When I was living with my father (for a spell) we would go to “garage sales” on Sundays. These events were listed in the newspaper, and was a great excuse to go out, take a drive around town and look at other people’s junk.
It was often fun to haggle over an old nick-nack or curiosity.
Some interesting things were often found, at dirt cheap prices. Many unique things and items. Nothing really valuable, though. But it was darn fun to do.
Today’s story involves one such adventure on a lazy Sunday.
We once went to an estate sale. Nice big old house. Lots of rooms with all sorts of stuff. The old man died, and his son was selling off everything.
Lots of clutter. Mountains of puzzles in their original boxes. Piles of old pots and pans. The usual run of odd ball things. Some new televisions and some very old radios and cameras.
I well remember the fancy antique dining table with boxes of office supplies. There were boxes of ink pens. Never used. All dried up and useless. Some electronic calculators from the early 1970s or so. A slide rule. A few magnifying glasses, and lots and lots of rusty paperclips and tacks.
Clutter and junk was everywhere. Apparently this older man lived alone for the bulk of his final days. No wife. Maybe she died or he had a divorce. I didn’t ask.
In the kitchen was a wall calendar dating to six years earlier. There was a dead plant in a small flowerpot on the window. And the sink faucet has rust stains near the drain.
There was an ungodly amount of glassware in a antique glass display case. Some were real crystal. Some looked like wedding presents of glass from the 1950’s, while others were short drinking glasses with Flintstone’s characters on them.
There were a number of ash trays at various locations in the house, and one large glass ashtray that stood alone on it’s own pedestal. The rooms had the aura of a grand-parent’s residence.
One of the bedrooms was nearly impassable with boxes and boxes of books. But most of the titles did not interest me at all.
The stairs had full boxes at every step, and junk of all sorts and sizes everywhere. I saw a half-completed model of a wooden boat, a guitar missing a string, a bunch of rusty old steel tools, and lots of baby jars filled with metal screws, washers and pennies.
An old Honda motorcycle sat in the clutter filled garage / basement. It must have dated from the late 1960s. Long forgotten. An old red-plaid shit draped over the tank and seat. It’s wheels were all flat, and the rubber useless.
The laundry room consisted of piles of dirty clothes and a few boxes of detergent and cleaning supplies with the box marked “$1”.
When I went to the bedroom of the old man, where he actually died, I saw his bed, and a nice cozy chair by the window. You can tell from the chair that his beloved cat slept on it. It was worn down into the shape of a cat and covered with cat fur. It must have been doing so for many years.
In the corner of the best room was a plastic litter box with some fossilized feces, and a cat mat with a dry water bowl, and a long stale half-eaten bowl of kitty krunchies.
So we asked about the cat, and the son told us that the cat was fine. He was old, though. 16 year old kitty. (Is it even possible?) And was put up for adoption at the local shelter.
Really?
REALLY!
Sad story. Chances of adoption were very small. Sigh.
If you are getting old, make SOLID arrangements for your loved ones, and do not trust promises from family. “I’ll take care of him…don’t worry.”
I have experienced the let-downs as an estate executor. Make the requests in writing AND set in place a guardian (paid) that will guarantee that the wishes are performed as you request. Put in place clear “guardrails” so that others will not cause discord and trouble.
Do not underestimate the greed, and sloth of relatives.
It will surprise you.
A message from Dad
Have you ever quit a job and walked out without giving any notice? What caused you to leave so urgently?
Yes I did. My husband was transferred many times before he retired. I was an accountant, so I would usually go to a temp agency and work a couple of jobs until one came along I liked.
I went for a short interview for temp to perm in the Milwaukee area. The manager interviewed me in the conference room and asked me if I would object to straightening up the conference room on Friday afternoons. I thought it was a bit odd since they had lower level positions, but it wasn’t far from my house so I said sure.
Friday comes along and people start leaving around 3:00 p.m. The girl who was training me comes by and says she is going to show me what I needed to clean on Friday’s. I was a bit puzzled, thinking I didn’t need to be shown how to pick up a conference room. She then takes me to a janitor closet, pulls out a vacuum, mops, bathroom cleaners, etc. She tells me I’m to clean all the bathrooms, empty the trash, vacuum all the offices, including mine and the conference room. I told her I thought there was a mistake and she said, no all the new woman employees did this job until a new one came along. Then she left. I tried to call the man who hired me, but he didn’t answer. I actually started to vacuum a couple of offices, but I was getting madder and madder.
I looked in the bathrooms and said to myself “oh hell no” . Apparently they were only cleaned on Fridays. Mind you I have on a suit, nylons and high heels. I tried calling the manager again and when there was no answer, I picked up my things and walked out. I went straight to the temporary agency. She was on the phone with him, because one of the employees called her and said I left all the cleaning material out and walked out the door. This was an agency for professional people. I told her my story. Had we had cell phones then I would have taken lots of pictures. She called him back with me sitting there and asked him if they had indeed asked me to spend the last two hours of the day cleaning bathrooms, etc. He said all the other WOMAN had done it, it was like an initiation thing. She asked him if men had to do this. He said no. She said so you expect my highly qualified client to do janitorial work in a suit? He said, well I don’t want that woman to come back, she just walked off leaving the office uncleaned and the supplies out, send me someone new. The agency lady told him, I didn’t plan on coming back and to please lose her number, she was not sending qualified accountants out there to clean his office.
This was in the early 90’s. In retrospect, I should have gone after them for discrimination, but just let it go. That was the one time I walked off a job!
Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?
I was Marketing Director for a major, easily recognized company that manufactured female oriented products. Our President was in over his head, as evidenced by our declining market share and revenue. I was hired to help turn things around given my successful track record at other companies. However, the President couldn’t handle any outside suggestion or strategy unless it was his so I was constantly reprimanded for doing my job.
One day, my timid, suck-up boss sends me an email about a report she needs me to do ASAP. I scoll thru the entire email and at the end, I see it originated with a request from the President. Basically he wanted my boss to assign the report to me and once she had it to fire me. The email also contained some very derogatory & crude & inappropriate comments about my appearance.
I forwarded the entire email to my personal email account, HR and members of the Board. In exchange for me not pursuing legal action or sharing the incident with my press contacts (would have killed any credibility in the female marketplace), I received my bonus, 6 months severance including paying my health insurance, & a strong positive reference letter. I had a new position in 6 weeks.
The President was let go after about 2 months and it took him over 1 year to find a new position at a less prestigious company and lessor salary.
I read somewhere that French people are required to take paid vacations. Isn’t this taking away individuals’ right to work if they choose?
Paid vacations are compulsory because French trade unions are not stupid. They know that if they leave in up to the individual to choose whether to take vacations or not, the employers will use that to subtlely, or not so subtlely, force workers to work and not take vacations.
Paid vacations being compulsory is a line in the sand and a right that has been won. Talk of the “right” to be a workoholic sounds like insanity. The only people wanting such a “right” would be exploitative employers who would use the workoholic as leverage against everyone else.
Rights do not exist in a vacuum, they are created and exercised in real-world social context. İn the real world, which is not the world of liberal individualist fantasy, the defence of rights must almost always be a collective effort.
*TEARS* Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home| REACTION
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
In business, has your boss ever tried to fire you, only to be fired by their boss instead?
Once upon a time, my department was merged into another. My old manager was a great boss. The new one was a horrible boss. I knew he was sexually harassing the women in the company, but had no direct proof until I was working for him. I gathered evidence over a few months, then one day I emailed all of it to his boss, claiming my rights under their confidential reporting policy and stating my fear of retribution. His boss thanked me and told me that he’d get back with me. Nothing happened…yet.
About 3 weeks later, it was time for my quarterly review. We were IT pros who normally worked out of the office at client sites. My client reviews were like “walks on water, talks with God”. My first review with the new manager was the first I ever had in my life where I “did not meet expectations”. I knew he was lying and I had proof, but I didn’t do anything yet.
The next quarter, the client was still totally satisfied with me. I guess saving them roughly $10 million in the first 9 months of my contract was considered a good thing. But, my manager’s review was “Needs improvement to meet expectations” – one grade level down from “Did not meet expectations”. Another lie, and more proof.
The next quarter, I was put on a 90 day “Improvement plan” with termination at the end if I did not fully meet expectations, and I had still more proof because I had copies of every single client review that they had ever turned in. By that time I had another job lined up, so I printed off everything I had, not only on his sexual misconduct, but his falsified performance reports, and his boss’s failure to do anything about the sexual harassment report. I not only had proof of my boss’s gross misconduct and lies, but also his boss had violated the “confidential reporting policy” by telling my boss about my report of his wrongdoing.
I took all of it to HR, along with my resignation letter, effective immediately. The next day I started at my new job. Two weeks later, after much investigation and interviews of the women who had been harassed, my boss and his boss were terminated with cause. Neither got severance and neither was eligible for unemployment insurance.
Karma is a bitch.
Edit: I should have said how I document the sexual harassment. I kept a journal with me. People were used to seeing me pull it out at random times and write in it for a minute or two when I had an idea on how to automate something or improve a process.
Every time I overheard or saw harassment going on, out came my journal. Date, time, place, woman’s name, what she was doing at the time he approached her, what he did, and the conversation on both sides as accurately as I could. Later one of the women told me that it was the detail in the copied journal pages that sunk him because all of the women verified each instance was accurate, and my record was less than 25% of what had gone on.
So, ladies, if you are in this situation, start recording the events. Do it on paper. There’s a reason attorneys use paper. It’s harder to fake evidence when it’s written with different pens and the handwriting is subtly different at different times.
A story of discovery
In 1836, the directors of the Bank of England received an anonymous letter, in which the author claimed to have direct access to the gold in the bank.
The directors assumed this to be a joke and simply ignored it.
However, sometime later, they received another letter, in which the enigmatic author offered to meet them at an hour of their choosing inside the main gold vault.
According to the bank’s website, the directors were intrigued but considered it impossible for someone to break into the vault without their knowledge.
Nevertheless, they agreed to the meeting and gathered together one evening, inside the vault as agreed.
To their great surprise, at the appointed time, a noise was heard beneath the floorboards, and a man popped up underneath their feet.
He was a sewer worker who had been working on repairs close to the Bank of England site at Threadneedle Street.
During his routine inspection, he had discovered an old drain that led directly underneath the gold vault inside the bank itself.
After a quick stock take, they realized that the sewer worker had not taken anything from the vault, despite having multiple opportunities to do so.
As a reward for his honesty, the directors gifted him £800, a sum that equates to £80,000 in today’s money.
African Coup: Soldiers Seize Power in OPEC Member Gabon
Just now.
Changes are happening hard and fast.
I cut down my neighbor’s tree while they were on holidays because leaves and branches fall onto my property. When he returned from holidays, he called the police and threatened to sue me. Does he have a case? Will the police do anything?
I have another story that will stop you dead on your tracks.
Here it is.
Deep in the beautiful wooded distant enclave of a famous city in America, there are estates of rich people that boast priceless trees. One day, one of these rich barons of this serene nature paradise, got bored and toyed with the idea it would be nice to have a distant view of the beautiful city skyline. Problem was his neighbor’s priceless mature trees were in the way of where he wanted this view to be.
As the desire grew in his heart, he decided to act on it. He hired a wood cutting service and pointed them in the direction of the trees he wanted taken out.
On the 3rd day, (as is usually the case) his actions came to light because he had cleared quite a sizable chunk of the woods and the neighbor noticed the gap. The neighbor raced over there in his off-road truck and what he discovered nearly gave him a heart attack. About 15 of his precious priceless trees littered the ground.
Long story short, the city and the courts served the tree murderer with all kinds of injunctions and the city went to town fining him for every tree he had taken out. He had to pay daily fines as long as the trees were not replaced, fully rehabilitated and the old ones not removed.
Meanwhile, the victim baron’s lawyers were preparing for a civil suit and things were not looking so good for the “tk” who by now was in dire straights and visions of the city skyline were being replaced by a windowless basement in a friend’s farmhouse way back in the Midwest.
The last time I heard it looked like it was going to be a long 3 years with the city doing the tree replacement because they had to locate the right kind of trees, clear the ground, dig up stumps and finally plant the trees, truss them up and after two or three years decide whether the process was a success for all trees concerned. If not the fines would continue daily, eish!!!
Tree killer, I mean “tk”, had to mortgage his property and get into debt to meet the costs of his impulsive ill informed act of messing with someone else’s trees. Trees have more value than you can imagine. And I say that as a supporter of the Arbor Foundation. We love trees and we will come after you if you remove them without permit.
Stay away from trees, they will fall on your wallet.
Whitney Webb Part 1: How Government Steals From Us, Bombshell Epstein Book & Bitcoin For Sovereignty
Yeah. They are powerful.
What’s something you’ll never be accustomed to in the military?
In the US Navy at sea, you will never get accustomed to the General Quarters (GQ) alarm going off when you least expect it in the middle of the night, calling the entire crew to man their battle stations. You go from exhausted and dead asleep in your bunk after working a typical 14 hour day while underway, to immediately energized and moving at full speed. The loud, insistent clanging could wake a graveyard. You have to jump out of your rack, throw on a uniform (you can fasten buttons and laces later), and run through passageways and up/down ladders with minimal night time red lighting to get to your designated station. If the ship happens to be rolling and pitching in heavy seas, the difficulty level is magnified, as are the chances of getting bumps, cuts, bruises, or even (rarely) more serious injuries.
Once at your station, you must complete dressing, don any required protective gear, and get your equipment ready to respond to any possible attack (e.g., guns, torpedoes, missiles, radars, sonar, comm gear, electronic jammers, damage control equipment, engine rooms, auxiliary spaces, aft steering, magazine hoists, signal bridge, lookout posts, medical stations, galley, etc.). The ship is then buttoned up (hatches, scuttles, watertight doors, and ventilation are secured shut to prevent the spread of fires or flooding from areas that may suffer battle damage), and all stations report to the bridge when they are manned and ready. The whole evolution is timed, as seconds can count when responding to an incoming threat. If the CO is not pleased with how quickly his/her ship was made ready for action, you can expect more frequent GQ drills, which can happen at any hour of the day or night, and are almost always performed with no prior warning.
Who has been the luckiest person you know?
This man was an alcoholic, he was homeless, he lived on the streets, he had lost everything, he had been homeless for more than 7 years.
Laszlo Andraschek, made a decision that many would say was foolish, spending the last of the money he had to eat on a gas station lottery ticket.
He chose 6 numbers, the cashier reminded him that there were 7, so he randomly chose the last number.
Surprisingly, he ended up winning 2.5 million dollars, something that changed his life forever. The surprising thing about this is that Laszlo donated a good sum of money to a shelter that he and his wife were surviving for a long time.
They also invested part of their newly acquired fortune in two foundations that look after addicted people.
I think he was lucky not only to win the lottery, but also to be mature enough to be able to be generous after suffering for so long.
Oliver Anthony Does It AGAIN! His New Song ‘I Want To Go Home’ Is Climbing The Charts – Here’s Why
This is a Republican vs. Democrat video on this song. Sigh.
However, what she does bring up is the “hit piece” Oliver Anthony, and seriously… someone was PAID to write the piece. No one in their right mind would say (seriously) what the UK Independent wrote…
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
Do people who buy expensive cars like Ferraris usually know how to drive them properly or maintain them well?
No, they don’t. Most don’t realize there are three milestones with exotic car ownership that require maintenance; on condition, based on miles driven, and calendar based maintenance. They always forget about the last and think if they didn’t drive their car all that much, what could it possibly need?
This is how exotic brands deny warranty claims, especially when you want to extend the warranty and a service interval is missed. If you own an exotic, carefully check the maintenance requirements and follow it to the letter. On a Lamborghini, the engine comes out for a lot of things. Ask me how I know.
As for how to drive them properly, the answer is no. The overwhelming majority of accidents with exotics are new owners and borrowed cars. I can only guess but they make up about 90% of all exotic accidents. The “Let’s see what this baby can do!” mentality is what does it, especially when they don’t know the subtleties of the car. A Lamborghini gives you little warning when it decides it wants to kill you. It’s your job to keep it from happening. Think of it like a domesticated wild animal that you have to constantly watch.
Tucker Carlson: HOT WAR With Russia Is Coming, Gabon COUP OUSTS French Puppet President
This is pretty good. Long. But good.
I mean REALLY GOOD.
“It’s difficult for me and my family to see this happening, I am married to a Russian I have two Russian born step kids now grown up, with friends in Russia as well. The people in Russia are good people and most Americans just don’t understand they are ignorant of that country and it’s culture and history.”
During the Vietnam war why did you join the US Navy instead of the Army
During my junior year at UC Irvine, I was a participant in the first drawing. My number turned out to be “16”.
I said to a buddy, “Well, I’ve got one more year on my student deferment. Hopefully I’ll get a better number in next year’s lottery.”
The buddy gazed at me in pity and said: “You’re an idiot. 16 is the number you’ve got FOREVER.”
He was right, of course. And I started searching for alternatives to the Army.
…
For me, the choice was simple.
I figured out in 1968 that the Vietnam conflict was headed in a slow slog to nowhere. (It wasn’t particularly difficult to figure. The optimistic military press releases coming out of Saigon never matched the body counts or nightly battle footage shown on television. So I stopped believing the announcements about the light gleaming at the end of the ever-lengthening tunnel.)
I was a university student, hunkered down behind my student deferment like a jillion other privileged young males, but that deferment would soon be ending. And I knew I wasn’t a conscientious objector, and wasn’t going to lie about it. But I was also disinclined to wait to get drafted and spend twelve months in the Mekong Delta.
So one bright June day in 1970, I drove to a nearby Naval Reserve Center where a grizzled, gray-haired CPO with about twenty hash-marks on his sleeve signed me up for a six-year hitch (four years in the active reserves and two years on active duty.)
I spent my active duty doing paperwork on big gray ships and in a large, yellow building in San Diego. The reserve duty was done on a World War II destroyer based in Long Beach, California. I was never in or near Vietnam (orders to the Gulf of Tonkin got cancelled), so my original mission of steering clear of Southeast Asia was accomplished.
U.S Beg China As Chinese Economy Can Make or Break Global Economy!
Where does the US Navy keep mothballed ships?
The Navy has several reserve fleets, also known as ghost fleets, where mothballed ships are kept. Some of the largest and most well-known reserve fleets are:
- The Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in California, near San Francisco. This fleet holds dozens of ships, mostly from the Cold War era, such as cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and auxiliary vessels. Some of these ships are slated for disposal, while others are on donation hold for possible use as museum ships or artificial reefs.
- The James River Reserve Fleet in Virginia, near Newport News. This fleet holds over 100 ships, mostly from World War II and the Korean War, such as battleships, aircraft carriers, landing ships, and cargo ships. Some of these ships are also on donation hold or awaiting disposal.
- The Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Texas, near Port Arthur. This fleet holds over 50 ships, mostly amphibious assault and support vessels, such as landing craft, tank landing ships, dock landing ships, and transport dock ships. Some of these ships are still in active service or ready reserve status.
Other smaller reserve fleets are located in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Bremerton, Washington; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Mobile, Alabama. The Navy also has a separate reserve fleet for nuclear-powered ships and related support vessels, which are stored at designated locations such as Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington and Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia.
Gabon Coup Latest: Billions In Raw Cash Found In Ali Bongo Son Apartment!
Quick recap. Niger has said no to a pro-West puppet government and had a coup. The puppet government was thrown out and the USA and France had a fit! So they organized a block of neighboring African states all run by their puppets to invade Niger.
It didn’t happen.
Instead Wagner troops from Russia, and other pro-African nations fortified and protected Niger from invasion.
So then Gabon started to be reinforced by French and American troops to better support an invasion. And then the Gabon military staged a coup and ousted their puppet “leader”.
After taking over. This is what they found.
What are some shocking death bed confessions you’ve heard?
I know of my great-uncle’s deathbed confession only second-hand, through my grandmother. There is some background here, so bear with me as I lay all the pieces into place.
My grandmother and her brother were born in pre-revolutionary Odessa and grew up in a poor and crime-ridden Jewish neighborhood immortalized later in the works of Isaac Babel. Like most boys coming of age in that time and place, my great-uncle began running with a gang around the age of ten. Although he had not been involved in anything major prior to the outbreak of World War II, like most of his friends, was growing up very tough, both physically and psychologically, as you would expect of children reared in a ghetto controlled by gangsters.
The Revolution had removed the legal restrictions that had been imposed on Jews under the old regime, and my great-uncle and his peers were able to leave the ghetto and their rough-and-tumble past behind them, received good educations and got respectable jobs. In the late 1940’s, he and my grandmother, along with a bunch of other young people they had known back in Odessa, moved to a the Moscow area, where they settled down into unremarkable middle-class Soviet lives.
The incident that was the subject of my great-uncle’s deathbed confession took place in the early 1970’s, when he was in his early sixties. He and a number of acquaintances he knew from his youth in Odessa were then living in a suburb of Moscow, which could be reached by an elektrichka, a rickety suburban commuter train.
Like a lot of Russian cities, Moscow and its surrounding areas were arranged in roughly concentric circles, with suburban districts separated by “green belts” — heavily wooded areas interspersed with bogs. These green belts were not parks; there were no hiking or biking trails, no camping areas. These were strips of true, impenetrable wilderness, a setup unimaginable in the capitalist West, where the pressures of the real estate market at the very least put nature on a leash, if not obliterate it altogether. If you were to ride a Moscow commuter train of an evening in that era, you’d see the lights and bustle of the city flash briefly by the window, and then the train would plunge into darkness, flying through a forbidding primordial forest. Then suddenly another town would appear, with a brightly lit platform, where the train would pause briefly — then it would start moving again and plunge into uninhabited wilderness once more. And so forth and so on, until it reached its terminus.
One evening, my great-uncle and two of his friends attended some sort of event in center Moscow and ended up taking a late commuter train back home — probably the last train of the evening, which departed the Leningrad Station close to midnight. This was never an advisable thing to do: late-night elektrichkas were empty and eerie, and bad things were known to happen to hapless tipsy passengers who rode one that late into the evening.
This was one of those times.
The three friends stepped into a virtually empty car and settled in — three pudgy, soft-spoken middle-aged men in bulky felt coats, flat caps and glasses. An engineer, a doctor and an accountant. One of them spoke with a heavy lisp. If you saw them then, these guys looked like your stereotypical, timid, limp-wristed, well-nourished middle-aged college dads, and you never would have guessed they had grown up as skull-cracking hooligans in one of the toughest urban areas in pre-War Soviet Union.
There was one other passenger in the car — a mean-looking drunk who began glowering at them and flicking a pen knife in his hand as soon as the train left the station. A couple of suburban stops in, he began to harangue my great-uncle and his two friends.
“Jews!” he hissed, “Fucking Jews! I know you’re Jews! Hitler didn’t finish the job! Stalin didn’t finish the job! You’re like cockroaches, impossible to kill! Your hooked noses! Greedy Jews! Filthy Jews! I’ll kill you and your Jew broads too! I’ll rape your children! Burn all the Jews!”
And so forth and so on.
As the train departed another station and entered one of the “green belts”, the three pudgy middle aged men exchanged knowing looks. Then the one with the lisp said loudly:
“Guyth? I am going into the vethtibule to thmoke a thigarette, okay?”
He then rose and walked over to the vestibule. The drunk with the pen knife followed him. As he opened the door to the vestibule, the other two men also rose and followed in. Once the three friends cornered the drunk in the tiny vestibule, they set upon him, disarmed him and kicked him to death, stomping on his head to disfigure him as much as possible. Then they opened the window and forced his body out of the train. It rolled down the embankment and disappeared in the nightly wilderness. The man’s ID was disposed of separately. One of the three friends, though not my great-uncle, kept the pen knife as a souvenir.
And then there was nothing. No cop ever came to question any of them. And because this was the Soviet Union, there was nothing on the news. None of the three ever mentioned the incident.
This my great-uncle told his sister as he lay dying in a hospital about fifteen years later. Having confessed, he looked away from her and began to mumble to himself. Those green belts are perfect places to dump bodies, you know (he said). Very convenient. Folks are doing it, it’s an open secret. No one ever goes there. You don’t even need to dig a hole, the animals will get to the corpse long before the “garbages” ever do. You can even roll a body into a bog. There are lots of bogs. Maybe that jackass we murdered also rolled into a bog, we gave him a good momentum. And once they sink into bogs, those bodies will stay there for thousands of years. Perhaps some day, future archeologists will dig them up. Lots of material for those turgid doctoral dissertations, hehehe! Were these bog men priests? War captives? Slaves? Chieftains? Why were they put in those bogs? Was it part of some religious ritual? Did ancient Muscovites practice a religion that called for human sacrifices? No professor, no, no. The ancients were just as cynical and practical are you modern people are.
Those men in those bogs aren’t ritual sacrifices, they’re just some assholes who had it coming. No man is there that did not deserve it. And the bogs are good places to dump the trash you never want to see again.
OLIVER ANTHONY- RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND REACTION
You all getting tired of these reactions?
This is HISTORIC.
Big changes coming together, and there WILL be Government / Oligarchic backlash. Wait for it.
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
Has a celebrity ever served as a defense witness in a criminal case?
An incredible story happened in the USA in the 2000s.
A man has been arrested in Los Angeles for murder. However, he swore that he was innocent (well known) and that he could not have committed this crime because he was attending a baseball game at the time.
Unfortunately, he had no proof of what he was saying. On the other hand, eyewitnesses claimed to have seen him at the scene of the crime. The case seemed heard and the suspect promised to life in prison.
However, from the depths of his cell, while awaiting trial, the defendant recalled that he had seen a camera crew filming something in the stadium on the day of the baseball game. He then asked his lawyer to try to find this team and try to see if there were any images in which we could see him.
It was a desperate attempt.
The lawyer did some research and quickly discovered that the crew from the series “Curb your enthusiasm” had actually filmed in the stadium that day. A request was made to the producer and star of the series, the comic Larry David (co-creator of Seinfeld) to be able to access the rushes filmed that day.
Larry David immediately agreed and made available to the lawyer the hours of video they had shot in the stadium.
And after a long and careful examination of these tapes… he found a plan on which the accused could be seen and recognized indisputably!
The latter was released on the spot, thus escaping life imprisonment…
AMERICA TERRIFIED of CHINA!
While the United States and it’s allies circle China with military bases to contain China, Russia is building military bases in Nicaragua and Niger is stopping an American LNG pipeline to Europe. North Korea is testing ICBM’s and Japan, South Korea and America are in talks to strengthen their security ties in the region. Could it be that the United States knows it is out manned, out gunned and losing it’s grasp on it’s world domination goals. Watch the video for the whole story.
Do you know why the grandparents in your family had such a hard life?
My grandparents lived in a dugout in Oklahoma. That is where you dig a hole in the ground, and it becomes your home.
They attended church and taught Sunday School each week.
During their 61-year marriage, they produced a huge extended family.
My grandfather’s ancestors came from Buckinghamshire, England. My grandmother’s kin came from Cornwall. As America expanded westward, their families expanded westward.
My ancestors (on both sides) lived on the frontier. They were constantly trying to grow more food. The goal was not to get rich — the goal was to survive another winter.
In constant dollars, Americans are 3,000% richer today than in 1800.
In the 1930s, my grandparents paid for magazine subscriptions (Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, Saturday Evening Post) by giving the traveling salesman a chicken. He carried a burlap sack.
My grandmother sewed dresses from feed sacks and flour sacks. Potato sack dresses were less popular. That’s because the word “Potato” was printed on them.
The dress below would have been too cheeky for my straightlaced grandparents.
There was no stigma attached to sack dresses. No one had any money.
Farm income in Oklahoma declined -35% during the 1920s. There were two reasons:
- End of World War I reduced agricultural demand
- Argentina and Australia became major crop exporters
The Great Depression of the 1930s was just a continuation of those same hard conditions. When the stock market crashed in 1929, Okie farmers barely noticed.
For Christmas presents, my aunts and uncles received one piece of fruit and one piece of hard candy.
My mother rode a horse named Shorty. That horse took her to and from school beginning age 6.
When the creek was up, Shorty would plunge ahead whether she was ready or not. Shorty knew the route and wanted to reach his destination.
One day after school, she got on Shorty and they started for home. A boy who attended the same school threw a rock and hit the horse on his haunches.
Shorty took off like a rocket. As a first-grader, she barely hung on — clinging to his mane. The teacher saw the whole episode through the window.
Mr. Rock Thrower could still recall his spanking at the 50-year reunion.
There were only two “dating services” back then: church and the pie auction.
Girls looking for a husband would bake their best pie. On a designated Saturday night, everyone in the county would converge at the auction. It was a big social event for all ages.
Young men would bid on pies. Bidding was fast and furious for every pie. In effect, bidders were buying a first date. Sometimes a last date.
Shy men and women were especially fond of the auction. Each year, marriages and new families could be traced back to pie.
The U.S. government offered money to my grandparents to stop growing row crops. My grandfather rejected the idea outright. He told his neighbors:
“No one should accept free money from the government, and that includes a poor man like me.
Politicians can call it whatever they like. But it is Socialism. Socialism is wrong.”
My mother worked as a cook to pay her way through the University of Oklahoma. She studied mathematics. Mom received no money from home. My grandparents simply had no money to send.
When she graduated, she was hired by the OSS. They did intelligence work. She said their nickname was Oh So Social.
She worked in temporary buildings on the Washington mall. As soon as the war was over, she returned to Oklahoma.
It was exciting working with spies. But she wanted to be a wife and mother.
Audie Murphy wrote In his autobiography:
“We were poor cotton sharecroppers. My family always lived hand to mouth. When I joined the Army, I was amazed they let me eat as much as I wanted.”
All my uncles served in the military. So did I.
In the 1960s, my Uncle Ken completed his tour. When he left the Service, he was invited to New York City to interview. The job was flying helicopters between Manhattan and the Hamptons.
My grandfather told him: You do what you want, son. I truly want you to be happy.
But Yankees live differently than we do.
If you go to New York City, there is a good chance you will be back in 6 months.
My uncle lasted one night.
There are more people in one high-rise building than all of Cimarron County, Oklahoma. You can look from horizon to horizon and not see another human being.
That feeling of vastness — unlimited space — never leaves you.
On the other hand, city folks like the “energy” of a metropolis. To each his own.
My grandfather said:
Each person is uniquely created by God. Each person has a unique purpose.
Some coastal Americans would not visit the Great Plains if you paid them in gold.
Woody Allen directed The Front. In that movie, a character from New York says:
He moved to Kansas. Or maybe it was Oklahoma. Doesn’t matter.
Any normal person would go nuts in a place like that.
In the 1960s, I helped my grandfather milk at 5 AM and 5 PM. Cats lined up early.
One time, all my cousins and I were swimming in the creek.
My grandfather suddenly raced into the water. He pinned a water moccasin with a branch, then killed it with his bare hands. We were shocked. He was always such a gentle man.
Around my grandparents’ farm house and hay barn, there were chickens everywhere. This gave my grandmother “egg money” for incidentals.
On Saturday afternoons, we hauled water from town back to the farm. It cost 50 cents for 1,000 gallons.
On Saturday nights, my cousins and I would attend stock car races, a baseball game, or the rodeo. There was no television unless the wind was blowing due west from Oklahoma City.
In some Oklahoma counties, people drove an hour each way to reach a movie theater.
Funerals in Oklahoma can be very practical. The funeral director will find strapping young men and say:
You, you, and you … please give us a hand with the casket.
In winter, my grandfather and I would break ice in numerous locations. Cattle and hogs need water each day. With livestock, there are no days off.
Our reward was a huge farm breakfast including homemade biscuits and gravy.
After breakfast, we listened to a radio program called Tradio. People would call in to buy or sell various items. These ranged from knick-knacks to wheat combines. My grandfather never bought or sold anything. But he could recognize the voices of his neighbors on the radio.
I helped Grandpa change a tractor tire when I was 15 and he was 73. It was 102 degrees that day.
I spilled icy lemonade all over my work shirt. He kidded me and could not stop laughing.
My grandfather told us: Do not stick your nose in other people’s business.
That was wise advice. But in the early 1970s, western Oklahoma had party line telephones. There were 8 households on each line.
When someone made a call, 7 other people could potentially listen in. That was great fun for teenaged girls — but less fun for other people.
One time, I called my cousin: “I need to buy a load of 32% feed.”
He said: “Pick me up. I’ll give you a hand.”
An unknown voice chimed in: “Atwoods is having a clearance sale on 28% feed.” <click>
When my oldest uncle returned from the military, he used the GI Bill to attend Oklahoma State University. Then, he went to medical school at OU.
After graduation, he headed back to western Oklahoma. He was the only country doctor for miles around.
He used his “doctor money” to build a huge cattle operation. He often treated patients while wearing ranch clothes and dusty cowboy boots. No patient ever objected. After all, he was the only physician in town.
On the other hand, pharmaceutical salesmen stared in disbelief when they first met him. My uncle would say a few words of medical mumbo jumbo. That seemed to relax them.
My uncle built a dirt landing strip on his ranch with his tractor. He used his airplane to find lost cattle.
One day, we were watching him land his plane. He was so low he clipped the barbed wire fence. There was no damage to the plane except scraped paint. My cousin and I were sent to fix the fence.
I said: “Good thing he lands on his own property. If he landed his plane at the airport, the FAA might suspend his license.”
My cousin replied: “What license? He traded some cattle for that plane and just took off.”
In some parts of the USA, energy companies are vilified. That does not happen in Oklahoma and Texas.
Oklahomans follow the oil patch like Bostonians follow the Red Sox.
In 1977, a natural gas driller proposed drilling four wells on my grandparents’ property. Oklahoma (unlike Texas) has pooling of mineral rights. We already knew drilling was getting close.
Those four wells were planned for 11,500 feet. At that time, these were the deepest wells in the Anadarko Basin.
One of their daughters (my aunt) worked for Mosbacher Oil in Houston. She advised them to ask for a bigger override in exchange for no signing bonus.
Negotiations with the driller were always friendly. Discussions took place at the breakfast table over coffee.
My family understood that dry holes would mean zero money and torn up pastures. On the other hand, a gusher would mean lots of money.
As it turned out, all four wells became big producers.
My grandparents became wealthy within 6 months. But they never spent a dime on themselves.
Grandma said: I always wanted to travel, but never had the money. Now I have the money, but I am too tired to go.
My parents and grandparents lived through the Dust Bowl. Their mindset was:
Never whine. Never complain.
Put a smile on your face and get to work.
My grandparents married in 1920 and always felt blessed.
They thanked God each day.
This hits HOME | Oliver Anthony – I Want To Go Home – REACTION
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
China makes breakthrough in controllable nuclear fusion technology for new-generation ‘artificial sun’
China made a breakthrough in controllable nuclear fusion technology on Saturday.
Huanliu-3 (HL-3), the country’s new-generation “artificial sun,” realized high-confinement mode operation with a plasma current of one million amperes for the first time, according to the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC).
The breakthrough puts the operational level of China’s magnetic confinement nuclear fusion device at the forefront of the world, marking an important milestone in the country’s development of nuclear fusion energy.
The Huanliu-3 (HL-3), independently developed by China, is a large-scale research facility for controllable nuclear fusion.
The high-confinement mode, or H-mode, is an advanced mode of operation in magnetic confinement fusion devices, which can improve the economical efficiency of a fusion reactor.
Thus, the H-mode has been chosen as the standard operation mode for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is under construction.
The ITER is a nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject funded and run by seven member parties: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
A computer-generated image of China’s self-developed Huanliu-3 (HL-3) nuclear fusion reactor, the country’s new-generation “artificial sun.” /CMG
The conditions for realizing nuclear fusion reactions are extremely harsh. In a vacuum environment, the plasma temperature must reach more than 100 million degrees Celsius. As long as the conditions are not met, the reactions will not occur. Therefore, the nuclear fusion reactor is safe and controllable.
As a cutting-edge technology, controllable nuclear fusion is considered one of the most important methods to ultimately address energy-related issues.
It serves as a significant part in China’s “three-step” technological roadmap of “thermal neutron reactor, fast reactor, controllable nuclear fusion reactor” for nuclear energy development.
According to China’s long-term development goals set for the nuclear energy industry, the application of nuclear fusion energy is hoped to be realized by the middle of this century.
This Is So Bad – San Francisco’s Largest Mall Will Be Replaced By a Stadium
What idiots are running SF today?
Big Serge On The Summer Campaign In Ukraine
Big Serge has a long read about the state of the war in Ukraine which I recommend to read. It is a nice recap of the whole war and the ballyhooed counter-offensive:
Escaping Attrition: Ukraine Rolls the Dice
The Zaporizhia Summer Blockbuster
After concluding that the Ukrainian counter-offensive has evidently failed, he dares a look into the future:
So, whence goes the war from here? Well, the obvious question to ask is whether we believe Ukraine will ever have a more potent assault package than the one they started the summer with. The answer clearly seems to be no. It was like pulling teeth to scrape together these understrength brigades – the idea that, following on a defeat in the Battle of Zaporizhia, NATO will somehow put together a more powerful package seems like a stretch. More to the point, we have American officials saying fairly explicitly that this was the best mechanized package Ukraine was going to get.
It does not seem controversial to say that this was Ukraine’s best shot at some sort of genuine operational victory, which at this point seems to be slowly trickling away into modest but materially costly tactical advances. The ultimate implication of this is that Ukraine is unable to escape a war of industrial attrition, which is precisely the sort of war that it cannot win, due to all the asymmetries that we mentioned earlier.
In particular, however, Ukraine cannot win a positional-attritional war because of its own maximalist definition of “winning.” Since Kiev has insisted that it will not give up until it returns its 1991 borders, an inability to dislodge Russian forces poses a particularly nasty problem – Kiev will either need to admit defeat and acknowledge Russian control over the annexed areas, or it will continue to fight obstinately until it is a failed state with nothing left in the tank.
Trapped in a bat fight, with attempts to unlock the front with maneuver coming to naught, what Ukraine needs most is a much bigger bat. The alternative is a totalizing strategic disaster.
Pushed by the U.S. the Ukrainian leadership seems to have decided to go for the alternative.
Also a good read is:
The Case for Negotiating with Russia – The New Yorker
Not that Biden will go for it, but it is important that such pieces are now coming up.
Posted by b at 11:56 UTC | Comments (216)
Episode 66 — Singin’ the truth about America (Oliver Anthony)
In his phenomenal and poignant song about the working man in America and the slide of a once great country into semi-tyranny by the rich rats “North of Richmond,” Oliver Anthony hits a patriotic nerve among tens of millions of Americans, who are just f**king FED UP with the Swamp’s politicians and their Leftist voters, and the outright theft of our paychecks and freedoms!
Reaction video. If you tire of the American angst, then don’t watch it. But I will continue to put up visions of what it was like in France before the powdered wig wealthy got beheaded.
Very expensive fails
Did Huawei deliberately launch the Mate 60 Pro phone with 5G Kirin 9000s chipset while US Commerce Secretary Raimondo was visiting China in August 2023 as a deliberate slap in the face to the US?
That’s at best, speculative.
Huawei had scheduled a launch event in September, 12th, if my memory serves me correctly. People were expecting the Mate 60 Pro in two weeks, with the usual media blitz typical of a flagship launch. Curiously, Apple’s iPhone 15 launch is scheduled for the 13th, Beijing Time.
This prelaunch sale landed in vmall, Huawei’s webstore as an announcement celebrating the sale of the Mate series exceeding 100 million.
No graphics, no specs, just short descriptions of the colors available, the satellite calling feature, the improved durability of the case and glass, the upgrade to the camera’s action, portrait and macro shot capability, the return of Ai-powered hands free gestures and mobile payment, as well as the Pangu large language AI model.
With that, several million sets of the 12/512 GB model sold out within the hour. At 7k per pop, that’s revenue in multiples of 7 billion RMB, in just 1 hour.
Reviews are aplenty, with customers receiving their purchases on the day or the next. There are drop tests, screen tests, satellite calling demos, smart mobile payment demos, gesture demos, pangu demos, camera tests, charging tests, teardowns… all within the first 24–48 hours.
All for a phone that hasn’t been officially launched, and caught everyone, even the influencers who review tech for a living, by surprise.
I won’t engage in conspiracy and say this was Huawei’s attempt at black humor, but beyond the impressive phone, the logistic efficiency demonstrated in getting the goods to consumers is shocking, and Huawei’s guerilla marketing success is testament to the groundswell of support and goodwill in the domestic market. Huawei (华为), after all, means “Created by the Chinese”, a symbol of pride for the Chinese nation.
Discounting Huawei’s motivation for jumping the gun, the Mate 60 Pro’s prelaunch injected tremendous chatter into the news cycle surrounding Gina’s visit. Its success is the perfect response to the Commerce department’s attempt at targeting a corporation for take down.
As for Gina, she is one confused girl. She says in Beijing she is ready to collaborate with China on AI, but turns around and insists matters of national security are non-negotiable.
“I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”
We are better off ignoring the rhetoric and focusing on her department’s policies.
Gina no longer has a bird’s eye view of Huawei’s activities, because it has been forced to create a sandboxed and independent supply chain free from American sanction through the abuse of IP privileges. Whoever inherits the hot seat will have to deal with the fog of war invited by America, for America.
GloFo had no choice but to abandon its $70 billion factory in China because of the US decision!
In this video, we dissect the dramatic withdrawal of a major U.S. chip powerhouse from the Chinese market, the stunning shutdown of a colossal $70 billion factory, and its subsequent acquisition by a Chinese tech giant.
🇺🇸 The U.S. chip bill, a game-changing move signed into law by President Biden, has ignited what experts now call the “chip war.” This showdown is reshaping the Sino-U.S. technological landscape, marking the second round of high-stakes rivalry between these global titans.
💥 The ripple effects of the Biden administration’s restrictions on American corporate investments in China have sent shockwaves through the industry. American chip companies are grappling with the potential loss of substantial financial support from the Chinese market. China, holding a commanding 65% share of nearly $600 billion in global semiconductor purchases, wields tremendous influence over the industry’s future.
What would Xi Jinping do if he took over Taiwan, and millions of mainland Chinese suddenly wanted to move there?
After the liberation of Taiwan, there will be no more millions of mainland Chinese going to Taiwan.
Taiwan’s per capita income is not as good as that of Hong Kong, Macau, or even Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hongkong
There are few business opportunities and few employment opportunities. As Taiwan’s industries are dominated by OEMs with low wages, young Taiwanese are reluctant to take up these jobs. Most of these jobs are done by foreign labourers from Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia who come to Taiwan.
Young Taiwanese are travelling out of Taiwan in search of job opportunities, mostly to Japan, Australia and mainland China.
And, they’re both China’s islands, but Taiwan’s scenery isn’t even as good as Hainan’s, let alone the other islands in Southeast Asia. There are not even decent tropical beaches. The west coast of Taiwan is mudflats, and the east coast is gravel. Therefore, few tourists go to Taiwan for vacation.
Hainan Province, China
The scenery of Alishan and Sun Moon Lake is just average. In terms of scenic beauty, it is not as beautiful as Huangshan, Lijiang, Jiuzhaigou, Zhangjiajie and other world natural heritage sites.
Zhangjiajie, Hunan, the setting for the film “Avatar”.
This is Sun Moon Lake, Alishan. To be honest, the scenery is pretty average! Many of the reservoirs in mainland China are no less scenic than Sun Moon Lake in Alishan.
In mainland China, there are plateau lakes, alpine lakes, forest lakes, basin lakes, frigid ice lakes, steppe lakes, underground lakes in caves, desert oasis lakes, Gobi lakes, park lakes, reservoir lakes, Tianshan lakes, Kunlun lakes, Qinling lakes, Shangri-La lakes, southwestern lakes, southern lakes, northwestern lakes, and so on. Tibetan Plateau lakes are densely packed how to describe? Even the seven deserts have starry lakes …… mainly because Taiwan is too small.
The infrastructure is outdated, and there are metal houses next to the 101 building.
Many mainland Chinese who have travelled to Taiwan Province feel that they have been deceived by the advertisements of travel agents. When you hear people bragging about how beautiful Taiwan is, you will be deeply disappointed when you are actually on the ground.
Of course, it is not that Taiwan is not beautiful, but Taiwan is too small, too common, not as vast as the mainland, for mainland Chinese who have seen too many beautiful scenery, Taiwan lacks the scenery that “shocked” them.
Because Taiwan is not attractive as a place to live, few mainland Chinese will voluntarily move to Taiwan.
In December 1949, the KMT fled to Taiwan with millions of mainland soldiers, Officials and wealthy businessmen. Except for the KMT officials and wealthy businessmen who are greedy for life and fear of death, most of the soldiers came to Taiwan from their hometowns out of necessity. They are coerced, not self-selected.
But the CPC is not the KMT. the CPC is the victor of the Chinese civil war and does not need to lead the Chinese people to flee to Taiwan.
Chiang Kai-shek brought millions of soldiers to flee to Taiwan, photo credit: New Taiwan Peace Foundation
However, the PLA will undoubtedly station troops in Taiwan Province. Taiwan Province falls under the jurisdiction of the PLA’s Eastern Theatre, and potentially 100,000 PLA soldiers will be stationed in Taiwan.
PLA soldiers come from all over China and rotate regularly, just like the PLA garrison in Hong Kong.
The PLA Hong Kong Garrison has 6,000-12,000 PLA soldiers. Taiwan is larger in area and has a larger population than Hong Kong. Moreover, Taiwan is very strategically located. the PLA will definitely have more troops stationed in Taiwan than in Hong Kong.
Filipina Give Hot Comments About Western Women Demands in a Relationship.
Tired of the reaction videos? Then this is for you.