Treasures of life

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

There are various scenes from life that are characteristic of the place where you live.

When I lived in Milford, Mass… I well remember the local boys carrying the fishing poles to the local stream before school started. I remember the hot fresh bagels that were so great with butter and creme cheese. And I remember the ‘Northeasterner’s.

In Hattiesburg, Mississippi it was the deep fried cat fish and hush puppies. The swarms of cockroaches under the streetlights at night, and the lush moist air that was so very calm.

In Sydney, Australia, it was the delicious meat pies, and the lady that sold them at ten in the morning at the factory. I remember the funny little $2 gold color coins, the women with huge manes of hair, and prawns the size of a turkey.

In Zhuhai, China it was the morning walks with PP (my dog) along the beach front, the beautiful blue skies and flowering trees. And the bike ride that I took to the office.

Different places generate different experiences.

It is the experiences that we have that causes us to think things in ways that are unique to us.

Thus forming our own unique opinions.

Treasure your experiences, and generate new ones at every opportunity. Welcome them as they manifest in your life. Have adventures. Savor the experiences.

I believe in you.

Today…

 

 

The dying American Empire may lash out in a nuclear strike as an act of desperation. Also, Biden, like all Alzheimer patients has bouts of irrational aggression. Is the world in danger of a destruction by the Americans?

Unfortunately, that is a nontrivial possibility. The U.S. corporate elites and their servant government are not popular at home these days (according to Pew Research, only 20% trust the government today, while in the 1960’s it was as high as 80%). In Finland, for example, 80% trust their government.

The US is also no longer very popular externally. So, rather than continue losing clout at home and abroad, the last one being the power of hegemony, the U.S. elites may opt for yet another world war, and a nuclear one, to boot. I hope it doesn’t happen, but I wouldn’t put it past them.

Also, I read an opinion similar to mine above, in a Western mainstream article two or three years ago, and now things are that much worse for the US elites, with Russia’s apparently successful Special Operation in Ukraine, a (real) 8% inflation in the U.S., and a half-senile President.

What was the most dangerous day in human history?

“Compared to this raid, Pearl Harbor was a Sunday picnic.”

3
3

9 November 1979.

It was a cold winter’s morning in Colorado when the alarms began to shriek at NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command. With a Cold War cloud hanging over their heads, the analysts’ hearts instinctively sank when they witnessed the cause behind the alarm — 250 Soviet missiles hurtling towards the United States.

2
2

Zbigniew Brzezinski, right, with Jimmy Carter.

At 3AM and within minutes of the alert, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is awoken by a call from NORAD to inform him of the imminent nuclear assault. Each second has suddenly become more valuable than gold, as he is told that he has as few as three minutes to inform President Jimmy Carter of the situation, as well as to get a decision from him.

Instead of doing so though, Brzezinski played cautiously by not immediately informing the president, telling the military assistant who’d called him that he would stand by for a further call to confirm the situation first. His wife sleeping beside him, he decided not to wake her up, convinced that everyone would be dead within half an hour anyway.

1
1

A B-52, part of the Strategic Air Command.

He received a call back shortly later, and was informed the number of incoming missiles had jumped to 2,200 — this was a full-scale annihilation. Brzezinski was determined that the USA should strike back, and so requested confirmation of preparations for retaliation. They were passed on, and ten aircraft from the Strategic Air Command were readied to launch into the sky and begin their flight towards the Iron Curtain, primed to deliver an American brand of retribution.

As each second dragged on and with less than a minute from Brzezinski making the big call to the President, the one that would change the war from cold to searingly hot, he received a third call. He was informed that the other warning systems weren’t registering anything; radar and satellites showed no sign of any approaching missiles. It turned out to be a false alarm, the result of someone mistakenly loading a training simulation into one of the operational computers at NORAD’s HQ.

To think, a mere blip caused the planet to be but a single minute away from World War Three! The quote at the beginning belongs to a congressional investigator who spoke about the event years later, reinforcing just how close the world was to turning that simulation into reality.

What was your “something doesn’t feel right here…” moment?

I’ve had several such moments, but one in particular comes to mind.

I was fourteen, probably, maybe thirteen. I was doing something in town with my dad, I can’t remember quite what. He wandered off for a little while anyway so I started texting or going on twitter or some such thing.

A car pulled up, the guy in it was perhaps thirty. He called me over, and I approached the passanger side door. He was asking for directions which, in the relatively rural area I lived in at the time, was relatively common. He was asking for somewhere I hadn’t heard of, however, so I told him I really wasn’t sure. He asked about somewhere else that I had heard of, though didn’t know the exact location of. I told him the rough direction of it. He held his phone, and requested for me to walk around the other side of the car to help him figure it out.

I don’t know quite what it was. Looking back there were a few red flags, the fact he decided to ask me instead of finding an adult, the fact he didn’t just hold his phone towards where I was stood, the fact he was asking for directions but didn’t have a definite destination in mind. At the time I wasn’t really thinking about this, but the whole situation gave me a definite sense that… something didn’t feel right.

I told him I couldn’t help him, while taking a few steps away from his car. I said that if he wanted to wait a minute or two my dad would be back and would probably know. He said nevermind and drove off.

I didn’t hear about anything happening that could confirm or deny the validity of my apprehension, all I can say is that as he drove away I made a point to memorise his face and licence plate.

I think in certain situations it’s important to trust your instincts, especially when they’re warning you of danger. It’s better to be too cautious a hundred times than not cautious enough even once.

 

What is the most badass thing your parent has ever done?

My family, Dad, Mum, my sister and I, were on holiday in the south of France in 1983. My sister fell ill and so we all went to the local pharmacy to get something to help get my sisters temperature down and help with the vomiting.

A quick aside: my mother went to an all girls grammar school and took German and French as well as some other topics. She always wanted to be a librarian and do she made sure she could read, write and talk in German, French and Latin.

And so, dear reader, back to the plot.

My dad attempted to talk to the pharmacist. With typical Gallic flair the pharmacist dismissed my dad, in French, and apparently added some less than savory comments about my Dad, us kids, my mum, her clothing, is not talking French etc.

I recall my mother getting redder and redder and more and more ready to explode. The pharmacist said a couple more words before the smoldering volcano of fury, anger and absolute motherly care and distress for her daughter exploded and, metaphorically destroyed the small village that sat at the foot of the volcano. This was the first time I ever saw my mother go absolutely ballistic at someone else. Me and my sister did the sensible thing and hid behind my dad. My dad just stood there and watched Mount St Helen erupt in a pharmacy in Hyeres in southern France.

The pharmacist stood no chance. He would get one half of a syllable out before the wrath of the Titans picked up a small temple and smashed him in the face. Eventually my mother stopped and said it was his turn to speak. Amazingly the pharmacist had several medications we could have to help my sister. No, no, please accept them with my thanks and blessings. No, Madam, there is no charge for your beautiful daughter or your exquisite self.

That’s the first time I saw my Mum be a bad ass in a foreign language. I have since seen my mother destroy other ignorant people who happen to make a serious error of judgement when her husband or children are ill or hurt.

Pork Sausage Loaf (Hungary)

2024 02 21 08 35
2024 02 21 08 35

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 cup diced mushrooms
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1 pound fresh bulk pork sausage
  • 2 cups dry bread crumbs
  • 1 teaspoon paprika

Instructions

  1. Melt butter in a skillet and add mushrooms. Sauté.
  2. Combine sausage, mushrooms, egg and crumbs and shape into a loaf. Sprinkle with paprika. Place in a small roaster; cover.
  3. Bake at 350 degrees F for 1/2 hour.
  4. Uncover, return to oven, and bake 30 more minutes.

Have you ever had an elderly relative sell a vehicle to someone way under its value, but you only found out after the (bad) deal was done?

Yup my father sold his last car to a neighbor’s 17 year old daughter. The car was worth in the neighborhood of $10,000 and he sold it to her for $1,000. Why? Because the neighbor and his wife had been very helpful to him after my mother died and he knew and liked their three children. The three kids 17, 15, 12 had come over every week or so and had done chores for him, things he couldn’t do as he got older. cleaned gutters, trimmed trees, replaced high light bulbs, they refused to take any money saying they were just being neighbors. When he decided to give up his car he thought about it how their daughter would be starting college and needed a reliable car. He discussed it with her parents and the fact that they had been wonderful neighbors to him and that he wanted to give something back. He sold the car for way under market to her. He bought savings bonds for the two younger children with the $1,000. We were so proud of him. He taught us to be kind, generous and to be grateful.

Yes he absolutely knew what he was doing and we would have never dreamed of interfering. It was his car and his choice. When he died he left a very small estate including his home. We sold the home since neither of us lived within 1500 miles and we divided the money from his entire estate into fourths. On fourth to my brother. One fourth to the two children of my youngest brother. One fourth to me and one fourth to the kind neighbors who had been such good friends to him over the years.

My brother and I took our inheritance and donated it to a charity, our father would have approved, neither of us needed it and others did.

 

“I Got FIRED!” Women WEAPONIZED The ME2 Movement & Companies Are Saying NO, To Hiring Modern Women

https://youtu.be/77F-puxgCDs

What are the biggest lessons you have learned in the corporate world?

  • If you spend 8 hours working for somebody else, take a couple hours after that to work for/on yourself.
  • A corporate office is not what you expect when you are in high school/college and most of the things you learn in college won’t worth a dime in your real world work environment anyways.
  • Your employer company is not YOUR company, so never take it for granted.
  • Never finish a work assignment sooner than the timeline given to you. No one gives a damn if you do it early, instead they will think your job is easy and their expectations from you will get higher.
  • It is okay to be late, miss a meeting, and say no to your superiors from time to time, in fact it will be worse if you never did any of those.
  • No matter how honest, dedicated, hardworking and talented you are, still there is a high chance you will never be the best employee of the month/year and you probably won’t get any promotions either.
  • Don’t be the guy who is there to take any task which others failed to complete.
  • You might be right, your opinion might be the best, but guess what? Sometimes nobody wants to hear the right thing and they won’t do it your way.
  • When you feel that you are way smarter and more talented than your boss, that is the moment you should consider changing your job.
  • If you actually want to grow and have your dream career/job then start your own business, spend all those energy and talent working for yourself instead of working for someone else all your life. You will grow much faster working a day for yourself than a month for somebody else.

A Powerful Website I Guarantee You Didn’t Know

 

What are the harsh truths of being a man?

Yesterday, something happened.

I was on the metro escalator on my way up to the platform. In front of me was a couple – probably in their late twenties. The wife was wearing a sleeveless top and carrying a baby in her arms. She was kind of cute. Her husband stood a couple of steps in front of her.

Suddenly, I’ve no idea how it happened, but the girl lost her balance started falling backwards. She tried to fumble for the railing, now holding the child with just one hand – her body flailing wildly. The child was about to fall on the moving escalator.

Instinctively, I reached out and firmly grabbed both her (wife, not the child) arms, steadying her. Once I was sure she was safe, I immediately let go.

The entire thing must have lasted less than a nanosecond.

But as it happened, I registered a flash of intense fear jolting through my body. It wasn’t because the girl and her child were going to get hurt. Their safety had nothing to do with it. No! my fear was much more primal, originating somewhere deep inside my reptilian brain which knew that she was a female and I was a male – and my bare hands on her naked flesh – what that would mean in the eyes of the society, and how those standing around us might interpret it! Her husband, who was standing just a few steps ahead of us had no idea what had happened. A single shriek from the girl, and his animal brain would have gone berserk trying to defend what was rightfully its and eliminate the perceived threat at any cost.

My life could have been destroyed.

In that single nanosecond, my brain witnessed a fierce battle between two base instincts – one to help a fellow human being and the other to be afraid since that human being happened to be a female. Society had only taught me well enough the consequences such a situation might spiral into.

I was just lucky that that day, the first instinct had prevailed.

Had the second one kicked in first, a two year old child would have, at best, gotten gravely injured, or at worst, lost his life.

This is what happened with one guy in one incident.

Integrate that over four billion men on this planet and a million such situations that arise in the lifetimes, and you’ll realize what our world has come to.

What has been the saddest moment of your life?

The day my father died. I know that’s a big one for most people, but it was so much more for me. I was 40 and had had a contentious or non-existent relationship with him for 30 years due to the lies my mother told me about him. According to her, he was a sociopath. He lied, cheated and stole money from his own children. I believed it all as a ten-year-old.

I contacted my father several months before his death because I found out about my mother’s lies. I needed to apologize to him. My stepmother said she would arrange a meeting as soon as they returned from vacation. When they finally returned, he had already been diagnosed with inoperable, incurable cancer, the kind that Jimmy Buffet had.

Dad only lived four more months and I only had one opportunity to say what I needed to say to him. He hadn’t known how pervasive the brainwashing had been or what had been said. It helped to talk, but it couldn’t heal 30 years of mutual wounding. My father died not loving me, and the time lost devastated me. It still does 30 years later.

Powerful Websites You Should Know!

Due to the numerous US military bases in countries close to China and the creation of the AUKUS, is China imprisoned?

Does it occur to you it could be the U.S. that could be imprisoned? If the U.S. ends up spending tons of money meaninglessly and without a return and yet it cannot stop spending billions to continuously do shit that don’t pay it is the U.S. that is trapped. China don’t gives a shit it simply just let the US waste all its own money bribing nations who refuse to do shit, just to pretend to the world that it has allies.

For us in Asia. Even Japan, Korea, Phillipines and India have no wish to do shit as it knows the repercussions and it has been China’s neighbour for some 5000 years! It may have no choice but to barked some shit on China to get the U.S. off its back. But sure won’t risk it to do more than that. So the U.S. having a pay billions get some pretend shit is outright silly and wasteful.

So who is trapped? China can and will do what it wants. And the U.S. has to stay and waste a ton of resources to get pretentious shit that China gives a damn. To me the U.S. is trapped in its own stupidity!

The mistake women make with faithful men…

Russian Space Nukes and Navalny’s Death… U.S. Psyops Go Ballistic

Two “breaking news” items this week provided a timely opportunity for the United States and its media-intelligence apparatus to regain control of the narrative.

The claims about Russian space-based nuclear weapons unraveled to become a joke. Fortunately, the death of Western-sponsored dissident Alexei Navalny then occurred to enable Western media to go into a frenzy of anti-Russia headlines.

First up was the scaremongering story about Russia allegedly developing a space-based nuclear weapon. Initially, it was dramatically trailed as posing a serious national security threat to the United States. Despite the sensational reporting, the story quickly became a laughingstock. Even some U.S. lawmakers dismissed it as “bullshit” and a blatant attempt by the Biden White House and intelligence agencies to push Congress into passing a new mega military aid bill for Ukraine worth $61 billion.

We’ll get to the Navalny story in a moment. But let’s just first parse the orchestration of the alleged Russian space nukes.

The drama began on Wednesday when Mike Turner, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (a dodgy source if ever there was one), made public appeals to President Joe Biden to declassify intelligence on “a serious threat to national security”. Turner is a Republican member of the House of Representatives but he is a close ally of the Democrat White House in terms of keenly supporting military aid to Ukraine. The latest bill passed the upper chamber of the U.S. Senate the day before, February 13, but it is unlikely to be approved by the House where many Republican lawmakers are staunchly opposed to it.

Accompanying the “concerns” of the intel committee chairman Turner,  media outlets then vented anonymous US intelligence sources “revealing” that the national security threat was from Russian nuclear weapons allegedly under development for destroying American communication satellites in space. The White House then “confirmed” the intel the next day, February 15. It was a flagrant put-up job. But the Biden administration sought to tamp down any public panic by saying that the threat was not imminent and the alleged Russian satellite-killing weapon had not been deployed in orbit, nor would there be any danger to Earth. (So, what was all the fuss about?)

Ironically, derisive comments from incredulous U.S. lawmakers were also echoed by the Kremlin. The latter’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov made a similar assessment that the Biden administration was playing tricks to push through the military funding package for Ukraine.

That bill has been delayed since the end of last year. The Biden administration has been cajoling Congress for months to vote it through. After the Senate finally passed the bill this week, President Biden put pressure on the House, saying that “history is watching you”. The bill has been exalted as having existential importance in defeating “Russian aggression” in Ukraine. The U.S. media have claimed (preposterously) that if the military aid is not supplied then Ukraine’s defeat could result in American troops being deployed to prevent Russian rampaging across Europe.

The American public, as with the European public, has become increasingly skeptical about the relentless funneling of taxpayer funds and weapons to Ukraine. Many citizens in the West – a majority, according to polls – have become critical of fueling a bloody war for the dubious cause of “defending democracy” in a regime dominated by NeoNazis. At a time of deep social and economic hardship in the U.S. and Europe, the Western public is rightly disdainful of hundreds of billions of dollars and euros being wasted on death and destruction and also being siphoned off by a corrupt cabal in Kiev.

The $61 billion in military aid to Ukraine is just the latest tranche that Washington is seeking to throw at the black hole of its proxy war against Russia – a war that is really all about defeating Russia as a geopolitical obstacle to U.S. hegemony. Another driver is the massive profits that taxpayers are subsidizing the military-industrial complex at the rotten heart of Western capitalism.

There’s a huge lot at stake with the failure of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine. The Kiev regime is facing a collapse in the face of a superior Russian military.

That’s why the passing of the latest bill by Congress has taken on such an imperative importance – for the warmongers.

To get this bill into law, the U.S. deep state rulers and the pliant Biden White House along with the media-intelligence establishment sought to demonize Russia with a desperate story about alleged nuclear weapons for outer space. Oh, those dastardly Ruskies!

But as noted above the space nukes scar-story turned into farce. It was too obvious that the public was being manipulated, or gaslighted as one US lawmaker put it. When a psyops fails, the blowback is dangerous for the authors because of the damaging revelation and contempt it engenders. The Biden administration was open to ridicule.

There are several telltale signs that the story was total hogwash from the outset. Bruce Gagnon, U.S.-based coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, said the claims are absurd. In an email exchange with the Strategic Culture Foundation for this editorial, Gagnon said Russia has already developed formidable non-nuclear kinetic weapons to destroy satellites if it wanted to. He also remarked that the United States possesses anti-satellite weapons (ASATs).

In other words, there is no need for Russia to develop a risky nuclear weapon to knock out satellites. The nuclear details flagged up in US media this week are a gratuitous embellishment designed to alarm the public and to demonize Russia as an evil rogue state.

Russia is a co-signatory to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty as are the United States, China, and over 120 other nations.

Bruce Gagnon commented: “I believe the Russians have a long history of generally honoring treaties while the U.S. does not. And remember that Russia and China every year for at least the last 20-30 years go to the UN and introduce a new treaty called Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) to ban all weapons that fall outside of the 1967 treaty. The U.S. always refuses, saying there is no need for a new treaty.”

Apart from the paramount issue of getting additional funding for the proxy war in Ukraine, another timing issue is the aftermath of the blockbuster interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin by American journalist Tucker Carlson. Since the interview was aired last Thursday,  February 8, it has broken all records for public audiences around the world. It has garnered over 300 million views, and counting.

The one-on-one interview was seen as a breakthrough world exclusive, an informative platform for Putin to comprehensively give Russia’s point of view on the whole Ukraine conflict, and more. The Russian leader was seen by American and European audiences as reasonable, intelligent, articulate, and convincing. The Western propaganda caricature of Putin was dispelled and for a rare moment, the Western public was persuasively informed of the bigger causes of the conflict in Ukraine. That is, how the U.S.-led NATO axis had instigated the war by fomenting an anti-Russian regime dominated by NeoNazis. The impact of the interview dealt a devastating blow to the Western narrative of “Russian aggression” and “evil Putin”.

Plausibly, the U.S. warmongering establishment was incensed by this exposé.

Hence, to wrest back control of the narrative and corral the Western public, the space-based nukes scare-story was unleashed. Unfortunately, that psyop attempt failed to gain traction and indeed was fast descending into a farce.

Next up, luckily, came the news of Navalny’s death. Western media immediately blared headlines and comments that he had been killed by the “Putin regime”.

Navalny was serving 19 years in prison on multiple corruption convictions. He died Friday apparently from a blood clot. The 47-year-old was a broken and forgotten figure facing a futile existence, having been used and abandoned by Western intelligence handlers as a cut-out dissident figure. His future looked bleak. Who knows at this stage what caused his death? He was last seen by his lawyer during a prison meeting this week two days before his passing. Did his lawyer pass something to Navalny? Was the washed-up Western asset offered a deal for his family’s benefit if he agreed to one last, ultimate psyop on behalf of Western handlers? Taking his own life? His death in prison has certainly provided the Western media with a bonanza opportunity to change the narrative and precipitate an avalanche of Russophobia, just as required.

As for the far-fetched Russian space nukes and the death of Navalny, the criminologist’s question of Who Gains? and the factor of timing are often reliable indicators.

Has anyone you’ve known simply disappeared? Under what circumstances?

My friend’s cousin disappeared, and it was an interesting lesson in media bias.

She didn’t come home one day. They found her necklace, broken, next to her car, in a nearby park. Her photo was in all the local newspapers: a cute smiling blonde girl in her high school softball uniform, well liked and a good student. Her family held press conferences pleading for whoever took her to let her go.

A few weeks later, she did return. But she had not been kidnapped – it had been staged. She had actually run off with her boyfriend against her parents’ wishes. The photo of the cute blonde girl was replaced by a photo of her with dyed black hair, dark goth clothing and a look of defiance. The papers began reporting that the well liked good student had been caught shoplifting and was in trouble at school. She was eventually sentenced to community service for faking the crime.

This was the same person. When they wanted to make her look innocent, she looked innocent. When they wanted to make her look guilty, she looked guilty. Think about that next time you read the news.

Big Picture Conflict: Pepe Escobar & Global Times Observations

Karl Sanchez

The Two-year anniversary of Russia’s SMO and the Ten-year anniversary of the overt beginning of the Outlaw US Empire’s conflict with Russia with the Ukraine Coup are upon us as well as the related conflict to free Palestine from Zionist/West Genocide—both operations initially were planned as Nazi-like Plan Ost Genocidal ethnic cleansing so the lands “freed” could then be exploited by Western Capital. But in both cases, the targets of oppression, dispossession and death fought back, although in both cases resistance was always present with the assaulted able to gain formidable allies. Both conflicts have revealed the status of the protagonists within the larger Global Conflict pitting the Global majority against the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals, perhaps most starkly revealing the Fence Sitters trying to play both sides for their own pecuniary gain as is the case most certainly with Turkey.

The recently completed G-20 Foreign Ministers Summit in Rio de Janeiro helped to further define the lines/sides as the raw statements from Lavrov provided to readers who read the reports about his actions. To help deepen understanding about our Global Conflict, the latest two essays by Pepe Escobar and Global Times G-20 report are presented below. The political cartoon at the header is from Global Times and is almost accurate for our purposes as the pot needs to include the Zionists. And Palestine is where we’ll begin with Pepe’s “The Axis of Asymmetry takes on the ‘rules-based order:’”

The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and non-state actors employing asymmetrical moves on the global chessboard to sideline the US-led western rules-based order. And its vanguard is the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah. 

Ansarallah is absolutely relentless. They have downeda $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone with just a $10k indigenous missile.

They are the first in the Global South ever to use anti-ship ballistic missiles against Israel-bound and/or -protecting commercial and US Navy ships. 

For all practical purposes, Ansarallah is at war with no less than the US Navy.

Ansarallah has captured one of the US Navy’s ultra-sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), the $1.3 million Remus 600, a torpedo-shaped underwater drone able to carry a massive payload of sensors. 

Next stop: reverse engineering in Iran? The Global South eagerly awaits, ready to pay in currencies bypassing the US dollar. 

All of the above – a maritime 21st-century remix of the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War – spells out that the Hegemon may not even qualify as a paper tiger, but rather as a paper leech.

Lula tells it as the Global South sees it 

Into the Big Picture – linked to the relentless ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza – steps a true leader of the Global South, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

Lula spoke in the name of Brazil, Latin America, Africa, BRICS 10, and the overwhelming majority of the Global South when he cut to the chase and defined the Gaza tragedy for what it is: a genocide. No wonder the Zionist tentacles across the Global North – plus its Global South vassals – went bonkers. 

The genocidals in Tel Aviv declared Lula as persona non grata in Israel. Yet Lula did not assassinate 29,000+ Palestinians – the overwhelming majority of whom were women and children.

History will be unforgiving: it’s the genocidals that will eventually be judged as personae non grata to all of humanity.

What Lula said represented BRICS 10 in action: this was obviously cleared before with Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and, of course, the African Union. Lula spoke in Addis Ababa, and Ethiopia is now a BRICS 10 member.

The Brazilian president was extremely smart in timing his Gaza fact-check to be on the table during the G20 meeting of Foreign Ministers in Rio. Way beyond BRICS 10, what’s happening in Gaza is a consensus among the non-Western G20 partners – who are actually a majority. No one, though, should expect any serious follow-up inside a divided G20. The heart of the matter remains in the facts on the ground. 

Yemen’s fight for “our people” in Gaza is a matter of humanistic, moral, and religious solidarity – these are foundational tenets of the rising eastern “civilizational” powers, both domestically and in international affairs. This convergence of principles has now created a direct link – extrapolating to the moral and spiritual spheres – between the Axis of Resistance in West Asia and the Slavic Axis of Resistance in Donbass. 

Extreme attention should be paid to the timescale. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) forces and Russia have spent two hard-fought years in Novorossiya just to arrive at the stage where it becomes clear – based on the battlefield and cumulative facts on the ground – that “negotiations” mean only the terms of Kiev’s surrender.

In contrast, the job of the Axis of Resistance in West Asia has not even started. It’s fair to argue that its strength and full sovereign involvement have not been deployed yet (think Hezbollah and Iran). 

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, with his proverbial subtlety, has hinted there’s, in fact, nothing to negotiate on Palestine. And if there would be a return to any borders, these would be the 1948 borders. The Axis of Resistance understands that the whole Zionist Project is unlawful and immoral. But the question remains how to throw it, in practice, into the dustbin of History?

Possible – avowedly optimistic – scenarios ahead would include Hezbollah taking possession of the Galilee as a step toward the eventual retaking of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Yet the fact remains that even a united Palestine does not have the military capability to reconquer stolen Palestinian lands. 

So the questions posed by the overwhelming majority of the Global South that stands with Lula may be: Who else, apart from Ansarallah, Hezbollah, Hashd al-Shaabi, will join the Axis of Asymmetry in the fight for Palestine? Who would be willing to come to the Holy Land and die? (After all, in Donbass, it’s only Russians and Russophones who are dying for historically Russian lands) [Not entirely 100% correct, but close].

And that brings us to the way towards the endgame: only a West Asian Special Military Operation (SMO), to the bitter end, will settle the Palestinian tragedy. A translation of what happens across the Slavic Axis of Resistance: “Those who refuse to negotiate with Lavrov, deal with Shoigu.”

The menu, the table, and the guests

That out-of-his-depth closet neocon, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, let the cat out of the bag when he actually defined his much cherished “rules-based international order”: “If you’re not on the table, you are on the menu.”

Following his own hegemonic logic, it’s clear that Russia and the US/NATO are on the table while Ukraine is on the menu. What about the Red Sea? The Houthis defending Palestine against US–UK–Israel are clearly on the table, while Western vassals supporting Israel in a maritime way are clearly on the menu. 

And that’s the problem: the Hegemon – or, in Chinese scholarly terminology, “the crusaders” – have lost the power to place the name cards on the table. The main reason for this authority collapse is the build-up of serious international meetings sponsored by the Russia–China strategic partnership during the past two years since the start of the SMO. It’s all about sequential planning, with long-term targets clearly outlined. 

Only civilizational states can do that – not plutocratic neoliberal casinos.   

Negotiating with the Hegemon is impossible because the Hegemon itself prevents negotiations (see the serial blocking of ceasefire resolutions at the UN). Additionally, the Hegemon excels in instrumentalizing its client elites across the Global South via threats or kompromat: see the hysterical reaction of Brazilian mainstream media to Lula’s verdict on Gaza. 

What Russia is showing the Global South, two years after the start of the SMO, is that the only path to teach a lesson to the Hegemon has to be kinetic, or “military-technical.”

The problem is no nation-state can compare to nuclear/hypersonic/military superpower Russia, in which 7.5 percent of the government’s budget is dedicated to military production. Russia is and will remain on a permanent war footing until Hegemon’s elites come to their senses – and that may never happen.

Meanwhile, West Asia’s Axis of Resistance is watching and learning, day after day. It’s always crucial to keep in mind that for all the resistance movements across the Global South – and that also includes, for instance, West Africans against French neo-colonialism – the geopolitical fault lines could not be starker.

It’s a matter of the collective West versus Islam; the collective West versus Russia; and sooner rather than later, a substantial part of the West, even reluctantly, versus China.

The fact is we are already immersed in a World War that is both existential and civilizational. As we stand at the crossroads, there is a bifurcation: either escalation towards overt “kinetic military action,” or a multiplication of Hybrid Wars across several latitudes. 

So it’s up to the Axis of Asymmetry, cool, calm, and collected, to forge the underground corridors, passages, and trails capable of undermining and subverting the US-led, unipolar, rules-based international order. [Bolded italics my emphasis]

Pessimistic or realistic? Obviously, the situation is already kinetic. But two very important factors have been proven over the past two years: NATO is powerless to defeat Russia and the USN can be defeated by the new methods of warfare. Pepe and I agree that the major forcing to solve Palestine will need to come from outside, which means Russia or China or perhaps an international coalition sans Western nations. The longer Palestine is subjected to Zionist Genocide, the more the world’s people will learn of its history and the utter crime related to the creation of Occupied Palestine. And now for the second Pepe Escobar essay, “Two Years After the Start of the SMO, the West is Totally Paralyzed:”

Exactly two years ago this Saturday, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the launching – and described the objectives – of a Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. That was the inevitable follow-up to what happened three days before, on February 21 – exactly 8 years after Maidan 2014 in Kiev – when Putin officially recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

During this – pregnant with meaning – short space of only three days, everyone expected that the Russian Armed Forces would intervene, militarily, to end the massive bombing and shelling that had been going on for three weeks across the frontline – which even forced the Kremlin to evacuate populations at risk to Russia. Russian intel had conclusive proof that the NATO-backed Kiev forces were ready to execute an ethnic cleansing of Russophone Donbass.

February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever, in several complex ways. Above all, it marked the beginning of a vicious, all-out confrontation, “military-technical” as the Russians call it, between the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, its easily pliable NATOstan vassals, and Russia – with Ukraine as the battleground.

There is hardly any question Putin had calculated, before and during these three fateful days, that his decisions would unleash the unbounded fury of the collective West – complete with a tsunami of sanctions.

Ay, there’s the rub; it’s all about Sovereignty. And a true sovereign power simply cannot live under permanent threats. It’s even feasible that Putin had wanted (italics mine) Russia to get sanctioned to death. After all, Russia is so naturally wealthy that without a serious challenge from abroad, the temptation is enormous to live off its rents while importing what it could easily produce.

Exceptionalists always gloated that Russia is “a gas station with nuclear weapons”. That’s ridiculous. Oil and gas, in Russia, account for roughly 15% of GDP, 30% of the government budget, and 45% of exports. Oil and gas add power to the Russian economy – not a drag. Putin shaking Russia’s complacency generated a gas station producing everything it needs, complete with unrivalled nuclear and hypersonic weapons. Beat that.

Ukraine has “never been less than a nation”

Xavier Moreau is a French politico-strategic analyst based in Russia for 24 years now. Graduated from the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy and with a Sorbonne diploma, he hosts two shows on RT France.

His latest book, Ukraine: Pourquoi La Russie a Gagné (“Ukraine: Why Russia has Won”), just out, is an essential manual for European audiences on the realities of the war, not those childish fantasies concocted across the NATOstan sphere by instant “experts” with less than zero combined arms military experience.

Moreau makes it very clear what every impartial, realist analyst was aware of from the beginning: the devastating Russian military superiority, which would condition the endgame. The problem, still, is how this endgame – “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, as established by Moscow – will be achieved.

What is already clear is that “demilitarization”, of Ukraine and NATO, is a howling success that no new wunderwaffen – like F-16s – will be able to change.

Moreau perfectly understands how Ukraine, nearly 10 years after Maidan, is not a nation; “and has never been less than a nation”. It’s a territory where populations that everything separates are jumbled up. Moreover, it has been a – “grotesque” – failed state ever since its independence. Moreau spends several highly entertaining pages going through the corruption grotesquerie in Ukraine, under a regime that “gets its ideological references simultaneously via admirers of Stepan Bandera and Lady Gaga.”

None of the above, of course, is reported by oligarch-controlled European mainstream media.

Watch out for Deng Xiao Putin

The book offers an extremely helpful analysis of those deranged Polish elites who bear “a heavy responsibility in the strategic catastrophe that awaits Washington and Brussels in Ukraine”. The Poles actually believed that Russia would crumble from the inside, complete with a color revolution against Putin. That barely qualifies as Brzezinski on crack.

Moreau shows how 2022 was the year when NATOstan, especially the Anglo-Saxons – historically racist Russophobes –   were self-convinced thar Russia would fold because it is a “poor power”. Obviously, none of these luminaries understood how Putin strengthened the Russian economy very much like Deng Xiaoping on the Chinese economy. This “self-intoxication”, as Moreau qualifies it, did wonders for the Kremlin.

By now it’s clear even for the deaf, dumb, and blind that the destruction of the European economy has been a massive tactic, historic victory for the Hegemon – as much as the blitzkrieg against the Russian economy has been an abysmal failure.

All of the above brings us to the meeting of G20 Foreign Ministers this week in Rio. That was not exactly a breakthrough. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it very clear that the collective West at the G20 tried by all means to “Ukrainize” the agenda – with less than zero success. They were outnumbered and counterpunched by BRICS and Global South members.

At his press conference, Lavrov could not be more stark on the prospects of the war of the collective West against Russia. These are the highlights:

  • Western countries categorically do not want serious dialogue on Ukraine.
  • There were no serious proposals from the United States to begin contacts with the Russian Federation on strategic stability; trust cannot be restored now while Russia is declared an enemy.
  • There were no contacts on the sidelines of the G20 with either Blinken or the British Foreign Secretary.
  • The Russian Federation will respond to new Western sanctions with practical actions that relate to the self-sufficient development of the Russian economy.
  • If Europe tries to restore ties with the Russian Federation, making it dependent on their whims, then such contacts are not needed.

In a nutshell – diplomatically: you are irrelevant, and we don’t care.

That was complementing Lavrov’s intervention during the summit, which defined once again a clear, auspicious path towards multipolarity. Here are the highlights:

  • The forming of a fair multipolar world order without a definite center and periphery has become much more intensive in the past few years. Asian, African and Latin American countries are becoming important parts of the global economy. Not infrequently, they are setting the tone and the dynamics.
  • Many Western economies, especially in Europe, are actually stagnating against this background. These statistics are from Western-supervised institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD.
  • These institutions are becoming relics from the past. Western domination is already affecting their ability to meet the requirements of the times. Meanwhile, it is perfectly obvious today that the current problems of humanity can only be resolved through a concerted effort and with due consideration for the interests of the Global South and, generally, all global economic realities.
  • Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EIB are prioritizing Kiev’s military and other needs. The West allocated over $250 billion to tide over its underling thus creating funding shortages in other parts of the world. Ukraine is taking up the bulk of the funds, relegating Africa and other regions of the Global South to rationing.
  • Countries that have discredited themselves by using unlawful acts ranging from unilateral sanctions and the seizure of sovereign assets and private property to blockades, embargoes, and discrimination against economic operators based on nationality to settle scores with their geopolitical opponents cannot be considered guarantors of financial stability.
  • Without a doubt, new institutions that focus on consensus and mutual benefit are needed to democratize the global economic governance system. Today, we are seeing positive dynamics for strengthening various alliances, including BRICS, the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union, LAS, CELAC, and the EAEU.
  • This year, Russia chairs BRICS, which saw several new members join it. We will do our best to reinforce the potential of this association and its ties with the G20.
  • Considering that 6 out of 15 UN Security Council members represent the Western bloc, we will support the expansion of this body solely through the accession of countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Call it the real state of things, geopolitically, two years after the start of the SMO. [Bolded italics my emphasis]

The G-20 timing also coincided with the ICJ’s sessions about Palestine and the increasing number of cases being filed against the Zionists and their abettors. The West’s stance was specifically called out by Lavrov who added it to the evidentiary trail of previous criminal acts. The Outlaw US Empire and the West generally are parasites who feed on host nations in what are clearly Neocolonial types of arrangements. Now the Empire is leeching off the EU and enforcing its blood-sucking via NATO. Trump doesn’t want to disband NATO; he wants to increase the intensity of its blood-sucking just as he did before. Now it’s: Pay up your 2% of GDP or we’ll sick the Russians on you, or rather won’t protect you from the Russians. Putin has said Europeans must rescue themselves as Russia has no intent on going beyond Ukraine as Russia already has most everything it needs. So, now we have Global Times whose experts opine that the SMO “may become ‘a war without winners.’” We’ll see why in “US escalates sanctions, fans fire as Ukraine crisis enters 3rd year:”

The US joined the EU and UK in announcing a new round of sanctions against Russia, ahead of the two-year anniversary of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine that started in February 2022. But at the same time, Russia is seemingly gaining the upper hand on the battlefield with its latest victory in capturing Avdiivka, a critical town in eastern Ukraine. 

Analysts said considering the previous sanctions were far from reaching expectations, and the US and West are not prepared to compromise with Russia on the conflict in 2024, the stalemate may become a large probability, and a cease-fire is still far from sight. 

At a time when the security environment and economy of the entire world are being seriously affected, the US, whether it is from holding Europe hostage to promote bloc confrontation or from selling gas and arms to Europe, seems to be benefiting the most. However, experts said that if the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues for a long time, it will be a war without winners, and China will continue its efforts in promoting peace talks and a cease-fire as early as possible. 

Stalemate to continue

US President Joe Biden on Friday announced Washington would issue more than 500 new sanctions targeting Russia for the ongoing war with Ukraine and for the death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. 

The US will also impose new export restrictions on nearly 100 entities for providing support to Russia and take action to further reduce Russia’s energy revenues, Biden said in a statement.

The US latest sanctions came on the heels of moves by its allies. The UK on Thursday announced more than 50 further sanctions against Russia, targeting individuals and businesses supporting Moscow’s “war effort.” On Wednesday, the EU also approved its 13th package of sanctions against Russia, banning nearly 200 related individuals and entities which it claimed as being linked to Moscow’s operation, including companies from China and India. The sanction was adopted on Friday.

However, experts found that sanctions from the US and West have failed to have any substantial impact on Russia. Meanwhile, Moscow was also “not nearly as isolated as US officials had hoped,” as Russia’s inherent strength, rooted in vast supplies of oil and natural gas, “has powered a financial and political resilience,” according to a New York Times report. [Which is BS as Escobar reported above.] 

Western sanctions on Russia did put short-term pressure on the Russian economy, but it soon adjusted policy and resumed growth, Zhang Hong, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday.

The sanctions are a sign of Western political correctness, but they have fallen far short of their intended goals, Zhang said, adding that rounds of sanctions have not changed Russia’s position in the Ukraine crisis or caused major economic difficulties for Russia. 

“In a way, it was a failure,” said the expert.

According to the expert, compared with the previous measures, the recent ones have focused more on indirect sanctions, by restricting Russia’s trade and financial contacts with other countries, narrowing Russia’s external economic activity.

The sanctions also come at a time when Russia is gaining the upper hand on the battlefield, capturing Ukraine’s eastern city of Avdiivka last week. Ukraine faces a shortage of ammunition and insufficient troops, according to media reports. 

Ahead of the crisis anniversary, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that Russia will have to continue fighting Ukraine until it takes the coastal city of Odessa and Ukraine’s capital Kiev, according to RT. 

Although some observers, including former CIA director and secretary of Defense Robert Gates, told US media that he believed Russia has “regained the momentum” and “has broken the stalemate,” Chinese experts said the current seesaw battle may continue in 2024.   

Medvedev’s remark shows Russia’s confidence in continuing its “special operation,” Zhang said, “What Moscow seeks is to maximize its security interests within the scope of controllable risks.

However, the latest sanctions show the US and the West are not prepared to compromise with Russia, Zhang noted, adding that although Ukraine has recently been passive on the battlefield, it’s unlikely to suffer a rout. [Avdeevka ws a rout.]
On February 1, EU leaders approved the extension of 50 billion Euros ($54 billion) in aid to Ukraine from 2024 to 2027. “It shows that currently the West is not prepared to abandon Ukraine,” Zhang said. 

Experts also noted that in the long run, the situation in the battlefield largely depends on US factors, whether it can overcome domestic partisan strife on aiding Kiev, and whether US policies will be adjusted sharply after a possible Trump return. 

In 2024, the continuation of stalemate and attrition may become a high probability on the battlefield in Ukraine, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Friday. 

The conflict will continue, and there is no end in sight, at least for now, Li added. 

War without winners 

Given that Chinese companies were listed among the latest British and EU sanctions against Russia, on Thursday, the Chinese Embassy in the UK expressed strong opposition, stressing that China has always held an objective and just position on the Ukraine crisis. 

Ahead of the anniversary, some Western media expressed misgivings over China’s position. VOA accused China of not pressuring Russia to “stop the aggression,” while some German media said the sanctions pushed Russia into the arms of China, making it “the biggest winner” of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The West is trying to pressure China to take sides through public opinion, but as a major power, China will not let this noise affect its neutral position, Li said. 

During a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on February 17, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China has stayed committed to promoting peace talks on the Ukraine issue and will not give up as long as there is a glimmer of hope. China refrains from adding fuel to the fire or taking advantage of the situation, and refrains from selling lethal weapons to conflict areas or parties, Wang said. 

Sanctions and weapons aid have not changed Russia’s position, but have prolonged the conflict and extended the damage to Ukraine. In order to end the losses in Ukraine as soon as possible, there must be an early cease-fire and peace talks, Zhang said. 

Due to the conflict, all major economies, including China, have been impacted, both in terms of security environment and economy, and it has also had a negative impact on China-EU relations and China-US relations, Zhang said. 

So far, the US is the biggest beneficiary, analysts said. US liquefied natural gas has entered the EU market and now takes up a large share. Through the export of weapons, US military manufacturers are making huge amounts of money. At the same time, the Russia-Ukraine conflict also further strengthens US control over Europe, prompting the return of the influence of its bloc politics.

However, overall and in the long run, the conflict will be a war without winners, with only tragedy and disaster, analysts said. 

If the goal of the US is to maximize the weakening of Russia by completely depleting Ukraine, even if the goal is achieved, Russia, the US and Europe will most likely fall into a deeper strategic confrontation in the future, Li said. 

If the US and the West hope to wait until Ukraine is almost exhausted before directly engaging Russia on the battlefield, then they are playing with fire, said Li, “to defeat a nuclear power on the battlefield is likely to lead to nuclear war and World War III. If that happens, Russia, Ukraine are the losers, the US, Europe are losers, global security will be at stake, and the end will be disaster and tragedy for humankind.” [Emphasis mine]

IMO, it’s odd that Li doesn’t think Ukraine isn’t yet “exhausted” and the loser ever since the conflict began in 2014. That the experts consulted think the conflict is now a “stalemate” means they aren’t paying attention to what’s happening and have ignored Russia’s highly successful strategy of attrition. Again, the notion that “the US … seems to be benefiting the most” or “is the biggest beneficiary,” is chimeric with the seems being an incorrect assumption when reality within the Outlaw US Empire is considered—no tangible gains have accrued to US citizens aside from a very small group of elites. Indeed, the US economy is polarized as the real economy shrinks and the parasite economy expands. The complexity of the sanctions and collusion in their make-up and application by the Empire and its vassals tells us that they were not made for Nalvalny. Indeed, his murder was likely induced by the West to coincide with three events: SMO anniversary, Munich Security Conference, and Putin/Carlson Interview, since his wife/widow was previously invited and showed no shock or grief and all BigLie Media outlets had synchronized copy/paste “news” items immediately upon word of his death. Over the last 24 years of similar happenings, those with active minds can see through the crap. Are the Chinese being honest when they write, “However, overall and in the long run, the conflict will be a war without winners, with only tragedy and disaster,” or are they writing that way to appease the West so it will not target China with further sanctions? Most credible analysts have China next on the menu after Russia, which is precisely what the Outlaw US Empire’s “security” and “defense” documents and policies say matter-of-factly.

Russia’s proving its SMO isn’t mired in a stalemate as it continues to push Westward along the FEBA. Medvedev has issued serious goals as statements of policy. The need to deNazify not only Ukraine but Europe’s been voiced by both Putin, Lavrov, Medvedev, Zakharova, Patrushev, and other top Russian officials. Russia has its Home Front in fine form with very little dissent to be seen or heard. The situation in Ukraine and the West is almost the exact opposite as it’s embroiled in the Gaza Genocide too that has vastly amplified dissent. Plus, the Neoliberal economies are functioning as planned—taking from the poor and giving to the already rich. Dr, Hudson recently provided some anecdotal evidence of that, “New School University race to the bottom,” which ought to be compared with my “Creating a Network of Modern University Campuses” report about two weeks ago. And as my reports show, Russia’s economy is booming as is its trade, while it’s ready to vastly widen the non-Western payments and settlements system so sanctions will have nothing to impede.

Some time ago a European politician made the analogy of Ukraine being a drowning person capable of drowning its rescuers. That man was insightful when compared with most European and US politicos. The longer the West continues to lie about the actual reasons for the SMO and what group started it, the harder it’s going to be when the time arrives for whatever remains of Ukraine to capitulate. The state, which has always been artificial as Putin told the world again in his talk with Tucker Carlson, will likely disappear into the ether from which it was conjured. And all those loans and “investments” will translate into 100% loses for their providers. And if the West attempts to steal Russia’s illegally frozen assets, then it’s going to suffer an even greater loss in the end as extinguishing Ukraine is precisely what will happen.

“What’s Coming Is WORSE Than A Recession” — Ray Dalio’s Last WARNING

https://youtu.be/uTBFD6t68js

What is the greatest act of cruelty you have ever committed?

I trashed a child in front of his parents while watching the movie “The Jungle Book” and I am proud of what I did to him.

April 14,

Navratri puja over, so I took my brother to watch a movie as my birthday treat which was on 12th.

Housefull.

This child was 27 years old sitting one seat to my left. And right beside me was a beautiful lady in her 60’s, followed by this boy and his father.

During the intermission, the boy ordered two cups of American corn and sat back. Then after a few minutes, the INOX guy came and handed it over to the boy.

Two minutes later, the lady unintentionally spilled the corn.

The boy started yelling at his mom, “koto taka legechy jaano ?? kheyecho aiekhany ??”

Translation: “Do you know how much that cost? Have you ever eaten here??”

And then comes the sickening part: he hit his mother’s legs pretty hard, simply because she had accidentally spilled the cup of American corn.

Seeing all this made me livid. And just when I thought he wouldn’t repeat this deplorable act, he hit his mom again.

His mom was extremely embarrased and kept her head down.

After hitting his mom twice, I didn’t hold myself back. I hit his cup of corn and spilled all of it on the floor. He stood up and confronted me; I landed a punch on his face as hard as I could.

To ensure he stayed put and didn’t retaliate, I landed two more. By then all the people around me (including my brother) got up on their feet and were ready to stop me in case I was going to smack him again.

It was chaos all around, and the security intervened and escorted both of us out.

Once outside and no more in the darkness, I saw that the guy really needed medical assistance after what I had to him. His nose was bleeding and lips were split open. And when our eyes met, I could clearly see the guilt in his eyes. I was damn happy with what I did, though I missed the movie which I watched later.

I was escorted off the premises, while he was administered first aid. I had to assure the security team that I would never repeat anything like this.

I never knew I could do such things but seeing a man punching his mother enraged me and I couldn’t resist myself.

Respect each and everyone whoever it might be, that is what my parents have taught me and I am glad that I do so and hope our generation does the same.

Edit 1 : For all those who think that I didn’t solve the whole problem, my little brother while taking them out of the theatre took the mother’s phone and saved my number.

I don’t think he will dare to do such activity again and I am hoping I won’t receive any call his mother.

Thanks for the appreciation !!

Edit 2: I would like you all to read Yogesh Singhq comment.

Link to the comment : https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-greatest-act-of-cruelty-you-have-ever-done/answer/Bharat-Sirohia/comment/18739940?srid=a0BE&share=bc8a905e

Thanks buddy !!

Edit 3: All those who are asking what was his father doing ?

He was there watching the drama unfold and was able to stop neither his son nor me.

The only and best way to protect Taiwan from China can be done by the United States. Why hasn’t America invaded and destroyed China by now?

You’re not a big history buff are you?

I guess you like to watch Rambo movies, instead?

  • China not only has the largest military in the world, but it is also the oldest military in the world. The Chinese were fighting mass invasions and assaults involving thousands of trained warriors when the Europeans were still living in caves and picking lice off each other.
  • China also has the oldest Navy in the world. Indeed, the Chinese were conducting mass Naval Battles centuries before the Europeans were considering the value of ocean going vessels.
  • China has always fought using cutting-edge technologies that were unexpected, unheard of, and unanticipated by the nation attacking it. It’s more than gunpowder, it’s poison weapons, tricks and deceit, and armored vehicles that totally stunned the opposition.
  • China is lead by merit, with people with millennia of military experience. Indeed the top rated military strategy books are all Chinese.
  • China is a military-organized society that does everything based on merit. They are hopelessly super patriotic, and live to die for their country.

Oh, and remember that the United States tried to attack China in 1950. The United States lost, and lost badly.

FACT: Keep in mind that China considers both Taiwan and the South China Sea as China territory.

EXTRAPOLATED FACT: Any bombs, guns, missiles, or assaults in those regions will provoke a STRATEGIC response onto the United States.

KIND REMINDER: And remember Kiddos, that for China, STRATEGIC is the same as NUCLEAR.

You all should be really FUCKING clear on accepting the risks, and resulting lifestyle that you will endure, after that Pandora’s box is opened.

Alien Bodies Confirmed After Testing to be NON Human

This is actually a pretty good video, and I recommend it to all mm readers.

https://youtu.be/ST8axewdge0

What do police officers typically notice when entering a person’s home (messy, clean, stinky, etc.)? What is the worst/weirdest thing you’ve seen?

I responded to a medical emergency in a hoarder house in the 1980s. When we entered the house from the front door there was no pathway to the back of the house. Newspapers, magazines and papers stacked up to the 6 foot mark on all the walls. The kitchen was covered in plates of old food that had not be cleared or thrown away. No way to get through to the bedrooms in the back of the house. Rats, mice and bugs crawling over everything. We could see the resident in the back bedroom, but could not get through the piles of papers, junk and trash to get to the back bedroom to see if he was alive. The smell was unbelievable.

The fire department brought in a K-12 saw and cut hole into the bedroom from the back of the house. The owner was dead. Mice and insects were crawling all over the body. Multiple cats sprawling all over the piles of papers, garbage and junk in the house. The fire department used the saw to cut a larger hole in the back of the hose so we could get in. The City Public Works Department brought a four wheel drive front end loader to clear out piles of newspapers and magazines which filled the floor around the bed in the bedroom at the back of the house. Several police officers, Animal Control Officers and Public Works employees had to run to the back the property to throw up from the smell.

I took time off the radio after we got the body out of the house to go back to my home, dump my uniforms in the laundry and take a very hot shower to insure I cleared everything I was in contact in this house off my body.

The city quickly declared the house a major health hazard and had it bulldozed to the ground. I told my sergeant the next call like that I wanted to be sent to other side of of town rather than enter a hoarder house again.

I dealt with several more in that community and next one when I was Chief of Police. The smell never gets better.

When you stop trying, it happens | The psychology of the flow state

This is a very important learning exercise.

https://youtu.be/k23x5kP7dAY

Have you ever seen an employee get fired on the spot because of you?

Well technically they quit but……

As a teenager, I washed dishes in a restaurant where my step-father ran the kitchen. He made all the soups and other pre-cooked items (prime rib, ribs), ordered the produce and stock, etc.

The restaurant was located on a barge moored in a harbor on a river. Most of the kitchen help were what we referred to as east-enders… rough boys. I was a preppy high school kid but got along with most of them. However, there was one guy… Dale. Dale was a bit crazy. He was also heavily into drugs and a burnout. He also washed dishes and on weekends, there would be two of you paired together.

All dishes had to be cleaned by the end of the night, the floors swept and scrubbed, and dirty laundry put away (table cloths, napkins, and aprons). If it was a particularly good night, the waitresses would bring a few pitchers of beer from the bar to the kitchen crew.

One night beer was brought while everyone was cleaning up. Dale was drinking more than cleaning. I got fed up and left the dishes piled high in the sinks.

The following morning, my step father arrived at work to find the dirty dishes. My mother awoke me asking what happened and that my step father was livid. I was taken to work where I find Dale and my step father standing in the kitchen. My step father is PISSED. He asks me why the dishes were left. I explained I was tired of Dale not doing his job. Dale tried to talk his way out of the situation which only made things worse. My step father was screaming at Dale and told him to go clean the bathrooms. Dale left to do that and now I’m expecting to catch hell. My step father put his hand on my shoulder then walked away calmly asking me to finish the dishes.

I was stunned. My step-father wasn’t an understanding person and he didn’t treat me any different that the rest of the crew. But here he was believing me and siding with me (a rare instance).

About an hour later, we discovered Dale left without cleaning the bathrooms. I was asked to stay and work the shift…. and to clean the bathrooms.

Dale never returned.

Ladies, men need this

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OdzXKsEgZuo?feature=share

“On Friday I did an activity with my 5th graders where they wrote a short blurb entitled.

“I wish my teacher would know…”

These are just a few that stuck out to me:

Kid 1: I wish my teacher would know; my dad is in jail, and I haven’t seen him in years.

Kid 2: I wish my teacher would know, I don’t always eat dinner because my mom works and I don’t know how to work the stove.

Kid 3: I wish my teacher would know; my sister sleeps in the same bed as me, and sometimes she wets the bed, and that’s why I smell funny.

Kid 4: I wish my teacher would know that I don’t always have sneakers for gym class because my brothers and I share one pair.

Kid 5: I wish my teacher knew I like coming to school because it’s quiet here, unlike my house with all the yelling.

✨We spend so much time talking and judging what we think we know… we need to ask more questions and spend more time listening. We also need to shift our mindset and see things from other people’s perspective. Give more than we get. Live to serve and to help make a difference in others’ lives.

Let’s leave this life a little better than we found it.

Polish Cinnamon Cake

babkaslice
babkaslice

Yield: 8 to 12 servings

Ingredients

  • 12 tablespoons butter
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 3 teaspoons cinnamon
  • A grating of fresh nutmeg
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups whipping cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
  4. Repeat two more times with the remaining batter.
  5. 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.
  6. Spread remaining whipped cream on the top and serve immediately.

Cyber Potter 2077

https://youtu.be/j0ov7NBosuE

For those of you over 40, what is it that confuses you the most about young people?

I am slap-in-middle of Gen X. Two years ago, I got diagnosed with cancer. I still live in the small-time town I was born in and know everyone.

I still went into work the next day and in the morning after I had texted all to my 31 year old boss whom I thought was a great guy that I might be a bit quiet today…. My ‘millennial’ boss was someone I deemed trustworthy and not at all like other guys like my disgusting, selfish, youngest brother. I was happy he was gonna be my boss through what was going to be a difficult time for me and my family. I wished I’d stayed at home but I had a lesson.

He actually thought it was the coolest thing, and was seriously, absolutely, completely delighted. An employee with cancer was so trendy. Not that he said that out loud but he was really pleased for himself…. Genuinely, the guy wanted to tell everyone – and I ordered him to be silent until I said so and stopped periodically shaking and could talk about it without being overwhelmed with fear that was so bad my tummy and heart hurt.

Me and my husband were looking at him like W.T.F. I suddenly got why millennials aren’t liked…

He then started to reduce my hours and told me I wasn’t haven’t sick pay three days before my massive surgery and sacked me when I got a lawyer on to him a year later. It is strictly illegal to sack someone with cancer in the UK.

He thought he was the best boss ever because he spent two minutes reading a website about how employees with cancer often want to work as it seems normal.

He had gotten a recent promotion and became ….. absolutely vile… I didn’t even get a card or a teddy bear. I am rather wary of that generation now.

And yes, this actually happened…

AI Video From OpenAI Just Blew Everyone’s Minds!

Sora. Damn!

Reality Universe sub-structure rebuilding effort by mm

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Happy new year. 

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.

(You can thank the DC for this explanation.)

What is the most selfless thing you did?

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.

 

If another coworker didn’t show up for work, how would you handle their responsibilities besides your own?

Not my coworker; my supervisor.

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?

 

What was the most disgusting display of entitled behavior that you ever witnessed?

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.

What is the wildest reaction you have seen to someone getting fired?

It seemed pretty wild to me.

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.

Can’t Escape The Gender Roles

 

 

What were the worst two minutes of your life?

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.

Have you ever seen someone treat someone else horribly and receive instant karma?

The suicide bomber who died alone.

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
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 213
image 213
image 214
image 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.

Karma some times works like magic.

No one could have seen this coming!

 

 

What are some golden advice you want to give for free?

  1. Don’t rely on others for happiness – it often leads to disappointment.
  2. Take risks while you’re young, because youth doesn’t last forever.
  3. Love isn’t about escaping suffering, but sharing a beautiful life with someone.
  4. Use your pain to grow and learn, don’t let it go to waste.
  5. Don’t let religion or beliefs stop you from loving and empathizing with others.
  6. Forgiving yourself is key to finding inner peace in life.
  7. Stay united with your family – they’re your support system.
  8. True love doesn’t just follow trends, it’s genuine and supportive.
  9. Explore life, but don’t forget to listen to your conscience.
  10. Stay open to learning – no one knows everything in life.

What is the worst prank someone did to you on April Fools?

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!

The bastard!

But I got him back about a year later….

4 signs she’s cheating on you

 

What did you do when you saw someone stealing while on the job?

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.

 

What was the first thing that blew your mind when you became a police officer?

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.”

Policing is not always what you think!

Italian Pork Roast

2024 02 13 17 11
2024 02 13 17 11

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 to 3 1/2 pound) rolled boneless pork loin roast
  • 4 cloves garlic, halved
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons dried Italian seasoning
  • 1 teaspoon coarsely-ground pepper

Instructions

  1. Place roast in a shallow roasting pan. Cut 8 small slits in roast at 2-inch intervals; insert garlic clove halves deep into slits.
  2. Brush olive oil evenly over roast, and sprinkle with Italian seasoning and pepper. Insert meat thermometer, making sure it does not touch fat.
  3. Bake at 325 degrees F for 1 1/2 hours (30 minutes per pound) or until meat thermometer reaches 155 degrees F.
  4. Remove from oven, and cover loosely with aluminum foil. Let stand 15 minutes or until meat thermometer reaches 160 degrees F.

Made in Shenzhen, China…

 

I am 60+. I lived alone for nearly 15 years. I have tried everything to meet someone. Is it simply never going to happen to me again? No one can imagine how lonely it is. I just want to scream.

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.

Cheating wife

 

What has an employee said that immediately caused you to fire them?

“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.

Truths

 

Have you ever called in a “welfare check” to the police? Did it turn out there was a real need? Officers, how often are “welfare checks” something where a person does need assistance?

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.

Yes it can

 

What needs to be said out loud?

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!

Generations looking at their Bank Account

 

What was the most outrageous repair quote a mechanic has ever given you to fix your car?

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.

Jesus!

 

What happened in a courtroom that gave the judge a belly laugh you will never forget?

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.

I never had to testify.

You won’t believe what the Filipino girl said

 

Does hard work really pay off?

You decide for yourself.

The world owes a debt to Israel for how they took on the terror-maniac Saddam Hussain’s vision of designing an atom bomb.

Iraq was a sworn enemy of Israel and it was just days away from the berserk tearing down of Israel.

Israel had only one reason in its favour before trying for the no-win.

They ticked all the boxes in the domain of ‘HARD WORK’.

  • For long, Israel had mastered the art of flying aircrafts at a height less than 30m( to avoid radar detection).
image 216
image 216
  • Israel can’t magically appear wherever they want to, they have to fly over enemy nations. They practised speaking the accent of those arab nations.
image
image
  • Israelis mastered the art of diversion tactics and deceiving radio signals.
  • Israel effected the speed of execution and precise-hitting because they get only one chance.

Israel had mimeographed the entire Iraqi nuclear plant and drilled several times before final execution.

Israel launched Operation Opera on June 7, 1981. Let’s see if the hard work paid off.

  • Israel flew over Jordan and interacted in Saudi accent. Jordanes assumed them as Saudis(ally of Jordan).
  • When over Saudi Arabia, Israelis produced a sham of Jordanese using Jordan radio signals.
  • Now, they were in Iraq, the High-Israel got low, I mean literally. They were flying less than 30m altitude and thus evaded detection.
  • A diversion was played using F-15 aircrafts while F-16s were ready for attack.

King Hussein of Jordan was enjoying in yacht when Israeli planes had flown just over him. He had communicated it to Iraq.

Iraqis had turned the detectors off so Israelis capitalized as their anti-aircraft attack was a no-threat but it’s time their lunch-break was over. .

image 215
image 215
  • The F-16s reached an height of 2000m then dived into 1000m, dropped off the Mark-84 bombs.
  • 8 of the 16 hit and were enough to reduce the nuclear plant to ashes. The attack took less than 2 minutes.
  • Jordan-king’s message would never reach and the Iraqi anti-aircraft attack was circumvented successfully by Israel.

Ramon was the youngest Israeli pilot who later on became an astranaut and was with Kalpana Chawla when the space shuttle disaster occured.

Technical details reference :

Operation Opera – Wikipedia

Never judge a book by its cover | 850k mudhouse in Africa

 

What’s the saddest celebrity moment ever caught on camera?

image 218
image 218

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.

image 217
image 217

Muhammad Ali 1942 – 2016, R.I.P.

A little king

 

Who are some of the dumbest criminals ever to be caught?

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
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.

The United States is a joke.

 

Can a workplace fire an employee for an argument that took place outside of work?

Yes.

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.

Imagine If The Roles Were REVERSED

 

What is it like being a police officer in a small town?

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.

USA Gen-Z

 

 

What happened to nurses captured on Bataan and Corregidor?

image 222
image 222

They endured many of the same deprivations the soldiers did.

“The Angels of Bataan (also known as the “Angels of Bataan and Corregidor” and “The Battling Belles of Bataan”) were the members of the United States Army Nurse Corps and the United States Navy Nurse Corps who were stationed in the Philippines at the outset of the Pacific War and served during the Battle of the Philippines (1941–42)

. When Bataan and Corregidor fell, 11 Navy nurses, 66 army nurses, and 1 nurse-anesthetist were captured and imprisoned in and around Manila.“

“They continued to serve as a nursing unit while prisoners of war

. After years of hardship, they were finally liberated in February 1945.“

At Santo Tomas

image 221
image 221

Army Nurses in Santo Tomas, 1943. Left to right: Bertha Dworsky; Sallie Durrett; Earlene Black; Jean Kennedy; Louise Anchieks; Millei Dalton.

“The campus of the University of Santo Tomaswas converted to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp

by the Japanese during their occupation of the Philippines.“

“The camp is described in detail in The War by Ken Burns

. 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.

image 220
image 220

US Government Poster

“Lt. Juanita Redmond

, 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.”

Angels of Bataan – Wikipedia

 

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?

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
image 223

Naturally, I had questions for the driver on the way:

  1. if the guy has a bike will they catch him. He says yes. They normally catch people within 24 hours.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

What do mediocre employees do that the best employees don’t do?

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

World Hal Turner 14 February 2024

Roscosmos Feb 9 2024 MoD Launch large
Roscosmos Feb 9 2024 MoD Launch large
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
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
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.

Kicked her off

Ukraine Sinks Russian Navy Ship in Black Sea

World Hal Turner 14 February 2024

Ukraine sinks another Russian Ship 02 14 2024 large
Ukraine sinks another Russian Ship 02 14 2024 large
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
Ukraine Sinks Russian Navy Ship in Black Sea

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
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
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.”

Shortly after the Moody’s report appeared Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah set out to increase the pressure on Israel:

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.

Rarely mentioned in western news is the extend of Hizbullah’s activities against the military of the Zionist entity:

Al-Manar correspondent:

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.

Hala Jaber @HalaJaber – 23:01 UTC · Feb 13, 2024

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:

Amal Saad @amalsaad_lb – 10:58 UTC · Feb 14, 2024

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

Who makes the best cheese burger in America?

 

Has a friend ever hurt you so badly, emotionally speaking, that you considered not being friends anymore?

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.

 

Employers Do NOT Want To Hire Gen Z

What are the best new products or inventions that most people don’t know about?

How did a lake go from this:

image 227
image 227

to this?

image 226
image 226

The reason is this man:

image 225
image 225

… and one incredible invention he made.

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
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!

Prep Time: approx. 1 hr. 

Cook Time: approx. 40 Minutes. 

Ready in: less than 2 hours

Ingredients:

  • Pie Crust
    • 5 cups of flour
    • ½ teaspoon salt
    • 1 cup warm water
    • ½ lb melted butter
  • Filling
    • ¾ lb spinach (remove stems from the end)
    • ½ cup yogurt or cottage cheese
    • ½ lb Feta cheese
    • ½ cup parsley
    • 2-3 stems of chopped scallions
    • 3 tablespoons parsley
    • Salt & Pepper
    • 2 tablespoons butter
    • 3 eggs

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
2024 02 13 17 09

Ingredients

  • 1 pound sweet Italian sausage links, casing removed
  • 6 large eggs
  • 20 ounces frozen chopped spinach, thawed, squeeze dry or 1 pound fresh salad spinach leaves, stemmed
  • 1 pound mozzarella cheese, shredded
  • 5 1/2 ounces (1/2 container) ricotta cheese
  • 1/8 teaspoon pepper
  • 10 to 11 ounces piecrust mix or 2 (9-inch) deep dish pie crusts

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. Crumble sausage in a medium skillet and brown meat over medium heat, breaking up with a spoon. Drain on paper towels.
  3. 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.
  4. Separate 1 egg. Combine 5 eggs with 1 egg white, sausage, spinach mozzarella, ricotta and pepper and set aside.
  5. 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.
  6. Mix egg yolk with 1 tablespoon water and brush on top of pie. (Can decorate with scraps of dough.)
  7. Bake for 1 hour, 10 minutes until golden and bubbly. Check crust after 1 hour and put foil on edges to prevent over-browning.
  8. Let stand for 10 minutes and cut OR chill uncovered until cold; cover and refrigerate until serving cold.

 

Internet Crazy

What was your most horrible wedding experience as a guest?

It wasn’t ‘horrible’ exactly but… maybe just odd.

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

 

What is the greatest display of kindness you have witnessed in your life?

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.

 

You’re Not Broken, The Dating World Is

What did your boss do that you decided to quit?

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

Spaghetti Heaven!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

When I lived in The ‘States, spaghetti was my primary food. It was affordable, tasty and easy to make. I would cook up hamburger (mince) and then add it to spaghetti with some peppers and onions.

When I moved to China, I learned about REAL noodles… and all sorts of different variations. All so darn yummy.

Zha Jiang Mian (Old Beijing Fried Sauce Noodle, 炸酱面)

A popular classic Beijing dish, Zha Jiang Mian features ground pork and onion cooked in a rich savory brown sauce with a hint of sweetness, tossed with noodles and then served with crunchy cucumber. It takes no time to prepare, is easy to cook, and can be prepared ahead of time. It’s a perfect one-bowl dish for hot days and is great for meal prep as well.

220608 Zha Jiang Mian 1
220608 Zha Jiang Mian 1

 

What is Zha Jiang Mian

Zha Jiang Mian (炸酱面), or translated literally, fried sauce noodles, is one of the most classic and famous dishes in Beijing cuisine. It’s not as fancy or well-known as Peking Duck, but if you travel to Beijing, locals will always recommend this dish to you.

My parents told me that zha jiang mian was a dish for poor people. The traditional recipe uses a thick salty soybean paste to make the sauce, together with a bit of ground pork and sometimes lard. The sauce becomes so rich and flavorful that you only need a small amount of it to accompany a whole bowl of noodles. This way, people don’t need to spend much to fill up their bellies.

Although it seems like a simple dish, it has a whole set of rules that govern how it’s served in Beijing. It is called Old Beijing Fried Sauce Noodles here, and this is considered the most traditional and authentic way to prepare the dish. In addition to the sauce made from yellow soybean paste, the dish is often served with sliced cucumber, sliced red radish, boiled bean sprouts, and yellow soybeans. By adding all these things to the noodles, you can create a balanced and flavorful dish that is refreshing and has a good texture.

220608 Zha Jiang Mian 3
220608 Zha Jiang Mian 3

 

Why this recipe

However, the recipe I’m sharing today is different from the traditional way of cooking Zha Jiang Mian. This is a family recipe that was passed down from my grandma, and I think it tastes much better than the traditional one.

Secret Ingredient: Sweet Bean Paste 

Instead of yellow soybean paste, my family uses sweet bean paste (Tian mian jiang, 甜面酱) to make Zha Jiang Mian. It is a thick dark brown sauce made from fermented wheat flour. Tian Mian Jiang is less salty than yellow soybean paste and has a slightly sweet flavor (It is the same sauce that accompanies Peking Duck and Moo Shu Chicken). It has a more delicate flavor and is less overwhelming than yellow soybean paste. Sometimes Chinese restaurants label it as hoisin sauce. But sweet bean paste is less sweet and has a deeper fermented umami than hoisin sauce.

You can find sweet bean paste at Chinese markets and many Asian markets. You can also purchase it on Amazon.

220608 Zha Jiang Mian 5
220608 Zha Jiang Mian 5

 

A more satisfying sauce

The traditional Zha Jiang Mian uses very little pork in the sauce. Because the dish is created for a budget meal, like I mentioned above.

For the homemade version, my mom uses much more pork and chopped onion to create a much better texture and more delicious sauce. Since sweet bean paste is less salty than soybean paste, you will also use more sauce per bowl of noodles, which makes the dish more balanced and satisfying. 

My mom likes to chop a fattier block of pork into small cubes instead of using ground pork, to achieve a better mouthfeel. Here I used ground pork to make prep much easier. But feel free to use cut-up pork for your dish if you prefer.

Ingredients

When you’re ready to cook, your counter should have:

  • Sweet bean paste and water
  • Sliced cucumber (and other toppings if you prefer)
  • Minced ginger
  • Shaoxing wine
  • Oil for cooking
  • Ground pork
  • Chopped onion
220608 Zha Jiang Mian 2
220608 Zha Jiang Mian 2

Type of noodles for Zha Jiang Mian

There are a few options for Zha Jiang Mian. Traditional Zha Jiang Mian uses a rather thick type of noodles. It’s a bit similar to udon noodles in terms of thickness, but with a chewier texture. 

If you have access to Asian market, try to find fresh noodles in the refrigerated section. The Lan Zhou Fresh Noodles or Da Xi Bei GunGun (my favorite) by HAVISTA, and the Plain Noodles from Twin Marquis are great options. You can freeze the portion you’re not using for up to 6 months.

If you can only find dried noodles, that’s totally fine. You can use either the thick type or thin types of noodles, depending on the texture you prefer. Make sure to use noodles made from wheat flour and water (there shouldn’t be eggs or other ingredients).

If you’re up for a fancier meal, check out my homemade hand pulled noodles for a more authentic experience.

Topping options

You can serve your Zha Jiang Mian with no toppings and the result will still be delicious. For a better texture, my favorite topping is sliced cucumber. Other crunchy vegetables such as sliced radish (red, daikon, or watermelon radish), blanched bean sprouts, and sliced carrots are great options as well. You can also add a small handful of salad greens to the dish. 

TIP: If you find slicing vegetables too time consuming, use a julienne peeler to save time.

An untraditional topping

Unlike the traditional way of serving Zha Jiang Mian, my mom loves to add scrambled eggs and tomato as a topping. This is a family tradition and I’ve never seen other people serve Zha Jiang Mian this way. But I love how it tastes. The tender tomatoes and eggs add more volume to the noodles and balance out the rich brown sauce, making the dish so delicious and colorful! 

How to cook zha jiang mian

Mix the sweet bean sauce

Sweet bean sauce is a thick paste that’s easy to burn in a hot pan. So you will need to add water to it to thin it out before cooking. It’s like the idea of miso paste, as you should dissolve it in water beforehand. 

Cooking Zha Jiang Mian sauce

  1. Gently cook the ginger
  2. Pan fry the pork
  3. Add the sauce
  4. Simmer to bring the flavor out of the sauce
  5. Add the onions and cook until tender
  6. Stir and serve!

The sweet bean sauce needs to be cooked for long enough to bring out the best flavor. That’s why you will start with a diluted sauce, and it will gradually thicken until it’s done. Make sure to stir the sauce frequently during the cooking, so it won’t burn on the bottom of the pan.

2024 02 11 10 29
2024 02 11 10 29
2024 02 11 10 2ttt9
2024 02 11 10 2ttt9
220608 Zha Jiang Mian 4
220608 Zha Jiang Mian 4

Cook the noodles and assemble

When the sauce is simmering, you can start a pot of water to cook the noodles. Because the Zha Jiang Mian sauce will be piping hot once it’s done, you can boil the noodles at the end, when the sauce is almost ready.

To assemble, transfer noodles to individual bowls and add a spoonful of the sauce. And top it with vegetables as you like. Then you can mix it all together and eat it.

My family’s recipe not only preserves all the deliciousness of a bowl of traditional Zha Jiang Mian, but also tastes better and is super comforting. Add a spoonful of sauce to the noodles and gently mix them; you will smell the pungent aroma and be unable to resist picking up the chopsticks and digging in. 

220608 Zha Jiang Mian 8
220608 Zha Jiang Mian 8

More delicious noodle recipes

Guys, this dis is authentic, and super delicious. If you love American (Western) “spaghetti with meat sauce”, you will absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this dish. It is worth the time to prepare correctly.

However, if you are in the West, go to any Chinese family run… Chinese restaurant, and ask for Zha Jiang Mian.

Pronounced like a “ja”. Say it twice fast as in “ja-ja”. Add “mian” which is noodles in Chinese. You say…

 ja-ja mian.

Or if you are shy ask for …

Ja-ja noodles.

You’ll love them.

zha jiang mian
zha jiang mian

Today…

What is the most condescending advice you received from someone who assumed you were poorer or less educated than them?

Originally Answered: What is the most condescending advice you received from someone who assumed you were poor or less educated than they were?

I worked at Trader Joe’s for 3 years while I was pursuing my Ph.D. One day, a woman and her granddaughter came through my lane. The girl, about 12, remarked that she thought it would be fun to work at Trader Joe’s someday. Her grandmother winked at her and said, “Oh I think you can do a little better than that.”

I continued scanning her groceries and said, “Keep it in mind if you’re ever in school getting your Ph.D. The flexible hours and benefits are great so you can focus on your studies.” I looked directly at the grandmother and said, “At least that’s how it’s working out for me.”

The woman was embarrassed, but I continued, talking again to the granddaughter. “And, just remember, a job you love and enjoy is the most important part.”

This is just ONE example of hundreds. Customers coming through my lane acting as though the only reason for me being there was because I was too dumb, too lazy, too whatever to be their equal. I worked with people with their MBA, artists, and people who didn’t have a college degree but were the hardest workers I’ve ever known before or since.

 

 

Ukraine SitRep: A Hated New Commander – Critical Lack Of Infantry

The Ukrainian President Zelenski has fired the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces General Zaluzny.

Zaluzny was replaced by General Syrski, a somewhat unexpected choice as Syrski is hated by the troops for pushing them into meat grinders without a perspective of winning. Syrski, who was born as a Russian, had lost the cauldron battles of Debaltsevo (2015), Soledar (2023) and Bakhmut (2023). Currently Avdeevka is in a cauldron and likely to fall.

Rumors say that Syrski already ordered reserves to reinforce the troops in Avdeevka. Russian FAB bombs will welcome them.

The Economist describes Syrski as thus:

General Syrsky has a reputation for being willing to engage the enemy, even if the cost in men and machines is high. He is a divisive figure who provokes strong reactions from serving officers. Some praise his professionalism, others say he terrifies his subordinates and rules by fear. He is less likely to question the priorities of his president. As he takes on the top job, he will have to soften his style of command and learn to speak truth to power.

The reorganisation will also cause disruption as officers shift to new positions in the chain of command. It is important that these changes do not degrade Ukraine’s capacity to fight. Before long, the country will need a new mobilisation even if General Syrsky uses his troops mostly for defence—as, for now, he should.

Simplicius discusses the most plausible reason why Zalauzny got fired and Syrski promoted:

Ask yourself, why would Zelensky appoint a commander that the entire armed forces allegedly hates?

In fact, this is a ‘design feature’ not a bug.

Recall that the reason Zaluzhny was given the boot was he had become too powerful: he was too loved by the troops, and by the people. Why? One of the reasons is likely because he fought for the troops multiple times. In early 2023, documents were leaked showing that he nearly begged Zelensky to pull troops back from Bakhmut, but the narco-Fuhrer refused, wanting it as a symbolic city defense—perhaps taken with romantic delusions of Stalingrad.

During the grand summer ‘counteroffensive’, Zaluzhny pulled the brigades of the 10th Army Corps back and began to use them sparingly—much to the chagrin and disapproval of US sponsors—after the initial first few wipes devastated columns of Leopards and Bradleys along the infamous road of death near Rabotino and Mala Tokmachka.

Recently it was claimed Zaluzhny likewise attempted to get Avdeevka totally withdrawn. It does not seem that he likes to waste men for what he knows to be fruitless efforts. Syrsky on the other hand appears glad to grind them down.

So, has it become obvious yet? Zelensky needs a commander-in-chief he can control, someone not universally loved by the troops; someone who cannot use those troops at a time of opportunity to ‘march on Kiev’ and oust Zelensky from his citadel. Syrsky appears to fit the perfect prototypical role: undefiant, unpopular, uncharismatic, and most importantly, untempted by political ambitions—the ideal subserviant factotum to Zelensky’s regime.

There is no word yet what Zaluzny is going to do. He has the respect of the troops and good relations with the ‘nationalists’, i.e. the Nazi fringe militia of Ukraine. He also has the support of some politicians opposed to Zelenski.

A coup is thereby a possible outcome of this change.

Yesterday a Washington Post article, sources from interviews at the Ukrainian front, describes the utter shamble the Ukrainian forces are in:

In interviews across the front line in recent days, nearly a dozen soldiers and commanders told The Washington Post that personnel deficits were their most critical problem now, as Russia has regained the offensive initiative on the battlefield and is stepping up its attacks.

One battalion commander in a mechanized brigade fighting in eastern Ukraine said that his unit currently has fewer than 40 infantry troops — the soldiers deployed in front-line trenches who hold off Russian assaults. A fully equipped battalion would have more than 200, the commander said.

Under normal circumstances a mechanized battalion is supposed to hold a 3 kilometer long frontline. With only 40 infantry soldiers available that becomes an impossible task. The further deterioration from that depleted state will be rapid.

Oleksandr, a battalion commander, said the companies in his unit on average are staffed at about 35 percent of what they should be. A second battalion commander from an assault brigade said that is typical for units that carry out combat tasks.

Asked how many new soldiers he has received — not including those who have returned after injuries — Oleksandr said his battalion was sent five people over the past five months. He and other commanders said the new recruits tend to be poorly trained, creating a dilemma about whether to send someone immediately onto the battlefield because reinforcements are needed so badly, even though they are likely to get injured or killed because they lack the know-how.

“The basis of everything is the lack of people,” Oleksandr said.

“Where are we going? I don’t know,” he added. “There’s no positive outlook. Absolutely none. It’s going to end in a lot of death, a global failure. And most likely, I think, the front will collapse somewhere like it did for the enemy in 2022, in the Kharkiv region.”

The new Ukrainian mobilization law, which is supposed to refill the army with fresh bodies, is still creeping through the Ukrainian parliament. It will likely come into force only by April. The first new troops conscripted under it will take until July to be combat capable. One wonders is the current Ukrainian army can hold that long.

Posted by b on February 9, 2024 at 7:41 UTC | Permalink

My Wife/Her Friends Expected Me To Pay For Their $700 Dinner Bill, Instead I Walked Out!

https://youtu.be/CoEUiOE7044

As a police officer, what type of crimes are virtually never solved?

There are already some good answers here. One type of crime that has a low solvability is the “one off” variety, e.g. an offense the perpetrator does once before moving on. Solvability gets even lower if the crime is committed with no other connection between actor and victim.

For example, say that I am on a cross-country road trip, and take a detour to Ames, Iowa. I’ve never been there. I take I-80 to I-35 North, and stop off at a gas station/convenience store somewhere around Ames. I cover my license plates just before I get there, park around back or some other place where there are few surveillance cameras, and walk inside, robbing the store. I go back to my car, drive a few miles before getting rid of the license plate covers, and resume my trip. I stop for gas only at stations around I-80, none on I-35.

I haven’t given the cops much to go on. If I’m careful not to leave fingerprints and wear some clothing that makes it hard to get a good camera shot of my face, the chance this crime is going to be connected to me is pretty low. If I get greedy and use the same tactics at other crime venues, I increase my chances at getting caught with each iteration.

Organized crime hit men use a similar tactic. They take on targets that are outside their usual haunts, and do the deed in a place there are few witnesses. The police local to the site of the crime won’t know anything about the hit man. A federal agent looking for behavior patterns (M.Os. or modus operandi) might pick up the trail, but even that is a long shot, one that gets longer if the M.O. hasn’t been tied to the hit man.

While there are some smart criminals, most people who make it a habit to commit crimes aren’t especially bright, and have signature behaviors that tie the crimes back to them.

What is the most Russian thing ever?

There’s a sport called Airsoft. If you know about it, skip this part, but for those who don’t here’s an explanation.

Airsoft is like paintball, but a lot of its components, i.e. the guns, gear, etc. is a lot more realistic than paintball. A lot of LARPers and MilSim (Military Simulation) guys love doing stuff like that.

The sport started in Japan due to its tough gun laws but the sport soon spread to other places like Britain, America, and… oh… Russia for instance.

In America, MilSim events are huge. There is a lot of preparation involved. People will drop thousands on gear to look like this:

image 147
image 147

This is an image I found off Google. Rifle, easy with all attachments, $300+, not to mention any internal modifications he might have.

Helmet an easy $50, assuming its a nice one. Earpieces have wires, so they’re probably communication linked, noise cancelling and sound enhancing. Easy $70–80. Crye combat pants. $100.

Even vehicles, which probably cost thousands to kit out:

image 148
image 148

As you can see, American MilSimmers are rather dedicated.

However, compared to Russian MilSim events… Well let me just say this. Its like comparing a pickup game of basketball with the neighborhood friends versus an all out NBA game. Take a look at this video.

https://youtu.be/hVyWHsElhME

Fucking hell. Russians bring multimillion dollar TANKS to their Milsim events. Plus, as you saw in the second vid, Russian soldiers got involved to take blank potshots at people to add to realism!

Meanwhile in America you have people arguing about 10 foot engagement distances and bang killing.

Yep. Most Russian thing ever, bring a tank to a toy fight.

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is a traditional Italian pasta from Naples that’s quick to put together from pantry staples. If you have canned tomatoes, garlic, olives, anchovies and capers in your cupboard, you can knock out this simple but flavourful sauce in a flash. It’s a stellar emergency meal everyone should know, with a “saucy” backstory of its own!

2024 02 11 09 18
2024 02 11 09 18

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

There are various colourful stories explaining how this dish came to be, and how Puttanesca pasta got its name. “Puttanesca” roughly translates to “working girls” in Italian (that’s a politically correct term I’m using there!) One tale tells how this dish was invented in the brothels of Naples so the smells wafting from the kitchen would entice potential … errr, clients. Another story claims this pasta was a quick and simple dish ladies of the Neapolitan night could throw together in a hurry in amongst their busy schedules.

Does this kind of talk on a G-rated food blog make you blush? 😉

Whatever the origins, today this is considered a classic and staple Italian pasta recipe. It’s budget-friendly, easy and quick to make, yet delicious enough to woo family and friends (or indeed, “paying customers” … 😉)

2024 02 11 09 19
2024 02 11 09 19

Ingredients in Puttanesca sauce

Being such simple recipe, this is one of those dishes that genuinely benefits from better quality ingredients. In this pasta, the one ingredient I find is really worth seeking out is fresh deli-style olives in olive oil or brine, rather than cheaper jarred ones you find on supermarket shelves.

Oh, also, anchovies – the secret “why is this simple sauce so good?” ingredient. If you skip it, the sauce isn’t quite as good! However you can leave it out if you wish to make the dish vegetarian / vegan (add a little more garlic, capers and olives instead).

2024 02 11 09 194
2024 02 11 09 194
  • Black olives – Try to use good quality, fresh olives from the deli. These come in either olive oil or brine and will add more flavour into the sauce as it simmers compared to bottled ones that come in sealed jars. Both pitted and unpitted are fine but pitting your own is best.
  • Anchovies – This adds savoury flavour and salt to the sauce without leaving it “fishy-tasting”. In fact, you’d have to have a highly attuned palate to be able to taste it at all. The anchovies are finely chopped and dissolve into the sauce, and any strong fishiness disappears leaving just deliciously deep umami.I prefer to use whole anchovies and finely mince it myself because it has better flavour than using anchovy paste. But paste is a handy alternative – my rule of thumb is 1/4 teaspoon of paste per anchovy (so use 3/4 teaspoon in this recipe).
  • Spaghetti – Traditionally made with spaghetti or vermicelli pasta (ie. the thinner spaghetti), though this recipe works just fine with any long pasta. Or short, for that matter!
  • Tomatoes – Not all canned tomatoes are created equal! Better ones are sweeter and break down better to create a sauce. TIP: If you find your tomatoes are a bit on the sour side, just add a touch of sugar to the sauce. It’s a cheat’s way of taking the sour edge off that is a game changer with for example, Spaghetti Bolognese.
  • Capers – Adds little pops of briny goodness and that unique caper flavour to the sauce. I usually use standard size capers. On occasion, I find they can be giant in size so I’ll reach for the baby capers instead. Both work!
  • Garlic – Because this is Italian food!
  • Chilli flakes (aka red pepper flakes) – A pinch of heat is wonderful in this sauce. It’s not a spicy sauce, here it’s just a background hum of warmth.
  • Extra virgin olive oil – For cooking and finishing.
  • Fresh basil and oregano – These finishing herb touches will really lift the dish and return some freshness to the sauce. But if you don’t have them, it is absolutely still worth making using a pinch of dried oregano. Don’t bother with dried basil, it’s basically flavourless.If you don’t have basil, serve with a sprinkle of parmesan instead. The extra flavour will compensate for absence of fresh herb flavour.

How to make Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

Start the sauce first and get it simmering, then cook the pasta. They’ll both finish at the same time, ready to toss together!

2024 02 11 09 20
2024 02 11 09 20

This recipe serves 2. Use a medium size skillet here rather than a very large one, else the sauce will dry out too quickly when simmering. If you’re scaling the recipe up however a large skillet will be necessary to toss the pasta in the sauce (or use a pot for the sauce and tossing).

  1. Sauté aromatics – Start off by sautéing the garlic in olive oil until it starts to go golden on the edges. Then add the finely chopped anchovies, capers, olives and red pepper flakes and cook for a further 1 minute.This sautéing step is key to the flavour of the sauce. It blooms the flavour of the red pepper flakes and even more importantly, takes the raw fishy edge off the anchovies while causing them to break down, ready to dissolve into the sauce.
  2. Add everything else into sauce – Add the can of tomatoes, then add water by rinsing out the can. In goes salt, pepper and fresh or dried oregano, then give it a good stir.
  3. Simmer 10 minutes – Once the sauce comes to a simmer, turn the heat way down to low and let it simmer gently, stirring every now and then, for 10 minutes while the pasta cooks. The tomato will break down, the water will cook out, leaving behind a nice, shiny and thickened sauce. If at any stage it looks like the sauce is drying out (probably due to heat being too strong or using a skillet that’s too large), just add a splash of water.
  4. Cook pasta – Cook the pasta in salted water. Just before draining, scoop out a mugful of pasta cooking water. This is a key, essential step for cooking any pasta (well and properly!). We add a splash into the pasta sauce when tossing with the pasta. Starch that’s left in the cooking water helps emulsify the fats and water in the sauce. This has a thickening effect and also discourages the sauce from separating. The sauce clings deliciously to the pasta strands instead of leaving a watery pool of bland liquid at the bottom of your pasta bowl.You’ll see this step in every pasta recipe on my website. And every household in Italy makes pasta this way!
  5. Combine pasta, sauce and pasta cooking water – After draining the pasta, immediately throw into the sauce along with about 1/4 cup of pasta cooking water. I rarely measure, I just eyeball it.
  6. Toss, toss, toss! With the skillet still on a low stove, use 2 wooden spoons to toss the pasta vigorously for a minute. After 20 or 30 seconds of tossing, you’ll notice that the sauce in the skillet starts clinging to the pasta (thanks to the pasta cooking water!).The pasta is ready when the sauce is all stuck to the pasta rather than sitting in the skillet.Pasta/sauce gets dry – If at any stage the pasta (or sauce) gets too thick or dries out, rather than being slippery and shiny, just add an extra splash of pasta cooking water then toss more. This will resurrect the pasta and makes it “juicy” again. This is why we scoop out a big mugful of pasta cooking water! I do this multiple times when taking photos and shooting videos of pasta because it loses freshness within minutes and I can’t shoot that fast!Sprinkle with basil and serve immediately!
2024 02 11 09 21a
2024 02 11 09 21a

Pro tip: warm your pasta bowlsWatch how to make it

Pasta is a dish that is at its absolute best served hot and fresh. It is never the same reheated. It is also one of the rare dishes where I make the effort to warm serving bowls, to preserve the heat of the pasta when eating. I just pop them in a 70C / 160F oven to warm before I start cooking, or in the microwave for a minute before serving. It’s worth the small effort, especially in winter!

2024 02 11 09 22w
2024 02 11 09 22w
2024 02 11 09 23g
2024 02 11 09 23g

What to serve with Puttanesca pasta

Parmesan?

Puttanesca is traditionally not served with the typical shower of parmesan because it already has plenty of salt and savouriness from the flavour-packed ingredients. But I won’t stop you if that’s how you want to roll.

Having said that, if I don’t have fresh basil sometimes I use parmesan to compensate as a finishing touch (no it’s not the same thing at all, but I like to have a garnish).

Sides!

In my world, Puttanesca is planted firmly in the “emergency pantry meals” bucket so you won’t get a side salad if I make this for you. It’s also technically 95% vegetables anyway! 😉 However, if you’re after a super quick one that’s on-theme, Rocket with Shaved Parmesan fits the bill with a side of hot buttery garlic bread or focaccia (I’m very proud of this recipe, I hope you try it one day!).

Add a Tiramisu for dessert or Italian Almond cookies with coffee, and suddenly this humble “quick pantry dinner” has transformed into a full blown Italian dinner menu!

Watch how to make it

https://youtu.be/9i-KRU3wEok

I have an employee who constantly steals other people’s lunches. Do I fire him?

Yes. Always.

We had a 10 year employee working at my store named (ummmm) “Suzy”. She was the community out-reach leader (and amazing at it) and the intimates / beauty department manager. She had a perfect attendance record. She was one of TWO “Exceeds Expectations” leaders in the entire store. She went to EVERY fundraising event and was absolutely one of the most delightful human beings I ever worked with.

I was in the break room with the store manager. In walked “Suzy”. She opened the fridge, dug out a bottle of iced tea. Said (out loud), “No name! Fair game!” and opened it and drank it. We didn’t even have time to stop her. We saw her take an item from the fridge. There was no moral dilemma on our part. The front of the fridge had a sign on it saying, “If it’s not yours and you take it, it’s theft. Period.” We had a camera pointing at the fridge because food theft had been a past issue.

“Suzy” was walked off the property the same day.

She was stunned. “But I have perfect attendance. I’ve gotten exceeds expectations on every review. I’m the community captain.” It absolutely broke my heart (she was one of my all time favorite employees). We had to explain to her, “Nobody gets immunity to the rules. You cannot be the greatest employee ever and expect that you earn some kind of points that grant you forgiveness, especially in an area so critical to trust and morale. All theft is treated the same, regardless of size or intent. You took something that didn’t belong to you.”

Theft is and should always be treated with absolute zero tolerance. No exceptions ever. Making exceptions demands future exceptions for all people. Making exceptions about theft opens the door to low standards. Better to fire all the perpetrators and shut the unit down until backfill can be identified than to allow a thief to continue being employed for even one second.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Demise of Europe

https://youtu.be/Wbul826yfp8

 

How can parents be so unloving that they would make their own child homeless by kicking him or her out into the street?

I did it.

My son stole $2000 in a locked box from under my bed as I slept. He knew I needed that money to do badly needed repairs on the house we had just moved back into after a divorce. He had just gotten out of a juvenile treatment facility. He refused to get a job. He kept bringing a friend over at night when I was working.

My house reeked of marijuana every morning when I got home. They ate my food. He was 18. A legal adult. When I discovered he stole the money I had him arrested.

He was put in jail. No one would bail him out so he stayed there for three months. At court I told him I did not want to see him until he was a contributing member of society. He had to have a legal job…not selling street drugs etc. He was given time served plus probation and had to pay restitution. He got out of jail and lived with the kid who had been hanging out at my house.

His mother kicked them both out. My son found his birth father and stayed with him. He soon learned the man’s sole goal in life was to stay high. My son then stayed with another friend, couch surfed.

Lived in an office building bathroom. Then with a woman who was crazy. Then a friend rescued him. He lived with them and their father for two years.

They made him stay clean, clean up after himself, eat healthy, get and keep a job. He then asked if he could come back home.

He is now 24. The other day he thanked me for holding him accountable. He has a job he enjoys and is saving money for a future. Some kids just need tough love.

This is funny

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CzpyaT2oF_0?feature=share

 

What are some funny things you’ve seen happen with the police chasing someone on foot?

My husband is a retired Royal Thai police officer. He rarely told me much about his days, not wanting me to worry, get upset.

He did, however, share a few events that had me laughing…

Story 1

Husband and his men were chasing a small group of meth dealers who abandoned their car and ran into the tall grass of a swampy field.

Husband has the usual regulation, very short hair and was wearing a bright orange vest that was clearly marked POLICE, front and back, in huge English and Thai letters.

He waded into the swamp and stood next to one of the meth dealers who told him to take off the bright vest because the police were searching the area!

Story 2

Husband and his guys raided a gambling den at dawn. The players, many of whom were very drunk, ran to their motorcycles, trucks and cars to get away.

Four men staggered to their car but were stunned because the police seemed to be keeping pace on foot with their ‘pedal to the metal,’ speeding car.

In fact, they had jumped into an abandoned car that had no engine and hadn’t noticed they hadn’t moved at all.

Story 3

‘Uncle’ Tan was a quiet, older man who grew veggies and sold them from the back of his pick-up.

Officers received a call saying that Uncle had unsuccessfully tried to rob a local shop with a plastic water pistol and was walking down the highway, TOWARDS the police station.

He seemed pleased when he was arrested.

As was the norm, he was told he could be held for 48 hours in the police station jail, longer if a judge deemed it necessary. Uncle perked up at the possibility of ‘longer.’

The officers were puzzled until the truth came out: his wife’s sisters were coming for their yearly visit, and Uncle said that he was just too old to go through that hell again. He had thought he would be in jail for weeks.

The judge showed leniency, asking the police to hold Uncle until it was deemed safe for him to go home.

* Note: this was NOT in husband’s district.

Due to the numerous US military bases in countries close to China and the creation of the AUKUS, is China imprisoned?

Does it occur to you it could be the U.S. that could be imprisoned? If the U.S. ends up spending tons of money meaninglessly and without a return and yet it cannot stop spending billions to continuously do shit that don’t pay it is the U.S. that is trapped. China don’t gives a shit it simply just let the US waste all it money bribing nations who refuse to do shit, just to pretend to the world it has allies.

For us in Asia. Even Japan, Korea, Phillipines and India have no wish to do shit as it knows the repercussions and it has been China’s neighbour for some 5000 years! It may have no choice but to barked some shit on China to get the U.S. off its back. But sure won’t risk it to do more than that. So the U.S. having a pay billions get some pretend shit is outright silly and wasteful.

So who is trapped? China can and will do what it wants. And the U.S. has to stay and waste a ton of resources to get pretentious shit that China gives a damn. To me the U.S. is trapped in its own stupidity!

 

 

What are the best ways to improve your personality?

Best ways to improve personality :

  • Groom yourself, even if you’re living alone . Keep your beard clean and trimmed. Girls may wax, if necessary.
  • Always carry a wallet, Comb, Belt, Perfume, a pen with you.
  • Workout at least 1 hour a day, it’s the least you could do for your body.This will keep your confidence up, your body healthy and your face free of pimples.
  • Cover your mouth while sneezing, coughing, etc. Say ‘Sorry/Excuse me’ afterward.
  • Invest in your own personal hygiene like flossing your teeth, cleaning your mouth, wearing cologne.
  • Speak a bit less and think before you speak because one wrong word can hurt your personality.
  • Talk looking into the eyes of the other person.
  • Be a man of your words , If you promise to do something for someone, make sure you do it .
  • Show respect for other person’s opinion. Never tell a person he or she is wrong.
  • Learn the difference between Ego and Self-respect. There’s a very thin line between them.
  • Hustle as much as you can. Fast success brings ego, slow success builds personality.
  • Do Meditation.(Meditation transforms you into a new human)
  • Never make fun of someone’s disability whether it’s financial, mental or physical.
  • Never hesitate meeting new people. People have own experiences and knowledge to share with you.

Mushrooms!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZEjDf2o21kI?feature=share

What is the most ludicrous thing someone got fired for at your job?

My coworker, Marty, at the Department of Correction was fired after bantering with our department’s business manager. She was a diva with a (very) high opinion of herself and one morning Marty told her that she looked “nice”.

She cocked her hip and smiled at him, and asked if he was implying that she didn’t look good every day. Marty responded that she did, indeed, look good and that she looked good enough to eat. That ended the conversation and I went on my merry way.

When I returned to the office late that afternoon, another coworker pulled me aside and asked, breathlessly, if I’d heard about Marty. I hadn’t — I’d been out installing computers in a prison all day — so she said that he’d been fired! For sexual harrassment! The diva business manager had filed a complaint against him.

I immediately tracked my boss down and told her the complaint was bullshit, and that I’d witnessed the entire exchange. She said that her hands were tied because Marty admitted saying the diva looked good enough to eat. It was considered inappropriate verbiage for the workplace and the diva insisted that she would be uncomfortable working with Marty.

I kept my contact and conversations with her to a minimum from that day on.

 

How to use a telephone

Cool vintage stuff…

telephone guide 1951 4
telephone guide 1951 4
telephone guide 1951 5
telephone guide 1951 5
telephone guide 1951 6
telephone guide 1951 6
telephone guide 1951 7
telephone guide 1951 7
telephone guide 1951 8
telephone guide 1951 8
telephone guide 1951 9
telephone guide 1951 9
telephone guide 1951 10
telephone guide 1951 10
telephone guide 1951 11
telephone guide 1951 11
telephone guide 1951 12
telephone guide 1951 12
telephone guide 1951 13
telephone guide 1951 13
telephone guide 1951 14
telephone guide 1951 14
telephone guide 1951 15
telephone guide 1951 15
telephone guide 1951 16
telephone guide 1951 16
telephone guide 1951 17
telephone guide 1951 17
telephone guide 1951 18
telephone guide 1951 18
telephone guide 1951 19
telephone guide 1951 19

How does China’s exclusion from the International Space Station affect its space ambitions?

China has been excluded from the ISS project, which has greatly promoted the development of China’s aerospace technology.

You can imagine that 20 years ago, several young people decided to save money to buy a car and then use it together. The Chinese were excluded. He was told: Your money is dirty and we will not accept it.

You have to understand that Russia, which the United States considers an enemy, is accepted, while China is excluded. How humiliating is this to China?

image 146
image 146

The young man decided not to pray to join but to work hard on his own. Finally, he made enough money to buy a car of his own. A new car that belongs only to him.

The group of young people who pooled their money to buy a car are still using that old car together, even though it is very old. All participants are not yet able to buy their own cars.

When they saw a Chinese driving a new car alone, they were filled with envy, but they said: His car is smaller than ours!

Let us assume that if China was allowed to join, what would be the result? They may have a module on the ISS, but they will never have their own CSS.

image 6
image 6

Now everything has changed

The Chinese space station is so advanced that they even use Hall thrusters to maintain orbit without having to consume a lot of fuel like the ISS.

Famous media commented that the interior of CSS is like an Apple store, while the ISS is like an old grocery store.

Were you thinking this?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_DlekPAikOo?feature=share

 

What stupid thing did you do when you were a child that turned out to be very funny?

My father was a very serious and strict man. We lived in a nice house with a covered front porch on a hill overlooking a valley. One day when I was 10 yrs. old I was with my father on the porch ,there was a man dressed in a suit and tie and they were discussing serious business. I knew not to disturb them in any way. I had to remain quiet so I quickly became bored. I looked around the porch for something of interest when I spotted a small stone on the floor. When I picked it up I thought it was such a perfect throwing stone, the shape and the way it fit in my hand I just knew it would travel a record breaking distance down that valley. I took a few steps back so I would be behind dad’s peripheral sight as they both were facing the valley in deep conversation. I focused on a bush for my target . I took a couple deep breaths and threw the stone with every muscle I had.

To my horror the stone slipped out of my hand . I heard a deep moan as my father collapsed to one knee . As he grabbed his left ear he uttered”” “JUMPIN JESUS” WHAT WAS THAT ? I was so afraid I couldn’t speak. The stone had hit the bone behind his left ear and instantly a purple knot appeared . WELL , WHAT WAS IT ? I finally managed to say… a rock.. A ROCK ! Get in the house. Well, lucky for me their conversation lasted longer giving him a cooling off period. When the man left Dad gave me a lecture about throwing rocks and interrupting adults. Surprisingly there was no physical abuse which I expected. Now many years later even though he’s gone , I can hear his voice as if he just now said “WELL, WHAT WAS IT ?” And I get a good laugh about that frightened little boy .

The Imperialist projection against China

image 145
image 145

Do you wonder why I put the Deng Xiaoping face on my post? Because the post I am writing tends to make sense for what I will try to convey. As you know, in the mainstream media, basically the West tends to use this Imperialist projection against the Chinese nation. It has become a human sin for the Chinese people to seek their old legitimate rights such as the right to become rich and powerful, the right to become among the most respected nations it used to be during the Ming towards Qing era.

The mainstream media has changed its focus from China’s rising economic threat towards China being the country seeking sphere of influence in Asia. This projection is among those who had committed this act before. History doesn’t lie, not do the suffering of the people they had to face from the British to the American Imperialism which still is going today in many forms.

China has now become one of the second largest economies in the world and the first if we see it through a PPP basis. The nation’s citizens are now enjoying a much better, high quality life in comparison to what their parents had to face under Mao respectfully. China, just like Deng envisioned, became the county that is leading the world in science, tech, and environment policies where China has been recently focused on being the country focused on building a strong green economy.

Media nowadays tends to portray China as aggressive and imperialist. Every investment China does in other countries is judged as a form of imperialism, every defense that China undertakes or its mission to uniting Taiwan is seem as foreign aggression by the West on China when they only want to take what was lost before. This judgment is not just fueled by the West but also by CINOs, or in other words ‘Chinese just in name’ that have Chinese names and ethnicity but they lack the Chinese spirit to show sympathy for their homeland. Most of these can be found in countries like Malaysia and Singapore or even U.S. who tend to side with the West’s aggression against China. This lack of knowledge is what has made ignorance prevalent today. The lack of the understanding the Chinese mindset and their way of doing things is what made them see China from a hostile viewpoint rather than a positive one.

image 144
image 144

Socialism: what do I mean? Well to understand China’s foreign policy and the way how it perceives the world is through the socialist perspective. You see Socialism didn’t come out of thin air in China. People before Mao used to be exploited, oppressed by the Chiang Khai Shek government. The land was controlled by the foreign businessmen who used China as a source of destination to build capital under the Chinese labour. This unequal relationship between China and the West is what made the Chinese more angrier, coupled with the hate from their humiliation. The weakness of the Chinese civilization is what pursued the Chinese people to seek a new radical solution and that was Socialism which back then Chairman Mao worked tirelessly to increase the support and work towards unifying China.

Its basis was simple: to fight against oppression, build an equal society and bring back China as the nation it once was. Which means an independent, strong China without being anymore humiliated. Thus when Mao United China is the time where humiliation of China ended and China began to recover. During the recovery, China faced many obstacles. Once was the American aggression in Asia, the other was the restrictions which were put against China because they were “Communist,” then the aggression from outside. China, after seeing Korea fall to the American forces, was forced to send its troops and successfully push out the American troops and North Korea was saved. Hence the socialist and proletarian cause was built on self defense and defending neighbours from Imperialist aggression that came from thousand miles away.

image 143
image 143

After Chairman Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping came to power, which is praised for the new reforms that brought China to the place it is today. A new socialist modern economy built by Chinese people and a strong country looking to move forward even more and bring back the national rejuvenation to the Chinese people. The Deng Xiaoping goal was to always revitalize China which is now being carried by the leader Xi Jinping. Which meant a rich China which used to be under Qing before the Imperialist oppresion, a strong China in Asia and a China that is respected and seen as the gateway to the Eastern civilization and not a China that will replace the role of the West.

Deng Xiaoping in a public forum told others:

China shall always belong to the Third World and shall never seek hegemony. This idea is understandable because China is still quite poor, and is therefore a Third World country in the real sense of the term. The question is whether or not China will practise hegemony when it becomes more developed in the future. My friends, you are younger than I, so you will be able to see for yourselves what happens at that time. If it remains a socialist country, China will not practise hegemony and it will still belong to the Third World. Should China become arrogant, however, act like an overlord and give orders to the world, it would no longer be considered a Third World country.

What do these words mean? It is simple. The leader who laid out the reforms for his nation and the next vision, he is also the one who made sure to future generations to always see China as a nation similar with others of the third world. He never advocated a China which replaces the West’s role, he never advocates for a dominated Chinese power that controls Asia in the similar way of how United States has controlled South America.

This is also one of the main factors that led China into creating SCO and BRICS organizations, because the vision is simple: to build prosperity and encourage integration and connectivity with the third world that includes all of the former nations that were once colonized and exploited. Anti-Imperialism is after all something that has been pushed from Marxists itself, because the concept or freedom isn’t mainly focused on ending exploitation but also imperialism that caused the third world to suffer under the hands of the Western nations, that exploited its natural resources to feed their population.

Anyone who tends to see China in a Western way then that kind of thinking is bound to fail and even insult your own intelligence. No rational person would be crazy enough to compare China to a Western country and I believe the track records of US and other western countries, tells us a lot about the morality that the West loves to show many times.

But what kind of vision then does China see for the world?

image 142
image 142

Of course the role that China will play will fundamentally change the world in many ways, and right now we are already noticing many changes especially in Asia. We are seeing a role that keeps growing each year. And a strong China is at the same time bringing a good balance to the world especially when it’s necessary to counter the bi-polar world order by US

  1. Multipolarism: China’s idea of Multipolsrism came even more to light after the importance and value of BRICS began to rise. This is in vision with Deng Xiaoping’s stance who’s always have said to never seek hegemony. China sees Multilateralism as the only way to bring equality to the world order where some certain nations seek a greater role in the world affairs and share a certain security to meet the world challenges.
  2. New Financial system: Putin in the interview with Tucker laid out a very good critique of the US dollar. He mentioned how the United States’ policies towards other rivalries have caused mass panic in the world, and it is true in many ways. After the Russia war in Ukraine began, the West was so quickly to launch the heaviest sanctions in history. This didn’t collapse Russia’s economy and instead they shot themselves in the foot. Because the world for the first time in history was ready to move and make a change in the international order, which was the beginning of implementing new different currencies in trade with other countries. This thing is only going to become more common especially as BRICS advances.
  3. Unity within their territory: Many people tend to see China’s actions in Taiwan in a wrong way but instead this isn’t the case. China has only sought to reunify its territories that were once lost. The ROC and PRC were at civil war which the ROC lost and retreated to Taiwan. Technically they are still at war, because considering that no peace treaty has been made or even ceasefire, this makes it legitimate for China to reunify Taiwan.
  4. The development of BRICS: BRICS will continue to play even more important roles in the next decades, it will be more than just an organization. It will be the representative of the East and of the Global South. It will put the other part of the world in equal footing with the West. This balance is exactly what the whole world should pursue, because the moment there is a balance of power, then you will be at peace and respected. Though my opinion of BRICS might be optimistic, but as of now, I believe that all members have one desire, and that is to seek more independence from the US dollar regime.

 

What are some psychological facts that people don’t know?

Does it really matter which type of clock we are using?

Yes! It does.

Reason is “Those who use ‘Analog clock’ are more aware of the ‘time spent’ & the ‘time left’ than those who use Digital clock”.

How? Is what your question right?

Here we go. Let’s have a look at the digital clock.

image 9
image 9

What did we get? The time is 9:30 & that’s it. Only the current time.

Now, Analog clock.

image 8
image 8

Just look at it. Look at how beautiful it is. What do we observe here? 11:55. That’s it? No. But along with the current time there is something else.

image 7
image 7

This we sense by intuition. An Analog clock resembles a pie chart which can represent selfexpressive data.

Intuition matters! It is the advantage of having Analog clock.

This is not so easy with digital clocks. Because we need to force our brain to calculate the ‘time spent’ ,‘time left’, etc.

The USA is so fucked

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IAFUtL-zOtY?feature=share

 

How does a woman feel when she is getting old and no one wants her?

I’m not getting old. I’m there. I’ll be 77 years old in a couple of weeks, so I believe I qualify to answer this question.

I have a lover who is younger than I am. And if I were to “lose” him, I would readily find another, if I desired it.

However, I pay close attention to my figure, my wardrobe and my makeup. It takes me about half an hour to put my makeup on skillfully enough so I don’t look as though I’m wearing any. I dress nicely even when I have nothing important to do, although I am still in business, which keeps my thinking sharp. I watch what I eat carefully, most days keeping at 1200–1400 calories total for the day. This enables me to have lunch or dinner with my love or friends in a restaurant pretty much any time I wish.

I don’t exercise, though I know I should. However, I have two flights of stairs that I go up and down many, many times per day. I tell myself that this helps.

I read extensively, and not just on the damn internet. I have an immense library and continually add to it. I read in science and in the arts. Although I do try to avoid politics, these days. I am responsible for my feelings, and I like them to remain hopeful and serene. But my reading enables me to converse on many topics. And until Covid, I also traveled, an activity which broadens anyone’s perspective.

So in answer to the question, I feel just fine, thank you very much. And I also feel – and know that I am – desired.

I hope perhaps your young mind has been opened, even a bit. Thanks for the question.

A very good illustration

This is a good illustration why the size and growth of US debt is totally out of whack with the real economy.

American debt is already THE systemic risk to the world economy. There is not enough money in the world to satisfy America’s ravenous appetite, not even if it prints them for free.

This is why the BRICs are desperate for an option to the dollar.

image 141
image 141

 

Have you ever dined at a restaurant that left you thinking ‘is this a joke’?

Hubby and I went to a fancy steakhouse in Atlanta for dinner a few years back. Having checked out the restaurant’s online menu, we made sure we were appropriately dressed—me in a long Italian silk dress and hubby in some business casual outfit. We arrived at the time of our reservation and experienced multiple WTF moments—

1. We were led to a side dining room instead of the fancy main dining room shown on their website. The decor was shall-we-say interesting. It resembled a kindergarten cafeteria, with folding chairs.

2. All the other guests there looked like they had just attended a basketball game.

3. The female manager had a LOW-cut cami and jacket on. Her boobs were 75% exposed.

4. On my way to the ladies’, I passed the kitchen and caught a whiff of rotten fish.

5. Before the server set my plate of scallops down, I smelled a stench that could have only come from decayed seafood.

6. Service was slow, but that was the least of our concerns.

All this cost us $250, tip included.

If you wonder why we did not raise any issues about what we went through, it was a mystery shop. Essentially, I was contracted to observe anything about the restaurant’s operations. In the end, the meal did not cost us anything. We were actually paid some money for the effort. However, the experience was so bad that I did not offer to take the same assignment for several years to come.

Vintage Ads and Celebrities’ Glamour on These Classic Vespa Scooters

Vespa ads 2
Vespa ads 2
Celebrities on Vespa 12
Celebrities on Vespa 12
Celebrities on Vespa 11
Celebrities on Vespa 11
Celebrities on Vespa 8
Celebrities on Vespa 8
Celebrities on Vespa 7
Celebrities on Vespa 7
Celebrities on Vespa 5
Celebrities on Vespa 5
Celebrities on Vespa 4
Celebrities on Vespa 4
Celebrities on Vespa 3
Celebrities on Vespa 3
Celebrities on Vespa 1
Celebrities on Vespa 1

The DELUSIONAL OBSESSION with 6-Figure Salaries in Modern Dating

Future cat ladies. (And I do love my kitties. But no man is going to be able to make them happy.)

https://youtu.be/GvNEtlEb2ss

Italian Drunken Noodles

Italian drunken noodles are my Italian fusion take on one of my favorite Thai-style dishes. Brimming with noodles drenched in a flavorful, wine-infused sauce, bits of spicy Italian sausage, plus sweet bell peppers, onions and basil, this Italian take on drunken noodles is not only scrumptious, but quick and easy to prepare as well!

italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 1 ca
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 1 ca

Yield: 6 servings

An Italian twist to a favorite Thai dish

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of trying Thai drunken noodles (or pad kee mao), you know what an amazingly vibrant, rich and flavorful dish it is.

With ribbons of broad rice noodles drenched in a sweet and savory sauce, charred red and yellow bell peppers and onions, a choice of spicy meat, tofu, or shrimp, and a light flourish of freshly julienned Thai basil, this dish always hits the spot when it comes to all those big flavors I crave in Thai cuisine.

I must admit, whenever I would enjoy this dish, it always made me wonder what an Italian version of it would taste like…

italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 2 ca
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 2 ca

How to Make Drunken Noodles with an Italian Twist

In keeping with those basic components of noodle, meat, veggie, sauce and herb, it’s easy to see how Thai-style drunken noodles can easily be “morphed” into a brand new, Italian-style dish with a distinctly different flavor profile, while still maintaining the spirit of the original.

This is what I love and appreciate about fusion food!

What I did with this Italian drunken noodles recipe was to substitute wide and tender pappardelle noodles in place of the broad rice noodles, and then switched out some spicy and rich Italian sausage for the tofu, shrimp or chicken typically served in the Thai version.

For the sauce element, I used a tomato base kissed with a hint of wine in order to make the dish a bit “drunken”, and then kept the classic vegetable medley of multi-colored bell peppers and onions, plus that flourish of fresh basil to tie all the flavors together.

Here’s a glance at my Italian drunken noodles recipe: (or just jump to the full recipe below…)

  1. To get things started, I cook my pappardelle noodles according to package instructions, and keep them warm while I prepare the sauce.
  2. For the sauce, I place a large, heavy-bottom pan over high heat, and add a drizzle of olive oil; once hot, I crumble in the spicy sausage and brown it until cooked through, then remove it from the pan.
  3. Next, I caramelize my onions in the pan drippings, then add in my seasoning, followed by my bell peppers, and saute until golden; then, I add in my garlic and wine, reducing that just a bit.
  4. Finally, I add the diced tomatoes, with their juices, into the pan, along with the browned sausage, and allow the mixture to simmer for a couple of minutes; and then, I finish the sauce with a touch more olive oil and some fresh herbs before adding in my warm pappardelle noodles, and tossing everything to combine.
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 3 ca
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 3 ca

Ingredients:

  • 8 ounces pappardelle noodles, uncooked
  • Olive oil
  • 4 spicy Italian sausage links, casings removed
  • 1 large onion, quartered and sliced thinly
  • 1 ½ teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • ½ teaspoon cracked black pepper
  • 1 red bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
  • 1 yellow bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
  • 1 orange bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
  • 4 cloves garlic, pressed through garlic press
  • ½ cup white white (I used Chardonnay)
  • 1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes, with juice
  • 2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped
  • ¼ cup fresh basil leaves, julienned, divided use

Preparation:

  1. Prepare the pappardelle noodles according to instructions on package; then, drain the noodles very well, and keep them warm while you prepare the sauce.
  2. Place a large, heavy-bottom pan or braising pot over medium-high heat, and add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil; once the oil is hot, crumble the spicy Italian sausage into the pan in small chunks (you want to keep the sausage fairly chunky), allowing it to brown in the oil for a few moments on each side; once the crumbled sausage is browned, remove it from the pan/pot with a slotted spoon and place into a small bowl to hold for a moment.
  3. Next, add the sliced onion into the pan with the sausage drippings, and allow it to caramelize and become golden for roughly 5 minutes or so, stirring to keep it from burning (add a touch more olive oil, if necessary); once the onion starts to become golden, add the salt, Italian seasoning and cracked black pepper, and stir to combine.
  4. Add in the sliced bell peppers, and allow those to saute with the onion for about 2 minutes until slightly tender and golden; next, add in the garlic, and once it becomes aromatic, add in the white wine and allow it to reduce for a few moments, until almost completely reduced.
  5. Next, add in the diced tomatoes with their juice, and return the browned spicy Italian sausage back into the pan, and gently fold the mixture to combine; allow it to gently simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavors, then turn the heat off.
  6. To finish the sauce, drizzle in about 2-3 good tablespoons of the olive oil to create a silky, rich flavor, and stir in the chopped parsley and about half of the julienned basil.
  7. Add the cooked pappardelle noodles directly into the sauce, and using tongs, gently toss and combine the noodles with the sauce and all of the ingredients in it; check the seasoning to see if you need to add any additional salt or pepper.
  8. To serve, add equal portions of the Italian drunken noodles to bowls, and garnish with a sprinkle of the remaining julienned basil (you can even top with shaved parmesan, if desired, and an extra drizzle of olive oil).
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 5 ca
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 5 ca

Tips & Tidbits for my Italian Drunken Noodles:

  • The larger the pan, the better: Use a large, heavy bottom pan (cast iron or a Dutch oven) for this dish, as it retains heat well and will give a little extra color and flavor to your peppers and onions; plus, it provides room to add the noodles directly into the sauce at the end, and toss ’em around.
  • Pappardelle are best, but don’t sweat it: Pappardelle noodles are the broad or wide egg noodles that look a bit like “ribbons”, and you should be able to find them in the pasta section in most markets—they really are best for this recipe; but if you can’t find them, feel free to substitute whatever type of pasta noodle you like. The flavor will still be amazing.
  • Go white or go red: White wine is what’s called for in this recipe, but red wine would also be a delicious choice; use whatever you’d actually like to drink with this dish.
  • Looking to leave out the alcohol? No problem: If you’d prefer to leave alcohol out, then simply substitute chicken stock for the wine, and add a little squeeze of lemon at the end for that “brightness” as well.
  • Go Veg: For a meatless version, omit the spicy sausage altogether, and enjoy just the veggies, noodles and sauce; but you can always use a vegetarian “crumble” in this dish as well, or even use cubed tofu to keep in line with the Thai inspiration.
  • Prep ahead: You can make the sauce element of this recipe ahead of time, such as the day before you’d like to serve it, which will actually give the sauce more time to sit and gain deeper flavor; just prepare the noodles the day of, toss with the warmed up sauce, you’re set to go.
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 6 ca
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 6 ca

General Instructions

  1. Place a large, heavy-bottom pan or braising pot over medium-high heat; add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Once the oil is hot, crumble the Italian sausage into the pan in small chunks, allowing it to brown in the oil for a few moments.
  2. When the crumbled sausage is browned, remove it from the pan/pot with a slotted spoon and place into a small bowl to hold for a moment.
  3. Place in the pan the diced bell peppers, salt, Italian seasoning and cracked black pepper. Stir to combine. Allow to sauté for about 2 minutes until slightly tender.
  4. Add the garlic. Once it becomes aromatic, add the white wine and allow it to reduce for a few moments, until almost completely reduced.
  5. Add the diced tomatoes with their juice.
  6. To finish the sauce, drizzle in about 2 to 3 good tablespoons of the olive oil to create a rich flavor.
  7. Add the chopped parsley and about half of the basil.
  8. Return the browned Italian sausage back into the pan and gently fold the mixture to combine. Allow it to gently simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavors. Then turn the heat off.
  9. Stir and keep warm while you prepare the noodles.
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 4 ca
italian drunken noodles 03 03 13 4 ca

 

Will the U.S. really defend Taiwan?

During the debate, KMT Presidential candidate brought up a very good point. The US sold 400 missiles to Taiwan for $6 billion. That came out to be $15 million / missile. But then when the US was defending Israel from attacks they fired those missiles and were reporting that they were expensive $3-million missiles.

Why were they sold to Taiwan at 5x the price? It makes sense if the US is leveraging the reported danger to extract as much value as it can from Taiwan. It doesn’t make sense if it has intentions to defend Taiwan.

The Mainland is ending its preferential treatment towards Taiwan which would hurt the ability for Taiwanese products to be exported to the Mainland. The US can help mitigate the impact to the Taiwanese economy by increasing imports from Taiwan and signing a free-trade agreement but it hasn’t.

How can anyone expect the US to give up its lives for Taiwan if it can’t even give up a bit of its profit?

 

What are some tips for becoming successful?

Tips for becoming successful :

  • Always keep a diary and a pen with you. Whenever you get any intriguing idea, write that down in your diary. When you open this diary, you’ll realize that you have a great set of ideas.
  • Leave your comfort zone as nothing grows for good there. Take risks in your life. Risks come with reward. Look at the rewards and move ahead.
  • Introspect and improve. Realize your mistakes and improve them. Try your best to not to repeat your mistakes again.
  • Success is something you take by force. No one will give it to you freely.
  • The secret of success is hidden in books and old-school wisdom. Yet most people hate to read books. No wonder, few people are successful.
  • Stop expecting instant satisfaction. Patience, persistence and perspiration are your best friends. Remember that there are NO shortcuts in life.
  • Cry as hard as you want, but make sure that when you stop crying, you never cry for the same reason again.
  • No matter how much it hurts now. Someday you’ll look back and realize, your struggle changed your life for better.
  • If you are an intelligent person, you will try to do what you love the most. But if you are a genius, you will only do what is needed.
  • Students believe that there is only one right answer to every question. That is why people always want to follow the crowd because they think there is only one right way to live life. Find your own way . don’t follow the crowd
  • Putting in the work daily without quitting. Going through the drudgery and mundane tasks repeatedly. Practicing everyday like insane just to master your craft.
  • Don’t bother about the judgements of society, friends, peers and relatives. You want it, go for it. Don’t give a fcuk about others , live your life , give your best
  • And Finally , Make the best out of every hour.

 

Modern women lifestyle

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Bclgu6le1CA?feature=share

Must the CCP fall? They can’t assimilate everyone in China into Chinese culture.

The Chinese Communist Party is not in charge of assimilating everyone into Chinese culture, and it does not promote it. In fact, the Party makes a big deal out of preserving minority cultures, and giving them special advantages such as in numbers of children they can have (unlimited), and giving minority students extra points in the highly competitive university exams. There is some grumbling from Han Chinese about all the benefits minorities get in China.

Some minorities such as the Manchus, some Mongolians and some Tibetans have been absorbed by Chinese culture, not by any government policy. The general rule in China is that any non-Han Chinese minority, if it adopts Chinese language and the Chinese non-nomadic lifestyle, will eventually disappear over several generations.

This is not done because of any government policy; it is just that Han Chinese language and culture have a very strong pull which is hard to resist over time. This is because more than 90% of China’s population is Han Chinese, and once a minority adopts the language and then culture, it loses its own identity.

This is not done under any threat of force, but is done voluntarily by individuals.

 

More fun with the the Vespa scoots…

We start with Ann Margret.

0
0
1960s beauties with vepas 3
1960s beauties with vepas 3
1960s beauties with vepas 4
1960s beauties with vepas 4
1960s beauties with vepas 5
1960s beauties with vepas 5
1960s beauties with vepas 7
1960s beauties with vepas 7
1960s beauties with vepas 9
1960s beauties with vepas 9

Western women are BROKEN

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9lBhgXWuR8s?feature=share

She Made Him Wait, While Keeping a “Friends With Benefits”

The USA is sinking under the deep blue waves…

https://youtu.be/rySWo7F1Tys

What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

It wasn’t so much what my boss said, it was more about what the company did. Being more specific, what the sales department and management did.

At the time I was a senior developer for a medium sized, privately owned and pretty much unheard of software company.

One day I found out, quite by accident, that the sales department had told a prospective client about some wonderful new software that we had.

The only problem with that was this wonderful new software didn’t exist!

So, sales lied to the client.

Then came all the fanfare, because they actually sold it to them… with an impossible delivery date, even for a team five times our size.

The plan was for the dev team to develop this new software working sixty hours a week without overtime pay, while management strung the client along until the final delivery more than a year later.

So there was this big pep talk meeting – you know the ones – we need you guys to help us deliver and all, and we’ll make it up to you afterwards, we promise. We’re a big family and we are in this together and all that kind of stuff.

I didn’t believe a word of it.

After the meeting I confronted my boss who said, “Well, you know how it works.”

At that moment I knew he didn’t have my best interests at heart and I looked at him and said, “I want no part of it.”

Then I got up and left the building without saying another word.

The next day when I didn’t show up for work my boss called me asking where I was. I told him, “Sorry, I thought I was quite clear yesterday, as I said, I quit!”

He said, “But you can’t quit! We need you! You’re our only senior developer!”

And I answered, “Watch me!” and hung up the phone.

It’s been four years now and the company still hasn’t delivered the final version of the software nor has it made good on its promise to their employees!

I’m sure glad I quit when I did!

Different generations

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JM1NfrrC4Pk?feature=share

 

Who was the weirdest classmate that you’ve ever had?

Chad.

You ever have that goofy kid who could never take anything seriously? Who took any opportunity to be the center of attention? Who relished being the class clown and wore the jester’s hat like a triumph? That was Chad. I don’t remember how many grades in elementary school we had together before he and I transferred to other schools at the end of fouth grade, but it was at least a couple. He used to not only drive the teachers crazy but even us students too! Every day we had to bear witness to his never ending shenanigans, sometimes he would start up with a joke and the whole class would collectively groan and grab their faces. If I’m being honest, I was his friend but even I found him to be too much at times, too optimistic, too dramatic, too goofy, too Ace Ventura. I remember thinking, “why can’t he just be normal for a day?”

I went to middle school with some of the kids/friends from this elementary school. One of the popular boys, Randy was one of them. We were talking during free period one day when I brought up Chad. He also remembered him and smiled. We exchanged stories about his greatest hits and laughed. Then he told me something that absolutely broke my heart, and only spoke as a testiment to Chad’s resiliencey. He told me Chad’s stepfather used to beat him, often. At some point the authorities found out and removed him from his home. His everday life at home was hell, his only respite was during the time he was safe and felt safe at school, and Chad always made the most of each moment because he knew when he got home that day and every day after that, there would be no more laughter.

I hope he’s doing better, and I hope he’s happy where ever he is now. It goes to show you never know what someone is going through, even if they smile in your face everday. I have never forgotten about Chad, and I never will.

 

Were you ever treated poorly when you wanted to purchase an expensive item until they found out you were rich?

Just recently actually.

My twins birthday is coming up. And I was thinking of rewarding the missus by upgrading her car to something better.

A Range Rover Evoque 🙂

So the search started, and I finally scored a good deal on this particular high spec (and a higher priced) Evoque that’s is in a dealership nearby to my house.

Off I went. Arrived in my old e46, and I asked to see the car. This local Chinese chap took one look at me, and probably deduced that I was too young, or too shabby looking to even qualify to get an evoque, and decided to reject me.

He told me, put a deposit before even thinking of sitting in the car!

Before you think I made drama, let me tell you that the opposite happened: I smiled and walked back. I don’t necessarily like to deal with idiots, so I don’t mind looking for another.

For some reason, just as I was about to leave, another salesman from India who is working there came to me, apologized profusely and told me that he can serve me better.

I accepted.

I went to see the car, and told him that I would love to take it for a test drive 5 minutes away to my house to show it to my wife to ask her opinion on the spec and color. This guy agreed, and said we could do a short run.

So off we went.

The moment this Indian guy saw the neighborhood and my house, and the cars parked in there, he realized that he scored a lottery prospect.

After that, I was practically given free reign to do unlimited test drives and checks on that car, unaccompanied.

I saw the car on Wednesday. Thursday I contemplated on it with the missus between that or Cayenne. She wanted Range Rover, so be it.

On Friday I agreed and signed the papers in the AM. That evening the bankers called to tell the dealer that the loan passed. This coming Monday I am taking the car, once paperwork’s is completed.

$90 billion spent on disinformation about China, what did the US people get?

This is really great. I really like Charles.

https://youtu.be/IkDmdmfhzU4

 

 

How historically accurate is the theory that the ancient Minoans were actually in fact the mythical empire of Atlantis or at least the inspiration behind it?

Of course, only Plato could answer this accurately but here’s my penny:

In Greek mythology, Thera and the eruption are missing and the explanation for this is that the eruption miraculously didn’t affect mainland Greece. The Greek myths that express their collective memory, although they involve foreign lands often, had to be of Greek interest and the eruption, no matter how cataclysmic it was, was not. So, Plato didn’t possibly have a clue about the events of the Bronze Age which took place almost 1,000 years before his time.

image 150
image 150

As you can see, the mainland is out of ash range. Image from https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/santorini/minoan-eruption/size.html

What could be his inspiration for the description of Atlantis then? I can only make assumptions…

However, having in mind that Plato had traveled enough, how about the circular Punic port of Carthage?

image 149
image 149

 

Why do Chinese people think that China is better than the USA?

Security is better. When i studied in Chicago, I was told to always keep 20-dollar life money in the pocket in case anyone wants to rob me, and UChicago has the so called safe ride to take students home because walking alone at night is not safe. Here in Shanghai, Beijing or any major cities (except Guangzhou perhaps), it’s safe for girls to walk alone at night. And people don’t shoot people so often, especially struggling students don’t kill classmates or teachers. At worst, they jump from buildings without harming others.

Second, food is cheap and delicious if you don’t mind antibiotics, additives, pollutants etc. (If you count in unhealthy western food, the Chinese food is not that bad in quality.) Clothes are cheap and good quality. In fact most products made in China are cheap and accessible.

Third, online purchase and delivery and other services based on the internet is incredibly convenient. As long as you don’t care about personal information, China has all kinds of Apps to satisfy your physical and mental needs.

Fourth, the government agencies and hospital systems are much more efficient than those in USA. I am not saying the quality is better but the waiting period is shorter.

One thing I dislike is a must of vpn to access foreign media. But this is like a filter, the gov don’t want ignorant children and people to access to those anti-China information, because they can’t do critical thinking, so the gov thinks that if those were to be brainwashed, they would have to be brainwashed by us not the Western. I am neutral to it. Common people are like pawns, they’d better just stay where they were and do both to avoid being cannon powder.

Family?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2wFvhDKzSjg?feature=share

 

 

Can you tell me about your first camping experience with your family? How old were you and how did it go?

I was 10 my brother was 13 and mom and dad was in there 30. We when to a old run down house that Dad was used to go on fishing trip when he was a kid. Mom said it so run down. Dad said it still got a roof on it. Mom said ok we stayed. We got what fews begs we have out of the car and we when into the house. it started to Strom very bad. We stayed dry in that old house. About two hours passed we was getting our sleeping bags out. We hard a loud pop. The wind had blown a big tree on to the car. The car was totaled. Mom said we 150 miles from home without a car. No one could sleep until the Strom had stopped that was all most 3 hours. By morning there was a new storm and like the other one it to blowed a tree down on to what left of the car. We ended up been there for over a week. Our foods ran out after five days. We all fished for our foods. 6 days in as we was all fishing. A big tree fell onto the dam house. If me and my brother was have been in our room a sleeping we were been hurt or killed.

GAMECHANGER: China Tests ‘Dream Shell,’ Achieving Mach 7 Speed

Wow.

https://youtu.be/HHK6Yfk5wuA

What’s something that sucks about being a man?

Both my wife and I worked, we both had good jobs and shared the childcare of our 4 children. I was always the more nurturing parent, if the children ever hurt themselves they would always come to me, I was more affectionate, I used to bathe them, read to them, tuck them in and look after them most weekends. My wife was extremely jealous of my relationship with the children and they grew up, we grew apart. She used to often go out with the girls on a Friday and Saturday night and occasionally wake up the following day with a hangover so bad she would spend the day in bed. Which was fine with me, meant that I had more time with the children and we used to find somewhere to go and have real fun.

Unsurprisingly after 13 years of marriage, when our eldest was 11, she decided to leave me, she had an affair and that was that.

What really sucks about being a man is the custody battle that I had after that. The standard custody model still is, for the father, every other weekend and maybe one night during the week. Everyone assumes that the mother is the ‘right’ parent for the children to live with and I had to fight that prejudice every day for a very long year.

My ex-wife even told me that she didn’t really want custody of the children, she only was fighting because the bigger percentage of time she got, the more Child Maintenance she would get. The first time that we were in court she started off by saying that I shouldn’t see the children at all, claiming that I had abused the children, hit them, raped her and had an affair with a teenager. The judge ordered that I didn’t see the children at all, while this was investigated. That was a hard couple of months.

After a year, meetings with social services, so many court visits that I had my own seat in the waiting room, I eventually got 50:50, the best a man could ever hope for in this world.

Even though we had exactly 50:50 I still had to pay Child Maintenance because she gets the Child Benefit. Guess why … Child Benefits default to the mother at the birth of the child.

I Visited World’s Largest Tech Show…You Won’t Believe What China Did

https://youtu.be/YOOoJbzG1BU

Kitty on the loose

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

This is a story that took place in the late 1980’s, when we lived in Indiana. At that time we lived in Columbia City, Marion, Kokomo, and one or two other places that were pretty much small communities in the land of corn…

Anyways, one day we went and visited a zoo. I think that it was in Indianapolis. Though, it could have been in Fort Wayne.

So we went there and were looking at the animals.

Sad creatures.

I really couldn’t stand it. What’s the matter with people? Can’t they emote? Gosh! I was stunned that people spent a day looking at sad, sad, and depressed critters.

My heart was sore…

Anyways, we rounded a corner at the far end of the zoo, and walked into an isolated corner of the zoo, and my wife said “hey! look at the cute cat!” and she started to walk to it to pet it.

But I grabbed her arm. I told her “wait!”.

Yup.

One of bobcats, or lynx, got out and was sheltering alone in the isolated privacy of the end of the park.

Poor thing.

It was wild. And it was ready to defend itself. Ears up. Hair ready. Hind legs ready to leap. In a half-crouch.

I told my wife to stand by the entrance to the enclave, and not to let anyone in.

I then went to get a worker.

I found one, but she was too busy with something and didn’t have time for me. She was talking earnestly on the radio. But, you know, I got her attention and said…

…”one of your cats is out…”

She looked at me.

“What?” she asked.

I then pointed to the enclosure. And she walked over, and took it from there.

Sigh.

That was the last time I went to a zoo up until last year when I took my daughter to a zoo. And do you know what she said?

“I don’t want to go back to the zoo. The animals are so old and sad. “

She’s able to emote like me.

Painful.

Today…

When people say “never settle” does this mean you should never settle for people who don’t give you happiness?

I wanted to date men I wasn’t attracted to.

When asked I insisted it was because I “gave everyone a chance” and because “looks don’t matter” and because I “might find a gem.”

The truth is, I didn’t deserve the guys I liked.

I knew it. I knew it by the semi-faded acne scars on my face and the way my tummy sticks out over my jeans and the jokes I make, how when I say something other people sort of cock their heads and wonder where the hell did I get that from?

I’d spend hours on dating apps swiping yes on guys I felt I deserved and no on guys I really wanted.

Needless to say, dating didn’t go well. I found myself just really, really hoping they wouldn’t ask to kiss me at the end because I didn’t want to deal with saying no; I wanted to check my phone while they were talking even though it was rude, even though I wanted to care but I didn’t; even when I enjoyed myself I looked forward to going home alone.

I left every date wondering what a good first date should feel like. Should I feel smitten? Should my heart be racing? Is it okay to just feel content, like I could see them again except the minute I get in my car I forget what their face looks like because maybe I wasn’t really looking?

They say that if everyone around you shares the same trait, it’s not coincidence — something about you is attracting those people to you. So if every guy I dated made me shove my hands in my pocket so that he couldn’t hold them, then it wasn’t the men.

It was me.

I had the rather stunning realization that if I wanted to date men who made my heart skip a beat, then I had to… well, date those men.

But God, I was scared. Acknowledging that you find someone attractive is vulnerable. What if they thought I was too stupid, too ugly, too fat, wholly inadequate in every single way?

What if they weren’t interested in me? What did that say about me as a person — about my worth, my character?

Dating guys I didn’t like was safe because I knew I could turn them down before they did so to me, whether I realized it or not.

But dating attractive men?

Oh no. What if they don’t like me? Or worse — what if they do?

I wasn’t sure I could handle that.

Even so, I couldn’t handle another date with someone I didn’t like. Fuck “giving it a chance” — if you’re not into someone, you’re not into them. There’s no amount of well-wishing that will change it.

So I plugged my nose, closed my eyes, and dove straight into the deep end —

Without floaties.

When I saw cute boys — boys who wrote things I found intriguing, boys with good-looking faces and a physique I liked and ooh, you’re into that? That’s so cool! — I gave them a like. I reached out. I said awkward things. I bumbled. I was, as I described it to a date later, hopelessly myself.

And I started getting dates.

Some were awful (seriously, don’t compare yourself to Ted Bundy on a first date), some were marginal, and some?

Well, some taught me what a good first date is.

I don’t know about you, but for me, it is butterflies in the stomach and redness in the cheeks and flying in the door at midnight with no one to tell about how WOW WONDERFUL it was that you give the whole play-by-play to your cat, who’s just happy to see you’re willing to pet him for once.

It’s staying up late because gah, you don’t want the night to end.

See, happiness isn’t a gift. No one can give it to you and I’d say that no one can take it away. Happiness is what happens when you align what you do with what you want. It’s the serendipitous occasion of realizing that yes, this is where I want to be right now. This is what I want. You are what I want.

When people say not to settle, they’re telling you not to undershoot for fear of getting hurt.

Because you will get hurt. Any time you want something, you’ll go through fire to get there. In business you’ll lose money, in life you’ll lose health, and in love you’ll get your heart broken so many times you’ll wonder how it still pumps.

But the reward of not settling?

Is so, so, so worth it.

A credit card

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WlTlgSnEN9k?feature=share

Spareribs and Cabbage
(Zeberka Wieprzowena z Kapusta — Poland)

Serve with mashed or boiled potatoes.

IMG 4093
IMG 4093

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

  1. 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.
  2. Add onion, carrot, bouillon, salt, caraway seed, 1/4 teaspoon pepper and the bay leaf.
  3. Pour water and vinegar over pork mixture. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.
  4. Add cabbage; sprinkle with pepper. Cover and simmer until cabbage is tender, about 45 minutes.
  5. Remove bay leaf.
  6. Arrange spareribs and vegetables on serving platter.
  7. Garnish with minced parsley if desired.

Talent

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ldrFLgTPULE?feature=share

What is the funniest joke you’ve been told that you still think about to this day?

I don’t know. I heard this at Fort Carson, Colorado, in 1980. Soldier humor — especially in the Infantry — tends to be a bit dark, but here goes . . .

The Company Commander called for the First Sergeant.

When he arrives the C O says:

“Top, just got word that Private Schmedlap’s mother died. Please inform him.”

“Got it, Sir.”

So the Company is assembled for the noon accountability check. Per usual, he makes a few announcements then:

“Private Schmedlap?”

“Here First Sergeant.”

“Your mom just croaked.”

Schmedlap completely falls apart and passes out. An ambulance is called and Schmedlap spends almost a week in the hospital getting back his senses.

The C O is pissed.

“Damn it, Top. The Battalion Commander is on fire about this. I’m going to send you to Tact School. Maybe they can teach you to handle things like this a bit more thoughtfully.”

So, Top spends a week at Tact School. Time passes. Then, one morning . . .

“Top”, the C O says, “Just got word that Private Schmedlap’s father died. You need to inform him and I hope to hell you do a better job this time.”

“No sweat, Sir, I got this.”

So at the noon formation, Top makes a few announcements then: “Alright, listen up. I want everyone whose father is still living to take two steps forward. Not you Schmedlap.”

Find your Next Side Hustle to Make Extra

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-AQ_Qt4SJYc?feature=share

How can you politely tell someone to give back something that belongs to you?

Just last week I faced this. I had lent my neighbour a drill and an angle grinder so he could do some renovation work on his home before moving out and renting it.

A few days before he moved out he brought back my drill but not the angle grinder. When I asked about the angle grinder he told me he had already returned it to me. Hmmm. I told him I didn’t think so but would check at home for it, which I did and at my business in case I had taken it there.

I let him know I couldn’t find it and that I was fairly sure he had not given it back. He said he would have another look for it too but he was sure he had given it back.

At this point I wrote off the angle grinder in my mind and was prepared to simply buy another. It never occurred to me that he was stealing it, as he is not like that, my thought was he had packed it up with his things or some other person had taken it. Regardless I was not having a good friendship lost over an angle grinder that might cost me $100!

In the end I told him it would turn up. No anger, no accusation, I really didn’t care for the reason above.

A few days pass and he is now at his new place and guess what he finds – the angle grinder!

My text message back to him was – I told you it would turn up.

So for you; all you can do is ask. Something like, “Hey, remember that xyz I gave you last year? Would you mind returning it as I have to clean the widgets. Would you mind dropping it back tomorrow? Or I will come by Wednesday and grab it.”

But if they don’t and they are a good friend or family member then let it go if you can at all afford to. Weigh up the friendship versus the cost of replacing it and make a decision.

Things can be replaced easily, friendships not so much.

BUT next time don’t lend them anything – that ship sailed.

Crazy shit

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d-eZf_CqhAg?feature=share

12 Golden things you learned with age

  1. Your friends no matter how close, will disappear with time.
  2. The most important relationship in this entire world is the one you have with yourself.
  3. Nobody cares about your hard work, they just look at the result.
  4. Heart break and failures are part of life.
  5. There’s no place like home.
  6. Family and money matters the most.
  7. Book is indeed a person’s best friend.
  8. Physical activity reduces stress.
  9. Wasting time in regretting and crying won’t fetch you results.
  10. Whatever you want today won’t matter to you tomorrow.
  11. Your decisions define your life, not fate.
  12. Childhood is the golden time.

White women were highly valuable slaves in many Islamic empires.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8cmbBCe0B6Y?feature=share

What did your parents say to you as a kid that still affects you today?

Things my (adoptive) father said that still affect me today:

I’m a little scared to be your dad, you know.” (This when I was a twelve-year-old child riding in the backseat with curious eyes. I hadn’t replied because communication at the time was a lot of effort for me, though my vocal cords were fine and I had been a talkative boy up to age 8.)

Nightmare? Okay. Grab a cup and I’ll make you some cocoa.” (This to a progressively older me from 12 to 15, when I woke up from nightmares of the car accident that took my parents and the drug overdose that took my sister.

Oh… oh.” (This when I finally broke through my walls and told him that I wasn’t afraid anymore. Verbally. It startled him into tears, though if you ask him today he’ll tell you he just blinked a little. That day was the first time I’d ever spoken to anyone since my sister’s death nearly 8 years prior. Of course it was my Dad.)

And last:

“He’s my son.” Or: “This is my son.”

This was the way he introduced me since the car ride to his house when I was 12. As far as he was concerned I was his boy and that was that. He didn’t care that I didn’t even look like his biological child, with flaming red hair to his jet black.

I love my birth parents and always will, but my Dad is my Dad and that’s it.

Road Rage

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/u-2l3aTKHY0?feature=share

What’s something on an employee’s first day that sets off red flags?

I was working in the creative department of arguably the hottest ad agency in the world at the time. It was the 1980’s and the place was extremely casual. By that I mean some of the creatives were in full punk, there was frequently a smell of weed in the corridors, there were occasional fights, and often too much drink was consumed, not always out of office hours (not that anyone paid much attention to that, as a few people actually slept in their offices).

The management of the agency didn’t mind because some truly exceptional work was produced. The agency was booming, and if a little anarchy was the price, so be it.

We creatives needed a lot of backup. We needed secretaries to type up TV scripts and generally look after us. They were all pretty good at seeing what the mood was and going with the flow up to a point. But one new secretary came into the dept and I thought straight away “Hmmm…this is going to be interesting”.

For a start she was all twinset and pearls. Then she unpacked a load of squishy animals like a child might have in their bedroom, and arranged them on her desk. Finally she went around to each office introducing herself by her last name and shaking hands. People scratched their heads. She had come from a bank’s headquarters where everything was very correct and formal.

She lasted about three months and when she left I remember her being in tears and saying we were all completely mad. It was a shame because everyone had been nice to her. People watched their swearing around her and no one vomited in her typewriter, (which had actually happened before to someone).

Disney Lost $200 Billion After Elon Musk Called Out Bob Iger

Seriously, the CEO has a responsibility to understand his customer base. When a company fails it is because it no longer provides things that the customers want.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CVoPx6ewykk?feature=share

I got fired. My ex-boss is now asking for the whereabouts of important files. How should I respond?

I’ve had conversations with managers about this. It usually goes something like this:

Manager: “I can’t finish this project. I have no idea what Gary did with the project files.”

HR Me: “You have no idea where he put the files in the shared drive?”

“I think he kept them on his laptop.”

“You ‘think’? You weren’t tracking important project documents?”

“I even called Gary at home and you know what he did?”

“Told you to pound sand?”

“Pretty much! He didn’t want to talk to me! He just hung up!”

“Imagine that. We terminated him and marched him out immediately. You were pretty happy that day. What made you think he was going to help you at all?”

“I told him we might put him back on the re-hire list.”

“Oh you sweet summer child… so what did you want me to do about it?”

“Can’t we threaten to sue him or something? Like he stole company property?”

“Did he?”

“Well…”

“You weren’t tracking or centralizing important project files, but if it is on his work laptop, you should ask IT to look.”

“uh, they already reimaged his laptop.”

“Did you get a dump from his email account on the server?”

“A what, now?”

“Of course. Here you are asking me for HR advice and I’m sitting here suggesting ways you could have done your job. You lost company files because you didn’t act to protect them. You worked to fire someone we thought was essential to completing the project, but you didn’t want to wait. Now you look like you need a performance improvement plan for failing to secure work assets. And you want us to go threaten this guy with a costly lawsuit and an internal investigation which would likely document your incompetence. How is it that guy got fired and you’re still here?”

“…”

“I will talk to IT to see what we might have in his email attachments or if there’s a chance we can still recover something from the laptop. If we can’t, I would scour the shared drive with a content search because if you lost something, you’ll have to explain how you plan to recreate the assets you lost or you might be walking out of here with your own empty copier paper box.”

San Francisco crazy

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zOE7PDjLrgI?feature=share

What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

It wasn’t a meeting, but the morning breakfast where many of the local small business owners would gather every day. I was sitting at the large table, doing my morning crossword, when the guy I worked for started telling the story of a particularly difficult-to-diagnose problem we had encountered. He prefaced his story with, “my dummy, here”, meaning ME ! He went on to tell the story, telling of the various things we tried in attempting our diagnosis. He made himself out to be the wunderkind, when I was the one who had actually reasoned out the problem and came up with a solution. As he was laughing at his ‘dummy’s’ ineptitude, I calmly folded my paper, picked up my check, paid and left the cafe. I went to the shop, backed my vehicle in and started loading my tools. Boss rolled in about 15 minutes later. He came in, saw what I was doing and still asked me what I was doing ! He was totally clueless as to what I was doing and why I was doing it ! I told him, “ I rolled ’em in, and I’m rolling ’em out “! He asked, “Why ?” I had to struggle to stay calm as I told that I would not work for someone who had not only insulted me in public, but had also implied that I was some sort of idiot who had to be guided by his ‘superior’ intellect. The look of confusion on his face as I pulled out of the building was indicative of his lack of respect for me. He couldn’t understand how I had been insulted. The little story he had told at the cafe never entered his mind. C’est la vie et au revoir !

Is That What You Wanted Me to Say?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lkzZKJnL2BA?feature=share

What is the perfect thing to say when someone is being rude to you?

It was 530 am and the starbucks drive-thru was already hopping. There were two lanes to order from, but only one had a lit menu. I chose that side, despite the car waiting impatiently at the microphone for the other. After placing my order, I pulled ahead towards the pickup window, where the two lines merged. The car still waiting at the darkened lane honked angrily, and a hand shot out displaying the middle finger.

I had a terrible head cold and already felt miserable anticipating my 24 hrs of trauma call ahead. When he did that I considered my options and very nearly went with my first thought— to slam on the parking break, hop out and give somebody an in-the-face lecture on manners. If he couldn’t figure out that lane was closed, how was this MY fault?? I was tired of this kind of bullshit.

But I live in Arizona. I was likely to get shot doing that.

Next I considered giving him the finger back. I leaned on the window switch, but it was locked, and that allowed me thirty seconds to reconsider.

I felt like shit.

But maybe he felt like shit, too.

Flipping him the bird would just feed into both of our foul moods.

I reached the pickup window, still stewing, and finally managed to lower the car pane. “$4.25,” a teenager named Robin chirped at me, and as I dug into my pocket for my card, wondering how a small cup of tea could possibly add up to over four dollars, the ultimate revenge for the rude driver behind me occurred to my tired brain—-

“And I’ll pay for the car in back of me,” I told Robin.

She smiled. “Pay it forward, huh?”

“Well. Something like that.” I accepted my tea and my card back, waved cheerfully into my rearview mirror, and pulled away, feeling one less thing was wrong with the world.

What is the most ignorant thing someone has said to you?

I was 54 doing a degree in education at an Ivy League university. Most of the students were in their early 20s and from wealthy backgrounds. Each student had to do a presentation on an aspect of teaching. I did mine on the impact of poverty on learning.

Several students told me quite clearly that they were not remotely interested in poverty issues.

Then one student looked at one of my handouts on my topic and said, ‘this is so gay, it’s retarded!’

I had had enough of this crap. I quietly said to the instructor that he needed to deal with this or else I would. He agreed wholeheartedly and simply reminded everyone to use respectful language. That was it. I was pissed. That was not good enough.

So I went to the Dean of Education with this. He was someone the entire university respected. He had also grown up dockside in Liverpool I later learned.

A couple of days later the Dean came to our class and delivered an hour long lecture on poverty and terms like gay and retarded and a bunch of similar terms. He talked about identity, and he talked about cases where teachers have been punched in the face for using terms like that. He went into great detail with each researched case and the results. He talked about all the ways students can sabotage a teacher’s car. He talked about a case in our own city where a teacher used terms like this and the student population took up a petition to silence her. Her classes were chaos as retaliation and she had to be moved mid-semester. Then he talked about ethics, personal and professional, and how they overlap. He went into some detail about what he would do as a principal to a new teacher who spoke in such a degrading way to, or about, students.

Then the Dean asked if anyone in the room had loved ones who were developmentally challenged or gay.

There were several. They were invited to speak about them, and they did, eloquently. It was heartwarming.

This is what the instructor ought to have done.

Coming from no money adds a dimension to perspective that is valuable and important.

 

During World War 2, why didn’t the Allies consider invading Indochina (Vietnam, Laos) instead of the Philippines which would force the Japanese military to retreat into China and allow the Chinese to have direct assistance there?

  • At that time, China, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom were the Allies against the Axis Powers such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Italy. The Chinese army is part of the Allied Forces.
  • The Chinese defeated the Japanese in Indochina.
image 257
image 257

In February 1942, Japanese troops attacked Burma through Thailand. The photo shows the Japanese fighting in the jungles of Burma. The British were unable to withstand the Japanese offensive, and requested the Chinese government to send troops to Burma to rescue the British. On 8 March, the Japanese captured the Burmese capital of Yangon, sending shock waves through India.

image 256
image 256

In 1945, Chinese in Yangon hit the streets to welcome soldiers from China’s New 1st Army who had arrived to take part in a military parade celebration dedicated to the victory of the Burma Campaign.


Second expedition (Early 1943 – March 1945)

Between 1942 and 1943, many Chinese soldiers were airlifted from Chongqing to India and joined the ones who had followed the British retreat there earlier, they were trained under American advisors and became the X Force into which the New 1st Army and New 6th Army was incorporated, which was supported by American Special Forces in their field operations.

For most of 1943, the Chinese Army engaged in several conflicts with the Japanese Army while defending the construction of the Ledo Road.

In October 1943, the New First Army managed to defeat the Japanese veteran 18th Division at Hukawng Valley.

To secure the opening of the Ledo Road, the Chinese Army in India was retitled the “Northern Combat Area Command” (NCAC), and re-entered Burma in the spring of 1944.

The Chinese Army engaged and defeated the Japanese forces during various campaigns in Northern Burma and Western Yunnan and recaptured Myitkyina in August.

Allied success in these campaigns enabled the opening of the Ledo Road.

However, by the time Myitkyina was captured, Allied success in the Pacific theatre was reducing the significance of the China-Burma-India theatre.

Intending to coordinate with the X Force, Wei Lihuang’s Chinese Expeditionary Force in Yunnan, known as the Y Force, crossed the Salween River in April and launched an offensive against the Japanese Army.

Y Force was composed of two Army Groups from the National Army; 11th Army Group(Commander Song Xilian, Deputy Commander Huang Jie, Chief of Staff Cheng Gang) and 20th Army Group (Commander Huo Kuizhang, Deputy Commander Fang Tian).

By January 1945, the Y Force had captured the town of Wanting on the China-Burma border and regained control of the land route from Burma to China. The first convoy via the newly opened Ledo-Burma Road reached Kunming in February 1945

100th Monkey Theory

The video cuts off at the end, but the point is that at the 100th monkey, all the monkeys in the world learn how to clean the sweet potatoes. There is a threshold that is crossed, and ESP, PSI takes over.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/99m3lKevnvg?feature=share

As a doctor or nurse, what’s the most appalling behavior you’ve seen by a patient’s family?

My patient had just been vaginally delivered of a newborn baby who weighed something more than nine pounds. The obgyn had to cut an episiotomy to prevent a tear into the rectum.

During the repair, which took a lot more sutures than usual, the father asked the doctor to “tighten her up a bit.”

The doctor and I exchanged looks. I let her respond first, because I wanted to say things that were inappropriate for a Muslim and as an RN.

The obgyn said words along the lines of, “I’m down here repairing an injury that your wife has because she pushed like a champion when she could have given up and requested a cesarean section. She did it because she loves the baby, she did it because she loves you. I’m going to let you think about all of that.”

It’s been about 20 years, this was early in my career, and I don’t want to portray the physician as more witty than she actually was, but this is pretty close to an exact quote.

I am scared of dying. Can anyone help, and is there an afterlife?

My dad died in 1983. My mom sat and held his hand for a week until he died. He had such a look of pain on his face and my mom was very distraught that he did not have a happy death. I stayed with her for support and began calling family members to announce his passing. In the evening, before the family arrived, my mom asked me if we could be sure he was in heaven and happy. I said that Dad was very good at expressing his feelings and I was positive that he would send us a sign. We prayed and asked him to send Mom a sign so that she would accept his death with courage. Almost immediately there was a light shower that came from the west. Rain never came from the west so she thought that was a good sign. She then called my dad’s name and said “Valent, are you at peace and happy?” almost immediately the evening sun began to shine through the windows. The sun’s rays shone through the rain droplets on the windows and spread little tiny rainbows across the floors and furniture in the house.

My answer is yes, there is an afterlife. Dying is scary, more so because it might be painful. Death might be an end to physical life on earth, but faith will always help me to believe that there is something after death that is worth hoping for. Bless you, and I hope you feel comforted in all our answers to you.

Police say self-checkout aisles invented a new type of criminals

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CSsQZfsGhig?feature=share

How do I politely tell my daughter’s friend’s parents that they are taking advantage of me by having me drive their kid to school events/practices when they never reciprocate?

When my child was in grade school, a mother down the block asked me to drive her daughter to and from school every day. I said okay, because I was driving my child anyways. The only stipulation I made was that she eat breakfast before coming to our house. I was on a very strict food budget due to being an at home mom with only one paycheck. At this child’s house, both parents worked full-time and had enough money to put their children in extra activities. I couldn’t afford this for my child. I even arranged any Dr. appointments, dentist appointments, etc. fora time after I would drop this child home. This was all because the older sister had to start school earlier and couldn’t watch the younger child in the morning. After the first week of the school year, this child came every day earlier and earlier. The father would drop her off at my house on his way to work. It got to the point where I was getting up earlier than needed just to let her into our house. Did she eat breakfast at home, NO! I was feeding her every day for the rest of the year. I mentioned to her that she was to eat at home. Did she? NO! She stayed in bed until the last minute and then get into the car with her dad. Never saw dad or mom except when dropping her off. They would do the drop and go before she was even in the house. Did they talk to me at all during the year? NO! At the end of the year, the mother came over with a gift card for $25.00 to the grocery store and a decorative flowerpot. No flower even. I told her I couldn’t do it the next year at that time. The child then no longer was a friend of my child in school and taunted him constantly. When the new school year came, another mother from the block came and wanted me to drive her daughter to school so “I could save the bus money and you’re going anyways.” I told her “No, I am sorry. I am only driving my son this year so I could get things done after school if I need to.” I then became the “bad neighbor” and not talked to again. Don’t get roped into this at the beginning. Just tell the parent “Sorry, no.” No reason, no explanation, just no.

Can overweight people tell that they’re full?

I will speak for myself:

I can’t tell I’m full unless I eat so much that I experience discomfort and, even when I reach that level, it goes away within an hour or so, and I’m often hungry again.

It’s not uncommon for me to begin eating a meal, feel painfully full, and only then remember that I’d already eaten a meal a little earlier, which I’d forgotten about. This happens sometimes when they offer us food at work. My official lunch period at work is pretty late in the school day, so I usually eat my lunch during my planning period, which is earlier in the day. There have been times when I’ve eaten the lunch I brought and then, maybe an hour later, had a lunch provided for me by the school. Halfway through that lunch, I felt discomfort, and only then did I remember that I’d already eaten.

Like C. S. Friedman said in her answer, this is why single-serving portions of food, while more expensive than buying in bulk, are so popular.

If you put me in front of a family-size bag of chips, I can easily eat half of the bag before I start to feel discomfort. So we don’t get big bags of chips in my house. We get the little bags. That way I know when to stop.

It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I realized I was missing that “full” sensation that other people had. I always just assumed that everyone else had more self control when it came to their portion sizes. The idea that it wasn’t so much “self control,” but rather their mind actually signaling to them that “you’ve had enough” was foreign to me.

Meals where everyone eats from the same source (pizza, pots of soup or chili, etc.) are particularly problematic for me. When we have those for dinner, after getting my first serving, I have to make a conscious effort to avoid returning to the source for more, or I will eat until I feel discomfort, which is way beyond what I should eat. What usually happens is that I will be the last to serve myself and, as soon as I serve myself, before I even eat it, I will store the leftovers, to remind me that I’ve already had enough. Otherwise, every time I walk by it, I will have some more.

I’ve learned another trick over the years. It’s probably not the healthiest trick, but it does help keep me from overeating. If I know I’m going to be somewhere with a lot of food, if I eat candy about 20–30 minutes beforehand (to spike my blood sugar), I won’t eat as much food later. I’m sure a doctor could explain why that works, and the explanation is probably that something is wrong with me or I’m being even more unhealthy when I do that. But I know that I’m going over to a meal at someone’s house, and I don’t want to overeat there, on the way there, having a few pieces of candy will help me eat less once I get there.

Gym Owners Are Starting to BAN Cameras | Modern Women Are BAFFLED

https://youtu.be/fNTrAthUSaU

Is it rude to tell my father-in-law that he stinks? He finished his work shift and had dinner straight away without showering and reeked.

My father was a mechanic. My entire life Dad would come home sweaty, smelling of transmission fluids, mineral spirits, and all sorts of other automotive fluids.

And yes, it stunk. Bad enough that he’d tell me , “No Pumpkin, dont hug me till I can shower, I stink!”

One Friday night, I had come home from college and called him at work to meet Mom and me at the Mexican restaurant up the street from our house for dinner. He told me the shop had been really busy this week and he had worked hard to get all the cars finished before the weekend. “Pumpkin, I need a shower first, I stink.” I knew once he got home there wasnt going to be a dinner out, he’d shower and be tired. I told him I wasnt worried about that stink and no one else would be either. Because that stink is the smell of money. That stink proved my family’s business was doing well. That stink put food on our table and kept a roof over our heads. That stink put me through college. If someone was offended by that stink then I’d be more than happy to explain why my Dad stinks.

My Dad never worried again about how he smelled directly after work, and often used that line when my mom would tease him about coming in smelly… “Aww Mae come on, that’s just the smell of money!”

When someone has worked hard to earn an income to take care of their family, you keep your mouth shut if they might smell a little, because that’s the smell of money.

What’s something you did so well that it even surprised you?

In 1979, I arrived in Thailand to study Thai language and culture. I had a job waiting for me in Los Angeles, helping Thai immigrants adjust to U.S. life.

I was living with a Thai family and had brought some of my savings for expenses, but I had never NOT worked (starting at 14). When I heard that the language center where I studied Thai was looking for native speakers to teach, I shrugged and applied to work for a short time. I had no clue that I would remain in Thailand.

Teaching was one of a VERY few jobs open to foreigners.

When I explained to the director that my background was in business, not education, but that I had tutored Thai monks in the U.S., she waved my concerns away and hired me, saying that the school had a training program.

The one-week training did little to calm my nerves about being a teacher. I had adored so many teachers in my school life; how could I ever do what they did and do it well?

My first class was harrowing UNTIL I noticed that the students were just as nervous as I was. I remember thinking, “We’re in this together!”

For 7 years, I worked hard to find better, more effective ways to help my students achieve improvement. I read, I questioned, I experimented, I observed, I listened.

One of my most joyful moments was when a troublesome student thanked me for teaching him and said, “You have a teacher heart.”

Then I was promoted (unasked for) to teacher supervisor and trainer. I was stunned that I was chosen over many who had far more experience (and background).

I used my own struggles and experiences to find ways to help other new teachers.

I never stopped teaching, even when I was a supervisor. When I left that position, although I loved the work, I was delighted to devote my time to the classroom.

40+ years later, the covid situation managed to ‘retire’ me.

When I look back, I am surprised at how passionate I became about teaching and how flexible I was in response to students’ needs.

I am so grateful that life took me to where I needed to be!

p.s. No, they didn’t hold the job for me in the U.S.!

 

Have you ever walked into your house and noticed a sound that you thought was suspicious? What happened?

I recall how when I was a boy our family became very puzzled by a noise we heard in the lounge in our bungalow whenever we walked into it. The noise sounded like a little persistent rustling, tapping or clicking noise coming from the ceiling in one corner of the room. In those days we did not use the lounge very often, because with the extension of our bungalow we had another big “living room” space that had formerly been the kitchen but now contained sofas and a TV set, so we did not notice this noise for a long time. However when we finally did notice it, the noise was persistent and we were curious to see what it was. My uncle, who lived next door to us, went up a step ladder through a hatch in the hall ceiling and shone his torch into the dark roof space, and this is what he noticed in the corner of the roof space where we kept hearing this noise, and indeed was the reason for the noise. Do you know what it is ?

image 258
image 258

It is of course a wasps’ nest, not the actual nest in the roof space of our bungalow, but a very similar looking one. The rustling, tapping or clicking noise noise was the sounds of the wasps building their nest or moving around in it. It was fortunate for us at the time that my uncle was working as a pest control officer for the local council, and in those days the council would send him to destroy wasps’ nests free of charge if they were a nuisance to householders. He was soon able to destroy this one. Eventually he brought the nest down from the roof space in a box, and it was the first time I had ever seen a wasps’ nest.

We had of course noticed a number of wasps in our home at the time, especially in the kitchen, but the number was no greater than usual, because we were always visited by wasps, especially in the late summer. This was because a ditch ran past our bungalow, and wasps do like to make their nests near water because they need water to make the nest. Indeed in other years I often noticed wasps flying in and out of a location on the bank of the ditch, indicating that a nest was there. One year my uncle tried unsuccessfully to destroy one of these nests, but disturbed it and left us running away from an angry swarm of wasps. I received a sting on the hand in the process, but it was certainly not the only time I was stung by a wasp as a boy.

Harry Pothead and the Stoned Philosopher | Harry Potter Parody Part 1

This AI generated stuff is amazing.

https://youtu.be/bxHhmbQmyb0

How do I nicely tell my sister and her husband that I can’t provide them free food anymore? They come to my house on weekends and don’t leave until we eat.

Leave them there while you go out for dinner.

Then, when you see them arrive, meet them at the door with your coats on and tell them you’ll see them next time.

Then start not answering the door and pretend you’re not home.

Or, just tell your sister it’s time she brought the main dish. Then, it’s her time for 2 side dishes. Then, dessert.

Or, just tell her you want to have a private dinner with your immediate family.

Or, start showing up at her house right before you know they’d be getting dressed to come to your house.

Or just tell her it’s time for them to go home because you’ve got to get dinner ready.

Edited to add:. People, while I enjoy your comments and suggestions, I am not the original poster. I didn’t ask the question. I wouldn’t have trouble using any of my suggestions, but I would most likely use my last one.

Rather than telling me what you think I should do, or get all worked up at how snarky I am, click on the question and tell her. The OP will not see responses to comments.

Edited to repeat: Click on the QUESTION, then under it, click ANSWER. If you’re clicking Reply, you’re talking to me. Since the OP has never chimed in during this long exchange with me, I am assuming the OP isn’t getting some of these really great suggestions. While I appreciate 2.2K upvotes, maybe the OP could use a little support.

Plus, I don’t care. This isn’t my sister, nor would either of them be so rude. Tell the OP, please!

Harry Potter as a Dramatic Indian Soap Opera

So friggin’ strange.

https://youtu.be/V0fgsLXQbx4

Does working fast food suck as much as people say it does?

Yes, It kinda does. I work as a shift manager at a fast food restaurant. (I won’t mention the name, I still need the job for a little longer.)

Don’t get me wrong, there are some good days where everything goes smooth.

There are many reasons I hate working fast food.

  1. There’s never a fixed schedule. I have to find out what my hours are every Sunday. Even then, I have been called in on my only off day more than once.
  2. Absolutely no benefits. Except 1 free combo each shift worked. No paid time off, no insurance of any kind, nada!!! Just free food and a bi-monthly paycheck.
  3. It’s a very stressful job. When a car pulls up to to the menu, a sensor triggers a timer to start. When that same car pulls from the window to leave, a sensor stops that timer. Management wants each car to be timed at a maximum of 107 seconds.
  4. You haven’t seen how ugly people can behave until you have worked fast food. I have been pelted with coins, spat at, cussed at, screamed at, punched, doused with soda, and have received countless threats of assault, and a few death threats. People don’t respect fast food employees.
  5. It’s a dead end job. The most you can progress is to a shift manager. Don’t get too excited, they hand that promotion out to anyone who lasts more than a year. Yes, you’ll get an okay pay raise, but don’t expect your checks to be any bigger. The more you are paid per hour, the less hours you will be scheduled for. This is due to the labor percentage. The store computer keeps track of how much money the store is taking in hourly, and tells the GM how much of the money coming in is already spent on wages for the people who are clocked in. The higher your hourly rate, the closer you are to the first pick to be sent home early.
  6. There’s a HUGE language barrier for a lot of my coworkers. They are all from south America. They all speak different varieties of Spanish. They are really cool people, but it’s frustrating to have to pull out my phone to translate what needs to be done, or to simply communicate. Especially during a busy lunch rush.

I can’t wait to finish college. I graduate September of 2025. The moment I walk across the stage with a cap and gown, I’m putting in my two weeks.

What is the biggest scam an auto mechanic ever tried on you?

On my wife . . .

Front bumper of her car had been popped off by something trapped under it (dark, wet night: black plastic bin on tarmac). I pushed it back on, but was worried it might be damaged so suggested she get it checked. The dealer she’d bought it from sent her to their branch in the next town.

They said it’d cost £3400, including new bumper, new headlight, new wing, & re-painting several body panels including one at the back.

So she went to the Toyota dealer near one of her workplaces. Different town, different company. At first they said it’d need a new headlight, because the mounting point was broken (less than 10% of what the other lot said), but when they took the bumper off, they found the headlight assembly was OK: just the fastener broken. So they replaced it. No charge. Too small.

She saw the service manager looking at her staff parking permit for the local college. 😉 May have been thinking she might speak to colleagues. It’s a few hundred yards/metres from the workshop.

She’s been back there for other things since, so they’ve got some money from her.

What are some deep truth you must learn now or never?

  1. Stop expecting honesty from people who lie to themselves. It’s a really expensive gift, cheap people can’t afford it.
  2. Sometimes your old life has to fall apart before your new life can fall together. So, don’t hesitate to leave the past in the past.
  3. The job, the party, the relationship knowing when to leave is so important. Don’t stick with the toxic environment.
  4. Fitting in will make you miserable. Be your own uncool, weird-ass self and whoever still wants to hang around with you then, keep them close and be weird together.
  5. It’s not your job to fix insecure people. It’s your job to fix the part of you that resonated with your insecurities.
  6. At any minute, there is someone who can come along and change your life. That person is you.

Lord Of The Rings But in Jamaica – Lord of the Rastas

My goodness!

This is pretty darn CRAZY!

https://youtu.be/RWTIGk8COpU

If I’m a defendant in court, when the judge tells me, “The defendant, please rise,” if I don’t rise, what will the judge do to me?

One of my favorite responses from a judge happened at a motion hearing docket. The defendant filed a motion to dismiss, and it was set on the docket with a dozen other cases for that afternoon (I had two of the other cases). The defendant’s case actually got called before mine, so I was present when this happened.

The judge entered the courtroom, and the bailiff announced, “All rise, the Honorable Bocephus Williams presiding.” Everyone except one fellow stood. The judge took the bench and called the first case, which happened to be the guy who didn’t stand. Again, he didn’t stand, just said, “Here,” when he heard his name called.

The judge then called the case again. The state, standing near a podium in the well, announced present, and the defendant, who had taken a chair at the defense counsel table, simply grunted, “Right here.”

“Next case,” the judge said. He then called the following case, my first, and I stood to announce my presence.

“Hey, my case was called.” The man interrupted from his seat.

“You failed to present yourself before the court; the matter was moved to the end of the docket.”

“But I was here … “the man began to argue. The judge struck his gavel and admonished him that he would be heard at the end of the docket.

One of the other attorneys stepped close to the fellow and whispered to him. I can only assume the substance of the conversation, but imagine it was along the lines of “Next time, stand up, and the judge will recognize you.”

The judge worked through the entire docket and, in the end, again called the original case. The defendant, being hard-headed (pronounced dumbass), remained seated. “Still here,” he said.

“Sir, you should consult local counsel and read the court rules. You have failed to maintain proper decorum. Your case is being moved off the docket, and a new date for the hearing has been set. Failure to follow the court’s rules will result in a dismissal, so ensure you are prepared next time.” The judge left the bench while the fellow tried to argue that he was there and ready to proceed.

Harry Potter but everyone is Gen Z

https://youtu.be/5X194j_sAGY

What row do you sit in in a movie theater? Why?

Always sat in the middle of the theatre in the middle of the row, dead centre of the screen. That was my favourite. Sat in those seats since I was a kid, when I went to the show with my pals, then sisters then girlfriends. Best seats in the house.

I remember when I went to see Bonnie and Clyde. Went with my sisters Lori and Tracy. The theatre was packed, only three seats left. At the very front. I got a sore neck from watching that movie. At one time I thought, “Wow, I could walk right up into Warren Beatty’s nostril!” The heads were so huge. Do you know what that scene was like when they shot up Bonnie and Clyde’s car when you seemed to be sitting 10 feet away? WOW!

Another time when I went with my sisters, I had a large drink and popcorn. My seat was still up and I sat on it to bring it down. I came crashing down in my seat squeezing my drink cup which exploded all of my legs. THAT was a very uncomfortable movie to watch, but I stayed. Lori went and got me another drink great sister that she is. She brought me a small one.

Always loved going to the movies. Don’t go much anymore. Just as good staying home and watching them on the big TV screen. My sons will take me once in awhile so we have some fun together then.

Is Marriage Actually Worth It?

https://youtu.be/vnNY6oSgZBU

Helen Beveridge’s Haluski Grange Stand Favorite

This one is a stand favorite. If you can’t wait a whole year, here is the Haluski scaled down.

741aaa666b000a0f758c68955bc4a469
741aaa666b000a0f758c68955bc4a469

Yield: 10 to 12 servings

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 large head cabbage, chopped and steam until tender
  • 1 pound egg noodles, cooked al la dente
  • Salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste

Instructions

  1. Using pot large enough to accommodate all the ingredients, melt the margarine and sauté the onion until tender.
  2. Add the cabbage and the noodles and stir to combine. Heat thoroughly.
  3. Season to taste.

Notes

Once a year only. Customers love it because ” It’s such a comfort food” Megan Schlow, New York free lance food stylist.

Harry Potter but the Matrix

These AI generated videos are next generation!

https://youtu.be/nJIyCt5-_b4

A rush for the booze

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Arkansas is in the “Bible Belt” of the United States. And because of this, everything is heavily influenced by religion. Mostly “Southern baptist”. Which tends to be rather strict and fundamental.

One of the aspects of this influence is something known as “dry counties”.

These are regions in the state where the purchase of alcohol is against the law. So that people living in those areas must dive elsewhere to buy their booze, cart it home. Store it and then drink it in such a way that it does not run out. It’s a core characteristics of “the Southern way of life” that you hear so much about in American Country and Western music.

Anyways, where I lived in Arkansas, was a “dry county”.

And sure as shit, we would have to make an “alcohol run” before the stores closed on the weekends. And Lordy! Was it always a madhouse. Car jams. Packing lines. Carts full of booze. People jostling and pushing. Everyone in a rush.

Yup.

The American Way of Life.

I’ll tell you what!

Some things about the United States are so ridiculous that it’s not even worth commenting on. Except to say, that I am glad that I live in China where booze is cheap, plentiful and accessible by anyone, at any time.

Praise the Lord!

Today…

Why doesn’t the USA remove its troops from South Korea and Japan?

While there is no threat to Japan from any quarter, the US keeps troops in Japan to:

  1. Maintain Japan as a pliant vassal state.
  2. Control the region around Japan with its vast military complexes. The US has more bases in Japan than any country outside the US itself.
  3. Japan subsidies US forces and makes it easier for the US to maintain an overall large military since Japan pays large sums to the US for the privilege of hosting massive US troops and equipment. If those troops went home the US would have to pay 100% of the costs of maintaining them.

South Korea faces a real threat from North Korea. The 35,000 US combat troops in RSK are meant to provide a deterence to DPRK. In a real war the US would likely lose these 35,000 troops, which would drag the US into its next quagmire.

Secondary objectives to the US maintaining troops in SK are the same as in Japan, however US bases in Japan are not under any threat and are far more extensive than in RSK, which makes Japan much more important to the US than RSK.

I believe one of the primary reasons the US has become addicted to operating more than 800 bases around the world is that in many of the large ones, the host country pays for some if not the majority of the costs of that base. This defrays direct costs of maintaining its own military for the US while keeping the US military at an overly large scale relative to its growing inability to afford such size and scale.

If you can park your car in downtown Manhattan in someone else’s garage for free (with a promise that if someone in his family gets injured you’ll drive them in the car to the hospital), and that guy is going to pay for all the maintenance of that vehicle, while you still get to drive it anytime you want and he isn’t allowed to use it, you’re going to park your cars there for a very, very long time.

What is the purpose of the bread that restaurants give you before they take your order?

Jonas‘ answer is spot on on a cultural level, but IME, there are also often some more mundane/practical considerations involved.

  • It buys us time. I used to work solo for years. In one joint, we used to have baskets of bread and little bowls of homemade dips available for the waiters to just grab and hand out. If someone ordered food and I was swamped with orders, that would simply keep the guests happy until I got around / was able to free up a burner on the stove to make their starters or entrees…
  • It is one more element a really skilled waiter can employ to time orders etc. I’ve seen good waiters ‘stall’ for half an hour and more from the point the guests were seated with menus, drink orders, drinks, food orders, cutlery, bread and butter etc. without the guests even noticing they were being strung along while the kitchen and / or back office recovered from some minor catastrophe or just cleared a backlog of orders…
  • In places that are not dedicated restaurants, it sets ‘the mood’ for ordering something to eat. You might have come in just for a glass of wine or two, but when that cute little basket of fresh bread with a little bit of good butter or some nice dip, a napkin and a set of silverware arrives unasked along with the menu, you might just realize you could do with a nice bite to eat… This may sound far-fetched, but I’ve seen it work (on myself as a guest and on guests in places I worked at) often enough to not dismiss it.

 

Would the Chinese military be competent against the American and British in defence of Taiwan?

I don’t know why, but the Chinese captured POWs in Korea from 15 countries, and only the American GI’s knelt and surrendered to the Chinese, just like they knelt when they were captured in Iranian territorial waters. Is it because the Yanks have particularly soft knees? Can anyone tell me why?

image 166
image 166

American and British are not defending Taiwan, but they want to invade China, and the Chinese are certainly capable of defeating the invaders and letting them die in the sea and become food for sea fish. The Pacific Ocean’s marine fish will feast, and then we’ll sell our catch to the Yanks and bring their souls back to the U.S. so they don’t pollute the environment in China’s territorial waters. 😁

2300 heavily armed US soldiers have been killed fighting Afghan shepherds. 2300 Yank kids become corpses in coffins. There are no corpses in naval battles, they can only be fed to the sea fish.

image 165
image 165

With the exception of the Americans and the British, everyone in the world has been educated to know that the Taiwan question is a legacy of the Chinese civil war, an internal affair of China and a domestic affair of the Chinese.

Biden did not tell the US citizens that he wanted to invade China, only “to defend Taiwan”.

So, I ask, how does the US plan on doing that? with some sort of video game competition?

I mean, in order to “defend Taiwan”, you have to have military troops pertorming military actions, aka combat inside of China – And that’s because Taiwan is in China.

So currently America has soldiers in Taiwan, which is either illegal, or at the very least gray area because that’s part of China. And the government of China doesn’t approve of that and hasn’t allowed it. So that’s the current status.

If US start performing miltary action, that’s an effort to militarily conquer at least China or push them back inside of China. That‘s called an invasion.’

Sorry, everybody, if you don’t agree with this definition, but that’s what it is.

So US is yet again contirming that it will invade China if China attempts to continue its reunification by using military action.

I’d like to advise the US to listen to a well-known Chinese song with these lyrics: “For our friends, we have fine wine. For jackals or wolves, we welcome with shotguns.”

image 164
image 164

 

What’s the shadiest tactic you’ve witnessed HR use at your job?

OOOOHHHH!!!! This one is legend! It didn’t happen at my employer, but one nearby. (I worked for a bit just a city block, or two, up the street.) Here’s the basics:

Control Data Corporation (CDC) was on the rocks in the early ‘80s. They started laying folks off. But they didn’t do it publicly. Instead they “Disappeared” them. Here’s how it worked:

  1. An employee was instructed to keep quiet about the fact that he’d been transferred to the Roseville, Mn. Plant across town.
  2. He (it was mostly a he in those days) was to pack up his gear & personal stuff late Friday afternoon & the box(es) would be picked up & transferred over the weekend to his new job site.
  3. He was then given an address at the new plant where he was to report first thing Monday Morning.
  4. The next Monday he showed up, was escorted into a room with a table, a chair, a guard, and an HR person.
  5. The HR person gave him his walking papers & allowed him to sort out & collect his private stuff from the box(es).
  6. He was then escorted out the door to the parking lot.

Chopped Meat Pies (Pitta Me Kima)

Pitta Me Kima
Pitta Me Kima

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds chopped lamb
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 1 1/4 pounds tomatoes, peeled or 1 tablespoon tomato paste with 1 cup water
  • 1 piece stick cinnamon
  • 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 slices toast
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 cup parmesan cheese, grated
  • 5 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 3/4 pound phyllo

Instructions

  1. Brown meat, half the butter, and onions in large pot, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up meat. Add tomatoes (or diluted tomato paste) cinnamon, parsley, salt and pepper. Simmer until all liquid is absorbed (about 30 minutes).
  2. Meanwhile, soak toast in milk, then mash with fork. Remove cinnamon stick and add milk-toast mixture to the meat, remove from the heat. Add cheese and eggs, and mix well.
  3. Melt remaining butter. Butter a pan about. 2 inches smaller than the phyllo. Put 7 to 8 phyllo sheets, buttering each before adding it, into the pan, letting phyllo extend on all sides. Pour in meat mixture and spread it evenly. Fold overlapping phyllo back onto meat. Butter these well. Carefully cut remaining sheets of phyllo to fit the top of the pan. Brush each with butter and lay on the filling to make the top of the pita. Pour on any remaining butter and sprinkle the top very lightly with a little water (to keep phyllo from rising too high).
  4. Bake in preheated 350 degrees F oven for 30 to 40 minutes.
  5. Cool for about 30 minutes, and cut into squares to serve.

It is easier to cut this if you score it lightly before baking.

First Impressions

That’s right. Drop out completely.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cLJvb-s-P5o?feature=share

20 Lessons that can change your perspective of life

1.. Words are like keys; if you choose them right, they can open any heart and shut any mouth.

2.. One day, the people that don’t even believe in you will tell everyone how they met you.

Don’t get burned twice by the same flame.

3.. When you build in silence, people can’t figure out what to attack.

4.. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

5.. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to worry about or remember what you said.

6.. Be selfish with your time; a lot of people don’t deserve it.

7.. Silence is the best answer to someone who doesn’t value your words.

8.. Turn your wounds into wisdom, and wisdom into wealth.

9.. If you only walk on sunny days, you’ll never reach your destination.

10.. People inspire you or they drain you; pick them wisely.

11.. Fear is temporary; regret is forever.

12.. Your future needs you; your past doesn’t.

13.. Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.

14.. Allow yourself to be a beginner; no one starts off being excellent.

15.. The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

16.. Do it alone, do it broke, do it tired, do it scared; just do it.

17.. Excuses make today easier but tomorrow harder.

18.. Discipline makes today hard but tomorrow easier.

Sanctioning China? US is as stupid as the Qing Dynasty Emperor

https://youtu.be/_0W1fpg5Yy4

Have you ever been treated differently in a store because of what you were wearing?

This isn’t my story, but that of a very good friend who I had as a roommate a long time ago.

Geoff was a car salesman for many years. One night he came home and told me the story of his big sale that day. A man had driven into the parking lot in a beat-up pickup truck, one bumper tied in place with baling wire, rust all over it and a cracked windshield. He and his wife emerged from the vehicle and started walking around the show lot looking at cars and drifting towards the trucks. The man was very large, Geoff estimated 6′5″ and 280 lbs and wearing bib overalls, a plaid flannel shirt, well worn boots, and a John Deere baseball cap. All of his clothing was showing age, dirt, and stains. His wife was very plain and wearing similarly worn clothing, but neat and she almost never stopped smiling.

They walked around for about 15 minutes as the salesmen watched them from the showroom. All of these guys were triple-A personalities who were like sharks as salesmen and normally would have been fighting or drawing straws as to who got the next customer. Nobody wanted to go talk to these people, the very definition of hayseed goobers with big eyes but no money and they clearly had nothing to offer as a trade in. Geoff had just finished up showing a customer a few cars and writing up prices and a trade-in offer and was irritated that the others had all left these people out there without even a “hello”. He went straight out and started taking to them.

The man wanted to buy a truck to replace the one he had driven in on. He also wanted to buy his wife a car because their son had just run their old one into a telephone pole and totaled it. Geoff spent about two hours chatting with them, getting and giving information. He learned that they owned and ran a large farm with 40 horses, 80 head of cattle, other livestock, crops and side businesses running farmland that others had leased from him, and had about 20 employees working for him. When he got done and was writing up the sale of two brand new, fully loaded, vehicles, he asked how they would like to pay. The man reached into his bib overalls and pulled out a roll as big as his country-ham fist and said “sorry, I don’t have cash for both of them, but I’ll pay for one with cash and give you a check for the other; the bank’s open and you can verify the funds are there right now”.

So, because these people looked like dirt-kicker rednecks to the auto sales staff, Geoff sold two top-line vehicles for cash, earned a very substantial commission, and made two acquaintances who invited him out to their farm to visit, and then became good friends for the next 30 years. I got to go with Geoff to their beautiful farm once; among the nicest folks I’ve ever met.

What’s that old saying about not judging a book by its cover….?

Insane

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ISqPmN_Nu24?feature=share

What do I do if a whole SWAT team is at my door?

This kind of happened to me.

One day, my doorbell rang and I opened the door assuming there was a package or a salesman outside.

Instead, there were maybe six large men in body armor and pads. They were each holding a rifle on a sling. Their plate carriers were festooned with pistols, extra magazines, flashlights, and handcuffs.

I stared at these men through my iron security door for a beat- probably with my jaw dropped. Then I said, “Uh, Hey! What’s going on guys?”

Turns out it was a fugitive recovery team from the US Marshals.

They were looking for my neighbor’s scummy boyfriend who had lived with her for a short time. Apparently, he was even scummier than I had thought.

I stepped out on the porch and spoke with the Marshals for a few minutes. I knew my neighbor, but not her boyfriend. I had nothing helpful to tell them. They piled back into a few big, black SUVs and left.

Weird, but at least it wasn’t a solicitor at the door.

No One

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jw8_gjWsQgA?feature=share

What is important in life?

When we die, our money remains in the bank. Yet, when we are alive, we don’t have enough money to spend.

In reality, when we are gone, there is still a lot of money not spent.

One business tycoon in China passed away. His widow wife, was left with $2.5 billion in the bank, and married her husband’s chauffeur (Car driver).

His chauffeur said,

All the while, I thought I was working for my boss it is only now, that I realise that my boss was all the time, working for me !!!

The cruel reality is,

It is more important to live longer than to have more wealth. So, we must strive to have a strong and healthy body.

  • In a high end hand phone, 75% of the functions are useless!
  • For an expensive car, 75% of the speed and gadgets are not needed.
  • We never contact 75% of people in our contact list.
  • If you own a luxurious villa or mansion, 75% of the space is usually not used or occupied.
  • How about your wardrobes of clothes?75% of them are not worn!
  • A whole life of work and earning. Still, we spend 75% of our earning on other people.

So, we must protect and make full use of our 25%.

  • Go for medical check-ups even if not sick.
  • Drink more water, even if not thirsty.
  • Learn to let go, even if faced with grave problems.
  • Endeavour to give in, even if you are in the right.
  • Learn to forgive people.
  • Remain humble, even if you are very rich and powerful.
  • Learn to be contented, even if you are not rich.
  • Exercise your mind and body, even if you are very busy.
  • Be calm and patient in every situation.
  • Make time for people you care about.

Why is London Disappearing?

https://youtu.be/GPJti1ASGcc

What’s the craziest reason a kid got suspended at your school?

My sister got suspended for skipping class. She wasn’t feeling well during PE, and got a note to go to the nurse’s office. The nurse wasn’t in (supposedly she was on a coffee break). My sister passed out (as in unconscious) in front of the nurse’s office, laying on the floor in the hall. No one noticed she was there until after the nurse came back at the end of the *next* period.


They suspended her for cutting that class. She was told the next day, and served the in-school suspension that day. The next day my dad came in and raised heck… and the suspension was removed from her record, and the nurse was written up for taking a too long coffee break (over an hour).


I’m not sure what was said to the teachers who were supposed to be watching the hall during class change, and never noticed her on the floor. None of the kids said anything that we know of either. I guess it’s a good thing it wasn’t a critical thing that caused her to pass out.

Shadow People and The Hat Man | Who are they? What do they want?

https://youtu.be/tsKqJay4ZRE

What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?

Back in the 1980s, I worked as an independent Contract Software Engineer working through a technical service firm. As such there were many ‘business deductions’ that I could take off and I also only had to pay taxes 4 times a year, so all the interest I earned on the taxes was an added boost. But, then the tax laws changed. As a Software Engineer working through a technical service firm, I was now considered an employee of that firm. This meant no more ‘business deductions’ and no interest on my tax savings account.

So I looked for another loophole. I discovered that as long as I worked more than 50 miles away from home, all my travel expenses were tax deductible. Now I was a single man with few attachments so I started to travel. My home became a mailbox in New Jersey. Now you might think that keeping track of all your travel expenses would be annoying. The federal government though made that easy. The standard travel deduction for most metropolitan areas was $100 per day and if it was cheaper to stay than it was to travel home, you could take that deduction for 7 days each week. Now my expenses did not run $3000 a month. I would rent an apartment for $800/month, do my own cooking so food was maybe $300/month. Electricity, water, heat, cable whatever, might cost me another $300/month. All told, my expenses were rarely half of the $3000/month I was deducting off my tax return.

There was one gotcha to this tax rule. The federal government rules that if a person stayed at the same job for 27 months, then that person was not traveling. They had moved…. 27 months ago. This meant that if I stuck around that long, I would owe the taxes on that $81000. To add insult to injury, even if I just took another position that was within 50 miles of that position, it was still considered the same location. So every 2 years I would quit whatever position I had (most of my contracts didn’t actually last that long) and move to another part of the country.

Still, this $36500/year tax deduction was a nice boon. But they kept on nibbling away on this. Originally it was on the Schedule A and the deduction occurred before you calculated your AGI. They later moved it to a post after the AGI was calculated so the lower AGI no longer affected when other deductions kicked in. Later they decided that 20% of that $100/day was for food. If you were home, you still had to eat, so they considered that 25% of that 20% is no longer deductible. this changed the $100/day to $95/day. And each year, the deduction was lessened.

After a few years, I married and my wife didn’t want to travel around the country with me. I stopped contracting and I have no idea whatever happened to that deduction.

Gonzalo Lira’s DEATH update. US State Dept. confirms his death. They did NOTHING to support him.

They tortured him to death.

https://youtu.be/Iq8ZwE3-h2g

What’s the most unprofessional thing a doctor has said to you?

Two Years ago:

My daughter had turned two a couple months before. She was really fussy that day but I had to go to work. Three hours later I got a phone call from her daycare telling me that she was crying a lot and couldn’t move her leg. There was no swelling or bruising or anything. I was stuck at work and had a minimum 45 minute commute back. So they offered to take her to the ER for me. I got off as soon as I could and rushed to meet them.

By the time I got there, they had already done blood/urine tests and x-rays. When the doctor came in he went through everything they tested for and said he couldn’t find anything. I was confused and asked him why she couldn’t move her leg and was in so much pain. He gave me this stupid smile and said “Well it could just be growing pains. But I think she just wants attention. If you could bother spending time with your child instead of working she would be happier. If you are still worried go ahead and take her to her regular doctor on Monday”. I demanded to have a second opinion and the doctor refused. I was told if I didn’t leave the hospital he would call security and force me to leave.

I was pissed! It isn’t as if I wake up and think “Gee I don’t feel like dealing with my kid I am just dropping her off at daycare”. I am a single mom, I don’t receive any kind of child support, don’t go out or have a social life, and have to work to pay the bills (including medical insurance for both of us). I was handed a piece of paper that said to just give her Tylenol every few hours, spend “quality time” with her, and see her regular doctor on Monday if the pain continues. I took my crying baby home (it was 3 AM on Saturday morning) and stayed up trying to figure out what to do next.

(BTW)

I called in to work that morning; my gas tank was almost on empty, I had $11 to last until my next pay check (a week away), and our regular doctor was the next town over (about 20 miles away). By 8 AM I called my sister and borrowed some cash, filled up my tank, called our doctor on his cellphone, and took her to the ER next to his office. Our doctor tried to get the test results from the other ER, but they said they couldn’t find the paper work. Instead of waiting, the doctor ran his own tests. Thank god he did!

We were there less than 30 minutes when the doctor came in and said he was rushing her to Wichita (3+ hour drive away). It was complicated because he wanted to fly her there but our tiny ER didn’t have an area for the plane and she needed to be there immediately. They hooked her up with an IV, we got in the ambulance, had a police escort, and lights/sirens the entire way (it took about two hours to get there). I was freaking out. There was no time for the doctor to explain what was going on and the paramedics said that they weren’t sure exactly what was happening but was told she wasn’t allowed to move at all. My poor baby was strapped down head to toe and terrified.

When we got to the hospital there was a team of doctors and nurses waiting in the bay. They rushed her away; I wasn’t allowed to follow, and I had to speak with the police and DCF. They asked me a bunch of questions about our visit to the other ER, where I was when she was at daycare, what my daughter’s symptoms were before going to the ER, what the doctor told me, what paperwork I was given, and if they had permission to look at her medical records.

I kept asking to see my daughter and what the hell was going on. Finally an hour later a nurse came out and explained that my daughter was going septic, flat-lined once, and they had to figure out where the infection was and what was happening to her. She was rushed into emergency surgery shortly after that.

Turns out my daughter had a pouch in her hip joint that was filled with MRSA. It had begun to leak into her tiny body. Any slight movement could have ruptured the pouch and within minutes killed her. The doctors in Wichita said if I had waited even one hour longer to bring her in she would have died. She was in the hospital for two weeks. After she was discharged she had to stay on very heavy duty antibiotics for seven weeks, physical therapy for four months, and bi-weekly blood tests for a year. She still has pain sometimes when she walks or runs; the infection ate away some of the lining around her hip joint, and she will most likely have arthritis when she is older.

We still don’t know for sure how she ended up with this infection. The only thing we can figure is she got it from me since I work at a hospital. She did have bronchitis a few weeks before this experience but it is normal since she has asthma.

Here’s what I found out later:

The ER my daughter originally had gone to refused to give up her medical files and our doctor knew something was very wrong. He had been our family doctor since my daughter was two months old and well as a friend/doctor to the rest of our family over 10 years. I was that annoying first-time worry-wart mom but never neglectful and never brought my daughter to an ER without something really being wrong. Our doctor called the sheriff and explained an investigation had to be checked out. The sheriff got a hold of DCF and they began an investigation. That is when they figured out quickly what had happened.

The dickhead ER doctor had never looked at her test results (which showed a very high white blood cell count)! When our doctor had requested the files the other doctor actually tried to destroy the evidence that we were ever there (thank god for computers). The doctor was arrested and pled guilty to a bunch of different charges. He lost his license and was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

What Is Going On In America Right Now

What the fuck is going on?

https://youtu.be/iKYWzhR0o58

What are some shocking implications in movies nobody talks about?

Basically the entire concept of Minions, honestly.

The plot of this 2015 animated children’s movie can aptly be described in one sentence

A race of genetic yellow freaks become hellbent on villainy, and vow to serve the most evil villain they can find

Throughout the movie’s opening montage, the minions meet several well-known historical and mythological figures, including Count Dracula, Genghis Khan and Napoleon Bonaparte.

This seems innocent at first, especially given the cartoonish depictions of said historical figures in the movie. But an internet user took to Tumblr to analyse exactly what these scenes implied for the minions in the greater historical landscape

According to the official Minions Movie, the Minions:

  • Assisted Napoleon in invading most of Europe, racking up a total death count of around 3 Million
  • Assisted Genghis Khan in invading just about all of China and racking up a total death count of roughly 40 Million people
  • Plus that of the T Rex, Caveman, Pharaoh, King, Captain, and Dracula

So we know for a fact they took part in 43 Million deaths. Not to mention they also killed all of their former masters, so add them to the total.

But this also implies there is a strong chance the Minions are going to kill Gru

Conclusion:

Minions are bloodthirsty monsters that should not be glorified in any way.

[1] I’m no historian, but this all sounds about right to me. It’s horrifying to think that in this universe, minions are responsible for pretty much every war crime and atrocity in human history.

And to make matters even worse, the Minions retire to Antarctica after the fall of Napoleon, where they remain until 1968, when the main plot takes place. The Minions were conveniently exiled during WW2 in order to avoid the implications that the minions were Nazis, but by writing around it, the movie still implies that the minions would have worked for Hitler if they were around.

Wow.

Footnotes

[1] TRAPPED IN A PRISON OF EMOTIONS

Alien by Wes Anderson

WTF? I’ve just got to watch this!

https://youtu.be/12qFeL6Thj4

Was there a time when drill sergeants and drill instructors hit recruits? If so, when and why did it stop?

I have been out of the Army well over 50 years when things were somewhat tougher than I expect hey are today. I never saw anyone hit. I had an E-6 Platoon Sergeant, named Walter Streets. He was about 6′4″ and towered over me. He was black and I am white.

He knew I was a good recruit and would become a good soldier. I developed Pneumonia while I was in Basic at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina and went on antibiotics just before the PT test. I was doing the last phase of the test, which was running track. I was having trouble making the last lap and he ran out onto the track and put his arm around me and ran with me. Another Drill Sargeant who stood about only 5′4″ came out and complained to Sargeant Streets who bent down and told him to “F” off. I passed the test.

When I got on the bus to AIT at Ft. McClellan, Alabama, Sargeant Streets gave me a small bottle of whiskey and told me to drink it all on the trip. He told my buddies to throw their overcoats over me on the back of the bus and by the time I got to AIT the pneumonia was gone. It’s actually 58 years ago and I learned how great some Drill Sargeants can be. I wish I could thank him again today!

Would you abort a baby if it had Down syndrome?

I have lived this. When I was 23, I found out we were expecting. At 23 you don’t think anything will be wrong with your baby. That happens to older women, not young people like me. Well the truth is it happens more often with younger women because they are typically having more children than the older women.

At my 16 week ultrasound we really went into it just hoping we would find out the sex of the baby. Instead we left with fear and uncertainty and they weren’t able to tell us the gender. Basically they told us they were able to get a good look at the back of the babies neck but they had a feeling there was some type of abnormality.

So I was referred to a specialist for a level 2 ultrasound and further testing.

A few days later I went to the specialist along with my Mom and one of my sisters who had a medical background. After the ultrasound we were told that there was definitely something wrong with the baby and they thought it was either Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida or Cerebral Palsy.

I was offered the option to terminate and/or do an amnio to find out exactly what was wrong. They also still couldn’t see the baby’s gender. I decided to do the amniocentesis but I made it very clear to the doctor that I was not terminating the pregnancy no matter what the results. Approx 10 days later I called my OBGYNs office and was told they would call me back.

They called me back in just a few minutes to tell me that the doctor was on vacation but he was coming in to talk to me, how quickly can you get here? I knew that didn’t mean good news. My husband couldn’t get off work again so my mom and sister met me there.

My doctor took us into his office and said. “You are having a boy! But he does have Down Syndrome”. I was totally broken with this news.

I sobbed in his office with my family. I mourned the child I thought I would have. I mourned for months. Probably even after my son was born. My husband gave me an ultimatum, either have an abortion or we get a divorce.

I took the divorce and never looked back. I was always pro-life. I am still pro-life. My ex was mad. He was mad at the world. He was mad with God. He knew plenty of people that smoked or did drugs in their pregnancy and their babies were fine.

I wouldn’t even drink caffeine and our baby was going to be “retarded”. (His word, not mine). I could never choose to have an abortion. It wasn’t my body or life. I was just the vessel. I couldn’t get him to understand that what if we had a “normal” child and down the road the child was diagnosed with cancer or had a life changing accident that left them disabled? He couldn’t answer me. He could only say “if you have this baby, then I will never be able to have a boat”. (He was a winner).

But when my son was 5, I met a wonderful man who loved us both. We were married and he adopted my son and we have two other kids now.

Has it been easy? No but who said parenthood was easy?

Even with typical children. Jacob is 23, he has graduated high school, he has a job that he loves and so much more. He will never be able to drive or live on his own but so what?

He is high functioning, smart, talks ALOT, no heart issues, no major health issues and a wonderful personality. He loves Jesus, Disney and his family. And we wouldn’t trade him for the world.

How AFRICAN Are African Americans?

https://youtu.be/IYuuybBt6lg

What did your parent do that made you say “I will never be like my mother/father?

Mama left in the middle of the night with my daddy’s best friend. She didn’t show up for the divorce hearing and that gave my daddy full custody. They had been married for 18 years. Suddenly she was gone. I was 5 years old.

I told myself I could never leave my children like that. I remember the feeling of abandonment. I was her only daughter, she left my brothers as well. One was 10, the other was 4.

My family that I was left with didn’t care much for me. I was a girl, strike one. I looked exactly like my mama, strike two. I finally revealed the sexual abuse I was being tortured with at the hands of my uncle, huge strike three. So, rejection has been a big problem for me in my lifetime. I never wanted to make my own children feel unloved and unwanted. But… I did.

I didn’t leave them physically. I had a problem with alcohol at a very early age. By the time I was 40 I was a full-blown alcoholic. For the next 10 years I was in a drunken stupor, in mental hospitals because of suicide attempts and in jail. It ruled my life and took ME away from my son and daughter during their teenage years. Thank God I married a solid gold man who is always present for our children.

I turned 50 in County jail serving my 90 days for my 4th DUI. That was the very last time I was in custody. We sold our home soon after that and moved to an apartment for the first time in our married life. Our children were both married and living on their own. When we drove away from that home I took that monkey off my back and flung her out the window. I’ve not had a drop of alcohol since. The craving is gone and has not returned for 12 years now. YAY!!!

We can try not to repeat the sins or mistakes of our parents, but be mindful of those mistakes because you could be hurting your family the same just by acting in a different way.

What’s something you should never reveal about yourself to your coworkers no matter how close you are?

What I’m going to speak on is something that you should never, ever share with anyone but your most trusted friends and siblings (and you should never share it with your parents or any of your friends that you don’t trust to act accordingly), in addition to your coworkers.

You should never, ever share your marital or relationship issues with any of those people. If you get in a huge fight with your spouse or partner, you should never share the details of it with anyone but the people you trust the most.

You see, when you share the details of a fight with a close friend who doesn’t have the ability to internalize all of the details, the next time that friend sees your spouse, they very well might treat your partner differently, based on what you told them.

A fight between a husband and wife especially should never be shared with anyone but your very closest friend, and you absolutely NEED to have one person that you can share it with, otherwise, you’ll never get an objective truth about who was really right in the fight.

When my wife and I get into a fight (we’ve had exactly three over the last five years), I call one person; my best friend Casey. Would you care to know why I call him specifically, even though I have two other friends that I’m just as close with or closer with?

Casey will tell me the truth, no matter what. If I’m wrong, and I was acting like an asshole, he will absolutely tell me so. That’s extremely valuable information, and I can think on what he tells me and take it back to my wife.

If he tells me that I’m right, and that she’s completely wrong in her argument, I’ll keep it to myself, because throwing that in her face won’t do anything but escalate the situation and cause her to have animosity toward Casey, who is our daughter’s favorite person in the world outside of her blood family.

My wife always calls her best friend Rae, which makes me happy, because Rae is very similar to Casey, in the way that she’ll tell my wife the truth of the matter, even if the truth is that my wife was wrong. Also, both Casey and Rae have the ability to completely internalize all of their knowledge about the fight when next we all see one another, and don’t treat either of us differently. If that wasn’t the case, Casey wouldn’t be able to talk to my wife without being disrespectful, and Rae might slap me every time she sees me.

I’ve known quite a few people who have spoken freely about fights with their spouse, and who have even badmouthed their spouse in front of everyone present. In my opinion, there isn’t much that can be more disrespectful to your spouse and your marriage. You’re giving everyone present a horrible picture of your spouse, and making everyone think that your marriage is some kind of argument-ridden catastrophe.

Everyone that I work with believes my wife to be an absolute angel. From what I’ve told them, she is by far the perfect woman. I never tell them when we argue, or when she does something stupid (like switching the bags for my lunch and the dirty cat litter), or anything negative about our marriage.

Nobody should be airing their dirty laundry at work. Period.

Why did China wait until recently to start her own airliner program? Why didn’t China start the C919 as far back as the mid 90s? China wouldn’t have to buy Boeings if they long started this project.

That easy huh?

If you needed a few billion bucks to establish a commercial aircraft industry, you would think at least 30 nations would have had their own fully operational commercial aircraft right?

Let’s see

Threshold Engineers & Researchers

To commercially manufacture Aircraft you need a minimum threshold workforce of engineers & researchers

Aerospace, Aeronautical and a whole bunch of engineers with significant experience working for commercial aircraft or who have studied commercial aircraft production and assembly

The Magic number for China was 25,000 to be able to draw from

This happened only by 2014–2015

Prior to that every Aerospace Engineer or Designer worked for Defence Manufacturing or for the Space Agency

Boeing alone has a workforce of 61,000 Engineers and 4300 Researchers

The West combined has close to 160,000 Engineers and Researchers in their workforce for Commercial Aircraft Manufacture

By comparison COMAC has 11,280 Engineers and around 900 Researchers

Chinas largest workforce is for

  • Production Engineering (1998–2004)
  • Civil Engineering (1982–1998)
  • Chemical Engineering & Metallurgy (2004–2012) & Electrical Engineering (2004–2012)
  • Automobile Engineering (2012–2019)
  • Tooling & Precision Engineering (2019-)

Even today China has around 34,000 Engineers and Researchers as total workforce for Commercial Aircraft Production


Competition

You aren’t competing with just Boeing or Airbus

Your competition is with Boeing, Rolls Royce, GE, Safran, Michelin, Dunlop and another 700–1200 companies that make from the largest airframe to the smallest on board electronic assembly

  • The Airframe alone to carry such a huge aircraft is a massive challenge
  • The Wind Tunnel System
  • The Electronics
  • The Wheels

Every part especially the Engine is a result of decades of continuous development by the West from the First World War

China this needed to get the Airframe Right

This alone took a decade

They then used a Canadian entity called Bombardier to get the electronics and the supply chain

They then got the electronics right. That took four years.

Then they got the Composite Wing Design and that was seven years.

That finished by 2021

They still have the largest nut to crack – THE ENGINE!!!!

Plus remember Mitsubishi has been unable to break into this market after 45 years


Economic Fiscal Problem

Like our Bullet Train, this Airliner was deemed a project that could never hope to break even by Chinas best economists

It’s why they proposed the HSR or Highways where China is the boss, the master of the fantastic quality supply Chain

It’s why China is investing so heavily into HSR

That’s their core area

Sadly the Comac is more of a prestige issue by China

To have their own fully made aircraft is acceptable even if the aircraft costs some money to the State as subsidies to keep at even keel

Its why China sidestepped IC Engines which they could never ever perfect and are masters of EV Batteries and E Platforms on earth

The Aircraft has to be made fully indigenously on a huge scale to break even because today the selling price is lower than what it costs on an accountants scale

In 1990 – China could certainly not afford to subsidize the Aircraft by any degree of money that they can easily do in their sleep today


So establishing an Industry and producing commercially is not a joke

It takes decades of solid hard work

You are competing against a technology evolution of over 60 years or 70 years from the West

You have specialized suppliers and makers of mother machines – all who need replication

Exactly why Chinas EVs and Renewable Energy models are next to impossible to recapture by any other nation

They have the whole package


China is likely to do far better in developing commercial self flying taxis on a drone concept which can travel as far as 600 Kms on indigenous technology and dominate the world

 

Have you ever had a job where you did nothing for years and nobody found out?

I worked at this large busy engineering factory. There was a store keeper who also worked there. He had a different role to all of the other store keepers.

He had his own desk. He had big tubs of machine cutters on his desk. His own computer. At the back of his desk, he had shelves filled with box files.

He was always busy. He never had to work shifts like the rest of us. He worked regular days.

Redundency came and he successfully applied for it. He left.

The other store keepers were told that they had to include his job into their own job. They kicked off about and went to the union. The union told them to “ just do what you can”

The store keepers decided to find out what it was that he did. The cutters were old stock, and they were chucked away. The files were full of old unimportant paper work, they were chucked away too.

If you had a lathe tool that needed to be sharpened, he would have to book it in. Those lathe tools had been made obsolete years before.

He basically never had a job. He never did anything. Nobody ever questioned him. He looked so busy and important. And he’d been doing this for years.

She needs to be happy

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fdG7CmoMvdA?feature=share

 

Chicken with Tomatoes and Olives
(Kotopoulo me Tomatoes kai Elies)

Kotopoulo me Tomatoes kai Elies
Kotopoulo me Tomatoes kai Elies

Ingredients

  • Flour (for dredging)
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1 (3 pound) frying chicken, cut into 6 to 8 serving pieces
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 2 large red onions, peeled, chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, peeled, minced
  • 1 1/2 cups peeled, chopped plum tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup dry red wine
  • 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
  • 1 cup pitted Kalamata olives, rinsed and drained
  • 1 teaspoon oregano

Instructions

  1. Combine flour, salt and pepper on a plate and lightly dredge the chicken.
  2. Heat 1/3 cup olive oil in a large, deep skillet and brown the chicken on all sides, over high heat. Remove with a slotted spoon.
  3. Add remaining olive oil to skillet, and sauté onions until wilted and lightly browned. Add garlic and stir for 30 seconds.
  4. Place chicken back in the pan. Pour in the tomatoes and wine, and season with salt and pepper. Cover and simmer over low heat for about 45 minutes, or until the chicken is tender.
  5. Ten minutes before removing from heat, add the crumbled feta and stir until melted. Five minutes before removing from heat, add olives and oregano.
  6. Serve warm.

Yields 6 servings.

The US says she is in an economic war with China. China never declared economic war on the US. So who started the fight? China didnt ban US products from China first. The US did ban Chinese stuff in America and openly speaks about limiting China.

There is no question who started the trade war.

Of course it is the despicable and obnoxious USA! Everyone knows it and everyone knows it is the U.S. that is hurting the work.

But if Americans are smart enough, which suspect the are not, a much more salient question would be “will it work?”

I absolutely won’t and it will harm the US economy much more than it ever hurt the Chinese economy.

Why? Very simple.

The U.S. market is simply a lot smaller than China and threatening not to sell to them is threatening to lose a market bigger than the world’s next 10 biggest market combine!

China can and will buy from someone else or it will simply make it themselves just like how Huawei Mate 60 surprised the U.S. who naively thinks that China will need at least 30 years to make it own high end chips China took less than 3 short year! And now the U.S. is well and truly fxxked!

China stops buying not only for their own consumers that is 30% of the world, it also stop using the U.S. chips in the product they make for the rest of the world or at least another 40% more. So the U.S. gets cuts away from 70% of the world’s market!

Next threatening not to buy from China who can simply make things better, faster and cheaper than everyone else is like threatening to bring inflation to its shores. Let alone depriving your own people from productivity and profit. Hence your crippling inflation. Increasing interest levels to fight inflation caused your bank failures and hurt investment! All are very bad for the US!

Now let’s evaluate the result of the trade war initiated by the U.S. The U.S. inflation were double digit at one point but now 3–4%. China’s inflation rate is 0.3%!

In the 5 years since the trade war China grew 5 times faster than the U.S.! Your trade with China grew from less than 200 billion before the trade war to more than 700 billion last year!

So who is winning the trade war? China is laughing all the way to the bank!

[中文版本】周深新歌《浮光》跨晩首唱!宿命感拉满 REACTION

https://youtu.be/r4XmlTrhx30

Quarters in the ashes

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

One of the things about my mother was the ashtray in her car.

Yeah. I know. I know.

Many of you youngsters have no idea what an “ashtray” is, what it does, and why it is important. Let alone what one was doing in a car.

ashtray
ashtray

Well, let me tell you. It is a receptacle to hold the ashes of a cigarette in. You see, when you smoke a cigarette, the end burns. Turns to ash and dissolves. If you don’t flick the ashes away they fall over everything. So you’ve got to deposit them in a tray to get them out of the way.

Anyways, I once went to clean out her can and pulled out the ashtray. And it it was about $30 worth of change (mostly quarters) and a ton-load of ashes and one or two bubblegum wrappers. Man, oh man. They made those things DEEP! Lordy! I had no idea.

30369 gettyimages 1017146822
30369 gettyimages 1017146822

I understand that you can still order cars with this feature, but they are no longer as common, and certainly not standard like they used to be.

Who’d figure. Eh?

Live moves on. Things change.

It’s called life.

Don’t you know….

Today.

How do you deal with your husband’s family members who are always criticizing you in front of him?

Happened to me with my ex MIL. She started in on me about the mess my kitchen was in the day after I got back from a 2500 miles business trip I had been on. My ex left dirty dishes everywhere, dried food on them, spanking clean dishwasher, and laundry piled by the back door. As soon as she started, I was furious. First she wasn’t to be in my home but he let her in, second, he said nothing about the mess being his, and finally, I was exhausted and had 3 days of paperwork ahead of me. I looked at him, he looked away while she was yelling at me. I basically told her to can it, her son had created the mess while I was out making money and that I had paperwork to do to make sure I finished the job of the trip. Since she created a spoiled brat who wouldn’t clean up, she had dispensation to be in my kitchen while she did the dishes. She turned to him to back her up and the coward that he is, he told me it was my job and I said, nope, I quit, hire a maid if you won’t do it. She left and we had a blowout fight (led to divorce in a couple of month).

Three days later after getting my paperwork complete and I was scheduling my next trip away, the kitchen was still a mess. I actually packed up every dish, glass, pan, silverware, etc. that was mine and refused to cook or clean anything. I was really totally fed up. I did purchase paper plates and cups and plastic eating utensils and left him with a pretty much bare fridge. He ate at his mom’s while I was gone or at a restaurant but I had a clean kitchen.

Stand up for yourself. Tell them that if they can’t behave with decency, there is the door and until they learn some respect and manners when it comes to you, they are not welcome in your home. If you are in theirs, tell them goodbye and that you won’t be returning. Hubby can visit when he likes but you won’t be back. And by the way, you are no longer welcome in my home either.

Have you ever literally face-palmed in court?

I was prosecuting a committal hearing against a defendant for an allegation that he sexually assaulted his younger step daughter. The victim was a ‘not so polite’ 13 year old. My first question to her was, “Please tell the court your name.” Reply, “You already know that.” It was a struggle just to set up the identity of the victim. I just knew it was going to be difficult to adduce the evidence necessary for the matter to be committed to the District Court for trial from this young victim so I then asked a very broad open question and I was going to build my case from there. “Can you just remember what happed to you at your 12th birthday party?” Reply, “Get Fucked.” That was later followed by, “Can you now tell the court what your step gather did?” Reply, “Get Fucked. You know.” By then I wanted to palm face but pressed on.

Such answers are a body blow for a prosecutor as two rules apply, 1. I can not ask leading questions and 2. I can’t normally cross examine my own witness. From there on the defence lawyer started to frequently object to my ‘leading’ and ‘cross examining’ questions.

Eventually, I was able to (unconvincingly) put the barest evidence necessary to the court. When the victim was cross examined she gave numerous answers that were very detrimental to the prosecution’s case.

I then called evidence of ‘complaint’ from the victim’s older sister. She gave evidence that shortly after her sister’s 12th birthday party that the victim told her about her step father sexually assaulting her. She gave very credible and convincing evidence. She was then cross examined and was ‘not shaken’ in her evidence re the sexual assault.

There is an old saying in court that you should never ask a question when you don’t know the answer. The following supports that view.

The questioning of the older sister swung around to the credibility of the victim, her younger sister. And the defence was on a roll. “You know that your sister tells, don’ t you?” ‘Yes.’ “And she has often told you lies hasn’t she?” ‘Yes.’

I considered, having heard the victim’s evidence, that these question were reasonable and the the replies were very predictable. My case was almost totally destroyed at this stage and no court would ever committed with this standard of evidence.

It was then time for the defence lawyer to sit down but he was on fire with favourable answers now flowing freely from my witness. Then came, and my ears immediately pricked up, “You don’t believe you sister is telling the truth about your step father do you?” I was looking at the face of the defence lawyer as he was asking that question and I could almost read his mind that he was starting to regrett asking this question but it was out of his mouth before he could retract it. I thought, that’s an interesting question, I wonder how my witness will answer this question?

Then came the immediate reply, with gushing tears, screams and finger pointing to the defendant, ‘I know she is telling the truth, dad also did it to me on my 12th birthday.’

Horror was in the face of the lawyer. That was one question too many. He had nowhere to hide and it was high drama in the court room.

The female social worker who was comforting the victim then ran across the courtroom and started attacking the defendant with her handbag shouting ‘You Bastard, You Bloody Bastard.’

And the reaction of the defendant? He was wimping like a mongrel dog during the attack and not trying to defend himself to any degree. If anyone ever ‘acted guilty’ then this defendant was acting as absolutely guilty.

The first time the older sister had ever told any person about her being sexually assaulted by her step father was just then in the witness box.

The mother then rushed up to the witness box to console her older daughter and the police were trying to protect the defendant from the social worker.

Me, I just sat back in my chair with a smug smile and thought … well such thoughts were not complementary to the defence lawyer who was trying to now object to his own question as the witness was crying out to her mother, ‘Mum, Dad did it to me all the time till he started fucking her.”

It was too much for the Magistrate who stood up and adjourned the case till ‘order was restored’.

It was utter joyous pandemonium for this prosecutor.

I had two, the lawyer and his client who needed to palm face!

And yes, the defendant was committed that day for the offence and he was later charged with sexually assaulting his older step daughter.

Such high drama is exceptionally rare to see in a courtroom but that day still lives with me some 20 years later.

Greek Souvlaki with Tzaziki

Souvlaki are kabobs, usually made with beef, lamb or chicken and sometimes shrimp.

2024 01 24 10 39
2024 01 24 10 39

Yield: 6 servings; about 3 cups

Ingredients

Souvlaki

  • 2 pounds lamb shoulder or 2 pounds sirloin tip, cut into 1 1/2 inch chunks
  • 2 cups dry red wine
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 2 teaspoons lemon rind, long strips
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • Sweet peppers and cherry tomatoes as needed

Tzaziki

  • 2 cups plain yogurt
  • 1/2 English cucumber, peeled and grated
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

  1. Begin preparing the tzaziki a few hours before serving. The flavors need time to blend.
  2. Marinate the meat overnight to absorb the wine and garlic.
  3. Souvlaki: Place the meat in a large bowl. Pour in the wine and sprinkle minced garlic and oregano. Imbed the lemon strips among the cubes of meat and drizzle with olive oil. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate 12 hours or overnight. Shake or stir the mixture several times during the marinating period.
  4. About 30 minutes before serving, drain off and discard the marinade. Thread the chunks of meat onto long skewers, brushing with a little olive oil.
  5. Over medium coals, barbecue the souvlaki until it’s done the way you like it.
  6. Serve on a bed of rice and pass the tzaziki to spoon on top.
  7. Tzaziki: Line a colander or sieve with cheesecloth (or gauze) and set it over a bowl. Pour in the yogurt and allow it to drip for an hour or so.
  8. After the yogurt has drained, combine it, in a small bowl, with the cucumber and the garlic. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until just before serving.
  9. While the meat is barbecuing, drizzle the olive oil over the surface of the Tzaziki and, without stirring, sprinkle on the salt. It needs no mixing as your guests will do that when they dollop it onto their souvlaki.

The truth

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GjzmvcU7BpI?feature=share

What is the nastiest home you have been in?

When I was working as a police officer I had a call of a shoplifting with a minor, a girl of 14. At that age I was required to take her home to find an adult to release her to as she was considered “arrested on paper.”

When we got to her house she got out of the cruiser rather quickly and ran inside the home and brought out another teenager with her. I told the teen I needed to release her to an adult and as I started to go to the front door she blocked my way which seemed very odd.

I pressed on asking “is there an adult inside?” She responded that there was but that she would go in and get her. I stood about 6 feet from the open door and inhaled an odor from inside that I can only describe as truly putrid from inside that house.

I immediately began to suspect that the inside of the home was a “filth situation” and I walked around to the back to see if I was correct by looking in the windows, but almost all had closed curtains and it was dark inside the windows that I could see into.

The girl then exited the back door which again produced a rush of air that was truly disgusting. Again I attempted to gain entrance to the house but the girl stood in my way. Since I didn’t have a warrant to search the house and I couldn’t prove that it was a dangerous situation to justify a warrantless entry, I then released the girl to an adult relative who also eventually came out of the home,

Afterwards I wrote an information report to Child Protective Services relaying my suspicions that the inside of the house was filthy and a potential danger to those living inside.

A few months later I received a letter from one of the CPS investigators who had received my report. She wrote to tell me that she thought I’d want to know that they investigated the home and that it had been the worst case of child neglect and filth they had ever seen!

She said there was urine and feces everywhere from both humans and animals. She said that she was amazed that I had been able to make a determination that the house was a problem having never entered and by only using my sense of smell.

In 15 years I had been in a lot of dirty to filthy homes and somehow my sense of smell let me know that this home needed a look inside. The investigator said everyone (7 children in all) had been removed from the home, as there were no adults living there,the utilities had been shut off and the oldest child was trying desperately to keep the family together.

I felt sad that the family was split up but I knew how dangerous continuing to live in that house was going to be. This was one of the saddest cases I worked on and has always remained in my thoughts.

What is the best way to inform your boss that you are leaving your job permanently (no plan of coming back)? Also, what is the best way to resign from any job?

The best example of someone leaving their job was a former associate that I worked with. She had been through hell and back with the company. The boss had harassed her for years, causing her emotional and physical pain. She was overworked without getting much praise for it. She was blamed for every little thing. All this being said, she was no push over. She routinely stood up for herself, even putting her boss in his place several times. In all honesty, he was beyond incompetent. So there was no shortage of ways to put him in his place.

She was on the brink of quitting. What pushed her over the edge was a phone call she received while on her day off. The boss would start to berate her and blame her for the disarray the store was in. He called her lazy and good for nothing. This was the straw that broke the camels back. She walked into his office the next day and quit. She warned him that if his behavior continued, he would lose all his good workers; which he proceeded to lose. This turned out to be true because the following month, he lost two of his managers.

Fast forward to the present, the store is in worst shape and bleeding people constantly.

Gonzalo Lira has died

https://youtu.be/LZxd4tyW3Js

What’s the creepiest thing you have heard a child say?

One of my kid’s friends who came over after a bday party to play said something to me I’ll never forget.

He was around 8. When offered snacks he declined.

When offered to play toys he declined.

He wanted to go on my patio to “ watch the sky”. When I joined him he was staring intently up. He pointed to the sky and said “ You should watch out. Watch out for the triangles. They come sometimes. They look at you and you can talk to them but it’s not like we talk. “

I asked him to elaborate. Who comes? What do they look like? How do they come to you?

“ No. Not just me. Lots of people see them. And animals too. Some are nice. Some are mean. You should watch out because you might see a mean one. They come in triangles. Big triangles. With lights. I can’t see them. But if you don’t run and listen they talk. The mean ones say they own us. The nice ones say they’ll protect us. The nice ones come in circles. So watch out for triangles. “ He said all this very matter -of -fact and seemed afraid but confident in his words. He claimed to have seen one just the other day

He then went inside and I don’t remember much after that. When his mom picked him up I asked her about what he said. She looked embarrassed and said something like oh don’t mind him and his wild imagination. This was late 90s and we were temporarily in Northern Canada in a rural area for work. We left shortly after. I still to this day watch the sky a little differently.

*Edit to Clarify

  1. Forgot to mention when I asked the kid how many times this happened he said only a couple.
  2. This was not a normal part of our planet for background. This was a vast frozen tundra with small communities accessible by dogsled and helicopter. Near the Arctic Circle. I don’t believe him per se but also don’t disbelieve entirely. I hope it’s not true.

“Can you hug me too?”Seeing owner embrace another companion,the rescued stray cat longs to be loved

https://youtu.be/-8mYhq18ZXA

How tough is life after engineering if you dont get placed?

I passed out engineering in 2007. I did not get any campus placements even after scoring first class with all papers cleared in first attempt.

So I moved to Bangalore in search of job by end of 2007, and joined a course for Java. I have 50 K money with me, this is the money I got as part of my mothers share. All my aim at that time was to get into a job, before I exhaust this 50K rupes.

I paid 10 K to java institute and spent 2 months there. The training was so poor and contrary to what they promised, no companies came for campus recruitment. Every month I need to pay 2500 rupees rent in PG, and cost of food is around 100 per day. The total cost per month would be around 5500 Rs.

After 2 months, I was left with 30 K. Again I spent one more month, the balance amount came to 25K.

I couldn’t get a job in software, and my real passion is VLSI since I am commimg from ECE stream. I attended around 30 placememts both inside and outside the campus, but not a single one I am able to crack.

I went to home with 25 K money. I told my parents about my VLSI dream. But my poor parents couldn’t afford it. The fees was 50K for 6 months course, and rent + food cost 30 K till course completion.

So I need another 55K for my dream course.I have to sell the golden chain of my mother as well a gold chain my grandma given to me before her death. We sold those gold chains and arranged money for my course. I was able to make some 45 K by selling those.

So I went to Bangalore back with 70 K rupees and paid 25 K as first installment of the course. Now really I need to cut short my expense, otherwise I will run out of money. So I moved to friends house, where I pay around 2000 Rs for rent. That way I can save 500 rs per month.

My bus fare was 10 rupees one side that time, so I walk past 2 stops so that I can save 2 rupees per day. Then I will have dosa from road side shops in the morning, so that I can skip lunch. I only ate breakfast and dinner. Lunch I used to have water, and then opted for tiger biscuit.

On Saturdays and sundays, I will sleep the whole days and have one time food. This saves money. I will study the whole night on weekends. Weekends are holidays for the institute.

On monthly basis my bank balance started diminishing, and I have to save each one rupee coin I have. Now I started walking 8 kms to office and then return in the evening by bus. That way I reduced bus fare from 20 rs to 8 rs. Earlier I saved 4 rupees by walking past 2 stops, so I can go for 8 + 8.

To manage money, I brought all my B.Tech text books from native and sold it in Bangalore. I managed to bring some 20 Kg books by train. O got another 2500 Rs for that.

By 5 th month, I am left with 4 K, and don’t know what to do. I tried myself and got placed in a small company that is willing to pay me 3000 Rs per month. The company is working in the field of VLSI. I happily joined the company.

The work hours are from 9 AM and can extend up to night 10 or 11. Sometimes night shifts. Though weekend are officially OFF, but they make us work on Saturdays mandatory. But I am so happy that they give 100 Rs food reimbursement on Saturdays and 100 Rs from snacks for night shift. I made use of this opportunity happily by testing my stamina and deteriorating my physical health.

By 20 th, my purse will be left empty, and I need to survive for next 10 days. So I keep 100 rs in my wallet for bus fare for the next 10 days. I am lucky that they distribute snacks at 6 PM daily. So I will have only snacks from 20 the to 26 th, and tons of machine tea. Tiger biscuits for lunch and dinner.

I get sodexo coupons worth 350 Rs on 26 or 27th of the month. So I use sodexo coupons from 26th to 30th the for food expense.

By 1 st, I get 3000/rs stipend, in which Rs 2000 will be given as rent, and Rs 1000 would be iny purse. I need to manage food for 1000 Rs for next 20 days from 1st to 20th and bus fare as well.

Me and my mom have 2 separate accounts in SBI. Since we don’t have money to maintain AQB, I use this 3000 Rs and swing between both of these accounts to maintain a 1000 Rs AQB in bank savings account. Cumulative amount in account shall be 90K for a quarter. I manage it somehow to maintain bank account.

This went for few months and one day

I was not even left with 10 rupees for bus fare. Then I made a call to my parents and asked them for some 400 rupees, telling them that my sandals got broken and I need money. I can’t say my real situation to my parents because they will feel bad that they were not able to support me.

My weight got reduced from 80 to 65 Kg in one year gap, and every time I say my parents its due to job stress. I hide the fact that I starve of limit my food intake to save money.

All my friends were placed in tops MNCs in Bangalotr., earning some 18 to 20 K per month.

I don’t know I should say it here, there are couple of times, I searched the left overs of the food, which my friend brought as parcel. It happend 2 to 3 times.

By this one year time frame, everybody branded me as a failure and only my parents given me the fire to pursue further.

By end of 2009, I got 10 k per month, and my weight suddenly spiked from 63 Kg to 75 Kg in 2 months. Everybody got surprised, I told them I started eating junk food, that’s why. Succcesfully hidfen the fact again.

After 2011, I changed 2 companies and now its my 3 rd company. Now I get in hand around 1.8 lakhs per month and other benfits.

Persistence and hardwork never goes waste.

############

Edit:

I am really overwhelmed with happiness after seeing the comments, as I never thought my story would be an inspiration to others.

I will clear some of the questions being raised in the comments:

  1. Anonymous – Though I don’t like to go anonymous, but I have to because I have mentioned my take home salary. If I link my linkedin or Facebook profile, it would become a clear violation of company policies as I disclosed my salary in public forum. Second reason is that my friends and other know people are there in quora and online world. I am sure that some of my close friends will feel bad that I did not go to them for help in times of need.
  2. Regarding my salary, its after 10 years of work experience, I am getting the mentioned amount. May be luck also matters, that few of my colleagues resigned from the organisation, and management looked at me to lead the team. In that way, I got few extra lakhs every year. Not my hardwork alone.

3. Somebody pointed about Government job, I somehow managed to arrange Rs 500 for applying BSNL JTO 2008 examination. After a great difficulty only I was able to arrange that money for application itself.

4. Shiv Shankar Panda – Appreciate your comment. You said said the fact to the point.

5. Happy to see that Shailesh sharma , Neha Yadav, and Bhaumik Raja that my story inspire the juniors.

Thanks for all the comments.

Even the darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer”.

What was the nail in the coffin for an employee or a co-worker?

Actually wasn’t a coworker. It was me.

I landed a factory job in Michigan between my freshman and sophomore years of college at MSU. I was making $10/hr, which was great money at the time, considering minimum was $2/hr, and you could almost survive as a single guy on a minimum-wage job.

I was coming up on the end my 90-day probation when the general foreman dropped by my mill and asked me if I was going back to college, or did I want a full-time job. You know the phrase “young dumb and full of c.” I told him I wanted the job. He told me it was mine as of the next week.

The next day, the plant manager (big suit) never seen in my part — dirty part — of the plant, was in my foreman’s office when I started my shift. A little while later, I saw my grandfather walk in, and they all talked for a bit. After a while, my grandfather got up, pointed to me, shook the GM’s hand, then left.

A few minutes later, I was called to the office, and the GM said, “Sorry, Rich, we like the way you work, but Joe said I need to fire you. He said to tell you that he knows you are mad now, but you are going back to school, and he will get you canned from any job you take until you do.”

I really wasn’t mad, but I was more than a little bit frightened. My 5′6″, 120# grandfather, who had never worked anything other than plant labor (a different plant and a different company) his entire life (except for WWI army and WWII navy), called a high-and-mighty suit, and got him to go to the dirtiest part of the plant just to fire me and make me go back to college.

2023 Review: How China is Catching Up with the US in Key Tech Domains?

https://youtu.be/5KZvekBskM4

What is the best way to tell your boss that their behaviour is not acceptable without coming across as disrespectful or insubordinate?

If my boss behaves inappropriately, particularly toward me, the last thing I’m concerned about it being respectful toward him/her. While working in IT at a community college, I had a boss who attempted to embarrass a coworker and I in front of an office full of staff, students, and school visitors. He announced, loudly, that we were doing our job wrong — we were rerouting a netwok cable — and asked if he had to do it himself. The thing is, he came as we were finishing the job up and were in the process of installing the wall port at the new location. That didn’t stop me from laying my tools on a desk and telling him to go ahead and finish up, since he could do it better, while my coworker and I went to lunch. Then we walked out of the office.

My coworker was so angry and embarrassed that he never returned; he sent the douche an email the next day saying he wouldn’t be back. The douche tried to write me up for insubordination — the douche was angry and embarrassed because I’d told him to finish the job and then walked away in front of a crowd of people — but his boss had heard about what he’d done and told him to leave me alone. The douche could dish it out, but he couldn’t take it, apparently.

The douche and I had a mutual dislike for one another from my first day at the school. In fact, he tried to have my job offer revoked when he was named to replace the former IT Director on an interim basis, but his boss wouldn’t let him do that, either. It pissed me off that my coworker was collateral damage in our feud — even though my coworker told me later that he’d planned to leave before the next semester — and I went out of my way to make life miserable for the douche my last two years at that job. It wasn’t difficult because he was not well-liked — even his boss would insult him in front of the techs he was supposed to be managing.

When I turned in my resignation he asked why I was leaving and I told him I could no longer work for someone I didn’t like or respect. In retrospect, I should have been ruder.

What is something you have learned about relationships while you were single?

1. Pay attention to who you’re with when you feel your best.

2. How you are treated is more important than how much you like someone. Read it again.

3. You can leave a toxic relationship but if you don’t heal what attracted you to them, you will meet them again. The same demon, just in a different person.

4. If you get that gut feeling that something isn’t right about a person or situation, trust it.

5. Being alone is the beginning of something better with someone better.

6. You break your own heart by making somebody more important than you are to them. Never play yourself like that.

7. A boy will say: You deserve better.

but

A man will say: I will make myself better to deserve you.

Choose wisely.

8. You can feel when someone ain’t being real with you, energy never lies.

9. Sit with it.

Instead of drinking it away, smoking it away, sleeping it away, eating it away, f*cking it away, running from it.

Sit with it.

Healing happens by feeling.

10. Feeling safe in someone’s energy is a different type of intimacy. That feeling of peace and protection is really underrated.

11. Imagine a man who doesn’t stop pursuing you, even after he has you.

12. A good relationship is when two people accept each other’s past, support each other’s present, and love each other enough to encourage each other’s future. So don’t rush love. Find a partner who encourages you to grow, who won’t cling to you, who will let you go out into the world, and trust that you will come back. This is what true love is all about.


If you like my answer, drop it an upvote. Check out my profile for more relationships tipsAmy Swift


[Updates]
  • Don’t maintain relationships for the sake of it.
  • Age: 18–25, the age where you meet a lot of temporary people

 

Reports Claimed China’s Missiles Tech Could Wipe Out US Bases in Minutes

In today’s world of global power hungry giants, China emerges as a formidable force with an arsenal of thousands of missiles, capable of reshaping the dynamics of conflict. The alarming prospect of China having the ability to swiftly incapacitate U.S. bases in a war sparks intense discussions about the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific and settles one discussion of the whole debate, China has lurked in the shadows long enough and now it’s time is here.

https://youtu.be/wzMN0ql-X0A

What is the most clever way you have seen someone respond to road rage?

As a young, newly qualified police Constable I was on mobile patrol with a more experienced officer. We stopped a car because one brake light was not functioning. But the driver was enraged. He didn’t think his transgression was worth stopping him. He had an urgent appointment to meet, and he communicated this very angrily, loudly and with lots of swear words. In a normal case it would be “Yes officer, why have you stopped me?” “Your brake lights are not working properly sir.” “Oh, thanks, can I carry on?” “Yes sir, if you are careful and don’t brake suddenly. Get them fixed asap.”

In this case my colleague could see I was getting angry at all the abuse. He pulled me aside and whispered in my ear “The ruder he gets, the politer you get. But don’t forget there are a lot of other things you could check. He’ll either calm down or he’ll assault you and then we’d have a good case.”

So I became excruciatingly polite. But… “So sorry to delay you sir, but I just have to measure the depth of tread of your tyres, including the spare. And make sure your screen wash bottle has sufficient water. Would you demonstrate that your wipers are working please?” “Yes, I’m really sorry about the delay, and my colleague will probably want to see all your documents.”

In this case his road rage melted away, and when he apologised for his attitude, we let him go.

Years later I became a senior officer in charge of a large traffic police formation. I told them all the story.

What is the most insane conversation you have ever had with your parents?

My teen years were tough because my father and I didn’t get along at all. When I was younger my little sisters would look for trouble for fun. When they were caught they’d lie to my parents and say I dared them. They’d smirk while I was beaten – not spanked. When I got married at 22 I began to understand my father as a man. On Oct. 30, 1979 I was saying goodbye to him. He was leaving PA to take a job as a quality control inspector at a nuclear power plant that was being built in Oregon. I suddenly grabbed him into a tight hug and begged him not to go. He’d already signed a contract and all arrangements had been made. I said “If you go I’ll never see you again.”. His reply was “ The next time you see me I won’t be able to see you. The pay is too good to pass up and I’ve never been to the west coast.” He had a heart attack and died on April 5, 1980, one week before he was to go home. The nuclear power plant never opened. It was 40 miles from Mt. St. Helens. When the volcano erupted it caused an earthquake which cracked the foundation of the plant. Thank goodness it wasn’t in operation yet. (Dad and I both had precognition. We often knew things were going to happen before they happened. I prayed for God to take away that ability as no one ever took my warnings seriously and I couldn’t save anyone from accidents or injuries. I’d talked to Dad the day before his death. He told me he had a strong feeling he’d never see home again. I knew that back in Oct. and we were both right.

Accountability (Red Flags #4 + #5)

https://youtu.be/Aj_g5dbtJG4

What things have you accidentally overheard? Do you regret hearing them?

Went out to a bar with some friends for a birthday party for my ex girlfriend. She really messed me up when she left me, like really bad, but I was trying to be nice since she invited me so I figured I’d go out and be there for a drink or two.

So, a mutual friend who had been broken up with a few days before and was there, so as I made the rounds I talked to her and tried to do whatever I could to let her know it would be ok. I’m no therapist, but I did my best ya know? I knew what a bad breakup felt like, as I was also going through one, so I tried to help.

Anyways, after I left the table I overheard her talking to my ex at the bar about me trying to give her advice and she said, “Well nobody has ever loved him so what does he know about any of this?” And they started laughing. Don’t think they know I heard, but I grabbed my coat immediately and took a long walk home.

I don’t need people like that in my life, haven’t willingly seen either of them since.

Why won’t boomers move into more size appropriate homes and retire?

You won’t like the answer.

Enlisted in the military during Vietnam because there was no college money. Not drafted. Got out and got undergraduate and graduate degrees. Made absolutely sure I got the degrees in a field that paid off. Got a job at a company that had cut out retirement plans the previous year — so much for that myth. Did not have lifetime guaranteed employment complete with a gold watch. Worked for six companies over my career. Got married and had kids. First house was small enough to afford, 1300 square feet. It had a 17% mortgage. That’s seventeen, not seven. Paid every cent of the kids’ college educations, and they all have high-paying jobs. Told the kids to always save twenty-percent. They didn’t. They moved to Latteville and immediately rented McMansions in wealthier areas they couldn’t afford, even with their high salaries. They live hand-to-mouth, but make sure they have swimming pools and eBikes with custom paint jobs rendered by highly-regarded eBike artists. They occasionally hit me up for money. I retired 12 years before the average guy, so there’s that. I have more dough than I know what to do with, no one gave me a cent, and I’m not taking a beating from a real-estate agent to help you satisfy whatever selfish desires you may harbour. I like the house I’m in. It’s quite hard to understand why anyone would want to allocate living quarters in America the same way they did (still do) in the ex-Soviet Union. If so, you would qualify for 90 square feet. Anyway, just stay off my lawn.

What is your best “losing it moment” story?

Hi there. One of my biggest losing it moments occurred many years ago. I was still married to my now ex. We walked around the block to visit family for tea and a swim.

After dinner we all had quite a few drinks and I wanted to get the kids home. So we all said our goodbyes and proceeded to walk home. We were happily chatting on our walk, when my nephew, who wanted to stay at our place, said something smart assed to me in a joking way.

My ex whacked him up the back of his head, for disrespecting me. I wasn’t disrespected by anyone and we were all just mucking around having a laugh.

I absolutely lost my shit on him. My ex not my nephew. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, punching him in the face as I rode him down to the ground. I then sat on top of him punching him over and over for hitting our nephew.

Next minute, flashing blue lights and a tall cop is telling me to stop and get off him.

I stood up and my ex just sat there, hands on his head, saying it’s ok because he deserved it.

They let us go home and my kids have never forgotten how pissed off their little muma can get if needed.

Happily divorced now. Kids all have kids. And he’s not in the picture much anymore.

What is the one in a million coincidence you have ever had?

I don’t know about one in a million.

In the late 70s I went to Phoenix for the first time and was staying with a friend who lived there, I bought a cheap car that was a long ways away from my friends house and was following him back to his place. He took a left, the light turned yellow. I had no clue where I was and I didn’t want to lose him. The cop that pulled me over said the light was red. He looked at my New York State license and said hey, you’re from a little town about 25 miles from my little home town. I’m thinking wow, we’re practically neighbors, he won’t give me a ticket. He saw my name and asked any relation to a Vince Dano? Holy shit, no ticket THAT’S MY UNCLE! That little prick he said as he wrote me a ticket. I asked him why my uncle was a prick? He called my uncle an asshole and said he used to be his little league coach. I guess he got benched. About 6 months later I’m in Florida with a job installing lawn sprinklers. I went to my apartment for a minute with the old work truck, left it running and ran inside, heard a crash ran back out and the truck was across the street in a guy’s yard. It had crashed though his fence and wiped out some lawn sprinklers. The old guy came out and I’m apologizing saying don’t worry, I’ll fix everything. As I’m working he asked me where I was from, I told him a little town in nys and he said he’s from a little town about 25 miles away from there. He told me his name I told him mine. He asked if I was related to Vince Dano? I was kind of hesitant thinking what did my little prick uncle do to piss this guy off and now he was going to call the cops. But I said yeah, he’s my uncle. Oh my God! the man said he’s my best friend, we used to coach little league together

Star Trek: TOS Enterprise Bridge Background Ambience *8 Hours* w/ quiet conversations, calming

This is great.

https://youtu.be/vnU2qn6-hz4

Are Republicans saying the charges against Trump are not true?

Most aren’t. Most are saying one or more of these things:

  • The charges are politically motivated. (Doesn’t mean that they are true. Crimes go uncharged on a regular basis.) The charges aren’t meant to ruin his reputation or lead to convictions, but to tie up his time during the general election.
  • He is being charged for things that everyone in his position does. Not his position as president, but the charges against him for his business dealings, some of which were before his presidency. I remember hearing a real estate developer defending Trump’s supposed fudging of some real estate numbers to get more favorable terms as “standard operating procedure in the real estate business.”
  • The charges against him don’t make any difference, because no one ever voted for him for his squeaky-clean record.

I’m not a Trump supporter, but I see the logic in that last one. One saying I heard during every election, when the mud starts flying, is “Jesus isn’t on the ballot.” Every real contender for higher offices in the U.S. has a lot of skeletons in their closet. Many people don’t vote for who they want; they vote against who they don’t want.

Support for Trump is based largely on the fact that he’s not a Democrat. Support for Biden is based largely on the fact that he’s not Trump.

That’s why I’m convinced that any Republican candidate other than Trump can easily walk into the presidency if running against Biden. When three of the four pillars holding up Biden’s platform are simply “he’s not Trump,” his entire platform falls when Trump isn’t the other real contender.

What are the potential implications of Taiwan’s election results for global markets?

No implication.

A mere 30% voted for some form of independence but some kind of union with China!

70% prefers a one country 2 system with China but higher autonomy without independence! That is the result as much as you prefer to twist it. And of course all western media twist it as an independent minded candidate wins!

Win? He get a president title but it is weak minority that the 2 main party rule in the next 4 years. He cannot decide on shit let alone do shit for the west! The election result is a simply a pure disaster for Tsai Ing Wen and it ought to be recognised as such.

For China it is a decent result. And for Taiwanese people it hurts them! For western trouble makers. They twist and spin it as Taiwan wants independence! 30% result? 70% wants China. It knows it needs China!

Open letter to Chinese American high school students

Chinese Americans should look beyond the Ivy League farce and consider instead getting a real university education in China

by Han Feizi

The jig should have been up when the Varsity Blues scandal broke. Oh was it delicious. Hollywood actresses, hedge fund managers, winery owners, real estate developers and other assorted muckety-mucks sneaking their low-watt spawn into elite colleges. The fraud was so absurd you couldn’t make it up.

Rich people Photoshopping their kids playing sports, paying for medical “stupid” certifications to get “special” proctoring, hiring a Harvard grad SAT ringer able to deliver any score you want. Stanford, Yale, Cornell, Georgetown and we are not going to make USC jokes because the school has gotten a lot better in recent years.

And that Chinese girl who paid US$6.5 million to get into Stanford. Did you see her hour-long “I got into Stanford” video on YouTube? Oh the burns in the comments. If you could only read Chinese. Epic!

Of course, the joke is really on us. Because four years later, elite American universities – with additional malfeasance in the interim – continue to command the same prestige, elicit the same anxiety and demand the same obeisance.

The college counseling business is as hot as ever. Some are reportedly charging over a million dollars for white-glove service starting in the 7th grade, with a perfect record of admissions into HYPSM (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it).

And Asian Americans. Did you really think you scored a win when the Supreme Court scrapped affirmative action last year? The universities saw it coming a mile away and became test-optional well before the gavel came down. Underrepresented applicants are polishing their essays on how they’ve thrived in unsafe spaces while you are stuck with the surname Zhang.

So what can you do? You’ve already maxed out the SATs, signed up for every AP class, play the oboe, do bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like fencing. At this point, it’s just one giant crap shoot.

Will the admissions officer like your essay on teaching inner-city kids at math camp (but they really taught you)? Does Yale need another oboist? Will your history teacher write a flashy enough recommendation?  

And even if you do get into HYPSM (or its sorry near peers), you will be surrounded by a sea of people who maxed out on the SATs, took every AP class, play an instrument, did bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like water polo. If it is true that you learn the most from your peers, then HYPSM will likely prove less educational than high school.

If you are lucky and go to a regular high school, at least you are exposed to regular people with regular aspirations and regular opinions – deplorable as they may be. In HYPSM, you will join the tiresome Westoid elite with their anxious entitlement and risible pretensions. It’s a nauseating mélange of sanctimony, condescension, virtue signaling, victim larping and look-at-me posturing.

The only people you might learn something from are the international students who mostly keep to themselves after discovering how loud, deranged and solipsistic their American classmates are.

You will discover that student cliques mostly keep to themselves – international students with international students, blacks with blacks, Asian Americans with Asian Americans, frat boys with frat boys, sorority girls with sorority girls (okay, frat boys and sorority girls do mix). 

You will while away four years, slowly socialized into Westoid elitism with its arcane rules of self-censorship and approved aspirations, until your life path is narrowed down to finance, consulting or tech. This is made tolerable by drunken debauchery and meaningless hookups (that’s what the kids tell me anyways) that passes for a social life.    

All of this is to deliver an indoctrinated end product to Wall Street and Silicon Valley which has accomplished the miracle of hijacking both progressivism and capitalism while impoverishing the rest of America. Evidently, there are progressive non-solutions to every problem which coincidentally increase FAANG share prices. 

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know it’s all a giant farce. The system broke down decades ago. Really, what are the chances you go to a “regular” high school and expect the meritocracy to pick you from the haystack? No, your parents scrimped and saved, fought tooth and nail, to buy that house in Tenafly, New Jersey or Mountain View, California.

College admissions was your religion since birth. Sunday afternoon is for test prep classes (Saturday mornings are for Chinese school; we will get back to that). And when the time comes, your anxiety-ridden parents will fork over a pretty penny for a college counselor, if not white glove S-Class level.

If you think this isn’t farcical enough, the racket has now gone international. Longtime China resident and insightful Twitter commentator Arnaud Bertrand relays a familiar story. His ultra-wealthy Chinese friend has decided to move his family to California largely to buy his children into the American elite.

The friend plans to purchase a house in the best California school district and hire top tutors for his children, confident that it will pave the way to prestigious American universities and elite status in Western society.

Mr Bertrand explains, “Why isn’t this possible in China? Because China has invested considerable efforts – and continues to do so – to ensure that wealth couldn’t ‘game’ the education system.”

China’s schools are not funded by local property taxes. The government did away with guaranteeing school placement based on property ownership. Private schools exist but enrollment is by lottery. And famously, China, in one fell swoop, scrapped the entire for-profit tutoring industry.

Of course, explains Mr Bertrand, none of these measure are perfect. An underground tutoring industry continues to operate. The ultra-wealthy can hire household “help” with PhDs. But his wealthy friend likely reached the correct conclusion – his money has a better chance of buying his children into America’s elite than China’s.

Some of Mr Bertrand’s observations deserve to be quoted in full:

This all raises the bigger question of the reproduction of elites. In the long run, which society is more sustainable and fares better: one that does little to avoid the reproduction of elites like the US (which – contrary to the “American dream” narrative – is one of the high-income economies with the lowest rates of relative upward mobility) or one that actively fights it to enforce, to the extent possible, a meritocracy?

What my friend’s story illustrates is actually even more than this: in the US you don’t even only have a reproduction of local elites but you also have elites from other countries who come to the US because it’s easier to reproduce there!

This may all be grim reading for the anxious Chinese American high school junior. But fear not! Han Feizi does not come bearing bad news but rather with an offering of devastating logic.

Remember Saturday morning Chinese school? Where you go to socialize and misbehave? Well strap yourself down and get back up to 1,500 characters!

An arbitrage opportunity of historic proportions has opened up. Forget about HYPSM. There is nothing for you to learn there. It was already done and dusted 20 years ago. The sheeple just haven’t realized it.

Remember this acronym: TPSFZUN. That’s Tsinghua, Peking, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Fudan, Zhejiang, USTC and Nanjing. Yeah, it’s a mouthful, but it’s not like HYPSM was so obvious. And we are not talking study abroad. We are talking the full four-year degree shebang!

Vaclav Havel famously said that China’s development “has happened so quickly, we have not yet had time to be astonished.” This applies to higher education as well.

In 2004, Tsinghua was ranked 62 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In 2024, Tsinghua ranked 12th in the world and 1st in Asia (with arch-nemesis Peking University at 14th). Both ranked higher than the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Brown.

Seven of the top 10 research universities in the Nature Index are now in China – University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Nanjing University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University and Fudan University.

One of the metrics weighing down the rankings of Chinese universities is their lack of international students. And that’s where you come in! This arbitrage is just asking to be exploited. As an overseas applicant, you get the full DEI treatment. You are the underrepresented minority, the diversity admit, the token international student!

Don’t get me wrong, they don’t take just anybody. You still have to be a top student with a near 4.0 GPA and SATs over 1400. The biggest hurdle will probably be Mandarin proficiency which, depending on the school, you need either HSK4 or HSK5 to matriculate.

All things considered, however, it’s a buyer’s market allowing you to short-circuit both the soul-crushing hell of the gaokao and the humiliating dog and pony show of applying to HYPSM.

Let’s first get one jaw-dropper out of the way. It is an important consideration for many families, especially if yours stretched themselves sending you to private school. Four years of tuition as an international student at Tsinghua will set mom and dad back about $17,000 (room and board are extra). You are free to do your own calculations for HYPSM.

This is, of course, about much more than arbitraging school rankings and acceptance rates (and cheaper tuition). What you are actually getting by choosing this road is a real education. Let me explain. There are important directionality and timing elements involved.

There is a lot of truth to the cliché that modern China is a closed society with an open mind while America is an open society with a closed mind. It is relatively straightforward for a Chinese national to study in the US given the open minds of China’s youth and America’s open society. The reverse is problematic. Chinese society is far more insular and the minds of American youths are generally closed to outside input.

The Chinese American, however, is a different animal and has a window of opportunity. The width of this window depends on how seriously you took Saturday morning Chinese school. Some of you are actively discussing Genshin Impact on Weibo and can sail through HSK7. Others have more work to do.

But for most of you, there is a solid enough base to build on. The best strategy may be to stretch college out to five years with the first year in language immersion (five years of undergraduate tuition is $21,000).

To be sure, this road is not for the faint of heart. You will not be comfortably surrounded by cookie-cutter versions of yourself who maxed out on the SATs, took every AP class, play an instrument, did bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like diving.

You will be surrounded by gaokao mutants whose intellect can be so blazing it’s like staring at the sun (thankfully, there are slackers as well). You might be constantly fighting a language deficiency. And through it all, you have the additional burden of going through the many stages of culture shock.

On the positive side, the liberal arts education at elite Chinese universities may surprise you. The resentment warriors in American academia are laying siege to the Western canon, poisoning every facet of the liberal arts education.

While politics has always encroached on academia in China, the boundaries are far better defined. Chinese universities may, in fact, be a healthier environment to study the Western canon given the immolating culture wars currently being waged on American campuses (see here). Nobody at Fudan cares if Hegel is dead, white or male.  

On a side note, this letter is addressed to Chinese Americans (and the diaspora in general) to knock some sense into them. It also applies, with certain caveats, to non-ethnic Chinese. It can be done, has been done and should be done more.

Anecdotally, non-ethnic Chinese Westerners who have successfully taken this road are eccentrics. These oddballs have gotten a far superior education than HYPSM could possibly provide because they would have had to shake off Western solipsism and open their minds.

All of this, in the end, represents an opportunity for a real education – to be outside your comfort zone, to be stretched, to interact with the unfamiliar. You have a short window in your youth to gain lifelong access to the closed society that is China. It cannot be done after undergrad anymore.

Decades ago, when China was short on talent, carpet-bagging Ivy League Chinese Americans flocked to Beijing and Shanghai. Nowadays, one can run a couple hundred meters down Chang’an Avenue with arms outstretched and knock over a dozen Chinese nationals with HYPSM degrees.

Don’t worry, you will never lose access to the West. That is guaranteed by your native command of English. For many of you, especially if a decent amount of Chinese was spoken at home, you have the opportunity in your university years to claim full native command of Mandarin. If you want it, it is yours for the taking. If you don’t claim it now, it will be lost in time.

I sense skepticism and hesitation. Of course, this is normal. This is not a well-worn path. There are no how-to manuals or consulting companies guiding students on this road. The street lamps have not been installed and you even wonder if this road comes to an abrupt end just outside your view.

If you are worried about future placement chances at Goldman Sachs, you should probably forget the whole enterprise. With decades of experience in investment banks, Han Feizi can say that he was always looking for the unicorn, the luminous being, the perfectly bilingual and bicultural animal.

At some point, you have to have Confucian faith that learning is its own reward. Planning for the future is a fool’s errand. To take the road less traveled, next to having children, is the ultimate expression of hope. We leave you with perhaps Lu Xun’s most famous quote:

“Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like the roads made across the earth. For actually there were no roads to begin with, but when many people pass one way a road is made.”

COMMENTS

Brilliant! I’d also encourage the same audience to consider other English-track degrees at universities in Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent Malaysia, Germany, and Korea. Also thanks for summarizing the entry requirements and tuition in China. Note that not all of the TPSFZUN have a full slate of majors for international students studying exclusively in English. But especially those seeking STEM careers that will hold outsized weight back in the United States, one can tap into the unique Chinese economic leadership in engineering, AI and data mining, and environmental mechanics. A quick browse of English-taught curriculum at Tsinghua is impressive:

https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/pdf/ut2022.pdf

Great essay! As they say “its funny because its true!” Really a brilliant idea

NASA Confirms the Discovery of the Tenth Planet! It Is Larger than Pluto!

https://youtu.be/BinDeGBIj9k

Can you tell me about a time that you sued someone in civil court and won?

A little over two years ago I filed a small claims suit against a guy I made the mistake or renting a room to. He asked to have the hearing rescheduled, then rescheduled again. He asked for a third time and they said no. He was unprepared. He was asked about some documents and said he had seen them, then moments later denied ever having seen them. It didn’t go well for him. The judge issued a judgment in my favor. He stormed out, saying he was going to file an appeal.

He had three weeks to do so. He didn’t. I suspect that is because he would have been required to put up the amount of the judgment as a bond. Since he rents rooms he can pack up and move easily, and before the three week appeal period was up he’d moved again.

It took a couple of months to find him again. I sent a demand letter and got no response. I sent post judgment interrogatories (questions to try to determine what, if any assets, he had). He didn’t respond. I repeated that a couple of times. No response.

I filed for a motion to compel. The judge issued that in October. He had to respond, and the judge added a $500 penalty. He didn’t respond.

We currently have another hearing scheduled for early February for Contempt of Court. I’m not optimistic.

The legal system is set-up to protect the deadbeats of the world. I called a legal aid service but they said they couldn’t advise me because of a conflict of interest — he had contacted them for help sometime in all this. A lawyer I paid for advice said the court could issue a bench warrant and have him held for up to six months and issue another $500 fine but I don’t believe this Judge will do so.

After all this got started I learned that the guy had two small claims cases he lost in California before coming to Texas. One was for $15k and involved rent he owed to a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. He’d rented a room from this officer. The officer got deployed and the deadbeat was supposed to pay his rent payments to the bank and never did. It wasn’t until the officer started getting contacted about insufficient funds for his mortgage payments he knew something was wrong. In the other case, he’d told someone he met at a gym that he was a licensed stock broker. He eventually persuaded the person to give him $25k to invest with promise of $300k in a matter of a few months. Then he gave the victim the run around. The victim found out he wasn’t a licensed broker (required in California) and demanded his money back. He then ghosted the victim and moved. The victim filed suit and was awarded $30k with interest. He left the state.

We don’t have debtor prisons and the judge in this case isn’t likely to put him in jail over a pretty modest sum (about $1,600 now).

What was the strangest Christmas present you received in your adult years?

My mother in law was something extra.

She thought I was an extra that would eventually fade away. My wife and I have been lucky in love and lucky to stay that way. We were married thirty years when my mother in law passed.

This long happy marriage was a thorn in her heel.

One of the last Christmas’s consisted of nice envelopes from the bank with Ben Franklin’s reassuring face smiling through the old time holly and Christmas bells. There was a bit of a problem. One Benjamin was missing, but there was a present that looked like half of a basket ball that had enough tape on it to secure a team.

It had my name on it.

I carefully removed the paper so she could use it again. When the present was revealed, it was not a basket ball in need of a pump. It was a three piece set of plastic mixing bowls with blue ducks waddling around them in an unending line.

My wife was furious.

The next Christmas there was a Ben Franklin with my name on it.

Greek Sesame Bread

Greek Sesame Bread
Greek Sesame Bread

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup lukewarm water
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 5 tablespoons lukewarm milk
  • 1 envelope active dry yeast
  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons milk
  • 2 tablespoons sesame seeds

Instructions

  1. Combine the water, oil, milk, and yeast in a mixing bowl and stir to dissolve the yeast. Add 1 cup of the flour and the salt and beat with an electric mixer for 2 minutes. Add the remaining flour and beat to form a stiff dough. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth and elastic. Place in a lightly greased bowl, cover with a dish towel, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in volume.
  2. Punch the dough down and form into a round loaf on a lightly-floured baking sheet.
  3. Beat the egg with the milk and brush the dough with the mixture. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, and cut a deep cross in the top of the loaf with a very sharp knife or razor blade. Cover and allow to rise until double in volume.
  4. Place a cake pan with 1 inch of water in it on the bottom shelf of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
  5. Bake the loaf for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees F and bake an additional 15 minutes, until golden brown. Test for doneness by thumping the bottom of the loaf – it should produce a hollow sound.
  6. Cool on a rack.

Makes 1 loaf.

I am anti-gun but want to be able to defend my family should an intruder break in. What weapon is best to keep by my bedside?

I can tell you that having been an EMT, I have seen a lot of rough stuff with home break ins. Of those where the occupant did not make it out, They were all unarmed. Some tried to fight back, some didn’t. But the absolute worst cases were those where the intruder felt they had absolute control of the situation.

Of those where the occupant made it out and successfully fought off an intruder, by the time the police arrived (with us not far behind) The occupant was STILL ready to fight and kill.

with a home intruder, you are not shooing off a rodent. You are fighting off natures apex predator, humans. One thing that can get you killed faster than anything is hesitation in your purpose.

If there is someone in your house that is not supposed to be there, You can not confront them with the hopes of tying them up scooby-doo style and waiting for the cops. There is three things one can do; Kill, hide, or run.

I say “kill” and not “fight” because “fight” confuses the purpose. Your purpose when they are in the house, is to KILL. Thinking ANYTHING ELSE, can make your body do weird things, like NOT STRIKE in the place it needs to in order to kill. It is already hard enough to put a sharp object though a breast bone, Even worse if you are half-hearted about it.

It takes far less to slash a throat, stab the gut, kidney etc. Or just start stabbing quickly and repeatedly and randomly. You won’t do that if you have confused your purpose.

I want you to know, though, that this is one of the most brutal you will ever engage in and will likely cause permanent mental scars as what will result is a **LOT** of blood. This will also likely cause a divorce as it will quite possibly cause your significant other to fear the living hell out of you. No matter what you did, stab them, beat them You will have used your hands to have killed another human.

With a gun, there is a degree of separation that somehow allows humans to think there is a “not as bad” level to it. You don’t have to REALLY commit to killing, just let the bullet do it for you.

In the end, all of your options are calculated risks.

EDIT: After re-reading this, I find that My recommendation for using a knife in place of a firearm (if you just *have* to) is not clear. But you need to realize that a knife is more brutal and traumatizing to the user on average than a firearm. Obviously, this is subjective to the individual, and my only “Data” on this is the calls I have responded to over about a decade as an EMT.

Hire slow; fire fast

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qVkvVUSt4Ak?feature=share

Our local version of Costco is called PriceSmart.

Isn’t that a clever name?

A lady in front of me, at the queue to cash, decided she was cleverer than me and all the fine people employed at PriceSmart.

To shop at PriceSmart you have to be a member. You do this by purchasing a membership subscription card which allows you a year of membership. For the average Joe it’s a tad costly ($265 TT) but the savings you get shopping at PriceSmart, more than makes up for it.

I’m a very economical shopper and I tend to purchase only the bare necessities and would treat myself to something nice only once in a blue moon. This lady in front of me had a cart piled with groceries and also several treats ranging from frozen salmon burgers, Lindt, Toblerone and Mars chocolates, smoked almonds and ribs. Clearly she was not a poor lady.

When we neared the cashier she suddenly turned around to stare me in the eyes. This is the conversation that followed.

Lady: You don’t mind if I use your card right?

Me: For what?

Lady: To cash.

Me: You don’t have a card?

Lady: No. Can’t afford it.

I then stared at her pile of groceries tethering at the edge of her trolley. Her bottle of Grey Goose Vodka was almost $300TT but she ‘couldn’t afford’ a $200TT (at that time) membership.

Me: It’s only $200 for the membership and it takes just a minute.

I saw her face suddenly transform into a look of complete irritation. It was as if I was asking her for the favour.

Lady: I don’t have the money right now. I just told you. People need to help each other.

Me: Well I can’t lend you my card.

Lady: Why?

Me: Because I don’t know you.

Lady: You need to know me to help me?

At that point I remained silent. I didn’t want to call her out for attempting to use random strangers for her financial convenience. I didn’t want to argue that I spent my hard earned money on this membership and she ought to make that sacrifice also rather than gorge on her four rotisserie chickens as it was not my place to say.

Instead she went to the man in front of her, giving him a sad story of how she just lost her card and this stuff is for her mother. The guy took the bait and lent her his card. She then stared at me as if to say, ‘Got anything to say now?’

Clearly this wasn’t the first time she did this and it definitely wasn’t going to be the last.

Some people may not see the big deal of what happened there but to me she is trash: a selfish and cheap opportunist. She is a leech on PriceSmart (who generates a profit from membership fees) and on the good people around her who make the necessary sacrifices for the greater good.

Edit 24.11.21 Whoa. 5K upvotes. I always thought venting anger never got people anywhere. Was wise enough to avoid that lady’s scheme. Was not so wise as a teenager when I fell for a bootlegger’s silly scam. Click here to read all about it.

What is the best piece of advice you could give someone about life?

No matter how bad is your life now, how disgusting your life might be, how ugly you may look and how badly life is f*cking you, never ever lose hope.

Have the positive attitude towards life and get surrounded by the positive personalities.

Never ever lose hope!


Couple of months back I met my 2 engineering friends after 2 years from engineering days. We are all living in 3 different cities as of now, somehow we managed our busy schedules and we met finally.

Sharath and Sagar, my engineering close friends. Sharath is the one who introduced me to alcohol in engineering days.

  • Sharath, a son of highly influential politician son. He need not to worry about money in life. He is preparing to crack “Sub Inspector” post and he is taking coaching in Hyderabad now.
  • Sagar, a son of a farmer. He is working in apprenticeship program for an year in a manufacturing company in Chennai for a stipend of rupees 5,000 per month. He has 2 sisters and he needs to marry them off. His father is in debt. He is from lower middle class family.
  • Me?
    • I’m too from a lower middle class.

We were sitting in the outer ring road at 10 pm that night, talking random things. Then, Sharath got a call from his girlfriend, so he went aside to talk to her in private. So, me and Sagar were having a conversation in the absence of Sharath.

Me: Sharath need not worry about life and he need not to struggle in his life to make money, because his parents are already making huge money and property for him. You (pointing to Sagar) and me should work our ass off to get settled and to become rich in life.

Sagar: Sharath’s parents didn’t give him the opportunity for him to become rich. Look how lucky me and you are, because our parents gave us the opportunity to become rich. Shouldn’t we take this as a fire in our belly?

Sagar is getting a stipend of rupees of 5,000 per month from a manufacturing company in Chennai. He is still struggling to find a job. He failed in 14 interviews so far. He has 2 sisters and he needs to bear the expenses of their marriage. His father is a farmer and is in debt.

Despite having such obstacles in life, Sagar’s confidence and attitude towards life is simply appreciable.

The story of mediocre mechanical engineers!!

I would save her

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z_zaPFkqjeA?feature=share

CNY Year of the Wood Dragon 2024

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Well, as I type this up, it is CNY. This (today) is the first day of the new year, and I am in Wenzhou. It’s a standard fare of massive meals, lots and lots of drinking, and long bouts of lazing about.

The weather is cold out, but nothing like what I grew up with. Lots and lots of fireworks. Non-stop explosions and bangs. Day in, and day out, at all hours of the day and night. Very typical.

This is the first time that we are in Wenzhou since the COVID hit China. That was four years ago. My… a lot has happened.

I’ve been busy knocking these posts out, and now have a nice big backlog, but I will be altering my schedule and product mixes in the future.

I want to wish everyone a very nice and prosperous Year of the Dragon 2024.

Golden Chinese Dragon on Red Background ,Traditional New Year Sy
Golden Chinese Dragon on Red Background ,Traditional New Year Sy

Today…

As a car mechanic, what has been the most poorly maintained car you have worked on?

This reminds me of the early 90’s when I had just started Nick’s Racing in Denver CO

As anybody who starts his own business knows, money was tight and everything would just need to hold out a bit longer.
Every Saturday afternoon I went to the local mall/shopping-centre to buy whatever I needed for the week.
Whilst there I often saw this 70’s Camaro in the lot and it amused me how the inside looked like a pig sty. But I did love the shape & one day… Dream on Nick you are living from week to week.

Fortunately lady luck and my craftmanship smiled on me, work came in so that I had to hire 2 more engine builders and I started to have disposable income and no time to spend it. The American dream, right ?
One day I see this Camaro in the same lot with the bonnet (hood) open and a for sale sign on it.
I bought this car for a ridiculously low amount and spent a whole day cleaning out all the junk this lady owner had accumulated in it.
The first thing that hit me where the cigarette burn marks in the upholstery and the holes in the roof lining 😉

I had to redo the interior, the body had to be panel-beated and resprayed.
The engine was going to be replaced with a 383 stroker anyways
I just decided to redo the Electrics, as fixing this rats nest was not worth it.
I fitted a Classic Air Air Con
This car was trash- defined.

Luckily my 2 workers were foreigners also- Mexicans. We got on well and their friends and family did a lot of work on this car for good value.
Considering this was basically a rebuild, using performance part where possible, and not a hot-rod build, it still took close to a year of getting it on the road again. This car must have gotten 0 maintenance from the day she got it to the day it expired in a parking lot.

And then I left back for Namibia and sold it to one of my guys who then gave it to his daughter once she needed wheels.

A lot of them…

What is the most heartwarming behind-the-scenes fact about a movie?

A young Kurt Russell worked together with Charles Bronson. During shooting, Russell found out it was Charles Bronson’s birthday. So he got his older co-star a gift. Bronson looked at it, took it… then walked out of the room, without saying a word. Russell was terrified, worried he had insulted the man.

image 5
image 5

A little while later, Russell was called to the dressing room of Bronson. Bronson was silent, looked down and said to the child actor: “No one has ever given me a birthday gift before…” Charles Bronson was the son of dirt poor immigrants. He had fourteen siblings, and worked in the mines as a child. Never finished schooling, never had a kind word, he was worked like a mule since the day he learned to walk.

Charles Bronson hadn’t known a lot of kindness in his life. It caught him off guard to receive some from his young co-star. He later gave Russell a skateboard on his own birthday to play with between takes. The two men remained lifelong friends.

Modern Women Having MELTDOWN Over The FUTURE #2

Have you ever felt sorry for a teacher?

Yes. Several. Mainly because I know what’s going on in their lives, and the students don’t. If the students knew what I knew, they’d cut those teachers a little slack.

One teacher in particular, with whom I worked seven years ago, stands out for me among all of the teacher sob stories I know.

To make a long story short, when she was in her 40s and had been teaching preschool for half of her life, her husband left her for a much younger woman. Around the same time, the school’s preschool program changed from full-time to just two days per week and, in order to stay full-time and keep her benefits, she was forced to become the school’s art teacher for all students in grades PreK-8 (ages 3–14).

She was good with the younger students, but had no idea how to control the middle schoolers. She hated teaching the older kids, but she had no choice. She was still more than a decade away from retirement and needed the health insurance, but she also couldn’t afford to go back to school or change careers or anything like that. She was trapped teaching students that she wasn’t trained to teach.

And they were merciless to her.

The art class existed primarily to give the “regular” teachers a planning period, but I, along with my coworkers, ended up sitting with our classes to the art room most days, because we could control the kids, and she couldn’t. The students treated her class like recess, and treated her with a level of disrespect you usually only see in the movies, right before the “savior” teacher swoops in and sets things right.

The students didn’t see how the teacher cried after school every day, alone in her classroom, before she composed herself enough to walk down the block to her apartment, where she probably cried some more, alone, throughout the evening and night.

I left that school after teaching there just one year. The school closed two years after I left. I hope she was able to find a full time position working with younger children. Middle schoolers can be just as cruel to their teachers as they are to each other.

Hitting the jackpot

All in or fold.

The doctor, after an examination, sighed and said, ‘I’ve got some bad news.’ 👨‍⚕️

The doctor, after an examination, sighed and said, ‘I’ve got some bad news. You have cancer, and you’d best put your affairs in order.’

The woman was shocked, but managed to compose herself and walk into the waiting room where her daughter had been waiting.

‘Well, daughter, we women celebrate when things are good, and we celebrate when things don’t go so well. In this case, things aren’t well. I have cancer. So, let’s head to the club and have a martini.’

After 3 or 4 martinis, the two were feeling a little less somber. There were some laughs and more martinis. They were eventually approached by some of the woman’s old friends, who were curious as to what the two were celebrating.

The woman told her friends they were drinking to her impending end, ‘I’ve been diagnosed with AIDS.’ The friends were aghast, gave the woman their condolences and beat a hasty retreat.

After the friends left, the woman’s daughter leaned over and whispered, ‘Momma, I thought you said you were dying of cancer, and you just told your friends you were dying of AIDS! Why did you do that??’

‘Because I don’t want any of those bitches sleeping with your father after I’m gone.’.

Top 8 rules

Ricotta Lasagna Swirls

2024 02 10 13 35
2024 02 10 13 35

Ingredients

Lasagna

  • 8 lasagna noodles
  • 2 pounds fresh spinach
  • 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 pound ricotta cheese
  • Salt
  • Pepper

Sauce

  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 cup chopped onion
  • 2 cups tomato sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon basil
  • 1/2 teaspoon oregano

Instructions

  1. Lasagna: Cook and drain lasagna noodles.
  2. Steam 2 pounds fresh spinach for 7 minutes, then chop. Mix spinach with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/2 pound ricotta cheese, salt and pepper.
  3. Coat each noodle with 2 to 3 tablespoons of mixture along the entire length of the noodle. Roll up. Stand on end in a baking dish.
  4. Sauce: Sauté garlic and onion.
  5. Add tomato sauce, basil and oregano.
  6. Pour sauce over noodles and bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.

Young Men Are Lonelier Than Ever (And It’s Getting Worse)

What one thing makes someone a very mature person?

Joe is having a bad day.

On this very day, Joe decides to eat out. He enters a restaurant, sits down, and has his order taken.

Just as the waitress arrives with his precariously balanced meal, someone knocks her aside. This causes an avalanche of food and drinks to tumble onto Joe in a non-majestic, yet sloppy manner.

Joe breathes in heavily and….

…asks if the waitress is alright, wipes himself to the best he can, and helps clean up a little without mumbling. Joe then comforts said waitress who is on the verge of crying, whilst assuring the seething and anxious manager that everything is all right.


If shit happens to you and it’s not your fault, then more shit happens yet you are still cool, you are mature in my eyes.

Mature people don’t cause more shit, or simply throw their shit away, even when shit is thrown at them.

It’s not that they don’t give a shit, but they deal with their shit appropriately.

Be like Joe and deal with your shit correctly.

China’s New AI Microchip Just Destroyed US Sanctions Forever!

Very interesting.

What are the best examples of people who have “gamed the system”?

Meet Patrick Combs-

image 135
image 135

Years ago, Patrick received a junk mail “fake cheque”- supposedly, if he were to send money to the company, he would then soon get more huge cheques like the one he’d just received.

The fake cheque was made out for $95,093.35. It even had an attached authorised signature.

image 134
image 134

Now, most people would see this as the junk & total scam that it obviously was. Most people would rip it up and just toss it in their bin. Most people would ignore it.

Most- but not Patrick.

Patrick was extremely broke at the time – he had only $200 in his bank account.

He had a good sense of humour and thought, “What would happen if I tried to lodge this into my bank account?” Fully expecting to get a laugh out of it from both himself and the bank teller, that’s exactly what Patrick did.

He went to lodge the cheque into his bank account.

As Patrick said, “I didn’t think I was sticking money into the machine.

He so fully was expecting the cheque to bounce that he didn’t even endorse the back of it.

Time passes and Patrick forgets about it.

Ten days later though, he checks his bank account and to his amazement, $95,093.35 now sits in his bank account!

It turns out that the cheque actually matched 9 of the criteria that the bank required for a cheque to be valid – the words “non negotiable” that the junk company placed on the front did not negate the cheque whatsoever. It turned out that they had been successful in making the cheque look real – too real.

Additionally- the bank managed to miss their own legal deadline to notify Patrick that his cheque had bounced as a non-cash item.

The excitement of that much money was off the scale,” he said. “It was an addiction. For two months I obsessed on whether I should take the money or give the money back. I put my bank on speed dial and dialed it every ten minutes. I worried constantly that it would go away.

Patrick, being the good person that he is, did return the money 6-months later.

And, there you have it, Patrick Combs is the man who received a junk mail fake cheque in the post – and managed to cash it to the tune of $95,000+! That, I think, is very much gaming the system.

Do you think Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview was great?

image 136
image 136

It garnered 164 Million views on X

Yet the content was something I have known and understood and have been talking about for more than two years on Quora

Anyone who follows Scott Ritter, Brian Berletic, The Duran, IEarlGrey and those guys would find most of what Putin said to be nothing surprising, given that this was what most of them have been discussing for both these years 2022 and 2023

However for the Average Americans, this gave them the other point of view

You have had almost 66 Interviews of Zelensky over the last 24 months and you have seen almost 4000 articles covering Zelensky and Ukraine yet Putins POV and Russias POV has never been covered in the West

This Interview filled the gap


Why did Russia invade Ukraine?

Putins explanation makes a lot of sense

He says the Invasion was the LAST RESORT

He says Russia carved out Ukraine under Lenin and later on post WWII, more territories from Germany & Poland & Hungary & Romania were added to Ukraine after USSR got them under Post WWII restructuring

He says Russians and Ukranians were the same people and every Ukranian had 3–4 relatives in Russia and vice versa

He says Ukranian Language is just one of five languages spoken in Ukraine along with Russian, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian in different parts of Ukraine

He says Russia and Ukraine had a friendship and a relationship post 1994 and most of Ukraine’s Trade was with Russia

He says how Ukraine in 2008 began to start idolizing NAZIs and established Neo Nazism and began persecuting Russian Speakers of Eastern Ukraine

He says how Ukraine in 2014 deposed Yanukovich after the West Deceived HIM openly. He talks of how Yanukovich was assured by Merkel and others including Obama of a peaceful conclusion to Maidan if he didn’t use the Military and the Police and how once Yanukovich agreed, they openly deceived him and allowed Maidan to depose him

He then talks of how Zelensky spoke of ending the Russian Language from 2019 onwards and how Zelensky spoke of military conquest of Donbass

He talks of how Russia repeatedly talked to Western Leaders for a peaceful re implementation of the Minsk II Accords that Zelensky broke openly and which the guarantors ignored

He talked of Airplanes over Donbass and forced action against Russian Speakers for 8 years from 2014–2022, all chronicled and presented to the UN and yet IGNORED by the West

It was in the end the ONLY WAY for Russia to secure it’s borders and help the Russian Speakers in Ukraine and Denazify Ukraine


Is Russia ready for Talks?

Yes. Putin confirms this.

He says it’s Zelensky who is not ready. Who in fact even decreed that any discussion on peace is in fact illegal.


Is Russia ready to sell Gas to Germany?

Yes. Putin says he still has pipelines that can supply Gas to Germans.

So he says why are Germans throttling their own industries by paying 4.25 times more for Piped LNG???

He literally openly says Scholz is either Insane or a Traitor to his own people


Putin talks of China & Russia

Putin says China is far more significant to the West because of their Population and their strong economy which even at 5% growth is DOUBLE AS FAST AS THE US

He exposes the China Bogey by citing how BRICS & SCO are both Consensus based organizations against NATO which is entirely US dominated

He gives an example of the Iraq War where France and Germany were openly muscled by George Junior Bush


He cites how Sanctions failed

He highlighted how Russia simply DEDOLLARIZED as did many other nations

He cited that 61 Nations have reduced USD holdings by 10% or more since 22/2/22

He cited that 70% of Russian Trade is settled in Yuan or Ruble now and only 19% in Euros and USD (4.8% in Emirati Dirham and 1.7% in South African Rand & HKD and the rest in other currencies)

He cites how the US lost its own place in the world thanks to the Sanctions and how everyone now wants their own financial secure system and an independence from the Dollar and a preference for their own local currency


He clarified why he retreated from Kiev

He was clear when he said, in Istanbul the Ukranians wanted Russians away from Kiev as a matter of faith and Putin complied

Yet again HE WAS DECEIVED


So the conclusions are clear now

First Putin doesn’t care what the West thinks anymore. He will do what is best for Russians in his opinion. He won’t trust the West again.

Second Putin will not end this SMO unless he gets what he wants. A Guarantee that Ukraine won’t join NATO and security for the Russian Speaking population in Ukraine.

Third, Putin will not initiate WWIII unless NATO attacks Russia. He made this clear. He will attack any NATO member if they attack Russia first.

Fourth, Putin says his Hypersonic Missile System is the most advanced in the world and the fact that he talks less about it means he is accurate


His final message to the Americans is WHY THEY ARE POKING THEIR NOSE IN UKRAINE WHEN THEY HAVE SO MANY TROUBLES OF THEIR OWN

It’s something that resonates with Donald Trump and his MAGA crowd


It would have been enlightening to many people

Not to me

This is essentially everything I have been saying for two years now.

If you live in the US, was there an event in your life that made you decide to get a concealed carry license? If so, what was it?

When the kids were grown and gone, my wife and I considered getting a firearm for home protection. Two events finally pushed us to do it. The first event was my walking into a large drug buy in a gas station late at night in Miami. Lots of drugs, thugs, and guns. While they stood there looking at me. I said “Hey, I’m just here to get a receipt for the gas. The guy behind the counter (who was in on it), gave it to me and they let me walk out the door past a very confused lookout. Having a concealed weapon probably wouldn’t have done me any good that night. But it did reminded me that the world is a dangerous place.

The second event was back-to-back hurricanes, causing weeks of power outages with no cell or landline capability. The neighborhood was blocked in for a long time by fallen trees and debris. Even though we live only a mile or so from a precinct, there was no way to contact them or for them to quickly get into our neighborhood.

I asked my neighbor if I should be worried about looting. He responded, “everyone in this neighborhood is armed”, and everybody knows it. You are, aren’t you? A few weeks after the storm, I purchased my first gun.

I friend in law enforcement asked if I had a carry permit for it, reminding me that I lived within a 1000 feet of a school, restricting how I can transport the gun when off my property. Those restrictions (other than being on school property itself) are waived in my state if you have a carry permit.

I signed up for an approved NRA course that counted towards the permit, applied, and received one. Since then, I’ve purchased a few other guns, joined a gun club, and have had dozens of different firearm courses with a state LEO firearms trainer.

Like other “constitutional carry” states, Florida no longer requires a permit for concealed carry. But I keep mine current so I can carry reciprocally in other states.

While repairing a car, have you ever found something you weren’t supposed to see in it?

Yes. This was back in the late ’90s. I had a customer come in with a Corolla. He only had one remote for the security system, but had just purchased another one and needed to have it programmed to the car. I told him that was a very quick and easy job, and I could literally do it while he stood there. I opened the driver’s door, turn the key to the on position and moved the driver seat all the way forward. The computer for the security system was under the driver’s seat on this car. You had to access the computer and push and hold a small button on the side of the computer to put it in programming mode, but it was much easier to access from the back seat. So I then got out and opened the rear driver side door, leaned in, and moved the floor mat to get better access to the computer under the seat. When I moved the floor mat, there was a syringe, a spoon, a lighter, and a bag of white powder that I will assume had to be heroin. I put the computer in program mode, hit the buttons on the remote, and heard the confirmation chirp from the front of the car to signal the new remote was programmed. I put the floor mat back, climbed out, and with a death stare, handed the customer his new remote and told him you’re all done, have a nice day. The guy’s face was white as a ghost, and I never saw him in the dealership again.

Breaking Bad by Wes Anderson Trailer

Do you have a story about a boss who was so out of touch that they made a cringeworthy decision?

Having spent years working in a retail store, I saw so many decisions made by highly-paid executives in an office in another state that I knew instantly wouldn’t work out. And they didn’t.

I could write a book about the reasons for this, but mainly – either they don’t know because they don’t do the actual work, or they don’t believe the underlings who have tried to explain it to them.

I’ll give you an example:

So, I worked at a retail store that was part of a national chain separated into so many districts. I think our district had 10 or 12 stores. One quarter, I have no idea how, but somehow, one of the other stores in our district massively overspent their budget by like ten or fifteen grand. (I really wish I knew how, I bet it was a helluva story.) Probably someone got fired over that, but that didn’t solve the problem that they had a shortfall. (And no, firing the person responsible didn’t fix it either, because they then had to spend money to hire a new person to fill the role.)

So, somewhere up in the corporate office, a person whose name I don’t know had an idea to fix this problem. Since I don’t know who this person is, we’ll call them Bean Counter. I assume their job had something to do with accounting or finance.

So Bean Counter says, “Well, we can make up the shortfall by having every store in the district cut their budget by so much % for the remainder of the quarter.”

Bean Counter’s Boss ran the numbers and decided this was a grand idea. They may have even given Bean Counter a raise or promotion for such brilliant work. On paper, Bean Counter’s plan appeared to play out beautifully.

But this was around the beginning of December, just as the holiday rush was kicking into high gear.

Also, there are not a lot of ways to reduce spending on a store level, where budgets are already pretty tight. Management had very limited discretionary funding, and rarely went out and bought stuff for the store. Basically, the only way to really reduce spending by the amount Bean Counter wanted was to cut payroll hours….drastically.

So it’s the holidays and we’re working with a skeleton crew on every shift. One person at the register, one on the floor, and a manager who wasn’t *supposed* to get tied up with tasking.

And we’re busy, every day, because it’s the holidays, and we sell, among other things, a lot of tech items that are popular gifts. Sometimes we have 20 or 30 people in the store at once, and we can’t help them all. There is no “work harder” solution that allows one person on the floor to help 30 people at once. Even with the manager also helping customers on the floor, and “floating” between customers, they could realistically help maybe 10 people at a time.

Oh, and we weren’t supposed to get a line of more than 2 people at the register without opening a second till. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, that couldn’t happen with only two other people in the store and both of them working the floor.

So we had people walking out, unhelped, constantly. We did our best, assuring people we’d be with them in a moment, apologizing for the delay, etc. Even so, some people just couldn’t wait and they left and, presumably, went to a competitor.

But Bean Counter and Bean Counter’s Boss weren’t in the store watching this every day. They were back in their nice little offices, smiling at their Excel sheets because they turned a line green.

You see, an Excel sheet can’t show you how much revenue you lost because you didn’t have enough employees to help your customers.

And even without knowing any of the numbers on the Excel sheet, I can tell you that we lost money. I’m going to give you a VERY conservative estimate here. I’ll assume some of the people who left wouldn’t have bought anything anyway. Let’s say only half the people who came in would have bought something. And let’s say that only twenty people walked out in an hour. (Most hours it was probably much more than that, but I’m giving you a conservative estimate.)

And let’s say that the average sale at that point was $20. That’s a really low number for this time of year (usually it was $40–60), but no one had time to upsell and pitch the customer add-ons, so we’ll say $20. That’s $200 an hour lost.

Employees like me and the floor person were making about $7.50 to $8 an hour. Let’s say everyone was getting $8 an hour. Having two more employees would have cost an additional $16 an hour but would have prevented at LEAST $200 in sales losses. (And again, the actual number is almost certainly much higher.)

The store was open from 8 AM to 9 PM, so 13 hours. By cutting two employees all day, the store saved $208 a day. They lost AT LEAST $2,600 a day in sales.

BUT Bean Counter’s plan looked good on paper, before, after, and during the last quarter. They got the district out of the red! We were no longer over budget! Problem solved!

Why is Tesla failing so badly in the stock market?

  1. Tesla primarily makes cars. And when regarded solely as an auto-maker – it is over valued.
  2. Tesla pioneered electric vehicles and established a head start in that market. Newer entrants into that market (including Chinese manufacturers) are catching-up and offering products with similar utility and competitive prices. Tesla’s first-mover advantage is not being sustained. The company is taking too long to produce new models and is not iterating its current line-up fast enough. Where is the Roadster? Where is the new better battery tech? Why is the Cybertruck failing to match expectation?
  3. The company presented itself to the stock market as more than a mere car maker. Rather it is a tech company which happens to make cars. It argued that it should be valued as such, and that initially convinced the market. However the various technical innovations it promised have yet to materialise. Self-driving has improved, but it is many, many years late. The robo-taxi idea seems to have evaporated – there are still safety issues and regulatory hurdles. It’s AI vision stack is a really impressive bit of technology – but it is not a product.
  4. The company has a CEO problem. The CEO has a history of over promising and under delivering. Rather than finishing products and releasing them in a polished state, the CEO presents semi-baked ideas to the market in the conceptual stage, and then take years and years to materialise. The market is getting wise to this bait and switch strategy.
  5. The CEO is distracted with other companies and is at best a part-time manager. The CEO has not been good at attracting and retaining the best staff. When the head of the AI project left, this should have been a warning sign. The CEO has not created a workplace culture that values attention to detail and quality. Instead the culture is gung-ho and reckless, which frequently ends up causing more damage than good.
  6. The CEO seems to be having either a drugs and or mental health problem and has recently decided to become more politically active in support of various right and far-right political groups. In some companies this would not matter, but Tesla’s main market is selling vehicles to individuals and families who are aware of environmental issues and support the transition to greener energy. The far-right regard electric vehicles as a government imposed initiative to spoil their god-given right to drive a pick-up, full of firearms, while running over vaccine-users. – This makes Tesla vehicles less attractive to people who would have previously bought them. No one wants to own a vehicle which has become a repugnant political statement.
  7. The CEO clearly regards Tesla has his personal piggy-bank and demands absurd amounts of compensation for his part-time and mercurial contribution. This naturally upsets shareholders.

AI Tool Deciphers Herculaneum Scroll, and It’s All About Pleasure!

A team of student researchers have combined 3D-mapping and AI to decipher a Greek scroll that was encased in ash during the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The philosophical musing reveals Greek thought on the complexities of “pleasure”.

In the ancient Greek world “pleasure” wasn’t just an occasional indulgence; it was an Olympic event of the senses. From lively symposiums colored with courtesans and entertainers, to dramatic theatrical productions and festivals, the pursuit of delight was as integral to Greek life as debating philosophy.

Now, offering new insights into pleasure across the ancient Aegean, where it wasn’t a guilty pleasure but a cultural cornerstone, a Greek philosopher’s thoughts regarding pleasure have been decoded by AI. And adding to the intrigue, the source material was an ancient papyrus scroll that was entombed in ash during the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

2024 02 10 18 41
2024 02 10 18 41

Text from the Herculaneum scroll, which has been unseen for 2,000 years. (Vesuvius Challenge/Nature)

Fusing 3D-Mapping and AI

The team of student researchers, comprising Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor and Julian Schilliger, who used AI to decode the damaged papyrus scroll, have scooped the $700,000 grand prize in the Vesuvius Challenge grand prize Vesuvius Challenge. They received the illustrious award for being the first team to “recover 4 passages of 140 characters from a Herculaneum scroll”.

Essentially, the young team combined 3D-mapping applications and AI to successfully penetrate a lump of blackened volcanic rock that has encased a scroll for almost 2,000-years, since Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. Known as the Herculaneum papyri, the new combination of technologies identified tiny patches of ink within the fused ash, revealing hitherto unseen musings of a Greek philosopher contemplating ‘pleasure.’

A Gigantic Boon for Philosophy

Not only did the winning team of the Vesuvius Challenge decipher more than “85 percent of the characters illustrated within four passages comprising 140 characters each,” but they included a further 11 columns of text, bringing their total to around 2000 interpreted characters.

The text discloses the personal thoughts of Philodemus, the philosopher-in-residence at the library which once housed the Herculaneum papyri. As such, Professor Michael McOsker from the University College London told New Scientist that the findings represent “a gigantic boon” to the understanding of philosophy in the ancient Greek world.

2024 02 10 18 39
2024 02 10 18 39

The Villa of Papyri at the archaeological site of Herculaneum (Erik Anderson / CC BY-SA 3.0)

When Pleasure Challenges Virtue

The ancient Greek text muses on how the scarcity and abundance of material items impacts the pleasure received from them. According to Philodemus, a philosopher of the Epicurean school, the enjoyment derived from food and other goods is closely tied to their availability. In line with Epicurean philosophy, which emphasizes pleasure as life’s primary objective, the scarcity or abundance of these commodities plays a crucial role in shaping our well-being.

Additionally, it was noted that in his two-millennium-old text, there seems to be a subtle attack at the Stoic school of philosophy, suggesting they have “nothing to contribute regarding pleasure.” While Epicureanism centers on the pursuit of pleasure and tranquility, considering them the ultimate goals in life, in contrast, Stoicism emphasizes virtue as the highest good, advocating for inner strength and moral excellence to navigate life’s challenges.

What this all means for modern researchers, is that they have fresh data pertaining to Greek ideas about the prioritization of pleasure and tranquility (Epicureanism), against virtue and inner resilience (Stoicism), being the key foundation for a fulfilling life.

It Cost What? This Has To Stop!

Having bagged the Vesuvius Challenge the team of students now plan “to scale up the 3D scanning and digital analysis techniques,” while at the same time keeping an eye on the costs of analysis. It might have read like the $700,000 prize was a big win, but not when we put that amount into perspective.

It cost the team $100 for every square centimeter of analyzed rock, which tallies to between $1 million and $5 million per scroll. This sounds within the realms of research budget, right? But when you then consider there are another “800 scrolls” lined up to be deciphered, that calculates to between 800 million and 4 billion USD.

Therefore, a lot of ancient philosophy will go undeciphered, and as such it will remain a mystery for future researchers to tackle when lower cost research methodologies are developed.

Top image: Left; One of the Herculaneum scrolls that are being deciphered. Right; Text from the Herculaneum scroll          Source: Vesuvius Challenge

By Ashley Cowie

What was the best way you left a terrible job?

I had already submitted my resignation. On the last day, the bitch who had committed all the prior unfair labor practices was, of course, at it again. She had me covering for other people, and didn’t let me take any breaks all day. An hour before the end of my shift, when a co worker had come to relieve me from covering for her, she told me the same supervisor wanted me down in her office so she could talk to me.”Oh really? Well, first I am going to take my morning 15 minute break, then I am taking my half hour lunch, then I am taking my afternoon 15, which I am legally required to do. That will bring me up to quitting time, so she can WANT all she wants”, and left. Heard later than she couldn’t believe I had done it, and went screaming my name through all 6 floors of the building looking for me LOL

CHINA WARNING! We Will Show Our Swords Against AMERICA

Has someone ever been fired because of you?

Yes, and they had it coming.

This was back in the mid 90’s, I was working at a pizza place. A good friend of mine had signed a contract with a major league baseball team, and he was back in town after his first season in the minors. He stopped in to see me at work, when he left one of the waitresses asked who he was. I told her, she seemed interested and asked if I could introduce her to him. I said sure, me and this girl had become good friends since she started working at this place.

I introduce them, they start seeing each other and things seem good. At some point, she learned about the signing bonus that he had received when he signed his contract. It wasn’t a ton, but it was a decent amount. I heard her tell a co-worker that she had stopped taking her birth control, she wanted to get pregnant so, “I can get some of that money”. I told my friend that she said this, and he broke up with her that evening.

She knew I told him, and she did not like that. I go into work the next day, she’s already working and she wants to have a talk. We’re talking, she asked if I told him, I said, “Yep, that was me”. There’s some shouting, and at some point, she grabs me by the throat and his her fist drawn back. The assistant manager grabbed her, and dragged her away. She was sent home for the day. The manager comes in, and he wants to fire both of us. A few coworkers and the assistant manager defended me, as I hadn’t started this fight. She was fired that evening.

Side note: a few weeks later, she tried to run me over with her car. As you can clearly see, she was a very stable individual.

What is the weirdest thing you have seen at Target?

I had the best laugh of my life in a Target.

A sales associate was pushing a very large cardboard box, filled with some kind of clothes, along one of the main aisles in the store. It didn’t look very heavy, but it was clearly much too large for any one person to carry.

She had picked up a lot of speed, and she was kinda racing forward, bent over the box like she was going for the gold in Olympic box-pushing, when she reached a spot where the floor changed to carpet. The two types of flooring were separated by one of those very narrow metal bands, flat enough to where it wasn’t generally noticeable.

The box hit the metal band and came to a full – and very abrupt – stop, but the woman did not. She could have done the maneuver a thousand times and never repeated her trick, but she somehow flipped over herself and landed in the box she’d been pushing.

I didn’t laugh at first. I actually managed to control myself, but then I saw the look on her face. She looked like a startled cartoon, anime style, and I just couldn’t contain my laughter after that. I knew that it was so, so wrong, but she looked like she was okay physically.

I still think of her sometimes, and whenever that happens, I can’t help but laugh like an insane hyena.

Rigatoni with Steak Sauce

2024 02 10 13 38
2024 02 10 13 38

Ingredients

  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 (12 ounce) rib eye steaks
  • Salt and pepper
  • 2 onions, thinly sliced
  • 2 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 3/4 cup dry red wine
  • 1 (26 ounce) jar marinara sauce
  • 1 cup beef broth
  • 16 ounces dried rigatoni pasta
  • 3 ounces Parmesan, shaved

Instructions

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a heavy large frying pan over high heat. Sprinkle the steaks with salt and pepper. Cook the steaks until they are brown but still rare in the center, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer the steaks to a plate and set aside to cool completely.
  2. Add 2 more tablespoons of olive oil to the same pan. Sauté the onions and carrots until the onions are translucent, about 8 minutes, with additional salt and pepper, to taste. Add the garlic and oregano, and sauté for 1 minute. Add the wine and simmer for 1 minute. Add the marinara sauce and broth. Cover and simmer over medium low heat to allow the flavors to blend, about 10 minutes.
  3. Season the sauce, to taste, with salt and pepper.
  4. Meanwhile, trim off any fat from the steaks, then cut the steaks into bite size pieces and set aside. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the rigatoni and boil until it is tender but still firm to the bite, stirring often, about 10 minutes. Drain the rigatoni.
  5. Toss the rigatoni and reserved steak pieces and any accumulated juices from the steaks with the sauce to coat.
  6. Transfer the pasta to bowls.
  7. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese shavings and serve.

What’s the best revenge to someone who robbed you?

Had a fella break into my house when on holiday in Brazil and a neighbour called the police and he was arrested in my house. She saw him break a small window to get in. Was big on the new consoles and computer games at the time, had all the latest. He’d taken suitcases from upstairs and filled them.

He told the policeman cockily he was going to come back and finish the job, he was a local heroin addict known to them.

When I came back from holiday I had to get a crime number, the policeman without giving a name gave me a massive clue who did it…off the record of course

.Not saying the two are related but I told a certain local person and the burglar was found tied to a lamppost naked a few days later in public view. I know a few locals had a vendetta against him so could have been anyone. A few months later the exact same happened to a teen who had been stealing cars locally and joyriding in them. I know the teen had to be cut free in public which must have seriously embarrassed him. An obnoxious fat kid who would gloat to folk who he had stole a car from.

Thought was a great way to deal with people who were getting away with petty crime and back out to do it again. Made the local papers as well which really would have rubbed it in.

What ignorant thing did a retail employee say that made you walk out of the store without buying a single item?

Ah! My little sister!

This was when she was 17. She decided she wanted to make the big plunge and purchase a stereo system with the money she’d saved from various jobs. But she was nervous about being taken by nefarious sales people, so she asked her big brother (the guy with a house account at Groove-N-Tube… yeah I bought a lot of that stuff back then) to go with her to recommend what to purchase.

We arrive at what at the time was a big name electronics and appliance store (out of business now, no surprise). The sales person gloms onto us right away and his eyes are sparkling. He thinks he’s landed a couple (probably dating but maybe a young marriage), and he goes into his spiel. We walk through the store discussing the various things they have to offer. I ask some questions. My sister asks some questions. Salesperson totally ignores sis. Probably figures I’m the one wearing the pants in this decision. At one point, he totally turns his back on her while he discusses the attributes of a system. I could tell she was fuming but was too polite to say anything.

Finally, it’s time to make a decision. With his back still to my sister, he asks me: “So what can I pack up for you?”

I look him dead in the eye and say: “What are you asking me for? She’s the one buying it.”

He went white. Looked at my sister. She beamed at him and said: “I think I’ll buy something from a store that values all its customers.” And out she sailed.

I love my little sis.

Different wiring

What screams “I’m asking to be pickpocketed”?

By the time I went to college in West Texas, my pickpocketing days were well and truly behind me. I had seen the error of my ways, repented of my mischief, and was endeavoring to live an honest life again.

Little did I know that my new Lone Star country was home to one of the most absurd and illogical bits of fashion stupidity in history.

No, I’m not talking about chaps. Don’t even get me started on those.

I’m not entirely sure what it’s called, but I have heard it referred to as a “cowboy wallet.” The primary difference between it and a non-stupid wallet is that it is extra super-duper long.

image 132
image 132

This means that when you put it in the back pocket of your Wranglers, it sticks out the top like a pull-tab.

image 131
image 131

Are you effing serious, Texas? Why not just hang a sign saying FREE MONEY?

There may be a reader or two out there thinking, “no, I’d definitely notice if someone pulled my wallet. I’d feel it slide out!”

Trust me, you wouldn’t. It’s not any failure on your part, either. Pickpocketing is a bit like cheating at cards. When done properly, it has nothing to do with luck.

I had several friends in college who used these cowboy goodie-bags and I made sure to let them know the economic dangers of their rustic fashion. I had one friend named Logan with whom it became a running joke that I would pull his wallet pretty much every time I saw him. I’d obviously return it to him immediately, but even when he knew full well that I was going to do it, he was still powerless to stop me because it really is that easy.

So Quora, if you are the owner/carrier of a cowboy wallet and you happen to find yourself in a big city or, for that matter, pretty much anywhere besides your family’s ranch, I suggest that you consider either putting it in your inside jacket pocket or getting a different wallet. You would actually be better off taping your money to one of those flag-football belts than putting that thing in your back pocket, as you’d be more likely to notice when it got pulled.

The New York pickpocket rings (to the best of my knowledge) have all either become defunct or transitioned to more profitable ventures, and the city is now very safe. Nonetheless, wear one of those things around here and someone’s likely to flint you on principle.

What is the most interesting fact that you know and I don’t, but I should?

image 133
image 133

McDonald’s most popular burger and the second most popular item on their menu (second only to their unique fries).

But have you ever stopped to wonder how it got its name?

You see, McDonald’s was originally founded by brothers Maurice and Richard McDonald.

They went by the nicknames Mac and Dick (for when Mac and Cheese just isn’t enough).

The “Big Mac” hit McDonald’s fast food restaurants in August 1968. However, before this, the executives at McDonald’s were struggling to come up with a name for this new super-sandwich.

The McDonald’s corporation tested out a couple of other names, including “The Aristocrat.”

Eventually, a secretary named Esther Glickstein (who was quite fond of co-founder Maurice), suggested the name “Big Mac”.

She admitted that the higher-ups initially laughed the name off when she first suggested it, but she got the last laugh when the name stuck!

But just imagine…

for one second…

if…

she had been more fond of Richard…

You could be enjoying a Big Dick, instead of a Big Mac.

My Girlfriend Asked For An Open Relationship, I Walked Out And Now I Laugh At Her Tears

What is the weirdest reason you got fired from a job?

I was general manager of a pregnancy resource center. It was a 501(c)(3) corporation, and we were completely dependent on donations. It was going broke when I took over. We got back to solvency within a year, without having to back off at all from the services we provided. In fact, we had grown quite a bit. There were 5 full time employees, and about 35 volunteers.

One day, right out of the blue, I was called to go to the office down the street of the chairman of our board of directors. When I got there, he and another board member summarily fired me. Before I left that office, the board chairman had written a glowing letter of recommendation for me.

Curious, I asked him why I was being let go. He said that the board had voted me out because I ran the place too much like a business and not enough like a charity. He had voted against firing me, but was outvoted. The reason they were going broke before hiring me was that no one in the place had any ability to manage money. So, making it more businesslike internally, without that being noticed by our clientele, just seemed wrong to them.

As a waiter, what is the cheapest thing a customer has done?

I’m not a waiter, but I will tell my experience. After work, a bunch of coworkers and I would go to the pub across the street. People came and left, as they got off work. We always ran a single tab. Someone would come, have one five dollar drink, and throw ten dollars into the middle of the table. The next person might have 3 $5 drinks, and throw in a twenty before leaving. Nobody wanted to risk stiffing their coworkers or the waitress.

The biggest problem was that at the end of the night, we often had a 35–40 percent tip.

Then a friend we used to work with, joined us for drinks, at first everything was fine, but after a few friday nights at the pub, he started to say. I don’t have any cash on me, just hand me the cash, and I will go put it all on my credit card.

Three weeks later, the waitress who had waited on us for years, sat down early in the evening, before our friend joined us and asked us if her service had slipped, because suddenly we had gone from 35–40 percent tips to exactly 10 percent the last few times. This was a few years ago in Canada, and 10–15 percent was the standard tip. It turns out our friend had been picking up our $300 for a $220 bill, and paying $242, with tip, and going home with $58 more than he came with, after drinking all night for free.

We said no, her service was still fabulous and suggested that she keep us on a group tab, and put him on a separate bill.

Our friend came and at the end of the evening went to grab the cash, and we said, no you have a separate bill.

He got all flustered, and we told him we didn’t want to see him for 6 months, until he learned his lesson.

What is your reaction to the visit by Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami team to Hong Kong?

image 137
image 137

Lionel Messi will go down in history as the man who united both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese football fans, both pro- and anti-establishment Hong Kong voters, and both its political elites and grassroots citizens, to have such seething hatred towards the same person.

I don’t think even bona fide war criminals like Tojo Hideki would be able to accomplish such a feat in the Sinosphere these days. There were people who paid thousands of HK dollars for a ticket, and traveled to Hong Kong all the way from Xinjiang and abroad, just for a glimpse of the legendary “king of football”. Instead, all they got was snubbed.

There’s no other way to put it. Messi messed up, big time.

Right now nobody really knows what’s going on, why he refused to fulfil his contract (of playing at least 45 minutes on the field), and why he behaved in such a cold and arrogant manner towards his fans in Hong Kong, to the extent that he didn’t even once smile or wave at them.

But judging from the fact that he did play ball in Riyadh, and that he said in an interview he will play again in Kobe, Japan later on, my gut feeling tells me this probably has to do with politics. And before some of you start going “but muh oppression/human rights”, remember that he didn’t protest being in Saudi Arabia.

It’s just too much of a coincidence. You see, right now Hong Kong is trying to pass a law known as “Article 23”. For those of you not from here, I’ll give you the rundown version: Hong Kong, which is part of the People’s Republic of China, has a constitutional duty to enact a law covering secession and subversion (pretty much every country and region in the world has this type of law, by the way).

This was supposed to have been done ages ago, but the anti-establishment, anti-China, right wing types pushed back against any discussion of it every single time. After the violent far right riots in 2019, the local government began to take national security more seriously, which is why western media, unsurprisingly, is trying to depict Article 23 as dystopic and totalitarian.

My instinct is that even if this whole ordeal in Hong Kong was not political at first (he could have just been a dick – not the most outlandish thing about footballers, honestly), Messi will make it political and milk all he can from it. He’s going to turn this thing into another Daryl Morey, NBA-China controversy, hijacking an entire sport for his own political virtue-signalling, and as a pledge of allegiance to both the United States and his home country of Argentina (which is currently being run by a far right neoliberal demagogue, who is trying to abolish the national currency in favour of the US dollar, outlaw abortions, and legalise the organ trade).

If nothing else, this would at least help him win over a few crowds in certain parts of the world where Sinophobia is politically correct. He might even run for political office on this far right platform after retiring from football. Who knows.

image 138
image 138
image 139
image 139
image 140
image 140

Again, I have to stress that this is all just speculation on my part. Nobody but Messi and those closest to him would know what’s really going on. I hope I’m proven wrong, and that the same shitshow that happened in Hong Kong would repeat itself in Japan, thus proving he wasn’t being disrespectful specifically towards the Chinese, and that he’s just a snobbish cunt to everyone. However, knowing how politicised football has become in recent years, I’m not counting on it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shoutout to the real MVP on the field, Hong Kong singer G.E.M. (Gloria Tang), for doing her best to cheer up an angry and disappointed crowd, and trying to give them something worth their money. She’s the queen 🫅.

What is your reaction to the visit by Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami team to Hong Kong?

Lionel Messi will go down in history as the man who united both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese football fans, both pro- and anti-establishment Hong Kong voters, and both its political elites and grassroots citizens, to have such seething hatred towards the same person.

I don’t think even bona fide war criminals like Tojo Hideki would be able to accomplish such a feat in the Sinosphere these days. There were people who paid thousands of HK dollars for a ticket, and traveled to Hong Kong all the way from Xinjiang and abroad, just for a glimpse of the legendary “king of football”. Instead, all they got was snubbed.

There’s no other way to put it. Messi messed up, big time.

Right now nobody really knows what’s going on, why he refused to fulfil his contract (of playing at least 45 minutes on the field), and why he behaved in such a cold and arrogant manner towards his fans in Hong Kong, to the extent that he didn’t even once smile or wave at them.

But judging from the fact that he did play ball in Riyadh, and that he said in an interview he will play again in Kobe, Japan later on, my gut feeling tells me this probably has to do with politics. And before some of you start going “but muh oppression/human rights”, remember that he didn’t protest being in Saudi Arabia.

It’s just too much of a coincidence. You see, right now Hong Kong is trying to pass a law known as “Article 23”. For those of you not from here, I’ll give you the rundown version: Hong Kong, which is part of the People’s Republic of China, has a constitutional duty to enact a law covering secession and subversion (pretty much every country and region in the world has this type of law, by the way).

This was supposed to have been done ages ago, but the anti-establishment, anti-China, right wing types pushed back against any discussion of it every single time. After the violent far right riots in 2019, the local government began to take national security more seriously, which is why western media, unsurprisingly, is trying to depict Article 23 as dystopic and totalitarian.

My instinct is that even if this whole ordeal in Hong Kong was not political at first (he could have just been a dick – not the most outlandish thing about footballers, honestly), Messi will make it political and milk all he can from it. He’s going to turn this thing into another Daryl Morey, NBA-China controversy, hijacking an entire sport for his own political virtue-signalling, and as a pledge of allegiance to both the United States and his home country of Argentina (which is currently being run by a far right neoliberal demagogue, who is trying to abolish the national currency in favour of the US dollar, outlaw abortions, and legalise the organ trade).

If nothing else, this would at least help him win over a few crowds in certain parts of the world where Sinophobia is politically correct. He might even run for political office on this far right platform after retiring from football. Who knows.

Again, I have to stress that this is all just speculation on my part. Nobody but Messi and those closest to him would know what’s really going on. I hope I’m proven wrong, and that the same shitshow that happened in Hong Kong would repeat itself in Japan, thus proving he wasn’t being disrespectful specifically towards the Chinese, and that he’s just a snobbish cunt to everyone. However, knowing how politicised football has become in recent years, I’m not counting on it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shoutout to the real MVP on the field, Hong Kong singer G.E.M. (Gloria Tang), for doing her best to cheer up an angry and disappointed crowd, and trying to give them something worth their money. She’s the queen 🫅.

Have you ever made a mistake that ended up saving your life?

Honestly, no way to be sure. On a Saturday night i was at a tavern having a few. I was supposed to leave and meet my Niece at another tavern. I wasted just enough time at the first place that my Niece and her friends decided to go to a different tavern. I was just about a mile down the road from the other tavern.

A whole load of police vehicles and emergency personnel trucks go flying by the first bar heading towards the other bar. A Shooting occurred at JB’s tavern; killing a bartender Named Jeff; who put himself between the gunman and his patrons.

The gunman did this because he was kicked out for harassing women. He went home shaved his head, dressed in camouflage, grabbed a rifle, and then finished his journey to insanity

He killed another man Rich; who I knew from my working in taverns. Jeff, I knew from school; he was a couple of years behind me. We weren’t best friends; but we both enjoyed playing poker. The killer also wounded like a dozen innocent people.

Luther Casteel was his name. I had to Google it because I was unsure of the spelling. He actually wounded 14 people and brought 4 weapons with him and a couple hundred rounds of ammunition.

I really cannot answer if my screwing around saved my life; but I believe that it saved my niece’s life.

What is the cutest mistake you’ve ever seen someone make?

Okay, this would have been cute if the guy wasn’t a huge piece of human garbage*. My crew and I were out to eat on Christmas Eve in Hawaii. One of the few places that was open was our hotel’s sushi restaurant. After eating a heroic amount of sushi, lard ass leaned back and explained, “that was so good. I’m famished!”

Read on for the rest of the story.

The flight attendant and I looked at each other and exchanged a glance. So, I casually said “How can you still be hungry after all that sushi?” He said “I’m not hungry, I’m famished.” I just said “famished is a synonym for starving.” He had to look it up. The n made some BS excuse.

Read on for my rant against this dumbass.

He was fucking stupid. His wife was pregnant with twins at the time. He was glad because he said twins would be easier than a single kid. Later, after they were born he would only talk about one of the. “Clair Bears” was what he called his daughter Clair. He rarely referred to her twin. We dubbed that one trash bag because it was obvious how he felt about his kids. He was just awful.

hong kong 香港 3/3 (if wong kar wai and wes anderson had a really bad short film as a baby)

As a landlord, did you ever have a terrible tenant that didn’t appear to exhibit any red flags in the beginning, but later on you realized you made a huge mistake to accept them?

My stepfather was an apartment building manager in Hollywood, California when I was a teen.

The modern building was large and well-kept. The one large ‘suite’ was a challenge to rent out because of the price and because it was just too luxurious for the neighborhood.

But the owner of the building found a tenant who exceeded her dreams: a young Arabian prince (a student?) who paid a hefty security fee and rental for a year upfront.

I rarely saw him and his entourage because they clubbed and partied until dawn.

When I did catch a glimpse, it was like watching a movie: a group of handsome, laughing young men dressed in flowing Arab robes, moving through the California sunshine.

When they left before the lease was up, the owner was told that the prince did not require rent and security deposit refunds.

The owner was delighted…until the suite was inspected.

The formerly white shag carpet had not been cleaned since the prince moved in, and much of it had a strange, dark tinge. The walls and ceilings were no longer pristine white either.

As the owner and my stepfather entered the massive livingroom, they discovered why the colors were so dingy.

The tenant had been using braziers ON THE CARPET to cook food, leaving greasy stains all over. Above, the ceiling was almost black from smoke. Mattresses had been dragged in from the bedrooms.

The kitchen was literally filled with spoiled food and dirty dishes and pans; the stove was caked all over with burned food. The refrigerator was a mold-filled, broken disaster.

The bathrooms were disgusting, and the owner backed quickly away and shut the doors because of the stench.

The 3 bedrooms had been used for pets (forbidden by the lease) – dogs and birds. Excrement and rotted food were everywhere.

Most cabinet and inside doors were damaged or missing. Old papers, clothes and other items as well as trash littered the apartment.

Reparing and refurbishing the suite took almost 6 months and cost way more than the substantial deposit and unused rent. A bill was forwarded to the prince’s lawyer and was paid promptly.

Note: In the interest of keeping this short, I have not written in detail about the destruction.

After being fed for two consecutive weeks, this beautiful stray cat became a part of the family.

I love this video.

Why did my dad think it was a good idea to get a lower-paying job and lower our standard of living just because he was stressed and tired? Isn’t it the parents’ job to make sacrifices for their children to be happy?

I’ll tell you what happened to my dad, and you might understand. My dad owned part of the family business, he was the working partner in the business.

He worked 12–16 days, 7 days a week to make ends meet.

When I was 8 or 9 he had what was called at the time a nervous breakdown, he was in the hospital for months, and the business didn’t close.

He was out for two months, and my mom went in, evidently she had worked herself into a git, worrying about my dad, and the effect that only seeing him for an hour or two a day was having on the marriage.

My mother got a job. That wasn’t rare in the early 1960s , but it wasn’t common. My dad cut his hours to 10–12 hours a day 6 days a week. Still way too much, but now we took a yearly, week long camping vacation.

When I was 19 my dad had a heart attack, and they put the company up for sale.

When my dad got out of the hospital he was under strict orders not to work more than 40 hours a week. I dropped out of university to help run the family business, while they were selling it.

It took 4 years to sell the business.

My dads heart was never the same. He went to work for the new owners, working 36 hours a week, weekends off, for the first time in his life.

He retired at 65, and died before he was 66 .

That is why you don’t work at a job that stresses you out.

Ex-CIA: Biden is NOW a National Security risk for the world

Uncle Franks Jacket

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

When I was growing up, I referred to my Maternal Grandfather as “Uncle”. Mind you, this was in a Irish Catholic household, and unless you were the first husband, and the father of the mother, you became “uncle”. Not grandfather.

So…

My grandfather on my mother’s side was “uncle”, not “grandfather”, because as I surmise today (as a much older man) he was not my mother’s father.

Ok.

They, like my father’s family had separate bedrooms for the man and the woman. My grandmother had her bedroom, and my “uncle” had his own bedroom. This was actually quite common in my family, as the men-folk from both families all started to snore when they turned 40 or so.

LOL

The poor women would never get any sleep unless that arrangement occurred. Yeah. It was never really explained that way to me. It’s just that you figure out these things over time as you age. Otherwise, it’s just a “family affair”, and something that you are supposed to “understand” and absorb like osmosis.

Jeeze!

That was not the only room that the women and the men folk didn’t share. Oh no. They also did not share the bathroom.

The men’s bathroom, for the people on both sides of my family was in the basement. This also included my father. Who had a little cubby hole under the basement stairs. As well as all my uncles. Later on, when I was much older, and my father was in his 70’s this arrangement continued with his new wife. She had her own bedroom, and bathroom, and so did my father. And his bathroom was in the basement… yet again.

Anyways, one day we (as kids, I was perhaps 14 at the time) were visiting my maternal grandmother, and she and my brother was in “uncle” Frank’s bedroom. And going through his credenza. And she was all Hell bent on giving away some of “uncle” Frank’s old items that he never wore.

And he just stood there. Really kinda emotional.

He had a leather jacket, “bomber “highwayman”style with a logo on the back that dated to the 1940’s and my grandmother was giving it to my younger brother Daniel. It fit him perfectly.

588bf5a5655c71dc75a9ea8a1b6ffbdd
588bf5a5655c71dc75a9ea8a1b6ffbdd

But, it was painful to watch because my “uncle” Frank did not want to part with that jacket. It’s not that he ever wore it, but it held some important memories and emotions to him, but my grandmother seemed oblivious to his emotional state.

I didn’t understand.

Two years later… he died. I was working in the mines, and it was mentioned as an off-hand remark at the dinner table one weekend. “Oh, by the way… Uncle Frank died”…followed by “please pass the peas”, and “How’s your cheerleader project going…” (said to my sister).

Odd. Really odd.

I have never been able to go though the emotional disconnect with “uncle” Frank and my grandmother, as all my uncles and aunties. When I checked on ancestry dot com, he is officially listed as my maternal grandfather… so what is up with that? Eh?

It only seems to point to another man being my mother’s father. But I’ll never know the truth.

An “official” father, but referred to as an “uncle”. Hum… Was a different “father” involved?

Anyways… here’s to Frank.

You were certainly unappreciated, and not as well respected (I believe) that you deserve. Perhaps it’s an Irish-American thing, but this little post will allow you to live on somewhat… in the minds of thousands of strangers.

As far as the leather jacket was concerned, yeah… my brother loved it and wore it all the time in his high school years and into his college years. It was a “truckers leather jacket” (highwayman) and fit him well.

highwayman leather jacket 1940s
highwayman leather jacket 1940s

And Frank. When you reincarnate… please never allow yourself to be P-whipped by anyone. It’s not becoming. Your clothes are YOURS. No one else’s.

Today…

What’s the best answer a witness ever gave to a smart lawyer?

I think I may have answered a similar question before but the best response I’ve heard was from my wife. She was a senior manager in Children’s Social Services in the UK. She was involved in a very unfortunate case about a social worker with Schizophrenia which came before the Family Court. Due to the social worker’s condition it was felt that her child needed to be taken into care for their protection. In challenging this, the social worker’s barrister quoted from a manual providing guidance to social workers. My wife challenged his defence saying that he was taking the particular section out of context and what was really intended was something quite different.

The barrister then challenged her in the sort of language beloved of smart-arsed lawyers ‘Oh, you are blessed with this wonderous gift denied to us mere mortals that you can look at the written page and and read the mind of the author when they wrote it’.

My wife then replied……

‘If you look at the author’s name on the front page of that document, you will see that I did indeed produce that guidance. ‘

The judge was covering his mouth with his hand to hide his snigger.

How did you get over the narcissist?

Deactivated or deleted all my social media – this removes the temptation to look.

Deleted their phone number and any trace of them that I could – photos and any other memorabilia I had.

Went on a long holiday on my own somewhere warm by the sea, sparsely populated and that I’d never been to before.

When I got home, I came out of my very early retirement (at 50) to throw myself back into my work in law and business so that I could direct all of my energy & emotion & passion into something positive that ended up making me quite a bit of money. I was so busy that I didn’t have the time to feel sorry for myself or miss her.

I got fit. I was never obese and had been quite fit & athletic up to my 40’s which was a hold over for my military service, but I was middle aged and starting to feel it. I worked out 5 times a week like a mad ba$tard, walked 3–4 miles every day, dropped 42lbs and looked 10 years younger. I’d never felt better, more energy, less aches and pains and my libido went through the roof 😁

Two years and six months later my life was completely different and I didn’t care about the Narc anymore.

I will admit that despite all of this I do still miss her sometimes… for maybe about ten seconds – or at least I miss the illusion and dream of who she led me to believe she was. But in focusing on myself I was able re-establish my own identity again which then reinforced the fact that it wasn’t my fault. That I wasn’t to blame for what happened.

Because some people are just wrong in the head and can be quite toxic & poisonous to the people they latch onto.

The moral of this story is that when you leave the narcissist, you have to focus on YOU! Fuck them, try and forget about them as best you can and work on yourself. It doesn’t matter what you do or where you are, but if you concentrate on levelling up and doing whatever you can to better and improve yourself, you will eventually heal and no longer give a $hit about the Narc.

And your life will be better too!

I promise.

Bread and Butter Pudding

Bread and Butter Pudding
Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients

  • Butter for greasing
  • 5 slices white bread, crusts removed, thinly spread with butter
  • 1/2 cup raisins
  • 2 pieces lemon rind
  • 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 3 medium eggs (at room temperature)
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 8 ounces heavy cream, lightly whipped

Instructions

  1. Thoroughly grease a 6-cup round ovenproof soufflé dish.
  2. Lay a slice of buttered bread, butter side up, in the base of the dish, sprinkle on a few of the raisins, and repeat until bread and raisins are used up, reserving enough raisins to sprinkle on the top.
  3. Slide the 2 pieces of lemon rind down into the dish on opposite sides from each other.
  4. Place the granulated  sugar in a mixing bowl, break in the eggs, and beat for 1 minute with a balloon whisk or electric hand mixer.
  5. Add milk and mix well. Pour over the bread and push the bread down so that it gets soaked, then sprinkle the brown sugar on top.
  6. Heat the oven to 425 degrees F and after 5 minutes of preheating, place the pudding in oven.
  7. Bake for 30 minutes until the dessert has risen well and the top is crusty and golden brown.
  8. Serve immediately with whipped cream.

Secret Door Reveals Killer’s Darkest Secrets | Documentary

https://youtu.be/HdcLC243YnU

How would China react if the United States declared a naval blockade?

The world—American or otherwise—should bear this in mind.

Chinese ports handled 300m containers last year.

To put the number in context, American ports struggle with 50–60m, with the 10% increase during covid provoking loud creaks of protest from the antiquated system, resulting in transpacific shipping rates going up by an order of magnitude, or >10x.

China is the truly the world’s factory. It imports plenty, and exports plenty.

A naval blockade of China equals a naval blockade of the world, tradewise.

What happens to the >1t in annual revenue that American MNCs generate from within the mainland? Note this is not visible from bilateral trade figures.

What happens to Wall Street?

Good luck with that foolhardy scenario, which will lead to material collapse of civil society everywhere, because China is indispensable to the global supply chain.

Cheese and Onions

Serve with potatoes.

Cheese and Onions
Cheese and Onions

Ingredients

  • 7 or 8 large onions, peeled and sliced
  • 1 cup water
  • 14 ounces extra sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded

Instructions

  1. Put half of onions in a microwave proof dish and add water.
  2. Microwave about 15 minutes, drain and put into a glass casserole dish.
  3. Put half of cheese on top of onions. Repeat with remaining onions, adding them to dish when cooked in microwave and adding remaining cheese.
  4. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until cheese is browned to your taste.
  5. Serve with mashed potatoes.

What is the rudest thing somebody said to you when you were obviously pregnant?

I was eight months pregnant, and I was huge. I was at the grocery store and I had just gotten in line and was putting the items on the conveyor belt when a very strong contraction hit, you know, the stop you in your tracks kind. While I was standing there trying to catch my breath and wait for the pain to pass, the customer behind me, who was apparently in a hurry, told me to “move my fat a@&^$” on so she could go. The cashier, who knew me figured out what was happening, had already reached out to her supervisor and was closing down the line so she could help me, when the customer said really loudly, “That fat cow just peed on the floor”, ( my water hadn’t broken, but it had started leaking). Hilarious chaos ensues, I’m hunched over the counter being yelled at by the customer, the cashier and my friend are both yelling at her, and the supervisor is trying to herd the yelling customer and the others, who are trying to see what’s going on, to another line to get them checked out. The last thing I remembered was being called a “fat cow”, everything else receded into the background. What I remembered of that incident was what the cashier and my friend told me when they visited me in the hospital. The cashier later told me my friend ripped that woman a new one while the paramedics were putting me into the ambulance.

ITS BEGUN: FULL SCALE WORLD WAR IN 2024

What should you do when someone has taken your assigned seat and refuses to move on an airplane?

This happened to me. A woman wearing a hijab was in my seat. I politely said “excuse me but I think this is my seat.” The man next to her, by the window, very sternly said “no, this is my wife and she will stay here.” He was middle eastern. I say this not because I’m racist but because I realized there was a culture concern here. I showed him my ticket, but he very rudely proclaimed that his wife was not moving. The poor wife never spoke, but kept her eyes down the whole time.

The flight attendant came over to see what was going on. The husband was very rude to her as well and said his wife would not move. After some more conversation, in which the man wouldn’t budge, the flight attendant looked at me with a bit of desperation in her eyes. I knew that if things escalated, the man and his wife would be removed from the plane and we’d all be delayed. She asked me if I would consider changing seats with the woman, whose assigned seat was a couple of rows back.

I looked at the rude man and said, “No, I don’t mind. All he had to do was ask me.”

Part of me wishes I had made a thing out it, because his rudeness should not have won, but ultimately I didn’t want the plane to be delayed. The person I felt sorry for was the embarrassed, subservient wife.

Fear

Rare Ferrari Daytona Found After 40 Years In Japanese Barn

1 33
1 33

Many thought this car didn’t even exist.

Ferrari had, in fact, only ever commissioned one street version of its Daytona with a full aluminum body. Completed in 1969, the car was exported to a Japanese dealership in 1971 and then featured in the January 1972 issue of Car Graphic, a Japanese motoring magazine.

After passing hands several times, it ended up in the barn of its last owner, Makoto Takai, some time around 1980.

The car is in “barn find” condition and is being put up for sale unrestored. The odometer displays just over 22,000 miles. RM Sotheby’s expects the car to fetch up to 1.7 million euros ($2 million), according to the auction catalog.

2 32
2 32
6 30
6 30
8 26
8 26
9 25
9 25
11 20
11 20
13 19
13 19
16 18
16 18
17 17
17 17

Women Who Were Filmed Being Murdered By Cartels..

https://youtu.be/C8YgimvEE1w

What did someone say in court that made you burst out laughing?

It’s jury selection for a medical malpractice case. It’s tedious, and the judge appears to be asleep. Lawyers have questioned a dozen potential jurors already. “Do you know anyone on the witness list?” “Have you ever been harmed by a medical practitioner?” “Has anyone you know been harmed by a medical practitioner?”…he’s reading the questions off a clipboard and making notes from time to time.

They get to one juror and before questions even begin he’s giving lawyerman the eye, like “Tread carefully, sir.” Lawyer doesn’t seem to notice.

“Do you know anyone on the witness list?”
“Yes.” Eye.
“Who do you know?”
“The doctors listed as expert witnesses for the prosecution.” Eye.
“All the doctors listed as expert witnesses?”
“Yes.” Eye
“How do you know them?”
Juror sighs. “Through my…profession.”

He’s clearly trying not to provide extra info, but lawyer plows on. I’m already smirking. I don’t know what’s coming, but I sense a train wreck. The lawyer looks at the juror expectantly. The juror finally says, “I’m an investigator.”

“Of what?”
“Insurance fraud.” Oh snap.

“CHAMBERS NOW,” says the judge. Oh hell, I guess he wasn’t asleep after all.

They ended up dismissing the whole jury pool—we’d been hopelessly tainted. The judge was pissed. I just thought it was hilarious.

15 Brutal Hells Angels Rules That Are Mandatory

https://youtu.be/wTeefV0dLzY

What are some ugly truths of life?

A forwarded story.

One day,a bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus and drove off along the route.

No problem for the first few stops,afew people got on , a few got off and things went generally well.

image 492
image 492

Google image

At the next stop, however,a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet height, built like a wrestler,arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver and said, “ Big John doesn’t have to pay!

image 491
image 491

Google image

The driver was five feet three,thin, and basically meek.

Naturally,he didn’t argue with Big John,but he wasn’t happy about it.

The next day the same thing happened. Big John got on again,made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down.

And the next day, and the one after that..

This went over the driver,who started losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him.

Finally he could stand it no longer.

He signed up for body building course,karate,judo and all that stuff.

By the end of the summer,he had become quite strong and the big thing is that he felt really good about himself.

So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus and said, “Big John doesn’t pay!” The driver stood up,glared back at the passenger and screamed, “And why not?”

With a surprised look on his face,Big John replied, “ Big John has a bus pass.”


Like the story above, most often in life, without realising the basics of the problems,we work hard finding solutions at the cost of time, effort , money and relationships. But in reality the problems are not that big. This is an ugly truth of life.

TikTokers Who Captured Their Final Moments

As a superior: Did an ex-employee ever say something to you that made you fire him on the spot? What was it?

I had a patient with Shy Drager Syndrome. Nothing at all wrong with her mind, but she had very limited use of her body. She was a very nice person who used to drive a school bus. She was in her mid 40s. She was incontinent of bowels and bladder.

There was a CNA (certified nursing assistant) on my hall who was kind of tough. She had a harsh demeanor and some patients and other employees were a bit afraid of her. I wasn’t.

One day I heard a commotion down the hall. I went down there to find my patient crying and the CNA speaking to her in a very loud and rude voice. She had had a bowel movement in her briefs and had tried to make herself more comfortable because she hadn’t been checked by said CNA and I’m sure it was cold and lumpy and uncomfortable.

The CNA was loudly berating her for everyone to hear. She was saying. “You’re disgusting, Margaret! You are so nasty! Do you think I want to deal with this mess that you made”??? Oh hell no. I was livid. I called another CNA to please tend to the patient while I had a talk with the bully CNA.

She didn’t want to hear what I had to say and gave me attitude so I told her to gather her belongings and clock out. I told her that she was no longer employed by us. I advised her to find a line of work where she wouldn’t have the opportunity to terrorize helpless human beings who depended on others for care. She gave me the side eye but left with no issues.

News travels fast and soon the whole facility knew that I had just fired her. They advised me to have someone walk with me to my car that night. They feared retribution. I was called Monday by the administrator to discuss the situation. He was in agreement with me. Problem solved.

What was the weirdest thing you have seen in plain sight?

When I was 16 I was driving to a friend’s house for the first time with only an address (pre-GPS – pre-cell phone). It was the dead of night and I was having trouble reading the numbers on the houses so I got out of my car, left it running to read the numbers on a house. I read it and realized I wasn’t close so I ran back to my car only to discover that I had apparently hit the door lock on my way out. I stared in horror at my locked car, running, with lights on, in the middle of the road. Finally I went to the house I had looked at and explained the situation. My window was cracked so I asked if I could borrow a coat hanger to try to lift the door lock. I was 16, the man was a full adult and taking pity on me he not only got a hanger but came out to the street to try to unlock my car for me – which was so huge for me as a teenager! As he is is working on it the street lights up. We both look up and a HUGE craft is sailing over us trailing PURPLE fire! I was speechless. We both were. After it passed, the man turned to me and said ‘I’m so glad you’re here… no one would ever believe this….’. He succeeded in unlocking my door and I told everyone this crazy story about a space ship that flew RIGHT OVER ME.

A couple of days later the local paper had a story about it. Apparently it was a satellite burning up during re-entry. Nevertheless it is the most astounding thing I have ever seen with my own eyes.

Probably a long shot that the man who helped me that night will see this but OMG you saved my life that night. 30 years later I still feel immense gratitude, I’m sure 16 year old me did not express that adequately and I’m glad that someone else saw this with me!

Scientists Think There Could Be LIFE on Europa and It’s Even Weirder Than We Thought!

What instantly makes a person less attractive?

So I went to market yesterday with my mom to buy some vegetables for home. I always purchase vegetables from a specific vendor, as he gives me fresh vegetables in lower price than the market and his respectful behavior towards me. A person came out from a BMW car with his small daughter to buy vegetables. I asked mom to look at his car and said that it costs around 80 lakhs. He was in hurry and asked the vendor to pack 1 kg of tomatoes and cabage with some other vegetables. And then he asked to sum the bill. The vendor said ₹135 . He gave him a 100rs note and started leaving towards his car.

image 49
image 49

Then the vendor yelled – Bhaiya ji aur 35 rupay.

Brother you need to give me more 35 rupees.

He – Aree ho jayega rakho tum.

Keep it. It is sufficient.

Vendor- Nahi bhaiya, nhi hoga. Mera khareedi bhi nahi hai utna.

No Brother. Even my purchase is not that much.

He – Tu na kisi aur ko thug na.

You, deceive someone else okay.

Vendor – Nahi, bhaiya meine aapko bahut kam rate lagaya hai. Aapko itne kam mein koi nehi dega.

Nope brother, I have gave you these in less price possible. Nobody is gonna sell you vegetables at this price.

He – Aree hojayega tum rakho na.

Come on ! Keep it na

Vendor – Bhaiya agar aapko nahi lena hai toh aap rakhdo, parr mein itna kaam mein nahi de sakta.

Brother, if you don’t wanna take it then let it be, leave these vegetables. I can’t give you in this cheap price.

After that the person threw all the vegetables in front of the vendor and said ‘rakhle apna Sabji, sadh jayega magar koi nahi lene wala ‘.

‘Keep your vegetables, nobody is gonna take this and it will be rotten’

Me – Aree aapne aise kyu feka Sajiyo ko, usne jab aapko diya tha toh ache se diya na

Why did you throw these vegetable ?! When he sold you the vegetables, he gave you with respect right.

He – Bhai tu apne kaam se kaam rakh.

Bro, you mind your business.

Me – Aap unke boss nahi ho jo aap unse aise vyabhar karoge. Aapko nahi lena tha toh ache se bhi lauta sakte the.

You can’t behave with him like that as you are not his boss. If you wouldn’t want to take vegetables, you could’ve given it back with respect.

He – Yeh kya tera Mama lagta hai ? Tu kyu uska wakil ban rah hai.

Is he your uncle ? Why you are being his advocate!

Me – Han yeh mere mama lagte hai, aur mein banunga uska wakil. Tumhe kuch problem hai

Yes he is my uncle and I will be his advocate. Have any problem?

To divert the argument between us my mom yelled at me to keep quite and said , ‘Bhai Saab aapko toh sabji lena nahi hai, parr hume late hora hai. hume sabji kharidne dijiye’

‘ Brother, you don’t need vegetables, do you ? We are being late so please let us shopping for home.

That person threw daggers at me and finally went away.

Like what’s the benifit to maintain a BMW car when you don’t have money to buy vegetables.

So coming back to the question

What instantly makes a person less attractive?

Abusive behaviour of a person towards the people who stands on the road side whole day to provide us service and feed his family. Towards those people who considered as lower class according to our so called society. Showing your rude behaviour to others won’t make you look either rich or cool. It certainly makes one less attractive no matter how much rich he/she is or how great he/she looks.

Spreading kindness is not that expensive. But the love that we get in return is priceless.

5 Times TikTokers Messed With The Wrong Cartels

Watch this.

Now read this…

From a follower…

This is legit; Gordon Duff claimed years ago that the Mexican cartels (heavily involved with Mossad) own the entire legislatures of many southern states. NM and Az are 100% cartel.

Connecticut and New Hampshire are also fully controlled.
Flabbergasting, right?

2 of the richest, "whitest" states and yet cartel controlled.
As I knew years ago: the US isn't even a country anymore, just competing, very dangerous factions vying for control. The US military (Navy and Army deadly rivals) is still the top faction for now holding it all together.
Intel agencies half compromised. Irish/catholic and Mormon mafias fight for control FBI and CIA.
But for how much longer?

The "jews" are just minor players despite what everyone seems to think. But definitely the money guys.
Interesting times.

And this shows up on Hal Turner.
As the Domain said: by 2024 the US won't be in a position to make war on anybody.
Looks like something is definitely happening at the border, regardless.

https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/news-nation/flash-u-s-border-being-over-run-by-cartel-trucks-in-arizona

Cheddar Cheese Soup

Cheddar cheese originally came from the English town of Cheddar, where it was made as early as the sixteenth century.

2023 12 27 19 57
2023 12 27 19 57

Ingredients

  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 1 medium stalk celery, thinly sliced
  • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
  • 1 (10 3/4 ounce) can condensed chicken broth
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 cups (8 ounces) shredded Cheddar cheese
  • Paprika

Instructions

  1. Cover and simmer onion and celery in butter in 2-quart saucepan until onion is tender, about 5 minutes.
  2. Stir in flour, pepper and mustard. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until smooth and bubbly; remove from heat.
  3. Add chicken broth and milk. Heat to boiling over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute.
  4. Reduce heat to low. Stir in cheese; heat over low heat, stirring occasionally, just until cheese is melted. Do not boil the soup after the cheese has been added, as the soup may separate.
  5. Sprinkle soup with paprika.

The TERRIFYING Last Minutes of Lynyrd Skynyrd

I was in university when this happened, and we were all big fans. We were shaken to the core! Fact.

CB Memories

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

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
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.

Today…

Have you ever regretted saving a patient?

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.

It’s fun until it isn’t

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BFwQhDrX0hE?feature=share

English Beef Steak Pie

English Beef Steak Pie
English Beef Steak Pie

Ingredients

  • 1 pound boneless round steak, trimmed
  • 6 to 8 russet potatoes, pealed and cubed
  • 1 large onion, sliced and separated
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 pie crust (to cover top of pie)

Instructions

  1. In a deep glass baking dish (either round or square, Corning or glass), layer meat, potato and onion, sprinkling flour over each layer.
  2. Salt and pepper each layer.
  3. Pour water slowly over layers and top with rolled out crust.
  4. Roll edges of crust under around the edge and flute to seal edges to pan. Vent with knife several times.
  5. Bake at 350 degrees F for about one hour until water bubbles and gravy have formed. Pierce with a cake tester through vents for doneness of potatoes.
  6. Serve with a green salad.
feae6c86cfb526da56d1158124b28ec1
feae6c86cfb526da56d1158124b28ec1

Compromise

As a trial attorney, what is the most ridiculous outburst you have seen first-hand in court?

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

What types of problems do Asian Americans face in Asia?

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
image 498

vs this

image 497
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.

Mentally Ill USA

New York 1966

new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 05
new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 05

She Thinks An AVERAGE “D” Size Is SMALL?

The USA is so messed up.

What is the perfect thing to say when someone is being rude to you?

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.

Harsh truth

Do police officers care about you?

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
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
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
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
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

  1. 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.
  2. Remove the stones from of the dates and prunes.
  3. Butter a large pudding basin or double boiler bowl.
  4. Sift flour into a bowl.
  5. Stir in suet and mix to a fairly soft dough with cold water.
  6. Turn out on to a floured surface. Lightly knead until smooth.
  7. Roll out two-thirds of pastry into a round and use to line a well-greased 2-pint pudding basin (or double boiler bowl).
  8. 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.
  9. Steam steadily for 2 hours. Ensure that the water does not evaporate, topping it up from time to time with boiling water.
  10. Turn out onto a plate and serve.

Something good about this man

What is your biggest mistake or regret?

Starting a “STARTUP” with best friends.

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:

  1. I was ready to work with anyone, but not with a treacherous friend.
  2. 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.

Being nice

New York 1966

new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 02
new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 02

What scandals should NOT have been forgotten?

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.

The USA is totally fucked up

Why didn’t you leave a tip at a restaurant?

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).

New York 1966

new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 09
new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 09

Woke challenge

What’s the most ridiculous adult tantrum you’ve witnessed that you couldn’t believe?

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!”

What did someone say in court that made you burst out laughing?

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.

Moral of the story

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RtIIpfpMKhc?feature=share

New York 1966

new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 04
new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 04

Why didn’t you leave a tip at a restaurant?

Because it is an utterly stupid idea.

image 496
image 496

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
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

  1. After kneading, place in greased bowl and let rise until double.
  2. Roll out to 3/4-inch thick. Cut with 3-inch cutter. Cover circles and let rise until very light.
  3. Bake on greased electric skillet or at 375 degrees F in the oven.

Good advice

What are some unwritten social rules everyone should know?

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Let people exit the elevator/train/bus before rushing in.
  5. 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.
  6. Buy earphones, or headphones. Whatever you prefer. Because I don’t want to listen to rock music during my morning commute.
  7. 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.
  8. Wear washed clothes, because the smell of the sweat sticks. Use deodorant. Specially applies when you are traveling by public transport.
  9. Also, don’t keep your clothes next to the kitchen area, as the smell from spices sticks.
  10. 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”.
  11. 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?
  12. Don’t dump your negativity onto others. Not many people are accepting of it.

It’s all I have.

How did one small decision change your life?

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.

Dad’s do your job

As a trial attorney, what is the most ridiculous outburst you have seen first-hand in court?

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.

Sadly

Why do people go into the military without doing any research about what they’re getting themselves into?

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.

I can relate to this

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2lG5LXgzzzw?feature=share

Brian Berletic: China Has a SHOCKING Secret and the US is Going to War Over It

Monkey Play

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

When I was quite young, perhaps three years old, I went out for a walk with my father. And thus, together… hand in hand… we walked down the street in our housing complex in Bridgeport, CT. It was a nice Saturday. Blue sky. Sunny, but cool.

And as we walked down the street we came across a curious sight.

There was this old man in a blue jacket playing a wind-up musical device of some type, and a monkey on a really long leash….

organ grinder monkey
organ grinder monkey

This guy was just strolling along and the monkey was going p to people. If we gave the monkey some change, he would take it and carry it off to the guy playing the music. A simple and nice cute distraction.

My father gave me a few coins and I gave them to the monkey. He crawled up onto me, took the money, raised his tiny hat off his head and then ran to the guy with the music box, and gave it to him. And then the guys started the wind-up music all over again.

This was my once and only experience with such a troubadour. And, I had long forgotten about it.

But … when I was going through “retirement” I ended up with complete memory recall, and thus had memories regarding this singular event.

Treasure the valuable memories that you have. They might take you to places long forgotten, and seemingly trivial in importance….

Today…

How do you find out if someone is a jerk before you hire them? I want someone who isn’t too abrasive, competitive without being cutthroat, and who is able to represent the company well.

I believe it was Sir Richard Branson who did what he called the “Restaurant Test.” Part of his interview process was an “informal” interview at a restaurant. What the prospective employee didn’t know is that Sir Richard had already notified the restaurant that he was coming with a potential employee and to screw up their order, nothing major like giving meat to a vegan but if they ordered their steak medium rare, the chef would cook it well done.

Richard would then see how the other person reacted. If he was polite then it was onto the next phase of the interview, if they were rude he would finish his meal and that person would not be considered for the job

When in your life did you feel happy to be home after dealing with a lot of stress?

My wife and I agreed early on that whoever could draw the largest salary would work while the other was stay-at-home parent. Unfortunately I went to work (would have loved to be the stay at home dad.) Our deal included that after a 30 minute decompress and wash up after arriving home, our daughter was 100% my responsibility through bedtime. My wife got up in the night with her during the week, and I took the weekend shift. We tag teamed the weekend hours, but I took most of the time. My happiest memories were coming home and getting my baby to hold, feed, and change. Later it was seeing her standing at the door or front window waiting for me. She’s 50 now and remembers being swooped up and burying her face in my fur lined coat collar in the winter.

NO stress could survive the love of a dad and daughter.

Guy stuff

How would you describe your parenting style?

I’m teaching my 6-year-old son to be defiant.

And everyone thinks I’m crazy.

“Grandma said she’ll give me a gift if I let her shampoo my hair,” he tells me the other day.

I can see how torn and conflicted he looks.

My son’s a swashbuckling, bug-hunting pirate.

You’d have an easier time getting a stray cat to take a shower.

“I hear you,” I reply, making sure she’s out of earshot. “My take?” he leans in. “If she wants to give you a gift, she should just do it. No strings attached.”

He nods and we exchange conspiratorial smiles.

“You’ve got to rein in that wayward son of yours,” she tells me after a botched shower attempt.

But I won’t.

Of course, I’m always encouraging him to be kind, respectful, and thoughtful with others.

But I won’t use the stick or the carrot.

Because when he’s older and someone hands him a rifle telling him who the enemy is, I want him to do his own thinking.

Because when he’s older and someone offers him a pill and tells him he’ll have the best time of his life, I want him to question.

Because when he’s older and someone offers him a quick reward in exchange for giving up his values, I want him to stand his ground.

Am I making my life difficult as a parent?

Definitely.

Is it worth it?

Without a doubt.

Teachers: What’s the craziest excuse for late work you have ever heard?

“My homework caught on fire.”

That was the excuse I got during the last week of school when a project was due in my 7th grade reading class.

My students were told that the book we had just read, The Call of the Wild, was going to be made into a major motion picture, and they were to create a movie poster to persuade people to see the show.

The posters were to be judged by other students and staff, and the winner would be awarded a prize. The competition was intense!

Every student had a finished poster except Shane (not his real name). I wasn’t totally surprised, as Shane had been late with assignments in the past, but the excuse was pretty shocking.

“So, Shane,” I began, “when I call your dad, will he be able to verify that your project did, in fact, catch on fire?” I was ready for him to change his story, but he didn’t!

“Yes,” he replied, “and he’s really mad at me because it burned a hole in the living room carpet, so now I’m grounded.”

“Hmm, he’s good”, I thought, “validating his story with details…this should be interesting.”

Later, I called Shane’s dad, and sure enough, Shane was telling the truth! His dad explained that his son had used so much white-out on his project, that when he held a lighter to the poster board (to singe the edges and make it look old) the entire thing exploded into a fire ball, fell to the floor and burned a big hole in his living room floor.

“Wow, Shane! I was a bit skeptical, but your story checks out. I’ll give you until tomorrow to create a new poster. Your idea to make your poster look old is most impressive (as the story took place over 100 years ago) but DON’T burn the edges this time!”

The next day, Shane proudly walked into the class. I eagerly looked for a poster, figuring he’d be carrying it, but it was nowhere in sight.

“Shane, did you finish you new poster?” I asked.

“Yep, I sure did.”

“Where is it?”

“Right here.” and he gave me a crumpled ball of cardboard. “Open it up, you’re going to love it!”

I did the best I could to smooth out the wrinkled mess. Sure enough, there was a movie poster advertising The Call of the Wild.

“It looks great, but why did you wad it up into a ball?”

“To make it look old.” he said as if I should have already known.

Shane didn’t win the contest, he remained grounded 2 weeks, and that summer he had to get a job mowing lawns to pay for the damaged carpet.

I recently saw Shane at the state fair. He’s engaged and works as an auto mechanic. He remembers the poster project vividly and said everything worked out pretty well. They ended up getting the entire apartment re-carpeted for free and Shane got to keep his lawn mowing money.

Galatoire’s Crabmeat Yvonne

jacques pepin oysters rockefeller recipe 1024x694 1
jacques pepin oysters rockefeller recipe 1024×694 1

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 6 artichokes
  • 1 pound mushrooms, sliced
  • 1/2 cup clarified butter
  • 2 pounds backfin lump crabmeat
  • Salt and ground white pepper
  • 1/4 cup parsley, chopped fine
  • 6 lemon wedges

Instructions

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
  2. Cut stem from artichokes flush with the base and boil artichokes for 45 minutes, or until a leaf pulls off easily.
  3. Remove from pot, drain and let cool.
  4. Pull off leaves and reserve for another purpose. Remove choke and slice the bottoms. Set aside.
  5. In a large skillet sauté mushrooms in clarified butter.
  6. Add reserved artichoke bottoms and crabmeat. Heat through, stirring gently.
  7. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with parsley.
  8. Serve on toast points with a lemon wedge on the side.

Attribution

Source: Galatoire’s, New Orleans, Louisiana. Gulf Coast Cooking

What is the best thing that has ever happened to you for being nice?

We have a son.

Twenty years ago, a friend called me in a panic. She was on the backside of a bad divorce, she had a three year old daughter, and she’d just been told she couldn’t continue to live where she was. The little girl was with her father that weekend, but my friend was at a neighborhood restaurant with no money and no idea what to do next. I told her to come over, got her something to eat and settled her on the sofa because she hadn’t slept in something over 24 hours and told her that we’d figure out what to do next when she woke up. Ultimately we moved her and her daughter into our guest room.

About three weeks later, she introduced us to a young woman who was pregnant and not in a position to raise a child. (She was married. That wasn’t the issue.) Sitting at our dining room table, having just met us and not knowing much more than that we’d taken in our mutual friend, she asked my husband and me if we would adopt the baby. We’d fought infertility for a long time. We said yes. She talked to her husband, and the whole thing was agreed on by the following morning. About seven months later, I was her birth coach and had the incredible privilege of catching my own son.

He’s nineteen now. We have him because we let a friend in a tough spot move in with us.

What was the best revenge you’ve ever gotten?

Mine was in the Air Force. I had a racist for an immediate supervisor who always gave me average ratings on my performance. I didn’t realize how bad I was getting screwed until one of my counterparts (who was a total screw up) was shocked that he higher ratings than myself. A “3” is considered average (which I was getting on my reviews). This “screwup” was getting 5’s which is the highest score. I was thinking “how the HECK did he get a 5??” This dude missed time, came to work drunk, was reprimanded for fights….been to jail….etc. my record was SPOTLESS. Always the first on the job and the last to leave. Kept my uniform super clean. So I realized that I’m working twice as hard as this other dude and getting a much lower score.

This was in the 1990’s. I overheard a conversation with my racist supervisor one day about what he wanted to be when he leave the military. He stated that he wanted to be a highway patrol officer “so that he can legally hit minorities”. He always made crude jokes about Mexicans and blacks. As an African American myself I hated this dude’s guts. His leadership skills were the worst. I hated every day of working with him.

One day it was his last day of work. The shop was going to throw a going away party for this racist pig. There was an option to donate $10.00 to the potluck to participate in the party or miss out and work. I chose to work. I’m not donating a DIME to this dude’s going away party.

After he gracefully disappeared from the job I thought that would be the last I’ve heard of him. NOPE! I was wrong. Found out later that he did apply for the state highway patrol position.

The timing on this particular day couldn’t have been more perfect. Two men from the highway patrol were visiting our unit and I happened to be the ONLY person there. They asked me “who’s in charge?” Well, I’m the only airman in the shop so I was actually in charge. I asked them what’s going on? They told me that they are doing a follow up on a gentleman who applied for highway patrol who used to work at this unit. I told them I have detailed files on this person. What made this even better was the fact that one highway patrol officer was black, the other was Hispanic. I was so nervous in hopes that our main supervisor didn’t show up because he would give this guy a decent feedback. I wanted them to hear the DARK side of this scumbag.

I told them that he was a decent worker at best but here are some documents I wanted to share. Luckily I kept my old floppy disk handy with all of the stuff I wrote to the higher chain of command about this racist pos. The statements had dates and times I written down of his racist comments over the years. Too many to write in this essay. But let’s just say it was two pages worth (front and back).

The look of disgust was very apparent on their faces. One of them asked me “people like him still exist in the military?” I replied “shockingly, yes”. They asked me, “did you ever want to knock this dude the F- -K out?” (Many Times I did).

To make a long story short, months went by and I didn’t hear anything. Then one day I overheard a conversation about my former supervisor being turned down for his highway patrol job and was working at a Wal-Mart as a warehouse worker. In all honesty, I take GREAT pleasure in feeling that my sneaky swift actions were the reason.

Get outta here

I told my professor that I am a Mensan; he laughed at me. What does it mean?

I certainly wouldn’t laugh if a student of mine told me that – so have no idea why your professor did. But I wouldn’t give it much weight, either. And I’d wonder why the student told me. Would they tell me how tall they were? Or what color hair they had?

If eligibility to be in Mensa requires one to be in the top 2% (or something) of people who take IQ tests, that is a nice capability to have. But what percentage of university professors are likely to also be eligible if that’s the requirement – plus have become academically very accomplished in their field of study? I have no idea what my IQ is, it’s never been tested as far as I know – nor has it ever mattered to me. It is likely higher than some – and not nearly as high as others, both professors and students I have known in my well over half-century at a university (if you include my student years). It’s a place that tends to collect very bright articulate people.

So if a student of mine told me they were in Mensa, I’d probably ask them about it, what they did as a member of Mensa, etc., just as I would if they told me they were in an orchestra or worked for a charity or played on the soccer team or something. That is, it is information about that student and it might be interesting, but what does it change? I would expect that person’s intelligence to show in their love of learning, the questions they ask, the connections they make, etc. And all of that intellectual capability would be obvious even it they were not a member of Mensa.

What was the best “extra item” you got in your order when ordering/eating at a fast food restaurant?

I went to McDonald’s and went inside to place a to go order. While I was standing there, the manager walked up to me and handed me an empty French fry box. This was during the time that McDonald’s was doing the Monopoly game. The game piece on the fry box was already partially open. I peeled it the rest of the way back and it said it was a $2000 winner. I really needed the money for college at that point in my life. I thanked the manager profusely. She said that it had been inadvertently opened by a worker. She saw me standing there with my young daughter and thought that I looked like I could use some cheering up. Best trip to McDonald’s ever!

If ASML cannot sell to China, how did they sell a huge order in September?

It’s very complicated

It seems the Dutch Government has forbidden ASML to sell EUVs to SMIC from 1/9/23

Yet orders placed until 23:59 on 31/8/23 can be shipped and fulfilled.

So technically ASML can ship orders to SMIC upto the time the last order placed on 31/8/23 is fulfilled

That’s for 21 EUV Machines & 50 DUV Machines

In September, ASML has delivered 4 EUV Machines & 17 DUV Machines


Meanwhile there is another legal complication

SMIC has now introduced a Distributor company who can buy EUVs from ASML and simply sell them to SMIC for a 10% commission (10% is just an example)

Now the Dutch order said only SMIC was forbidden from receiving ASML EUVs so ASML has also accepted 8 more orders for EUVs from this distributor

Technically Dutch Govt cannot specifically forbid ASML from selling to China as a whole as that is a major WTO violation

So they can only blacklist importers

So China can keep bringing up new distributors and placing orders and ASML is happy because TSMC has cancelled 24 Machines recently and i am sure China offered full price for the machines


Ultimately MONEY TALKS

Once again the US is furious but again it’s all about the legalese now

SMIC is forbidden so an agency buys and sells to SMIC

The Dutch look the other way of course

ASML is delighted because they sell more machines


My guess is this new agency will be blacklisted soon and they will incorporate more laws to prevent such measures

Yet that gets China another 8 machines plus a further 24 machines which I bet China will place as they are already in process

This means SMIC technically can make 7 nm and 5 nm Chips in decent quantities at least till 2026/2027

By then they should crack some breakthrough

So China has gained TIME and the Dutch have put business ahead of stupidity

Just like NVDIA and Intel just sold products to China which were slightly off the specs in huge numbers

Economics is ultimately invincible

Bile. Pure Bile.

What is something a teacher did that impressed you?

My Calculus professor in college did this:

He was working on a HUGE problem that took up the entire white board. The students were doing their best to follow the problem in their notes and in their minds. Suddenly he stopped, turned to look at us, turned red with embarrassment and realized that he got confused and lost in the problem. A student in the front row gently guided him to finish.

Instead of brushing this off he used this as an amazing teachable moment.

Here is what he did:

  1. He asked us if we thought he was stupid. We collectively said “no.”
  2. He then said that he was not a “melon head” and neither were we.
  3. The lesson: He explained about the fight or flight syndrome and said that once he got momentarily confused, instead of going back to the place in the problem where he understood, he got nervous because he was in front of us, got into the fight or flight syndrome, produced adrenaline and got so stressed that he could no longer think. He then drew a picture on the board of a human brain, showed the reptilian part of our brain and the frontal lobes and explained that when we get too stressed we go to our reptilian brain and we need to return to our frontal lobe thinking. He gave us concrete strategies for exactly how to do this. (Breathe slowly, go back to a place where we last understood and start over). This lesson was SO impactful to me that I began to study the brain more and more and then I taught this to all of my students.

Final Thought: Even though my professor was teaching Calculus, his off-topic lesson was one of the best I ever had. He turned an embarrassing moment into an incredibly helpful life lesson.

This lesson was so important to me that I included the story as one of the chapters in my teacher support book, “Wait, Don’t Quit.”

Caught in the act

Ahhh. Sad.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wtWALCHAB04?feature=share

Have you ever found something unexpected inside of something you bought used?

I passed a great little convertible parked in front of a business with a “For Sale” sign and stopped to go look at it because I was considering a fun weekend car. It turned out the owner of the business was a past customer of mine, I had done work on his home. Two days later it was mine.

In the process of fixing every little thing and customizing it, I decided to pull out most of the interior to really clean it. Tucked in where the carpet overlapped, under the driver’s seat, was a gold ring with a small diamond. I wasn’t sure if it was real so I asked a friend at a nearby jewelry store. They confirmed it was real 18k and about ⅛ carat real diamond.

I called my friend who sold me the car. He checked with his wife and it wasn’t hers. I asked if they knew the previous owner but she had sold them the car before moving overseas and they lost track of her info. There must have been a clean title at some point because she wasn’t listed.

I doubt it was a wedding ring because it was so small, in fact the only finger it would fit was my mother in law’s pinky. She liked it so I let her keep it.

What is the bloodiest battle in Roman history?

Well, it depends on what we mean by “bloodiest”.

Battle with highest total losses: Battle of Vercellae

In 113 BC a large Germanic-Celtic coalition begins poking around Rome. They crush a Roman army and send the Romans into a panic. This army is 200,000 men strong- how can Rome compete.

Into this steps Marius, Uncle of Caesar. Marius was the most well-known general of his age and he set about reforming the Roman military with rapid speed, creating the more traditional Roman Legions we all know and love.

As this massive Army began to move for Italy Marius responded with his reformed Legions. What followed was a massive all-out clash where Roman discipline held back a far larger army. The turning point came when a commander named Sula counter-charged the Celtic cavalry and sent them fleeing into their own lines.

In all Plutarch reports 100,000 were killed, Livy reports 160,000, and Orosius reports 140,000 were killed.

Battle with highest Roman casualties: Cannae

Hannibal had invaded Italy and Rome responded by raising the largest Army in it’s history- some 90,000 men strong. The Romans used this Army to attack Hannibal, driving their strong heavy infantry forward in an effort to break Hannibal’s lines.

Hannibal had cleverly made his flanks strong and so as his center bowed inwards his flanks did not. This created a big “U” shape and the Romans found themselves being pressed from all sides. Then Hannibal’s cavalry came around the rear and surrounded the entire Roman Army. They then pressed in and killed perhaps 50,000 Romans.

My therapist refused to talk about herself. She kept saying “therapy isn’t about me, we are talking about you”. I don’t know why but it made me feel uncomfortable and a little distrustful. Is this normal?

I have to say, a number of answers to this question are appalling. What is most troubling is that many of the worst and most shaming of these responses are from supposed clinicians themselves. I am deeply bothered by this.

Is it normal, or lets say understandable, that you would feel distrustful and off about your therapist shutting down your queries about the nature of your relationship with them? Yep, sounds downright logical to me. When we feel distrustful it is because we feel unsafe in some way. You therapist refusing to engage with you around the experience of the inherent lop-sided-ness of the therapy relationship is problematic.

What you are experiencing is incredibly common, if not inevitable. I would dare say anyone who has remained in therapy for more than a few sessions with a therapist will wrestle with the freedoms and constraints afforded within a psychotherapy. For many this remains a constant felt tension throughout their therapy. It is an important aspect of therapy as exploring the tensions, dissatisfaction, unfairness, longings etc…with our therapists directly reveals our deepest needs and wants. Talking about the bounds of the therapy is the most fruitful of topics, a talented therapist would happily (if not giddily) help you to explore your distrust, or any other experience you may be having about being in therapy.

The issue isn’t whether it is right or wrong for a therapist to reveal anything about their private-selves (some do, some don’t). The issue here is that this subject has come up more than once in your therapy and you are clearly completely confused about it. Your therapist has missed a golden opportunity to open up a discussion about relationships.

It would seem according to some of these answers your therapist is not alone in completely missing the proverbial elephant, or neon sign, in the room.

He just wants peace

Have you ever met someone who sent you immediate red flags?

On my first day working at Domino’s Pizza, I was introduced to all the workers. One of the delivery drivers was a guy in his 70s whom we’ll call Morgan. He looked at me and said, “I’d ask you out, but I guess you don’t date people your grandfather’s age.” Keep in mind that I was 17 at this point; this was my first “real job.” Since I’d been homeschooled, I wasn’t well-versed in social norms, but this statement gave me the creeps. When I went home that evening, I discussed it wiith my mom, who said he was most likely teasing.

Morgan kept chatting with me, and I came to know him as a very friendly person. However, a couple of months later (I worked there from halfway through summer break until Thanksgiving, when I got a better job), I was eating a piece of leftover pizza and he grabbed my shoulders, trying to take a bite out of my pizza. I warned him not to do it again, or I’d elbow him. He talked for weeks about how “M.J. has pointy elbows,” so nobody get on her bad side.

I was never comfortable around him from that time on. He kept making comments that made me less comfortable. One day, he said, “You’re going to make a wonderful wife and mother someday.” Finally, I brought it up with my parents again. When I mentioned that he’d given me his business card so I could “use him as a professional reference,” they realized what was going on.

My dad called the manager, who was the best guy ever with six kids of his own and decided to let my dad (a tough-as-nails, Glock-carrying Italian gym rat in cowboy boots) do whatever he thought was best. I gave my dad Morgan’s schedule, and the two of them had a nice chat out in the parking lot. Morgan said about five words to me the entire rest of the time I worked there. It was glorious.

What is it like to work for a billionaire?

In a word? Surreal.

I used to work for an EXTREMELY reclusive billionaire (for further reference in the answer he will be called Greg) as a personal aide. Many things that I have seen and been a part of during my fantastic service with (for?) him are covered by legal documents that demand non disclosure from me. However, there are still some things that can be shared.

The word extremely is in all caps because only one or two pictures of him have ever been publicly published, and he has never given a personal statement. He maintained a zero social media presence, and would always grumble about the dependency of modern society on rapidly changing technology. His family and him always maintained a low profile, choosing to utilise public transport if they could (however, they had extensive means of transportation and if he felt even the slightest inkling of a threat they would use another transportation method). The children attended a private school just out of the county, however, in my country, private schools are very common, so this is not too fancy.

But, don’t for a moment underestimate the man. He had an uncanny ability to read people, pick out things others would not see at first glance and was always determined to understand and learn about the world around him. He would anonymously donate millions to organisations that furthered research into space (is this a thing? I learnt this from another personal aide). He played his cards close to the chest, and if he did not understand a theory or idea, he had no qualms of ringing the relevant party up to better understand the concept, something he did regularly with his firm which led to some talks behind his back in the firm.

He always maintained a composure of calmness through out even the most trying situations. There was a time when a client agreement between his firm and the client had fallen through, and they only had a few hours to rehash all the details. Unfortunately, he had given the lead architect of the deal a few days off earlier in the week as the client company had, at first, shown a very positive outlook on the agreement. Greg knew that the architect was out deep in the country side where he was helping with the after party of his sister’s wedding. Cell service was not great, and while the architect was informed of the situation, he was in no place to rehash a multi million dollar deal. So what was done, within a span of 1 hour, was a helicopter from a local tour agency, that always had one on standby, was chartered, sent out to the architect, brought him back and they worked on the deal. The deal eventually fell through (it was beyond saving if you asked me), and Greg felt extremely guilty for the inconvenience he caused the architect. As a form of thank you, he proceeded to pay for the sister’s wedding, and gave the architect another month off.

The billionaire I worked for always attempted to remain frugal. He never owned any form of private transport (jet, helicopter, yacht etc), had a small car collection but always donated money or reinvest it into the market. He never showed emotions, but you knew he was a caring individual. His neighbours son had been involved in an extremely gruesome accident when his car was slammed by a truck. Knowing that financing the operation and hospital stress for the son would be too much for the mother, he quietly payed for the entire operation, and set up a trust that would cover the living and medical treatment costs for that young man for the rest of his life.

Greg passed away a few years ago, which is when I stopped working. His wife asked us aides if we would like to stay on, and while several did, I left to take care of my ailing Mother. As a parting bonus, she gave the aides leaving a substantial monetary bonus that will be enough for the rest of my life if I live carefully. I haven’t heard from them in a while, but their current aides say they are still the same down-to-earth people I had known them as.

Greg was a fantastic individual. He was an avid learner, an individual who did whatever it took and, yet, still managed to keep the small things in life within his view. It gave me great pleasure to work for him, and I definitely miss him.

The Ferrari 166 S

The Ferrari 166 S was a sports racing car built by Ferrari between 1948 and 1953, an evolution of its Colombo V12-powered 125 S racer. It was adapted into a sports car for the street in the form of the 166 Inter.

2 17
2 17

Only 12 Ferrari 166 S were produced, nine of them with cycle-fenders as the Spyder Corsa. It was soon followed by the updated and highly successful Ferrari 166 MM (Mille Miglia), of which 47 were made from 1948 to 1953. Its early victories in the Targa Florio and Mille Miglia and others in international competition made the manufacturer a serious competitor in the racing industry. Both were later replaced by the 2.3 L 195 S.

1 17
1 17
8 15
8 15
5 15
5 15
4 17
4 17

What’s the strangest question you’ve been asked during an interview?

At the end of the interview, the hiring manager leaned back on his chair, folded his hands and grinned, “Tell me why I shouldn’t hire the guy I interviewed before you came in?”

I had to think for a moment. “Having never met or interviewed the guy, I can’t make an informed opinion.” And I thought the reason for the question was to see if I made snap decisions without any facts.

He shook his head, “Now that’s a cop out. Give me another reason.”

“Let me see his resume and give me a few minutes. Cover up his name.”

“I can’t do that, but I’ll show you his cover letter.”

He folded the paper so I couldn’t see who sent it, and moved it across the desk. I read the first sentence and said, “He makes careless mistakes. He misspelled the name of your company.”

The hiring manager’s eyes popped and said, “What?” He looked at it again, then said, “This meeting is over.”

And that was that. I never heard back and no one in HR would take my call. I don’t know if it was a fake letter he used as a test or a real one.

That was the strangest question I was ever asked.

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

Yes, I was a financial manager at a golf & country club.

I took two weeks’ vacation and when I came back there was a note taped to my computer that said, “Do Not Open.” Immediately, I knew because employees were being let go daily.

Minutes later, my desk phone rang, and the NEW GM wanted me in his office.

I was let go for no reason given other than “Don’t take it personally”.

I stayed in contact with my assistant, and she was given my job at $8 an hr. She also told me he brought in his wife, children and many other employees that he knew from a previous job at another club.

All total, 23 employees were let go and replaced!

Karma got him….he got caught stealing and he was fired!

Nagging Song

Have you ever dined at a restaurant that left you thinking ‘is this a joke’?

Some years ago, when my special needs kids were younger, we went to a nearby restaurant to practice behavior, social skills, and new experiences. They won’t learn if they aren’t exposed.

I agreed they could have anything on the menu as long as they agreed to try their choice. My older two tried something off the adult menu, but my younger one was less confident and asked to try something from the kid’s menu. I wanted this a positive experience so I said sure. He ordered the personal pizza.

I did chuckle that we came to a restaurant for him to have pizza, but we agreed. It was a great time, and everyone enjoyed. Well, I didn’t enjoy it as much when I got the bill. His personal pizza cost almost as much as a regular pie from the pizza shop. Well, we came for the experience and everyone behaved well. But next time, I had an impulse about eating out, I asked the kids if they were ok with the pizza shop, and they were. The restaurant was ok, but you could relax in the pizza shop. Ok, I learned a lesson that day.

What’s the biggest secret your mother told you that you can disclose here?

She hated the pool and resented my father for getting it.

Upon retirement, my father put an in-ground pool, complete with a deck and privacy fence, in his back yard. I’d been moved out for three years at that point, and I usually visited during the holidays, when the pool was closed. I never saw it in its full glory except in pictures. I saw a lot of pictures of my dad and sister and other people having great pool parties.

My mother was never in those pictures. She was the one taking the pictures, I assumed. But she later told me that she hated the pool. It cost half as much as the house it was attached to. It was the single biggest purchase my father ever made for himself.

He got about eight years of use from it. Then, his health got so bad that his doctors told him to quit going in it, lest he have a heart attack and drown in it. They drained the pool that winter, and it was never used again.

Then he died, and for the next six years, my mother had a giant man-made swamp in her backyard. Every time it rained, she had to pump the water out of the pool. It attracted frogs and snakes. It actually reduced the value of her home, because she lived in a poor neighborhood and no one who could afford to fix and maintain the pool would want to live in that neighborhood.

Finally, just last month, she got it filled in with dirt. It wasn’t cheap, of course, but now she can have what was there before: a garden.

Easy vs Hard

From an economic perspective, what would a “reasonable relationship” between China and the United States look like?

To the US :-

To the US, a REASONABLE RELATIONSHIP will be when :-

  • Xi Jingping retires or resigns
  • China demilitarizes and commits to the same
  • China relinquishes the One China Policy wrt Taiwan and cedes the South China Sea to US Hegemony
  • China prepares to be Number Two for the considerable future
  • China purchases and takes back US Debt to $ 1.5–1.7 Trillion

Nothing else will satisfy them

Even if China makes these confessions, some Neocons won’t be satisfied

They want a War against China and to see China broken and lose considerable power and the CPC to be ousted and a US style democracy established


For China, a REASONABLE RELATIONSHIP MEANS :-

  • Each Nation understanding that their laws are meant to be followed in each nation
  • No protectionism
  • Not using Geopolitical issues in Economic problems
  • Fair Competition and the ‘May the best man win’ philosophy
  • Win Win Partnership so that the Global Economy can gain

Of course China also has Wolf Warriors who simultaneously aim to develop their independent supply chain and to oust US influence in the Global South


In the end, the businessmen in both nations want what China wants

The leadership in China wants peace

It is the US that is divided because of its unstable politicians, between Neocons and Neo Liberals and frankly too many homosexuals and transgenders to truly gauge what a diplomatic partnership means

So today all China is doing is BUYING TIME and waiting for US to collapse under it’s own weight

What’s the strangest thing delivered to your house (that you did not order)?

About a year ago we had a strange series of UPS and FedEx deliveries. They all had our correct address but the name was something like a cartoon character.. think something like Betty Poop.

The first box was a plant stand. My wife took it back to FedEx. Two days later we got the same delivery! In the middle there were a few more deliveries.. my wife was thinking it’s a scam where someone would come by and steal the freshly delivered boxes. But the stuff we were receiving weren’t that kind of stuff you’d expect in a scam.

We have an HOA with a complete list of homeowners. There was nobody with a name even close. Last box arrives.. it’s UPS and a big box of wallpaper. I send an email to the HOA mailing list, asking if anyone else was on the receiving end of same thing.

I get an immediate call from a woman on my street about 10 houses away. She’s screaming that we are stealing her packages and she’s a decorator and we made her miss her deadline! Apparently the funky name was her new business name! She wants me to deliver it all to her immediately or she’s calling the cops!

I ask her what her address was and she recites MY address.. I tell her to go outside and look at the number on her house. And that I’m putting all her boxes out in my driveway and she should come get it!

Ten minutes later there’s a man in an SUV picking up the boxes. No apology, no admission of fault. I still wouldn’t know the woman if I saw her today!

What can we do against obesity?

Penn and Teller had this show a few years back called “Bullshit”.

They would debunk TONS of stuff. It was very educational without being skewed like some of Michael Moore’s stuff is.

One show was debunking diet myths. They went through the history of sugar vs. fat and the evils of high fructose corn syrup, etc…

But one pivotal bit was when they brought a stagehand out from behind the set. He had apparently lost a ton of weight recently. They asked him how he managed to do it.

This epic hero looked straight into the camera and said, “I stopped eating so fucking much.”

When COVID hit, I knew I wouldn’t be going out as much. So I decided to change my diet very VERY slightly. I would take smaller scoops of rice and take the smaller potato during dinner. Without doing ANYTHING else, I lost about 4 pounds in about as many months. I wasn’t even trying.

Stay away from hidden sugar. EVERYTHING in the U.S. has hidden sugar in it. Look at the ingredients. Is something ends in “ose”, it’s sugar.

Exercise helps, too, of course, but not everyone can do it. One thing everyone can do, though is:

Stop eating so fucking much.

Project Looking Glass | The Time Warriors of the 2012 Apocalypse

This is fun, but full of disinfo. Enjoy yourself.

When was the day you first realised you were getting old?

I grew up outside of a small prairie town. One of my best friends grew up about 10 miles out of town, and in my teens I used to spend a lot of time at his house with him, his siblings and his parents. They had a built in kitchen table and wrap around bench. We used to sit at that table have a beer, and play a card game called “pass the ace” or sometimes “spoons” with all of our friends, his parents and siblings.

I moved away, travelled the world, and never settled down. I was about 40, still single, and I still planned on getting married and having kids someday.

When I was back in Canada, I decided to stop in and visit his parents. I knocked on the door, which was never locked, they yelled at me to come in, and there was a tableful of people playing pass the ace, and drinking beer. There was my friends mother, his younger brother, and 5 other young people playing pass the ace. I sat down, had a beer and got dealt in. I started to get caught up on all the news. It was exactly like old times, talking, drinking beer, playing cards, with a tableful of young adults, in their late teens, and early twenties. Exactly as if I hadn’t left. Then it dawned on me, I was playing cards with my friends two sons, his sisters son and daughter, and two second cousins. I was thinking I hadn’t changed in twenty years, and suddenly I was an old man playing cards, with the next generation, and they were old enough to legally drink.

That was the day, I realized I was no longer young, lets face it, I was old. I remember 20 years before, thinking how cool his parents and their friends were, for drinking and partying at their age, and now I was that old man sitting at the table.

I not only remember the day. I remember the minute it hit.

What is the most interesting conversation you overheard in a restaurant?

I’m not sure it was the most interesting, but its stuck in my mind for years. I was in a nice lakefront restaurant, inside a city, so it wasn’t a big lake, but a small man made lake.

At the table beside me was a couple and a realtor discussing putting his house on the market.

The man appeared to be about 10 years older than his wife. They had one of 5 houses on an island in the middle of the lake, accessable only by a bridge. Very exclusive. The housing market was down. The realtor had told the man what his house was assessed at. The husband said, he knew very well, what it was assessed at, but he wouldn’t sell it for anywhere near that price.

The realtor told him it would be on the market for a long time, if he listed it that high, and might never sell. The wife started to say something, and the husband actually turned to her, and said “This is mans business, we know what we are doing, let us talk, if we want to know how to decorate a room, we’ll ask you” I saw the realtor cringe, he didn’t want to be included in that kind of conversation.

The husband then told him, that the way to market it, was to sell it as one of only five houses on an island in the city, maybe the whole province. I understood his logic, but this was not a nice man.

Listing a house is something that a realtor really wants to do. Even if they don’t sell it themselves, as long as someone buys it, they make money. But, and this is a guess, it costs money to advertise the house, put it on the MLS system, and if its unrealistically high, and it never sells then they lose money. Then he has to deal with a high maintenance client, that makes him feel like he should wash his hands, after every meeting.

In any case, the realtor said that if he wanted to list the house for more than 30 percent over market value, he would have to find a different realtor. The husband was stunned, and couldn’t believe he was being turned down. The realtor paid for the lunch and left.

I don’t know if they ever talked again. But I didn’t feel clean myself, sitting at a table next to this guy, so I didn’t blame him.

Men are not dogs

How do you call out someone that claims to have been in the SAS?

There is a sure fire way to discover if a guy actually served in the British SAS, one that I witnessed myself. Let me explain. I had a friend who was an alcoholic. There was gossip in the local pubs that he was ex SAS. No matter how drunk he would get, he would always laugh and tell you not to be so stupid if you aver broached the subject with him. So how did we find out the truth? At his funeral. A serving member of the SAS in full uniform, accompanied by a bugler (Non SAS) attended and gave a eulogy that had us all gobsmacked. Not only was my friend ex SAS, but his exploits were totally jaw dropping heroic. We were told that whenever an ex member of the SAS dies. His funeral is always attended by a serving member of the regiment. RIP Alec.

What’s the saddest “card declined” moment you’ve seen?

I was waiting in line at the dollar store, lady in front of me had an infant in her arms, and had an older boy maybe 5 who was holding his little sister’s hand who was about 3 to prevent her from running off.

She was purchasing 2 tiny packs of diapers, a few minor food items, and a 1 liter Mountain Dew. She had enough for the total, but it was spread among 3 debit cards. I don’t know if the clerk was new, or a new computer system, but the clerk was having trouble ringing it up in 3 payments like she needed.

I was off work at the time, between jobs collecting unemployment, so I was struggling also, but I could easily afford the little bit she needed, so I just stepped up, and swiped my card to cover her groceries. She tried to take the Mountain Dew out (a luxury, not necessity) but I pointed out with 3 children she needed the caffeine even though 1 was very mature, and helpful.

On my way out the door to walk home (nice day, and not far, so I walked instead of driving) I heard her attempt to stay her van, it sounded like a dead battery and when it finally started, a horrible belt squealing sound told me a belt was destroyed, or very loose.

I told her I’m a hobby mechanic, I don’t live far, and I told her I’d gladly look at it if she would like since I don’t live far, so she offered me a ride and another thank you for paying for her groceries.

When she pulled in the driveway, she was reluctant to shut the vehicle off, I told her I have a battery booster or my car to get her started if needed.

Opened the hood, and someone had replaced the alternator recently, but had forgotten to tighten the swing arm assembly that holds pressure on the belt. It took as much time to grab the tools as it did to tighten it correctly. It started right up with the battery booster, and the squealing was gone.

I pointed out the belt was looking worn out, recommended she get it replaced but it’ll last for a few months at least, and told her I would gladly put the belt on whenever she needed free of charge if she showed up with the belt.

I’ve been in her shoes raising my 4 children as a single dad, so the little money for her groceries, and about 5 minutes of my time to tighten the alternator belt was no problem at all.

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

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.

no charges were filed..

The mindset of GEN Z

When Japan invaded China, did they also create “comfort women” like in South Korea?

During the Japanese War of Aggression Against China (1931-1945), about 200000, or even more women in China were lured and forced by the Japanese army to become “comfort women”. They suffered various unimaginable and unspeakable forms of abuse during the war, most of which were tortured to death at that time. Even if a few survivors survived by chance, they were left with scars and even lifelong disabilities.

At the comfort station, they subjected women to inhumane torture, even if they were pregnant, they still had to endure the torture of the Japanese army. Once they fell ill, they would be killed. The Japanese army did not leave a way for these women to survive, and they even set up a series of “rules and regulations” that made these captured women unable to die.

After Japan surrendered, they were afraid that their crimes would be exposed, and they brutally killed all comfort women before leaving. We cannot imagine how desperate they were at that moment. Fortunately, there are many women who have survived by chance. But for them, surviving may not be a kind of luck, because they have been living in darkness for the latter half of their lives, and their survival is evidence to prove the Japanese’s inhumanity. Because they survived with strength, we could only know about the various crimes committed by Japan.

There is a lengthy documentary in China called “Twenty Two”, that tells the story about China’s surviving “comfort women” during the Japanese invasion of China. The film was directed by Guo Ke, with 22 comfort women participating in the filming. It was released in mainland China on August 14, 2017. Unfortunately, on November 9, 2023, Li Meijin, the victim of comfort women, passed away at the age of 98. It means that all the surviving women in the documentary “Twenty Two” have passed away.

Until now, Japan has refused to admit their crimes. However, history is there, and it’s useless for them to sophistry. But even in textbooks, they briefly mentioned or directly overturned the truth about that period of history, to the extent that young Japanese people today do not understand what happened back then. They can cover up, but Chinese people will never forget that shameful past.

Alpha Dad Overcomes Childhood Hardships To Gain Wealth, Respect & A Wife That Treats Him Like A King

Damn is this good. And man do I love his grandmother. You rock!

What did you start doing differently that quickly changed your life?

When I moved to Thailand, I was incredibly lonely.

Not speaking the language, I lived for months in silence. I desperately wanted human connection. I just wanted to speak with someone.

My standard for becoming friends with someone dropped to having the ability to speak English. That’s all it took.

My new best friends became a 70 year old English man and his Thai wife. They would take me to markets on the weekends sometimes and talk with me if I ate dinner at their shop.

When I walked around the lake every day, I became friends with a 40 year old Thai man who used to work on cruise ships and could speak a decent amount of English to me.

A little 17 year old girl from Uruguay that I met at the gym became one of my good friends as well, she was studying abroad to learn Thai.

For the first time in my life, I had friends of all ages from all backgrounds.

My whole life, I’ve only been friends with people who were within a couple years of my own age. The only older men I talked to was my grandpa, I’d never called an older man a friend. I avoided high schoolers. Forty year old men and women were my parents age, I didn’t want to hang out with them.

But, let me tell you, life became so much richer as soon as I did. 70 year old men have lived a lot of life and can teach you a lot of things. 40 year old cruise ship waiters can tell you about a lot of life experiences that you’ve never had. 17 year old girls from high school can teach you about their way of life in Uruguay and supporting them can bring a lot of meaning to your life.

I think most people limit themselves to a bubble of friends who are the same age as them and in the same stage of life. I think that really limits yourself and the depth of relationships you can have.

I want to stay open to everyone for the rest of my life. It’s so much better this way.

Divorced Men

What is animal-inspired engineering?

Cockroaches have made their way into my life, against my will, and to great inconvenience. Three years ago, my girlfriend cried into the phone for me to come over, “Please…please…it is twitching on my kitchen floor.” She sounded like a hostage. We went back and forth for two minutes, with me insisting I couldn’t come to her house.

“I’m busy writing. Just get a paper towel and flush it,” I said, trying to calm her down. It didn’t work. She begged and begged until I finally said, “I’m doing this once.” And then drove 20 minutes — just to kill a roach.

After we moved into our new house together, my war with the roaches truly began. Exterminating them took significant research and numerous failed attempts. Mine is a common problem, and has made me question the value of these little critters.

We should be impressed that a creature has survived so much research and resources put into their extermination, and pesticides that are only making them stronger. A roach always finds a way and there is no “walling them out”. To the shock of NASA’s employees, one even snuck onboard Apollo 12. They’d moved mountains to decontaminate the spacecraft and ensure nothing snuck on. Employees were even in denial, swearing the roach couldn’t be there when astronauts said they’d seen one. Nevertheless, one did, and Apollo 12 took off for the moon while gaining the nickname, “The Roach Coach”.

Roaches are so nimble that researchers at Cornell University explored how just flexible they are. In a test of increasingly smaller crevices, they discovered roaches could squeeze through 3 millimeter spaces, despite their back being 12 millimeters high. Their exoskeleton is indeed hard and breakable, but exists in sections connected by soft tissue that molds and bends. And even while pressed down tight with weight on their back, they can still move fast and with little regard for gravity. When adjusting for size, they run the equivalent of a human running 200 mph. They can run when missing four legs. They can climb vertically while missing two feet. Scientists proved that roaches could withstand 900 times their own bodyweight without taking damage.

A roach is also an extreme gymnast, with a hallmark move, where it quickly flips from the edge of a table to the underside, dangling by one leg in an instant. It often leaves home owners wondering where the roach went. And so, a cockroach’s incredible athleticism, nimbleness, and durability, make it the perfect model for robotics technology, as we continue to explore new planets and depths on Earth. These new robots may even save lives.

A new era of inspiration

At John’s Hopkins University, Dr. Chen Li and Dr. Sean Gart filmed cockroaches running and then played video back in slow motion, studying how the legs and arms sync and propel it forward. They took notes, in awe, and looked at means of replicating these efficiencies with robots. A cockroach typically deals with vegetation, leaf and stick covered terrain. It is highly complex to navigate, but cockroaches do so with extreme ease and efficiency.

This matters because robotics is moving into a new phase, where robots are moving from indoor testing to outdoors, which is why the most clever animal navigators, including snakes, octopuses, and arachnids, have attracted non-hostile attention from scientists. One of the signature challenges robots face, is moving through unpredictable terrain and being durable enough for random physical impacts.

The study of cockroaches, in particular, has led to a new branch of durable and penetrating robots that can climb high objects, crash hard, and still get back up and resume climbing. Professor Robert J. Full, of UC Berkley, has spent his career researching the nature of evolution-inspired design, and even attached tiny jetpacks to the sides of roaches, to test how well they climb vertically while being randomly jetted to the side. It was easy work — for the roaches.

His lab designed a tiny cockroach inspired robot, that squeezes through cracks, and even looks a bit like a roach. It could be useful for descending through cracks in rubble to search for survivors. It stands 75 millimeters tall and can squeeze down to 35 millimeters, which is almost, but not quite as good as roaches. It also has similar pliable and molding body parts, that allow it to bend and move in extremely tight and uneven spaces. Dr. Full routinely meets with first responders at disaster sites, to learn more about their needs as he continues to innovate this robot.

The necessity of studying them

It is as the old Sun Tzu saying goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Cockroaches are a brilliant species, without actually being brilliant.

When I met with a pest control expert, his feedback wasn’t what I expected. He said, “Don’t just spray every inch of a room’s perimeter, they’ll know it’s a trap.” Then, he showed me how to put tiny drops along walls, and in the underside of cupboards and tiny cracks between furniture and sliding drawers. “Think of all the tiniest openings possible, and think like a roach — and you’ll know where to put the spray,” he said. It is this intrinsic cleverness and efficient navigating that could manifest robots of incredible caliber and utility in the coming decades.

What’s remarkable is that cockroaches don’t rely heavily on their nervous system for movement like other mammals. Even when thrown off balance, yanked around, blasted with wind, and spun like a top, their bodies auto adjust without thought. This matters for robotics because engineers are constantly programming and scripting robots to manage uneven terrain, and think about where their feet are going.

The insight from a cockroach is that, perhaps engineers shouldn’t try so hard with this programming method. They should rely on predictable mechanics, that have built-in means to traverse steep rocks and slippery surfaces. In short, make it more natural. This could impact medical technology and prosthetics, and help people who’ve had strokes or major injuries, develop more fluid gaits.

The animal kingdom is, in a sense, the only alien intelligence we deal with. Species are of ingenious design through an evolutionary arms race, and can move and adjust to their environment in ways we’d have never dreamed of. Which is evident when trying to step on a roach and you miss in the last moment, or even when you hit it, it manages to keep running. Who wouldn’t want this fortitude and evasiveness?

Perhaps what strikes me most, is that a bug with little cognitive function, has evolved to elude the smartest of all known species, and who is quite hostile to its presence. A future where nature-inspired robotics, combined with artificial intelligence, could save lives in search and rescue, improve exploration of new places and planets, and improve lives for the disabled. All thanks to our most ancient and enduring pest.

Chinese minorities

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I2dUVTdyiOY?feature=share

Copeland’s of New Orleans Swamp Pie

copelands of new orleans
copelands of new orleans

Ingredients

  • 20 ounces Graham cracker crumbs
  • 6 ounces chocolate fudge
  • 1/2 gallon vanilla ice cream
  • 12 ounces sliced roasted almonds*
  • 12 ounces shredded roasted coconut*
  • 5 ounces whipped cream
  • 8 ounces butter or margarine

Instructions

  1. Mix crumbs together with butter or margarine thoroughly. Spread the mixture on sides and bottoms of a 9-inch springform pan to form a crust.
  2. Take 2 ounces of fudge and spread on top of crumbs. Place 1/4 gallon of ice cream on top of fudge. Next, spread 2 ounces of fudge over ice cream then place 4 ounces of coconut. Place remaining ice cream on coconut and follow with 2 ounces fudge, 4 ounces almonds and 4 ounces coconut as done before. Top with whipped cream and remaining almonds and coconut. Place in deep freezer for 3 to 4 hours.

Notes

Roasted Coconut and Almonds: Place coconut on a metal sheet pan and put into oven at 350 degrees F for approximately 3 1/2 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds. Do the same for almonds but increase the time to 4 minutes.

Simpsons Predictions For 2024 Is Insane!

What is one of the kindest things another person has ever done for you?

When I was running from an abusive situation, i lived in a shelter on welfare. After my 2 month stay was up, i had to find a room to rent or they’d send me to a homeless shelter (the one i was in was for female abuse victims and their children if they have any. Since there was a high demand for rooms there, the stays were short). I ended up finding a room that was 500$ per month. On welfare as a single person with no kids, I got 709$ per month. I went to view the room and the landlord asked me why I wanted to live there. I explained the situation and he immediately said yes. I ended up moving in not even a week later. He let me live there for free with unlimited wifi and cable TV included for 8 months of my 13 month stay with him. After the 8 months I had a job and could pay the rent, but even then he said if I couldnt make the rent to let him know. Hed share his food from his fridge with me, give me cash money randomly with notes that said things like “buy whatever you want” and “have a nice day”, hed offer to give me rides to the store and job interviews, he offered to get me a bus pass (85$ for one that lasts a month), hed invite me to share BBQs with him, his wife and the other 4 tenants. He bought everyone Christmas gifts (a box of Ferrero Roche chocolates and a 50$ amazon gift card). He never asked for anything back. He became more like a friend to me than a landlord. He was amazing

Was there ever a time in your life when you almost wanted to give up?

My stepdad beat me when I was between 8 and 11. He would wait until I wasn’t looking, then sneak up behind me with a riding crop and hit me behind the knees. My mother would not come to my defense, no matter how hard I cried. I had no idea how to process this situation. I felt like my mother betrayed me and that the legal system was on her side since she got custody of us (my sister and me) when she divorced my dad. I had thoughts about suicide, but we only lived on the second floor, so jumping wasn’t an option. There were railroad tracks nearby, so I could have jumped in front of a train. Basically, it was the lowest point of my life… and I was 11. Somehow I found the strength to get past this and accepted that beatings were a thing now. I could make it through this. I had to just count on myself to deal with the pain and betrayal.

Eventually, he beat me so bad that when my dad came to pick us up for one of our weekends with him, I was bleeding from a ruptured eardrum. My dad almost lost it. He was going to kill my stepdad. I asked him to just take me to a doctor and deal with the rest of the shit later. He did. He also demanded custody. My mom accepted immediately. I knew then that I was a commodity to her. I’ve written her out of my life for the most part. We only talk on birthdays and Christmas.

My dad did his best and I think he really supported me up until I lost him to brain cancer in January 2016. He was my Yoda, my Gandalf, my friend. I miss him daily. He saved my life.

I hope I can be there as much for my kids.

Overthinking men

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

KFC – always popular for making rules and rolling it back badly. As a student in UK, I worked as a parttimer in KFC for two reasons 1) Money I get paid 2) Food I’m allowed to eat during breaks.

Staffs who work in KFC are allowed to take KFC food during lunch breaks. I know staffs who even took a bucket of chicken for lunch , but then they’re hard workers and smart workers – a pillar of support behind the enormous profit KFC makes per shift.

One fine day, the circle management decided to do some cost cutting – made a rule that staffs are allowed to take only limited food for lunch. A burger, fries and a cup of soft drink. Nothing more.

Rationing food for staffs — nobody likes it. The store manager would check how much food you take for lunch , particularly if he’s a bully , that’s annoying as hell.

Time for payback ….

We came with a plan.

If the store closes by 10 pm, we started to over cook by 9pm, pile up all the racks with cooked food.

  1. Now the “kick in the butt” is back on the store manager – it’s his head ache to sell all the cooked food before closing or else the food is reported as “unsold” in records. This means he gets questioned for poor sales, losses his incentives and what not
  2. He can’t ask us not to over cook because incase there’s customer flow and there’s food shortage – we can do nothing. That affects the rating
  3. Above all , staff food was rationed as a means of cost cutting. Now the management has learnt -” you touch my food, now deal with the loss mate, let’s see how you make profit”.

Within a week , the rule of food rationing was rolled back. The management went in knees —” take as much food you want for lunch, but please don’t overcook at closing time.

The management has learnt a hard lesson — it’s not just the store manager but the staff who knows how to run a shift with better profits.

No food chain can make profits without staff cooperation

Children who have had to clean out your parents’ house after they passed, did you find anything that completely changed how you viewed them?

This one didn’t necessarily change how I viewed my mom but it sure gave me a good (but bittersweet) laugh.

My mom was a hoarder. Her home was filled with junk from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. She just couldn’t bear to get rid of anything because she thought she might “need” it someday. The fact that she couldn’t find it if she did need it was lost on her.

Anyhoo, the day came when we had to move mom into a care home. My sister and I sat mom in a cleared corner of a couch and let her “help” by telling us “yay or nay” on keeping certain things. In the background, our team was hauling soooo much crap out into a bin without her knowing. We’d bring random boxes and let mom “sort” through them to keep her occupied. One or the other of us would sit with her and talk while the others worked. In the end, we actually kept only enough clothes and books and personal items to fit in the care home room we’d lined up for her.

During the course of the day we noticed that mom had acquired a VERY large number of nail clippers over the years. Being tiny items that you need fairly often, she was constantly leaving them here or there and losing them. The people helping would laugh and say “found another one!” every time they spotted one. In the end we found about 100 nail clippers! (We also found a mini fridge that had been buried in the back, filled with sickeningly, gaggingly, gross, rotten, mouldy food!)

Sometimes you can laugh and feel pain at the same time, I guess. It was a time of bonding for my sister and I. Mom had to give her beloved dog Spike to a friend and move away from the town that had been her home for decades. It was very painful for all of us but in a way it was also life-affirming if that makes sense.

What’s the weirdest thing you secretly do daily?

I bought a large framed picture of James Butler Hickock or Wild Bill. I loved the photo.

I hung the picture in my sunroom right beside the back door. It was like he was looking right at me and his eyes followed me everywhere I went.

I read quite a few books about this man and he led a very interesting life as a soldier, scout, lawman, cattle rustler, gunslinger, gambler, showman, and actor.

We even visited Deadwood, South Dakota where he lived the last years of his life before being killed at a card game he was playing in 1876, the same year Custer died. We went to the saloon where he was shot and visited his grave on Mt. Moriah, and there beside him was the grave of Calamity Jane who was buried when she died in 1903.

So at first, every morning I walked out that door, I’d say, “Morning Bill,” and everytime I walked in that door at night, I’d say, “Night Bill.” All in fun.

Poor old Bill was probably lonely out there as he guarded the house. Was probably also cold at times. But those steely eyes would sure look at me. Sometimes he looked sad, sometimes amused like he had the slightest smile on his face. He probably enjoyed my pipe or cigar smoke that floated around the room while I had a few puffs. But I feel he looks forward to my good mornings and good nights, and I feel that if I forget to say those things to him, well, might not bode well. Superstitious I guess.

So every morning and every night, I talk to Bill and I think it’s okay. Weird, but okay.

Night Bill.

Roles

All the benefits and no responsibilities.

How could the American Military Industrial Complex be dismantled to save the US from getting into more and more wars and ballooning national debts?

This is a very good question indeed. Thank you.

Every American should seriously think about this. Every empire that come and gone since time in memorial, went because of over intervention, over interference and over reaching to the point that it could no longer sustain itself. And they self implode and civil war is inevitable.

The U.S. is not getting there, it is indeed there now and almost beyond redemption. Seriously, Americans must jointly and severally destroy the U.S. military industrial complex before it destroy all of you. They are the single most important reason that the US is drag into conflicts after conflicts. Due to them, your real standard of living has not grown since 1960! Your great grand parents have a better standard of living compared to you!

Please think seriously about your debts. Just 10 years ago your debt was a mere USD10 trillion today it is USD34 trillion precisely 340% increase in a decade. At the rate you are going by 2034 the U.S. debts will be USD100 trillion at least! Just paying interest alone at 5% is USD5 trillion dollars per annum.

Seriously, don’t let anyone fool you! 5 trillion is so humongous your nation will never be able to do anything else. Today you can argue that the U.S. infrastructure is lying dilapidated, your homeless has reached a million, a third of Americans are in debt and can’t afford healthcare and college education. It can only afford one and only one thing. Wage more wars! Wars enriched 0.01% of Americans! Your politicians and the deep state!

China is a million times more healthier than the U.S. that is your problem right here! China’s saving is so colossal it save a U.K GDP a year. China’s debts is USD 15 trillion and almost 100% of it is investment that grows China’s capacity! Build its state or art technology and infrastructure, graduate STEM engineers the size of the entire US STEM experts each year!

This means China grow its capacity phenomenally while the US fall back every year due to your liabilities. Let me be brutally honest, you don’t stand a chance against China! But you may save the US that still remain a nation and a strong 2nd largest economy for 50 years till India catches up! Most importantly your citizens get back its prosperity and avoid total collapse! Do it before it is too late. Get rid of the neocons, eradicate the deep state, get ride of NRA and CIA.

China cannot be stop, the best you can do is be strong and wealthy again.

Top Gun with a Cat

Enjoy this FUN short video. I hope it makes your day. I know that it did mine!

Skunks in Milford

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

You know, I really liked Massachusetts. I used to live in Milford, Massachusetts. It was really great.

Beautiful, pleasant. A really nice place, and I often miss what it was like.

You know… there is one thing about Milford…

Skunks.

Lots and lots of skunks. LOL.

That and foxes. Who would thunk it?

Oh, they would really leave you alone. But, you know, you don’t want to get them upset.

Ha!

They would just meander about. Clueless, without a care in the world. Funny.

Skunks in Milford.

Meandering about. Not a care in the world.

Cute.

Puts a smile on my face.

Today…

Is it really worth it to live to over 80 years?

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.

What situation made you wish you never reported it?

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
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.

Something to accept

What has been the most life changing health issue you’ve experienced? Did it change your life for the better or worse?

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.

Swapping phones

How does a rescuer deal with a person who has been cut in half by a truck and obviously will not survive, but is still alive?

Not a truck. A railroad train.

The kid had attempted to jump on a boxcar from a bridge.

He dropped instead between the cars and rolled onto a rail.

A wheel cut him in half at the belly, but at the same time sealed the wound.

He was fully conscious, and asked a rescue worker if he would be “OK.”

The first responder said, “Sure, son, you’ll be fine.”

Then his two halves unsealed, and his guts poured forth. He died.

Where?

In Cumberland, Maryland. Here:

image 118
image 118

Right behind my house, years ago.

What’s something you can’t believe you had to explain to another adult?

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 actual paper 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.

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

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
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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
  4. 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.

What is the strangest way you have seen someone repair a broken object?

I drove around a 1988 Toyota Corolla when I was 16 years old.

It looked like this, only a lot more beat up and ugly:

image 110
image 110

The car had a habit of making strange noises, but there was one noise in particular that I just couldn’t deal with anymore.

I drove it over to my dad’s house to see if he could tell what the problem was.

Dad: “Oh that’s just your heat shield.”

Me: “My what?”

Dad: “It’s basically just there to keep stuff from catching on fire when you park somewhere.”

Me: “That sounds kind of important. Is it something that can be fixed?”

Dad: “Hmmm… Probably.”

My dad grabbed a stick from the yard, shoved it somewhere on the heat shield, and the noise magically stopped.

I thought that stick would eventually catch on fire, but it never did and the noise never came back.


There are some benefits to having a redneck dad.

What is one of the most effective improvised weapons made by soldiers in the field?

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
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
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.

What problems did you encounter when buying a house in an “as-is” condition?

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
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:

image 106
image 106

From the Agreement of Purchase and Sale:

image 105
image 105

What are the most mind-blowing tricks used during any war?

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
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.

West will choke on Putin’s terms for Ukraine

Discussion on the Ukraine surrender terms.

Who was the most delusional person you’ve ever met? Why were they so delusional?

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”

Have you ever felt disgusted by the actions of a family member?

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.

How did one small decision change your life?

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.

What did you notice during an interview that made you not want the job?

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?”

What’s the pettiest thing you’ve done to get back at a nuisance neighbor?

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
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.

What’s something your husband did to you that you will never forget?

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.

The USA is so filthy rich to fund $100+B to Ukraine and $14B to Israel to support their wars but they can’t agree in Congress to avert a government shutdown this Friday, lifeline extended since 30 Sep. Where is the America First mindset?

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.

Strange things caught on camera

How did Genghis Khan treat his soldiers?

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

What is the most ridiculous way you have seen someone make a lot of money?

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.

Can the United States build a new carrier group every five years for the next fifty years?

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

Another fun video.

Is it a crime to say in China, “Xi Jinping is destroying China. He must be kicked out! He is a dictator!”? In the West, saying such things about one’s president is perfectly normal.

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

Perceptions on making money

What would you consider a legitimate Italian cuisine that the US actually gets right?

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
image 116

Ricotta filled:

image 115
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.

The 80/20 rule

Why is a partner at a Chinese semiconductor investment fund calling the U.S. ban on certain chip exports to China “great news”?

It’s simple

Today YMTC makes products that are maybe 75% as good as NVDIA

Other Chinese Entities make products that are around 60% of the quality of products of entities like Samsung & SK Hynix

Spending $ 100 on NVDIA chips means $ 88 goes to US or Taiwan or other such companies

Spending $ 100 on YMTC chips means $ 61 comes to Mainland China

That’s 5 times more money than otherwise

And these Companies, they won’t use this extra revenue and put in a Swiss Bank account somewhere

They will use this money to invest into more researchers, more hours and match the same quality of the superior western brands

Today there is a vast stockpile in China to handle maybe 30 months of inventory

That gives a transition gap of approximately 2 1/2 years or until 2027 January

This is a big boost to the Chinese local entities because you can’t rely on Government largesse for ever

What robbed you of your childhood, and how?

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.

What is your most embarrassing restaurant experience?

I was bar tending during a lunch shift at a horseshoe shaped bar in the middle of a restaurant.

The bartender who closed the bar the previous night did not shut off the hose inside the bar.

Unbeknown to me, the nozzle had fallen off the hook and was resting right under the service bar, where I was making drinks.

About 30 minutes into the lunch rush I had a full bar and a miles worth of service bar drinks to make.

All I remember is hearing yelling and commotion coming from my right, yet continue slave away as I had a million and one things to do.

Finally, hearing a “WHAT THE F*#K IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” towards my direction I turned to see the hose dousing half the restaurant in water.

I had been stepping on the nozzle for at least 30-45 seconds.

The entire left side of the restaurant, it’s customers, the food, everything was drenched in water.

Everyone who had food, had it ruined, men in business suits… soaked.

Water was literally dripping off the ceiling.

Looking back it was kind of awesome to see around 100 people all giving you the rageface all at the same time.

What is something that people were better at 100 years ago?

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.

What was the bravest thing you ever did in a job interview?

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.

They offered her the job on the spot!

Have you, while repairing a computer, ever found anything that made your jaw drop?

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.

Mama! Huawei is not giving me his data!

What is the saddest truth about smart people?

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”.

How likely is China going to sell $810 billion worth of U.S. securities? What will happen in the global credit markets if China starts to dump U.S. dollars?

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

World Hal Turner

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!

https://halturnerradioshow.com/images/2023/10/28/US-Military-transport-Flights-Fri-into-Sat.jpg

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:

https://halturnerradioshow.com/images/2023/10/28/THAAD-flight-to-Saudi-Arabia.jpg

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! ! ! ! 

What was a big mistake in WW2?

image 113
image 113

This is the Lorenz cipher.

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
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
image 111

W T (Bill) Tutte, the man responsible for cracking the Lorenz Cipher

Cajun Pot Roast

2023 11 09 14 23
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

  1. 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.
  2. Heat a large nonstick pan over medium heat. Add beef and brown well on all sides.
  3. Add onion, bell pepper and minced garlic land sauté until tender.
  4. Add water to pan to cover the beef.
  5. Stir in the mushrooms and Worcestershire sauce and season with Creole seasoning.
  6. 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.

Who did you experience that is so cheap they are disgusting?

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.

What did you say at a job interview that automatically landed you the job?

“I don’t know”

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.

Resistance hits back against US bases in Syria, multiple casualties reported

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.

Who is the rudest celebrity you have met, and who would be the nicest?

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.

What shortcuts in life are never worth taking?

Suicide.

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
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
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.

What’s your impression about your experience in China? How about the Chinese?

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.

Children who have had to clean out your parents’ house after they passed, did you find anything that completely changed how you viewed them?

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.

When did you think, “this can only be a fake”?

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.

Before leaving after being fired, what’s the most that one can sabotage the office without getting caught?

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).

What is the worst medical misdiagnosis you have ever had or personally known someone to have had?

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.

What’s a hilarious story that has happened to you?

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.

Very Unlikely

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R3eXHD3c4EI?feature=share

Yo Yo gets a haircut

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

When I was first living with my (present) wife we were living in Nanshan. This is a suburb in Shenzhen, China. We had a little dog. She was a Bomei. The dog’s name was “yo yo”.

Well, my wife wanted to save some money and cut yo yo’s hair herself.

The only thing was… well… she was drinking alcohol when she did it.

Uh oh.

Poor yo yo.

She shaved it all off, and yo yo was so very, VERY pissed off.

She would go to the standing mirror, look at herself, sigh and then go back to her bed and sleep off her depression.

It was a long time ago. Maybe 2003 or 2004.

Poor little Yo Yo.

Trust me, everyone… a word to the wise… never cut your dog’s hair when you are drunk.

Today…

Why is our world still plagued with ugly architecture despite having more architects now than ever in history?

Because 100 years ago we had a future.

Europe had just emerged from a terrible Great War, and everyone wanted to cut the ties with the past. The World War One was simply a terrible disaster which cost the lives of millions of fine young men and destroyed gazillions worth of property. And the World War One effectively killed Christianity in Europe. The industrial mass carnage was simply too much.

Europe was wiped mentally and spiritually into a blank slate, and this also included fine arts and architecture. New Totalitarian ideologies, such as Communism, National Socialsism and Fascism had emerged, and the new generation hated anything bourgeoisie, anything hand-made, anything posh and cute, anything feminine. One of the most important men in the architecture of the era was Swiss-born Edouard Jeanneret aka Le Corbusier, whose pamphlet Towards a New Architecture was the start bang of the run of hideous, ugly and banal architecture.

Of course Corbu did not aim for hideous, ugly and banal. What he wanted was natural light, air, sanitation and effectiveness. The centuries old European cities had very little to speak about commodities – many did not have central heating, central water supply nor indoors loos. (They came only later.) And he wanted to make a total break with the 7000 years of architectural legacy. Not evolution, but revolution. this is how the box-arts architecture emerged.

According to Corbu, the problems of architecture are the same all around the world, and the solutions also are the same all around the world. Everything returns to the three basic forms – cube, cone and ball. Away with gabled roofs, decorations, ornaments, frizes, symmetry, anything unnecessary! Light! Warmth! Joy! Buildings are nothing but vertical streets! Sameness must prevail! Everything shall be the same from Arkhangelsk to Antofagasta!

Meanwhile in Germany, the Bauhaus sported similar ideas. While le Corbusier leaned towards Fascism, Bauhaus was a Communist hotbed. Everything shall be mass-produced! Away with pastel colours and genteel forms! Away with decorations and ornaments! Everything shall be standardized!


The new architecture – International Style– spred incredibly fast. Because the year 2000 was near. This was the future – and it did away with past. Everyone now waited for year 2000. It was to be a concrete milestone of the future. See, the odometre gears revolve and the new numbers set in. And the architects wanted to build bridge to the future.

Nazis and Fascists were enamored of the new style. Bauhaus was done away because it was a hotbed of Communists, but the Nazis adopted the Bauhaus style eagerly. Likewise in Italy, Futurism was the offficial style of Fascism in arts and Italian Rationalism in architecture. Not some kind of Neo-Classicism which one could expect.

Came the World War Two, and the cities in Britain, Netherlands, France, Germany and Eastern Europe were simply obliterated. They had to be rebuilt – and they were rebuilt in the new style. And a new technique of building – Plattenbau – had been invented. The large panel system-building revolutionized construction and made houses cheaper than ever.


But this meant also the revolution on architectural thinking. The old buildings had been built indefinitely, or at least as long as the razing craze, fire or aerial bombardment would destroy them. Now the concept of lifespan entered in architecture. Edifices would last 50 to 60 years after which they would be ready to be demolished and replaced. So there was no reason to build beautiful any more.

Two world wars had killed the artistic soul. The architecture must be true and honest. The world is ugly, so architecture must be ugly. The world is fragmented and broken, so the architecture must reflect it. The materials must be left raw and unfinished to be honest to them. Brutalism had been born.

And the future was closer than ever. The 1960s finally demonstrated the future was at hand. True, we didn’t know exactly what the future would be like, but we knew that it had to be one of a few alternatives. The future was a world with a distinct architecture. It had its own way of speaking. It had its own technology. It was for all intents and purposes a different land where people dressed differently, talked differently, ate differently, and even thought differently. It was where scientists were wizards, where machines were magically effective and efficient, where tyrants were at least romantically evil rather than banal, and where the crystal spires and togas would prevail.


Then the long-awaited Year 2000 (or rather 2001, if you prefer) came. The odometer wheels revolved and the numbers turned. Suddenly we realized we lived now in that future which we had built in the 1960s – and it was no different from the past. It is now 2023 – we are well in that future – and nothing has really changed. The world did not change by revolution, but by evolution. Meanwhile, the centuries- and millennia-old towns, cities and buildings had evolved by constructing modern age amenities within – without destruction, simply by building waterworks, sanitation and Internet connections within those buildings built centuries ago and made to last for centuries. Evolution 1 – revolution 0. “Building a bridge to the future” sounds just as corny as building a causeway to next Tuesday.

For people of the generations who had lived through the tarnished promises of the Atomic Age, the Space Age, the Computer Age, and the This That and Another Age, the year 2001 was a gateway. We waited twenty, thirty, forty years and some longer to pass though that gate into a time when spaceships the size of ocean liners plied between colonised planets, where cities were colourful collections of brand new towers without a single old building or blade of grass.

Turned out the future was hideous, banal, bland, ugly and simply terrifying. And it was not the future anymore. It was now. The future was now here, and had become the present. We no more had a past, and we no more have a future either – what we have is perpetual present, here and now. The years turn and nothing really changes. Or should I say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.


And now the lifespan thinking in architecture is bearing fruit – we are losing those futures now. The Brutalist and the Plattenbau buildings are now reaching the ends of their designed lifespans, and they are being pulled down. Every day we lose one or more of those futures. Most of us say good riddance – nobody except arts and history professionals will miss those ugly, hideous and banal buildings like we miss the destroyed beautiful buildings of the past centuries.

Here goes the Vesiputoustalo (Waterfall House) in my hometown. Built in 1985, it was abandoned in 2017 and demolished 2022. The house had a terrible mildew and internal air problem, and had a functional lifespan of barely 32 years. Another future becomes a heap of gravel.


So why our world is still plagued with ugly architecture despite having more architectrs now than ever in history? Because the doctrines of Modernism and International Style still prevail in all architectural schools and technical universities in the world. The students are still today indoctrinated to build that same hideous architecture as has been built during the past 90 years. Repeat styles are not allowed unless they repeat the past 50 years.

And yet, all futures have now been explored. The same has happened in architecture as what happened in the fine arts in the 1970s. All isms have been tried and all turned stale. Like Gollum, we have now explored all the roots and all the caves and they turned empty. This general disillusionment has now produced the spiritless and soulless Postmodernist architecture. Anything goes.

Most of all, it is all about money. Building ugly is cheap. Cutting corners and cutting away anything unnecessary is a way on saving money and on costs.

The dreams of le Corbusier and other Modernists turned out nightmares in the real life.

Leave The West! Move To China Now!

Like it or not, Russia and China are running circles around the USA. Better learn Mandarin and Russian. We love you Sabrina!

Creole-Style Pork and Red Bean Chili

On a spiciness scale of 1 (mild) to 5 (hot), this chili is a 3 with chaurice only or a 2 with pork tenderloin and chaurice combined.

creole style pork red bean chili
creole style pork red bean chili

Prep: 15 min | Cook: 55 min | Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
  • 2 pounds chaurice sausage (or other spicy pork sausage, like chorizo), removed from casing*
  • 2 cups finely diced yellow onion
  • 1 cup diced celery
  • 1 cup finely diced green bell pepper
  • 3 cups cooked Camellia Brand Red Kidney Beans
  • 2 teaspoons dried thyme leaves
  • 3 (14.5 ounce) cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes
  • 4 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Pork & Veal Magic
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • 2 cups thinly sliced green onion tops
  • Kosher salt, to taste
  • Fresh thyme leaves, for garnish

Instructions

  1. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven set at medium-high. Add the chaurice sausage, and, using a wooden spoon, break up the sausage into bite-size chunks. Stir and cook until the sausage is fully opaque, about 8 minutes. (If also using pork tenderloin, do not add yet.)
  2. Add onion and cook until translucent, about 6 minutes.
  3. Add celery and bell pepper and cook until soft, about 5 minutes.
  4. Add Camellia Brand Red Kidney Beans, dried thyme, tomatoes, garlic, and Pork & Veal Magic®. (If using diced pork tenderloin, add it at this time.) Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to medium-low and cook until slightly thickened, about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  5. Add tomato paste and stir until thoroughly combined, taking care not to break up the beans. Bring chili to a boil, stir in green onions and add Kosher salt to taste. Cover, remove from heat and let stand for 20 minutes before serving.
  6. Garnish individual bowls of chili with fresh thyme leaves.

Notes

* For a milder flavor, use 1 pound chaurice and 1 pound pork tenderloin, diced.

Princess math

What was the shortest interview you’ve had that led to a job offer?

The quickest interview I ever had went like this:

Me, wearing a Best Buy shirt and buying something from the 7–11 down the street: “Hello”

7–11 owner: “Oh hi, how are you today!”

Me: “Pretty good I guess. Best Buy isn’t giving me enough hours though.”

Owner: “Do you want to work here?”

Me: “…yes, actually.”

Owner: “Can you start tomorrow at 6am?”

Me: “…yes, actually.”

Owner: “OK, see you then.”

Now, to be fair, at that point I’d been in that particular 7–11 maybe 3 times a week for 3 years leading up to then, and I knew the owner and his family decently well.

But still. I went in to buy cigarettes and left with a new job. Pretty nice.

Russia-US security agreement. Conflict on two fronts w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Have you, or someone you know, ever experienced a house fire? What caused the fire, and did everyone get out safe?

We, fortunately, have not yet had a house fire, but some neighbors of my daughter did. The whole family was at a movie and arrived home to find their house on fire, and firemen already battling the blaze. The house was saved, but there was extensive and very expensive damage, making the house uninhabitable for months. The fire had started from a clothes dryer left running, and a blockage caused the motor to overheat.

Since then, I have two rules: Never leave the house with the dryer running, and also, clean, not only the dryer vent after every load, but also the dryer line to the outside on a regular basis.

I also, at one time, prevented a major fire at work when I smelled overheated electrical wires. I had a great deal of difficulty persuading the maintenance people to cut a hole in the ceiling where I could smell the wires, but they finally did, just as the flames erupted.

Disrespect

Some analysts say the worst is over for property sector in China, do you think so? Why?

As on date there is an oversupply of 17.2 Million Homes in China

There are 17 Million homes built or being built without takers , built in anticipation of being sold for which developers have already borrowed loans

The Cumulative loans on them are around 3.4 Trillion RMB ($ 500 Billion) needing interest payments of around 165 Billion RMB a year

There are a further 35 Million Units built or being built with takers but which haven’t been concluded and with at least 50% payment pending

The Cumulative burden of these units is around 6 Million RMB ($ 813 Billion)

88% of these Homes are in the Top Cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen etc

That’s $ 1.3 Trillion worth of homes waiting to be sold or fully sold

The Reasons for the lack of demand include :-

  • Very tough requirements to avail mortgage loans since 2018
  • Restrictions on Second and Third Home ownership since 2020 as part of Common Prosperity
  • Tier 2 and 3 Cities developing very fast and real estate much more affordable. In Chongqing City i can buy 143 Sqm for 1.625 Million RMB against a mere 52.5 Sqm in Shanghai
  • General lack of faith in Residential Property as a source of Investment anymore

Yes Chinas worst case scenario is a $ 1.3 Trillion HIT assuming China decides to burn the entire issue and pay for all these units and plug the hole

However since China won’t raise debt to pay off the hole like US or India would, it means Chinas strategy will be long term and that will take at least 6 years or until 2028 to absorb this amount effectively and cost maybe 1.5% a year in growth (Hence around 4–4.2% instead of 5.7% a year for the next few years)

China could raise 10 Trillion Debt and plug the hole fully tomorrow. It is the only nation on earth that can do so. Yet if it does, it begins to follow the US into a path of no return which China, a producer economy doesn’t want to do


Good news is today, there is no fresh problem

The old problem has to be sorted out and that will take a few more years

This Is Why So Many Women Are Single

” I’m loyal, but I am not monogamous” ” I’m loyal , but I am bisexual ” ” I’m loyal , but I have all my exes in my DMs to this day” ” I’m loyal , but I do OF ” To me , the reason why a lot of these ladies are single/ in pseudo relationships is because they don’t know what the word loyal means .

Would a British person who moved to the US or Canada notice a big improvement in living standards?

Two years ago, my son moved from the UK to the US (Texas).
He works in IT (network engineer).
His salary now is more than double of what he made in the UK.
He got married last October and his wife works a minimum wage job.
Yet, combined they make more now than me and my wife ever did.

So, you would think that he’s now better off than when he worked in Britain.
Think again.

  1. Healthcare costs a fortune. Last month, my daughter in law needed emergency dental surgery (root canal). Co-pay 3,000 USD.
  2. Since he’s a recent immigrant, his credit score is not all that great. Meaning he can’t get a mortgage to buy a home. So, they’re paying 2K pcm in rent.
  3. Since public transport in the US is either in a shocking state or non-existant, they both need cars to get to/from work. Cost of buying/running/insuring something decent is substantial.
  4. Utilities are generally more expensive. The monthly electricity bill in particular is high (because living in Texas means you run the AC pretty much all of the time).
  5. Food prices are about the same, though the portions are larger. Quality is a lot lower. Steaks in particular: all water and hormones. Sugar in everything.

So while is monthly gross pay is higher than this side of the Atlantic, his monthly disposable income (after all the bills are paid) is a lot less. It would be fair to say that they live paycheck to paycheck most months.
When my son and his family want to come over for a visit, we pay for their trip.
Whilst he’s a real go-getter and loves his job (and the opportunities he has in the US) my daughter in law is beginning to realise that they would enjoy a superior quality of life in Europe.

What could someone do to you that you can’t forgive?

I worked n the restaurant business on and off for around 15 years. In all that time, I was lucky enough to work with good hard working people. There was only one person I will never forgive, a person who I worked with who I thought was a friend. We used to tend bar together on busy nights and we made pretty good money. There used to be a group of guys on a bowling team who would come in once a week a they always left us a large tip. I remember after they left I was cleaning up the bar and noticed there wasn’t their usual tip there. I asked “my friend “ if she took the tip off of the bar and she said no. I didn’t think much about it until the owner of the bar pulled me aside and told me my coworker told him I pocketed the tip. I’m many things , but I’m not a thief. She eventually admitted to stealing tips because she was in a lot of debt. She was fired

When did you have to fight for your child’s life, and how is your child today?

“Can you help us save him? the nurse asks. “He’s failing fast. Not responding to medication. We have nothing more here to keep him alive.”

“What do you mean?” I say. “ You mean the doctor can’t give him more drugs? Please, please.”

“Who’s at home? Does he have a favourite stuffy? What about a pet? Think about it and let us know.” The nurse is detached and unemotional.

And I’m falling apart.

It is a cold, blustery winter morning in January, 1984. Winters in Northwest Canada can be brutal and this week was especially miserable. The wind heaped the snow in large drifts around the house; not our house, mind you. Living at the in-laws. A devastating fire a short time ago. I say, “Good to remind us how the homeless live.” There is no time to feel sorry for ourselves.

And now an unfamiliar sound from baby’s crib.

I listen.

Breathing interruptions. Gurgling sounds. Strange animal-like noises.

I hold a lethal weapon in my arms.

Baby son stares menacingly as I draw him closer.

“Shh, shh, baby, my baby, shh.” I sing as I rock back and forth to calm him down.

His arms flail. He lets out a piercing scream. Growls. Racks my face. Finds my eyes and claws at my eyeballs.

Our family physician writes on his prescription slip: Query spinal meningitis. Sends baby and me to a paediatrician. “This is an acute emergency,” he says calmly. “Your appointment’s made.”

Hysteria rises in me. My legs turn to jelly. The sound roaring in my ears is deafening.

And baby son lies still. Pale. Too still. Pale. Deathly still.

Another race against time. I remember a small crowded room of bored patients. I remember a nurse calling my son’s name. And I also remember rushing down a flight of stairs, throwing open a door, and racing into a crowded street.

My husband looks wide-eyed at us.

“Go. Go. Go. He’s dying. Oh my God, he’s dying. Hurry to the General.”

We screech to a halt in front of the hospital. I stumble awkwardly nearly blinded by tears flowing freely now. The specialist, just seen, races by with his doctor’s bag in hand.

I run into the hospital and a front desk clerk gestures towards the elevator. “Run. They’re ready.”

We call for the resident priest.

“Please baptize him.” I choke on my words then. “And give him the Last Rites if need be.”

Life stands still at times like this. Husband and I huddle together, entwined branches of a single tree. We sit in parallel, silent prayer begging God for mercy. We’ve waited thirteen years for our little boy, a son who will carry on a dying family name. We can’t bear the thought of losing him today.

Hours later, after his abdominal surgery, the attending doctor walks towards us. We search his weary face, but find no answers. His words come haltingly.

“The fight’s just begun. Your son is critically ill. “

He quickly describes our son’s diagnosis, surgical procedures, present condition.

Intussusception. Bowel blockage caused the small intestine to telescope into the large intestine. There was total blockage. The surgeon made an incision in his belly and removed eighteen inches.

Tells us finally that our son’s odds of survival: ten percent.

Ten percent? We prop each other up, slump over in our chairs, cover our faces, and cry.

The next week is a blur. I call my mom and beg for prayers. She phones everyone she knows. Holds prayer gatherings at her home a couple times weekly for a month. Attends Mass and asks the priest if she can address the congregation at each of four Sunday Masses. Continues to give updates to her various support groups.

There are new developments daily. Our tike is a fighter. He is watched around the clock by rotating nurses who hang over his crib. When he starts yanking out tubes, his hands are tied together with cotton restraints. The staff won’t listen to my pleas. “I’ll sit here all day, all night holding his hands, but please don’t tie him up.”

They send me home. “You’ve got to sleep. You can’t save him all by yourself. Trust us.”

But he gets worse. Lies listless.

Still. Pale. Too still. Pale. Deathly still.

Then, without warning, cardiac arrest.

Husband and I pass a crash cart on the way back from the cafeteria. Not for a moment do we think it comes from our son’s room. We are oblivious to the gravity of his condition until the doctor intercepts us. “Your son’s heart stopped. But he’s fine. We did our job.”

Suddenly our son is floundering once more. The medical staff run out of answers and I can see the troubled look in their eyes.

“Any suggestions, folks?“

Our daughter is three. She loves her brother as if he were one of her precious Barbie dolls. Packs him around like a sack of flour. Lines up stuffies in his crib and makes up plays which make him giggle. Helps me change his cloth diapers, even the poopy ones.

And I think, she’s one hell of a trooper, too. Held her baby brother in a freezing car a month ago while I alerted the neighbours to call the fire trucks.

Sister leans over his crib and says, “Hi, little guy! “ Simply that.

And he cocks his head and listens.

Three simple words from a protective big sister makes all the difference.

He starts fighting. And wins his battle.

………….

Son’s life and health have been a challenge over the years; however, as difficult as circumstances might be, our mighty fighter perseveres.

Three days ago his big sister’s “little guy” turned thirty-six.

They would kill you… maybe

It is a “Western” cultural aspect.

What’s the strangest thing delivered to your house (that you did not order)?

When I was a kid, a truck dropped off a huge box at our house that was addressed to my mother.

According to the paperwork, it was an automatic dishwasher, something that had just been invented, and we had no idea why we suddenly had one.

It took a few phone calls to figure out that, months earlier, my mother had entered a free sweepstakes at Zayres department store and the appliance was a prize.

She was scared to death of the newfangled device and never even hooked it up.

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

Yeah. It was funny as hell. I got a call from my counterpart at corporate. He has gotten laid off and he called me before they could escort him out to tell me we were getting laid off in three months. I confronted my boss and she turned ashen white but in the end she was honest with me.

Scott Ritter – “Palestine and Hamas have won.. Israel is in BIG TROUBLE!..”

Thank you Scott Ritter for speaking the truth.

https://youtu.be/_m9g5idX4eU

What should I absolutely not do when visiting your country?

In the United States, do not argue with the police. They are armed and they are jumpy because so many other people in the US are armed, including a lot of people who should not be.

Several years ago an Italian professor attending an academic conference in California crossed a street at a location other than a designated crosswalk. It would not occur to an Italian in a million years that this might be a crime. A cop saw him and shouted at him. He, being Italian, questioned the officer. The officer hurled him to the ground, tore his clothes, roughed him up and took him to jail for refusing to obey a lawful order given by a police officer. (He was eventually released without charge.)

The fact is, if the police are violating your civil rights, or even if they are breaking the law, there is nothing you can do about it at the time. Resisting them risks your being shot. Obey without question.

What is the strangest thing someone has said to you on a first date, and how did you react?

I was on a date with a veterinarian. She was a beautiful brunette with big eyes. She was a bit crazy too.

It was our second date and we were drinking a beer at a restaurant and somehow, we got to talking about how kids were growing up too fast, which is code for them sleeping around at too young of an age.

Just as I was drinking a sip of a beer, she said, “Yeah, I mean, I guess I get it. Kids are curious and going to experiment. When I was 6-years-old I stuck a pen in my p#ssy.”

I choked on my beer really hard and starting coughing. She immediately turned red, blushing with embarrassment for having been so candid and said, “Are you ok? Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

I was also red at this point from my brief oxygen shortage. I waved it off, still coughing, and said, “No worries at all! Kiiiids these days.”

MOBS SWARM US NUKE BASE, LEBANON/ ISRAEL ON BRINK, NUCLEAR SUB NEAR IRAN, IRAQ MOBILIZING

“President” Biden distributed 100 nuclear warheads all over the world. WTF?

What’s the most unusual job you’ve ever had?

I was a teenager. It was a temporary job. They had this big mail machine that folded letters, put them into envelopes and sealed them.

My job? It was sit stand between three of these machines and to squirt some water on the brushes every few minutes. The auto wetting water tank was broken and it was cheaper to hire me as a teenager (this was before UK minimum wage so it was about 30p an hour) until they could replace the water tank. You had to give it 3 sprays for it to be in the sweet spot anymore and the envelopes would be too wet, any less and too dry.

It drove me absolutely spare as the machines would beep each time a letter went through it. You had three machines beeping and you were stood there with a bucket of water and a couple squirty bottles. You’d hear the beeps in your sleep.

What is the most under-rated pleasure?

An actual wood burning fireplace. I got my first one in 1986, and every place has had one since. Unlike a wood stove, I can have a fire three seasons a year, without overheating my house.

When the first fluffy flakes of winter start falling, my wife and I start a fire. We might have a glass of wine, possibly a hot rum toddy, maybe mulled wine, brandy, or maybe peppermint schnapps and hot chocolate.

We sit in front of the fire, eating Brie and crackers, maybe some other snack. Possibly popcorn.

When it gets close to Christmas the Christmas music is playing. Two puppies at our feet.

Every Christmas when family comes over, we have the fire burning in the background, the tree is center of attention, but everyone loves hearing the pine snap crackle and popping in the fireplace.

TikTok Woman Gets Owned By Hand Drawn Graph

Would you explain to me what happened to the victims of Pompeii? Did the volcano not give them enough time to escape?

The restructed events of the disaster have been pieced together over the years.

Mount Vesuvius was a known volcano in Roman times but it had not erupted in several centuries. No one knew why some mountains erupted and no one could predict when they would. However, due to the nature of fault lines in this region geologists now believe smaller earthquakes and eruptions simply relieves the pressure along the fault line that runs along Italy.

The Latins had no way of knowing that. All they know was volcanic soil grew good crops and volcanic ash was a key ingredient in Roman concrete. Italy was also the world’s factory at the time, so the area around Vesuvius centered around the city of Pompeii who was a big exporter of wine and metal tools. This was a pre-industrial society, so most people rarely went outside walking distance of their homes and for most residents this was their whole world.

In the days before the blast, many minor quakes were reported in the area around Vesuvius. No one knew what this meant, but Roman academics would later take this as the sign of potential eruption.

The exact moment of the blast was witnessed by the historian Pliny the Younger. He was reading Livy while his father governor Pliny the Elder was eating lunch. Indeed, the blast occurred during the lunch hour, as the most common find in Pompeii were tables set for lunch that were buried in ash and partially preserved. Pliny’s mother called them over to the window urgently and they looked and saw Mount Vesuvius’ summit turned into a tower of ash. Explosives didn’t exist in this period, and Pliny tried his best to explain how it appeared the force of the hot gas inside the mountain blown away the summit. The danger this caused was lost on no one, and Pliny the Elder gathered his soldiers to travel down across the Bay of Naples and rescue as many as he could while his family went away.

This was the worst kind of eruption. The lava is actually the least dangerous part of a volcano. Safe enough to be a tourist attraction at a distance and safe enough geologists is firefighting gear collect lava samples directly. The second most dangerous is the ash and rock because it tends to fall out of the sky and/or form hot avalanches Earth called pyroclastic flows. The hot gas is the most dangerous as it both suffocates and burns. Common gasses are CO2 and HS that are commonly disolved in solutions underground but bubbles up like a soda fountain inside the mountain. This causes volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows.

The residents of Pompeii went outside and it was soon raining ash and rock as Vesuvius vented its contents into the sky. Evacuations started immediately, and anyone who wanted to stay was quickly convinced to leave with the first pyroclastic flows that nearly reached Pompeii. As Vesuvius lost pressure it stopped being able to support a column of ash and rock and this collapsed forming the flow. However, that simply restricted the throat of the volcano, allowing pressure to build up again in a cycle that only got worse as the day progressed. The first victims found in the bottom layer of ash in Pompeii were all killed by falling rock.

Travel was a big deal in a pre-industrial world as you would be gone for days and it was quite strenuous. Among items victims were carrying included bread, coins, and housekeys. The latter back in those days was a heavy iron thing that didn’t easily fit in a pocket. Most of the dead from Pompeii were persons unable to flee including a soldier with a bad toothache, a near term pregnant lady and her husband, and an old bedridden man and his teenaged grandson among others. Most of these people were not buried with their houses as the ash levels rose, but were killed lady by hot gas. Indeed, this is how we know the pyroclasic flows got worse through the afternoon, as the victims closer to the mountain are typically buried deeper in ash. The final pyroclastic flows killed the most people including Pliny the Elder who stayed behind after his men loaded up a boat of refugees in order to organize the evacuation.

This is also how we know there were a lot more victims than we find buried in ash because Pliny the Younger recounts how these bodies were all recovered and given proper funerals. Likewise, we know there are many more bodies that have not been found as much of what we know of is concentrated in the city itself when the majority of this region’s population was dispersed in the countryside. However, country folk were much more dispersed so finding said bodies is far more difficult and more is discovered every decade.

All that said, the bulk of the population managed to escape. The eruption only effected the immediate area of the blast and once out of sight of the mountain people survived and later returned to find a volcanic plain where the city had been. The layer of ash and pummice stone was roughly 20 feet deep and it simply wasn’t worth it to unbury the homes, many of which had collapsed under the weight. The whole city was effectively homeless and Emperor Titus personally arrived to survey the damage. Titus directed both state funds and his personal money to rebuilding Pompeii, and within two decades a planned city emerged. However, no one in Italy ever forgot how on one day that was otherwise like any other a mountain simply exploded for no reason and that most of the victims simply happen to be downwind of the disaster.

You likely seen those sculptures of Pompeii victims, but those are not bodies. The bodies rotted away leaving voids in the ash, and archeologists simply filled the voids with plaster to reveal the Pompean’s final moments, most clearly dying in agony.

Brian Berletic: War is COMING as China Rejects Dangerous US Maneuvers in Taiwan

Let’s​ be frank​ about​ the​ Taiwan​ issue, where​ the​ US is involved. The​ US cares next to nothing about​ the​ well-being of Taiwan​ese people, who are​ Chinese in race and ethnic​ity. Why should​ they? Look at the way the​ US government​ treats Asians​ in their own country, many of whom are citizens. So what about other nationalities? Yea, that somes it all up in a nutshell.”

What is it like for a single father raising a daughter?

I’ma be honest, it’s fucking nerve racking. I had to give the period talk when I dont even know the period talk. I had to be the one to wake her up at 2am when she was 8 with police behind me to tell her that her mother overdosed and died. I get up everyday and makes sure she gets to school, leave work, pick her up and take her to excuricculer/home/friends/wherever the fuck, then go back to work and finish my 12 hour shift. Pick her up if not at home. Cook/order/figure out dinner, spend some time with her try to get to laugh at least once a day, make sure she gets her shower in, hug her tight kiss her forehead tell her I love her and goodnight, then go lay down and try to sleep myself …to wake up and do it all again.

Wanna know what I can’t do? Break down and cry. Blame her mom. Blame my mom. Blame the world for putting me and her though what we been through. And some days, that is all I wanna do. But when I feel tears in my eyes I’ll walk back to her room and look at her sleeping, usually her back to me.

I remember then why I keep getting up every morning

Love you Kaylee

How do you respond when your boss says, “I need this done by Monday”?

I’m in my 70s and retired now, but years ago, worked as the President’s assistant for an accounting firm.

Many times over the 4 years that I worked there, he would say, “I need this done by Monday.”

I would jump right on it and work all weekend if necessary. The reason being, he and the other owners of the small company treated me like gold.

I was a single Mom. When I first started working there, I was separated from my alcoholic husband, heading to divorce. I had no money to pay the mortgage or car insurance. I confided in one of the owners and the next thing I knew, they handed me a check to cover everything past due. They deducted a small amount each week from my paycheck to pay them back.

There was no problem if I had to stay at home with a sick child. If my work for the day was done, they had no problem if I hit the road early to avoid rush-hour traffic. My hours were flexible because they knew if they needed me to work late or on the weekend, I would cheerfully do it. They gave me great raises. They valued me as an employee and I never took advantage of it.

Not all small business owners are horrible people. I was lucky to work for such a great team. The only reason I left was to remarry and move out of state. I heard later they sold the company.

World at end of 200 yrs of North Atlantic rule: Sachs

What will happen to the United States if China’s technology continues to advance?

I’ve worked with Chinese tech companies. Their engineers and scientists are devoted to their families, employers and country.

China has the capacity to leap frog the US in many different technologies. Take your pick, they are on it.

The Chinese government places a high value on a highly educated population. Engineering and scientific professionals are leading a revolution in advancing scientific innovation in China.

Their current leader, Xi, was a chemical engineer before becoming involved in his political career. In fact, many Chinese politicians are former engineers, refreshing thought isn’t it?

The motivations for innovation in the US and China are a key point in China leap frogging the US. Both countries reward success in innovation with financial incentives.

But, the Chinese have a greater sense of pride in their country and it’s future.

The US is presently extremely divided politically, current leadership is seeking short term monetary goals over the advancement of scientific innovation.

China may take the lead in further technological and scientific breakthroughs in this environment.

How do I respectfully and tactfully tell someone that I can’t split the bill at a restaurant when their portion is way more than mine?

I had this scenario happen to me. A group of us were on a whitewater rafting trip and we went to dinner. All of us got the buffet, which was huge and had everything you could imagine (including prime rib). One of the couples both ordered the prime rib dinner off the menu, with appetizers, desserts and extra sides. When the waiter came to check on us and see how we were doing and if we were ready to pay, I spoke up and said “separate checks for all of us, please”. The waiter winked at me, other couples smiled, the couple that ordered the dinner had a fit. “We agreed we would split ALL costs! We can’t afford this unless we do”. I just smiled and said “we agreed that we would split costs, that was before we realized we would be taken advantage of. It’s separate checks for us from now on”. The other couples instantly said “agreed!” and “I didn’t agree to split the cost of a $125 dinner for you two when ours was $30!” I got the death glare, and neither of them spoke a word to me after that. When we got home I noticed I was blocked on everything. Oh well. They weren’t friends of mine and I found them to be not team players-not someone I would choose to be friends with.

Did you ever find out something disturbing about a relative that made you look at them in a different light?

I have a relative that I thought was a wonderful person and mother. Her spouse died suddenly when their daughter was 13 or 14 (they live in a different state than I do).

About a year after her spouse died, I start getting phone calls from her daughter in the evenings. I discovered her mom would go to her boyfriend’s house and cook he and his daughters dinner, while her daughter ate cereal for dinner at home.

Over the next several years, I spent a lot of time talking the teen through issues, concerns and challenges that mom wasn’t around to address.

Mom didn’t even know her daughter was taking college courses in her senior year of high school because she wasn’t there when she attended the classes in the evenings.

When it was time for the teen to go to college, she got into a great school. Mom told her she couldn’t go to it because they didn’t have the money. When the daughter went off to the lesser expensive and prestigious college, mom married the boyfriend, bought a larger home with a pool in the backyard, bought a facelift, and a luxury car. The daughter had only 2 pairs of jean to wear at college.

At the end of the daughter’s freshman year, she calls mom to let her know when she’ll be home. Mom tells her it would be better for her to stay at college over summer break.

Her daughter explains that she lives in a sorority house and it closes in the summer. Mom didn’t care, she told her to find somewhere to live… during final exam week.

The daughter calls me crying and I take her for the summer to live with me. I got her a job at the company I worked at and we made the best of it.

The insensitive and cruel things my relative has done to her daughter over the years is more than I can list.

By the way, the daughter went on to get a doctorate, despite her narcissist mother who I have zero respect or affection for.

The common theme is “no respect for the man”.

Why haven’t humans learned to take laxatives and use our body waste as compost rather than using animal feces?

Humans started using their own feces as compost pretty much as soon as agriculture was invented. The practice continued in many places well into the 20th century.

However, the practice soon proved to have a lot of drawbacks. Humans in the early agricultural era didn’t know about bacteria, and crops fertilized with human dung often caused outbreaks of disease because those gut bacteria persisted in the soil until they found a new human host.

As such, people learned that although it was fine to plant cereal crops, or any plant with a long stalk in such fields, and not to plant carrots or other root crops for at least a year. By that time pathogenic bacteria had usually died out.

Because horses, pigs and cows don’t share a lot of gut flora with humans, it was soon found using animal dung had the same effect with fewer drawbacks. It was perfectly safe to use a few acres of land as cattle pasture for a year, then plant the following year.

How would you handle an employee who refuses to attend company parties?

I’ll tell you something about Jim who doesn’t want to come to the company parties. He thinks if he does a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, that is all he owes you. He doesn’t think having a job means the company owns him, body and soul. Even if he knows that not attending the parties means a black mark against him, he still won’t go.

I’ll tell you something else. Before I retired, I worked for a lot of different organisations, some large, some small, and there were always some Jims. They got along well with their co-workers. They did their jobs and did them to the best of their ability. They were often prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty at work. But that was where it stopped.

Here’s the thing though. In every organisation, for every Jim, there are at least 25% of your staff who are Jim wannabes. They all wish they had the nerve to say no, but they don’t want to risk their jobs or their pay raises or their promotions, or even just the disapproval of their co-workers. They won’t tell you this because, as we can see by your question, in your mind this is not somebody exercising their right to say no to a social event. It is a problem that needs to be “handled”.

They don’t go home from the company party and say, “Wow, what a blast.” They walk in the door limp with exhaustion and say, “Thank god that’s over!” They probably put on a convincing act while they were there, but they didn’t want to spend their private time with a bunch of people they are already spending at least eight hours a day with. If they want to party, they want to do it with family and personal friends.

If you want to “team build” either with parties or other activities, do it within regular working hours. Jim probably still won’t like it very much, but at least he is getting paid for it. And it will not be breaking into the precious free time he needs to recharge his batteries so he can be an effective employee for you.

Like a university

I help run a philanthropic chicken wing festival. What is the most efficient way to cook chicken wings for thousands of people?

I’d fry them.

You’re going to need a bank of fryers and I wouldn’t fry them from raw. Frying them from raw will break the oil down really quickly and force you to either shut down the operation to change the oil or serve crappy wings. You don’t want to do either of those.

So, get your wings and brine them overnight in a simple solution of water, salt and sugar. Then drain them and bake them until they are cooked through. Cool the wings and package them in batches that will fill a fryer basket. Say 2.5 pounds per plastic bag and refrigerate them until it’s time to cook them.

On site, set up your fryers, your cold boxes of wings, a station for hot holding and saucing and a table for serving them to the customer. The cooks fry the wings, dump them into the hot holding units from one side and the service workers pull an order from the bin, place it into a bowl, toss the wings in sauce and then serve them to the customers. You can use heat lamps overtop of the wings to keep them hot, which you can rent, along with deep fat fryers that run on propane.

What is the saddest thing you have seen a parent do to their child?

I worked a few summers at a home for children who’d experienced abuse and neglect. Their caseworker had just dropped them off; two beautiful little girls with big, blue eyes that swallowed their faces. They were two and four years old and they were very quiet for children their age. I looked them over, and immediately noticed several things: they had rope burns around their ankles, matted hair, and both were underweight and wheezing like they had the croup.

On closer examination I noted that the older of the two had bitten the insides of her mouth so hard that not only were they bleeding, but infected. I could not hold back my tears. They came with barely any clothing or personal effects, but many children in foster care share that experience. And later that evening when they were settled and I read over their file I knew they had lived a nightmare.

There had been an older sister, but she had died, thus prompting a welfare investigation in the first place. They found a woman addicted to drugs with a boyfriend who cooked meth—and they tied their children up in ropes to keep them out of their way. That was eighteen years ago and memories of those two girls still make me teary eyed. Questions like this immediately bring them to the forefront of my mind. I hope they finally found peace.

The American Dream is a Scam

What is a stand that you took with a customer that you will never apologize for?

I had gotten out of the Army in 1971 (was drafted) and working my old job in a drugstore. I was growing a beard and letting my hair grow. A older customer came in and started criticizing my hair and beard (this was in the deep south). He said I was a disgrace. I let him know I didn’t need his permission or approval . He went to my boss and said the same thing. My boss basically said “He spent 2 years defending this country, he can wear his hair any way he wants.” . The customer left and my boss winked at me.

As an emergency physician, what is the strangest case you have ever encountered?

One night in the ER…

A 42 year old lady came in with severe abdominal pain and nausea. She wasn’t vomiting. No other symptoms or problems, except for multiple prior visits to the ER with the same problem.

Many doctors had tried and failed to diagnose and treat her. She had been to all the specialists at all the regional Universities. The famed Cleveland Clinic even took a crack at her.

All the tests were negative including blood work, poop samples, X-rays, scopes in both ends, the camera pill (a camera that the patient swallows, it takes pictures as it traverses the gut), and various scans.

She had CT scans, MRIs and various nuclear scans. There were scans with and without IV contrast and oral contrast. There were scans of her arteries, and scans of her gallbladder. Her gallbladder was a little weak, so a weak surgeon jerked it out without any benefit.

She had every blood test for cancer known to man. Multiple biopsies were always negative. I thank God that no tired pathologist ever imagined any cancer cells under the microscope. This lady already suffered so much at the hands of her healers.

X-rays were done many times with and without Barium. Some of the X-rays were done as videos. She might have had enough radiation to kill any tumor!

And the scopes! Multiple scopes down the throat and into the stomach and duodenum. Another scope down the throat through which a catheter is passed into the bile duct and pancreas to inject contrast that highlights the ducts for more X-rays. A urologist even scoped her bladder!

She saw stomach specialists, liver specialists, gastrointestinal surgeons, kidney specialists, urologists, neurologists, and even psychiatrists.

There’s an old saying in Medicine, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. This poor lady had been beaten with every specialist’s hammer in 3 states!

When they couldn’t diagnose her, they just skipped straight to the cure. She failed multiple curative procedures and dozens of medications. There were medications to neutralize acid, coat the stomach, decrease acid production, anti-spasmodics, anxiolytics, antidepressants, antibiotics, anti seizure, antifunguals, and plain old pain medications.

She learned to refuse the pain medications, because she was smart enough to realize that she would be written off as an addict, that doctors stop trying if they think you just want opioids.

She has been put on every dietary restriction, and treated with every fiber supplement. She knew it all because she had tried it all!

The first night I saw her, I just told her that she had already seen many doctors much smarter than myself, working in a low level ER. But I did what I always do in these difficult cases.

I sit down and shut up and listen. I talk about weather, sports, hobbies and family; anything but medicine. But mostly I listen and observe. I try to get the patient talking more than myself. It’s an attempt to make a brain-to-brain connection for a two-way flow of truth. It is engaging the patient’s mind as the powerful problem-solving machine that it is.

Two minds together are more than 1+1=2. It’s more like 1+1=4. And it doesn’t really matter much that the other mind has limited medical knowledge. In fact, this process can sometimes work better if at least one of the minds is unspoiled by medical dogma.

So there we were, in the middle of a hectic ER night with several people trying to die. I talked with her for a few minutes until a nurse convinced me that another patient was closer to the next world than this one.

I grabbed the patient’s hand and begged her to be patient. I promised her that if she would wait for me, that I would give her my best shot. She was obviously in pain, but she attempted a smile and closed her eyes as I left to find something easier to do, like make a room look like an axe murderer walked in on a meeting of hemophiliacs anonymous, by saving a trauma victim.

That night was one of those nights that leaves me feeling a bit PTSD. I just wanted to crawl into my hut for a couple days. Yes, I have an actual stick-and-grass hut in the woods for this purpose.

But I have a soft spot for kids. The nurses all say that kids like me, and I am a pediatrician. I hate to leave a kid at the end of my shift, knowing that the next doctor may not feel as comfortable with kids.

I picked up the last chart in the rack (this was years ago), and saw that it was a 3 year old girl with abdominal pain. She was on the other side of the curtain from my 42 year old patient whom I had completely forgotten, or I would have spent the end of my shift with her as promised.

I took a deep breath and switched my brain from high pressure ER doc mode to easy and relaxed pediatrician mode. I walked into the room and quickly recognized a familiar problem. I explained to the worried mother that it was a simple stomach virus, that young children can’t tell the difference between pain and nausea. I explained that I was going to treat her pain with a tablet called “Zofran” for nausea, that dissolves in the mouth. I told her that I would be back in a few minutes and I left to give my order to a nurse.

By this time it was well after the end of my shift. The nurse I found said, “There you are! We thought you left! Did you forget about the 42 year old woman with abdominal pain? She’s been lying in there for hours!”

Of course I had totally forgotten her, but I remembered fast and said, “No! Of course not! I promised to spend some time with her if she would wait until the end of my shift!”

At that the nurse winked and nodded her head knowingly. I said, “No! Not like that! Look, can you give this little girl 2 mg of Zofran?” And I turned back to see my forgotten patient.

She was still in obvious discomfort but was waiting patiently. I walked over and placed my hand on her shoulder. Before I could say a word, she said, “That was great!” I didn’t know what she meant until she said, “You’re so good with kids, you should have been a pediatrician.”

She did not seem surprised when I said, “Well, as a matter of fact, I am!”

She joked, “No wonder I’m no better, my doctor is a pediatrician!”

I laughed. She tried to laugh. I poked my head around the curtain and asked the mother if it was okay to open the curtain? This violates protocols and is probably illegal, but I was too tired to care. I was simply trying to create an atmosphere to promote dialogue. A pleasant mother-baby dyad seemed the perfect antidote to the chaotic night this lady witnessed.

So now we had three minds working together. We talked to the little girl. She was smiling and feeling better already and asking for food. We talked about little girl things like toys, birthdays and sisters.

The mother thanked me. The Zofran trick worked wonderfully, despite her doubts. Then she looked at my patient and said, “He’s a wonderful doctor; listen to whatever he says.”

I asked her for permission to share her case and then I explained to the mother with a smile how that she had no idea, that this poor lady has some incurable ailment that has stumped all the specialists at all the Universities.

And then my patient and the mother began to talk about her case. As soon as the mother realized that it was a case of chronic abdominal pain and nausea, she drew an analogy to her daughter’s simple acute stomach virus.

I shook my head at the absurdity of it and was about to interrupt this conversation that was quickly getting off track. And then I remembered my rule for difficult cases (shut up and listen!).

My patient said, “Believe me, I have tried every stomach medication and even some herbs. Zofran does nothing for me.”

But my mind was zipping through all my experiences with chronic pediatric abdominal pain. I thought of the episodic nature of my patient’s condition. I asked her weird questions l usually reserve for pediatric cases like, “What part of the world did your ancestors come from? Any children in your family with health problems? How old is your house? Do either of your parents get migraines?”

She said, “Nobody has ever asked that question. My mother and father have both had migraine headaches their whole life. My brother gets them, too!”

And then I knew the diagnosis, even though I had assumed it was impossible and had never heard of an adult case. There is a condition called “abdominal migraine” that affects young children. There is usually at least one parent with migraine headaches, but most of these kids will get better by age 12. Their abdominal pain just stops. A certain portion will develop migraine headaches about the same time their abdominal pain goes away.

But I had my doubts. Pediatric abdominal migraine is easy to treat with simple medications that had failed to help this lady. But what if I gave her a common adult migraine treatment such as a vasoconstrictor? The pain of migraine is caused by too much blood flow to the head. Medicines that constrict blood vessels can be curative.

These medications work best if given very early in an episode. My patient was hours into this episode. As expected, the first dose in the ER that night did not relieve her pain, but it did do something much better: it gave her hope.

I gave her a prescription and sent her home, still in pain. But she was so grateful and she thanked me profusely. I felt a little anxious that maybe I was giving her false hope, for surely it could not be this simple? Surely the specialists thought of this?

Several months later she was in the ER with a sick family member. She was beaming and radiant. When she saw me she said, “That’s him! He’s the one who cured me!”

Tears were rolling down both our faces that night.

JFK Man!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hYaQ_Lm_Gu4?feature=share

Can you give an example of when the Chinese government was right and it’s critics were wrong?

COVID-19. I have had several conversations here in the US with people who teach. They have all pointed to how awful the current batch of kids are when it comes to classroom learning. They can’t sit still nor pay attention because they lacked the classroom environment at that formative age to reinforce those skills; learning is nearly impossible. Meanwhile China adapted quickly to initial lockdowns, and by April 2020 normality had returned. My niece serves as my personal data point for what happened, and she has had no significant interruption in her education as online instruction was brief.

The haphazard lockdown strategy of the US combined with a retreat to virtual teaching will have a major effect on the labor force come 10 years from now. China’s strategy of strong, nationwide lockdown at onset followed by an elimination strategy allowed the country to more or less weather the storm more gracefully. One can have criticisms about how the country left COVID, but the end result is that the period of normality from spring 2020 through fall 2022 was the right target to reach, and the impact will play out in the coming years.

What do you think are the reasons for the United States having a higher economic growth rate than countries like Russia and China?

The current seemingly higher economic growth rate of the US is unsustainable and superficial because the inflation rate in the United States is much higher than that in China.

Since the 1980s, although the US has pioneered technological revolutions such as information technology, the Internet, and life sciences, and revolutionary technologies have brought new markets, services, products, and high-tech companies, it stands to reason that total factor productivity growth should be very high, but the new rounds of technological change have not prevented the gradual decline of U.S. productivity.

Statistics show that the average annual growth rate of total factor productivity in the United States has dropped to about 1% in the past 40 years, and even less than 0.7% in the past 10 years. The third industrial revolution did not bring about a substantial increase in total factor productivity growth in the US like the second industrial revolution that occurred during the industrialization process. Economists call this phenomenon the productivity growth paradox.

Forecasting a country’s potential growth rate is very important for judging its economic direction, but it is not easy. In 2022, China’s GDP may be 72% of that of the United States. Assuming that the U.S. economic growth rate would be 2.2%, China’s economic growth rate would be 5%, and the U.S. dollar and RMB remain at the current real exchange rate, based on this calculation, China would catch up with the United States in 2029. However, potential growth is not actual growth. A country’s ability to achieve its potential growth rate depends on whether sufficient demand exists. In the past three years, China had mainly relied on investment and exports to create demand. Thus, China must increase domestic consumption to create sufficient demand.

An important reason for China’s economic success lies in the close integration of a competent government and an efficient market. The invisible hand of the market and the visible hand of the government play a positive role in promoting economic and social development. The Chinese government focuses on key industries that promote national economic growth through five-year plans, industrial policies, and allocation of financial resources. Technological changes that occur in node industries are transmitted and amplified through the production network, forming a spillover effect, driving the emergence of a large number of upstream and downstream market entities, and producing a multiplier effect on the overall economy.

The closer an industry is to a node (the area with the highest density in the production network), the greater its impact on the economy. Empirical research also shows that investment projects with longer industrial chains generally bring more jobs, tax revenue and growth to the local economy.

Total factor productivity growth is a decisive factor in a country’s economic performance. Since the Industrial Revolution, no country or economy has been able to maintain a total factor productivity growth rate of more than 2.5% for a long time after completing the industrialization process. Since for advanced economies, sustained high productivity growth is the exception rather than the norm because when the share of the service industry increases significantly, it becomes more difficult to maintain rapid growth in total factor productivity.

The real estate industry is a long-chain industry and is of great significance to boosting domestic consumption. Putting all factors together, the consumer market can be expected to recover in 2023. Before the epidemic, consumption growth was above 7%. If China wants to achieve a potential growth of 5.5%, consumption growth of 5.4% will be enough. It is now no longer appropriate to call the Chinese economy an investment-driven economy.

In many areas, China has reached the global frontier in mid-level technologies, and hidden champions have emerged in almost every industry. For example, China was originally a latecomer to the electric vehicle industry, but it has become a leader within 10 years. Relying on development and innovation, China is becoming the largest contributor to the global clean economy.

The Chinese government has successfully prevented and resolved major financial risks through active and prudent deleveraging efforts. Money only generates value when it is used in the real economy. Serving the real economy has become a priority for financial institutions. The negative impacts of aging in China are actually overstated, at least for the next 10 years because over the next 30 years, artificial intelligence and automation will replace more workers than will be lost due to aging.

China has a large state-owned industry with a net capital stock of 60 trillion yuan. The central government has begun transferring state-owned shares to social security funds. These shares will generate enough dividends to support the social security system for the aging population.

In the long run, the economic growth rate of China will be higher and better than that of the US.

Blinken Spurned, Drifts Across MidEast, Dems Attack Biden; 22 Ukr Officers Killed, Ukr Avdeyevka

What a disaster US diplomacy has become.

What was it your little one said that left you speechless?

When our son was around 3,(he’s now 48) I took a parenting class where it was recommended that you give your child a choice of 2 things that were both acceptable to you, so the child felt that he or she had some control over their actions. One night we had company for dinner. One of our guests was a psychologist who frequently lectured both in the US and abroad.

When it was bedtime, my son said he didn’t want to go to bed, so I gave him a choice. “Do you want to go to bed in your own bed or mommy and daddy’s?” He answered by saying “I want a Coca Cola”. I repeated the bed options, his bed or ours. He repeated his desire for a Coke. We went back and forth like that a few times, then he put his hands on his hips and said “I want a Coca Cola! Will you pour it or shall I?” He was using my parenting method on me!

Our psychologist friend fell off his chair laughing. I scooped up my son and put him in his bed. Our friend told us years later that he told that story in all his lectures from that time on, until he retired.

Things that matter

Before leaving after being fired, what’s the most that one can sabotage the office without getting caught?

Back in the day, when physical mail was still delivered to companies, I executed my quiet sabotage. The CEO was a weird one. He would open all the mail, read it, write his comments directly on each piece of mail and then distribute it to the appropriate person. Mind you we had roughly 50 office staff and 100 factory employees, so we weren’t a tiny operation.

The CEO instituted 2 cost savings. We were not allowed to purchase staples or paper clips. We were all given some little device (as a replacement stapler) that folded corners of papers and then perforated that corner so that the papers couldn’t separate.

And his feeling was that enough paper clips that came with the mail so we should just reuse them. It was ridiculous and impractical.

I khew that I was going to be fired at the end of the week in the afternoon and decided to annoy him. I went to Staples and bought all the office employees 2 boxes of staples and 2 boxes of paper clips. Sure enough Friday afternoon, I’m let go and then the CEO left right immediately. The wuss didn’t want to see how much of impact my dismissal would be on morale.

I was given the opportunity to say goodbye to everyone. So I walked desk to desk and gave each person staples & paper clips. I heard, the next week, that the CEO went bonkers seeing everyone having them. Lmao

The Duran: Neocons DESTROY Themselves as Russia and China Forge New World Order

The Duran discusses the failures of the neocons to maintain the US-led unipolar order amid Russia and China’s global rise.

Why is Huawei sanctioned by the United States, but Xiaomi is not? Aren’t they all Chinese technology companies?

Huawei and Xiaomi are both Chinese technology companies. This is true.

But essentially, Huawei and Xiaomi are Chinese technology companies with completely different natures, so their treatment is also completely different.

To accurately distinguish the differences between the two companies, we must start with the history of world globalization and the changing role of Chinese companies.

Before the 1980s, China was one of the poorest and backward countries in the world, almost isolated from the modern economy.

When China opened its doors in the 1980s, the Western world discovered that this was such a special country.

It has a huge poor population, but most of them have basic education.

It has a sound industrial foundation, but its technology is very backward.

He has huge territory and rich resources.

It has relatively complete infrastructure, including roads, railways and electricity.

At this time, the West had just carried out the first round of globalized industrial transfer, moving low-profit, polluting and risky manufacturing industries to Asian countries such as South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand.

However, these countries have limited population and scale, and limited capacity. As industries increase, salary levels increase rapidly and become less cheap.

Moreover, the education level of the population in these countries is limited, the infrastructure is limited, and there are many restrictions.

At this time, China was like an endless pasture. No matter how many cows the cowboys threw in, it could quickly accommodate them.

As a result, China quickly became the new continent for Western manufacturing.

Throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the 20th century, China was like a magnet attracting manufacturing industries from around the world, and countless companies developed in China.

They all follow the model of Western hope:

Version 1.0 Chinese Company: Processing and Manufacturing

1. Design, technology and standards provided by Western companies

2. Western companies provide key components

3. Chinese companies are responsible for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and completion of assembly and production.

4. Western companies are responsible for sales

In this stage, Chinese companies shouldered the heaviest and hardest work, but could only obtain 10% of the profits, while Western companies took away 90% of the profits.

The Nike sneakers we wear, the French bags in women’s hands, and the various toys children play with are all products of this model.

The Chinese produce these things, but they cannot afford to consume them.

Of course, although the profits of the Chinese are meager, the total amount is huge. Therefore, during this period, they achieved a large amount of wealth accumulation, and gradually accumulated knowledge and talents.

Some companies are beginning to try to enter a new stage.

Version 2.0 Chinese company: independent production

1. Chinese companies purchase designs, technologies and standards through joint ventures or introductions

2. Western companies provide key components

3. Chinese companies are responsible for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and completion of assembly and production.

4. Chinese companies are responsible for local sales

During this stage, the share of Chinese companies expanded. They got rid of the pure processing industry and began to focus on technology, trying to build their own brands and market capabilities.

However, during this period, the product quality of Chinese companies could not be compared with that of their foreign counterparts, and they mainly relied on low prices to compete in the local Chinese market.

Haier Electric, Chery Automobile, Lenovo Computer, etc. are all Chinese companies that have risen during this period.

Their degree of autonomy has been greatly improved, but most of their profits are still taken away by Western companies through patent licensing and the import of key parts, and they can only compete in the Chinese market. There is no pressure on foreign counterparts.

Version 3.0 of Chinese companies: independent production, global competition

1. Chinese companies solve most technical and quality problems through independent research and development

2. Western companies provide key components

3. Chinese companies are responsible for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and completion of assembly and production.

4. Chinese companies are responsible for global sales

Around 2010, Chinese companies grew further. They have more technologies and knowledge systems, and the quality of their products has also improved rapidly. began to threaten Western counterparts in the global market. Especially in the fields of household appliances, kitchen appliances, electronic products, mobile phones and other fields, it has achieved rapid success.

Xiaomi, VIVO, Oppo, Transsion, Haier, Lenovo and other companies are representatives of this stage.

They have mastered the complete design, manufacturing and quality management capabilities of products, and established a good brand and reputation. During this period, products made in China began to be famous around the world and can be seen everywhere around us. Their low prices and high quality put traditional Western and Japanese brands to shame.

But they still have an Swelling of Achilles: key components and technologies are in the hands of their Western counterparts. For example, the Qualcomm chip and Android system of Xiaomi mobile phones; such as the Intel processor and Windows system in Lenovo computers;

Through control of these key technologies and components, the West still takes away most of the profits of these companies.

Take Xiaomi mobile phone as an example. Its core processor comes from the United States, its memory comes from South Korea, its screen comes from South Korea and Japan, its camera comes from Japan, its key communication chips and sensors come from Europe and the United States, and even the tempered glass on the screen surface is a product of an American company. . Chinese companies can only supply low-value accessories such as casings, speakers, and interfaces. According to media statistics, 70% of the value of Xiaomi mobile phones comes from Western suppliers.

Therefore, although Xiaomi has squeezed out the share of traditional peers such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Sony, for every mobile phone it sells, Western companies make the most profit, and the Chinese still take away a small part.

Version 4.0 Chinese companies: disruptors

1. Chinese companies master core technologies and solve all problems

2. Chinese companies provide key parts themselves

3. Chinese companies are responsible for cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and completion of assembly and production.

4. Chinese companies are responsible for global sales

After entering 2015, some Chinese companies have grown further. They began to get involved in core semiconductors, operating systems, precision sensors, databases and artificial intelligence algorithms. It began to seize the most profitable industrialization in the world and the last economic position of Western developed countries.

Huawei, DJI, Hikvision and other companies are representatives of this stage

They have all the features of a 3.0 enterprise and are beginning to replace Western suppliers. Not only do they make excellent products, but they also use core components and basic software developed entirely by themselves. They intend to completely take away the fattest piece of meat in the mouths of Western companies.

Before Huawei was sanctioned by the United States, it had surpassed Samsung and Apple to become the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer. It is completely different from Xiaomi. Almost all the core components of Huawei’s mobile phones are provided by Chinese companies, and they have even begun to develop basic operating systems in order to kick Google out. In the field of communications, it holds the most 5G patents in the world and develops all high-value semiconductors and antennas on its own.

The essence of the above 3 versions of Chinese enterprises, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, is the same.

In the chain of globalization, Western companies take the best parts of food, and Chinese companies get the remaining food scraps. The difference between 1.0 and 3.0 is just the amount of residue obtained.

Therefore, whether it is Lenovo or Xiaomi, although they are technology companies from China, their positioning is within the scope of this rule and is allowed by the West.

But 4.0 Chinese companies are different. They are trying to subvert the rules of the game that have existed for decades.

They still embrace globalization, but they think, why are companies from Western developed countries always at the top of the food chain?

This involves the issue of economic competition between developed and developing countries.

Why do Westerners enjoy the most vacations, the best benefits, and the highest salaries and rewards? And people in developing countries work hard and overtime, but can only get meager pay and struggle to feed their families? Are people in developed countries inherently smarter and harder-working? The Chinese believe that this is not the case and that something is wrong with the rules.

Chinese companies like Huawei are determined to subvert this rule.

In the end, their appearance caused tension in Western countries: the subversives have occupied the entire country, their athletes have come to the king’s castle, and Huawei is the champion at the forefront.

Kings and nobles discovered that they could no longer defeat the subversives through “civilized rules.” How can he maintain a comfortable life in his castle and continue to rule and plunder the entire world in the future? The behavior of subversives must not be allowed!

So they shouted: They are thieves, liars, and traitors, don’t believe them!

While silently picking up the gun in his hand, he aimed at the one running at the front.

Creole Artichoke Bisque

2023 11 10 15 27
2023 11 10 15 27

Ingredients

  • 16 ounces butter
  • 8 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 6 cup beef stock
  • 2 ribs celery, finely chopped
  • 3 large onions, finely chopped
  • 1 bunch green onions, finely chopped
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1/4 teaspoon thyme
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 (14 ounce) cans artichoke hearts, undrained
  • Salt and black pepper to taste
  • 1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
  • 1 cup dry white wine
  • 4 ounces light cream
  • 2 tablespoons parsley, minced

Instructions

  1. Melt the butter in a heavy pot and add the flour. Over low heat, cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
  2. Slowly add the stock and when well mixed, add the celery, onions, green onions, bay leaves, thyme and garlic. Let this simmer for 45 minutes.
  3. Chop the artichoke hearts fairly fine and then add to the pot, along with the artichoke water. Cook at a low simmer for another 30 minutes.
  4. Add salt and pepper to taste, the Tabasco, wine and cream and bring to a simmer. Do NOT boil.
  5. The bisque is now ready to serve.
  6. Sprinkle a bit of parsley over the bisque in each bowl.

What should I do if a female leaves her underwear in my car?

Tell the truth,but , it wont make any difference, no one will believe you.

I was having drinks after work with my coworkers, and the waitress got off work and joined us. She had been our waitress for over a year and we had no spark in that time. Though she was attractive. When I said I was going home, she asked if I could give her a ride. I dropped her off, and didn’t think anymore about it.

The next day I swapped vehicles with my girlfriend, as she needed a truck to help her sister move something.

She found a brown paper lunch bag in the back seat. It had a lacey bra, panties and unused condoms in it. I was totally at a loss. Then I remembered giving the waitress a ride home. So on Monday I handed the bag to her, and asked if it was hers, and it was. She gave no explanation of how it got in my backseat, or even why she was carrying it.

I asked her to explain to my girlfriend, and she declined, saying she didnt want a whole bunch of drama over nothing. So I got a whole bunch of drama from my girlfriend.

I couldn’t even blame her, or come up with a plausible story. We broke up shortly after that

NOT POSSIBLE: Why US Can’t Compete with CHINESE Monster Drones?

“China also has many AI drones such as the amphibious Nezha that can fly and dive to 23ft under water; shark/dolphin/stingray undersea drones; and an anti-air/land defense system called the Hornet’s Nest that can launch 10,000 explosive drones rapidly each will auto lockon enemy vehicles. People have no idea how secure China’s borders really are today.”

Boudin and American Supremacy

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

There is a sausage that is popular in the deep South in the Unites. It’s called boudin. It’s a kind of very spicy sausage and super tasty. I used to get it at the local quickie mart, and along with meat pies and fried catfish are some of the best ‘eatin that I ever had.

One day, while living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, my wife made me some homemade boudin, and I ate it just prior to hopping on a plane to Chicago for a meeting.

2023 11 12 09 20
2023 11 12 09 20

But she didn’t make it quite right, and I suffered from the most amazing gas that I ever had. I thought that I was having a heart attack! I was freaking out and almost called the ambulance from the hotel. But once I got on the phone and talked to a nurse and explained what I ate, it was simply a matter of taking a stomach pill. Phew!

Anyways, if you are gonna eat this tremendously delicious dish, please make sure you cook it properly.

2023 11 12 09 22
2023 11 12 09 22

What’s Boudin & Why Louisiana Is The Best Place To Find It

68 Comments / By Matt Long

Like many of you, I didn’t know what boudin was before first arriving into Southwest Louisiana. I like to consider myself somewhat worldly and at least aware of many foods, but somehow boudin had escaped my culinary lexicon for 40 years. But if you are from Louisiana, and particularly the areas around Lake Charles, then boudin isn’t just familiar to you, it’s a big part of everyday life. As I discovered though, it’s a lot more than just a snack, it’s an important part of Louisiana’s culinary traditions.

What Is Boudin?

To say that boudin is a type of sausage is wrong, although when you first see it that’s exactly what it looks like. To really understand boudin, we have to go back to those Acadians who originally settled in Southwestern Louisiana. Who we now call Cajuns, these French-speaking settlers were forced out of Canada, but took with them their proud French culture and traditions, including boudin. Boudin in Louisiana is different though from versions you’ll find in other parts of the world.

d5d92947bb7e3100da854e39c4a3dc0f
d5d92947bb7e3100da854e39c4a3dc0f

At its simplest, boudin is a combination of cooked rice, pork, onions, green peppers and seasonings. The mixture is pulverized in a meat grinder before being stuffed into sausage casings. It is then steamed for on-the-spot eating. But those are just the basics, boudin changes in taste and flavor from cook to cook, no two are exactly the same and are based on recipes that have been handed down through the generations. That’s why it’s so much fun to drive around Southwest Louisiana sampling different versions, to experience new tastes and flavors in what is this area’s go-to food.

25448069546 0eb9d47fcd b
25448069546 0eb9d47fcd b

When And How Do You Eat It?

Asking around, I soon discovered that there is no perfect time to enjoy boudin. It’s very common for people to buy some in the morning to take to work for the office to enjoy, and no proper road trip in Southwest Louisiana would be complete without some boudin links to snack on. Pronounced “Boodan” (never say “Boodin”), this is as simple a snack as you can get, and slowly eating the link whole is very normal. But there are many variations, including the most common, fried boudin.

delicious boudin slices
delicious boudin slices

Cut into smaller pieces, breaded and then fried, you’ll find fried boudin balls in everything from breakfast sandwiches to serving as an entire meal in their own right. While you can certainly buy them in grocery stores in the area, homemade is best and there are any number of small meat shops and independent butchers and grocers in and around Lake Charles that specialize in their own versions of boudin. To best enjoy this regional delicacy, a culinary route was established to help locals and visitors alike discover different variations of boudin on what is now called the Southwest Louisiana Boudin Trail.

25355152052 0a29d3fe56 b
25355152052 0a29d3fe56 b

The Southwest Louisiana Boudin Trail

The sign read, “Napa Valley has wine. New York has pizza. Wisconsin has cheese. Southwest Louisiana has boudin.” To say that boudin is an important part of foodie life in Lake Charles would be a massive understatement. That’s where I started my culinary adventures in Louisiana and in addition to offering a lot to see and do for visitors, locals consider themselves to also be the home of boudin. It’s also from Lake Charles where you should start your trek along the Boudin Trail – just make sure you skipped breakfast.

Truly the best way to understand and certainly enjoy the importance of boudin is to actually taste it. In Southwest Louisiana that means traveling the Boudin Trail along US Interstate 10 and stopping off at the many independent businesses all verified to be serving up some of the best versions of boudin in the area. For my own boudin experience, I was invited into the kitchens of a local favorite – B&O Kitchen & Grocery.

25381342151 5318df5a8f b
25381342151 5318df5a8f b

Jeff Benoit is a third generation Benoit to own the B&O Kitchen and Grocery, which specializes in of course boudin, but also cracklins and other tasty meats. Walking into his kitchens, Jeff first took me back to the fryers where new batches of cracklins were being prepared. The aromas were heavy in what can only be called porky goodness. Pork fat with skin that’s fried to within an inch of its life and then salted, these treats are delicious and as I discovered, somewhat addictive. I was there though for my first lesson in boudin, which Jeff’s daughter had prepared for me.

2023 11 12 09 42
2023 11 12 09 42

True to form, Jeff wouldn’t tell me exactly what seasonings he uses, but just smiled and promised that they were delicious. I picked up the small sausage link, taking a peek at the rice and meat before enjoying that oh-so-important first bite. A gentle but not intense heat from the spices was the first thing I noticed, but then the combination of well seasoned meats and rice came into play, creating an overall bite that can only be called perfectly constructed. I then took my second, third and fourth bites, quickly understanding why boudin is so popular. Simple, easy to eat and not expensive, they really are the perfect go-to food for almost anything. Next to the “normal” boudin links, Jeff had also prepared some fried boudin balls and since nothing fried can be bad, I knew right away that I’d love this version even more.

Jeff and the B&O is just one of more than 25 small, independent businesses along the Southwest Louisiana Boudin Trail, each offering their own unique takes on this Southwest Louisiana staple. It’s not just about the food though; it’s also about the culture. Many of us who don’t live in Lake Charles or surrounding towns don’t really know a lot about Cajun culture. But it’s more than what we see on TV, it has a long and proud history and it’s still very much alive. Food teaches us about new cultures when we travel; it emphasizes what is and is not important. In Lake Charles and other neighboring communities, that first step in better understanding what makes this part of the world tick starts first and foremost in the kitchens of the local boudin experts lining US 10.

Boudin sausage is worth the drive

KEVIN BEGOS

SCOTT, La. – Want a true taste of the real Louisiana? You’ll want to get behind the wheel and head out of New Orleans and off into the cypress swamps and rice paddies of Cajun country. Because that’s where you’ll find scores of mom-and-pop meat shops and convenience stores preserving a hundreds-year-old tradition of some very special sausages known as boudin. And you’ll be glad you did.

Welcome to Louisiana’s Boudin Trail, a loosely defined region west of New Orleans, both north and south of Interstate 10.

“Boudin is not a New Orleans thing. It is a Cajun country thing,” says Robert Carriker, a professor of history at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and author of “Boudin: A Guide to Louisiana’s Extraordinary Link.” ‘’There are meat shops that make a handsome living for entire families selling almost nothing but boudin.”

Most boudin is boiled and served hot, but you also can buy it smoked, fried in balls, and made with crawfish, alligator or deer meat. There are boudin egg rolls, boudin grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza topped with boudin, even boudin stuffed king cakes. A handful of slaughterhouses still make old-fashioned red boudin, a blood sausage version.

2023 11 12 09 4s0
2023 11 12 09 4s0

Boudin (pronounced BOO-dan) is a tradition that dates back to the 1700s, when French Canadians came to Louisiana. Carriker says Cajuns started using local ingredients and spices to make sausages that are different from Old World recipes. They held communal livestock slaughterings, often in the fall, that combined food, family and music. Locals have loved the pork and rice sausages ever since.

2023 11 12 09 40
2023 11 12 09 40

Today, the region is littered with shops serving and selling boudin, almost all using special family recipes that date back generations. Where to begin on an eating tour of boudin country? An AP reporter ventured out, sampling boudin for breakfast, lunch and dinner at almost a dozen locations. Of course, there are countless more. But these are some of the delicious highlights:

Johnson’s Boucaniere (Cajun French for smokehouse) in Lafayette sells wonderfully flavorful boudin, and 87-year-old Wallace Johnson tells stories of boudin’s origins at communal country hog slaughterings, or boucheries.

2023 11 12 09 3s9
2023 11 12 09 3s9

“When they killed the hogs, they had to use everything, all the meat, because they had no refrigeration,” Johnson said. “It was rice, liver and meat, and the seasoning. In the old days they didn’t have a stuffer. They would take a cow horn” and use it to push the boudin mixture into casings.

2023 11 12 09 39
2023 11 12 09 39

Johnson’s father started making boudin in 1948 at the family grocer in Eunice. That store closed in 2005, but Johnson’s daughter Lori and his son-in-law Greg opened a new location a few years later, using the old family recipe. They sell a great breakfast biscuit with boudin, cheese or egg, along with po’boys, gumbo and other local specialties, such as barbecue potatoes and an outrageous bread pudding with praline sauce.

The Best Stop Supermarket on Route 93, just north of Scott, is a country store with a dizzying variety of specialty meats and sausage. Co-owner Dana Cormier said the family began selling boudin as a way to make ends meet in 1986, when oil field jobs went downhill.

502825311 MpOO3HgdzyUSFR4gQJxyjB3dUYSbY1U OifZlsjK6Tg
502825311 MpOO3HgdzyUSFR4gQJxyjB3dUYSbY1U OifZlsjK6Tg

“When we first started, we’d make like 100 pounds, here and there,” Cormier said. Now “we make about 4,600 pounds of boudin a day, Monday through Friday,” along with 35,000 boudin balls a month. The Best Stop’s boudin is exceptionally moist and meaty, with pieces of scallion and a touch of old-fashioned liver flavor.

The state legislature gave Scott the title of “Boudin Capital of the World,” causing hard feelings in Broussard, which originally held the title, and some grumbling in Jennings, the “Boudin Capital of the Universe.”

Billy’s Boudin & Cracklin’ in Scott, just off I-10, sells an amazing smoked boudin, perfectly balancing the meat and rice with just a hint of smoky flavor. Their boudin egg roll is excellent, too. Crackling is deep-fried pig skin.

2023 11 12 09 32
2023 11 12 09 32

At the same I-10 exit, check out Don’s Specialty Meats, which sells a tasty, moderately spiced boudin with chunks of meat, as well as innovations such as Tater Tot boudin, which is a good choice for people looking to ease into the experience. They also have a large selection of Cajun specialty foods and spices, such as pickled quail eggs and jars of roux.

photo0jpg
photo0jpg

On the edges of Abbeville, about 30 minutes to the south, Herbert’s Slaughter House and Meat Market is one of the few places you can still buy red boudin, made with blood and an old-fashioned range of pig trimmings. They have fresh and frozen links, and the red boudin is moderately spiced with a slightly metallic taste, similar to English blood sausage.

2023 11 12 09 34
2023 11 12 09 34

Meanwhile, 30 miles away in Beaux Ridge, Cajun Works sells a wonderful, blisteringly spicy boudin ball in a small sit-down restaurant.

Ronnie’s Boudin & Cracklin’ in Hammond sells a version with a nice, full, creamy flavor, along with many specialties, such as crawfish boudin, deer boudin and andouille sausage.

2023 11 12 09 35
2023 11 12 09 35

Ready to hit the boudin trail? Start by heading to www.boudinlink.com , which has an interactive map showing more than 50 boudin stores, as well as a link to Carriker’s review of each one. Also check out Southern Foodways Alliance — www.southernfoodways.org — which works to preserve southern food cultures.

Carriker says you could start by visiting one city and sampling all the different boudin there, since each store makes it differently. Some areas, such as the Lake Charles region, have their own brochures with lists of boudin trails.

2023 11 12 09 36
2023 11 12 09 36

Or you could cruise along I-10 in either direction, stopping at the many stores near the highway. In general, old fashioned boudin often has more of a liver flavor, and boudin lovers look for a good balance between meat and rice, and a texture that isn’t too mushy or too dry.

Some people like their boudin spicy, others like it mild. And appearances can be deceptive; a small country gas station may have the most wonderful boudin, so stay open to serendipity.

What is the most romantic thing someone said or did to you?

This was few months after my daughter was born. My husband and I were trying to get back on track with our sex life. I had some difficulties. It didn’t feel the same as it used to be and I was worried.

He sensed it and he said, “ You know what? 50 years later when both of us are very old, do you think sex is going to be important? What I really want is to be able to grow old with you and I want you to be happy and comfortable to be with me till the end. We’ll consult a doctor and we’ll figure this out. I’m ready to wait until you are ready for this.”

That moment, I felt really lucky to be married to him.

Buster Crab, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich

Buster Crab, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich is a fried soft-shell crab served open-face over toasted brioche and dressed with fresh vegetables.

2023 11 12 09 12
2023 11 12 09 12

Ingredients

  • 1 Louisiana soft shell crab, dressed
  • 1/4 cup canola oil
  • 1/4 cup seasoned all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup cornmeal
  • 1/4 cup mixed red, yellow, and green grape tomatoes, peeled
  • 1 dash 25 year old balsamic vinegar
  • 1 pinch minced chive
  • 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 slice brioche or challah, toasted
  • 2 teaspoons your favorite aioli
  • 1 pinch micro greens
  • 1 pinch lettuce sprouts
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Chive oil for garnish
  • Beet juice for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a sauté pan, heat the canola oil over a medium-high flame.
  2. Season the buster crab with salt and pepper. Toss into a mixture of seasoned flour and cornmeal.
  3. Place the crab into hot canola oil and allow to cook for 1 minute on each side.
  4. Season the tomatoes with salt, pepper, vinegar, chives, and olive oil. Place the tomatoes over a well-toasted brioche and place into a serving plate.
  5. After cooking the buster crab, remove and allow it to drain over some absorbent towels for a moment.
  6. Place the crab over the tomatoes and top it with a dollop of aioli, which you in turn cover with a pinch of micro greens and lettuce sprouts.
  7. To serve, garnish the plate with additional chopped chives, chive oil and beet juice.

Man talk

Are there any reasons that the United States should not fear China?

Sure. Here’s one – China is a very peaceful country.

In the past 40 years, while the USA was busy bombing cities and killing people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Grenada, Libya, Bosnia, Sudan, Somalia etc

China did not fight a single war with anyone.

Here’s another. It is untrue that China beats the USA in all areas of manufacturing and exports. There is one area where the USA is far, far ahead of China.

The USA is far, far ahead of China, in selling weapons to the world, for killing people. You know – bombs, missiles, artillery, tanks, fighter jets etc.

China ia no match for the USA in destroying people’s lives.

China only surpasses the USA in manufacturing peaceful, beneficial things such as solar panels; electric cara; antibiotics; laptops; furniture etc.

13 Things from the 1970s, Kids Today Will Never Understand!

There are some things that are unique to the decade that we grew up in. The 1970s was no different, having a distinct style that is easily recognizable, even to newer generations. But aside from the obvious disco and bell bottom trends, there were more minute details that people living during that time will easily recognize. So, here are 13 things from the 1970s that kids today would never understand.

What are some street smart tips that could potentially help me one day?

1. Always carry a few coins in your pocket….

If someone confronts you with a knife you pull the coins subtly from your pocket and drop them on the floor. The attacker will always look down to the floor upon hearing the coins drop and this will buy you a second or two to turn and run. This can also be used if someone is intent on fighting you and you know you need to land the first blow, it’s a distraction technique.

2. Never use an ATM while wearing headphones and if wearing a coat/hoodie, never have the hood up, both will affect your awareness and makes you more likely to be robbed.

3. When entering any room, work out where every available exit and hiding place is. In the event of an emergency you will react a hell of a lot quicker if you have planned scenarios in your head, it will make you far less likely to freeze up.

This was something explained to me by an ex-special forces guy I was chatting to at a conference (he was head of security). He was sat at the same table as me, one of those big round ones with 10–12 people on each. I noticed his eyes were never still and he was always glancing at each door, window etc, basically any entrance to that room. I got chatting to him after the conference and asked him about what I had observed. He said “imagine you are at a public event and an armed terrorist storms into the room and starts shooting, most people are going to freeze for the first couple of seconds and that can cost you your life, plan for it to happen and although incredibly unlikely it ever will, you’ll react instantly and it could save your life”

Would Western countries go to war to spread LGBTQ policies and environmental policies to restrictive socially right-wing conservative countries? Would it be a good casus belli that would rally massive domestic support for such a war?

Would Western countries go to war to spread LGBTQ policies and environmental policies to restrictive socially right-wing conservative countries?

Why?

Because united we stand, divided we fall.

Those policies above? They atomise societies, atomised societies are easier to drive wedges into.

China 200 years ago 1820. There was a commonality of Chinese language. But we were fighting each other. Hakka hated Cantonese, Fujians hated Cantonese etc.

Sun Yat Set’s vision of Chinese nationalism was that we are all Chinese one people instead of atomised.

By 2023 we’re on the way to achieving this. We still keep our unique cultural identity but we intermarry we talk shit about other groups but 2019 aside there’s very limited division that we’d fight each other over.

That’s why I’m super suspicious of things like this

In that I don’t care who you’re miserable with and who you marry, but those groups? They’re often used as trojan horses by western governments.

Jimmy Sham for instance. He was on the side of the RIOTERS in Hong Kong. He was promoting VIOLENCE.

He claimed to have been attacked by multiple men with hammers for over a minute (he wasn’t he was exposed when he appeared the next day with only a small cut and fliers advertising his attack printed the day before).

They use their sexuality as a shield, you can’t criticise me! I’m gay!

What is important

When was the moment you realized you had gone too far with something?

We’d hired a guy and he seemed to have a good sense of humor. One day, he made a minor mistake and so I (thinking that he’d catch the humor) said “Looks like we’re going to have to transfer you to the Arctic Circle Remote Payroll Station.”

He said nothing, I let it go. Next time he goofed up, I mentioned that again and he got very apologetic, promised to work hard to not make any further mistakes, etc.

At any rate, a few months later, I mentioned that one more time and found myself in my manager’s office. He said that this guy was in terror that I was going to transfer him somewhere awful for what he thought were small mistakes that he’d promised to fix.

I said he should know that firstly, I’m not his direct manager so I couldn’t transfer him anywhere if I wanted to. But his big clue should have been “Arctic Circle Remote Pay Station.” Surely he couldn’t think that a movie payroll company had some operation on the Arctic Circle.

Well I don’t know, said my boss … all I can tell you is that you terrorized him and now you’re going to have to fix it. Okay, so I did.

(Good thing too because in the 12 years since that, he was promoted to supervisor, manager and he’s now a director and my boss.)

What’s the cleverest cheating you’ve ever seen as a teacher or student?

I taught a young Latino boy who was also short for his age. In secondary school, height is an issue.

By the second week of class, I was sure that he was illiterate, yet he submitted assignments and tests that were above failing.

At that point, I read his permanent record. There were no indications of cheating and his grades were Cs with only a few Ds.

How should I confront a student who already feels marginalized?

With the confidence of a newly certified teacher, I kept him after class one day and confronted him. “Do you know that you are smarter than every teacher you’ve ever had?”

His dark eyes grew deep and large!

“No.”

I insisted, “You are. You cannot read, and writing gives you a great deal of difficulty. You’ve been cheating all these years, and no teacher has caught you until now!

I’m giving you choices. You can continue as you’ve been doing and I will record your grade as F for cheating, or you can work with me, learn to read, do honest work, and earn an honest grade.”

He chose tutoring. He had great eyesight, strong artistic skill and had been reproducing the work of a variety of smarter students around him. He was dyslexic. It took patience from both of us for him to learn phonics and for him to get his quick brain to slow down to a speed that worked better.

By midyear, his grade of C was honest. By end of year, he was at a C+ in all his courses, and he’d been honest with every teacher about his problem, my tutoring, and asking each of them for help as needed!

(Yes, I recall his name!)

What are the dumbest things people spend money on?

Luxury items that they can’t afford.

Everyone has the freedom to buy stuff that makes them happy, may it be expensive purses/shoes, sports cars, yachts and boats, gambling, religion, tools and materials for hobbies and crafts, night clubs and fine dining, sports events and memorabilia, action figures and figurines, pre-order video games, subscription for streaming services, legal escort services and porn, legal recreational drugs (marijuana), tattoos and piercings… etc. etc.

There’s no such thing as a “dumb” purchase if it brings you joy and you can afford it.

Over the years, I had made plenty of “dumb” purchases. I bought a bunch of expensive lego sets. I bought video game figurines and collectible items. I pre-order games I like. I bought tools and materials for various hobbies, such as knitting, embroidery, and crocheting. I bought cookware and ingredients I only used once.

All of that could be considered dumb things, a waste of money.

On the flip side, I don’t buy luxury clothing items or shoes. All my clothes are from Uniqlo or Muji or discounted stuff from T.J.Maxx or Norstrom Rack.

I don’t go around claiming, “Gucci purses are the dumbest thing people buy.” Do you know why? Because I understand people are different and there’s nothing wrong in finding a little happiness wherever you can. I don’t judge people for purchasing things I don’t find very interesting.

Of course, if you spend beyond your means, that’s not very wise. But that’s not about the kind of things you spend money on, but rather you’re spending money you don’t have and it will eventually come back to haunt you.

But if they have the money, and Gucci purses make them happy, what’s so “dumb” about buying happiness? Oh, because you disapprove? Because Gucci purses don’t bring you any joy? So? Who the fuck are you anyways?

Life is short and miserable, for most people, most of the time. So, shut the fuck up and let people enjoy things.

What are some psychological proven believes about maturity of men?

  1. Men need to understand that there’s nothing special in the body of random women you meet on the street/ Internet.
  2. On difficult days, being extra gentle with ourselves is maturity at its peak.
  3. Setting boundaries is not a display of disrespect . It’s an act of self-respect.
  4. Maturity is seeing someone’s lack of effort as their lack of interest in you no matter what they say.
  5. You don’t get fit eating everything . You don’t get wealthy spending everything.
  6. Resist the urge to regret . Regrets are like old textbooks , you’ve already learned the lessons.
  7. Your urges are your biggest enemy . Learn not to argue for nothing.
  8. Self-acceptance shouldn’t stand in the way of self-improvement. Recognizing that you’re good enough today doesn’t prevent you from getting better tomorrow.
  9. We’ve to be grateful for things . It’s too easy to be ungrateful. It’s too easy to not appreciate the simple things in life.

Fiancée DEMANDS Hall Pass 1 Month Before Wedding, In Shock After I Demand We Break Up!

If I didn’t have a 26 year old son, and a 27 year old daughter telling me this madness is actually real, I honestly don’t think I’d ever believe it.”

What was your first impression when you met your sibling’s future spouse?

I thought she was sweet and quite attractive but giggly and not very bright. I thought Dave could do a lot better. In fact some of his previous girlfriends had been intelligent and ambitious as well as great looking. One had even been an Olympic tennis player. I didn’t get this new one at all.

She is Jewish and Dave decided to convert. Our Dad was Jewish, our mother not. We had been brought up as agnostic. So Dave’s announcement was surprising and I’m sure I must have asked him if he was sure about this. I know our parents argued with him over his sudden conversion. However his new girlfriend and her family didn’t insist on him being Jewish, so I think this decision was about him wanting to join the culture of north London Jews rather than any sudden religious conversion. I never heard of him going to a synagogue or heard him utter a prayer.

They had a long and reasonably happy marriage. I was wrong about her.

Although it is true that she’s no intellectual and never achieved anything academically, she helped Dave be all he wanted to be and was content with that being her role. She was a great home-maker and possibly the kindest person I know. She is funny and light hearted. When my brother suddenly died, she was distraught but showed a strength I had never previously seen. She is a very supportive mother and grandmother. She was a big help to me when my wife died.

Could Dave have done better? I doubt it.

What did the teacher in your high school get fired for?

I had a terrible High School Algebra teacher. Coach Trout could not teach and had “favorites” who somehow received good grades. One day a group of kids were hanging out at Mellow Mushroom and saw him drive up to the nearby grocery store….he went in and a student walked up to his car to see who was inside. Guess what – one of his female students! He walked back out with a twelve pack of beer got into the car and left. Students told other students….a student told their mother….their mother called her mother….the mother called the school. Bye Bye Coach Trout.

Years later ran into him at a wedding….he was the DJ.

What form of entertainment is on its last legs or on its way out that we don’t realize?

My cable company is starting to sound like this creepy, desperate -ex.

Each month the mail they send me is basically saying,

“PLEAAASE TAKE CABLE TV BACK. We’ll give you all the stations we gave you before at an amazing, amazing deal!”

Deal = $1 cheaper with a 24 month commitment, $399 cancellation fee + 2 kicks in the crotch.

By any logic I cut it, it makes no sense.

I divided the hours I was watching TV by the monthly bill and it came out to $15 an hour for TV.

I’m paying money to be forced to watch commercials every few minutes.

My cable package is forcing me to pay for a bunch of expensive channels (ESPN) that I don’t watch.

I don’t see cable TV as going fully extinct but I see it having a life as an increasingly endangered animal.

When you compare it to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and the like, it isn’t even a close contest. The only value cable companies add to my life is internet.

I think cable companies have become boxed into a bit of a hole. As more people realize how much they are being ripped off, they will keep cutting.

I don’t envy the cable executives who are charged with solving this problem.

What was the moment you cancelled the friendship with your best friend?

One of my best friends of all time and I parted when we were eighteen, and heading for university. The next big leap of life. We had known each other since we were seven years old, and we promised to write (hand-written letters still existed, though the idea was certainly fading).

And I did write letters, many times, over many years.

But none of them ever got an answer. We had been very close, and shared some of our darkest moments in our young lives — I didn’t understand.

More than a decade later, I bumped into him in an everyday supermarket and bluntly asked him why he never answered any of my many letters. He looked at his wife and shrugged —

I never found the time.”

Only one of my friends still drives a gas powered vehicle. How do we respectfully cut him out of our gatherings without it getting ugly? Is an ultimatum warranted before severing ties?

Congratulations! You need to cut this vermin out of your life entirely! And without warning of any kind! And don’t kid yourself- he’ll KNOW why!

You need to take it a step further, too!

  • No more ordering from Amazon, who deliver those things in a fossil-fueled vehicle!
  • Raise your own food because everything gets delivered to your local store in smelly diesel trucks!
  • Make your own clothes out of cotton you’ve grown yourself!
  • Refuse mail unless it’s brought to you in a clean, quiet electric vehicle!
  • Stop heating your house—even if it’s an electric heater— because chances are that electricity comes from a coal-fired or natural gas generator!
  • And for God’s sake stop posting on Quora, powered by the same earth-destroying mechanisms!

What is the best roast from a student or teacher you have heard so far?

I was teaching a class in math in 4th grade. Because I’m kind of demanding of kids, and show them that anything less than their very best, is not good enough, I end every school-year with an hour of “roasting the teacher,” so they can get back at me for all those times that I’ve stood before them and asked for more.

I warn them that whatever they throw at me, I’ll return it in even measure. So, if they feel fat and don’t like it, they shouldn’t call me fat, cause I will make a fat-joke on their expense. If they feel ugly, they should not call me ugly, because I will do an ugly-joke on them.

So, younger kids are a bit scared and don’t really say anything. Older kids can’t help themselves and try anything to roast me. They never ever get to me, because kids are really bad at roasting adults.

But there was this little girl in a 4th grade class I taught a few years ago. After the initial stupid roasting (like, “your mom is so fat that …”) this little girl raised her hand.

As roasting can be a bit hard, I ignored her at first. She seemed fragile and I didn’t want her to get hurt. Usually the boys will shout any profanity at me and I will return their profanity with an equal profanity. It’s fun and it’s not personal. It’s a roasting game and the boys and girls who can handle it, get a go.

She kept her hand raised so finally I told her “Go ahead – give me your best shot.”

When I said that, this little girl, stood up, walked slowly along the back wall, then along the wall to the left. She came all the way up to the chalkboard and stopped just in front of me.

She lifted her right arm and raised a finger, pointing at me, about to roast me. Everyone in the class were silent and we all waited for it. Then she said:”

“Naaaahhh, you’re not worth it.”

Then she turned around, walking the same way back, just as slowly, and sat down.

The class erupted with laughter. It was beautiful 🙂

I didn’t roast her back. What could I say? I just got burned.

10 American Cities That Are DEAD Forever

Having grown up in suburban Hartford, I agree strongly with the inclusion in this list. I left the area as a student in 1977, and was shocked about its decline when I happened to pass theough on a business trip in 2011.”

Have you ever had a car crash where the other person was at fault but they acted like the victim?

About 25 years ago, when I was still young, I had a crash at a roundabout. It was the kind of roundabout where visibility of all exits was excellent from a distance away, and because the roundabout was offset from centre, I was in a lane going straight on whereby you don’t need to turn the car at all to cross the roundabout.

So, on approaching I saw no cars to my right or straight on, and just carried on. Everything was fine until a car to my left, who should have given way to me (at roundabouts in the U.K. you give way to the right) just pulled out.

I hit the brakes but it was too late, and I went into the side of him.

He was immediately on the offensive, I suspect thinking insurance companies would take the word of a middle aged experienced driver over a 22 year old.

He kept saying that I was going far too fast, which was curious because by the time we hit I’d managed to slow down enough such that my airbag didn’t deploy.

He was impervious to reason, still yelling at me about my speed when the police showed up.

The policeman heard the guy say, “he was going far too fast”, to which the policeman replied, “if you thought he was going too fast, why did you pull out in front of him?”

My insurance paid nothing.

What are your school funny stories? Share it

It was online school, and we were just fooling around in our advisory breakout rooms.

We were discussing where people lived.

My friend, ‘Agastya’, let’s call him, told me that he knew where I lived.

“So,” I said, “Tell me where I live then.”

He repeated my exact address.

Me: Shocked.

Him: Smug.

Him:Me = 1:0

I asked him how he knew, and he said he’d seen my Mom and I playing outside while he was riding a bike with his friend.

In order to protect the great secret of my address, I told him, “Bro! I don’t live there! You know the house next door? I live there. I actually babysit the toddler of a very kind couple.”

He asked me to give the name of the mother.

I somehow made up a name—purely fictional I tell you—and told him it.

Five seconds later, he was laughing like hell and I asked him, “What? Give up?”

“See for yourself,” He said, laughing. He proceeded to share his screen, and I sat there, quietly, shocked at the results.

The “Kind Mother” had been murdered in 2016.

Never again would I give a fake name without searching it up first.

(Also, please note that we, in no way, intended to make fun of the fact that someone died.)

What’s the funniest thing your toddler believes?

My little guy firmly believes that if he lifts something “high” above his head, we cannot reach it.

I wanted to make a demonstration of this, so when I found him playing with a toy, I pretended that I wanted to take it.

I chased him all over the place, and he screamed and laughed and ran away from me.

Each time I got him cornered though, he would lift his hands above his head, looking at me victoriously.

Because obviously, if he lifts the toy THAT HIGH, no one could possibly reach it.

He is so darn adorable in this belief that we don’t have the heart to take anything from him when he does this.

How could we?

How could anyone?

It’s simply too high.

What is China’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how does it align with international law?

China is a pragmatic and rationalistic nation. The Isreal Palestine issue is a very long divisive issue with high emotion in both sides. China’s position is simply that they must find a long term solution such as a two state solution. This is a prerequisite for long term peace. It doesn’t take sides and not is it interested to be drawn into the conflict.

The reason being. China believes in the sovereignty of nations and that it can only be solved between Isreal and Palestinians. Not China or the U.S. for that matter. China sees quite correctly that U.S. lob sided stance is fuelling the crisis not resolving anything.

For the Palestinians sees that the Isreal government is backed by the U.S. to drive a wedge in the middle of a Arab and Islamic world. Hence it is an interested party. To China an Isreal that do shit on Palestinian land and people everyday then when they got hit Uncle Sam will always backed them out. And protect their excesses cannot be sustainable. It is foolish to think that Palestinian will put it up. At best Isreal is kicking the can down the road. Isreal and the US need to recognise this. For the good of them, the Palestinians and the world.

Laws a made by man, we are mere mortals. If laws are written unequal. It won’t last. That is the reason colonialism failed, it is also the reason the so called US international rules based order is rejected, if one stole land or occupied land that belongs to some one else and wrote laws to legitimately protect the wrong. It is double wrong not right. Two wrong don’t make a right China knows that laws written by the west cannot stand. It must go.

In 1840’s the British forced its jungle laws on China that it has a right to bring opium to China and drug the Chinese people bring havoc to the Chinese families. When China objected. The west jointly and severally supported Britain. To invade China and forced China to surrender HONGKONG for 156 years. This barbaric law were written by the British government. Of course laws like these can never be moral nor can it stand.

Why can’t China be more like South Korea?

You tell me this, would you accept a place literally BUILT to serve foreign soldiers? There’s literally a place in Seoul called hooker hill. Where those soldiers are completely above the law? Why would anybody want that?

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

Way back in the day when I worked fast food, it was common for my fellow employees and me to clock in within a few minutes of when we were scheduled to start. If someone was scheduled to start at 8 AM, they might clock in at 7:57, or 8:03.

One day, the manager decided she wanted people to clock in at exactly their scheduled time on the dot. You were scheduled to start at 8:00? She would not allow you to clock in at 7:57. You had to stand there staring at the clock for three minutes. If you clocked in at 8:01, you got written up,

This backfired in a spectacular but predictable fashion.

People started clocking in at exactly the scheduled start time…

…and clocking out at exactly the scheduled end time.

Before the rule, people would often stay a few minutes late if they needed to. After the rule, if people were scheduled to leave at 5:00, and a tour bus full of hungry roadies pulled into the parking lot at 4:58 (something that happened a couple times a month), everyone would leave at 5:00 exactly.

The new shift is still getting organized and there’s nobody in the grill area? Sorry, boss, you made the rules. Remember how you wrote me up for punching in at 8:01 yesterday? Remember what you said about the schedule? Well, the schedule says I’m off now.

The rule lasted about a week before the manager did a humiliating climb-down.

The Most DANGEROUS Teens Reacting to Serving Life in Prison

Step into an emotionally charged moment in today’s video, where we capture unscripted reactions of teenagers as they receive their court sentences. Watch as their faces reflect a range of emotions – shock, disbelief, and introspection – as they process the weight of their legal judgments. This thought-provoking glimpse into a critical juncture of their lives offers a unique perspective on the impact of the justice system on young individuals.

What’s a hilarious story that has happened to you?

I was working at an upscale motel as the check in clerk. One night, around midnight, this nice looking couple came in and asked for a room. The man was slightly tipsy and dressed in a business suit. The lady was well dressed, sober, very nice. The guy signed the register, and it was time to pay for the room.

“Here is my check” he said.

“We don’t take checks here, it has to be cash or credit card.”

“You HAVE to take checks,” he replied. “I am in business. You have to take a check.”

“It’s the management’s rule, we don’t take checks”

He glared at me. “You will have to take a check. Everyone takes checks.”

“Sorry sir, we can’t take checks. That is our policy.”

He is getting angrier. “Every business takes checks….”

“Sorry sir…”

At this point the lady taps his arm. “It’s ok,” she says, “I’ll pay for the room. Here is cash”

The man looks over at her. He says, “Ok….I will write you a check. What’s your name?”

When have you said “That’s not my name”?

A couple times — once verbally and a few times non-verbally.

For the verbal time. Years ago when I lived in Minnesota, my ex asked me to go to the local farmer’s market to buy some things. I was wandering through the markets when this guy comes up to me and says: “Hey Steve!”

I kept walking; clearly he wasn’t talking to me.

“Steve? Dude?” he asked again.

“Um, my name’s not Steve,” I said. I got called this a few times until someone at a local restaurant asked me while I was buying takeout: “Are you Bonnie’s husband Steve?” “Nope,” I replied. Apparently I look pretty similar to someone named Steve in Minneapolis.

Now for the non-verbal.

One of the things you will not ever do to me if you want me to answer, or even respect, you is to shout out: “Hey, blind man!”

I am blind, and I am a man, but Blind Man is neither my first nor my last name. This has happened to me a few times when I lived in Manhattan. Sometimes when I’d be walking along a street, someone would shout this to me as I was minding my own business. I don’t care why you do it, but if you shout “Hay blind man” at me, I will not, under any circumstances, even acknowledge your existence. If you want to get my attention and you don’t know who I am, walk up to me, tap me on the shoulder or something and say: “Excuse me, sir?” Or something to that effect. “Hey blind man” will get you completely ignored.

First Step

From your school friends, who surprised you with their success in life?

I was friends with this guy in elementary school. He and I used to play together at recess and after school as we waited for our parents to pick us up. We even went to each other’s birthday parties during those years.

We didn’t talk much in middle school or high school, though. He was one of my many elementary-school friends who, once puberty and the popularity crunch hit, pretty much quit talking to me. I wasn’t one of the chosen “popular” kids… too ugly, and my parents were too poor.

Anyway, I have no hard feelings about it. Kids are stupid like that.

Over the years, a lot of my old classmates have either found drugs and ruined their lives, or found successful careers and are living happy adult lives now.

But this guy surprised me the most. That old elementary school friend of mine grew up to be a professional poker player:

He’s my Facebook friend now. We’ve never interacted, other than to send and accept friend invites, but he seems to be very happy. He’s married to a beautiful woman, and, judging from the pictures he posts, they do a lot of outdoorsy stuff, like hiking and camping. Good for them. I’m happy that he’s living his best life.

Do you agree with Donald Trump Jr. that we no longer have an equal justice system? The facts clearly support the statement.

I absolutely agree.

If you had a fair and equal justice system, Donald Trump (the father of the individual you mention) would presently be in jail awaiting trial – not only because of the stunning seriousness of the crimes of which he has been accused, but as a consequence of his own words, attacking both the criminal justice system, but also doing so in a way that actively threatens law enforcement and the judiciary.

Were it anybody else doing this, someone with less wealth or political influence, and they’d already have been in jail for weeks or even months, knowing that their trials would likely have additional charges tacked on for those threatening actions.

The United States isn’t a fair or impartial country, and the justice system sadly reflects that. It isn’t even a democracy anymore: whilst there are certainly democratic aspects, these are presently being undermined by Donald Trump and his cronies, as they push for a more authoritarian approach to governance. And, thanks in part to Citizen Utd v. FEC, and the nature of the US’ political elections, one thing is abundantly clear: the wealthy own the country, and live by different rules to the rest of you.

That Trump has committed such deeply serious offenses and yet remains free as a bird is evidence enough of that.

GALAXY QUEST is THE BEST!

Thanks so much for being here! OMGOSH! this movie is actually the best! I am so happy to have finally watched this! it is SO FUNNY and I can’t wait to keep re watching this!!

What is the strangest conversation you’ve ever had?

Fun story from my younger days. When telephones didn’t have caller ID.

I wanted to get together with a buddy, so I called him.

“Hey Mark! It’s Mel. Got any free time this weekend?”

Mark: “Hey Mel. Good to hear from you. No. I’m booked solid this weekend.”

Me: “Whatcha up to, buddy?”

Mark: “Got family issues to deal with.”

Me: “Family issues? What kind of family issues?”

Mark: “You know. The wife. She’s still pissed at me for taking that biking trip last month.”

Me: “Wife? When did you get a wife?”

Mark: “Dude, I’ve been married for four years.”

Me: “Um… Is this Mark?”

Mark: “Yeah. Is this Mel?”

Me: “Um… yeah. Is this Mark Chubett?”

Mark: “No, dude. You aren’t Mel Richter?”

Me: “Um… no. Wow. Ok. So you aren’t Mark and I’m not Mel.”

We had a good laugh. How I managed to dial a different Mark who knew a Mel (not the most common name) I’ll never know.

What’s the funniest thing your toddler believes?

I am responsible for putting dreams in her brain before she falls asleep.

It’s a part of our nighttime routine… I read a book, tuck in the kids, give them hugs and kisses…

…then I put my hand on the top of my youngest one’s head, murmur some nonsensical chant, ask her what she wants to dream about that night, chant a little more, and then tell her I put the dreams in there.

Sometimes, I tell her that I put in dreams about “Ice cream, puppies, and spiders.” Then she’ll say, “No! Not spiders! Take that one out!” So I put my hand back on her head and tell her I took it out.

Sometimes, if she’s having trouble sleeping, she’ll come into my room and request better dreams, because the ones I gave her aren’t working. It’s cute when she does it before 10 pm. It’s annoying when she does it after that.

Sometimes, I tell her it’s a “surprise dream.” In the morning, she tells me what she dreamed about, and I say, “Yep, that’s the one I put in there.”

How did Americans get so fat?

Back in college one or our profs made the blanket prediction that a new wave of obesity was about to sweep the nation.

The year was 1978 and the professor was Daniel Atkinson (who would later join the National Academy of Science as a biochemist).

His basic rationale was that the recent shift to high fructose corn syrup as a sweetening agent in American processed foods was a huge mistake that would have ramifications far beyond the the nominal amount of money saved by switching to a cheaper sugar.

The underlying biochemical premise was that, unlike glucose, fructose metabolism shunts one of the main regulatory steps/enzymes of glycolysis (phosphofructokinase-PFK).

Because of this, every bit of fructose consumed that was not needed for energy production would quickly be stored as fat.

History has proven him right (although there was more to it- noting that it was also around this point that America’s penchant for eating-out, and restaurant portion sizes were increasing in tandem along with the growing shift from food primarily being regarded as a source of sustenance as opposed to a source of pleasure).

Look at pre-1980’s films/TV programs that show Americans out on the streets and compare the sizes of the people in the background crowds to later post 1980’s films.

Similarly, look at pro athletes from the pre/post 1980’s and you’ll notice a similar pattern.

Anyhow, the point here is that the fairly abrupt American shift towards obesity can be linked to both to the biochemical properties of the food we consumed prior to the 1980’s as well as the gluttonous ways we increasingly adopted while on our way to the current “food porn” era.

If you found a Genie in the bottle, what would be your first, 2nd and 3rd wishes in that order?

If I found a mysterious bottle that promised a Djinn, I would put it back exactly where I found it and run in the opposite direction.

I’ve read enough folklore, myth, and fairytales to know that making deals with a supernatural entity never, ever ends well for the mortals. Even if the mortal doesn’t get screwed over by the Djinn or the devil or crossroad demon, they’ll soon realize either their wish didn’t resolve the problems they have or the wish created more, bigger problems.

“Faustian Bargain” is a cautionary tale to warn people not to take the shortcut because there isn’t any “easy” way. And the payment you give for the wealth and pleasure is always bigger than what you get.

So, put the bottle back, or sell it to some moron who thinks they can outsmart the devil.

China’s Groundbreaking 1nm Chip: Redefining Technology and Global Power

Wonderful China well done China keep it up.

https://youtu.be/4vEFXi_5INk

What’s the best mistake you’ve ever made?

I asked the wrong woman on a date. I have a problem remembering names and faces. There was a girl at school I had been chatting with during lunch breaks, Vicki. There was another that I had met and spoken to exactly once during an outdoor cookout at the school (college) Marie.

I had an occasion where I was performing, the event included a dinner and dancing and I could bring a date.

I planned to ask Vicki as I had spent more time with her and felt I knew her better.

I am rushing between classes and I am stopped by a girl who says Hi. Vicki. I surprise her by asking her to accompany me to my event. She says yes and I get out my note pad to write down her number (prehistoric days before cell phones) and write the name Vicki. She says “That’s not my name.” I apologize for my memory glitch and ask her what her name is. Marie. Then it dawned on me, I had just asked out the wrong girl. But she had said yes and I was a gentleman so I would not back out.

We went on the date. We both fell in love that night. We were engaged three weeks later. That was 38 years and one son ago. We are still together. And yes, she knows the story.

Why does Amtrak have such poor service in comparison with other forms of transportation?

Imagine you’re at an airport. You’re on your plane and all of a sudden the pilot says “I’m sorry folks, but there are like 30 cargo planes waiting to take off and they all get to go first even though we were first in the passenger take off line. We’re going to be here another hour.”

Or you’re driving on the interstate and the right lane is marked “Tractor Trailers only, except for exiting”. so you have to use the left lane only, which of course is crowded with slower cars even though there’s lots of room in the right lane and trucks are moving very fast.

It’s even worse for Amtrak. In the deal that created them, the railways got to keep all the track. Amtrak has to pay to use it, but they have no say in its upkeep. Now, in theory, passenger trains are supposed to get priority over freight trains but, in practice, the three mile freight train running at 10 m.p.h. on rusty tracks gets to go first, so Amtrack trains wait.

If you go to Europe, the passenger and freight trains use separate systems, so passenger trains only get in the way of other passenger trains.

There’s also a feeling in the United States that rail doesn’t matter even though, particularly in densely populated areas, it carries more passengers than road and planes together. As such, the government doesn’t give Amtrak a lot of money. In Spain, on the other hand, the government went nuts laying out a new high speed rail network, buying trains, and upgrading stations. As such, there are like 16 trains a day between Madrid and Barcelona that cost $40 at peak times and like $8 at non-peak times.

Have you ever met someone from the Mafia?

When I was in high school, a divorced lady moved in across the street (quite scandalous, she was the first divorced person in the neighborhood). Her boyfriend was an older guy named Herbie. He was cool. He drove a bunch of cool cars, Lincoln, Jags, Caddies, etc.

Her kids were older than me and gone a lot.

Herbie asked me if I would mow her lawn. I usually got $5 for mowing a lawn, Herbie gave me a $20. My parents made me go give it back. Herbie gave me a 5, then took the 20 and stuck it in my shirt pocket. ““Now you can tell them I paid you a 5”.

A couple of times Herbie made spaghetti and meatballs and they had me over for dinner.

One day I was hanging out at the neighborhood gas station and Herbie drove up and started using the phone booth. My friend said “that guy always uses the phone to call his bookie, I think he’s a gangster” I told them no way, but when Herbie left and waved to me, they were impressed.

One day I go out to get the Newark News and there’s a headline “Mafia Lieutenants run things while Capos are in prison”. And there in the series of pictures is Herbie.

He was Jewish, made up for being Italian by supposedly being extra tough.

He was always really nice to me, me being friends with him made my parents nervous, but they never said anything, except for me overcharging for lawn mowing that first time.

Developing as a person

What was the strangest way a criminal was caught?

This happened in the 90s in Anchorage, Alaska, towards the end of summer. 2 geniuses decided to rob the Key Bank during daylight hours at a time in the afternoon when rush hour was almost at peak traffic. Key Bank was located at a corner where there was three major avenues with at least 3 lanes each, right in the middle of a 1 way grid. All lanes on all those streets were headed north, west and east, all one way streets. The apparent plan was 1 genius actually committed the armed robbery whilst his side kick drove the get-away car. Fine so far. Key Bank also is only a few blocks from Anchorage Police Department and jail. The hold up itself went off without a hitch. Now, mind you the streets were jammed with cars. Including an Anchorage PD officer sitting in his unit waiting for the light to turn green. This officer happened to be heading to the Police Department. The armed genius ran straight out the main door of the bank and (without checking if he was diving into the get-away car or not), threw open the police unit’s back door, threw the stolen money on the seat and threw himself onto that same seat. He slammed the door shut and screamed “Go! Go!”. The amused officer (who just heard about the heist on his radio) said “I will as soon as the light turns!” He arrested the genius right there and took him straight to booking along with the loot. He later claimed it was the easiest open and shut case he ever had!

A horse tale

I’ll never forget the day my mom called me in a panic: ‘Janna, you’ve got to convince your daddy to get rid of that horse, it’s gonna kill him!'”

Janna Grapperhaus shared the touching story of the bond that was built between her father and an abused horse.

Major was a young and vicious stallion when her father bought him. He “couldn’t be broke”.

“The men who owned him previously had used a technique to break horses that involved beatings and tying his head tightly between two posts where they left him standing without food or water for 4 weeks,” Janna said.

But Major stood strong.

When her father brought him home, Major barreled through five strands of fence within minutes of arriving. He’d bite and strike anyone that got too close.

“My dad never broke him… he earned his heart,” she explained. “Every single day, for hours and hours dad worked to earn that abused horse’s trust. Love won and after two full years, Major allowed my dad to ride him. When dad would go out, Major would kiss him on the head over and over. They had a bond that only horse people could ever understand.”

So when her father passed, it seemed fitting to let Major say goodbye.

“This is Major’s last kiss.”

Doing things right…

In 2018, 13-year-old Jaequan Faulkner started a small business selling $2 hot dogs with $1 sodas and chips from a stand in front of his house in Minnesota.

But his small business was in jeopardy after someone reported him to the Minneapolis Health Department.

Impressed by the young man’s drive, health inspectors decided to teach the young entrepreneur about proper food handling to assist him in getting his hot dog stand up to code.

The teen’s stand passed inspection, and it was the inspectors themselves who paid the $87 fee for his “short-term food permit.”

Kodak

What is the best thing that has ever happened to you for being nice?

I was flying on a milk run, from Houston to Dallas, to Denver to Calgary. Its May long weekend , and I have another flight from Calgary to Vancouver to catch, to meet some friends for the long weekend. I get to the airport in Houston and the lady behind the desk is having a bad day. There is a thunderstorm in Houston and my flight is cancelled. I explain that I am going to miss my.connecting flight to Vancouver, and ask if maybe there was an alternate route, maybe through Vegas. She did her best, and came up empty. I thanked her for her effort, and said I will lose the cost of my Vancouver flight, as it was with a different airline, and have to buy a new ticket.

She asked me why I was being so nice, when my vacation was ruined. I told her I was just being normal, and I appreciated them not risking my life flying into Dallas.

She told me that her afternoon had been hell. I was the only person not yelling at her. So she goes back to her desk, and says, she put me on the first flight in the morning. I come back in the morning, and not only did she put me in first class, she rebooked my Vancouver flight in first class with a different airline.

I don’t know how she did it, but I was only 16 hours late for my vacation, and didn’t miss much.

What’s the most obnoxious instance of America-centric behavior you’ve ever witnessed?

When I was in a bar in Vegas with my black, British-Born-with-Jamaican-roots dad, I entered into conversation with a group of strangers and pointed to my dad and referred to him as “the black guy in the blue shirt over there”. You would have thought I had slapped them in the face. I got screamed and shouted at for having the nerve to call him black and that I should call him African-American. I kept telling them he’s not American and not African either but they wouldn’t hear any of it and in the end informed me(!) that whilst in America I should call him British African-American.

Have you ever been mugged and had it end badly for the mugger?

Not me, but my husband.

He had landed in London and would be living there for about six months. He had gotten his iphone all set and was there with our 15 year old daughter.

He had his phone out at a bus stop and was checking the schedule. A little ways away a group of teenage boys were plotting mischief. Suddenly one of them breaks away, runs up to him, grabs his phone, and runs away.

Now, my husband, god love him, is a lovely man, a brilliant, overweight biostatistician. But he needed that phone! Badly! So he took off after the boy, who did NOT expect that at all.

He chased him down the street and around the corner, and then the boy disappeared. Furious, he said to some construction workers, “Did you see a boy run past here? He stole my phone!” Yes, he went right around the corner, and it’s a dead end, one of them said.

Mike went around the corner and there was a reedy looking, terrified 15 year old kid cowering in a pile of garbage, desperately trying to unlock his phone.

“Give me my phone, dammit!” he shouted. “Right! Now!”

It may help to know that all British people are firmly convinced that every American is insanely violent and probably carrying a gun…

He handed Mike the gun. Mike turned and walked away. The workers asked if he wanted them to call the cops. Mike said no, he’s just a kid.

The workers all laid into the kid, saying, “You are so lucky! You nearly ruined your life right there! for a phone! Are you crazy?” They were still yelling at him when he was out of earshot.

I would not want to be that kid for any amount of money.

What’s the rudest thing a doctor/healthcare provider ever said or did to you?

For nearly a year I had excruciating pain in my hands, wrists, neck, and shoulders. It would last anywhere from a few days to over a month. The doctor never really put much effort into finding out what was going on and would prescribe pain medications and muscle relaxers.

The second to last time I saw him, he informed me that I was an addict and he was putting that in my file. I had asked repeatedly for a referral to see a rheumatologist; he flat out refused, even with a family history of RA and other autoimmune diseases.

I made an appointment myself and paid for the visit and the labs out of pocket as, without a referral, my insurance company wouldn’t cover it. The rheumatologist’s office was in the hospital so he requested the blood test for RH factor be expedited (he was one of the hospital’s best and longest associates, so they did as he requested).

About an hour later he told me that I have RA and he had things pretty much under control in a few weeks. I went back to the first doctor and showed him the lab results and print outs of my x-rays. I chewed him out for letting me not only live with the pain and the permanent damage to my joints, but for accusing me of being a drug-seeking addict – particularly since I had never asked him for anything except an answer as to why that was happening. And yes, I did report him.

Zones: A map of relationship types to help relieve dating confusion

This is really good. LOL!

What is the creepiest thing you’ve ever experienced in your home?

I decided to stay up one night after my husband and kids went sleep reason because it’s usually the only time I had to myself. I cleaned house a little bit took a shower and made coffee . I sat down to watch TV and read a little bit , I didn’t last long before I fell asleep in the recliner. It was a very restless sleep and I had bad dreams like the kind that you know your dreaming but you can’t wake up and any attempts you make to fight or run in the dream were useless because it was like you were weighed down. When I did wake up I was sweating and very groggy. While I’m setting there trying to shake the groggy feeling my dog comes and sets at my feet and is staring at the bar between my kitchen and living room as I turn to see what he’s looking at a very thick large fruit bowl on the bar that had apples in it burst into hundreds of pieces and the apples went in different directions. It scared me so bad that for a few minutes I couldn’t get up to look around and when I did no one was awake and both doors were still locked, still to this day I can’t think of any logical reasons to how that thick bowl just burst like that. What ever it was my dog was aware of it.

What is the most outrageous outfit you have seen a client wear to court?

My years ago on a Monday morning trial docket a woman showed up in a lace red cocktail dress with a large flowing skirt, her hair piled high on her head with red pearls set in, red purse and red shoes. I can only assume the attorney told her to look nice. She looked GREAT for a Saturday night dinner at an expensive restaurant but for a Monday morning her outfit stood out. You could see her from across the room. It was years ago but I learned that day to specify to dress conservatively like you are going to church not a cocktail party.

What would be that one thing you would do for someone?

I have a good friend. We meet each year at a restaurant in Chicago. He always narrows his choice for a starter to one of two soups that he likes. No matter how often I remind him which is which, he always gets confused, can’t remember the difference, and can’t even remember which is the one he likes.

So the one thing I do for him is the obvious solution:

I order one of each, let him taste both, and I let him pick the one he likes that night. Maybe it’s the same as last year, maybe not; who cares? I like them both.

This has been happening for 15 years and it isn’t going to change. My solution works and it’s just our personal ritual.

JUST HAPPENED: China-Russia LATEST Military Pact in War Shocked US

Can you think of an example of something your teacher said in school that made everyone think they were crazy but was actually true later on in life?

In my junior year of boarding school (1982 to 1983), our history teacher, Mr. Steve Patterson, was a dyed-in-the wool 1960s hippie type. He was about 34 back then. Originally from Ohio, he was a calm, pacifistic sort who wore his unabashed liberalism on his sleeve. Since Mr. Patterson lived on campus with his wife and two young children, part of his job was to head a table in the dining hall twice daily, at breakfast and dinner.

However, neither he nor his family ever touched the school’s fare—which, though it was actually superb (really!), was also very traditional, i.e., full of meat and dairy products. The Pattersons were adamant vegetarians, back at a time when this issue was barely on the radar for most people. They used to bring along their own food, packed in Tupperware containers bulging with disgusting-smelling, homemade hippie-1970s-vegetarian concoctions. (Mr. Patterson would, though, deign to eat an ordinary peanut-butter sandwich now and then.)

At this school, we were all pretty close, so virtually no topic was not subject to vigorous discussion. We used to tease Mr. Patterson quite a bit, and he’d give it right back to us, with all the usual arguments you hear from vegetarians or vegans today, i.e., animal cruelty, fat, hormones in the meat, the environment, sustainability, etc. None of us heeded him (I certainly didn’t), but one thing he said back then does stick out in my mind to this very day:

“In the future, people are going to sue McDonald’s and Burger King for causing heart disease, what with all the fat and unhealthy ingredients, the same way that smokers are now suing the tobacco companies.”

At the time, I thought this notion ludicrous. Today, forty years later, I still haven’t converted to vegetarianism, let alone veganism, but I have to give Mr. Patterson his due. The food industry, the meat industry, and the fast-food industries have all come under increasing fire in recent years. Books, articles, and media productions focusing on portion sizes, obesity, and sustainability have proliferated.

Sad to say, Mr. Patterson didn’t live to see his prediction come true. He died of ALS at the age of 52, back in 2001.

When did getting older really start to bother you?

My friend, that is very easy to answer.

I was fortunate enough to be a patient of a wonderful General Practitioner Doctor for almost 20 years.

We had a great rapport, so any of my visits were very friendly and efficient and usually included a bit of friendly banter.

I’ve been playing some kind of sports all my life, and went to see him about a pain that would rise up in my left knee after about an hour of tennis.

After x-rays and a few tests I was back in his office for the results.

His back was to me, and he appeared to be studying my x-rays.

I saw the slight shaking of his head as I heard him take a deep breath and very slowly let it out (I found out this was all for dramatic effect after his performance).

Still with his back to me I heard him say in a serious sounding tone, “I know what is causing your knee problem, and it’s very sad to have to tell you that your condition is incurable It will without doubt become worse over time.”.

“There are things I can do to help slow down the damage and difficulty, but nothing to stop it..

He knew me well and I’m a rather stoic individual who wants to “cut to the chase”, and as he figured I said, “So Doc, how about just telling me what it is so I can assimilate and deal with it.”.

A slow rather dramatic turn to face showed me a Cheshire Cat’s grin as he said, “Welcome Michael to the ranks of us who are simply getting old and our aches and pains are caused by that incurable health issue called aging.”.

We both had a good laugh and I departed with his set of instructions and the realization that I was officially getting older physically.

I didn’t want to hear it, yet knew I would, so it came as no big deal. But I did appreciate my doctors touch of theatrics and dose of humor.

Indian scan center hacked

Why didn’t the Japanese try to decipher the famous “Navajo” code by capturing a Navajo native during WWII?

The Japanese did try to do that. And they did capture Navajo men. However, they were unsuccessful in using them to decipher the code. The reason was simple. The Navajo Code was a code that used Navajo. It was not normal spoken Navajo. To a Navajo speaker, who had not learned the code, a Navajo Code talker sending a message sounds like a string of unconnected Navajo words with no grammar. It was incomprehensible.

So, when the Japanese captured a Navajo man named Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines, he could not really help them even though they tortured him. It was nonsense to him. He was in New Mexico’s 200th Coast Artillery unit when the Philippines fell. He had a horrible war as a POW on the Bataan Death March. Then he was later held at POW camps near Nagasaki and was there during the bombing. He survived the bomb and was released three days later. He returned to the Navajo Nation and lived a long life, dying in 1997 at age 77.

The reason capturing Navajo did not work was that it was a code, not spoken Navajo. The Navajo Code had to be learned and memorized by the Navajo Code Talkers. It was designed to transmit a word by word or letter by letter exact English message. They did not just chat in Navajo.

That could have been understood by a Navajo speaker, but more importantly translation is never, ever exact. It would not transmit precise messages. The US Marines only wanted to use such a code if it could send exact, word for word, and letter for letter transmissions. There were about 400 words in the Code.

The first 31 Navajo Marines created the Code in a Marine base in the San Diego area with the help of one non-Navajo speaker officer who knew cryptography. The idea of the Code was brought to the Marines by Philip Johnston. He was a WWI veteran, and engineer in L.A. and he spoke Navajo and had Navajo friends and contacts because he had grown up as a missionary kid on the Navajo Reservation.

The first part of the Code was made to transmit English letters. For each English letter there were assigned three (or sometimes just two) English words that started with that letter. Then those words were translated into Navajo words. In this way, English words could be spelled out with a substitution code. The alternate words were randomly switched around. So, for English B there were the Navajo words for Badger, Bear and Barrel.

In Navajo that is: nahashchʼidí, shash, and tóshjeeh. Or the letter A was Red Ant, Axe, or Apple. In Navajo that is: wóláchííʼ, tsénił , or bilasáana. The English letter D was: bįįh=deer, and łééchąąʼí =dog, and chʼįįdii= bad spiritual substance (devil).

For example, using the letter substitution part of the Code, the word “bad” could be spelled out a number of ways. To a regular Navajo speaker it would sound like: “Bear, Apple, Dog” on some days. Or on other times it could be “ Barrel, Red Ant, Bad Spirit (devil)”. Other times it could be “Badger, Axe, Deer”. As you can see, for just this short English word, “bad” there are many possibilities and to the combination of words used.

To a Navajo speaker, all versions are nonsense. It gets worse for a Navajo speaker because normal Navajo conjugates in complex ways (ways an English or Japanese speaker would never dream of). These lists of words have no indicators of how they are connected. It is utterly non-grammatical in Navajo.

Then to speed it up, and make it even harder to break, they substituted Navajo words for common military words that were often used in short military messages. Almost none were just translations. A few you could figure out. For example, a Lieutenant was “one silver bar” in Navajo.

A Major was “Gold Oak Leaf” in Navajo. Other things were less obvious like a Battleship was the word for Whale in Navajo. A Mine Sweeper was the Navajo word for Beaver. That would be pretty impossible to guess

A note here, as it seems hard for some people to get this. Navajo is a modern and living language. There are, and were, perfectly useful Navajo words for submarines (tsin naaʼeeł táłtłʼááh naagháhígíí ”boat, under the water, the one that goes”), and battleships and tanks. They did notmake up words because they had no words for modern things”.

This is an incorrect story that gets around in the media.

There had been Navajo in the US military before WWII. They had words for everything in the world that existed in 1940. And they have words for all the newer things today. The Navajo language is different and perhaps more flexible than English. It is easy to generate new words. Most nouns are made by conjugating verbs so they indicate what the object does. They borrow very few words and they have words for any modern thing you can imagine. The words for “telephone”, or “train”, or “nuclear power” are all made from Navajo stem roots.

Because the Navajo Marines had memorized the Code there was no code book to capture. There was no machine to capture either. They could transmit it over open radio waves. They could decode it in a few minutes as opposed to the 30 minutes to two hours that other code systems at the time took. And, no Navajo speaker who had not learned the Code could make any sense out of it.

The Japanese had no published texts on Navajo. There was no internationally available description of the language. The Germans had not studied it at the time. The US Marines were careful about that. The Japanese did suspect it was Navajo. Linguists thought it was in the Athabaskan language family. That would be pretty clear to a linguist. And Navajo had the biggest group of speakers of any Athabaskan language. That is why they tortured Joe Kieyoomia. But, he could not make sense of it. It was just a list of words with no grammar and no meaning.

For Japanese, even writing the language down from the radio broadcasts would be very hard. It has lots of sounds that are not in Japanese or in English. It is hard to tell where some words end or start because the glottal stop is a common consonant. Frequency analysis would have been hard because they did not use a single word for each letter. And some words stood for words instead of for a letter. The task of breaking it was very hard.

Here is an example of a coded message:

béésh łigai naaki joogii gini dibé tsénił áchį́į́h bee ąą ńdítį́hí joogi béésh łóó’ dóó łóóʼtsoh

When translated directly from Navajo into English it is:

SILVER TWO BLUE JAY CHICKEN HAWK SHEEP AXE NOSE KEY BLUE JAY IRON FISH AND WHALE. “

You can see why a Navajo who did not know the Code would not be able to do much with that. The message above means: “CAPTAIN, THE DIVE BOMBER SANK THE SUBMARINE AND BATTLESHIP.”

“Two silver bars” =captain. Blue jay= the. Chicken hawk= dive bomber. Iron fish = sub. Whale= battleship. “Sheep, Axe Nose Key”=sank. The only normal use of a Navajo word is the word for “and” which is “dóó ”. For the same message the word “sank” would be spelled out another way on a different day. For example, it could be: “snake, apple, needle, kettle”.

US Military has Overextended Itself – John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen

Beef Muffuletta Burger

beef muffuletta burger
beef muffuletta burger

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 recipe Cajun-Style Beef Sausage
  • 8 ounces salami, diced
  • 6 slices provolone cheese
  • 1/2 cup olive tapenade
  • 1/2 cup chopped giardinera
  • 1 large sheepherder loaf, about 8 inches in diameter
  • 2 cups shredded lettuce
  • 2 large tomatoes, thinly sliced

Instructions

  1. Prepare Cajun-Style Beef Sausage (crumbles); add salami, mixing thoroughly but gently. Form sausage mixture into 1 large burger patty, 8 to 9 inches in diameter and 3/4 inch thick. Place patty on grid over medium, ash-covered coals. Grill, covered, 10 to 11 minutes (over medium heat on preheated gas grill, 10 to 11 minutes) until instant-read thermometer inserted horizontally into center registers 160 degrees F, turning once. Use 2 grill spatulas for easier flipping. During the last 2 minutes of cooking, top patty with cheese and allow to melt.
  2. Meanwhile, combine tapenade and giardiniera in small bowl. Cut sheepherder loaf in half horizontally. Scoop out extra bread from middle of both halves, as desired. Toast loaf on grill for 2 to 3 minutes, if desired. Line bottom of bread with lettuce and tomato; top with burger. Top burger with tapenade mixture, close sandwich. Cut into 8 wedges.

Notes

Sliders: You may prepare 12 sliders instead of one large patty. Form twelve 2 1/2 inch diameter patties in step 1. Place patties on grid over medium, ash-covered coals. Grill, covered, 8 to 10 minutes (over medium heat on preheated gas grill for the same time) until instant-read thermometer inserted horizontally into center registers 160 degrees F, turning occasionally. During the last minute, top patties with cheese and allow to melt. Continue with step 2.

Nutrition

Per serving: 423 Calories; 20.6g Total Fat; 8.2g Saturated Fat; 0.7g Polyunsaturated Fat; 6.2g Monounsaturated Fat; 0.1g Trans Fat; 77mg Cholesterol; 1385mg Sodium; 413mg Potassium; 34g Total carbohydrate; 26g Protein; 4.3mg Iron; 4.4mg Niacin; 0.3mg Vitamin B6; 71mg Choline; 2.6mcg Vitamin B12; 4.5mg Zinc; 17.8mcg Selenium; 2g Fiber

How can Latin American countries lessen Chinese influence by increasing trade with the United States?

Why would the LATAM countries want to lessen Chinese influence and increase US influence when they have had a much worse experience with the US for more than 200 years?

The US had the Monroe Doctrine which turned Central and South America into a US political fiefdom where the US militarily intervened and toppled governments it didn’t like.

China never did that to the LATAM nations.

So why would the LATAM nations want to increase US influence unless the governments were directly US controlled?

The US influence on LATAM was never based on trade; it was based on the power of US multinational businesses such as United Fruit and US military power. Basically, the US government and its military acted as a protector for US business interests in the LATAM region.

Opting out is the real male response

Pre-divorce posturing

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

You know what?

I have (as of late) been drawn to the horrible stories about infidelity between married couples. Just terrible stuff really. And then one of my followers asked for help on this matter and I responded in a post.

When I get these urges, there are always deeper meanings underlying their intrusion into my consciousness. And it just occurred to me what is going on.

The “marriage” is the United States and China.

The United States is “having sex and fooling round”, and China knows all about it, but wants to keep the relationship stable.

So the United States denies, and denies, and then denies…

  • What are you talking about?
  • Nothing is going on?
  • You worry too much?
  • You are reading too much into the picture of me and a coworker…

…but the texting behind the back keeps on occurring, and the sex orgies still occur in (apparent) secret.

But China has a PI investigating everything and knows everything. China has transcripts of all the text message. China has videos of the sexual events taken from the phones, and the sexy pictures sent back and forth between them. China knows when, where, how and how often these events occurred.

But hasn’t shown its hand yet.

What will China do?

The normal thing (the most common event) is confrontation; a “lot of fireworks” and screaming and yelling, and then a hostile divorce.

But I really don’t think that China wants, or has any plans, to do that.

China does not want a divorce (a war; in any shape or form.)

However, if push comes to shove, China (as a partner) will make life a living Hell for the United States….

…if push comes to shove.

If all these non-stop provocations keep on occurring while the USA puts on the face that “all is just fine, nothing is going on. You are the one with the issue.

And were a hard and harsh divorce were to manifest, it would be China who would hold all the cards. It won’t go in any way that the USA thinks.

All these are ugly thoughts.

The USA and China are (at least on the surface) making amends. Dating again, things are getting back to normal. Plane Flights are opening up. Businessmen are cutting deals and all the rest.

But the USA is still up to it’s old bag of tricks.

  • A “color revolution” in Burma by the CIA was just squelched. Lots of dead (CIA trained) insurgents.
  • “President” Biden got up and made a public warning to China to stop provoking The Philippines…

My gut feeling is that the Chinese know everything, and are just “waiting out” the United States. It will run out of money, resources, banking, finance, and cred sooner than later.

Ai! Hopefully the hidden texts, the late-night “meetings”, and all the rest will come to a quick and decisive end.

Hopefully.

One more year of Joe Biden. Sheech!

I don’t know if I can handle that. Oh Lordy!

I swear that he has his foot on the gas petal towards war and is FLOORING IT.

Yikes!

Today…

What is your opinion on the statement “China will never be as good as western civilization”?

Well China gave the west a 2 century head start and caught it up in less than 50 years! Go figure. The west don’t have civilisation it has a war mongering barbaric mind set that thinks they are ordained by god to loot and plunder. Colonialism U.S. not civilised it is a cruel, despicable act of stealing land and carrying out genocides to slaughter most of the natives.

Civilisation is like the Chinese and Confucianism edicts on discipline, respect, compassion, hard work, eagerness to learn, winning without fighting. Murder, slaughter, genocide done by the west to steal land and resources is barbaric not civilised.

Star Trek: The Silent Skies | 1920 Universe

This is AMAZING!

Zero-sum mentality in US won’t halt China’s tech rise — Global Times

American automaker Ford said on Monday it’s pausing construction of a $3.5 billion electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in the US state of Michigan until it is confident it can run the factory competitively, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Although the US government is flexing all of its policy muscles available to suppress China’s high-tech industry, US competitiveness in cutting-edge technologies has continued to decline as a result of multiple factors.

Ford’s decision comes as the company is in the midst of national contract talks with the United Auto Workers union, which wants to represent workers at battery factories and win them top wages, according to the AP report. Intense competition among global EV manufacturers has unsettled the US automotive industry, which had been a pillar of the US economy, as US automakers are under pressure both at home and abroad.

On the one hand, competition from international competitors, including Chinese EV makers, poses a challenge to American firms, especially as Chinese companies have accumulated technological and price advantages against the backdrop of fierce competition in the Chinese domestic market.

On the other hand, deep-seated problems in the US economy, including insufficient labor protection and the widening wealth gap, have erupted in a concentrated manner. The car industry, like other manufacturing industries in the US, is facing increased pressure due to rising production costs.

As reported by the AP in March, Ford’s EV business has lost $3 billion before taxes during the past two years. If the US automaker wants to catch up with rivals amid intense international competition, one option for Ford is to collaborate with top Chinese companies.

Ford in February announced plans to build the plant in Michigan, betting that making the batteries in the US would help it and Chinese partner CATL attract US customers to embrace a lower-cost technology pioneered in China, according to Reuters. Honestly speaking, Ford’s cooperation with CATL benefits the development of the US EV industry. However, the sector’s survival opportunities are being stifled by politicians in Washington. Republicans in Congress have been probing Ford’s battery plant plan over concerns it could leave Ford dependent on Chinese technology.

As reported by Reuters, Rep. Mike Gallagher said lawmakers were “encouraged to see Ford take a crucial first step to reevaluate its deal” with CATL. “Now, Ford needs to call off this deal for good,” he added.

Not only in the EV industry, but also in most high-tech and cutting-edge industries, some people in the US possess an extremely unhealthy and unfair zero-sum competition mentality toward China. However, it is evident that this thinking is counterproductive in promoting the development of domestic US industries.

Apart from Tesla, other American vehicle companies still have a relatively low share in the domestic and international EV markets. Although the US government has devised protectionist measures such as the Inflation Reduction Act, it is still moving slowly in terms of addressing domestic supply chain issues, particularly in the production of batteries.

Washington is working toward a zero-sum competition with China, with American firms serving as victims. What Chinese enterprises need to do is to confront external challenges, continuously enhance their competitiveness, strengthen technological innovation, seize the opportunities created by Washington’s zero-sum competition mentality – which has caused difficulties for American enterprises – and continuously strengthen themselves.

China is becoming increasingly competitive in EV manufacturing capacity and technology innovation. Chinese EV brands, such as BYD and NIO, have made significant strides in developing advanced EV technologies, including battery technology and autonomous driving features.

China holds a superior position in the EV supply chain, with about three-quarters of the world’s battery production capacity. Moreover, China houses more than half of the world’s processing and refining capacity for lithium, cobalt and graphite, which are essential materials for making EV batteries.

The West’s narrow-minded, zero-sum game mentality has indeed put some pressure on China in the short term, but it cannot fundamentally hinder technological progress. If the US always opts for dirty tricks against China instead of learning how to conduct healthy competition with Chinese enterprises and develop its own economic competitiveness, this will just lead to a larger gap between China and the US.

What is the reason for the opposition to Huawei? What is the US’s motivation for wanting to ban the company?

Huawei has grown into a technological monster.

image 81
image 81
  1. If you don’t understand why I use the word “monster” to describe Huawei, please look at this picture. Here is a summary of the business Huawei is doing. 

It is different from traditional foreign technology companies, such as Samsung, SONY, Nokia, and Alibaba, which only challenge advanced American companies in a certain field.

It has launched a comprehensive challenge to its American counterparts in almost the entire information technology industry.

It not only challenges, but has already achieved success in many areas, and this trend is getting faster and faster.

If the US doesn’t stop it, it will slap American companies on the butt in global markets. Just like Toyota and Honda slapped Ford’s ass back in the day.

Currently, high-tech companies are a key means for the United States to gain wealth from around the world. Once these high-tech companies are stepped on by Huawei, how can the United States maintain its status as a developed country and maintain Americans’ living standards?

Therefore, when American companies have no choice but to rely on the U.S. government to take action. Kill the monster before it grows up.
As for the reason: threatening national security

Senior shelter cat desperately hugs woman for adoption

I adopted the oldest cat my shelter had. She was owner surrendered at the age 15 which I just thought was wrong. I named her Hope and she gave me 4 of the best years of my life. Thank you so much for adopting a senior cat. I wish you many years of happiness and love with her.”

REPORTS: Thousands of Ukraine Soldiers SURRENDERING To Russian Army

World Hal Turner

A special radio frequency being used so that Ukrainian soldiers can safely surrender to Russian forces is now chattering like never before. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are opting to surrender to the Russian Army.

These surrenders were seen even by Clayton Morris, an American journalist, who expressed his astonishment and said, “this is a story the western media does not want you to see.”

Ukrainian forces are laying down their Western-supplied arms and surrendering en masse! Using emergency radio frequencies, they’re receiving food & medical care and even sharing critical intel with Russian forces.

Is this the final chapter?

As Zelensky hears of mass surrendering of Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines he will likely be very concerned. Not about the soldiers; about what happens to him

The question now is who gets to him first. The Russians will want him but the west may want him too. Dead.

They will not wish to have him expose the money laundering, child sex slavery and child organ harvesting that has been going on in Ukraine; the Globalist Parasites cant allow that.

Either way its not looking good for the man in Green.

By most credible accounts, the recent Ukronazi+NATO attack in the Kharkov area was even more costly in KIA/MIA, wounded and lost hardware than the attack towards Kherson. The combined losses from these attacks are staggering.

  • Yet there are all the signs that the Ukronazi+NATO forces are preparing for even more such attacks.
  • The Ukronazi+NATO seem happy to trade human lives for territorial gains, no matter how small or how irrelevant that territory is.
  • The Russians seem happy to trade space and time to protect the lives of their soldiers and equipment.
  • We could say that the Ukronazi+NATO are trading bodies for shells.

Let’s remember the two goals set by Putin for the SMO: denazify and demilitarize. Both of these goals are human-focused, not terrain-focused. In other words, if a tactical-level withdrawal allows the Russian to kill scores of Ukronazi+NATO personnel and destroy their equipment, they will gladly accept the trade.

The other goal was to protect the LDNR. Kherson is not part of the LDNR.

Territory can be reconquered, equipment is hard to replace, especially complex weapon-systems.

Soldiers cannot be resurrected.

It is absolutely clear that Ukronazi+NATO are “betting the farm” into these offensives. Not only is the coming winter a major threat for them, but the political chaos in the EU and the US this fall and winter means that now is the time to try has hard as possible to conceal the magnitude of the disaster for the Ukronazi+NATO.

So, most of what is taking place now can be summed up in this simple question: who will run out of resources first: the Ukronazi+NATO in terms of manpower and equipment or the Russians in terms of firepower (mostly artillery, missiles and airpower)?

I think that the answer is obvious:  Russia wins.

U.S. Plans To Ethnically Cleanse Gaza

This is, presumably, the U.S.-Israeli plan for the Palestinian people in Gaza:

Harry Sisson @harryjsisson – 1:44 UTC · Oct 11, 2023

Amazing: President Biden is working on a plan with other countries that would allow civilians to safely leave Gaza and cross the border into Egypt. This is great news. President Biden is making sure that innocent people don’t die due to the actions of Hamas. That’s leadership.

No, it is not leadership. It is ethnic cleansing, a war crime disguised as humanitarian gesture. It is ethnic cleansing of people who’s land has been stolen by Zionist settlers. These people would have no right of return to the homes and land they once owned. People who have been put into an open air prison, who have no access to electricity, water and food and are currently under intense attacks.

Egypt, the only country where they potentially could be moved to, is already bankrupt. It can not even provide for its own people. Two million new people from Gaza, all poor and some of them radicalized, would undoubtedly unbalance the Egyptian state.

Should such a plan be put into action it would guarantee that the resistance axis, Hizbullah and various other Sunni and Shia groups in the Middle East, would step in. The would attack Israel to prevent such a move.

The U.S. thinks it can deter resistance action by threatening to move in with its own forces. That’s why the USS Herald Ford, its newest carrier, was moved into the Eastern Mediterranean. Rumors have it that a second carrier will come in too.

But the resistance can not be deterred by that. The last time the U.S. tried to intervene in Lebanon it ended up with 241 dead Marines and had to retreat in shame. Hizbullah at that time was only a handful of men. Today Hizbullah has tens of thousands of very well trained men. Then there are also Iran and Russia:

agitpapa @agitpapa – 12:24 UTC · Oct 11, 2023

As I said in my analysis today of the NATO intervention in the Israeli northern front, it’s inconceivable that Russia should stay silent in the face of such brazen NATO overreach. This seat-of-the-pants, unmandated NATO panic move will speed up Russia’s pivot from pro-Israel to pro-Arab that started with the deaths of Russian airmen caused by an IAF aggression against Syria and was locked in with Netanyahu’s support for the nazi regime in Kiev.

The Russian military has long identified Israel as an enemy state and Putin is now conceding to them, acknowledging the failure of yet another one of his strategies, namely the political use of the Russian Jewish community in Israel via his “friend” Avigdor Lieberman. Russian Jews in Israel are virulently anti-Arab, so Putin tried not to upset them.

Today, however, with Bibi bringing in the full might of NATO to the Eastern Mediterranean to threaten not only Lebanon but Russian bases in Syria, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy. With Patrushin and Shoygu holding the reins of state and a clear and present NATO threat on Syria’s doorstep, expect a strong and unexpected Russian intervention in the multifront Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war.

See also:

THE SILENCE OF THE BEARS – RUSSIA IS REORIENTING TOWARDS THE ARABS

Adding:

Rybar Force @rybar_force – 15:52 UTC · Oct 11, 2023

❗️🇱🇧🇺🇸 The American Embassy in Lebanon is being evacuated. American citizens are advised to leave the country as soon as possible.

It looks like the American leadership will have to keep its word and join the war on the side of Israel after all.

Later adding – Ooops:

U.S. Embassy Beirut @usembassybeirut – 16:23 UTC · Oct 11, 2023

The U.S. Embassy in Beirut has not evacuated and is open and operating normally. Reports saying otherwise are false. For more information and travel advisories, visit our embassy website: lb.usembassy.gov

Posted by b on October 11, 2023 at 15:43 UTC | Permalink

Have you ever applauded an act of vigilante justice?

When I was young I was pretty much left to my own devices as far as personal hygiene and was always had dirty clothes. My parents were drunks and as the youngest of 7 it was total chaos for me. For some reason though this girl in my class who was smart, funny and popular became my friend. She was just the best friend a girl could ask for. Her father was a prominent doctor and she came from a big loving family. Whenever she could she would include me in whatever she was doing.

We were freshman in high-school and were sitting having lunch and a girl who was just as popular invited my BFF to a party but told her not to bring me because her mother wouldn’t appreciate it if I brought vermin or disease into her house. My friend just stood up and told me that we had to get to our next class and didnt engage with her. The next Saturday was the party and I was home sitting in my room and my BFF showed up at the door and said she thought the party was boring and we ended up going to the movies and then to her house for a sleepover.

Fast forward about a week and the girl who had the party was talking about how her mother was upset because their house apparently smelled like something died in it. They couldnt figure out what the smell was. It was awful. My friend said to the girl that “maybe you have some type of vermin in your house.” She then said she didnt think she could hang with someone like her because there could be vermin in her house. This immediately caught my attention. I asked her about it later. She came clean and told me that when she went to the party – she brought with her some canned shrimp and discreetly placed the raw shrimp in places throughout the house. Under area rugs, on top of a grandfather clock even in the hem of the drapes in various rooms. She said that nobody fucks with me – and she would always have my back.

THAT IS A FRIEND

The Average Age Of Ukraine’s Army

Ben Wallace, the former Secretary of State for Defence of the UK, writes in the Telegraph:

Putin is desperately grasping at the final two things that can save him – time and the splitting of the international community. Britain can do something about both. We must help Ukraine maintain its momentum – and that will require more munitions, ATACMSs and Storm Shadows. And the best way to keep the international community together is the demonstration of success.

Ukraine can also play its part. The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but the fact is that Russia is mobilising the whole country by stealth. Putin knows a pause will hand him time to build a new army. So just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilisation.

Let us not pause for one day. Let us see this through. The world is watching to see if the West has the resolve to stand up for our values and the rules-based system. What we do now for Ukraine will set the direction for all of our security for years to come.

Think for a moment what the aside insert “The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40” really means. Can Storm Shadows change that fact?

Roland Popp @RoPoppZurich – 5:43 UTC · Oct 2, 2023

Sollte stimmen, was Wallace da über das Durchschnittsalter an der ukrainischen Front sagt, 40 Jahre, dann sind die schlimmsten Mutmaßungen über Verluste weit übertroffen worden.
Paraguay 1870.

Translated from German by Google
If what Wallace says about the average age on the Ukrainian front is true, 40 years, then the worst assumptions about losses have been far exceeded.
Paraguay 1870.

Paraguayan War – Casualties of the war:

Paraguay suffered massive casualties, and the war’s disruption and disease also cost civilian lives. Some historians estimate that the nation lost the majority of its population.

Ukraine ain’t there yet. But looking at pictures of Ukrainian soldiers at the front Wallace seems to be right. If you are forty or above are you really still able to run, react and fight like when you were twenty? I am not.

The young Ukrainians are gone. They either have fled from Ukraine or are wounded, disabled or died. You can not mobilize what is no longer there.

A huge loss that will forever haunt that country.

End this war now!

Posted by b at 7:50 UTC | Comments (299)

Cincinnati Chili

Have your chili 3, 4 or 5 ways, Cincinnati style. This is also great on hot dogs, smothered with shredded cheese.

cincinnati chili
cincinnati chili

Yield: 5 to 6 servings

Ingredients

Chili

  • 1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
  • 2 medium onions, chopped
  • 1/2 cup chopped celery
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons mild chili powder
  • 1 tablespoon paprika
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 2 (14 1/2 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
  • 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
  • 1/2 cup water

Have It 5 Ways

  • 1 pound spaghetti, cooked
  • 1 medium onion, finely chopped
  • 1 cup finely grated Cheddar cheese
  • 1 (15 1/2 ounce) can kidney beans, rinsed, drained and heated
  • Hot sauce (your favorite)

Instructions

  1. Brown ground beef, onions and celery in a large skillet, drain off all fat.
  2. Place slow cooker ingredients into a slow cooker and stir well. Cover slow cooker and cook for 7 to 9 hours on LOW, or for 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours on HIGH, stirring during last part of cooking if using HIGH setting.
  3. Cook spaghetti 1/2 hour before chili is done.
  4. To have chili 3-ways, serve it with spaghetti, chili and cheese.
  5. To have chili 4-ways, serve it with spaghetti, chili, onion and cheese.
  6. To have spaghetti 5-ways, serve it with spaghetti, chili, beans, onion and cheese.
  7. Douse chili liberally with hot sauce, if desired.

US Shutdown CANCELLED, No Money For Ukraine, Economy In Ruins

At the last minute, the US Congress passed a Stopgap Bill to keep money flowing for government spending. However, funding was cut to Ukraine in a shocking move. This is most likely political theatre as American support will likely continue. Here’s why the US government is trapped and borrowing money will never end!

What’s the most shameful thing a co-worker has done to you?

I was a store manager at family dollar and I inherited the store and like 6 employees. I was a new manager and didn’t have much experience in such a leadership role. Fast forward I am learning as the days go by. One of my employees come to me and ask me for a ride from work. I typically don’t mingle with coworkers or employees just to keep the possibility of drama down. Well long story short I ended up befriending this middle aged lady I worked with. She frequently got rides from everyone because she didn’t have a car. I ended up hiring another middle aged lady because she had to get a job to get her kids back from the state(I know I know not a good reason to hire someone but I was young soft hearted and above all a mother) so I gave her a chance. I worked around her visitation and allowed her to work a sporadic schedule. This went on for about two years. Well one day I came in on my day off which I frequently did just to make sure everything was up and running and things didn’t feel right. Everyday at a certain time the cameras cut off and reset to save memory or storage(one do them) well I see those two employees pushing carts full of merchandise to their cars along with other people. So I stop them and the people who were with them and ask them for receipts. They produced receipts for like 5 items but the amount of items In their carts greatly exceeded the receipt description. I fired them on the spot and they took two of four carts back into the store. Their family refused and I called loss prevention and police at this time. I was stressed out because she lost her job which means she was going to lose her children and I know it wasn’t my concern I just didn’t understand why she put her children in that position. They both had been stealing expired and new merchandise for the last 6–9 months. I was shocked at how they behaved so normally around me. I learned a lesson here though, I am more strict and don’t allow my heart to lead my professional decisions! I am an exceptional leader today because of my family dollar experiences!!

Have you ever had to fight with a family member about your own belongings in your own home space?

Not fight but they were hard to get back. As the younger brother, two years younger, of two older sisters, twins Lori and Tracy, I often had to go into their bedrooms and retrieve my stuff.

Yes it’s odd girls would be taking their brother’s clothes but mine did. Tracy would take my ball cap. She had a lot of blonde hair but that didn’t stop her from wearing my cap. She wore ball caps before girls wore ball caps and she got a lot of looks. She would also borrow a military style belt I had.

Tracy wore jeans ripped on the knees, purposely, to school one day before that came into fashion. The teacher sent her home. He told her that her knees were showing. She went home and changed into a short skirt and came back to school. The teacher stared at her shaking his head.

“Oh my God. My knees are showing. Should I go back home and change?” she said coyly. That was my sister. She was ahead of her time.

Lori would often take my school football jacket and wear it going to games with her friends. She often came to my games wearing it and cheered me on.

It was hard getting these things back sometimes and I’d have to sneak into their rooms that looked like cyclones hit them. Mom called them ‘Cyclonic Rest Areas.’ Fashion models since age 15, the girls had a lot of clothes and they were all over the rooms. You wouldn’t think they’d borrow their brother’s clothes having all those clothes in their rooms. Of course as soon as I got them back Lori would ask, “RJ, can I borrow your school jacket?”

I remember once I had to run out into the backyard to get the dogs out of the rain. Mom’s orders. The dogs never wanted to come in, even out of the rain. I had no shoes but there was a shiny pair of white boots by the back door. I was thirteen then. I put on the boots. I then ran outside and herded in the three dogs. Tracy, 15, was at the door with her friends. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WEARING MY BOOTS? THEY ARE ALL MUDDY NOW!” She scolded. “Do you have any idea how much they cost?”

“Oh, but it’s fine for you and Lori to wear my ball cap, belt and jacket having them smell like perfume later!” I said to her as I took off her boots. She looked at her friends and laughed. She sighed. “Touché!” she said smiling at me.

I remember the girls were at a school football game I was playing in. One of the guys asked, “Is that Tracy wearing your cap RJ?” In those days, girls were not often seen wearing ball caps.

“Yep, that’s her,” I said.

“Wow! She sure looks a hell of a lot better wearing that cap than you do,” he said..

Thanks a lot!

Life Found?

What are the disadvantages of shifting manufacturing base from China to any other country for Apple Inc.?

As Apple found out, limited amount of skilled labor and poor quality output. Apple tried to assemble in India and found they had a 50% yield rate and about a fifth of its required manpower needs. Further, as word got around, Europeans are not buying ‘made in India Apple iPhones. Almost all developing countries are similar in condition and experience. Simple things like garments work fairly well, but assembly of high end mobile phones are a bit harder.

While India offered what appeared to be the greatest possibility, Vietnam is always cited. Vietnam has limited skilled labor, lack of electricity, and lack of infrastructure. Again, garments, toys, and simple assembly are possible, but complex items get poor results.

Further, the supply chain is non-existent, so parts have to come from the supply chain developed in China. For Apple, lesson learned. It has lost $70 billion in this exercise to move to India, only to return to China and expand its operation there. The labor costs may be higher, but still cheaper than the US and the skilled labor is in quantity that Apple needs plus the yield rate is almost 100% and the supply chain is well developed.

I would also mention TSMC’s attempt to build a 4nm fab in Arizona, only to find lack of skilled labor, and work culture below that of Taiwan. It appears TSMC has closed the fab, laid off the workforce, and for all intents and purpose, shut down its US operations.

What’s the most epic way you’ve seen someone quit a relationship?

This break-up is epic. And classic. It was the ultimate f*ck you and the horse you rode in on.

A former co-worker had this “boyfriend” for four years. Didn’t want to marry her. “Marriage is just a piece of paper” and all that guff. So this woman was diagnosed at a fairly young age with cancer. Boyfriend still didn’t want to marry her; really, he didn’t want to have to deal with making her medical decisions, caring for her, etc. It became obvious during chemotherapy when she needed tending to.

Luckily, she had adult children and friends who stepped in and did all of the heavy lifting he was unwilling to do—and unable, by law, to do.

The cancer turns terminal. So, of course there’s the issue of inheritance to sort out and other financial and legal matters. This woman wasn’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but she did okay. She had a house that was paid for, and some investments. A nice pension and Social Security benefits, and of course, health insurance.

The ne’er-do-well boyfriend has a lightbulb moment: he could get the house, basically double his monthly living income, and get really good health coverage, if he just married her. So he proposed when she was at her very weakest.

Not being a foolish woman, she told him to take a long walk off a short pier. He scuttled away in disgrace and let her spend her final days in the company of those who loved her.

When she did die, it was very sad. She was too young and still had a lot of living to do. But at least Mr. “marriage is just a piece of paper” didn’t profit out of the deal. Her adult kids got everything instead. To this day, I hold her in very high regard for not letting him bamboozle her.

He got nothing, nada, niente, as it should always be for people like that.

Oliver Anthony Rich Men North of Richmond”REACTION” It Just Got Real

Did China lose money on its bullet train project?

China’s 18 main trunk lines of high-speed railways, only 6 lines are profitable, and the remaining 13 are loss-making.

In 2022, China’s high-speed rail suffered a total loss of US$15 billion.

Therefore, if all high-speed rail in China is regarded as a company, it is a company with huge losses.

image 82
image 82

But in the eyes of the Chinese, high-speed rail is not a business. They believe that high-speed railway is a kind of social infrastructure. The purpose of its existence is to provide basic services for the entire social and economic development without maintaining profitability itself.

Therefore, as a state-owned enterprise, China Railway Corporation must bear losses. The funds lost are subsidized by the government every year.

The question is, how can the Chinese government have so much money to subsidize high-speed rail?

The reason is simple. After the Chinese built the first key high-speed railway, the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway, they were surprised to find that for every US$1 they lost on the high-speed railway, the economic growth generated along the high-speed railway would increase by US$1.8.
Three years after the high-speed rail was completed, tax revenue from governments along the line increased by 68%. The economic growth is 1.5 times faster than that of other regions.
This increased wealth is enough to build ten more high-speed railways of the same type.

At the same time, there are 140 core enterprises and 500 general enterprises producing high-speed rail parts in China, distributed in more than 20 provinces. A 200 billion yuan industrial chain has been formed, providing a large number of jobs.
Just look at the construction process of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, which involved more than 700 construction companies and provided jobs for 110,000 people.

Ultimately, high-speed rail became an engine of economic development in the eyes of the Chinese.

Wherever high-speed rail is built, wealth will be greatly increased. As for the funds invested in high-speed rail construction and operating expenses at a loss, they seem insignificant in the face of these increased wealth.

Have you ever met a dangerous person and not known it at the time?

I worked in a small rural hospital in the central part of Texas. This hospital happened to be in between two high-security prisons. It was not a rare occurrence that while being transferred, they would stop at our hospital for blood work, x-rays, cat scans, etc. One time they brought two prisoners to the lab for blood work. (they remained chained and the officers kept weapons at ready.) I drew blood from the first guy. He was charistically covered with prison tattoos; tears, a clock with no hands, and several gang tattoos. He had one I never saw before. On his cheek were the numbers 5150.

I asked the other guy what 5150 meant. He said that guy is completely nuts! Nobody messes with that guy! What does 5150 mean? He said it is Part of the California penal code. It means criminally insane. I don’t who he is or what he did but he sure was creepy.

P.S. I got to know the transfer crews pretty well. we developed a practical joke with the prisoners. For all of their toughness, many of them were afraid of blood draw needles. When I was done with the blood draw I put a pink Barbie band-aid on the site. Then I told them they had to keep it on until they were admitted to their new home. The guards would back me up and say that they had to have proof that the blood was drawn. So the possibly badest, craziest, most evil, person I will ever meet wore a pink Barbie band-aid in prison because of me.

The Pentagon claims “China has over 500 nuclear warheads.” How can they be so certain about China’s nation secret?

After a countless string of falsehood dangled by American leaders, government agencies, the mainstream media, thinktanks and intellectuals, why are we still debating if a particular American interpretation of China is credible?

Odds are it is false or embellished/exaggerated.

Remember this guy?

image 173
image 173

He made history becoming the first Cabinet-level official to be sanctioned by China, after passing a genocide determination on China’s treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang during his final weeks in office.

Surprisingly, few have spoken up for him, neither blue, nor red.

The State Department has quietly shelved his statement, with its lawyers concluding there was insufficient evidence to make the genocide designation. Antony certainly hasn’t acted on his predecessor’s words, even though the designation remains.

There was also balloon-gate, which was recently absolved by the Joint Chiefs.

“It was a weather balloon we shot down.”

It doesn’t matter how many warheads China has, because Zhou Enlai’s words remain relevant today.

“China has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world once over”.

And that is enough.

If you are a police officer, have you ever stopped a car only to have it drive away as you walked up to it?

Yep.

Stopped a motorcyclist who blew through a 4-way stop intersection. The guy pulled over and after I got out of my car, took off.

I chased him down and again, he stopped. He continued to straddle his bike while I approached him. I asked him to shut down his ride and swing off of it. No compliance. I reached down and turned the ignition off and removed the key. He went ballistic and decided to fight. Guy was huge and clearly under some form of influence. Inhumanly strong.

Tried to mace him, only to have the wind push it back at me. I had left my baton in the car and all he wanted to do was grab my holstered service weapon. We had no portable radios. Frankly, he was besting me and all I could do was keep him from ripping my revolver away from me.

Very, very fortunately, a county traffic officer approached from the other direction and he called it in before diving into the wrestling match. A few minutes later, LOTS of needed manpower arrived and we got the guy down and cuffed. We got him to his feet and watched while he “stiff-legged” it back to my car. Went to put him in the back seat and he wouldn’t fold. Tucked his knees with my stick; nothing. We knocked him back down and shoveled him into the car for the trip to the jail.

Upon booking, he ripped his (artificial) leg off, hopping around and swinging it at the jailers and everyone else……again, subdued and hauled off…aggressive, foul-mouthed, non-cooperative. Next day at his arraignment, a totally different guy! Disabled Vietnam vet…..double amputee….off of his meds. Contrite and apologetic.

Even as the arresting officer, the magistrate gave me no opportunity to comment or o’wise condition the arrest. The vet pleaded guilty and drew a 60-day sentence for battery to police officer(s). To this day, not certain that justice was served, but rolling around in the street fearing for my life was an eye-opener!

Who is the rudest celebrity you have met, and who would be the nicest?

Many years ago, I was walking down a road in Bristol (England) and suddenly, a figure burst out of a door knocking me over, He stopped dead, and apologised profusely, helped me to my feet and noting my accent said ’You’re Welsh,- me too.’

He took me inside and got me a coffee, and we chatted awhile, and he said, ‘You don’t know who I am, do you? I had to admit I didn’t, So He said ‘I’m Tom Jones’ You know, the singer?

‘Bloody hell, I thought you were in America’, I said He replied ‘I had a date to appear in the Colston Hall and didn’t want to let them down’, ‘What can I do to be sorry?’ he said. ‘You said you were looking for a short-term job, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes’, I replied, ‘Let me help’, said he, and got on the phone and arranged a job for me there and them with a famous wine importer, saying he’d vouch for me ‘cos I’m Welsh.

I was well received and took up the job for the remainder of the time I spent in Bristol, and it opened a new horizon for me to explore in work which changed my life. So, I’ve often looked back to that chance encounter with a bloke renowned for being brutal – but who changed my life.

China is more ADVANCED than we realised!

Since returning to China, our minds have been blown by the rapid technological progress we’ve witnessed! In this video, @Huawei invited us to explore some of China’s most cutting-edge technologies, including robotic arms, futuristic robots, 5G factories, and mind-blowing augmented reality experiences.

LOL. The rest of youse guys are just NOW figuring all this out?

What are the chances that Japan would send military assistance to defend Taiwan if China invades them?

If the PLA liberates Taiwan by force, 99% of Chinese want Japan to send troops to intervene in the China’s internal affairs or China’s civil war.

As for why the Chinese think differently than you think, I think Asians understand.

Even the dispatch of 1 soldier from Japan is something the Chinese would be happy to see.

In 1937, the Japanese launched the Marco Polo Bridge Incident under the pretext of the disappearance of 1 soldier, and began a full-scale invasion of China.

So, 1 soldier is enough excuse. New grudges and old grudges can be returned together.

What is the strangest complaint you have received at your job?

One evening in the London casino I worked at, I was having dinner in the restaurant with another client.

Then at a nearby table very old Greek man had a catastrophic failure of his bowels. This is a very exclusive Michelin equivalent restaurant. The restaurant unsurprisingly cleared, leaving me alone with the incontinent gentleman and his wife. I shamelessly pulled rank and had one of the wait staff wrap a table cloth around the unfortunate soul and then informed our reception that we would take the member home in one of our cars.

The car took the old couple home. The restaurant cleaned up the mess. And we were down one Bruges lace tablecloth. I thought the matter dealt with.

I received a phone call the next afternoon from the irate wife of the unfortunate guest. She took great pains to inform me that the quick thinking car jockey had covered the £100,000 Bentley’s back seat with something like clear plastic wrap. Obviously this was deeply humiliating to the couple. Especially to her faeces covered husband. The fact that he was wrapped in tablecloth after soiling himself in a packed restaurant was apparently not even comparatively humiliating.

The wife demanded I discipline the very rude driver. I agreed* and promised I would, and that the next time anyone fouled themselves in my presence at work I would not try to protect the interior of a hugely expensive car.

*Obviously I did not discipline the driver. He saved us an obscenely large valeting bill!

What blew your mind today?

America is one of the biggest criminals in this modern world. They fights for their economic interest. Media defames nations and leaders from the intelligentsia.

Today there will be talk of a leader whom most of the world considers as a dictator.

Who should have got the Nobel Prize. But got death. Unfortunately, people think them as a criminal.

Libya is an African country bordering the Sahara Desert. There 80% of the land is desert. Only 10% of the land is such that people can live. Most of the parts of the country are such where not a drop of water has fallen for 20 years.

When oil was discovered in the world, oil was discovered in every country. What was found instead of oil in Libya was astonishing.

500 meters down in the desert, a thick layer of water was found, its thickness was somewhere around 700 meters thick.

According to experts, this is so much water that it can give water to Libya for 2-3 thousand years.

Its importance can be understood for a country where 90% of the land is desert.

But extracting this water, sending it to other parts was nothing less than Bhagirath’s penance. The money needed for this work in 1960 was $25 billion. From today’s point of view, it will be above 100 billion dollars.

Consideration on this project was abandoned. But when Colonel Gaddafi became president, they started this work.

The West was opposed to Gaddafi. IMF, World Bank no one gave loan to Libya for this work.

Gaddafi took this impossible project forward by making arrangements with their own nation.

Engineers from South Korea helped in this. Later, UNESCO also trained engineers.

Large pipes were built. So wide that the metro train passes.

The project was inaugurated by Colonel Gaddafi on 28 August 1984.

500 meters deep, 1300 wells were constructed. Which used to carry water through a 4000 km long pipeline. So many dams were built that 12 Egyptian pyramids could be built. Astronauts can also see the well built in it.

$33 billion was spent by Gaddafi. The whole of Africa was expected to be green.

In 2008, the Guinness Book of Books included the project as the largest project ever.

People went crazy with joy when water reached the major Libyan cities of Tripoli, Bayanji. Irrigation started in 13 thousand hectares of land.

But in 2011, America attacked NATO by spreading propaganda against Gaddafi.

The surprising thing is that he dropped the maximum number of bombs on this project. Due to which more than 25% collapsed.

How Western countries have turned the boon to Africa can be seen in ruins.

Now urgently we will sell bottled water to Africa, some Mother Teresa will come and get her converted. The Nobel Prize will take the title of a saint.

Gaddafi was bad, so the people of his country would have understood, who are you people who dropped bombs and missiles.

Indian External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, this is all he is saying. Your intention is not right. He says Britain robbed India 45 trillion dollars in 100 years. This is the research of UK universities only. India could not become a 5 trillion dollar economy in 75 years. So how much it will be looted can be estimated.

This project was made in collaboration with engineers from all over the world! What makes Gaddafi a great leader.

Burden X Steven James – Rich Men North Of Richmond Remix

Wow. This is a really good remix.

Transform yourself into a superhuman in just 6 months:

1. Fix your schedule and sleep at 9:00 PM to be awake at 4:00 AM.

2. Quit your excuses and work out for 30 minutes daily.

3. Include 2 eggs plus fresh fruits to optimize your health.

4. Prioritize 2 cold showers a day with no excuses. I promise your self-discipline will be boosted.

5. Listen more than you talk and be teachable.

6. Learn to say “NO” unapologetically and get busy minding your own business.

7. Attempt and read 50+ pages to sharpen your mind.

8. Learn a new skill every 3 months and spend another go-off days developing it.

9. Set on a morning walk after having 2 glasses of water immediately after.

10. Sleep a quarter of your day to reset your focus and boost your mood.

11. Put your phone away or uninstall your social network to save yourself from Aimanipulation.

12. Avoid sex, especially at the initial stages of your personal growth.

13. Please for no one else, do something for yourself for 6 months.

14. Go for 1000 hours without watching the news or talking politics and use the time to rest.

15. Make more money, and invest wisely to buy yourself anything without looking at the price.

16. Prioritize 4 hours of deep work a day over 8 hours of busyness and make time to improve yourself.

17. Make time for your close friends and family during your weekend.

18. Start a side hustle/business It’s time to learn how to build a side hustle to win big.

What has an employee said that immediately caused you to fire them?

My parents needed a new housekeeper because our old housekeeper was retiring, so with a very heavy heart — Hermione had become part of the family after all these years — they hired a new one.

And what a different person she was.

Vera was in her late twenties, good-looking, was energetic and quick, and had a smart mouth. We needed some time to adjust, but we immediately liked her.

Still, some things were really different. Sometimes she was caught red-handed leaving early, but she aways had some original excuse —

My mom’s really sick. My husband needed urgent help. My boy needed an unforeseen ride. I started earlier than planned.”

It also happened a couple of times when my mom came home earlier than expected, that Vera was on the phone. (A classical rotary phone in the conversation pit in my parents’ living room.)

(Yes, dear reader. A rotary phone. With a cable.)

The excuse was always the same — urgent matters for sick people and needy children.

Till the day when my parents got the phone bill.

It was humongous, and an absurd number of very long calls had been made to an unknown number, each and every time during Vera’s working hours. When she alone was home.

It turned out that Very had a lover, and had used my parent’s house as a call center all along, so that her husband wouldn’t find out.

She was fired on the spot.

Not much later she left her husband for the lover, and that’s the last thing we ever heard of Vera. When Hermione heard the news some time later, she proposed to come back and spend one or two extra years in our family.

(We totally agreed.)

Besides a bat, what is something you can carry in your vehicle that is effective as a weapon, yet legal to have and won’t cause any trouble if a cop searches your car?

Purchase a marine air horn that works with a canister of aerosol gas. I keep two in my truck, one in each door panel. You may know them from hearing them at soccer matches in big stadiums. They are extremely loud and piercing. If you point one in a person’s face and discharge it with a long blast, the person would become discombobulated instantly. It is actually painful and can hurt eardrums. It would render them unable to hear for a minute or more and affect their equilibrium, causing trouble moving, walking, running, or aiming. The surprise effect is stunning; they do not expect anything like that. You then have the option of running and getting the hell away or physically counter-attacking. It is hard to defend yourself when your faculties are compromised. It is also hard to chase someone. Keep the horn in your hand and be ready to give them a second dose if needed. If you do the wise thing and run, you can keep doing short blasts as you are leaving. The beauty of this is that anyone who is within 100 yards of you will be alerted to that sound and will turn to look and see what is happening. The perp is put on full display and probably will abandon his assault attempt. This can be a lifesaver in a gas station scenario where you are pumping gas and getting approached by someone walking up to your car. I tried a test on a friend who was 3 feet away and his back was turned. A one-second blast, aimed at the ground, made him jump three feet and run about twenty feet away. He didn’t know what happened, he just wanted out of there. Think what a 10-second blast directly in the face would do!

image 86
image 86

This really works!

STAR TREK but is 1920 | Unreleased Movie Fan

What was the largest refund you ever got from a purchase?

Twenty years ago my wife and I saw an ad in the New York Times travel section. Round trip from JFK to Barbados on the Concorde, plus a week at the hotel of your choice (there were 5 hotels to choose from).

The Concorde? Let’s do it.

We called British Airways Holidays. (It was still the early day of Internet commerce. Back in 2000 you picked up the landline.)

“We’re flexible on dates,” I told the agent. “But the hotel has to be the Fairmont Royal Pavilion.”

No problem. The agent found a date that worked and took our money (about $13,000 all in). Pricey, but hey — the Concorde.

Two nights before our departure date there was a message on our home answering machine. “This is British Airways Holidays. We’ve had to make some adjustments to your itinerary. You will now be staying at the Royal Pavilion’s sister property, Glitter Bay.”

Sister property. It sounds like kind of the same thing. Except it’s not. Royal Pavilion is for adults only. Glitter Bay is for families with kids. Lots and lots of kids. We love kids. We raised two. But the reason we picked the Royal Pavilion was because we wanted to spend a week without kids.

I called British Airways Holidays. No answer. They’re not an airline. They’re just the travel planners for the airline and work from 9 to 5. We left a voicemail.

The next morning we called the Royal Pavilion and spoke to the General Manager of both properties. He said, “British Airways does this all the time. They take your money, and then they switch your hotel. Here’s what I can do. For the same price I can put you up in a large one-bedroom private villa at Glitter Bay. It’s off the beaten path, far from the kids, an easy walk to the Royal Pavilion, and you’ll have complete access to all our facilities and amenities. I’ll send my wife over to take photos of the villa.”

An hour later I got the pictures. It was incredible. We decided to take it.

British Airways never called back. The guest relations guy who met us at the airport in Barbados never told us we’d been switched to another hotel. He drove us to Glitter Bay. Or as we called it all week, Glitter Bait and Switch.

Let me sum up that week-long vacation: The Concorde was a once in a lifetime experience. Our villa was spectacular. But still, it wasn’t what we’d signed on for.

The General Manager was a total sweetheart. He suggested that I write to British Airways, but warned me not to get my hopes up for a refund.

We’ll just see about that decided the man who writes for a living. I spent days crafting the letter. A week after I sent it I got a call from a British Airways rep in London. She apologized for the “misunderstanding,” and asked how she could make it right.

I told her I wanted a public apology. An ad in the New York Times travel section telling the world what they had done and promising not to sucker in any more people. She said, “Sir, we can’t do that.”

I told her if she didn’t I would go public on this Internet thing that was still just taking hold and tell the whole world wide web what a bunch of crooks they were.

She said, “I’ll get back to you.”

A week later she called back. “We’d like to offer you and your wife an all-expense paid trip from New York to London,” she said. “We’ll fly you there on the Concorde, put you up in a five-star hotel, and fly you back first class on a 747.”

If she had seen the look on my face, she’d have known she had me. But she couldn’t see me. So I doubled down.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “You already flew me to a hotel I didn’t want to go to. Why would I want you to fly me to another place I don’t want to go to? I want a public apology. An ad in the New York Times.

“Let me talk to my management,” she said.

Another week passed. She called back. “Sir, we absolutely can’t print a public apology. The best we can offer you is a full refund. Airfare and your entire hotel bill including meals and other amenities and services you may have charged. If you say yes, we will credit your American Express card with the entire amount.”

I grumbled, and told her that it wasn’t what I wanted, but she’d won. I begrudgingly accepted the more than $13,000 refund.

Then I hung up, did a happy dance, and told my wife the news.

The next day I called the General Manager of the Royal Pavilion and booked their best villa for a week the following spring. Three bedrooms. Perfect for me, my wife, my son, my daughter and their significant others. The cost of the villa, along with airfare (non-supersonic) for six people — a little over $13,000.

Best all-expenses-paid vacation ever.

—————————————————————

EDIT — Sometimes I post and hear crickets. But this one — over 100k views and 9k upvotes in less than 24 hours. That’s like Mach 2 in Quora terms. Thank you. Several people asked if they could see the letter I sent.

I’d have thought that after 20 years it would be lost to the ages, but I was amazed to see that it was still buried in my archives. It’s 1700 words, and I’d be embarrassed to reprint it. My recounting of the event on Quora was written with a smile on my face. The complaint letter is me at my pissiest.

But I can give you the highlights. Basically, the letter stated the facts. Re-reading it after 20 years, it’s clear that British Airways was even more underhanded than I remembered, so those facts were pretty damning. The manager of the Royal Pavilion taught me some of the tricks of the trade, and he explained why they waited till I was 48 hours away from departure, even though they knew they had overbooked weeks before. He also assured me that BA overbooked, not the hotel. I made sure they knew I was a very knowledgeable consumer.

My closing was this: “I feel violated and am angry enough to take my complaint to the FAA, the appropriate consumer fraud departments in New York, the travel press and travel newsgroups on the Internet. I also feel justified in pursuing legal action where I would seek compensation for both the cost of a lost vacation and for being the victim of dishonest business practices.”

But my best line was this: “Under no condition would I have considered a vacation at Glitter Bay, much less pay $13,186.90 for the privilege of living in the middle of a high rent day care center.”

It’s hard to go up against a corporate Goliath and win. But every now and then… I hope this is the kind of encouragement you need to never quit trying.

Russian Spetsnaz Captured German Army Officers in Ukraine! NATO Armies Suffer Heavy Losses!

Was the U.S. behind the Kursk Submarine Disaster?

Backstory

The Kursk was an Oscar II class submarine, one of the largest and most powerful subs ever built. It was armed with 24 cruise missiles and 24 torpedoes, some of them tipped with nuclear warheads.

It was supposed to be a show of force and a demonstration of Russia’s military capabilities.

But something went horribly wrong on August 12th, 2000 around 11:30 a.m. local time.

According to the official investigation, one of the practice torpedoes that the Kursk was loading had a faulty weld in its casing, which leaked high-test peroxide (HTP) inside the torpedo tube.

HTP is a highly reactive substance that can explode when it comes into contact with metal or organic matter.

The leak triggered a catalytic explosion that blew off both the inner and outer tube doors, started a fire, and killed or injured most of the crew in the first two compartments.

Two minutes and fifteen seconds later, another explosion occurred, much bigger than the first one.

This one was caused by the detonation of five to seven torpedo warheads, which ripped a huge hole in the hull, collapsed several bulkheads and decks, destroyed the fourth compartment, and killed everyone who was still alive in the front half of the sub.

The second explosion was so powerful that it registered as a 3.5 magnitude earthquake on seismographs around the world.

The Kursk sank to the bottom of the sea, at a depth of about 350 feet. The rear half of the sub was still intact, and some of the survivors managed to seal off the ninth compartment and activate an emergency beacon.

But they were trapped, with no way to escape or communicate with the surface.

Meanwhile, the Russian Navy had no clue what had happened. They did not realise that an accident had occurred until six hours later, when they noticed that the Kursk had missed a scheduled communication check.

They did not initiate a search and rescue operation until 16 hours later, when they finally located the sub on sonar.

But their rescue efforts were hampered by bad weather, poor equipment, and bureaucratic delays.

They tried to attach four different diving bells and submersibles to the escape hatch of the Kursk, but failed every time due to technical problems or human errors.

They also refused to accept help from other countries’ ships nearby, claiming that they had everything under control.

It took them five days to admit that they needed outside assistance, and by then it was too late.

On August 21st, British and Norwegian divers managed to open a hatch to the ninth compartment of the Kursk, but found no signs of life. All 118 sailors on board had perished.

….

Now, there are those who believe that the U.S. Navy had something to do with the disaster, either by sabotaging or attacking the Kursk. Why would they do that?

To prevent Russia from testing or deploying new weapons systems

To send a message or a warning to Russia about its military ambitions

To cover up an accidental collision or confrontation between U.S. and Russian subs

To distract attention from other issues or scandals in U.S. politics

These claims lack substantial evidence.

Some people claim that there were two U.S. subs near the Kursk at the time of the accident: USS Memphis and USS Toledo.

Memphis

  • They say that these subs were spying on or harassing the Kursk, and that they either collided with it or fired a torpedo at it.
  • But there is no proof that these subs were actually there. The U.S. Navy denies any involvement in the incident, and says that its closest sub was hundreds of miles away from the Kursk.
  • Even if these subs were there, they would have no reason to attack or sabotage the Kursk. The U.S. and Russia were not at war, and the Kursk was not a threat to them. It was only carrying practice torpedoes, not live ones.
  • And if there was a collision or a confrontation, why would the U.S. subs not report it or try to help the Kursk? Why would they risk an international incident or a nuclear war by hiding their actions?
  • Some people claim that the second explosion on the Kursk was not caused by its own torpedoes, but by an external source, such as a U.S. torpedo or a mine. They say that the explosion was too big and too loud to be from the Kursk’s weapons, and that it left traces of uranium or plutonium on the seabed.
  • Again, there is no evidence to back up these claims. The official investigation concluded that the second explosion was consistent with the detonation of five to seven torpedo warheads, each containing about 500 pounds of high explosives. The explosion was big and loud because it happened in a confined space, and because the Kursk’s hull acted as a resonator.
  • And there is no proof that there was any radioactive material on the seabed. The Kursk’s reactors shut down safely after the first explosion, and did not leak any radiation. The traces of uranium or plutonium that some people claim to have found were either natural or from other sources, such as sunken ships or waste dumps.

Verdict:

There is no credible evidence to suggest that the U.S. was behind the Kursk submarine disaster. It was a tragic accident, caused by a faulty torpedo and compounded by a series of failures and mistakes by the Russian Navy. It was not a conspiracy, but a catastrophe.

I shit myself

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DQgs-bGp6yI?feature=share

“United States is pressuring the Netherlands to block the sale of EUV equipment to SMIC by Dutch company ASML is ultimately affecting China’s dream in technology”. How long US can resist China’s development?

image 179
image 179

The Chinese people are such a nation that when you give them comfort and enjoyment, they will self collapse, just like every dynasty change in China and the late Qing Dynasty.

But when external pressure is exerted to suppress the development of the Chinese people and limit their pursuit of happiness, the Chinese people will erupt in strong resilience, use their talents to break through the blockade, and ultimately achieve rise.

From resisting Japanese aggression during World War II to becoming the world’s second largest economy, the Chinese people have come step by step due to external concerns.

The characteristics of this ethnic group can be summarized by a famous quote from the Chinese Confucian philosopher Mencius two thousand years ago:Born in distress and died in peace and contentment

image 176
image 176

Coincidentally, the United States is such an ultimate concern from outside, and its extreme pressure and sanctions unite all Chinese people. Regardless of whether they support the government or not, they have found that only by overcoming American oppression can they have a happy life and a bright future.

China has a population of 1.4 billion, and the number of university graduates in China far exceeds the total population of Japan. China has over 70 million science and engineering talents, which is a huge treasure trove of human resources.

For example, the Huawei Mate60 series, which was just released in September, under four years of extreme sanctions and pressure, more than 100 companies listed by the US Department of Commerce worked together to break the world’s strictest blockade and create 7nm chips with independent intellectual property rights and production capabilities. This is the first time in the history of a company or industry’s battle against the world’s only superpower.

image 85
image 85

In the chip disassembly video, the encoding is all 2035CN.

CN is easy to understand, it implies China. 2035 needs to be explained as it represents China’s national research plan. If completed according to the plan, China will become the center of the world’s manufacturing industry and advanced technology by 2035.

image 175
image 175

It goes without saying where the sword points

The local manufacturing of high-end chips means that the bargaining power of Chinese local chip consumers will be epic strengthened – the space for manufacturers to rely on exclusive technology to obtain excess profits will be compressed, and domestic companies that need chips to drive their own products will welcome a round of “technology driven cost reduction and efficiency increase” – industries such as AI, new energy vehicles, autonomous driving, etc. will benefit from this.

If this is just a celebration of the country and the company, it’s not a big deal. But Chinese consumers joined the frenzy, using their own income to support this domestically produced phone with fully autonomous and controllable technology, and even sparked a wave of frenzy.

image 177
image 177

This high-end phone with an average price of over $800 sold over 1.6 million units in just 6 weeks, according to Counterpoint data. It is expected that the remaining few units will be sold over 5 million units in 2023, with a full life cycle sales of over 20 million units. Such sales have boosted Huawei’s sales forecast for 2024- reaching 60 to 70 million units. You know, this is the single market of Chinese Mainland, and $800 is not a small amount for a country with an annual per capita GDP of $10000.

Due to the release time of this phone, which coincides with the visit of US Commerce Secretary Raymond to China, Chinese netizens have divided and joked about Raymond and the US government, and even spliced the phone’s advertising image with Raymond’s photo, using the phrase “Raymond is a Huawei certified spokesperson” to mock the US blockade for not being able to stop China’s technological progress.

image 178
image 178
image 84
image 84

In the capital market, after the release of mobile phones, there was a wave of enthusiasm in the stock market – various semiconductor related stocks have been strengthening all the way, and SMIC International has ushered in five limit up boards in the stock market.

China’s capital market has always been cautious, but now it is full of confidence. How did you say this confidence came about? I have not yet achieved satisfactory results in the journey of technology with my strength.

The wave of new products from Huawei shows this trend: consumers use money to support the products of consumer electronics manufacturers, and manufacturers can collaborate with upstream chip factories to strengthen production processes after withdrawing funds, gradually increasing yield rates, reducing costs, and polishing production processes to maturity.

Then the chip factory uses the money earned to encourage upstream equipment and material suppliers to upgrade and iterate. This is a virtuous cycle, driven by a large amount of capital and technological capital intensity, and an upward spiral towards development and progress.

In addition to continuously developing on the path of EUV,DUV, China is also exploring other surpassing and disruptive technologies, such as chip lithography factories.

image 174
image 174
image 83
image 83

To understand the great significance of this scientific device, it is necessary to first briefly understand some basic knowledge of lithography machines.

As the most core equipment in the chip production process, the lithography machine mainly works by passing light through a specific mask, shrinking it through the lens, and projecting it onto the wafer – the wafer is coated with photosensitive photoresist, and after the development program, a specific pattern can be left behind.

This is the basic process of building integrated circuits on chips by a lithography machine. But with the development of technology, chips have become increasingly complex – in a limited space only the size of a fingernail, people need to put billions of transistors inside.

Therefore, the requirements for lithography machines are becoming increasingly high, specifically for the light source of lithography machines. Because if we want to achieve more advanced process technology, we must have shorter wavelengths.

main qimg 5cd8775c5fcc7cb9197c3b7b1f0741c0
main qimg 5cd8775c5fcc7cb9197c3b7b1f0741c0

Early lithography machines used ultraviolet radiation emitted by mercury lamps, also known as g-line light sources, with a wavelength of 436nm.

The most advanced process capable of processing was 250nm. Later, with the development of technology, it was replaced with an excimer laser light source, which can emit deep ultraviolet light at 193nm wavelength, also known as an ArF light source – under the ArF light source, the most advanced manufacturing process is only 22nm.

But the problem is that technological development has no end. The 22nm process cannot keep up with the booming development of the consumer electronics industry, and people need more advanced chips. 7nm/5nm/3nm…

Although these data are common now, industry scientists have long anticipated this trend, and in fact, they have been launching impacts on these process nodes since the 1980s. The result of the impact is that there must be a new light source – the 193nm wavelength of the ArF light source is still too long to meet the requirements.

The final solution to this problem is the Cymer company in the United States, which provides an extremely complex light source – extreme ultraviolet light with a wavelength of only 13.5nm. The working principle of this light source is extremely complex: a high-energy carbon dioxide laser is irradiated on a dripping target of tin droplets with a diameter of only 20 microns.

This bombardment causes the tin material to instantly produce plasma, which emits extreme ultraviolet rays with a wavelength of 13.5nm – ultimately, these scattered extreme ultraviolet rays are gathered together through a complex lens group and projected onto the mask. This is the effort made by European and American companies and scientists to obtain an extreme ultraviolet light source with a wavelength of 13.5nm.

However, this type of light source actually has significant drawbacks. Firstly, it is too complex. In order to hit a tin target with a diameter of only 20 microns, a carbon dioxide laser needs to “shoot” 50000 times per second, and the evaporated tin target can also pollute the precision optical equipment inside the equipment – most importantly, the power of this light source is too low.

Under a 20kW laser bombardment, the radiation power generated by the plasma is less than 500W – not as powerful as a household refrigerator. Low power ultimately leads to impressive output; And the impressive output means that there is no scale effect and the cost remains high. But even so, this is currently the most advanced thing.

2023 10 21 16 q41
2023 10 21 16 q41

Now, it’s time to talk about our so-called “lithography factories”. Huairou HEPS and Xiong’an SSMB actually belong to the same category, as both study “synchrotron radiation”.

And synchrotron radiation is a type of light source. The history of synchrotron radiation light sources is very long: in 1947, scientists first discovered a phenomenon on electron synchrotron: when charged particles with speeds close to the speed of light deflect in an electromagnetic field, they emit electromagnetic radiation along the tangent direction of the motion trajectory – this is called “synchrotron radiation”.

This type of synchrotron radiation has many excellent characteristics, such as high brightness, wide energy spectrum, high collimation and polarization. Therefore, since the 1970s, scientists around the world have been studying light sources based on this synchrotron radiation. In Chinese Mainland, we have four generations of synchrotron radiation light sources: the first generation stands in Beijing (BSRF), the second generation stands in Hefei (HLS), the third generation stands in Shanghai (SSRF), and the fourth generation stands in Beijing Huairou (HEPS).

And Xiongan’s SSMB is actually within this category, but SSMB has taken a step further – Steady state micro bunching, a new light source solution developed by Professor Tang Chuanxiang’s team from Tsinghua University in collaboration with German and American scientists.

The specific technical details are too complex, so we won’t go into more detail. What we need to know is that the most attractive aspect of SSMB light source is that it can provide a variety of wavelengths of radiation, not to mention extreme ultraviolet rays with a wavelength of 13.5nm. Soft X-rays with a wavelength of 5nm are also effortless, and the maximum power can reach 4kW, far surpassing Cymer’s “tin droplet bombardment method”.

Therefore, the implementation of SSMB-EUV light sources is expected to help China achieve leapfrog development in EUV lithography.

2023 10 21 16 41
2023 10 21 16 41

At the same time, the SSMB accelerator light source can provide coherent radiation from terahertz to soft X-ray bands with high average power and narrow linewidth, and its time structure can be adjusted in a large range.

It can provide unprecedented tools and means for cutting-edge basic research and applied basic research in physics, chemistry, energy, environment, and other disciplines.

The SSMB accelerator light source has attracted widespread attention from the scientific and industrial communities With the deepening of physical research on SSMB storage rings and the mastery of their key technologies, SSMB accelerator light sources can be expected as light sources for the lithography industry and scientific research.

Their performance will also continue to improve, and the cost will gradually decrease. At the same time, the application of SSMB accelerator light sources will also be more widely expanded.

In summary, we can see that China’s scientific research team is not blindly following and catching up with the West, but is also developing the next generation of technology in a new way while following – this is not a “curve overtaking”, but a dignified linear acceleration overtaking.

I even think that the domestic lithography machine industry is highly likely to replicate the success of China’s new energy vehicle industry in the future: comparing the traditional “tin droplet bombardment” lithography machine is like comparing the engine and gearbox of traditional fuel vehicles.

Time is not waiting for us, and it is difficult for us to reach the most advanced level in Europe and America in a short period of time. But competing for the brand new SSMB light source is like competing for new energy vehicles, where everyone is on the same starting line, and we are even the leading one.

Therefore, I would like to end with Mao Zedong’s famous statement: “Imperialism blockades us, then blockade it. After ten to eight years of blockade, all China’s problems have been solved

1

What’s the most ridiculous way a co-worker thought they could get away with something?

‘Steve’, a new person at work (it was about his second or third week) called in one morning to say that his grandma had died. He was told he could take some time off, and get back to us in a few days and let us know how he was doing.

Soon afterwards, co-workers noticed that Steve had unfriended them on Facebook. All except for his line manager who, we can only presume, he forgot to unfriend.

A few days later, Steve posted on Facebook, saying that he’d been robbed.

By a prostitute.

In Ibiza.

When he returned to work, Steve was called into a meeting with the line manager, who opened with: “Sorry to hear about you getting mugged.”
By all accounts, it was a short meeting.

Credit where credit’s due, Steve didn’t waste anyone’s time trying to claim that the Ibiza trip had been an attempt to deal with his grief – apparently, he owned up straight away that a friend of his had got cheap last minute flights to Ibiza, and he’d made the dead granny up to get time off at short notice. He was still fired though.

US Suspiciously Activates Global Fragility Act To Intervene In West African States

How does the US have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations? How would the dominant society feel if Russia and China intervened openly in American affairs?

What’s the most ridiculous thing a coworker told on you to your boss for?

For refusing to help a coworker and making them miss a deadline.


That was the story the guy gave to his boss, who confronted my boss about it, who brought the other boss into my office to get to the root of the problem.

My boss: Did you get X for John Doe?

His boss: He said you refused to help him, and I don’t appreciate people preventing my team from getting their work done.

Me: I haven’t talked to John Doe in ages, but let me check my records.

~pulls up database of work requests which I’d built myself for just such occasions~

Me: Oh it looks like he caught me after a meeting 6 months ago and mentioned it, and I asked him to follow up with details so I would know what to get him… but he didn’t contact me again.

His boss: Oh. Okay, well, that clarifies things.

Me: I’m here whenever he he has free time, or, if he doesn’t want to call or come over, he can just submit a request, telling me what he actually needs, on our intranet page.


My boss was cool, he was used to me being blamed and fully approved of my tracking every interaction I had with everyone I worked with (internal and external)… I was the only female technical staff and was young enough to be the daughter of most of the folks I worked with.

His boss was cool with me after that point… he knew anyone smack talking me wasn’t doing their job and was trying to blame-shift and he’d whip them into shape. He ALWAYS stood up for his guys, so I had mad respect for that.

What was the worst infestation you’ve ever had in your house?

I set up a worm composter inside my home and ended up with a fruit fly infestation.

It was over a decade ago and I was really into gardening and soil biology.

I had a regular compost bin in my backyard, but it was taking almost a year for my kitchen scraps to turn into finished compost.

I wanted a way to make compost faster and worm composting seemed like the best solution.

From my research, it was supposed to be really easy. You set up a tray with moist bedding and kitchen scraps, and you let the worms go to town. What could go wrong?

Apparently, a lot.

Take one:

When my worm composter and red wrigglers arrived, it was fairly easy to set up.

I placed the worm bin in my back patio, and I checked on them every day for the next few days. The worms seemed really happy.

On the fifth or sixth night, we had a heavy rain. When I went to check on my worms the next morning, I discovered a bunch of worms outside the bin.

When I looked inside, the tray was waterlogged and the few worms left inside had drowned.

Apparently, the heavy rain had caused a bunch of rain to leak into the composter, causing the mass worm exodus of 2008.

Take two:

I ordered more earthworms, and my husband fashioned a rain cover for the composter from a trash can lid.

After I set up the worms, things were going really well for several weeks.

One morning, when I went to add food to the trays, there was a bunch of dried worms outside the bin and a horrible stench coming from the composter.

When I looked inside, all the worms were dead and had already started to decompose.

I had started the worm bin in early spring when the weather was still mild. But as the weather warmed up, the bin apparently heated up too much and literally cooked all my worms, causing the great worm extinction of 2008.

Take three:

There wasn’t any part of my patio that was completely shaded, and even though I had placed the bin in the shadiest part of my patio, it still got too hot.

So I came up with the bright idea that I would set up the composter in my basement. It was climate controlled, and I would never have to worry about rain.

I ordered more red wrigglers and after I set them up, things were great for several months. The worms were munching through the trays, and I was getting rich, finished compost that I added to my garden.


One day, we noticed we were getting a lot of fruit flies in the house. The next week, they grew into a few dozen. Before we knew it, they turned into a full blown infestation.

As I walked through the house, the little pests would fly into my face and get lodged in my hair.

We had fruit flies peppering all the windows, trying to get outside.

At night, we itched and scratched as fruit flies wandered around in the air and crawled on our bodies.

There were so many swarming around our ceilings, that they would trigger our fire alarms, setting them off at odd times of the day and wee hours of the morning.

We tried everything to get rid of them.

We set up vinegar fruit fly traps.

We strung sticky fly strips from the ceilings and pinned fly paper everywhere.

We withheld water from our plants, letting them dry out completely between waterings to kill off eggs.

But still, the population kept growing.

For the life of us, we didn’t know where they were coming from, or why they were multiplying so quickly. That is, until one day, when I went down to add food to the worm trays.

I was pulling a finished compost tray out when it suddenly clicked. I knew that fruit flies laid eggs in moist soil. But it wasn’t until that moment when it occurred to me that I had been making moist soil right in my basement.

Trays and trays of dark, rich soil, teeming with nutrients. What fruit fly mama wouldn’t want to lay eggs in that?

At that moment, I knew that I had to give up my worms.

I took the trays of worms out back, to the grassy community area behind my house. And I said goodbye to my earthworms, as I carried out the great worm liberation of 2008.

Wisconsin Chicken Booyah
(Belgian Beef, Pork, Chicken Stew)

Wisconsin Chicken Booyah is famous in the Fox River Valley region — Green Bay, Wisconsin. Booyah and beer go great together. Booyah King, Bob Baye, of Green Bay, Wisconsin, has been making Booyah since about 1946 in 100-gallon cookers.

chicken booyah
chicken booyah

Ingredients

  • 1 roasting or stewing chicken (about 4 pounds)
  • 1 pound beef stew meat, with bones
  • 1 pound pork stew meat, with bones
  • 1/2 cup minced parsley
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon rosemary
  • 1 tablespoon thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon sage
  • 4 cups quartered potatoes
  • 2 cups chopped onions
  • 2 cups chopped celery
  • 1 cup carrots, cut up
  • 1 cup green beans, cut up
  • 1 cup fresh peas
  • 1 cup skinned, seeded, chopped tomatoes
  • 2 lemons

Instructions

  1. Put chicken into a deep kettle with the beef and pork. Cover with boiling water. Bring slowly to a simmer, remove scum from the top, and add herbs and seasonings. Simmer very gently, covered, about 1 hour.
  2. Remove chicken and, when cooled, take meat form the bones and cut into pieces. Let beef and pork continue to cook until tender, 45 minutes to an hour more.
  3. Remove and let cool enough to remove meat from bones. Add vegetables to the broth and simmer 5 to 10 minutes.
  4. Grate lemon rind and set aside; remove white pith and seeds from the lemons, chop the pulp, and add to the broth. Taste for seasoning.
  5. While vegetables are still crisp, return the meat pieces to the broth to heat through. Serve in large soup bowls and sprinkle with the lemon rind.

Servings: 12 to 16

What office rule made you say “Really?”

Oh, this is a fun one…

The Committee on Office Ambiance.

I kid you not.

This particular company had a major office building with hundreds of employees. All the offices were decorated in shades of burgundy and green. It was quite pretty actually.

Anyhoo… due to changing departments, I was moved from 3d floor NE to 3rd floor SW. As I’m settling into my new space (which was identical to the old space except I looked south instead of north out the window), the head of the Committee On Office Ambiance appears.

“Oh no no no!” says she. “You aren’t allowed to have original artwork in your office because you are not a manager.”

I glance at the generic painting on the wall, one like every office had. It was ugly as sin. But apparently it was an original rather than a print. Miss Committee snatches that piece of original art and returns with a print, which I liked better anyway.

But it gets better.

So years go by and eventually the hydraulics on my chair gave out. The chair would periodically drop me to the floor without warning. Rather annoying as you can imagine.

I ask my boss for a new chair but he says he doesn’t have the budget for it. I ask to fix the chair but he says he doesn’t have the budget for that either.

This is ridiculous, I think.

So one night I stay late. In the dark of night, I hasten my broken chair down to another office and steal one from an empty. But I get caught! Manager sees me switching chairs. Yells at me because he doesn’t have the budget to fix a chair either, even if that chair is in an empty office. Foiled!

I wait. I plot.

Another night comes and again I wait until not a soul is in the building. I make my switch and I’m not caught! Victory!

Next morning, I’m all happy in my new chair until Miss Committee stops by.

“Oh no no no!” says she. “That’s a burgundy chair! You must have a green chair to match your office.”

Out goes my nice chair and back comes my broken one. Foiled again.!

Once again, I wait. I plot.

Darkness of night. I steal through the building with my broken chair seeking one of identical color. Find it. Make the switch. Life is good.

Until Miss Committee stops by again.

“Oh no no no!” says she. “That’s a manager’s chair. You are only allowed a peon’s chair.” Back comes my broken chair. Foiled yet again!

I’m bemoaning my fate to sit on the floor for the rest of eternity when the maintenance dude happens by. He tells me he has a fix for chairs like mine. He takes it away and comes back in a few with a fixed chair. He’d put a pipe in the stem. The chair can never be lowered again, but what do I care?

I’m finally happy. Miss Committee is finally happy.

I tell this to some folks in the plant. One day, mysteriously, a Dilbert cartoon appears on my desk. Poor Dilbert’s chair is broken and he tries to steal one, only the accounting troll catches him and sentences him to prison at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my (fixed) chair.

I dare anyone to come up with something stupider than this tale.

My employer asked me to sign a resignation letter. I refused. They cleaned out my office, but they didn’t fire me. What do I do?

I had this experience. My boss had already let me know they were eliminating my position due to budget constraints. I wasn’t upset; I had seen the writing on the wall, and I had included a 90 day severance notice in my contract, since the company was known for poor budgeting and finances. In addition to my being let go, I was going to have to let go of several members of the office staff as well. That was fine, but I asked for some time to put everything in order for doing so, at least a week. We didn’t have an HR dept, and being in California, there are certain steps that need to be taken when letting someone go.

The owners didn’t want to wait and insisted I inform people immediately, giving them a two week notice of their termination. Obviously, there were a lot of questions from the employees being let go about benefits and unemployment, which the owners were unprepared to answer. One of the employees complained to me in an email about how vague the owners were being in their answers.

Well, a couple of hours later, I received an angry phone call from the owner’s wife, because this employee had spoken ill of her, and I hadn’t defended her. She and her husband were reading everyone’s emails and were unhappy to learn the people they were firing had little good to say about them. The next call I got was from the owner, demanding I resign immediately in writing for not defending his wife. Of course, I laughed and refused.

His next tactic was to demand I leave home for an unspecified amount of time to work with him on the east coast on new projects. This was the week of Thanksgiving. I had one more card to play: the owner of the company thought it was hilarious to send explicit photos to upper management. I had asked him in front of witnesses to stop; it was a whole other level of weird. I refused to go to the East Coast or resign on advice of attorney based on the hostile sexua environment at the company.

The moment I mentioned sexual harassment and attorneys, the owners went on radio silence. They wouldn’t fire me, and I received zero emails from them for the rest of my 90 day term. I still had to come in to work, but I just sat in my office. I did start taking my private laptop and a hotspot, though, and completed my masters thesis on their dime. I think they thought they were punishing me by making me come in to work for the remainder of my time, but in reality, they gave me an air conditioned, private office to complete a major project. So, thank you?

US Forever War vs Russia and China

In 2014 there was a coup. Soon after, there was a massacre in Odessa (dozens of people were burned alive). Ethnic Russians living in Ukraine were treated as subhuman. Their language and culture was being oppressed. A civil war broke out due to the rise in ethnic tensions.

For 8 years the Ukrainian military was indiscriminately shelling civilians living in Donbas.

If Zelensky honored the Minsk agreement and pledged neutrality, none of this would have happened. The 8 year civil war would have ended and Donbas would have remained part of Ukraine. War is the ultimate failure of diplomacy.

Chinese Doctors

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

The doctor(s) keep telling me that high blood pressure is not a problem. They say “you cannot die from high blood pressure“. And this, of course, is the Chinese stance on the matter. That blood pressure is dynamic, and not static, that it goes up and it goes down. And that you want to manage your lifestyle to keep it in a relatively low state, but not to get upset if it raises up high.

Meanwhile the Western advice for what my current blood pressure seems to be is…

2023 11 20 20 40
2023 11 20 20 40

Which is quite different from the Eastern belief.

When I entered the hospital emergency room, my blood pressure was 214. The Western medical advice and warnings are…

2023 11 20 20 42
2023 11 20 20 42

I think that it was prudent that I went to the emergency room, no matter what the doctors say. And I most certainly did not want to endure a stroke or a heart attack.

You all, please be careful and safe.

Today…

In the military, have you ever seen a superior officer berate a junior officer for giving enlisted unnecessary grief?

In 1973 while a specialist (E4) in the 82d Airborne Division, I had to draw a travel pay advance to go TDY (temporary duty) for 179 days.

This was well before direct deposit or electronic payments.

We actually got paperwork processed then went to a teller’s window who dispersed cash.

When I arrived at the division finance center the waiting area was full to overflowing.

As I found a place along the wall to stand a soldier near me said, “You’ll be here a while. ”

He pointed to another soldier and said he had been there two days in a row before that day attempting to get an advance to go home on emergency leave.

Several other soldiers confirmed what he said. They too kept returning and waited their turn until time for the center to close, then they returned to their barracks and came back the next day.

After an hour or so with only a couple of troops called to the desk to be processed (by now it was late morning) a full Colonel arrived and signed the waiting list at the front.

As he took a place along the wall one of the soldiers told him he would have a long wait. Someone else told him about the guy who needed to go on emergency leave.

After about 30 minutes, the colonel went to the clerk at the sign in desk and asked to speak to his boss.

The clerk went to the back office area and returned with a senior NCO, E6 or E7 as I recall. The sergeant asked the colonel how he could help him.

The colonel replied, “I asked to see this clerk’s boss, the person in charge here.” The Sergeant said, “I’m his boss.”

The colonel then said “I want to see the OIC (Officer In Charge) out here, right now.”

He was very polite and spoke in a slightly lower volume than if in a normal conversation, however when he approached the sign in desk all conversation in the room ceased and we could hear what he had to say.

Full Colonels, O-6s, don’t like to be kept waiting.

The Sergeant (staff sergeant or sergeant first class) went to the office area and returned from a small separate office with a junior officer, a captain if I recall correctly.

Very respectfully the finance officer asked the colonel how he could help him.

The colonel said he was going on TDY and needed his advanced travel pay. The finance officer said, “Yes sir we’ll get you taken care of right away.”

The colonel then said “I need to leave tonight.”

“Yes sir, no problem.” was the reply. The colonel said “

All these men that were signed in before me are ahead of me. They will get their money before my advance gets processed. Are we clear on that, Captain?”

A very red-faced, obviously shaken junior officer, now sweating bullets, assured him everyone in the waiting area would be processed that day.

It was amazing how quickly paperwork was processed after that.

The guy waiting for emergency leave was called back almost immediately and the rest of us were taken care of very expeditiously in the order in which we signed in.

The colonel was looking out for men who weren’t directly in his chain of command but he made sure everyone was taken care of appropriately.

He could have “pulled rank” and left with his money in just a few minutes.

He could have made one phone call to division headquarters and had the officer and the NCOIC replaced, but a low key, on the spot correction resolved the immediate issue.

I’m sure the situation was discussed with both the OIC and NCOIC privately and in much greater detail later.

That was an experience I learned from and never forgot as I rose through the enlisted, warrant officer and commissioned officer ranks during my 24 years of service.

Chili Louisiana-Style

2023 11 10 15 09
2023 11 10 15 09

Yield: about 3 quarts

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 1 pound ground hot sausage
  • 2 medium onions, diced
  • 1 green bell pepper, diced
  • 1 whole clove garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
  • 1 (15 ounce) can stewed tomatoes
  • 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
  • 3 (15 ounce) cans New Orleans style kidney beans, drained
  • Louisiana hot sauce, to taste (optional)

Instructions

  1. Combine first four ingredients and brown in a large frying pan. Drain all excess fat.
  2. In a large slow cooker, combine all the remaining ingredients. Add the cooked meat mixture. Cook on LOW overnight.
  3. Remove garlic clove before serving.

When men have NOTHING left to lose. The masculinity crisis pushed too far.

Men being treated like second-rate citizens in the modern day is nothing new, but what happens when they end up being pushed to the very edge? Men were not designed to lie down and be taken advantage of. Eventually, all men rise up against oppression and take their final stand. This is a frightening world we’ve created.

https://youtu.be/aOnsLtmIPb8

On a plane, is it rude to ask someone to move to another seat so you can sit with your friends or family?

Literally this just happened to me a few days ago. I live in Virginia (USA) and I was flying to Athens, Greece. We booked the trip on a Saturday and left three days later, very last minute. Because it was an overnight flight and more than 9 hours we purchased the tickets in business class so we could recline to sleep. I like to read before sleeping so I purposefully selected (on Saturday) the window seat so I could lean up again the wall and look out the window while reading. As soon as I got onboard and got to my seat (hadn’t even sat down yet!) the woman in the aisle asked me switch with her husband who was seated on the middle row on the aisle. I said “No thank you, I’m good with where I booked”. I was polite but firm. Later during the flight she asked when I had booked and I said three days ago and she said that they had booked months before. What actually irritated me was that MONTHS went by where she (they) could have adjusted their seats to be together. Why then does it become MY problem to give up what I paid for. So yes, I find it exceedingly rude to ask someone to give up their seat.

P.S. Athens, Mykonos and Santorini were fabulous and I can’t wait to go back!

Why does the West vehemently back Israel?

They don’t

Get your facts straight

The West has a history of Anti Semitism that would make your blood run cold

I don’t mean just Uncle Heini

Jews have been deported enmasse from 8 European Countries from the 12th century to the 20th in their thousands, forced to live in Ghettos, speaking a slavish language Yiddish for the most part

Guess where they were treated better than in Europe?

Yep.

The Middle East , the Muslims

The Jews had their best time under the Ottoman Empire and with the Arabs. Both sides minding their own business

And once again who ruined it?

Yep

The West – in the form of the United Kingdom


This is Klaus Barbie – a Psycopathic Anti semite who sent many jews to their death in camps during WWII

He was the butcher of LYONS

Yep that’s France

Frenchmen, Poles, Czech and Ukrainians watched and silently endorsed the slaughter of Jews and making them soap , a term that our friend Jean-Marie Valheur takes such strong offense against

Auschwitz, Riga, Sachenhausen – they aren’t in Moscow or Beijing or Delhi or Tehran

They are in Europe


This gutter dreg who took orders from Himmler or his men and who had jewish blood on his hands

He got a standing ovation in Canada

Standing Ovation!!!!


So dont ever say the West backs Israel

The West wants a guard dog in the Middle East just like you want a Foreman in prison, in case the inmates get violent

The West believe the Middle East is their playground and to keep things in order, fund organizations and terror groups and keep organizing small and large scale chaos

Israel does what it’s told

As simple as that


The West will never see Israel as part of it’s Anglo Saxon heritage

Not even Eastern Europe whose idiots think they are a part of the grand alliance of the West

They aren’t

The West is US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Italy and Scandinavia

Every one else from Spaniards to Slavs to Greeks to Jews to Balts to Chinese to Indians to Malays to Serbs are expendable and will be dropped like hot potatoes if it suits the West

How powerful is the Triad? Does the triad engage in a gunfight with the Chinese police?

The Triads? They’ve long since become regular business men.

The last triad gunfights were in the UK around 1997 vs the Vietnamese gangs. The Vietnamese gangs had guns the Chinese triads didn’t.

The last gunfights in Asia were Yip Kai Foon. He had a type56 Chinese AK and rarely got into gunfights. He eventually did get into a gunfight with police and was hit in the spine and captured shortly after.

What is the fastest anyone has been fired from a job?

I got fired during my interview.

I had already been given the job. Been told my start date and salary. The owner was my brother in laws father.

I had sat and chatted with him one evening having just left the army. He told me the job was mine. But he had already arranged the interviews so told me he had to go through with them but inserted me into the interview process.

I mean this job couldn’t of been more nailed on. Ever.

Anyway. I was so blasé about it. I went into the interview not even thinking it was an interview and chatted away to him. Next thing I’m laughing and joking with him about my time in the army. About the crazy funny antics we got up to. Like skidding tanks. Trying to spin the tracks on tanks in the mud. Breaking so hard to see how much you could nose down.. how I run my colnel of the road snaking down the road in a tank. I thought I was hilarious. I thought he thought I was hilarious

This was for a job as an articulated truck driver.

I even walked out pleased with how it went. Absolutely clueless

Needless to say. I got a call next day saying I didn’t get the job.

The most ridiculous part of this story is that the penny didn’t drop for years for me. I just assumed he had only given me an interview to keep the family happy. That I was never going to get the job and was annoyed he’d wasted my time.

It was only 20 odd years later I had that awful.cringe moment. Like. Oh god! No! Did i actually go into an interview for a driving job. Bragging about how irresponsible a driver I could be. Yes. I did.

A need to rewrite marriage laws

The latest generation is simply not getting married, and will result in this…

Do the Chinese know how much worse a war with the United States would be for their country than for the Americans?

Terry, you have everything upside down.

China and the Chinese do not have to be reminded of the horror of wars. They have the century of humiliation that reduced their entire country to destitution and hundred of million dead. It is this existential awareness that is in fact going overdrive to ensure this never ever happen again.

On the other hand, the U.S. has never been touched by war because of geography – not WWI, not WWII. This is why after WWII it is only the U.S. and our industrial base coming out totally unscathed that allowed for our hegemony.

We’re the clueless.

And today, it is the U.S. who must be reminded that we have a peer military power. China has the capability to kick our ass if we try an offensive run at them and can accommodate in kind with a nuclear MAD. So, how is it that they will suffer more in case of war with us?

Have you ever gone for a date without knowing it was a date?

I went to a late afternoon house party at a neighbor who lived a block over from my house.

The host was wealthy. She had a beautifully designed Tuscan, two-storied house, with art of various styles and sizes adorning the walls throughout.

Although I was younger than most by decades, everyone was very welcoming to young buck Sean.

Everyone had brought a dish of food and they had some music playing.

My intention was to just stay for an hour, make the rounds, introduce myself to some neighbors and get to know them as it was rare to see a lot of these people that I shared close proximity with.

(For the record, I wasn’t a freeloader – I’d made brownies that I’d brought with me as well.)

There’s a crowd of us on the back porch talking. I’m in a circle with the host, her daughter, and 4 other people.

So out of the blue, the host says, “We’ll just let you two talk for a bit.”

And everyone evaporates into the house and here I am stuck on this back porch with her daughter.

It felt like I blinked and the world disappeared and I was locked in a closet with a stranger.

“So Sean – do you like it here in Tampa?”

You’ve got to be kidding me. This is a setup…..

She was pretty and friendly enough.

However she was not my type and I was not psychologically/emotionally prepared to be on a date that moment. My ex and I had broken up 2 days before this.

I got through it. We spoke and I stayed long enough so as not to be rude and/or hurt her feelings. Then I went home, curled up in a ball and sucked my thumb.

But hey – at least the experience made for an OK Quora answer.

My pain for your pleasure.

Did he handle this situation properly?

Making a day better

Yesterday, we had a horrible customer at the restaurant, he yelled at the bartender because we didn’t have club soda. The bartender explained we don’t have club soda because we don’t have liquor (just beer and wine) and therefore we don’t have a soda gun behind the bar. He didn’t like that.

Then he asked for a cheese that we don’t have, even after she read him the cheeses we did have – twice. She explained we don’t have that cheese. Then he LOST it and started yelling at her as if she was hoarding the world’s supply of this cheese for herself. Ridiculous.

He eventually left in a big huff and every other person within earshot of his temper tantrum was thankful.

Even after he left we still had a black cloud over us. Admittedly, we let this man and his behavior affect our day.

That is until an older gentleman and his adult son came into the restaurant and changed our whole mood. They are relatively new regulars (started coming in a month or so ago). The son has Down Syndrome and his father takes care of him throughout the day.

The father is very talkative, but his son (Peter) never spoke to us – he was always happy to eat his sandwich and bop along to the music (he really likes Grateful Dead songs).

As they were getting ready to leave, the father waved us over. We got to the table and Peter looked up at us and said…

“I’m happy here, I see you give out hugs, can I have a hug?”

We happily raised our hands to start the hug and he quickly pulled us in and gave us the strongest bear hug we’ve ever received in our life. He lifted us off the ground – anyone that has ever met us face-to-face will attest, that is no easy task.

Thank you Peter, with one (just shy of unbearably strong) hug, you made our entire day better (and gave us a free back (alignment) You’re an awesome man.

What are your thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict?

Regardless of the military outcome of the war in Gaza, America, and Israel are already big losers. In a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and a humanitarian corridor in Gaza, a staggering 120 countries voted in favor. Only 12 other states backed America and Israel. Massive protests are erupting in major cities around the world, from Sydney, London, Paris, New York to Washington, and across much of the Muslim world. Israel has the audacity to question UN’s legitimacy after it passed the unfavorable resolution and doubled down by demanding an apology from Secretary-General Guterres and his resignation for condemning Israel’s indiscriminate bombing in Gaza.

The biggest losers are, sadly, the Palestinian people. Consider these sobering facts. Fully 85% of Hamas fighters are orphans who grew up in hate, many as young as 12 who stand shorter than the rifles they carry. Thousands of children are buried alive in the rubble, and thousands of expectant mothers are denied medical care because hospitals are either bombed, overstretched, or critically short of essential supplies. It is a humanitarian disaster on a scale unseen since the last world war. Israel keeps killing while the whole world watches—in its own shameful Holocaust against the poor Palestinians.

Brushing aside the UN resolution, Netanyahu seems constitutionally incapable of compromise. Turkey calls him a war criminal and is crouching to strike, as is Iran. The 6th full-scale Israeli-Arab war looms.

When Hamas killed and captured Israeli civilians, they were crucified by Western politicians and pundits. But as Netanyahu made good his threat to reduce Gaza to rubble in a frenzy of murderous bombing that took the lives of aid workers, journalists, women, and children, world opinion swiftly shifted. Four European minnows plus eight tiny Pacific Island states like Fiji opposed the resolution, as their support can affordably be bought. Even traditional staunch Israeli and American allies voted to abstain.

The root cause of the conflict is Israel’s 50-year-long brutal suppression of Palestinians, who subsist as stateless people in their own country. In World War II, Jewish people won universal sympathy as the oppressed. Now, they have mutated into brutal oppressors themselves. Netanyahu has Nazified the Israeli military.

In a fatal strategic miscalculation, the US rushed warships to the combustible region, ostensibly to deter Iran from entering the conflict. But Biden is sending a wrong and strong signal that emboldens the bloodthirsty Netanyahu to carry out his Gaza massacre. America has failed to put Bibi on a leash and he is spilling oceans of blood.

This conflict has reshuffled the geopolitical deck, with Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon already engaging Israel sporadically. Heavy hitters like Turkey and Iran are crouching and poised to pounce. Russia, too, is entering the equation, airlifting supplies to Gaza and threatening all-out war if its planes are fired upon. The war in Ukraine is becoming a side-show, with NATO support possibly waning or wavering. China is seen as a potential credible mediator. America, by contrast, stands discredited as a meddler, aiding and abetting Israel’s unjust war against a downtrodden people. It is fast losing its halo as the world’s self-appointed policeman.

If the war widens, America and Israel will be fighting on multiple fronts. I see no long-term winners, even if Israel wipes Hamas off the map. Genocidal oppression breeds its own revenge and lethal vicious circle. That is why Netanyahu, the butcher of Gaza, is a danger to Israel’s legitimate existence. China is walking taller among nations. That explains the mild thaw in US-China relations during the Chinese foreign minister’s recent visit to Washington. Both Blinken and Biden notably toned down their anti-China rhetoric. With two wars raging, America reluctantly seeks dialogue to restore bilateral relations to a normal footing.

Wars are notoriously unpredictable. Who will emerge on the right side of history? No one knows. But one thing is certain: injustice is inherently unstable. Regardless of military muscle, with shifting allegiances on a crowded planet, world opinion matters.

Has someone ever been fired because of you?

Absolutely and I would do it again!

I was in line at a market and there was just one person ahead of me. The assistant manager was at the register and just as the person in front of me left, the regular cashier returned from her break.

Instead of simply walking away and letting her take care of me, he turned to her and began yelling at her because she was 3 minutes late coming back from her break! “How dare you take up my time, I am way more important than you and I could fire you for this!!” he screamed, as I was standing there waiting to pay for my groceries and leave.

The poor girl was incredibly embarrassed and turned to me to apologize and I lost it!

I looked him square in the eye and said “How dare you dress down a staff member in public! I manage a staff of 60 and would NEVER yell at my staff in front of anyone because it is incredibly unprofessional and embarrassing for every person standing in this line! Where is the manager?” I asked and proceeded to hunt him down.

I spent 10 minutes dressing down the manager in his office and told him that I would take it to the corporate level if that man was not promptly fired for his actions.

I found out later that he had been harassing this poor girl for weeks and no one had gone to the manager about it out of fear of retribution. I never again saw that assistant manger and later heard that he was fired on the spot after I left. The staff was so much nicer and happier without him there and I received a personal letter of apology from the manager that thanked me for letting him know what had happened that day.

BTW, I have done this 3 other times at different places and had the same outcome at all of them. I am not looking for someone to be fired when I walk in the door, but I know what it feels like to have a boss that thinks it’s okay to terrorize his staff and I refuse to allow it to happen in front of me ever again.

No one has the right to go after a staff member in front of customers. It is unprofessional and makes those in charge look like they are power hungry bullies who out of control.

Someone has to be the champion of those who are too afraid to speak because they are so afraid to lose their job, and being the loudmouth that I am, I am happy to step up!

A tiny tiny house

What is the cheapest thing you’ve seen a mega-rich person do?

I am a pediatric dentist. I had a patient who was autistic and had ADHD (male, 5 years) with a huge swelling on his cheek because of an infected tooth. Generally, 5 years old understand and sit on the chair, but because of his problems, he just wouldn’t sit and made a mayhem in the clinic. My assistant then restrained the child and we drained the pus.

Now, the mother started to cry when the payment part came. She told us she was separated from her husband and he wasn’t paying support. Because of the special child, she couldn’t even work, so please make it free.

Thankfully, my assistant knew her. She and her husband had two apartments worth 7 cr each in Mumbai and were in the middle of a deal worth another couple crores. My assistant was with the broker who had initiated the deal, so he knew for sure. But the lady wouldn’t budge. At the end, she paid 50 percent and left, and didn’t turn up for the next appointment.

Fast forward a month, the kid had swelling and pain again, because of the incomplete treatment. She pleaded to come, and promised to pay. But this time, because of the pain, the kid didn’t allow me to even have a look. He was feverish and in a bad condition.

So I told the parents (dad had also come) that the kid would need a treatment under general anesthesia in a proper hospital. We explained everything, they nodded with great interest, then asked for the cost. It was going to cost more than a lakh.

The dad straightaway asked me to slash my charges completely. Because, anyway I was earning from rest of the patients and didn’t really need the money. Then he asked for the cheapest hospital possible. I told him I don’t go to charitable places because of questionable hygiene, and lack of ICU. I don’t compromise with the safety. He then argued for an hour over the charges. I refused to budge. I have done numerous free cases, but I wasn’t going to do charity here. He then asked me to wait for two months as he had enquired about an insurance plan, and the wait period was two months. And give the kid medicines to stop the pain.

I was aghast. I told him the kid needed treatment now. All his teeth were in a bad shape. And medicines wouldn’t help after a while, and it wasn’t his decision to make. The medicines also have numerous side effects, if given unmonitored.

Then he started to blame me for the charges. I politely told him to go to a govt hospital where he would be treated for free. He declined, because they had a really long waiting list, just to be seen.

Lastly, he told me to go ahead, but that if his kid had any problem post treatment, he would see me in the court.

I folded my hands, and asked him to leave. Anyway I didn’t want to treat after such a long argument. And no one wants to work under threats.

He got furious and stormed out. We heaved a sigh of relief.

He kept calling for the next few days, bargaining. Even told me he would refer me ultra rich patients if I treated his boy for free.

No thanks, I said. I am happy with my patients who trust me.

So, a super rich man and his wife(at least for me) declining urgent healthcare for his kid to save money and insulting the doctor is the cheapest and most despicable person for me.

Cooter (Turtle) Stew

2023 11 10 15 14
2023 11 10 15 14

Ingredients

  • 2 to 3 pounds cooter*
  • 2 quarts water
  • 4 tablespoons cooking oil
  • 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 2 large onions, peeled and chopped
  • 2 tablespoons minced garlic
  • 10 peeled, seeded tomatoes or 2 large cans tomatoes
  • 1 small can tomato paste
  • 3/4 cup chopped celery
  • 1 cup green spring onion tops
  • 1 pinch each paprika and cayenne
  • 4 bay leaves
  • 1 1/4 cups good sherry (not cooking sherry)
  • 1 tablespoon molasses or brown sugar
  • 6 to 8 hardboiled eggs, chopped
  • 3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
  • Seasoned salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
  • 1/4 cup crumbled bacon

* Substitute dark-meat chicken, catfish, veal, or all three.

Instructions

  1. Cover meat with water and parboil on medium heat for 20 minutes.
  2. Set aside to cool and then trim to small chunks. Skim fat from broth and set aside.
  3. Heat oil to just short of smoking. Stir in flour and cook, stirring constantly, for 15-20 minutes to make a dark roux.
  4. Add big onions, garlic, tomatoes and tomato paste.
  5. Add 4 cups of reserved broth and meat and cook 30 minutes on medium-high.
  6. Add celery, spring onions, seasonings, bay leaves, sherry and molasses or brown sugar and cook 30 minutes. Add water to thin stew, if needed.
  7. Add chopped eggs and cook for 1 1/2 hours.
  8. Add potatoes and cook 20 to 30 minutes longer, until potatoes are tender.
  9. Taste and add seasoned salt and pepper.
  10. Sprinkle bacon over top. Remove bay leaves.
  11. Serve in large bowls with a salad on the side and hot bread, preferably corn bread made in a black iron skillet.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Big Cup of coffee

What is the best moment you witnessed in which somebody proved they weren’t “all talk”?

I watched an elderly man in San Francisco, on the tough corner of Eddy and Hyde streets, being threatened by a thuggish stranger on the street, and being told “I’ll kick your ass.”

The old man laughed, and said quietly, “No, you won’t.”

The thug made a quick move and the old man flinched. The thug laughed and said, “Scared?” The old man said, “Yes. And it’s not healthy to scare me.”

Suddenly the thug was on his back on the sidewalk and the old man was sitting on his chest and beating him across the face, still talking quietly, saying “You better not mess with strangers. I could easily kill you, but I won’t. But you’ll have enough pain so that you’ll remember this for a long [BAM] long [BAM] time.” [BAM]

The old man got up, dusted himself off, picked up his dropped belongings, and left the thug laying bleeding and dazed on the street.

The “Urban Alchemy” private security people across the street, stationed in the area as part of the city government’s last desperate attempt to maintain civil order in the anarchic “Tenderloin” district, didn’t even have time to react. It was over that quick.

I was in awe. My jaw literally dropped. I was walking ten feet behind them, I heard and saw everything. I’m pretty old myself, and I’m no stranger to street confrontations. I’ve never seen any such situation where the outcome was like that. Not ever.

And I’ve never envied one of the participants so much in my entire life.

Why was salt so valuable in ancient times and even used as a currency, when all you have to do to get it is let sea water evaporate in the sun?

It’s not that easy.

Yes, if you can get sea water to evaporate, you get salt. However, you need to get a lot of sea water to evaporate to get an appreciable amount of salt out of it. For that you need a lot of flat land by the seashore. It needs to be at or very close to sea level so that you can let the water roll in before you close off your salt pans. And you need a lot of warm, dry, sunny weather to evaporate the sea water and leave the salt behind. Land behind the sea shore rises too quickly? Can’t make salt. Too much rain? Can’t make salt. Storms driving large waves that wash over into the salt pans? Can’t make salt. Too cold or humid so evaporation is slow? Can’t make (meaningful amounts of) salt.

So it turns out that there are actually very few places where it’s actually feasible to make salt by evaporating sea water. So few that those very, very few places which can historically grew rich by doing it and salt mining could remain a viable competitor. Venice, for example, occupied a shallow lagoon backed up by marshes. The sheltered lagoon protected the marshes from large storm surges, the marshes weren’t too elevated to convert into salt pans, and the Mediterranean has a warm, sunny climate. Consequently, it first became wealthy in the salt trade. But you simply couldn’t do that around places like Genoa or Bruges, which had the wrong geography and/or the wrong climate. Sure, you can get salt out of sea water, but it’s a lot harder to do on an industrial scale with historical technology.

The lack of a father….

MM hospital run

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Well, I am in the hospital. In-patient.

I had a “blood pressure” event that scared the living shit out of myself and caused me to rush to the emergency room.

The night before, we had drank three bottles of Merlot wine. Now, Merlot is a very hard wine, not so much in alcohol, but it is a heavy wine, and the next morning, I felt “very off”. That feeling of being “off” persisted well into the afternoon.

By 3:30 in the afternoon, I made up some of my herbal tea. Which consisted of “yin Yang Hua herbs (“Horny goat weed”) and GuoGe grapes. You just keep on adding hot water to the mix. And I drank about six bottles of the tea. Perhaps six or seven bottles. Maybe three liters total. It made me feel better.

It always does.

Anyways, I started to chew on some of the leaves and swallowed some of the GuoGe berries. And about a half of an hour later, I started to feel really “off”

My body felt really “wrong”.

So I went and checked my blood pressure. It is normally at 121.

I read 142. High.

High.

2023 11 20 20 40
2023 11 20 20 40

So I calmed down. Waited 15 minutes.

Measured it again.

158. Uh oh!

Gulp.

It was rising rapidly. Too rapidly. Too fast.

So I waited twenty minutes, and checked again.

175.

Sheeeeet!

I told ms. mm, “we need to go to the hospital now”. She started to protest, “but I have xxxxx”. I said “I don’t care.” And grabbed my keys. And the mrs and kid followed behind.

Luckily the hospital was down the street and we parked in front of the emergency room, as it was around 5 o’clock Sunday night.

I got in. They measured my vitals.

  • Blood Pressure = 214
  • Body temperature = 39.5 C
2023 11 20 20 42 2
2023 11 20 20 42 2

Both too high. I was admitted, and checked in. The staff took care of me.

Anyways, things are under control now, but I have to stay in the hospital for a while as they watch me.

My temperature is back to normal, and my BP is going down. The doctors tell me that I worry too much, high BP will not kill me. And they put me in the old people wing of the hospital due to my age.

LOL.

They nurses look at me… and then to my wife…, and four-year old and go “really?”

I don’t look like the rest of the folk in this area. And frankly, they are scaring me. Old 90 year old men on death-beds, and 80-year olds with health issues.

But I’ll get out once things stabilize.

My heart checks out fine. CT scan of my skull is fine too, though the doctor wanted to know what those seven black beads were. LOL! He chuckled at my answer, and I joked about it too.

Anyways…

Don’t fuck around with your health!

Anyways, the doctor says that my worrying about my situation only made things worse. All I was doing was drinking red wine, and taking Chinese herbal teas and that there was nothing that I should worry about.

Nothing. Normal behaviors.

Blurred vision, however. Dizziness, however… yeah… go straight to the hospital, but aside from that. Dontworryaboutit.

I’ll give you all updates as time moves on, but I have a lot of things on my plate that this particular moment in time, and I have to jiggle my medical emergency with all sorts of other personal, professional concerns. So I’m at max right now.

Today…

Attractiveness as rated by different sexes

How and where was Huawei able to manufacture the 7nm chip that powers the Mate 60 series? It is the subject of intense speculation within the US government. Why does the US focus on it? Will it reignite the ongoing US-China tech cold war?

Huawei did a miracle, defy traditional convention and believe, it had done the impossible. It was beyond US and DOC imagination, it is still a mystery to them, they have yet to figure out how Huawei did it.

The US banned Huawei access to EDA design tool, practically cut Huawei or Hisilcon from designing the chip although Hisilcon was able to design chip of 3nm using US EDA design tool before the ban.

Therefore Huawei and Hisilcon need to come out with their own EDA tool which they did successfully in unprecedented record time.

With its own EDA tool Hisilcon can proceed to design 7nm chip that SMIC can fabricate.

The other breakthrough was the fabrication of 7nm chips with DUV machines which according to industry is not possible, DUV standard limit is to produce chip up to 14 or 10 nm. 7nm chip require EUV machine, China or SMIC was banned from getting EUV machine.

BUT SMIC with corporation from Huawei did successfully produce 7nm chips by using available DUV machines which they call them N+2 chip. It was reported Huawei seconded more than 300 engineers or scientists to jointly resolve the bottleneck of using existing DUV machines to produce the require N+2 chips, an unbelievable breakthrough.

Another mystery is how can SMIC mass produce N+2 chips, initially, market was under impression, Huawei Mate 60 pro will be limited in supply, but Huawei surprised the markets by introducing 3 more models and look like the 7nm chip had achieved mass production able to meet sale volumn requirement.

The US and allies are panic now, Qualcom sale of chips to China contribute more than 60% of their sales, may risk losing the markets, ASML is panic too, China and Huawei are likely to breakthrough on EUV machine soon. US EDA suppliers risk losing Chinese markets permanently, the biggest risk is China may soon flood the markets with competitive chips killing US and allies chip industries.

The US and allies need to worry beyond just Mate 60 pro.

周杰倫 Jay Chou【Mine Mine】Official MV

What do you make of the comment by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat that “the most important bilateral relations in the world is that between the US and China”?

Of course.

The U.S. will lose considerable ground and opportunity if it continue behaving like it is doing now.

What you need is a leader like Newsom the California governor. He sets aside biases and US media narratives to visit China and sees for himself what opportunities the U.S. is missing by having senile leaders like Trump and Biden.

The U.S. can only stay strong if it takes its head out of the sand. China is not just a big market it is humongous and growing rapidly. China alone is worth more than your next 5 biggest market. These nonsense of decoupling or de risking is having the opposite effect. You are not cutting China out. The U.S. is being decoupled from the world instead.

I suspect that Americans will throw out all China and Chinese haters out of your government soon. That is the first right step for the U.S.

GLICHERY – SEA OF PROBLEMS (PHONK)

Creole Flank Steak with Sautéed Vegetables and Cheese Grits

creole flank steak
creole flank steak

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

Flank Steak

  • 1 beef flank steak (about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds)
  • 1/2 cup red wine
  • 2 tablespoons lime juice
  • 3 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon Creole seasoning
  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

Okra and Carrots Sauté

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/2 cup onion, chopped
  • 1/2 cup carrots, chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon coriander
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/2 cup tomatoes, chopped
  • 16 ounces okra, cut into 1 inch pieces

Creole Grits

  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 tablespoon Creole seasoning
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup quick-cooking grits
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 cup jalapeño jack cheese, shredded

Instructions

Flank Steak

  1. Combine red wine, lime juice, garlic, Creole seasoning, crushed red pepper, salt and pepper in a food-safe plastic bag. Add steak, close bag securely. Marinate in refrigerator for 6 hours to overnight.
  2. Remove steak from marinade; discard marinade. Place steak on grid over medium, ash-covered coals. Grill, covered, 11 to 16 minutes (over medium heat on preheated gas grill, 16 to 21 minutes) for medium rare (145 degrees F) to medium (160 degrees F) doneness, turning occasionally. Allow to rest.

Okra and Carrots Sauté

  1. Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the onions, carrots, cumin, coriander and chili powder. Sauté for 3 to 5 minutes or until the onions are transparent. Add the tomatoes and cook for 1 to 2 minutes.
  2. Add the okra and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes or until the okra is cooked through.

Creole Grits

  1. In a Dutch oven combine water, milk, Creole seasoning and salt. Bring to a boil.
  2. Slowly add grits to hot liquid stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low and cover, stirring occasionally, about 5 to 7 minutes.
  3. Remove from heat, stir in butter in cheese until melted.
  4. Slice grilled steak against the grain. Serve with vegetables and grits.

Nutrition

Per serving: 569.53 Calories; 256.68 Calories from fat; 28.6g Total Fat (13.2g Saturated Fat; 0.1g Trans Fat; 1.1g Polyunsaturated Fat; 8.6g Monounsaturated Fat;) 97.9mg Cholesterol; 1192mg Sodium; 45g Total Carbohydrate; 5.3g Dietary Fiber; 38.5g Protein; 4.3mg Iron; 964mg Potassium; 9.9mg Niacin; 0.7mg Vitamin B6; 3.6mcg Vitamin B12; 6.6mg Zinc; 35.5mcg Selenium; 129.3mg Choline

This recipe is an excellent source of Protein, Iron, Potassium, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Zinc, Selenium, Choline; and a good source of Dietary Fiber.

Why do many people live beyond their means/income?

Because the goalposts have been moved.

50 years ago, it was perfectly reasonable to have a huge house, 3 kids, a car, and go on holidays at least once per year. On a single income.

Today, working 2 jobs, living in a small room, having no kids, taking the bus, never going on holidays, but sometimes getting a latte or an avocado toast… is considered to be an extravagant lifestyle, filled with needless luxuries.

Give it another couple of decades, and random stuff like getting 8 hours of sleep will be declared to be some kind of reckless indulgence, irresponsible behavior that youngsters should avoid if they ever want to be able to afford housing.

Husband Shocks Mrs By Laying Down The Law About The Marriage, Lack Of Bedroom Fun, Etc (She Obeys)

In today’s video, I go over an email sent from a subscriber who shares his story of how his once great marriage went down the tubes after unfortunate life events caused him to stop being the masculine leader he once was.

Finally after gaining back some of his manhood, he confronts his wife about her years of bad treatment of him and makes it clear that there are going to be some immediate changes or it’s over!

This is a great story about how men need to always remain in their masculine (even when things are difficult) as well as be the leader or things will quickly go to hell in a handbasket in their relationships.

What was the best April Fool’s prank played on you/you played on someone else?

Sixteen years ago, I got a job assignment 100 miles away for one year. My newly married daughter and son in law (Andy) moved into my house and I got an apartment in the new city. I came home most weekends. Before I left, I asked Andy if he wanted to keep cable for the year and pay for it. He said no and I cancelled it. Interestingly my bill with Comcast reflected the cancellation but the house still had service.

A few months go by and now it is April 1. I call Andy and leave a voicemail. I say that the Michigan State Police contacted me. They are investigating a three state cable theft ring. They claim my home is stealing cable, there is an illegal, third party bridge device affixed to home and the device has Andy’s fingerprints on it. I am in the clear because I have not been living there. This is all fiction.

Next, Andy is out and goes to my ex wife’s house where he and my daughter had been living previous to my house. A younger daughter answers the door and tells Andy that a police officer came to the house asking for him. She gives him a name and phone number the imaginary cop left. Andy is confused and then listens to my voicemail. Now he is freaked out. He calls the number and it rings to the desk of the woman who works next to me. She sees the incoming number and answers “Kent County Jail”. Andy identifies himself and tells her a bit of the story. She says she will transfer the call to the detective.

The call rings to my desk and I answer Hi Andy. April Fools.

I never left his side

What are some reasons the Cold War started?

Everyone keeps saying “1945” but the genesis of the distrust between the Soviet Union and the United States goes back way before that, and it’s impossible to understand why the two sides got engaged in proxy wars and a disastrously expensive arms buildup without going back to the Russian October Revolution in 1917.

It’s 1917 and the Russian Empire is on the ropes due to some spectacularly bad military and civilian leadership that saw Tsar Nicholas actually trying to lead troops in the field. His government completely collapsed that spring.

However, the provisional government, led by a faction called the Mensheviks (“Minority”) made one critical error. They were dependent on Great Britain, France and the United States to prop up their finances on the condition that Russia continue their war effort. The Mensheviks were no better at trying to fight the Germans, Austrians and Turks as the Imperial forces were and Germany decided to try to destabilize the new government by allowing passage to a Communist who went by the pseudonym of “Lenin” who was living in Geneva at the time who knew an opportunity when he saw it.

Lenin managed to get the support of worker’s unions, known by the Russian name “Soviet”, and the armed forces and took power in Moscow. He then consolidated power and ordered his foreign minister to end the war with the enemy powers as soon as possible no matter what it cost them. Russia conceded massive amounts of land and Lenin planned for what he knew was coming next – a civil war with the various factions that remained in Russian territory and breakaway states.

Naturally, the Western Powers were appalled, not only by the fact they now had to fight the Germans and Austrians alone (the war dragged on for another year) but that Lenin was making good on his promises to destroy the aristocracy and redistribute land and factories to the new “Soviets”.

The Russian Civil War, which lasted from 1917 to 1923 was an absolute mess with dozens of factions getting involved in addition to the primary fight between the Bolshevik “Red Army” and the “White Movement”, a loose coalition of anti-communist forces. Into this mess jumped in Great Britain, France and the United States, who sent personnel and support to the White faction.

So, after half-a-million people were killed and another 2.5 million people were wounded, the Reds were clearly on top and ready to rebuild the country. Unfortunately, the currency was worthless and the economy (once the world’s 4th largest) was in the toilet. What made it worse was that the economy was still largely agricultural at this point, and the Soviet Union still had to feed itself.

And absolutely no-one was willing to help them. Despite the Soviet Union being the de facto government of most of the old Empire (the Baltic States and some other areas remained independent) it would be another ten years before the western governments would recognize the new government, at which point the Soviet Union still struggled to recover its economy while it made great strides in industrialization. Sure, the west would buy Catherine the Great’s diamonds, but money was scarce.

In 1924 the secretary of the party, who had by manipulating meeting attendance and taking control of the bureaucracy rose to the head of the government, was clearly in charge with his rivals fleeing the country (to no avail, he had them hunted down). Joe Steel, or in Russian, “Josef Stalin”, had been a Georgian seminary student (he was very bright) and former bank robber (to finance communist party operations) but despite his accomplishments still spoke Russian like a Georgian and had a massive inferiority complex, a suspicious streak a mile wide, and was absolutely ruthless. When he died thirty years later, his servants were too afraid to check to see if he was actually dead.

But the western powers, this time including the newly restored Nazi Germany, were still hell bent on anti-Bolshevik rhetoric. The Nazis were hardly alone in this – the U.S., France and Great Britain were also hostile to communists during this period.

And it’s in 1939 when Stalin makes one of the greatest blunders in world history – he trusts Hitler. As his foreign minister later said, Stalin trusted no-one, except the world’s greatest liar. At first, it seemed to be a good idea as Russia seized the eastern half of Poland. However, just two years later, the Germans were on the move and invaded the Soviet Union. The irony is that Great Britain had excellent intelligence and was able to pin down the date of the invasion. They weren’t stupid and passed the information onto Russia. However, Stalin thought it was a ruse to get them to attack Germany. The Tsar’s attack on Germany in 1914 was what led to the war with Germany and he didn’t think it was a good idea to repeat history.

Nevertheless, their common enemy pushed Great Britain and the Soviet Union together as the British provided what they could to the Russians. When America entered the war later that year they got in on the game too and the three sides realized they had to work together to destroy Nazi Germany.

But throughout this period the three sides still had a lot of distrust of each other, and there were even cases where the United States and Great Britain were at odds.

Percentages agreement – Wikipedia

Russian and Great Britain’s plan to carve up Europe after the war. The U.S. wasn’t in on it.

But distrust over each other’s post war motives continued. By the time Truman told Stalin about the atomic bomb, Stalin knew about the project and even before that, had known about the potential (Russian scientists had independently hit on the idea). Moreover, during the period from 1941–1944 and D-Day, the Russians were carrying the bulk of the fight against the Germans and suffering terribly for it while the British and Americans were safely making plans in England. Stalin persistently pressed the matter about when the western powers would open a second front, and by the time they did so in June 1944 it was clear the Germans weren’t going to win the war anyway. American involvement didn’t win the war, but it certainly shortened it.

Things didn’t get better after Germany’s defeat. Russia turned its attention to Japan and Japan, in another great historical miscalculation, figured they could avoid an occupation by using the Russians as intermediaries with the Americans. Instead, the Russians moved their forces east and invaded Manchuria the same day the first atomic bomb fell.

The importance of this delay cannot be overstated as it allowed Russia to occupy Manchuria and the northern half of the Korean peninsula, both of which were under Japanese occupation. Meanwhile the Americans grabbed the southern part of Korea and Japanese occupied Taiwan. Russia’s occupation allowed safe haven for the Chinese and Korean communist parties.

Still, the Russians, Americans, British and French still worked together to get things done, but by 1949 it was clear that the relationship was severely strained. One of the big issues was the flight of European capital to the United States after the war. This was clearly against the laws of the countries where the capital flight had taken place, but instead of repatriating the capital to their original countries, the American government decided to provide replacement capital (commonly called The Marshall Plan). Stalin outright refused to participate in the plan and again blamed capitalists for the now near total lack of usable money in his sphere of influence.

The western powers managed to keep the Russians from extending their influence into Austria or Greece, but it was clear Stalin had a great plan to prevent western friendly governments from getting influence in the regions he occupied. The first was his refusal to clear Warsaw of German troops as the Polish government-in-exile in London planned to return. This gave him the opportunity to set up a new Polish provisional government. East Germany’s new leaders were found by using the easiest denazification tactic after the war – finding German communists who had been forced into exile or concentration camps.

After the Soviet attempt to blockade the western powers zone in Berlin in 1948, everyone quickly got used to the new world order with NATO in the east with the remaining democracies and the Warsaw Pact consisting of communist puppet governments in Russian occupied territory. A couple of places like Yugoslavia and Albania were both communist and mostly independent of Russia, but it was a delicate balancing act.

At the same time, it was clear the Republic of China was in serious problems and the Kuomintang fled to American controlled Taiwan as the Chinese Communist Party managed to do what the Republic of China never did – consolidate the country’s military forces into a single unit and take control over all the countryside. The Soviet Union immediately recognized the new communist government of China, but the western powers instead continued to back the Kuomintang despite the fact they no longer controlled any of the mainland.

So in the end all of this really goes back to that time in 1918 when the western powers refused to accept communism despite its immediate popularity in the new Soviet Union, and gave birth to a paranoid sociopath who could neither trust nor be trusted. The two sides continued to be suspicious of each other for the next forty-five years as both spread misinformation about the other in order to justify their tactics.

Do not be fooled

What is the strangest thing you’ve seen someone return to a store?

Someone attempted to return a steel entry door to the store I worked at. I refused the return.

“You have to take this door back! I know the returns policy here!”

“No, I do not. We only accept returns of unused items.”

“And how do you know it isn’t unused?”

“Okay…
It’s painted green on one side.
It’s painted white on the other.
The tape from where someone hung a picture on it is still there.
The jamb on one side is nine years older than the jamb on the other, and it’s busted out where the lock bores are.
The jamb side of the hinges is a different color than the lock side.
It’s warped.
The brickmould around the outside is three different colors. (There are three pieces of brickmould on a door.)
There’s a big dent in the area of the lockset where someone kicked it in.
Which says to me that someone came in, bought a new door to replace this one, removed the parts from the new door that he needed, reassembled the rest of the parts into a facsimile of a door, then sent you down here with it to try to return it. And, as I said, I’m not going to accept the return.”

Naturally, he demanded to speak to a manager…who took one look at the door, asked the guy “you’re kidding, right?” and walked away.

On edit: Here’s one that was actually justified. In North Carolina, you can buy bales of pine needles. The product is called Pine Straw, and people use it in landscaping. A woman brought back a bale of it – something that NEVER happened.

“Reason for return?”
“There’s a live rattlesnake in it.”

We called Animal Control. They sent a truck over to pick up the bale. Before hauling the snake off, they told her that next time she gets a free rattlesnake with her pine straw, she needs to call Animal Control and not try to haul it back to the store. They returned two hours later; they hauled the snake twenty miles out in the woods and turned it loose.

Second edit: A customer I knew pretty well and got along with (he was a contractor) brought in a wooden gable vent. A very, very used wooden gable vent…the house it was in was probably 50 years old. So I got called to Returns. “No. Definitely used, and we don’t sell these anyway. The cobwebs on this thing probably weigh more than it does.”

“But I bought it here fifteen years ago!”

“Sir, I can guarantee you didn’t buy this here fifteen years ago.”

“How can you guarantee that?”

“The store is only eleven years old.”

He was just fucking around; he wanted to see if I’d throw it away for him because it wouldn’t fit in the dumpster he rented. That, I would do.

Two options

I just got fired. Now my former boss (the one who let me go) is asking me where some important documents are. How should I respond?

I went through this myself and I was the biggest idiot in the world for thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I’m nice and give the info my “dear friend” would change his mind. HAH!! The fucker had his errand boy bother me for days about all the shit that they never fixed or gave me the correct info to fix it properly and they they denied the fact that I worked 7 days a week and only paid me for one week instead of the 2 it should of been. His piss poor excuse was that his girlfriend the office manager said I wasn’t owed it. I wonder how she would of felt if I told her about the offer of an apartment and $3k a month to be his girlfriend and how much he hated being with her and was disgusted at the thought of having sex with her. DO NOT DO IT! If you are offered payment to do it and you need the money, tell them the money has to be in your account before you tell them anything, otherwise let them look for it themselves. Basically, fuck them, they fired you and now are proving they need you. It’s bullshit!

What is the worst case of a spoiled person you have ever seen?

In 9th grade, during PE class we were just sort of milling around waiting for class to start. The guys were all standing around discussing chores.

Our PE teacher was a southern blue collar kind of guy. He worked as a fixer upper worker on the weekends too, repairing homes, bathrooms, kitchens etc. This is a guy who probably earned every penny he ever spent.

And here he was stuck in a room with a bunch of spoiled rich kids.

He jokingly said something to the effect of, “Man, you guys are all spoiled. I bet your parents pay you to do chores.”

And all the guys start nodding yes. “Oh yeah, my mom gives me $20 to mow the lawn.”

Another says, “I get $5 to clean my room.”

The teacher had poorly concealed disgust on his face.

For the record, I didn’t get paid for chores. Again, I’m from a military family. Being paid for chores is preposterous.

I cleaned my room or else.

Why did China’s Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng say that the US wants to establish China as an ‘imaginary enemy’ to divert attention from domestic problems and suppress China?

Of course.

It is cheap political propaganda that gain popularity but in reality costly to the U.S. government and the Americans livelihood.

To me and indeed the world. The U.S. is a broken nation that has tremendous internal issues to the point of being unsustainable and imploding politically and socially. There is far too many unworkable issues facing the U.S. such as racialism, poverty, homelessness, disparity of income, high inflation, bankrupt cities, random street shooting and unworkable. Health care policies.

Most U.S. politicians simply ignore those unsolvable issues and distract the attention of frustrated citizens by ignoring those problems through creating imaginary adversaries like China, Iran or Russia. Their media are used to demonise these nations instead of facing its own domestic issues.

What is the last thing you want your pilot to say?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem with our wings,” announced the pilot.

True story. This happened to me last week.

The plane was making its final approach to Houston Intercontinental Airport. Suddenly there were three consecutive “ding-dong” sounds in the main cabin.

I saw both air hostesses run from the back of the plane to the front and grab the phone. They talked for a few seconds to the pilot, then the pilot came on with an announcement.

We have broken off our approach. We have a problem with our wings. The leading edge slats won’t come down. We have declared an emergency and we will be landing shortly,” he said.

Fire trucks will be waiting for us on the runway. It’s probably going to be a hard landing because we can’t slow the plane down as we normally would. We’ll see you on the ground.”

That was it.

Immediately the air hostesses started preparing everyone for the emergency. Uncertainty filled the cabin. Everyone of us felt vulnerable and scared.

I reflected on how fragile we are. There we were, trapped inside a metal tube flying at a high speed, … nothing to be done, simply pray and trust that everything would be okay.

The wind shook the plane from one side to the other. I could sense how the pilot was trying to find the optimal speed to land, not too fast, yet enough to fight the winds.

I could finally see the runway through my window. We all braced for the impact and as soon as we touched the ground, the pilot hit hard on the brakes.

The captain did an amazing job. We cheered and clapped for his fantastic landing.

Fire trucks followed us to the gate.

It was not fun. That leading edge slat on the front of the wing is responsible for the addition of a few more grey hairs to my head.

My first — and hopefully my last — emergency landing!

Making a sandwich is a problem

Is it a crime to say in China, “Xi Jinping is destroying China. He must be kicked out! He is a dictator!”? In the West, saying such things about one’s president is perfectly normal.

Nobody cares about you.

  1. You need to prove your idea carefully and defend your opinion facing a tsunami of debates, otherwise, no one believes in you, or they just took you as a psycho. Persuading Chinese people is a hard task, America tried every means to turn Chinese people to think so in past 30 years, but worked badly. And thanks to Western anti-China propaganda, Chinese people are well trained in confronting such speeches.
  2. China has a lot of CCP-haters, Western-lickers, retro-nationalist (hate their own nationality and hoped to be colonized by the West again), they spoke much more hilarious speeches than you.
  3. Again, if someone making speech only providing his own opinion but lacking details, usually means the speaker is less educated or lack independent rational thinking.

Why I choose to raise my child in CHINA and not the WEST

I found a practically new Porsche 911 that was declared a total loss by an insurance company because water came up to the floor. A third party says it’s in perfect condition and wants to sell it. Should I buy it?

Oh. Oh dear god.

Any car that’s been written off for water damage is a car you want to stay as far away from as possible. Insurance companies know what they’re doing, and there’s a reason they declare water-damaged cars total losses even when the car looks and acts fine.

Look, Porches are expensive, temperamental, finicky beasts at the best of times, with perfect care and proper maintenance. A water-damaged car that insurance has declared a total loss? Jesus.

No. The third party is lying to you. It is not in perfect condition. Dear God no. If you buy it, you are not purchasing a car. You are purchasing a world of hurt. You are purchasing pain everlasting. You are purchasing a demon of the night, a thing that will present you with repair bills you never knew could be so high and so frequent at such totally unexpected times. Every seal, every moving part, every bit of metal on that car is suspect, and it will fail in interesting ways you wouldn’t think possible.

“Perfect condition” my left testicle. Right now, as I type this, corrosion is at work in every tiny nook and cranny of that car, eating away at its heart. As the seller hopes you’re too technically naive to realize. Don’t think of it as a car, think of it as an opportunity to saddle yourself with an expensive albatross that will be a source of the most magnificent pain for years to come.

Snowgraff – 10 Mentions Parallèles feat. José (Clip Officiel)

Israel Minister Amihai Eliyahu: Dropping a Nuke on Gaza is “An Option.”

World Hal Turner

Israel’s Minister Amihai Eliyahu says that dropping a nuclear weapon on the Gaza Strip is “an option.” Given the volume of explosives already dropped on Gaza, it exceeds the explosive power of Hiroshima.

Asked in a radio interview about a hypothetical nuclear option, Eliyahu replied: “That’s one way.” His remark made headlines in Arab media and scandalised mainstream Israeli broadcasters.

Neither Eliyahu or his party leader are in the streamlined ministerial forum (War Cabinet) running the Gaza war. Neither would they have inside knowledge of Israel’s nuclear capabilities – which it does not publicly acknowledge – or the power to activate them.

“Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality. Israel and the IDF (military) are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents. We will continue to do so until our victory,” Netanyahu’s office said.

Eliyahu also voiced his objection to allowing any humanitarian aid into Gaza, adding that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza” and that Palestinians “can go to Ireland or deserts.”

Hal Turner Editorial Opinion

I am almost apoplectic at this remark by Minister Eliyahu.

It is unclear to me which is worse: His remark, or the reality that his country has dropped more conventional explosives on Gaza than the explosive power of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb; and Israel still isn’t winning.

Can any of us imagine a military that is so ineffective, they would have to resort to using a nuclear bomb against an “enemy” that has NO ARMY?

How pathetic must the Israel Defense Force actually be that someone would even consider using a nuclear weapon?

One wonders if Minister Eliyahu has even considered what the rest of the world might do if Israel actually did something like that?  Would the rest of the world allow even ONE Zionist – including Christian Zionists – to continue living anywhere on this planet if they did something like that?

How could the world ever trust any such person to remain breathing if they chose to use a nuclear bomb against an enemy that has NO ARMY?

I think this remark by Minister Eliyahu shows a gigantic, deep-seated, severe, mental sickness.  Win at all costs, no matter what.

The remark strikes me as what we get when we bring up entire generations of people with “Participation Trophies” so they “all win.”  

In real life, in sports, in business, in relationships, someone wins and someone loses.  It is the reality of human existence.

But those who were brought up with Participation Trophies, have never had to learn to lose.  They never learn to deal with it.

And it now appears to me, this is the result:  A man who is so bent over possibly losing, he is willing to use nuclear bombs against an enemy that has no army, in order to satiate his need to “win.”

This remark indicates to me, that this particular Minister (and maybe a whole slew more) is a danger to himself and to other people.

How many more  such people with such maniacal ideas are elsewhere in Governments around the world?

Maybe it’s time to find out – before such a maniacal idea spreads.

It’s a different race completely

Have you ever gotten roadside help from somebody unexpected?

Quite the opposite. One of the right side 110psi tires on my 24 foot living-quarters horse trailer blew out spectacularly on the interstate in Wyoming. It caused quite a bit of damage to the trailer. My horses were fine, though. I was alone, but prepared for that eventuality. On the side of the freeway, I set about getting it changed. I noticed a car pull over in front of me as if to help. A young man got out of the back seat, took one look at me standing there holding my four-way lug wrench, immediately turned around and got back in the car and left! What was he expecting? I was 57 years old at the time with silver hair, but not ugly or scary. I can’t imagine why someone pulling over to help would change their mind upon seeing me. Maybe I looked capable? I did get the tire changed, but getting the extremely heavy spare on was very difficult. I was very dirty (I ended up sitting on my butt on the roadside straddling the wheel, and lifting the spare up with the help of my knees) and bug-bit when I was done, and I’m still mystified as to what changed the young man’s mind.

Why Men Age Like FINE WINE in the Dating Market | Why Women Like to Date Older Men

The reasons why men age like fine wine and most women prefer to date men that are older, is because women look for a “standard”. In addition to qualities, that most men, simply do not have in their early twenties. Which makes it very ironic that women complain about this fact, since it’s women themselves, who are choosing these standards and men. Most skills that women love in a long term partner are skills and traits that only come with age and experience.

What was the most scariest experience you’ve had at work?

Hello, I trust that you will truly understand the whole means the this event had upon me. I was working in neibourhood office with about a dozen others, a mother came in carrying her child, who alleged had stopped breathing. Everyone stood back aghast…. Not knowing what do, several people just ran out. I had to push through the melee of useless people who were happy just to stare.. Moribid fasination! I managed to take the child from the mother and began breathing and heart compression treatment. I was very briefly trained in first aid, but only to a small degree. While I was with the child, someone called for an ambulance, which eventually arrived. They took the child from who by now was partly recovered. I heard theat very soon the child had recovered completely. All this action caused a great deal of mental worry to me and disrupted me a huge amount. Am I now over the trauma? I very much doubt it. My the lord never sho you the back of his hand.

What are some paradoxes in life?

  1. The more you seek approval from others, the less you will get it.
  2. You can only be brave when you are afraid.
  3. If you aren’t happy now, you won’t be happy after you achieve your goals.
  4. We aren’t wired to be happy and fulfilled, but to be miserable and safe.
  5. Without failures, there can be no consistent success.
  6. Wisdom is realizing that you know so little.
  7. The more available you are to people, the less they will respect you.
  8. Nobody will love you if you don’t love yourself.
  9. A king and a slave have the same duties i.e. to serve others.
  10. If you find yourself in toxic relationships over and over again, then it’s your fault — you teach people how to treat you.
  11. Whatever you think is stopping you from living the life you want is not stopping you, but only you.

Triangle method

What is your craziest TSA experience?

I was on my way to Iraq. I was on a plane chartered by the Marine Corps for this, there were about 400 Marines on the flight, in uniform, with our weapons stowed under our seats. I was stationed in California, and we left from March Air Force Base out there. The first stop was in Baltimore, at the international airport there, and this is where my story occurs.

In Baltimore, we were let out of the terminal to go make phone calls and smoke cigarettes and whatever else. I called my girlfriend from a payphone, I smoked some cigarettes, and eventually it came time to get back on the plane. Now, I had put my rifle cleaning kit into my cargo pocket, without the slightest idea that this would cause any problem whatsoever. Inside my cleaning kit was this”carbon pick”.

I’d estimate that the steel rod at the end is about half an inch long by maybe a millimeter in diameter. As I emptied my pockets to go through the checkpoint, this carbon pick came to the attention of the TSA mouthbreather working there. He had decided that this steel rod, significantly smaller than a toothpick, was a deadly weapon (or something) and that I would not be permitted to take it into the terminal and on my flight. Now, mind you, I was in uniform. Flying with a military ID. With approximately 400 other guys dressed exactly like me. I told him that I clearly was flying on official military duty, and that I wasn’t wearing desert camouflage for fashion sense, and that it wasn’t a coincidence that there were all these other guys wearing the exact same outfit who were with me. He didn’t seem to comprehend this. I told him that, speaking of weapons, I had an M16A4, a select fire rifle, under the seat on my flight, a bayonet with a 7″ blade in my carry on, and everyone else on my flight was similarly equipped – except for those with grenade launchers and machine guns. He looked at me stupidly. Eventually I said something to the effect of: “you know those guys, those terrorists, that you’re trying to keep from getting on airplanes? Well me and all those other guys dressed like me are going over to Iraq to kill them. And to do that properly, I need my fucking rifle cleaning gear”. He grudgingly handed my carbon pick back and let me through. He took my cigarette lighter – I’m still convinced, 12 years later, that he did so simply to score some small, petty victory. I didn’t care, I’d left my crucial Zippo on the plane anticipating TSA stupidity.

This is your tax dollars at work, America. Outfuckinstanding.

Anima Libera 0.8X (国会鼓DJ抖音版 2023) Remix Tiktok

Why don’t China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have emotional intelligence and no global media? Why they don’t use datas against the USA? Everyone thinks the USA is right always.

You think that everyone thinks the U.S. is right. That is a highly flawed notion. You media gives you the impression and your politicians fooled you into thinking that way.

The truth is to tally the opposite. Very few people on earth have trust and faith in the U.S. Global media reached out to mainly to the western world. This group sound a lot but they are a small minority. In population it adds up to 13% of the world. In nation count it is at most 12–15 out of the world’s 195 nations.

I live in South East Asia. Almost everyone I meet are disgusted with American lies and western media. No one believes it. It is biased it is opinionated, it spews falsehoods and fabrications. For me I feel pitiful for the western Ignorant and highly naive lot. Please tell yourself 90% of everything written in CNN, Fox, BBC are inaccurate and lies.

I cannot speak for other nations but Chinese media focus less on opinion but you are given facts and proofs. Chinese media trust that armed with facts one can make up their own mind.

Creole Hot Dogs and Rice

2023 11 09 14 48
2023 11 09 14 48

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 3/4 onion, diced
  • 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
  • 2 slices bacon, diced
  • 3 hot dogs, sliced
  • 2 cups cooked rice
  • 1 (14 ounce) can diced tomatoes (seasoned or not)
  • 2 tablespoons fresh cilantro or basil, chopped

Instructions

  1. Cook bacon until crisp and remove from pan to paper towels to drain.
  2. Sauté onion in bacon drippings for 4 to 5 minutes or until onion is softened.
  3. Stir in seasoning and sliced hot dogs and cook for 2 minutes.
  4. Add rice, bacon and tomatoes and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, or until heated through.
  5. Remove from heat. Stir in chopped cilantro or basil.

Would you be willing to adapt if European style socialism was implemented across the board in the U.S. or would you have to leave the country?

If the U.S. treated its citizens like Europe does, I might actually come home.

Leaving Media, PA for Frankfurt, Germany in 1990, I have to admit, it was hard to adjust.

When I went to the supermarket there were only ten or twelve types of soda. The bread was heavy with brown stuff and seeds. Some stores didn’t even bother to take the goods out of the carton boxes. The cashiers didn’t treat me like a king and the stores closed at 6.30 p.m. during the week and at 2.30 on Saturdays. The service was so lazy they refused to work on Sundays and everything was closed.

What a nightmare!

I went from the land of 24/7 plenty to a socialist desert.

Get this, on Sundays people walked everywhere. Gas was so expensive, that few could afford to cruise about the countryside just for fun. People took public transportation because they couldn’t afford a car or the place to park it.

Then there were the taxes. When you are young, single and making tons of money they rob you. In some countries such people are taxed at more than 40%.

Healthy I had to pay the highest premium for mandatory health insurance, and some chain-smoking unemployed father of five paid much less.

There is no better way to say it, I was furious.

I was used to a different sort of social justice.

Then something really terrible happened.

Summer came and I had to take vacation. I learned that I had five weeks with full pay. Crazy isn’t it?

How can any economy function when everybody spends so much time on vacation?

It gets even worse. Everybody gets a minimum of 20 paid vacation days! EVERYBODY! Yes, even the dishwasher, the hotel page, the taxi driver and the cleaner get paid vacation. And for a small deduction from their salary, they get unlimited health care too. And if they have smart kids, they get to go to the best schools for free.

It was then I started to understand why eating out was more expensive too.

Feeling sorry for myself I asked “Why did I go to college and study so hard if even the cleaner has the same rights to vacation, health care and education as me?”

Slowly, the answer dawned in my thick skull.

Everybody else does have the same rights as me.

Everybody has the right to health, enough to eat and a warm place to sleep…even those who don’t work. It occurred to me that that may be why the incarceration rate is so much lower in Europe.

Everybody who works hard, no matter how much they earn, has the right to paid vacation.

I woke up and smelled the roses.

I liked vacation. And I was much more productive and happy when I returned to work

I saw the clean streets, the modern buses and metros, the airports crowded with regular people returning from sunny beaches.

I learned to look forward to Sunday grill parties when nobody had to work.

I became tired of traffic jams and trying to find a parking spot for my car and read a book while on the train or the bus.

I fell from a fence and had to go to the hospital. They treated me like a king and there was no bill.

I met a girl who became my wife. We moved to France and raised four children. That was almost 20 years ago.

I still pay the highest rate for health care, but it’s not much more than I paid 30 years ago as a single. The deduction for our four children makes our income tax rate very low. If they want, all the children can go to university without breaking the family finances.

To conclude, everything I paid into the system as a young man is being returned to me in spades.

When the children are grown and my taxes rise, I will pay them without anger (I won’t lie and say happily).

Europe is taking care of me, my family, my friends, my co-workers and my neighbours.

It is not a utopia. It can do many things better.

But America can do better too. A good start would be to recognize that caring for fellow humanity is not a dirty word that ends like Venezuela.

I love America dearly, but Europe treats its normal people (that would be me) better and I will stay here until that changes.

That’s Right

Swamp Pizza

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

The “swamp pizza”.

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
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

Horrific! But a great rescue.

What is the smartest thing you have seen a lawyer do in court?

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.

The award: Zero.

My son’s school searched my child’s backpack and found his phone. Now they are holding it to the end of the year. Is this legal?

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!

What is the most humane gesture you have ever encountered?

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?

Riddle me this. China has been doing quite well under Deng-Jiang-Wu-early Xi when China was friendly to foreign countries and being part of the global community. Why did Xi change all of that? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?

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.

Nikki Haley says she will stop China from killing Americans with fentanyl. Is the PRC doing this? If so, how?

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.”

https://youtu.be/IVx7KNRiJEI

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

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.

no charges were filed..

What would you recommend to China’s leaders on foreign affairs/relations?

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.”

How can you handle humiliation in your job by your boss?

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?

When do you think the Ukraine war will end?

It depends on so many factors

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)

Fun. Fun. Fun.

Have you ever tried to fire someone and it backfired?

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:

  1. The company take back his early retirement and bridge his service so he could reach full retirement. (The manager groaned, but grudgingly agreed.)
  2. 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)
  3. 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.

If you had the opportunity to bring back a deceased family member for 24 hours, how would you spend your day?

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.

Why doesn’t Huawei use Qualcomm chips anymore?

Introduction

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.

When is lying the right thing to do?

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.

Dishonesty is right when it saves innocent lives.

How do pilots of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird handle the load of speed when the plane is flying at 3,540 km/h? How does a person feel when flying in an airplane at such a speed?

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….

What is the best comeback you used on someone?

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

Why has the Belt and Road Initiative been criticized as “debt trap diplomacy?”

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.

What is the classiest way to respond when meeting a celebrity?

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.

What did you say at a job interview that automatically landed you the job?

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.

What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?

Raise all prices by 15 percent.

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.

We are all going to die!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

The neocons are marching the world towards war. Lordy!

We are all going to die!!!!!

2023 10 28 13 15
2023 10 28 13 15

All these videos MUST be watched to get the FULL IMPACT of what is going on right now. It’s so insane. So crazy. So very disgusting. You have to laugh.

2023 10 28 13 17
2023 10 28 13 17

Neocons cannot be stopped, they will get war

This is so worrisome. This is a MUST WATCH.

How does your language reflect your culture?

I have worked in the video games industry for over a decade. During this time, I introduced several Western games to the Chinese market. This experience taught me a great deal about the cultural and behavioral differences (and similarities) between Western and Chinese users.

One thing I found fascinating is how Western users and Chinese users absorb information.

The Chinese language is information-dense. Reading Chinese, you absorb a lot more information compared to reading English of similar length. There’s a reason why when Western (English) literary works are translated into Chinese, they usually “shrink” in length. Chinese Bible, for example, is thinner than English Bible.

Chinese users are very used to absorbing large amounts of information all at once. Chinese websites usually have a very busy (by Western standards) layout packed with headlines and texts. At the same time, English users are more comfortable with a minimalistic layout.

In game design, this reflects on UI and HUB design. Chinese users are very used to busy UI and packed HUB design, while Western players are more used to the “less is more” kind of design, sometimes no HUB at all.

A lot of times, when Western designers were presented with this problem, they often considered Chinese users “backward,” or “still live in the 90s,” or “just not sophisticated enough to appreciate a minimalist design.” While it was my job to explain the cultural differences, the designers didn’t always listen. They believed they could “educate” Chinese users with their “superior” design. They thought once these “backward” people saw my awesome modern design, they’d love it!

LOL.

That is not to say there isn’t minimalist design in China. It’s just what’s considered “too busy and overwhelming” style in the West is accepted or even preferred in China because of how our language functions differently than English.

Good Advice

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-EbqIpiOPNk?feature=share

Which country has the most objective news coverage about China: USA, UK, Australia, Canada or Japan?

USA knows the only thing it can do is to talk shit on China. It cannot out compete, out innovate and out succeed with China. It certainly cannot bomb or nuke China as it will will received the same from China. The only thing it can do is to talk shit.

UK,Canada and Australia. Are the U.S. fellow colonialist and fellow native slaughterers. They did so much shit in the past few hundred years and are scared of reprisal and reparations. They had no choice to get a mafia hoodlum to protect them. Talking shit on China is a given.

Japan shared the loot and plunder of Chinese and Asian people in the 2nd world war and refused to accept responsibility for her aggression and prefer to pay protection money to the U.S. they had to talk shit on China.

if you are smart and intelligent enough. None of these nations ever whisper a grain of truth on China. The truth hurts them too much.

Why everything is so cheap in China…


MINISO: how China’s 10-Yuan shop became a global sensation

MINISO’s global expansion strategies; Q3 online sales in China, and consumer reactionsAmber ZhangOct 26∙Preview READ IN APP *This post is our premium content.

MINISO (NYSE: MNSO), a Chinese low-cost retailer and variety store chain, is gaining global attention. As of June 30, 2023, MINISO operates 5,791 stores worldwide. Its annual revenue for the period ending June 30, 2023, increased by 13.8% to 11.47 billion yuan. Revenue from China reached 7.651 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 2.8%, while revenue from overseas markets reached 3.822 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 44.6%.

MINISO’s rapid overseas revenue growth has made it one of the most successful Chinese companies to go global.

(For the year ended June 30, revenue from overseas markets accounted for over 33% of MINISO’s total revenue.)MINISO is on track to reach the peak price it had since its IPO in October 2020.“一切面向海外,一切面向商品” (“Everything is oriented towards overseas, everything is oriented towards products.”) —— Guofu

Ye, CEO and founder of the MINISO [source]Expanding into global markets has always been a key part of MINISO’s strategy.

As of 2023, MINISO had already established stores in 107 countries and regions, including North Korea, with over 2,100 stores overseas. Notably, in May 2023, MINISO achieved a significant milestone by opening a store in Times Square, New York, becoming the first Chinese brand to have a presence in that iconic location.

As of year-to-date 2023, MINISO (NYSE: MNSO) has gained over 150%, despite the pessimistic sentiments towards Chinese equities.In today’s post, we will share some winning strategies of MINISO to help you understand how the company managed to succeed domestically and internationally, and whether these strategies will be sustainable.

We will also provide an update on MINISO’s domestic online sales and consumer reactions ahead of MINISO’s upcoming earnings report in November.*

Understanding the psychology of overseas consumersMINISO adopts unique sales methods in various countries to connect with the psychology of local consumers. To scale this strategy, MINISO has chosen the “agency model” by partnering with local leaders.For instance, in Vietnam, MINISO initially thought that inexpensive small umbrellas would be popular, but they ended up having an excessive amount of umbrellas in stock.

This was due to MINISO underestimating the actual preferences of local consumers. Vietnam, being a “motorbike country,” is the fourth-largest motorcycle market globally, with over 45 million motorcycles in circulation. As a result, people in Vietnam use raincoats while riding motorcycles.MINISO later collaborated with Le Bao Minh Group and specially developed arm sleeves and masks for the Vietnamese market, which immediately became popular locally.Le Bao Minh is the exclusive distributor of Canon in Vietnam and has over 200 sub-agents in 64 provinces.

With such a leading enterprise leading the way, MINISO avoided many pitfalls and reduced a significant amount of trial and error costs. [Source]The low-cost advantage has given MINISO a boost amid a slow economic recoveryAs we have previously observed, Chinese consumers are increasingly prioritizing practical purchases.

The combination of Miniso’s low-cost advantage and its creative and personalized products has given them a boost both in China and globally in 2023.Similar trends are observed among other low-cost retailers. For example, Pinduoduo is estimated to reach its target of $10 billion USD GMV for 2023, and SHEIN recorded a revenue of up to $23 billion USD in 2022. In China, there is also a growing trend among e-commerce players to adopt the low-cost strategy to remain competitive in 2023.To create a feeling of consumers “getting a bargain,”

MINISO focuses on the “golden price point of 10 yuan” in its stores.Ye Guofu, the CEO of MINISO, explained: “To make customers buy when they want to buy and use when they want to use, that’s the best thing. We must achieve this situation, so 10 yuan is the golden price point, allowing customers to have no pressure.” [source]

However, despite the growing importance of value for money to consumers, the demand for personalized and stylish products from MINISO’s main customer base of young consumers remains strong.

As a result, MINISO has made significant investments in “大牌平替” or “substituting big brands with generics” products, which are self-made products that imitate the popular themes and styles of well-known brands:

For example, from the same supplier, a water cup is priced at 379 yuan in MUJI, while MINISO is priced at 49 yuan; the same goes for socks, with MUJI priced at 158 yuan and MINISO priced at 29 yuan.

The management of MINISO stated, “The perfumes in our store are made by perfumers from Dior and Chanel, using their fragrance ingredients. The luxury brand perfumes are priced at $200 per bottle, but I only sell them for $20 per bottle.” [source]

Have you ever had a job where you did nothing for years and nobody found out?

Not me (sadly) but a guy I met when I worked at a steel mill.

It was a very big company, 17.000 employees at the time, the size of a small town with their own small hospital, fire department and armed securities with patrol cars, shops and even a gas station. So quite a big area.

I was working at the contiunous casting facility. Basically where molten irom from the blast furnace is poured into a casting unit and becomes a rectangular block of steel.

The whole company was incredibly split up in different departments each with their own hierachy and leadership. One casting unit consisted of a Foreman (which belonged to department X), 1 quality control inspector (department F), 1 guy in the control room checking all the parameters, looking at several graphs and so on (department Z) and finally 3 workers doing actual work (department A). Just to get the hang of it, 6 people working on the same unit belonged to 4 different departments. And the whole company was like that!

Like every few years some higher ups decided to reinvent the wheel and restructure the electrical maintenance department. There used to be 6 departments and after some calculations they decided to cut it down to 5 departments and integrate the workers from the sixth department into the remaining five.

It went surprisingly smooth aside from the old foreman. There was only one foreman position per department and they were already filled. Because he was 30 years with the company, starting as an apprentice and rose through the ranks after a few years they told him “We need to hold a meeting about your position but dont worry we find something for you”.

Time went on but he heard nothing at all about the meetings outcome despite several inquiries. So he simply came in his office everyday and waited for news. He had nothing to do because the sixth department didnt exist anymore so nobody could call him to fix a problem, he simply didnt exist.

But it gets even crazier. A new office building for the departments was built and he stayed in the very old 2 story building because how could he move into the new one if he didnt exist at all?

So he strolled around all day through the different units, chatting with people and drinking coffee, had an awful lot of house plants in his office, even one of those Japanese Bonsai trees he used to cut regularily (it looked like a rain forest, not gonna lie) and found himself another hobby, modelmaking. If he wasnt walking around he sat in his office and assembled those 1:24 models of planes, helicopters, cars…

It took the company 4 years to somehow recognize he is still here! But nobody could figure out how he had gone missing. HR had him listed as Foreman of department 6 and higher ups of the casting facility somehow assumed he left the company and went into early retirement or something because department six did no longer exist.

In the end, he had two years to retirement and they decided to let him carry on for the next two years. It was apparently cheaper to pay him for literally nothing than dealing with all the legal issues. Our worker protection laws are really strong and firing somebody so close to retirement means the company has to pay a massive fee to the government.

Which island has the most unusual plant life?

Ah. An insight into what life on other planets might look like. -MM

The obvious choice would be Socotra, that little Yemeni isle off the Horn of Africa, home to the iconic dragon’s blood tree. However, I think there’s another island which has even more interesting flora – New Caledonia. Sitting in the South Pacific, well over a thousand kilometres from the nearest major landmass, New Caledonia has been biologically isolated since the Cretaceous period.

Because of this, it has unprecedented, record-breaking levels of endemism: around three quarters of its plants are found nowhere else on Earth! Despite only being around the size of the nation of Israel, it’s home to four and a half thousand plant species.

image 192
image 192

Back in dinosaur times, New Caledonia broke off from a vast southern super-continent known as Gondwana. Because it remains remote, it still harbours the primeval flora of Gondwana, which has long since gone extinct in most mainland regions. First of all, it is the world’s only true stronghold of the araucarians.

The most famous species today is the monkey puzzle tree, which is native to Chile, but New Caledonia’s most recognizable variety is the coral reef pine, Araucaria columnaris. It has a thin, pillar-like shape, and grows directly on shallow limestone coastlines, especially on the Isle of Pines (a popular tourist attraction).

image 191
image 191

The araucarians are an ancient family of conifer trees, dating back to the beginnings of the Jurassic Period. During the reign of the dinosaurs, they dominated forests all over the world, and were the first trees in Earth’s history to grow extremely tall, as many stood over 60 metres in height. In fact, they are likely the reason sauropods like Brachiosaurus were so damn tall.

Despite their former success, araucarians have been out-competed by more advanced lineages of tree, but they persist in various parts of the Southern Hemisphere. The only place where they still predominate, however, is New Caledonia, which is home to 18 species.

2023 10 26 18 57
2023 10 26 18 57

They thrive in all kinds of habitats on the island, from its tropical rainforests and iconic limestone islets to its hilly “maquis” scrub and dry woodlands.

The closest relatives of the araucarians are the podocarps, which were also abundant in Gondwana long ago, and also maintain a strong presence in New Caledonia despite extinction in many other regions. The island has an especially interesting (endemic) genus called Parasitaxus.

image 194
image 194

As its name suggests, it’s a parasite – in fact, it’s the only parasitic gymnosperm plant in the world. Believe it or not, it has no roots, and does not perform photosynthesis (hence its rather alien purplish-black colouration). Instead, it grows exclusively out of the roots of a different endemic podocarp species, sucking nutrients from its host.

Another example of New Caledonia’s very unique flora is Amborella. This genus contains a single species, and it is in fact so unique that it has a whole taxonomic family and order to itself! It’s the most primitive flowering plant on Earth, having diverged from the rest a staggering 130 million years ago. It’s a pretty good proxy for what flowers would have looked like while T. rex was roaming the Earth.

image 193
image 193

Lastly, I’ll introduce you to Sphaeropteris intermedia, sometimes alternatively called Cyathea intermedia. With a woody trunk that can stand over 30 metres tall, one would think it was a palm tree, but it is in fact a fern – the largest fern on the planet. It further contributes to the exceptionally prehistoric feel to New Caledonia’s vegetation.

image 199
image 199

So, those are the most charismatic and fascinating members of New Caledonia’s flora. There are many, many, many more endemic species Mesozoic relics and the like, but I’ve just selected the ones which are of particular interest to the non-botanist.

Now, you all know me by now, so I doubt any of you are surprised that I can’t bring myself to finish this answer without going off-topic and talking about the animals. First things first, the wonderful birdies. The most fascinating of all the island’s avians is undoubtedly the kagu.

image 197
image 197

This species is highly unique, genetically – it is the sole species in the distinct family Rhynchochetidae, and shares the whole order Eurypygiforms with a single other species, the equally weird sunbittern of South America. The kagu is practically flightless, and probes the forest floor for invertebrate prey.

To prevent soil from getting up its nose as it digs around the ground, it has structures covering its nostrils called nasal corns, something not seen in any other bird. For mysterious reasons, it has around a third of the number of red blood cells most birds have, but thrice the amount of hemoglobin per cell.

Another highly notable New Caledonian avian is the New Caledonian crow, one of the world’s most intelligent birds.

image 195
image 195

In the wild, they fashion sophisticated tools out of ferns, feathers, thorns, grass and twigs, carefully trimming and folding them down to size. These are used to extract insects from trees, and remarkably, different styles of crow tools can be observed in different parts of New Caledonia. This could mean that these crows are the only non-mammals in the world which have distinct, evolving cultures.

The island is also home to a diverse array of tropical pigeons. Pigeons seem boring to us, but closer to the equator, species are much less drab. Some in New Caledonia are huge, measuring over half a metre in length, whereas others have vibrant colours, such as the cloven-feathered dove.

image 196
image 196

There’s also the crow honeyeater, a strange-looking bird, which – at over 40 cm in length – is the largest species of honeyeater in the world. Sadly, it’s now critically endangered.

image 200
image 200

Moving onto the reptiles, we have some very cool geckoes. This includes the rather polite-looking crested gecko, who’s got killer eyelashes:

image 198
image 198

And of course Leach’s giant gecko. Measuring up to 36 centimetres from nose to tail, this lumbering beast is the world’s largest gecko.

2023 10 26 18 59
2023 10 26 18 59

On the topic of larger-than-life lizards, here’s the dramatically-named terror skink. It’s even bigger than the aforementioned reptile, at around half a metre in length. It was presumed extinct until being rediscovered in 1933, although to this day it is extremely rare.

2023 10 26 19 0350
2023 10 26 19 0350

Then there’s a plethora of endemic invertebrate fauna, of course. The largest insect on the island is the giant coconut grasshopper, a freakishly big creepy crawly which is longer than your hand.

2023 10 26 19 00e
2023 10 26 19 00e

What are even more interesting, however, are New Caledonia’s marine invertebrates. For example, its waters are the only home of one of the only four living species of nautilus, Nautilus macromphalus.

2023 10 26 19 01
2023 10 26 19 01

And it has the New Caledonian Barrier Reef, which is the world’s longest continuous barrier reef, stretching across over 1,500 km of shallow sea. That’s about two thirds the length of Australia’s much more famous one, which is actually a smattering of smaller, disconnected reefs! This reef is highly biodiverse, and is home to rare dugongs.

2023 10 26 19 01r
2023 10 26 19 01r

My final words in this very long answer about a very small island will be on New Caledonia’s extinct animals, from the time of the last Ice Age, prior to human arrival. Back then, it was home to even more amazing wildlife, such as Mekosuchus inexpectatus.

Up until its extinction 4,000 years ago, it was the very last land-dwelling crocodylian in Earth’s history, the end of a story lasting hundreds of millions of years. It would have been an apex predator on the island, despite being only 2 metres long.

2023 10 26 19 02
2023 10 26 19 02

A possible prey item of Mekosuchus was Sylviornis, the largest galliform ever to live. The galliforms are an order of birds which include chickens and their relatives. Specifically, Sylviornis was a member of the megapodes, odd Australasian birds who incubate their eggs in huge mounds of earth.

It weighed in at about 30 kg, and its skeletal anatomy was markedly similar to that of the non-avian dinosaurs.

2023 10 26 19 027
2023 10 26 19 027

Other extinct creatures endemic to New Caledonia in the Pleistocene include a variety of other megapodes, flightless rails, huge hawks and several monitor lizards.


So, what was meant to be a quick answer about some cool plants ended up being an exhaustive ecological and paleontological survey of New Caledonia. If you stuck around for the full article, thank you very much, and if you didn’t, just try to sleep well in the knowledge that you’ll never know what a terror skink is.

America Compared: Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better – US American Reaction

This is a very good video. Please take the time to watch it.

Irresistible Exotic allure! Russian tourists flock to China’s border city of Heihe for breakfast, shopping

It may seem surprising, but a growing number of Russians are making the trip to have breakfast in Heihe, a border city in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, before heading back home.

image 188
image 188

Heihe sits across the Heilongjiang River from the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk. The river is known in Russia as the Amur River. Since the resumption of visa-free group tourist trips between China and Russia in Heihe on Sept. 21, 2023, there’s been a noticeable uptick in Russian visitors. A simple boat ride allows for easy movement between the two nations.

Many Russians are attracted to Heihe’s breakfast offerings and shopping experiences. They indulge in local breakfast staples such as soybean milk, tea eggs, and Baozi — steamed stuffed buns. Some have even crafted a unique dining blend, pairing Baozi with beer.

image 87
image 87

Many vendors at morning markets have added bilingual Chinese-Russian signs, and some have picked up basic Russian to better serve their visitors.

Given its strategic location, Heihe has long been a nexus for China-Russia trade. It stands as China’s primary supplier of everyday Russian products, which are then distributed nationwide.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has made trade between China and other BRI partner countries increasingly convenient.

image 189
image 189

Beyond Heihe, many other border areas in China exude an exotic allure. Cities and regions such as Dongxing in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Manzhouli in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Horgos and Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and Mengla county in Yunnan Province have thrived due to the expanding cooperation under the BRI. These places now serve as critical ports connecting China to Southeast Asia, Europe, and Central Asia, and beyond via railways and economic corridors.

image 190
image 190

Over the past decade, these border regions have directly witnessed, participated in, and benefited from extensive cooperation under the framework of the BRI.

Meanwhile in the United States…

2023 10 22 17 57
2023 10 22 17 57

Texas Chicken-Fried Steak with Cream Gravy

texas chicken fried steak
texas chicken fried steak

Yield: 6 large servings (2 pieces each)

Ingredients

Steak

  • 3 pounds 1/2 inch thick round steak
  • 2 cups all-purpose white flour
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • Vegetable oil (corn, peanut, safflower oil) for frying*

Cream Gravy

  • 1/4 cup pan drippings
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose white flour
  • 3 cups warm milk
  • Salt
  • Black pepper

Instructions

Steak

  1. Trim the fat off the meat, remove the bone and cut the meat into 6 equal size pieces. Use a meat mallet to pound the steaks on both sides, until they are 1/4 inch thick. Then cut each pounded piece of steak in half (making 12 pieces total).
  2. Combine the flour, salt and pepper in a large shallow bowl. Beat the eggs and milk together well in another large shallow bowl.
  3. Dredge the steaks in the seasoned flour, coating them well on both sides. Then use the meat mallet to pound the flour into the steaks. Dip the steaks in the egg-milk mixture, then dredge them again in the remaining flour. Set the steaks aside in a single layer on a large piece of wax paper.
  4. Heat the oven to 200 degrees F.
  5. Pour the vegetable oil to a depth of 1/2 inch into 2 or 3 large heavy-bottom skillets (iron skillets are best). You will have to cook the steaks in 2 or 3 batches, depending on the number of skillets you have. Set the skillets over medium heat. The oil will be hot enough for frying when it pops when you sprinkle a few drops of water on it.
  6. Carefully put the steaks in a single layer in the hot oil and cook over medium heat until the bottom side of each steak is golden brown (about 7 to 8 minutes).
  7. Turn the steaks over, cover the skillets, reduce the heat to low and cook until the bottom sides are golden brown and the steaks are tender (about 8 to 10 minutes).
  8. Transfer the steaks to a heatproof platter, cover loosely with aluminum foil and keep them warm in the oven while you cook the remaining steaks and prepare the cream gravy.

Cream Gravy

  1. Pour the remaining oil out of one large skillet into a heatproof bowl or measuring cup, but leave in the skillet any particles of batter that stick to the bottom of the pan.
  2. Return 1/4 cup of the oil to the skillet and stir in 1/4 cup of flour. Cook for about 3 to 5 minutes over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan, but don’t let the mixture brown.
  3. Slowly add the warm milk to the pan, stirring with a fork or wire whisk to prevent lumps from forming. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the gravy is smooth and thick.
  4. Add salt and black pepper to taste.
  5. Serve the chicken-fried steaks with the cream gravy poured over them.

Notes

* Beef suet, lard or solid vegetable shortening are traditionally used for cooking chicken-fried steak

What did the military give you or instill in you that you wouldn’t have had if you didn’t join?

A free house.

In Belgium you could join up “for life” (until retirement, you can’t do that anymore) and get a shitload of perks.

You got a free apartment, free water, electricity, telephone, gas, and cable TV.

You could eat for free and you got your uniforms for free. You also got free cigarettes’, free beer, and free condoms.

Whatever else you needed you could get at substantial discounts.

When you traveled from Germany to Belgium (every weekend … yes, we went home for the weekends during the Cold War), it was on military trains where the customs officials had no jurisdiction. So our kitbags were loaded with cigarettes which we sold on the black market in Belgium.

We always used public transport as it was free as well.

You could get a free university education as well if you passed the screening tests. The better your education, the easier promotion came, the more money you made.

Basically, you could put your whole monthly pay in the bank and then some.

In the days of the Cold War, most joined for the perks. You had a good job and job security.

What did all that amount to? A free house.

HUGE BOMBSHELL! China & Russia Sign $160 Billion Strategic Project

Best ever friendship China- Russia helps to build up global prosperity.

https://youtu.be/JnQtWGw95b4

Have you ever witnessed a customer become aggressive because they believed they were given an incorrect amount of change?

I experienced many times when I worked as a cashier. 99.9% of the time the customer was mistaken. There was a woman who came into our store every 2 weeks and usually made a stink about some aspect of poor service , etc. We suspected her of stealing also. She was not happy unless she made a clerk or cashier cry.

Once she tried to pull the wrong change scam on me and it backfired on her. While I had a fully loaded till, I only had rung one sale that day and that customer had paid with a $20 bill that was ripped. I put the bill under the removable cash drawer so that I could tape it back together later. .

The store got busy so I opened my register. The scammer purchased a few small, inexpensive items and paid with a $50. When my drawer opened, I noticed the damaged $20 was sticking out so I lifted the drawer and stuffed it back in and also put the $50 under the drawer. I make the correct change. The customer starts screaming that I made the wrong change and that I’m stealing from her. She calls me a thief repeatedly. I locked the register down as the manager comes running over.

Customer is throwing and all out hissy fit, crying and screaming about how I should be fired for stealing from her. She also started throwing her purchases at me, hitting me in the face. I know the manager is going to pull a reading on the register and count the money in and under the drawer. I stepped away and discreetly called the police. I knew we finally had her.

Surprise, surprise. My drawer balanced. Evidently she saw the damaged $20 and assumed it was a $100 and thought she would try to take advantage of us. The police show up. I explain that she has slandered and assaulted me (I have a raised red welt on my face), I want her arrested and I will sign a complaint . My manager tells them that we have video. She also explains what happened with the customer trying to scam us financially. As the police walk her out, some items fell out of pants, so stealing was added to the charges

Long story short, it goes to court. She got community service for assaulting me and a substantial fine for the stealing. But the best was the store manager printed out the customer’s image from the store video and made a poster stating that she was banned from the store. She taped it to the entrance door. Lol Plus she made smaller versions and taped one to each register telling the cashiers to call a manager if she is spotted in the store.

Looking Poor is More Important Than Ever

What things are just not worth the effort?

The vice president of Korean Air, Heather Cho, in 2014, was so angry about being served Macadamia nuts in a bag instead of on a porcelain bowl that she forced the plane to return to the gate at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport so the flight attendant could be removed.

She also demanded that the flight attendants get on their knees to apologize to her.

Heather Cho, the daughter of the CEO of Korean Air at the time, Cho Yank-ho served five months of a one-year prison sentence after South Korean court found her guilty for violating aviation law.

The flight attendant filed a civil suit against Cho and Korean Air, asking for a total of 400 million South Korean won ($354,000).

“The Seoul western district court ordered that Korean Air pay him 20 million won for attempting to coerce him to drop the case.”

“He was also entitled to another 30 million won ($27,000) as compensation for Cho’s assaults and insults.”

In all, $18,000 was all he was able to get.

It took one and a half years for the flight attendant and cabin crew chief to get their jobs back.

Her father could have just said “yes, my daughter is batshit. Here, have your jobs,” but that did not happen.

This was a perfect example of the abuse of power that seems to be all too common in South Korea and amongst a good number of Asians even here in Africa.

There is always a better use of your high influence than using it to make people feel like a puppet.

It’s just not worth it.

Sources:

The Duran: Zelensky is FINISHED as Russia Forces NATO to Seek Frozen Conflict

Are Huawei and China Mobile developing a completely separate hardware and network stack for mobile to support 6G?

You have to.

6G is 100 times faster than 5G. Nothing we have supports this. It is 100Gb/s. I think there are fiber lines that support this. But that is in PC, not mobile.

It is a challenge to do this in the power factor that mobile phones have. You don’t have access to 300W of power.

So everything has to be done from the fundamentals and re-engineered to work in a mobile form factor.

Wired, whether copper or fiber is completely different than wireless. This is brand new territory for human technology.

Overrated?? America Compared: Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better

Will a US sanction on BYD be more or less effective than on Huawei?

Oh please

BYD is an EV company and China sits well above the US in this field

They control

  • The Rare Earths and lowest extraction and process costs
  • The Patents are theirs
  • The Raw Material supply is theirs
  • The Technology is entirely owned by China
  • The Software and Electronics are theirs
  • You take them out of GPS, they will laugh and use Beidou in 10 seconds or Galileo

At best US can prevent their sale in US but BYD expects that anyway

The only area where US hold some away is AUTONOMOUS DRIVING

Here US holds the edge while China hasn’t yet gone full flow into autonomous driving because it’s superfluous and expensive today

The ADS for Tesla costs around $ 13000 to make in the factory and design

China will get it to $ 4600 by 2025–2026

Then my guess is Oppo and Baidu will take over the Autonomous driving revolution in China


China is immune against their development of High Speed Rail, EVs, Solar Panel, Rare Earth Extraction, Steel and Alunimum and Nuclear development and Aerospace

US can’t do squat except prevent these models from being sold in US but frankly Automobiles always depend heavily on their domestic market with the sole exception of Germany

What did a neighbor do to you that you will never forget?

When my son tragically died she bought groceries, put them on the doorstep, knocked on the door and left so I didn’t have to engage in conversation if I didn’t feel like it (she stayed just inside her front door in case I did want to talk).

She cooked meals I could put in the freezer for me and my daughter that I could eat (I have several food intolerances she knows about and which mean I can’t actually find ready-meals in stores).

She put our bins out every week until I could do it myself (it was one of my son’s jobs each week).

She was always there when I needed a hug. Even now, four years on, she is there to talk to, to reminisce with about my boy’s antics, to share a tear with about the loss of him. She is never afraid to bring him up in conversation and talks to her young sons about him, holding him up as an example of the type of young men they should strive to be.

I have had a lot of bad neighbours, but she is a blessing that outweighs the others a million times over

Florida Businessman Dies from Virus : Meets Three Guardian Angels (Near-Death Experience)

Bill Tortorella shares the story of his Near-Death Experience, occurring after contracting a virus at a jewelry trade show in Tucson, Arizona. During his encounter on the Other Side, he describes being transformed into a beautiful beam of light, being guided by three guardian angels, reuniting with his deceased brother, and having it revealed to him where we come from and why we are here. Bill shares what it was like to feel that he was back in his True Home on the Other Side and how the love and forgiveness he experienced helped him to live his life differently after his Near-Death Experience.

Why did China sell missiles to the terrorist group Hamas?

The missiles used by Hamas were aided by the United States to Ukraine!

Yes, it’s an American missile.

The United States provides “aid” to Ukraine, and the corrupt Zelenskyy government officials resells it cheaply to Hamas.

This money is enough for Zelenskyy family to live a luxurious exile abroad in the future.

image 187
image 187

What happened to some of Hong Kong protesters who got prosecuted for breaking Hong Kong’s national security law?

What happened to some of Hong Kong protesters who got prosecuted for breaking Hong Kong’s national security law?

The legal system in Hong Kong works slooowly… it took them 3 years to prosecute me for not wearing a seat belt on a bus. A woman who rioted in Mong Kok in 2016 went to trial in 2020.

So what’s happened?

Open court trials happened. Open court trials YOU can attend by sitting in the galleries.

Some were convicted some were not.

The trials and convictions began in 2021. Convictions and acquittals are going on as you read this on 26th October 2023. Last week 4 rioters from PolyU were sentenced to around 4 years. That means we’re likely to find out in 2024 as some of those sentenced in 2021 and 2022 of 2–3 years will be released from prison.

My guess is that they will be absolutely unemployable Yer see Hong Kong doesn’t have the rehabilitation of offenders act like the UK. In the UK if you’ve served a prison term you no longer have to declare it but it will show up on a CRB check.

As such they will likely be exploited for the rest of their lives.

You go jogging in the morning and you see old people sweeping streets. It’s hard work as I see them leaving trails of sweat. They may get jobs in those areas and the bosses? They can exploit the shit out them as they wish. What are they going to do? Quit and work somewhere else?

Those last chance employers have ALL the power.

Even the leaders of the rioters and politicians. When was the last time you heard from them? The Nathan Laws who ‘escaped’ to the UK. When was the last time he was in the limelight? When was the last time he said or did anything?

Or they may become homeless. Way back in 2021 there was a rioter who was sentenced for 8 months and was released. He was homeless and had a piece of cardboard begging for money. You can’t go any lower than that and once you get down to that level all that’s left to help you are charities.

What was combat like for American soldiers in Vietnam?

You sweat. Especially in an M48A3 Patton tank. You’re cramped, well the guys in the turret were but the driver didn’t have it too bad though he had 30 rounds of 90 mm stacked around him along with control panel in front and to the left plus fire extinguishers.

The driver had three telescope views to the outside world. One to the front, one to the left and one to the right. In the jungle, he could barely see anything out of them but green. And he could only see about eight or so feet ahead. He had help from his TC who had a better view and told him which direction to go through the com. You can’t hear conversations in a tank unless you are wearing your CVC helmet with the com speakers in it. Tanks are very noisy. Don’t let the movies fool you. You cannot talk and hear each other normally in a tank. Not in a 48 anyway. Not unless you are wearing your ‘Bone Dome.’

Tank crews in Vietnam, especially in III Corps sweated because inside the tank the temperature could reach 130 F or 54.4 C. Without gloves, you could burn your hands on the surface steel of a tank. Crewmen wore either T shirts, no T shirts.or just flak vests, if they wanted to. And their trousers of course.

So before moving up into the tree line, or jungle, you sit there sweating and waiting and sweating and waiting and sweating and waiting. That’s the worst part of eminent combat. Waiting…..and thinking. Too much time to think. Too much time. That was the problem. You were praying to get moving. Thinking too much was not good.

So you sat and waited and listened to the chatter on the com. A big ice block could be felt in your stomach and you got thirsty as hell and gulped evil tasting warm water.

Your eyes detect everything, right down to the flies that land on your vision block and you think, ‘You won’t want to be there in a little while. Fly away little guy.’ At times you wish you could fly away with him but here you stay, seated in a 52 ton steel hot box, a hot box that is nothing but a killing machine manned by 18 and 19 year olds just out of high school. They look tough in their combat gear but take off the combat uniform and give them t shirt and jeans, and you’ve got innocent looking kids. They are the ones fighting your wars.

Then, all changes. You’re ordered to move up.

“Time to find the bad guys,” you hear your gunner say on the com.

“Or time for them to find us,” the loader chimes in.

“Cut the chatter chipmunks,” the TC says sternly. It’s not like advanced training anymore, a crew being in combat together often is much less ‘Army’ and more personal.

Moving into the jungle is not pleasant especially in a buttoned up tank. It’s nerve wracking everytime. For a new guy it’s nerve wracking because he doesn’t know what to expect. For a combat vet it’s nerve wracking because he knows.

The pack or engine of the tank is loud. All you can hear is that and the voices on the coms. Combat can happen in seconds. You have to remember you are not alone. That’s hard to do in the lead tank because it seems like you are. However there are ground troops, M113s or ACAVs and other tanks with you. You are all going through this shit together.

You do not know when it’s going to happen then suddenly, you are in it. Green tracers are steaming toward you, sometimes you see sparks then a smoke trail snaking your way and mortar explosions falling around you. If there is a lot of this happening and does not stop, you know it’s an NVA regiment and not the VC. A VC fire fight only lasts 15 minutes or so. Hit and run. With the NVA, it’s hit and hit. You know your in for a fight. Now you hear the TC’s voice on the com telling you where to drive, telling the loader what type of round to slam into the breech, usually it’s canister or Beehive if they are available which they usually are not.

In close combat the gunner is not needed, shots are eyeballed by the TC who can fire the big 90 from his cupola. Canister rounds spray shot like a huge shotgun. The gunner is on the back deck of the tank armed with either an M79 or an M3 grease gun or if lucky to get one, a Car 15. He’s watching for jumpers who usually try to climb onto a tank and disable it with packs of ChiCom grenades. Surprisingly, it is fairly safe on the rear deck of a 48 because as I mentioned, a tank is never alone.

The nervousness has left you and you concentrate on doing the job you’ve been trained to do. A good tank crew operates like a well oiled machine. Their sole purpose is to kill the enemy and get their fellow crewman back to base alive, in a month or so.

Being in combat is an experience few people have had. There is no other experience like it. It is loud, time is sometimes sped up or slowed down, there’s no time to be scared as you are too busy to be scared and some of the sights you see are locked in the deep recesses of your mind only to come out later in life to haunt you.

It is after combat that the full effect of what you have just been through hits you. Some get the shakes, some talk fast and crazily, some are too tired to move and a few joke about it to hide their true feelings. There is no exhaustion ever felt as the exhaustion you feel after a lengthy combat action. Some men are dead and some are dead tired.

Seeing your own dead you usually have two thoughts in quick succession. You feel for the guy and what his family will soon learn and nearly at the same time, you are glad it wasn’t you laying under that poncho.

I found out what “the China threat” really is–and it’s hilarious

References to “the China threat” are widely used to justify the diversion of public money to weapons makers. But what is it? Look closely and we find “the China threat” is a series of vague allegations that China is planning to impose its system on the world—evidence-free claims that no scholar believes. Yet at the same, a very different “China threat” DOES exist, and it’s not what people think!

Do you agree that despite the animosities between China and the West, it is nevertheless in China’s interests to try and calm the Russians down and get them to adopt another approach to the Ukraine situation?

A peace proposal was reached early in the conflict last year. But it was vetoed or blocked, only not by the Russians.

There was no Chinese involvement.

In the meantime, China hasn’t shipped weapons to either side, or provided monetary aid, unlike, ahem, Nato members. Ukrainians soldiers are being paid in US dollars, while a select group of young Ukrainians are driving brand new Teslas and German cars on the streets of Kiev, partying into the night while conflict ravages their country.

China has instituted export control of commercial drones, after these were found weaponized in large numbers by Ukrainians. WHO paid for them?

China’s consistent position has been, let’s sit down and talk this through, and overtures have been made. Unfortunately, this isn’t a bilateral quarrel between Russia and Ukraine, but with the entire NATO.

Joe the elder(ly) will have to take the pedal off the gas and walk back from escalating this conflict.

There is little China (and the rest of the world ex-first) can do, just like Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen…

The only difference this time is white people feeling the economic pain of war.

And I mean the whitest of white, not the “not white enough” cannon fodder being slaughtered and displaced in the tens of millions.

You want it that way, you can have it.

Leave Asia out of it. We have had enough suffering the horror of war, particularly the Muslims of the Middle East.

“Europe” does not accept Russia as part of “Europe”, despite Russia being sovereign over the largest piece of EUROPE.

This quarrel needs a shift in mindset, and I am not referring to the russians.

“Europe’s” problems need not be the world’s problem.

Note: Hundreds of thousands Ukrainians are dead, and more than 20m Ukrainians have turned refugee. Is Ukraine in a better position today than 2014–2015, when the Minsk agreements were signed (and reneged) TWICE? Ukraine gave the finger to Russia for 8 long years, ignoring two brokered agreements.

Zelensky and co. belong in jail.

China and Malaysia’s Rare Earth Metal Deal, Put U.S in Panic

Today’s video is a deep dive into the significant geopolitical decisions made by China and Malaysia regarding the export of rare earth minerals, which play a crucial role in driving today’s tech-savvy society.

How has living as a Buddhist monk (temporarily or permanently) changed you?

I have been a Theravada nun for 8 years now.

Here are the main changes that may take within you.

  1. Lack of sensitivity towards your own self and your own needs. – Monks and nuns are constantly under immense public scrutiny in culturally Buddhist countries. At first you feel extremely sensitive and it’s a huge pressure. But with time you get used to it. Also the lack of freedom and comforts compared to laity may make one quite selfless and tough.
  2. Sensitivity towards others – People keep looking forward to you in their bad times and you have to act as their guardian angel. But in their good times they may somewhat forget you. You learn this nature and learn to deal with it.
  3. Whatever you do, you do not expect anything in return – You are a public figure. Being a public figure (specially if a monk or nun) is the same as being anything public. Everyone uses you but there is no one in particular to look after you. And again this will make you very tough, independent and very strong.
  4. Even the worst introvert can become the most outgoing person – This was the case with me. If you want to do something for the society you get so much support from the laity. It is very easy to do social service.
  5. Develop leadership qualities – People always want you to lead them in everything so if you do not have nor develop leadership qualities you are more or less doomed. So you learn it.
  6. Patriotism – A lot of monks/nuns in traditionally Buddhist countries gets criticized specially by the Western Buddhists for this. But as a monk or nun you have very little things to call yourself apart from your country, ethnicity and religion. So the patriotism comes naturally and it is quite inevitable.
  7. You become very patient.
  8. It was originally intended to be a very calm and quite solitary life style but you can also make it the busiest life if you want it to be. You have the choice. However you have very little bonds and you feel so free whatever you do.
  9. Inner calmness.
  10. More understanding of life and worldly nature.
  11. The immense discipline.
  12. Sense of family towards other monks and nuns.
  13. Respect for the elders
  14. As a nun I MUST specially mention the discipline of the Buddhist monks and the way they treat the nuns specially in my country Srilanka. I had been a lay person till I was 28 years old. And there hasn’t been a single day that I did not face some sort of a sexual harassment from lay men in public places. But once in the order you don’t even feel that you are a woman. Suddenly gender has completely disappeared and you all just become human beings – monks and nuns. It’s so beautiful.

These qualities may increase if you stick to the practice as well. But just being in the robe without doing a minute of meditation can make you a different person in itself.

I see it among the monks who have been in the order since their childhoods the most. Eventhough they may not meditate as a habit there is a significant patience and an inner discipline among them. The later you enter the order the lesser the change may be. Ofcourse when you keep up the practice a lot of changes start appearing but it also can go down when you stop it. And the farther you keep away from the laity and the more you stick to the company of fellow monks and nuns the more changes will take place within you.

Worship whom…

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/35o5NQuNFFs?feature=share

Why is America the only country that tips? In other words, why are Europeans so cheap?

My own experience here. Back in the 1980s when I worked in a BR (British Rail) information kiosk, I had an American couple come up and ask for a train itinerary to get up to Fort William in Scotland. They were keen to stop off at various places en route so it took a good half an hour to work out times and optimum ticket prices.

Once they had collected all their notes, the gentleman pulled out his wallet and proffered me a tenner (£10 note) whilst thanking me for my diligence.

Naturally, I turned his “tip” down and said that what I’d done for them was simply my job and that we weren’t permitted to accept such things.

Blimey, that was it! The gent was visibly taken aback then his partner launched into a very loud verbal lashing of me saying that I was extremely rude for embarrassing him in front of everyone else, adding that they were “only trying to help your poor wages”.

Somebody in the queue piped up with “we don’t need your money, pal”, at which point the couple stormed off and kicked the door on their way out.

It could be argued that I went “above and beyond” but all BR clerical staff were salaried back then and we’d be mortified to have people announce that they thought that we were poor!

Generally people in Europe are paid a living wage so we don’t need to extract a tip out of everyone at every transaction to make ends meet. We leave that to our American cousins!

This is a HUGE PROBLEM for all of us!

This is a must watch for anyone who cares about our country and We The People !

Do you believe that America’s involvement in various global affairs has played a role in China’s ascent to superpower status?

This is a very good question.

Yes in a huge way it is. Though China and the Chinese people Confucian character and ethics itself is a phenomenal force.

If the U.S. had not foolishly fought wars that achieved absolutely nothing and cost tens of trillions of dollars that literally bankrupt America that pave the way for China to speedily caught up the U.S. and overtook it in most aspect of superpower status.

Just imagine this. Korean War is to stop North Korean to being communist. Today 80 years latter it is still a communist nation. The same goes to Vietnam. After 10 trillion lost 3 million dead and most U.S. gold reserves evaporated yet today half a century is still a proud socialist nation. Iraq is fought to introduce democracy to them. After 5 trillion dollars down the toilet Iraq is as i lambic nation as it was. But worst it now ally with Iran now. Another 3 trillion dollars thrown into the money pit is Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban after 20 years the U.S. surrender the nation back to the Taliban.

The U.S. achieved nothing but hate and a broke and bankrupt nation! But worst. During the 60 years of continuous self created conflicts while the U.S. real standard of living standard of living stagnated back to the 1960 level today in 2023. During these same duration China grew 50 times in 60 years! By 2021 The Chinese life expectancy overtook the U.S. having doubled from 39 to now close to 79 years old!

You would think the US learn lessons from this nonsense but no. But today in 2023 the U.S. is fomenting coups in Africa, doing regime change in Russia, fighting another 10 trillion dollar un-winnable war in Ukraine, seething a stage to begin another war with China doing another Tokin lie in Taiwan and South China seas. It seems the U.S. won’t stop till it is finally collapsed in a total civil war! But that is the U.S. where popularity of leaders triumph over rationality.

China is laughing all the way to the bank metaphorically and factually. While the U.S. economy is is dire straight. Ukraine requires a billion a day Chinese provocation cost another billion a day and CIA and NED activity will totally burn up their cash but heck, your million homes less living on tents can wait, your 35% of Americans without medical insurance can die without help!

Israel Has just CUT OFF Water Supplies to Gaza – Just Like Ukraine did to Crimea

World Hal Turner

NEW AL JAZEERA REPORT SAYS ISRAEL JUST COMPLETELY CUT OFF THE WATER SUPLY TO GAZA!   Just like Ukraine did to Crimea. 

It was a Crime Against Humanity when Ukraine did it.  It is a Crime Against Humanity now that Israel is doing it.

To deny human beings water means death in as little as three days.

During those days, people will have to take a crap into a five gallon bucket and haul it out to dump it somewhere.

With THAT type of sanitation, disease outbreaks will come fast; killing many who have some water stored and are otherwise surviving.

The shear hatred between the two sides over there would be mind-boggling were it not so long in coming.

Most of us have known for years this type of day would come.  Few of us thought it would be in our lifetime.  

Meet Frane Selak, the world’s (un)luckiest man.

In January 1965, Frane was aboard a train travelling through a cold, rainy canyon.

At one point of the journey the train was somehow flipped off of its tracks, and tumbled into a river.

A bystander rushed to the train’s aid, and pulled Frane out of the river. Unfortunately, 17 people drowned, trapped inside the train as it sank to the river’s bottom.

A narrow brush with death.


The next year, Frane was aboard the only plane ride he would ever take.

During the flight, the plane malfunctioned, and Frane was blown out of the aircraft.

He tumbled through the air— and landed safely in a haystack.

The plane crashed in a field, killing all 19 of its passengers.

Yet another close call.


It seemed that Frane had experienced his fair share of near-death experiences, but life still had quite a lot in store for Mr. Selak.

  • 1966- A bus Frane was aboard crashed into a river, killing four. Frane was able to swim to safety with only minor injuries.
  • 1970- While he was driving, Frane’s car suddenly caught on fire. He managed to escape just before the fuel tank exploded.
  • 1973- In yet another driving incident, the engine of Frane’s car was doused in scalding oil from a malfunctioning fuel pump, causing flames to shoot through the air vents. Other than singed hair, Frane was unharmed.
  • 1995- While on a trip in Zagreb, Croatia, Frane was struck by a bus. Luckily enough, he only sustained minor injuries.
  • 1996- As Frane was driving, he was forced to swerve into a guardrail to avoid an oncoming truck. The rail collapsed under the car’s weight, sending it plummeting into a gorge. However, Frane wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so he was flung out of his car—right onto a tree. He held on, and safely watched as his car tumbled down into the gorge.

While he’s lucky to have survived more than seven brushes with death, Frane Selak seemed plagued by misfortune.

That is, until 2003 rolled around.

Two days after his 73rd birthday, Frane purchased a lottery ticket—- and won. It wasn’t a small amount, either: Roughly $1.1 million USD.

Perhaps even better than his lottery win?

He’s gone over twenty years without being placed in a life-threatening situation.

Frane Selak truly has beaten all odds.

My Son Didn’t Want to be Born; Pre Birth Memory and Near Death Experience

I really appreciated the whole “I want to go home” statement. I never wanted to kill myself but I have that feeling of wanting to go home all the time. My husband never understands this because I will be at our house but I feel lonely/a longing to ‘go home’”

The US’ small yard & high fence protect its outdated & obsoleted technologies which are one to two generations behind of the Chinese technologies such as hypersonic missiles, smart phones, chips, green energy, stealthy fighter, radars etc. Why?

Simple.

Small things amuses small mind. To most Yanks the world stood still since 1945. That is their failure to recognised that the world has move on.

Americans stood still while China advanced beyond recognition in a space of a mere 74 years since 1949. ASPI the acronym for Australian Strategic Policy Institute coincidentally an off shoot of the U.S. Neocon group concluded that today China lead the U.S. in all 37 out of 44 most key and strategic technologies and material sciences going into the future.

Hubris, over estimation of themselves, racial bias and frown upon Chinese people, wrongful dismissal of Chinese progress and achievements. Coupled with being so full of it attitude caused the U.S. to lose all its lead in technology. While China work their guts out the U.S. simply deteriorated by by feeling entitled and foolishly ignorant and naive about their collapse going into the 21st century.

Another way to put it they slumbered into deep sleep mode till it is way way way too late. And any counter action on China hurts and harm the U.S. way more that it affects China. It hasten China’s lead. And speed up US implosion. And being full of it they did in the space Center ban GPS threat, trade war and Chip act all of which cost the US an arm and a leg. And padded China’s lead further.

How can I find out who’s stealing my lunch from the office fridge?

I added a drug in my food which induced diarrhea and waited to catch the culprit.

I was fed up with the lunch thief. Every other day someone would eat my lunch and this was a common phenomenon happening in our class. Any day a student bring something delicious it was bound to disappear. Some students stop bringing lunch others used to carry their lunch box wherever they go. Complaints were made to the school principal but, couldn’t catch the thief. I suspected few students which included some senior students also but, didn’t dare to say anything. Then I decided to do something extreme.

I brought a local delicacy for lunch one day and invited every possible classmate to have a bite during lunch hour. The morning hours were chemistry practicals and we had to leave our bags in our classroom. I knew if the thief got news about my food, he will strike during this time only. We all went to the practicals. Nearly one hour later we heard a commotion and saw principal and few teachers rushing upstairs, immediately followed by nurses. My teacher also went outside to see what was happening and then we saw one of my seniors crying loudly and taken on the stretcher by the nurses. He was the one who tried to eat my food but, didn’t know that I had mixed a drug extracted from a plant which induces diarrhea. He ate my entire lunch went back to his class and within 15 minutes started to have uncontrollable loose motions. That class was opened only after disinfecting which took 2 days.

He was admitted to hospital for a week. Later on, he confessed that he ate food from my lunch box before falling ill. My parents were called to the school and I was asked what happened to your food and I confessed to mixing in the drug for which I got nice beating from my father.

But, that incident made me famous in my schools and students started to bring lunch without fear. I felt like a savior of the world.

Edits 1- Lot of people have commented regarding the legality of this situation. I was in 8th grade when this happened. I didn’t mix the entire potion of drugs in my food, it was few drops. The diarrhea was contained within few hours but, the culprit felt weakness and took a week to recover. To everyone knowledge, I won’t use that drug again but, if someone tries to mess again with my food…….hahahahahahahahahaha (beware)

US decrypts the secrets of Kirin 2035, Huawei did not respond. The discovery scares the U.S.

The United States decrypts the secrets of Kirin 2035, Huawei did not respond.

The discovery scares the U.S.

https://youtu.be/zp8fL5uX3DU

Have you ever checked into a hotel room and found something unexpected?

Yes. One of the major regrets of my life. Let me explain……

As a young single sales engineer for Digital Equipment in the early 80s I attended a european sales meeting held in a posh hotel in Majorca. We were told that junior ranks (like me) were to share rooms, so after picking up my key I went to my room and saw a suitcase on the other bed. No probs, I thought, until I took a slightly closer look and noticed it was opened and full of female underwear. Hmmm, there must be some mistake, thought I. So I trudged down to reception, they assured me the room allocations were made by the company organisers not themselves, but they sent me to another room, which did in fact have a male engineer in it.

I subsequently discovered that the female in the original room was an absolutely stunning blonde Swedish girl, also single, and the organisers (a couple of girls from the Geneva Head Office) had mischievously allocated us together hoping that love would blossom.

What a wasted opportunity, I should have stayed in the first room and seen how events played out.

Have you ever seen someone who badly needed it “get dealt with”?

My middle school was relatively clean cut. It was a private school.

Most of the kids came from good homes. They weren’t the fighting types.

There was this kid Brandon, who used to bully everyone. (There always seems to be at least one doesn’t there?)

He was one of those early teenagers who had a big early growth spurt. He was bigger than everyone.

He was angry for no reason all the time. A perpetual scowl on his face.

He’d constantly be in the face of kids much smaller than him, egging them to fight him. He’d say, “You are a pussy.”, “Do something you pussy.”, “I dare you. Push me you pussy.”

I occasionally was the target, I’ll admit.

He’d throw a 12 year old boy into a locker right as the kid was talking to his crush. It was brutal. He had no qualms embarrassing people.

Nobody in our school was much of a fighter. And most of us were smaller so we didn’t really want to test our luck.

That summer, apparently there had been a meeting with school officials where it was communicated that his tenure at this private school should probably end.

Code: expulsion.

He didn’t learn from his expulsion from our school. His ways continued.

But he would learn soon.

He went to a new public High School with the same assholish attitude, that “looking for a fight” approach.

Unfortunately, the new pool he was swimming in had bigger fish: kids from a rougher side of the train track.

One particular kid “opted in” on his invitation to fight and Brandon got himself a badly needed public ass-kicking.

My conclusion, that actually gives me some solace:

Every bully will change his ways eventually.

Or he’ll have his ways changed for him.

There’s always a bigger, badder dude out there, gladly willing to be the “vehicle of his enlightenment”.

Now that China is beating the US in every aspect such as technology, life expectancy, quality of life, infrastructures, resources such as steel and rare earth, smarter people, no homelessness, does this mean that its the new superpower and the best?

No it does not want to be a super power. It wants a fair and just world! The U.S. can still pretends to be the superpower and spends its way into oblivion. Go right ahead. Prepare for another hundred US wars!

China just wants to make money and give its people peace and prosperity. If the U.S. prefer to see 5 million homeless in the U.S. but fund Hong Kong poor and hoodlums to pretend to protest. That is their right of the US to deprived its own people and interfere in every corner of the globe.

China wants the world to be a better place. It wants to help build a better and fairer world. The U.S. can necked it’s citizens to death in bright daylight or shoot 16 years old due to his skin colour. That is their right. The U.S. can fund another 10 Ukraines wars and cause 10 million deaths that is the U.S. right.

China knows what it needs, better roads, better high speed railway, better infrastructure better access to IT and facilities for its people to progress. China won’t do shit like the U.S. China won’t bankrupt itself over muscles flexing like the U.S. It wants to give its people better food and more food and better homes and nicer cloths. Better health care and free education.

You ask this question because you see from a western lens. China needing to over lords the world now that they are rich and successful. That is the western way. Not China not the Chinese people. They want to sell to the world. They want to make stuffs for the world. They want to trade with the world. Sure they are super duper ready if you ever threat them.

Have you ever found out a horrible family secret from your parents?

Yeah, from my dad but AFTER he’d died, when I was given a load of his stuff.

I knew my mum had left him, but we were told she left me and my brother with dad because she couldn’t take us with her as we were on our dads passport and he was in the army.

Well it turns out my dad kept the “Dear John” letter she wrote him when she left us all.

She made it clear that my dad was to stay in contact with her parents, but to not contact her about us.

The courts naturally awarded her custody in the divorce, but she never came for us.

We ended up living with our paternal Auntie, long story, and she hated our dad and did her best to ensure he couldn’t take us back from her.

She made us wards of court and sought a custody of sorts, which she won.

In the paperwork for that was a note saying our mum had a new life, spouse and a daughter with him and didn’t want to be involved with her two sons.

Reminder — she left us, she didn’t come get us after the divorce and didn’t prevent our Auntie from keeping us.

My dad never ever told me any of that, not even a hint and I had years of on and off again contact with mum before eventually going to live with her when I was 17.

He’d kept a load of her photos, original birth certificate, all the court documents from divorce and ward of court stuff, everything we’d need if we’d wanted to find her when we were older but to also show she’d left us and he’d tried his best to keep us.

He was civil to her the few times they saw each other, like when he came to visit me when I was living at hers and when I got married, but he never mentioned the past.

Even when my brother estranged himself from dad after years of our Auntie drip feeding him lies about dad, Dad never said anything about Mum and what our Auntie did to him in regards to taking his boys off him.

Dad left the Army, left his girlfriend in Germany with whom he’d settled down with after Mum left and they were going to raise us as a family when he came to get us back from his sister…he left everything behind to come and live round the corner from us and start all over again with nothing.

He had to die before I could find it out the truth, I never got to speak to him, to hear his side because he just left it in the past and was the best dad he could be in the circumstances.

I miss him and honestly the wrong parent died early in my view.

What is the oddest conversation you’ve had with a telephone scammer?

It was a Sunday morning, and I was bored, so when the phone rang, I jumped to answer it.

I forget the detail, but the first sentence spoken by the caller gave the game away.

I put on my best British upper crust accent, and demanded to know where he got the number from.

He umm’d and arr’d. I demanded again, whilst I turned around and barked an order to trace the call to the non-existent millitary staff behind me.

Tapping on my computer keyboard, for sound affects, I informed the caller that he had called a millitary number restricted for use by 10 Downing Street (and no-one else), and I continued to question him, whilst having secondary conversations with the non-existent personal behind me.

I kept the call going for 30 minutes, and I’m pretty sure that I heard the precise moment the poor guy shat himself.

In the end, I let him off with a warning and an instruction to ensure that this number was not called again.

I didn’t receive an unsolicited call of any description for more than two years after that.

Initially, I felt cruel, figuring this was just some kid in a scam call centre. That feeling wore off when I realised what a tale this guy had to tell his mates later on.

How do you politely decline when an older family member tries to give you things they no longer want?

You politely say, “Are you sure you want to part with it?” Then depending on the item, you can say that you will keep and cherish it as a family heirloom, or, you can be honest and say, “While this is lovely, it doesn’t fit with my decor. I will be glad to take it and find the perfect home for it where it can be loved and enjoyed.”

The biggest fear many older people have is that after they die, people will come into their home and not respect the things that were special in their lives. My mother’s fear was that her “special items” would simply be thrown away.

While your older relative is alive, ask them to walk you through their home and tell you the history of the various items throughout their house. You may gain a new respect for those items, as well as get clues to another family member who may actually want that item or have a connection to it. You may also find out if the items have significant monetary value or just sentimental value.

Your relative may think some items have high value, such as old or expensive sets of china or some collectible figurines, but the reality is that people no longer are interested in china sets or other items and they are worth very little. Older people can be devastated at the loss of value, so if that is the case, you don’t need to tell the older person, just reassure the person that you will take those items and care for them, then you can later dispose of them appropriately. If you don’t have room to store items, it may work to say, “I know you love this figurine (or whatever.) Why don’t you keep and enjoy it, just put my name on it for the future.”

The key is to respect the feelings of your older relatives and help them care for their special items in a respectful and caring manner. After they are gone, you can do what you need to do.

What are some signs that someone may be manipulating you, even if they don’t seem like it?

Years ago, my then-girlfriend gave me a pair of Bluetooth headphones as a birthday present. I appreciated it and tried so hard to make them work. But they kept irritating my ears and always fell out. Eventually, I went back to my regular wired headphones — not realizing this would trigger a huge point of contention.

Every time we went to the gym, she’d cross her arms and lament, “It’s a shame you won’t use those $150 headphones I got you.” She brought it up for months and months and it started to feel like I’d loaned money to the devil.

Humans are strongly reciprocal in nature. Any healthy relationship is built on giving and receiving in a fair manner. When there’s a gulf in this reciprocity, it creates a power imbalance. This is why gifts are a common tool for manipulation by people who score high in machiavellianism (having a desire to control someone).

Bestowing presents is also a common tactic by abusers. Each of Michael Jackson’s accusers made similar claims of him showering them with amazing gifts. They felt a sense of loyalty to him, particularly when it was time to defend him in court.

With my aforementioned ex, we eventually reached a resolution that once a gift is given, it is released. There are no claw-backs. There is no weaponizing them during arguments or using them to create resentments. That relationship taught me to keep an eye out for scorekeeping. Anytime someone tries to lord over me that they did this one nice thing for me — just to get their way on an entirely different subject, I tend to get prickly.

Even favors can be used against you if you aren’t careful. The most advanced manipulators use them, and you can too, in a good way.

Ben Franklin had a political enemy who was making speeches against him. Franklin remembered an old quote, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.” Then he asked that political enemy to loan him a rare book. Ben eventually returned it to him with a nice thank you note inside the cover. Suddenly, their political rivalry vanished and Franklin had a new friend.

Asking for a favor is a conveyance of trust and need. A person feels chosen. You’re suggesting they have something you don’t: knowledge, ability, and resources. It also appeals to their insecurities. If you don’t know the requester or are angry at them, it creates a cognitive dissonance: why am I helping someone I don’t know or whom I’m mad at?

Your brain watches you behaving in conflict and creates a subconscious conclusion: you must like the person. After all, we ask favors of people we trust and care for, right? Beware of pro bono favor requests from people who have something to gain from you.

China Just REVEALED Update Plans For NEW Moon Base

China, who has seen a dormant phase recently regarding its lunar exploration program has recently released updates regarding the continuation of its lunar exploration program. As this important endeavor continues, China is on track to land its Taikonaut on the lunar surface and achieve one of the biggest milestones in its sector.

BOOM! Turkey Enters Israel-Palestine Fight — Warns U.S. to STAY OUT

World Hal Turner

The President of Turkiye, Recypt Erdogan, has publicly come out in support of Palestinians in the ongoing HAMAS-Israel conflict and has PUBLICLY WARNED the United States to STAY OUT of the conflict.

Erdogan says that his country is “with our innocent Palestinian brothers”  and explicitly warned — everyone — that Turkey is “willing to defend Palestine at any price.”

It looks to me as if he just threw down a Gauntlet.  To the US.  To Israel.  To pretty much everyone; perhaps even including NATO!

Erdogan knows that Poland, just yesterday, said they were sending military transport aircraft into Israel to evacuate Polish nationals and that if those aircraft are attacked, Poland would invoke NATO Article 5, resulting in the 31 country NATO alliance making strikes against Palestinians!  

With today’s announcement, Erdogan just dumped cold water all over Poland . . . AND NATO.  Neither will be able to do anything if Turkey says no.  NATO requires unanimity before the bloc can engage in military action.

This HAMAS-Israel thing is spinning out of control so fast, it’s hard for me to even keep track of it. 

Frankly, in my opinion, this has “Disaster” written all over it.

Why doesn’t America feel shameful when talking about human rights when they have only been in peace for 17 years in its entire 247 years of history?

They are deluding themselves. Most Americans still think they are exceptional. They are so deluded that they think it is alright for their government to use chemicals like ‘Agent Orange’ in the battle field. They think it is alright for them to torture captured prisoners with ‘Water Boarding’ and all other forms of ‘Tortures’. One picture has kept me awake at nights for a long time is the one showing a naked young girl running away and crying because she and other kids were being chased by American soldiers after they saw the unarmed civilian grown ups being tortured and killed by the American soldiers. And of course who can forget those picture showing prisoners being torture in Abu Ghraib prison, on the outskirts of Baghdad. There are too many pictures for the American Authority to deny their existence. And a former US President got the nerve to say that ‘Water boarding’ was not torture.

Another picture that come to mind is when Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a former 4 Star General, holding up a tube containing washing powder and claimed that as proof of Iraq’s ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’. He mis-spoke. He should have said. ‘Weapon of Mass Deception’.

Thank his ex

Where would a war between China and the United States be fought?

Simple cheek for cheek an eye for an eye!

China will not start a war. To China it knows wars don’t resolve anything. It focus on being able to do tit for tat.

So if the U.S. talk shit and do daft muscle flexing and chest thumping like a gorilla, China will do nothing. China’s view is

It will intelligently let the US have a long rope to hang itself if that is what the U.S. wants. But if the U.S. hit China in China it will reciprocate by hitting US in U.S. if you kill a hundred in China it will kill a hundred in U.S. mainland. If you kill a thousand China will kill a thousand. If you use a nuke on China, China will use a nuke on U.S.

So if you want to stay safe stay in your shore in Florida or California. If you are loitering in South China Seas. The U.S. had 2 choices. One blow trillions for nothing. Or two, murder equal number of people in China and the U.S. or worst turn earth into a nuclear dust.

Right now the U.S. choose blowing billions like a faded and aging hoodlum flexing its muscles no one bother to pay attention to. All it needs is it swing accidentally and hit China to start a mutual self destruction. I think it is suicidal.

2023 10 28 13 20
2023 10 28 13 20

As a doctor, what is the most dangerous lie a patient has told you?

It wasn’t a patient, but the sister of his wife who demanded that my girlfriend tell a big lie to her patient. According to my girlfriend, it happens all the time in Muslim families.

Only a couple of days ago, my girlfriend found out that the patient was dying from bladder cancer metastasis. He did not have much time left — quality time, that is. She explained that to the family members who had come to the consultation room.

Not only his wife and children were there, but also his wife’s sister and an even older aunt, and some other family members — there was a bunch of them. The man himself was in his room. Asleep.

The sister and his wife asked — well, actually insisted — that my girlfriend would not tell the patient how bad his condition really was, and she certainly was not allowed to mention that his end would be very painful and bad.

My girlfriend kindly explained that she cannot tell this kind of lie to a patient — that he had every right to know about his condition, and that there were also the options of palliative care or euthanasia, which he had every right to think about before the pain would get even worse.

The problem is: in Muslim families, euthanasia is a no-go, and they rather have beloved uncle-husband-father patient succumb to the worse imaginable pain, than to help him go finally asleep without pain. Their way of coping with it is simply to not tell the patient.

But my girlfriend refused (she always does).

And she also told them that she had already spoken with him, and that he had dearly thanked her for telling the truth. He had suspected for a while that this was going the wrong way, but he needed confirmation — which he now had. And he planned to think about the options, now that the pain was getting worse.

His wife’s sister was furious, and exclaimed that the proposed therapies were not an option.

Yeah. But, you know, she was not the one in pain though.

What are some lies car mechanics tell?

I purchased a brand-new Honda Civic, which I drove very little and kept garaged. At 21k miles, I was told by the Honda dealer that the car needed brake work in order to pass inspection. I was highly skeptical, since I’m not hard on the brakes, and my previous vehicle did not require ANY brake work until around 80k miles. However, I was recovering from surgery and not able to do much myself, so I agreed to the work. I questioned this, and got a long BS story from the Service Manager about how I didn’t drive the car often enough, and as a result, the brakes were wearing. Something didn’t seem right, and I should have known better.

At 25k miles, the vehicle had other service work done, and the Honda mechanic reported that the brakes were fine. However, as I was leaving the dealership, I overheard the Service Manager having the exact same conversation with another customer about her brakes. The same BS reasons (not driving enough) were given, verbatim.

Roll forward to 31k miles, and the Honda dealer tells me they need “immediate attention”. By now, I was recovered and strongly smelled a rat. So I declined the work, and put the car up in my own garage. I was pissed when inspection showed nothing wrong with the brakes whatsoever. In fact, they looked almost new.

Since that time, I have driven the car for 2 years and over 16k miles, passing state inspection (which includes brakes) both times, without any brake work!

Took my business elsewhere, and didn’t look back. That was the 5th car bought by the family at that dealership, it will be the last.

Has anyone ever taken a DNA test and found something completely shocking?

I have a good one. I had long had a suspicion that my father was not my biological father. We looked nothing alike, not that it bothered me, but he was a 5′4″ Egyptian man and I’m a 5′9″ very white woman. At some point, my sister’s MIL gave her an Ancestry DNA kit for her birthday. Sure enough, it came back with 0% anything related to Egyptian. Both our parents have been deceased for several decades so we couldn’t ask them. At that point, I figured I should just go ahead and take the DNA test myself. Sure enough, same with me. I told my sister than I had heard a rumor from my mother’s best friend that our parents had fertility problems. I had quietly assumed that we had been a product of a sperm donation for years. My sister and I appear to be half sisters. She’s three years younger than I am so it makes sense. Sperm donors usually don’t donate for years and they may have tried to get a donor with at least some darker features. She was somewhat more shocked.

Fast forward six weeks after my results came in and I get an alert from Ancestry, I have a match. I open up the email and the first line is something like – “John Smith (not real name) is your father”. I was ready to acknowledge that I was not biologically my father’s but, for some reason, it startled me that I would find my actual biological father. I didn’t contact him. I was in my forties at the time and I imagine when he donated sperm that many years ago anonymously, it never occurred to him I’d show up.

That being said, a couple weeks later, he contacted me. After a few back and forth messages, it turns out he was a sperm donor, a retired OB/Gyn (not my mother’s for the record) and was indeed my biological father. On top of that, I have three other half sisters, the youngest of which is three months older than I am. He likes to brag/joke that he had two women knocked up at once. Of course, there may be more of us out there.

I’ve met the family multiple times. They’re a very nice group of people and my biological father calls me his fourth daughter. I look a lot like my sisters. At 5′9″, I’m actually the shortest sister. My bio dad at his tallest was around 6′5″, I think.

As crazy as all of this sounds, it didn’t really cause any identity crisis. I was in my 40’s. I knew who I was at that point and who my “real” father was, the one who had raised me. On top of that, I had fertility issues myself (just age related) and had used donor egg and sperm for my daughter. I discovered all of this after my child was born. It would never occur to me that my daughter wasn’t my “real” daughter. I gave birth to that girl and raised her and I’ve been honest with her about all of it, in an age appropriate way, of course. My mother died when I was eight so my Egyptian father was a single parent raising two girls. I still feel half Egyptian. As far as I’m concerned, I just have more nice people in my life.

Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond (Remix by Patryk Pryce)

Another fantastic remix. I really love this version.

Bluegrass rock.

Shit, I must of listened to this version about a hundred times! Damn!

Did China lose money on its bullet train project?

image 182
image 182

Absolutely

China averages around 65 Billion RMB a year on Losses on the HSR and an aggregate loss of 5.77 Trillion RMB totally

Sounds huge doesnt it?

It would be if you were an American

For a Chinese system, this is a pittance

Let me explain


First

HSR is regarded as a PUBLIC SERVICE in China

Public Services are always subsidized by the Governments from Beijing to the Local Governments

So these losses are reimbursed by the Taxpayers

The estimate is the average Chinese taxpayer pays 3.77% of his tax money to maintain his country’s railway network

image 183
image 183

Meanwhile an Average Indian contributes nearly 3.11% of his annual income for a railways that’s maybe a fifth of the level of Chinese quality

This is why I keep saying India isn’t ready for a HSR

Our people are too poor today as a whole to pay for the HSR unlike China whose population is way more middle class and have larger pockets plus the fact that HSR has an entire massive hub ensuring the lowest cost of operations

A HSR of 1/10th the size of Chinas in India would cost the Indian Taxpayer 8.41% of their annual income (Around 2100 Kms length)

image 184
image 184

It’s why despite the operating losses of 65 Billion RMB a year , only 10 Billion RMB or 15.4% is reimbursed from borrowings or debt

In India, a whopping 57% is reimbursed from borrowings

In Pakistan, 77% is reimbursed from borrowings

In short the people happily pay for the losses because (a) they are capable enough to pay for the losses with a near 50% middle class (b) the amount is not that high, around 3.77% of their total tax money


Second

Intangible benefits

The HSR enables development of areas and places deemed uninhabitable a decade ago

image 185
image 185

In Shenzhen a worker pays 870 RMB for 32 m² Apartment while 240 Kms away in Guaoxi he pays 400 RMB for 60 m²

Earlier Guaoxi took 6 hours by Road

Today Guaoxi takes a mere 65 minutes by HSR, the 230 kph line, not even the 418 kph fastest line

Thus he saves almost 500 RMB a month which translates to 6000 RMB disposable income a year

The fare for the train is paid out of profits by the employer

This extra 6000 RMB can be spent on other things and thus enhance the economy

The Value of intangible benefits is estimated to be close to 7 Trillion RMB or so


Third

Asset Monetization

The Benefit of Socialism

China owns the land on which the HSR is built, valued today at close to 21 Trillion RMB and that’s not even market price but a 60% discounted government local land price

Thus the total losses are barely 33% of the Assets owned in land alone


Thus the HSR is in vibrant and excellent economic shape

What is the dumbest thing you have ever done

The dumbest thing I’ve ever done …

Well, in my defense . . . oh, never mind. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I have no defense.

Remember this excellent product, ladies?

2023 10 26 17 12
2023 10 26 17 12

It made our hair wonderfully moisturized and conditioned, silky, shiny, and lustrous. It comes in small tubes, and you put it in a glass or cup of hot water to heat it up, apply it to your wet hair and work it through, leave on for just one minute (!) and then shampoo it out.

Alberto VO5 products (made by a company named Alberto-Culver) are very good and inexpensive hair care products. They go back a long way; even my Grandma used them. In her bathroom was always VO5 shampoo …

2023 10 26 17 1d3
2023 10 26 17 1d3

and this …

2023 10 26 17 13a
2023 10 26 17 13a

And never mind “conditioner” .. we used this, Tame Creme Rinse …

2023 10 26 17 1a3
2023 10 26 17 1a3

I remember, when I was a young girl, wondering why “cream” was spelled c-r-e-m-e, and why a guy named Toni was making stuff for girls (?) And why the heck was Tony’s name spelled with an ‘i’ instead of a ‘y’?

Okay, sorry. I got sidetracked by nostalgia. (Love and miss you, Grandma and Mom.)

So, the dumbest thing I’ve ever done? I gave myself a “hot oil treatment” but not with VO5. Not that time. That time I did it with this:

2023 10 26 17 14
2023 10 26 17 14

I melted some (probably more than a tube full, but, ya know, I was putting Vaseline in my hair. What’s one more dumb thing?) in a small saucepan on the stove, applied the “hot oil” to my hair, and well – did I let it sit on my wet hair for one minute? Hell no … I let it sit for ten minutes.

Yeah, I hadn’t thought it through.

It completely congealed. Back to its original state. Petroleum Jelly. My hair looked like I went swimming in an Exxon oil spill.

I shampooed .. and shampooed .. and shampooed. It wouldn’t wash out. In desperation, I even called an Ask-a-Nurse hotline for advice, which was a fairly new service at the time, around ‘78 or ‘79. (I was only 21 or 22 at the time. Is that a good defense? . . . No? Yeah, you’re right.)

The nurse I spoke with told me to try laundry detergent or an astringent, which sounded reasonable. I bought two bottles of Bonnie Bell astringent. It rolled off my hair like a car windshield that’s been treated with Rain-ex.

NEXT…

Yes, I washed my hair with powdered laundry detergent. Was there no end to the dumb shit I’d try? Apparently not. That didn’t work, either. Perhaps the nurse meant liquid laundry detergent. Well, dammit. Then she should’ve specified.

Finally I spotted something that gave me hope, in the kitchen of all places. Like a shining beacon of relief from an ordeal of my own dumb doing, one I’d been dealing with for three days running. It was a fairly new product, too. One that had “grease cleaning power”, or whatever their slogan was back then. And .. hallelujah! It worked!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason nothing but this adorns my kitchen window ledge.

2023 10 26 17 14as
2023 10 26 17 14as

Have I done dumber things than giving myself a hot oil treatment with Vaseline? Oh, I’ve done a couple of dumb things since, sure, but nothing quite as dumb. My brother-in-law thought it was the funniest freakin’ thing he’d ever heard. He told everybody. I’d meet friends of his and they’d say “Oh, are you the one who put Vaseline in her hair”? I never lived it down.

“Yep … *sigh* .. yep, that was me”.

Shocking: Nightlife in Kampala, Uganda

This is ASTOUNDING.

What’s something scary you’ve done?

I started a men’s group.

And… it was terrifying.

The idea came from a conversation with my therapist.

“You need to find meaning outside of work,” she said. “What are you passionate about?”

And get this—
Even in the *safe space of therapy* I felt awkward telling her: “I want to normalize vulnerability between men. I want to support other dads. I want to feel their support.”

“That’s a beautiful idea,” she said. “Go for it.”

So I:
– Posted on a local Facebook Group
– Got hundreds of likes and comments
– (ironically, 80% from wives tagging their husbands)

I felt imposter syndrome every step of the way.

“Who the hell are you to start a men’s group?”
“What do you even have to offer?”
“No one’s going to come.”
“You suck.”

But I did it anyway.

(While responding to that voice with a healthy dose of: 🖕)

And now, 7 of us meet in my basement every two weeks.

It’s:
– 10% parenting advice
– 90% “I need to get this off my chest”
– And 100% “Why don’t men do this more often?!”

There are two things I’m trying to say here:

The first is that I have three boys at home, ages 16, 12, & 8.

I don’t want them to grow up like me:
– Terrified to share their feelings
– Show weakness
– Be vulnerable.

Incapable of connecting with other men on an emotional level.

Because life’s short. We’re social creatures. And finding our shared humanity is one of the greatest joys of life.

The second thing is that:
– The inner critic is a liar
– Your comfort zone is a liar
– Imposter syndrome is a liar

Each of us has unique gifts to give to the world.

But it takes stepping out of that comfort zone.
Taking risks.
Falling.

Getting back up.
Doing hard things.
Being the change you want to see.

What are the best ways to become the best at whatever you do?

Follow this simple process:

  1. Write Down Your Goals Twice Every Day. You cannot get the things you don’t remember you wanted in the first place.
  2. Do Something For The Goals Every Single Day. Success and excellence only come from what we do behind the scenes every day.
  3. Work Harder Than Everyone Else. To be the best you must work like the best. Period.
  4. Get Over Yourself. Get over the fact that you can do this all while staying comfortable and do the things you do not like to do and that scare you.
  5. Believe You Are The Best Before You Are. If you do not believe it, why should anyone else?
  6. Focus All Your Energy On Improving. You are not the best yet, so you must grow into the best by improving everything you can as much as you can.
  7. Invest In Yourself. Spend the time, energy and money required for you to become the best.
  8. Do Not Give Up. This will take longer than you think it will and will be harder than anyone told you, but if you give up, you will never be able to reach it.

How does the ousting of China’s defence minister and foreign minister reflect on President Xi Jinping’s leadership?

It has no effect because defense and foreign policy are not made in the Defense and Foreign ministries. These ministries are only involved with policy implementation.

Foreign policy is formulated by the Director of Foreign Policy 外事办主任。 This office is now headed by Wang Yi, who took over as Foreign Minister after Qin Gang was put under investigation in June. This means that Wang Yi is responsible for foreign policy, and is also responsible for foreign policy implementation as the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Defense policy is devised by the Central Military Commission 中央军委, of which Xi Jinping is chairman. The Defense Ministry is responsible for defense policy implementation.

China is not ruled by Xi Jinping individually, but by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, of which Xi is the face and the spokesperson. Because it is not rule by individual ego, as is often done in the west, it has no significant effect on Xi himself.

Can Israel survive a long drawn out war of attrition?

Hezbollah is waiting for Israel to start the ground invasion of Gaza then they will open the northern front. With Iran, Russia and China potentially backing this war, what will be the situation if this escalation happens?

Israel does not have the stomach to take heavy casualties nor the capability to fight a prolonged war of attrition on three fronts i.e. Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon. Israel has a Jewish population of 7.1 million, around 50% of which are of fighting age (18–55) male and female.

[1] Size of its army is 634,500 including reserves, that is around 18% of population which is in the 18–55 years bracket. With these statistics, how much casualties can Israel take? Without US soldiers to die for it, Israel will run out of soldiers long before it runs out of ammunition.

Hence the only way Israel can survive this war is if US comes in with full force to fight alongside IDF and die for Israel. Short of that Israel is in deep trouble, as it is surrounded by the ocean of Muslim world with unlimited supply of manpower ready to fight Israel given half a chance.

image 181
image 181

It remains to be seen whether American public is ready for another “never ending” war, and whether American taxpayers are willing to fund it.

They aren’t stopping for shit

How do you politely decline paying for a group dinner?

Our somewhat spoiled and entitled 34 y/o son invited a couple friend of his to join us at an expensive beachfront restaurant. We had graciously picked up the tab for him and his friends on previous occasions, so we expected it to be more of the same. No big deal except that couple brought another couple we’d never met, and they all proceeded to order filet mignon. They also ordered two more to-go for their large dogs waiting at home! I whispered to my husband to keep his wallet in his pants and to order us two hamburgers. Oh how sweet it was when the check came and I loudly told the server that my husband and I would be on a separate check. You could hear the gasps and watch them all struggling and asking each other if anyone had cash or creditcards. I didn’t need to order dessert as that was the most delicious moment. Got tired of being mooched.

India is paying $17 billion for a 500km bullet train while China is building a 3,000km bullet train for $5.5 billion in Thailand. Arvind Kejriwal has re-tweeted this thrice. Is this true?

That’s not how China works

image 186
image 186

China never builds 3000 Km at a stretch

Chinese Projects are always divided into Phases

Typically a 3000 Km has 10 Phases of 300 Km each, which are finally linked into a single mesh network

The Chinese learnt this from Singapore & Japan both of whom work this strategy

This way, if the project is cancelled, the Phase completed can stand alone and have it’s own financial viability model

So if China quoted $ 5.5 Billion, it’s always for a Single Phase

The Whole cost will never be revealed and depends heavily on other factors

Since a Phase is around 300 Kms or definitely not more than 400 Kms, China is likely quoting $ 5.5 Billion for maximum 400 Kms

Still that’s astronomically different from Indias $ 17 Billion for 500 Kms

India is at least 250% higher

India was rather short sighted with the Bullet Train

Initially Chinas bid to India was for almost $ 4.3 Billion for 250 Kms but included Tech Transfer over 15 years

However five areas of disagreement emerged

  • China quoted 2.6% interest on composite terms
  • China demanded a 33% contingency payment knowing Indias history of delays
  • China insisted on having first refusal to build additional routes along the bullet train at later dates , basically saying if and when you expand, we get first choice
  • Chinas last condition was that their engineers felt very strongly that Mumbai to Ahmedabad was not a good pilot route due to many estimated problems that they predicted. Instead they wanted the Pilot Project between two other points rumored to be between Karnataka to Tamilnadu due to ease of terrain and other reasons.

At this time Japan who was terribly eager to get the contract offered to regard the entire 500 Km as a single phase at 0.1% interest but at double the cost

They agreed to Ahmedabad to Mumbai route

They agreed to no contingency payment

The agreed to no first refusal at a later date if India chose to expand

However they said no Tech transfer


In the end the Chinese were absolutely bang on

Proving that Political decisions never work

They perfectly predicted Delays in the whole project

They perfectly predicted that this 500 Km had a much lesser chance of becoming 5000 Km than with Indonesia Or Thailand

And Japan is stuck with the Project having had a opportunity loss of around $ 1.488 Billion to this day

Biden’s build up to war w/ Jeffrey Sachs

Outstanding discussion.

I’m almost 18 and I inherited 3.5 million dollars can I live off this for the rest of life by investing it?

An old friend of mine received 1 million dollar through a private investment savings account when he retired as a university professor. He was sixty-five at the time and had plenty of other savings, so you would think that he would do all right. Wrong.

His Chinese wife — who was a tad younger — had different ideas.

She first used part of his money to start a female clothing store in a local mall, without knowing the next thing about clothes, selling, or money management (she had a PhD in Physics and had no clue about what selling was about).

The shop went bankrupt in no time.

Some time later, he noticed that his private savings accounts were shrinking rapidly. She had gotten into investing (again, with no knowledge about it whatsoever, besides her prior dramatic clothing shop experience), and she was essentially flushing his money through the drain.

He could stop her (barely) before it was all gone.

In the end, nasal and sinus cancer hit him (very) hard when he turned eighty, and almost nothing was left to pay the very expensive surgeries and therapies — he also had a young daughter to take care of, and she came first. (His wife ignored their daughter altogether.)

He died not much later in “relative peace” (as they say), but kept worrying about one thing and one thing only till the very last seconds, as his daughter would be all alone now.

And his money was gone.

What bothers you?

Would you bargain at an Apple store? How about Starbucks?

“Let me have two 15″ MacBooks for $1,000. Last offer!”

“Gimme two Frappucinos for $2. Otherwise I’m going across the street!”

No?

I live in a small village in Costa Rica.

A guy selling free-range eggs from his own backyard chickens came over the other day.

Everybody tried haggling him down.

“That’s too much!”
“If I drive over to the next town I’ll get them for half of what you’re asking!”
“How did you decide on your price?!”

Tim Cook took home $102M in 2017.

This man was raising chickens so he could send his daughters to school.

Now, I’m not here to bash executives and big companies. I own an Apple laptop and I like going to nice cafés.

But here’s my question:

Why are we comfortable paying those who already have so much what they ask, but always try to get the best deal out of those who have so little?

Texas Chuck Wagon Chili

0ATexas Chuck Wagon Chili0A
0ATexas Chuck Wagon Chili0A

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 pound) beef chuck roast, cut into small stew-size chunks (including fat)
  • 6 tablespoons chili powder
  • 3 tablespoons ground oregano
  • 6 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 tablespoons ground cumin
  • 1 tablespoon cayenne (less if you don’t like it really hot)
  • 1 1/2 to 2 quarts water
  • 1/3 cup Masa Harina or cornmeal

Instructions

  1. Using some of the fat, render fat for browning rest of meat. Brown meat in a cast-iron Dutch oven.
  2. Add chili powder, oregano, garlic, cumin and cayenne. Stir to coat meat.
  3. Add water and stir. Bring liquid to boil and simmer, covered, for 1 to 11/2 hours.
  4. Make a thick paste of Masa Harina or cornmeal and add to chili. Stir to prevent lumping.
  5. Remove lid and simmer 30 to 45 minutes longer (more if you like) to thicken and reduce stew to desired consistency.

Notes

You may need to cut down on the seasonings to suit more tender, non-Texas palates.

NATO Web Site Op-Ed Calls for Nuclear War Preparation!

World Hal Turner

NATO has published an Op-Ed article by a retired American defense official, which calls on the bloc to fight and win a limited nuclear war against Russia. Should the US and China clash over Taiwan, the author claims that a full-scale war in Europe would likely follow.

The Op-Ed article was written by Gregory Weaver, who served as the principal nuclear and missile defense advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In it, Weaver argued that, counter to Moscow’s long-standing nuclear doctrine, Russia may use tactical nuclear weapons either to stave off a battlefield defeat or bring about a swift victory to a conventional conflict, such as that in Ukraine.

In such a scenario, Russian military leadership would assume that the West would not respond in kind, for fear that the situation would “escalate uncontrollably to a large-scale US-Russia homeland exchange.”

Instead of fearing nuclear war, Weaver argues that the West should embrace it. NATO should equip its fighter jets and submarines with tactical nuclear weapons to deter a tactical Russian strike, and “convince Russian leadership that NATO is fully prepared to counter limited nuclear first use with militarily effective nuclear responses of our own.”

Russian nuclear doctrine allows for the use of atomic weapons in the event of a first nuclear strike on its territory or infrastructure, or if the existence of the Russian state is threatened by either nuclear or conventional weapons. This position has not changed since 2010, and makes no exception for the use of tactical nuclear weapons (which are far less powerful than the strategic nuclear weapons that NATO and Russia would fire at each other in the event of an all-out exchange).

Despite these clear guidelines on nuclear use, Weaver claimed that Russia could launch an attack on NATO states in Europe if the US were preoccupied with fighting China over Taiwan, a scenario that he treats as possible without further explanation. 

To counter this, he recommends that NATO move “more deep precision strike capabilities” to Europe, form “several modern armored divisions” in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, and press European members to “provide more conventional capability,” while the US sends them tactical nuclear weapons.

Weaver did not mention the consequences that nuclear war would wreak on the European countries where such a conflict would be fought.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Western leaders have become so obsessed with inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia that they have lost their “sense of self-preservation.”

The writer of the NATO Op-Ed Piece is Gregory Weaver.

Filipina SHOCKED by “DELUSIONAL WOMEN” | Rubeauti reacts

Ugh!

What is the likelihood Xi Jinping will never meet with President Biden during Biden’s term?

I watched a recent speech by Biden in Asia. It was a press conference in Vietnam. Biden was so bad that while he was still talking, his own US press secretary cut him off halfway by muting his microphone, declaring abruptly that the conference was over; and turning on jazz music in the room so that Biden’s voice could not be heard anymore. This was damage control. The US press secretary did it, to stop Biden from continuing to ramble on spouting nonsense in front of a roomful of journalists and media crews.

The poor man is senile. He is still President, of course. But surely he is no longer making the real decisions for the USA. He is just the front, the puppet on stage – the people in charge are the ones behind the curtains pulling on the strings.

It’s pointless for Xi to meet Biden. Xi probably knows it already. Any meeting with Biden would just be for ceremonial purposes and publicity reasons. Nothing will actually come out of such a meeting, because Biden doesn’t make decisions anymore.

Xi is a busy man and I wouldn’t be too surprised if he decides never to meet Biden again. There’s not much point in such a meeting.

Is 65 TOO OLD for a YOUNG FILIPINA? | Street Interviews

LOL! That’s my age!

This is too funny!

How superior is NATO to China in terms of weaponry?

Chinese Weaponry is more than capable of taking on NATO weapons

Oh don’t get me wrong. Maybe technologically, NATO weaponry is more advanced

Yet NATO weaponry has been exposed in Ukraine as woefully being inadequate for a battle with a formidable ally

They have been designed since the 1990s with the aim of maximizing profit and fighting small nations like Iraq and Afghanistan rather than design them to COLD WAR STANDARDS

NATO weapons are designed for rapid strikes and rapid breakthroughs

Their offensive capabilities, mobility, speed are their key design parameters

Yet their defense is weak, their loading rate is compromised and they are not meant for heavy use

The Leopard and Challengers are the best example

They move faster than Russian Tanks yet their load rate is slow and their external body is vulnerable due to lower weight and allows them to be crunched by a simplest cheapest $ 20,000 drone or an 155 mm Artillery Shell or an Air to Surface missile


Chinese and Russian Weaponry are still designed per COLD WAR STANDARDS

To fight NATO

To fight US in an eventual war

They are designed for slow, territorial attrition, rock solid defense and grinding the enemy

Plus their numbers are superior due to better industrial productivity


Logic says Chinese Weapons should take on NATO weapons

Did Apple get lazy about introducing new features to the iPhone when Huawei was sanctioned by the U.S. Commerce Department?

Lazy is not the word to describe Apple.

When there is no rival, all you need to do is to change a little to fool consumers to buy your new product.

Sometimes you purposely do not want to change too much either. Otherwise you may not have new things next year.

Huawei is different. Huawei must find a way to go around US sanctions. It is this urge to survive a harsh condition that people become more innovative & get breakthrough.

It’s STARTING! Biden Just SHOCKED The World With This Move Towards GLOBAL WAR

As Biden seeks vast new sums for wars in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, will his rambling and incoherent speech propel America hurtling towards a global war?

This video is great.

He absolutely captures the sheer insanity of this moment! I mean it’s so insane that you all have to laugh.

Jesus H Christ!

Why don’t people make better decisions?

Biases.

I’ll give you an example.

Psychologist, Paul Piff, ran a famous social experiment using Monopoly. They had two strangers play a game against each other — but first, they flipped a coin.

The “heads” player got double starting money, double bonuses, and rolled two dice instead of one. The tails player played the game normally.

By design, the Heads player would eventually begin winning. Then, scientists watched.

The heads player began talking louder, raising their hands to celebrate. They slammed their pieces down louder on the board as they moved them. Eventually, they were outright rude and hostile to the other player.

When interviewed about winning, they talked about their amazing strategies and tactics. They rarely mentioned the 2x bonuses they began with. They also never acknowledged those advantages were the result of a coin toss.

image 180
image 180

They were displaying the Self-Serving Bias, where people tend to seek out and over-weight information that is favorable to them (and their ego).

In sports and video games, it’s why teammates often point fingers at each other over a loss. In business, it’s why unethical managers blame employees for their own incompetence.

It’s as Upton Sinclair once wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

I try to fact-check the beliefs I have against this powerful bias — because it sneaks into every minor decision we make.

Do you think Russia, China, North Korea, and other countries will make a joint army against NATO, the USA, and Israel sooner or later?

No need for ‘or later‘, perhaps in the ‘now‘.

This is a schematic diagram of the recent situation in the Middle East, where the armed forces of China, Russia, and the United States are located near Israel, Palestine, Iran, and Syria.

The top three countries in the world’s military power rankings are all gathered in this small region.

image 88
image 88

The reason why the US military dare not directly intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is because they are unwilling and because they dare not.

No one will act recklessly.

No one wants to break the current balance.

They Just Did It! America Unleashes Economic Chaos – Shutdown Crisis Escalates

Congress has just ousted Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. This one move just ramped up the shutdown crisis to the next level. We are in for a rollercoaster ride which could lead to a government shutdown where the economy could get dangerously impaired. Here’s what you must know!

The case of the light-fingered PC thief

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

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.

Todays…

Nice Picture

2023 09 26 16 51a
2023 09 26 16 51a

Do you think Huawei can produce smartphones with advanced chips in large volume despite the US claims that Huawei may violate trade restrictions?

LOL, this is China.

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
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

  1. Score meat on all sides.
  2. 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.
  3. To serve, cut diagonally across the grain into very thin slices.

What were the worst two minutes of your life?

Watching my wife die.

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.

https://youtu.be/yo3IUSfTiMY

Our 18-year-old daughter enlisted in the Marines without discussing with me or my husband. What should we do now?

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.

Why were the Japanese so merciless to Chinese people during World War II?

It happened, but not only to China.

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.

Nice Picture

2023 09 26 16 51
2023 09 26 16 51

What is a true personal story that people have a hard time believing?

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.”

Have you ever lost any respect for someone instantly?

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

Why does the West feel so intimidated by Russia when Russia has shown by its poor performance on the battlefield and its looking for outside help that it is not a proper threat?

Poor Performance?

Aw give it up for heavens sake

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 Reacts to Huawei Challenge in China

Unconfirmed reports that Apple is reacting by:

  1. Apple corporate has decided that the newest Apple products would be supplied to China before the US market;
  2. 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.

What is something Westerners don’t know about Africans?

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.”

What is the most eerie declassified CIA document you have seen or heard about?

A US Marine group had killed Sixty Afghans

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.”

22 things. Yuppur.

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

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
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

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.)
  4. When ready to cook steaks, oil a grill rack and prepare grill.
  5. 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.
  6. Grill steaks until lightly charred on the outside and until bacon is cooked, about 5 minutes per side for medium-rare.
  7. When done, remove steaks from fire and place on warm serving plate. Remove toothpicks.
  8. 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.
  9. Serve immediately.

The United States is fucked

2023 09 26 15 5a7
2023 09 26 15 5a7

The big nope

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

You know guys. When you think about it, I mean spend some time and think, the most crazy stuff about “extraterrestrials” is that you adapt (as a human) they become normal to you.

Maybe it is my “Frankenstein” programming, or just four decades or so of close proximity, but it’s not a big thing. Not at all. To me, they are like my pet cats, my pet dogs, my friend down the street. They are most certainly not a “shock” in any way shape or form.

If anything, I just kind of wish that I would spend more physical time with them, somehow. But, you know, I know that is not gonna happen soon. Sigh.

When I was attending university, there was a saying that all my classmates had (guys and girls). And this saying was “I’ll do (try) anything once.”

I wonder how many of them caught Genital Herpies, HIV, or got addicted to cocaine, over the decades. Some of those “first things” can stay with you forever. Don’t you know.

Now, I was NOT one of those people who repeated that mantra. I just nodded knowingly and agreed verbally, but internally disagreed.

Of course, for many, I suppose that (at that time) they were thinking of sex, or drugs. But, to me, I thought that it was like playing Russian roulette. One of those “try once” events could be your last. Like “speeding down a highway way too fast”, or “jumping out of a plane skydiving for the first time”.

To me, it’s all a big “NOPE”.

Through, joining MAJestic was one decision that I will never truly regret.

Today…

Why do American expats say that the USA is a shit-hole?

Because it’s true! I am an American who permanently moved to central Brazil. It was the best decision I ever made.

● I built my new house in central Brazil and was able to pay it off in ONE year.

● My property taxes are $100 US dollars a year. No, that is not a misprint. $100 US dollars a year!

● My dental implants are less than half the cost of the same in the United States…with equal and often better results.

● My food isn’t loaded with hormones and chemicals and I even have space to grow my own organic vegetables. Within 2 months in Brazil I lost 40 pounds without much exercise….just eating better food (which is difficult in the US).

● Almost every day is sunny and breezy with low humidity.

● Racism is much less pronounced than in the US. People in Brazil actually help each other and are not afraid to talk to strangers.

● Doctors actually take the time to listen to you and don’t treat you like a “number”.

● Brazilians enjoy life and have “fun”. They don’t worship the “Almighty Dollar”….except for some who are very greedy. For the most part, people are more important than money.

When Americans speak about “life” they speak about “life in the United States”. There are many ways “to live” and , for me, life in the US is NOT “truly living”. Americans don’t know what it means to truly live. In the end, materialism isn’t what brings true peace and satisfaction…….good relationships are.

Tex-Mex Macaroni and Cheese

2023 09 08 09 24
2023 09 08 09 24

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground pork sausage
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 (16 ounce) loaf Mexican pasteurized cheese
  • 1 (4 1/2 ounce) can chopped green chiles, drained
  • 16 ounces macaroni, cooked
  • 8 ounces shredded Southwestern cheese blend

Instructions

  1. Cook sausage and onion in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until sausage crumbles and is no longer pink; drain.
  2. Add flour, cumin and milk, stirring constantly, until thickened.
  3. Add Mexican cheese and chiles, stirring until cheese is melted.
  4. Add macaroni.
  5. Spoon mixture into a lightly greased 9 x 13-inch baking dish.
  6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes.
  7. Sprinkle with shredded cheese blend, and serve with salsa.

Yield: 8 servings

Why was China able to abolish the hereditary nobility and establish the absolute authority of the emperor and the dynasty around 200 BCE (when it was first unified), while Europe was never able to do so?

It all starts with water.

China has two very large and very powerful rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangzi River, both of which have their source in the Tibetan plateau. Harnessed the right way, these rivers are able to provide water irrigation to support a very large part of the world’s population. However, these rivers are unruly, and would often overflow their banks, and flood the surrounding plains which were fertile farmland. Many thousands, even millions of people would die in these floods.

The challenge for any Chinese ruler was simple then: control the waters so that the people would have food to eat, and not rebel against their ruler. At the same time, prevent floods from wreaking widespread damage.

This question goes so far back into Chinese history that one of the early, probably mythical rulers of Chinese history, Yu the Great

, had to deal with the issue of controlling the rivers about 2200 BCE. Because he succeeded, he is venerated as one of China’s great emperors.

Now, the challenge of controlling floods required a central government which was able to command huge resources in its ability to create and handle large engineering projects. Not only that, but there needed to be a large bureaucracy.

Here is one example of a successful Chinese hydraulics civil engineering project: Paul Denlinger’s answer to What are the most significant high-impact civil engineering projects in the world?

This is one of the reasons China has gravitated to a large central and authoritarian government. Big challenges normally need big governments and bureaucracies to solve them.

At the same time, this meant that small local rulers and kings would have less power, because in comparison, they would only be able to handle comparatively smaller local projects.

Because the farmers could only pay their taxes in grain, this required a complex national bureaucracy which could collect grain (farmers didn’t have money, and had no use for money most of the time), and store it in central locations so that in case of a grain shortage in one area, it could be shipped to another area where it was needed.

When the water problem was solved, the Chinese then gravitated to small hi-intensity farming. This was highly efficient, and Chinese farmers were able to increase the yield of their crops. As the Chinese farmers fed their families, they had more children, and more sons.

These farmers’ sons then formed the core of the army used to unify China the first time.

This was why Qinshihuang was able to unify China the first time in 221 BCE.

But one piece of the puzzle was still missing. In order to turn these men into soldiers, he needed to be able to quickly train them and standardize their weaponry. Furthermore, these weapons needed to be interchangeable on the battlefield.

The weapon which the Qin dynasty standardized upon was the crossbow, and the piece of standard equipment it needed to make in very large numbers was the Chinese crossbows’ lock and trigger mechanism.


Basically, the Qin dynasty took the Chinese bureaucracy and put it to use to master mass production and manage what was probably the world’s first national armory to produce standardized weapons to conquer all of China.

You can read more about it here: Paul Denlinger’s answer to Why did the Qin dynasty last only 16 years following its unification of China?

Because the conquest of all of China required huge national resources, the Qin unification made the nobility obsolete. The state controlled water distribution, food distribution, taxation, fielded a national army and large-scale weapons manufacture. The nobility was now irrelevant.

If we turn to Europe during the Roman period, the Roman empire also had tremendous central state power. If we take a close look at how the Romans spent their engineering talent, we see roads, aqueducts, temples and coliseums. Compared to the Chinese, they did not have to deal with huge unruly rivers and floods, which probably also meant that the Romans were dealing with considerably smaller populations than Chinese rulers.

If we turn to Europe during the feudal period, the rise of local barons in what is now England and Germany is precisely because they did not have national bureaucracies and armies. As a result, the barons had large estates, and would provide land to the serfs, and the serfs would have to turn over a significant portion of their harvest to the lord of the manor as their rent.

When the King of England would go to war, he would have to turn to his barons for support, and they would be responsible for raising armies from their serfs. The most highly skilled fighters were knights, who would have to be paid by the barons, and had squires and other supporting company. All of their fighting equipment was custom-made, and was not made in a national armory. Moreover, they had to carry the costs of the production of their weapons.

This meant that the local nobility, or the barons, had great power over the King of England, and if he could not rally the barons to support his cause, he would have his knees cut from under him.

This is what happened with the Magna Carta.

It was all about separation of powers, and this is what gave way to what would eventually come to be western democracy.

In contrast, the Chinese emperors and dynasties never had this notion of separation of powers. To this day, this continues to be a foreign notion to Chinese rulers.

To sum up, the Chinese rulers discovered in the second century BCE that with the right combination of water, food, population, weapons and bureaucracy, one emperor and one dynasty could rule all of China, becoming the Son of Heaven. His rule was direct, and he needed no nobility.

This never happened in Europe, which is why the hereditary nobility survived.

The Sopranos – Paulie vs Ralph

Why does the USA Suck?

As a low income American that worked multiple jobs that just covered rent, utilities and health insurance, I can assure you I was scraping the barrel of third world living conditions, my house was ruined, we had no hot water, no heat, and barely enough for food. It cost me $25,000 a year to survive, barely survive.

For the same amount of money in the UK I have a home, all utilities paid, cable WiFi and landline, a cellphone, health care, transportation, a whole months shopping for groceries and money left over. I also get 15 free hours of child care for my children and 28 paid vacation days. I have never lived better in my life.

Some wealthy person is going to say the US is easy, well for lower class people it’s a nightmare. I don’t have time to put the links but Google the following.

51 percent of Americans earn less than $30,000 a year.

Only 0.01% of minimum wage workers can afford a 2 bedroom apartment at fair market rent

The average minimum wage worker needs 2.5 jobs to have a two bedroom apartment at fair market rent

Low income Americans can’t afford 95% of colleges.

Our healthcare, infant and mother mortality rankings.

When you are poor you are left with nothing, there may be programs but they are extremely limited, hard to get, usually you are denied several times until you give up. As someone who just barely survived I got SNAP. I fed my family on over a hundred dollars a month, that does not last.I eventually had to get Medicaid when my job closed up, but nothing in the form of cash benefits.

First, second and third world reside within the US, your income depends on what your reality is.

What are the fundamental differences between Western and Russian tanks?

Design philosophy. What some people are calling “flaws” were conscious decisions and tradeoffs made in the design process.

To be honest, it’s only later in the Cold War where the two began to diverge significantly. Prior to that, both were in a pretty neck-to-neck, “my machine is the better version of yours” competition. I’ll emphasize more on the Soviet side:

  • Small turrets and low profile

In World War 2, the Soviets noticed that plenty of the fatal hits their T-34 took were to the turret. The concluded that they need to minimize the turret to make it harder for NATO tanks to hit them. Similarly, keeping it small means the tanks would be harder to find and hit from great distances. At the same time, they also realized the 3-man turret works best, which means that the turret would have to accommodate the commander, gunner, and loader even though it means that each would have a very constricted working environment.

The Western approach of keeping ammo on the turret, making it nearly as big as the hull, makes little sense from this point-of-view.

  • Autoloader and ammo inside the hull

People love to jump on this like it’s a “gotcha” thing the past year or so, but this was also another conscious decision.

Having an autoloader means that you eliminate the loader position, allowing the turret to be smaller. It also means that you can crew a tank with just 3 people instead of 4 (Western standard) or even 5 (World War 2). This has massive implications in an all-out World War scenario:

Imagine you have 1,200 trained tankers. With the Soviet approach, you can man 400 tanks, but with the Western approach, you can only crew 300. 100 extra tanks is a formidable force, no matter how you look at it. World War 2 was a numbers game, where quantity can trump quality. Both sides were expecting World War 3 to be no different fundamentally.

(Of course, with only 3 people servicing the tank, the workload is higher during repairs.)

Keeping the ammo deep inside the hull is as old as tank design. Without blowout panels (on the turrets), this is the most sensible place to put ammo since it has the most armor protecting it. The other thing is, if something did enough damage to go through all that armor, the crew would probably be already dead anyway.

In any case, even modern Western tanks have provisions to store ammo inside the hull. The main downside of keeping ammo in the turret is simply that you’re far more limited even with that huge turret and you’ll run out of ammo quicker.

Contrary to what some people say, autoloaders can be installed with ammo-on-turret designs. See the French Leclerc.

  • Simple/“crude” technology

It all goes back to World War 2, again. Soviet tanks were designed to be easily repairable in the field and manufactured in great numbers. Those were the main qualities of both the T-34 and the Sherman (even though the Sherman has a much better “finish quality” than the T-34). The Soviets also knew that they stuff they’d be mass-producing wouldn’t be very high quality, but they absolutely needed the numbers. That was how the older but more sophisticated T-64 was supplemented by the T-72.

That said, the newest versions of both are about equal.

  • Light weight

Bridges. That’s it. The Germans had issues trying to cross rivers because sometimes they found out that their tanks were too heavy to use certain bridges. The Soviets wouldn’t have any of that. Of course, the downside of keeping the tanks light is that you can’t put too much stuff on it (including armor).

Ground pressure and mobility on soft/rough terrain is a bit more complicated than simple weight. After all, Pressure = Force (weight) / Area. All you really need to do is to make the tracks wide enough. But having lighter weight also helps.

  • Gun-launched missile

This is to offset NATO’s superior optics and computers and also that generally, you want to be the first one to shoot. Even if the missile missed, the opponent would have to do something to defend themselves, making them more vulnerable to follow-up strikes.

In any case, the Soviets absolutely love missiles given that they put it on just about anything that moves (the BMP series was ahead of its time, it’s not until late in the Cold War that NATO had anything comparable, with the M113 being the workhorse. The M113 APC versions do not have missiles and barring a few modifications, its armament is usually just machineguns).

This Phone Just Destroyed US Sanctions… America Shocked!

This is STUNNING! Jesus. H. Christ!

Why do American expats think that the USA is a shit-hole?

I haven’t spent that much time in the US, barely two years, but was also very happy to leave.

My issue with American society:

  1. artificial culture with short lived relationships, therefore people are great at making first impression, but after that it gets quite shallow and interest based
  2. materialistic culture where people are quite obsessed with money. This isn’t America specific thing, but it is very strong in America, and rather on third country levels where it is rather understandable that people really need money, but not on more relaxed developed country level
  3. overconfident culture based on “American exceptionalism” can be too much for people who prefer to rely on data in their life, and are independent thinker
  4. Therefore, a lot of entitled people which is quite annoying since they have often no reason to be so entitled
  5. Those entitled people are often in debt, sick and not being able to afford appropriate treatment, education, not having money reserves, but underlying still acting like some movie stars and big patriots

Fundamental problems:

  1. The society is overall in a bad shape. High suicide rate, high depression rate, high *insert random sickness and USA is probably quite high in rankings*. You see that in people, overworked, sick and depressed. Most live paycheck to paycheck.
  2. Crime rate is quite high for a rich country, actually the highest among rich countries. And it has some unique problems that are not being addressed like mass shootings.
  3. Combination of high violent crime rate, mental and economic issues and a lot of “confident” yet not good at problem solving people leads to constant tension in all areas of live. USA just feels tense and stressful.
  4. Healthcare and education are way more expensive than elsewhere, probably adds also to the tension.
  5. Overall, with all the fear and tension there are technically less freedoms.
  6. No specific perks of being in USA. All patriotism aside, there is nothing what you can’t get elsewhere (for guns obsessed ones, yes, guns too, USA isn’t really that special here)

What are good hacks to live cheaply?

In the US, if you’re shopping for food, find a store run by immigrants from India, the Middle East, Latin America, China or Vietnam. Probably almost every item you’re looking for, they’ve got the cheapest prices and best value in town.

I live in the Twin Cities. I go miles out of my way to drive up to Northeast Minneapolis to shop at Holy Land (which specializes in Mediterranean, Balkan and Somali food) and Little India — the mother lode of spices in this town.

Stores like these usually aren’t very “visually appealing.” It’s pretty low overhead. They’re not in very wealthy neighborhoods. They cater mostly to a working-class immigrant clientele. And that’s partly why they’re so cheap. (Many American yuppies actually go out of their way to pay more for products so they can show off and feel rich. That’s one reason why REI is so popular in the clothing line. They might be paying textile workers more — I don’t know — but a lot of consumers just feel like they’re getting a “better” product if they pay more. This is a huge American consumer mindset.)

Spices that I’d have to pay $16 a pound for at my usual neighborhood market… Little India sells for a third of that price. And man, they’ve got spices. This is about half their spice aisle. Both sides of the aisle, all spice:

I also love that they sell a 28-ounce bag of this stuff for a reasonable price. A pound and a half of the stuff:

Honestly, I don’t know if all the products you find at these markets are optimo primo top quality. But if you’re poor (I’m poor), it’s good enough for you.

When I wander into a Whole Paycheck/Whole Foods, the setting is spiffier, but that’s about it. I see just about nothing there I can’t find for a better price at an immigrant market, plus a lot of unique imported goods that I can’t find anywhere else at all. (I don’t know any standard grocery store in the Twin Cities that sells fava beans. No other stores sell Turkish coffee, also called Greek coffee, also called Bosnian coffee. And where I do buy Bosnian chocolate cookies or tangy Bulgarian yogurt — even though the brand I buy at Holy Land is made from California milk? Well, the Lebanese sell it.) I’m also happy to support an immigrant instead of a big company.

I’ve lived most of my life in the Midwest. There’s a lot of immigrants in the Midwest. You can find these stores in probably every big US city. Even if you live out in the country, if you buy bulk, sometimes it’s cost-effective to do your shopping while you’re in a city. Lots of items like spice, oil, tea, coffee and obviously rice and beans — this stuff keeps for months if not years.

What are the scariest social experiments?

This is one of the experiments that, like the Milgram experiment, simply scares me.

Because it shows why people allow themselves to be led en masse to their own downfall.

Let’s take a look at this.

Participants were alone in a room and had to fill out a questionnaire.

Then, suddenly, smoke came out from under the door.

What would you do now?

Leave the room immediately and tell someone, okay?

And that’s what 75% of the people tested did. And, on average, they did it after 2 minutes.

Then, the subjects were exposed to the same situation, but with other people in the room.

In this case, there were two actors and they pretended not to notice the smoke.

And now only 10% of the test participants left the room, continued to fill out the questionnaire.

Even when the smoke burned his eyes and rubbed them visibly .

The experiment shows that people react slower (or not at all) in emergency situations when other people are passive.

They seem to rely heavily on the reactions of others, even against their own instincts. If the group acts like everything is fine, then it has to be, right?

That’s what always scares me, because I see it everywhere.

But I know that others don’t react until they believe that at least most other people would react.

This fact makes me desperate because it is being used to manipulate the masses . And I will never be able to do anything to convince them until everyone cares.

It’s so scary!

Germany just told Ukraine to F*CK off, along with 3 other E.U. countries | Redacted News

We will not extradite people to die! That is what four countries have told Ukraine in response to the country’s request to send back those refugees they were so nice to last year. They need to throw them into battle to die, please.

The Czech Republic has said that it will not do that and so has Austria, Hungary and Germany.

Poland has reportedly already begun to comply.

What are some difficult foods to give up when you move abroad?

Speaking from personal experience; as an American living in China, I have found the following to be rather difficult to obtain. (Oh, anything can be obtained in China. The issue boils down to accessibility, cost, and quality.)

Here’s a brief list;

  • Fresh bagels.
  • And creme cheese to put on them.
  • Thin crust pizza. (In China it is either impossible to get, or cooked to a cracker.)
  • Deep dish pizza.
  • Cheese-It crackers. (Does not exist in China.)
  • Goldfish crackers. (I found some once.)
  • Jar of pickles. (Doesn’t matter; dill, sweet butter chips, gerkins. Not available.)
  • Jar of relish. (Can be found if you look hard enough.)
  • Fresh and hot pretzels.
  • Jello. Not unheard of, just very rare.
  • Hard rolls. Forgetaboutit.
  • Hamburger (Known as “mince”). You have to make it yourself in a grinder.
  • Pre-made bread, or pizza dough.

Of course, must Western foods are available in a restaurant. But these are limited to either fast food, or steaks. Forget about “blue plate specials” and things that you normally get in the ‘States.

  • Grits
  • Cheese omelette
  • Rye toast. (Rye anything…)
  • Eggs Benedict.
  • Milkshakes. (McDonald’s USED to carry them, but they fell from popularity. Presently, they are impossible to find.)
  • Pies. (any type; pumpkin, cherry, blueberry, sweet potato, it doesn’t matter. )
  • Turkey.

The Sopranos – Like Everybody Else

I’m Not Like Everybody Else (Live) – The Kinks.

What is the best case of, “You just tried to scam the wrong person,” that you’ve witnessed?

I can relate two instances.

Back about 1980 I bought a raffle ticket (for only 50 cents) from a sorority in Little Rock, Arkansas. The prize was dinner for two at the 6 nicest restaurants in town. Eventually I got a call that I had won and would get my gift certificates soon. No tickets ever arrived. I contacted the sorority and they offered to refund my 50 cents! Unfortunately for the girls who sold me the ticket, I worked with a certain fraud division of the state government. I contacted the restaurants mentioned on the raffle ticket and discovered they knew nothing of the raffle. I then brought some serious heat down on the sorority, and they quickly delivered my prize. As they left my home, one of the girls said “We’ll never sell YOU another ticket.” As if.

About a year later my car needed a tune up. The car needed new spark plug wires so I replaced them myself before going in for the tune-up. While I’m waiting for my car to be fixed the technician walks in and announces that I need new spark plug wires. Oh really? I asked to see the wires. They had been cut. I explained to the man that I had just put on that new set of wires not an hour ago, and the only way they got cut was by him cutting them himself. The result of that business’s interaction with the fraud folks? They found themselves closed down. There had been plenty of complaints about that business but now they had defrauded the wrong person for sure.

China Wins the Deep Sea Mining Race, Becomes Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Rich Country

Thanks for sharing this information, I love your podcasts,,, We don’t get this knowledge on mainstream media.”

https://youtu.be/Bx5bOKGLG3k

US inability to sell Iran’s seized oil angers congressmen

The US congress representatives referred to reports that show that 800,000 barrels of Iran’s seized oil have been wandering off the coast of Texas since about 11 weeks ago, and American companies and parties are reluctant to unload their cargo for fear of alleged Iran’s possible retaliatory measures.

The US seized the tanker in a sanctions enforcement operation, Reuters reported.

The delay in discharging the cargo is also partly out of fear of repercussions from Iran. A senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ navy said last month Iran would retaliate against any oil company unloading Iranian oil from a seized tanker.

They continued that enforcement of petroleum sanctions will become irrelevant if American citizens and companies involved constantly live in fear of Iranian retaliation.

They asked the administration for a briefing on the progress of the transfer of the seized oil from the Suez Rajan to US custody.

After withdrawing from the JCPOA nuclear agreement in 2018, the US government has implemented all the suspended sanctions under this agreement against Iran. US has also required third countries and companies to implement its territorial sanctions against Iran.

LOL at uncle shame…

The Teen That Lit 91YO Man On Fire..

That man lived a long hard life and this is how it ends, a teen’s selfish and senseless act. RIP wise old man.

Was Adolf Hitler a talented person? It seems as though he failed at painting, military career, and politics.

He was a talented…. speaker.

After World War I, Hitler was broke and unemployed, and he made money by (1) being paid by the Army to speak to young people about the evils of Bolshevism and (2) spying for the Army at political gatherings.

In July 1919 Hitler, on his second part time job, was sent to a meeting of what was then the German Worker’s Party, a nationalist, anti-Semitic, pro-capitalist reform group of about sixty people. During the meeting, Hitler, who had read up on politics, started talking and everyone there started thinking he would be a good spokesperson for the group.

Now, Hitler was a bright involved student in elementary school (top of his class as a matter of fact) but his ultra-strict father and doting mother (Hitler was the family’s only son who survived infancy) turned him into the equivalent of an emo-kid when he got to high school, and he insisted he was going to be an artist, something that his civil servant father was opposed to, but his mother encouraged.

Hitler’s father died when he was young and his mother actually gave Adolph the money she got from the Austrian State pension for a child benefit so he could move to Vienna to pursue his dream. However, when he was 18, the money stopped when the state stopped paying for him, and his father’s estate and death benefits still had to be used for the support of his mother and sisters.

As such, Hitler became largely homeless, art school didn’t want him (he wasn’t particularly good at it) and he hadn’t finished high school, which was a prerequisite for architecture school. Let’s just say at that point he was like a teenager who discovers Ayn Rand and thinks he’s better than everyone thinks he is. What he read during this period of time started to shape his views on the economy and non-Germans.

When World War I started Hitler actually fit into the army quite well, but after the war he fell for the “Big Lie” of the day, that the socialists had sabotaged the war effort (in fact, the previous government had collapsed under the weight of lack of supplies and money). The peace treaty in 1919 didn’t help as it required Germany to pay more money than existed on the entire planet at the time.

When Hitler and his buddies, now re-named the National Socialist Party, tried to overthrow the government of Bavaria in 1923, he avoided the death penalty by appealing to the right-wing German Empire judges that he was only trying to save the country. He served less than a year in prison while he dictated a very bad polemic book, “My Struggle” (Mein Kampf) to a couple of his friends.

Anyway, Hitler was banned from speaking so the Nazi’s were moribund, but then the ban was lifted just as the Great Depression began. Mainstream parties couldn’t cope, but both the Communists and the Nazis grew rapidly in popularity and Hitler positioned himself as a middle-left alternative to Communist Soviet-supported Bolshevism. As he gained electoral success, he paralyzed the government by having his legislative deputies vote against everything, and then argued that the problem was that there were too many political parties.

Hitler never had a majority of deputies in the legislature (Reichstag) so despite numerous elections and legislative paralysis, the centrist and right parties managed to keep him at bay. Finally, in a panic, Hitler said he would be Chancellor if just two other Nazis were in the cabinet. They bought it, but the two Nazi ministers controlled the police and the army, which were quickly used against Hitler’s adversaries. When someone tried to burn down the Reichstag, he managed to convince it to give him emergency powers, which he used to arrest even more of his rivals. Eventually, when the only balancing force, President Hindenburg, passed away, Hitler just took his place. He had a mortal lock on everything, and most of that was his idea.

What is the most badass thing your parent has ever done?

California, 1949. My 16-year-old mother was called into the office of the very agitated high school principal who explained emphatically, “There are reports that you have been dating a Negro. We have an integrated school here now and the only way than can work is if the races do not ever mix. As a white girl I expect you to uphold that standard.” My mother stared that woman down without a word, then simply walked out of the office and nothing else was ever said about it. The reports were quite true, and three years later they were married. I was born the following year.

Poor Kitten Showed No Sign of Life, and Her Mama kept Worrying for Him

Help the kitties.

https://youtu.be/RRl4DNTSWDI

What was the bravest thing you ever did in a job interview?

My plebe (first year) at West Point, I asked my Tactical Officer (a TAC is the legal commander and supervisor of a cadet company) if I could give up my summer leave (1980) and serve at Nellis AFB. Even this was pretty bold for a plebe to ask a Captain. He said he would (might?) look into it. I mentioned it again during graduation week (just prior to leave) and he said it couldn’t be arranged.

The following week, when I arrived home in Las Vegas, my Dad asked if I wanted to attend the 100th year birthday party at the American Legion for the oldest veteran in the state. (He had been a veteran of the Spanish American War). I said sure and attended in uniform.

There were many veterans, active duty military, and dignitaries present, including the commanding brigadier general at Nellis. He recognized my uniform and that I was a newly minted “yearling” and asked how I was doing at the Academy? I said it was tough but that I was doing well. He asked what I had planned for summer leave? I replied, “Sir, I was hoping to work for you.” He was surprised and asked why? I said, “I thought it would be career broadening.” He said, “That sounds like a great idea. Why didn’t you do it?” I said, “My tactical officer said it wouldn’t be possible to arrange… with all the inter service bureaucracy” He replied, “Inter service bureaucracy? I’ll give Joe Franklin a call and we’ll have it set up by tomorrow afternoon.” Brigadier General Franklin was the Commandant of Cadets. Apparently, they were classmates.

it was a great summer!

Has a cop ever said something to you which was completely unexpected?

I was speeding down a highway in the dark of night, around 10 or so, when I passed a state patrol car sitting in the median. I knew I was busted, so I took my foot off the gas, looked in the rearview mirror to see if he was coming after me (of course he was) and then looked down at my speedometer which read 75. Yikes! How fast had I been going?? Anyway, I pull over and get my stuff ready to hand to him. He pulls up behind me and gets out, and out, and out of his car. Big man, very tall and imposing. I was thinking oh crap. He comes to my window and asks me how I’m doing as I hand him my driver’s license. I tell him pretty good, just trying to get home to go to bed. He stops, leans (way) over and looks in the window at me. I recognize him as one of the regular customers at the convenience store where I work days. He says “what are you doing?? Go home. Slow down and drive safely!” And hands me back my driver’s license. I thanked him profusely and we both went on our way. No ticket, no nothing. Whew! Dodged a bullet there. It pays to be good to law enforcement. 😀

Star Trek Enterprise – Unknown Space Capsule

Please enjoy this segment. I did.

Star Trek Enterprise “Future Tense”

Why do American expats say that the USA is a shit-hole?

Because it’s true. I moved to Spain in 2017.

  • My health improved dramatically thanks to high EU food-quality standards (and the 2000 additives and chemicals used in the US food industry that are banned or restricted in the EU).
  • My quality of life improved thanks to low crime rates and Spain’s emphasis on quality of life over work. Everyone is happier.
  • My cost of living went down a lot, especially my healthcare costs.
  • My doctors here actually listen to me and take time with me because they don’t have to rush through as many patients in a day due to the high costs of everything. Healthcare isn’t all about profits. It’s about… health. Imagine that!
  • Even the health of my pets improved.
  • Instead of Oklahoma and Louisiana being my “backyard” (I lived in Texas), France and Portugal are.

You could not pay me to go back.

The Rule of Thumb

What are some facts about some famous video games?

I’ve just got one.


During the Cold War, lots of people expected the US and the Soviet Union to exchange nuclear missile strikes. They thought nuclear armageddon could arrive any day.

So in the event of nuclear armageddon, what are some tips? One tip that was widely popularized, was the Rule of Thumb.

The Rule of Thumb says if you extend your arm, and put your thumb over a nuclear mushroom cloud, you can tell if you’re in danger from radiation. If your thumb covers the entire cloud, you’re safe. If it doesn’t, you’re in danger and need to take cover.

This tip wasn’t necessarily true, but luckily nuclear war never broke out and they never had to use it.

But in the Fallout games, nuclear war did break out. And guess what extremely popular Fallout character is using the Rule of Thumb?

The Government has Secret Listening Posts in Every Major City

New York City has skyscrapers of all shapes and sizes. But why does this 500 foot tall, 29-story building have no windows, no lights and no markings at all?

Because it’s a top-secret NSA spy station built to withstand nuclear war.

Officially, this is an AT&T telecommunications building. But thanks to leaked documents, we now know that 33 Thomas Street is actually a top secret NSA mass surveillance hub.

It’s code name is: TitanPointe.

And right now, as we speak, TitanPointe is listening.

The gray, granite tower is located at 33 Thomas Street in Lower Manhattan. Locals know the building as the “Long Lines Building” and it’s been a source of mystery for years.

What jumps out is that the building has no windows and no exterior lighting.

During the day, it fades into the background of the New York City skyline.

And at night, it becomes an invisible shadow.

Thanks to NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden, we now know that creating an invisible building wasn’t an accident. It was absolutely by design.

33 Thomas Street operates under NSA codename TITANPOINTE.

And Titanpointe is a core location used for a controversial, and possibly illegal, NSA-sponsored mass surveillance program.

According to leaked documents, this program has targeted the communications of the UN, the World Bank, the IMF. It’s been used to spy on at least 38 countries, including US allies like France, Germany and Japan. It’s common knowledge that AT&T is very cooperative with the NSA.

Using an AT&T cell phone? Eh, you might want to rethink that.

Let’s find out why.

Brutally True

What accidentally rude things do Americans do while traveling even without realizing it?

Black Zimbabwean on receiving end here. Many years ago, just after getting married, new hubby & I flew from Harare (capital city) to Kariba (small touristy town 45 minutes away by air) for our honeymoon.

On arrival at the little airport, we head for the courtesy shuttle. A group of mostly middle aged (& all white) American tourists have already taken up most of the seats when we step onto the bus. Some look a little startled, and one woman pipes up, “You can’t get on this bus. This is OUR bus”.

We politely explain that no, it isn’t ‘your’ bus, it is actually meant for anyone booked at the local hotel.

She argues; there are a few supportive mutterings from her compatriots, until the driver chimes in, and with a huge smile, confirms what we’ve just told her.

I suspect he’s encountered this before.

A few minutes later we are on our way, & we soon strike up a conversation with our nearest neighbours (the natives are friendly here ). A woman in the next seat interrupts and says, in baffled tones, “Your English is really good”, and her male companion adds, almost accusingly: “You sound educated!”

I don’t remember feeling offended, just mildly taken aback and amused at the level of unconscious presumptuousness.

People are PISSED off

What’s the most ridiculous adult tantrum you’ve witnessed that you couldn’t believe?

My sweetie and I were in a BBQ restaurant in Cambridge, MA. The place was crowded with lots of people, including a family of 2 adults, 1 son, and an infant. The son was going from table to table flailing his arms, screaming in people’s faces, grabbing their food, knocking over their drinks, while their parents did absolutely nothing to control their child, who was ruining dinner for everybody else in the place.

The layout of the restaurant meant that we would be the last table for him to torment. Sure enough, he arrived and began shrieking very, very loudly in our faces. My sweetie smiled at him, and made the exact same sound back at the kid. In an instant, the child stopped, smiled, and began a low and happy conversation with my guy. End of problem. It was the first and only time the kid smiled.

What happened next was unbelievable. The wife/Mother came up to our table, and began to yell as loudly as she could that we were being horrible to her child, we should be thrown out of the restaurant, and never allowed back again.

The next thing that happened was my sweetheart changing his demeanor 100%. In an instant, the gentle man playing with the kid was gone, to be replaced with a deadly serious person who quietly but forcefully said to the woman “Hey lady, f*** off!” Other customers actually applauded. As the husband/Father got control of his family, he came to apologize for his wife’s behavior, saying dealing with the kid was very hard on her.

While I had all the sympathy in the world for the family, no child should be allowed to ruin the dining experience for 50 other people. If the child can’t be controlled, then take it outside. Period.

This has to be a joke…

What are telltale signs of an ambush?

Ideally, there wouldn’t be any ‘telltale’ signs of an ambush, but in practice, this is as good as impossible.

To successfully set up an ambush, there need to be a few elements in place and this can give the attacker away.

Ambushes are executed from concealed positions, locations where you’re able to hide a number of soldiers very close to the troops that you want to ambush.

The ambush has to take place on a road or path frequented by your enemy, most often at a certain time. An ambush is not a fishing expedition. If you don’t know that an enemy will pass by your ambush site, you are just wasting your time.

If you attack vehicles, you need your enemy to slow down or stop. This can be achieved either by choosing a location where your enemy has to slow down (a sharp bend or uphill) or you place an obstacle on the road (a tree ‘fell’ down, a carcass, etc.).

Very bad for your health, but not an ambush: a roadside bomb or IED (photo: US Army 25th Infantry Division soldiers during an “IED trainer course”).

Often a mine (or Improvised Explosive Device, IED) is placed on the road. It has two functions, to stop the enemy’s vehicles and to give the signal for the attackers to open fire.

To make things clear, an IED per se is not an ambush but a remote controlled mine. An ambush by definition is “a surprise attack by people lying in wait in a concealed position.”

[1] This can happen with the help of an IED, but the detonation of a road mine alone isn’t sufficient to qualify an attack as an ambush. In other words, you need soldiers attacking you.

When you are on patrol, you’ll probably never see a direct sign that there is an ambush ahead of you, but bearing in mind how an ambush has to be set up to be successful you will have a good idea where it’s most likely going to happen and how to avoid it.

  • If you use the same road twice, the risk for you to be ambushed increases dramatically.
  • If you approach an area with buildings, bushes, or other covers near the roadside, be careful!
  • An obstacle on the road that forces you to slow down is an alarm sign.
  • Sharp bends, ravines, and hollow-ways are the classical spots for an attack.
  • Every activity “out of the usual” might point to a possible enemy attack. The absence of people or animals or a road that has been blocked and requires you to take a detour might point to an ambush.

Experienced soldiers learn to read those signs and many others, often unconsciously. You acquire a ‘feeling’ when something ahead of you doesn’t look, sound, or smell right and you’ll be able to take countermeasures.

The Sopranos || Easier

Guy in there has a natural canopy.

What is the nicest thing a stranger ever did for you?

My birthday one year ago was really sucking. I decided to go buy myself a cake at the grocery store and get it decorated, because it was my birthday and I wanted something nice. When the guy at the counter asked who it was for (in retrospect he meant what name to put on it) and I said it was for me, he was incredulous that I had to buy my own birthday cake. I just kind of shrugged and went out to finish shopping for groceries. He said my cake would be need to be paid for at pick up.

When I came back to pay for and pick up my cake, a different person was at the register and she said my cake had been paid for. It was also decorated a bit more than I thought it should have been. I have not seen that guy working there since and in my head I’ve called him the cake fairy.

It was a good cake. I still cried eating it because the entire day sucked, but it was a good cake.

The Sopranos Tribute “Don’t stop believing”

Strange how you can miss people from a tv series like they were your family even though you know they are fictional characters. Even today I feel like a part of my life ended when the series stopped.”

What was something that someone said or did that has changed you forever?

My baby son was fast approaching his first birthday. I was working away from home in South Wales and had just completed a 3 month long project before returning to head office in Aberdeen. I received a phone call, at home, informing me of a problem in another location and requesting me to travel to Shotton steel works, in England, as soon as possible.

My wife went ballistic. She informed me that I had only been home to enjoy my son growing up for 6 weeks of his first year of life. Not only that but I would miss my boy’s birthday. On reflection, she was correct.

All that night I reviewed my life. I recalled my own childhood with my father being a fisherman. He was away at sea for 3 to 4 weeks at a time and only home for a couple of days before sailing off again. We never had time for any father/son activity. I loved my dad but he was a stranger to me. I simply didn’t know him well.

The next day I scheduled a meeting with my managing director and informed him that I couldn’t continue to spend as much time away from home. His response was that I was the only person qualified for that job and nobody else could do it. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

I tended my resignation and started looking for another job. I ended up working in the oil and gas sector. I was office based and got to help raise my kids. It was definitely the best decision I ever made.

NORTH KOREA TO SEND 300,000-500,000 TROOPS TO ASSIST RUSSIA

This is FLASH Traffic. North Korea has agreed to send three-hundred-thousand (300,000) to five-hundred thousand (500,000) troops to Russia to assist with its Special Military Operation in Ukraine, against NATO.

The first deployment will be about 20,000 soldiers to assist with Logistics.

North Korea will also deliver to Russia, the new KN-09 Multiple Launch Rocket System.

This is the latest North Korean version of the KN-09, with two pods of SIX rockets each.

Intelligence assessment of these new rocket launchers is as follows:

Judging by the published photos, the military received MLRS, known under the Western designation KN-09 or KN-SS-X-9. Its caliber is 300 mm.

The first version, which has eight missile tubes, was shown in 2015 at the parade in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

It is believed that missiles with a warhead weighing up to 190 kg are capable of hitting targets at a distance of at least 220 km.Guidance is inertial, in preparation for use, the calculation uses data from navigation satellites, which provides a fairly accurate hit.

In 2020, an upgraded version was introduced, in which the three-axle all-terrain vehicle was replaced with a four-axle platform with twelve tubes.

THOUGHTS & OPINIONS

  • North Korea is supplying military materials, ammo, weapons systems, supplying military logistics, and manpower to Russia.
  • A 500,000 man military presence is large enough to; Completely take over the Ukraine war effort from Russia. Occupy and conquer Ukraine. Serve as a complete self-contained invasion force for NATO and Europe.
  • All reports indicate that Ukraine has been sufficiently weakened by the USA / NATO leadership decisions that it is a “404 nation”.
  • NATO, and the largest European nations inside of it are now in the process of De-industrializaiton, suffering energy shortages and high inflation. All of which is a very terrible mix were they to be invaded.
  • North Koreans have been taught, from cradle to grave, how dangerous the West is, and that the United States and it’s proxy nations need to be eliminated from the surface of the planet.
  • North Korean soldiers are “enraged” soldiers, and are a very dangerous and lethal force.
  • The decision to place a NATO office in Japan is viewed as a direct threat to North Korea.
  • The decision, last month, to have NATO war games next to North Korea, (to include Germany) is viewed as a direct threat to North Korea.

CONCLUSIONS

  • The NATO use of Ukraine as a “cat’s paw” has been a disaster.
  • The American neocon dream of a “Pacific NATO” has resulted in dangerous consequences.
  • Now, North Korea is basing an enormous invasion force at NATO’s door. This is exactly what the United States (and it’s proxies) have been doing to Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and the Global South.
  • The size of the force betrays it’s intent; the conquering and subjugation of Ukraine. Followed by a “dagger at the throat” of NATO.

Did you tell your parents you’re an ex-Muslim? How did they handle it?

Yes I told them.

But parents aren’t dumb. Especially when the family is as religious as mine it’s easy to see when your child strays. It’s like having a gay kid who you can easily see his lack of interest in the opposite gender early on.

However, if I were to pinpoint the start of them noticing, It would go back to the time I was in high school.

I was curled on my bed sobbing like there’s no tomorrow. My mother came up to me and asked me why I was crying. I said that when I pray I sometimes wonder what if I’m talking to myself and no one’s actually listening to me. And I said that I hate myself for having such bad thoughts. She said “Salma it’s the devil playing with your mind. It’s okay all of us have thoughts like that sometimes”.

But I wasn’t anyone. I was obsessive, still am. I had a form of OCD where I had to wash so many times before each prayer to make sure I’m clean. I always repeated my prayers over and over to make sure they are to God’s liking. And at the end of the day after all the washing and repeating I would go to bed crying and whispering “please god make it easier on me”. But he didn’t.

My thoughts increased “what if god doesn’t even care about washing five times a day to meet him and pray?” “What if everything I believe in and take for granted is false?”. And naturally I was devastated and drowning in guilt and shame for even having in such thoughts.

I talked to my mother about it and she was really scared and told my father. They took me to a therapist who’s from their very same religious circle. I told him about my obsessions and my thoughts. And he would try to convince me so strongly of the falseness of my thoughts and that they are all OCDish thoughts not what I truly think. And with my excessive washing and the like it was believable at the time. I was prescribed meds to get rid of my OCD. And my obsessive actions stopped. But my thoughts never did.

The more time passed the more I doubted things. Then I went to pray while sobbing and said “help me ! I’m about to stray. Please don’t take my faith away. I don’t want to go to hell”. Yet by that point my blind faith and certainty of the rightness of my path had already vanished. Despite myself when I sat with religious people and heard them talk about Quran and Sunnah, I thought of everything they say with a critical eye and not the eyes of a believer who listens and obeys. And when I did that I noticed how much I roll my eyes at the silliness of what’s said.

I was miserable. I lived for Islam and wanted to die for it. My whole life revolved around it. I was a teacher at a mosque, I knew the Quran by heart, and I prayed much more than the average Muslim. So I felt like the very core of my personality and life is being pulled away from my heart.

In my last prayers, I was desperate. If you know the Islamic prayer, you know we place our foreheads on the floor. I would stick my head to the floor, holding to the rug around me like I’m holding to dear life. And from the very bottom of my heart I would whisper with a cracked voice “Help me. Help me. Help me.”. I would cry and sob and pray “please god take me. If you don’t now I’ll die as an infidel and spend an eternity in hell”.

And that was it.

The knots of faith were already fully untied after that. My mind went numb. And I finally allowed my brain and heart to be on the same page.

My parents noticed it all. They especially noticed that I didn’t pray anymore. Which was anything but easy, for weeks everytime I skipped a prayer I felt utter shame and fear of hell. But then even that disappeared. My parents gave me advice constantly urging me to pray again. They would always tell me the benefits of prayers and all that.

They urged me to visit a therapist again. And what’s a therapist going to do? Make me believe that god cares about washing before praying especially if I farted beforehand? (Yes this is a teaching). He’s going to convince me that God wants me to not listen to love songs or shake hands with male cousins?

What was the point?? So I insisted on not going.

The final straw, was after I met my husband. They discovered that we’re chatting. And yelled at me “you’re going to marry an infidel??” And they insisted that this marriage will never come to life.

So I had to come out and say it bluntly.

“I’m not a Muslim. And if I married a Muslim he’d be sinning anyway because he’s not allowed to marry a non-believer”. (Muslim men are allowed to marry Muslims, Christian’s or Jews which I was none).

The silence resounded in the room. My father’s broken voice was the only thing that put an end to it “so you’re really not a Muslim anymore? That’s it?”. He looked devastated.

I hated it all. Should I have just lied for life? Should I have hidden the truth sentencing myself for a life with misery and hypocrisy? But I didn’t take anything back. It was either now or never. Either I choose to break free and be true to myself or bury myself to suit their tastes. I loved them so much but I couldn’t make such a sacrifice.

They were heart-broken for months. Until I broke down completely mentally and emotionally. The guilt and pressure were too much for me and I snapped. I was in so much heartache. I had to be put on a big dose of anti-depressant and an even bigger dose of mood-stabilizers.

That’s when my parents softened up and came around. Finally my happiness meant something to them and they just gave in.

My father was in denial for long though. Whenever the topic came up he would change it. And when I said something that indicates that I don’t care about Islamic teachings he would ask “why?” As if he doesn’t know the answer.

However, after months, our relationship now is really good. I no longer lie, hide and sugar-coat. So they know me better. They still hope I go back on my decision but never pressure me to do it. And I love them for it.

Dr. Phlox Confirms That the Pilot Was A Human Male

Star Trek Enterprise Season 2 Episode 16 Future Tense

Why do American expats think that the USA is a Shit-hole?

I’ll start with the definite truth of my own life: Leaving the US was, without a doubt, the best decision I ever made.

I have said this out loud and reflected upon it often. In short – it had to do with identity and personal happiness.

I was always an energetic child and a hardworking student. Motivated by accomplishments; incredibly obedient; afraid of getting in trouble – a teacher’s pet type. I was generally nice to people around me; just wanted to do well and get on with my day.

After elementary school, I started going to private school – for a better education and hopefully better access in life. During that time, my Black, middle class background became the center of the world. I still did well in school, but I wasn’t spoken to as if I did well or was capable. I was made to feel inadequate at every turn, even in the face of great accomplishments.

As a teenager, this racial alienation was emphasized through social and dating dynamics. All teens have teen problems, but I wasn’t just a moody, insecure kid – I was a Black kid in a sea of White and there was nothing to be done about that. There was no amount of patience, kindness; weight loss; working out; grooming; hair perming – that would make me less Black. And you can’t talk about that to anyone; no one can relate; you’re unceremoniously accused of “bringing race into everything”. A very lonely reality.

Throughout the entire secondary school process, my intelligence was always doubted and I was constantly insulted. My school offered Chinese – they tried to tell me I wouldn’t do well because it’s “a very difficult language”. Within a year, I had top marks. I once had a teacher tell me my writing was so bad I probably had a learning disability. (I’m about to finish my Masters with distinction in England, and I’ll be starting my PhD in the fall).

By high school, I decided to spend a portion of my senior year in China. It was like night and day from my home school. Suddenly, I was smart again. Without a concerted effort of teachers telling me how stupid I was all the time, I was flourishing. I got straight A’s in AP Calculus – a course, among others, my home school wouldn’t let me take because it would be “too hard for me”. When it came to college lists – I was told I couldn’t get into any of the schools on my list; I shouldn’t aim higher than my State school. Mind, at 17 I was a varsity athlete; president of thespians; worked on a number of school plays; danced on the school team and studied Martha Graham independently; first chair clarinet; played alto sax in Jazz band; fairly skilled in drawing and painting; spoke Chinese and had a high honors GPA. So – what made me less than my peers?

In China, it was the first time anyone (other than my parents) had ever told me I was pretty. Looking back, I was still quite young; so a lot of firsts would be happening around that time anyway – but it was definitely different than in America. In America, I was just ugly. People might not say that to my face – but it was reflected in certain ways.

Beyond that, college was the same for socialization. I tried to be cute, preppy and peppy like my White friends – but I wasn’t. I was sad and defeated. And still had some discernible, inferior, human status.

So again, in college, I went to China. And again, I was able to find normality, humanity and love.

After I graduated college, I went back to China to work. I soon met my current partner and we’ve been together six years. We moved to England together last year so I could continue studying to change careers. I’ve done incredibly well and I’m just happy.

In summary:

I personally felt my intelligence and beauty were never appreciated in the US.

I was suicidal sad; until I could no longer deny that I needed to live life a different way.

My partner is Greek and it feels very freeing to not be a part of the radical, radicalized, American fervor. Also, biracial relations aren’t questioned in England the way they are in the US.

Life doesn’t feel so heavy. My days are nice. I have a nice home. A nice partner. My efforts are recognized. I’m just, whole.

What is the most dangerous object that you’ve seen on the road when driving?

This happened about ten years ago.

I was going to Providence, RI on a stretch of highway known as Route 295. It’s a wide highway but in a rural area and there are no lights on the road. It’s long and actually pretty boring. It was nighttime and I was racing down the highway in the middle lane when I thought I saw a glimpse of something dark. I only noticed it because it created a black patch of dark in the middle of the dark night which otherwise was studded by ambient light from other sources. I pulled into the fast lane and when I got to it, it was a shipping container, right there in the middle lane, just sitting there, with no lights. It had evidently fallen from a truck – but there was no truck to be seen. Apparently the driver didn’t even know he had lost it. It was just like this in the photo:

2023 09 08 09 12
2023 09 08 09 12

If I hadn’t been paying attention I would have plowed right into it as if it were a brick wall at 70 MPH.

I immediately called the State Police who dispatched a cruiser. My brother is a state cop who told me that there were almost many accidents. They had to put a cruiser with lights flashing behind it until a truck could come and retrieve it. I was astonished at how nearly invisible it was. Without power from the truck or reflective panels, it was as if it weren’t even there. It would have been easy to crash right into it.

Casino | “Meeting in the Desert Always Made Me Nervous”

Ace (Robert De Niro) and Nicky (Joe Pesci) arrange to have a secret meeting in the desert outside of Las Vegas. As federal law enforcement closes in around them, the two find their friendship has reached its breaking point. They exchange insults and foul language in one of the finest acting moments in any Martin Scorsese’s film.

Tex-Mex Hash

Tex Mex Sweet Potato Hash 3
Tex Mex Sweet Potato Hash 3

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 1/2 cup rice, uncooked
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 3 onions, sliced
  • 1 can whole tomatoes
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • Dash of pepper

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Pan fry ground beef until light brown in skillet. Drain fat.
  3. Add onions and bell peppers and cook until onion is tender.
  4. Stir in remaining ingredients and heat until warm.
  5. Pour into a casserole dish. Cover, and bake for 1 hour.

Yield: 5 servings

HEAVEN

Datura tales

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

When I was in my “lost in the wilderness” period in my life (After I joined MAJestic, but not yet trained at China Lake, I wandered about.) we were living on a farm in Yanciville, NC. (I don’t know if I spelled that name right.)

And there was a guy (named Holt) who introduced us to the Datura plant.

Datura is a genus of nine species of highly poisonous, vespertineflowering plants belonging to the nightshade family (Solanaceae).[1] They are commonly known as thornapples or jimsonweeds, but are also known as devil’s trumpets[2] (not to be confused with angel’s trumpets, which are placed in the closely related genus Brugmansia). Other English common names include moonflower, devil’s weed, and hell’s bells.

All species of Datura are extremely poisonous and potentially psychoactive, especially their seeds and flowers, which can cause respiratory depression, arrhythmias, fever, delirium, hallucinations, anticholinergic syndrome, psychosis, and even death if taken internally.[3]

Due to their effects and symptoms, Datura species have occasionally been used not only as poisons, but also as hallucinogens by various groups throughout history.[4][5]

Traditionally, their psychoactive administration has often been associated with witchcraft and sorcery or similar practices in many cultures, including the Western world.[5][6][7] Certain common Datura species have also been used ritualistically as entheogens by some Native American groups.[8][9]

Non-psychoactive use of plants in the genus is usually done for medicinal purposes, and the alkaloids present in some species have long been considered traditional medicines in both the New and Old Worlds due to the presence of the alkaloids scopolamine and atropine, which are also produced by Old World plants such as Hyoscyamus niger, Atropa belladonna, and Mandragora officinarum.

And we all tried this old fashioned remedy using this dangerous plant.

We soaked the roots of the plant in water for a week, and then drank the water.

I know it was terribly stupid, but we were young and in our 20’s and we believed Holt.

The effect was that every thing turned very blue and soft to us. We heard the twinkling of soft bells, and when we went to sleep later on the night, had very vivid dreams.

I would NEVER do that again. And I DO NOT suggest anyone duplicate our stupidity.

But the point of this story is that …

  • Well-meaning friends can put you in life threatening situations.
  • When you are in your 20s you can do very stupid things.
  • Whatever the experience was, it was not worth the risk of death.

And so, I ask everyone to heed my story and pay attention to what might transpire in your own lives.

Today…

Huawei unveiled their new smartphone, which is undeniably impressive and packed with numerous technological breakthroughs. How many of you are keeping tabs on this development, and what are your thoughts on Huawei’s achievements with this phone?

I am following it closely; the Mate 60 Pro is just the first step.

Over the next decade, I expect China to launch many new products based on new technologies. Most of these products will be launched in BRICS markets instead of the G7 nations.

The West is poised to feel what it is like to live in a a “banana republic.”

Granny’s Old-Fashioned Bread Pudding
with Vanilla Sauce

grannys old fashioned bread pudding
grannys old fashioned bread pudding

Ingredients

Bread Pudding

  • 1 pound French bread, cubed
  • 1/2 cup raisins
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs, slightly beaten
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Sauce

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Bread Pudding

  1. Combine bread and raisins in a large bowl.
  2. Combine milk and 1/4 cup butter in a 1 quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat until butter is melted.
  3. Pour milk mixture over bread; let stand for 10 minutes.
  4. Stir in all remaining pudding ingredients. Pour into greased 1 1/2 quart casserole.
  5. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until set in center.

Vanilla Sauce

  1. Combine all sauce ingredients except vanilla in 1-quart saucepan.Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until mixture thickens and comes to a full boil (5 to 8 minutes).
  2. Stir in vanilla extract and walnuts*, if using.

To serve

  1. Spoon warm pudding into individual dessert dishes; serve with sauce.
  2. Store refrigerated.

Notes

I usually serve this without the walnuts, but sprinkle them over individual servings if anyone likes walnuts.

Niger Raises Uranium Price From €0.80/kg to €200/kg

Niger Raises Uranium Price From €0.80/kg to €200/kg – In a groundbreaking development that signals a seismic shift in the global resource market, Niger, a prominent player in the uranium industry, has reportedly taken a bold step towards securing fair compensation for its invaluable natural resource, uranium.

Multiple reports suggest that Niger has substantially increased the price of its uranium, skyrocketing it from a mere €0.80 per kilogram to €200 per kilogram.

This remarkable decision underscores a burgeoning determination among African nations to break free from historical imbalances and demand equitable remuneration for their vital contributions to the global economy.

According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), Niger is the world’s seventh-largest uranium producer.

The radioactive metal is the most widely used fuel for nuclear energy. It is also utilised in cancer treatment, naval propulsion, and nuclear weapons.

Uranium prices increased slightly in the aftermath of the military coup in Niger that saw the ousting of President Mohamed Bazoum, with many analysts forecasting larger gains in the future. For instance, Ben Godwin, head of analysis at London-based Prism Political Risk Management, said that current events in Niger, which produces about 4 percent of the world’s uranium supply, could be critical to Europe.

“It is certainly a topic of great interest in the moment, particularly as uranium markets are very, very tight at the moment,” he said.

“Demand has been going up over the last few years, and this year, we’ve seen the uranium spot price go up by nearly 40 percent year to date.”

Does the US believe that China is powerless to attack the US mainland if it attacks China first?

The Pentagon understands the true and real abilities that China possess.

There is absolutely no questions regarding whether or not China can attack the United States mainland. The answer is affirmative. China has numerous weapon systems designed to acquire, target, stealthy evade and strike with great accuracy targets within the United States geographical landmass.

This has been proved. Demonstrated beyond any question of doubt, and is known to be stockpiled in enormous quantities.

The Pentagon believes that China is capable of destroying targets within the United States without problem or interference.

That being said. What does the “government” think?

I’m sure that President Biden has his own points of view…

main qimg a7e1345fe6e7b99031320bb423d4606a
main qimg a7e1345fe6e7b99031320bb423d4606a

I’m sure that key and influential members of the US Senate has their ideas as well…

main qimg 31abfa22c7712659717f74bcead91cce
main qimg 31abfa22c7712659717f74bcead91cce

And since they will be the ones who will decide whether China shall use these weapons systems on American cities, perhaps we need to listen to what their thoughts are.

One way is to go though the people that elected them to office, and ask those people what they think.

main qimg c6c7f321775e90046cb10509a2a3b34d
main qimg c6c7f321775e90046cb10509a2a3b34d

But, you know, most are going through the “trials” of being an American. So perhaps the smarter thing to do is ask a more diverse cross section of the American population and see what they think…

main qimg ec46b35a182640dbd43e3faba5aa261f
main qimg ec46b35a182640dbd43e3faba5aa261f

My guess is that these people would have a diverse opinion that would be heavily influenced by their social media of choice. So, if you want some real unbiased opinion of what Americans think, perhaps you should visit the more rural areas…

main qimg eaea341906732b762833d5c79479a093
main qimg eaea341906732b762833d5c79479a093

And their opinion is “China ain’t gonna do shit. We’ll kick their ass!”.

And so, to answer the question…

  • Yes. China is fully capable of attacking the United States.
  • But Americans are not worried because…

IRAN’S VICTORY! China Takes Over Iran’s $2.7 Billion Strategic Project | Break US Sanctions!

The United States has long imposed a series of sanctions on Iran, including restricting oil exports and cutting Iran off from the international financial system.

This has greatly affected Iran’s economy and international status. In order to break through US sanctions, Iran has been working hard. Recently, Iran became a member of the BRICS as it wished.

In order to express its sincere desire to its Eastern partners, Iran signed an infrastructure agreement with China immediately after the BRICS summit ended. According to the agreement, Iran will invest at least US$2.7 billion in the expansion of the international airport, and Chinese companies have successfully become the sole builders of the project.

However, what is most concerning is that this time Iran’s $2.7 billion infrastructure cooperation with China will use a special payment method.

From an analysis point of view, the payment method reached by Iran and China not only effectively got rid of the sanctions of the United States, but may even accelerate the process of “de-dollarization”, which made President Biden feel very panicked.

So, what exactly happened?

https://youtu.be/XMoWgo4jUVQ

Why does Elon Musk blame a Los Angeles-based school for turning his transgender “woke” and making her hate him?

It’s kind of a crazy story.

One of those stories that seem almost surreal.

But essentially, Elon Musk sent his children to the finest schools money could buy. Only to discover, much to his chagrin, that such schools are rather progressive.

[1] Now his oldest son suddenly isn’t his son anymore, but his daughter. And she self-identifies as a “communist” and hates Musk for “being rich”.

main qimg 58e59ff552016cd136f71523a814d6b0
main qimg 58e59ff552016cd136f71523a814d6b0

This is where the whole “campaign against wokeness” comes from, for Musk — it’s a personal vendetta of sorts. This is why he bought up Twitter in the first place; because ‘the woke’ have gotten to his own family, and he resents it. I’m not entirely sure it’s this school in particular that turned his child transgender, however — the school boasts several famous alumni, among them Jack Black. And Jack Black is pretty much the bloke-iest bloke to ever bloke around.

main qimg 192310e5ba870d220813b1e09d1eb4fb
main qimg 192310e5ba870d220813b1e09d1eb4fb

Either way, Elon Musk decided that schools pushing woke narratives turned his own child against him, brainwashing her. He’s upset. I kind of get it. I would be, too. Change is scary. And when someone hates you to the point of legally petitioning for a name change (from Musk to Wilson, the last name of his ex-wife), that’s rather awful.

Anyway, it’s the school’s fault, not Musk’s. And now, the wider issue Musk identified, is the the type of policies peddled at schools and campuses in general. The left-wing ideologies, the gender-bending, the overly progressive attitude towards pretty much everything. I’ve never given much thuoight to what started Elon’s crusade against wokeness… but now we know the answer. Now we know what started it all.

The Death of Disney – Narrated by A.I David Attenborough

Sir David Attenborough narrates the rise and fall of Mickey Mouse (A.I parody).

As a police officer, have you ever received an unusual ‘thank you’ for taking care of someone?

Around 6 months after I finished field training, I was working a night shift and was dispatched to an animal cruelty call. Arriving at the home,I was met by a woman and her 4 year old son,both in tears. In this line of work, you quickly become accustomed to dealing with upset people, it’s just a part of the job. I introduced myself to both of them and listened as the mother explained the situation to me.

Arriving home from work, she and her son had parked in the driveway and walked to the side door of the house where they found the little boy’s 4 month old kitten lying on the steps. The kitten had been skinned by someone, and carefully placed on the steps to be noticed immediately. Being a cat person myself, my heart ached for this little boy. Not only was his kitten dead, it had been killed on purpose by someone and carefully skinned then left on display for maximum shock value! I took a report on the incident and then I helped the little boy bury his dead kitten in his back yard, fashioning a little cross out of some sticks.

There were really no leads of any kind on who may have perpetrated this horrible crime. I had the 911 telecommunicator search for any similar crimes in the area that had been reported recently and had no luck. I knew that the chance of finding out who did this was slim to none, but promised the little boy that I would do everything in my power to find and punish those responsible. Before clearing the call, I gave the little fella a tour of my patrol car, letting him play with the lights and siren. I always kept some stickers and stuffed animals in my trunk for situations just like this, and I let him choose a couple stickers and an animal.

About two weeks later, my Lieutenant called me in to his office after shift briefing. On his desk was a thank you card and a picture of a kitten that had been colored for me. My Lieutenant explained that the lady and little boy from the animal cruelty call had visited the office and left the items for me earlier that afternoon. It warmed my heart to receive this heartfelt thanks from them.

Maybe a month or so later, I answered a call about someone throwing a kitten out of a car window. Arriving on that scene, I found the kitten on the side of the road amazingly uninjured. Normally on a call like this we would turn the animal over to animal control, but I had an idea. I put the kitten in my patrol car and drove towards the little boy’s house, hoping that since it was a Saturday I would find them at home. I was in luck! Before showing the kitten to the little boy, I spoke with his mother to make sure she was OK with it. She agreed, so I got the kitten out of the car and presented it to the little boy. His eyes were the size of dinner plates when he saw the kitten! Both mother and son thanked me profusely and I left knowing that I had made that little boy happy.

It is situations like this that made being a law enforcement officer one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

“Nuclear war between U.S. and Russia is inevitable” – Russian General | Redacted with Clayton Morris

Retired Major General Alexander Vladimirov, who wrote Russia’s three volume book called the ‘General Theory of War,’ says the moment war broke out in Ukraine is the moment that nuclear war with the West became inevitable.

Why is everyone talking about the G20 Summit?

The biggest point on every media outlet outside India is

WHY IS XI JINGPING BOYCOTTING THE G20?

That’s the only thing that has made the G20 summit newsworthy so far

In India locally – the G20 Summit isnt even the top news

It’s the renaming of India to BHARAT and Modi hiding slums with green posters or something like that


Every major outlet is only discussing that one thing on the G20

Why is Xi Jingping not attending?

Some say he has kidney ailments, Some say he fears CPC revolt, Some say Putin and he plan a major meeting and some others say something else

All of it nonsense of course


The G20 Summit will not make a splash unless it becomes G21 which means inclusion of the African Union

Li Qiang will support the proposal wholeheartedly as will Lavrov and i am sure so shall Modi

Then the G20 may draw some traction

Right now nobody is talking about it at all

Douglas Macgregor: What A Deep Penetration!

https://youtu.be/0ibt2nrh0IQ

What are the gayest things I should avoid?

According to my homophobic father?

There was an entire list.

  • Shorts. Invented by gay men so that they could check out men’s legs.
  • Football. All that back slapping and hugging when they score a goal. They’re all closet <insert homophobic slur here>.
  • Rugby. The scrum? Closet <insert homophobic slur here>, the lot of ‘em.
  • Art. They’re all <insert homophobic slur here>.
  • Actors. They’re all <insert homophobic slur here>. Putting on wigs and make-up – sends them “funny”.
  • Having female friends. Women are for looking at and for having sex with, not being friends with.
  • Wearing your watch on the right wrist. I never learned why.
  • Anything pink.
  • Looking at your nails “funny”. (This translated to holing your hand out, flat palm facing away from you, fingers straight).
  • Cooking.
  • Baking.
  • Garlic. The French use it a lot, and we all know the French are all <insert homophobic slur here>.
  • The French. A special rung of gay was reserved for the French (yes, the entire population) in his head. Apparently the women were gay and the men were gay. He never did elaborate as to how France has managed to still exist generation after generation. The “womanizing” Frenchman was a cover to hide his gayness.
  • Thai men. Yes. Every man from Thailand is a homosexual… apparently.
  • The Navy.
  • Glam Rock.
  • ABBA’s music. But only the one’s in which Bjorn sings lead in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Do you want to know what my homophobic father regarded as the most macho, manliest-man, hetero thing in the world?

Wrestling.

Wasn’t regarded as gay, but eating garlic and hanging around with French girls was.

The Sopranos ( best ending scene ) season 6

When Phil says “no more Butchie. No more of this” and the music starts rolling, you know the war is about to start.

What was the moment you cancelled the friendship with your best friend?

My best friend spent most weekends with my husband and I, we had lots of fun cooking, going places, etc. She would get a guy, get serious, then find some awful thing wrong with him, call him names, and had to change her number numerous times.

When I got pregnant she seemed off. I know she always wanted a family and was jealous. She gave me an IOU for an expensive breast pump and bragged about it at my shower. 5 months after, no breast pump, whatever. But not even a pair of socks to welcome my child into the world. Yest she got a mani- pedi every two weeks, like clockwork. I am the type of person who yses the same old bargain pur for years, never get manicures or pedicures, and i get my hair cut twice per year. I shop at goodwill for clothes. I summoned up the courage to tell her I felt insulted that she never acknowledged my child, not even a pair of socks. She went of the deep end and called me materialistic! And all sorts of swear words. I never spoke with her again. Been 16 years. I couldn’t wrap my head around what she said to me.

Crunchy Taco Wraps

This taco wrap gets its crunch from a tostada in the middle of delicious taco fillings; and of course wrapped up in a delicious Rhodes grilled flatbread.

crunchy taco wrap
crunchy taco wrap

Prep: 15 min | Bake: 15 min | Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 12 Rhodes Dinner Rolls, thawed
  • 6 tostada shells
  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1 small yellow onion, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons taco seasoning
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon garlic
  • 1 jar nacho cheese or Queso cheese dip
  • 1 cup sour cream (optional)
  • 2 cups shredded lettuce
  • 1 cup salsa
  • 1 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend

Instructions

  1. Lightly spray counter or table with nonstick spray. Combine two dinner rolls and roll into an 8 inch circle. Repeat with remaining rolls. Cover with sprayed plastic wrap and let rest.
  2. In a large skillet or griddle, over medium-high heat, brown ground beef and. Stir in taco seasoning, water and garlic. Reduce heat to low and let simmer for 5 more minutes.
  3. Heat griddle to medium heat. Carefully remove plastic wrap from dough. Grill dough for 20 to 30 seconds on each side or until cooked through.
  4. Lay one grilled flatbread on a flat surface. Spread 1/2 cup of taco meat onto the center of the flatbread. Spread queso over one side of the tostada and place it cheese side down on the meat.
  5. Spread a thin layer of sour cream or more queso on top of the tostada shell. Top with lettuce, tomato and cheese.
  6. To fold the taco wrap, start with the bottom of the tortilla and fold the edge up over the center. Continue to work your way around, folding the tortilla over the center fillings. There will be an open spot on the top in the center.
  7. Repeat with all remaining flatbreads, tostadas and toppings.

every store is CLOSED in San Jose

San Jose the Bay Area’s largest city has dropped out of the top 10 largest cities in the US by population and stores are closing left and right in this city tour I am exploring downtown San Jose, and what I found was shocking, blocks after blocks of empty storefronts.

Why don’t the Western countries “peacefully evolve” China by breaking the Chinese Great Firewall?

Has it ever occurred to you that the Great Fire Wall protects you? Yes, you!

main qimg c2d5fcb2380564a20ec56de57213a704
main qimg c2d5fcb2380564a20ec56de57213a704

Imagine if suddenly 1.4 billion people flooded the internet with pro-China content. Okay, some are dissidents so make that one billion instead. My point is, in the Western world where “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” abound, unleashing the mainlanders into that environment en masse would have a profoundly negative impact for Westerners. I’m not sure they (the “outside” world) could handle it. Fun to think about though.

Globe is ready to ignite

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Ugh.

People! We are at peat transition. I have no idea how long this plateau will last but we are most certainly at peak.

Consider Africa. Niger is kicking the colonial powers out, and they refuse, and so the rest of Africa bands together to throw the bums out. Three nations, under proxy control, plan to invade Niger. What happens? Grass roots military coups though the “puppet masters” out.

Consider Oliver Anthony and how his music resonates.

Consider what is going on in Ukraine right now. Not the narrative. But the actual happenings. Where the EU went to Putin and started to make demands, and he dismissed them. They are P-O-W-E-R-L-E-S-S.

Consider the strange “fire” in Hawaii and the conspiracy theories behind it. And the fact that the entire area is now under wraps and fully blocked off doesn’t help the speculation. WTF is going on?

Japan radiation from the power plant. The cheapest solution, my ass. This water can be purified. But it isn’t. Some one (read USA) wants a conflict and wants a lot of Asians to die.

Look at San Francisco. First the orgy of riots. Then the store closures. Then the tenants move out. Followed by a ghost town. Now the “town counsel” has plans to bulldoze all the historic buildings down town and put up a gigantic football stadium surrounded by parking lots.

The insanity is off the charts!

Meanwhile China plugs on and on. Huawei P90 is coming out. 7nm chips. All Chinese made and manufactured. Full 5G capability, and the West loses out…

Genocidal, Zionist Israhell has expunged all historic Arabic names in Palestine for a reason. 

Algeria is removing French from all their street signs. 

Russia and China are switching English signage to phonetic and Pinyin, respectively. 

Words are powerful things. 

Jeff 

Enough… today’s post…

DEVICES FOUND ON RAILROAD TRACKS TO DERAIL TRAINS!

2023 08 15 14 36
2023 08 15 14 36

Police have revealed that devices like the one pictured above, designed to derail trains, have been found — and are being found — on railroad tracks all over the United States.

Police warn that they could lead to train derailments and the death of passengers. The devices have been found all over the country, from the West Coast to the East.

It now seems self-evident that America is literally under attack – from within.

More details as they become available.

UPDATE 7:53 AM EDT —

Additional information has come in regarding the device shown above.   What is pictured is a standard railroad siding derailer. It is designed to derail a car with dangerous materials from going on the main line and becoming a run away (bomb).

While it is good to hear this is a known safety device, this explanation does NOT address why police are reporting finding these devices on mainline tracks all over the USA.  This would seem to indicate people within the railroad industry, with ready access to such devices, have begun misusing them.

More if I get it.

What is an experience you had at a gas station you’ll never forget?

Sitting out side talking to a friend of mine and all of a sudden a loud bang made me jump. Turned to see a van had run straight into this little car. I was able to catch the plate number. I ran inside asked for a pen and paper quickly and jotted it down. Cashier looked so confused. The woman whose car it was was at the counter finishing checking out. She went outside and came back in saying someone hit her car. I was able to give her the plate number and bought her a coke. Waiting with her till her husband and then the cops showed up. Her whole frame was bent couldnt open the driver side door. The cops were able to ID the guy very quickly and this wasn’t his first accident in the year. Not his second either. The husband was so grateful for how I treated his wife during the incident he insisted on giving me twenty bucks. That twenty went to into getting my Mother a Christmas present. Caught up with them a few months later. She thanked me again and his insurance ended up paying for a new car for them. He (the driver) had to pay his insurance back.

Many Chinese economists, including Chinese scholars, acknowledge that China’s economy is getting worse and worse as of August 2023. Why do the Chinese on Quora insist that China’s economy doesn’t have any problems?

Every Economy has problems

China is one of the few who acknowledge their problems and correct them

Others talk about China and bury their own problems

  • US and it’s monstrous $ 33 Trillion Debt as a Global reserve currency
  • The West and it’s record shrinking of Industrial Production
  • Record Inflation in the Western Nations of almost 6% with a near 11% increase in Food Prices
  • India’s unemployment of almost 9% against China’s 5.5% and India’s stock market being larger than China’s albeit a GDP barely being one sixth

Thats the difference

Its why China always wins in the end


Take the top 35 economies in the world and guess how many have become better than their 2019 period

Guess?

Four

Exactly Four

Russia, Iran, Nigeria and Algeria

31/35 Economies are doing worse than they did in 2019 and that too many after 3 years of everything

China has come out of a 3 year lockdown barely 7 months ago and still grew against a very hostile situation presented to the it by the West


So like always the basic question

“Has a Chinese soldier killed your father or Has a Chinese boy cheated and dumped your sister?”

No other reason why you blindly ignore reality and keep focusing only on China

China Punishes U.S Military By Imposing Ban On Drone Export To The U.S And Europe!

Yes. China is stepping up to the plate. You all want to fuck with China, China will fuck your right back.

2023 08 12 17 49
2023 08 12 17 49
https://youtu.be/AQejBGfMcIA

Why do so many people defend China?

I am an American who resides in the United States.

I defend China because of history. The United States, England, France, Japan and Europe colonized much of the planet between 1800 and 1960. China was a victim of this aggression.

China continues to be a victim of American aggression. Since 1949, the United States has provided weapons and military support to the losing side in the Chinese Civil War, i.e. Taiwan. This is a continuation of 200 years of colonialism.

The United States is aided and abetted in its WAR against China by the Western media. Like others posting here, I view the Western media as propaganda, created by persons in the United States who want to sell weapons at the expense of China, Russia and the Middle East.

I believe that it is important to stand up for the truth, and to put an end to America’s endless wars for profit. The United States should not be a nation of endless war.

The present leaders of the United States have tarnished the nation, and caused it to be condemned in the eyes of the world. This is a very dangerous situation, for the United States. America is dependent upon credit and imported goods from the rest of the world.

I recognize that unchecked power in China could be a problem, when the United States is weakened due to its debt. However, the United States brought that problem upon itself, by closing two-thirds of its industrial base. The balance of power will correct itself.

Hopefully, America’s leaders will wake up soon. Power is about to be taken from their hands.

The Origins Of The Neocons And Their Lunatic World View

Linda’s Easy Lasagna

This is my favorite lasagna recipe because you do not cook the lasagna noodles first. I have always disliked cooking the lasagna noodles, so this is a great solution for me. This turns out perfect every time.

2023 08 12 17 52
2023 08 12 17 52

Yield: 12 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 pounds ground beef or turkey or Italian sausage*
  • 1 jar spaghetti sauce or homemade sauce
  • 1 can tomato sauce
  • 1 tomato sauce can water
  • 2 pounds ricotta or cottage cheese, mixed with 4 eggs
  • 12 ounces lasagna noodles, UNCOOKED
  • 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
  • Grated Parmesan cheese
  • Garlic powder
  • Salt

Instructions

  1. Brown meat. Drain.
  2. Add sauces and water.
  3. Spoon a small amount of sauce onto the bottom of a lasagna pan or a 13 x 9-inch baking dish.
  4. Place a layer of UNCOOKED noodles (overlapping slightly), one-third of the cottage cheese mixture, a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and one-third of the shredded cheese.
  5. Pour about one-third of the sauce over the top.
  6. Repeat twice more. Cover with more cheese.
  7. Bake, covered and sealed with foil (DO NOT LET THE FOIL TOUCH THE CHEESE), at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.
  8. Uncover and bake 15 minutes longer to brown the top.
  9. Let stand for 15 minutes before cutting.

Notes

* Remove Italian sausage from casings and crumble as it cooks.

I usually make this with Italian sausage, but I have also used sliced cooked meatballs. It’s yummy whatever you decide to use! Of the two spaghetti sauce options, if you have time, go with the homemade sauce!

You can also bake for 1 hour without the cheese on top, then put the cheese on top and bake 15 minutes longer uncovered.

What is the most inappropriate thing you’ve ever witnessed from a co-worker?

I’m a retired accountant.

Friend, who works for a financial broker, calls me, says she needs a break from work. Could I come in and be a receptionist for a week so she can take a break? I would be on the payroll.

OK. So, I do the week.

Then she says that I’m doing great, can I stay the month? Hmmm, OK. The extra money is nice.

At the end of the month. she says, “I am off on vacation for the next three months. Have fun.”

I didn’t know this, but she does NOT tell the broker. It is only a two-person office, and the broker is a sweet guy who does not deserve to be dumped on like this.

She never comes back.

I worked there two years until he sold the company and retired.

China’s cancellation of Germany’s $100 billion car order sends Europe into a panic!

https://youtu.be/tfqgWibM71g

Dear America – You Are Delusional, and Failing at Everything You Undertake

Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions –  “All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly.” 

“Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.”

Back in the days when I was still trying to do the corporate thing, I regularly found myself in a bit of a tight spot simply by failing to keep my mouth shut.

I seem to carry some sort of gene that makes me naturally irrepressible. I can keep my mouth shut for only so long before I have to blurt out what I really think, and in a corporate setting, where thinking isn’t really allowed, this causes no end of trouble. It didn’t matter that I often turned out to be right. It didn’t matter what I thought; it only mattered that I thought.

American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.

Of all the thoughts you aren’t allowed to think, perhaps the most offensive one is adequately expressed by a single short phrase: “That’s not gonna work.”

Suppose there is a meeting to unveil a great new initiative, with PowerPoint presentations complete with fancy graphics, org charts, timelines, proposed budgets, yadda-yadda, and everything is going great until this curmudgeonly Russian opens his mouth and says “That’s not gonna work.”

And when it is patiently explained to him (doing one’s best to hide one’s extreme irritation) that it absolutely has to work because Senior Management would like it to, that furthermore it is his job to make it work and that failure is not an option, he opens his mouth again and says “That’s not gonna work either.” And then it’s time to avoid acting flustered while ignoring him and to think up some face-saving excuse to adjourn the meeting early and regroup.

I lasted for as long as I did in that world because once in a while I would instead say “Sure, that’ll work, let’s do it.” And then, sure enough, it did work, the company had a banner year or two, with lots of bonuses and atta-boy (and atta-girl) certificates handed out to those not at all responsible for any of it. Flushed with victory, they, in turn, would think up more harebrained schemes for me to rain on, and the cycle would repeat.

It is probably one of the main saving graces of corporations that they do sometimes (mainly by mistake) allow some thought to leak through. The mistake in question is a staffing error in promoting those constitutionally incapable of keeping their mouths shut or shutting off their brains. Such errors create chinks in the monolithic phalanxes of corporate yes-men and yes-women.

Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.

The likelihood of such mistakes increases with the agony of defeat, which causes attrition among the ranks of qualified yes-sayers, creating holes that can only be plugged by promoting a few non-yes-sayers. However, this only seems to work in the smaller, hungrier corporations; the larger, better-fed ones seem to be able to avoid experiencing the agony of defeat for a very long time by moving the goal posts, outlawing any discussion of said defeat or other similar tactics. Eventually the entire organization goes over the cliff, but by then it is of no benefit to anyone to attempt to inform them of their folly.

It is much the same with governments, except here the situation is even worse. While the smaller, hungrier governments, and those blessed with a fresh institutional memory of extreme pain, do not have the luxury of lying to themselves, the larger political agglomerations—the USSR, the EU, the USA—have the ability to keep themselves completely immunized against the truth for historically significant periods of time.

The USSR clung to the fiction of great socialist progress even when it was clear to all that the cupboard was bare and there were rats gnawing through the rafters. The EU has been able to ignore the fact that its entire scheme is one of enriching Germany while impoverishing and depopulating eastern and southern Europe, neglecting the interests of the native populations throughout. And the amount of self-delusion that is still currently in effect in the USA makes it a rather large subject.

Regardless of how great the lies are and how forcefully they are defended, a moment always comes when the phalanx of truth-blocking yes-men and yes-women stops marching, turns and runs. This event results in a tremendous loss of face and confidence for all involved.

It is the crisis of confidence, more than anything else, that precipitates the going-off-a-cliff phenomenon that we could so readily observe in the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s. I have a very strong hunch that similar cliff-diving exercises are coming up for the EU and the USA.

But for the time being I am just another disembodied voice on the internet, watching from the sidelines and periodically saying the unfashionable thing, which is: “This isn’t gonna work.” However, I’ve said this a number of times over the years, on the record and more or less forcefully, and I feel vindicated most of the time.

Internationally, for example:

Carving the Ukraine away from Russia, having it join the EU and NATO and building a NATO naval base in Crimea “wasn’t gonna work.” The Ukraine is a part of Russia, the Ukrainians are Russian, and the Ukrainian ethnic identity is a Bolshevik concoction. Look for a reversion to norm in a decade or two.

Destroying and partitioning Syria with the help of Wahhabi extremists and foreign mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel while Russia, Iran, Turkey and China stand idly by “wasn’t gonna work”; and so it hasn’t.

Giving Afghanistan “freedom and democracy” and turning it into a stable pro-Western regime with the help of invading NATO troops “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. Western involvement in Afghanistan can go on, but the results it can achieve are limited to further enhancing the heroin trade.

Destroying the Russian economy using sanctions “wasn’t gonna work,” and hasn’t. The sanctions have helped Russia regroup internally and achieve a great deal of self-sufficiency in energy production and other forms of technology, in food and in numerous other sectors.

All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly. Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well.

In the meantime, the world isn’t waiting for the US to shake itself out of its stupor.

The fulcrum of American influence in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and the petrodollar. In turn, Saudi Arabia rests on three pillars: the Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi Islam and the petrodollar. As I write this, the next king, Mohammed bin Salman, is busy hacking away at all three: robbing, imprisoning and torturing his fellow-princes, working to replace the Wahhabi clerics with moderate ones and embracing the petro-yuan instead of the now very tired petrodollar.

Not that any of these three pillars were in good shape in any case: the defeat of ISIS in Syria was a defeat for the Saudi monarchy which supported it, for the Wahhabi clerics who inspired it and, consequently, for the petrodollar as well, because Saudi Arabia was until now its greatest defender.

The new guarantors of peace in the region are Russia, Iran and Turkey, with China watching carefully in the wings. American involvement in the middle-eastern project is now limited to Putin’s sporadic courtesy calls to Trump, to keep him updated.

And so here’s my latest prediction: Trump’s goal of “making America great” “isn’t gonna work” either.

The country is so far gone that just taking the first step—of allowing the truth of its condition to leak through the media filters—will undermine public confidence to such an extent that a subsequent cliff-dive will become unavoidable. It’s a nice slogan as slogans go, but Trump is too old to be a reformer or a revolutionary. He is of an age when men are generally mostly concerned about the quantity and consistency of their stool and how it interacts with their enlarged prostates.

Perhaps he will succeed in making America great… big piles of feces, but I wouldn’t expect much more than that.

France, ECOWAS Armoured Vehicles Land In Nigerian Port As They Move To Invade Niger

Worst Things You Can Say to Your Kids

Stacey FeintuchUpdated: Jan. 25, 2023

Why words hurt

We’ve all said the wrong thing at times, leaving our kids feeling angry, hurt, or confused. Words can be eternally damaging, especially coming from parents who are supposed to be safe and supportive figures in their child’s lives. “Parents’ support and approval are essential for kids’ well-being,” says Jill Whitney, LMFT, who practices in Old Lyme, Connecticut and blogs about relationships. “The words you use can be constructive or destructive to kids’ developing sense of self. If they’re negative, they can negatively color our self-image for decades.” Find out the worst offenders and what to say instead.

“Hurry up!”

Your child may be slow as molasses getting dressed in the morning when you’re trying to head out the door to school and work. Pushing her to get a move on, though, will only make her more stressed. And while you may be making her feel guilty about running late, your screaming won’t motivate her to move any faster. Instead, look for calm ways to speed things up, like making getting out the door a game by racing to see who can get dressed first. “By making it into a ‘we event,’ you’ll teach your child the importance of collaboration,” says Paul Hokemeyer, PhD, a clinical and consulting psychotherapist and author of the forthcoming Fragile Power: Why Having Everything is Never Enough.

“Leave me alone”

Every parent needs a break at times. Yet, you shouldn’t be telling your kids that, otherwise, they’ll think that you’re brushing them off and that there’s no point in talking to you. “Kids like to be acknowledged and heard; in fact, it can help cut down on meltdowns and tantrums,” says Jennifer Trachtenberg, MD, a pediatrician, the creator of Pediatrician in Your Pocket, spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “Answer in a way that is age-appropriate and give them specific tasks to do while they wait for you,” she says. You may instead say, “I have to finish one thing. I need you to play with your cars for just a few minutes. We can play outside as soon as I’m done.” “Just make sure you then follow through with whatever you promised you would do together afterward,” says Dr. Trachtenberg. Some compliments can actually be hurtful to kids, too.

“Why can’t you be more like your brother or sister?”

It’s natural to compare your kids, but you shouldn’t let your kids hear you doing it. When you ask kids why they’re not more like their sibling, it promotes unhealthy competition and kids may not feel like they’re good enough. You’re implying that you wish your child was someone else when you compare him to his sibling. Besides, the comparisons aren’t likely to change the behavior, says Dr. Trachtenberg. You’ll only be pressuring a child to do something he doesn’t want to do or isn’t ready for, undermining his self-esteem. Instead, encourage and inspire your child about what he can do and praise him when he does something good, such as, “Thanks for telling me you had to use the potty” or “Wow, you zipped your coat up all by yourself.” “Each child is an individual with his own strengths and weaknesses,” says Dr. Trachtenberg. “Positive reinforcement is a powerful tool to help shape other wanted behaviors. Remember to encourage and praise the child for the actions they succeed at instead of harping on what they can’t do.” Besides, you’ll want to stop sibling rivalry before it starts.

“Practice makes perfect”

“There is no such thing as perfect; being perfect isn’t a good goal as it doesn’t exist,” says Betsy Brown Braun, child development and behavior specialist, author of two best-selling parenting books, and founder of Parenting Pathways. “You’re sending the message that she didn’t train hard enough if she made a mistake.” Instead, acknowledge how frustrating and hard practicing can be and give some examples of things she practiced and did improve. “I like to give the example of babies learning to walk. They try and try, fall down, and try and practice, over and over,” she says. “Then they become good walkers, just like you did.” Explain that doing something repeatedly teaches you how to do it, says Brown Braun. “Nobody can do something well unless she has done it a lot,” she says. “Some things take a lot of work; some take less.”

“Let me help”

It’s natural to want to give your child a hand as he is finishing a puzzle or building a tower; after all, you don’t want to see your child struggle. But if you jump in too soon, you can undermine his independence. “Allow your child to complete a project to build his self-esteem and core competence,” says Fran Walfish, PsyD (aka Dr. Fran), a child, couple, and family psychotherapist in private practice in Beverly Hills and author of The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Building a Better Bond with Your Child. “Each disappointment is a golden opportunity for your child to develop frustration and build coping skills to deal with life’s inevitable daily ups and downs.” Constantly helping prevents him from getting the satisfaction of learning to do it for himself and teaches him to always look to others for answers. Instead, wait for him to ask for help first. Then, ask him questions to help him solve the problem. “Should the big piece go here? Why? Try it yourself.” Is your child faking illness to stay home? Here are some of the most common reasons why kids hate school.

“I’m on a diet”

If you’re watching your weight, keep it to yourself; talking this way about physical appearance can lead to your child developing an unhealthy body image. If they see you’re struggling with how you look, they may feel that they need to look a certain way, too. “Obsessing about your weight or appearance isn’t delivering a good message,” says Elizabeth Berger, MD, a child psychiatrist and author of Raising Kids with Character. “Children need to feel that their parents are in control of their own lives.” Instead, say “I’m eating healthy because I like how it makes me feel.” Promoting positive body image like this is one of the tiny ways you can encourage your kids every day.

“Don’t cry”

When you tell a child she’s fine as she’s bawling over a scraped knee, you’re invalidating and discounting her feelings. Kids will think they have to brush off their emotions and that can lead to more explosive outbursts. Dr. Walfish suggests you say instead, “You got hurt and scared. It’s okay to say ‘Ouch! That hurts!’ Mommy sees you’re scared and hurt, and I’m right here with you.” Or give her a hug, acknowledging and verbalizing her feelings. “That was a scary fall.” That can help give her the words to express herself. “This is what I call empathic narration,” says Dr. Walfish. “This style of compassionate attunement to your child’s feelings will help her feel seen, acknowledged, validated, and accepted—flaws and all. The attuning narration also teaches your child to be a kind and empathic person to others.”

“I could do that when I was your age”

Kids all develop at different rates. So expecting your son to ride a two-wheeler by age seven as you did will only make him feel like he disappointed you. “Parents are under a lot of pressure to make sure that their children meet a long list of expectations, and some of this anxiety tends to be passed on to children,” says Dr. Berger. Still, you as a parent should appreciate your child’s efforts, regardless of what they are. “A calm attitude towards ‘success’ helps children get over their own sense of shame when they haven’t met their own—and social—expectations,” says Dr. Berger. Dr. Berger says you can say, “Wow, I can see you’re making a lot of progress; keep it up!” or “Don’t worry—you’ll get there.”

“Because I said so”

When you’re in a rush, it can be easy to fall back on this clichéd parenting phrase, but avoid this empty phrase in favor of one that’s more thought out. “As parents, one of our most challenging tasks is to convince our children to do something they don’t want to do,” says Janie Feldman, PsyD, a licensed psychologist in New Jersey. You can say something like, “I know you want to play outside today. But you have to finish your homework first. How about we play outside after?” Dr. Feldman says you can offer an incentive to promote interest in completing the task. “It would be a great help to the family if you raked the leaves. If you rake them for us, you’ll earn ___.” It’s not guaranteed they’ll help, but they may be more interested. “In our society, we do work for incentives such as our salaries, vacation time, and other benefits,” says Dr. Feldman. “Offering an incentive can not only motivate our children but also socialize them to recognize the value of their efforts.” Beyond your children, find out more things you really shouldn’t be saying to the people in your life.

“I do everything for you”

You may feel like you do everything for them—cooking, cleaning, and chauffeuring them. But you know this isn’t true. “Do what you do for your kids with an open, generous heart or don’t do it,” says Eileen Kennedy-Moore, PhD, a psychologist based in Princeton, New Jersey and author of Kid Confidence: Help Your Child Make Friends, Build Resilience, and Develop Real Self-Esteem. “Don’t expect that you’ll be repaid with effusive gratitude or even good behavior,” she says. She says you can help teach your child gratitude and good manners by mirroring them yourself with your spouse, family, friends, and others. Say something like “What a delicious dinner! Thank you so much, Daddy!” “Your kids will probably pipe in with their thanks,” she says. Or point out someone’s efforts made on their behalf, along the lines of, “Grandma went to three stores to find the yellow paint you need. Remember to thank her when you see her tonight.”

“It’s not that big of a deal”

It may not be a big deal to you that your daughter wasn’t invited to Mary’s party, but it’s a big deal to her. Telling her you disagree with her invalidates how she’s feeling, making her ashamed or embarrassed. “When our kids are upset, we want to reach for empathy,” says Kennedy-Moore. She says that a useful formula is: “You’re feeling ___ because __.” “It bothers you when___.” “It’s hard for you when ___.” “You wish___.” “Don’t interpret or judge, just describe the feelings you see,” she says. “We adults tend to want to skip the feelings and go straight to the solution. But when kids don’t feel heard, they tend to get louder. Wrapping kids’ feelings up in words makes them seem more understandable and more manageable.” When your child feels heard and understood, it will do wonders. Beware of these other things parents say that ruin kids’ trust, too.

“You’re a liar”

Even if your child did take money from your wallet, that tone will only make him feel like he’s being personally attacked. Find out why he lied instead of being accusatory; then start an open dialogue about why it’s not okay to lie. Edward Kulich, MD, is a pediatrician who provides house calls in the New York area with his practice KidsHousecalls. He says you can say something like “Hey bud, I just wanted to let you know that I’m always here for you if you need anything or if you have a problem. I noticed some money is missing from my wallet. I’m not mad but I think we need to talk about this.”

“Be careful”

These words can have the opposite effect, making your child more likely to fall as she’s attempting the monkey bars. You’re distracting her from what she’s doing, so she’s losing focus. Instead, quietly spot her in case she falls. Dr. Kulich says you can say something like “You got this.” He says if your child is more hesitant, you can say, “I saw you do this yesterday. I know you can do it.” These compliments your kids really need to hear also help to build self-esteem and foster a loving relationship between the two of you.

US Forces Combat in Niger is a Nightmare

Talk WITH People, Not AT Them

Talk WITH not AT Header 2
Talk WITH not AT Header 2

One of the insidious things about trying to judge our own social skills, is that if an interaction went well for us, then we assume the other person thought it went well too. While you’ve probably never consciously thought about it, if you had a good time talking to someone, you think they felt the same. But this just isn’t the case. It’s very possible for you to walk away from an interaction feeling grand, while the other person walks away feeling annoyed, bored, or burdened.  

What usually happens in these lopsided engagements is that you talked a lot about yourself and your interests, an act which is enjoyable and makes humans happy. We like to talk about ourselves! But, the other person didn’t get to talk much about him or herself, and thus left the conversation without a corresponding level of elevation.  

While dominating a conversation simply by talking a lot is almost guaranteed to be a charm-killer, the worst kind of one-sided interaction is when you talk at someone, rather than with them.

Talking At Vs. Talking With

Valerie White and (former AoM podcast guest) Ann Demarais, doctors of psychology and authors of First Impressions, define the “talking at” dynamic as “forcing others to react rather than interact.” It manifests itself when one party takes on the role of teller/entertainer, and the other is forced into the role of audience.

While being part of an audience can be enjoyable when that is what one is expecting and desiring (e.g., watching a movie), people do not expect to be an audience member during face-to-face social interactions. Feeling like a spectator in this context is dull and irritating, because the role is so passive. A conversation is a cooperative, almost artistic endeavor — much like symphonic music — in which each person gets satisfaction from engaging, contributing, creating. They don’t want to watch and clap.

Demarais and White describe 4 common forms that “talking at” takes, each of which can be flipped in a way that gets you “talking with” your social partner:

Lecturing

When you’re in lecturing mode, you’re imparting facts in a very one-sided way. You want to tell someone something, but you’re not expecting or eliciting a real response. They’re the passive audience for your knowledge dump. Lecturing feels great for the lecturer — you’re amped up on the status you get from feeling in the know, and sharing information you hold as uniquely yours. But your listener is likely to see you as boring and self-important.

How to share knowledge with your social partner. Talk about subjects in which you and your partner are mutually interested, and watch for signs that they’re engaged — “Uh-huhs,” nodding, saying things like “That’s interesting.” In the absence of such cues, stop your monologue. And even when they are manifested, pause intermittently to see if the other person wants to respond, or add something, or has a question. If they don’t interject anything, you should probably wrap it up and change the subject.

Additionally, how you introduce a subject matters, as Demarias and White explain:

“A hallmark of a lecture is the speaker’s implicit ownership of the information.

When you present something as your own, you may intend to appear smart but actually may appear bombastic and egotistical. On the other hand, when you mention where you learned your information—as in ‘I read an editorial in the paper that said…’—or the genesis of your idea—as in ‘I saw something on TV, and then thought…’—you show an open mind and a more modest assessment of your own intellectual value.”

When you say, “I heard/read X the other day,” people don’t feel like you’ve already fixed your opinion about it, but rather that you’re opening up a dialogue on the subject, making them more likely to offer their own thoughts and engage with you.

Storytelling

The great paradox of stories is that they can be both the most compelling and the most boring form of communication. A good story can entertain, engage, and build connection. But as Demarias and White observe, stories can easily go wrong when they’re “long, detailed, and about people your conversational partner doesn’t know.”

How to share stories with your social partner. Bad storytelling is an easy trap to fall into, because the characters and plots in our anecdotes seem so interesting and salient to us. We know our friends, and children, and boss — they loom large in our own lives, and we can vividly picture their facial expressions and have all the context to understand why their behavior is so adorable/comical/outrageous. It’s subconsciously difficult to realize that other people, who lack this context, won’t find these people and places equally compelling.

But they don’t. The difference can be likened to the way you’re interested in a story about your favorite NBA player, but have no interest in news about a professional Chinese athlete you’ve never heard of. Unless a story connects to universal aspects of the human experience (training for a race; dealing with an incompetent boss; getting in an accident) or intersects in some way with the other person’s life, it’s going to be Dullsville.

Even if a story does include those elements (touches on shared human experience; connects with the other person’s life), you should still keep it short and to the point. Dole out the story in small chunks, watching to see if the other person shows interest and asks things like, “What did you decide to do?” or “How did he respond to that?” before continuing the tale.

When a story of any kind goes on too long, you turn your social partner into an audience member who passively spectates instead of actively engages.

Sermonizing

Sermonizing occurs when you’re trying to persuade someone to your point of view. The subject matter is usually something around morality, religion, or politics, and while this kind of conversational mode can be okay in the company of long-time friends and family who enjoy spirited debate and verbal jousting, it’s a turn-off for new acquaintances who don’t know you well enough to put your opinions into context and to realize there’s more to you than a zeal for some particular issue. They’re likely to get defensive or disgusted or just plain annoyed.

How to have a weighty discussion with your social partner. You don’t have to rigidly follow the old adage about avoiding talk of politics, religion, and money, even with new people, as long as you follow a few guidelines we’ve offered here, the gist of which is to strive to have adiscussion rather than an argumentA wise writer put the distinction this way:

“in discussion you are searching for the truth, and in argument you want to prove that you are right. In discussion, therefore, you are anxious to know your neighbor’s views, and you listen to him. In argument, you don’t care anything about his opinions, you want him to hear yours.”

When you’re aiming a sermon at someone, Demarias and White note, “The implicit message is ‘you’re wrong and I’m right.’” When you’re having a discussion with them, in contrast, you seek to understand how they’ve arrived at their convictions, where your positions differ, and the common ground you share.

Telling Jokes

A great sense of humor is one of the most charming of qualities. But too much humor reaches a tipping point where it stops adding to the collective “music” of the conversation and becomes a one-sided performance, turning the speaker into an entertainer and the listener into an audience. Instead of getting to interact, the latter is forced to simply react to the constant stream of quips and witticisms — a role for which they soon grow bored.

How to share humor with your social partner. Jokes serve better as the seasoning of a conversation, rather than its main dish. Instead of interspersing everything you say with a quip, just pepper them in here and there between sustained stretches of neutral talking and showing sincere interest in the other person.

When it comes to being socially adept, Demarias and White note that “how you talk about topics matters more than what you actually talk about. You can make a fascinating ethical issue boring if you simply lecture someone about it. On the other hand, you can turn your model airplane hobby into a stimulating conversational topic if you talk about it in a fun and engaging manner.”

To avoid your conversations turning into one-sided monologues where you simply talk at people, toss out subjects of reciprocal interest and see what people bite on; like volleyball players, hit the ball back and forth over the net. Show that you’re curious, open-minded, and interested in other people’s experiences and perspectives. Interact rather than making the other person solely react to what you say and do; create a little theater/dialogue/symposium/comedy together, rather than having them watch you from the gallery.

Create something special with the people you meet.

China’s Dumping Dollars For Gold & They Won’t Stop!

China just ramped up their gold purchases, buying for a 9th straight month! As the world gets de-globalized, we are seeing an acceleration of de-dollarization towards alternative stores of value like gold. Even JP Morgan is calling for record gold prices in 18 months. Here’s what you must know about this historic monetary shift.

The More Options You Have, The Happier You Are

Over the years, I’ve experienced a direct correlation between the number of options I have in life and my happiness.

The more options I have for my career, the better work I can do. The more options I have for spending my free time, the less I cling to people and activities.

In short, if I can choose what to do with my time at any given moment, I’m happy. It doesn’t necessarily matter what I do. What matters is that I have a choice. 

The importance of this concept is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned about happiness in the modern age. 

I recently read Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston, who was a seasoned psychiatrist. In that book, he talked about why it’s so important to have options:

“Mental health is a function of choice. The more choices we are able to exercise, the happier we are likely to be. Those who are most unwell or discouraged suffer from a sense that their choices have been limited, sometimes by external circumstances or illness, most often by the many ways we restrict ourselves.”

Fewer options restrict us. That gives us a sense of dread. We feel like there’s not much we can do in life. And that makes us unhappy. But you can turn that around by creating options for yourself. 

The paradox of risk

The most important thing about career options is that there’s a paradoxical relationship between risk and reward we need to understand first. Before I came to terms with this, I never had many options.

Here’s the issue. As humans, we’re naturally risk-averse. We fear loss more than we desire a potential gain. That force usually keeps us where we are. That’s why most people remain in the same job or industry until they get fired or retire.

The paradox is that most people assume it’s risky to change. But in reality, the reverse is true. The more stagnant you are, the more you’re at risk of loss.

When I pursued a career as a full-time writer, I had to take risks. I left my well-paying corporate job in London, left the city, moved back in with my parents, and took a step back from our family business.

I went from earning about $80K a year to almost nothing. My blog and online courses generated about $5,000 of income in the first year. The risk is wasting your time and the loss of your salary when you make a move like that.

Livingston recognized the importance of getting comfortable with risk as well. He said the following about the relationship between options and risk:

“The primary variable in this regard is tolerance of risk. If we take counsel of our fears, particularly our fear of change, it is hard to choose a life that makes us happy. Is it anxiety or lack of imagination that restricts us?”

This is hard to accept. Unless you get comfortable with your fear of change, you will not have a happy life that consists of many options. 

Remember that no matter how dire your circumstances are, you’re never out of options. You can always do something. This is the most important belief in human hope and progress. As long as we’re alive, we have a choice. 

How I create career options

Let’s look at how you can create more career options. Since your work takes up the majority of your time, it’s important to get this straight. When you have options and happiness in your career, you automatically become a better person.

How many of your personal problems are related to work? How often do you allow the stress of work to change your mood? And how often does your mood create problems at home?

To say that your career is important is an understatement. Work is not just something you do on set hours. It’s the single biggest factor that determines what your life looks like on a macro level.

So how do you make sure you have a good career? Not by having a great job. This might sound weird to you if you’ve been raised thinking every person needs to have one job.

That’s an old model that no longer works. We don’t need jobs. We need skills that we can apply to multiple jobs and industries.

Here’s how I approach that. I always prioritize learning over short-term goals like money, bonuses, status, or any other benefits that I can get in my career. 

The more universal skills I have, the more opportunities I have. For example, if you’re good at persuasion, you can work as a copywriter, account executive, stockbroker, recruiter, or work at a retail store. 

If you know how to code, you can work at any company that develops software, in any industry.

Another thing I focus on is building good relationships with experienced people. I’m not a fan of networking with hundreds of people or forming “mastermind” groups with people who are not top-performers. On a social level, it’s wonderful, but professionally, you won’t learn much. 

If you do want to network, at least connect with people who are more established in life and don’t have much to prove anymore. Professionals like that can point you in the right direction if you don’t know what to do. They can help you to see options you didn’t see before.

Be willing to pay the price or move on

I was once talking about this concept of career options with someone in their twenties. The person said they also wanted to be in a similar position as I am today. 

And I said, “Look, I’ve given up a lot of things when I was your age to be where I am today. I sacrificed relationships and leisure. But I don’t see it as bad because I’ve always been happy to pay that price for happiness. And I still am.”

And the person said, “I don’t think I can do that.” 

That’s the end of it. “Then you should accept your life the way it is and that you’re always at the disposal of other people,” I said. If some people are not willing to pay the price, they should just accept whatever is and not complain about being unhappy.

The truth is there are always options. We just can’t expect that they come for free. Everything in life has a price. If you’re willing to pay, you won’t get disappointed.

Why is the US doing such a bad job countering China’s rise?

Oh Simple

Every Nation has a certain threshold beyond which it’s rise can’t be contained

The Threshold is Economic and Political and Military based

I believe that China could have easily been contained or throttled in 2010 or even 2012

Luckily the 2008 Crisis helped China and gave it 6 years or so beyond which throttling it became tougher and tougher

Today?

Economically China is a giant not just because of the $ 19 Trillion GDP but because of an Industrial Output that exceeds US,UK and Europe combined

Militarily they can sustain a war for almost 4 years without cracks in their economy. They have enough food and energy independently for that.

Hence attacking China would result in worse weakening of the West especially by US


So all US can do is OPTICS or PR

Make it look like it’s containing China

Use their media to exaggerate every one of Chinas failures by 1000 and suppress all of Chinas achievements by either not publishing it or using the narrative “BUT AT WHAT COST”

Riling up neighbors of China

Essentially acting like a Pimp Bully instead of a Direct Head on Face to Face talk with China


And Why?

Why is the West so alarmed with China’s Rise?

Because they feel China will invade and conquer the US?

Nonsense

Because they feel China will become the numero uno hegemon

Nonsense. The US hegemony is too well entrenched to be removed in a year or two. It will take 30 years minimum. Well after the current leadership has been dead and buried

Because China would become wealthier?

Naah. Luxembourg and Singapore are wealthier than US and US doesn’t give a damn

It’s because China isn’t a democracy and it’s proof that a One Party Meritocracy System can do better than a Democracy if the vision and policies work to that effect

2023 08 15 19 39
2023 08 15 19 39

That breaks the so called “Democracy is God model” that the West has been floating for nearly 100 years

That’s why the West is so terrified of China’s rise

The First and Only Photos From Titan, Saturn’s Largest Moon – What Did We See?

Oh. This video is REALLY cool!

Why are Just Stop Oil waging war on motorists?

This is the best selling vehicle in the United States

2023 08 15 19 42
2023 08 15 19 42

The Ford F Series. Currently, the F-150 is the production model.

Not the best selling “truck”. The best selling “vehicle”.

In Canuck speak, it uses anywhere from 11–15 liters of fuel per 100km travelled. By contrast, a Honda Civic uses about 7.1–8 liters of fuel to travel the same distance.

Vehicles like this are rarely used to haul cargo or for towing. They’re mostly used the same way other vehicles are used – commuting and errands. If cycling were safe in the United States, which it mostly isn’t, about 50% of trips taken by an F-150 could be done by bike.

It’s not even a good pickup truck. It has a pitiful amount of cargo room.

Vehicles like this make it difficult for people to travel by any other mode of transit that doesn’t use petroleum, like walking and biking. Heck, this behemoth even makes it impossible to get around in vehicles like the Civic which could do 99% of the trips this thing can because in a collision between this and a Civic the Civic owner is probably in for a bad experience.

It it safe? For the occupants, yes. For anyone not in it, no. You can’t see a 5 foot tall child standing directly in front of it for one thing.

America Tells Saudi Arabia To Keep Using Dollars – You Won’t Believe This!

The U.S. is pushing back against BRICS and China with a deal for Saudi Arabia. However, the terms will include the continued usage of the US dollar in oil sales. Will MBS take the bait and is this a win for America? Here’s what you must know!

2023 08 15 19 59
2023 08 15 19 59
2023 08 15 20 00
2023 08 15 20 00

Linda’s Pepper Steak

I’ve been making this delicious pepper steak for about 50 years.

2023 08 12 17 53
2023 08 12 17 53

Cook: 25 min | Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound round or flank steak
  • Kosher or sea salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 green bell pepper, diced large
  • 1 red or orange bell pepper, diced large
  • 3 beef bouillon cubes, dissolved in 1 cup hot water
  • 1 can diced tomatoes
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 2 teaspoons soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup water

Instructions

  1. Cut the steak into thin slices (this is easier to do if the meat is semi-frozen).
  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  3. In a large skillet heat the oil.
  4. Add the steak and onion and cook until meat is browned on all sides.
  5. Add the bell peppers and bouillon water. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
  6. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.
  7. Mix the cornstarch, soy sauce and water and stir into meat mixture. Cook, stirring, until the mixture has thickened.
  8. Serve with hot fluffy rice or noodles.

It’s Never About The US President, It’s About The US Empire – Caitlin Johnstone

We talk about US presidents all the time — Obama did this, Trump did that, blah blah blah. But really it’s never the president doing those things, it’s the empire. The president is just the face of the operation, the name they put on the door that they change every few years to create the illusion that the US government is responsive to the will of the electorate.

Really if you look solely at the raw data of the US power structure around the world (where the weapons are going, where the resources are going, where the money is and isn’t going, where the diplomats are and aren’t going, etc), you can’t tell from year to year when the White House is changing hands. You can’t tell from that raw data what political party the current president belongs to or what platform he campaigned on, and you can’t tell when he’s replaced by someone from the other party with another platform. The raw data of the empire keeps moving in basically the same way without any meaningful interruption.

So it’s not really true to say “Obama did this” or “Trump did that”; really they’re just the face that happened to be on the operation when it was time to kill Gaddafi or begin the Pivot to Asia or sanction Venezuela or start arming Ukraine or whatever. They’re not leaders leading the US government in various directions based on what they think the best policies are, they’re empire managers who are responding to whatever the needs of the empire happen to be each day — using whatever justifications or partisan leverage they can muster in that moment.

And Americans don’t get to vote on any of that stuff. They don’t get to vote on what will have to be done to facilitate the needs of a globe-spanning empire, or if there should be a globe-spanning empire at all. The behavior of the empire is never on the ballot. The only things that are ever on the ballot are issues which stand no possibility of ever interfering in the operation of the empire, like whether the president will appoint Supreme Court justices who oppose abortion or support gun control. And the voting populace is continually kept at a 50/50 split on as many of those issues as possible to keep both sides tugging on the rope with all their might so they don’t look up and notice that the real large-scale behavior of their government is completely unaffected by the small back and forth gains and losses of the tug-o-war game.

Really the only reason to talk about US presidents in terms of “Obama did this” and “Trump did that” is to highlight this point. To highlight the fact that Obama continued and expanded all the most malignant policies of his predecessor, and that Trump continued and expanded all the most malignant policies of his. To disrupt all the dopey partisan narratives about things getting better under Biden or worse under Trump or that Obama was a progressive or Trump was a peacemaker.

By pointing out the horrible things that happened under each administration, regardless of party affiliation or platform, the illusion that Americans are controlling the behavior of their government using their votes can be worn away. You can in this sense use the illusion to fight the illusion — use people’s intense interest in presidents and electoral politics to draw them into the insight that it’s all a performance designed to keep the eyes of the masses away from the inner workings of the machine.

And then the possibility for real change opens up. The longer Americans are convinced that they can vote their way out of problems they never voted their way into in the first place, the longer they can be dissuaded from using the power of their numbers to force real material changes by real material means.

EPIC FAIL: Why Most US Weapons Systems Are Worse than Russia’s

Two reasons: complexity, and too much money

Lately we have seen some good analysis on the limits and vulnerabilities of the American military in light of events in the former Ukraine and especially Russia’s demonstrated competence in Syria.  

So we have the “what” of the issue, but how about the “why”?  

As a U.S. Army veteran and a longtime resident of the Beltway—including four-and-a-half years living on Crystal Drive in Arlington, Virginia, which has probably the densest concentration of “defense” contractors anywhere in America—I think I understand what is fundamentally wrong with the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC.)

First and foremost, the MIC has long been incapable of producing durable, efficient, versatile weapons.  

We don’t even have to look to the F-35 on this one.  

(America’s latest fighter which has turned into a spectacular technical failure and massive  ($1.5 trillion!) expense  – see our super-popular article about how this plane stacks up against the Russian competition- edit)   

Just consider the most basic item, the M-16. 

The M-16 Assault Rifle

My field experience with this piece of junk is that it runs into problems in the presence of even a small amount of sand. When enough sand gets in to the chamber and mixes with the lube oil on the bolt assembly, the grit thus formed results in up to every second round misloading.

God forbid you should brush an oiled open breach against the side of your foxhole—you are out of commission.  In the absence of air or artillery support or sheer overwhelming numbers on your side, you are dead meat against anyone with a gun that functions in a sandy environment.  And why?  Because, as I was told in boot camp (whether it’s true or not), this thing is perfectly built to have zero fault tolerance.  

Supposedly, just about every metal component in the M-16 is cast and/or machined to perfection rather than stamped.  Contrast this with Russian or Chinese weapons that are said to be built like can openers to spray lead under any conditions.  In other words, the M-16 is so sophisticated that it doesn’t work well.

It is now acknowledged that the M-16 with its 5.56mm rounds is insufficiently lethal beyond a couple of hundred meters, making it unsuited to long-distance firefights over open terrain (again those deserts, or perhaps shootouts between mountain ridges.)

The M-1 Abrams tank

Another great example – this can be a real dog.  The engine is a gas turbine, like with an aircraft, except that it is being driven around in deserts and even sandstorms, making it extremely finicky and high-maintenance.  (Would you fly your Boeing into a sandstorm?)  Of course, the Abrams was designed to fight in Germany where sand is not an issue.  But during the Iraq adventure, sand so tore up the turbine fans (or whatever) that over 1000 of these million-dollar “power packs” had to be removed and sent up for depot-level maintenance or refurbishment stateside.  

Yes, that’s right—these things cannot even be fixed in the field.  All you can do is pull them out with a crane and ship them back to the civilians at enormous expense.  At the height of the Iraq adventure, around 2007, the maintenance backlog was so bad that even the national media got wind of it.  

Of course, when you have the world’s reserve currency, you can afford all that and more—the entire world is paying for your wars.  

But the waste and inefficiency are a fact.

The Basic Problem :  Excessive Complexity

I think the problem here is that American war planners and logisticians prefer originality, complexity, and/or expense-for-the-hell-of-it over versatility and ease of use and maintenance.  This is no surprise given America’s wealth and the longtime generous funding of its armed forces.  After all, every military reflects its own society. 

Unfortunately for Uncle Sam, what he gets is equipment that may work very well in one environment but not another.

But so much for American equipment per se.  Let’s talk about Crystal Drive (a neighborhood in suburban Washington where many defense contractors have offices – edit.) —or more broadly, the MIC.

The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is failing on a massive scale

It is clear now that the MIC cannot build anything for less than 200 percent of its original planned budget (and that’s being extremely conservative.)  Nor can anything it cranks out nowadays meet performance or survivability expectations.  Besides the never-ending supersonic train wreck known as the F-35, we have other boondoggle failures such as the Littoral Combat Ship, which by all accounts is less capable and more vulnerable than the 20 to 30 year-old vessels it was supposed to replace.

Or, going back a few years, we see the Army’s “Commanche” helicopter, an intended replacement for the Apache, which blew through $6.9 billion—in 1983-2004 dollars, probably over $10 billion today—before the entire program was scrapped.  That’s right, over $10 billion for nothing—not one Commanche was ever delivered for permanent use to an Army operational unit!  

Where did that money go, if they didn’t actually manufacture anything besides a few prototypes?  Did they spend $10 billion on PowerPoint presentations?  

My brain cannot even wrap around this.  Can you imagine what Russia or China could do for $10 billion?  

However, even that pales before the Army’s cancelled Future Combat Systems program, which burned through an estimated (no one knows exactly) $20 billion from 2003 to somewhere between 2012 and 2014 (depending on what termination milestone you go by), with almost nothing to show beyond a few prototypes, a lot of concept art, and a 29-pound toy robot made by iRobot of “Roomba” vacuum cleaner fame.  In fact, I can’t think of one big new U.S. weapons system that has succeeded in the last 25 years, other than perhaps the Stryker armored car (though some have argued that point, and I just don’t know enough about it.)

As pointed out by many other observers, part of the blame lies with our political system, where MIC corporations buy politicians and then receive favors in the form of contracts, whether or not the contracts make any sense. However, I think this is not the only problem, nor even necessarily the biggest.  

Fundamentally what I think we have is systemic over-complexity resulting in nothing getting done, or done well anyway.

US intelligence agencies have the same problem

This is akin to the deep systemic crisis in Uncle Sam’s intelligence agencies, where from 9/11 to the Arab Spring to Crimea to the ISIS conquest of Mosul to Russia in Syria, the word is always “we didn’t expect…”  In this case, we have numerous agencies—some of them with overlapping functions—that are drowning in paperwork and garbage data (or too much data) and are almost totally useless.  

As some readers will remember, it got so bad that in April 2014 the State Department released a photo collage aiming to prove that (among other things) a bearded Chechen battalion commander going by the name Hamza, who appeared in Russian TV footage of the 2008 Olympic War, was none other than the bearded, overweight Slaviansk militiaman going by the call-sign “Babai”—in other words, Russian special forces have invaded the Donbass.  (The New York Times ran with this and was then oh-so-vaguely and gently reproached by its own ombudsman.)  

Shouldn’t this awful joke have been prevented by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed to promote info-sharing among agencies and centrally vet all claims and conclusions—especially those being trumpeted on the State Department’s website or at its briefings?  Apparently not!

Bureaucratic bloat

On the other hand, what the U.S. lack-of-intelligence complex is very good at—besides hiring way too many buxom, flirty young things straight out of college and with no language skills or any experience at all (DIA and NGA, you know your ex-military managers like to beautify their offices)—is providing employment for tens of thousands of its own staff as well as tens of thousands of grotesquely-overpaid contractors, including those who build and run billion-dollar eavesdropping centers that have proven incapable of picking up anything useful, perhaps because when you try to listen to everything, you end up hearing nothing. 

The lesson here is that the more offices and agencies, the more managers and political appointees who will seek to justify and expand their turf and budgets by shoveling out as much money on as many contracts as possible, as quickly as possible, in many cases even paying contractors to do little more than just sit around (sometimes at home) waiting for the next contract.  (I have seen this many times in Washington.)  

Then you get so big that people simply trip over each other and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

The US MIC worked great 50 years ago because less money and people were involved

So I think this is what’s going on not only in the intelligence apparatus, but in the MIC as a whole.  We have hundreds of thousands of staff and contractors as well as military officers assigned to liaise with them, all kinds of project managers and “six-sigma black belts” and other buzzwords, juggling millions of PowerPoints across the river from Washington and throughout the country, and they can’t field a helicopter after spending $10 billion on it. 

Really?  How did this great country ever defeat the Japanese Empire?

Go to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington; you will see the most amazing things—e.g. generators designed to operate on the surface of the Moon, drawing electricity from the heat of plutonium decay—that were developed when there was no Crystal Drive, no Tysons Corner, etc.  

Then go to the museum’s extension near Dulles airport and check out the SR-71 “Blackbird”, the fastest and highest-flying airplane ever built (this was about 50 years ago.)  

How did they do it?  

Although there were more men in uniform back then, the MIC itself (or should I say the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Homeland-Insecurity-Complex (MIIHIC)) – had but a fraction of today’s civilian workforce.  Luckily, most of those paper-pushing “systems integrators” and PowerPoint rangers did not exist.  Blueprints were drafted with pencil and paper.  

Today, Uncle Sam can’t even build a heavy rocket engine, not to mention a good helmet or ejection seat for his F-35.

No hope for change going forward

So it seems that as a technical civilization we are degenerating.  

Sure, there are constant advancements in microelectronics (a.k.a. integrated circuits) and the programs they allow, but in terms of heavy engineering—of which the MIIHIC and other government initiatives like the space program were at the forefront since WWII—it seems that the U.S. is tapped out.  

And you know what?  Throwing more money at it is just going to make it worse. 

The organizations with their budgets and their perfectly reasonable-sounding arguments for ever-greater budgets will grow, their workforces will grow, the contracting sector will grow, more shiny office buildings will go up, but the result will be an ever-increasingly-negative marginal return.  

John McCain and all the other broken records in and out of the Pentagon will say we still don’t have enough funds to counter a pointless Russian invasion of parasitic, inconsequential Lithuania (currently headed by a longtime communist) or any other 1990s-era speculative wargame training scenario that somehow carried over into the public consciousness and morphed into the Greatest Threat to World Peace.

Of course, as long as the U.S. has the money to send gazillion-dollar armies and armadas against illiterate natives armed with sharp sticks and coconuts, this may not visibly threaten its hegemony.  Almost any problem or mistake can be papered over with money, for a long time anyway.  

But eventually, even if the money spigot does not constrict, we will get to the point where the military really can’t be used as anything more than a façade or a gunboat road-show, hoping no one calls the bluff, because the stuff just doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, or else is too vulnerable (witness the evacuation of the U.S. aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf after Uncle Sam found out that Russia has cruise missiles with a range of at least 1500km, or the ridiculous sail-around of China’s little islands which had the sense to infringe only very slightly and briefly on that country’s imaginary territorial waters), or the natives can devise their own countermeasures. 

In fact, I would say we are at that point already.  Not to mention, the U.S. Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs are still so tapped-out after Iraq and Afghanistan that another major ground operation is unthinkable.  (At this point, Washington is more likely to launch nukes at somebody than risk another ground war.)

So you can anticipate a lot of hand-wringing and a lot more money being thrown into the breach.  That’s simply what the machine does; there is no chance to reform it, nor will the Hegemony dissipate willingly (although lately it’s done a good job of dissipating unwillingly.)  

But all that money may as well be flushed down the can. 

The threshold has been reached and it’s all downhill from here.

Pluto Really Is a Weird Place! These Are the Strangest Things Found on Its Icy Surface

Successful Kids and 10 Habits of the Parents Who Raise Them

Jenn MorsonUpdated: Apr. 12, 2023

Raising successful kids

We’re always checking out other people’s parenting skills in an effort to raise successful kids. Should we make their bedtime earlier? Should we insist on piano lessons? We rounded up the parenting moves that do seem to spur kids on to greatness.

Give children chores

When children are made to complete chores, they are shaping a work ethic from early on. Not only does this give them a chance to contribute to family life, but it also demonstrates that they play an integral role in the successful day-to-day functioning of their family. Chores for kids also teach them valuable skills that will be necessary when they head off to college and start their adult lives.

Set high expectations

Parents of successful kids set high expectations for their children as well as themselves. More often than not, it encourages children to rise to the occasion. If college is the expectation, students will work toward that goal more readily than if a parent doesn’t bother mentioning it. What’s more, parents help their children succeed by modeling high expectations of themselves and demonstrating how to work hard to meet goals. It’s important to make sure that your expectations of your kids are realistic, however—they shouldn’t be led to believe they have to qualify for the olympics, graduate as valedictorian, or even keep their rooms clean 24/7—as the pressure to meet overly lofty goals can cause anxiety and ultimately backfire.

Get yourself educated

Statistically speaking, parents who have completed high school or college are more likely to have children who do the same. Parents who have not achieved higher levels of education might consider pursuing these educational goals in order to provide a good example for their children. As a bonus, studies show that higher education lowers blood pressure.

Show them the good life

If you want your child to follow in your footsteps—getting a steady job, making a nice home, and having a family—it’s helpful to make it look appealing. That doesn’t mean never ever complaining or hiding the truth about real life from your children, but there’s something to be said for modeling a life that motivates your children to want to achieve success. If they see your hard work is paying off, and that it seems meaningful, they will be more inclined to invest in their own futures. Avoid these things that parents say that ruin their kids’ trust.

Make friends with numbers early

Teaching math at an earlier age is not only an indicator of later success in mathematics but also in reading. Preschool now places a stronger emphasis on math skills in order to prepare students for the rigorous math expectations of elementary school and beyond. Giving your child a leg up on these skills will set them up for later success. We did an algorithm to ensure that these math jokes will make you smile (just kidding).

Make time for bonding

Children who have a secure foundation with their parents are more successful than those who do not, regardless of socio-economic status. That doesn’t mean you have to take them to Disney World or to the movies every week, but you’d do well to read a book together at bedtime, share meals whenever possible, and generally make yourself available when they need you. By nurturing a strong bond with your children from birth, you’ll help them feel grounded and secure—and secure children are more likely to become successful adults.

Teach troubleshooting

Parents of successful children give their kids the tools they need to solve problems, whether it means asking them how they think a word is spelled before dictating the answer, or prompting them to suggest solutions when problems arise. These moves help children develop the habit of trying to solve problems themselves, which leads to feelings of competence and confidence—invaluable skills for navigating adult life. These quotes about parenting are sure to make you laugh.

Accept and recognize their feelings

Emotions are tough for a lot of people, especially kids. So it can be particularly helpful to teach kids how to recognize and verbalize their emotions. When children are young, attach names to their feelings, so they can speak about them intelligently. You might say, “I see that you’re feeling very frustrated,” or “I know it must be disappointing to have to miss your friend’s party.” Giving children the space to explore their emotions and helping them process those emotions will contribute to their becoming successful adults. Don’t miss the signs you’re raising an emotionally intelligent child.

Try to chill out a little

Stressed out parents make for stressed out children. Learn to manage your own stress levels in order to provide a stress-free home for your children. Stress is contagious—don’t pass it on.

Read to them

Reading to your child, even in infancy, demonstrates how communication works and elevates their verbal skills as they enter formal schooling. What’s more, reading with your child helps them build empathy and decision-making skills. Build up your reading this with 25 of the best children’s books ever written.

The Niger Crisis and the Global Threat of War

August 14, 2023

By Thomas SCRIPPS

The impoverished West African state of Niger is the latest flashpoint in the struggle by the imperialist powers for a redivision of the world. The issues involved in the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine—a fight for territory, strategic resources and regime-change—are erupting all over the globe, in China and Taiwan, and now in the Sahel region of Africa.

Though stalled for the moment, what would be a devastating war led by the most powerful country in the region, Nigeria, to oust the coup leaders in Niger and reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum is under active preparation. At a summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the Nigerian capital Abuja Thursday, leaders agreed to activate a standby military force and threatened that “no option had been taken off the table.”’

2023 08 15 14 52
2023 08 15 14 52

They agreed a new round of sanctions on Niger, which has been plunged into blackouts by electricity cut-offs and seen food prices rise 60 percent amid a blockade and the freezing of assets and trade.

A conflict would draw in the entire region. Senegal, Benin and the Ivory Coast have already pledged to send troops to aid Nigeria. Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea have declared for the military coup leaders in Niger.

Behind the proposed ECOWAS action stand the imperialist powers, who are intent on blocking Russia and China from further penetrating a continent whose strategic significance is growing rapidly. The long-term decline of France’s economic position in its former West African colonies—culminating in the last three years in a dramatic collapse of its military presence in Mali, Burkina Faso and now perhaps Niger—has thrown open the Sahel region to intense geopolitical competition.

Bazoum was considered an important Western ally. The US and the European powers have responded to the coup against him by cutting aid to Niger supposedly provided on “humanitarian” grounds—on which it relies for 40 percent of its annual government budget. They are determined to secure their interests whatever the cost.

Speaking Tuesday after “difficult” talks with the coup leaders, US Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland—veteran of the US-backed 2014 coup in Ukraine—threatened, “We’ll be watching the situation, but we understand our legal responsibilities and I explained those very clearly to the guys who were responsible for this and that it is not our desire to go there, but they may push us to that point.”

2023 08 15 14 52a
2023 08 15 14 52a

Caution over a proposed military intervention by ECOWAS has centred on concerns that such action has not been properly prepared and would spark mass opposition throughout the region. A misjudged war could explode the social powder keg in Nigeria, where the US and Britain are heavily invested politically and economically.

A great deal is at stake. The United States currently has 1,500 soldiers of its 6,500-strong declared African deployment stationed in Niger across two bases—one of which is the regional hub for drone missions. France has 1,100 troops in the country, Italy 300 and Germany around 100.

Niger is a major uranium producer, providing a quarter of Europe’s supply. It is due to start exporting oil and plays a central role in policing migration out of Africa to Europe. It has become a frontline state in a battle for economic and military pre-eminence in West Africa and across the whole continent.

2023 08 15 14 53x
2023 08 15 14 53x

Africa is home to an estimated 30 percent of the world’s mineral wealth, including 90 percent of its chromium and platinum—crucial to the green energy transition. Another such mineral is cobalt, of which 70 percent of the world’s supply is produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By the end of the century, Africa could also account for a fifth of the world’s lithium supply.

The continent also produces 65 percent of the world’s diamonds and is home to 40 percent of its gold reserves, 12 percent of its oil and 8 percent of its natural gas, while Morocco alone is home to 75 percent of the world’s phosphate rock, crucial for fertiliser.

In terms of markets, Africa’s consumer expenditure is on track to grow from $1.4 trillion in 2015 to $2.5 trillion in 2030.

The US and Europe are concerned not to let Niger be another loss to the claims made by China and Russia on these riches and opportunities.

Russia’s Wagner group (headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin) is operating in Mali, to Niger’s immediate West, Libya, to its North East, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Sudan—providing armed forces for their governments in conflicts with local rebel groups. In the CAR and Sudan, Wagner also runs private gold and diamond mines.

Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated a Russia-Africa summit in 2019 promising to help push back against “an array of Western countries [that] are resorting to pressure, intimidation and blackmail of sovereign African governments.” The second, far less well attended, summit held under conditions of anti-Russian sanctions and the war in Ukraine, took place last month, where a special effort was made to court Burkina Faso’s “interim leader” Colonel Ibrahim Traoré.

Russia has sought to leverage its relatively meagre resources to gain allies and the occasional lucrative venture, but China is throwing enormous economic weight behind securing control of Africa’s resources markets. It has controlling stakes in large swathes of the continent’s mining industry—including the bulk of uranium mines in Niger, plus its oil industry—forming part of a total FDI (foreign direct investment) stock of $43.4 billion in 2020, a 100-fold increase in 17 years.

China is Africa’s largest bilateral lender, loaning $153 billion in the two decades to 2019, and its second largest trade partner after the European Union, bigger than any other single country.

Both Russia and China are also major arms suppliers to sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 26 and 18 percent of sales respectively in the last five years, above third-place France at 8 percent, and the US at 5 percent.

In 2019, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) launched a five-year plan to “deter” what it called “Chinese and Russian malign action.” Former head of AFRICOM, Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, told Congress that year that both were after “access and influence to our detriment,” and that, within the decade, China could gain the capability to inhibit US military access and operations. The policy has remained unchanged since Trump’s Republicans were replaced by the Democrats under Biden.

Colin P. Clarke, former RAND analyst and current director of research at the global intelligence and security consultancy The Soufan Group, bluntly explained to Newsweek the implications of the Nigerien situation.

“This could take on the dimensions of a regional proxy war, with Western countries supporting ECOWAS and Russia supporting Niger—and Burkina Faso and Mali, if they joined in—with muscle from the Wagner Group.

“What’s happening in the Sahel is not a sideshow to great power competition, it is great power competition. The events unfolding are not doing so in a vacuum. The US, France, China, and Russia each have their own vested interests in Sahelian countries.”

Workers and the rural poor in Niger and West Africa are confronted with the catastrophe warned of by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) at its 1991 Berlin Conference of Workers against Imperialist War and Colonialism, held in response to the Gulf War.

The manifesto announcing that conference explained: “This ongoing and de facto partition of Iraq signals the start of a new division of the world by the imperialists. The colonies of yesterday are again to be subjugated. The conquests and annexations which, according to the opportunist apologists of imperialism, belonged to a bygone era are once again on the order of the day.”

Based on Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, the statement warned that the struggle “against imperialist oppression cannot be waged successfully as long as the working class remains under the political domination of any wing of the national bourgeoisie.” It is inseparable from a fight against national ruling classes which have overseen the continued gruelling exploitation of the African masses, kept in power by militaries trained and funded by the imperialists.

Niger must above all serve as a warning to the working class all over the world of the urgent need to oppose the predatory war aims of the imperialist powers. As the ICFI and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality insisted in calling for the building of a worldwide movement against the NATO-Russia war:

The war in Ukraine is not an episode that will soon be resolved and followed by a return to “normalcy.” It is the beginning of a violent eruption of a global crisis that can be resolved only in one of two ways. The capitalist solution leads to nuclear war, though the word “solution” can hardly be rationally applied to what would amount to planetary suicide. Thus, the only viable response, from the standpoint of securing the future of mankind, is the world socialist revolution.

If the Taiwanese people join China by their own free will, what would happen?

USA will not allow it to happen. Why do you think all 3 Taiwan candidates needs to appear in US for an interview. They will be questioned on this issue and make their pledges this will not happen.

Scott Ritter Scrubbed From Youtube

Declan Hayes

August 14, 2023

Scott Ritter will survive. But over 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have not survived the carnage that is a direct result of YouTube’s censorship of omission and commission.

The best place to begin a discussion of b scrubbing Scott Ritter from its public arena is with former English football international Matt Le Tissier, whose footprint can be still found all over social media.

In his interviews, Le Tissier comes across as a nice, well-balanced guy, who exudes the abundance of confidence which he himself admits made him such a formidable spot kicker for Southampton FC, which he loyally served for an impressive 16 years, despite getting much better offers from Spurs and other big clubs.

Retiring from football, Le Tissier became a successful pundit before being blackballed over his views, which he continues to express in the most moderate of terms, on censorship and overall state repression. Even more to our point, Le Tissier said that, as a pundit, he described the action from the point of view of a spectator and not as a manager or, in his case, a lethal forward, and that he left the complex strategic analysis and accompanying diagrams to others. In other words, even as a pundit, Le Tissier was a team player, who could see the overall picture and the best role he could play there.

The point here is that, whether we are looking at football or at NATO’s Ukrainian war, we should try eliciting views from many informed quarters, those like Ritter, with a modicum of relevant experience, included.

Although NATO would agree with that, they insist that military pundits must only express the views of Team NATO and no one else, as all else is mis-information, Putin propaganda and so on. Because Ritter not only differs from NATO’s narrative but actually admits to sometimes working in consort with informed Russians, NATO must have him gagged, for what possible benefit could there be for NATO in giving a Russian, any Russian, a fair hearing? As someone who wouldn’t go out of my way to listen to Ritter’s punditry or, for that matter, that of Le Tissier, that is still fundamentally wrong and, in the case of Ritter, dangerous.

It is dangerous because listening to echo chambers on Ukraine or any other war zone is not only dangerous but potentially lethal as well. This can now be seen in the case of Ukraine where, following the collapse of the much-vaunted Ukrainian Army that Ritter, Douglas Macgregor and other informed pundits long ago consistently predicted, MI6 agent Zelensky, a term I borrow from Ritter’s prior excellent work, is now pretending to clean up Ukraine’s rampant corruption, which Ritter repeatedly previously drew attention to.

Not only has NATO lied to us about every aspect of their Ukrainian war, just like they have lied to us about every single other of the countless wars they have waged since their inception but they want to muffle and ban every authoritative voice that might present us with a contrary view.

This is not to say that all views are equally valid and legitimate. They are not. Le Tissier was a pundit because he was an excellent and articulate player and Ritter, as he constantly reminds us, was a senior officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, which I would put on a par with Hitler’s Wehrmacht, many of whose generals, such as Erich von Manstein, provided valuable post-War insights and more of whom, such as Franz Halder, who served as Chief of Staff of Nazi Germany’s High Command from 1938 to 1942, was subsequently showered with medals and awards of appreciation by President John F Kennedy for perpetuating the myth of the “righteous war the clean Wehrmacht” fought against the Red Army’s Soviet Homeland, whose civilians remain NATO’s primary military target to this very day.

NATO has, of course, countless other targets, many of whom are like Gonzalo Lira, where Ritter has singularly missed the mark. Lira is, or rather was, our man on the spot, just as Nazi Party member John Rabe was our much better informed man on the spot during Japan’s Rape of Nanking for which NATO relentlessly pilloried investigative journalist Iris Chang until she suicided.

Scott Ritter, like Matt Le Tissier before him, is strong and resourceful. He will survive. But over 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have not survived the carnage that is a direct result of the censorship of omission and commission YouTube and other NATO mis-information portals have spewed out. Though each of those soldiers had a story to tell, many of them, who could not afford to bribe their way to safety, came from the poorest strata of society, from mountainside hovels without even a window, never mind any semblance of what we might regard as the barest comforts of life. Instead of letting them be, Zelensky’s thugs kidnapped them and threw them into the meat grinder where they died unlamented, except by those who loved them and depended on them for their subsistence.

When we take Ukraine’s dead, wounded, orphaned, widowed, trafficked and abandoned into account, Zelensky and his YouTube and other NATO censors must have destroyed the lives of well over 4 million Ukrainians and that is without even looking at the Russian side of the lines.

But, because Lira and even Ritter may be our current men on the spot, historians in future years will probably thank them, just as the more honest amongst them previously thanked Rabe, for giving posterity the first draft of why so many millions of lives had to be blighted so low life porno actor Zelensky could accumulate his portfolio of mansions to house his impressive stable of mistresses.

Ritter and Lira, like Rabe before them, might well be just very minor footnotes to all this carnage. But the main authors of this carnage, criminals like Victoria Nuland and John Bolton, are not. Their self-serving threats against the International Criminal Court notwithstanding, all NATO curs like them have very serious questions to answer, the sort of charges Frank, Frick, Jodl, Kallenbrunner, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and Streicher all swung for in Nuremberg.

These NATO curs have repeatedly said that rough justice is for others, for those like their former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein whom they lynched in 2006, or Gadaffi, whom they sodomised and murdered in 2011. But then there is also Stepan Bandera, who met his Maker in 1959 to settle, in part, vendettas these NATO gangsters continue to this day. And, though Ritter, Lipp, Lira and Assange are immaterial to settling such scores, until they are settled, there can be no justice and no peace because justice demands that NATO’s war criminals pay with their lives for their crimes and, as even the blind can see, as long as Nuland, Bolton and the rest of NATO’s swamp creatures remain uncaged, there definitely can be no peace.

15 Months On Mars: Ingenuity Finds Eerie Spacecraft Wreckage

WTF? Cool.

Through the Western lens

Through the Western lens means 3 things:

  1. Ideological bigotry — liberal democracy is superior; China’s political system is evil, autocratic, repressive.
  2. Western projection — Western colonialism has dominated the world for the last 500 years; therefore, China will also try to dominate the world similarly, either militarily or economically.
  3. Fear of losing hegemony — China threatens the global hegemony of USA, UK and EU. China must be stopped.

Viewing China through this lens yields:

  1. Anti-China propaganda to smear China’s reputation, turn world opinion against China and hopefully cause the world to decouple from China.
  2. Economic and tech sanctions against China, depriving China of 5G market, semiconductors, FDI.
  3. Military intimidation — naval exercises in Taiwan Strait, adding more military bases, selling arms to Taiwan.

The Western lens is blind to 3 facts:

  1. China has fought no wars in over 40 years, since 1979, making China the most peaceful world power to have ever existed.
  2. Outside of USA, UK and EU, the rest of the world holds a favorable view of China. The University of Cambridge published a study in October 2022 called, “A World Divided: Russia, China and the West.” It surveyed 137 countries representing 97% of the world’s population to uncover the favorability of Russia and China to these countries. It found that 70% of the world, excluding the Western countries, had a favorable view of China. Only 23% of Western countries thought well of China.
  3. Evil, autocratic, repressive China has the most trusted and satisfactory government in the world. According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, 89% of Chinese trust their government compared to 56% for France, 51% for Canada, 47% for Germany, 46% for Italy, 42% for USA, 37% for UK, 36% for Spain, and 33% for Japan.

A November 2019 Ipsos survey shows that 94 percent of Chinese believe their country is on the right track.

According to the Global Happiness 2023 survey from Ipsos, China is the happiest country in the world at 91% compared to 76% for USA, 74% for Canada and France, and 70% for UK.

According to Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School in 2020, 95.5% of Chinese are satisfied with their government.

A 2019 UC San Diego study shows a high level of satisfaction among the Chinese across a range of aspects up to 95 percent.

According to Latana’s Democracy Perception Index 2023, China is the 6th most democratic nation on earth, well ahead of Germany, Spain, Canada, Italy, UK, USA, France, and Japan.

Use Google search to verify all of the above. Don’t take my word for it.


Western democracy is a failed model. US democracy has degenerated into a plutocracy. UK democracy is a mess. Indian democracy is a mess.

We have bozo leaders like Biden, Trump, Trudeau, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Scholz, Modi, Zelensky, etc.

Western democracy allowed millions of people to die needlessly from the pandemic.

Western democracy allowed UK and EU to f*ck up their economies thanks to Russian sanctions.

USA is in very sad shape because of a totally incompetent government…

  • $32 trillion national debt
  • crumbling infrastructure
  • homelessness
  • unaffordable health care
  • rampant gun violence
  • mass incarceration
  • fentanyl crisis
  • increasing poverty

The list is endless.

India can’t get a handle on ethnic strife and human rights issues. It has poor education and poor infrastructure. China’s economy is 5.2 times larger by nominal GDP and 2.5 times larger by purchasing power parity when, by rights, India’s economy should be roughly on par with China’s. Thank India’s democracy for this.

The West is a waking up…

The US obsession with China is 100% a “they hate us cuz they ain’t us” situation.

Forty years ago, the Chinese were living in rice fields. Now, they’re all super rich and living in cities that look like the Mars Base from Total Recall.

Last time I was there, I was so shocked by the affluence of the general population that I literally made this face:

2023 08 14 11 52
2023 08 14 11 52

They had to give me tea to relax.

But seriously, I’m thinking of making a trip to China and making a documentary proving that it is a much better country.

A Chinese friend invited me. He’s not even really rich, and he was like “yeah – you can stay at my place. You can sleep on the couch. It’s not a problem – I have 200 couches.”

A Litany of Lies

by Arch Bungle
Lifted from an off-topic comment.

Being a catalogue of the lies I have imbibed through by means of torturous exposure to Anglo-American Newspapers and the rumor mills of Continental Europe.

See the examples below:

  1. The Russian MIC cannot manufacture semiconductors. All their semiconductors are obtained via the black market from western sources. Or Iran. Or China. Or North Korea (all of whom are themselves under sanctions!).
  2. The Russian microchip industry doesn’t exist (But the Russians can build things with black market American chips that even the Japanese can’t build)
  3. The Russian microchip industry has collapsed (How something that doesn’t exist “collapses” I am not sure, but there you are)
  4. Putin is a Dictator. He micromanages every single aspect of Russian Society up to the frontline battles (The Surovikhin Line should actually be renamed the “Putin Line”. But russian military bloggers and even military staff are criticising him on a daily basis without apparent consequence, and outspoken media figures are allowed to hurl an endless stream of criticism against Putin and his conduct of the war).
  5. Putin is Russia and “Russia is Putin” (And that one aging bureaucrat alone is enough to terrify the West )
  6. Russia / Putin is Isolated from the global community (Because everyone knows the “International Community” consists of white folks plus some honorary members like the Japs and South Koreans (whose membership may soon be up anyway))
  7. The Russian economy is insignificant and smaller than Italy/Texas/France/etc. (it’s only the biggest economy in Europe by PPP, and nobody cares about PPP)
  8. The Soviet Union was an Empire and Russia is seeking to restore it’s imperialism
  9. Putin is a “Thug” and a “Murderer” (Because he bombed all those Afghan weddings, blockaded the starving people of Yemen and stated publicly that 500 000 Iraqi children were a worthy sacrifice to Mammon)
  10. Russian military operations are at a disadvantage at night due to inferior night vision (The AFU on the other hand has access to the best NATO night vision technology)
  11. Russia is starving the world by withdrawing from the grain deal
  12. The Oil Price Cap, defying all laws of economic gravity, has been surprisingly effective in strangling Russian oil revenues
  13. Russia is running out of artillery/drones/tanks/men Russia is salvaging microchips from dishwashers
  14. Putin is dying from Alzheimers/Parkinsons/Cancer
  15. Russia is stealing millions of Ukrainian children and abducting them to Russian territory
  16. Putin eats brains cooked by Prigozine
  17. Prigozine was Putin’s Chef (literally)
  18. Russian army is demoralised and bordering on mutiny
  19. Putin’s inner circle is plotting a coup against him (It’s going as slow as the SMO because they also believe in the slow grinding approach)
  20. [Counter-Narrative character assassination] Putin was responsible for the Moscow Apartment Bombings
  21. Russian army is incompetent and poorly trained
  22. Russian satellite coverage of the battlespace is poor, so poor large swathes of Ukraine are completely invisible to them
  23. Russian army has poor targeting precision. So bad that even a large CEP and a salvo won’t help
  24. Russia is deliberately targeting civilians
  25. Ukraine is not targeting civilians (deliberately)
  26. Putin is preparing to colonise Africa (The Africans will be given a choice of Russia, China, The EU or the US for their new colonial masters)
  27. The Wagner group is involved somehow in the coup in Niger
  28. Russia has been making extensive use of cluster munitions since the start of the SMO (Extensive evidence of this to be found in Bucha, Mariupol and Kherson)
  29. Ukraine has an artillery advantage over Russia (July/June 2023)
  30. NATO tactics are superior to Russian battlefield tactics (Specifically the training provided by the Brits, those eternal masters of battlefield tactics going back to the charge of the light brigade)
  31. Putin has a poor grasp of strategy (As compared to Biden, Sunak, Boris Johnson, Olaf Scholtz, Jens Stotenberg, Milley, Von der Leyen and Borell who are strategic geniuses)
  32. The Sanctions Are Working (Just like they worked against Iran, Cuba, North Korea, the Houthi, China, Vietnam …)
  33. The HIMARS Missile system will be a “game changer” (It’s impossible to shoot down a hi mars round, and not a single Himars system has been destroyed)
  34. American drones will be a “game changer” (especially the little spy ones)
  35. The AFU has “semi-encircled” the Russian forces in Bakhmut/Artyomsk
  36. Byraktar will be a game-changer (Because somehow the Turks managed to evolve from kebab makers to advanced drone manufacture. Who do they think they are, Iranians?)
  37. F16s will turn the tide of the battle in Ukraines favour
  38. X wonder weapon will “turn the tide against Russia” (I thought the tide was already in Ukraine’s favour from the start?)
  39. X general/commander has been fired/sacked/discipled
  40. X and Y generals have a personal rivalry that is affecting Russian battlefield performance
  41. The Russian army is dependent on decrepit Soviet-era equipment (e.g old Soviet Hypersonic missiles)
  42. There’s nothing special about Ukraine’s neo-nazi problem since neo-nazism is a worldwide problem.
  43. There are no weapons bio-labs in Ukraine operated by the Pentagon
  44. The weapons labs operated in Ukraine by the pentagon are not a threat to Russia
  45. Russia Attacked Ukraine Unprovoked (The bombing of civilians in donbas was no reason to go in guns blazing. R2P is the divine right of Europeans only)
  46. NATO made no commitment (written or otherwise) to not advance on Russia’s borders (Gorbacheff was drunk and hallucinating at the time)
  47. The SMO has nothing to do with the NATO advancement in Eastern Europe
  48. The SMO has nothing to do with the 8-year killings of ethnic russians in donbas
  49. Cluster munitions are acceptable in Ukraine’s case since they’re in dire straits
  50. The Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014 (“Little Green Men”)
  51. Russian tanks are inferior to American tanks (Even Shermans.)Russian tanks are inferior to German tanks (Even WW2 tiger tanks)
  52. Russian tanks are inferior to French tanks (Especially in reverse)
  53. The Russian army is the second most powerful one in the world (Second most powerful in Ukraine, which means the AFU is the most powerful army in the world)
  54. Putin is a Crypto-Jew (Because there are some photos of a Putin-looking dude wearing a weird cap)
  55. Ukraine cannot be a NAZI state because it’s president is Jewish
  56. [Counter-Narrative Character Assassination] Alexander Mercouris is a convicted criminal
  57. [Counter-Narrative Character Assassination] Scott Ritter is a convicted paedophile
  58. “X” pro-russian commentator has never been right (non of his predictions has come true)
  59. “Y” pro-Russian commentator is a convicted x,y,z (character assassinations)
  60. The sanctions will work if we only apply enough rounds of sanctions!
  61. The Russian economy is in tatters!
  62. Putin is losing the political support of his people: Protests breaking out all over Russia with a possible cooler revolution brewing
  63. The Ukrainian Counteroffensive (June/July/August 2023) is/was/will be successful
  64. Russia is firing S300 missiles into Poland (over Ukrainian airspace)
  65. The Russo Ukraine war started in 2022
  66. The Russian Army is using Human Wave attacks (wagner’s HR department must be the most efficient on planet earth – a revolution in HR affairs for sure)
  67. The Russian Army is targeting civilians (And yet the Russians have poor targeting ability?)
  68. The Russian army is using cluster munitions since the start of the war (with not a single mention in the media until the US decided to suggest using them?)
  69. Putin wants to expand the Russian empire into Europe (including such useless basket cases like the Greeks, Italians, French and Spaniards and those malevolent psychopaths the Germans)
  70. Ukrainian Grain is key to solving world hunger (But the EU frequently rejects the grain due to toxins?)
  71. ‘International Law’ says x , y , z about the SMO (the same international law that has no enforcer or single legislative body acknowledged internationally)
  72. NATO is a defensive organisation (Except when it comes to brown people in non-european countries, or yugoslavs, who may be bombed with wild abandon)
  73. NATO is limited to the “North Atlantic” (Libya is a north atlantic country of course, everybody knows THAT)
  74. NATO has greater military power than Russia (An organisation made up mostly of countries who got their asses kicked by the Wehrmacht or paid Russia to do their fighting for them are now suddenly the most powerful military force on earth)
  75. Putin is in league with the Russian Oligarchs and therefore targeting the Oligarchs harms Putin (which explains why they’re fleeing Russia for London)
  76. Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure are justified (but Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure are not. All Ukrainian attacks on civilians are unintentional, including the couple killed on Kerch bridge orphaning their daughter)
  77. The Russian Tank Autoloader is inferior to the manually loaded western tank loader (Because a meat-bag on captagon can outperform automation in any era)
  78. The Ukrainian offensive is stalling because NATO is drip-feeding weapons to the regime’ (But still Ukraine is winning!).
  79. Current hostilities between the AFU and the RF are “stalemated” (Even in Kupyansk)
  80. Current hostilities between the AFU and the RF are “stalled” (but Ukraine is making ‘incremental gains’, but Russia is not making ‘incremental gains’)
  81. The Tochka missile attack on the Kramatorsk train station was perpetrated by Russians using an old Soviet missile from Ukrainian stocks.
  82. The Russian people are collectively responsible for Putin’s war on Ukraine (So they need re-education and De-Russification)
  83. The Ukrainian Industry is continuing as normal despite the war. It’s glorious industrial machine pumps out tanks, shells, missiles, semiconductors, fuel and grain at impressive levels, supplying The World and their own army with important commodities (Motorsich is running fine producing tanks for the AFU, jet engines for the Ukrainian Airforce, the neon/argon production facilities have not been captured by Russia, oil reserve facilities are untouched).
  84. Life in Ukrainian cities is continuing as normal despite the war. All is well. Pool parties and street celebrations are commonplace. (Millions of Ukrainians have not fled for Europe, it was merely the tourist high season, hospitals are not filled with the casualties of war, funeral hearses in their thousands are not seen in the streets, WW2 cemeteries are not seeing a capacity problem …)
  85. If the west only gets rid of Putin Russia will collapse and the West will be victorious. (This short, balding, 70-year old bureaucrat is the only one standing between Victoria Nuland and “World Domination”).
  86. The use of nuclear weapons by Russia will end the war and the world will be at peace thereafter (or some variation thereof).
  87. Ukraine should be grateful to the West for supplying the Ukrainian Army (But the West owes Ukraine nothing for fighting their wars for them?)
  88. General Gerasimov was killed on the battlefield.
  89. Putin is dead and what we’re seeing is one of his many body doubles (The body double is somehow as worthy of hatred as the original and as capable of running Russia as the OG Putin (anybody watched Foundation Series lately?))
  90. Russia is the last bastion of the “white, straight, christian male” and is fighting this war in the name of White Christendom (not the chechen muslim, tengrist buryat, buddhist tuvan, shamanist Yakhut … no they’re all just immigrant labour shipped in for their “white” masters)
  91. The Ukrainians should never have surrendered their USSR nuclear weapons (the ones they never had control of to begin with)
  92. If you were against the invasion of Iraq by the USA you should be equally against the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (During which Vasiliy Nebenziya stood up in the UNSC waving a vodka bottle filled with Novichok as evidence the Ukraine was using chemical weapons against “it’s own people”)
  93. The Ukrainian Counteroffensive (June/July/August 2023) is/was/will be successful
  94. The USA is able to fund the Ukraine war on Russia indefinitely (because “infinite money printer capacity” = “infinite manufacturing capacity” and all this manufacturing capacity can be restored to the US in the space of a few months, just like 9 women can birth a single baby in 1 month if working in parallel)
  95. The Ukrainians are winning because they’ve taken back 50% of the territory Russia took from them in a fraction of the time Russia took to take it (at the cost of more than 50% of the Ukrainian army, and just not the part Russia truly cares about. The other 50% of the land will cost another 50% of the AFU probably)
  96. The Wagner Coup’ (Because a 10 minute speech by Putin is enough to stop a coup right in the tracks)
  97. the Wagner Mutiny (Because somewhere there was a ship involved)
  98. The Wagner Protest (Minus the protest placards)
  99. The Wagner Insurrection (Because a couple of clowns barreling down the road with some stolen artillery can take on the entire Red Army)
  100. The Wagner Invasion of Poland (Because “why not”?)
  101. The Russian people would rise up and overthrow the Putin regime if they could only just receive CNN, BBC, MSNBC (Because they’re all nostalgic for a repeat of the 1990s)
  102. The West has unparalleled media freedom (as long as you don’t watch RT, Sputnik, Iranian Opress-TV, Al-Manar because those are obvious propaganda, because we think so)
  103. Putin intends to invade Moldova (skipping on right past Lvov because “Stretch goals: we can do better!”).
  104. Putin is “weaponising” hunger by forcing the West to impose grain sanctions on Russia (“I made you hit me in the face to hurt your hand”).
  105. The Wagner ‘insurrection’ left Putin weakened politically (So weak he had to deliver an entire 10 minute speech including pauses to shut the whole thing down completely).
  106. US Patriot missiles in Kiev shot down Russia’s hypersonic Khinzal missiles without sustaining significant damage.
  107. Ukrainian Air Defences are capable of shooting down Khinzal hypersonic missiles (but by their own admission cannot defend against Onyx, probably because Onyx beats Dagger in trading card games)

Posted by b on August 14, 2023 at 17:45 UTC | Permalink

To add a handful more on top of my mind…

108. Journalist Julian Assange raped women and it’s only normal this journalist is locked up in high security prison Belmarch rotting away with psychopaths and murderers
109. The West is not a party to the Ukraine conflict
110. Putin/FSB bombed Nord Streams, Kerch, Kashovka dam in a 5D chess move
111. Putin/FSB murdered Darya Dugina/Vladlen Tatarsky in a 6D chess move
112. Russia would never use nukes against the West so there’s absolutely no risk in ever escalating the war
113. Russia would only use nukes against Ukraine, never the Western war participant so never mind upping the ante
114. The Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 case was carried out by Russians and directing the flight route over the most active war zone of that time as well as lowering the flight altitude from the usual 10 km to 8 km is just imagination
115. To let the war finally end, more weapons payed for by Western tax payers are necessary… war is peace
116. RT, Sputnik News and so many more information streams need censoring to protect our freedom… ignorance is bliss
117. Europe is now totally free of Russian hydro carbons
118. …

Posted by: xor | Aug 14 2023 19:21 utc | 14

Europe is FINISHED as NATO Bleeds Dry in Ukraine w/ Brian Berletic

Vladimir Zelensky, Russian Hero

2023-06-07

2023 08 15 14 44
2023 08 15 14 44

During his tenure as president of (what remains of) the Ukraine, Zelensky has wrecked the Ukraine, but has achieved many great things… for Russia. Here are his main achievements in no particular order:

• By being elected with the promise of ending hostilities, then immediately proceeding to escalate the conflict in the east, he thoroughly compromised what was left of Ukrainian democracy. He further demolished the Ukraine’s civic realm by banning all public media except for one government channel, banning all opposition and all Russian news sources and, in effect, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship.

• By relentlessly shelling the civilians in the now Russian Donetsk and Lugansk regions, then, in the spring of 2022, threatening them with a genocidal assault, he provided Russia with an ironclad reason to start the Special Military Operation: to save civilian lives. By so doing, he helped to expand Russian territory by four very valuable provinces (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson) and set the stage for the eventual addition of, among others, Nikolaev, Odessa, Kharkov, and Kiev regions.

• He squandered $150 billion in foreign aid (much of it by the simple expedient of stealing it), expended a huge amount of military equipment and ammunition with nothing to show for it, and killed off 350 thousand Ukrainian soldiers (many of them Nazi war criminals), with possibly twice as many wounded.

• He shrunk his country’s population by almost half, some of it moving to Russia, becoming Russian citizens and integrating productively into the Russian population while rest went to the European Union, becoming a major burden for the welfare budgets of EU countries.

• By ordering Ukrainian troops to shell schools, kindergartens, hospitals and apartment buildings in universally recognized Russian regions such as Belgorod and by launching drone attacks directly on the Kremlin, he declared his government to be a terrorist organization, foreclosing any possibility of forcing Russia to negotiate a peace that would not be entirely on its own terms.

• He demonstrated the superiority of Russian weapons and military technique over NATO’s, most recently with Russia’s destruction of one of the Patriot missile batteries provided by the US. Almost every bit of equipment the West has been able to provide to the Ukrainians has been shown to be inferior to its Russian counterpart.

• He gave the Russian army ample opportunities to perfect their techniques for defeating NATO forces, venturing into new areas of drone warfare and battlefield surveillance from geostationary satellites. This will no doubt be very useful both in opposing NATO and in boosting future weapons sales to non-Western nations that wish to be free from Western oppression and meddling.

• He sold some of the weapons he received from the US to Mexican drug cartels, leaving US officials with no other choice than closing their eyes and pretending that this did not happen. Perhaps they will also be forced to look the other way as these cartels make use of these weapons to take over more and more of US cities and towns.

• He played host to many high-ranking Western officials, whom, on their to visit to Kiev, he presented with lavish presents such as suitcases of foreign aid money he had laundered, which these officials then brought home in diplomatic baggage, thus collecting blackmail material on all of them.

• He set an example for other Russian Jews whose bad luck had caused them to end up in the Ukraine rather than in Russia by resettling his parents in a posh neighborhood in Israel. But he kept his wife by his side, where she did a good job demoralizing the Ukrainian population by squandering more money on a single European shopping spree than most Ukrainians see in several lifetimes, all paid for by the US taxpayer. She also worked hard to gaslight Western officials by making them accept at face value and repeat ridiculous tales, such as the one about Russian troops being issued viagra, for them to better rape Ukrainian women.

• Zelensky is sometimes incautious; for instance, he got caught appointing operatives from Russia’s Federal Security Service (former KGB) to sensitive posts within the Ukrainian defense establishment, although it is unclear whether what’s left of the Ukrainian judiciary will be capable of prosecuting him.

• One of his greatest achievements was in placing the US and NATO in a zugzwang. This is a chess term for a situation in which a player has a choice of several moves, all of which lead to defeat. The US and NATO can either continue supporting the Ukraine, or they can stop supporting the Ukraine; in either case, they will lose.

• Perhaps his greatest achievement of all was in helping Russia turn away from its hostile neighbors in the West and toward friendly countries in Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America, cutting its economic, financial and cultural ties to the West and freeing itself from Western influences. His unwavering support for Ukrainian Nazis, whose emblems, insignia and slogans are styled after Nazi Germany and whose heroes are Nazi collaborators, coupled with the lavish support they received from the West, whose leaders chose to turn a blind eye toward their fascist proclivities, cemented in view of the Russians the view of the West as their existential enemy: a fascist, racist entity determined to destroy Russia but too weak and cowardly to do the job themselves.

All of this begs a question: Whom does Vladimir Zelensky serve?

More…

Why does the whole world dislike Chinese?

Only 15% of the world’s population dislikes China; they make up the G7. They dislike China because it is a threat to what they think is their monopoly on global influence.

They call themselves “the world” because western-owned media has global influence.

The other 85% of the world either likes China or doesn’t care.

Putin: NO WAR In AFRICA

2023 08 15 20 09
2023 08 15 20 09
https://youtu.be/J8-RDcoEdOs

How would Italians react if a Chinese made dog pizza and sold it?

Hi, SJ-Z . Thanks for your very interesting question!

I guess Italians would be super surprised at just how much the Chinese spoil their pets.

Recently, 网易天成 (NetEase Tian Cheng), a subsidiary of 网易 (NetEase, the Chinese internet technology company) that specializes in medium-to-high-end pet food, partnered with 必胜客(Pizza Hut) to come up with a “Chinese-made dog pizza” that is safe to be consumed by dogs (and cats!).

The dog pizza is the brown disk thingy in the picture below:

This is what the “Chinese-made dog pizza” looks like in promotional material:

In the close up below, you can see that on the top of the pizza box, written in Chinese:

宠物零食
冻干生骨肉珍享比萨

This translates to:

Pet Snack
Freeze Dried Raw Bone Meat Premium Pizza

2023 08 15 20 15zzz
2023 08 15 20 15zzz

To be honest, to me, it doesn’t look at all appetizing.

But then again, it’s made for dogs and cats.

Maybe dogs and cats don’t take visual aesthetics into account when it comes to their choice of nosh:

2023 08 15 20 15x
2023 08 15 20 15x

This pizza is part of 网易天成 & PizzaHut‘s “人宠同吃” (Pets eat together with us) promotional marketing campaign.

Basically, you buy a package deal at Pizza Hut that includes:

– a set meal for the humans
– the “Chinese-made dog pizza”
– Pet items/plushies

2023 08 15 20 16bv
2023 08 15 20 16bv

More marketing collateral from the campaign:

2023 08 15 20 16q
2023 08 15 20 16q
2023 08 15 20 17111
2023 08 15 20 17111

So, SJ-Z , at the end of the day, I guess it’s whether the dogs (and the cats) are actually going to eat this “Chinese-made dog pizza”.

I mean… you know how fussy some dogs and cats can be with their food…

I checked out Chinese social media platforms, and it appears that there are dogs (and cats) out there who will consume a “Chinese-made dog pizza”.

I guess, while it may look unappetizing to me, it’s tasty enough for them:

main qimg fe3e47a7039cc4c448fca817c0181767
main qimg fe3e47a7039cc4c448fca817c0181767

816 views

Which incident did you consider to be an absurd hoax but later found out to be crazily true?

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.

What happened that made you walk out of the courtroom and think, “That did not just happen”?

So there I was, sitting in traffic court to plead for a reduced fine and or a payment arrangement. The courtroom was packed, it would appear there were many traffic law criminals in the small town I was appearing in.

So I sit and wait my turn.

And wait…

and wait…

After most of the morning had passed, there were only 15–20 of us left. The judge however stopped calling cases. He was busily doing his after-court paperwork for a good ten minutes. Finally, he looks back out to the courtroom and asks “Why are you all still here?”

The response from more than one of us was we had tickets and were here for our day in court. The judge looked quite unhappy as he side-barred with his clerk. When the conversation was over he looked out at us and said “It would appear my office was not prepared for you all to come today. Since the city cannot see fit to be ready for your legally required court date I am dismissing every one of your cases. Please give your name to the clerk as you exit. Also please accept my apologies for the City’s inability to do its job.”

I am of course paraphrasing, it was long ago, but that is the gist of what happened. As we all filed out we were entertained by the Judge’s not-so-discrete chewing out of his staff.

BRICS prepares to destroy the USD

A tale of a boob adventure

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

You know guys, I am just accepting of my appearance. I get older, wrinkles appear. Liver spots show up, and my hair goes from grey to white.

I’ve got a bunch of liver spots on my chest, and a massive one on my forearm. And a couple of emerging pinpricks on my hands and wrists.

Its called “getting old”.

If you aren’t there yet, well… you will be.

But my white hair….

I color my hair.

Otherwise, I’d have stunningly white hair. Not grey.

White.

But for now, I perform a nice twice-weekly hair dying exercise. It’s a pain in the ass, but you know, it’s now ingrained in my lifestyle and I accept that.

I use a Chinese black hair color, and then a color formula to lighten it out. The over all look is like my natural hair color.

Now, my wife, on the other hand, even being much younger than myself (25 years younger by the way), really wants to stay beautiful. And she does a great job at it. Don’t you know.

She’s done a lot of cosmetic procedures regarding her eyes, and lids, and so on and so forth. It’s an Asian thing, and most Westerners just wouldn’t understand.

She’s also had a few nose jobs over the decades. Right now, it’s stunning. The procedures for plastic surgery are quite advanced in China. It’s an awesome nose! Last job ran $86,000 so you had best have it done right.

I’ll tell you what.

The nose is the first thing you see when you look at a face. Not the eyes. The nose. It frames the face.

Back in the day, she wanted a European nose. High up like my mother had. I thought it looked good. But alas, it did not fit her face.

So she got it redone.

It looks AWESOME! It’s just amazing what a good nose job can do, Ill tell you what.

You know, most of the cosmetic surgeries that she has had revolved around the eyes. It’s a very Asian thing. I, as a Westerner, can’t tell the difference. But, sheech! everyone around me can.

And they all LOVE it.

(shrug)

What did you know?

She had a boob job around ten – fifteen years ago. Used a nice upper-grade set of implants. Silicone. 260ml. And they were fine.

2023 08 29 09 42
2023 08 29 09 42

She went from a C cup to a nice big D cup, and everyone was happy.

Something sort of like this…

1647885988 vzal937bbq
Not mrs MM

Now that was the older boob technology.

We paid $YUAN40,000 for that set, and it looked good. Back in 2013.

It was under the muscle. You could feel the boob as it was under the muscle as a hard piece that sat there. But overall the effect was what she was looking for and I, being a latent boob aficionado, appreciated it.

It was a textured squashed ball, that protruded her chest outwards.

Now…

When we had our child, we nursed her naturally with the implant, and my wife’s boobs went gargantuan. She was something like a triple F size or so. Damn!

I am not kidding. Sheech!

And then when she stopped nursing, her boobs deflated, and became soft and watery.

Her chest was a wreck.

Hard lump covered by bags of water. Not all that great of a look.

So, we have been wanting to have some nice corrective surgery on the chest, but life and the expensive price put it way on the back burner. At least for a while.

But, things happen.

(wink wink)

Then she went to the hospital (we are VIP don’t you know) and had the old ones taken out, and a set of new ones put in. She opted for the second best grade. The best cost $YUAN550,000 and that was way out of our budget. But the slightly lesser grade was affordable at $YUAN280,000. Ah. The price of a nice car.

It’s a Hermes-level brand and quality.

2023 08 29 12 02
2023 08 29 12 02

Boob technology has changed a lot over the years, and the medical procedures are new and quite modern. These new boobs (at least the better grades) look and feel like real boobs. You seriously cannot tell the difference.

The boob implant was really different as well.

2023 08 29 12 04
2023 08 29 12 04

She got a German brand: Freya and worked with a doctor to fix the mess her chest had become and get the biggest size that would fit her frame and look 100% realistic.

[1] Biggest that would look realistic. [2] Biggest that would feel good, and not be hard or detectable. [3] Very soft. Feels like a real boob.

No doctor wanted to implant implants that would end up looking like basketballs on a thin frame, and our surgery center was staffed with really GREAT experts.

1647886039 ewnwccpn0t
1647886039 ewnwccpn0t

He procured 390ml extra-soft silicone implants.

And she spent a week at the hospital after the surgery adjusting to them.

They look real. I mean absolutely real, and feel real, and they are awesome.

She is a large DD. Not some gigantic size like some girls might want, but a nice large but realistic size and they are fun. Large, but not obnoxiously so.

She looks good in clothes, but it isn’t obvious. She does not look like she has a boob-job or anything.

I stayed at the hospital with her, as did our daughter, and a few of her friends.

It’s a Chinese thing where you stay in the room with the hospital patients. And I noticed so many other gals were there getting their boobs done too. There must have been about thirty or so gals during the week we were there, and of course, girls being girls would gather and compare their boobs together.

A girl comes in, the top comes off and its all a lot of ohhhs and ahhhs, and then the squeezes and touching.

I saw so many post-surgery boobs that week in the hospital. I’ll tell you what.

They all looked great.

Being China, it’s not a taboo thing like in the USA. The gals would take off their tops and feel each others boobs, and I was there watching with amusement. I just smiled, shook my head, and went back to my computer work.

Silly.

My wife’s replacement boobs were the largest of all the gals with the typical boob implant size being somewhere between 250 and 320 ml.

Hers is 390ml.

A number of the gals wanted really small implants on the order of 100 to 120 ml, which confused everyone. That will take a flat chest to an A-cup. Maybe a B if the gal has a petite build.

One of our friends (who also had surgery that day, and was sticking around) said…

“I am as flat as a pancake, and 100 ml is nothing!”

One gal was in there and told us that she had eight (x8) surgeries all over. Eyes, lips, nose, boob, etc. They all were back to back, and done over a one month period. I thought it was way too radical, and she was complaining that her hair was starting to fall out.

Well, what do you expect? Stupid 20-year old chick doing crazy stuff all for her internet image. Becoming all plastic for what?

To get a lot of likes, or to get some “sexy projects” (hint hint). Maybe meet a very wealthy man?

Sheech!

Her first boobs were still quite nice with a 250 ml implants.

Not a gel. She got a cheaper grade.

Part of a “package deal”.

Most of the gals opted for the cheaper implants, and they didn’t look or feel as nice as ours. But they all looked ok, while ours looked and felt outstanding!

I mean it. You cannot tell the difference at ALL!

Under the armpit was the preferred insert location, and saline implants (so popular in the USA) are considered to be “backwards”, cheap and unappealing. So everyone were getting “gummy bear” style implants, and other soft gels of varying viscosity, and textures.

All in all, I like a nice set of boobs, and if you have the time and money, I urge you to consider them if you are worried about your appearance.

Remember, whether you are thin, or swat, or tall or chubby… enhancing your shape in slight ways can really make a significant difference in how your feel when you put on clothes.

I’ll tell you what.

1647886046 sfxn5173dz
1647886046 sfxn5173dz

Me?

For me, well my big issue is white hair and balding up at the top. So I have to keep my hair short, or I look really terrible. Maybe one day, I’ll get some kind of hair replacement surgery… who knows?

It is important to feel good about your body. Feel good in your clothes. To feel healthy and fit.

I will tell you all that I have been contemplating Botox… as my face is starting to show some wrinkles, but I don’t want to end up looking like Nancy Polaski. So I am a bit put off by it. But who knows, maybe one day I’ll make the leap.

It looks painful with all those needles in your face.

That’s how it is done, don’t you know. They inject this botox into your skin.

Now, in China there are other things, and other methods that are much more advanced than Botox. Different names, different means of operation. Different ways of smoothing out skin. I’ll tell you, I’m in the wrong line of business.

All these pretty gals… all ages… coming in to make their faces prettier.

But, for me… yikes!

And my wrinkles are near my eyes, I fear that it would be really, REALLY painful. Yikes!

Well, if I ever decide to try it, youse guys will be the first to know. I will report on it in great detail.

Right now… I am hesitant.

In the meantime, I am a big believer in facial care, and I use (religiously) the NIVEA brand scrubs, cremes, and facial lotions. I do so, except when it is unbearably hot out like this month.

And NO! This is not a paid endorsement.

nivea
nivea

Facial scrub and skin replenisher goes a long way to keep your skin looking youthful and clear.

Damn straight!

Todays…

Bioweapons

Suspicions have long been swirling surrounding the possibly nefarious activities going on at the Wuhan Viral Institute, as well as the Ukrainian “biolabs” the U.S. government was so concerned about falling into Russian hands. Now both the Russian and Chinese governments are accusing the United States of conducting research into biological weaponry in violation of a range of international treaties.

Edward Snowden today

2023 08 29 11 51
2023 08 29 11 51

What is the most unreasonable demand a parent made of you after you became an adult?

I moved out the day after high school graduation because I was tired of the beatings. My mother would hit me until she was so tired she could no longer lift her arm. She hit me when my sister disobeyed, when my father upset her or when the moon was full. I was the family scapegoat.

About six months after I moved out, got myself accepted to a college far, far from home and figured out how to pay for it without their help (3 jobs and financial aid), my father called me. He begged me to move home because my mother had started hitting my sister instead of me. He wanted me to come home and resume my place as the family scapegoat.

I didn’t.

Man shoots through door at would-be burglars posing as maintenance workers: video

Wow!

CHINA’S EVERGRANDE FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY

World Hal Turner 17 August 2023

evergrande large
evergrande large
BREAKING NEWS: CHINA'S EVERGRANDE FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY

China’s second largest Property Developer, EVERGRANDE, has filed for, get this, Chapter 15 Bankruptcy.  Yes, you read that right, Chapter 15, which is ancillary to a primary proceeding brought in another country, typically the debtor’s home country.

Chapter 15 is a section in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code that was added in 2005 to provide for cooperation between U.S. courts and foreign courts when foreign bankruptcy proceedings touch upon U.S. financial interests.

The section was added in response to a United Nations recommendation for cooperation among nations on what it calls “cross-border insolvency.”

The primary goal of Chapter 15 bankruptcy is to promote cooperation among U.S. courts, their appointed representatives, and foreign courts and to make legal proceedings of international bankruptcies more predictable and fair for debtors and creditors.

As such, Chapter 15 focuses on jurisdiction. It also tries to protect the value of the debtor’s assets and, when possible, financially rescue an insolvent business.1

United States Courts. “Chapter 15 – Bankruptcy Basics: Ancillary and Other Cross-Border Cases.”

Chapter 15 allows a representative in a corporate bankruptcy case that has been filed outside the United States (also known as a “cross-border insolvency”) to obtain access to the U.S. court system. This is intended to provide an efficient and common-sense mechanism for addressing insolvencies that involve debtors, creditors, and assets associated with more than one country. The purpose of Chapter 15 is outlined in the following objectives listed in Title 11, Chapter 15, Section 1501 of the U.S. Code:2

  • Promoting cooperation among U.S. courts and parties of interest and the courts of other countries involved in cross-border insolvencies
  • Establishing a better legal foundation for cross-border investment and trade
  • Providing for better administration of cross-border insolvencies that protects the interests of all parties
  • Protecting the value of the debtor’s assets
  • Assisting financially troubled companies 

ANALYSIS

The fact that EVERGRANDE filed Bankruptcy in China, and is now doing the same in the US, is a staggering financial catastrophe.  They are the second largest Property Developer in China.

U.S. Banks have severe exposure to loans to this company.  This could turn into a “Black Swan Event” for US Banks.

Notice, too, the announcement of this Bankruptcy filing in New York City, was done AFTER markets closed for the day!  Seemingly because they **know** the impact this is going to have . . .

UPDATE 6:08 PM EDT —

While EVERGRANDE is China’s #2 Property Developer, it’s bigger competitor, COUNTRY GARDEN,  with annual revenues of more than $70 billion, is now also on the verge of collapse.

The company’s 8% bonds due in 2024 are trading at a paltry 9 cents, signaling massive losses for the bondholders. The yield is skyrocketing, meaning nobody expects it to be paid. China’s property meltdown continues.

Country Garden Bond Crisis
Country Garden Bond Crisis

Thus, with today’s EVERGRANDE Bankruptcy filing in the USA, and the clearly-coming similar fate of China’s largest Developer COUNTRY GARDEN, these two financial collapses could be a “one,two-punch” to the global financial system.

I have ZERO financial expertise or formal training.  Yet, as a lowly financial laymen/neophyte, even I can see the writing on the wall over this.

If my analysis is correct, then I personally __SUSPECT__ we here in the U.S. could see tumult in financial sectors for, oh, I’d say about a month.  Then,  I’d put it between the dates of September 16 and September 22, that the full financial sector impact will be (ahem)  “painfully” evident in US financial circles.   I suspect BIG . . . . REALLY  B I G  impact.

Watch Europe over the next two weeks.  Europe will go first.   They’ve already seen about five-hundred thousand (500,000) German companies go Bankrupt THIS YEAR, mostly over Russia-related Sanctions.   So economically, Europe is now hanging by just a few threads financially.

As European Banks go, so will US Banks.   Watch Europe closely over the next two weeks.

What’s Happening in CHINA right now?

Should the USA surround China with its naval forces as a way to tell them not to be aggressive towards other countries?

Do you mean all those countries that China has attacked in the past 40 years?

Such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Uganda, Kosovo, Bosnia and Niger?

Oh wait, those countries were attacked by the USA, not China. China hasn’t attacked any country in the world in the past 40 years.

So which countries do you mean? By any chance, are they countries whose No. 1 or 2 biggest trading partner in the world happen to be China? In other words, every day these countries are buying a lot of Chinese goods and China is making good profit out of them. And you think China wants to invade and attack them?

Or do you mean the countries where China is busy building or planning to build highways, railways, water treatment plants, solar energy plants, schools and hospitals? Which is about 150+ countries on earth?

If China planned to bomb a country to bits, do you think that China would invest billions of dollars in that country’s infrastructure? And then bomb the infrastructure to bits, causing its own investments to suffer grave losses?

Open your eyes. Use your brain. Free your mind from the lies that Western media propaganda has been feeding you.

And no, you CANNOT be the President of the USA when you grow up.

Best Tweet

2023 08 19 12 39
2023 08 19 12 39

What duel was craziest in history?

On May 30, 1832, a duel took place in Paris in which a young man barely twenty years old was mortally wounded. Much later he would become one of the greatest mathematical geniuses in history.

His name is Evariste Galois.

It’s pretty clear that in life he had some “gift” as a mathematician, but no one really understood all the “gibberish” Galois was writing about.

His essays and ideas were often rejected, he was denied entry into the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, and he was also a bit of a hothead, especially when, again, no one understood him.

He was simply too ahead of his time.

And to top it off, he was very involved in the French Revolution, and he used to spend a lot of time in jail if necessary.

Galois was a rebel both on the streets and in the math fog.

Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, he was drawn into a duel, but it is very likely that the direct cause of this duel was a breakup – some say it was with a prostitute, while others think the woman in question was married – and Unfortunately, his nemesis, whose identity remains unknown to this day, was a much better duelist than he was (Galois knows this all too well).

On the eve of the duel, Galois makes the most important decision of his life.

Instead of taking a much-needed break to give himself any chance of survival, he decides to put his mathematical ideas on paper[1] :

Galois was so convinced of his imminent death that he stayed up all night, writing letters to his republican friends and composing what would become his mathematical testament, the famous letter to Auguste Chevalier setting out his ideas, and three accompanying manuscripts. .

In his last letter[2] he laconically describes revolutionary ideas on analysis, continued fractions and group theory, a subject he had created on his own to solve one of the biggest mathematical problems of the time: how (not) to make polynomials by radicals. .

Galois group theory evolved over time to become one of the most important topics in contemporary mathematics, and also finds its place in many other scientific disciplines such as physics and chemistry, quantum theory and its applications, etc.

He was far ahead of his time.

Galois’ last written words, dedicated to his younger brother Alfred, are as follows:

Don’t cry Alfred! I need all my courage to die at twenty!

The famous mathematician Hermann Weyl later wrote:

This letter, if judged by the novelty and depth of the ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial writing in all the literature of humanity.

To honor Galois, I would like to say that this was indeed the case.

How To Leave Your California Residency Forever

Interesting.

But I am NEVER going back to the United States. No fucking way.

Deep Dish Hamburger Pie

Cheeseburger Pie 4IMG 0711c
Cheeseburger Pie 4IMG 0711c

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 can green beans
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Ketchup
  • 2 cups mashed potatoes
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Instructions

  1. Brown the meat and add your seasonings.
  2. Stir in enough ketchup to suit your taste.
  3. Add green beans and stir in well.
  4. Place this mixture in a casserole dish and top with the mashed taters and then top that with the cheese.
  5. Bake at 350 degrees F until heated through and cheese is browned.

Coming Back Home After 3 Years In Thailand, here are my thoughts

I really enjoyed this video.

What are you banned from? Why?

I am not banned from anything major, but my father got banned from the Maldives for life, due to a rather odd chain of events!

My father loves to sail, and before he got his own boat he used to sail across the seas at any chance he could find.

One day he found himself on a ship with a crew of about 8 other men that were doing a across-the-world-tour on their boat.

To his unfortunate surprise these were all rather young sailors.

The problem wasn’t in their skills, as they managed to all do their share of work without a problem, but rather that they were too poor to afford any variety in food.

After being on board for two weeks upon their vessel he had had enough of noodles for the next months to come.

He got off at the Maldives as soon as they arrived and the group only stopped to let my dad off the boat, then they sailed away towards their next destination.

My dad then proceeded to the customs office to announce his arrival, but more so he could get on a plane to depart again.

When he finally found the place they asked him with what plane he arrived.

He told them he came by boat, to which they stared at him with surprise.

After a bit of back and forth they finally found the documents for arrival by boat and asked my dad to give them the name of the vessel and where it was located.

At this point he said that he can give them the name but the vessel is not located here anymore and he had no way to contact them.

That is where the problems started for all the other sailors would have had to announce their arrival, as well as that of the vessel.

But since my dad was the only one that got off it was as though he had just appeared out of thin air… to which there were no real regulations.

All my dad wanted to do was to get out of the country, but for that he needed to be accepted in the country to begin with, as you cannot leave a country you never arrived in.

Of course no one had ever done this, so my dad was told to find a place to stay and not to leave the country (which was ironically what he wanted to do but couldn’t do).

For the next week my dad talked to the customs office every day, trying to reason with them that he didn’t care about his arrival approval, all he wanted to do was to leave!

But he needed their approval or he wouldn’t be allowed through the gates at the airport…

After about a week of going back and forth between the customs office they finally came to an agreement:

They were going to deport him.

The next day, early in the morning, two police cars and a taxi were waiting for him in front of his hotel.

With a police escort my dad traveled to the airport, at which point two armed men guided him through the gates and into the VIP lane at check-in and to the VIP lane to get on the plane.

At this point they wanted to make absolutely sure he would leave and was treated almost like a criminal.

To get out of the country he never wanted to stay in he had to be forcefully deported.

My dad now has a life-long entry ban from the Maldives and can never go there again, and only because they couldn’t lawfully prove that he even got into the country.

Yellen Stunned! China Dumps $481.3B in U.S. Bonds, Invests in 6,927 Tons of Gold

https://youtu.be/XDgCAvcNo-o

Book About Hawaii Wildfires Published BEFORE Fires Were Out!

Nation Hal Turner 17 August 2023

Fire and Fury Hawaii Fires Book large
Fire and Fury Hawaii Fires Book large

In an an almost inexplicable manner, a new book about the Maui, Hawaii “Wildfires” was published on August 10 – BEFORE the fires were even put out! Of course, the book pushes the “Climate Change” political agenda. But how did they write and publish a book BEFORE the fires were even out? Unless they knew in advance, the fires would happen?

More interestingly, look at the description of the book on its AMAZON sales site.  The description says the book offers “the harrowing experiences of people who lived through the fire” and “the heroic efforts of fire fighters and Rescuers who battled the flames.”  How did they do that while the fire was STILL BURNING? 

Book on Hawaii FIres Publication Date 08 10
Book on Hawaii FIres Publication Date 08 10

ot to put too fine a point on this, but the description of “people who lived through the fire” and the “heroic efforts of fire fighters . . . ” was published while the fire was STILL BURNING.

You’ll note in the book description it talks about “the events of August 8-11.”   Look at the PUBLICATION DATE:  August 10.

Book on Hawaii fires Product Info Page
Book on Hawaii fires Product Info Page

How did they cover the events of August 8-11 with a book published ONE DAY BEFORE the fire was even out?  

Unless, of course, the book was written BEFORE the fire even started, by people who may have known the fire was going to happen?

Was the Maui, Hawaii “wildfire” a staged event?  Or was it DELIBERATE, to burn-out land owners who had previously refused to sell to developers who wanted to build multi-million dollar residential complexes on some of the most beautiful – and expensive – real estate in the entire United States?

The fact that this book was published while the fires were still burning seems to some people to be prima fascia evidence the fire was actually planned.  Arson.  

Some wonder if the book was perhaps written to divert attention form the heinous crime, and then plug a Climate Change agenda to gloss it over.   

It seems a criminal investigation is required of this fire – and of this book.

 In order that YOU can verify the facts set forth in this story, here is a link to the actual AMAZON web page, selling this book: (Click HERE)

Solving Cicada 3301: Decoding the Internet’s Greatest Mystery

Phew!

Is Australia good for travelling?

Not really, no.

Not to bad mouth my fellow members of the Commonwealth, and I often talk about how tough it is to get around Canada, but Australia takes it to another level entirely.

  1. It’s hard to get to. Australia is extremely isolated. It’s not hard to reach from eastern Asia, the Philippines or Indonesia, but it’s a long, long way from Europe and North America. It’s even far from Honolulu.
  2. The best way to get around Australia – is by flying. The major cities and tourist areas on Australia are very distant from each other. Sydney (one of the major cities) and Canberra (the capital) are two of the closest, but they’re still about 300 km apart. Sydney to Melbourne is about 900 km. Yes, you can drive or take a bus, but that’s some long trip.
  3. Roads are… problematic. The verdant strip running from Adelaide to Cooktown in the east of the country has roads as good as any you will find in the United States or Europe. However, the majority of the country (which has very little in the way of population) has roads that are dangerous and run through some of the nastiest desert in the world. It can be hundreds of kilometers between gas stations. Cell phone service isn’t available. Dying is a distinct possibility.
  4. Trains are are scarce. One popular route is the Ghan, running from Adelaide to Darwin. It’s a five star trip on luxury coaches on a pristine set of tracks that runs through some of the most interesting scenery on the planet. However, the rest of Australia’s rail network is fair to middling. One of the problems is that each state set its own rail gauge. It is possible to cross Australia’s southern limit by train, but it’s not a luxury experience.

The Not So Polite Truth Behind Canada’s COLLAPSING Economy!

RUSSIA BEGINS PROCESS TO WITHDRAW FROM W.T.O. AND W.H.O

World Hal Turner 16 August 2023

Russian Duma Speaker Tolstoy large
Russian Duma Speaker Tolstoy large
RUSSIA BEGINS PROCESS TO WITHDRAW FROM W.T.O. AND W.H.O

The Russian government is starting the process of unilaterally withdrawing from a series of international bodies, including the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization, the Russian Duma’s Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy said on Tuesday.

“We have work to revise our international obligations, treaties that today bring no benefit, but instead directly harm our country. The Foreign Ministry sent a list of such agreements to the State Duma,” Tolstoy said. “Together with the Federation Council, we plan to analyze them and to propose to withdraw,” he added.

Tolstoy singled out the international trade and health organizations, saying that “the next step is to withdraw from the WTO and the WHO, which have neglected all obligations towards our country.”

I Never Thought I’d Go Back To China (#155)

US is urging Europe not to deal with China and Russia because of the human rights situation in those countries. Why then is the same US in bed with Saudi Arabia?

Originally Answered: US is urging Europe not to deal with China and Russia because of human rights in those countries. Why then is US in bed with Saudi Arabia?

President Roosevelt of the United States said his famous phrase:

– Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch.

Many people know who Somoza is. I’ll remind those who have forgotten history. Anastasio Somoza is Nicaragua’s cruelest dictator. He killed 150,000 Nicaraguans – a monstrous figure with a population of only 800,000 in 1940.

main qimg ee46a87c58e04e4759013fd34a006084 lq
main qimg ee46a87c58e04e4759013fd34a006084 lq

In September 1956, the dictator’s enemies shot him. By helicopter the U.S. Navy took the dictator to the Panama Canal, where the best American surgeons, including personal physician of President Eisenhower, eight days fighting for the life of “our son of a bitch”. However, on September 29, 1956, Anastasio Somoza went to the next world. It’s a legitimate retaliation for a hereditary gangster.

Do you think the U.S. policy towards pathological killers and sadists has changed? You’re deeply mistaken. If you read George Orwell, you remember the phrase about equality: “All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.” So the Saudi authorities may have blatantly killed opposition journalist Jamal khashoggi in the Saudi consulate building in Istanbul. The US and the EU have called for a transparent investigation. And that’s it! No consequences, no sanctions and no expulsion of Saudi diplomats. It’s very simple: “Our business partner may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a…”

2023 08 18 11 51 1
2023 08 18 11 51 1

It turns out that being “untouchable” requires “friendship” with the United States and being a source of income for American business.

The U.S. calls on Europe not to contact China and Russia because of human rights violations in those countries. This is only a fictitious excuse. The reality is simple to the primitive. China and Russia have an independent policy and are competitors in international business. It is only natural to weaken a competitor, or better yet, to destroy it, and to appropriate assets…

“You Won’t Turn Niger Into Another Libya!” – African Leaders

WOW! This is a great video.

What little-known details are usually left out when talking about the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

2023 08 18 11 49
2023 08 18 11 49

Photograph of a victims eyeball after the Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, with an “Atomic Cataract.” A snapshot of the devastating destruction of the Nuclear bomb, permanently burnt into the victims eyeball. Atomic Cataracts can develop 3 months to 10 years after exposure. The incidence of this happening is greater the shorter the distance from the explosion.

Russia Publicly Accuses U.S. “Deep State” and Big Pharma of Deliberate COVID Pandemic to takeover the world

World Hal Turner 17 August 2023

2023 08 18 10 58
2023 08 18 10 58

In video below from the Russian Ministry of Defense, Russia just publicly accused Deep State actors and Big Pharma of manufacturing the COVID pandemic to take over the world.

They even listed Obama, Clinton, Biden, and Soros, of being the main “Ideologists” behind the plot.

Below, video from a Briefing by Chief of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops of Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov: “Pentagon conducts uncontrolled dual-use research in circumvention of international obligations under the BTWC (Biological and Toxin Weapons Control Treaty).”

Put sccinctly, the Russian Military officially and publicly accuses the US of releasing bioweapons to create “crisis situations”, and claims the US are planning to do it again.

This is the biggest story in human history, and yet it is somehow remaining largely unnoticed.

UPDATE 11:22 AM EDT —

Television stations all over Russia are carrying this bombshell accusation as major leading news stories.

In this Interview, Lt General Igor Kirillov goes even further in the accusation, saying the US is going to do it again:

MORE:

Russian biologist Igor Nikulin, who was presented as a former member of the U.N. Commission on Biological and Chemical Weapons, sounded the alarm in a February 27, 2020 interview on Russia Today’s Arabic-language channel where he said that he believes it is no coincidence that the coronavirus had the effect it did in China, Iran, and certain European countries.

He said that coronavirus was carefully selected to affect countries that rival the United States and that it is a conspiracy by the “global government,” which he said consists of 200 families that control over $400 trillion, that own the media outlets and Hollywood, that control the minds of humanity, and that want to decrease the world’s population by 90%.

He suggested that it may be possible that coronavirus is a targeted biological weapon, like he said Ebola and the bird flu were, that infects some people and not others, and he said that the U.S. government may be testing a pathogenic agent it began developing in 1999.

Nikulin also said that this is a warning to the non-English-speaking world that it must submit to the laws that are imposed upon it.

https://youtu.be/MY-RL6FMx84

Is China colonizing Africa?

China is interested in resources in Africa from Cobalt to Lithium to Gold to Aluminium to Manganese to Hydro power to Farmlands to Labor (Human resources)

In exchange China delivers growth and progress – Soft Loans, Machinery, Schools, Hospitals, Bridges, Trains, Factories, Jobs etc

Yet China stays out of two core areas in Africa – RELIGION AND POLITICS

The West doesnt. The West interferes in both. Conversion and Ruling over the Africans

China doesn’t

So China cannot be colonizing Africa at all

main qimg 9f8e6e824532a7c89b5841f762269759
main qimg 9f8e6e824532a7c89b5841f762269759

Colonizing means treating the people as second class citizens under the rule of your own government

China certainly doesn’t do that

China simply makes trade deals which may be loaded in favor of the Chinese

China may even to a certain extent take advantage of the Africans

Yet China doesn’t Colonize Africa and Chinas Actions are maybe a 100th of what the West did

Media keeps deceiving us about China’s intentions – here’s how

Baked Spaghetti Pie

Spaghetti Pie Recipe 17 650x975 1
Spaghetti Pie Recipe 17 650×975 1

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds spaghetti
  • 2 pounds ricotta cheese
  • 1/2 cup whole milk
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 pound spicy Italian sausage
  • 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce
  • 1 pound Provolone cheese, sliced thin
  • 1/2 cup Romano cheese, grated

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 475 degrees F.
  2. In a large pan, boil spaghetti for 20 minutes; drain and set aside.
  3. Mix ricotta, milk and eggs together in a small bowl; add to spaghetti and stir together.
  4. Press into a 13 x 9-inch baking pan until compact and even.
  5. Cook ground beef and sausage in a large skillet.
  6. Drain fat, removing as much as possible.
  7. Stir in spaghetti sauce. Spread evenly over spaghetti base in pan.
  8. Layer slices of Provolone over meat mixture, then add the grated Romano on top of that.
  9. Bake for 20 minutes.

Polybius | The Most Deadly Video Game in History | More Truth than Legend

Burger-Bean Spaghetti Pie

Looking for a dinner pie? Then check out this ground beef spaghetti pie packed with spicy chili beans and three types of cheese – a hearty meal.

2023 08 19 11 47
2023 08 19 11 47

Prep: 40 min | Total: 1 hr 5 min | Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

Crust

  • 7 ounces uncooked spaghetti or vermicelli
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder

Filling

  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1/4 cup chopped onion
  • 1 (15 1/2 ounce) can spicy chili beans, undrained
  • 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can zesty diced tomatoes seasoned with mild green chiles, undrained
  • 4 ounces (1 cup) shredded hot pepper Monterey Jack cheese
  • 4 ounces (1 cup) shredded Cheddar cheese

Instructions

  1. Cook spaghetti to desired doneness as directed on package. Drain.
  2. Meanwhile, heat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9 1/2 inch deep dish pie pan with nonstick cooking spray.
  3. Beat egg in large bowl. Add butter, Parmesan cheese and chili powder; mix well. Add cooked spaghetti; toss to coat. Spoon mixture evenly into sprayed pie pan, pushing mixture slightly up sides of pan to form crust.
  4. In large saucepan, cook ground beef and onion over medium heat until beef is thoroughly cooked, stirring frequently. Drain.
  5. Add chili beans and tomatoes; cook for 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated, stirring occasionally. Add hot pepper Monterey Jack cheese and 1/2 cup of the Cheddar cheese; mix well. Spoon evenly into spaghetti-lined pie pan. Top with remaining 1/2 cup Cheddar cheese.
  6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until filling is set and crust is light golden brown.
  7. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.
  8. Cut into wedges to serve.

OLIVER ANTHONY DROPPED THE PEOPLE’S ANTHEM!

2023 08 20 10 34
2023 08 20 10 34

Hey! Guess what the “president” is up to…

2023 08 20 10 33 1
2023 08 20 10 33 1

What is coming next is double barrelled

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

We begin today with a discussion on what the United States actually is.

It is a bully, and a liar, that is based on a system of deception; a shadow play of puppets. All supported by the largest propaganda system in history. And all of it; MM included has (up until very recently) believed it all lock, stock and barrel.

So it is fitting to begin with today’s brilliant podcast by Neil Oliver.

Who knows what will come next for the West…

HEXAGON

In April 1972, when a “data package” sank into the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Navy dispatched the Trieste II Deep Sea Vehicle I (DSV-1), its most advanced deep sea submersible at the time, to recover the item. In reality, it was “part of a film capsule from an American photoreconnaissance [spy] satellite codenamed HEXAGON.”

According to the Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, a malfunction was responsible for the incident. A parachute was supposed to deploy once the film capsule, or “bucket,” having reentered the atmosphere, was over the primary reentry zone near the Hawaiian Islands. Instead, the parachute broke off, and the bucket fell into the ocean, sinking on impact to a depth of about 16,400 feet (5,000 meters).

NO ONE HIT WONDER HERE!!! OLIVER ANTHONY – I WANT TO GO HOME (REACTION)

I think people are getting upset because he’s waking people up and they don’t want to be woken. It’s time guys. We can’t keep living like this and accepting it. It’s happening around the world and we need to make a change.

IMF Just Shocked The World And The U.S With This Move!

2023 08 23 14 43
2023 08 23 14 43
https://youtu.be/B80Hn0zAWKQ

How can a country like China catch up with the United States on chip production?

China is not interested to catch up!

It wants to overtake and dominate the Chip industry within a decade and it will. No perhaps, not may be, not hopefully. It will. Meanwhile it will take over the low and medium end market for chips in 3–5 years and totally bankrupt the U.S. and its cronies chip outfit.

Let me give you 2 perfect example of never ever doubting and never try to cut China out act by the U.S.

One, The U.S. the congress in the most childish and hubris behaviour, decided to bar China and Chinese on its U.S. space station in the 90’s. In that in one single racist act it motivated China to build its own space station and it did within 15 years.

And today the Chinese space station is a fully functional and well developed space station that is better, build faster and using far less resources. It uses better and more advance technologies and it is open for the entire world including the US for the betterment of humanity. For me shame on the US. The US coincidentally will retire the US space station within 5 years leaving the Chinese Space Station as the only one for the coming decade.

Two, The GPS. The US threaten the US that it can and will cut out nation that refuse to be submissive and subservient to the US in not too many words. That statement and threat itself motivated China enough to developed its own GPS within a decade of the US threat. Today the Chinese Beidou has way higher resolution, and accuracy up to a meter compared to the GPS functional up to only 10 meter! Today 150 out of 195 nations use Beidou. Instead or with the GPS. All within a decade.

Marked my word. Within a decade the US will lose so much in Chip business, market share and profits that it will forever regret the nonsense and ludicrous Chip policy under President Biden. To me China was willing to share a loaf of bread with the US but it is the US that wants to deprived China. So China should say fine, they will dominate. The entire Chip industry. In a decade. I will bet every cent I have on China winning.

What is the best revenge you got on a superior in your workplace?

2023 08 23 14 52
2023 08 23 14 52

I had a boss who was a narcissistic D-bag. Everyone knew it.

I finally had enough after yet another useless meeting set up just to stoke his ego. At that point somebody decided to jack him up a bit.

Somebody hung around his office until they saw him leave for a meeting with the company president. They knew it would take a while and he would leave his precious laptop open on his desk.

No they didn’t hack into it or delete any files. They did one better.

They had a firecracker set aside for this specific opportunity.

Somebody cut the firecracker open and sprinkled a bit of gunpowder lightly on his vowel keys and between the keys on his keyboard. They then lightly wiped it clean to hide the evidence.

I heard that the next time he took a flight he was flagged by TSA screening. Something about explosives in his laptop.

He missed his flight and had to replace his laptop.

I have always wondered who that “somebody” might have been. Certainly not me writing on an open forum like Quora.

OLIVER ANTHONY – I WANT TO GO HOME (REACTION)

He’s so authentic with angst, pain, confusion and he’s fed up like soooo many of us!!

Brisket in Coffee-Barbecue Sauce

867f0f8a8b65b137dcca1c34ce969057
867f0f8a8b65b137dcca1c34ce969057

Yield: 10 to 12 servings

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 large Spanish onion, minced
  • 5 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 7 tablespoons light brown sugar
  • 5 cups brewed coffee
  • 1/2 cup cider vinegar
  • 1 (28 ounce) can peeled, chopped tomatoes
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 (4 pound) brisket

Instructions

  1. In a medium pot, heat 1/4 cup of the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until soft and golden brown, about 7 minutes.
  2. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the red pepper. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring frequently, about 1 minute. Stir in the brown sugar. Pour in the coffee, vinegar, and tomatoes; bring to a boil; and then lower to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.
  3. Working in small batches, transfer the tomato-coffee mixture to a blender and puree. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
  4. Heat the oven to 275 degrees F.
  5. Season the brisket with salt and pepper. In a Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid, heat the remaining 1/2 cup oil. Brown the brisket on both sides. Drain off the oil, leaving the brisket in the Dutch oven. Turn the brisket so that the fat side is facing up and then coat it with the pureed tomato-coffee mixture. Cover the Dutch oven and place it in the oven. Bake for 3 hours, basting frequently.
  6. Remove the lid and bake uncovered until the brisket is glazed and very tender, about an hour and a half more.
  7. Remove the brisket and set it aside to rest for 10 minutes, covered with foil, before slicing thinly across the grain.

Compilation of the #1 Song in America!!! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond

This is an outstanding compilation.

2023 08 21 08 14
2023 08 21 08 14

I can criticize anyone in India and I can’t in China. Is this argument tenable?

Why not test it out?

Post a harsh criticism against a political leader, any leader not just Modi

Compare him to some clownish character or demand that he step down

Under your real name

I am a very ordinary lawyer, yet I promise that unless you are an MP, MLA, Civil Servant, Minister or Wealthy Industrialist/Businessman, Military Man or Senior Cop :-

I can get a simple complaint with some influence filed through a specific lawyer and you will be arrested and you will be humiliated in front of your family and workplace

I guarantee it

All I need is a friendly cop and once he knows you are an ordinary commoner – he will happily file an FIR

He then writes to the passport office and you don’t get a passport

He can place you on the blacklist through a friendly SP Or State Home Secretary and you can’t get a US Visa or Schengen Visa or Singapore Visa for life

You would spend the next 6 months to 3 years in horror before a High Court quashes the case

I will come and look sheepish and say I got emotional while giving the PCR and the judge will admonish me and fine me ₹10K

You would have spent ₹3–6 Lakhs, maybe more

And I am an ordinary enrolled lawyer who doesn’t even actively practice

Imagine a powerful practising lawyer or a powerful cop if you antagonize one

Imagine if this is done in Begusarai Or some random place in Kerala

Imagine working in Infosys and two cops arrive and haul you out in front of your friends and drag you into a waiting jeep

Their response if questioned will be

We got a complaint we followed it up

So a simple malicious connected official can destroy your life if you are a commoner even if you earn ₹20 or ₹30 LPA

Your company will drop you like a hot potato


NOT IN CHINA

No Malicious officer or lawyer can try anything like this

The law is black and white

Evidence is specific and very strictly specific

So even if a case is registered, it will be dismissed in seconds if it doesn’t violate the laws

The official or lawyer would be roasted


So you understand?

In India the Law reads fairer

The System is utterly and totally loaded against the innocent average man

In China the Law is harsher

Yet the System protects the innocent average man


So the next time someone on Quora says he can post criticism freely in India

Ask him to do it under his own name and ask him if he is willing to test the fairness of the Indian system against a malicious prosecutor or entity

In China – the Law is very fair

It’s very harsh yes but very fair

No malicious person except high ranking CPC officials can come after you or spoil your life with lies

Evidence counts for a lot

1:45 / 14:42

‘We’ve all been watching the longest-running show of modern times. But it might soon be all over’

Neil Oliver: We’ve all been watching the longest-running show of modern times. But soon the show might soon be over, as more and more of the audience, especially in the cheap seats, are becoming restless, aware of how uncomfortable their seats are.

Why is the US doing such a bad job countering China’s rise?

The US spends way too much time and effort looking out into the world, not nearly as much looking in the mirror at what the US has become.

The result: hard outside, rotten core

No longer able to keep running the marathon while the tank is on ‘E’.

Americans are far more focused on countering the other major political party in America whenever we are looking in.

We want our team—our little tribe—to be victorious.

Countering China’s rise?

We failed at rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan…after more than 10 years and how many billions upon billions dollars spent? thousands of lives lost?

Americans are so disconnected from reality that even that experience hasn’t shaken us from our delusions of grandeur.

What will? who knows—maybe the next great Recession will offer a bitter dose of reality.

But even then perhaps we will still go on believing in our triumphalism, with all our rags, evictions, foreclosures, abandoned properties, and pink slips

America today is more divided than I have ever seen it.

Individuals and companies and our own government are swimming in an ocean of debt with—until recently—out of control inflation.

Countering China’s rise?

Maybe we should check the plumbing and wiring in our own house first?

This is why this hit a nerve… Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond (Reaction)

“everything has been tainted”…

“It’s all fake”…

Is Japan a depressed nation?

I have a cousin who was passioned by Japan since a very early age. He subsequently studied Japanese culture and language at university, and then decided he had to go after his big dream — live in Japan and become a part of Japanese culture.

But my cousin was used to living in The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France — the Western Burgundian world in a nutshell. And that also translated into the fact that he loved to enjoy life, far above enjoying work, and succeeding in it.

In fact: he even enjoyed to be unemployed when it suited him back in those Western days.

In the big city in Japan though, that kind of non-philosophy did not work out.

Although he was embraced in the very beginning, his way of “interpreting life” was spit out and on by his Japanese company, because he simply could not follow the exuberant pace by which Japanese people were living — are rather: working.

And after a while, he was excluded from the city society as an outcast.

In the old Western world he came from, he would have been helped, but now he was considered as a lost case, as if he was diseased, and no one would touch him — afraid to be infected.

In the end — in the most embarrassing episode of my cousin’s life — his dad and younger brother travelled to Japan, and got him out of there. By then, he was living in an almost depraved way in an apartment the size of a closet.

He suffered from a major depression when back, and had to leave his Japanese dream for good.

Because now he understood, that he didn’t understand.

Neocons CRUMBLE as China DESTROYS the US-led Unipolar Order

2023 08 21 08 48
2023 08 21 08 48

What are some problems only poor people would understand?

Fear of the mail.

I remember I once opened the mail box and saw
the electricity bill and the first thing I noticed was the paper was a different color.

Not the envelope, the bill. And poor people know what the means…notice of disconnect.

main qimg e6c06b18dc1d51de356c6f6c67b485bd lq
main qimg e6c06b18dc1d51de356c6f6c67b485bd lq

(Google)

As I held the bill in my hand, I could feel my anxiety ramping up as I frantically searched my mind and counted backwards to the last time I paid. I could swear I just paid it.

But it’s a bill, we always feel like we just paid it! Because we did! Right?! Then there’s the fear of checking your account to find, not only do you have no money, but less than no money. Your account is negative and you haven’t paid that particular bill in months.

It wasn’t purposeful. You just spaced it.

I sit the bill on the bar and pace back and forth, for hours before I finally get the nerve to open it.

Then I snatch it up and rip it open like a present. Very unlike my normal polite, trimming of one end and shaking the letter out.

And I was right!! The bill is red! Not just red numbers on a white page. A red sheet of paper! I just about have heart palpitations.

I unfold it through half squinted eyes and read.. “Happy Holidays to you and yours! From our team and we would like to Thank You for being a valued customer for all these years.”

After years of abuse, poverty, homelessness and then stability. Christmas Greetings can send me spiraling at the hint of a different color inside the envelope.

Poverty traumatizes on so many different levels.

BRICS DEFEATS The WEST

2023 08 23 15 38
2023 08 23 15 38
https://youtu.be/0jKQcw-b0-I

British Guy Reacts to Oliver Anthony “Rich Men North Of Richmond” REACTION!

2023 08 21 08 43
2023 08 21 08 43

Who do you think is, or was, the unluckiest person on Earth (fictional or non-fictional)?

2023 08 21 08 53a
2023 08 21 08 53a

Adolphe Sax had earned the nickname “Little Sax the Ghost” due to the abnormal amount of accidents he was in. Even his mother believed he wasn’t meant to live, and all she foresaw was a tragic end to his life.

2023 08 21 08 53
2023 08 21 08 53

He was plagued by an unusual amount of misfortune from a very early age. At just three years old, he drank a mixture of white lead, copper oxide, and arsenic, believing it to be milk. A few months later, he fell down three flights of concrete stairs and hit his head on a stone below, both times he was lucky to walk away.

Then he swallowed a very sharp needle that he was able to pass without puncturing any vital parts. As he got a bit older, he fell onto a red hot stove and suffered third-degree burns down one side of his body.

When he was ten, he fell into a river and barely escaped drowning. When a container of gunpowder exploded in his father’s workshop, he was blown across the room.

On several occasions, he nearly died from accidental poisoning and asphyxiation due to sleeping in a room where varnished furniture was drying.

His last known brush with death happened when a tile fell from a roof, hitting him in the head and causing him to fall into a coma.

main qimg 96741f761c9f604400b6b987323a9b80
main qimg 96741f761c9f604400b6b987323a9b80

Despite all this misfortune, Adolphe went on to invent some notable musical instruments, the most famous being the Saxophone.

HE’S SPEAKING TO US! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond

2023 08 21 08 46
2023 08 21 08 46

Mustard Glazed Brisket

Starts on the stove top, finishes in the oven for tender Mustard Glazed Brisket every time.

2023 08 21 09 00
2023 08 21 09 00

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 (3 to 4 pound) boneless beef brisket
  • 2 cloves garlic, peeled
  • 1 large onion, sliced
  • 2 stalks celery
  • 8 black peppercorns
  • 4 whole allspice
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 3 tablespoons prepared mustard

Instructions

  1. Place brisket, garlic, onion, celery, peppercorns, allspice and bay leaf in a large soup pot. Cover with water. Simmer covered 3 to 3 1/2 hours until tender, adding water as necessary.
  2. Remove brisket and place in a roasting pan with 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid.
  3. Combine brown sugar and prepared mustard. Salt and pepper brisket and spread with the mustard glaze.
  4. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 350 degrees F until glaze bubbles and is browned.

Pegasus spyware

According to declassified documents, Alejandro Encinas, Mexico’s Undersecretary for Human Rights, advised President Lopez Obrador that Pegasus spyware had been found on Encinas’s own cellphone and those of two others in his office. Encinas had been investigating the mysterious “disappearances of hundreds of people,” a New York Times article explains, which occurred during the “Dirty War” that the Mexican military conducted in the 1960s and 1970s against a left-wing insurgency.

Initially, U.S. officials considered the Mexican crackdown to be understandable, Kate Doyle reports in her 2003 article “Human Rights and the Dirty War in Mexico.” And the U.S. assured Mexico that it “had no intention of pressing [Mexican President Luis] Echeverría about it.”

However, this stance changed in 1978, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter ordered the White House to conduct a sweeping review of U.S.-Mexican relations and learned that “the White Brigade and other security force elements… sometimes ignored [both] the human rights of [terrorist] suspects and Mexican judicial procedures,” torturing and executing such individuals, with the results that “200-300 persons [had disappeared] over the last decade.”

Only now, three decades later, is Mexico beginning to come to grips with the fact that the government was responsible for “torturing and murdering its own people.”

Chris Webby – North Of Richmond (Remix)

What Makes Certain Wine Unbelievably Expensive?

The price gap is supply and demand, for certain prestigious brands.

So first of all, wine comes from grapes; and grape quality is dependent on many factors. Weather of course, but also soil, water, light, heat, and grower skill/decisions. AND of course, the actual grape vine.

Old vines produce less fruit – thus, smaller production, BUT generally more concentrated and intense. Younger vines produce more fruit, but you have to prune them – the amount of pruning affects the concentration and quality of the juice you get. If your options are ‘n’ cases of wine at $60/case (wholesale) or ‘n/3’ cases at $120, you’re probably going to prune sparingly to get as much juice and wine as possible, without creating garbage. On the other hand, if you can make truly great wine and have a name for yourself, then the options are ‘n/3’ cases at $1000, or ‘n’ cases at $1000 – for a year or two, and then the price per case drops down to $100 because nobody trusts you anymore.

Then you factor in the slope of your land and composition of the soil (acidity, water retention or runoff), the light, the use of pesticides, mulch, etc..

So now you have some amount of good-quality grapes. How do you make wine? Do you make wine that’s going to mature over 10-50 years, or wine that’s going to be drinkable about the time it hits the market, late next year (like about 90% of the wine sold)? The former leads to more expensive wine, and is harder to sell – BUT if done well, can establish you over time as a top-notch winemaker. Or drive you into bankruptcy even sooner.

So this pretty much determines the pricing for most wines between $8 and $80. Above that, things get…complicated.

If you’re in Bordeaux for instance, your vinyard is likely ranked by the government. Your wine has to meet certain standards of quality and composition, and much of it is historical. There are, for instance, only five first-growth houses, and only one of them was not defined as such in 1855. (Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, which got promoted in 1973). If you’re one off those, or one of a limited few others who have a similar cachet, you can pretty much name your price. The thing is, most of their wine is sold on futures at auction, so basically it’s “as much as someone is willing to pay.”

HE DONE DID IT AGAIN!! | OLIVER ANTHONY – I WANT TO GO HOME

2023 08 24 06 30
2023 08 24 06 30

Nice things and bad things

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

China and the UAE will conduct the “Falcon Shield-2023” joint training exercise in NW China in August, marking the first joint training between the two national air forces, the Chinese defense ministry announced Monday.

And Ukraine is going to blow Russia to pieces with American made drones…

2023 08 01 17 08
2023 08 01 17 08

Gonzalo Lira is escaping Ukraine, with no help from the US State Department. And “President” Biden is taking a nice long nine-day long beach vacation after Victoria Nuland appointed herself to the number three spot in the US government.

Massive rain in China. Massive heat in the USA.

Massive changes all the way around.

BREAKING! China’s U.S. Invasion plan EXPOSED in captured documents | Redacted w Clayton Morris

So China is invading the United States…?

LOL. Really?

2023 08 02 09 52
2023 08 02 09 52

Video here…

https://youtu.be/73NMN8OEtzc

Why aren’t some old people scared of dying?

There is a time to leave the party. You have had a good time, have had your fill, you’re a bit wobbly from too much drink and conversation. The crowd has thinned, at least of anyone you know. In fact, most of your family and many of your friends have left already. You find less and less in common with the other guests and it becomes an effort to put on a fresh face and pretend you care about petty concerns.

The newer guests are still living it up and it gives you comfort to know they will keep the party going without you.

If you stay any longer you fear you’ll make a fool of yourself. You might pee your pants or babble incoherently. No matter how hard you try, you can’t always hear what others are saying. If you stay any longer you just know you are going to become a drag and your hosts, while concerned, will have to divert time and attention to you which might be used more constructively elsewhere.

You look around and realize, the party is no longer one where you fit. They are dancing to tunes you don’t recognize and they use words not in your lexicon. You are really not interested in adapting to new ways. Peace and quiet seems more prized than frantic activity.

The thought crosses your mind: it’s time to go home.

What are some of the most notorious kidnappings in history?

main qimg b941a30a9ded7ee82132f3a680025a80
main qimg b941a30a9ded7ee82132f3a680025a80

Imagine being kidnapped and buried alive. It all began when children between the ages of 5 to 14 were on there way home from summer school in Chowchilla California, when three masked men with guns hijacked the bus they were in.

The Kidnappers forced the hostages into 2 vans and drove them for 12 hours to a rock quarry. Then put the hostages 12 feet down a hole into a tracker trailer that had been buried under ground.

main qimg e96d50d99962af8ef9484af09ef5d587
main qimg e96d50d99962af8ef9484af09ef5d587

Realising that no one was coming to save them and with the roof caving, the bus driver and one of the students began digging themselves out. 16 hours after they had been buried they reached the surface, to the surprise of quarry workers.

main qimg e5ccbfd4e6dc186b94e149e256d9a5f0
main qimg e5ccbfd4e6dc186b94e149e256d9a5f0

The Children were all reunited with there families, while the three kidnappers were caught, but because the police phones lines were busy with media and family members, the kidnappers never even got to demand the ransom.

My Chinese pal claims that the best way to quickly become a billionnaire in China is to get involved in China’s endless construction projects that use cheap, substandard materials. If true, can China’s construction projects stand the test of time?

You answered your own question

“Endless Construction Projects”

China does have endless Construction Projects

It means the chances of them using cheap substandard materials is very less

If they had a few projects then yes, it makes sense

If you have endless projects, it means the cost of production will be very low and thus you can get good quality products at lowest cost

Say I need Steel for 50 projects

I would be tempted to cut corners because cheap steel costs $ 800 vs High Quality Steel costing $ 1600

Thus it’s worth it

Say I need Steel for 4500 projects worldwide

The High Quality steel costs me $ 600 and the Cheap Steel costs be $ 550

It’s not worth it for a mere $ 50 to risk Jail and Execution if there is a collapse

It’s called ECONOMIES OF SCALE


China has reached the scale where such necessities are no longer warranted

At this scale, the best materials are produced at such a low cost that there is no incentive to use cheaper and substard material


Your Friend is listening to Western Rumours or he still thinks it’s 1995

What did someone say to you that instantly made you realize their life was in danger?

My wife and one of her friends were at a popular lake beach in our home state. They were both THOROUGHLY pregnant and were wading in the water. I was relaxing on the beach in the warm air. All of a sudden, they are giggling and laughing, and they call over to me, ”Look at our hair!”

I must have turned white as I saw their hair was standing straight up. In a flash, I yelled, “GET OUT OF THE WATER!! NOW!!!”

For those that don’t understand, it means that there was a giant electrical charge potential between the water and the air, meaning a possible lightning strike. It was sheer luck that the potential never built up enough to cause the strike, but they would have been ground zero….

What is something that needs to be said?

main qimg cbe984d944b11e5580019e45ad8edc97 pjlq
main qimg cbe984d944b11e5580019e45ad8edc97 pjlq

This is Jordan. She is a Youtuber who travels across the world and posts videos of her experiences on her channel.

Recently, she came to India for her travel project and was staying at a hotel in Delhi with one of her friends. It had almost been three weeks that she was in India now and her experience was mostly positive, although many a times she was harassed by the local public who tried to touch her and say abusive things to her. But it was when she was about to leave India that her experience turned traumatic.

Her friend left the hotel four days before she had to. The hotel employees found out about this and knew that she was all alone in her room then. All of a sudden, these people started stalking her. They would follow her upto her hotel room. Some employees would ring her up and start talking sexually to her. It didn’t end there, now they wanted to enter her room by making up false reasons. They would switch off the mains of her AC (which she clearly heard from inside the room) and tell her to open the door becuase they needed to fix the AC. The other time, they would turn off her room’s wifi and again give her the same bullsh*t. But Jordan could clearly see their shadows outside the room and knew the consequences of her opening the door, so she never let them in. They would keep on using the same tricks everyday to get in, but somehow Jordan kept her cool and kept on telling them that she was busy or that the switch isn’t broken as she heard them turn it off. This kept on going for like 3–4 days and she couldn’t get out of her room at all, leaving her no choice but to sacrifice food and water completely.

Finally the day arrived when she had to leave India. She left her room early in the morning, around 4 a.m because that was the only time when no-one stalked her outside her room. Can you imagine the trauma she might have suffered during those door- bangings and awkward phone calls, with she being miles away from her home?

Who is to blame for this horrific incident? How would our image as a nation be portrayed when everyone watches her video on Youtube and comes to know about this? And most importantly, how safe are these foreigners in our country?

As of now, actions have been taken against the concerned hotel and it has been shut down. But should that be enough?

These aren’t even the complete details of what exactly happened to her. She felt that it was important for her to talk about this incident and not be quiet, and so did I. Here’s the link to her video:

This Happened in India // Sexual Assault

The Chip War is over! The USA has been made to cry “Mamma!”

China Makes U.S Regret, Surrender In Chip WAR While Sinking U.S Allies!

2023 08 01 20 26
2023 08 01 20 26
https://youtu.be/EmL1YlpdGm0
2023 08 01 20 28
2023 08 01 20 28

What’s the worst case of hoarding you’ve ever seen?

2023 08 01 17 14
2023 08 01 17 14

Bruce Andrew Roberts took hoarding to a whole new level. He was a wealthy recluse that lived in Sydney Australia, and a chronic hoarder who kept everything. When he died in 2017 the house cleaners found a lot of stuff, including the mummified body of the man he murdered.

main qimg 83926248bfcf1c16735cbafa7e33b5e0
main qimg 83926248bfcf1c16735cbafa7e33b5e0

Shane Snellman

It’s believed that Shane Shellman broke into the house and Roberts shot him, but instead of calling police he wrapped up the body in carpet, stuck it in the spare room, surrounded with 70 bottles of air freshener and lived with it for the next 15 years.

When is love a waste of time?

My ex-husband derived a lot of pleasure from extensively researching things before buying them.

He one day decided he wanted to get me a yoga mat. He spent an entire weekend reading reviews and cross referencing relevant information.

While typically he was highly efficient this time by the end of the day he was in a state of analysis paralysis. He was overwhelmed. He didn’t know what to do.

I walked over to his screen and pointed at a mat and said “just get this one. I like the color.” I wanted to set him free but I didn’t. He required another day before he could make a final decision.

When the mat finally arrived I seldom used it. I liked yoga back then but it wasn’t the sanctuary it is now.

Today, after years on that trusty mat I appreciate it in ways I could not have foreseen.

It’s not too heavy to roll up and carry and yet it’s thick enough to protect my knees. It’s rough so I never slip on it, and it’s easy to wipe clean. It has held up well despite the fact I’ve used it for so long.

It’s the perfect mat.

Love is never a waste of time. We give it lavishly, madly, and it studs another person’s life with treasures they continue to find in unexpected places long after they are no longer a part of our regular life.

I confirm this every time I roll out my mat and set it down on the smooth wood floor of the yoga studio.

What is it about women that confuses men so much?

It took me about ten years of marriage, and about seven years of having mostly female coworkers, before I stopped being confused by:

The tendency of women in my life to seek out unnecessary friction.

That is, why they’d get annoyed or even angry with me when I agreed with them on something. My inner monologue was often variations of: “Why are you mad? I’m literally agreeing with you. You’re creating a conflict where there isn’t one.”

It usually manifested itself when decisions had to be made that affected the women and myself. Like this:

Woman in my life: What do you think of this choice for the thing that we both use?

Me: I like it.

Woman: What about this one?

Me: I like that one, too.

Woman: Which do you prefer?

Me: Whichever one you like best is fine with me.

Woman: [Visible anger.]

My inner monologue: I’m agreeing with you. Why are you mad at me?

Finally, after one such unnecessary conflict with my wife, she told me a secret: being agreeable all of the time is not a good thing. Not having opinions about most things doesn’t mean that you’re easy to get along with; it means that you don’t care. At least, that’s how women interpret it.

So, I started forming opinions about things when women asked for my opinion, and it’s worked wonders. Even if, deep down, I’d be happy with any decision, I still state a preference for one decision, and defend it if necessary.

This has helped me out a lot at home and at work. Just last month, there was a schedule change and my three coworkers (all women) and I had to decide on the order in which we’d take our breaks, since only one of us can go on break at any given time. The truth was that I would have been happy with any break time because, honestly, it’s not like we’re doing manual labor and need to rest our bodies. I do half of my teaching while sitting down anyway, writing on an iPad which is then projected onto a screen for my students to see. I never leave work exhausted. Anyway, my coworkers were putting a lot of thought into their requested break times, so I figured I should, too. I picked a time, and, even though it was a time that another one wanted (I didn’t know that when I picked it), they all seemed to appreciate the fact that I had an opinion, and then built the rest of the break schedule around what I wanted.

Experience has taught me that if I’d just taken whatever was left after my coworkers picked what they wanted, the women would have left the meeting angry at me for being so agreeable.

It’s like there’s a base level of friction women are comfortable with, and that level is above the “zero level” where a lot of men, like me, dwell.

I think this is why the only people I know who actually enjoy reality television are women. Watch Bravo sometime… a channel with shows targeted toward women… and notice how many of their shows basically revolve around completely unnecessary conflicts between “real” people.

Men Are Going Abroad For Love And Modern Women Are FURIOUS!

Western culture is destroying relationships. PERIOD.

https://youtu.be/sRf_JFBK_kM

In terms of his acting life, what was actor Brendan Fraser’s wrong decision?

The biggest “wrong decision” of Brendan Fraser was that he was too much of a “company man”. You know, the company man, the model employee, the man who goes that extra mile, all the time? That was Fraser as an actor. Say a movie wants to keep the budget a little lower. Or wants it’s scenes to look more realistic… they’ll insist you do your own stunts, and you say yes, every time.

main qimg 2fa25af7520b47e60d2cc96fadc7cf81
main qimg 2fa25af7520b47e60d2cc96fadc7cf81

We’re all built differently, no two bodies are the same. But it’s rare for a man to do his own stunts and sustain countless injuries in the field and not have one’s body break down. Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise are MAJOR outliers in this area. As for Fraser, he reportedly had hundreds of contusions, a partial knee replacement, and his vocal cords needed to be repaired, among many surgeries. Fraser also had to do a laminectomy, in which a patient’s vertebra bone is removed. Basically… he broke down, physically.

Brendan Fraser, today, looks like a far cry from his former self — he has aged less well than other actors. Because actors aren’t really supposed to take on that much hard physical work. The profession of stuntman doesn’t exist for no reason. Fraser’s badly mangled body is proof. Don’t be a company man — learn to say “No.”

When was the first time you truly understood the concept of privilege?

Around age 15, I realized that I was privileged in one particular way compared to many of my friends.

When I was 8, my best friend… the kid next door… moved away when his parents got divorced. I learned later that the mom left in the middle of the night, taking the kids with her, because the father was abusive and a heavy drinker.

When I was 11, I’d sometimes ride my bike to another friend’s house a few blocks away. But I always had to call ahead of time, to make sure his father wasn’t “in a bad mood.” I didn’t understand it at the time, but that was my friend’s way of describing when his dad was drunk. A few years later, the mom finally left the dad. Twenty years and a lot of drugs later, that old friend of mine finally died of an overdose, but that’s a different story.

When I was 13, I’d often go to a different friend’s house after school. He happened to live near the school, so a group of other boys and I just hung out there a lot after school. We liked it there because there was never any supervision. He was being raised by a single mom who worked a lot and didn’t pay much attention to what her son and his friends did at her house. He came over to my house a few times, too, and my parents noticed that things started missing every time he came over, so they told me to quit hanging out with him. Years later, when he was 16 and in high school, that (then former) friend of mine got his girlfriend pregnant. She was still in middle school… she’d hang out at his house, unsupervised, after school.

When I was 15, a new classmate showed up in the middle of the year. She ended up being my high school crush. While chatting with her one day, I found out that she moved from New York in a hurry in the middle of the year because her father was a heavy drinker and abusive, and her mother finally had had enough and skipped town, and ended up in my little hometown.

[It was around this age I started to realize how lucky I was to have a father who was not only present in my life, but who didn’t drink or do drugs or abuse my mother. He went to work in the morning, came home in the evening, and spent time with his family. He barely even swore. I called it luck back then. Today I’d call it privilege.]

When I was 16, I got my driver’s license, and I was able to go all over town to hang out with friends at their houses. I settled into a pattern of hanging out at the same three friends’ houses. One had no father at all, and the mom was one of those “I’d rather you do it here at my house, since you’re going to do it anyway” kind of parents. She’d buy the booze and cigarettes for him and his friends on the weekend. I didn’t drink, but I’d sometimes get cigarettes from her.

Another friend had a stepfather who was nice, but about twenty years older than her (very attractive) mother. I didn’t see another older man/younger bride combo until I worked in the wealthy Chicago suburbs years later. By then, I understood what was going on there.

The final friend’s house I hung out at in high school… he was an only child and lived with his mom and dad, who were his biological parents. One was a teacher, and one was a businessman. That friend was my fellow computer nerd friend. He’s the one who got me into BBSs. He went on to graduate from a major tech university and now runs the computer system for a different university.

In my mid 30s, when I finally got on Facebook and reconnected with several dozen old high school classmates and friends, a pattern started to emerge: my classmates who had what I had … sober parents in a stable relationship who paid attention to their children … almost always ended up in stable relationships and with stable jobs as adults themselves.

I truly believe that the single biggest privilege a person can have is parents who love each other, love their children, and aren’t abusive or neglectful. If you have that in your life, you’re already on the right track.

Brian Berletic: China has DESTROYED Blinken’s Fake Diplomacy as US-China War Nears

What is the most important thing in life?

1. There’s still a plan in the unplanned.

2. Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.

3. The present moment is all you have.

4. Sometimes it feels like the lyrics to a song you’re listening to were written just for you.

5. You’re not born a winner or a loser. You’re born a chooser.

6. Invest in people who invest in you.

7. Your vibe attracts your tribe. If you are picky in relationships, try this application.

8. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.

9. Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

10. Not everyone you talk is your friend, and not everyone’s opinion matters.

11. Don’t change for change’s sake. change becomes truly rewarding only when you do it with intent.

Russia warns STOP this or else or risk nuclear attack

NATO is striking at the heart of Moscow via Ukraine. Russia has called this a terrorist attack and the West is saying that it could push Russia to the brink of a nuclear war. Is that what they want?? Can we have cooler heads prevail here please for the sake of us all?

What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Classroom screen time for my students.

I just wrapped up my 14th year as a middle school teacher. Every single year I’ve taught, in four different schools, students have had 1:1 tech. I embraced this tech to make my life easier. I used Edmodo and, later, Google Classroom, to post stories for students to read, post assignments for them to do online, collect those assignments online, grade those assignments online, etc… In my English classes, students would usually spend about 50% of their time online.

Initially, I was one of the few teachers where I taught that fully embraced the tech. But, over the years, more and more of my coworkers have embraced it. Last year, I realized that it’d gotten to the point that, some days, students were spending so much time on their laptops at school that their laptop batteries couldn’t make it through the day.

Some parents started to get weary of how much time their kids were spending on screens while at school. As a parent myself, I agree with them.

So I’ve spent the few months planning and prepping to go as screen-free as possible in my classroom next year. My boss is helping me out with this because she, too, as a parent and educator, realizes that we should probably cool it with so much screen time during the school day. We’re getting new, physical English textbooks (as opposed to online versions), and new, physical vocabulary books for the students. We’ve also invested about $1,500 in bookcases for my classroom, which I installed myself, so students always have easy access to a 4,000-or-so book classroom library. When I announced plans for the classroom library, my students’ parents were very excited and several of them donated books for it.

My boss was also able to get some comfortable reading chairs for my classroom.

(I will be honest, this classroom makeover is as much for me as it is for my students. I’m stuck in that room all day, and have every intention of using the comfortable reading chairs myself on my planning periods.)

In the past, whenever I could make my life easier by putting things online for my students, I did. But, going forward, I’m going to only resort to putting things online if absolutely necessary. It will be a bigger pain in the ass for me, keeping track of physical books and assignments, making physical copies, etc… But I think it will be better for the students in the long run.

We’ve had a real problem the last two years of students, when they had nothing else to do (or when they just didn’t want to do what they were supposed to be doing), instinctively opening their laptops and playing video games to pass the time. Next year, we’re hoping that they’ll instinctively reach for whatever novel they’re reading instead.

Gonzalo Lira

This is his video after he left prison.

What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

When I was younger, I was the Assisstant Manager of a Pizza Hut. I was moved to this particular store with the expectation that the Store Manager who was there had set me up to become the next Store Manager. When he resigned I was passed over for a 23 year old nobody with no experience or work ethic. He worked 25 hours a week and had me do most of his duties on top of my own. He would often show up in the middle of dinner rush with his posse, ask how things were, I would tell him it was terrible and we needed help, he’d see that we did, and say things like “Sounds good” and walk out.

Week after week people in my Store were getting overworked and burned out. I constantly hounded my Area Manager to let me hire people, often being turned down. He woul even turn down temporarily allowing neighboring stores to send their workers to my Store to keep up with demand. So week after week we would have at least 1 person quit.

Even when I was allowed to hire ONE person, that person would freak out on day one because of the workload pushed upon all of us. They would typically last 1 day, maybe a week, before quitting.

One day we were told we were having a store meeting with the Area Manager so I typed up my resignation letter preemptively and attended. We were told how terrible our customer service scores were (mostly hold time issues or delivery time issues because we couldn’t keep enough people to staff the whole store, so delivery drivers were cutting and boxing pizzas, answering phones and taking orders, THEN delivering them) and how we needed to shape up. I spoke up and said we desperately needed more employees and I was waved off again. So I finished my shift that night, put my resignation letter in the fax machine with my end of day paperwork, locked the door, and dropped my security key and door keys in the mail slot. The next day I was inundated with phone calls from the Store Manager and Area Manager, which I ignored for a few hours. Then I picked up, the Area Manager begged me to come back and said he’d do anything if I came back.

“A raise?”

“Sure, whatever you need.”

“4 more employees?”

“No, you know you’re not getting that.”

*hangup*

I never talked to them again.

China issued a new ban after USA & Europe clamored to counter China’s ban on gallium and germanium.

2023 08 01 20 37
2023 08 01 20 37
2023 08 01 20 3r7
2023 08 01 20 3r7

News from HK

HK court declined an injunction from the AG to ban the rebel song “Glory to HK” which incites HK breaking away from China. The song has been mistakenly broadcast as the Chinese national anthem on several international sport events. Some are believed to be intentional with foreign assistance for the purpose of keeping the concept of colour revolution going on. Google has the song on the top of list of Chinese national song which helps the confusion.

COUNTRIES THAT EXPRESSED A DESIRE TO JOIN BRICS

✔️Algeria

✔️Argentina

✔️Bangladesh

✔️Bahrain

✔️Venezuela

✔️Guinea

✔️Greece

✔️Egypt

✔️Indonesia

✔️Iran

✔️Mexico

✔️Nigeria

✔️UAE

✔️Tajikistan

✔️Thailand

✔️Tunisia

✔️Turkey

✔️Syria

✔️Saudi Arabia

✔️Ethiopia

Are products purposefully made not to last?

Absolutely it’s called planned obsolescence .

Exemplified by Charles Brannock.

He invented this:

main qimg 74326bc3c98425474ba997f61dae31f1 lq
main qimg 74326bc3c98425474ba997f61dae31f1 lq

People told him to make it out of plastic so it would break and they’d have to buy new ones.

He refused and made them out of steel.

Same thing with Tonka trucks. Made of STEEL. I still have mine from my childhood (it was left in Hong Kong when I left here and I found it when my grandmother died and we were cleaning out her house).

Wait, Australia did WHAT to Julian Assange?

Australia has reportedly asked the U.S. to stop persecuting Julian Assange, which in and of itself is surprising because Australia has had amnesia about Assange for over a decade. The U.S., predictably, says that it can’t do that. The U.S. seeks to punish Assange for publishing true information about the government’s own war crimes. This will have serious implications for journalism in the future. Assange is a fly in the ointment of the U.S.’ plans to increase the “tempo” of visits of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia plus expand the Aukus treaty for Australia to host weaponry for the U.S. and U.K.

Reuben Soup

bcbc324d83eb2a9f626a6c63c9f257a4
bcbc324d83eb2a9f626a6c63c9f257a4

Ingredients

  • 2 quarts chicken broth
  • 2 small bay leaves
  • 1/2 cup sauerkraut, drained (reserve 3 tablespoons juice)
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 pound chopped corned beef
  • 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
  • 1/2 cup sour cream

Instructions

  1. Heat broth to simmer, and add bay leaves, sauerkraut and the 3 tablespoons of sauerkraut juice. Cook for 30 minutes, then strain. Set sauerkraut aside.
  2. Return broth to boil, then add the milk and heat gently to avoid curdling.
  3. In a small saucepan, melt the butter, add flour and cook for about 2 minutes, whisking frequently. Slowly add flour mixture to pot to thicken soup, stirring with a wooden spoon. Soup should be thick and creamy.
  4. Return reserved sauerkraut to pot. Add corned beef, pepper and sour cream, and remove the bay leaves. Heat to serving temperature, but do not boil.
  5. Serve with rye bread and butter.

Why did we ever agree to the One-China policy in the first place?

You single-handedly created this situation.

Chiang Kai-shek refused to officially split China into 2 pieces.

You needed Beijing to weaken Soviet Group.

You knew that Beijing didn’t have the power to overtake Taiwan by crossing the strait.

So you started to go close with Beijing, because you were confident that the whole situation was under control even if you admitted Taiwan being part of China.


You tried to start a color revolution in China when you saw USSR was on the edge, like you did for many times around the world.

You tried to strangle China after the collapse of USSR.

You failed both.

So you began to cooperate with China in 1993, because you were confident that China will stay low forever.

You were sure that China’s bad debts would trigger an explosion and then destroy the country in late 90’s, so you turned your focus from Asia to middile east and started the 2nd Gulf War without UN authorization, because you were virtually invincible.


You realized in the mid 00’s that instead of going down, China was actually rising.

You started a media warfare to smear China before 08 Beijing Olympics, because you knew that it was the last chance before the west could see the real China.

You failed that too and caused yourself in deep trouble in 07 and 08.

You needed China to save your arse by purchasing your treasury.

You realized that China was your No.1 foreign debt holder.

You start to panic, and tried to move your strategical focus back to Asia, hence the Asia-Pacific Rebalance.

Your worries about China kept growing, because China’s GDP, along with other aspects such as military.

You finally realized that you cannot contain China after launching the trade war.

You began to redo everything you did during the previous cold war and pray to god for having the same result.

“This is the end of the UNIPOLAR order” Africa Russia Summit Recap 2023

Why is the West ignoring the Russia-Africa Summit? Because they don’t want to see the cooperation these two regions are fostering. Redacted correspondent Mike Jones was there and he shares just how much economic collaboration is happening, despite the West’s best intention to disrupt that from happening.

2023 08 01 16 35
2023 08 01 16 35

What is the nastiest thing you’ve done for revenge?

I owned a home that had a pretty little meadow (about 1–1/2 acres). The front portion was planted in native grasses that grew to about 1 ft tall. Then there was a bigger section of native wild flowers. Then there was our garden (surrounded by a deer fence). The upper portion of the meadow was lined with poplar trees.

One night one of our local yahoo teenagers decided it would be fun to do donuts in our meadow.

The next day I dropped a poplar tree (about 10 inch diameter) across the upper part of the meadow and carefully limbed it. I hid it in the grass as well as I could. We worked our tails off to recover as much of the garden as we could.

Sure enough a couple of weeks later, they were back. Except their pickup hit an unexpected obstacle that ruined the front end and it got stuck when it bounced over the tree trunk. When I woke up and saw what I had caught, I got a logging chain and padlocks and locked my “catch” to the tree trunk. Soon there were irate teenager that wanted their pickup back. My shotgun, German Shepherd and I disagreed with that idea. An irate father showed up and demanded I release my catch. I will be glad to release it when the upper and middle parts of the meadow are restored and I am compensated for all the vegetables that were ruined. That didn’t seem fair to him, so he left and came back with a sheriff’s deputy. The deputy listened to both sides of the story, told dad and son that what I wanted sounded reasonable. He then proceeded to inform me (in front of them) the process for claiming my catch and obtaining a clear title. He also told me what the impound fee was at the local impound lot, reminding me that the fee should be declared as income on my taxes. I was warned that if I dropped another tree across the truck, I was responsible for cleaning up any soil contamination. If that was what I chose to do, I should properly drain all the fluids from my “yard art.”

The kids started work the next day. When everything was repaired and they agreed to pay $200 per month until the next planting season, I released my catch.

At What Cost?

Another coping meme

Godfree Roberts
Aug 1

Our media have striven for seventy years to predict China’s collapse while ignoring its successes. But some successes are just too big to hide and, in those cases, journalists know exactly what to do.

at what cost
at what cost

In this post the media, faced with undeniable Chinese successes, cope by trying to diminish the accomplishments: all Chinese achievement must have been bad investments. Hence the directive.

The directive

 “When writing about China’s achievements, question their purported cost.”

The results

Radio Free Amanda has compiled them.

Transcript

Global Markets – 1st quarter 2007 : China powers ahead – but at what cost? – Fin Law, Feb 09, 2007

China pumps up the Cambodian economy, but at what cost? – Taipei Times Apr 07 2011

Luxury Property in China: Boom, but at what cost? – Spears, Oct 18 2011

Tibet: Tourism Rises, but at what cost? – UNPO, Dec 28 2011

China brings jobs to Ethiopia but at what cost? – Horn Affairs, May 31 2012

China: smartphone market domination…but at what cost? – GFK, Feb 27 2014

China wants the Gold but at what cost?? – Disturbing Road to Olympic Stardom- Linkedin, Aug 14 2016

Podcast: China Aims for Bluer Skies Ahead, but at what cost? to Commodity Demand?- SPGlobal, 2017

Peter Bart: Hollywood Has Appetite For China’s Big Bucks, but at what cost??- Deadline, Mar 2 2017

China is driving a boom in Brazilian mining, but at what cost?– China Dialogue, Jul 27 2017

Chinese Tech Firms Are at the Cutting Edge of Artificial Intelligence — but at what cost?– Global Voices, 28 Aug 2017

China Invests in Environment – but at what cost? – US News, Apr 20 2018

China’s Belt and Road poised to transform the Earth, but at what cost?– Mongabay, Apr 24 2018

China’s Belt and Road poised to transform the Earth, but at what cost? to the environment?- Eco Business, Apr 25 2018

China May Become the World’s Leader in AI, but at what cost?– China File, Jul 30 2018

President Xi pledges $60 Billion to African Countries, but at what cost?– Medium, Sep 8 2018

Vatican–China relations are warming up, but at what cost?– East Asia Forum, 23 Oct 2018

Gene-edited babies: China wants to be the world leader, but at what cost?– The Conservation, Nov 26 2018

China’s economy looks to be stabilising, but at what cost?– France24, Apr 17 2019

China’s Big Cities Get Cleaner Air, but at what cost?– Caixing, Oct 26 2019

China is getting smarter – but at what cost?– BBC, Dec 24 2019

Hou Jianbin wants to educate China. but at what cost?– Protocol

A better, stronger China after the epidemic? but at what cost?– Think China, Feb 21 2020

China May Forge Ahead of the Us in AI Chip Race, but at what cost to Both?- CIGI, Apr 9 2020

China’s Three Gorges Dam may be safe for now, but at what cost?– Dams, Rivers and People, 27 Jul 2020

Serbia has rolled out the red carpet to China – but at what cost?– Euronews, Oct 08 2020

The BRI’s Footprint in the Lower Mekong Region Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam all need infrastructure—but at what cost?– RosaLux, Dec 15 2020

Chinese PD-1s secure broad reimbursement, but at what cost?– Pharmaletter, Dec 28 2020

Green Transition in China: but at what cost?– Green Europe Journal, 16 Jan 2021

Wuhan one year on: The city that appears safe from Covid – but at what cost?– Telegraph, Jan 23 2021

China’s economy grows, but at what cost? (vid)- SCMP, Jan 27,2021

China Is Imposing Strict Lockdowns To Contain New COVID Outbreaks. But There’s A Cost– NPR, Sep 2 2021

China keeps virus at bay but at what cost?– Sioux City Journal, Sep 21 9 2021

China keeps virus at bay at high cost ahead of Olympics- ABC News, Sep 21 2021

China celebrates Meng Wanzhou’s return as a victory — even at the cost of its global image – CNN, Sep 28 2021

Clean Air at What Cost? The Rise of Blunt Force Regulation – US China Dialogue, Oct 21 2021

China Rewriting Economic Narrative – But At What Cost? – BMF, Oct 27 2021

China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Efforts Come With a Cost – New York Times, Nov 12 2021

China is now controlling the weather. What’s the environmental cost? – Euronews, Dec 9 2021

Ultra-leftist voices are making themselves heard in China, but at what cost? – SCMP, Dec 24 2021

What is the poorest dinner meal that you can remember eating during a time of financial hardship?

After I graduated from law school, I had no money left – not even enough to pay for gasoline to get to my new job. So, a friend of mine gave me $50 to buy gasoline. That $50 had to last until I got paid – a month away. Shortly after I started working, my employer told us that we would be going to the state Capitol for training. The group of new employees went out to eat together for every meal, but, needless to say, I could not afford to go with them. So, I stopped at a grocery store and purchased a bag of 6 rolls and a bottled soft beverage. I spent all of my down time alone in my hotel room (paid for by the state). I ate one roll a day during that week and took only sips of that beverage each day. I drank plain water where it was offered for free. No one knew that I was so poor that I could not buy food. Rather, they thought that I was anti-social and that was the reason I never went out to eat with them. Poverty hurts in many ways and on many levels.

The Forgotten Era: What Really Happened AFTER the Dinosaurs Went Extinct ?

🌍 Today, many extinct animals are more familiar to us than some species that are still alive. Among them are the dinosaurs. The diplodocus is more famous than the aardvark, and the tyrannosaurus more famous than the peramete. Dinosaurs are part of popular culture.

For over 160 million years, these majestic creatures dominated the Earth, occupying most ecological niches and leaving little room for other species. On five occasions, the Earth was confronted with major upheavals that had a fundamental impact on its subsequent history.

When they disappeared during the fifth mass extinction, the dinosaurs left an immeasurable void. But one man’s misfortune is another man’s gain, and this void enabled the evolution of mammals and birds, which are now highly diversified groups of animals.

Without this extinction, dinosaurs would probably have continued to dominate life on Earth, and other animals would not have had the opportunity to make their mark.

Mass extinctions change the rules of the game, redistributing the cards by condemning certain groups and giving new opportunities to others. When the dinosaurs disappeared, our distant ancestors survived.

What did the Earth look like after the extinction of the dinosaurs?

Strange Diplomacy: Victoria “F*ck the EU” Nuland

She’s Lost 20% of Ukraine w/100,000+ KIA (& was promoted to Deputy SecState)

J.B. Angell

Apr 24, 2023

2023 08 01 16 246
2023 08 01 16 246

Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability. It is a bad sign that President Joe Biden has nominated Victoria Nuland for the third highest position at the State Department, Under Secretary for Political Affairs.” (ronpaulinstitute.org 2/11/21)

The war began with the violent overthrow of Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, a coup that was overtly and covertly backed by the United States government in the service of NATO expansion.” (Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia, Jeffrey Sachs 3/8/23)

Thanks for reading Earth Rider (Tales of a Dharma Bum)! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Since Victoria Nuland overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014 during the Obama/Biden Administration (along with then Deputy Director of National Security Anthony Blinken), the aggressive anti-Russian policies of the former Assistant Secretary of State for European & Eurasian Affairs & now President Biden’s Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs have led to the loss of 1/5th of the country: Crimea, Kharkov, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye & Kherson.

2023 08 01 16 26w
2023 08 01 16 26w

The architects of the Ukraine disaster: Nuland & Blinken

On December 13, 2013 Nuland claimed during a speech at the US-Ukraine Foundation the US had spent $5 billion on a “secure, prosperous and democratic Ukraine”, then passed out cookies to protestors in Kyiv before her color revolution (with the help of pro-Maidan snipers) created the bloody scenario necessary to remove democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych from office.

“Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovich, a strong candidate for president, said he would keep the country out of NATO if he wins the January 17 election but said he remained committed to taking it into the European mainstream. The 59-year-old Yanukovich, a former prime minister, told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda Ukraina that he would keep Ukraine out of military blocs, including the NATO alliance, membership of which has been one of Yushchenko’s goals.

‘Ukraine, quite simply, has been and will be a state outside any blocs. We will not aspire to enter either NATO or the ODKB,’ he said, referring to the Russian-dominated Collective Security Pact that brings together some ex-Soviet allies.” (reuters.com 1/07/10)

Almost a month before the Ukrainian president was overthrown, a January 28, 2014 phone call between Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who they wanted to replace Yanukovych post-Maidan was taped and released on YouTube February 4th. After Victoria stated, “So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U.N. help glue it and you know…fuck the EU”, Pyatt responded “Oh, exactly”; they then agreed “Yats” (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) would become the Prime Minister of Ukraine. Russia likely released their call to enlighten the world as to who was behind the coup d’état.

2023 08 01 16 2t6
2023 08 01 16 2t6

Nuland & Ambassador Pyatt passing out cookies in Maidan Square, Kyiv

Soon after Nuland’s coup, The Guardian newspaper wrote about another phone call: It is the audio of a telephone conversation between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton. The call was initiated by Paet on 25 February 2014 and only he can be heard speaking:

“In the call, Paet said he had been told snipers responsible for killing police and civilians in Kiev last month were protest movement provocateurs rather than supporters of then-president Viktor Yanukovych. The Estonian foreign ministry confirmed the leaked conversation was accurate. It said: ‘Foreign minister Paet was giving an overview of what he had heard in Kiev and expressed concern over the situation on the ground.’

During the conversation, Paet quoted a woman named Olga – who the Russian media identified as Olga Bogomolets, a doctor – blaming snipers from the opposition shooting the protesters. ‘What was quite disturbing, this same Olga told that, well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,’ Paet said.

‘So she also showed me some photos, she said that as medical doctor, she can say it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened. So there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition,’ Paet says.

‘I think we do want to investigate. I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,’ Ashton says.” (the guardian.com 3/5/14)

In a December 19th interview in the Russian magazine Kommersant, George Friedman, who was the founder and CEO of Stratfor, the ‘Shadow CIA’ firm, said of the overthrow of President Yanukovych on February 22, 2014: “It really was the most blatant coup in history.”

“The massacre by snipers of anti-government activists and police officers in Kiev’s Maidan Square in late February 2014 was a defining moment in the US-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government. The death of 70 protesters triggered an avalanche of international outrage that made President Viktor Yanukovych’s downfall a fait accompli. Yet today these killings remain unsolved.

2023 08 01 16 2hhh5
2023 08 01 16 2hhh5

Ivan Katchanovski

Enter Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist at the University of Ottawa. For years, he marshaled overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the snipers were not affiliated with Yanukovych’s government, but pro-Maidan operatives firing from protester-occupied buildings.

Though Katchanovski’s groundbreaking has been studiously ignored by the mainstream media, a scrupulous study he presented on the slaughter in September 2015 and August 2021 and published in 2016 and in 2020 has been cited on over 100 occasions by scholars and experts. As a result of this paper and other pieces of research, he has been among the world’s most-referenced political scientists specializing in Ukrainian matters.” (thegrayzone.com 3/12/23)

“The war began with the violent overthrow of Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, a coup that was overtly and covertly backed by the United States government in the service of NATO expansion. During his presidency (2010-2014), Yanukovych sought military neutrality, precisely to avoid a civil or proxy war in Ukraine. But this stood in the way of NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia that the US had pushed for from 2008 onward.” (Dr. Jeffrey Sachs: ekathimerini.com 3/8/23)

It didn’t take long for Vladimir Putin to respond to Nuland’s coup d’état, because he knew NATO’s goal was to seize Sevastopol, Russia’s Black Sea naval base on the Crimean Peninsula. Just five days later, on February 27, 2014, he installed a pro-Russian government with a declaration of independence declared on March 16th. Russia reunified Crimea on March 18, 2014, formally reclaiming the strategic Black Sea peninsula Catherine the Great captured from the Ottoman Turks in 1783, but was transferred to Soviet Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. A referendum was then held based on UN statutes of self-determination, with 90% of the population voting to rejoin Russia.

Ethnic Russian provinces in Eastern Ukraine unhappy with Nuland’s coup initially sought the same autonomy enjoyed by Quebec & Catalonia, but were rebuffed by the US puppet government in Kyiv, with Ambassador Pyatt declaring them terrorists. Armed militias in Donbass & Luhansk then seized government buildings and called for independence. In April 2014 Ukraine launched an Anti-Terrorist Operation against the separatist forces and reclaimed most of Donbass. In response, Russia launched a “humanitarian convoy” including military personnel and equipment, which pushed Ukrainian forces back from its border. On May 2, 2014 dozens of “separatists” were burned to death in the Odessa Trade Unions Building by “nationalist” Ukrainians after demonstrations in the city, a rallying point for ethnic Russians to this day.

On September 5, 2014 Ukraine, Russia, Donetsk Peoples’ Republic (DPR) & Luhansk Peoples’ Republic (LPR) signed the first of the infamous Minsk Agreements, which required Ukraine to recognize limited autonomy for Donbass and enshrine it in a new constitution. Instead of granting that autonomy, Ukraine continued to exert its authority over Donbass by force.

2023 08 01 16 2j5
2023 08 01 16 2j5

Minsk I Agreement

In January 2015, DPR & LPR troops seized Donetsk Airport, the last bastion of Ukrainian forces in Donbass. Retreating Ukrainian troops were then caught in a cauldron at Debaltseve by those same DPR & LPR troops. In panic, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel flew to Moscow to stop the massacre and along with Presidents Putin & François Hollande of France agreed on a Minsk II Agreement under the Normandy Format to halt the carnage.

As we now know from recent statements by Merkel and Hollande, the Minsk II Agreement was a ruse to rescue the encircled Ukrainian Army and allow them to rearm for a future campaign against Russia:

“In an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit last week, former German chancellor Angela Merkel revealed the West’s real intention behind its negotiation with Russia and Ukraine to promote a ceasefire in 2014. She admitted the Minsk agreements were an ‘attempt to give Ukraine time’ and that Kiev had used it ‘to become stronger.’

In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Merkel’s remarks were ‘completely unexpected and disappointing.’ As the US media New York Post pointed out, Putin felt betrayed by the West following the Minsk agreements. ‘It has turned out that no one was going to implement the agreements,’ the Russian leader pointed out.” (globaltimes.cn 12/12/22)

“Hollande came clean on Wednesday about the fact that the international agreements for which France acted as guarantor were little more than a ruse to buy the Ukrainian regime some time while it upgraded its military with equipment and training from NATO.

2023 08 01 16 24
2023 08 01 16 24

Minsk II Agreement

‘Since 2014, Ukraine has strengthened its military posture. It is the merit of the Minsk Agreements to have given the Ukrainian Army this opportunity,’ the former French president told a Ukrainian outlet.” (english.almyadeen.net 1/2/23)

As if to reconfirm the Minsk Agreements went as planned, Hollande was duped by pranksters Vovan and Lexus (pretending to be former Ukraine President Poroshenko) into stating: “Everyone thought it was Putin who was playing for time. No, we were playing for time to strengthen Ukraine.” (Vladimir Kuznetsov & Alexei Stolyarov 4/5/23)

The ruse worked, with Ukraine building Europe’s largest army while shelling its Donbass region from layered, interlocking & mutually supporting hardened fortifications developed & enhanced over 9 years. Training and preparation by NATO instructors over this period, to include satellite support and AWACS feeds, created the most formidable military in Europe on the Russian border.

“In 2016 the United States deployed a land based air defense system — i.e. Aegis Ashore — in Deveselu, Romania. Aegis Ashorek is a land-based version of the missile system now on Aegis cruisers in the U.S. Navy. Then, last year, the United States set up the same system in Redzikowo, Poland. Only one little problem — the Aegis Ashore system can also be used to launch nuclear tipped Tomahawk Cruise missiles.These two systems have the potential to put a nuke in Moscow within 10 minutes of launch from Poland or Romania.

This threat situation is similar to the one the United States faced in 1961 when the Soviets deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba. Just as the United States correctly viewed those missiles in Cuba as an existential threat, Russia also sees that U.S. placement of missiles as an existential threat to Moscow.” (Larry Johnson sonar21.com 5/10/23)

According to the UN, from Nuland’s February 2014 coup d’état to Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukraine shelling of the separatist Donbass region resulted in over 14,000 casualties (news.un.org 9/9/22). In the months before the invasion, Russia reached out to the West, requesting security guarantees as NATO marched towards its border: continuing to supply Ukraine with military advisors, billions in advanced equipment as well as funding numerous bio-labs.

For example, on November 30, 2021, President Putin warned NATO against stationing troops and weapons in Ukraine, saying it would cross a red line. Western media outlets reported on December 7, 2021 that President Biden told Putin “where to shove his red lines” during their two-hour video summit. In retrospect, however, the tipping point for Russia most likely was President Zelensky’s suggestion at the Munich Security Conference two weeks before the invasion that Ukraine might pursue nuclear weapons.

After receiving an official non-response concerning NATO expansion from the US State Department on January 27, 2022, Foreign Minister Lavrov diplomatically stated, “The content of the US response on security guarantees allows you to count on a serious conversation, but on secondary topics. There is no answer to the most important question – about the non-expansion of NATO to the east and deployment of strike weapons that can pose a threat to the territory of Russia, which we consider unacceptable.”

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to suggest late last week that his country could pursue nuclear weapons as a way to defend itself from Russian aggression as Russian President Vladimir Putin sends forces into separatist regions of Ukraine that he recognized as independent as of this week.

‘Ukraine has the nuclear technologies created back in the Soviet times and delivery vehicles for such weapons, including aircraft, as well as the Soviet-designed Tochka-U precision tactical missiles with a range of over 100 kilometers. But they can do more; it is only a matter of time. They have had the groundwork for this since the Soviet era,’ Putin said. ‘In other words, acquiring tactical nuclear weapons will be much easier for Ukraine than for some other states I am not going to mention here, which are conducting such research, especially if Kiev receives foreign technological support. We cannot rule this out either.

If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia,’ Putin continued. ‘We cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so since, let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire these weapons to create yet another threat to our country.’” (dailywire.com 2/23/22)

Speaking of weapons of mass destruction, Victoria Nuland confirmed the existence of bio-labs across Ukraine at a Congressional hearing on March 8, 2022, with subsequent reports confirming the DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) had been funding them for decades.

2023 08 01 16 2f4
2023 08 01 16 2f4

Sen. Marco Rubio: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?

Victoria Nuland: Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we’re now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.

“Judicial Watch announced today it received 345 pages of records from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a component of the U.S. Department of Defense, revealing that the United States funded anthrax laboratory activities in a Ukrainian biolab in 2018. Dozens of pages are completely redacted, and many others are heavily redacted. The records show over $11 million in funding for the Ukraine biolabs program in 2019.

The records were obtained in response to a February 28, 2022, Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for records regarding the funding of Black & Veatch involving work of any manner with biosafety laboratories in the country of Ukraine.” (judicialwatch.org 11/10/22)

Confirmation of DTRA funded bio-labs in Ukraine wasn’t all, Nuland’s guarantee of the Nord Stream pipeline destruction signaled that destroying Russia is her obsession, to the point of ideological blindness.

“‘If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward,’ undersecretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland told a press briefing.

Asked how she could make that assertion with confidence, Nuland replied, ‘We’ve had extensive consultations at every level with our German allies. I’m not going to get into the specifics here today, but we will work with Germany to ensure that the pipeline does not move forward.’” (cnsnews.com 1/28/22))

In a January 2023 Senate hearing a year after her Nord Stream 2 pipeline destruction promise, Nuland bragged about blowing up critical infrastructure in Europe on 9/26/22: “Senator Cruz, like you, I am and I think the Administration is gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

2023 08 01 16 r23
2023 08 01 16 r23

“Russia has spent months pummeling the country with missiles, seeking not only to cause destruction but also deplete Ukraine’s air defense stocks. Ukrainian soldiers have described acute shortages of basic ammunition, including mortar rounds and artillery shells. And upwards of 100,000 Ukrainian forces have died in the year-long war, U.S. officials estimate, including the most experienced soldiers.” (politico.com 3/15/23)

Nuland graduated from Brown University in 1983 and served as Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot from 1993-96 before becoming Deputy Director for former Soviet Union affairs.

“Nuland served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s deputy national security adviser from 2003-2005, during the illegal U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, a painful chapter in U.S. history that left over a million Iraqis dead and thousands of U.S. soldiers in body bags.

In 2005, Nuland became ambassador to NATO, where she lobbied Europe to participate in the disastrous U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. In persuading other governments the U.S. could win that war, she sold a lie across Europe to prolong a near 20-year occupation that left Afghanistan broke, with 6 million children and adults at risk of starvation.

Nuland has repeatedly stated that she wants to destabilize other regions in Russia’s nuclear neighborhood: Belarus and Kazakhstan, because they are too friendly with Russia. What critics say she really wants is regime change in Russia, a country of 193 million people, 150 different ethnic minorities and 6,000 nuclear weapons.” (consortiumnews.com 3/8/23)

According to Wikipedia, Victoria is married to Robert Kagan, a foreign policy commentator for the Brookings Institute. Apparently, the Kagan/Nuland family business is manufacturing consent for continuous war among the DC political elite: that’s some strange diplomacy:

“In the summer of 2011, Nuland became special envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe[14] and then became State Department spokesperson.[15]” (wikipedia) In May 2013, Nuland was nominated to act as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, where she was supposed to employ diplomacy in relations with Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet states.”

“In 1997, Kagan co-founded the now-defunct neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century with William Kristol.[4][6][14]Through the work of the PNAC, from 1998, Kagan was an early and strong advocate of military action in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan as well as to ‘remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power’.[15][16] After the 1998 bombing of Iraq was announced Kagan said ‘bombing Iraq isn’t enough’ and called on Clinton to send ground troops to Iraq.[17] In January 2002, Kagan and Kristol falsely claimed in a Weekly Standard article that Saddam Hussein was supporting the ‘existence of a terrorist training camp in Iraq, complete with a Boeing 707 for practicing hijackings, and filled with non-Iraqi radical Muslims’. Kagan and Kristol further alleged that the September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official several months before the attacks.[18] The allegations were later shown to be false.”

“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.” (Henry Kissinger to wsj.com 8/12/22) Why did Kissinger & Nixon go to China in 1971/72, to keep China & Russia from allying. What has Victoria Nuland accomplished: fused China & Russia together in a military alliance.

“‘After my appointment as the defense minister, my first visit is made to Russia in order to demonstrate to the outside world the high level of Chinese-Russian relations,’ Li Shangfu said before the beginning of talks. The trip is also intended to stress Beijing’s firm determination to strengthen strategic cooperation between the militaries of China and Russia, he added.” (rt.com 4/19/23)

“Eight years before his death in 2005 at 101, George Kennan marshaled his Russia expertise again when he warned that in extending ‘NATO’s borders smack up to those of Russia we are making the greatest mistake of the entire post-Cold-War era.’” (foreignpolicy.com 1/23/23)

Not only did Victoria Nuland ignore State Department legend George Kennan’s sage advice, but also that of the current CIA Director in a 2008 cable when he was Ambassador to Moscow:

“Russian Opposition Neuralgic and Concrete: Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.” (Wikileaks)

Alexander Mercouris of The Duran captured the DC War Party best: “If you’re a neocon you have no reverse gear, they are going to double down, triple down, quadruple down,” and right on cue:

“The (spring) offensive is largely the brainchild of US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. She is the éminence grise in the Biden administration when it comes to Ukraine.

2023 08 01 16 23
2023 08 01 16 23

Nuland has not made any secret of her ambition for Ukraine to take back Crimea. Nuland, who is rigidly anti-Russian and anti-Putin, would like to see the Putin government collapse: achieving that in her view requires an absolute victory by Ukraine over Russia, meaning that Ukraine will retake every square meter of its lost land. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agrees.” (asiatimes.com 4/12/23)

If there was ever any doubt about the Nuland/Neocon plan for the future of Russia, they defined it clearly in Foreign Policy magazine: “Russia’s poor performance on the Ukrainian battlefield, and the growing belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat shouldn’t be taken at face value, has emboldened Western analysts and Russian dissidents to publicly call for ‘decolonization’ of Russia itself. They are referring here to the vast Russian Federation, the successor of the Soviet Union that consists of 83 federal entities, including 21 non-Slavic republics. 

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an independent U.S. government agency with members from the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate, and departments of defense, state, and commerce, has declared that decolonizing Russia should be a ‘moral and strategic objective.’” (foreignpolicy.com 4/17/23)

“This has not, as Vladimir Putin and others claim, become a proxy war between the United States or the ‘collective West’ (the U.S. and its European and other allies) against Russia. In the current geopolitical arena, the war is now effectively the reverse—a proxy for a rebellion by Russia and the ‘Rest’ against the United States. The war in Ukraine is perhaps the event that makes the passing of pax Americana apparent to everyone.” (Fiona Hill news.err.ee 5/14/23)

“The same people, the neocons, who ran that [Iraq] operation, lied to us about weapons of mass destruction, tricked us into that war, and who we thought were now out of government forever, pariahs, in disgrace, they’re now all back in the Biden administration with a new project.” (RFK jr, Joe Rogan Experience 6/14/23)

“Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has resigned, and her last day in office is June 30. Her departure has triggered near panic inside the State Department about the person many there fear will be chosen to replace her: Victoria Nuland. Nuland’s hawkishness on Russia and antipathy for Vladimir Putin fits perfectly with the views of President Biden. Nuland is now the undersecretary for political affairs and has been described as ‘running amok,’ in the words of a person with direct knowledge of the situation, among the various bureaus of the State Department while Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on the road.” (seymourhersh.substack.com 6/15/23)

“Blinken’s speech highlights once again that the Biden Administration has no intention of ending this conflict peacefully. The plan, which members of the administration including Blinken have explicitly admitted on numerous occasions, is to use Ukraine to achieve the larger geopolitical goal of weakening Russia. In other words, the Ukrainians are cannon fodder in a U.S. proxy war against Russia.

Blinken’s statement is consistent with reports in Foreign Affairs magazine last September citing numerous American former security officials that Russia and Ukraine had actually reached a tentative peace agreement in April 2022. That deal was scuttled after Boris Johnson, doubtless at the behest of the Biden Administration, visited Kyiv on April 9. Later, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was trying to mediate between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenski, stated that the U.S. and its allies blocked his mediation efforts.

The pattern here is clear. Not only is the administration deceiving the American people about the motives for this costly and tragic war, but by continually escalating it they put the whole world at risk of nuclear conflagration.” (RFKjr 6/19/23)

2023 08 01 16 2r3
2023 08 01 16 2r3

Ukraine Counteroffensive, June 2023

“In an interview with Germany’s Welt am Sonntag published on Sunday, Stoltenberg declared that peace cannot mean freezing the conflict and accepting a deal that is dictated by Russia.Stoltenberg added that only Ukraine can define the conditions that are acceptable,’ an explicit endorsement of Kiev’s vow to drive Russian forces back to pre-conflict borders and seize the Russian territory of Crimea.

If NATO, through the mouth of Stoltenberg, once again declares that they are against freezing, as they say, the conflict in Ukraine, then they want to fight, Lavrov told a press conference. Well, let them fight, we are ready for this, we have long understood the goals of NATO in the situation around Ukraine, which have been formed for many years.’” (rt.com 6/20/23)

“According to the latest intelligence reports, Russia believes that the Ukrainian armed forces now intend to cover their failed counter-offensive in the Donbas by using US-supplied Himars multiple launch artillery and UK-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles, possibly in the longer range domestic version, to attack the Crimea.

If this happens, says Shoigu, Russia will consider both the United States and Britain to have fully entered the war as co-belligerents. And Russia will immediately respond to any such attack on its territory by destroying ‘the decision making centers’ of the Kiev regime.   This is a fairly transparent threat to ‘neutralize’ their government apparatus and personnel, logically including President Zelensky.” (gilbertdoctorow.com 6/20/23)

We have 30 years of Victoria Nuland to thank: “Moreover, America’s ability to rally the world is much diminished, in no small part because respect for the US is much diminished, the result of internal divisions and widespread global opposition to the US interventions in Iraq in 2003 and in Libya in 2011.” (Richard Haass: foreignpolicy.com 6/22/23) 

“The point of the F-16s, in my opinion, is to specifically make sure they take off from NATO territory in order to bait Russia into going after the airfields located in Eastern Europe, I think that’s what the Neocons really want. I think the Neocons know the F-16s are not going to be a game changer, they know the Russians will deal with the F-16s, but they want to make sure those F-16s take off from airfields in Eastern Europe to go to Putin and say what are you going to do about it now? We have F-16s taking off from Romania. Here’s another red line, are you going to hit Romania? I think the Neocons want to get to that point.” (Alex Christoforou, The Duran 6/23/23)

Neocons have no reverse gear: “American intelligence officials briefed senior military and administration officials on Wednesday [June 21] that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, was preparing to take military action against senior Russian defense officials, according to officials familiar with the matter. U.S. spy agencies had indications days earlier that Mr. Prigozhin was planning something and worked to refine that material into a finished assessment, officials said.” (nytimes.com 6/26/23)

Following Prigozhin’s coup attempt: “Blinken has piled up a consistent record for being horribly wrong on his assessments on Russia — starting from the deathly blow the ‘sanctions from hell’ were expected to give to the Russian economy; Putin’s hold on power; Russia’s catastrophic defeat in Ukraine; Russian military’s deficiencies; Kiev’s inexorable military victory, and so on.

In this case, he has reason to feel embittered particularly because of the spectacular unity of the Russian state, political elite, media, regional and federal bureaucracy, and the military and security establishment in rallying behind Putin. Arguably, Putin’s political stature is now unchallengeable and unassailable in Russia and the Americans have to live with that reality long after Joe Biden’s departure from the scene.” (M.K. Bhadrakumar indianpunchline.com 6/26/23)

“‘They [the West and Ukraine] wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, so that soldiers and civilians would die, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would break apart and choke on bloody civil strife,’ the president [Putin] said. ‘They rubbed their hands, dreaming of getting revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counteroffensive, but they miscalculated.’” (rt.com 6/26/23)

2023 08 01 16 e22
2023 08 01 16 e22

Evgeny Prigozhin

“Western nations must have helped businessman Evgeny Prigozhin organize his brief insurrection last week, according to Viktor Zolotov, commander of the National Guard of Russia. Speaking to journalists on Tuesday on the sidelines of a ceremony at the Kremlin awarding decorations, the senior official expressed certainty that the mutiny was inspired by Western special services, because, as they said, they knew about it several weeks ahead of time.’

Media reports claimed that the US intelligence community had prior knowledge about possible trouble coming from Prigozhin and his private military company Wagner Group. Washington has vehemently denied any involvement in the turmoil, which it called a domestic Russian affair.

Zolotov claimed that Prigozhin’s camp has been deliberately leaking focused information about a possible mutiny coming sometime between last Thursday and Sunday. He suggested that Western agents may have been directly involved in conducting the operation.” (rt.com 6/27/23)

“According to Lavrov, the Americans have been too vehement in their denials about having nothing to do with the June 24 mutiny in Russia, while ‘the Europeans were much more explicit about their interests in this particular situation.’ For example, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the main conclusion he drew from what happened in Russia was confirmation of the fact that the EU had to continue arming Ukraine to ‘finish off’ Russia.” (tass.com 6/28/23)

“The fact that the CIA briefed the Gang of Eight in Congress on Prigozhin’s planned uprising two days prior means that the CIA had information from a human source. It could have been a recruited CIA asset or someone recruited and controlled by a foreign intelligence organization. But someone close to Prigozhin was blabbing. Or maybe it was Prigozhin himself.

I find it noteworthy that the Biden Administration went to extraordinary lengths to insist it knew nothing about the coup and certainly did not encourage it or support it. Oh no. Biden, Blinken and Nuland do not want Putin overthrown by force. Perish the thought.” (sonar21.com 6/28/23)

“Pity the Washington columnists and national security correspondents who seem to rely heavily on official backgrounders with White House and State Department officials. Given the published results of such briefings, those officials seem unable to look at the reality of the past few weeks, or the total disaster that has befallen the Ukraine military’s counter-offensive.

There is an enormous gap between the way the professionals in the American intelligence community assess the situation and what the White House and the supine Washington press project to the public by uncritically reproducing the statements of Blinken and his hawkish cohorts.

The Washington press in recent days seems to be slowly coming to grips with the enormity of the disaster, but there is no public evidence that President Biden and his senior aides in the White House and State Department aides understand the situation.”(seymourhersh.substack.com 6/29/23)

The Neocons are going to double down, triple down, quadruple down: “CNN reports the Biden administration is strongly considering approving the transfer of cluster munition warheads to Ukraine. The weapons are banned under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which has been signed by U.S. allies including the U.K., France and Germany. Ukraine, Russia and the United States never signed the treaty.” (democracy now.com 6/30/23)

And if the Neocons quintuple down by sending F-16s: “U.S. or NATO personnel tasked with maintaining any F-16 fighter jets sent to Ukraine would become ‘legitimate military targets’ for Russian strikes, a former U.S. Air Force commander has told Newsweek.

Countries that supply fourth-generation fighters such as F-16s to Kyiv will likely also need to send contractors or military personnel who have experience maintaining the sophisticated jets, according to retired Lt. Gen. Charlie “Tuna” Moore, former deputy commander of the Cyber Command.” (newsweek.com 7/6/23)

“Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned the US against supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions which have been banned in more than 100 countries due to the severe risk they pose to civilian populations.

In a statement released on Thursday, the NGO sounded the alarm over media reports that the US government is considering whether to approve deliveries of the deadly weapons, which Kiev has been requesting for months. The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing a senior White House source, that Washington was expected to greenlight the move. CBS said on Wednesday that the US could make a decision as early as this week.” (rt.com 7/6/23)

“President Biden has approved the provision of U.S. cluster munitions for Ukraine, with drawdown of the weapons from Defense Department stocks due to be announced Friday. The move, which will bypass U.S. law prohibiting the production, use or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent, comes amid concerns about Kyiv’s lagging counteroffensive against entrenched Russian troops and dwindling Western stocks of conventional artillery.” (washingtonpost.com 7/7/23)

2023 08 01 16 2e2
2023 08 01 16 2e2

Jens Stoltenberg

“The US is willing to offer Kiev a sort of security arrangement currently offered to Israel instead of membership in NATO, President Joe Biden told CNN in an interview previewed on Friday. ‘I don’t think it’s ready for membership in NATO,’ Biden said of Ukraine. I don’t think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war.

Membership in the US-led military bloc means the commitment to defend all of its territory, so ‘if the war is going on, then we’re all in a war. We’re at war with Russia, if that were the case,’ Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.” (rt.com 7/7/23)

“The allies will give political approval to the first detailed war plans on how to defend all of NATO territory since the end of the Cold War…Those plans, drawn up by General Christopher Cavoli, the American commander of allied forces in Europe, cover more than 4,000 pages and tell countries in specific terms what is required of them to defend themselves and their allies.” (nytimes.com 7/10/23)

“Many of the foreign mercenaries who flocked to fight for Kiev have met an inglorious end on the battlefields of the Ukrainian conflict. While Western governments appear rather tight-lipped when it comes to discussing their nationals fighting alongside Ukrainian militants and neo-Nazi gunmen employed by Zelensky, Western media outlets periodically run stories about this or that foreign ‘volunteer’ getting killed while fighting Russian troops.” (sputnikglobe.com 7/11/23)

2023 08 01 16 21e
2023 08 01 16 21e

This short video, which surfaced online on July 10, allegedly depicts the aftermath of a clash between the Russian military and a group of foreign mercenaries – “adventurers”, as the social media post’s author described them – in the vicinity of the Lugovoye village in Zaporozhye Region of Russia.

“Russia on Tuesday said France’s decision to send long-range missiles to Ukraine is ‘erroneous,’ and countermeasures will follow to mitigate risks. ‘Of course, it remains to be clarified and found out exactly what (effective casualty) radius we are talking about. This, from our point of view, is an erroneous decision, fraught with consequences for the Ukrainian side. Because, naturally, this will force us to take countermeasures,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a press briefing in Moscow.

He added that the West’s supply of new weapons to Ukraine ‘only aggravates its fate. These decisions (to supply heavier weapons) cannot, are not able to turn the course of the special military operation. They can only aggravate the fate of the Ukrainian, Kyiv regime,’ he said.” (aa.com.fr 7/11/23)

Of course Victoria Nuland and the Neocons were always going to escalate by quintupling down, they have no reverse gear: “Kiev will likely get F-16 fighter jets from Washington’s allies in Europe who may have some to spare, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday. While many NATO countries have offered to train Ukrainian pilots, so far none have pledged to send actual airplanes.

On the F-16 fighter jets, President [Joe] Biden took the decision some weeks ago, working in close consultation with allies, to begin the training of Ukrainian pilots on those jets, Sullivan told Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos from Vilnius, Lithuania, where he is attending the NATO summit. That training will take some time, and then there will be the transfer of F-16s, likely from European countries that have excess F-16 supplies,Sullivan added.” (rt.com 7/12/23)

“By continuing to provide more sophisticated arms to Kiev, the US and its NATO satellites create the risk of a direct armed confrontation with Russia, and this may lead to catastrophic consequences, Lavrov warned in his interview with Lenta.ru on Wednesday. The plans to supply F-16s to Kiev is yet another example of an escalatory move by the West and in itself is an extremely dangerous development,’ he stated.

We have informed the nuclear powers – the US, UK and France – that Russia can’t ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons, the foreign minister continued. ‘No assurances [by the West] will help here,’ he warned. In the midst of fighting, the Russian military isn’t going to investigate whether any specific jet is equipped to deliver nuclear weapons or not, he added. ‘The very fact of the appearance of such systems within the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be considered by us as a threat from the West in the nuclear domain,’ Lavrov said.” (rt.com 7/13/23)

“There are other signs of internal stress, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland has been blocked from being promoted to replace the much respected Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Nuland’s anti-Russian politics and rhetoric matches the tone and point of view of Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken,” but Democrats are worried about their Ukraine policy ahead of next year’s elections. (seymourhersh.substack.com 7/13/23)

2023 08 01 16 21
2023 08 01 16 21

The Russian navy’s training class ship Perekop sailed into Havana. (Patrick Oppmann/CNN)

As the Neocons continue to escalate in Ukraine, the Russians counter in Cuba: “A Russian navy ship docks in Cuba as tough times bring the old friends together. ‘We are condemning, we are rejecting, the expansion of NATO towards Russia’s borders,’ Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told Russian-controlled network, RT, in a rare interview in May. He also blasted US economic sanctions on Russia, while heralding Russian ‘projects of cooperation and collaboration’ under development in Cuba.” (cnn.com 7/13/23)

We know Victoria Nuland and the Neocons have no reverse gear, after the Cluster Bombs & F-16s were green lighted: “President Joe Biden has authorized the deployment of up to 3,000 U.S. military reservists to Europe as part of a long-term operation in response to Russian actions in Ukraine. Biden issued an executive order on Thursday authorizing military leaders, including the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, to mobilize ‘select reserve forces’ in an effort to augment Operation Atlantic Resolve, which began in 2014.

The move comes shortly after Biden attended a two-day NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, this week where the president recommitted to the alliance, and amid Ukraine’s continued push to join NATO.” (newsweek.com 7/14/23)

“By ordering the deployment of 3,000 more reservists to Europe, US President Joe Biden is preparing to fight Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said. ‘Biden has lost his way,’ Kennedy tweeted on Friday, arguing that the president should focus on America’s domestic problems instead of trying to achieveglobal military dominance. I want people to understand what this troop mobilization is about. It’s about preparing for a ground war with Russia,’ he said.” (rt.com 7/15/23)

“The West is evidently disappointed that Kiev’s much-lauded counteroffensive has failed to produce any results and has led to high levels of Ukrainian casualties, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Kiev has received ‘colossal amounts of resources,’ including all kinds of Western weapons and ‘thousands of foreign mercenaries and advisers,’ but has still failed in its campaign, Putin stated during a government meeting on Friday. The leader praised the bravery, resolve, and professionalism of Russian soldiers and officers. He also argued that Western military equipment had proven to be inferior in some ways even to Soviet-era weapons.” (rt.com 7/21/23)

This is what they mean by failing up: “US President Joe Biden requested that Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland serve as acting Deputy Secretary of State following current officeholder Wendy Sherman‘s upcoming departure from the role, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.” (urdupoint.com 7/24/23)

“The Biden Administration played a vital role in both recent deadly attacks on the Crimean Bridge, providing Ukraine with the necessary technology, US journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Thursday, citing a US official. ‘Of course it was our technology,’ the US official was quoted by Hersh as saying. ‘The drone was remotely guided and half submerged—like a torpedo.’

When Hersh asked if there was any thought before the bridge attacksabout the possibility of Russia’s retaliation, the official responded with ‘What will Putin do? We don’t think that far. Our national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There’s no adult supervision.’” (sputnikglobe.com 7/27/23)

“At least 15 people sought medical aid after an explosion rocked the Russian city of Taganrog on July 28. The Russian Ministry of Defense described this incident as a terrorist attack perpetrated by the Kiev regime. Ukrainian forces carried out the attack using an S-200 surface-to-air missile converted into a surface-to-surface munition, the ministry said in a statement. The missile was detected and destroyed in mid-air by Russian air defense units, with the debris landing within the city limits.” (sputnikglobe.com 7/28/23)

“Western countries have spent years steering Ukraine towards a conflict with Russia, as they planned to use Kiev as a tool to undermine Russia’s national security, President Vladimir Putin claimed on Friday. He argued that Russia’s retaliation, including its ongoing military operation in the neighboring state, was justified. 

‘This problem was not created yesterday. It was instigated by certain forces in the West, which for a long time were preparing a hybrid war against our country, and did everything to transform Ukraine into an instrument of undermining the foundations of the security of the Russian Federation,’ Putin said during a meeting with the members of the African peace mission in St. Petersburg, following the two-day Russia-Africa Summit.” (rt.com 7/28/23)

“Even if Moscow will be somewhat strategically weakened, whatever the outcome, it’s the US – in the view of Chinese scholars – that may have committed its greatest strategic blunder since the establishment of the Empire: turning the Ukraine Project into an existential conflict, and committing the entire Empire and all its vassals to a Total War against Russia.

That’s why we have no peace negotiations, and the refusal even of a cease fire; the only possible outcome devised by the Straussian neocon psychos who run US foreign policy is unconditional Russian surrender.” (Pepe Escobar, Zerohedge.com 7/30/23)

“‘NATO has been training the Ukrainian army since 2014, NATO partners have been providing the Ukrainian armed forces with the necessary weapons and training since 2014,’ the head of the military bloc [Stoltenberg] said.” (@smotri.media 7/30/23)

Victoria Nuland has not only “fuck[ed] the EU”, but the US as well:

The collapse of U.S. influence over Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom’s new alliances with China and Iran are painful emblems of the abject failure of the Neocon strategy of maintaining U.S. global hegemony with aggressive projections of military power. China has displaced the American Empire by deftly projecting, instead, economic power. Over the past decade, our country has spent trillions bombing roads, ports, bridges, and airports. China spent the equivalent building the same across the developing world. The Ukraine war is the final collapse of the Neocon’s short-lived ‘American Century.’ The Neocon projects in Iraq and Ukraine have cost $8.1 trillion, hollowed out our middle class, made a laughingstock of U.S. military power and moral authority, pushed China and Russia into an invincible alliance, destroyed the dollar as the global currency, cost millions of lives and done nothing to advance democracy or win friendships or influence.” (RFK Jr. 4/3/23)

“If Zelensky’s cowardice allows America’s foreign policy neocon scum to push Ukraine into a doomed offensive, it will be the most wasted effusion of blood yet in this catastrophic ‘proxy war.’ And it will be the most disgraceful ending possible to the Neocon’s 30 years ‘forever war’ that dropped the United States from a half century illusion of dominant hegemony to an also ran with an obsolete defense establishment and a wrecked economy, all in less than 2 years…” (Thomas Lipscomb domigood.com 5/3/23)

The Brooklyn Bridge UFO | The Weirdest Story You’ll Ever Hear

Philly Cheese Steak Soup

Philly Cheesesteak Soup 7
Philly Cheesesteak Soup 7

Ingredients

  • 18 ounces rib eye or eye roll steak, frozen, thinly sliced
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 medium onion, cut into thin wedges
  • 1 medium green bell pepper, cut into strips
  • 11 ounces Cheddar cheese soup or cheese sauce
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

  1. Cut each sandwich steak into 1/2-inch strips.
  2. In 2-quart saucepan over medium heat, in hot butter, cook onion and green pepper until tender, stirring occasionally.
  3. Add steak strips. Cook until meat is browned, stirring often.
  4. Stir in soup. Gradually stir in milk, water and cheese. Heat through.

Do the average Chinese people hate the government?

I’m British having lived and worked in China for 14 years. Married to a Chinese and have 300 Chinese employees in my factory.

In my experience the Chinese people have a healthy suspicion of all people in authority, particularly those in Government; and they are particularly cynical about corruption. Most Chinese I know, and have discussed the matter with, are extremely happy with President Xi Jinping, and they mostly support his opposition of the US’ ridiculous trade war. Most are extremely happy with his handling of the economy and reduction of official corruption in the last half-decade.

In the last year nationalism has been on the rise, and they completely support the idea of a New Long March to resist the Americans. Chinese are voting with their Renminbi: they are choosing not to buy American brands, even the USD 350 billion+ that is Made in China under US brands for the Chinese domestic market.

Foreigners who have not lived in China, or have not been here for an extended period of time, often cannot understand why anyone would be happy living in a so-called non-democratic society. My answer would be this: do you want a vote every four years, or do you want a competent government that gives the people everything they need to be successful? Voting, or not voting, guarantees nothing. Democracy sometimes delivers result, often not. Autocracy sometimes delivers results, often not.

China has a unique system of government that works for them – really works for them. I don’t think any Zhongguo Tong (foreign China expert) would recommend trying the Chinese model in any other country. Likewise, why on earth would China want to adopt the US model.

So in summary, does the average Chinese person hate the government. No they don’t, far from it, but they do have a very healthy cynicism about all authority no matter where it lies. In fact, I doubt that most Chinese people even think about this question. If they get 3 points on their license, and a 2,000 yuan fine, for jumping a red light, they sure as hell hate that the government for putting a camera above the intersection to catch them. That’s the level at which most Chinese would hate the government if they hate them at all. I can’t imagine most Americans are too happy getting a speeding ticket; but does that mean they ‘hate’ the Federal Government as a result?

China overtaking US – NATO member’s PM: the balance is shifting and Washington must accept that its hegemony is about to end, Viktor Orban has said

The world is facing the biggest power shift in decades, with the US poised to lose its leading position to China, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday.

This could result in a major conflict between Washington and Beijing unless the US accepts that it cannot be the “winner” forever, he warned.

“[China] has become a manufacturing powerhouse and is now overtaking America,” Orban said in his annual speech in the town of Baile Tusnad in Romania’s Eastern Transylvania.

In just 30 years, China has undergone the industrial revolution that took the West around three centuries, the Hungarian prime minister said, adding that America is about to say ‘goodbye’ to its status as the world’s only superpower.

Beijing is also challenging the values Washington seeks to portray as universal, Orban said. China considers American values to be a “hostile ideology,” he said, adding that “there is some truth in it.”

Such a development would certainly not sit well with Washington, which will want to remain “on top of the world” forever, Orban warned. He said attempts to challenge existing hegemony had led to major conflict on multiple occasions in human history. “There are no eternal winners and eternal losers,” he added.

A conflict between the two great powers is likely but not unavoidable, the Hungarian leader believes. The world needs to find a new balance, and the two opposing parties should recognize each other as equals, he said. Major nations have to “accept that, today, instead of American dominance, there are two suns in the sky,” Orban added.

He also painted a grim picture of Europe’s future by saying it’s about to lose its dominant position in the global economy. Orban blamed the West’s anti-Russian policies for this development. The EU is already “rich but weak,” he said, adding that it would further lose its competitive advantages as a result of its determination to impose sanctions on Russia.

The idea that Russia can be separated from the world economy through various restrictions is an “illusion,” he warned. The EU has already witnessed the results of its erroneous decisions, Orban said, adding that “others buy Russian energy instead of us, and we pay more for energy than ever before.”

According to Orban, the UK and Italy would drop out of the world’s top ten economies, and Germany would fall to 10th place, down from its current fourth position. A significant part of the European economy is still linked to Russia despite all the rhetoric about sanctions, he said.

Hungary has emerged as one of the major critics of Western policies amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Budapest has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and peace deal in Ukraine, and has criticized the EU for sending arms to Kiev. In June, Orban told the German tabloid Bild that a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield was “impossible.” Hungary has also insisted that anti-Russia sanctions are hurting Europe more than they hurt

What is the nastiest thing you’ve done for revenge?

I worked as an office manager at an engineering firm in the 90’s. We sent and received many of our deeds and surveys via fax machine back then.

While there was an internet and email, spam hadn’t become the massive issue that it is today. What we would get at our business were entrepreneurs sending unsolicited advertising by way of fax. It wasn’t just annoying but costly in fax machine paper rolls.

There was this one guy who was a particular nuisance. He would send several faxes a day and always with a DILBERT cartoon pasted to the bottom of the page. It finally got to the point where I was forced to call his business and request he cease and desist.

Rather than stop, he made a point of doubling his faxes to our number.

Like I said, there WAS an internet in the previous century, and one of the sites I used to frequent was a cartoon page that happened to carry Scott Adams’ strip. So few people actually used social media back then that it wasn’t entirely uncommon for a media person to provide their personal email address on a website. I even carried on a terse exchange with Roger Ebert once over a factual error in one of his movie reviews.

So I wrote to Scott Adams, pointed out that someone was reprinting DILBERT without his permission, and provided contact information for the perpetrator.

Not three hours later I got a phone call from the fax bomber asking that I call off the dogs.

Evidently Adams forwarded my email to his law firm and they made their presence felt.

In India, generally the students who do not perform well in Academics are looked down upon as Evil and treated as lesser mortals. How are the lesser intelligent students treated in the Foreign countries other than India?

In Singapore – A Plumber takes a 3 year course after finishing secondary school. He is called a Certified Professional. Once he gets his certification – he can charge a service charge for his work. An Average plumber makes S$ 34125 a year which is around 65% of what an Engineer makes (S$ 52000 a year).

Plumbers can drive their own bikes or even cars, take their kids out to the Mall on Saturdays, Eat at KFC or McDonalds or even in other restaurants and go on a Vacation once in a few years.

In US – A Plumber is called a Services Professional. He charges between $ 60 – $ 300 an hour for his professional charges and owns his car and even a mortgage.

In these two countries and in 25 more – being a Plumber or a Carpenter or an Electrician is defined as being a Skilled Professional (CHINA) or Certified Professional (Singapore) or Services Professional (USA).

In India – a Plumber is simply someone who fixes pipes. A Plumber is automatically deemed to be just above a servant. Same for a Carpenter or a Electrician. They are all considered to be inferior


Generally speaking – Indians are CLERKS

200 years of clerical work for the British have made us clerks to such an extent that even our Doctors and Engineers are clerks preferring to by heart and mug up solutions than understand and work on fundamentals.

Students need not learn. They just need to get marks. It doesnt matter if 10 minutes after the paper – the student remembers zilch. As long as the student gets 95% marks – its all fine.

As i have always maintained –Average Students will be Average.

Countries like US or China or Singapore have a place for Average Students. They can move to suitable vocations where they can excel and shine without needing any academics.

In China – a Below Average Student whose score did not merit college – can work on a Vocational Program to Semi Skilled Construction and rise to become a Foreman in a Construction Company. It is an honorable job.

In USA – a Student can join an Air Conditioner Servicing Program and make a Good Career out of servicing Air Conditioners.

In India – Sadly you dont get the marks – there is simply no vocation which wont be met with disdain or insulting looks.

Mothers weep when their children get 80% marks. Mothers weep when their children dont become engineers. Fathers hide from relatives because their kids got only 70% in their XII standard exams.

Parents would prefer to take out huge loans to get their kid into Engineering college rather than allow the kid to find his vocation and explore.

Its why Predators can succeed so well in India with respect to Education who will be crushed and thrown out of any other country.

Turning vanilla flavoring into pure dopamine!

In today’s video, I’ll be making a neurotransmitter called Dopamine! This compound regulates many functions in the body but is mainly associated with feelings of motivation! So follow me today as I turn vanilla flavoring into dopamine!

What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

It wasn’t said to me, it was said to one of my colleagues. I worked at a small new car dealership in New England. I had worked there for over five years as a manager, when the current owner sold the dealership. The previous owner was a really nice human being, and he had a gentleman’s agreement and handshake with the new owner that he wouldn’t let any employees go or change anybody’s pay plan. The new owner came in and introduces himself to everyone in the sales department. He proceeded to tell us what a nice guy he is, and how he went to church seven days a week.

The first few days that he was there, he went back to one of the other department managers outside of sales, who had worked there for over 25 years. He walked in and introduced himself as the new owner and without even a conversation told him to pack up his desk, that he was fired. The second thing he did was slash all the managers’ pay plans by almost half. I give you this information as a background so you understand the morals and lack of honor this gentleman has.

Fast forward five weeks. They had hired a young man to take the position of sales manager, reporting to the general sales manager. The young man was married, and his wife had cancer, and was going through chemotherapy.

When he interviewed for the job he made it clear to the owner that he needed to be off on Wednesdays, because that was the day he took his wife for chemotherapy, which was a two-hour drive each way. The owner understood and agreed. The sales manager started the next week.

About three weeks later in the Saturday morning sales meeting, the owner stands up and says that he is taking out a double full-page ad for a sale starting that day and running for one week. He said that all days off were canceled. The young sales manager spoke up sheepishly, reminding the owner he had to take his wife to chemotherapy that coming Wednesday. The owner stood there and actually said, and I quote:

“I don’t care if your wife has cancer, I don’t care if you have cancer, I don’t care if you’re f****** dying!!! I said all days off are canceled.”

I was stunned beyond belief! I was almost certain I had imagined it. I couldn’t even think those words could come out of the mouth of another human being, especially your employer, about one of his managers, much less any human being!

Shocked, I glanced around the table at the other managers and the sales people, and the look on their face was one of disbelief. I looked at him, and asked him inquisitively, “Excuse me?”

He responds that unless we had a hearing problem, we heard him just fine.

I sit there stunned for probably two minutes, although it felt like hours. Disgusted, I get up and walk out of the meeting and go into my office. I closed the door, and sat there for the next 45 minutes thinking. Finally I get up, leave my office, and walk into the owner’s office.

I resign on the spot! No notice, no nothing. I told him he didn’t deserve notice, and that I was leaving immediately. He asked me what the hell I’m doing and who the hell do I think I am. I tell him I’m a human being, but I don’t know what he is, and I don’t work for Monsters!

I’ve never walked out on a job in my life, ever, but this “man” deserved no respect because he didn’t give any.

The last thing I said to him as I walked out the door was “Have a phantasmagorical day!” with my middle finger raised up in the air in the salute he deserved.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Full Episode

Maggie and Negan travel into a post-apocalyptic Manhattan long ago cut off from the mainland. The crumbling city is filled with the dead and denizens who have made New York City their own world full of anarchy, danger, beauty, and terror.

Its been years since I watched this series.

I find the latest incarnation … prescient.

Maybe I grew out of this…

…perhaps its because I left the USA, and it no longer “feels right” to me any longer.

Do Japanese people forget to give tips when traveling abroad and eating in a restaurant?

They are not used to give tips. Last time I visited Japan (2019) , went into a nice restaurant, was so happy with the service.

I gave the female some extra money.

She was really offended and upset:- “Don’t you believe we have a decent salary? Keep your money for yourself “.🙏

I can live with that. Pay people decent salaries, so we get rid of tips! Japan and Nepal, strictly believe good service is simply part of life, so tipping should only reward good service.

Do you pay extra in a grocery store?

Btw, it’s banned in China. I can live with that as well 🙂

main qimg f634e12604228a91bc84b8e1ec2f2a14
main qimg f634e12604228a91bc84b8e1ec2f2a14

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

I was homeless and trying to study at college while living on the streets. I had no money for food or bus fare etc and was struggling to walk miles to college with little to eat. I managed for a while until I collapsed in class. At the hospital I tearfully told my professor that I’d have to leave. He asked me to give him a few days and he’d be there when I was discharged. At discharge he turned up with 4 of my classmates. They had rented me a room, paid the deposit and first months rent, gave me basic furnishings and made it look nice. Food was in the fridge. The professor had organised a bus pass and a grant to cover books and food for the year. It was the kindest thing anyone ever did for me. They gave me a home. And they gave me a future.

Can Xi Jinping keep China’s stability together for a long time?

I’m not sure what you mean by “stable” in a very rapidly changing and increasingly unpredictable world.

I will assume that you mean would he be able to keep China peaceful and out of conflict.

I assume that Xi’s view is that it is not in China’s interest to go to war with anyone because it would hurt China’s economy and lead to potential instability. When politicians start wars, they always assume that the war will be short after securing their political goals. The problem is that wars are very unpredictable, and always go out of control.

Xi’s main challenge is that the single nation China is most likely to have a war with is the US. The US sees China as a huge threat to its global leadership role, and feels that time is on China’s side, not the US’s. For this reason, US politicians are using Taiwan as an issue to provoke China into a conflict with the US.

From the perspective of many in the US, it’s now or never.

Xi has no control over any actions the US may take.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Say hi to this guy. He works at a restaurant in Beijing.

main qimg 3600ac61f0e45ab01e1c00e51532ca2f lq
main qimg 3600ac61f0e45ab01e1c00e51532ca2f lq

I go to his restaurant every day (approx) to have my lunch. The restaurant follows self-service and a token system. So, the moment someone orders food, he will give him/her a token number. He will announce your number when the food is ready. Post that, just go to the counter, collect and enjoy your meal.

I don’t know his name. He doesn’t speak the languages that I speak. We don’t talk. He only remembers me with my face since I am probably the one who doesn’t look Chinese here.

Our relationship is very simple. I visit the restaurant and he places the order by himself. He knows what I eat there. I have never seen him serving a customer to his/her table. But, for me, he brings the food to my table without me even asking for it. Then, he says something in Chinese which means (I guess) enjoy your meal.

When I pass by the restaurant, he passes me a smile. When I leave, he passes me a smile. When I reach the counter to order food, he smiles.

Once, the restaurant was extremely crowded. There was hardly any place to sit and even stand near the billing counter. He stopped taking more orders for a minute just to grab the plate and serve my food to my table. I am sure his customers were giving me an angry look back then.

Since last 3 months or so, this is it. I can’t think of anything nicer than this, that too from an unknown person who can’t even talk to me.

As a housekeeper, what is the most “F-that” situation you’ve had in your career?

I had a business cleaning houses for 22 years. I had this lady that was an alcoholic. Every week I would throw away at least for gallons of empty vodka bottles. One morning when I got there the drapes were not open. I knocked and there was no answer. The door was unlocked so I went in. There was dark spots on the carpet in the living room. I shouted her name and no answer. Thinking she was in the bathroom I started cleaning the kitchen. The kitchen was more messy then usual. I went into her room and noticed dark spots on the floor. She was moaning on the bed. She had me help her to her bathtub to wash. There was poop and blood all over everywhere. She did not want me to call the ambulance. Instead I called her son who lived in a mother state. I told him the situation. He said please stay and watch her until the ambulance arrived. I did. I finished the house and left. Her son called me later and thanked me. If I had not come that day she would have bled to death from ulcers. I hate alcoholism.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

When I was running from an abusive situation, i lived in a shelter on welfare. After my 2 month stay was up, i had to find a room to rent or they’d send me to a homeless shelter (the one i was in was for female abuse victims and their children if they have any. Since there was a high demand for rooms there, the stays were short). I ended up finding a room that was 500$ per month. On welfare as a si gle person with no kids, I got 709$ per month. I went to view the room and the landlord asked me why I wanted to live there. I explained the situation and he immediately said yes. I ended up moving in not even a week later. He let me live there for free with unlimited wifi and cable TV included for 8 months of my 13 month stay with him. After the 8 months I had a job and could pay the rent, but even then he said if I couldnt make the rent to let him know. Hed share his food from his fridge with me, give me cash money randomly with notes that said things like “buy whatever you want” and “have a nice day”, hed offer to give me rides to the store and job interviews, he offered to get me a bus pass (85$ for one that lasts a month), hed invite me to share BBQs with him, his wife and the other 4 tenants. He bought everyone Christmas gifts (a box of Ferrero Roche chocolates and a 50$ amazon gift card). He never asked for anything back. He became more like a friend to me than a landlord. He was amazing

Song Starts Global Movement; People WORLDWIDE “Get” What The Man Sings About . . .

World Hal Turner 18 August 2023

This video is blowing away the music charts. It resonates with so many people in the West. This song is on fire.

As you read this, today is Friday, August 18, 2023.  Two nights ago, on my worldwide TALK Radio show, I played a new song by Oliver Anthony called “Rich Men North of Richmond” and reported to my global audience that this song has struck a chord with common, everyday, working people throughout America.  The next day, the song topped Apple Music Charts for GLOBAL distribution.

I take no credit at all for the song reaching the top of the GLOBAL chart, but I certainly hope and pray that I helped.

This song speaks to the real life, everyday struggle that you, and me, and every other common, working-class person, lives.  It speaks to the reason for such struggle: The rich men north of Richmond (Virginia) – that is to say, Washington, DC.

The song has real global appeal and a user on Twitter, now called “X,” edited together a video of Podcasters around the world, all listening to the song together, online.  Some of them actually had tears in their eyes.

I think it’s because they finally came to realize, we are ALL hit by the situations created by these “Rich Men north of Richmond.”  NONE of us is immune.  It is a struggle for ALL of us common folk.  THe song brings to the forefront the realization that ALL these troubles, all the strife, all the fighting, all the division – pitting groups against each other – is ALL being done by the “Rich men north of Richmond.”

Below is that video of the Podcasters worldwide, of all ages, races, shapes, and sizes, listening to the song.  Watch the reactions.  It is soooooooo powerful.   In those reactions, there are real tears from folk who KNOW how hard it is nowadays just to live.  In their faces there is almost relief that THEY are not alone in this struggle; the realization that all of us are being affected, badly.   And moreover, we are ALL so very tired of this bullshit.  

Revolution…

…is brewing.

Some stories of American Expats in other lands that mirror the stories of those of us inside of China

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

In the race (and millions of dollars in funding) to convince the world how evil China is they neglect one important point. Which is that everywhere outside of the USA looks like paradise now. Not only China. Everywhere.

It’s cheaper, cleaner, politer, calmer, nicer, with better infrastructure, and all the rest. The only people that don’t see this are the hypnotized American zombies glued to FOX “news”, CNN, Alex Jones and Hal Turner.

Here we talk about what it is like outside the prison walls, and at the other end of the computer screen.

Consider these examples. Obtained from "These 7 expats left the U.S. to start over—here’s how they earn an income overseas: ‘We spend less on all expenses’" which was  Janet Blaser, Contributor@WhyWeLeftAmerica
All rights and credit to her, and all the standard disclaimers apply.

Catalina Viviel

Catalina Viviel

Catalina Viviel interviewed for jobs at several South American countries before finally getting an offer in Colombia.
.

More and more people are discovering that not only can they live abroad and be happy, safe and comfortable, but that they can successfully earn an income.

That’s exactly what I did when I left the U.S. for Mazatlán, Mexico in 2006. I lived off a steady income from freelance editing jobs and running M!, a local arts and entertainment magazine I started.

Colin Bucell, 47

Colin Bucell

.
Currently in Morocco, Colin Bucell lives on his sailboat, which doubles as an income source via private tours and excursions.
.

Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Currently an expat in: Morocco
Occupation: Sailboat excursions
Annual income: $12,000

In 2011, Colin Bucell had a dream to sail around the world. He took early retirement at age 37 and went first to Mexico. Since then, he’s lived in more than 60 countries.

“Every day is an exciting new adventure!” Bucell tells CNBC Make It from his sailboat in Morocco. “And all for a fraction of what my California expenses were.”

Bucell lives on his sailboat, which doubles as an income source via private tours and excursions — advertised through word of mouth — wherever he is. He’s found health care and food to be much cheaper everywhere he goes.

Spain, Thailand and Mexico are countries where he could happily settle down if he wanted to; he says it’s great that he’s been able to thoroughly test the livability of all of them.

Shawn Supra, 45

Shawn Supra

Shawn Supra, a musician and furniture restorer, currently lives in Australia with his wife Diana.
.

Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Currently an expat in: Sydney, Australia
Occupation: Musician and furniture restorer
Annual income: $32,500

Love was the motivating factor behind musician Shawn Supra’s move to Australia in 2020, where he met his future wife Diana while on tour. They first settled in the U.S., but as things began to change politically and socially, they decided it was time to move to Australia.

“Living in the U.S., there’s such a sense of fear. It’s almost drilled into you that there’s danger around every corner. I don’t feel that here. Everyone is more relaxed,” Supra says.

He also likes the free health care in Australia, and that the income from his furniture restoration business entitles him to superannuation from the government — similar to U.S. Social Security benefits.

Kema Ward-Hopper, 39

Kema Ward-Hopper

.
“We love our lives here. We’re treated as humans first,” says Kema Ward-Hopper, who now lives in Costa Rica with her family.
.

Hometown: Houston, Texas
Currently an expat in: Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica
Occupation: English teacher and yoga instructor
Annual income: $24,000 to $33,000

In 2017, after Kema Ward-Hopper was diagnosed with breast cancer and when Hurricane Harvey destroyed her Houston home, a family trip to Costa Rica turned into a permanent move.

“We love our lives here,” she says. “We’re treated as humans first. We didn’t always have the luxury of been seen as people in the U.S.”

Although the pandemic shut down Ward-Hopper and husband Willie’s income streams for months, they’re disciplined savers and their expenses in Costa Rica are low.

An added bonus was the birth of her son last year, even after doctors said chemotherapy had rendered her unable to conceive. “Health-wise, I did a complete 180 after moving here,” says Ward-Hopper. “I healed both physically and emotionally.”

Chasity Diggs, 37

Chasity Diggs

.
“We’ve been able to exceed our goals without having to make sacrifices in our daily lives,” says Chasity Diggs, who now lives in Singapore with her family.
.

Hometown: Greensboro, North Carolina
Currently an expat in: Singapore
Occupation: Behavior intervention specialist
Annual income: $170,000

Chasity Diggs is no stranger to living outside the U.S. Before moving to Singapore about six months ago, she and her family lived in China.

The primary reason was so their oldest daughter could attend an international school. The family also wanted a better work-life balance and to be in a more diverse country.

“However, the best part of living overseas are the financial benefits. We’ve been able to exceed our goals without having to make sacrifices in our daily lives. Housing costs are covered by my employer, so we’re able to save a considerable amount of money each month,” says Diggs.

Carol Markino, 52

Carol Markino

.
Carol Markino lives in Rome and works as an English teacher.
.

Hometown: Dover, Ohio
Currently an expat in: Rome, Italy
Occupation: English teacher and language consultant
Annual income: $13,500

Having visited Italy many times when she was in college, Carol Markino always knew that someday she wanted to stay there long-term. It’s now been 30 years since she moved to Rome.

“As an Italian-American, I’ve always been attracted to my roots,” says Markino. “I love that I live in a city that’s full of beauty — not just museums, but wonderful buildings, architecture and style.”

She also appreciates the culture: “Italians work hard, but they understand there’s more to life than just work.”

Tim Leffel, 57

Originally from: Tampa, Florida
Currently an expat in: Guanajuato, Mexico
Occupation: Travel writer
Annual income: $60,000

Tim Leffel

Many factors drew Tim Leffel to Mexico, particularly the “perfect weather all year” and low cost of living.
.

“It was one of those love-at-first-sight visits,” says Tim Leffel. “I was in a few central Mexico cities on assignment, and Guanajuato really struck a chord.”

Many factors drew him to Mexico, particularly the “perfect weather all year” and low cost of living. “We spend less on all expenses — including private school for our daughter — than we did just on rent and utilities in Tampa,” he says.

Well-traveled family and friends admire their lifestyle. Some were even inspired to move abroad themselves, while others “seem afraid of the scary world beyond the borders.”

“It’s the message that has been pounded into their heads. They’ve probably expected us to be kidnapped or robbed by now. I hope that by seeing a steady stream of happy photos as we live and travel around, they’re getting a bit of balance.”

Catalina Viviel, 48

Catalina Viviel

.
Originally from New York, Catalina Viviel now lives in Bogota, Colombia.
.

Hometown: Long Island, New York
Currently an expat in: Bogota, Colombia
Occupation: Teacher and resource room coordinator
Annual income: $75,000

“I’d only been to Colombia once, when I met my dad’s entire side of the family for the first time,” says Catalina Viviel. “I never forgot that trip and the warmth of the people.”

Working in education, Viviel began her expat life with a two-year contract in Marrakech, Morocco. Then she went back to the U.S., where she found herself “itching to go abroad again.” She interviewed for jobs at several South American countries before finally getting an offer in Colombia.

“People thought I was crazy to change countries and become a single mom, all the while navigating a new language during a pandemic,” says Viviel. “Were there days I cried? Absolutely.”

Now halfway into her two-year commitment, Viviel says she’s not ready to leave and has requested to extend her contract.

“It’s amazing being able to reconnect with my Colombian roots, especially watching my daughter thrive in the country of our heritage,” she says.

Metallicman comments

Zhuhai City

The general comments from American expats that reside around the world are similar. It does not matter if you live in China (like MM here) or elsewhere. All of us share similar experiences.

[1] It’s a calmer; easier place to live.

The news” is not barking at as filling us with fear. The commercials are not screaming at us to buy things. We are not hearing about shootings, accidents, murders, rapes, government corruption, and all the rest. There are no advertisements for mind altering drugs, lawyers for legal settlements, bail bonding, or pawn shops.

People pretty much live their lives in peace.

[2] It’s a cheaper place to live.

You can live cheaper, and buy basic foods, local meals, and rent or own a house at a fraction of what it costs in the USA. Not only that, there aren’t the crazy taxes, regulations and fees tacked on to everything. You can get buy and live a simpler life either on retirement or working a simple part-time job.

Drawer slide

For instance, a drawer slide made in China is $3 a pair. It sells in the United States for $106 per pair. Unfriggin’ believable.

[3] The Government is concerned about domestic issues.

You don’t ever hear about the need to go to war!

You don’t hear about government troops in this nation or that country. You never hear about how “we must do something now about XXXXX!”. The government is focused on the lives of the people that in in the country. That’s it.

All in all, Americans have been corralled. They are in a pen within the geographic confines of the United States, and filled with fear of what lies outside of it. They are constantly bombarded with the idea that they are “special” and that the government is “exceptional” and “superior”.

It’s all a big lie.

And it is obvious to everyone who is paying attention. In the world today, it is common knowledge that the USA is undergoing a spectacular collapse.

What will happen is anyone’s guess, but the future for America does NOT look bright.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my SHTF Escape Index here…

Escape!

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

.

 

What it is like to live in a truly free society. No it’s not the USA, and no it’s not China either.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

It’s actually Albania.

Life is better in a third world “shit hole” than in the fabled land of the free and home of the brave… 

-stevennonemaker88

I argue that America has become a totalitarian, oligarchy-run, military empire, that pretends to be a “democracy”.

Meanwhile, China has become a traditionalist, merit-driven, single-party, socialist republic.

Both nations have their benefits and liabilities. But the bottom line is always a simple one. How “free” do the people feel who live inside these nations?

Let’s look at the often overlooked nation of Albania, and see what kinds of “freedoms” that they enjoy.

Where it is located…

What it’s geography is like…

Physical map of Albania, shaded relief outside.

Here's a reprint of an article from UNZ, it's titled "The Freest and Most Open Country". It's written by  • April 28, 2021. All credit to the author, and please note that it was formatted to fit this venue.

The Freest and Most Open Country

People don’t have to pay extortionate taxes, or interest rates, to cater for their basic needs such as housing, farmland ownership, education or health. People earn little, but their relative purchasing power is higher and their lives certainly more secure and pleasant than ours in the West. 

-Iris

Girl walking past a billboard in Albania.

Is Albania, believe it or not, for here, you can walk around, sit inside cafes, bars or restaurants, worship at a packed church or mosque, and travel by crowded buses between cities, etc.

Though you’re supposed to wear a mask in public, most folks do so with their nose sticking out, because it’s hard to breathe otherwise, and unhealthy, too. That’s good enough for the easy-going cops.

All these people can enter Albania without a visa, vaccine passport or even a negative Covid test, and stay up to a year: European Union citizens, North Americans, most South and Central Americans, Turks, Kuwaitis, Israelis, Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, South Koreans, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Australians and New Zealanders, plus a few more.

After decades of Communist isolation, Albanians are happy to reclaim their Western heritage. A bookcase is painted on a downtown high-rise. Among the authors featured are Homer, Aeschylus, Cervantes, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekov, Twains, Dickens, Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, Kafka and the Brothers Grim. Albanian giants such as Kadare, Agolli, Fishta, Arapi and Poradeci are also honored. Unlike elsewhere, the Western canon is not assailed or canceled, but upheld and extolled.

Sidewalk book vendors are common, so Albanians are obviously reading, and not just junk either. I’ve seen volumes by Camus, Dostoevsky, Orwell and Hitler, etc. Albanian minds can still stay open.

Old man’s bar in Albania.

In an old man’s bar with plenty of character, there are five wine bottles with labels showing a portrait of Mussolini, JFK, Lenin, Hitler or Stalin. Sharing the same shelf are skull and penis shaped liquor containers, and a laughing buddha.

In a more Jew-screwed nation, this goofy display would undoubtedly trigger complaints, protests and maybe even a riot that burns up half the street, if not much of downtown. Luckily, I’m in Albania.

There’s a Frederic Chopin monument here. Born in Poland, Chopin spent nearly all of his adulthood in France, and had nothing to do with Albania. As an important cultural figure, however, and not just in the West, but globally, why shouldn’t Chopin be celebrated in Tirana?

Those who reject even the best of their heritage are lobotomizing themselves. Go for it!

In my building, I’m friendly with a man roughly my age. Introducing himself, he said, “Just remember me as the guy with the hat,” and sure enough, he always wears the same baseball cap.

Like many Albanians, he has emigrated, but returned after only a few years in Greece. Vaguely dreaming of America, he entered the immigration lottery, and actually won, but by then, he has changed his mind.

“I have a cousin in Illinois,” he said. “He told me Albania is better.”

“I agree,” I laughed.

“Really? I should tell people you said that.”

“In every American city, there are homeless people all over. If you go to San Francisco, for example, you’ll see homeless people all around City Hall, right in the center! Many of them have gone crazy. Many are on drugs. They shit in the streets!”

“Hmmm.”

“There are almost no homeless in Tirana.”

“We have family. We take care of each other.”

“There are beggars here, but not too many.”

“Most of them are Gypsies.”

“Is your cousin in Chicago?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe just Illinois. Every year, he comes to Albania and stays for six months. He wants to retire here.”

“Does he have children?”

“Three. Two boys, one girl. They are big.”

“Have they been back here?”

“No, they work, all the time. They have good jobs, but they can’t get married,” he chuckled.

Near us, there were half a dozen boys playing. Hearing English, they decided to join in, but their vocabulary was limited to just “hello!” and “hi!”

Walking down a side street, I heard “hello” repeatedly, but there was no one in front or behind me. Perplexed, I finally looked up to see two small boys inside a sixth-floor window. “Hello! Hello!” I returned their greetings, waves and smiles.

My North Macedonian friend, Alex, has a peculiar habit. As we wandered through the back streets of rarely visited towns like Veles and Shtip, little kids would sometimes get very excited to see me, so Alex had to answer their questions. When they asked Alex where he was from, however, he’d also say, “Америка!”

“Why did you say that?” I asked.

“It’s more exciting for them! If I told them I was North Macedonian, they’d think, Who cares? Now, they can go home and brag about seeing two Americans today!”

Inside a Chinese restaurant in Albania.

Though Albania is wide open, there are very few tourists here. In 2 ½ months, I’ve only seen eight Orientals on the streets, plus two Chinese cooks inside restaurants. I’ve chanced upon American English maybe ten times, but Italian just twice. Once, I ran into a group of Turks. I’ve never gone this long without seeing a single black.

It has been raining too much, but with more reliable sunshine, visitors will come. Ali, a taxi driver, certainly hopes so.

Impulsively one morning, I paid Ali $24 to take me to Durres, 24 miles away. It’s a pretty good deal, and Ali could surely use my business. Too often, I see him just standing around near the Swiss Embassy, his usual spot. This also gave us a chance to chatter.

Like the man with the hat, Ali has also gone abroad. He spent six years in Australia.

“Wow! How did you get a visa for that?”

“I paid,” meaning to the right people.

After sweating his ass off at various menial jobs, and saving almost nothing, Ali returned to Tirana, his hometown.

Here, Ali got a job driving trucks, then buses, before becoming a cabbie 15 years ago. Until the Covid mess, everything was going fine.

Ali also got married then, so his son is almost 14, and his daughter, 10. He showed me their photos.

“Nice kids! Are they good students?”

“No,” Ali laughed.

As his name indicates, Ali is Muslim, but only nominally.

“It’s Ramadan,” I noted, “but all the restaurants are busy. Nobody is fasting!”

“Some people are. My kids are fasting. I’m not.”

“They’re better Muslims than you are!”

Ali just shrugged.

After the collapse of Communism in 1991, thousands of Albanian boat people fled to Italy from Durres. This ugly, chaotic exodus lasted until the end of that decade.

Now, Durres is a very pleasant city with an elegant seaside promenade. Before Covid, ferries departed often for Bari, Ancona and even Trieste (where James Joyce spent nearly a decade). Soon, buses will resume their daily routes to Athens.

Normal family life in Albania with children on swing-sets, and normal shops in the background.

Basking in sea breeze-tempered sunshine, I watched parents pushing strollers, a stern boy bouncing a ball and three tots on swings. Busking, a beer bellied, middle-aged man tooted his clarinet. A stand briskly sold “Petulla te Gjyshi” [“Grandpa’s Fried Dough”].

As you’re tucked into your novel nightmare, Albanians have quite impressively exited theirs. How bad was it?

An escapee risked being shot or jailed for years, and if he manages to get out, a family member would be arrested instead. For trying to flee, poet Uran Kostreci was locked up for two decades.

Just getting into Albania was very difficult. Defining the border as “a checkpoint against foreign ideology,” Enver Hoxha declared that “The People’s Republic of Albania is closed to enemies, spies, hippie tourists and other vagabonds.”

First of, Albania was not a republic, much less a “people’s republic,” and there’s no ideology more foreign to Albania than Jewish Marxism, in any permutation. A fanatical us-against-them mindset is the Jewish core. A dictator, Hoxha ruled Albania for 40 years, until his death.

Of the hundreds of Hoxha statues that once dotted this poor land, only one remains that’s not damaged. A ten-foot bronze, it lies in the basement of the former museum in Labinot, a Communist stronghold.

In 1975, the Albanian government posted this guideline:

  1. The border authorities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs do not allow the entrance into the People’s Republic of Albania of all those foreigners who, with their appearance go against the norms of the socialist aesthetics, such as men with long hair like women, with exaggerated sideburns, with irregular beards and with inappropriate clothing, and women with mini and maxi skirts.
  2. Persons with extravagant clothing and irregular appearance […] may enter into the People’s Republic of Albania only if they choose to be adjusted (to cut their hair, to dress normally) […]

To facilitate such adjustments, a barbershop and a store with socialist-approved clothing were available at Albanian borders.

Even eight years ago, Albania was still a wreck, apparently, at least according to an unsolicited account I just received.

Reading about me being sick in Tirana, a reader emailed to say that he had come here in 2013, to be somewhere “as ugly as [he] felt”!

An American living in France, he had spent a year in “herpes hell,” which he had gotten from “an attractive empty vessel who worked in the Paris fashion scene.”

Bald, loveless, with “a ruined penis” and nearly broke, he thought about killing himself, then “had a better idea”:

I would identify the most miserable country on Earth and I would go there. Anything but suicide. I wanted to be somewhere as ugly as I felt. I wanted to see bleak, closed, hard faces. I wanted to see mute wifebeaters and battered women caked in whore makeup. So I went to Albania. I wandered around Tirana with sores on my dick for a few days, considering suicide. One day I found this weird field next to the train station, just a big garbage-strewn negative space at the heart of the city. There were fetid ponds, plastic bags everywhere, and little paths through the half-dead grass. An old Balkan crone squatted next to one of the paths with a few carrots and onions spread out on a scarf in front of her. Men in tracksuits with brutal pimp faces came and went. I went to the center of the field, squatted down, and dug through the trash a little. I found a broken teacup, an old domino, and a playing card. It was Christmas Day. I felt like I was at the negative center of the universe. Here I was, at ground zero of our ruined Jew world with pus coming out of sores on my dick surrounded by the most ugly and corrupted goyim on Earth, the despised and despicable Albanian race. 

That’s some beautiful writing about an ugly situation. Today’s Tirana, though, is nothing like that.

Albanian kiosk.

Though many of the buildings are drab, each Tirana street is lively with cafes, bars, restaurants and shops, and the people are very pleasant, mellow and lovely.

Most are slim and not misshapen. Children are well behaved and not agitated. Young men don’t sneer or bluster. Many women are confidently beautiful. The old are dignified.

Though Albania is one of Europe’s poorest countries, with an extremely high emigration rate, its social fabric is more intact than in more advanced nations. Its great men are justly revered. It’s also freer and more open, and as safe as any, with no mugging or riot around any corner.

Unlike in Philadelphia, I don’t wake up each morning to news of another murder or two. There were 499 in the City of Brotherly Love in 2020!

The United States will never catch up to Albania.

This is most interesting. Albania always seemed like a pit of drabness, repression, and despair during the Cold War. Not that I actually read anything about it, of course. Now here it is quite relaxed about life while the US slips ever deeper into unreason, minority hatred of whites, wars that are beyond stupid, open borders, multicultural delusion, corrupt courts, a lunatic legislature, contemptible corporate whores, a rotten FBI, a worthless press, malevolent central bank, Jewish control, feminist malevolence, and leftist thuggery. Did I leave anything out? 

-Ace

Conclusion

It is difficult for Americans to understand, and grasp this fact, but most of the world outside the United States is MUCH freer.

This is a fair and philosophical point, which contains a much large-ranging truth:

– Traditional societies favour the collective and protect the weakest among them but at the expense of some of the individuals’ freedoms. This is why there are less junkies and homeless in the streets of poorer countries, as they remain within the family fold, but individuals sometimes feel suffocated by social pressure.

– Modern Western societies, especially with the ascent of Anglo-Saxon “liberal” values, purport to favour the individual and individual freedoms. This should normally give great opportunities to the brightest and smartest to achieve and accomplish their professional and economic potential, at the expense of the less gifted who are let down. This is how it was supposed to work anyway, and maybe it did work like that up to the 80’s or 90’s.

But since globalisation took off, the individualist dream hyped in the West has remained just a dream. No matter how hard one works, it is obvious that the middle classes are disappearing to the benefit of an ever-more powerful plutocracy.

So Western working people are actually only getting the anxiety and precarity, without the economic security, the worst of two worlds. I can very well understand why the Albanians described by Mr Dinh have returned to Albania after initially emigrating to the West.

-Iris

Americans have 24-7 narratives about “American Exceptionalism” rammed into their mushy brains for decades. So much so that they believe it. And then, coupled with the non-stop fear-mongering about the rest of the world being a very dark and gloomy place, it’s  no wonder that Americans hide inside their homes and huddle in front of the flickering blue monitors for their entertainment.

Freedom is not a nice road, a fancy mall, a impressive government building, or being able to own guns. It’s nothing of the sort.

A large proportion of Americans today, think freedom is the right shop at Walmart, eat at Burger King and to get a quick Covid shot. How things have changed 

-Joe Paluka

Freedom is the ability to live your life, as you see fit, without interference by anyone for any reason.

Freedom

  • Never having to report any income, or financial information to the government.
  • Never having to ask your government for permission to do something.
  • Being allowed to eat, smoke, ingest anything your want to your own body.
  • Never worrying about the police.
  • Being able to redress your grievances with the government locally and get results in a timely manner.

Not Freedom

  • Asking permission to buy bullets, and then once granted, having to pay taxes on them, and enter onto a watch list.
  • Being forced to buy something simply because you are a citizen.
  • Having your ability to leave the nation prevented and subject to a tax audit.
  • Your taxes are used for other things that do not directly impact your quality of life.

When I say that my life in China is far freer than what it was in the United States, it’s not hyperbole. It’s truth. It’s on a very personal, and direct, visceral level.

And I have experiences that back this up. So it’s non-debatable.

People, if you are miserable with your life…

…instead of blaming yourselves, maybe you need to start looking at where you are living and what you put up with. Most Americans will discover an exceptional amount of personal freedom the moment they step outside the monstrous United States Military Empire.

And that’s a fact Jack.

The best case in point would be in New York City. 

Take the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy, for instance. Aside from the fact that the policy has proven to be vehemently racist, what kind of free society allows their police officers to search people without just cause?

Imagine casually walking home from work only to have a police officer stop you, ask for ID, question you and frisk you. All you’re guilty of is walking home. How is this any different than the Gestapo asking you to see your papers?

-The rise of the American Police State

You all won’t see that anywhere else in the world.

Only in America.

America is more and more like a contagious disease. It would be fine if the US contained their toxic culture and influence to their own border and left the rest of the world alone. But no… They want to make the whole world like them. Enough. 

-Dumbo

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my Escape! Index here…

Escape!

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

 

Humanity breaks out all over the world. Good signs are everywhere.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

This post is about people. It’s about families. It’s about relationships. It’s about cultures, societies, and life. It’s about lifestyle. And I want to start the year with a good humane post that discusses these elements in our life.

Unlike previous years, there seems to be an increase in videos and movies about humanity. Sure there’s the action videos, and lots and lots of guns. There’s monsters and super heroes, but a new kind of video is emerging from the old. It’s a video about people and their humanity. And these videos are becoming more an more common.

This article, this post, highlights those videos.

Please kick on the picture to see the video. It will open up in another tab. Allow some time for it to load. Most videos are in the 20MB range, but one is 65MB. I do hope that you all will enjoy them as much as I have.

A Chinese video about a father and his daughter..

The night before my father died, he left me an email message. It was a stupid one-sentence email along the likes of “do you have the link for the website we talked about?” And I kept that message. It’s still there, sitting in a dusty file folder on my long disused Yahoo! account. And account I only refresh every year or so to keep my old archives and records intact.

The following is a video. It’s a Chinese video. It’s about a man, now an old man. He’s a man, a father, who likes to listen to the voice-mail message left by his (now dead) daughter. We don’t know how she died, or what their personal situation is. But we do know that they had a relationship, and hearing her voice was very important to him. So important that he has paid for her cell-phone account to stay active for years and years.

But then suddenly, her voice-message disappears. And a story ensues…

.

I hope that you all enjoyed this video as much as I have. You don’t need to understand Chinese. Just watch what is going on.

So what might the oligarchs think of Chinese people with their resounding support for the Communist Party of China? 

They will hate them  with every bone in their body, they will be furious that this country  resists and denies them a chance to plunder it - yet again. 

The  oligarchic death cult will be extremely angry that a single country  presents an excellent and achievable system of government and financial  management and community betterment to all the other nations on earth.
 
-Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan  5 2021 20:48 utc | 14

Two strangers in Europe

This next video is about two strangers. It’s a European video. And they get stuck in an elevator. You know those places where you just stand and focus on the lighted numbers, the buttons or the advertisements on the walls. never communicating with the other people that you share that brief moment of time with.

Enjoy, it’s actually a little cute.

.

That was good. Right? A nice fun and kind of cute video. But the message is important.

How are you going to behave this month?

A sense of community.

In the next video we have a typical small family run business. These places are everywhere in China. You can get a breakfast for under $1. Usually some hot Jiu (which is a rice porridge soup), some Baozi (which is a small roll with meat or vegetables inside), some noodles, and some sweet bean drink. The business is thriving…

…but there is an emergency and the entire family must leave now. And all the people are stuck with no one to serve them, and the family devoid of income for the say. What is going to happen? As these establishments typically don’t have doors, are out in the open, with the family living in the back room watching the store.

What is going to happen?

It’s all about community.

.

It’s all about community and our role in it.

Lets look at what China plans to do over the next 5 years.  The article provides a very broad explanation then links to some  specifics at the bottom, the item about the Yangtze River Economic Belt  being most important. I found this bit of reporting highly important:
 
"More specifically, these days the government uses the five-year  plans to reinforce and complement the market dynamic by providing  regulation and guidance. That includes providing the legal and social  framework, such as issuing monetary and fiscal policies, providing  public goods and services, such as building high-speed rails, and  correcting for market failures like pollution."
 
There's a vast difference in focus between China and the West--China's sharply focused on its development in ways the West isn't  whatsoever, and it makes certain its citizenry knows that and everyone's  working as a team--every job has its own value and is important. 

The  best explanation I have is that China is doing while the West is watching and not doing; therefore, China continues to grow ahead of those standing watching with their jaws agape. 
 
China outnumbers the Outlaw US Empire by more than one billion people. That's a huge team working together to advance their nation and  themselves. 

Within the US Empire, at least 30% of the labor force is idle  and not even counted for unemployment purposes since they aren't  actively looking for non-existent jobs while about 24% of the active labor force is unemployed. That's 54% of your human capital that's not  being used at all to better themselves and their nation. Honestly, which  one has the better outlook? 
 
- Posted by: karlof1 | Jan  5 2021 22:57 utc | 28

Bravery, sacrifice and respect

The next movie consists of excerpts from a Chinese war drama.

Most Americans haven’t a clue to the fact that China has been embroiled in centuries of very, very bloody warfare. People have suffered well enough, and one of the great polices of modern Communist China is to avoid war and get off that “bandwagon” of exporting “communism”, or “democracy” to the rest of the world.

Instead, China has adopted a “live and let live” attitude, and all of China, from the laws, to the media play this narrative over and over.

Never the less, if you need to fight, you fight to the best of your ability. And you do your best. You fight for family, and your die for family. For in China your community is who you are.

Which is the opposite of what it is in America.

In America, it is “every man for himself“, it’s a “dog eat dog” world and you need to “carve out a life for yourself“, or you are a failure. So in America you don’t have teams. You don’t have families. Instead you have successful individuals.

Instead of Huawei’s leadership committee supported by the Huawei engineering group, you have Elon Musk.

You have Jeff Bezos, you have Hugh Hefner, you have Bill Gates, and you have Donald J. Trump.

In Chinese movies the emphasis is on being the best you can be as part of something bigger. While in American movies it is the individual that fights against all odds.

This next clip is a Chinese war drama. Notice the depictions of bravery for the community of friends. It’s all very Chinese, but maybe…

…just maybe…

…it’s that we are all part of something bigger, and we need to contribute to it.

.

War is not going to help humanity grow.

It’s working together, not fighting apart.

The tale of the thermos

In our culture, well in most cultures, it seems very odd to open up to strangers. It’s difficult to meet them, to talk to them without feeling a jerk. For in most societies the people that tend to come up to you are typically undesirable…

  • A policeman.
  • A beggar.
  • A mentally ill person.
  • A drunk asshole.
  • A mass murderer.
  • A religious zealot.

And so we avoid others. We stare at our shoes. We read our cell phones, we look at the scenery, we stare off into space. We do anything and everything possible to not engage into inter-personal contact with others. We self isolate. We go home to our dark home and there we stare into the flickering blue glow of the monitors until the next day, when we get up and drive alone to our destination.

This is undesirable.

Humans are social creatures. We need society. We need to communicate with each other. We need that inter-personal level of relationship.

The next story, is a cute one. It’s about a boy who wants to strike up a communication with a pretty girl, but there is nothing to “break the ice with”, just his thermos.

.

This is the central theme behind the first Howard and Kumar movie; Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (plus a heady dose of smoking that marijuana.)

Help others by active participation…

The next video is from the Middle East. And a man decides to help a beggar out. And maybe the point is clear. Rather than pass by, or rather than just give him a coin. Perhaps assisting in a more active way…

…even if it seems trivial…

…is important.

I personally believe that every action that we perform has meaning and substance. Everything that we do, and every thought that we have, all combine towards the reality that we create for ourselves. Maybe the fellow in the video cannot change this beggars life, nor does he want to. He just wants to help him out a little bit more.

The world would be a much nicer place to live in, if everyone stopped thinking about themselves and instead abandons the “for-profit” model embraced by the capitalist oligarchy out of Washington DC and starts going on the local level ….

…helping each other out.

.

And from Europe we have a similar themed movie. And in this one the same type of action is performed. The point should be clear, you all…

…all over the world…

…most especially in Asia…

…people are waking up to the realization that we all must contribute to the well being of each other, and that the greedy “mine, mine, mine…” oh, you are “bad and evil, we must destroy you“, and all the bans, the nonsense and the hate must end. It is a time that is long over due.

.

Funny thing about all these videos.

I pulled them off of DouXing which is the Chinese version of Tiktok. You know, the one that Donald Trump banned in the United States for “natural security reasons“.

Perhaps, if you are an American, you will need to destroy your computer now because you watched these dangerous videos with their dangerous ideas. You don’t want the American thought police to come banging in your door and arrest you.

Do you?

It always gets me when the American press says that there can't be peace without "democracy" and "liberalization."
 
Huh ...  try 20 million dead in America's wars since WW II. 
 
And as for "democracy," living in America I would love to see some of it. 
 
Posted by: Mike from Jersey | Jan  5 2021 20:41 utc | 12

Conclusion

I think the main problem are the two different approaches taken by  the US or Chinese, which are diametrically different.  The Chinese seem  to use a "Cumulative" approach, while the US is based on what I call "Winnowing" as a state. Take their respective attitudes towards the poor.

 First the Chinese; Cumulative, we are all in this together.  If everyone has a "job" be it ever-so lowly, selling food on a street  corner for example, then for the Chinese this is a "plus". The person is  more or less responsible for his own well being, is not a burden on the  State for handouts, and could be (potentially) taxable etc.  The object  being that ALL Chinese then become positive factors in the society.  They are also more motivated because they have a "place" in society. The  recent case of Jack Ma and an IPO is not the opposite, but he was  trying to get ahead by means that would have led to more unemployment -  on the back of the Chinese Government. He was not adding to the  cumulative good of the country. Only his own riches. (The Chinese do  have billionaires and riches - but are constrained by Corporate credit  ratings as explained on a previous - very interesting - thread. Thanks  to: psychohistorian | Jan 5 2021 2:08 utc | 162. The MoA Week In Review -  OT 2021-001)

 The US. The attitude is to beat out the chaff leaving only the "kernel". To "Winnow"  the population leaving only the top. ie the poor are sidelined, they  become a problem for the Government (needing support, food etc.). A net  negative value to US society. (The Rich also get handouts from the Fed.  as free money has become an habitude, but that is an another way of  winnowing out the chaff - as others do NOT get the trillion dollar  handouts) The poor have no "place" in a society that has rejected them  and so are less motivated. They must fend for themselves and are  expected to obey. If they do not there are always the police to enforce  obedience. 

 "Cumulative = win-win", and "Winnowing = Only the top win". 
 
 Posted by: Stonebird | Jan  5 2021 20:26 utc | 11

The world is changing, and it is a good thing. Awareness of it, and awareness of our role in the world is very important. And we do not need to subscribe to any service, pay any fee or provide any user login information to participate. All that matters is to smile, and be more open to the world around you.

Who knows what interesting people you might meet?

Do you want some more of this?

I have more posts along these lines in my Rufus index here…

Hero Stories

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

To go to the MAIN Index;

Master Index
  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.

Error! Missing PayPal API credentials. Please configure the PayPal API credentials by going to the settings menu of this plugin.

If you enjoy what you see, it would be helpful if you could assist in hosting this forum. A donation would be appreciated.

A very Metallicaman Merry Christmas!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

I have written about Christmas before, don’t you know. I wrote about Christmas in China HERE. And you all might want to visit it and see what Christmas is like in China. And I have other Christmas themed posts as well. But this post will be about me offering you, the reader a very MERRY Christmas. And it won’t be much more than that.

When I grew up in the States, Christmas was a month-long event. It began after “black Friday” and continued to about one week past New Years. At that time the Christmas tree was taken down, and the decorations were removed, the food was all either eaten up or thrown out, and we all would settle in for the Winter months.

December was the month of long lunches with co-workers. Always involving alcohol. Also this was the time when frozen hams or turkeys were handed out. The company would buy them in bulk at bargain basement prices and hand them out to the employees as a token of “appreciation”.

This was also the time when the President would send out signed Christmas cards to every employee. But you know it really wasn’t his signature. My department was once told to sign a stack of 6000 cards for the President to mail out to all the workers. So we did, and over time our signatures got sloppier and sloppier. LOL.

December was quite the month for certain.

Typically, folk would leave for lunch around noon, and get back around four, pretty much sloshed. We would then try to pretend to work, while our bosses would close their office doors and take a nap. Obviously, work was only completed in the morning hours.

Merry Christmas. A vintage view.
Office Workers would take time off to shop in the afternoon before coming home to work.

.

All through the month of December, the “white collar” staff would take time off to go shopping during the normal working hours. It was pretty much a normal occurrence, and everyone did this. Just as long as you didn’t abuse this privilege, it was one of the “perks” of being an “office worker”.

So, if you all could imagine what it was like, imagine the afternoon with everyone sitting at their desks, sloshed. Smoking cigarettes in their company ashtrays and imbibing on some of the many, many home-make Christmas cookies donated (for the cause) and sampling the many kinds of dips and chips lying about. Heck! It was an often abused event, when people from one department would sneak into another department to grab some delicious dip and chips.

Fun times!

Typical Christmas dip.
Christmas was the time when many people would bring in “home made” snacking masterpieces. Some of my favorites were peanut-butter and marshmallow dips, wrapped bacon mini-hotdogs, and those jello molds with tiny orange slices.

.

The Christmas Bonus

One of the big conversation pieces revolved around the size of the Christmas bonus that we would get. People would tell stories about what they did with the last year’s bonus. And what they planned to do with this years bonus. Typically the bonuses would either be given out during the Christmas Party, or at the end of the day right before Christmas.

Most people tended to spend it on something big an lavish. It might be a down payment on a new car, an addition to their house, a planned swimming pool, or a vacation to interesting and sunny locations. By the time I started working, the idea of Christmas bonuses were begin phased out all over America. But, instead, we were promised generous sick days, and lenient extended vacation days to make up for the shortfall.

So many fun, but terribly embarrassing moments befell the employees.
Christmas was always a “hoot” in the office.

.

Bonuses tended to equal one months pay. Which is WHY most companies calculated salary based on a 13 month year. Bet that you didn’t know that, did you?

From the festive celebrations to the time away from the office, there’s plenty that your employees look forward to about the end of the calendar year.

But, the one thing that likely tops their lists? A year-end bonus.

Nearly 80% of employers hand out a bonus to employees at this time—making it something that most employees not only appreciate, but expect.

And, while your staff is sure to be all smiles when you present them with a year-end reward, making the effort to provide bonuses on top of the usual payroll has some benefits for you as well. Fifty-four percent of employees state that they prefer monetary bonuses, and they would be willing to change jobs in order to receive that benefit.

-Quickbooks

Anyways, everyone tended to chat about bonuses and television shows. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s the big shows pretty much dominated the conversation. MASH was always a favorite, as was “The Golden Girls”. And yes, we would talk about these things while at work. It’s what real humans do.

Office parties during Christmas was always fun.
Office parties during Christmas was always fun.

.

Most companies, back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, held two Christmas parties. There was one “big” party, that was usually held in a local banquet hall or hotel. And one was a local party for the staff in any given department. Those local department parties were the stuff of legends. I’ll tell you what.

Local Department Parties

These local department parties might be on a Friday evening, where the boss would bring in a case of hard alcohols, and the secretaries would bring in some snacks and munchies. All paid out of the department budget especially reserved for this occasion. Typically, a table would be set up for the foods, snacks, and booze. Sometimes people might wear some stupid party hats. But that seemed to disappear in the 1980’s.

Typically the primary function of the party was to start drinking early on, then have a meal buffet style, and rounded out with some stupid games or a “mystery Santa”, some puzzles or skits, and then closure with handing out the yearly Christmas bonuses. Everyone would be smoking and drinking. Chatting up a storm about sports, television or the work “war stories” and then everyone would pretty much break for home by 9 or 10 pm.

Company party.
Company party – “in the day”.

In all my recollections, while the ladies might limit the numbers of mixed cocktails that they drank, everyone drank alcohol. If you refused to drink, you would label yourself as an outcast.

The idea was to really get everyone “shit faced drunk”, lower your inhibitions, and have fun. In those days, before the mainsteaming of busy-bodies and their ideas of a perfectionist utopia mandated by law, it was considered important for people to bond free of social inhibitions.

Oh my friends we're older but no wiser. 
For in our hearts the dreams are still the same. 
Those were the days my friend. 
We thought they'd never end. 
We'd sing and dance forever and a day. 
We'd live the life we choose. 
We'd fight and never lose. 
For we were young and sure to have our way. La la la la la la.

-The 5th Dimension - Those Were The Days Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

The alcohol was all high quality, and expensive shit too. None of that “average” stuff. If you are going to a Company Christmas party, you can expect to drink the best, and the Department Managers would typically contribute to this from their own home stocks.

In those days we also had "free standing" ashtrays. They typically sat upon a metal stand and when you and your friends were smoking, you would move the piece next to you.
In those days we also had “free standing” ashtrays. They typically sat upon a metal stand and when you and your friends were smoking, you would move the piece next to you.

.

Of course music would be provided. Often it was just Christmas music, and played loud enough to provide atmosphere, but not so loud that you all couldn’t carry on a conversation with. The boss might hand out cigars, and there was always the obligatory visit from the President or the Vice President (the manager’s manager) who would stop by, have a drink and congratulate everyone and hand the manager the Christmas bonuses for him to distribute right then and there.

This was to prevent bad bosses from surreptitiously stealing the cash out of the employees bonus envelopes. 

Nope, the bonuses were not in the form of checks. It was in the form of cash. 

Indeed, it was usually in the form of hard cold cash. And i think part of this reason was to show gratitude and "special-ness". After-all, how often does a person get a stack of one hundred dollar bills?  

So yeah. It wasn't in the form of checks. It wasn't until the 1990's when everyone started to phase out hard cash bonuses.

Now, of course, once the bonuses were handed out, and all that, it pretty much signaled the time for everyone to leave. I would guess that about fifteen minutes to one hour afterwards, the staff would slowly leave in clumps and clusters. Everyone would help everyone else (being drunk and all) get into their cars. If someone was too drunk to drive, they would be driven home instead. And if, for some reason, someone or a couple of people needed to stay there, the company would provide them a hotel for the night.

Office Santa.
Often, a co-worker would dress up like Santa Claus and have the secretaries sit on his lap and tell him their deepest desires. LOL.

Arriving Home

We would leave the office, drive home (drunk) and arrive safely. I only know of one accident that ever happened after a party. She wasn’t killed, but her car was smashed up, and she spent a week in the hospital. Obviously the fears of HR do have some weight. But not at the expense of creating a sterile no-fun environment.

But we would tend to drive home. And we would arrive and greet our families. Many of whom were past their normal meal times and who were off studying, watching television, or doing their own personal hobbies and activities. Since this is Christmas, the tree would be lit up (as well as all the house decorations), creating a nice warm and cozy atmosphere for us to arrive home to. And of course, the first thing that the wife would ask was “how big was the bonus this year?”

Arriving home.
Often that man would come home from the Company Party and would be greeted by his adoring family and the warmth of their warm house and hearth.

Elsewhere…

Sometimes the men (or ladies) would break off and meet at another venue outside of work before going straight home. The argument of “the night is still young” probably comes from this kind of situation. Often they would leave the company parking lot, only to drive four or five blocks over to a favorite lounge or bar for a few “night toppers” don’t you know.

It’s difficult to find a decent lounge today. But back in the day it was more like an American version of a British pub. It would have an array of sofas, comfortable chairs, fine areas to converse, smoke cigarettes, play cards and just drink with your friends. And at this time, the lounge might be packed and filled with a low hanging cloud of cigarette smoke that would waft and hang there like a blue haze.

Cocktail lounge.
Cocktail Lounge.

.

These were always fine establishments to head out to and hang out at. Most people might close out and head home around midnight, but others would linger until the “wee hours” of the morning.

Where are these lounges today?

Why aren’t there any more Christmas parties (in the United States) any longer?

What is going on with the HR telling you that you cannot smoke, you cannot drink, and you cannot have fun on your off-hours? I mean, people!, WTF?

Where did things go “off the rails”…

Money

The United States has become a place where everything has been co-opted by a military run money-making machine. The citizens, all are reduced, to what is nothing more than medieval serfs working on subsistence wages to service an enormous military-industrial machine that supports global “police actions”. To keep the citizenry in check, a local military is used which is called the DHS (The Department of Homeland Security). If it does not serve the military-industrial machine, then it is liable to prosecution… anything outside of the “normal” is to be avoided least one get entangled in legal battles.

party harty.
It does not serve the “machine” for the serfs / working class to get out of control. The first thing that might happen is that they start to think for themselves, and then after that they might question their life, and their role in it.

.

Too harsh?

Religion

Ok, then try this angle. Society has changed. Fun is now outlawed. This is because the Bible says that people have to be of a high quality to “witness” to others. That means no vices, a near saint-like presence, and an active effort to spread the word of God. Whether that is door to door with a bible, or obliterating the nations that do not follow the word of God; like Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, and China.

For the children.
People (adults) drinking and smoking might be a bad influence on the children. Americans must be forever banned from smoking or drinking…for the children!

.

Still to harsh?

SEX

Try this angle. When you are with others celebrating the holidays people tend to relax. they lower their inhibitions. When people of the opposite sex lower their inhibitions, they tend to want to have sexual intercourse. By limiting all aspects of social interaction, the government (in this case, via businesses) can curtail the fun and freedom aspects of gender interaction.

Christmas surprise.
Christmas is a time to loosen up, have some fun, and spend time with those that you care about. Check out this Christmas surprise.

Remember boys and girls. The way for the 1%, the PTB, the oligarchy controls people is through “vices”. Vices are natural biological processes that are very popular. By limiting the access to these vices, governments control people. All you need to do is notice the government reactions to control popular pastimes, and systems in support of that.

Real Freedom is the ability to have fun.

Actually, it all boils down to sentience. Those with a service-to-self sentience end up collecting riches and with that comes power. They use that power to collect even more power, and as a result they lord over other sentience’s. Service-to-others sentience then is at a natural disadvantage. The two sentiences cannot co-exist.

What we are witnessing is the physical manifestation of the power projection between the two primary sentience’s on this earth and within this reality. And this story about the loss of freedom to have parties at work is one such manifestation.

Or…

To put it another way…

Your owners do not want you wasting your energies, thoughts, and creative abilities on anything that might “take away” from your labors from their interests.

And to that, I say…

Fooey!

Live life. You are in control of it. So live it and live it well. Do things you own way, with those that you care about, on your time schedule and in the way that matters to you. And if others don’t “get it” well, fuck them. That’s their problem.

Your life.
It’s YOUR life. Live it well!

.

And I know…

I know that many won’t understand. That hey might think… well, what would they think? And does it really matter? We are all living our own different realities and the ways that feel best for us personally. And so if someone doesn’t like what we are doing, or how we are doing it, I say FUCK them.

Life is far too short to care about others that lie outside your immediate circle of friends and family. Concentrate only on those that matter to you, and if you put your pets before say a cousin, that is your decision and it is ok. Why? It is because it is your life. Do what is important for you.

And start now.

Start at Christmas.

Spend time with your loved ones.
Spend time with those that you care about.

Yes, things have changed…

Yes. I know that things have changed. That you have to abide by all sorts of diversity quotas, behavioral shackles, rules and regulations from state and local requirements to insurance issues, to local law enforcement requirements. But even so…

WHO says that you need to obey them?

Really. Seriously. So what? What is the worst thing that is going to happen if you want to take your staff out to a bar after work hours for a few drinks? What if your department budget no longer allocates money for recreation or “team building”? What’s stopping you for doing it yourself, on your own time, with your own money?

What’s stopping you?

Fear?

Celebrate Christmas your style.
Don’t be afraid to celebrate Christmas in your own way, and in your own manner. Life is too short waiting for group approval. You just go ahead and do things your way and at your speed.

.

Yes. I know everyone is different.

So what? Being different is good. No, I take that back. Being different is GREAT. It is what adds color to our lives, and passion to our experiences. It’s the wonderful aroma when bacon is cooking in the skillet, and the wonderful feeling when you take your first sip of icy cold beer after a really bad day at work.

So don’t hold back.

Be yourselves.

And embrace who you are and your own uniqueness. I mean that. I really, honestly do. And no matter what others might think of you, your lifestyle, your behaviors or your taste in music, in all events BE YOURSELF.

It’s an element of what Christmas is.

Celebrate Christmas your style.
Celebrate Christmas in your own personal style.

.

Oh?

What?

You don’t think that I am serious. Oh Noooo! I am very, very serious. You MUST be who you are and you MUST share that reality with those that you care about. This remains true whether they accept that reality or not. And no it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will get drunk at a work party. It might mean anything.

But it means the freedom to be ourselves surrounded by those that we love and who loves us for EXACTLY WHO WE ARE right now.

Be who you are.
Be who you are.

.

Strange posting from Metallicman

Yes. I get that a lot.

Why aren’t I railing about the “issues of the day”? Why aren’t I all that concerned about the Fourth Turning, and the SHTF, and the post-election shit-storm and all the myriad of issues that seem to intrude in my daily news feed? Why not?

  • The train is moving full speed to the end of the line. There’s nothing that I can do about it.
  • The Oligarchy, the PTB, the 1%, the Jews, or what ever enemy du Jour you want to assign this current world-line to, well it’s also out of my hands. You just recognize what is going on and step out of the way.
  • Work rules and regulations come and go with the human condition. What we have now is but a fleeting moment in time. Embrace it.
  • And if this world line is going to opt for the MAD level fiasco, well, I’ll perform a deep slide and get the fuck out of here. Maybe you all should consider that as well.

And if you don’t understand, well then, pour yourself a nice cocktail and forget about it. You need to relax. American have become so fucking uptight over the last few decade. When they arrive here in China they look bewildered and out of sorts. Like they are trying to find some kinds of stability or familiarity that they can hold on to.

Just celebrate Christmas.

Celebrate your way

Do it YOUR way.

Christmas Nativity Scene.
(Minimalist) Christmas Nativity Scene

.

And if you don’t…

If you don’t take some friends, some co-workers, some family out to a meal, or a beer, or just a cup of coffee then you are a sorry, sorry excuse for a person. It’s the relationships with others that define our value. You have no relationships, then you have no value. Simple stuff. Easy to understand. Yet…

What the fuck is wrong with you all?

You don’t need to buy a lot of expensive presents. You don’t need to get shit faced drunk. You don’t need to ask permission. You don’t need to plan for a big event. You don’t need to order a cake.

You just need to be there.

Be unique.
Be unique.

.

Some ideas…

  • Stop over to your grandparents unexpectedly. Say hi. Tell them that you want to look over some old picture albums if they don’t mind. Or barring that, just have a cup of coffee, and maybe watch a television show with them.
  • Call your brother, or sister and tell them that you remembered about the time when XXXXXXX and you were thinking about that time and just wanted to say hi.
  • Call up a friend and say hi, and go out for a beer. You pay. It’s your treat.

It need not be extensive, expensive or exclusive. You just need to contribute your time. If you cannot. If you cannot give some of your time up for those that you care about, then what the fuck are you doing with your life? It’s those in our lives that make it worth while and who helps and stands by us when the times are low and we need to know that we are not alone, and that these people care about us.

Go crazy.
Christmas is the time to go wild. Let it all hang out.

.

My friend Marcus didn’t know that. He thought that he was alone. He thought that people didn’t understand him. He thought that he was a failure. But that was all wrong-headed thinking. He wasn’t a loser. He wasn’t alone. And he wasn’t a failure.

He was just different.

And that difference made him special in our minds. And to this day, I greatly lament that he is no longer here. And yeah, even though I saw him rarely (being at the other end of the globe and all) I still wish that he could have said “MM I’m going through some shit right now, can I crash at your house for a month? I won’t be a bother. I just need some time”

And while my wife might have a fit, I would say “Yeah. I’d be happy to host you. We have an empty 2nd and third bedroom. Just come and we will sort out everything when you arrive.”

That’s what friends do.

That’s EXACTLY what friends do.

Expereince life.
Don’t let the world pass you by. Start enjoying the moment. Stop having your head buried in an APP, a game or social media. Experience life.

.

It’s a shit load better than the alternative. No shit. It’s better than the alternative; the reality of what actually happened. Instead of lying nude in his bed and blowing his brains out.

So now, it’s Christmas. Are you all gonna follow the herd? Or are you going to spend time with friends and family? Are you going to bond with co-workers? Are you going to be a substantive person? Are you going to make a difference in this world? Or are you going to continue to be a passenger?

Do things your way.

Define your life by your actions now.

Use Christmas as your springboard.

You are in control.
You are in control of your life. Act like it.

Final words

Merry Christmas. Don’t be afraid about being called into HR for saying it either. Be who you are. Be proud, and define life on YOUR TERMS. start now.

Merry Christmas!

And if HR gives you some shit over it, tell them that Christmas is a Chinese holiday and you are just celebrating it because you are part Chinese.

…And if they look at you like you are fucked in the head, show them THIS post.

Remind them that Federal law prevents and prohibits discrimination against your religion and speech. It’s first amendment, baby!

Tell them to stop being so niggardly.

niggardly
[ˈniɡərdlē]

ADJECTIVE
not generous; stingy.
"serving out the rations with a niggardly hand"

synonyms:
miserly · parsimonious · close-fisted · penny-pinching · cheeseparing · [more]
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.

.

Oh…

One last thing.

How is Metallicman celebrating Christmas this year 2020?

Like this, you all. Like this…

Merry Christmas.
Metallicman celebrates Christmas.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my Life and Happiness Index here…

Life & Happiness

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

To go to the MAIN Index;

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE .
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.

Error! Missing PayPal API credentials. Please configure the PayPal API credentials by going to the settings menu of this plugin.

If you enjoy what you see, it would be helpful if you could assist in hosting this forum. A donation would be appreciated.

The rest of the world is living life, what is holding you back? Is it the belief that you are somehow “special”?

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Americans are constantly reinforced how dark and gloomy the rest of the world is. They are told that America must fight wars all over the globe to “free people” from the evils of Communism, and “to spread democracy” and the “American way of life”. It’s all a big nasty lie. The rest of the world is doing just fine thank you. And Americans need to straighten up, get their collective shit together and stop putting their nose in everyone else’s’ business.

This post consists of some videos from the rest of the world. And no, it doesn’t look like a “save the children” commercial either. People are living life, having fun and just enjoying themselves. They are not probed, monitored, reported on, and over taxed. They are doing just fine. And we are going to have some glimpses into their lives right about now.

Meanwhile in America

Ah. The Drudge Report offers us a snapshot of how America is doing. It’s a fucking mess, I’ll tell you what.

I will tell you how bad things are.

I know that change is a normal art of life, but man….

And yet, if you go on American social media it’s still the same old narrative. America is so fantastic and so wonderful and so great that it must be the “will of God”, and all the rest of the world is evil. America needs to get involved and “teach them lessons”.

Today, Sen. Ernst says, we face a different supply chain threat: China.
"We rely on communist China for far too much," she explains.

She hasn't only been talking about the Chinese threat. Sen. Ernst recently wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in which she stressed that the U.S. must be more aggressive toward China, particularly after the communist regime's mishandling and cover-up of the coronavirus. China's role in the pandemic resulted in the loss of thousands of American lives, as well as devastating economic consequences.

-Joni Ernst Focuses on China in First TV Ad of the Year

Oh Fucking Brother!

"...the communist regime's mishandling and cover-up of the coronavirus..."

Please give me a fucking break.

The videos of people dying all over China during CNY were everywhere.  I myself have collected thousands.  And while this was going on, you had President Trump telling everyone that "nothing is going on", and that you don't need to wear a mask. The idea that there was some sort of coverup is just political theater.

What “mishandling”?

Six days after discovery, everything went public and under lock-down. If anyone is mishandling anything it is the idiots running the United States right now.

Anyways…

America is in bad shape. And the general “rule of thumb” (historically) is to claim some foreign threat. Then launch a war, claiming that it’s all in “self-defense”. Right now, the build up is all against China.

But if Trump loses the election, the build up will be redirected against Russia.

And if so, then it looks like the John Tutor narrative will really start to have some legs...

… Nuclear War.

But of course, the PTB, the Oligarchy aren’t thinking this. They just simply cannot envision a life where they are not inside their nice comfortable homes living life and sipping tea while fondling with their pearl necklaces. They cannot envision major change on the order of Genghis Khan level disruptions.

Instead, they are pushing the same, tired old, narrative…

Export “democracy” to the rest of the world so that they can be as fantastically wonderful as Americans are, with all those American “freedoms”!

American freedoms in action. Let's export this to the rest of the world!
American freedoms in action. Let’s export this to the rest of the world! Woo woo!

Well…

Let me tell you’se guys. The rest of the world doesn’t want any “American exceptionalism”. They just wish to be left alone, and the dearly wish that America would just “go away”.

Why?

Because the are NOT suffering. They are NOT some starving village out of a “Save the Children” commercial. And most people are very, very far removed to that 0.0003% of people who live in the elitist bubble in Washington DC where stocks, bonds and public manipulation are the norm.

They are having fun.

They are living life.

Having fun like everyone used to back in the day, in America before all those progressive "improvements".
Having fun like everyone used to back in the day, in America before all those progressive “improvements”.
Here's some glimpses into the rest of the world. The images are from South East Asia. This includes Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Burma. Now, there is a lot of cultural back-and-forth going on in these areas, so there is a chance that I am mixing up a few regions with nearby societies. lease excuse the mistakes if appropriate.

Burma Music Video

Most Americans don’t know where Myanmar is.

It’s a small nation West of Thailand. It’s relatively poor, but peaceful. The only time most Americans hear about it has to do with some military excursion one way or the other. Then suddenly the news is plastered with buzz-words and trigger phrases. You know the drill “democracy”, “military junta”, “regime” and “communist”.

But aside from that, Americans are kept ignorant.

Myanmar map.
Myanmar map.

Americans just do not care.

“Out of sight is out of mind” as we all used to say.

At most, Americans might look at the news and see what constitutes as a video portrayal of events and daydream of starting a KFC franchise, introducing those “poor starving people” to ATM machines, and American social media. Not realizing of course, that they already have all of this. Each and every bit, only under their terms. Not under the oppressive terms of the iron-fisted American empire.

Anyways…

Here’s what it’s really like.

This is what the rest of the world is like.

And while you Americans were out having a BBQ with some chicken, some hamburgers, bags of potato chips, and watermelon, this is what other people were doing. While you were flying the red, white and blue flag on your porch, and drinking some fine Budweiser beer or PBR. Only…

Only…

Only…

…they didn’t need an official government holiday to do it. They just went out and lived life. Because for the rest of the world, just about every day is a holiday.

Check out this (partial) MV video from Burma…

Burma music video.

Ah it’s one of my favorites.

Now for some bad news…

THE PENTAGON IS PREPARING A NEW WAR IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA
Political Islam against China
by Thierry Meyssan

You are probably aware that you are incompletely informed about what is brewing in Myanmar, and you probably haven’t heard about the military coalition that is preparing to attack that country. And yet, as Thierry Meyssan reveals here, these current events have been in preparation by Riyadh and Washington since 2013. Don’t take sides before you read this article and digest the information.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article198141.html

All in the name of “freedom” and “democracy”…

But, take a gander. Do these people seem to need “democracy”, or “The American way of life”, or “American exceptionalism” that Donald Trump so loudly proclaim?

DO you really think that they want ANYTHING that America exports right now?

Do they look like they eat a lot of McDonald’s hamburgers, are all worked up and stressed about the IRS reporting dates, the up coming November elections, the new laws on social distancing on beaches or fishing? Nope. They are not. Because that nightmare world that all Americans live within is far, far removed for the lifestyle, and the societies of the rest of the world.

Thirteen years ago my life changed forever.

Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State and the most credible person in George W. Bush’s cabinet, made the case for war in Iraq on February 5, 2003.

As a young military intelligence officer at the time, watching from a makeshift army base in Kuwait not far from the Iraq border.

Back then I was a true believer, trusting that the government was a force for good “making the world safe for democracy. . .”

But that night it all changed.

Powell told the world unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, an assertion that history has proven categorically wrong.

But within the intelligence community, many people knew the appalling truth immediately.

That night it became clear to me that the government was lying and that the whole case for war was being fabricated.

It was crushing, like finding out everything I’d been told throughout my life was total bullshit.

So for the first time, I broke out of the spell and began questioning. Everything.

I started learning about the extraordinary political power of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about.

That led me to the fraud of many previous wars going as far as the Mexican War in 1845, one deeply criticized by Abraham Lincoln himself.

That led me to the Constitution, to which all military officers swear an oath to support and defend…

… and it surely didn’t seem like supporting or defending the Constitution in waging an ill-conceived, illegal war.

Needless to say I couldn’t talk to my professional colleagues. Everyone was so gung-ho, I felt like an outcast.

When I returned home, things didn’t improve.

While I was away the country had noticeably turned into a police state.
Yet people seemed oblivious to the change, drinking in the propaganda like a spiked punch bowl.

All the loud, bombastic nonsense and pledges of allegiance were merely illusions masking modern day serfdom.

-Simon Black

And now, well America is really knee-deep in shit. And it desperately needs a major military conflict for the PTB to stay in control and they are all “chomping at the bit” to make it happen.

It’s terrifying.

Yes. I know. I am in a “safe place”. And I know that change is going to happen. But, you all do know that I want peaceful change. Not violent change. And these elitists sitting in Washington DC are just delusional. On both sides of the isle. They do not know what they are asking, and the result will NOT be what they expect.

Hey!

Did the starvation of China work? How about the mass riots in Hong Kong? What about the UN going against the Uighur “concentration camps” (nonsensical, but still) or of course the COVID-19 bioweapons attack against China on the CNY eve 2020? How did it all pan out.?

Do you all somehow think that a war with a major power is going to be a “walk in the park”?

The United States needs to leave the rest of the world alone.

It needs to concentrate on it’s own problems and start fixing things.

No one believes the United States any longer. All the masks of self-righteous truth and Godliness has been stripped away to expose the evil dark underneath.
No one believes the United States any longer. All the masks of self-righteous truth and Godliness has been stripped away to expose the evil dark underneath.

Instead of filling their own pockets and letting the rest of the nation suffer. And that is what is going on right now. Those trillions of dollar bailouts are not going tot he citizens. They are, instead, going to the politically connected and the cronies that support the PTB. This is not good…

It’s like throwing kerosene on a smoldering fire.

Yet…

The rest of the world is living life. Having fun. Chilling.

Let’s go to Thailand.

Local Thailand Music

Of course, in Thailand you can hear classic American Rock blaring from the bars and nightclubs, but if you listen carefully and go outside the tourist areas you can find real genuine local music. And it’s all pretty darn cool.

One of the most curious things that fascinated me is that the local music, and the styles all tended to resemble the hotter sections of Southern Mexico. And I am not the first to notice it.

A curious new trend has emerged in Bangkok, where young Thai men are identifying as “Mexican gangsters.” 

On the outside, many of these Thais resemble the Cholos who inspire them. Their clothes, tattoos, and hairstyles emulate those sported by real homies.

What became clear is that the Thai obsession with these groups is simply an appreciation of their aesthetic. All of the men we spoke with were captivated by “the clean and simple style” that “worked well in this (Thai) weather,” as one gang member said. 

So while they might appear and look like Mexican gangsters, they really emulate their style and appearance. As they both have a similar build / stature, a similar family lifestyle, a similar society, and similar weather. One should not, however, think that they aren’t able to handle themselves were “push comes to shove”. Thailand is the land of “kick boxing” and they do not play.

I dont know about the clothes but on a hand to hand combat fight my moneys on the thai boys! 

They would kick their ass in about 2 seconds with that martial arts shit! 

As for the idiot who wondered wtf this story got to do with anything? Get the f**k outta here! U need a change of pace sometimes! 

I saw a little woman from thailand once bring a grownass man to the floor with a damn broom handle once honest! If i hadnt seen it myself i wouldnt have believed it! 

I was like dayuum!

Anonymous
March 20, 2014 at 11:19 PM

Perhaps what most separates the Thais from the Mexicans they imitate is that almost all of them hold innocuous 9-5s as teachers, policemen and bureaucrats. Many are family men, and some admitted to consulting their wives before getting certain tattoos.

Thailand Music Video

In a nutshell, this is a brotherhood of style-conscious men who bond over baggy white shirts and gothic-baroque tattoos.

That’s not to say that the Thais don’t have an understanding of the fierce take-no-shit Cholo attitude. Thanks to Youtube and movies they’re very much aware of that culture’s hyper-aggressiveness and machismo. One Balcony Pain gang member – Mr. Shiro Local – bared his inner gangster to us when he rapped a few lines from an original song he had written called “Fuck the Popo” in which he compared corrupt Thai police to parasites in his scrotum. 

Such outright vitriol is rarely directed towards people in authority in Thailand, where the dominant culture is one of extreme deference towards the powerful. Yet, you’d be hard pressed to find Thais who disagree with Mr. Local’s assessment of Bangkok’s cops. Perhaps a little more Mexican gangstah chutzpah is exactly what Thailand needs. 

Just some local Thai men being themselves and living life.

Nice. Eh?

Local societies doing local things. People living life.

Good. Right?

Well…

Not everyone thinks so…

Trump, Pompeo and Bolton.
Trump, Pompeo and Bolton.

Now all this is going on while the PTB and the Oligarchy are moving military forces around the world. Both the American and English forces are moving in preparation for the World War that America so desperately needs…

What this article in fact announces is the state of war between the Anglo-American Empire and the PRC which with characteristic euphemism is called "hybrid". 

https://www.ft.com/content/20910e6d-5ae7-4026-aaee-947e22c3dd60

"Britain’s armed forces pivot east to face growing China threat
Security and defence review dominated by ways to counter Beijing’s hybrid warfare"

The FT as a mouthpiece of the Establishment is announcing that the conventional warfare elements are being mobilised as cover for covert operations already in progress for at least 18 months.
By placing visible assets near the "front" any PRC responses to covert action can be dressed as provocations justifying selective escalation.

Since the AAE is aware that it is unable to challenge PLAN elements in Chinese territorial waters or EEZ, these naval elements serve to inhibit or disrupt maritime traffic toward or from China.

The preoccupation with repeated instances of viral infection not only consume resources but reinforce the negative public image of the PRC and force its "self-isolation".

Since at the same time the promoters of the "pandemic" are determined to drive Trump out of office at all costs, both to restore control over the W**** House and hence the state bureaucracy and to continue the rollout against China and Russia unobstructed, there is little reason to expect any change in the WHO status before December.

By that time the scale of basic economic disaster will require the draconian "public health (in fact policing) measures" on a far more coordinated scale than at present is apparent.

We are going through what might best be called an indoctrination phase. This is a shift from overt criminal policing or political repression to a general "health and safety" doctrine- already well anchored in Britain and the US (the white dominions).

My gut feeling is that the protests in the US are in fact a managed "watertight integrity" test. The natural anger and opposition to all sorts of real and imagined injustice is being selectively detonated. This will starve the real opposition of the "oxygen" it needs to resist the next phase of suppression.

It would be nice to think that it is all more chaotic and less subject to management than I describe above. However, I see little cause for optimism of this sort.

Dr. T. P. Wilkinson
魏巴克

Yeah.

I know that it is depressing. It’s like you have this really nice calm life. It’s fine and tranquil and then suddenly American planes zoom overhead and release a fireball that completely wipes out your small village.

Americans spreading “democracy”.

Like what happened in Panama…

In Libya…

In Afghanistan, Syria…

And many, many other places…

Syria before and after America spread "democracy" and let them have a fine taste of American "freedom".
Syria before and after America spread “democracy” and let them have a fine taste of American “freedom”.

Hey! I know it’s depressing.

You want to know what’s even more depressing?

It’s that any attack on China or Russia will end up with nuclear attacks on American soil. And yet somehow, somehow and in some crazy way, the American and British PTB Oligarchy leadership doesn’t think that this will happen. Thinking that a war with China will be limited to conventional weapons in the South China Sea is absolutely foolish.

What is the matter with these people?

  • It will not be limited to conventional weapons.
  • It will not be limited to the South China Sea.

Don’t they realize that on the grand scale of things that you just cannot move about… being a destroyer of things and NOT have some “flash back”?

Look at these videos.

America is a bubble of insanity.

Has anyone seen this from Rod Campbell of Australia Institute? He claims thousands of bot accounts controlled by US government spread the Wuhan bioweapons narrative nearly 5 million times in the first half of 2020:
 
https://www.facebook.com/HongKongGoodNews/videos/200057774713941/

The life of the people in the rest of the world is…

… normal.

The life of Americans in America is…

…abnormal.

People… the rest of the world is not like this. The rest of the world is normal and doing well. The rest of the world is living life and having fun. They are not in the same kind of extremes that Americans are enduring.

It is like night…

… and day.

Having fun at the clubs in Thailand.
Having fun at the clubs in Thailand.

They are not living in this bubble of extreme freak-out that exists within the USA today. They are innocents. They are just minding their own business. And when the brave American bombs start dropping, there will be a response…

… you want to avoid the areas where the response(s) will end up.

Come on…

Look at the rest of the world.

What about life in Cambodia?

How about checking things out there…eh?

America Needs a War

As I am trying to make the point, I want you the reader to pay attention and listen. It’s simple really.

  • Americans are living within a “bubble”.
  • The rest of the world lies outside this “bubble”.

They are happy, doing well, and want to be left alone. They are now protected with strong military alliances with peer-capable weapons, serious and powerful leadership, and an understanding of the stakes and the evils of the American Military Empire as it exists today.

America needs a war. It is the only technique remaining in the arsenal of control that will allow the United States to stay coherent and not break apart through internal division.

The severity of the internal American discord is an indicator of how serious the projected war that America wants…

…and the rest of the world is aware of this.

If you all think that the Chinese, and the Russians are going to sit back and allow the America to go initiate a global war to preserve their control over the rapidly crumbling American structure…

…you are sadly mistaken.

Right now, and keep this in mind… China is STILL at DEFCON ONE. Last week they just called up all of the national reservists. All of them. (What? You didn’t see this in the American or Western press did you?) If you think that China is going to permit the five aircraft (2 + 3 = 5) carriers heading to China right now, and the two invasion flotillas to be a threat, you are crazy.

Chinese and Russian military advisors have been having a flurry of meetings over this last month.

Do not think that the rest of the world is going to sit back and pretend that nothing is going on? Don’t be silly. The leadership of both China and Russia are experts that obtained their positions through merit. Not though some diversity checklist and under-the-table bribes.

Meanwhile…

…In Cambodia.

Party Time in Cambodia

It’s “party time”. There, just like it used to be in America, people would customize their vehicles and make them into mobile party-centers. Then all they would need to do is go to an empty parking lot and have a good time. Sort of like this…

Cambodian Music Video

Yeah.

The rest of the world is just having fun. They are just enjoying themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But, you would never know that this was going on from reading the American news…

To Americans within their own bubble, they are convinced that they are “special”, and “wonderful”, and all is “great”.

How could they get this kind of idea?

Well…

It’s because it has been drummed into them ever since they first started attending school, and getting participation trophies for showing up.

But…

I’ve got news for everyone.

Americans are NOT special. In fact, most aren’t really functional at the most basic level. The PTB realize this, and many people are starting to wake up to this frightening situation.

Here’s one…

The following is the full text of an article titled “RAW TRUTH: Why 97% of lives really DON’T matter at all to the future of humanity” by Mike Adams. It was found on Natural News and all credit to the Author.

The opinions are of the author and not necessairly that of Metallicman. So please take advisements. Realize that there are changes and you need to be a participant or else you will be flushed down the drain with the rest. Be advised.

Aside from that. Realize that other people are starting to "wake up" and look around...

RAW TRUTH: Why 97% of lives really DON’T matter at all to the future of humanity

Sunday, July 05, 2020 by: Mike Adams

(Natural News) The mantra of “Black Lives Matter” has been pounded into our heads 24 hours a day, and we’re told it’s an enlightened, progressive statement while anyone who claims “White lives matter” is somehow a racist bigot. Even worse, those who utter “ALL lives matter” are now threatened with being killed by this Harvard graduate, and people are being fired from their jobs for claiming “all lives matter.”

In truth, almost no lives really matter to the future of humanity, and that’s because roughly 97% of the people are oblivious, clueless consumers who are doing absolutely nothing to help secure a legacy of truth and freedom for future generations.

If you are sitting on your ass, watching The View and devouring Weight Watchers donuts as you allow the TV to fill your brain with mush, your life actually doesn’t matter. If you were to cease to exist, nothing about the future of human history would change one iota.

If you are still watching CNN and predominantly using Facebook, Twitter and Google because you don’t realize all the voices of truth have been banned by the authoritarian Left, your life probably doesn’t matter. You are nothing but a mind puppet of the globalist-run corporate propagandists (Big Tech and Big Media).

If you conform to the insane demands of the progressive left-wing fascists because you cower in fear over being “cancelled,” your life doesn’t matter, either.

If you’re not standing up against the lunatic left-wing mob to defend logic, reason and rationality, your existence really doesn’t matter. You aren’t changing history; you’re being used as a “useful idiot” to help achieve the aims of the anti-human globalists who despise human populations.

If you’re not fighting for the right to speak, the right to disagree and the right to question the lunacy of the mob, your life doesn’t matter.

If you’re doped up on a dozen prescription drugs to the point that you’re mentally incapacitated and can barely process events happening right in front of you, your life doesn’t matter. (But you might get nominated as the Democratic Presidential candidate, notably.)

If you vote for candidates based on political tribalism without having any real clue what those candidates stand for, your life doesn’t matter.

If you think you are owed everything without having to work for anything, your life doesn’t matter.

If you think the answer to today’s existential threats to our nation, our freedom and our Bill of Rights are no big deal and everybody should just “think positive,” then your life doesn’t really matter. You will accomplish nothing that matters.

Approximately 97% of the lives of Americans today don’t matter one bit. They are NPCs — Non-Player Characters — also known as PLFs (Programmable Life Forms), and they will do whatever they are told by the media, the corporations and the fake establishment “authorities.” They add exactly zero value to society and if they vanished tomorrow, the course of human history wouldn’t be altered one bit.

Here’s a video showcasing some members of the 97% — the clueless masses whose lives are pointless and inconsequential. Watch as they explain how the United States of America achieved its independence “in 1964” by fighting “the Civil War” against “America.” Seriously… and two of them are teachers!

Whose lives matter? Those who are informed and who make a difference. The 3%.

Only about 3% of the population have any clue about our history and are actively engaged in shaping our future. That’s fewer than 10 million people nationwide.

It is these 10 million people who will determine our shared future and whether or not we end up enslaved under left-wing tyranny or are able to reclaim our constitutional republic and defeat the anti-American forces that are rising.

So out of a nation of 330 million people, about 320 million lives make no difference at all. They are what globalists call “useless eaters,” and they are on the list to be exterminated via global depopulation efforts that are now underway via the plandemic and the coming coronavirus “vaccine.”

Another way to look at this is by simply being active in the effort to spread the truth and defend humanity against tyranny, you matter more than any 33 other people who are oblivious. Your life “counts” more, in other words, because you’re fighting to make a difference. And the 97% figure for the clueless masses is actually quite generous. The real number is probably more like 99%, which means one active, aware person “matters” more than 99 other people who are clueless.

What makes your life matter isn’t the color of your skin or your political affiliation. What determines whether you matter is how committed you are to fighting for human freedom and opposing authoritarianism and tyranny. Notably, people who really matter are self-selected: They alone determine that they wish to take a stand and make a difference. No one can appoint you to this position of relevance; you must seize it for yourself and become a person whose life really does make a positive difference in the world.

How to make your life matter

If you are an oblivious conformist who surrenders to the lunatic mob, your life is pointless and redundant. But if you want your life to really matter, you must break away from the mob and start thinking (and acting) for yourself.

There are many, many people who have set the example of independent thinking that you might allow to inspire yourself to do the same:

… and many others. There are lots of examples out there. Are you among these types of independent thinkers who challenge the status quo and work to truly empower and uplift humanity with wisdom and knowledge?

Don’t go through life on a pointless, narcissistic rampage of a cult-like obedience to the puppet masters of our time: Think for yourself. Learn history. Share knowledge. Branch out and away from the content controllers at Facebook, YouTube, Google and Twitter. Change the channel and stop allowing yourself to be brainwashed by CNN, MCNBC and NPR.

Use alternative platforms for sharing real knowledge, like…

  • Brighteon.com
  • Spreely.com
  • Parler.com.

Seek out uncommon knowledge and use it to empower yourself. Create your own channels and post your own videos, texts or articles.

Freedom is so easily accessible that you can find it by typing a URL into your browser. Instead of typing “Facebook.com,” type “Brighteon.com” and discover a whole new world.

Be someone who matters.

Change the future for the better. Join those of us who are doing this work every single day, dedicating our lives to protecting human freedom and a sustainable future of abundance and liberty for all.

97% of lives don’t matter, but yours can. What will you choose to do with it?

Be the Rufus

Make no mistake. Those that will survive and be permitted to procreate and live life through this tumultuous time period with be those that are aware, kind and knowledgeable. But most certainly have the kind of sentience deserving of mankind.

Sitting on a couch, smunching on pork rinds, and demanding that taxes get raised so that you can still keep using your food stamps is not representative of the future of mankind.

This is…

The rest of the world is starting to fight back.

The rest of the world is changing.

The way things have been is coming to an end, and people are starting to fight back. They demand stability, families, and stable relationships. They tire of the vermin… rich and the poor that prey on the rest of society. Now, with the proper tools, and the proper motivation they have declared a new order of society.

Have you noticed?

  • The CIA/NED instigation of the Hong Kong “pro-democracy” movement and the pay-offs of the Judges to let the criminals have a pass. Even when it came to killing people, damaging critical infrastructure, and maiming people.

And…

  • China changing the law. Throwing out the judges. Shutting down the CIA/NED “safe spaces”. Arresting and severely punishing the wrong-doers. Organ harvesting with life-time of hard-labor in the salt mines for many many years. No wonder that even Joshua Wong has disbanded his organization.

It’s all starting to come down. It’s all starting to fall apart.

USA compared to China. 2020.
USA compared to China. 2020.

And the petty criminals and the evil folk in positions of power must change or else they will face the consequences.

Remember this;

A functional nation devotes 100% of it's time, energy and resources on bettering the lives of it's people.

If it is unable to do that, or devotes a smaller percentage of time, money and effort to the domestic needs of it's people, it is disfunctional.

The world, and the human race, needs functional, healthy and substantive people, organizations and governments. Anything less MUST be purged and culled from existence.

Do you want more?

I have more articles like this in my Happiness Index here…

Life & Happiness

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

To go to the MAIN Index;

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE .
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.

Error! Missing PayPal API credentials. Please configure the PayPal API credentials by going to the settings menu of this plugin.

Mother Cat Brings Her Ill Kitten To The Hospital, Medics Rush To Help Them

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

It’s stories like this that remind us of our humanity and our place and role on this planet. We should be helping others in need, not trying to grab handfuls of cash at the expense of others.

Be the Rufus.

It’s our highest calling.

Recently, photos taken at one Istanbul hospital’s emergency room made a round on social media. The snaps that were shared by Merve Özcan on Twitter show a mother cat bringing her sick kitten to the human hospital. The paramedics can be seen surrounding the poor mama cat and petting her.

Luckily, the Turkish people are known for their love and respect for stray animals and they provided the cats with the necessary help. The kitten is now fine and no CAT scans were required.

Recently, in Istanbul, a stray cat mom took her baby kitten to the ER

In Turkey, the paramedics wear clothes that looks like they belong on a soccer field.
In Turkey, the paramedics wear clothes that looks like they belong on a soccer field.

Shared by thousands of people on Turkish social media and liked by more than 82k people on Reddit, the story made many’s hearts warm. In the photos shared on Twitter, a baby kitten is seen carried by its mama to the human emergency room.

“Today we were in the emergency room of the hospital when a cat rushed to bring her offspring in her mouth,” Merve Özcan, who originally shared the photos, wrote.

The photos that made a round on social media show paramedics huddled around the cats

The mother cat carried her kitten into the Emergency room directly and down the hallway to the ICU.
The mother cat carried her kitten into the Emergency room directly and down the hallway to the ICU.

Local media writes that while the baby was being cared for, the medics gave its mother some milk and food to make her more relaxed and comfortable. The Turks have long been known for their love and care for stray animals, with many leaving out food and water for them on the streets.

After the intervention of human doctors, the two cats were directed to a vet

The mother cat carried her kitten into the Emergency room directly and down the hallway to the ICU.
The mother cat carried her kitten into the Emergency room directly and down the hallway to the ICU.

Luckily, as Turkish media reported, both cats seemed fine, but were still directed to the vet just to be sure that the mother and kitten duo are in good health.

The event was all over Turkish news outlets and social media

The mother cat carried her kitten into the Emergency room directly and down the hallway to the ICU.
The mother cat carried her kitten into the Emergency room directly and down the hallway to the ICU.

People on Reddit praised the paramedics and hospital staff at the Istanbul hospital for their kind actions. Some also remembered stories of their own where people helped animals in need. “This happened in my hometown with a birthing cat. She had problems and walked up to the hospital and started to meow. They helped her and she is now the pet of the doctor who called the vet,” one Reddit user shared.

Here’s what people on social media said

The cat makes friends within the hospital.
The cat makes friends within the hospital.

Do you want more?

I have more uplifting posts in my Rufus index here…

Hero Stories

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

To go to the MAIN Index;

Master Index

.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE .
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.

Error! Missing PayPal API credentials. Please configure the PayPal API credentials by going to the settings menu of this plugin.