The world is set to ignite. The old is going to die. It can evaporate quietly, or be ripped into bloody grizzle. But the USA is set to explode.
…
In 1977, one of the top songs was “Love is in the air”, while all of us were jamming to Peter Frampton “Do you feel like I do?” We were watching “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”, and going to McDonalds to get our 25 cent hamburgers. Our biggest concern at that time was Roller Disco, and whether to have coleslaw or potato salad at the next get together.
Man, life has certainly changed…
…I don’t think that it is an improvement.
Are Chinese citizens legally allowed to use a VPN in China?
Yes. The companies which sell VPN access are state-owned. That’s right, the companies which sell access to get around the Great Firewall are owned by the Party. Welcome to China!
Baking with Hillary
In this program, Hillary Clinton demonstrates how nation building is a lot like baking a cake. Yum!
In the early 19th century, why could the US (an ocean away) destroy and defeat the Barbary Pirates while Britain (the alleged naval superpower) couldn’t?
The Barbary Corsairs were afraid of Britain, because the UK was a naval superpower, and so they didn’t dare attack them. British ships sailed unhindered through North African waters.
This immunity to attack had also applied to ships of the 13 Colonies prior to independence, but not to the new United States. The Barbary Corsairs were not afraid of them, so American ships soon came under attack.
This went on for over a decade. Eventually in 1801 President Jefferson decided to go to war with one of the Barbary States, Tripoli. He sent a small fleet, which linked up with the Swedish navy who were also at war with Tripoli. The US also had significant help from the Kingdom of Naples, which offered them the use of three naval ports in Sicily as well as supplies and port personnel. Without this aid it is doubtful that the US Navy could have conducted a successful war so far from home.
However, saying that the US ‘destroyed and defeated the Barbary Pirates’ is a major exaggeration. They blockaded one Barbary city, Tripoli, engaging in several naval actions and raids onto the land until finally, after four years, the Pasha of Tripoli agreed to negotiate a treaty. This required the Americans to pay Tripoli the sum of $60,000 ($1.5 million in today’s value) and in return the Barbary State released about 300 American slaves.
This did not end Barbary attacks on American ships. In 1815, just after the end of the US war with Britain, another fleet was sent to the Mediterranean, this time to attack Algiers. They were able to force the Dey of Algiers to release about 10 captives and pay compensation of $10,000. He also promised to stop attacking American ships in the future, but soon afterwards (when the US warships had returned home) repudiated this treaty.
It was at this point that Britain decided to get involved.
The Napoleonic Wars were over, and the UK had naval power to spare for more humanitarian missions such as ending piracy. A large fleet of British warships including five ships of the line, in cooperation with a squadron of Dutch frigates, was despatched to the Mediterranean. The Barbary States were ordered to halt all piracy and free their Christian slaves.
The states of Tunis and Tripoli, intimidated, backed down without a fight. Algiers resisted.
Admiral Pellew, commanding the British fleet and its Dutch attached squadron, ordered an attack on Algiers on 27 August 1816. The city was heavily fortified with over 300 cannons in land forts as well as many warships in the harbour. The fighting was bloody and went on late into the night, with almost a thousand casualties in the Anglo-Dutch fleet; but the Algerian forts were pounded into rubble, their guns destroyed and their ships sunk.
The following day, the ruler of Algiers surrendered to the British admiral. He freed over 3,000 Christian slaves and paid compensation of $372,000 (£80,000). He also agreed to end the practice of piracy entirely.
In practice, the Barbary Corsairs did not entirely keep their promise to end piracy, though its scale was much reduced after 1816. It took the French colonisation of North Africa, beginning in 1830, to end Barbary piracy forever.
The view on America after spending 40 years in Asia
This is pretty good. Well worth the time to watch. Very interesting.
Meet Karl. He is from the US and has been working in Asia for almost forty years. Karl speaks Mandarin Chinese fluently and was known as a rainmaker for NFT technology in China. He told me about cultural differences with his Taiwanese-Chinese wife, his views on how America should treat its immigrants, and the way his views on the US changed after living in Asia. Enjoy!
How tough are Vietnam veterans?
My father is a Vietnam veteran with three purple hearts and a silver star. He is the toughest person I have ever known.
This is his story
My father volunteered to join the Army in 1968, he did not get drafted. He worked in a saw mill as a teenager, and grew up the son of poor Italian immigrants. He was raised in a quanset hut in Connecticut (yes there are poor people in Connecticut) until my Grandfather had enough money to build a house by hand with a couple of buddies in the late 50s or early 60s.
Once in Vietnam my father was wounded three times, but on the first two he never left the country even though he could have.
The third time defines toughness.
My father’s platoon, as part of a company operation, walked directly into a VC Base camp in southern Vietnam (my father was a grunt in the 2/60th of the 9th Infantry Division) roughly during the Tet offensive.
A VC Machine gunner fired on him from a concealed position that was no more than 15 feet away. One round instantly almost ripped his foot completely off, and it dangled mainly by the achilles tendon. Another round destroyed my dad’s hand, and also another rendered his M16 inoperable because the bullet went through the bolt and destroyed the action. When he fell down from the impact, and somehow crawled a bit, he somehow escaped the wrath of that particular machine gun nest, but then he saw another in front of him, but this new VC machine gunner didn’t see him yet and was firing at others in his unit.
At this point, men were screaming in pain for help everywhere around my father, and the pain in his hand and leg grew, and he was weaponless. He had to get away from this new machine gun without it seeing him, and the only way to go was over the rice paddy dike that was about 10 feet behind him.
As soon as he moved one inch to begin his escape, that machine gun swung around on him and opened fire. My father only talks about this moment with me, and he only talked about it once or twice ever, and he literally breaks down with the shakes at the recollection.
As the bullets spewed at him, he jumped up, standing on the end of his ankle bone on his right leg, since the foot was flopping, and did the best he could to basically run and dive over the dike. In the process he was hit three more times. Once in the underside of his arm, shredding his bicep and part of his tricep, again in the shoulder, and another in the underside of his Jaw/face.
He landed in the mud on the other side of the dike and could feel his jaw swinging on his face, and his arm was pumping blood like a garden hose. He didn’t even feel the one in the shoulder at all.
His tongue and face began to swell so badly that he couldn’t breath, so he somehow cut himself a trachea with a jackknife using his one good hand. He also packed his arm with mud to stop the bleeding because those Army bandages were totally useless.
the trachea didn’t work perfectly, so he occasionally had to grab his swollen tongue and pull it down so he could breath a bit more, and he did this intermitently as he put his bayonet between his thighs, and hooked the pin on his grenades on the blade so he could pull the pin with his one hand and throw the grenades. He said he couldn’t talk, but he was trying to yell at “the sons of bitches” the whole time.
He crawled along the dike and got weapons from the dead, or from those who were so wounded they couldn’t function, and continuously fired them with one hand to hold the enemy back (they had started to advance through their kill zone basically). Multiple evac helicopters were shot down during this time, and eventually my father had lost so much blood he started to fade… he was going to die.
Out of nowhere, a huge black man from Texas named Cleaver, scooped up my father, and carried him to a chopper that had finally been able to land somewhere. This man barely knew my dad, given that he was black and this was 1968 so the platoon was kind of self-segregated. Cleaver saved his life, and I wouldn’t be here without him – today he would have gotten the medal of honor, but then he didn’t get a damn thing. This is a whole ‘nother story.
Cleaver ran through a hail of bullets, and threw my dad in a huey on top of other bodies, and that’s the last thing my father remembers until he woke up in a hospital in, IIRC, Okinawa (could be wrong on that).
Fast forward two years and hundreds of operations on his jaw, arm, hand, and ankle, my dad is released from the Army with a 300$ pension (they messed up his disability rate, but he “never expected to get any money anyway because he had volunteered”). He is missing a finger and has limited use of his right hand, and his ankle is fused together with a tangle of screws, and his jaw was bone graffed back together but was wired shut for almost a year.
He got a job in a factory in Deep River, CT, marries my mom, and has kids (me). In the late 70s and early 80s he still gets multiple operations, and I remember him shooting an M1 carbine out the window due to insane flashbacks (we lived in the middle of nowhere). He worked in this factory for 30 years.
Then something else happens to him. He somehow becomes deathly allergic to bee stings. He has three near death experiences with this, barely surviving one occasion. He always says, “I can take 5 machine gun rounds, but a goddamn bee sting is what’s gonna kill me… WTF”
He coached our school soccer and baseball teams for years from crutches, or a wheelchair, or both, and every year he coached we won the CT shoreline championships (soccer).
Then another thing happened. One day my grandfather and him were cutting wood in the forest, and a dead tree fell on him. Imagine the luck. You’re in the woods, and a dead tree decides to fall, right on where you are squatted cutting another tree. My grandfather yelled to him just in time for him to turn, and that turn allowed the tree to only graze him. He still was unconscious for several days in the hospital, had a massive concussion and other damage, but somehow lived.
He was also electrocuted once as well… but this post is getting too long already so I’ll stop there.
My dad is now 73, and his wounds don’t get any better, especially the mental ones. He met Cleaver later in life, and they were both so overwhelmed that they really didn’t know what to say, and then they never talked again, because it was just too emotional. He was awarded a Silver Star for his actions that day, but he really doesn’t give a shit about that medal.
I also forgot to mention that he is an amazing father, and one of the kindest people you would ever know. Half of what I’ve done, and do, in my life was/is just a pathetic attempt to impress him.
Now if that ain’t tough, I don’t know WTF is. Also, think about Cleaver, also tough AF.
SO MUCH TRUTH!! | Rapper Reacts to Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond (First Reaction)
What screams “I’m upper class”?
Number one: Teenagers wearing khakis and blazers with an embroidered logo. When I lived in Boston, I hung out a lot in Harvard Square, and there were a fair number of kids like this walking around. I don’t know if they dressed this way because they were part of a fraternity, or they were high-school students at a nearby boarding school (Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, etc.). But it’s something you don’t see in very many places.
Number two: Dogs in sweaters and matching booties, being led by women in sunglasses. Saw this around Little Italy/Houston St. in New York. It was just so out of the ordinary! I get it that broken glass and such is common in New York, and that some protection can sometimes be a good thing, but there are plenty of _people_ who don’t color-coordinate their shoes to their outfit every day: to do that for both yourself and your dog says something.
Number three: teenagers with Porsches/Maseratis/etc. Ran into a few of these in Boston: there are students there coming from immensely wealthy families, sometimes insensibly so. No way you’re a 19-year-old college student paying for a brand-new sports car/ritzy SUV.\
Number four: Mentioning “my club” in passing conversation, such as “I met her today at my club for lunch.” Or “there’s a ‘function’ (not a _party_, mind 😉 ) at my club tonight.” A lot of people might belong to a book club, or perhaps a bowling team, or even a chess club, but usually they preface it with the activity in question. If you can afford tens of thousands of dollars to belong to a private golf club, country club, racquet club, etc., you’re upper class.
Russian spacecraft crashes into the Moon – BBC News
Something is going on here. I strongly suspect that there is more to this story than what meets the eye.
Braised Pork with Green Chile Sauce
Mild green chiles season this meaty pork stew. Serve it with rice or as a burrito filling. This can also be served with tamales. This chile verde is also good served with scrambled eggs.
Ingredients
Pork
- 1 (3 pound) lean boneless pork butt
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 large green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
- 1 (7 ounce) can diced green chiles
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves, crumbled
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher or sea salt
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
- 1 tablespoon wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup water
Garnish
- Tomatoes, cut into wedges
- Cooked rice
- Sour cream
- Lime, cut into wedges
Instructions
- Trim and discard fat and cut pork into 1 inch cubes.
- In a large frying pan, heat oil over medium-high heat; add meat a few cubes at a time and cook until very brown.
- Push meat to side of pan and add onion, garlic and bell peppers; sauté until limp.
- Stir in chiles, oregano, cumin, salt, cilantro, vinegar and water.
- Cover and simmer until meat is fork tender (about 1 hour).
- Skim off fat and discard.
- Serve with rice or make burritos or serve in your favorite way.
- For Burritos: spoon pork into warm, soft flour tortillas, add sour cream, tomato wedges, and a squeeze of lime juice and fold to enclose. Rice may also be enclosed with the filling in the burritos, if desired.
What are the most epic failures in history?
Originally Answered: What are the most epic fails in history?
“The Americans should know the character of the men they are dealing with in Singapore and not get themselves further dragged into calumny…..They are not dealing with Ngo Dinh Diem or Syngman Rhee. You do not buy and sell this Government.”
In 1960, a CIA agent was caught attempting to purchase confidential information from Singapore intelligence officers. They offered a $3.3 million bribe (equivalent to $25 million in today’s money) to then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to keep hush about the matter.
Instead, PM Lee insisted on $33 million in economic aid as Singapore was then a 3rd world country.
A few years later, the US vehemently denied the entire incident. This caused Lee Kuan Yew to go ballistic and threaten to release full reports and recordings to the public. It was only then did the US government admit and make a formal apology.
One of the most epic fails in my opinion…
Why are the oligarchs in the US military industrial complex so eager to start a war with China? Aren’t they generating enough profit from the Russia-Ukraine conflict already?
This is an MM answer . -MM
A long, long time ago… when I was a boy of 14 years old… I started my first job. I was a “tipple loader” at a coal mine in Western Pennsylvania. My job was to operate the rock crusher and then use the conveyor belt to load hopper-cars (a type of train car) with crushed coal.
Throughout the 1960s, the 70s, and well into the 1990s it was common for the older workers to harass and “break in” the new kid. And during my teen years, I sure as heck got the brunt of it all.
One of the things they would do is order me to “fetch a boom-hoist-clamp” which is just a simple clamp on a drag-line. Now, drag-lines are big enormous machines.
And so, being young and inexperienced, they would gleefully chuckle and laugh at how stupid I was as I would climb the boom to the top to get this fucking clamp.
Being so young, and ignorant, I really didn’t realize that I was risking my life…
…on a joke, for minimum wage. It never occurred to me. As this was my first experience to the harsh world of much older men who have lived the “hard life” in the hills of Western Pennsylvania. And so I endured the various initiations. And worked hard…
…until I was able to pull myself out of that environment and go to university to study aerospace engineering and leave that Hell-hole.
But…
Let’s get back to the question.
Why are the Oligarchs so easy to start a war with China?
Well, like myself as a young boy and my first experience with the harsh world of rough and scrabble men, I had no idea of what I was going up against. Neither do these oligarchs. They think in terms of what they know, and what they don’t know is something that NEVER crosses their mind.
They believe the funded lies about “Russia collapsing”, “Putin will be disposed any day now”, “Ukraine is winning”, ‘Russian military is a joke”…. and they most certainly believe the massive lies (oh, so much greater and so much more outrageous) concerning China…
- China will collapse any day now.
- The Chinese dictatorship cannot face the American military might.
- China has no weapons able to compete or fight the mighty nations of Rambo soldiers.
- China is weak, and helpless.
And so on and so forth.
And so, when I listen to these oligarchs speak, and their proxy figureheads talk to the “news” media, it’s like some kind of warped parody. The ignorance is staggering. And like myself, (as a young boy of 14) I had no idea that I was risking my life for something as trivial as the chuckles and cajoling of the elder men.
These idiots will draw the United States into a war with China, and the United States will lose. Sure as shit. It doesn’t matter if it is conventional, economic, or nuclear. The United States is on the fast-track to “suicide by cop”.
And that is what happens with you are ignorant, stupid, and egotistical and facing a lethal opponent that isn’t.
FIRST TIME LISTEN | Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | REACTION!!!!
What are some surprising causes of death?
In the 90s, a group of kids were playing football at the local football pitch that was situated near a rocky mountain. One of the kids kick the ball into a pile of rocks at the side of the mountain, and when one of the kids went to retrieve the ball he was left horrified when he discovered the body of a man crushed by a large boulder.
The man had been pinned under the boulder, but what was even more unusual was the fact his pants was down and he was holding a chicken in his hands. When investigators tried to piece together the mans final moments, they came to the conclusion that the man had been trying to tenderise the chicken, so to speak.
They believe the 39-year-old bricklayer named Herminio Rivera Coucerio had abducted a hen in Orsense, in Spain, and brought it to the mountain side to have his way with it. They believed his rigorous trusting had caused the boulder to come lose and rolled on top of him, and killed him instantly.
Do you drown in quicksand?
Against common misconception, quicksand will not drown you as it is denser than your torso. The problem with quicksand is that you can practically get stuck in it and die from hunger, thirst, or extreme temperatures.
The force required to lift your foot out of quicksand at a speed of 1 cm per second is equal to the lift force of a medium-size car. So if you are really stuck in the middle of quicksand, forget about moving your legs out of the sand with just force.
First of all, you need to get rid of excess weight, which will be a huge obstacle to escape. Breathe deeply as your fully filled lungs will allow you to float better.
If you are standing, lean back into a position where you can float. This will allow your feet to return to the surface as your weight is more evenly distributed.
When you move your legs up while in the floating position, let the quicksand under your legs fill for a moment.
Move slowly inch by inch toward the shore.
Try reaching for something outside like a tree branch and try to drag yourself out. Only do this when your feet are on the surface again.
THIS SONG IS AMAZING!!! Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Richmond Reaction
How did you find a wife if you’re unattractive?
I played the long game.
When most women are young, they’re attracted to men with good looks, charm, charisma, confidence, and raw sexual magnetism.
As time passes, people age, and life experiences accumulate, most women start to realize that other things are important. Like a good credit rating. Now the ball’s in my court.
To be clear, I’m not talking about being rich (never was, probably never will be). I’m talking about being responsible, reliable, predictable. The kind of guy who pays all his bills on time, has his tax returns filled out in February, spend his weekends doing yardwork rather than partying, and has never once gotten in a fight with a bouncer.
Being conventional to the point of being boring seems to hold little appeal to women in their teens and twenties.
But…
I’ve found that most women in their thirties have had a lot of bad experiences with ‘exciting’ guys, and are ready to settle down with someone they can count on.
I just had to hang around for enough years that a woman I knew felt the need to settle, and then closed the deal as quick as possible.
Those of us who lack the looks have to deal in patience.
What was the shortest interview you’ve had that led to a job offer?
When I was 18 year’s old, my mom submitted my application to a place looking for part-time help. I had no idea she did this.
I didn’t find out until after she already had the interview set up for me.
The interview was in a part of town I had never been in before.
Everything was extremely run down looking. Homeless people were wandering the streets and sidewalks with their shopping carts. Almost every building on the block, including the one I was interviewing in, had some sort of graffiti on the side.
I walked inside the building to find unfinished concrete walls and floors. The desks and tables were dilapidated and covered in dust.
“Are you here for an interview?”
That was my assumption, but this place looked more like it was ready to shut down than it was to hire someone new.
“Paul, Robert is here for your 10:30 interview.”
Tucked in the corner of the building was a make-shift office set up where Paul sat. Behind him was a bookshelf that looked no better than the other furniture in the building. Sitting on top of his bookshelf was an long ivy plant that stretched halfway to the floor.
That stuck out to me because that plant was the only sort of decoration that I could see in the entire place.
Instead of going to his desk, Paul met me at the front door. After exchanging some short introductions, Paul asked –
“Have you ever worked a heat press before?”
I had no idea what a heat press was.
“That’s okay, we’ll teach you. The pay is $9.00/hr but it’s a temporary position. We’ll only need you for about 3 months. If all sounds good, you can start tomorrow.”
The entire interview took less than 5 minutes.
That was 16 years ago. Even though the position was only supposed to last for 3 months, I’m still here, sitting in the space where Paul used to sit. Only now that space has walls around it to form an actual office.
We’ve also painted the building, finished the walls and floors, and replaced all the furniture.
One of the only physical items left from 2007 is that ivy plant, which now sits on top of a shelf behind my desk… along with some other plants that I’ve collected and am trying not to kill.
El Dorado Casserole
I have been making this casserole for as long as I can remember. It’s very good and exceptionally good warmed up the next day.
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 16 ounces tomato sauce
- 1 cup sliced black olives
- 8 ounces sour cream
- 1 cup cottage cheese
- 1 (4 ounce) can diced green chiles
- 7 ounces tortilla corn chips, crushed
- 8 ounces (or more, if desired) Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
Instructions
- Cook beef until browned.
- Drain. Add onion, garlic powder, tomato sauce and olives. Cook over low heat until the onion is clear.
- Combine sour cream, cottage cheese and chiles.
- Layer half the chips, meat mixture, sour cream mixture and Monterey Jack cheese in a greased 2 1/2-quart casserole.
- Repeat this layering a second time.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.
Why Rolling Stone is TERRIFIED of Oliver Anthony
Country musician Oliver Anthony went from unknown to the top of the iTunes charts after his song, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” went viral overnight.
But music press outlets like Rolling Stone immediately became hostile.
They started churning out headlines trying to tie Anthony to right-wing politics and Q-Anon, and even suggested he was a plant for far-right culture warriors.
But former Mumford & Sons banjoist Winston Marshall, who knows a thing or two about political attacks against musicians, joins Glenn to explain what’s really going on: the former countercultural generation has “become the establishment.”
But is there still a chance that an authentic artist like Oliver Anthony can unite a divided country?
Xi awarded Order of South Africa
Chinese President Xi Jinping received the Order of South Africa from President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday.
The award ceremony came following Xi’s meeting with Ramaphosa during his state visit to South Africa, where he will also attend the 15th BRICS Summit and co-chair with Ramaphosa the China-Africa Leaders’ Dialogue.
The Order of South Africa is the highest decoration and the highest honor that South Africa awards to an important and friendly head of state.
Speaking at the ceremony, Xi said the China-South Africa comprehensive strategic partnership has entered a “golden era,” as political mutual trust between the two sides continues to deepen, and mutually beneficial and practical cooperation in various fields has yielded fruitful results.
The two countries have maintained close coordination and cooperation in international affairs, which has effectively promoted their respective development and revitalization, and made positive contributions to safeguarding the common interests of developing countries, he noted.
Xi reiterated that no matter how the international situation changes, the two sides will remain committed to deepening bilateral friendly cooperation.
Noting that he will treasure the honor, which symbolizes the friendship between the two peoples, Xi pledged to unswervingly push for the continuous development of China-South Africa relations.
Which country has the better governance, China or India? Why?
China, because its dominant political party, unlike India’s who worship cows and discriminate against fellow Indians based on caste, has developed China much better.
Man finally dates Wifey Material..
What is a sure sign that your life isn’t in a good place?
Florida is underappreciated. It’s a great state in many ways.
I’ll confess it isn’t the classiest of the 50 states primarily because of a few people and a few bad habits.
One thing you’ll see here that you won’t see in many places:
Porn shops. Everywhere.
They seem to be allowed to just plop down and open a shop anywhere.
Church. Porn shop. School. Store. Porn shop. Mechanic. Strip club.
Post office. Furniture store. Porn Shop.
It is this weird juxtaposition that occurs between this deeply Christian part of our state and a very naughty other half.
It’s not uncommon to see stuff like this:
This isn’t one of those “never masturbate,” “quit porn,” posts. I actually get annoyed with those posts. Go do your thing. Enjoy you some porn, ladies and gents.
But.
There is this porn DVD store that I pass, yes – DVD, on the way to work.
Every time I pass this store, typically between 7:45AM and 7:50AM,
There are at least 3–4 cars in the parking lot, and that bitch is open for business.
If any of you catch me shopping for porn DVDs at 7:45 AM on a Tuesday –
-something didn’t go right.
What’s the most disturbing thing you’ve seen at school?
This is from a school dance a year or two ago. It was the Valentine’s Day dance and we were all having a lot of fun. All of a sudden there’s a big commotion in the gym. There’s a huge crowd and everyone around has their phones out and seem to be recording something.
I’m able to see what’s going on my pushing myself through and what I see is literally horrifying.
This girl is breathing crazily and crying with her hands on her head. Two girls are next to her (friends I assume) saying, “GUYS STOP! SHE’S HAVING A PANIC ATTACK!”
Everyone around in that circle is recording.
Recording a 12 year old at a dance having a panic attack.
Soon the teachers help the girl outside to get some fresh air and the teachers tell everyone to delete the video they took. I know they never really deleted it.
But this is absolutely absurd. The fact that everyone didn’t even try to help but recorded her is awful. I didn’t see her since or really ever knew her, but I know I would hate it if someone recorded me at a low moment like this.
Please don’t record stuff like this guys.
What’s been the most mind-blowing example of incompetence ever displayed by one of your coworkers?
While I was in college, I worked as a security guard at a factory that reprocessed scrap cloth into felt.
One of the maintenance workers was notably lacking in common sense. I once found him on the roof of the factory, watching a seized-up motor burn, with six-inch flames coming up to it.
He wasn’t making any attempt to cut the power to the motor, or put the fire out. I commented that I was surprised the circuit breaker hadn’t tripped. He explained that he had bypassed the circuit breaker, “because it was tripping too often”.
As part of my duties, I wrote and submitted a fire report. He was still kept on as a member of the maintenance crew, because he was the plant manager’s son-in-law.
RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND RAP remix By: Black Pegasus – INSPIRED by Oliver Anthony!
Is it possible to be a millionaire/billionaire and be homeless?
I have no interest in being a billionaire, but I would like to be homeless one day.
When the kids are grown and out of the house, I see no point in having one. I’ll pick up one of these, sell the house, and go wherever the wheels take me.
What is it like to be fired from a software engineering position?
Absolutely shocking.
I was working at a company for about a year and a half. It was just another day. I was talking with my co-worker who I shared an office with. I said, “You really don’t want to be called in to speak with H.R. If you do, it’s pretty likely you’re being laid off.”
Right then, as if on cue, my phone rang. It was the head of H.R. She wanted me to come to her office.
My heart sank. I told my co-worker, who I’ll call Greg. He blew it off. “It’s probably nothing. Probably just something with your benefits.”
I didn’t think so, but marched over to her office. My boss’s boss was there. I was invited to take a seat and I did so.
Mrs. H.R. said, “Okay, you’re being terminated, effective immediately.”
“Wait, what?” I said.
“Your employment with us is being terminated. Now.”
I couldn’t believe it. I had just finished a pretty important feature for our project and had just got a “Congrats!” from my boss.
“What…” I said. “What for?”
Boss’s boss answered, “For not doing your work.” His face was flushed and he looked ashamed.
I still couldn’t believe it. Doing my work was all I did, every day. “According to who? Who said that?”
“Your manager.” The one who had just given me the “attaboy!”. Boss’s boss looked even more ashamed.
I had been given no warning that my work was insufficient. In fact, quite the opposite. “Uh, for future reference,” I said, “it might be a good idea to let your employees know when they’re not meeting expectations.”
Mrs. H.R. made me sign some papers. She said signing them was non-voluntary. I was still in a haze and just signed them.
My manager handed me off to a guy who I vaguely recognized from some IT or facilities function. He looked like he could easily be in a body building competition. He escorted me downstairs to someone else, who explained to me I was being fired and made me hand over my badge. She was about to have me escorted out by Mr. Muscles when I asked her if I needed to surrender my CAC as well.
She said, “Oh, yeah, I’ll need that too.” She acted like this was the first time she had done this. She was flustered.
Mr. Muscles took me back up to my office, where he watched me pack what few belongings I had. Greg wasn’t there. I left him a note to call me.
Mr. Muscles escorted me outside, where I walked to my car. I drove home, trying to process what had just happened. I had never been fired before. I’d never even been warned about “insufficient performance”.
Greg got a hold of me later that day. When he saw my note, he noticed a bunch of people were disappearing from the office. He found our manager and asked if his neck was on the chopping block too. He said, “Yes.”
He asked him why. He said he couldn’t tell him.
When it was Greg’s turn for the “You’re Fired” ride, he turned to our boss’s boss and said, “Chase*, what you’re doing is wrong, and you know it.” Wow, guts are one thing Greg didn’t lack.
He said in all, about 40 people were let go that day. All were “fired”.
No one fires 40 people in one day, unless they were all involved in some sort of widespread fraud or something, and of course we weren’t.
Over the course of the next few days, we pieced together something that sort of made sense, but not really. It was a layoff, but they had to call it firing so they wouldn’t have to pay us severance. That kind of made sense, but I’ve been laid off before and never got any severance. Why was this case any different?
It turns out that the company was trying to win a big government/military contract that was up for re-compete. They hired all 40 of us to build a “demo” to bid for the system. They didn’t win it, and thus needed to get rid of us.
The “firing” part really hurt, though.
The company has since been bought out twice. The company has a totally different name now, and different owners.
But they kept their employment records. Over the years, recruiters have tried to place me there again, under the new company. They always reject me, saying they wouldn’t rehire me because they fired me once before.
Yeah, fired. Just call it what it really was, you cowards: a non-severance layoff.
Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North Of Richmond” Is The War Cry The Working Class Has Been Waiting For
This is actually a very good video and connects the Fourth Turning to Oliver Anthony.
China is already the world’s second largest economy and its contribution to the world is obvious to all, but why does it still receive targeting from the West and what are they afraid of?
Trust me
All that China has to do is to BE SATISFIED with its present position and be prepared to be Number 2 all it’s life
The West will never target China and it would always be a great country and best friends
The West especially the US emasculates any threat it perceives to it’s dominance with a combination of
Political upheavals or color revolutions or
Propaganda
or
Stoking nationalist sentiments against a specific nation
or
Economic Throttling
That’s how they neutralized the EU or Japan or S Korea to date
Sadly China, India, Russia are three nations that remain defiant
Of the three – China is the most likely candidate to pip the US in the next two decades and thus the West which is more or less an accepted fiefdom of the USA is targeting China most heavily
Color Revolutions won’t work in China, a 90% Han majority country
Political Upheavals wont work as Xi Jingping is firmly in charge and has consolidated the CPC
Nationalist Sentiments work against USA now
All that is left is Economic Throttling and that’s what the US is doing and forcing it’s allies to do the same
Chinas Defiance , Indias Defiance, Russia’s Defiance is getting a bit worrisome for the West
Especially Chinas, since China has the Economic Clout and a huge stack of money and a massive industry, not to mention a consumer market that is 16% of the World’s Consumption, third highest after US and EU
So the West want to ensure that China can’t end the “Western way of life” Or the “Western Dominance” Or question “US Exceptionalism”
Unfortunately the US has lost the art of diplomacy long ago and has become somewhat of a bully
As a result, it is unable to persuade most nations to toe the line
Left to itself, China could have been happy with imports and never really aspired to do more
Instead by these sanctions, China knows it has to buck up and do a lot of hard work and can’t rely or trust the USA
Thus US and the West scored an Own Goal in this aspect
Have you ever seen an employee get fired on the spot because of you?
I caused a young guy to get fired on the spot. It actually wasn’t intentional on my part.
Every Friday a friend and I used to meet to play pool. We found that a local bingo hall had a cafe& lounge area and the table was only 50p a game and the food & snacks were really cheap.
One Friday I ordered my meal, it was only £3. When the usual guy rang it up I was looking at the screen on the top of the register and I saw ‘staff discount’ and the total dropped to £2 but he told me £3, obviously he was pocketing the difference.
I messed around getting cutlery and sauces next to the register and watched him do the same thing to the next few customers.
I went back to the table where my friend was and told him what the cheeky git was up to. No big deal, we both commented it was a bit naughty and that was that.
However there was a woman on the next table who clearly heard our conversation. She stood up, put on a blazer with a badge stating ‘supervisor’, promptly walked over to the cashier, printed something out and escorted him away.
Never saw the young guy again.
Oliver Anthony – Rich Men North Of Richmond | Reaction
What are the most unexplained and mysterious deep sea creatures caught on camera?
The deep sea is perhaps the most terrifying environment on the planet. Not a glimmer of sunlight to be found, only pitch darkness. The water icy cold, and almost devoid of oxygen. The immense and crushing pressure is enough to kill a human instantly. No source of food, other than the slow precipitation of organic debris trickling down from above; “marine snow”.
And yet, against all the odds, if you stare long enough into the abyss, something will stare back.
In 1966, the crew of a deep sea submarine learned as much. The vessel, dubbed the Deepstar 4000, began its descent not far off the coast of California, on a mission to deploy some hydrographic technology on the seabed, which lay some 1,200 metres below the surface. With the tremendous pressures at this depth, every inch of glass is a threat to the submarine’s structural integrity, so there was only one tiny window for the crew to look outside.
After the Deepstar 4000 touched down on the ocean floor, its pilot Joe Thompson glanced out the diminutive porthole, and saw something extraordinary.
By Thompson’s account, he found himself gazing into an eye “as big as a dinner plate”, belonging to a fish whose skin was “mottled” and “gray-black”. The fish, he estimated, was at least 25 feet (7.6 metres) long! It kicked up a cloud of silt in its wake, and within a matter of seconds, the encounter was over, and the abyss regained its characteristic eerie stillness.
Shortly thereafter, underwater cameras in the nearby area were triggered by the motion of a massive marine creature. One of them captured this photograph.
This image is not from a made up spooky story, it depicts a very real creature. A creature which might just be the culprit behind the infamous Deepstar 4000 encounter. To me, this animal is the scariest and most intimidating of all the deep sea horrors we have discovered, but also one of the most fascinating. It is a Pacific sleeper shark.
A close cousin of the much better-known Greenland shark, this species is found in waters across the North Pacific, and even the Arctic Ocean. It spends most of its days deep in the marine void, sometimes thousands of metres below the surface. Because of this strange lifestyle, the Pacific sleeper shark is shrouded in mystery, and to this day we know very very little about it.
What we do know is that it is one of the largest sharks on the planet. Though we have never scientifically measured a 25 footer like the one possibly sighted by the Deepstar 4000, we know for certain they can grow to four and a half metres in length, which is already gigantic. In 1989, a sleeper estimated to be seven metres was filmed in Tokyo Bay, while in Hawaii one was photographed that was potentially over nine metres long!
If these estimates are true, the Pacific sleeper shark could be the world’s third largest shark species, after the filter-feeding whale shark and basking shark. The claims are very much within the realms of possibility. Other shark species are well known to display a massive range in size, with some individuals being a whole 50% larger than the average specimen. After all, so long as they have enough food, sharks never stop growing.
And Pacific sleeper sharks sure do have plenty of time to grow. If their almost identical cousins the Greenland sharks are anything to go on, they can live for hundreds of years, perhaps half a millennium. There are likely sleeper sharks alive today that have lived through the entirety of modern history.
How does such gargantuan animals survive so deep in the abyss, where food is so scarce? Their extremely slow metabolism helps, though as a result, they are very sluggish. The aptly named sleeper sharks cruise through the depths at an extraordinarily slow speed of about 1 kilometre per hour – if you saw one in front of you, you’d barely even notice it moving! Being such slowpokes, we long assumed them to be scavengers, as they’d surely be useless predators.
However, when we dissected sleepers that got caught in fishing nets, the contents of their stomachs told a very different story. Inside, scientists found fresh remains of practically every kind of animal that the sharks share their habitats with. Fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, sea lions, porpoises… these beasts are far from carrion feeders, they are apex predators!
One shocking food item in particular seems more common than any other; the beaks of giant squid! This means that the Pacific sleeper shark is one of only two animals on the planet that can hunt and kill giant squid, the other being the sperm whale. The thought of such a slow-moving creature being able to take down this prey may seem impossible, but the shark’s thick and muscular tail fin indicates that it can produce violent bursts of intense speed when it needs to.
With a gaping and oddly circular maw, the sleeper shark can effectively “inhale” most of the prey it encounters. Victims too large to be eaten by suction are chomped to death by its massive bite force and sharp, needle-like teeth, pictured below. It also has a truly enormous stomach, which allows it to store food for long periods of time, a lifesaver in the barren deep sea. The stomach of one specimen was found to contain over 135 kilograms of accumulated food!
Lack of food is but one of the many challenges posed by life at such depths. The extreme pressure and frigid temperatures can wreak damage even at the molecular level, destabilising proteins within organisms’ cells. To protect against this, Pacific sleeper sharks employ a powerful chemical known as trimethylamine oxide (TMAO), which circulates in their bloodstream in incredibly high concentrations.
As it turns out, TMAO also has psychoactive properties – it is in fact a potent nerve agent. Because of that, if you eat sleeper shark meat, you’ll soon start to show symptoms of severe drunkenness, which may last for days. This is known as being “shark drunk”. The flesh of the (again, very closely related) Greenland shark is a delicacy in Iceland, called hákarl, but it is left to ferment for months before being safe to eat. It smells and tastes like urine, due to the vast quantities of urea in sleeper sharks’ blood.
Yet another fascinating thing about Pacific sleeper sharks is that almost all of them are blind. This is not a condition they have at birth, however. At some point in their lives, sleepers will invariably fall victim to a rather horrifying parasite called Ommatokoita elongata. This tiny worm-like creature is actually a crustacean, though it doesn’t look the part.
Ommatokoita attaches itself to the cornea of its unfortunate host, and remains there permanently, slowly eating away at the poor shark’s eyeball. It’s seemingly not fatal, as virtually all sleeper sharks have them and they can live for hundreds of years, but it does make them go blind. To be fair, eyesight isn’t of much use in a pitch black void, anyway.
That is absolutely everything you need to know about the Pacific sleeper shark, because it’s just about everything we do know about the Pacific sleeper shark. What I find even more interesting is everything we don’t know, all the mysteries that science shall hopefully solve in the coming decades, as we learn more about these incredible real-life sea monsters.
Can you still see the scars of WW2 all over Germany?
In 2012 I was in Germany on business when I was invited to the home of the managing director for dinner. The house was beautiful and located on a hillside with a spectacular view over a sheltered valley. After dinner we were sitting on the varanda drinking coffee when my host explained that not only did he own the valley but it was an additional source of income.
He stated that he was very grateful to the wartime RAF who had bombed the valley. There had been a small stream flowing through the valley until a bomber had jettisoned it’s bombs, probably after being attacked by a night fighter. The resulting bomb craters had filled up with water and were now a very profitable trout farm.
We leaned over the varanda balustrade and he pointed out the seven deep pools strung along the valley bottom. It was the number seven that worried me. Looking down from above you could clearly see the pools were grouped in a string of three with a short gap followed by a string of four pools. I am no bomber expert but I had to point out to my host that I would have expected any bomber to carry a balanced load. That and the gap in the regular positioning of the bomb craters made me wonder if perhaps one of the bombs had failed to explode.
A couple of weeks later, back in Aberdeen, I received a very nice email letting me know that following our conversation he had notified the authorities who had indeed found an unexploded bomb burrowed deep in the ground.
Visitor from a Parallel Universe | Who Was The Man from Taured?
Welcome to my life.
This is fun. Who knows what the real truth is? But, you know, powerful interests will generate cover stories to hide reality.
Huawei Mate 60 Pro with 7nm have been on sale in China and in the world with 100% China-made components, software, chips & operating systems. Why is the US’ sanction against Huawei making Huawei smart phones more independent and successful globally?
It’s why the US is panicking, because China is a competitor which the US has never seen.
Un like countries such as India, China has the ability and determination to advance;
on the other hand, unlike countries such as EU countries and Japan, China has a huge internal market to protect its companies from being sanctioned.
In a test video on Bilibili, they confirmed that the Mate 60 Pro is powered by the New Kirin 9000S, which was made in week 35 of 2020, in mainland China.
But the CPU is not the main character in Mate 60 Pro, since Kirin 9000S is only about the same as Snapdragon 888, the top performance 2 years ago.
It’s the BAW filter, or Bulk Acoustic Wave Filter. It was the key component for 5G communication, and the only part which the US could sanction Huawei’s cellphones. For a while, all Huawei cellphones used to have only 4G.
Silex Microsystems made a breakthough in BAW filter, and finally found the last piece of the puzzle.
Designed by Huawei, Silex, and other Chinese companies, made by SMIC.
U.S. Department of Commerce must be disappointed.
I guess it’s why Mate 60 Pro made a sudden appearence even without a press conference or any other event. It just quietly appeared in Huawei Stores and Huawei Online Shop.
The one who being the main drive of this sanction against Chinese companies is in China. Gina Raimondo is one of the most aggressive person in Biden administration to push a harder stance against China. She’s one of the most extreme eagles, if not the most extreme one.
Just like how Robert Gates was so sure that China wouldn’t be able to have a stealth fighter, China did the first test-flight during his visit in China in 2011.
It’s been 1041 days since Huawei released its last Kirin 9000.
It’s been 1566 days since Huawei being included into the entity list of US government.
With the massive domestic market, China was able to maintain Huawei’s operation. Now Chinese government and state-owned companies should choose only domestic computers, preferablly Huawei.
The US sanctions Huawei not because of its cellphones, but communication equipments.
The world was going to choose Huawei to deploy their 5G networks, and this would be a problem for the US government to spy other countries.
Therefore, even with no backdoor found, the UK eventually banned Huawei for security reasons and choose US companies which does have backdoors in their products.
The UK cannot say no to the US, because any British politician would want to stay longer in the politics club.
Why are China and Singapore politically dictatorial but well resistant to corruption while most other authoritarian countries are not? What is their secret? Is it more effective than the Western model?
I see from your profile that you’re American. I am from Singapore.
I think it’s funny how an American is calling Singapore “dictatorial”, when the USA is the place where cops use equipment designed for military warfare; where cops regularly shoot people, especially black people, to death for minor offences; and which has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates (the USA comprises 4% of the world population, but holds 25% of its prisoners) and exploits prison labour in a way that the ACLU and Chicago Law School has described as a “fundamental abuse of human rights”; and models itself after Afghanistan when it comes to women’s rights to contraceptives and abortion. The USA treats gun ownership as a kind of human right, but not universal healthcare. Meanwhile, its leaders talk openly in Congress about invading its southern neighbour Mexico …
Well, maybe that is not so strange. After all, Kansas, Colorado, California, Utah, Arizona etc were all part of Mexico, before the USA brutally invaded it and took all that land away. “Dictatorial” is also not an inappropriate adjective to describe the genocidal acts which the white Americans inflicted on the Native Americans. Let’s not even go into the USA’s history of black slavery.
Meanwhile, Singapore is “dictatorial” because it bans commercial imports of chewing gum except for therapeutic purposes. LOL …
Gabon just SHOCKED the world with a coup, Africa breaking from Western rule
An amazing video.