Cute chicks doing yoga

2023 02 24 14 31
2023 02 24 14 31

Disturbingly…

Not by MM, but rather by <redacted name>…

  • Disturbingly, the recent UN General Assembly resolution voted by 140 countries asks Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. Forget about the Nazis, forget about the gross abuse of Russian speakers in the Donbass, forget about the cynically broken Minsk agreements, forget about the USA and NATO flooding their Nazi infested proxy colony against Russia with weapons. It’s all Russia’s fault.
  • To make things worse, China itself put forward its 12 point ‘peace plan’ which calls ambiguously for respecting territorial integrity of countries, again disregarding the whole history of US/NATO subversion of Ukraine’s government, not just in 2014, but taking into account decades of CIA backing of the worst elements of Ukrainian society.
  • Following Russia suspending its cooperation with the START strategic (nuclear) missile reduction treaty, what is left out of commentaries is Putin’s statement that the US has given various excuses to prevent Russian inspection of US nuclear sites, while demanding access to Russia’s. To sum up treaties that the US signed, they are, like George Bush’s characterization of the US Constitution itself, “Goddamn piece of paper”. So explain how negotiations have any meaning at all.
  • Indeed, the US has walked out of every other arms control treaty it signed and deliberately undermined START.
  • Next, tension is heating up in the independent region sandwiched between hostile Moldova and hostile Ukraine, known as Transniestria, or its Russian name Priednestrovie.It houses an enormous warehouse, containing about 20,000 tons of Soviet era ammunition and weapons, equal to the bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima. If it falls into the hands of Ukraine, it will ‘solve’ Ukraine’s lack of ammunition.
  • And finally, the US seems to have forgotten its commitment to China of the One China Policy. This stated that Taiwan is part of China.
It just provoked China directly, by sending US military trainers to Taiwan, to train its tiny army against a possible Chinese attack, meant to recover its delinquent province.
  • Sidenote: Following WWII, the Communists and their Western backed opponents, the KMT fought a civil war. The KMT was pushed out of Mainland China, and due to US influence, it took over and maintained its rule over the island province Taiwan, which it calls The Republic of China, claiming that it was the real government of China. Now that Taiwan realizes that it’s not going to return to ruling all of China from Beijing, much of the Taiwan leadership flirts with the US, a total violation of the agreed policy.
  • The US has ‘an unsinkable aircraft carrier’ in the island of Taiwan. So it’s using Taiwan to whip up another war, this time with China.
  • So the US along with its subservient vassal states in Europe and in Asia, wants a war to subjugate both Russia and China at the same time! Both of which have armies that are more modern and better equipped than the US and the NATO countries. What could go wrong?

Listen up!

When China FM met with President Putin in Russia, they did NOT talk about Ukraine, or a peace plan. They talked about something else…

Russia and China didn’t discuss Beijing’s ‘peace plan’ – Moscow

The two countries’ top diplomats have only exchanged thoughts on the “root cause” of the Ukraine crisis, Maria Zakharova says
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi did not discuss Beijing’s yet-to-be-unveiled peace proposal for the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told reporters on Wednesday.

“Our Chinese partners explained their thoughts on the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis, as well as their approaches to its political resolution,” she said. The official added “there were no talks of any specific ‘plan’.” 

Wang first mentioned his “peace proposal” at the Munich Security Conference last week. “We will put forth China’s position on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis,” the diplomat announced. Wang warned that he knew that “some forces might not want to see peace talks materialize” without naming any party in particular.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin also commented on the peace proposal at the Monday press briefing. “The international community is fully aware who is calling for dialogue and striving for peace, and who is fanning the flames and stoking confrontation,” the diplomat said. He then encouraged the US to “seriously reflect on the role it has played” in the Ukrainian conflict so far.

China presented ‘key elements’ of peace plan to Ukraine – Kiev

On Tuesday, Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun said that a “position paper” with China’s consistent views on the conflict would be released “within days.”

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky commented on the plan during a press conference on Tuesday, saying that he had his own “peace formula” supported by a large number of states. Zelensky was apparently referring to the so-called ‘10-point peace plan’ that was presented by him at the G20 summit in November.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Moscow anticipated a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping once Beijing had completed items on its domestic agenda. “We assume that we will realize our plans regarding face-to-face meetings, which will give an additional boost to our relations,” Putin added.

Complete text

Here is the complete text in English translation appearing on the official website of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs produced by the Chinese rulers that Gonzalo Lira understood as a “prosecution case” against the US tantamount to a declaration of war.

The Sovereigns of Ancient China had the ritual of proclaiming publicly (Urbi & Orbi) the faults or mistakes 错 (cuo4) even the sins or evil doings 罪 (Zui4) of the troublemaker before neutralizing the blamed entity.

The US evil doings are grouped into 5 categories :

  • I- Political Hegemony-Throwing its weight around
  • II- Military Hegemony-Wanton use of force
  • III- Economic Hegemony-Looting and Exploitation
  • IV- Technological Hegemony-Monopoly and Suppression
  • V- Cultural Hegemony-Spreading False Narrative

For details, please read the full text. HERE

China takes American hegemony head-on

In a rare scathing essay, Beijing’s foreign ministry has blasted Washington’s every effort at world domination

The Chinese foreign ministry has published an essay titled ‘US Hegemony and Its Perils’, a scathing attack on the United States and its attempts to effectively rule the world.

The essay was widely shared throughout Chinese state media outlets and was probably the harshest thing they’ve ever published at least as far as Washington is concerned. It coincides with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent address and attacks the US across a broad spectrum of topics, outlining Washington’s multi-pronged efforts to achieve and maintain exclusive dominance over the entire planet. This includes military action, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as interference in internal political affairs of countries in the form of coups and revolutions.

The essay discussed the Arab Spring, US interference in Latin America including the CIA coup in Chile and attempts to undermine the government of Cuba and Venezuela, and the number of “color revolutions” in former Soviet states such as Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. It went on to condemn how Washington weaponizes the subject of democracy and forces countries to take sides, branded the US a country “characterized by violence and expansion” that crushes its opponents with sanctions and “economic coercion” and claimed the (US) dollar of being “the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy.”

Never has China’s foreign ministry launched such a blistering attack on the US.

For many years, despite Washington’s turn to hostility towards Beijing, China has been overwhelmingly restrained when it comes to the US. For a long time, it held to the belief that America can be engaged with, that somehow the country can be brought to reason, and that the US-China bilateral relationship can be improved and stabilized. It once held the belief that after the departure of the Donald Trump administration, things could be returned to “normal” under Joe Biden.

That belief could not have been more wrong.

After two years in office, the Biden administration has shown itself to be more belligerent and hawkish on China than Trump and his colleagues had ever been, and ties have gone from one new low to another, with the Biden presidency having transformed US policy from a series of “America First” Trumpian grievances over trade, to an all-encompassing campaign of military and strategic containment which has dramatically escalated tensions. Trump was a negotiator, who wanted to make trade deals with China to suit American interests using tariffs as leverage, whereas the word “compromise” does not exist in Biden’s vocabulary.

The Biden administration has repeatedly claimed it wants “guardrails” and “lines of communication” with Beijing, but its actions have shown its real intentions, from allowing Nancy Pelosi’s highly provocative visit to Taiwan, to stoking paranoia over a balloon, to forcing countries to cut off supplies to China’s entire semiconductor industry.

The conclusion that Beijing has finally arrived at is that when it comes to the United States, there is no serious dialogue to be had. It is a waste of time. China faces a belligerent, hegemonic and bad-faith actor who seeks to contain it and strategically crush it at all costs.

The US is forcing a change in China’s foreign policy. For many decades, China’s philosophy was to avoid confrontation with Washington and seek cooperation, to prevent the Americans from moving towards policies of Cold War containment and blocking its economic development, which is the Communist Party’s overarching domestic priority.

This is why even when the US was turning hostile, China remained ambivalent and restrained for a long time. It wanted to believe the relationship with America could be rescued, and these policies could be offset.

China now recognizes that its best bet is not appeasing Washington, but that its continued development and prosperity depends on sustaining a multipolar world where American power is diluted.

China has formally identified American hegemony as the biggest source of instability, chaos, inequality and conflict in the world, mirroring comments made by Vladimir Putin.

As such, the US has no interest in accepting or coming to terms with the rise of any other country which challenges its monopoly on global power, believing its hegemony to be some sort of divine right, and leaving little hope for “stability”.

It will do everything it can to try and contain China and break up its integration with the global economy.

While this does not mean Beijing will do something reckless or risk-prone, it does mean it has finally woken up to the challenge it faces and is no longer, after decades of cordial ties, starry-eyed or deluded about the true nature of the American regime.

Heaven Help My Heart – Tina Arena

Filthy Philaenis? The Ancient Mediterranean Sex Guide that Steamed Up the West

first sex guide
first sex guide

Often referred to as the author of the Mediterranean Kama Sutra , little is known about Philaenis of Samos, who likely wrote this work around the 4th century BC. She is the most mentioned author of the erotic sex guide Joy of Sex , being a rare surviving work by a woman from antiquity. She is mentioned in more than a dozen sources, and fragments of a manual titled P. Oxy. 2891, found in Egypt’s Oxyrhynchus, and published in 1972 seem to trace their attribution to her.

The Joy of Sex: Sentence and Structure

“Philaenis of Samos, daughter of Ocymenes, wrote the following things for those wanting … life”, begins the work.

The papyrus preserves two adjoining columns from the upper margin of the very beginning of a roll. It commences with a short preamble that introduces the author and the purpose of their work and the second column of the papyrus begins with a new chapter heading, advising the seducer to neglect their appearance.

Concerning Seductions: Accordingly, the seducer should be unadorned and uncombed, so that he does not [seem] to the woman to be too concerned about the matter in hand,” the manual states.

The sex guide is very practical in nature, written in simple and accessible language, prioritizing the ways of making love easier. There is no erotic rhetoric or literary artifice, and it proceeds to lay out the stages of seduction systematically – flattery, kissing, and ultimately intercourse.

There is a large segment on how different kinds of women (somatotypes) must make love – petite, bodacious, and pretty are separated, and men are instructed on how to take them. Great parts of this section are missing, so reconstruction has been a little complex.

Who Was Philaenis, alleged author of the ancient sex guide?

Interestingly, Philaenis, who was a Hellenic hetaira, or a female companion herself, was the kind of woman who had professional technique. Thus, she and other hetairas or courtesans were the only ones capable of instructing men in how to take them. Her work covered the best sexual positions, perfumes, cosmetics, means of inducing abortions, and the art of kissing, among others.

attribution
attribution

The attribution of the ancient sex guide to Philaenis is disputed. Hetaira, oil painting by Franciszek Żmurko circa 1906 ( Public Domain )

The only mention of Philaenis outside of this book comes from another preserved papyrus scroll, where Philaenis debunks the myth surrounding her being a hetaira. “I, Philaenis, renowned amongst men, rest here, after living long into old age. Frivolous sailor, you who round the cape, do not mock me, do not laugh, do not despise me. No, by Zeus, in the name of the young people resting underground, I was not a debauched woman with men, offered to anyone. It is Polycrates of Athenian birth, a sort of subtlety of words and a perfidious tongue, who wrote what he wrote. As for me, I know nothing about it,” she is alleged to have written.

The Hidden Fronts of Greek Sexuality

What is particularly interesting in a larger historical context, keeping in mind that Philaenis was a front for a random assortment of unknown male authors, was that Greek society was an active practitioner of pederasty. Adult men, both married and single, had relationships with young boys, generally post-pubescent juveniles.

The Joy of Sex was written in the same style as The Histories of Herodotus , akin to a history of sex. It was widely read, although publicly condemned at the same time. This disapproval obviously emanated from the fact that a woman potentially wrote such a work, rather than a disapproval of the subject matter itself.

Will the Real Philaenis Please Stand Up?

This is where a certain degree of conflict does arise – that of identity. Many scholars believe that Philaenis was a generic enough Hellenic name under which a few people wrote and compiled this treatise, and those were likely men.

The manner in which it was written reduced the complexity of sex to that of providing pleasure to only men, which is not different from various sex manuals written across history, all over the world. The poet Aeschrion of Samos has claimed that the Athenian sophist Polycrates was the author of the sex guide.

Philaenis was thus also an idea, one that encompassed the elements of sex considered crude or vulgar, including debauchery and prostitution. This ties up with a lesser explored and more closeted question of female homoeroticism and lesbianism, which many conservative male authors have attributed to the idea of Philaenis.

Sandra Boehringer explains, “Philaenis has particular status for another reason. Three times, in Greek and Latin works, her name is found in feminine homoerotic contexts. Yet, while orators’ speeches overflow with accusations or praise for famous men who loved boys, while historians mention names of women who lost their honor in adulterous relationships with men, in the case of documents evoking sexual or loving relationships between women, the names of either fictional characters or real persons are rare.”

couples
couples

 

Male couples at a symposium, as depicted on a fresco in the Tomb of the Diver from the Greek colony of Paestum in Ital ( Public Domain )

This is because, in Greek society, sexual desire was not seen as the marker of gender – rather, it was the roles assumed by each participant in the sexual act. This was generally clubbed into active penetrator and passive penetrated, or the dominant and submissive roles respectively. The dominant role was associated with masculinity, higher social status, and adulthood, while the passive positon became associated with femininity, lower social status, and juvenescence.

Love between adult women was not as well documented, although it may be said that etymology of the term lesbian, used for homosexual women, has its origin on the island of Lesbos. Many love poems were written by Sappho, a poet from this island, who left behind close to 12,000 lines of poetry on her love for other women. There are a few other scattered references, but all in all, the love between women was not as well-documented.

Clearly, ancient Greece was a land where alternate sexualities were being explored in much more of an open manner than they are in certain societies today. Yet, traits of dominant and submissive have been passed down through the eons, and assume importance in sexual power play even today. Philaenis was clearly someone who held an importance place in society, even though her identity is mythical at this point. Perhaps more finds in the future can help shed more clarity on this.

Sweet Pineapple Tamales (Tamales de Dulce)

Aside from flan, sweet tamales are probably the most satisfying of Mexican desserts. The flavor varieties for sweet tamales are endless. This pineapple and raisin tamale is one of our favorites. They go great with morning coffee!

tamales dulces 7
tamales dulces 7

Yield: about 30 tamales

Ingredients

  • 30 dried corn husks
  • Hot water
  • 3/4 cup firmly packed crushed piloncillo or brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup lard or vegetable shortening (at room temperature)
  • 1/4 cup butter (at room temperature)
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups Masa Harina
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • Pinch of salt
  • 3/4 to 1 cup warm water
  • 1/3 cup flaked coconut
  • 1/3 cup raisins
  • 2 cups diced fresh pineapple
  • Boiling water
  • 2 cups crema or sour cream

Instructions

  1. Place corn husks in large pot; add very hot water to cover. Top husks with plate and heavy jar to keep submerged. Let stand at least 3 hours or overnight.
  2. Drain corn husks; rinse and rub each husk under running water to remove any silk and debris. Drain well; pat dry. Wrap in towel to keep pliable.
  3. Combine piloncillo, lard and butter in large mixer bowl; beat until light and fluffy, 5 to 10 minutes. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix Masa Harina, 1/4 cup at a time; beat until thoroughly blended. Gradually beat in warm water, using just as much as is needed to form dough that just holds together. Stir in coconut and raisins.
  4. For each tamale, spread rounded tablespoon dough in center of 1 corn husk to form 3-inch square; top with 4 to 6 pineapple pieces. Make 30 tamales in all. Fold tamales.
  5. Line large steamer basket with remaining corn husks. Stack tamales in basket, seam sides down. Cover tamales with kitchen towel. Place steamer basket over 3 to 4 inches boiling water; cover with lid. Adjust heat to maintain gentle boil. Steam tamales about 40 minutes.
  6. Remove 1 tamale from center of basket and carefully unwrap; if dough pulls easily away from husk, it is done. If necessary, steam 5 or 10 minutes longer and test again.
  7. Serve tamales hot.

ISIS women force boys to impregnate them – media

Female detainees in Syrian camps have reportedly used teen males as sex slaves to help populate the so-called Caliphate
Women ISIS devotees held in Syrian detention camps have forced boys as young as 13 to serve as sex slaves to impregnate them and help boost the population of the “Caliphate,” the Daily Beast reported on Thursday.
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At least ten boys at Camp al-Hawl in northeast Syria were conscripted to have intercourse with dozens of women, the US media outlet said, citing unidentified Syrian Defense Force (SDF) officials. The Syrian government has detained about 8,000 ISIS-affiliated women and children since the terrorist group’s defeat in 2019. Adult male ISIS members are held in separate camps.

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“We are being forced to have sex with the ISIS women, to impregnate them,” two teens identified as Ahmet, 13, and Hamid, 14, told a guard at Camp al-Hawl. “Can you get us out of here?” One of the boys was required to have sex with eight ISIS women in just a few days.

Security forces confirmed that teen boys at Camp al-Roj, also in northeastern Syria, had been subjected to similar exploitation, the Daily Beast said. In fact, one of the boys collapsed and was hospitalized after being given a Viagra-like substance to make him perform. Mothers at al-Roj, seeking to protect their sons from sexual enslavement, have begged camp authorities to transfer their boys to rehabilitation centers.

Syrian defense officials have recently adopted a policy of moving boys who have reached puberty to such rehabilitation facilities, where they receive anti-extremism counseling and are prepared for reintegration into society. The United Nations decried the policy last week, calling it “unlawful” and suggested that they may be “forcibly disappeared” or sold.

Many of the ISIS women have refused repatriation to their home countries for themselves and their children. Others, such as “ISIS bride” Shamima Begum of the UK, were stripped of their citizenship and barred from returning.

SDF officials said many women have become pregnant in the camps, though the Damascus government doesn’t know the exact number. Some give birth in secret with hopes of boosting the population of the Islamic State, which they believe will be re-established when their men arrive to break them out of the camps.

Artist Creates Cute Paintings Of Chicks Doing Yoga

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251680100 221383110093296 635068834755249160 n 61ba99aa3e87f 880

Tree pose? Downward-facing dog? If these sound familiar to you, I assume you have tried doing yoga. Like many people in true quarantine fashion. Maybe not only people. For example, artist Lucia Heffernan has imagined chicks in 15 different yoga poses!

The idea was inspired by the phrase “a yoga pose a day keeps the doctor away”, and these lovely paintings were created. Artist Lucia Heffernan has many cool paintings shared on her Instagram account and these chick paintings can be purchased as prints on her Etsy.

More: Instagram, Etsy, Facebook h/t: boredpanda

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Russia, China and South Africa launch joint military drills

Naval ships from the three countries are set to conduct artillery firing exercises in the Indian Ocean, Moscow has announced

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The trilateral ‘Mosi II’ drills officially kicked off in the South African port of Richards Bay on Wednesday, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Frigates from the Russian, Chinese, and South African navies are set to carry out artillery drills in the Indian Ocean over the weekend.

The opening ceremony was overseen by top officials and commanders from the Russian Navy, Chinese Naval Forces and South Africa’s Joint Command. The exercises will also be observed by representatives of Brazil’s naval forces.

Russia will be represented in the drills by the frigate Admiral Gorshkov and the medium sea tanker Kama. China has sent its frigate Rizhao, destroyer Huainan and supply vessel Kekesilihu. The South African Navy will deploy friagte Mendy.  

“The active part of the exercise will take place from February 25 to 27. Joint artillery firing and tactical maneuvering will be carried out at sea. Sailors of the three countries will work out the actions of inspection teams to search and release a captured ship, provide assistance to a ship in distress, and repel enemy air attacks,” a statement from the Russian Defense Ministry’s press service read.

Speaking to the audience attending the opening ceremony on Wednesday, the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Nikolay Evmenov, stated that “the Russian navy is deeply interested in strengthening naval cooperation between Russian, Chinese and South African sailors.”

The three nations conducted similar exercises in 2019. This time, however, South Africa has faced criticism for participating in the drills. The Democratic Alliance, an opposition party, has claimed that the move suggests the country has sided with Russia in the conflict in Ukraine. The government, however, has defended its position by noting that it also routinely engages in naval exercises with other nations such as France and the US.

9 Women Who Gave A ‘Nice Guy’ A Chance Describe Their Experiences

 

1. He seemed a bit shy but goofy,smart and genuinely kind when he approached me, so I agreed to go out and we hit it off at first. Deep, meaningful conversation about our personal challenges, him quickly meeting my friends and me being the first person he called after a family emergency. We were both pretty vulnerable, but things were seemingly progressing somewhat well.

One day he was on Tinder in bed next to me and when called on it, he said that dating me had made him realize that he needed more confidence and experience with women and thus needed to date a lot more different people, but that he only fucked the others at their houses, so I was obviously his no1. I freaked, cried and broke things off – he called me the next day to casually ask me out to the new Hunger Games movie.

I got an STD-screening the next week – he harassed me at work for another 6 months.

2. All the guys I have known or dated that felt it necessary to label themselves “nice guys” turned out to absolutely awful humans. Either they had a bad temper, horrible morals, or just didn’t want to take “no” for answer. One even turned out to be an emotionally abusive alcoholic.

The actual nicest guys I’ve dated or called friends were the ones who didn’t feel the need to label themselves “nice guy”. In fact, the best of them usually warned me and others that they were not all that nice, but always turned out to be the sweetest, most understanding, appreciative, and kind guys I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.

3. Had a “nice guy” on tinder who didn’t make it to date for the following reason.

He lived in a different city so he insisted on an all day date (lives about 50 mins away). I said I’m not comfortable subscribing to 8+ hours with someone I hadn’t met yet, but he kept insisting I had to make it worth his while to come through. At this point I said I can’t see it going anywhere and it was putting me under pressure and that made me feel a little uncomfortable, that realistically, it may not work out so let’s just leave it.

So then he says he’s gonna book a hotel and come through. Explained that’s sweet but it’s making me uncomfortable. So he says I can have the bed and hell be a gentleman and have the sofa… I explained that he seems to have the wrong idea, I’m not going to a hotel with him and I feel uncomfortable, I don’t want to meet. He continues to press, saying he is nice guy, he won’t make me have sex if I don’t want to. I say I don’t want to. I don’t want to go to a hotel. I don’t want to meet. It’s too much pressure, and for someone I’ve not met, I feel uneasy, thanks, good luck with your search…

But apparently I need to give him a chance. He’s willing to come all this way. I say no. He keeps finding new things to message me. Uses my phone number to add my snap chat and says he can see what street I’m on. At this point I start feeling very uneasy. I didn’t know I had location on. I block him. He messaged on something else so I say I’ve got back with my ex. ( I see my ex a lot, we are good friends, he’s happy to “have a word”) so he starts going on about my ex had his chance and blew it, he is a much nicer guy than my ex, he will treat me like a princess and worship me and my ex has blown it etc etc. I tell him this is my choice. Thanks and goodbye. Please don’t try to message me on anything else as it’s not appropriate and I’ve already blocked on 3 things.

Fast forward 4 months and I move cities. I get an Instagram message. It’s the nice guy saying he’s seen my on bumble in this new city and even though we haven’t matched it must not have worked out with my ex. He’s using Instagram and can see I’m near the station (Is that even a thing?!) And we should go on that date that I owe him.

Blocked again. Had a friend stay over that night.

4. Went on and on about what a great, compassionate guy he was. He was actually just your garden variety, abusive psycho.

He once said to me: “I wish you had been abused so you would realise how great I am”. What the fuck. Who says that?!

5. Not well. He was funny and friendly in public, but turned into a different person as soon as we were behind closed doors. He was basically your textbook abuser – manipulative, controlling, and demanding. He wanted to do some really weird and degrading (to me) sex stuff and acted like I was the psycho for not wanting to. He’d make angry comments like “I’m just trying to be romantic and YOU keep freaking out”. I got out of the relationship before he could hit or rape me, but no question that was what the future held. Oh, and he still insisted that he was the nicest guy I’d ever meet.

6. We met on Tindr and he convinced me he was such a nice guy and he was so misunderstood…the typical sob story.

He fatfished me with old photos, tried to convince me that I had autism and we would be “an amazing autistic couple.” I finished the date – politely making conversation while waiting for my half of the cheque.

At the end, I wouldnt let him walk me to my car. I walked him to the bus stop and waited for the bus to drive off before I left.

When I told him later that night that we didn’t really have chemistry, he begged for another chance. He told me he was really depressed and had to see me again because I helped him to feel happy. This is 110% emotional blackmail and I fell for it.

We met again, I was really uncomfortable the entire time but he tried to insist that I was the one for him if I would just meet him closer to his place. He kept trying to grab my waist and hands despite me saying No.

I was weirded out and eventually said goodnight. He went in for a kiss, but I ducked and walked the long way home.

He threatened suicide later that night and showed me his giant scar down his arm from when he had been unsuccessful previously.

I freaked out and blocked him.

He messaged me on Facebook a week later telling me that he thought we had chemistry and he hadn’t friended me yet because he thought it was creepy. So he waited and was messaging me as a final attempt to court me.

It was a wild ride.

7. He was one of the most manipulative people I ever dated. And I will never give another chance to any self proclaimed nice guy again. He kept positioning himself like he was just a nice guy so nothing he did could ever be wrong, hurtful, or rude.

8. I’ve dated several. All of them were manipulative, most were abusive, emotionally and mentally, one physically and sexually. They would constantly belittle my feelings and opinions, ignore me and blow me off, and get mad when I wanted to do my own thing. And god forbid another man pay me any attention, even if it was clear I was uninterested. It gave me a very warped sense of relationships and self. The constant gaslighting and the fact that pretty much all the people I was close to took their sides made me feel absolutely unreasonable and actually insane. Even though the most recent one was roughly 5 years ago, I still am realizing different ways it has damaged me.

A lot of the behaviors they try to pass off as nice are typically incredibly calculated. The will always try to get something from you later. There’s no unconditional anything. There’s no selfless acts. And god forbid you bring up that they said it was just cuz or that they’re using it against you. You are put on an impossibly high pedestal, acting human is punishable by anything from screaming to being kneed in the uterus as hard as they can. They will convince you that they are the nicest you will get cuz they are the nicest out there. There is no better for you. No one could ever possibly love them the way you do. They force you to depend on them. They leave cuz you’ve become too hard to love after everything they’ve put you through. You’re moodier and more withdrawn and miserable, even though most of them cite that your depression is what drew them to you. They wanted to fix you. To see that broken girl smile. They fetishize your sadness and then hate you when they make it worse.

Do not bother with these people.

9. I had dated one for about three weeks, shortly after a serious boyfriend seriously fucked me over. Looking back, it was like he sensed blood in the water with me being sensitive to assholes, and went in for the kill. Also, people have this thought process that nice guys are all basement dwelling fedora wearing neckbeards, when in reality a lot of them are decent looking, normal dudes, which is what this one was.

I got constantly accused of cheating because I was too pretty/smart/whatever for him, even though he was smart and good looking. I have been told multiple times I have one of those friendly, sweet faces, and it makes me always approachable. We could be out and some guy I don’t know could come up to me and ask for directions, I could explain where he wants to go, and he’d thank me and leave, and he’d think I was fucking him, because I knew I could do better, and was rubbing it in his face. The constant praise was also horrible; I’d be told I was a bitch if I wasn’t perfectly happy and wonderful all the time. I’d be brought around to be shown off to his friends, and then ignored once I stopped being amusing. Also dealing with hearing about how horrible he thought he was in comparison to me was so goddamn TIRING, you don’t even know.

The whole thing crashed and burned after I went on a new york trip for a weekend with a few friends, that was planned well before I started dating him.

I have a tattoo near my collarbone/just above my armpit of a cockade that’s the colors of the french flag, because I’m a theatre nerd and love Les Miserables. A guy saw my tattoo and asked if it was a Les Mis thing, and ended up finding out he was involved in the Broadway revival that was going to be happening the following year. We started a conversation that led to me and my two friends and this guy, his wife, and their buddy at a bar together. His wife took a picture of us talking with his hand on my arm looking excited and captioned it with something like ‘well, I’ve lost him to a fangirl’ on instagram and followed me so she could tag me in it, and I liked it.

I woke up the next morning to a wall of text, berating me, calling me a slut, saying I was cheating on him, etc. No idea what he was talking about. Reading through it hit me that he had been checking my instagram likes. I didn’t even know he had an instagram, because he had told me he didn’t. this guy had a secret instagram account so he could monitor my every move. When I freaked out on him about it he said he had to do it, because I was so much better than him, and he needed to know I wasn’t cheating on him because women are all bitches and I could find someone easily while he’d be stuck alone.

I broke up with him on the spot.

The kitten was abandoned and has hid in the muddy, cold, lonely sewer

https://youtu.be/In9vdEZx6rM

What’s It Like To Be Pulled Back From The Brink of Death

 

I don’t know what death feels like, but I do know what dying feels like.

A year and a half ago, I was shot point blank in the chest with a 9mm. I didn’t feel it, but the bullet severed my subclavian artery. I was losing blood quickly and I collapsed. And let me tell you, to lie there and bleed out would have been the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Instead I did the hardest thing I’ve ever done; I crawled out of the house and into the street, where a neighbor saw me and called an ambulance.

I moved back to my porch and sat down on the steps, pressing on the wound as hard as I could… But I was losing my strength at a terrifying rate. I could hear my neighbor in the background saying to 911 dispatch, “y’all need to hurry up, this boy is bleeding.” I’ll never forget the emphasis she put on that last word. I was in my boxers only, and the blood soaking me from neck to toe was far from inconspicuous.

As I was sitting there on my steps, I began to feel everything shut down. Calm overcame chaos. My pineal gland was dripping. I felt instinct, fear, and everything I had known in my worldly existence slowly drift away. I felt no pain throughout this entire ordeal (that didn’t come until the next day, chronic nerve pain that has been with me ever since, as the bullet also did severe damage to my brachial plexus). My vision began to blacken around the edges. Looking back I know I was dying, but I didn’t know it at the time. I stopped caring, which is the scariest part. For a brief moment, it was almost peaceful. When my vision began to fade, I left my body. My body was sitting on the steps, but my mind had left. In my reality, I was sitting directly over my body, upside down on the ceiling, still facing out towards the street. The ambulance rounded the corner as I had about a foot diameter of light remaining in my line of sight, the rest was black. They say don’t go into the light, but that’s asinine. The light is all that’s left of the world as you know it.

The paramedics came at me like a nascar pit crew. Trying to replenish my blood, and I can only imagine what else. I believe they put 5 pints of blood in me on the short ride to the hospital. I asked them if they had me, if I was safe, and they said “NO.” They had me answer questions over and over about my name and address and whatnot… just to keep me alive. This continued into the OR, I wanted to sleep so badly but they wouldn’t let me. Thank fucking god. I also wanted water very badly (you don’t know thirst until you’ve had half your blood drained), but they would not let me drink as it would interfere with the operation. They put in a stent and it didn’t cover it, so they ran another. The head of vascular surgery (who is my vascular surgeon now) was there that night, and when the operating surgeon was about to give up on the second stent and amputate my arm, his boss made him keep going, so I was fortunate enough to keep my arm. It took a lot of rehabilitation to get function back, and my hand still doesn’t work.

However, I beat death that day. And the world has shone with a touch more beauty ever since.

Roxus Where Are You Now 1991

Shrimp Tacos with Cabbage

shrimptacoswithcabbageslaw 7 1140x1710 1
shrimptacoswithcabbageslaw 7 1140×1710 1

Ingredients

  • 1 pound cooked shrimp, shelled, deveined and coarsely chopped
  • 1/2 cup chopped onion
  • 4 teaspoons TABASCO brand Green Pepper Sauce
  • 1/2 cup chopped pimento stuffed green olives
  • 1 large tomato, seeded and diced
  • 1/2 pound cabbage, cored and finely chopped
  • 1/2 cup crema Mexicana (Mexican-style sour cream)*
  • 3 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 12 corn tortillas

* Sour cream mixed with 2 tablespoons milk or cream may be substituted for crema Mexicana.

Instructions

  1. In medium bowl, combine shrimp, onion and 2 teaspoons TABASCO® Green Pepper Sauce, olives and tomato. Toss to mix well.
  2. In separate bowl, combine cabbage, crema Mexicana, cilantro, remaining 2 teaspoons TABASCO® Green Pepper Sauce and salt. Gently toss to mix well.
  3. To serve, place small amount of shrimp mixture in center of each tortilla; top with 2 tablespoons prepared cabbage. Fold tortilla over filling to form taco. Repeat with remaining tortillas.
  4. Serve immediately.

Facing the Global South: Building a new International System by Yang Ping

“If you raise [the development of the BRI] to the strategic level, there are countries where ... you will have to lose money and there are countries where you will be free to make money."

First Public Display of 16-meter-long Papyrus Found in Saqqara Casket

papyrus Saqqara 0
papyrus Saqqara 0

The exciting discovery of a 16-meter-long (52.5 ft) ancient papyrus found in a sarcophagus in Egypt’s Saqqara region has now been unveiled. A papyrus of this size and quality had not been discovered in over a century. The restored artifact that dates back to 50 BC and contains passages and images of the Egyptian Book of the Dead has now been put on display at the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square, Cairo for all to see. It really is an impressive document from Egypt’s deep past.

The Saqqara site where it was discovered, a vast necropolis of the ancient Egyptian capital Memphis, is a UNESCO World Heritage site that’s home to pyramids, animal burials, and even ancient Christian monasteries.

At first, scientists believed the ancient scroll to be only 9 meters long (29.5 ft), but after a thorough restoration and translation process in the restoration laboratory of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, it was revealed to measure an astounding 16 meters (52.5 ft), reported the Egypt Independent .

Mostafa
Mostafa

Mostafa Waziri, examining the extraordinary document. ( Supreme Council of Antiquities )

The papyrus has been named the “Waziri Papyrus” after Mostafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, who made the exciting announcement. It contains texts from the Pharaonic Book of the Dead of its owner, Ahmose, and was found inside one of 250 caskets at the Saqqara site, noted Arkeonews.

Ahmose is mentioned a total of 260 times in the script, which is mostly black ink with some texts in red. The script contains 113 chapters from the Book of the Dead, as well as scenes of Ahmose worshipping Osiris, amongst many other images. The script would have been prepared by priests in anticipation of his death.

mummy 18
mummy 18

Ancient Papyrus Contains Texts from Book of the Dead

The Pharaonic Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text which was written on papyrus scrolls and buried with the deceased in their tomb. The texts contain declarations, hymns, and spells that were intended to help the deceased navigate the treacherous journey to the afterlife. It also includes illustrations and vignettes that depict the journey of the soul through the underworld and the different gods and goddesses the deceased would encounter along the way.

The Book of the Dead is an important source of information on ancient Egyptian beliefs and practices related to death and the afterlife. It is considered an important document of ancient Egyptian culture and religion and continues to be studied by scholars and Egyptologists around the world.

Waziri
Waziri

The Waziri papyrus.  ( Supreme Council of Antiquities )

Papyrus Will Be Displayed at Opening of Grand Egyptian Museum

The date the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities chose to make the announcement of this incredible find was January 14th. This was in recognition of the annual Egyptian Archaeologists Day, due to the fact that this latest discovery is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the country’s archaeologists.

papyrus 3
papyrus 3

More images and text on the Waziri papyrus. ( Supreme Council of Antiquities )

The papyrus is currently the centerpiece of the completed first phase of the renovation of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square.

Ahmed Eissa, Egypt’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities stated at the opening of the newly renovated wing where it is currently housed, “Today we announce the completion of the first phase of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square’s renovation as we are delivering a message to the whole world that the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square is still developing”.

The newly-discovered papyrus containing the Book of the Dead spells will provide a deeper understanding of one of the world’s most fascinating ancient cultures.

Eventually, the papyrus will be one of thousands of exciting artifacts that visitors will be able to view when the Grand Egyptian Museum opens later this year.

Top image: Part of the 16-meter-long document from Saqqara that includes illustrations and text from the Book of the Dead of Ahmose. Source: Supreme Council of Antiquities

US ‘quadrupling’ number of troops in Taiwan – WSJ

Up to 200 soldiers will reportedly head to the island to train its military against a hypothetical “Chinese invasion”

Washington is planning to send between 100 and 200 troops to Taiwan “in the coming months,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing anonymous officials. The personnel will be tasked with training the Taiwanese military against what was described as a “rising threat from China.”

The deployment will more than quadruple the US military presence on the island, according to the Journal

. According to the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower Data Center, there were 23 American soldiers in Taiwan as of autumn 2022.

These Americans have been acting as advisers and trainers for the US weapons and equipment sent to Taipei. The new troops will also train the Taiwanese in tactics “to protect against a potential Chinese offensive,” according to unnamed US officials.

There were also Taiwanese troops in the US, with “a contingent” training alongside the Michigan National Guard in the north of that state, the Journal reported. When reached for comment, the Pentagon said only that the US “commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid.”

“We don’t have a comment on specific operations, engagements, or training, but I would highlight that our support for, and defense relationship with, Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Army Lieutenant Colonel Marty Meiners, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Journal.

The expanded training is intended to “thwart a possible invasion by China,” and has been planned for months, long before this month’s incident with the Chinese “spy balloon,” officials who spoke to the Journal said. They also don’t believe it amounts to “anywhere close to a tipping point” for Beijing.

“One of the difficult things to determine is what really is objectionable to China,” one official said.

China has repeatedly warned the US against arming Taiwan and warned Washington to abide by the treaties and agreements governing their relationship. The US used to recognize Taipei as the “Republic of China” but switched that recognition to Beijing in 1978, adopting a One-China policy.

Taiwan has been a point of contention between China and the US since 1949, when the Communists won the civil war against the Kuomintang. The Americans helped evacuate the defeated nationalists to the island, which was liberated in 1945 from 50 years of Japanese rule.

The People’s Republic of China has pointed to Taiwan’s status as Chinese territory for over 200 years before it was ceded to Japan as a war trophy in 1895. Beijing seeks to reunite

what it calls a renegade island with the mainland, preferably by peaceful means.

Why the United States Has Set Itself Up for Failure in the Semiconductor Race for Military Supremacy

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2023 02 24 15 37

Doomsday prophesising of how China’s days are numbered and that it is in the midst of an economic collapse could not be any further from reality.

The reasons for the spread of this sort of gossip is to keep up the belief (and thus investment) in the idea that the United States is secure in its alpha dog global status and that the world is better off siding with said alpha in its escalating and reckless, not to mention unnecessary, economic and geopolitical war against Russia and China. It is to intimidate any country foolish enough to throw too many of its eggs into the Russia-China basket with the thought that they will be left hanging in the wind once China collapses from the international stranglehold on its economy, which is touted as inevitable.

It is to convince the American people, that the further sacrifices they are about to make in their livelihood and standard of living will be worth it, perhaps to even go so far as to proclaim that this will be the necessary “new normal” all for the cause of world security, of course.

The reality of the situation which should be plain for everyone to see at this point, is that the United States’ sanctions and banning of various types of trade with Russia and China, meant to cripple their economies, is doing more damage to the world markets than anything else, including that of Europe and the United States.

These sanctions have brought the world into a very predictable energy and food crisis to which European and American citizens are told they must suffer through in the name of western security. A crisis which is gutting essential infrastructure required to sustain developed countries. A crisis from which there is no quick return to a first world living standard for its citizenry.

It was thought that such manoeuvres would cripple the Russian economy and cause internal unrest demanding for the removal of President Putin. Instead we see the Russian rouble stronger than it has ever been in large part due to the competent leadership of Sergei Glazyev (see his speech on Sanctions and Sovereignty) who is in the process of organising a “new economic order…[which] will involve a creation of a new digital payment currency founded through an international agreement based on principles of transparency, fairness, goodwill, and efficiency” as he explained in an interview with Pepe Escobar for The Cradle.

In other words, the world’s new monetary system, underpinned by a digital currency, will be backed by a basket of new foreign currencies and natural resources. And it will liberate the Global South from both western debt and IMF-induced austerity. What this means is that with this new system, the economic sovereignty of a nation will be protected; that a country rich in resources will finally be in a position to use the profits of these resources to strengthen their currencies and build infrastructure essential for any first world nation rather than be forcefully reduced to an indebted raw resource producer and nothing more as enforced by the policies of the IMF over the past several decades.

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2023 02 24 15 39

Russia’s economy did not tank, and the alliance between Russia and China has only grown stronger. And despite attempts to isolate their markets, trade opportunities remain ample and in high demand while the United States and Europe who refuse to participate in these markets are pushing themselves further into a corner.

Instead of reassessing its position, the U.S., which clearly did not expect such an outcome, has instead decided to escalate this economic war with China, which will create further hardship for the world markets, in the middle of a very serious semiconductor backlog.

Semiconductors/chips are an essential component for any smart device, including automobiles and smart phones. They are essential in the production of AI, quantum computing, and microelectronics.

Semiconductors are also essential for advanced weapons systems, including hypersonic missiles.

Interestingly, the United States has shot itself in its own kneecap in the middle of a race for military supremacy since the crisis of the semiconductor/chips backlog (triggered by the United States), which has heavily hit the consumer market especially the automobile industry, has also hit the United States’ ability to churn out advanced weapons systems in mass quantity.

In December 2020, SMIC along with other Chinese firms were put on a U.S. blacklist for exports called the Entity List. This was an attempt to prevent SMIC, China’s largest and most sophisticated semiconductor producer, from importing the necessary material and equipment to manufacture 14nm and 20nm semiconductors/chips, which also ended up cutting off the world markets from China, the main supplier of these chips.

TSMC (Taiwan) and Samsung (South Korea) are the present titans in the cutting-edge semiconductor industry (that is 7nm and 5nm chips), however, China’s SMIC was the largest supplier of 20nm+ chips which are essential for the consumer market. When China was taken out of this market it created a bottleneck since TSMC and Samsung, who do not specialise in bulk manufacturing of lower grade chips, were already way above capacity. This created a massive global bottleneck in semiconductor/chip production. [East Asia is manufacturing about 75% of the chips in the world.]

Ironically, the United States would have had an easier time amping up production in their advanced weapons systems if they had left China as the main global supplier of 20nm chips.

Over the past month or so the U.S. State Department has been busy setting up weapon sales with countries such as Japan ($293 million deal, principally with Raytheon Technologies for 150 air-to-air missiles that can be loaded on F-35 fighters), Singapore ($630 million deal for laser-guided bombs and other munitions), Australia ($235 million deal with Lockheed Martin for 80 air-to-surface missiles), South Korea ($130 million for 31 lightweight torpedoes to use with MH-60R helicopters for anti-submarine warfare) and Germany (with a potential sale of over 35 F-35 fighters).

These are orders that presently are unable to be fulfilled by these companies in the short-term due to the semiconductor backlog of 1-2 years or more.

The United States is attempting to increase its onshore manufacturing capabilities so that it can control much more of the supply chain within its domestic market, rather than the present reality, which is that there are several countries dispersed throughout the world who are the specialised leaders of one of the approximately 50 steps, requiring high standard specialisation, in manufacturing cutting edge semiconductors.

The specialising process for all the components required for leading chip manufacturing is so costly (in the hundreds of billions) and precise that it is estimated that it would take at least 4-6 years or more to master each area of specialisation.

If you want a resilient [self-sufficient] chip supply chain, you not only need chip plants, you also need a whole string of suppliers from critical chemicals and precision components all coming along,” said an executive at Japan’s Daikin, reported by NIKKEI Asia. “Building a semiconductor plant takes several years, but building chemical plants will take even longer given the extensive environmental assessments and regulations for handling chemicals.” [Refer here for a short video on how semiconductors are made.]

Presently, no country comes even close to this capability. Later on in this paper I will explain why if any country is to reach resilience, that is self-sufficiency in this market, it will be China not the United States.

Is China too far behind to catch up?

There has been a lot of persistence, perhaps in the belief that if one repeats something out loud enough times it will come true, that China is too far behind to be a contender in the semiconductor race. Since the U.S. ban on China purchasing certain essential materials for chip manufacturing in December 2020, in just the past year, China has experienced a 33% semiconductor growth output.

According to Bloomberg, China’s chip industry is the fastest growing anywhere else in the world, including the world leaders TSMC and Samsung, owning 19 out of the world’s 20 fastest growing chip industry firms over the past four quarters.

SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd., the biggest contract chip makers, have kept their Shanghai-based plants operating at almost full capacity even as the worst Covid-19 outbreak since 2020 paralyzed factories and logistics across China, while other leading semiconductor industries, such as TSMC and Samsung, have been operating at 60% capacity or lower (due to the backlog in essential materials). SMIC recently reported a 67% surge in quarterly sales, outpacing far larger rivals GlobalFoundries Inc. and TSMC.

Despite the United States having already pushed the Netherlands to ban ASML Holding NV from selling China EUV technology (considered essential for manufacturing cutting edge semiconductors), at the time of writing this, it is now attempting to put further pressure on the Netherlands to ban even DUV systems (which predate EUV and are generations behind cutting edge lithography technology) to China in the U.S.’ desperate attempt to remove or at least contain China as a competitor. The U.S. has also attempted to put pressure on Japan’s Nikon (the only other DUV manufacturer at 5% market share) as well.

However, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said this past June he is against reconsidering trade relations with China and called for the EU to develop its own policies toward Beijing. China is the Netherlands’ third-biggest trade partner after Germany and Belgium. ASML opposes a ban on sales of DUV lithography equipment to Chinese customers because it is already a mature technology.

I suspect this sort of response will become the new normal for the United States if they continue along this line of thinking that everyone, and not just the U.S., should also be ready to shoot themselves in the kneecap or worse, in service of a self-sabotaing idea of U.S. hegemony.

You have to admit, it is a hard story to sell when China is increasingly one of the top trading partners of the majority of countries, while the U.S. seems to only ask that countries be willing to do frequent bloodlettings and be the first to poke their heads up from the trenches in reckless military posturing, all in service to the Anglo-American empire, who has consistently shown that they have not a care in the world for the future state of such countries.

And it gets much worse for American aspirations for global military supremacy…

China’s SMIC has had the capability of manufacturing 7nm chips since 2021, thought to be equivalent to Taiwan’s TSMC’s N7 (7nm chip) in yield optimization. [TSMC is capable of 5nm chip production and is expected to achieve 3nm chip production by the end of this year]. This puts China in the lead of the United States’ Intel, which has yet to achieve manufacturing capability of 7nm chips and hopes to reach capability by the end of 2022 or early 2023.

[Note: Presently, TSMC is banned from selling semiconductors to Huawei that have been made with U.S. technology. Huawei up until that point was the biggest client of TSMC.]

TSMC had already filed lawsuits in U.S. courts against SMIC for products made with TSMC trade secrets in 2003 and 2006, the latter which ended with a settlement. This was a rather controversial manoeuvre on the part of TSMC since the United States is not neutral ground and stands to benefit greatly by crippling what is now China’s no. 1 semiconductor producer. However, TSMC did decide to make a settlement with SMIC rather than attempting to go for the full jugular. Interestingly one of the terms of settlement was the transfer over of about 10% of SMIC’s stocks to TSMC.

There are no signs yet that TSMC is seeking another lawsuit against SMIC, however, even if they were successful, it were likely that China would be prevented from trading with unfriendly countries in 7nm chips but would continue its production and application within China and its trade to friendly countries. The U.S. is increasingly in no position to enforce anything further than this.

With the advent of SMIC’s N+1 and N+2 (7nm chips), China is now 4-6 years behind the leaders (TSMC, Samsung) in cutting edge semiconductor capability. HiSilicon and Huawei together will no doubt accomplish much with N+2 and are capable of massive output.

This is very big news.

Funny how western press seems to be rather silent on this massive breakthrough for China which has propelled it ever close to the front of the race. Instead, we seem to be told, with ever more vigor, that China’s economy is in the midst of a collapse…

China has accomplished what almost everyone thought to be actually impossible. Namely, it was thought an extremely difficult if not impossible task to produce 7nm chips with high yield optimization without EUV technology (to which China has been banned from using after the U.S. pressured the government of the Netherlands). China has also been banned from other thought-to-be key components and yet, have either found a way to bypass the requirement of such things or have successfully specialised in their production on their own.

In January 2022, legendary TSMC R&D Director Dr. Burn Lin mentioned in an interview that SMIC can even fabricate N5 equivalent chips with only multi-patterning no EUV necessary. (TSMC had also become quite good at making cutting edge semiconductors before the EUV technology had come out).

Thus, those simply accusing China of just “copying” TSMC N7 have no comprehension that to actually successfully manufacture TSMC N7 yield optimization level chips is akin to successfully building the Star Trek Enterprise and all its features with 60% of the parts and using technology thought to be about 20 years behind the requirement to build such a thing. You can understand why almost everyone thought this was an impossibility for China.

Instead of accusing China of merely copying, her critics should in fact acknowledge this impressive achievement for what it is. China is increasingly finding itself in the lead of the U.S., despite being the only country banned from full participation in this market.

How the U.S. was the first to use the “Copy EXACTLY! Technology Transfer Method”

Before I go on to discuss where is the U.S. positioned in the semiconductor race, I thought it necessary to review a very important piece of history that everyone, but especially Americans, should know about in relation to their criticism of China.

In the 1980s Japan was the kingpin in cutting edge semiconductors production. This was especially the case relating to a specific type of memory chip DRAM.

Japan’s product was not only superior to that of what the United States was producing but it was also much cheaper, due to Japan’s investment in automation tools and processes. This resulted in much lower defect rates and higher yields.

It was also because Americans were dependent on NMOS for their DRAM technologies, whereas the Japanese had decided to go the more difficult and risky route with CMOS, that is, more expensive and harder to pull off. Rapid advances in lithography technology made the cost of CMOS far lower and became the industry standard.

American chipmakers were now the owners of outdated, expensive technology. And Japan became the kingpin of the semiconductor world.

In 1985 there was a recession in the computer market, with the microcomputer market seeing an 8% decline. This decline had massive reverberations down the supply chain. Prices collapsed by 60%.

Intel, DRAM pioneer, experienced the biggest crash in orders in over ten years, resulting in their exiting of the DRAM industry entirely. Leading U.S. semiconductor industries saw 14-17% decline in revenues. By 1986, the American DRAM industry had dropped from fourteen producers in 1970 to just three.

Complaints from certain quarters in the United States began criticizing Japan for “predatory” and “unfair” trade practices despite the recession in 1985 being a demand problem and not a competition problem. These complaints were primarily:

  1. That the Japanese were dumping semiconductors into the U.S. market at below fair market value.
  2. The Japanese were not providing foreign chip makers sufficient access to its domestic market

However, Japan’s semiconductor presence in the U.S. did not harm all American markets, IBM and AT&T greatly benefitted from these lower prices for DRAM.

Discussions began about implementing trade barriers, which would in turn make America an even more expensive place to make things, accelerating the electronic assembly off-shoring trend already underway.

In June 1985, Micron filed an anti-dumping complaint against Japanese exporters of 64K DRAM. Intel, AMD and National Semiconductor soon followed, doing the same for the EPROM market.

The Reagan Administration had filed a complaint of their own over 256K DRAM (64K DRAM was released by Japan in 1982 and 256K DRAM was released by Japan in 1984).

President Reagan, who was supposed to be all about free markets, in the spring of 1986 forced the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement with METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan).

Part of the conditionalities of this agreement were that the American semiconductor share in the Japanese market be increased to a target of 20-30% in five years, that every Japanese firm stop its “dumping” into the American market and the Americans wanted a separate monitoring body to help enforce all of this.

Many Japanese companies felt that their government had caved and had betrayed them. They had hoped for a simple fine. It was thought incredible, and rightly so, that their company trade data now needed to be submitted to a third party in order to be reviewed and judged in accordance to the demands of an American market competitor.

Not only this, but these Japanese companies were being asked to trade with American companies, regardless of whether the American product was the most superior or best priced from its competitors, to meet this U.S. demand for a 20-30% Japanese market share.

No surprise here, the Japanese companies refused to do this and METI had no way of forcing them to do so.

President Reagan responded by imposing a 100% tariff on $300 million worth of Japanese goods in April 1987. Combined with the 1985 Plaza Agreement which revalued the Japanese Yen the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement gave the U.S. memory market the extra boost it needed.

Of course, that boost was akin to pushing Japan’s head underwater for several minutes while a race was underway, however, rather embarrassingly, Japan would still maintain a lead.

The U.S. was in no position to beat the Japanese in its domination of the semiconductor industry. There was no choice but to…copy Japanese technology, in the name of American supremacy that is.

It appears no country has the right to earn its way to the top other than the U.S. in a world we are told benefits the smartest, most innovative and fastest growing industries. Apparently everyone at the end of the day works for a global boss, who reserves the right to determine your company’s fate and the rules are changed accordingly to what suits this global boss’ needs case by case, the world markets be damned.

Intel would be the first to implement vast copying of Japanese semiconductor technology in order to stay in the competition. Craig Barrett CEO (1998-2005) and Chairman (1968-2009) of Intel was the first to implement “Copy EXACTLY! Technology Transfer Method.” I think the title gives you a good enough idea of what that entails.

Again, if we have learned anything from the generous lessons bestowed on us by the great arbiter, the United States, it is to “Do as I Say, Not as I Do.”

Apparently copying is only an infringement on patents when other countries do it. I guess this is sort of similar to the American lesson that biological research facilities only turn into dangerous bio labs threatening world security when in the possession of the Russians, when in the possession of the Americans it is simply called biological research and entomology (the study of insects).

Yields at American fabs (semiconductor fabrication plant, also know as foundry), improved by 60% in 1986 to 84% in 1991. Over the same time the Japanese had gone from 75% in 1986 to 93% in 1991, decreasing the gap by 6% in the span of five years between the two competitors.

In 1984 the U.S. passed the National Cooperative Research Act, which among other things allowed for the revising of laws to permit partnerships between national research institutes and private companies and that these private companies could attain the exclusive rights of the generated research for five years or even longer.

This initiative was to partially mimic what the Japanese had done in terms of collaboration between companies and R&D, however, whatever came out of such partnerships were owned by the Japanese government. In the case of the United States, publicly funded research was to be the property of private companies who could choose to use whatever they learned from such research for their sole benefit or to even bury it if it was thought to be not “profitable” in accordance with their aims, whatever that might be.

In 1987, fourteen American semiconductor companies along with DARPA joined together to found SEMATECH. SEMATECH became the facilitator of relationships within the American semiconductor industry. DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.

In case the chilling reality of this has not fully sunk in, what the formation of SEMATECH along with the National Cooperative Research Act meant, was that the U.S. Department of Defense was the sole proprietor of R&D research in practically ALL fields of science and engineering. In other words, the U.S. Department of Defense would be the sole conduit at the core deciding where funding goes, which projects should be prioritised and downgraded, and which projects should be killed in their cradle never to be talked about again with threat on your life.

For those who take issue in all advancement of technology because they are fearful that we are heading towards such dystopic visions as Terminator, the Matrix, or Bladerunner, this is not because this is what humans “naturally” do, it is not even fair nor accurate to say that this is what all countries will inevitably do. It is namely what a country will do if the military industrial complex is its sole reason for existing on this Earth. And it will feed this monster at the cost of the welfare and livelihood of its actual people, as we see so clearly occurring specifically within the United States.

And yes, this is specifically striking in the United States, especially since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, to which the U.S. has yet to do anything differently in terms of how it runs its finances, despite countless Americans losing their homes and more while the big banks have been repeatedly bailed out with taxpayer money.

Today, the U.S. continues to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on its military industrial complex and leaves the ever-growing poverty, suicide and drug abuse unaddressed while it loudly blares its woke priorities as to how to speak in such a way that no person could possibly be emotionally offended and in the process render anything you have to say entirely irrelevant.

People should wake up and realise that they are not mad because of this or that label, it is because your future was stolen from you, and it was done by the hand of your very own government.

Your oppression in situated in your lack of opportunity, in your lack of real choice for a better future. In today’s western world you are free to choose whatever avatar you like but you are not free to make any changes to the status quo that is governed by the military industrial complex, which keeps the American people in ever-increasing poverty and destroys entire nations. What sort of freedom is that?

This is the reason why no decent scientist can hope to accomplish great benefits for their society with any research they conduct in the United States. It is all about business at the end of the day, and there is no bigger business than the military business in the United States, except perhaps “biological research” which is drawing a close second, and technically speaking figures into the military business…

In the case of China what we see is the very opposite to what is occurring in the United States. As the World Bank and BBC attest, surprise surprise, China is doing what they say they are doing in addressing poverty levels, you can read about it on the BBC news site. According to the World Bank, which draws a higher poverty line for upper-middle income countries, to reflect the economic conditions, China is now considered an upper-middle-income country according to the World Bank.

Therefore, China is able to not only compete with the American arms race (in self-defence to the clear war escalation), but it is also able to compete in other areas of more useful endeavours as well as raising its own people out of poverty.

China is not subservient to a military industrial complex and using the lazy logic that if it happened to the U.S. it will happen to China, is to not only disregard what is actually going on in China today but it is also to disregard the cultural orientation of its country and its people.

Now back to our story.

Intel, which would exit out of DRAM in 1985 would turn their focus on logic chips, which they are now a world leader in.

In 1991, the Japanese real estate bubble burst. The real estate bubble had inflated due to the Yen’s appreciation, triggered by the 1985 Plaza Accord.

In 1983 Samsung received a technology transfer from Micron (the company that launched the complaint suit against Japan that started this whole thing off) for 64K DRAM.

To the credit of Samsung, they utilised this technology transfer to maximum use and along with LG and Hyundai were able to produce the 4M DRAM, with their product hitting the market just 6 months after the Japanese.

Micron was one of the few American DRAM producers to have survived the 80s and had made adjustments making production very cheap for their lower-end DRAM chips.

While Samsung was beginning to compete for the lead in cutting edge DRAM technology with the Japanese, Micron in a pincer move flooded the Japanese markets with half-a-generation behind DRAM chips at a cost of $4 when Japan was selling them at $6.

Japan’s semiconductor market was hit from the top by Samsung with their high-end products and at the bottom by Micron with their low-end products, known as the Micron Shock. The Micron Shock set into motion the fall of the Japanese semiconductor manufacturing industry.

128M DRAM prices collapsed by 50% in a single year. Fujitsu exited the DRAM market in 1998. Japanese companies Hitachi and NEC merged their operations together to create Elpida in 1999. They later took over Mitsubishi’s DRAM division in 2002. Elpida was later acquired by none other than….Micron Technology.

Japan’s semiconductor industry is still strong but they are much smaller players in the world market and no longer have a capability of developing cutting edge semiconductors. Companies such as TSMC, Samsung, SMIC, and Intel are much further in the lead. (for more on this story to which I largely drew from refer to Asianometry).

Today, the United States has reopened its arms to Japan in what is promised to be a loving embrace this time around, Japan will open an R&D center for next-generation 2nm chips by year-end under a partnership with the U.S., part of their efforts to establish secure chip supply chains amid tensions around industry leader Taiwan.

Perhaps Japan truly believes it will really be different this time around.

Is the U.S. too far behind to catch up?

Intel was scheduled to have its 7nm chips in production by 2021, instead one year later, Intel has yet to develop the capability of 7nm chip production which they hope to achieve by the end of 2022 or early 2023.

However, despite China having figured this all out in 2021, we are still supposed to believe that China is hopelessly behind the U.S. in the semiconductor race. Back in July 2021, Intel is still making big announcements of their comeback, now moved back to the year 2025

2025 is something that is almost lightyears away in the semiconductor R&D. Who knows what TSMC, Samsung and SMIC will have achieved by then, there may even be a new form of technology to replace the entire present way of doing things. Perhaps the U.S. is used to making these predictions assuming everyone else will remain stationary? Someone should tell them and their investors that this is no longer 1985.

With this set back in mind that things tend not to run on schedule in the semiconductor business, is it a feasible prospect of the United States to increase its onshore manufacturing capabilities so that it can control much more of the supply chain within its domestic market?

The short answer is no. But don’t take it from me, take it from Morris Chang, an elder statesman of the semiconductor industry who founded and formerly chaired TSMC, who put this smack of reality most bluntly in remarks addressed to the U.S. as reported by NIKKEI Asia:

If you want to re-establish a complete semiconductor supply chain in the U.S., you will not find it as a possible task,he said at an industry forum last year.Even after you spend hundreds of billions of dollars, you will still find the supply chain to be incomplete, and you will find that it will be very high cost, much higher cost than what you currently have.”

Despite these words of advice, amidst what I think can be fairly called an economic recession if not depression, the United States has just recently passed the $52 billion CHIPS Act, with $39 billion planned to be spent domestically, to namely benefit, you guessed it, the military industrial complex.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned in a recent interview with CNBC while the CHIPS Act was being considered by Congress:

If you allow yourself to think about a scenario where the United States no longer had access to the chips currently being made in Taiwan, it’s a scary scenario…It’s a deep and immediate recession. It’s an inability to protect ourselves by making military equipment. We need to make this in America.

Notice the only concern she names by name? The military industrial complex. At some point Americans need to ask themselves, what is the point of all of this military equipment if the American people’s livelihood is not economically secure, in violation to the promise of freedom from want as one of the four core American freedoms. How is the American government providing the American people security if they do not even have enough food to eat and have no homes to live in but increasingly ghettofied communities living like an ant colony. Or Elon Musk’s ridiculous house box. They are literally selling boxes for homes as if this is some sort of luxury product.

Why is it ok for Americans to increasingly have no access to the most basic of basic needs while hundreds of billions of dollars are poured into Department of Defense Frankenstein projects?

In case you haven’t noticed, the Cold War has been going on for 76 years now. When has the military industrial complex ever been justified and not in fact based on conscious lies? President Eisenhower departed his office actually acknowledging that he left a monster growing in the basement and had no idea how to get rid of it in his farewell address:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

Honestly, he might as well have gotten into a helicopter and left the country waving like Nixon did while the Americans all stared dumbstruck. But somehow we largely regard that speech as if it were something respectable. Let us call a spade for what it is. And what happened to the next President who was elected to address the matter? His brains were splattered onto the pavement in broad daylight on live television.

Anyway, I digress, back to the matter of American supremacy…

The U.S. is confident that it can once again unleash its jungle roar of supremacy with the help of TSMC. TSMC is scheduled to building fabs (semiconductor fabrication plants) in the U.S. and Japan.

Intel doesn’t expect its new fabs in Ohio to begin production until 2025. Intel is also building two new factories in Arizona expected to go online in 2024. That’s when TSMC and Samsung also plan to open new fabs in Texas and Arizona, respectively. What this means is essentially that they have agreed to share some of their trade secrets with the U.S.

This is likely not being done voluntarily, without some very scary threats.

As NIKKEI Asia reported Taiwan’s government is keenly aware that if TSMC were to move production sites it could weaken the island’s security position, analysts say. For many analysts, those factories and their role in the global economy act as an insurance policy for the island.

The Taiwanese government will definitely hope TSMC keeps its most cutting-edge factories all in Taiwan,” said Su Tzu-yun, director of the Institute for National Defense Security Research in Taipei. “That could make Taiwan a safer place. No one would want to damage TSMC’s advanced chip production capacities, which are the hearts of many electronic devices…We don’t think the tension and competition between the U.S. and China will end any time soon…As a crucial supplier, TSMC may still face a tough issue later – choosing sides.

TSMC is thus stuck in a very tight spot right now. What Taipei should also understand is that Taiwan is expendable to the United States, but it is not expendable to China. Rather, Taiwan is actually essential for China’s security. Taiwan needs to realise that words are words but actions are another thing. Independence for Taiwan is not a reality. It is not an economic reality. And it is not a political reality (not to mention cultural reality).

The United States will not stop until Taiwan becomes its own military base (added to the list of South Korea and Japan) and becomes an upholder to U.S. hegemony in the area, which pretty much runs counter to every country’s interest in South-East Asia. Or Taiwan can return to China and receive protection from America’s war mongering. China will do this one way or another, that is, defend their land against a U.S. invasion, but it would be nice if Taiwan had its head together if such a stand-off were to occur.

In case you have not been informed, Taiwan is internationally recognised, including by the United States as part of China. China has enough missiles to defend Taiwan without any issue. For more on China’s military capability refer to ex-Marine Brian Berletic’s New Atlas.

Thus, though Intel has high ambitions to somehow be in the lead in 2025 despite only being thrown scraps from the alley presently, the elephant in the room here is that the U.S. seems to have lost any ability to actually be an innovator in the field. The only thing keeping them in the game right now as a leading cutting edge semiconductor manufacturer is their use of intimidation and threat of force.

The writing is on the wall, as Russia and China gain in economic and military supremacy, South Korea and Taiwan will be free to conduct their business as they choose and not be obligated to constantly give the U.S. favors under uncomfortably tense situations threatening the very sovereignty of these companies let alone countries.

Another rather large factor to the U.S.’ miscalculation in their strive for supremacy is the matter of a little mineral called Fluorite.

Fluoropolymers are a key material for semiconductor production. Fluoropolymers are processed from fluorspar, also known as fluorite, a mineral of which China controls nearly 60% of the global production output, according to data from market research company IndexBox. China has long identified fluorspar as a strategic resource and back in the late 1990s limited exports due to its importance to industries from agriculture, electronics and pharmaceuticals to aviation, space and defense.

In a supply chain review paper published by the White House in 2021, the U.S. flagged the risks of critical materials subject to foreign domination and identified fluorspar as one in a list of “shortfall strategic and critical materials.”

2023 02 24 15 42
2023 02 24 15 42

An independent commission established by Congress recently concluded: “If a potential adversary bests the United States in semiconductors over the long term or suddenly cuts off U.S. access to cutting-edge chips entirely, it could gain the upper hand in every domain of warfare.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reportsChina’s leaders have set a goal to build a ‘fully modern’ military by 2027 based on ‘informatization,’ ‘intelligentization,’ and ‘mechanization,’ investing heavily in technical areas which support such an approach, such as AI, quantum computing, hypersonics, and microelectronics.”

As the chair and vice chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) put it in 2021, “We do not want to overstate the precariousness of our position, but given that the vast majority of cutting-edge chips are produced at a single plant separated by just 110 miles of water from our principal strategic competitor, we must re-evaluate the meaning of supply chain resilience and security.”

U.S. dependency on Taiwanese production of chips for defense systems extends beyond AI. TSMC makes semiconductors used in F-35 fighters and a wide range of “military-grade” devices used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

Interestingly, the CSIS report acknowledges that advances in semiconductor technology are primarily driven by the development of devices for commercial use.

Which is what China is exactly focusing on right now. Recall China was the number one world supplier of semiconductors for commercial use with 75% of all semiconductor production coming out of East Asia.

What China has done in fact is, to quote Pascal Coppens, set up an ecosystem in Shenzhen that will allow for top industrial focus on all levels of the semiconductor production line for commercial use, while SMIC, HUAWEI, and HiSilicon focus on the cutting edge semiconductor technology. As Pascal Coppens makes the point, China’s semiconductor ecosystem is in fact a form of decentralization, while the United States is approaching the semiconductor race from an approach of centralization (around the military industrial complex).

TSMC is bottlenecked due to the reasons already discussed above. TSMC is operating at around 60% capacity and to achieve 80% capacity would be considered an incredible achievement. China has the ability to correct the semiconductor shortage that is bankrupting western companies right now, including the automobile industry. And 90% of the chips needed to make the smart world will have to come from China. Recall, TSMC owns 10% of SMIC stocks, if SMIC is able to meet these demands, TSMC stands to benefit greatly, much above what they are capable of producing as output.

And everyone knows, there is no greater romance than a forbidden romance.

6 People Describe What’s It Like To Do DMT

1. The other side was like a rollercoaster ride. I had no choice but to sit back and be carried away as things unfolded in front of me. I — or, my essence, my consciousness — was just floating in space, detached from existence, not fighting anything, not trying to direct anything. It was like I was being given a spiritual tour of this parallel world.

The first thing that I remember is the imagery. The infinitely intricate, breathtakingly complex geometric images that I saw were indescribably beautiful. One pattern after another, in split seconds, unfolded. Dozens of them. They unfolded or melted away as quickly as they appeared. Glowing rainbow colors — everything had an aura. It turned blue, green, yellow, hot pink, light orange — unfathomably beautiful. And they kept coming and coming and coming — It is simply astonishing that the mind is capable of such things.

Then, it’s like I’m in space — pitch-black darkness, but with hundreds of glowing, rainbow stars in the background, shining beautifully. And I go past these holographic, glowing blue floors — and then I saw — them. They could be described as aliens or elves — aliens, since I had the feeling of being in outer space; elves, because of their elongated ears. They were very thin, but not emaciated — everything was proportional. Their bodies were comprised of triangular shapes, and were glowing blue, too, although they also had an aura.

I saw several of them, though I remember certain images most vividly. I saw a family of three — a mother, a father, and a young boy. She was pouring the boy cereal at the table as the father was at the stove, attending to something, talking to a client on the phone. I also saw two young women having coffee on a breezy weekday afternoon. I vaguely remember a man showing himself to me, as if he were about to go to work. But I didn’t interact with them; they said nothing to me — it was just this sense that this was their world, and, while things looked mundane, their lives were peaceful and didn’t need any interference. I just had to keep going; my ride was taking me elsewhere. It was all happening so frustratingly quickly.

As I felt myself coming down and my consciousness restored, the images kept coming at me at a million miles a minute — images that implicitly conveyed information, mostly evoking feelings of childhood and daily life, although they felt like so much more. Things were just coming and going at lightning speed — there was hardly time to process any of it. It was simply an incomparable show, like a kaleidoscope of dream images, beautiful geometric shapes, and images that so perfectly conveyed particular feelings.

When I came to, all I could do for three minutes was pound the ground relentlessly, repeating variations of ‘Holy shit!’ and ‘What the fuck?!’ — It was just pure astonishment, just utter disbelief at what I’d just experienced. I still felt ‘in the experience’ for another five minutes or so, — my body was shaking, I was breathing heavily, and I was still able to feel out-of-body when I closed my eyes.

2. “I cannot recall the transition to the void. There were no colors or visions, in the traditional sense. I realized immediately that I had actually poisoned myself, and this was not a DMT trip at all, this was death.

“This period of time is impossible to relate. Try to understand that there was no sensation of time at all. Nothing was linear, and my ideas seemed to come to me at impossible intervals. My brain had been killed, I could tell, because I could not think. I could only sense the overwhelming loneliness and shame. I had actually believed at some point, somewhere, that I was alive, but this was not possible, because I was a scrap of discarded thought, not worthy of keeping. It was a foregone conclusion that I would destroy myself. This seemed to be forever.

“There appeared in the vastness a tiny point of light. I remember realizing that I had not died at all, but that I had been dead. Then, not dead, but dormant. Dormant. I was about to be born.”

3. “I couldn’t believe the breakneck speed with which I was beginning to move, like a proton in a hyper spatial supercollider. The breathtakingly ecstatic sensation of being literally shot out of the confines of my corporeal body was overwhelming, and already my mind was grasping wildly about for some semblance of familiarity. No previous DMT journey had ever moved this fast…

“ Ahead was an entirely ludicrous, tensile, concentric, mandala-like disco-medusa that wore about it a technicolor dream coat of fibrillating antennae, surrounded by an ultraviolet aura. Instantly I could tell it was alive: some sort of a sentinel. Then seemingly out of nowhere and from every direction at once came these freakish tentacles of liquid lapis lazuli. They began moving together with an almost orchestral hyper precision, and I was completely mesmerized — it was like nothing I had ever seen…

“The presence of what is awesome, what is wildly and passionately and luminously alive, filled every meridian in the vast continent of my expanded being, an intensity of joy and love and life coursing like heavenly ambrosia through my electrified veins. It was as though I myself was God, moving through liquid ecologies of God, the self-crystallizing emerald labyrinths of the tryptamine dream time, a marvelous infundibulum of plasmodial calisthenics. What occurred was a total meltdown of everything I know and hold dear. [It was an] utter surrender into the honeycomb love womb of the universe reborn, born anew in a thousand unendingly magnificent eyes, and Maya and Lila handheld spinning in sundream dandelions, my five senses spinning like a zillion gyroscopes round the centripetal amethyst of this all and everything.”

4. “I was transported to that extremely alien-like realm that I had been to so many times before. I felt like I was being schooled on existence. A teacher entity that seemed to have some sort of almost condescending power over me was trying to convince me that ‘they’ constructed our reality completely, and tried to get me to agree that this reality was not under our control; it was being constructed and predetermined by an outside force completely. Even though I had lost complete touch with reality, I did not listen blindly. I was skeptical. ([It was] not that I disbelieved it, but I didn’t believe it either… I always like to keep an open mind when it comes to these sorts of existential matters). The entity was so persistent about trying to convince me! I remained neutral on the matter, but courteous and attentive all the same…

“I don’t know where I was, but I was confronted by a mother entity. She was shapeless; dripping, melting, ugly, terrifying, disgusting, and even smelled bad. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but next thing I knew, she was engaging me in psychic conversation. She had a wallet of some sort, and began showing me photographs of her son. I could tell that she loved her son very much. She also had a bunch of his artwork that she was obviously proud of, and began showing it to me. The problem was, her son and all of his artwork were also melting, grotesque and disgusting. I could still feel her genuine love for her son and pride in his artwork, but at the same time, no matter how hard I tried to show her love, I couldn’t hide the fact that I felt grossed out by her and the entire situation. I could tell that she could tell that I was feeling uncomfortable…

“When I came down from this trip, I found myself feeling guilty for not being able to feel/give the love that I felt that I should have given her. So I had another hit of DMT and tried to meditate on the experience and its meaning. I tried to send out my purest, most intended form of love to her and every other entity under this umbrella called consciousness. I even tried to psychically apologize to her for my reaction to her. I felt a little bit better after that, like I had resolved something.”

5. I was given the pipe and took the largest hit I could. After blowing out the smoke I immediately took a second, very large hit and instantly handed my friend the pipe. As soon as I blew the second hit out a familiar feeling came over me. It was very much like the peak of inhaling N2O. It lasted just enough time for me to think that this is not very impressive (about 30 seconds into trip). The next sensation was a feeling of separation from my body and the feeling I could not breath (45 seconds into trip). I had expected these feelings from my studies so I just relaxed and waited for the next stage of this experiment. No study, no book, no letter and no conversation could have explained to me or prepared me for what was yet to come.

I started to think to myself ‘remember to breath, stay calm, you will be back’. Before I finished that thought I was met by a multitude of sounds (At this point track of time was lost) It was music-like but it was not music. It was the typical cracking and popping I had read about but did never read that these sounds could be felt. I could feel them in every part of my body and that was when I realized I had no body, I was outside of my body. My soul had separated from the flesh and had transcended to another place I still did not yet understand. I then realized these sounds were not just random sounds but living entities. I did not question what these entities were or where they came from. I did not try to communicate with them for I had no need. They were there and the sound they made gave me more comfort and peace than I have ever felt on this plane of existence. I knew they had come to see me and to guide me to where I was going. We had known each other before and were with each other not to question what was happening or to communicate with each other but just to thrive from each other’s energy. I had a feeling of mutuality between us. They were all around me, inside me, over me and below me and the whole time nothing more than content, peaceful feelings were present. I thought this was all there was and I would be returning home soon. I had never been so wrong in my life.

I think the sounds may have been beings sent to guide me to where I was being taken. I had a feeling of movement faster than anything I could have ever imagined. I felt a flood of energy and ultra high and low frequencies weighing on my body similar to a high G-force turn. While this was happening I felt as if I was being flooded with information. It was like other beings trying to communicate with me each one wanting my attention. It was coming too fast and it was the only time I had any sort of panic or fear, I thought or said slow down and was almost annoyed by the speed at which this was coming at me. As soon as I thought or said slow down everything stopped. I had no sensation of touch, smell or sight but was content with this feeling. I had no need for the physical sensations we need in this plane of existence. I was not hungry, cold, in pain, tired, etc… and had no wants or desires for anything, I was truly content and at peace with my surroundings.

Once this contentment filled my soul and everything slowed down I heard a female voice as if it was being tuned in on a radio. I could not make out the words but I knew they were being said to me. I only made out 3 words clearly and they were all I was supposed to hear. The female voice said, “I love you”. In those three words I felt more secure, comforted and loved than I have ever felt anywhere, anytime in my life. As soon as I heard those three words I heard a male voice in the same “radio being tuned in” matter. I never did make out any of the words that were said to me but the message was loud and clear. The message I was being given was don’t worry, you are with me, you can and will get over anything, there is nothing you can not handle. Then, suddenly the voices were gone but the sound were still with and within me. I knew I had been given the gift I was pulled to that place for and I knew it was time for me to return to my body and my friends. I had a feeling of opening of a door and walking though it. Before I walked through the door I felt as if I turned and said thank you. The most honest, unconditional thank you I have ever said.

6. Drifting deeply into the visual ebb and flow of the DMT I just walked through the thin fabric of the visual fractal fantasy. It was like a gauze layer of the dream just separated and boom .. it was like walking from a dark night into a brightly lit casino in Las Vegas. I felt like I had walked behind the scenes into a series of rooms. Everything was prime color cranked up to it s fullest potential. The images were clear, crisp and vivid. many times more vivid then the early pre-room images.

There were two people a man and a women or a girl and a boy. They appeared to me like simple balloon computer generated images. As soon as I stepped in the room, they glided up to me and spoke directly to me. They kept saying welcome back and words like: the big winner, he has returned, welcome to the end and the beginning, you are The One! As I looked around the room I felt the sense of some huge celebration upon my entry to this place. Bells were ringing, lights flashing fear began to rise in me as I felt the deep change in my world. The sprites begin to lead me around the room showing me how all my life they had been preparing me for this return. I was shown dozen of experiences simultaneously in my life, that had lead up to and been clues to this moment. I was shown in a flood and a onslaught of images, thoughts, situations, raw feelings that everything had been building to this moment. That this moment had been planned.

They told me it was a gift. That I had been selected to be The One. I felt feelings of huge relief, excitement and fear in the sprites. At this moment in the experience I became afraid for my life. I felt that this gift would cost me my life. I did not want to be The One. The sprits felt this fear in me and begin to hold my hands and arms rushing me deeper into their world. I felt their fear and I begin to believe that I had stepped out of the dream, out of the drug, out of my body and mind and into this super world. I begin to believe in the transformation. As I walked deeper I could see standing in the middle of the room, in the center of this place, an object similar to an hour glass. It was slowly turning over. I became aware that this vessel, as it tipped over, transferring its contents from the small red end to the larger blue end was transforming me. I felt my humanity slip out as I was filled with this new powerful light. A light of greater perception, of clarity. It felt like returning home. It felt familiar. It felt like I was waking up from a hollow, pale dream of reality. I felt god like and omnipotent. I realized the this gift was not only a gift but equally a death sentence for my physical body. I felt like I had been chosen to receive this not out of benevolence but out of a need to release this power and perception There had to be The One, to relieve the others. There had to be The One who perceived completely. I felt like Christ at the moment of realization of godhood and the inevitable moment of his crucifixion. I also felt like all this knowledge and perception was far too large to be processed by my physical mind and that death was the obvious transition.

As this moment of realization hit me I felt the sprites smile and step back. They told me I WAS The One and this WAS real and that it would never end.

They said do you not believe….. then see.

At this moment I sat up (in the real world) and opened my eyes. This moment true panic set in. I was deeply hallucinating. The real world was being covered, transformed into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of energy. Every surface had something like movie film, one image after another lined up like film shown through an overhead projector. These were the prime images of our symbolic nature. Slowly rolling over every surface. like the sprites of the objects. I felt I was seeing time in a singularity. I felt like I was seeing the symbolic patters like a second perception of true meaning. In the real room there were two people sitting next to me. When I looked at them I felt reassured momentarily. Then they exploded into dozens of two dimensional layers of light. Looking like computer generated futurists paintings. Wafer thin halos created the shapes of my friends. Dave looked up at me and said Welcome Back causing me to panic. Because when he said welcome back I did not think it was back to reality but back into the fold of this super world I was in. Back as there chosen one or at least one amongst them. I perceived Dave and Poon as personal guides or Guardians or gatekeepers there to welcome me into this new exalted state. That moment striped me of my world, my truths leading me to believe that my hallucinations were truth. I once again had the crashing feeling of winning, of being chosen, and being forced to receive this unwanted sentence of total vision. I had this crash as I could see once again the cause and effect of my being there and the price I would have to pay. I was the Bean King and the price of my gift would be perceptual transcendence but physical death.

At this time I felt a collapsing feeling as I gave in to the experience excepting my fate. I remember thinking that the hour glass had turned a little farther and I was pouring out of this life into my new one. I said out loud I am dying. Then I lost the support of my body, my self, my existence and I began to drift.

Dave then touched my leg I remember being drawn back into my body and thinking to hell with this I am not going to die, not yet and I felt the sprites smiling around me looking at me. I felt the fear. I felt the exhilaration of my visions. I was back in the sprites room. Even though this place was vibrant and psychedelic it was within my ability to comprehend. The sprits began there pitch at me being a winner and The One. I felt they were taking me back down the hallway to open those iconic, electric vision and to my death. I then said out loud again I am dying to which Dave responded only three more minutes and you will be all right.

Three more minutes.. Three more minutes was like a life raft that I sailed out of that world. As soon as I was able to believe that in three more minutes I would be normal again and everything began to fade. I felt in control of my body and my life. Slowly I drifted out of the their world, back through the gauzy world of colors and patterns. With a little extra coaxing from my friends I was able to wake up and separate my self from that moment.

I still vibrate from the experience.

I am very grateful to have been with my friends.

https://youtu.be/cb4KetF2Yjs