential chit-chat, and I said, “You sound like home.”
He was from home, less than an hour from home anyway, La Follette, TN.
That was it, a short conversation with a soldier, a good ole Southern boy in a white T-shirt tucked into belted jeans. He was a little older than everyone else in the bay, but oil needed changing, right?
Hubby gave me big eyes and said, “Thank-you, SIR.”
It was the GENERAL Carl Stiner, his many boss’ boss, head of the 82nd at the time.
The Pinto started right up and ran like a top. Hubby’s shoulder healed. And the general went on to great things with Special Operations Group and to co-write a book with Tom Clancy. But I think of him changing his own oil in a tucked-in T-shirt at the Hobby Shop.
Strangest things on camera
WHAT ELSE COULD GO WRONG?
A man was skydiving one bright sunny day. He pulled the string to open his main parachute – but nothing happened – the parachute did not open! So he pulled the string to open his reserve chute – but that didn’t open either!!
‘Oh no’, the man thought to himself. ‘The way things are going, my car probably won’t start either when I try to drive home!!!’
This is a favorite story of mine. If you watch my show the original creature features on YouTube, You will note that I wear an eye patch. I have been blind in one eye for almost 60 years And I have made a point of wearing an eye patch in all of my ID photos because it makes it easier for people to know it’s me. Having a damaged eye is a hard thing to fake. So I went down to the DMV to renew my license and they said I had to take an eye test remember I am wearing an eye patch. They first told me to cover my left eye and read the chart, the eye with an eye patch. I told them that it would not affect anything as I don’t have an eye and I am in fact wearing an eye patch but they said I could be faking it so I had to cover my left eye and read the chart. That was not the stupid part. They then told me I had to cover my right eye, The only eye that can see and read the chart. I again told them that I was blind in my left eye and was in fact wearing an eye patch over my left eye which i’d be willing to remove so that they could see the lack of a left eye. They pointed out that despite being qualified to be at the DMV or Possibly because of it, They were not qualified to look at my eye and tell that it was blind and that I still had to cover my eye and read the chart. Again they pointed out that I could be faking it, There could be a hole in the eye patch that I’m seeing through. I said let’s just write down that I saw nothing and they said they couldn’t believe me until I covered my eye and then told them I saw nothing. I asked them what would be the advantage to me to lie on my DMV eye Test that I was blind. They couldn’t tell me but required that I covered my only good eye and try to read the chart. I covered the eye said I couldn’t see anything and they proceeded to give me my new driver’s license. I desperately want to work at the DMV as I don’t believe I am stupid enough to possibly ever be fired.
“We all printed off our copies of the speech and she had hers on her computer! I can’t even believe that. I was so pissed.”
“Did you tell her to print it?” I ask.
“Well, no,” she admits. “But I think it’s fairly obvious—”
“If it’s so obvious, you’d think she’d’ve done it,” I observe.
“She was probably just being lazy.”
“Or she didn’t have the same expectations as you. If you wanted her to do something, you should’ve told her. You can’t really be mad about something you never said.”
Many people think it’s valid to get upset about assumptions.
But if you want something done, say it. If you don’t like something, say it. If you need something, say it.
Don’t assume that others see what you see.
It never hurts to discuss things.
And it never hurts to say what you’re thinking.
Communication.
It rocks, yo.
NDE REVEALS: The REASON We CHOSE To Incarnate During This DIFFICULT Time!
My best friends 5 year old son stayed with me for a week (my friend and her husband went on holiday). I was pregnant at that time.
One evening after bringing him back home from the park, i was panting walking home. As soon as he got home, he disappeared into the bathroom.
I could hear running water, but didn’t think much of it. I thought he was washing his hands (and he takes long).
While he was doing his thing, I went to the kitchen to warm up dinner, I saw him pull a chair to the bathroom. Obviously this wasn’t normal. I followed him to the bathroom, but he asked me not to come in for two minutes.
When he finally opened the door, he’s filled the bathtub with hot water, added soap for bubbles, cologne for smell (he probably didn’t realize that soap had smell too). And he’d kept the chair just outside the bath tub so I could sit and soak my feet in hot water.
He said that’s what dad did when his mum was expecting his sibling. It takes away all the pain he said!
Obviously the sweetest thing a child has done
Wife Says She “Wasted Her 20s Raising Kids” So She Wants An Open Marriage…I Said I Want A Divorce
So you know how in the Lord of the Rings books, orcs are corrupted, debased creatures made by foul darkness in mockery of elves?
That’s kind of what English muffins are to crumpets.
If you’ve only had English muffins but never has your mouth known the blessing of a crumpet, you might think they are in some way kin, without realizing how the English muffin is a fel and evil mockery of a crumpet. To taste a crumpet after a lifetime of English muffins is to know true bliss, as if you’ve had your first hint of a brighter world, a breakfast delicacy buttered by the loins of Aphrodite herself.
Not my boss, it was an important client. A client we couldn’t afford to lose.
A desperate call came in Friday morning. An American investor wanted an English translation of their just released 68-page German annual report for Monday.
I knew it was a huge problem, but I stayed calm as I ran the word count to see how bad it was.
Doing the rough math, I told him we needed to find at least 3 additional financial translators (plus yours truly) who might be willing to work a 32-hour weekend on short notice. I would call him back as soon as I had news.
Now this was back in 1998, long before Google Translate and DeepL.
I sent an email out to 11 translators and got on the phone to follow the mail.
After 8 calls I had my 3 translators, but there was a catch. The least expensive one was asking for 240 marks (120 EUR) per hour. The most expensive wanted 400 marks (200 EUR).
That was outrageous, but as they all pointed out to me, only outrageous people ask suppliers to change their weekend plans on Friday morning and tell their loved ones they are working a 16-hour Saturday and Sunday.
Normally this job would have been quoted just under 8,000 marks with a one week delivery time, but to complete over the weekend it would cost 45,000.
I called back the client and told him we could deliver for Monday at a price of 45,000… or we could deliver a week later for 8,000. I asked him to talk it over with his investor and get back to me asap.
The return call came pretty quickly. Monday in a week would be just fine.
The moral of the story is, be nice, but be firm. Set a price for losing your weekend. It can be extra money, extra days off or maybe even a promotion.
Then let the boss decide whether it’s worth it. Your weekend belongs to you, but you can always sell it if the price is right.
It was on our honeymoon and I knew then I made a mistake by marrying him. We argued a lot. He was angry with me because I couldn’t read a map. I COULD read a map just fine, it was the map that wasn’t clear as to which way to go. I gave him the map and he couldn’t figure it out either. 15 years go by, our two daughters were 10 and 13 and starting with the mouthy disrespect, but only towards me. The girls and I got into a verbal confrontation about respecting me, right in front of him. He gathered both girls to hug them and told them I was “tetched” or in other words crazy and they didn’t have to listen to me! So instead of backing me up he just made it worse. It was all downhill from there. Time goes by. Every single night, just like his parents, come home from work, eat, shower, watch TV and go to bed. Repeat until death. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Rarely go to a movie or anything else. NEVER go anywhere on vacation. I could not live like that so I decided to start my own business, which did pretty well. Went by myself on simple vacations since he didn’t want to go. So after 32 years wasted with this man, he decides to cheat with my businesses book keeper who was my best friend. I should have listened to my instict, left him to figure out his own map and walked out while on our honeymoon.
Psychologist Explains WHY Women Have To EARN Affection
“Women treat men like men treat their jobs. Men treat women like women treat money”.
And…
“people want what they want. Not, what wants them.”
I had an offer and counter offer then agreed to sell. I signed the papers and gave them to his realtor. The realtor said he would take them to the buyer tomorrow. It would have closed in a couple weeks. I was on a tight deadline to sell, it was 1994 and tax law gave me two years to sell and time was up soon. Later that same day another realtor brought me an offer that was VA preapproved and could close that week. Since the first buyer hadn’t signed yet I was able to recind my agreement to sell and accept the new one. His realtor cost him a house
“You haven’t passed the trial period”, I said to the manager.
I was having this interview for a job I really wanted. The interview went well, but the employers explained that since they couldn’t tell from an interview how I would do in practice, there would be a trial period of three months. I was happy with that; if I didn’t pass the trial period, at least I’d gain experience.
So I began my trial period, but already in the first week I didn’t like the atmosphere in that place. The manager who was so nice during my interview, turned out to be loud, on the verge of being a bully. He was walking in the place like a dictator and people would go quiet every time he was around them. I’m prone to anxieties and I knew it wasn’t going to work for me. Yes, I needed the money and I loved what I was doing, but it didn’t do good to my soul.
I was taking my time deciding though, but then one day he was shouting at one employee so badly (and in front of others), that I made up my mind. It was nearly the end of my trial period, and at the end of that day I went to his office and asked to talk. He said, “Please come in, I was actually planning to talk to you after the weekend, we’ll sign a contract next week.” I said, “Thank you but I won’t be staying, I can’t stand the atmosphere in your place.” He said, “What? why? don’t take it like that, we are busy, it’s nothing personal, and you have definitely passed the trial period.” I said, “Yes, but you haven’t passed the trial period!”
I was 17. 2 cops pulled me over and checked me and my car out. They found a pair of pliers on the back floorboard. They were looking at me all suspicious like. I was shaking. One of them said “We’ve got you now”. I managed to say “For what?” They looked at each other and then one said “Cattle rustling” I said “But we’re in the middle of the city”. They started laughing. Turns out there’s an old Texas law dating back to the 1800s that forbids anyone from carrying wire cutters. We all got a laugh and they let me go.
I came to USA married and our daughter arrived 5 years later.
I decided to teach her Portuguese since it is our mother tongue.
When my daughter was 7 years old, she did not want to speak Portuguese anymore. One day, coming from school, she began telling me some situation that happened at school in English. I told her: “Please, tell me in Portuguese.” My English is excellent, but the reason that I wanted her speaking in Portuguese was because of her future, it is a plus when you can acquire a language as a child.
She got upset and told me she did not want to tell me anything anymore. I told her to go to her room and come back when she was ready to speak. It took her a few minutes, but her reasoning was valid: “Mom, everything happened in English”. But she told me the story in Portuguese, with some American words.
A decade passed, she is in nursing school where she learned Spanish. Since both languages have Latin roots, it was not very difficult to learn it.
Today she is a nurse. Almost every week she comes home telling me how impressed her foreign patients are with her Portuguese. The hospital administration asked her to do some tests for her to become their official translator.
Here and there she thanks me for not giving up on teaching her Portuguese. It has opened many doors to her.
They took all the power tools off of my service truck.
Told me I had to go see Bob Laublaub (not his real name) at the shop.
Yup…They’re firing me.
So I go into Mike’s…Ermmm Bob’s office. He has a termination slip and a check he is filling out by hand, my payoff. He says, “We are letting you go, it’s a clean layoff”. True to his word it was a clean ROF (reduction of force). I sign it, he already has. As soon as I sign it I am no longer his employee, so I ask him, “Why”? He states “We had a complaint from a customer that you were spending too much time in your truck smoking cigarettes”.
“Ohh,” I replied and handed him his copy of the termination form.
When one of my best friends from high school got married, she asked me to be a bridesmaid. I was pretty honored, and said yes. Then she told me I had to order a dress in a size 16. I was a size 2 at the time.
Her reasoning: she was portly, as were her bridesmaids, and if I was up there in a gown that showed how slim I was, I wouldn’t “match” the bridal party.
The dress was very low cut, and the only straps a loop of fabric on each side, like this, in lieu of sleeves. The skirt was much fuller.
What was I supposed to do, walk down the aisle holding my arms over my head, dragging two pounds of fabric? How would I walk with all the fabric tangling between my legs?
The amount of U.S. treasury notes held by foreign countries is well known.
China’s current holding of U.S. treasury instruments is, roughly, $859 Billion (U.S. of course). That’s less than one trillion.
And the U.S. treasury owes that much money to China because China loaned the United States that much money (although there’s probably some interest in there). The United States isn’t going to turn down perfectly good money just because the Chinese have it. For one thing, if the U.S. government refused to sell U.S. debt instruments to countries for U.S. dollars, those countries would probably trade them on the open market for Euros or something and drive down the value of the dollar. Then the Europeans who sold Euros would be investing the money in U.S. treasury notes anyway.
They are intelligent and play the long game. They’ve watched the effects that immoral contents have had on other countries for the past few decades and they’ve decided they do not want a similar fate for the youth of China. I commend them.
Meet the woman who killed the President of France with a blowjob:
Marguerite Steinheil was a woman who lived a very interesting life. She was a socialite whom became famous for her many affairs with very prominent French men at the turn of the century, she became embroiled in international political scandals and once attempted to frame her manservant for the brutal murders of her husband and mother, a crime for which she was heavily implicated but never convicted.
However, it is for her relationship with Félix Faure, 7th President of France, that she became infamous.
Steinheil was introduced to Faure at a social event and quickly became his mistress. She would often visit his office at the Élysée Palace and disappear with him into his private chambers. One day, having visited the Palace, Steinheil rung urgently for the servants, who entered to find Steinheil adjusting her clothing and Faure having a seizure on the sofa. Within a few hours he was dead.
The story that came out was that Steinheil had been performing oral sex on Faure when he suffered a fatal stroke.
It’s tragic, but undeniably a pretty awesome and quintessentially ‘French’ way to go. The Presidents legacy lived on through a ship named for him, which ironically went down a few years later.
When I was an ENT resident, I had a patient named Alvin who had been treated multiple times for an oral cancer. What happened on a visit after a biopsy stays with me today. At that time I wrote an article about it. Kind of a long answer to your question,, but I think worthwhile:
Alvin lay on the gurney, oblivious to the huff of the respirator forcing oxygen into his lungs. Pulling the surgical mask from my face, I reached for his pulse and checked his pupillary reflexes, matching the physical input against the digital readouts on the recovery room monitor. Everything looked good except that Alvin was going to live.
Alvin, a master woodworker, had cancer. At least, he’d had it before. Four years ago a small sore on the floor of his mouth proved positive for squamous cell carcinoma. Chemotherapy, radiation and three mutilating surgeries over as many years battered the disease to a standstill.
Throughout his ordeal, Alvin was indomitable. His face disfigured by the loss of half of his lower jaw, skin burned leathery by radiation, he saw no reason to complain let alone despair. Although he couldn’t smile, he never failed to joke with the nurses and talk about the mountain cabin where he planned to retire.
When Alvin presented for his checkup, there was another lump. My heart sank. He’d had all the drug and x-ray treatments his body could tolerate. Another surgery was out of the question.
“I don’t know about this, Alvin,” I said. “I think we’d better biopsy it.”
With a voice made raspy by his treatments, he said, “Sure, Doc. No problem.”
A week after the biopsy, Alvin bounced into my office after a wave and a wink to the receptionist.
He plunked himself in front of my desk, eyes still bright but unaccompanied by the usual deep laugh lines. He unshouldered a Woodworker’s Supply tote bag and set it beside the chair. “So what’s up, Doc?” he said.
The damning pathology report lay on my desk like a sheet of lead. My voice broke on his name. I took a sip of water and pulled myself together.
“It’s not good, Alvin. The cancer’s back. I don’t think we can stop it this time.”
Alvin nodded and leaned back, staring at the ceiling for a few seconds. Leaning forward, he rummaged in his bag, extracting a package about the size of a cigar box brightly-wrapped in silver paper. He placed it on the desk and pushed it across to me.
“I know, Doc, and I knew you’d feel real bad about it. I thought this might cheer you up a little. Made it myself.”
Speechless, I carefully unwrapped a wooden box with an intricate inlay of a bird on the lid and scrolls of a yellow wood encircling the periphery.
“Not bad, eh?” he said. “Now the box is amboyna burl from Southeast Asia. One of the most exotic burls around. Chinese emperors used to hoard it like gold. Now they use it to make the dashboards on those high-end Mercedes. Just a delight to feel it in your hands, isn’t it? Like butter.”
He reached across to outline the yellow scrollwork inlaid on the sides. “Now that’s East Indian satinwood,” he said excitedly. “India and Sri Lanka. Tightest grain you ever saw. Hold it up to the light and it looks like it’s embedded with diamonds.”
I ran my hand over the polished surface, turning it to catch the light, catching some of Alvin’s enthusiasm for the natural beauty of the wood and marveling at the craftsmanship.
“The bird,” he said, “is my poor attempt at a phoenix. Lots of different woods in it for the colors: bloodwood for the fire, granadillo for most of the body, plum for the wings, some ebony for the talons. Whaddaya think?”
I stared slack-jawed at the man who’d just received a death sentence. “Alvin,” I managed, “it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Knew you’d like it,” he said, his voice smiling for him. “Thanks for being my doc. We gave it a good run didn’t we?”
Kyle McDonald, a guy (26 years old at the time of the events) who in 2006 managed to trade his way from a single red paperclip to a house.
It happened in Kipling Saskatchewan, Canada. In July 2005, Kyle posted an ad on Craigslist: “My name is Kyle, I’m an unemployed 26-year-old Canadian, I want a house in exchange, starting the trade by offering the red paperclip on my desk.” The idea came from a popular Canadian children’s game called “Bigger and Better,” which involves trading an object for something bigger or better until you get what you want. It took 14 trades and one year, but he finally succeeded.
The first to respond, two days after the initial blog post, were Rhawnie and Corinna: via email, they offered a wooden fish-shaped pen. Kyle went to Vancouver and met them, completed the trade, then posted their photo on his blog. And so, he waited for another trade. In Seattle, the pen was traded for a ceramic doorknob made by a lady named Annie. The doorknob turned into a barbecue, then a gas-powered generator (September 24). Within weeks, the internet buzz about young McDonald’s idea reached the media, and CNN and BBC competed for his interviews. The electric generator was traded for a beer keg, a snowmobile, a trip for two to Yak, British Columbia (February 2006), until he got a van and a record contract with Metal Works (February 22, 2006).
Later, he could trade the contract for a year’s free stay in a house in Phoenix. Kyle accepted, updated his blog, and started again. But renting wasn’t enough for him; he wanted his own house. Then came the real turning point in Kyle’s already lucky story: metal rocker Alice Cooper offered an afternoon in his company in exchange for the year’s rent. Leslie, an employee of Alice Cooper’s restaurant in Phoenix, lived in the apartment rent-free for twelve months. After closing the deal, Kyle had many offers to choose from, and he made the only trade that seemed like a loss: the afternoon with Alice Cooper went to Mark Herrmann of Kentucky, for a KISS band glowing orb. His popularity helped in the search, and in February, director Corbin Bernsen offered a role in his next movie in exchange for the KISS orb. At this point, the town of Kipling stepped forward, offering McDonald a recently renovated house in exchange for his role in Bernsen’s film.
It was July 5, 2006, a year had passed.
Kyle had made it, and on the lawn of his little house with red windows, there’s a large red metal paperclip.
I live in the wilderness. One night, just after dark, I get a knock at the door. Other than a few neighbors who would have phoned. I live miles into the woods, and nobody knocks on the door after dark.
I go to the door and there’s an older man and a woman, in pretty rough clothes, the man is holding a pretty beaten up rifle.
He claims that they went scouting elk in the morning, left their car, and went on foot, and got lost. The rifle was just for protection from Grizzlies. He was going to show his girlfriend a valley of elk, that would blow her away.
I hated to break it to him, that there had been no elk in that valley since the wolves moved in.
Elk season didn’t start for another week, he had planned on poaching. But here was a couple in their late sixties that had been walking for 8 hours, so guest rules were in place.
So I offered them a drink. He wanted a ride to his car.
I explained that it was a 40 mile drive, half of it on rough roads. Even though his car was only 10 miles as the crow flys away.
So we hopped in my truck, I took his gun, before we got in the truck. Though, with my hands on the steering wheel, he could have taken it while I was driving. But it was a good faith gesture.
It took close to an hour to get them to their car. I waited until they got it started, and they drove out ahead of me.
Of course, they were flat busted, and I wouldn’t even ask for gas money, because they didn’t look like they had a penny.
Went to a local mechanic to get some tires replaced on my vehicle my current set was bald and I was traveling from North Carolina to Florida.
After the tires were changed everything seemed fine until I got above 60 miles an hour at which point there was a severe rattling/wobbling coming from the rear end.
After the Florida trip I took my car back to them they told me I needed a new rear axle. Never had that kind of problem before so I took it to the dealership I bought it from. They examined the car and asked me why I had roughly 6 extra ounces of weight on my passenger rear tire on the back side of the rim. I said I don’t know please remove it they did problem was solved. The dealership didn’t charge me anything.
Upon returning home I went to the scam artists and said I am going to do everything I can and tell everybody I can not to use their services and why. Even went so far as to keep the weight strip in my car to show people.
We live in a very small town and word travels fast they we’re shuttered never to open again 6 months later.
Commander’s Palace Sour Cream Pecan Coffee Cake
2023 11 23 19 46
Ingredients
Cake
1 cup (2 sticks) softened unsalted butter
2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 pinch salt
1 1/2 cups sour cream
Pecan Filling
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped pecans
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Instructions
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter well a 10 inch Bundt pan and dust with flour, shaking out the excess.
Cake
In a bowl with an electric mixer beat the butter until smooth.
Add the sugar, a little at a time, and beat the mixture until it is light and fluffy.
Beat in the vanilla extract and the eggs, one at a time.
Into a bowl sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Add the dry ingredients to the butter-sugar mixture, beating slowly until just combined.
Fold in the sour cream.
Pecan Filling
In a bowl combine filling ingredients. Spoon 2/3 of the batter into the prepared pan, sprinkle the top with the pecan filling, gently pressing filling into batter, going completely around the cake until all remaining nut mixture is used. Add remaining batter to pan and smooth top.
Bake for 1 hour, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. If necessary, loosely cover top of cake with piece of aluminum foil to prevent overbrowning.
A corporate party in a 4 star restaurant a guest was talking full advantage of the open bar, and when told he would not be served he grabbed at the bartender.
The bartender was a former Michigan state police officer and he grabbed the man’s hand and was punched in the side of the face.
An all call went out for help as every bus boy, prep and chef poured into this party and restrained the drunken patron.
As they attempted to evict him he dropped to the ground. The two chefs, large, strong and burly, fell with him. They lay there on the steps holding his arms when the police came through the door yelling at us.
“LET HIM GO!” the officer commanded. And so they did.
This drunk idiot screamed, shook off the chefs, blew past me and attacked the cop!
I’ve never seen a baton wielded in such a dramatic fashion. From his side it smoothly went up and across that man’s head with a this and a “uhg” he dropped like a rock.
The dining room didn’t react at all. We all went back to work.
Your U.S. CEO earns 100 times that of Chinese CEO! Your Employees earn 5 times Chinese worker but Chinese workers work twice as hard. Your employees expect 10 times more benefits yet product half the Chinese worker productivity.
Your ports and infrastructure is dilapidated China’s infrastructure is state of the art latest technology. You turn our bill shit artist and Chinese workers are well educated, willing to learn and highly driven.
Every shit you do China will do it better, do it faster and do it way cheaper than you. So go figure why everything China do is get done at a fraction of your cost! It is not nuclear science!
CHINA, in every respect, I know every yank will say the USA but I don’t think so, not anymore, mainly because of their debt, and growing daily, yes, the US have a very powerful navy, but SO WHAT? Ships can be sunk, and sunk quickly, missiles are the thing these days, and China is way ahead with their hypersonic missiles, double the speed of US ones. According to all reports. Also, they run rings around the US in speed and cost of manufacturing. Which also puts China in front.
An elderly neighbor died. He was a mechanic before he retired and had a large set of tools. His widow held a garage sale to get rid of his things, and she had a large rolling tool chest, filled with the tools of his trade, marked at $25. I took her aside and told her “Withdraw that from the sale. It is marked way low. I will sell it for you.” She demurred, but I talked her into it.
Three phone calls later I had it sold for $1500 to another mechanic I knew. I also managed to sell the rest of his tools at a good price over the next few weeks, including a few I bought myself at fair market price.
Sleeping at night is worth more to me than getting a good deal at a yard sale.
Because (many) human beings think in terms of archetypes, not individuals, and the archetype of the abuse survivor is not a man.
I recently (last year) had a conversation about this with a therapist who works with abuse survivors. She was quite blunt and up-front about it. She said (paraphrasing) “A man can have video of a woman hitting him, and many people will still insist he can’t be an abuse victim.”
Liberals often make this about politics. A lot of liberals will point to toxic ideas about masculinity common in conservative circles (men are stronger than women, women can’t be a threat to men, women are kind and nurturing while men are aggressive and warlike) and say “therein lies the problem.”
While there is some truth to that—-some people do discount the idea men can be abuse survivors because they hold traditional gender-essentialist ideas about men and women—liberals have their own dirty closets when it comes to this issue as well.
A lot of liberals will say “believe survivors” when what they actually mean is “believe women,” and “believe women” when what they actually mean is “believe cis white women.” (Trans women? Women of color? They have a very different experience when they talk about being abused. I personally know a woman who says “believe women” who silenced a woman of color when she came forward about abuse.)
So, why does this happen?
Because people think in archetypes.
This isn’t actually about left or right, and it isn’t even about abuse. Step back for a moment. What’s the first thing, the very first thing, that pops into your head when you visualize a welfare recipient?
For a great many Americans, the prototypical welfare recipient is an inner-city black single mother.
Would it surprise you to know there are more white people than black people who receive welfare in the United States?[1]
This is an archetype: a quick mental image of the exemplar of a group. Many Americans think the exemplar of the group “welfare recipients” is “inner city black single mother.” Many Americans think the exemplar of the group “abuse victim” is “cis white woman.”
People make judgments based on archetypes, not individuals. People who make public policy decisions think in terms of archetypes, not individuals. When the archetype of “abuse victim” is “white women,” you build shelters around…white women.
And the thing is, even people who will tell you “oh, yeah, I know anyone can be a victim” don’t act like that’s true, not really. Liberals will point out hypocrisy in conservatives and conservatives will point out the same hypocrisy in liberals, but this is a “humans think in terms of groups” problem, not a left/right problem.
The very same conservative who will say “those social justice warriors always go on about how men are bad and women are perfect” also think that a real man, a strong alpha man, is not a weak pathetic pussy who would ever be hurt by a woman.
The very same liberals who will say “those knuckle-dragging conservative Neanderthals always sneer at beta males weak enough to let themselves get pushed around by a woman” also think that in any patriarchal society abuse is always a phenomenon perpetuated by men against women.
They both have the same archetype. They have it for different reasons, but ultimately they have the same archetype.
My husband and I have a very “boring” relationship. We don’t fight, we don’t “just pick up our backpacks and go for a vacation”, and we don’t indulge in “let’s do something crazy” moments. For (up to now) over twelve years together (including get-to-know-each-other, relationship, and marriage), we haven’t done anything “just because”. Anything we do, we have a plan for it.
The love my husband has for me is not the kind of love that the teenage me once dreamed about (I always dreamed that someone would love me like Gatsby loved Daisy). His love is not a love that burns like lava, seething with passion. His love is like the essence of life, filtered through time and crystalizes into a steady, solid, giant rock that I can lean on. His love is so tangible that I feel I could see it and touch it.
And I believe it’s the best kind of love one could ever ask for.
We often dream about someone that willing to die for love, willing to die for us, and we are willing to die for them. Yet, I’ve come to understand that we don’t need an eventful relationship to feel fulfilled. It’s far more enriching to have someone that we are willing to live for, to build a life together.
I know that I live in China, and that it is safe, safe… safe! But you know guys, I do miss my guns. Yup. I left them all behind back in the ‘States when I moved to China. I loved to take them out, and shoot them every now and then, and truthfully, I was lethal with my pistol.
I also miss my G3.
HK G3 Assault Rifle
I have had numerous weapons through the years, but I left behind my precious P99. It’s not that it is better than the trade-offs that I get here in China. It isn’t, but every now and again, I do miss firing that pistol.
Truth, you all.
Deep down, I still hold on to some of my American characteristics.
Walter P99
Of course, all of this is meaningless to you all, unless you are an American. But there is always something very nice about being able to defend yourself from the crime-ridden United States .
Here’s a (my) Martin .444 lever action.
Marlin 444 Lever Action
Man, oh man, those bullets were huge!
Marlin 444
It could really cut through the brush… I’ll tell you what.
Back in the day, Australians used to own thee kinds of weapons, and then a crazy guys in Tasmania (I seem to recall) went on a shooting spree “out of the blue”, and the Australian government started to ban everything… you know… to make Australia safer.
I hear that there are parts of Australia that remains very, very dangerous. I mean that there are some places that you do not dare go out at night…
…ugh. That is NOT a place where anyone should live.
But I don’t know if it is the wildlife… or the “wild” life. But if live in one such place, I would suggest that you leave. Life is too short to live in fear.
For my case, I was the boss who was later hired by the guy who used to work for me. Early in my career, I managed a construction crew of a dozen or so workers. One of my workers, I’ll call Scott, showed exceptional intelligence, drive and common sense. I promoted to foreman and then supervisor in less than two years. I left that company over a contract dispute and found another job.
Six years later, I’d grown bored with the new job and felt my future there was limited. Out of the blue, I received a call from Scott. A short time after I had left the old company, Scott ran into his old college sweetheart and a year later, married her. College? A menial laborer, promoted for foreman, and then supervisor, had a college degree? Yep. He told me that he was once a practicing attorney but disbarred for helping a client hide some assets. After disbarment, he slipped into depression and alcoholism. At his lowest point, he took the job of laborer.
His sweetheart and new wife was $$$ LOADED $$$. she had bought him his own successful construction company. He was a smart, ambitious guy but lack bossines (I mean business) sense and knowhow. He found himself over his head on a project and called me for help. It happened I had a couple of weeks vacation left, so for a nice fee, I agreed to spend that time helping him.
At the end of those two weeks, he offered the the job as Executive VP at salary over my current one and a share of the profits. He turned out to be the best boss I ever had and I worked for him until he retired (at forty-two.)
Ask the foreigner.? To them it is a million times safer than back home in the U.S. Chinese people like diversity and welcome good foreigners. But if he is a CIA or NED spy or trouble maker chances is he or she will be caught within 24 hours. If he likes the food, the place the people or the culture he or she is always welcome. If he is a hubris, xenophobic racist he should stay at home and join the KKK.
Let me warn you, China sniff you out in an hour and we will send you packing. But if you live China and wants to make China even better welcome. Let me tell you what you can do in China that you cannot do at home. You can open a 6 pack and you can drink as you walk on Chinese streets. You cannot do in the U.S. You can walk in the street at 3 am in the morning safely even if you are a women. In the U.S. you have many no go areas that even cops don’t want to go.
You cannot see homeless because there is none in China. Your chance of being shot by a random mass shooter is a billion to one in the U.S. if you fall sick everyone including foreigners get to be treated by the best doctors and given medical help. The life expectancy of China exceed that of the U.S. There is zero case of racial profiling in China but in the U.S. blacks can be necked to death in open daylight.
There are Sixty Eight Customized cars made for the CPC top brass every 5 years and PLA Top brass
Xi Jingping has four such cars, all similar and heavily armored
The Communication system is connected to a Chinese Satellite constellation and is not dependent on any other system allowing the president to talk to anyone he wants without any interception
Presently only Biden & Putin have similar systems
The Contract Tender price of this car was 972000 RMB ($ 136K)
I’ve been managing a brand for 9 years and have had stellar performance. I was promoted quickly and pretty soon assumed the role of second in charge for one of the key cities.
Part of my role includes bringing in big corporate sales. I was in the midst of closing a large annual contract with a major player.
And then my godmother had to undergo brain surgery.
I applied for some time off and spent a week with my godmother who lives in another country. I had accrued over 40 days in leave as I’ve been working myself to death to grow the company.
When I returned, my then boss wanted to know if I had finalised the sale. I was speechless. Everyone knew about my godmother’s surgery and it was an annual contract that the company could’ve afforded to wait a couple of weeks for. It wasn’t as if it was completely lost and I’ve been in communication with the client throughout.
But then came those words that I will always remember – “I don’t care if she’s dead. Money is money.”
I walked.
On a happier note, my godmother is fully recovered!
Story: He was the leading runner in the 2004 Summer Olympics marathon. At his pace, he was sure to win first place and secure the gold medal which would’ve brought pride and glory to his family and country.
Near the end of the marathon, he was attacked by a spectator. The spectator actually sidelined into him. Intentionally. In public.
That brief, 10 second-long distraction was enough to completely disrupt De Lima’s mental AND physical rhythm, both of which are critical to running long distance marathons.
He was quickly surpassed by two other runners and was evidently off his game for the remainder of the marathon. He finished in third place in surprisingly good spirits and received the bronze medal.
What people remember is that he crossed the finish line with a smile despite what had happened to him just moments before.
This was a man who was robbed of first place and an Olympic gold medal in a matter of seconds.
Imagine training for something your entire life and being so close to accomplishing something extraordinary. Something that brings you, your family, and your country great pride and happiness and puts you in the history books.
Only to be robbed in a matter of seconds in the most outrageous and nonsensical way possible. By something that should never have happened in the first place.
De Lima could’ve stopped running when that incident happened. He could’ve attacked the trespasser. He could’ve complained endlessly to the officials.
But he pushed past, he ran, and he finished.
Even after the fiasco, words like “furious” or “hatred” were evidently not in De Lima’s vocabulary. Holding a relentless vendetta against his perpetrator was clearly not important to him.
Even when a fellow Olympian earnestly offered his own gold medal to De Lima, De Lima responded “I am happy with mine – it is bronze but means gold.”
De Lima went on to win a variety of awards commemorating his self-discipline and spirit of sportsmanship.
He also went on to light the cauldron at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
image 152
It takes immense willpower and discipline to run and finish as a top contender for a marathon in the Olympics, but I think what makes De Lima so special is his willpower and discipline to look past something so ill-fated and still come out on top. He truly lives a life of no regrets.
And I don’t remember who won first or second place in that 2004 Summer Olympics Marathon.
Although I didn’t know how she died at the time, it later turned out that she had died by suicide. Nine year old me thought she’d just died of old age — she was 43 after all!
We were kept off school for a few days. My middle sister was in the year above me at the same school. Our classmates had been told that our mum had died (not how) and that they should be nice to us.
On my first day back at school, a boy from my sister’s class ran up to me and shouted in my face “Jordan, how’s your mum?” and ran off laughing.
I still remember his name 41 years later – Billy Smart; the same name as a popular travelling circus from that time. That’s all I remember about the boy now – his name and that he thought it would be funny to tease me about my dead mother. I hope he became a more sensitive and well rounded person as an adult, but I have doubts.
Ahahaha, memories! I worked at a publisher for a few years and the management had no clue how much work folks did. They were so clueless, in fact, that they were convinced people were shirking their duties, sneaking out early, coming in late, etc.
So, they ostentatiously installed an electronic time card system. We had to log in and log out every time we entered or left the building, respectively.
They informed us we were going to be paid for the “actual” hours we worked, instead of what we submitted on our timecards (we were “salary,” and yet had a low-budget pay system, so “salary” simply meant “submit a 40-hour timecard every week regardless of the actual work you perform.”), with the implication that we better watch out ’cause “now they were watching.”
Hahahahaha! Watch this!
This company was so delusional that it spent cold hard cash in a passive-aggressive attempt to not pay people, and it totally backfired.
To no one’s surprise, the next payroll was a blowout because we always busted ass and worked long hours. Plus, we completely stopped taking work home to do. Our rationale was “If you’re going to be a jerk about insisting that we are only paid for being in the building, then we’ll only work while we’re in the building.”
The company found themselves shoveling out overtime pay like it was Skittles.
They deactivated that system after Week Two.
I think, to this day, they still think we somehow “hacked” the system, because they could not acknowledge that we worked long-ass hours.
I learnt how to break into my own house when I forgot my keys.
I was waiting for my wife to come home standing in my doorway when a neighbour asked me if I was okay. I said I was fine and I was waiting for my wife to get home from work so I could get in.
I knew that he had a criminal history. He asked me if he could use a small branch of one of my trees to open the door. I agreed, and he put one into the letterbox of my door and he used it to nudge the Yale lock to open it.
I learnt that I needed a better lock. In fact, I bought a whole new door with several locks.
I also learnt that criminals can. and do. reform. For many years, my neighbour could have entered my house and stolen anything he wished.
Months before he died he wasn’t feeling the best. Where he used to NEVER take time off work he had started taking lots of time off. Or coming home early. His feet hurt him. He did a lot of walking at work.
I BEGGED him to go to the doctor. I told his mom to TELL him to go to the doctor. All it created was fights. So I quit begging him to go.
I went on a girls weekend and he died in our home. I have SO MUCH ANGER that he died so young, when it possibly could have been prevented. The main cause of death was a heart attack due to untreated diabetes. Clearing out his drawers I found many bottles of unused diabetic pills. They weren’t even his. Someone gave them to him to “help”, he still didn’t use them.
Now I tell people. PLEASE make sure the ones you love go to the doctor, use Dave as an example why. Also that you know how all the household expenses work. He paid all the main bills and spoiled me. I didn’t have to do any of that. Was a huge eye opener when I had to take over. Nearly lost my house to foreclosure, but am finally getting things under control, four years later.
So yeah, he died on me. I will never forget. We were high school sweethearts. Met when I was 15, he was 17. Got Married when I was 19 and he was 20. Married for 23 years. Together 27.
Make sure the ones you love take care of themselves and get medical help. Sucks being a 42 year old Widow.
So I was in a car accident with my then girlfriend. A teenage girl, driving her mom’s car ran a red light and hit us. It was a pretty bad accident and my girlfriend was taken out of the car on a backboard. The girl who was driving was really shook up, and her passenger had a minor wound that was bleeding. I had banged up my knee and my face got hit pretty hard. An ambulance came, but there was no room for me in the back, so I sat upfront, shotgun. When we got to the ER it was really busy. I sat there waiting for about two hours. Finally a nurse brought me to the examining room, where I waited about another 45 minutes to an hour. The nurse who brought me in looked at my swollen face and said if you had iced that it wouldn’t be so swollen. Finally I just signed myself out.
About a week later I got a bill from the hospital for treatment and an ambulance ride. I called and told them I wasn’t paying because they never treated me and I rode on the empty front seat of the ambulance. They told me that I was charged because if I had really needed treatment it was there. So I asked if they charged people who walked past the hospital also were charged for the same reason. My bill was graciously forgiven. That’s when I knew I would go to law school.
Not my husband but my bf. On Sunday passed I collapsed at the bar we were at having pizza and wine, and I suddenly dropped like a stone. I died for like 7 seconds, eyes wide open and no pulse. I was out for a few minutes then slowly came to. I had no idea what I was doing on the bar floor or who the girls were hovering over me. (Lucky the one girl was a chemist and resuscitated me) My bf tried to see if I could make it to the car but I was too weak, I could not walk at all. I could barely sit up. He called an ambulance for me. He sorted my ID with the drivers to help with my medical aid numbers (as the ambulance was going nowhere otherwise) Followed me to the hospital and sat by me while tests were being done. My blood sugar stabilised and I could go home. He drove us back at midnight, an hour journey…both of us exhausted. He’s not my husband so I didn’t expect him to do all that for me. I can’t believe he behaved exactly as a husband would. I’m a very lucky girl.
After the dotcom crash I got hired by a small software company. They didn’t really have a good product and it was obvious they were on the way down. One day the owner called in with instructions to fire all the sales people as they weren’t making any sales anyway. OK so at the end of the month he calls to ask how sales were going. I said about as good as can be expected with no sales people.
A week later the hammer comes down and we’re all let go and given our severance checks. I immediately go to the bank branch that check was drawn on to cash it and it bounced!
So since I still had the keys to the office, I went back and grabbed a bunch of high-end laptops and took them home. Another week goes by and he calls to ask about these laptops that have gone missing. I said they’re not missing, I’m holding on to them until you make good on the bounced check. I was told that was theft and they would be pressing charges. I said great, I’ll be contacting the Labour Relations Board about your shitty practices and also the Police about knowing passing a bad check for thousands of dollars.
Needless to say I was asked to stop by his office to exchange the laptops for another check. It was like the scene out of Scarface where Tony Montana goes to buy the coke.
Owner: Do you have the laptops?
Me: They’re close by. Do you have my check?
He gave me the check and I went and cashed it and then went back and gave him his laptops.
It is assumed that men can handle hardships on their own…
This is the best, most positive experience I had at the hotel where I worked in college.
As I was getting ready to close my shift out at the front desk of a large hotel on Capitol Hill, a woman came to my desk and said that she wanted to check in, but she lost her purse somewhere along the way between the train station and the hotel.
She was frantic. She was having a meltdown. I asked her about her reservation, if she was with a group? She said “Yes! I’m with X group!”
Awesome. I knew this was an incoming group, with a block of rooms, so I asked for her name. Her name corresponded with a name on my incoming list. I told her that I see her reservation and you have a room! So don’t worry about that, I said. Let’s get the rest sorted.
I then asked when was the last time she saw her purse, and she said that it was on the Amtrak that came into Union Station about 20 minutes before she got to the hotel.
I asked her if she’d had anything to eat. She said she hadn’t, in hours. I said well you better get over to the restaurant and let them give you something to eat while I make some calls! I sent her to the restaurant, and I made sure that everyone knew she was my guest, and why.
I got on the phone, called a few people I knew at Amtrak and asked them to find the cleaners on that train. They found her purse, and brought it to the hotel. Everything intact.
Kicker is? The woman I helped? She was in DC to lead a series of workshops on customer service. I turned out to be the star in her first session on “Getting service right.”
As my marriage began to unravel, my (then) husband became worse and worse with money.
First, he wouldn’t come home for days, leaving the kids and me with no car. That meant if I needed groceries, I had to walk 8 blocks to one store or 11 to another and carry them home.
I couldn’t ask my father for a lot of help, as my mother had cancer. More often than not, I was helping her, and my father was filling in when I couldn’t.
One day, I found I had no bread or milk for my children. I went to the cabinet where I kepy emergency money, only to find the jar empty. The “proud papa” took it. I scooped up whatever spare change I could find and went to the grocery. At the counter, I found I was short. I was ready to cry. I tried to think of which should I put back, when the grocer told me someone behind me paid for my groceries. I cried as I took the bag and said thank you.
Walking home I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but I was wrong. The jerk stopped his paychecks from going to our joint account. He wouldn’t pay the mortgage or utilities.
I had a bank book that he forgot about, and with that I paid bills for as long as I could. I put my children on food stamps to put food on the table. I put a lien on my house since you couldn’t qualify for services if you owned a house. Passover was coming and I didn’t have a penny.
Agencies that claimed to help made you feel like you were robbing them if you asked for food. I got one parcel and was sick. Everything was dated a month or two before: the juice, other items, and the raw chicken – which smelled so bad I threw it out.
I begged my brother for $200 so we could have a nice holiday. He gave it to me – and never let me forget it. If he needed a favor, he reminded me that I owed him. I was so ashamed I never told my parents.
The house went to foreclosure about the same time the utilities were shut off. I borrowed money from my father to move and pay first month’s rent on an apartment. When I finally started working I put aside $10 a month to pay him back. It was hard, and I barely made ends meet. My kids hadn’t gotten new clothes at this point in nearly two years.
I was still chasing my separated husband to get him to court. Finally, I hired three court servers for $200 a piece to wait at each exit at his job. He was served his subpoena to appear in court. After some delays – didn’t come with a lawyer, fired his lawyer in court – the judge asked him why he didn’t take care of his family. He said I’m having problems with their mother. The judge said “Why didn’t you buy food? Pay for the house? Clothes? What did you do for your children?” He kept trying to say he was having a problem with me and the judge got angry.
“What did you do with your money?” the judge asked. We presented photos of his new sexy sports car – bought with the money that was supposed to take care of his children. The judge told him “I’m done talking to you.” Then she asked me what I had done for my children.
I showed her the paperwork for food stamps, proof I sold jewelry and used the bank book I had to pay utilities. I just got a job, so we were under a roof.
She told my then husband “you earn almost 3 times as much as your wife and you did nothing for your children?” She ordered child support at the maximum allowable by law, as well as back pay of money he should have paid since January (it was now October).
He screamed “where will I get that kind of money?” The judge said “sell your sexy car, that doesn’t have room for your three children.” My attorney stepped up and said “we would like to show more mercy than he showed to his children. He can pay off his wife in semi monthly checks.”
He took the deal, never realizing he would be paying me for three years. The extra money coming in meant my kids could get new clothes for the first time in two years, I paid my father back the money he lent me – and I gave my brother $300 when he lent me $200. I told him the extra $100 was for him to shove it anywhere he wanted – I didn’t want him to talk to me like I was dirt again. In spite of my brother’s protests that he didn’t mean to humiliate me, he did in fact keep the extra hundred.
Today, I’m a bit better off. But I still need to watch my money. Sometimes I get depressed and buy junk I don’t need. But I try hard to avoid that.
Read some of the western propaganda. You can see it on youtube videos about non western hardware.
There’s a very common narrative.
Everything Russian is junk! None of it works! Russians apparently don’t even have working rifles according to most westerners. If Russian rifles don’t work how would these [slurs] be able to maintain nuclear weapons! Only the SUPREME MASTER RACE can maintain nuclear weapons. You can see smug British people say haha ours work! Like our SA80 the BEST gun in the WORLD! The Challenger 2 the MOST INVINCIBLE TANK IN THE UNIVERSE. You remember posts on Quora about 6 months ago? British people saying it would take nuclear weapons to stop a challenger2.
Chinese?
Everything in China is made of tofu! Pretty much exactly the same as the above.
The MASTER RACE is so confident that they think they can perform nuclear strikes and bomb our cities and we can’t do anything back.
It is a big problem
Blue Bayou Chocolate Mousse
Chocolate Mousse
Yield: 8 cups
Ingredients
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate
4 ounces unsalted butter
5 ounces egg whites
2 ounces granulated sugar
3 1/2 cups heavy cream
Instructions
In a double boiler combine chocolate and butter, stirring until melted.
Whip cream and sugar until light and fluffy; set aside.
Beat egg whites at high speed until soft peaks form.
Using a wire whisk combine egg whites with the melted chocolate and then with the whipped cream.
A case like this actually happened in the 1960s. A programmer working on Wall Street opened an account and wrote a program that funneled all the forgotten mills rounded off of each penny into his account. It seemed like he was stealing nothing. It turns out that a weakness in binary systems makes it difficult for them to convert 1 penny correctly so they round up or down. There are often thousandths of a cent that are then ignored and few people, if any, on Wall Street look at the penny column. It was absolutely invisible. But those thousandths of a cent, multiplied by millions of daily transactions add up. He was caught by the sheer size of the numbers that were being generated.
He was prosecuted not because anyone cared about those fractions of a cent (they didn’t) but because he was stealing and stealing is against the law.
When you steal something it doesn’t matter what the victim thinks. The state is obligated to prosecute. The statutes don’t often say, “He broke the law but it’s ok because his victims don’t care”. The statutes, while they may take the scale of the injury into account, must prosecute you for breaking the law because “Justice is blind”. It’s a one size fits all approach, for better or worse.
In reality we know what really happens and there are plenty of ways for justice to be derailed long before the judge bangs the gavel and pronounces a sentence, but the theory still applies. It doesn’t matter what the victims think. Actions have consequences and you broke the law.
In 1994 my then-husband was arrested for soliciting a hit man to kill me. He was apprehended by federal agents through a sting operation. As more information was revealed about how he was caught, I learned that my husband had contacted a member of the Outlaw motorcycle gang looking for the killer. Turns out the gang member called the feds because he had been in my business a few weeks prior with his daughter and I had given the little girl change for the gum machine.
A quarter saved my life….and sent my now-ex husband to prison for 21 years.
Be nice, you never know 😉
Cat With a Broken Paw Went To The Clinic & Begged For Help, But The Vet Did Something Shocking!
Mao won because he and the Red Army had won popular support among the Chinese people. In fact, during the three main battles fought during the civil war, Chinese civilian volunteers provided logistical support to the Red Army, and abandoned the Nationalist Revolutionary Army.
In China’s cities, runaway inflation and corruption among Nationalist officials destroyed support among private Chinese businesses, and they moved to support the Communists.
From your question, you seem to assume that the civil war simply involved two armies fighting each other for the control of China.
In fact, just as Sun Tzu has said, wars are fought and won in the hearts and minds of the people; it is not just about two militaries.
For this reason, your belief that the Nationalists could have won against the Communists is an impossibility.
The Chinese people decided that they needed a new China, and that is the environment the world is living in now.
“I’m worried about you,” my grandmother told me. “You’re too nice. People like you don’t do well in the world.”
That was the last time I saw her.
I forgot about that conversation.
I didn’t even understand what she meant.
Besides, it’s easy to dismiss the words of an elderly woman suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s.
I’ve always been concerned with what others think about me. I wanted to do well in the world. I had a deep need for outer acceptance because I wasn’t embracing myself on the inside.
I thought that if I just stayed out of trouble—if I just avoided controversy and did my best to please the people around me—I’d feel safe in the world.
Perhaps even wanted.
And so I became the nice guy.
I let other people come first. I put my own needs aside. I sacrificed my wellbeing.
And I was miserable.
But in the last years, something changed.
I put me higher up the priority list.
It’s not that I became an asshole or stopped caring. I realized that I’m still someone who feels and empathizes deeply with others.
But I decided to stop operating out of fear and guilt.
And I’ve realized that, as much as it sounds like a cliché, you have to cultivate happiness within instead of expecting the world to hand it to you as a trophy for your “good” behavior.
So I started taking my career seriously and insisted on being paid what I knew I was worth instead of letting employers walk over me.
I began practicing martial arts and became more confident.
I resolved to not put up with other people’s shit.
I gave up being nice.
And in doing so became more empowered. More genuine. More me.
I finally understood what my grandmother was trying to say.
She was right all along.
I just wish I could let her know.
Yes and no
25 Strange Things That Only Exist In Vietnam!
Vietnam, nestled in Southeast Asia, boasts a multifaceted tapestry of history, culture, and natural beauty. The nation’s turbulent past, marked by the Vietnam War, contrasts with its vibrant present, where bustling cities like Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are hubs of innovation and growth. In today’s video, we will be talking about the things you can only find in this country of the east. We cover everything from their markets to their religious beliefs, but if you stay until the end of this video, you will also find out what exactly is the balance of five flavors, and why is it the most important part of their cuisine. Enjoy!
After my divorce, I knew I’d have a lot more free time on my hands. I needed a hobby that would be productive.
I am very intense and passionate about anything I do. I was a hardcore gamer for years and was a high-level league of legends player at one point. Not good enough to go pro, but maybe just below the level at which people make money. But it was a problematic hobby that ate up too much time.
As a child, my dad had often said, “Wow imagine if you put as much time into your studies as you did into those games.”
I decided no more hobbies that will consume me.
I figured writing on Quora would be a quasi-productive, quasi-fun hobby, that wouldn’t consume me too much.
Everything except that last part was true. It spun into this whole big thing that I never expected. I got obsessed with writing. I think in the first 3 years I wrote 4000+ answers.
This love of writing led to opportunities to make money. I was able to work at the craft.
Writing also made me realize how much I hated my corporate job. I would liken it to when you are in a terrible relationship and some great, attractive person who has their shit together asks you out on a date.
You start to wonder, “What if there is more to my life than this crap relationship?”
Quitting my job was a huge decision that changed my life for the better. I have freedom. The money is great so far. I have control of my life.
It’s amazing what can happen if you just listen to your parents.
Because it was mainly an agricultural country and France was a major food exporter.
Britain and Germany had massive industries meaning fewer people working in agriculture. This resulted in food shortages, the need to import food, and higher food prices.
The French economy was doing very well being based on agriculture.
When I was in eighth grade, our science teacher held a school wide competition to see who could build the strongest bridge out of tooth picks.
My best friend, “J”, was very smart, very clever, and always mischievous. The rules only states that the bridge had to be made out of toothpicks and had to be a certain length (I think 12”, this was over 20 years ago). The rules did not limit what glue you used to join the toothpicks. Additional toothpicks could be earned by doing extra credit worksheets.
“J” came up with an awesome plan. He did dozens of extra credit sheets. He had thousands of toothpicks. His father was a machinist for a local manufacturer of printing presses and was able to procure some industrial grade epoxy to use as glue.
“J” set to work making alternating crisscrossing layers of toothpicks and epoxy. He essentially made a solid brick of toothpicks and epoxy.
The day of the competition came. The competition went in alphabetical order and “J”’s last name was pretty far down the list. The teacher had everyone gathered in the gym to see the competition. The bridges were suspended over a gap with weights hung from them until they broke.
Kid after kid brought up their bridge, some of them very fancy suspension type looking bridges. Most of them broke at 6 kg or less.
“J”’s turn came. He walks up to the platform with his brick. Kids in the audience are laughing at it. The bridge is placed over the gap. 1 kg, 2 kg, 3, and on until they hang the biggest weight of 25 kg and it’s not even flexing. All the kids are stunned.
The teacher, who was quite large and probably weighed 150 kg, puts two stacks of books on the floor, puts the brick over the gap between them, and stands with one foot on it. Not even flexing yet.
He then has the entire middle school follow him to the parking lot. He uses the books to prop up the brick again and proceeds to drive one wheel of his car onto it. It flexed a little.
At this point he has run out of heavy things to try to break the brick and declares “J” the winner.
As a teacher, what was the trashiest thing you’ve seen a parent do?
I’m frequently shocked at the language some parents use when dealing with the priests and nuns at a Catholic school. I’ve been in meetings where parents shouted and swore at elderly clergy people because they (the clergy people) had the audacity to remind the parents that they were way behind in their tuition payments, or their children were in danger of being expelled due to too many discipline issues.
I was always taught to treat older people and members of the clergy with respect. I’ll never get used to hearing a middle-aged parent scream and swear at an elderly priest or nun.
I was also always taught that you’re supposed to be extra nice to pregnant women. Apparently, a lot of parents were not taught that. I’ve seen parents scream and swear at teachers who were just weeks away from giving birth.
I was also always taught that you’re not supposed to swear in front of children. Yet every year, there’s at least one incident where a parent picks up their child from school and, in the course of a three-minute conversation within earshot dozens of kids as young as three years old, manages to drop a dozen really loud f-bombs.
I’ve also been preparing for my class in the morning, only to have the windows of my classroom shake as someone with stupidly-loud bass in their car drove up to the school to let their kids out… all kids who were under eight years old. There’s a time and a place for loud music. Seven thirty in the morning in front of a Catholic elementary school while you drop off your kids is not the time or place for that.
Get photos of the cord plugged in, photos of where it goes (unless you have to trespass), and make sure they are dated and time stamped (most digital cameras can do that and possibly some phones). Pull out your electric bills from the times you know he was using your power and try to see how much extra was used. If it is a lot over a short period, you have proof on the bill. Not sure about your power company but some keep track of just how much is used when to try to help you cut down and that information could also help you.
I always say, document, document, document so it isn’t your word against his.
I’m not sure this counts as ‘accidentally’ but: A long time ago I joined a startup company. We were doing some innovative stuff with fiber optics.
My roommate and I got into the habit of taking the accountant out to lunch or Happy Hour every few weeks; generally on a Friday. We’d get a few drinks into her and she’d open up about the financial condition of the company because she was worried.
We found out that the first unit we “shipped” was actually sent to a warehouse for storage because the CFO wanted to tell the investors we’d sold and shipped a unit by year end. There was a potential client but they hadn’t signed the purchase order.
When I found out that the CFO was lying to investors and employees I started looking for a new job. Sure enough four weeks later they announced a layoff. I was let go because “your software already works and we’re betting that it will keep working.” Meanwhile they kept a programmer that couldn’t get his program to compile let alone work.
When my manager called me in, I told him that he was cutting off his nose to spite his face. I also neglected to mention all of the semi-automated routines that I’d built in my spare time that no one had thought about or worried about ( things like builds, backups, space reclamation in the homegrown database, etc. ).
They offered us ‘outplacement services’ with the first meeting that AM at an offsite location. At the outplacement meeting they scheduled us for a follow up meeting the next morning. I told them I couldn’t attend because I had an interview already scheduled. Three other people also had interviews already scheduled because I wasn’t the only on that took the accountant out to lunch!
Yes. I have a school friend who was very bright and did well. He was in the rugby team and was a Prefect. He was very popular.
After school he went to a good uni but surprisingly dropped out. He got a good job in advertising but lost it. He got another, got married, but both failed disasterously. He was a raging alcoholic and was out of control. Finally he became very ill and ended up in a clinic. He was in his 20’s still and was given a year to live unless he stopped drinking.
He met a girl at the halfway house he was in. She was in the same position as him. Together they joined AA and got their lives going. They moved abroad, to a fairly undeveloped country that was growing quickly, and with some inheritance, started a small film production company. They did very well. He was responsible for starting many AA chapters there. He saved careers, marriages and lives.
We met for lunch recently. It’s forty years since his last drink and he’s happy and prosperous. Being dry is not a struggle, but he is still vigilant. He accepted a long time ago that he has a terrible weakness, possibly inherited, and this is his burden. Unwilling to hand on this weakness, he’s never had children. He’d have made a wonderful Dad.
Cold, but usually above freezing, at least here in the UK where nearly all buildings are made of stone or brick.
I don’t have central heating. I do have 18″ thick stone walls, but in a very cold winter my kitchen has been known to get so cold that my fridge stopped working, and my hands went numb within a minute or two of entering the kitchen.
However: yes, my windows are double-glazed but they’re a lot bigger than they probably would have been in the Victorian era, and in the Victorian era they would have had wooden shutters. I don’t even have curtains in the kitchen, because the room is laid out in a bloody stupid way which means I can’t even get *near* the window without climbing on top of a kitchen counter and walking across it.
In the Victorian era I would have had a fireplace in the living room and possibly the bedroom, and my kitchen would have had an actual stove that burned fuel and so put out excess heat.
Back in the day I worked as an assembly line “artist,” creating art that sold wholesale to decorators of office buildings and hotels. The company was owned by a foreign family that had fled prosecution in their own country and a few family members were employed as artists or support staff.
I was a poor lad but this job seemed really fun. It paid a bit more than minimum wage and it was cool to hang out with young artists like myself. I rarely went out to lunch, preferring to save money and bring my own, including yogurt cups for dessert. After a while I noticed my yogurt kept vanishing. I made a stink about it, even contacted HR (well, the supervisor that handled billing and HR) mostly suspecting another starving artist.
Then I had a diabolical idea – I read that consuming saline solution could cause diarrhea! I wore contacts so I had some, I just needed to find a way to inject my yogurt cups with it. After some failed attempts, I was still trying to figure it out when another yogurt cup went missing.
Struck by inspiration, I went to the HR supervisor’s office and “confessed,” with the door open and loud enough for nearby folks to overhear, that I had “spiked” the yogurt with saline. I regretted my rash decision and told her that whoever consumed the yogurt would likely have stomach problems for an hour or so but would otherwise be okay.
Sure enough, an employee suddenly went home sick, complaining of stomach problems! And it was one of the owners’ family members, a fairly well off individual compared to the rest of us. So did I get in trouble with the bosses for poisoning a beloved relative? Nope, because there was NO ACTUAL SALINE in the yogurt! The only thing the thief was suffering from was a guilty conscience.
There is a thing called sexual dimorphism. This refers to physical, physiological and even mental differences between males and females of a species, beyond their sexual organs.
The vast majority of species in the animal kingdom have sexual dimorphism, and even some plants. I’m sure you’re familiar with lions.
Males and females are fundamentally different, and in humans and all apes the males are generally bigger and stronger than the females. This isn’t just a matter of exercise. Testosterone in men promotes the growth of larger and more powerful muscles, something women cannot achieve without outside help like anabolic steroids.
Testosterone doesn’t just influence men’s muscles; it also affects their brains. Men and women are mentally different because of the different levels of testosterone and estrogen in their brains.
And guess what? This doesn’t just apply to humans.
Male birds, for instance, are the only members of the species that initiate courtship rituals. (That’s why the peacock has that huge mane of feathers). Male birds sing and court females because of the levels of testosterone in their brains, making them aggressively seek and impress females.
Most animal species from rats to humans to birds exhibit these mental differences between males and females, even in species where no physical sexual dimorphism is present (such as with dolphins).
These differences even cause societal systems to form in animals. Patriarchies aren’t unique to humans. Lions have a totally patriarchial society where the males head the pride, and the women serve and hunt for him. Wolves, apes, and other animals have formed patriarchies.
Guess what? Some of the other species have matriarchies. Elephants for instance are a completely matriarchial society, with males being cast out of the herd to find other herds to impregnate, which is about the extent of his involvement in society. The herd itself is guided by the oldest matriarch.
The fact of the matter is, differences between males and females affect society. Not just in humans, but in many social animals. Pretending that men and women are equal is like an ostrich hiding its head in the ground trying to ignore what is obvious.
Human societies formed into patriarchies around the world regardless of creed, religion or ideology for one simple reason: the stronger physical dominance of men made them better warriors and workers, while the vulnerability of women during childbirth meant it was important to provide a safe and stable environment for them to rear children in. Further, only women can produce milk to feed newborns. This meant that the role was locked in from the start, something a man can never do.
Thus men took on the role of protector and provider, while women took on the role of homemaking and childbearing. While modern society can allow men to just buy infant formula and women to rise to exemplary careers and bring home the bacon, this is a modern development and not one that was possible through the early stages of human evolution and society.
In today’s world and moving into the future, it’s certainly possible for us to destroy the patriarchy and create a different kind of society. Time will tell where this social experiment will lead humanity.
Terrorists Blow-Up PAKISTAN Air Base! 40 Fighter Jets Burning
The Taliban-Linked Terrorist Group “Tehreek-e Jihad” (TTP) has just claimed Responsibility for a Significant Attack tonight on Mianwali Air Force Base in Northern Pakistan.
The Terrorist Group appears to have Snuck into the Base using Ladders and are claiming to have Destroyed several Aircraft as well as some kind of Armored Vehicle.
The Pakistani Army is currently conducting an Operation to Secure the Base and have already Killed multiple Terrorists.
I viewed some answers above, I felt many answers didn’t get the main point.
The truth is: nobody of the 5 wants to share their rights.
Everyone of the 5 says they agree to extend the council but actually they don’t. Because it will add the bargain cost.
USA government says they support Japan to get into the council because USA knows Russia and China will veto. USA says like this way to keep Japan in hand to deploy USA army.
China supports Germany to the council because China knows USA and France will veto. Guess for what interest.
USA and Russia says they support India because they know China will veto. For what interest? Weapon sales.
So now do you understand what game they are playing?
Alpha particles don’t get far at all. They’re heavy, they’re slow, and they carry a charge, so they interact easily. They can travel an inch or so in air, but are blocked by a sheet of paper.
Beta particles are just elec…okay, um, so, correction. β- particles are just electrons. They’re light and zippy, so how far they get depends on how fast they go. Good rule of thumb, approximately 10ish feet or so for each MeV of energy.
β+ particles are positrons—antimatter electrons. In theory they could get as far as β- particles, in an antimatter world. In our world, they don’t get far at all in air before they hit something and annihilate in a flash of gamma photons.
Gamma rays? Oh, it is on. Hold my beer.
Gamma rays laugh at your puny “air.” Gamma rays laugh at your puny steel. Gamma rays might stop for lead, maybe, if you have enough of it to make things interesting. Six feet of concrete or one and a half feet of lead should do it.
This might as well be tissue paper to gamma rays
Gamma rays sneeze at this
This is not even close to what it takes to stop gamma rays
Starting to get there, if the gamma rays are going through lengthwise
Now we’re talking! (The whole stack, not one plate)
Gamma rays will go merrily through this planet’s entire atmosphere, plus the bodies of the researchers doing the experiment, plus the roof of their house, and then merrily on toward Alpha Centauri.
300,000 engineers and scientists in China will briefly look up from their work and say in a puzzled tone: “奇怪，那是什么声音？ 是不是美国放屁的声音？”. Then they return to their R&D projects in advanced chipmaking.
Not a mugging but I did have a break in at my apartment. I was assaulted, had both eye orbits fractured, broke ribs and fingers, and was choked almost to the point of loosing consciousness.
I however did manage to stab my attacker in his face and skull, scalping him from his left ear to the top of his head and causing brain dammage. He lost serious ammounts of blood passed out and was put in a medically induced coma for two days and had multiple blood transfusions before he was even conscious to be charged with aggrivated assault, breaking and entering and attempted murder (I dont actually know what he was officially charged with, just that he was sentenced to two years and ended up serving four)
I had my ass beat, and badly. But I was told by the police that if it wasnt for modern medical treatment my attacker would have died.
Now years later I was very drunk the night before my brothers wedding. Someone did try to mug me but I was apparently so drunk that I didnt know what was happening and I thought they wanted a cigarette and I kept explaining that I dont smoke. Their heart must not have been in it because they gave up and moved on to someone else without stabbing me. Some witness called police and I was supposedly too drunk to give a statement. They got me back to my hotel and I dont remember any of it
And thats my life story so far.
“Men Have No CLUE!” This Is Why Men Aren’t TAKING Western Women SERIOUSLY Anymore
Raw reality. I am so glad that I am no longer young.
U.S. and Europe Talking with Ukraine about PEACE NEGOTIATIONS with Russia!
U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official.
The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said.
Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.
The discussions are an acknowledgment of “the dynamics militarily on the ground in Ukraine” and politically in the U.S. and Europe, officials said.
In other words, despite all the media hype that Ukraine is winning, Ukraine is actually losing. Imagine that.
“Unchecked flooding of Chinese fentanyl into America”?
Fentanyl is a LEGAL drug. Fentanyl addiction is a problem only in America. NOT in China or anywhere in the world. It is Americans ordering, procuring and peddling this drug and not the Chinese “flooding” the U.S. It’s OUR problem because WE caused OUR opioid addiction. Why the shit are you blaming China for us not being able to control the trafficing of fentanyl within the U.S.?
“Mercenary bounties placed on British residents”?
“Mercenary bounties” is the farthest from the truth.
Bounties is defined as money paid for killing or capturing a person or animal.
However, Australia, the U.K. and U.S. have branded the rewards for information as “bounties” for 8 exiled pro-democracy HK activists for the 2019 riots in Hong Kong that these countries instigated through the CIA and NGOs. Hong Kong has every right to seek information on persons guilty of seditious acts against China.
This is Hong Kong issuing warrants for their citizens for serious criminal acts. And if they are stupid enough to return to Hong Kong, they will be arrested.
“Arrest warrant for Xi”?
Another stupid question. Who is to issue this? The U.S.? For what charge?
Are you dense enough to believe the U.S. has the authority to arbirtrarily order the arrest of the leader of another country? The U.S. has NO police authority beyond our border just like any other country.
And then what? Do you expect the U.S. or another country to invade the soveriegnty of China by going to China to arrest Xi?
China hate does not justify you to think, write or act stupidly.
This Just Ηappened In South Carolina, But Something Εven Stranger Ιs Ηappening Around The World!
Seems suspicious we never had this many huge disasters in our food manufacturing plants, trains, and other big plants.
The United States has been flying MQ-9 “Reaper” drones over the southern Gaza Strip of late. (HT REMARK: One wonders if they are giving intel to Israel so they can slaughter more women and children?)
They were first spotted on Saturday on Flightradar24.
Officials say the drones were being used to “aid in hostage recovery efforts” indicating that the U.S. is more involved than previously known.
Republicans are winning, they just don’t seem to know it nor can they give the rest of us some peace. What do I mean by this?
Traditional Republican values are what America still runs on and much of the rest of the world too. In fact, all of the countries where things work, they run on traditional conservative or Republican values. Like thrift, hard work, saving, putting your kids in school, reasonable but not high levels of tax, a hand up not a hand out. No corporate crony capitalism (this is in theory of course as there always is colllusion) , some type of religious base to your society and usually that is Christian though it could also be Jewish, or Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim.
So why are the Republicans winning and losing?
First the losing. Because they can’t stop themselves, they keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It is called extremism and the entire right wing of the Republican party starting with the so called Freedom Caucus which has nothing to do with either, not espousing freedom rather telling everyone especially women what they can and can’t do and it is not even a caucus, just a raucous group of malcontents.
Republicans are winning of course in the electoral college where they own around 30 states which gives them a disproportionate control of just about everything with state, local and federal government. They control red states which means military bases and expenditures (11 out of 15 largest are in red states, yet they cannot pass a budget that is focused on the military or allow the military to make promotions which their extremists block). They control state houses in the same proportion, they gerrymander like crazy and win more and more as the Supreme Court now rules in their favor, slowly whittling away black and brown rights in particular.
They are winning on dismantling and even the legitimacy of the federal govt and their chief avatar, Trump has his man in as Speaker who we found out this week doesn’t even have a bank account. No, he is not a traditional Republican.
What to make of this? Democrats feel they are in the majority, but control less and less and are fragmented. Republicans could control everything but the right wing crazies including Trump keep giving them opportunities which if it were not for Joe Biden, they would have squandered once again.
Republicans? Their values, real conservative values rule the civilized non autocratic world. Unfortunately in America, these values are not the values of the current Republican party.
Therefore you see, in the end they are winning in spite of themselves and with their losing their way and becoming extremist, they are literally taking the country down along with democracy with them.
Prizes…
Bank Notice: “Some Deposits May Be Temporarily Delayed”
Several US banks are facing service disruptions today. Meanwhile, users on the ‘free speech’ social media platform X complain that the Automated Clearing House system is down.
Downdetector.com shows Truist, Bank of America, Chase, US Bank, and Wells Fargo are experiencing widespread outages and disruptions that began around 0800 ET.
A message on Bank of America’s webpage reads, “Some deposits may be temporarily delayed … Some deposits from 11/03 may be temporarily delaved due to an issue impacting multiple financial institutions. Your accounts remain secure, and your balance will be updated as soon as the deposit is received. You do not need to take any action.”
Hal Turner Remarks
I see about 5 US banks listed as being offline over on down detector website. (HERE)
Bank of America Chase Chime US Bank Wells Fargo Huntington
My bank (Capital One) is **NOT** affected at all.
One wonders if the situation in the Middle East has Hackers going after the US banking system?
Apparently, it’s a particular clearinghouse that B of A, Chase and Huntington use. That went down last night. They just got it up and running and I was told that most will get their deposits within 2 hours. Tonight at latest”
BofA rep just told me that the Fed sent the banks a bulletin that there was an outage overnight but that the servers are back online now and the deposit backlogs should be worked through by end of day today.
My wife contacted her company’s bank this morning. They reported that the issue is with the banks that use what’s called the ‘Federal EPM Processing Clearinghouse,’ and that they had a widespread server outage overnight, but that they are back online and processing the backlog.
We were eating at Benihana’s one evening and sat next to a young couple who appeared to be on a date. They looked over the menu and ordered a variety of sushi. I was impressed by how adventuresome they were.
When their meal arrived both of them stared at their plates closely examining every item. They were clearly getting very upset. Finally they called over the waiter and the gal said in a loud voice, “You call yourself a restaurant?! Did you even CHECK this stuff before it left the kitchen! Look at it! Everything is raw!”
China has had the north Korea experience. It was embargoed (I.e. Total sanction) together with their war comrades for three decades, until the 70s.
China survived that, back in a time when they couldn’t even make fertilizers.
The soviets helped but only the first decade. China remained desperately poor into the 90s.
Today, a china embargo will not be cost free like in the past. Does the world even notice Cuba has been embargoed for almost 6 decades?
Not so China.
For one, Apple as a viable company becomes historical, because it will not have hardware to sell. Every single company in the semiconductor supply chain will be disrupted, because China is a key node, either as supplier, assembler or customer.
Moving on, the different festivals driving seasonal demand will have to be repriced, because it is hard to find a supply chain big and efficient enough to absorb demand spikes.
Study the pandemic. Why didn’t a black market develop for ppe, ventilators and other medical equipment despite exponential growth in demand? Prices increased but they stabilized and the quantity and quality of goods has been remarkable given months of spiraling demand.
It is the same story with work from home essentials, from bird feeders to children toys to video conferencing equipment.
Things are so out of whack containers are being shipped empty back to China while the cost of sending an FEU from Asia to Europe has crossed the 10k mark.
Embargo China if you must, but it will hurt big time, especially for the comfortable first world.
China has made itself relevant to the world. There will be no repeat of “let’s bomb Iraq back to the stone age using flour in the test tube as justification”.
If China is embargoed, you won’t only see it in the news.
You will feel it, deep into your pockets, and you will live the consequences.
REPORT: VIP Jets Now Airborne from DC to Cheyenne Mountain Bunkers – “Gov’t Going Underground”
I’m not sure what to make of this, but it was posted in a US Veteran’s Forum. The guy in the brief video seems VERY nervous as he reports EIGHT “VIP” Aircraft heading to Cheyenne Mountain (NORAD??) and says “They’re putting government into Bunkers.”
His voice is clearly trembling as he describes what he sees going on. Looks legit to me, at first glance.
I pass this along with the full Disclaimer that I have not (yet) verified these claims. But if he’s right, then time is of the essence and all of YOU should know.
*****FLASH ***** U.S. House Approves Resolution on Iran: “All means necessary” to prevent Nuclear Armed Iran
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Resolution late last night “. . . to use all means necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon; . . .” Now we know why our military is massed in Middle East.
It now seems clear to me that all the US military hardware sent to the easstern Mediterranean, has nothing at all to do with Israel, per se, and has everything to do with Iran.
That military hardware isn’t there “to protect Israel” as much as it is there to disarm Iran.
The Iranians have likely suspected this, now, they know.
Iran had better take a long, hard look at what is arrayed against them because once all that firepower starts shooting, the entire landmass of Iran will be like a hail storm of explosions.
What happened to Iraq in 1991, I think will look like nothing compared to what they plan on unleashing against Iran. But . . . . there’s a little problem. Russia.
Two weeks ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin casually reminded the world that his MiG-31 fighter jets, flying freely in international air space all the way up in the Black Sea, are equipped with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. He also causally reminded the world that those missiles have a “known” range of at least 1,000km. Without actually SAYING this, it quickly became clear to everyone paying attention that America’s two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea, are within range of those Kinzhal hypersonic missiles.
Moreover, it also became quickly evident that those missiles can carry either a conventional warhead, or tactical nuclear warheads of at least 5 kilotons.
The US cannot defend itself from hypersonic missiles. No one can.
So if the US goes after Iran, using carrier-based planes, Russia can order two of its MiG fighters to fire Kinzhal missiles armed with small, tactical, nuclear warheads, and utterly destroy both aircraft carrier battle groups.
Can you say “World War 3?”
A direct Link to the official US Government Website showing the text of the US House Resolution on Iran is HERE
Hal Turner Editorial Opinion
Interestingly, this now seems to be a method for declaring war without actually “declaring” it.
While the words “Congress shall make no law . . . .” does **not** mean what it actually says in the Constitution’s First Amendment, and while “. . . shall not be infringed.” does **not** mean what IT actually says in the Constitution’s Second Amendment, you can bet your ass that “. . .any means necessary . . .” means exactly what it says in this resolution!
So . . . . it now appears that the massive naval and military build-up we’ve been watching in the Middle East over the past two weeks was all part of a well-planned series of moves KNOWING FULL WELL they intended to take us to war with Iran. They just waited until ONE day before likely hostilities break out, to put through this new “policy.”
This is the level of sleazy, political, human, garbage we have in the Congress of the United States.
Oh, and by the way, have you noticed that this web site is the **ONLY** media outlet in the entire country pointing this out? That shows you you the level of sleazy, human garbage, infesting the mass-media these days. Keep it all quiet — on purpose. Keep the American people in the dark — on purpose.
Then, when actual war breaks out, the American people are blind-sided, afraid, and called to rally behind the troops. All one big plan.
As our military starts coming home in body bags, the very same politicians who literally caused the war, will cry crocodile tears for the men whose lives their vote snuffed out.
It’s disgusting to me on a level that’s hard to verbally describe.
Straight to the point
The Ukraine Peace Talk Trial Balloon
A trial ballon has gone up on the NBCnews website. It is testing the public reaction to the upcoming U.S. and NATO acknowledgment of their defeat in Ukraine:
WASHINGTON — U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions.
This comes the same week that saw a Time piece about Zelenski’s unwillingness to consider the real situation on Ukraine and to admit defeat. The same week the Economist interviewed General Zaluzny who optimistically spoke of a stalemate at the front even while his army is on the cusp of disintegration.
Taken together the three pieces might well be part of a U.S. administration campaign to concede its defeat in Ukraine while blaming its Ukrainian proxy forces for the results of its blunder.
The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said. Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.
The discussions are an acknowledgment of the dynamics militarily on the ground in Ukraine and politically in the U.S. and Europe, officials said.
They began amid concerns among U.S. and European officials that the war has reached a stalemate and about the ability to continue providing aid to Ukraine, officials said. Biden administration officials also are worried that Ukraine is running out of forces, while Russia has a seemingly endless supply, officials said. Ukraine is also struggling with recruiting and has recently seen public protests about some of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s open-ended conscription requirements.
The problem of the Ukrainian army is an obvious one. It is running out of men and has few it can still recruit. It is difficult to assess the real losses the Ukrainian military has had, but I would not be astonished to learn that they sum up to about 300,000 dead and some 500,000+ wounded, many of whom will now be disabled.
Finally these concerns about Ukraine’s manpower get acknowledged:
President Joe Biden has been intensely focused on Ukraine’s depleting military forces, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” one said. The U.S. and its allies can provide Ukraine with weaponry, this person said, “but if they don’t have competent forces to use them it doesn’t do a lot of good”
The last sentence seems to be taken from the Time piece which had said:
In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”
During the last days tanks from the 47th brigade (Leo 2) and 10th mountain brigade (T-64BM/BV) have been seen, and were destroyed, near Avdiivka. Both brigades had only recently been mauled during their hopeless attacks at the southern front. It does not make sense to throw what is left of them into another battle without reconstituting them. The whole experience and knowledge these brigades had gained will be lost with them.
The whole professional middle-block of the army, the sergeants and young officers, have mostly been killed or wounded. Without them it is impossible to constitute new forces.
The NBC piece has made news in Ukraine (in Russian) but I have yet to find Ukrainian reactions to it. While I was publishing this a first political reaction, total denial, appeared:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not think the situation on the front in Ukraine is a stalemate and has said that Ukraine will not negotiate with Russia. … Quote from Zelenskyy: “This is not a stalemate. Russia controls the sky. We are protecting our troops. No one [in Ukraine] wants to just throw our people [into the battle] like Russia does […]
How can we overcome it? With the F-16s, we have to wait for our guys to get trained and for them to come back. When there’s air defence on the front, our soldiers advance, and they deploy the equipment they have.”
What will he say when the F-16s, the fifty year old wunderwaffen, fall out of the sky faster than they go up?
There are sure signs that the divide between the political and military leadership in Ukraine is growing. President Zelenski, on request of his new defense minister, just removed the commander of Ukraine’s special forces and installed a new one:
Major General Viktor Khorenko does not know the reasons for his dismissal from the post of Commander of the Special Operations Forces. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, did not submit a request for his dismissal.
It is very unusual to fire an officer without a request from his superior commander.
There are also shots fired against Zaluzny himself:
Ihor Zhovkva, Deputy Head of the Office of the President, commenting on the article by Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, for The Economist, has said that the military should not bring to the public what is happening at the front. … Zhovkva also stated that “one of the heads of the leaders’ offices” called him after the mentioned article was published.
“And they simply ask me in a panic, ‘What should I report to my leader? Are we really at a stalemate?’. Are we trying to achieve this effect with this article?”, the President’s Office representative said.
The NBC piece even sets a time frame to Ukraine to admit that it is over:
Officials also have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin. U.S. officials have shared their views on such a timeline with European allies, officials said.
Russia will likely agree to peace talks. But it probably will demand more than Ukraine is willing to give. At a minimum that is the full control over the five oblast it has annexed, including Crimea, and no NATO relations with Ukraine. The current Ukrainian parliament will probably reject those requests which will then lead to further Russian demands.
Kiev has yet to acknowledge reality. The Ukrainian state has been bleeding out – financially as well as physically. Its masters have found that their aim at the start of the war – to weaken Russia – has led to the opposite. Russia now has a bigger and better armed military with more real war experience than any of its possible opponents.
Russia has won.
Posted by b on November 4, 2023 at 13:23 UTC | Permalink
Danny-Bob Vanderwal is the smartest man alive. Danny-Bob was so smart back in school that the teacher couldn’t find anything in her text books that Danny-Bob didn’t already know. When he graduated from high school, he got offers to go study just about anywhere he wanted. But instead, he went to work at the family vineyard. Danny-Bob said he owed it to his great grandpa that brought these grapevines from Germany to the Ozarks over a century ago.
image 150
Back in 2013, the county had the worst drought anyone could remember. Grape vines died and family vineyards went out of business everywhere. But Danny-Bob had a plan. He’d studied old geology maps of Vanderwal mountain made back in the 1930’s. He found a fissure in the bedrock down about a hundred feet below the vineyard. Danny-Bob had walked the mountain since he was a little kid, and he had always wondered where the watershed drained to. He came to the conclusion that the stormwater on the surface was draining down to that fissure. And it was probably staying there.
The summer of 2013 was really hot. It was well over 100 degrees in the shade. Danny-Bob had bought an old 1950’s cable-tool well drilling machine and the whole family was out trying to punch a hole through the black granite bedrock beneath the vineyard. Danny-Bob had the old Hercules diesel power unit firing on 5 of the 6 cylinders, but she was turning the drill head. The whole family worked non-stop for 8 days and nights. And finally, on September 7, 2013, Danny-Bob hit water. They all hugged each other and danced in the cool wet mud that flowed up the borehole.
The Vanderwal vineyard was the only one to survive the drought of 2013. Danny-Bob’s great grandpa’s grape vines are still producing today. And everyone in the county knows without doubt, Danny-Bob Vanderwal is the smartest man alive.
I lived in a small country town and my front garden was on the road children took to the little school, and as I was usually out there with my dog, many of them would stop and talk to me, and pet the dog, but being careful considering the paranoia about pedophiles, I never made any ‘advances’ that could be considered inappropriate
I had to collect my mail from the little post office, no deliveries were made, and standing in line one day, a miserable older woman in front of me turned and demanded to know ’Are you a Pervert?’
As you can imagine EVERY head snapped round, and all I could think to say was,
‘ I don’t really know..do you want to visit later and find out?’
Her face was a study..the post office erupted in laughter, and she stormed out in embarrassment, and being a small place, the story went around like wild fire…and several locals congratulated me later for ‘Talking the old biddy down a peg or two!
How about an interview that I did not even know was an interview? Time spent on interview: −2
weeks. Let me explain:
I went to a state university, and was not the ideal student. My undergraduate GPA was pathetic. I could make excuses, but the reality was that my parents made enough money that I could not qualify for any government student support, and they expected me to provide money to them. All of my high-school friends were far more cool than me, and they had jobs, and money. I could have worked a bit harder, maybe. But I worked my way through college, and usually took on too many obligations. My GPA was very bad, but one professor, Dr. Vimes, hired me on a grant to do some work creating custom maps for convention attendees, to get them to the booths that they were interested in. I got to travel to conventions and install the map systems.
When I finished my BS degree, I wanted to go on for a Master’s degree. The department chair, Dr. William M. Marcy, initially rejected my application. However, some of the faculty, and the department administrative assistant, convinced him to give me a chance. Dr. Vimes weighed in on that, and probably made a greater difference in my life than he ever realized.
As a Master’s student, I was paid a meager stipend to teach courses and conduct some research. I had the opportunity to travel and present my research at conferences. Meanwhile, Dr. Marcy had a start-up company that employed some graduate students. They had a fundamental problem that they could not solve. They had worked on the problem for over a month, and one of the graduate students told Dr. Marcy to hire me. He caught me in the hallway and outlined the problem, and asked me if I could solve it. I said “probably.” I showed up at the job site at 9:00 AM. By noon their problem was solved. It took me another 30 minutes to write some code to automate it. Dr. Marcy asked me for a bill, and I said, “Don’t worry about it. I had fun solving the problem. Buy me a good dinner someday.”
Under the tutelage of Dr. William Jennings Briant (Brian) Oldham, I finished the MS degree, with a much better GPA, and went to work in industry. In my two years, there, I earned an award for “Best internal supplier” and filed a patent application. When I told them that I wanted to go back to school and earn a PhD, they were willing to support me. They paid for four years of what turned out to be a six year degree. The patent was awarded, and they licensed the technology to other entities. The patent made them well over $10 million, so I think think that them paying me for four years of graduate school was a win-win. During my time as a PhD student, I traveled the world and presented papers to scientific conferences in several countries.
Now I’m going to answer the question.
As I approached my graduation with the PhD, I wanted an academic position. I wanted to be a professor, even though the pay is less. But there were about 50 academic positions nationwide, and over 600 applicants. There is a fairly standard part of interviewing for an academic position. The applicant must give a “research” lecture, and a “teaching” lecture. I needed to practice my lectures. So in October, I sent an email message to my MS Thesis advisor, Dr. William Jennings Brian Oldham, asking if I could do my lectures for their seminar. at my former university.
About a week later, he responded by asking what dates would work for me. The signature on the email message indicated that he was now the department chair. I congratulated him on his promotion, and gave the dates that I could be there.
Fast-forward. I drove down in early December to spend a few weeks with my family and incidentally give my lectures and get some feedback on them from my former professors. Dr. Oldham asked me to show up early, so that they could give me a tour of the campus and see how it had changed in the decade after I was a student.
I showed up at the appointed time, and a student took me all over campus, which was surprisingly interesting. Being near Christmas, someone was playing the carillon. One of the best carillons in North America. She even took me to the office of the president of the university, where I met with Dr. William M. Marcy. Yes, he had worked his way up from professor, to department chair, to university president. We only met for a few minutes, but he did mention that I had been a really shitty undergraduate, and that he was very happy that other people had pushed him to change his decision on admitting me to the MS program.
Shortly after that, I gave my teaching and research talks, and got some feedback from my former professors. The president of the university was present for both of my talks. He reminded me that he still owed me a dinner, and asked me if I was available that night. That night, we went to the best restaurant in that city.
A week later, I received an email message from my former advisor, Dr. Oldham, asking me to log into a web site and fill out the application. It turns out that they had put me through the standard job interview, and all I had to do was actually apply. I did that, and a week later, Dr. Marcy called me and asked, “What will it take to get you to come here?” I answered, “I want to be the highest-paid associate professor on your campus.” And that is how I ended up spending 14 years at a great university in a place where I really did not want to be.
And the shortest interview of my life. I did not even apply for the job until after the interview, so really, the time between application and landing the job is negative.
Blue Bayou Chicken Florentine
chicken florentine side close
Yield:4 servings; 2 cups sauce
Ingredients
Chicken
4 (7 ounce) chicken breasts (with skin)
1 cup Florentine sauce (see below)
3 ounces chopped fresh or frozen spinach*
3 ounces grated Cheddar cheese
2 ounces cooked and chopped bacon
Seasoned salt to taste
2 tablespoons melted butter
Florentine Sauce
2 teaspoons unsalted butter
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons unsalted butter (room temp)
1 1/2 cups finely chopped onions
3 sliced medium mushrooms
2/3 cup white wine
1/4 cup chicken broth
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon diced pimentos
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon chopped fresh chives
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
Chicken
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
In mixing, combine spinach, bacon and cheese; set aside.
Open chicken breast and sprinkle with seasoned salt. Stuff with spinach mixture. Fold and place seam side down in baking dish. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle outside with seasoned salt.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
Top with Florentine sauce and serve over rice.
Florentine Sauce
Blend together flour and 2 teaspoons of the butter; set aside.
Sauté onions and mushrooms in 1 teaspoon butter (do not allow onions to brown).
Add white wine and reduce completely.
Add remaining ingredients. Bring to a simmer and slowly add the flour/butter mixture a little at a time until desired thickness is achieved. Continue cooking at a simmer for 8 to 10 minutes.
That was the last job I had in Vietnam before moving to the U.S.
I showed up. My (later would be) boss looked at me. Pointed me to the chair to sit down in front of his desk, then he said:
– I read your resume and recommendation. Do you have any questions?
I didn’t expect the interview went straight to that point, so I asked:
– What do you expect your new hire to be in one year?
I think I surprised him with that question as well. He thought for a few seconds, then listed out his bullet points of his expectations. After listening, I told him, firmly:
– I will be that person in 6 months.
He stood up, held his hand out. I shook his hand, he smiled:
– DEAL!
I got the job. Worked for him 5 years. He’s the best boss that I’ve had the chance to work with and learn a lot from.
Years ago I worked as an overnight stocker for Walmart when a night manager position came open.
I was the team lead in the grocery department and had, previously, been an assistant manager for a local grocery store so after almost 5 years with Walmart and 12 years in the grocery business, I felt that I was qualified for the job.
I went through several interviews and at the end it came down to me and a suckup who worked days.
The suckup ate lunch with management staff on a regular basis so I had a feeling that I was going to get screwed.
I didn’t receive a call on the day that they said they’d announce their decision but when I arrived at the store an assistant manager asked me to come back to the HR office. I knew I’d gotten screwed when he directed me to a chair in front of the desk while he leaned against the desk so I sat back to listen to what he had to say.
He said that choosing between me and the dayshift suckup was an incredibly difficult decision but they’d decided to promote the suckup.
He said that I was doing an outstanding job as team lead in grocery and it would not be in management’s best interest to remove me from that position.
He said that I was doing such a good job that they were bumping my pay up by 50 cents an hour, effective immediately.
He asked if I had any questions and I had just one:
“So, I didn’t get the promotion because I’m doing too good of a job?”
He immediately began backtracking and saying that I misunderstood him but I knew what I’d heard. I handed him my name badge and apron before leaving the store. I have not set foot in a Walmart since.
China can go into War Economy in a matter of weeks
None of the others can
You would be taking them on in their backyard where their supply and production and replacement will be twenty times faster than Quads with only South Korea being capable of production based supply
India
India , if they send one ship will face a Chinese pincer movement across the Eastern and Northern fronts and that’s a war that India with barely $ 20 Billion debt free dollars can’t afford
Russia and Venezuela and Middle East will refuse to supply Oil to India on the spot and Canada is not a friend now.
So India will simply sit this one out
Japan
Japan is a decent Navy but an offensive war?
They would simply be unable to get weapons and equipment beyond the sixth week
They would be begging the US for equipment pretty soon especially Shells
Japan has 140,000 active shells & around 600 Active Missiles
China has 1.7 Million shells and around 12,000 Active Missiles for offensive and defensive
South Korea
South Korea will sit this one out
Uncle Kim would be looking with Glee
No way will SK risk a conflict with China and open up a new salvo with NK
So it would ultimately be US vs China
Quad, the rest of it would simply opt out or play a small role in the deep background
US isn’t the great superpower anymore
They can’t defeat China on their turf
They don’t have the manpower if China decide to go reserve and get a whopping 5 Million men in 6 months
No American will agree to get conscripted to fight China miles away today
This ain’t 1965
So No
NATO, QUAD have no chance against China in the South China Sea
China doesn’t want a conflict because China is primarily a Trader than a Warrior
I don’t generally care what people buy but there is an exception.
I’ll occasionally see someone who is morbidly obese at the grocery store, who had a kid or two under 8 who are very, very overweight already and on track to be 2–3x their healthy weight.
Without fail, their grocery cart almost entirely filled with junk food.
I’m all for people living their own lives and whatnot. I also get that food and being judged is a sensitive issue for overweight people.
But I hate seeing kids being indoctrinated into a pattern of trashing their body.
It’s a really difficult thing to undo later in life if you’ve been conditioned to go straight for candy or chips everytime you are hungry. It borders are being a form of child abuse.
image 151
Admittedly, this is a touchy issue for me because I lost a family member solely to the fact that they’d chosen to trash their body. I probably have some pent up agitation because of that.
Outside of that, I don’t generally judge people’s purchases. When I worked retail many years ago, the only thing I judged people over was their attitude.
As long as they were nice and respectful, we were cool.
Some people look down on you for working such a low octaine position. So I try to pay it forward and be polite with everyone.
British Airways has been in decline for a LOOONG time.
What was it?
Multiple things : They were pretty much a monopoly in the past meaning they had the American problem. DELTA, AA have absolute monopolies on some routes… so it’s like it or lump it. This attitude continued well into de-regulation of airlines.
Later on, they got bought out and as usual corporates sweat the company for more profits. They did this by cutting back on cleaning and employee pay.
Employee pay was a funny one. In that they had unionised staff yet again a legacy of the monopoly age. They could give you crappy attitudes and be protected from losing their jobs. They also had new less well paid staff on different contracts. In essence nobody cared. The seniors were entrenched and were difficult to fire so they didnt care. The new staff were underpaid and on a vastly lower rate and less perks than the regular full time staff so they too didn’t care.
I bought a coat on Marketplace. When I got home, I washed it, and I checked the pockets again before doing so, to make sure there was nothing more – like a tissue – that might make the wash gross. The pockets were really deep and came to a point, and I felt something in one of them and had to fish deep to get it. When I pulled it out, it appeared to be a diamond ring, with three sizable diamonds, white gold. I took a picture and messaged the seller I’d found it. She was surprised – said it had been an anniversary gift and wondered if her little girl had been playing with it and put it there. I didn’t want to make the drive again – it was 20 mins each way. So I offered to ship it, which she accepted. I hoped she would offer to pay shipping, since this was not my fault. She’d didn’t. I shipped it anyway.
I worked several decades at a company that Forrest Gump invested in, he called it “some fruit company in California”. I just turned 60, and got a bit tired of expectation of 14 hour days, so I asked to use my skill set in a reduced capacity. I have a life to live, family, other interests. So I asked for a demotion. “We don’t do demotions”. I said that we would have to do something, as I am not keeping up this pace until I drop. So we agreed to part ways (laid off). This did not go over well with other engineers who respected my work, some of whom I have mentored. Basically, anytime you touch a keyboard on a Mac, and enter something in any language of the world, what you see on the screen is my junk (and the junk of a bunch of other really bright people with whom it was my privilege to work). Well, it seems that the other engineers realized that there is no loyalty, and it was just a matter of time before they would be treated similarly. Next thing I know, the other engineers have moved elsewhere inside the company, or have left. Then it seems the entire project got put in “maintenance” mode, as nobody wants to mess with my work, I believe (it is elegant, but a bit hairy… well, I think I invented something, but whatever). Conclusion: This fruit company is ok at recycling hardware, but does not want to hear about recycling its people. The CEO is reported to have said that this is a company for young people, although he isn’t. My years of experience and skill set are no longer valued, there is no loyalty (as I go through ups and downs of life), so I’m happily pursuing my other interests… and I don’t look 60 anymore !
West Confused As China Rolls Out Red Carpet For Russian President Putin On His Visit!
Well, my doctor has stated that I need to stay in the hospital for a week or longer. And then afterwards, I really have to be very moderate and calm in my activities. Apparently, I can trigger my blood pressure to launch towards the stars, and I need to tame that beast. So, this is MM going calm and serene.
Drinking is going to stifle for a spell. Same with smoking, and many of my favorite vices. Sigh.
Gotta be good, and lend myself to some serious chill.
…
I really get upset about the crazy relationship scene that the West has collapsed into. And this mix of rampant sexuality, free-lovin’ (not that I’m complain’) and isolationism with a woke political class is just another sign of a seriously collapsing Western society.
Men need love.
Women need understanding and compassion.
And let’s not forget about our kitties. Right?
Let’s all strive to be a tad better to ourselves, and to those around us. It’s so easy to get caught up, and ignore our very own needs and situation.
…
We need to chat about food. And stews are great Winter fare. (Unless you live down under) then I would recommend prawns. Stews are great, and I’ll guess that many readers haven’t had a home-made stew in some time. I suggest that you make up one and enjoy it.
With butter and bread.
Life is too short otherwise.
Today…
Cajun Meatball Stew
2023 11 10 09 45
Ingredients
Meatballs
1 pound ground round or chuck
1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs (3 slices)
2 tablespoons each minced parsley and cold water
1/2 clove garlic, crushed
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon each cayenne and pepper
1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 green onions, trimmed and minced (save tops for gravy)
2 teaspoons salt
Gravy
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
5 cups cold water
4 envelopes or 4 teaspoons instant beef broth
1/4 teaspoon salt pinch of pepper
1/3 cup minced parsley
4 green onion tops, sliced thin
Meatball drippings plus vegetable oil to total 1/4 cup
Instructions
Meatballs
Combine beef, bread crumbs, green onions, parsley, garlic, egg, salt, cayenne, pepper and cold water in a medium size bowl. Mix lightly and shape into 24 balls. Place on tray and chill for 30 minutes.
Heat oil in large, heavy skillet and brown meatballs quickly on all sides (don’t overcook or the meatballs may toughen).
Drain on paper towels; save drippings.
Gravy
Place combined meatball drippings and vegetable oil in a large, heavy saucepan or skillet. Blend in flour, and heat and stir over moderately low heat until flour begins to brown, at least 10 to 15 minutes. Good Cajun cooks take about 45 minutes to make a roux. The roux should be a rich topaz brown.
Add water and instant beef broth gradually, whisking until thickened, about 5 minutes.
Add meatballs to gravy. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally for 45 minutes.
Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.
Stir in parsley and green onion tops. Heat for 15 minutes longer.
Serve in soup bowls or on plates with the meatballs and gravy ladled over fluffy rice or egg noodles.
I’ve seen this question hundreds of times over the years on Quora and the knee-jerk answer is always some version of “Follow your passion is terrible advice.”
There was a time when I thought exactly that and wrote a similar answer. Sure, following your passion can lead you to become a starving artist or a passionate amateur beach volleyball player who lurches from one financial crisis to another.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have accountants under neon lights, droning through their days like robots, their life becoming a series of monthly, quarterly and annual closes.
image 10
Having been on both sides, I didn’t see a lot of difference in the happiness between those two groups.
My biggest advice is to “see the grey” and not take anyone’s career advice as a one-size-fits-all tip. Be like a CEO and take in differing perspectives of your VPs, and attach weights to each piece of advice given your own circumstances.
Don’t ever, ever, treat anyone’s advice as gospel. And that includes anything I say or write.
Hustle culture has spawned this nauseating obsession with meme-quotes from billionaires that supposedly solve all of our problems.
Spoiler alert: I don’t give a shit what Elon Musk said. He’s smart and capable. But he came up through a very narrow silo in the world. His circumstances are extreme and hardly applicable to most of our own. Hell, I’m half-convinced he’s a narcissistic sociopath.
You can do what you love. Or you can learn to love what you do. Life changes. New passions evolve and the economics of those passions make new paths possible while destroying old ones.
You may wake up one day and realize you hate the thing you thought you’d spend your life doing.
The only constant in success is hard work and focus.
The more I’ve accepted that life is a fluid situation, with everything in constant change, and given assumptions always being tested, the better I’ve done.
Work hard, stay flexible, and expect waves of upheaval. Because I promise those waves are coming. We all get our turns.
The first military tactic, and for thousands of years the most successful by far, was “stand together in a line and point our sharp sticks in the same direction.” Here’s the Sumerians doing it about 4500 years ago:
Proto-warfare involved individual fighters going essentially one-on-one with other individual fighters: think a modern gang fight or bar brawl. But you can’t really do that if the guy you are trying to fight has two guys immediately adjacent to him also holding spears: they’re going to stick you. If the guys in the line have shields and/or armor, you can’t even hang back and chuck shit at them, which was the other proto-warfare classic.
Now, this sounds really easy, but it turns out it actually isn’t. Warfare involves a bunch of people you hate trying to kill you. The natural response to that is to either (1) sensibly run away, or (2) run over and get the bastards first. Standing in a strict formation with even spacing is fairly unnatural in those circumstances: you need to practice it a lot, especially if you want to have any hope of moving.
(1) in particular is hard: even if you know that in theory your phalanx will survive a cavalry charge, it’s a harder sell when you have a couple thousand pounds of muscle and steel coming at you at a gallop. Gaps in your line means you are fucked: it’s hard to convey how absolutely shafted (pun intended) disordered infantry are in the face of cavalry, but it might be helpful to recall that the reason Napoleonic and Civil War soldiers stood in closely packed formation while getting mowed down by musket and cannon fire was because that was the safer alternative. And, to make things even more fun, the first guy to run away is probably going to be fine: he’s got all of his buddies holding them off. The last guy is going to get shishkebabed by a Gothic/Frankish/Norman/English lance, so how much do you trust your buddies?
(2) also isn’t actually easy to overcome, either. If you are a professional soldier, you might like the fighting. That’s how you get honor and, more importantly, loot. If it looks like you’re winning, you might really want to be the first person on the scene. You might make a lot of money. This is actually how the English lost at Hastings. The English housecarls, who were pros, successfully stood in a line with the pointy sticks the right way against a half dozen Norman charges, but broke when the Normans faked a retreat. They were then slaughtered.
But yeah, “get my guys in a line with sticks the right way” was sufficient for Alexander, the Romans, and Napoleon to get into the world conquest game. Simple, but that shit really works if you can actually do it. But you do need to actually do it.
We bought a building that previously had section 8 tenants. None paid on time, the very first month that we owned it. The housing authority didn’t pay either. After 8 phone calls spanning 3 weeks, during which time we had already given 3-day notices to pay, and filed for eviction, the housing authority finally called us back, asking what the heck we were doing evicting THEIR tenant.
We informed them that under state law, we were following the required procedure for eviction for non-payment. They told us that under the terms of the 17-page Section 8 Contract, we could not evict the tenant for any reason whatsoever, including non-payment. We asked why they didn’t pay us on time, and they replied because we had not signed the Section 8 Contract yet, after the purchase. Ah-Hah!
We then informed them that we would be proceeding with the eviction, and would not be signing the Section 8 Contract. They told us that the previous owner had already signed it, and it is not revocable! They then threatened us with legal action if we continued with the eviction.
We told them that we had already consulted our attorney, who told us it is illegal to enforce or coerce anyone into signing or upholding an agreement that they did not willingly enter into. Thus, upon the sale of the property, as clearly stated within the Section 8 Contract itself, and apparently unbeknownst to the Housing Authority, the new owner has a choice to enter into Section 8 or not. And, oh by the way, selling the property is the only way to get OUT of Section 8, and the only way to evict Section 8.
The Housing Authority huffed and puffed, and went away. The tenants were evicted.
End of Story. Yes, it is legal. We’ll never do Section 8 again, ever, for any reason whatsoever.
An articulate well known diplomat with high integrity and trust Wang Yi is meeting a 6 year old mindset, with Neocons drumming his voice with China hate and U.S. hubris thinking China is still in its 100 years of humiliation and the U.S. is still the one eye king after everyone loses both eyes after 2nd World war in 1945.
I hope for Blinken’s sake he will stop talking like the U.S. is the angel and China is the devil. He may think so but 180 out of 195 nations think it is the other way around. Best don’t even go there! Pretend to act civil and learn humility. That will go a long way Blinkyboy!
Confucian ethics says it is better to overestimate your opponent and underestimate yourself than the other way a around. The U.S. needs a lot of this balancing. China don’t listen to hot air after all. China sees more than hear. Anyone can say anything.
The U.S. better not talk about its own self made propaganda, lies, misinformation and fabrications. China is way too smart to let you lecture. Moreover the U.S. has done too much evil to even dare preach. Better focus on how to work with China on each others progress. Projects of common interest and goals to enrich the world, China and the U.S.
Without China the U.S. will die of pneumonia, with China it may suffer common influenza once in a while. Sure China will fly with the U.S. and still travelled at breakneck high speed rail without the U.S. but the faster China goes the more the U.S. will benefit too. If it knows humility.
We bought a house in a small California town, primarily because of our dogs. It had two and a half fenced acres, and was in a semi-rural area. Our dogs were getting old, and we wanted them to have a peaceful place so that they wouldn’t be stressed while we were at work. Well, it seemed like we bought a house in the “snob hill area.” During the first week we were there, a man stopped by our gate and informed me that our car was too old, and that we needed to get a new one. I told him that we were new to the area, and asked him to recommend a dealership. He did so, and I told him that I would meet him there the next morning, and to remember to bring his checkbook. For some strange reason, he hasn’t spoken to me again.
In the military, are you only allowed to keep on you what is issued to you by the government or can you buy extra protection if you want to? (knives, extra guns, extra supplies, etc), also, is your weapons and gear all new when you get them?
From a Navy perspective…
In the military, are you only allowed to keep on you what is issued to you by the government or can you buy extra protection if you want to? (knives, extra guns, extra supplies, etc)
Being on ships, there are some things you can and can’t have. No one, except a few watches, carries a gun on a regular basis. Generally, they’re issued out prior to watch, during security drills, or during actual events that threaten the security of the ship. Having a personal firearm onboard would have been useless, as it would always need to be locked up in the armory. There’d be no reason to have a personal firearm. The only people who MIGHT be allowed to have one would be the Commanding Officer, or a flag officer.
As for knives, I used to have one or two I carried everywhere while on ship. I was an engineer, and knives are essential, but not issued. I usually had a large Buck folding knife (I liked how they kept an edge), along with a small Swiss knife on my keychain. At one point I did have a double edged boot knife that I would keep hidden, specifically because they weren’t authorized. And only certain fixed blade knives were allowed (based on size).
Other types of gear we could go outside of regular issue were certain uniform items. When I was in, we had what were officially called “chukkas”, but which we all called “boondockers”.
These weren’t too bad, if they fit right, and they got more comfortable as they wore in, but they were about as mass produced as you could get, and the quality was inconsistent. They had steel toes that would cut through the inner lining and tear your toes apart, and a little saltwater would destroy the shine and eat the leather.
So, many of us would spend a small fortune on civilian shoes, much like these…
The Navy was fine with them, as long as they had steel toes and were black (for enlisted). They were supposed to be leather, too, but a lot of us would go for the ones that were synthetic, specifically because they were water proof.
There were other items that were not “issue”, but were sold as extras in the uniform shop. Back in the 80’s, there was a light black jacket we called the “Johnny Cash” (not to be confused with the black working uniform with the same nickname). If you ever went to certain overseas ports (generally Hong Kong), you could get your dress blues lined with an Asian motif embroidery on silk. This was out of sight for inspection, so the command never had a problem with them.
As for “extra equipment”, we sailors really didn’t need much more than what was already given us. We were allowed to bring on personal items, as long as they could be stowed properly. Electrical items always needed to be safety checked, and might need a request chit (permission slip) to bring it on board, but I usually had a computer for cruises, and game consoles were popular.
…also, is your weapons and gear all new when you get them?
This all depends.
Your primary issue for almost everything is in Boot Camp. That’s all your uniforms, toiletries, and other kits, such as sewing. These are always new, and upon issue, you have to identify your items with you name. In my time, we had a “stencil party”, which consisted of the entire company sitting down on the deck and using a machine cut stencil and special pens, we stenciled our names on everything.
I can literally smell the stencil ink as I write this. Not unpleasant, but strong.
From that point on, you’re responsible for replacing any items that aren’t up to standard. You get an annual allowance for this, and you can choose where to buy your gear.
I have broken service, and my uniforms weren’t in the best shape when I got back in. I was given an allowance that was meant to buy a new seabag (what we call our full set of uniforms), but I decided to save a little money and go “used”. There are always “boot drops”, the recruits who didn’t make the cut, and they have to return their uniforms. These were in good shape, but stenciled. We could buy our uniforms used, then cross out the old stencils and add our own. Saved about half what I would have paid for new.
Ships also have a lost and found, and those items are sometimes auctioned off for the welfare and rec fund. You could get some decent items from that.
As for weapons, well, you don’t keep your service weapon when you leave. Those are turned around and reissued. You might get new, you might get used.
The Evidence has been submitted and the case is closed
The Judgement has been delivered.
DEATH.
…
The MEA tried many times to help out but Qatar refused to comply
So there is no point discussing the evidence
We can go to the ICJ but given that Qatar is a gas lifeline to Europe, I am certain ICJ will pass
They openly bankroll the Hamas and yet not even a pinky finger has been pointed at them to this day
We need to get our boys out
That’s crucial
Now I am almost certain, the death sentence would not be carried out.
It never does
Except Eli Cohen and a handful of others, most spies are never killed or executed
Eventually there will be trade offs and exchanges
My guess is if India backs a Two State Solution in UN and votes against Israel for a cease fire and UN involvement in the Gaza conflict, that alone could secure a commutation to life imprisonment
Typically there could be a round robin exchange
Meaning a third country could mediate the release of hostages in exchange for India doing something for this third country
Like US or Russia or China
Ideally if we had a few Qataris in our Jail, we could do a swap
We don’t
Qatari tourists to India are non existent
We can’t pull out business contracts because we have only 6% and the Chinese would grin and happily take over
We can’t pull out of Oil and Gas contracts because we have no major long term deals and these are fungible goods
Of course they will, that is a a done deal, in fact they have already. Overtaking the U.S. is a piece of cake. A bunch of war monger selling stuffs no one one wants to buy at astronomical prices because they pay their greedy CEO 100 times that of China with workers that demand 10 times higher salaries working half the hours and insist 5 times more benefits!
Never mind this, the Yanks believed they can spend till thy kingdom come and spend like there is no tomorrow! China will pretend that they fear the U.S. but to the Chinese they not need to lift a finger, Uncle Sam will bankrupt it selves.! Hubris will bury them. Superiority complex will destroy themselves!
Let me help you hubris and racist Yanks understand the real world. As long as you still think the world belongs to you, the easier it is for us! China today in reality is at least twice bigger than you and that is being highly overestimating Uncle Sam and underestimating ourselves!
At the very worst., China is growing 5 times faster than you. The U.S. is totally fxxked! But we will pretend that the Chinese is 50 years behind the US! You loved that don’t you?
Embrace a lifestyle that costs only a fraction of your earnings.
Living below your means is like having a superhero cape you never have to show off. It’s the ultimate life hack for me, it makes one feel invincible, calm, and in control.
It’s likened to standing in a rock-solid tower while chaos swirls around you, that’s a feeling words won’t be able to capture.
In many places, especially in my home country, living modestly is more than just a money-saving trick; it’s a shield against life’s darker corners.
It keeps you off the radar for all sorts of unpleasant situations, from kidnappings for ransom to targeted robberies.
It also makes you less of a walking ATM for friends, family, and even strangers who see you as their personal bailout fund.
Choosing simplicity when you could go grand is a power move. It’s like having an invisible army guarding your peace. You’re not just scraping by; you’re flourishing but on your terms.
This lifestyle is the ultimate stress-buster. You’re cruising in a relatively comfort zone where you’ve got the choice but not the pressure to splurge. When you do spend, it feels like tossing a pebble into a pond, not like drilling a hole in a dam.
Living this way gives you access to a type of joy most people can’t even put into words, let alone experience in their lifetime.
Imagine being able to book a dream vacation or buy a dream home on a whim, leaving everyone around you stunned. That thrill is something money can buy only with a huge dose of discipline.
When you can comfortably afford your belongings, life takes on a different hue. You’re the boss, and everything you own is just a tool to make your life better, not a golden calf to be worshipped.
You only hurt one person, you, when you chose to live above your means. It is a recipe for sleepless nights and constant stress.
Being smart about how you live pays dividends in happiness and freedom, the very assets that are truly priceless.
There was a tall, lanky fellow who always wore long sleeves and sat down the table from me in engineering class. He didn’t talk much, had a strange sneeze and mostly kept to himself.
I had a sneaking suspicion he was smart, really smart. I shouldn’t have cared either way but between my bloodthirsty competitive side and penchant for people watching, my radar was always on.
And it wasn’t like I had any evidence, grades, test scores or even a remote conversation to draw my conclusion from.
All I had was a subtlety I’d noticed: His body language.
It was a cool confidence juxtaposed with a complete lack of stress on his face.
This absence of stress is not to be confused with slackery. He was laser focused on our material but rarely took notes. That pencil just sat by his hand begging for playing time, but no. Class didn’t seem to faze him. It was as if he was just in cruise control, coasting along while we all paddled to keep up.
He would go on to graduate first in his class.
But I had confirmation before that.
One day towards the end of the term, our teacher put a very high level problem on the board and asked who knew the answer. I immediately looked at him – he knew the answer. I could tell. His head sat still while his eyes were darting around waiting for someone to answer.
He was smart. He had it in his pocket. But he wasn’t looking for attention.
The teacher reiterated, “Anyone?”.
Finally, he slowly raised his hand and read off the answer like a trained assassin: calm, cold and collected.
You don’t need test scores to realize someone is smart.
Just watch them, it’s usually there. And it’s usually the quiet ones. Still waters run deeper.
China is TAKING OVER! Tiangong Space Station HUGE Update
Zero! Unless the US cancels all sanctions and restrictions it has placed on China. China is using the proceeds of its bond selling to buy gold. The expectation is that China will begin using gold backed currencies whether the Yuan or a BRICS currency. China sees the US headed for bankruptcy or at best, a financial and economic restructuring. So far, the US continues to print dollars and spending like there is no tomorrow, especially its spending on foreign wars. Yesterday, it was Ukraine, today it is Israel, tomorrow???
Schumer’s recap of his meeting with Xi has the tone that is as condescending of a lecture by an adult to a child. Here are all the points.
Point #1: At the foundation of our relationship must be a level playing field for American businesses and workers as well as responsible competition. We need reciprocity. That means allowing American companies to compete as freely in China as Chinese companies are able to compete in America. I made clear to President Xi that we do not believe there is a level playing field or reciprocity now.
Schumer is complaining about a level playing field? Reciprocity?
This is from a Congress and administration that has more than 1,200 Chinese tech companies on the Entity List and cried economic coercion when China placed restriction on one U.S. companiy. And he’s “making it clear to President Xi” that the U.S. wants a level playing field?
Point #2: “I raised the huge structural inequities and serious imbalances the U.S. faces in its economic and trade relationship with China. For decades, the Chinese government has erected significant barriers aimed at restricting the ability of American companies to compete in an open and fair manner in China. I made clear that the United States cannot sit idly by and that we must address the Chinese government’s forced technology transfers, theft of intellectual property, required joint ventures, and intimidation of U.S. businesses operating in China, among other troubling actions, that undermine economic reciprocity.
“Specifically, I also raised the need to remove restrictions and open up the Chinese market to U.S. companies, including from the semiconductor, financial services, and aerospace industries, and putting an end to policies that intimidate U.S. businesses operating in China.
What restrictions? What structural inequities?
Shouldn’t U.S. companies be making their own decisions on these? And as they say, the proof is in the pudding.
U.S. companies are making money in China. This is why they’re in China. It is precisely because of the structural benefits that China offers that U.S. companies are accepting the Chinese terms for doing business in China. U.S. companies can at any time decouple to India but are not because of the superior structural benefit China offers. And it is also why there is a “structural inequities” between the U.S. and China because, like India, we do have the infrastructure and manufacturing resources to compete with China’s. And this is not China’s fault. If the U.S. and India want to compete, then its incumbent on themselves to build the requisite “structure”.
Evidence of China’s open market? There’s Tesla in China’s automotive market and Apple in the mobile market, both market leaders in the world’s largest market. Nvidia was also the market leader in the world’s largest semiconductor market but its the U.S. banning them, not China.
Point #3: “Equally important to the need for reciprocity is the need for China to take more aggressive action to stop fentanyl from coming into America. Right now, the scourge of fentanyl is costing tens of thousands of lives and destroying American families. I called on President Xi to work with the United States to stem the flow of precursor chemicals that are fueling America’s fentanyl crisis.
And how exactly is China suppose to do this when precursor chemicals are not even banned substances in the U.S.? Fentanyl is a legal drug precribed by U.S. physicians for their patients.
Enforcement of illicit drugs is the sole responsibility of the U.S.. Blaming China is just a sorry excuse for failing at controlling an epidemic of our own making. It’s our greedy Pharmas in collusion with the FDA and physicians that promoted opioid use and solving this can only done by us alone.
Point #4: “I raised with President Xi the unfolding atrocities carried out against Israel and the need for the world community to stand together against terrorism and with the Israeli people, and pointedly requested from President Xi that the Chinese Foreign Minister strengthen their statement; they did.
Schumer is lecturing China on its foreign policy. He stressed the “unfolding atrocities” against Israel but omitted the greater “unfoldering atrocities” that the Israelis are committing against the Palestinians that he wants China to ignore.
Point #5: While we must ensure that our trade policies are fair, the United States will also prioritize our economic and national security, including protecting advanced technologies. Our delegation made clear that America is not seeking a confrontation with China, but we will remain steadfast in our commitment to promoting stability in the region, freedom, and democratic principles, and vigorously defend our values around the world.
This is just BS political talk. He’s saying that U.S. policies should be fair but justified when it’s not when we prioritize economic and national security, including protecting advanced technologies. So the U.S. subsidizing companies to the tune of $52 billion on building chip fab in the U.S. is ok but accusing China of doing the same subsidizing its tech companies as unfair and illegal trade practice. And its ok to sanction China from advanced chips and machines that make them – even forcing the Dutch, South Korean and Japanese companies to join – is justified for the sake of U.S. national security.
Now, how different would a Biden meeting with Xi be from Schumer’s? The Democrats has an election in 2024 and this will be nothing more than an electionering tactic at China bashing to win votes.
Radical Culture Change
Russia’s Top General: “Ready for Post-Conflict Negotiations”
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said today “Moscow is ready for negotiations on post-conflict resolution of the crisis in Ukraine and on further coexistence with the West.”
Russia knows Ukraine has lost. Russia knows the West can no longer provide weaponry or money to keep that conflict going. Russia knows it’s defense production is SEVEN TIMES GREATER than all the West combined. Yet, they are extending an olive branch.
Hal Turner Remarks —
We in the West should seize the moment and take this opportunity to move forward in peace.
Sadly, I fear the West simply CANNOT seek peace. I think the West – especially the United States — is literally Bankrupt. I believe the West **needs** a nuclear war or at least a partial nuclear war, so they can blame their financial collapse on the war. I perceive the West **needs** debt forgiveness and the only way they can get it is through mass destruction.
It seems to me the West needs to be able to go to their creditors and say “Our cities are destroyed, our people are dead, our economy is smashed. We have no hope at all of ever paying you back. We need debt forgiveness.”
If I am right, the Creditors, seeing this is the actual reality, will have little choice.
I suspect at that point, the very people in the West who perpetrated the massive financial destruction, get to walk away, free and clear, **remain in power ** (that’s the key) and start the whole shitshow all over again. Then, in maybe another 75 years, they have to do it all again. Round and round the wheel spins. Same old, same old.
If the West turns down this move for peace that Russia is offering, then ALL OF US know the whole Russia-Ukraine thing, and the whole Israel-Hamas thing, was specifically designed to intentionally CAUSE nuclear war for debt forgiveness.
Nothing else about these situations, makes any sense to me.
This is especially true of athletes in their mid and late 30s.
Men’s testosterone begins to decline around 30. We don’t recover as fast and lose a bit of our power over time. It’s a subtle change that catches up to them.
And many champions don’t know when to walk away in their prime.
Ronaldo is now sitting the bench on Manchester United:
True soccer fans knew this day was coming—as in fans who aren’t Ronaldo fanboys. He wasn’t playing at a high enough level to start on Manchester United. He was leaving the midfield too open while he camped out waiting to score goals.
He’s 37 and feeling his age. And that’s fine. Father Time catches up to everyone.
The sad truth is that this happens to the best of athletes. And it’s never more evident than in combat sports. Fighters that seem invincible, will go from being 31–1 to suddenly losing 8 of 10 fights in a row.
Muhammed Ali stuck around wayyyy too long and at least accelerated his mental decline.
Anderson Silva used to look untouchable. And then, age 38, he began a long losing streak.
Losing 6 of his last 8 fights.
The only person smart enough to walk away seems to be Khabib Nurgademedov. He was 29–0, and the allure of 30–0 whispered his name—but he stayed disciplined and knew to step away.
Meanwhile, his nemesis Conor McGregor has been racking up losses.
It’s a good metaphor for life.
Some phases of our life have an expiration date. Relationships. Jobs. Parties. And if you stick around too long, it just makes things worse.
The most dangerous creation of society is the man who has nothing to lose.
Today, at age 34 our combined net worth is $1.6M, not including equity in our home and equity in a small business my wife runs.
I can tell you our story, but it will probably bore you to sleep.
I had it in my head at the age of 25 that I wanted to be a millionaire in 15 years. So I sat down in front of a computer and opened up excel. I made a simple spreadsheet that assumed market returns of 7%. I then calculated how much we needed to save each year to obtain millionaire status by 40. We then proceeded to save the amount of money generated by the spreadsheet and invest in index funds, basing our lifestyle around the remaining income.
That is it.
Why did it happen sooner?
My wife hated her job. She was treated with very little respect by some members in the office, I suspect because she was young and good at her job. So she left. I told her to take some time for herself and figure out what she wanted to do. Little by little she began doing some book-keeping and tax work for former clients (she is an accountant). As word got around, more people called. She began networking and eventually built up a small accounting business with her and two employees. It’s humble, but we are able to save 100% of her earnings which helped us reach our goal sooner.
If you met me on the street you’d think I was a generic 30-something with all the same stresses of a corporate job, house and kids that most middle-class 30-somethings deal with. You’d probably assume I was barely getting by when you saw my dirty 14-year-old car, especially after you learned that I like to commute by bike most of the time anyway.
And that’s it. Having means is often more about your life style than your earnings. Unfortunately I’m not a savvy business man who made millions in his 20’s while driving a Ferrari and flying first class. I used a spreadsheet, saved that amount of money and built my lifestyle around that savings rate.
Then my wife and I woke up rich.
I told you it was a boring story.
Cajun Pork Chili
2023 11 10 09 48
Ingredients
2 pounds ground pork
2 large onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped
1 sweet green bell pepper, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 (28 ounce) can tomatoes
1 (28 ounce) can kidney beans, drained
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dried oregano*
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Dash of hot pepper sauce
Salt and pepper
Instructions
In a heavy saucepan, cook the pork over medium heat, stirring to break up the meat, for about 5 minutes or until browned. Pour off the fat.
Add onions, and cook until tender.
Add garlic, red and green peppers and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until vegetables are softened.
Add tomatoes, breaking them up with the back of a spoon.
Stir in kidney beans, hot pepper flakes, oregano, cayenne pepper, hot pepper sauce and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Notes
* If you prefer a more traditional chili flavor, use cumin instead of oregano, and add chili powder to taste.
When he was 87 and slipping into dementia, I asked my father exactly this on one of his “good days.” He smiled and said that it had been worth it, even when he became the last of his siblings alive and started to lose his ability to remember names, first, and other things later.
He became a very gentle person to be around (he had been an angry and argumentative Democrat for most of his life) and enjoyed his children, grandchildren, and even their pets. We got along better than we ever had. I remember taking him to the Fourth of July parade and whispering the names of people who came up to greet him. Once he knew their names, he could have a great conversation. Then I brought him back to a school reunion and that was wonderful. He needed no introductions as everyone wore a name tag.
Having watched my father in those years, I hope that I may live long enough to navigate old age just the way he did despite his obvious infirmities.
I’ve worked with the company I’m presently employed with for not quite 12 years. Up until a year ago, we were a small personable, easy going, family owned company of about 250 drivers. If you were around for any length of time, everyone in the office and shop knew you, and vice versa. That was up until about a year ago when the owner of the company retired and threw us under the bus by selling us out to a larger company and everything changed.
It’s common practice for just about any trucking company to require any damage to their equipment be reported and documented. With my company, if the damage was minimal, the report would still go in the driver’s jacket, but no further. It would stay in-house instead of being reported to a national data base.
I’ve always been the type to man-up in situations such as this. I was raised that way, and it was the right thing to do. Even leaving small damage unreported could result in the next driver having to have it repaired and possibly being late for a delivery.
So, after pulling out of a customer’s driveway and cutting it too tighly, I felt something go bump in the night. Upon further inspection, it appears I clipped one of those large landscaping rocks placed to prevent idiot drivers like me from cutting corners too tightly, and running over their curbs. When I stopped for the day and was doing my mandatory post-trip inspection, I came upon this,
image 114
Thinking it was no biggie, and my company would normally think likewise, and wanting to do the right thing, I called it it. What happened next was nothing short of a shit storm. The new people acted like I ran over a carload of nuns. Initial phone call to my parent company, followed by a call to the new company’s safety department, followed by a call-back the next day from same, followed by submitting pictures and a full accident report, followed by a call-back from the new company to review of same, followed by a never-heard-of-before-review from Greg in our safety department.
When I related the story to the former head of our . safety department, her reaction was, “It was just a fuckin’ rim!”, as she shook her head.
Trust me, if it ever happens again, I won’t think twice about going palms up with a “Dunno nuthin’ ‘bout it. When I dropped it off, it was fine “, should anyone inquire.
I was driving down the freeway and all of a sudden I couldn’t see the cars ahead of me. It was if someone had pulled a shade down in front of my line of vision. I could see all around the shade, but not right in front. Although it was only for a few moments, the terror I felt was devasting.
I was a 21-year old college student, a senior at academically prestigious school, getting good grades, working part time, and enjoying a fun social life.
So, what was the matter? Where did the intense headaches come from? Why did I frequently wake up in the middle of the night, jumping out of bed and running to the bathroom, to vomit repeatedly? Why did I feel that I was about to fall down whenever the sidewalk was a little uneven?
Then there were those crazy nightmares I was having.…. I dreamed one night that I was driving on the freeway. The car next to me pulled up right beside me. The driver pulled a gun out. He shot me in the head. My head exploded. Everything became dark. I woke up in a terrified sweat. What on earth was wrong with my head that I would have such a dream?
In spite of everything, I was doing okay and maintaining my studies. But finally it became too much for me to handle. Especially the shade covering my eyes on the freeway.
I saw several doctors. They said I was fine.
I went to a psychologist. I figured that since the doctors said I was fine, it must be all in my mind. The psychologist listened to my symptoms. He said that I didn’t need to see a psychologist. Instead, I needed to see a neurologist and he urged me to see one right away.
I took his advice and went to a neurologist. The neurologist admitted me to a hospital. Still no answers. Many tests were done, but it was during the days before C-T scans or MRI’s were used, so it was hard to figure this out. Finally a diagnosis was made: brain tumor.
Surgery was scheduled. They operated for 10 hours, and were able to remove half of the tumor. The surgeon told me the tumor was the size of a large orange and that if I hadn’t been diagnosed when I was, I would have had 6 months left to live. It was just taking over my whole brain and growing so fast.
I was in intensive care for 2 weeks. I can’t remember too much about that time. It seemed like a dream, for just a few hours.
Then, more surgery. And then some more.
I lost the ability to walk. I couldn’t see very well. I lost hearing. I was fed intravenously. Because I had stroke-like symptoms, one side of my body became weak and uncoordinated. I no longer could hold a pen and write.
I had physical therapy and occupational therapy to regain some of the skills that I had lost.
I finally left the hospital and went home to live with my parents. The tumor was not all gone, but I needed a break. I needed time to get stronger before the next onslaught of surgery.
While I was home, I had physical and occupational therapy at a nearby hospital. I still couldn’t walk or write, but I was beginning to feel better. In physical therapy I worked on learning to walk with a walker and then eventually on my own. In occupational therapy I worked on strengthening my very weak hand. I did many activities with my hands, including making some beautiful crafts. Occupational therapy was so much fun! I loved therapy.
I went back to the hospital and had the last surgery. Finally the tumor was gone. After some more time had passed I felt that maybe it was time to return to school.
Living on my own again was not easy. I still couldn’t walk or write well. But I persevered. Sometimes I fell down. I used a tape recorder during lectures since I couldn’t write fast enough to take notes, and my professors gave me extra time to write exams. With the support of my family and professors, I did well and succeeded.
As graduation approached, a brilliant idea occurred to me. I remembered the great time I had in occupational therapy, and how I had been helped so much. Maybe I too could become an occupational therapist. I thought of how wonderful it would be to spend my life helping others just like I had been helped. I decided that yes, I would try, and so I applied to a master’s degree program in occupational therapy.
There were many more applicants than spots available, but much to my delight I was accepted into the program!
The program was so difficult and very competitive. But I worked hard and after two years became an occupational therapist.
That was 40 years ago, and I am still going strong. I have worked with literally thousands of patients during my career, from little 1-pound premature babies all the way up to 103 year-old patients in nursing homes, and everything in-between. I have loved every minute of it.
Occupational therapy is a flexible career with an abundance of interesting and meaningful jobs available. During my career, I traveled the world, met and married my husband, gave birth to and raised two beautiful children, and enjoyed my life!
I turned what could have been a terrible, frightening experience into something really wonderful.
My sister-in-law once called me to borrow my fax machine. This was in the days before most people had computers and internet. She had a very important document that had to be faxed to a company showing proof of payment.
I took my fax machine to her house that night, hooked it up, walked her through the simple instructions and left.
She called me at work the next day in a panic. She said she had tried to send her document several times and it would not go. This was important, and she needed it sent right away. I was getting off early that day so I agreed to go by her house and help her with it.
When I arrived I checked the machine and connections and everything seemed fine. I told her to send it again so I could see what was going on. She did everything correctly and at the tone hit Send. The fax machine pulled the paper through and indicated a successful receipt at the other end. My sister-in-law grabbed the paper as it came back out of the machine and said, “See. It doesn’t go, it just spits it back out.” My jaw hit the floor. It turns out she thought the actualpaper was being sent over the phone lines.
After I explained the concept to her, I let her know that this story would be told at every family get together for the rest of my life. It is now firmly a part of the family lore and enjoyed by each successive generation.
My sister-in-law fortunately took it in stride. She declared it her worst blonde moment and laughs as hard as anyone when the story is retold.
P.S. My sister-in-law did call the company still to confirm receipt. They told her they had four copies and that was absolutely sufficient.
Close? I accidentally found out I was going to be demoted which lead to me quitting.
In my 20s I worked at one of those places that made huge cookies, I was specifically hired by the manager to be the assistant manager, she’d worked with me as a key holder at another place so she knew I would be good at it. A few months after I was hired the owner sold the business.
One day I was hanging out with the Manager L when she got a call from one of the kids at cookie shop. “Hey L, the owner is in here with some chick he says is the new Manager, what’s going on?”
Too bad L had no answers for her, we had no damned idea what was happening. She and I jumped in the car and headed to the cookie shop to talk, in person, to the owner.
Sure enough, he was demoting L into Assistant and me into just a regular employee. Neither of us had done anything wrong, the new owner just planned to make this new lady a manager. He told us a bunch of BS saying she had experience bla bla… but we found out later she was actually just his girlfriend. We told him how messed up that was, and that both of us would quit if he planned to do this. He was unrepentant, even gaving us the whole “I’m sorry you feel you need an apology” line.
She and I looked at each other, got up and walked away.
Apparently he truly didn’t understand what had just happened because when he saw the kid who called us changing the schedule he was confused. When he was told by her we had just quit, he was completely stunned and didn’t understand why we would have done that. Dude, we literally told you to your face that’s what we’d do if you demoted us for no reason other than to put someone else in as manager, WTF did you think would happen?
Turns out the girlfriend was horrible as a manager, and the owner ended up folding in a few months. Funny how that happens when you take actions that force the people with a clue out, and put someone clueless in just because you are dating them. The two of us were the ones who knew how to run the store, knew how to run the fundraising side, which is where most of the money was made. He screwed himself by being an idiot.
Cajun Butt
2023 11 09 14 20
Yield: about 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
1 (6 pound) boneless pork butt
15 to 20 garlic slivers
3 tablespoons red pepper flakes (or less)
4 tablespoons yellow mustard
3 tablespoons Tony Chachere’s Original Seasoning
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
Cut 15 to 20 slits 1 inch deep on external surface of pork butt. Press one garlic sliver into each slit with thumb, to bottom of slit. On top of each garlic sliver, insert 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes in the slit. Pinch slit closed.
In a bowl, mix mustard, Cajun seasoning, brown sugar and black pepper. Mix well and apply to pork butt. Lightly dust with a coating of red pepper flakes.
Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
Smoke-cook using apple and hickory chips on a covered barbecue pit off the heat for 1 hour per pound or until the internal temperature reaches 190 degrees F.
Perhaps one of the most effective improvised weapons was the Rhino tank. An ordinary tank – usually a Sherman but with improvised steel teeth welded to the front.
In 1944 just after D-Day the Americans, Canadians and British troops were getting held up in the ‘bocage’ countryside of Normandy. Bocage consisted of high hedgerows built on thick banks of earth. This environment proved ideal for German ambushes, providing plenty of defensive cover. It also meant that the Germans could pick off tanks because they would be funnelled down the lanes, or forced through the narrow gaps in the bocage hedgerows. The Germans knew exactly where the tanks would come through and could lay anti tank mines, or train their guns on that exact spot. If the tanks tried to avoid the gaps and instead drive over the top of bocage embankment, it was so steep that it would expose the thin underside armour. Allied tanks were getting wiped out. Until this man, Sergeant Curtis G. Culin had an idea.
image 109
When one of his fellow soldiers joked and said they needed a big set of teeth to bite their way through, Culin didn’t laugh but took the idea seriously. He welded some of the steel that the Germans had used as tank traps to the front of his tank, like this.
image 108
The teeth allowed the Sherman to burst straight through the hedgerow, surprise and then destroy any Germans waiting in ambush on the other side.
When General Omar Bradley saw what Culin had done and saw how his tank was able to smash its way though the bocage hedgerows, the General ordered that as many tanks as possible be fitted with this improvised weapon. The Normandy beaches had been filled with landing spikes which were conveniently just the right shape and type of steel to make the ‘teeth’.
This simple but effective innovation enabled the Americans to swiftly move on and cut off the Cotentin Peninsula and then move south and meet up with the British and Canadians cutting off the Germans in the Falaise Pocket.
I bought the house we are in now exactly 10 years ago in “as is” condition. In fact this was the entire listing:
“Seller and agents make no representations and warranties. Sold as is.”
The house is in a fairly upscale suburb, and was about 15 years old at the time. There was plenty of cosmetic damage — water damage on the hardwood floors, a filthy kitchen, holes in some drywall, a half-full leaky pool clogged with algae. Plus the interior and exterior were just sad looking, with ugly brown paint and outdated stained oak stairs.
image 107
But the funny thing was that no matter how carefully I looked, I could not see any actual serious problems. In fact, it was a bank repossession, and I eventually figured out that since it looked so bad they just assumed there were real problems, and they listed it the way they did to avoid any liability. Over 100 people looked at the house, and we were the only ones who put in an offer, and we got it way (way!) under the asking price, which is rare in Toronto.
I was planning on doing a full renovation anyhow, so I didn’t care about the drywall and flooring. The entire kitchen went in the dumpster. And for $600 we repaired the pool, and it worked perfectly.
I’ve been here for 10 years now and we have not had a single serious problem with the house.
I am sitting outside Quoraing this morning and I took this picture 60 seconds ago:
When you can’t destroy a target by dropping bombs vertically, you can drop them horizontally. That’s what the 617 Royal Air Force Squadron did in May 1943.
The squadron carried out Operation Chastise, designed to destroy German dams and hydroelectric power stations. Reconnaissance and simulated bombing runs revealed that bombs dropped vertically on top of dams were not effective. So instead, the RAF used an experimental bouncing bomb, designed by Sir Barnes Wallis, that was dropped at low altitude onto the surface of the reservoir and skipped along the water horizontally until it hit the face of the dam.
The strategy proved effective. “The Möhne and Edersee Dams were breached…Two hydroelectric power stations were destroyed and several more were damaged. Factories and mines were also either damaged or destroyed.”
image 121
Lancaster bomber dropping bouncing bomb during the Operation Chastise raids on Germany’s Ruhr Valley.
The operation was later the subject of the movie Dambusters, released in 1955.
I remember seeing a girl, her parents were millionaires due to a massive inheritance.
She would try and talk about her “Working class background” how the struggle was real.
One day she was telling me how her parents only bought her a brand new mini when she passed her test and how that went to show how much her family had struggled. One of her school friends got a brand new Range Rover.
I listened to that thinking “My Mum couldn’t have afforded a driving lesson let alone a car”
My sister’s daughter and her husband were about to lose their house in Texas because neither of them had jobs, they had one very young daughter and were expecting another baby. My 80 year old mother couldn’t stand to watch this happen. So, she took out an equity loan on her house and lent them $100,000. They were supposed to make the equity payments for my mom, and at first they did and were supposed to pay the whole loan back when they sold their house.
A few months later, they sold their house but told my mother they needed her money as a down payment on their new house in california. So, they kept the money, and continued making the monthly payments until they had a big fight and split up. Suddenly, no one wanted to make the payments on my mother’s equity loan so my mother had to. If she couldn’t keep up on them, she would have lost her house.
She is now 85 years old, completely disabled, living on a tiny pension, and trying to pay off this loan. Since my niece split with her husband, they did not make payments on their house either. So, it went into foreclosure, and Mom cannot even put a lien on it to get her money back.
Needless to say, I am truly disgusted by my niece’s behavior as well as her husband’s. I have now sent my mother money; my sister has sent her money, and another one of my nieces has sent money. The only people in the family who do not seem to feel terrible about this are the two people who should.
When i decided not to break up with my boyfriend at that moment.
I had just joined post graduation course and found this guy who was extremely caring about me. Within a month, he proposed me. I was confused however i said yes.
We use to talk, study and laugh together. However even after six months, i was not sure about our relationship.
AND Here comes the blow. He was back to his hometown. He was ill since a week. Meanwhile, i had a introspection round with my roommates. I found i was still unsure about our relationship. So i decided, on the next call, i will tell him that this is not the right time to fall in love etc., we should be friends only.
He called me around 8 PM. I was full prepared to say him a No. As soon as i picked the phone, he was crying on the other side. He was suffering from a fatal disease, Meningitis. I could not gather courage to leave him at this crucial moment. I just said, “I am with you today and always. No matter what happens.”
He was not in position to join college. His parents was insisting him to leave the college and repeat next time. He refused and joined the college next month. He had not recovered fully. In fact, he lost his hearing power around 40%. When he came back, he told me – how my words motivated him to join the college again. I took care of him. I used to call him reminding his medicines, diets etc. Meanwhile, i actually fell for him and then never told about that breakup thought.
Today, i am happily married with him.
P.S. I do not want my husband to know about my breakup thought even today. He is on quora. So i am writing anonymously.
I visited a radio station for an interview, at the station manager’s request. At the time I was somewhat “known” as a pleasing radio “personality” and therefore many stations wanted to talk to me.
Part of the interview process includes a station tour where the owner or manager shows off their office, production facilities, etc.
But at this particular station, I noticed all the shelved albums (well over a thousand) were locked in place by a steel bar which prevented their removal from the shelf, unless the bar was unlocked.
But who the Hell would steal the records? During business hours, when the station was open, advertisers or promoters might come in, but they were always accompanied by station staff, so visitors couldn’t steal an album (or even a 45). So, when the doors were locked after 5 PM, who did that leave as a potential thief?
Answer: the DJ who was on air, and the news guy or gal. Sometimes, the sales manager might come in.
So, the owner of the station was paranoid about theft from his or her own people! I had worked at a number of stations, and had never seen a lockdown of the music library. It had to mean that employees and top management were not happy with each other, and I was NOT going to work in that kind of environment.
Thus, I stopped in my tracks and said, “Thanks for the tour, but I don’t think this will work for me.” And I was out the door before anyone could say, “Huh?”
Years ago, I lived in an apartment in a two-family building. Upstairs and downstairs.
The landlord had rented the downstairs to a woman and her three teenage kids. They were obnoxious, had fights constantly, played music so loud it literally shook the walls, and despite multiple complaints by other neighbors to the landlord and the police (because yes it was that bad), nothing was done.
While technically, landlords are supposed to do snow clearing after a snow fall, getting some landlords to do so in a timely manner is more effort than digging out the snow yourself. This was one such landlord.
That winter we had a bad snow storm, a few feet of snow.
The downstairs neighbor knocked on my door to ask when I, the older woman with no kids, would be shoveling out the apartments and driveway, all of it, by myself.
I told her I wouldn’t, but we could split the cost to have someone come over and do it since the landlord was extra full of excuses as to why it would take days to get to the property and do so.
She laughed and said she wasn’t paying. She then told me I was welcome to hire her 3 kids to dig out the entire property. Her kids were a big part of the problem as to why the cops were coming over constantly, and so no. I’d previously had problems with her children opening my mail and putting it back in my mail box or opening deliveries of mine. There was no way I’d pay them.
Oh hell no, first you expect someone older than you to do the work for free, then expect that I will pay your kids, who are apparently perfectly able to do so, to dig YOU out? Fuck that.
A friend’s husband was offering to dig people out for a reasonable rate. I contacted him and hired him. When he got there, I explained the neighbor issue and what I wanted and was willing to pay for. He was only to clear out MY half of the driveway/garage/sidewalk. Her sides were still untouched, because no one(Me) would pay her kids to do it.
He went the extra mile, splitting the snow between the yard, and her side, of everything. AKA her side ended up with more snow that needed to be cleared.
This level of petty
image 117
Picture from Google.
She complained to the landlord that:
1. I refused to shovel her side of the property for her and her family (I was not obligated to do ANY property maintenance at all)
2. I had refused to hire her kids to do it
3. I had hired someone and refused to pay him to clear her side.
Now this was a kinda shitty landlord, but still… I was amused that the landlord contacted me about it and agreed to reduce my rent the amount I paid to have MY side cleared, as well as tell me about the downstairs neighbor’s complaints about me.
Until I moved out, whenever there was snowfall, you would see a similar clearing pattern on the property. SO much so the other neighbors joked about it, and refused to hire her kids to clear their properties as well.
EDIT: Apparently there are a large number of people who feel the need to comment about how she could just use my side of the stairs as if I lack a functioning brain. Seriously, the level of condescending ‘splaining in the comments is a sad statement on so many here. Thanks all you Captain Obvious’.
Of course she could, as could the postal worker who had to use them to deliver mail(Something not one of those commenting about her using the stairs seemed to consider).
Her being able to use them or not wasn’t the point. So many of you making the same comment as if the more of you who say it, the more I will regret it, or as if I didn’t realize that years ago when I did it is mind-boggling.
For those clueless ones that feel the need to comment the obvious, you all missed the obvious point that it wasn’t about her use of the stairs, but the refusal to clear her side on her command.
My partner (not my husband). My mother had been really sick from cancer for 18 months, we were told that she was unlikely to make it past the weekend. With that being said I was completely distraught… my partner of 9 years said pack your stuff and leave first thing in the morning (400km drive). He woke me up at 430 am, had already packed the car and fueled it up for me. Had a travel mug of coffee ready and said call me when you get there. I left 5am Friday morning.
mum passed 8am Saturday morning (the next day). I called my partner and told him, he said I’ll move heaven and hell to get there as soon as I can. I said, don’t worry, there is nothing you can do, just be here in time for mums funeral (the upcoming Friday).
in the mean time, it was my birthday 4 days after mum had passed. My family tried to make it as special as it could be. But, it was quite a somber occasion. At 8pm, there were headlights at the top of the drive way (rural property). I know the sound of his car. I’m like it’s *partners name.
he had worked 12 hour shift (construction) then drove 400km to be with me in my darkest time to help me feel better on my birthday. In the days after mums passing I had not been able to sleep, or cry or anything but just barely function. I slept solidly that night.
I know most would say that or like to think their spouse would do the same. But, that level of love and support got me through my darkest days. Love this man so very much.
Unfortunately, this is the point. The U.S. is not filty rich but filty poor.
All those money for Ukraine and Israel we got by using the printing press. We’re now $33 trillion in debt.
We can’t pay for basic utilities to keep our house in order but we believe we’re still able to live the high life of showing off to the rest of the world how powerful we are.
Genghis Khan, the legendary Mongol conqueror, had a unique approach when it came to treating his soldiers. Known for his strategic brilliance and military prowess, Khan understood the importance of a strong and loyal army in his quest to build the largest empire in history. So how did he treat his soldiers?
First and foremost, Genghis Khan believed in meritocracy. He valued skill, loyalty, and bravery above all else. Regardless of their background or social status, anyone who demonstrated these qualities had the opportunity to rise through the ranks of his army. This approach fostered a sense of unity and purpose among his soldiers, as they knew that their achievements would be rewarded.
Khan was also an astute observer of human nature. He recognized that soldiers needed to be motivated and inspired to fight with unwavering dedication. To achieve this, he led by example. Genghis Khan was renowned for his courage on the battlefield, often placing himself at the forefront of his troops during crucial engagements. This not only boosted morale but also instilled a sense of camaraderie and trust among his soldiers.
In addition to leading from the front, Khan took great care of his troops’ physical well-being. He ensured that his soldiers were adequately fed, equipped, and cared for. The Mongol army was known for its skilled horsemen, and Khan prioritized the breeding and training of horses to provide his soldiers with superior mounts. This gave them a significant advantage in maneuverability and speed during battles.
Furthermore, Genghis Khan implemented a system of rewards and recognition for valorous acts. Soldiers who displayed exceptional bravery or achieved notable successes on the battlefield were given honors, titles, and even land. This not only motivated his soldiers to excel but also created a sense of pride and camaraderie within the ranks.
However, Khan was also a strict disciplinarian. He demanded discipline and obedience from his soldiers, as he believed that a well-disciplined army was crucial for maintaining order and achieving victory. Disobedience or betrayal was met with severe consequences, ensuring that his troops remained loyal and committed to the cause.
Woman EXPOSES The INEVITABLE Problem With Dating Modern Women | TRAINED/GROOMED To Be Masculine
I was in talks to design a business plan for one of those “Become a Millionaire” guys – aka a “Life Coach”.
As we moved along in talks I immediately got the heeby jeebies from the guy.
He was in his late 50’s and only seemed to brag about things he did in high school and his early 20’s. When I would ask about subsequent years, just to understand his career narrative, he would get thin on details and then squirm and change the subject.
So then I watched a few of his media interviews where his go-to story was about this incredible and vivid vision that came upon him when he was a child. A vision that he would someday become rich.
To his credit, it indeed came true. He was a wealthy man.
But it became true because he inherited his dad’s company when his dad passed away unexpectedly. He then immediately sold the company and spent the next 30 years doing a whole lot of nothing.
So now he is one of those people going around telling everyone he knows “that ONE special secret to getting rich”. He released his first book on becoming wealthy, which a bunch of unfortunate suckers bought.
And, no, I won’t tell you the title because he will sue the hell out of me.
But I’ll give you the cliff notes version, “Get rich by having a rich dad.”
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there that are like him.
Preying on people’s hopes and dreams in search of a dollar.
The American industrial system does not have such production capacity.
American shipyards do not have such production capacity: There is only a dry dock suitable for manufacturing aircraft carriers, and aircraft carriers waiting for repair are still queuing;
The steel mills in the United States do not have such production capacity: The last scandal involving the use of low-quality steel made in Kobe, Japan, by US nuclear submarines has not yet passed. This batch of nuclear submarines with quality issues cannot dive at all, and diving into deep water will explode due to increased pressure. American warships are even unable to withstand the impact of fishing vessels, which fully proves the quality issues of the steel used in their shipbuilding.
There are not enough skilled workers in the United States
20 And Back – The Super Soldiers Defending the Kuiper Belt
Joe Biden is taking the World to the brink of World War III
What can the American people do about it?
SQUAT
…
Until 19/1/2025 at least, there is nothing any American citizen can do about it except watch the World plunge into war under the watch of a senile idiot who needs Diapers
So what is the use of saying
Biden is destroying USA and he must be kicked out
It’s just empty gas isn’t it. It’s just 10 words at the end of the day. Biden laughs and keeps doing whatever he likes for four years, unchecked
…
Same with every Democracy in the Planet
At the end of the day – WHAT IS THE END RESULT OF ABUSING OR CRITICISING THE LEADER?
Nothing
Either the Media suppresses it or people shrug and brazenly keep doing what they are doing
…
Take India
We have had Protests on every decision that has ruined the country
Demonetization, CAA, NCR etc
They matter Squat
Once in, Modi is in power for minimum 5 years and he can’t be shaken by the common man
…
France?
Same story
All those Protests and Screams and Shrieks about Pension reforms and Macron did exactly what he wanted
He is in charge till 2027
…
Same with South Korea , exports plunge to historic lows and people scream and protest but does it matter? Nopes
Taiwan?
Japan?
Germany?
So many protests begging to end the war and Germany openly and brazenly calls for Escalation
So what is the use of this damn free speech? You can say the words but they are worthless in every possible way
Now China
Yes
Maybe in China, saying these 10 words could be counter productive
However the people’s voice in China is heard much better than in any democracy
Lockdowns were ended post protests
Rural Banking Reforms were initiated after Protests
Crackdowns on Real Estate Financing was initiated after Protests
1.03 Crore Jobs have been added due to vigorous Weibo Netizen criticism
Tagging Schoolkids Or regulating online gaming has been deferred due to Weibo online protests
Plus the Biggest Biggest Thing…
Recently on the XI Jingping app, they asked if Chinas History for 6–9 Classes be modified and whether Chapters on the Boxer Rebellion and the Opium Wars had to be reduced
The Question was asked of Students who had already passed out their 9th Grade and above
79% Students said NO.
DON’T CHANGE HISTORY
They didn’t.
…
In India, US, and all those wonderful democracies – they don’t ask the kids do they????
So on one hand you have Western Democracies and their lapdogs where you can say what ever you want but can do zilch
Or China where your criticism must be tempered but as citizens you can achieve much greater control on Governance
The Chinese say WE LIKE OUR MODEL BETTER
I kinda agree with them
So you keep your Senile Alzheimer’s Ridden President and your ‘Freedom and Democracy’ and let the Chinese have their own version
I think you might want to edit the question to ask which item from Italian cuisine does the US actually get right.
Italian American cuisine is a cuisine in its own right. Millions of Italians immigrated to America and they adapted their traditional dishes to use American ingredients. Some of the ingredients they used at home were unavailable or too expensive in America, so changes were made. Successive generations didn’t know there was a difference between what they were eating and what was being cooked in the old country. They just accepted the food their families prepared as being Italian cuisine, which at heart, it is.
There’s a lot of water between America’s East Coast, the epicenter of Italian American cuisine, and the old boot herself. It’s that distance that led the creation of Italian American classics. If I had to point at one item the made the leap unmolested though, I’d name Sfogliatelle.
Sfogliatelle are a flaky pastry that originated in Campania. They’re made by rolling out dough, brushing it with lard or oil, rolling it up, cutting it into portions, shaping the pastry, filling it and baking. Sfogliatelle can be baked unfilled or filled with sweetened ricotta, almond paste or candied citrus zest. They’re simple to make and don’t call for any exotic ingredients. It’s the thin flakey layers that make sfogliatelle unique.
image 116
Ricotta filled:
image 115
If you’ve never tried these pastries, seek them out. They’re amazing and their recipe has not been molested by time or distance.
Life robbed me of my childhood. My parents had to quit school after grade 9 to help support their families. They vowed that my brother and I would not be barred from finishing school and going to University.
But we were poor, so they had no way to pay for it. So they propped me early. I knew by grade six that if I wanted to go to university, I would have to pay for it myself.
So in grade 8, I started mowing lawns and shoveling snow.
In grade 9 I got a part time job and worked 20 hours a week, in grade 10 ,30 hours, and grades 11 and 12 it was 40 hours. I graduated first in my class. I lived in a 10×14 ft room, with a roommate and the bathroom, was down the hall. I worked in the dorm cafeteria. When summer came I got a camp job, where I worked 360–380 hours a month, and they also paid room and board.
This was the way I graduated from university debt free.
So, as soon as I turned 13, I stopped having a childhood, and had an adulthood instead. So much for life being easy for baby boomers.
I’d do it all over again in a heart beat. Its what it took to break the cycle of poverty.
Because I am 71, I knew people who were in their prime of life a hundred years ago (1918) and there were definitely things that they did easily and routinely that are rarely done today:
Baking bread and caramel rolls. My grandmother learned it from her mother but did not pass it on to her daughters, probably because sliced store bread had essentially taken over.
Writing cursive and writing letters. I have saved some of my grandfather’s letters. For a person with an eighth grade education, he wrote simply but beautifully.
Sewing and mending. My grandmother was not wealthy, but she was capable of producing wonderful pajamas for all of her grandchildren on her trusty Singer. My generation has lost the ability to create heirlooms.
Gardening and canning the things they grew. In an era when you were not going to see fresh fruit or vegetables in stores after growing season, people developed great preservation skills. Things like pickles, berries, tomatoes were canned as were peaches and plums when in season. I do not remember kale or zucchini, however, and that was also a blessing.
Memory work. I grew up with great uncles and aunts (all born about 1900) who had memorized massive amounts of poetry and famous speeches as well as scripture. Rote learning was fairly normal in their education, so they did group memorization. We loved to hear their recitations.
I miss those folks. They just slipped away one at a time between the seventies and today.
This wasn’t me, this was my wife. She is a lawyer and was interviewing for a job managing the sale of properties. She was interviewing at a firm that specialised in really expensive and tricky sales and when she turned up to the interview she was told by the recruiter that the partners had told the last two people who were interviewed to leave midway through so they were quite abrupt!
She went to the interview, which went quite well, and they asked her to prepare an answer to a legal sale question. When she looked at it, she knew she had no hope: it was madly complicated and about a type of property sale that is known to be horrendous to do. She thought about trying to brazen it off and decided to be honest and say she had no idea.
It turned out the partners knew from looking at her CV she would have no idea about how to do it; it was something so complex the partner himself had had to do it himself. What they were trying to do was see how she reacted to something she didn’t know. The last two people interviewed had tried to make something up and so failed the test.
I was nowhere qualified as a computer tech but one time a friend of mine brought over a a desktop machine and keyboard and asked me to see if I could get it running as it wouldn’t boot up. Every time you’d plug in the power cord to the wall socket a strange odor would start permiating from the cover. I figured something was wrong with the power supply, which if push came to shove I could’ve probably went to an electronics supply store and bought another one and installed it. I was adept at soldering and replacing some common components at the time, which is why my friend thought that I could fix it.
Anyhoo, I removed the screws holding the cover to the unit, lifted the cover off and got the most absolute shock of my life!! Hundreds of live cockroaches start running out all over everywhere not to mention many more that were obviously dead inside that cover!
I came unglued along with a major panic attack! I’d never, ever had to deal with roaches after I became an adult. I despised them because while growing up my family and I always had a major problem with roaches and they were always into everything and would drop from the ceiling when you went into a room after turning on lights, etc etc etc.
I spent 2 hours stomping on and smashing roaches trying to prevent them from getting into places in my apartment where I couldn’t reach and in the long run wasn’t successful. Ended up moving out to get away from them making sure in the process that I didn’t inadvertently take any with me.
I was not happy with my friend. It caused a major, almost homicidal argument with him and it would be several years before we spoke again. The creepiness and ick factor of watching those roaches pile out of that machine that day still haunts me to this day.
Huawei refused to disclose its foundry information, sending the Biden team into madness.
Let’s talk about smart children. Particularly smart children in the United States. Particularly those in grades K-8 at a public school.
A lot of you reading this are, yourself, a product of the American public school system. Think back to your K-8 years. Do you remember people whose only job was to deal with the students with behavior problems? Were there “special education” teachers who had special classrooms with aides and all kinds of equipment for just a handful of students? Do you remember being bored a lot in school, because your teacher didn’t have the time to challenge you, because they were so busy re-teaching things to the students who didn’t get it the first time? Do you remember a handful of students who seemed to set the pace for the whole class, and that pace was much, much too slow for you? Do you remember a handful of students whose attitudes and behavior set the tone for the whole class? And was that a negative tone that left your teacher spending most of their time dealing with that small handful of students?
That was my experience, at least. In grades 4–8, I was one of about 20 students in a special gifted program in my school. But that gifted “program” was just two teachers who were given a spare classroom in five schools in the district, and they went to a different school every day of the week, and pulled out the gifted students from their classes for an hour, to play logic games with them.
One hour per week. That’s what we got.
Meanwhile, the students on the other end of the spectrum had resources thrown at them, including permanent classrooms with full-time teachers for students whose only “special need” was that they didn’t give a damn about learning.
I remember one incident in particular, when I realized just how much time my teachers wasted trying to get one particular student under control. His name was Anthony. One day, in seventh grade, we were learning about feudal Japan by playing a game where we were all on teams, given items to trade, and could use money we made to hire soldiers, and then there was a huge map of Japan on the wall, separated into regions, with the number of regions under each team’s control represented by different colored push pins.
My team started in Osaka. To this day, I know exactly where Osaka is because of this game back in 1992. I remember that we were the blue team, our main thing to trade was fish, and we began with five pushpin armies.
Also Judith was in my group, which made it even that much more enjoyable for me. She was forced to interact with me for a few minutes each day because of this.
It was a computer-less strategy game. I loved it. The game was supposed to last for a few weeks.
It lasted two days. On the third day, Anthony vandalized the giant game board, and some of his friends laughed. And that was it. The teacher was tired of putting in so much effort for something that students like Anthony just kept ruining. We did the rest of the unit, and every unit afterwards for the rest of the year, through textbook reading and worksheets.
But, as I thought about it, I realized that Anthony had been that way since he was first in my class in second grade. He was always out of control. He always set the pace and the tone for the class. In middle school, he got kicked out of class a lot, which just wasted a lot of time because he rarely went willingly and they had to call and wait for security. But he was always back in the class the next day. He just needed to “chill out.”
That was actually the name of the kick-out room for students like him: the “chill out room.”
I just Googled him and found a story that he was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 for “domestic battery, drug possession, and forgery.”
Yep. All of that extra time, effort, and money the public school spent on him… how’d that work out?
That would be fine, if the public schools spent the same amount of time, effort, and money on the upper end of the spectrum.
My point is this: What’s the saddest truth about smart people? Public schools just aren’t equipped to deal with your special needs, because they’re too busy dealing with the special needs of students on the other end of the spectrum. The very people who have the most potential to give the most back to society are the same ones who school prioritizes the least.
Imagine a school system where every dollar spent on students on the lower end of the special needs spectrum had to be matched by a dollar for students on the higher end of the spectrum.
Imagine if, just like schools have resources in place for when the teachers need to kick out the Anthonys of the world, those same schools had resources for teachers to send out the students who were too smart for that day’s lesson.
“Timmy, you can read this and learn it on your own in five minutes, but I’m going to be teaching it to the rest of the class for the next hour. You can go to the gifted resource room and work with the teacher there on more advanced stuff.”
Imagine if, just as schools pay extra attention to students with special needs due to federal laws and fears of getting sued, schools did the same for students on the high end of the spectrum. Imagine if parents could threaten a lawsuit because the school wasn’t meeting the needs of their child… the legally-mandated requirement that the school challenge them on their academic level and not let their classmates hold them back.
Imagine how high your hot air balloon could be now, if not for the classroom sandbags that weighed you down when you were in school.
Instead of “No Child Left Behind,” it should be “No Child Forced To Wait.”
Gavin Newsom goes to China, one-ups Biden and meets Xi Jinping
“As a Californian, I can tell you that not only is Newsom not acceptable to the rest of America, California is not acceptable to the rest of America”.
It is likely that China will sell virtually all of its remaining U.S. Treasuries.
It is useful to look at Russia’s experience in this regard. Russia sold virtually all of its Treasuries in 2018, fairly quickly. At that time, Russia encouraged the world to dump U.S. Treasury bonds. Thus, it is possible for a country to officially not hold Treasuries.
After 2018, Russia continued to hold some foreign currency reserves in U S. dollars. When the Ukraine War started in 2022, the United States and its allies froze hundreds of billions of dollars held by Russia.
As a result, the world has been forced to look elsewhere to store its savings. Both China and Russia are storing much of their wealth in physical gold. Other countries are doing the same. The planet is also increasingly doing business in currencies other than the dollar.
As a result of these trends, China will increasingly no longer need U.S. Treasuries to do business. In October 2023, China bought its first oil for Chinese Yuan. If this continues, China will get its oil for free, by printing Yuan. America will be forced to trade hard goods for oil in the future.
America’s leaders were very short-sighted to weaponize the dollar. A global reserve currency requires trust. The United States had a money-making machine, and voluntarily gave it up.
FLASH TRAFFIC ADDED – TURKISH NAVY DEPLOYING 100 SHIPS AGAINST ISRAEL –~FIFTY (50) U.S. Military Transport Planes in 24 Hours to Middle East
FLASH TRAFFIC ADDED – SEE 12:27 PM EDT UPDATE BELOW —— From Friday-into-Saturday, the United States sent no fewer than fifty (50) military transport planes loaded with troops to the Middle East. In addition, the list below shows “unprecedented” naval deployments. Today, Iran said they WILL NOT abide U.S. warnings to stay out of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
We begin with Naval Deployments into the Middle East showing 11 Countries in Support of Israel:
All of the above, along with Submarines and other support ships show an utterly massive naval deployment. I am told this present deployment is larger than the ones done prior to the US war(s) against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 1991 and again later.
In addition to all the above vessels, another Aircraft Carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth II, transited the Strait of Gibraltar yesterday morning around 11:00 AM, enroute to the eastern Mediterranean:
In addition to THAT additional aircraft carrier, the Navy of Italy is also now deploying vessels:
AIR
In the 24 hours period from Friday into Saturday, the United States flew 49+ military transport aircraft from the US to the Middle East, carrying TROOPS!
On top of those troop transport flights, a Significant number of C-17A Globemaster lll and C-5M Super Galaxy Transport Aircraft from the U.S. Air Force’s Air Mobility Command have been arriving in the Middle East.
The flight info above DOES NOT even cover the regular commercial airline flights the US has chartered to exclusively move troops!
Yesterday, Saturday 28 October 2023, Germany put 1,000 soldiers on alert for deployment to the Middle East in case of emergency The German Army keeps 1,000 troops on alert for possible deployment to the Middle East in case of emergency, given the prevailing tension in the region as a result of the war between Hamas and Israel.
This flight from Fort Sill, OK has my attention at the moment. Fort Sill is home to a THAAD battery and this flight appears to be headed overseas. There are no helpful ACARS for this flight, but this is possibly a THAAD battery flight enroute to Saudi Arabia:
At about 1:47 AM eastern US Time Sunday, which was about 11:00 AM in Tehran, Iran, the President of Iran said Tehran will not follow US warnings against interfering in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to the Press service of the President of Iran: “Israel has crossed red lines, forcing everyone to take action.”
The President made it a point to also say “the presence of U.S warships in the region will make no difference to Tehran’s decision.”
Hal Turner Analysis
Based solely upon the movement of ships, troops, and planes, it is obvious to me the United States is going to war. A big war.
Trouble is the federal government under the Biden Regime has intentionally left the US southern border with Mexico, virtually open. Literally millions of illegal aliens have been entering the country via Mexico since Biden took office.
It is my opinion that many – but not all – of these illegal aliens are a “5th Column” sent here by adversaries to be “sleeper cells.” I believe that when war erupts in the Middle East, that WE HERE IN THE USA will also be attacked by these sleeper cells.
YOU must be ready with emergency food, water, medicine, a generator to make electric in case the grid is taken down. Have CASH MONEY in your possession incase cyber attacks take out the financial networks, making credit, debit, and SNAP/EBT useless. After all, almost no one takes checks anymore. So folks with cash will eat. Those without cash will go hungry.
The utterly massive movement of troops and weapons indicates to me that hostilities are imminent. Which could — and I emphasize “could” (not necessarily “will”) — trigger sleeper cell attacks here in America.
If you wait until trouble starts, then YOU and every other person who failed to plan, will all be rushing to stores at the same time trying to get food and supplies. In short order, store shelves will be empty and those of you who took no action, will find yourself standing in an empty store.
Don’t be like “the masses who are asses” that wait until the last minute to get supplies. Do it right now. Today.
And gas-up your cars, trucks, and spare gas cans for your generator.
Lastly, have COMMUNICATIONS GEAR – a CB or a HAM (Shortwave) radio — so if things go wild weasel, and communications like phone, fax, email, cellular/Internet all go down, at least YOU will be able to communicate locally (CB) and hear international news on shortwave (HAM).
Of course, some of you will say that this story and its advice is sort of like “Chicken Little, the sky is falling.” To those who would scoff I merely point out that, this morning, a U.S. E-6 Nuclear Command Post is now flying over the US East Coast:
The E-6B Mercury is a communications relay and strategic airborne command post aircraft. It provides survivable, reliable, and endurable airborne Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) for the president, secretary of defense and U.S. Strategic Command.
So it isn’t just ME telling you to take steps to prepare, it’s the US Military, too. Take the hint!
(PERSONAL: Sorry my coverage today begins at this late hour of 11:00 AM EDT. I slept-in this morning. Didn’t wake up until 9:25 AM. I was literally exhausted.)
********** FLASH ***********
UPDATE 12:27 PM EDT —
The Turkish Navy is, right now, transiting ONE-HUNDRED Naval Warships through the Bosporus Strait from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
It is BELIEVED Turkey plans to engage Israel over its ongoing military action in Gaza. War may break out between Turkey and Israel within Hours! ! ! !
Unlike its better known relative, the Enigma machine which was infamously deciphered by code-breakers at Bletchley Park throughout the war, the Lorenz cipher posed a much greater challenge. Utilising 12 wheels to scramble up the message being sent as opposed to the 3 or 4 rotors found in the Enigma machine, the Lorenz cipher was incredibly secure. As a result, unlike the Enigma that was used by the German standard armed forces, the Lorenz cipher was used only by high command with messages coming from Hitler himself. As a result, to crack the Lorenz cipher (or Tunny as it was code named by the British) would have the potential to change the course of the war.
Not much headway had been made in breaking the Lorenz cipher through the war until a German operator made a catastrophic mistake on 30 August 1941. When a German receiving operator did not receive a message correctly, he asked the transmitter to resend the information and despite clear protocol against it, the two operators resent the message without changing their key settings (the settings that determine how the text is scrambled up). However since the message in question was 4000 characters long, the lazy German operator abbreviated several words, thus changing the length of the message. Since their key settings were both the same, the two messages had the same scrambling pattern of characters. Thus by comparing the locations where the message text changed, details of the way the rotors worked could be determined.
These two messages were intercepted by the British who soon realised the importance of what they had discovered. This task of cracking Tunny was given to W T (Bill) Tutte who began to find repetitions in the cipher which allowed him to reverse engineer the Lorenz machine’s logical structure in what would be later described as “one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II”. In order to support the painstaking decryption of German messages, the British Colossus was built in 1943 by Tommy Flowers, the first ever modern computer.
image 112
The Colossus Machine
The impact of the decryption of Tunny was enormous. It gave the British intimate details of Hitler’s most secret communications which was most notably vital in D Day where the Allies were able to deceive the Germans that they were going to attack at Calais as opposed to Normandy and at the Battle of Kursk in 1943, Germany’s last ditch attempt to reverse their fortunes on the Eastern Front and one of the largest battles in history. Involving 3 million men, without foreknowledge of German planning provided by the British, the Soviets would have been badly prepared defensively and could have lost this crucial battle and as a result, the war would’ve been prolonged. In fact, historians estimate that the breaking of the Lorenz cipher shortened the war by two years and thus saved millions of lives all due to the careless mistake of two lazy German operators.
However this pivotal event is not well known due to the Official Secrets Act keeping the nature of the code breakers working to break the Lorenz cipher secret until 1974 and some former staff even today still refuse to break their vow of secrecy, preferring to take their knowledge to the grave.
image 111
W T (Bill) Tutte, the man responsible for cracking the Lorenz Cipher
Cajun Pot Roast
2023 11 09 14 23
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (3 pound) beef sirloin or chuck roast
2 large garlic cloves, cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces
3 cayenne chiles, or jalapeno chiles, cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces
Salt and pepper to taste
1 large onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 (4 ounce) can whole or sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Creole seasoning to taste
Instructions
Cut 1/2 to 3/4 inch slits into beef. Stuff one piece of garlic and one piece of chile into each slit. Season the roast with salt and pepper.
Heat a large nonstick pan over medium heat. Add beef and brown well on all sides.
Add onion, bell pepper and minced garlic land sauté until tender.
Add water to pan to cover the beef.
Stir in the mushrooms and Worcestershire sauce and season with Creole seasoning.
Simmer, covered, for 3 to 4 hours or until tender, adding more water if needed to keep liquid level halfway up the beef.
Notes
You may stir 1 tablespoon flour mixed with 1 cup cold water into liquid near end of cooking for a thicker gravy.
I broke off a 10 year off and on relationship over a single piece of gum.
He and I weren’t on great terms for a long while. It was mostly out of his cheapness. He wouldn’t take me out to eat-we ate at his place. That wouldn’t have been bad except that he bought cheap items and used foods that had expired. I told him I wasn’t eating his cooking anymore, thank you. We watched TV but only shows he liked-he didn’t want to waste his time on my shows. I could watch them at my place.
Things were coming to a head and I knew the next fight we had would be the last. It was November when he called me and asked me to come over and fix his computer. I wasn’t in the best of moods-I finally had a free afternoon with the kids out with their father and I had things to do. Ok, I decided I would go over and see if I could do something to help. I got there and he already told me I had just an hour to get things right. Perfect start-no thanks for coming over, great to see you, etc.
He offered me a piece of gum. I haven’t chewed gum in years because it sticks to my dental work, and he knew it. Why was he offering me gum-was my breath stinky? After I thought about it for a moment, I took a piece. I didn’t even get it open when he started to yell at me-why is everything in your life a big decision? Don’t waste my gum-either take it or don’t! I paid money for that!
I immediately put the gum back on the table. He flips out again-you touched it not you don’t want it! What’s the matter with you? With me? I don’t chew gum, not in years! You knew that! I thought you were hinting my breath stunk so I took a piece of gum. Now you don’t want me to take the gum! Why don’t you make up YOUR mind?
He immediately moved my tech bag away from his computer and began to work on his computer. Don’t you want me to do that? No. You asked me to cone down here to help you, now you don’t want me to help you? Silence. Are we really going to have a fight about a piece of gum after I wasted my time and gas to come here? Silence.
I sat on the couch for a few minutes. I could have just stormed out the door. I wanted to compose myself and make it clear what would happen. I told him that I have spent 10 years doing for him, taking care of him when he was sick, lent him things like my cell phone and my car, then paid the repairs when he broke them and he never paid me back. I have put up with all this, and if we didn’t resolve what was really going on, I was leaving and not coming back. All I got was silence. Are we really going to break up over a damned piece of gum? Silence.
I picked up my things and I left. I never went back. I blocked his number from my cell phone. I had a feeling I knew what happened because he did it to me before. He used to get moody around Thanksgiving time and lots of times we broke up so he could avoid my birthday in December and Christmas/Chanukah/Valentines Day. He used to call around March to renew our friendship but his birthday was in April and he really wanted a present. I just had enough of his childishness, his cheapness and his abusive control. It was just one fight too many and I was done.
He did email me the following April-after I sent nothing for his birthday. I emailed him back that I told him that after our last fight, I was done and I wanted nothing more to do with him. He replied that he forgot what we fought about, and I told him that it was over a piece of gum. Then I blocked his email.
He called from another phone the following September, demanding I stop being stupid and get back together. What a lovely invitation, no woman can resist that, I answered. Then he threatened me. I told him to come over and try to f*** me up. I had an old lead pipe my father had and it had his name on it. I told him I’ll invite my neighbors to watch me smear him all over the street. My temper broke and I told him about the horrible things he did to me over the years. He finally said “I guess you’re mad at me, huh?” I hung up and blocked his new number too.
He attempted to contact me a few times through his friends but I told them I would go to the police and file harassment charges. He finally moved out of New York City-he attempted to contact me from his mother’s home in Tennessee. I blocked that too. He’s been blocked in every social media site so I don’t have to deal with him.
He had 10 years to grow up and apologize. The words aren’t in his vocabulary. I know the piece of gum wasn’t the reason our relationship ended-it was years of my giving and him taking and never appreciating what he got. But that stupid piece of gum was the catalyst. To this day, when I see a pack of Wrigley’s gum, I still smirk with amused disgust.
I interviewed for a support engineering role, the interviewer asked me how a fluorescent light fitting worked. I explained what I knew about the ballast, starter and gas tube etc. He delved deeper and I drew a rudimentary circuit diagram. When he asked exactly how the starter worked I was stumped, so I said “I don’t know”.
He told me that he must’ve had 2 dozen other applicants attempt to convince him how it all worked, but being able to admit I didn’t know something landed me the job. I learnt how knowing one’s limitations is so important.
Despite increased attacks on US occupation bases, Joe Biden has reportedly turned down more ‘aggressive bombing options’ in Syria out of fear that a wider conflict may erupt
NOV 13, 2023
(Photo credit: AFP via Getty Images)
Several missile and drone strikes targeted US occupation bases in Syria on 13 November in response to the latest round of US airstrikes on alleged Iranian targets in the country.
Fifteen missiles targeted the US base in the Conoco gas field, sources told Al-Mayadeen, adding that US helicopters began making flights ten minutes after the strike.
“The Conoco base was targeted with advanced Grad missiles, which led to the death of four US soldiers,” Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent reported.
Field sources told Al-Mayadeen that the attacks were carried out by the “Popular Resistance” in Syria.
In a second response to US airstrikes, three drones struck the Al-Shaddadi military base in Hasakah, northeastern Syria.
The US Green Village base at the Al-Omar oilfield northeastern Syria, was also hit with a drone. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is a coalition of Iraqi resistance factions formed last month in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
The coalition was formed to confront US forces in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and in rejection of US support for Israel in the war, and has been targeting US bases on a regular basis.
Hours before Monday’s attacks, US warplanes carried out several airstrikes in eastern Syria.
Washington claimed the attacks targeted facilities used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
According to Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent, the US airstrikes “targeted a house in the town of Al-Mayadeen, which led to the death of a citizen and the injury of another.”
US jets have struck Syria several times over the past month in retaliation to the unprecedented surge in resistance attacks against US military bases in Iraq and Syria. Washington has labeled the attacks as “self-defense.”
According to the New York Times (NYT), US President Joe Biden “has rejected more aggressive bombing options proposed by the Pentagon out of fear of provoking a wider conflict with Iran.”
The newspaper also cites Republicans in Congress as saying that Washington’s strikes on Syria “only invite more frequent and more dangerous attacks against US troops in the region.”
There have been at least 48 resistance attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria since 17 October, the Pentagon said on Saturday.
“At least 56 U.S. service members had been injured. Roughly half of those suffered traumatic brain injuries, and two had to be flown to Landstuhl military hospital in Germany for treatment,” the NYT adds.
There doesn’t seem to be many who are rude. My story is about a beautiful and kind woman.
Many years ago I was in O’Hara airport getting ready to fly home from Navy boot camp. As I waited, I saw what looked like a Hollywood photo shoot going on. I walked over with my nearly bald head and baggy Navy uniform and talked to an absolutely beautiful woman, dressed like an Elf. She was friendly and asked where I was from and what my home was like. We talked for about 10 minutes. As I needed to catch my plane, I thanked her for taking the time to speak with me. I asked her what her name was. It was Ann-Margaret. Surprise! I’ve had a soft spot for her since our meeting.
There have been a lot of memes lately, discussing this subject:
It’s viewed as a sort of work-around to all of life’s problems:
These’s memes are funny and all (sometimes), but they also have some truth.
A good portion of depressed people definitely view suicide as a way out and they genuinely think it’s the only way.
But it’s not.
Sunday, Nov 18 is my late-uncle’s birthday.
No one ever talks about him in my family. And of the few times he’s brought up, is always in relation to his suicide or mental illness.
He lived a pretty amazing life, but the memory of his suicide looms over the conversations around him.
It’s not like we never talk about him, or that suicide is strictly the only thing that we remember about him. There’s just no solace to the memory of his passing, suicide is something that is preventable, it didn’t have to be this way.
And, unfortunately, it’s the same with my idol, Chester Bennington.
image 120
In every Linkin Park YouTube music video, all the comments are the same. They’re ALL about his depression or his death.
No one talks about his life, how he made it big after a period of being homeless. How Linkin Park immediately knew who their lead singer was after his audition; how Chester would always do screaming vocal warmups, which could be heard several changing rooms away, before each of his live performances.
No one talks about that anymore.
If I’d killed myself on year ago, all I’d be remembered as was “that quiet kid who killed himself.”
You have a lot to be remembered for.
Stan Lee, who passed away on Nov 12, 2018, is positively cherished by fans.
So much material was circulated recently about his life and work.
image 119
There was a meme about how he drew the Peter Parker meets MJ comic strip based on the time he first saw his future wife. There were memes of his cameos in Marvel movies, memes of Infinity war, Spider-man memes….
It was awesome.
And nobody was particularly sad, rather they celebrated everything he did in his 95 year life on Earth.
You have a lot to live for.
And a lot to be remembered by.
And even if things don’t get better quickly.
Don’t tarnish that with suicide.
It’s not worth it.
You are worth it.
You are worth a good life and the world deserves your proud legacy.
During my very first visit to China, there were a couple of things that took me by surprise:
Massive malls absolutely everywhere
I’ve heard that Chinese food is so much better in China than what you get in other countries, but that’s is a massive understatement. There is so much diversity in food options, all of it is amazingly delicious and very reasonably priced. I could not get enough of it, and I can’t wait for my next visit so I can stuff my face with all that deliciousness again!
I didn’t expect to have that much trouble finding restaurants or shops that accept foreign bank cards. Some locations only allow Alipay. Also, apps like Didi are not available to foreigners as you need a Chinese number to sign up, and hailing a taxi is not always easy.
I saw very few tags or graffiti on buildings in big Chinese cities. Those are a major issue in pretty much every European city, as even historical buildings get smeared in tags, so this was a welcome surprise.
Excellent public transportation – so cheap and easy to use!
All the people I’ve met were absolutely lovely and extremely helpful. Also, there are so many older people in the parks, exercising or dancing, which is refreshing to see.
There is never any paper in bathrooms, so you have to carry a roll with you
The only thing that slightly threw me off during my very first visit was that people in China often take pictures of foreigners without asking. I’m very visibly a foreigner, so I always get quite a bit of attention when I’m travelling in Asia. I’m used to that, and I never decline a picture with some curious locals, as I find it a sweet experience. However, in China, while many approached and asked for a photo, there were many more who just tried to ‘’sneakily’’ take it, which made me feel a little bit uncomfortable at times.
As a tiny woman travelling alone I felt quite safe, even at night in less populated areas.
My wife and kids lived upstairs in my parent’s house. My Dad passed before my Mom. When she passed, as the only child, I had to sort out her bills, insurance, etc. My Mom was a school teacher for many years and received SS and a pension. At her time of retiring, she did not make as much as teachers do today. A few days after her funeral, I was sitting at her desk going through her checkbook to see what was paid and so forth. When I looked at the deposits, I started to see bill after bill after bill being paid, leaving her with very little left over. I am still saddened to this day, many years later, that I never knew the depth of how bad things really were. We could have contributed more to the household, but she hid most of this from us, trying to spare us any hardship. This is the single biggest regret I have in her passing, knowing I could have eased her burden, as she was the most loving mother one could ask for. She worked her whole life to teach children and raise me, who deserved so much more in her retirement. I am shedding tears as I write this, and hope that others can take more of an active role in their parents lives (when allowed) while they are still with us.
While employed as a pizza delivery rider, after the lifting of the COVID lock-down, our company decided to pull a fast one.
A memo from the head office was circulated among all restaurant staff at all branches. It basically said that the company was so concerned about our welfare in these trying times that they were willing to keep a percentage of our weekly salary for us as a form of savings. The memo also mentioned that if we agreed to this ‘Pizza Savings’ (my term, not theirs) that we will be getting 0% interest.
My delivery co-worker and I had a field day with that memo. We read it several times in disbelief and laughed. The owners could not be serious.
It was obvious they wanted to get a loan/invest in something. It was as if they told themselves instead of taking a 16% interest loan from the bank why not simply take it from their uneducated restaurant workers, all they needed was our signatures.
I went around some of the co-workers joking about it. Most of us laughed it off but two of them couldn’t understand what was so funny.
‘But we’re getting 0% interest!’ an older woman working the grill said.
She seemed to have the idea that this was a good thing. Apparently she had had so many loans in the past that to her the word interest = bad.
I explained to her it was a savings and not a loan. That with savings you want the highest interest you could get and the exact opposite when it comes to a loan.
‘But isn’t it good to have a savings?’ one of the teenaged girls working the pizza table said.
I explained to her it is a good thing but it makes no sense to save your money with someone giving you 0%. I tried explaining how banks work, about buying shares etc and getting the best rates for your money. Both women looked at me in silence.
In the end they both decided to ‘try it out.’
I didn’t know what shocked me more. The fact that the restaurant attempted that stunt or the fact that it actually worked on two employees.
Controller got fired for all the right reasons. On his way out, and before his access was deleted, he programmed a very, very offensive message on the Windows start menu for the entire company-something along the lines of “fxxx you, (name of the CFO)”. Now I’ll admit the guy had it coming, but will also say that the CFO was the biggest a-hole I’ve ever met. Anyway, it took the IT guys weeks before they were able to fix it (always wondered why it took sooooo loooong).
As a 45 year old, I started feeling very tired. I fell asleep in the bathroom at work one day. Went home and thought I was coming down with a cold. Never actually got cold symptoms, but could barely move my body. It felt like all of my extremities were filled with lead. Then I started getting dizzy. Then I started to vomit. I went to an urgent care center and told them all of the above symptoms and how now I’m vomiting and peeing every 5 minutes. I even told them I was vomiting black stuff which they informed me was blood. I was told I just had a stomach virus like people get on cruise ships. I said I have never been on a cruise ship in my life. I was sent home with antinausea meds. I had lost about 15 lbs in 3 days. That night and next day still vomiting and now breathing in short gasps. Now my body is shivering uncontrollably and I can barely move and still vomiting blood. My kids found me on the kitchen floor and took me to the ER. I was rushed back and found out I was in diabetic ketoacidosis. My body was shutting down. I was about a day away from death. My blood sugar was 854. I was diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic.
While hospitalized, I received a survey from the urgent care center asking how my experience was. I’ll told them that I almost died thanks to them, but other than that it was great.
Years back when Subway still gave you tickets to collect for free subs, my kids’ mother and I were going to have dinner and movie night with my brother and his wife. Subway was the night’s choice. Well, it is Friday evening and the video store is packed. So we’re standing in line waiting to check out our movies, and she is going through these Subway tickets. She asks me,
“I don’t supposed you’ll eat a 6 inch?”
To which I responded, in a building with over 150 people in it, without even missing a beat,
“No, if I don’t get 12 inches, I’m just not satisfied.”
Children were laughing at me. Had it not been so hilarious, I would be mortified of that story getting out.
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.
aspen woods
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
9b296f5c257208e9cd42c4846c76ab15
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.
2023 10 18 15 54
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 got out of Prison, I suddenly came down with two maladies. The first was Ball’s Palsy (where my face was paralyzed, and I couldn’t close my eyes), and the second hit me about two weeks later. I had terrible kidney stones. And man oh man was it painful.
Because I had no money, and was transitioning from prison, I went to the hospital emergency room and they gave me a number to call to get some medicine for the pain.
And when I called that number, the receptionist answered the phone and accused me of wanting drugs and said that I could come in, but they weren’t going to give me anything for the pain.
I endured that pain for a week before I passed the stone, and it was a mighty bad situation. The pain was HORRIBLE.
Never the less, the thing that I remember was not the pain; the stone; or the egress from prison. I remember that holier than thou bitch at the reception desk that was giving me a hard time.
For all you Karens out there, I have a message for you all.
FUCK
YOU.
…
Good, now that I got that off my chest, let’s do todays post…
Robert Sandifer’s life began in two overlapping hells.
image 2
The first hell smoldered outside of his home, the streets of the South Side of Chicago, infamously dangerous, and marred by a blistering gun violence that persists to this day.
These streets are so dangerous that Google actively censors the imagery that populates on Google Streetview.
image 1image 3image
Robert Sandifer’s second hell raged in his own home.
He was born to a prostitute mother who had dozens of arrests, and who was addicted to cocaine before, during, and indefinitely after his birth.
Sandifer’s father was wholly absent, serving a long prison sentence for felonies related to brutal gun violence.
He received severe physical beatings that started long before he could speak, that left him with terrible bruises and bloody lesions.
At age 3, Child Protective Services opened an investigation after finding cigarette burns on his body, caused by his mother’s boyfriends.
CPS tried to save him. They moved him to his grandmother’s house, but that home was a 3rd hell, already overflowing with as many as 20 kids at a time, many of them from similar circumstances.
Sandifer quickly became a product of his environment, adopting a violent lifestyle, beating children mercilessly on the playground, stealing their money, and their food. He began burglarizing homes, breaking into cars.
He dropped out of school at age 8 and roamed unsupervised in the gun-born, blood-soaked streets of The South Side.
Sandifer was assimilated into a notorious gang, The Black Disciples, who embraced and celebrated his violence.
At age 10, he was arrested after being caught driving a hijacked car, not the first he’d stolen – nor the last.
After Sandifer’s arrest, his family requested that he be kept in juvenile detention for his own safety and for that of the public – but they were denied – Sandifer was too young for juvenile detention.
And thus – he was released to his Grandmother’s custody.
And into the arms of The Black Disciples.
On a fateful 28th day of August, his gang ordered him to take out a hit on a rival gang member.
Sandifer arrived at his target’s house, he positioned himself behind a parked car on the opposite side of the street.
And opened fire.
His bullets plunged into the crowd, hitting several bystanders, and ultimately killing the wrong person – a 14-year-old girl Shavon Dean.
3 days later, Robert Sandifer was taken under a bridge, told to get on his knees, and shot, execution-style in the back of the head by members of his own gang to silence him.
At the time of his death, he had committed 23 felonies and 5 misdemeanors.
At his funeral – the only picture his family owned of him was his mugshot.
He was 11-years-old.
The bitter truth of life: some kids never stand a chance. People really do not understandjust how bad it gets.
Yes I have. I was a single mom struggling to keep my head above water so I would take leftovers for my lunch. This one co-worker would help himself to my lunch, then tell me how delicious it was. I tried explaining my situation to him, but he still continued to eat my lunches. I even bought an insulated lunch box so I didn’t have to put my lunch in the employee refrigerator. He would steal my lunch while I was away from my desk. And still brag about it. Now this coworker was from a different department than I was and made almost twice as much as I did. One day I had enough. That night as I was preparing my lunch for the next day, I included a healthy dose of mineral oil. Mineral oil is edible, it has no taste or smell, but it is a very good laxative. It took the guy about a week to figure it out. He went to HR and tried to get me fired or at least pay his lost wages ( he had to leave work 2–3 hours early all week.) HR talked to me and when I told them my story and how long it had going on, they made him reimburse me for all my lunches he ate. They verified my story first, of course. Later an email went out to all employees that theft of any food would be grounds for termination.
Illegal, in China, selling drugs is illegal, exceeding 1 kg will be sentenced to death.If you know Chinese, you should know that.
In June 2021, 215.37 kg of drugs were hidden in 67,000 tons of soybeans exported by the America to Qingdao port, China, and were intercepted by Qingdao Customs. Relevant personnel have been punished.
image 201image 90image 89
I hope you can understand Chinese hatred of drugs. Qingdao is an eastern port city, and it is obligatory to prevent drugs.
In 2017, Mianyang city Sichuan Province, southwest of China, a thief broke into a house to steal.When he find drugs on the ground,he gave up the plan and report to the police, confessed his crimes and discoveries, and helped the police officers catch a large drug-making-trafficking gang.
Yes, even thieves also despise drug dealers,they also join Antidrug.
Lone Star Bacon and Cheddar Fries
67aa71c90c60143eee828c8addba65ba
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 pound (3/8 inch) regular cut fries with skin on
2 ounce shredded Cheddar cheese
2 strips cooked diced bacon
3 ounces sour cream
Finely chopped green onions, for garnish
Jalapeno peppers, for garnish
Instructions
Deep-fry regular cut fries (350 to 360 degrees F) for 3 to 3 1/2 minutes or until golden brown and crisp.
It was a hot summer afternoon in the month of May.
I was riding on my bike to home. A man who may be in his early 50s asked me for a lift. He was sweating profusely and needed to reach home. As his house was on the way I was going in, I gave him a lift.
He explained to me that, his sugar levels are dropping and need to reach home fast. I dropped him off at his home and he thanked me whole heartedly. I got back home and forgot about it.
After a month, a small hotel was opened nearby. I went there to try it out. I was checking out the menu and someone tapped on my shoulder from behind. He was the same man whom I gave lift earlier.
He asked me if I had recognized him. I said no. He explained that I gave him lift a month ago. Then, I recollected him. He asked me, what would I like to eat. I was surprised.
He giggled and said that, he is the owner of that hotel and as a token of gratitude I can have anything for free. I politely refused it but he was stubborn in his offer. So, I gave in.He asked the chef to make the best of the dish I ordered and was given for free.
That day, I realized, the good you do however small, goes far.
Any small help you do to people will for ever be engraved in their minds forever and it comes back to you in the ways you can never imagine.
The areas shaded in green are owned by the federal government. Although Wyoming is large, the federal government owns about 47% of the land. So, some of the most beautiful parts of Wyoming are not places to which people are moving because there is very little private land for them to buy and live on.
But the problem is even deeper than that. These federal lands contain timber, pasture, and minerals which are leased or sold to those industries, but those leases and timber sales are prone to fluctuate with political fads for or against use of federal timber, minerals, and grazing. Even aside from that, the bureaucracies in authority over these lands do not take responsibility for maintaining the jobs in these industries. Since they have often not worked in the private sector, they either do not understand or do not care how delays and unpredictability in their decisions kill private-sector jobs.
Another reason for the low population in Wyoming is the 75,000-person tipping point in urban population. There is a pattern in the United States: cities tend to grow faster once they have reached a population between about 50,000 and 100,000. At this population, there is enough demand for specialized services in medicine, law, finance, engineering, management, entertainment, air transport, and other professions to support higher-paying jobs in these industries. There is also enough population to entice specialized types of businesses to locate there. Some of these are businesses that hum along below the surface of your local economy, but are important in helping other businesses thrive: machining, transportation, calibration, training and testing. Some of these businesses are retailers and national food chains that make a place more inviting to new residents. No Wyoming city has broken through this tipping point, although Cheyenne may be doing so now.
A third factor: By geographical accident, Wyoming’s neighboring states tended to have urban clusters near their borders with Wyoming which hindered any Wyoming city from reaching this population tipping point. Specialized, high-paying jobs and businesses are less likely in an area within 150 or so miles of existing firms. Denver and Salt Lake City are large cities with trade areas which include much of Wyoming. But the smaller cities of Rapid City, SD, Billings, MT, and Idaho Falls, ID also have large parts of their trade areas within Wyoming. Have a look at the map of United States trade areas and influential cities. All of Wyoming is depicted as being within an out-of-state city’s trade area. The map has flaws. Certainly Casper, Wyoming should qualify as having a trade area if Butte, Bozeman, and Helena, Montana and Alliance and Valentine Nebraska do, but the map nevertheless makes a valid point about Wyoming’s lack of urban areas with trade areas.
image 91
In the long run, Wyoming will be one of the nation’s faster-growing states and will develop larger urban areas. It contains major freight rail lines and major interstate highways. It has cheap electricity, low taxes, and lots of money in the bank from all the mineral wealth. It has major electricity transit lines and energy pipelines. Culturally, it has a good work ethic and an openness to newcomers. It has enough water resources to accommodate lots of population growth.
Many, many years ago I received a letter in the post. It was a recorded delivery and I had to sign for it to confirm delivery. I was intrigued and opened it immediately. It was a summons to appear in our local small claims court. I was being sued for £6,000. There were no details about the charges or any explanation of what the case was about other than the name and address of the complainant. I was mystified as I didn’t recognise the name. Lets call him Mr Smith.
In the three weeks before the stated date I convinced myself that one of my sons was playing an involved joke on me. I quizzed them all mercilessly but nobody would admit to knowing anything about it. As the date drew closer I determined to go to court just to find out which of my boys was the perpetrator of this rather involved joke.
Court day arrived and I went into the court building and presented my summons to an attendant, still expecting to be told it was a forgery. I was wrong. I was politely directed to a small waiting room and told my case would be called in 10 minutes. I was stunned.
When I was escorted into the courtroom the Sheriff (a lay judge in Scotland) asked me if I had a legal representative. I explained how I thought that the summons was a joke and I had no lawyer. He said that I could ask for a deferment to get legal advice if I choose but he didn’t think that was necessary. I sat down still stunned and confused but by now rather scared.
The Sheriff now asked the other side to outline their case. I listened in stunned amazement as the story unfolded.
Apparently some 6 months previously I had sold Mr Smith a tenpin bowling ball and drilled the ball to suit his hand. I had explained to him the need to keep the ball clean of lane oil on a regular basis. Mr Smith had taken me at my word and had left his bowling ball soaking in a bathtub of hot soapy water overnight. Feeling that the finger and thumb holes were wet when he fished the ball out of the bath in the morning he had decided to dry out the ball. Fifteen or twenty minutes in the microwave should dry it out nicely.
Some time later the ball had exploded. The force of the explosion was enough to destroy the microwave and send the door of the microwave flying upward with enough energy to punch through the ceiling and the floor of the room above his kitchen. Unfortunately the room above his kitchen was his neighbours bathroom. The microwave door not only punched through the floor but punched through the actual bath. Really unfortunately the poor woman was taking a bath at the time.
She was suing Mr Smith for the damage to her bathroom from the flying microwave door as well as the water damage to her carpets from the bath full of water. She wasn’t suing for the shock of a microwave door suddenly puncturing her bath although it must have been a terrific shock.
Mr Smith was suing me for the same amount on the basis that I had sold him a bowling ball without specifically telling him not to put it in the microwave.
By this stage several people in the gallery were laughing and the sheriff was definitely smiling. I was still worried but feeling considerably less scared. We all sat politely until Mr Smith’s lawyer had finished. The Sheriff then drew himself very straight and without a trace of a smile said that he was here to apply the law of the land and not to educate idiots. Case dismissed.
WARNING something BIG is happening in Ukraine, Putin stays quiet
Something big is about to happen in Ukraine. Is Putin about to launch a pre-winter offensive now that Ukraine has exhausted all of its resources? Logistical signs are showing newly built railway tracks and large troop movements on the Russian side. Also multiple reports over the past 48 hours show an increased number of young Ukrainian men racing to get the hell out of Ukraine.
How has living in China changed you?
it’s aged me!
I was in my mid-20’s when I came, and after 30+ years here I’m already 57. If I stay here a few more years I’ll be 60. No one cares!
I don’t know which changes are due to maturing and which are due to living in China, but I can say how I’m generally different than Americans who haven’t lived in China.
I’m less emotionally invested in news reports, especially about politics. If you’ve lived in a place or have a job that’s occasionally the focus of the international media (as China manufacturing has been) then the discrepancy between what’s reported and what you know is obvious. It makes you skeptical at first, then cynical. Apathy soon follows.
I don’t take it for granted that multi-party democracy is superior to one-party rule. I tend to look at the results not the process.
I accept rapid, sweeping, head-spinning change as the norm. instantly accepted and accommodated.
Yesterday we used paper currency to purchase things. Today we use cash cards. Tomorrow we’ll buy everything with our phones…. oh wait… we’re using the phones now, today, not tomorrow. OK, ok. I got it. Yesterday we used cash cards, today we use phones, tomorrow well use something else.
I don’t remember when I stopped carrying cash and then stopped using my cash card. But that’s where I am now. That’s where everyone is—even beggars on the street accept mobile payments.
Got a meeting in the next city… ? Better schedule 1/2 a day to get there. Then, all of the sudden, you realize you’re always arriving early to meetings. Everything started moving faster like this. Now that half a day gets you from Shanghai to Beijing by train. And if you start in the morning in Shenzhen, you can have an authentic Hunan lunch in Hunan, and be back in Shenzhen for an authentic Cantonese dinner.
I’m more appreciative of people in general, Chinese or expat. I don’t love everyone, but I value my relationships and feel grateful for the respect and assistance I’ve been given. I often feel like the big bang has distributed the universe’s molecules with my wellbeing in mind.
Chinese programs in Universities today get more funding than even USA, as US focuses on Private Funding
In 2022, US Universities spend $ 208 Billion in University Research against $ 346 Billion by China
You write a good paper for your PHD in Biotechnology, you could get offered an Research Associate position for 25000 RMB a month that’s around ₹ 34 LPA plus housing against a mere ₹7.6 LPA in India
That’s equivalent to $ 83,666 a year in US that’s higher than the US median of $ 64,712 for a Research Associate in PPP terms
China pays highest in PPP terms for most research today barring Norway and Switzerland and Taiwan
Life of an Indian Post Doc in China
My son is one
He is doing research for a Private Company on a 5 year grant (2023–2028)
Here are his observations:-
Knowing Rudimentary Mandarin is very important. The Lab assistants, the research students do their best in mandarin. The english is pretty accented. Luckily most Universities offer you Mandarin elementary classes for free if you are doing research there.
Softwares and Settings are programmed to Mandarin. You have to set it to English. Then print in English and Mandarin.
Money is pretty good. Housing is pretty good.
You will have two security reviews by the Government.
If you do research funded by the Government Or research classfied as National Research , you get a ID that gives you some powers. You get clout with cops. Now technically these IDs are only for National projects but like India, my sons director has managed to wrangle these IDs for these guys as well.
Very easy to get a Chinese girlfriend if you are unmarried. Unlike Singapore where girls are steady since secondary school. My son has 3 Assistant Researchers from Vietnam, Indonesia and Kerala. All have Girlfriends in less than a year.
Research is very well funded. You want to buy a $ 300,000 machine, you get approval in a matter of 2–3 days
It’s damn good
Settling down in China ?
Not encouraged
Finish your grant, extend your grant, live for 15–20 years in China and then go home or to Singapore
Meanwhile train as many Chinese as possible
Most people who settle down in China are married to Chinese Mainlanders and have kids and full families
They become Chinese themselves, speak like mainlanders, act like mainlanders
They are eligible for Citizenship of China
Are Indian Postdocs selecting China?
Yes
China beat Japan to the fourth position in 2023
It’s US, Germany, UK and China at fourth position beating Japan which was at fourth place until 2023, France is sixth, Middle East & Africa is seventh (no idea how), Singapore is Eighth and Canada is ninth
However in absolute numbers only 8.63% Postdocs go to China with almost 39.44% going to US and 71% going to US, UK and Germany
However this is a huge increase because in 2006 only 0.51% Postdocs sought careers in China meaning a Eighteen fold increase in a mere 17 years
Men DESTROYED Modern Women’s Beauty Standard
Rating women’s attractiveness is dramatically affected by make-up. I’ve seen them transform from as much as 2’s to 9-10’s. Truly amazing results.
A few years back I had to change my careers. At that time I took a big change and moved halfway across the world to China.
I lived there for 3 1/2 years. I was there for 3 years in NE China in a small rural area. Then about 4 years later I move back but to the big city of Shanghai(but only for about 1/2 a year).
That’s the background story now to your question.
My first 3 years in China was very humbling. I was in a rural area still governed by old rules and ideas. I met a friend who lived in South China in a big city and she told me that I experience things that she never experienced while there. Each person’s experiences are so different. In the rural areas you live like the Chinese, but in a big city, you live like a foreigner in China.
When I say humbling it’s because I learned to live on very little. I spent $200 a month for food, shopping and traveling. When I went back to China in a big city you definitely can’t live on that. I learned to appreciate what I had and how to make do with what I had.
I discovered that my own culture lack respect for elders. That we are far behind when it comes to public transport. (China is far ahead of us). I gained a love for food, Chinese eat all the time (but are skinny). They eat tons of vegetables and meat as well…but it’s fresh produce…which my own country lacks…we eat way too much processed food. Of course, I learned how to use a squatty potty.
Now, when I went back to China 4 years later…so much has changed. They are so advanced when it comes to technology. While China was a humbling place for me for my first 3 years. It was not so the second time around…why? The simple answer is that times have changed. Don’t get me wrong I loved Shanghai and appreciated it, but I learned that sometimes you can’t go back…memories are better left in your mind.
China will always be a part of me. It has changed me so much more than I can ever put into words. But for me, “humble” is what learned from all my experiences in China.
No Handyman Jobs! People are BROKE!
I guess I was spoiled with the abundance of jobs these past few years. Well, I guess that has come to an end…
A few years ago, a kid in our neighborhood got a drone for Christmas. He started flying it around people’s houses. The first time. I was sitting on my deck and it flew to the edge of the deck. I waved and it flew away. The next day, the same thing. After a few days, the kid got bolder. He started to fly it right over the deck. There was also one time that I was doing dishes in the kitchen it was hovering right outside the kitchen window, watching me.
This went on for about a month. I would see it right outside my windows or around my yard. I knew it was just a kid but it was getting kind of creepy. I wasn’t sure if I could be heard on it but I tried telling the drone that the fun was over and please don’t come back. Guess what? It came back the next day again. I didn’t know who the drone belonged to so I called the PD and they really didn’t know what to tell me. At this point, drones were just becoming popular and there wasn’t really any protocol. I asked around the neighborhood and no one seemed to know where it was coming from. I tried to follow it but it was faster than me and was piloted over houses and through other yards that I couldn’t go through.
Another month passes and now this kid is just taunting me. I tried throwing things at it, putting up a sign asking them not to fly it near my house anymore, my then-husband actually had it in his hand at one point but those things are pretty strong and he wasn’t able to keep a hold of it. We would flip it off when we saw it or curse at it, anything we could think of. I even fired a few warning shots with a BB gun. Nothing worked.
Finally, we were just done. The last day I ever saw it, I was again sitting on my deck and I hear the familiar drone sound. I tried to ignore it, hoping it would go away. I could hear it getting closer to me but I just kept my head down, pretending to read my book. The living room window was open so without looking up I yelled “It’s back again!!”. My then-husband walked out onto the deck and the drone moved towards him. He pulled out his pistol and pointed at the drone. No shots fired, it wasn’t even loaded and the drone high-tailed it out of there. Within 15 minutes, a very angry father and 2 police cruisers were in my driveway. The father wanted us arrested for threatening his kid. We explained what had been going on and the cops had several reports over the last few months from me as well (including pictures of the drone in various places around my house, date and time-stamped). Basically, nothing happened. The gun was registered to a licensed gun owner, no property was damaged, and the documentation from the police department showed that this kid was a nuisance. The cops went and had a talk with the kid. I found out later that other neighbors had the same issue with the drone so the cops had not only our complaints but many others. I don’t know what happened to the kid but I do know I never saw that drone again.
***EDIT***
A lot of people are commenting about the police not doing their job and yes it does seem that way. However, we have to remember that this was the first year that drones became really popular and it was the IT thing to have. People were having a lot of fun with their drones but there weren’t any clear laws that the police could follow. Also, you couldn’t trace them so you had a basic idea of the surrounding area where the drone was coming from but unless you actually saw where it went “home” to, there was nothing you could do so I believe that the police did the best they knew how at the time.
I don’t even blame the parents that much because the kid was like 13 or 14 years old. When I figured out who the drone belonged to, I knew exactly who this kid was, and quite honestly, he was an entitled little sh**. His parents were actually pretty nice people who tried their best but had very little control over their kids. The father showed up with the police because the kid made the father believe that a gun was pulled on him while cutting through our yard. That was not the case and when given all the facts, the father was still upset but it didn’t have a whole lot to say anymore.
And before you come for me, yes, most times kids are a product of their environment but sometimes the parents are doing everything right and the kid will still be a jerk. My kids are 21 and 17 and I have been involved in many of their activities over the years and have seen it all.
The Real China Shocked This British Man
Whenever I hear the China collapse theory, I always ask the person if s/he wants to take a bet, just provide a time frame when you think China will collapse and I bet you two whiskey that it won’t. I had been winning so many whiskey in the last 15 years, but none of those losers pay up.
Seriously, do you really think the people in China really care whether China is a Communist or a Democracy if all there is to it is just some meaningless labeling.
Is like categorizing races by color, when you call it white I saw pink, when you call it yellow I saw light beige, when you call it black I say are you color blind, do you know what black looks like?
Chinese people in general are very much pragmatic, results orientated and doesn’t give much crap to whose camp they are in as long as they prosper and live a better live then the past. Also, Chinese history and philosophy never taught them life is simply black and white we know it has at least if not fifty shades of grey in between.
Furthermore, if one look at the Tai Chi symbols we see the black and white are not shown as antagonistic to each other, whilst they may be opposite to each other in direction but they intertwined in a circle with the opposite instead of a straight line in between a square. It also house a fraction of the opposite too, all for the purpose of equilibrium and in layman term it is call Win-Win or Harmony.
Life cannot always be a equal sum game, it has many elements and each play an important role, if one element does not survive well or is missing rest assure others will also get affected adversely by it. In science term, it is what we call a Eco System.
Balance reduce conflict, hegemony are always short livedand unintelligent, longer it stretches it more violent is the snaps when it breaks.
So is it really true that there are no democracy in a Communist system and when a country is not run by Communist does that mean they have no tyrant, no dictator, no ruthless regime, no poverty, no corruption and their people live a much better happy life?
Whats’s the big fucking deal about democracy if the leader doesn’t really practices it. “For the People, To the People, By the People” my arse when I see what’s going on in their land of Oligarchs Plutocracy.
Safety – yesterday, today and tomorrow. At first, right after moving to China I was truly amazed that there are so many chairs for valets randomly placed on the sidewalks. In Russia these chairs will end up at someone’s country house.
Small businesses In Russia shops, restaurants, coffee-shops etc. belong to the large chains, you cannot find a small bar with homemade food for example. And places like that are my favorite in Beijing.
Infrastructure – in Russia you hardly can: – get anywhere by subway and pay under 10 kuai for it, – get anything delivered to your house, – pay for the stuff via wechat, – get foot massage in the middle of the night, – pay for electricity and water using your own terminal, etc. etc.
Variety of entertainment choices The only places that are really good for eventful life would be Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, other cities cannot be ever compared to Beijing: lots of events, activities and parties. Russia does need to get on this level.
Taobao This is the most genius thing ever – I am a big Taobao fan and would love if a platform like that will be developed in Russia someday.
China moves into position to support Syria
So happy to see China & Syria are working together! Stronger united against the Empire!
School Bus Driver Rant
As a school bus driver, I would like to explain something.
My job is to transport your child from point A to point B safely, on time and ready to learn.
That is all.
What do I mean when I say safely? Let me explain. Safely means I pre-trip my bus daily to ensure it is running properly and that it hasn’t been tampered with. Safely means my eyes are constantly scanning all 7 mirrors, blind spots, and the road in front of me.
I’m NOT a babysitter.
I’m NOT a mediator.
I’m a BUS DRIVER.
I would absolutely love to be able to watch and hear each and every little thing that goes on in the 40 feet of school bus behind me, but while I’m watching Johnny jump across the seat, I just missed a car pull out in front of me. And oops, while I’m yelling at Susie to keep her hands to herself, the light changed and now I’m slamming the brakes to stop in time at the intersection. And what’s that? Now Joey has a nose bleed? And now someone dumped all of Katie’s stuff out of her bookbag, and “bus driver, Bobby is flicking me”, and “bus driver, Lily said she doesn’t like me anymore”, and what’s that? While I’m looking in the mirror behind me reprimanding your perfect children, a car just ran my reds and Sally almost got run over!
It’s Never Ending to us…
And that doesn’t even include the way the children speak to us. I’m pretty certain they don’t speak to other school faculty like that. And certainly don’t speak to their parents the way they speak to us.
So please, parents, tell me … where do you want me to look? Behind me? In front of me?
Would you prefer I pull over each and everytime someone yells “bus driver”? Because then YOU will complain that the bus is never on time, and trust me if I did pull over everytime, we wouldn’t even make it out of the school parking lot before I’d have to stop. Incase you didn’t know, your children are not perfect…no one is.
Would you rather I continue down the road watching what’s going on BEHIND me more than what’s going on with other vehicles on the road around me? Because I can assure you, if I’m not scanning every angle around the bus, there WILL be an accident, and then I will again be to blame, because I should’ve been paying attention to the road.
Now, on top of that, we see your children for less than 30 minutes a day, in most cases. Please teach your child to respect the bus driver, and to behave themselves when riding the bus…because we want to return them to you, SAFELY.
~ Unknown
Russian & American In China Are SHOCKED What They Experienced
Not crazy at all, just unusual and — under the circumstances — quite touching.
A 1969 Ford F250 was advertised for sale located in a town about 400 miles away. I called and spoke with the elderly original owner. He was not an enthusiastic seller and seemed to be throwing up obstacles to buying it. For one thing, he asked the questions, not me. The conversation went like this:
Me: Hello, I’m calling about the F250 for sale. Is it still available?
Him: Yes. What do you want with it?
Me: Uhhh, well, sir, I was thinking about buying it.
Him: Why?
Me (looks at phone with a WITW? expression): Because I need a truck.
Him: What do you need a truck for?
Me: To haul tools and material.
Him: That’s good. How old are you?
Me: (Young in spirit but wise beyond my years. More or less.)
Him: That’s good. How’s your driving record? Any accidents or tickets recently?
Me: No wrecks, no tickets.
Him: Will you put different wheels and paint and interior and engine in it?
Me: Gosh, no. I want it all original. Like it is now.
Him: Okay, you can come look at it. My address is…
I went all that way, looked, endured another vetting from him and was finally judged worthy of his treasured pickup that he could no longer drive because it had manual steering and he could no longer turn the steering wheel. As I drove away in the truck he’d named Whitey back in 1969, I glimpsed him in the rear view mirror crying unashamedly.
But wait, there’s more.
I drove directly to the other side of town and viewed a second 1969 Ford F250 for sale by its elderly original owner who also subjected me to a lengthy qualifying interrogation. Satisfied, he sold me the truck he’d named Rita in 1969 and helped me disconnect the driveshaft then attach a tow bar so I could pull her home with Whitey. After I had remote lights rigged up on his Rita, I got into Whitey and pulled away. In the rear view mirror I glimpsed Rita’s original owner crying unashamedly.
Nearly 10 years later Whitey and Rita are still exactly as they were the day I brought them to their new home. It was a good day, as have been all all the rest with them. As their original owners requested I have kept them exactly as they were: working trucks, now 50 years young, in original condition and carefully maintained. I even built them a canopy to protect them from the sun and inclement weather.
When you speak this way, your reality evolves…
Fair video. Fits in with my affirmation campaigns.
Sure it wasn’t a comfortable idea for the people. I haven’t had children yet. But I do want to have two. One is scary in many way. What if something happens to him or her? What if he/she wants to join the military… and not come back?
But if I insist on having a second child, I would end up paying a fine. Then I would be liable to pay for the child education. The first child will get free ride from K-12 and university.
In fact, I can have as many children as I would like. I just have to afford raising them all with minimal government support.
Why the one child policy?
Look at China in the 60s – 80s
It was a simple life. Classism may have been at the lowest in Chinese history. To be a well respected person, you can be a teacher, a village chief, a policeman, a small government official, a factory manager, etc…
This simple peaceful life was made possible by the One child policy.
Do you know that unemployment was low? Job selection wasn’t great, but as long as you were willing to work, someone could find you a job.
Despite the scare of Western invasion and atomic bombs, it was a relatively safe society. Petty crimes were plentiful, from pickpocketing, theft, to scam artists. But it was unlikely your house would be broken in at gun point.
All these wouldn’t be possible if the population was left to balloon unchecked. Far more crime, homeless, desperate people out for blood, and money.
If I went back in time to 1970s…
Knowing the future is a hell of an advantage. I would start trading goods, then collaborated with the government’s economic expansion programs.
Humble start, this was how many Chinese entrepreneurs in the 70s and 80s had their start.
Moving up, buying a truck. One man transportation company in the 90s.
Eventually able to have enough money to open a factory. TV production company in the 80s.
Not really a photo of China, but of 1980 computer stores in the US. My computer store would look like this.
I would get into computers as early as 1975. This was around the time Bill Gates and Steve Jobs founded their companies.
I would even go to India in 1974 to meet the penniless backpacker Steve Jobs and offered him his first initial investment before he even knew he was to found Apple. He would be indebted to me for life.
Two prospects regarding to One Child policy:
One Child Policy: Boosted economy. I could be rich, easily affording 4–5 children if I wanted to.
Booming population: China would still be a shithole like any of the third world country China’s BRI is helping now. Raising one child and keeping my family fed would be very hard.
I actually knew people in China who had more than one children after 1980. They were not jailed or anything. Their neighbors and friends were supportive of their decisions.
Putin at Valdai, civilizational world order is here to stay
“I thought Putin was exceptionally clear, rational, even handed, well spoken, honest, and painfully accurate about everything he said. He has my vote for US president.”
Steve seemed such a surley man. Unsuprisingly older than me by a couple decades since this was my first professional job as a newly minted college graduate, he seemed to growl at me whenever I saw him.
With the confidence only available with youth, I judged him.
I judged him mean, old, and a bit scary.
Imagine my horror when after about a year on this entry level job when I was reassigned to work for Steve. Of course, the reality was that I knew nothing about him.
What happened over the course of the next year was one of those special times of life that changes who you are forever. I learned that while I knew nothing about him, he knew quite a bit about me. Turns out that this wasn’t some corporately bland reassignment, but, rather, he asked to take me on as a project.
As I got to know Steve, it turned out that the gravelly voice, which I can still hear in my imagination as I write, was just his voice. And the surley demeanor I had judged so harshly was a product of a direct and unassuming style this loquatious post-adolescent did not yet grok.
One teaching moment in particular is one I’ll never forget. I carry this lesson with me every day.
You see, I’d made a mistake. Not a huge one, but a clear screw-up. I had a plan for spin control. I was confident in the plan. The lies were off-white lies at best.
But Steve believed in me enough to ask questions gently. And after he had twisted me into a logical knot, he said, and I’ll never forget his words, “Tony, you can do better than this.” He proceeded to teach me the value of not spinning and just dealing with my own limitations as a human. He showed me the real value of honesty: building trust.
And, Steve was right. I came clean and it was all ok. And, a few months later when I made a yet bigger mistake, that was ok too.
I got to know Steve better over the next couple of years. I learned that we shared some basic interests and religious faith, but he was not the type to over-share or brag. Sadly, when I had this incredible access to him, I never fully understood Steve.
But, I understood far better when he died.
Just a couple years after this priceless mentoring, Steve was stricken with brain cancer. He was far younger than I am right now, so even in death he taught me to value every day.
But this wasn’t the last lesson he had to teach. Not hardly.
I was invited by his widow to his funeral. I had known of his faith, but not quite the extent to which he walked the walk. I’ve omitted a great deal of detail, but Steve had not had an easy life. In my mind, he was doing all he could to just survive and raise his own family. I assumed his faith was like my own: sincere, yet mostly a coping mechanism.
In the shadow of his recent death, some mutual acquaintances filled in some details. There was far more to the man than even I suspected. My admiration was already deep. My tears were quite real.
Steve had been an elder at a prominent church for many years. The details of his service to others would make this long answer far too long. The debts others expressed dwarfed my own sense of gratitude.
But, the funeral blew me away.
You see, it was a large church. Very large. That day, it was filled to the rafters. I have never been to anything like it since. The love expressed for Steve that day over powers me even as I write this.
And there, in that pew, I knew i wanted to be like Steve.
Not for glory or acclaim—not at all. Just to have left this place a better place than I had found it. And, as I traverse my new career in coaching, I am still chasing his example.
Thank you, Steve, for teaching me how to be real. I’ll never forget you. I’ll never achieve what you did, but I am so much happier for trying.
In a short sentence, the completeness of the supply chain.
In brief exposition, this is the bitter fruit of embargo.
No, I’m not referring to Donald the Orange’s tariffs and dismantling of Huawei.
I’m talking about the 30-year EMBARGO that the US enforced on China after the breakout of the Korean War, along with the withdrawal of Soviet tech support as relations cooled heading into the 60s.
In fact, the Cultural Revolution’s deurbanization was a direct policy response to having the economic rug pulled under by foreign forces.
China learned a very important lesson: Any weakness in a supply chain can and will be exploited.
The Chinese prioritized the control of key enabling heavy industries, beginning with steel manufacture, before using policy tools to encourage the organic growth of eco-systems downstream.
The Chinese were not happy with assembling a shoe from components. Rather they focused on being able to make every component, down to the dye and synthetic materials suitable for footwear.
This process was repeated up the tech ladder, and by the 2010s, the Chinese had the most complete supply chain in the world, encompassing all categories of the UN industrial sector classification. China remains the only country to maintain this milestone.
China’s strength is hardware, and the world’s greatest concentration of hardware engineering talent—whether it is chips, IC, antennas, speakers, motors—are found on the mainland, and overwhelmingly Chinese.
These are world class talent who’ve delivered on big projects, and thoroughly up-to-date with their field of expertise. I daresay set them loose on any problem and they will find solutions, because the intensity and breath which they attack problems is unrivaled. The Chinese have the scale to apply multiprong strategies in parallel*, while the competition iterate sequentially. This is the famed China speed, and China has made up plenty of ground in recent decades expertly harnessing economies of scale.
America uses its heft to force compliance, through the threat of market access withdrawal. But the Chinese market is already bigger than the US, especially hardware components, just because China is the world’s factory. Huawei is able to find enough domestic partners who don’t mind losing the US market, because there are enough customers within China. Besides, this is a matter of survival for entire industries, and it is imperative to break the tech embargo.
Huawei’s telecoms gear isn’t like cellphones, because they are tethered to the mains. Power efficiency isn’t a make or break consideration, and there is no need for the latest and greatest off the cutting edge node, chip-wise.
This makes domestic substitution a breeze compared to say, the Kirin SOC, because hacks are always available, especially under the umbrella of Huawei’s immense patent portfolio.
In the final analysis, I’d say it boils down to the quality and quantity of talent, and it shows in the remarkable speed of the turnaround.
欺负华为没人？
门儿都没有。
Heinz Guderian noted in his diary that he had observed snow for the first time in the campaign in the Soviet Union.
The original plan for Operation Barbarossa was extremely sketchy for such a massive operation. One of the odder aspects of planning was that the endpoints for the invasion were never set forth, and became vaguer and more nebulous the further along planning got.
The first battle plans, prepared for the OKW by General Erich Marcks in mid-1940, actually did set forth a terminal line of the invasion. Marcks proposed the “A-A line” as the operational objective. This was to run from the northern city of Arkhangelsk on the Arctic Sea through Gorky and Rostov to the port city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian Sea. This assumed that the European portion of Russia and its satellites was the only part of the country of any interest and importance. There, the German Army could stop and set up a defensive line beyond which whatever was left of the Soviet Union could be allowed to wither away, as it would pose no threat.
After the Marcks Plan (as it came to be called), though, the idea of any kind of ultimate objective for the Wehrmacht disappeared. The debate instead degenerated into one of whether or not it was even important to get to Moscow, let alone reach any points further east. The prevailing theory – primarily Hitler’s – was that the entire Soviet Union would capitulate after a few decisive border battles destroyed the Red Army, failing that Hitler issued a directive to pursue the Soviets.
As of 6th October 1941, there has been no “pursuit” in the Soviet Union or at least none that has lasted very long. Every step has been contested, every river has been defended, every city has been fought over and sometimes even been boobytrapped after the Red Army has left. The defense has been uncoordinated and lacking in effectiveness on many occasions, but the Red Army has been fighting all the way. Now, the best campaigning months of 1941 are already gone and it is only going to get worse before it gets better again. Given all that, the astounding underestimation of the effectiveness of Red Army opposition during the planning stage of Operation Barbarossa has not really hampered German operations yet, it just has required adjustments to compensate for a slower rate of advance than anticipated. The tanks still run, the trucks still carry supplies, the horses are still fed from grain in the fields.
However, everything is about to change forever, and the men on the front line see why after dark as the snow begins to fall around them. The lack of effective antifreeze for trucks or tanks, the lack of chains for wheeled vehicles, the absence of winter clothing which was considered superfluous in June – all of a sudden these omissions loom large.
Late Night Flight
While drinking, a Pilot bet he could land outside the bar, 2 hours later he touched down in central New York in a stolen aircraft. Years later he repeated the stunt because someone wouldn’t believe him.
In September 1956 after drinking heavily at a bar in New York City, Thomas Fitzpatrick made an intoxicated barroom bet that he could travel from New Jersey to New York City in 15 minutes.
At 3 a.m. he stole a single-engine plane from the Teterboro and flew without any lights or radio before landing on St. Nicholas Avenue near 191st Street in front of the bar where the bet was made.
The New York Times called it a “fine landing” and a “feat of aeronautics”. For his illegal flight, he was fined $100 after the plane’s owner refused to press charges.
In October 1958 just before 1 a.m., Fitzpatrick again stole another plane from the same airfield and landed on Amsterdam and 187th after another bar patron disbelieved his first feat.
For his second stolen flight, judge John A. Mullen sentenced him to six months in prison. When asked why did had undertaken the 2nd flight Fitzpatrick told the police “he had pulled off the second flight after a bar patron refused to believe he had done the first one”
Fitzpatrick was a Marine during the Korean War and received a Purple Heart. He has three sons and was married to his wife, Helen, for 51 years working as a steamfitter. He died in 2009 at the age of 79.
Fitzpatrick has a mixed drink named after him for his feat called the “Late Night Flight”
Oh SH*T, The Collapse Has REALLY Begun
The threat of a US recession is escalating fast as corporate bankruptcies and debt defaults pile up. As the Federal Reserve continues to hike interest rates, small businesses are starting to collapse and close down. There’s going to be a tipping point where job losses will accelerate and consumer spending will crash.
I got the “You owe money to the IRS and are going to jail” phone call. I knew it was a scam because not only does the IRS not call you, but I could hear multiple voices in the background…classic boiler room. Duh! So I decided to play along. I let the guy go into his spiel and about halfway through I started crying. When I say crying, I mean REALLY wailing, gasping for breath, totally panicked! The guy has to stop talking in order to calm me down as I’m really losing it. As soon as he calms me down, off he goes again, telling me if I don’t pay, I’ll go to jail. Well, I just lose it again…crying, wailing, the whole nine yards.
Again, he tries to calm me down. Finally, with hitching sobs, I calm down enough to ask him how much I owe the IRS. When he tells me it’s $24,000, well, you know, I just lost it again. Crying. Wailing. Sobbing. What am I going to do?? OMG, I’m going to lose my house! I won’t be able to feed my kids! I’ll have to give away my dogs! Oh, noooooo! Noooooo! He calms me down (again) with the suggestion that he might be able to reduce what I owe to just $12,000. Which, of course, just sets me off again. Where, oh where am I going to get that kind of money?? I’m going to lose everything! Death! Doom! Destruction!
Finally, for the last time, he manages to calm me down enough to where I can ask him one final question…before I gave him my credit card number, would it be okay if I ask my husband first? After all, he IS a tax attorney. Dead silence for the space of about five seconds, then he let loose a torrent of profanity such as I’ve never heard before (and I’ve heard a lot) while I’m laughing my ass off. He then warns me that, “I’ll be sorry” to which I reply, “Not as sorry as you, you thieving, scum-sucking piece of humanity!” He hung up on me then, and surprisingly enough, I’ve never gotten another IRS phone call again.
I started learning German before coming here. People said I was wasting my time, that everybody here speaks English. That’s not true. Many Germans don’t speak English. Also, a number of people (usually officials or clerks) were upset that I don’t speak their language yet, as if my not having learned the language yet in the span of two months is some grave offense.
Maybe it’s only this year but the summer isn’t really summer. There are hot and cold days. Sunny and overcast days. Clear and rainy days. A day can start sunny and end in rain. You can walk out in your shorts and have to wear pants and a light jacket by the end of the day. Also, the days are unbelievably long. The sun rises before 5 AM and sets at around 10 PM.
WWII and the Holocaust. I am of Jewish descent. Many of my ancestors were taken to Auschwitz and other camps to be exterminated. I remember the first time I saw a stolperstein or “stumbling stone” in Berlin (these are brass plates inscribed with the names of Jews and information about the dates of their deportation and extermination, inlaid in the pavement outside their last place of residence) I froze. My heart sank, and a deep sadness welled from within me.
Ethnic Diversity here is wonderful. There seem to be people from all over the world, all co-existing. Yes, there have been some glitches, but seeing this melting pot of diversity brings hope to the heart. Plus, you can have authentic food from almost anywhere—from Mexican to Vietnamese to Turkish to Lebanese to Korean, etc., etc.
Many, many people are tattooed, so much so that un-tattooed individuals seem rarer than tattooed ones. And so much so that I sometimes wonder if even the businessmen and women, under those fine tailored suits, are hiding some large and colorful dragon or tiger adorning their skins.
I assumed Berlin would be cleaner. Before I came I had a vision of Germany as a glinting-clean place. And although it’s not filthy, there’s some waste strewn about in parks and on the streets—empty beer bottles and food leftovers and dirty plastic packaging, etc.
And speaking of beer bottles, people drink alcohol. A lot of it. I see many people walking around with some kind of drink in their hands, or people sitting outside bars or even in parks with an unbelievable amount of empty bottles by their side. Or in supermarkets, walking out with cartfuls of booze.
Maybe I notice it more because I’ve never lived in a place with so many churches, but there are so many of them here. Imposing ones with rising spires and crimson bricks and huge bells resonating blocks and blocks away. Having grown up in Israel, I find it hard to imagine how the visions of a carpenter in the Middle-East, over centuries and millennia, transmogrified into these massive, gothic places of worship in a completely different culture and milieu.
The other day we went to a pleasant park and there were a bunch of kids playing in the nude, splashing each other with water and running around in the sand giggling. My son took off his clothes and joined them, and I thought, how wonderful that no one is embarrassed seeing naked kids playing around, that they are granted this easy, unconscious freedom that in many other parts of the would would have been considered inappropriate.
Sex seems to be less of a big deal here. I’ve seen a number of adverts in the street depicting some form of sex in illustrations. In the US, there would have been a lecherous quality to it, some kind of cleavage or exposed thighs, something to suggest and tease and taunt. But here there is something unassuming about its depiction—a couple or even a threesome lying in bed covered in blankets, a cartoon of a man with his loins covered by a popping champagne bottle and a smiling woman by his side. Unassertive—as if this, too, is a natural part of life and there’s no need to make a fuss about it.
Organic food is available in most supermarkets and is not necessarily exorbitantly priced. In fact, almost every little place that serves food will have some kind of organic lemonade or soft drink.
Although I am not vegetarian, when I came here I imagined würste (sausages) everywhere, and a dearth of other, non-pork based offering. But, in fact, it is very easy to get vegetarian food here. From vegetariangemüse kebap (Turkish food—vegetables in bread) to vegetarian asian dishes, to tofu, grain- or legume-based meat substitutes in supermarkets, it is not only possible to be vegetarian here, but even easy.
The streets and the curb are wide and spacious, oftentimes cobbled and shaded by evenly-distanced stately trees. Having grown up in Israel and lived in India, this was novel for me—this European expansiveness.
Some people can be incredibly proper and strict here. I’ve been scolded for standing out in the street when the bus came, and then for standing in the wrong place inside the bus as I was paying. In some places and settings people are expected to behave in a certain ways, and are frowned upon if they are not.
The bicycle is a serious mode of transportation with its own lanes and a substantial number of riders.
Drivers are not as courteous as in other places—in less trafficked streets with no stoplight, and unlike the US, cars will mostly not stop when they see a pedestrian, and one has to wait for an opportunity to cross.
Things are well made. The walls of the apartment I’m staying in are almost as thick as my outstretched arm. The woodwork is precise and sturdy. Some of the buildings around look like they’ve been in existence for centuries, and that they will last for many centuries more. There is an assuring sturdiness in the material existence here—like things are dependable and robust. Also, it is not difficult to find objects that are Made in Germany or Europe—be it knives or rucksacks or wallets, etc.—that look like they will last for a lifetime. I like that.
Almost all shops are closed on Sundays.
Parcels are left with neighbors. If you’re not in and you have a package, it will be left with one of your neighbors, who will then, perhaps later in the day, come knocking on your door and claim the package with a slip.
People have been incredibly helpful. When I arrived, a neighbor helped carry our luggage from the street. Another neighbor helps me whenever I need something in German translated. I’ve had people in the street, after asking for directions, pull out their phones, search for the place, and give me clear instructions. Of course, as with everywhere else, there are also unfriendly people, but the friendly and helpful ones have left a greater impression on me.
Boeing is Panicking! Brunei and China Order 30 Aircraft | Boeing Completely Loses The Chinese Market
In May 2017, China successfully conducted the historic first test flight of the C919 aircraft, which marked the complete break of Boeing and Airbus’ half-century monopoly on large commercial aircraft. Soon after, China’s C919 aircraft attracted cooperation intentions from many countries.
Up to now, China’s orders for C919 aircraft have exceeded an astonishing 1,061 aircraft, but I think this is just the beginning of the emergence of China’s C919 aircraft. At this year’s 20th China-ASEAN Expo, China’s C919 aircraft once again became the focus of attention.
Among them, Brunei spent US$2 billion to purchase 30 large passenger aircraft from China, including the much-anticipated C919 aircraft. As more and more countries purchase China’s C919 aircraft, Boeing in the United States begins to panic and even begs to regain the Chinese market.
One day at the end of the School year, my teacher was throwing out some old junk. One of which was this old globe that was so inaccurate, I’m surprised it wasn’t thrown away as soon it came off the assembly line.
Some Countries don’t exist at the same time.
image 204
As far as I know, Tibet did not exist at the same time with a unified Independent India, Southeast Asia with a unified Vietnam, and what’s that little country north of Mongolia?
image 205
Oh that’s right, It’s Tannu Tuva! You know the country that was annexed into the USSR during the middle of WW2. Because the Partition of India took place after the World War ended (1947). The inconsistency with time are the least of this Globe’s problems.
Making major countries the same shade of blue as the OCEAN!
As you saw above, China is the same color of the Ocean, but that’s not the only one.
image 206
The color they chose for Turkey just makes it look like the Black Sea is part of the Mediterranean if you’re not looking close enough.
Same goes with the Great Lakes area.
image 207
Since the State of Michigan is sandwiched between massive lakes, it should be a different color to make it stand out more. Well the designer didn’t think so, because instead of the Great Lakes, it’s just ONE Great Lake.
Plus New York makes lake Ontario and Erie look like an extension of the Atlantic. So does Quebec.
But this doesn’t go with what makes the map the most useless.
They got the freaking hemispheres on wrong!!!!
image 208
I’m pretty sure Australia is not directly south of Ethiopia!
South America is just floating in the middle of the Ocean.
image 209
Though Southern Africa actually fits well with the Northern Hemisphere part of South America.
image 210
This Globe has to be the most Useless reference of the World ever!
I got Montana at a church fundraising garage sale for $1.15. She was a Rottweiler/GSD mix and the owners were selling the puppies for $3. After three hours of wheedling my mother, and scrounging as much change as I could from the car, I paid for her quite proudly. She’d been the runt of the litter, and all her litter mates had long been snatched up. I brought her home, and made a bed for her in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Took her to the vet the next day to get her all of her shots. Did basic obedience training with her and all the requisite fun things a teenage girl could do with a dog.
Flash forward three years and I’m off at school across the state, and she’s at home with my mother, grandmother and younger brother. Due to her general quirkiness, she never barked or growled unless she felt that her family was in danger. She was quite content to roam the backyard, playing chase along the fence lines with the dogs that neighbored on either side. About three am my mom hears the neighbor’s golden retriever barking up a storm, then hears the fence rattle. Thinking it was a raccoon or opossum, she laid back down. Then Montana is growling right under her window. That’s when she hears a lot of cussing, more growling and then a whimper and the fence on the other side rattle. Now there’s even more cussing and growling as the other set of neighbor’s black malamute is in on whatever is happening now. Mom grabs a flashlight and the cordless phone, calls 911 and rushes out to find out what’s happening. That’s when she sees a man vaulting the far side of the fence in the neighbors yard, only to be confronted by a massive Great Dane. Montana comes slinking to her, whimpering with cuts running down both her flanks. Grabbing her leash, she takes my dog out to greet the police, explaining what happened. Apparently they caught up with the guy a few blocks away, having been bitten by about four different dogs. Mom took my brave girl to the vet immediately. The cuts were superficial and shallow, needing nothing more than some cleaning. She had a chemical burn on her backside because he’d sprayed her with either mace or pepper spray. Montana was handsomely rewarded with a steak for doing her job protecting the family, and no one ever set foot in our backyard without permission again.
There is anger against the CPC by some people, especially in the big cities however none of these people want democracy or voting
They simply want more capitalist reforms by the CPC
The Majority are very satisfied and happy with the CPC
Especially the younger generation
They regard US democracy as a JOKE
They are so proud of their country and it’s growth and the CPC that they only want reforms, reforms and more reforms
Here are the main suggestions
The Average Age of a Party Member is 49 and they want it to reduce to 40
The Average Age of a Politburo member is 56. They want it to reduce it to 50.
70 Investments were banned by the CPC between 2017–2023. They want these investments regulated.
They want flexible and productive work hours to enhance maximum output instead of the rigid slogging workstyle of the older generation
They have contempt for the USA
Especially the 17–30 year olds born post 1993
Chinas future
They are brilliant, they have the midset to be the BEST in the world
The Older generation in their forties and fifties, born between 1973–1983 are more of the WHY IS THE US SO UNFAIR rather than any contempt for the US
They have a lot of relatives in US and the West who migrated from 1965–1990
They have contempt for the Russians and Russian Technology
They are also a bit colonial and sub consciously believe they are not in the same league as the West deep down
They MAY have no problem if China becomes a democracy but they wouldn’t want it as a choice
The even older generation in their 60s and 70s, born between 1945–1965 are steeped in Patriotic Ideology. They remember the old days and the way the CPC took China to the top
It’s for their sake that China still has the name Communist when it’s anything but communist
They would abhor any democracy
Xi has created a very nationalistic patriotic generation of Youngsters brimming with confidence
The CPC needs to make some changes though in the next 10 years to ensure the Youngsters connect to the party and that wave of nationalism is retained at it’s same fervour
Countries opt for local currencies in bilateral trade due to several reasons that align with their own interests:
The high interest in the US dollar has driven up the cost of purchasing US dollars.
Foreign exchange transaction fees associated with using US banks are expensive (3%), and the SWIFT system not only takes several days to settle transactions but is also subject to US monitoring for unilateral sanctions, even when the transactions involve purely business matters.
A surplus of expensive US dollars is circulating in the global economy, with many countries selling them back to the Federal Reserve Bank where billions are used to fund the record national debt and crowding out private investment by keeping the interest high.
There is a concern that the US dollar could face a collapse if the Federal Reserve Bank ceases its policy of increasing interest rates, as this could exacerbate inflationary pressures and erode the currency’s value.
Military,
In contrast to historical colonial powers and the dominant influence of the United States, China lacks the ambition of global control through culture/racial superiority, military endeavors, and covert activities. Instead, China offers an alternative vision to the world by fostering connections among people through infrastructure development and trade.
The Real Reasons I Left United States (and won’t go back)
I really enjoyed this video.
Real Talk about why I don’t like living in the United States anymore and why I can’t see myself ever returning. I had invested a lot of time and money to research and travel the world to find where I best fit in, which culture I feel more comfortable in. After almost 6 years of continues life abroad, I really can’t see myself ever going back.
The sheer logistics of trying to feed a nation of 1.4 billion people are insane. Take this building right here — it’s a pig farm. A 26-story pig farm named Ezhou farm. It’s one of the biggest ‘only in China’ moments for me.
image 4
Basically, China has been having some pretty major geopolitical tensions with many of its neighbors lately, and there have been a lot of issues with the ongoing trade war with America. So China wants to be less dependent on imports of vital things such as food.
[1] As a result, it has started building absolutely MASSIVE pig farms on an industrial scale unseen anywhere in human history. It’s pretty crazy. Also, I gotta say, pretty impressive.
So yeah, 26-story pig farms are a strange phenomenon I’ve not seen anywhere else. Anyone who’s ever enjoyed Chinese cuisine knows it cannot survive without pork. So if ever war breaks out and trade routes are blocked, China is ensuring it’ll never run out of pork chops.
Unfortunately, some stereotypes might be true. When I served in the German army we trained for a week with Italy’s famous “Folgore” parachute unit. Although they were considered elite in Italy, they really sucked.
When we went with them to the shooting range my job was to count the targets they were hitting, which weren’t many. With one guy it took me a while to figure out that he was missing his target by at least 5 meters- at a 150 meters shooting distance.
These guys failed at everything they did, except for one thing: The last night of their stay we went to a bar with them and after a few German beers they started singing Italian songs. Very well and beautiful and not like our “barbaric” German singing.
I also trained a lot with French units. Most of them were really decent fellows, but their officers were completely useless. They were unable to motivate their soldiers and always seemed to be screaming at them. As a result the French troops we trained with didn’t perform as well as they could have.
Although I trained with British troops on several occasions, they didn’t leave an impression with me. Neither good nor bad. Later on my German army unit got their a** kicked by a British Special Air Service unit during an exercise in Denmark. I didn’t participate in this exercise and therefore these SAS guys are not in my ranking.
In Bosnia I fought for the Croats. They were all decent soldiers and what is very important, they were eager to learn. The Croatian army during the war lacked material and sometimes professionalism, but they more than compensated these flaws with outstanding bravery and high motivation. Especially their leadership was exemplary.
Later I fought in Kosovo with the Kosovo Liberation Army. I trained the unit that I fought with, so of course, they did ok. What I often saw in battle was that with the right guidance one could really make a difference. Sometimes we had soldiers from other units under our command and although we first thought that they were completely useless, watching our guys fight it out, these soldiers started to give their best.
I trained twice with US Army units and both times it was a pleasure. First time with a battalion of the 82nd Airborne in Italy and later I had the privilege to attend the German commando course with a US Army Special Forces unit. While the Airborne soldiers, although very good soldiers, were not really a match to our German “Fallschirmjäger” platoon, the US Army Special Forces (SF) were amazing.
They somehow weren’t that good at achieving many tasks during our training inside the barracks and were also not the fastest team on the obstacle course, but as soon as they were in the forest they showed admirable infantry skills, very good adaptation to the terrain, speed and stealth.
These SF would make the first place on my ranking if it wasn’t for a couple of Dutch LRRP’s (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) soldiers who also attended the same German commando course. They were good at everything and in the end had the highest score from all attendees.
They were also very modest, quiet and polite, almost shy, and these are qualities one doesn’t find very often with elite soldiers. Therefore I rank them first.
I will answer with my experience in this. There was a drone that would come over my house three times a day and roughly the same time each day. I put out a sign said please stop recording my house and yard for a couple of days but it kept coming. Thay is when I noticed a police car parked in the lot behind my house while the drone was there. So each time I’d check and see on my camera if the cop car was there and every time the drone came around sure enough. So new sign unless you have a warrent stop filming my house and yard. At this time I checked with courts for any investigation warrents for me and my property and none. So I then went out and threw rocks towards the drone each time it would take off. But still coming back. So I set the trap. I sat out front and waited for this thing to come flying over my back yard with a rather large rock. I nailed it the first try. It broke and landed in the back yard. It took three days for the cops to get a court order to come and retrieve it. Seems in the attempt to get me into trouble they had to show the footage of the drone and the warning to stop recording was enough to exonerated me for damage to the drone. They have not been back since.
Man Didn’t Want This Cat. Now They’re Inseparable Swimming Buddies
At first this man didn’t want a cat, but his swimming buddy Frosty changed everything. It took time for them to develop the bond, but when they did, a cat dad was born. Soon, Stefan discovered Frosty’s affinity for swimming, He was super curious about water and started jumping to the shower, and then the bath and finally the swimming pool.
Biscuits and gravy is a popular breakfast dish in the United States, especially in the South.
No.
No.
NO!
I don’t care that you have your own version of English – that is an abomination.
That quite clearly consists of a scone:
With some kind of weird elephant ejaculate on top.
So not only is the name utterly wrong to British ears (if you ask someone here if they wanted “biscuits and gravy” here you will either a) end up in a mental institute, or b) be hounded out of town like a demon), but:
The actual thing doesn’t look much better.
I mean seriously guys – that stuff looks pretty damn unappetising, and that’s a “glamour shot” taken from some recipe website!
So America – let’s recap:
You’ve taken a food item traditionally eaten in the UK with cream and jam – and decided it would be better with some weirdass sausage-jizz-sauce.
You gave it a name which makes it sound bloody awful to British people
In case you haven’t gathered – this is not a popular food item in the U.K.
And we would rather it stayed that way – it looks ghastly.
EDIT:
From some of the very angry comments, it seems like some of you Americans just can’t seem to take a light-hearted ribbing, or a smidge of sarcasm. The whole point of the question is that us Brits don’t understand why you like it.
And for crying out loud:
yes, I know you call biscuits “cookies”. That’s part of the bloody joke.
Yes I have tried it. Calling me ignorant isn’t going to help.
Yes some British stuff is weird too. But we’re not talking about us – the question is about America.
Some people are treating this answer like I did a big squishy turd on your beloved flag.
It must be that sarcasm is hidden away in the ‘u’ in humour….
This answer isn’t really about saying what one single country has done the worst, but I do want to share below on the cruelty of humankind that many people don’t know about.
Graphic content below but I want to make this known because so many people around the world have heard of Hitler, Nazis, concentration camps but they have not heard of the Asian holocaust that took place around the same period. In western schools, history classes do not teach people about this part of the world.
This is regarding what the Japanese did during their occupation of China and Korea and the war crimes they committed to the surrounding Asian countries, including some Pacific Islands they invaded: Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, East Timor, New Guinea, Indonesia, Guam, Nauru, Wake Island, Attu and Kiska Islands, and Kiribati.
They even had some prisoners of war from the west such as America, any forces against them at the time etc.
Hundreds of thousands of women from my country in Korea were forcefully abducted (called comfort women) during the Japanese occupation in WWII. They endured torture beyond imagination if they did not sexually submit to these vile men and were forced to have sex with 60–100 men every single day. Their innards rotted because of the STD’s and they were destroyed, unable to have children even after they were rescued. They have still not been compensated for the war crimes that they endured and majority have died.
Pregnant mothers were cut open and rape victims were sodomized with bamboo sticks and bayonets until they died in agony.
On top of this they literally tore the unborn from women’s wombs and speared them alive with bayonets in front of them. They’d crush the infant’s skull against concrete floors. They would actually do this for fun.
They tied sons and daughters up and tore them apart, spearing them and forced their own parents to watch.
They raped and pillaged women of all ages, even toddlers to old women in the most vile, disgusting way imaginable. They would often disembowel them while in the process, leaving them to die in agony.
They conducted unspeakable evil torture and experiments on LIVE prisoners from these countries even children and infants in UNIT 731. Torture methods such as vivisecting pregnant women without any anesthesia, centrifuging and killing people in pressurized chambers, and slowly burning and freezing people alive. They artificially created what is similar to the ‘bubonic plague’ to see the effects on the prisoners. They were forced into X-rays until they perished and hung people by their thumbs or tongues etc. These torture tactics were deliberately planned to see death happen SLOWLY, not fast as the scientists wanted to observe the resilience of the human body.
Bodies of slayed, raped, mutilated women in China.
(image deleted – too unsettling)
Carcasses of babies and children piled up
Despite this, Japan still presently denies what has happened and even believes that it is a rumour. The young people as shown in this video are absolutely clueless on the whole tragedy, or are so far removed in cognitive dissonance and lack of care it is astounding. There is even a middle aged woman in the video who even says “Well I’m not sure if it’s a rumour or not…” which is an absolute lunacy and an embarrassment of the failure of the country in not properly educating their citizens of what truly happened. One young girl even says “Well, I wonder when they will ever get over it…” How are people supposed to get over it when there are still thousands of victims still alive who didn’t receive any form of compensation for what they have been through??!
Their government still warps their history books and deliberately tries to hide the evidence of what truly happened. There are active groups within Japan who refuse to accept what happened and truly believe that it is just a ‘rumour’ to make Japan look bad.
Below is a real life account by a South Korean comfort woman on the horrors she went through. It is heartbreaking to watch but quite educational. She sadly passed away early January of this year, fighting until her last breath but still never receiving any compensation or apology from the Japanese. They don’t even recognize that she went through this or who she is.
(Video no longer available on YT)
What Japan did wasn’t just an invasion or occupation, it was a literal carnage, hell on earth genocide. They didn’t have to go this far as majority of the Koreans and the people they invaded were helpless farmers, uneducated servants, and innocent people who were not trained in war at all. They did this because they did not see these people as human, and their goal wasn’t simply to occupy, but to desecrate the spirit from within. They knew when you destroy someone’s spirit from inside out, the enemy will bend the knee and yield to the point where they do not have the soul to fight back. On top of this, it was just pure, raw sadistic savagery because all of these helpless people surrendered and begged for mercy yet they were still tortured for absolutely no reason.
(Video no longer available on YT)
Presently Japan is one of the most wealthiest and prosperous Asian countries in the world yet they cannot even fully take responsibility for their own committed atrocities. It shows the savage barbarism that still resides in some of these people and makes one question just how this is even acceptable. Instead they choose to warp their own history books, flat out deny it existed and have refused to offer sincere, acceptable compensation/apology for the people who are still alive. They are waiting until every last victim is dead so they no longer have to worry about it. They are not truly ashamed of this past, they just see it as an eyesore they want to bury. Keep in mind Japan has very strong political parties that strives to ensure this shameful past does not reach the masses to retain their false honour. Still to this day, they praise their war criminals in shrines.
From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. This is more than the estimated Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe controversially claimed that “there was no evidence to prove” that the women had been coerced into sex.
“Mr. Abe’s administration DENIES that imperial Japan ran a system of human trafficking and coerced prostitution, implying that comfort women were simply camp-following prostitutes,” Kotler continued. “The official narrative in Japan is fast becoming detached from reality, as it seeks to cast the Japanese people — rather than the comfort women of the Asia-Pacific theater — as the victims of this story.”
Edit: Since I’m getting quite a lot of people who clearly don’t seem to understand and may not have read or researched in depth in this matter. They are saying that ‘Japan does not need to offer apology or compensation for what people of their past did etc’
It’s more complicated than that.
Please read the links again. Even if they can’t take full responsibility for their past, they SHOULD take responsibility for the future by not warping textbooks and giving power to political parties who enforces the dangerous fallacy of denying any of this ever happened or triviliazing everything that has happened. They should make sure to teach the correct history not just for educational purposes but to ensure their citizens fully know and accept their own history and in hopes that it never happens again. This is also to help not silence the voices of the people who did suffer in the past and to not spit into their graves and ruin their legacy by spreading false lies.
Also the comfort women and people who were forcefully taken into labour camps as prisoners, many are still alive who didn’t actually get any compensation or even sheer RECOGNITION. They suffered their entire lives without anyone hearing what they have to say with nothing from Japan. This isn’t just about wanting Japan to go up to a stadium and saying ‘I am sorry’ and stepping down. Words are meaningless and worthless when not backed up by actions.
They are hypocrites by warping textbooks and also praising their own war criminals. Imagine what the world would say if Germany praises Nazis and gave strong political power that has the power to make Germans never even hearing of the Nazis or even contemplate if it was just a rumour or not. Think about how insane that would be.
So why do they need to apologise? Because unlike Germany what they are doing is absolutely deplorable and morally bankrupt by continuing to CONTRIBUTE to the legacy of the abomination Japan was in the past. You don’t see Germany do the same about the Nazis and for good reason. It means Japan hasn’t learned and is not truly remorseful. By Japan I am talking of the FACES of Japan which are the politicians who represent that country. The rest of the Japanese experience their trickle down effect so while it’s not saying it’s their fault, they end up indirectly contributing to supporting these vile politicians. So yes the people who represent JAPAN who hold the power of influence does need to sincerely apologise and stop contributing to what they are presently doing.
As I am getting tired of having to repeat the same information again and again, any comments that say things along the lines of ‘Japan does not need to apologise’ or those questioning or defending the existence of any of these crimes, their war criminals will be either ignored, deleted or blocked. It is extremely disrespectful to the victims and deplorable. The links are already here clear as day for reading and one can also do the research themselves. Also for anyone who brings up another atrocityandpitting them against each other,STOP. This post isn’t about pitting one atrocity against another, it is disgusting to even keep doing that and seriously lacks any insight into the original point of my post.
Otherwise thank you for reading and have a nice day.
TLDR: Japan did some truly horrific shit that many people including the present day Japanese citizens are unaware of. What they did is abysmal carnage from the Antichrist itself.
Also, piece of shit apologies that require uttering words and throwing money at victims isn’t a true apology when they are still in 2019 warping textbooks and none of their youths know anything about their crimes.
Why do you think Germany forces every citizen to learn about their nazi history and Japan doesn’t ? It is to deliberately ignore and not acknowledge their past due to their pride and selfishness. I’d equate this to even pathological narcissism and psychopathy due to how far they have gone in managing stomping this knowledge out of their own present day citizens.
Edit 2: As I am still getting very disrespectful, deranged comments on here pitting atrocities against each other, saying that I am spreading lies and others spewing ignorant hatred against Koreans, here’s my final message.
Instead of blaming others, look at what Japanese Nationals do. Stop diverting the attention away by blaming the mistakes of other countries yet not acknowledging the corruption of the Japanese government
Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia
The Germans in contrast have personally done everything possible to make people aware of their Nazi past. Japan doesn’t scratch the surface of what it means to have true honour while Germans go to great lengths to do humanitarian work and to allow their citizens to understand the FULL facts. This is what true compensation and remorse actually is, not the dogshit excuse of what Japan does by also denying people, correct history. End of.
Disappointed that china isn’t collapsing and Chinese people are not starving with 50 cent hoes selling their body to you?
A channel which is ironically named “Economics Explained” is possibly the worst when it comes to it. Western propganda is not just limited to mainstream media, but to nutwits like these.
Imagine if a Chinese made a video “sorry to disappoint America/India isn’t collapsing ..yet”. What wud their reactions be.
In all honesty, the best channel for economics is Xiao Lin, light years better than these sick bas***ds.
Meanwhile Indian videos on China’s economy are even more hating than that of westoids.
Like seriously westoids, get a forking life other than hating a new country every decade. Last decade was Russia, last to last was Iraq. You guys got no job other than invading countries and telling “we love the people hate the government” then getting sad why that country hasn’t collapsed yet?
Original San Antonio Chili
2023 10 18 16 01
Ingredients
2 pounds beef shoulder, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 pound pork shoulder, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/4 cup suet
1/4 cup pork fat
3 medium-size onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 quart water
4 ancho chiles
1 serrano chile
6 dried red chiles
1 tablespoon comino seeds, freshly ground
2 tablespoons Mexican oregano
Salt to taste
Instructions
Place lightly floured beef and pork cubes in with suet and pork fat in heavy chili pot and cook quickly, stirring often.
Add onions and garlic and cook until they are tender and limp.
Add water to mixture and simmer slowly while preparing chiles.
Remove stems and seeds from chiles and chop very finely.
Grind chiles in molcajete and add oregano with salt to mixture. Simmer for another 2 hours.
Remove suet casing and skim off some fat.
Notes
Never cook frijoles with chiles and meat. Serve as a separate dish.
Chiang Mai Thailand 2013. I had a rare form of Tuberculosis cysts lodged in my spinal cord and on my right kidney. The doctors didn’t know how I contracted this deadly bacteria. I was too ashamed to tell them it was from drug abuse and the unhygienic practices that came with it.
It felt like a hot knife piercing my back continuously for months as I lay immobilized on the bed of my apartment. I could not hold down food and went from 220 lbs to 163 lbs. There was no sleep, only my body eventually shutting down from the pain.
My mother was an LPN and flew in to take care of me because I could not afford a hospital. My poor mother, I screamed at her to take my life. I switched from fentanyl to methadone to morphine, but none of them worked – they only made the pain worse because my feeble body could not process the drugs. It was gasoline on the fire raging inside me.
Once a week or so, my mother would help me to sit up, place a back brace on me, and help me move six feet to the bathroom so I could attempt a bowel movement and a brief shower. Every inch of every movement was excruciating pain; I had no more tears; it was hollow bellowing, and even cursing was painful. And then back to bed. That simple exercise would be an hour of horrific suffering.
After three months of strong antibiotics, I could finally eat and hold it down. With a back brace and cane, I could stand and walk briefly. The photo above was from this time, taken with my beautiful mother. You can see the back brace under my shirt and the cane I used to walk.
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This life I have today is beyond anything imaginable
I never thought it possible. I thought I was doomed to the bondage of self, and the slavery of active addiction.
Now, I live a lifestyle of sober recovery – drug and alcohol-free at 56. I train daily in the gym, go for power walks and jogs in nature, and have a purposeful, meaningful life.
I Just Got an Email That Left me SPEECHLESS. WE’RE AT DEFCON 2
This is really good, from a prepper. DEFCON 2. Holy Shit!
Your appraisal is dependent on last 2 months efforts and not 12 months
You ask for a raise, and your boss thinks you’re looking for a job change
You complain about administrative issues and your manager thinks you’re trying to be a rebel
Don’t share secrets with your colleagues, they might be sharing your secrets with colleagues or managers
Your office friend is not your real friend and they won’t swear by your death bed
If you die tomorrow, there is a replacement within a week
Your efficiency is decided by number of hours you clock in vs number of productive efforts you place in
A junior person can outsmart a senior person but he will still be called junior
Your mistakes will always be discussed during appraisals
Your best performance will be discussed when you want to quit
If you finish your work on time and leave early, this is getting noted in the system as you don’t have enough work. [Your efficiency is not counted 90% of the time.]
Hiring is done based on communication skills and not on management, writing, negotiation, programming, analysis, attitude and mindset
Your CTC, Variable, Bonus and Take home salary are different components (understand the difference)
Utilize your earned and casual leaves when you get time
Find your interests and do some certification courses from LinkedIn, Coursera, edX etc
Documentation is king
Lazy ones are the smartest but are difficult to manage
Love your job and be committed to the work. Period.
Your salary will increase by 1.5x, 2x or 3x only when you switch companies
At age 20–30 skill set is primary and salary is secondary.
If you find a mentor in your current company, listen to him/her and always consult when you get stuck
Be open to change and learn how to become smarter
Try to be 1% better than yesterday
Kill the boredom, go for a walk when you don’t have anything to do at office or talk to your colleagues and find out how they do what they do
Be happy and learn the financial management, this will help you stay afloat after 10–15 years
Chen Si.
He works at a logistics agency in Nanjing, China. He also spends his free time saving other people’s lives.
Let me tell you his story.
In 2003, a very close relative of Chen’s committed suicide after watching his sons argue over who would take care of him. The incident was deeply traumatizing. Having to lose someone he held so dear to his heart just because his sons didn’t seem to show enough respect and compassion for him. Chen also read in the local newspaper that the Nanjing-Yangtze River Bridge was a major suicide hotspot — in fact, by 2006, about 2,000 people were estimated to have killed themselves by jumping off the bridge since the year it was constructed (1968). He then became greatly determined to devote the rest of his life saving those of others trapped in hopelessness by foiling suicide attempts.
In response, Chen began to patrol the Nanjing-Yangtze bridge either on his motorbike or on foot, continuously on the lookout for people willing to jump from it.
He has been there almost every day, even on holidays and weekends, regardless of the weather.
He has kept a lookout for signs of depression, for example, in the way some of them walk, which Chen describes as “passive with no spirit or direction”.
Chen also keeps a diary documenting the people he has encountered and the reasons why they wanted to kill themselves.
Some had been greatly shamed for not being successful enough in school.
Some had broken up with their boyfriend or girlfriend.
Some had wasted away their money on needless things.
There was also, for example, a migrant worker who was drowning in debt because he couldn’t pay off the $15,000 bill for his daughter’s leukemia treatments.
Chen also gives out suicide prevention pamphlets to potential jumpers, detailing emergency contacts.
And not only does he simply pull people off the bridge. In fact, he has spent 10,000 yuan ($1,457 in dollars) renting a two-room house not far from the site, which he calls “a station for the soul to rest in”.
He sits with people and lets them share all their suffering in their stories, which in a way ignites friendship, trust, and newfound confidence. Chen also occasionally brings victims back to the bridge as volunteers, helping others see a way forward in life.
Throughout his time engaging in this, Chen has stopped over 300 people from ending their lives. That is an example of being a hero without having to fight. An example of generosity and compassion at work without the necessity for bloodshed. Sometimes the best heroes simply dedicate themselves to lending a hand to people who feel like they’ve got nothing left for them. Chen Si isn’t called the “Angel of Nanjing” for nothing.
“Not all heroes wear capes”, they say. That is most definitely true.
Every October since 1211 the City of London has paid rent to the Crown for two pieces of land even though nobody knows their exact locations.
The Ceremony of Quit Rents is the oldest legal ceremony in England apart for the Coronation of the Monarch. It takes place between St Michael’s Day (October 11th) and St Martin’s Day (November 11th) every year in the Royal Courts of Justice in London where the City pays the King’s Remembrancer.
The King’s Remembrancer is the oldest judicial position in England and was created in 1164 by Henry II to keep track of what was owed to the crown.
For the first piece of land, called The Moors, the City pays two knives, one blunt and one sharp.
The Remembrancer’s duty is to test the knives. The billhook is tested on a hazel tally and should make a mark representing the payment. The sharp axe then splits the tally in two, one for each party as a receipt. The Remembrancer then calls “Good service”.
This is called a split tally where in order to record debts a stick was marked with a number of notches and then split lengthwise. This way the two halves both record the same notches and each party to the transaction received one half of the marked stick as proof.
The second quit rent is for the use of the forge in Tweezer’s Alley, somewhere near The Strand. It is believed that the first tenant, Walter Le Brun, was a blacksmith who had set up his business near the tilting ground of the Knights Templar sometime around 1235.
The rent for this land is sixty-one nails and six horse-shoes. The horseshoes used are believed to date back to 1361 and are probably the oldest horseshoes still in existence. After the payment is received, the shoes and nails are then loaned back to the City of London for the next year.
When presented with the horseshoes and nails, the Remembrancer calls “Good number”.
There are also other quit or peppercorn rents. In Medieval times when a piece of property was deeded over as a reward for service a nominal rent was often charged as a reminder that the tenant didn’t own the property outright. A single peppercorn (or a single rose i.e. rose rents) was among the most popular forms of this style of rent but there were various other interesting forms of payment, such as a frog, a roast pork dinner, the donation of a petticoat to a poor woman, or even a raw calves head and a pair of gloves.
Hi. I am an Australian who is married to an American and, due to the nature of my work, lived ALL OVER the US over a decade.
Half my family are American and many of my closest friends. In short, I’m very fond of the United States and support my nation’s close affiliation with them.
So please forgive me if I’m blunt. This is NOT an American bash, it’s an honest expression of the one thing that [SOME] Americans do that never fails to trigger me.
“We saved your asses in World War Two”.
Americans often tell us bluntly, over and over how they “saved our arses” in both World Wars.
I assure you, EVERY SINGLE Brit, Aussie, Kiwi or Canadian reading along can hear those words spoken in an American accent as they read them.
That’s how often we hear it. Almost weekly. Certainly once a month.
Wars that we ourselves stepped up and fought in the protection of others. Wars that wouldn’t even have affected us directly. Wars we fought for YEARS before the United States.
Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand particularly could have turned their backs on Western Europe.
Britain herself could have closed her borders and looked the other way. Hitler had no designs on the UK – He admired them. All they had to do was stand back and allow the holocaust to happen.
But of course they couldn’t because fighting Nazi Germany was the right thing to do.
We didn’t make Britain wait 3.2 and 2.3 years to enter either great war. We were there from day one.
We didn’t charge Britain for our goods or help. We didn’t keep a tally and make them pay it back for seventy years. We didn’t insist they realign their trade preferences to favour our markets setting their still very young colonies prematurely adrift or cost them their empire, wealth, dignity or preeminence as a world power.
We didn’t use Britain’s plight as a springboard for our own wealth and dominance or spend the following century diluting their culture with Pan Americanism and shallow consumerism.
CANZUK didn’t ask for anything. We just went because we’re family and that’s what family does and despite what some of you are going to assert in the comments, yes, America, though you are the black sheep you are also family.
Speaking for Australia, from a population of six million (2/3 of which were women, children, the elderly and infirm), a full one million Australian men served in the military during the Second World war.
Let that sink in.
We had, from our far-flung nation gathered together the fourth-largest air force in the world and the fifth largest navy and lost so many men in every theater of both World Wars that we had a noticeable lack of them right into the 1980s. Indeed, by the time American boots had touched the ground in North Africa and Europe, CANZUK had already sacrificed literally millions of men.
It’s SO, rude. I’m not even sure you understand just how disrespectful it is and how much damage it does [at street level] to our relationships with the US. Honestly – it’s there in the pit of all our stomachs whenever we even engage with an American.
I will leave you with this quote from the memoirs of one of your own. American journalist Ernie Pyle who was killed in action by the Japanese in April 1945.
His account of D-day and the liberation of Paris.
“One cannot help but be moved by the colossus of our invasion. It was a bold and mighty thing. One of the epics of all history. I hope that we can rejoice in victory but humbly. The dead men would not want us to gloat.”
I don’t live in China. But I do live in another country that is often said to be authoritarian (Singapore). And what else can we say about Singapore?
It’s ranked in the world’s top five richest countries (by GDP per capita). It’s ranked among the world’s top five least corrupt countries. Its public transport system is often ranked as the world’s best. It’s also ranked as the world’s no. 6 most peaceful country. It has one of the world’s highest average life expectancies. It’s ranked No. 1 for infrastructure. Singapore is ranked the 2nd safest city in the world. Singapore students are the world’s best in science, math and literacy. Its economy is ranked the 4th most competitive in the world. Singapore has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world. Homelessness is very rare here. Singapore’s rate of death by drug overdose is 81 times lower than in the US. There hasn’t been one gun homicide in the past 17 years.
Etc etc etc. I could go on and on. Basically Singapore is a very successful country across a wide range of different indicators and criteria. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it – what exactly is so bad about authoritarianism.
Yeah, yeah, you can’t smoke pot; you’ll be caned if you are a rapist, and you have no right to utter hate speech to bully anybody. Sounds quite good to me.
You do the maths. I used to be able to buy them at HKIA for $90HKD a carton. The airport staff said you have to pay duty if you take more than 2 cartons. I said yes and filled my suitcase.
I’d take them to the UK and sell them for £35–40 a carton. I’d sell them to somebody who looked like he’d stab you in the face. First time I met him he wanted to rob me, but realised I could supply him regularly. Anyway he’d sell them for £50–60 a carton (it’s about £50 for 100 a carton is 200).
The trick was to land late at night, if you did this the customs agents were usually not too attentive and wanted to go home.
Same thing with France, I’d go for a razz now and again and come back with a car filled with cigarettes.
It was easy money and made me my seed money to get my business off the ground.
Chris Langan was born with a freakishly potent brain, having arguably the highest IQ of any living person.
Langan began speaking at six months old and went on to skip several grades. He had an adult vocabulary by age 10. He breezed through college-level tests as an adolescent. He took his SAT several years early and got a perfect score in half the allotted time and took a nap.
Today, he is a rancher. He never finished college. Most of his adult years were spent as a bouncer at a bar, and in manual labor jobs.
image 202
It all stemmed from his rough childhood. He grew up in a poor family. His mother married multiple times before he turned 12. One stepfather committed suicide. Another was psychopathic and abusive.
His stark upbringing created behavioral problems and a persisting contempt for authority. Combine this with inadequate mentorship, resources, and an absent professional network and he never weaponized his extremely rare gift.
The sad truth is that there are many like Langan, who are like the gifted child working on a 3rd world farm, born into poverty and dealt a common, cruel blow to the chance of success.
TikTok on the cost of living | RANT ON INFLATION | EVERYONE IS BROKE AND TIRED
“Hi guys, just to clarify I do not own any of these videos I just thought it would be interesting to see how people are dealing with the cost of living, sending prayers and well wishes to you ”
When I was a teenager I would explore all the abandoned homes in my tiny small town. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania; coal and steel was our life, but during this time, the factories were all closing. So the homes would be abandoned. And we would explore them.
One of my friends, not me, was rummaging around in one of the old bedrooms and found an interesting object in an ancient shoebox tucked in the end of top shelf of a closet.
It was a handbook.
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He found an operation manual for a biplane! It was a World War I era instruction manual for a Curtiss JN-4. And it was cool as Hell. I loved the illustrations, and the classic format in this small leather-bound book. Totally awesome.
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I have no idea what happened to this little jewel of a book, and sometimes I muse what happened to it.
I will never know, but if you see me sitting quietly watching the rain fall down, thoughts of this little book is but one of my many many meandering thoughts.
So after researching, apparently the longest anyone ever stayed awake was this dude named Randy Gardner who did it for a science fair project back in 1963.
He lasted 11 days and 25 minutes without sleep, which is insane. He set a world record, but they don’t do that anymore cuz it’s too dangerous.
We all know that sleep is super important for your body and your brain. It helps you heal, grow, learn and stay sane.
When you don’t sleep, you mess up all kinds of stuff in your body, like your hormones, your metabolism, your mood and your stress levels.
You see, you start feeling the effects of sleep deprivation pretty fast. After just 24 hours, you’re like drunk or high.
You can’t think straight, you can’t remember stuff, you can’t see or hear well, you get cranky and you might even start to hallucinate.
It gets worse the longer you stay awake. After 36 hours, you lose your motivation, your reasoning skills and your attention span.
You might also start to have microsleeps, which are like mini naps that happen without you knowing. You just zone out for a few seconds and then snap back to reality. Imagine this happening while driving.
After 48 hours, you’re in trouble. You might start to have delusions, paranoia and psychosis. You might see or hear things that aren’t there, or believe things that aren’t true. You might also get really emotional or aggressive.
After 72 hours, you’re basically a zombie. You can barely function at all. You might not even be able to stay awake if you wanted to. Your immune system is shot, your blood pressure is high and your risk of getting sick or having an accident is through the roof.
So yeah, don’t try this. It’s not worth it. Sleep is awesome and you need it to live a healthy and happy life.
The average adult needs about 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, but it varies from person to person. Find out what works for you and stick to it.
Texas Fajitas
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Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
Fajitas
2 (1 1/4 pound) skirt steaks, trimmed of membrane and fat
16 to 20 flour tortillas, warmed
Marinade
1 cup bottled herb and garlic or Italian salad dressing
12 ounces beer
1 large onion, minced
Juice of 3 or 4 limes
3 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons minced, fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons lemon pepper
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 bay leaf
Accompaniments
Mild or medium salsa
Guacamole
Instructions
Place the meat in a Pyrex dish.
Combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl, mixing well and then pour over the steaks.
Refrigerate the meat for 6 to 24 hours, turning occasionally.
Remove the meat from the refrigerator and drain off the marinade.
Bring the steaks to room temperature.
On an outdoor grill, grill meat to medium-rare.
Cut the steaks diagonally through the grain, into finger length strips.
Serve meat on a platter with tortillas and serving bowls of salsa and guacamole.
One of my first “real” jobs as a young man was working in a distribution center for a pharmaceutical company. I loaded and unloaded trucks, unloaded box cars and pulled orders, and I found the work to be enjoyable. I was the youngest employee in the place and the older women in the office would dote on me, which I also enjoyed immensely.
The general manager was a former college jock and I became friends with him and would play volleyball, basketball, and softball with him and his friends. After a softball game one summer I overheard him talking to one of his friends and he mentioned that the company we worked for was in trouble. He told his friend that he was afraid the DC where we worked was going to be shut down, and he didn’t want to move to North Carolina, where the company was headquartered.
I didn’t really think about it until I started noticing that the shipments we received weren’t as large, or coming as frequently, as they had in the past. A warehouse than had once overflowed with stock was starting to look barren. That’s when I recalled what the GM hold told his friend and I decided to start looking for another job.
I found a job working in a DC for a wholesaler and gave notice, but the GM tried to talk me into staying. He said I had a future with the company but I still decided to leave. Six months later the distribution center closed and the entire warehouse crew was let go. Some of those guys were in their 60s, so their only option was to take early retirement. I felt bad about not letting them know what was coming, but what if I’d been wrong? I was lucky to get out when I did.
Deserve the world
Tech hegemony name of NSA’s game — Zhang Zhouxiang
Had the Ministry of National Security not mentioned it on its official WeChat account, it would have been hard to imagine that the US National Security Agency, a key department of the US government, had invaded the server of China’s Huawei headquarters in 2009 and was monitoring it ever since.
This was at a time when the US had not even triggered trade frictions with China and “partnership” was the key word defining their bilateral relationship. That was also the time when the US was keeping a tab on allies and imagined enemies alike, such as by bugging the then German leader’s phone, as Edward Snowden revealed.
All these incidents once again prove that even when the US smiles at you, you cannot take it at face value. The US can use one hand for a handshake and the other to point a gun at the person it is shaking hands with.
It’s ironic that despite spying on the Huawei server for 14 years, the US still could not find any evidence of Huawei having “stolen” technologies from it. That is the biggest evidence that the NSA is not at all concerned about the United States’ national security, but about the US’ technological hegemony. Anything called “national security” for the US is based on the insecurity of others.
With this mentality, the US cannot become a worthy leader of the world. It can only arouse the whole world’s suspicion with its actions, as everyone knows that the US gained its current superpower status by cheating, stealing, hacking and blackmailing.
And such conspiracies won’t persist for long because the rest of the world cannot be overshadowed by the US forever. That Huawei has released its new smartphone model Mate 60 Pro, despite the sanctions, proves that the US’ blockade and surveillance don’t work.
It is time the US woke up from its own dreams.
China’s LASER Tech Achieves Yet Another MASSIVE Breakthrough
In a groundbreaking announcement, Chinese military scientists have unveiled a remarkable leap forward in laser weapon technology. The researchers claim to have developed an ingenious cooling system that eliminates a long-standing obstacle – the buildup of excess heat during the operation of high-energy lasers. This achievement, which could redefine the face of modern warfare, promises to enable these laser-based weapons to fire with unprecedented longevity and precision. Today’s episode will cover another breakthrough in China’s laser technology.
Wasting an entire tech budget on peripherals, with no computers to attach them to.
Several years ago, I worked at a school where the majority of teachers and the principal still used overhead projectors. I bought my own projector and used my own Macbook instead. When the principal saw what I was doing, she put me in charge of setting up Smartboards for every classroom.
Apparently, the year before I got there, the principal (an older woman) went to an education convention and got swindled into spending thousands of dollars on new Smartboards. Someone must have had a display where they showed all of the great things you can do with a Smartboard, so she used the school’s technology budget to buy one for each classroom.
They’d been delivered over the summer, before I was hired, and they were still boxed in the storage room when I got there.
Except she didn’t buy the computers or projectors to go along with them.
A Smartboard by itself is useless. It’s basically a large track pad. It requires a computer and a projector to work. The Smartboard is the cheapest part of the equation.
I got one up and running in my room, since I had my own laptop and projector. She was so excited that she had the janitor unbox and hang several others in other classrooms over a weekend, before I explained to her that they only worked when connected to a computer and a projector.
When I came to work on Monday, half of the classrooms looked like this:
They had nice, new Smartboards hanging there, completely useless.
Then I gave her an estimate for cheap laptops and projectors to get the other Smartboards up and running like the one in my room was.
She got mad at me. It’s the first time a principal ever actually raised their voice to me. She insisted that I could make the Smartboards work without buying extra parts, because the guy who sold her the Smartboards didn’t say anything about needing a computer or projector to go with them.
I think she was mad that she’d been ripped off. She spent literally the school’s entire tech budget on those Smartboards.
She raised her voice to me a few more times throughout the year, for leaving to get coffee on my lunch break (I’m an adult and I can do that), not keeping the students busy every possible second (I don’t believe in busy work), and not using the Smartboard in my room enough (It was a bigger pain to use it than it was worth). Basically, she micro-managed and treated me like a student, not a teacher. I left there after just one year. She ended up being forced into retirement after that year too. I suppose a lot of people complained about the way she treated the teachers, and pissing away the school’s money on pointless tech was the last straw.
Whatever your opinion may be about this man, Dan Bilzerian, he said something very true in an interview, and I would like many people to reflect on it.
In the Joe Rogan Podcast (the most famous and most listened-to podcast in the world), Rogan asked him the same question:
Joe: Hey Dan, for the people who are listening to us, and most of them won’t even make a quarter of the money you’ve made, do you think money brings happiness?
Dan Bilzerian: Money, Joe, brings satisfaction. Money can undoubtedly give you a lot of satisfaction, but never complete happiness.
When I go to a fancy restaurant, when I drive a brand new car, when I party at the best clubs, for me, that’s already normal.
But the day I can’t afford to eat at a restaurant of the same quality, or drive the latest car, or go partying, how do you think I’ll feel?
In my case, I raised the ‘satisfaction bar’ so high that I have to maintain this lifestyle forever because if I don’t, I get depressed.
Happiness, even if it sounds cliché, cheesy, or however you want to call it, comes from within, from your person. It doesn’t come from material things. Material things give you ‘satisfaction,’ but they will never give you happiness.
There’s always someone who says something like:
‘Money doesn’t bring happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Lamborghini.’
Now, let me ask:
Wouldn’t you rather smile from ear to ear in a Kia?
Regards.
If I Compare Both – CHINA is The Winner
China’s space program and Elon Musk’s SpaceX represent two major players in the rapidly evolving field of space exploration. In recent years, both entities have made significant strides in rocket development, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in terms of space travel. From the famed Falcon series to the proud and furious Long March family, both players have redefined space sector on their own terms.
The Russian military has launched small attacks along the whole frontline. A major effort is made near Andivka which yesterday was bombed to smithereens:
The headline reads “RF Army has delivered a blow of previously unseen might against the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU)”. What they are describing is an aerial bombing of Avdeevka, the heavily fortified Ukrainian town 14 kilometers away from Donetsk city, which is an urban center of more than a million inhabitants and capital of the Donbas oblast (region) of the same name. Donetsk city has been struck by missiles and artillery shells launched from Avdeevka on a daily basis from the time before the Special Military Operation, and with ever greater intensity during the SMO. Video images of destroyed homes and apartment buildings have appeared on Russian evening news together casualty figures and the testimony of victims.
The attack on Avdeevka came early in the morning when the Ukrainians were attempting to carry out a rotation of their troops. Eyewitnesses said that “the earth shook” in the whole area as a result of the bombing. … The bombing of Avdeevka today, like the reported destruction of a major Ukrainian command post by 1.5 ton bombs a couple of days ago, would suggest the “softening up” phase before a major ground offensive.
That something important was coming up could be seen it the recent Daily Reports by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The ones put out on the 8th, 9th and 10th of October showed relatively few Ukrainian casualties (655, 630, 580) and a reduced counter artillery campaign with only 6, 7 and 8 Ukrainian guns hit on those days. It was a sign that something was coming up.
Today’s report, which includes the numbers from yesterday’s campaign against Andivka and other places show high Ukrainian casualty numbers (895) and hits on some 24 Ukrainian artillery systems.
The Ukrainians seem to fight almost exclusively on foot. Losses of armored fighting vehicles have become rare. Today’s report reports hits on only 7 armored combat systems (including tanks) but also hits on 35 transport vehicles, i.e trucks and pick-ups.
Yesterday’s evening summary by Strana.news described the bad state most of Ukraine’s brigades are in (machine translation):
Reports of the beginning of massive attacks by the Russian army coincided with the appearance of an increasing amount of information about significant problems with the offensive potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
As we have already written, ex-adviser to the President’s Office Alexey Arestovich called on the Ukrainian command to go on the defensive and abandon the offensive, which, in his opinion, is hopeless with the current balance of forces.
Also in social networks, a video from a Ukrainian military man was distributed, who talks about problems in the “Guards Offensive” brigades due to heavy losses and poor organization.
“I communicate with different military personnel from different branches of the armed forces and, in principle, I understand that cp@ka is everywhere. But I did not expect that in the rampant “Offensive Guard” we will meet with those mistakes that even the most meaty brigades no longer make,” says a National Guard soldier in Tiktok.
Then he describes various problems in specific teams. Let’s list the main ones:
Platoon commanders in critical areas, including on the Zaporozhye front, are appointed junior lieutenants without military experience and knowledge.
Many fighters have not received sufficient training;
Coordination at the company and battalion level is almost nonexistent. Maximum-squads and platoons;
Huge losses – “three companies enter, only a few go back”;
“One village took an infantry company in a short period of time. 120 plus or minus people,” says the military man.
The Russian Federation has many times more forces and resources – “no matter how strong you are, you will be stupidly beaten by the crowd”;
In some cases, the assault fighters go on foot – 7 km in equipment for 35 kg.
Other reports have confirmed that the Ukrainian military has long lost its middle officer and NCO corps. Smart kids fresh from senior high school are leading platoons of men mostly in 30s or 40s and 50s. Brigade commanders give direct orders down to platoons because the staff of battalions and companies in between is no longer there.
The Ukraine lacks artillery. The Russian counter battery fire has become more and more intense.
The advantage the HIMARS systems with their 70 kilometer reach had given Ukraine is also gone. The U.S. delivered HIMARS systems, which previously had been positioned safely out of reach of Russian counter-battery fire, are now easy to reach targets.
Russia’s new versions of the Lancet kamikaze drone have destroyed Ukrainian fighter planes on the ground some 90 kilometer behind the frontline.
Smaller Russian First Person View (FPV) suicide drones now come with thermal night vision.
It is pretty much over for the Ukrainian military. The only sensible action it can now take is to shorten the frontline and to retreat behind some natural defense barrier like the Dnieper river.
However, Zelensky still talks of victory and is unlikely to order such a move.
Posted by b on October 11, 2023 at 15:00 UTC | Permalink
On May 7th, 2013, Clevelander Charles Ramsey sat down in his living room, and was about to eat a Big Mac when he heard screaming coming from outside…
He opened his front door, and realized that it must have been coming from his next door neighbor’s house, so he walked over. But instead of his neighbor, Ariel, he saw a woman in the doorway clutching a child. She said that they needed to get out of the house, but that the door was secured and they were trapped. Although hesitant to break his neighbor’s front door, Ramsey agreed, and together they kicked out the bottom panel. The woman and her daughter crawled through…
But that was just the beginning! The lady said that she had been trapped in the house for years and that there were other women still inside! She ran to a nearby house and called 911 while Ramsey did the same on his cell phone. Within minutes, police and press had swarmed the street. What was going on?
The woman’s name was Amanda Berry. She had been kidnapped by the owner of the house and kept inside for 10 years, where she and two other women, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus, were kept in dismal conditions and sexually abused. They were all rescued and reunited with their families after a decade. The kidnapper, Ariel Castro, was arrested minutes later at a nearby McDonald’s. The whole city of Cleveland, Ohio, was overjoyed to learn that the missing women had been found alive after so long, and the rescue made headlines across the world!!
Ramsey gave an iconic interview with a local news station, just minutes after the news broke, and it quickly went viral.
“I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Dead Giveaway. Something is wrong here.” – Charles Ramsey
His candid demeanor during such a stressful episode caught people’s attention. The Gregory Brothers recorded a song by remixing his statement. Mike Epps parodied his reaction. Drew Carrey, a fellow Clevelander, personally met with him. He was skyrocketing to fame but his big break came on Snoop Dogg’s show talk show.
Snoop Dogg received an audio recording of Ramsey’s 911 call. In it, the dispatcher asked for Ramsey’s phone number and Ramsey gave it, but whoever provided the audio did not mute or obscure it to protect Ramsey’s identity. Snoop and his guest decided to call the number themselves to congratulate him, and Ramsey picked up. But they also broadcast the number to the entire world!
Ramsey received an unbelievable amount of support and praise. From across the world many sent their thanks and Ramsey was absolutely overwhelmed by the attention. As more evidence came to light, Ramsey also had some choice words for Castro and described in graphic detail how he would exact revenge on him. Talks of a reward for Ramsey abounded. He even received several marriage proposals. When a news reporter asked how Ramsey felt about all the congratulatory phone calls and texts he was getting, he replied that he now wished he had paid for an unlimited phone plan, as he had exceeded his allotted data. He eventually solved this by throwing his phone into the Cuyahoga river.
McDonald’s — whom Ramsey had referenced in his viral interview and where Castro had been arrested — gave Ramsey tons of $50 Mcdonald’s gift cards. Ramsey gave them out to children and the homeless, and when McDonald’s heard about this, they stopped giving him gift cards.
Ramsey appeared on Anderson Cooper, wrote a memoir, and since then has sought to avoid the spotlight. He met with Amanda Berry in 2019 on the sixth anniversary of the rescue, and claims that he and Michelle Knight, now known as Lily Rose Lee, sometimes see each other when out walking because they live nearby.
As I was sitting on the beach with my friend Courtney, she turned to me and said, “You know, I really love Landon. I’m going to marry him. But, if he were to leave me, I would be okay.” They had been dating for four years and her boyfriend was asking her dad that summer if he could have her hand in marriage. They were very happy and comfortable together.
It was a stark contrast to my old roommate. In the four years I had known her, she had been single less than two weeks. Every time she became single, it had not been her choice. After each breakup, she had immediately gotten a new man within days. Eventually she settled with a guy who emotionally abused her. She had eventually caught him cheating more than three times and broken up with him, but her fear of being alone had driven her back into his arms after ten days. She married that guy.
Both of these girls are wonderful people who I enjoy hanging out with. But, they have one stark difference. Courtney is comfortable being alone. My old roommate is not.
Courtney dated her share of frogs but was always able to leave if things got bad. She liked being single and was comfortable with herself. So, she found a man perfect for her who added something amazing to her life. She settled for nothing less.
My old roommate stayed in abusive relationship after abusive relationship. Being single scared her, so she’d rather stay with someone who treated her badly than face the world alone. She will depend on someone else for her happiness for the rest of her life and they will consistently fail to provide it.
Being single taught me that you’re not ready to be in a relationship unless you’re truly happy and comfortable being single. If you don’t, you make yourself very vulnerable to abuse and a life of heartache.
Learn to be alone and to depend on yourself. Don’t date anyone before you date yourself. It is the most important basis of a healthy relationship.
Filipino Girls Get BRUTALLY HONEST
As the Philippines welcomes foreign tourists back for the first time since 2020, countless interested bachelors are arriving at the shores of Davao City specifically to find a Pinay to share their life with. Known around the world as amazing women, Filipinas entice foreigners to travel halfway across the globe just to guaranty a match through face to face interactions. As more men dream of romantic connections with Filipino women, solo travel to the magic city of Davao becomes a bucket list item for countless guys.
Davao City plays host to a couple dozen foreigners several times each year who arrive to meet Pinays in one on one introductions or during group speed dating events arranged by local matchmakers. Because dating in Davao remains a foreign affair for Philippine women seeking love beyond borders, foreign guys also interested in meeting Filipino girls are once again solo traveling to this magic city to try and guaranty a match among some of the most stunning ladies in the entire world.
Know to be ultra family oriented in nature, most Filipinas are seeking traditional family life with a good man who seeks the same. While many Western men begin to adopt alternative philosophies towards domestic dating like MGTOW or Red Pill, many are simply seeking a traditional wife or what they call a tradwife within these Red Pill or MGTOW circles. While most Filipino women fit what men use to describe their tradwife, it must be recognized that Pinays are also industrious and independent completely out of necessity in the Philippines.
Most Filipinas find the domestic dating scene in Davao City to be lacking, which leads many towards furthering their educations and/or careers to make a life for themselves. Because most Pinays will want to create a family of their own, dating beyond borders to establish a WMAF ( Western Male Asian Female) relationship becomes a focus for many who are seeking such a life. WMAF relationships in the Philippines have become quite common in cities like Davao where dating often feels like a foreign affair because of the expat population and constant foreign tourists who frequent the region.
While Filipino women dream of lasting connections with foreign men, the ability to guaranty a match in the Philippines via solo travel rather than making a Filipina dating app your cupid has become the go to method for guys wanting the same type of lasting relationships.
There are advantages to dating Filipinas in cities like Davao, where an overwhelming number of Asian women are wholly open to the idea of WMAF ( Western Male Asian Female) relationships. While most marriage minded Filipino men are already starting families by their early twenties, the vast majority of bachelors are single by choice. Because countless Pinays still seek to create a family of their own, dating beyond borders with visiting foreigners becomes the most practical way to achieve the dream of loving connections that can create such dynamics.
WMAF relationships are quite common in cities throughout the Philippines like Cebu, Davao or Manila. Because the majority of Filipino women are fluent English speakers, men who share this language are able to communicate well, which expedites the courtship process for many WMAF couples. As men venture into the Philippines specifically in search of the Filipina pea to their pod, cold approach in the street scenes of Davao can seem appealing, but the most serious Filipino women often find such interactions with strangers to be unappealing.
Sure, Filipinas may say hello to you in the street scenes of Davao if you initiate this interaction, but in the less savory parts of the city, these interactions rarely signal a woman interested in starting a lifelong loving relationship. In the interest of being able to guaranty a match during solo travel to Davao City, more men that ever are partnering with local matchmaking agencies to meet serious Pinays to achieve their dream of lasting connections with Asian women. Matchmakers in the Philippines commonly organize private speed dating events for Filipinas and visiting foreign men who have a stated purpose of finding lifelong love as the key motivation for attending these events.
During speed dating events in Davao, men meet over 100 single Pinays in a matter of hours, with only a couple dozen guys in attendance. The odds of meeting 100+ Filipinas in 4 hours via cold approach becomes less likely, especially when factoring in the pre-qualification process administered by matchmaking agencies like A Foreign Affair. Because more men than ever seek to guaranty a match with Filipinas, dating agencies play a crucial role in creating lasting connections via one on one introduction or the world famous speed dating events held in Cebu and Davao.
The longest recorded continuous firing of a weapon took place in 1963, when a group of British Army armorers decided to put the venerable Vickers machine gun to its most extreme test ever attempted. Having a stockpile of around 5 million obsolete .303 British rounds, they took turns continuously firing a single freshly-rebuilt Vickers for an entire week.
The men took 30-minute shifts operating the gun, with others shoveling the spent brass and bringing more ammo and cooling water, pausing only to reload and change worn-out barrels. Amazingly, in a week of non-stop firing, the gun never malfunctioned a single time, and a follow-up inspection found it to be within design specs in every parameter.
This hardly came as a surprise, as Vickers MG was already legendary for its reliability, having been continuously fired for over 24 hours on multiple instances during WWI. In one recorded instance in 1916, a British machine gun company of ten guns expended a million rounds over the course of 12 hours to suppress a German position, at the end using their own urine to cool the barrels after all available water was expended.
What to expect from Iran’s membership in BRICS
Friday, 25 August 2023 11:24 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 02 September 2023 6:26 AM ]
Iran’s membership in the BRICS group of emerging economies is a significant national, regional and international development, which is important both to Tehran and BRICS members, including China and Russia.
In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on Iran’s membership in global political and economic organizations, institutions and groups in order to spur economic growth and provide a ballast in the face of geopolitical and structural changes.
BRICS has gained a special place in Iran’s foreign policy due to its increasing importance in the international political economy and geopolitical developments.
The Islamic Republic has good political relations with all five main members of the BRICS group consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Tehran is motivated by the international prestige, the geopolitical and geoeconomic linkage with the emerging world powers, and the regional and international status which joining BRICS can potentially bring in.
New economic partners are about to come out of the woodwork after membership in BRICS and access to new financial resources, technological findings, knowledge-based production methods in agriculture, food security and trade could enable Iran to better deal with the hobbling impact of sanctions.
BRICS is developing internal institutions for integration and increasing effective economic power in order to support development programs of its members and strengthen their regional and international position.
The establishment of financial institutions independent from Western institutions can be considered the most important success of BRICS in promoting convergence and its most important advantage in the new global economic structure.
Two financial institutions within BRICS are the pillars of the group’s power, which also offer opportunities for Iran.
The New Development Bank of BRICS is the most important economic pillar of BRICS, created with the aim of forging convergence among the members in the world economy.
The bank was established in 2014 with the initial authorized capital of $100 billion to finance infrastructure projects in BRICS countries and other emerging markets. It is headquartered in Shanghai, China.
According to the agreement, the bank “shall support public or private projects through loans, guarantees, equity participation and other financial instruments”.
Another key institution established with the aim of strengthening financial convergence among the members is the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA).
It is a framework for the provision of support through liquidity and precautionary instruments in response to actual or potential short-term balance of payments pressures.
Although US financial sanctions make it difficult for Iran to access the resources of these two institutions, BRICS has adopted various methods under its de-dollarization scheme to provide loans and services to members, which can reduce the impact of the sanctions.
The New Development Bank uses methods such as providing loans in the national currency of BRICS powers, cryptocurrency and currency swaps.
Bear in mind that Iran’s integration into the BRICS economic framework is fraught with challenges as regards alignment with the economic policies, regulatory mechanisms and commercial laws and regulations of the main and new members.
Ensuring the coordination and synching of the domestic bureaucracy with BRICS institutions in areas such as customs, tariffs and investment regulations requires time and complex expert reviews.
Nevertheless, the geoeconomic benefits of the membership are so many that any misgivings are roundly misplaced.
As a full member, Iran would have closer economic relations with other member countries, which can gradually lead to increased business and investment opportunities.
This cooperation can include various sectors including energy, production, agriculture and technology and provide access to new markets and potential sources of foreign direct investment.
Joining BRICS would also give Iran the opportunity to diversify its economic partners beyond the current circle.
The BRICS countries have an overall population of more than 3 billion people, which potentially provides a vast consumer market for Iranian goods and services. This diversity would reduce Iran’s dependence on a limited set of business partners and increase its economic resilience.
Membership in BRICS also increases Iran’s regional influence and geopolitical position.
It enables the country to interact with emerging economies and have a say in shaping global economic and political affairs. In addition, Iran can actively participate in regional projects and contribute to the development of convergence in the region.
By becoming a member of BRICS, Iran would access the financial resources of the BRICS Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangements (CRA) to fund the development of infrastructure, energy projects and other potential priority sectors.
This can help to solve part of Iran’s development needs and spur long-term economic growth, even though access to the resources of these institutions under sanctions would be difficult.
Iran is a large producer of oil and gas and its membership in BRICS can strengthen closer cooperation on energy security initiatives.
BRICS countries, especially China and Russia, have significant energy needs. They can potentially cooperate with Iran on energy exploration, production and infrastructure development. This cooperation would improve Iran’s energy sector and provide ways to diversify exports.
Meanwhile, BRICS countries stand out for their advances in technology and innovation in the developing world.
Iran’s membership in BRICS can facilitate the exchange of knowledge, carrying out joint research projects and technology transfer, which could enable the country to increase its technological capabilities and competitiveness in different sectors.
This can help Iran’s economic modernization and reduce technological gaps with other countries.
Iran is facing the most draconian US sanctions, which has limited the country’s access to global markets and financial systems. Joining BRICS can potentially give Iran more leverage in international negotiations and potentially reduce the effects of some sanctions.
Moreover, the collective power and influence of the BRICS countries may provide a platform to defend Iran’s economic interests and reduce trade restrictions.
BRICS countries have forged increasing cooperation on agriculture and food security. Iran, with its diverse agricultural sector, can benefit from the best methods and joint initiatives through knowledge exchange with the aim of increasing agricultural productivity, production and distribution of foodstuff.
This cooperation can help Iran’s food security goals and strengthen its agricultural sector.
Finally, Iran’s membership in BRICS can activate the Russia-Iran-India corridor, facilitating exchanges among the member countries, and provide access to Eurasian resources along the Belt and Road Initiative stretching from China to Russia up to Central Asia and beyond.
In 29 Days The Internet Will Change FOREVER
Through increased legislation such as the Online Safety Bill and Google’s own repression of new emerging competitors, independent media and free speech has a fight on its hands.
“Can I trust you?” she asked me quietly as we walked in the school grounds.
She didn’t even wait for me to reply.
“My father was diagnosed with cancer. Two years ago. Of the prostate. He was under treatment since then, but these days, he’s been getting worse. And we don’t even have that much money, we’re a simple family.”
Sarah was the ‘weird girl’ in the class. Or that’s how the others saw her.
She was always energetic. So much that you’d think she was high on caffeine every day. She had a prominent personality, something so sun-bright that you couldn’t help but notice. And being talkative and making loud, obnoxiously lame jokes were a fundamental part of her.
Sarah was just so full of life. The fullest you can be. The fullest I’ve ever seen someone.
I think that’s what began, slowly but surely, irritating others in a way.
She would laugh at her own awkward jokes and people would roll their eyes. She’s so random and so extra, they’d say.
She became the class clown.
One day, during the sports class, the conversation written above took place.
And I couldn’t help but silently wonder: how/why was she so buoyant and full of life all the time?
A second later, the tone of her voice shifted.
“You wanna know why I’m so cheerful all the time?”
It’s like she read my mind, I swear. I looked her in the eye, then quickly looked away.
But what she said left me open-mouthed because it was completely different than what I expected.
“You know, I believe that you have to create what you want for yourself. As I see it, everyone has to create their own happiness. There is no other way out. I have so many things to be sad about. But that is exactly what I won’t be. I just work like that,” she shrugged.
And suddenly, just like that, I saw her in a whole new light. And I’m not even exaggerating. It was literally like depicted in the movies.
In fact, I felt guilty, on behalf of my class, that we’d been so utterly stupid.
Not to be dramatic or anything, but Sarah taught me things that I have not learned from anyone else.
I’m not gonna lie and say that since that moment, I’ve been the happiest person alive. I haven’t. It’s a slow process. But I see myself getting there very soon.
Sarah reminded me that one has to create their own happiness. You can’t rely on life or its circumstances to do that for you. She was a living example of the quote: “When life knocks you down, smile and stand up taller than ever before.”
China learnt that thinking that it should share a loaf of bread with the west is unnecessary and unappreciated. Well perhaps the west is not matured enough. So why not have the entire loaf of bread themselves.
So why not just produce the very best in everything for China and 7.5 billion earthlings and let the west decide if it wants to be up to date and advance. Or suffer a triple digit inflation and stay backwards.
Like what they say one don’t know how fortunate they are till they lost it for good. It’s a shame. For the U.S. China is willing to be a good partner to help bring about a better world but the U.S. chose its own demise.
The U.S. behaviour befits the 247 years old hoodlum mafia that they are and China need to let the U.S. grow out of puberty. Sure China prefers to work with the west and the U.S. and it will do better with them. But without some say 50–70% of worlds 30% of the market it will still do rather well.
US may need to make a million adjustments just to stay afloat. But heck. That U.S. their problem. It is their choice. They can de-risk on each other for all we care. Essentially the U.S. has decoupled with the world.
My former supervisor came to my wedding and told guests that she felt terrible, but when I got home from my honeymoon, she was going to have to fire me.
I was working at a staffing agency, and my supervisor Snowflake (for her appearance and mental condition) came to my wedding as my guest and the date of my fiance’s friend.
During the reception, she told multiple people that as much as she looooved me, she was going to have to fire me when I got back from our honeymoon. We were gone for a week, and knowing what we would be facing when we got back, her date called my husband and told him the bad news.
Talk about landing the balloon with a crash! At least I could walk into the office the next day armed and forewarned. They transferred me to another department, she was reprimanded, and within months was transferred to another office. I will never trust people like that again, and I feel for anyone who had to be involved with her in the future.
THE DURAN AND BRIAN BERLETIC ON UKRAINE’S DEFEAT SENDS NATO INTO PANIC
I will answer from my personal experience. I do trauma anesthesia and every now and then I will get someone in who has survived a shoot out with the police. I usually talk to the police during the case since they are waiting to hear if the prisoner will survive or not so they can file the paperwork. The truth is they miss more.
Last one was a murder suspect who they rolled up on as he was exiting his car. He pulled out a gun and they unloaded on him. The police expended more than 350 rounds. He was hit 3 times. One hit on the hand which took off 2 fingers, one hit in the meat of the thigh and the one that took him down was a hit directly between the eyes. But he was a lucky SOB. The police were shooting 9 mm. The shot that hit him between the eyes bounced off his skull, traveled under the scalp and exited near the rear of his head. That one knocked him out and probably saved his life.
Shootouts are a very stressful situation. The target is hiding behind obstructions. He is shooting back at you. And the distances are more likely to be 25 to 50 feet. The adrenalin is running high. Even in a perfectly comfortable range with a paper target it is almost impossible to put in precision shots at 50 feet with a hand gun. That is a pretty typical outcome in that type of shooting.
The scary part of all that is that there are 340 plus bullets traveling down range which can strike anywhere.
Unless one is blind, deaf or dumb you can conclude otherwise. Of course BBC, CNN, Fox & Sky News sing a tune that US are popular are needed or or respected. But it is no different from Nazi propaganda selling the Aryan nation and the Nazi’s view on Jews!
But let us stick to the facts. Zero nation in Latin America and Caribbean supported the U.S.stance on Russia! And that is the U.S. closest neighbours.
Take the Beijing Olympics boycott. In 2020. After a year of shuttling around the world. Convincing nations to boycott China and billions invested to demonised China. Only 5 nations agreed to withdraw uninvited officials from the games! Just 40 years ago the U.S. wanted to do likewise in the Moscow Olympics and 65 nations joined them!
US influence? It us a thing of the past. Good riddance Uncle Sam.
Originally Answered: What have you assumed was exaggerated until you experienced it yourself?
Expensive paper towels.
What the hell, Bounty? You think you’re worth twice as much as my grocery store-brand paper towels?
Oh, you’ve got “super-absorbent pockets” that can soak up that entire sippy cup’s worth of juice and then still have room for the drips the other leading paper towel left behind?
Riiiiiiight.
The “quicker, thicker picker-upper”?
Screw your fancy camera tricks and stupid, gimmicky pockets! I’m not going to fall for your crafty advertising and excessive -er-ending tagline!
Oh, what a fool I was.
Enter: the Infant.
Through drips and spills and mud and snot, the infant could take out an entire store-brand roll in a single afternoon. My discount paper towels may as well have been tissue paper against the sticky onslaught of a lunchtime feeding. Spit and mucus passed right through those weak sheets, so much so that I would have been better off just wiping my daughter’s mouth with my own hand.
Oh, “just double them over,” you say?
Ha! The acrobatic, one-handed tear needed to secure a double sheet (while holding a leaking child) would simply rip a corner sliver from those generic towels, leaving the bulk of the sheet flapping wildly off the roll and onto the floor.
In a delirious panic, I’d resort to mummifying the child and letting the mess soak through, sheet after sheet, until she was just dry enough to slip a new shirt on.
There had to be a better way…
I finally caved and bought a roll of the more expensive Bounty brand—they were on sale. I figured maybe I could stick my daughter into one of the “super-absorbent pockets” and just let her eat from there like a quilted, drooling baby kangaroo.
Dear sweet sanitary Jesus.
Those paper towels are amazing.
Yes, they can soak up the sippy cup juice, and the snot, and the milk, and the spaghetti sauce, and the toilet water on the floor, and—why is there toilet water on the floor?!—and the strange brown mess that probably isn’t that, but you’re not going to get close enough to smell it.
All of it.
And double sheets? Ha! Only if you want to clean out a frying pan right off the stove because those babies can insulate like a fiend when you need to wipe hot grease out of a pan.
Bounty paper towels are freaking magical. I buy them all the time now—though I still wait for sales. They are worth every penny, and they are every bit as amazing as the attractive hand models on the commercials imply they are.
On December 9, 1914, Thomas Edison faced probably the biggest test of his life when a huge fire destroyed his lab in New Jersey.
The fire destroyed more than half of the buildings in the laboratory complex, including many original records, prototypes, and valuable research work.
The damage was estimated to be around $7 million dollars at the time, which is equivalent to over $180 million today.
Insurance only covered $2.3 million.
How would you react if your entire life’s work went up in flames at 67 years of age?
History tells that on the night of the fire, as Edison calmly watched his life’s work go up in flames, he told his son Charles, “There is a great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.”
Edison wasted no time in rebuilding. In just a few weeks after the fire, parts of the lab were operational again. Within about a year, most of the facilities were fully reconstructed.
To answer your question, what is the best way to deal with failure at everything in life?
We should learn from Edison…
Accept that failure and setbacks are just part of life’s journey.
Be persistent, don’t ever give up. If we ever stop trying, that’s when we let real failure take over our lives.
As Edison put it, “We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish. Although I am over 67 years old, I’ll start all over again tomorrow.”
Life will always throw challenges our way. But like Edison, we can choose to get back up and start building again.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison
When you are feeling unproductive, don’t allow yourself to do anything. This means no entertainment devices, no books, nothing. It is very boring. But if you make this rule and allow yourself only to do only one thing, you will find yourself walking the plank and doing that very task.
It feels like putting yourself in time out. But you’ll find your task beats the despair of boredom.
Meditation is also extremely effective if you can’t get focused. When I’m most distracted, I close my eyes and focus on not allowing in any thoughts. It is in those moments that mental silence is most difficult. My head is full of chaotic energy and thoughts that gust and jerk around inside of me. But in the end, I feel still and focused. I am prepared to work. Start with 5–10 minutes. A little bit goes a long way.
Shoplifting was a regular occurrence at the auto parts store where I worked. Headlights were the most common thing people stole. At least once per day we’d find an empty package for a headlight on the shelf.
That’s how a lot of people shoplift, by the way… Just open the package and take the product. Chances are, if there is some anti-theft tag on it, the tag is in the package, not on the product itself.
Also, the fancy retail word for product loss through shoplifting and internal stealing is “shrink.” Now you know. My store had a pretty high “shrink” rate, because the neighborhood around the store wasn’t all that great. The last time I visited that store, about five years after I quit working there, they’d finally wised up and put most of the products behind glass displays, so you had to ask a worker to get them for you.
We’d catch shoplifters sometimes. They’d usually get loud and try and cause a scene, but then leave. None of them ever got physical. They also frequently worked in pairs… one person distracting the counter guy, while the other walked around the store and cut things out of their packaging and put them in his pockets. I got good at spotting that scam eventually, and would stare at the guy walking the aisles until he got the hint that I was on to him, and they’d leave.
But my best story was the Great Heist of 2008. That’s what I called it when I was telling my coworkers about it after it happened.
I was the opening manager that day. It was six in the morning and there were just two of us there. That was the minimum number of people we had to have working in order to be open. The first few hours every day were always uneventful, especially during the week.
This particular day, a guy came into the store and said he needed antifreeze for his car. We looked up the type he needed. He said he needed four gallons. I showed him where they were on the shelf, and he immediately complained about the price. The type his car needed was expensive… like $20 a bottle, if I remember correctly. He left the store without them.
But he didn’t go far… just to his car. He drove up next to the door, left his car running, ran inside, grabbed four gallons, dashed out the door without paying, and sped off, tires squealing and everything.
Except he grabbed the wrong thing. He stole four gallons of washer fluid:
Not even the good washer fluid either. The cheap stuff that we gave away for free sometimes. It was like $1.25 per bottle, max. This guy made off with $5 worth of, basically, tap water with a little alcohol in it.
I didn’t even fill out a report. To be honest, I felt kind of bad for the guy. I hope he didn’t put it in his radiator. That would be two boneheaded mistakes in a single day.
Unbreakable Friendship
U.N. approves invasion of Haiti, US forces already there
Redacted has confirmed that the U.S. has special forces inside of Haiti as the U.N. is set to approve an invasion. The United Nations will vote today on the United States’ request to invade Haiti with Kenyan troops. The U.S. says that a military invasion is necessary to “conduct joint security support operations as it works to counter gangs and improve security conditions in Haiti.” The force will help secure “critical infrastructure sites and transit locations such as the airport, ports, and key intersections.” The people of Haiti have been pushing back against this rhetoric and begging the United States to stay out of their politics. Redacted correspondent Dan Cohen brings us the story.
There are currently two Foxconn situations regarding India. One is iPhone production and one is a project to build semiconductors.
iPhone production in India is below the output volume and quality demanded by Apple. This year’s production in India will sold only in India and maybe in some other Asian countries. Foxconn will seek to improve the production in future. For now China will remain the primary production location.
Foxconn has broken off a JV with Vedanta on a project to build semiconductor chips in India. Foxconn decided end plans after delays by the Indian government to approve incentives for the project.
Foxconn has operated in India before and left after a few years. It knows the business situation there. It likely is aware of other prospective projects that were to receive government incentives by India that led to years of foot dragging, and decided there are other opportunities. Meanwhile India will look to attract others interested in the project.
It’s the first time this year that you are going on an actual holiday.
You booked the ticket months in advance, and have been preparing for this trip for weeks.
Today is finally the day on which you leave.
You arrive at the airport earlier than you need to, get your luggage checked in and are in front of the gate, ready to go, 2 hours in advance, when you hear this over the announcement:
“Flight 206 to Honolulu has been cancelled. We apologize for the inconvenience. Have a nice day.”
Your heart sinks into your chest.
That was your flight.
You lean back in the chair you were sitting in, stare up at the ceiling and take a deep breath.
Then you pull out your cell phone, grab your carry-on and start walking.
On your way to the information desk you check various’ other flights, check hotels in the area, and when you get to the information desk you ask about alternative, last-minute routes.
Within 20 minutes you have an alternative booked, have gotten your ticket refunded, and are ready to go.
This is the difference between those that will reach success and those that won’t.
The key indicator of those that will be successful later is that they do not let their situation stop them.
They find a way, are solution oriented, and will act a hundred times more often than they will complain.
Stop complaining about your situation and stop focusing on the problem. And look at what you can do now instead.
WW2 From the German Perspective (Full Documentary) | Animated History
Texas Ranch-Style Taco Salad
Cool Ranch Taco Salad
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
1 head lettuce
1 onion
1 (16 ounce) can Ranch-style beans
1 package Fritos Corn Chips
2 avocados (ripe but not too soft)
2 tomatoes
1 pound Cheddar cheese, grated
1 bottle Catalina dressing
1 pound ground beef or turkey
2 tablespoons lime or lemon juice
Instructions
Sauté ground beef; drain well and set aside to cool.
Tear lettuce into pieces.
Dice tomatoes and onion.
Grate cheese.
Drain beans.
Break corn chips into smaller pieces.
Chop avocado and sprinkle with lemon juice, lightly tossing to coat.
Ability-track students into separate classrooms, starting at around fifth grade.
The frustration for teachers usually isn’t from an underperforming student alone; it’s from underperforming students in the same class, at the same time, as average and over-performing students.
Underperforming (the more PC term is “struggling”) students often take longer than average to learn the same concepts as their peers, and/or require different teaching methods. All of that is fine and easy for a teacher to do, if students like that were all in the same classroom at the same time, with no classmates who were too different from them, learning-style wise.
I have the same issue with my English classes every year. I always begin each year with three days’ worth of lessons on proper comma usage when writing, because so many students struggle with that. About 25% of the students understand how to use commas after the first day of lessons. Another 50% of them understand the concept well enough by the end of the third day.
But about 15% of students need longer than three days to get the concept, and 10% of them will never get it, no matter how long I spend on it. So, what’s a teacher to do? Bore the smart kids? Frustrate the struggling students by leaving them in the dust? Or aim for the middle and hope for the best?
Of course, is all of the smart kids were in one class, all of the average students in another, and all of the strugglers in another, I could spend as much time as I wanted on each concept, without worrying about boring anyone or leaving anyone in the dust. And I could use lesson plans tailored specifically to each group’s learning style.
The classes wouldn’t even have to have even numbers. I can easily teach 50 students at a time, if they’re the “average” students, while teaching smaller classes of advanced and struggling students.
There are a lot of reasons why separating students by ability isn’t popular these days. I’m not saying that they’re good reasons, or that I agree with them. I’m just saying that there are reasons that exist.
Still, it would help de-frustrate teachers to have fewer mixed-ability classes, and more mono-ability ones.
That was me. I worked for a biotech firm that was cutting costs. I was a corporate recruiter. People were being laid off. My only HR colleague left because he had to do all the firing as the big boss didn’t want to do the dirty work, he was also never in the office. That left me having to fire the employees which I hated doing but there was no one else to do it.
I had to fire the finance manager, it was year-end and we had to do merit raises and bonuses. The payroll manager didn’t know to calculate the merit increases based on the allocated budget and bonuses. The company was going to ask Ernst & Young to calculate this but the CEO rejected this as the cost was enormous. The CFO didn’t know how to calculate this so he asked me to calculate this.
this task can be done manually but it would have taken weeks as there were over 200 employees. I downloaded ADP salary data and created an Excel template using formulas to allow scenario analysis as there were lots of changes. (fighting between managers on merit and bonuses) This took a whole week but I completed it on time to pay the employees.
It was yearend and I had to fire most of the salespeople, the new sales manager cleaned house. After I fired the last person my boss called me in to fire me. He said sorry we have to cut costs, you’re a great recruiter but we won’t be hiring anyone next year.
Well, this was the first time in my life to get fired. I was very upset but luckily I found a good job in 2 weeks and I was working. A month later I get a call. They had lost key employees in the IT department and had struggled to find anyone. They wanted me to help. I had started a side business – a staffing agency so I said I will work on commission which they agreed. In 45 days I completed 2 searches and billed my former employer 45K. This took about 40 hours of my time. The fee is 20% of the annual base salary. I made more money that year than any other year.
They wanted to hire me back but I was upset that they fired me in the first place so I did not go back.
At the end of the year, they called me to ask me how to use the spreadsheet that I created. No one could figure out the formulas to change the parameters.
I said no, why don’t you call Ernst & Young?
An unfiltered conversation on why I live in china now, what china is like for indians, college, etc
“Thank you for sharing your insights. I agree with you, China is much safer for walkability and touring. I stayed 1 year in China and nobody ever gave me any problems and everyone was so hospitable and friendly. India tends to be more lawless in many ways compared to China. I still love India though! Jai Hind”
Some disturbing stuff going down right now. The idiots in Washington DC are Hell-bent on war, and all of us are feeling like we are trapped in some kind of cage lashed to the back of a speeding car driven by a madman.
The West has gone completely koo-koo.
No shit.
In case you all haven’t noticed, I am not “reporting” or commenting on the insanity of the Middle East. It’s all a cluster fuck that I want no part of.
A long time ago, I owned one of the first Honda Accords. I had bought it new in 1977, and around 1984, the engine had a very bad oil burning problem. I was pulled over by a Metro Toronto Police constable, who gave me the choice of a ticket for “excessive smoking” or a visit to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment testing centre.
I chose the test, filled the engine with 50 w oil and while there was no smoke, the rest of the needles went fully to the right. Busted.
I was given a chance for a repeat, but knowing I would fail that one also, I put the car on the driveway, pulled the plates and used a borrowed vehicle. About a month after the missed test, a summons came in the mail to appear at the Provincial court one morning in the not too distant future.
I showed up early, and approached the clerk to find out where I should be and when. They never tell you that on the summons, just to appear. While talking the the clerk, a man walked up and was dealing with another of the clerks. I asked the clerk I was talking to “what the fine would be” if convicted. She didn’t know, and man beside me became interested in the matter. I had no idea who he was, but we kind of looked at the summons and neither of us could see anything about a fine. There was a little conversation; I assumed he was a lawyer, and we had a friendly chat. Court was starting shortly, and the fellow left, so I also went inside, told the bailiff I was there – important to do so, otherwise they might not call you for hours – and sat down.
At the stroke of 10:00 am, someone says “all rise” and in walks the Judge, the fellow I was talking to at the desk. Before the proceedings began, the Judge asked me if I had received an answer from the clerk. I told him that I had not, and then the proceedings began.
The Crown (prosecutor) presents the charge, an environmental offence, which he obviously felt was on par with burning down a forest or killing baby seals. Looking very smug, he sat down.
I am called forth, and I told the Judge that yes, the car had failed, but it was off the road and here are the license plates in my hand proving that it was no longer driving or polluting.
The Judge then asked the Crown what the minimum fine was for such an offence. The Crown responded that “the Ministry has a range up to $5000 for such an offence and the usual fine is this case would be $100.”
The Judge asked again about the minimum fine and the Crown repeated his same line. The Judge then asked “so there is no minimum fine?”
The Crown sheepishly answered “No sir” and the Judge turned to me and asked “the car is off the road?” and I responded affirmatively, at which point he said the charges were dropped as the intent of the law was to keep polluting vehicles off the road and obviously this had happened. Case dismissed!
I can’t say for sure, but there was a bit of smile from my new friend on the bench as I walked out of the court.
We’d just celebrated a diversity milestone as part of our quarterly meeting. It was one of those corporate cheerleading events where I stood in the back resisting the painful urge to roll my eyes.
“We are far more than a team of coworkers,” the CEO said, gesturing wide with his arms to the crowd, “We are a family.”
He was such a phony. The summit concluded and I went to the lunchroom. Right as I walked in, I stopped in the doorway and noticed something obvious that I hadn’t noticed before this diversity meeting.
All the white people were at their tables. All the black employees sat at another set of tables. Three Asian ladies sat at another. It was like we were living in the 1950s. And it wasn’t confined to this office. I still see this trend so often when I walk through malls, or along the sidewalk.
A similar phenomenon was observed on the set of Planet Of The Apes in 1968. The director noticed that during lunch, the people dressed as gorillas sat with other gorillas, chimps with chimps, and humans with humans. He described feeling a chill in the air and wondered if we were already in a dystopian sci-fi future. It even happened on the set of Babylon 5. People self-segregated according to their alien skin color.
This trend has long predated echo chambers, and it’s detrimental to your growth.
image 116
The closed network problem
The trend is called homophily, where we magnetize towards clusters of people similar to us. Race isn’t the only sorting mechanism. People sort by social class, age, political ideology, and even the type of music they listen to. And the unfortunate result is that we often live in a “closed network”. We sort ourselves into increasingly tight homogeneous groups.
A closed network forms in these four steps and I suspect you’ll be able to think of a few examples as you read this (I certainly did):
image 74
Putting all moral platitudes aside, social diversity has great predictive qualities for your career and life.
Count on one hand your closest friends. I’d bet that for many of you — they are pretty similar to you across a few demographic touchpoints. It’s no fault to you. This happens naturally, but you can disrupt this habit.
By mixing up your friend group, you are exposed to ideas different than your own and stretch your thinking. Your professional network also becomes much more potent, which is especially important: Within 10 years of graduation, a majority of people won’t work in the area they majored in.
Beware of gatekeeping your network
My ex’s family was deeply conservative — which is fine on its own. People are entitled to their beliefs. But this was often a barrier to who could spend time with them.
They were constantly sizing people up and figuring out their political opinions to determine if they were friend-material. Many people do this without realizing it. These parents were just explicit about it and they had a very small town syndrome (cliquey behavior, when you forget there is an entire world outside of your own).
This introduces the other pesky problem. It’s not all that easy to make friends — especially as we get older. So what next? There are a few solutions.
A route out of Cloneville
I moved 15 times before I turned 18. I lived in California, DC, Florida, Virginia Beach, North Carolina — and every new batch of people was so different than the next. I went to an all white, deeply conservative private school in 9th grade, a liberal high school in Coronado. I was one of the only white kids at an inner city middle school in DC. It wasn’t always easy.
Every summer, I waited for the talk. My mom or dad would come to my bedroom and tell me we were moving and how I was going to love this new school and place. Early on, I realized implicitly, “OK. I need to learn to make new friends.”
I was a new 5th grader at Linkhorn Elementary. We had a substitute teacher who happened to be gorgeous. She was passing out quiz papers. Before she passed out each quiz, she did that thing where she licked her finger to grip the paper.
After she handed me my quiz, I looked across the table at a classmate Joe and say, “Hey Joe! Pssst.”
He turned to me and I pretended to lick my finger and put it down to my thigh and made a hissing sound, like bacon hitting the frying pan. It was a corny joke — but it made Joe laugh and we were instantly friends. And from there, I learned that humor was one quick path to win anyone over.
Often, it’s less about how funny a joke is — and more about the energy it establishes. It signals, “I want to play.” Think about how a dog plants his chest down to the ground while keeping his hind legs standing to get another dog to play with him. This is the human equivalent.
It says, “I like you. Let’s have fun.”
“What if I’m not that funny?”
An even better solution that is painfully overlooked is to smile. Researchers have proven that smiles motivate people to interact with you. They are seen as a “prosocial invitation”. Stand upright and give them a quick, natural smile right when you spot them. It signals you are excited to see them.
After getting to know so many types of people, I’ve realized most people just want to be accepted as a complicated human being. And if you are just nice to them, and seem happy to see them and talk to them — you’ve nearly won the battle already.
When you go to your lunchroom, consider sitting with a new group of people. Don’t be afraid to talk to someone who looks different than you.
There’s a concept called contact hypothesis whereby tension between groups is reduced when they are brought together and interact. It promotes trust and reduces stereotyping. It reminds two different people that they’re both human beings. But the only way to make different types of friends is to actually spend time with people who are different from you.
One of my close friends couldn’t be more different from me. His political views and background are a full 180. But we are both fully candid about our opinions and thoughts, and know we can do so without fear of judgement or being disliked. Sure, he says crazy stuff sometimes but that’s fine. He’s still my friend. He’s taught me a few things about the world and changed a few of my opinions, and I’d like to think the reverse is true.
My hope, is that in a world that is so divided, more people from different walks of life can share the same path. They’d expand their own perspectives. They’d have more love and understanding, and more career opportunities.
And it would save us from being fenced in with our own. Closed networks beget closed minds.
Brazil was inches away from recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital not very long ago, mind you.
Surprising split in South America nonetheless, you’d imagine they’d have a uniform stance like they had for Ukraine.
A sea of yellow in Asia with only the usual suspects in blue but hey there’s someone new this time!
India’s position sits perfectly with our new found friends and within our domestic political landscape but ought to disappoint the fellow global southerners. But tbf, it is not to be construed as a paradigm shift in our policy, our Ministry of External Affairs clarified our two state stance on Palestine only yesterday, rather bad memories getting rekindled.
Nepal lost about a dozen citizens to Hamas’ attack. Poor folks go under the radar and didn’t even get sufficient coverage.
Irans sphere of influence, man, from Caspian Sea to Red Sea. Bush what have you done?
This is a map from TRT— Türkiye’s state run broadcaster. Interesting that they construe Erdogan’s position as call for de-escalation.
Sudan’s case is the perfect microcosm of the viability of normalisation deals that Israel is pursuing. You try so hard and get so far, and then a coup happens.
Morocco, UAE understandable, but Saudi and Pakistan? Who would have thought? Not me. Only 2% of Saudis are in favour of normalisation, I wonder if that matters at all. And 2% would be too high a number for Pakistanis.
Those who follow Bangladesh’s politics ought to find Bangladesh’s silence intriguing, if not outright discombobulating, especially with Hasina up for election soon and US breathing down her neck (yeah, not making this up, US is the biggest threat to Hasina’s re-election).
I don’t get Mexico’s neutrality, they don’t even recognise Palestine.
I don’t get New Zealand’s contrarian take either. What gives? I imagined if anyone from the West was going to have a contrarian take it would be Norway. The right is on the rise in Norway, left rules New Zealand, perhaps that explains?
Ghana coming all out to condemn Hamas? With a similar religious demography split like India, I wonder if there’s domestic political considerations involved.
Foreign policy really is domestic politics with its hat on.
Given that Indonesia’s support will be construed differently then Iran’s support, Venezuela joins the “axis of evil”. But in all fairness they joined the club previously after Ukraine invasion.
DPRK has been silent?
What explains the silence of that many African countries? None of our business paradigm?
Putin tells it like it is…
Fudge Cobbler
chocolate cobbler 2 pn
Yield: about 9 servings
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
1 (1 ounce) square unsweetened baking chocolate
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs, beaten
Vanilla ice cream (garnish)
Instructions
Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease an 8 inch square baking dish.
Melt the chocolate and the butter in a saucepan over very low heat. Stir often. Remove from the heat.
Stir in the sugar, flour, vanilla extract and eggs.
Everyone in the office was paid on an hourly basis and it was each person’s responsibility to keep track of how many hours they worked each day on a paper time sheet. At the end of each week each employee turned in their time sheet to their supervisor who would sign them and then give the to HR so everyone can get paid for the hours they worked. In practice, everyone showed up each day, did their work, wrote down”8 hours” on their time sheet and went home. Everyone was happy.
Then along came a new guy in management who stated that nobody was actually keeping track of their hours and just writing down what HR wanted to see. This meant that the company was losing money and productivity from people not working a full day but being paid for it. So he instituted a new digital time sheet system where each person had to log their times in and out on their computers and the system would track how many hours each of us worked.
What the company discovered was that everyone tended to come into work 10–15 minutes early, hardly ever took a full hour for lunch and often stayed 10–15 minutes late to get their work done. Thanks to the new time sheet system every employee was now getting paid for all that overtime they had been working but not tracking. This affected the company because it was added payroll expense that wasn’t budgeted. So management put out a new rule that nobody would be allowed to work any overtime without written permission from their supervisor and HR. So everyone was very diligent to log in and out exactly in time.
Except now productivity had fallen because nobody was working those extra minutes each day, which multiplied over all staff added up to an extra 60 hours per week of work. The company ended up needing to hire two more people to make up that productivity.
After Huawei released Kirin 9000S, Biden revised the bill: banning China from owning high-end chips.
So China cannot make their own, if they do, they will violate American law.
Malaysia Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Wednesday the country’s switch to a dual 5G network will allow for more effective participation by China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.
Malaysia in May had said it would allow a second 5G network to operate from next year, following concerns over a monopoly held by a single state-run network.
The European Union and the U.S. had warned Malaysia of risks to national security and foreign investment amid efforts by Huawei to bid for a role in its telecoms infrastructure.
Anwar on Wednesday acknowledged concerns from some countries over the “security and capacity” of technology stemming from China, but said the decision to allow a second 5G network was made so that Malaysia could benefit from different technologies.
“We in Malaysia… and I believe rightly, decided that while we get the best from the West, we also should benefit the best from the East,” he told an event hosted by Huawei in Kuala Lumpur.
“After extensive discussion… we made the decision to allow for a dual network, and thus the decision for more effective participation by Huawei.”
Malaysia had in 2021 unveiled a plan for a state-owned agency, Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB), to own the full 5G spectrum, with various carriers using the infrastructure to provide mobile services, but the plan had come under industry criticism over pricing and competition.
State-run DNB partnered with Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson to roll out Malaysia’s 5G network. It is unclear how Malaysia’s plan for a second network would affect DNB’s agreement with Ericsson or other mobile operators.
WHAT THESE FILIPINAS CAN OFFER TO THEIR PASSPORT BROS!
They are generally ignorant about China and Chinese, and conversations about China are very shallow and full of misconceptions. It is not worth my time to correct those misperceptions, and there is no reward for doing it.
Chinese are much fun and interesting, and even if they have silly ideas, they are often entertaining. Most importantly, they know the local restaurants and dishes, and can introduce me to some dish I have never had before. Unlike for most westerners, dining out is a social event, not just filling the tummy.
I was age 14 in the early 1960s and living with a family who had one child around my age. On my 14th birthday, my mother said I needed to pay room and board. I decided to pay for a room in other homes where there was no violence. My rapidly increasing scoliosis was becoming a problem. I had three jobs to pay room and board — (1) feeding and washing people in a nursing home and doing laundry), (2) babysitting at the country club 1.5 miles away, and (3) stocking shelves in a dry goods store. I made $29.00 a week. My room and board was $28.00 a week. I went to high school about three days a week.
I was happy with this family. The father was Welsh and sang Welsh songs every Friday night as he walked home from the Legion. The mother was one of the cafeteria ladies at the high school. They were good to me.
Then one day, the father came home with an envelope and pulled out a Beatles ticket and handed it to his daughter.
And then he handed another ticket to me.
TO ME!
It cost $15.00. I told him it would take me years to pay him back. If I didn’t buy shampoo, pads, or deodorant, it would take me 15 months to repay him. The father disregarded this idea with a flick of his hand and a Welsh phrase I didn’t understand.
The father drove us the 80 miles to the venue, let us off and circled the building during the performance and was right there when it was finished. Not only that, but the man put up with us singing Beatles songs all the way home. We were not good singers.
Even now, decades later (and I am a retired person), whenever I do something nice for someone, I think, ‘this is for you, John Cooper, this one is for you.’
I carry such lightweight debts with me.
Pepe Escobar: China Has DEFEATED the Neocon Agenda as US War Fails Before It Starts
I don’t expect Xi or Putin to meet with Biden. He doesn’t make the decisions.
If they know how to do something, they automatically know how to do it at scale.
This is a country that builds entire new cities at one go. They produce 600,000 engineers per year. They make four out of every five solar panels in the world. They can build a 57-storey skyscraper in 19 days, and as we saw during the covid-19 pandemic, a brand new hospital in 10 days. They are the world’s biggest factory.
If they know how to make one Huawei Mate 60, they already know how to make 100 million Huawei Mate 60s.
China does not know how to think SMALL. It is unnatural and weird for them to think on a small scale. China has cities with populations larger than countries such as Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, even Australia. Thinking big is China’s default mentality.
New round of US sanctions started against Huawei! U.S. tech war enters stage 2.0!
In this episode, we dive into the latest updates on the potential second round of sanctions by the United States on Huawei. Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, unveiled its new smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro, sparking intrigue amidst ongoing U.S.-China tech tensions.
These cutting-edge smartphones, powered by 7-nanometer chips from China’s SMIC, bring 5G connectivity to the forefront.
The implications of this move are significant, causing a reevaluation of the technology blockade against Huawei and even calls for a complete halt to technology exports. We also explore China’s efforts to boost its self-sufficiency in chip production and navigate U.S. export restrictions.
But the worst part of my job is that I occasionally have to be the “male voice”.
One of my female colleagues will refer a call to me to tell a caller about some iron clad policy we have that we can never, ever overlook.
I am on the same pay level as all of them. I am not the manager. I often work in a different department. I am, however, the only one of this fairly large group of people that is male.
I tell them the iron clad policy. They shut up. End of story.
Part of the problem is that the engineering profession is still about 80% male, and so is the applicant base. They are not used to being told “no” by someone who isn’t male. It’s not like it’s just immigrants either.
Here’s the irony. The second highest ranking staff member, and the person two steps above me, is a woman. She’s had to put up with it too.
But I will tell you about my ex-colleague, boss and PEO president. She left her position as my boss to take on a five year position at the university she was hired by to get female enrollment in the engineering program up to 40%. It took her one year and she shot past the 40% goal to boot. Then she went to another university and did the same thing.
China’s LATEST Hypersonic Drone Can Destroy US F35 Stealth Fighter in Seconds
China’s hypersonic program has emerged as one of the biggest and heavily advanced sectors of the nation. In this remarkable sector, the PLA boasts having a drone in its arsenal which is capable of reaching hypersonic speeds and destroying world renowned stealth fighters that have dominated the aerial warfare sector for years. Today’s episode is covering China’s hypersonic drone and how it can be used to destroy US Stealth fighters.
Many of the westerners have been to China, like it, and see a lot of criticism of China in the western media which is based on planted information and is basically untrue, in order to drive western public opinion against China.
These westerners try to compensate for this distorted view by praising China. Their intention is to restore balance in how China is viewed.
Unfortunately, the western view of China has become so distorted that it is impossible to have a balanced view of China: either it is completely bad, or it is good.
A balanced view of China would say that there are many good things about China, and there are some bad things as well.
China is just like the US: it is just another country and society, each facing its own set of challenges.
I live in Northern Maine. My property borders a state park/forest. The state forest has a parking lot you need to pay to park in the lot although the park/forest is free to enter. Alot of people will park along the main road and walk into the park. my property is on a side road that is beside the park the park entrance is 2 mile up the main road from my road.
Some park/forest visitors have taken to pulling down my road and parking on my property and hiking across my property to enter the park. they block driveways and the road with poor parking abilities. Some pull into driveways.
My property is a farm I have many driveways used by tractors and equipment to enter the feilds for feeding livestock and tending crops. All driveways are gated (keep livestock in feilds and out of crops)
One group of annoying tourists pulled up in 3 vehicles (2 rvs and a 12–15 passenger van) All had New York plates. they pulled in blocking the access to the feilds and began hiking across my feilds. I caught up to them and informed them that they would be towed if they did not move the vehicles. The leader of the group told me to f-off while giving a one finger salute. I watched as they walked away across the feild. once they entered the park/forest I went to my equipment barn got my large green and yellow tractor hooked up a slurry spreader tank and drove over to the slurry bin and filled the tank. ( Slurry is cow manure that is mixed with water to make it able to spray) I adjusted the spray bar and drove over near the area and sprayed liquified manure (did not spay any on the vehicles) just near the road along the fence a nice heavy thick layer then sprayed more along the area they entered the forest. Since it was 85 degrees outside the smell would bake in the sun to keep it fresh I placed a water tank and sprayer/ sprinkler nearby and set the timers to run for 5 minutes every hour. After 4 hours I called and had the vehicles towed.
They returned and found me spraying slurry in my feilds as they walked across the feilds the slurry is sticking to the shoes (most wearing sandles or flip flops – Nothing like the feeling of liquid poop between the toes) They find the vehicles gone and ask me where they are. I tell them where the inpound lot is and inform them that as they exit onto the main road they should stop and read the large SIGN that says private road. I called the police who informed them that they could walk to impound as it was 20–30 minute walk down the road.
I would imagine that they found out that the oder of sun baked slurry permeates into things. (they left the widows open on the vehicles) and with what was on the shoes it must have been an interesting ride back to New York.
The problem with the EU is Josep the Chief Diplomat’s words do not represent the cohesive attitude, or indeed, policy decisions of the EU towards China. EU member states hold even more divergent and polarizing attitudes.
The fact of the matter is, the G7 does not have a China seat, but the EU gets its own seat, on top of individual EU members. The currencies of these nations power the global financial market, while the yuan issued by the world’s No. 2 economy is an afterthought in BIS reports.
Senior figures in the EU have repeatedly made rude and damaging attacks on China and Chinese interests, including the core issue of Greater China sovereignty. Entities and individuals have been sanctioned, just like their American counterparts, whose actions they mirrored.
Nord Stream is a key European infrastructure that cost billions to build. After it was bombed, the lack of condemnation for an act of war is curious, to say the least. Government findings were blocked from release, while there remains a shocking lack of blowback and demand for accountability in the press.
The EU-CHINA CAI, which is tilted in Europe’s favor, is also dead in the water, after 10 years of painstaking negotiation securing an agreement in principle. EU leaders are complaining about lack of market access in China, when it is self-inflicted.
There is also the issue of the EC, with Ursula completely at odds with Josep’s conciliatory, if shaky, diplomacy. She was given the cold shoulder on a recent visit to Beijing as Emmanuel’s invited partner. The message was clear. She wasn’t the guest invited by the Chinese state.
Who represents the EU? Who has the authoritative voice that can be trusted? How has the EU demonstrated long-term policy independence from the US?
Wang Yi, and before him, Yang Jiechi, have had regular hours-long closed door conversations with Jake, the National Security Advisor. Jake is 46, and not even elected, but he has access to top Chinese leadership that the EU can only dream of, because he is the personal envoy of Joe.
Do we really have to spell out who calls the shots in NATO, which is tied at the umbilical with the EU power structure?
During a 10-hour flight, she was heading from Seoul, Korea, to San Francisco, USA. This mother distributed more than 200 passengers on the plane a plastic bag for each one. The bag contains candy, chewing gum and earplugs as a kind of advance apology for using them in the event that her 4-month-old baby screamed during the flight.
The bag also contained a message containing (hello, I am Jan Woo. I am 4 months old and today I’m traveling America with my mom and grandmother for my aunt’s outfit. I’m a little nervous and scared. This is my first flight in my life. It’s normal for me to cry or cause some disturbance. I’ll try to stay calm, but I can’t promise you. Please use it if my voice gets too loud.. Enjoy your trip. Thank you)
Communism and Marxism is hardly an issue to the U.S. with Vietnam that the U.S. is courting shamelessly and Saudi Arabia a Islamic Monarchy hardly liberal democracy but does it bother Uncle Sam for the last half a century?
For me it is as simple as China cannot be made submissive and subservient to the U.S. that is all to it. And worst China is simply a lot lot more efficient and effective than the U.S. can ever be! In fact China has a better human rights record than the U.S. anyway! That perturb the US to no end.
But what is worst for the U.S. Is 150–175 nations out of the world’s 195 nation prefers Chinese and China way and none in the global south wants anything to do with Uncle Sam. They find them obnoxious and despicable. To me this is not due to China at all but due to the shit U.S. did to the world since 1945.
I know Americans who are mostly highly naive and hugely made ignorant to think the U.S. media or government is well liked by the world. But in truth it couldn’t be further than the truth!
Abusing nations has consequences, bullying nations turned them off, arbitrary sanctions puts nations off, they will hedge, they will stop letting you fxxk them! It does not matter what your media lies and your propaganda says. The world is no fool!
Just figure this. US the biggest murdering nation telling China in Alaska about human rights! Is totally laughable and utterly ridiculous! Chinese officials told Blinken save the advise for your dogs and slave vassal nations!
The “American Dream” is actual Slavery (It’s all a Lie)
I was an admin assistant at a department at my local university. I was just about to clock off and make my way home in a wild windstorm that eventually knocked down 20,000 trees across the city when for some reason I decided to check one of the grad student offices and discovered that the skylight had blown off, exposing multiple desks and computers, some of them running data, to the elements. I called the relevant campus department and was told that restoring electricity and clearing roads and whatnot took priority, and they likely wouldn’t get to replacing the skylight (which I’d located, but lacked the strength and roof access to lug it up myself) until the next day at the earliest. So I cracked open the earthquake kit and rigged, using tarps and duct tape, a patch, then moved, ever so carefully so as not to accidentally disconnect the computers, all six desks away from the skylight shaft, in case my patch failed.
This all took about four hours past my usual knock-off time. Everyone was really glad I’d taken the time and initiative to do it, but my supervisor refused even to consider giving me time off in lieu for those four hours because she hadn’t pre-approved them, never mind that, in those pre-cell days, I’d had no way of reaching her. So I appealed to the department head, who overrode her. She was livid, and thereafter made my life so miserable that I leapt at the first decent opportunity to leave.
People with no medical knowledge make decisions about whether a patient can have a medical procedure, overruling the attending physician.
Now, with the outsourcing of call centers, people with no medical knowledge in Jamaica, India, and Pakistan make those decisions.
Here are some typical costs in Uruguay:
Office visit: US $8.00
ER visit: US $ 10.00
House call: US $12.00.
Electrolyte blood analysis: US $7.11.
Cerebral CT Scan: US $23.29
If you call an ambulance, it arrives with a full-fledged MD, not an EMT.
Before I turned 70 years of age, I paid around US $55 per month for health coverage.
Now I pay around US $70 per month. For that, I get totally free hospital stays and all costs are free, including hospital stay, surgery, medications, doctor care, and nursing care. When you check out, regardless of what was done or how long you were hospitalized, you pay nothing.
The monthly cost for my cancer medication is around US $2.50. The same medication in the US is around $500.00.
It’s been proven China can with Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro.
Chinese companies can rival the giant U.S. tech companies like Intel, Apple and Nvidia but what takes time is building up the ecosystem to make this possible. Thousands of companies make up the support system that manufactures and supports the tools and machines for the manufacturing processes of semiconductors.
The most critical of these companies are in the design (specifically EDA tools) and packaging (chiplets) processes, as well as the lithography machines for the making of the chip itself. There are now Chinese companies with the leading edge (or close to) technologies to rival industry leaders.
Just as critical is the consolidating of resources and capabilities to have the companies to ensure adequate supply of legacy chips. These are actually the more important players because they make up 90% of demand.
U.S. sanctions have forced China to come up with its own self-siufficient semiconductor indiustry.
Chinese don’t necessarily support single party rule; they support a strong central government to maintain order.
Whether it is single party or not is secondary.
In today’s China, it is led by a single party, but it is much more than any western political party because it has 100M members who meet monthly to discuss local, provincial and central government issues, and how to solve them.
Do the Republican and Democratic parties ask their members to meet monthly to discuss how to solve social issues? I think not.
My point is not that one system is better than another, but they are very different, and talking about the ruling party in China being the same as the political parties in the US is silly and ridiculous, because China developed according to its historical conditions, and the US developed according to its historical conditions.
As Everyone’s Lοοking At Ιsrael, Something Τruly Unbelievable Has Begun Ιn America
Very interesting.
He’s saying that (it’s official) World War III is on-line.
People are imbued with cultural and religious ideas they don’t even recognize and simply take for granted.
I, an American, was imbued with the idea “I am my husband’s equal. In marriage we will have the same freedoms and similar expectations of each other. I would never shout at him for wearing shorts, so of course he will not do that to me. I don’t consider cooking his job, so I am sure he won’t consider it my job. I would always discuss a big purchase with him – and naturally he will give me the same respect.”
That sense of equality and “Don’t treat your spouse in a way you don’t want to be treated yourself” was my cultural norm.
I found that my husband had absolutely no cultural or religious norm of equality. He absolutely was willing to treat me in ways he would hate to be treated himself. He did not think a woman deserved what a man deserves.
He found it absolutely normal to expect control over me, and be resentful thst I didn’t make his life as comfortable as he believed a man’s life should be. He was constantly looking at the very unequal marriages of his (Muslim Arab) friends and resenting me for not being a submissive woman who cooked and cleaned and expected nothing but money from him.
My husband and I are in the same profession. I worked longer hours than him. I was also the one who was sometimes pregnant or recovering from childbirth.
But he could not appreciate me. He had a cultural and religious idea in his head : a man should come home from work and be catered to. Clean house, good food, obedient wife who wears certain clothes and lets her husband forbid her from certain activities or friends that do not please him. The man should be comfortable, should be served, should have things his way. (It is similar to the relationship between a dog owner and his dog. They love each other – but the owner does not think the dog should share in decisions or come and go as it pleases. A dog is expected to be happy being owned and trained and played with.)
My husband started off claiming he would love me forever.
It did not last.
But his cultural ideas of what a man is owed and how a wife must serve — those ideas will last in him forever.
Let’s answer this question using 5 Low IQ positions that the US politicians are taking –
Low IQ action 1 – Raimondo threatens Huawei before her China trip. She is simply arrogant and lacks intelligence. Who in the right mind threatens someone’s kid before visiting their home?
Low IQ action 2 – It is simply embarrassing to see a country using full state resources to bring down a private company. You brought an army to a fist fight and didn’t knock your much smaller opponent out!
Low IQ action 3 – The Western chips companies are making large profits selling products to China. And you stopped the sales and force your biggest customer to make their own?
Low IQ action 4 – You give billions of dollars of subsidies to your own chip companies to build factories. But you stop the demand from your top customer. So where are US companies gonna sell their excess chips to?
Low IQ action 5 – You take away Huawei’s access to Google and they went to develop their own operating system to threaten Google’s and Microsoft’s future dominance. You like shooting your own foot?
Irish Girl Watches MISTER ROGERS For The First Time
Oh nostalgia tv, except I don’t know who Mister Rogers is. I’ve always heard the name Mister Rogers as a reference in American tv and films but this Irish Girl had no idea who that was. Join me on a very emotional journey as I watch Fred Rogers first through last tv appearance, see him sing “I like you just as you are” and “ it’s a wonderful day in the neighbourhood” Mister Rogers Neighbourhood. Couldn’t we all do with some nice insight from a Fred Rogers right now.
I was in the US Army stationed in Germany for 3 and half years… Just turned 18. During this time I never took leave and went back. Travelled all over Europe! In Germany, I drunk my first beer, had my first kiss, and my first Girlfriend, was amazed by the people, the culture, the infrastructure, the cuisine, almost everything. I even took German courses and was proficient at least with speaking German. Anyway the day came, when i was being discharged ( I never really liked the army, andjoined for the Gi Bill) Back in the rural midwest, working at Walmart while going to community collage, I realized how much I missed Germany, the lifestyle, the urban vibe and so many things ( missed having a GF too, in the US I wasnt rich enough or cool enough to date anyone, in Germany this was never a thing at all, about money and all that. I decided if I was going to have a dull dead end life with no future, why not go back to Germany? At least have an adventure of some kind, i could always come back to the US.. 7 months after I ETSed ( left the army) I got a passport, got a cheap one way ticket and reconnected with some German civilians I knew.. I ended up staying in germany, has been 30 plus years now. I remember when the plane landed and I was disembarking, and set foot on the ground, I felt like,, this is it..the place you are meant to be.
I takes longer than that but slowly and surely it will.there is not even a speck of doubt. Tell me which nation wants to save in U.S. dollar reserve if can be confiscated away from you at the whims or fancies of the U.S? Do you want to keep your savings in a bank using a currency that the US can take it all away anytime it wants?
No one do, no want does, no one will ever want to. The fact that the US and the west can even phantom that by stealing gold from Venezuela and US dollar reserves from Russia is an acceptable behaviour tell how little the west thinks of the rest of the world.
Every nation on earth, even the US allies are figuring how to hedge against the US dollar. Direct Currency swap arrangement is very popular and it must have have grown several fold in the last year alone! Some agree on a basket of currencies, Others revert back to barter.
JEFFREY SACHS ON A HISTORIC DEBT
Israel Attacks Damascus Airport as IRAN Foreign Minister Plane Coming-in; Plane Forced to Divert
The Israeli Air Force fired missiles at Damascus Airport and Aleppo Airport this morning, just before a plane carrying the Iran Foreign Minister was approaching Damascus for an official state visit. The Iran Minister’s plane was forced to divert from the area to avoid conflict.
Attacking Syria was an illegal act of aggression by Israel. Conducting that attack while a Diplomat was approaching for a state visit is arguably an Act of War.
Damascus Airport is now damaged and closed. Aleppo Airport is also reported to be damaged and closed.
The Iran Foreign Minister plane appears to be returning to Iran.
Syrian Defense Ministry: “At approximately 1:50 pm this afternoon, the Israeli enemy simultaneously carried out an air aggression with bursts of missiles, targeting the international airports of Aleppo and Damascus, which led to damage to the airports’ landing strips and them being out of service.
This aggression is a desperate attempt by the criminal Israeli enemy to divert attention from the crimes it is committing in Gaza, and the great losses it is suffering at the hands of the Palestinian resistance.”
( HT Remark: Nothing like escalating the already bad situation with Gaza into an international incident with a foreign Diplomat. Unschooled, these Israelis. Totally devoid of class.)
According to our Singapore media reports, the cost of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail is approximately US$7.3 billion. We tentatively believe that this number is real.
So this figure exceeds the budget given by China when bidding for the project eight years ago by US$1.2 billion. The project completion time was delayed by 4 years than originally planned.
This doesn’t seem like a good number.
But compared to current plans in other countries around the world to build high-speed rail, these are two very good figures.
1. Cost per kilometer
Even calculated based on all costs after overruns (including land costs), the cost per kilometer of Indonesia’s high-speed rail is only US$58 million. The high-speed rail in the United Kingdom is US$300 million per kilometer, and the high-speed rail in California is US$200 million per kilometer.
India’s high-speed rail was originally planned to cost US$35 million per kilometer. However, it has not actually been completed yet. Only ten kilometers have been built. The cost has been doubled and the final cost cannot be estimated. Due to serious delays in construction, some experts predict that there is a high probability that the cost per kilometer will exceed US$80 million when completed.
2. Time spent
The Indian high-speed railway started construction one year earlier than the Indonesian high-speed railway and is scheduled to open in 2023. According to media reports some time ago, only 10 kilometers have been built so far. The completion date has been changed to 2028, but many experts believe that the actual completion time may be after 2032.
The first phase of the British high-speed railway is planned to build 160 kilometers. Construction will start in 2020 and is scheduled to be completed in 2029. It has now been changed to 2033. The real completion date cannot be determined.
Therefore, although the Indonesian high-speed railway experienced a 16% cost overrun and a 4-year construction delay. But this is mainly due to the virus problem over the past 3 years.
Judging from similar large-scale projects around the world, Indonesians have reached the top level in terms of project time and budget control.
I believe that for many years to come, no country will be able to surpass Indonesia’s level.
This is due to the efficient work of the Indonesian government, the unity and support of the Indonesian people, and the technology and efficiency of the Chinese. Their achievements deserve congratulations.
Star Trek – Fire On the Forcefield
America Can’t Stop China’s Rise — Foreign Policy
There’s little doubt that the American government has decided to slow China’s economic rise, most notably in the fields of technological development. To be sure, the Biden administration denies that these are its goals. Janet Yellen said on April 20, “China’s economic growth need not be incompatible with U.S. economic leadership. The United States remains the most dynamic and prosperous economy in the world. We have no reason to fear healthy economic competition with any country.” And Jake Sullivan said on April 27, “Our export controls will remain narrowly focused on technology that could tilt the military balance. We are simply ensuring that U.S. and allied technology is not used against us.”
Yet, in its deeds, the Biden administration has shown that its vision extends beyond those modest goals. It has not reversed the trade tariffs Donald Trump imposed in 2018 on China, even though presidential candidate Joe Biden criticized them in July 2019, saying: “President Trump may think he’s being tough on China. All that he’s delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers and consumers losing and paying more.” Instead, the Biden administration has tried to increase the pressure on China by banning the export of chips, semiconductor equipment, and selected software. It has also persuaded its allies, like the Netherlands and Japan, to follow suit. More recently, on Aug. 9, the Biden administration issued an executive order prohibiting American investments in China involving “sensitive technologies and products in the semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence sectors” which “pose a particularly acute national security threat because of their potential to significantly advance the military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities” of China.
All these actions confirm that the American government is trying to stop China’s growth. Yet, the big question is whether America can succeed in this campaign—and the answer is probably not. Fortunately, it is not too late for the United States to reorient its China policy toward an approach that would better serve Americans—and the rest of the world.
America’s decision to slow China’s technological development is akin to the folly revealed by the old cliché: closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. Modern China has shown many times that China’s technological development can’t be halted.
Since the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, several efforts have been made to limit China’s access to or stop its development in various critical technologies, including nuclear weapons, space, satellite communication, GPS, semiconductors, supercomputers, and artificial intelligence. The United States has also tried to curb China’s market dominance in 5G, commercial drones, and electric vehicles (EVs). Throughout history, unilateral or extraterritorial enforcement efforts to curtail China’s technological rise have failed and, in the current context, are creating irreparable damage to long-standing U.S. geopolitical partnerships. In 1993 the Clinton administration tried to restrict China’s access to satellite technology. Today, China has some 540 satellites in space and is launching a competitor to Starlink.
The same principle played out with GPS. When America restricted China’s access to its geospatial data system in 1999, China simply built its own parallel BeiDou Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) system in one of the first waves of major technological decoupling. In some measures, BeiDou is today better than GPS. It is the largest GNSS in the world, with 45 satellites to GPS’s 31, and is thus able to provide more signals in most global capitals. It is supported by 120 ground stations, resulting in greater accuracy, and has more advanced signal features, such as two-way messaging. Other nations have also previously tried and failed to block China’s technical rise. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the USSR withheld nuclear weapons technology from China, China launched its own “Manhattan Project” in the early 1960s and succeeded in testing its first nuclear weapon by 1964. Russian nuclear leverage over China ended that day.
Many of the measures taken by the Biden administration against China were also executed without factoring in China’s capacity to retaliate. While China does not physically construct many truly irreplaceable components of the American technology stack, they are keenly aware of the importance of their raw materials inputs (rare earths) and demand (revenue generation) in fueling the American innovation ecosystem and are now using them as leverage. In the current tit-for-tat dynamic, China will start squeezing these two critical ends of the value chain in response to American technology and capital export restrictions. China’s July ban of the gallium and germanium exports was merely an opening shot across the bow to remind America (and its aligned allies) of China’s dominance in the rare earths and critical metals space. The country has a near monopoly in the processing of magnesium, bismuth, tungsten, graphite, silicon, vanadium, fluorspar, tellurium, indium, antimony, barite, zinc, and tin. China also dominates in midstream processing for materials essential to most of America’s current and future technology aspirations such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper, which are critical for the rapidly developing EV industry globally.
While America and other neutral countries have mineral reserves of many of these materials, it would be naïve to believe that one can simply flip a switch on mining and production. It will take at least three to five years just to build the requisite extraction and processing infrastructure. This is to say nothing for recruiting and training skilled labor, or receiving requisite operational and environmental permits for such activities. Both could prove impossible. The processing of rare earths is a highly toxic and environmentally destructive endeavor. It’s unlikely such approvals will be granted. If Arizona is struggling to find qualified workers for its TSMC fabrication facility, and to address domestic union opposition to importing foreign skilled labor, it’s unlikely that America can develop similar capabilities for material processing. Along the way, China gets to play kingmaker in how it doles out access to its processed materials, likely restricting supply to American technology and defense giants. The failure to factor in China’s retaliatory capacities indicates that the United States doesn’t have a well-thought-out and comprehensive approach to dealing with China.
American measures to deprive China access to the most advanced chips could even damage America’s large chip-making companies more than it hurts China. China is the largest consumer of semiconductors in the world. Over the past ten years, China has been importing massive amounts of chips from American companies. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, China-based firms imported $70.5 billion worth of semiconductors from American firms in 2019, representing approximately 37 percent of these companies’ global sales. Some American companies, like Qorvo, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom, derive about half of their revenues from China. 60 percent of Qualcomm’s revenues, a quarter of Intel’s revenues, and a fifth of Nvidia’s sales are from the Chinese market. It’s no wonder that the CEOs of these three companies recently went to Washington to warn that U.S. industry leadership could be harmed by the export controls. American firms will also be hurt by retaliatory actions from China, such as China’s May ban on chips from US-based Micron Technology. China accounts for over 25 percent of Micron’s sales.
The massive revenue surpluses generated by these sales to China were ploughed into R&D efforts which, in turn, kept American chip companies ahead of the game. The Chamber of Commerce estimates that if the United States were to ban semiconductor sales to China completely, U.S. companies would lose $83 billion in annual revenues and would have to cut 124,000 jobs. They would also have to cut their annual R&D budgets by at least $12 billion, and their capital spending by $13 billion. This would make it even more difficult for them to remain competitive on the global scale in the long run. American semiconductor firms are painfully aware that U.S. actions against China in the chips arena will harm their interests more than Chinese interests. The U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association released a statement on July 17, saying that Washington’s repeated steps “to impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the U.S. semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China,” and called on the Biden administration not to implement further restrictions without more extensive engagement with semiconductor industry representatives and experts.
The Chips Act cannot subsidize the American semiconductor industry indefinitely, and there is no other global demand base to replace China. Other chip producing nations will inevitably break ranks and sell to China (as they have historically) and the American actions will be for naught. And, in banning the export of chips and other core inputs to China, America handed China its war plan years ahead of the battle. China is being goaded into building self-sufficiency far earlier than they would have otherwise. Prior to the ZTE and Huawei components bans, China was content to continue purchasing American chips and focusing on the front-end hardware. Peter Wennink, the CEO of ASML, stated that China is already leading in key applications and demand for semiconductors. Wennink wrote, “The roll-out of the telecommunication infrastructure, battery technology, that’s the sweet spot of mid-critical and mature semiconductors, and that’s where China without any exception is leading.”
Germany Just Warned Europe On “China’s Counterstrike Move” | Silent EV War Explodes
Simple, like the UK with Brexit, Germany should leave the EU. This will solve the problem, as Germany will then be able to distance itself from investigations implemented by the EU parliament.
Installing antennas and transmission lines on cellular towers.. Day in and day out we would climb 150, 200, 300feet and stay up there literally all day – often 10–12 hours.
Those heights were the norm, but I also did 400ft a couple of times, and then 500ft once.
And I did it because I needed a job and this paid really well. Plus I was a brand new divorcee and just starting over, so at the time working this tough, dangerous job with other guys was a very good thing for me. I made close friends, we partied and had fun, we laughed a lot, and it was just what the doctor ordered.
The end of Evergrande.
Bloomberg News has reported that billionaire founder and chairman Hui Ka Yan was taken away by police earlier this month and put under so-called residential surveillance , a type of police action that falls short of formal detention or arrest.
The surveillance doesn’t necessarily mean that Hui will be charged with a crime, and the exact circumstances of his situation remain unclear. But it’s not looking good: Evergrande has halted trading and confirmed in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing that authorities have told the company that Hui has been subjected to “mandatory measures,” due to “suspicion of illegal crimes.
The latest twist in an ongoing saga for the world’s most indebted developer has left creditors confused and concerned about what’s to become of their investments. The fate of the developer’s restructuring plans are now at risk, and the chances of a full-on liquidation have increased.
There’s a long list of victims: the hundreds of thousands of homeowners who bought into some 706 residential projects that are still being built; people who bought into Evergrande’s wealth management products, worth 40 billion yuan ($5.5 billion) a few years ago; global investors who collectively own at least $30 billion of offshore debt; suppliers and banks who are among those owed some 2.39 trillion yuan in liabilities. The company is facing more than 2,000 lawsuits, too.
I remember a time when Evergrande was still able to overcome its detractors. When a shortsellertargeted it for alleged financial mismanagement back in 2012, a Hong Kong tribunal provided vindication by saying the report was misleading and false.
But so much has changed since then: Evergrande has become a harbinger of the nation’s real estate meltdown. Its fate seemed to be sealed back in 2020, when a liquidity scare fueled by its massive debt load triggered aggressive regulatory tightening. Compounded by pandemic-related woes, the company defaulted the following year.
What happens after Evergrande? As we know, this property crisis is far from over. China’s property developers face a liquidity shortfall worth some 19 trillion yuan, or 15% of GDP, that could morph into a solvency crunch by year-end, Bloomberg analysts estimate.
Property downturns are always painful. In China, that’s especially the case because of the outsized role that the sector plays in the economy: As much as 70% of household wealthis tied to the industry.
The government has responded by relaxing property buying rules, since it doesn’t want the current distress among developers to trigger financial contagion — nor does it want to see social unrest.
Dragging out the Evergrande saga, though, has wreaked havoc among homebuyers, construction workers, suppliers and investors. And as the government has shown no intention of bailing out developers, the only certainty we’re left with is the idea that this pain is far from finished.
My ex was the CFO of one of the largest private construction companies in the world. His main role was to make sure the company stayed profitable. Simple really.
The owners’ son, who recently graduated from college and was having trouble finding gainful employment, (seems nobody would hire him to get stoned) was parachuted into my ex’s job. My ex was quickly let go.
He didn’t mind too much. Even though a little disappointed, he still was paid out fairly and started his own firm with the severance money.
A tender came up for a new skyscraper in London. My ex’s former company put in its bid and came in ahead of everyone else by millions. Turned out months into construction that the new CFO had forgotten to add the cost of electrical wiring into the cost of construction. A mistake that sent his family bankrupt.
Luckily there was one new firm with the creditor’s backing, experience and ability to jump in immediately. My ex hired a lot of the now redundant employees and bought a large chunk of his old company’s heavy equipment at a huge discount in a mortgagee sale.
The lesson here is to never kill the golden goose!
Elderly shelter cat had weeks to live. So this woman adopted him.
This woman is a saint! What she does for these cats is beyond compassion!
The Sixteenth Forum of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) took place from 25 to 27 September 2023 in Fuzhou, China, co-organised by Fujian Normal University. The theme of the forum was Chinese modernisaton and the prospects of world modernisation. Although unable to attend in person, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez was invited to submit a video presentation.
Carlos’s presentation, entitled Capitalist and socialist modernisation, takes up a number of questions: What is modernisation? Is modernisation desirable? How has modernisation been achieved in the West? What is China’s modernisation plan? What are the unique characteristics of Chinese modernisation? How does socialist modernisation differ from capitalist modernisation? What effect does China’s modernisation on the global journey towards development and socialism?
The video and the text of Carlos’s presentation are available below.
What is modernisation, and is it necessary?
Modernisation is a somewhat nebulous concept. It means different things to different societies at different times. By definition, its parameters are constantly changing.
In the broadest sense, it means adapting to the latest, most advanced ideas and techniques for meeting humanity’s material and cultural needs.
In sociology, there is more or less an equals sign between modernisation and industrialisation, and is generally held to begin with Britain’s Industrial Revolution. We can think of it essentially as the transition from ‘developing country’ status to ‘developed country’ status; from a predominantly rural society to a predominantly urban society; from a technologically backward society to a technologically advanced society.
Is this desirable? Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, but most people consider modernisation to be desirable, because it enables higher living standards for the masses of the people.
With modernised industry, production techniques, communication methods, transport systems, energy systems and healthcare strategies, there exists the possibility of providing a healthy, meaningful and dignified life to all, such that each individual has reliable access to a healthy diet, to decent housing, to clothing, to education, to healthcare, to a vibrant cultural, social and intellectual life, and to fulfilling work. In short, modernisation makes it possible to attend to people’s basic human rights.
The fruits of modernisation have thus far been divided extremely unequally: the process of industrialisation in North America, Europe and Japan has created previously unimaginable wealth for a few, but this has been accompanied by desperate poverty and alienation for significant numbers. However, modernisation creates a material basis for common prosperity, far beyond what a pre-modern economy can offer.
Specifically in the case of China, the government has set a goal of “basically realising socialist modernisation by 2035”, and has defined some parameters for this:
Reaching a per-capita GDP on a par with that of the mid-level developed countries such as Spain or the Czech Republic
Joining the ranks of the world’s most innovative countries in the realm of science and technology
Becoming a global leader in education, public health, culture and sport
Substantially growing the middle-income group as a proportion of the population
Guaranteeing equitable access to basic public services
Ensuring modern standards of living in rural areas
Steadily lowering greenhouse gas emissions and protecting biodiversity, so as to restore a healthy balance between humans and the natural environment
If achieved, these aims will constitute a significant – indeed world-historic – improvement in the living standards of the Chinese people, and will blaze a trail for other developing countries.
How did the West modernise?
But is China doing anything new? After all, it won’t be the first country to achieve modernisation.
In mainstream modernisation theory in the West, the dominant narrative is that the countries of Western Europe, North America and Japan achieved their advances via a combination of good governance, liberal democracy, free-market economics, scientific genius, geographical serendipity and a dash of entrepreneurial spirit.
Historical investigation reveals a considerably different story.
The most important precursors of the West’s modernisation are colonialism, slavery and genocide. The conquest of the Americas, the settlement of Australia, the transatlantic slave trade, the colonisation of India, the rape of Africa, the Opium Wars, the theft of Hong Kong, and more. The profits of colonialism and the slave trade were essential for propelling the West’s industrialisation, as was so eloquently uncovered in Eric Williams’ classic 1944 work, Capitalism and Slavery.
As Karl Marx famously wrote in Volume 1 of Capital: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”
Such is the ugly truth of European modernisation. And the story is not so different in the United States. Many of the so-called founding fathers of that country were slave-owners, and they established a slave-owners’ society. They went to war against the indigenous peoples and against Mexico in order to expand their territory.
In the 20th century, having established their domination over the Americas, they constructed a neocolonial global system that is still in place to a significant degree, imposing American hegemony on the world.
A network of 800 foreign military bases. NATO. An enormous nuclear arsenal. Genocidal wars waged on Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Systems of economic coercion and unilateral sanctions.
This is the global system of violence that has facilitated and accompanied North American modernisation.
Japan’s rapid rise was facilitated first by its brutal expansionist project in East Asia, particularly Korea and China, and then through adaptation to and integration with the US-led imperialist system, the much-vaunted ‘rules-based international order’.
South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan Province constitute the small handful of non-imperialist territories that have been able to achieve modernisation, but these are special cases. Their shared proximity to China and the DPRK is no coincidence; they have been inducted into the imperialist club by the US, to play a dual role as regional policemen and living advertisements for capitalism on the frontline of its confrontation with socialism. Both roles rely on at least a certain degree of prosperity for a section of the population.
There is no shortage of countries of the Global South which have attempted to apply the “liberal democracy plus free market capitalism” formula, but none have been successful in modernising. Indeed the West’s prescriptions for (and interference in) developing countries have largely led to chaos and disaster.
The contrast between the West’s success in modernising and the Global South’s failure has fed into a largely unspoken but widespread and pernicious racism: an assumption that white people are somehow inherently more advanced than everyone else.
This supremacism is allowed to fester, because in addition to dividing working class and oppressed communities, it provides convenient cover for the reality that capitalist modernisation is built on the foundations of colonialism, imperialism and hegemonism.
As Kwame Nkrumah commented, “in the era of neocolonialism, under-development is still attributed not to exploitation but to inferiority, and racial undertones remain closely interwoven with the class struggle.”
How is China modernising?
China’s journey towards modernisation starts in 1949 with the founding of the People’s Republic, the early construction of socialist industry, land reform and the extirpation of feudalism and the landowning class, and the provision of at least basic levels of education and healthcare services to the whole population.
In 1963, Premier Zhou Enlai, supported by Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun, first raised the question of the Four Modernisations: of agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology. Despite a complex political environment this goal was revived in the early 1970s, and, with the launch of reform and opening up in 1978, China accelerated its pursuit of those goals, and ushered in an era of rapid development of the productive forces and improvement in the people’s living standards.
China’s journey of modernisation has evolved again in recent years with the pursuit of the second centenary goal: of building a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by 2049.
China is on a fast track to becoming an advanced, developed country, and this process stands in stark contrast to the West’s modernisation process:
First, China’s modernisation is built on the efforts of the Chinese people rather than on war, colonialism and slavery.
Second, its fruits are to be shared by everybody, not dominated by the wealthy. As General Secretary Xi Jinping said in his work report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China’s modernisation is “the modernisation of common prosperity for all.”
Even today, not everyone in the West is able to enjoy the fruits of modernisation. Consider for example the US, where tens of millions lack access to healthcare; where over half a million people are homeless; where life expectancy for African Americans is six years less than for their white counterparts; where – according to the US Department of Education – over half of adults read below a sixth-grade level.
Third, China’s modernisation is becoming a green modernisation, fuelled by clean energy, careful not to destroy the planet that sustains us. Again quoting Xi Jinping’s work report, “it is the modernisation of harmony between humanity and nature.”
Capitalist modernisation has had a disastrous impact on the environment. With 4 percent of the global population, the US alone is responsible for 25 percent of historic greenhouse gas emissions. The simple fact is that humanity literally cannot afford for China’s modernisation to follow this pattern.
Socialist modernisation will become the ‘new normal’
The West’s modernisation path is not open to the countries of the Global South, and it wouldn’t be desirable even if it were. Today, the road of capitalist modernisation is closed, so how is China able to modernise?
China does not have an empire, formal or informal, but it does have a particular advantage of being a socialist state, a “people’s democratic dictatorship based on the alliance of workers and peasants”, to use Mao Zedong’s expression. Such a state can use its power to direct economic activity towards the goals of the social classes it represents.
Thus the specificities of China’s modernisation – the commitment to common prosperity, to ending poverty and underdevelopment, to preventing climate collapse and to peaceful development – are a function of China’s political system, its revolutionary history, and the leadership of the CPC.
At a meeting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2016, Xi Jinping made this point very succinctly: “Our greatest strength lies in our socialist system, which enables us to pool resources in a major mission. This is the key to our success.”
Or as Deng Xiaoping famously commented in 1984: “the superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of the productive forces than under the capitalist system.”
In a world still largely dominated by capitalism – and an intellectual world still dominated by bourgeois ideology – it’s easy to forget this system’s fundamental and irreconcilable contradictions, which Marx identified with such clarity and profundity 150 years ago; contradictions which lead inexorably to inefficiency, stagnation and crisis. A political economy directed at the production of exchange values rather than use values can never result in common prosperity.
In China, the capitalist class is not the ruling class and is therefore not able to direct the country’s resources according to its own prerogatives. At the top level, resources are allocated by the state, in accordance with long-term planning carried out by, and in the interests of, the people.
This is what is enabling a new type of modernisation, which is blazing a trail for socialist and developing countries the world over.
The fruits of this process are being shared with the world, via mechanisms such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Development Initiative, which are creating a path for the countries of the Global South to break out of underdevelopment, even where they lack China’s resources and political advantages.
As such, China’s evolving modernisation has great historic significance, and offers valuable lessons for the world. It is an embodiment of historical materialism in the current era: capitalism has long since exhausted its ability to fundamentally drive human progress, and therefore the future lies with socialism.
Galvarino was a legendary warrior of the Mapuche people who rebelled against the Spanish Conquers who had invaded their land.
The Mapuche people were natives of the Araucana region of Chile who fought against the Spanish conquest of South America. The Arauco War was the bloodiest and longest-running battle in the history of the New World.
In what became known as the Battle of Lagunillias, Galvarino led his people in a fight against the Spanish invaders who were trying to force them into servitude.
During the battle, Galvarino and his men were captured by the Spanish. As punishment for defying the Spanish, Galvarino had both his hands amputated at the wrists and sent him home as a message to the other Mapuche tribes.
image 107
He returned home defeated and severely wounded. He showed the war council his wounds and begged them to let him lead an army against their oppressors. For his bravery, he was named commander of a squadron of men in a fight against Governor Mendoza.
With long Sharp knives fastened to his mutilated stumps, he led his army into battle against Governor Mendoza and his men. The Brutal battle lasted for an hour, with Galvarino striking and killing Mendoza’s number two in command with his modified stumps.
image 73
Although Galvarino and his men fought a brave battle, they were soon overwhelmed and captured. All the remaining captured warriors including Galvarino, were executed on the orders of Governor Mendoza.
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
image 106
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 :-
image 105
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
Lego just hit a climate BRICK wall
Lego says that it cannot make bricks from recycled material. They tried and they simply cannot do it without increasing carbon emissions. That’s a refreshing admission. Most companies take on “green initiatives” anyway, even if they prove to make the problem worse. In a similar vein, the CEO of Lufthansa admitted that“going green” would require the airline to use up HALF of Germany’s electricity. So not green at all then. Meanwhile, Ford says that it will pause construction of a $3.5 billion plant to build EV batteries in Michigan. They aren’t saying why. It just goes to show: It ain’t easy being green.
You’ve probably heard of China’s ambitious plan to connect the world with its Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI for short. It’s a massive project that involves building roads, railways, ports, pipelines, and other infrastructure across Asia, Africa, Europe, and beyond. China says it’s a win-win situation for everyone, a way to boost trade, development, and cooperation among more than 140 countries that have signed up for it.
But not everyone is buying it. Some critics in the West say that the BRI is a trap, a scheme, or a tool for China to expand its power and influence at the expense of other countries. They say that the BRI is saddling poor countries with unsustainable debt, damaging the environment and human rights, and undermining the international order. They also say that the BRI is losing steam due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the backlash from some host countries, and the changing global dynamics.
So what’s the real story? Well, if you listen to what China has to say on its official websites, you’ll get a very different picture. According to them, the BRI is not losing steam at all. In fact, it’s gaining momentum and achieving positive results in various aspects.
First of all, they say that the BRI has shown strong resilience and vitality amid the COVID-19 pandemic. China has actively cooperated with other BRI partners to fight against the virus, provide medical supplies and vaccines, share prevention and treatment experiences, and support economic recovery. The BRI has also contributed to the global efforts to build a community of health for all.
Secondly, they say that the BRI has promoted high-quality development and green cooperation. China has adhered to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits, and has followed the international rules and standards in implementing BRI projects. China has also attached great importance to environmental protection, social responsibility, and debt sustainability, and has encouraged green investment and financing under the BRI framework.
Thirdly, they say that the BRI has enhanced mutual trust and friendship among different countries and peoples. The BRI has fostered dialogue and exchange among different civilizations, cultures, and religions, and has supported education, culture, tourism, sports, media, and other fields of people-to-people cooperation. The BRI has also created opportunities for poverty alleviation, job creation, livelihood improvement, and social development for millions of people in the participating countries.
So there you have it. The BRI is not losing steam but rather advancing steadily and fruitfully. The BRI is not a solo show by China but a chorus by all participants. The BRI is not a challenge or threat to anyone but a benefit and opportunity for everyone. The BRI is not a zero-sum game but a win-win cooperation for common development. That’s what China wants you to believe. And if you don’t believe it, well, too bad for you. Because China is not going to stop or change its course anytime soon. It’s going to keep pushing forward with its vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.
Why Australia’s Housing Crisis Is a Warning for the World
They weren’t misled by Russian trolls. They weren’t ignorant. They weren’t racist or sexist or xenophobic or homophobic. They were mad… they felt left behind and ignored by the media and the federal government… and they had a point.
They were left behind, and ignored.
For many of them, the America their parents and grandparents grew up in was a lot better. And no, that’s not because other groups were oppressed. It was because the economy was better for working-class people back then.
If your grandparents raised a large family on a single income, while the media and politicians cared about what your grandparents cared about, and now, 50 years later, you and your wife can’t get by on your dual incomes, and the media and politicians spend more time talking about transgender bathroom usage than the fact that families like yours are falling further behind each year… then yes, you have a point, and Make America Great Again makes sense.
Blueberry Grunt
2023 10 14 11 57
Ingredients
4 cups fresh blueberries
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
Instructions
In a skillet, combine blueberries, sugar and water; bring to a boil. Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
In a bowl, combine the next 6 ingredients; stir in milk just until moistened (dough will be stiff).
Drop by tablespoonsful over blueberries.
Cover and cook for 10 to 15 minutes or until dumplings are puffed and test done.
All terrorism in the world is linked to the United States! It is no longer a secret that the United States Government supports terrorism in South-East Asia!
US-backed Terrorism Targets Vietnam & Myanmar in Wider War on China
Two terrorist attacks this month (June 2023) in Southeast Asia have been carried out by groups backed by the United States government and its allies for decades;
This includes a singer murdered in Myanmar and a series of armed attacks carried out on police stations in Vietnam killing 9 including several civilians;
British state media, the BBC, and US government-funded media platform Radio Free Asia have attempted to spin and even justify this terrorism as part of a much wider pattern promoting and defending terrorism as a means to counter China’s rise and punish nations working closely with China;
The opposition in Myanmar has openly been backed by the US and UK for decades – fighting to reinstall Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy back into power;
In Vietnam, the ethnic Montagnards had fought alongside US invaders in the Vietnam War, and since then have worked closely with the US through the National Endowment for Democracy toward separatism;
Much of this context is omitted from Western state-media accounts of the terrorism;
Both Myanmar and Vietnam’s current governments have close relations with China. Vietnam, while depicted in the Western media as “anti-China,” has worked with China to build infrastructure within its borders and access Chinese rail projects to bring their products all the way to Europe;
Why Companies That Go Woke Go Broke
I saw the title and I instantly clicked to watch, really wanted to see a documentary about all these companies that went woke, then broke!
Well one fairly amazing thing happened in Penang. I (white Australian) was speaking to my friend (Asian Australian) in English.
An American tourist interrupted us and asked “excuse me, do you speak English?” We were both quite shocked and I said “a little.” I don’t know if she really couldn’t understand Australian English and didn’t realise what language I was speaking.
She said “Can you direct me to XYZ hotel?”
Now ordinarily two Aussies, neither of whom have ever been to Malaysia and speak no Malay wouldn’t be the best choice. But I pointed to the building we were standing in front of and said “walk about 10 yards that way.”
She was WAY out of her depth and her next international holiday should probably be to Hawaii.
However, I did the opposite in Austria. I speak no German, but if I look at a menu and plan out my sentence I can pretend to. So I asked in perfect German “Could I please have 2 hot chocolates; one with whipped cream and one with rum thanks.” She answered with something as simple as “that will be 8 euros” and I looked at her blankly and said in English “I’m sorry, I don’t speak German.” She laughed and did the transaction in English. She said I fooled her.
Pretty much the same thing in Poland, back in the days before Schengen membership. Apparently I needed a visa. So they berated me in Polish for a while, and I said I didn’t speak Polish. They went to the lingua franca of Eastern Europe and said “something something Russky.” I replied with what I’m told is an excellent accent “nye poni mayu po Russkiy.”
Here’s a guy in Lithuania, driving an Estonian-registered car, saying in perfect Russian in response to a question IN Russian “I don’t understand Russian.” I’m sure they weren’t thrilled and may not have believed me but I looked blankly at the rest of their diatribe. So eventually they wrote down my name, pointed me to Vilnius and said “visa.”’
Almost every Chinese City beats Indian Cities hollow in terms of Cleanliness, Safety and Development
image 113image 114
There are Primarily three reasons for this :-
A. One Party Meritocracy & Funds
In China, fund allocation for Cities and their overall Urban development is based on the Urban Development Index (UDI) plus between 15% upto 46% of the revenue generated by a City is used by the Local Government of that Province and the Administration of that City to develop the place
There is no political rivalries or party based discrimination between Fund Allocation and Revenue sharing
It’s all about How much the City develops and how well maintained the City is
In India, funding is a nightmare because the State themselves have no claim over the money they generate as revenue. Everything is handed over to the Centre which then decides how much each State should get and then the State decides how much each City should get
China has 20 times the provincial autonomy than an Indian State
B. Continuous Development to prevent overcrowding
India keeps on dumping on the same city again and again for year after year. Thus every such city attracts migrants like flies and that leads to overcrowding of the worst order
China keeps developing and expanding new Cities regularly
Chengdu, Chongqing etc were small towns a decade or so ago that are now bustling cities, brimming with Prosperity
Urumqi was once a town , now it’s classified as a Tier 3 City
Thus if you notice Shanghai and Beijing both lost 4% and 5.6% of the population due to migration between 2013–2023 whereas Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad netted between 7.6% and 12% SURPLUS population by migration between 2008–2023
C. Chinas Housing Policy
Everyone living with a proper Job in a City in China MUST have housing
This is a law from the time of Chairman Mao and when it’s a Chairman Mao law, it’s enforcement is very strict
Public Housing is thus available for every single resident of the city including the poorest of them
Only Shanghai and Beijing has slums today , which existed before the 1998 law and thus can’t be torn down
image 112
If you have a legitimate job in CQ City, you get a Public Apartment of 39–52 Square Meters with indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning and gas and electricity and drinking water for a mere 78 RMB / month
Of course many Chinese become prosperous enough to rent much nicer places and sub lease their public homes for which they pay rent of 78 RMB/ month for 400–500 RMB / month
During Covid 19, many such people were discovered and fined very heavily (30, 000 RMB plus 60 months rent or 100 Days in Prison)
A Fourth reason is the fact that Migration into Cities is heavily controlled
You just can’t come to a City that easily without housing or a job unless you are a tourist there
In India it’s the opposite
You can flood into cities and sleep on the roads and everywhere else and even defecate
It’s like a Zoo
image 110image 111
So it’s the Chinese System
They may have their flaws but by God they have excellent City maintenance and keep themselves very clean
image 109
Their Air Quality improvement in a mere decade is something every nation takes notes on
image 108
Primarily another reason is the Chinese are proud of their country and love their country
Not the bogus love that Indians show which translates into defending India for all it’s weaknesses, glorifying mediocrities as superheroes, forcing people to stand up for the National Anthem etcetera
The genuine love that ensures they actively take pride in their development and their cities
When stray cats see this man, they compete with each other to get a place on his lap.
On a somber note, the Israeli destruction on Palestine is a (text book) genocidal event. This is just as disturbing to me as the complete killing off of all the males in Ukraine.
There is something truly evil about the oligarchy that rules the West.
Their “heads aren’t screwed on tight”. They are unhinged and behaving in complete disregard for their fellow humans.
No care towards humanity.
Which means that they have evolved into something NOT HUMAN.
I shake my head in sadness.
As Everyone’s Lοοking At Ιsrael, Something Τruly Unbelievable Has Begun Ιn America
I bought a used coat from a yard sale and months later, when it turned cold, I put the jacket on and noticed a hand written note in the left pocket. It had listed things to buy at Ace Hardware.
It said Lye, ropes, tape and a small shovel.
Next to the list was the actual receipt showing the stores name, what was bought and exactly when.
I thought it seemed suspicious so I took it to the local police and they ran the info I had against an unsolved murder case.
After pulling the archived video from Ace Hardware, it was clear who the man was and after interrogating him and his fake alibi, he broke down and admitted that he was the one who picked up a 22 year old hitchhiker and raped and murdered her.
He forgot about the note and receipt in his left pocket.
He was also left handed. Had he not written it himself, it would not have proved anything, but it matched the handwriting analysis.
He also had no idea his wife sold the old jacket in a yard sale months earlier. That simple task on her part, cost him his life and he sits on death row today.
You just never know what you’re gonna get for three dollars at a yard sale.
A strategic nightmare sneaks into Washington’s political agenda: Global Times editorial
By Global Times Published: Oct 14, 2023 12:38 AM
This is horrifying. -MM
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A simultaneous war with China and Russia is a strategic nightmare that sober American strategists such as Henry Kissinger have been warning the US to avoid at all costs, and it is also a topic that some US media outlets have become more and more fond of talking about in recent years. At least from the publicly available information, Washington has never previously addressed it as a formal political agenda, supposedly aware of its seriousness and the terrible risks it carries. But the publication of a report by a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel titled America’s Strategic Posture crossed this “red line” on October 12.
The central point of the 145-page report is that the US must expand its military power, particularly its “nuclear weapons modernization program,” in order to prepare for possible simultaneous wars with China and Russia. Notably, the report diverges completely from the current US national security strategy of winning one conflict while deterring another, and from the Biden administration’s current nuclear policy. It is not a fantasy among the American public, but a serious strategic assessment and recommendation in the service of policymaking.
The 12-member panel that wrote the report was hand-picked by the US Congress from major think tanks and retired defense, security officials and former lawmakers. This report makes us feel that a “strategic nightmare” is sneaking into the US political agenda, but has not drawn due concern and vigilance in Washington, and to a large extent, the American elite group represented by the panel is actively working to make this nightmare come true.
A look at the specific recommendations of this report will send shivers down the spine of those who retain any basic rationality. The report recommends that the US deploy more warheads, and produce more bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missile submarines, non-strategic nuclear weapons and so on. It also calls on the US to deploy warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and to consider adding road-mobile ICBMs to its arsenal, establishing a third shipyard that can build nuclear-powered ships, etc.
What depths of insanity is the US sinking to? The US’ military spending accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s total defense expenditures, and it has been growing dramatically for several years, with military spending in 2023 reaching $813.3 billion, more than the GDP of most countries, but even that is not enough for these politicians. Such a report full of geopolitical fanaticism and war imagery, whether or not it actually ends up as a “guide” for Washington’s decision-making, is dangerous and needs to be resisted and opposed by all peace-loving countries.
According to some American media, the report ignores the consequences of a nuclear arms race. In fact, the report doesn’t seem to consider this at all and doesn’t suggest any measures other than nuclear expansion to address this issue. In other words, it is a reckless approach. Both China and Russia are nuclear powers, and everyone knows that provoking a confrontation between nuclear powers is a crazy idea. Even promoting a nuclear arms race under the banner of “deterrence” is a disastrous step backward in history. Washington’s political elites, who lived through the Cold War, cannot be unaware of this. However, the fact that such an absurd and off-key report is being presented in all seriousness by the US Congress is both surreal and unsurprising. It is in line with the distorted political atmosphere in Washington today.
The motives behind this exaggeration of threats and creating a warlike atmosphere are highly suspicious. The recent outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict caused a sharp increase in US defense industry stocks, while American defense industry companies have also been the biggest beneficiaries of the long-standing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The military-industrial complex, like a geopolitical monstrosity, parasitically clings to American society, manipulating its every move, pushing Washington step by step to introduce and even prepare for ideas that were once considered “impossible.”
The prosperity of the American military-industrial complex is built upon blood and corpses, and carries a primal guilt. Serving the interests of the American military-industrial complex is unethical.
The reality is that such rhetoric is becoming increasingly politically acceptable in today’s Washington. The idea of “preparing for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China,” once a fringe fantasy, has gradually made its way into Washington’s agenda, which is deeply unsettling.
If Washington were to adopt even a small portion of the recommendations in this report, the harm and threats it could pose to world peace would be immeasurable and would ultimately backfire on the US itself.
There is an old Chinese saying: “Those who play with fire will perish by it.” This is something that is worth Washington’s careful consideration.
In 1980 my boss had left the company and had planned to sell his very nice 1970 Buick LeSabre for $500. One Monday I came into my office and the keys to the Buick were on my desk with a note saying that the automatic transmission was bad and that it would cost more than the car was worth and that I could have it for $25 since that is all the wrecking yard would give him.
I picked up the car one evening and was able to make it part way home before the “transmission” problem occurred.
Fortunately, I was near the company parking lot where I left the car. The next morning, in daylight, with the help of my brother-in-law, we discovered that the “transmission problem” was actually the air conditioning compressor intermittently locking up and putting a severe drag on the engine.
Since it was fall in southern California, we just cut off the single belt that drove the AC compressor and the car ran great. Months later, a neighbor was putting a Chevy V8 into a Toyota pickup and gave me the AC compressor, which we installed on the Buick. And the AC worked perfectly.
I told my boss how we fixed the “transmission” problem and offered him $500 for the Buick.
He declined and said I should keep the car for $25.
I told him I didn’t want my wife driving a $25 car, so he agreed to $250.
That summer I decided to install an aftermarket cruise control unit on the Buick and while routing wires under the dash, I noticed a small spring, not unlike the ones in ball point pens, was broken in an AC/heater duct. I replaced that spring (cost was less than $1) and noticed that the AC was coming out of the dash vents where previously it was just coming from the floor.
When I next saw my former boss, he said that he had taken the Buick to the dealership to complain about the AC/heat not coming from the dash vents, and they told him that to fix the problem they would have to remove the dash and it would cost more than the car was worth.
I put an additional 100K miles on that car and only recall replacing the brakes and a distributor, in addition to routine maintenance. In 1992, as I was moving to Texas from NJ, a co-worker asked if I would sell him the car, which I did.
As an aside, my former boss went to work for a company that made high power gas lasers, costing at that time about $25,000.
At my next company, I needed one of those lasers. I happened to mention to my former boss at a conference that I hoped to buy one of those lasers, but didn’t have the budget.
A few weeks later, a high power gas laser unexpectedly arrived on the shipping dock!
I called my former boss and he said if and when I get the budget, let him know and he will replace the “loaner” laser with a new one. Probably a year or so later, I did find the money and paid for the “loaner” laser.
My former boss’s company also made an even higher power laser for $50,000. I later wondered if I had given him $500 for the car if he would have shipped a $50K “loaner.”
I would ask him, but he passed away, way too young, years ago.
Rest in peace, Dean…
Life in URUGUAY! – South America’s Richest and Safest Country
As an Uruguayan I want to make a comment. First, great video, mostly accurate expect for a couple of details.
When you show the ‘gauchos” those look more like people on horses from Bolivia or Peru, or even maybe somewhere in northern Argentina or Chile. Because, first of all, in Uruguay, the gaucho’s “poncho” is usually made of plain dark colors, and most important, we do not have mountains, like the ones you show. About population “skin” color, let me make some remarks.
The original population in Uruguay is around 90% of European descent, and when I say European I mean, from all over Europe, including countries like: Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Russian, Denmark, etc. Not only Southern Europe. So there are a lot of fair skin color people including blonde, blue eyes.
But what has been happening in the last decade is that there’s a large immigration wave, such as from the Caribbean countries, as well as from the rest of Latin America.
So, the demographic is changing rapidly because Uruguayan’s population as you established is very small, so the culture is also changing, including the food and even the language…
2500 Foreigners have been invited to the Hangzhou Asian Games in China
Ordinary Foreigners
From US, Canada, Europe and Japan and South Korea
Fully paid for, Business Class Tickets, Five Star Pampering
All China asks them to do is to cover the Games on their Social Media (TikTok mainly or YT or Instagram)
The result is despite the Western Media almost entirely ignoring the Asian Games, a whopping 673 Million people worldwide are watching the events
This is China’s Strategy to counter thr Western Media
Not launching their own MSM and insanely and making accusations
Instead , they bring ORDINARY PEOPLE and treating them to what China looks like and spreading the message
A Popular Teenager goes home and says “Man do you know China is so different from what we hear in our TV channels”
Slowly this gains traction
It’s a long term plan targeting the 19–24 year olds today and gradually influencing the Younger Generation
The key reason is INFLUENCE
The 12–36 year old US Generation doesn’t view China as an enemy but as a neutral country or as a mutually beneficial country
Yet 36–65 year old Americans, the MSM influenced generation see almost 75% of them view China as an enemy
China is slowly influencing the younger generation and in a way that US simply cannot comprehend
Long term, slow and PATIENTLY
Every year you have 20,000 Vloggers invited to China and cover China positively
They influence around 60 Million -150 Million people
Tourvashu is one of these
He influences 2 Million Indians
Most are 16–20 year olds
More likely to watch Tourvashu than Palki Or Gravitas or Arnab
Slowly the Younger Indians will be influenced and say “Yaar Tune Chaayina ka wo Video dekha. Mast tha”
So you wonder why Apple is not banned. In China?
Same reason
It’s not the Chinese way
These Brash, Useless and Economically unsound tactics are not something the Chinese do
China will encourage Apple, use it as a gold standard to develop their own industry, and undercut the iphone eventually
Take the Chinese High Speed Rail
In 2005, Chinese imported exclusively their Boring Machines (Germany, Switzerland), Engines (Japan, Spain), Software (UK, Singapore, US) and Electronics (Japan, S Korea)
Today nearly 90% of their High Speed Rail Supplies are COMPLETELY MADE IN CHINA with same or better quality
They have decimated TBM markets in Germany with export shares plummeting from 69% in 2000 to 11% in 2023
Took them 17–18 years
That’s how China works
These loser protectionism bans don’t work for China
They COMPETE and UNDERCUT and enhance quality with competition
The Trump Ban begun in 2019
So the key is to see if China will beat the Apple and undercut the company by 2036–2037
I am willing to guarantee that they will
It’s what they do
Kind of their Mantra
Banning is what Losers do
Competing and beating with Economics is what Winners do
When I was a young boy I used to get teased a lot in school and I didn’t have many friends. I was a fat kid and often got called a “fat slob”, “pig”, and “smelly or “stinky”. I took a bath at least once a week, more in the summer, and tried to keep clean so I knew I was just getting teased because I was fat. When I was eleven my best friend’s mom drove us home from baseball practice one day. Out of the blue she turned to me in the back seat and said, “Andy, you smell and you need to bathe more often.” She did not say it in a mean way but in a stern businesslike manner. My best friend was horrified and said nothing.
When I got home I immediately took a shower and wondered about what was going on. Obviously, I’d been sweaty from practice but she must have known that. As I thought it over, it also dawned on me that my skinny little sister often got teased as “smelly” too. I’d always assumed she got it from association with me, not because she smelled. So I told my mom what happened and asked her to tell me honestly if I smelled. She said, “no” and started to get a little upset about my best friend’s mom saying that to me.
I went to play outside and saw one of my classmates across the street. We had an on-again/off-again friendship up to that point. I guess we were what you might call “frenemies” today but at this point in time, we were more on the friendly side. I decided to get his opinion believing he wouldn’t hold back. In fact, he had teased me before about being smelly. So I asked him straight-up, “Do I smell?” He answered very matter-of-factly, “yes”. “My sister too?” “Yes, her too,” he replied. Then I asked him what we smelled like. He then told me that this had actually been a subject of discussion among his family who did not want me or my sister in their house because of our smell. He said his parents said we smelled like “old books”. Immediately, this brought to mind the set of Encyclopedia Britannicas I had in my bedroom closet. I immediately went home to check them out. Not only were they covered in mold but vast sections of my closet and room had mold. In fact, I found it throughout our home. But it didn’t smell to me. I was used to it. We all were. We lived in the woods surrounded by soggy tree pools so our home was often damp. We had no AC nor did we need it. This was back in 1972 before the internet and all the scares about the dangers of mold.
I told my mother what I’d learned and was able to convince her this was what was causing my sister and me to smell and probably her too. We cleaned everything with bleach, aired out the house, and bought dehumidifiers. From then on I showered every day. My friends all told me I no longer smelled. That following summer I also worked my ass off to get physically fit. I don’t know how many more years I might have suffered but for this very simple and brutally honest admonition from my friend’s mother. To this day, my best friend of 58 years still tells me how embarrassed he was that his now-deceased mother said that to me. And I always remind him she did me one of the greatest favors of my life.
Flip Flop Cherry Cobbler
CHERRY COBBLER 05 28 2028115 1
Yield: 6 to 8 generous portions
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
8 cups cherry pie filling
1/2 cup granulated sugar
Instructions
Coat a 9 x 13 inch baking dish with cooking spray.
With an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture alternating with the milk; mix until well combined.
Spread batter evenly into prepared pan.
Top with filling and sprinkle with sugar. Cover and freeze.
To bake: Thaw completely in refrigerator.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 40 minutes or until browned.
Mighty China Remove All Iran Sanctions Placed By U.S and E.U
In this eye-opening video, we explore the shifting dynamics of power and influence between Iran, the United States, and China. With the U.S. imposing stringent sanctions on Iran, China steps in to form a strategic alliance, challenging the global power balance. Learn more about the economic, political, and strategic implications of this trilateral relationship and how it could shape the future of global geopolitics.
Going anonymous because it is a part of my life that not even my closest friends are aware of.
This is from the time when I was 12 years old. My mom had a problem where her breast would develop lumps which would have to be removed surgically. This problem started before I was born and she would undergo these procedures every couple of years. We lived in a small town with limited access to advanced medical facilities, but the doctors always told us that the lumps were not malignant.
When I was 12, this one lump was growing very big. My dad (who is a doctor himself) decided to take her to Delhi to get some tests done. I have two elder sisters and we (me, my sister and my parents) live with my grandparents.
So, my parents were away in Delhi and my grand mother would spend the day on the phone talking to relatives, spreading rumors that my mom actually had cancer and saying that we three are a burden on them and that they just want my parents to come and get us off their head.
My sisters, who were older and more mature, would mostly stay in their room, but I, by nature liked to be outside with my mom and in her absence, my granny. Hearing these things used to hurt me, but I wouldn’t tell my sisters since I knew they’d be hurt even more.
I started taking up house-work with my granny (though we had help by my granny used to crib that we 3 were a burden)-cooking half meals, helping with washing clothes. All this I did without my sisters’ knowledge (or they’d never have let me do it).
This was a time when mobiles didn’t exist in India and fixed line phones were the only means of communication. News from my parents used to reach us with a lag. We just kept praying that our mom comes back safely.
After tests at AIIMS (top hospital in India), our parents returned awaiting results and my granny immediately left for my aunt (her daughter’s) place citing she needed “rest”.
Results came in-the growth didn’t seem malignant but needed a fairly complicated medical procedure in Chandigarh. These were times when my dad was under a lot of financial pressure (though my grandparents were well-off and my dad was the only son). My dad requested my granny over call that they need to leave immediately and that though he had applied for their life savings-their FDs to be broken, but if it doesn’t happen on time, if my grandparents could lend money till the FD money could reach home.
Unbelievably, my granny just didn’t come home! She made my aunt call in saying she would stay longer at her place and that my parents can leave for the surgery! I still remember my dad almost crying, not sure if he would be able to arrange money on time to save his wife (the tumour had grown visibly big). By God’s grace, the FDs broke a day before they had to leave and they left us alone, at the trust of the neighbours who were more helpful than my grandparents!
It was a long, painful time when my mother received treatment-a surgery which lasted 9 hours, where doctors almost gave up hope, where she was on ventilator support for days. All this while, I kept hearing from my granny’s conversations as she invited friends over, that it was certainly cancer, that such complicated surgeries could only be for cancer. It kept on making the 12-year old me scared as I knew cancer is something bad, it is something that can take away my mom.
We first got a chance to speak to our mom after 35 days when she managed to call from a hotel after her discharge. Those 35 days had been a struggle beyond my imagination for my parents (which they told me much later when I was around 20). With just my dad for company-he had managed everything from sleeping on hospital floors to washing my mom’s clothes.
My mom has recovered fully and still prays everyday for the doctors who cured her.
My dad still hates my grand parents, and I don’t feel any love for them wither.
My grand dad passed away a few years ago and we still live with my granny because my mom still thinks its our duty.
But, the pain is still there, the fear that the 12-year old felt is still there ,the betrayal is still feels fresh when I see my granny.
I grew up in those 2 months, chopped off my hair because I had long hair and my granny wouldn’t help manage them.
I hardened, realized I only have my parents and my sisters who will stand by me, and I will stand by them till I die.
I realised the world is cruel, looking at my relatives’ behaviour in that period.
“Hector, I retired before you were born,” he laughed.
Confused, I asked again, “Be honest, Dad, I mean, when will you stop working?”
His response was simple, “Working? What’s work? I don’t know what work is.”
“OK, Dad, forget about it,” I said as I assumed he wasn’t willing to talk about this.
“Hector,” he said, “what you know as my job is not work for me. I enjoy architecture so much that I could do this 24/7. This is who I am. Architecture is my life.”
So, to answer your question, why do rich people work even after they become rich? Why don’t they play?
My father lived to be 91 and worked until his body gave up on him. He was a passionate architect who found joy in his work. That’s what kept him active and full of joy every day. His passion for architecture was infectious, and it taught me this valuable lesson about work as a lifestyle.
So, if you ask me about retirement or work-life balance, I’d say it’s better to find what you love and make it a part of your life. When you find that, you’ll stop working and start living. We achieve a balance not by separating work from life but by integrating what you love into your lifestyle.
Today, this is how I see it: It’s not about working less; it’s about loving more what you do.
That’s the secret to a fulfilling life. As my father always said, “The day you find what you love is when you will stop working.”
Heavy Rain forced Mother Cat to Carry her kitten in Streets, but No One Opened the Door for Them!
In the pouring rain, we spotted a soaked cat seeking shelter. Feeling sorry for her, we followed as she led us to her hidden kitten in the woods. We gently petted the mama cat, who had braved the relentless rain. The tiny, wet kitten needed our care, so we wrapped him in a warm blanket. Back at our home, where rescued cat families and foster cats live together happily, we ensured both mother and baby were dry and well-groomed. A vet visit ensured mama cat’s health, and we even gave the kitten a bath, revealing his adorable charm. The heartwarming reunion between mother and kitten was filled with playfulness and bonding, showing the strength of family ties.
Here’s one example, regarding myself: I was working as a bouncer at a bar in Erie, Pa one night and some guy, about 24 years old or so was making quite a bit of trouble, harassing customers, pushing some, bullying others, etc.
He was somewhat high, but not drunk, and it seemed he was there just to harass and embarrass/humiliate some who were there with a date. He was pretty big, about 225 pounds and about 6 feet and acting like a real bully. When I was told about some guy doing these things ( He wasn’t near my door, but farther inside ), I went in to see what was up.
When I got there he was harassing some poor kid who was clearly scared and was with his girlfriend. As I approached, a few people pointed at this guy and said, “get him out if here, he’s an asshole.” .
I got up to him and very nicely told him to leave the kid alone and that he’d have to leave because he was causing too much trouble.
He looked at me, stood up as high as he could (I hate when they do that, like it matters), and said, “Who’s going to make me?” I said, simply, “me.”
He told me to get lost or he’d beat the shit out of me.
I said, “Well, let’s go outside and see who comes back in, and, if it’s you, you can stay.” He smiled, said,”I’m gonna enjoy this” and said, “let’s go” and we walked outside. By that time, everyone, including the other bouncer at my door knew what was going to happen.
The other bouncer, Tommy Williams, just stood at the door and smiled while we walked outside. Well, when we got out about 15 feet from the door, the moron suddenly turned and tried to hit me with a roundhouse kick which I not only blocked, but grabbed his leg and picked him up by the leg and threw him to the ground, saying, ”I don’t think karate is going to help you here.”
He jumped up and said, “how about this, asshole? and then tried a double leg takedown, as, apparently, at some time he was a wrestler. I actually laughed and said, “oh, you want to wrestle, huh?” and then as I countered his sad attempt, the other bouncer, who had heard everything, shouted out: “Wrestle? well you picked the right guy, he’s the National wrestling Champion……”
I just said, “You picked the wrong guy you moron,” and, as my friend, Tommy later said to me, I literally swept the parking lot with him.
I never saw him after two of his friends ended up taking either home or to the hospital.
He was a bully.
He got to feel like those he had bullied before.
I was NOT kind to him.
No regrets, but I bet he was kinda surprised when he heard the other bouncer tell him who I was, and he had no escape, as even as he said over and over, “I quit, I give up.”
I told him that it wasn’t up to him, It was my call and I wasn’t done yet.
That is a scary thing to realize, that you can’t quit, that it’s up to the guy beating the crap out of you. But I believe it has led others like that guy to never bully anyone again. Jeff
Sat in a bar in South Pattaya one Sunday afternoon in 1991 I noticed a fairly fit looking bloke dressed only in flip flops and shorts. He suddenly ordered everyone a drink then turned to me and said “I see my friend that you are interested in my tattoos.” I wasn’t that interested but I wasn’t going to argue and let him tell me. One he’d got for some work in the Philippines – the other some thing in the Mekong Delta. A mahout then came by with a large elephant which the man went across to look at saying they’d always fascinated him. So I asked him where he came from – American Samoa he replied. And what did he do? He worked “for the government”.
He then stepped back and ordered another drink for everyone in the bar. I thanked him and he turned and said “Let’s eat and drink for tomorrow we may be dead”. He then looked me in the eye with the coldest eyes I’d ever seen and said “ You know it is very easy. I pick up the gun, I pull the trigger and they are gone.” It was evident he wasn’t bullshitting.
That evening I saw the bar owner – who comes from Texas – and mentioned this guy. “Oh yes that’s so and so – he’s a US Navy SEAL. Bad news when he’s drunk.”
Guess I can be thankful I met him whilst he was sober!
Atheist Overdoses; Shown Soul’s Process Of Pre-Life Planning (NDE)
Her story is powerful. All of her words should have been heard and none bleeped out….
If you are offended by profanity, best skip this response.
I, too, am in the top 1% of wealth holders in this country, albeit, on lowest rung, yet minimum wage at my small Inn is higher than it is at this billionaire cunt’s company. I have no problem finding employees. This piece of shit motherfucker sits on his yacht sipping pina coladas while his employees need a second job to just pay the bills to live their day to day lives.
This asshole supports the Republican Party with massive amounts of money, and as a wealthy person, I can tell you a thing or two about how tax laws work in this country. For those of you who make less than $250k a year but still vote Republican, your economic misery is your own fault. The Democratic Party has LOTS of problems, but one problem they don’t have is trying to make life better for the average person and if you stopped watching your choice of right wing media, you’d soon realize that. It’s people like this cunt who are destroying America and contributing NOTHING to it.
What did this prick do? He built a fucking store, massively exploited his workforce by grabbing all the loot for himself and then whining when ordinary people have had enough and don’t want to work for anymore. Fuck him, and his fellow cunt billionaires.
When I was doing my B Tech, there was a Professor Talukedar who used to teach us ‘Mechanics’.
His lectures used to be very interesting since he had an interesting way to teach and explain the concepts.
One day, in the class, he asked the following questions,
What is ZERO.
What is INFINITY.
Can ZERO and INFINITY be same.
We all thought that we knew the answers and we replied as following,
ZERO means nothing
INFINITY means a number greater than any countable number
ZERO and INFINITY are opposite and they can never be same
He countered us by first talking about infinity and asked, ‘How can there be any number which is greater than any countable number?’
We had no answers.
He then explained the concept of infinity in a very interesting way, which I remember even after more than 35 years.
He said that imagine that there is an illiterate shepherd who can count only upto 20.
Now, if the number of sheep he has less than 20 and you ask him how many sheep he has, he can tell you the precise number (like 3, 5 14 etc.). However, if the number is more than 20, he is likely to say “TOO MANY”.
He then explained that in science infinity means ‘too many’ (and not uncountable) and in the same way zero means ‘too few’ (and not nothing)
As an example, he said that if we take the diameter of the Earth as compared to distance between Earth and Sun, the diameter of earth can be said to zero since it is too small.
However, when we compare the same diameter of earth with the size of a grain, diameter of earth can be said to be infinite.
Hence, he concluded that the same thing can be ZERO and INFINITE at the same time, depending on the context, or your matrix of comparison.
The relationship between richness and poverty is similar to the relationship between infinity and zero.
It all depends on the scale of comparison with your wants.
If your income is more than your wants, you are rich.
If your wants are more than your income, you are poor.
I consider myself rich because my wants are far lesser than my income.
I have become rich not so much by acquiring lots of money, but by progressively reducing my wants.
If you can reduce your wants, you too can become rich at this very moment.
I came home very sick with flu one day, went up to my bedroom, my husband was in my bed with the mail lady. I told them both to get the fuck out of my house. He argued that he needed sleep cuz he worked overnights. He needed his clothes and stuff. I told him all his clothes would be alongside the garage by Monday. It’s where the garbage is kept. Take a shirt and stuff he needed for tonight and get lost. Take a shower at her house or work. I packed up his stuff in garbage bags along with the topper to our wedding cake, some mementos from our honeymoon, I was being passive aggressive I agree, but how dare he sleep with her in our bed, in our home. We had a 2 year old and a 6 mos old. He was just wrong. He showed up a month later crying to me that she had broken up with him. I told him too bad, I didn’t feel bad for him in the least. I got the house( and mortgage) in the divorce. It was ok cuz I wanted the kids to stay in their home and school and I made more money, the root cause of the problem. He felt inadequate cuz I was a senior manager and he was doing maintenance work. This was no issue for me, just for him.
When I first got married, we would be passionate everywhere, if you know what I mean, bed, floor, couch, where ever. We would do things for each other. And we enjoyed each other’s company. She was from Japan I am white american.
I learned to speak Japanese and we lived in Japan a few years and life was good. We had kids together, but over the years things grew cold between us.
They say that people change and you grow apart. I don’t think either of us changed. I doubt that most people change. What I suspected happened was that I would base my love on how much she loved me and visa versa. If she did something nice for me, I would do something nice for her. Or if I did something nice for her, she would do something nice for me.
That all sounds fine and dandy, but I think in practice, it doesn’t work. When I do something nice for her, I expect something of equal niceness in return. However, often is the case that you don’t perceive what is done in return is as valuable as what you gave him or her. So the next time you do something, you feel less inclined to do something as nice. And so the love kind of fizzles.
You basically stop caring because you perceive your partner as not caring. And chances are your partner feels the same way about you. Neither person has changed. They are both the same person, but the love isn’t there anymore. They let it spiral into nothingness.
That is what my wife and I did. After 20 some odd years of marriage, there was nothing. I really had no desire to do anything for my wife, because she wasn’t going to do anything for me. We didn’t hate each other. We helped each other when needed, but that is about all.
I was unhappy with the marriage. I either wanted out or I wanted it fixed. But after 20 years of marriage, I knew that she wasn’t going to try and fix the marriage. I knew that she thought I would not change so why should she have to do anything special and if I did change, it would only be temporary and things would go back to how they were, so why even try. I knew this would be her mind set.
So I had 3 options. Divorce, stay in the lifeless, sexless marriage, or take a chance and do something about it.
I thought perhaps divorce would be the better way. Start anew. She had given up on me and didn’t care.
But I decided to give it a try anyway. I completely revamped my approach. I decided that I would try for one year to fix this. I would not require her to do anything. I would just do these things on my own. If these things wooed her back then she would be back on her own terms and not mine.
So I did the following.
I committed to get into shape… better diet, exercise
I committed to do something special for her everyday regardless of whether we were getting along or not.
I committed to do at least an additional 30 minutes of house work every day.
I committed to pay her a sincere compliment at least once per day.
I committed not to fight with her and to only have calm arguments with her.
I decided to fix her dinner and breakfast as often as possible.
In essence I decided to love her every day.
As I thought, I got essentially no response from her day after day. I mean she would sometimes say thank you, but that was about it. After about four months she started to change. I kept at it. She continued to change. Ok.. she didn’t change. She was the same person, but she saw that I was trying. She saw that she was important to me. She saw that I wasn’t giving up. She wanted to be loved.
She started doing things for me again. We started talking a lot more and doing a lot more together. We started dating again and going on trips. It was almost like we were newly weds again, but with less passion, but it felt great. Sometimes I would just hold her in my arms for 30 minutes.
Love can be revived. It is not easy. True love takes work. Making the decision above to love her regardless was the second best decision of my life. The first of course was to marry her. Our marriage is not perfect, but I look forward to seeing her every day. She is an awesome woman. She is basically the same person I married. We just let our love die. We were lazy lovers. She asked me one day what got into me and I talked with her about my plan. I think it was a pretty good plan and so did she. And yes, we are still married, but much more happily now.
I knew our love couldn’t be one sided, but I also knew it needed to start somewhere and why not me. Ask yourself, why not you? Do you want the love back? what kind of sacrifice are you willing to make to have the love back? If I had decided that she needed to do something while I was doing something, then we would have been right back to where we started. You can’t base your actions on what the other is doing in return. You need to commit to love regardless of what is done in return. That is the sacrifice and that is where real love will begin.
Edit.
I can’t believe how many people have read and liked this. Someone mentioned the 40 day challenge. I found out about that several months after I started on this path. There is a movie out there along these same lines called fireproof that is worth a watch.
For me things didn’t change around in 40 days. It took quite a bit longer. But you have to ask yourself is divorce really the better way out? Yes, sometimes it is. But infidelity doesn’t have to be the end of life as we know it.
I look back on these events and they seem like a distant memory, the hurt and pain. like a forgotten dream. But it really wasn’t that long ago. I am a better person because of it. She has become a better person as well and we are definitely a better couple.
6 REASONS WHY AMERICANS ARE OBESE. WHAT IS CAUSING THE RISING OBESITY IN THE USA?
It’s no secret that obesity in America has been an ongoing issue and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.
In fact, according to Harvard University; about 2 in every 3 adults or 69 percent of the population in the US are overweight while1 in 3 adults are obese or 39 percent.
It has to make you wonder how the most powerful and advanced nation in the world can be so obese especially when compared to countries in Europe and Asia, it’s not like we don’t have the means as a nation for healthier lifestyle and better-quality food.
Or maybe Americans are meant to be obese, and they want us to stay that way? Sounds controversial right, well in this video we will expose 8 reasons why Americans are so obese compared to other countries.
Our country born with troubles since its independence.
Have you ever heard about the Burma Campaign in World War 2? It is quite thorough and one of the most destructive campaigns largely forgotten by Western Powers and historians. The entire infrastructure of the country was destroyed during the course of the war. By the end of the war, the country was totally in rubbles and a massive number of firearms were widespread even in the village level which was left behind by warring powers. The situation was ripe for armed insurgencies.
The country was never been administered as a whole before British arrival. The region out of central Myanmar was usually administered by local petty chiefs with vassal-high king relationship which never need any direct contact between different cultures (except a few tributary missions and merchants). There is no large-scale internal trade and the transportation was also difficult. Different cultures and ethnic groups suddenly came into contact under British rule. As usual, the British exploited the situation by creating a divide & conquer strategy by favouring ethnic minorities over the Burmese majority. This led to extreme Burmese nationalism.
Due to economic disaster in the 1930s and later devastating war, the country is under very hard economic conditions which was a natural breeding ground for communism. The Burmese Communist Party which never believed in British plan for independence already went rebellion even before independence.
Then, the world’s longest-running civil war began.
In the 1950s and 60s, the civil war lost momentum and Burma came under the spotlight of international relations due to its leading role in third world nations, one of the founders of the non-aligned movement. The country was also the only real democratic nation in Southeast Asia with regular elections. The country largely recovered from the war at the beginning of the 1960s and hopes ran high. A federal system was proposed by the ethnic leaders and the government agreed.
All out of sudden, the coup came. At first, people weren’t serious as they already seen a short 2 years long military rule which stabilized the country and the coup ended with the mostly free and fair elections. By the time they realized that the military is no longer intended to give up the power this time, the civil war gained intensity and all the things we achieved in the last 10 years were gone.
The military junta slowly transformed themselves into businessmen by laying hands on the country’s economy entirely. The Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) ran by the military alone control nearly 40–50% of the country’s economy directly or indirectly. With the lack of a proper banking system, the ordinary people have no access to much-needed capital for investments. Small and Medium scale businesses have no chance to grow unless the monopoly of military elites and their relatives were removed.
So he responds in self-defense and you teach him that if the attacker is female he’s supposed to just sit there writhing in pain getting injured? And she got off scott-free?
What’s next? She stabs him and he gets tossed in a closet and fed gruel and water? Because you might as well.
If you knew she attacked first, you should have punished HER. You discipline all parties that have transgressed, not just the ones who have a penis. Having a vagina doesn’t magically bestow immunity on a person.
If you confiscated all his devices, you should have confiscated hers as well. For his month of grounding, she should have received two.
There’s a big difference between a slap in the face (which stings but quickly dissapates) and kicking someone in the jewelies (which could cause irreparable damage).
No. You’re punishment wasn’t good enough. You half-assed it due to sexist reasoning. Go back and discipline your daughter as well.
Who Wants To Be A WARMONGER?!
Inspired by the war hawks that run the West, it’s the game show that always ends badly!
Even though this was a relatively small thing, it affected me profoundly.
On my lunch break from work, I went to a fast food place. A homeless man came in. He was absolutely filthy, with long, greasy hair and dirty hands, dressed in raggedy clothes with a piece of blanket wrapped around him. He smelled bad. He didn’t seem able to talk and he went from table to table, sort of chittering at people, like a rat. People were pretty horrified and either gave him a quarter or just ignored him.
There was one table with 4 Mexican day laborers. These are guys who often are in the U.S. “illegally” and who hang around outside home improvement stores, hoping to pick up jobs. They don’t make much money and sometimes people cheat them, knowing the laborers can’t go to the authorities. A lot of these men may live in one house so they can save money and send it back to their families in Mexico.
When this homeless man came up to their table, they asked him, “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?” Then they gave him all of their food, packing it up for him so he could carry it away. Then they didn’t go and buy more food themselves (they probably couldn’t afford it), but simply cleared the table and walked out. They knew what it was to suffer, and they very likely would suffer a bit from their generosity. But that didn’t stop them; and they were the best example of kindness I have ever seen. It was over 30 years ago, and it still affects me.
The night my daughter died in a double hit-and-run in Colorado, a stranger stopped to help her and was witness to the second car that hit her, ending her life. He had been trying to help her though; he called for an ambulance and although it was ultimately unsuccessful, every effort was made to save her life. That stranger is a hero as far as I’m concerned.
The man who tried to help was very traumatized by what he had witnessed and had to change jobs so that he no longer had to daily pass by the place where my daughter died as he went to and from work. Unrelated to the accident, he and his wife got rid of their landline when they moved. I wanted very much to thank him but although I had tried every way I knew, his job had changed, he no longer had a telephone I could call 411 for and he no longer lived in the same place. I finally decided that simply being grateful would have to be enough, even if I couldn’t tell him myself.
Two years later, I’m sitting at the dinner table in a hostel in London and strike up a conversation with a guy also having dinner there. He was from the same area as me. He remembered my daughter’s death not just from it being in the news, but because the husband of one of his co-workers had stopped and tried to help the young lady.
OMG.
To make a long story short, he put me in touch with his co-worker and I was able to email her and express my thanks and gratitude for her husband’s efforts that night. She emailed me back and said that although her husband was desperately sorry he couldn’t save her, he was grateful that she didn’t have to die alone. He is a hero in my eyes and I’m so glad I got to let him know how grateful our family is. May he and his loved ones be abundantly blessed.
China Reveals HUGE Sanctions On US Tech Giants Due A STAGGERING Unpaid $1 Trillion
The direct consequences for the implicated U.S. tech companies are potentially disastrous. China is a significant market for many of these entities, and the sanctions could drastically affect their revenue, stock prices, and global operations. Companies like Apple, which rely on China for both sales and a vast portion of their supply chain, could see significant disruptions. The same goes for firms like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which have invested billions in capturing the Chinese market and establishing a supply chain nexus.
Furthermore, these sanctions could also impact hundreds of smaller U.S. tech firms and startups that might not be direct targets but could suffer collateral damage due to the intertwined nature of the tech ecosystem. This isn’t just a bilateral U.S.-China issue; the sanctions have ramifications for the global tech industry. Supply chains across the world are intricately linked, and disruptions in China could lead to ripple effects impacting tech manufacturing globally. Countries and businesses that rely on these tech giants for critical infrastructure, software, and hardware might find themselves caught in the crossfire.
The European Union, India, Japan, and South Korea, among others, will be closely watching the developments. Any prolonged conflict could force these nations to recalibrate their tech dependencies and alliances. On the diplomatic front, this escalation further strains an already tense U.S.-China relationship. The last few years have witnessed a hardening of stances on both sides, with trade wars, tech bans, and territorial disputes. This new development might just push the diplomatic ties to a new low.
As the news of China’s unprecedented sanctions reverberated across the globe, key stakeholders began weighing in, highlighting the vast complexities of the issue. Major international business councils, traditionally silent on political matters, expressed deep concern over the possible long-term disruptions to global trade. Wall Street responded predictably, with significant declines in tech stock prices. Investor sentiments seem to mirror the broader fears. If China and the U.S., two of the world’s largest economies, can’t resolve their differences amicably, what hope is there for the stability of the global economic order?
Moreover, experts in international relations also sounded the alarm. The escalation of this magnitude in the U.S.-China tech conflict marks a deviation from conventional trade disagreements. The integration of geopolitics with business is not new, but the scale of this rift indicates a deep-seated power struggle reflecting ambitions, fears, and strategies beyond mere economic interests.
One of the most pressing concerns for the sanctioned tech companies and the international community is the verification of China’s claim. How is this enormous one trillion dollars figure reached without transparent documentation and a clear breakdown? Suspicions linger over the validity of such a vast sum. The call for a neutral third-party audit has gained traction in various quarters. International bodies like the World Trade Organization could potentially mediate, ensuring that claims and counterclaims are examined impartially.
While the U.S. government has not yet announced any countermeasures, there’s widespread speculation about potential retaliation. Would the U.S. respond with equivalent sanctions on Chinese tech companies? Could there be a broader economic response that targets other sectors of the Chinese economy? Such a move would undoubtedly lead to further escalation, intensifying the trade war and potentially causing harm to global economic stability.
As an immigrant, one thing that always spooks me is paperwork and all related things to immigration process.
One day, I was outside working on my garden, when I came back inside, there were four missed calls. Just like a habit, I copied and pasted the phone number to Google search, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection – Corpus Christi Border Patrol Station popped up.
I started panicking. Why? Why they called me?!?? So, when the phone number appeared again a few minutes after that, I picked it up.
A woman on the phone let me know that there was someone used my identity to cross the border, tried to traffic drugs into the country. She told me that this could happen because I traveled outside of the country recently (which was correct). I was nervous. Then the woman proceeded to tell me she ‘would help me to verify and straighten things up’. Then she asked me my full name, DoB and Social Number.
At this point, I started smelling B.S. I told her, wasn’t it an identity thief case? Shouldn’t she have those information already? She got furious and told me, she was ‘trying to help’ and I needed to ‘cooperate’ or else I would ‘end up in jail’.
I decided to cut off the call, told her I would contact my lawyer and said goodbye then hung up.
I did some searching, then I decided to call back the phone number. It went to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection – Corpus Christi Border Patrol Station for real. I talked to an officer. He told me I was right hanging up the call and told me scammers nowadays gets really aggressive. They can hi-jack the phone number line like that, so the Caller ID looks like it’s legitimate from government offices. He also told me: If the government wants anything from you, they will send snail mails, they don’t call.
If you take a moment to look at the globe, you will notice that the United States (and remember they OWN both Ukraine, and Israel) started wars in Ukraine, and in Israel (After all, HAMAS is Western trained).
Why?
Well, for one, war is a business racket. But that is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the BRI.
Both wars effectively block two major routes of the BRI to the West.
War in Ukraine = Europe BRI
War around Israel = African BRI
2023 10 14 08 13
Thus the BRI is now geographically limited to the Asian nations.
The Asian Games in Hangzhou, which kicked off on Sept. 25, are not only a showcase of athletic prowess, but also a dazzling display of technological wonders. China has spared no effort to impress the world with its cutting-edge innovations in various domains. Here are some of the most remarkable examples of what I call “black technologies” that have made the games a spectacle to behold:
– Digital torchbearers: This is the first time that the Asian Games have used holograms to create virtual torchbearers who can carry the flame across different locations and interact with real people and surroundings. The digital torchbearers include some of the most famous and influential figures in sports, entertainment, and history, such as Yao Ming, Jackie Chan, and Confucius.
– Electronic identity registration cards: These are smart devices that replace the traditional paper-based accreditation cards for all participants. They can perform multiple functions, such as verifying identity, controlling access, monitoring health, making payments, and providing information. They also support various authentication methods, such as NFC, QR code, and biometrics, making them convenient and secure.
– Digital spectator service platform: This is a comprehensive platform that offers a range of features and services for both online and offline audiences. For example, users can watch live streams, replays, highlights, and VR videos of the games; chat with athletes, coaches, and experts; join quizzes, games, and lucky draws; and access information about venues, transportation, tourism, and culture.
– Intelligent robots: These are robots that can assist in various scenarios and tasks. For example, there are robots for guest reception, patrolling, firefighting, and distribution; robots for public performances, such as dancing and drumming; robots for sports training, such as playing table tennis and badminton; and robots for media coverage, such as interviewing and reporting.
These “black technologies” reflect China’s leadership in digital transformation and innovation. They also add to the cultural significance and social value of the Hangzhou Asian Games. By blending technology and culture, the Hangzhou Asian Games have created a new paradigm of sports events that is more intelligent, interactive, and inclusive.
Blueberry Dumpling Cobbler
This is good served warm with vanilla ice cream. Strawberries may be substituted for the blueberries.
Bring blueberries, 1 1/3 cups sugar and butter to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring gently until butter is melted and sugar dissolves. Remove from heat.
Beat cream cheese and 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy; add milk and beat until smooth.
By hand stir in Bisquick mix and uncooked oats.
Spread two-thirds of dumpling mixture onto bottom of a lightly greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
Spoon blueberry mixture evenly over dumpling mixture.
Dollop remaining dumpling mixture evenly over blueberries.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes.
This is a Briefing, I’m not asking for your consent.
I love how in this altered timeline, the relationship between Picard and Riker is completely different. Far more strained and much less casual as well. It’s little touches like that that make the overall picture clearer and more believable. Great writing and great execution by a very talented group of actors.
Hersh Reveals U.S. Motive For Destruction Of Nord Stream Pipelines
Seymour Hersh just published a new piece about the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.
When the pipelines were blown up on September 27 2022 I had asked:
It was no surprise to the agency’s secret planning group when on January 27, 2022, the assured and confident Nuland, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, stridently warned Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, as he clearly was planning to, that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The line attracted enormous attention, but the words preceding the threat did not. The official State Department transcript shows that she preceded her threat by saying that with regard to the pipeline: “We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies.” … The German leader was considered then—and now—by some members of the CIA team to be fully aware of the secret planning underway to destroy the pipelines. … What I did not know then, but was told recently, was that after Biden’s extraordinary public threat to blow up Nord Stream 2, with Scholz standing next to him, the CIA planning group was told by the White House that there would be no immediate attack on the two pipelines, but the group should arrange to plant the necessary bombs and be ready to trigger them “on demand”—after the war began. “It was then that we”—the small planning group that was working in Oslo with the Royal Norwegian Navy and special services on the project—“understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command.”
After Biden’s order to trigger the explosives planted on the pipelines, it took only a short flight with a Norwegian fighter and the dropping of an altered off-the-shelf sonar device at the right spot in the Baltic Sea to get it done. By then the CIA group had long disbanded. By then, too, the official told me: “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war”—Putin was in the process of annexing the four Ukrainian oblasts he wanted—“but was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up” the shuttered Nord Stream 2. “The White House fear was that Putin would get Germany under his thumb and then he was going to get Poland.” … All of this explains why a routine question I posed a month or so after the bombings to someone with many years in the American intelligence community led me to a truth that no one in America or Germany seems to want to pursue. My question was simple: “Who did it?”
The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.
The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will now have to answer some serious questions …
Posted by b on September 26, 2023 at 14:26 UTC | Permalink
Get Out of America Now… Something Strange is Happening
“Hey fam! Let’s talk about why we believe you should leave America for good. Back in 2020 we left America and have never returned and hope to never go back. As time goes on, the country isn’t getting better from everything that happened with the planned-demic and now hyper-inflation. What do you think? Will you be leaving America in search of greener pastures? It’s up to you to decide!”
Mainstream Media Admit – Ukraine’s Propaganda Is Full Of Lies
As a sign of the turning narrative of the war in Ukraine we find a new New York Times piece about ‘disinformation’ that is not about Russia but about lies from Ukraine.
Andrew E. Kramer, the NYT correspondent in Kiev, opens with an anecdote from the first weeks of the war:
Six weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine sank the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, dealing a serious blow to the enemy navy, and, a Ukrainian official said, killing the ship’s captain.
“We do not mourn,” an adviser to the interior minister at the time, Anton Gerashchenko, said.
The only problem was that the captain — or somebody who resembled him — later appeared in a video of survivors released by the Russian Navy. He had escaped his sinking ship, the Moskva, the video seemed to indicate.
Then comes a paragraph that could fit both countries but the following one it is again related to disinformation from Ukraine:
What is clear is that misdirection, disinformation and propaganda are weapons regularly deployed in Russia’s war in Ukraine to buoy spirits at home, demoralize the enemy or lead opponents into a trap. And it is often hard to know when reports are false or why they may have been disseminated.
Now, Ukraine and Russia are offering dueling narratives over whether a more senior Russian naval officer, the commanding admiral of the Black Sea Fleet, is alive or dead.
Few military analysts, […], believe the Ukrainian military’s optimistic daily account of Russian casualties running into the hundreds that is nonetheless reported widely in Ukrainian media.
It is the first time I see a public refutation of Ukraine’s laughable claims about Russian casualties in the mainstream media. It is also an indictment of the Biden administration and the Pentagon who publicly use the Ukrainian numbers.
The piece ends with a wise acknowledgement:
Mr. Gerashchenko said that, in the end, war propaganda is only effective when it accompanies battlefield successes. The missile strike on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet last week, he said, was a “stunning success of Ukrainian intelligence and the air force that fired the cruise missiles on a supposedly well-defended site.”
“You cannot win the propaganda war without winning the real war,” he added.
Good to see that this obvious truth is finally sinking in.
—
Yesterday the Minister of Defense in Russia, Sergei Shoigu, gave an update (in Russian) on the war in Ukraine. The speech seemed to include a time frame for the war to end (machine translation):
The United States and its allies continue to arm the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the Kiev regime throws untrained soldiers into senseless assaults, for slaughter.
Such cynical actions by the West and their cronies in Kiev only encourage Ukraine to self-destruct.”
“Under these conditions, we continue to increase the combat power of the Armed Forces, including through the supply of modern weapons and improving the training of troops, taking into account the experience of a special military operation. Consistent implementation of the activities of the Action Plan until 2025 will allow us to achieve our goals.”
Shoigu expects the war to run throughout 2024 and into 2025. But if the current loss rate of the Ukrainian army continues the country will be running out of soldiers and armored vehicles before the end of next year.
Posted by b on September 27, 2023 at 13:50 UTC | Permalink
Ask Prof Wolff: China Vs. a Myth of Stolen Technology
China has pulled it off because it is unique with huge, diligent and hard working population, and a one party state with consistent long term goals but flexible enough to adapt and adopt so as to be pragmatic.
Other Asian and South East Asian countries have similar ethos but their populations and geographical size are much smaller.
More to the point, those countries have multi-party political systems that would ensure continuous changes to whatever the previous government has done, ie no consistency in long term targets but all short term political gains (Western style).
Vietnam is actually a communist country but the US and the West like Vietnam; they rarely publicly criticise or smear Vietnam because it is not seen as a “threat”.
Singapore is a prosperous city state virtually dominated by one political party.
Rarely, if any, have I seen negative opinions of Singapore from the West. Some local and Asian people think that Singapore acts like a dictator.
So you know what I am leading to.
Political system may or may not matter. It is a matter of effective governance.
During an interview, the founder of Huawei questioned that how could the West accuse Huawei of stealing technologies from them that they had not got?
A senior employee said in an interview about 5G that the company had been researching on 6G several years ago.
By the end of 2020 the entire underground transport network in Shanghai was covered by 5G.
In contrast, the Mayor of London has promised to cover the entire London Underground network with 4G by the end of 2024.
That’s how much more advanced Chinese technology is in terms of development and implementation. Without Western interference of all kinds, I bet that African nations with help from China will leapfrog the West.
This may sound far-fetched.
The US will do its utmost, including starting a war and regime change, to next suppress the rise of Africa.
Many areas on the Belt and Road Initiative have since 2013 had bombings, massive political protests and chaotic civil wars etc.
This is the dirty work done by a particular organization to stop the success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
If China and the Chinese had the technology to migrate to live in Mars, I bet the US would try to stop the Chinese travel in mid-space.
Grounding an adult has no effect other than making them more belligerent.
Instead, I changed her living conditions…
Turned off her phone service
Changed the wifi password
Changed the password for all TV services and accounts
Put a lock on the laundry room door, where the breaker box just happened to be located
Flipped the breaker for her room
Finally, I ordered take out for me for a full week and bought no groceries
After a week, she came in throwing a tantrum. I was abusing her! How dare I do this to her.
I calmly told her that family enjoys the perks of living in a family, including my electricity and food…but they also are respectful, do household chores or pay their share. Squatters get no considerations of family. And next week, there will be a lock on my room and no hot water in my guest bathroom.
She was a butthead for another week. She talked to other adults and the cops and CPS (who asked if she was a vulnerable adult who needed guardianship)…then decided being pleasant and respectful and doing about 2 hours of chores a week was worth the perks of being family.
I never raised my voice, never argued with her, simply impressed upon her what I no longer HAD to provide for an adult.
‘Armed to the Teeth’ Frankish Warrior’s Untouched Grave Found
In a discovery that has left historians and archaeologists astonished, a completely untouched grave from the Merovingian period was uncovered in Germany. Hidden among other graves that were plundered over a millennium ago, this singular grave had rested undisturbed for over 1,300 years.
The discovery was made by the archaeologists from the Kaiserpfalz Research Center , who have been digging at this early medieval burial ground since 2015. Christoph Bassler, excavation manager described the discovery:
“We first spotted the edge of a shield boss…It wasn’t immediately clear which grave it belonged to. But, as we dug further, the realization dawned that we had stumbled upon a grave that, for some reason, had been overlooked by ancient grave robbers.”
A 7th Century Frankish Warrior, ‘Armed to the Teeth’
The grave’s occupant, known as the “warrior from grave 447,” was evidently someone of importance in his time. A splendid double-edged sword, or ‘spathe’, lay next to him, measuring nearly 93 cm (3 foot) in its entirety. Its blade, even after so many centuries, remains slightly flexible , pointing to an impeccable state of preservation, noted Bassler.
The sword wasn’t the Frankish warrior’s only companion in the afterlife. A massive broadaxe, another heavy knife, a lance tip, and a shield were found, showcasing an array of almost every weapon from that era—except for a bow.
Interestingly, while adorned with an impressive weaponry collection, this man was not a full-time soldier. In the early Middle Ages , there were no standing armies as we know them today. Free men were expected to gear up and respond to their leader’s call to arms when required.
The Franks in Europe
The Franks, one of the prominent Germanic tribes, played a central role in the reshaping of European geography and politics after the fall of the Roman Empire . Their history in the region was rich and transformative.
Between the 5th and the 8th centuries, with the decline of Roman power, the Franks under King Clovis I unified various Frankish tribes and expanded their territories. In 486 AD, Clovis defeated the last Roman governor in Gaul, marking the end of Roman rule in that region. Clovis and his successors, known as the Merovingians, expanded the Frankish kingdom into what is now Germany, establishing a significant portion of the region as “Austrasia.” Under the Merovingians, the Franks converted to Christianity, and the fusion of Germanic and Roman traditions began.
Secrets Remain intact, For Now
While the grave’s goods have been handed over for restoration, further studies are expected to shed light on the precise dating and intricate details obscured by rust. For instance, silver inlays hidden beneath the rust layers, might offer deeper insights into the artistry of the time. “This incredible discovery adds a significant piece to our understanding of early medieval Ingelheim,” remarked department head Eveline Breyer.
Analyses are also underway to ascertain the cause of the man’s death, who was believed to be in his 30s or 40s when he passed. Whether he succumbed to illness or fell in battle remains to be seen, but given his grave’s martial ambiance, a warrior’s end in combat wouldn’t be unexpected.
Typically China doesn’t use political muscle to counter Anti Chinese sanctions or Anti Chinese hostility
image 103
China is in a very good position today
It is very strong, it is bustling with emerging technologies, every day sees new developments and it’s people are enjoying the lowest inflation possible and saving the most money in the world with very little personal debt
China is developing at a very rapid pace and surging ahead
It’s Military and Navy are building up at a rate that the US has not hit since 1944
image 104
Israel placed an order for 1.5 Million units of Body Armor Vests for their Paramilitary with China
Delivery within 30 days
Express order at 2.5 times original tender price
Bangladesh can do it, India can do it
Yet the quality, price and time taken combo is entirely Chinas baby
No Nation on earth can come even 50% close
At this stage, China is too prosperous to get into fights and get into any situation that could jeopardize it’s progress
In fact if you go to China, you will realize that a Company sanctioned by US is a MARK OF HONOR in Beijing
DJI is flush with orders from South America, Central America and the Middle East today
They lost a potential $ 4 Billion of deals in US and Europe and gained almost the entire $ 4 Billion in Saudi, Oman, Qatar and Brazil and Peru
Huawei has China
The Sheer Network in China alone would ensure Huawei covers 5G for 1.4 Billion people
Add the BRI Nations and another 36 Nations and you have a whopping 3.47 Billion People who are using Huawei equipment for their 5G
Plus Chinas smartphone market of 867 Million Units a year is more than US and EU and UK and Japan combined (574 Million Units)
Plus Huawei is an expert at using Western IP developed for Billions using a few tweaks and minting money on the same by spending pennies on the dollar
Best example is 3G and 4G.
The Collective West spent almost $ 15 Billion on the development
Huawei modified these IP and developed their 5G Patents by spending a mere $ 600 Million
Thus while Cisco hasn’t even recovered 15% of it’s investments, Huawei has already quadrupled it’s investments in 5G
image 102
China thus is in the best position to just sit by and surge ahead while doing very little
Things are so good for them that any counter action could make things worse
Huawei too is building a base among its Global South clients and will ultimately reach the peak without the West or their markets
Don’t under estimate China
They use their soft power for other things
This UNHRC is the best example
The Collective West twisted arms until they broke
Yet China grinned and became a full member for 2 more years
The Collective West twisted arms until they broke to avoid the BRICS expansion or the G20 condemnation of Putin
China crushed both these plans through tough diplomatic manoeuvres
The US is in a very weak place
It’s breaking up and is in deep trouble
Thus all this posturing to divert attention from the problems at home.
Same for UK, Canada and Europe
China has no such diversion needed
They just want to keep doing their job – developing Technology and soft power and surging ahead
FIRST TIME REACTING TO | Merkules ”Rich Men North Of Richmond” Remix
He’s been around many years. A true badass rapper. Dudes flow is always crazy.
I was 14. No friends. Each day I dragged myself home to where I lived with my schizophrenic Mother, just the two of us.
I would be in trouble for something: I lived in a perpetual state of confusion as I often couldn’t remember what she told me I had done.
She told me I was stupid and needed to go to a special school because I didn’t know what I had done wrong.
In the past she had often slapped me until my nose bled and beat me with the metal pole of a fly swatter, but that stopped the summer before high school.
She told me she didn’t love me repeatedly for months.
According to her I was a horrible daughter.
Her friends from church had stopped coming weekly to yell at me and slap me senseless as well. I knew when she sent me away with my Aunt and Uncle the summer that had passed she had read my diary, where I detailed all the abuse and talked about wanting to die.
She denied reading it, but it stopped the physical abuse so now it was just verbal and believe it or not that hurt just as bad.
I was unloveable and alone.
She didn’t work and depended on government assistance.
She just sat at home chain smoking and playing cards.
During the week I woke myself up, made breakfast, went to school. She complained about the smell of eggs in the morning and of course I was useless.
I had a hard time socializing, and she decided she didn’t like the friends I’d managed to make the previous year, so put me in a very small private Christian high school the church paid for.
As a low income, single parent house I was a freak among higher income two parent families.
So I spent my days an outsider and bullied at school and then came home to be bullied some more.
I got in trouble once because someone told her I walked around with my head down and never smiled!
I remember trying out and making the school play that year. I was so proud.
My Mother decided to use that as leverage for her every whim: if I did anything wrong (sang doing dishes) she threatened to not allow me to be in the play. It got so bad I just quit the play rather than have it continually be held over my head as a threat.
A school councillor regularily made me talk to him.
I refused to give anything up.
He persisted. He asked me if I was abused: as she was no longer hitting me I said no.
I had no words to explain the verbal abuse.
Being stupid and unloveable didn’t seem to qualify.
Then one magical day a girl at school approached me and we became friends.
A few weeks later she asked me if I could spend the weekend at her house.
Her house was beautiful and she lived with her parents and siblings and it was loud, noisy and chaotic.
On the Saturday of this weekend sleep over, my new friend had to take piano lessons so I was to hang out in her room until she got back.
I was surprised when both her parents wanted to speak with me while she was gone.
They informed me that the school had asked them to be my foster parents and presented me with a ‘contract’.
They gave me 30 minutes to decide if I wanted to live with them.
I was 14 years old.
I had no friends.
My Mother was the only family I had ever known.
I knew I was stupid. I knew that I was worthless and unloveable. 30 minutes was a ridiculous amount of time for a decision that would change the course of my life that I was too young to make. I didn’t know these people at all.
But a voice in my head screamed at me to do it, with everything it had.
So I took that leap of faith. I jumped off the cliff away from everything I’d ever known.
My roller coaster ride wasn’t over my any means, but to this day I am so grateful I left.
My life 30 years later is wonderful and I often wonder where I would be if I had stayed growing up in that horrible house.
The United States is confirming that the first (official) group of M1A1 Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine to be used against Russia. The escalation of fighting between Russia and Ukraine continues.
At some point, and we are now very close to it, Russia is going to declare the US a “combatant” in the fighting, and when that takes place, it will be public notice that we — here in the USA — are now subject to Russian military strikes.
Americans will be caught completely blind-sided if and when this takes place; they won’t understand how or why we got attacked by Russia – because our Mass-Media has not done its job to inform the public just how far our government public servants have escalated the fighting.
China just gave US chip materials’ permission, the US ordered to escalate sanctions against China!
For me, the most surprising thing about being rich is that it’s an incredibly isolating experience. What I mean by that is you can’t really complain about your problems except within your small circle of rich friends. Otherwise, you will sound like a douchebag. Even if you do, non-rich people can’t really empathize with you.
There are a few problems associated with being rich such as general (lack of) motivation for work, family/friends asking for money, worry for how to motivate kids, spouse with different attitudes toward life after getting rich, potential spouse being a gold digger, unexpected jealous reaction from friends/family, pressure to deal with more complex tax, estate planning and investment planning and etc.
The joy of “set for life” doesn’t seem to offset the anxiety from hoarding the huge sum of money. In addition, when you don’t work because you are rich but can’t hang out with your friends who have to work during the week, you feel like an outcast of society.
Overall, being rich is very isolating and that’s the most surprising thing I have experienced.
China’s new missile DF 51, called a small Sarmat, can evade the Aegis defense system at sea
The New DF-51 ballistic missile can carry 10 miniature missiles. When the DF-51 flies to a certain area and launches 10 atomic bombs at the same time, the power is so great that the existing air defense system of the United States cannot bear it at all.
I watched a 90 lb female put a 235 lb guy in the hospital. This was a fight between 2 neighbors in my neighborhood. This guy harassed her for weeks then for some reason he decided to walk up to her front porch and knock on her door. I was sitting on my front porch when it happened. I was thinking this is not going to be good, and had my cell phone within reach.
She open her door and in a clear loud voice, she requested he get off her property. He said, what are you going to do about it. She said, I’ll call the police. He laughed at her and reached for the screen door. Before I could move she kicked him in the head twice, swept his legs out from under him, and he was down and bleeding.
I started to call the police, but again before I could dial the number a patrol car pulled up and the officer put the guy in handcuffs. I just sat there, drank my coffee and waited for him to come over and ask what I saw. I told him and signed the bottom of the form.
As he walked away he said you know the woman? I replied yes, she’s a former Marine. He chuckled and said. I guess the guy didn’t know that, and I laughed.
How I see the US after living in Europe for 5 years
“I moved to France 5 years ago. Came home to Maryland to spend Christmas with the family. I got sick, went to the ER, and came out with a bill worth $1,900. The doctor saw me a week later for a follow-up. I needed surgery and it would cost more than $ 45,000. I went back to France after the holidays, saw a doctor, got surgery, 2 months off work and I PAID NOTHING. “
In 1974, Xi volunteered to go to Liangjiahe, a dirt-poor village in Northwestern China. His dad was getting the rough treatment during the Cultural Revolution, so he probably felt that getting out of Beijing was a safer move. So he volunteered.
China’s GDP per capita in the 70’s was around $100 per year, which is obviously not great. But Liangjiahe was a totally different ball game. It was a famously poor place. I would guess the GDP per capita was maybe $20 a year. No, I did’t miss any zeros. It was really that poor. There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no toilet, no heat, no rice or flour. Corn was a luxury, millet and wild grass were the normal diet. and people just dug dirt caves out of mountains to live.
The villagers that Xi lived with – were mostly illiterate and covered in fleas. So Xi looked around, and was like, fleas, oh well, I just have to get used to it. Food? That’s OK, I’ll take a hoe and go farm with the villagers. We can feed ourselves. Electricity? Water? Nah, nothing can be done about that. So what do we have? Poop! OK, so we have poop. We can make something with that, maybe.
So he read about fermenting poop to make methane gas, and tried to build a poop-fermenter in his village, so that people can use it for light and cooking at night. He was only 16 or 17 at that time, so he wasn’t very good and got the pipe stuck, so he had to jump into the cesspool to clear the pipe, and got poop all over himself, but he got it working. The next year he traded his motorbike for a water pump and some other tools for the village, and pretty soon his village was getting more prosperous. He stayed and worked in that village for 7 years, applied to join the CCP 10 times, got rejected 9 times, and finally got admitted on the 10th time. The villagers promptly elected him the Party Secretary of the village.
That was how he started his political career in China.
He’s not unique.
Actually, all of China’s leaders have been through absolute hell to get to where they are.
CCP tradition is that unless you start from the very bottom, you’ll never get to the very top. I mean, you are selecting 7 out of 80 million, once every 10 years, so the CCP traditionally has been absolutely ruthless in terms of discipline and promotion.
Election bribery? Expel 70.
Industrial accident? Send 25 to jail.
Corruption? Punish 100,000 in one year.
Get GDP to grow at 10%+, while keep your nose clean? OK, you get a one step promotion.
A small purge once every 2 years.
A big purge once every 5 years.
You’ve got to beat out 80 million people to get there, and everybody is swimming as hard as you are. The ones who pop out at the end, after 35 years, are all NOT your normal people!
When Beijing announced the plan to eliminate extreme poverty in 2015, most foreign observers were dubious. Can China Wipe Out Poverty By 2020?
Since the announcement, People Daily, the top Chinese newspaper, has been literally reporting on poverty reduction DAILY – success, failure, method, strategy, recidivism, lessons learned, statistics, etc. Everyday! I suspect the guy is actually serious about it.
Why I Am Leaving The United States and Never Coming Back
In this video I will be explaining why i am leaving the united states and never coming back. this discussion consists of reasons like social life in the united states, dating in the united states, cost of living for quality of life and more. I am going to thailand for the first time leaving the country in a couple months. expect upcoming traveling vlogs.
I sit behind the students and use an iPad hooked up to a projector to show them things on a screen in front of them.
It’s a really big screen, too. It’s one of those “backyard movie projection” screens, for which I built a frame and now it’s taking up the better part of one wall in my classroom. I have the projector at the back of the classroom, aiming over the students’ heads. And, since the projector is next to my desk (which is a sit/stand desk, by the way), I can physically plug my iPad into it. I tried doing this all wirelessly a few years ago, but it was more trouble than it was worth.
Usually, I’m showing them pages from their textbooks or workbooks. I snap pictures of the relevant pages for that day, turn them all into a single .pdf, and work my way through them, for the class to see. I use an Apple Pencil to mark them us as I go.
If the students seem bored, I ask for volunteers to come over to the iPad and do a few problems for everyone to see. The students enjoy it when one of their classmates takes on the role of “teacher.” The students who are taking on that role enjoy using the iPad and Apple Pencil.
Every now and then, I have to sub in another teacher’s classroom for a single period. No one else at this school has a set-up like mine. I genuinely don’t understand how teachers can stand being in front of their students while they’re trying to teach them, writing things on a whiteboard. Turning your back on your students while you write on the board is nerve-racking for me.
As an added bonus, when I’m using the iPad as a whiteboard or e-reader, and our textbook mentions something interesting, I can quickly and easily pull up YouTube or Safari, to enlighten the students a little more. Just this morning, our lesson on appositives featured 10 sentences about jazz music, including several about Louis Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis. I was able to pull up videos of both men, so the students could see who we were learning about. I was then able to find out that, not only is Marsalis still alive (the students asked me), but he’s playing in Chicago next spring.
At least once per day, I pull up something online that one of our textbooks mentions, to teach the students a little more about it.
Originally, I sat behind my students so I could see their screens when they were online. Yes, there is monitoring software, but just looking around at their screens in much easier. That was 15 years ago, when I began teaching. I’ve been doing it like this ever since.
The Video I Never Wanted to Make.
This is honestly getting scary hopefully it doesn’t get as bad as we all think but something tells me that we may not get that lucky. Crazy to think I am only 28 years old and I am prepper but i might have to start teaching my family how to do this stuff. Everyone stay safe.
Several years ago I inherited a “team” of people that included a lady I’ll call “Nancy.” She was what we called a houseplant: she’d been there forever and didn’t do much, but firing her would be a mess.
Nancy was a disaster from day 1. She would take two hour lunches. She’d hand in work so poor I could have just done it.
I once asked her to compile a spreadsheet and all she did was dump files into a folder and send it to me. She literally had one job of compiling a single report that she was doing. We even made her a simple guide that anyone could follow. We had her do this because it kept her away from everyone.
She also had beefs with three of my other people, so much that I moved people around the office to avoid her. She once accused a lady of drinking beer at her desk and it turned out to be some generic cola from Winn Dixie. When she wasn’t satisfied by this she reported me and the lady to HR. One fellow on my team was on long term pain management after being wounded by an IED in Afghanistan. He took some serious pain medication but he was a fantastic employee. Again, she called HR on him after telling her to mind her own business. When HR didn’t do anything she called the police and tried to have him arrested for drug possession.
One day we were doing end-of-year reporting and needed the report that Nancy was running. I go to the share drive and it’s empty. I ask her for it and she claims it’s there. I check again and it’s just raw data from our database.
I go over to her desk and ask what was happening. She immediately lies and says I never told her about the report. I point out the file detailing the steps on how to pull the report on her desktop.
One of my other employees, Wondah (pronounced Wanda) walks over and is trying to help. Nancy keeps trying to just push her away or delete files. Wondah tells her she’s costing us time and resources and it hits. Nancy looks at Wondah and yells “Shut up n*gger!”
The office goes quiet. I take two steps back. I put my hand on Wondah’s shoulder and gently pull her back a bit. I call over a neutral guy on another team. I ask him to walk Nancy out of the office and wait.
30 seconds later I’m on a conference call with HR confirming she’s getting fired. Wondah and five other employees confirm what she said.
I walk out in the hallway. Any illusion of civility is gone. Now she’s spitting and swearing at everyone. I tell her she’s fired. I get deluged by a string of racist screeds and threats to send her sons to my house to kill me. Security is there to escort her out. She turns and spits at me.
She tried suing the company for everything under the sun. On the stand she was a total disaster of a witness and I think the jury hated her as much as I did at that point.
She lost and had to pay our legal fees. Last I heard she’d fled the country to avoid paying a bunch of debts.
As a gullible 30 y.o. I met a really cute man that seemed to like me. We started dating. His car broke down and he asked to borrow $80. I loaned it to him and he returned it. About 6 weeks later, his Mom had an emergency and he needed $400 and asked to borrow it until the next payday. I loaned it to him. Then I found out he had a live-in girlfriend and child. She came to my work and tried to beat me up for trying to steal her boyfriend. I broke up with him but I tried to get my money back. That wasn’t happening. He kept trying to get back with me, but I found a note that he had written about how much money I had in my checking account. He didn’t realize it had fallen out of wherever he put it. So I decided to beat him at his own game. I asked him to meet me for lunch at a restaurant. I had stashed a dear friend of mine at another table within ear shot and vision of what I was doing. I had handwritten a small “loan agreement with interest” that I told him I needed him to sign for me to rebuild trusting him. The Sucker signed it thinking it wasn’t valid. My friend witnessed it and signed as a witness. I then took him to Small Claims Court, asked for damages and Court costs, garnished his wages, and got my money back over time, including interest.
10 Reasons Why You Should NEVER Move to the United States
The USA has become a TERRIBLE place.
Apricot Cobbler
Apricot Cobbler
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
Filling
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup water
3 (15 1/4 ounce) cans apricot halves, drained
1 tablespoon butter
Topping
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold butter
1/2 cup milk
Instructions
Filling
In a saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Stir in water; bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil and stir for 1 minute; reduce heat.
Add apricots and butter; heat through. Pour into a greased 2 quart baking dish.
Topping
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl; cut in butter until crumbly.
Stir in milk just until moistened. Spoon over hot apricot mixture.
Bake at 400 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown and a wooden pick inserted into the topping comes out clean.
When I was 14 years old my Mom suddenly decided she wanted to move to Colorado. Apparently it was a place she had always wanted to see, so next thing I knew we were living in the ultra small town of Limon, Colorado. I was not happy about this at all. My brother, who was 19 at the time, had stayed in South Carolina. All of my friends were still in South Carolina. I was miserable.
I spent my freshman year in Limon, and hated almost everything about it. The one part I didn’t hate was that my freshman class of 30 students included 5 guys and 25 girls. That was fun. On the other hand, I was the fattest kid in school, so even playing football didn’t help me in that arena.
One day, about a week after school let out for summer, I was sitting in my bedroom listening to music when I suddenly really wanted to hang out with my brother. I didn’t even think about it. I grabbed my rucksack that I used for camping, loaded it up with clothes, my radio and some tapes (this was 1990), and I walked out the door. I was going to hitchhike the almost 1500 miles to South Carolina.
It took me 63 hours to get there. To this day I am amazed at how easy it actually was, and how fast I made it there. What’s even more amazing is that when I showed up at my Aunt’s front door (my brother was living with her after we moved) it was my Mom who met me at the door. As soon as she had gotten home from work and I wasn’t there she knew what I had done and where I was going. Since she was able to drive straight through she made the trip far quicker than I did.
My Mom was angry, but she was just as relieved that I was safe, so she agreed that we could stay for one week before we headed back to Limon. That was on a Friday. The following Wednesday was June 6th, 1990. That date might not matter to most people, but it was very important to us, because of this:
A tornado ripped through the town, destroying almost half of the town – including the apartment we were living in at the time. If we hadn’t been in South Carolina, I would have been home when it came through, and likely would not be alive right now.
Oddly enough, this would not be the last time something like that would happen to me. In 2010 I made the split-second decision to move back to South Carolina again, leaving behind my apartment in Joplin, Missouri. I had already been planning to move, but my plan had been to go to Florida to be near my parents. At the last minute my Mom told me not to come because the Space Center had just laid off 10,000 NASA employees, and that was a job market I did not want to try to compete in during those hard times. I could have stayed in Joplin, but I had already sold off most of my furniture, so I just decided, “Screw it, I’ll go back to South Carolina.”
A year later, Joplin was hit by an F5 tornado that destroyed almost 25% of the town — including the apartment I had been living in when I was there. Combined with the fact that an entire street I lived on in South Carolina was destroyed by a tornado a couple years after I moved away, and the fact that I left South Carolina months before Hurricane Hugo hit, and again just before Hurricane Andrew hit, and now my friends joke that if I ever move away they are all coming with me.
Jamaican Sista Warns Black Immigrants, The American Dream Is A Farce Because US Is A Plantation
“You will work until you are literally DEAD!”
Stacked 1,400-Year-Old Zhou Dynasty Emperor’s Tomb Uncovered in China
Archaeologists in Shaanxi Province, northwest China, have discovered the tomb of Emperor Xiaomin (birth name Yuwen Jue), the founding emperor of the Northern Zhou Dynasty (557-581). Emperor Xiaomin’s tomb, a medium-sized one in the context of the Northern Zhou dynasty, is situated in Beihe Village, Weicheng District, Xianyang, an area known for its concentration of high-quality tombs spanning from the Northern Dynasties (439-581) to the Sui and Tang dynasties (581-907).
Uncovering Zhou Dynasty Emperor Tomb: Medium-Sized but Power Packed
The tomb itself faces south and is a single-chamber soil cave tomb with four patios along the sloping tomb passage, according to a press announcement by Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology on Tuesday. Covering a total length of 56.84 meters (186.5 ft) from north to south, the bottom of the tomb lies 10 meters (32.8 ft) beneath the current surface.
According to the press announcement:
“The archaeological discovery of Yuwen Jue’s tomb from the Northern Zhou Dynasty is of great significance. It is the second Northern Zhou emperor’s tomb that has been excavated after the Xiaoling Mausoleum of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty.”
Though the tomb had previously been looted, archaeologists have managed to recover 146 burial objects, primarily pottery figurines in a single chamber holding funerary offerings, depicting warriors and cavalry units. Furthermore, the presence of an epitaph on the tomb’s eastern side has allowed archaeologists to confirm that the tomb belonged to Emperor Xiaomin (542-557), reports Heritage Daily .
This discovery holds immense significance for historical research into the emperors of the Northern Dynasty , as highlighted by Zhao Zhanrui, an assistant researcher at the academy.
Northern Zhou: Foundation of a Short-Lived Dynasty
Rather than assuming the title of emperor, Xiaomin, also known as Emperor Ming of Northern Zhou, chose to adopt the Zhou Dynasty’s title of “Heavenly Prince.” However, his reign was marred by internal strife and power struggles. A significant conflict unfolded between Xiaomin and his cousin, Yuwen Hu, who sought to consolidate his own power.
In a dramatic turn of events, Yuwen Hu managed to depose Xiaomin from his position and subsequently had him killed. This political maneuvering further highlighted the instability and internal divisions that plagued the Northern Zhou Dynasty during its relatively brief existence.
The Northern Zhou Dynasty , which reigned from 557 to 581 AD, was a significant but relatively short-lived era in the history of ancient China . Founded by Yuwen Tai, who took the title of Emperor Wen upon his ascent to power, the dynasty was established following a successful rebellion against the ruling Northern Wei Dynasty .
The Northern Zhou’s capital was Chang’an, an influential city located in what is now Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Chang’an was known for its cultural richness and strategic importance as a center of trade and governance .
One of the most notable aspects of the Northern Zhou Dynasty was its association with Buddhism. Emperor Wen and his successor, Emperor Wu, were fervent Buddhists, and they played a pivotal role in promoting Buddhism as the state religion. They supported the construction of Buddhist temples , sponsored the translation of Buddhist scriptures, and actively contributed to the growth of Buddhism in China. This period marked a significant turning point in Chinese religious and cultural history.
Emperor Wen and Emperor Wu also implemented important political reforms aimed at strengthening the central authority of the emperor. Land redistribution was one such reform, aimed at reducing the power of the aristocracy and redistributing land to the common people. These efforts were indicative of the dynasty’s desire to create a more equitable society.
Despite these reforms, the Northern Zhou Dynasty faced challenges. The empire’s unity weakened over time, leading to regional fragmentation and conflicts among various power centers. Eventually, the Northern Zhou Dynasty succumbed to internal strife, and it was conquered by the Sui Dynasty in 581. This marked the end of the dynasty’s relatively short but culturally impactful existence.
Legacy and Historical Relevance of the Northern Zhou
The legacy of the Northern Zhou Dynasty lives on in several ways. Its patronage of Buddhism had a lasting influence on Chinese religion, culture, and art. The dynasty’s contributions to calligraphy and sculpture, particularly in the context of Buddhist art, marked significant advancements in Chinese culture. Furthermore, some of its political reforms, such as those related to land distribution, influenced subsequent Chinese dynasties, including the powerful Tang Dynasty.
Notably, the Northern Zhou Dynasty was unique in its ethnic background. Its founding emperor, Yuwen Tai, belonged to the Xianbei ethnic group, making the dynasty one of the few in Chinese history to be ruled by a non-Han Chinese ethnic group, a rarity.
FILIPINA WIFE DEFENDING PASSPORT BROS.
One of the best, most intelligent responses to these woke, American women. Thanks Leah. You and Gary have a great family and life. Wish you both the best!
Man oh man! The Geo-political changes are happening hot and heavy! HEAVY!
My MM articles are now at a 35 post backlog. Shit! Half of you will be reading 1/2 month old articles by the time I get around to posting them.
Do not freak out.
Lots of things going on in the world today. It’s a massive realignment of the world AWAY from the USA dominance. The thing is that the Western peoples, and their “leadership” are clueless as to what is really going on. They still believe that they have some kind of power or ability in these matters.
Nope.
It’s all strategic retreats… for now.
The running away and full-scale, across the board, running and galloping rout comes later.
Maybe this year. Don’t ya know.
Have fun. Enjoy yourself.
Today I am catching up. We have a typhoon raging outside so I have an opportunity to play some catch up. Israel, Ukraine, and all the rest, especially Africa are in states of flux.
I’m not worried. The USA will retreat and the rest of the world will be secure.
The long-term forecasts clearly favor China by every measure.
If American companies fail to use this period of time to invest, they will not be able to “jump on the bandwagon” and take advantage of opportunities that are presenting themselves today.
If the Biden “government” insists that all American (and allied) companies “sit this one out”, then the entire American and Western industry will fall back and will NEVER be able to catch up.
…
China is being kind.
The United States NEEDS to “carefully consider” the long-term ramifications of their current actions.
As China gets stronger, more important, more dominant in all areas, the United States is at risk to not only falling behind, but going absolutely obsolete in the process.
This is not something that China wants.
…
China wants and prefers a vibrant world; one where different regions; nations, societies and people thrive. In the world that China envisions, it is a WIN-WIN for everyone.
However, the path that the United States has embarked on is fraught with danger. And the United States appears to be on fast-track towards becoming a blight; a mawed gouge in an otherwise improved world.
…
So China is being very polite, and very understated.
However, the truth is the truth.
Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers
Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers 1200 7517
Ingredients
1 pound bottom round steak, thinly sliced
2 bell peppers, halved and cored
Avocado oil
Bell peppers, sliced thinly
Red onion, sliced thinly
White onion, sliced thinly
Pickled jalapeños, chopped
1/2 pound Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
Onion salt
Sea salt
Pepper
Instructions
Heat oven 350 degrees F.
Drizzle avocado oil on bell papers. Bake for 17 to 20 minutes.
Heat a large frying pan over medium-high and add a little avocado oil.
Season steak with onion salt, sea salt and pepper. Sear each side of steak for about 1 to 2 minutes and remove to let rest a couple minutes.
Cut steak into small 1/4 to 3/8 inch square pieces.
Heat frying pan over medium heat and add avocado oil when warm.
Add thinly sliced onions and bell peppers to pan and cook while stirring often for about 10 minutes.
Mix steak, cheese, bell peppers, onions and jalapeños in a bowl.
Fill bell peppers, then bake for 10 minutes until cheese is melted.
In 2001, two ancient statues were blown up in Afghanistan on the orders of the Taliban. The monumental statues were called the “Buddhas of Bamiyan,” and they were carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamiyan valley of Afghanistan.
They were destroyed after the Taliban declared the ancient Buddhist statues to be false idols and had them blown up.
image 68
In a crazy twist of luck seven, years after the statues were blown up, an Afghan-led archaeological team discovered a series of hidden caves behind that statues. In the caves, they found oil paintings that dated back to the 5th century. This pre-dates the common perception that oil paintings originated in Europe hundreds of years later.
The Israeli Defense Force has declared they are in “a state of war” after over eight hundred rockets were fired into Israel today. Fighters from HAMAS para-glided into southern Israel using fan gliders to cross over the border, landing and killing everyone they see! Today’s “state of war” declaration has not happened since 1973.
Numerous Israeli civilians are already dead, some shot dead just standing in Bus Stops; many more are injured.
At about 1:17 AM EDT Saturday, the Israeli Defense Force made a public declaration that this is a “State of War.”
The last time Israel announced a “State of War” was in 1973. And the first time Israel was surprised by an attack like today’s was in 1973.
Air Raid Sirens are blaring throughout Israel as the Iron Dome air defense systems engage more incoming missiles.
This is taking place NOW. Live updates to appear below . . .
Casual Observers of the never-ending situation between Israel and Palestinians are commenting publicly right now “This is quickly heading toward a Full-Scale War near the Gaza Strip and Southern Israel, this is Totally Out-of-Control.”
Terrorists from Gaza invaded southern Israeli civilian cities – and they’re shooting whoever they see. This is unprecedented. Israel in under attack. pic.twitter.com/5Ngrjm4uts— נריה קראוס Neria Kraus (@NeriaKraus) October 7, 2023
Fighting is widespread and fierce:
Video below shows the Iron Dome air defense system engaging multiple inbound rockets:
By 1:00 AM eastern US time Saturday, at least sixteen Israelis were confirmed injured and at least ONE was confirmed dead, but there is already ample evidence of MANY dead.
(HT NOTE:I am already reaching out to my former colleagues in the Intelligence Community from during my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) to get more detailed info and the “Back Story” but things are a bit chaotic right now over there, and it is very early over here, so information is coming very slowly . . . .)
— Hamas military chief calls on armed groups in Lebanon to join the fighting against Israel
— Civilians massacred by Hamas terrorists in Sderot.
— According to Al Jazeera television, Israel has begun bombing Gaza by Air, Sea, and Artillery.
— Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant has Approved an order to begin the Call-Up of Reservists to Reinforce and Support the Israeli Defense Force.
Below, images of what are reported to be an Israeli “Merkava” tank, burned-out and smashed outside of the GAZA Strip:
image 73image 72
Palestinian Fighters taking Israeli’s Captive:
An IDF soldier has reportedly been Captured . . . Israel calls that “kidnapped.”
Hostage situations reported in Southern Israel.
Palestinian infiltrators have taken over a police station in Sderot and are currently in an active firefight with Israeli police.
Livestreams from Palestinian infiltrators show them executing/ shooting Israeli citizens.
Unconfirmed reports of 10 killed and 2 IDF soldiers captured after clashes on the Gaza border.
Due to rocket salvos throughout Israel, Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv is closed.
— The Government has just declared an “Emergency situation” for an 80km perimeter from Gaza borders
— The Israeli army announces the loss of control of an Israeli military site in the northern Gaza Strip. The soldiers are either captured or dead.
Ashkelon Burning
Map showing Air Raid Alert areas in Israel:
image 71
Heavy rocket barrages on Jerusalem area, rocket alert siren in Wadi Ara in northern Israel; emergency situation declared in entire southern & central Israel.
WARNING – GRAPHIC IMAGES
Below, a man reported to have been an Israeli Soldier, but who is already clearly shot through the head and dead, is dragged from a car and stomped in the street:
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES
An Israeli soldier has been taken by Palestinian fighters into the Gaza Strip.
The guy circled below is in the last minute of his life.
He and the guy in the vest were talking trash to each other, escalating a situation and having an ego battle.
image 70
What the guy in the red shorts didn’t realize, is that the other guy was armed with a knife. As he goes to tackle the armed man, he is fatally stabbed. The knife severed a major artery and blood poured out of the man’s body. He couldn’t have survived this wound if it happened in a hospital.
All because he wanted to get into a fist fight with someone who disrespected him.
To the men reading this, especially, getting into a fight with a complete stranger is one of the most dangerous things you could ever do. To you, it might be a fist fight. To them, it might be much more.
On March 25, 2022, 17-year-old Michigan teen, Jordan DeMay put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. His demise came as a huge surprise to his parents, who noticed nothing unusual before the tragedy.
Unknown to them, Jordan had been in an online relationship with a ‘woman’ he met on Instagram. They had exchanged nu*de photographs, but he had no idea he was chatting with two Nigerian men: 22-year-old Samuel and his 20 year-old brother, Samson Ogoshi.
image 62
With Jordan’s nu*des in their possession, they resorted to extortion. They demanded $1000 from him, and although he managed to send $300, it wasn’t enough. They threatened to leak the photos to his Instagram followers if he didn’t send the rest.
After several failed attempts to change their minds, he sent them his final message: ‘I am k-illing myself right now because of you.’ To this, they responded, ‘Good, do that fast, or I will make you do it.’
The brothers have been apprehended in Nigeria and extradited to the US to face trial.
Once I lived across the street from a high school and every day at lunch the students would cross in front of my house on their way to get food. A lot of them crossed through my yard which was annoying but not a big deal. Well one day there was this long hair stoner punk standing in my yard gouging a hole in my lawn with a big stick. I shouted at him to get the fuck off my lawn, he shouted back at me and we got into a low grade shouting match (fuck you! No fuck you! —that sort of thing) as he walked away.
I thought that was the end of it, but then a few days later in the morning I realize my house and truck had been egged. These geniuses had egged me during a rainstorm, however, so all the egg had washed off. The only way I knew was from the eggshells and a little residual yolk in my truck bed that I easily wiped off with a paper towel. Still, the principle of the situation called for vengeance. I was a grad student with a lot of time in my hands, so I got onto myspace (kiddos, myspace was like a proto-facebook popular for a minute in the mid-2000’s) and spent hours clicking through the networks of kids attending that high school until I found his page. Bingo!! This kid was a stoner raver dude and not exactly a genius ( egging in the rain, eg). His myspace page was full of pics of him drinking vodka, smoking blunts, and arranging smalltime drug deals on his and his friends pages, out in the open with no privacy controls!
Next I clicked through all his friends’ pages and happened to stumble on one where he had left his phone number (home phone — this was when only grownups had cells) on a girl’s page. So I paid $5 to reverse-lookup the number and got his parents’ names and address. Then I printed out all his pics and references to drug use and buying/selling along with a handy glossary of drug terms, put it in an envelope and mailed it to his mom. For good measure I emailed a link to his page to the principal and school police officer at his school along with a note expressing how concerned I was that this kid was dealing drugs in school.
I continued to monitor his page to see if I could find out what happened. His activity ceased and his friends were leaving messages on his page saying ‘Dan where are you??’. Apparently he was not in school. After a while his friends began to learn what happened and were discussing it on their pages. Apparently, he got expelled and his parents sent him to reform school!! So delicious. It was great revenge, and hopefully the intervention steered him toward a better path in life. Wish I had a way of finding out what happened to the kid in the long run, as this was 13 years ago.
Once, while in high school, I went to a store in my small town to buy a gallon of milk for my family. I paid the cashier with a $5 bill but she somehow gave me change for a $20.
I didn’t notice her mistake until I was almost home- I had too much money. I told my Mom that I was going to return it to the store. When I walked in the store, the cashier was not at her place so I went to the back and talked to a man in the meat market area (it was a small business not a chain store like we have nowadays).
I told him I had received too much money in change. He looked at me with a look like “WOW”. He then said, “You are an honest young man, aren’t you?”
I told him that I would have felt like I was stealing if I didn’t return the extra money.
Come to find out that he was the owner of the store. He thanked me and said he would not forget about my honesty.
Well, three years passed and I needed a job. I went in to fill out an application for a job at the same store. When I asked for an application at the front counter, the owner came out of the meat market area and asked if he could help me with anything. I asked him for a job application. He said, “You are hired. Can you start tomorrow?”
Now it was my turn to have a “WOW” look on my face. He told me that he remembered me from when I had returned the extra money.
So…by me not keeping $17 three years earlier, I made way more money for three years while I went to work there after high school.
He also trained me to be a butcher, too.
It does pay to be honest.
This is a true story that I told my kids (and every sports player I coached) as they grew up.
This case was famously called the “ Mormon sex in chains case.” In 1977, 17-year-old American Mormon missionary student Kirk Anderson was in the UK when he was kidnapped from the steps of a Mormon church in Surrey.
Kirk Anderson was kidnapped by 24-year-old Keith May after posing as a fake Journalist. He was then driven to a house in Devon, where he was chained to a bed. He was then seduced and raped by Joyce McKinney for three days against his will, while chained to a bed.
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Kirk went straight to the police to report Joyce and her accomplice Keith May. The two were charged and during a committal hearing Joyce, claimed to be in love with the victim. At the time, under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, no crime of rape was deemed to have happened due to the perpetrator being female.
Although Joyce couldn’t be charged with rape, she was charged with kidnapping, along with her accomplice. Joyce McKinney and Keith May absconded to the US under fake names, skipping their trial. They were sentenced to a year in Jail for skipping bail, but extradition orders were never filed by UK authorities.
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She became quiet infamous and even appeared in some raunchy photos for a magazine. She still lives in the US, and to this day, she has never seen a day inside prison for her crimes. She also received a suspended sentence for using a fake ID to enter the US.
BUSTED: Trudeau’s Plane Filled With Cocaine, Psychedelic Drugs!? Diplomat Outs Scumbag Canadian PM
Mr Benny, I’m Canadian and we are not all under Trudeau. I think he should be charged and tried for treason.
Fighter jets from multiple countries played relay
in a reflection of how geopolitics have changed
when President Assad and his family left China after attending the Asian Games and State visit on Air China Special jet B6131. It was escorted by Chinese fighter jets.
as soon as the plane left China and entered Pakistani airspace, fighter jets from Pakistan Air Force escorted the plane
when the Special jet left Pakistani airspace and entered the Arabian Sea, fighter jets from the Iranian Air Force escorted the Special plane along the Persian Gulf
jet fighters from Saudi Arabia subsequently took over and escorted the special plane to Jordan
at the Syrian border, Russian jet fighters took over for the last leg of the journey.
countries that were once bitter foes are now coming together under a BRI Eurasian world
and demonstrating their military coordination
it is now clear that Muslim countries of the Middle East will now COLLECTIVELY provide a powerful and decisive military contingent as part of a BRI Eurasian world in the war that will be fought
triggered by the Angel of Death himself who will once again lead a world wide coalition of countries obsessed with racial superiority, brutality and consumed with hatred against others not like them to complete what he had failed to do in World War 2……to burn the world down
You are not going to exist forever. You’re just a tiny speck in this vast universe and your time in this world is limited.
Anything harsh said to a loved one in anger leaves a permanent scar, no matter how much you try to bandage it.
Health is the most important wealth you can acquire. No matter how much gold you own, it can not quell the torture of an illness.
Every old person was once as old as you are today. Time stops for none.
Things which are most important for you today might be worthless tomorrow. Avoid spending money on urges.
Something as simple as saying sorry first can prevent countless disputes. It is not a sign of weakness.
Who your friends are determine who you become.
To become good at conversation, learn to be a good listener first.
Luck favours those who don’t give up
Be grateful if you have a roof for shelter, clean water for drinking , food on your table and a healthy functioning body. Try to imagine the absence of even one of these in your life.
This Kitten was LEFT FOR DEAD: What Happens Next Will SHOCK YOU
When I still worked for the Forest Service, right after 9/11, the newly created Department of Homeland Security went crazy issuing all kinds of new rules for federal employees. One was knives and sharp objects were no longer allowed in federal buildings. We all shook our heads and muttered “WTF!!! This is the Forest Service. Axes and knives are part our EDC. Tools of the trade.” All field going personnel carried a 4″ folding blade knife, that was mandatory, and most had a favorite tool they carried. Mine was a double bit axe I shaped and filed to my specifications. I did not leave it in my pickup at the end of the day. I carried it to my desk. Most others did too. Walking down the hallway carrying a sharp hand tool was a common sight.
We had a warehouse full of sharp tools and chainsaws. We used incendiary devices and napalm for prescribed burning. We used a scoped rifle to shoot cones out of trees for seed collection I received fire investigation training that showed me how to commit arson without detection. Yet we could not be trusted to carry a knife in the office.
The rule was ignored by everyone, including top management.
You Won’t Believe Who’s The Mastermind Behind Failed Coup Against Ibrahim Traoré!
Stay Strong My Brother, All Africans we need to STAND TOGETHER.
The BRI is a very simple idea on a very grand scale:
China will help to buiid ports, highways and railways in other countries, to facilitate mutual trade and commerce.
If you don’t have enough money, China will lend you some.
That’s about it. Participation is voluntary – China doesn’t force you to have a port or take a loan. And of course, before any country takes any BRI loan, its government, with its Finance Minister and accountants and economics advisers, will think carefully about the pros and cons. Simple as that.
The criticism came about because, well:
… the US government is paying USD 500 million to get the media to criticize the BRI.
The U.S. made more money on trade and business with China than any other nation in the last decade and within a decade it will double.
Think about this for every outlet of McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks and Coffee Bean open in the U.S. they opened 10 in China! China alone buy more GM than the entire U.S.! Every Apple and Dell sold they make 300 USD due to China’s productivity low cost of production. China’s middle income is now 3 times the size of the U.S. middle income consumer! Most of US brands produced in China is laughing all the way to the bank.
And what did the U.S. do? Yes the fxxk it all up. They pick a fight with their biggest customer and about to be bigger than the next 5 biggest customers put together! The U.S. is now facing an unbearable inflation and an impending recession due to your two 80 year old leader jointly and severally starting a trade war with China! And China have not really retaliated yet.
About the only thing the U.S. is able to make and sell to China. It stupidly ban China from selling! Ok to be fair it bans the 1% of high end Chips. Thinking China will buy the 99% that China could make but thought it let the U.S. share the piece of the pie! But since the U.S. says has evil intentions. China immediately stopped buying the 99%. And the entire U.S. chip industry crashed. Now China has the ability to even take over the 1% high end chips too.
You cannot find a more foolish government on planet earth or perhaps the universe. They even think that China will collapse if the U.S. stop buying or trading with China. China in their mind says if the U.S. wants to have a long rope to hang itself that is their right. China suffers a mosquito bite!
Amidst Laos’ rugged mountainous landscapes, a daily spectacle unfolds as dozens of trains race through, carrying a diverse array of goods, from electronics to cold-chain fruits, bound for destinations in China, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, and beyond. For the people of Laos who had endured the impact of dire transportation for decades, however, these sights have lost their novelty.
Two years have passed since China completed the construction of the China-Laos Railway, which connects the Chinese city of Kunming with Vientiane, the capital of Laos, a route that traverses mountains bearing the scars of unexploded American bombs from the Vietnam War. In this short span, over 19 million passengers and 24 million tons of goods have been transported, and more than 100,000 jobs have been created.
The once treacherous day-long drive from Vientiane to the Chinese border has transformed into a safe and smooth 3.5-hour journey. Today, with an average of seven passenger trains operating daily in Laos’ section, individuals sometimes still struggle for securing a ticket, given that Laos just added another passenger train set to its fleet from China in June. The ample demand for the rail service has surpassed initial expectations.
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Over the past decade, hundreds of railroads and highways like the China-Laos Railway have been constructed from scratch over mountainous terrains and deserts across the Eurasian and African continents. Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed in 2013, promoting greater infrastructure connectivity and facilitating cross-border transportation with the aim to strengthen business and cultural exchanges have become a defining aspect of China’s international cooperation. Millions benefit from BRI projects. According to the World Bank, BRI is able to boost trade flows among participating countries by 4.1 percent, cut the cost of global trade by 1.1 percent to 2.2 percent, grow the GDP of East Asian and Pacific developing countries by an average of 2.6 to 3.9 percent, and lift 7.6 million people from extreme poverty.
A trap?
On the global stage, however, China’s overseas infrastructure projects under the BRI have faced significant scrutiny, often being depicted as costly plans that may push participating countries into a “debt trap.” The Bar-Boljare highway is on top of the list. It is the first highway in Montenegro history that connects the country from south to north, which is set to replace the old narrow two-lane expressway built along steep mountains and over deep canyons. Although Vatroslav Belan, former advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Montenegro on financial matters, stated in an interview that the project did not impose an excessive debt burden on his country, discussions still revolve around the cost of the highway.
China constructed the Bar-Boljare highway with a cost of around 20 million euros per kilometer, which seems like a high price at first glance. But here is a fair comparison to similar infrastructure projects, such as those in the Alps region. According to World Highways, Germany and Austria, two countries situated along the Alps, spent an average of 28.9 million Euros and 27.8 million euros per kilometer on their highways. Given that the Bar-Boljare highway includes the construction of 16 tunnels and 20 bridges over one of the toughest mountainous terrains in Europe, its cost falls within a more than reasonable range.
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However, it’s important to acknowledge the existing concerns and controversies surrounding the BRI. Debt issues for some participating countries in this case highlight the need for more transparency in BRI projects.
No matter what people’s attitude towards the BRI is, one thing that can be confirmed is that the BRI is pragmatic, prioritizing gains for the sake of mutual prosperity, as seen from the results.
Open for all
The original purpose of BRI was building an “economic belt” along the ancient “silk road” linking China with Europe. Despite this, the BRI does not impose geographical restrictions on participating countries, nor is it limited to developing nations. In fact, among the over 150 countries that have signed up for the Initiative, approximately half of them are categorized as upper-middle or high-income by the World Bank. Examples include countries like Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, and many others.
Several Western corporations have already reaped benefits from the BRI. General Electric secured orders worth $2.3 billion for construction and engineering projects under the BRI, while Siemens collaborated with over 100 Chinese partners on BRI-related energy and mining projects. Citibank and Deutsche Bank have also participated in financing BRI projects. From China’s perspective, the BRI is an inclusive platform open to all stakeholders willing to engage.
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Also, the world welcomes other similar initiatives aimed at promoting cooperation and shared prosperity. The G7’s ‘Build Back Better World’ and the EU’s ‘Global Gateway’ can be promising endeavors, provided that their leaders prioritize meaningful actions over branding.
Cooperation rather than aid
To achieve prosperity, economies not only need modern infrastructure, such as high-quality electricity, fast rail, 5G networks and so forth, but, more importantly, a development path tailored to each country’s unique circumstances.
African countries have been receiving aid for decades. Prior to 2000, developed countries extended one trillion US dollars in aid to Africa, averaging more than 1,000 US dollars per person for its 800 million population at that time. Surprisingly, despite the peak of European and American aid between 1970 and 1998, Africa’s poverty rate soared from 11% to 66%.
(Source: Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo)
China has actively supported Africa since the 1950s, albeit with a distinct approach. The wisdom of the proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,” exactly characterizes China’s intentions in Africa and other developing nations under the BRI.
China’s own economic ascent over recent decades underscores the belief that each nation should chart its development path based on its unique circumstances—harnessing its resources and fostering distinctive industries. The wiser approach lies in dismantling barriers to enable the smooth flow of essential factors for industrialization.
Instead of extending direct financial aid, China focuses on addressing crucial development needs, removing obstacles, and promoting trade, which are pivotal for African countries in breaking free from the control of aid providers and achieving self-reliance in development. The 1,860-kilometer-long Tazara Railway, linking Zambia to the Indian Ocean, has significantly bolstered the development of nations along its route, underscoring the effectiveness of China’s approach of assisting others in helping themselves.
Underlying this philosophy, the Belt and Road Initiative goes beyond merely offering financial assistance to impoverished nations. It revolves around empowering countries to foster their own development in which China gets market access, while BRI participants acquire technology and opportunities. It’s a mutually beneficial, two-way journey with cooperation at its core.
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As reflecting on the past decade of the BRI, it is clear that this initiative has evolved significantly. It has embraced environmental sustainability and has promoted smart industries like telecommunications and cloud computing. While debates about its impact continue, the BRI remains a focal point of global economic development and international cooperation.
The smartest thing I ever saw in a court, and I’ve been in a court more than a few times (no, not as the defendant), wasn’t accomplished by an attorney, but by a 16-year-old girl. I bet she’s a lawyer now, as it was some years ago. If not, she’s surely doing something that requires similar talents and abilities, because she removed a threat and constant victimizer from our community when lawyers couldn’t.
It wasn’t a particularly important case, but she approached it acting as her own attorney and as if she had been arrested for murder. She even brought her own self-produced technicolor slide and video shows.
She had been pulled for speeding and running a stop sign by a county deputy who was the bain of our resort community from which the only way into the city where many of us worked or had other homes was by passed through a small town. Deputy Thug, as we called him, often lay in wait behind huge trees in the darkness, not just for law breakers but for people to harass at night when observers were not about. His favorite victims were minorities and teenagers and younger women of any race. He never pulled mature men, even if they were flying low, or older women, maybe for fear of husbands and sons or maybe they reminded him of his mother.
Almost all of our law enforcement officers were extremely polite and courteous, even if they hauled you off to jail. But people were afraid of this man. Everyone, even other deputies, knew that those he pulled were far more likely to be innocent than guilty and that he threatened violence and set people up, but no one had been able to prove it, with or without lawyers. Deputy Thug was not merely a liar, but a bully with no one controlling him. He was proud of his reputation for the most tickets, the most arrests, the most feared, etc.
He yelled, screamed, called names, demanded people, especially boys, get out of cars so he could shove them around and try to provoke them into something he could arrest for. He threatened, he intimidated. He accused them of serious crimes. I know it was true, because I saw it, and spoke up about it, and later I was also targeted. He was nasty and very threatening until I convinced him I knew my rights and for reasons not worth going into here, he wouldn’t be as likely to win my kind of fight as he would a violent one against a teenage boy.
Miss 16-Year-Old approached the docket like Perry Mason pretending to be Columbo. You would have to see it and hear a lot of detail to get the brilliance of how she set him up, but just to simplify it, she asked him question after question, about what she did, where she was, why that was illegal, where he was, what he saw, what he did, when he did it, on and on. She repeated every important question, asking twice if he were absolutely sure beyond a doubt. Of course, he was, he would answer, arrogant and condescending, tough, counterattacking, apparently not suspecting a trap being laid.
Since she refuted nothing he said, even seemed to be accepting his lies and a bit chagrined at times, the 200 or so of us in the courtroom (a bigger county court in the bigger city, not the small town) felt sorry for her. Deputy Thug was verbally beating her up to the extent the judge would let him, and we were losing hope that she had anything to offer to support her case – until she finished her line of inquiry and turned on the visuals.
She turned from Columbo into a 16-year-old ace prosecutor and proved with the slides and film that every single answer he had given her was a lie.
She had not even been where he claimed and wrote on the ticket that the incident happened. He had not pulled her at the time he said and wrote. There was no stop sign where he said she had run one. The speed limit at the place he cited was higher than he said she was driving, on and on and on.
Then, after she had disproven all his claims beyond a doubt – she proved that both the place she actually was and the place he falsely claimed to have pulled her weren’t even in his jurisdiction! He had no right to pull her or ticket her, let alone threaten to arrest her, as if she had been committing grand theft auto.
And during that process, she handled him as if she had 30 years’ experience in dismantling the defenses of hardened criminals, and he lost control and exploded at her when he realized she had shown him up as a liar and abuser of his authority.
The entire court room erupted in loud cheers and applause as the judge, enraged well before this point, dismissed the case and shredded the deputy, saying that he was a disgrace to his uniform and that he himself was deeply offended by the lies just told, also implying that serious consequences were in order.
Unfortunately, the judge had no control over police personnel, and Deputy Thug was not fired. But he stopped harassing our community and we never saw the swagger and arrogance again. All because a 16-year-old decided to take the time and trouble to prepare carefully a real defense and offense instead of just paying the fine.
I wondered if one of her parents might have been an attorney. Someone close to her could have advised, but the girl did it all. I hope she is fighting for the right somewhere today.
The lesson I learned is that it sometimes does pay to take small cases that seem to have little chance of success to court.
i sold everything & left America
I left my country beginning of 2021 and moved to France. It has been the most healing, spiritual and phenomenal thing I’ve ever done. I had a spiritual awakening, met my husband and started a business and all because I answered the call of my soul. Well done for doing the same. Life is short. Just do it!
I am not sure what what will US become. That is what Americans must decide on its own free will. To me to each it’s own. It will be good if Americans think seriously about the system you have that your media term as exceptional and land of the free and brave, the beacon of democracy and the leader of the free world?
But if Americans are brain dead and take it as what your media and your politicians say it is. Then that is the choice and right for Americans. I can only say what I think and what 7.5 billion out of 8 billion earthlings think about the so called liberal democracy. We know it is anything but democratic, anything but liberal, anything but exceptional!
We want out. Out from the U.S. so called rules based international order. The world knows it should not and will not follow a U.S. or western order or rules set by the west to impoverish the developing world and enriching the western order. That won’t work and we the world reject it wholeheartedly.
The U.S., its dog nations mainly your Anglo Saxon family, your slave vassal states some former colonial powers have reason to want to perpetuate this order so that the loot and the plunder can perpetuate because you are the net beneficiary of this order. So I can understand why this group wants to keep your thieving ways. But this group represents a mere 12% of the world and at most 12–15 nations out of 195 nations on earth. By any definition this is not the majority of the world. It Is a small minority.
We think the U.S. ways are simply barbaric and certainly unsustainable over the long term. It is no wonder that the U.S. share of the world economy evaporated from 52% in 1945 to today a little less than 15% in real purchasing power share today! And dropping very fast. In a decade the U.S. dollar as a reserved will reduce by 80% after all who wants their reserves to be robbed right before their eyes like how you confiscated the Russian reserves or Venezuelan gold in London.
The U.S. can only survived by money printing and credit creation without basis. No different from one humongous Ponzi scheme. 20% of worlds prisoners population is in the U.S., a week of mass random shootings in the U.S. is more than the entire world put together in a whole year! Up to a million Americans live in tents homeless throughout the U.S. Is the U.S.”liberal democracy” good? Or is it even workable?
Because China is a large country with a population of 1.4 billion. In recent years, China has increased its research and development efforts, innovated and made breakthroughs on its own, achieved independence and self-improvement in the fields of military, national defense, finance, economy, high technology, and got rid of external constraints and threats. It has maintained the world’s advanced level in fields such as high-speed railways, aerospace, ocean diving and drones, and has won respect and voice in the world. China is not afraid of provocation by the United States or encirclement by the United States.
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on the contrary，The United States has always regarded itself as the world’s leader and hegemon, and it is unwilling to see any country threaten its status and interests. The United States’ provocation against China is motivated by fear and jealousy of China’s rise. When China has made significant progress in various fields, the United States feels crisis and uneasiness. It fears China will surpass it, or at least be on par with it. It is jealous of China’s achievements and wants to smear and slander China’s image. Therefore, the United States has adopted various means to suppress and contain China’s development in an attempt to maintain its advantages and hegemony.
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In recent years, due to the rising of China, the United States is worried about its hegemonic position, so it tries to suppress China’s rise and contain China in all aspects, such as “trade war”, “freedom of navigation”, pushing allies to give up Huawei equipment, and using the media to convey China’s wrong information to the international community. It has also put pressure on its Allies to do so, for example, by provoking countries such as the Philippines to constantly provoke China over the South China Sea issue.
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In fact, none of these strategies worked. The more the United States oppresses China, the higher and more stable the Asian country will stand. For example, the US accused China of setting a “debt trap”, which eventually resulted in more countries joining the Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, more and more countries have applied to join the BRICS, and the BRICS countries also ushered in the expansion of membership this year. Diplomatically, despite the United States’ efforts to isolate China around the world, more than 30 foreign leaders and senior officials attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. In short, the US policy of “containing China” has failed miserably. So why can’t the US contain China’s rise?
First, the US cannot afford outright confrontations with China right now. China’s economic growth has been steady, and it has become the world’s second largest economy, with a wide market for US trade exports, and the two economies are highly interdependent, making complete decoupling almost impossible. China and the United States have close ties in trade, investment, and finance. Some US industries and enterprises are too dependent on the Chinese market and will suffer serious losses if the trade war continues. However, China has countermeasures, such as restricting imports of US products and reducing purchases of US bonds. This interdependence makes it difficult for the United States to bear the economic costs of confrontation with China.
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Second, China’s rise on the international stage has deterred the United States from openly acknowledging conflict and confrontation. China is increasingly influential in global affairs, actively participating in global governance and proposing a series of initiatives and programs, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The US is aware that open confrontations with China will only lead to its isolation on the global stage, loss of opportunities for international cooperation, and further weakening of its hegemonic position. History is the best proof: Vietnam War and the Iraq War fully illustrate the nature of selfishness of the US. The various failures of the United States have already undermined its diplomatic reputation, but for China, it is a good opportunity to gain more room for growth in the targeted competition.
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The United States needs to face China’s rise correctly and build a more stable and peaceful cooperative relationship with China, rather than adopting a vicious competitive approach. In the era of globalization, international cooperation is an effective way to solve problems. Both China and the US are the world’s largest economies with different strengths and development models. Through mutual respect, equal dialogue, and cooperation, the two countries can jointly address global challenges and promote prosperity and stability in the world.
Spicy Orange Beef
sweet and spicy orange beef.tif
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
1/4 cup orange juice concentrate
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon finely grated orange peel
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
5 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 cups broccoli florets
12 scallions, with tops, cut into 1 inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 (1 pound) boneless sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
3 medium oranges, sectioned
Hot cooked rice
Instructions
In a small bowl combine the first six ingredients; set aside.
In a large skillet or wok, heat 3 tablespoons oil over medium heat; sauté garlic for 30 seconds.
Add broccoli, onions, ginger and pepper flakes; stir-fry for 2 minutes or until broccoli is crisp-tender.
Remove vegetables and keep warm.
Heat remaining oil in skillet; add beef. Stir-fry until no longer pink.
Stir orange juice mixture; add to skillet.
Cook and stir for 2 minutes or until sauce is thickened.
Return vegetables to pan. Add oranges and heat through.
You have to understand the Chinese mindset to make sense of High speed rail
Only the Chinese can make it work
In Hongkong, Westerners predicted ferries would go out of business in the late 1950s because they charged 5 cents per person
FIVE CENTS
They were losing almost 150,000 HK a day
Yet they flourished and stayed in business
The reason?
INTRINSIC BENEFITS
More people flocked to Kowloon and the New Territories and more opportunities cropped up and more money was earned and the economy benefited more
So the Loss of 150K a day was compensated by a gain of 800K a day in 4 years time to the HK economy
This kind of mindset is something only a Chinese Mind and by extension a Singaporean Mind can conjure or think up
Factories in China were given tax subsidies in lieu of investing in Rural China
Factories gained an average of 60 Billion Yuan of tax concessions and their investment into the villages was 34 Billion Yuan
So Chinese Governments were losing 26 Billion Yuan a year in Tax
Sounds inefficient? Sounds corrupt?
Yet this 26 Billion Yuan a year, helped make villages self sufficient and within a decade the villagers were saving the Government of China around 100 Billion Yuan a year and earning them around 36–40 Billion Yuan
So the Chinese lost 260 Billion Yuan in Taxes over 10 years but Chinese Economy gained 1.4 Trillion Yuan over the same 10 years
High Speed Rails works in the same way
It costs the Chinese around 600 Billion Yuan a year in Losses
Yet it connects people from 200 miles away and helps prevent ghettos and slums in cities, ensures workplaces tick on time
It brings value to rural outlying areas whose land growth is asset monetization to the Chinese Government
It helps the housing sector as people can build in semi urban or rural areas now and still sell flats and houses due to the fact that cities are 4–6 hours away instead of 18 hours
Thus the intrinsic benefits of this 800 Billion a year is maybe 2–3 Trillion a year to the Chinese Economy
And as you scale the HSR across China (It’s only 45% complete today), you can cut the losses from 800 Billion Yuan a year to maybe 300 Billion Yuan a year and bring a positive intrinsic benefit to China of upto 4 Trillion a year
That’s something purely for the Chinese and maybe the Japanese people to know and understand
Westerners who follow pure capitalist economics won’t understand any other this
Indian leaders sadly are too corrupt and too entrenched in politics to have intrinsic benefits for their people. Thus any intrinsic benefits will be replaced by inefficiency and corruption
Bottom line
You want to understand Chinese actions in business?
First understand how a Chinese thinks
You cannot understand Chinese actions with a Western mindset.
USA is basically what happens when Jean Calvin meets Oliver Cromwell meets Ayn Rand.
I have never seen this kind of squalor in any First World country - and I have travelled a lot.
United States, as a society, is incredibly callous, ruthless, indifferent and negligent as a society. It was like that when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, and it is the same today. United States is a winner-takes-it-all society, where losers are treated with hard hand and where losing in this societal dog-eat-dog struggle of existence is basically your own fault. And in this mindset, for every winner, there must always be a plenitude of losers.
American “freedom” is essentially indifference.
Now opiates are painkillers. They are downers. They numb down pain. Not only physical pain, but also social and societal pain. This is what makes them so dangerous.
Opiates are not party drugs nor protest drugs nor psychedelics. They are essentially loser drugs. They are not used to getting high. They are used to keep the pain away.
Heroin is the ultimate so-what drug. Opiates are used to keep the cruel world away – to keep the pain, the shame, the agony, the knowledge you are bottom dregs of the society, human waste – away.
Opiates are the alternative for committing suicide. For the really downtrodden and broken, the opiates give a reason to live for tomorrow.
The seeds of the opiate crisis were sowed in the 1980s during the era of Ronald Reagan and the Neo-Liberalist economic policy and Neo-Conservative societal politics. They initiated the polarization of the American society into filthy rich and dirth poor, and they initiated the erosion of the middle class. Ever since USA was founded, each generation was wealthier than their parents. This finally ended with the Generation X – it is the first generation which will remain poorer than their parents. The reason is the erosion of the middle class and the polarization of the society into winners and losers, and there is no guarantee any more for social ascension via hard work, education or entrepreneurship.
With the erosion of the middle class came the erosion of the support pillars of the society. The loss of middle class jobs meant erosion of the nuclear family. That came with erosion of the traditional religiosity of the US. That came with the polarization of politics – Dems were overrun by the progressive wokes and Reps by the MAGA folks. I cannot say who are more lunatic, but the pragmaticism and common sense disappeared. Trump is not the cause, he is the symptom.
Generation Y and Z (the Millennials) will remain still even poorer than the Gen X. They are the first American generations with no future. And they realize it. Usually people become more conservative with age – because of gentrification. This has not happened with Gen X, Y nor Z. It is said Gen X is the great so-what generation – totally disillusioned and totally dreamless – and the younger generations are outright Nihilstic about their futures.
This “no future” realization, however, is not enough to create a drug problem – in the UK it created the punk subculture. What is needed is a cheap supply of safe drugs. And that happened with the Purdue Pharma. They developed a process to manufacture oxycodone cheaply from thebaine and a form of compound which releases slowly the oxycodone into metabolism – and named it as Oxycontin.
image 66
Thebaine can easily be converted into just any source of drugs. Mind you heroin is diacetylmorphine, and synthesized from morphine by treating it with acetic acid anhydride. The molecule of oxycodone is dangerously similar as that of heroin.
Purdue Pharma marketed Oxycontin ruthlessly and disregarding its addictiviness. The company got rich – and also a lot of the product went to clandestine hands. The drug addicts realized it was both cheaper than heroin and safer to use – oxycodone eventually pretty much has superseded illicit heroin on the market. Purdue Pharma dug too deep and unleashed the balrog.
image 66
This figure pretty much explains it all. The first wave began with Purdue Pharma unleashing the balrog with Oxycontin in the 1990s. It also coincided with the closure of coal mines and deindustrialization of the Rust Belt and the desperation and hopelessness of the poor people there.
The second wave began with heroin in 2010. It was only a temporary rise – the even stronger and stranger stuffs – emerged. That is, synthetic opioids like fentanyl, tramadol and other similar stuffs. The Russian scourge, krokodil, never got a foothold in the US, though – the American addicts are not that desperate.
Eventually the synthetic opioids bypassed both oxycodone and heroin. The drug misuse problem is greatest where desperation, hopelessness and bleak outlook in the life are hardest – rural America, traditional industrial areas and poor quarters of the cities. In 2020, the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths increased 31% compared to 2019. Adults aged 35-44 (Gen Y) experienced the highest rates of drug overdose deaths while young people aged 15-24 (Gen Z) experienced the greatest percentage increase in deaths.
Fentanyl is both extremely potent painkiller and rather simple to synthesize in a clandestine laboratory. Fentanyl has been synthesized from a simple phenylethylamine by four step sequence. The key part of this synthesis involves an efficient construction of phenylethylpiperidone skeleton via aminomethano desilyltion-cyclization followed by Swern oxidation. This is known as the Gupta method.
image 65
The first step involves treating piperidone in hydrocloric acid solution with aniline and zinc catalyst with acetic acid – this is a simple addition-elimination reaction.
The second step is adding 2-bromoethylbenzene in 50% w/w NaOH (50% hydroxide solution was interpreted for the 100% hydroxide solution stated in the Gupta patent) to yield 4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (4-ANPP).
The third step is adding propionyl chloride to yield fentanyl. It should be noted in all cases that dichloromethane was substituted for 1,2-dichloroethane in the last step (Step-3). Also, the Gupta-patent stops at the isolation of the fentanyl in freebase form, while all samples in this study were converted to the hydrochloride salt form to replicate the salt form of most seized samples (Step-4) with hydrochloric acid.
Unlike Breaking Bad and the red-white-blue synthesis of methamphetamine, the fentanyl synthesis is rather safe, but asks for clandestine, uncommon and not generally available chemicals. The yield is not stoichiometric, and produces a lot of unwanted side products. Mind you also the stereochemistry. A modification of the Gupta “one-pot” route is accomplished starting with piperidone hydrochloride, triethylamine, phenylacetaldehyde, and sodium triacetoxyborohydride (STAB) in dichloromethane. This chemical mixture was stirred at room temperature overnight. On the second day, aniline and additional STAB were added and allowed to stir again overnight at room temperature. The crude 4-ANPP product was isolated after Step-2, which was a deviation from the standard “one-pot” procedure, by adding NaOH solution until basic and extracting the desired product with dichloromethane. The resulting dichloromethane layer was dried over sodium sulfate, decanted into another flask, taken to fentanyl using propionyl chloride and triethylamine, and then isolated as the hydrochloride salt form in Step-4.
The result is now that balrog roams free and there is no simple solution for this problem. United States is slowly decaying and disintegrating, but not with a bang but with a whimper. The current opiate and opioid crisis is a symptom of this decay – including all the social evils connected to it.
Russia has a similar crisis, but with really dangerous stuffs, such as krokodil, which is basically home-cooked very impure desomorphine. The Russian youth experiences the similar hopelessness, lack of opportunities, bleakness and desperation as the Americans, and they have it even worse. Needless to say, Putin’s politics have certainly not eased it. Russia is basically another petrostate with Mongol legacy, and Russian rulers have always treated their peasants as expendable. In Russia, human life has never had any value whatsoever. See ‘Muting The Horrors’: Experts Warn Of Addiction Crisis As Russian Soldiers Return From Ukraine
We here in Europe live with a cold circle under our butts: which will collapse first, USA or Russia – and what will it mean to us?
a shift is happening, keep up
“I needed to hear this so badly today. Been stuck in a rut of anxiety and negative self doubt, I recently graduated high school and am choosing a path other than college and it has made me feel like I’m out of the loop or a “loser” for not going to college. This made me realize I need to stop pitying myself and put the work in to have a better life for myself”
Long before I even heard of a “Chicago pizza”, I would make these pizzas that my brother and I referred to as “swamp pizza”. What I would do is take a “off the shelf” pizza kit and raise the dough extra long. And instead of flattening it out in the standard pizza shape, I would use it to line a deep Pyrex dish.
deep dish pizza aka swamp
I would then fill it with the sauce and cover it up with cheese. Sometimes I would add meat and mushrooms, and always I would cover with lots and lots of cheese.
It’s been decades since I made these little Swamp Pizzas. But every now and then, I get a hankering for a swamp pizza on a lazy afternoon, and a black and white vintage science fiction or film noir movie. I will tell you that it is perfect for spending a snowy Winter day alone.
Today…
Doggie story
“My dog gave her life to save my son.
Cindy, my dog, was six years old and she was the most home-loving and obedient dog. I loved her and she knew it. When my son was born, she was immediately very protective over him. She’d sit beside his pram for hours, popping her front legs up onto the pram every now and then to make sure he was ok.
My son was almost three years old. We lived near a busy road and we were super vigilant at always child-proofing the front door – without exception. My son, as young children can be, was into everything. We’d often find him in the kitchen at 4 am with a concoction of cereal, milk, dry dog food, eggs, etc all mixed up on the kitchen floor. He was that kind of child – into everything. He also watched everything we would do and try to mimic us in his own unique way, often with highly amusing consequences.
One morning, again around 4 am, he somehow managed to ‘escape’ through his bedroom window. To rewind a little, Cindy knew not to go outside (apart from the garden) without us. We could have left the front door open all day (when my son was visiting with grandparents) and she’d never venture out. She also knew that our son wasn’t allowed to go through the front door without us, evidenced by her pushing at him if he fiddled with the front door handle. She didn’t know that it was double locked. This day, she followed my son through the window.
At 5 am, the police woke us knocking on the door. Their words were – “your son was nearly killed but your dog copped it”. They then reiterated what the lorry driver had said…
He told them that he was driving along in the dark and in the distance, he could see something ‘light colored’ moving on the road. As he got closer, he could see a dog at the side of the road barking and barking at the ‘light colored’ something. At the last moment, he realized that this was a child and was about to swerve. He said he could see the dog, still barking and glancing between the truck and the child. While the driver was braking, the dog ran out into the road, jumped at the child’s back and threw him out of the path of the lorry and at the same time, the lorry hit the dog and killed her.
According to the police, the driver said that he’d never believe what he saw unless it was with his own eyes. He said that the dog definitely knew the danger which is why she was barking so anxiously. He said “that dog just saved that kid’s life and it knew what it was doing.”
That was 39 years ago and I still miss Cindy every day. She was a rough collie (a lassie dog) and I can understand why this breed was chosen for the movies.”
School Bus story
“I drive a school bus and have a 6 grader who I would like to talk about.
Last week he was talking about an elderly neighbor not leaving her house for weeks. I tried to explain how hard it could be for her to do things. On Tuesday I pulled up and he wasn’t at the stop waiting. I looked over and saw him shoveling her porch. I was early so I waited for him. The other kids asked why I waited. I said anyone helping someone deserves a few extra minutes. All the kids started asking him questions about his neighbor. The next day 7 children got on the bus with blankets, food and cards for the elderly woman. I delivered them after worked. Now everyday she stands on the porch and the whole bus waves good morning. I am so proud of him for stepping up and doing the right thing. He taught all the children something important. I smile with pride in my heart because of the extraordinary children I have on my bus.” .
A Secret Global Coup Has Happened!
Let’s say there are 10 people. 1 is a sociopath and 2 are brutish thugs. The sociopath will use the two thugs to keep the rest in line using violence. The other 7 people will be forced to work long and hard so that these 3 can live lives of pleasure and privilege. This is the story of human civilization ever since the agricultural revolution. Countries are people farms; most humans have become farm animals and are treated as such.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Leonard
Matthew Leonard, born on November 26, 1929, in Eutaw, Alabama, embodied the spirit of service from an early age. Raised in a segregated society, Leonard attended Ullman High School in Birmingham, Alabama. He was not only a student but also a Boy Scout, instilling in him the values of honor and duty.
As a teenager, Leonard took on a job at a local drugstore, earning a modest $15 per week. This hard-earned income was dedicated to helping his mother meet the family’s financial needs. Even in his youth, Leonard demonstrated a deep sense of responsibility and commitment to those he cared for.
In 1947, at the age of 18, Matthew Leonard enlisted in the U.S. Army, beginning a remarkable journey that would span nearly two decades. He dedicated himself to a life of service, embracing the challenges and responsibilities that came with it.
Leonard served as a drill sergeant and trained young recruits at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. But as the war in Vietnam broke out, Leonard’s wife said he struggled to watch those young recruits, who weren’t much older than his sons, go to war and die. So, even though he was close to retirement, he volunteered to deploy in the hope of making a difference.
On February 28, 1967, in the heart of Vietnam, Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Leonard, serving as the platoon sergeant for Company B of the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, demonstrated unparalleled bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.
Sgt. Leonard’s valorous journey unfolded near Suoi Da, Vietnam, where his platoon suddenly found themselves under a hail of enemy fire. The enemy, armed with small arms, automatic weapons, and hand grenades, vastly outnumbered Leonard’s platoon. Amid the chaos, the platoon’s commander and several key leaders were among the first to be wounded, thrusting Leonard into a position of leadership.
With remarkable composure, Leonard rallied his platoon to repel the initial enemy assault. He swiftly organized a defensive perimeter, redistributed ammunition, and bolstered the morale of his fellow soldiers. Even in the midst of battle, he exemplified unwavering leadership.
As the enemy’s assault intensified, Leonard’s selflessness and bravery shone brighter. When a wounded soldier found himself outside the safety of the defensive perimeter, Leonard risked his life to rescue him. It was during this act of heroism that Leonard himself was struck by a sniper’s bullet, shattering his hand.
Undeterred by his injuries, Leonard refused medical attention and continued to fight. He moved tirelessly from position to position, directing counterfire against the enemy, who had positioned a machine gun that threatened the entire perimeter.
Just as the situation seemed dire, Leonard’s own platoon’s machine gun malfunctioned, adding to the peril. Without hesitation, Leonard crawled to the malfunctioning weapon, determined to get it back into operation. During this critical moment, the enemy machine gun began strafing nearby soldiers, hitting Leonard’s gunner and others.
Summoning every ounce of his strength, Leonard rose to his feet and charged toward the enemy gun. Despite suffering multiple gunshot wounds, he managed to eliminate the enemy machine gun’s crew, silencing the threat.
Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Leonard’s indomitable spirit and unwavering commitment to his comrades and mission endured until the very end. Despite being gravely wounded, he propped himself against a tree and continued to return fire until he could no longer carry on.
His incredible sacrifice and valor were acknowledged with the Medal of Honor, a testament to the extraordinary dedication and courage he displayed in the face of adversity.
Poor Cat Left To Decompose While She Is Alive | Rescue Before And After
Back when I was a young teen (more moons ago than I can count) I worked as a law clerk during the summers at my father’s office in downtown Chicago. Mostly it was busy work, matching mail with files, pulling files for court and some light typing.
On occasion I would go with him to court when he argued cases before the industrial commission (work related accidents).
One of these cases involved an individual who claimed his shoulder injury was so bad he was permanently and totally disabled from working ever again. He was a Russian immigrant and so his lawyer had to use an interpreter to question him during the hearing.
What they didn’t know was that my father had been a Russian Interrogator for the Air Force during the Korean War, and spoke fluent Russian. He had been teaching me conversational Russian while I was growing up, so I was able to follow along for the most part.
When his lawyer asked the question : “Mr. Petrovitch, how high can you lift your right arm” their interpreter actually said “Raise your right hand a small amount and act as if you are in severe pain” to which the man raised his hand a little, groaned and grimaced, squinting his eyes.
On cross-examination, after a laundry list of standard questions (through the interpreter, of course) my dad said in fluent Russian “HANDS UP OR I’LL SHOOT!” The man immediately raised both arms and stretched them towards the ceiling, showing no limitations or pain behavior at all.
Of course the other lawyer started shouting his objections, the interpreter yelled at the petitioner (plaintiff) that he was stupid and the judge covered his face with his hands to try and stop laughing out loud.
Go to the school and demand the phone back immediately. Having a phone is not illegal. If they balk at giving it back and spew some nonsense about not allowing phones at school tell them your child doesn’t have his phone in class but you as his parent require that he carry it with him to be able to track him and reach him as needed. There are many tracking apps now. Calmly, Demand they hand over the phone immediately. If they do not, call the police right there from the school office to report a theft. Get the names and positions of everyone witnessing this. Tell the school that if you don’t get the phone by the next day you will be buying a new phone and your attorney will be in contact with the school regarding the school paying for the new phone plus the old phone plus the attorney’s bill. Ask when the next school board meeting is and suggest you will be attending to discuss the dismissal of all involved, on charges of petty larceny.
You Won’t Βelieve What Τhey Have In Stοre For Us Next..
Let me see if I got this correct. The tax payer now pays for Gov stores and also pays to fill those stores with food and other items again using tax payer money. Then the tax payer goes to buy the food in the Gov store and gets tax on top of that. Crazy times we are living in!
Prison food is not great. It is not served on fine china or plated to be visually pleasing to the eye.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are seldom served.
For five years I went twice a week to spend time with inmates as we worked together on a book project for at risk kids.
We were all volunteers for our community, as we sat on opposite sides of the table.
One evening when I entered the men’s dormitory, where we met, an inmate handed me a small cardboard box.
He said, “We do not have anything to give you to thank you for coming here and treating us with respect. We want you to know we appreciate your giving value to our lives by using our stories to help others.”
I felt humbled and astonished when I saw the contents of the box. It was a red apple, some popcorn, and another small edible item. On the side was a handwritten note with many signatures.
Anyone who has spent time in prison knows fresh fruit is like gold. A thank you in any form is not to be taken lightly.
Inmates sharing their food with an outsider is not common. Sharing food that is fresh and seldom served is momentous.
Their gifts were not only humane. They were risky. Giving gifts was not in the rule book. I looked over at the nearby guards who also chose to be humane that day and let me know they understood the importance of what was happening.
They looked at the hardened faces of the men in my class, whose softened eyes were asking permission. The guards nodded while I fought to keep back the tears.
In all my years of teaching and rendering service to others, I have never felt such gratitude for the priviege as I did that day.
Years later, seeing a red apple stirs my spirit and reminds me, humane and selfless acts still abound.
In unexpected places, gratitude can still civilize us when we least expect it, for both the giver and the recipient.
P.S. The book is available to be borrowed for free through Amazon Kdp select. It is titled, “Redirecting Kids for Success” Prison Prevention…for at risk kids grades 9-12.
Breaking! China just dealt a DEVASTATING blow to U.S. Dollar Dominance
Breaking news on this Monday out of China where we have new data on the dumping of U.S. treasuries and what this means for the U.S. dollar dominance. Saudi Arabia also dumping U.S. treasuries at an increased rate over the past few weeks. What is going on?
Xi changed nothing. You’ve been listening to Western propaganda garbage.
Nearly the entire Global South is behind China. More than 40 countries have expressed a wish to join China-led BRICS and SCO. More than 150 countries have signed up to the BRI and wish to receive Chinese assistance.
China has treated America, Britain and EU with utmost respect. The reverse, unfortunately, has not been true. China is sick and tired of their arrogance and Cold War mentality.
Why did the West change their attitude towards China? Riddle me this.
She’s lying. She has no idea what to do. What she’s trying to selli is the idea that she does.
Here’s the problem. Americans want fentanyl. Enough Americans want fentanyl as to make it worth the enormous risk of smuggling either it, or the raw materials to make it, into the United States. Capitalism 101. And there is no way to stop that. None. Every attempt we’ve ever made to stop drug use by prohibition has been not only an utter failure, but has caused us more trouble than the actual problem we were trying to fix.
There’s a deeper problem. Fentanyl is a symptom, not a cause. And that cause is the utter hopelessness and the lack of resources for the poor in the US. We’ve literally criminalized poverty. We have the weakest social safety net in the industrial world, and we’ve decided that a tax structure that makes it possible for a handful of men to amass fortunes that can buy them freedom from the law, is a good thing even if it leaves 20% of the country living below the poverty line in an information and resource vacuum that leaves most trapped.
Preying on the poor is hugely profitable, and the capitalists have risen to the task. We choose to look away and complain.
HarmonyOS 4.0 reaches over 60 million Huawei devices in less than 2 months
Hauwei unveiled HarmonyOS 4.0, the latest version of its operating system, on August 4. The new iteration brought several changes to the user interface, as well as new features and improvements. Huawei has been quickly rolling out the new software to eligible devices. Earlier this month, we reported that 10 million Huawei smartphones and tablets were already running HarmonyOS 4.0. And today, the company confirmed that the OS has now made its way to over 60 million devices.
Huawei announced 60 million installations of HarmonyOS 4 on Huawei smartphones and tablet devices at its Autumn 2023 Flagship Product Launch event today. The company said it added an average of 1.2 million new users each day. This is just after less than 2 months of the formal announcement of the software.
HarmonyOS 4.0 comes with several notable changes, including a variety of rich theme templates and stylized layout designs. You can select the colors of your app icons and set emoji wallpapers and home screens by choosing your favorite emoji.
It also lets you better manage your notifications by clustering them together and sorting them by importance. The notifications for the same app are now stacked into dynamic cards so you can see more information about each notification without having to open it. HarmonyOS 4.0 also lets you identify text and images by double-clicking and then long-pressing to select them.
Huawei had a busy day today. It launched half a dozen new products in China, including a Huawei Mate 60 RS Ultimate Design smartphone with satellite calling and a ceramic body. In addition, the company unveiled the FreeBuds Pro 3 as well as the Watch GT 4.
U.S Sanctions Failed As China’s Shenzhen Imports Integrated Circuits From All Around the World!
“We see the “US of Amurdikkka is fastly declining in to a third world company/country/corporation.” Fall Babylon fall, youve destroyed so many. Now enjoy the ride down, you’ll never rise again.”
I’ve been wondering whether or not to answer this… The “wrong person” is my daughter (stepdaughter really,but I’m Daddy now and forever so that settles that) and the people doing the “picking a fight”were her ex boyfriend and his father.. I didn’t personally witness this because I was in Iraq at the time,but believe me I sure heard about it.
Daughter is tall and not a delicate flower even though she has all the requisite standard equipment to attract stares and suchlike, including a startling resemblance to Gal Gadot ,and I always emphasized to all my kids the importance of self confidence ,so she carries herself with a certain pride. She has Blackfeet blood along with Irish and Norwegian and who knows what else, girl has a temper too,what can I say..
Anyways,ex boyfriend and father spot her walking down the sidewalk one weekend night and follow her,asking her to get in and go for a cruise.. She says no,but they apparently don’t want to take no for an answer and pull ahead and stop, ex BF Gets out of the car and grabs her elbow and pulls her towards the car,she pulls away and he grabs her again, by this time she is almost in the door. I had taught my kids to avoid punching someone and use their elbows if the person was close enough, which ex BF certainly was unfortunately for his dumb ass, because Daughter proceeds to elbow him repeatedly in the face with backswing strikes on her way away from the car, dislocating ex BF‘S jaw and shattering his eye socket and breaking his nose, and naturally stopped any hostilities on his part, but ex BF’s dad was pushed by this time and ran around the car and accosted Daughter, catching a 50 yard field goal kick in his balls for his troubles..I taught my kids well.
Well, as an American woman, I would recommend that China’s leaders maintain a strong and unyielding stance against the outright bully tactics of my country’s government. To be fair, the US isn’t the only country upping their anti-China sentiments but it is the country I am from so that is what I primarily speak of.
I would say to China, you have more than paid your dues and earned your right as a superpower in world affairs. Hold your heads proudly because you have every right to. There is no need to hide your strength anymore. It is time to let it be on display.
You are one of, if not the oldest country with 5000 years of continuous history. You don’t need to bow to anyone. You don’t need to apologize for being great. You don’t need to sell your technology to the US. You don’t need to accept blame for a virus that was not your fault. You don’t have to back off of your initiatives because other countries don’t approve. You don’t have to take acts of aggression from our spy planes flying in your airspace. You don’t have to tolerate the blatant disrespect to your consulate that was closed in our country. Your people don’t have to accept racism when they come to the US to attend college, work in research, or just visit as tourists.
Please don’t let anyone else push you around anymore. Never again. Let that be your motto from here on out.
Germany Freaks Out – China, PLEASE Buy Our Cars!
“As a European, I am so ashamed of our political class and what they have turned the Eurozone into. If the european project is just a facade for American hegemony, then let it die and this is extremely hard for me to say, because I see the eurozone and union as a great idea but ONLY if we have autonomy both strategically, economic and militarily. These two years have shown we have none of it and this is why I write this. It is mindbuggling/unbelievable stupid what is happening right now.”
Let me tell a story about a Clerk who worked with me who made me believe that The Godfather (Book) theory that The Simplest and most humble man can avenge himself against the most powerful of men with patience
We worked in a Branch where i was temporarily in charge of recovery. The branch was a Scale IV Branch but for some reason a Scale V AGM had been deputed to the branch for a temporary basis due to some shortage or something.
This Asst General Manager who had a chip on his block. You had a good natured thirty something old clerk who worked in the department and who was a pretty good guy. He owned a family business as well and would very often give us discounts. I went on many recovery missions with him and he was always a cheerful and happy go lucky type.
Our Old Branch Manager was a good man but once he retired – until his replacement came- this AGM was posted and he was a PRIG. He was angry at working in a Scale IV post and showed it on people.
Now our Clerk always went from 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM to pick up his daughter, take her to the family business premise, drop her there, have tea and return. The lunch ended at 2:30 so he would always be around 45 minutes late which he would make up by working from 5:30 to 6:15 in the evening. He would help a lot of us.
This arrangement was unofficially agreed upon by the Old Branch Manager. The New Prig did not agree . He believed it was against Bank rules and decided to take the clerk on. Now the clerk requested the AGM to give him the time off but the AGM refused. He decided to run the department efficiently (Instead he made it highly inefficient). He refused to repair a water filter (Back then Aquaguards were rare) and calculated the cost of Pens and White Paper.
One day – the wife of the clerk came. The clerk was away for recovery and the peon took her straight to the AGM. She told the AGM that she had to go to her mother and requested that her husband pick up the child as usual. Back then there were no cellphones or SMS and the lady had come to the office for the first time. The AGM was preoccupied with something and forgot (I believe this. Others say he deliberately did what he did but i believe he was preoccupied)
Bottom line – the message was not conveyed. It was 2:50 PM or so when the Peon told the clerk that his wife had visited. The Clerk was puzzled and walked into the AGMs office but the AGM was not there. The Clerk shrugged and continued on with his work believing that his daughter had picked up the child. It was 4 PM when the brother of the Clerk called the Office and asked where the child was? The Clerk was stunned and believed the child would be with his wife but Myself and few others decided to ask the AGM (Bank Hierarchy especially PSU hierarchy is a big thing. Approaching an AGM when you are a Scale II officer is a scary prospect) but the Clerk was out of the doors.
The Good thing was that the Child was a clever girl and simply sat outside with the Watchman of the School and was relieved when the father picked her up. The Father brought her to the branch and he was hugely relieved.
What happened next was straight out of the Malayalam Movie Drivers License
The AGM who saw a child and commotion – shouted at the top of his voice. He abused the Clerk in the loudest words calling him inefficient and moron. The Clerk also raised his voice and talked about his wifes message and the AGM said “I am not your messenger or Postman”. By the time the others separated them – the Clerk had literally been abused in front of his girl who was watching the whole thing (She was in Class IV i think)
The Clerk silently took his daughter home burning with humiliation. The local association leader told him to stage a Dharna but the clerk refused. He told me “God will take care” and i thought it was the usual sentimental nonsense. He remained on his desk, never asked for any leave from the HC, did his work and we all presumed the issue was finished.
Then An Opportunity came
Back then there was no Core Banking. A Customer came with a Fixed Deposit Receipt for Rs. 6 Lakh and wanted Cash. The Officer in question looked at the register and saw that the FD number was not mentioned (No Computers also. Back then we had Ledgers where FD numbers would be mentioned and recorded). The Customer was known to the AGM though and the AGM told the Officer to go ahead and encash the FD.
However it was after Lunch and the normal officer was gone for the day. I am a law and recovery officer and have no role to play so there were no officers. The AGM promptly asked the Clerk to encash the FD and pay the cash (Highly irregular) and the Clerk said “Sir the FD number is not on the ledger”. The AGM arrogantly told him that the customer could not be made to wait and so the Clerk paid him.
Once the Customer was paid and left, the Officer returned the next day or so and searched in every register but could not find a trace of the FD record. He told the AGM and the AGM called the customer but the customer was gone (It was a honest explanation. The Customer did not cheat etc. He just was away somewhere else). The AGM was now sweating beads. The Clerk shrugged. “I am just a clerk. I follow instructions. You instructed me to encash the FD” – he said and pointed at a few of us as witnesses.
The Officer was told by the AGM to give a few days but the same evening the clerk told him “Sir…if you report this today then you are clear but if you take a few days then they may think you are also involved”. The Officer decided to not take chances and reported it.
What happened next was unbelievable. The Big Boss arrived personally and blasted the AGM. Then some people came to go through the ledgers and found Rs. 6 Lakh shortage (A Huge sum back then) and told the AGM he had to make the amount good or they would report to the cops. The AGM was shivering but nothing could be done. The cops arrived and took him to the station. Now the Clerk was a local and the cops were locals. The AGM was an outsider – so they sweated him, threatened him, took him to his house in a jeep in front of his wife and children, talked to his neighbors etc. I was asked to be there at the station as a lawyer and the cops took iron rods and torture devices in front of me. When i said “What the hell is this ??” – the SI laughed and said “Sir! We are not mad. This is just for getting him to talk”
The poor man stayed the entire day at the Station. The next day the Customer returned. He had presented an FD receipt for another branch of our bank so the number was not in our ledger. He gave the FD receipt of our branch and the ledger confirmed the number and everything was okay.
But the AGM was finished. He was humiliated in every way possible. He took leave for 4–5 days and asked for a Transfer
It was then that the clerk told me “Sir. On that day itself i saw that this FD receipt was from a different branch. Had he been a better man – i would have told him then and there. I would have told the customer itself. None of this would have happened”
I told him he had been too cruel but he said “There is nothing worse than being yelled at in front of your child for no fault of your own”.
The AGM who was destined to become CMD – resigned from the bank unable to bear the humiliation of the incident (Though it lasted exactly for 14 – 15 hours after which it was all over). He joined Madura Courts and his career was never the same. He later began to sell Reuters Screens on a commission basis.
The Moral of the Story is – Humiliation by your boss unjustly will always come back to bite the boss. This Clerk who was such a good man that when i was transfered – he travelled in a lorry with my furniture to ensure that the local packers dont take me for a ride. Yet he never forgot his humiliation and destroyed the life of the AGM.
If you are a Boss – Never humiliate your underlings. Call them separately and tick them off but never in front of others. Easiest way to make enemies.
True for all fields.
Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza
This is a clone recipe of the best Chicago-style pizza you will ever eat!
Servings: 8
Pan Dough 1 cup warm tap water (110-115 degrees F) 1/4 ounce active dry yeast 3 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup course ground cornmeal 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt 1/4 cup vegetable oil
Pizza Topping 1 pound mozzarella cheese, sliced thin 1 pound Italian sausage, removed from the casing and crumbled 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained 2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced 5 fresh basil leaves, chopped fine 4 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
Pour the warm water into a large mixing bowl and dissolve the yeast with a fork.
Add 1 cup of flour, all of the cornmeal, salt, and vegetable oil, and mix well with a spoon.
Continue stirring in the rest of the flour 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl. Flour your hands and the work surface and knead the ball of dough until it is no longer sticky.
Let the dough rise in an oiled bowl, sealed with plastic wrap, for 45-60 minutes in a warm place, until it has doubled in size.
Punch it down and knead it briefly.
Press it into an oiled 15-inch deep dish pizza pan until it comes 2 inches up the sides and is even on the bottom of the pan.
Let the dough rise 15-20 minutes before filling.
Heat the oven to 500 degrees F.
While the dough is rising, prepare the filling.
Cook the sausage until it is no longer pink and drain the excess fat.
When the dough has finished its second rising, lay the cheese over the dough shell.
Distribute the sausage and garlic over the cheese.
Top with the tomatoes.
Sprinkle on the seasonings and Parmesan cheese.
Bake for 15 minutes at 500 degrees F, then lower the temperature to 400 degreesF and finish baking for 25-35 minutes longer.
Lift up a section of the crust from time to time with a spatula to check its color. The crust will be golden brown when done.
Serve immediately.
Cat Sisters Meet After 9 Months Apart – Do They Recognize Each Other?
The Ukraine War was one of the worst miscalculations of the West and the Stupidest
The aim was to
Weaken Russia and destroy it Economically
Weaken Russia Globally and make it a Pariah
Give China a strong message and frighten China into following the Biden Doctrine
What’s happened is:-
A resurgent Russia that has something to fight for at last and has grown stronger every day
A Russo Sino Alliance that is fast becoming a nice power bloc with many nations with resources and heavy sanctions now drifting to them
Loss of Confidence in the West by 80% of the world and belief in a Multipolar world
Waning Western impact of Sanctions
Ensure China knows it’s War and prepare for it instead of catching them off guard
Today, Ukraine has been brutalized badly
It has lost 33.7% of pre SMO population as Refugees or now Russian Citizens in the Donors region and Kherson and Zaprozhye
It has lost its entire production capacity and it’s own weapon reserves have been brutally depleted and it relies on western arms and money which is dwindling every day
The West has spent $ 130 Billion so far on Ukraine and most of this money has been salted away due to severe corruption
Ukraine is sending more and more men to die
Russia meanwhile is happy with it’s grind and move strategy, minimizing casualties and enjoying the growth of their own industries in the MI complex
Scenario 1:-
The West want to FREEZE the conflict
Russia said No
Maybe Russia would be incentivized to do so like say offer to remove sanctions on Russia or maybe persuade China to convince Russia
Bleak chance of this happening
Scenario 2:-
Ukraine is destroyed
Russia decides to move from SMO to war and start hitting and destroying Ukraine like US did to Iraq or Afghanistan
Zelensky would flee and most leaders would flee then and Ukraine would capitulate
Timeline: 2025 March or April
Biden will not be President. He may not even be nominated as the Democratic candidate, so he will vindictively carry this till 19/1/25
Scenario 3:-
Trump is elected
Trump only has one term left and knows once he is elected, he has no more fears and no need to worry about voters again
He may make a deal and force Zelensky to surrender and make a deal with Russia and China
Unlike 2016, he won’t have the fear now because he can’t stand for any more elections
Scenario 4:-
The famous BAKYAN scenario
Poland moves into West Ukraine on invitation from Ukraine and forms a protectorate for West Ukraine
Central & remaining Ukraine is given security guarantees akin to Article V by Poland (Proxy by USA) and formally remains as the NEW UKRAINE
Donbass, Zaprozhye, Kherson are abandoned by Ukraine and Poland but not recognized by the West or UN as part of Russia and only as break away republics
However in reality, those territories will never return to Ukraine again along with Crimea for a long time
Russia will declare a cease fire to avoid clashing with Poland, a Nato power
Zelensky will be mostly arrested due to corruption and replaced by someone else
Timeline :- 30/6/2024 , a clean 4–5 months before the US Elections
The Destruction of Los Angeles | 2012 (John Cusack, Morgan Lily, Liam James)
I have not, but an interesting backfire happened with a close friend’s father, George.
Meet George, he is a PhD Astrophysicist and works in a very specialized field for the United States Department of Defense through a Defense Contractor. He has developed a number of unique solutions over his career that solved some very big problems for some very expensive black projects.
After over 30 years on the job he had moved to the top of his career path, he led a sizable group of physicists and engineers, but was not in management. Following a reorganization, George and his band of merry eggheads found themselves under a manager that had very little experience managing. When budget cuts came down, the green manager started reviewing the personnel files and, unsurprisingly, George was the highest paid person in the department. George was given the option to take an early retirement or be laid off. He was getting close to full retirement age and taking early retirement took a large chunk out of the pension he was counting on. He even offered to give up salary or work part time to address the budget needs. The manager would hear nothing of it.
Once George’s retirement was announced, a number the physicists and engineers approached the manager to warn him that there were solutions that only George fully understood and if there became a need to update or change some of the solutions, they may not be able to do it. George gracefully retired from the company and headed off to teach at the local university. About a year later, he heard from a number of his former team that there had been layoffs and terminations from the team by the same manager. A contract had come in to the company to modify one of George’s unique solutions and the remaining team was unable to make it work. The manager was under the gun to deliver and when it wasn’t working, he was accusing the team of being lazy and incompetent.
Not too long after, the Manager contacted George and asked him if he would come back on a short-term basis, George declined because he was happy teaching at the university. The manager continued to pester George until he finally agreed to come into the office to talk about what it would take to bring him back. George told the manager that he would come with his terms and that the meeting had to include the HR Director and the department Director.
George’s terms:
The company take back his early retirement and bridge his service so he could reach full retirement. (The manager groaned, but grudgingly agreed.)
Any of the team that was fired or forced to resign would be offered the option to come back. (The manager was furious, but George demanded that he had to have his team to be successful, so the manager agreed)
He become the manager of the department. (The manager threw up his hands and said it would never happen, there was only one manager of the department.)
The department director agreed to George’s last term.
We have A guardian Angel his name is Harry Kim.
Kathryn Janeway was a mother figure to almost ALL the crew … the clear exceptions being her first and second officers … but she ESPECIALLY was so to Harry Kim.
Oh my god, no. God, no… no no… I’d rather they stay dead.
Jesus, the mere thought of it gives me anxiety and stress.
My father died very suddenly last year. It was like my aunt talked to him on Friday, and he died of a heart attack on Sunday in his house.
For a few months, I kept thinking if I had any regrets. If I knew he would die, what would I say to him, or what would I want to do with him?
I came up with nothing.
It’s not like I don’t have anything to say. In fact, I have a LOT to say, so much so that I had therapy for years so that I could process and perhaps recover from all that childhood trauma from his abuse and neglect.
Would I say that to him? No. Because he wouldn’t listen. Not only he wouldn’t listen, he would turn it around and make it my fault. He would make me feel that I somehow wronged him, that I should feel guilty and ashamed and beg him for forgiveness and ask him how I can make it better. He’s an emotional manipulator, and he will never change. Not even in death.
He had, in his own domineering kind of way, made some attempt to mend our relationship after his 3rd wife died. But I couldn’t help but think he was doing that not because he genuinely wanted to fix our father-daughter relationship but because he did the mental calculation and realized with his wife dead, I was the only person who would take care of him if he couldn’t care for himself. It’s all about him. Never about me.
After he died, I wondered if he’d come back and haunt me or if he would come visit me in my dreams. Not that I believe in such things, but my aunt said her father (my grandpa) had visited her several times. And I thought, “Oh, you want to come and haunt me? Go ahead. I have something I want to scream at you. So come and haunt me and see how it ends for you, Dad.”
I’ve never even dreamed of him once since he died.
Having him back to life for 24 hours is not going to change anything between us.
The same goes for my mom, who ran off with some artist when I was 18 months old. The same goes for my grandma, who had raised and abused me…
You all better stay the fuck dead because you ain’t gonna like what I have to say to you.
Quit Your Job In 2023, This is my way out
No more 9 to 5 job for me. Do you also struggle with not having time for more valuable things in life than your work, do you spend too much time working for others? Are you feeling frustrated and stressed about not having time to live your life to the fullest, this is my story of how I realized my dream of living a simpler and less stressful life by quitting my job and stopped working for others.
In the ever-evolving landscape of the global smartphone industry, Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, once relied heavily on Qualcomm chips to power its devices. However, recent years have witnessed a significant shift in Huawei’s chipset strategy as it began to develop its own chipsets and reduce its dependence on Qualcomm. This change in course raised questions and curiosity in the tech world. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the reasons behind Huawei’s decision to distance itself from Qualcomm chips, explore the challenges and opportunities that this shift presents, and assess the implications for both Huawei and the larger smartphone ecosystem.
1: The Historical Nexus
1.1. Qualcomm’s Dominance
A brief overview of Qualcomm’s leading position in the semiconductor industry.
Huawei’s early partnership with Qualcomm and the Snapdragon chipset series.
1.2. Huawei’s Ascendancy
Huawei’s rise to global prominence as a smartphone manufacturer.
The integral role of Qualcomm chips in Huawei’s international success.
2: Huawei’s Push for In-House Chip Development
2.1. The Emergence of HiSilicon
The birth of Huawei’s semiconductor subsidiary, HiSilicon.
The strategic importance of in-house chip development.
2.2. The Rise of the Kirin Chipsets
Introduction to Huawei’s Kirin chipset series.
Technological advancements and innovations in Kirin chips.
2.3. The Competitive Edge
How HiSilicon’s chip development aligns with Huawei’s long-term goals.
The advantages of vertical integration and control over chip design.
3: U.S. Sanctions and Supply Chain Stumbles
3.1. The Unfolding U.S. Sanctions Saga
An examination of the U.S. sanctions imposed on Huawei.
How these sanctions impacted Huawei’s access to critical technologies, including Qualcomm chips.
3.2. Vulnerabilities in the Supply Chain
The precariousness of relying on foreign suppliers for critical components.
The central role of chipsets as a strategic resource in the smartphone industry.
4: HarmonyOS and Huawei’s Ambitious Vision
4.1. Huawei’s Vision for HarmonyOS
Introduction to HarmonyOS, Huawei’s proprietary operating system.
The strategic significance of developing an Android alternative.
4.2. A Unified Ecosystem
How HarmonyOS aims to provide a seamless user experience across devices.
The role of chipset compatibility in achieving the HarmonyOS vision.
5: Implications and Challenges
5.1. Disrupting the Smartphone Market
How Huawei’s departure from Qualcomm chips impacts the competitive landscape.
Implications for consumers, industry players, and market dynamics.
5.2. Pursuing Technological Self-Reliance
The broader implications of Huawei’s commitment to technological self-reliance.
Lessons for other tech giants facing similar geopolitical challenges.
5.3. The Road Ahead
The technological and market challenges Huawei faces in developing its own chipsets.
The importance of innovation, research, and development in overcoming these hurdles.
6: Consumer Perceptions and the Future Outlook
6.1. Consumer Reactions and Preferences
How Huawei’s decision to utilize its chipsets is perceived by consumers.
Factors influencing consumer preferences in the realm of smartphones.
6.2. Shaping the Future of Huawei Smartphones
Prospects for Huawei’s smartphone business in the absence of Qualcomm chips.
The role of design, innovation, software, and competitive pricing in defining Huawei’s future offerings.
Conclusion
The divergence of Huawei from Qualcomm chips signifies a monumental shift in strategy with far-reaching implications. While the impact of U.S. sanctions and supply chain disruptions are undeniable catalysts for this transition, Huawei’s investments in in-house chipset development and the vision of HarmonyOS underscore its unwavering commitment to technological self-sufficiency and innovation. As we conclude this article, we gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex factors influencing Huawei’s strategic decision and what the future holds for one of the world’s foremost smartphone manufacturers.
INDIAN NEWS is Cheap Western Propaganda
The Indian news channels like WION and ANI (Asean News International) have become cheap propaganda outlets for the Western Colonial Masters that have always ruled over the Indian population. This video shows beyond any doubt that India News is part of the Anti China propaganda network set up by American Politicians and Main Stream Media. It is no secret as they admit to it in this video that they have joined this movement of hate against China.
A young German soldier during WWII was ordered to check the house for Jews. After minutes of searching, he declares the house clear.
His commanding officer is unconvinced. “Schauen Sie in den Dachboden,” he orders. Check the attic.
“Die Luke ist offen! Die würden sich nicht dort verstecken!” The young soldier says. The attic door is wide open! Surely they wouldn’t hide there!
His commander shakes his head. “Schauen Sie trotzdem nach.” Go check anyway.
The soldier climbs the ladder. As he peers into the darkness, he sees at least a dozen Jews hiding in the attic. All women and children.
Their terrified faces look back at him. Nobody dares to move. The young soldier turns and shouts to his commander.
“Alles klar!” All clear.
The soldier closes the trapdoor, leaving the Jews in the dark. He will never see them again.
Decades later, one of the young children in the attic will recall the anonymous soldier’s kindness. Every single person in the attic survives the war. Many attribute their lives to the young man.
The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was a remarkable aircraft that could fly at speeds over Mach 3.2 and at altitudes up to 85,000 feet. It was the fastest manned aircraft ever flown and still holds many speed, altitude, and distance records for a manned aircraft.
Flying in such an extreme environment required special training and equipment for the pilots. The pilots of the SR-71 wore full-pressure suits that resembled those worn by astronauts. The suits protected them from low pressure, low temperature, and lack of oxygen at high altitudes. They also provided protection in case of an emergency ejection.
The pilots also had to cope with the high g-forces and acceleration that resulted from flying at such high speeds. The SR-71 could accelerate from Mach 1 to Mach 3 in less than 15 minutes, which put a lot of stress on the human body. The pilots had to undergo rigorous physical training and medical examinations to ensure they were fit for the mission. They also had to use special techniques to breathe and move their limbs during high-g maneuvers.
The pilots also experienced a unique sensation of speed when flying the SR-71. They could see the curvature of the Earth and the stars in broad daylight. They could also see the shock waves forming around the aircraft as it broke the sound barrier. The SR-71 flew so fast that it could outrun any missile or enemy aircraft that tried to intercept it. The pilots had to rely on their instruments and their instincts to navigate and control the aircraft.
Hang on, this is VERY strange!
This is the equivalent of China recognizing Puerto Rico as a sovereign nation….
My ex husband and I got married at Gretna Green with just 2 friends for witnesses. On the day after the wedding on the car journey home, we were passing a field of higland cows (ginger and hairy like me apparently) and said in an insulting tone, “oh look Sarah, there’s your relations”. I immediately fired back with “yes, but only through marriage”…. friends were in stitches, he never even cracked a smile. He had no sense of humour and had been trying to belittle me in front of people as he did the entire 9 years I was with him…
Another time when I was about 25 or so, at a neighbours bbq, I approached a small group of people listening to one guy in his late 50′s or so telling sexist joke after sexist joke. At the end of each joke all the men laughed loudly and the women kind of awkwardly. I had always found this guy a bit of a chauvinist and quite ‘sleazy’ so stepped in with my own joke… Mrs Smith went to hospital to give birth. After the baby was born the doctor said to her “I’m really sorry Mrs Smith but your baby is a hermaphrodite”. “A what?” asked Mrs Smith. “A hermaphrodite, it has features of both sexes” said the doctor. Mrs Smith gasps and says “Oh my god….it has a penis AND a brain!”. The women in the group all belly laughed but the sleaze not so much
A well-told lie is worth a thousand facts. The debt-trap narrative is a lie, a powerful one.
There are three main fallacies in the West’s hype about China’s “debt trap theory”: First, in terms of debt causes, countries in debt distress today often fall into debt traps before the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Second, in terms of debt ownership, most of these countries’ debt is owed to Western or pro-Western institutions, not China. Studies show that 80 per cent of Sri Lanka’s external debt, 70 per cent of Pakistan’s and 77 per cent of Zambia’s external debt is owned by Western private and public institutions.
Third, in terms of the nature of debt, Western loans tend to be short-term with high interest rates, leading to unsustainable debt cycles, while Chinese lending to developing countries is long-term, low-interest credit that helps improve infrastructure.
The characteristics of China’s BRI financing is that it breaks through the traditional model, with no political conditions attached, and the forms of financing are pragmatic and diverse; The Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank both emphasize debt sustainability, with commercial needs flexibly integrated with national strategies.
The irresponsible monetary policy of the United States is the real reason for the concentrated outbreak of debt problems in developing countries. The United States first implemented an ultra-loose monetary policy, allowing low-interest dollars to pour into Africa and emerging market countries, and then aggressively raised interest rates to attract dollars back to the United States, resulting in insufficient liquidity in developing countries.
Since China is not the largest creditor of developing countries, why does the West hype the “China debt trap theory”? The answer is that China’s “Belt and Road” initiative helps developing countries improve their economic capability. Once these countries achieve independent economic development, they do not have to rely on borrowing money from Western developed countries to maintain production and life, which is equivalent to cutting off a financial route for Western countries.
How I See the USA After 14 Years of Living Abroad & Expat Life
After 14 years of living abroad and enjoying expat life, I wanted to talk a bit about how I see the US now… This week, we’ll be taking a look at the USA through an Expat lens… Is the U.S. truly the “leader of the free world”, or is that just a perception we’ve grown accustomed to? One of many topics that are worth thinking about is the education system. Does it really prepare us for life, or is it more about scoring high on tests?
What about healthcare access? Is it as straightforward as it seems, or are there nuances we’re missing when comparing American Healthcare with European Healthcare? Another important factor to consider is safety and quality of life, is the U.S. the gold standard, or are there elements of community and culture that we’re overlooking in comparison with overseas?
We’ll also touch on the topic of zoning. Is it just a mundane urban planning concept, or does it have deeper implications for our lifestyle and mobility? Finally, we’ll take a look at the geographical isolation of North America. Is it just a geographical fact, or could it be shaping our understanding of the world in ways we don’t realize? There’s a lot to unpack, and these are the conversations that need to be had.
In this expat podcast episode of Not Your Average Globetrotter, hosted by me, Rafael Di Furia, I’ll share how I view the US and American culture and lifestyle in comparison with the culture and lifestyle in Europe and elsewhere having been abroad for more than 14 years, questioning everything from its global leadership role and education system to healthcare access, safety standards, connections in local communities, cultural rituals, and the implications of its geographical isolation.
My husband and I entered an elevator in a hotel in Vegas, headed to the lobby and extraordinarily tall black man was already in there. I smiled and tried not to stare because he was simply that enormous.
Husband, a sports fanatic, asked the giant of he’d ever played basketball and the giant responded that yeah, he’d played some ball in his day and DH told the giant that if he hadn’t, he would have missed an opportunity. The giant chuckled and sort of shook his head.
When we arrived in the lobby, we all kind of nodded and smiled and went out separate ways. I asked DH what his little exchange was all about.
The giant was Shaquille O’Neill, the Shaq Attack. My husband told Shaq that he would have missed an opportunity if he hadn’t played basketball.
I told a story about a kid threatening to kill himself. Let me explain.
I didn’t think I was going to get the job. Not in a “I don’t believe in myself” kind of way, I mean in a “I have direct evidence” kind of way. A meeting I’d had fell through, so I showed up for my interview super early. This meant I was sitting there in the lobby when the head of the special education department opened the door, profusely shook another woman’s hand, and said:
“You are exactly what we’re looking for. We’ll send out an offer to you as soon as we’re done with today’s interviews.” Then she looked up and saw me waiting. “Oh, you’re here early, come on it.”
So I walked in knowing I was wasting my time, but I was already there and decided to have fun with it. I told jokes. I made fun of the number of people they had in the room to interview me (7!). I was as casual as possible and answered every question off the cuff instead of trying to think of an answer they wanted to hear. Then they asked me one of those awful, super generic questions you always get when you work with kids, something along the lines of “What was your moment when you realized you knew you were supposed to be a teacher?”
I have no patience for those questions, and find them to be really performative and all about showing how generically kind and sensitive you are. For a job I thought I was going to get I might have played along and told an exaggerated story about teaching a kid to read or something. I didn’t do that.
Instead I told them about one of my students in the Emotional Disorder class I was teaching at a middle school. The little guy had a severe anxiety disorder, and we were trying to support him while also ignoring attention seeking behaviors. So when he started yelling I escorted him to the quiet break area. When he started shouting he needed to go to the hospital I assured him I would check in on him to make sure he was ok. And when he started screaming that he was going to kill himself I pointed out there was nothing in the area he could use to do it, and if he decided to bang his head against the wall it would probably just really hurt. Two minutes later he poked his head out and calmly asked if he could do his math work, and I realized that some of the interventions I was using were actually working. It was a pretty cool feeling. Everyone in the room was silent, and more than a few looked really freaked out. No worries, I already knew they gave the job to someone else, and went on my way.
They offered me the job that evening. Apparently they had an elementary school moderate/severe class with a lot of difficult behaviors, and my story had convinced them immediately that I could handle it. Oh, and that other woman I saw getting offered a job? She was a speech therapist, and not a teacher at all. Looks like we both crushed our interviews.
We had 4,000 employees and had been the world leader in our field for about 10 years at this time.
We were not the price setter, though. But we did very well and had a reasonable operating margin, enough to satisfy our corporate owners and shareholders.
Then we got a new president, an American B-school graduate. He came from Stanford, as I recall.
After some time he declared to us in the sales department (about 90 people), operating worldwide.
Raise all prices 15 percent
Go back on all orders in house and negotiate a 15 percent higher price.
I tried.
We all tried.
We suffered, badly.
No new orders for nine (9) months.
The customers with orders in place said a flat “are you out of your fr…..g mind?”
Our build cycle, order to delivery, was about 18 months.
Nine months later the factories started to look empty and were laying off staff, weekly — NO NEW ORDERS.
“Biggest boss” at our owning company got wind of this and came to town.
Our president was fired the same day and we all in sales got new instructions.
“Forget all orders about price increases — go sell as competitively as you can.”
It took about two years for the company to regain its world-leading position.
By that time, I and just about half of our previous sales organization were gone, replaced by eager young souls.
The “American Dream” Is A Big Lie
I talk about how the “American Dream” is a big lie. Too many people around the world are victims to debt, consumerism, and care too much about what other people think. I give my all knowing wisdom via Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
As my life crumbled apart, back in 2005-6, I tried all sorts of measures to stop my “retirement” from MAJ.
But, at that time, I didn’t know the entire picture. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought that I was just “having some problems”.
Nope my entire life was crumbling away before my eyes.
Still I tried to do something about it.
I made arrangements in China, and tried to make various arrangements in the Philippines as well. I was tricked, abused, and basically thwarted at every turn. So many swindles. So many scams. So many selfish pricks. So many liars, tricksters, and generally selfish narcissists.
In hindsight, my Fate Forecasting was Black-on-Black, overlaid with black. It was triple negatives; or to use the parlance of Fate Forecasting and Bazi, it was very inauspicious, on top of very inauspicious.
It was one bad thing after the other, and my life fell apart in complete stages of collapse.
(Which, by the way, you are now starting to watch the entire United States government go through.)
Anyways, I was stuck in the Hong Kong airport,and spent about ten days there after being swindled in a number of places… by numerous people… and left alone to ROT.
While I was waiting there, my resources started to dry up and I was living off airport coffee, and hope. I slept on the hard metal chairs. Used the bathroom, and took sponge baths in the sinks.
And sure as shit, I eventually had to go to the bathroom and pee up a storm, so I put my backpack (with my laptop computer) in it, on my back and stood at a urinal peeing away…
…and some jackass gets really close behind me, but I must have been pissing three liters out, …
…he stood there right behind me, so close. Sheech.
Anyways, soon he left. I still kept a peeing.
I’m not kidding. I must have needed to pee out three liters. It just kept draining.
…
Then I exited the bathroom, and settled down, and low and behold, my laptop was stolen!
That asshole plucked it skillfully and silently from my backpack while I peed. Sheech!
Yeah. It really sucked, and I was flabbergasted. Shocked, and upset. I didn’t know if I were to laugh or cry.
It was profoundly a disaster, on top of a fiasco, surrounded by trouble at every turn.
…
I relate this little story to make a few points of interest.
When things are going to shit; they will go to shit no matter what you do.
The only thing that you can do is to reduce the damage, hedge against it, and be extra cautious.
It was a new computer, but has all my passwords, codes and critical communication methodology. I placed way too much on electronic means of record keeping, and communication.
After this event, I made it back home, computer-less, of course, and then was seized and set into the “system” to endure my “retirement”.
So to keep things simple.
Let’s distill the lessons here.
Friends are valuable. Never dare try to do things alone; and on your own. Work as part of a team with your most trusted friends.
Fates must be endured. These are gravitational / planetary alignments that you cannot modify. The only thing you can do is “nothing” on very inauspicious times.
Hope is critical. No matter how bad and hopeless things are, it is always temporary. Eventually it WILL change. Just hang on.
It will end. Sure it will, and an equal period of greatness will occur. You simply must endure the bad first. Consider the “bad events” to be your entry ticket to the life you desire.
If they know how to do something, they automatically know how to do it at scale.
This is a country that builds entire new cities at one go. They produce 600,000 engineers per year. They make four out of every five solar panels in the world. They can build a 57-storey skyscraper in 19 days, and as we saw during the covid-19 pandemic, a brand new hospital in 10 days. They are the world’s biggest factory.
If they know how to make one Huawei Mate 60, they already know how to make 100 million Huawei Mate 60s.
China does not know how to think SMALL. It is unnatural and weird for them to think on a small scale. China has cities with populations larger than countries such as Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, even Australia. Thinking big is China’s default mentality.
Barbecued London Broil
london broil
Ingredients
1 (1 1/2 or 2 pound) flank steak
1 tablespoon sherry or any dry red wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions
Score meat on all sides.
Mix together remaining ingredients. Put on meat and let stand 1 1/2 to 2 hours, then place meat in broiler pan about 4 inches from heat. Broil for about 10 minutes or a little longer on each side. Ten minutes is for medium rare.
To serve, cut diagonally across the grain into very thin slices.
My wife’s had cancer for the last seven years. It was well-controlled. She was on maintenance chemo to prevent it from coming back.
All was going fine—she always felt sick a few days after chemo—but she was generally doing well. She had good quality of life and wasn’t really limited in any way except she had doctor’s appointments and scans nearly every week.
After a routine PET scan… Well, to make a long story short, they found cancer in her brain. It wasn’t “brain cancer”, it was the same cancer (inflammatory breast cancer) that had made its way to her brain. It was already fairly extensive by the time they found it, but they were confident they could take care of the lesions through radiation.
The day after her penultimate treatment, she complained that it hurt to breathe. I took her to the hospital and after giving her some pain meds, they admitted her. She was still having pain breathing, so the doctor thought they’d give her something to help her sleep so she could get some rest. And maybe in the meantime, they could figure out why she was experiencing painful breathing; it hurt to breath in and out.
While they were checking her out to prep her for some sleep, she flatlined. About a dozen people sprang into action. Some were specialists, some were support, but all were fighting to bring her back. I stood in the corner out of the way watching in horror as the hoard of medical professionals tried to bring my wife back.
About a million thoughts flooded my mind. Was I really watching my wife die? Was she really gone for good? I just hoped they could get her back.
The doctor pulled me out into the hallway. She asked what I wanted them to do.
I said, “I’m not a doctor, but I want you to do whatever’s reasonable!” She said okay, and they tried shocking her back. Every time, they got no pulse in response. They tried at least three or four times when it was clear she was gone. I gave the signal they could stop.
That was two weeks ago. I’m still trying to process it. It wasn’t like she was on a slow or steep decline. Everything pointed to her recovering.
But she’s gone. My kids are doing a good job helping keep my spirits up, but they’re devastated too. They’re all adults now, but they very nearly worshipped her, as did I.
Girls Standing In The Middle of Tokyo to Sell Themselves.. Japan Has A Serious Developing Problem.
Thank you for posting this. Japan is a complex society, with many ancient traditions, some of which are clashing with modernity even today after 150 years of intense exposure to (and copying of) the West. As with many things, prostitution there has uniquely Japanese characteristics and doesn’t necessarily involve physical intimacy, though such certainly exists. Anyway, these sad stories of girls from the countryside being exploited in the big city are all too common not just in Asia but in the West as well.
Every few weeks, bake 100 chocolate chip cookies, wrap them in wax paper, put them in a large Tupperware container, and mail them to her in Boot Camp.
Whatever you do, NEVER send packaged cookies from the supermarket! If you do this, her Drill Sergeants will hold them up for everyone to see at Mail Call and mock her mercilessly, saying, “This means yer parents do not love you!” Seen that happen in Army Basic Training a few times.
Homemade cookies the sergeants hand out to everyone and she will be the most popular and well liked Boot for the next half hour.
Japan has historically been a very xenophobic and racist culture. Once you’ve convinced yourself your enemy are subhumans not even worthy to live, and you’re a dick, you go nuts.
The interesting contrast between the German and Japanese atrocities is that the German stuff was much more hidden. People have the impression that the holocaust was openly known to everyone, but the Germans took great pains to tell the population that they were shipping undesirables off to newly conquered territory to the east, to live seperately from Germans.
Whereas the the Japanese, their atrocities were rarely hidden. Entire military units would make a contest out of beheading prisoners. They’d round up women and children into a tall building and set it on fire and watch them jump from the roof in desperation. Their newspapers would cover these incidents and it would be celebrated back home.
Not to downplay the evil of the Germans at all, but the Japanese never get their due – I consider them to be as evil or more than the Germans, but you almost never hear about it, whereas you’ve heard about the holocaust at least 100,000 times in your life.
In addition to that, the official policy in Japan is dangerously close to the equivelant of holocaust denialism, whereas at least the Germans are thoroughly ashamed and sorry for what they did.
The American Dream is a Scam
Long comment. -MM
I think this subject matter is 100% correct and I agree with you on it and I also think that its a major part of the reason why America steadily has been becoming more toxic of a place over time.
I think its the perfect storm of capitalisms worst traits being compiled on and exacerbated by the people that are winning at capitalism.
What I’m saying is, in the course of the last 80 years at least our capitalist society has become more and more structurally corrupt.
Because the only people with any real power over how these systems are built and the people that they screw over vise versa, the people that it benefits.
Are the people who have the power and the success to influence it.
This is done with lobbying and both political parties USE lobbyists to this day which is essentially legal corruption for the political system to thrive on.
How it works is this, If im the owner of Apple or something like that and I value things like gun control or mandator vaccines and a community based culture , Im gonna give the politician that most closely values what I value and ima give him multi millions of dollars to run his campaign for election.
THEN I ask this person for political favors and to represent ME a little more than anyone else BECAUSE im handing them a multi million dollar check to run for whatever.
America has done this for a very long time and its one of the reasons way our election cycles are meaningless.
The elite class literally have more valuable voters than you do lol. Its NOT an even playing field. I think red or blue doesnt matter because the problem is both parites are dog shit.
Both parties got some good they wanna do and the bad shit they do is there too.
With republicans its the positive of them understanding personal freedom and things like guns remaining protected rights. but negatively speaking the republican party Is just as tone deaf and stupid about stuff like corporate greed and how bad that is, as the democrats are tone deaf to the importance of gun rights and being able to have the scary shit they wanna be able to dictate HOWEVER democrats do understand corporate greed and greedy elite cocksuckers who are siphoning the people of this country of their time and labor value. It sickens me that republicans will support selfish people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk who are prime examples of people who do ALL THE SHIT that’s killing society over time.
This idea that they “earned” this when the money the get is being farmed off the backs of 20k employees.
We live in a country where we got the worlds largest GDP and the most ready to fight population of people ready to defend our country if someone wants to try us. and we got people like Jeff Bezos living in massive excessiveness while FAMILIES of people cant afford insulin or food or housing without government assistance programs and hand outs.
I mean its really no wonder why drugs are such an issue in the modern world, and people are doing shit all the time like walking into a place and killing your fucking children because theyre fucking sick.
This country BREEDS sickness. The hormone changing foods we eat. The garbage media we consume way to much of.
The sheltered life we have in dependency to the system being the norm and self sufficiency being a less sought after thing. People need to understand what freedom is. Sometimes it sucks.
But its way more liberating than this shallow illusionary world we created for ourselves. It dont even make sense to go out here and farm money like we do with our jobs, killing our bodies and our backs to MAINTAIN a life style when that money your working for is being PRINTED off a press by the trillions in our government. Its MAKE BELIEVE.
There is no backing to the value of our currency other than what we say its worth. Its just a catalyst to make way for modern slavery.
The type of slavery where the average slave doesn’t even see the shackles attached to them or they see it as a necessary inconvenience rather than what it is. Its a scam. Its a rigged game built to siphon the actual value of your life way from you. Money is nothing.
The value comes from skill and time.
The reason they created curency like money is because with this extra step in between, you can figure out ways to siphon it down without people knowing. I These companies use every dirty trick in the book to maximize profits.
Oh our employees want better pay, well just make everything we sell twice as expensive as to not take any cut to our current lifestyle.
This is why I was pushing back against minimum wage being increased to 15 an hour. Because this DOES NOTHING. People could do more with their money back when they made 1.35 an hour at minimum wage. The wage isn’t the problem its the scope of how much these companies WANT out of what they put in to a product or service. Its the fact that per hour of your time, you make less than half of what the same money could afford back when the world had a better capitalist balance going on before every motherfucker was exploiting every facet of every thing for maximum profits.
The average American doesn’t understand this concept of how they are stealing from you, while making it look like their giving you more when they aren’t.
The ONLY way to fix the issues is if these rich greedy cocksuckers decide one day that they are tired of being super duper rich and excessive, which has no chance of happening.
The people who hold the heys to the cookie jar are gonna dip into the most for themselves when nobody is looking.
That’s just human nature.
I do think that if people don’t mentally evolve enough to realize this entire system wand cultre we have is bogus and we dont need it at all to have everything we got, and keep working just like we have.
The only difference is, instead of working for selfish reason and necessity, people would work for others and out of wanting to serve the human race. Like if EVERYTHING was free..
I think people would still work. The only difference would be people wouldn’t settle for a job because they NEED money to eat, they’ll do shit they find more meaningful to them to do. It would actually probably IMPROVE the quality of work being done IF we just made it to where we operated as a community.
You like building houses ok, go build some hosues for people.
You know tech?
Okay go build tech or set it up for people. You know farming and food? Okay teach people how to be self sufficient and help them get set up. Society CAN function perfectly WITHOUT this idea of being in competition with each other and having more than the next guy.
That’s all that capitalism really is, its the idea of fuck the community I live in so I can get ahead of all of them and earn my status in society. And I don’t think capitalism is even the problem.
I think its just people. People are the ones who infest something and start corrupting it to be beneficial to themselves.
It doesn’t matter what system we call ourselves because people will always find a way to reach the top rungs of society in any society and they will begin to manipulate how society is from then on built, and they will most likely create it in a way where its unfairly exploiting one class of people sop another class can have more than they honestly need or deserve.
Communism wouldn’t fix it because that system is just as exploitable and manipulatable as capitalism and any other system controlled by human beings. I hope this all makes some sort of sense. people really need to fully wake up and we do need to throw this system overboard as a whole and we need to start restructuring society in a way where its beneficial to the human race equally.
I was representing the USA in an international table tennis (ping pong) tournament in Osaka, Japan. The night before, I wandered over to the tournament site to check it out. When there, I noticed a guy wearing a Chinese team jacket. They were and still are the best in the world. Being somewhat cocky, I went over and asked him if he would like to hit some. He did and we eventually played a best-of-three match. I was playing well and managed to eke out a win.
Back with my teammates I modestly mentioned that I had beaten a Chinese player. To my astonishment some skepticism was expressed. Being fed up, the next day I suggested to the most skeptical teammate that we stroll over to where the Chinese team was camped out. I didn’t see the player from last night, so I started talking to one of the other Chinese players. Finally I casually mentioned that I had won a match with one of his teammates. “Which one?” he asked.
“Well I… Oh there he is, walking over now.”
“Ah yes”, he said, “That’s Mr. Chen. He’s our cook.”
I had worked at the car dealership for a year when they decided to shift me from sales to service. It wasn’t what I wanted, but at least I still had a job.
The Saturday before my job changed, the service manager grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into his office. He then filled me in on his philosophy…
“I can’t stand having women working for me”, he said. “They have menstrual periods. They’re nothing but bitches for 3 weeks out of the month. They can’t make rational decisions. You can’t trust them.”
I just sat there, silently. He’d apparently decided that I would be replacing a woman who I had great respect for. She’d helped dozens of my customers, and they loved her. Nobody ever had a bad word to say about her.
I was floored at his attitude. He could think what he wanted, but by opening his mouth, he became a liability to the company. I have no idea why he felt the need to ”share” that with me.
Months later, I had to testify against him in an unlawful termination lawsuit brought about by that female employee. I don’t know what it cost the company, but I hope it was worth it to them.
My mother raised me by herself until I was about 5 years old, and I have nothing but respect for hard working women in the workplace.
With his unsolicited diatribe against women, he instantly lost my respect.
How to Leave the USA in Five Steps
I think this guy is a puke. However, his information is pretty good. Hold your nose and watch. -MM
The Western MSM have been forced to acknowledge that Russia has had a massive win against Ukraine and NATO by ensuring the 115 day long counter offensive with :-
14 Fresh Brigades – 56,000 NATO Trained troops
4 Fresh Divisions – 120,000 Ukrainian Reservists trained over 6 months in Ukraine from June to December 2022
116 NATO Tanks
440 Armored Vehicles
540 Soviet Era Tanks (T 62, T 72)
1.7 Million Artillery Shells 155 mm
Has been ground to dust
Literally
Only ONE BRIGADE the 71 UK Yeger is still left untouched
The Ukrainians have 258 out of 656 Tanks left
They have 190 out of 440 Armored Vehicles left
They have barely 200,000 Artillery shells left
They have lost in the last 115 days, around 44000 Men and another 27000 men have been seriously wounded and disabled for minimum one year from fighting
And what have they gained?
Exactly 152 Square Kilometers that too, territory still under Russian Offensive
That’s why the West are worried
That Russia of their imagination is a different Russia from this Vigorous fighting force
Apple corporate has decided that the newest Apple products would be supplied to China before the US market;
Price war to keep China users from switching (back) to Huawei mobile phones.
Obviously Apple sees a major Huawei challenge with the Mate 60 Pro and upcoming products, and sees that this market is key to Apple’s future, even if it has to sacrifice profits.
In many African countries, money changers effortlessly swap bundles of cash by the roadside, operating under the implicit but rock-solid assumption that they won’t be robbed. And we walk out of banks with wads of cash, sometimes on a tiny nylon or envelope. Such security measures are largely unnecessary.
Lawyers and signed agreements may be the norm elsewhere, but in many parts of Africa, your word is more valuable than gold. Break it, and you’ve essentially declared social bankruptcy. A broken promise doesn’t just tarnish your immediate reputation; it haunts you for life, impacting your relationships and prospects. I, for one, have family members I wouldn’t lend a penny to, much less enter a business deal with. All because they failed to uphold their word when it mattered.
In most Western cities, shoplifting is a perennial problem, and law enforcement often turns a blind eye. Not here. Young people aren’t emboldened by societal indifference. On the contrary, the idea of swiping even a candy bar sends shivers down their spines. In our world, retribution is swift and comes from the community itself. Misbehavior is universally scorned.
Kids don’t engage in senseless acts like random street attacks, burning of shops, or joyriding in someone else’s car. It’s not just the fear of punishment that deters them. Rather, it’s a collective societal understanding that these actions are fundamentally wrong. Our young people may admire your shiny sports car, but they’d rather beg you for money than dream of damaging or stealing it.
Respect is in our DNA. Children back-talking their parents happens rarely and is frowned upon. We quickly give up our seats to older people and pregnant women without being asked. Titles like Sir, Ma’am, Daddy, and Aunty aren’t just terms of address; they’re badges of honor for the wisdom that comes with age. We greet older people by bowing or semi-kneeling. Communities act as a self-regulating mechanism, making certain transgressions practically unthinkable.
Violent acts like public shootings of innocent people remain alien to us, not because we’re oblivious to the global mental health crisis, but because the fabric of our communities simply doesn’t allow such chaos to unfold.
While discussions around the treatment of women in Africa often lean toward the negative, there’s another side to the coin. Any man who dared to raise a hand against a woman in the presence of people would swiftly face communal justice even before the police arrived. Spectators don’t stand back to dial emergency numbers, we make the fight ours.
The Magic isn’t necessarily in governmental laws or policing. It’s in the unwritten code of conduct, the communal upbringing that checks our moral compasses and teaches us to respect one another.
U.S Hold Top Secret Talks With China in Malta! U.S Beg China
September 22, 2023
American plans are turning to shit, quickly. Actions must be taken. Can China bend a little to help out the Biden Administration?
“It would be wonderful should the United States regain some measure of sanity again! Then we in the rest of the world may be able to breathe again without the thought of forever war and death intruding in our dreams only to become nightmares.”
So a group of angry Afghans pretended to be PRO US and requested a few marines to help them and abducted them
They proceeded to skin the marines alive literally and chop them into pieces and cook them
They then wanted to feed this to the other marines
However there was a road block and the truck was abandoned and the men saw the huge container that was full of some flesh
They soon DNA tested and found it was human remains , cooked meat of their comrades
The remaining Marines were so frightened that they were relieved immediately to stateside and took treatment for mental shock
This was related to a Congressional Committee in the late Obama era when the issue was declassified to justify keeping Guantanamo
The Taliban and the Islamic fundamentalists are the only mortals who can defeat the USA and bring them to their knees
Russia has missiles, China has missiles
No use
The Fundamentalists have a nice 14 year old boy who befriends a majors son, becomes a close friend and them calmly plunges a dagger into the kids heart and smiles as he waits for deliverance
Invincible!!
Sad but true
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED to the USA! (REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK)
“I’m an American ex-pat who has been living overseas for 35 years. I try to fly to the States at least every other year (with the exception of the Corona-lockdown years), and I always get the reverse culture shock. I think what shocks me most is the huge increase in homelessness and drug addiction, as well as the political polarization. Back in the 80s, you could discuss politics with others, even if you didn’t agree, and in the end you stayed friends.”
When I was about fourteen years old I was walking home, at about 8 PM, through a local park in The Bronx when three boys from the gang that came from an adjacent neighborhood appeared. It was about dusk. I knew I was in trouble. As things were getting tense for me, Ronnie appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
Ronnie and I attended the same public school from grades K to 6. In 2nd grade the teacher had me sit next to Ronnie. The seats were arranged in three rows of two. Each pair were adjacent. Ronnie was a slow learner. I taught him to read that year. We became friends…only in that class as we didn’t live “near” each other and didn’t have much in common. In those days, near was within 2 city blocks. For seventh grade I was sent to another school and I hadn’t seen Ronnie for two years.
Ronnie was short but he had bulked up a bit and had taken up boxing. I had lost track of him. As he stood next to me facing the three boys, it became clear as what was going to happen as Ronnie took a step closer to the other boys and slightly in front of me. They all took a step back. And then walked away.
Ronnie and I said the mandatory “Good to see yous”, walked a couple of hundred feet together and said. “see ya.”*
*A couple of years later I heard that Ronnie had become a Golden Gloves boxer and had done OK.
Bacon-Wrapped Filet Steaks Topped with Roasted Garlic Butter
fm148
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
12 large garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
Kosher salt
3 1/2 teaspoons chopped chives
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
4 (6 to 7 ounce) filet steaks, about 1 inch thick
4 very thin slices of lean bacon
6 inch wooden skewers or toothpicks, soaked in water for 10 minutes and patted dry
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Place peeled garlic and olive oil in 1-cup, ovenproof ramekin, soufflé dish or custard cup. Cover dish tightly with aluminum foil and place in oven. Roast on center rack until garlic is golden and very tender and soft when pierced with knife, about 30 minutes (start checking cloves after 20 minutes and then every 5 minutes until done).
With slotted spoon, remove garlic from bowl and reserve oil. Place garlic, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the reserved oil, butter and 1/8 teaspoon salt in food processor or blender and process, pulsing machine on and off for 30 seconds or less until garlic is coarsely chopped and blended with butter and oil. Transfer garlic butter to small bowl and stir in 2 teaspoons of the chives. (Garlic butter can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature 30 minutes before ready to use.)
When ready to cook steaks, oil a grill rack and prepare grill.
In small bowl, stir together 1 teaspoon kosher salt, coarsely ground black pepper and thyme. Rub both sides of each filet with some of this seasoning. Then wrap each steak around its sides with 1 slice of bacon. Skewer bacon in place with wooden skewer or with 2 to 3 wooden picks.
Grill steaks until lightly charred on the outside and until bacon is cooked, about 5 minutes per side for medium-rare.
When done, remove steaks from fire and place on warm serving plate. Remove toothpicks.
Top each steak with 1 generous pat of roasted garlic butter and sprinkle with some of remaining chives. Butter will start to melt and season the steaks.
When I was a boy, I had a friend named Jeff B. I spoke about him earlier. He was the kid with the great idea of growing “night-crawler” worms in his garage so he could become a millionaire. Anyways, today’s story is about his plate.
You see, in his living room was a glass curio cabinet, and at the top of the cabinet, proudly displayed was a pretty normal ceramic dish. It didn’t look anything special to me. I’ll tell you what. But, they (his entire family) revered that plate.
You see, that plate was used to serve George Washington back in the 1780’s.
It served duck, maybe turkey… maybe chicken to the President.
The telling of the tale seems to be blurred at this moment in time.
Yupper. My local boyhood friend was in possession of a major American historical artifact. And it was there; right there in plain sight. Imagine that!
That’s it.
(crickets)
I wonder how many great historical artifacts lie hidden in everyday homes, long forgotten and their histories lie undusted? Hum.
Like a cache of 1950’s era men’s magazines. Or a box of world war I metals. Or perhaps, an original 1950’s barbie doll in a pristine box.
Or, even more interesting…
A metal fob found in a lump of coal, or the old “Indian tale” of a certain place in the woods with magical histories…
Makes you think.
Don’t you know…
…
Todays….
Southern Pork Loin with Fall Flavor Infusion
This pork loin recipe is easy to make and has been a Southern favorite for generations. Apples and pork have always been a great duo and this crock pot recipe is no exception.
pork loin fall flavor infusion
Ingredients
3 pounds pork loin
1 apple, cut in half and sliced
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 Vidalia or other sweet onion, sliced
Instructions
Slice slits into pork loin horizontally about 3/4 through meat.
Fill each slit with an apple slice and drizzle honey over top.
Sprinkle with cinnamon.
Transfer pork loin to slow cooker. Layer onions over top.
After 30 years of rapid development, China’s society has entered the level of a middle-to-high-income country. In 2022, Chinese people will buy 25 million cars, and per capita GDP will reach US$12,000. In this case, if you want a Chinese to turn a screw on the production line, or sew a shirt, their monthly salary requirements are often more than $1,000. But, it’s only $300 for a Vietnamese or a Bangladeshi to do the same thing. What do you think the Chinese company will do? Yes, as early as a few years ago, Chinese enterprises have already begun to transfer abroad. The first thing to be transferred is clothing, toys, shoes and other industries with a high proportion of labor.
Just because an enterprise or factory has moved to Vietnam does not mean that it has no connection with China. For the production of clothes, toys, shoes, household appliances. They need upstream support. Equipment, computers, software, buttons, batteries, switches, wiring, paint, circuit boards, everything. from where? Can only be imported from China.
Therefore, the transfer of industries is accompanied by a sharp increase in China’s exports to target countries.
2. Decoupling of the United States and the European Union (passive transfer)
Since Trump launched the trade war, the United States and the European Union have begun to “decouple” from China. They said “Hey! Let’s not do business with China, don’t buy Chinese stuff, okay?” In order to force importers and consumers, they imposed too high tariffs and created a sanction list with only one purpose, to prevent the sale of Chinese goods.
However, what will happen to people’s lives without Chinese products?
So they need to find a replacement. Some countries with large populations and low wages are the best choices: Mexico, Vietnam for example. They signed trade deals, lowered tariffs for these countries, and hoped they would replace China. It’s a pretty naive idea: New cheap suppliers replace old ones, with nothing to lose.
However, businessmen in Vietnam and Mexico soon discovered that they simply could not make these items (or it was more expensive to make them than in China). The easier way is to import from China, label it with Mexican or Vietnamese labels, and sell it to Americans or Europeans.
Another strange line appeared: China exported semi-finished or finished products, and Vietnam and Mexico completed the final assembly and outer packaging.
Finally exported to America and Europe.
3. Everyone wins The Chinese found that their exports were not reduced.
From January to July 2023, China’s total exports increased by 3.1%.
Vietnam and Mexico saw a massive increase in their exports and imports, and people made more money.
Politicians in the United States and the European Union are finding that trade decoupling from China is paying off. Imports from China fell.
The Big Lebowski (1998). Jeff Bridges portrays Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, a passionate bowler, White Russian drinker, and consummate slacker.
The Big Lebowski received mixed reviews when it first came out. The movie seemed a bit odd for audiences and reviewers to initially appreciate, especially in comparison to the Coen brothers’ previous hit film, Fargo, which received seven Oscar nominations and went on to win two Academy Awards.
Peter Howell from the Toronto Star wrote, “It’s hard to believe that this is the work of a team that won an Oscar last year for the original screenplay of Fargo.” Doesn’t exactly tickle your interest, does it?
image 4
Over the years though, The Big Lebowski has developed into a cult classic. Passionate fans of the film call themselves “achievers” (an ironic reference to the Dude’s lack of ambition), and several lines from the movie have become memorable quotes, such as:
• “I’m The Dude. So, that’s what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or, uh, Duder, or El Duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.”
• “Obviously you’re not a golfer.”
• “Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!”
• “That’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
• “This aggression will not stand, man.”
• “The dude abides.”
image 5
As the film evolved into the cult status it has become, it spawned “Dudeism”, a way-of-life that celebrates The Dude’s philosophy and laid-back lifestyle.
image 6
In 2002, what began as a Lebowski Fest in a local bowling alley in Louisville, Kentucky, has evolved into 4,000 people now attending the fest. In addition to the original fest, several other Lebowski fests have taken place in cities around the US.
image 7
Jeff Bridges has described The Dude as his favorite role, and the only one of his films he feels comfortable watching.
“It’s just a really good movie,” he told Vanity Fair in 2022. “The characters, the way everything is executed from the set design to the wardrobe, everything is just right.”
image 8
The Big Lebowski, what began as one of the Coen brothers most misunderstood and underappreciated films, is now regarded as one of their best films. The Dude’s iconic repute is still alive and kicking.
In 1997 I witnessed a pickup truck flip and roll, and saw one person fly out of the truck. I was first on scene. A teenaged boy was sobbing, only a few scratches, asking me where his grandpa is. The boy said he was driving and got distracted.
50-60 yards away I found his deceased grandpa, head totally caved in, blood spot from every pore in what was left of his face. His hands were clutched in an agonizing pose.
I grabbed a blanket from my car to cover his body so that his grandson wouldn’t see him like that, nor bystanders who began to appear.
I comforted the teenaged driver for 30 minutes until police and fire rescue arrived on scene. The boy was devastated, saying “I killed my gradpa” and “I’m so sorry grandpa “ all in the midst of his sobbing. I told the boy his grandpa was gone.
Cops told me it was obvious the old man was thrown from the truck, which then landed on his head, causing instant death. The boy was wearing his seat belt; the grandpa was not.
After that I insisted that everyone in my family buckle up. A year later, my sister in law rolled their family car 3 times, only a mile from where the old man died. Everyone was wearing a seat belt, and only got minor scratches and bruises, but their car was a mangled mess.
My sister in law told me that when they left the house, she told everyone to buckle up because of what Uncle Danny said happened.
That was 36 years ago. Once in awhile I still wake up from a nightmare of that sobbing teenaged driver, and the image of the smashed head of an old man I did not know.
When I first saw the man’s face, I was stunned to realize that I was seeing blood drops from every pore in his mangled face from the impact of the pickup truck.
I remember it like it just happened, all these years later.
Please, wear your seat belt for your family, friends, the EMTs, and innocent people who might see your smashed head when they stop to help.
When I was a kid, they had all kinds of neat things you could send away for in comic books.
I ordered the Big Bang cannon and scared the shit out of my family one night when I fired it off in my room. After that it was an outside cannon only. Worse was when I was 10, I fired off a .22 starter pistol in my room. That gun was confiscated. Then there was the black chewing gum that turned your mouth black when you chewed it. I gave a piece to my older sister Tracy when she went out with her friends. Funny! Younger brothers did things like that. My pal Earl ordered the X Ray Specs, glasses that you were supposed to see through things with, like girls clothing. Didn’t work. Earl was vastly disappointed. He wore them over to my house hoping to see through my sisters clothes.
“Those are pretty stupid looking sun glasses,” Lori said to him. Earl felt stupid.
I ordered the footlocker full of soldiers, tanks, boats and airplanes. A FOOTLOCKER FULL OF THEM! WOW. When I finally got the footlocker, it was about seven inches by two inches full of flat, tiny, half inch crap, not even to scale. Very poorly made. Disappointment was real though. This stuff was all junk but they made it look so great.
I remember when I was ten I asked my mom at the breakfast table if I could get the little monkey advertised in the comic ads. My twelve year old sisters burst out laughing.
“I’ll look after it,” I promised.
“RJ, those things aren’t real. They’re all fake,” Lori said to me. But they actually were real. Live animals shipped to kids for $18.99, a lot of money in those days. Unbelievable.
Mom laid the law down. NO MORE ORDERING FROM COMICS!
But the dream of many boys was the Polaris Submarine. WOW! A real nuclear submarine! For only $6.98! Many boys dreamt of getting their sub and taking it down to the river where they could float around, dive, and shoot nuclear missiles and torpedoes. The ad actually said you could hunt for sunken treasure and explore the ocean floor. To good to be true? Yes it was. When the package arrived, you had to build it, ‘out of cardboard’. It would last two minutes in the water. It wouldn’t last an hour out in the rain in the back yard.
Most of the ads were lies but they got away with it. Many children were disappointed. But still, it was fun to look at those pictures and dream.
The Biden administration has made it very clear that China must operate in the manner in which the USA sees fit
That China must develop in the manner in which the USA sees fit
In short –
Make all the Washing Machines, Laptops, Smartphones, Microwaves and Televisions you wantMake all the Jeans, Toys, Textiles you wantMake all the low and medium grade components you wantHell even make all the Robots you want and High Speed Trains, EVs and Solar Panels and Green Energy
Yet at the same time
You cannot go ahead of us or our allies in the areas of Advanced Computing, Space, Quantum Computing, AI etc. You should always be No 8.You cannot modernize your Military technologicallyYou cannot pursue your own foreign policy and Geopolitics against our foreign policyYou cannot support anyone who doesn’t follow the Rules based orderYou have to buy more Bonds of ours and acknowledge the Dollar as the world’s only reserve currency
This was the BIDEN DOCTRINE TO CHINA
Qin Gang and Blinken apparently discussed this where :- In exchange for China acknowledging the Biden Doctrine & relinquishing support to Russia & Forcing Putin to sue for peace by weaponizing the Yuan The US would remove tariffs on Chinese products, remove export controls on certain equipment, remove 215 Chinese entities from the blacklist and propose Status Quo for Taiwan with no support for Taiwanese Independence The plan was likely for QG to deliver an ultimatum to Lavrov and for Xi Jingping to gather Global South Leaders like KSA & UAE while US could persuade India and together force Putin to call a ceasefire in UkraineThe Old Fox Wang Yi likely told Blinken to f*** himself which is why Biden was so angry that he called XJP a dictator I believe Raimondo tried the same thing, asking China to trade and develop in a direction acceptable to the US I believe China again said GO SCREW That’s why Raimondo was so angry when she returned backBlinken, Yellen, Raimondo all pushed China to follow the Biden Doctrine and China said No each time which was why they all returned back in a state of fury So now Biden will say the same thing if he meets Xi Jingping
Maybe Hu Jintao would have agreed
Not Xi Jingping
So Biden and Xi meeting is a pointless exercise
There is no US Leader who is willing to ask China to do whatever it wants and COMPETE with China directly and win
It’s very unlikely that Ukraine can turn the tide in the next 45–50 days after which the rains descend in all their fury
The West is very angry
They expected a breakthrough by Ukraine and a belief that such a breakthrough would force the Russians to negotiate from a position of weakness
It didn’t happen
Instead Ukraine lost too many men and too much equipment
Bradleys, M113s, M777s, M109s, Leopard Tanks, Strykers all burning on the battlefields
Almost 70% of Ammunition used up. Ukraine had almost 700,000 Shells in June 2023, sufficient to use 8000 Shells a day for 90 days, yet they used up 270,000 Shells in the first 16 days of the offensive and are down to their last 200,000 Shells today
They have sent over 110 Drones into Russia but only 17 caused any damage and now they are short of Drones
Plus the men they lost!!!
image 17
See the horror here
The Russians tag every dead Ukrainian now and they accurately estimate 4700 Dead in the past 14 days.
That’s Dead
Not Wounded
The Estimate of the Dead Ukrainians in the last 3 months ranges from 40,000 to 70,000
Almost all of these were NATO TRAINED
They were not conscripts
NATO trained 70,000 men and it’s likely most of them perished in the counter offensive
So the West simply hang in there because they can’t lose face and they can’t appear to have LOST
They spoke too much
image 16
The West can’t really keep pursuing aggressive strategy here
They tried begin aggressive, threatening people in 2022 and 2023 but that was because they hoped they would be in a winning position
That’s not happening
Now they need to end the conflict without appearing to look defeated
Bernie Marcus was CEO of the Handy Dan Home Improvement Center chain when the parent company declared bankruptcy. Marcus was fired by a vindictive board even though the Handy Dan division was not in bankruptcy.
“They threw me out of my office and put bars on the door. They searched my files. It was pretty terrible — one of those corporate things. You hear about them, but you don’t know what they are like until you live through one.”
He was convinced to drop his lawsuit against the company by a mentor who encouraged him to get on with his life. Another friend advised him to open the store he had always dreamed of. And that’s how The Home Depot was born. He was fired from a top spot in hardware retailing and went on to redefine the hardware industry.
In Japanese culture, when you reach 20 you are officially considered an adult. Cities across Japan have “Coming of Age
” ceremonies where 20-year olds would dress up in formal attire or traditional Japanese clothing to attend.
This was over six years ago, but being in the U.S. at the time I had no ceremony to go to. Still, my parents and I decided it would be nice for me to dress up anyway for a family photo shoot.
(long-sleeved kimono) or any kimono is a complicated art form impossible for amateurs to do. Fortunately for me, my best friend’s mom happened to be certified, and she offered to dress me free of charge.
As she was tying the stings around my waist, she said:
“Serina, you have the perfect body type for kimonos! You’re going to look so good.”
My genuine smile froze as she continued,
“They’ve always said people with a flat chest and no waist are ideal. It’s such a struggle to dress my daughter….“
-_____________________________-
I died a little inside that day, but I still managed to smile for the camera.
We purchased our first house in Hampton, VA in 1976 for $15,000. It needed painting and we were planning on starting on Saturday hoping we could get it finished in a couple of weeks. Talking to our neighbor who had a crew doing restoration painting. I asked him what the best paints were that was reasonably priced and told him what we were going to do. “When are you going to paint it?” “Starting Saturday.” “I can probably get some folks to help if you are buying the beer.” “Great!” “How much is the paint going to be?” “My price.” A crew of six showed up at 6 am Sat and were finished inside and out by 5 pm and ready to party.
We moved into our new (to us) house in Burleson, TX on the day before Thanksgiving. As I am working on unloading the POD’s our neighbor walked over and waited for me to come back out. “I know that you are busy and don’t need me intruding. I just wanted you to know that you don’t need to worry about a Thanksgiving turkey. I am going to my mom’s tomorrow and deep frying two, I will cook one for you also.” He showed up the next day with Turkey, sides and a fresh baked pie.
While this may not be the most life-ruining experience, it certainly causes you to fantasize about using baseball bats in ways you’ve never imagined after being a victim of such an atrocity.
It still boils my blood thinking about it.
Let me explain:
I live in quite an affluent and liberal area – Montgomery County, MD to be exact. Montgomery County borders directly against Washington D.C., so the government basically fuels the entire economy and causes people to flock to the area. Of course, not everyone is rich, or even well-off. There are a lot of poor people in the area, including immigrants – a lot of whom are ‘undocumented’. These people are hurt the most by this specific brand of towing.
Basically, here’s how it works –
At first, a parking lot may be abused. Let’s say I want to visit a friend, but there’s no parking, so…eh, what the heck? I’ll just park in the grocery store parking lot nearby and walk over. Maybe Safeway gets tired of people taking up their parking spaces, but not doing any shopping. Let’s say it gets really bad after a while and there’s no spaces for paying customers to park, so they start to have cars towed away when people park there and walk “off premises”. Seems pretty logical, right?
That’s the innocent example, but here’s what it snowballed into:
A woman pulls into a McDonald’s parking lot – her son wanted a burger. She parks. He walks into McDonald’s, she walks to the post office 2 doors down. She comes out 7 minutes later to find her car, front wheels hoisted off the ground by a tow truck (one of the short ones with no bed, just a crane on the back). She is confused, scared, angry that someone is ‘stealing’ her car (as far as she understands it). She confronts the Shrek looking man who is operating the tow truck. He tells her (in his most practiced rude attitude) that ‘walk-offs’ are not allowed. He points to a sign in the far corner of the parking lot, under a tree. When examining the 18″x24″ sign (minimum regulation size).
It basically says “2 hours parking only; if you park and leave you will be towed” then a bunch of fine print, but at the bottom it says “Towing charge $440; storage per day ~$40” (can’t quite make out the storage price). So, you get towed, you go pick you car up immediately, and it’s “$480 to get your car out” they say with a smile.
The woman argues, saying she has a receipt for the McDonald’s. Her son is holding the food in the McDonald’s bag.
He ignores her and says “The tow bill is $440 plus $40/day when you pick it up from Rockville (12 miles away), or I can drop it now for $250 cash.”
She tries to argue more, but he continues lifting the car up. As she is yelling she doesn’t have $250 in cash, he walks to the truck, gets in, and leaves with her car.
Scenario 2:
In addition to pretty much all businesses having some sort of deal with towing (the business gets a kickback because the towing is so profitable), all apartment complexes have adopted a similar deal. Remember how I said immigrants are a large part of the population in Montgomery County? Do you know that immigrants usually live crammed in one household? Well…When you’ve got 8 hispanics living in a 2 bedroom apartment, and 6 of them have jobs, they all have cars to get to work. But the apartment complex only gives out 1 parking permit per adult resident allowed to live there – 1 per bedroom. So the hispanic family only has 2 parking permits, but they have 6 cars. What do they do?
Well, the first night they likely make a huge mistake – they park in the lot without a permit. Towing is allowed to start at 10pm, so a “scout” or “spotter” shows up at 9:48pm walking around with a flashlight looking for parking permits in the window. You remember “oh crap! I need to move my car by 10pm!” You walk outside to see your car being towed up the hill at 10:02pm, gone. $480 at the tow lot in Rockville, 12 miles away. An entire week’s pay – gone.
Scenario 3:
You see your car being raised off the ground. You run up to the guy and start arguing. He says the “$250 cash and I drop it”. You pay him, he pockets it, and goes to hook up someone else’s car 10 feet away. Rinse and repeat.
These towing companies quickly realized how profitable it can be to employ these predatory towing practices (a tow company could make $5,000 per tow truck in a night), and it became rampant in Montgomery County throughout the 2000s. There was very little regulation on the books. Around 2013 it really started getting atrociously bad. Even though there were some rules on the books by then, they were nearly unenforceable, or just plain not enforced. The use of “scouts” was made illegal, but hard to prove, so the towing companies kept using scouters because they are so profitable. Additionally, these tow companies will ignore some smaller rules – such as being required to have an ATM on premises. Another problem is them damaging your vehicle. You ever try to get an auto shop to admit they dinged your door while they were working on your car? These guys are 100x worse. I’ve seen all-wheel drive cars being towed (front wheels on the ground) that are jerking and bucking all over the place because the transmission is still in gear and it’s catching. I was once towed and they broke my windshield. In addition to the $300 tow bill, I got a “it was like that when we towed it” in respond to my cracked windshield.
There is nearly zero recourse.
Me, an angry white male who speaks proficient english, tried to file a complaint with the “Office of Consumer Protection (OCP)” in Montgomery County. The investigator (investigator XXY) told me things like ‘the owner is never in the office’ and ‘they haven’t responded yet’.
BRO! You are literally THE government. It’s your job to police these guys.
About 6 months later, my dad’s truck had been towed so we went to pick it up from one of these scumdumsters. As we were paying, an official looking guy comes in and starts talking all buddy-buddy with these chumbuckets. Stuff like “oh how’s Linda? And the kids?” I realize that he’s supposed to be some sort of inspector. I talk to him and find out he works for the OCP. “Oh, wow. Do you know investigator XXY by chance?” ‘I am investigator XXY!’ oh well fuck you then
It’s starting to be cracked down on. Here are some articles that make my heart sing
This clip is from season 4 episode 3. I fucking love gale. His death was genuinely the hardest to watch for me, he was such an endearing dork.
A first comment on B’s site
I write here just to address Pacifica’s point at @7, which is dead-on accurate I think. First comment ever here, but love this site B. So good.
This is kind of a general plea, but we get so lost in the politics, and this team or that team, it’s as if we’ve failed to figure out that the whole damn system is rotten, both teams. As the Founding Fathers realized, this is what poisoned so many governments in Greece and Rome and throughout history.
In any event, Trump was basically a 1980s Democrat who loves the country, hates wars, and just likes doing deals. Remember that MSNBC interview, where they listed out a bunch of positions and Trump is like, hey, you’re describing me, and they said no, that’s Bernie Sanders’ platform. LOL. He is very close to the Kennedy family, which is why he and RFK do not attack each other. I would love to see that combined ticket. I truly believe that 2016 was the last free election, and the deep state was so sure he was going to get beaten in a landslide they did not activate all their plans/contingencies.
In any event, look at what Trump said on the campaign trail with regard to Russia. Why can’t we get along?? What idiot wants to start WWIII??
Indeed. And then look how Trump dealt with China. Yes, he had very serious hawks on China on his team, but it really dealt with trade and business. Repeatedly, he made the comment that he doesn’t blame China for these crappy trade deals and eating our lunch, they are just doing what’s right for them, he blames our stupid leaders for allowing this to take place and completely hollowing out our industrial capacity. It is the fault of OUR politicians. That was completely respectful to the Chinese. (And of course, he would scapegoat this or that, such as Corona stuff, but that is just politics, even the Chinese get that)
As Pacifica said, Trump can be manipulated by the oligarchs, but it’s even deeper than that. Understand how our entire system has been hijacked to work against the PEOPLE and for the benefit of the few at the top. Trump wanted no wars. Trump wanted to pardon Assange and Snowden any many others (he was threatened with immediate impeachment conviction if he did so). He wanted better labor deals and to secure the country.
The guy was impeached twice for essentially nothing. The Democrats were firing at will. And HIS OWN PARTY hated him. Opened up all these idiotic investigations like Russiagate. FFS, that scumbag Paul Ryan wouldn’t even give him money to build the wall, which is the issue he won on. The deep state of McConnell, et al., had at their fingertips the ability to convict him with 20 GOP Senators standing at the ready if Trump went too far off the reservation. I think everyone has to remember that.
If one studies his errors, just consider what was arrayed against him. The Soleimani attack. True, I did not like that, but Trump was the only thing standing in the way of a full blown war against Iran. The MIC had those plans ready and literally said let’s do it and put it before him. Trump said no.
Sending weaponry to Ukraine. Again, the WHOLE system was saying he was a puppet of Russia, so of course he was boxed into that corner. If he said no, can you imagine the fury of the system saying, see, we told you so!!
Pacifica, I’m not sure about MacGregor, and I’m willing to give some benefit of the doubt here b/c I really like his thoughts on Ukraine and military matters generally, but I do worry about any saber rattling with China. It makes no sense and is idiotic. They had nothing to do with the opiod plague. All one needs to do is look at the Sackler family and that whole rotten cabal and so many towers of power would come down if the people knew and the fury was put in the right direction. But certain ethnic clans and regulatory agencies would get nervous. There was a 25 page or so New Yorker article on that that was just brilliant.
It’s amazing how much the system is against the people. You had Walgreens pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for ivermectin, which is essentially aspirin, but if you need some opiods, just come on up, no problem!!
Sorry for the very long winded message. The American system is rotten to the core. The only people in the ring that actually care about the American PEOPLE and peace and lives throughout the world imho are Trump, RFK, and Sanders to some extent. I don’t trust anyone else quite frankly.
And finally, with the weaponization of the court system and these ridiculous indictments, which themselves are an indictment on the American populace as to the stupidity to which they have devolved and the darkness or partisanship that should have had these grand juries laughing this stuff out of the room, we are in sad and dark times now. Even though Hillary clearly was rotten to the core and an absolute criminal, I never supported anything criminal against her, you open that pandora’s box and you don’t know where it leads.
It’s why there’s a famous saying, grand juries are so retarded you can indict a ham sandwich. Very dark times ahead I think. The system is pulling out all the stops. I have no idea where this leads.
My Chinese friend asked me a question: As we all know, there are 7 days in a week, when you need to express the eighth day, how do you say it in English?
This stumps me. There is no such word in English. I can only say “Monday next week”, or “the day after Sunday”.
But the Chinese can create a new word “星期八” at will, and other Chinese people don’t need to learn anything. The Chinese people can immediately understand what he means.
Another Chinese teacher asked me a question: If you went back to England hundreds of years ago and asked Queen Anne: “What are trains, wires, televisions, refrigerators, telegraphs?” Queen Anne will know nothing.
But if you go back 2000 years ago and ask Qin Shihuang the same question. Qin Shihuang will tell you: Yes, I know the general meaning. train: a vehicle powered by fire Wire: A rope that can spread lightning Television: A machine that displays shadows by means of lightning Freezer: a box full of ice Telegram: Reports sent by lightning
Since it was finalized 2000 years ago, the number of commonly used Chinese characters has dropped from 50,000 to 7,000, but its meaning has expanded countless times with the development of human science and technology.All professional words, including words that have not yet appeared in the future, can be expressed using these 7,000 Chinese characters.People can understand the meaning of these future words without detailed study.
But the number of English words has expanded to 1 million in the past 300 years, 98% of which are professional words that ordinary people cannot master. Basically, every time humans discover new knowledge and items, English needs to create a new word. Moreover, people who have not studied cannot understand it.
Chinese characters：This is a magical text whose underlying architecture can be infinitely expanded without incurring too much learning cost.
FACES OF KENSINGTON (Zombies in the real life of the United States) Streets of Philadelphia – Part 2
Whose law? US laws are for US people in the U.S. International must be written by all nations! Not one? Or a few Chinese or China hating ones!
US don’t rule the world.
Even though some in the U.S. thinks so.
It may be a strong nation and likes to talk and behaves like it does.
It is just a single nation amongst other nations.
The U.S. has every right (though hurting itself) to stop buying any products from any nation. But to tell others not to is not the U.S. right. Some dog nations, slaves nations and cronies wants to do so is up to their cowardice and lack of courage but it don’t matter. It is their right to destroy their own nation.
Take the UK for example. Today they don’t even have half the Chinese 5G capability spending more than twice to set up unworkable and inefficient 5G non Chinese systems and today it is the worst performing Europe nation. But it is theirright to destroy itself.
Australia under Scott Morrison nearly self destructed Australia but the Aussies send him packing.
Good bye!
We the rest of the world must understand this and see to it that the U.S. cannot and won’t ever control the world.
This is good for the world and it’s good for Americans too.
US excesses are killing and collapsing the United States.
SO, The Rumours are True! Oprah Shady Maui Deal with The Rock Exposed
An AI Model Tested In The Ukraine war Is Helping Assess Damage From The Hawaii Wildfires 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.
Because China isn’t artificially modifying it’s currency and a low yuan helps the Chinese stay competitive
As I have reminded you Japan was strongest when it’s yen was 291 to the Dollar
It became stagnant and a zombie economy when it’s rate went to 115 a Dollar
It was FORCED to do so by the US in 1985 as part of the Plaza Accords
China won’t do that. EVER.
The US hopes to weaken the Yuan and use that to pull out investments and force China to appreciate the Yuan by other means including purchasing US Debt
China is already busy with establishing it’s own BLOC
Tomorrow instead of wasting time with G20, Xi meets President Maduro of Venezuela and inks a Oil Contract paid fully in Yuan and Priced in Yuan
If this works out then in 2024 – China will be purchasing 41% of Oil in Yuan or Ruble or Infrastructure Projects
US hope for China to print money, bail out their real estate companies and buy long term debt in Dollars and Euros to keep the Yuan floating
Like India has done, purchasing more US Debt than selling in the first eight months of the year
China knows how dangerous that can be and prefers ECONOMIC FORCES to handle the same while taking care of it’s energy supply
Family Guy British Radio
INDY speaks
Given matters in China have a bearing upon the SMO, a few items to consider…. LINK HERE Tech war: China’s top memory chip maker YMTC making progress in producing advanced 3D NAND products with locally sourced equipment: sources YMTC’s top secret project, which aims to use Chinese-only equipment, has placed big orders with domestic tool suppliers, including Beijing-based Naura Technology The ramped up sourcing of local equipment comes after YMTC received fresh funding to the tune of US$7 billion from its state-backed investors, including the ‘Big Fund’
Chinese chip maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC) is planning to use domestically sourced equipment to make advanced flash memory products after it was put on a US trade blacklist last year, according to industry sources.
If successful, the strategy would represent a breakthrough in China’s efforts to become self-sufficient in semiconductor production after the country was denied access to advanced chip making tools over Washington’s concerns that the technology would end up in the hands of the Chinese military.
LINK HERE Huawei Teardown Shows Chip Breakthrough in Blow to US Sanctions The company’s Mate 60 Pro is powered by SMIC’s 7nm chips, according to analysis that TechInsights conducted for Bloomberg News
LINK HERE China is the breakaway global leader in new nuclear construction.
China has 21 nuclear reactors under construction which will have a capacity for generating more than 21 gigawatts of electricity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is two and a half times more nuclear reactors under construction than any other country.
India has the second largest nuclear buildout right now, with eight reactors under construction that will be able to generate more than six gigawatts of electricity. Third place Turkey has four nuclear reactors under construction with a presumed capacity of 4.5 gigawatts.
The United States currently has one nuclear reactor under construction, the fourth reactor at the Vogtle power plant in Georgia, which will be able to generate just over 1 gigawatt.
“China is the de facto world leader in nuclear technology at the moment,” Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told CNBC.
China is “the determined and pacing leader in global nuclear ambition at the moment,” agrees Kenneth Luongo, president and founder of the Partnership for Global Security, a nuclear and transnational security and energy policy non-profit. China is “leading, even racing ahead,” Luongo said.
CHINA / SOCIETY China to employ multiple methods to enhance monitoring of marine environmental pollution: MEE By Shan Jie Published: Aug 28, 2023 10:47 PM
In this aerial image, nuclear-contaminated water is released from the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean on August 24, 2023 in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan. Photo: VCG In this aerial image, nuclear-contaminated water is released from the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean on August 24, 2023 in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan. Photo: VCG
The dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan has raised concerns among Chinese citizens about the state of the marine environment. Chinese environmental authorities on Monday vowed to strengthen the monitoring of marine environmental pollution through multiple means, including conducting baseline surveys of marine pollution and utilizing satellites for monitoring.
China has launched its third marine pollution baseline survey, with the goal of completing a thorough investigation and assessment by 2025, said Wang Juying, the director of the National Marine Environmental Monitoring Center, at the ministry’s monthly press conference on Monday.
LINK HERE Thailand’s confusing election was a win for China Thailand’s election saw winner Move Forward pushed to the opposition. It vowed to reset foreign relations including that with China. The current Pheu Thai-led government won’t likely deliver that.
Chinese scientists look to 6G to hunt submarines, testing device small enough to fit on drone Defence researchers say sensors can identify extremely small surface vibrations produced by a low-frequency sound source in the open sea UAV-mounted platform could work in concert with other submarine detection methods such as a magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), microwave radar or laser
China’s most advanced Fujian aircraft carrier on track for 2025 PLA handover, latest Weibo photos suggest Covers taken off all three electromagnetic catapults on the deck of the Fujian, social media photos posted by military buffs show Images indicate readiness for sea trials and systems testing, with warship likely to join the PLA within two years as scheduled, observers say
Not included above…. Passenger traffic on the Laos High Speed Rail Network has more than doubled since the beginning of the year..
Neither the markets nor consumers are easily surprised any longer by tech developments. Huawei’s deceptively low-key launch of its new “breakthrough” smartphone has turned out to be an exception, sparking patriotic jubilation on the mainland about a victory over American efforts to block China’s rise. At the same time it has caused consternation in the US over the apparent failure of a tech containment policy towards China, which has been progressively tightened under the Biden administration.
Analysts and market observers believed that even if the US could not head off China’s tech rise in the long run, its policies would significantly slow it down – that it would take Huawei, for example, longer to reach the stage it now has. Most people are taken aback by its progress.
The question for Western technology experts – and US security officials – is how Huawei developed the advanced semiconductors that drive its Mate 60 Pro. The device is powered by the new Kirin 9000s chip whose processor runs on the 7 nanometre technology, the kind of advanced chip the US seeks to deny China.
Sales of the new phone may be largely confined to the mainland and China may remain five years behind but, in simple terms, it is within one technology generation of the West. Beijing has spared no expense to build a domestic semiconductor industry, including billions in reported subsidies for Huawei to develop a network of fabrication plants. The aim is to boost the domestic supply of high-end products such as 5G smartphones, according to a plan released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Finance last month.
Huawei’s apparent breakthrough is in some senses symbolic. It is just one battle in a long war in which it will remain the weaker player. This is nonetheless a morale booster for China, a reminder of resilience and huge potential. That said, it still makes more sense, whenever the situation allows, for China to seek cooperation rather than fall back on total self reliance. Economically that does not make sense for any country.
That is not to discount China’s achievement. It is a reminder, as many have said, that US containment policy may backfire. A major concern is possible fragmentation of the global tech development and supply chain, creating problems such as oversupply and incompatibility, or so-called Balkanisation of the tech sector.
Technological development is going to be extremely expensive. Division of effort can help bring down costs and speed development. If Washington cites security concerns, unsupported by evidence, for trying to contain China’s tech rise it can only raise costs for everyone. In the light of Huawei’s new smartphone launch the US should come to terms with the need to revise its policy for everyone’s sake.
Not me, but my daughter who was 17 at the time, was working at a McDonalds in a bad neighborhood. They had to constantly check the bathrooms for needles and passed out junkies (she actually found a nice Bowie knife in it one day and the manager let her keep it). So one day she steps outside for a break and finds a man laying on the sidewalk, bleeding from a stab wound (not from a Bowie knife), so she does what they were taught to do and calls for a manager, grabs some gloves and a towel and comes back outside.
The manager (30 something male) is standing outside, wringing his hands, along with several older staff members and none of them will take the gloves. The manager is trained in first aid as part of his job, but he won’t calm down. So my daughter tells one of them to go back inside and call 911, and she puts on the gloves, takes the towels and applies pressure to the wound. She talks to the guy while they wait for the ambulance and keeps him calm, while her manager is trying not to pass out from hyperventilating.
When the ambulance arrives, the paramedics assess the man and while one is getting the guy’s wound stabilized, the other one starts asking questions. When he finds out my daughter is only 17, he lost his crap on the manager and then commended my daughter for doing such a good job. He told her that she should be a paramedic because she was so cool under pressure. She laughed and told him she hates the sight of blood, but didn’t want the guy to die. She then went on break and had a little cry, then returned to work.
I was a 20 year old newly licensed pilot flying solo from picking up my wedding dress one state over. There were thunderstorms in the area that my small plane should never fly in, not to mention i was a VFR pilot not qualified to fly in instrument conditions…so I landed at a small airport about halfway home. About an hour or so later the storms passed, and I called my fiance to see if the weather was clear at my destination (he worked as a fuel guy at the airport I was flying to). Earlier we had been in an immature fight where I thought he told me a lie, so there was some tension between us but we had put that aside for the moment. When I called him about the weather he said “yep it’s clear as a bell. Sunshine and rainbows.” So I took off and had about 45 mins in the air before getting there. The sky got darker and darker and by the time I landed it began pouring rain and lightning/thunder. I got there in the knick of time. When my fiance met me at my plane I said “omg! That was a close one! I was expecting rainbows and sunshine.” And he said “oh you believed me? I thought you thought I was a liar so why would I tell you the truth about the weather?” So he played with my life and safety in order to play a game and prove his point. My mother begged me to call off the wedding but foolishly I did not. It was a rough 9-month marriage before I got the hell away from him.
Well, Mcmahon is long dead, and he is neither Chinese nor Indian.
The problem with the Indian side is the rather inconvenient history of the Raj, which unilaterally drew the “border” that is at the heart of the dispute.
Nehru singlehandedly upset the gameboard, when he overreached and concluded China was too weak to fight his well-equipped elite frontline troops, distracted by the Taiwan crisis, embargo by the US-led west, and rapidly cooling relations with the Soviets. He also judged that China would find resupply over the roof of the world challenging, unlike India which held the lowlands.
Nehru’s forward policy reached its crescendo in 1961/62, with unbelievable rhetoric from New Delhi fueling provocative orders to establish guard posts NORTH of the Mcmahon line (in other words, the occupation of Chinese territory, even by Indian standards). Delhi granting asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959 raised suspicion that India was complicit in the 1960 Tibetan armed rebellion and had evil designs on Tibet.
By then, Nehru had rejected Zhou’s proposal for a East-West swap, despite China being prepared to accept the Mcmahon line as the basis of settlement. Instead, Nehru demanded China withdraw from Aksai Chin while retaining control of NEFA, today’s Arunachal Pradesh, as the essential condition for border negotiation.
Nehru wanted the cake cut India’s way as precondition, before negotiations had even begun!
The Chinese responded to Dhola Post after losing almost 80 men in early October to a skirmish with Indian troops. A massive attack was launched that decimated an Indian brigade. In the three-week lull that followed the battle of Namka Chu, India refused to negotiate, despite Nehru’s illusion of the Chinese unwillingness to attack being shattered. Mid-November exploded into full-blown war, with Chinese troops punching a hole through Indian lines that led straight to Delhi. The military loss was strategic and conclusive, despite China’s voluntary withdrawal.
India, in particular, Delhi, has never forgotten the humiliation, and fear of the capital being overrun by China. No leader since has criticized Nehru for his strategic blunder and overreach. That is why the border remains frozen in time. India, for the foreseeable future, will not come to the table unless China gives up claims (and actual control) to east and west.
Having shed blood to obtain the status quo, China will not agree to such terms as precondition for negotiation.
India needs a superman to courageously forge a new path distinct from the father of modern India, and come to the table as an equal, if slightly disadvantaged, party.
Absolutely Gina Raimondo and the state department believe that the rise of Huawei is a security threat to America and the world.
Let me give you an example of why Americans think like this. In 2012 I was in America and found a group of professionals who cycle twice a week. Everything was terrific. I purchased a second-hand mountain bike for $150 because I didn’t know how long I would stay. This is the bike I owned at the time:
image 20
Everyone in the group had nice road/racing bikes that looked something like this:
image 19
The first two months were incredible. All the males were very nice to me, the females wanted to introduce me to other females … it was love and humanity everywhere in the group.
Keeping up with fast road bikes on a heavy aluminium mountain bike was too much for me. So, one stupid day I decided to buy the below bike so I can keep up with my cycling group:
image 18
From that day forward people in the group started to distance themselves from me. People started to find me ‘rude’ and ‘arrogant’ all of a sudden. Females started to feel ‘intimidated’ in my presence. The males in the group started suggesting that maybe I was homophobic? maybe I’m misogynist?
Then they started to worry about the ‘safety’ of members of the group because of my presence.
Whenever I spoke people would become irritated, their faces would become red with anger.
When I stopped attending the group cycle meetings they became even angrier and more contemptuous of me. When I returned to cycle with them the anger and hate increased even more.
They didn’t want me in the group, and they didn’t want me to leave the group either. What I’m describing is the process of ‘ni*gerization’ that Western people put others through.
Raimondo, with most of America’s institutes, are desperately trying to ‘ni*gerize’ China.
I hate to say this, but the talent pool of American actors has been shrinking for years.
Most American actors came into movies through stage (like Brando) or adult television (like Burt Reynolds). They trained with good acting coaches using innovative techniques.
But now, most American actors come into movies from juvenile television. It’s a massive logistical problem, but it’s much easier to hire actors who have already had membership in the Screen Actors Guild than to try to get an actor who has trained on Broadway or at a university theatre program into the Screen Actors Guild.
And teenage American actors get virtually no training. They come into adult acting with no real background in how to act, so, when you need someone really good, it’s a really small pool of talent.
However, in Great Britain, where America draws most of its “Screen Americans”, teenagers who are on juvenile television are still in some sort of serious theatre program learning stuff like Shakespeare. They likely have theatre experience before they get into movies. They learn how to act.
Take one of my favourites, Maisie Williams.
image 9
Although she got her job as Arya Stark at the age of 14, she already had three years of experience at a performing arts academy. Prior to that, she already had dance and drama training. Americans of the same age would probably be more interested in polishing their resumes than their acting skills.
Spike Lee noted that the film Selma featured British actors in all the lead roles, including playing Martin Luther King, Jr. He was somewhat upset that a black American didn’t get the role, but had to admit that he would be hard-pressed to name a young American actor who could carry the role.
And it’s that way for many serious productions. The big American actors aren’t bad, but they don’t have the same sort of training on the whole. There are exceptions, like Robert Downey, Jr., who have outstanding acting chops, but they’re few and far between, and their number keeps shrinking.
What exactly are all those fees and charges? You’ll notice my tuition (the last one on the list) is only about $7,000.
What’s the rest?
Rent—$3,345: I need a place to live, and the only way to get student loans/scholarships to cover my housing is to live on campus.Dining plan—$2,355: No kitchen means I need an on-campus dining plan. My plan is the cheapest they offer, giving me ten meals per week.STEP 161 supervision fee—$11: Presumably a fee to compensate my host teacher (or to pay for some aspect of that supervision) during my in-classroom observations.Student Capital Fee—$400: “The Student Capital Fee supports bonded facility debt service and facility operations as well as capital repair and replacement.”
I have no idea what this means.LEAF Fee—$10: “The Student Leadership for Environmental Action Fund (Student LEAF) is intended to move the campus community toward a sustainability-minded culture. This fund finances environmental improvements in campus infrastructure and educational initiatives.”Student Services Fee—$444: “Student services and support are funded by this portion of the Student Fees.”Health Insurance—$1,290: You have to have health insurance on campus. You can fill out a waiver proving you have your own health insurance and have this fee removed (which I’ll be doing).Library Fee—$70.80: “Covers print and online library materials.”Online course fee—$45: An extra fee due to the fact that I’m taking one online course. “On-Line Course Fee-online fees pay for adjunct costs resulting from increased course sections and smaller class sizes; it also funds instructional designers, development and training to enhance online course offerings.”THEA 100 and THEA 275 course fees—$40 each: Supposedly to cover the cost of materials and anything consumable used in-course (which really doesn’t exist in these courses).Theatre program fee—$128: No clue. I’m guessing it’s to fund the theatre program, which is bizarre.Technology fee—$160.80: “Used for equipping new smart classrooms, staffing and maintaining computer labs, and providing students access to academic software.”Differential tuition for theatre—$144: Theatre classes are more expensive, so we pay more in tuition to allow the university to keep having them.Tuition WUE—$6,966: My actual tuition. “Covers classroom instruction, student services, administration and facilities. Based on cost and demand, differential tuition may be charged for certain classes (Sciences/SES/Art, Business, Nursing, Theatre).”
So that’s how we get to that beautiful number of $15,449.
I’m only taking six classes—note that three (THEA 100, THEA 275, STEP 161) had extra fees attached in addition to the over $1,000 they already cost.
And on top of that, I pay an extra $250+ dollars in a program fee and differential tuition to cover the mere act of being in my major.
And, I already receive reduced tuition as a Wyoming resident. My tuition is, by default, 150% of in-state tuition, which is significantly less than out-of-state. Imagine what this bill would look like if I was from New York and not Wyoming.
“Get a job!” you say. “Stop being a lousy freeloader! Work, save up some money, and pay for it yourself!”
Let’s take a look at that— “pay for it yourself”. How possible is it for one to pay for their own college?
I did some math. The minimum wage in Colorado is $9.30/hour. If you worked 40 hours a week making $9.30 an hour, you’d have $19,344 in one year. That’s assuming you work 40 hours every single week, with no time off.
My student bill for one semester (four months of education time) is $15,500.
I could take a whole year off from college, work at the minimum wage, and if I didn’t spend a cent of it I could pay for a little more than a semester of college.
“Don’t get a minimum wage job, then!” you say. “That’s on you!”
Right. The good ol’ “Just make some more money, then” argument. See, I’ve tried that. I currently have a few jobs that pay $20 an hour. If I worked 40 hours a week at $20 an hour, I could make around $41k a year.
That’d be fine and dandy, except for the fact that I still have to go to school. At most, I can work 20 hours a week (and even that’s being optimistic).*
If I work 20 hours a week at $20/hr (which is well over both the Colorado and federal minimum wages), I could make about $20K a year.
Once again, that assumes I never have to get gas. Never go to the doctor. Never buy groceries (remember, my meal plan covers 10 meals a week. The average person eats 21). Never buy clothes. Never fix my car. Never buy shampoo.
Even then, I could afford just over a semester of college.
The days of “save your pennies from your summer job to pay for college” are long gone.
“Well, you should’ve gone somewhere cheaper. That’s on you.”
Right. Because it’s on me that the cost of going to a mid-range school three hours from home is so exorbitant.
Sure, I could’ve gone to another school. Let’s consider my less expensive options:
University of Wyoming—AKA, the only 4-year school I can get in-state tuition at.Casper College—2-year community college.
Problem with both?
I couldn’t get my degree.
As in, neither school offers an equivalent degree program. I couldn’t study to be a theatre educator at either of these schools.
So sure, I could go somewhere cheaper, but then why bother spending the money at all if I’m coming out with a degree I don’t even want?
There are lots of others, too— “Your parents should’ve been saving up” (their savings went down with the economy, yo). “You should take out loans/apply for scholarships” (done and done. Still not enough). “Not everything in life is fair” (that’s not an argument. It’s just, like, philosophical bullshit). “You need to talk to your school’s financial aid department. There are resources to help you” (Oh, if only you knew…).
I’m not saying college should be free. I’m happy to pay for it.
I’m saying that it’s insane that college prices keep rising, and there’s no clear way for young people to pay for it. I’ve already taken on $10,000 in student loans from the past year. I’ve applied for every scholarship I can find.
It’s still not enough.
Jobs are requiring college degrees, but to get a college degree, you need a damn amazing job to pay for it (or parents who can afford it).
It’s a vicious cycle. I don’t know what the solution is.
I just know that it’s one of my top complaints about the US.
I don’t need free college—I need affordable college. Please.
*Ignoring the fact that few jobs will hire you for that much without a college degree, and that my current $20/hr gigs are really limited as to how many hours I’m allowed to work (one is max 5 hours a week).Footnotes[1]
A country ham (such as a “Smithfield” ham) is salt-cured, smoked and aged well. Whole country hams are expensive; it is possible, however, to buy country ham steaks. But you may also substitute thick-cut, smoked, streaky bacon for the ham in this recipe.
Ingredients
2 quarts cold water
1/2 cup kosher salt (regular table salt will make the brine too salty)
1 (3 pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces
1 quart buttermilk
1 pound lard
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup country ham pieces, or 1 thick slice country ham, cut into 1/2-inch strips (see note)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
Combine the water and the salt, stirring until salt is dissolved.
Place the chicken pieces in a bowl and pour the salt water over.
Cover and refrigerate for 8-12 hours.
Drain the chicken and rinse out the bowl it was brined in.
Return the chicken to the bowl, pour the buttermilk over and cover and refrigerate 8-12 hours.
Drain the chicken on a wire rack, discarding the buttermilk.
Meanwhile, prepare the fat for frying: put the lard, butter and country ham into a heavy skillet or frying pan. Cook over low heat for 30-45 minutes, skimming as needed, until the butter ceases to throw off foam and the ham is browned.
Use a slotted spoon to remove the ham carefully from the fat. (Reserve the fried ham for another use, such as snacking.)
Just before frying, increase the temperature to medium-high and heat the fat to 335 degrees F.
Blend together the flour, cornstarch, salt and pepper in a shallow bowl or on wax paper.
Dredge the drained chicken pieces thoroughly in the flour mixture, then pat well to remove any excess flour.
Slip some of the chicken pieces, skin-side-down, into the heated fat. Do not overcrowd the pan; fry in batches, if necessary. Cook for 8-10 minutes on each side, until the chicken is golden brown and cooked through.
Drain thoroughly on a wire rack or on crumpled (not flat) paper towels. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.
As an ED nurse years ago, middle of the night – MVA. We got the 6- or 7-year-old boy who had 2 broken femurs. Dad was dying in surgery at a huge trauma hospital in Portland. He had been driving drunk and went through the windshield. Mom didn’t have custody as she was an addict and lived who knows where. The room was flooded with people – two surgeons, police, nurses, etc. while I spoke on the wall phone to the surgical team at the trauma hospital. Went into my little guy’s room and I wrapped my arm around his head to shield him from the chaos and bright lights and leaned in to ask him how he was doing. He asked me if his dad was dead.
I asked him what made him ask that. He said that he saw his dad and thought he might be dead. I told him, “Yes, I think he did die.” (I knew by then he had.) He said (without tears) “He can’t be dead.” “If he’s dead that means I have nowhere to live.”
I got the very real feeling that this little man had been through too much in his short life already. We did a brief meeting before he went to surgery and I shared with everyone what he said. He did well in surgery and I found out that within 2 days he had 5 offers for actual adoption. One was one of the surgeons, one a firefighter, and one a paramedic, and two nurses. He ended up living three hours away with his maternal grandmother. I never forgot that little boy. Rough.
When I left my retirement in Arkansas and flew to China, the airlines lost my baggage. So when I arrived in China, all that I had was a backpack, some of my most important papers, my laptop computer, and what I was wearing.
At that time, and to this day, I wear very comfortable clothes on planes during air travel. And given TSA back in the State’s, my clothes were simple;
Black hospital scrubs, and black slippers with black socks.
null
So, here I am arrived in China, with literally only the clothes on my back.
And for the first month or so, I had to live and wear in them until I got settled in, reestablished, and start earning money again.
In hindsight, it’s kind of funny.
Everyone, including my wife, wanted me to toss those things and never wanted to see me in them ever again. As a result, she went on a spending spree and outfitted me right and proper.
…
I don’t know what the fuck I was doing when I planned this cluster-fuck of a life, but I’ve got to tell you all, it’s almost a parody. Seriously.
Did I have a sense of humor, or was my “crew” trying to make a point when they planned my pre-birth world-line template?
I wonder…
…how many meme’s have I personally experienced in this life? Hum….
Enterprise Under Attack from the Suliban Part II
Stra Trek Enterprise Season 2 Episode 16 Future Tense
Carolina Hot Dog Chili
hot dogging
Ingredients
1 1/4 pounds ground beef
1 large onion (about 1 cup chopped)
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon cider or white vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper (optional)
Instructions
Place the beef, onion and 2 cups of water in a Dutch oven or soup pot over high heat. Bring to the water to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and stir to begin breaking up the meat.
Add the tomato paste, ketchup, chili powder, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper, if using. Stir well until the tomato paste and ketchup are dissolved and the meat is mostly broken up.
Continue to cook at a simmer, stirring about every 5 minutes, about 15 minutes. As the chili thickens, you may need to reduce the heat to medium-low or low so it doesn’t stick. Refrigerate, covered, up to 2 days, or freeze in small freezer bags for up to 6 months.
Thaw or reheat in a microwave, stirring often.
If you want a finer texture, you can cool the chili at least 20 minutes and process in a blender or food processor for 30 to 45 seconds.
Say tomorrow we are at $ 4.981 trillion, then it’s possible we may fudge to somehow make it appear that we have reached $ 5 Trillion
There is no conceivable way that any GDP number is off beyond say 2% at the most
The Point is Economic Development can be seen with your own eyes and not on paper
Take UP
I visited UP and traveled to quite a few places
I saw nothing to indicate bountiful prosperity
There was nothing to indicate the hum of a busy growing economy
Sure they had nice roads and a lot of nice commercial and techno parks but frankly it looked like more like
If you build it they will come
That’s what happens when you don’t develop your own populace with good secondary and tertiary education and instead rely on only investments under gun point or unrealistic concessions by the state
Now Take Bangalore or Hyderabad or Chennai
They are buzzing with activity and you can see that the economies are doing well
The Problem in India is that a few cities and few hubs are carrying the weight of the entire nation
There are 3 Key points in a booming economy
Unemployment is pretty low
Savings are pretty high (>= 36%)
Inflation is typically 50% of RORR
India has neither of the three
Unemployment is way above the target 5%
Gross Savings are 30.20%
RORR is 7% and Inflation is 5.05% which is way above the 3.50% target
That alone tells me there are pending issues that need looking into
I taught a shop class in an inner city high school…One day as the students were changing into work clothes I noticed some relatively new wounds on Jerome’s back…I politely and discreetly took him into my office and asked him what happened…He told me his step father had tied him to a metal bed spring and beat him with a coathanger…I knew where he lived so when school was out for the day I went to his apt and his stepdad was there…I proceeded to beat the living shit out of that evil man…And told him if he wasn’t gone before Jeromes bus got there I’d finish the job…AND call the cops…I drug his worthless carcass down to his pos car and he drove off…never to be seen again. Jerome stayed in my class for the full 3 years and graduated high school…Neither of us ever mentioned it…30 years later Jerome still calls me to visit ever so often…
The US Bankrupting Itself on Wars -w/ Ron Paul, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
Oh HELL yeah! The dignified and stately Dr. Ron Paul is one of the very best Americans living. Thanks very much for this, you guys.
Laughable because you are ignorant and naive like a 5 years old kid. If you know the truth you will be the one of the 89% too.
While the U.S. real standard of living deteriorated back to the 1960’s Chinese real standard of living grew 30 times in 40 years! While 35% in the U.S. has no health insurance, every single Chinese gets free health care. While the U.S. kids get into debts for just getting into college Chinese are provided totally free college tuition.
Chinese average life expectancy overtook the U.S. in the last 2 years straight. While your infrastructure is crumbling China has the latest state of the art ports, airports, highways, high speed railways. While your trains travel at snail speed China’s high speed trains travel at 400 KM per hour.
Do you still laugh now? To be honest everyone in the world is laughing at you. You want to know about the 11% so that you can orchestrate a coup? Organised a protest and a demonstration? Do a colour revolution? And you think the Chinese are fools to give you the information? Just because you have a IQ of a snail doesn’t mean others are the same like you!
Tex-Mex Biscuits
Tex Mex Biscuits
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup enriched hominy grits or quick grits
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
1/2 cup butter or margarine
4 ounces Monterey Jack cheese (with or without jalapeno peppers), shredded
1/2 cup dairy sour cream
1/4 cup milk
Instructions
Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.
Combine dry ingredients; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Stir in cheese.
Combine sour cream and milk; add to dry ingredients, mixing just until moistened. Shape dough to form a ball; knead gently on lightly floured surface 10 to 12 times. Roll dough to 3/4 inch thickness. Cut with floured 2-inch biscuit cutter. Place 1 inch apart on prepared cookie sheet.
This is Kalinka Bamberski, who used to be a 14-year-old from France.
During the summer of 1982, she briefly stayed in Lindau, Germany, with her mother and her stepfather, Dr. Dieter Krombach.
On July 9th of that summer, Krombach killed Kalinka. The next day, Krombach told the authorities that he simply found Kalinka dead in the morning.
Autopsies could not determine the exact cause of her death, and Krombach got away with the murder. This led Kalinka’s biological father, Andre, to grow suspicious and to investigate further.
Despite the authorities’ failure to discern the exact cause of Kalinka’s death, there were multiple red flags in the original autopsy: Kalinka’s corpse had multiple injection marks, fresh blood stains and a “whitish substance” around the genitals, and indigested food near the throat suggesting that she died soon after a meal.
Andre, rightfully suspecting that his daugher was raped, called for an additional investigation. This time, the authorities discovered clear evidence that, right before her death, Kalinka was injected with a drug named “Kobalt-Ferrlecit,” a substance capable of causing immediate discomfort and nausea in a victim. Andre pressed a case against Krombach, but the German courts judged that there was insufficient evidence for an indictment. Despite multiple red flags, Krombach was not indicted.
In 1995, however, the French courts officially sentenced Krombach in absentia to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.
Furthermore, later in 1997, Krombach admitted in a German trial that he had drugged and raped another girl using Kobalt-Ferrlecit, the same substance found in Kalinka’s corpse. Numerous other girls came forth, saying that Krombach had also raped them using the same drug. For this, the German courts took away his medical license, but did not sentence him to prison.
Unfortunately, in 2001, Krombach’s French manslaughter conviction of 1995 was annulled by the European Court of Human Rights, the reason being that Krombach was not capable of defending his case in that French trial. Not only was the 1995 French verdict annulled, but all attempts to extradite him for retrial were rejected.
But for Andre, the case was not over. Andre was deeply frustrated at the international legal system’s failure to bring justice; he decided he was going to take justice into his own hands.
In 2009, Andre and three other men secretly kidnapped Krombach from Germany, beat him up, and left him tied up near a French police station, allowing the French authorities to detain him and honor their 1995 decision.
Despite Germany’s requests to bring him back, French officials and courts ignored these complaints and officially re-tried Krombach.
With other victims testifying that Krombach had injected them with the same drug to rape them, on October 22, 2011, Krombach was finally sentenced to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.
Kalinka’s father, Andre, was convicted and given a suspended sentence for abducting Krombach.
But in my opinion? Andre Bamberski was a heroic father who spent 30 years of his life to bring justice for his daughter’s death. Yes, he broke the law — but refusing to convict Krombach earlier and ignoring the mountatin of evidence against him was a clear failure in the international justice system.
For Andre’s determination and commitment, I applaud him.
Prof. Richard Wolff on American Labor: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
There is very little value enhancement due to market pricing or Brand pricing or Technology Pricing
Even a Boeing makes at the most a couple of million dollars commission to a Chinese Importer while earning nearly 100 Million Dollars to the US Economy
You see right?
No Nation on earth can export $ 564 Billion worth of goods to the USA
It’s estimated that at thrice the manufacturing potential today – India, Vietnam and Mexico combined can export $ 338 Billion worth of Goods by 2030
This that’s around $ 226 Billion of Exports but also around $ 700 Billion of final retail goods
That’s the amount that US players and entities will be deprived off if US entirely decouples from China EVEN IN 2030 with India, Vietnam and Mexico tripling their Industrial Output
Even then US Economy and it’s players will be deprived of $ 700 Billion Dollars which by 2030 could be around $ 1 Trillion with inflation
That’s a lot of jobs, lots of payments GONE
Meanwhile China?
China may lose around $ 564 Billion of Exports in decoupling
At 0.4% inflation
That’s $ 580 Billion vs $ 1 Trillion
So even in the worst case scenario of US entirely decoupling from China and India, Mexico and Vietnam tripling their Industrial output today – China would lose $ 580 Billion while US would lose a whopping $ 1 Trillion
At normal Industrial output for these three nations, US would lose $ 2.4 Trillion or nearly 4.5 times as much as China stands to lose as an economy
Same for EU
Same for ASEAN
Same for India
Its why Raimondo visits China
It’s why 27 Chinese entities were removed from a Blacklist recently
The Media has been spinning fiction and propaganda so far and China hasn’t cared
Now if China decides to take their revenge by drastically cutting off key exports of say $ 100 Billion, then US cannot source more than $ 30 Billion from other countries
China loses $ 100 Billion but US loses around $ 210 Billion of value to it’s economy
That’s 44% of the projected $ 470 Billion that the US Economy hopes to enhance itself this year at 1.8% growth
So Raimondo says
Please keep trading with us as usual. Ignore what we say in our media. Our contention with you is for the $ 10–15 Billion portion of our Trade, let’s keep the balance $ 685–690 Billion of Trade as normal
That’s why China doesn’t need to visit everybody and reassure anyone much
Everyone loses far far more by decoupling with China
So ultimately it creates a slow down globally where China albeit having very low growth still beats the rest of the world
Solving The Most Mysterious Children in History
THREE STORIES: The Most Mysterious Children in History In 12th century England, two children were found lost in a forest.
They spoke only gibberish, wore strange clothing and had bright green skin.
When the children finally learned to speak English, they described where they were from.
And that’s why, after almost 1,000 years, people still talk about The Green Children of Woolpit.
In 1828, a teenage boy was shuffling through a public square in Nuremburg. He seemed confused and disoriented.
He had trouble walking and speaking. When police finally approached him, he was holding an envelope containing two letters.
And those letters sparked the mystery of Kaspar Hauser.
In April 1922, in Brittany, France, 2-year-old Pauline Picard went missing. A massive search turned up nothing.
The family was losing hope. A month later, Pauline was found wandering around a village over 200 miles away.
Though her parents were overjoyed to have her back, they soon realized something wasn’t quite right with their daughter. These are three unsolved cases of the most mysterious children in history.
POMPEO said ‘Covert operations, ousting democratically elected governments, inciting revolts and supporting transnational companies are run of the mill operations for the CIA.’ WHO GAVE THEM THOSE RIGHTS?
We did, all us minions. America was once set up having a government described as ‘a government of the people, for the people, by the people’, but the people couldn’t be bothered and went home, leaving ‘those who shouldn’t be’ in charge. Industry filled the vacuum created by our conspicuous absence, which over time gave way to the American Industrial Military Complex which runs the country today.
Now industry owns the puppet show called ‘Democracy’, which in no way should be confused with actual democracy, and yet we continually pretend they are one and the same, and that our vote counts, even though voting either left or right basically changes nothing of significance. Results may vary but the rich are always always always the primary beneficiary, either way they lean.
We demand and receive empty platitudes, and are duly amused by military antics across the globe, ignoring the fact that such behavior merely mirrors us here at home, and that the same shit is pulled on our own, until folks like Snowden and Assange et al dare to shatter our deliberately cultivated ignorance. No matter, we have ways to deal with such moral assholes, as throwing them under the bus in various ways has become a time honored national pastime.
So, when you want to look at who’s at fault, go look in the mirror. When you wish to look deeper, check out your family albums. We are the bloody problem, and as we are paying the price, with record numbers driven from their homes in this rich nation, and yet, still we refuse to accept responsibility for our democracy, knowingly leaving it in the manipulative hands of industry, which is exactly how to kill actual democracy, regardless of the puppet show which operates by the same name.
Whether you love Trump or hate him, he reflects us, and had he actually run the country as we pretend to believe, he would have surely killed it, as would Biden. We need to wake the fuck up to the reality we have created, and make the necessary changes within ourselves which can then be reflected through our leadership, before it’s too late, if it’s not already.
But who among us want to actually be the change we want to see?
Many years ago, when I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I had a work commute on a typical Monday through Friday schedule.
One evening on my way home from work, I turned off a main street into the side streets that would lead me the rest of the way home. It was a very familiar drive and I knew each block well – which ones had a stop sign for me, which ones had stop signs for the cross traffic, and which ones had four-way stops. I was cruising the last few blocks toward home and had no more stop signs, so I was probably going about 35 mph when suddenly it was as if someone inside my head said, “Slow down!” It was so forceful and unexpected, I did just that. “Slower!” was the next command, and then again, “Slower!”
I was just about to chalk it all up to being a little kookie after a long day, when suddenly someone driving a vehicle on the cross street blew through their stop sign at an alarming rate of speed. I am 100% certain if I had not slowed down, I would have been T-boned by someone doing a good 60–70 mph. The close call freaked me out. I’m not a religious person, but it sure felt like I had a guardian angel that day.
Dead For 7 Minutes; Man Is Shown Past Lives During Incredible NDE
Yes. My dad’s best friend growing up has a son my age. We were really close as kids but they moved away and I didn’t talk to him for years. When we were teens, my dad’s friend came to visit. Something about his son literally made my skin crawl. I was left alone at home with him and my three young siblings while the parents went out for the night and I was nearly frantic trying to ensure he did not have a moment alone with my siblings. When our parents returned I told them something was wrong with the son, and to please not leave me alone with him again. My dad was upset and demanded to know why I would say that, did the son do something? He honestly hadn’t actually done or said anything that I could pin this feeling on. So I told them, I think my animal brain just knows a predator when I see one. My dad thought I was being dramatic but my mom believed me and made sure we weren’t alone with the son for the rest of their visit. About a year later it turned out the son got caught in the act of raping his niece. He told the police he was glad he was caught because he couldn’t stop himself. My dad has never doubted my intuition since.
Tony Confronts Tony Blundetto – The Sopranos HD
When Tony B looks up after Tony S said someone got a look at the guy. That’s the reaction of someone who did it. Split second panic and then cool as a breeze. Steve Buscemi nailed it.
I worked for a major retail company, in a team running the mainframe.
One task was keeping the (huge, size of a car trailer) printers running.
Some printouts were for the board, and these we were told to check for misprints and missing pages.
We’d just been told that we couldn’t have any pay rises since there wasn’t any money in the budget. Inflation was running high, so not getting a pay rise really meant a pay cut.
The company annual account report was printed and I was checking it before putting it in internal mail.
I noticed that the IT department budget was underspent by half a million!
No money for pay rises!
Showed printout to my manager. He ran off with it to the copier. Multiple copies of the page showing the surplus in the IT department were placed around the department.
We got pay rises.
Ralph Cifaretto Refuses Tony’s Drink – The Sopranos HD
SMIC has been making 7nm custom GPUs for the past 2–3 years, mostly for crypto customers who couldn’t get in the TSMC queue.
This filled real market demand that other players didn’t, or couldn’t.
SMIC used this opportunity to refine its process, on the quiet.
Huawei, in the meantime, found willing partners to share talent and resources, in a concerted effort to save the high-tech industry on the mainland from American destruction through the threat of sanction.
How did Huawei et. al. find the tools necessary for chip design, especially the GPU? What black magic did Huawei use to improve the transistor geometry? How did they penetrate the Qualcomm 5g patent wall? I don’t know. Neither does my friend in TSMC. It’s a separate ecosystem now, and quite independent.
The fog of war has descended, but the outcome point to solidarity across the ranks, with competitors working together like they are part of a conglomerate.
The Chinese are capable of cooperation on unheard of scale, because of long history.
The Mate 60 Pro is merely a first step, lacking polish and maturity. What’s coming though, will be a deluge.
Alien Artifacts on Mars: What NASA doesn’t want you to know
Of course. The Chinese government really wants to know how many times you call your girlfriend every week, and which are your favourite games, and which pop stars you follow on Instagram, and most of all they are interested in the photos of your meals that you regularly post on Facebook.
These are vital secrets so critical for the national security of the USA, so the evil communist spies from China will be watching intently. Remember that well, and be careful! The everyday events of your online life have the devastating potential to alter the direction of global geopolitics and the history of the world, basically.
How Huawei Mate60 5G Overcome US Sanctions? | Time to invest in Chinese tech stocks
100 sanctions. Imprisonment of it’s CEO. Mandatory shutdown of partner factories in the West.
Why worry US. Remember most Yanks still think Chinese live in caves and eat bats! To these hubris Yanks China can only make T-shirts and toys. And U.S. can deprived them technologies and send them back to the Stone Age.
Well, what happened? While the U.S. is still in the midst of ordering and coercing Taiwan to build its chip plant to manufacture 7nm chips that it thinks China is unable to do. To the horrors of U.S. officials. It took a mere 3 years for China to. Make it and now inside the Huawei Mate 60!
Where are the neocons who convince Biden to spend a trillion in losses, in subsidies, in coercions, in tax breaks, in new shining plants, in luring specialist to the U.S. only to see that China get it done in no time and made products that are not only comparable but better, faster and cheaper!
Huawei, under tight US sanctions since 2019, started selling its latest Mate 60 Pro smartphone this week, raising speculation about its 5G capabilities. Some online reviews claim the device comes with the Kirin 9000s chip to support 5G and satellite calls.
The US and some European governments have labelled the Chinese giant a threat to national security, despite the company’s denial. Huawei had restricted access to US components and software, including from foreign chipmakers.
Early this year, Japan and the Netherlands joined the US effort to curb the export of advanced semiconductors. However, Huawei has been rumoured to be actively trying to overcome these sanctions to return to the 5G smartphone market, even resuming production on advanced chips with China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).
Why does it matter?
Huawei’s development of its 5G chip may have implications for the tech industry, the global economy, and national security.
The smartphone launch coincides with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to Beijing, reiterating the Biden administration’s stance on export controls to China.
If the new Mate 60 Pro is confirmed to have a 5G chip, that would mark a significant achievement for the Chinese tech champion.
China’s ability to produce its own advanced chips would also announce a considerable advancement in technological capabilities and would mean a serious blow to current US measures aimed at slowing its progress.
It could inspire the country’s largest tech firms to get around US sanctions, fueling the ‘whole nation‘ endeavor to produce Chinese innovation to beat the US.
In the United States, I was a conservative Republican working at a wage earning job. Then, while driving for my employer, on a delivery, on the clock, at a red light I was stopped. A person who was not paying attention smashed into my stationary vehicle and totaled it, and sent me to the hospital.
The hospital bill was thousands upon thousands of dollars. My employer didn’t cover any of it. My automobile insurance replaced my new vehicle with an old one that barely ran. I ran up many thousands of dollars of medical debt that I couldn’t afford.
Note: I spent one hour at the hospital, getting one scan. I received zero actual treatment, before or after that scan. It still cost me more than I made in a year. And no, the insurance didn’t cover it. Insurance that would have covered it, would have taken up half of my wages in a given month.
Cut to a few years later. I am now happily married, living in Norway. Still an American citizen. My wife is Norwegian and the pay is much, much better here, because they have things called unions. I literally earn three times as much as I did in Florida, working the same type of job. Scratch that, I was in management in the USA. Here, it’s an entry level job, no promotion. I still make far more money than I did in the states.
But the point is, whenever I need to see a doctor now, I just go. Whenever I need an operation, I can afford it. Whenever I am sick, I take time off. Because over here, in Norway, they have single payer universal healthcare.
I’ve never seen a doctor more often than I have since moving to Norway. I’ve gotten medical conditions diagnosed that I never would have found the money for before. I’ve gotten sick leave from work when I have been ill. Seeing a doctor tends to cost less than I make in a day, and if I go over a certain amount in a year, I can pay nothing.
Instead of getting bills from a doctor for thousands of dollars, I end up paying around 30 bucks out of pocket each time.
The doctor earns plenty. They make slightly less money here, but are still among the highest paid people in society. The citizens are healthier, they live longer. They take their health more seriously. Norway spends more per patient than almost any other country in the world, and they cover every citizen, every resident, completely.
Norway still spends only about half as much as US citizens are forced to spend on their healthcare.
The reason is because healthcare is considered a right here, like getting a public school education. People don’t go without simply because they’re poor.
And as a result, lifespans and healthcare outcomes and healthcare expenses are all a better outcome or a cheaper deal here in Norway.
Bernie Sanders is one of the few politicians in my native United States who understands that progressive ideas like universal healthcare would greatly enhance the lives of my fellow citizens.
I care about my fellow citizens, and I’d like for my son to be able to live in the USA someday, as he is born to a US citizen and he can certainly go far there.
The problem is, if he decides to come to the USA; there won’t be a union fighting for him against corporate greed. There will be greatly reduced wages. And if he gets hurt, sick, or otherwise needs medical care, he will likely need to have far more money than he earns in order to get that care.
That’s ridiculous.
Of course, he could just get a college education (something that is free in Norway) and then he could afford the outrageous healthcare prices in the USA.
But if he wanted to get such an education in the USA, he could find himself a hundred thousand dollars in debt just for college alone, in a shitty economic downturn, without even the benefit of having a place to live. Throw on a mortgage payment on top of that, and he would be downright stupid to deliberately choose the USA over Norway.
The difference is that Norway governs for its citizens and certain things are prioritized here, like education and healthcare.
Whereas in the USA most of the money you spend in taxes goes towards prepping for world war 3 and giving subsidies to already profitable corporations, and then giving them loopholes where they don’t have to pay any corporate taxes at all. And then billionaires pay for senators to give them even more tax breaks personally, and then they use that money that should be funding your government services to bankroll candidates for the Republican ticket that will never, ever do anything to help a working class person.
I support Bernie Sanders because he’s spent decades representing working class people, without ever selling out. It’s a shame people keep rejecting him in favor of billionaires who bail themselves out on the taxpayer’s dime like Donald Trump.
Norway isn’t alone. Basically any other modern, western nation has a universal healthcare system of some kind, and doesn’t shit on the poor like the USA does under Republican rule. Needless to say, I don’t think much of my former political party. They haven’t done anything for any working person in at least 4 decades. I was a fool to support them at all when I was younger. I believed their lies, basically.
The Mate 60 is superior to the performance of the Iphone 13 and is on par with the performance of Iphone 14
Yet the Mate 60 is expected to be half a generation below the Iphone 15
The Price of the Mate 60 however is at least 3000 Yuan lesser than the Iphone 15 and given the mild differences in performance between the two, the market for the mate 60 is likely to zoom and surge and definitely affect the market for the Iphone 15
I believe Iphone will lose around 15% of it’s present market share in China to Huawei due to the Mate 60 and the Mate 60 Pro Plus to be released in 2024 April
As a child, I was an incorrigible thief. Absolutely nothing could stop me.
I stole books. We had no local library, no school library, and no money to buy books. And I WANTED TO READ! (That may have been why I developed the habit of re-reading books.) I also stole art supplies, but that wasn’t quite the same problem, because you didn’t need a new set of pastels every week. When I was caught, I was punished — usually beat, because that was punishment in Little Italy in the 1960s.
My brother also stole. He tended towards candy and comic books. He also got beat when he got caught.
When I turned 16 I got a job, and I never had to steal a book again. Within three months I had enough books (and money) to build my first bookshelf. My current bookshelf, which is about half the size of its maximum ever, is 13′ long and 7′ high. I built that one, too.
I don’t steal art supplies, either. I order them online.
My brother decided stealing was fun, and meant he didn’t have to work. He made a living illegally hooking up electric lines after the power was shut off; later, he added cable TV installations. And he didn’t need a full-time job, ever.
Same parents, same beatings, same reason — poverty. When I had a choice, I stopped stealing. When he had a choice, he became a better thief. Good parenting helps, but nothing will tell you why a child turned out the way they did.
Clear interference shown in docs leaked to Mintpress
Theoretically, any cell phone that makes calls through a terrestrial carrier could be monitored by the CIA. It doesn’t matter whether the phone is made in the United States, South Korea or China.
After all, their signals and data must eventually be aggregated into the operator’s computer room and lines.
However, Mate60 is so unique that it is the first mobile phone in the world that can send short messages and make calls directly through artificial satellites. Previous similar products required the help of ground operators for transit.
Some people may say: CIA will also monitor satellites! Of course.
But what if these satellites are not operated by Americans?
Yes, if two people hold Mate60 at the same time, they can rely on a series of artificial satellites in space for global communication that do not rely on the United States. Perfectly avoiding every link that the CIA may touch.
While many Chinese scientists and engineers have returned to China after working years in the US, there is a newer trend which just came to my attention: Young Chinese star physicists and engineers are refusing to go to US universities and companies for study and then work, and are choosing to do their post-graduate study and work in China.
Why?
They have seen how research and product patents are owned by US universities and companies, and are used against Chinese companies and interests if a tech war breaks out.
They do not want their inventions used against Chinese companies and interests, so they choose to stay in China.
Huang Qianqian 黄芊芊 is a leading student and researcher on electricity consumption in chips, who went to Beijing University for undergraduate work, and is now doing graduate work there. In spite of being offered full scholarships to US universities, she decided to stay in China to do her work. She already has several patents under her name.
The US wanted decoupling; it is getting decoupling.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for plans to immediately deport Blacks out of Israel and back to Africa.
Plans should be drawn up to remove all African migrants from Israel after groups of Eritreans were involved in a violent clash in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says.
He also wants the migrants involved in the demonstration to be deported immediately.
His remarks came a day after rival groups of Eritreans clashed in bloody protests that left dozens of people injured.
The groups, supporters and opponents of Eritrea’s government, faced off with construction lumber, pieces of metal and rocks, smashing shop windows and police cars.
Israeli police in riot gear shot tear gas, stun grenades and live rounds while officers on horseback tried to control the protesters.
The violence broke out near the Eritrean embassy when protesters were stopped from reaching the building ahead of a cultural event set to take place there.
The issue of migrants has long divided Israel and the latest violence has brought it back to the fore.
“We want harsh measures against the rioters, including the immediate deportation of those who took part,” Mr Netanyahu said.
He requested that ministers present him with plans “for the removal of all the other illegal infiltrators,” and noted in his remarks that the Supreme Court struck down some measures meant to coerce the migrants to leave.
Under international law, Israel cannot forcibly send people back to a country where their life or liberty may be at risk.
About 25,000 African migrants live in Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, who say they fled conflict or repression.
Israel recognizes very few as asylum seekers, seeing them overwhelmingly as economic migrants, and says it has no legal obligation to keep them.
Stray Cat Follows Every Stranger and Asking to Take her Home Until This Happened
Heartwarming.
Media Say … Gloom And Doom In China
The New York Times, and other western media, are running a ‘doom and gloom in Xi’s economy’ campaign.
Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonpartisan, nonprofit institution with major centers and public buildings in New York, Hong Kong, and Houston, and additional locations in Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, New Delhi, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Seoul, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and Zurich.
In 2016, he was found guilty and imprisoned after being found guilty of perverting the course of justice by asking Leung, in letters and emails, to stop the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) from investigating him.
Why is he quoting the Vice-something professor of this or that Liu Shijin?
Former Vice-President (Vice-Minister), Development Research Center. Currently, Vice-Chairman, China Development Research Foundation.
Natixis is a French corporate and investment bank created in November 2006 from the merger of the asset management and investment banking operations of Natexis Banques Populaires (Banque Populaire group) and IXIS (Groupe Caisse d’Epargne).
Natixis provides financial data for the ‘Markets’ section on the news channel, Euronews. On October 26, 2010, Natixis Investment Managers (NIM) has acquired a majority stake in asset management start-up ‘Ossiam’.
Why use some other outlets interview with the retired Lou Jiwei without giving this (2019) context?:
Lou Jiwei, who has long been seen as a liberalizing force in China, an advocate of market reform and international openness. He served as finance minister, ran the country’s massive sovereign wealth fund, and has palled around with western economists since the 1980s. But recently he made a prediction that contained a startling phrase: At a forum in Beijing, according to reporting in the South China Morning Post, he said: “The next step in the frictions between China and the United States is a financial war (jinrong zhan). The U.S. has been hijacked by nationalism and populism, so will do everything in its power to use bullying measures [and] long-arm jurisdiction.”
In this financial war, he continued, the U.S. will exploit its dominance of the international financial system to hurt China—and China will fight back.
REALITY: Only four economies have ever grown by $1.5 trillion in a year, and 2023 will see the fifth. All five boom years are Chinese, of course. Its economy is booming and so are wages: 4.7% nominal rise last year, 4.2% after inflation. Bwahahah.
But it’s all gloom and doom in China. The NYT says so.
Posted by b on September 6, 2023 at 8:23 UTC | Permalink
Tex-Mex Baked Potatoes
OIP Potato
Ingredients
4 baking potatoes
1 pound lean ground beef
1 (12 ounce) jar mild or hot salsa
2 teaspoons chili powder
1/4 cup diced green bell pepper
1 tablespoon chopped stuffed green olives
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1 cup thinly sliced iceberg lettuce
Sliced tomatoes
Instructions
Scrub potatoes; pierce skin with fork. Bake at 400 degrees F until tender, about 1 hour.
Fifteen minutes before potatoes are done, sauté meat in hot skillet until all pink disappears.
Add salsa and chili powder to meat. Cover. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes.
Add green pepper and olives to meat mixture. Heat through.
Cut baked potatoes open. Spoon hot meat mixture into potatoes. Top at once with cheese so that it melts slightly.
Serve with lettuce sprinkled on top and with sliced tomatoes alongside.
Apple In Tears: China Ban Iphone In Response to U.S Sanction
In today’s video, we dive deep into the recent ban imposed by China on the use of iPhones for its government officials and its potential impact on the U.S economy. From Apple’s position in the global market to the ripple effects on allied industries, join us as we uncover the implications of this significant move.
Some years ago I was living in rural Texas. My housemates decided to raise chickens. They thought it would be “fun.” As someone who had to raise chickens in the past, I did not agree with them, but compromised because chickens were probably the least expensive and bothersome livestock they could mess with. Eventually, they got bored of the chickens, so I processed the chickens for future consumption in the front yard where the light was good. My neighbors called the local police and claimed I was conducting Satanic Rituals. Once again, this was rural Texas (no HOAs, large tracts of land with the Piney Woods for our backyards). All of these neighbors claimed to be descended from farmers and country people. They should have damn well recognized what cleaning a bunch of chickens looked like versus “Satanic Rituals.”
About 15 years ago I was driving through a part of Miami, Florida in my work van, which contained lots of specialized tools. My company was based out of South Georgia, and we usually didn’t work this far South, but there I was, driving through unknown territory.
I was on a very long street with stop signs every block, and I dutifully stopped at each one before proceeding. Of a sudden, as I stopped at one of the stop signs, a police car pulled up on the left side of me, lights flashing. An officer jumped out of the passenger seat and stood at my window, asking me where I was headed. I told him that I was heading to the interstate so I could make my way back North to Georgia.
The officer asked what I had in the van, and I told him a bunch of tools. Wearing a pained expression, the officer told me that he and his partner had observed me stopping at every stop sign and then he said that it was several miles to the Interstate and that I was in a very rough part of town. In fact, the officer believed that my life would be in danger if I were to stop at every stop sign, as someone may jump on / in the van, shoot me, or whatever, and take the van.
The officer ordered me not to stop at any of the stop signs between where we were and the interstate. He said I could slow down and make sure it was safe to proceed, but under no circumstances was I to stop and that if anyone tried to stop me or signal me to stop, that I should ‘floor it’ and get the hell out of there.
The officer assured me that they were radioing my vehicle description / license plate # to other officers in the area to let them know what I would be doing.
I thanked the officer and proceeded toward the Interstate, running every stop sign on the way.
PASSPORT SIS Thought She Could Talk Down To Men In Africa Like In USA
“The arrogance of US women is astounding. I live in a poor country, but that does not mean that their education is bad. Very smart people here.”
Yes you are 100% correct. The U.S. is totally dependent on the Chinese in 3 main ways.
Without the Chinese products the U.S. will suffer a 50% inflation at the very least.
Without China producing stuffs productively and efficiently for them they cannot sell a thing in the world.
Without access to the humongous Chinese market most U.S. companies will go bankrupt and out of business within a year.
Just take Apple and Tesla as an example. Without the Chinese market it will suffer a good 30% less sales. Without China making their products they will be totally uncompetitive and lose the entire world market.
What can be done about this? You can do something to avoid dependence on China but you won’t. And you can’t. You wanted the cake and eat it too. You see US wants to be the world’s baddest nation and fight wars upon wars upon wars. It needs to outspent the top 20 nations put together! If you do that much shit you need to watch your back, your side and your front, your top and your bottom too!
There lies your problem. You need to spent all your money on wars you have no more money to produce anything. You thought that your CEO can earn 100 times China’s CEO, your workers must be paid 5 times more than Chinese workers and get 10 times the Chinese benefits and the customer will pay for your excesses! But the customer won’t! Not even American customers!
It is that simple. The U.S. cannot have the cake and eat it too! The U.S. needs to choose being competitive or being hegemonic! It cannot have both. American need to decide!
You want to compete with China, do the following. Close your 800 foreign military base, turn your dozen aircraft carriers into holiday cruise! Divert your trillion dollar military budget to building U.S. infrastructure, stop spending money talking shit and doing shit spend it on building relationship with your customers. Disband NATO, CIA and NED! Ban Industrial Actions and Trade Unions!
Can you do this? I doubt so. So the U.S. will rather be dependent on China!
The Sopranos || Feelin’ Good
I am really starting to like these Sopranos themed fan videos.
The growing US’ geopolitical competition with Russia and China marks the end of the post-Cold War world order, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, speaking at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies on Wednesday. “What we are experiencing now is more than a test of the post-Cold War order. It’s the end of it,” he noted. “Decades of relative geopolitical stability have given way to an intensifying competition with authoritarian powers, revisionist powers.” This statement appears to be a rallying cry for a “new cold war.”
Since the post-Cold War order is coming to an end, what kind of new world order does the US want? Various signs indicate that the US wants major power competition and camp confrontation in order to maintain its global hegemony, even at the expense of the interests of other countries, including allies, and partner nations. However, the reality is that major power competition goes against the trend of the times and cannot solve the US’ own problems and the challenges facing the world. It will only further divide the world, leading the world to slide toward a more dangerous cliff edge.
Regarding Blinken’s remarks, there are two main points to consider. Firstly, Blinken was creating a sense of crisis in the world. The underlying message to US allies and other countries is that there are challengers, particularly China and Russia, who want to change the existing order. Secondly, Blinken’s remarks also reflect a sense of anxiety in the US. The US is attempting to slow down China’s rise through strategic competition, while hoping to sustain its hegemony without jeopardizing its own interests. However, it seems that the US has no clear solution to this dilemma.
China is one of the beneficiaries of the existing system and does not seek to challenge or subvert this order. However, the US has viewed any legitimate demand made by China, even those that reflect the reasonable demands of the majority of developing countries, as a challenge and ill-intentioned sabotage….
As for China, the US is attempting to stifle its development by imposing unlimited technological restrictions, but it is unable to completely decouple from China economically. For the US and its main allies, China is either their largest single trading partner or one of the largest. Today, the US is a reckless strategic aggressor, attempting to unite its relatively weaker strength with its allies to wage a new cold war. It should be noted that the power of US allies has declined significantly, and the unity of the “West” is crippled due to the US transitioning from a “blood donor” to a “vampire”.
There’s no way the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals can contain China or the rest of the Global South. The degree of geoeconomic dependency noted in the final paragraph above is far too much for that Bloc to overcome. The attempts made so far beginning with Trump have illustrated the damage the Empire can inflict on itself in its ill-considered policy toward China and the world. The Outlaw US Empire’s illusion of “primacy” has faded into the mists of time and is irretrievable so matter what it tries.
Dancing around each other in the ring. Throw a punch or two, and the West believes that “it has rigged the game”. I disagree, but what do I know?
I am tried of all this “shadow boxing”, but there are only two directions; two vectors left.
Full scale military HOT war
A subsiding of hostilities
I think that the East (China, Russia, the Global South) are just biding their time in the eventuality that the West will run out of “steam” and slow down on the provocations.
It’s safe and reasonable. And they have systems designed…intentionally designed to force all the steam out of the “mighty beast”.
But I am sure that they are all ready to unleash bloody Hell if need be.
…
Nothing that I can do about it.
So, I’m just gonna drink my coffee and enjoy the day.
Ukrainians Caught Trying to Sabotage Russian Nuke Plant; Putin says “Trained by British” – for whom “There will be consequences”
Putin British trained Ukies Nuke Plant Sabotage large
“Vladimir Putin today warned Britain of ‘serious consequences’ and said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ‘doesn’t understand’ the risks after the UK’s special forces tried to disrupt Russian nuclear power plants.
President Putin said that Britain’s elite forces were training Ukrainian troops on how to damage atomic power plants in Russia.
The Russian President declared dire consequences for the UK while admitting his words would be interpreted as ‘nuclear blackmail.’
Putin claimed during a speech at an economic forum in the far eastern city of Vladivostok, that Russia’s FSB security service had interrogated a Ukrainian team caught operating inside Russia.
‘It turned out to be a sabotage group of Ukrainian special services,’ he said.
‘Interrogation showed they had been tasked to damage one of our nuclear stations by exploding a power line… to damage the work of the power plant. And this is not the first attempt.’
He alleged: ‘During interrogation, they admitted they were trained under supervision of British instructors. Do [the British] understand what they are playing with, or not?
‘Are they provoking our response at Ukrainian nuclear sites, nuclear stations, or what?
‘Does the British leadership, or the Prime Minister [of the United Kingdom. Rishi Sunak] know what their special services are engaged with in Ukraine?
‘Or do they have no clue at all? I assume this is possible, too. I assume it is possible British special services act on the orders of the Americans. Either way, we know the final beneficiary.”
There was a moment after a short firefight when we shared a few thoughts about a dead enemy soldier.
We were on the top of a small hill in the mountains near our Kosovo Liberation Army base and a group of enemy infantry was coming up towards our positions. They didn’t see us, but we could hear them talking to each other. One guy, probably their leader, told his troops: “Stop whining, guys!”
When they were close enough we opened fire. We heard one of them screaming in pain. After we had ceased fire we went down the hill to look at the aftermath. We found the body of a dead soldier and what struck me first was how well this guy was equipped: a US-style Kevlar helmet, combat fatigues, boots; all his gear was of the best quality. One of my comrades searched his pockets and found his documents.
My comrade read out loud what was written in the dead soldier’s papers. This guy had been a sergeant and a professional soldier. He had fought in Bosnia as well and was the member of a Special Forces unit.
Then my comrade told me in a tone of regret: “Look at him! This guy did all the training, fought everywhere and then he gets himself killed by some peasants like us. What a waste!”
That was quite an objective and modest statement and I was honestly surprised. We had very good soldiers who were well trained and highly motivated, but they were no match to the soldier we had just killed. He was better trained and equipped and far more experienced than we were. Still, he was dead and we were alive.
We took the dead soldier’s gun and left the place.
This was the only time that we’ve ever talked about a dead enemy. Usually, we were just interested in the number we had killed: one there, three over there and so on. They were numbers for us, nothing else. We fought for the right cause and they didn’t. No regrets.
Tex-Mex Meatballs
Crushed tortilla chips is the ingredient that sets these Tex-Mex Meatballs apart from the rest!
In a bowl, combine the crushed tortilla chips (they should be the size of large breadcrumbs) with the water or beef broth. Stir to make a thick paste. This helps keep the meatballs moist but also adds a great corn flavor.
In a large bowl, combine ground beef, green chiles, salt, garlic powder, cumin, chipotle powder, onion powder and the tortilla chip mix. Using hands, mix lightly but thoroughly (do not pack).
Form the ground beef mixture into balls, using about 1/3 cup of the mixture per ball. Do not overwork or form the meatballs too tightly.
Place the meatballs in a large skillet, leaving space between them, then bake for 15 minutes.
Pour the enchilada sauce over/around the meatballs, and return to the oven for an additional 7 minutes.
Sprinkle the cheese all over the meatballs, and return to the oven until cheese is melted, about 3-5 minutes.
Serve immediately. Caution, skillet will be extremely hot.
Yield: 8 servings
In Canada
In Canada, they combine orphanages with retirement homes. And it has given new meaning to the lives of older people, who can share their time with children who so desperately need a father or mother figure.
For a few hours, children and elderly people play, discuss and share together.
As for the little ones, they grow up and learn in an atmosphere of respect and admiration, not only between themselves, but also in front of the elders.
And older people have the opportunity to pass on some of their wisdom to children. They no longer feel so alone and isolated and now look forward to getting up in the morning to play and talk with the little ones.
It seems to me that this initiative should be applied everywhere in the world, we would help the elderly to feel less alone and the children to grow better.
The Chinese can’t make domestic chips below 5nm process using their present methods of innovative stacking
The Chinese used the “Necessity is the mother of invention” saying to fullest use and have managed to mass produce 7nm cost effective Chips using DUV and innovative stacking
They will crack 5nm Chips in a year and by 2027 – the Chinese will make 25% of all the 7nm and 5nm Chips on earth
They would have saved their Semiconductor Industry and would be able to make Robots and develop advanced technology
I don’t think the Chinese want more than that
Fact 1:- 3nm Chips are very different. It may look like 5 to 3 is just one step below but in reality 7nm process and 3nm process are two generations (6 years) apart. So if the 3nm is 2024,then 7nm is 2018 and 5nm is 2021.
Without Western Equipment and without the advanced know how that TSMC and Samsung offer – the 3nm Chip is almost 3 generations or even 3.5 generations ahead in commercial manufacture
This means to China, the 3nm Chip is around 10.5 years apart, meaning 2035 at least
It’s not worth it and China knows that
Fact 2:- The West cannot develop 3nm Chips commercially and not sell to China
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China and Hong Kong together consume around 43% of the World’s Chips produced
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China and HK account for 30% of the sales of Advanced Technology and Hardware needed for Advanced Applications
It makes no sense to invest billions into 3 and 2 nm Chips and NOT SELL in a market that today has a 30% demand and could well have 45% demand in the next 15 years
That’s like increasing oil production by 30% and refusing to sell to China or India
That’s like spending crores of rupees on refining Gold jewelry and refusing to sell them to Telugu or Gujarati weddings
It’s UNVIABLE
So the West HAS to sell the 3&2 nm Chips to China if they have to sustain a market.
At present the rest of the World only has a 7% market for these advanced applications of which Saudi and UAE have a 3.4% market share and they certainly can’t create the applications even if they get the equipment for the next 15 years
India has a 0.7% market today for advanced applications ($ 767 Million)
That’s 3% of Chinas market and 2.3% of China and HK market combined
Fact 3:- The 3nm Chips, 2 nm Chips and 1 nm Chips may be redundant advanced technologies
Artificial Sun, Hypersonics, Nanogrid Laser Arrays – these were all areas where good studies were made by the US in the 1980s -1990s , well before China and Russia
Yet they faltered because there was not sufficient necessity for such advanced stuff back then
The assumption that people will use advanced smartphones for the next 30 years would be silly
Today Defence equipment works perfectly with 450 nm Chips and Drones with 150nm -65 nm Chips
Today the most advanced Robotic applications are done without 7/5 nm Chips
The Memory, GPUs and other hardware are more crucial than Chips now
Again these products need China which is a 30% market to them
Otherwise they cannot be viable commercially
They HAVE to sell to China and if the US tries too hard, they will find alternate ways
Like NVDIA which custom made advanced chips and sold $ 5 Billion of these to China just breaking the threshold
If they say China can’t be sold a car that drives at 100 Kph, simply modify your engine a bit and sell them a car that drives at 99 Kph and stay within sanctions guidelines
Fact 4:- If China develops it’s own 7/5 nm Chips using the innovative stacking process and DUV, that alone is a major blow to Global Players
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Today TSMC sells most 14,7 and 5 nm. chips to China
China accounts for 36.5% of TSMC and it’s revenue
Yet now its estimated by the SIA that
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By 2027, SMIC and other Chinese entities will sell most of the 14,7 and 5 nm Chips to China
TSMC and Samsung will lose a lot of sales to China in the next five years and simply be unable to sell anywhere else
By 2027, China will account for 14.6% of the same sales to TSMC and there won’t be market for TSMC to compensate for the loss
Same for Qualcomm, Intel and other players selling Modems and other 5G technology
This means China is a part of a War where it suffers the LEAST
China won’t make 3nm and 2nm Chips. They will buy these Chips if offered by others but won’t waste billions on trying to commercially make these chips with their own equipment
They DON’T NEED these Chips even for their most advanced applications
TSMC and others HAVE TO SELL TO CHINA if they commercially produce 3/2 nm Chips
China likewise knows it will be SOLD equipment and hardware that keep defying sanctions all the time to survive
And in a few years time – China will take away a huge chunk of TSMCs market in the mainland and TSMC cannot replace the Chinese market, even half of it in the next decade
To answer your question
China is never likely to catch up with commercial 3 / 2 nm Chips
China will come out of the Chip war with the least damage and most positive effect for the mainland.
Taiwan, Korea and US will find their players badly mauled by economics
China will deliver a strong blow to TSMC and Samsung by 2027 from which they can’t recover
Unless Biden removes ALL EXPORT CONTROLS today and goes to free market mode
Then Chinese players will start being swamped with aggressive growth.
The Sopranos – Johnny Sack And Paulie
Paulie complains about Tony ruling against him in a sitdown to Johnny Sack, This is the first of many conversations between the two. These conversations lead to major problems down the road.
Fedor Nikiforovich Plevako was one of the most famous Russian defence lawyers of the 19th century. Many of his speeches were recorded and became legendary. I will quote two of them.
Once, he was defending an old Orthodox priest accused of adultery and theft. The jury was very unfavourable. The public prosecutor described the depravity of the vicious priest. Finally, Plevako rose from his seat to say:
– Gentlemen of the jury! The affair is clear. The prosecutor is absolutely right in everything. The accused really perpetrated those crimes and confessed them. Nothing to discuss. But there is something I wish to draw your attention to. You behold a man, who listened to our confessions for thirty years. For thirty years, he absolved us from our sins. Now he is waiting for your decision. Would you absolve his sin?
The priest was acquitted.
In another case, Plevako defended an old townswoman who stole a tin kettle worth 30 kopecks. The prosecutor, knowing that she was going to be defended by Plevako, decided to knock the bottom out of his arguments and took pains to describe the hardness of her life and show that she was worthy of compassion. However, he explained, private property is sacred and if you acquit her, you would have to acquit criminals who are much more dangerous, and this may lead to the destruction of Russia. The jury nodded in agreement. Plevako started to speak:
– Russia has suffered a lot in over 1,000 years of its history. It was invaded by numerous foes. Moscow was taken by Napoleon’s army. Russia overcame all these challenges and not only survived but became stronger. Unfortunately, an old lady stole a tin kettle worth 30 kopecks. This is a heavy blow. Now Russia will perish, that’s for sure.
The old woman was acquitted.
Ukrainian Soldiers REVOLT Against Military Leadership
If only we could send all the Ukraine flag twitter users as conscripts, then we’d have reasonable discourse on the internet. LOL.
Not at all. the two colonies involved in the war, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, both remained colonies after the war. Even if the Americans had succeeded in their objectives, they may have just handed both colonies back to the United Kingdom. The war was started by the Americans, although they felt some of their grievances against the United Kingdom were legitimate. The end of the war essentially put things back exactly as they were before the war, and everyone in Upper Canada and Lower Canada were just fine with that.
However, the war did create a Canadian identity, both tying together people of both Protestant and Catholic backgrounds through the six British Colonies in eastern Canada, and by establishing an identity separate from the United Kingdom for Protestant Canadians.
Prior to the war, you pretty much had five distinct groups of people living in Canada, each of whom identified differently.
Catholics (mostly French speaking) who identified as “Canadien” and not as British. They didn’t see Protestants as “Canadian” but as “British”.
Loyalists, who had been born in the United States prior to the American revolutionary war. They always saw themselves as “British”, but largely spoke and acted like Americans.
British immigrants, who also saw themselves as “British”, but were more diverse than the Loyalists, who tended to be English and Anglican, while the immigrants were English, Irish and Scottish, and were often Methodists, Baptists or Presbyterian. The largely Anglican Loyalists weren’t very welcoming. The immigrants also spoke and acted like the British.
American immigrants, who still saw themselves as “American” and came to Canada looking for opportunity well after the revolutionary war. They didn’t get along well with the Loyalists, and also had a rather diverse set of religious backgrounds.
First Nations, a mix of those who had been in Canada for some time, and some that had fled from the United States because they had supported the British. Most of them didn’t get along well with each other. They got along well with British authorities, but not with the other four groups.
Shortly into the war, and by no later than 1813, all five groups had pretty much put aside their differences and started identifying clearly as “Canadian”. There were two basic reasons for this. The first was that the Americans treated everyone they encountered brutally. They would routinely loot and burn settlements, including York (now Toronto), where they burned the new legislative building (which is why the Ontario legislature isn’t on Parliament Street, but the burned down structure was). Anyone who dealt with the American forces largely found the militia (not so much the professional soldiers) to be undisciplined and arrogant.
The other was the indifference of the United Kingdom to their plight. Yes, the UK was busy with Napoleon, and the professional British forces in Canada were competent, but a lot of the fighting was done by the First Nations with help from the local militia. The militia often complained they had to answer to British leaders who were often indifferent to their suffering. For people in Upper Canada, that often meant that their local forces answered to the British governor in Quebec City.
So, yes, the British did most of the fighting, with some help from Canadians, but the real stars were the First Nations, who terrified the Americans but worked well with the British. When the Mohawks heard the Americans had invaded York, and the British had abandoned the city, they put together a force of 400 warriors (to face an American force at least three times that size) and only turned back when they found the Americans had abandoned the city too. In late 1813, after the American unsuccessfully tried to attack British forces near St. Catharines (where they were ambushed), the natives surrounded the Americans at Fort George and kept them from venturing outside the fort. The Americans withdrew for the winter.
Over in Lower Canada, the Americans found the locals not to be hospitable. Two attempts to invade Montreal were turned back by a mixed force which was largely French-Canadian. That sent morale throughout the country through the roof.
As for the American immigrants, they soon realized they wanted nothing to do with their own country as the American forces looted and burned farms and houses without discrimination. That drove them further towards the British and their fellow residents of Upper Canada.
Meanwhile, over in Nova Scotia,. Halifax became rich as Canadian privateers preyed on American shipping. Once privateer, the Liverpool Packet, took fifty prizes during the war despite being captured once – the Americans sold the ship at auction back to its former owner. Everyone in Canada got involved in the effort.
The events eventually pushed all the colonies towards self-government by the 1840s (governors became figureheads without real power) and a new country by the 1860s (when the Americans went to war with themselves).
Glenn Beck reacts to Oliver Anthony’s POWERFUL testimony on The Joe Rogan Experience
Over the years, there have been several people (suspects, offenders, witnesses, victims, etc.) who have said kind things to me. One that comes to mind is probably the most recent. As a captain, I’m not often out on patrol and I make very few traffic stops. A few weeks ago however, I saw a vehicle traveling the wrong direction in a traffic circle. Given the danger presented, I stopped the motorist and saw that the vehicle was driven by a tiny African American lady of about 65 (I am a not so tiny 55-year-old Caucasian man), and that she was confused and upset by the unfamiliar traffic control device into which she had driven. I helped get her turned around and pulled to the side of the road where we were both safe. Pursuant to Department policy, I asked her for her license, registration and proof of insurance. She paused a moment and then started looking through her purse, center console and glove compartment for the requested documentation. Based on my experience, this suggested to me that she did not have one or more of the documents I had asked her to produce. I asked her if she had a driver’s license and she admitted that her license was suspended. I couldn’t help but notice the tears welling up in her eyes. I had already noticed that her license plate was expired, as was her motor vehicle inspection sticker. I then asked if her automobile was insured, and she told me it was not.
In my jurisdiction, unless there are exigent circumstances, a vehicle found to be uninsured is to be towed and impounded. In addition, a motorist found to be driving under suspension may, at the discretion of the officer, be arrested, and should not be permitted to drive away from the traffic stop absent exigent circumstances which mitigate against preventing the motorist from driving any further. The lady had tears streaming down her cheeks, knowing she had a problem. She was wearing a business outfit, so I asked her where she was going, thinking that I might be able to drop her off if time was a problem. She explained that the previous week, she was hired by a local hospital and that day was to be her first at her new job. She explained that she had lost her home and job in August of 2016 when our area suffered through the worst flood to affect the area in modern history. Approximately 80% of the homes and businesses in our area flooded during the event. Many had never flooded before, were not in flood zones and consequently, many families and businesses were left with nothing, following the inundation. This lady was one of those.
She understood that she was in trouble, and she understood that despite her good intentions, she was breaking the law. But there was no anger or bitterness. In her face, I saw only resolve and determination. She never once suggested that she deserved a break. She didn’t hint at leniency. She expressed no self-pity and did not seek to shift the blame. While I may not have shown it, I was very impressed with the way she was handling the experience.
I told the lady, whom I’ll call Ms. Smith, to have a seat in her car, turn on her air conditioner (it was about 95), and that I would be back with her as quickly as possible. I then returned to my unit and checked her registration and driver’s license. I determined that her license was suspended due to her inability to honor a payment plan with the DMV that she had reached in order to resolve the fines assessed to her when her insurance lapsed. She was uninsured; her history showed that over the last several years, her insurance lapsed several times, She always managed to have her insurance reinstated but the administrative fees had built up over time. Her registration had expired two months earlier. However, with a suspended driver’s license, she could not renew her registration or obtain an updated motor vehicle inspection sticker. Clearly, she was in a vicious spiral and putting her in jail or doing anything to cost her the new job would not be helpful.
I carefully considered my options, recognizing that my obligation to protect and serve includes keeping people without the mandatory liability insurance off of the road. Her failure to have the required insurance presented a problem for me. Under our law, were she to have an at-fault accident and it was discovered that I had stopped her and failed to take the appropriate action, I could be held responsible. If I towed her car, she would likely lose her new job which was going to pay her enough to get the required insurance, take care of her suspended driver’s license and generally make her life better for the first time in two years. As I sat there considering what to do, I suddenly remembered something. I got out of my unit, walked up to car and looked in the back seat. There, behind the front passenger seat was a rear-facing baby seat, buckled snuggly into place. “I meant to ask you about the baby seat,” I told her. “Oh,” she replied. “That’s for my grand baby,” she told me. “I take her to day care each morning so that my daughter can make it to nursing school on time. This is our only car.” “Do they live with you all the time.” I asked. “Yes, sir! They’re my best friends,” she said with a smile.
I thanked her and returned to my unit. I smiled too and thought to myself, “Exigent circumstances! Can’t tow that car if there are exigent circumstances.” I prepared the lady a citation for driving under suspension. I hated to do it, but the only discretion we have in such cases is jail or a misdemeanor summons. I did, however, exercise my discretion and prepared a warning for the expired driver’s license and expired vehicle inspection sticker. I then made a quick phone call before walking back to her car, ticket book in hand. As the little lady waited to hear her fate, I began. “OK, Ms. Smith, here is where we are,” I told her. “I have to issue you a citation for driving under suspension. I have no choice. However, you’re not being arrested, only fined.” She asked me how much the fine would be and I told her that I did not know, but that I had called the Clerk of Court, asked that they let her pay over a period of six months, and that they had agreed. I then handed her the citation and asked her to sign where indicated. She signed and then remembered the other charges. “Is there another ticket,” she asked? “No Ma’am,” I told her. “Apparently, I am out of tickets and don’t have time to go and get some more.” She seemed confused and asked, “I know you have to tow my car, Captain. I was just wondering if there is any way that you can let me get to work first. I can park it around back where nobody will see it and you can tow it from there, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Well, Ms Smith, it looks like your car isn’t going to be towed today. As it turns out, there are exigent circumstances that allow me to let you keep your car. But you have to get insurance within 30 days.” She didn’t understand, so I explained that since there is an infant in their house, since they had only one car, and since that car was the child’s sole means of transportation to day care, such a situation created exigent circumstances which allowed me to decline to tow the car, provided that I had a reasonable belief that the required insurance would be obtained within 30 days. She assured me that they would get the insurance they needed.
I wished her good luck and told her to be safe and I turned around to walk back to my unit as the tears started rolling down her cheeks again. Before I could walk away, however, Ms. Smith called out to me, “Captain Sharp!” I turned back to her. “I don’t know if you’re allowed or not, but would it be OK if I gave you a hug?” I told her I would love a hug, and it was the best hug of the day.
I’m sorry that it took so long to answer your question, but, “Would it be OK if I gave you a hug?” was one of the kindest things that a suspect ever said to me. Thank you for your question!
Nearly ALL of America FEELS This | Oliver Anthony “Rich Men North of Richmond” | Just Jen Reacts
Americans are crying out! And not one Senator is addressing this!
Covert Intel: Another “Gulf of Tonkin” Incident Planned? Black Sea. Next Week.
This content is for Subscribers Only — In order to get the United States involved in the Vietnam War, the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” was staged by the United States, to claim one of its ships was attacked by the North Vietnamese (Viet Cong) and thus, the US had to enter the war.
Years later, it was revealed the entire incident was staged by the US to provide an EXCUSE to enter the war.
First and foremost you should worry. Feeling eating is a chore is not healthy at all. Meals are one of the core moments of socialization, our whole human identity is tied to eating collectively and many paleoanthropologists believe that the practice of sharing meals is what pushed us to develop the linguistic skills. This is how important are meals. Your refusal to eat may be a symptom of something extremely serious and you should see a psychologist about it.
‘The Purge’ would cause a massive shift of capital to the rich, causing society to essentially collapse.
What would be incredibly rare is private citizens going out hunting and killing each other for sport. People would naturally band together in groups of those they trust and heavily arm themselves. Neighbourhoods would become fortresses. Rich people would hire extremely well paid private security for the night. If you had a murderous grudge against someone, Purge night would be the dumbest night of the year to actually try and carry out that grudge. It is the only night where it should be literally impossible to find your victim unarmed, unaware and alone.
It would also be unlikely to be an opportunity to rob banks or stock up on luxury goods or cars via looting – people who run banks or supercar showrooms know a thing or two about security, for purge night those places would be patrolled by heavily armed private security with orders to drop anyone who comes within a 100m radius of the place.
What would take place is massive amounts of corporate, financial and environmental crime, mostly by rich people.
Say you have a factory which produces gigantic amounts of toxic waste. Treating and properly disposing of that waste is damn expensive, so how about instead of doing that, you just store it all up in a giant vat through the whole year and dump it all into the sea on purge day! Millions in overheads saved, and your company isn’t on the hook for the cleanup. You could probably even get away with claiming that your company has produced zero toxic emissions that year and claim environmental subsidies as a result.
Say you are a hedge fund manager responsible for managing a multi billion dollar portfolio of assets mostly made up of people’s pensions. There are strict rules about how you manage pension funds, however on purge day, you simply transfer all of the money into your own account and become a billionaire overnight.
Say you are a major property developer who has big plans to demolish a poor neighbourhood to make way for luxury condos. There’s no way you can get away with doing something like this in normal times, but on purge day? Shit you could hire goons to put the whole place to the torch.
The premise of ‘The Purge’ is that it is supposed to act as an outlet to enable people to express their frustrations with life for one day, allowing them to live the rest of the year normally. What would actually happen if this law was passed is that normal people would spend the night huddled together in fear whilst rich people systematically rape and pillage the rest of society with zero repercussions.
The World WON’T Believe How SAFE China is! (Americans Shocked)
“I live in Los Angeles. It’s true that I will not go out walking around after dark by myself. It’s definitely not safe. I don’t understand why the government cannot do anything effectively about homeless people, zero-dollar shopping, and all sorts of hate crimes. I hope Chinese people continue to enjoy the freedom of walking around in the cities day and night without worrying about safety.”
My friend is a police officer and what he told me was surprising: the thing that gets most criminals caught is often simple stuff—usually with their car.
Speeding. Expired license. Broken brake light. Turning without using your signal.
Stupid stuff.
Officers need probable cause to pull you over. So at night, when many criminals are out, they just look for these little things.
Once you are pulled over, the officer runs your name in their database and asks you questions. He notices you acting weird while you churn out lies while darting your eyes around nervously. He notices the slight smell of crack coming from your car because you couldn’t leave it at home. But just to be sure, he has a drug dog come and sniff the car.
It all starts with something as simple as that license plate tag you were too lazy to update, which has a new color cycled in each year, to immediately call you out.
I see it happen over and over again on bodycam videos on YouTube.
Most criminals aren’t these genius conniving psychopaths you see on TV. They are generally quite stupid.
In March of 2022, former US Army Soldier Jericho Skye, made the decision to leave his young child and family behind, and go fight for the Ukrainian government.
An avid mass-media consumer, he was convinced that Russia’s “unprovoked” war was merely the start of a bloodthirsty campaign for global conquest.
The photogenic Californian was killed in battle yesterday, along with NINETEEN other “volunteers.”
I am not sure about you but I don’t think any military background would have helped Huawei’s founder in any way to survive and fight the most powerful nation in the world, because he does not lead an army, but a private company.
I would think it is his engineering background that’s behind his success,which translates to a single-minded purpose to transform factual information and physics into something that benefit Huawei’s customers more cost effectively and efficiently. This is the true cornerstone of Huawei’s success.
Even when his daughter was detained/kidnapped by Canadian authorities to blackmail him into submission,he did not immediately confront the unfairness of the detention, as what all hot-blooded military folks would do, but instead make him want to motivate his company to continue producing high quality products for the consumers. He took three years to reorg and rally his staff to launch the Mate 60 Pro and Mate X foldable smartphones recently, despite U.S. sanctions.
He probably foresee what’s coming, as he had wanted to sell Huawei to Motorola back in 2003, knowing Huawei will one day challenge America’s high tech Infocomms hegemony … but Motorola was not keen at that time and the deal was called off. After that he held an after-event-review and asked his employees if they wanted to sell the company again and the majority gave a no-vote.
Thus he decided so be it, and warned his employees they will one day battle the most powerful nation on Earth.
He’d never looked back since. The rest is history.
A woman found three kittens running right up to her, and knew they needed her help.
My sister asked me right before my father’s funeral as she was processing his final arrangements if I wanted to be buried next to him when I pass away myself. I felt that question was a self-serving, insulting slap in the face to me. My father and I had a very toxic relationship. We didn’t speak to each other the last 2 years of his life, although I was gultt-tripped by the family to attend his deathbed and funeral. Going all the way back to my early childhood, my sister, mother, stepmother, grandmother, and everyone else in the family have made it clear my dad matters more than me. Once he was gone, I couldn’t even enjoy the quiet relief from his emotional abuse of me in peace without having yet another female made on me, although I told my sister to go to Hell.
With Huawei Mate 60 Pro, the writing on the wall is clear: China’s chip ecosystem can make the chips to power the 5G technologies to meet current market needs. . . .and producing its own high end lithography machines can be achieved in as short as 5 years.
ASML should be shitting in their pants right now.
If Huawei can make do with 7nm node and work with chiplet technology in packaging to boost power and utility for the next few years, this means that U.S. chips will not be needed by China. And when the U.S. chip companies are decimated in their prime market and bankrupt, where else can ASML sell their machines to?
Weak or even the collapse of the EUV machine market will mean choking off the large capital funding needed for their even more expensive NA EUV machines. All these can collapse on its own immense weight within these 5 year period. ASML does not have the luxury of time.
‘To hell with spinelessness!’ | Neil Oliver
Neil Oliver shares his thoughts on the climate agenda.
Africa is an imaginary place to most people. A lot of commentary about Africa is a fictional genre that reveals more about the writer than the subject of their analysis.
If Europe was written about like Africa, it’d be a place that Arabs and Turks colonised, then an Austrian and Corsican did evil stuff before Uncle Sam saved them from themselves. They’d best watch out for dreadful Chinese and Russian propaganda! Europeans are a bit childlike, you see.
With that out of the way, countries can’t help each other. They can trade, but that is mutually beneficial. By sheer proximity European countries have paid more for African products than China has.
Even now, my country sells more to Spain than we do to China. It’s their dollars that funds our imports of Chinese widgets. Last I checked, Britain was also our largest source of foreign investment.
Much is made about infrastructure, but it’s one of those topics where people have more opinions than facts. The infrastructure explosion across many African countries is downstream of their increased prosperity and the expansion of global financial and industrial capacity.
China Civil Engineering is one of many foreign and domestic contractors vying for construction contracts from the Nigerian government. But it is ultimately Nigerian taxpayers financing the construction. I bet it’s no different in other African countries.
Infrastructure is also an investment. For example, a consortium of American internet firms have built out the underwater internet infrastructure linking Africa to the world. They’ll recoup their investment from increased usage and selling access to their property.
Similarly, a Chinese firm granted a port concession will recoup their investment through port management fees.
There is richer, more informative story waiting to be told once people drop their caricatures and deal with reality.
Dell’s Revenue Collapses After Losing Chinese Market Share De risking Became Destruction
Dell has lost China as its market share plunged posing an existential challenge as Lenovo, a Chinese company, has about 3x higher market share in China and growing. Dell is moving out of China as it cannot survive against the competition against China’s local companies due to the usa’s de-risking policy. Without components from China however makes Dell uncompetitive against China’s local companies. Going out from China Dell loses the huge China’s market forever. The de-risking policy shoot Dell in its foot as it struggles for survival.
Back in the 80s, I lived alone in a cheesy one-bedroom apartment in a building full of apartments rented to gay guys. I developed significant friendships with these men; one of them eventually became my “maid” of honor at my wedding, and we are all still in contact to this day. I was alone in the city and these men became my family. We were always hanging out in one apartment or another and I rarely ate dinner alone.
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Back in the 80s, our 24-hour Walmart was still a fun place to hang out. If we were bored, we’d all pile in my car and go to Walmart; half a dozen gay men and me.
One December weekend afternoon we were just hanging at Walmart. Some of us were picking up Christmas gifts but mostly we were just enjoying the Christmas displays and each other’s company, cutting up amongst ourselves. We landed in the Christmas toy aisle.
Oh, lo, and behold, hey guys come check out the fire truck!
It was metal, and heavy, and fully as long as my arm. Bright red, it was built to resemble a real fire truck, not a cartoon truck. And it was covered with buttons labeled “Try me!”
By God, it was the coolest thing. One button sounded the siren. Another button and we heard water gushing out of the hose. Another button and we could hear the fireman admonishing the driver to go faster. Sound effects for everything: a 911 call reporting a fire, tires screeching around the corner, firemen calling out to rescue the cat. Probably two dozen buttons worth of sound effects. By God, it was the coolest thing.
The seven of us crowded around this fire truck; for five minutes we repeatedly punched buttons, crowing with delight.
Finally, the old lady standing behind us asked to be excused and pushed between us to grab three of the fire trucks. “If it keeps seven adults that amused, it might work for my grandsons.”
I was tearing down my old house, and building a new house. I got some outrageous estimates for tearing it down. I live 80 km from the nearest waste transfer station that would take this kind of material, so the hauling was expensive.. It was surrounded by trees, that I wanted to keep, so I couldn’t burn it down. I was talking to a neighbor about how much it cost to tear it down, but that looked like my only option. He talked to my other neighbors, and then on my birthday, the whole neighborhood showed up and helped tear down the house. One guy worked construction, and brought out a 40 foot dumpster container for the waste. We kept a fire like a large bonfire going, small enough to not be a threat, but big enough to burn a lot of tinder dry 80 year old wood . We filled the dumpster with the crushed shingled roof, windows, hot water heater, insulation, and kept burning as much wood as the fire would take. One neighbor brought over a Bobcat to pack everything into the dumpster. Others had sawzalls, cutting the walls into manageable chunks. My wife was BBQing up a storm. One neighbor who was disabled brought over 10 pizzas for the crew. Others hooked their winches to the walls and brought it down.
Some people hauled stuff away, my refrigerator became someone’s beer fridge, etc.
One neighbor stored all my furniture in his garage.
One neighbor let me plug an extension cord into her house, so we didn’t overload the little generator I had.
Another neighbors leant me in his bigger generator.
It took one day, a lot of burgers and pizzas, and my neighbors had saved me a small fortune.
Would your neighbors do this for you? I couldn’t believe my neighbors would do it for me.
BRICS: Bank of China opens branch in Saudi Arabia, New World Order
If you are dumb to asked this question you should take my advise. First open up every product to ensure 100% nothing is made in China. Check the materials. And every single parts need to be sent to a laboratory to check.
Any part of any items with even a small oration or materials made in China as throw it away. Yes you should absolutely not buy anything made in China. China don’t need you. You can throw everything you have and China still has 7 billion customer.
You and your six racist friends can keep buying and keep throwing everything away for all we care. You can burnt down your home because chances is the materials. Are China made, the wall paper U.S. Chinese made, your paint is made in China. Stop asking redundant questions no one gives a shit of your hate.
We don’t gives a shit if you think Chinese products is bad, inferior, trash or dangerous 175 out of 195 nations has China as their biggest trading partner and 7 billion out of 8 billion use a Chinese product 23 out of 24 hours a day. You are as insignificant to China as a one of the germ on planet earth. Get it through your thick skull.
why am I speaking out for China part.1
Once you get past his accent, it’s a very nice perspective.
Huawei is taking up the leadership in various tech fields, from autonomous vehicles to semiconductors. Huawei is moving so fast, the US has little chance to catch up, let alone compete. Huawei has gone beyond its original mandate of telecom gear and is now a strong voice in the EV sector, cloud computing, semiconductor design, production and all the attendant software and hardware items needed for the complete supply chain to produce semiconductors.
Huawei’ unannounced sales of its Mate 60 Pro with its Kirin 9000s chip during US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to China stole the show. Not only is the chip self designed and produced in China, but it features no US parts. In fact, the messaging in the semiconductor sector is continuous and fast moving. Not only did SMIC produce 7nm chips, but TSMC is now taking orders from the mainland for 7nm chips.
Further, Samsung is set to rebuild its China semiconductor factories, Micron is expanding its Xian plant, Intel and Qualcomm have created ‘ innovation centers’ in China, and TSMC is expanding its Nanjing fab. Rumor has it that TSMC may acquire or build a couple more fabs in China. A rebellion is taking place to flaunt Biden’s bullying and destroying any effort to quiet the rise of the semiconductor sector in China.
Mission accomplished
Love this!
Tex-Mex Ravioli Casserole
This dish is good as is, but for an extra pop, serve with a dollop of sour cream and a few jalapeno slices.
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Ingredients
1 (16 ounce) jar mild salsa
1 (10.75 ounce) can tomato puree
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 (28 ounce) bag frozen cheese ravioli, unthawed
2 (19 ounce) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 bunch green onions, thinly sliced
2 cups (8 ounces) shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Monterey Jack cheese
Instructions
Combine salsa, puree and cumin.
Pour 1/2 cup of sauce mixture on bottom of a lightly greased 2-quart baking dish.
Top evenly with frozen cheese ravioli. Layer with black beans, chopped cilantro, green onions, and remaining sauce mixture; top evenly with cheeses.
Bake, covered with aluminum foil, at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes or until bubbly.
Remove foil, and bake 5 more minutes. Let stand 5 minutes.
Right now the Chinese government and companies are striving to make tech breakthroughs in all areas: the most recent example is the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro 5G mobile phone, which was made completely without using any US technologies.
As a result, share prices in tech companies have gone up.
The current trend is to let the air go out of the real estate balloon, while building up the tech sector.
China is also welcoming investment money from Saudi Arabia and UAE, while the US is forcing US tech companies to cut back on their sales and investment to the Chinese market.
Niger France Uranium Operations Shutdown As US Ambassador Is Given 48hr Ultimatum To Leave
Why would you send an ambassador to or insist on being in a country you don’t recognise the regime? The US and France definitely have something under their sleeves.
The State Department said on Friday that the US government had seized the vessel and its cargo of 980,000 barrels of crude oil, alleging it was transporting Iranian oil to China in violation of Washington’s sanctions against Tehran.
It further claimed that the US government obtained a warrant earlier this year for its seizure.
On April 19, around the time of the seizure, the vessel’s owner, Suez Rajan Ltd, pleaded guilty to sanctions violations and was fined $2.5 million.
Subsequently, the Greek vessel’s operator, Empire Navigation, agreed to cooperate with US authorities and ordered the ship, located in Southeast Asia at the time, to take its load of oil to the United States.
The commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy warned on July 20 that any oil company unloading hundreds of thousands of barrels of seized Iranian oil sitting in a Greek tanker off the coast of Texas would be held accountable.
Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri’s remarks came on the anniversary of Iran’s confiscation of a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz in 2019 after Britain seized an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar.
A few days after the seizure of the M/T Suez Rajan, Iran’s Navy seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Sea of Oman, which was carrying Kuwaiti oil for the second-largest energy company in the US.
The oil tanker, named Advantage Sweet, had been involved in a maritime accident with an Iranian fishing craft, which resulted in the injury and missing of a number of its crew.
After the collision, the oil tanker attempted to flee the scene in serious breach of international laws and regulations, which require the provision of medical treatment and supply of proper and sufficient medicine to seamen in case of sickness or injury.
After sitting off the Texas coast for months, the Suez Rajan began the hours-long ship-to-ship transfer of its oil to another tanker, the MR Euphrates, on August 21.
The newly released court documents confirm the US government then seized the oil.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference on August 21, spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kan’ani emphasized that the Islamic Republic won’t remain silent on any violation of the Iranian nation’s rights, will show an appropriate reaction, and will “cut off the hands of violators.”
He reminded the parties that have plans to confiscate Iran’s oil to review the history of Iran’s actions in similar cases.
“Measures that involve attacking oil tankers carrying Iranian oil are a brazen example of piracy,” Kan’ani stated.
The United States and its allies have been seizing Iranian oil cargoes since the previous US administration of Donald Trump withdrew unilaterally from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May 2018.
In the early 1970s I was at a cocktail party. There was lots of standing about in small groups making small talk about nothing consequential. I was introduced to one particular person who was from Canada.
When in other countries myself, I have often been asked by strangers, when they discovered I was Scottish, if I knew their aunt, or uncle, or cousin or some other random relatives. No one seemed to realise that Scotland has a population of 5 millions and it was impossible for me to know everyone who lived in the same country as myself.
With the above in mind while chatting with this Canadian visitor, I made a joke saying “I won’t ask you if you know my friend Billy who lives in Canada”. We both laughed at that and talked about other things. A couple of hours later we had both circulated through various other groups and came across each other again. We had both run out of meaningless Smalltalk and simply smilled at each other.
Our Canadian guest then broke the ice by saying “Aren’t you the one who has a friend living in Canada? “
I responded yes, in Toronto.
He asked where in Toronto.
I replied, Missauguia.
He asked, where in Missauguia.
I replied, 26 High Cliff Drive.
He looked surprised and said, “Do you mean Billy Skinner. I live next door at number 24.”
On the night of August 23rd 1987, 16-year-old Don Henry and 17-year-old Kevin Ives decided to go hunting in Alexander Arkansas. It was believed, at 4 am the two boys were in a horrific accident when they were hit by a train.
It was determined to be a horrific and tragic accident by the state medical examiner, who said the boys were sleeping on the tracks due to marijuana intoxication from smoking 20 Joints. Those were his words, and the authorities closed the case.
Anyone that knows anything about weed would see that as a major red flag. The parents didn’t accept this finding and had a second autopsy done which showed the boys only smoked one joint and they were already dead when they were placed on the tracks. Don Henry’s shirt showed evidence of a stab wound and Kevin Ives had his head smashed in with his own rifle.
The theory is the boys stumbled upon a drug smuggling operation that was run by crooked cops and town officials. Several witnesses that came forward with information died under mysterious circumstances with each of the victim’s bodies examined by the same guy who first examined the two boys.
The prosecutor for the case Dan Herman, was arrested for drug dealing and was implicated as one of the murderers. Keith McCaskill was another man implicated but died when he was stabbed to death by an unknown attacker.
Phil And Tony Sitdown With Carmine Lupertazzi Jr – The Sopranos HD
Phil Leotardo And Tony Soprano Sitdown With Carmine Lupertazzi Jr.
Of course. China is the cause of all of the USA’s problems.
See how the white cops keep killing black people in the USA – this surely is China’s doing.
Observe the mass shootings that plague the whole of the USA – at schools, malls, supermarkets, churches, pubs, cinemas, workplaces – this too must be China’s doing.
Did you know that the USA’s literacy rate has plunged t0 78%? (Developed countries usually have a literacy rate between 95 to 100%). China must have caused this.
Look at the ever-increasing number of homeless people living in tents in the streets of the USA. We know that this is China’s fault.
US engineers say that many of the bridges and roads and other public infrastructure in the USA are “crumbling”. Why didn’t China take steps to stop this?
In the USA, even the water pipes are leaking lead into the supply of drinking water at public schools, poisoning the children. China must be blamed!
Look at how Americans hate each other! Even families stop talking to each other, because some are Democrats and some are Republicans. Once again, China is guilty.
The average life expectancy in the USA keeps dropping! Americans keep dying at a younger age. Becauae they are more and more obese these days and; their healthcare system is too expensive. Surely China had something to do with this.
Women in the USA even have problems getting birth control and abortions! The infant mortality rate AND the maternal mortality rate in the USA have fallen to the levels typically found in developing countries. Let’s blame China for this too.
But not to worry. The USA still has more gender pronouns than China. So the USA will prevail.
I served as an infantryman in the army…. I don’t usually share this kind of thing, but I do have one “confirmed kill” to my name that I’m sure of. I think this an important topic, so I’m going to explain a little about my service.
My unit had many enemy KIA’s, and I’m sure my bullets were in many of them, but I’m happy not to know for sure. My one “confirmed” was from less than 3 feet away, and I wish like hell I could pretend there was a way to spread that out over my fire team.
I’m proud of my service. I’m proud of the men I served with. I’m proud of a lot of things I did when I served…. I’m not “proud” I had to shoot someone. I’m not proud of any of the potential “kills” I may or may not have had. …I’m happy the men I served with came home. I’m happy that my wife doesn’t understand my nightmares or my anger, or my need for hyper-vigilence (i.e. paranoia). But one thing that will live with me forever is searching through the possessions of a young man I KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt I killed…
I still am angry at the situation. I still shake and feel nauseous. At the time I got a reputation for being cold because I DID search his body when we got the all clear. The reality was that I didn’t want someone else to have to do it. I took “Intel search” duty for the rest of the deployment. Most of my battle buddies looked relieved they didn’t have to. Some were angry at themselves for feeling that way. None of them were going to go home and brag to a friend about it. Let me repeat that…
NONE OF THEM WERE GOING TO GO HOME AND BRAG ABOUT IT!
We didn’t talk about killing others amongst ourselves. We actively avoided such topics.
Some of us started waking up in the middle of the night. I definitely did. I went for walks. I went to another room. I made something to eat. By the end of the deployment, we’d have midnight card games. We weren’t sleeping anyways, and it was something else to think about. We told inappropriate jokes, we complained about the heat, we talked about women and home. We never talked about what woke us up.
Your friend could be a psychopath that truly didn’t feel anything when someone else died. He could be claiming every kill his unit got, and never losing any sleep over any of them because they were never personal. He could be a sadist, and truly enjoyed killing the people he did.
Or he could be lying.
I have to be honest, I hope it’s the last one. For his sake, I honestly hope it’s that.
It has been years, and I still don’t want to talk about some of the things I had to do so I could come home. Writing it here is the closest I’ve ever come. Even if no one reads this, I do feel a lot better for having written this down.
BRICS is an economic organization where all nations are treated as equals.
How does that make BRICS dependent on China?
China and India have border disputes, and Chinese companies have repeatedly been sanctioned and fined by the Indian government, but they still manage to work together for BRICS.
If BRICS were too dependent on China in any way, India would be the first to complain, but that has not happened.
The US has changed completely in the last 30 years
Their Motto in the 1990s was
I want to Win
Their Motto today is
I don’t want to Lose
2022
image 26
This reflects the Chinese Semiconductor Market today
China still imports more 28 nm, 14 nm, 7 nm and 5 nm Chips than it makes domestically
Yet it makes most of the 45–450 nm Chips on Earth
2015
image 27
This is the same market in 2015
See the Difference?
China was importing a lot of 45 nm Chips , a good amount of 90–260 nm. chips and almost 96% of it’s 28 nm Chips
In a mere 7 years, China developed advantage in 45 nm Chips, a near monopoly in 90–260 nm Chips and 40% of it’s 28 nm Chips, up from 8% in 2015
Directly proportional to the Anti China Rhetoric from the West
The Moral of the story is
You don’t provoke such people by cutting them off
You keep giving them best chips which are far better than their home made chips so that THEIR CHIP INDUSTRY NEVER GROWS BEYOND THE 28 NM CHIP
If TSMC keeps giving their best Chips to China, China would never have their own Chip Industry
Sure Huawei may be developing it’s own Chips but others won’t cooperate because they would get better chips easily available
Instead by throttling access, you allowed China to innovate and slowly they managed to crack cost efficient stacking to make the 7 nm Chip domestically
Plus the 5G Modem
If you keep doing this, they innovate faster and harder
It’s inevitable
So the US should end export controls on Huawei and flood China with 5 nm Chips and ensure that it makes no economic sense to invest billions into semiconductor chips
All restrictions must be removed and free market competition must ve established
If that happens, US has a 50–60% Chance for continuing their tech dominance for a few more decades
If they keep doubling down and imposing more stupid restrictions, China will take over in a decade or 15 years tops
When I was in middle school or so, there was a popular song called “They are coming to take me away”. It was a single, and on the flip side the sound was revered and (to me as a young boy) sounded cool.
I asked my father to buy it for me.
And when it came, he listened to it first before he gave it to me. Heard the flip side (which was recorded and played backwards) and returned the song. Telling the company that the record was defective, and to send a new one.
Sure as shit, a new one came, and he promptly returned it also.
When the third try was delivered, it was incorrectly delivered to our neighbors house and they played that song over and over. And since their bed room was only about ten feet from my bedroom, I was able to listen to the music over and over though my neighbors.
My dad never figured out that the song was supposed to sound like that, and that I liked the sound.
He was really out of touch.
How out of touch am I with my kids? I hope not too much.
We must be more open to the differences to others, and stop being so darn judgemental about other people. Let them live their lives on their terms. Let them be. Just let them be.
US officials visiting China is the result of the precarious situation visited on the US. These officials visiting China, just as the EU did, is because US need a life line and help from China. US $31.8 TRILLION debt and growing is fueling panic in the US with more than 70 countries dumping US Treasury Bonds. Come October, there will be another crisis looming in the US with US hitting another debt ceiling! Janet Yellen went to China with a well concealed begging bowl and went home without China supporting US Treasury as China did in 2008 GFC. China have, effectively, lost trust in the US with consistent and persistent promises made by the US being broken unfailingly each and every time. Why go through the motion for talks and promises which were never meant to be kept?
Fall back flack from the Trump Pro-Democracy moment in HK
It was an aborted “color revolution”.
And all the Judges (UK and Australian citizenship) released all the criminals that caused the riots and damage, and even deaths.
Step one; get rid of the Western puppet “judges.”
Step two, charge and sentence the military operatives…
30 years ago, I owned some furniture stores. It was just before Christmas and a young woman came into the store I was at that night to pick up a roll top desk that she had purchased on layaway. She made weekly payments towards this purchase and was proud and excited that she was able to buy this desk for her husband’s Christmas present. It seemed apparent that it was a real financial stretch for her to have afforded this. She had come to the store with a pickup truck, and we helped load the desk into the truck bed. With a merry Christmas and smiles all around, she left for home.
Half an hour later, the woman came back to the store in tears. She had struck a pot hole in the highway and the desk was launched out of the truck and smashed to the ground. Fortunately no one was behind her, and a passerby helped get the desk back into the truck. Sobbing, she pleaded whether we could do anything to fix the desk. Clearly, though, it was irreparable. She was so distraught, there was clearly only one thing to do. We loaded another desk into her truck and I told her that it was my Christmas gift to her. She was so excited and thankful, and I think it really was a gift to myself. I felt really good about that!
Trim excess fat from beef. Rub surface of beef with salt and pepper. Place beef in 3 1/2 quart or larger slow cooker.
Mix remaining ingredients; pour over beef.
Cover and cook on LOW for 10 to 12 hours or until beef is tender.
Cut beef across grain into thin slices.
Skim fat from cranberry sauce from cooker if desired; serve with beef.
Notes
* Be sure to use a fresh beef brisket instead of a corned beef brisket. A ‘corned’ brisket is a fresh brisket that has been cured in seasoned brine, which would overpower the delicate flavor of the cranberry gravy. If a fresh brisket isn’t available, use the same cut of beef roast that you would use for your favorite pot roast. Also, whole berry sauce is recommended for its appearance, but you can use jellied if you like.
Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond: Asian labourers Emotional Reaction
This is going global, and it is being heard. The world is changing. Wake up! Pay attention!
It depends on when the filthy U.S. drops a viral weapon on China!
The filthy U.S. is the only country in the world that has not signed the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.
According to reports, the U.S. has more than 300 biological laboratories established worldwide and large-scale dangerous infectious diseases have been found around some of them. For example, the army lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland, which is the country’s largest biochemical weapons base, was shut down in July last year, but the CDC refused to give any details on the grounds of “national security”.
The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone.
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Ministry of National Defense (MND) is planning to build a new biosafety research and development facility.
On Sunday (July 9), UDN published a report claiming the U.S. has urged the MND’s National Defense Medical Center (NDMC) to invest in the construction of a new Biosafety Level 4 (P4) laboratory to “secretly establish virus research and development capabilities” and develop “biological warfare agents, with the target of these weapons being self-evident.” According to UDN, the information was obtained from secret meetings held by the government on June 23, 2022 and in January.
2023 08 25 22 30
Entrance to current P4 lab in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District, Taiwan.
2023 08 25 22 3s0
Entrance to current P4 facility in Sanxia District, Taiwan. (CNA photo)
THIS WAS AMAZING!!! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond[FIRST TIME UK REACTION]
This is from the UK. This is a really good reaction.
My parents (who own a small ranch) bought a new tractor in 1998 for about $50k. Buying a tractor is just like buying a car—they put a downpayment of $1000, and financed the rest.
After a month or two, they noticed they had not gotten paperwork regarding the loan, so they called the dealership. The person there said that the dealership was going through a turbulent time and their loan paperwork had not been fully submitted, but assured them that it would be filed and they would not owe late fees when the statements started coming.
A few months later, they still hadn’t received anything, so they called again. This time, the person at the dealership was very short and with them. The person said that the dealership was going through bankruptcy proceedings and said (very firmly) not to call again.
They never called again, the paperwork never came, and nothing ever went on their credit score. They got a $50k tractor for $1000. That was almost 25 years ago, and the tractor still runs great.
Moral of the story—if you have the chance, buy a vehicle from a dealership that is about to go under. There is a small (but non-zero) chance that you’ll get the vehicle for basically nothing.
EVERYBODY WAS RIGHT!!!! | OLIVER ANTHONY-RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND-REACTION| THE PAUSE FACTORY
Ah, yet another reaction… and again, people are stunned.
Brisket of Beef in Tomato Onion Gravy
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
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Ingredients
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 (4 to 5 pound) beef brisket, trimmed
1 (1 1/2 ounce) package dry onion soup mix
1/2 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns
1 (10 ounce) can condensed tomato soup
1/4 cup beef stock or water
2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons balsamic or red wine vinegar
Additional all-purpose flour (optional)*
Instructions
Rub flour into brisket on both sides and place in slow cooker.
In a bowl, combine onion soup mix, peppercorns, tomato soup and beef stock. Pour mixture over brisket.
Cover and cook on LOW for 12 hours or on HIGH for 6 hours, until beef is very tender.
Transfer brisket to deep platter and slice thinly.
Stir brown sugar and vinegar into sauce. Pour over sliced meat or pass separately in a sauceboat.
Notes
* If you prefer a thicker gravy, keep cooked brisket warm and pour sauce into a saucepan. Place 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour in a small bowl. Add 1/4 cup hot cooking liquid, 2 tablespoons at a time, stirring to thoroughly blend after each addition. Stir mixture into remaining sauce and cook, stirring, over medium heat until thickened. Pour over brisket and serve.
A Tired Man’s Reaction to Rich Men North of Richmond by Oliver Anthony
I present to you one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia, Al Waleed Bin Talal, known as Prince Al Waleed, and this is his car.
image 18
This gentleman bought a Mercedes Benz SL600 and decided to give it a little more luxurious touch, he customized it by filling it with diamonds, including the entire bodywork, the tires, the door handles, rearview mirrors, and even the exhaust pipe. This luxurious Mercedes Benz is part of Prince Waleed’s extensive and sumptuous car collection of over 50 vehicles.
image 19
The car went from costing 320 thousand dollars, to almost 48 million dollars, a scandalous figure for a car.
The Three Little Pigs – as read by Christopher Walken
The Chinese are waiting for three events :- Indian Elections 2024 and US Elections 2024 and TAIWANESE ELECTIONS 2024
I have always maintained that China has no strategic use for Arunachal Pradesh or Ladakh
They are far more powerful and are certain India would never launch an offensive against China
They are just waiting for the HIGHEST PRICE they can get for these concessions
The BRICS expansion was unanimous
Modi met Xi Jingping
Both these events were deemed impossible in July 2023
Jaishankar personally stated that :-
Expansion at this stage of Geopolitical Tensions could be misinterpreted, so India is likely to keep expansion to a future date down the road
Brazil and India mutually talked and decided to postpone Expansion
In Politico, which is a mouthpiece for US Democrats, there was an article that stated that BRICS summit was likely to be a washout with no major discussion taken
Yet Modi wholeheartedly supported Expansion towards the end and made a speech to that effect welcoming the new members
Modi met Xi Jingping
So what’s the Price China wants?
The Clue is Irans inclusion into BRICS and Chinas agreement to accept payment in Crude Oil under the Yuan Commodity Mechanism
A PIPEPINE!!!!!
Until 2007, the Straits of Malacca fed China with nearly 84% of Gas and Oil and Energy
Today it’s just 56%
Almost a 40% reduction on reliance
In 2027, it’s estimated to be 44% as Power of Siberia and the Vladivostok Anhui pipelines go on full capacity
Add Gwadar to the mix and the dependence on Malacca reduces to 37%
Add the Suez Gwadar Route and that reduces the dependence to 31%
84% to 31% is a massive reduction
However China want 0%
The Solution is Iran
Iran Pakistan and INDIA
The idea was floated in 2016 of extending the Iran Pakistan Oil Pipelines into India and subsequently to Pakistan
Two Pipelines of 5243 Km each, longest in the world
That will end the dependence on Malacca permanently for China and ensure a Blockade of Malacca would bleed the West while China wouldn’t care too much
It’s a win – win for India as
India gets Oil from Iran, a fellow BRICS NATION and may likely pay for the Oil in Rupees or Imports
India gets a transit fee from China and pays a Transit fee to Pakistan
India isn’t threatened by a similar blockade in the coming years as India too heavily relies on sea shipping (96% as of 2021) along that route
My guess is once the US Elections are finished, China will know the future
If it’s Biden, it’s gonna be a Taiwan conflict and China has to focus on the South China Sea, so securing India is important
If it’s Trump, it’s gonna be a Trade conflict and China has to focus on it’s energy supply and trade routes and securing India is equally Important
The Price then will be full giving up on Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh claims and from all existing territorial claims made since 1963
In return Indian Navy would not be expected not to participate in any trade blockade of Malacca straits or other parts of the Indian Ocean or support the US in the South China Sea
India would be asked to revise and enter into a massive business and trade agreement with China with a lot of investments from the Chinese side
India would endorse the pipeline from Iran and Pakistan and endorse it’s extension into China by 2030
My guess is India will agree because it’s cheap at the Price
It just cements Indias nonalignment not to interfere between global players and their conflicts
Modi is far more likely to accept this than Rahul would be, because its now clear Rahul would be heavily endorsed by the West and their Doctrine
He may even accept Western Military Bases in India and make India a Chessboard pawn in event of a Taiwanese conflict
Interesting time in 2024 to be frank
Now about the Map that China published yesterday, that’s normal since 1988
They always show Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh
That means nothing whatsoever
There is another option
India could leave BRICS and go to the Western Fold completely
That would be a pity
Yet unless China do something really really stupid, India is very unlikely to take such a step as long as Jaishankar is in charge
Public money raised for the Grayzone never reaches them
Where’s my money? The public around the world raised more than US$90,000 for the Grayzone, a body of independent journalists whose loyalty is to the truth, rather than to the US narrative against China and other communities deemed “rivals” or “enemies”. But our money never reached the journalists. What happened?
An idiot thought he was being funny when he loudly asked me (the pilot flying the plane), “So, what have you been drinking this morning? Vodka?”
At that point I grabbed my kit bag and my hat and departed the plane and I went and got a voluntary alcohol and drug test. The flight was cancelled due to no pilot.
I made sure I announced over the PA the passenger’s seat number and last name so they knew who got their flight cancelled.
Of course my results came back clean, but professionally, I cannot stay on an aircraft after being accused of drinking or drugs, even if it’s a joke.
Florida man caught on camera injecting chemicals into neighbor’s door
A Florida man has been arrested after he was caught on camera injecting a chemical into his neighbor’s front door after complaining they made too much noise.
Back in the 1960’s the US Navy taught a lesson to Norfolk, VA. The town was getting a bit to big for their britches, the local police were shaking down Sailors and Marines and bar owners doing the same. Even taxis drivers were getting in on the fun of ripping of military personnel. Homeowners and businesses were putting up “Sailors and Dogs Keep off the Grass” signs.
‘As a first step to cleaning things up the Navy asked the city to have the signs removed, but they replied that the signs were on private property and the council had no power to have the signs removed. They figured that since Norfolk was the biggest Naval base in the world there was little the Navy could do. Oh how wrong they were. You see fleets are mobile.
One morning the good citizens of Norfolk woke up to a practically empty base. The handful of ships remaining were those that could not move because of physical problems. The Navy had decided to hold an “Emergency Sortie” drill which affected all ships, sending every ship that could get underway to sea overnight. The next day the base was empty and remained so. After the piers remained empty a while, reports came to the city council, that ships that had been in Norfolk were now entering other ports up and down the east coast. My ship was one of the first to re-enter Norfolk and we were very surprised at all the empty piers. The carrier piers that normally had one or two carriers moored-were empty. The supply piers, normally an ant hill of activity getting supply ships loaded-were empty. It was like something out of the twilight zone. When we moored, It seemed that all the laundry trucks in the city arrived had arrived at the pier we moored to, all wanting to know one thing—if the fleet was returning. We had no idea as we were returning from an around the world cruise with long stopover in Vietnam and had no idea what had happened.
It turned out that the city council had suddenly found a way to get those disrespectful signs removed and the police and bar owners had developed a totally different opinion of the Sailors and Marines that made up most of their business. So the fleet returned — to a different Norfolk.
Intel Lost $5 4 Billion as China Rejects Regulatory Approval!
Imagine cheating death twice only to become the world’s luckiest man. The unbelievable true story of Bill Morgan, a truck driver from Australia.
In 1992, Bill Morgan suffered a heart attack after being in a almost fatal crash while driving his truck, which stopped his heart for 14 minutes 33 seconds. He died, but doctors managed to bring him back, and he spent the next 15 days in a coma. Doctors couldn’t believe he beat the odds when he woke up from the coma, and they classed him as a medical marvel.
Since he cheated death, Bill thought about chancing his luck and started buying a weekly scratch card. He did this for about a year until luck smiled down on him again when he scratched a winning ticket, winning a car worth 30,000 dollars.
It was a welcomed surprise, but it wasn’t a life-changing sum of money, so Bill didn’t see it as a big deal. News of his win and his unbelievable back story caught the eye of “Channel Nine Evening News” in Melbourne, and they sent out a reporter to interview him.
The Channel Nine news team brought him to the shop where he bought the winning ticket. They asked Bill to buy another ticket so they could re-create the moment he won the car for the cameras.
The cameras rolled as he scratched the ticket. He stopped for a split second before turning to the cameras in total disbelief and said, “I just won 250,000 dollars, I’m not joking.” Channel Nine News couldn’t believe their luck as they caught the moment Bill rang his wife to tell her she could buy the house.
I CRIED SO MUCH 😭😭 | Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home Reaction
Yeah… I feel you. This one smacked me hard as well.
The Soviet Navy painted their ships red for several reasons, many of which are interesting and complex. One reason often cited is that they only used anti-rust primer paint and did not want to apply an additional layer of paint. However, there is much more to it than that.
Firstly, they chose the color red because most optical reconnaissance, satellite reconnaissance, and non-optical reconnaissance devices of that time had black and white color quality. Even thermal imaging devices had black and white imagery. Soviet ships, which carried long-range missiles and often conducted surprise attacks by launching long-range missiles and retreating, rarely had to engage with visually observed reconnaissance aircraft.
Red also provides good camouflage during dusk and dawn, which are considered the “ideal” times for naval combat by the Soviet Navy. When viewed from above without close attention, a red ship can easily be mistaken for a civilian oil tanker or fishing vessel.
The color of the sea is not always blue; it can be red, purple, black, yellow, and so on. Therefore, gray or black may not always be the optimal colors for camouflage at sea. Different environments, lighting conditions, and times of day can affect the appearance of the sea, and using colors that blend well with the surroundings in a specific situation is crucial for effective camouflage. The Soviet Navy recognized this and chose the color red for its ships, considering factors such as the equipment used for reconnaissance and the specific lighting conditions during combat scenarios.
