I’ll bet you all never knew this…

In China, if you hit a dog or a cat, or any pet for that matter, and the owner comes out and makes a claim against you for killing or wounding their pet, the insurance company will pay no questions asked.

It is automatic.

Most insurance is no-contest up to 3000 RMB, and many (but not all) go up to 5000 RMB for the death of a beloved pet involved in a car accident.

You would NEVER see this anywhere else.

…

So, consider this scenario…

In China, Fido bolts across a busy road. He gets hit, the car and driver slows for a minute but then continues to drive on.

A day later, the owner finds the crushed bones of Fido.

He files a police report, which NORMALLY causes the AI cameras in the region to identify what actually happened.

And just like the Tom Curse movie “Minority Report” the car is identified, the driver is identified, and the time of death is established.

The driver is contacted. He apologies, and his insurance is notified.

There is a insurance pay out to the aggrieved pet owner.

…

This would NEVER happen in the USA. But it’s pretty common in China. It’s an accident and there are no civil or criminal penalties for the driver, but the aggrieved pet owner needs to be compensated, and this is the way China does it.

The USA needs to “up its game”, don’t you know.

Today…

What is one remarkable thing you’ve witnessed at a funeral?

I’ve been to some interesting funerals.

At one, the funeral of an elderly woman, her only child used the eulogy to mock and insult her to the startled crowd. Also, there was no body and no mention of one. We showed up to a bare room where her child stood at the podium and went on about her shortcomings for about forty-five minutes, until we were dismissed. No gravesite was ever disclosed. To this day we have no idea what happened to her.

At another, a relative leaned over a coffin and contemplated the deceased as he took a long, loud slurp from a Super Big Gulp.

via The Blaze

And, although strictly speaking this took place after the funeral, I should mention my spirited aunt who tormented my uncle from Beyond. She informed everyone as she was dying that she’d reincarnate as a bird and peck out the eyes of those who’d done her wrong. After the funeral, which was in early spring, her husband came home and a bird was nesting in the back porch overhang. It chose to dive bomb him at the worst (best?) possible time, and for the rest of his life he swore the bird was his dead wife returning to haunt him.

Worst deal ever

What is the greatest display of accuracy with a gun you’ve ever seen from someone at the firing range?

It wasn’t at the firing range, but here’s mine…

My grandfather was a WWII sniper. It was always funny to me…he had the worst eyesight you could imagine, and I remember seeing pictures of him as a little boy with glasses thick as milk bottles. But by a very wide margin, he was the best shot I’ve ever seen.

One example is something that happened when I was a little girl. We used to go to an annual state fair, and one of the attractions was a turkey shoot. Basically, it was a wooden maze that a live turkey would run through…the body was hidden, but as the turkey ran, he’d bob up and down and his head would be visible for a fraction of a second every now and then. Contestants would pay to take a shot – you stood maybe ten yards behind the maze and you had one shot…if you hit it, you won the (dead) turkey and some sort of cash prize.

We watched other shooters…apparently it was a big test of manhood among the locals, and all the heavy-duty serious shooters were out there, many in camo with various military or law enforcement patches. Definitely some seriously mean looking dudes. The tool of choice seemed to be an expensive looking shotgun, and while some of the shooters seemed to come close, the turkey always eluded them. Many shooters tried, but the turkey was still alive – I started to think maybe the whole thing was rigged somehow, and that there really was no way to win.

Thing is, the crowd was loud enough that you couldn’t really tell where the turkey was at any moment. It might make a beeline for the exit, or it might linger in the maze. It might hear something and keep its head up, or it might not…very unpredictable, and shooters would have to spot the turkey, swing their weapon and get a shot off in almost zero time.

Many of the shooters seemed to use a technique where they’d just pick a small area of the maze and keep their guns focused there. Didn’t seem to make a difference…the movement was just too fast to acquire the target and get a shot off.

My grandfather watched the event too, shaking his head at each of the shooters and telling us what they were doing wrong. At one point, my father suggests that grandpa should show them how it’s done…only issue is that he doesn’t have a shotgun.

Out of pure coincidence, grandpa had taken my older brother to the range a few days prior, and my brother remembered that his .22 was still locked in the trunk of the car. Grandpa starts considering it, and he asks the folks running the event if he can shoot a .22 instead of a shotgun. There was discussion whether this was allowable, but before you know it, my father and older brother head off to fetch the .22.

Grandpa takes out the .22 and the crowd sort of laughs…here’s this feeble 70-something with thick dark glasses and a pretty well worn .22 that might just as well have been a slingshot. People try to explain to him that he needs a shotgun, and one or two of the shooters even offers to lend him one…I remember him laughing them off with, “well, what kind of contest would that be? I have to at least give the poor bird a fighting chance.”

Of course, by now, grandpa’s pride was at stake, and there was no way he was putting down that .22.

Grandpa pays his fee and lines up. He draws a crowd, and with the help of my dad, he gets down into a kneeling stance, and suddenly he looks a little more like he knows what he’s doing.

I was maybe ten, and grandpa looks at me and tells me to stand close, but not too close, and to put my fingers in my ears. I remember him telling me he wanted to make sure I had a good view, and someday I’d either tell my kids about grandpa’s amazing shot, or I’d be telling them what a silly old man he was…either way, he wanted me to witness it.

The buzzer goes off, the crowd starts yelling and the turkey starts its run through the maze. I remember seeing its head bob up and down a few times, and then as it got about halfway through the maze, I hear grandpa’s shot ring out.

We didn’t see the turkey after that…it wasn’t clear if it had been hit or it just ran to the end of the maze with its head down.

Then I heard someone in the crowd: “the old man hit it!”

And sure enough, grandpa hit the turkey with one shot from his lowly .22.

The crowd was going crazy, and I asked grandpa how he did it: “easy – I just watched for the gleam of the sunlight in its eyes.”

I thought he was kidding, but when the bird was fetched, we found out that grandpa managed to put a bullet exactly through the eyes of the turkey…in fact, the bullet went in one eye, and out the other. If I hadn’t seen grandpa shoot before, I would have thought it was pure luck, but I knew better.

We didn’t know it at the time, but grandpa had pancreatic cancer – he died within the next six months…this event, grandma complaining about having to go home and roast a turkey even as she beamed with pride, and the twenty dollars grandpa gave each of us as thanks for believing in him, were some of my fondest memories of my grandfather.

I’m sure there are others that could make that shot, but when you consider his age, physical condition, primitive equipment, and the stress of the situation, it was one in a million in my book.

Preach it dude!

What is the best case of “You just picked a fight with the wrong person” that you’ve witnessed?

I was just a girl, probably about 10. My Dad was driving the family to my Grandmother’s place for Sunday dinner. Dad stopped behind a car at a red light when it happened…

Now to know my Dad was to love him. He was all of 5 feet tall, had polio as a child so was bent over with a hump back and had an undeveloped leg in a brace. He was a talker, could converse with anyone. He sang and played the guitar, he boxed with my little brother and built a mean fire when we went camping. He couldn’t chop wood or put up a tent or anything that required muscle, but he could and did, entertain his friends and family as they did it for him. Not one person ever resented helping my Dad. He had a way of making everyone feel comfortable, like he’d known them forever. So… he was a gem.

This day was just like every other Sunday. Except for what happened at that light. I don’t really remember what caused the problem but my Dad did something that pissed off the guy driving ahead of him. This guy slams his vehicle into park and gets out of the vehicle then starts stalking over to Dad’s door. My Mom is worried but not him. He got out of his door, walked all 5 feet of himself up to this brute, stuck out his hand and said something like “I seemed to have annoyed you somehow.” I don’t remember the conversation but I do remember the guy shaking my Dad’s hand and apologizing for getting mad over nothing. Yup, took the wind right out of his sails in a few seconds. Quite the guy.

What is a personal story of a moment that made you truly appreciate the quality of life? What happened?

I became friends with Gordon in Grad School. Gordon suffered from Acromegaly. Acromegaly is a hormonal disorder that develops when your pituitary gland produces too much growth hormone during adulthood. When this happens, your bones increase in size, including those of your hands, feet and face.

He never had friends and had been shunned his whole life. I heard a voice (as I do when it is very important) that said to befriend him. I did, going out for chicken drive-thru, having long talks and visiting each other’s houses. His mom was very curious of me.

I wanted to have a graduate party, about 100 students, at my Dad’s house. Guess whose name was at the top of the flyer? Three hosts, including Gordon. Supertramp was on the record player and it was a great time.

Wonders of wonders, Gordon announced he was going to throw a party. It was word of mouth since there was no internet. Gordon had timed it so his parents were out of town. I arrived early to help. He was busy setting out nuts and such. Unfortunately, it was pouring down raining, hard. Gordon lived in an outer suburb of the city, so it was a drive.

7:30 came and went. Nobody showed. Nobody.

I started to talk to Gordon that it was raining hard, and people do not like to drive in the rain, etc. He listened but was still busy.

At 8:00, there was a ring on the doorbell. Then another, then another.

EVERYBODY was there. He was so happy and I was happy for him.

The next day I went to help clean up. All good.

Later he told me his parents wanted to know why there were shoe prints in the bathtub.

I have had success in school, business, and my marriage, but one of the proudest moments was seeing Gordon’s face that night.

Quantity vs. Quality

What is the strangest reaction of someone who has just been fired?

I was working at the corporate headquarters of a major Consumer product goods company in the late 80s. They were undergoing the threat of being purchased by a tobacco company, which was going on at the time (late 80s and early 90s). As such, they were having a significant 14% layoff to improve their position in a potential hostile takeover. (and it did work!), Well, there was a lot of hurt and pain the morning people came in to discover they were pink-slipped. One guy and there was some concern from a PR perspective, was a guy who had worked at this company for over 40, yes, 40 years! He was a year out from retirement(meaning he planned to retire the following year) , and the company was giving generous severance packages. Well, the guy under the terms of severance was getting the maximum full year of 100% pay for 52 weeks. Basically, he was retiring with full pay and retirement benefits but was able to do so a full year early. He and his wife had planned a world cruise to the year after his retirement. Evidently, the first call he made was to his wife to book the ship and pack because we are going this week! He was so gleeful that he had to be escorted out of the building because his utter joy was inappropriate for so many in that office who were now unemployed and hurting. They were also concerned that at his age, he might have a heart attack from his ecstasy and how the press would report it!

What is your best badass firearm story?

I was at an outdoor shooting range and had been talking to the guy next to me during cease-fire breaks. He had his granddaughter with him and he was shooting an old .22 revolver at a 25 yard target. Two men came in and went down to the 10 yard range and were blasting away at their targets, often hitting the ground in their haste. At the next cease-fire, they packed up and walked down the shooting line to leave. The guy next to me said something to them about maybe slowing down their shots and focusing on accuracy. They informed him that they were rookie cops and that they knew what they were doing because of their extensive weeks (days?) of training. He replied that he was a retired Louisiana cop and held up 2 of his targets that he had pulled from the range. He had been shooting heart shapes into the target with that old revolver. As they left, I heard one of the rookies tell the other, “We just got schooled, didn’t we.”

The best badass story I ever heard was in the news here maybe 20 years ago. A guy was running the register at his little convenience store when a punk came in and pulled a pistol demanding money. The store owner started complaining about being robbed several times and that he needed to get a gun. Then he asked the robber how much he would take to sell him the pistol. The robber gave him a price, the owner paid him, took the gun, and turned it on the robber and told him to put his hands up. The story made the news because the police thought it was such a great “dumb criminal story” that they pulled the robber out of his cell at each shift change and made him tell the cops coming on duty what had happened. His lawyer threatened to sue the police department for embarrassing the guy.

It is so messed up.

What was your most glorious moment in a classroom ever?

I never got amazing grades in my science class. Or any classes really. I was a very distracted student. Class was boring. I enjoyed daydreaming in the back.

But I won the school science fair in 9th grade.

Almost as fun as winning the science fair?

Enjoying death stares from all the smart kids.

I was told that the smartest girl in our class, Liz, who went on to study at MIT, was pissssed. Both of her parents were doctors. She fancied herself a descendant of Science.

The quote that got back to me was, “I can’t believe I lost to Sean.”

But alas. Lose she did. Yours truly, Captain Dumbass, topped a future MIT Grad.

What was my experiment, you ask?

Well, for context, this was back in 1998 after a bunch of major oil spills had occurred and the news had lots of terrible stories about wildlife dying, covered in the tar-like oil.

My experiment measured the use of different types of animal hair in oil spill cleanups. I used hair from barber shops, llama farms, horse farms, and beyond in the experiment, which was done in the backyard in a kiddy pool.

Several types of fibers ended up testing with better results than the synthetic buoys used during actual oil spill cleanups.

After winning regionals at a local university, we traveled to states a month later, where about 50 science experiments were featured.

I think I was the dumbest guy at this science fair, but I placed 3rd somehow.

The guy who placed 1st, a 15-year-old, designed a roof that doesn’t blow off during hurricanes. He brought his own wind tunnel and everything.

Yeah, he kinda deserved the gold.

But I was happy with 3rd. And for having trolled the smart kids at my school back home.

Who’s the real one that is oppressed…

What was the worst day of your life and why?

May 6, 2008. My husband of 28 years came home early from work one day, sat down at the table and told me he was just fired for having an affair with a 25 year old girl at work. In that moment, with that one sentence, everything inside me shut down and I was in shock, numb. Until then, I had truly believed he was my best friend and I was a lucky woman.

We ended up losing our dream home, went bankrupt, sold everything of value and cashed out our retirement to survive (I have a good job but his salary was 4x’s mine). We now live in a small apartment like we did when we first got married. Those are just “things” though. What hurts most is how it affected the future of our (then) teen children. We couldn’t help them through college or keep them on health, dentist, and car insurance. All for a few quick fucks.

He is extremely remorseful and worked long and hard to win my heart back. Our marriage counselor considers us a huge success story. I have forgiven him and all seems happy now. But secretly, whatever it was that went numb inside me on May 6th at that breakfast table, has never come back to me. I’m afraid it never will.

I hope if you are married, or even happily employed, that this post will make you think twice should you need to.

Which was the most important airplane of WW2?

This guy:

The PBY.

And his British brother

The Sunderland Flying Boat

The only crucial battle of WW2 that the Axis almost won was the Battle for the Atlantic. This plane and the others that performed anti-submarine patrols enable the flow of men and materials from America to Britain.

Some people prefer to go to an office every day rather than staying at home all day. Do you think this is because they like what they do?

1. When I was growing up, I saw my father going to office every day. He would eat his breakfast at 9 and leave for office by 9.30. It was a six days week during that period. Since he was a civil servant, he had to many times go for work even on Sundays and holidays.
2. When I was in school and then in college, I seldom missed my classes. It was fun going to school and college and meet with friends and participate in all activities.
3. When I joined my job, everyone in office used to come in time without fail. There were many who wouldn’t even avail their full quota of casual leaves (15 in a year). There were a few instances when due to Deewali or some other vacations, there were continuous holidays for 4–5 days. People used to wait for offices to open.
4. Even today, in most government offices, there is no concept of working from home. All government employees go to office every day.
5. During the covid pandemic, most of the private sector companies introduced the concept of work from home. It was the need of the hour and was very convenient for the employees. Lots of people shifted to their home towns and worked from there. It became a new normal.
6. Now that the things have gotten back to normal, a number of people are still preferring to work from home. I know a few youngsters who resigned their jobs when the companies asked them to report to office for work. They became too comfortable perhaps working from home.
7. Maybe I am old school, but for me staying home all day is not done. I want to go to my office and work.

You need to get out

In what moment did you realize your life would never be the same?

I was 14. No friends. Each day I dragged myself home to where I lived with my schizophrenic Mother, just the two of us. I would be in trouble for something: I lived in a perpetual state of confusion as I often couldn’t remember what she told me I had done. She told me I was stupid and needed to go to a special school because I didn’t know what I had done wrong. In the past she had often slapped me until my nose bled and beat me with the metal pole of a fly swatter, but that stopped the summer before high school. She told me she didn’t love me repeatedly for months. According to her I was a horrible daughter. Her friends from church had stopped coming weekly to yell at me and slap me senseless as well. I knew when she sent me away with my Aunt and Uncle the summer that had passed she had read my diary, where I detailed all the abuse and talked about wanting to die. She denied reading it, but it stopped the physical abuse so now it was just verbal and believe it or not that hurt just as bad. I was unloveable and alone.

She didn’t work and depended on government assistance. She just sat at home chain smoking and playing cards. During the week I woke myself up, made breakfast, went to school. She complained about the smell of eggs in the morning and of course I was useless. I had a hard time socializing, and she decided she didn’t like the friends I’d managed to make the previous year, so put me in a very small private Christian high school the church paid for. As a low income, single parent house I was a freak among higher income two parent families. So I spent my days an outsider and bullied at school and then came home to be bullied some more. I got in trouble once because someone told her I walked around with my head down and never smiled! I remember trying out and making the school play that year. I was so proud. My Mother decided to use that as leverage for her every whim: if I did anything wrong (sang doing dishes) she threatened to not allow me to be in the play. It got so bad I just quit the play rather than have it continually be held over my head as a threat.

A school councillor regularily made me talk to him. I refused to give anything up. He persisted. He asked me if I was abused: as she was no longer hitting me I said no. I had no words to explain the verbal abuse. Being stupid and unloveable didn’t seem to qualify. Then one magical day a girl at school approached me and we became friends. A few weeks later she asked me if I could spend the weekend at her house. Her house was beautiful and she lived with her parents and siblings and it was loud, noisy and chaotic. On the Saturday of this weekend sleep over, my new friend had to take piano lessons so I was to hang out in her room until she got back. I was surprised when both her parents wanted to speak with me while she was gone. They informed me that the school had asked them to be my foster parents and presented me with a ‘contract’. They gave me 30 minutes to decide if I wanted to live with them.

I was 14 years old. I had no friends. My Mother was the only family I had ever known. I knew I was stupid. I knew that I was worthless and unloveable. 30 minutes was a ridiculous amount of time for a decision that would change the course of my life that I was too young to make. I didn’t know these people at all. But a voice in my head screamed at me to do it, with everything it had. So I took that leap of faith. I jumped off the cliff away from everything I’d ever known.

My roller coaster ride wasn’t over my any means, but to this day I am so grateful I left. My life 30 years later is wonderful and I often wonder where I would be if I had stayed growing up in that house.

What did prisoners of war eat?

I spent several weeks in a Prisoner of War camp in Central Bosnia. Conditions were bad and so was the food. We basically ate the same things every day:

Breakfast.

A small slice of bacon with bread. The bacon was as tough as leather and full of bones. If you were lucky, one of your roommates was working outside and brought you some Turkish coffee.

This slice of bacon looks much better than the ones we ate. (Photo: Rainer Zenz, wiki:de)

Lunch.

Most of the time, there was no electrical power and our food had to be heated over a small fire in the backyard. Our captors just threw a bunch of tinned food into a big pot of boiling water. There were two different meals: peas with beef and beans with beef. You always had to be careful when you opened the tins because they were under pressure. Once, I opened a tin and the content just sprayed over my T-Shirt.

Dinner.

We either had another slice of sh*tty bacon or tinned sardines with an onion. Both, the bacon and the sardines, were extremely salty which caused you to drink a lot of water during the night. This was a big problem because there were no toilets in the rooms. If you needed to pee, you had to knock on the door (waking everyone up), shout the number of your room to a guard, and wait. There was only one toilet for all of the seventy prisoners and it could take an hour before someone came to open the door.

Partner, not a job

Was the Soviet Tupolev Tu-22 bomber a failure or success?

Massive success.

The aircraft itself was pretty crappy but that didn’t matter as kinks would be worked out later.

It’s main job was to attack targets in Western Europe and its speed could not be matched by NATO interceptors stationed in Europe except the British Lightning and the F-104 Starfighter … BUT …

The Lightning had a short range and was only operated from British soil, it couldn’t go after the Tu-22. And the F-104 was a very good interceptor but the Europeans used it in the low-level fighter-bomber role, so again not a real threat to the Tu-22.

On top of that, the Tu-22 was a versatile aircraft that could carry a wide range of weapons.

But the most important aspect was psychological.

The fucking commies have a bomber we can’t intercept !!! and NATO collectively shit its pants.

Think about all those billions wasted on modern NATO Air Defences while Khrushchev had already decided to go with ballistic missiles instead of bombers.

With a large arsenal of relatively cheap missiles, the Soviets could have taken out expensive NATO Air Defences and then mop up the rest with cheap (and often crappy) bombers.

The Soviets couldn’t keep up with the West financially so they came up with a wide range of ploys to force the West to spend money on expensive systems that could be easily circumvented … and usually NATO fell for it (they still went broke in the end, but that is another story).

What is your biggest regret in life?

I don’t like to share my personal life with anyone, so writing this anonymously. Though I have made some mistakes in life, this one really tops the chart.

So me any my father were never really close, although he cared for me but never really showed it (like most indian dads) and I was the same as well. It was my final year engineering exams when I received a call from home, it was my sister who said that dad just fainted and we are taking him to the hospital. I reached as soon as I could, he suffered from brain haemorrhage. Though the doctore saved him, he was not able to walk or speak properly after that. He was 57 at the time.

After 3 years went by, we had accepted this fate and were living peacefully. My dad was now able to take care of himself(doing his day to day activities that is) and he used to exercise as well, since the doctors mentioned it was very important for him to keep his body moving.

One fine day he complained to us that he is having some chest pain so he’ll skip exercise, we all thought it was due to gas so didn’t pay much thoguht to it. This continued for 3–4 days after which I had an argument with him and I shouted these exact words to him “You are just finding excuses to not exercise, there’s nothing wrong with you. You are just being lazy.”

Guess what! Next morning he started sweating really bad and fainted. We took him to the hospita and found that he was suffering from a heart attack and doctor said that it must be going on for about 4–5 days now. He asked us how come we didn’t notice any symptoms and we were all blank and cried like anything.

He was not so lucky this time, after being in the ICU for 15 days, he didn’t make it. Life has never really been the same since, beacise all I can think of now is our last coversation in which I shouted at him. That’s my last interaction with him, the amount of pain and guilt I feel now, if I could give everything I have just to change that one moment where I shouted at him, I would not even think twice.

But I can’t, after that day I’ve realised the importance of words and parents as well. Although they may not always show but we(their children) are the best thing that ever happened to them.

Please guys, treat your parents with the love and respect they deserve, because you don’t know which conversation is going to be the last one.

What facts about Japan do foreigners not believe until they come to Japan?

1. They are extremely punctual. For eg: I had a dinner planned with my labmates at sharp 6.00 PM. I was in my room till 6.00 PM and I wondered where everybody has gone as no one was to be seen. Suddenly, I remembered that there was a dinner at 6.00 PM and immediately I rushed downstairs. I reached at there around 6.02 PM and saw everybody there in their seats waiting just for me and they had set a plate with the food for me. When I sat down, then they sang their prayer and started eating.

2. People politely line-up in front of the metro unlike in Delhi metro where people cover the whole door just to get inside (at least that was my experience when I traveled in Delhi metro during my visit there) and it is considered rude to speak in the metro.

3. Even if train is delayed by 15-20 seconds, a message is displayed “Sorry for the inconvenience”

4. Technology is used even in toilets to keep the seats warm and bidets are there. There is also an audio track to mask the unappealing sounds you emit 😛

5. Has excellent garbage management: For eg. Mon, Thu – Burnable, Wed- Non-burnable, Fri- Bottles and plastics to be kept in street corner

6. You can find almost everything of daily use in the 100 yen shop. Not to mention the cheap electronic goods in Japan.

7. There is a 10,000 yen note. And the travel is very expensive. For eg: a ride of 2 km by taxi costs 710 yen in Tokyo.

Manipulated…

Some say China-U.S. tech competition has forced U.S. tech companies to abandon a dynamic market, putting them at the forefront of the confrontation. So how do you see tech competition between China and US?

Thanks for the request.

U.S, tech companies are unfortunately being squeezed by our own government. The Chinese market is existential to these companies. . . . and its the U.S. government banning them from this market.

Biden is continuing trump’s sanctions of China’s tech companies – that latest salvo being the ban on U.S. tech companies from selling to China the latest version chips. But for what end?

Bottomline, on a head-to-head confrontation, the U.S. just can’t win because ultimately, you need to be able to sell what you produce. And this has to be through China because they are the market.

And by banning U.S. tech companies from the Chinese market now is allowing Chinese startups to take over the vacuum left open and effectively replace the U.S. tech companies not just in the Chinese but the global marketplace over the long term.

After you let him use YOUR the “back door”?

Not “our” back door.

HER back door.

What was the best revenge you’ve ever gotten?

Back in the ′90s, a new neighbor moved in to the house just down the block. He was a single guy in his early 40s, seemed to be one of those guys who worked with his hands and kept mainly to himself. But… it wasn’t very long before we (as in the ENTIRE block) found out that he was a jerk.

He had a beautiful vintage ‘69 Ford Mustang GT 500, with (what I found out later) one of the fastest engines ever commercially made. Here’s one below, and you have to admit, it looks absolutely stunning, eh?

Well, the neighbor in question definitely thought so as well, especially the over-powered engine. But in a suburb, where can you show off the power of the engine, really?

How about EVERY MORNING AT 5 AM when he went to work.

Every morning, that lunatic would pull out of his driveway, rev up the engine and demonstrate why that car could go 0–60 in 3.3 seconds! That car (and he) would go straight down the length of the block in practically 2 seconds and burst out onto the cross streets until he disappeared in a tell tale cloud of smoke and exhaust. Our neighborhood had become a 5 AM RACE TRACK.

To put it lightly, the entire neighborhood was NOT impressed. The sound of that car engine could be heard from two blocks away. I think practically all of the residents went to him in the period of a week asking him to not drive so recklessly and dangerously and wake up the entire block every weekday (and some weekend) mornings.

He would fake concern, and assure everyone he won’t do it again. And of course, he did it again and again. We complained to the cops, and they gave him a warning several times, but at the time there were no laws on the books in Montreal about sound decibels between 11 PM and 5 AM. Needless to say, we were stuck.

This went on for about two months until winter set in, and I and several neighbors were assembling the local outdoor hockey rink. As we were filling in the rink, making the ice and so on, we were talking about the jerk when an inspired idea suddenly flashed in our heads. Looking at the wooden boards that we used to make the ice rink, a devious plan came to mind. We rushed back to my kitchen as soon as we could, and started to work on the math. Later, we went door to door to see who we could conscript to help with our evil plans.

(By the way for all you car enthusiasts and collectors, I have NO idea why this guy was using such a classic car as a daily driver, and why drive it in the winter either.)

A few more weeks we all waited (by this time, the secret neighborhood revenge task force grew to about 30 households) for an ESPECIALLY cold day in Montreal (-20C and below) and waited for the chance to execute our plan… and then the forecast came of one especially cold night and day. The time had come.

Seeing as the neighbor always went to work at 5 AM, he almost always went to bed around 9 PM. Assuming that he would take about an hour to get ready for work, that gave us a window of around midnight to 3 AM for our plan. And like clockwork, at the stroke of midnight, 30 people came out, with small shovels, wood brackets (the ones we use to make local rinks), buckets and several hoses from the houses surrounding the target house. We all worked efficiently and effectively seeing as we never did anything like this before. Brackets went up. Snow got piled in. Water poured in.

Did I forget to mention again that it was -24C that night?

By 3 AM, we were all done. Our act of vengeance was complete, and had a few more hours still to harden and solidify. And yes, you’ve probably guessed what we did… and at 5 AM, we heard a very loud man ranting and raving, wanting revenge on whomever that did this, screaming that he was going to do horrible things to the people that did THIS to his beloved car.

Oh, as for what we did… imagine the next two pics COMBINED to see what we did to that beloved ’69 Ford Mustang GT 500.

Yes, we turned his car into A HUGE ICE CUBE.

Needless to say, when life resumed on the street around 7 to 8 AM as people were going to work, we were greeted to a pretty pissed-off guy hammering at iron-strong ice walls surrounding his car. He wouldn’t even look at anyone as people passed by, and only kept muttering to himself something pretty nasty.

It was about three days before he managed to get his car completely free, and that involved a LOT of hot water, hours of labour and god knows what else he had to do. Add on that he had to get back to work each day, the mornings were peaceful as there was nary a roar or sound of anything.

The cops came and asked for statements from everyone in the area to find out who could have done something so terrible, but no one pointed at anyone, and everyone reiterated about how that neighbor had been a jerk from day two. He even went door to door, absolutely furious and demanded that someone tell him who did this. I think someone must have called the cops on him because he was threatening too many people. Needless to say, his complaints fell on deaf ears, and even the cops, who I think figured out that this was a group event, brushed his rantings away and threatened him with arrest and told him to calm down or else. Overall, a pretty satisfactory conclusion.

Well, there was a slight miscalculation though… the hot water (then cold) had to drain somewhere, and went down the street turning half the block into an ice rink for a while. Still, aside from a few bags of sand and ice, plus the help of the city and ANOTHER warning from the cops about how he was endangering the street, it was still a successful operation with only a minor inconvenience.

For the next few months, the mornings were quite peaceful. No more 5 AM revving or barreling out of the neighborhood like a bat out of hell. And in the spring, a For Sale sign popped up on his lawn. By the summer, we greeted a brand new family to the neighborhood, and life went on in a sleepy (no longer sleep-deprived) suburban neighborhood in Canada.

What’s the most morally disgusting thing you’ve ever seen someone do?

An acquaintance of mine took his daughter’s college savings away so that he could buy a boat. He did this the year before she went to college to “teach her responsibility” after they had an argument.

After they got into a (relatively minor) fight he told her she had two choices:

1) They could transfer ownership of an almost-paid-off car to her.

2) Let her keep the college fund they’d been growing (they told her this fund was for her, her entire life).

She chose “Keep the college fund”. He changed his mind, took that option away, made her take the car anyway, and kept the college fund for himself instead. Perhaps 2) was never an option, but he hoped she’d choose the car so he wouldn’t feel like such a jerk for taking her college money away.

Shortly after taking her college fund away, a brand new fishing boat appeared in his driveway. It looked a hell of lot like he just wanted an excuse to get his boat.

I am still in abject disgust.

She was a fantastic student and had been told throughout her life that her college would be paid for if she had good grades.

If my daughter had great grades and had the desire to go to a good school, even if I was poor, I would work 3 jobs to make sure she could have the best education.

School always came first in my family so I didn’t understand his actions. Bad grades were quickly punished. Good grades forgave many sins.

Natchitoches Meat Pies with Pepper Jelly

Pepper Jelly is also very good over cream cheese and served with crackers.

Yield: about 90 to 100 meat pies; 9 to 10 half-pints Pepper Jelly

Ingredients

Filling

• 2 pounds ground sirloin
• 2 pounds ground pork
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 tablespoon red pepper
• 1 cup chopped green onion
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• Vegetable oil for frying

Crust

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1/3 cup Crisco shortening
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3/4 cup milk

Pepper Jelly

• 2 cups finely chopped bell peppers
• 20 to 25 jalapeno peppers, some but not all of the seeds removed
• 7 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups white vinegar
• 1 (6 ounce) box Certo pectin

Instructions

Filling

1. Cook ground sirloin and pork until it crumbles. Add salt, black pepper, red pepper and green onions. Stir in all-purpose flour. Set aside to cool.

Crust

1. Sift self-rising flour into a large bowl. Cut shortening into flour. Add egg and milk. Form dough into ball.
2. On a floured board, roll about a third of the dough about 1/4 inch thick. Cut dough in circles about 3 inches in diameter. Place a heaping tablespoon of meat mixture on each circle. Dampen edges. Fold over filling. Crimp edges with a fork and prick with fork on top. Deep fry at 350 degrees F until golden brown.
3. Serve with Pepper Jelly.

Pepper Jelly

1. Chop peppers very fine. Place peppers, sugar and vinegar in a tall pot and bring to a boil. Boil for 7 to 8 minutes, then add both pouches of Certo pectin. Boil for 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Put into sterilized jars and seal.
2. Serve Pepper Jelly with Natchitoches Meat Pies.

Notes

You may need to repeat the crust recipe three or four times to use all of the meat mixture.

Freezes well. Place uncooked pies on cookie sheet in freezer until set. Put in recloseable plastic bags and freeze.

Attribution

Source: The Advocate – Baton Rouge, Louisiana

What is the most epic thing anyone has ever done?

This is both inspirational and thought-provoking.

His name is Wang Enlin. He is a Chinese farmer. He was a primary school dropout.

In 2001, his farmland was flooded by chemical waste from a nearby chemical company. The chemical pollution made the land unusable . Wang had written to the local officials about the pollution but he had no idea what law the company had broken by polluting his land.

‘I knew I was in the right, but I did not know what law the other party had broken or whether or not there was evidence.’

• He decided to study law by himself, so he would be able to sue the company.
• He spent 16 years educating himself about the law, from 2001 to 2017.
• He studied law books in a local bookstore.
• He sued the company and had won the first round of the legal battle against Qihua Group which is a state-owned chemicals company.

Truly, knowledge is power.

xoxo…

How did we become so intolerant?

Westerners have ALWAYS been incredibly intolerant.

It’s not a new thing. The difference is that in the past many didn’t interact with others.

Today we can see the absolute intolerance of westerners.

Only they are allowed to have views non whites must only agree with the supreme master race.

Any views ew that deviates from theirs is propaganda.

We saw with Ukraine that most western people are fine with literal outright Nazis.

We saw with Brexit that most British want an ethnostate.

We saw with Iraq that they literally think that they have the right to decide everything and anything as nonwhites have no agency according to them.

What are the most embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions that your teacher has ever made in class?

Took a friend’s child (11m) to swim class. The instructor was a 19 yo college varsity swimmer. First class of the day, heard her talking about her new swimsuit and how her BF got it for a romantic trip they were taking that weekend, but since she had not done laundry, she pulled it out early.

She always swam a couple of hard and fast laps before starting class, finishing with this dramatic pop out of the water to stand infront of where her class gathered. This day was no different. Turns out her suit was a joke swimsuit, made with dissolving threads. It was intended to fall apart in the hot tub of where ever they were going for the romantic weekend. She did her normal dramatic pop out of the water to stand on the deck in front of her class, and let’s just say those 11-year-old boys got quite the education that day.

What is the luckiest thing that happened to you?

Showed up for a college English class just as the class was starting. There was only one seat left by the time I got there.

That seat was next to a very hot woman who was way out of my league. So far out of my league that I didn’t bother talking to her. Why set myself up for failure, you know?

Over the next few classes, people kept sitting in the same seats, even though they weren’t assigned or anything. I started to talk to the woman, mainly because the professor had us discuss some things with people near us. Eventually I got comfortable talking to her and forgot she was so far out of my league. Then, after class one day, I offered her a ride to the other side of campus, even though it wasn’t a large campus. I told her I wanted to show her my new car (which was true). She accepted, we started talking more.

Finally, I asked her out; she accepted. We dated for five years, got married, had three kids, one dog, bought a house, and now she’s sitting next to me, trying to figure out how to set up some new speakers she got for Christmas.

All because I was the last one in class and had to take the one seat that was left. Otherwise, I would never have sat next to someone like her.

Cheating Wife LOSES IT After Husband Puts Her Through The Ultimate Mental Gymnastics Before Divorce

Tactically Interesting.

"It's always the dad that ends up broken about the actions of his daughter..."

Why did you leave your last job?

I was the company’s first employee. It started with just me and the owner working from his living room. He promised me as the company grew so would my paycheck. Two years later… I am running the whole back end of the company out of two warehouses and he is running the front end and doing the administration side. As he travels the world I step up and run it all. He bought his wife and father each a Lexus. I was still living with my grandparents and driving an old beat up car because I couldn’t even afford a studio apartment anywhere in our county but my annual review was coming and since the company and his pay had grown exponentially, I expected a large raise.

My annual review was nothing short of perfect, but all I got was a $0.25 per hour raise. It was bull****. He cried when I gave him my notice, but in my opinion, he kind of asked for it. I would have gladly stayed if he kept his word and my pay really had grown as the business did. After I left apparently there was a power struggle with all the employees in both warehouses all fighting over who would be in my position and it fell apart. He begged me to come back and help it get under control again but that was a big NO.

Harsh truths about men and divorce

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OJsrqi7UCjo?feature=share

Xi calls for letting internet better benefit people of all countries

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday called for letting the internet better benefit people of all countries when he addressed the opening ceremony of the 2023 World Internet Conference (WIC) Wuzhen Summit via video.

Xi said that the vision of jointly building a community with a shared future in cyberspace, which he proposed at the second WIC in 2015, has garnered widespread international recognition and positive responses.

The vision answers the questions of our times related to resolving the development deficit, addressing security challenges, and enhancing mutual learning between civilizations, Xi said.

Xi stressed that the international community needs to deepen exchanges and practical cooperation to jointly advance the building of a community with a shared future in cyberspace to a new stage.

He called for prioritizing development to let the fruits of internet development benefit more countries and people.

Xi emphasized the need to improve public access to information-based services, bridge the digital divide, and improve people’s livelihood with internet development.

Calling for building a more peaceful and secure cyberspace, Xi stressed the need to respect cyber sovereignty and each country’s way of internet governance and the need to oppose seeking hegemony, bloc confrontation and arms race in cyberspace.

Xi went on to underscore the need to crack down on cyber crimes, strengthen data security and personal information protection, and properly respond to the risks and challenges brought by sci-tech development to rules, society and ethics.

China is willing to work with all parties to implement the Global Artificial Intelligence Governance Initiative and promote the safe development of AI, Xi said.

He also called for building a more equal and inclusive cyberspace. He stressed the need to better promote the shared values of humanity.

Xi underlined more high-quality online cultural products and efforts to fully showcase the outstanding achievements of human civilizations and actively promote civilization preservation and development.

What are some signs that someone may be incompetent?

After working for several companies, I came to a grim conclusion. In most organizations, only ~10% of people are truly high performers. They have great attitudes, are self-starters, smart, and great to work with.

25% are hard-working, competent, and carry most of the company’s workload. About 50% are lazy and just cross the minimum standard of work. 15% are completely incompetent and shouldn’t be at the company.

Many in this bottom 65% are gone at 5:01 PM despite being on a performance improvement plan. And the thing that stinks: many of them once held promise in the eyes of the interviewer. Nobody wants to hire and manage a dud.

Many in that bottom wrung are managers too. They slid up to their own level of incompetence (the Peter Principle). There’s another key distinction between the top 35% and the bottom 65%.

Their attitude.

The high performers don’t grimace when something goes wrong because it means more work. They don’t pout or complain incessantly about their job.

They are all in. They are there to crush their goals.

I noticed this in particular with the Indian coworkers who were there on a work Visa. They were the ultimate in keeping their head down and working, never complaining, and investigating problems thoroughly.

They appreciated the opportunity in front of them. They weren’t spoiled and had grown up in a competitive academic environment.

What was the biggest scandal at your work?

The head of my department was anonymously accused of sexual harassing a female senior student. Immediately an investigation was started, and he was put on hold.

When first days, and then weeks passed, it became obvious that in this kind of case, you are presumed guilty until proven innocent. I always thought it had to be the other way around.

(Stupid me.)

The weird thing was that although the accusation had been filed anonymously, the student was named in the document — she had not filed it by herself. After a round of interviews, it also became clear that she had not been harassed at all.

In fact, she was totally shocked by the way she had been questioned, as if she had been almost forced to “admit the accusation.” But nothing had happened, which she had repeated over and over again, and still the same questions came.

From the beginning, I was involved in the case as a confidant, and after reading the accusation, it became crystal clear who had written it. (And it wasn’t the girl.) This was a retaliation of the darkest evil, written by people who wanted to get rid of the man, and this was the easiest way.

They tried to erase his every accomplishment by making him a sexual offender. And it actually worked.

Because although he was totally cleared in the end, many people had already decided that he was a sexual predator before the outcome of the investigation. And that type of people usually don’t change their mind afterwards.

And although he was declared innocent, soon after he was “asked” by the dean to step aside as the head of the department (to save the faculty from losing face), and a new head was appointed.

Presumed guilty—proven innocent—total erasure.

Check.

Meet the Fattest Military in the World

What did a family member say or do that you don’t talk to them anymore?

I was running late to a family gathering at my older brother’s house. When I got there I saw my cousins step son going under the water in the pool.(my cousin leaning on the fence,) watching this happen and does nothing. Turns away, my son, the same age and build as the other boy, dove in to help. He can swim, but not well enough to handle a panicking person. I was on my way to the pool, removing my boots to help the first boy, when I saw my son I panicked. Knowing he wasn’t going to be able to help, but become someone else needing help. Meanwhile no one is paying attention except my ex wife. So now I have to get undressed, leaving my underwear on. My clothing would have been too heavy to swim with a child in each arm. By the time I got to the edge my ex was there with 2 towels. And I said, “see, that’s what I’m talking about. He treats those kids like shit. And he just walked away seeing him go under”. Not more that 10 seconds later my aunt was jumping down my throat, saying I was just an ass…… and then it was the rest of my family. I said I am speaking out in defense of a child and you are calling me messed up. But he can watch the kids go under, yelling for help and turn around? I never went to another family function again. And recently decided that I am going to just disown the entire lot.

How “modern” American / Western women sound…

What was your best random conversation with a stranger?

Mumbai Airport, Jet Airways ticket counter:

She: Do you have any specific seat preference, sir?

Me(lightly): A seat beside a cute girl would be great.

She(smiling): Sure, you can take that chair and sit beside me.

Slightly taken aback by that unexpected response.

Me: Not now, but maybe some other time. You can give me your number and I would definitely call you next time I’m in the city.

She: That’s private.

Me(delivering my well rehearsed dialogue): Ultimate privacy is a myth. God sees everything. The cloud records everything. NSA files everything. So, live transparently and don’t waste useless energy hiding yourself.

She(placing the ticket on the counter): Here’s your ticket, sir. If it’s meant to be, we’ll meet again. Till then have a nice journey.

Me(with a wide smile): Thank you.

Later in the flight while I was reading a novel, my attention diverted towards something scribbled at the back of my ticket which I was using as a bookmark. To my horror I saw this:

A half written name and mobile number with a smiley.

One of the security staff must have torn and kept the other half. I re-winded that conversation and cursed myself a million times for not paying attention.

Now, every time I travel through Mumbai I just glance through the Jet Airways counter once, just in case….

Simping

What has an intern done that blew your mind?

A bored, 25-year old intern in Microsoft – named Wes Cherry wrote Windows Solitaire (Klondike) in his spare time and never got royalty for it!

The story in his own words:

I wrote it for Windows 2.1 in my own time while an intern at Microsoft during the summer of 1988. I had played a similar solitaire game on the Mac instead of studying for finals at college and wanted a version for myself on Windows…

At the time there was an internal “company within a company” called Bogus software. It was really just a server where bunch of guys having fun hacking Windows to learn about the API tossed their games.

A program manager on the Windows team saw it and decided to include it in Windows 3.0. It was made clear that they wouldn’t pay me other than supplying me with an IBM XT to fix some bugs during the school year — I was perfectly fine with it and I am to this day.

A few people have paid me “a penny” as a joke. I’d get them in the mail, or in person if someone introduced me as the author of Solitaire and the obligatory no royalties conversation came up. I think I’m up to about 8 cents now.

(source: reddit)

Microsoft thought that Solitaire will train people how to use mouse, a newly introduced input device back then.

Initially he programmed a Boss Key into the game, which would instantly switch out the game with spreadsheet looking display. He knew already how addictive the game is. But, Microsoft told him to remove that feature.

He is also creator of Pipe Dream which was part of Microsoft Entertainment pack. Although, this time he was paid a few thousand $ in stocks for that (those worth millions today!).

After his internship, he joined MS Excel team.

Today he is growing apples (fruit!) on an island west of Seattle.

In 2004, Microsoft’s Chris Sells described Solitaire as the most-used Windows application in the world surpassing MS-Office itself!

To celebrate Solitaire’s silver anniversary, Microsoft arranged a Solitaire tournament on the Microsoft campus on May 18, 2015.

---

Hats off to this genius intern, who took the internship to another level just out of self-interest!

Do you behave like a child sometimes? How does it feel?

I was baking a banana bread yesterday. When I took the loaf out of the oven, my finger accidentally touched the hot baking pan. I exclaimed, “Sonofabitch!”. My husband heard and rushed into the kitchen, “What’s that?”. I showed him my finger, “The hot baking pan burnt me!”, faking a cry. “Lemme see!”, he held my finger and gave it a ton of small kisses. “Better?”, he asked. I nodded and grinned like a little girl.

---

Sometimes, there is a helicopter hovering over our property. When my husband hears it, no matter what he’s doing, he will drop it, rush out to the backyard, and look up to watch the helicopter. Then he will come back inside, and announce to me with a grin, “It’s a helicopter!” like a seven year old boy.

---

We definitely are two kids living together (three, if we count The Teenager), and it’s pretty good. I recommend it!

Current dating landscape

As a doctor, have you ever seen anyone outside the hospital who made you think, “You need to go to the hospital now”?

Several times, but then, I’m a doctor.

I was once told that a patient in our waiting room was disruptive and probably drunk or high. I got him back to my office, and began to ask him questions. He talked about working all day outside. At that point, something struck me as odd. I asked him how long he had been in our office—less than ten minutes.

It was the hottest part of the Texas summer, and his clothes were dry. There had not been time for them to dry out. He was not sweating.

I got staff to help call EMTs. He went to the hospital with heat injury. He had been in heat stroke. He told us later that the hospital thought he might have kidney damage from it, but he recovered.

Everyone knows cold can kill you. Not as many know that heat can. If you are out in the heat and someone who has been sweating stops, or starts acting crazy, get help. People die from heat stroke, and pretty quickly.

Men Giving Delusional Women REALITY CHECKS

Damn!

What was your most embarrassing moment as a foreigner in another country?

I will never forget it. K.K. Lim had taken me to breakfast at a restaurant in Singapore known for their Laksa. It really is delicious. We were eating and talking and having a pleasant time.

When it was time to leave I pushed back from the table, forgetting the stool I sat on had no back. I proceeded to fall off of it, flat on my back. Did I mention it was a popular restaurant with high traffic? Lots of people to witness my embarrassment.

K.K. was afraid I was hurt and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to show my face there again, but I was fine. Extremely embarrassed, but fine.

Has your dog ever tried to tell you something important?

Yes!

We’ve had a pretty stable routine the last three years, my dog and I: Before we both go to bed, I walk her, then come home and brush my teeth. While I’m brushing my teeth, she goes to the bedroom ahead of me.

A few months ago, we came back from our final walk of the day, and I went to brush my teeth, expecting her to go upstairs to the bedroom. But she didn’t. She just stared at the basement door.

I didn’t think much of it at first. I finished brushing and began walking up the stairs, expecting her to follow me. I was only about two steps up before she started barking at the basement door. I told her to “knock it off,” thinking that she was barking at some other dog’s barking in the distance outside that I didn’t hear. She does that sometimes.

But she wouldn’t stop. She seemed distressed.

So it finally dawned on me that she was trying to tell me something. Something was in the basement that she wanted me to see.

So I opened the basement door and went down the stairs. Sure enough, she was right… there was a problem. I’d left the door to the outside from the basement wide open. I was taking things out of the basement earlier, and I totally forgot to close the door completely. The wind must have opened it all the way.

Had she not let me know about it, it would have been open all night. God only knows what woodland creatures would have found their way into my basement that night.

I rewarded her with a piece of bologna… her favorite treat. Well, really, any meat that humans normally eat makes her really happy.

Elon Musk: Taiwan is an integral part of China; the country will incorporate Taiwan 100 percent

Succeeding to American billionaire Elon Musk’s public indication that “Taiwan is an integral part of China,”which drew backfire from Taiwan authorities according to CNN, in a recent media video, Musk once again voiced his opinion about the Chinese island, which has gained widespread support from the Chinese public.

And the video has gone viral:

China does feel very strongly about Taiwan.

They’ve been very clear about that for a quite long time.

It’s like one of the states.

Their view is it’s fundamentally part of China.

They’ll incorporate it 100 percent likely.

How can I tell my daughter’s friend she can’t come to our house every single day?

I understand the frustration. A couple of my kids had friends that were constantly underfoot. After talking with my kids, there were good reasons those friends didn’t want to go home, and were just looking for a safe haven to shelter in.

At that point, I stopped treating them as guests, and started treating them like my kids. If there were chores to be done, then everyone did chores. If there was homework, everybody sat down and did homework. If we had errands to run, everybody got in the car and we did errands. If any guest balked, they had a simple choice to make—they could participate with us or go home. Easy peasy.

Yes, it jacked up the food bill. Oh, well. I still have children and grandchildren who are no blood relation to me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When in doubt, be kind. But being kind doesn’t mean giving over control of your home to someone else.

Is all this talk about countering “Russian propaganda“ actually propaganda itself? After bringing a Nazi into parliament, Justin Trudeau was blabbing on about Russian propaganda. What in God’s name is he talking about?

Absolutely there was a university of Adelaide study that most of the pro Ukrainians were bots while pro Russians online were actually people.

It’s classic gobbels and conditioning of the public.

It’s essentially two legs bad four good chant. Politicians say it because most Canadians will immediately buy it and believe it.

What would happen if I ate everything from the McDonald’s menu for the rest of my life?

A few years ago, I was teaching Earth Science to college undergraduates, and I had brought in a bag of small oranges and a bag of larger grapefruit—because you can stack them in various ways, as a visual aid to demonstrate how atoms are packed together in mineral crystals. Sort of like this:

Anyway, when class was over, I offered the fruit to anyone who wanted some. . . and a student came up and took an orange. She happened to mention that this would be the first time she had ever eaten an orange.

I said “Whut?” or something like that. Who the heck reaches the age of twenty without so much as trying an orange at least once?

In the ensuing conversation, it came out that my student’s mother evidently either couldn’t cook, or didn’t want to cook. . . and my student had been raised on fast food throughout her childhood and teenage years—burgers, fries, chicken nuggets, and so on. (For the record, I don’t remember if she had only eaten McDonald’s food specifically, or if she balanced her diet with other fast food chain menus.) She had never tried—or had only recently tried—all the fruits and vegetables that I pretty much took for granted as I was growing up.

You might think that someone who’d grown up on a diet of nothing but fast food would weigh 800 pounds and have lost all her teeth to scurvy, or something like that. But this student was of normal height and weight, and had no obvious medical conditions that I could detect. As a professor I try not to pay too much attention to my students’ looks, but as such things are commonly reckoned she was not bad-looking at all—and pretty smart as well; she did quite well in the class.

So I’m damned if I know how she did it, or what kind of trick metabolism she must have had—but it is evidently possible to eat McDonald’s food for many years and suffer no obvious ill effects. I still wouldn’t recommend it, though.

As I recall, she enjoyed the orange.

RICH Chinese LEFTOVER Women Are Not Attractive to AVERAGE Men Despite Women Being Outnumbered

Can you say something that would make me think about it for hours?

A Chinese man had brought a dog home from an animal shelter after adoption.

The dog was caring and obedient; however, one night the owner found the dog awake. The dog stood outside the man’s fenced bedroom door. He had been staring at the man while he was asleep.

The man shrugged it off, thinking that the dog was getting used to his new surroundings. But when the pattern was followed night after night, the owner was scared for the dog.

The owner used to play with the dog to make sure he was exhausted at the end of the day and would eventually sleep at night.

But the dog would stay awake and gaze at him every night.

The man showed him to the vet, but the dog was declared healthy.

Finally, the man went to the shelter from which the dog was adopted to seek closure.

The shelter workers revealed that the dog’s previous owner wanted to get rid of him as he had a pregnant wife and he found it difficult to take care of the two.

The owner waited for the dog to fall asleep and then left him at the shelter.

When the dog woke up, he realised that he had been abandoned. Deeply traumatised by it, he found it difficult to trust his new owner and feared being abandoned again if he fell asleep.

Upon learning this, the owner broke into tears. He removed the fence and shifted the dog’s bed beside his own. He believed that this would help build the dog’s trust, lost after being abandoned.

Have you ever had a teacher with literally no common sense?

I had a teacher in the 5th grade who kept calling me Jessica. I’ve dealt with this my whole life. Usually, my go to is to politely say, “Excuse me, but my name is Jerrica actually. It’s not Jessica.” That is what I said to this teacher the first day of school. He didn’t respond.
He called me Jessica EVERY SINGLE DAY. I corrected him, and he would laugh at me or just shake his head.

At one point, he even said “No, Jessica is your name, stop trying to change your name.” I had a few friends in class try to explain to him that my name is in fact JERRICA. He told them to stop encouraging me.

I asked my mother what to do about this predicament. She, being the wonderful and supportive woman that she is, suggested that I ignore him until he called me by the correct name. So that’s exactly what I did.
It got to the point that he was literally crossing out my name on my assignments, writing Jessica on them, and taking points off of everything I handed in with my actual name on it. I would end up with zeros for the day for “being obstinate and refusing to participate.”

I had a D in his class but was an A/B student in everything else. He requested a conference with my parents, and he requested that they both attend as my father was in his opinion the more reasonable parent.
As soon as he sat down he started in about me, using the wrong name. “Jessica ignores me in class.,’’ “Jessica does not complete assignments.,” “Jessica is disrespectful.”

My mom asked him what he was talking about and if, in fact he knew how to read. My dad said “I don’t know who Jessica is, but I’m sorry you’re having issues with her. My kid’s name is Jerrica.” He apparently told my parents they shouldn’t have given me such a difficult name, and that this still should not have resulted in the behaviour I exhibited in his class. To which my wonderful father replied, “If your name was Joe and I called you Steve every day for four months, you would be pretty pissed off too.”

I got a grudging, half-hearted apology from my teacher and ended up with a B for my final grade. He never used my name after that, but he did stop taking points off when I wrote it on assignments!

Three takeaways from Wang Yi’s U.S. visit

A meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House, two rounds of talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken across two days, strategic communication with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and separate sit-downs with members of the U.S. strategic and business communities.

This is what China’s top diplomat Wang Yi has achieved during a closely-watched three-day visit to Washington that concluded on Saturday.

During the visit, the two sides had “in-depth, constructive and substantive” strategic communication on many issues of common concern, and jointly sent a positive signal of stabilizing and improving China-U.S. relations, said Wang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and China’s foreign minister.

Here are three key takeaways from his visit.

Road to a San Francisco meeting

Throughout the visit, the Chinese foreign minister stressed, more than once, the importance of following through on the common understandings reached between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart when they last met

on the sidelines of the G20 Bali Summit in Indonesia.

During the Bali meeting on November 14, 2022, the two heads of state conducted their first face-to-face talks since Biden took office in January 2021. Xi said China and the U.S. should respect each other, coexist in peace, pursue win-win cooperation, and work together to ensure bilateral relations move forward on the right course without losing direction or speed, still less having a collision.

Biden, on his part, told the Chinese president that the U.S. respects China’s system, and does not seek to change it; that it does not seek a new Cold War; that it does not seek to revitalize alliances against China; that it does not support “Taiwan independence,” and does not support “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan;” and that it has no intention to have a conflict with China. The U.S. side has no intention to seek “de-coupling” from China, halt China’s economic development, or contain China, he added.

In the roughly one-hour – more than double than originally planned – meeting with the U.S. president on Friday, Wang said his visit is aimed at communicating with the U.S. side to follow through on the Bali meeting, and proceed toward a San Francisco meeting, so as to prevent bilateral ties from further deteriorating and bring the China-U.S. relationship back on the track of healthy and steady development at an early date.

During the talks between Wang and Blinken on Thursday and Friday, both sides agreed to make joint efforts for the meeting between the two heads of state in San Francisco, which is set to host the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation economies in mid-November.

“The road to San Francisco will not be a smooth one, and it will not be left to ‘autopilot,'” warned the Chinese foreign minister when he was hosted by the Aspen Security Group, a policy program of a namesake think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

Wang urged real efforts on the part of the U.S. side to eliminate interference, overcome obstacles, enhance consensus, and accumulate results to make the meeting happen.

Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University of China in Beijing, said that the U.S. side, in conducting its so-called Indo-Pacific strategy, has been making trouble for Beijing on the Taiwan question and the South China Sea issue, among others.

“So the key is to watch whether the U.S. side can really follow its words with actions,” the scholar told CGTN.

Wang Yi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, meets with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Washington, D.C., the United States, October 27, 2023. /Chinese Foreign Ministry

Need to restart dialogue

The Chinese foreign minister’s trip followed Blinken’s Beijing visit in June, as well as a visit to China by a bipartisan delegation of the U.S. Senate led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer earlier this month, and was partially coincident with California Governor Gavin Newsom’s week-long stay in China that is still underway.

Wang stressed the importance of keeping communication channels open between the two sides during his talks with Blinken. In the coming days, both sides will hold separately China-U.S. consultations on maritime affairs, arms control and non-proliferation, and foreign policies.

“China and the United States need dialogue. We should not only resume dialogue, but also have in-depth and comprehensive dialogue,” he told reporters while standing next to the U.S. secretary of state before their formal talks, which eventually lasted over seven hours across two days.

The call was shared by U.S. strategists, who told Wang in their meeting on Saturday that the U.S. strategic community does not agree with the rhetoric about the so-called failure of U.S.-China engagement and wants the two sides to restart dialogue in various fields.

To stabilize and improve China-U.S. relations, both sides should also have objective understandings of each other’s strategic intentions, Wang told Blinken, in his latest call for following through one of the common understandings reached between the two presidents at the Bali meeting.

Wang Yiwei, the expert on international relations, said it is important to put a strategic framework in place for the two largest economies to manage their relations.

“If ‘competition’ is the word [to describe the bilateral relations], then the competition should be an orderly one, not one with no bottom line, no principles or no rules,” he said.

It should be in line with the expectations of the international community, and be responsible for globalization and the international market, he added, referring to the U.S. rhetoric of “de-coupling” or “de-risking” its supply chains from China.

People-to-people exchanges

During Wang’s visit, China and the U.S. also agreed to further increase direct passenger flights between the two countries, on top of the commitment made during Blinken’s June visit.

Hours after the talks between the two top diplomats, U.S. officials announced that flights between the U.S. and China will increase to 70 per week starting November 9.

The Chinese civil aviation authority said the increase in flights will help facilitate personnel, economic and trade exchanges between the two countries.

In terms of promoting people-to-people exchanges, the two sides also agreed on a China-U.S. Coordination Meeting on Disability Affairs to discuss the signing of a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in disability affairs in the coming days.

Structure

Louisiana Cajun Style Hot Tamales

Yield: approximately 25 dozen tamales

Ingredients

Meat Preparation

• 10 pounds beef shoulder meat
• 2 onions, quartered
• 2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste
• Salt
• Pepper
• Water

Cornmeal Mush

• 2 pounds shortening
• 3 pounds cornmeal
• Salt
• Pepper

Meat

• 3 large onions
• 2 garlic buttons
• 2 bottles chili powder
• 1 small bottle red pepper
• Salt
• 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste

Instructions

1. The night before you make your tamales, wash each corn shuck and place in water to soak overnight.
2. Boil meat until done and falling off bone, about 1 1/2 hours.
3. While meat is cooking, make mush in heavy skillet. Get shortening hot and add salted cornmeal. Stir meat until golden in color. Make a paste by adding soup off the meat and stirring until smooth.
4. Take meat off bone and grind together with onion and garlic. Add chili powder, red pepper and salt.
5. Put shortening in skillet and fry until onion is cooked, stirring constantly. Add tomato paste and soup from meat making it soft. DO NOT GET IT TOO SOFT.
6. Spread meal mush on shucks about 1/4 inch thick with a flat knife. Then put meat on top and roll into tamale shape.

Notes

DO NOT UNDER-SALT THIS DISH. Cornmeal requires a lot of salt.

Date Planning

What’s the most inappropriate thing someone has done in a church service?

What was the most inappropriate thing someone has done in a church service?

Around twenty years ago, when I was pastor of a former congregation, there was a young woman named Anna,* who attended the church. At the time, Anna was in her mid-twenties, but had the mental functioning of a young child. She was brought to church by a kind and caring couple who had a heart for helping people like Anna, and as Anna began inviting her friends to church, we soon found ourselves with four or five of Anna’s friends attending on a regular basis. We had a ministry to some wonderfully unique people dropped right in our laps.

Most of the church did a wonderful job of ministering to these folks. They loved them and were very patient with them. Along with Anna, I fondly recall Mike, who like Anna lived in a group home. Mike would slip into my office at the church and leave little action figures for my then small children. My boys couldn’t wait to get to church and see what Mike had left them. On any given Sunday, there would be Star Wars or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures in a zip lock baggie on my desk. Mike was a real character and he possessed a sweet and caring nature. Later, his family moved him to a group home in Chattanooga, Tennessee and I eventually lost touch with him, but he will always be remembered as the Boo Radley of that little group.

During all this, Anna asked me if she could sing in the church choir. I referred the matter to our church choir director, a kind and compassionate man, and he saw no problem with it. The choir, around twenty members, welcomed Anna as one of their own. Anna couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but it was a joy for her to be up there with the choir on Sunday morning, and her sheer delight of singing along with the choir made it a blessing for all of us.

Not long after Anna began singing in the choir, a cantankerous church member named Madge, whom I have written about here before, came to me one Sunday morning before church with yet another complaint, which was no surprise, as I could always tell when Madge was complaining; her lips were moving. The conversation went something like this:

“Pastor, it’s embarrassing that this woman, Anna, is singing in the choir.”

“Awe, come on Madge; she enjoys herself.”

“I don’t care! She’s an embarrassment to this church!”

“Madge, didn’t Jesus say something about letting the children come to him for such is the Kingdom of Heaven?”

“Yes, he did, but she’s still an embarrassment.”

With that, she huffed away and that was the end of it. Her comments and attitude towards Anna and her friends were among the most inappropriate things I have ever seen during a church service or at church.

Eventually, Anna’s family moved to another town, and we later left that church and I was called to another congregation. However, for the last twenty years or so we have kept in touch with Anna. We consider her a very special friend. Last April, her family brought her to our part of Virginia for a visit and my wife and I took her out to dinner. Here we are enjoying some time with our old friend Anna.

Friendships come in all forms and with all sorts of people.

*Not her real name.

What changes would you like to see in the education system?

I’d love for the adoption of stuff my economics teacher taught me in University.

She was a bit mad and a self declared Marxist.

She did not however colour everything with marxism.

What she DID do however was to pretty much say question everything.

• Do some calculations.
• Does it pass the smell test.
• Check later on things you think to be true and see if they are no longer true.

She also later on ended up being the person who ran a short how to write your dissertation class. She did a very good section about critical writing.

• Who wrote it
• Why did they write it
• What possible bias is there?
• What was the methodology?

We see people on Quora literally do this all the time Kanthaswamy Balasubramaniam

He writes quite a few things and almost always does 1–3 of the above things sometimes all of them backing them up with calculations a lot of the time.

Same thing with Carl Hamilton he questions things and quantifies things.

If more people did that? Politicians wouldn’t get away with half the shit they do. Yet here we are with people literally saying it’s true because the BBC said so!

Reuters a WESTERN News agency counted the number of protesors in Hong Kong.

How Reuters counted a quarter million people at Hong Kong’s protests(Backstory is a series of reports showing how Reuters journalists work and the standards under which they operate.)

Yet westerners continue to say 2 MILLION.

So let’s go through the thought process above with the 2 million protestors.

• Do some calculations.
• Does it pass the smell test.
• Check later on things you think to be true and see if they are no longer true.

2 million is almost 1/3 of the population.

2 million cannot fit into such an area as other than telephone box challenges you can’t fit more than 3 people per square meter.

So let’s critically read the Reuters source.

• Who wrote it
• Why did they write it
• What possible bias is there?
• What was the methodology?

Reuters – Western news source so according to westerners themselves unbiased. If anything anti China.

They wrote it to check on the massive claims.

The possible bias is they side with the protestors.

The methodology was putting cameras at bridges and certain buildings and counting people passing every few minutes.

Meanwhile the 2 million claim? It came from Jimmy Sham

Let’s do the above with Jimmy Sham.

• Who wrote it
• Why did they write it
• What possible bias is there?
• What was the methodology?

Who is Jimmy Sham. He’s a anti government rioter, he was encouraging violence there are speeches you can still find videos of them on Yandex but not google.

Jimmy Sham claimed he’d been attacked for well over a minute by 6 men with hammers. Yet he managed to recover within a few days with only a slight cut to his forehead. Jimmy Sham also produced fliers documenting his attack 2 days before the ‘attack’ Hong Kong leaflets at the bottom state the date of printing.

Why did he write it – To claim more support than there actually was. PORI at HKU (they parted ways) found only 16% had any real support for what the protestors wanted.

What possible bias? – Again he’s anti China.

What was his methodology – He made it up.

Yet westerners are convinced Jimmy Sham is completely credible and Reuters isn’t.

Do women who don’t date broke guys dislike poor people?

Here’s what I learned from dating/marrying a poor guy: the idea that since he’s not working, he’ll clean and get groceries and cook, is completely lost on men.

They honestly think they can watch TV and play video games all day then when you get home, complain that there are no Doritos and the dishes are all dirty. With a straight fucking face.

And have the nerve to accuse you of assigning them “busy work” when you realize they aren’t going to do it on their own so you still have to be in charge and make them a damn list because they don’t mind wearing the same dirty socks for a week.

There was a time I would have gladly supported the family if I was getting the home handled as part of the deal, but taking care of a fully grown child in addition to everything else is too much to ask.

You broke? If she’s paying the rent and buying the food, you better be cooking it and not just ordering pizza on her card and leaving the laundry in a pile because you put it through the machine but couldn’t be bothered to fold it, sort it or put it away because you had a raid starting.

What was the cruelest weapon of war?

Trust.

In the Second World War and under the ruthless command of Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army conducted a string of depraved experiments on Chinese civilians.

Shirō Ishii.

One of the most heinous of these experiments saw soldiers gift chocolate to Chinese schoolchildren. Why was it heinous? Because the chocolate was laced with anthrax. Killing unsuspecting children with chocolate was far from the only cruel experiment undertook by Unit 731, though.

In another example, they went around villages offering “vaccinations” on the pretence that they would protect inhabitants against a rising epidemic. The truth was actually the reverse; they were creating epidemics by injecting residents with the live, deadly forms of pathogens like cholera. The cruelty in these examples is clear; they were taking advantage of people’s good faith and stabbing them in the back.

They were, in essence, weaponizing people’s trust.

An older, post-war Shirō Ishii.

Whilst Shirō lounged around in his pristine mansion, eating, relaxing and bathing without a care in the world, the civilians condemned to hellish terror by him were spewing their guts up, writhing in agony and taking their last breath. However, none of that would be enough to see him face punishment.

Understandably even in that era, the kinds of experiments conducted by him would not have been green-lit by most other countries, meaning that Shirō had unique information that other countries coveted. Using that, he was able to get immunity from prosecution in exchange for divulging everything in relation to his research.

With that, Shirō was allowed to go free and live out the rest of his life despite the trail of death that he’d left behind him. The kick in the teeth is that the information he provided proved to be of little use anyway, so he really did get off scot-free in the end. After the war, he opened his own medical clinic and became well-liked in the community, caught religion and lived out his remaining years in peace.

Is it wrong to seek pleasure? Why?

It can be.

For a simple example, if you binge eat a huge delicious unhealthy brunch, you’ll likely get a double crash: your dopamine and blood sugar levels fall at the same time, leaving you on the couch groaning. If you drank a few mimosas, consider it a triple crash.

A more extreme example is ecstasy. I’ve never done it but my ex did and I was around a bunch of people who were high as a kite on it.

It’s super bizarre to watch. Everyone is touchy-feely, warm, and excessively friendly. However, not in the way that someone on cocaine is, talking fast and moving around a lot. Ecstasy produces a massive release of dopamine. They’d always do it and then go to raves and dance until 4 AM. It was nuts.

Consequently, it carries a huge dopamine hangover and makes people sadder and less motivated for weeks. I saw it several times with my ex. She was miserable, mean, and incredibly hard to be around.

Nothing is wrong with seeking healthy sources of pleasure, but moderate it and resist the urge for chemical sources of it. The price of entry isn’t worth it.

Following last year’s meeting in Bali, the heads of state of China and the United States will meet face to face again. What will the two heads of state talk about at that time? What changes will it bring to Sino-US relations?

Nothing will happen.

Biden’s invitation to Xi Jinping to visit the United States was just a delaying tactic by the United States. For two reasons:

• For the needs of the new round of elections.
• Currently, the United States is deeply tied to Israel. In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it has strongly supported Israel despite the opposition of the world, and even put aside its support for Ukraine. Therefore, under the current world situation, the White House first compromised with China and gave China some “verbal promises”, such as “reiterating the one-China policy”, “no arms sales to Taiwan”, requiring China to purchase U.S. debt, stabilize the U.S. dollar market, and stabilize the U.S. economy, to trick China into lifting certain sanctions against the United States. After the situation in the Middle East slows down in the future, the White House will go back and tear up the agreement.

The United States is so shameless, so China will not have any illusions about the United States.

If snipers aren’t forbidden in warfare, why not use a ridiculous number of sniper teams in an infantry division? Say 30%, in the 2nd Iraq war for example.

I think another way to ask your question: why don’t more Infantry use a scope on their rifle?

This is my M-4 (I’m in the middle) for Ought-Three Invasion of Iraq, April 4th, 2003, modified with a 14x Leopold scope:

So, if you want to spend a little bit of money, you can change your Army issue rifle into a “sniper rifle” of sorts. That Leopold scope was better than binoculars, and was always ready. I still had an M2 laser to aim, and believe it or not, I could even still use the Iron-sight. That scope was extremely useful tactically. Just being able to check out whether movement at 500 yards was friend or foe was priceless.

Let me help you with some myths about snipers you might be entertaining:

Myth buster #1.

Snipers are great at choosing a target, but they are not a mass casualty producing weapon. Mortars and Artillery are still today doing 60–90% of the killing. It’s true snipers can call in the artillery/mortars, and that makes them even more deadly, but you still have to realize any soldiers on the battlefield with a radio and a hiding spot can and does do the same thing.

Myth buster #2.
There are tactical snipers and there are sniper teams. Tactical snipers are just a dude with a scope, in any Platoon. They will usually be in a Scout Platoon, but could be Infantry/Mortars as well. That is just a dude with a scope, and I agree with your question: units should have more dudes with scopes… Sniper teams are ultimately wasted resources, who do not assault or help with the attack beyond suppression. However, it is a gamble; sometimes they spend weeks hiding, and hit a high value target. If you kill the enemy General, then the gamble of wasting your manpower for a week payed off. If you are a 30 man infantry platoon, dividing out a third of your force just to have three OP-sniper teams waiting in a hide, is ultimately wasteful. Most of those sniper teams will do nothing, and come home having accomplished nothing.

My favorite Scout Sniper in Iraq, switching to M16 so he can help assault:

Navy SEAL Sniper Team who do their own thing, and do not help assault:

Myth buster #3.

Wait until we fight an equal Army, like China or Russia, who actually takes ground from us; wait until you see what Infantry do to captured snipers. When your Army retreats, those sniper teams are stranded. If those enemy have any suspicion about whether that sniper has had success on the battlefield, those Infantry will make him squeal before they say goodbye.

What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?

There were many people that had done this so I can not take credit for it but it was amazing. There was a certain bank that would give you 5% rebate for purchases. So the trick was I would buy gift cards with the credit card and then take the gift cards and pay the credit card bill with an online bill paying service. This would lead to about 3.5% profit. It got to the point I was spending the whole credit limit of the card each day to buy the gift cards. I had a $19,000 limit on the card. So 4 times a week I would spend $19,000 on the card, come home and pay it off with the gift cards and then go out and do it again. There were some people that did this for over a year. I was only able to do it for about 4 mths before the credit card company shut it down. It was nice while it lasted.

China urges joint efforts before highly-anticipated Xi-Biden meeting

Ahead of the highly-anticipated meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden, a Chinese official on Monday called for joint efforts from both sides to bring bilateral relations back on track.

China hopes the U.S. will act on its commitment of not seeking a new Cold War with China, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in response to a query about the upcoming China-U.S. summit meeting.

China doesn’t seek to change the U.S., nor should the U.S. seek to shape or change China, Mao said.

The Chinese government has confirmed that Xi is set to meet with Biden in San Francisco, where the two leaders will also attend the 30th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting.

Mao said China views and handles its relations with the U.S. in accordance with the three principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation proposed by President Xi Jinping. Major-country competition runs counter to the trend of our times and provides no answer to the problems in the U.S. or the challenges in our world.

“China does not fear competition, but we do not agree that China-U.S. relations should be defined by competition,” said Mao.

Speaking of concerns, the U.S. needs to respect China’s concerns and legitimate right to development, rather than emphasizing its own concerns at the expense of China’s interests, Mao added.

“To seek to remodel other countries in one’s own image is wishful thinking in the first place and typical hegemonism which is going nowhere,” she said.

Mao stressed that the Taiwan question is China’s internal affair and resolving it is a matter for the Chinese that brook no foreign interference.

“Successive U.S. administrations have made clear commitments on the Taiwan question,” Mao said. During the summit meeting in Bali, the U.S. said explicitly that the U.S. government doesn’t support “Taiwan independence,” Mao noted.

“The U.S. needs to honor its commitment to one China and oppose ‘Taiwan independence’ with concrete actions,” Mao pointed out.

Over the South China Sea issue, China is committed to settling relevant disputes through negotiation and consultation with relevant countries and will not waver in our determination to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, Mao said.

“China will neither take any inch of territory that is not ours, nor give up any inch of territory that belongs to us,” Mao said, urging the U.S. to stop creating pretexts and interfering in the disputes between China and relevant countries over territorial and maritime rights and interests.

Noting the world is paying close attention to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Mao said China stands on the side of equity and justice, stays in close contact with relevant parties and is committed to deescalation and protection of civilians.

“We hope that the U.S. will follow an objective and just stance and play a constructive role in halting the conflict,” said Mao.

You have a real problem

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/b-VLanBvFt0?feature=share

Did your parents buy you your first car, or did you pay for it yourself?

I started working at age 8. Mowing lawns and collecting bottles and newspapers to sell at recycling.

At age 12 I had two paper routes, one morning and one evening, and still mowed lawns.

At 15 I was working at a grocery store after school and on weekends. I took drivers ed in school and at that time you could get a provisional license within 180 days of your 16th birthday.

Could only drive dawn to dusk. I told my parents as my 16th birthday approached that I wanted to buy a car. They said no, and how could I possibly pay for one. They had no idea I had almost $10k stashed in a secret place in my dresser.

On my 16th birthday I climbed on my bicycle, with twenty $100 bills in my pocket, and headed for the Volkswagen dealership 14 miles away.

When I arrived I spotted a Bahama Blue 1968 VW on the lot. A salesman came out and asked if he could help me. I asked about the car. He asked where my parents were. I told him they were at home. He went inside and came back with a sales manager. Manager said, “Son, you can’t buy a car because you can’t sign for a loan unless your parents do it or you’re 18”.

I responded “Who said anything about a loan? How much is the car?”

It was a dealer demo and had 2,500 miles on it. I’d done my homework and knew the going prices. “I’ll give you $1400 cash, right now.”

The manager said, “But you can’t buy a car at 16!” Wrong. “I can’t borrow money but state law says I can own a car in my name.

If you won’t sell me this one, I’ll just go somewhere else.” After much consternation and discussion, a few phone calls to the owner of the dealership, they wrote up the sale.

I had called an insurance agent earlier in the week, and called him with the info. Told him I’d be right over to pay him if he’d issue a binder for the dealer.

He did, and I drove from the dealership to the agents office and paid him. A full year of insurance in ‘68 was $120. Drove home and my asshole father had a fit, but he couldn’t do anything. I moved out on my 18th and never looked back.

Put 235,000 miles on the Beetle. Wish I still had it!!

What is the most romantic thing someone said or did to you?

A close friend of mine shared a story that always warms my heart. She had been going through a tough time, dealing with the stress of her job and personal life. One evening, feeling particularly down, she decided to take a long walk to clear her head. Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice the time and soon found herself in a part of town she wasn’t familiar with, after dark.

Just as she started to feel uneasy, she noticed someone approaching her. It was a colleague from her office, someone she’d only spoken to in passing. He had seen her walking and, concerned for her safety, decided to follow at a distance to make sure she was okay. When he caught up to her, instead of just offering a ride home, he suggested they grab a cup of coffee at a nearby café.

They ended up talking for hours. He listened to her troubles, shared some of his own, and offered a comforting perspective that helped her see things in a different light. It wasn’t a grand gesture or a dramatic declaration of love; it was a simple act of kindness and empathy at a moment when she needed it the most.

Years later, they’re happily married. She always recalls that night as the moment she realized she’d found someone truly special. Someone who, without even knowing her well, showed her kindness and compassion when she needed it most. She often says it was the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for her, not because it was extravagant, but because it was genuine and heartfelt.

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

Yes, After a recent merger, I was on a MGT call with the new CEO(. He was like…’Alright team, all of the changes will be done by May 23rd (3 weeks)’. I was not aware of any of the changes, and knew immediately that I would be part of the changes. I was in the early stage of a house sell and purchase and knew that losing my job would create a problem for the new loan, so I immediately rescinded my offer on the house, and never signed the sell contract. Sure enough May 23rd, I got the call at 9 a.m. that my job was gone. Best thing ever! I could not stand the new CEO.

I took the summer off, travelled with my wife, and then looked at 3 offers in sept, increasing my income and stock significantly. Fast forward to a year later. I sold my house for $250k more than I had verbally accepted in 2021, and was able to get my dream house on the golf course!.

Everything worked out well and 2 years later, I am killing it with my new company!

Is it perhaps time for the UK to start dissolving its links with the submerging USA and consider applying for membership of the emerging nations group BRICS? Why stay on an obviously sinking ship, after all?

The U.K. is sinking and there’s no lifeline.

Joining BRICS. This means China and Xi will have nothing to do with the U.K. There’s just absolutely nothing in it for China. The U.K. brings nothing to the table.

As for the U.S., the U.K. can’t afford to decouple. Better to feed off crumbs than nothing at all. The U.S. has nothing to spare especially now that we have to spend billions to support Israel.

Boxing kitties

How should war time enemy collaborators be treated after the war is over?

I heard this, if memory serves, from a Frenchman whose grandfather was in the Free French forces.

Said grandfather once remarked this:

It was 1945, merely months after the Germans were thrown off my country, and every man I could talk to was in the Resistance. Everyone. Then I wondered, if there had been forty million people in the Resistance, how the hell had the Germans kept France occupied for years?

The truth of it is, when a country is occupied, most people are minor collaborators. For most places, life goes on as it did before the occupying troops arrived, only the authority changes. To keep on with the French example, for the most part, you’d live just like you would a few months earlier, except the police on the streets would be reporting to Germans and sometimes a few German soldiers would be visible passing.

The reason for that is as varied as the people who lived like this. Some feel apathy, others cowardice. Others do not want more blood to be spilled, some see no personal incentive to fight on, some see no point in it all. But for this reason or the other, people do nothing.

Things become problematic when, if, their allies, or the intact parts of their country, come to break the occupation.

Because when that happens, everyone wants to pretend they fought valiantly, like lions, for the freedom of their country.

And so, as the liberation forces approach and the occupiers pack up and leave, they band into gangs, seeking among themselves scapegoats, people whose collaboration with, or apathy towards, the occupiers were more visible than others. They use accusations of collaboration to settle old grudges and deal with jealousies. Societal order breaks down utterly and is replaced by mob rule of the worst sort, where women can be accused of being German whores because of some jealous bastard, where accusations of war profiteering and snitching run galore, where a man’s life is one convincingly accusatory voice away from destruction. Instead of justice, there are executions, humiliations, beatings meted out to those decided by a mob, oftentimes without a single Resistance member involved, so that its members can feel good and pretend they were helping the liberation all along.

If anyone wants to see what happens when the court of public opinion is the only court available, let him look at any occupied area just after the Germans left. He’ll find arbitrary judgment meted out by people who want the status of having been with the Resistance without suffering through its pains, meted out by people just brave enough to look into the eyes of whichever poor man or woman was the next target of the mob, but not brave enough to look into the barrels of German carbines.

This is sickening.

Ten thousand people were executed summarily without even the barest farce of a trial in France alone. Hundreds of thousands were humiliated, accused, cast out, by people no better than they were. And this is merely a single country. Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, all repeated the same scene.

Just how callously, no, not callously. Just how bloodthirstily a movement supposedly for the good of its nation has devoured the members of which it arbitrarily declared traitors is a horrifying sight.

The answer to how, with this context, is clear.

By whatever punishment the law allows, in a fair trial.

Or we will have this instead:

And if anyone here is thinking that this is not a deeply troubling sign of profound injustice, let me remind you.

The way the victims of the mob were picked, that could just as easily be you.

Bad luck

What is the appropriate, legal way to react when a street gang approaches your car at night as you are pulled up at a red light and starts vandalizing it?

Run them down.

These are not “squeegee men” just being annoying and obnoxious, and they are not merely delinquents running past with a key to your door and taking off laughing to one another.

They were throwing rocks (legally deadly weapons, assuming you’re talking about decent-sized rocks, not pebbles), surrounding the car, and making you feel it was not safe to leave.

John Locke opined that it was justified to kill someone who tries to steal from you, because a man who will violate your right to property won’t stop at your right to life. This isn’t the way the law works, generally, but… when it comes to using force in self defense, the relevant question is twofold: 1) Do you, subjectively, have a sincere belief that your life is at risk? 2) Would a reasonable person in your circumstances believe his/her life was at risk? Note that “Is your life actually at risk?” is not one of the questions.

So, you don’t have to think like a juror. You don’t have to give these thugs the benefit of the doubt [Note: it’s been mentioned to me before that “thug” is sometimes taken to have racial connotations, but you don’t say what race they were and I don’t care – white thugs, black thugs, Latino thugs, Asian thugs, or Purple-People-Eater thugs are all thugs]. You don’t have to make the generous assumption that all they want is to commit petty vandalism.

If they are surrounding your car and willing to use physical force, then you are at their mercy – the only thing stopping them from escalating to physical battery, rape, or murder is their supposed good will… and you have no obligation to rely on that.

So honk once for warning, count to three (out loud if you prefer, but silently is fine), then gun it. Any injury will be in self defense.

As for the stop light – non-criminal regulations (and even many criminal statues) yield to the affirmative defense of “necessity”. Basically, the law considers human life and well-being more important than slavish obedience to the law, so if you run a red light to get away from assailants, the law considers that justified.

Disclaimer:

This answer is not a substitute for professional legal advice. This answer is a response to a generalized fact-pattern based on the personal recollection of the posting attorney, and not a response to any specific case or based on any diligent legal research. This answer does not create an attorney-client relationship, nor is it a solicitation to offer legal advice. If you ignore this warning and convey confidential information in a private message or comment, there is no duty to keep that information confidential or forego representation adverse to your interests. Seek the advice of a licensed attorney in the appropriate jurisdiction before taking any action that may affect your rights. If you believe you have a claim against someone, consult an attorney immediately, otherwise there is a risk that the time allotted to bring your claim may expire. If you act on any information contained within this answer, you do so at your own risk.

Have you ever accidentally found out that you were about to be fired?

Two weeks after I started working for a company Walmart pulled their contract with us. They were 60% of our production.

Things got crazy fast as the owners tried to find new customers and cut costs. One night a coworker and I were working late when he came into my office and showed me the new budget schedule our boss accidentally left in the copier. It listed all our names and salary by month.

Mine however showed salary for me only until April then nothing. Being the astute finance professional, I knew what that meant. I got my paper out on the street seeking new employment.

As March rolled around with no new job in sight I was understandably worried; then luck shined down on me. My boss’s boss suddenly took ill and suddenly I was needed again, at least temporarily.

This gave me some breathing room but I knew my days were numbered. I continued my searched. Then one night, again working late, that same co worker stopped by and showed me a legal bill showing charges associated with the sale of the company. Now we both knew the end was near and a race against time.

A few months later we were all called into the lunchroom where we were told the company had been sold. As accountants we were told to close the books one last time before being let go. Everyone filed out quietly and returned to their work areas. As I sat in my office contemplating my next move I got a call from the recruiter I had been working with. Good news he said, you have a new job! As I like to tell the story, I was unemployed for 20 minutes.

I closed the books one last time for company A on Friday and started my new job on Monday. I firmly believe somebody up there was watching out for me.

Be careful

What are some of the dark lessons that life showed you?

My story starts nice – neither poor nor abused or depressed. My father worked in a PSU and was doing well financially. My mother was a house wife and is the sweetest. We resided in a tiny town in Middle India. I am the eldest son of three children. I studied well, got into an NIT – premier engineering institute in India.

But my under-graduation was a waste. No, I wasn’t one of those never-wanted-to-do-engineering type of person. I like engineering but like many young and naive people, I didn’t like working hard. I slacked a lot. In the first year, I got 2 backlogs. I did not clear them up in summer hoping to clear them up along with other semesters. I wanted to enjoy my first summer. But it only got worse after that. I accumulated 8 backlogs by the end of my graduation. During this whole time, I was least worried. Seniors had told us grades didn’t matter, ideas did. And we worshiped these words. Only, I did not create any relevant ideas either. I lied to parents constantly and they never knew that my marks were so bad. I even made fake marksheets to show them. I started smoking, drinking and was having fun doing all these. I bought a second hand bike during my third year too.

I participated in lots of extra curricular things though. I was member of the writing club, the Rotaract club, and also a dance club. I used to dance well. Despite my poor academics, I was sure I would make it in life. I thought i was smart, talented and witty and had lots of start up ideas too. And I knew seniors far dumber and with more backlogs who have had awesome careers. I fell in love with a girl too. We started dating and by the end of Btech, we were soulmates.

It should not be a surprise that the only job I grabbed was a 15k per month NGO job. But to me, it was shocking. “I was so smart. How come no company took me!” All my friends left after the course and I had to stay back to clear my backlogs. Slowly reality started hitting me. It was still hard to admit that there were difficult backstories to all these senior-success stories. Hence, I was still adamant not to join a stupid NGO job. I told my parents I am not interested in job and took money from my dad saying I wanted to prepare for UPSC. I tried working on my start up ideas during that time but I realized that it was not easy. No one was ready to fund and I wasn’t skilled enough to build it all on my own. So I thought I will just try UPSC instead while clearing my backlogs. A month passed by.

Then the worst happened. My father suffered a stroke and passed away that winter.

I couldn’t even meet him once, all because I was too fucked up to go home. I hadn’t been home since my third year summer. My family was devastated. While my dad’s salary was good enough, he didn’t have any major savings per se. My mom was old. And my sister was studying in a private Btech and my brother was about to give his high school finals. Everything came crashing down.

I went to mom and said, “I am sorry, Mom. I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be.” But as expected, my mother told me that she only wanted me to be her son and nothing else. She told me I can prepare for UPSC as long as I want and have no pressure to take a job since dad’s savings would work for atleast 2–3 years. She would be very happy to see her son as an IAS officer. And if I didn’t get selected, I could get a job anywhere after passing from an NIT. I was so devastated after hearing this I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t lie anymore but I couldn’t tell her the truth either. That her son was a failure. That no company would take him. That I wasn’t capable enough for UPSC. That I had no goals.

But I knew I had to be strong. I calculated dad’s finances and realised we can go by a couple of years with that if we spend carefully. I started looking for job. I tried to contact the NGO just so that I had 15k in hand atleast. Luckily, they agreed to take me after my summer. I tried getting other IT jobs at the same time. I kept preparing for UPSC but as you know, it’s not easy.

After my summer was over, No company took me, so I continued to work in the NGO. As I said, I wasn’t skilled either. So, I took courses from course-era and udacity to build my skills on the side. I took projects in Freelancer to get some extra money. I was working 20 hours a day with hardly any sleep. My UPSC exams were not up to the mark. But I kept trying. During all these time, I released all my anger and frustration on my gf. My gf and I had constant fights. At the same time, her family wanted her to get married and with her words, it seemed like she wanted to too. And you can’t blame her, the way I was treating her, I would have dumped me too.

And one day finally, she told me that she cannot fight anymore. She asked me to cut all contacts with her. I did.

I cried that night for the first time since father died. I realized what I had lost. But I thought that I wasn’t in a position to fight for her. I wished I could stop her. But I didn’t know how.

The next three years were extremely hard. I moved from the NGO to an IT company but the salary was only 25k per month. Our economic condition was the worst. There were leaks in our home. I stayed in a small shared dormitory to make ends meet. I couldn’t buy anything new for my family even on festivals. I was so broke. My sister was in her final year and I was hoping that atleast she would get a decent job to support the family. My mother was thinking of keeping our house and land in mortgage to make ends meet as my brother will start bachelors soon. I was feeling defeated at that point of time.

I had appeared UPSC 3 times. The last two times I had cleared the prelims but couldn’t clear the mains. This 4th time also, I cleared the prelims and was hoping to get further.

I was depressed and suicidal by now. I stopped all kind of social interactions. I avoided meeting my friends. And only talked to my mom and my siblings daily.

But finally, in 2016, the UPSC results did carry my name. I joined IOFS.

Now, my sister works in a good PSU, just like dad. And my brother took up commerce stream. My mom is happy and healthy. We repaired our house and there’s no question of mortgaging it.

What lessons life taught me?

That just because everything is good now, it won’t stay like that for ever.
That just because something worked out for someone else, it won’t work out for you too.
That grades are important.
That hard work matters.
That UPSC can be cleared.

Why MEN have MIDLIFE CRISES: you have to practice being selfish

What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?

Killing someone.

Yep, you read it right. Killing someone, taking some innocent teenage girl’s life, is the worst thing to happen to ME. Quite ironic, isn’t it? So here’s what happened.

It was about the 27th of March, 2007. It was a windy Tuesday evening, and I was driving my minivan down a foggy lonely road, and was going well below the speed limit, because I couldn’t see anything. I was listening to Lazarus by Porcupine Tree, and merrily making my way to my family, when I suddenly saw a teenage girl, whose name I later found out to be Laura, crossing the street oblivious to my van, and by the time I saw her and hit my brakes and turned my car, I had hit her. I immediately leapt out and raced to look at her, and she was fine. She was on the ground, but there was no bleeding, and she looked conscious but bruised. She got up by herself, and apologized for crossing the road without looking. I was proud of myself for braking in time, but I apologized for not seeing her too. She said that she had a bruise on her abdomen, and a pain in her leg. I suspected a minor fracture, and wanted to call 911, but she asked me to take her to the hospital myself, as she said she was in pain. Just as she said that, I thought to myself, how can a girl get into an accident so easily. I braked, and I swerved. She still got hit. What if she wanted to get hit? What if I take her to the hospital, and she accuses me of something that I can’t defend myself of, and not calling the cops would make me look guilty. So, I called the cops. They came, dealt with me and my insurance, and took her away to the hospital. I went on my merry way home, and forgot about it.

2 days later, I get a call. A call from the police, saying that Laura had died of internal bleeding. I was speechless. The doctor apparently said that she could’ve been saved if she was in eariler, but that was not certain either. I went over to the police, where the family of the girl was waiting for me. As soon as they saw me, they started blaming me for their little girl’s death. They said that I stole a life, that I was probably drunk, and that I should’ve gotten her myself. The cops pulled me aside and asked me to ignore what they said, because calling the cops is always the best option. It didn’t really leave a mark on me at the time, until I was driving home one day, and Lazarus started playing. I stopped the car and broke down. I had taken a life, an innocent 17 year old life, just because I was scared that she was going to set me up. I had nightmares about it for years.

I went to a therapist, and she asked me to get rid of my van, not listen to Lazarus, and to not blame myself for her death. Everyone kept telling me that it was no fault of mine, but in the end, I know that it was me who stole a life. It was me, who stole a daughter from a lovely couple, and a sister from a 6 year old kid. It was me, who killed her.

I know that I shouldn’t really blame myself for it, but it was me who hit her. It was me who didn’t take her to the hospital. It was me who didn’t bother listening to her complaints about being in pain. If I could, I would trade my life to get Laura back. But since that’s not possible, I’ll just be in this regret forever.

That, by far, is the worst thing to happen to me.

Ignore Yellen’s Pleas! China Sells $62 Billion in US Bonds, Adds 7.82 M Ounces Of Gold Reserves

https://youtu.be/bTYWh5fiM5g