You know what?

I don’t have a television, In fact, I haven’t had one since around 2004.

It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s just that I am not interested in one. I occasionally watch movies, but those that I do watch are downloaded torrents, and I watch them either on the laptop of on one of the (too many) pads that we have lying around the house.

Sure, there are television shows in China, and I could watch them, but they are all kind of silly and are of no interest to me. Shrug.

Were I to purchase one, it would be a big waste. Just running all day as “background noise”. With perhaps a video or kids show every other day. Ah. We have different priorities.

Sometimes I wonder if I am an outlier. Or is this just the way that society has changed? I don’t know. I really do not know.

Maybe it was me that changed.

Or perhaps… just perhaps… I am no longer addicted to that propaganda box. And once away from that “drug” I find that I no longer need it.

Ah. I “cut the cord”… so to speak.

Today…

Why are sanctions on Russia so weak that Russia is constantly laughing at those sanctions?

The sanctions are actually quite deadly, if it was some other country.

The US used SWIFT as weapon on Syria, Iran, and Russia in recent years.

Banning someone from SWIFT should be the strategical threat, like nuclear weapon. However, the US probably really doesn’t have any more conventional method to force the “enemy states”.

When the atomic bomb got dropped, the world suddenly realized that it’s not that devastating.

With enough countries being considered as “enemy”, they are now able to form their own environment. It means that they are able to establish an internal circulation, so that the sanctions from the western group became virtually invalid.

Iran now is able to sell its oil to China or with currencies other than USD. This does not only lowered the usage of USD in international tradings, but also partially took the right to price the oil. Petrol dollar is the foundation, at least one of the supporting pillars, of nowadays US economic hegemony.

It’s the same for the Entity List of US government. When there were only a few companies and organzations on it, they were technically isolated from the world, and it was devastating.

However, with enough companies being sanctioned, they are able to support each other. US government sanctioned Huawei, so that TSMC cannot make chips for Huawei. However, conveniently, the US sanctioned SMIC too, which is a Chinese chip maker in Shanghai. Now SMIC is able to hold hands with Huawei with no hesitation.

It used to work because after the collapse of USSR, there was only 1 world leader. It was either the US way or the highway.

Then the US pushed Russia into the corner and hoped Russia to kneel before it. This reached a peak when the US successfully launched a color revolution to overthrow the pro-Russia authority. What the White House didn’t expect is Putin putting his pride aside and holding hands with China.

Russia has sources, China has manufacturing, and both countries are vast.

They are forced by the US to became the leader of the “evil world”, and started to provide sanctuary for countries which have nowhere to go.

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Logic of the US: You are my enemy if you are not my friend.

Logic of China: We may not be friends, the least we could do is to coexist in peace.

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The US on one hand doesn’t want China to be in its group, because China is not Japan or South Korea, it doesn’t just do whatever the US wanted; on the other hand, the US doesn’t want China to be in other groups, including forming its own, because that will weaken the control power of the US group over the world.

You cannot have everything.

It might be the case in the 90’s because the US was the only super power.

But time has changed.

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Maybe one day Russia would turn against China, but that would for sure be after the decline of the US.

The Tiny Cell called “Little Ease” was the Most Feared Room in the Tower of London

The story of Little Ease begins with a prison break from the Tower of London.

In 1534, a man and woman hurried past a row of cottages on the outer grounds of the Tower. They had almost reached the gateway to Tower Hill and, not far beyond it, the city of London, when a group of yeomen warders on night watch appeared in their path.

In response, the young couple turned toward each other, in what seemed a lover’s embrace. But something about the man caught the attention of a yeoman warder. He held his lantern higher and within seconds recognized the pair. The man was a colleague, fellow yeoman warder, John Bawd, and the woman was Alice Tankerville, a condemned thief, and prisoner.

So ended the Tower’s first known escape attempt by a woman. But Alice’s accomplice and admirer, the guard John Bawd, was destined to enter the Tower record books too: he is the first known occupant of a peculiarly infamous cell used during the reigns of the Tudors and early Stuarts.

The windowless cell measured 4 square feet (1.2 meters) and bore the faintly prim name of Little Ease. Its effect was simple. The prisoner within it could not stand nor sit nor lie down but was forced to crouch over, in increasing agony, until freed from the suffocating, dark space.

In 1215 England outlawed these kinds of grim practices through the passage of Magna Carta, except, however, by royal warrant. The first king to authorize it, and he did so reluctantly, was Edward II. He submitted to intense pressure from the Pope to follow the lead of the king of France and demolish the Order of the Knights Templar, part of a tradition begun during the Crusades.

King Philip IV of France, jealous of the Templars’ wealth and power, had charged them with heresy, obscene rituals, idolatry, and other offenses. The French knights denied all, and were duly tortured. Some who broke down and “confessed” were released;  all who denied wrongdoing were burned at the stake.

Once Edward II ordered imprisonment of members of the English chapter, French monks arrived in London bearing their dreaded instruments. In 1311 the Knights Templar “were questioned and examined in the presence of notaries while suffering under the torments of the rack” within the Tower of London as well as the prisons of Aldgate, Ludgate, Newgate, and Bishopsgate, according to The History of the Knights Templar, the Temple Church, and the Temple, by Charles G. Addison. And so the Tower—principally a royal residence, military stronghold, armory, and menagerie up until that time—was baptized in pain.

Did the instruments remain after the Knights Templars were crushed, to be used on other prisoners? We cannot be certain, although there is no record of it. The next mention of a rack within the Tower is a startling one—an unsavory nobleman made Constable of the Tower pushed for one to be installed. John Holland, third duke of Exeter, arranged for a rack to be brought into the Tower. It is not known if men were stretched upon it or if it was merely used to frighten. In any case, this rack is known to history as the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter.

It was in the 16th century that prisoners were unquestionably tortured in the Tower of London. The royal family rarely used the fortress on the Thames as a residence; more and more, its stone buildings contained prisoners.

And while the Tudor monarchs seem glittering successes to us now, in their own time they were beset by insecurities: rebellions, conspiracies and other threats both domestic and foreign. There was a willingness at the top of the government to override the law to obtain certain ends. This created a perfect storm for torture.

“It was during the time of the Tudors that the use of torture reached its height,” wrote historian L.A. Parry in his 1933 book The History of Torture in England. “Under Henry VIII it was frequently employed; it was only used in a small number of cases in the reigns of Edward VI and of Mary. It was whilst Elizabeth sat on the throne that it was made use of more than in any other period of history.”

Yeoman Warder John Bawd admitted he had planned the escape of Alice Tankerville “for the love and affection he bore her.” Unmoved, the Lieutenant of the Tower ordered Bawd into Little Ease, where he crouched, in growing agony.

The lovers were condemned to horrible ends for trying to escape. According to a letter in the State Papers of Lord Lisle, written on March 28,  Alice Tankerville was “hanged in chains at low water mark upon the Thames on Tuesday. John Bawd is in Little Ease cell in the Tower and is to be racked and hanged.”

Today no one knows exactly where Little Ease was located. One theory: in the dungeon of the White Tower. Another: in the basement of the old Flint Tower.  No visitor sees it today; it was torn down or walled up long ago. Besides Little Ease, the most-used devices were the rack, the manacles, and a horrific creation called the Scavenger’s Daughter. For many prisoners, solitary confinement, repeated interrogation, and the threat of physical pain were enough to make them tell their tormentors anything they wanted to know.

Often the victims ended up in the Tower for religious reasons. Anne Askew was for her Protestant beliefs; Edmund Campion for his Catholic ones. But the crimes varied. “The majority of the prisoners were charged with high treason, but the taking of life, robbery, embezzling the Queen’s plate, and failure to carry out proclamations against state players were among the offenses,” wrote Parry.

The monarch did not need to sign off on these kinds of requests, although sometimes he or she did. Elizabeth I personally directed that torture be used on the members of the Babington Conspiracy, a group that plotted to depose her and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. But usually, these initiatives went through the Privy Council or tapped the powers of the Star Chamber. It is believed that in some cases, permission was never sought at all.

Over and over, names pop up in state papers of those confined to Little Ease:

“On 3 May 1555: Stephen Happes, for his lewd behavior and obstinacy, committed this day to the Tower to remain in Little Ease for two or three days till he may be further examined.”

“10 January 1591:  Richard Topcliffe is to take part in an examination in the Tower of George Beesley, seminary priest, and Robert Humberson, his companion. And if you shall see good cause by their obstinate refusal to declare the truth of such things as shall be laid to their charge in Her Majesty’s behalf, then shall you by authority hereof commit them to the prison called Little Ease or to such other ordinary place of punishment as hath been accustomed to be used in those cases, and to certify proceedings from time to time.”

After Elizabeth and the succession of James I came the most famous prisoner of them all to be held in Little Ease, Guy Fawkes. Charged with plotting to blow up the king and Parliament, Fawkes was subjected to both manacles and rack to obtain his confession and the names of his fellow conspirators. After he had told his questioners everything they asked, Fawkes was still shackled hand and foot in Little Ease and left there, though no one knows for how long.

And after that final burst of savagery, Little Ease was no more. A House of Commons committee reported the same year as Fawkes’ end that the room was “disused.”

In 1640, during the reign of Charles I, the practice was abolished forever; there would be no more forcing prisoners to crouch for days in dark airless rooms, no more rack or hanging from chains. And so, mercifully, closed one of the darkest chapters in England’s history.

What are your thoughts on U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo saying that Nvidia can sell artificial intelligence chips to China, but just not “the most sophisticated ones”?

It’s called the Calcium Carbonate Protocol

In the 1950s and 1960s, China needed Penicillin very badly plus Sulfonamides

The US used a harsh Korean War rule to restrict all shipments of Penicillin and Sulfonamides to RED China and passed a law demanding that Hongkong, Singapore and Philippines have END USER CERTIFICATES for shipments of these drugs

So THE US MAKERS SIMPLY ADDED CALCIUM CARBONATE TO THE DRUG MIX and sold the same penicillin plus calcium carbonate for 40% extra cost which the Chinese paid

It was deemed very legal in federal and circuit Court and UPHELD in 1967 as ‘Fair Business Practice’

So ultimately when there is demand, there will be a supply

Nobody can change that

Raimondo is no fool

Privately she knows none of these policies would work and she knows that she is butchering the same FREE TRADE principles that kept the US as the world’s most reliable nation all these years

Yet the fact is Chinas growth has stunned them all

That China is narrowing the tech barriers at such an astounding rate is something nobody expected

In the 2018 paper to the Congress, the Technological Independence of China was predicted to be 2048 , in THIRTY YEARS

Trump later said he had pushed that further

Yet in 2021, the same experts reassessed and claimed Chinas Technological Independence could be as early as 2035

Now it’s 2032, DESPITE THE EXPORT MEASURES

In fact the stronger these restrictions are, the more likely China will need to break strangeholds and that would lead to newer Independent Technology

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Today China can buy Less Sophisticated AI Chips from Chinese Entities

The Quality is same as NVDIA

Tencent for instance makes excellent high quality AI Chips at the lower and mid levels of computing power that are now the lock, stock and barrel for Russian and Belorussian markets and even the Saudi markets

Only the last two generation or the most sophisticated AI Chips made by NVDIA has no rival in China domestically

It is these Chips that China wants

If China doesn’t get them, NVDIA will sell them to China by producing a slightly less sophisticated version (Maybe throw in a few transistors less) with say 97% efficiency and sell them to China by passing the sanctions and winning legally

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You see the problem

If US sells China everything openly, China will beat US by 2030 in every field of emerging technology like AI and Quantum computing

If US restricts exports to China, China will develop it’s own high tech supply chain and that may delay it’s ascendancy until 2035 but after that China no longer needs any Tech from the West and the whole world will have a Multipolar world where US can no longer use it’s technology as a bargaining Chip

Either way the Writing is on the Wall

Zydeco’s Pork Tenderloin Etouffee

Ingredients

• 1 ounce oil
• 1/3 pound diced onions
• 1/3 pound diced celery
• 1/3 pound diced green bell peppers
• 1 teaspoon garlic puree
• 2 ounces tomato paste
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon basil
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 quart veal stock
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• Pinch of thyme
• Pinch of chili powder
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
• Pinch of black pepper

Instructions

1. Sweat onions, celery and bell peppers in the oil.
2. Add the tomato paste and garlic.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Brown pork in a sauté pan.
5. Add sauce and reduce.

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

My uncle was an outlaw, an honest-to-goodness criminal who did multiple stints in prison. He was a biker, but he wasn’t stable enough to be a member of the Hells Angels. He was a small guy who looked a lot like Charles Manson.

People didn’t mess with him because he was prone to violence, skilled at fighting, and willing to use weapons when he had to. He fully embraced the criminal lifestyle. Around Christmas, the largest of his pot plants would usually be decorated as a Christmas tree.

One evening on my grandparent’s farm, he decided to make a bonfire out of an old date-packing conveyor belt. The flames must have reached 50 feet or more into into the sky, and were likely visible from any nearby farmhouse. The fire department sent a truck out to extinguish the fire.

But my uncle wouldn’t let them put out his bonfire. Faced with an angry, shirtless, tattooed guy who looked like Charlie Manson. They called in the Sheriff’s Department.

A youngish Hispanic Deputy got out of the car. My uncle thought he could push this guy around like he did the fire department. This young deputy had been a college wrestler. When my uncle tried to stop the fire department again, this deputy gave my uncle a first class attitude adjustment.

He was wearing the bruises from his arrest when my grandmother bailed him out of jail.

Lucky Luciano Put a Hit on a Rival Mob Boss using Fake IRS Agents

Born Salvatore Lucania (but better known as Lucky Luciano) in Sicily in November 1897, the future brains of the New York mafia took the name Charles Luciano after he was arrested for dealing heroin and his parents disowned him. By the 1930s he was known as “Lucky” Luciano, although no one can say with certainty what first prompted the nickname.

The leading theory for his being known for his remarkable luck was his surviving a savage beating in October 1929. Luciano was not only beaten but stabbed by a group of men who then dumped him on a beach on Staten Island, left for dead. A police officer discovered him, and Luciano was taken to the hospital. As a result of the attack, he had a deep scar on one side of his face and a permanently drooping eyelid.

His attackers’ identity was murky. Sometimes Luciano said it was three police officers who beat him, other times it was thugs sent by mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano because Luciano worked for a boss that Maranzano was at war with. Whatever the reason for the attack, within two years, Maranzano was dead and out of Luciano’s way in his meteoric rise to the top.

The 1920s were in many ways flush times for the underworld, thanks to Prohibition, which handed the Italian, Irish, and Jewish gangs lots of opportunities to make money. But the New York City underworld was in the throes of a deadly rivalry between two men: Sicilian immigrant Joe Masseria, known as “Joe the Boss,” and the more recent arrival, Maranzano, driven out of Italy by Benito Mussolini, who hated the mafia. Following restrictions on immigration by Italians to the U.S., mafia members fleeing Mussolini applied for political asylum, saying they were oppressed by fascism.

Luciano worked for Masseria–which is why he was beat up and left for dead–but he was weary of the turf wars, because they were keeping people from making money in not just rum running but gambling, racketeering, robbery, and prostitution. He was part of an up-and-coming gangster class, along with Frank Costello, who despised the “old country” ways of the Sicilian bosses they called “Mustache Pete’s.”

Luciano had been a criminal since his early teen years. He dropped out of school, and at 14, took a job delivering hats, but there was heroin hidden in the hats. He later explained his fondness for crime by saying, “I never was a crumb, and if I have to be a crumb, I’d rather be dead.” After a prison term of one year for drug possession, he flourished in an East Harlem gang, and was mentored by Arnold Rothstein, the racketeer who is believed to have fixed the 1919 World Series.

Luciano decided to double-cross his tiresome boss Masseria, so he made a deal with Maranzano to kill him and in return take his place and cease hostilities. He invited Masseria to a lobster lunch in Coney Island, Brooklyn, on April 15, 1931. “Before dessert arrived, Luciano left for the toilet,” wrote Selwyn Raab in Five Families. “Mysteriously, Masseria’s bodyguards vanished from the restaurant as four of Luciano’s killers suddenly appeared and riddled Joe the Boss with a volley of gunfire.”

But if Lucky Luciano thought that matters would improve after he took his boss’s place, he was wrong. It was set up that there’d be five families controlling their own gangster turfs in New York City.  Maranzano, however, declared himself capo di tutti capi, boss of bosses, and imposed a lot of rules on everyone. Now Luciano decided that he needed to eliminate the boss of bosses.

Doing so wouldn’t be easy. Maranzano was always accompanied by a fleet of bodyguards, he drove a bulletproof Cadillac, and his office was in a fancy building overlooking Grand Central Station, with the address of 230 Park Avenue (later the Helmsley Building). But Luciano was able to learn that his target was having tax problems and Maranzano had instructed his bodyguards to not carry guns to the office because, any day now, the Internal Revenue Service was expected to descend on him.

At this point, Luciano turned to his old friends, Jewish gangsters Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. When he was a child, Luciano lived on the Lower East Side, on 1st Avenue between 13th and 14th streets. He became close friends with his neighbor Lansky and then Siegel.

For the hit on Maranzano, they came up with the idea of outfitting a group of men in suits and ties–and guns and knives.

Saying they were with the IRS, the assassins showed up at Maranzano’s 9th floor Park Avenue office on September 10, 1931. At that point, Maranzano was fanatical about only employing Italians, and he insisted that the whole mafia do business with exclusively other Italian gang members. None of the “IRS agents” looked at all Italian, so Maranzano believed they were genuine and went into a room with them. There he was killed.

And with that, Lucky Luciano rose to power in the New York City mafia, and as the man who put the “organized” into organized crime, eventually became the Number one gangster in the entire United States.

What are some of the common mistakes that home buyers make when dealing with real estate agents or purchasing property in general?

A few.

One: Just because the bank approves your $800,000 loan doesn’t mean you can afford the payments.

Two: Buying a fancy custom home that has unique designs and architecture.

Per my inspector, those homes have the most problems and leaks of any of them. If you buy a standard house design, or one in a neighborhood with a bunch of similar houses all clearly built by the same builder, you set yourself up for success more. Those homes, even if they seem boring, are proven models and have been built over and over by the builder. All the problems have been worked out.

Three: assuming a fixer upper is going to be easier than it is. When you walk through a house, you may see a few items that you can easily fix. Make a list of those items, count them up, and when you get home—triple it. If you can still manage that much work—have at it.

Four: carpeted floors. It tends to get super smelly and is harder to clean.

God forbid you have carpet in your bathrooms or by water sources.

Then, you are just asking for it. I can smell the mold from here.

In 2025, The U.S. Will Finally Begin Preparing To Fight A Nuclear War With Russia

December 12, 2023 by Michael

A point of view out of the United States. Trust me, it's bad, but NOT dire. Do not freak out. -MM

Will the upgrades that are coming to our strategic nuclear arsenal be ready in time?  Right now, hopelessly outdated Minuteman missiles that first went into service in the 1970s form the backbone of our strategic nuclear arsenal.  The silos where they stand ready to be launched still use rotary phones and 8 inch floppy disks in many cases.  Once they are launched, the brand new S-500 anti-missile systems that the Russians have deployed will be able to intercept them.  Meanwhile, the Russians have introduced a brand new intercontinental ballistic missile known as the Sarmat.  A single Sarmat carries enough firepower to destroy an area the size of Texas, and our anti-missile systems are not able to deal with this new threat.  The balance of power has fundamentally shifted, and so we desperately need to update our capabilities.

Unfortunately, this process will not even begin until 2025.

So we better hope that we do not get into a shooting war with Russia during the next couple of years.

The U.S. has been developing a brand new ICBM known as “the Sentinel”, and it is desperately needed…

The control stations for America’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles have a sort of 1980s retro look, with computing panels in sea foam green, bad lighting and chunky control switches, including a critical one that says “launch.”

Those underground capsules are about to be demolished and the missile silos they control will be completely overhauled. A new nuclear missile is coming, a gigantic ICBM called the Sentinel. It’s the largest cultural shift in the land leg of the Air Force’s nuclear missile mission in 60 years.

These upgrades cannot happen fast enough, because right now the infrastructure of our strategic nuclear arsenal is constantly breaking down and falling apart…

The silos lose power. Their 60-year old massive mechanical parts break down often. Air Force crews guard them using helicopters that can be traced back to the Vietnam War. Commanders hope the modernization of the Sentinel, and of the trucks, gear and living quarters, will help attract and retain young technology-minded service members who are now asked each day to find ways to keep a very old system running.

This is something that I have been warning about for years, but most people didn’t want to listen.

Now our military is in a race against time, because the clock is ticking.

Overall, 750 billion dollars will be spent to overhaul our strategic nuclear forces, and it is being projected the silo work for the Sentinel could begin “as soon as 2025”…

The Sentinel work is one leg of a larger, nuclear weapons enterprise-wide $750 billion overhaul that is replacing almost every component of U.S. nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ICBMs in the country’s largest nuclear weapons program since the Manhattan Project.

For the Sentinel, silo work could be underway by lead contractor Northrop Grumman as soon as 2025.

I am glad that they are moving forward.

But if work will not even begin until 2025, when will it finally be completed?

Until the Sentinel is ready, the Russians will continue to possess a major strategic advantage over us, and they know it.

If the war in Ukraine spirals out of control, we could easily find ourselves facing a nightmare scenario.

The Russians have been steadily gaining ground in Ukraine in recent weeks, and over the past few days they have started to gobble up significant chunks of territory.

The Ukrainians are running out of warm bodies to throw into the fight, and that is a major problem.

They are also running out of ammunition and equipment, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just made a trip to D.C. to beg for more money…

Zelensky is in D.C. to ask Congress to pass $61 billion more for Ukraine, on top of the $113 billion they approved early this year. However, it looks increasingly likely that any more funding for Ukraine will have to wait until next year.

The Biden administration requested the funding as part of a $106 billion package, which includes only $13 billion for securing the border, but Republicans say it does not go far enough, and are calling for a number of reforms to reduce the number of asylum seekers and illegal border crossers, which recently hit 12,000 per day.

Johnson said at a Wall Street Journal event on Monday that Democrats and the White House must agree to some or all of the border-security measures outlined in H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act.

Even with all of the money that we have given him already, his forces are still losing.

And even if we give him what he is asking for now, Russians forces will continue to advance.

Zelensky is holding a losing hand, and as the Russians advance he is going to become very desperate.

And very desperate people do very desperate things.

Eventually, I expect that events in Ukraine will force the U.S. and Russia into a showdown.

When that day arrives, will the U.S. be ready?

Earlier today, I came across an article about a calendar that is being sold in Russia that shows “a Russian soldier outside the US Capitol building in Washington DC with a drone and helicopter overhead”…

A Russian veterans organisation is selling a 2024 calendar featuring a muscle-bound Vladimir Putin.

The calendar continues a series of propaganda images including one showing a Russian soldier outside the US Capitol building in Washington DC with a drone and helicopter overhead.

Many Russians believe that a war with the United States is inevitable.

And as I have repeatedly warned my readers, the Russians have been feverishly preparing for such a conflict for a long time.

Thankfully, the U.S. is finally starting to get prepared as well.

But if work is not even going to begin until 2025, will the much needed upgrades to our strategic nuclear arsenal be completed in time?

How has China’s shipbuilding industry contributed to the expansion of its navy?

The first thing to understand is that commercial shipbuilding and building warships are completely different businesses.

Commercial shipbuilding is like building a family car. The technology, equipment, and quality standards used in the two businesses are very different.

Just because a country has strong commercial shipbuilding capabilities does not necessarily mean that it has strong warship manufacturing capabilities. For example, South Korea has huge commercial shipbuilding capabilities, but it does not have strong warship construction capabilities. Their naval equipment is almost entirely dependent on American technology authorization.

China has huge commercial shipbuilding capabilities (accounting for 60% of the world’s total). Will this help their warship manufacturing?

Helps keep costs down during peacetime.

China’s large shipyards are typically dual-use, meaning they are building container ships at the same time they are building Aegis destroyers.

The commercial business dilutes the shipyard’s operating costs, and various costs are allocated to commercial projects. This makes them offer very low prices when building warships. The Burke III destroyer costs approximately US$2 billion, while China’s similar Type 052DL destroyer costs only US$500 million.

Obvious advantages in emergency situations.

1. Numerous facilities

In order to build very large commercial ships, China has countless giant shipyards and gantry cranes. They have 50 giant docks and supporting large equipment that can build aircraft carriers. The only one in the United States is Newport News Shipbuilding.

2. Large supporting production capacity

Warships require not only shipyards, but also countless raw materials. From the most basic steel and non-ferrous metals to diesel engines and steam turbines. In order to satisfy commercial business, China has huge production capacity for these things.

3. Abundant talents

The shipbuilding industry has limited automation and a high proportion of manual work. A large number of skilled shipbuilders were needed. In order to meet the annual shipbuilding needs of 20 million tons, China maintains a team of 180,000 to 200,000 skilled workers (some surveys say that including various small shipyards, the number exceeds 500,000). The United States only has a shipbuilding business of 100,000 tons per year and only has 18,000 skilled shipbuilders.

When the Navy needs it, they can clear out commercial projects and put all their resources into warship manufacturing. The picture at the beginning of this article shows the ability of a Chinese shipyard to build 6 052D destroyers and 2 055 cruisers at the same time (5 ships are being built on the slipway, and 3 ships are outfitting equipment).

Imagine that starting tomorrow, China and the United States begin to build warships with all their strength. The materials, facilities and personnel required by China are all complete. As long as they get the order, they can immediately start construction of 10 aircraft carriers, 20 Aegis destroyers and 8 nuclear submarines at the same time.

However, the United States has limited resources and can only start construction of one aircraft carrier, two Aegis destroyers and one nuclear submarine immediately. At the same time, the United States needs to urgently build large shipyards, purchase and install large cranes, purchase equipment and train workers, and gradually expand production capacity within 2-3 years.

By the time the U.S.’s manufacturing capabilities reached a level similar to China’s, China had already built ten times as many warships as the United States.

Solution to the Fermi Paradox Found! Scientists Hope They’re Wrong

Have you ever seen an employer fire someone without realizing what a crucial role the employee played?

What is the pettiest thing you’ve seen a cheap person do at a restaurant?

Years ago I had a blind date. We had talked on the phone and the guy asked if he could take me to lunch. Not MEET me for lunch, but take me. He was inviting me so I assumed he would pay.

We met at a casual inexpensive chain restaurant. I had something modestly priced – it was probably around $7 (like I said, years ago). When the bill came, he told me what my share was – he actually said, “You had the french dip plus an iced tea, so your total is…..” I was pretty surprised but I figured that the cost of my lunch was worth finding out what a cheapo he was so I wouldn’t waste any more time dating him. But here’s the kicker – he had a Buy One Get One Free coupon! So his meal was free and I paid for mine! That was enough for me. He walked me to my car and asked if he could see me again. I said, “No” and he looked surprised and asked why. I said that anyone as cheap as he was shouldn’t date. Thank goodness he never called again.

What’s the most you’ve ever tipped someone, and why?

$500 tip on a $12 meal. It was at a diner in New Jersey. When my father was about 80, he lost interest in eating. My brother and I finally insisted he have dinner at a restaurant every night. My father reluctantly agreed. He found a local diner where he felt comfortable. Over time, he became very friendly with a waitress there. She treated him like royalty (in fact, all the staff did). He was by no means wealthy, but he always left a generous tip. The waitress would give him cookies to take home and was genuinely happy to see him every day. Many times when I would go with him, I would see her smile when he came in, run over to hug and kiss him, and just take wonderful care of him. It was one of the only joys for the last years of his life. Earlier this year, my dad died. When I went back to handle his estate, one evening I went to the diner for dinner. I told the waitress that my dad had died (she suspected as much, having not seen him for over a month)…and after eating there, I left her a $500 tip. She deserved every penny and more.

Tracking him through “discarded DNA,” police arrest a 72-year-old “suburban grandfather” suspected of being the Golden State suspect

For years a serial killer and rapist traumatized the entire state of California, committing at least 12 murders, before coming to a seeming halt some 40 years ago in his horrific spree of violence. For victims and families of victims, not knowing who committed the crimes caused lasting emotional damage.  That changed on April 24, 2018.

“In a perfectly executed arrest, my detectives arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, 72 years old,” said Scott Jones, Sacramento County Sheriff, at a press conference. Police were able to match DeAngelo’s DNA to evidence from the investigation, saying they used “surveillance and discarded DNA.”

USA Today published a story saying that police investigators submitted the DNA of someone whom they believed was the suspect, gathered at a crime scene, to Ancestry.com, not officially as police detectives but as a regular customer of the genealogical research site, and were then able to narrow the search through matches to relatives of the person with the mystery DNA, using “trees.”

This use of Ancestry.com is raising questions. In a story published by the Associated Press, Steve Mercer of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender said there aren’t strong privacy laws to keep police from trolling ancestry databases. “People who submit DNA for ancestors testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family,” Mercer said, adding that they “have fewer privacy protections than convicted offenders whose DNA is contained in regulated databanks.”

However, the arrest of DeAngelo is also sending shock waves of relief throughout California. He is believed to be responsible for 12 murders, 45 rapes, and more than 120 residential burglaries between 1976 and 1986.

According to an interview in the Los Angeles Times, Jennifer Carole, the daughter of 1980 victims Lyman and Charlene Smith, “said she had long thought that the person who bludgeoned her father and stepmother to death had probably died in the following decades. To find out he was not only alive, but living among them in Sacramento, was an overwhelming revelation, she said.”

“In my mind I thought he was dead the whole time,” Carole said to the press. “I’d compartmentalized it. But to find out … he’s been in Sacramento, where all my family lives … it’s unbelievable. How can he have just been here?”

A cold-case unit with the Ventura County district attorney renewed their efforts to find the Golden State Killer within the last two years. The FBI offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading to an arrest in 2016. “We all knew we were looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.

A series of rapes in an area east of Sacramento in 1976 were first linked by the authorities because of their proximity and the similar description of the rapist — a white male with blond hair who was close to six feet tall — and the sadistic rituals that he inflicted on his victims. His targets were women home alone and women at home with their children. The suspect went on to rape women with their husbands present and then the two of them would be murdered.

Neighbors of DeAngelo, whom the Washington Post described as a “suburban grandfather” in a headline, said that he kept to himself and sometimes yelled at people over infractions like mowing their lawns too early in the morning, but gave absolutely no indication of anything more frightening. He showed an interest in model airplanes, some say. He was the father of three daughters and had a number of grandchildren.

DeAngelo was a police officer in Auburn, California, in the 1970s but was fired after being accused of shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent. He retired last year after working 27 years at a distribution center for Save Mart grocery stores, the chain confirmed.

Public interest in the Golden State Killer was sparked this year with the publication of the true-crime book I’ll be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, written by Michelle McNamara, who died in April 2016 before finishing it. The book, published in February 2018, was completed after her death by a journalist and researcher recruited by her husband, the comedian Patton Oswalt.

The Golden State Killer was believed to have tracked the movements of his planned victims. He wore gloves and a mask and spoke in an angry whisper. Investigators at the time suspected he had military or law enforcement training.

The New York Times wrote, “Mr. DeAngelo was arrested by investigators using some of the same tactics employed by the suspect to stalk his victims — the police surveilled his movements, studied his routines, and pounced when he left his house.”

Eagles – Hotel California (Live 1977) (Official Video) [HD]

If war erupts between China and the Quad countries, who would win?

Let’s see

First would be the Cost of War

China would need to spend 1 Billion RMB a day to fight in the South China Theatre across the Taiwan Straits and Sea of Japan

Quad would need 2.5–3 times this or around $ 400 Million a day to be able to equal China given the cost and scale of production that is severely lagging

This means a 100 day war would cost China around 100 Billion RMB ($ 14 Billion) versus a whopping $ 45 Billion for Quad

Assuming a 3 year war, that would be 1 Trillion RMB ($ 140 Billion) for China versus $ 450–500 Billion for Quad

I am sure only one guy will be coughing up all that money and that’s USA

India, Australia, Japan combined won’t cough up $ 1 Billion

Since China now pays for its food and fuel in RMB , it can easily afford 1 Trillion RMB

The US needs to print $ 450–500 Billion and already the strain of printing $ 170 Billion for Ukraine is showing

Next would be the Logistics

Quad has an arsenal of 960 Missiles combined on their patrolling vessels and carrier groups (720 US, 240 Others)

Add another 320 with Japan and Korea and maybe 160 from Taiwan

That’s 1440 Deployable Missiles

China has 2400 Missiles on its Patrolling Vessels and Carrier Groups plus 1200 Land Battery Missiles plus 800 Intermediate Range Launch Missiles all aimed for the South China Sea

That’s 4400 Deployable Missiles not to include 90–110 from North Korea

That’s 3:1 in Chinas favor in just the South China Theatre

Let’s see the Weapon Supply status

Japan, Australia and India are Net Importers of weapons with a near zero indigenous supply line in most naval equipment or aerial equipment or even Intelligence gathering

If India risks it’s limited advanced equipment imported on this theatre, Pakistan can have a field day and so can the PLA on the Arunachal Front or the Ladakh front

Same with South Korea

Thus US has to supply all the intelligence gathering equipment and by chance some fall into China, that’s years of priceless IP reverse engineered

Today US has 20 key pieces of equipment over the Baltics handing intel to Ukraine against 90–120 key pieces handing intel to Russia and owned by Russia

Even if the US manages to quadruple it’s Ukraine strength and bring in 80 pieces of key intel gathering equipment like advanced radar etc, China has close to 250 and that’s 1:3

China will always have the Intelligence advantage

---

Bottom line is NO

QUAD will lose

QUAD cannot win

Quad will rely on a shock attack and HOPE China has an internal coup and regime change within 60 days

It didn’t happen in Russia and it’s more unlikely to happen in China

The US is too far away and China aint Iraq or Afghanistan

Others are too insufficient to take on China

---

In its theatre, China is not likely to be defeated

The only thing that can change this equation is if SOMEHOW Russia can be convinced to fight against China on another front

The one bodyguard assigned to Ford’s Theater to protect President Lincoln abandoned his post for a drink on the night of the assassination–and wasn’t fired for it

On the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln decided to take in a production of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater, in Washington, D.C. The one policeman assigned to guard the president on that fateful night left his post—to go next door for a drink.

Whether from hubris or humility, Lincoln was unconcerned about his safety, even amid near constant death threats. In August of 1864, he survived an assassination attempt, when someone fired a shot at him as he rode a horse—all by himself. (His hat was recovered the next day, with a musketball hole through the side.) It seems impossible to imagine today, but the president was known to go to plays, to church, and on walks without security.

John Parker was a carpenter and machinist born in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He moved to Washington and joined the Metropolitan Police Force when it formed in 1861. He was not an exemplar. The force cited him for conduct unbecoming an officer, drinking (and sleeping) on the job and frequenting a whorehouse, according to Smithsonian magazine. He had 14 disciplinary infractions on his record. Somehow he managed always to get off. When a four-man detail was created to protect Lincoln in 1864, Parker was selected to join the team.

Parker was late to his assignment on April 14, showing up at Ford’s Theater at 7 P.M. instead of 4. Lincoln and his party arrived at his box in the balcony at 9 P.M., after the play had already started. The actors stopped mid-scene while the orchestra played “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln bowed to the actors, and the play carried on.

Parker was stationed outside Lincoln’s box, in the passageway by the door, a good place to guard a president but a lousy place to take in a play. The bored Parker moved down to the first balcony to better see the performance. During intermission, he went next door to the Star Saloon for a drink with Lincoln’s coachman and footman.

As it happens, John Wilkes Booth was also at the Star Saloon, having a shot of whiskey before his nefarious mission. When Booth arrived at Lincoln’s box, the chair in the passageway was empty. Booth went into the box, shouted “Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!” and shot Lincoln in the back of the head. Booth leaped to the stage, exited the theater, and escaped on his horse. (Booth would be tracked down and killed within two weeks.)

It is of course possible that even had Parker been at his station, he might not have stopped Booth’s assassination of Lincoln.

“Booth was a well-known actor, a member of a famous theatrical family,” Ford’s Theater historical interpreter Eric Martin told Smithsonian magazine. “They were like Hollywood stars today. Booth might have been allowed in to pay his respects. Lincoln knew of him. He’d seen him act in The Marble Heart, here in Ford’s Theater in 1863.”

But Parker’s fellow guards never forgave him, nor did Lincoln’s widow.

“It makes me feel rather bitter when I remember that the President had said, just a few hours before, that he knew he could trust all his guards,” William H. Crook wrote in his memoir. “And then to think that in that one moment of test one of us should have utterly failed him! Parker knew that he had failed in duty. He looked like a convicted criminal the next day. He was never the same man afterward.”

Parker was charged with failure to protect the president, though the charge was dropped. The public did not know of his culpability, though Mrs. Lincoln did. Remarkably, Parker stayed on the White House security detail, at one point being assigned to Mrs. Lincoln, who confronted him as recounted in the 1868 memoir Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave, and Four in the White House, by Elizabeth Keckley.

“Why were you not at the door to keep the assassin out when he rushed into the box?” Mrs. Lincoln said.

“I did wrong, I admit, and I have bitterly repented it, but I did not help to kill the President,” Keckley recalled Parker saying. “I did not believe that any one would try to to kill so good a man in such a public place, and the believe made me careless.”

To which Mrs. Lincoln responded, “I shall always believe that you are guilty,” and sent him away with a wave of her hand.

Parker stayed on the Metropolitan Police Force three more years before finally he was fired for sleeping on the job in 1868. He turned back to carpentry and died in 1890 of pneumonia, an all but forgotten man in the drama of Lincoln’s assassination.

Have you ever seen a new employee stealing from the workplace?

The grocery store I managed allowed cashiers a margin of error of $5.00, plus or minus. Most of the cashiers were usually within $1, either way, but a newbie that the store owner ordered me to hire — she was a friend’s granddaughter — was short a total of $16 dollars — $1, $5, $5, $5 — over her first four days. The cashiers were rarely on the money (zero balance) and most were proud when they were 25¢ or less off either way, so I found it odd that this girl was off by whole dollar amounts on each of her first four days.

So I put a camera on her.

She was scheduled to work a six-hour shift and at the end she was, you guessed it, $5 short. So I reviewed the video and watched her pocket a dollar here and there; she’d appear to be putting it in her drawer but each time her hand would go into her pocket. She did this five times and I knew that I had her.

I went to the owner and he called her into his office before her next shift. He told her what I’d found and that she was, obviously, fired, but he wanted to know why she did it. She said she didn’t want to work as a cashier. She didn’t like the pay, or the hours, or the “stupid people”, and she thought she deserved more for putting up with it all. She also said she didn’t pocket more than $5 because she knew she’d get in trouble if she did. She felt that she was “allowed” to take that $5 each day.

The owner was dumbstruck and decided to lower to amount cashiers could be over or short to $1. And he never forced me to hire anyone else.

How do people with low IQs (≤80) perceive things in everyday life?

I used to teach Special Education. And, I’m here to tell ya that I’ve had arguments with a nine year old kid with a 40 IQ about how to spell a word.

Joey, brain damaged at birth, was capable of learning the correct spelling, just barely capable, but he was entirely convinced that his version of the word was the correct spelling. I took a very long time to gradually get him to change that view, because I could see that it wasn’t about how to spell a word, it was about nurturing in Joey what was plainly there: his love of correct spelling. He was proud of his version, doncha know! And also, of versions of other, much more important things too.

Joey the Saint

Joey had a fixation — he was an assembler of trophies. His father was in business selling trophies and plaques, ya see, and Joey would make bowling, golf, baseball, etc. trophies out of the pieces his father could not use in the business and gave to Joey to play with. These were scuffed or dented, but to Joey they were GOLD. He made some of the goofiest looking amalgams — football players in full stride with a football tucked in one arm and a tennis racket in the other, for instance. And it was always catch as catch can, but Joey didn’t care. He just loved assembling them, thought they were very marketable, thought of himself as a businessman like his father. Oh, he was full of esteem about it, let me tell ya. It was, you see, just about the only thing Joey could do well “in his own eyes.” With a 40 IQ, Joey was looking at a future like a life sentence without a chance for parole.

But Joey was happy.

And Joey taught my class, in one stroke, something more important than ANYTHING I ever taught anyone in that class.

One day, Joey came to school with three big boxes. His father helped him bring them in. And his father and I stood there and watched Joey teach us all. Joey opened the boxes, and out came a special, unique statue for every kid in the class. 18 statues made by Joey who couldn’t spell the word “statue.” 18 statues that were to Joey, by his own inner logic, as precious as fingerprints that could only be assigned to one and only one person. 18 statues in boxes that Joey knew so well that he could dive into the boxes after saying each pupil’s name and instantly pull out Pedro’s statue, then Anna’s statue, then Cathy’s statue . . . 18 statues with names assigned to them. Joey knew which was to go to whom.

Silently, for Joey could hardly talk, he gave each statue out like it was a soul. And every kid there opened themselves to Joey’s vision of the moment and took their statues into their hugging arms like each trophy was a newborn babe. Joey gave everyone a symbolic kiss on the forehead to take home. Everyone deserved a symbol of “job well done,” thought Joey. And 18 kids with almost no chance to succeed in life, hummed with delight.

And no one I’ve ever seen in my whole life was as happy as Joey that day. He so innocently beamed his love.

That’s my goal in life. Be as happy and as wrong . . . and as right as Joey.

Addendum. So very grateful for all the heartfelt responses. When I wrote this decades ago, Joey was so much fresher in my mind. I now see that writing style as a bit “much,” but I dare not change a word. Also, the title question is not my doing, so I cannot justify changing it either.

This essay’s success is due solely to Joey — not my writing.
This essay is his, not mine.

Has someone ever been fired because of you?

Yes.

I worked for a financial call center. I excelled there and loved my job. I was there for nearly 3 years and during the last 6 months my attendance suffered greatly. I had pain from a hernia and had taken time for those occasions and had repair surgery, so I had STD for that. I was also going through a very bad divorce and the emotional distress was so extreme that I couldn’t eat or sleep. I worked odd hours of the night because I was working during UK operating hours and by the time I would finally fall asleep, I’d have to be up 2 hours later.

My manager knew all of the issues impacting me, yet, never thought to look into how to help my situation at work (being an exemplary employee). I was one day called in to HR and was terminated. I later found out that I could have taken another short term for stress, and had I been informed sooner, it could have saved my job.

I explained these things to HR, but it was too late. Apparently, my manager had become intimidated by me and the success I achieved in a short period of time and didn’t want to help me, I learned.

After my termination and the walk of shame, being escorted out, HR summoned my manager to discuss what I had to say. That woman began text messaging me, upset that I would place any kind of blame on her. I told her that I was no longer an employee and to stop messaging me. She still messaged me.

Next day, I contacted HR about her harassment of a non employee and she was terminated.

Instant karma!

The only unsolved skyjacking case in U.S. history might have a break: “D. B. Cooper” is Robert Rackstraw, a Vietnam vet and ex-CIA operative, investigative team claims

On November 24, 1971, on a rainy afternoon in Portland, Oregon, a man approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines. He wore a dark raincoat, a dark suit with a skinny black tie, a neatly pressed white shirt, and loafers. He appeared to be in his forties, nearly six feet tall, with receding hair. “He looked like a business executive,” witnesses said later.

Using the name Dan Cooper, he used cash to purchase a one-way ticket to Seattle on Flight 305. The man, who carried a black attache case, sat in the last row of the Boeing 727 for the 30-minute flight, seat 18-C, ordered a bourbon and soda. After the plane took off, he handed an attractive flight attendant a note, which she slipped in her pocket and ignored.

A bit later, when the flight attendant passed by him, the man leaned toward her and whispered, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”

With that, the legend of D. B. Cooper was born.

Hours later, in the Seattle-Tacoma airport, Cooper, now wearing sunglasses, boarded a second plane empty of passengers and with only a flight crew. After he showed the flight attendant on the first plane the bomb in his attache case and she conveyed the note’s contents to the pilot, his instructions had been followed.

He now had four parachutes and a briefcase containing $200,000 in $20 bills. (What he did not know was that while the plane circled the Seattle airport, FBI agents photographed the money.) It was now night time, and rain was getting heavier.

The man had more detailed orders to be followed: the plane would follow a southeast course to Mexico City at the minimum airspeed possible at a maximum 10,000 foot altitude. The landing gear would have to remain deployed during takeoff and the cabin be depressurized. As with all of his communications, he was quite polite.

According to the FBI document on the case: “Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: he jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money.” Two aircraft from a nearby air force base had been following the airliner, but saw nothing.

Extensive searches on the ground found no trace of Cooper, his parachute, or the money. The FBI says, “Calling it NORJAK, for Northwest Hijacking, we interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads across the nation, and scoured the aircraft for evidence. By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, we’d considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.”

It is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in FBI history. Despite theories put forth in books, documentaries, symposiums, and an enthusiastic website, no one has proven the identity of D. B. Cooper (a journalist mistakenly turned “Dan” into “D.B.” and it stuck). None of the photographed money turned up until 1980, when a boy found three packets of the ransom cash in a stream near Vancouver, Washington.

One of the most widely believed theories was that Cooper died in his audacious jump from the plane. He had a parachute that couldn’t be steered, he jumped at night into a heavily wooded area, in the rain, in clothes certainly not practical for such an act. On July 8, 2016, the FBI announced that it had “redirected resources allocated to the D.B. Cooper case in order to focus on other investigative priorities.”

But in late January 2018 a startling claim was made to the media: D. B. Cooper was actually a former CIA operative named Robert Rackstraw, alive and well and living in Southern California.

A team of private investigators hired by TV producer Tom Colbert that has been working on the mystery for several years said they cracked a code proving the infamous hijacker is, in fact, a man who has ties to the San Diego area named Robert Rackstraw, and he is still alive. Rackstraw is a decorated Vietnam War veteran and, according to the investigators, an ex-CIA operative.

Portion of Brian Ingram’s 1980 discovery

The code was contained in a Dec. 11, 1971, letter the cold-case team got their hands on that they say was sent by “D. B. Cooper” to several major news outlets. The taunting letter, which the newspapers did not publish at the time and officials said were a prank, was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

“The letter, which went to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times and The Washington Post, contains strings of letters and numbers at the bottom of the page,” according to the Seattle Times.

A code breaker on Colbert’s team, Rick Sherwood, was able to decode the letters and numbers, and he said they pointed to the three Army units Rackstraw was connected to between 1969 in 1970 when he was in Vietnam.

The encryption was meant to serve as a signal to those in his units who knew the code that he was alive and well after the jump, Colbert said. He also taunted law enforcement by including “SWS” in the letter, which stands for “Special Warfare School.”

According to the website dbcooper.com, “Colbert said Pentagon records he obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show detailed skill sets Rackstraw received from Green Berets in 1968, including 400 hours of Special Forces classes, HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) parachuting, psychological operations (PSYOPS) and other training.”

In addition to claiming to have found the real D.B. Cooper, Colbert said he has strong evidence that the FBI deliberately worked to keep the hijacking case unsolved —due to Rackstraw’s CIA ties.

Although his CIA employment is not confirmed, Rackstraw, 74,  was not an angel by any definition. He was charged with murdering his stepfather but acquitted in a trial in 1978.

He once reportedly tried to fake his own death by using a Mayday call and bailing out of a rented plane–it quickly unraveled. He was even arrested in Iran and deported back to the United States, which certainly doesn’t happen every day.

According to the Washington Post, “he faced charges of aircraft theft, possession of explosives and check fraud … Colbert said Rackstraw was convicted and spent more than a year in jail before being released in 1980. Rackstraw’s attorney said he couldn’t confirm those details.” Those who feel that D. B. Cooper was a polite mastermind who behaved like a business executive are unconvinced that Rackstraw, who hit lists of possible Coopers in the late 1970s, was this man.

When tracked down recently by a TV crew, Rackstraw, when asked if he were the real D. B. Cooper said, “What difference would it make?” Rackstraw’s attorney has said that he denies any part in the skyjacking.

He was 28 at the time of the skyjacking, and one of the original flight attendants, when shown photos of Rackstraw, said he did not resemble the man she saw on the plane in 1971.

In a press conference in front of FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., Colbert said, “The FBI may hold the strings, but Rackstraw holds the ripcord. And thanks to his coded bragging, it’s now been pulled. We’ll be waiting for him at the drop zone.”

Last Chance To Get Out Of Dodge?

December 11, 2023by Michael

More doom and gloom out of the United States. Ugh. Not. That. Bad. Don't buy into all the fear mongering. -MM

Time is running out.  Lately, I have been hearing from so many people that believe that 2024 will be the year when our society goes over the edge.  Our financial system is teetering on the brink of disaster, crime is absolutely exploding all over the country, homelessness is rising at the fastest pace ever recorded, food banks are facing unprecedented demand for their services, and I believe that 2024 will be the most chaotic election year in the entire history of our nation.  And of course all of this is happening in the context of a global environment in which war, pestilences, economic problems, famine and natural disasters are all on the rise.  A “perfect storm” is raging all around us, and millions upon millions of Americans have become deeply concerned about what our immediate future will look like.

So where will you be when things finally hit the fan?

During the past several years, we have seen a mass exodus of conservatives from blue states.  For example, Fox News is reporting that 65 percent of those that have recently moved to the state of Idaho are Republicans, and only 12 percent are Democrats…

Data published by the Idaho Secretary of State’s office shows that out of the nearly 119,000 people who recently moved to the state, 65% registered as Republicans, compared to just 12% registering as Democrats.

The data, which was reviewed by Fox News Digital, show that out of the roughly 20,000 Americans who moved from Washington state to Idaho, 62% registered as Republicans, compared to 12% as Democrats, 24% as unaffiliated and 2% as “other.” The percentage of registered Republicans originally from Washington who recently moved to Idaho is actually higher than the state’s overall percentage of registered Republicans, which sits at about 58%.

And for those moving from the state of California, the numbers are even more dramatic…

Out of the nearly 40,000 people who left California for Idaho, a whopping 75% registered as Republicans, the data reviewed by Fox News Digital show. Only 10% of the California pool registered as Democrats, 14% as unaffiliated and 2% as “other.”

Wow.

Real estate agents in Idaho are urging potential clients to “escape liberal hell” and to get to the state “before the coming collapse”…

The Seattle Times noted that real estate ads advise residents in states such as Washington to “escape liberal hell” and move to Idaho.

“Time is not on your side, flee the city NOW before the coming collapse!” another ad for a house listing in Idaho states, the outlet reported.

Perhaps you are thinking that you should move to Idaho too.

Unfortunately, for many Americans it is already too late, because property values in some areas of the state have more than tripled.

Of course property values have also skyrocketed in desirable areas in many other red states as well.

Meanwhile, mortgage rates have also soared, and as a result home payments have risen to absolutely absurd levels during the Biden administration…

WSJ analysis of the housing market:

Average monthly new home payment
when Biden took office: $1,787

Average monthly new home payment
today: $3,322

You can still try to relocate.

But it will cost you much more than it would have a few years ago.

Renting is also an option, but we have just been through a period of time when rental prices have also jumped substantially…

After suffering through a three-year period when rents jumped by 30% or more in many U.S. cities, renters are now starting to enjoy small breaks like this.

Ultimately, if you were planning to relocate, you should have already done it by now.

But the good news is that conditions are still at least somewhat relatively stable as we approach the end of 2023.

So if you want to get out of Dodge, you can still do it.

In fact, for many of you this may be your last chance.

But don’t wait too long, because the clock is ticking.

At this point, most Americans can feel that something has gone horribly wrong.  The warning signs are all around us, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day.

Even Warren Buffett can sense that a really big shift is coming.  During the first three quarters of this year he sold off a whopping “$28.7 billion of stock”…

Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway sold $28.7 billion of stock in the first three quarters of 2023 in a move that some economists have interpreted as ringing alarm bells for the American economy.

According to the company’s earnings, the Nebraska-based firm of the legendary investor and billionaire, known as the Oracle of Omaha, sold a net $10.4 billion of stock in the first quarter of the year. In the second quarter, it sold close to $13 billion of shares and bought less than $5 billion. In the third quarter, it sold about $5.3 billion worth of stocks.

As Buffett is considered one of the greatest investors of all time, as well as one of America’s richest men, his moves are closely observed and analyzed.

He didn’t make so much money by being stupid.

Buffett may not fully understand all of the specifics, but he realizes that something is up.

As our society crumbles, most of the population is not going to be able to handle it.

The suicide rate just continues to go up, and psychologists are reporting unprecedented demand for their services…

For the third consecutive year, many psychologists across the country say they are seeing patients struggle with worsening symptoms, many of them needing longer treatment times.

Those are among the findings of an annual survey by the American Psychological Association, released this week. The APA first launched this survey in 2020 to gauge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practicing psychologists.

A majority of psychologists reported that more people are seeking mental health care this year, adding to already long waitlists. Over half (56%) said they had no openings for new patients. Among those who keep waitlists, average wait times were three months or longer and nearly 40% said that their waitlist had grown in the past year.

When conditions get really bad, we are going to witness a national emotional meltdown of epic proportions.

Where will you be when that occurs?

Global events just continue to accelerate, and 2024 is less than three weeks away…

Abandoned in space in 1967, a U.S. satellite started transmitting again in 2013
Nov 28, 2017

After learning that a satellite that’s been silent for decades has suddenly started sending out new signals you may, of course, suspect that the device has been hijacked by aliens now trying to communicate with Earth. Perhaps they’re warning us that they are planning an invasion!

It’s possible such thoughts ran through the mind of Phil Williams, an English amateur radio astronomer based in Cornwall, who was the first person to pick up the strange signals coming in as “ghostly sounds” in 2013. It turned out that the transmitted messages were coming from an abandoned LES1 satellite, but experts needed three more years to authenticate that this was indeed the American satellite that was “lost” in 1967.

LES1 was one of several units produced and launched into space by the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in between 1965 and 1967. These units, primarily designed for testing new satellite communication technology, were each labeled with numbers, running from LES1 to LES9.

As it turned out, the launch of the first four satellites did not go that well. LES1, in particular, failed to reach most of its planned objectives. Contact with the satellite was completely lost two years after its launch, and it has ever since revolved around our planet, staying entirely out of touch. Things went better for the later four, LES5 to LES9 units; the LES7 unit was canceled as the program was then coming to an end and there was no more funding for it.

What surprised everyone in 2013 is that LES1 started sending signals in repeats of every four seconds. Phil Williams has suggested that a failure in one of the device components is what perhaps caused it to start sending signals again.

The designated frequency of the signal is 237 MHz. However, the satellite manages to send the transmissions only when its solar panels are directly exposed to light. The signal reportedly ceases once the craft’s panels fall into the shadow of the satellite’s own body. “Tension in the solar panels jumps, and it can do the phantom signal,” Williams has stated.

It is probable that the satellite’s on-board battery is entirely diminished by now, so what powers the transmission of the signals is a bit of a mystery. As to whether LES1 poses any threat, there is apparently nothing to fear. This is yet one more piece of space junk spinning around in orbit.

What’s more striking is that the electronics used in LES1 were produced five decades ago and though they’ve been exposed to the severe conditions of space, they still appear to be in some sort of working order. And five decades ago is a long time in terms of the technology and its development.

LES1 was launched more than a decade before the probe Voyager-1 was launched into space to explore the outer realms of the solar system. And the electronics used back in the 1960s were way simpler than those used since, hence, perhaps, their durability.

The news of this out-of-date satellite coming back online after so much time staying silent has certainly surprised everyone within the scientific community. The satellite was launched February 11, 1965, from Cape Canaveral. It ceased sending signals just two years later. Still, this is not the only case of a satellite having been lost and then found again.

It also happened to the much more costly Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft (SOHO), which disappeared without a trace back in 1998. SOHO stopped sending signals while conducting its mission of observing the sun. NASA astronomers eventually located the lost craft and re-established contact with it as it was helplessly spinning in space.

In the case of SOHO, it was reportedly a glitch in the software that led to the craft’s malfunction. The satellite was eventually fully recovered, and it continued its set mission. But in the case of LES1, it all seems a lot more strange and way more unexpected as such an old piece of equipment had been long forgotten.

The Feed Bag Chicken Gumbo

Yield: 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients

• 4 to 6 chicken breast halves
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped green bell pepper
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup fresh or frozen okra
• 1 cup fresh, frozen or canned corn
• 1 tablespoon thyme
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon Cajun Seasoning
• Dash of red hot sauce
• 1 tablespoon gumbo file (mixed with water until gooey)
• 3 (14 1/2 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
• 2 cups uncooked rice

Instructions

1. Place chicken breasts in a kettle with enough water to cover. Cook until done, about 20 minutes. Remove chicken to a platter. Strain chicken broth.
2. Return broth to kettle. Add celery, green pepper, onion, okra, corn, thyme, oregano, garlic powder, Cajun Seasoning, hot sauce and gumbo fil paste. Bring to a rolling boil.
3. Chop chicken into bite-size pieces and return to kettle. Add tomatoes. Bring back to boil. If soup is too thick, add chicken broth.
4. Cook rice according to package directions.
5. To serve, place desired amount of rice in serving bowl. Add gumbo.
6. Serve immediately.

What is the dumbest life decision you’ve seen somebody makes?

“Susan Shannon trying to rip off her old friend”

52-year-old Washington woman, Susan Shannon (pictured below), wanted to destroy the life of her old friend, a successful US Army colonel, David Riggins, and possibly make some big cash out of her bogus claims, but she never expected the outcome of her decisions.

In 1986, Sussan and Riggins were both cadets at West Point, the U.S. military base in New York. While Sussan dropped out of the military, Riggins excelled. But just before he received a major promotion in 2013, Sussan started dropping bombs on her blog which haunted Riggins.

In her blog posts, she claimed she was brutally r-aped by Riggins while the two were cadets. Her claims got to the authorities leading to Riggins’s dismissal, this hurt him badly because he was just about to receive a life-changing promotion when the chaos started.

Once he left the military, Riggins fought back and sued her for defamation. Following several probing, investigators discovered that Sussan had made everything up.

She was asked to pay $8.4 million in damages to Riggins: $3.4 million in compensatory damages for hurting his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages. This will keep her a pauper for life.

More:

How Susan Shannon Destroyed Colonel David Riggins’ Career

What do you regret not buying when you had the opportunity?

In the fall of 2008, a few months into the Great Recession, my family was actually in a pretty good spot, financially. My wife and I were both working full time, we were renting an apartment, and we had only one kid at the time. We were saving to buy a house.

One night, I convinced my wife that we would be stupid if we didn’t take advantage of the stock market crash. I’d been interested in purchasing stocks, we had about $30,000 in savings for our house, and stocks were at near record lows. She agreed to let me spend just $1,000 on stocks.

The idea was to start with $1,000, and buy a few more stocks each year. We never followed through with that. We ended up opening college funds for our kids and IRAs for ourselves instead, but my original stock account from that night still remains.

I considered buying some stock in Apple. I was still a PC user then, but I really liked my iPod. I wanted to purchase stocks in companies whose products I used.

But I decided against Apple. I went with Disney and a few other companies instead.

My original $1,000 investment is worth about $3,500 today.

The day I decided against Apple stock, it was selling for around $13 a share. I could have bought 77 shares for $1,000 that day.

Today, those shares would be worth almost $16,000.

Had we skipped the house and put all of our savings into Apple shares that day, we could have sold all of that Apple stock today and bought a half-million dollar house in cash.

Oh well.

What was a Christmas bonus you got from your company that made you speechless?

I was downsized from a company I had been with for a pretty long time. Every year I would work really hard to make my goals so my bonus would be maxed. The cap was $1000. The CEO of the company had 4 houses, several race horses, and 3 private jets. The company made a ton of money. I moved on to another, much smaller company about the middle of September the same year. Needless to say, my bonus that I had been working for most of the year evaporated. I didn’t give it much thought beyond just being grateful I found another job that paid me equally. Christmas came around and I didn’t think much about it because nobody had ever mentioned anything about bonuses and I had only been there about 4 months. The last payday before Christmas the CFO popped in and just casually asks everyone if they’d received their bonus, tells everyone not to eat too much, and he’ll see us all next year. I didn’t even bother to look up. During lunch a coworker asked me what I was going to do with my Christmas bonus. I told her that I didn’t get one and that was to be expected since I had just been there a short time. She told me I should check my bank because the CEO was very generous and isn’t the type to leave someone out. So, I checked. There was my paycheck direct deposit and holy crap! Another deposit for $10,000 from the company! I later found out that mine was a gesture compared to some others. I’ve been there 8 years and counting now. The cash bonuses fluctuate more now than they did back then, but I’ve never gotten anything disappointing. I’ll be there the rest of my life.

Albert Einstein’s Strict List of Conditions for his Wife to Follow

Apr 16, 2019

Samantha Flaum

Albert Einstein’s relationship with his wife was a bit rocky to say the least. In contemporary times, prenuptials seem to be almost as common as vows. Before you walk down the aisle and say, “I do,” you first have to sign here, here, and here.

Contracts are not a new element of marriages. The act of getting married is, itself, a legally binding contract — provided it meets the requirements of the state or country in which the ceremony takes place. For example, according to New York City Bar, in New York, as in many other jurisdictions, “If either of you are still legally married to a former spouse, or do not meet the age requirements, then you are not legally married.”

Throughout history, marriage contracts have been negotiated between rich and influential families, with papers signed outlining the gains and losses of each party in the union — such as dowries payed and lands redistributed. To this day, you need to obtain a license to have a marriage legally recognized.

Today, a growing number of engaged couples wanting to avoid upset in any potential future dispute sign a formal prenuptial agreement — a private contract that both parties agree would be a fair way to split their combined assets.

It outlines dos and don’ts, haves and have nots, should the couple choose to split up in the future. They’re an increasingly popular element of a marriage, especially in the celebrity realm.

In some cases, postnuptial agreements come into play. These are agreements in which the couple draws up a contract after they are married, outlining certain requirements for the continuation and betterment of their union.

History provides an unfortunate example of a celebrity postnup that only served to make matters worse: it was written by Albert Einstein to his first wife, Mileva Marić. Einstein met Marić in 1896 at the Zurich Polytechnic, Eidgenossische Technische Hoschule, when she was studying for a teaching diploma in mathematics and physics. FemBio notes that Marić was the “second woman to finish a full program of study at Department VI A: Mathematics and Physics.”

Over the years, the friendship founded through their shared work interests developed and eventually lead to marriage in January 1903.

Their union was blessed with two sons, Hans and Eduard; but speculation exists, based on letters sent to each other, about a first child, born out of wedlock the year before the couple was married. Her fate is unconfirmed.

After 11 years of matrimony, though, the couple agreed that there was no longer any romance between them. Einstein and his wife agreed to approach the subject logically. They didn’t want to divorce recklessly, so for the sake of their children’s continuity, they decided to stay together.

According to Walter Isaacson in his book Einstein: His Life and Universe, Albert Einstein’s wife had some behavioral conditions to follow, which he outlined in the following list:

“You will make sure: that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.”

“You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego: my sitting at home with you; my going out or travelling with you.”

“You will obey the following points in your relations with me: you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way; you will stop talking to me if I request it; you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.”

“You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.”

Concise and direct, the list drives a hard bargain. It sounds particularly harsh considering it was issued from a husband to his wife. Mileva agreed to his conditions anyway.

Logic can’t dictate such a strong emotion as love, or lack thereof. A few months went by before Mileva changed her mind. Taking their two sons, she left her husband in Berlin and moved back to Zurich. They officially divorced five years later, having not seen each other all that time.

He may have been able to calculate the amount of energy contained in a given mass, but Einstein couldn’t write the perfect formula for maintaining a marriage.