78% of American divorces are initiated by women.
Think about that for a moment.
There was this guy that I went to college with. He was a real life Casanova. I mean it, a day did not go by without out him bedding (or boning) a new girl. He went through them like a sick person goes through tissues. And all us “normal” guys were terribly jealous of him.
I swear that of the 60 or so girls on our dorm floor, he must have had sex with perhaps 45 of them. Pretty damn impressive… seeing that I was a virgin throughout my college years.
This was in the 1970s. And yeah. I was the nerd bodybuilder planning to be a spaceman.
Virginal. No distractions.
On. My. Grind.
…
Ah. Memories.
During one of our Friday dorm parties, while I was a tripping on blotter (Acid = LSD), I noticed one of the girls on our floor; a particularly beautiful girl, flirting with him.
And myself, with all my inhibitions set to “off” went up to her and asked her point-blank.
“Why are you flirting with him”?
And I never forgot her answer.
“It’s fun”.
…
Duh.
…
Of course, this was a decade before Cindy Lauper sang “Girls just wanna have fun”….
And while I remembered the answer, I didn’t manage to put two plus two together. i still couldn’t figure out girls. Ah, perhaps it was because I was so fixated on “my grind” and trying to fly spaceships etc….
Which happened… well, sort of… don’t ya know.
…
Guys… men… we are too simple. If a woman wants something she gets it. Even at the detriment of her relationships, marriages, or physical health.
Keep your life simple.
Accept that women do what they want… FIRST.
And continue to do so until they hit an unyielding wall, And, as a man… our rules, relationships, structures and beliefs are that wall.
(Read that twice.)
And when that point comes… be prepared to… walk away.
Better for you.
Better for her.
Don’t fight it. Accept it.
And with that truth, we start with today…
As a therapist, what’s the most horrible thing a patient has confessed to you that no one else knows about?
‘That no one else knows about’ does not apply to my answer. But the most horrible thing was a schoolgirl aged about 15 came to see me when I was School Psychologist at her school. At the end of the session she said she had written a diary and had it with her and would I care to read it, as she wanted me to know what it was about.
I took it home to read that night in preparation for seeing her the next day. It was full of clearly suicidal thoughts. She was an alcohol user, too, and had already done some self-harming. I had to cope with the revelations overnight, spending my night not so much in sleep as in deep concern. To add to the difficulty, her mother’s sister had not long previously committed suicide. This would be a further load on her mother.
I did see her and was obliged to speak with her mother and get permission for referring her to an agency with more specialist capacity to help her. There was some opposition to the idea, but in the end the permission was given.
But knowing what she had revealed and not being able to do anything about it immediately was very stressful.
Head of the Household
What were you doing wrong all along?
Boiling eggs.
I grew up in West Africa. We didn’t just boil eggs; we superboiled them. We threw them on the stove, boiled them for 15 or 20 minutes or so, then took them out very satisfied that the egg was well cooked.
It was as though we wanted to let the yolk know that we hated it, along with its ancestors, parents, siblings, and extended family. The yolk, understandably would come out of this process looking pallid, forlorn, and dejected. The pale yellow would be covered in an equally pale grey, with the overall appearance of a strange, lost planet.
Why did you have to treat me so?
For my eternal fortune, at the age of 15, I moved to the United States, a land that was said to be paved with gold. I didn’t find much gold, truth be told, but I found the concept of a hard-boiled egg, which made me wonder whether there was such a thing as a soft-boiled egg.
Is it like when I accidentally “undercook” my eggs?
I googled it and found a chart like this:
Oooooooooooh!
I’ve never looked back.
This is what I made tonight.
This, my friends, is what you call perfection. The yolk is smiling at you suggestively, sending you an amorous look, beckoning you.
Come hither!
How can you resist? Of course you will kiss and treasure and savor it.
C’est ça, la douceur de vivre.
Yes, yes, it’s me in the picture. I’m wearing boring socks tonight. Deal with it.
What was a red flag that made you stop talking to a person immediately?
My grandfather on my dad’s side, as a child me and my younger sister would visit our Nan and Grandad every other week just to spend time with them. My Nan loved having us at times, my Grandad however was a different story. He would always drink every time we went round there and constantly sat on the couch.
On one occasion I was play fighting with my Nan in the living room once and out of nowhere he screamed at me from the top of his lungs to “take it in the other f***ing room!”. My mood was instantly killed and I remember hiding from him in a cleaning cupboard because I was terrified. There was another time where I accidentally turned off the lights for the living room, he screamed at me saying “Turn those f***ing lights back on or I’ll throw you onto the street!”. When my mum came back to the house that night I was hiding behind her and she had never seen me so clingy so she knew something was wrong.
When we got home that night I told my parents what he had said to me about the lights and how he had made me cry on multiple occasions that I began hiding in the cleaning cupboard. My younger sister was also a witness for every occasion he was horrible to me so she confirmed my story to them. After this they decided he wasn’t going to see us as much as he used to.
We found out many years later that his drinking caught up with him and he was suffering from cirrhosis. He also had a cancer in his leg that he’s now recovered from. When the whole family found out about his cancer, all my uncles said they wouldn’t miss him if it killed him because of how terrible of a dad he was when bringing them up.
I also recently discovered that before I was born, My Grandad and Nan had asked our parents to look after their house while they went away. They forgot to mention to our parents that they owed this criminal some rent money, so one night this crook comes breaking the door down and demands the money. My parents being completely ignorant to the truth of course refused to pay the rent and so they contacted my Nan and Grandad asking what this guy’s business is. They tell my parents the truth but then refuse to pay the rent, saying they assumed their son (my dad) would’ve payed it for them. They had both already refused to pay the rent so as a result this crook gives my dad a sucker punch to the face in front of my uncle’s daughter who was there at the time.
Because of this, most of the family don’t associate or even think about him anymore. My mother has real beef with them both because of the incident with the rent, when I told her about the threat my Grandad gave me and how my Nan said nothing to defend me, that was the icing on the cake for both my parents and as a result we talk to them less.
We’re in an okay place now but we hardly talk to them anymore, we only see them once a year now, sometimes there are years we don’t see them once. My uncles each have different reasons for not associating with him anymore but I’d be here all day if I wrote them out.
Will Chinese, Japanese and Koreans ever co-exist? And for that matter, can the world and China ever co-exist at all? As far as current events go,that seems impossible.
Of course it can and it will.
But first the U.S. that orchestrated the break up of the world and the creator of animosities amongst us must accept reality first and recognised that it no longer has the ability and the means to war monger any more.
The western media must accept that sowing hates is not good for humanity, spewing hates hurt humanity and destroying earth. They need to know that lying is lowdown and simply despicable and it makes many people ignorant and naive.
Westerners need to reject them and condemn them and stop reading or listening to them. Westerners must want the truth not lies, propaganda, fabrication and half truths to fit bias hateful narratives. The western media so discord and hatred on anyone or any society that refuse to be submissive and subservient to the west.
The U.S. led them into this depth of crisis it must lead them out of it. Otherwise the 87% of the global south will leave you behind, they are moving on. Germany, Japan, Korea must stop being a faithful brain dead U.S. lackey and a lowly dog.
UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, grow some balls or forever be US dog, you deserve to sink with the world’s biggest trouble maker the U.S. Another dozen or so dog nations. Rise up and abandoned the U.S. EU abandon NATO.
Together you helped the U.S. bring the world into a chaotic, dangerous place ready to erupt into another world war but one that can end the entire human race. Act before it is too late. Let there be strong pillars of powers working together doing good and not keep one power doing bad.
Asian Cucumber Salad
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons lime juice
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 large cucumber
- 1 small onion, thinly sliced
- 1 red jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
- Minced fresh cilantro
Instructions
- Mix lime juice, water, sugar and salt in non-reactive bowl.
- Cut cucumber lengthwise into halves, then seed and thinly slice. Add cucumber, onion and pepper to lime juice mixture; toss.
- Cover and refrigerate, stirring occasionally, at least 1 hour.
- Sprinkle with cilantro.
What’s the most obnoxious instance of America-centric behavior you’ve ever witnessed?
Not most obnoxious but a good example of why Europeans view Americans as obnoxious.
We were in a resort sauna in the Italian alps with 3 other couples (2 German, 1 Swiss) and single German woman. We’d enjoyed a couple of peaceful and wonderful rounds together.
A few minutes in to our 3rd round we heard them coming – Americans! They were talking and cackling very loudly. They opened the sauna hot room door and looked around – holding the door open, letting the heat out and cold air in. They received a loud round of ‘close the door’ in 3 different languages.
A few minutes later an American couple entered the sauna in their swimsuits. One of the German women told them that swimsuits aren’t allowed in saunas. The American’s scoffed and said certainly not and proceeded to sit down. I tried to explain to them that suits are indeed not allowed because of bacterias and odors. And that they also should have showered before entering the sauna. They slowly began to get the picture. They eventually left and we later learned that they’d complained to the resort mgmt about the no swimsuits rule and us.
Here’s the thing. There were numerous places in the hotel information stating that the sauna area (large changing and shower area with two saunas and a turkish bath) was a nude area and that suits were not allowed in the saunas or turkish baths themselves. And that this was a QUIET area.
There were big signs entering the spa and sauna area that said ‘SILENCE’, ‘QUIETNESS IS EXPECTED’ and ‘IN THE SPA YOU SHOULD TALK LIKE YOU ARE IN CHURCH’ and other sayings. If you closed your mouth for a few seconds you’d realize that there were a number of conversations happening but you couldn’t hear them. Except for Americans.
There were signs above the hooks where people hung their robes that stated not to wear swimsuits in the sauna. This is also standard throughout much of Europe.
The hotel manager told me that this was not an unusual event with Americans. I understand people being uncomfortable with the nudity element and that’s fine and those who are uncomfortable just don’t use the sauna. FWIW, about half of Germans and other Europeans aren’t comfortable with it either and simply don’t use public saunas. I have a fear of heights so I won’t go on most chairlifts or trams which means I can’t see many spectacular areas of the Alps. That’s life.
I think it takes a special kind of ignorance to not realize how loud and obnoxious Americans are, given how often it’s written about. Yet Americans continue to act loud, obnoxious and ignorant.
It has to crash
I fired my therapist and I regret it now. I’m having a hard time thinking she won’t be in my life. What would she think if I emailed saying never mind?
Because I worked with persons with Borderline Personality Disorder I was used to being fired. I enjoyed the phase of therapy where I could ask “remember all the times you wanted to fire me and the couple of times you actually did?”
As I type I remember seeing a guy with BPD who fired me and stayed away for three weeks. I had a hunch, so I kept his slot open. When he returned he told me he fired me for “not caring.” That was because he was pretty sure I was yawning at the last session. It was a great starter for talking about interpreting vs. over-interpreting social cues from other people.
It finally became a joke between us. “Any cruel evil unfeeling bastards yawn at you recently? Obviously torture and death is the only answer for them.”
One of my favorite techniques with Borderline folks in recovery was wild humor like that. They often lived and felt in extreme ways and had a hard time finding their “middle.” Taking a feeling to a silly and impossible extreme could prompt a response of “well, maybe not that bad.”
Developing the ability to scale feelings is critical for folks with BPD.
Long story short, make an appointment with your therapist and get on with it.
Can India afford to ban Chinese products?
I was in a Video Conference yesterday. There was this slick controller from Cisco. I picked it up and turned it around to see the sticker that said: “Made in China”.
We have all heard the phrase. So much so that it has become a cultural meme, like this creative advertisement.
Every machine, and I mean it in the broad sense of the word, people use, almost certainly, has components made by the most populous nation of the world.
We are at a stage where manufacturing is synonymous with China. China’s total exports in 2017 were more than the GDP of India, at ~$2.26 trillion.
US is close with $1.5 trillion, but there is the catch.
US exports are primarily expensive stuff like airplanes, gems, assembled cell phones etc. But China makes the “cheaper” things — the components of your phones, the clothes you buy, the filaments in your bulbs, the shoes you are wearing right now.
More than a decade ago, a US family tried to rid themselves of all things “made in China”
[2] . Here are some excerpts from their experience.
When our son, then 4, needed new shoes it took me two weeks of frantic mall trips and phone calls across the country before I located Italian-made sneakers. (They cost almost $70, an obscene amount, and I bought him just that one pair of shoes all year to compensate for my excess.)
We boiled water for coffee every morning after our drip machine broke and the only affordable replacements we could find were made in China. Kevin stole —he likes to say borrowed—sunglasses from the lost-and-found at our kids’ preschool when he needed new ones and the only ones that fit our budget were made in China. We were barred from the market for humane mousetraps (I made my own), birthday candles (we used votive candles on our cakes instead) and the monster trucks and light sabers that our son dreamed of all year.
As December approached, we made lousy homemade Christmas presents, spent too much on toys from Germany and waited for the year, and our boycott, to fade into history.
And Chinese manufacturing has become even more pervasive and ingrained in the last ten years. Good luck with your attempt!
What’s the most embarrassing misconception you’ve ever held?
Originally Answered: What’s the most embarassing misconception you’ve ever held?
When my best friend and I were around 16 years old, we always did homework at her house, as my house was usually occupied (my mother was… friendly).
Anyway, one afternoon, we were in the middle of English Lit. homework, and I asked her if she had a dictionary. She said, “I have an Onary, but not Webster’s.”
I had never heard of an Onary dictionary before, but I figured it was no big deal. She told me where it was, and I went to the bookshelf and grabbed it.
The front cover was missing. Across the first page, in bold capital letters was ONARY.
I started laughing, and I couldn’t stop. She came over and started laughing, too, asking me what was so funny. I said, “Sardee, your dictionary is missing the front cover. It’s a Webster’s dictionary.”
She said, “I don’t get it. It says ‘ONARY’, right there.”
So, I grabbed a piece of notebook paper, laid it next to the book, and wrote DICTI.
I’ve never seen someone go from confused, to embarrassed, to doubled over in silent laughter, so fast in all my life. She and I laughed so hard, for so long, that our stomachs ached for days, afterward. Every once in a while, over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to bring it up, and it’s never failed to make us giggle. In fact, one of her sons, just yesterday, asked if anybody still bought dictionaries, because we can just Google everything, now.
I couldn’t even answer him. I just got up, told him to go ask his mother, and walked outside. Two minutes later, here comes Sardee. I just looked at her, and she said, “Shut up.”
She’s kinda awesome. Even if she was dippy in high school.
Power
Was the battle of Stalingrad really as bad as shown in the movie Enemy at the Gates or was it an exaggeration?
Originally Answered: Was the battle of Stalingrad really as bad as in Enemy at the Gates or is this overexaggeration?
Really as bad?
Oh, you sweet summer child.
Was there any cannibalism in the movie? There was at Stalingrad.
Did you see any wounded with gangrene and maggots crawling in their wounds? No? Maybe a bit too much for Hollywood, eh?
How about extended scenes of vicious and literal hand-to-hand fighting, with the combatants using knives, spades, teeth and whatever else came to hand on each other. No? Maybe those were left on the cutting room floor?
I don’t recall seeing anyone crawling along on their hands and knees with their intestines hanging down and getting tangled in their legs, while their enemy jeer and laugh from cover a few yards away.
And we never saw anyone pouring their toes out of their boots, with a lovely long lingering reaction shot of the rotting frozen flesh on their own face because of frostbite.
I don’t recall seeing anyone screaming as they were burned to death, either. And the film doesn’t really convey that ‘roasting flesh’ smell too well. Human flesh smells like pork!
‘Enemy at the Gates’ is an entertainment product. It’s designed to be able to be watched while eating popcorn. War, on the other hand, is the worst thing that organised groups of humans can do to one another. So don’t compare the two. A movie cannot be compared to reality.
What’s the most incredible coincidence that ever happened to you?
My late husband died 11 years ago. I have a box full of his things. One of the things he loved having was this old alarm clock. There was certain dings and scratches on it that made it unique. At one point it broke and he took it apart to solder some wires together. It was obviously a homemade repair, but you couldn’t tell once it was put back together. Well after he died, we ( our son and I ) moved several times. At one point our things were being stored in a friends garage. For some reason, i never got my husband’s beloved alarm clock back, it some how got mistaken for junk and was tossed out. I was very upset over the loss of his alarm clock. Several years later i was living on another side of town and a friend stopped by on mothers day to show me a box of things she found in a dumpster. ( a weird hobby i know) I noticed immediately an old alarm clock exactly like my late husbands. I picked it up and examined it, and i recognized the dings and scratches on it. So i flipped it over and unscrewed the bottem to inspect the inside where my husband had made repairs on it. It was unmistakably my husbands old alarm clock, and my friend graciously handed it over.
SF Hardware stores are all closing…
Doctors, what is something a patient didn’t mention that turned out to be important?
This is a really odd story.
I was in clinic, seeing patients when one of my colleagues came up to me. He was a pleasant fellow who always looked like an un-made bed. Shirt rumpled, tie askew. I hasten to say, he was an excellent physician.
“Maureen, can I curb-side you?”
“Sure. Whatcha got?
“Twenty-year-old woman with complaint of throat pain. I saw her a couple of days ago. I investigated everything I can think of but she’s back with the same complaint. Now telling me she can’t swallow”
“Trauma? Fever? Weight loss?…”
“No.”
We puzzled and puzzled.
“Probably send her to GI for a scope.”
“Maybe just do a quick x-ray to see if anything obvious is going on structurally.”
Off the young lady goes to X-ray.
Colleague sticks his head into my office.
“You have got to see this.”
I take a look at the film.
We both shake our heads.
“How did that get there?”
On the film, plain as day, is the outline of a toothbrush, lodged in her throat.
“What did she say when you showed her the film?”
“She said that she wondered where that went.”
“What’s she look like?
“Painfully thin.”
“I’m guessing an eating disorder. She was trying to induce vomiting and went too far and lost her grip. She’s too embarrassed to tell you.”
That turned out to be correct.
So, yes, the fact that she had lodged a toothbrush, deep in her throat, would have been useful to know.
Where is the praise?
What has happened to the 1960s hippies, and where are they now?
Mostly they’re aging and retiring.
When my parents first met, my dad was living in a teepee in the woods, and my mom was living on a commune that could only be reached by boat.
When my older brother was conceived, they decided that being that remote would not be safe in case of complications with the pregnancy, so they moved somewhere a bit closer to town. They got some land, cleared it, dowsed and dug a well, and my dad started building our house.
My brother was born. I was born. The foundations of the house were laid, and the bottom floor was built. 4 rooms total. We moved in. My sister was born. Dad kept building. When I was about 4–5, we got electricity. That meant an electric pump, and running water.
When I was 11, the second floor was mostly done, which meant more rooms. I got a bedroom to myself. Mom got a job “in town”. We got an indoor toilet. That flushed.
The third floor got done when I was in high school. Mom worked as a youth counselor in town. We gradually got to be more “in the world”.
The folks split after my first year of college. Dad kept the house, Mom moved into town.
Dad finally finished the house and sold it. It was really way too big for one guy to live in. He died about 15 years ago.
My mom is 70 now. My brother owns an organic farm; she helps him out with canning and preserving his produce, so those old back to the land skills still see some use. Mom does grief counseling and hospice care as a volunteer. They never really lost their hippie ideals, but they modified them as dictated by circumstance and life.
As a doctor, has a patient ever surprised you in any way?
The first time I met her, she was in jail. She was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and plastic slides. The officer undid her handcuffs so I could examine her and he waited outside the exam room.
She was pregnant. I always ask my incarcerated patients why they are in jail (mostly in case it was for killing their former obstetrician). Invariably they will say “it’s for violating parole“ and eventually we will get around to why they are on probation in the first place.
Her’s involved a significant amount of theft.
I was immediately disturbed and put off by her handmade swastika tattoo.
She was always polite and respectful. She was released from jail prior to giving birth. She gave birth to a beautiful baby and was a conscientious mom and did a nice job breast-feeding.
She saw our lactation educator many times to help with the breast-feeding. After a year her baby self-weaned.
But she kept pumping. And pumping. And pumping. Once a week she would drive 30 miles to the nearest NICU and drop off a freezer full of breastmilk.
SHE DID THIS FOR TWO YEARS.
For two years she helped feed a NICU full of small and sick babies of every ethnicity and multiple nationalities.
She still has the swastika tattoo. Every year I see her I always look for it, hoping she will have had it covered up. I’ve never asked her about it.
I do hope that one day she covers it up.
But she is reminder to me that our worth is not simply equal to the worst thought and the stupidest decision we’ve ever made.
We are more than that.
Is America hoping for a war between China and Taiwan so they can rush over there as heroes?
US politicians want a Taiwan war. No doubt. Because MIC & politicians who buy MIC stocks feed on wars.
Warmonger Americans also want war because they think it is noble to support Taiwan democracy. Without understanding what is behind the war.
Let me share an article:
On the surface, it is noble, for a foreigner, to support Taiwan independence, in name of democracy or whatever.
Since WW2, 82% of riots/wars incl independence movements in the world are actually instigated by USA+allies. So as to control other’s strategic sovereignty, economy & natural resources. It is modern-day colonization without occupying other’s land.
No country will tolerate secession & subversion. I am sure not your country either. They will use military to stop secession when necessary. Biden deployed 10,000 armed personnel in the 2021/1/6 riot. UK also said they may use military to deal with Scotland independence.
In case of war, there are blood & deaths. If you cannot feel this pain, go to Ukraine & stay there for 6 months.
There may be legitimacy for independence. But we must know the history first. Otherwise we may accidentally support a devil instead of the righteous. Let me take the example of Tibet independence.
Before CPC China liberated Tibet in 1959, Mao Zedong had a 1-country-2-system, allowing Tibet to run their old system which was a slavery system. 5% of rich Tibetans OWNed 95% of Tibetans. Slaves sometimes fought with dogs for food. The worst part of cruelty was that owners could arbitrarily peel off (pretty) skins from slaves for crafts & gifts to foreigners. Pretty probably means young people’s skin. There is a museum in Tibet today to show this cruel history.
USA instigated Tibet independence in 1959 after USA lost the Korea war in early 1950’s.
When suppressing Tibet independence movement, China liberated Tibetan slaves at the same time. Today Tibetans have education & income, and can own business & property. It is only now they are treated like a human.
Next time when you as a foreigner support Tibetan independence, do not ask the 5% but the 95%. Do not ask those who live on political donation/corruption overseas & shout empty slogans. Instead ask those who work hard to earn an income to support life.
Likewise, dont ask the corrupted separatists in Taiwan who are, like the 5% of Tibetan, will only tell you China is bad, bad, bad. Try to independently learn Taiwanese history. Listen to the story of both sides – China & Taiwan. Ironically, it is the rebels whose propaganda stir foreigners’ emotion.
Remember: no country will allow secession & subversion. Not your country either.
Also remember: when there is war, there will be blood & deaths.
Never Ever
What did your mother say that made your jaw drop?
When I was in the eighth grade I had to bring home a report card with an F on it. For Spanish. Courtesy of Mrs. X.
I was a pretty good student, but I despised Mrs. X. She had the maturity of my fellow classmates and a mean streak a mile wide.
She was quite popular. Her mocking of the customs and ways of various Hispanic cultures always drew laughs from my fellow eighth graders. She taught us how laughably stupid and lazy Mexicans are for instance.
She also liked to gossip about other teachers. She once insinuated that a certain English teacher who was an ex-nun was probably lesbian.
I would rebel against her obnoxiousness by not doing homework and shrugging my shoulders when asked a question in class. I would aim for a 60 on all of the exams to show her I could do better if I wanted to.
I showed my report card to my mother who had to sign it. She saw A’s, one B (Math), and the F.
She asked me who my Spanish teacher was. I told her “Mrs. X.”
My mother said, “She’s an asshole.”
This is where my jaw dropped. My mother never swore!
She signed the report card and handed it back to me. Then she explained.
My mother was an RN at an urban hospital. She had trouble sometimes communicating with Spanish-speaking patients. She enrolled in an evening adult-ed conversational Spanish course at our local high school.
The teacher of the course was Mrs. X.
Ten minutes into the class my mother walked out. She thought Mrs. X was one of the most loathsome and obnoxious people she had ever met.
The weird thing is that my mother seemed almost proud of my F.
But she said “asshole.” That was the jaw dropper.
Lack of incentive
As a doctor, have you ever treated a patient you absolutely despised?
Absolutely. Many times. But one in particular comes to mind.
minor identifying features have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
A young mother in her early 20s broke up with her abusive boyfriend. A week later he ambushed her on her front porch, stabbing her over 30 times before stabbing himself once in the stomach. She coded shortly after arrival to the trauma bay but we were able to get her back. She had been stabbed so many times in the neck that the ragged end of her esophagus was dangling out. We rushed her to the OR and she ultimately survived and went home, but that is a story for another day.
Shortly after she came in, her ex-boyfriend arrived. His injury was not immediately life threatening but did require an operation, so after stabilizing her, I took him to the OR too, where he got a relatively minor operation. He remained in the hospital for several days after, however, because he was on suicide watch. So I rounded on him every day as I would any other patient, did wound care and other standard post-op care. He was polite, said “thank you, ma’am,” and we never discussed his ex-girlfriend or the circumstances that brought him to the hospital.
Does that mean I liked him? OH HELL NO. I thought he was the scum of the earth. I found myself thinking he should have stabbed himself as many times as he stabbed her. Better yet, just stab himself and leave her the hell alone. Oh, I despised him to the core.
So did one of my med students. So after the 3rd or 4th day rounding on him, she couldn’t take it anymore.
”How can you be so nice to him after what he did? He’s a horrible human being! He deserves to die!” she burst out.
”Maybe,” I replied. “But there are agents of justice and agents of mercy in the world, and we need both. As a doctor I am an agent of mercy. My job is to care for my patients and trust that the agents of justice will do their job just as well. Which I do.”
THE FIVE GLOBAL CONFLICT FRONTS OPENED BY THE US.
The war in Ukraine is one of the fronts in which the United States, in command of NATO, does not generate results in its favor
(Photo: Flickr)
Dec 14, 2023
The crossroads at which the Western establishment led by the United States finds itself has materialized in the concern of a political sector inside and outside that country. The war in Gaza threatens to reduce US arms supplies to Taiwan, as does the war in Ukraine. In recent days, US President Joe Biden has been seeking war aid for Ukraine and Israel (Biden seeks ‘vital’ war aid for Israel and Ukraine ), including more money for Taiwan.
A note (https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/five-fronts-against-unipolar-globalism ) by the Russian philosopher and geopolitical analyst Alexander Dugin refers to five potential or real fronts on which multipolarity and unipolarity confront each other.
Below they are presented along with the approach that Misión Verdad has made regarding these cases.
1. UNSUNG DEFEAT IN UKRAINE
After the Minsk Agreement (2015) served as a mechanism to buy time, the so-called “collective West” led by the United States went to war against Russia in Ukraine since March 2022. Analysts such as Dugin describe that (https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/five-fronts-against-unipolar-globalism ), essentially, it is about a civil war between Russians: patriotic Russians against Atlanticist Russians who have betrayed their Russian identity, but the Atlanticist “Russians” are being used by the unipolar forces of the West.
The confrontation continues to generate negative results and perspectives for the Western side. According to an analysis (Zelenski no logra ganarse al Congreso de EEUU y el paquete de ayuda a Kiev sigue estancado ) by The Washington Post, the efforts of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during his second visit to Washington in three months, “did little” to change the opinion of Republican congressmen, who oppose continuing to finance the escalation of the war.
During that same visit, and meeting with the Ukrainian leader, President Biden promised Kiev a new $200 million military aid package, while noting that it could be the last. Days earlier, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that he believes Ukraine’s front-line position could worsen if the West does not increase arms supplies. He detailed that kyiv is in a “critical situation” as members of the Atlantic Alliance were unable to meet the growing demand for ammunition. “We have to prepare for bad news,” he declared on December 3 in an interview (tagesschau24: Exlusiv-Interview mit NATO-Generalsekretär Stoltenberg – Nach dem Großangriff Russlands ist die Lage für die Ukraine kritisch | ARD Mediathek ) with the German television channel Das Erste.
In an interview (The AP Interview: Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says the war with Russia is in a new phase as winter looms ) with the AP, Zelensky admitted that his fighters were unable to make significant progress in their failed counteroffensive. “We wanted faster results. From that perspective, unfortunately we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact,” he asserted, blaming the West for not having provided sufficient weapons.
He also expressed fear that events in the Gaza Strip could jeopardize the flow of military aid to kyiv.
In this way, the Ukrainian conflict would be overshadowed by the destruction of Gaza implemented by Israel with the support of Western powers.
- Researchers Diego Sequera and Ernesto Cazal published a series of articles ( I, II and III) with a geopolitical balance of the war in Ukraine.
2. GAZA: “ISRAEL IS THE WEST”
Precisely, the second American war front is in Western Asia.The genocide against the Palestinian population carried out by Israel has the support of the West; This has been demonstrated not only by the forms but also by the concepts.
Last November, the official US military magazine Army University Press published an article (https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/Online-Exclusive/2023/Dostri/Hamas’s-October-2023-Attack-on-Israel-UA.pdf) written on behalf of the US Department of Defense calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the destruction of Lebanon.
The destruction of Gaza is not only advancing with irreversible damage to its buildings (15%) but also to its arable lands (22%)
(Photo: France24)
The article, written by an organic intellectual of Zionist nationalism, Omer Dostri, proposes as an “ideal option” that Israel reoccupy Gaza in the long term, ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents, exponentially expand the size of the extermination zone and establish settlements inside Gaza.
Dan Cohen, American journalist and documentary filmmaker, notes (El Pentágono propone limpieza étnica y colonización de Gaza y destrucción del Líbano) that the text adds to the numerous statements that, in the case of a war crimes trial, would serve as clear evidence of the intention to carry out a genocide, which is notoriously difficult to establish. establish. The fact that this call was published on behalf of the Department of Defense and in the main media branch of the United States Army raises doubts about American culpability in the Gaza genocide, which is being carried out mainly with factory-made bombs and missiles. of the North American country, and about what the true intentions of its government are.
Israeli occupation forces have attacked residential buildings, schools, hospitals, ambulances, medical personnel, rescue and first aid teams, journalists, United Nations employees, mosques, Christian churches, infrastructure, and have cut off electricity and communication services. According to data (Centro de Satélites de la ONU: el 18 % de las estructuras en Gaza fueron dañadas – SANA en Español) from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the death toll as a result of Israeli bombings against the Gaza Strip increased to 18,608, while another 50,594 people have been injured. 18% of the total structures and 22% (In Gaza, ‘an estimated 22% of agricultural land’ has been destroyed since the start of the conflict) of the arable land in the Gaza Strip have been damaged as a result of Israel’s aggression against this Palestinian enclave.
The destabilization of the Arab and Islamic world is a necessity of the West and its advance requires a systematic genocide of the Arab population like the one carried out in Gaza. Washington’s supervisory role, demonstrated in the recurring visits of the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has to do with maintaining control over an eventual overflow of elements of the Palestinian resistance, gas fields (Los recursos energéticos en la ecuación del exterminio israelí) such as Leviathan and the India-Middle East economic corridor -Europe (IMEC, its acronym in English).
Disinformation has been the usual currency in the exercise of extermination, numerous fake news have served to bestialize (“Peor que el ISIS”: desmintiendo la propaganda israelí) the affected Palestinian population (What really happened on 7th October?)
- Two research papers by Sequera ( I and II ) have been published on this portal to describe the plot, in addition to a recent interview with analysts Christian Nader and Javier Couso conducted by Ernesto Cazal.
3. IN AFRICA “UNIPOLARITY” IS TESTED (OR BETRAYED)
Dugin states that “the bloc of anti-colonial countries in West Africa (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Central African Republic, Gabon) is united against the pro-colonial (Atlantist) regimes and against Macron’s globalist France.” However, Washington’s hand is not far from that front, maneuvering to retain control of the region (or at least dispute influence with the multipolar powers) and depose the influence of France. This would demonstrate that unipolarity is not so much a Euro-Atlantic vision as a purely American one.
Three Sahel countries, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, signed (Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso establish Sahel security alliance) a pact in September to establish an architecture of collective defense and mutual assistance for the benefit of their populations.
After the coup d’état in Niger against President Mohamed Bazoum by officers at the head of the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland (CNSP), the confrontation against Paris was manifest.
The coup plotters alleged that the decision was due to the “continuous deterioration of the security situation” and “poor economic and social management.”
With the destruction of Libya (Níger: secuelas de la caída de Gaddafi en el Sahel africano) as a turning point, the Sahel region has become the epicenter of armed conflicts caused by terrorist groups throughout the entire strip; These opened larger markets for the smuggling and trafficking of weapons, drugs, slaves and raw materials, and facilitated the rise of the illicit economy (Terrorismo y crimen organizado: tráfico y contrabando de armas en el norte de África y el Sahel) around the energy and mineral enclaves of the area, while mass displacement increased and a trail of chaotic destruction in its wake.
Supporters of the military junta that took control of Niger through a coup d’état marched towards the capital waving Russian flags and denouncing France, the former colonial power
(Photo: Sky News)
The Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland, visited the African country (EE.UU. busca desplazar a Francia en el Sahel) in order to anticipate the increase in Russia’s influence. The rejection of the French could lead to their total expulsion (Aumenta la presión de Níger por la salida del embajador francés) from the continent and the subsequent security vacuum, which seems an irreversible process, even when force is used, either directly or through the Economic Community of West African States ( Cedeao).
The formation of the mutual defense pact by the three Sahel countries attempts, precisely, to confront the threats from ECOWAS, which has a history of successful military interventions (Historial de intervenciones militares de la CEDEAO en África) through its military arm.
In the region, the dispute between the unipolar order and the emerging multipolar order has been expressed (Níger, neocolonialismo y la geopolítica militar en África), one led by the Euro-Atlantic Axis with the United States at the head and the other by China and Russia, among other countries. The latter have dedicated themselves to establishing cooperative relations in the areas of diplomacy and international relations, economics, finance, trade and security—the Asians have been forging them for three decades. Washington, for its part, has become involved in the fields of financial investment in strategic resources and its military deployment has filled almost the entire African continent with AFRICOM (África marca el rumbo a América Latina hacia la multipolaridad)
- To expand on the complex African geopolitical dynamics, you can consult the works published by Eder Peñaand Diego Sequera.
4. NATOIZING THE PACIFIC AND PROVOKING CHINA
The global dispute fueled by the United States reaches close to China’s borders, as demonstrated by the continued interference in the conflict between the Asian country and the island of Taiwan, recognized as part of its territory even by Washington, which has maintained an “ambiguity strategic” increasingly difficult to demonstrate.
It is essential for China’s foreign relations that its “One China” (The One-China Principle and the Taiwan Issue) policy be recognized. Its territorial reunification process, adopted by the National People’s Congress through the Anti-Secession Law (Text of China’s anti-secession law) of 2005, reserves to the government the right to use “non-peaceful means” in the event of an eventual declaration of independence from Taiwan, after accepting that the Taipei administration represents an autonomous province.
For its part, since 1949, Taiwan has claimed the government of all of mainland China, in addition to the archipelago of the same name, which keeps alive the conflict that Washington constantly encourages through political, economic and military support.
After the United States switched diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to China in 1979, it continued to sell weapons to the island under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act. The key was to sell enough weapons so that Taiwan could defend itself against a possible Chinese attack, but not so many that it would destabilize relations between Washington and Beijing.
However, it has sold him more than $14 billion in military equipment.
Last August, Biden approved an $80 million grant (EE.UU. está armando (ya no tan) silenciosamente a Taiwán) from American taxpayers under a program called Foreign Military Financing (FMF), which until now had been used to send military aid to Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, among other countries. The novelty (Los últimos pasos pro-Taiwán de EE.UU. que avivan el conflicto con China) is that it had only been granted to countries or organizations recognized by the United Nations, and Taiwan is not.
Map demonstrating US military pressure against China. In red the defense systems installed by Beijing, in green the bases and presence of the United States and its allies
(Photo: The Economist)
Not only has Biden used discretionary powers to approve another $500 million in operational readiness to Taiwan, but ground battalions will receive training in the United States.
He has sought to increase the siege of China by strengthening the Seventh Fleet (Home) in Japan, it is the largest in the North American country with 40,000 troops, 70 ships and submarines and about 300 aircraft. Such a deployment, which seeks to otanize (Cómo se prepara China ante una escalada en Taiwán) the Pacific region, has been seen in the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars (1991), and would be focused on supporting South Korea against Pyonyang and Taiwan against China in possible armed conflicts.
A BBC report (The US is quietly arming Taiwan to the teeth) indicates that the United States is running out of time to update and equip the Taiwanese army, especially knowing that the equipment is old, there is no island counterintelligence in the rival country and, perhaps most importantly , taking into account its inferiority in every sense compared to China.
So much so that China has its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, the largest in the world with 340 ships compared to the United States’ 280 ships. In recent years, the PLA has advanced construction of dozens of warships, including the Type 052D and Type 055 destroyers (Tipo 055 – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre), the Type 075 amphibious assault ship (Buque de asalto anfibio Tipo 075 – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre), and the 80,000-ton Fujian aircraft carrier (Fujian (18) – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre), according to a Pentagon report (2022 Pentagon Report on Chinese Military Development – USNI News) published in November 2022.
In addition, Taiwan plays a fundamental role in the supply and value chain of the American industry, specifically in the race for the semiconductor market, fundamental for technological development.
TSMC, short for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, is the world’s largest chip manufacturing company (https://misionverdad.com/home/eder/Documentos/MV%20MMXXIII/_blank), with a global market share of 54%, while Taiwan’s UMC comprises only 7%. Voices from the US political establishment have proposed destroying its facilities (EE.UU. dispuesto a destruir las fábricas de semiconductores de Taiwán) in the event that China exercises military control of the island.
The most recent works of Misión Verdad in this regard can be consulted here:
The latest pro-Taiwan steps by the US that fuel the conflict with China (Los últimos pasos pro-Taiwán de EE.UU. que avivan el conflicto con China)
The US is (no longer so) quietly arming Taiwan (EE.UU. está armando (ya no tan) silenciosamente a Taiwán)
How China is preparing for an escalation in Taiwan (Cómo se prepara China ante una escalada en Taiwán)
MILITARIZATION OF DIPLOMACY: ESSEQUIBO CASE
The Global North continues to search for oil and Venezuelan territory is in its sights.
About 10 years ago, the oil company ExxonMobil activated an oil and gas extraction plan in the territorial waters of Essequibo, a geographical space in dispute between Venezuela and Guyana as a result of the imperial dispossession of the United Kingdom during the 19th century.
Venezuela has responded to the Guyanese claim, lacking legal and historical support, demanding dialogue and bilateral agreements stipulated in the so-called Geneva Agreement of 1966. However, acting as a subsidiary of the oil transnational (Guyana, Inc.: filial de la ExxonMobil) and supported by the United States, Guyana has resorted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) after the last two UN Secretaries General referred the dispute to that international court without taking into account the endorsement of the Venezuelan side.
Between 2015 and 2016, the Venezuelan government denounced to the international community the so-called “operation pincers” with which the United States, through Colombia and Guyana, would provoke a military conflict against Venezuela that would facilitate its subsequent intervention.
Within this framework, the United States Southern Command has arranged to include the neighboring country in its military maneuvers known as “Tradewinds”, in the Caribbean Sea, since 2015, just when ExxonMobil began to illegally explore (¿Quién está detrás del escalamiento diplomático por el Esequibo?) the deposits and sign contracts with Georgetown.
The US military arm is the one that manages (Guyana como enclave militar del Comando Sur en la cuenca del Caribe) diplomatic relations with increasing prominence; This is demonstrated by the face-to-face and discursive belligerence of his boss, General Laura Richardson. It was this official who received and introduced (EE.UU. busca potenciar su presencia militar en Guyana) the new American ambassador in Georgetown, Nicole Theriot.
The most recent version of “Tradewinds” featured 21 countries, including three European nations (France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom).
They gathered in Guyana for the second time since they took place to carry out various activities on land, air, sea and cyberspace, distributed in different locations in the country, many of them along the Essequibo River.
Guyana illegally granted concessions to ExxonMobil in territorial maritime space disputed with Venezuela
(Photo: El Universal)
Also this year, as a sign that his diplomacy is always linked to the conflictive imprint, Secretary Blinken visited Guyana and discussed energy investment issues for its companies and territorial security. There has already been a precedent for interference dressed in diplomacy: in 2019 the Lima Group, a group of countries aligned with the regime change operation against Venezuela directed from the United States, issued a statement (Declaración del Grupo de Lima) recognizing the alleged Guyanese sovereignty over the territory of Essequibo. This led to notes of protest from the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela against the signatory states of the statement and led to the majority of the signatories recanting (Países rectifican posición tras nota del Grupo de Lima sobre Venezuela).
After the overwhelmingly positive result of the consultative referendum on December 3, the Venezuelan State decided to take the first actions to protect Guayana Esequiba.
President Nicolás Maduro ordered state companies to explore and exploit oil and minerals in the area, which caused the president of Guyana, Irfaan Ali, to say (Presidente de Guyana muestra intransigencia y apela al Comando Sur
) that he accepted the fact as hostility.
The war scenario is designed by the United States.
The Organization of American States (OAS), the spearhead for interventions and interference, has expressed itself (▷ Almagro respalda a Guyana y exige a Venezuela cumplir el fallo de la CIJ sobre el Esequibo #1Dic – El Impulso
) around the dispute, supporting Guyana, which seeks to mobilize the focus towards what the ICJ rules, whose decisions are known to be biased towards the North. Global, and recognized in case of being harmed.
- Misión Verdad published numerous works regarding the Essequibo case, here
- are six of them.
— WE ARE A GROUP OF INDEPENDENT RESEARCHERS DEDICATED TO ANALYZING THE WAR PROCESS AGAINST VENEZUELA AND ITS GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS. FROM THE BEGINNING OUR CONTENT HAS BEEN FREE TO USE.
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The TRAP of the HIGH-VALUE woman: every restaurant serves water
Have you ever gotten roadside help from somebody unexpected?
This is actually a story about my daughter. She was 17 and had bought a second hand Acura Integra sports car with her own money. No, dad was very remiss in not teaching his lovely daughter how to change a flat tire, so one night she gets a flat and limps into a Walmart parking lot. She knows where things are in the trunk, but is a little unsure how to use them.
Suddenly, a van pulls up near her and 4 guys pile out. She said later she was frozen with terror thinking they were going to abduct her and rape her. Instead, one of the men asked if she had a flat and was help on the way.
No, she replied, she was going to fix it herself, except she really didn’t know how.
While she was talking the other guys opened the back of the van and pulled (as she described it) a lever-style jack out as well as a power wrench. In seconds, her car was lifted up from the side; the wheel removed and her replacement tire back on. All done in about 30 seconds.
They were the pit crew for a race team and were stopping at Walmart for some snacks when they saw her predicament and came over to help.
They advised my daughter to have dad show her how to change a tire.
edit: I neglected to mention that my daughter had AAA but given their response time and her not having a cell phone she was prepared to try to change the tire herself. Given enough time she’d have figured it out since she is extremely bright, but the fellows coming by was a godsend to her. They basically made it into a lark to help a damsel in distress.
It was just one time…
I’m a stepparent to two children, I pay all of the bills and support everyone financially. My significant other’s family and the children’s fathers are telling them I’m unimportant, my opinion doesn’t matter, etc. How should I handle this?
My dad’s father died when he was 9, in 1946. He had an older brother, and two younger sisters.
A few years later, his mother married a man named John. John told the kids “I am not your father, I cannot replace your father. Call me John, or whatever you want.”
John was a hard worker- he only missed a day of work when he was injured at work, and only stayed home because they made him. John was not an overly affectionate man- he was in Special Forces in WW2 and had terrible PTSD. He did however take the kids fishing with him, taught them to play cribbage, he was very handy and made sure the boys could fix things. He was protective of the girls, and would stand on the front porch waiting for them when they went out, not resting until they were home safe.
He made sure the boys stayed out of trouble, made sure they behaved, respected their mother, and worked from the time they were 14. Although very “street wise”, neither boy was ever in any trouble.
His whole working life, he always turned his entire pay over to his wife, and she gave him an allowance. He never once complained.
When someone said “Your children…” to him, he would say “they are my wife’s children”.
We called him Grandpa John.
When I was married, and after my grandmother had died, I asked him about him saying that. He said “Their father deserves the credit for who they are, and it’s wrong to make anyone forget him. You only have one father.” I asked if he loved the kids… and he said “I worked hard to make sure they had everything, I took care of them.” To him, this was the proof of love.
He also said “It was a privilege to raise them, they are good people. I was lucky to be able to be there to help”.
When I was a kid, and Grandpa John taught me to play Cribbage- if I missed points when counting my hand, he would take them saying “If you don’t want em, they’re mine”. He never let me (or my brothers) win; we either won fair and square, or not at all.
My dad is now 84. He is so much like Grandpa John- he is a strong man, who plays cards (just as John taught him), who fishes (just like John taught him), who can fix *anything* (just as John taught him), He missed rare days at work, served in the military, and would be waiting outside for me whenever I went out in the evening- he didn’t rest until he knew I was home, safe.
I beat my father once at Gin- once- in my whole life. The last time he and I played cribbage, I missed “His Nibs”- and my dad took the point, saying “If you don’t want em, they’re mine”.
He is, in reality, as much (if not more) John’s son as he was his father’s son. He respected and loved John, not because anyone told him to, but because John earned it.
Your step-kids will look back on their lives and see that *you* are the one who paid the bills, *you* were there when they woke up afraid, *you* were the one who waited on the front porch until they were home safe. You were the one who said “He’s $20, stop for Pizza on the way home”.
Just be a man of integrity. Don’t argue with anyone, don’t withdraw your love or support, just be there for the kids.
Just as no one needed to tell my Dad how important John was, no one will need to tell the children you are raising. And, one day, you will see in them how important you have been. And in reality, they are the only ones who matter.
What is the most shameless thing you have ever seen a teacher do?
More like the most disgusting. When I was in eighth grade, we had a male history teacher. He was in his thirties with a receding hairline and a weird smile.
When we started the beginning of the year, he was sort of like a goofy soccer dad. Very funny and interactive with the class. Nothing ever seemed weird about him, and all the parents always liked him.
As we moved along the year, he started doing strange things. He’d walk up behind female students and rub their shoulders or go way too close to them when trying to “help” with a problem. People always were uncomfortable but he didn’t go to an insane extent.
When we reached the “two months left of school” mark, we were taken on a field trip to the park for a class picnic. My friend and I went off to a table away from the class so we could talk with one another without other people hearing. I remember we were laughing about a joke her brother said when the history teacher came up to us and told me that our, at the time, English teacher needed me.
I didn’t think much of it and went up to my English teacher. Yes, of course, I realized that I shouldn’t left my friend alone with the history teacher, but at the moment I wasn’t thinking.
After I talked with my English teacher for a bit, I walked back to the table but realized they were both gone. I was confused and went back to my English teacher and told her that the two were missing. She grabbed the other teachers and began to look around for them.
I followed them as they spread out. While they were searching, I realized the two of them might be in the parking lot grabbing something from the bus. I went over and checked the bus and nobody was in there. The parking lot was mainly deserted so I went and checked the van parked slightly away from the bus. I peeked through the window, and to my horror, I saw my history teacher r*ping my friend, who was yelling through her tears. I was absolutely appalled. I threw open the door and started screaming at the top of my lungs. I slammed my fist into the groin area of my history teacher, grabbed my friend, and hauled her out of the van.
The rest of the teachers ran towards us as I told them what happened. The history teacher started yelling as the others called the police and screamed at him. It was all chaos.
To this day I am still scarred. Thankfully, my friend turned out okay and I still talk to her now. She’s happily married and has healed from this experience.
Remember, just because they’re an authority figure doesn’t mean you should trust them. People are messed up.
What one thing did your father do that left your mother sobbing?
It was the day before Thanksgiving. My mom was in the hallway sobbing and frantically searching the Help wanted section of the newspaper. I was only seven and my brother was four. I was confused about why my mom was crying so hard. I asked her and she said she needed to find a job. I thought that was strange because my dad had a good job and my mom stayed home and cooked and cleaned. Who’s going to take care of us I thought to myself.
Thanksgiving was a weird and somber day. All the food was there, but it was quiet. Silent even.
My mom found a job overnight so she could be home with us during the day. My dad stopped playing with us. He stopped talking to us. He stayed late at work a lot. My mom was always tired and took naps whenever she could. I was at school most of the day, so that helped, but the house started to get dirty and she started to bring home fast food instead of cooking delicious meals. This went on for a few years. My mom got really skinny.
And then, when I turned ten, my mom quit work and stayed home again. The house was clean again. We had good food to eat and my parents were happy again.
My mom told me years later that my dad had had a nervous breakdown. We were very close to losing the house and everything we owned. My dad had come very close to trying to commit suicide thinking that his life insurance would be enough to save every thing. My mom was crying that day because he told her his plans and my mom told him she would go to work and help save the house, but she couldn’t do it by herself. She loved him so much that she went without sleep to save him and everything we had. They were married 47 years until death did part them. My mom lived another 3 years afterwards and is buried next to him.
Traditional woman
Why did Kentucky Fried Chicken get so bad?
As a KFC customer for almost 40 years, I suppose I’m also contributing to the problem.
Ever since I first had KFC in the mid 1980s, I’ve been trained to look for their special deals or coupons which would make their meals about 30% cheaper than their regular pricing. With the deals, the iconic boxes and buckets haven’t gone up in price as much as everything else. 9 pieces of regular chicken went from about $7 in the mid 1980s to $10–12 today when it should be about $25.
Hence they had to reduce the sizes of their chicken pieces, as they charge by the piece, and slash ingredient costs until it’s basically just salt for seasoning. Honestly, plain battered fried chicken is already pretty good, so I can see how they can get by with mostly salt and dispense with the expensive spices.
As a customer, I would expect ever lower inflation-adjusted prices to compensate for the reduction in quality. I would still come for the deals if it’s cheap enough. They know it and I know it.
Now, they’re making barely passable food loaded with insane amounts of salt that people like me still eat out of nostalgia when yet another coupon comes across. The usual patrons are at least my age or older and their sad looking sit down tables are still mostly empty and straight out of the 1980s.
While each KFC location can still pull upwards of $1–2M in sales a year, I don’t know how they’re going to survive in the coming decade when the older generations like me literally can’t handle the salt anymore. The Millennials and younger crowd have grown up used to fancy fried chicken like the Korean double fried or Dave’s hot chicken. They’re not taking well to KFC at any price.
What was the most unexpected knock you got on your door?
In 2016 during a night in March around 2 AM, I was woken up by hard knocks my front door. As I made my way towards the door (which was partly glass), I noticed a police uniform. I opened the door and saw a police officer standing out there telling me he’s performing a wellness check. I look at him in a weird way, asking him why he would come in the middle of the night to check on me and my family. He explained to me that an Uber driver reported taking a strange guy from near our premises around 8 pm. The guy looked weird and acted strange enough to alert the Uber driver. He asked the Uber driver to simply drop him off in the middle of a street without specifying which house exactly. During the drive, he didn’t make any conversation with the driver.
Now for the back story. The passenger was my brother, who has hurt his eye during his army service. His iris was damaged, so it looks like he has an expanded pupil. He had just landed that evening after a flight from Europe (me in the US) and was jetlagged and tired. He simply rested during the drive and almost fell asleep. He didn’t know which Airbnb house the company rented, so he needed to walk a little to find it. When I explained this to the officer, we both had a good laugh at now, 2:30 AM and then he left.
After all this, I still appreciate the Uber driver, who did the right thing. I wish everyone cared enough about strangers they never met or knew.
What is something that you found out about your parents after they died?
After my dad died, my mother was incredibly lonely, so I would take her on road trips, and we would visit all the places that her and dad had visited together.
As we drove, she told me their history, from the day she met him, their first date, how he asked her out, their first kiss. They were married 75 years ago, and my mother was a virgin on her wedding night.
She told me of them scrimping and saving to buy each other, and later us kids, gifts. How happy they were when they saved enough money.
She told of how once a month they would have enough money for a 26 of whiskey or rum, and they would invite our neighbors, their best friends over, for drinks and toast. Then two weeks later, their neighbors would have saved up enough to invite them over. My parents had a pan with holes in it, with handles, that they sat on top of their propane stove, to make toast. Their neighbors had this newfangled electric toaster. My mother loved the evenness of the toasting on the toast, from the electric toaster. The neighbors were polite enough to say that they loved the toast from the pan.
When my father died, my mother had me spread the ashes at the site of their first house, by the stream in the country. She had told me so many joyful stories of those days. Like the day she found out she was pregnant with my older brother.
Her wish was to have her ashes spread there too.
What do you think are the reputational consequences of the Chinese spy balloon’s reveal in early 2023?
Your U.S. joint chief of staff in the military CONFIRMED THAT IT IS A WEATHER BALOON officially and you still choose to call it a fxxking “spy balloon” either you are dumb, idiotic or you are a jerk. But chances is that you are an average Joe a typical China and Chinese hater pretending to ask a question!
Shoot it down? Of course no. It no different from shooting down you neighbours kid party ballon blown of course into your air space! Do you know you look and sons like a 50 IQ per just for asking that? If you are normal you will question what your nation uses a billion dollar fighter jet to shoot down a thousand dollar balloon travelling 20 KM an hour!
Grow up will you? No wonder the U.S. is bankrupt and imploding. It is due to people like you.
You have to bite people from time to time.
What’s something you can’t believe you had to explain to another adult?
When I first left Hawaii I moved to San Diego. One of the first things I wanted to do was establish a checking account. This was the mid 80’s.
I took my travelers checks and had to catch a bus to a bank. I looked at the desks as I entered and they were all empty so I approached a teller and let her know I wanted to speak to someone about opening an account. She told me she could help. So I pull out my travelers checks and my wallet and place them on the counter. She glances at the tc’s and asks me, “What country is that from?” – wait, really?
“This one.”
“Which one?”
“This one. They’re from this country. Is there an account manager available?”
“I assure you, I can help. Can I see your ID?” I hand it over. “And do you have your passport?”
“For what? I don’t have a passport.”
“Because you’re from overseas. I need a passport.” again- what?
I’m not from ‘overseas’. I’m from Hawaii. It’s a state.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, think again. Hawaii is a state.”
“Ma’am, you have foreign money and a foreign ID. I need a passport.”
So, at 21, I stepped back and yelled, “I NEED TO SPEAK WITH A MANAGER!!”
A young man steps up from behind me and asks what the problem is. I try to let him know that I’m trying to open an account when the teller interjects and tells him I have no passport, I’m from ‘overseas’ and I have foreign money. Before I have a chance to show him my ID he kindly lets me know that I need a passport to open an account when coming from out of country. So, I’m done. I grab my things and head for the door.
At this point it looks like the manager is returning from lunch. He stops me on the way to the door and asks if he could help. I show him my ID. “This is a state ID, issued in the State of Hawaii. The 50th state of the United States.” He say, “Yes, ma’am, I know what this is. What’s the problem?”
Teller pops over, “She needs a passport.”
Manager, “For what?”
“Because she’s from overseas!”
“No, she’s not. She’s from Hawaii.”
“But, that’s overseas.”
“Actually, it’s a state.” To which she looked totally confused.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I won’t be able to open an account here.”
He tried to stop me but I was done.
Why are so many Americans moving to the UK?
I took my Inuit husband to England. I borrowed my Mother’s car and took him to a pub. I had not been back for a while, so when, near 11pm, I did not hear the familiar “Time, Gentlemen, please” I assumed that licencing hours had been changed. After a while the publican came to each table and said, quietly “If you wouldn’t mind drinking up and leaving soon I would appreciate it. The police are outside.” So we left and got in the car. A police officer came over and I wound down the window. “Excuse me, Madam,” he said politely, “Did you know that your tax disk is out of date?” This is a circular piece of paper which fits in a holder on the windshield to prove you have paid the road tax. I explained that it was my Mother’s car and I knew nothing about it, but I scrabbled in the glove-box in case it was there. It wasn’t. “Well, perhaps it is just at home, then” suggested the officer, “could I have the name and address of the owner?” I duly gave it and was told that he would drop round in a few days to make sure. We drove home. My husband was astonished and suggested what would have happened if we had been in Canada. My Mother rushed into the nearest town the next day in my Father’s car and paid for the missing tax disk.
A couple of months later I was speaking with my Mother on the phone and she told me that a policeman had shown up just a day or so before this call. He had a cup of tea and chatted, and then mentioned the tax disk which had been duly inserted in the holder. He took a look at it and left.
That is policing as it should be, and it is the reason that the British police can do their job unarmed. In the UK, the police are our friends, there to protect us. They do not shoot and ask questions after.
P.S. Yes, this happened a number of years ago, and now police can check using the number plate.
Caught
What is a secret which you would not tell anybody in real life, but would on Quora using anonymity?
Dear teenagers ,
Please don’t confuse between Love and Hormonal influences.
When I am 16 years old , I met a guy 26 years old man in Facebook. I liked all his post mainly composed of love
His post said : Love isn’t all about Romance .
I am impressed and created a fake profile to speak with him. He found that is fake.
When he asked me about it , I am forced to reveal my identity . I proposed. My first greatest mistake of my life !
The moment I proposed his speech and attitude changed . He took advantage over me . He asked for my photos .
That night he started sexy talks over phone .
At first I could not understand what he was saying . He said imagine I am there and pressing your chest … And even worser …
I was confused . I started to rethink whether he is the guy who posted such beautiful stuffs in facebook.
The next day I shouted at him and asked him not to speak with me then after .
But he blackmailed me that he will say all this to my Parents. He recorded that night talk and threatened me .
But I stood bold . I said its better to get beatings from my parents than to be the feast for your lust .
Teenagers on Quora,
I see some having crush on Quorans just for thier writings here . You will never know how they are In personal life.
Don’t confuse between Love and Lust
And
Don’t confuse between reality and social – virtual world .
Remember, Don’t be an object for men’s lust .
It’s ok to get punishment for your sin than to hide it with greater sin .
Why has the West, particularly the US, been upholding the democracy, human rights, and freedom to commit genocide on millions of civilians and children such as in Gaza?
It’s what happens to a rogue empire when it begins to collapse inwardly
It becomes a Nation of Factions and Partisanship
The US is struggling in a Multipolar World
More and more Nations now stand up to the US and say “We have had enough of your hegemony. Either you treat us better or we go to Russia and China”
Yet Israel is an old buddy and the Jewish lobby, a Lobby of corrupt and greedy people who are middlemen to various corrupt deals involving Israel and USA can use the pressure of this corruption and cause Biden serious problems in the elections because Wall Street is heavily controlled by the Jewish Lobby
So on one side the US is losing the goodwill of the Arabs who are too rich to be bribed, who can get nuclear architecture from Russia and China completely bypassing the West and who can get weapons and trade from China and Russia entirely bypassing the West
Iran simply says to the Arabs “Look guys , either you allow me to get a two state solution by funding Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas or i turn them on you”
Arab States are happy with the recent peace with Iran so they say “Either Iran gets defeated which is good for us or Israel gets humbled and US gets humbled which is ALSO good for us”
Its a win win for them
Meanwhile Israel knows the US is losing Arabia and know that if they burn bridges with Israel, they lose the entire middle East
Israel is the only anchor for US influence in the Middle East where Arab Nations are fast asking the US to go f*** themselves every day
So they cannot be forcefully impeded by USA
So there you have it
The Strongest Nation in the world now a stinking cesspit with a Senile Biden, a Stupid Birdbrain Nikki Haley and that Faggot Lindsey Graham in charge of decision making
Losing the Middle East and clueless how to stop it
Too scared of losing Israel and thus allowing open butchery and murder of kids and women and losing the goodwill of the entire non western world
A HELPLESS NATION CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF WEAKNESS AND CORRUPTION
Pearl Quickly SHUT HER Down For Saying This…
Who was the most frightening child you’ve ever met, that you have no doubt would grow up to be a dangerous adult?
After working closely with children as a teacher, I have to say that, although in many cases family problems/neglect or abuse by parents, carers, etc is to blame, there are also some children who are just born “bad seeds”. I had one little boy in a class one year. I knew his parents socially and had his older brother in my class in previous years. The older brother was a nice, well-behaved kid – sometimes naughty, but what kids aren’t, sometimes? Just a normal, well-adjusted child.
His younger brother, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Because I was a friend of the family, I got to see this little horror in action. From the moment of his birth, he was a cranky and demanding baby who had no patience and if everybody didn’t jump to his will he would throw a huge tantrum. As he grew older, and particularly once I could observe him daily in my classroom, I saw him become, what I can only describe as cunning. He knew tantrums didn’t work with me: I usually walk away and once they realize they have no audience they calm down. Instead, he began a campaign of terror. Always when he thought I wasn’t watching. He was very intelligent,and when it suited him he could charm the birds from the trees. But on an instant he could turn into a raging maniac. Instead of using that intellect to learn, instead he used it to lie, steal, cheat, and physically hurt other children who were smaller than him, destroying their work and generally causing me to have to concentrate on him more than any of the others just to keep him under some sort of control. The day came when he skipped class. I could hear a commotion in the playground, where the school had set up a henhouse for the children to have contact with farm animals. I could hear chickens in distress. A number of teachers, all followed by their classes, ran to see what was going on. The hens were all milling about and scared and there were five dead hens. E. was still holding one screaming chicken, laughing as he swung it by its legs. The school then told the parents that this behaviour was beyond our capacity and to take him out.
His parents took him to a child psychologist and he was diagnosed as having “Defiance and Anger Management Disorder” and he was sent to a specialist school that deals with children with out of control behaviour.
I lost touch with the family for a number of years after that, but eventually ran into the older brother, who had by now joined the Australian Air Force and was a pilot in training. We chatted for a while, and of course I asked him how E., his younger brother, was doing.
He told me that E. only got worse as he got older. He had gone to Juvenile Detention for attacking people and was now in jail again for attacking an old age pensioner with a pair of scissors. His brother said he feared for when he got out – he said that E. was dangerous and couldn’t be trusted not to hurt people. Not because of anything they did to him. Just because he enjoyed hurting other living things. The family couldn’t keep pets, since E. would always torture them to death.
Ten years after running into the older brother, I again heard of E. He is currently in jail for attempted murder. His live-in girlfriend was found beaten to a pulp, and she lives now with multiple disabilities. The judge said he had never seen anybody treated so callously, and that E. had an absolute lack of apparent remorse for his actions.
So it is not always nurture. Sometimes nature is to blame.
Exposure
If somebody slaps my father in front of me, what should be my response in this situation?
When I was in high school, I was a cheerleader. My father drove a school bus. One evening, we were at the school waiting to board the bus to attend an out-of-town game. A student at the school that was heavily into drugs and other assorted activities came to the school.
I was standing, talking to my father at the moment this student approached us. He produced a pistol, stuck it under my father’s chin and pulled the trigger. The gun just “clicked”. He sneered at us and said “Darn. Wish it had been loaded.”. That is my last cognizant thought of the evening.
Later, friends relayed the “rest of the story” to me.
The police were called. Upon their arrival, my father was asked where the offender was. He pointed and said “Under that cheerleader.”. Obviously, I had taken serious offense at this jerk’s actions and beat the living daylights out of him. The police pulled me off of him and took him to jail. Again, I have no recollection of those events.
I cannot condone you taking the action I took. It would completely depend on the circumstances.
What has been the biggest plot twist that happened in your life?
When I was 11 years old, I was diagnosed with Aspergers.
The psychologist told me I would never hold a real job, drive a car, or even be capable of basic self-care around the house.
Where I come from, healthcare is incredibly poor because only the lowest-qualifying doctors move to this environmentally contaminated area because nobody in a reputable city will accept them.
Basically, my diagnosis was based almost entirely upon my uneducated sociopath mother’s lies, slander, and manipulation. The rest of my diagnosis was based on the outlandish and outdated belief that it’s abnormal for a girl to be extremely quiet, but have very articulate speech and an interest in science and video games.
Yeah, they literally assumed I was mental because I didn’t fit their sexist views.
Needless to say, doctors in this area are among the most unprofessional in the entire country.
My childhood consisted of endless bullying and harassment from my mom, brother, stepfather, classmates, and teachers. My mom always called me a “retard” and told me to “act like a normal kid, you fucking freak.” She also belittled me by telling me that I DESERVED the bullying that everyone gave me.
Years later, I survived multiple suicide attempts and turned 18.
Despite being labeled as an “autistic retard”, my mom forced me to immediately enter college when I wasn’t ready and all I wanted to do was navigate through basic adulthood with a job before making such a huge commitment to education.
I psychologically cracked.
Most of what happened is now a blur.
But I can remember the part when I silently walked out of class in the middle of a lecture.
I continued walking silently outside and made my way toward my mom’s car.
(Yeah, she actually allowed me to get a license and drive myself occasionally. But only because her friends with “normal” kids started giving her shit about having a retarded kid.)
I got in the car and sobbed violently.
My life was over.
It’s all a prison and I want out.
My grades were all horrible because I saw no point in doing anything when my mom always told me that I would NEVER be allowed to have my own life and that if I attempted to escape from her, she would finally have me legally declared mentally incompetent so I would have no human rights to make my own decisions in life.
A few weeks later, I left my mom’s house without any notice and used my meager savings account to get an apartment. I spent 8 months submitting job applications to every place in town that would hire my age. I literally only got three interviews the entire time. I was forced to work online as an adult cam model to survive on less than $800 a month. Keep in mind that this job was very difficult due to being naturally ugly and constantly being degraded.
At the end of these 8 months, I was finally hired for a shitty part-time job.
At this point, it probably sounds like nothing will ever improve.
But here’s the plot twist…
Today, I’m 22 years old and I have a stable job in a manufacturing facility.
Most people are unable to survive on the meager wages of this job, but I’ve managed to do far more than just survive.
I’m thriving.
I didn’t need a roommate or a partner to help me move up in life.
In only two years of working this job and supporting myself living alone, I was able to build my credit and save up money to buy a nice convertible car and a HOUSE.
A freaking HOUSE.
I did it on my own with no guidance from anyone.
I researched everything carefully and worked hard and because of that, I succeeded.
But aside from material things, I also gained something else that my mom and all the other cruel people said I would never have.
Friends.
I still go through cycles of depression, but my friends are understanding of my struggle and it helps to know that they still believe in me.
The moral of this story is to never lose hope.
Even if everyone in your life hates you and makes a joint effort to keep you trapped, always keep an ounce of hope guarded in your mind.
If you have to use anger from injustice to re-ignite your hope, do it.
Do it until you succeed and then find peace.
As long as you have even the smallest amount of hopeful defiance,
you have the power to create a plot twist in your life.
Words have no meaning in modern America.
What was the moment you realized that life had passed you by?
Monday, November 26, 2012.
I had been out of prison for one month after a 15 year incarceration for murder. The conviction of murder requiring “intent” and “aforethought” in my state, I can say with a straight face and clear conscious that I did not commit murder, however I absolutely knew when my spouse took the stand to testify against me that I would be convicted of it. Since I am a “manslaughterer” by the legal definition of the word, I didn’t quibble and just took the sentence. It was coming either way, and I knew it.
On that Monday I took a psychological battery for vocational rehabilitation to see what they could help me with. I walked 4 miles one way at 7AM for the appointment. It was overcast, in the low 40’s when I started out, and I was hopeful. After taking a many hours long series of tests, I had a brief interview with a psychologist. I was warned beforehand that he was there to ask me a few questions but not for a counseling session, so I was to keep that in mind.
Every question he asked me I thought about in depth before I answered. I wanted to give this well educated, intelligent man the exact shade of phraseology I knew he needed for an accurate assessment. At the end, he asked if I had any questions for him. I said I had one, “When does being free start to become easier than it is now?” He looked at me straightaway in the eyes and said with absolutely zero expression of emotion, “This isn’t a counseling session. If you need a counseling session you can make an appointment.”
Freedom was not all it was cracked up to be, to put it very, very mildly. On that date I was down to my last few dollars I had saved whilst in prison ($700 in 3 years, crocheting blankets and working 250 hours a month at .30¢ an hour), I had no job, was being pestered to get a job immediately by Parole Officer who provided to date zero help in that department, and everything I was qualified, trained and educated for was worthless in a professional pursuit. I was given a list of over 50 companies who hire felons, but only 4 would consider a violent felon. I was told to spend at least 8 hours a day looking for a job. Between 10 to 20 times a day I had to replay for horrified managers what I did which sent me to prison. By the end of the day, I seemed like an apathetic sociopath who couldn’t care less about what I did. My family hadn’t deemed me worthy of help, I was in a strange new city in a halfway house, I knew very few people and they were all busy with their own life anyways.
What had most galled me was how the civilisation in general had changed. I was deeply, deeply bothered by the callous disregard of fellow humans by virtually everyone I met in every walk of life. For the last 10 years or so that I was in prison I noticed that the rookie inmates were particularly inconsiderate and selfish, and I attributed that to the fact that I was 10 years their senior, and that they were just young kids afraid and wanting to fit in. When I was released, I immediately noticed that in fact these selfish, inconsiderate and thoughtless inmates were just an accurate representation of their age group, and that this is what society had become.
Around noon, I was walking home on a bridge which went over the freeway. I looked over the edge. I could feel the spirit of despair and crushed dreams with no hope for relief calling me down to the pavement below with a promise for a sweet release from this place. For about 4 or 5 seconds, I just looked over the edge. I calculated all I have going for me and all I had relinquished so far in this life.
All I had was a promise from the Russian Orthodox Church which told me that after a well run race I would be awarded a rest and a peace the likes of which I could not imagine.
I walked on.
On my way home I thought first about what I had been educated 20 years for, and what I could do with it.
Zero.
Then I thought about what I had done in the past and wondered if I could do it again.
Nope.
Then I started considering my resources to find a job and realised that I had exhausted all of the leads I’d generated to no avail.
Empty.
Upon reaching the halfway house, I realised that every plan I had focused on my whole life was now worthless. Before I was arrested I’d hoped to become a tenured and published professor, and eventually move on to politics. In prison, all my hope every day was that life out here would somehow be better than life inside. It isn’t. It’s just different. After prison, I had hoped that my mind, education and experience could come together and be utilised in a positive way. I found that absolutely no one wanted to hear what I had to say except out of politeness. It had been all I could do to keep from jumping off the bridge when I saw into what this world has morphed.
Now I am a chef in a 4.75 star restaurant. Life is much, much harder and less pleasant than it has ever been out here. I don’t have a purpose. Not like my sister who is a world authority in her medical field. Nor like my brother in law who writes policy in the federal State Department. Nor like my Grandfather who helped save us all from the Soviet Union, put a man on the moon, and taught Jimmy Doolittle how to take a B-25 off of the USS Hornet.
I could have been any of these things and more, but I decided to overreact and lash out in abject rage in a total panic and go to prison. So, I can’t complain. At least I’m breathing, and at least God forgives me. He and His Church are all I have. Everything else can be stripped of me easily, and probably will. But I have faith in Him, His promises of life to come, and that the life here is of some merit simply unknown to me. Because of that, there is always hope that while if life has passed me by, at least I may someday cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.
What is something that your mother has done that is unforgivable?
My mother has done a great deal of unforgivable things. Here’s one:
Our family of eight moved from California back to New York in the middle of the night. I was 9 at this time. We drove, we had a beat-up station-wagon and it was pretty tight quarters.
One of the reasons for the move was my oldest brother was facing juvenile hall for some property he destroyed. My mother just couldn’t have HER oldest (and most likely best loved) son go away. I’d like to state here that my brother had problems, big problems. He was a sadist and probably a psychopath and definitely a pedophile. He was the eldest kid; there were six of us.
I believe another one of the reasons for the late night move was my Dad lost his job and we were running out on the rent. I’m not positive but it’s a pretty good guess. My Father was laid off from his job as a defense contractor.
We never got a hotel room because we couldn’t afford it, so we all slept in the car for the entire trip across country. Uncomfortable even if everything was Kosher. Which it was not.
One night I woke up to find someone pulling down my pants. Fortunately I was able to pretend to be asleep and move away from him, I realized during this situation (attack?) it was my oldest brother. So nothing happened technically, but we had just begun this trip, I was worried about him making another attempt to molest me. Of course I didn’t know THAT word at that time.
The next morning I got my mother alone and told her what happened, she said “What are you trying to do, start trouble?” I was speechless and afraid. So now if I tell my Father, (who was a good man) I would indeed “start trouble.” I should have gone to my Father first, but I was unaware (at the time), how skewed her opinion and vision of who and what her first son was. By the way, he was 16 at the time.
I have another older brother (he was 11 at this time) He is wonderful, loving, caring and trustworthy. I told him about the “problem.” He promised to keep me and my crazy brother separated by sleeping between us for the whole trip. For his trouble he was smacked and bothered by my crazy brother the whole trip. But he did just that, stayed between us, although our plan was met with objections from my oldest brother, he and my mother tried repeatedly to switch us around. I’m sure my Father thought this situation was nuts, but that was life with my mother all around.
My mother continued to take my brother’s side over the years, no matter what! He beat us up and terrified us just to entertain himself. He even turned on her, throwing glasses at her and a myriad of other things. I had to place him under citizens’ arrest twice, once when I was 13 and the other time I was 18. He was raving drunk both times, terrorizing us, breaking windows and furniture, hitting us. My Father did what he could to protect us, but my brother was a big, violent loud-mouthed drunk. The cops told me if I wanted him arrested, I would have to get him outside of the house or they couldn’t touch him. Although I’m loathe to have cops handle anything for me, I had no choice. I had little brothers and a sister to think about.
I’m so grateful to my brother (the normal one, lol.) for his protection, especially at his very young age. He remains to this day one of my very best friends as well as someone I can always count on.
A good man
What is the craziest thing you have ever said or done at an interview and still gotten the job?
Presence of mind was one thing I didn’t think I had until this happened:
Interviewer: Good morning Mr. Anonymous. I’m sure you’re familiar with a typical consult interview, so I won’t beat around the bush. Tell me a little about yourself before we dive into the puzzles and cases.
Me: Blah blah blah…er…blah…er…blah
Being my first job interview, I managed the impossible. I screwed up right at the start and ended up describing why I wanted to do consulting, instead of talking about myself. Beads of sweat started forming on my troubled forehead. With a bemused look on his face, the interviewer continued.
Interviewer: Uh, o…kay. I’ll go on to the puzzle now. Okay, so tell me…
He proceeds to describe a puzzle I had heard and solved recently. I have trouble keeping my emotions away from my facial expressions, so I broke into a wide smile, thinking that the moment to redeem the dismal ‘tell me about yourself’ had come! Needless to say, my poker career ended almost as soon as it had started.
Me: <Laughing> Sir, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve heard this one before…<I then proceed to give an outline of the solution>
Interviewer: Oh, haha, okay. I guess I’ll have to ask you another one I guess. Okay, so…
He then proceeds to describe a puzzle that sounded so tricky and convoluted that the beads of perspiration on my forehead now gushed forth with renewed fury in rivulets of nervousness down my face and neck and arms and legs. A Ganga of tension clouded over my face. The interviewer finishes asking the question and there is an ugly silence that ensues. I could almost hear the atoms in the left part of my brain screeching to a sudden halt and completely and stubbornly refusing to budge towards any analysis whatsoever. I had no idea what the solution was. I didn’t even know where to start!
But then the creative right part of my brain swooped in, with fluttering heroic cape et al.
Me: <Smiling broadly> Sir, I hate to admit it, but I’ve heard this one before as well!
Interviewer: <A look that registered appreciation of my unbelievable ‘honesty’ and shock at the probability of it all> Wow…No puzzles today, it seems. I guess we’ll move on to a quick case then…
And then, after blindly stumbling and bumbling through the case and then shockingly recovering to somehow solve it, I cleared the interview and got the job!
Why haven’t the French (& Belgians) filled (Garbage etc) the craters from WWl to enable farm land to be recovered?
Mostly they have.
A few years ago, I stayed at a hotel just outside Ypres (in Belgium) which more-or-less stood dead on what was the front line, back in 1914–18. There was a bunker in the garden, and lots of photos of what the immediate area looked like during the war (a muddy, blasted, hellscape).
Next door was a water park, across the road were fields.
If you look at aerial shots of, for example, the Lochnagar crater, which was right on the front line, and which was created by a massive underground explosion on the first day of the Somme battle (July 1916), you’ll see that it’s surrounded by fields of crops.
The areas that haven’t been reclaimed are the ones where the fighting was so intense, that there are still significant amounts of explosives, posion gas, etc, buried in the soil. Just down the road from Lochnagar is the Canadian (well, Newfoundland) memorial, at Beaumont-Hamel. There are areas there that are fenced off, and clearly marked as dangerous, becasue there are still explosives in the ground. Whilst the line of the Newfoundland trenches has been kept intact, and they are still there, along with no-man’s land, and that area has been turned into a memorial, the site of the German front line 100–200 yeards away has been cleared and reclaimed as farmland.
So, most of it has been cleared, but certain areas (the ‘zone rouge’) have not.
Think about that. We were so clever in our destruction of each other that we literally rendered the earth uninhabitable, for over 100 years.
This Is Why Marriage Is An “L” For Men!
“Their opinion on the fact that women initiate divorce 80% of the time is essentially… “a woman is always justified in whatever she does, and is also never at fault”. That is literally the default setting and opinion of most modern day woman. Ridiculous.”
What did a teacher say that broke your heart?
“You need to stay away from Kate.”
I was in 5th grade and my teacher told me I needed to leave my best friend alone. I was confused. I asked her why and was told me and Kate are no longer friends.
I was heartbroken. I didnt understand why this was happening. I kept trying to make eye contact with Kate to find out what was going on but she ignored me.
At lunch I was forced to sit alone. Kate was sitting with all our friends. Tears silently poured down my face as I tried to eat. My dad had just died of cancer a few weeks ago and now I had lost my best friend.
My face must have shown my grief when i got home that day. My mom, who was usually too self absorbed to notice me, asked me what was wrong. The tears started again as I choked out that I wasn’t allowed to be Kate’s friend anymore. She got immediately concerned and asked why, but the sobbing took hold and I ran to my room.
While I was in my room I heard my mom make two phone calls. One was to my teacher. My mom demanded to know what happened. I guess my teacher told her that Kate’s mom didn’t want us to be friends anymore. My mom was pissed. Me and Kate had been besties since 1st grade. Kate’s mom had never liked me but I never saw this coming. My mom asked why they didn’t call her. The teacher said she didn’t think it concerned her.
I guess my mom had hung up because next thing i knew she was yelling at Kate’s mom. “How could you do this after she just lost her dad? Shes already holding on by a thread!”
Then the conversation took an interesting turn. “What do you mean Kate thinks she’s too bossy?! She could have just talked to Sami. This was the extreme option. Can’t she just talk to her? Maybe they can work something out.”
So there was the truth. Kate didn’t want to be my friend. My mom was more pissed at my teacher for not calling her. I refused to go back to school. I couldn’t deal with it. I later ended up in the hospital for attempting suicide.
The teacher could have handled it differently. I was treated like a criminal basically. Everyone seemed intent on keeping me away from my friend that day and it hurt me deeply.
Edit: Wow! Over 5 thousand upvotes. Thanks everyone!
And I need to add something after reading certain comments.
I was just a child and I was hurt. I didnt realize I was getting on her nerves. I would have most certainly changed if I did. Im still unsure if my “bossiness” was the reason why she didnt want to be my friend all of a sudden. It could have just been an excuse to get away from me but we will never know.
I wasn’t some kind of mastermind bent on making Kate’s life a living hell. I didn’t know that I was acting a bad way because I was never taught about right and wrong. I was just myself with her, just like anyone else would be with their best friend.
How much real-life damage could a modern U.S. Special Forces soldier do to a small-town police force if provoked like Rambo’s character?
Originally Answered: How much real life damage could a modern U.S. special forces soldier do to a small town police force if provoked like Rambo’s character?
Micah Xavier Johnson, 25 years old, Army Reserves, Delusional
2016 shooting of Dallas police officers – Wikipedia
Dallas, Texas has a far superior police force to a “Small Town”, and Micah was young, delusional, rambling and scribbling gibberish at times with meanings still yet to be deciphered, and went in without a plan besides to shoot white cops, and in general a very far cry from a clear headed special forces operator with years of experience (one of the best if we are equating this person to Rambo)
Even still, he managed to kill 5 police officers and shoot 9 more, not to mention 2 civilians.
The largest police force of any city has a ratio of about 57 cops for every 10,000 residents, or .57% of the population. The next largest is a ratio of .43%.
San Jose on the other hand, has a ratio of .09% of the population belonging to the police force.
Based on what I have looked up
How Many Police Officers Does a City Need?
Over 87% of all cities in the US have a police force of under 40 members. Strange when considering New York’s is tens of thousands strong (.175% of population) The reason for this is that the smaller the city, the lower the ratio of crime to civilian numbers.
The Average Size of a Police Department | Synonym
The lower the population of a city, the lower the ratio of officers to the rest of the population.
San Jose has over a million people with a police force accounting for only .09% of the population, so a small town of say 4,000 people probably only has a police force accounting for around lets say .2% of the population at an absolute maximum? And even that is an extremely high estimate implying this small town has an abnormally high crime rate, despite this meaning that there are likely only about 8 officers in total.
8 officers in total for a small town of 4,000 people [on a high estimate], and a delusional, young army reserves soldier with no real plan besides shooting white cops, no escape planned out, proved his capacity to shoot them all out with a rifle while remaining largely stationary, in a shootout.
So how effective would a seasoned, trained, special forces operator, in their right state of mind [more or less] fair against a similar police force?
One of the officers might be able to survive by remaining hidden or fleeing if our modern day Rambo [with superior training than when that movie was made] is only allowed to use a knife.
Otherwise?
(Ironically Keanu Reaves training for John Wick was a better training video than the easily available ones on youtube)
Police force will get decimated. The operator will go in with a plan of action-
Luring the police force to a certain area for example and setting off a bomb or something- And then targeting the remainder with extreme and calculated force.
small EDIT: Thankfully no one has complained- But upon re-reading my answer, since we are talking about calculated killing of police officers, some of the terms I used- “Wiping them out”, “Blowing them up”- came back as callous to me, so I re-worded a bit to remove those terms. Targeted killing of police is a major issue that does not often get talked about, especially more recently with gang’s and initiations and the like, and I don’t want to give the impression that I do not have the utmost respect and appreciation for officers. Managing a hotel overnight (the closest one to downtown which has several clubs) surrounded by multiple popular bars and breweries within 5 minute walking distance, I have had to rely on officer assistance multiple times in the last year alone and the last thing I want is for an officer, past or present, to read this and think that I would make light of a highly trained military individual targeting a police force.
So thanks to everyone willing to put their lives on the line daily to keep people safe who cannot otherwise do it themselves, by picking up a badge knowing that it can just as easily become a target.
As a doctor or nurse, what has been your most disgusting encounter with a patient?
The most disgusting, and the most remarkable!
I was working at my first job post-graduation, as a brand new RN, young and impressionable. It was a 36 bed Ophthalmology unit, and there weren’t always enough eye patients to keep every bed occupied. During times when we had an ongoing number of empty beds, the docs would head over to the local psychiatric hospital and examine the patients for cataracts. Medicare would cover the cataract surgery if the chart documentation said that the psychiatric condition was exacerbated due to the patient’s impaired vision. After these visits we would have an onslaught of psychotic patients to admit and prep for surgery. Back then, in the 1970s, cataract extraction involved a four-day hospital stay.
We nurses admitted and cared for many patients with varied psychiatric diagnoses during this time, ranging from catatonia to manic disorders, schizophrenia, multiple-personality disorder, severe hallucinations — pretty much any mental disorder which rendered long term psychiatric hospitalization necessary. It was often our observation that, sadly, these patients were not well cared-for at the psychiatric hospital, and it unfortunately became routine for them to come to us malodorous, disheveled, needing a bath, and often with soiled clothes. We would get them showered and shampooed, apply lotion to their dry skin, give them physical exams and blood work, including gyn exams and Pap smears for the female patients, and begin eye prep for their cataract surgery.
So one morning I arrived at work and was given my assigned rooms, which included a new patient who had just arrived from the psych hospital. I braced myself for the usual, but what I found was beyond the pale. The patient was a 40 year old female. She did not speak, move or react, just stared ahead. Her need for hygiene was beyond anything I had ever seen. She smelled like an extremely ripe mixture of urine, feces, sweat, glandular and sebaceous secretions, stinky feet and unwashed clothes. Her dark skin was scaled and crusted. Her filthy and malodorous hair had once been carefully braided into tiny braids all over her head. Someone had once cared enough to do that. But it was so long ago that her hair had since grown about three or four inches into a neglected, uncombed, never-since washed, unkempt afro with the tiny braids imbedded at the ends.
I looked across the room to my other patient, her roommate, to see if she was at all put-out by the stench. She was in a long white nightgown, a rather pale tiny pretty elderly lady, who nodded hello and smiled sweetly at me. She was already getting up out of bed, and said she would attend to her own needs this morning so I could concentrate on her roommate.
First things first, the psych patient needed cleaning up. She would have contaminated the entire operating room! Ok to keep things brief I will only say she came alive when I explained I was going to give her a shower and tried to get her out of bed into a wheeled shower chair. She screamed and fought tooth and filthy nails, became dead weight when I tried to get her to transfer to the chair, wouldn’t cooperate with me one iota. Her breath was horrible every time she screamed at me. After much exertion, I was able to wheel her into the shower. I soaped and re-soaped and scrubbed her face and body, taking multiple times to do this, she was so encrusted with filth. The worst part was her groin. There was probably over a year’s worth of layers of soiling herself and never being cleaned, each layer dried and stuck to the layer underneath and to her skin and pubic hair. The hot water exacerbated the stench and I had to keep putting my head outside the shower curtain for fresh air. There were clay-like clumps of feces all along the bottom of the shower, which housekeeping would have to deal with when we were through. I must have gone through at least a dozen towels and washcloths, which were in a wet brown pile.
Once her skin was clean, I sighed, not knowing how I would ever attend to that head of hair. I decided the best thing would be to cut off the little braids, so I used my bandage scissors to do that. I trimmed and cleaned her filthy black fingernails and toenails too. All through the shower I was explaining what I was doing and trying to keep the patient as placated as I could, and by now she was considerably calmer. Her hair was thick with the texture of a Brillo pad, and so dirty that it was impossible to get any lather going. But I persevered until finally I had rich suds, which I fingered and rubbed into every bit of her hair down to the scalp. By now she was no longer trying to push me away, if not exactly cooperating.
Finally we were done. I was soaking wet. I dried the patient off, got her to put on a clean gown, rubbed her extremeties with lotion, then her feet also and put on clean socks. I wheeled the patient to the sink and brushed her teeth as best as I could, with very marginal cooperation.
I got the patient back into bed, now clean, and proceeded to give her the eye drops which would begin the prep for cataract surgery later that day. I was exhausted and needed to rest.
But first I needed to turn my attention to her roommate, who was also my patient and had been quietly waiting during all this time.
Since the roommate was going for cataract surgery also, I pulled the curtain back to administer the roommate’s drops as well, and I saw that she had washed up by herself and donned a modest white habit, and I realized she was a nun. So I gave the nun her eye drops and reminded her not to have anything by mouth prior to surgery. I told the nun that I would be back later with additional eye drops, and to check on her. The nun smiled and thanked me.
I turned to leave. As I reached the door, she said the most remarkable seven words I have ever heard: “You gave the Lord a shower today.”
Korean Spinach Salad
Ingredients
Salad
- 1 pound fresh spinach
- 3 hard-cooked eggs, diced
- 6 to 8 slices crisp-cooked bacon, crumbled
- 2 cups fresh bean sprouts
- 1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, sliced
Dressing
- 1 cup oil
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- Salt, to taste
- 1 medium onion, grated
- 1/4 cup vinegar
- 1/3 cup ketchup
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Instructions
- Trim and discard tough spinach stems. Rinse leaves well; pat dry and break into bite-size pieces in a salad bowl.
- Add remaining salad ingredients. Mix dressing ingredients together.
- Toss salad with dressing.
No brothers?
What do people living on SSI/SSDI do all day?
I have a friend. Let’s call him “Carl.”
Carl used to be a firefighter. He pulled people out of burning buildings. He risked his life all the time.
Then one day, an illness that had been lurking in his genes brought him to the ground. His tendons and muscles were slowly calcifying—turning to stone. All of them. His knees. His back.
His heart. His lungs.
And since this was a genetic disease, it was not covered by his firefighting pension plan. He had to go on SSI/SSDI.
The drugs that he took to slow (not stop, slow) the progression of his disease eventually gave him fourteen more incurable conditions, including heart disease, seizures, and diabetes. He’s had several strokes. He also cannot go outside because his immune system has to be suppressed. Going out around people always means he catches something.
So what does he do all day?
It takes him about three hours to get up, get cleaned up, and get dressed and get his breakfast, using his walker because his ankles are now frozen solid. It takes him two hours to do a single load of laundry. He does spend most of the day playing video games and watching TV, but that is because it takes him at least an hour to get to the bathroom, and there is no way he could actually work.
This man was a fireman. He saved people from burning buildings. Now he lives like a pauper, mostly on the charity of his family and friends because SSI/SSDI is not enough to allow him to do anything but die under a bridge.
He saved people from burning buildings. He’d have saved you, if you’d needed it.
What’s a rule your employer implemented that backfired terribly?
I was working for a major car rental company as a tripper (drove cars from the service Centre to the rental lots). They paid us minimum wage, which was about $3.40/hr. back in the mid 80s, and decided they we playing us too much, as sometimes we had no cars to trip and they still had to pay us. It’s about 15km to the downtown Vancouver rental lot, so they figured it would take us 20 to 30 minutes. They decided to pay us by the trip, $1.75 iirc. Oh, this was a Toronto decision based on our work load in May and came into effect mid June. Demand rate was constant and now we were highly motivated to make s many trips as possible. We were tripping about 5 or 6 cars an hour, we were speeding a lot, crashing at least once a month (company self insures so all their cost). Usual the crashes were minor but we totalled 10 cars that summer (their were 5 core and 2 or 3 fill ins, so everyone had at least one major). Record was 8 mins in rush hour. They seemed up paying us about $10 an hour, their accident rates went up. I became a rental rep the next year and quit the next year as the idiocy from Toronto continued.
What is the saddest aspect about you or someone else in your family?
huWhen my mom was 16 she was raped by the son of a prominent member of her community. He denied it was rape and said she was a willing partner. The police chose to believe him over her.
She got pregnant from the rape and, because abortion was illegal, her parents sent her to a Christian home for unwed mothers. The understanding was she would give her baby up for adoption immediately after birth. She got no say in this. For whatever reason, there was a delay and she got to spend 15 minutes with her son before he was taken from her. It broke her heart.
After she recovered from her pregnancy she went home. Two things had happened while she was gone. First, her parents got their friends to start a rumor that she was away because she had an illness that required special treatment. The other was that someone started a second rumor that she had to go away because she was pregnant and had a baby, with the implication that she was promiscuous.
Guess which one took off? When she got back to school most of her classmates shunned her as a bad influence. She lost most of her friends. Members of her own extended family picked this shunning up. It followed her to college when she graduated. It was more than she could take and she had a mental collapse, ending up in a psychiatric hospital. (It is also possible that she was already bi-polar.) She dropped out of college because she could not handle the stress and deal with her PTSD and depression.
When she met my father who was in the Air Force and from another part of the county, she told him about the rape. She told him about the baby. She told him that no one believed that she had been raped. He believed her. He said he saw no shame on her and eventually they married. His service had them move from her hometown.
HOWEVER…every time she returned to town for the holidays, she would go through the shunning, the snide comments, and insults from her family and the townspeople. My parents separated when I was 24 and she moved home…to the same thing again but now her own mother was doing it too. She endured this until she died when she was 69, which means she was subjected to that shaming for over 53 years.
This is the side of “pro-life” no one talks about. Not only is there no plan for the children after they are born, but in the conservative communities that support this policy, the women who are unmarried will be slut-shamed for life.
What are some examples of assassination attempts gone wrong?
A group of hitmen refused to kill a victim as she was a woman and let her free to get her revenge.
In 2015, the Australian Noela Rukundo (who’s the lady in the photo) went to Burundi to attend the funeral of her stepmother who passed away only a couple of weeks back.
Straight after the funeral when she was going out to get some fresh air, she was quite suddenly kidnapped at gunpoint and shoved into a vehicle. She was blindfolded and driven to a safe house somewhere in the country.
Inside the building she was tied up, and a sack put on her head and was asked by her captors:
“You woman, what did you do for this man to pay us to kill you?”
“Wh-what are you talking about?” said Noela, she was shaking uncontrollably.
“Balenga (Noela husband) sent us to kill you.”
“What? My husband will never do that, y-you’re lying!”
Her captors smirked and giggled. She then heard a phone dialling and a voice coming from a loud speaker:
“Kill her”
It was her husband. Noela fainted.
She was woken up much much later by her captors on the side of a road and they told her she was free. The men explained they didn’t believe in killing women, and they knew her brother and was friends with him. But they would keep her husband’s money and tell him that she was dead.
Not only was she freed, she was given a phone, recordings of the captors’ phone conversations with her husband and all the evidence she needed to take Balenga to court.
Although pretty messed up and a little dizzy, with the help of the Kenyan and Belgian embassies, she got a trip to Australia, where she planned her revenge.
Meanwhile back in Australia her husband had told everyone she had died in a tragic accident and all her friends mourned her at her funeral at the family home. On the night of February 22 2015, just as the Balenga waved goodbye to the last of his neighbours who had come to comfort him, Noela approached him.
“Is it my eyes?” screeched Balenga. “Is it a ghost?”
“Surprise! I’m still alive!” said a very angry Noela.
“ oh my god oh my god, I’m sorry for everything please forgive me” replied a rather shocked Balenga.
But Noela took none of his apologies. The police swooped in and captured Balenga, who ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison for incitement to murder.
During the investigations, it was found out that Balenga wanted to kill Noela because he thought she was going to leave him for another man, which apparently was not going to happen.
Balenga was sent to 9 years of prison while Noela lives with her 8 children somewhere in the same city I currently live at, Melbourne.
Who is the most evil person you have ever met?
This is probably a bit cliche to say but the first person that comes to mind for me is my ex girlfriend from 2017. Out of all the women I’ve had relationships with, she was by far the worst one. She was very controlling and manipulative. I was with her for 8 months and it was the worst 8 months of my life. We basically fought every day over anything. Most things that upset her. I felt like I couldn’t say certain things or do certain things without it possibly upsetting her. Anytime I tried to defend myself she would gaslight me and make me feel like the bad one. She would say things like “I don’t like what you said earlier” or “this happened and you didn’t do anything about it”. Right before I finally chose to break up with her I had her sleep over my house for a night because I just wanted a nice night with her and I could tell all night something was wrong. I could just sense it. When we were at my house she hardly spoke to me and when she did she said “I think I’m going to go home in the morning” Next morning I got up and without thinking made myself a cup of coffee.. but my mistake was not making one for her. She of course went tf off on me for it. At that point I had it, I was done. I couldn’t do it anymore. I’m not going to get treated like a servant when I’m just trying to be a good boyfriend and you refuse to see it.
Gong Xi Fa Cai MM & family.
As the year of the Dragon looms near, here’s wishing everyone a healthy, peaceful & prosperous year ahead.
And same to you JAA. Blessings