BREAKING NEWS

 JOE BIDEN DROPS OUT 

OF THE 2

024 PRESIDENTIAL RACE...

Being in the US Military

 

I enlisted into the US Navy Reserves in 1969-1974, (two years active duty and four years reserve), and when I left active duty in the summer of 1972, this photo was taken by my cousin, two days after my now ex-wife and I drove back from Norfolk, Virginia where I had been stationed on ARS-43, a salvage and rescue ship.  We had just returned from a 6-month deployment in the Mediterranean.

While in the Med, our ship stopped at a few duty-free stations and while on shore leave, I purchased about $2,500 of stereo equipment for less than $1,000 and a $1,000 35mm camera for right at $200, if my memory serves me well.

But the most important part of my enlistment in the military was the fact that the GI BILL paid for my last two years of college and my two years of Graduate School, not to mention that my daughter was born during that time as well and that only cost me $25 which was the hospital's charge for my wife's wristband.

I, like everyone else, had a opportunity to be sent to Vietnam but was looked over for some reason.  Not sure if it was because I was in the reserves or if it was just the luck of the draw.  I was a radio operator (RM3) and they were being sent to Vietnam by the boatload to be beach runners with a life expectancy of right around 30 seconds, give or take.

I got out of the military because I did not like being told what to do and I did not like wearing a uniform.  However, during my 45-year career (not including the military), I still wore a uniform (coat and tie) and was still told what to do.  I suppose that was the IRONY of my naive decision at the time.

Still, I believe that I got more out of the military than the military got out of me, although I performed all my duties aboard ship exceptionally well...  at least that is what my supervisors wrote on my evaluations.

TODAY, I am 76 years old, and my military career seems like a long time ago.  I have been retired since 2015 so it has been almost 10 years.

What do I think about the military now?

Not much...

I don't like wars - especially those we have to fight for some other country.

However, I agree that you maintain peace only through a strong military.

I don't think the military should be WOKE and I am very happy that it was not WOKE when I served because I am not sure how I would have reacted.

YES!!!  I do believe that everyone, REGARDLESS, should spend TWO YEARS in the military, as a way of giving back to this country.

AND I believe that the GI BILL should still be available just like it was before and not just because we were in a war-time conflict.

We give and our government gives back...

WIN/WIN

In The NEWS

Evan Gershkovich sentenced to 16 years in Russian prison.

The 32-year-old American journalist was found guilty of espionage charges in Russia, the first such case since the Soviet Era. The Wall Street Journal reporter had been jailed since March 2023 (which will be counted as part of his prison sentence) in what the US deems a wrongful detention. Gershkovich's espionage trial was not made public and has been considered politically motivated. Observers say a prisoner exchange could be possible.



Top UN court says Israel's settlement policies violate international law.

The United Nations' International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion Friday, ruling Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal. The world's top court directed Israel to withdraw the settlements immediately. While the decision is meant to be binding for UN member nations, the world's high court has no means to enforce the order.



Separately, a drone attack struck Tel Aviv early morning Friday, killing at least one person and wounding 10 others. Yemen-based Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack. See updates on the war here.



Bangladesh imposes nationwide curfew amid deadly protests.

Tens of thousands of students in Bangladesh are seeking an end to quotas that reserve 30% of government jobs for relatives of veterans in the country's 1971 war for independence. At least 100 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured this week in clashes between police and protesters, though the death toll is expected to be higher. The country is also experiencing a nationwide internet shutdown due to the unrest.



Vietnam's longest-serving Communist Party leader dies at 80.

Nguyen Phu Trong, the hard-line general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, died Friday due to old age and a battle with an unspecified illness. He held the country's most influential role for 13 years, overseeing its economic and geopolitical strategy. Vietnamese President To Lam will temporarily take over Trong's duties.



NASA's Curiosity rover uncovers yellow sulfur crystals on Mars.

Since October 2023, the Curiosity rover has been exploring a region that is rich with sulfates. In May, it accidentally crushed a small rock in Mars' Gediz Vallis channel, a surface feature of the red planet believed to have been an ancient river. The cracked rock revealed never-before-seen crystals made of pure sulfur.

SOURCE:  1440 NEWS

Trump's Speech

 

I tuned in to the Republican Convention at 9:00 pm and had to wait around for over an hour before Trump came up to the podium.  That wait pissed me off, but it was mainly my fault because I got the time wrong.

SO...  like everyone else, I watch the build-up with his son's comments, Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan's comments, Franklin Graham, and Dana White's introduction of Trump.  While those speeches were all well done and positive, I was tired of hearing about the same facts over and over again...  knowing that Trump was going to mention some of that stuff as well.

For me, once is enough and I GET IT...  more than once is just redundant and unnecessary...  but this is a convention designed to PSYCH-UP the attendees.

By the time Trump started speaking, I was drowsy and yawning like the little girl sitting on his lap.

AND...  he starts off by telling the story of the assassination attempt, trying to share details that he thought all the people in attendance wanted to hear.  Since the attempt did not work, I could care less about the details and what he might have seen while he was on the stage with bodies on top of him.

Trump told us what he was going to do when and if he becomes President - most of us could already guess what he was going to say - obviously, he is going to reverse all the policies that Biden reversed of his.  That was a no brainer.

What impressed me was that he was not bitter or angry or vengeful against all of those who tried to do him harm for the last EIGHT YEARS.

However, that is where the BEING IMPRESSED stopped.

He mentioned uniting the country and how the country needed to be united, or we are going to fall and/or fail...

BUT... he offered no clues as to how he was going to do that.

These CLUES is really what I was waiting to hear...  and since there were no steps given one must conclude that he either does not really have a plan or that he did not really mean what he was saying.

Trump made a comment or two against all the ridiculous spending on CLIMATE CHANGE and that alone will push away most of the mainstream liberals from any form of unity.

CONCLUSION:  Both political parties talk UNITY but neither party is going to anything to ACHIEVE UNITY.

Somewhat Political

 

Our Social Survival was Consciousness

Key Facts:

• Social Purpose: Consciousness evolved to facilitate social interactions and communication.
• Intuition’s Role: Intuitive beliefs shape our understanding of consciousness, often complicating scientific explanations.
• Species Benefit: Subjective awareness helps broadcast ideas and emotions, benefiting species survival and wellbeing.

Source: The Conversation

Why did the experience of consciousness evolve from our underlying brain physiology? Despite being a vibrant area of neuroscience, current research on consciousness is characterised by disagreement and controversy – with several rival theories in contention.

A recent scoping review of over 1,000 articles identified over 20 different theoretical accounts. Philosophers like David Chalmers argue that no single scientific theory can truly explain consciousness.

We define consciousness as embodied subjective awareness, including self awareness. In a recent article published in Interalia (which is not peer reviewed), we argue that one reason for this predicament is the powerful role played by intuition.


We are not alone. Social scientist Jacy Reese Anthis writes “much of the debate on the fundamental nature of consciousness takes the form of intuition jousting, in which the different parties each report their own strong intuitions and joust them against each other”.         READ MORE...

Gimme Three Steps

 

Would You Follow Her?

 

Our Real Problem

 

Hulk's Opinion

 

Trust

 

Secret Service

 

Goodbye

 

In The NEWS

Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> Bob Newhart, Grammy- and Emmy-winning comedy and TV sitcom icon, dies at 94 (More) | Lou Dobbs, political commentator and longtime cable news host, dies at 78 (More)

> The 2024 Tour de France wraps up Sunday in Nice, France; see latest standings with three stages left (More)

> The 2024 Kennedy Center Honors to recognize the Grateful Dead, Francis Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt, jazz musician Arturo Sandoval, and New York City's Apollo Theater with artistic lifetime achievement awards (More)


Science & Technology
> OpenAI debuts GPT-4o Mini, a smaller, less expensive version of its flagship large language model; critics of an earlier version said the cost to run GPT-4o priced out small developers (More) | Generative AI explained in three minutes (More, w/video)

> NASA cancels $450M robotic mission to explore the moon's south pole, citing cost overruns; materials developed to date may be repurposed for future efforts (More)

> Researchers discover the early formation of a 61-million-year-old microcontinent in the Arctic Ocean's Davis Strait; feature emerged during the separation of Greenland from Canada (More)


Business & Markets
> US stock markets close lower (S&P 500 -0.8%, Dow -1.3%, Nasdaq -0.7%) as investors rotate out of AI-focused tech stocks and into smaller cap stocks (More)

> Darden Restaurants, parent of Olive Garden, to buy Tex-Mex chain operator Chuy's Holdings for $605M in cash deal (More) | Ford invests $3B to expand Super Duty truck production, including at Canadian plant previously designated for electric vehicles (More)

> Amazon Prime Day hauls record $14.2B in US online sales, up 11% from 2023 (More) | Netflix beats Q2 earnings projections, raises 2024 revenue forecast; adds 8 million subscribers in Q2, pushing global audience to 277 million (More)


Politics & World Affairs
> US federal appeals court temporarily blocks Biden administration from carrying out its "SAVE" student debt relief plan, which offers reduced monthly payments to borrowers (More) | Biden administration announces it will cancel $1.2B in federal student loans for 35,000 public workers (More)

> US Justice Department alleges employees of Southwest Key, the largest housing provider of unaccompanied migrant children, engaged in sexual abuse and harassment of children since at least 2015 (More)

> Ursula von der Leyen wins second term as president of the European Commission after securing 401 votes from members of parliament; she will remain in the role until 2029 (More)

SOURCE:  1440 NEWS

A Fool's Fool

 

If you think that advertising really wants to do something special for you, help you out, or give you something you thought you could never have, the YOU ARE A FOOL...

Advertising is done for the sole purpose of selling a product and making money.  It has very little if anything to do with you except take your money away.

Investment houses will invest your money for a fee and that fee is designed to make more money that you are earning.  These houses make 12-15% and pay you maybe 5%.

Insurance Companies want you to take out life insurance so you can protect your wife and children but the only way you benefit is by dying early or right after you probation period.  You are better off investing the money yourself.

In the 1950s, kitchen appliances were made to last 25-30 years.  Today, they are made to last only 3-5 years so that companies will earn more REPEAT BUSINESS.

I remember buying a tool from SEARS in the 1980s and was asked if I wanted to buy a protection warranty designed to repair if something went wrong.  I asked the salesperson if the item was not made correctly because I never needed to do that before.

It was designed to bring in more money convincing the buyer he was protecting himself and saving money.  Maybe 1 in a 1000 had a problem.

The bottom line here is that whenever you see a commercial advertising something, more often than not, they are trying to sell you something you don't really need.

Somewhat Political

 

All Life on EARTH has One Ancestor

Life on Earth had to begin somewhere, and scientists think that “somewhere” is LUCA—or the Last Universal Common Ancestor. True to its name, this prokaryote-like organism represents the ancestor of every living thing, from the tiniest of bacteria to the grandest of blue whales.

While the Cambrian Explosion kickstarted complex life in a major way some 530 million years, the true timeline of life on Earth is much longer. For years, scientists have estimated that LUCA likely arrived on the scene some 4 billion years, which is only 600 million years after the planet’s formation. 

But a new study from an international team of scientists pushes that timeline back even further to some 4.2 billion years ago, while also discovering some fascinating details about what life for LUCA might’ve been like. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.       READ MORE...

Santana

 

Amish

 

LEAVING the USA