Here’s some memories of my mother’s, aunties, and grandmother’s sewing machines. They all had them.

My Grandmothers machines were made in the 1920’s or so.

My Mother’s and my aunties machines were all 1950 – 1960 machines.

And I bought a 1980 era machine for my first wife.

And that is all I have to say about sewing machines.

Today…

How China deals with US provocation

What was the moment when you felt extremely lucky?

The pinnacle of good fortune in my existence occurred in the Kosovo War after I inadvertently walked into a minefield.

силиmrtæmic base at the mountains required immediate evacuation when I forgot where I placed explosives and mines. My responsibility was to establish explosive devices and enemy-slowing barrier chambers to impede enemy military advancement. The enemy tanks became visible to our sight from the hills in the distance. Surrounded by time constraints I focused my work during the night shift which led to severe fatigue throughout the several days.

I completed mine placement duties just before we needed to depart from our headquarters during the last day of operation. My fatigue caused me to remove completely the newly set explosives from my conscious memory.

I walked out of the building with my backpack when suddenly my friend screamed at me to stop moving. Don’t move!” I froze. The narrow wire stretched between the ground and left boot caught my attention as I glanced toward my feet. The PMA-2 anti-personnel mine which I had placed on the ground rested mere half a meter away from my feet. The wire tore the explosive device out from the ground yet the device surprisingly did not detonate.

The mine check revealed that the trigger wire remained inside the mechanism at just a tiny distance. The addition of just a 0.5 millimeter distance would have activated the PMA-2 explosive which would have caused instant death for both of us.

I retreated carefully before calming myself down and we moved forward toward the mountain range. Only a short time later the shock disappeared completely while I forgot what happened although now I understand I escaped death that day by chance.

Collision

Submitted into Contest #210 in response to: Set your story after aliens have officially arrived on Earth.… view prompt

The cigarette caught the flame and smoldered. Dysus cracked his window, and the smoke that drifted up to burn his eyes was sucked away into the cold morning. He coasted under yet another green light. He’d encountered only green lights; insistent go, go, go signals from the universe.

Heavy slugs crept in his bowels. He sucked greedily at his cigarette, crossing his eyes to watch the ember glow. Flecks of ash dusted his lap.

Another green light. Dysus flicked a quick gaze to the dashboard clock, cursing his good luck, slowing down, willing the minutes to move.

He was running early for his appointment, so many factors having contributed to the unwelcome streamlining of his journey. He still hadn’t gotten used to the lack of traffic on the Rue – everyone took the new Magway now. The perimeter gates of his settlebloc had been open already, and he hadn’t needed to wait for security to buzz him through. The sobriety checkpoint had been unmanned. His trip had taken ten minutes fewer than he’d planned.

Another green light. The car’s rusted axle scraped a deep pothole in the middle of the intersection. Dysus thought about pulling over to kill time, but he knew if he stopped the car he would not be able to start it again.

He inhaled a huge, head-spinning drag of smoke and opened the window a bit more. His hand shook as he poked the tip of the cigarette out the window to tap its growing column of ash onto the street.

A nervous tremor rippled through him, and the stick fell from his nicotine-stained fingers. He fumbled instinctively, knocking his knuckles against the glass, and the drafting air pressure caught the cigarette and blew it back at him.

He didn’t see where it landed. The car was full of kindling: fast food wrappers flammable with grease, sun-brittled paper, dirty clothes. He imagined the backseat catching fire and tried to reach behind him, patting, feeling for the errant ember, grimacing at the green light visible above the next empty intersection.

Dysus felt a huge, hot bug bite his left elbow and reacted by slamming his foot against the gas pedal. He yelped and smacked the sleeve his cigarette had fallen into. It burned as he ground it into his skin. The car veered. He shook his sleeve out, flinging the still-smoldering cigarette out of his cuff and made to stamp it out on the floor mat, wincing and checking the time and still accelerating under the last green light, and when the flustered panic retreated beneath his original anxiety he finally looked back at the road just in time to watch a man disappear under the front of his car.

He braked, far too late, long after being gently jostled by two soft thumps below him.

Dysus never got to find out if he possessed enough cowardice to pull off a hit and run.

The pitchy squeal of badly maintained brakes and the crash of chassis on curb alerted supplicants of the Tor Vah’Gaar. They streamed out of their temple to investigate, their white ceremonial robes billowing in the morning wind.

Dysus sat still, his hands locked in grip around the wheel as if he meant to strangle it. He wished he could let go and light a cigarette, but that would mean he’d next have to open the door, step into the morning, and face the red squeezed-tube of a body on the road behind him. Would it be wet, steaming in the frigid air? Was his car heavy enough to squelch organs from orifice, or would he find less messy blunt force trauma? He pictured dirty tire tracks on a crushed throat. Might the man still be alive?

It was that thought that loosened his grip and allowed him to move, sludgy slow, on shock-cocooning autopilot. He reached for his cigarettes and felt a flood of relief when he found that two smokes remained in the worry-crumpled package. His hands were steady when he lit one.

He got out of the car and watched the white robes flock to the stillness in the street.

A woman stood over the body and cried, while another tapped off a message on her handheld. A man knelt, the pristine hem of his robe drawing road dust up through fabric capillaries. He reached for the body with tentative, gentle fingers.

They all saw the gun at the same time.

It had been knocked several feet from the dead man. A scratched-up bootleg particle cannon. Tech from an old empire, illegal and devastating, primed and still pointing at the temple of Tor Vah’Gaar. Dysus thought ridiculously of that old game, spin the bottle.

He sat on the curb and smoked, not wanting to bother the Vah’Gaarans with his stink, not wanting to yellow their robes with his residue. Sirens wailed, melancholy and distant, approaching via the Magway.

The crying woman ran back toward the temple, calling a name in an alien language as she flitted inside. “Baaraana!”

Realization of their narrowly-escaped victimhood widened the eyes of the Vah’Gaarans on the street. Shock ran through them like a contagion, vulnerability dawning like a weak sunrise. They stepped away from the body, their eyes on the gun as if it might come to life and shoot them on its own.

More Vah’Gaarans exited the temple, joining the congregation that formed in the road, keeping a safe distance from the downed would-be gunman. They discussed in hushed voices, asked shrill questions of each other, and gradually their attentions diverted to the silent, smoking man sitting on the curb by his ruined car.

The man with the dirty hem approached Dysus and crouched.

“Sir,” the Vah’Gaaran said. “Sir, are you alright? Are you injured?”

Dysus blew smoke away from the man’s intent, searching face. “Don’t think so.”

“Don’t think you’re alright, or don’t think you’re injured?”

Dysus blinked. “Both, I guess.” He wanted to laugh. He’d killed a man. He would not be making his appointment.

“He saved us!” A woman rushed over, the one with her handheld out, the one who’d presumably summoned the emergency vehicles that were now speeding down the Magway’s off-ramp onto the Rue. Blue and red lights spun halos in the morning fog around them. Sirens muffled the increasingly frantic voices of the Vah’Gaarans as their attentions closed in on Dysus.

He stubbed his cigarette out on the concrete and pocketed the butt. He didn’t want to litter in front of these pristine, holy people. Saviors have to keep up appearances, he thought.

Admiration was foreign to Dysus and at first he mistook it for suspicion.

When the responding officers were finally able to pry him away from the Vah’Gaarans, the media, and the tangle of emergency vehicles, they took him to the police station and parked him in an interrogation room. They gave him a cup of hot chocolate. They shook his hand. Short, neatly groomed Officer Kayata led him outside to smoke when he requested it, though she wrinkled her nose while she waited for him to finish.

He caught a glint at her throat, noticing the stylized Tor Vah’Gaaran saucer pendant she wore on a delicate chain. An icon of worship, veneration of the alien hands that cradled Earth, mending it from its human-inflicted wounds.

“You should really stop that,” she said, squinting her eyes against the smoke as he exhaled. “It stinks.”

They’re my lungs and I’ll ruin them if I want to, he thought. He narrowed his eyes at her pendant. Not that you’d understand.

Officer Kayata took a call on her handheld, walking a few yards away as Dysus blew smoke into the still-cold early afternoon sky.

“This is about to get a lot bigger,” she warned him as she strode back to him, her call concluded. “A Tor Vah’Gaar ambassador was supposed to be at that temple today.” She maintained her professional demeanor, but Dysus didn’t miss the sparkling hint of tears at the corners of her eyes.

Back in the interrogation room, Dysus sat on his hands to both hide their trembling and warm them up. Officer Kayata brought him another hot chocolate and sat primly in the metal chair across the table from Dysus. Fluorescent lights clicked above, probing and harshly bright, the better to scrutinize you with.

“This is just a formality.” Officer Bosqov, gruff and bushily mustached, shuffled incident reports and witness statements on the metal table. “You’re not in any trouble, we just want to get our facts straight. As you can imagine, the entire Vah’Gaaran community stands behind you. You told him about the ambassador?” Officer Kayata nodded. “They’ve offered their best lawyers but I don’t think you’ll need them. They’ve also set up a donation hotline.”

Dysus clenched his stomach against the tide of bile that threatened to rise. He wanted a cigarette, but his pack was empty. He felt the deprived addict’s headache peeking around the corner, waiting to ambush.

Officer Bosqov’s voice took on a serious tone, and he asked the question Dysus had been dreading.

“Where were you headed when you saw the gunman?”

Dysus swallowed, pausing for a moment too long.

“Going to the doctor. My lungs,” he said, freeing a hand unconsciously to reach for the empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket. He thumped a tightly closed fist on his chest. He thought a cough might be too much, too performative.

“Will your doctor verify that?” Bosqov clicked a pen, made a note.

“I was hoping they’d see me as a walk-in. I was coughing up blood last night.”

“I see,” Bosqov said. He leaned back in his chair, running a hand over his mustache as he regarded Dysus. “Now, I know this might be hard to talk about and you’re probably still in a bit of shock. But I need you to describe what happened again, with all the detail you can remember. Start with when you first saw the man on the street, what caught your attention, and what made you act. Again,” he said, his eyebrows raised with kind concern, “you aren’t in trouble. Fact is, you’re a hero whether you see yourself as one or not yet. You prevented what could have been an absolute massacre. That gun was modded and energized to Gaar and back. You saved a lot of lives. But we need to get everything on record.”

Officer Kayata twisted the Tor Vah’Gaar pendant she wore, her expression thoughtful, thankful. Dysus tried to keep from hyperventilating.

He cleared his throat. He spun his tale. He’d seen a furtive, suspicious man crossing the street, with hunters’ eyes narrowed and predatory, a gun hefted and steady, striding with obvious, murderous intent toward the temple. Dysus told the officers how he’d accelerated without hesitation, careening for the terrorist without fear for his own life, steering to kill and damn the consequences, it was the right thing to do! He had been out of his body, righteous instinct taking over, and all he’d felt was relief when the man’s rampage was aborted under his balding tires.

He’d almost convinced himself the story was true, until he found himself absentmindedly scratching the blister on his left elbow.

Vivette, the Vah’Gaaran PR representative, was a harried woman with two briefcases and a shaved head. She wore glasses and chewed gum like it fueled her, and her frantic productivity agitated and exhausted Dysus. He tried to pay attention to the several trains of thought she conducted.

“Tor’Baaraana will want to join you for some press conferences,” she said, typing a proposed media circuit schedule on a shiny laptop. She checked the official Vah’Gaaran forums. “Four independent congregations set up charity pools to cover any legal expenses. Gifts are coming in from all over the place. Is there any weird stuff about you online that I should know about?”

“I don’t think so,” Dysus said. He sipped tepid coffee and forced himself to take a bite of his rubbery omelet.

Vivette had wanted to meet him at his home, “to make you feel more comfortable, and for privacy”, she’d said, but he suspected she’d really wanted to scope out his situation and avert any potential PR crises before publicly canonizing him into the Vah’Gaaran sainthood. He’d refused, citing embarrassment about his messy bachelor’s apartment. She’d looked at him suspiciously, but had caved and met him at a cafe downtown. Time was of the essence for a story like this, she said. Already his face was plastered across screens and papers, his full name emblazoned in impact font under epithets like ‘The Hero of New Hartford’ and ‘A Savior’s Savior’.

Vivette checked a text message on her handheld, an email on her laptop, a notification on her watch. Information about Dysus assaulted her while he watched, tapping a nicotine-withdrawal beat on the table with his fingertips.

“Oh look, the Massippi branch got you a new car.” She turned the laptop around and showed Dysus a photo of grateful, white-robed zealots smiling next to a state-of-the-art Magcar. Dysus sneered. He hated those identity-stripped husks of bland futurism.

“You don’t like it?” She asked, catching his expression before looking down to respond to another text message.

“If I’d had one of those today, I wouldn’t have been there to run down Corsican.”

Trent Corsican, the other face of the day, the lone terrorist with a grudge against the benevolent aliens and their worshipers. A Regressivist with a raided apartment full of heretical literature and Macgyvered weapons. Dysus couldn’t picture the man’s face as having belonged to the body he’d smeared on the road. The visage and the corpse felt like two different men. Dysus felt like two men as well: the one who’d been anxious about an appointment earlier, and the paragon of righteous bravery he’d become.

He needed to get home. He had to clean his apartment.

“It is a bit ironic, isn’t it. The Tor Vah’Gaar give us MagTech and then you go and save them with that pollution machine relic. Oh, your ‘Reward a Hero’ fund is up to seventeen million credits,” Vivette said with an uncharacteristic awe.

“Wow.”

“I’ll say.” She narrowed her eyes. “How do you feel about joining a Vah’Gaaran chapter? It’s a great organization. And it would look great.”

Dysus clenched his teeth.

“I guess I could do that,” he said, thinking of seventeen million credits. He felt a piece of his principles snap off inside him.

“Great. A conversion might seem pandering if we do it too soon…” She checked her calendar for a good baptism date.

“Okay.” He really needed to get home to clean.

“And you’re going to need to stop smoking.” Vivette gave him a disappointed mother’s face. “It’s terrible optics and it smells awful.”

And it’s bad for me, I know, Dysus thought, and he’d never wanted a cigarette more.

He pictured himself smoking in his new Magcar. The two versions of himself, collided. The rebel and the hypocrite.

Is there anything so sacred as a being’s right to self destruct? Dysus wondered as he finally lit a cigarette. The smoke collected in the dark room, his comforting blanket of reckless autonomy.

Dysus had waited for the MagCab to pull away before unlocking the door of his apartment. He’d wondered how many more times he’d go through that familiar motion; he was now the owner of sixty million credits and could already taste the fresh air of a new settlebloc, a skyscraping penthouse with windows that opened to let in the cleanest clouds.

It was dark, the grimy settlebloc quiet, secured for the night against the scavenger sects. Dysus had slipped inside the apartment already feeling estranged from it, a trespasser, and he’d locked the door behind him quickly. He’d gone straight for his stash of smokes, navigating the clutter without needing to turn on a light.

He sat now on a ratty couch full of cigarette burns. He touched the circle on his elbow. “We match,” he said out loud, and laughed. He thought of the new couch he’d buy. Something soft, pillowy, something not pulled from a dumpster, something he might try to fall asleep on without a lit cigarette between his fingers.

Maybe it would be nice to live in the world the Tor Vah’Gaar race was trying to build.

Dysus exhaled, and he couldn’t see the smoke in the darkness. He never felt the drags as effectively when he couldn’t see the evidence of them; he saw emissions as proof of life. Was a sterile world a lived-in world? He’d believed destruction was inevitable, and more insidious if hidden.

He coughed. It was too dark to see any blood.

Maybe it was good he’d missed his appointment.

He imagined his beautiful, freshly painted penthouse again, then he thought of its opposite: a run-down safe house in a derelict settlebloc across town, sitting empty. He hadn’t had a chance to give the houses’ rusted key to Corsican; it was still nestled in his pocket alongside a pamphlet containing encrypted contact numbers, meeting coordinates, and credit stash codes. He’d lusted after the assassination bounty before, but now it seemed pathetic, an insult. Hardly enough to rise from ashes with.

A getaway driver was supposed to provide a new life, but not for themselves. He wondered if the Tor Vah’Gaar ever felt that way, rerouting a civilization from its path of shit, finding themselves Gods when they finished.

“Sorry, brother-in-cause.” Dysus raised a fresh cigarette in salut. “To new lives.”

He lit the cigarette, wondering if it would be his last, and used the same flame to burn the Regressivist pamphlet.

Because they need to learn history.

China has a complete historical record. The best generals will learn history and gain victory from the ancients’ combat experience.

They will also write their combat experiences into books and leave them to their descendants.

What actions should Europe take to increase its security and strengthen its defense architecture in order to prevent Russian aggression?

( 1 ) Europe needs to develop a nuclear deterrent that would cover either the whole continent or individual countries.

That might seem to be the same thing, but it’s not. The main risk here is that, in the future, the political forces that get into power in a European country might not want to share or extend the nuclear shield to other countries. So just having a common shield relying only on Britain, France and maybe a few others would not be enough. Le Pen has already publicly opposed such a scenario and it’s not that unlikely that her party could eventually reach power in France. Same possibility could play out in the UK or Poland (if they developed nuclear weapons). That means any nuclear deterrence arrangement might need more countries to develop their own weapons, possibly almost all of them. Or they could pool their nuclear shield in smaller regional groups, like Baltics could get their own shield, Poland its own nukes, Scandinavians their own separate solution, Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy their own separate shields and Romania and a few neighbours could also develop a joint approach to a common nuclear shield. This could be completed in less than 10 years.

( 2 ) Europe will also need updated and boosted air defence systems to handle anything Russia could lob in our direction. The discussion would be similar to the nuclear one, except this is less controversial, there is potential for a more collective approach.

( 3 ) Defence manufacturing will have to be scaled up considerably to be able to reach high-throughput ammunition production.

Ammunition at a production line in Unterluess, Germany

( 4 ) Stocks of staple weapons for a modern army should be increased: more tanks, more howitzers, more APCs.

Leopard 2 tanks at a production line an arms factory where weapons maker Rheinmetall plans to produce artilleries from 2025, in Unterluess, Germany February 12, 2024

A DITA howitzer-gun vehicle stands is pictured the arms factory in Sternberk, Czech Republic, February 27, 2024

Finished Senator APC is seen at vehicle manufacturer Roshel

( 5 ) Big focus on developing large stocks of several types of drones, adapted to counter jamming and possibly have some degree of stealth.

( 6 ) Big investment in autonomous satellite and space solutions to make Europe remove any external dependencies.

( 7 ) Boosting cyber warfare capabilities to block any interference or disruption of communication networks.

He Was Declared Dead And Sent To Another World; What He Saw There Will Shock You (NDE)

In the Philippines, being brown-skinned has usually been associated with ugliness.

I grew up with my grandmother and mother forcing me to slather sunblock all over my body for a simple trip to the mall. I always had to wear hats or bring out an umbrella whenever I was outside. And it wasn’t even about protecting oneself from the sun. Their reason? Boys only want girls with pale, fair skin.

Skin-whitening products such as soaps, creams, and lotions are very popular in my country and most TV commercials for bath products for women always make sure to emphasize their whitening properties.

Last April, GlutaMAX, a local skin whitening brand launched an advertising campaign called #YourFairAdvantage and plastered this ad on a billboard located along the busiest highway in Manila.

The ad basically shows two girls – one brown-skinned, the typical skin color of Filipinos, and one very fair and pale. The text in the middle reads:

She’s fair so she’s pretty. It’s unfair, right?

The brand claimed that fair-skinned people in the Philippines have more advantages than brown-skinned or morena ones and are considered to be more beautiful.

She’s given a seat on the bus because she’s fair-skinned. It’s unfair, right?

Fortunately, backlash from Filipino netizens was swift. Many called out the company for perpetuating harmful standards to Filipinos, especially to young, impressionable girls. It was a tone-deaf campaign that could have started a conversation about this type of bias in Filipino society, but instead, served to reinforce it even more.

Granted, the company took down their campaign and issued an apology statement on their Facebook page.

Despite recent steps made to counteract this age-old bias, preference for being fair-skinned continues to prevail in Philippine society. To be brown is to be considered unattractive. To be brown is to be considered ugly.

When I studied in Germany two years ago, I was surprised how people perceived my skin color. Strangers would ask me where I got my tan and was surprised to know that it was natural. My friends were jealous of my skin tone as they had to lie under the sun for a few hours to achieve a shallow imitation of it.

I’ve noticed that people from Western countries are generally more accepting of brown-skin than people from countries where that is the norm. Hopefully, this changes soon. I don’t want another young girl to grow up in a society where her skin tone dictates her self-worth.

A Nation In COLLAPSE: Americans Can’t Afford To Buy Groceries

I once worked as a cinema usher and a projectionist for one of our local multiplex cinema franchises.

I was quite young. I already had a full time day job in a warehouse, however I needed cash to do some driving classes as I prepared to get my license so I worked every night at the cinema.

In general, that cinema tends to hire heavily during the summer holidays which is the peak season for moviegoers. Most of the staff hired would be college freshmen on holiday or teenagers just out of school. They would mostly be temporary workers and a lot of them had little work experience or knowledge of their rights and labour laws. As such, the management would usually take advantage of them.

The first advantage they took was in terms of a fair salary. As I mentioned above I was an usher and a projectionist. I was trained to run the films upstairs and trained to deal with patrons downstairs. Management had the right to change my duty at will according to the situation. Many times, while ushering, if a projectionist did not show up to work for the evening shift or would be late, I was told to go and replace him at once.

If you guessed that such an important role would allow for a higher salary than the regular ushers well then you guessed wrong. I had extra responsibilities for the same salary. To add insult to injury, Herold, the finicky supervisor would constantly come up into the projection room to throw a tantrum about how poorly spliced in the advertisements in the film roll were. He had a fetish for sneakily penciling in on the roster board a new lunch time for a random person and then afterwards yelling to that person, ‘For the last time. You need to pay attention to your god-damned lunch roster. You have 10 minutes to get your lunch!’

As anyone could tell, Herold had no friends.

Secondly the cinema didn’t see the need to hire security. If Bin Laden came to see a movie, management wouldn’t bat an eyelash. This made it extremely difficult when dealing with mentally unhinged patrons. I remember collecting/tearing tickets and a large smelly man with mustard smeared all over his shirt walked past me without his ticket.

I yelled at him to come right back and show his ticket and he started doing an insidious belly chuckle while telling me that he already gave it to me. I told him he would have to leave and he came up to me and threatened that there would be some problems in here if I continued to harass him. I ran to Martha, the manager, and explained to her that there’s a madman without a ticket threatening me. She started laughing to my displeasure and then nonchalantly said that I just met Bo, the nickname for an aggressive, mentally challenged man who comes into the cinema once every summer. She advised that I leave him alone because he gave the last guy who tried to force him out a black eye.

Thirdly and the final straw was how unconcerned and unsympathetic the management were towards their staff. I developed an eye infection during the time the film The Dark Knight was having its weekend premier. This was the summer blockbuster of 2008 and management were like headless chickens ensuring they squeeze every ounce of cash from the long lines of patrons who came to see the movie. They pressured the ushers to clean the cinemas as quickly and efficiently as possible. They gave us two minutes (average time was usually 10 minutes) to have the cinema spotless before they let a new batch of patrons inside. They pressured the concessions staff to have the ice bins kept full and for the nachos and hotdogs to be made at lightning speed. Projectionists were cutting and splicing in advertisements into the film roll like mad. Rather than the usual 10 – 15 minutes, there was a solid 30 minutes of advertising before the trailers began.

The day before I had gone into the office and explained to Martha my eye condition. My eyes were all red and somehow exceedingly sensitive to light. I felt searing pain and could barely open them, even in the dimly lit cinema. I asked to wear a pair of sunglasses until my eyes cleared up. Martha was busy looking at schedules and distractedly muttered ‘Ok yeah.’

The Saturday premier was like a nightmare. Two ushers and a projectionist waited for that day to quit the job in a show of spite. The lines to see the movie stretched far out of the cinema and throughout the outside food court. All of us short-staffed ushers had to get our hands dirty sweeping the floor, cleaning popcorn kernels and nacho cheese off the seats and ripping tickets of eight separate cinemas before the next huge crowd was ushered in.

Martha was in a devilish mood and while passing me she glanced at me wearing my sunglasses. She assumed I was trying to look like James Dean and bawled up at me in front of the line of patrons to take off my stupid shades otherwise I would be fired.

My friend Alex was there with me (he was a friend from my day job at the warehouse who decided to come make some extra income also) and we looked at each other.

I did not take off my sunglasses but we both took off our silly bowties and jackets and handed them to her. We told her that we were quitting effective immediately.

‘Quit? Who say you could quit? YOU CANT QUIT!’ The manager shouted but we simply walked off and towards the exit. We had had enough. I asked Alex what he wanted to do now and he said he was hungry. There was a KFC right outside and it offered a good view of the interior of the cinema through the glass walls.

We got some chicken and sat to watch the fireworks as Martha and Herold ran around like maniacs trying to deal with hundreds of angry movie goers and run the film at the same time.

It was better than any movie I ever saw.

Kitchen Hints and Tips
Frozen Food

• Frost-proof frozen foods. Put food in a plastic bag. Before you seal the plastic bag, insert a drinking straw. Hold the bag’s opening snugly around the straw, and gently suck as much air as possible out of the bag. Remove the straw and quickly seal the bag.

Ice Cream

• To make birthday party treats ahead of time, scoop ice cream into muffin pan liners. Decorate with sprinkles, nuts or chocolate chips. Keep in the freezer on a baking sheet until ready to serve.
• Place a marshmallow in the bottom of an ice cream cone before you add the ice cream. You’ll stop a drip before it starts. If you’re out of marshmallows, try using a dab of peanut butter instead.
• To prevent wax-like film on top of opened ice cream, press a piece of wax paper against the surface and reseal the carton, then put into freezer.
• Soften hard ice cream by microwaving at 30% power. One pint will take 15 to 30 seconds; one quart, 30 to 45 seconds; and one-half gallon 45 seconds to one minute.

Ice Cubes

• To prevent them from sticking together, dump them into a brown paper bag before putting them back into the freezer.
• Save plastic foam egg cartons. By cutting off the top cover and placing it under the bottom half of the carton, you can completely fill the egg cups without worrying about spillage in the freezer. A slight upward push on the bottom of each cup ensures easy removal of the cubes. These disposable trays can be used two or three times before becoming floppy.

Popsicles

• Make a drip stop holder from a margarine lid with a slit cut for the stick.

Whipped Topping

• Thaw whipped topping in the microwave. A 4 1/2 ounce carton will thaw in 1 minute on the defrost setting. It should be slightly firm in the center but it will blend well when stirred. Do not over-thaw!

Sir Whiskerton and the Weather Machine Debacle: A Tale of Rain, Chaos, and a Very Wet Catnip

Ah, dear reader, prepare yourself for a tale of meteorological mayhem, malfunctioning machines, and one particularly soggy stray cat. Today’s story is one of absurdity, adventure, and the occasional existential crisis, all wrapped up in a storm of epic proportions. So, grab your sense of humor and a sturdy umbrella (you’ll need it), as we dive into Sir Whiskerton and the Weather Machine Debacle: A Tale of Rain, Chaos, and a Very Wet Catnip.

The Weather Wizard

It all began on a crisp autumn morning when Mr. Wigglesworth, the farm’s resident portly pig with a flair for the dramatic, called an emergency meeting in the barnyard. “Attention, everyone!” he bellowed, standing atop a hay bale with a flourish. “I have solved our weather problem once and for all!”

The animals gathered around, their curiosity piqued. Doris the Hen clucked nervously, while Rufus the Dog wagged his tail so hard it nearly knocked over a bucket of feed. Even Sir Whiskerton, who had been enjoying a particularly luxurious nap in a sunbeam, reluctantly opened one eye to see what the fuss was about.

“Behold!” Mr. Wigglesworth declared, unveiling a contraption made of old bicycle parts, a blender, and a suspiciously glowing pickle. “The Weathermatic 5000! With this, we can control the weather! No more rain during harvest season, no more droughts, no more bad hair days!”

The animals exchanged skeptical glances. “Control the weather?” Doris asked, tilting her head. “How does that work?”

“Ah, my dear Doris,” Mr. Wigglesworth said, puffing out his chest. “It’s all about science and strategy. The pickle provides the power, the blender creates the wind, and the bicycle parts… well, they do something very important. Trust me!”

Sir Whiskerton sighed, adjusting his monocle. “This is either going to be brilliant or a complete disaster,” he muttered. “And I’m leaning heavily toward disaster.”

The Storm Begins

True to his word, Mr. Wigglesworth spent the next few hours tinkering with the Weathermatic 5000, occasionally pausing to sprinkle glitter into the air for “maximum effectiveness.” By the time he was done, the machine looked like it had been assembled by a caffeinated squirrel.

“There!” Mr. Wigglesworth said, dusting off his hooves. “The Weathermatic 5000 is complete! Let’s test it out.”

He flipped a switch, and the machine whirred to life, its parts spinning and sparking. At first, nothing happened. Then, with a loud BANG, the sky darkened, and a torrential downpour began.

“It’s working!” Mr. Wigglesworth exclaimed, dancing in the rain. “I’m a meteorological genius!”

The animals, however, were less enthusiastic. “This isn’t just rain,” Sir Whiskerton said, shielding his monocle with a paw. “This is a monsoon.”

The Floodwaters Rise

As the rain continued to pour, the farm quickly turned into a swamp. The barnyard was flooded, the feed bins were underwater, and Doris’s nesting material was floating away like a tiny, soggy raft.

But the real trouble began when the floodwaters reached Catnip’s lair. The sneaky stray cat, who lived in a hollow tree near the pond, found himself knee-deep in water. “Great,” he muttered, wading through the flood. “First I lose my dignity, now I lose my lair.”

With no other options, Catnip reluctantly made his way to the farm, where he was greeted by a chorus of squawks, barks, and clucks. “What are you doing here?” Doris asked, flapping her wings.

“I’m seeking refuge,” Catnip said, shaking water from his fur. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

Sir Whiskerton, ever the diplomat, stepped forward. “We’ll deal with Catnip later,” he said. “Right now, we need to stop this rain before the entire farm washes away.”

The Feline Fix

Determined to restore order, Sir Whiskerton called an emergency meeting. “Clearly, the Weathermatic 5000 is… less than effective,” he said, shooting a pointed look at Mr. Wigglesworth. “But fear not! I have a plan.”

With the help of Chef Remy LeRaccoon, Sir Whiskerton devised a solution: they would reverse the machine’s polarity, effectively turning the rain into sunshine. The only problem? They needed a power source stronger than the glowing pickle.

“What about the yodeling fish?” Remy suggested, adjusting his goggles. “Their hypnotic yodeling could provide the energy we need.”

Sir Whiskerton nodded. “It’s worth a shot.”

The yodeling fish, who lived in the farm’s pond, were more than happy to help. “YODEL-AY-HEE-HOO!” they sang, their synchronized yodeling creating a wave of energy that powered the Weathermatic 5000.

The Moral of the Story

As the rain stopped and the sun emerged, the animals reflected on the day’s events.

The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: Sometimes, the best solutions come from unexpected places. Whether you’re controlling the weather, solving a mystery, or just trying to keep your lair dry, it’s important to think outside the box—and maybe avoid glowing pickles.

A Happy Ending

With the weather back to normal, the farm returned to its peaceful routine. Catnip, now dry and slightly less grumpy, returned to his lair, vowing to “never speak of this again.” Mr. Wigglesworth, ever the optimist, declared himself a “meteorological genius” and began planning his next invention—a “self-cleaning barn” powered by wind and wishful thinking.

As for Sir Whiskerton, he returned to his sunbeam, content in the knowledge that he had once again saved the day. The farm was safe, the animals were happy, and the yodeling fish… well, the yodeling fish were still yodeling.

And so, dear reader, we leave our heroes with the promise of new adventures, new inventions, and hopefully, no more monsoons. Until next time, may your days be filled with laughter, ingenuity, and just a little bit of feline genius.

The End.

Middle East Stuff

We Western-educated Middle Easterners were naive. In the West we believed in the myth of mosaics, melting pots and equality. We thought we were just as good as anyone else; just as protected by the system and just as respected by society if we tried to conform.

We believed this until we faced the most ferocious racism, censorship, silencing and dehumanization experienced by any ethnic group in the Western world since the days of Jim Crow. We believed it until we got marked as the new Jews of the 21st century.

We need to learn the following lessons:

1. Blood is thicker than water. We stick to each other no matter what. We cannot do it as countries, but we can do it as individuals. Individuals build communities. Communities can grow strong.
2. We must find unifying forces other than religion. Religion is the worst influence, because it prevents us from shaping our beliefs according to reason and according to our interests. Religion is received instruction; it is things we obstinately follow even if they don’t make sense. Even if a custom is bad for us, we say “We cannot disobey God” and “We cannot break what we inherited from forefathers.”
3. We must encourage voracious reading, intellect, strategizing and rational inquiry. De-Islamization will unleash a gigantic backlog of freethinkers and great minds. (Islamization began approx. 1970; backlog is 55 years!) We must reform our culture into a force that can drive us to material success.
4. No intermarriage or assimilation. Our outlook must be outward in terms of education, business, and progress, but insular in the private matters: identity and culture. We must remain tight-knit Middle Easterners, generation after generation, never disappearing like many other minorities did.
5. In terms of community funding and development, education of children, lawyering for defence against all the aggression facing us, public demonstrations, etc., we must be self-reliant. We cannot depend on “allies,” institutions or public funds. Sweden closed all of its Islamic schools; Germany defunds pro-Palestine organizations; the crowds of outsiders who joined our protests for Gaza can always lose interest if they haven’t already. It’s not their people getting starved and slaughtered. What others give, they can always take away. But what we build ourselves is ours forever.
6. We need to be aware that we have enemies who despise us and wish the worst upon us, and they come in the form of demographic groups: White Boomers and Generation X, Evangelical Christians, and Hindutvas. We should not be conditioned into feeling shame for developing prejudice. We cannot trust blindly as we did before. Prejudice and mistrust can unite and strengthen us.
7. We must adopt the following mentality: “If powerful Republicans, Evangelical Christians, Ashkenazi Jews, and Indians all hate and ostracize me, then so what? The important thing is, am I respected and loved by my own people? Are my own people helping me, and am I helping them?” With this mentality, we will have enough opportunities to make a living and we will never be lonely or betrayed.

As the new Jews of the 21st century, we are in uncharted and incredibly treacherous waters. It would be of benefit to study history for ideas of how to survive: namely, how Jews survived in medieval and early modern Europe when they were the most persecuted minority. Now we are the most persecuted minority, we will remain so for the foreseeable future, and we’ve got to figure out how to make the best of it.

If we’re smart, we will live like this for centuries and never be naive and complacent again. Even if a two-state solution comes one day, it will not mean an end to Western imperialism in our Middle East or to the persecution of Middle Eastern populations in Western countries.

Shorpy

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What can the Taiwan government leadership do to stop the US from strip-mining all of TSMC’s assets, and moving them to the US?

There’s nothing they can do, and they actually did nothing. Now, under the plundering of the US, TSMC is being gradually “emptied out”. What the DPP authorities have done is nothing more than “Please take everything you want, sir.” Some people say TSMC is going to become “ASMC” if it keeps going like this. That’s not unreasonable.

Trump and TSMC CEO C. C. Wei held a joint press conference at the White House on the 4th, announcing that TSMC will increase its investment in the US by “at least” $100 billion to build “5 of the most advanced chip facilities.” This is the largest single overseas direct investment case in US history. The news has sparked widespread anxiety and concern among the public in Taiwan about TSMC’s “de-Taiwanization.”

They do have reasons to feel anxious. TSMC’s rapid “de-Taiwanization” is not a normal business logic, but a submission to political pressure. In 2020, under pressure from the US, TSMC announced plans to establish a plant in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, and gradually fell under US control. Subsequently, TSMC was forced to send thousands of technical workers from the island to the US, continuously increasing its investment scale in the US, transferring its own production capacity, surrendering advanced process technology, and relinquishing board seats… gradually being eroded.

Faced with TSMC’s continuous distress signals, Lai Ching-te chose to “ignore” and “betray.” The DPP authority not only actively removed restrictions on the most advanced 2-nanometer process chip production line currently invested in the US, but also expressed its intention to jointly build a supply chain with the US.

DPP pliticians like Lai Ching-te always talk about “loving Taiwan and protecting Taiwan,” often questioning the “outflow” of technical talent to the mainland. However, when faced with the US, they show a “kowtowing” attitude. Lai Ching-te’s active cooperation with the US is nothing more than an attempt to exchange so-called “political asylum” through “strengthening industrial cooperation,” completely disregarding the risk that TSMC may potentially fall from a global chip giant to a vassal of the US industrial chain.

The US regards TSMC as a “meal on the plate”, with someone even suggesting the idea of “destroying TSMC”, clearly showing an attitude of “if we can’t have it, we’ll destroy it”. Lai Ching-te regards the US as a “partner”, and clinging to it as a “thigh”, but has the US ever considered Taiwan’s interests? The Lai Ching-te administration treats Taiwan’s semiconductor industry and TSMC as a bargaining chip for “seeking independence with foreign support”, giving them away as a “gift”, joining hands with the US to drain Taiwan, making “TSMC’s most advanced and critical technologies will stay in Taiwan” an empty promise.

Public opinion on the island is worried that once Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is squeezed dry of its last drop of value by the US, where will Taiwan go from there? The answer to this question is clear and cruel. It can be foreseen that in the future, the US will only intensify its demands on Taiwan, and when Taiwan’s value is exhausted, it’s inevitable that the “pawn” will become a “discarded piece”.

One Night Out on the Lake

Submitted into Contest #210 in response to: Set your story after aliens have officially arrived on Earth.… view prompt

China’s Wang Yi answers CNN: Will Trump’s “AMERICA FIRST” help China to play big role globally?