(Repost) Cities as dangerous snares – the doomed mouse utopia scientific study. (duplicate)

Well, it's gonna be the year of the rat in a few days. What would be more appropriate than to discuss RAT lifestyle in urban centers?

On July 9th, 1968, eight white mice were placed into a strange box at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Maybe “box” isn’t the right word for it; the space was more like a room, known as “Universe 25”, and it was large. It was about the size of a small storage unit.

The mice themselves were bright and healthy, hand-picked from the institute’s breeding stock.

They were given the run of the place, which had everything they might need: food, water, climate control, hundreds of nesting boxes to choose from, and a lush floor of shredded paper and ground corn cob. It was a mouse paradise. It was perfect in every way.

Of course, this is a far cry from a wild mouse’s life. There were no predators, no cats, no traps, no long winters. It was even better than your average lab mouse’s life. Which, of course, is constantly interrupted by white-coated humans with scalpels or syringes.

The residents of “Universe 25” were mostly left alone, save for one man who would peer at them from above, and his team of similarly interested assistants. They must have thought they were the luckiest mice in the world.

They couldn’t have known the truth: that within a few years, they and their descendants would all be dead.

John Bumpass Calhoun

The man who played mouse-God and came up with this doomed universe was named John Bumpass Calhoun.

As Edmund Ramsden and Jon Adams detail in a paper, “Escaping the Laboratory: The Rodent Experiments of John B. Calhoun & Their Cultural Influence,” Calhoun spent his childhood traipsing around Tennessee, chasing toads, collecting turtles, and banding birds. These adventures eventually led him to a doctorate in biology, and then a job in Baltimore, where he was tasked with studying the habits of Norway rats, one of the city’s chief pests.

Conditions of the utopia.

Rat utopia living arrangements within Universe 25.

No shortage of food, water and nesting material.
No predators.
Limited opportunities for transmissible disease.
The only adversity: space limitation – the size of the habitat was predicted to host 3840 mice.

The first utopia.

In 1947, to keep a close eye on his charges, Calhoun constructed a quarter-acre “rat city” behind his house, and filled it with breeding pairs. He expected to be able to house 5,000 rats there, but over the two years he observed the city, the population never exceeded 150. At that point, the rats became too stressed to reproduce. They started acting weirdly, rolling dirt into balls rather than digging normal tunnels. They hissed and fought.

This fascinated Calhoun—if the rats had everything they needed, what was keeping them from overrunning his little city, just as they had all of Baltimore? Why couldn’t they thrive in a rodent utopia?

The subsequent utopias.

Intrigued, Calhoun built another, slightly bigger rat metropolis—this time in a barn, with ramps connecting several different rooms.

Then he redesigned the structure, and built another.

Then taking the lessons learned, he built another.

And another.

Then he built another and another, hopping between patrons that supported his research, and framing his work in terms of population: How many individuals could a rodent city hold without losing its collective mind?

The 1954 rodent utopia.

By 1954, he was working under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health, which gave him whole rooms to build his rodentopias. Some of these featured rats, while others focused on mice instead.

Universe 25 photograph with it's inventor. — Universe 25 photograph with it’s inventor.

Like a rodent real estate developer, he incorporated ever-better amenities: climbable walls, food hoppers that could serve two dozen customers at once, lodging he described as “walk-up one-room apartments.”

A Video records of his experiments show Calhoun with a pleased smile and a pipe in his mouth, color-coded mice scurrying over his boots.

Still, at a certain point, each of these paradises collapsed.

“There could be no escape from the behavioral consequences of rising  population density,” 

-Calhoun wrote in an early paper.

The story of the 1968 “Universe 25” collapse.

It was a pattern that would not collapse. No matter how hard he tried. The final test confirmed this. Universe 25—the biggest, best mousetopia of all, built after a quarter century of research—failed to break this pattern.

In July 1968 four pairs of mice were introduced into the Utopian universe. The universe was a 9-foot (2.7 m) square metal pen with 54-inch-high (1.4 m) sides. Each side had four groups of four vertical, wire mesh "tunnels". The "tunnels" gave access to nesting boxes, food hoppers, and water dispensers. There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space.

Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following:

- expulsion of young before weaning was complete,
- wounding of young,
- inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females,
- aggressive behavior of females,
- passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against.

After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were named "the beautiful ones".

- Description in Wikipedia [2014.05.25]

In late October, the first litter of mouse pups was born.

After that, the population doubled every two months—20 mice, then 40, then 80. The babies grew up and had babies of their own. Families became dynasties, carving out and holding down the best in-cage real estate.

By August of 1969, the population numbered 620.

Then, as always, things took a turn. Such rapid growth put too much pressure on the mouse way of life.

As new generations reached adulthood, many couldn’t find mates, or places in the social order—the mouse equivalent of a spouse and a job. Spinster females retreated to high-up nesting boxes, where they lived alone, far from the family neighborhoods. Washed-up males gathered in the center of the Universe, near the food, where they fretted, languished, and attacked each other. Meanwhile, overextended mouse moms and dads began moving nests constantly to avoid their unsavory neighbors. They also took their stress out on their babies, kicking them out of the nest too early, or even losing them during moves.

Urban rats started to behave strangely and took on unusual behaviors.

Population growth slowed way down again. Most of the adolescent mice retreated even further from societal expectations, spending all their time eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming, and refusing to fight or to even attempt to mate.

These individuals were forever  changed—when Calhoun’s colleague attempted to transplant some of them to  more normal situations, they didn’t remember how to do anything.

In May of 1970, just under 2 years into the study, the last baby was born, and the population entered a swan dive of perpetual senescence. It’s unclear exactly when the last resident of Universe 25 perished, but it was probably sometime in 1973.

Paradise couldn’t even last half a decade.

The periods or cycles…

In a unique experiment that took years to complete, Doctor Calhoun used white mice to study population growth and its effects on individual behavior.

In this sixteen cell mouse habitat, utopian conditions of nutrition, comfort and housing were provided for the potential population of over three thousand mice. […] Factors which normally control population growth such as predation by owls and cats were eliminated. Transmissible disease were also reduced. In effect, the mouse universe simulated the present situation of the continually expanding population of humans.

To see how Dr Calhoun’s mouse universe grew, we use the population graph.

Population rise and fall within the Universe 25 test area.

Phase A – The phase of social adjustment (strive period)

Within the first one hundred days, the mice went through the period Dr Calhoun called, “strive”. This was the period of adjustment. Territories were established and nests were made.

(1) Considerable social turmoil among the 8 mice until they became adjusted to each other and to their expanded surroundings.
(2) Territories were established and nests were made.

Phase B – The phase of most rapid growth (exploit period)

The next period lasted about two hundred and fifty days. The population of the mice doubled every sixty days. This was called the “exploit” period. The use of resources become unequal. Although each living unit was identical in structure and opportunities, more food and water was consumed in some areas.

The population of the mice doubled every sixty days. This was called the "exploit" period. The use of resources become unequal. — The population of the mice doubled every sixty days. This was called the “exploit” period. The use of resources become unequal.

As the population increased, most mice associated eating and drinking with the presence of others. And crowding developed in certain units.

(1) Population doubling time is about 55 days
(1) Social organization established – frequency of litters proportional to social dominance
(1) The births tended to be concentrated in some sets of nest boxes (dominant males), while others (non-dominant males – withdrawn males = WM) had few or none.
(2) Although each living unit was identical in structure and opportunities, more food and water was consumed in certain areas. As the population increased, most mice associated eating and drinking with the presence of others. And crowding developed in certain units.
(1) At the end of this phase there were 3 times as many socially immature mice as there were socially established older ones.

Phase C – The stagnation phase (equilibrium period)

The third period, consisting of three hundred days, found the population of mice leveling off. This was called the “equilibrium” period. Dr Calhoun noticed that the newer generations of young were inhibited, since most space was already socially defined.

At this time, some unusual behavior become noticeable.

Violence become prevalent. Excess males strived for acceptance, were rejected and withdrew. Huddling together, they would exhibit brief flurries of violence amongst themselves. The effects of violence became increasingly visible.

Certain individuals became targets of repeated attacks. These individuals would have badly chewed and scarred tails.

But the trajectory of rat utopia soon sobered Calhoun. The eager rodents  did not seem capable of regulating their population size in the  long-term. As they reproduced and the pens overflowed, Calhoun noted  that male rates became aggressive, moving in gangs and attacking females  and young. Some became exclusively homosexual. Female rats, meanwhile,  abandoned their infants. The crowded mice had lost the ability to  coexist. One of Calhoun’s assistants renamed the “rat utopia”  “rodent  hell.” 

-Space Cadets and Rat Utopias

Other young mice growing into adulthood exhibited an even different type of behavior. Dr Calhoun called these individuals “the beautiful ones”. Their time was devoted solely to grooming, eating and sleeping. They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight. All appeared as a beautiful exhibit of the species with keen, alert eyes and a healthy well-kept body. These mice, however, could not cope with unusual stimuli.

Though they looked inquisitive they were, in fact, very stupid.

All of this, however, led to a drop in mating, and the birthrate soon fell to a third of its former level. A social imbalance also took place among the mice:

One-third emerged as socially dominant.
The other two-thirds turned out less socially adept than their forbearers.
As bonding skills diminished among the mice, Universe 25 went into a slow but irreversible decline.

By Day 315, behavior disparities between males of high and low status became more pronounced. Those at the bottom of the pecking order found themselves spurned from females and withdrew from mating altogether. Having no roles to fulfill within the society of mice, these outcast males wandered apart from the larger groups to eat and sleep alone — and sometimes fight among one another.

The alpha males, by contrast, became more aggressive and pugnacious, often launching into violence with no clear provocation or motive. At times, these males would roam around and indiscriminately rape other mice, regardless of gender.

Meanwhile, the beta males — those ranked between the aggressive alphas and outcast omegas — grew timid and inert, and often wound up being the passive recipients of violence. In several instances, bloodbaths ended with a cannibalistic feast for the victors.

(1) Population doubling time is about 145 days
(1) The male ability to defend territory declines
(1) The nursing females become aggressive, essentially taking over the role of the territorial males. This aggression generalized to their own young who were attacked, wounded, and forced to leave home several days before normal weaning.
(2) At this time, some unusual behavior became noticeable. Violence became prevalent. Excess males strived for acceptance, were rejected and withdrew. Social disorder became visible – a WM would attack a passive WM, who in turn would attack another WM. Certain individuals became targets of repeated attacks. These individuals would have badly chewed and scarred tails.
(4) Socially withdrawn male 29 makes a pan-sexual approach to male 16 who he recently saw attacked. Note how one assumes the female role. Males exhibit sexual behavior towards other males; you have rat homosexuality. They begin mounting the young.
(1) Incidence of conception decline and resorption of fetuses increases and dissolution of maternal behavior is observed. This lead to non-reproducing females.
(1) By midway in phase C, essentially all young were prematurely rejected by their mothers. They started independent life without having developed adequate effective bonds.
(1) Considering that there were 256 nest retreat sites in the 16 cells, one would not expect shelter to be a limiting factor until the population exceeded 3840. Due to the tendency of many animals to choose to crowd together in numbers in excess of 15 per nest site, at the peak population size of 2200 mice, 20% of all nest sites were usually unoccupied. Thus, there were always opportunities for females to select an unoccupied space for rearing young if they so chose.
(1) Social disorder – a WM would attack a passive WM, who in turn would attack another

Phase D – The death phase (die period)

With male mice abandoning their traditional roles in Universe 25, the females were left to fend for their nests. Consequently, many females adopted more aggressive forms of behavior, which would sometimes spill over into violence toward their young.

Others would refrain from motherly duties altogether, banishing their unraised litters and withdrawing from further mating, resulting in serious consequences:

In some compartments, the infant mortality rate topped 90 percent.
Calhoun named this the “stagnation phase,” alternately known as the “equilibrium period.”
He attributed the overly aggressive and passive behavioral patterns to the breakdown of social roles and rampant over-clustering.

Dr Calhoun called the last period the “die” phase, leading the population into extinction. Although the mouse utopia could house 3000, the population began to decline at 2200.

By the 560th day, the population increase had ceased altogether as the mortality rate hovered at 100 percent. This marked the start of the “death phase” — aka the “die period” — in which the rodent utopia slid toward extinction. Amidst the violence, hostility and lack of mating, a younger generation of mice reached maturity, having never been exposed to examples of normal, healthy relations. With no concept of mating, parenting or marking territory, this generation of mice spent all of their waking hours eating, drinking and grooming themselves.

In reference to their perfected, unruffled appearances, Calhoun called these mice the “beautiful ones.” Living in seclusion from the other mice, they were spared the violence and conflict that waged in the crowded areas, yet made no social contributions.

According to Calhoun, the death phase consisted of two stages: the “first death” and “second death.” The former was characterized by the loss of purpose in life beyond mere existence — no desire to mate, raise young or establish a role within society. This first death was represented by the lackadaisical lives of the beautiful ones, whereas the second death was marked by the literal end of life and the extinction of Universe 25.

(1) Population increase abruptly ceased on day 560 after colonization.
(1) Incidence of pregnancies decline very rapidly with no young surviving.
(1) The last conception took place about day 920
(1) Male counterparts to non-reproducing females were named the “beautiful ones”. They never engaged in sexual approaches toward females, and they never engaged in fighting. Their behavioral repertoire became largely confined to eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming.
(1) The capacity for reproduction terminated.
(3) The last thousand animals born never learned to develop the social behaviors, they never learned to be aggressive, which is necessary in defense of home sites; not engaging in any stressful activity, and only paying attention to themselves, they groomed themselves well so they looked like very fine specimens.
(2) Other young mice growing into adulthood exhibited an even different type of behaviour. Dr Calhoun called these individuals “the beautiful ones”. Their time was devoted solely to grooming, eating and sleeping. They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight. All appeared as a beautiful exhibit of the species with keen, alert eyes and a healthy well-kept body. These mice, however, could not cope with unusual stimuli. Though they looked inquisitive they were, in fact, very stupid.

In the shift from the equilibrium to the die phase, each animal became less aware of associates, despite all animals being pushed closer together. Dr Calhoun concluded that the mice could not effectively deal with the repeated contact of so many individuals. The evidence of violence increased to the point where most individuals had had their tails bitten to some degree.

Gradually, the mice that refused to mate or engage in society came to outnumber those that formed gangs, raped and plundered, and fed off their own. The last known conception in Universe 25 occurred on Day 920, at which point the population was capped at 2,200, well short of the enclosure’s 3,000 capacity.

An endless supply of food, water and other resources were still there for the mice, but it didn’t matter. The behavior sink had set in, and there was no stopping Universe 25 from careening to its self-made demise. Soon enough, there was not a single living mouse left in the enclosure..

The results of the study were published.

Calhoun saw in his rats the decline of future society, evidence that  inner city crowding led to rioting, crime, malaise, and political  radicalism: the obsessions of postwar American academics. He wrote up  his results in a Scientific American article that he titled  “Population Density and Social Pathology.” The article became one of the  most widely-cited papers in psychology. Like Pavlov’s dogs and  Skinner’s pigeons, Calhoun’s rats became exemplars for human behavior.  His experiments suggested a density beyond which rat society  disintegrated, and—to Calhoun and his colleagues, at least—the parallels  with human society were clear. 

- Space Cadets and Rat Utopias

In 1973, Calhoun published his Universe 25 research as “Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population.” It is, to put it lightly, an intense academic reading experience.

He quotes liberally from the Book of Revelation, italicizing certain words for emphasis (e.g. “to kill with the sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts”).

He gave his claimed discoveries catchy names—the mice who forgot how to mate were “the beautiful ones”’ rats who crowded around water bottles were “social drinkers”; the overall societal breakdown was the “behavioral sink.” In other words, it was exactly the kind of diction you’d expect from someone who spent his entire life perfecting the art of the mouse dystopia.

Most frightening are the parallels he draws between rodent and human society. “I shall largely speak of mice,” he begins, “but my thoughts are on man.”

Both species, he explains, are vulnerable to two types of death—that of the spirit and that of the body. Even though he had removed physical threats, doing so had forced the residents of Universe 25 into a spiritually unhealthy situation, full of crowding, over-stimulation, and contact with various mouse strangers.

To a society experiencing the rapid growth of cities—and reacting, in various ways, quite poorly—this story seemed familiar.

Senators brought it up in meetings. It showed up in science fiction and comic books. Even Tom Wolfe, never lost for description, used Calhounian terms to describe New York City, calling all of Gotham a “behavioral sink.”

Calhoun in 1986, nearly forty years after his first experiments. Photo: Cat Calhoun/CC BY-SA 3.0. — *Calhoun in 1986, nearly forty years after his first experiments. Photo: Cat Calhoun/CC BY-SA 3.0*.

Trying to discover solutions.

Convinced that he had found a real problem, Calhoun quickly began using his mouse models to try and fix it.

If mice and humans weren’t afforded enough physical space, he thought, perhaps they could make up for it with conceptual space—creativity, artistry, and the type of community not built around social hierarchies.

His later Universes were designed to be spiritually as well as physically utopic, with rodent interactions carefully controlled to maximize happiness (he was particularly fascinated by some early rats who had created an innovative form of tunneling, where they rolled dirt into balls).

He extrapolated this, too, to human concerns, becoming an early supporter of environmental design and H.G. Wells’s hypothetical “World Brain,” an international information network that was a clear precursor to the internet.

Failed Salvage Attempt and Concluding Observations

Before the rodent utopia imploded entirely, Calhoun removed some of the beautiful ones to see whether they would live more productive lives if released into a new society, free of social strife and carnage.

Placing these mice in a fresh setting with few pre-existing residents — a scenario similar to that which greeted the initial pairs placed in Universe 25 — he expected the beautiful ones to awake from their asocial haze and answer nature’s call to populate the barren environment.

The colonization of Mars, a possible solution to extinction does not work according to experiments.

However, the relocated mice showed no signs of change from their earlier behavioral patterns. Refusing to mate or even interact among their new peers, the reclusive mice eventually died of natural causes, and the fledgling society folded without a single new birth.

In Calhoun’s view, the rise and fall of Universe 25 proved five basic points about mice, as well as humans:

The mouse is a simple creature, but it must develop the skills for courtship, child-rearing, territorial defense and personal role fulfillment on the domestic and communal front. If such skills fail to develop, the individual will neither reproduce nor find a productive role within society.
As with mice, all species will grow older and gradually die out. There is nothing to suggest human society isn’t prone to the same developments that led to the demise of Universe 25.
If the number of qualified individuals exceeds the number of openings in society, chaos and alienation will be the inevitable outcomes.
Individuals raised under the latter conditions will lack any relation to the real world. Physiological fulfillment will be their only drive in life.
Just as mice thrive on a set of complex behaviors, the concern for others developed in post-industrial human skills and understandings is vital to man’s continuance as a species. The loss of these attributes within a civilization could lead to its collapse.

The public reaction.

But the public held on hard to his earlier work—as Ramsden and Adams put it, “everyone want[ed] to hear the diagnosis, no one want[ed] to hear the cure.”

Gradually, Calhoun lost attention, standing, and funding.

In 1986, he was forced to retire from the National Institute of Mental Health. Nine years later, he died.

His influence

There was one person who paid attention to his more optimistic experiments, a writer named Robert C. O’Brien.

In the late ’60s, O’Brien allegedly visited Calhoun’s lab, met the man trying to build a true and creative rodent paradise, and took note of the Frisbee on the door, the scientists’ own attempt “to help when things got too stressful,” as Calhoun put it.

Soon after, O’Brien wrote Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH—a story about rats who, having escaped from a lab full of blundering humans, attempt to build their own utopia.

Next time, maybe we should put the rats in charge.

My story.

I knew about this study from the 1970’s when I was a boy. My father had a “Year in Review” series of books that accompanied the Encyclopedia Britannia collection that he had acquired in the 1960’s. These volumes would come to our door, and would be jam-packed with information and trivia of the year previous.

I would sit on the Lazy-boy chair and go through these big massive volumes and read the articles there. As such, I too, was influenced by this study.

I even brought it up for discussion in my classroom. But no one cared. They were too interested with “Johnathan Livingston Seagull” and the television cartoon special about a boy and his dog (which brought forth the hit song “Me and my arrow“.) The rest of my classmates were too worried about Climate Cooling and the coming great freeze to worry about the implications of this study.

Years passed.

Then I read an article that rewoke this narrative.

The Article that re-woke and rekindled my interest in this study.

Then I read this article titled “Article – The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the ‘Rats of NIMH’” which was posted on January 8, 2020.

The author comments…

Give a buncha rodents all the food, bedding, water, and stress-free
living you can give them and they should breed like..well..rats. And have a population boom, right? Maybe not.

Such  rapid growth put too much pressure on the mouse way of life. As new  generations reached adulthood, many couldn’t find mates, or places in  the social order—the mouse equivalent of a spouse and a job. Spinster females retreated to high-up nesting boxes, where they lived alone, far from the family neighborhoods. Washed-up males gathered in the center of the Universe, near the food, where they fretted, languished, and  attacked each other. Meanwhile, overextended mouse moms and dads began moving nests constantly to avoid their unsavory neighbors. They also took their stress out on their babies, kicking them out of the nest too early, or even losing them during moves.

Some fascinating parallels to be had in just that one paragraph. 

To  quote Judge Dredd “You put that many rats in one cage and something’s  gonna happen.” 

The apparent message is that mammals ain’t cut out for  being put into large metropolises. Even when you give them all the welfare food and shelter they want, they’ll still go bad.

But, men are not rodents. 

Yet look at any major city and you’ll see  that the segments of the population that have everything handed to them  seem to be the most troubled and troublesome.

Moral of the story? 

Stay out of enormous cities. 

Having just returned from a week in one of the biggest i can tell you with utter sincerity that nothing reinvigorated my mind and spirit more than being able to have room to stretch both physically and metaphorically. Away from the restricting confines of mandatory recycling, absurd gun laws, high sales  taxes, etc, I felt I could breathe easier again and feel in control of  my life.

Big cities, in my experience, are superior in providing only three  things: money, women, and food. High paying jobs, endless varieties of  women, and a dizzying array of types of food…

...that's about all I can  recommend for the big cities. 

But what do I get out of smaller venues,  such as where I live? Relatively high levels of freedom, or, at least,  qualities that I equate with freedom.

Men or mice…put too many in one place and bad stuff happens. Don’t be there.

Conclusions by “experts”

All conclusions drawn by socialist (& state) scientists constantly connect extinction with overpopulation:

The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.
 
- Wikipedia 2014.05.25

Overpopulation = Extinction

However in the Calhoun’s papers there are clear evidences that this is not so:

All of the available space was not taken, and there was areas devoid of rodents.
WM (Withdrawn Males) had no social roles so they withdrew from society. Thus they could not be counted as part of the overpopulation burden.

John Calhoun conclusions

The demise of a population contradicts prior knowledge which indicates that when a population declines to a few remnant groups, some individuals will reinitiate its growth.

This study disproves the idea that growth can be resumed once society collapses.

Dr. Halsey Marsden (1972) placed some mice from the mid-third of phase D into new universes at very low densities. All exhibited nearly total loss of capacity for developing a structured society or for engaging in the full repertoire of reproductive behaviors.

The idea that individuals can flee an overpopulated environment and start all over again and rebuild from scratch is false. Once society collapses it is over.

For an animal so simple as a mouse, the most complex behaviors involve the interrelated set of courtship, maternal care, territorial defense and hierarchical intragroup and intergroup social organization. When behaviors related to these functions fail to mature, there is no development of social organization and no reproduction. As in the case of my study reported above, all members or the population will age and eventually die. The species will die out. For an animal so complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events should not also lead to species extinction.

For mice, society can simply stop reproducing and then die out.

For men, society can introduce dangerous technologies (WMD, robots, nuclear weapons, etc) and die out catastrophically.

If opportunities for role fulfillment fall far short of the demand by those capable of filling roles, and having expectations to do so, only violence and disruption of social organization can follow.

As the roles in society disappear, as the lines between gender and society disappear, social disruption WILL follow.

Individuals born under these circumstances will be so out of touch with reality as to be incapable even of alienation. Their most complex behaviors will become fragmented.

Acquisition, creation and utilization of ideas appropriate for life in a post-industrial cultural-conceptual-technological society will have been blocked.

Just as biological generativity in the mouse involves this species’ most complex behaviors, so does ideational generativity for man. Loss of these respective complex behaviors means death of the species.

John Calhoun’s collaborator’s conclusions

The larger the population, the less care a mother gives to her nest and young. This creates social unrest which will eventually result in the collapse of the society.

Non-academic conclusions

The principal factor is the lack of social education in the young.

This is due to the abundance of food and water and lack of predators.

They do not learn important skills.

The mechanism at work is there was no need to perform any actions to acquire resources and/or avoid danger. This creates a “soft” and “weak” rodent. The “strong” and “capable” rodents die out.

So the young have no opportunity to learn from the strong rodents. They learn from the weak rodents.

When confronted with danger, they do not know how to handle it. And many lose their lives.

A utopia is when one has everything, at any moment, for no expenditure.

But, utopia declines responsibility, effectiveness and awareness of social dependence.

This atrophying of these important factors, leads to self-extinction.

Contrarily, difficult conditions instigate better coping mechanisms for  the population, leading to its growth, strengthening and reinforcement.  [See S-nastu hypothesis i supercompensation]

Some wordy introspection…

Perhaps it is the creation of social constructs that cause this demise. The idea that there are “leaders” that mass groups of people follow, and trends, that mass groups of people follow, and “laws” that mass groups of people follow…

… instead of the individual that follows their own moral compass.

So we know that Resources, in every quantified sense – was never a problem.

There must be something we’ve either overlooked, or underlooked. Perhaps how we’ve managed the potentials of ourselves, as factors of “ignorance”. One clue we could “start” looking “from”, would be our prior history, wouldn’t it? Can we perhaps then, take a trip back to memory lane?

Interestingly, no other point of civilization since dawn of human first invention as ideological to then instrumental; have advanced us so quickly in a space of no more than few hundred years. The invention of “money” (instrument of exchange) then the banking system, and Marketing. From Abacus, then to light bulbs and automobiles. The Internet then the Blockchain. From willow tree bark to then Aspirin, and low-dose naltrexones.

An impressive advance for mankind, indeed. However beneath all this pursuit; we continued to DIVERT such a Progress to something else far more destructive. Effectively reversing our meaningful reconciling on the “why’s” behind all this pursuit in the first place.

...

What I genuinely fear; is that we are inching closer towards a global state of “stand-still”. So precarious if this were to continue it’d be likely petrifying.

That “stand-still” point I refer to is similar to the critique aimed against Calhoun’s Behavioural Sink. That is – Oblivious Irrationality. We know that, as hypothesized in part one – it was the excessive, totalitarian attempt for universal in-clusivity that contributes much to the mice’s declines. Leading to losses of individual liberties at reclaiming what is Authentically simply that – “individual”, peaceful, content in its own homeostasis.

Yet – if we were to translate this to our state of our present pedestrian normalcy – it is anything but peaceful nor quaint. Political myopism; aka. 1984 – is likely brewing to ever more increasingly heights of “reality”.

Why is this so? I can only speculate that once again – it is due to (helpless) totalitarian attempt for in-clusivity of all pedestrian “norms”. For structural “correctness”. First stemming as ideological concepts like “Religion” and/or “Faith”. Then structurally enforced as “Laws” and “Institutionalisations”.

Religion then instills us the comforting, human benevolence through warm, cosy and “emotive” doctrine(s) – of Monogamy and (infinite) servitude of Charity.

Yet little do we know, all this is a pursuit away from transcending ourselves. But instead to everyone else’s collectivism towards totalitarian in-clusivity. In other words, Totalitarian objectivity, in place of all Subjective Authenticities.

...

Following from this, we must remove all Human titles of “Politicians”. These hierarchical structure of decision-making must inevitably erode. As the efficacy of technology replaces human cognitive ability at “management” – “Politicians” absolutely have NO place in the rungs of every management of all genetically diverse human needs, and eccentric pursuits.

Considering we now have entire country (or as several “states”) today; overruled by elitism of (1) entity alone. Entities whom we decoratively label as “Rulers”, “Prime Ministers” or “Presidents”. Then orchestrated collectively through correctional “Institution/s”; to decide and thus make every Structural Impositions.

Such paradigm is unthinkably limited and unempathetic to individual, anecdotal crisis. People will always look forth to overthrow kings and queens. Especially given that individual human variabilities grow exponentially incomprehensible when judged or treated as collective whole numbers.

...

Hence, today’s archaic “Correctness Hierarchy” as our present, Institutionalized definition of Science today once again, must be eradicated. And there is one more realm connected to this that must also be strongly scrutinized.

-Nutritional humanity

My Conclusions

Catastrophic extinction (phase four events) is expected given conditions that suppresses natural behaviors.

Over-population is a symptom of the suppression of natural behaviors.

Before the extinction event occurs, there will be all sorts of odd actions, behaviors and dangers in crowded locations.

I would, for certain, avoid cities at all costs.

Human population is following the life-extinction graph. We cannot, and should not ignore it. Avoid cities, large groups of people, and charismatic leaders that control great swaths of the population.

MAJestic observation

Imagine that you are another species, from another environment. You are observing the humans as they exist in contemporaneous society. What would you think?

How could you benefit from this situation?
What advice would you give to a treasured individual from this society?

If you enjoyed this, you can view the SHTF index for similar articles. YOu can go there here…

SHTF Articles

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
You can find out more about the author HERE.
If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

How a real traditional home used to be run

After I left the Navy, I lived with my paternal grandmother for a spell while I worked at a steel factory. Later on, they would lay me off and I would go on my great adventure. But during this snapshot in time, I was spending about four months living with my grandmother; saving up money so that I can afford an apartment to live in.

She was very traditional. And she refused for me to do anything… anything in the kitchen. That was her domain.

For me… No cooking. No cleaning. No washing the dishes, doing the laundry. Not even emptying the trash.

Those were her “womanly tasks” that “real men” would never, and should never do.

That was my grand mother.

My parents were more progressive. Boys did the dishes. Emptied the garbage. Mowed the lawn. While the girls cooked, and darned clothes.

Something went seriously wrong in the United States sometime between 1913 and 1935. Because after that, the bedrock of familial roles shifted, and continued to shift until you have the cluster fuck family structures that you see today.

I miss my grandmother.

She was a smart, wise, and wiry woman with whom I greatly adored.

Today…

How will the US tech restrictions on mainland China’s semiconductor industry affect the country’s manufacturing supply chain?

The Chinese have been building and installing Chinese components to replace the components the U.S. has blocked so that Chinese supply chains are not affected.

Did you expect the Chinese to stop and give up because of the sanctions?

Sorry, that isn’t how the Chinese work.

Mark Sleboda: Putin and China Issue DEVASTATING Warning to Blinken, Neocons and They’re Not Bluffing

International Relations and Security analyst Mark Sleboda explains how Blinken’s latest visit to China exposes the weakening position of the neocons and their inability to compete on the world stage with both Russia and China, both of which are warning that further escalation will lead to all out war. This is not a bluff, so be sure to watch the video in full to understand how HUGE this all is.

What is the worst thing someone has done that broke you?

Not too long after my late wife passed (not nearly long enough), I got involved with a woman (I use the term loosely) who was supposed to have been one of my wife’s good friends. It was a vulnerable time for me and I had no business being involved with anyone at this point.

I will refer to this woman as “CB” (short for crazy bitch.)

The first few months of being involved with CB were fine, she did and said all of the right things until she felt she had me where she wanted me. I let her into my home, I helped her financially, treated her children well, and went out of my way to make them all feel welcome in my home.
One day, it was like someone threw a light switch and turned on her narcissistic, rage. She became violent with me and even attempted to do away with me using a boat oar to my head. I thought I was at rock bottom and broken at this point, but it actually got worse. Once I got her out of my home and out of my life (I thought), the real kick in the junk came. It turns out, the entire time I was working to make them feel welcome in my home, working my full time job, and doing the things you do for people you care about, she had been stealing all of my personal information. This CB had not only assaulted me physically, she had stolen my identity and when all was said and done, she had run up over $170K in debt under my name. This literally and financially broke me. I lost my home and so many of the things I had worked so hard to earn for so many years. It was the most expensive lesson I have ever learned. It was my rock bottom and became the motivation for me to climb out of the darkness and work on myself. It has been a few years since it all happened and while I am still fighting the financial fallout from being too trusting to the wrong person, I am no longer a broken man. Life has a way of making us move on and luckily, I made the right choices from then on. If Karma is real, CB is in for a world of hurt.

Do people in countries where you can’t openly criticise the government find it strange that you can do that in some countries?

That’s a loaded question if I ever saw one.

Last night somebody said me in China would be immediately executed if I was critical of Xi Jinping. He spoke with ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE because being a westerner makes you omniscient.

Funny, I live in China Hong Kong province. Where I see Falun Gong operate openly and distribute their publication everyday and they call for the destruction of China and the government. Similarly Shun Bot on here is openly critical of Xi Jinping as am I, and I don’t know about him, but I go over to Shenzhen a fair bit and yet here I am totally not dead.

In that just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen! It’s almost like Americans! Everything outside stopped once the USA was founded. Stuff goes on when you’re not looking.

Oh sure you can call Biden an ass, but guess what? It does nothing other than make you feel good momentarily.

So there’s totally no name calling in China? Oh there is if you understand Chinese and go on Chinese forums, but you can’t read that can you?

There’s also something completely unknown by those omniscient westerners. In that if you have a real grievance? You complain via official channels, but here’s the catch it needs to be genuine and you need to have evidence. The fact that numerous CPC officials RIGHT at the TOP have been sentenced to death for corruption instigated by people complaining is pretty telling.

Meanwhile, has anybody been investigated in western governments? Jon Corzine literally diverted 1bn USD into his Caymen islands bank account and paid a small fine for it, he didn’t end up picking up any soap in a prison shower.

Tony Blinken’s Stern Warning to China| More Hubris!

Was Antony Blinken’s recent visit to China a complete failure or just another round of political posturing? Dive into the details of the U.S. Secretary of State’s three-day interaction with Chinese officials and explore whether any real progress was made on critical issues. Despite the positive rhetoric, it seems the visit may have fallen short of expectations.

Join me as I dissect for you the nuances of Blinken’s diplomatic efforts & unravel the complexities of U.S.-China relations. Is it all just a facade for domestic audiences?

Some comics

Polish-Style Roast Chicken

Cajun Style Roasted Chicken with Garlic Herb Potatoes e1695046330313

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

2 (3 1/2 to 4 pound) whole chickens
1 onion, peeled and quartered
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika
2 teaspoons salt + more to taste
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper + more to taste
14 1/2 ounces reduced sodium chicken broth, defatted
1/3 cup vodka
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill
2 tablespoons sour cream (optional)

Instructions

Position oven rack in lower third of oven; heat to 350 degrees F.
Remove giblets. Place hearts, necks and gizzards in roasting pan and reserve livers for another use.
With a sharp knife, remove excess fat.
Dry insides with a paper towel.
With your fingers, loosen skin over breasts and thighs to make pockets, being careful not to tear the skin.
In a food processor or blender, combine onion, garlic, paprika, 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper; puree until smooth.
Spread 1/4 cup onion puree in the bottom of a roasting pan.
Place chickens in pan, at least 1 inch apart.
Rub 1 tablespoon puree into each cavity and spread remaining puree under skin.
Tuck wings back and tie legs.
Roast chickens for 20 minutes.
Drizzle with 1/4 cup chicken broth and roast for 40 minutes more, basting with pan drippings every 20 minutes.
Tent chickens with aluminum foil and continue roasting for 30 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone, registers 180 degrees F and the cavity juices run clear.
Transfer chickens to a platter and cover with foil to keep warm; leave giblets in pan.
Pour pan juices into a bowl and chill in freezer for 10 minutes to bring fat to the surface.
Meanwhile, add remaining chicken broth and vodka to roasting pan and bring to a boil over medium heat, scraping up any browned bits adhering to the pan.
Add any juices accumulated on chicken platter.
Skim off fat from chilled pan juices.
Add juices to roasting pan and return to a boil. Strain juices through a fine sieve into a medium saucepan.
Bring to a simmer over medium heat.
In a small bowl, blend water and cornstarch; whisk into simmering gravy.
Cook, stirring, until slightly thickened, about 1 minute.
Whisk in dill and sour cream, if using.
Season with salt and pepper.
Carve chickens, discarding skin.
Serve with gravy.

Brazilian Woman Arrested After Trying To Use Her Uncle’s Corpse To Get A Bank Loan

By Amber Breese | Edited By John Kuroski

Published April 19, 2024

Updated April 22, 2024

Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes has been charged with theft by fraud and abuse of a corpse after allegedly wheeling her deceased uncle into a bank to sign for a loan.

Bank workers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, received the shock of their lives after a woman brought her deceased uncle to a bank to sign for a loan on April 16, 2024.

woman took dead uncle bank e1713544751893

The woman, who claimed to be the man’s niece, allegedly wheeled him into the bank and attempted to force a pen into his hand. Workers noticed the bizarre scene and called emergency workers. A medical examination later confirmed that the man had been dead for at least two hours.

Now, investigators are trying to determine the full story of how this disturbing incident unfolded.

Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes’ Attempt To Use Her Uncle’s Corpse To Commit Fraud

On April 16, Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes entered the Itaú Bank branch in Rio de Janeiro. In tow was her 68-year-old wheelchair-bound uncle, Paulo Roberto Braga.

The two came to the bank to take out a loan equivalent to $3,250.

While the duo signed for the loan, the bank employees noticed the oddity of the scene. For one, Braga did not move at all, and Nunes seemed to force a pen into the man’s hand, stating:

“Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign [the loan contract]. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, because I can’t sign for you. Sign so you don’t give me any more headaches, I can’t take it anymore,” a video of the incident aired by g1 showed.

Evidently, bank employees told Nunes that her uncle appeared unwell, to which she responded:

“He is like that. He doesn’t say anything.”

But the strangeness of it all was too much for the bank workers. They quickly called for an ambulance, and when the doctors arrived, they confirmed the worst — the man was dead.

The Ongoing Investigation Into Paulo Roberto Braga’s Death

g1/YouTubeSurveillance footage of Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes and her deceased uncle, Paulo Roberto Braga.

According to a medical examination, Paulo Braga had been dead for over two hours when Nunes brought him to the bank. His cause of death was respiratory aspiration of stomach contents and heart failure. However, the situation became muddied when both Nunes and her lawyer claimed that her uncle was alive when he arrived at the bank.

“The facts did not happen as they were narrated. Mr. Paulo arrived at the banking unit alive. There are witnesses who, at the appropriate time, will also be heard. He started to feel sick, and then he had all these procedures. All of this will be clarified and we believe in Mrs. Érika’s innocence,” Ana Carla de Souza Correa, Nunes’ lawyer, told TV Globo. Just a day before, Nunes had taken Braga to the emergency room.

Despite these pleas, police arrested Nunes on two separate charges of theft by fraud and abuse of a corpse.

Now, authorities are conducting an investigation into Braga’s death. So far, doctors know that Braga must have died lying down, evidenced by the way blood pooled in his vessels. He could not have died sitting in the wheelchair.

Authorities know that Nunes took a taxi to the bank, so they are now trying to determine if Braga could have died lying down in the back of the cab.

“The main thing is to continue the investigations, identify other family members and find out if, when this loan was made, he was alive,” Fábio Luiz Souza, a police officer on the case, told O Dia.

For now, Nunes will remain in custody until the investigation concludes.

The Chinese owner of TikTok claims they would rather shut down than sell TikTok. (To the surprise of many lawmakers who voted to ban TikTok). Do you think they are serious or bluffing?

They are dead serious

Selling TikTok would mean the US can bully every Chinese company doing Business in USA to divest or leave

There are laws about transfer of IP or IP licenses belonging to Chinese entities without permission of the Government

So selling TikTok isn’t an option.

Meanwhile if you notice, China is becoming more and more conducive to foreign investments

Tesla is the best example

China didn’t force Tesla to divest 70% to BYD or Geely. .

China already has the money and capital

As US acts insane and stupid, newer Chinese entities who once would have gone to US for establishing a startup or a business will stay back in China and develop there

China has the under rated stock market today

Soon it’s possible that emerging economy players will seek financing in China over the US for unique high technology products especially as China has the enormous Capital and the Market and the Supply Chain

China can replace the US in Capital today with $ 19 Trillion in Public Savings

China has the huge market of 430 million consumers

The only thing stopping people from going to China to seek capital and establish business is because China is authoritarian and US has all these laws and systems

Now as US abandons these laws and systems, Chinas system begins to look less authoritative and that’s what China is aiming for

So why would they sell TikTok?

Bytedance has more revenue earning products including DOUYIN

Anything that makes the US look insane is a Chinese win

What’s the poorest judgment you’ve ever witnessed from someone else?

My wife has had a concussion ,that she never fully recovered from a few years back. It can make her impulsive and has really messed with her sense of balance. I have asked her not to go down our steep basement stairs by herself, as an example of my concerns. My wife does not like other people doing things for her, she hates the idea that she might need help.

We retired out in the country, but still had the place in the city, which was empty because we were getting ready to sell it. The insurance company removed our burst pipe insurance, because no one was living in it. We had a cold snap and it dropped below minus 40 in the night, and didn’t get above minus 30 during the day.

So I went to the city to do some work on the house, and make sure a pipe didn’t burst.

The previous winter, our high efficiency furnace exhaust at our country place had frozen up, and shut down our furnace when it reached minus 35 for a week. So I insulated the exhaust pipe. Which on an older furnace would have been called a chimney. I was satisfied that it would take more than a week to freeze up this time.

So I am in the city, sitting out the cold snap and my wife is in the country. The furnace is running fine, but she can’t get to sleep, worrying that the exhaust will freeze up.

So at 1:00 in the morning, in minus 40 weather, she puts a ladder up against the house, grabs a crowbar, and climbs onto the snowy roof, and chips the ice that has formed on the exhaust off. She didn’t bring her phone with her.

Then she climbs back down the wobbly ladder. Its in deep snow and hasn’t sunk all the way to the ground.

She goes to bed and gets a good night’s sleep.

She is so proud of herself, that its painful for me ,to tell her to never do that again. Our nearest neighbor in the winter is a kilometer away. If she had fallen, or if the ladder had fallen, leaving her trapped on the roof in minus 40. She wouldn’t have lasted 2 hours, and she didn’t even take her phone.

I have gone up there and done the same thing. But never in the dark, never alone, I always had someone watching me. I always dug out the snow before placing the ladder. I never went up when it was below minus 35, though I would have if I had to.

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

The person to be fired was sitting in the VP’s office. Also present were an HR Rep, a person from Legal and the department manager (the immediate supervisor was not present).

The VP opened a folder and began to explain all the evidence they’d gathered. Theft of time, theft of property, misuse of resources and a few other things.

The firee held up his hand and said “Hey, you don’t need to read all that to me, and I’m sure you missed quite a bit. If that document you have there is an admission of wrongdoing, I get to say I was a voluntary quit and I can go my merry way as long as I don’t go around s**t-mouthing you, let me have it.”

According to the HR person (who told me about this), dead silence for a moment. Jaws dropping, and then the employee said “You guys are sloppy so maybe you should hire me back to stop people like me. I never got away with my crap anywhere else as long as I did here.”

More silence, then:

“Look, you know as well as me that if what I got away with ever got out to the clients, they’d be tripping over each other to rip up their contracts. You’re busy I’m sure and I guess I have to go get another job now so no games, okay. Just let me read that to be sure it won’t bite me and I’ll be on my way.”

The VP silently handed him the document, he read it, signed it and dated it. His parting words were “By the way, there’s nothing at my workstation I want, so just toss it if you like. See ya …”. Legal started to say “but we need to tell you about COBRA and your unemployment claim …” and he answered with “I probably know that stuff better than you. I can’t afford COBRA, I don’t qualify for unemployment because I’m a voluntary quit under what amounts to a gag agreement and I was never in the company retirement plan. See ya … got things to do.”

And he was gone, taking the 20 steps to the elevator never to be seen (by us) again.

Let it be said that there were a few VERY embarrassed people in that room. It soon became evident that he was telling the truth about all he got away with. A lot was right under the noses of the two area supervisors, but we had nothing in place at that time to pick up abuse of our email system (employees didn’t yet have Web access).

What caught him was that our Operations Manager, responsible for phone use, picked up on him quickly once he started abusing the phones (by calling 900 numbers). He hadn’t been misusing the phones prior to that. So the OpMgr was not only safe, but somewhat a hero. The employee, by not staying, never heard the part about his phone misuse and so never knew exactly how he was caught.

As a result:

Both supervisors were put on final written warning.
The department head got an oral to start paying more attention to what was going on “out there on the floor.”
IT was authorized to hire a SysAdmin and to immediately implement steps to prevent future email abuse.

Never Become Reliant On Other People or Things For Peace and Happiness

April 26, 2024

It’s so damn easy to get caught up in the trap of thinking that our happiness is dependent on external factors.

We convince ourselves that we’ll finally be content and at peace when we have that perfect relationship, that dream job, that luxurious house, or that fat bank account.

But here’s the harsh truth: relying on other people or material things to make you happy is a recipe for perpetual disappointment and dissatisfaction.

Because the reality is, no one and nothing outside of yourself can fill the voids within you. That’s an inside job.

Sure, a loving partner, a fulfilling career, and financial abundance can certainly enhance your life and bring you joy. But if you’re not already at peace with yourself, if you haven’t cultivated a deep sense of self-love and self-worth, those external things will never be enough.

You’ll always be chasing the next high, the next temporary fix, the next shiny object that you think will finally complete you. But it’s a mirage. A fleeting illusion that leaves you thirstier than before.

The truth is, genuine, sustainable happiness comes from within. It comes from learning to love and accept yourself fully, flaws and all. It comes from discovering your passions and purpose and pursuing them with unbridled enthusiasm. It comes from developing a rock-solid relationship with your own damn self.

When you’re truly at peace with who you are, when you’ve built an unshakeable foundation of self-love and self-respect, external circumstances lose their power over you. You’re no longer a slave to your surroundings, no longer dependent on others for your emotional wellbeing.

You become the master of your own happiness, the alchemist of your own joy.

And from that place of inner peace and wholeness, you can build deeply fulfilling relationships and achieve incredible things. But they become the cherry on top, not the entire fucking sundae.

So stop waiting for someone or something outside of yourself to make you feel complete. Stop giving your power away to external forces that are ultimately beyond your control.

Start turning inward. Start excavating the gold that’s already within you. Start cultivating an unbreakable bond with yourself.

Because at the end of the day, you are the only one who can give yourself the love, acceptance, and validation you crave. You are the only one who can fill your own cup until it overflows with abundant peace, happiness, and self-assuredness.

And when you learn to do that, when you become your own primary source of joy and fulfillment, you become truly unstoppable. You become the kind of person who radiates contentment and gratitude wherever you go, regardless of your external reality.

That’s the kind of happiness worth striving for – the kind that comes from within and can never be taken away from you. The kind that endures through life’s inevitable ups and downs. The kind that allows you to weather any storm with grace and resilience.

So stop searching for yourself in other people and things. Stop making your happiness contingent on circumstances beyond your control.

Start digging deep within yourself. Start unearthing the peace and joy that’s already there, just waiting to be unleashed. Start cultivating an ironclad sense of self-love and self-reliance.

Because when you do, you’ll find that everything you’ve been searching for has been inside you all along. And that, my friend, is the ultimate freedom.

Some AI generations

alchemyrefiner alchemymagic 0 546c58f1 d510 4f97 b854 594434eef20a 0

Default female Primary school pupil with satchel standing at t 1 deff964f 087e 4897 99d0 6e682e5e41ff 0

alchemyrefiner alchemymagic 0 32bcc95a 2a9f 4b1f 91de 27f519db6387 0

alchemyrefiner alchemymagic 2 b8bdf87c 2356 418a a997 89e9e739ee79 0

alchemyrefiner alchemymagic 3 df43ed84 a84c 49cf a694 0dc5ec200205 0

Default The camera pans through a lush enchanted forest sunlig 0

Default A beautiful black woman in a emerald green with natura 1

What is the craziest reason someone threatened to fire you?

A new consultant was hired by my company. I was working my first real job out of school (sales). The consultant came out to spend the day making sales calls with me. He critiqued my work, I listened to him, and tried to implement some of his advice in the next calls. He was very full of himself and full of something else too. Most of his advice might have applied to someone making sales calls on people in offices. We were calling on farmers. He spent the day talking down to me.
I took him back to his hotel, then made the 25 minute drive to our house. I called the CEO of our company (our families were friends) and told her to never send the guy back to work with me. She began to laugh, which was very annoying. When her laughter had slowed down a bit, I asked her what she found so funny. ( I was still pretty angry.) She told me that the guy had called 20 minutes earlier and fired me.

This was the second guy who had fired me from the same job, and for the same reason: I wasn’t a “polished” salesman. The CEO knew when I was hired that it would take me some time to learn the business, so she ignored both of them. I was promoted back to the home office, and was still working for that company after both of the folks who had “fired” me were gone. The consultant only lasted a few weeks. He pulled the same stunt on others that he had on me. The CEO got rid of him.

What happens inside casinos that most people don‘t know?

As someone who cleaned crime scenes, it is both amazing and creepy how well casinos would make every effort to cover up any suicides in the parking lots. The casinos know this is bad PR and they don’t want anyone to know that such occurs more than what one may think. Gambling addicts have the highest rate of suicide amongst all other addicts combined. Don’t believe such a statistic? Feel free to research it.
Casinos make the majority of their profits from gambling addicts. The kind who will gamble any time they have $20, electric bill be damned. If it wasn’t for the gambling addicts, casinos would not prosper nearly as much. It isn’t the high rollers nor the couple who goes out for a date. Those folks definitely help the profit margin but at the end of the day, the compulsive gamblers are where the majority of their profits originate from.
Casinos give the option of banning yourself but it’s a laughable illusion. I’ve known many folks who banned their self for five years and never had an issue entering during their ban. If you chest the casino, then somehow their facial recognition technology suddenly works. Imagine that….
Whenever a person jackpots, the manager of whatever area of the casino will come by and congratulate you. They will then take your I.D. ad disappear for a bit. What they are doing is trying to find out any possible way to not pay what is owed. Banned? You aren’t entitled to your jackpot. Have warrants? Good luck with that. The manager will then return with some dimwitted hostess. No one knows what the hostess actually does besides stand around and wear that plastic smile of theirs. They of course expect a nice tip for not actually even accomplishing anything. I will tip the folks cleaning out ash trays becsuse those workers actually have a real job which doesn’t rely on flirting with old men for better tips (basically prostituting one’s self in a way).

There are other things as well but I don’t wanna end up typing out a rambling explanation which goes on for hours.

Pep Talk on a Dark Day

“We live in an age of full spectrum deception.” — Edward Dowd

Clusterfuck Nation

You realize, don’t you, that what’s going on in our country is the collapse not just of an empire, or an economy, but a comprehensive paradigm of human progress. The hallmark of post-war life in Western Civ was supposed to be a return to sanity after the mid-twentieth century fugue of mass psychotic violence. The wish for just and rational order was not entirely pretense. But that was then. Now that we are going medieval on ourselves, the not-so-ironic result will be our literally going medieval, sinking back into a pre-modern existence of darkness, superstition, and penury, grubbing for a mere subsistence in the shadow of scuffling hobgoblins, our achievements lost and forgotten.

What’s most appalling is that our governing apparatus is visibly willing that to happen. When Barack Obama warned America to not underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck things up, was that some kind of joke? After all, it was Mr. Obama and his fellow blobsters — the cabal of Intel spooks, covert Marxist bureaucrats, lawfare ninjas, globalist megalomaniacs, post-liberal think tankers, weapons grifters, degenerate billionaires, and assorted mentally-ill camp followers — who inflicted Joe Biden on the body politic. And then ran him on the country like some demon algorithm designed to wreck the USA as fast as possible.

The source of anguish in all that is the struggle to understand why they would want that to happen. What debauched sense of history would drive anyone to such lunatic desperation? It’s a cliché now to say that the Democratic Party has turned its traditional moral scaffold upside down and inside out. It acts against the kitchen table interests of the working and middle classes. It’s against civil liberties. It demands mental obedience to patently insane policy. It’s avid for war, no matter how cruelly pointless. It’s deliberately stirring up racial hatred. It despises personal privacy. It feeds a rogue bureaucracy that has become a veritable Moloch, an all-devouring malevolent deity. And now, rather suddenly, it aligns itself with a faction that seeks to exterminate the Jews.

And how did the opposition to that epic divergence into bad faith turn so flabby? How did the Republican Party roll over and wheeze so feebly while the FBI ran amok swatting grandmothers in dawn raids, and the US attorney general made justice a whore, and a Republican Congress allowed the Frankenstein agency of Homeland Security to flood the country with its enemies and give them gobs of operational cash? If Mr. Trump was unappetizing to them as a leader, why were they unable to produce an alternative figure of standing and stature at least equally resolute? They look like traitors and cowards.

For the moment, the country lies mired, inert, and demoralized in the face of in those terrible mysteries. But events are still tending and the hidden hand of emergence still operates backstage, preparing surprises for us. You are necessarily aware that the center did not hold. It’s even hard to locate where the center used to be with the action so heavy on the far-out margins. You’re watching drag queens importune young children to shove all the Jews into the sea. And the kids are sitting next to their mommies. What happened to the mommies’ brains that permits them to think this spectacle is okay? How will the mommies ever get their minds right?

In some quarters, a great rage is building. Not a few resent the overthrow of common sense, common law, and common decency. You better believe they will be aiming to do something about it. They will stand up for their dignity, their culture, their history. Virtue isn’t dead; it’s just broke down on a lonely highway waiting to hitch a ride back to where the lights are still on. Don’t forget that this really is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Meanwhile, prepare for action. It’s obvious that the enemies of the people don’t intend to rest. They are going to try to play out this string to the last move because otherwise a lot of them will be going to jail, or might even hang for their wickedness. Once they turned criminal, there was no turning back. They have dishonored themselves and they’re trying to dishonor their country.

It’s true nonetheless that we’re moving into a new disposition of the human project. It’s going to be smaller and leaner, and not nearly as complex as the tottering Rube Goldberg apparatus we’re currently trapped in. We don’t know yet what the shape and texture of that America is going to be. As the sage Yogi Berra observed, our whole future is ahead of us. If you’re not among the insane, have faith. We’ll get there and everything is going to be all right.

Do you want to move to China from the US?

I am neither Chinese or American but am an Australian outsider observer! From where I stand I would wonder why anyone from a thriving, prosperous expanding nation would want to move to.

Why would an American want to move to China?

Different people have different reasons.

I came to China because the Chinese government agreed to support my research and give me opportunity to build a team to pursue solutions for health problems with genomics. I tried again and again through the grant process and VC channels in the US. For grants, if you weren’t part of the group that gets most of the grant money or one of their proteges (“the club”), you weren’t getting a grant. And, if you weren’t 20 something with no experience but full of wild ideas VC funds weren’t interested, they are all looking for the next Zuckerberg or Gates. They didn’t care about sound business plans.

So, I came to China where I was first able to almost immediately raise money from VCs and then after a year the Chinese government agreed to support me, my team and my projects.

China is the land of opportunity for talented scientists. They are putting a lot of money into developing a broad group of technologies of which biotech is one. A key focus of the education system is STEM graduates. So, for me, China was the obvious choice.

Note: I could’ve gotten a job in the US and been paid a very good wage, although I am doing well, especially by Chinese standards, I would’ve made more in the US. But, here I am supported to pursue my passion. And, it is a very good opportunity to experience the culture and the people.

The largest group of American expats here in China are teachers though. In China, teaching is a very well respected profession and the teachers are well compensated with lots of perks. They came here, some for the experience, most for the increased wages and respect that they found they lacked in the US.

My father left my brother/sister very little inheritance compared to me due to little contact with him. They feel I should give them a bigger part of the inheritance. I’d like opinions on whether my father’s wishes should be followed or not?

I have a simular situation — my older sister (79) took my dad (99) to a dealership and she used my dad’s debit card to buy a car — $36,000 and $6000 cash down last year. She paid him $400 monthly for a year! How does that add up to $30,000?

He bought her a house in 1980 cash in Calif. Dad also gave her his stamp collection ($80,000). Dad pays $1100 a month to live in her and her husbands (96) house. They called me over to help care for my dad so I do most his stuff and became his POA (they charge me $500 plus $250 food to stay here). My sister takes care of her husband. Dad has about $70,000 cash and he wrote a will splitting it between my brother (71) and I (68) only. My sister got upset!

My Sister originally had it written that she would keep the car plus $20,000 cash, stamp collection and I for some reason would receive nothing —leaving my brother to get the rest.

I am the closest to Dad. I am in the nursing field and was the only one of us kids to care for my Dad’s Mom a year, my Mother’s Mom 10 years in my home. And my Mom 5 years who had a terrible illness with no help from siblings. My Sister will demand we split the remaining cash 3 ways but Dad wrote it his way and I will honor it the way he chose it.

What is the most petty thing you’ve done, or someone has done to you?

This girl stole my thermos that my dad gave to me with his company’s name on it, and tried to pretend that it was hers all along.

Let’s call this girl Maya.

Now, Maya and I weren’t friends, but we were pretty friendly. Just the normal, ‘hi’ and ‘hello’ occasionally.

She was really good friends with some of my friends at that point.

One Friday I had left my thermos at school. It sucked, but I waited until Monday to get it back.

I searched all over the school for it, but I couldn’t find it.

A week later, a friend of mine pointed out Maya’s ‘new’ thermos and asked, “Wait, isn’t that your thermos?”.

It most definitely was mine.

Of course, I made sure that it was, in fact, mine.

Scratches that I made in it with a pencil? Check.

Company name etched into it? Check.

Was it literally the exact same thermos I had lost a week ago? Triple check.

After eliminating any and all possibility that this was not my thermos, I finally confronted Maya.

She decided to play dumb.

Me: Hey, Maya, where’d you get that thermos from?

Maya: Uh, my mom bought it for me.

Me: Huh, where does your mom work?

Maya: At some nursing place, why?

Me: I see…and is that the place written on your thermos?

Maya: …Yup.

*she tries to walk away at this point but I stop her*

Me: Well, that’s odd, because I had just lost a thermos recently that was the exact same! Funny how that company is actually my dad’s and how it’s a trucking company.

Maya: Um, I’ve had this thermos for a couple weeks now.

Me: …Is that so? Well, if you see my thermos around please tell me!

Maya: Will do!

It was so frustrating because she was obviously lying to me. I knew she was lying. She knew I knew she was lying. But she kept lying.

I tried to address our mutual friends but they took her side. They lied and said that she’s had it ‘since Christmas’, when Maya said herself that she’d only had it for a couple weeks.

I felt extremely frustrated with the entire situation so I vented to a teacher I was close with and trusted.

He said that I should just leave it be if I already addressed it with her since it was only a thermos.

IT WAS NOT ONLY A THERMOS!

If she got away with this once, that would give her a reason to do it again and again!

I had to do good, vigilante-style justice, to teach Ms. Maya a lesson.

During my 8th period class I asked my teacher if I could fill up my water bottle.

I knew what class she had then: Band.

Now band is pretty chaotic, but the music teacher thinks I’m an awesome person since I stay in there during lunch all the time.

No one gave me a second look when I walked in.

I spotted Maya. She was in the far corner of the room by the piano joking and laughing with the very friends who had lied to me.

She had left all her belongings closer to the door where I now was.

I walked by them but saw that the thermos wasn’t there.

I looked back over to the piano and there it was, in all its glory.

The thermos!

My thermos.

It was sitting at the top of the piano while she was sitting on the piano bench facing the other way.

I walked up as casually as possible, planning on getting the thermos and getting the hell out of there.

A friend of hers saw me and I mentally froze.

I got over my initial shock and then gave her a smile and a ‘Hey!’, and pretended I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

She smiled back and went back to talking with Maya.

I gave a sigh of relief and decided to just go big or go home.

I grabbed the thermos, turned around, waved to the band teacher and made my way to the door.

Mentally praying, ‘please don’t let her see me, please don’t let her see me, please don’t let her see me..’, I made it all the way to the door.

In a moment of weakness I took a quick glance back to make sure I wasn’t spotted.

They were still talking and laughing, oblivious to the fact that I just won this one-sided war.

I smiled to myself and walked out the door and back to my class.

Maya never knew what happened to ‘her’ thermos.

And I never brought it to school again.

Crab Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Ingredients

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 tablespoons butter, divided
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup chicken broth
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 (6 ounce) can crab meat or 6 ounces imitation crab meat
1 can mushroom stems
1/3 cup crushed saltines (10)
2 tablespoons parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt pepper
1 cup shredded Swiss cheese
1/2 teaspoon paprika

Instructions

Cover chicken breasts with plastic wrap and pound to a 1/4 inch thickness.
In saucepan, melt 3 tablespoons of the butter.
Stir in flour until smooth.
Gradually stir in chicken broth and milk and bring to a boil. Boil and stir for 2 minutes.
Remove from heat and set aside.
In a skillet, sauté onion in remaining 1 tablespoon butter until tender.
Add crab meat, mushrooms, crushed saltines, parsley, salt and pepper and 2 tablespoons of the white sauce; heat until warm.
Place 1/2 cup or less of mixture on each chicken breast. Roll up and secure with wooden picks.
Place in greased baking dish with secured side down. Top with remaining sauce.
Cover and bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes or until chicken runs clear.
Sprinkle cheese and paprika on top.
Bake uncovered 8 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.

What golden advice did you learn in your life?

The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who deliberately arouse someone’s love without the intention of loving them back.
Pretty people aren’t always beautiful, and beautiful people aren’t always pretty. I hope you know the difference.
You’re not really rich until you have something that money can’t buy.
The more you can talk about uncomfortable things with someone, the more comfortable you’re with them
The less you react, the more stable you become. Yes, chemistry works in real life situations too 🙂
Don’t judge the choices someone made if you don’t know the options they had to choose from.
Be sweet like sugar but don’t let people use and dissolve you as per their requirement.
No one ever became big in life by showing how small someone else is.
If there is no one to hold your hand, put your hand in your pocket and continue.
Everyone loves you until you become competition.
One must not lose faith in humanity . humanity is like an ocean , if few drops of ocean is dirty , ocean doesn’t become dirty.
We can complain rose bushes have thorns or we can rejoice that thorn bushes have rose. So it always our choice to be positive or negative.
Not everyone you lose, is a loss.
I read this one somewhere- The best way to be safe is to be dangerous.

TESLA KNEW The Secret of the Great Pyramid: Unlimited Energy to Power the World

This is really great!

TESLA KNEW The Secret of the Great Pyramid of Giza: A Power Plant to Generate Unlimited Free Energy for the World Nikola Tesla believed that he could harness the energy from inside the earth and transmit that power wirelessly around the world. His early experiments were successful. But his research mysteriously vanished after his death. There is no evidence left of Tesla’s wireless power technology. Or is there? For years we were taught that the Great Pyramid of Giza was a tomb for a king. It wasn’t. It had a different purpose. Tesla didn’t invent wireless power. It’s been here for 5,000 years. And probably a lot longer than that. Let’s find out why.

Spaghetti Heaven!

When I lived in The ‘States, spaghetti was my primary food. It was affordable, tasty and easy to make. I would cook up hamburger (mince) and then add it to spaghetti with some peppers and onions.

When I moved to China, I learned about REAL noodles… and all sorts of different variations. All so darn yummy.

Zha Jiang Mian (Old Beijing Fried Sauce Noodle, 炸酱面)

A popular classic Beijing dish, Zha Jiang Mian features ground pork and onion cooked in a rich savory brown sauce with a hint of sweetness, tossed with noodles and then served with crunchy cucumber. It takes no time to prepare, is easy to cook, and can be prepared ahead of time. It’s a perfect one-bowl dish for hot days and is great for meal prep as well.

What is Zha Jiang Mian

Zha Jiang Mian (炸酱面), or translated literally, fried sauce noodles, is one of the most classic and famous dishes in Beijing cuisine. It’s not as fancy or well-known as Peking Duck, but if you travel to Beijing, locals will always recommend this dish to you.

My parents told me that zha jiang mian was a dish for poor people. The traditional recipe uses a thick salty soybean paste to make the sauce, together with a bit of ground pork and sometimes lard. The sauce becomes so rich and flavorful that you only need a small amount of it to accompany a whole bowl of noodles. This way, people don’t need to spend much to fill up their bellies.

Although it seems like a simple dish, it has a whole set of rules that govern how it’s served in Beijing. It is called Old Beijing Fried Sauce Noodles here, and this is considered the most traditional and authentic way to prepare the dish. In addition to the sauce made from yellow soybean paste, the dish is often served with sliced cucumber, sliced red radish, boiled bean sprouts, and yellow soybeans. By adding all these things to the noodles, you can create a balanced and flavorful dish that is refreshing and has a good texture.

Why this recipe

However, the recipe I’m sharing today is different from the traditional way of cooking Zha Jiang Mian. This is a family recipe that was passed down from my grandma, and I think it tastes much better than the traditional one.

Secret Ingredient: Sweet Bean Paste

Instead of yellow soybean paste, my family uses sweet bean paste (Tian mian jiang, 甜面酱) to make Zha Jiang Mian. It is a thick dark brown sauce made from fermented wheat flour. Tian Mian Jiang is less salty than yellow soybean paste and has a slightly sweet flavor (It is the same sauce that accompanies Peking Duck and Moo Shu Chicken). It has a more delicate flavor and is less overwhelming than yellow soybean paste. Sometimes Chinese restaurants label it as hoisin sauce. But sweet bean paste is less sweet and has a deeper fermented umami than hoisin sauce.

You can find sweet bean paste at Chinese markets and many Asian markets. You can also purchase it on Amazon.

A more satisfying sauce

The traditional Zha Jiang Mian uses very little pork in the sauce. Because the dish is created for a budget meal, like I mentioned above.

For the homemade version, my mom uses much more pork and chopped onion to create a much better texture and more delicious sauce. Since sweet bean paste is less salty than soybean paste, you will also use more sauce per bowl of noodles, which makes the dish more balanced and satisfying.

My mom likes to chop a fattier block of pork into small cubes instead of using ground pork, to achieve a better mouthfeel. Here I used ground pork to make prep much easier. But feel free to use cut-up pork for your dish if you prefer.

Ingredients

When you’re ready to cook, your counter should have:

Sweet bean paste and water
Sliced cucumber (and other toppings if you prefer)
Minced ginger
Shaoxing wine
Oil for cooking
Ground pork
Chopped onion

Type of noodles for Zha Jiang Mian

There are a few options for Zha Jiang Mian. Traditional Zha Jiang Mian uses a rather thick type of noodles. It’s a bit similar to udon noodles in terms of thickness, but with a chewier texture.

If you have access to Asian market, try to find fresh noodles in the refrigerated section. The Lan Zhou Fresh Noodles or Da Xi Bei GunGun (my favorite) by HAVISTA, and the Plain Noodles from Twin Marquis are great options. You can freeze the portion you’re not using for up to 6 months.

If you can only find dried noodles, that’s totally fine. You can use either the thick type or thin types of noodles, depending on the texture you prefer. Make sure to use noodles made from wheat flour and water (there shouldn’t be eggs or other ingredients).

If you’re up for a fancier meal, check out my homemade hand pulled noodles for a more authentic experience.

Topping options

You can serve your Zha Jiang Mian with no toppings and the result will still be delicious. For a better texture, my favorite topping is sliced cucumber. Other crunchy vegetables such as sliced radish (red, daikon, or watermelon radish), blanched bean sprouts, and sliced carrots are great options as well. You can also add a small handful of salad greens to the dish.

TIP: If you find slicing vegetables too time consuming, use a julienne peeler to save time.

An untraditional topping

Unlike the traditional way of serving Zha Jiang Mian, my mom loves to add scrambled eggs and tomato as a topping. This is a family tradition and I’ve never seen other people serve Zha Jiang Mian this way. But I love how it tastes. The tender tomatoes and eggs add more volume to the noodles and balance out the rich brown sauce, making the dish so delicious and colorful!

How to cook zha jiang mian

Mix the sweet bean sauce

Sweet bean sauce is a thick paste that’s easy to burn in a hot pan. So you will need to add water to it to thin it out before cooking. It’s like the idea of miso paste, as you should dissolve it in water beforehand.

Cooking Zha Jiang Mian sauce

Gently cook the ginger
Pan fry the pork
Add the sauce
Simmer to bring the flavor out of the sauce
Add the onions and cook until tender
Stir and serve!

The sweet bean sauce needs to be cooked for long enough to bring out the best flavor. That’s why you will start with a diluted sauce, and it will gradually thicken until it’s done. Make sure to stir the sauce frequently during the cooking, so it won’t burn on the bottom of the pan.

Cook the noodles and assemble

When the sauce is simmering, you can start a pot of water to cook the noodles. Because the Zha Jiang Mian sauce will be piping hot once it’s done, you can boil the noodles at the end, when the sauce is almost ready.

To assemble, transfer noodles to individual bowls and add a spoonful of the sauce. And top it with vegetables as you like. Then you can mix it all together and eat it.

My family’s recipe not only preserves all the deliciousness of a bowl of traditional Zha Jiang Mian, but also tastes better and is super comforting. Add a spoonful of sauce to the noodles and gently mix them; you will smell the pungent aroma and be unable to resist picking up the chopsticks and digging in.

More delicious noodle recipes

…

Guys, this dis is authentic, and super delicious. If you love American (Western) “spaghetti with meat sauce”, you will absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this dish. It is worth the time to prepare correctly.

However, if you are in the West, go to any Chinese family run… Chinese restaurant, and ask for Zha Jiang Mian.

Pronounced like a “ja”. Say it twice fast as in “ja-ja”. Add “mian” which is noodles in Chinese. You say…

 ja-ja mian.

Or if you are shy ask for …

Ja-ja noodles.

You’ll love them.

Today…

What is the most condescending advice you received from someone who assumed you were poorer or less educated than them?

Originally Answered: What is the most condescending advice you received from someone who assumed you were poor or less educated than they were?

I worked at Trader Joe’s for 3 years while I was pursuing my Ph.D. One day, a woman and her granddaughter came through my lane. The girl, about 12, remarked that she thought it would be fun to work at Trader Joe’s someday. Her grandmother winked at her and said, “Oh I think you can do a little better than that.”

I continued scanning her groceries and said, “Keep it in mind if you’re ever in school getting your Ph.D. The flexible hours and benefits are great so you can focus on your studies.” I looked directly at the grandmother and said, “At least that’s how it’s working out for me.”

The woman was embarrassed, but I continued, talking again to the granddaughter. “And, just remember, a job you love and enjoy is the most important part.”

This is just ONE example of hundreds. Customers coming through my lane acting as though the only reason for me being there was because I was too dumb, too lazy, too whatever to be their equal. I worked with people with their MBA, artists, and people who didn’t have a college degree but were the hardest workers I’ve ever known before or since.

Ukraine SitRep: A Hated New Commander – Critical Lack Of Infantry

The Ukrainian President Zelenski has fired the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces General Zaluzny.

Zaluzny was replaced by General Syrski, a somewhat unexpected choice as Syrski is hated by the troops for pushing them into meat grinders without a perspective of winning. Syrski, who was born as a Russian, had lost the cauldron battles of Debaltsevo (2015), Soledar (2023) and Bakhmut (2023). Currently Avdeevka is in a cauldron and likely to fall.

Rumors say that Syrski already ordered reserves to reinforce the troops in Avdeevka. Russian FAB bombs will welcome them.

The Economist describes Syrski as thus:

General Syrsky has a reputation for being willing to engage the enemy, even if the cost in men and machines is high. He is a divisive figure who provokes strong reactions from serving officers. Some praise his professionalism, others say he terrifies his subordinates and rules by fear. He is less likely to question the priorities of his president. As he takes on the top job, he will have to soften his style of command and learn to speak truth to power.

The reorganisation will also cause disruption as officers shift to new positions in the chain of command. It is important that these changes do not degrade Ukraine’s capacity to fight. Before long, the country will need a new mobilisation even if General Syrsky uses his troops mostly for defence—as, for now, he should.

Simplicius discusses the most plausible reason why Zalauzny got fired and Syrski promoted:

Ask yourself, why would Zelensky appoint a commander that the entire armed forces allegedly hates?

In fact, this is a ‘design feature’ not a bug.

Recall that the reason Zaluzhny was given the boot was he had become too powerful: he was too loved by the troops, and by the people. Why? One of the reasons is likely because he fought for the troops multiple times. In early 2023, documents were leaked showing that he nearly begged Zelensky to pull troops back from Bakhmut, but the narco-Fuhrer refused, wanting it as a symbolic city defense—perhaps taken with romantic delusions of Stalingrad.

During the grand summer ‘counteroffensive’, Zaluzhny pulled the brigades of the 10th Army Corps back and began to use them sparingly—much to the chagrin and disapproval of US sponsors—after the initial first few wipes devastated columns of Leopards and Bradleys along the infamous road of death near Rabotino and Mala Tokmachka.

Recently it was claimed Zaluzhny likewise attempted to get Avdeevka totally withdrawn. It does not seem that he likes to waste men for what he knows to be fruitless efforts. Syrsky on the other hand appears glad to grind them down.

So, has it become obvious yet? Zelensky needs a commander-in-chief he can control, someone not universally loved by the troops; someone who cannot use those troops at a time of opportunity to ‘march on Kiev’ and oust Zelensky from his citadel. Syrsky appears to fit the perfect prototypical role: undefiant, unpopular, uncharismatic, and most importantly, untempted by political ambitions—the ideal subserviant factotum to Zelensky’s regime.

There is no word yet what Zaluzny is going to do. He has the respect of the troops and good relations with the ‘nationalists’, i.e. the Nazi fringe militia of Ukraine. He also has the support of some politicians opposed to Zelenski.

A coup is thereby a possible outcome of this change.

Yesterday a Washington Post article, sources from interviews at the Ukrainian front, describes the utter shamble the Ukrainian forces are in:

In interviews across the front line in recent days, nearly a dozen soldiers and commanders told The Washington Post that personnel deficits were their most critical problem now, as Russia has regained the offensive initiative on the battlefield and is stepping up its attacks.

One battalion commander in a mechanized brigade fighting in eastern Ukraine said that his unit currently has fewer than 40 infantry troops — the soldiers deployed in front-line trenches who hold off Russian assaults. A fully equipped battalion would have more than 200, the commander said.

Under normal circumstances a mechanized battalion is supposed to hold a 3 kilometer long frontline. With only 40 infantry soldiers available that becomes an impossible task. The further deterioration from that depleted state will be rapid.

Oleksandr, a battalion commander, said the companies in his unit on average are staffed at about 35 percent of what they should be. A second battalion commander from an assault brigade said that is typical for units that carry out combat tasks.

Asked how many new soldiers he has received — not including those who have returned after injuries — Oleksandr said his battalion was sent five people over the past five months. He and other commanders said the new recruits tend to be poorly trained, creating a dilemma about whether to send someone immediately onto the battlefield because reinforcements are needed so badly, even though they are likely to get injured or killed because they lack the know-how.

“The basis of everything is the lack of people,” Oleksandr said.

“Where are we going? I don’t know,” he added. “There’s no positive outlook. Absolutely none. It’s going to end in a lot of death, a global failure. And most likely, I think, the front will collapse somewhere like it did for the enemy in 2022, in the Kharkiv region.”

The new Ukrainian mobilization law, which is supposed to refill the army with fresh bodies, is still creeping through the Ukrainian parliament. It will likely come into force only by April. The first new troops conscripted under it will take until July to be combat capable. One wonders is the current Ukrainian army can hold that long.

Posted by b on February 9, 2024 at 7:41 UTC | Permalink

My Wife/Her Friends Expected Me To Pay For Their $700 Dinner Bill, Instead I Walked Out!

https://youtu.be/CoEUiOE7044

As a police officer, what type of crimes are virtually never solved?

There are already some good answers here. One type of crime that has a low solvability is the “one off” variety, e.g. an offense the perpetrator does once before moving on. Solvability gets even lower if the crime is committed with no other connection between actor and victim.

For example, say that I am on a cross-country road trip, and take a detour to Ames, Iowa. I’ve never been there. I take I-80 to I-35 North, and stop off at a gas station/convenience store somewhere around Ames. I cover my license plates just before I get there, park around back or some other place where there are few surveillance cameras, and walk inside, robbing the store. I go back to my car, drive a few miles before getting rid of the license plate covers, and resume my trip. I stop for gas only at stations around I-80, none on I-35.

I haven’t given the cops much to go on. If I’m careful not to leave fingerprints and wear some clothing that makes it hard to get a good camera shot of my face, the chance this crime is going to be connected to me is pretty low. If I get greedy and use the same tactics at other crime venues, I increase my chances at getting caught with each iteration.

Organized crime hit men use a similar tactic. They take on targets that are outside their usual haunts, and do the deed in a place there are few witnesses. The police local to the site of the crime won’t know anything about the hit man. A federal agent looking for behavior patterns (M.Os. or modus operandi) might pick up the trail, but even that is a long shot, one that gets longer if the M.O. hasn’t been tied to the hit man.

While there are some smart criminals, most people who make it a habit to commit crimes aren’t especially bright, and have signature behaviors that tie the crimes back to them.

What is the most Russian thing ever?

There’s a sport called Airsoft. If you know about it, skip this part, but for those who don’t here’s an explanation.

Airsoft is like paintball, but a lot of its components, i.e. the guns, gear, etc. is a lot more realistic than paintball. A lot of LARPers and MilSim (Military Simulation) guys love doing stuff like that.

The sport started in Japan due to its tough gun laws but the sport soon spread to other places like Britain, America, and… oh… Russia for instance.

In America, MilSim events are huge. There is a lot of preparation involved. People will drop thousands on gear to look like this:

This is an image I found off Google. Rifle, easy with all attachments, $300+, not to mention any internal modifications he might have.

Helmet an easy $50, assuming its a nice one. Earpieces have wires, so they’re probably communication linked, noise cancelling and sound enhancing. Easy $70–80. Crye combat pants. $100.

Even vehicles, which probably cost thousands to kit out:

As you can see, American MilSimmers are rather dedicated.

However, compared to Russian MilSim events… Well let me just say this. Its like comparing a pickup game of basketball with the neighborhood friends versus an all out NBA game. Take a look at this video.

https://youtu.be/hVyWHsElhME

Fucking hell. Russians bring multimillion dollar TANKS to their Milsim events. Plus, as you saw in the second vid, Russian soldiers got involved to take blank potshots at people to add to realism!

Meanwhile in America you have people arguing about 10 foot engagement distances and bang killing.

Yep. Most Russian thing ever, bring a tank to a toy fight.

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is a traditional Italian pasta from Naples that’s quick to put together from pantry staples. If you have canned tomatoes, garlic, olives, anchovies and capers in your cupboard, you can knock out this simple but flavourful sauce in a flash. It’s a stellar emergency meal everyone should know, with a “saucy” backstory of its own!

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

There are various colourful stories explaining how this dish came to be, and how Puttanesca pasta got its name. “Puttanesca” roughly translates to “working girls” in Italian (that’s a politically correct term I’m using there!) One tale tells how this dish was invented in the brothels of Naples so the smells wafting from the kitchen would entice potential … errr, clients. Another story claims this pasta was a quick and simple dish ladies of the Neapolitan night could throw together in a hurry in amongst their busy schedules.

Does this kind of talk on a G-rated food blog make you blush? 😉

Whatever the origins, today this is considered a classic and staple Italian pasta recipe. It’s budget-friendly, easy and quick to make, yet delicious enough to woo family and friends (or indeed, “paying customers” … 😉)

Ingredients in Puttanesca sauce

Being such simple recipe, this is one of those dishes that genuinely benefits from better quality ingredients. In this pasta, the one ingredient I find is really worth seeking out is fresh deli-style olives in olive oil or brine, rather than cheaper jarred ones you find on supermarket shelves.

Oh, also, anchovies – the secret “why is this simple sauce so good?” ingredient. If you skip it, the sauce isn’t quite as good! However you can leave it out if you wish to make the dish vegetarian / vegan (add a little more garlic, capers and olives instead).

Black olives – Try to use good quality, fresh olives from the deli. These come in either olive oil or brine and will add more flavour into the sauce as it simmers compared to bottled ones that come in sealed jars. Both pitted and unpitted are fine but pitting your own is best.
Anchovies – This adds savoury flavour and salt to the sauce without leaving it “fishy-tasting”. In fact, you’d have to have a highly attuned palate to be able to taste it at all. The anchovies are finely chopped and dissolve into the sauce, and any strong fishiness disappears leaving just deliciously deep umami.I prefer to use whole anchovies and finely mince it myself because it has better flavour than using anchovy paste. But paste is a handy alternative – my rule of thumb is 1/4 teaspoon of paste per anchovy (so use 3/4 teaspoon in this recipe).
Spaghetti – Traditionally made with spaghetti or vermicelli pasta (ie. the thinner spaghetti), though this recipe works just fine with any long pasta. Or short, for that matter!
Tomatoes – Not all canned tomatoes are created equal! Better ones are sweeter and break down better to create a sauce. TIP: If you find your tomatoes are a bit on the sour side, just add a touch of sugar to the sauce. It’s a cheat’s way of taking the sour edge off that is a game changer with for example, Spaghetti Bolognese.
Capers – Adds little pops of briny goodness and that unique caper flavour to the sauce. I usually use standard size capers. On occasion, I find they can be giant in size so I’ll reach for the baby capers instead. Both work!
Garlic – Because this is Italian food!
Chilli flakes (aka red pepper flakes) – A pinch of heat is wonderful in this sauce. It’s not a spicy sauce, here it’s just a background hum of warmth.
Extra virgin olive oil – For cooking and finishing.
Fresh basil and oregano – These finishing herb touches will really lift the dish and return some freshness to the sauce. But if you don’t have them, it is absolutely still worth making using a pinch of dried oregano. Don’t bother with dried basil, it’s basically flavourless.If you don’t have basil, serve with a sprinkle of parmesan instead. The extra flavour will compensate for absence of fresh herb flavour.

How to make Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

Start the sauce first and get it simmering, then cook the pasta. They’ll both finish at the same time, ready to toss together!

This recipe serves 2. Use a medium size skillet here rather than a very large one, else the sauce will dry out too quickly when simmering. If you’re scaling the recipe up however a large skillet will be necessary to toss the pasta in the sauce (or use a pot for the sauce and tossing).

Sauté aromatics – Start off by sautéing the garlic in olive oil until it starts to go golden on the edges. Then add the finely chopped anchovies, capers, olives and red pepper flakes and cook for a further 1 minute.This sautéing step is key to the flavour of the sauce. It blooms the flavour of the red pepper flakes and even more importantly, takes the raw fishy edge off the anchovies while causing them to break down, ready to dissolve into the sauce.
Add everything else into sauce – Add the can of tomatoes, then add water by rinsing out the can. In goes salt, pepper and fresh or dried oregano, then give it a good stir.
Simmer 10 minutes – Once the sauce comes to a simmer, turn the heat way down to low and let it simmer gently, stirring every now and then, for 10 minutes while the pasta cooks. The tomato will break down, the water will cook out, leaving behind a nice, shiny and thickened sauce. If at any stage it looks like the sauce is drying out (probably due to heat being too strong or using a skillet that’s too large), just add a splash of water.
Cook pasta – Cook the pasta in salted water. Just before draining, scoop out a mugful of pasta cooking water. This is a key, essential step for cooking any pasta (well and properly!). We add a splash into the pasta sauce when tossing with the pasta. Starch that’s left in the cooking water helps emulsify the fats and water in the sauce. This has a thickening effect and also discourages the sauce from separating. The sauce clings deliciously to the pasta strands instead of leaving a watery pool of bland liquid at the bottom of your pasta bowl.You’ll see this step in every pasta recipe on my website. And every household in Italy makes pasta this way!
Combine pasta, sauce and pasta cooking water – After draining the pasta, immediately throw into the sauce along with about 1/4 cup of pasta cooking water. I rarely measure, I just eyeball it.
Toss, toss, toss! With the skillet still on a low stove, use 2 wooden spoons to toss the pasta vigorously for a minute. After 20 or 30 seconds of tossing, you’ll notice that the sauce in the skillet starts clinging to the pasta (thanks to the pasta cooking water!).The pasta is ready when the sauce is all stuck to the pasta rather than sitting in the skillet.Pasta/sauce gets dry – If at any stage the pasta (or sauce) gets too thick or dries out, rather than being slippery and shiny, just add an extra splash of pasta cooking water then toss more. This will resurrect the pasta and makes it “juicy” again. This is why we scoop out a big mugful of pasta cooking water! I do this multiple times when taking photos and shooting videos of pasta because it loses freshness within minutes and I can’t shoot that fast!Sprinkle with basil and serve immediately!

Pro tip: warm your pasta bowlsWatch how to make it

Pasta is a dish that is at its absolute best served hot and fresh. It is never the same reheated. It is also one of the rare dishes where I make the effort to warm serving bowls, to preserve the heat of the pasta when eating. I just pop them in a 70C / 160F oven to warm before I start cooking, or in the microwave for a minute before serving. It’s worth the small effort, especially in winter!

What to serve with Puttanesca pasta

Parmesan?

Puttanesca is traditionally not served with the typical shower of parmesan because it already has plenty of salt and savouriness from the flavour-packed ingredients. But I won’t stop you if that’s how you want to roll.

Having said that, if I don’t have fresh basil sometimes I use parmesan to compensate as a finishing touch (no it’s not the same thing at all, but I like to have a garnish).

Sides!

In my world, Puttanesca is planted firmly in the “emergency pantry meals” bucket so you won’t get a side salad if I make this for you. It’s also technically 95% vegetables anyway! 😉 However, if you’re after a super quick one that’s on-theme, Rocket with Shaved Parmesan fits the bill with a side of hot buttery garlic bread or focaccia (I’m very proud of this recipe, I hope you try it one day!).

Add a Tiramisu for dessert or Italian Almond cookies with coffee, and suddenly this humble “quick pantry dinner” has transformed into a full blown Italian dinner menu!

Watch how to make it

https://youtu.be/9i-KRU3wEok

I have an employee who constantly steals other people’s lunches. Do I fire him?

Yes. Always.

We had a 10 year employee working at my store named (ummmm) “Suzy”. She was the community out-reach leader (and amazing at it) and the intimates / beauty department manager. She had a perfect attendance record. She was one of TWO “Exceeds Expectations” leaders in the entire store. She went to EVERY fundraising event and was absolutely one of the most delightful human beings I ever worked with.

I was in the break room with the store manager. In walked “Suzy”. She opened the fridge, dug out a bottle of iced tea. Said (out loud), “No name! Fair game!” and opened it and drank it. We didn’t even have time to stop her. We saw her take an item from the fridge. There was no moral dilemma on our part. The front of the fridge had a sign on it saying, “If it’s not yours and you take it, it’s theft. Period.” We had a camera pointing at the fridge because food theft had been a past issue.

“Suzy” was walked off the property the same day.

She was stunned. “But I have perfect attendance. I’ve gotten exceeds expectations on every review. I’m the community captain.” It absolutely broke my heart (she was one of my all time favorite employees). We had to explain to her, “Nobody gets immunity to the rules. You cannot be the greatest employee ever and expect that you earn some kind of points that grant you forgiveness, especially in an area so critical to trust and morale. All theft is treated the same, regardless of size or intent. You took something that didn’t belong to you.”

Theft is and should always be treated with absolute zero tolerance. No exceptions ever. Making exceptions demands future exceptions for all people. Making exceptions about theft opens the door to low standards. Better to fire all the perpetrators and shut the unit down until backfill can be identified than to allow a thief to continue being employed for even one second.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Demise of Europe

https://youtu.be/Wbul826yfp8

How can parents be so unloving that they would make their own child homeless by kicking him or her out into the street?

I did it.

My son stole $2000 in a locked box from under my bed as I slept. He knew I needed that money to do badly needed repairs on the house we had just moved back into after a divorce. He had just gotten out of a juvenile treatment facility. He refused to get a job. He kept bringing a friend over at night when I was working.

My house reeked of marijuana every morning when I got home. They ate my food. He was 18. A legal adult. When I discovered he stole the money I had him arrested.

He was put in jail. No one would bail him out so he stayed there for three months. At court I told him I did not want to see him until he was a contributing member of society. He had to have a legal job…not selling street drugs etc. He was given time served plus probation and had to pay restitution. He got out of jail and lived with the kid who had been hanging out at my house.

His mother kicked them both out. My son found his birth father and stayed with him. He soon learned the man’s sole goal in life was to stay high. My son then stayed with another friend, couch surfed.

Lived in an office building bathroom. Then with a woman who was crazy. Then a friend rescued him. He lived with them and their father for two years.

They made him stay clean, clean up after himself, eat healthy, get and keep a job. He then asked if he could come back home.

He is now 24. The other day he thanked me for holding him accountable. He has a job he enjoys and is saving money for a future. Some kids just need tough love.

This is funny

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CzpyaT2oF_0?feature=share

What are some funny things you’ve seen happen with the police chasing someone on foot?

My husband is a retired Royal Thai police officer. He rarely told me much about his days, not wanting me to worry, get upset.

He did, however, share a few events that had me laughing…

Story 1

Husband and his men were chasing a small group of meth dealers who abandoned their car and ran into the tall grass of a swampy field.

Husband has the usual regulation, very short hair and was wearing a bright orange vest that was clearly marked POLICE, front and back, in huge English and Thai letters.

He waded into the swamp and stood next to one of the meth dealers who told him to take off the bright vest because the police were searching the area!

Story 2

Husband and his guys raided a gambling den at dawn. The players, many of whom were very drunk, ran to their motorcycles, trucks and cars to get away.

Four men staggered to their car but were stunned because the police seemed to be keeping pace on foot with their ‘pedal to the metal,’ speeding car.

In fact, they had jumped into an abandoned car that had no engine and hadn’t noticed they hadn’t moved at all.

Story 3

‘Uncle’ Tan was a quiet, older man who grew veggies and sold them from the back of his pick-up.

Officers received a call saying that Uncle had unsuccessfully tried to rob a local shop with a plastic water pistol and was walking down the highway, TOWARDS the police station.

He seemed pleased when he was arrested.

As was the norm, he was told he could be held for 48 hours in the police station jail, longer if a judge deemed it necessary. Uncle perked up at the possibility of ‘longer.’

The officers were puzzled until the truth came out: his wife’s sisters were coming for their yearly visit, and Uncle said that he was just too old to go through that hell again. He had thought he would be in jail for weeks.

The judge showed leniency, asking the police to hold Uncle until it was deemed safe for him to go home.

* Note: this was NOT in husband’s district.

Due to the numerous US military bases in countries close to China and the creation of the AUKUS, is China imprisoned?

Does it occur to you it could be the U.S. that could be imprisoned? If the U.S. ends up spending tons of money meaninglessly and without a return and yet it cannot stop spending billions to continuously do shit that don’t pay it is the U.S. that is trapped. China don’t gives a shit it simply just let the US waste all it money bribing nations who refuse to do shit, just to pretend to the world it has allies.

For us in Asia. Even Japan, Korea, Phillipines and India have no wish to do shit as it knows the repercussions and it has been China’s neighbour for some 5000 years! It may have no choice but to barked some shit on China to get the U.S. off its back. But sure won’t risk it to do more than that. So the U.S. having a pay billions get some pretend shit is outright silly and wasteful.

So who is trapped? China can and will do what it wants. And the U.S. has to stay and waste a ton of resources to get pretentious shit that China gives a damn. To me the U.S. is trapped in its own stupidity!

What are the best ways to improve your personality?

Best ways to improve personality :

Groom yourself, even if you’re living alone . Keep your beard clean and trimmed. Girls may wax, if necessary.
Always carry a wallet, Comb, Belt, Perfume, a pen with you.
Workout at least 1 hour a day, it’s the least you could do for your body.This will keep your confidence up, your body healthy and your face free of pimples.
Cover your mouth while sneezing, coughing, etc. Say ‘Sorry/Excuse me’ afterward.
Invest in your own personal hygiene like flossing your teeth, cleaning your mouth, wearing cologne.
Speak a bit less and think before you speak because one wrong word can hurt your personality.
Talk looking into the eyes of the other person.
Be a man of your words , If you promise to do something for someone, make sure you do it .
Show respect for other person’s opinion. Never tell a person he or she is wrong.
Learn the difference between Ego and Self-respect. There’s a very thin line between them.
Hustle as much as you can. Fast success brings ego, slow success builds personality.
Do Meditation.(Meditation transforms you into a new human)
Never make fun of someone’s disability whether it’s financial, mental or physical.
Never hesitate meeting new people. People have own experiences and knowledge to share with you.

Mushrooms!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZEjDf2o21kI?feature=share

What is the most ludicrous thing someone got fired for at your job?

My coworker, Marty, at the Department of Correction was fired after bantering with our department’s business manager. She was a diva with a (very) high opinion of herself and one morning Marty told her that she looked “nice”.

She cocked her hip and smiled at him, and asked if he was implying that she didn’t look good every day. Marty responded that she did, indeed, look good and that she looked good enough to eat. That ended the conversation and I went on my merry way.

When I returned to the office late that afternoon, another coworker pulled me aside and asked, breathlessly, if I’d heard about Marty. I hadn’t — I’d been out installing computers in a prison all day — so she said that he’d been fired! For sexual harrassment! The diva business manager had filed a complaint against him.

I immediately tracked my boss down and told her the complaint was bullshit, and that I’d witnessed the entire exchange. She said that her hands were tied because Marty admitted saying the diva looked good enough to eat. It was considered inappropriate verbiage for the workplace and the diva insisted that she would be uncomfortable working with Marty.

I kept my contact and conversations with her to a minimum from that day on.

How to use a telephone

Cool vintage stuff…

How does China’s exclusion from the International Space Station affect its space ambitions?

China has been excluded from the ISS project, which has greatly promoted the development of China’s aerospace technology.

You can imagine that 20 years ago, several young people decided to save money to buy a car and then use it together. The Chinese were excluded. He was told: Your money is dirty and we will not accept it.

You have to understand that Russia, which the United States considers an enemy, is accepted, while China is excluded. How humiliating is this to China?

The young man decided not to pray to join but to work hard on his own. Finally, he made enough money to buy a car of his own. A new car that belongs only to him.

The group of young people who pooled their money to buy a car are still using that old car together, even though it is very old. All participants are not yet able to buy their own cars.

When they saw a Chinese driving a new car alone, they were filled with envy, but they said: His car is smaller than ours!

Let us assume that if China was allowed to join, what would be the result? They may have a module on the ISS, but they will never have their own CSS.

Now everything has changed

The Chinese space station is so advanced that they even use Hall thrusters to maintain orbit without having to consume a lot of fuel like the ISS.

Famous media commented that the interior of CSS is like an Apple store, while the ISS is like an old grocery store.

Were you thinking this?

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

What stupid thing did you do when you were a child that turned out to be very funny?

My father was a very serious and strict man. We lived in a nice house with a covered front porch on a hill overlooking a valley. One day when I was 10 yrs. old I was with my father on the porch ,there was a man dressed in a suit and tie and they were discussing serious business. I knew not to disturb them in any way. I had to remain quiet so I quickly became bored. I looked around the porch for something of interest when I spotted a small stone on the floor. When I picked it up I thought it was such a perfect throwing stone, the shape and the way it fit in my hand I just knew it would travel a record breaking distance down that valley. I took a few steps back so I would be behind dad’s peripheral sight as they both were facing the valley in deep conversation. I focused on a bush for my target . I took a couple deep breaths and threw the stone with every muscle I had.

To my horror the stone slipped out of my hand . I heard a deep moan as my father collapsed to one knee . As he grabbed his left ear he uttered”” “JUMPIN JESUS” WHAT WAS THAT ? I was so afraid I couldn’t speak. The stone had hit the bone behind his left ear and instantly a purple knot appeared . WELL , WHAT WAS IT ? I finally managed to say… a rock.. A ROCK ! Get in the house. Well, lucky for me their conversation lasted longer giving him a cooling off period. When the man left Dad gave me a lecture about throwing rocks and interrupting adults. Surprisingly there was no physical abuse which I expected. Now many years later even though he’s gone , I can hear his voice as if he just now said “WELL, WHAT WAS IT ?” And I get a good laugh about that frightened little boy .

The Imperialist projection against China

Do you wonder why I put the Deng Xiaoping face on my post? Because the post I am writing tends to make sense for what I will try to convey. As you know, in the mainstream media, basically the West tends to use this Imperialist projection against the Chinese nation. It has become a human sin for the Chinese people to seek their old legitimate rights such as the right to become rich and powerful, the right to become among the most respected nations it used to be during the Ming towards Qing era.

The mainstream media has changed its focus from China’s rising economic threat towards China being the country seeking sphere of influence in Asia. This projection is among those who had committed this act before. History doesn’t lie, not do the suffering of the people they had to face from the British to the American Imperialism which still is going today in many forms.

China has now become one of the second largest economies in the world and the first if we see it through a PPP basis. The nation’s citizens are now enjoying a much better, high quality life in comparison to what their parents had to face under Mao respectfully. China, just like Deng envisioned, became the county that is leading the world in science, tech, and environment policies where China has been recently focused on being the country focused on building a strong green economy.

Media nowadays tends to portray China as aggressive and imperialist. Every investment China does in other countries is judged as a form of imperialism, every defense that China undertakes or its mission to uniting Taiwan is seem as foreign aggression by the West on China when they only want to take what was lost before. This judgment is not just fueled by the West but also by CINOs, or in other words ‘Chinese just in name’ that have Chinese names and ethnicity but they lack the Chinese spirit to show sympathy for their homeland. Most of these can be found in countries like Malaysia and Singapore or even U.S. who tend to side with the West’s aggression against China. This lack of knowledge is what has made ignorance prevalent today. The lack of the understanding the Chinese mindset and their way of doing things is what made them see China from a hostile viewpoint rather than a positive one.

Socialism: what do I mean? Well to understand China’s foreign policy and the way how it perceives the world is through the socialist perspective. You see Socialism didn’t come out of thin air in China. People before Mao used to be exploited, oppressed by the Chiang Khai Shek government. The land was controlled by the foreign businessmen who used China as a source of destination to build capital under the Chinese labour. This unequal relationship between China and the West is what made the Chinese more angrier, coupled with the hate from their humiliation. The weakness of the Chinese civilization is what pursued the Chinese people to seek a new radical solution and that was Socialism which back then Chairman Mao worked tirelessly to increase the support and work towards unifying China.

Its basis was simple: to fight against oppression, build an equal society and bring back China as the nation it once was. Which means an independent, strong China without being anymore humiliated. Thus when Mao United China is the time where humiliation of China ended and China began to recover. During the recovery, China faced many obstacles. Once was the American aggression in Asia, the other was the restrictions which were put against China because they were “Communist,” then the aggression from outside. China, after seeing Korea fall to the American forces, was forced to send its troops and successfully push out the American troops and North Korea was saved. Hence the socialist and proletarian cause was built on self defense and defending neighbours from Imperialist aggression that came from thousand miles away.

After Chairman Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping came to power, which is praised for the new reforms that brought China to the place it is today. A new socialist modern economy built by Chinese people and a strong country looking to move forward even more and bring back the national rejuvenation to the Chinese people. The Deng Xiaoping goal was to always revitalize China which is now being carried by the leader Xi Jinping. Which meant a rich China which used to be under Qing before the Imperialist oppresion, a strong China in Asia and a China that is respected and seen as the gateway to the Eastern civilization and not a China that will replace the role of the West.

Deng Xiaoping in a public forum told others:

China shall always belong to the Third World and shall never seek hegemony. This idea is understandable because China is still quite poor, and is therefore a Third World country in the real sense of the term. The question is whether or not China will practise hegemony when it becomes more developed in the future. My friends, you are younger than I, so you will be able to see for yourselves what happens at that time. If it remains a socialist country, China will not practise hegemony and it will still belong to the Third World. Should China become arrogant, however, act like an overlord and give orders to the world, it would no longer be considered a Third World country.

What do these words mean? It is simple. The leader who laid out the reforms for his nation and the next vision, he is also the one who made sure to future generations to always see China as a nation similar with others of the third world. He never advocated a China which replaces the West’s role, he never advocates for a dominated Chinese power that controls Asia in the similar way of how United States has controlled South America.

This is also one of the main factors that led China into creating SCO and BRICS organizations, because the vision is simple: to build prosperity and encourage integration and connectivity with the third world that includes all of the former nations that were once colonized and exploited. Anti-Imperialism is after all something that has been pushed from Marxists itself, because the concept or freedom isn’t mainly focused on ending exploitation but also imperialism that caused the third world to suffer under the hands of the Western nations, that exploited its natural resources to feed their population.

Anyone who tends to see China in a Western way then that kind of thinking is bound to fail and even insult your own intelligence. No rational person would be crazy enough to compare China to a Western country and I believe the track records of US and other western countries, tells us a lot about the morality that the West loves to show many times.

But what kind of vision then does China see for the world?

Of course the role that China will play will fundamentally change the world in many ways, and right now we are already noticing many changes especially in Asia. We are seeing a role that keeps growing each year. And a strong China is at the same time bringing a good balance to the world especially when it’s necessary to counter the bi-polar world order by US

Multipolarism: China’s idea of Multipolsrism came even more to light after the importance and value of BRICS began to rise. This is in vision with Deng Xiaoping’s stance who’s always have said to never seek hegemony. China sees Multilateralism as the only way to bring equality to the world order where some certain nations seek a greater role in the world affairs and share a certain security to meet the world challenges.
New Financial system: Putin in the interview with Tucker laid out a very good critique of the US dollar. He mentioned how the United States’ policies towards other rivalries have caused mass panic in the world, and it is true in many ways. After the Russia war in Ukraine began, the West was so quickly to launch the heaviest sanctions in history. This didn’t collapse Russia’s economy and instead they shot themselves in the foot. Because the world for the first time in history was ready to move and make a change in the international order, which was the beginning of implementing new different currencies in trade with other countries. This thing is only going to become more common especially as BRICS advances.
Unity within their territory: Many people tend to see China’s actions in Taiwan in a wrong way but instead this isn’t the case. China has only sought to reunify its territories that were once lost. The ROC and PRC were at civil war which the ROC lost and retreated to Taiwan. Technically they are still at war, because considering that no peace treaty has been made or even ceasefire, this makes it legitimate for China to reunify Taiwan.
The development of BRICS: BRICS will continue to play even more important roles in the next decades, it will be more than just an organization. It will be the representative of the East and of the Global South. It will put the other part of the world in equal footing with the West. This balance is exactly what the whole world should pursue, because the moment there is a balance of power, then you will be at peace and respected. Though my opinion of BRICS might be optimistic, but as of now, I believe that all members have one desire, and that is to seek more independence from the US dollar regime.

What are some psychological facts that people don’t know?

Does it really matter which type of clock we are using?

Yes! It does.

Reason is “Those who use ‘Analog clock’ are more aware of the ‘time spent’ & the ‘time left’ than those who use Digital clock”.

How? Is what your question right?

Here we go. Let’s have a look at the digital clock.

What did we get? The time is 9:30 & that’s it. Only the current time.

Now, Analog clock.

Just look at it. Look at how beautiful it is. What do we observe here? 11:55. That’s it? No. But along with the ‘current time’ there is something else.

This we sense by intuition. An Analog clock resembles a pie chart which can represent self–expressive data.

Intuition matters! It is the advantage of having Analog clock.

This is not so easy with digital clocks. Because we need to force our brain to calculate the ‘time spent’ ,‘time left’, etc.

The USA is so fucked

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IAFUtL-zOtY?feature=share

How does a woman feel when she is getting old and no one wants her?

I’m not getting old. I’m there. I’ll be 77 years old in a couple of weeks, so I believe I qualify to answer this question.

I have a lover who is younger than I am. And if I were to “lose” him, I would readily find another, if I desired it.

However, I pay close attention to my figure, my wardrobe and my makeup. It takes me about half an hour to put my makeup on skillfully enough so I don’t look as though I’m wearing any. I dress nicely even when I have nothing important to do, although I am still in business, which keeps my thinking sharp. I watch what I eat carefully, most days keeping at 1200–1400 calories total for the day. This enables me to have lunch or dinner with my love or friends in a restaurant pretty much any time I wish.

I don’t exercise, though I know I should. However, I have two flights of stairs that I go up and down many, many times per day. I tell myself that this helps.

I read extensively, and not just on the damn internet. I have an immense library and continually add to it. I read in science and in the arts. Although I do try to avoid politics, these days. I am responsible for my feelings, and I like them to remain hopeful and serene. But my reading enables me to converse on many topics. And until Covid, I also traveled, an activity which broadens anyone’s perspective.

So in answer to the question, I feel just fine, thank you very much. And I also feel – and know that I am – desired.

I hope perhaps your young mind has been opened, even a bit. Thanks for the question.

A very good illustration

This is a good illustration why the size and growth of US debt is totally out of whack with the real economy.

American debt is already THE systemic risk to the world economy. There is not enough money in the world to satisfy America’s ravenous appetite, not even if it prints them for free.

This is why the BRICs are desperate for an option to the dollar.

Have you ever dined at a restaurant that left you thinking ‘is this a joke’?

Hubby and I went to a fancy steakhouse in Atlanta for dinner a few years back. Having checked out the restaurant’s online menu, we made sure we were appropriately dressed—me in a long Italian silk dress and hubby in some business casual outfit. We arrived at the time of our reservation and experienced multiple WTF moments—

1. We were led to a side dining room instead of the fancy main dining room shown on their website. The decor was shall-we-say interesting. It resembled a kindergarten cafeteria, with folding chairs.

2. All the other guests there looked like they had just attended a basketball game.

3. The female manager had a LOW-cut cami and jacket on. Her boobs were 75% exposed.

4. On my way to the ladies’, I passed the kitchen and caught a whiff of rotten fish.

5. Before the server set my plate of scallops down, I smelled a stench that could have only come from decayed seafood.

6. Service was slow, but that was the least of our concerns.

All this cost us $250, tip included.

If you wonder why we did not raise any issues about what we went through, it was a mystery shop. Essentially, I was contracted to observe anything about the restaurant’s operations. In the end, the meal did not cost us anything. We were actually paid some money for the effort. However, the experience was so bad that I did not offer to take the same assignment for several years to come.

Vintage Ads and Celebrities’ Glamour on These Classic Vespa Scooters

The DELUSIONAL OBSESSION with 6-Figure Salaries in Modern Dating

Future cat ladies. (And I do love my kitties. But no man is going to be able to make them happy.)

https://youtu.be/GvNEtlEb2ss

Italian Drunken Noodles

Italian drunken noodles are my Italian fusion take on one of my favorite Thai-style dishes. Brimming with noodles drenched in a flavorful, wine-infused sauce, bits of spicy Italian sausage, plus sweet bell peppers, onions and basil, this Italian take on drunken noodles is not only scrumptious, but quick and easy to prepare as well!

Yield: 6 servings

An Italian twist to a favorite Thai dish

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of trying Thai drunken noodles (or pad kee mao), you know what an amazingly vibrant, rich and flavorful dish it is.

With ribbons of broad rice noodles drenched in a sweet and savory sauce, charred red and yellow bell peppers and onions, a choice of spicy meat, tofu, or shrimp, and a light flourish of freshly julienned Thai basil, this dish always hits the spot when it comes to all those big flavors I crave in Thai cuisine.

I must admit, whenever I would enjoy this dish, it always made me wonder what an Italian version of it would taste like…

How to Make Drunken Noodles with an Italian Twist

In keeping with those basic components of noodle, meat, veggie, sauce and herb, it’s easy to see how Thai-style drunken noodles can easily be “morphed” into a brand new, Italian-style dish with a distinctly different flavor profile, while still maintaining the spirit of the original.

This is what I love and appreciate about fusion food!

What I did with this Italian drunken noodles recipe was to substitute wide and tender pappardelle noodles in place of the broad rice noodles, and then switched out some spicy and rich Italian sausage for the tofu, shrimp or chicken typically served in the Thai version.

For the sauce element, I used a tomato base kissed with a hint of wine in order to make the dish a bit “drunken”, and then kept the classic vegetable medley of multi-colored bell peppers and onions, plus that flourish of fresh basil to tie all the flavors together.

Here’s a glance at my Italian drunken noodles recipe: (or just jump to the full recipe below…)

To get things started, I cook my pappardelle noodles according to package instructions, and keep them warm while I prepare the sauce.
For the sauce, I place a large, heavy-bottom pan over high heat, and add a drizzle of olive oil; once hot, I crumble in the spicy sausage and brown it until cooked through, then remove it from the pan.
Next, I caramelize my onions in the pan drippings, then add in my seasoning, followed by my bell peppers, and saute until golden; then, I add in my garlic and wine, reducing that just a bit.
Finally, I add the diced tomatoes, with their juices, into the pan, along with the browned sausage, and allow the mixture to simmer for a couple of minutes; and then, I finish the sauce with a touch more olive oil and some fresh herbs before adding in my warm pappardelle noodles, and tossing everything to combine.

Ingredients:

8 ounces pappardelle noodles, uncooked
Olive oil
4 spicy Italian sausage links, casings removed
1 large onion, quartered and sliced thinly
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
½ teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 red bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
1 yellow bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
1 orange bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, pressed through garlic press
½ cup white white (I used Chardonnay)
1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes, with juice
2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped
¼ cup fresh basil leaves, julienned, divided use

Preparation:

Prepare the pappardelle noodles according to instructions on package; then, drain the noodles very well, and keep them warm while you prepare the sauce.
Place a large, heavy-bottom pan or braising pot over medium-high heat, and add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil; once the oil is hot, crumble the spicy Italian sausage into the pan in small chunks (you want to keep the sausage fairly chunky), allowing it to brown in the oil for a few moments on each side; once the crumbled sausage is browned, remove it from the pan/pot with a slotted spoon and place into a small bowl to hold for a moment.
Next, add the sliced onion into the pan with the sausage drippings, and allow it to caramelize and become golden for roughly 5 minutes or so, stirring to keep it from burning (add a touch more olive oil, if necessary); once the onion starts to become golden, add the salt, Italian seasoning and cracked black pepper, and stir to combine.
Add in the sliced bell peppers, and allow those to saute with the onion for about 2 minutes until slightly tender and golden; next, add in the garlic, and once it becomes aromatic, add in the white wine and allow it to reduce for a few moments, until almost completely reduced.
Next, add in the diced tomatoes with their juice, and return the browned spicy Italian sausage back into the pan, and gently fold the mixture to combine; allow it to gently simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavors, then turn the heat off.
To finish the sauce, drizzle in about 2-3 good tablespoons of the olive oil to create a silky, rich flavor, and stir in the chopped parsley and about half of the julienned basil.
Add the cooked pappardelle noodles directly into the sauce, and using tongs, gently toss and combine the noodles with the sauce and all of the ingredients in it; check the seasoning to see if you need to add any additional salt or pepper.
To serve, add equal portions of the Italian drunken noodles to bowls, and garnish with a sprinkle of the remaining julienned basil (you can even top with shaved parmesan, if desired, and an extra drizzle of olive oil).

Tips & Tidbits for my Italian Drunken Noodles:

The larger the pan, the better: Use a large, heavy bottom pan (cast iron or a Dutch oven) for this dish, as it retains heat well and will give a little extra color and flavor to your peppers and onions; plus, it provides room to add the noodles directly into the sauce at the end, and toss ’em around.
Pappardelle are best, but don’t sweat it: Pappardelle noodles are the broad or wide egg noodles that look a bit like “ribbons”, and you should be able to find them in the pasta section in most markets—they really are best for this recipe; but if you can’t find them, feel free to substitute whatever type of pasta noodle you like. The flavor will still be amazing.
Go white or go red: White wine is what’s called for in this recipe, but red wine would also be a delicious choice; use whatever you’d actually like to drink with this dish.
Looking to leave out the alcohol? No problem: If you’d prefer to leave alcohol out, then simply substitute chicken stock for the wine, and add a little squeeze of lemon at the end for that “brightness” as well.
Go Veg: For a meatless version, omit the spicy sausage altogether, and enjoy just the veggies, noodles and sauce; but you can always use a vegetarian “crumble” in this dish as well, or even use cubed tofu to keep in line with the Thai inspiration.
Prep ahead: You can make the sauce element of this recipe ahead of time, such as the day before you’d like to serve it, which will actually give the sauce more time to sit and gain deeper flavor; just prepare the noodles the day of, toss with the warmed up sauce, you’re set to go.

General Instructions

Place a large, heavy-bottom pan or braising pot over medium-high heat; add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Once the oil is hot, crumble the Italian sausage into the pan in small chunks, allowing it to brown in the oil for a few moments.
When the crumbled sausage is browned, remove it from the pan/pot with a slotted spoon and place into a small bowl to hold for a moment.
Place in the pan the diced bell peppers, salt, Italian seasoning and cracked black pepper. Stir to combine. Allow to sauté for about 2 minutes until slightly tender.
Add the garlic. Once it becomes aromatic, add the white wine and allow it to reduce for a few moments, until almost completely reduced.
Add the diced tomatoes with their juice.
To finish the sauce, drizzle in about 2 to 3 good tablespoons of the olive oil to create a rich flavor.
Add the chopped parsley and about half of the basil.
Return the browned Italian sausage back into the pan and gently fold the mixture to combine. Allow it to gently simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavors. Then turn the heat off.
Stir and keep warm while you prepare the noodles.

Will the U.S. really defend Taiwan?

During the debate, KMT Presidential candidate brought up a very good point. The US sold 400 missiles to Taiwan for $6 billion. That came out to be $15 million / missile. But then when the US was defending Israel from attacks they fired those missiles and were reporting that they were expensive $3-million missiles.

Why were they sold to Taiwan at 5x the price? It makes sense if the US is leveraging the reported danger to extract as much value as it can from Taiwan. It doesn’t make sense if it has intentions to defend Taiwan.

The Mainland is ending its preferential treatment towards Taiwan which would hurt the ability for Taiwanese products to be exported to the Mainland. The US can help mitigate the impact to the Taiwanese economy by increasing imports from Taiwan and signing a free-trade agreement but it hasn’t.

How can anyone expect the US to give up its lives for Taiwan if it can’t even give up a bit of its profit?

What are some tips for becoming successful?

Tips for becoming successful :

Always keep a diary and a pen with you. Whenever you get any intriguing idea, write that down in your diary. When you open this diary, you’ll realize that you have a great set of ideas.
Leave your comfort zone as nothing grows for good there. Take risks in your life. Risks come with reward. Look at the rewards and move ahead.
Introspect and improve. Realize your mistakes and improve them. Try your best to not to repeat your mistakes again.
Success is something you take by force. No one will give it to you freely.
The secret of success is hidden in books and old-school wisdom. Yet most people hate to read books. No wonder, few people are successful.
Stop expecting instant satisfaction. Patience, persistence and perspiration are your best friends. Remember that there are NO shortcuts in life.
Cry as hard as you want, but make sure that when you stop crying, you never cry for the same reason again.
No matter how much it hurts now. Someday you’ll look back and realize, your struggle changed your life for better.
If you are an intelligent person, you will try to do what you love the most. But if you are a genius, you will only do what is needed.
Students believe that there is only one right answer to every question. That is why people always want to follow the crowd because they think there is only one right way to live life. Find your own way . don’t follow the crowd
Putting in the work daily without quitting. Going through the drudgery and mundane tasks repeatedly. Practicing everyday like insane just to master your craft.
Don’t bother about the judgements of society, friends, peers and relatives. You want it, go for it. Don’t give a fcuk about others , live your life , give your best
And Finally , Make the best out of every hour.

Modern women lifestyle

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Bclgu6le1CA?feature=share

Must the CCP fall? They can’t assimilate everyone in China into Chinese culture.

The Chinese Communist Party is not in charge of assimilating everyone into Chinese culture, and it does not promote it. In fact, the Party makes a big deal out of preserving minority cultures, and giving them special advantages such as in numbers of children they can have (unlimited), and giving minority students extra points in the highly competitive university exams. There is some grumbling from Han Chinese about all the benefits minorities get in China.

Some minorities such as the Manchus, some Mongolians and some Tibetans have been absorbed by Chinese culture, not by any government policy. The general rule in China is that any non-Han Chinese minority, if it adopts Chinese language and the Chinese non-nomadic lifestyle, will eventually disappear over several generations.

This is not done because of any government policy; it is just that Han Chinese language and culture have a very strong pull which is hard to resist over time. This is because more than 90% of China’s population is Han Chinese, and once a minority adopts the language and then culture, it loses its own identity.

This is not done under any threat of force, but is done voluntarily by individuals.

More fun with the the Vespa scoots…

We start with Ann Margret.

Western women are BROKEN

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9lBhgXWuR8s?feature=share

She Made Him Wait, While Keeping a “Friends With Benefits”

The USA is sinking under the deep blue waves…

https://youtu.be/rySWo7F1Tys

What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

It wasn’t so much what my boss said, it was more about what the company did. Being more specific, what the sales department and management did.

At the time I was a senior developer for a medium sized, privately owned and pretty much unheard of software company.

One day I found out, quite by accident, that the sales department had told a prospective client about some wonderful new software that we had.

The only problem with that was this wonderful new software didn’t exist!

So, sales lied to the client.

Then came all the fanfare, because they actually sold it to them… with an impossible delivery date, even for a team five times our size.

The plan was for the dev team to develop this new software working sixty hours a week without overtime pay, while management strung the client along until the final delivery more than a year later.

So there was this big pep talk meeting – you know the ones – we need you guys to help us deliver and all, and we’ll make it up to you afterwards, we promise. We’re a big family and we are in this together and all that kind of stuff.

I didn’t believe a word of it.

After the meeting I confronted my boss who said, “Well, you know how it works.”

At that moment I knew he didn’t have my best interests at heart and I looked at him and said, “I want no part of it.”

Then I got up and left the building without saying another word.

The next day when I didn’t show up for work my boss called me asking where I was. I told him, “Sorry, I thought I was quite clear yesterday, as I said, I quit!”

He said, “But you can’t quit! We need you! You’re our only senior developer!”

And I answered, “Watch me!” and hung up the phone.

It’s been four years now and the company still hasn’t delivered the final version of the software nor has it made good on its promise to their employees!

I’m sure glad I quit when I did!

Different generations

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JM1NfrrC4Pk?feature=share

Who was the weirdest classmate that you’ve ever had?

Chad.

You ever have that goofy kid who could never take anything seriously? Who took any opportunity to be the center of attention? Who relished being the class clown and wore the jester’s hat like a triumph? That was Chad. I don’t remember how many grades in elementary school we had together before he and I transferred to other schools at the end of fouth grade, but it was at least a couple. He used to not only drive the teachers crazy but even us students too! Every day we had to bear witness to his never ending shenanigans, sometimes he would start up with a joke and the whole class would collectively groan and grab their faces. If I’m being honest, I was his friend but even I found him to be too much at times, too optimistic, too dramatic, too goofy, too Ace Ventura. I remember thinking, “why can’t he just be normal for a day?”

I went to middle school with some of the kids/friends from this elementary school. One of the popular boys, Randy was one of them. We were talking during free period one day when I brought up Chad. He also remembered him and smiled. We exchanged stories about his greatest hits and laughed. Then he told me something that absolutely broke my heart, and only spoke as a testiment to Chad’s resiliencey. He told me Chad’s stepfather used to beat him, often. At some point the authorities found out and removed him from his home. His everday life at home was hell, his only respite was during the time he was safe and felt safe at school, and Chad always made the most of each moment because he knew when he got home that day and every day after that, there would be no more laughter.

I hope he’s doing better, and I hope he’s happy where ever he is now. It goes to show you never know what someone is going through, even if they smile in your face everday. I have never forgotten about Chad, and I never will.

Were you ever treated poorly when you wanted to purchase an expensive item until they found out you were rich?

Just recently actually.

My twins birthday is coming up. And I was thinking of rewarding the missus by upgrading her car to something better.

A Range Rover Evoque 🙂

So the search started, and I finally scored a good deal on this particular high spec (and a higher priced) Evoque that’s is in a dealership nearby to my house.

Off I went. Arrived in my old e46, and I asked to see the car. This local Chinese chap took one look at me, and probably deduced that I was too young, or too shabby looking to even qualify to get an evoque, and decided to reject me.

He told me, put a deposit before even thinking of sitting in the car!

Before you think I made drama, let me tell you that the opposite happened: I smiled and walked back. I don’t necessarily like to deal with idiots, so I don’t mind looking for another.

For some reason, just as I was about to leave, another salesman from India who is working there came to me, apologized profusely and told me that he can serve me better.

I accepted.

I went to see the car, and told him that I would love to take it for a test drive 5 minutes away to my house to show it to my wife to ask her opinion on the spec and color. This guy agreed, and said we could do a short run.

So off we went.

The moment this Indian guy saw the neighborhood and my house, and the cars parked in there, he realized that he scored a lottery prospect.

After that, I was practically given free reign to do unlimited test drives and checks on that car, unaccompanied.

I saw the car on Wednesday. Thursday I contemplated on it with the missus between that or Cayenne. She wanted Range Rover, so be it.

On Friday I agreed and signed the papers in the AM. That evening the bankers called to tell the dealer that the loan passed. This coming Monday I am taking the car, once paperwork’s is completed.

$90 billion spent on disinformation about China, what did the US people get?

This is really great. I really like Charles.

https://youtu.be/IkDmdmfhzU4

How historically accurate is the theory that the ancient Minoans were actually in fact the mythical empire of Atlantis or at least the inspiration behind it?

Of course, only Plato could answer this accurately but here’s my penny:

In Greek mythology, Thera and the eruption are missing and the explanation for this is that the eruption miraculously didn’t affect mainland Greece. The Greek myths that express their collective memory, although they involve foreign lands often, had to be of Greek interest and the eruption, no matter how cataclysmic it was, was not. So, Plato didn’t possibly have a clue about the events of the Bronze Age which took place almost 1,000 years before his time.

As you can see, the mainland is out of ash range. Image from https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/santorini/minoan-eruption/size.html

What could be his inspiration for the description of Atlantis then? I can only make assumptions…

However, having in mind that Plato had traveled enough, how about the circular Punic port of Carthage?

Why do Chinese people think that China is better than the USA?

Security is better. When i studied in Chicago, I was told to always keep 20-dollar life money in the pocket in case anyone wants to rob me, and UChicago has the so called safe ride to take students home because walking alone at night is not safe. Here in Shanghai, Beijing or any major cities (except Guangzhou perhaps), it’s safe for girls to walk alone at night. And people don’t shoot people so often, especially struggling students don’t kill classmates or teachers. At worst, they jump from buildings without harming others.

Second, food is cheap and delicious if you don’t mind antibiotics, additives, pollutants etc. (If you count in unhealthy western food, the Chinese food is not that bad in quality.) Clothes are cheap and good quality. In fact most products made in China are cheap and accessible.

Third, online purchase and delivery and other services based on the internet is incredibly convenient. As long as you don’t care about personal information, China has all kinds of Apps to satisfy your physical and mental needs.

Fourth, the government agencies and hospital systems are much more efficient than those in USA. I am not saying the quality is better but the waiting period is shorter.

One thing I dislike is a must of vpn to access foreign media. But this is like a filter, the gov don’t want ignorant children and people to access to those anti-China information, because they can’t do critical thinking, so the gov thinks that if those were to be brainwashed, they would have to be brainwashed by us not the Western. I am neutral to it. Common people are like pawns, they’d better just stay where they were and do both to avoid being cannon powder.

Family?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2wFvhDKzSjg?feature=share

Can you tell me about your first camping experience with your family? How old were you and how did it go?

I was 10 my brother was 13 and mom and dad was in there 30. We when to a old run down house that Dad was used to go on fishing trip when he was a kid. Mom said it so run down. Dad said it still got a roof on it. Mom said ok we stayed. We got what fews begs we have out of the car and we when into the house. it started to Strom very bad. We stayed dry in that old house. About two hours passed we was getting our sleeping bags out. We hard a loud pop. The wind had blown a big tree on to the car. The car was totaled. Mom said we 150 miles from home without a car. No one could sleep until the Strom had stopped that was all most 3 hours. By morning there was a new storm and like the other one it to blowed a tree down on to what left of the car. We ended up been there for over a week. Our foods ran out after five days. We all fished for our foods. 6 days in as we was all fishing. A big tree fell onto the dam house. If me and my brother was have been in our room a sleeping we were been hurt or killed.

GAMECHANGER: China Tests ‘Dream Shell,’ Achieving Mach 7 Speed

Wow.

https://youtu.be/HHK6Yfk5wuA

What’s something that sucks about being a man?

Both my wife and I worked, we both had good jobs and shared the childcare of our 4 children. I was always the more nurturing parent, if the children ever hurt themselves they would always come to me, I was more affectionate, I used to bathe them, read to them, tuck them in and look after them most weekends. My wife was extremely jealous of my relationship with the children and they grew up, we grew apart. She used to often go out with the girls on a Friday and Saturday night and occasionally wake up the following day with a hangover so bad she would spend the day in bed. Which was fine with me, meant that I had more time with the children and we used to find somewhere to go and have real fun.

Unsurprisingly after 13 years of marriage, when our eldest was 11, she decided to leave me, she had an affair and that was that.

What really sucks about being a man is the custody battle that I had after that. The standard custody model still is, for the father, every other weekend and maybe one night during the week. Everyone assumes that the mother is the ‘right’ parent for the children to live with and I had to fight that prejudice every day for a very long year.

My ex-wife even told me that she didn’t really want custody of the children, she only was fighting because the bigger percentage of time she got, the more Child Maintenance she would get. The first time that we were in court she started off by saying that I shouldn’t see the children at all, claiming that I had abused the children, hit them, raped her and had an affair with a teenager. The judge ordered that I didn’t see the children at all, while this was investigated. That was a hard couple of months.

After a year, meetings with social services, so many court visits that I had my own seat in the waiting room, I eventually got 50:50, the best a man could ever hope for in this world.

Even though we had exactly 50:50 I still had to pay Child Maintenance because she gets the Child Benefit. Guess why … Child Benefits default to the mother at the birth of the child.

I Visited World’s Largest Tech Show…You Won’t Believe What China Did

https://youtu.be/YOOoJbzG1BU

The truth about “forgive and forget”

Ah. I tire so about repeating myself.

Earth is a Prison Planet. There are systems within systems, within systems to control the inmates. It’s a big subject and I have covered it elsewhere. If you want to learn all the details, then you can browse around here on MM. But for now, I want to discuss one of the control mechanisms.

It’s the “forgive and forget” control mechanism.

I can tell you that criminals inside the United States use this method all the time to reduce their sentences, get away with crimes, and conduct “damage control” to lessen the impacts of their crimes to others.

I’ve explained this many, many times over.

If you can convince your victim to forgive you, then there is a great chance that they will not press charges or file a report on you. And thus you, as a criminal, can continue repeating your crimes over and over. All you need to do is follow the simple formula;

Hurt a person.
Have someone else convince them to “forgive you” and then “forget about the event”.
Repeat. And hurt a different person.

That is precisely why the police routinely look at first time offenders with an eye towards how many prior crimes they committed, but were not caught in.

It’s not just felony activity. It’s about everything. Thoughts, feelings and behaviors are all connected.

It’s a nice trite saying that is used to control you.

Learn this fact; children learn from their mistakes. A child that falls off a chair, then a ladder, then a table will stop accidentally falling down because it HURTS. But what if you mind-wipe the memories, and forget what it was like when you fell down? Well, the child would repeat again, and again, and again over and over.

If you are in a bad relationship, after a long string of bad relationships, you need to stop “forgiving and forgetting”; bone up. Grow a spine and learn from your mistakes.

And for the really brainwashed out there in internet land…

Do you want more?

I have more posts like this in my happiness index here…

Life & Happiness

Articles & Links

Master Index

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
You can find out more about the author HERE.
If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

How You are Controlled by the Government. They Control you by your Social Media Feeds.

We like to think that we are independent thinkers. We like to believe that we really know what is going on in the world. We know that the American government controls the press, and that the rich oligarchy controls the Big Government Deep State. And we think of everyone else that believes them as “sheeple”.

But perhaps, the government controls ALL of the media, both the left-wing and the right-wing.

And that perhaps you are being led to believe that you are thinking independently, when you are actually just following the programmed narrative that the PTB (the Powers That Be) desire.

I see this in the narratives that are almost always easy to categorize by political affiliation. It's become simplistic and frightening.

Here we discuss this mechanism.

The following is an article titled:”Social Media Is A Polarization Machine” by FMPadmin6120 written on December 31, 2019. It is edited to fit this venue, but aside from that left intact. All credit to the author; Paul Rosenberg at www.freemansperspective.com .

Social Media Is A Polarization Machine

Sure, we’ve all seen this in practice and people have developed catchy terms for it, like echo chamber, but the polarization effect of social media has been demonstrated scientifically. In fact, some of us were warning about it more than a decade ago. And while I can no longer find my original documentation on the subject, I can tell you precisely how it works.

The One-Room Phenomenon

What researchers discovered about twenty years ago was that putting people of the same opinion into a single room had a striking effect: The opinion in the room moved, inevitably, to the extreme. And this effect was the same no matter what the original opinion may have been.

So, then:

If you put a bunch of right-wingers in a room, the shared opinion in the room will become stridently right-wing.
If you put a bunch of left-wingers in a room, the shared opinion in the room will become stridently left-wing.
If you put a bunch of save-the-planet advocates in a room, their opinion will become all the more adamantly save-the-planet.
If you put in a bunch of the-planet-is-just-fine advocates, their opinion will become all the more adamantly the-planet-is-just-fine.

This happens because of human insecurity and status-seeking: Anyone taking a contrary opinion (advocating “right-wing” economics in the left-wing room, for example) is instantly branded as a traitor and suffers heavy shaming within the group.

Gaining social status in the closed room, however, is simple and obvious: You just adopt a stronger, more polarized, version of the original opinion.

Because of this, the opinion in a closed group becomes more and more severe. That is, it becomes increasingly polarized.

Yeah, They Know

Like I said at the open, if you’ve observed people at all, you’ve seen them polarized by Facebook. They climb into their groups, block discordant voices, and end up in a (partly) self-created echo chamber.

I say “partly” self-created because Facebook knows all too well what they’re doing. They want people who are emotionally tied to their groups. It’s called addiction, and it’s what makes Facebook rich.

Being polarized also makes people cold and cruel. Anyone who’s on the other side of what their group thinks is not just wrong, but evil. And whoever fails to agree with them is their opponent… an object of disgust.

In that condition, people will advocate all sorts of stupid and even abominable positions, assured that the members of their group will support them tooth and nail. It’s now common, after all, for such groups to lump ten million people together and slap a negative verdict on them all. If you’re the wrong skin color, or too old, or too young, or a dozen other things, you’re “privileged,” or “don’t get it,” or something else. That is, you are declared evil. After that, whoever hurts you is a hero.

This serves Facebook, you understand. Once your opinions are polarized, you are dependent on your group and you’ll be unable to leave.

This addiction is also crucial for political causes. Facebook provides hard believers: addicts with claims to righteousness. And that means that politicians need Facebook, and deeply. Politicians get ahead by making their opponents into monsters, after all, and social media may be the best tool ever for creating polar opposites. (Or at least the illusion thereof.)

The Awakening Has Begun

Little by little, people are waking up to the evils of group dynamics and the devolutionary effects they generate.

Twitter, in my opinion, is  the least bad of the centralized social media platforms, and will  hopefully be decentralizing at some point. They have, at least, a team  working on that.

There are decentralized social media experiments coming along, and I hope they succeed, but the closed group problem will remain, even if it isn’t stoked to the limit by political and financial mercenaries((I was ready to write “whores,” rather than “mercenaries,” but I can’t equate sex workers, even metaphorically, with willful and purposeful abusers of mankind.)).

Thoughtful, observant and intelligent people are noticing that social media makes humans hateful, as well as lonely, insecure and miserable. I hope that knowledge spreads. I further hope that people will realize the past ten years of their life have been polluted by social media.

No, there’s nothing wrong with talking to friends and sharing ideas, but Facebook and other social media companies have weaponized this. They are intentionally abusing human instincts.

So, don’t get angry and hateful in response; just stop rewarding them. People who addict and polarize you are precisely the wrong ones to empower.

Social media is a polarization machine. Separating from it would be a very good idea.

If you’d like to learn more, see:

I do hope that you enjoyed this post. You can find more in my Happiness and Life index here…

Life & Happiness

Articles & Links

To go to the MAIN Index;

Master Index

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE .
You can find out more about the author HERE.
If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.

[wp_paypal_payment]

Unusual Movies – Greenslime. When Hollywood made movies without social justice agendas.

I am old enough to remember going to the movie theater to watch this flick. It was on a Saturday afternoon, and my folks gave me a dollar to watch it. I was ten years old. Back in those days we watched movies for fun, or barring that, to stay out of our parent’s hair and let them have some time alone.

Here’s some fun “elevator pitches” for science fiction movies. 

How about  having astronauts land on an asteroid that’s on a collision course with  earth? Wait, it gets better— to save the world they have to use  drilling equipment to bore holes in the rocky surface to plant nuclear  bombs inside and blow the renegade asteroid into space dust. 

Not working  for you? 

Okay, try this one on. How about having an alien life form that looks harmless in its infant state brought aboard a space ship. Then it breaks loose, transforming into a monstrous killing machine that slaughters the crew one by one!  

- Horror News

Lately, most of the larger (high budget) movies out of Hollywood are nothing more that venues to ram-rod social justice “improvements” down our collective throats. This policy certainly started long ago. Maybe back during the Clinton administration, but it most certainly became heated up to a degree of red-hot insanity during the Obama presidency.

Now we have a 007 “James Bond” flick that going to have a new transgender LGBT “woman of color” in the role of secret agent. Funny how she looks like a morph of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. Yuck!

The face of the new progressive, modern "James Bond", 007. This woman looks like someone morphed Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton together. Oh, how enlightened! How so very progressive! — The face of the new progressive, modern “James Bond”, 007. This woman looks like someone morphed Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton together. Oh, how enlightened! How so very progressive!

Anyways, let’s get back to the movie at hand; Green slime.

This is a movie perfect for the eleven year old boy inside of all of us. It’s got a cool retro 1960’s sound track. (It’s got) Cool miniatures with all sorts of detail like something out of Fireball XL-5. It’s got spacemen exploring a rogue asteroid and carrying space rifles (!). It’s got a love triangle with a handsome man with a chiseled face, and the girls all look like they came out of a 1960’s playboy magazine.

And it’s got monsters.

Lots and lots of monsters.

Right out of the gate you can feel the movie itching to get to the good  stuff– that song barely lasts a verse and a chorus before Robert Horton,  as Commander Jack Rankin, arrives at space station Gamma 3 ready  to head up a very dangerous mission– landing on a strange asteroid and  exploding it out of its collision course with Earth.  

-Trailers from Hell

What’s not to love?

I saw THE GREEN SLIME in 1968 at the Omni Center Theatre in Atlanta Georgia with my brother and cousin and was awestruck and terrified as only a 6-year-old boy seeing a movie called THE GREEN SLIME in 1968 could be so I’ve always had a huge soft spot in my heart for this film (I was lucky enough to attend a 16mm screening at Cinema Wasteland a couple of years ago and it held up great).

I mentioned three things that I think make THE GREEN SLIME so enduring.

One. The title, THE GREEN SLIME is so perfect and unpretentious that Saturday matinee audiences in 1968 had to know exactly what was in store and I can’t imagine anyone feeling let down.

Second, THE GREEN SLIME has one of the funkiest title songs in cinema history. Written by Charles Fox (who would go on to write the themes for THE LOVE BOAT and HAPPY DAYS) and accompanied by a frenzied drum beat and blaring electric guitars (someone edited the song to clips of battle scenes from the film and posted it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKESo2ofEcw).

THE GREEN SLIME theme is a blast and was even released as a single!

Third, the poster is my absolute favorite from the 1960’s. The bold colorful artwork features the emerald cretins in an action-packed outer space battle with flying spacemen while holding a terrified Luciana Paluzzi in a skin-tight metallic spacesuit in the foreground (an outfit like nothing she wears in the film).

The poster is a throwback to the “bug-eyed monster” posters of the 1950’s and the artwork even graced the cover of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” #57 in 1969. I have an original THE GREEN SLIME three-sheet (40 x 80 inches) and it’s proudly displayed in my den along with my Resin Green Slime model kit and vintage “The Green Slime are Coming!” button.

- My Favorite Movies: The One About the Green Slime That I Saw at the Theater When I Was Six

The Characters

The plot of THE GREEN SLIME play like a precursor (or parody) to ARMEGEDDEON and then ALIEN as a  runaway asteroid, known as Flora (!), is determined to be on a  collision course with earth. 

Rugged astronaut Jack Rankin (Robert  Horton) is ordered out of retirement to command Space Station Gamma 3,  an enormous ring-shaped outpost populated by a detachment of scientists  and military personnel, and stop Flora before it destroys our planet.  

Onboard Rankin meets his old flame Lisa (Luciana Paluzzi) and her  fiancée, Commander Vince Elliot (Richard Jaeckel), Rankin's former close  friend. 

Rankin, Elliot and the sinister Doctor Halvorsen (Ted Gunther)  land a shuttle on the asteroid, depositing explosives in an attempt to  nuke Flora. 

They succeed, but a small wad of pulsating green jelly adheres itself to Dr. Halvoson’s spacesuit and is brought back to the station unobserved. 

The crew celebrates with a groovy party featuring nurses in short skirts and high heels shimmying to 60’s electronic tunes, unaware that the oozy green stowaway is morphing into a deadly tentacled creature out to electrocute everyone in its path.  

Attempts to kill the slimy beast backfire as each drop of its blood  grows into a new monster until Gamma 3 is infested with these waddling critters collectively known as…

...The Green Slime!! 

- My Favorite Movies: The One About the Green Slime That I Saw at the Theater When I Was Six

Commander Jack Rankin – This guy wouldn’t stop smiling if a rabid weasel was in his shorts; he would just grin and give you a thumbs up.
Commander Vince Elliott – In charge of the space station and not very happy Rankin is senior to him. A rash man who gives one Green Slime a hug. (That means he dies.)
Lisa Benson – Woman torn between loving Rankin and Elliott.
Dr. Halvorsen – Head researcher aboard the space station, he gets seriously fried.
General Jonathan Thompson – Gruff senior officer, his main role in this movie is sweating.
Captain Martin – Elliott’s right hand man, for some reason he looks natural in a white motorcycle helmet.
The Green Slime – Alien life form which feeds on energy and even a single drop of blood can regenerate into new creatures. Incinerated.

The Green Slime has the secret weapon every B-Movie needs-  Richard Jaeckel. 

Jaeckel was a prolific, academy award nominated actor  who bounced between supporting roles in big budget films and starring  turns in B-pictures. In fact he was nominated for a best supporting  actor Oscar for Sometimes A Great Notion (1970) right after he starred in The Green Slime.  

What made Jaeckel so special was that (like Shelly Winters) he always  delivered a class-A performance in any film, regardless of its quality.  If you watch The Green Slime carefully you’ll notice that he’s always moving, or emoting— giving the audience a little something extra.  

He never steals scenes from his co-stars, but he’s always the most  interesting thing onscreen. 

 - Horror News

Exploring the mysterious and dangerous asteroid. Yikes!

THE GREEN SLIME was an American/Japanese co-production shot in Tokyo with a mostly American cast (extras are Japanese or played by American servicemen stationed in Japan) and a Japanese director giving the film a stilted, off-the-wall international quality.

It was shot in English but crudely post-dubbed and the whole cast has English monikers regardless of their ethnicity (exotic Italian beauty Luciana Paluzzi plays…..Lisa Benson!).

Square-jawed Robert Horton (a TV actor best known for starring in WAGON TRAIN) delivers a comically wooden lead performance as the arrogant and condescending Rankin.

As Elliott, Richard Jaeckel seems to have more fun with his role and he makes a good space hero (Jaeckel stayed in Japan to costar in the equally absurd LATITUDE ZERO before returning to Hollywood and Oscar-nominated the next year for SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION).

Luciana Paluzzi had made a splash as Bond girl Fiona Volpe in THUNDERBALL in 1965 and makes for equally sexy here.

Director Kinji Fukasaku went on to make cult items MESSAGE FROM SPACE in 1978 (a gonzo STAR WARS knockoff starring Sonny Chiba that featuresmassive sailboats in space!) and the controversial “teens- killing-teens” epic BATTLE ROYALE in 2000.

THE GREEN SLIME’s toy-like special effects are hardly realistic, but there are a ton of them and most are ambitious and imaginatively designed. The spaceships look like models because they are models and the fact that they are way overlit doesn’t help.

It’s the monsters themselves that make THE GREEN SLIME so memorable.

Squat and lumpy, with one giant red eye surrounded by many smaller eyes, the rubbery, tentacle-waving gremlins were played by Japanese children in clumsy suits. They seem more than a bit silly today but, with their high-pitched electronic squeal, were pretty nightmarish to young audiences in 1968.

- My Favorite Movies: The One About the Green Slime That I Saw at the Theater When I Was Six

The Plot

Packing more goofy models and props than most Godzilla films comes this lovely piece of b-cinema.

I still want to know who starched Commander Rankin’s face while he was smiling, either the guy is a loon or he’s on some serious happy pills. Prozac boy gets things done though; when you have a rogue asteroid hurtling toward Earth he’s the man to call. (Not Bruce Willis, mind you.)

... a brilliantly artificial and eerily vibrant landscape which writer  Richard Harland Smith accurately described as perfectly evocative of the  Major Matt Mason space station and lunar base command toy sets of the  1960s, reproduced with full-scale reverence and a dash of pop sci-fi  psychedelia.

-Trailers from Hell

Fighting the oozy and tentacled greenslime monsters.

When the astronauts land to place their bombs they find the asteroid is inhabited by strange blobs of glowing slime that are drawn to the equipment. After blasting off and barely escaping the massive explosion (Imagine an orange and brown papier mache’ ball with half a stick of dynamite inside and you’re golden.) the heroes return to Space Station Gamma 3.

Just because The Green Slime predates Alien and Armageddon doesn’t mean it’s some visionary piece of science fiction cinema. On the surface it’s a subpar space opera with rubber-suited monsters, cheesy miniatures and a cast of B-movie veterans struggling to kill aliens while keeping a straight face.

But despite its myriad of deficiencies The Green Slime is a charming time capsule of mid sixties camp.

Watching its colorful “mod” sets, plastic helmeted astronauts and man-in-a-suit monsters is like sprawling in a bean bag chair, sipping a can of Schlitz while feeling the luxurious shag carpeting beneath your toes.

Scientists aboard the Gamma-3 space station discover a massive asteroid careening towards earth.

UN Space Command dispatches their bravest and squarest jawed astronaut (Robert Horton) to command the mission to destroy the deadly celestial body, which looks like a cat toy you’d find moldering under the couch.

But our hero has a long simmering feud with the space station’s commander (Richard Jaeckel) who stole his fiancée (Luciana Paluzzi) who happens to be the space station’s resident doctor. Putting their differences aside they land on the asteroid, drill holes, plant nukes and zip back to the space station, barely escaping the atomic blast.

The earth is saved, but during their escape a small bit of green slimy alien life adheres itself to an astronaut’s space suit and hitches a ride to Gamma-3.

Due to the station’s high oxygen (or testosterone) levels the little blob of space spooge sprouts into a menagerie of man sized monsters shooting electricity from their tentacles.

Will the astronauts defeat the alien invaders? Will the big haired sexy doctor dump her beau for her brick headed ex fiancé? Will our two heroes finally give in to their seething homoerotic tension and be as god made them? Its all part of The Green Slime experience.

- Horror News

Unfortunately, for everyone, some of the slime was carried back on a space suit. It soon evolves into a tentacled creature! So the thing kinda looks like Sigmund the Sea Monster – he never fried anyone with several thousand volts of electricity. (Yes, I know it’s the amps that get you.) This gives a nice excuse for Elliott and Rankin to have a power struggle over who is in charge, the latter a firm believer in “shoot first ask questions later.”

This poor doctor went back into the midst of the greenslime monsters to get his papers. Bad movie Doc. Bad move.

Another unfortunate fact about Green Slime: even a single drop of blood will grow into a new monster. So now you have dozens of pissed off Sigmunds running around electrocuting the crew, good job Rankin.

In the end humanity is saved by crashing Gamma 3 into Earth’s atmosphere, incinerating the Green Slime. Thank goodness something stopped them besides THROWING your laser rifle. The characters often unload at point blank range without effect. Soon as they throw the weapon it goes right through the monster’s eye. Even if you don’t like watching “spacemen” wearing white 1960’s police motorcycle helmets firing “laser guns” at waddling masses of latex monsters you have to love the title song.

Fighting the deadly greenslime inside the space-station.

Things I Learned From This Movie:

Asteroids look like a Gobstopper which has been under the refrigerator for ten years.
Movies are less interesting from a phone’s objective.
Pulsing green muck plays heck with interstellar golf carts.
People can stand up and walk around while experiencing ten G’s.
Never let a bitter exgirlfriend tend your wound.
Alien life is best represented by green soap suds.
Space station security guards wear white motorcycle helmets with a little space symbol on them.
Golf carts are not four wheel drive.
Laser rifles work better as spears.
Never hug an ungrounded Green Slime.

The most charming thing about The Green Slime is how the  filmmakers lovingly revel in its cheesiest elements. 

Those miniature  rocket ships don’t zip by in an instant— instead the producers proudly  linger on them as if they were unveiling 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968).  

The unconvincing rubber monsters aren’t confined to fleeting, shadowy  glimpses— Nope, they’re given long loving close-ups under brighter lights than a baseball game. 

I love the filmmakers for having the balls  to do that. Plus Alien never had a rocking psychedelic theme song. Why Richard Delvy’s title tune, actually entitled The Green Slime, never made it onto Lenny Kaye’s classic psychedelic music anthology Nuggets is beyond me. 

The Green Slime’s other achievement is compressing entire plot of Armageddon into the first fifteen minutes. Why couldn’t Michael Bay have done that? 

 - Horror News

Stuff To Watch For:

2 mins – Nice miniatures, ahm.
13 mins – For some reason this scene is making me horny.
25 mins – Bad dubbing!
48 mins – White motorcycle helmets?
64 mins – RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A FLASHLIGHT!
70 mins – The explosion took out half of the model space station, but not that flimsy door?
75 mins – Elliott could use some boxing lessons.
83 mins – Jack, I’m going to kick your smiling self in the testicles. What do you think of that?

Our brave hero and attractive love interest.

The Green Slime was a coproduction between America’s MGM  Studios and Japan’s Toei Company LTD. But oddly for a Japanese based  production, the entire cast, right down to the extras, is entirely  western. This presented Toei with a genuine casting challenge. 

As a  result the crew of Gamma-3 are a mix of struggling American fashion  models plucked from Tokyo’s fashion runways and American sailors on  shore leave from the nearby Yokosuka Naval base. 

That’s right, those  glamorous young models were thrown together with guys who’d been stuck on an Aircraft Carrier deployed off Vietnam for six months! 

Take a good  look boys… cause this is what you’re fighting for! 

Hidden among the  space stations impossibly pretty female crew is blonde haired Linda  Miller who, a year earlier, had been the lead in the Japanese American  co-production King Kong Escapes. If you ever wake up with a hangover skip the Advil and coffee and try a double bill of The Green Slime and King Kong Escapes— your pain will be forgotten. 

- Horror News

Conclusion

In 1968 my eight-year-old pals and I absorbed the adventure of The Green Slime and took that template to the playground, turning every jungle gym or set of monkey bars into the Gamma 3. Looking at The Green Slime  today I confess I am not seized with the urge to run over to the nearby  elementary school and start back up where I left off 46 years ago.  After all, there are plenty of reasons to put away childish things, to  bid a safe farewell to childhood and our nostalgia for it. (My bathroom  scale insists this is so.) But for me The Green Slime beautifully recreates a playground of the mind to match the one I had to leave behind.  

-Trailers from Hell

This movie will never get an Oscar award. But it’s a great movie for a rainy day, and fantastic to spend with a case of beer, some friends, a pet and loyal dog (or cat), a loved one and some potato chips. Not the flavored kind, mind you, good “old fashioned” American style salted chips… with dip. Lots and lots of dip.

This is the perfect movie to enjoy when you are stuck inside (like during a biological weapons attack like I am) or whether it is raining cats and dogs outside. Make sure that you have an ample supply of chips, dip and beer. I'll tell you what! — This is the perfect movie to enjoy when you are stuck inside (like during a biological weapons attack like I am) or whether it is raining cats and dogs outside. Make sure that you have an ample supply of chips, dip and beer. I’ll tell you what!

In closing, if you wake up craving a piece of nostalgic science fiction fromage The Green Slime  is exactly what you’re looking for. And don’t forget to sing along to  the psychedelic theme song (later covered by the Fuzztones) for a  totally immersive experience. Everybody sing… You’ll believe it when you find… Something sreamin’ ‘cross your mind… GREEN SLIME… GREEN SLIME!  

 - Horror News

I do hope that you enjoyed this post. I have other movie review in my Movie Index. Please feel free to check them out…

MOVIES

Articles & Links

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
You can find out more about the author HERE.
If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Cities as dangerous snares – the doomed mouse utopia scientific study.

Well, it's gonna be the year of the rat in a few days. What would be more appropriate than to discuss RAT lifestyle in urban centers?

On July 9th, 1968, eight white mice were placed into a strange box at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Maybe “box” isn’t the right word for it; the space was more like a room, known as “Universe 25”, and it was large. It was about the size of a small storage unit.

The mice themselves were bright and healthy, hand-picked from the institute’s breeding stock.

They couldn’t have known the truth: that within a few years, they and their descendants would all be dead.

John Bumpass Calhoun

The man who played mouse-God and came up with this doomed universe was named John Bumpass Calhoun.

Conditions of the utopia.

No shortage of food, water and nesting material.
No predators.
Limited opportunities for transmissible disease.
The only adversity: space limitation – the size of the habitat was predicted to host 3840 mice.

The first utopia.

The subsequent utopias.

Intrigued, Calhoun built another, slightly bigger rat metropolis—this time in a barn, with ramps connecting several different rooms.

Then he redesigned the structure, and built another.

Then taking the lessons learned, he built another.

And another.

The 1954 rodent utopia.

A Video records of his experiments show Calhoun with a pleased smile and a pipe in his mouth, color-coded mice scurrying over his boots.

Still, at a certain point, each of these paradises collapsed.

“There could be no escape from the behavioral consequences of rising  population density,” 

-Calhoun wrote in an early paper.

The story of the 1968 “Universe 25” collapse.

- Description in Wikipedia [2014.05.25]

In late October, the first litter of mouse pups was born.

By August of 1969, the population numbered 620.

Then, as always, things took a turn. Such rapid growth put too much pressure on the mouse way of life.

These individuals were forever  changed—when Calhoun’s colleague attempted to transplant some of them to  more normal situations, they didn’t remember how to do anything.

Paradise couldn’t even last half a decade.

The periods or cycles…

In a unique experiment that took years to complete, Doctor Calhoun used white mice to study population growth and its effects on individual behavior.

To see how Dr Calhoun’s mouse universe grew, we use the population graph.

Phase A – The phase of social adjustment (strive period)

Within the first one hundred days, the mice went through the period Dr Calhoun called, “strive”. This was the period of adjustment. Territories were established and nests were made.

(1) Considerable social turmoil among the 8 mice until they became adjusted to each other and to their expanded surroundings.
(2) Territories were established and nests were made.

Phase B – The phase of most rapid growth (exploit period)

As the population increased, most mice associated eating and drinking with the presence of others. And crowding developed in certain units.

(1) Population doubling time is about 55 days
(1) Social organization established – frequency of litters proportional to social dominance
(1) The births tended to be concentrated in some sets of nest boxes (dominant males), while others (non-dominant males – withdrawn males = WM) had few or none.
(2) Although each living unit was identical in structure and opportunities, more food and water was consumed in certain areas. As the population increased, most mice associated eating and drinking with the presence of others. And crowding developed in certain units.
(1) At the end of this phase there were 3 times as many socially immature mice as there were socially established older ones.

Phase C – The stagnation phase (equilibrium period)

At this time, some unusual behavior become noticeable.

Certain individuals became targets of repeated attacks. These individuals would have badly chewed and scarred tails.

But the trajectory of rat utopia soon sobered Calhoun. The eager rodents  did not seem capable of regulating their population size in the  long-term. As they reproduced and the pens overflowed, Calhoun noted  that male rates became aggressive, moving in gangs and attacking females  and young. Some became exclusively homosexual. Female rats, meanwhile,  abandoned their infants. The crowded mice had lost the ability to  coexist. One of Calhoun’s assistants renamed the “rat utopia”  “rodent  hell.” 

-Space Cadets and Rat Utopias

Though they looked inquisitive they were, in fact, very stupid.

All of this, however, led to a drop in mating, and the birthrate soon fell to a third of its former level. A social imbalance also took place among the mice:

One-third emerged as socially dominant.
The other two-thirds turned out less socially adept than their forbearers.
As bonding skills diminished among the mice, Universe 25 went into a slow but irreversible decline.

(1) Population doubling time is about 145 days
(1) The male ability to defend territory declines
(1) The nursing females become aggressive, essentially taking over the role of the territorial males. This aggression generalized to their own young who were attacked, wounded, and forced to leave home several days before normal weaning.
(2) At this time, some unusual behavior became noticeable. Violence became prevalent. Excess males strived for acceptance, were rejected and withdrew. Social disorder became visible – a WM would attack a passive WM, who in turn would attack another WM. Certain individuals became targets of repeated attacks. These individuals would have badly chewed and scarred tails.
(4) Socially withdrawn male 29 makes a pan-sexual approach to male 16 who he recently saw attacked. Note how one assumes the female role. Males exhibit sexual behavior towards other males; you have rat homosexuality. They begin mounting the young.
(1) Incidence of conception decline and resorption of fetuses increases and dissolution of maternal behavior is observed. This lead to non-reproducing females.
(1) By midway in phase C, essentially all young were prematurely rejected by their mothers. They started independent life without having developed adequate effective bonds.
(1) Considering that there were 256 nest retreat sites in the 16 cells, one would not expect shelter to be a limiting factor until the population exceeded 3840. Due to the tendency of many animals to choose to crowd together in numbers in excess of 15 per nest site, at the peak population size of 2200 mice, 20% of all nest sites were usually unoccupied. Thus, there were always opportunities for females to select an unoccupied space for rearing young if they so chose.
(1) Social disorder – a WM would attack a passive WM, who in turn would attack another

Phase D – The death phase (die period)

Others would refrain from motherly duties altogether, banishing their unraised litters and withdrawing from further mating, resulting in serious consequences:

In some compartments, the infant mortality rate topped 90 percent.
Calhoun named this the “stagnation phase,” alternately known as the “equilibrium period.”
He attributed the overly aggressive and passive behavioral patterns to the breakdown of social roles and rampant over-clustering.

Dr Calhoun called the last period the “die” phase, leading the population into extinction. Although the mouse utopia could house 3000, the population began to decline at 2200.

(1) Population increase abruptly ceased on day 560 after colonization.
(1) Incidence of pregnancies decline very rapidly with no young surviving.
(1) The last conception took place about day 920
(1) Male counterparts to non-reproducing females were named the “beautiful ones”. They never engaged in sexual approaches toward females, and they never engaged in fighting. Their behavioral repertoire became largely confined to eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming.
(1) The capacity for reproduction terminated.
(3) The last thousand animals born never learned to develop the social behaviors, they never learned to be aggressive, which is necessary in defense of home sites; not engaging in any stressful activity, and only paying attention to themselves, they groomed themselves well so they looked like very fine specimens.
(2) Other young mice growing into adulthood exhibited an even different type of behaviour. Dr Calhoun called these individuals “the beautiful ones”. Their time was devoted solely to grooming, eating and sleeping. They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight. All appeared as a beautiful exhibit of the species with keen, alert eyes and a healthy well-kept body. These mice, however, could not cope with unusual stimuli. Though they looked inquisitive they were, in fact, very stupid.

The results of the study were published.

Calhoun saw in his rats the decline of future society, evidence that  inner city crowding led to rioting, crime, malaise, and political  radicalism: the obsessions of postwar American academics. He wrote up  his results in a Scientific American article that he titled  “Population Density and Social Pathology.” The article became one of the  most widely-cited papers in psychology. Like Pavlov’s dogs and  Skinner’s pigeons, Calhoun’s rats became exemplars for human behavior.  His experiments suggested a density beyond which rat society  disintegrated, and—to Calhoun and his colleagues, at least—the parallels  with human society were clear. 

- Space Cadets and Rat Utopias

In 1973, Calhoun published his Universe 25 research as “Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population.” It is, to put it lightly, an intense academic reading experience.

He quotes liberally from the Book of Revelation, italicizing certain words for emphasis (e.g. “to kill with the sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts”).

Most frightening are the parallels he draws between rodent and human society. “I shall largely speak of mice,” he begins, “but my thoughts are on man.”

To a society experiencing the rapid growth of cities—and reacting, in various ways, quite poorly—this story seemed familiar.

Trying to discover solutions.

Convinced that he had found a real problem, Calhoun quickly began using his mouse models to try and fix it.

Failed Salvage Attempt and Concluding Observations

In Calhoun’s view, the rise and fall of Universe 25 proved five basic points about mice, as well as humans:

The mouse is a simple creature, but it must develop the skills for courtship, child-rearing, territorial defense and personal role fulfillment on the domestic and communal front. If such skills fail to develop, the individual will neither reproduce nor find a productive role within society.
As with mice, all species will grow older and gradually die out. There is nothing to suggest human society isn’t prone to the same developments that led to the demise of Universe 25.
If the number of qualified individuals exceeds the number of openings in society, chaos and alienation will be the inevitable outcomes.
Individuals raised under the latter conditions will lack any relation to the real world. Physiological fulfillment will be their only drive in life.
Just as mice thrive on a set of complex behaviors, the concern for others developed in post-industrial human skills and understandings is vital to man’s continuance as a species. The loss of these attributes within a civilization could lead to its collapse.

The public reaction.

But the public held on hard to his earlier work—as Ramsden and Adams put it, “everyone want[ed] to hear the diagnosis, no one want[ed] to hear the cure.”

Gradually, Calhoun lost attention, standing, and funding.

In 1986, he was forced to retire from the National Institute of Mental Health. Nine years later, he died.

His influence

There was one person who paid attention to his more optimistic experiments, a writer named Robert C. O’Brien.

Soon after, O’Brien wrote Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH—a story about rats who, having escaped from a lab full of blundering humans, attempt to build their own utopia.

Next time, maybe we should put the rats in charge.

My story.

I would sit on the Lazy-boy chair and go through these big massive volumes and read the articles there. As such, I too, was influenced by this study.

Years passed.

Then I read an article that rewoke this narrative.

The Article that re-woke and rekindled my interest in this study.

Then I read this article titled “Article – The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the ‘Rats of NIMH’” which was posted on January 8, 2020.

The author comments…

Give a buncha rodents all the food, bedding, water, and stress-free
living you can give them and they should breed like..well..rats. And have a population boom, right? Maybe not.

Such  rapid growth put too much pressure on the mouse way of life. As new  generations reached adulthood, many couldn’t find mates, or places in  the social order—the mouse equivalent of a spouse and a job. Spinster females retreated to high-up nesting boxes, where they lived alone, far from the family neighborhoods. Washed-up males gathered in the center of the Universe, near the food, where they fretted, languished, and  attacked each other. Meanwhile, overextended mouse moms and dads began moving nests constantly to avoid their unsavory neighbors. They also took their stress out on their babies, kicking them out of the nest too early, or even losing them during moves.

Some fascinating parallels to be had in just that one paragraph. 

To  quote Judge Dredd “You put that many rats in one cage and something’s  gonna happen.” 

The apparent message is that mammals ain’t cut out for  being put into large metropolises. Even when you give them all the welfare food and shelter they want, they’ll still go bad.

But, men are not rodents. 

Yet look at any major city and you’ll see  that the segments of the population that have everything handed to them  seem to be the most troubled and troublesome.

Moral of the story? 

Stay out of enormous cities. 

Having just returned from a week in one of the biggest i can tell you with utter sincerity that nothing reinvigorated my mind and spirit more than being able to have room to stretch both physically and metaphorically. Away from the restricting confines of mandatory recycling, absurd gun laws, high sales  taxes, etc, I felt I could breathe easier again and feel in control of  my life.

Big cities, in my experience, are superior in providing only three  things: money, women, and food. High paying jobs, endless varieties of  women, and a dizzying array of types of food…

...that's about all I can  recommend for the big cities. 

But what do I get out of smaller venues,  such as where I live? Relatively high levels of freedom, or, at least,  qualities that I equate with freedom.

Men or mice…put too many in one place and bad stuff happens. Don’t be there.

Conclusions by “experts”

All conclusions drawn by socialist (& state) scientists constantly connect extinction with overpopulation:

The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.
 
- Wikipedia 2014.05.25

Overpopulation = Extinction

However in the Calhoun’s papers there are clear evidences that this is not so:

All of the available space was not taken, and there was areas devoid of rodents.
WM (Withdrawn Males) had no social roles so they withdrew from society. Thus they could not be counted as part of the overpopulation burden.