People can be odd sometimes. I wish to relate a story that took place a few decades ago. At this point in time I was sponsoring some Americans to visit some factories in China, and this group of four guys were all pretty nice. But one of them was a gnarly cuss who insisted on not eating ANY Chinese food while he was in China.

Instead, he wanted no part of the Business KTV lifestyle, food, friendships and was generally a royal pain in the ass. He insisted that no one smoke at the table… (WTF? this is China), and that we go to a grocery store to get cereal and milk so that he can have a “safe” breakfast in his room.

OK. Different strokes for different folks. I get it.

Anyways, Instead of eating at the many, many delicious restaurants for dinners, he convinced everyone to eat a McDonald’s, Pizza-hut, KFC and Burger king instead. And I begrudgingly allowed it. That was, until the last day.

There we took him to a steak restaurant, and we all ordered steaks.

It was a nice Western style place, and they were known for their decent steaks and fine dining atmosphere. Everyone loved the decor and the food looked great. We all sat down and placed our orders.

Imagine my surprise when he received a fine filet Mignon, and then promptly drowned it in ketchup. It went from this…

To this…

You couldn’t even find the meat under all the ketchup. I couldn’t believe it. Thinking about it now, and again… I still am incredulous. Jeeze! Louise!

…

Ah.

You can’t fix stupid.

Todays…

What is an experience you had at a gas station you’ll never forget?

In 1971 the 18 year old me worked 10 hours a night 7 nights a week overnight pumping 29 cent a gallon gas at an Exon station on Highway 14 near Los Angeles. An endless parade rolled through every night.

The cult bus from up the canyon gassed up heading for LA to recruit and gassed again coming back with newbies. The cult escapees on foot stopped for food or directions.

My usual directions to lost drivers was “you can’t get there from hear” with a smart-ass grin. One time the person just said Ok and left quickly. I guess they went somewhere you could get there from!

I had an endless supply of free food from the catering trucks fueling up. Newspapers, donuts, bread and more.

Guest appearances by two dozen of the Galluping Goose Motorcycle Club (Google them) swarming the stations islands was interesting. A sheriff car chase through the station code 3 was entertaining. You never knew what was next.

The problem was I tried to go to the local junior college full time and slept a bit in the morning and a bit at night. Zombies had nothing on me. Mom wpuld tell me the time, day and where I needed to go when I woke up.

One night, around 3am I was leaning against the front of the station waiting for the next car and noticed three dollars sticking out of my shirt pocket. A customer had filled up and paid while I slept standing up!

I took it as a clue that I should retire and joined the Air Force.

But I came away with so many great stories 🙂

Memnon of Rhodes (died 333 BC)

Memnon was a Greek soldier from the island of Rhodes in the southeastern Aegean Sea. He was born around 380 BC and entered Persian service at a young age. His first patron was Artabazus, the satrap of Phrygia, who married Memnon to his daughter Barsine, a beautiful and well-educated woman. The Greek soldier proved his worth during Artabazus’ revolt against King Artaxerxes III of Persia; at some point, he even rescued his captured father-in-law.

When Artabazus fled to Macedon, Memnon followed him. He stayed there for about five years and gained valuable inside knowledge. He met the then king, Philip II, and his son, the future Alexander the Great — he had supposedly lengthy discussions with the latter. He studied the Macedonian tactics and realized how keen on invading Persia Philip was. He also understood how precarious the Macedonian hold on southern Greece was — Greek unity wasn’t deep yet.

All this theoretical knowledge was soon combined with practical experience. Memnon fought with considerable success against general Parmenion, whom Philip II sent on an expedition shortly before his own death. Thus, Memnon was the perfect man to lead the Persian defense when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont in 334 BC. Indeed, he sat at the war council of Darius III along with Persian satraps and other high-ranking officials.

Memnon proposed a dual approach. First, the Persians were to follow a scorched-earth policy: burn the crops before Alexander’s army and constantly retreat instead of opt for an open, pitched battle. Second, using money and diplomacy, they should cause as much unrest as possible in Greece, behind Alexander’s back. It was a careful and well-thought strategy, because the Greek armor, training and battle tactics were superior to those of the Persians.

Darius and his satraps didn’t agree with Memnon. They were unwilling to destroy Persian land, believed it would be below them to not fight openly against the invader and possibly hesitated to follow the advice of a Greek. Thus, they assembled an army behind the river Granicus and waited for a battle that eventually took place in May 334 BC. Memnon was one of the leaders of the left flank, opposite Alexander. Reality proved him correct: Alexander won.

After the battle, Darius changed his mind. He made Memnon supreme commander of the West and gave him the authority to carry out his initial plan. Although several Anatolian cities surrendered to Alexander, others like Miletus and Halicarnassus resisted, and that could wear out the invading army. Memnon didn’t care how many individual victories Alexander would win; he played the long game and was content with the Greek losses.

Soon, Memnon started his counterattack. Since Alexander’s fleet was not very strong, he attacked the islands of Chios and Lesbos; the first he captured completely, while the latter partly. He also accepted representatives of the Cyclades — with them, he could control the Aegean route. Persian money worked miracles, as it had in the Peloponnesian War. Athens, led by the anti-Macedonian Demosthenes, Sparta and other cities were almost ready to rebel.

In this crucial hour, Alexander’s good fortune prevailed. Memnon got sick and died in 333 BC while besieging Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. The Persian generals, seeing that Alexander was moving slowly, thought he hesitated to face them openly. Thus, they abandoned Memnon’s strategy and pushed for a second direct confrontation. A few months after Memnon’s death, Alexander defeated Darius himself at the battle of Issus. The East was open to him.

It’s always hard to pose What if … ? questions, but Memnon’s plan had many chances of success. His shrewdness, experience and what steps of his plan he managed to carry out before he died show that clearly. If he had forced Alexander to keep advancing slowly and with constant losses, exploited the favorable dynamics at sea and stirred up a major revolt in Greece, the invading army might not have been able to get beyond Asia Minor.

It’s not necessary to get into details about this, but Alexander’s campaign was indeed world-changing. Although he died too early, his conquest set the bases for all sorts of historical developments. Greek became the common language of the new oecumene, the Greek civilization came in closer contact with those of the East — a new era began. Even Rome would later build on Alexander’s legacy. Who knows if any of that would be the case had Memnon lived to execute his plan to the end?

Fun fact: Memnon’s wife, Barsine, was later captured by the Greeks. Alexander made her his concubine, and she bore him a son named Heracles. He was the only child we know Alexander lived long enough to see: his legitimate son by Roxana, Alexander IV, was born a few months after his death. Both Heracles and Alexander were murdered at a young age, victims of the bitter antagonism among Alexander’s generals over his kingdom.

When did you realize your parent was a total badass?

I was 11, and for some reason, I wasn’t at school and with my father when he got word that my older sister had run-away, again.

Dad went to a couple of houses, with me staying in the car. Then, we went to a biker bar. Dad said, “Stay here!” Then, walked into the bar.

Being the brat that I am, I waited briefly, and decided I needed to use the restroom. I walked through the door and spotted my sister on the right at the far end next to the bar. My father was just in front of the door, and to his left were two pool tables, with those low-hanging stained-glass lights over each table.

There were FOUR extremely large biker dudes – right out of central casting. All were much taller than my father, who stood at 5′7″. All four had cue sticks in their hands, and all four began moving.

My father shifted quickly to stand between the two pool tables. The bikers spread-out and one circled back, going behind the rear pool table. Dad grabbed the table light and shoved it violently to sideways, hitting the biker solidly in the face.

Then the guy on the far side of the tables stepped forward, swinging the pool cue like a baseball bat. Dad blocked the cue, gave two punches to the face, grabbed the cue, swiveled it around and punched him with the base of the cue several times to the neck and face.

At this point, the third guy came from behind, and struck Dad viciously in the right kidney, causing a grunt. Nevertheless Dad swiveled around with the cue, hitting the biker on the side of the neck. Then Dad did a little jump and kicked the knee out from under the biker. The crack was audible.

Guy #4, clearly not being bright, tried to do the same trick with the other table light, and missed as Dad ducked beneath, grabbed the biker by his vest and pulled him onto the table, then elbowed him to the throat.

Guy #2, having recovered enough on the far side of the tables, pulled-out a knife and came with a stabbing motion. Dad caught the thrust arm, twisted it with both of his arms, and broke or dislocated the man’s shoulder / arm – again with an audible sound – and a screech from the biker.

#1 guy, face bloodied from the splintered light, put his hands up in a placating gesture and backed away.

#2 guy was on the floor, holding his right arm

#3 guy was on the floor, groaning, and holding his leg, which was bent in an odd manner.

#4 guy was gasping for breath, on hands-and-knees on the floor.

At this point, the bartender started rummaging around under the bar for something, and Dad said, “She’s 14 years old.”

The bartender stood up, backed away from my sister, next to the wall and put his hands up.

Then we went home.

Please note, that while Dad was quite powerful, and lifted weights, with biceps that split shirts – he also had a bad right leg, and was only 5′7″.

Is it possible that the Apollo 11 ascent stage is still orbiting the moon?

Interesting question and it might be.

You see, the ascent stage was the part of the Eagle lunar module that blasted off from the moon’s surface on July 21, 1969, carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin back to the command module Columbia.

After they docked, they jettisoned the ascent stage into space, leaving it in a retrograde orbit about 125 kilometers above the lunar equator.

NASA assumed that this orbit was unstable and that the ascent stage would eventually crash into the moon.

But a new analysis by James Meador, an independent researcher at Caltech, suggests otherwise.

He used a NASA tool called the General Mission Analysis Tool to simulate the trajectory of the ascent stage using data from GRAIL, a mission that mapped the moon’s gravitational field in 2012.

He found that all of his simulations showed the ascent stage maintaining a steady orbit for over 50 years, despite the influence of the sun, other planets and solar radiation.

Of course, there are other factors that could have affected the fate of the ascent stage, such as fuel leakage or explosion, but Meador thinks that there is some possibility that it is still up there and might even be detectable from Earth.

How cool is that?

But don’t get too excited yet.

This is just one study and it has not been peer-reviewed or confirmed by other sources.

Meador himself admits that his analysis has limitations and uncertainties.

He also says that finding the ascent stage would require a lot of effort and resources from NASA or other agencies.

So, for now, we can only speculate and hope that one day we will know for sure what happened to the ascent stage of Apollo 11.

Maybe it is still orbiting the moon as a silent witness to one of humanity’s greatest achievements.

Or maybe it has already crashed and become part of the lunar landscape.

Either way, it is a fascinating piece of history that deserves our attention and respect.

More Info:

– Long-term Orbit Stability of the Apollo 11 Eagle Lunar Module Ascent Stage

What is a stand you took during your wedding planning that you will never apologize for?

I was 32 when I got married and had been on my own, building a career and supporting myself for 10 years. I refused to be “given away” because no one “owned” me. So, I told the officiant to eliminate the line where they ask who’s giving me in marriage. My dad simply escorted me down the aisle, sat down beside my mom and I joined my husband.

I’d attended and been in enough weddings by this time to have very definite ideas about what I did and didn’t like. So, I also made the following changes to the reception. When I was planning our wedding, all kinds of people told me I “had to do all this stuff because it was ‘tradition.” I said, “NOPE!”

1. No long wait between the ceremony and the reception – The photographer took a few pictures of me and my husband at the church and we arrived at the reception along with the last of the guests. We took the family and wedding party photos after we ate.
2. No sit-down dinner – I’d been to too many receptions that were ruined by guests banging on their glasses to make the couple kiss. We decided we weren’t trained monkeys that perform on demand and had a cocktail-style reception.
3. No obnoxious, screaming DJ – We had a guy playing background music on the piano and guests were able to converse without shouting.
4. No smashing cake in the face – I don’t know who ever decided this was cute, funny or amusing. It’s tacky and an insult to your new spouse, and I didn’t spend hours on my hair and makeup to have it messed up with smeared cake and frosting. As a side note, any DJ who sang “The Bride Cuts the Cake” to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell” would have had the cake smashed in HIS face—by me!
5. No dollar dance (or anything else that solicits money or gifts) – I subscribe to the old-school view that you don’t ask guests for gifts or money. If someone gives a gift, you should thank them regardless of whether you like it or now, and follow up with a nice note.
6. No bouquet toss – Some women don’t want to get married. Others recently lost a spouse or are getting over a breakup. They don’t want to be singled out or embarrassed by “well-meaning” guests or insensitive DJs who want to push them into catching the bouquet.
7. NO GARTER TOSS – I saved the best for last. I ABSOLUTELY REFUSED to do this. The “tame” version always made me uncomfortable, but the way many couples do it nowadays is raunchy, nauseating and disgusting, especially when the groom removes the garter with his teeth! I definitely DO NOT want my new husband or anyone else sticking their head up my dress in front of a hundred people! Maybe I’m just an old fogey or fuddyduddy, but some things should be kept private!

It’s YOUR day. Do what you want and don’t let anyone force you into doing anything that you don’t like or that makes you uncomfortable!

China’s ‘Golden Veil’ To Launch Cruise Missiles For Sneak Attacks

As a doctor or nurse, what is the greatest display of selflessness you have ever witnessed?

During the toxic, soul destroying ICU rotation of residency, we admitted a young lady intubated for a “community acquired pneumonia”. It ended up being acute myeloid leukaemia, and she had to start chemo in ICU.

She turned out to be an incredible, inspiring, resilient and kind soul. She developed every possible complication of chemo, including being septic while having profound pancytopenia (all cell lines down).

During a particularly busy call with multiple sick admissions, she started bleeding (sepsis plus inability to clot), and I remember noticing frank blood in her catheter. At some point after midnight, she weakly summoned me to the bedside. There were tears on her face and I remember they seemed blood stained, which seriously alarmed me.

I thought she was calling me to tell me how sick she felt. But, teary eyed and all, she said, “I’ve been watching you…you’re having such a hard evening. Are you okay?”

Here was this woman battling for her life, and she had enough compassion left over to care for me. I thanked her, told her to please not worry because she/they were the only priorities.

Then I went into the bathroom, bawled my eyes out, put my game face back on and got back to work. People like that make everything worthwhile.

I’m glad to say she survived and was discharged from hospital several months later, but my colleague who managed her after she was discharged from ICU said it all took its toll and she was a shadow of her former self.

I still think of her. I hope life gave her her flowers, because she deserved everything.

Have you ever had a neighbor who believed they had free reign of your property?

Many years ago we moved into a house where the garden had two gates, a small one at the back and the front double gate which gave access for the car. I was amazed to see people idly strolling through our garden one day with their dog. I went out and challenged them and they said they’d been doing it for years. The previous owner let them use his garden as a short cut to the shop instead of having to walk round past the church.

I said it had to stop now. We had a young child and I didn’t want to risk total strangers coming into the garden. Besides which we had two dogs at the time and although they were not dangerous I didn’t want to risk them getting involved with trespassers. As a child I discovered that people tell lies and they can report that your dog attacked them even if it didn’t.

We put a lock on the gate, and a notice saying Private Property. Keep out. We had no end of abuse from people. The one who really stunned me was the one who said they picked the apples and other fruit every year, it was their right, and now we were stopping them from doing it. The woman even said the fruit wasn’t ours because the trees weren’t planted by us, they’d been there for years.

We only lived there a few years. We didn’t like the weird neighbours so we moved.

Men are Avoiding Marriage and Modern Women Don’t Get It Ft.

Have you ever had a neighbor who believed they had free reign of your property?

Back in 1993 my first wife and I purchased a house on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Our house was a new construction, we were the first owners, and it was also the last piece of property in the subdivision to be developed. Our right-side neighbors, an elderly couple, had been one of the first residents, moving in back in 1975.

For all the years they had lived there they used our property for extra gardening space, and as a dumping ground for their yard waste. Our one-acre lot was partially wooded, and I found huge piles of branches, leaves, and household trash scattered throughout the woods. Apparent leftovers from these neighbors. No problem, it was pre-existing conditions, so my wife and I just worked to clean up and do our own landscaping.

The problem was, our neighbors didn’t seem to understand they couldn’t use our yard as their private dump anymore. We woke up one morning several months after moving in, and discovered a huge mound of leaves, branches, and other yard waste right in the middle of lawn area in our backyard. Trying to be polite and “get-along,” I talked to the guy and explained they couldn’t use our yard as a dumping ground. he agreed to remove it. His method of “removal” was to just torch the pile and burn it. No fire permit, no warning to us, and he left a big burn scar in the lawn.

We let this go, which turned out to be a big mistake. For the next several years, we would periodically discover piles of yard waste in our yard. The lady next door would simply clean up her yard, and haul everything over into our yard. She would always haul this waste over during the night, or times when my wife and I were both gone. No amount of complaints would change her behavior, and her husband would openly avoid us.

After nearly five years of this, my wife and I had enough. After finding yet another pile of yard waste, I called the police and filed a trespassing complaint against my neighbor. In Mississippi, this was a misdemeanor and so I had to go to night court to testify in support of my charge.

The night of our court hearing, the judge had my wife wait outside the courtroom while I testified first. The night court prosecutor and judge were pretty hostile to me during their questioning. Extremely hostile. They included comments about how “neighbors were supposed to get along,” and other similar crap. I managed to hold my own during their questioning, then they called in my wife.

The judge asked my wife to explain our reasons for the trespassing charges, and she just lit into the judge with “They have been doing this for five years!” How long should we have to put up with this?” The judge looked shocked, looked at me, said “five years?” and I nodded my head in confirmation.

My wife finally ran down, the judge gave some judge-homily crap about neighbors getting along and ruled against us – no trespassing. One week later we found yet another pile of trash in our yard, and I called the police, again. When they showed up, I explained we had already taken the neighbors to court once, the judge decided this wasn’t trespassing, and now our neighbors did it again. I suggested that possibly if their house accidently burned down, this crap would stop.

The police, not happy with the entire situation, and not happy with my comments, finally took action. They issued our neighbors a “no trespass” order and advised them that if they set foot on our property again, it would be in violation of a police order and they would be charged with a misdemeanor.

We finally had peace. Then a year later the husband lost the house due to gambling debts and they moved away.

Scott Ritter: “US Naval SUPERIORITY IS A MYTH! Our Navy has been exposed in the Red Sea as weak!”

https://youtu.be/hym8EJEibjg

What is the best advice HR gave to you?

Best HR advice I got was two things.

1) Document everything. A journal format is best. Date, time, who, where (desk, hallway, restroom), what, and your impressions. I’m a nerd: I use Excel.

2) Once a year, ask HR to let you see your file. You’d be surprised what random people put in it. I once saw a note from a coworker that said “she used the F word.”

An example of how the advice worked to my advantage. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after six months of “what the F is wrong?” A couple days later I mentioned it to my immediate supervisor. I asked about partial disability and should I contact HR? She said no no no do not call HR yet. (I thought that odd).

The next day I heard through gossip that layoffs were coming. So I went and copied my HR file a couple days after. Wow, I found that my boss emailed her boss about my diagnosis. Boss’s boss wrote, “Well, she’ll be one of the first to go” and “I won’t let someone faking a disability continue working here.“ It was in there because it had info about work performance for a review due in 4 months. I have no idea why those sentences weren’t redacted.

One week later, I get called to HR. During the “exit interview” she gave me a big envelope. I asked, no, I told her to increase my compensation package by a factor of ten. She said nothing. I said, “I’m getting laid off because I have Lupus, which as you know, is against the Disabilities Act … { long pause }… and I have proof.“ She mumbled, I’ll get back with you before the end of the day.

Packing up my stuff, HR came and gave me the envelope, asked me to sign an NDA. I noticed the final check was not increased. “My lawyerl will contact HR soon. I’m not signing this NDA. Goodbye.”

End of story. I got a settlement with the compensation multiplied by 10. It took almost two years and if not for my journal and the copy of my HR file, it would have been pointless to sue.

Bullied cat is now unrecognizable

Why do some people always act over-modest when in fact they’re extremely talented and brilliant?

Okay, this is something I legit struggle with. When you’re talented, one of the lovely little gifts that gives you is the ability to see the flaws in the things you create.

Like, I’ll have people gush about one of my books and I cringe inside because when I look at it, all I see are the bits I’d fix if I could rewrite it. I read books from people who are better writers than I am, and then I read something I’ve written and I’m painfully aware it’s not as good.

The same was true when I was really into B&W photography. I was dedicated enough to have a darkroom in my house, but that didn’t give me confidence in my own ability, it gave me an acute and sometimes pointed awareness of the gulf separating me from people who are actually talented.

Like, I look at the best thing I’ve ever done, and compare it to the most mediocre thing Robert Mapplethorpe ever produced, and there’s a gap that’s actually more like a chasm.

I have a lot of writers, artists, photographers, and other creatives in my social circle, and pretty much all of them are plagued by this. The ability to create comes with the ability to evaluate your creations, and when you do that, you realize the gulf that separates you from genuine masters.

Online Dating App Creator Regrets What Online Dating has Become

Who is the most unlikely movie star?

I’ll go with my favorite:

Gene Hackman.

He was tall (6′2″) and “manly”, yes. But he was never handsome, even as a young man. More than that, he was expected to be a failure.

He dropped out of high school at 16 and lied about his age to join the Marines, but he didn’t care for military life, having an admitted “problem with authority”. At 21, he moved to New York City, where he bounced from job to job; then, in 1956, when he was 26, he decided to pursue an acting career, something he said he’d dreamed of since watching James Cagney films as a kid in Illinois.

As a teenaged Marine:

Hackman moved to California and joined the Pasadena Playhouse, where he befriended another aspiring young actor, Dustin Hoffman. The two were noted outsiders, and their peers didn’t think much of them — jointly voting them “least likely to succeed”. Hackman also got the lowest score in the Playhouse’s history.

But he was determined to prove them all wrong.

He moved back to New York and took a job as a doorman at a Howard Johnson’s to support himself while taking bit parts here and there. Here he ran into one of his former Playhouse instructors, who told him, “see, Hackman? I told you you wouldn’t amount to anything.”

It was in 1967, at age 37, that he had his breakthrough role as Buck Barrow in “Bonnie and Clyde”, which earned him his first Academy Award nomination. He would be nominated again 3 years later for his against-type performance in “I Never Sang for My Father”, then became a bona fide leading man — and Oscar winner — with his unforgettable turn as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in 1971′s “The French Connection”.

As Popeye Doyle:

He received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for his performance in “The Conversation” (1974), another Oscar nomination for “Mississippi Burning” in 1988, and won his 2nd Oscar for his brilliant turn as Little Bill Daggett in “Unforgiven” in 1992, while “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001) garnered him the Best Actor Golden Globe.

Two-time Oscar winner:

He retired from acting at age 74 in 2004 to write historical fiction, with 2 Oscars (5 nominations), 4 Golden Globes (8 nominations), and 2 BAFTAs (5 nominations) for his career, in addition to countless other awards.

Not bad for a funny-looking guy whom everyone expected to fail.

Beef Piroshki

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground round
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
• 3 tablespoons sour cream
• 1 teaspoon dried dill (or 1 tablespoon fresh)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 5 (7 1/2 ounce) cans buttermilk biscuits
• 1 egg, well beaten

Instructions

1. In a large skillet, cook ground round, onions, and garlic over medium-high heat, stirring often to break up lumps of meat, until beef has lost its pink color, about 5 minutes. Drain off excess fat. Off heat, stir in hard-boiled egg, sour cream, dill, salt and pepper; let filling cool completely.
2. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
3. One can at a time, separate biscuits. On a lightly floured surface roll out each biscuit to a 3 1/2 -inch circle. Place about 1 tablespoon filling in the center of each circle. Fold in half to enclose filling. Press edges with a fork to seal closed. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Brush tops with beaten egg.
4. Bake piroshki for 15 to 20 minutes, until golden brown. Keep unbaked piroshki batches covered with clean kitchen towels.
5. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Baked piroshki can be frozen and kept for up to one month. Thaw and bake as instructed.

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What’s the most badass thing anyone ever did in school?

The most badass thing I ever did in grade school was during a Dodgeball game. I was in the 5th grade, 10 years old. Being the competitive little fuck I was, this game made me ever more hyped up than a monkey at a banana buffet.

The teacher chose who went on which side. I ended up going against the class bully and a couple of my friends. The class bully’s name will be Derek. Derek was a mean motherfucker who was fatter than a whale.

But you couldn’t tell it to his face or he’ll make sure to break yours. Derek never really picked on me that much since I usually kept to myself and away from him and his friends. But he did pick on my friend; Mike.

Mike was a full-on geek. Me and him both liked comics and Star Wars, but I kept that geeky side of myself hidden while Mike foolishly waved it around. He was also a very easy target.

I was really fit and tall compared to everyone else in my grade so not many people would try to physically start a fight with me. Simple insults were as far as they’d dare to go.

Mike, however, was really short and frail. You could kick him like a soccer ball if you had the lack of heart to go for it. He was also a super nice kid, so it really hit me in the feels when I saw him getting picked on.

In this Dodgeball game, Mike was on Derek’s side of the field and 2 of Derek’s friends were on mine. The balls we had for that game weren’t your typical soft and airy ones. No, they were all green and red plastic ones.

The plastic shells for these balls were hard and lordbabycheezit’s only knows why they allowed it for a game where the sole purpose of winning was to throw them at other people. Ironically, these were the same balls we used when playing bowling at the school fair.

During the first round, my side won. We also were about to win the second round when Derek burst in anger and started yelling at Mike.

The teacher didn’t do shit, he was busy having his lunch in the gym office. Some people told Derek to keep it down and take a chill pill but that only even made the asshole angrier.

Like it was just Mike’s fault his team was losing. I was surprised that no one had even hit Derek yet seeing that he was so huge, missing him would’ve been an even harder than not.

I guess everyone was afraid of hurting him and getting him angry. Having enough of his shit, I called out his name. He turned his head to face me, looking as if I’d just finished cussing the life out of his mom, “What?”

“Leave Mike alone.”

“Or what?”

I didn’t respond cause my mental response was a nice long essay’s worth of insults and death threats. Yeah that wouldn’t go too well seeing that Derek was also notorious for snitching even more than he was for bitching.

He took the ball that was in his hand and threw it right at me, full force and all. I was about 6 feet away from him and shouldn’t’ve been hard to hit. But just as the ball came this close to hitting me in the face, I tipped my head over to the side so that it’d miss.

My gawd people, it was so close that the air from that thing was brushing against my skin. I’m still impressed with what I did to this very day. Then, while I was getting Oo’s and Ah’s from everyone around me, I turned around and grabbed the ball from the floor.

Derek stood there, dumbstruck. Which makes sense, I was still freaking out then. Not giving him time to recollect and snap out of it, I took the same ball and football-chucked it right in his big ugly face.

Y’all know what came after that cat-in-a-blender scream when it hit him? That’s right; blood. And a whole lot of it. His nose was bleeding so much that his entire shirt was almost completely covered in it.

And he kept crying until the teacher came, furious as to what he saw. “What happened?”

“Leonardo hit me in the face mister! He tried to kill me!”

Ugh, could this soft ass bitch be any more of a drama queen?

“Is that true Leonardo?”

“No sir, if I was trying to kill him then he’d be long gone by now.”

And that was the last time anyone heard of the great DiCrapio. Any questions?

Just kidding. He sent me to the office straight after that, not bothering to listen to my side of the story. Which to be fair, wasn’t a very justifiable side to hear from. I was suspended for a good week and had another week of recess detention after that.

Needless to say, they never picked on Mike again after that. So worth it.

---

Just fyi, I wouldn’t recommend anyone try this at home cause even though they did leave Mike alone after that, I became enemy number one for Derek. That wasn’t the most fun title to hold.

Oh and he broke my thumb during recess the next month. Yeah, definitely don’t do this. Fuck you Derek, I hope your thumb gets crushed by a million plastic Dodgeballs one day.

Military personnel, what’s the dumbest thing you’ve heard someone in uniform say?

It was a two star general.

I was in the military for two years, just long enough to get the GI Bill. Just a one-striper, nothing much. As luck would have it, I scored very highly on an aptitude test I was given, and I was selected to work in a nuclear facility, as a computer operator. It took nine months (of a two year gig) for me to get a very high security clearance, necessary to handle nuclear weapon related material.

I was involved only at the lowest levels of this, my job included janitorial work, for example, gathering and bringing trash from officers to the furnace (to be burned; all paper and packing trash was burned, none left the building).

Anyway, one day I am filling in, in the computer room, for the tape librarian who is on leave. All data was stored on reel-to-reel magnetic tapes, and the tape librarian, directed by the console operator, brought the tapes in from the “library” (many racks of stored tapes) to mount them on the tape drives. And of course to take down tapes, label them and store them in the library. It’s a fairly continuous process walking back and forth, but not very strenuous for fit soldiers.

On this particular day, the general in charge of our operation had retired, and his two-star replacement was taking a tour of the facilities. He knew absolutely nothing about computers. He was guided by a full bird colonel, that knew a little bit about computers, but was not a very technical type.

When they got to the tape drives, the Colonel tried to explain to the General how they worked, like a voice recorder. The General thought this could be a security risk, because somebody could stand next to a tape drive, and listen in on the data being played, and be privy to nuclear secrets they should not be listening to. That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.

Everybody in the computer room had all the clearances necessary to do anything or see anything going on in the computer room. You not only cannot hear the binary data, you couldn’t possibly make sense of it if you did, it goes by far too fast and sounds like static if you feed it into a speaker.

The Colonel assured him it was impossible to eavesdrop on the data.

Nevertheless, the following day we had an armed MP guarding the tape drives, and we had to show an ID in order to mount tapes, or take down tapes. Which slowed down operations. And a week later, the MP was gone, and things went back to normal.

Why are many countries investing in China’s growth despite their poor human rights record and their own struggling economies?

How about the whole world!

Human rights and struggling economy is a narratives. Set to demonised China. It don’t work except for Brian dead westerners. That is some 1% of the entire world!

Four out of every five stuff made on the world U.S. made in China! 175 out of the world’s 195 nation on earth has China as their biggest trading partner! And 171 nation support and participated in BRI

Sure racist like this person who ask this question like to ignore facts and listen to narratives like these but even in the west there are very few of them! Do you know, in spite of Donald Trump’s trade war, the U.S. trade 3 times more in 2022 than in 2017 when the trade war began?

So it must make your anger and hate boils but heck some people choose not to think!

What bad experience had you saying “I will never buy from that company or use their service ever again”?

Lowe’s. Went to the store and ordered a GE gas wall kitchen oven with 5 year extended warranty. Not in stock, they had to order it and I had to wait. Because of a unique kitchen cut out and old house, I had few options. I call the store a few times over several weeks to try to get a status update. “Should be coming in soon”. Three months later they call to say GE no longer makes the model. Come in and pick another or get a refund.

I go in, get my refund and decide to do some more research. A few days later I go back to Lowe’s and order a Frigidaire gas wall oven and 5 year warranty. Not in stock, have to pay and wait for it to come in. I do so. About three months later they call to say that model is no longer made. Come in and pick another or come and get a refund.

I go in to get the refund. When they refund me, I notice I did not get refunded the $300 for the 5 year extended warranty. The cashier tells me they don’t give refunds on the warranties in the store. I have to call a special Lowe’s Telephone number to get that refunded separately.

I go home and then spent the next two weeks in automated telephone carousels trying to get to somebody who can orchestrate the refund. Probably spent 40 hours in total on the phone at different times before finally getting somebody. They had no record of the sale so I have to email them all my purchase and refund receipts. I do so. More run around. After a few weeks I get a check in the mail for the refund.

It then occurs to me…did I get a refund on the GE oven extended warranty I ordered first? I go back and look at the receipts and see they did not give me the $300 warranty refund on that one, and I didn’t notice.

Back to the store who tells me I must call the telephone number. Back on the phone trying to get to the right person. Did I mention this telephone number they have me calling has no weekend hours and limited weekday hours? When I do reach someone they have no record of the sale or return so I need to send them all copies of my receipts, which I do. Weeks later, no word. And no response from more hours on the phone. Mostly on hold.

I write a letter and send it through the mail to Lowe’s corporate office. I gave them documentation and photocopies of every single receipt and my timeline of purchases, calls, emails…every interaction, everything. I explain what’s been happening.

A few days later I get a letter from them saying they’d be happy to assist. All I have to do is call this telephone number (the one I’d been calling).

At that point my stomach could no longer bear it and I had to decide if $300 was worth the stress and time. I let it go.

I wouldn’t purchase a nail from Lowe’s ever again.

At that point I searched the internet and found the first GE oven I wanted at Plessers Appliances. I call them. They had five in stock. So the model wasn’t discontinued. I ordered it from a salesperson on the same call on which I confirmed it was in stock. I paid by debit card and it was installed 3 days later.

A true story. No embellishments.

Why didn’t I just go to Plessers to begin with? I didn’t know they existed. Their closest store to me was about 50 miles away in a town I never visit. But more importantly, initially I had no reason to doubt the information Lowe’s gave me about both models being discontinued. I know wall gas ovens are becoming more and more rare, so it seemed possible. And I didn’t want to deal with a gas to electric oven conversion, but that probably would have been the next step. But not with Lowes.

What is the most expensive lesson a company got after firing an employee?

Learned this through shard contacts. When we rented a house a few years back, the landlord was engaged to a very wealthy ex-Pharma sales executive. Roughly 15 or so years ago, this person was working for a major Pharma company selling its patented drugs to doctors. He was making a lot of money. Until one day he stumbled upon evidence that the company was covering up the massive toll of side effects of its drugs. After repeatedly attempting to correct the situation, he was stonewalled. In a good conscience, he couldn’t remain silent as the drugs were affecting people in terrible ways.

Under the Whistleblower Act, he provided the details to Federal agencies, who immediately launched an investigation. His identity was not protected as part of this process, and he very quickly was fired from his high paying job. Worse, he was blackballed across the entire industry. No one would talk to him. No companies would ever hire him. His Pharma, Medical and Sales careers were over. No one would hire him – not for anything. If I recall he was in his mid 30’s. He ended up bankrupt, divorced, lost his home, lost his family. He was utterly destroyed.

After many years of litigation at the highest levels, the company was found liable across a number of areas. The fines imposed on the company were MASSIVE – hundreds of millions of dollars.

As a whistleblower, he was entitled to, and paid a percentage of the fines imposed. I forget the exact number, but he made something like $100 million dollars as a result of ratting on the company’s deadly products. But the cost was….EVERYTHING.

When I learned of this story, the man was in living in the same town/city that we were in, and had a beautiful multi-million dollar waterfront home.

I always wondered if he felt like he would do the same thing again if he knew how things worked out. His life was ruined, literally ruined.

The company, of course, is still in business today. But a fine approaching the better part of a billion dollars has to hurt. A Lot.

China’s LATEST Stealth Aircraft Can Kill US B-21 ‘Raider’ in 1 Second

Have you ever had a neighbor who believed they had free reign of your property?

We had the neighbor from hell. The first day they moved in, he parked his Uhaul on our front yard yo unload. This was a hundred year old house with ceramic water lines. My husband explained that he had to move the truck, and he did.

Then, we had a tree cut down in our fenced back yard. The wood was cut into lengths to burn in a fireplace. I worked that day, and when I came home that night, over half the wood was gone. Every night for months they burned their fire pit. I know he took it.

Next, ghe to,d me he was putting up a privacy fence. As I said, we had a chain link fence already. I explained to him that he needed to put it as close to our fence as possible. The weeds between the fences on our side would be every difficult to remove. Again, I came home from work, and he had put up the fence inside out with the support beams on our side. This left a 8” gap between the fences. Weeds were horribly difficult to reach.

We had a two car parking spot in the back of our houses. No lie, he had a motorcycle trailer, two cars and a trailer parked there. Of course he spilled over his lot. Every time they took the trailer out they moved my garbage can. They never put it back where it belonged. One night I was having a few beers when I heard him come home with the trailer. I grabbed the trash can and held it. He wasn’t going to move it that night. My drinking got the better of me and I went off on how they thought our yard was his to use, and how all the neighbors had had enough of them.

They put their house up for sale that week. Good riddance.

If you can give me only one tip to improve my life, what would it be?

I can’t think of one person who runs and doesn’t have their shit together.

1. I think it’s because running teaches you how to persist. The entire act of running is to not listen to your body’s urges to stop and to persist instead.
2. You will also learn how to focus on a singular goal, to keep your legs moving until you reach your destination. The skill of focus is one of the most underrated and misunderstood. Many people think your ability to focus is inborn, but I know from personal experience it’s a skill that we train through out the day.
3. Running will also make you have more stamina in bed which could lead to you landing the wife or husband you want.
4. Running also tends to weed out bad habits like smoking because it’s so difficult to run and to keep smoking.
5. Also when you travel, you will get a intimate view of the city because you will know what it’s like to see the city on foot.
6. You will also be able to learn things because podcasts​ and books are some of the best things to listen to while you are on a long run.
7. Also runners tend to eat healthier which helps them lose weight and have good skin. I know I don’t like eating fried food if I’m going to be running later because I will feel sluggish.
8. When you run you also feel very confident because you will feel like you are becoming a stronger person.
9. Finally, you should run, because one day, you won’t be able to.

Have you ever had a neighbor who believed they had free reign of your property?

Yes after buying new property in a rural area. The neighbor behind us kept letting the family ride off road four-wheelers on our property as we did not have a fence between us and we did not live there yet. As I was building our new house and shop we saw the kids riding across our property again, I drove to top of hill where they were and asked them not to keep coming across the property line that was surveyed and marked. They apologized and said they thought it was their grandparents property. I thanked them and told them my insurance would not allow other people to drive on my property, if they got hurt I could get sued.

No problem I thought all was well. I keep getting other neighbors calling and saying people are still driving all over our property when we aren’t there. So the next week we see an adult with a small child again riding on our property. Again I drive up the hill and park in the middle of the trail so when he comes back he has to stop. When he does, I again ask to stop trespassing as I have also told his kids before. He said they are just puttering along slow and not hurting anything. And he drives off. Now I’m mad. So my employees start a new (nice) fence the next day. A week later all employees are working on new house (I’m in construction) and one employee says “hey there’s that rude guy on the four-wheeler at the top on the hill”. We all stopped working and run over to look, he is stopped (standing on top of his seat) on the trail by a large barbedwire fence looking all the way down both sides on the mountain at a new long fence. We laughed for about 10 minutes. He had that look like how did this get here. Sad thing is we would have let the kids ride on our property if they had just asked nice. But we didn’t even know their names. We had miles of trails all over the place.

How did you get revenge on a co-worker who stole credit for your work?

I never seek revenge.

In the 1980s, I had a co-worker who presented my craft work as her own. At that point, I just sat back and watched, I knew things were going to be entertaining.

My manager was so very pleased with the job my co-worker claimed as her own. When my manager asked my co-worker to show her how she had done the job; my co-worker was at a complete loss on what to do. My manager tried to assist my co-worker by asking “how did you start, what was your first idea?”

My co-worker had no idea about how I had created the project as I had completed it at home. After about an hour of trying to figure out how to dismantle my work; my co-worker had to admit that she hadn’t created the project at all. She also admitted that she had taken it from off my desk.

My manager was not amused by my co-worker. When she came to my desk; I was just smiling a little smile. My manager asked me why I hadn’t defended my project and claimed my work. Then she answered her own question; that my work spoke for itself.

Have you ever had a neighbor who believed they had free reign of your property?

Not I, but my brother.

When my brother was ready to buy a home, he instead went the custom-built route: our parents divided their five-acre lot so he could build next door.

Both homes were perched on top of an almost-mountain hill, looking over the valley. Pretty amazing view.

For whatever reason I’m unaware of, my brother ended up with a two-acre L-shaped lot; basically, he ended up with his front and back yards and a narrow strip at the rear of our parents’ backyard next door. I think it may have been so my brother could own and maintain the wire suicide fence that prevented any accidental tumbling into the valley below, so our parents wouldn’t have to. Yeah, the hill slope was that steep; it was basically a grassy cliff.

Then my mother’s husband passed away, leaving her to rattle around her huge home by herself. Empty nesting, the property became too much for her to care for and she put it on the market.

My brother, having foreseen this, had included a mother’s suite when he built his home. Practically an independent apartment on the first floor next to the garage, with its own kitchen and bath and a private entrance and my brother’s living space on the second floor upstairs. Absolutely no issues with Mom moving in next door to live with my brother while she was trying to sell.

The people she eventually agreed to sell to were not fun even during the real estate transaction process. They moaned and whined and nickel and dimed but they got her house and moved in. Long story short, this couple proved to be assholes before they even signed the contract, and that certainly didn’t change when the house was theirs. They promptly began tearing out everything to renovate.

Including the yard. Twenty years’ worth of plantings; Mom’s beloved gardens and flower beds, shrubs and fruit trees, ruthlessly removed to accommodate an unending sea of grass. Mom said nothing of course but she was sick.

My brother suggested that she replant a new garden. Together, they spent the time and money to plant roses and fruit trees along the suicide fence on that strip of land that was too narrow to accommodate anything else.

My brother returned from work one afternoon to discover that the new neighbors had crossed the property line to dig up and chainsaw everything my brother and my mother had planted. When questioned, the neighbor explained he wanted nothing but grass in the backyard. He wanted an unobstructed view of the valley below.

Furious, my brother explained that that strip of land was not part of the neighbor’s backyard and that he didn’t consider two dwarf fruit trees to be obscuring the view, but even if they did, the neighbor did not have the right to trespass or to tear them out of property he didn’t own. The plants had cost in both time and money. Neighbor refused to pay for the damages.

It was not worth it to bother with the time and expense of small claims court. But Mom had already been complaining that every time she stepped into the yard or the driveway, the nosy neighbors were watching her, and that they were able to view the interior of my brother’s home through windows visible from their side of the property line. Mom was feeling paranoid and upset.

My brother erected an 8-foot-high wooden fence that completely surrounded his L-shaped lot and its driveway. Including both along the suicide fence at the rear of the property and the property line that separated that narrow strip from the neighbor’s backyard. When the driveway gate is closed, the only thing visible from outside the fence is the roof of the house and a couple of treetops.

My brother further installed a length of decorative metal fence with a fairy gate to separate that narrow strip from his own backyard. Mom ended up with a “hidden” garden that over the years was equipped with concrete benches, bird houses and a bath, a fountain, lawn toys. They planted fruit trees, grapes, roses, flowers, a vegetable patch, butterfly bushes. You couldn’t see the valley from Mom’s fairy garden for the wooden fence, but no nosy destructive neighbors could see her, either. She puttered away hours in there; she loved it.

Instead of two fruit trees and some rose bushes, now the new neighbors had not one but two runs of eight-foot-high wooden fence between their house and the view. The view from their property is completely gone. Short of climbing a ladder to sit on the roof, there is nothing they can do about it.

And whenever my mom wants, the valley and their neighbors’ yard are visible from my brother’s living room and back deck, upstairs from her mother’s suite. Sometimes they barbecue up there.

Oh, and they got a half-dozen egg-laying pet chickens. The rooster is pretty loud at 5am. That’s how my brother knows it’s time to get up and get ready for work.

We don’t know what the rooster wakes the nosy neighbors up for.

The fantasy of the Philippines has been completely shattered, the situation in the South China Sea has been clarified, and the mysterious “sonic weapon” has appeared!

Just this morning, I woke up and saw the news. After the Philippines illegally invaded my country’s Scarborough Shoal. Philippine control began to “collapse” with my country’s law enforcement ships on Ren’ai Reef, which was met with professional restraint by my country.

First of all, as for the recent provocations by the Philippines, it is obvious that the United States is behind it. Without the support of the United States, the Philippines would not dare to come and make noise. China is dismantling the “island chains” deployed by the United States in the Asia-Pacific region one by one, and breaking through the “containment” of the United States at a rapid speed.

That article was a paper written by an expert from the University of Defense Technology, which roughly revealed that our country has accelerated its development in close-air combat in recent years, and has also established a near-air command equipped with a variety of hypersonic weapons units.

Everyone knows that our country is ahead of the United States in the research and development of hypersonic missiles. We not only have a mature and complete offensive weapon system, but also a strong and powerful defense system.

The emergence of the Near Air Command today obviously tells the United States that it is no longer possible for the United States to “cover the sky with one hand” in the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, he also warned the United States not to have any illusions on the Taiwan issue or the situation in the South China Sea.

Looking back, the United States naturally does not want us to develop more and more stable long-range missiles and hypersonic missiles, so it will let the Philippines come over from time to time to stir up trouble.

After all, what the United States wants is to involve us in the war, then contain our development, and turn the South China Sea into the next “Russian-Ukrainian battlefield.” But what makes the United States even more unexpected today is that we will not dispatch hypersonic missiles to deal with the tiny Philippines.

Instead, a brand new “attack weapon” was released, which was the mysterious sonic weapon!

Since the Philippines continues to invade our country’s islands and reefs and frequently come to cause trouble, our country’s new coast guard ships are equipped with a series of self-defense weapons to strengthen the defense capabilities of maritime law enforcement.

Of course, in the face of repeated troubles from the Philippines, we still maintain the rationality we should have to avoid falling into the trap of the United States, so we usually use some high-pressure water cannons to achieve the effect of driving away the Philippines.

But this time, in the face of the collision with the Philippines, our country has released a brand-new weapon, which is the long-range directional acoustic wave repellent device. This “acoustic weapon” can be said to be specially designed to deal with the Philippines!

Because this remote directional sound wave driving device can release a sound of 160 decibels, which is 60 higher than the human body’s tolerance range (100 decibels).

This weapon can be used for “sonic bombing” from a distance of 3 kilometers.

You know, this time the Philippines dispatched 40 small fishing boats, multiple coast guard ships, and official ships to form the so-called “Christmas Fleet” in an attempt to invade my country’s islands and reefs in an attempt to create large-scale chaos.

In that case, we will directly release the “sonic weapons” to give them a “Christmas atmosphere boost”!

Maybe many people don’t have much idea about this 60 decibels.

The human body is originally very sensitive to external sounds. The sound of two people communicating normally is about 20 decibels. But if a large car passes by and honks its horn, the decibels will reach 50, and the ears will instantly “buzz”. Once it exceeds 100 decibels, it will cause great damage to the ears, and may even lead to temporary “deafness”.

Moreover, this kind of directional sound wave repellent weapon can focus 150 decibels of noise, and then adjust the angle to directionally project it onto the enemy’s ship. As a result, all the Philippine ships can do is to leave quickly with their tail between their legs…

In fact, the Philippines still does not understand the situation in the South China Sea today. We have already firmly grasped the overall situation.

If nothing else, in the past two years, our navy has laid a “drag net” on Mischief Reef, Ren’ai Reef and other islands and reefs, and assembled the largest naval formation in recent years.

There are 052D guided missile destroyer, 052C guided missile destroyer, 053HC guided missile frigate, 056A guided missile frigate, 072 tank landing ship, 022 high-speed missile boat…

All in all, the current situation in the South China Sea is very clear: ASEAN countries have clearly seen the true face of the United States and know that the Philippines is a pawn of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region.

Author note : China is a country when you do something anti China you will lose the disputed territory to China, it happened to India, it happened to Japan now the Diao Yu Island is in China control. A lot of countries has demarcated border with China Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, Kazakhstan.

Has anyone at your workplace ever been fired for something they said or did?

Yes. Leanne. A rather entitled millennial who thought the sun shone from somewhere it didn’t. She told her manager to F-off.

She was put into a tech assistant role, supporting George, a category manager who had been working for the company close to 50 years. He actually retired when he hit 50 years service – he was 72 at the time. After retirement, he stuck around part time for a few years as a consultant too – he was that knowledgeable, and important to the business.

Anyway, what George didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. He could tell you the names of staff going back to the early 70s. He could also tell you when something was made obsolete, and what replaced it. He was a walking archive of catalogue information going back to before I was born. If you couldn’t find an answer, George was the one who would know it. He was extremely well respected. He had 2 assistants working under him, doing daily tasks like tenders and quotes, warranty checks, stock orders, and general technical assistance for distributors and customers.

Jovic was a fellow in his mid 30s when I met him. He was George’s protégé, and he had already learnt a lot from George – having worked under him for nearly a decade. His only career plan was to step into George’s role when he retired. He did (and still does) a cracking job.

Leanne was employed a year or so before I came along. She was lazy, and slow to reply to requests for help. Customers complained to both Jovic and George about her. Jovic was growing tired of having to carry Leanne’s shortcomings, and begged George to do something.

George worked out she would be better doing analytic tasks like price increases, manufacturing updates, large pricing tenders, and stock monitoring – so she wouldn’t have to talk to customers anywhere near as much. She was taking a week to do a tender than George could do in a few hours. Admittedly, George could look at a partial part number, or a description, and instantly know the correct number. This took Leanne a lot of time to search. But she was also partial to online shopping, and would spend hours browsing fashion sites. She would also call her friends and spend hours going through fashion websites, deciding what to buy. This was the main reason she was so slack.

George had gone to HR several times about her lack of competence in the role, her time wasting, excessive personal calls etc etc. She was given numerous verbal warnings, and a couple of written ones. She was on thin ice. One afternoon George was frustrated that a deadline was coming up, and she hadn’t started a tender that she’d had for over 2 weeks. He walked up behind her desk to see she was browsing a fashion site, and yapping away on a personal call. He interrupted her and asked her to focus on the tender. Her response “fxxx off George.”

George had never been short with anyone before. So his next outburst was a huge shock to us all. He bellowed (loud enough for whoever was on the other end of her phone to clearly hear it) “That’s it, we’re going up to HR right now. You had your last chance, and you blew it.”

Her response, which was heard right across 60+ people in an open plan office – people who had suddenly become silent after hearing George’s ouburst, was “you can’t sack me you crusty old cxxx. I quit first.”

Because of that retaliation, and the language used, HR refused to give her a reference as she was marched from the building.

George was the most patient guy, but Leanne pushed him way too far. We were all glad to see the back of her.

Jovic has since become “George 2.0” – although his knowledge isn’t as impressive as George, he still has some 25 years to get there.

Chicken with Dill Sauce
(Kurczeta z Sosem Koperkowyn — Poland)

Ingredients

• 1 (3 to 3 1/2 pound) broiler-fryer chicken, cut up
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
• 1 cup Half-and-Half
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon minced dill weed
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Instructions

1. Heat chicken, water, salt and white pepper to boiling in skillet; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until thickest pieces of chicken are done, 45 to 50 minutes.
2. Remove chicken; keep warm.
3. Shake Half-and-Half and flour in tightly covered jar. Stir Half-and-Half mixture, dill weed and lemon juice into pan juices. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly; boil and stir 1 minute.
4. Pour some of the sauce over chicken; serve with remaining sauce and with spaetzle or cooked cauliflower, if desired.

What is the best way to handle rejection?

My partner interviewed for her dream job as a tenured professor at an elite university. It offered generous compensation, and the opportunity to expand her research and educate students on niche subjects she is passionate about. She prepared for a week, doing mock interviews and research. When the day came, she called me after and exclaimed “It went great! I’m sure I will get a follow up interview. I haven’t felt this good about an interview in so long.”

The next day, I was walking downstairs at our home and saw her sitting at the dining room table. She looked glum, so I asked, “How’s it going?”

Without looking up, she said, “I’ve been better. I just got a rejection email for that job.” She was completely devastated. For years, she’d been so successful in getting every job she applied for, saying that, “Interviews are my super power.” Consequently, she was being quite hard on herself.

I reminded her that this job process wasn’t like finding jobs in high school and college. She was competing with other academics: highly intelligent, motivated, organized professionals with so much to offer — just like her. But it still stung because she’d put so much of herself into this process.

I related so strongly to her feelings. Coming from corporate, I’ve done around 100 interviews. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a hiring manager say, “You are such a great match for this role!” Or something equitably enthusiastic, with me leaving their office skipping like a kid out of a candy shop — only to get a rejection, followed by waves of frustration.

While I’ve found that rejection does get easier with repetition, it never becomes a pleasant, or even neutral experience. Be it writing, dating, or jobs, there’s always a burn.

Dr. Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, found that even the most sophisticated among us are often distinctly sensitive to failure. His study found the part of the brain activated during rejection is also associated with physical pain. When someone says “it hurts” after a rejection, they aren’t far from the truth.

Rejection is different from failure in that there’s often an interpersonal dynamic to it — which makes it particularly unpleasant and personal.

I have long battled my harsh inner critic, which is quite common, especially with people who had a strict childhood or where they felt they weren’t good enough (the prior certainly describes me). Replaying these rejections comes naturally and with ease. Which is why I’ve invested in help from a therapist. He gave me a great and counterintuitive exercise, called the “rejection collection”. It helps destigmatize that rejection and promotes empathy — and friendships.

How the rejection collection works

Rejection often has a secretive nature, where we hide these shortcomings from others to insulate our ego and feelings of acceptance. Ideally, per the American Psychological Association, we should do the exact opposite and seek more meaningful connections with people in the aftermath of rejection, which is what this exercise does.

You create a simple spreadsheet using excel, google docs, anything. Create it with at least one other person and list out notable rejections from your life. I’ll throw myself into the fire right now:

1. I was rejected from my dream publisher, Penguin Random House, after going through several rounds of feedback with a senior editor. I was close to signing a contract, only for them to reject me in the 11th hour, saying my book idea, “Is not strong or unique enough.”
2. I was given a reference to interview at my dad’s company, SAP, and flew to Philadelphia for an interview, only to be rejected. I applied for a second position, and flew to Philadelphia again, only to be rejected a second time. I felt like a complete failure and an embarrassment to my dad.
3. In 8th grade, 23 people tried out for the JV soccer team at a school where soccer was everything. Only me and one other person got cut from the team. I felt like the least athletic, least cool guy in the world.
4. I was once having a great and long conversation with a beautiful Jamaican woman. We were hitting it off. On a whim, and before I could talk myself out of it, I said, “We should grab dinner sometime.” Her smile immediately vanished, as if she’d just seen a ghost. Then, she said, “Sorry, I don’t date white men.” Which is fine. She’s entitled to her preferences. I cringed more thinking about how I misread her energy.
5. There was a personality test for our finance department at my last corporate job. During HR’s presentation, each of us were represented as a dot on a giant graph, with our initials by the dot. I didn’t see my name. At the end, I raised my and asked the researcher, “I noticed my name isn’t listed?” She said, “Yeah, we couldn’t properly score your personality. It was too far outside our bounds.” The room erupted in laughter.

When you create your list, adding context and the story helps humanize the experience for the other people on the list. The other option is to have a zoom call where each person reads through their rejections and shares those stories.

It’s OK if they feel entirely random and with different contexts. It’s also completely advisable to find ways to laugh and have fun with it. Self-deprecation can remove the heaviness from the experience, and pivot the tone of your inner monologue to be more accepting.

Per psychology professor, Dr. Mark Leary, the communal component of a rejection collection is the key component to remember. Rejection tends to threaten your sense of belonging to the group, but by celebrating and putting those rejections boldly forward in a group setting — it promotes that sense of belonging and understanding between people.

When I went through this list with two friends, I marveled at some of the stories I heard and we laughed together, thinking through and discussing the events, often debunking people’s insecurities. I felt a sense of togetherness, and enhanced friendship with my buddies afterwards. I was glad they shared these moments of supreme rejection that they’d hidden from me for decades. I didn’t feel alone.

Each of us exists on a spectrum of rejection sensitivity, with some people having very harsh and self-immolating interpretations of these events. But this rejection can cause you to seek out friends and build your connection to them as a compensatory response. This isn’t to say one should get chewed up by rejections intentionally to make friends. But more to remind you of how universal this experience is. A rejection collection helps you purge these harsh narratives and reframe them into something kinder.

When I was an early teenage boy, I had a long-standing crush on another girl who was signaling pretty clearly that she liked me too. I was talking to my friend Brian, saying, “I want to ask her out but I’m so afraid.”

He shrugged and said, “What’s the worst thing she can do, say no?” It was such a healthy extrapolation to rethinking these rejections. Sometimes, we need to lighten the load we place on these outcomes.

I remind myself that rejection stems from something proactive: you taking the initiative to pursue things you want in life. It takes courage to try, to put yourself in the line of judgement. So pat yourself on the back for that, regardless of the outcome.

And if you get rejected, consider sharing it with a someone, or scheduling a call with friends, and list them out in all their glory. You’ll all be better off for it. Remember to stay kind — to others, and yourself.

What’s the quickest way you saw a co-worker get fired?

When I was with the DoC, we had a shipping container in our parking lot to store outdated, or damaged, computer equipment. Once the container was full, bids would be placed on it and the winning bidder would come out and carry the equipment off.

The container was 8 feet by 40 feet so unloading the equipment from it could take some time, and because security balked at having to stand around while the equipment was removed, someone from IT would have to babysit the people hauling the equipment off. This job fell to the person in the office with the least seniority.

It just so happened that we had a newbie start the day equipment was being picked up so the team leader took him outside, handed him the clipboard of inventory being picked up and forms the buyer had to sign, and told him to stay out there until the container was empty. He was told to lock the container up and come back inside once it was done.

It usually took about an hour to empty a container and the newbie was sent outside around 9 AM, so when the team lead began asking us if we’d seen the new guy around 11:30, we knew something was wrong. The team leader went outside and found the trailer wide open, and empty, so he locked it. There was no sign of the newbie. About that time one of the techs saw him strolling across the parking lot, from the direction of a fast food joint nextdoor. When he entered the office the team lead asked him where he’d been and he said it was hot outside (it was summer) and watching the people empty the trailer was boring so he’d decided to sit in the fast food place and watch them from there. He was asked when the people had left and he said they drove off around 10:20. The team lead asked if the buyer had signed the equipment transfer forms and the newbie stated he’d “forgotten” to have them sign (and it’s kind of hard to have someone sign a form when you’re 150 feet away, sitting in a restaurant).

The team lead told our boss what had happened immediately and the new employee became a former employee after only 3½ hours on the job. He didn’t even make it to lunch time — the official lunch time, that is.

MAGA Girl Drops TRUTH BOMBS About Western Women

What is normal in your country but weird in the rest of the world?

Although Australia is considered your “typical white country” by many, we still have quirks that make the whole world tilt their head and think “What the F*ck?” For example:

• We have a tradition called a “shoey”– which is were you drink beer out of a dirty shoe.

• Bars are required to have stables, water and food for horses.
• We call friends “cunts” and people we dislike “mates”.
• Life sentences cannot be over 25 years.
• Repairing a fence because a kangaroo tried jumping over it and failed.
• School is from February to December, so we have Christmas and New Year’s eve during our annual break.
• Petting zoos having kangaroos, wallabies and emus which you can feed and play with for something like 5 bucks an hour.
• Deadly spiders everywhere. The week before writing this answer, I actually removed a huntsman from my backyard so my dog couldn’t eat it. I ended up throwing the fucker over the fence and into my neighbors house (by accident of course).
• Having Christmas at the beach. Since Australian summer is during December- people go to the beaches in swarms on Christmas Day to open presents and have barbecues.
• Every Australian town has a pub with at least one, massive foster beer ad stuck on the rood (even though no one drinks foster any more).

• Almost everyone is outdoors. Hiking, walking, fishing, sailing, boating, surfing, swimming and a hell of a lot more. Everyone is into some kind of sport or activity. The natural resources like beaches and suburbs are used wisely and not just wasted.
• Swearing when complimenting something. In Australia, when someone says “Sick cunt”, it means “you did good.”
• Calling rain boots/wellies “Gum boots”.
• Smelling smoke from a far way bushfire when going outside.
• Having no idea what “political correctness is” and saying anything on our minds.
• We say ‘Yeah, nah’ instead of No, and ‘Nah, yeah’ instead of “Yes”.
• Children aren’t allowed to purchase cigarettes, but there is no law specifically stating that they cannot smoke them.
• Not being able to go outside during lunch break at school because you forgot your hat.
• Having extremely wide roads and pavements, even in the city and suburbs.
• Making fun of anything regardless if its offensive or not.
• It is illegal to dress up as Robin and Batman.
• Selling $2 hot dogs when everyone is voting for the new prime minster in the elections.

• Getting fined if you don’t vote in the elections.
• Putting butter and sprinkles on bread to create fairy bread– our traditional dish.
• Putting butter and Vegemite (a thick black Australian sauce) on bread to create another traditional dish: Vegemite and toast.
• Eating a lot of fresh fish and ripe avocados. Avocado milkshakes are really common in Australia, and so is really good sushi.
• Every pub has 2–4 Poker Machines minimum.
• Eating burgers that have beetroot.
• Getting attacked by magpies (a Australian bird), because you walked into their territory by accident.

Atlantis, Thoth, the Emerald Tablet & the Secret to Immortality