Because “breakfast food” comes from certain rural farm traditions, combined with more recent urban traditions.

On a farm, you wake up at dawn and do the “chores” of caring for the animals. Then you eat breakfast, then you start your actual work day.

So since you go out to care for the chickens, you collect the eggs at this time. And so eggs make an easy breakfast meal. You milked the cows, so you have fresh milk. It takes hours to make bread, so instead you take yesterday’s leftover bread and toast it to bring it back to life. You don’t have time to butcher an animal, so any meat is preserved meat, likely pork. Cooking sausage/bacon/ham creates grease, no farmer is going to waste that, so that’s perfect to cook potatoes or pancakes or corn cakes. Preserved fruit and homemade sweeteners like maple syrup are ready made.

There you go, a classic American breakfast.

If you don’t have any of those fancy things, because you’re dirt poor, you can at least boil some grain and make porridge, flavored with whatever leftovers and odds and ends you have. Another classic breakfast food. Grits, oatmeal, congee,

Other classic breakfast foods are products of urban living. You can’t buy a pastry for breakfast on a farm, only if you live near a bakery. Dry cereal is an processed industrial product that replaces the grain porridge that farmers would eat. Fresh fruit and juice require modern transport networks and refrigeration, they replace the preserved fruit. So that’s a modern layer added on to classic rural breakfast foods.

Nowadays with modern supply chains you could literally serve anything for breakfast from lasagna to Boeuf Bourguignon to Peking duck.

But people are used to what they’re used to and so they want the same sort of thing they’re used to. In many parts of the world breakfast is just last night’s dinner leftovers. That would horrify lots of Americans.

The only thing about breakfast food is that you either have to make it yourself, or you have to buy it from someone who made it for you. And so breakfast foods will always tend toward easy convenient foods rather than involved complicated preparations, even if you’re buying food from a restaurant.

But something like making doughnuts is insanely complicated for a home cook to make a dozen doughnuts. But the complexity is all setup. For a doughnut shop it’s easy to crank another dozen doughnuts, because everything is ready all the time.

Fried chicken is just like this, once you’ve got the kitchen set up you can crank out fried chicken in industrial quantities. So why do people eat doughnuts for breakfast but not fried chicken? Because they aren’t used to it, because it isn’t a traditional breakfast food that comes from rural origins.

Poco – And Settling Down

1. You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone. Start living for yourself, never live just to impress others.
2. Comfort zone will destroy your life. Life starts at the end of comfort zone.
3. Your family and friends can only support you, you have to do it yourself.
4. Happiness doesn’t come from sleeping, relaxing and hanging on social media.
5. True happiness comes when you give your best in life.
6. The less people you chill with, the less bullshit you have to deal with.
7. Life is too short to become angry and to seek for revenge to those who did you wrong. Just let it go.
8. It’s never too early or late to do the things you have always wanted to do.
9. None really cares unless you are rich, beautiful and popular, at least not forever.
10. Readers are leaders. Never stop reading.
11. No matter how much we try, some situations are never in our control.
12. Don’t believe everything you hear and see. Be curious, question them.
13. It is not necessarily important to know who likes you and who doesn’t. What really matters is how you see yourself.
    Thanks for reading !

Boy is this the right question for me! I have worked in around Burger King for over 40 years, and was deeply involved in the competitive wars with McDonald’s in the 1990s. There’s a very simple reason why Burger King has struggled… Inconsistency.

Burger King is nearly as old as McDonald’s, haven’t been founded in 1954 in Florida. Their paths stayed pretty parallel into the early 1960s, when McDonald’s took off due to a very well planned program of franchising and development that focused on real estate. McDonald’s owned it, rented it to the franchisees, and used the money from that to pay for the purchase… So McDonald’s really is a real estate company more than a restaurant company. Seems a little far-fetched, but it’s true. Solid company structure from the mid-1960’s until today.

Burger King on the other hand has passed through numerous owners since it’s existence, starting in the 1960s with Pillsberry (yes, the dough boy folks), who kept it as a subsidiary until the late 1990’s. Under Pillsbury‘s ownership, the company stayed stable and grew its franchise base in a consistent manner. However, when Pillsbury sold the company to Grand Metropolitan (GM) out of England, things began to go south quickly.

GM was an alcohol company, who owned such brands as Guinness and Baileys Irish cream. They had involvement in bars in England, but never with a fast food restaurant chain. GM saw BK as a cash cow, and basically drained the company of money for years to fund other non-restaurant needs. They brought in executives from England who had no knowledge of the food industry, as sort of a training ground for them. Not a good combination.

Burger King also owned a lot of real estate under Pillsbury, though under a different program than McDonald’s. But once GM got involved, the real estate started to be sold as a way to pay for the purchase of the company. They nearly completely paid for their entire purchase by selling off the real estate- which was a stupid move for BK, as it removed an important asset base for the company.

GM later became Diagio, and under Diagio’s ownership they began to look for a buyer, because they realized it wasn’t a business they wanted to have within their liquor organization. This was a time when large investment groups were getting involved in the restaurant industry, so they sold the company at a profit to a US company called Texas Pacific Group (TPG). TPG then began their own dismantling of the US corporate structure, as a way to save money.

After TPG held it for a few years it was bought by a Brazilian group – who paid a lot of money for BK because of the ever expanding trading environment. They proceeded to remove even more of the corporate structure of BK – reducing it to basically nothing more than a holding company. They focused on international franchising, and did a good job in bring in new franchisees across the world. But By eliminating real estate, operations, training, marketing, and other departments almost in their entirety in the US, and eliminating hundreds of experienced people who were very loyal to Burger King, it just ruined the brands operations and strategic planning capabilities.

The Brazilian group eventually combined with the Tim Hortons group out of Canada, and recently Popeyes to create the new entity RBI, which runs all the businesses. While very successful as an organization, growing the company over the years internationally to a great extent, it really never addressed the fundamental differences between McDonald’s and Burger King when it came to quality and operations. Burger King‘s are just not up to the same level as McDonald’s, and I doubt ever will be because of the way they’ve been handled. By having virtually no company stores, decisions are made that seem reactionary and off the cuff, loading the stores with gimmicky products and putting undo pressure on the franchisees to shoulder nearly every task with little to no backup from BKC.

I know several McDonalds executives who I have discussed this BK subject with, and to a person they agree with my assessment, and were happy that BK was so disorganized as a competitor. BK’s food in its original form (like the Whopper) were superior to McD’s offerings, and they knew it. But with the constant turnover at BK it was a recipe for disaster long term.

I love BK, and even 20+ years since leaving I still stay in touch with my former executive colleagues. There is even an alumni group of BK folks. Great people who were basically tossed aside during these various sales, and have gone on to work with other brands and enhansed them as a result.

BK is a classic example of corporate greed taking a great brand and diminishing it as a result. 😉👍

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR READING THIS POST. I am humbled by your response to it – I am overwhelmed and appreciative. There are some interesting opinions that have been shared….I encourage you to read a desenting opinion below, and my response. Free speech is what makes our world better, versus places where you can’t proper an opinion. But also, facts are facts….something we have lost sight of recently here.

Balance of emotions and facts are what makes life work, don’t you agree? 😁🤟

UPDATE TIME. Hello folks, thanks so much for reading my post. Over 500K views…wow! I have been answering questions on other chains due to your requests, so if you want to learn background about KFC, Chick Fil A and others, check into my profile.

I did visit a brand new rebuilt BK yesterday here in California. Had to see what was new. Building was nice, and it was loaded with crew, training. Because of all those people, I got my food quickly. I was the only inside customer at 4:30. But, sadly, the underlying issues are still there. My food was warm, not hot; the fries were way too salty and only warm; I wanted an ice tea (there was a picture of it on the drink machine), but they didn’t have it. Not part of the rebuild. While I was eating inside, a couple of cars came through the DT, but one came back because he didn’t get his full order. Seriously? A new store with about 12 employees at 4:30, and it still wasn’t right?

Their system is clearly broken. They’ve made it overly complicated to produce the food, using lots of holding equipment to allow the pre-cooking of nearly every menu item, in a bid to save labor. Getting a fresh piping hot sandwich is basically impossible now, because of the production methods. People are willing to wait for a quality product, like the made to order food at In -N -Out. I have seen wait times in the 10–20 minute range there, with no one complaining. And they do 2–3 times the BK sales. Sacrificing speed for quality is stupid. I had this nearly exact argument 23 years ago at a BK corp meeting, and I was basically dismissed. Too many way smarter people in the room I guess🤨.

One more thing….I did real estate for BK for a long while, and I just don’t understand why they rebuilt this restaurant. It’s not in a good location at all, being a bedroom nighttime area, not a daytime one. A lot of money was spent, and I doubt that it will ever make a profit.

And the beat goes on….stay tuned!🤨

Dead Broke

I lived as a very young girl, already at 17, in a commune in Florence, Italy.

We all almost never had money.

What usually happened anyway was that there was no toilet paper, but we “recycled” newspapers.

These were , ifs went well, even cut into rectangles , punched , with a thread through and hung on a hook.

Mostly the most important was read again before.

At that time, newspapers were still good for something.

Sometimes we didn’t know in the morning what we would eat in the evening. We didn’t eat anything in the morning anyway.

Then one of the men went into a bookstore and stole a book. There was another bookseller who bought these books for then for little money.

For a good book there were 5000 lire. That would be 2 Dollars fifty today.

For that I bought food for everyone. That was always pasta. I remember one day it was noodles with rape, which is a green vegetable.

Eight of us sat at our big kitchen table and each had a not very big plate of noodles.

The doorbell rang. We didn’t have a phone and anyway, we always had visitors.

So two more people. Sigh.

It was normal then to take so much from each of our plates that the two visitors also got a portion each. And no one let on.

It was so long ago, but I remember going to bed very hungry that night.

Skid Row – I Remember You (Official Music Video)

Absolutely. China does not need any military ally. China’s military is enormously powerful, the second most powerful on the planet.

Fighting in China’s own backyard gives China an enormous home court advantage.

Nevertheless, Russia has already pledged to come to China’s aid in the event of a war over Taiwan.

You can pretty much count on North Korea and Pakistan, too. Maybe even Iran.

He saved my life.

When I lost my son at birth in 2003, Mikey was just a kitten.

I didnt realize then, the role he would play in my life.

Mikey became my reason for everything, my reason for just getting out of bed.

Losing a baby a birth is devastating and many women face a life of depression after going through something like this but that didnt happen in my own experience because Mikey helped me find my way.

From the first moments arriving home with no baby in my arms and finding Mikey all curled up asleep in my sons bassinet, he was a comfort to me.

Making sure my arms did not stay empty on that first night home and for the next 18 years made a difference, I wasn’t alone, he was always by my side.

Mikey was born deaf and I knew it from the time he was born. After my son died, I really spent a huge amount of time researching feline deafness and trying to figure out how I would care for this kitten.

Before I knew it Mikey and I had embarked on our own journey, a journey based on love and friendship.

Mikey died on February 21, 2021, He was 18 years old.

For as long as I am still alive in this place, I will tell his story, it was our story.

He may not have been tall enough for me to lean on but he always held me up.

This is Mikey, he was my best friend…

Seinfeld – A Stop at Willoughby (Twilight Zone)

WTF? This was just too hilarious and the editing is GOLD, Jerry. GOLD.

Well, of course, I support it. Anything that may help developing countries should be a good thing.

However, do I think it will succeed? Unfortunately, no.

Western nations cannot coordinate such a massive project. Too much politics. Too much capitalist greed. Too much corruption. Too much incompetence.

A good question, and the answer is somewhat involved. I’m an artisan ice cream maker, and I have very direct experience relating to this topic.

First of all, you can dismiss the cheaper brands of ice cream, as they won’t use genuine natural Vanilla Extract, which is made from the Vanilla bean. They will use Vanillin, which is one of the most important flavour compounds found in natural Vanilla Extract. But natural Vanilla Extract contains hundreds of flavour compounds, giving a far richer taste experience. Vanillin can be extracted from wood pulp, amongst other sources, and is cheap.

Another way to avoid the burden of the very high cost of natural Vanilla Extract, is simply to use very little of it. I bought a tub of Vanilla ice cream here in Scotland, made by one of the major brands. It’s ingredient list stated that it use natural Vanilla Extract. This company have a reputation for being commercially ruthless, so I was intrigued that they were using such a costly ingredient. Well, I couldn’t taste the Vanilla Extract at all. I’m sure they were complying with the law, and were adding Vanilla Extract to the mix. But probably by the dropper-full. So that is one way to keep your margins up. They will have been counting on their customers not really noticing the lack of Vanilla taste in their product, as unflavoured ice cream is not far off Vanilla, to most people’s taste buds.

When I began making ice cream in 2015 I could buy top-grade natural Madagascan Vanilla Extract at reasonable cost, about £75 per litre (about $100). The following year it had gone up to £90. OK, I can live with that… But then in March 2017 a cyclone hit NE Madagascar – where all the Vanilla orchids are grown – just two weeks before the harvest was to begin. The crop that year was wiped out. Overnight the price of Vanilla Beans quadrupled, as did the cost of top-grade Vanilla Extract. What would have cost me £90 one day, cost £360 the following day. And the prices of Vanilla beans and extract have stayed up at that level ever since, which is hard to explain. I believe one would need to examine the politics of Madagascar to find the answer.

So I had a choice: use less extract, or raise the retail price of our ice cream. I did neither. We did not put up prices, and I refused to cut back on the Vanilla Extract. I chose instead to live with our #1 best-seller having a pitiful margin. I assumed this was a temporary situation. That was a wrong assumption..!

For a couple of years we did have our larger 500gm tub of Vanilla ice cream at a higher price than our other 15 flavours. (With the small 125ml tubs, no price difference.) But this was awkward, both for us in the office, and for the shops we supply. So 6 months ago we had a general price increase – due to the tremendous inflationary pressures of the global situation just now – and we got rid of that two-tier pricing. We simply chose to slightly increase our margins on the other flavours, and have an acceptable margin on our Vanilla tubs.

It of course is possible to save costs (at the expense of quality) by choosing a lesser grade of Vanilla Extract. But in my view that is rarely a wise choice in a crowded field. A race towards the mediocre? Not an attractive proposition.

In 2017 and 2018, many smaller brands of ice cream simply stopped making Vanilla altogether, due to the very high cost of the extract. I know one company in Scotland that began heavily promoting their “Traditional” ice cream flavour – the one with no flavour compounds added – and made no mention of the fact that they had dropped their Vanilla ice cream altogether at that point.

So try tasting your choices of Vanilla ice cream. It should have a clear and lovely rich taste of the natural Vanilla orchid bean. If it doesn’t, then maybe they are using Vanillin, or maybe they are simply using a very small amount of Vanilla Extract in their product.

Further note… A few days ago we took part in a major Scottish ice cream competition, which highlighted some of the issues with Vanilla. In the Vanilla category, the winning ice cream was one described as “Double Cream Vanilla”. I went to their stand and bought some, to see what it was like, after all, they won the Gold award. It certainly had a LOT of cream, much more than most people would consider the right level – but as a one-off I suppose it will cater to certain tastes. But the shocking thing was that neither I nor my 32 yr old son could detect any hint of Vanilla in it. We also tried a Vanilla ice cream from a different company at this, the Royal Highland Show. The other company’s ice cream had won Silver. It was a good ice cream, and did actually taste of Vanilla, albeit weaker than I would have liked.

This reflects the high price of natural Vanilla Extract these days: ice cream makers are using less and less of it in making their Vanilla ice cream. This wasn’t news to me. But I was shocked that the judges awarded Gold to a Vanilla ice cream which had no taste of Vanilla in it at all.

Rainbow – L.A. Connection

Classic.

Putin issues DEVASTATING warning to NATO if they even try it

In 1965, a French lawyer André-François Raffray found an apartment for investment purposes. Jeanne Calment a 90 year old woman was the owner of that property with no living heirs.

Instead of purchasing it, he struck a deal with Jeanne that he would pay her a sum of 2,500 francs, about £330 a month, until she died after which he would get to keep the apartment.

He was only 47 years old at the time, so he thought he would have plenty of time with the apartment to benefit from once she’s gone. 30 years later, he died at the age of 77 and on the other hand Jeanne was still kicking it at 120.

Not only that, after his death his family had to keep paying Jeanne for two more years when she met her maker at the ripe age of 122 years.

It is believed that she received more than double the value of that property.

Her only comment on the situation was, “In life, one sometimes makes bad deals.”

Maybe, she was able to live longer as the stress of paying bills was eliminated due to this deal.

Don’t laugh, but my first real introduction to Oz was Paul Hogan’s ‘Crocodile Dundee.’ The images in that movie resonated with me as a teen in 1980s Texas. To me, Australia appeared to be hot, arid, and tinged with swagger and lots of cultural traits that a kid from Texas could readily identify. Paul Hogan was even wearing a cowboy hat and boots, for crissakes!

And later came Steve Irwin. – Same spirit, same bull-by-the-horns high energy and easy-going non-abrasiveness. What red-blooded young male wouldn’t like to kick up his heels at the local pub with a mate with a penchant for wrestling crocodiles?

I was in the U.S. Air Force when I got my chance. I received word they were looking for a few guys to go to Alice Springs for a few months. I quickly made my way to my squadron headquarters; before I even knew what I’d be doing there. ‘Screw it. I’ll figure it out,’ I thought. “By the way, where’s Alice Springs, exactly?” I said on my way out of the office.

“Oh, it’s right in the middle of ‘everything,’ I heard someone say. -Probably with a bit of sarcasm that I didn’t pick up on.

Now, if you are as naive about Australia as I was, you frame Oz with the aforementioned croc-hunters, and a whole slew of silly-looking animals that are either exceptionally cute or exceptionally deadly. If you’re more clued-in, you may even throw in Hugh Jackman, Kylie Minogue , the Hemsworth brothers, or if you’re old-school like me, the whole 5-feet tall AC/DC clan. Maybe you even picture beautiful Sydney with that iconic opera house too. But again, these were mostly pre-Internet days. It still wasn’t apparent to me where I was actually going.

I was back to my office when an office-mate inquired: “Why are you so happy?”

“I’m going to Australia”

“Where in Australia?” He asked.

“Alice Springs. It’s in the middle of everything.” I quoted.

“You mean it’s in the middle of nowhere! Dude, that place blows! There’s nothing there! You’ll be bored out of your skull!”

My heart sank. I raced to the local library after work to get on the Internet. Yep. Smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. Trying to find a silver lining, I decided to see how I could use my off-duty time in Alice Springs to go sightseeing in Sydney. That would have been nice, until I realized that Alice Springs is a full 1700 mile drive from Sydney, and just about anyplace else. I thought I was going to be snapping pictures of the Sydney Harbour bridge, but I was actually on my way to ‘Walkabout Creek.’ Ugh.

I was relieved when I landed in Brisbane. In my naivete,’ I didn’t know much about it. But it was BIG. – A lot bigger than most Americans probably know. However, I was going to be there only a few hours before I left for Alice Springs, so I toured the Airport and bought a few silly, cliche’-driven tourist trinkets for the family; a refrigerator magnet with a kangaroo, and a shark-having-tourists-over-for-lunch t-shirt, etc.

You may laugh, but I couldn’t believe how everybody sounded Australian. It was like I was in a movie! You see, Australia is delphic and Australians are elusive to many Americans to this day, because stars like Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Eric Bana, Iggy Azalia and Keith Urban hide their accents so damn well. Australians in Hollywood are sneaky chameleons…

But alas, I left Brisbane for the netherworld of Alice Springs. Now, you may think I was going to tell you that Alice Springs was a sparrow-fart town in the middle of nowhere compared to Brisbane. And you’d be right. But everything that I dreaded about Alice Springs was everything that I ended up loving about Alice Springs. I got to travel to Ayers Rock, do a couple of horseriding tours, and even found a comfortable seat at the local pub. I learned that kangaroos, endearing to most Americans, can be pests and road hazards. The few crocodiles I saw in the Northern Territory were as small and lethargic as the gators in the Florida Everglades. I never saw one of those legendary funnel web spiders either, though I persisted in searching my shoes for one every morning, lest I become the ‘Stupid Dead ‘Yank’ who Didn’t Check his Shoes’ in the local newspaper…

As for the local people, there weren’t near as many wearing cowboy hats and boots in the Northern Territory as I believed there would be. But everyone was really cool. There is a rugged, independence about the people of ‘Alice’ that I really enjoyed. Even if you live in a city in the Outback, you have to be a bit of an outdoorsman on the side. The people there seemed blissfully ignorant of life along the coast, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Had a few mates at a local pub that liked to talk American politics, but they soon bored with that. I didn’t defend well because I had no interest in it. They also picked at me a bit too, but I had learned long ago to avoid negative reactions to that stuff. That gets you respect, and they soon embraced me (not literally). The conversation soon became like any local watering hole I knew in Texas. -Sports, women and favorite beers. They got a good laugh at the ‘Fosters is Australian for beer’ tag line that was popular in the U.S. commercials. Seems that any self-respecting person in Oz didn’t agree.

My four months soon passed and I said goodbye to ‘me mates’ with a firm handshake; heading out the next morning on a Qantas red-eye flight to Honolulu. My stint in Oz was among the most memorable times in my life.

I saw 56 countries and lived in seven of them in my Air Force career, not including the 4 months I spent in Oz. But there was only one country to which I ever seriously contemplated immigrating during my time abroad. -Australia. About a year after I left, I found out about a program to get people to immigrate there, but in the end, I decided to stay in the States to be nearer my family. It was a promise I had made to my mother throughout my 23 years in the U.S. military.

But I’ll never forget the friendships I made there, and I often wonder whatever happened to the people I knew there. All of the movie-driven cliches were eroded by my time there, and I was left with a different perspective. So, what do I think of Australia?

Well, it’s a damn fine country.

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Gimme Three Steps

Image: Me with my black Labrador Retriever in our garden in Central California.

Well as a Briton, who does live in the United States of America, and has done so for over 16 years, I think I am qualified to answer the question as to why I would want to continue living here.

My answer may not the often antagonistic comments here on Quora, but I will be sincere in my answer.

I was a reluctant immigrant to the United States, it was never a dream to leave my home in Cheshire for the central valley of California. But I met an American woman who moved to live with me in England for the period of my mother’s life. My mother being my only close relative, after her death, my promise to look into moving to the US was called in. So two years into our marriage, we up rooted from England and moved to be close to my wife’s family in California.

Then I found work, found that dispite some bad experiences, the heat of a central valley Summer, only 116 degrees Fahrenheit just a few days ago. Not even locals like that kind of heat. But then on New Years Day I can sit outside with my cup of PG Tips Tea and drink happily in a temperature more akin to a late British Spring Day.

I like the opportunity to do things. I have even tried my hand at television production in a real television studio. There was never the opportunity to do that in or around my hometown in England. Now you may think anyone can have a YouTube channel, butt that is true, but my television program was broadcast television, not originally on YouTube,. It is now, just search for Blindside Fresno.

I found less social anxiety. I grew up on a council estate, what Americans may call social housing or projects. Working class you may say, the son of a gardener, when later my mother and I bought a shop, convenience store, wow the reaction from friends “Who do you think you are? Lord Muck?” Social climber extraordinaire. When I married my wife as I mentioned an American and they found that I married a school teacher, “Well woo hoo! Lardy dah!” In the US no one even bats an eyelid at my social creep upward.

Americans are in general more interested in the British? They rarely know much about us other than the stereotype, which is sad and very annoying. The stereotype doesn’t fit me too well, except the possible fact that if someone steps on my toe, I say “Sorry!”

As for the stereotypical grumbles, yes it is bad when visiting the Emergency Room to have them frisk you for a weapon or to have them ask for your credit card for a downpayment. Before anyone complains, that has happened to me. Then when I go out for a quiet coffee I can find someone in my local coffee shop who is certain that everyone within a mile radius is interested in their private conversation. Yes America has irritating loud Americans too, and many Americans hate them just as much as we British.

The sound of gunfire is also never far away. But then in my youth in the lawless realms of Cheshire gun fire was never far away either, just there the gunfire was aimed at crows magpies, Pheasant or grouse, not a fellow citizen.

Here I could drive, now I am blind my wife drives, from the sea shore to over 10,000 feet in a few hours. From the ocean to mountain tops with actual countryside for mile after mile, rather than a scrubby patch that calls itself “Green Belt”

Of course you can throw in that some of the food is awful, there is a shopping mall at every corner and the cars are just huge as are many of the people.

But like it or loathe it, the United States is now my home and I for one will not be looking to leave in the foreseeable future.

I Drink Alone – George Thorogood and the Destroyers

Actions. Actions, as we all know, speak far louder than words. Sadly for the world the simple action of refusing to heed an American throat-clearing is interpreted by America as “hostile aggression”.

Gunboat diplomacy. American diplomacy is never anything other. It can’t be. Once Peary’s 1853 “or else we’ll fire-bomb incinerate your home with you still in it” coerced Japanese acquiescence that silent“or else” of an American naval strike force ‘leaning against one’s door-jamb stiletto-paring their nails’ made every American ‘negotiation’ a de facto coercion. The only change to America’s unspoken “or else…” ‘’heavily armed pathological goon at the door’ negotiation strategy is the size of the goons and guns. And one other thing. That thing being? America has ‘reduced the homes of the resistant to ruins with their families huddled in unarmed terror inside. America, having found a sure-fire way to guarantee itself a win, hasn’t seriously rethought the policy over the 169 years since America first threatened to fire-bomb Edo.

American negotiation policy change has never strayed from “we’re going to need a bigger boat”. The current ‘bigger [gun]boat’ being a Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier and lethal entourage. Republican to the bone Secretary of State Hank Kissinger declared America’s policy truth when shrugging “An aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons of ‘diplomacy’.”

As the brilliant song-smith Paul Simon wrote: “Still a man hears what he wants to hear/ and disregards the rest.” — explaining Americans’ beliefs about how the rest of the world judges them. To paraphrase a certain little green sage “The listening skills . . . they are not strong with America”

Leaders around the world know that it’s futile to try to tell America anything. Except an ego-stroke.

To America listening isn’t part of its national job description. To America — and to the American consensus — America is always, at bottom line, right, ‘in the right’, and ‘within its rights’. Knowing America’s congenital disdain and incapacity to listen to and consider the perspectives of other peoples? Few nations’ leaders waste breath on anything but token effort to negotiate with the hubris-deafened American nation. The Peoples and leaders of NATO & Co. have long deluded ourselves we needn’t fear intentional harm by America. Especially so we in the rest of the G7.

The global majority haven’t had such delusions since . . . well . . . since forever. By 1960 they had evolved as a self-preservation strategy flocking together in a 120-strong herd called ‘T’he NAM’. The Non-Aligned Movement couldn’t save those on the flock’s fringes from American predation — but it was the best the 2/3 of the world striving to ‘bootstrap’ themselves out of their colonial ruination had.

After WW2 the global playing field was, for every practical purpose, “geo-political governance of the global village, by America & Co., for America & Co”. Of that fact all those America & Co. dismisses as “The Rest of The World’ were inescapably aware.

The UN was shaped to maintain the status quo as America & Co. saw profit in it. This is why as fast as formerly colonized nations ‘held their noses’ and joined the UN they also joined the NAM.

Until the 2010s all ‘The Rest of The World’ had was the NAM’s tenuous moral support. If that America naval wolf-pack showed up off of your shores . . . kiss your illusion of sovereignty g’bye.

But come the 2010s did. And along with them came a plan to empower the NAM members to invulnerability from being besieged by America’s ‘projectors of power’ carrier task forces — and American sanctions.

The raw hopeful potential of the NAM inspired the Belts & Roads Initiative cooperative.

The above map presents the over-arching global geo-political/economic communities determining current and emerging security both of sovereign and economic sustainability. If it’s greenish then it’s that “The Rest of The World’ ‘The West’’ keeps dismissing. The over-arching organization of the 149 of 193 nations — of that 77% of all countries — is two-fold. Their ideals-informed community is the Non-Aligned Movement. Their practicality– informed community is the anti-hegemonic Belts & Roads Initiative + its AIIB Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The BRI reinforces the efforts of regional communities — the African Union on that continent; continental Eurasia’s Shanghai Cooperative Organization; and Southeast Asia’s ASEAN. Further reinforcing this “The Rest of The World’ is BRICS.

In March of this year (2022) America decreed imposition of a sanction siege on Russia. That America and its 5 Eyes posse traditionally buy and sell little with Russia meant the sacrifices would be made by, well, by whoever else chose not to buy commodities and goods at the price point they’d determined their best option.

The green-hued 3/4 of the world chorused an “enough is enough, America” by ignoring that American decree. Actions speaking loud and clear their dismissal of America as a threat to them going forward. Their complex networks have rendered them able to ignore gunboat threats and sanction threats alike, There’s no need for ‘gum-flapping’ — ignoring America’s efforts to be accepted as hegemon does the trick.

Why doesn’t the USA just chill and pull all its forces from around the world back home, give up interfering in global politics, mind its own business, try and look after its own people and realise it hasn’t got a very smart populace and just stay out of everyone else’s lives?

USA: GO HOME AND STAY HOME FOREVER.

NOT NEEDED, NOT WANTED, GET LOST!!!

The Medvedev Map

“The Medvedev Map” was posted by former Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, currently deputy head of the Security Council, on July 30, 2022.

.

Chicago – (1973) “Saturday in the Park” & “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”

Which is worse, drinking one pint every day for six days or drinking seven pints once a week?

What’s worse, taking 1 Advil a day every day or taking 7 Advil once a week?

Let’s use a healthier example. What’s worse, eating one apple a day every day or eating 7 apples once a week? Regardless the same logic applies.

Let’s dive into the pharmacokinetics of all of this. There is a concept of the therapeutic window which is the region between the start of getting a therapeutic response and the start of getting undesired responses i.e. side effects. Side effects occur when the concentration of your drug/entity/poison surpass that critical concentration.

There is also the concept of your CMax, which is the maximum concentration you’ll get after ingesting something. That CMax will be directly proportional to your dose. In this case, 7 times as much. Not only are you pushing your concentration higher thus moving you above the threshold where other even worse side effects can occur, you’ll also be above your adverse range for a longer period of time.

So taking more at onetime is always the more hazardous and dangerous scenario.

Unless you can find away to do controlled release of your alcohol once ingested.

Does the future of US-China relations look very bad?

Look bad?

It is bad, and deteriorating by the year.

The most concerning is the re-orientation of the US military since barack’s pivot to Asia strategy.

The war on terror in the middle east has reached sundown under Joe, as budgets are redirected towards indopacom, already the largest command with twice the number of ships deployed than the rest combined.

The past decade has seen incredible militarization in and around the waters of China, with control of the SCS central to the ambitions of both the pla and USN.

With the difficulties encountered producing clean sheet 21st century designs, the current USN plans calls for approximately 50 Virginia class nuclear fast attack subs and 90 arleigh burke class guided missile destroyers to turn the SCS, ECS and yellow sea into a shooting gallery. Production has been increased to 2 ships a year for each class to meet expansion schedule, at a cost of 11-12 billion a year.

Australia is joining in the fun and games with its own fast attack sub derived off the Virginia platform, slated to enter service in the 2040s, boosting indopacom’s attack sub operation.

Guam and neighboring tinian are undergoing rapid expansion and fortification as a key naval asset, particularly for the submarine fleet.

America is also coercing and cajoling pacific partners to increase their military budget, in order to subsidize indopacom expansion.

All these and more point to a forced realignment of world order, just like the American insistence on the indopacific (hence indopacom) rather than the more inclusive and familiar Asia pacific.

This is a dry powder keg.

War appears more inevitable by the year, as anti-chinese rhetoric and diplomacy increasingly dominate American politics.

The country may be deeply divided domestically, but there are two issues with bipartisan support: Russia and China being “the enemy”.

What are some “forgotten” dishes and recipes that few people make anymore?

A few months ago, my husband and I were watching “Desk Set,” starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. In it, there’s a scene where he asks, what’s for dessert, and she says, Floating Islands.

I’d never heard of this. I asked my husband, a pastry chef, “What’s that?” He knew that it was meringue and cream but not the exact recipe. I googled it and, in fact, it’s poached meringue in creme anglaise. My husband actually said, “No one really makes it any more.”

Then, last week, we went out to eat at a French restaurant for dinner and, lo and behold, Ile Flottante was on the menu. I was so excited to try it! It was lovely and delicious and elegant and old school, and basically Katherine Hepburn if she were a dessert. I recommend it.