When I lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, I experienced the most amazing changes in Weather patterns ever.
Apparently, throughout the Great Lakes, large snowfall, icy winds, and gale force winds were the norm, but when I moved to Erie, what amazed me was how mercurial the weather was. It was constantly changing.
One morning it was sunny and warm. Come Lunch Time, it was windy with gusts, and come dinner time, lordly! It was snowing. What a surprise.
Erie was a really nice place to live, and I did like the small town feel, and all the rest. It was very nice in the Spring, Summer and Fall. The lake was nice and it was simply a great place to live.
Do not overlook the small communities. They have things to offer that larger cities don’t have.
Today…
Imagine this:
An indoctrinated westerner being told your whole life that your technology was superior, only for China to come around and out compete you without even needing plunder. Once you understand how devastating this is psychologically for them you will understand why China fuels such hatred amongst them, that we are viewed as insects nothing BENEATH them! And yet here we are with BYD booting Tesla off the top spot and 8 more ROROs being bought to export EVs to Europe.
In fact it’s even more devastating than that. Many people are stuck under the misery of western regimes have always used the excuse that “others are worse, so I can’t be that sad about my condition”.
But living standards in many western countries is in severe and accelerating decline and is much worse than living in China (e.g. see how scientists flee to China, the top destination worldwide, seeking better lives), and that brutal realization causes sheer panic on westerners.
Blunder
What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?
Whilst this has not happened to me, I was a boss, I would go on site with new clients, rarely would I tell them I am the boss, I was one of the engineers. Always interested to see how clients treated the people that I worked with.
Several occasions where I have been spoken to in a manner that I don’t feel was appropriate, one such incident the boss of the company was throwing his weight around, started getting heavy handed with me, I was not playing ball, said I was going to walk off site. His reply was ‘I am going to get you fired!’, ok I replied, he said I am going to get your boss on the phone and get this done now, ok I replied. He proceeded to phone the MD, I had the same shareholding as the MD, I created the business and the MD was brought in later. I stood there whilst this bully proceeded to exaggerate what had happened, then the line of ‘you need to get rid of him’ at which point, I saw his face drop and then over the next couple of minutes sink even further.
He got off the phone, said to me ‘You knew that was going to happen didn’t you’ yes I replied, you now know I am the boss, key thing here is you should not treat me any differently to any of my staff. He did not remain a client for long after that.
There is no need to treat people like shit.
Wow Wow
What are some dark truths of life as a government employee?
I’ve to go anonymous for obvious reasons. This is something I’ve buried deep in my heart as I couldn’t really tell anyone.
Story is from 1996, my father was back then in District level court and was on one of the relatively high positions, he had always lived by the principle of not taking anyone’s money (bribe) for doing the job and he was incharge of his table/office, this setup is consisting of 4–7 people usually and they handle different departments like Civil, Criminal and what not per table/office. Since he was incharge of that table and he did not take any money, all the others were not getting opportunity to take that extra benefit home either. Which used to be pretty big considering meager government salaries back then.
So due to my fathers honest nature, nobody was getting “malai” and this annoyed them greatly, they used to find ways to bother him so he will apply for transfer to different table or district all together, usually they are transferred after 5 years each, but you can apply for one in advance in case of problems. But no matter what they did, he never gave up, and maintained his stance to follow rules. One dark day of my life, woman from their group falsely accused him of “sexual harassment”, so he will at least get suspended and then fired. Which did work, internal complaint was lodged and if found the accusations true he would’ve been fired. He had been suspended till the proceeding were over, to make appeal he stayed in court only, as usually you have to give reply in written for any form of notice. Unfortunately for our family of three, one of the policeman (Havaldar) who heard this incident was my mothers relative (as incident was big), he came to our house and told only side of the story that he knew about, which was “my father being suspended for harassing a woman at workplace”.
My mother took this to very extreme levels, cried all day, but she did not mention a word when my father came home. As if she was waiting for him to tell her all that, which unfortunately he didn’t as he was never the type of man to bring his office problem to home. This angered her further, and you know what she did? When me and my dad was watching TV (those days some Krishana Malika was very popular and it was being played on our black and white TV), she locked herself in our kitchen and burned herself to death. Those days we didn’t have Gas, we used to use one of those “rokel stoves” and we had 5 liter can full of kerosene in our house, she used that to kill herself.
Just because of some incident in my father’s office which was actually result of him being honest and doing his job? I was only 7 years and you know what happened next? My mother’s family accused him of killing my mother, which by the way was false as he was with me the entire time. I can’t explain the details very clearly here, but this got him suspended for 2 years till case was to be given verdict on. And you know what? at age of 9 I was in court giving testimonies whether my father had killed my mother or not. As prime witness my testimony was taken right after the incident too, my mothers another relative lived close by and after the incident police took my father and they took me with them for couple of days till matters calmed down. They tried to “coach” me to give false testimony even after me giving them honest account of the incident. Thankfully police had immediately written down everything I had said right after the incident and they used that as prime evidence to prove my father innocent 2 years later.
Thankfully, my father was cleared of both the incident as there were people contradicting ladys accusations of sexual harassment and my immediate testimony as prime witness was accepted. Finally he was free, he had virtually no savings, no money to do anything during that period. Everyone looked at him as wife killer. Even our relatives would distance themselves from us.
I came to know of backstory many years later from one of his coworkers who used to come home after his retirement and we used to discuss many things. He thought this was something I needed to know. I’m glad he did.
Till my fathers retirement after the case, he still kept his head down and worked honestly. He was retired at even higher position due to couple of promotions but till 6th pay commission we didn’t even have our own home. We just weren’t able to buy it as we never had any saving in meager government salary. He also never married again, raised me all alone and even now, in such a old age does social service.
I was probably not able to explain lot of things as things are too old, but hell, that incident changed my life. COMPLETELY!
Whenever people talk about how there are no honest government workers, I can’t help but smile to myself bitterly. Afterall, that honesty has cost me quite heavily, which people think does not exist.
Sorry for any spelling and grammatical mistakes, I’m fully grown man and I’m crying atm, probably won’t even have heart to read it again to check and correct. Sorry.
Thank you for listening. I feel like huge burden was lifted off my heart.
A good man
What is the most ridiculous thing you have seen on a bus, or something that the bus driver has done?
Three obnoxious teenage males were standing at the back of a nearly-empty bus one evening in a major U.S. city. They were yelling and cursing, mocking the bus driver, who’d been instructing them to take their seats because the bus was moving. The teens clearly thought themselves far too cool to follow a transit driver’s orders to sit.
One other passenger and I sat up front on this otherwise-empty bus as the huge vehicle approached a series of underpasses — the next stop was many blocks ahead. “Hold on, you guys,” said the driver quietly, addressing me and the other behaving passenger. The driver gradually increased the bus’ speed to nearly 50 m.p.h., deftly navigating a curved underpass before straightening the bus out and locking the brakes up.
As the bus skidded to a very short stop, a twisted heap of panicked teenagers slid from the back of the bus all the way to the front, where they slammed into the steel farebox.
“Man, I barely missed that cat!” exclaimed the driver. “You guys gonna sit now?”
A yes or two was muttered as the teens untangled themselves and stood, trying unsuccessfully to wipe filthy black streaks of urban-bus-floor-grime from their previously spotless clothes. Wherever they’d been headed, they were now going to arrive looking decidedly less cool than if they’d just taken their seats.
Morons.
Is it possible for the US or other nations to prevent a potential invasion of Taiwan by China?
Absolutely, and positively No. ZERO. No way. Never gonna happen.
…
Taiwan is a province of China, and it is so close to the mainland that the PLA can swim to it.
China has already shown that it can isolate, blockade and totally rubbish the island and there isn’t a God-damn thing that anyone can do about it.
Sanctions?
Ha ha ha ha ha
Tell me about it. Ain’t no one gonna follow sanctions on China except the most butt-hole sucking LGBQ+ moronic clown-show transvestites.
Threat of war?
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Have you forgotten what getting a good butt-reaming was like? Hey! Wanna have some fun. Go watch the interview of American veterans of the “Korean War” and what THEY have to say. Instead of listening to John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.
Trade embargo?
Oh my goodness, this is a belly laugh for certain. Ha ha ha ha
When Namibia, Africa is running 7G and 8G, the USA will be struggling with land-lines and cell-phone towers that struggle with obsolete 3G networks on dying batteries.
…
To take on China is to place a loaded .45 ACP to your temple and pull the trigger. It’s “death by cop”, and you know what, if you are so God-damn stupid to pull that one, you will deserve the nuclear radiation that comes with it.
Idiots. Suckers.
…
Update
I’m sorry. I must apologize. I sometimes really minimize really serious issues and distill it into something more palatable to the average person. Like this post. The reality is that it is gonna be much, much, MUCH worse.
The fact is, that any war between China and the “rules based insanity” that is the West today is gonna be a God-Damn cluster Fuck. That is a truth, and you all had best get your arms around this truth.
Trump can be President. Oprah Winfrey could be president. Joe Biden could be President. It won’t make any difference. The USA is run by the ignorant, and they are on a death-march to the meat-grinder, and you are duck taped to them.
Enjoy the ride.
Until it is over.
Sad truth
What’s something your husband did to you that you will never forget?
My husband told me I should go to technical college and get a degree in graphic arts. He said if anything happened to him I didn’t really have a profession to fall back on. I had worked for several companies doing different types of art, ads etc. I loved art, any and all kinds. I was 40 at the time.i told him I was too old. He said in two years you will be 42 wheather you go to school or not. Huge decision as a mother of five. When I got there several others were my same age much to my surprise. Our “elder” group rocked our work and we all got pretty good jobs after graduation. Seems we were there because we wanted the education. Most of the young kids just out of high school were there to meet other kids and party. Thank you dear John. One of the best decisions I ever made.
What is your opinion on the best approach for the US to handle conflicts with China?
China is on the other end of the globe.
There are NO INTERESTS on that side of the world that matter to the American citizenry.
…
Any conflicts there are handled locally, by the local inhabitants, and the United States is like that nebby neighbor down the street who is really bent out of shape by the color of your socks.
…
The best thing for the United States to do is to mind it’s own business.
Take care of the needs of it’s citizenry.
- Inflation.
- Jobs
- Work / industry.
- Social changes.
- Homelessness.
- Addictions
And much, much more…
…
Do you understand?
What should I do if my boss says, “If you don’t like the job, you can go”?
I’ve done that twice.
First time was at a small chemical sales company that hooked up with a Russian shortly after the breakup of the USSR. The Russian sources were willing to do things no one else was willing to do (chemicals and pure elements that were dangerous to make).
Commissions were horrible and the new partner said if you don’t like it, leave. So I had a friend working in telecom sales for big blue that referred me in.
I came to him and said, you know how you said if we weren’t happy to leave? Well here’s my 2 week notice.
Similarly, years later I’m working in the copier industry and coming off a stretch of making Presidents Club a few years in a row. They had just changed my territory, cutting my base of machines by 2/3rds and moving me to a branch in the city meaning more expensive to go to work.
My new manager was struggling making quota for the team and called a meeting and told us all as a group that we had to make quota or we can leave if we don’t like it.
I immediately got a job at another company, as did half of the rest of the team. The only people left were newbies.
Bottom line, don’t threaten sales people. We can always get a job
Good rules
China Warns Citizens Inside USA: Prepare for “Various unexpected situations”
A strange warning has been issued by China to any of its citizens located in the United States: “take safety precautions and be prepared for ‘various unexpected situations.’
According to the China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, several Chinese students and company employees have recently been subjected to “unwarranted interrogations and harassment” by US airport law enforcement officers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its WeChat account on Friday.
Their phones, computers and other luggage items were searched piece by piece, and several people were banned from entering the country, it said.
To most casual observers, this “warning” from China makes no sense. At worst, perhaps twenty people from China have had unusual incidents trying to enter the United States; hardly a reason for such a large warning. Unless . . .
So-called “Conspiracy theorists” are wondering if this “warning” is actually a “signal” to Chinese forces already inside the US; sort of a notice to “prepare for action?”
After all, such folks say, how can anyone, anywhere, “prepare for various UNEXPECTED situations?” They point out that no one can do that, and thus the tin-foil-hat folks — who often are proven to be correct — wonder if this is more of a signal, than a warning?
Timeline alert
How did Intel create the 4004 without another microprocessor?
They did it by hand. When I was an undergraduate student in my Junior year, I took a course called “Advanced Digital Circuits.” The professor never gave a lecture. On the first day, he allowed us to choose teams as one would in a grade-school PE class. He gave the two teams three projects to complete, deadlines, a list of textbooks and other resources, and his home phone number.
For the third project, we designed and built (by hand) a CPU, using only Small Scale Integrated Circuits (7400 series). We were allowed to use Medium Scale Integrated circuits for main memory and I/O devices. The next step in the CPU design would have been to replace the gates with the equivalent transistors and lay out the masks to make the chips. My group’s design was a bit more complex than a 4004, but not as complex as a 6502. We estimated around 3500 transistors. We built it in about seven weeks, while taking other courses and working to pay tuition.
The team got together for a four hour session on a Saturday to design the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), and then took a week to each code up the solutions to different problems. We got together again a week later to check all of the solutions. We decided to add one instruction to the ISA.
The next Saturday, in a six hour session, in a room with chalk boards covering every wall, David Baten and I derived and minimized all of the Boolean equations for the entire CPU. Will, Paul, and Tim kept notes and kept us from making mistakes. Everyone went home and spent a week drawing up schematics.
We got together again the next Saturday, and reviewed each other’s schematics. We took the best ideas and drew up the final set of schematics. We made copies on Monday (the schematics were on ANSI E paper and there was only one copier in Lubbock, Texas that could make copies that size). Everyone went home and spent the rest of the week reviewing the schematics.
The next Saturday, we met to update the schematics. There were three errors, and a few places where we had to debate about whether it was correct or whether there was a better way to do it. We broke the design into 5 components and each person went home to build their component.
A week later, we met again to integrate the components. We spent 10 hours on that Saturday trying to make it work. We had a couple of instructions that were not working correctly. We broke it back down into the five major components and everyone spent the next week testing their components. One teammate, Will, found a wiring error in his component.
The next Saturday, we met at 8:00 AM. We got it working at around 2:00 AM on Sunday morning and rang the professor. He got out of bed and came to see our demo at 4:00 AM. We showed him our cross-assembler (written by yours truly), our serial downlink to transfer the code into our target system (primitive JTAG done by David), and demonstrated it running three programs. He asked us to write a new program for it. He had the specifications all typed out. It took about two hours to code it in our assembly and get it to run.
We called it the “Pizza 1000” because it was about 1000 square inches of protoboards housed in pizza boxes that the owner of “One Guy from Italy” (best pizza and calzones in Lubbock, TX) gave me when I told him about the project. It was the best learning experience that I had as an undergraduate. Our computer ran for about 8 hours, and then something failed.
Now I teach a similar course called “CPU Design.” my students build a much more complex CPU using an HDL and implement it on an FPGA. To get into the course, they already have a course in basic digital logic, and another course in HDL and FPGA. I give them a few lectures to get them started, and they don’t have to create the ISA or cross-tools (I provide those). Most of my students love it and mention it in their exit interviews as one of their most challenging and rewarding courses.
They still have to understand gates, muxes, registers, etc. so that they can read the schematics generated by VHDL or Verilog, and debug their designs. Here is a simplified, non-pipelined, RISC-V core (no interrupts or exceptions). Instruction decoder on left, register file in the middle, and ALU on the right. It was generated from VHDL code.
I teach them to build and test each module separately, then connect them together at the end. Very much the same way that my team worked, but this design was built and tested by a single student. The HDL and FPGAs are force multipliers, not substitutes for knowledge. The students still have to understand what they want to build, and they have to specify it precisely in a language designed for that purpose. They still have to read the schematics that they create. The software makes sure that there are no wiring errors, and the FPGA replaces 1000’s of square inches of protoboard with reconfigurable hardware in less than a square inch. This design could be mapped to transistors and put on silicon, but that is another course.
What can we say about hypothetical planets of Alpha Centauri Star?
The Centauri triple star system, is our nearest stellar neighbors at a distance of 4.25 light years from our solar system. Two of these stars are very similar in mass to the sun, and orbit each other around a common center of mass. The third star, (know as Proxima Centauri) is a red dwarf star that orbits it’s two sibling stars at a much greater distance. Only Proxima Centauri has a confirmed exoplanet known as “Proxima B”. This exoplanet is slightly larger than the earth, and sits comfortably in the Goldilocks zone of Proxima Centauri. However, the prospect of life on Proxima B must be viewed with extreme skeptisism. The reasons why are as follows:
1.) Proxima Centauri is an “M” class red dwarf star, and is the smallest stellar classification, approximately 80 times less massive than the sun.
2.) The Goldilocks zone of an “M” class red dwarf is very close to the Star. This means that in order for Proxima B to be warm enough to allow for liquid water to pool on its surface, it must be tidally locked in its orbit.
3.) No red dwarf star in the history of the universe has ever left the main sequence. This is due to the fact that red dwarf stars will stay on the main sequence for trillions of years.
4.) No Red Dwarf in the history of the universe has ever evolved out of its “T” tauri stage of its main sequence either. Every star that initiates the main sequence of it’s evolution starts out in the “T” tauri stage. Depending on its initial mass, all stars begin the main sequence by spinning much more rapidly, and as they age slowly begin to spin slower. When a star spins much faster, it’s magnetic field lines will twist violently, and cause tremendous solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Any planet that is in the Goldilocks zone of an “M” class Red Dwarf will eventually have any atmosphere it possesses will be stripped away.
What should I know when I visit America?
- No one really wants to know about your health. “How are you?” is a greeting. Respond “I’m fine, how about you”.
- No one really wants you to drop by unannounced. “You should come over some time” is just a polite way of saying they want to remain on friendly terms.
- Americans really are that friendly. When they smile, they mean it. They aren’t just being polite. It’s not some sort of act.
- It’s a really bad idea to talk about politics, religion or guns (which is increasingly becoming the same topic). Ask about football. Americans love to talk about football.
- They probably don’t know a lot about where you’re from and may make some stupid statements about it. Resist the urge to correct them. If they actually do know about your country ask them more about theirs. Americans love to talk about America and, in fact, their country is pretty awesome.
- One way to show that you’re not as smart as an American is to make some comment about how you want to see the country on your one week trip. Americans know exactly how long it takes to get anyplace in their country. Ask instead what’s great to see in the region. They can then point you to a place that’s no more than a day away that you may have missed.
- Americans will usually address you by your first name. That’s normal, and they often don’t mind being addressed by their first name unless they’re a policeman or a judge. They think they’re being friendly by doing so.
- In most of the United States, public transit is a joke. Many places can only be effectively reached by private car. Car dependent cities like Detroit and Dallas still have cabs, but it can be nearly impossible to get one. If some how you arrive in some such city without a ride, it may be a while before you get one. For example, Detroit has a lot of car rental agencies, but almost all of them except the majors deal solely with insurance companies to provide replacement vehicles for people who have lost theirs in a crash. Some cities have really good public transit (NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago) but assume none of the other do.
- Currency exchange is a real hassle, and as been pointed out there are some places that don’t even take credit cards (particularly foreign ones). It’s not going to be a problem at a hotel, but it might be at a fast food place.
- Food portions are massive. And delicious. And usually not very expensive. However, American often put “quantity” over “quality” when making recommendations.
- American customs and immigration agents are not really representative of the people in their country. They are rude, suspicious, humourless and often seem in a constant state of anger. Be unfailingly polite and listen to their questions.
Generative AI in a Nutshell – how to survive and thrive in the age of AI
This is HOW AI works.
Worth your time to review.
What is the saddest thing you have ever had to terminate an employee for?
My first full time job.. I was a clerk and got friendly with our receptionist. She didn’t have a car so she’d take the train to our town and either take a taxi or walk several miles to our office. I would start my day at the post office picking up the company mail. On my way in I saw her walking one day so I picked her up. Upon discovering this, I drove past the train station anyway, I told her to just wait for me every day and I’d take her there. At days end she’d come to the mailroom and I’d drive her back.
I noticed she called in sick on Fridays. One day the boss told me they fired her for attendance and asked me to drive her to the station. Once in the car she told me the reason was that she had kidney disease and was getting dialysis on Fridays. She was afraid to tell management and just let her them fire her.
I turned the car around and went back to the office. I left her in the car and went right to the boss’s office. I explained the situation and he was upset. I then brought her back in and he hired her back, with the understanding she could only work four days. Every Friday other secretaries would fill in the reception spot, rotating each week and nobody complained.
The poor girl thought the company would fire her if they knew she was I’ll. Instead we all rallied around her to help! She was still there when I left the company for a better job.
Have you ever witnessed a life ruined from a small mistake?
Yes, my neighbor’s adult son.
Let’s call him, Jack.
Jack led the ultimate life. He was attractive, smart, charismatic. Everyone loved him. He went to the best university; majored in pharmacy. Got his pharmacist license and started a great pharmacy practice.
Went out one night and got drunk.
Hit a construction worker who was at work early. Left the scene of the accident. Several days later turned himself in after contacting his parents and a lawyer and getting sober.
Got convicted and spent 9 years in prison as a 28 year old.
Fifteen years later he is still not out of debt to the family or the lawyer. Has a job, but not a career. Can’t work in pharmacy as he can’t be licensed.
One drunk night was all it took to ruin his life. He will never get rid of the stain on his life.
Forgot to add that his car insurance didn’t cover the damage to his Beemer and the lawsuit filed by the construction company he drove into so he now has a $70,000 lien against him for the damages. Doubt he’ll ever be able to pay it.
Will the US tech sanctions on China backfire itself, when the US policy has morphed into an all-encompassing effort to contain China’s development of everything from sophisticated chips to artificial intelligence and supercomputing?
Of course, US effort to contain China’s development will backfire USA.
Let us take 5G as an example.
In 2017, Huawei got 5G before USA. Then USA+allies hysterically banned Huawei. But it does not stop Huawei at all. In early 2024, Huawei announced it got 5.5G.
Then USA unites 10 countries to skip 5G & develop 6G. That is, USA+ tries to set the standard of 6G, They may marginally improve 5G a bit & call it 6G.
However, with Huawei announcement of 5.5G, USA+ must develop something faster than 5.5G before they can call it 6G.
Let say USA+ does get 6G. But if Huawei’s new G is faster than western 6G, then Huawei will skip 6 & jump to 6.5 or 7G. That is, USA+ will be forever behind Huawei. The more USA+ try, the bigger the gap will be between Huawei & the west.
Had USA+ cooperated with Huawei 5G at the beginning, they may get a chance to surpass Huawei when they work/improve on Huawei’s 5G.
Slowly, the world will be split into 2: China standard & western standard. The 2 standards are not the same.
While USA+ banned 5G, Global South are happy to use 5G. In remote China areas, Chinese already use 5G while remote US towns are still using 2 or 3G.
Many countries in Latin America, Mideast, Africa & more are using 5G too. This means technologically, USA+ are behind the world & have become the 3rd world now.
Train
How do felons get jobs if no one hires felons?
An old high school friend of mine spent 9 years and 9 months in prison.
He got out in 2018 as a convicted felon.
What’s worse, he was convicted of a violent crime.
After he got out, the world had changed and he was ostracized by society but I commend him for what he did.
The rate at which convicted felons return to prison in the United States is higher than any other country.
That’s because the system makes it hard for them to get a break so they turn back to the only life that they’ve known.
A few days after my friend got out, he and I sat down and had a long chat about what he wanted to do.
He had a plan that wasn’t fully fleshed out but I helped him fill in a few details.
We agreed that a “traditional job” was probably out of the question because of his record. So, instead, he decided to go through training as a plumber.
You may be surprised to learn that plumbers make roughly $25/hour. At least in the southeast.
After he finished his training, he applied to at least 10 positions before getting hired. Finally, he caught a break and was hired by a small firm. He put his heart and soul into that job and was recognized as one of the best employees after six months.
Then, his parole officer violated him because he was 10 minutes late for the nightly check in call. He had a curfew of 7 PM every day and was running late because of work.
He was arrested and sent to jail for 30 days.
That’s how the system is in America.
He lost his job.
After that, he started applying for more positions.
There was one that denied him because of his background. In the email they sent, there was an attachment with a form that asked him why he felt they should hire him anyway.
He ignored it because it didn’t seem like it would make a difference.
For some reason, I called him that week and asked him about the job hunt.
He mentioned the form and I encouraged him to fill it out.
He did, sent it, and forgot about it.
He got a call back later. The company said they wanted to hire him. He was flown out to Florida for 2 weeks of intensive training and came back with a 2019 Ford F-250 and all the equipment he needed to do his job well.
He’s been crushing it ever since.
It’s true that most employers don’t hire convicted felons.
That’s because many of them deserve their reputations of being untrustworthy and unreliable. For every employer that has had a good experience hiring a felon, there are twice as many who’ve had a bad experience.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities out there. It just means if you’re a felon, you have to work twice as hard for half as much.
It’s just like being a marginalized minority in America so nothing new there.
Who is an actor that had a rough start in their career but eventually became extremely successful and had one of the biggest careers in Hollywood history?
Harrison Ford has to be one of the best examples, if not THE best example of all time.
As a young man, Ford was put on contract with Columbia Studios, but then pissed off one of the executives who critiqued the young actor by saying, “When Tony Curtis played a bellboy early in his career, you could see he was a star.”
Harrison Ford said sarcastically, “Really? I thought he was supposed to be acting like a bellboy.”
Well, that was end of his career at Columbia, but he went on to do bit parts in several movies for Universal. However, years went by and he found he wasn’t getting anything more than a line here and a line there, and it didn’t look like he was going to ever make much of a living as an actor.
That was when he decided to take up carpentry. He was good at it, and made a living at it, because, he said, “I’d rather tell people I was a working carpenter than another unemployed actor.”
But one day he ended up making the acquaintance of young filmmaker George Lucas, who liked Harrison Ford and gave him a modest supporting role in “American Graffiti.” Originally, Lucas didn’t see Ford as right for his new space opera, Star Wars, but Lucas gave Ford some work by hiring him to read opposite actors auditioning for Luke and Leia.
And then something interesting happened. Lucas decided that Ford’s reading of Han Solo was actually better than the actors being considered for the role. His reading was that good. So his “offscreen” reading of Han Solo was better than the actors who were officially being considered for the part.
The rest is history.
It ain’t so; it is everybody
Alpha Centari stuff
Alpha Centauri A is about 20% more massive than B, and so A is called the primary. B’s orbit, relative to A, is shown below. The real trajectory is the fatter ellipse, and it’s shown as though we were above the orbit looking down. The orbital plane is highly tilted to our line of sight from Earth, and so B appears to follow the skinnier ellipse (the apparent trajectory).
B’s orbit is fairly elliptical. Its distance from A varies from 11.2 AU at closest approach (aka periastron or periapsis) to 36.5 AU at its farthest (apoastron or apoapsis). At its closest, it’s about as far away as Saturn is from our Sun (9.5 AU), and at the furthest point, it’s comparable to Pluto (39 AU). BTW, the Astronomical Unit, AU, is the distance from the Sun to the Earth.
If there were an Earth-like planet around A, its orbit would be somewhat further out than Earth’s because A is about 50% brighter than our Sun. But let’s ignore that and make this a bit easier.
B is about half as bright as the Sun, so roughly speaking, at its brightest B would look about half as bright as the Sun does from Saturn. According to the first link, your surroundings would look like a typical office or maybe a bit dimmer. When at its most distant, B would be about as bright as a typical streetlight.
B would certainly perturb the orbit of any planet circling A. It would take some serious calculations to determine whether the orbit is stable, and if it is, what shape it would have. Luckily, someone has just released a paper doing just that. They reckon a planet would have a stable orbit if its semi-major axis is 3 AU or less (semi-major axis is the average of the closest and furthest distances from the primary). That’s close enough for the planet to be in the habitable zone. See the second link for the paper.
You may be asking because The Three Body Problem trilogy and TV series imagine a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. Spoiler alter! The planet has a chaotic orbit which causes repeated destruction of civilization.
Paternity test results
Have you ever witnessed a judge go completely ballistic and “lose it” in court?
I’d gotten thrown in jail for the night, after I decked a guy that had been slapping his girlfriend around. Even though the jerk had swung first when I interceded, the cops decided I’d hurt him more than I had to. Spent the night the “holding “ area, but actually knew a couple of the jail staff, and got one of them to get me a book to read.
I go to court around 1:30–2:00 next day, and get a public defender for the sole purpose, of setting bail. As I didn’t have a record, I knew I should be able to get a signature bond, then straighten everything out later. My case got called for “Felonious “ assault, and the judge called for a $5,000 cash bond. Without batting an eye the idiot public defender stated “thank you, your honor. We think that’s fair.” I stared at the dolt for about 5 seconds said “Shut up. You’re fired!” The judge asked if I’d just fired my attorney, and if I thought it a good idea? I said yes, and thought I could do better than that, so I asked for a $5,000 signature bond. Judge countered with $2,500 cash, and I asked to approach the bench, and say something I don’t want heard in open court . The judge looked puzzled but said okay. I went up without the legal joker, but the assistant DA and a bailiff that was a cousin of mine went with me. Here’s how it went;
I asked the judge to mute his microphone, as I didn’t want others to overhear. Judge again asks why, and I pointed to the local newspaper guy with nothing to do.
Judge: Why do you think you deserve a signature bond ?
Me: Because it’s Wednesday.(Giving him an evil look and smile.)
Judge: What does that mean?
Me: On Wednesday’s you have lunch with your wife at Gionelli’s. You two meet in the bar area and order a club soda with lime, and a double vodka tonic also with lime A switcheroo occurs en route the your table. (I know all this because I’m one of the management staff there and have seen this several times.) At the table your wife is probably having chicken Marsala, and you had the usual chicken/broccoli fettuccine. Around half way through the meal, fresh drinks are ordered, including the double vodka tonic. You will have finished the second drink by the time you leave the restaurant.
Judge: (bug eyed and pretty pissed off): What are you trying to say.
Me: I’m saying that you’re legally buzzed, and if I don’t get a signature bond, I will have this deputy here breathalyzer you right now! (indicating my cousin who didn’t look happy, about the attention)
Judge: Go back to the table with the attorney. (Knowing he was busted!) I got a really low signature bond and had a bunch of witnesses, so the case was eventually dismissed. The judge hung out and shot a good game of pool at a bar about 2 blocks from my house, and would always made me buy him a vodka tonic whenever he saw me.
Some historical Shorpy pictures
Why are Europeans poorer than Americans?
My son moved from Europe to the US three years ago (Houston, TX).
He’s got a well paid job in IT. In fact, a monthly take home pay is about double of mine.
So, you would think he’s got it made…
Think again.
His monthly disposable income is about 2/3 of mine.
Everything’s much more expensive in the US. Especially the basics of modern life: decent food, communication (cell phone, broadband internet, car insurance, medical insurance, … ).
And whilst TX doesn’t have state income tax, property taxes are brutal.
At first glance, going out doesn’t got an arm and a leg till you add the expected 20% gratuity.
Or when shopping for clothes… what you pay at the till is not the ticket price.
All things considered, people on the US are better paid, but people in Europe are richer and enjoy a better quality of life.
I came for the show
What are some amazing psychology and mind tricks?
- When you tell a joke in a big group of people, the person who you turn to look at first is the person you’re closest to.
- If you want something from someone, frame it as an offer rather than a request.
- If a person is using his/her hand’s gestures much while talking, that’s the sign which indicates that they are telling the truth and 100% confident about their facts.
- Nodding your head while asking a question makes the other person more likely to agree with you.
- You can judge the character of a person by how they treat people who can do absolutely nothing for them.
- If you’re asking for a favor, always use the word ‘because’. It makes them more likely to comply.
- Sitting with legs open indicates that you are more open to having a conversation. If you are not very confident always mirror someone else’s body action and you will be fine.
- While talking to someone, keep using their name in the conversations. This helps them feel important and valued.
- People look more attractive when they speak about the things they are interested in.
- If someone becomes angry over silly or petty (small) things, It means he/she needs love.
WHAT?! Yemen just Closed Red Sea to Israeli and US Ships in Deal with Russia, China
What is the most unusual and incorrect reason you’ve had the police called on you?
My ex-wife ran the gift shop at a small local museum. Very often she was the only one there in the morning for an hour or so, opening up the place before the guides and tour groups arrived.
One morning she got to work and called me (this was well before we were “ex”) because it looked like someone might have broken in overnight. So I came over to check it out, because she was justifiably worried about who might be hiding out in the building.
As it happened, the museum was doing some construction work and there was lots of debris lying around. Before I went inside, I grabbed a handy length of 2×4 to use as a club. Of course if whoever was inside had a gun, that wouldn’t have done me much good. But we figured it was more likely to be a homeless person seeking shelter for the night, or maybe something to steal quietly, than a dedicated armed robber. Folks like that don’t usually go for the stealthy approach.
I walked through the entire place, looking in every possible hiding place, with my makeshift club over my shoulder. Nobody was there, and I headed back toward the entrance to tell her it was safe.
Neither of us remembered that the museum had a silent alarm.
When I got outside, she was there, and so were the cops. A fair number of cops, because the museum in question is locally famous and known for its valuable collections. She’d told the cops that I was inside the building, but hadn’t given them a description. So what they saw was a big, scruffy, grumpy guy in a biker jacket walking out of the building carrying a 2×4 …
… and suddenly I did have guns pointed out me. Lots of guns. Probably not as many as it seemed like, but you know, all it takes is one to do the trick.
Fortunately, her cry of “don’t shoot him, that’s my husband!” got through, and the cops lowered their guns and we all had a good laugh. Then they went inside and repeated my search, with the same lack of result, and declared the museum safe to open. A good time was had by all.
Me, I wasn’t there for most of that, because I had an urgent appointment with the restroom.
Cool
How would you describe your first interview? What lessons did you learn?
I had just turned 13 and my mother woke me up one Saturday morning and told me two things:
- That it was time for me to get a job.
- That working for McDonald’s would look good on my resume when I got older.
Phase 1
We hopped in the car, drove a couple blocks to our regular McDonald’s and picked up an application. We got in the car, and then my Mom hands me a pen.
So, right there in the parking lot, my Mom gave me a tutorial on how to fill out an application. We dropped it off and, apparently, this was only phase one of the plan.
“Next we’ll call first thing Monday to make sure they got your application. That will increase your chances of getting an interview.”
Uh huh.
Phase 2 works like a charm. I call, and not only did they get the application, they schedule me for an interview.
Phase 2: Interview Day
Wearing my best “Church Clothes for an Adolescent Skateboarder”, I show up with knots in my stomach. I guess I really care about getting this job. As if it’s even possible, my nerves make my voice crack and squeak like the puberty I’d gone through didn’t take for some reason.
The Interviewer
I’ll never forget seeing this guy. I’d never seen a McDonald’s issue white, button up dress shirt, or a McDonald’s employee wearing a tie – but there he was. The best dressed Big Mac boss you’ve ever seen.
“Hello Mr. Lynam. Have a seat.”
I’d been eating at this location since I was 5, but this was the first time it scared me.
“I want to tell you that we appreciate you filling out this application, but because you’re only 13, we wouldn’t be able to give you a job.”
Off the hook. Relief. I thank him.
“You were very persistent and we look forward to having an interview with you when you’re old enough to work.”
Phase 3
I hurry back to the car to inform my Mom of the news. “Too young.” It was as if the news never registered to my Mother. Like one of those “Goonies Never say Die” moments, but for, you know, a job at McDonalds. So she says:
“That’s just for this location.”
Funny thing about McDonald’s – there are a lot of them. We immediately drive over to the McDonald’s exactly three blocks in the opposite direction of our house, and repeat the steps: Application, Phone Call, and then an Interview.
Then It Happens
I show up at McDonald’s #2 exactly a week since my first interview. I’m wearing the same clothes, and this time I’m a little less freaked to walk in.
I take a seat because my interviewer is busy.
Then I see that same white, button up shirt and tie. McDonald’s issue. It’s the same guy. You know those nightmares where you wake up, and think you’re safe – only to realize it’s still part of the nightmare? Well this was the McDonald’s job interview version of that.
He looks at me, then looks at the application.
“Hi Mr. Lynam, um yeah, it’s the same deal as last time.”
Epilogue
What my Mother taught me was persistence. There are countless times that I think back to this story when I’m faced with a situation that challenges my, or my team’s, comfort zone. My Mom still laughs at this story, and so do I, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect what this moment has continued to teach me all these years later.
Common in the USA
Roasted Garlic Pizza
Ingredients
- 1 (13 inch) uncooked dough crust
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 bunch spinach, wilted
- 6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
- 8 sun-dried tomato pieces, sliced
- 1 head garlic, roasted
Instructions
- Prepare wilted spinach by first thoroughly washing and drying, removing stems, and then stir-frying until wilted.
- Prepare roasted garlic by skinning garlic, coating with olive oil, and baking covered for 20 minutes in a 350 degrees F oven.
- Top dough crust with olive oil, spinach, feta cheese, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes.
- Bake in preheated 500 degrees F oven on a pizza stone for 8 to 10 minutes or until crust is golden brown and cheese is bubbly.
- Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack for 2 or 3 minutes before cutting into wedges and serving.
What is something you secretly enjoy doing?
I live in China, and as a black person I frequently come across people who assume I can’t speak Chinese. I’ve been learning it for over two years and I study in it, too.
I sort of enjoy the impressed looks people give me when they see me speaking it – not fluently, mind you – but people get really impressed anyway.
It’s sort of amusing how very deer-in-headlights some shopkeepers get when they see me approach them. It’s like I could hear the wheels in their heads turning, “how will I speak to this foreigner?” Then comes the look of relief across their faces, the bright smiles when I speak to them in Chinese.
They usually congratulate me for speaking it; I smile and nod encouragingly at some English words they try to use to help me understand what they’re saying. All good-natured exchanges; no hard feelings.
I’ve had food vendors give me free food; candy, even chicken once, after we conversed in Chinese and they complimented my skills.
The stories you hear about Chinese people coming up and asking to take pictures with ordinary foreigners as if we are celebrities are true, too. I’ve had that happen occasionally, especially if I’m out with other foreign friends.
There are many elderly people who’ve never stepped out of the country nor even seen a black person in their entire lives, so I do get the occasional elderly person or child literally stop in their tracks to stare wide-eyed at me like I’m a rare unicorn. It’s amusing.
Women and two things
What is the one fact about the world that no one knows, but you?
- By 2020, depression will be the leading cause of death and disability.
- Feeling ignored causes the same chemical effect as that of injury.
- People who play video games often are much more likely to have lucid dreams than non-gamers. They were also better able to influence their dream worlds as if controlling a video-game character.
- People who have cars with bumper stickers are more likely to exhibit road rage. You may want to think twice before laying on the horn!!
- Phobias may be memories passed down through generations in DNA, according to new research. If you remember a past event, you’re actually remembering the last time you remembered it rather than the event itself.
- Thinking about sex will temporarily relieve the urge to pee in the case of an emergency.
- Having a problem? Lay down! You can process thoughts faster by laying down.
- At a restaurant? Wash your hands after ordering. The menu is generally the dirtiest thing you can touch.
- Always check your cell signal when looking for new apartments or dorms to live in.
- If a crocodile is chasing you, run in a zig-zag pattern. Crocodiles can’t take sharp turns well.
- If a crocodile has caught you between its jaw, you press his eyes intensely with your thumbs, he will leave you.
- You can clear cigarette smoke in a room by spinning a wet towel around.
- If your stomach is rumbling in a public setting, do not clench your muscles, instead of push out like a beer belly and the noise will stop.
- Honey= brightens, tightens, & fights wrinkles & acne. Honey Facial: Smear onto face let sit for 1-3m, rinse with warm water, pat dry.
- Got a pimple before something important? Use an ice cube to shrink it.
- Mash tomatoes and apply the pulp as a pack on the face. Wash this off after half an hour to get a clear and glowing complexion.
- For oily skin, mash one banana with a teaspoon of honey and a couple of drops of lemon juice. Apply to face for 10 minutes, rinse.
- You can get longer nails by applying olive oil to help them grow.
- Eating garlic and onions can make your hair grow faster.
- Putting sugar on a wound does helps heal it faster!
- Clean your room! When your room is messy, you’re more likely to procrastinate and not get work done.
- If you know you’re going to vomit eat some vanilla ice cream first. It won’t stop the vomiting, but it will stop the burning sensation.
- Remove ink from clothes? Put toothpaste on the ink spots generously. Let it dry completely, then wash.
- Sign up for the free 30 minute trial of on-board WiFi while flying. Delete cookies when the trial ends. Start a new trial.
- If you are buying headphones/speakers, test them with Bohemian Rhapsody. It has a complete set of highs and lows in instruments and vocals.
- Put a stocking over the end of a vacuum to find tiny items like earrings. This prevents you from accidentally sucking them up.
- Mess with telemarketers! Some aren’t allowed to hang up, so answer the call, take a shower, have a snack, then say “no thanks 😉
- Memorize your waiter’s name when they introduce themselves—call them by name later in the meal and they’ll like you more.
- Singing in the shower daily can help boost your immunity, lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and improve your mood.
- Combine used coffee grounds, coconut oil, & sea salt for an amazing body scrub that will remove dead skin cells while hydrating your skin.
- If you don’t know whether to write “affect” or “effect”, use the word “impact” instead.
- If you want someone to listen to you, start the conversation with “I shouldn’t be telling you this.
- If your boyfriend or girlfriend wrongs you–don’t tell your parents about it. You might forgive them, but your parents won’t.
- If you’re ever stuck in a large crowd, put coins in a can and shake it, asking people to donate. Everyone will move to avoid you.
- When walking through a crowd, look at your destination in the distance. People will clear a path if they see you make a clear eye-line.
- When washing clothes, always turn them inside out so the design doesn’t crack.
- If you still feel tired after a good night’s sleep, you’re probably dehydrated. Drink some water after you wake up.
- If you email a big company and tell them your recent purchase was unsatisfactory, they’ll most likely send you free stuff.
- Feeling sleepy? Hold your breath until you can’t anymore and then breathe out slowly. This will increase your heart rate.
- Sleeping without a bra can help you have a 95% better sleep.
- Sleeping on your stomach can induce weirder, scarier, and sexier dreams.
- Sleeping next to someone you love not only reduces depression, but it also helps you to live longer and makes you fall asleep faster.
- Eating your food slowly will help you lose weight, enjoy your food, reduce stress, and lead to better digestion.
- Fasting for 16 hours will reset your body’s natural sleep/wake cycle and is considered an effective way to overcome jet-lag.
- Have a flat tire? Take a picture of it on your phone for future reference. Use it as an excuse later.
- When in college, always sit in the front. Your teacher will remember your face when it comes to grading and most likely be more favorable.
- Forgot an assignment and need to email it? Change the date on your computer system and send it.
- If you think somebody is giving you a fake number, read it back to them incorrectly. See if they correct you.
- Listening to music can boost your running performance by 15%.
- Before sleeping, 90% of your mind begins to imagine the stuff you’d like to happen.
- Have a good 20-minute workout at night so you’ll feel better before you sleep.
- Dancing, singing and masturbating are all proven ways to fight depression and lead to better sleep.
- Take vitamin B complex during the summer. Insects don’t like the way it makes you smell to them, it wards off mosquitoes and biting flies.
- In college? Always ask for a student discount, most stores have it and students never use it.
- If you are drunk and have the urge to vomit, taking short rapid breaths can help it go away.
- If you download a “PDF” file and you see it ends in “.exe” delete it. Its a virus.
- When cleaning your room, start with making your bed. It will make everything around it look out of place and it will motivate you to clean.
- Hearing your name being called, when no one has actually called your name, is a likely sign of a healthy mind.
- If you want someone’s number at a party, take a picture with them and ask them to send it to you.
- The Two-Minute Rule: If you see something that needs doing, and it can be completed within two minutes, do it immediately.
- Putting dry tea bags in gym bags or smelly shoes will absorb the unpleasant odor.
- Wrap a cold paper towel around a drink and put it in the freezer to make it cold faster
- Drinking 2 cups of cold water on an empty stomach can boost metabolism by 30%
- Cough keeping you up at night? Put Vick’s Vapo-rub on your feet and put on socks. Within minutes the cough will stop permanently
- Hugging can help reduce stress and lower blood pressure — This helps to protect us from heart disease
- When on a date, the best way to judge a person’s character is to see how they treat waiters and waitresses
- To remove gum from hair, dip into a small bowl of Coke, leave for a few minutes. The gum will wipe off
- When doing sit-ups if you place your tongue on the roof of your mouth it will stop you from straining your neck
- If your boss calls you in on your day off, tell him you’ve been drinking, the boss can’t fault you for not coming in.
- When going on a date, go to a horror film. Elevated heart rate and adrenaline are strongly tied to sexual attraction.
- If you ever drop glass, put a piece of bread on it. The consistency of the bread will pick up even the smallest shard
- When you’re finished with an essay, copy and paste it into Google Translate and listen to it. It’s the easiest way to find mistakes.
- If you toss onions in the freezer 15 minutes before you cut them you won’t tear up.
- Accidentally text the wrong person? Immediately put your phone on airplane mode and once it fails to deliver, delete the message.
- If you place an egg in water and it floats, don’t consume it. It’s bad and should be thrown away. A fresh egg will sink to the bottom.
- Eating Pizza once a week can actually help reduce the risk of esophageal cancer. So go eat some Pizza.
- Turning the shower cold right before you get out closes your pores and makes you less likely to get acne.
- Yellow rooms can make babies cry more and couples fight more.
- Grab a banana for breakfast! They are known as happy fruit. Eating just one can help relieve irritable emotions, anger and or depression.
- Bananas can reduce the swelling and irritation of mosquito bites and help with nicotine withdrawal.
- People who enjoy sweets like chocolate tend to be more generous, happier, selfless and open-minded.
What are the consequences for Chinese citizens who criticize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or its policies, particularly regarding Xinjiang and the Uighur population?
Here it comes again..
- If your criticism is based on facts and logics, then your criticism is welcomed.
- If your criticism is based on rumor and bias, then you will ran off and seek political asylum in USA, Canada or UK, like the pro-”democracy” activists in HK, eg, Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow Ting. Because you can’t make a living in China, everyone knows you and they put you into their blacklist, you can’t find a job. So the only choice is to go for your funder.
- No one is excuted by the government for criticizing it so far.
- No one believes in Xinjiang fake news, because those news reports targeted on you, not us. This is your government’s propaganda, not ours. We can tell the illogic and not-make-sense narratives at the first sight but you can’t, because the distance and language barrier made you not able to access information from a much wider range.
Why don’t nuclear nations have a disarm mode for nuclear ICBM’s after they are launched?
The answer lies in the theory of deterrence and enduring paranoia of that most iconic of Cold War doctrine’s “MAD” or Mutually Assured Destruction. If there is one man who was most responsible for both it is General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay. LeMay was everything you imagine a Cold War air force general to be — a sports-car driving, martial arts practicing, HAM radio operating, steel-nerved commander for whom the killing of thousands or even millions of civilians was an uninteresting footnote in the larger strategic calculus of war. Indeed, he may well have been the source of that stereotype. he is certainly remembered as both the patron saint of the United States Air Force and as among the most infamous war criminals in history.
Along the way LeMay became one of the guiding lights of American strategic airpower. Now, LeMay didn’t like ballistic missiles. He was a bomber man. So if we asked LeMay this question he would probably respond the same way he did when he advocated for the continuation of the SAC bomber program in a memo dated January 4, 1964:
Ballistic missile forces represent both the U.S. and Soviet potential for strategic nuclear warfare at the highest, most indiscriminate level, and at a level least susceptible to control.
What LeMay is saying here is that the ICBM fleet is, by design, an all-or-nothing proposition. The fact that it exists — out in the middle of the Northwest Great Plains in full view of any satellite that cares to look down upon it — sends a very clear and unambiguous message:
- The United States has the ability to reduce your homeland to a smoldering ruin
- The United States will use these weapons if you use similar weapons against her
- The United States has numerous redundant protocols in place to ensure that it will use these weapons if the time ever comes.
These three statements are the core of deterrence theory. They’re sometimes referred to as the “Three Cs” — Capability, Communication, and Credibility.
- The enemy has to know that you are capable of destroying them.
- You have to communicate under which circumstances you would do so.
- And they have to find your threat credible.
This last “C” — credibility — is probably the hardest to nail down. Credibility amounts to a psychological state: are you really ready to kill hundreds of millions – maybe billions – of people to follow through on your threat? The ICBM fleet is about credibility. It is a Sword of Damocles, hanging over the enemy’s head.
That’s why they can’t have a disarm button.
The mere existence of the ICBM fleet is a compelling argument for the idea that the people that built it have accepted – in advance – the moral quandary of the nuclear age. They are not a gun brought to a knife fight; they’re a suicide vest rigged to a dead-man’s switch. But that promise of crushing retaliation loses some of its credibility if it comes with a “take-backsies” button.
But, paradoxically, the lack of that capability also diminishes the credibility of the ICBM threat. Because they are an all-or-nothing proposition, ICBMs offer very little proportionality. The United States may be more than willing to turn lose its missiles if a Russian first-strike is spotted coming over the North Pole, but would the Americans really jump to total thermonuclear war if just one warhead were used to clear a route for Russian tanks as they rolled into Germany?
Maybe not… and that creates a problem. It invites escalation and that escalation may bring about a general nuclear exchange which wouldn’t have happened if there had been some way to deter that first nuclear use.
This is the weakness LeMay saw in the missile based deterrent. The missiles have their place but, as LeMay puts it:
The employment of these weapons in lower level conflict would be likely to escalate the situation, uncontrollably, to an intensity which could be vastly disproportionate to the original aggravation. The use of ICBMs and SLBMs is not, therefore, a rational or credible response to provocations which, although serious, are still less than an immediate threat to national survival.
LeMay’s solution to this problem was – predictably – the bomber. The ICBM fleet could await the end of days in its silos, LeMay contended, the bomber would be there to handle everything short of that.
And that is largely the role of the American bomber force. Whenever Uncle Sam feels some “gunboat diplomacy” is in order, the bomber fleet is there: flying in joint exercises over South Korea
or dropping cruise missiles after a marathon flight from the other side of the world
.
So why don’t ICBMs have a recall button or a disarm button? Because that’s what bombers are for.
Why are rural towns in America dying?
Rural towns are generally built around one or maybe two industries other than agriculture.
Take my hometown, for example. You basically work in some form of manufacturing, or you’re in dairy and crop farming. Go north a ways to some bigger rivers and it’s dairy farming and paper mills.
Every other business basically operates to support those two industries. Dollar General, Shopko, Piggly Wiggly? They provide the basic necessities for people who work in those industries. The specialty shops downtown provide luxury goods for people who work in those industries. The standard Wisconsin small town 2:1 ratio of bars to churches exist to support those industries.
The car dealerships don’t sell Priuses and sedans hardly at all; they sell pickup trucks and grocery-getter wagons/SUVs. Mostly used; the only new dealership in my town folded about 15 years ago and both lots are still vacant.
A hundred years ago, iron was king in my hometown. It was mostly blast furnaces making iron ore into pig iron and shipping it off to coal country to be made into steel. When the iron mines dried up, it switched mostly to manufacturing.
One of the four major manufacturers in the area closed almost 20 years ago now after it got bought up by a west coast equity firm. It wiped out probably a solid 15% of the school district area’s employment. It came at a bad time, as well, in the middle of a recession, so getting other work was pretty hard. Another industry in town laid off 50% of their workforce and automated two product lines.
Between transfers and people who had to move out of town to find work, enrollment in the school district dropped a solid 5–10%. My class was large, at around 125. By a decade later, the average class size was down to 80.
Automation in the other manufacturing industries has resulted in attrition of jobs there probably by another 50%, though I will seriously credit one of the local employee-owned companies for doing a great job of retaining employees and retraining them for other positions to keep them, which is probably why they’re one of the few manufacturers that has expanded significantly and actually increased overall employment in the last decade. The other manufacturers, not so much.
Then there’s agriculture and advances in that field.
Here’s what my great-great grandfather started farming with:
If you were fast and had a good horse and you worked sunrise to sunset, you could probably plow a 40-acre field in three or four days. Work it down in another two or three. Plant it in another two or three. If the weather cooperated and you worked your horse and your equipment and yourself hard. And the land was already cleared of trees and stumps. You could pull a two-row corn planter.
By the time my great-grandfather was ready to start working the farm, my great-great-grandfather was able to put together enough money for one of these:
That’s a John Deere unstyled model A. The first one on the farm had steel wheels, not tires. On the other side of this is a flywheel that you had to crank to get it started. It was insanely hard to do. But it didn’t get tired and need water every hour or so like a horse. And it would pull a two bottom plow. You could plow a 40-acre field in a hard day if you had enough light. You could probably do a 4-row corn planter with this.
By the time my grandfather was old enough to start working the farm, my great-grandfather had bought this:
This is a Ferguson TO-30. It might look smaller than the A, but it’s got more horsepower (26HP), hydraulics, and a three-point hitch. My great-grandfather bought it after the A needed a serious overhaul and the tractor salesman brought out one of these and a Ford 8N, and my great-grandfather said he’d buy whichever one got to the top of a hill with a two-bottom plow faster. The Ferguson won. (We still have the original in the family, plus the replica model the salesman gave him for buying it.)
You could plow, work down, and plant a 60-acre field in probably three good days’ work, if you were willing to work into the dark a bit. (My great-grandfather actually specifically ordered the tractor without lights because he believed if you were working into the dark, you were working too long.) Still a 4-row corn planter, but you could probably pull a larger grain drill than the A.
By the time my uncle was in high school, the farm was up to this:
That’s a Ford 7600 diesel. Almost 100 HP, over three times as much as the Ferguson. This would pull a four-bottom plow. Live PTO, making it possible to run better and better equipment. My family actually sprung for one with a cab because Grandpa was getting older, but he didn’t like it, actually.
With the four-bottom, a cultimulcher instead of a disk and drag, an 8-12-row corn planter instead of a 4-row that the Ferguson would pull, you could work a 60–80 acre field in three days if you were nice to the equipment, and probably still get some other stuff done.
By the time I was old enough to start really driving around tractors, the neighbors were driving these:
That’s a Massey-Ferguson 8220. The neighbors had an 8240, if I recall correctly. I remember when the guys around the corner bought one of these and a chisel plow. 150HP.
They worked down an 80 acre field in about two hours and planted it with a 16 row corn planter in about three hours two days later.
Today? I have an uncle who does crop and dairy farming. He’s got one tractor with 240 HP that can chisel plow a 120 acre field by GPS in 60–90 minutes, and will pull a 24-row John Deere corn planter. He probably wouldn’t even use it to work down a 40-acre field because that field would be too tiny to effectively turn around very well.
My great-grandfather would have been stunned at that. He might have imagined it, but it would have been a wild dream.
One guy can work ten times the cropland that my great-great-grandfather could have with a quarter of the work.
And yields have gone up, too. Hybrid corn and advances in other crops have made it so that today’s farmers are growing an order of magnitude more per acre than my great-grandfather did.
But all of those advances come at a cost. A bag of seed corn or soybeans can cost upwards of $100 a bag, and is currently going for as much as $180 a bag for the 2020 corn planting season. My grandfather once stormed out of a mill with me 25–30 years ago as a kid when the same sized bag of seed corn was going to be $15 because it was “highway robbery” and he figured he could get it cheaper elsewhere.
The same is true of dairies. My great-grandmother milked 20 cows by hand; a large operation at the time. In the 50’s, they got an electric vacuum pump system after the farm got electricity, and built a bigger, modern milking barn. That bumped them up to 60 head. In the 70’s, they were able to add on and up that to 100 head. By the early 2000’s, they were a small dairy, starting to be unable to compete. My uncle made some bad decisions, but he leveraged the land like crazy and cheated my great-grandmother out of her share of the farm to afford a 240 head new barn with a milking parlor.
He’s still a small operation now and is close to bankruptcy.
There’s a farm about two dozen miles over that has 8,400 head and the farmers don’t even milk the cows now; the cows have an RFID tag and when the cow feels like it wants to get milked, it wanders over to a stall and a robotic milking machine reads the tag and hooks itself up. The system tracks the cow’s individual production.
When my great-grandmother was doing the milking, there were probably fewer than 8,400 milking cows in the county.
But that huge operation is probably over a $10 million investment. That would have been unfathomable for my great-grandfather.
Whether crop or dairy, it’s been evolve or die, and evolving requires growing into a massive factory farm. That equipment and the buildings are expensive. And the margins are thin. If you couldn’t get enough credit to expand, you went bankrupt. If you had a bad year or two, you went bankrupt. The margins on all of that are razor thin; the farmer is probably actually netting pretty little, if not taking a routine annual loss many years.
Small farm bankruptcies are skyrocketing right now because factory farms are keeping the prices so low as to make the margins non-existent or below break-even for the little guys.
The area where I grew up is a moonscape of rotted out, fallen down barns, abandoned outbuildings, and lonely old farmhouses with lonely old retired farmers who have given up. They sold off all the equipment, and if they can rent out the land for enough to pay off the mortgage, they do, or sell it off for enough to satisfy the liens and keep four or five acres with the house. And when the old man and his wife pass away, the kids, who have moved to the city, don’t want to take care of it anymore. I’ve seen a dozen or two of those old houses just demolished; the outbuildings used for storage if anything at all.
Maybe 10–20% of the farms that were operating when I was a kid thirty years ago are still milking. Six of the seven neighbors my grandparents and uncle had that were farming when I was a kid are out and quit wholesale. The one left isn’t doing dairy anymore, the kid, who’s almost exactly my age, sold off the dairy cows and most of the equipment, does some basic crop farming, and grass-fed beef. One of the last neighbors to sell had gotten up to about 1400 acres that he’d owned and another 400 he rented before he sold out to a guy from Iowa who trucks up even more massive equipment than I described above, works up the whole thing in less than a week, and moves on to the next bit.
One guy. With probably a dozen hands. I have no doubt that he owns or rents over 36,000 acres.
Who needs a whole town to support that anymore? He isn’t going into my hometown for groceries every week, or the downtown coffee shop on a routine basis. He isn’t in the bars regularly. He isn’t buying stuff from the local hardware store, or tires and oil changes from the local mechanic.
Even if he were local, he certainly isn’t buying the same amount as the 100+ farm families he’s replaced.
Infrastructure also drastically changed my home area. Infrastructure, especially transportation infrastructure, dramatically reduces the friction costs of commerce. If it costs less to move stuff to market, people will build stuff there. If not, people won’t.
The railroad was first on this. Wherever the railroad went, towns grew along it. Where the railroad didn’t go through, those places died or never grew. There’s a little town of about 300 people, about big enough to have an “unincorporated” sign and not much more.
There’s a huge Catholic cathedral there, built to serve probably a 150 family congregation. Today, it serves probably a few dozen for a whole area.
That’s because the railroad was supposed to go through the town, which is why they built it. There’s half a dozen other old businesses that used to exist, too, the hollowed out remains of their buildings still visible, built in anticipation of a train that literally never came.
Because the railroad company built ten miles east, instead.
That town died. Or rather, never grew at all. The businesses mostly folded, with the exception of a bar and a butcher that finally relocated when I was a kid. There was a fancier restaurant there that closed up about five years back finally. It had a for-sale sign on it since before I graduated high school, but the guy who owned it could never find a buyer and finally just retired.
Today, railroads are largely replaced by highways and interstates, though freight rail is making a comeback in some places. Not enough to support a whole town, like it once did, but enough to keep some businesses going.
The main corridor in my home area is now I-41, 20–30 miles from town. It’s only recently been made into an interstate. When my parents were first dating, it was only two lanes. I still remember when there were no overpasses and it was cross-traffic most of the way by us.
As the interstate and a few four-lane state highways have grown, the towns along them have stayed steady or grown with them in some spots.
The towns between the main highways? They’re mostly gone or drying up. One got virtually wiped out by a tornado twenty-some years ago and never really recovered. Every year, they keep talking about consolidating the school district with a nearby one because enrollment is too low to sustain it independently. The elementary school closed fifteen years back and K-8 are all in one building now.
I remember a couple years ago, I was going through Iowa on my way to a wedding and they’d recently moved I-80. The main highway that it now paralleled used to go through a bunch of little towns. We got off the super-slab and went through some of them because we weren’t in a hurry to get to Colorado. Half of everything was boarded up. I asked the cashier about it. People don’t want to exit the highway and drive four miles south to get to Casey’s General Store. They just bypass the towns and wait until the next bigger stop. Where towns could, they’d tried to move towards the highway, but that’s often not possible.
It’s what happened to the towns on Route 66. A few remaining nostalgic pieces of it remain, but most of it’s just gone. Whole towns were just erased.
But even my hometown isn’t seeing new facilities getting built for manufacturing and the like, because of a lack of infrastructure. There’s a decent state highway into town that they keep in reasonable repair, but it’s a ways to the interstate still. The existing facilities keep churning out stuff, but if the companies are expanding, it’s along the four-lane highways and the towns and cities on those, still reasonably nearby enough, I suppose.
One company bought out that old plant that went bust I mentioned and turned it into a big R&D facility, since it doesn’t need much import/export and it’s smack in the middle of town. Getting trucks there is a pain in the ass. When they come up with something, they send the specs over to the shiny new plant two towns west, which is built on a four-lane highway with direct access to Madison and Milwaukee.
Internet is another infrastructural element that is significantly lagging in some of these places. Nobody’s running fiber to my hometown for the most part. A lot of people still have DSL. Maybe satellite. Apparently Verizon or Frontier is upgrading some of downtown somewhat. The last time I was at the local coffee shop to use the wi-fi, the speed test ran up to 15 megabits.
The cell coverage depends on the provider, but it’s spotty even in downtown. Verizon is okay. US Cellular is the preferred choice. Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T are complete dead zones. That makes it hard to operate a retail business these days, which is increasingly dependent on the internet for sales and backend that we take for granted. You’re not selling much if you can’t use so much as a Square reader at the local businesses. And you’re not getting a lot of tourists if their phones are off the grid before they get to the city limits.
And younger people don’t want to live in a town where they can’t get Netflix or Prime Video at even standard resolution half the time. So, they’re not moving there, or leaving for greener pastures if they can.
Because there isn’t enough demand, the cable companies don’t bother upgrading the lines unless they have to. Because there isn’t basic high-speed broadband, nobody moves there to create the demand. It’s a vicious cycle. My folks just moved out of the place where I grew up and moved to the edge of a moderately large rural town. They get one internet provider, which maxes out at 8Mb down, 4 up. If they were two blocks over, they could get another provider with much better bandwidth, but where they are, they’re just screwed. A lot of places are like that. There’s no competition, and relatively light demand, so there’s basically no reason for the telecoms to bother running anything out there.
At least my hometown and surrounding area are still close enough to major transportation routes that Fed-Ex and UPS will come all the way out. My in-laws have to drive 20 miles into town to pick up anything. They’ve been where they are for fifteen years and two weeks ago, a Fed-Ex truck actually went all the way to their house for the first time, ever. The delivery driver said he would never do it again. They don’t even get mail delivery to their place; they have to go up the minimum maintenance road five miles to a turnaround if it gets delivered, and they maintain a PO box in the slightly larger, but further away town for that purpose instead.
Water is increasingly an issue, too. New water treatment plants with higher capacities are expensive and getting more so. Rural areas have a lower population density to spread that cost around, and that means either a need for increased state aid, or higher property taxes.
If you don’t live right in town, that water isn’t probably coming to you. So, the farmers and people who live outside of town, but who are in the township and so would pay the increased taxes to pay for it, vote against it. They’re already paying literally tens of thousands of dollars for septic systems and wells; paying more property taxes for someone else’s water on top of that, while getting nothing in return, is a hard sell.
Even trash collection is an issue here. Depending on the size of the town, you might have to do it yourself or contract with a company, because the town itself might not provide it. Again, friction cost for a business, and another thing that sometimes makes people not want to move there. I grew up with it, so the idea of a garbage guy that actually comes to your house is still weird to me, as are the ideas of a) not having an organic bucket that needs to get hauled out to the brush pile by the line fence, b) not having a burn barrel for paper garbage, c) not needing to separate out metals from other recycling to take to the salvage yard when there’s enough to get the higher price, or d) that the garbage guy comes at a specific time rather than taking it to the dump on Saturday morning or dropping the cash in the can or slot to pay for the bags you put in if you come not on a Saturday morning.
When rural areas lack easy access to the kinds of infrastructure that reduces commercial friction costs, they’re at a serious disadvantage. It’s more expensive to do things, it’s more difficult to attract workers, and as a result, what sustains these small towns begins to go elsewhere.
The decline itself then turns into a vicious cycle. As the major sustaining industries and businesses give out, or the resources like a clay or gravel pit start to dwindle, the people that can leave, do, especially younger people.
That increases the concentration of people remaining in poverty.
And with an increased concentration of poverty comes a lot of the problems that arise out of that: increased crime, increased drug use as depressed people try to self-medicate, depressed property values that make it even harder to get out, and more.
The schools end up with lower enrollment, and lower tax revenues, and lower state aid. So they have to start cutting services. And then people move out of the district because they want their kids in a better school, if they can.
Any young people who can get out flee. That leads to a brain drain of the community. It’s hard to get young professionals to move back if they think they’re never going to make enough money to justify it, or lose a quality of life that they enjoy elsewhere.
So, that means fewer social workers, attorneys, doctors, etc. serving these areas that can help mitigate these problems of poverty, and it spirals downward even more. People of means have fewer kids; people without them have more but can’t support them. Services get progressively thinner, making people more desperate.
More and more desperate people often end up getting into the criminal justice system one way or another, and once you’ve got a felony, everything is substantially harder. Housing, employment, everything. That traps more and more people, as well.
People that are trapped get more and more hopeless. Suicide rates skyrocket.
Eventually, the whole thing just gives out. The remaining people die off. The houses and businesses are abandoned and left to crumble.
We’re not just talking about your boom and bust ghost towns of the Wild West. There’s plenty of these that are modern, some dying in the last few decades. There’s a few places I know of around where I grew up where the last living inhabitants were present just a few years ago. Today, there’s a handful of vacant buildings and nothing else left. You can walk right in a few of them. Some of them are so far gone that you wouldn’t even know that several thousand people once lived there in some cases as recently as thirty or forty years ago just by looking at them.
One town near where I grew up used to actually put up their own population sign and an old man would repaint the number by hand every time someone died or moved away, until he died and nobody took over the task. There was a lumberyard/building center there, a church, and a bar, when I was a kid at least. It was a quarry town for limestone before that, but the easily accessible limestone ran out in the 60’s. There were probably 100 residents total, maybe, when I was a kid, but at one point there were about 1900 people who lived there. The businesses closed and the church is boarded up now. About twenty houses remain; two others were destroyed by fire – one started accidentally by a homeless person who was squatting in it after it was abandoned. The businesses are all vacant, the for-sale signs faded and dusty.
Sometimes a natural disaster comes in and finishes the job. Gays Mills in Wisconsin has been flooded completely out several times in the last decade. Hundreds of residents just gave up and never came back when the insurance gave them an out. Some businesses are trying to stick it out, or relocate as disaster relief has tried to make it possible to move the town to higher ground.
Lastly, the death rate is exceeding the birth rate. Sixty to eighty years ago, you needed ten kids to run the farm, and the infant mortality rate was considerably higher.
In the last 20–30 years, though? People aren’t having babies. The birth rate in a lot of these rural areas is well below replacement. The oldest generations are dying off with increasing rapidity every year.
Death rates among 18–64 year olds in rural areas are also on the incline. The opioid crisis really has disproportionately affected rural areas not because it’s higher per capita, but because there’s just fewer people overall and so the same per capita impact has a greater overall impact.
But suicides are where it’s gotten really out of control. The rural suicide rate is bonkers higher than urban areas. It’s as much as 25% higher in some areas, and it’s risen over 40% in the last 20 years. There’s been a lot of research into this, with hypotheses ranging from lack of health care (both in insurance and in care providers) to stigma around mental health to simply increased access to guns, but there has not been a good consensus around what factors are most prevalent or most contributory.
This is perhaps the most literal reason rural towns in America are dying: they are literally seeing more death than birth.
Some other rural towns are growing around new industries. In Kansas, feedlot and meatpacking plants are growing substantially. Feedlots are smelly as hell. You don’t want to live anywhere near them. Seriously. Even setting aside the animal cruelty issues that are often present, they’re just awful places to be within ten miles of. But, they also provide jobs. For the desperate rural worker, any port in a storm.
In Minnesota, it’s chicken and turkey processing. There’s a handful of towns that have poultry processing, and they’re doing pretty well for now.
But those jobs are not very secure. They’re hard labor, and if someone gets laid up, there’s enough people willing to take the jobs that someone can just be replaced. Anti-union sentiment from conservatives that dominate these areas don’t make anything easier, either.
Additionally, these industries also creating a lot of tension because the local natives don’t want those jobs due to the lack of security and don’t often apply, or can’t pass a drug test to qualify; instead, these jobs are attracting a lot of immigrant labor, such as Somali refugees. These are more typically than not legal immigrants, but that makes little difference to some people who are already mistrustful of any outsiders. I have a relative who moved into a rural town thirty years ago and still is considered a transplant and given second-class citizenship to a generational local.
But many of these industries are also boom-and-bust. The oil fields in the Bakken and the Permian Basin led to huge expansions of parts of North Dakota and Texas, but as quickly as they exploded, they’ve died off as oil prices crashed in recent years.
Those feedlots and chicken processing plants are likely as insecure. All it takes is a commodity oversupply, or a trade war, to shutter whole plants. And if that’s the primary employer for the area, it can take a significant piece of the town when it goes.
Some rural towns are still doing okay, or even growing a little, and in sustainable ways.
What’s kept my hometown alive is that it’s a good bedroom community that’s 30–45 minutes driving from two reasonably large urban areas and less than two hours from two more metro areas. Those are people who want to live in a small, safe, quiet neighborhood, but they don’t work there. They commute to the larger cities in the region.
Enrollment is back up a little in the school district with people moving in to live in a quiet spot, and class sizes are back up to about 95-ish. The school has some good programs such as an award-winning music program that have brought in school choice students from neighboring districts (with corresponding state aid), or even gotten some individuals to move there.
The tax base has remained about neutral or grown a little as developments and new housing grow slowly. Areas that were farm fields when I was a boy are now subdivisions generating more property taxes than the agricultural zones they once were.
There are some rural areas that have this geographical quirk and are mostly becoming the new form of suburbs for those wealthy enough to either buy a nice place in a small town, or a couple acres of former farmland and build a house out in the country. The cost of living is usually reasonable or even sometimes lower than the city or suburbs; housing is certainly cheaper even if certain commodities are a bit higher.
But there’s a lot of rural areas that don’t have that quirk of geography.
Get out in the middle of Nebraska, or Iowa, or Kansas, or Minnesota and there’s a lot less. It’s a long, long way to the urban centers.
Those places are increasingly seeing the demise of rural America the hardest.
Scott Ritter Jaw-Dropping Revelation: NATO vs Russia – A Ticking Nuclear Time Bomb Ready to Explode!
What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?
Back in the early 1980’s I was a district manager for a large manufacturer. I had 16 sales reps out of three offices. My company brought in a new VP of Sales. This guy knew very little about our product or company.
This VP put out a mandate for all District Managers (there were about 150 of us nationally) to break our reps into four categories.
- Category one were the top producers. They received a good end of year raise.
- Category two were over quota but did not do extremely well. They got a 3% raise.
- Category three were either over quota to a less amount than category two or under quota. They got no raise and were put on a 90 day action plan. The plan stated that they must be on quota for the next 90 days otherwise they would be terminated.
- Category four would be terminated.
Of my 16 reps, 10 or twelve were over quota. At least two were within a point or two of quota and the rest had enough business outstanding to bring them over quota shortly.
Myself and a large group of District Managers rebelled. It went up to our CEO. Within a week or two we were allowed to make a case for each rep we believed should be kept on. Within another month or two, the new VP left the company. Good riddance!
Angel of death?
What is the biggest “I’m definitely fired” thing you’ve done at work, but nobody ever found out?
I was a third shift computer operator while in college—mostly weekend work to run overnight jobs and print boxes of client reports. Our IBM computer was old but reliable—except this night we had a drive malfunctioning and each time it fritzed out I would have to clean the head and rerun the job. After 4–5 such failures, I was tired and the night was long—when the console showed the next failure message “Drive Malfunction — Retry or Abort?” I knew it was yet another 30 minutes added to my shift. So instead of typing “A” or “R”—I punched the keyboard. A cluster of 7–8 keys were mashed down and just stayed down—there was no more keyboard input on the console so the system was down.
I called the 24-hour service tech and they were there within an hour. I “explained” that I had dropped a box of paper on the console (a lie) and the technician looked at me knowingly. Another half hour and the keyboard was repaired and we were up and running again. As the tech put his tools away, he looked at me and said “Next time you drop a box of paper, go in the back room and do it there so you don’t break anything.” Somehow I finished all the overnight jobs and at daybreak I had to call my boss to fess up. Fully expecting to be fired, I was surprised when my manager’s response was “So how many jobs did you not complete?” I told him I had finished everything and there was no backlog.
Instead of being fired, my manager was actually relieved because a prior third shift operator who was on the wrestling team at the college had a similar night—and he ended up punching in the entire keyboard. It turned out that my lie (reported dropping a box of paper on the keyboard) was better for the company than the truth—if my malicious tempered behavior broke the console it would be the company’s expense for the repair but an accident was covered by the service contract. So they promoted me into a day job on the coding team.
The US government will force ByteDance to sell TikTok. Should the Chinese government force Apple to sell all of its Chinese businesses in response?
No, I don’t think the Chinese government would take such an approach.
“If you sanction me, I must retaliate against you and launch corresponding sanctions, otherwise I will be weak.”
This is a common understanding in Western society that governments must respond to public sentiment. If other countries “hurt us”, we “must tit for tat”. Retaliation must be direct, reciprocal and obvious. Only then can public sentiment be released, and politicians’ approval ratings not drop.
So we discovered a key point: the way of revenge is centered on politics, not interests. No one cares whether doing so will bring greater benefits to society or cause greater harm.
“If you sanction me, I must retaliate against you, but the method may not be reciprocal. How to do it is left to professionals.”
This is a common perception in Chinese society, which is full of patience and believes that professional officials can handle it better than public sentiment.
With this premise, we return to the Tiktok case. If Tiktok is forced to sell by the United States, will China’s retaliation be to force Apple to sell it? No, that’s simply impossible
There is a proverb in the Chinese world: If a dog bites you, it does not mean that you have to bite the dog too.
There are many ways to take revenge, you must choose the one that is most beneficial to you.
In the past few years, China has been challenging the status of the United States in global economic activities, and the United States is in a state of hysteria. They are trying to use all available means to contain China. However, we find that China’s response has always been mild, even making people feel a little weak.
In fact, they have been choosing the way that is best for themselves, rather than the most “tit for tat” way.
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The United States has imposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods; they believe that in order to contain China, it is worth raising prices in the United States.
China’s most “relieving” response should be to impose additional tariffs on $200 billion of U.S. goods, but China believes that this will affect the import of technology and raw materials by Chinese companies, which is not worth it.
China’s actual approach is to expand BRI, join RECP, seek to join CPTPP, expand trade scope, offset the influence of the United States, and stop buying soybeans from American farmers.
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The United States has imposed five rounds of comprehensive sanctions on Huawei; they believe that it is worthwhile to undermine the fair international image of the United States and use “national security” crimes against a company in order to curb the development of China’s 5G technology.
China’s most “tit for tat” response should be to select an American company, such as CISCO, or Microsoft, or others, and impose five rounds of comprehensive sanctions. But China believes that this will affect these companies’ operations in China, reduce Chinese jobs and government tax revenue, and this is not worth it.
China’s actual approach is to change foreign investment laws and allow foreign companies to independently invest in telecommunications, automobiles and other industries. Then successfully brought Tesla to China.
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The United States has imposed “Chip and Science Act” sanctions on hundreds of Chinese companies; they believe that destroying the market and revenue of the US semiconductor industry can delay the development of China’s AI technology, which is worthwhile.
China’s most “tit for tat” response should be to select a group of American companies, such as General Motors, Ford, Walmart, and Starbucks, to implement some kind of reciprocal “sanctions bill.” But China believes that this will affect these companies’ operations in China, reduce Chinese jobs and government tax revenue, and this is not worth it.
China’s actual approach is to sanction several U.S. arms dealers and ban the export of rare earths to the United States. Launch the semiconductor development plan encouraged by the government, establish the National Semiconductor Fund, and recruit talents from all over the world to strengthen its semiconductor industry.
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Some Western public opinion has produced many similar news: Tesla is banned in China, and Apple mobile phones are banned in China. They seem to want to tell us: Look, they are just as bad as us;
But the truth is there, these are lies. The CEOs of Tesla and Apple have both praised the performance of the Chinese market.
Some Western public opinion will also tell us: Google is banned in China, Youtube, X and Ins are banned in China; so it is reasonable for us to ban Tiktok.
But some facts are deliberately ignored. Bing is running very well in China, and Amazon and Paypal have been running in China for 20 years. The crux of the matter is that China has enacted laws, companies that are willing to abide by them stay, and those that are unwilling to abide by them leave. China actually does not have a “ban” against a certain American company.
Now, the United States is demanding that Tiktok be forced to sell, maybe it will be Temu’s turn in the future, Shein
China’s most “tit for tat” method should be to choose an American company, such as Apple mentioned in the question. Asking them to “force a sale”
But China will definitely not do this. On the contrary, we may see them take more opening measures to encourage more foreign companies to participate in the Chinese economy.
They are deliberately taking a completely different approach to doing things than the United States. Use openness to fight closure, use trade to fight sanctions; use win-win to fight zero-sum games; use construction and manufacturing to fight bombs and destruction.
They are very patient and they are creating a global persona:
I don’t have many slogans, and I’m not very good at publicity and storytelling. I will only use actual actions to tell the world: who represents justice and friendship, and who represents evil and destruction.
In the short term, China’s approach seems inefficient, negative, and weak. But over time, many things change.
FAB-3000. Russia begins war. Macron, Ukraine will collapse
Give me a joke?
Here’s a Jewish mama joke.
A Jewish mother picks up the phone to hear the sound of a woman gulping sobs. Her daughter! “Darling! What’s the matter?
Woman:” Oh,Mama! Oh,Mama!”
“Yes darling. Mama is here. What’s wrong?”
“We’re snowed in. The car won’t start. The refrigerator stopped working and all the food is spoiled. The kids have colds and the house is a mess. I have a headache. And twenty ladies from my Hadassah chapter are coming for lunch at one o’clock! Oh,Mama” she wails “What am I going to do?”
In a calm soothing voice Mama replies “Don’t worry darling,Mama is here. First I’ll go down to the grocery and pick up something to eat.Then I’ll take the subway. And from the subway I’ll walk the sixteen blocks to your house. I’ll cook something for the twenty ladies,they’ll love it. I’ll give the kids an aspirin so they’ll be quiet. I’ll tell them a story till they fall asleep so you can lie down too. While the food cooks I’ll pick up the house. Everything will be all right. Don’t worry darling,Mama is here! That’s what a mother is for!”
The woman gives a huge sigh of relief. “Oh,Mama thank you! I feel so much better.”
“Don’t mention it,darling” Then,in an everyday voice “If you’re snowed in and the car won’t start how did Sam get to work?”
(Puzzled voice) “Sam? Who’s Sam?”
(Mama impatiently) “Sam! Your husband Sam! How did he get to work?”
Long pregnant pause. Then in a small voice the woman says “My husband’s name is Saul”
Another pregnant pause . Then in a trembling voice the woman says:
“Does that mean…you’re… not coming?”
Skillet Pizza Supreme
Ingredients
- 1 package dry yeast
- 1/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1/2 to 3/4 cup milk
Instructions
- Dissolve yeast in warm water in a small bowl; let stand 5 minutes.
- Combine 2 cups flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl; stir in yeast mixture and oil. Add enough milk to make a soft dough. Cover and let stand 15 minutes.
- Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Knead 5 to 8 times, working in remaining 1/2 cup flour to make a smooth dough.
- Pat dough evenly in bottom and halfway up sides of a lightly greased 10-inch cast iron skillet.
- Bake at 425 degrees F for 8 minutes.
- Spoon sauce over crust.
- Top with any toppings desired.
- Sprinkle shredded Mozzarella cheese over the top.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until cheese melts.
Such a narcissist
What is the most epic thing anyone has ever done?
What would you do if you are a poor, uneducated farmer and a multi-million dollar company came in and permanently destroyed your land by dumping toxic chemical waste into it?
This amazing David vs Goliath story is from China.
In 2001, the Qinghua Group, a state-owned mining company worth more than $200 million released 20,000 tonnes of chemical waste from a polyvinyl chloride plant into a village called Yushutun that depended entirely on farming.
The company filled a 478-acre pond with liquid waste and destroyed an additional 71 acres of land by dumping calcium carbide onto it.
As you can see, the land was pretty much useless now.
Wang Enlin was one of the farmers in the village who was playing cards with his friends on the night this incident happened.
He approached the courts and they asked him to provide evidence of the pollution unleashed by the company. This perplexed Wang. He didn’t know which law the company violated and nor did he or anyone he knew in the village have the means to hire a lawyer tough enough to go against a state-owned company like Qinghua.
“I knew I was in the right, but I did not know what law the other party had broken or whether or not there was evidence.”[1]
So what does he do?
He starts a 16-year long journey of studying the law all by himself.
Being only educated for a sum total of three years in his life and dropping out thereafter, Wang faced a huge challenge.
He did not have enough money to buy the costly tomes that were law books, so he hit the library with a dictionary and began learning. He would initially copy out notes on his hand and would pay the librarian with sacks of corn in return for his services.
In 2007, a law firm, learning about Wang’s endeavor, began giving him legal advice pro bono. Armed with accumulating knowledge of the law, he directed his neighbors and fellow villagers to collect evidence and document it.
When he began frequenting courts with his new found skill and the evidence, he was at first ignored, but he persisted. It took about eight years for the case to finally merit consideration and in early February 2017, the Angangxi District Court of Qiqihar ruled that each of the families in Yushutun village would receive a financial compensation of $111,500.
Unfortunately, as legal battles go, the company was quoted as deciding to file an appeal in a higher court and this may drag out some years, but there isn’t any reason to believe Wang and his people will not succeed.
Even if in a nominal sense, an uneducated village simpleton had brought down a huge organization with all its legal might and its nonpareil team of lawyers to its knees.
As I said, a proper David vs Goliath story.
And pretty badass too.
References:
Footnotes
What was the moment that made you realize that your childhood was different from other people’s?
Near the end of my sophomore years of high school, when I got my license and began driving myself to my friends’ houses to hang out.
At that point in my life, I had five friends that I hung out with on a regular basis, and about a dozen other people who I knew through those friends. Those dozen were like second-tier friends. We hung out a lot because we happened to be friends with the same person.
Before being able to drive myself to my friends’ houses, I was limited to friends’ houses I could walk to, or convince my parents to drive me to. By the time I turned 16, I’d been in six different friends’ houses that I could recall.
Then, during my first visit to my friend Rick’s house (I had to drive there myself because he lived pretty far away), I realized something: he had a lot of pictures of him, his mom, and his brother in the house, but zero pictures of his father. He’d never said anything about his father, but I always assumed he had one. When we finally talked about it, he said that his father walked out on the family when he and his brother were still young, and his mom never talked about him.
That got me thinking about all of my other friends. Jay’s father was an alcoholic and abused his mom until she divorced him. Emma’s father was actually her step-father, because her real father ran off with a younger woman. Emma’s step-dad was also much older than her mom. Sarah was being raised by a single mother. Aaron’s dad drank and swore a lot, and I’m pretty sure beat his wife. Trey’s dad was super controlling of his wife. (And, a few years later, killed her. He’s currently serving life in prison.) Anthony didn’t know who his dad was. Etc…
It was then that I realized that, of all of my friends, only one of them had a father in their lives who wasn’t an alcoholic, wasn’t abusive, and actually seemed like a nice guy. That was Tom. Tom was an only child and his parents were some of the nicest people you’d ever meet. His mom was a teacher and his dad was a businessman. They were both very active in one of the local churches.
My parents were married before they had me or my sister. They stayed married until my dad died. Both of my parents took an active role in my life as a child. My father never once raised a hand, or even his voice, to my mother. He didn’t drink. He didn’t do drugs. He wasn’t the jealous type. He never cheated on her. He showed her plenty of affection through all of the years of their marriage.
I think a lot of it had to do with the socio-economic class I was raised in. I, like most of my friends (except Tom), was raised in a lower socio-economic class. Poverty takes its toll on marriages. I guess, for a poor kid from the South, I got super lucky when it came to dads. Mine was like the dads you saw in sitcoms back then, while my friends’ dads, if they even had them, were more like the dads in dramas about abusive relationships.
FOUR MINUTES! This new site was online 4 Minutes Before HACKERS went after it
This rebuilt and restored website was online to the world for only 4 minutes before HACKERS tried to break-in! They were caught.
Long-time users of this website will recall that during Thanksgiving of the year 2022 (over a year ago), this site was mercilessly HACKED. It’s layout and functionality were wrecked.
At the time, I didn’t have the money or the ambition to do a full rebuild/restoration, so we jury-rigged-it and got by for a little over a year.
I saved up the money, did the research necessary, and last week, my tech guys began the rebuild.
In the past, the site has “good” security, better than most sites. Yet Hackers were ultimately able to breach that “good” security, got in and did their harm. So for this new rebuild, security was a major — I mean really big — aspect of the rebuild. Enterprise grade security.
Last Friday, this newly rebuilt and restored site went online at 7:24 PM eastern US time.
FOUR MINUTES LATER, the security system was already recording hacking attempts, and blocking IP addresses of malicious users. FOUR MINUTES!
I got alerts from my system about what was going on, and that these certain IP addresses had automatically been blocked, but telling me I should consider adding these IP’s to the PERMANENT BAN list. I did.
Here’s just a small sampling of the IP’s banned, and why:
So it’s going to be a rough ride for me as we proceed in the future. For whatever reason, people with nefarious motives are already trying to break in.
I thought you should know. In fact, it’s important you know.
Doing what I do to bring the TRUTH to the public, has enemies. Those enemies don’t want YOU knowing the truth.
When did you realize that your childhood was not normal?
This is from my childhood in the 1960’s. My Mom and Dad were married in 1946. My sister and I were born in 1959 and 1962, so they were older parents. My dad died when I was 8. My Mom went into a deep depression. She started smoking and drinking a lot. She finally got her driver’s license, and we would drive to the bank to deposit our Social Security survivor’s benefits once a month. Then we would drive to the neighboring big city that sold alcohol. As a 10-year-old kid, I remember going into Snappy’s, getting 4 cases of Lone Star beer and a handle of Canadian Club. I would write the check on my Mom’s checking account, and they would help us load it into the trunk while my Mom sat in the car. I had to get my little sister up in the morning and walk her to school. I would sign her report card, and sign my own. I got very good at forging her signature. I did the grocery shopping, hauling them back on my bike. We ate lots of cheap frozen pizzas and sugary cereal because that is what I liked. It all seemed normal to me. She smoked and drank herself to death when I was 17. When I had a family of my own I worked very hard to give them a normal life. I realized when they were little that my childhood was really messed up and I wanted a better life for them.
Zulu Culture
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RyhTmgGzL_g?feature=share
Three bulls heard the rancher was bringing another bull onto the ranch.
Three bulls heard the rancher was bringing another bull onto the ranch.
First Bull: “I’ve been here five years. I’m not giving this new bull any of my 100 cows.”
Second Bull: “I’ve been here three years and have earned my right to 50 cows. I’m keeping all my cows.”
Third Bull: “I’ve only been here a year, and so far, you guys have only let me have 10 cows. I may not be as big as you fellows, but I’m keeping all 10 of my cows.”
Just then an 18-wheeler pulls up in the pasture carrying the biggest bull they’ve ever seen.
At 4,700 pounds, each step he takes strains the steel ramp.
First Bull: “I think I can spare a few cows for our new friend.”
Second Bull: “I actually have too many cows to take care of. I can spare a few. I’m certainly not looking for an argument.”
They look over at the third bull and find him pawing the dirt, shaking his horns and snorting.
First Bull: “Son, don’t be foolish, let him have some of your cows and live to tell about it.”
Third Bull: “Hell, he can have all my cows. I’m just making sure he knows I’m a bull.”
How were black P.O.Ws treated by Nazi Germany?
Generally not well.
Generally speaking, American POWs captured by Germany had it alright. They were not sent to concentration camps and generally received pretty good treatment at the hands of the Germans.
However we are dealing with Nazis here- keep that in mind. 2 factors really decided how an American POW would be treated.
- Was he being captured by the SS or the normal German Army (SS bad, Army good)
- Was he black or Jewish
If you were Jewish or Black and captured by the SS (or even elements of the Amry) you would be lucky to find yourself in a concentration camp. More likely, you are killed on the spot. If you were white and captured by the Army you’d be sent to a more comfortable imprisonment.
Black soldiers had it bad though- as they were considered Untermensch (sub-human).
I am about to tell you a story that will ruin your day and remind you how evil and demented the SS was.
So you are all familiar with the Ardennes offensive right? Also called the Battle of the Buldge where US forces were surrounded and cut off during the winter and then held out for weeks while the American 3rd Armored division broke through to save them.
Well during this time there were 2 massacres of US troops. The fact we are well aware of them both shows how rare it was for this thing to happen but I digress.
During this battle, 85 American soldiers were captured and executed by elements of the SS. Instead of bringing them to a prison camp the Germans just flat-out shot them all to death. But these men were all white, so they got the mercy of a bullet. This is called the Malmedy Massacre and is very well known.
There is another atrocity long forgotten though, largely because it involved Black US soldiers and not white ones.
During the battle 11 “Colored” G.I’s found themselves out of ammo with only 2 rifles and lost in the woods. They came upon a little house in the middle of nowhere and asked for refuge from the cold.
Inside this house were Belgium Patriots who supported the US. They offered the 11 men shelter and food and warmed them up. The nearby neighbors were not Patriots though and had a son fighting in the SS. They would run to the Germans and inform them Americans were being sheltered nearby.
4 men from the SS would arrive armed to the teeth. The Americans chose not to resist, not wanting any harm to befall those that took them in. They were also lacking the weaponry to fight.
So all 11 Americans surrendered to these SS soldiers and they wouldn’t even get the mercy of a bullet. Their bodies would be found shortly after and US command was shocked by what they found.
I am not going to pull any punches- I want you to understand the level of evil we are dealing with. These men were found with the following injuries.
- Their eyes had been gouged out while they were still alive
- Fingers were removed and legs were broken
- Men were beaten to death with rifle butts
- Many men had been run over by vehicles
- A few were shot, but not in the head- they were shot in the knees and stomach to inflict maximum suffering
- A few men had fractured skulls from having their heads beaten in
Just executing a POW is a war crime but this goes beyond it. The 85 executed at Malmedy were simply shot, perhaps because the Germans lacked the logistics to transport or guard POWs.
These 11 black US G.I’s were brutally and violently tortured and killed for no other reason than they were black. The SS soldiers took joy in their suffering. It’s the brutality that is hard to imagine.
The US would investigate this for years but the killers were never discovered. Maybe they got killed by the eventual onslaught of US forces. Hopefully, they died slowly in a pool of their own shit crying for their mothers who were already dead at the hands of the Red Army in the East.
I hate the SS
Dr Greer
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Tag5EeF7QCM?feature=share
What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?
How about my high school principal?
Waaaayyy back, early 1970s, everyone arrived at school and was greeted by an announcement to go to homeroom.
Sounds normal, except that we only went to homeroom for things like report cards. Normally our first period class was attendance center, so a sudden announcement of starting the day with homeroom was weird.
Everyone went to homeroom, and there was a lot of wondering what was up – even the teachers seemed puzzled.
The principal then made a strange and rambling speech over the PA system.
It was about the parasites infesting our school.
It turned out that his definition of parasites was students who wore their coats to class, students who sat on the floor, students who held hands with :::gasp::: students of the opposite sex, students who, well, acted like teenagers.
Any student seen doing these things would be suspended for the rest of the day.
It didn’t take long.
By second period, everyone was wearing their coats. Half the school had on pieces of paper that read “I’m a parasite and I’m proud.” Members of the football team (all boys at that time) walked from class to class, holding hands. Any student with a free period was in the core, sitting on the floor around the tables instead of in the library or somewhere else. The Madrigal singers, in full costume ready for a performance, promenaded through the main hall with their hands in position (boy raised, holding girl’s in an “elegant” fashion), but not touching (it looked really stupid). I’m sure there was more, but that’s all I saw.
His policy was rescinded the next day. It’s really hard to suspend 2000 students, and that’s what it would have taken.
Donnie is a baddie
If China is full of the smartest people, why is the US so much more advanced?
I suggest you visit China. It reversed my preconception. I am from Norway, North Europe. A rather modern and advanced society.
On my first visit to the US over 20 years ago, I was surprised at how backward and old fashioned it was. Movies had let me to believe it was the epitome of modern society. I visited several states on the East/South-East. Very backwards digitally. Terrible infrastructure. Unwalkable. Dirty. Hard to find quality restaurants outside of big cities. Dead city centres in medium sized cities.
I went to China a year or two later, and the opposite struck me. It was a highly modern society. Highly digital. Fantastic high-speed infrastructure (that is even better nowadays). Super clean, modern cities. I was mainly in the Jiangsu province that time. Loved it!
I suggest everyone to go and form their own opinions. I really fell in love with Suzhou, not far from Shanghai.
What’s it like to fail because you ignored your gut and followed someone else’s advice instead?
We were drunk. Stupid teenagers thinking that we could make fun of every rule.
“Let’s go to Gabriel’s house and continue the party there!” one of my friends suggested.
“We don’t have a car!” I said.
“I’ll take everyone on the back of my pickup truck! Hop in!” Juan said while starting his truck’s engine.
I immediately hesitated, “I don’t think it’s safe!”
“Aahhh… don’t be a wooze Hector! Come on! Everything will be okay!” Juan said.
“I don’t like the idea!”
Everyone was ready to go, partying, singing, drinking and fooling around.
It was very late at night. I had two options, call my mom to come pick me up or simply go with the flow.
I ignored my gut and followed my friends.
We were balancing ourselves as the truck moved forward. Juan, the truck driver, wasn’t responsible of us sitting — and standing on the back of the pickup.
A quick turn was enough to change the rest of my life. One of my best friends lost balance and was thrown off the back.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” I shouted to the top of my lungs while hitting the rooftop of the pickup.
Juan stopped.
We quickly jumped out of the box to assist my friend. He was bleeding. His head was totally covered with blood and unconscious. He had landed with his head on a yellow speed bump causing him to fracture his head.
We took him to the hospital. Four days later he passed away. He was 16 years old.
To this day, his parents cry every time they see me because I bring memories of their son. I’m always speechless. I can only imagine how I could have prevented this life-changing event for every one of us.
I lacked character.
To answer your question:
Not trusting your instinct, your conscience, your spirit or however you want to call it; will bring terrible regrets that may last a lifetime.
Today, I’m aware of that “small voice” that somehow, I know I shouldn’t ignore anymore.
Yet, it all comes down to character, strength, and courage to stand my ground even when temptation or peer pressure is on.
Have you ever gotten home and found evidence that somebody had been in your home while you were gone?
I had been away for a couple of months diving and arrived home after a long flight. As soon as the taxi pulled into the parking square I noticed that where I once had a solid wooden door to my house I now had plywood sheet. So I immediately knew something was wrong. I got out of the taxi and approached my house where I was met by my neighbours who told me that the previous night, the Police had broken into my house and searched it. Now furious I called the Police and demanded an explanation.
A few minutes later the Police arrived and together we entered my house. Once inside they explained that a few weeks earlier a body had been found on the beach in the North West of the country, and there had been a public appeal to help identify the deceased. Following this appeal my brother (who I have not seen for over 30 years) had called the Police and claimed the body was me. He had even been taken to identify the body. With this information the Police arrived at my address and spoke to my neighbours who confirmed that they had not seen me for a number of weeks. This reinforced their incorrect assumptions that the body was mine, and as it was considered a suspicious death, they decided to break into my house and examine it, in case there were any clues that could help them solve the death.
The body found on the beach was later identified.
So yes there had been someone in my house, the Police, it wasn’t a pleasant feeling knowing that they had been through all of my possessions, and then I was left with a bill for a replacement door, as damage caused by Police in the execution of their duty, is apparently excluded from house insurance.
China has announced countermeasures against a US company and two individuals that have long collected sensitive information to provide so-called evidence for illegal sanctions by the US, after the US newly added two Chinese officials and three Chinese companies onto a sanction list citing so-called human rights concerns.
US intelligence data company Kharon and Edmund Xu, director of investigations of Kharon and Nicole Morgret, a former researcher from Center for Advanced Defense Studies, will be prohibited from entering China (including China’s mainland, the Hong Kong SAR and the Macau SAR), said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Tuesday.
China will freeze the property of Kharon and the two persons in China, including their movable and immovable property, and prohibit organizations and individuals in China from transactions and cooperation with them.
In December, US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced to sanction two Chinese officials for alleged link to human rights abuse. Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security added three more Chinese companies to the so-called “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” (UFLPA) blacklist.
In response, Mao said that the US once again fabricated and spread false narratives about China’s Xinjiang region, imposed illegal sanctions on Chinese officials and companies under the pretext of so-called human rights issues in the region, seriously interfering in China’s internal affairs, seriously violating international law and basic norms of international relations, seriously tarnishing China’s image, and seriously damaging the legitimate rights and interests of relevant Chinese officials and companies.
China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this and has made solemn representations to the US, Mao said, urging the US to stop slandering and smearing China, revoke the illegal unilateral sanctions against Chinese officials and companies, and stop implementing erroneous bills such as the so-called UFLPA.
If the US refuses to change course, China will not flinch and will respond in kind, the spokesperson said.
The Day After (1983) & ABC News Viewpoint original WPVI-TV 6ABC Broadcast 11-20-1983
Full movie.
This was the movie that forced President Regan to talk with the Soviet Union to stop the ramp up towards world war 3. Must watch.
Include all the vintage commercials.
Horrific.