I like statues. They have weight, and they grow significance though association.

Today, I want to present some small statues that can serve as a nice gift to those who appreciate art and passion.

Today…

What is the scariest gut feeling you had about someone that came true?

My brother always said “trust your dog – if they don’t like someone, then something is wrong”.

We had a couple over one night for pizza and beer. The wife was a good friend of my wife – we both had children in the same kindergarten and they became friendly as volunteers at the school.

Anyway, the couple came, and we locked the dog in her crate because she could be a pest. Later, we let the dog out and she made the rounds of the guests; we had a jar of treats and the guests took some to give the dog. Our dog, a Lab-Shepherd mix, eagerly took the treat from the wife, but wouldn’t approach the husband at all, despite how hard he tried to give her treats. Normally, she took treats so roughly you had to watch your hands.

This went on all evening, and after the guests left, my wife mentioned how Duchess wouldn’t even approach the husband.

Several months later we read in the paper he was arrested for swindling a bunch of people out of tens of thousands of dollars on some investment scheme to buy a building and rent it out – in fact he never had the building and wasted the money on himself. We were never approached for money (we didn’t have very much – not enough for them, probably) but most of the evening we listened to conversation on how successful he was and how he was going to be very rich.

We learned that night to trust the dog, just as my brother predicted.

Ranch Fish Fillets

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup crushed Pepperidge Farm seasoned stuffing
• 1/2 pound fresh or frozen (thawed) cod, flounder, red snapper or orange roughy
• 1/4 cup ranch dressing

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Brush both sides of fish fillets with ranch dressing.
3. Coat both sides of fish with stuffing. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake uncovered for 8 to 12 minutes or until fish flakes easily with fork.

Chinese People On RedNote are STUNNED by Americans’ Homelessness & Housing Crisis

China is gaining more power after the US shut down USAID. What do you think about this?

No, China has not gained more power after US shut down USAID.

China is indifferent. It does benefit from the lessening of anti-China propaganda. The journalists and media on the US payroll had provided chunk of them. Congress has approved $1.6 billion for anti-China propaganda to be spent over 5 years. Presumably, part of this money would be funneled through USAID.

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame has revealed the bombshell.

USAID has been secretly funding over 6,200 journalists and 707 media outlets worldwide. They are directed to report and manufacture the news as instructed. They have been bought. The Deep State has spent decades controlling them. Trump is draining the swamps. The media is in panic as the money dries up.

An alternative question. Has US lost power from the shut down of USAID?

Perhaps on the surface – the feel good, feel great syndrome.

The reality is more gain from the shut down of USAID than loss. At the very least, millions of dollars are saved from the useless propaganda. China and Russia are the grist of US propaganda.

No one believes the reports of the bad things China is supposed to be doing or have done in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong. No more report of Russian losses in Ukraine when everyone knows US is trying to extricate from it.

Such propaganda has cost the US the loss of international credibility.

Joe on the Crazy USAID Spending Being Uncovered

If you are interested in crime, and governance, you will find this video mesmerizing. It is truly amazing just how corrupt the United States government has become.

Why does SMIC dare to do business with Huawei, which is a sanctioned company by the US?

SMIC is a Chinese company. Why shouldn’t it do business with Huawei? The Biden administration believes a Chinese company headquartered in Shanghai needs a US export license to sell chips to another Chinese company headquartered in Shenzhen. Just when you think the Biden administration couldn’t get any more absurd, Biden somehow finds a way.

Eep, Opp, Ork, Ah-ah!

Submitted into Contest #210 in response to: Make a mysterious message an important part of your story.… view prompt

Eric Lizotte

It was just another day at work, or at least that’s how it started. Consulting work was sometimes a drag, sometimes a joy. In Dubai, it was a little bit of both. Fun to see the culture, try the foods, wander through the parking garage with crazy exotic cars. But like anywhere it had its downsides as well.Extremely hot, occasional sandstorms and less than obvious local laws don’t help. Try and find yourself a good bacon cheeseburger and beer there sometime, it isn’t easy (or all that good of a burger). But the money is great, and we all gotta do what we gotta do.What I wanted to do right now was go have a cigarette. Analyzing the business requests was a strain on the eyes after a while, and I needed a break. I walked over by the project manager Tarek’s desk, and waited for him to get off his call. “I’m going to hit the observation deck on 124 for a quick cigarette” I said after he was off. Tarek replied with “Of course, my friend, please enjoy your break. We will be here when you return, Inshallah”. What a great voice he has I thought. I smiled, slightly bowed to him and headed toward the elevator.For as tall as the Burj Khalifa building is, the elevators are pretty fast. Granted they got a little bit crowded and slower at certain times of day, but never as bad as in some other cities. Then again, it has the advantage of being built after Y2K unlike a lot of office buildings elsewhere. The Sears Tower was built before I was born, and boy the difference shows. The bell dinged, and I got in.The trip to floor 124 was short and fast, and amazingly I was alone in the elevator. At least this trip I was smart, and brought a carton of cigarettes with me. Here it was easy to get some of the exotic European cigarette brands you can’t get in the US, but impossible to get American Spirits. It’s not like there are many places that allow smoking either, at least not in the business areas. I’m still not sure if it was actually legal to smoke on the observation deck, but nobody has ever said anything. I try not to do it more than a couple of times a day, just in case. Well, also because of the blazing heat while you’re out there.At least at that height, it wasn’t as bad as on the ground. Still on a day where ground level temps hit 118f, it was “only” around 105 up here. And dry of course, so even the 105 here wasn’t as bad as 95 back home in Tampa, Florida. It was probably only in the upper 90s on the deck today as it was a bit cloudy. “That one cloud looks pretty weird” I said aloud as I looked at them, luckily nobody else was nearby to hear me.It wasn’t just the shape looked off, but the colors and shadows weren’t the same as the other clouds. It wasn’t as round and flat as the rest, more squarish. And not as much internal fluffiness either. The bluish tinge to its greys was really odd too. I can’t recall having seen a cloud that looked like that before. And it was moving in this direction too. Hmm, oh well I thought and went to light the cigarette. Right as the lighter sparked, the cloud squared up a bit more, turned a little bluer and started moving faster in this direction. 

Not like I’m the panicky sort but that gave me a bit of a gut wrench. It was moving faster than the other clouds and in a different direction. That certainly wasn’t normal. I looked around and I was the only person on the observation deck. That didn’t leave me feeling any better, but I wasn’t spooked enough to abandon the cigarette. It wasn’t like it was replaceable until I got back to the US. And that was still a few weeks awy.

 

Taking a drag off the cigarette helped for a moment. But by the looks of it, I wouldn’t finish the cigarette before it was overhead. I chuckled at myself, it’s a freakin cloud. Not like there was much lightning here, and even if the cloud was weird, it was a cloud for gods sake. I’m sure Tarek will have some interesting story for me about how historically clouds like that were a sign of something or another. He was a great guy, part of what made being here a bit easier. Always a helping hand, always a kind phrase to help through any stressful moments. Maybe part of that was his age, he was in his mid 60s I think, so perhaps that was part of his zen-like demeanor.

 

Dang I wish he was up here as the cloud got closer and closer I felt my stress rise. Thankfully (Inshallah I thought) I didn’t have a fear of heights or any other phobias, but it seems like I was beginning to get whatever a fear of clouds is called. I guess I can look it up on my phone… if I hadn’t left it at my desk. The pocket pat and check for the phone did distract me for a moment from the cloud, but when I looked back up it was just about overhead. Suddenly the temperature felt a lot cooler, but I wasn’t sure if it was me beginning to panic, or just the darkness of that cloud absorbing more sun.

 

The cloud dropped closer to the observation deck, and I started to realize how small it was relative to the other clouds. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred feet across. There was a quick flash of bright light from it and then standing about 10 feet in front of me was well, I don’t know what to call it. I would have said creature, but it didn’t really look like anything living I’ve seen before. It was a vaguely humanoid shape, but it seemed to be made out of cloud. Swirling translucent to opaque areas inside it, all blueish tinged. It was beautiful enough that I forgot to be scared.

 

Then it spoke. Well, it made sounds at least in what I assumed was language. It sounded something like “Erps Opp Ork Tang Glor”. The cigarette fell from my mouth and for a moment all I could do was blink. I’ve travelled around the world, worked with people from all over the planet, sat with CEOs of near trillion dollar companies and I had no idea what to do here. I half wanted to pick the cigarette back up but I didn’t want to take my eyes off him. So I pulled one out of the pack and lit it without looking.

 

Realizing it seems you’re stalling in what perhaps is the first human encounter with an alien kicked enough adrenaline and endorphins into my brain for me to at least say “Excuse me? I didn’t understand that”, which felt pretty lame after it left my lips. The thing replied with another bunch of gibberish sounds that didn’t help. His swirls started to change shape a bit which had me a little worried, but he hadn’t moved closer, or moved his appendages. “I don’t understand that either” I replied, wondering whether it was worth my time to try some other languages. Except most of what I knew in languages other than English was “please”, “thank you” and “where is the bathroom”, none of which seemed appropriate. Well maybe “where is the bathroom” as the anxiety was giving my bladder a bit of a push.

 

That didn’t seem like an appropriate response, but thinking that maybe that’s what he was asking had me chuckle internally which helped my tension. I was wracking my brain for good phrases in other languages and somehow a piece of Latin popped into my head and I said “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” – Who will guard the guardians themselves. His swirls moved faster for a moment and he flashed brighter and darker for a moment and replied “Forsitan spectemus invicem” and I blinked hard again in surprise. It sure sounded like Latin, but I didn’t have the slightest clue what it meant.

 

But it gave me some hope that we could work out a middle ground. After all that was a lot of what I did in consulting, work out the middle ground during mergers, acquisitions etc. So I fell back into working mode, and tried a piece of Spanish “Que paso mi amigo?”. His color shifts and swirls were faster this time and he almost immediately replied with “Bien, y tu?”. “Bien” I replied, which also hit about the end of my Spanish knowledge. “I wish I knew more Spanish” I said, as I had no idea where to go from here.

 

It replied “No worries my friend, I’ve worked out your current language” which somehow was more of a shock than anything up till this point. “Why me” I muttered under my breath, not intending it to be aloud. It replied with “20 of your earth years ago we received a partial garbled audio message of I Love You from your planet in our language and we came to see if it was one of our people lost here.” Thankfully his colors and movements were soothing, because that took me to another level of being lost.

 

“You got a message of I Love You from Earth?” I asked while shaking my head and taking another drag from the second cigarette. Again, glad I lit it as it gave me that moment to compose myself. I suppose its like those Twix commercials where jamming one in your mouth gives you that moment to not have to respond. “The message was otherwise garbled, but that part was clear” it replied as its swirls slowed a bit more and the color flickering also slowed. “The signal was weak enough by the time it reached us that we did not have the ability to be certain where on Earth it originated, so we started in the areas that was closest to our home planet’s environment” he added, then seemed to almost put his arms on his hips waiting for me to respond.

 

I quickly puffed the cigarette a few times while I thought. Donning my analyst hat again, I asked “Do you have a copy of that audio with you?” hoping it would take him some time so I could continue to compose myself. Why of all times did I leave my phone at the desk? He waved an arm towards the cloud and a tiny tendril came down from the cloud, forming a ball in his hand. He put his other hand over it and “Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah” came from the ball.

 

“Is that the whole audio file?” I asked quizzically with my eyebrow raised. “There may have been more in the original audio but it was very degraded over that distance, and this was all I was given” it replied, with somehow his semi-amorphous body taking a pose that felt like embarrassment to me. Keeping my working mindset in place I scratched my chin. There was something vaguely familiar here but it was escaping me. Maybe because it shouldn’t be familiar, I thought.

 

The creature moved his hands around the ball again, and it repeated “Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah” but it sounded a bit different this time. Not the words, but it sounded like there was music behind it. Maybe a guitar and drums? “Can you play it like that again?” and he did. It felt even more familiar but still nothing specific. “You say you received it 20 years ago, what would that mean in terms of when it was sent?” He paused, another speedup of his swirls and flashes then said “It would have been in 1962 in your years”

 

I was sort of hoping the answer was 1947, as at least the Roswell incident would have made sense. I scratched my chin as I thought and shook my head as I said “I don’t believe that in 1962 humanity would have had any more knowledge of your people and it’s language than we do today.” With another quick flickering it made a gesture that seemed like a shrug, and said “We had no people reported missing in this area, but still felt it was worth checking. I’ll be leaving now”. Then with another flash from the cloud he disappeared and the cloud rapidly rose as well disappearing into the other clouds.

 

Second cigarette today I spit out from surprise before finishing it. I yelled “Wait” but I couldn’t even see the blue square cloud. Looking around there was still no-one else on the observation deck. I slapped my forehead, here I got first contact with an intelligent alien race and not only did I not have any proof but also got nothing valuable from it, and no way to communicate with them again. Well, at least I got a laugh from it. After all being stuck traveling through space for 20 years checking on a slightly garbled message of “I Love You” is way worse than anything I’ve had to deal with work wise before. I pondered lighting another cigarette but that seemed like tempting fate at this point, so I gathered the 2 butts from the ground and headed back to the elevator and downstairs.

 

I went and grabbed a coffee before heading back to my desk, secretly wishing I could pour some bourbon in instead. But not here in Dubai. I was already starting to wonder if maybe it was a heat stroke hallucination, or some delayed jet lag symptom. Oh well, I had work to do and as nobody would believe there was no point in mentioning what happened to anyone. Still that phrase ran through my head with the hints of guitar and drums in the background. Welp, back to analyzing business requests.

 

As I walked towards Tarek’s desk, he wasn’t busy so I stopped by. “Anything I missed while I was away?” I asked hoping there was something to distract me and get that earworm of a phrase and music out of my head. “No my friend, but you look troubled. Is something wrong?” he replied in that kind voice. I figured there was no harm in that part so I told him “I have this weird sound that feels like it’s a part of a song in my head, but I have no idea what it is. It’s Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah” I said, trying to replicate the rhythm of the music as I said it.

 

Tarek’s face lit up and he laughed as he stood up and gave me a hug. “Ah my friend, that means I Love You” he said with a huge smile. “In what language does it mean that? Cause I have no idea.” Tarek saw my confusion and said “That is a song from an episode of the Jetsons. I’ve told you before that my father travelled with us for work when I was a child. The joys of American children’s television still stick with me today, as we had nothing so wonderful as that here.”

 

“Oh” I said, “I guess I forgot and somehow it got came to my mind today. Thanks Tarek, you’re a lifesaver” and headed back to my desk to immerse myself in analysis. Well, after I watched some Jetsons I guess. I wish I could let the alien know that he could stream it on Tubi but no way to tell him. “Time to push the button” I thought as it was all I could remember of the Jetsons, but that would change soon.

My 15-year-old son wants to be a Navy SEAL, what unbiased advice should I give him?

Why more foreigners want to go to live in CHINA?

Title: Sir Whiskerton and the Mystery of the Enormous Eggs: A Shell-Shocking Case

Ah, dear reader, welcome once again to the wild and wonderfully wacky world of the farm, where drama unfolds, feathers fly, and mysteries abound! Today’s tale begins with an egg—a big, ginormous, absolutely eggstraordinary egg that threw the entire barnyard into chaos. But fear not, for when chaos reigns supreme, Sir Whiskerton, the farm’s most brilliant (and modest) detective, is on the case!

Hold onto your hats (or feathers), folks—this is a tale of confusion, wild speculation, and one very fancy ostrich named Pistachio. So grab your magnifying glass and prepare for a cracking good time.

The Morning Surprise

It all began at sunrise, as most barnyard shenanigans do. The roosters were crowing, the cows were chewing, and the chickens were clucking about their usual nonsense. All was peaceful… until Doris the hen let out a screech so loud it nearly knocked the feathers off the entire coop.

“WHAT IS THAT?!” Doris squawked, pointing a wing at the nesting box.

The other hens gathered around, their beady eyes wide as they stared at the object of Doris’s horror—a massive, oval-shaped, pale cream-colored egg. It was at least five times the size of a normal chicken egg.

“Did… did YOU lay that, Doris?” Harriet asked, her feathers trembling.

“ME?! Of course not!” Doris clucked indignantly. “Do I LOOK like I could lay something that monstrous?!”

“Well, it wasn’t me!” Harriet replied, puffing up. “But if it wasn’t you, then who…?”

“Oh, I can’t bear it!” Lillian wailed dramatically, fainting into a pile of hay. “It’s unnatural! Unholy! It’s… it’s an alien egg!”

And just like that, the coop descended into chaos. The hens clucked, squawked, and threw out theories faster than you could say “scrambled eggs.”

“I heard the farmer’s experimenting with mutating feed!”
“What if it’s a dinosaur egg?!”
“Maybe it’s a prank by those troublemaking ducks!”

It was a full-on poultry panic.

The Ducks Get Ducked

Meanwhile, over by the pond, Ferdinand the duck was preparing for his morning quack-practice when his routine was rudely interrupted by a loud splash. He waddled over to the nesting area, only to find… you guessed it… another enormous egg sitting in the reeds.

Ferdinand’s beak dropped open. “What in the name of pondweed is THAT?!”

“Did YOU lay it?” Bingo the dog asked, lazily scratching his ear nearby.

“LAY it?!” Ferdinand quacked, scandalized. “I’m a DRAKE, you flea-bitten furball! I can’t lay eggs!”

“Well,” Bingo said, tilting his head, “then who did?”

“Clearly, this is a sign!” Ferdinand declared dramatically, puffing out his chest. “A sign that I, Ferdinand the Fabulous, am destined for greatness! This egg has chosen ME as its guardian!”

“Or,” Bingo muttered under his breath, “it just rolled here.”

But before Ferdinand could claim the egg as his own, the geese arrived, and things took a turn for the chaotic.

The Goose Is Loose

Gertrude, the leader of the geese, was not pleased when she saw the egg. “What’s this?!” she honked, glaring at Ferdinand. “You ducks think you can just LAY eggs in OUR territory now?!”

“It’s not OUR egg!” Ferdinand quacked indignantly. “And for your information, we don’t lay eggs this big. Maybe it’s YOURS!”

“How DARE you!” Gertrude honked, her feathers flaring. “We geese lay perfect, elegant eggs, not… not this monstrosity! And besides, if it were ours, we’d know!”

“Oh, I can’t bear it!” Lillian screeched from somewhere in the distance, fainting again for no apparent reason.

As the geese and ducks argued, the mysterious egg sat there, oblivious to the drama it had caused. And while feathers flew and accusations were hurled, one thing was clear: they needed answers. And there was only one animal on the farm who could crack the case.

Enter Sir Whiskerton

I was, as usual, enjoying my morning sunbeam on the barn roof when Rufus the dog came bounding up, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

“Whiskerton! You’ve got to come quick!” Rufus barked. “There’s a mystery on the farm!”

I opened one eye lazily. “Oh, Rufus, there’s always a mystery on this farm. What is it this time? Missing mud puddle? Ghostly mooing in the pasture?”

“No, no! It’s eggs! Enormous eggs!” Rufus said, practically vibrating with excitement. “One in the chicken coop, one by the ducks, and now the geese are fighting over one too!”

At the mention of “enormous eggs,” my ears perked up. I stretched, adjusted my monocle, and jumped gracefully to the ground. “Very well,” I said, flicking my tail. “Lead the way. Let’s see what all this egg-citement is about.”

The Investigation Begins

Rufus and I were soon joined by Porkchop the pig, who waddled over munching on an apple. “What’s this I hear about giant eggs?” he asked, snorting. “Sounds like breakfast to me.”

“It’s not breakfast, Porkchop,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s a mystery. And as the farm’s most brilliant detective, it’s my duty to solve it.”

We started at the chicken coop, where Doris and the other hens were still clucking in a frenzy. I examined the egg closely, noting its size, texture, and faint earthy smell.

“Interesting,” I muttered. “This is no chicken egg, that’s for certain.”

“Tell us something we DON’T know, genius,” Doris snapped.

Next, we moved to the pond, where Ferdinand was still arguing with Gertrude. The second egg was identical to the first, and both were far too large to belong to any bird on the farm.

Finally, we visited the geese’s nesting area, where the third egg sat like a silent judge over the chaos. I stroked my whiskers thoughtfully. Three eggs, all enormous, all appearing overnight… What could it mean?

The Shell Shocking Discovery

As we pondered the puzzle, Big Red the dog trotted over, his red fur gleaming in the sunlight. “I saw something last night,” he said, wagging his tail. “A big bird wandering around. Real fancy-lookin’, with long legs and a long neck.”

“A big bird?” I said, my ears perking up. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?!”

“Well,” Big Red admitted sheepishly, “I thought it was just a weird dream.”

With Big Red’s lead, the four of us—Rufus, Porkchop, Big Red, and myself—set out to find this mysterious bird. It didn’t take long before we stumbled upon her: an enormous ostrich wandering in circles near the barn.

“Ah, greetings!” she said in a prim, formal voice. “I seem to have misplaced myself. This farm is simply enormous! I go around and around, and yet I never seem to arrive anywhere.”

“Who are you?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“My name is Pistachio,” she said, bowing her long neck. “I’m an ostrich, and I appear to have gotten… er… lost.”

“Lost?” Porkchop snorted. “Lady, you’ve been laying eggs all over the place and causing absolute chaos!”

“Oh, dear!” Pistachio said, flustered. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I thought those nesting areas were… well… free real estate.”

A Happy Ending

After much commotion, we managed to explain the situation to the chickens, ducks, and geese. Pistachio, being the polite and formal creature she was, apologized profusely for the confusion. The farm animals, while initially skeptical, eventually forgave her.

The farmer, noticing Pistachio wandering about, decided to let her stay. She quickly became a beloved (albeit absent-minded) member of the farm, known for her fancy manners and tendency to wander in circles.

As for me, Sir Whiskerton? I returned to my sunbeam, satisfied that I’d once again brought peace to the farm. The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: Sometimes, the biggest mysteries have the simplest explanations. And no matter how big or small, there’s always room for one more friend on the farm.

Until next time, my friends.

The End.

Shorpy

Is it the case that China has once again copied and counterfeited? OpenAi has insisted that DeepSeek has copied some of its proprietary models to train its own AI product, seemingly unaware that its own model was built by freely copying the work.

DeepSeek Unlocks Golden Opportunity For IT Infrastructure Providers

DeepSeek removes cost barriers to AI training, opening the door to much broader adoption and competition in the IT infrastructure market.

Another contextual highlight is necessary to understand the DeepSeek saga better.

U.S. propaganda narrative is America is democracy the Good Guy and China the authoritarian the Bad Guy. The table is turned for AI.

The U.S. reality had been our Big Boys monopolizing AI. Our Magnificent 7 gang poured billions in a cloud-first AI training play to make market entry to be so prohibitively expensive that it’s dominated by this handful of giant tech players.

Of most significance are three – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – commanding almost 70%, repeat 70%. of global cloud services – that used AI to inflate its capitalization with an AI mound that promises a fat cow they can milk on for the next 20 years. And they are already fleecing businesses because they can charge whatever they want.

DeepSeek evaporated this monopoly by democratizing AI training showing hyperscaling is not necessary. They used a fraction of older Nvidia GPUs and a much shorter time to streamline AI training to a level previously considered unattainable.

And OpenAI, a closed model, trying to insinuate that DeepSeek is “copying or counterfeiting or piggieriding” their system, is shooting itself in the foot. If they can’t “protect” themselves from this, they really can’t monetize their investment and stay competitive. . . .and threatening the big three cloud providers’ business model. On the other hand, AI applied and used at the enterprise level can prosper quite well. These are AI-applied services in a direct to business model that can charge for services in an open competitive market.

So why did China gift an Open-Source AI technology to the U.S.? If U.S. players were to just pay a little attention to what’s going on in China, they would readily see that DeepSeek has been essentially doing it the Shenzhen style. They share. Most of the technologies used are likely not proprietary to them. There’s a collaborative ecosystem of AI companies. For example, former Google China CEO Lee Kai-Fu revealed his AI unicorn is even spending less for AI training at $3 million!!

DeepSeek does not have the silver-bullet technology. This is what Steve McDowell of the Forbes Article said: “DeepSeek’s approach enables smaller enterprises to participate in AI development by significantly reducing the hardware and costs required for training. It’s a moment that mirrors historic IT transformations, like the transition from mainframes to mini-computers and, ultimately, PCs, where decentralization unlocked new opportunities at every point.”

OpenAI’s model is brute force with billion$ worth of GPUs thrown in for AI training at the cloud level. McDowell said::”If DeepSeek’s claims hold, rack-level training clusters may now be possible.” Rest assured this is not “if”, China’s AI ecosystem is already doing this.

Read the story about Liang Wenfeng. DeepSeek used up only 2,000 of his 10,00 stash of Nvidia GPUs. There will be more of his models on the way. These will be refined enterpirise level models expanding on more superior LLM model.

Who is DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, the math whiz-hedge fund manager upending the AI industry?

The millennial math nerd behind DeepSeek launched his own hedge fund before turning to artificial intelligence chips.

Chinese AI companies do not have to copy OpenAI models. Know this, AI needs data. And China is the Saudi Arabia of data. Their data has both quantity and quality. Chinese internet users do everything on their smartphones – EVERYTHING. This is the data to die for. This is the superior AI models must build on.

“You’ve been chosen” greeted her once again the next morning, bright and early. She hadn’t had her coffee yet, so she nearly opened the damn thing without even looking, but then she noticed the hardware store’s name and the somewhat creepy headline.

Something about the missing punctuation. Shouldn’t they have used an exclamation point if she was chosen for a prize or something? Seems like if you wanted to generate a feeling of excitement, really get someone stoked to open an email, you’d use an exclamation point. Wouldn’t you? Whatever. The point was, she noticed just in time and didn’t open it. Mark as spam. Move on.

“Emma you’ve been chosen” made her do a doubletake. Hey, the sender was personalizing things now. They still hadn’t figured out the punctuation (They weren’t just missing an exclamation point, but a comma, too. Where were these emails coming from, where had the sender been educated? Did they miss the day on punctuation? As an English major, it really was starting to piss her off.)

Now they had her name. Had they paid a little more to the evildoers on the Dark Web to get her info? If she opened this particular email, would she find additional personalized tidbits?

Would she find the hardware store had chosen her to win a year’s supply of bird food (the only thing she ever seemed to buy at the hardware store…), or was her name the extent of the personalization? She was tempted to open it, but she wouldn’t. She remembered reading–somewhere, who knew where, that if you opened a spam email you would signal the sender you were reading their crap and they’d just send you more (and was it possible to get, like, a virus or something if you opened it? Or was that just attachments? Maybe she should Google it.)

Anyway. Mark as spam. Move on.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen. Open now.” Whoa. This morning they’d seriously stepped up their game. Had Zuckerberg been bugging her thoughts? Punctuation, finally! She’d still prefer an exclamation point, because without it, this seemed ominous, but at least there was punctuation. Well done. She still wasn’t going to open the damn email. At this point, it was a game of wills. And now that she thought about it, wasn’t her email provider supposed to be filtering this crap out? She’d reported it as spam for three days now. The sender was the same (damn that hardware chain) and the subject lines were pretty much the same every day…why was it so hard for them to send this to spam? Why was it her job every day?

Whatever. Mark as spam. Go to work.

But now she was pissy and starting her day on the wrong foot. She felt like she was not going to have a good day. Damn those hardware spammers, damn her email provider. Shit, she was running late. See? Bad day already.

The next morning, she woke up in a bad mood and couldn’t figure out why. She stubbed her toe on the way to the bathroom. Put her yoga top on inside out. Nearly fell over putting on her yoga pants. Almost put moisturizer on her toothbrush. What the hell was going on!? Why was she so off today? Oh yeah. Yesterday.

Yesterday, she’d gone to work in a bad mood because of that damn email. What was it about those emails that was putting her in such a crabby headspace? Was it the fact that she kept reading too much into the subject line—it seemed so menacing. Was she just pissed that spam kept getting through her email filters? Well, whatever it was, she ended up at work yesterday feeling grumpy and was short with a colleague, who then decided to run to a manager and complain.

Then, she was called into the manager’s office and given a talking to. It wasn’t terrible, since she was able to fob it off on a ‘bad day’, but still. Who wants that?

This whole thing was giving her a headache, and it was really making her angry. It was SPAM for fuck’s sake! SPAM!

Dammit. She swore if there was another one of those damn emails in her inbox this morning, she was going to reply to the damn thing.

She was obsessed. These things were driving her mad.

Bypassing coffee, she reached for her phone. She opened her email. God DAMMIT! There it was. But it was…different.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen. Read this now. Or else.” Geez. Melodramatic much? She tried to laugh it off, but her skin had broken out in goosebumps. She felt a cold sweat on her brow, in her pits. This subject line was so not cool. What the fuck was going on? Someone had to be messing with her, and it wasn’t the hardware store, of that, she was very sure.

But she refused to open the email. Mark as spam. Move on.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen. Open this, or we’ll come back.” Wait, what? Who was coming back Emma wondered. What the fuck? Who was emailing her? This was insane. Jesus.

Who did she know that a) had gone away and b) was really pissed at her for some reason? Pissed enough to threaten her? The subject line said ‘we’…not ‘I’…so that was odd. And the sender said ‘come back’ not ‘be back’…was that a clue? It had to be, right? ‘I’ could mean an old boyfriend coming back to haunt her…but ‘we’? Maybe it was just her parents. Maybe they wanted to visit her again? Those visits always went well. Ha.

Shit. She had no idea. She really wanted to open this email. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Right? Who could she ask about this? She worked at a tech company—she wrote marketing copy, but still, it was a tech company. She had several friends in the IT department who could (possibly? She had no idea how these things worked…) help her trace this thing. Maybe they could tell her who was actually sending them to her.

But, shouldn’t she read one of these emails before she asked for help with them? Would it sound too crazy to just say the subject lines were freaking her out? No. She was sure she’d read (somewhere) that opening spam was bad.

So, she’d take her laptop to work with her and ask someone to help her. She’d beg if she had to.

“Hey, Chuck! You busy?” she asked the bespectacled young man who sat behind a desk laden with D&D figures and Funko Pop bobbleheads.

“Hi, Emma, what’s up?” he asked, smiling.

“So, I’ve been getting these weird spam emails,” she began.

“Oh, man. Sorry about that. The filters here are supposed to grab those before they get to your inbox.”

“Actually, no, they’re in my personal email. At home, and I was just wondering if I could show them to you? I have a question about them…” she said.

“Oh, sure. Not to worry, I can help,” he smiled. His smile assuaged her fears. He’d know what to do. She could just tell.

“Whew, thanks. I just keep getting them. I don’t know why my email provider doesn’t filter them. I get them every single morning, and they’re pretty much the same.”

“Have you opened one?” he asked, giving her a stern look.

“No! I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to,” she explained.

“Good. Usually, it’s more dangerous to open an attachment, but it’s safer to just delete spam without opening it,” he said.

“That’s what I thought. The thing is, though, they’re kind of creepy. It seems like they’re a little threatening? I think. And the subject lines seem to be getting…I don’t know, more aggressive?”

“Whoa, Emma. That’s crazy. Let me take a look,” he said, gesturing to her laptop.

She passed it over, with her spam folder open. She’d left all of them there, so you could see the escalation as you looked from the first to the last.

He peers at the emails for a second, reading the subject lines.

“Yeah, Emma, these sound crazy! I mean, it’s most likely just sent from a spammer—someone who’s paid to generate this stuff. But I’m guessing whoever the spammer is, they took some weird liberties with their subject lines. I guess they were bored at work. Maybe a creative lit major with a second job?” He laughed, and smiled at her, trying to ease her mind. It worked.

“Are you sure? Nothing to worry about?”

“I don’t think so, but let me trace their IP address, and I can ease your mind a bit. Shouldn’t take me long. Do you mind if I keep your laptop for a moment? It could take me a few minutes, or it could take hours, depending on how well they’ve hidden themselves.”

She thought quickly. She’d closed all her tabs, and there wasn’t really anything embarrassing in her email right now…”Sure, that’s fine. Thanks for doing this.” She must have looked relieved because he smiled again.

“No worries! Happy to help. Like I said, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

She went back to her desk and got to work, with one eye on the clock. She hoped Chuck would find something out for her, and relatively soon. She hated to take time away from whatever he was supposed to be doing.

Losing herself in work, she was surprised to look up and find

Chuck standing next to her cubicle. She looked down. Two hours.

“Did it work? Did you figure out who’s sending me those emails?”

He shook his head and shrugged. He looked defeated. His entire body drooped. He seemed sad to be disappointing her. “No, I’m sorry Emma. I tried everything, but they’re hidden pretty good. I assumed they’d be using a VPN, but I thought I could at least track down the company. But no luck. They really don’t want to be discovered. But, if it’s any consolation, most spammers use practices like this. They never want to be held accountable for clogging up inboxes. I really don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about, though.”

She sighed, shrugged. “Ah, well. Thanks for trying. I appreciate it.”

That night, as soon as she got home, inexplicably, Emma checked every lock on every window and door. She felt a vague sense of unease. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew it had something to do with those damn emails.

Her phone dinged. An email. No, she thinks. She can’t take another one.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen. Don’t try to find us. We’ll find you.”

WHAT? Freaking out, she looked out the kitchen window. With the lights on inside and the darkness outside, she felt like she was on display, under a spotlight in a shop window. She closed the kitchen blinds, then ran through the house again, this time closing all the curtains and blinds.

This was insane. They knew she’d had Chuck try to track them. Whoever they were. And they were coming for her. Her hands shook as she opened her laptop. She had no idea what to do, but she started going down rabbit holes. How to track spam. How to track an IP address. How to stop spammers.

The consensus seemed to be that there was nothing she could do. She felt powerless. She was powerless.

A new email popped up.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen. Don’t fight it.” She screamed and dropped her laptop. She ran to the kitchen. She needed her phone close at hand in case she needed to call 911 call; a knife to defend herself. She had no other weapons. No dog to bark, no pepper spray.

She couldn’t sit down. Should she just leave? She didn’t want to just walk around the house, randomly looking into rooms. She’d seen so many scary movies where the woman, all alone, walked into a dark, empty room, only to have the door close behind her, finding herself trapped with a killer. “I will not be a final girl!” she yelled out loud, at no one. At nothing. Wait, did she want to be a final girl? She was so confused about final girls…were they the final ones left alive, or the final ones to die?

She shook her head. She was delirious. She needed to leave. To go somewhere where there were lots of people. Phone in hand, she grabbed her purse, her keys, headed to the garage door.

Her phone pinged. An email. She wouldn’t look at it. But she did. She looked down. “Emma, you’ve been chosen. There’s nothing you can do.” She’s reading the email and doesn’t look up in time. The door leading from the garage opens while she’s preoccupied.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen.” She hears the words and looks up. She screams, but it’s too late. They had come back.

Inflation may be leveling off but high food prices are here to stay. Companies have raked in huge profits while selling less food. But it doesn't have to be this way.

I quote from the above article. Bolding is mine.

“Kraft Heinz dominates the packaged cheese category at 65% market share. Category unit volumes are up just 6%, while prices are up 21%. That is exactly the intention. “We are not going to be chasing volume,” according to the Kraft Heinz CEO, “We’re going to be looking to drive profitable volume.””

In other words they don’t want to sell more product, that would involve more staff, more trucks, etc. In other words it would provide jobs. But instead they plan to make more on every product they sell. By raising prices.

“In 2022-2023 Kraft Heinz profits skyrocketed from $225 million to $887 million, an increase of 448%. Gross profit margins reached 34%, up 400BP over Q3 2022.”

The United States exists for these corporations. If they are still losing money, no, let me correct that. If they are still not making as much money as before they will appeal to the government for relief. And they will get it. More tax payer money to the corporations.

Alaska King Crab in a Warm Lemon-Cilantro Sabayon

Prep: 45 min | Cook: 10 min | Yield: 8 appetizer servings

Ingredients

King Crab

• 1 1/2 pounds Alaska King crab legs (about 4 legs)
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Warm Lemon-Cilantro Sabayon

• 4 large egg yolks
• 1/4 cup dry white vermouth
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• Small pinch cayenne pepper
• 6 tablespoons heavy cream
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Instructions

King Crab

1. Twist and separate the sections of crab legs at the joints, while pulling out the long pieces of cartilage that run into the adjacent sections. Using kitchen shears, cut the shells open and remove the leg meat. Pick the body meat from the sections of crab at the base of the legs. Pat the crabmeat dry on paper towels. You should have at least 12 ounces.
2. Choose eight individual gratin dishes, eight 4 to 6 ounce ramekins, or one small shallow baking dish. Brush the inside of the dish or dishes with melted butter. Arrange the crabmeat in the dishes, breaking the large pieces apart if necessary to fit. Brush the crabmeat with melted butter, cover the dishes, and refrigerate until almost ready to serve.

Warm Lemon Cilantro Sabayon

1. Choose a medium size stainless steel mixing bowl and a saucepan on which it will sit. Fill the saucepan with about 2 inches of water. When the bowl rests on the pan, the bottom should not touch the water. Bring the water to a boil.
2. Prepare a large bowl filled with ice water and have ready.
3. Whisk the egg yolks with the vermouth, lemon juice, mustard, salt, and cayenne in the mixing bowl. Place it over the boiling water and whisk vigorously until the sabayon becomes very thick and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes. Plunge the bowl the larger bowl filled with ice water, and whisk until the sabayon is cold to the touch.
4. In a separate bowl, whip the heavy cream until it forms soft peaks, then whisk it into the sabayon. Stir in the cilantro. Refrigerate the sabayon in a covered container until you are ready to finish the dish. It will keep up to a day.

To serve

1. To serve, heat the oven to 300 degrees F with the oven rack in the upper third. Bake the dish or dishes of crabmeat, uncovered, until just warm, 7 to 8 minutes.
2. Remove the dishes from the oven and turn the boiler on high. Spoon the sabayon over the crabmeat. Broil until the top of the sauce is nicely browned. Serve right away with slices of crusty baguette.

Nutrition

Per serving: 185 calories, 11g total fat, 6g saturated fat, 57% calories from fat, 169mg cholesterol, 17g protein, 1g carbohydrate, 0 fiber, 905mg sodium, 61mg calcium and 200mg omega-3 fatty acids

Attribution

Recipe and photo used with permission from: Alaska Seafood
Recipe by Jerry Traunfeld, Executive Chef, Poppy