Everyone knows by now that I went away to visit with family and we had a family reunion that was long overdue.

It was amazing, as I have said a thousand time by now, but we also had a number of memorable moments that will be shared for a many reunions still to come. One of those events I am still having trouble making sense out of.

I am the oldest of ten children. I have been carrying for my siblings all my life. My responsibilities became clear to me when I was about 8 years old. I made breakfast, washed dishes, walked my siblings to the babysitter and picked them up and walked them back home, after I came home from school.

It was as natural as breathing, and I never thought anything of it really. When we became older, and my siblings realized how much they relied on my care, they started to call me, "Mom 2". I get holiday and birthday cards, all addressed to me as Mom 2. But all of my nieces and nephews know me as Auntie, or Big Auntie.

I have a new niece. She is three years old. I was introduced to her as Big Auntie. The next day I was walking up the stairs, she was ahead of me, in case she fell, I could catch her. Halfway up she stopped. She came back down the stairs. She took my hand and said, "Come on Grandma".

Now here is what I find odd. She has two grandmothers. She calls both of them Nana. She has a great grandmother, she calls her Big Nana. She does not call anyone grandma but me. And no one in the family calls anyone grandma, so they don't even know where she got the word from.

The whole week, anytime anyone asked her what my name was, she would say, "Grandma". When she was corrected she would say "Auntie", or "Big Auntie", then say "I am sorry Grandma".

Weird?? I am probably thinking too much into it, but it is interesting, if nothing else.

You may have not yet heard, because we were having Thanksgiving & hung over the next day, but the Biden parasite regime authorized the building of a giant oil export terminal off the coast of Texas, if I'm reading the docs correctly.

Set to open in 2024, it will drain domestic oil production faster than anything we've ever seen, as it's been prioritized to "help our allies" overseas.

Quote:Biden administration quietly approves huge Texas oil export project

The Biden administration has approved plans to build the nation’s largest oil export terminal off the Gulf Coast of Texas, which would add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity, The Texas Tribune and Earthworks reported.

The approval by the Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration was filed in the federal register on Monday without any public announcement, a day after the United Nations’ annual climate conference wrapped up in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt.

Earthworks, an environmental nonprofit, spotted the filing and publicized approval of the Sea Port Oil Terminal on Tuesday.

“President Biden cannot lead on combating climate change, protecting public health or advocating for environmental justice while simultaneously allowing fossil fuel companies to lock-in decades of fossil fuel extraction,” the group’s senior policy advocate, Kelsey Crane, told The Texas Tribune.

In its 94-page decision, the Maritime Administration wrote, “The construction and operation of the Port is in the national interest because the Project will benefit employment, economic growth, and U.S. energy infrastructure resilience and security. The Port will provide a reliable source of crude oil to U.S. allies in the event of market disruption.”

The administration’s move marked a major step forward for the export sector, which has grown rapidly since the U.S. began to allow crude sales abroad in 2015, the same year that the U.S. helped broker the Paris climate accord that called for dramatic reductions in global fossil fuel emissions.

The offshore oil export terminal, the first to be approved of four proposed along Texas’ Gulf Coast, will enable continued growth in U.S. shale oil production and in global consumption, dealing a substantial setback to the White House’s goals for drastic cuts in carbon emissions by year 2030.

“President Biden has renewed United States leadership in the fight against climate change,” the White House said ahead of the UN climate conference in Egypt this month according to The Texas Tribune. “The President is delivering on his Day One promises, positioning the United States to achieve our ambitious climate goals.”

In July, the Maritime Administration’s 890-page impact statement said oil processed at the Sea Port Oil Terminal would create greenhouse gas emissions equal to 233 million tons of carbon dioxide per year (about 4% of total 2020 U.S. emissions).

Approval of the Sea Port Oil Terminal, off the coast of Freeport, about 50 miles south of Galveston, gave its corporate developers — Enterprise and Endbridge — a clear lead in the race to build the first new offshore export terminal in the Gulf. It was the agency’s first endorsement and followed a three-year review process.

According to James Coleman, who teaches energy law at Southern Methodist University in Texas, the export terminal’s approval represents the “hands-off” approach the Biden administration has adopted toward oil infrastructure projects since winning the White House on promises to block pipeline expansions.

“They keep asking the oil industry to expand its production and build more refineries. And yet they are saying we need to phase out fossil fuels,” Coleman told The Texas Tribune. “What they’ve said seems contradictory.”

The Environmental Protection Agency issued its approval of the project last month — also without a public announcement — prompting Gulf Coast activists to stage a protest in Washington, D.C., that ended in four arrests last week.

“I’m extremely disappointed,” Melanie Oldham told The Texas Tribune, who is the founder of Citizens for Clean Air and Clean Water in Brazoria County, where the project is proposed. “[Transportation] Secretary Pete Buttigieg and President Biden have chosen not to be climate change leaders.”

The EPA has not responded to repeated requests for comment. While its Oct. 7 endorsement of the new terminal outlined concerns over climate change and environmental justice, it did not explain why the agency opted to approve the project.

“Last week, they were in Egypt telling the world that now is the time for climate action. This week, they’re locking us into a climate-wrecking monstrosity for at least a generation,” Jeffrey Jacoby, deputy director of Texas Campaign for the Environment, told The Texas Tribune.

According to the Maritime Administration, the project will expand a Houston-area terminal operated by Enterprise and connect it to a new 140-acre onshore facility near Freeport with 4.8 million barrels of storage capacity. From there, two 36-inch underwater pipelines will run to the new deepwater port, 30 miles offshore, where two 24-inch floating crude hoses will load it onto the world’s largest class of crude tankers.

At least 14 giant pumps with a combined output of 86,000 horsepower will be needed to move the oil from Houston to Freeport and then out to the offshore terminal.

The project will create 62 permanent jobs, plus up to 1,400 temporary construction jobs, according to the Maritime Administration.

The project aims to improve the efficiency of oil exports from the Texas coast, where smaller tankers currently ferry oil from coastal depots to larger ships that wait in deeper water, miles offshore.

It will process more oil than the largest U.S. export terminal currently operating, Moda Ingleside Crude Export Terminal, owned by Enbridge in Texas, which moves up to 1.6 million barrels per day at the Port of Corpus Christi, the nation’s top port for oil exports.

“Compared to facilities and processes used today, this project will create a safer, more efficient mechanism for exporting oil, and will play a key role in facilitating U.S. energy security,” a Maritime Administration spokesperson said in a statement to The Texas Tribune.

The administration’s decision laid out a series of final steps for the Sea Port Oil Terminal to receive a license and begin construction.

Plans to develop the offshore oil sector date to the lifting of the oil export ban in December 2015, said Jordan Blum, editorial director at Hart Energy in Houston. But efforts lost momentum in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic caused global oil demand to dip.

Now that demand has roared back and prices are soaring, development of the export sector is pushing forward. The Maritime Administration’s approval gives the Sea Port Oil Terminal a clear lead among similar projects.

“There was essentially this big race to build these,” Blum told The Texas Tribune. “Not all these projects are going to be built, so being the first mover is really important.”

The Sea Port Oil Terminal hopes to start operations by the end of 2025. When it does, Blum said, it will initially draw business from less-efficient onshore terminals in Houston and Corpus Christi. Over time, it will enable growth in oil production from Texas’ shale oil fields and beyond.

“It would allow for increased production to continue. It would encourage more production, but it wouldn’t be like a light switch,” Blum told The Texas Tribune.

Firstly, I'm putting this in the Survival and Sustainability Forum here on the new and improved RN as a redo from the old R-N3 on a thread I called "Wild Berry Wine" that you can look at here . . .

https://rogue-nation3.com/thread-8989.html

Why here in the Survival and Sustainability Forum? Well, this is about my very first batch of beer I made from organic barley seed, hops I grew myself, common baker's yeast, sugar and water from my own well. I now feel that I can survive given the fact I can make my own IPA. Because what is life without a good IPA at least once a week? Also, I attached this parallel subject to one about some wine I made in this same forum on the old R-N3, so I felt it needed it's own detailed thread here so others could make their own beer and survive long enough to enjoy each and every batch they make.

My Official Recipe (as of now)

Rinse and then soak 8 lbs Whole Barley with Husks in a food grade bucket or other sprouting container with 1.5 gal of water for 8 hours.

After 8 hours of soaking, drain and leave to air dry for 8 hours, and then soak them again for around 10 hours.

Drain the barley that has now begun to sprout (develop "chits") by pouring the water out of the sprouting container.

Now put the drained but wet barley into a clean and sterile medium sized plastic tote container then shake the grain around, flip it a few times and shut the lid.

Do this shaking and flipping a couple times a day for a week until the grain germinates and sprouts a bunch of rootlets. Add a little water to it after about four or five days, but only if it really needs it.

After a week of germinating, the acrospire growing inside the grain has gone from the base of the rootlets to almost the top of the grain (not quite ready to burst out of the grain and become leaves).

Dry the germinated grain at around 110 degrees F in an oven for 8 to ten hours. I used a large bath towel on a table top to dry it with a heat lamp for about the same amount of time.

Rough grind the dried malted barley in a blender, place it into a muslin bag and boil it for an hour in 5 gallons of water at between 150 and 170 degrees F.  If you only have a 4 gallon pot, put an extra gallon on to boil then add at the end to bring the wort to 5 gallons.

Drain and remove the bag of ground up barley and continue to boil the wort for another half an hour.  Now, using the empty and clean muslin bag, add 6 to 8 oz of dried hops (twice as much if you use fresh hops) and boil for another 1/2 hour. Ten minutes before it is done, removed the hops and add another 4 to 8 oz of hops (double if fresh) to the bag and boil for about ten minutes before removing the pot to cool it down. You can chill the wort by placing the pot into a sink or tub of ice water.

Cool the wort to below 100 degrees F and pour into the primary fermentation bucket before adding activated dry yeast.  Mix with two cups of warm sugar water (50/50 mix). Within 5 or 6 hours the wort should be fermenting.

Add a cup of sugar when necessary to keep it fermenting, other wise, add a cup of sugar every 3 days, for a total of no more than 5 cups of sugar (one cup per gallon) to keep it fermenting for two weeks. After two weeks transfer the fermenting wort by siphon into a 2nd stage fermentation bucket or jug. Allow the wort to ferment and settle out for another week (no more than two) without adding more sugar.

After a total of about four to five weeks fermentation, it's time to bottle up the beer. Make sure the bottles are sterile by cleaning with soap and water, then soaking in water with bleach (one table spoon per gallon) for about one half hour. Rinse with water that has been boiled and cooled a bit.

Dissolve 2/3 cup of sucrose (pure cane sugar) in a few cups of boiling water then cool to less than 100 degrees F before adding it to the 5 gallons of beer to prime it for bottling. Stir it in and mix it with a sterile stirring spoon and then bottle it off.

Keep the capped bottles between 70 and 90 degrees F for one to two weeks to build up carbonation in the bottles. After this, keep cold and consume within the next two months.

Five gallons is 640 ounces, or about 53 beers, you aren't going to get that much, two cases at best or around 48 beers.

. . . So folks that is basically what I did to produce this fine IPA that will get you good an buzzed after two and in bed after three 12oz bottles. I've determined that if I malt the barley (sprout and dry it) about two weeks before hops harvest around Labor day, I can have beer bottled and ready to go by the first or second week of October. I need more equipment like caps and bottles if I am to go for more than a 5 gallon batch next year.

The Story of the 17-year-old Who Survived LANSA Flight 508

A 17-year-old German girl named Juliane Koepcke was sucked out of an airplane after it was struck by lightning in 1971. She fell 2 miles to the ground, was strapped to her seat, and survived 10 days in the Amazon Jungle!

Quote:17-year-old Juliane Koepcke survived the deadliest lightning strike in aviation history, one that sucked her out of LANSA Flight- 508



On Christmas Eve 1971, Juliane Koepcke boarded the LANSA Flight 508, a plane that could carry up to 99 people. Like most families, Juliane and her mother, Maria Kopcke spent their Christmas Eve traveling.

Their desired destination: Panguana, a research facility near Pucallpa, Peru, where Juliane had spent 3 years studying the environment alongside her parents. With the anticipation of the holiday looming in the horizon, Juliane braced for what should have been a rudimentary hour flight.

15 minutes before the projected landing, mother nature decided she had other plans. Barely into the flight, a thick blanket of black clouds encased the plane, reducing all visibility to zero.

Then, bam. With a swiftness, a lightning bolt not only illuminated the sky, but it sent the aircraft into a nosedive. Juliane can remember the strike, the sounds and weight of every passenger’s fear, and the calmness of her mother uttering “now it’s all over”. It was pure chaos until it was nothing. Juliane can still recall the silence that followed the crash as she woke on the muddy ground of the Amazon rainforest, alone. 

2 Mile High Club

Juliane opened her eyes to find no flight attendants offering beverages, no pilot announcing their arrival, not a single other person. She immediately assessed her injuries. The confusion that she felt was a dead giveaway to a concussion. Additionally, her collar bone was broken from the impact and she had large wounds traversing both her calf and shoulder. It would come to light following the crash, that Juliane fell approximately 2 miles out of the sky onto the cold ground beneath her. Juliane wrote “”I lay there, almost like an embryo for the rest of the day and a whole night, until the next morning,” After the sun had risen, Juliane’s sedimentary attitude was replaced by a burning desire to find her mother. So, with lollipops from fallen luggage in hand she began her voyage through the notoriously dangerous jungle. 

From Juliane to Tarzan 

It was almost as if Juliane’s parents had spent their lives preparing the 17-year-old for this moment. Maria was a scientist who specialized in research of tropical birds. Her father, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke was a renowned zoologist. Between the two, they had provided Juliane a great advantage to surviving such a brutal environment. She was able to hear native bird calls and sounds of wildlife that indicated she was in the general region of home. She made her way across both bodies of water and intense self-made trails until she noticed a species of vulture her mother had taught her about. The birds were eerily circling a part of the forest. She tried to keep her optimism as she grew closer and closer to their marked location, with the daunting knowledge that these birds specialized in detecting death. The image that followed is permanently etched into her memory. Three passengers still strapped to their seats, had not been so lucky in the crash. These casualties would be the first of many to Juliane’s knowledge. Even with the gruesome discovery, Juliane would not stop her fight for rescue. She navigated the Amazon for 10 days before not only her body began to give up, but her mind as well.



The Sweet Sweet Sound of Peruvian Fisherman

On the 10th day, Juliane finally received some karmic return. Just past a riverbed that she had been following, was a small hut. The hut must have looked like a top tier 5-star hotel in that moment. She wandered inside and found a bottle of petrol. She quickly poured it into her large shoulder laceration and spent her next moments cleaning maggots out of her wound. Absolutely exhausted and feeling safer than she had in days, she decided to spend the night there. Juliane was woken up the next day by a sound that startled her, the sound of people. She managed to make her way outside of the refuge and to the Peruvian fisherman nearby. Utilizing her Spanish, she was able to communicate that she was a survivor of the LANSA flight 508 plane crash. Juliane would eventually learn that she would be the only one to mutter those words, a lone survivor. Finally, days after Christmas, the best gift Juliane could receive was her in her grasp… Salvation. 



The Story of the 17-year-old Who Survived LANSA Flight 508

"Peaceful Protester Pilsner" and "Let it Burn Lager" (reference to Move or the Minnesota precinct?). Either way, some in your face "American values", one pint at a time! Proud Boy Pilsner incoming... 




Look at that, my favorite:




BLUE LINE BEER COMPANY



Untappd

Hey everyone,

As you know, our smilies have always ranked amongst the best ones out there.

For those of you not yet acquainted to our little friends, here's how it goes:

When you click on [get more] under the smilies box:




A pop up window shows up with more of them, like this one:





Now, if you slide the bar at the bottom of that pop up box, you will find a second row of them on the right side:





Here's another hint, for Shoutbox lovers, the :__identification____: on the right side of the smilie will automatically change that id into the smilie you want to show in your Shout...


NOW,


I'm about to be uploading the bigger ones but before I do...


IT'S TIME FOR THE ALL TIME ROGUE NATION SMILIE SCAVENGER HUNT:


Are there any smilies you'd like to suggest that we should we carry?

Are there any smilies you'd wish we have?


Post them as a reply, in this thread here and if it's possible, we'll upload them.

The amount of smilies we can carry is pretty much unlimited but the size matters. We can always resize suggestions though.


GO FOR IT !!!

HUNTING SEASON IS OPEN !!!



.

Unless we one day discover a great hall of records showing how some of the ancient constructs were finished we may never know how these structures were made.

I for one do not believe the polygonal megalithic walls with boulders weighing in some cases many tons were made by hammer stones and any available metal we are told the ancients possessed; not to mention placing the stones to begin with. Anyway I do find some of the construction of many buildings and stone edifices in times past to be interesting to say the least, now where is that 'hall of records?"



Another interesting discussion about cutting and lifting granite from long ago

Yellowstone is turning out to be one of my all time favorites...

1883, the spin off, has proven to be ok. Nowhere close to Yellowstone though, even if Sam Elliot steals the show.

House of the Dragon - Nowhere close to being as good as the books and the acting was meh. Nowhere close to Game of Thrones, the CGI even sucks at times, seems to be on a very limited budget. I hated the time jumps where they changed all (or just about) the actors. Like they keep doing on "The Queen", which fucks up the character depths.

Am getting to the final episode of Andor, which has proven to be a good Star Wars spin off.

Suggestions on what's good, what's not?

The Teotihuacan Pyramid
(Photos from the FB page of Archaeological Wonders - https://www.facebook.com/archaeologicalw...7145222533)



This pair of images flipped a switch in the old memory banks to a find and the loss of that find in 2009.

For starters, I don't recall exactly when I began using Google Earth for entertainment/discovery purposes, but am certain it must have been prior to early 2009.
And, while I don't recall the initial impetus, I am fairly certain it had to do with Peru-sing ( ) the Nazca Lines.

An example from said Nazca Lines...



As those initial forays broadened, to span much of the globe, some efforts began to focus on Central America, and, more specifically, Guatemala...where I stumbled upon what was referred to, at the time, as El Mirador - a Mayan archaeological site in the northeastern corner (at the time), not far from the border with Belize.

Today, should you search "El Mirador, Guatemala" in Google Earth, you will be taken to the location of a restaurant much farther south.

Anyway - after a good bit of time searching the surrounds...one day, I found myself moving west along that northern border, marking and documenting high points, low points, and other points of interest...then, taking this effort in a northerly direction into Mexico...and, as those efforts developed, one day, said efforts were focused on documenting (in fine detail) a "mountain-top strip" that measured a couple of feet (unvarying) in width, and precisely 300 feet (due north/south) in length, amid a group of mountains somewhere in northeastern Mexico (moving toward the border with Texas).

I say "somewhere" (in NE Mexico) because of what happened, on THIS day (November 26th) in 2009...(or, actually, November 27th - as will be evident shortly)...

We were living in a duplex...and, sometime during Thanksgiving's evening hours, the neighbor's toilet (or, the pipe that sent their-&-our waste to a sewer line in the alley) became stopped, and backed up...causing said waste to back into our domicile.

We were notified of this disgust by the sound of canine paws splashing through the mess...during the cold dark hours of the morning of the 27th.

A great deal of urgent effort went into rescuing all manner of anything residing on the floor (including such things as boxes of old photos)...but - the spiral notebook in which I had logged the "mountain-top strip" sat directly on the floor...and, in effort to get as much of the "shit" out of our dwelling as possible, my wife threw it into a pile outside (to go directly into the dumpster). (At the time, it was nowhere among my concerns.)

A short time later, we had moved into a proper home...and, it was then that I discovered the loss of this 'treasure'.

I have tried numerous times since then to 're-discover' this anomaly in Northeast Mexico, to no avail.

But - the images above sparked the memory...and made me wonder whether I (or anyone) will ever find it, again.

Should you be anyone interested in taking up such an effort, you might note that said location was well north of Mexico City...and thus, the Teotihuacan Pyramid shown above.

Good Caturday Apocalypse!

Quote:‘Zombie’ virus revived after 50,000 years trapped in Siberian permafrost (November 25, 2022)

Researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research have revived more than a dozen prehistoric viruses that were previously trapped deep within the Siberian permafrost, according to a pre-print study.

From seven ancient permafrost samples, scientists were able to document 13 never-before-seen viruses that have been lying dormant, frozen in ice, over tens of thousands of years.

In 2014, the same researchers unearthed a 30,000-year-old virus trapped in permafrost, the BBC reported. The discovery was groundbreaking because after all that time, the virus was still able to infect organisms. But now, they’ve beaten their own record by reviving a virus that is 48,500 years old.

Quote:Abstract

One quarter of the Northern hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost. Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect. Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times. While the literature abounds on descriptions of the rich and diverse prokaryotic microbiomes found in permafrost, no additional report about “live” viruses have been published since the two original studies describing pithovirus (in 2014) and mollivirus (in 2015). This wrongly suggests that such occurrences are rare and that “zombie viruses” are not a public health threat. To restore an appreciation closer to reality, we report the preliminary characterizations of 13 new viruses isolated from 7 different ancient Siberian permafrost samples, 1 from the Lena river and 1 from Kamchatka cryosol. As expected from the host specificity imposed by our protocol, these viruses belong to 5 different clades infecting Acanthamoeba spp. but not previously revived from permafrost: pandoravirus, cedratvirus, megavirus, and pacmanvirus, in addition to a new pithovirus strain.
.....
The biohazard associated with reviving prehistorical amoeba-infecting viruses is thus totally negligible, compared to the search for “paleoviruses” directly from permafrost-preserved remains of mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, or prehistoric horses, as it is now pursued in the Vector laboratory (Novosibirsk, Russia) [75], fortunately a BSL4 facility. Without the need of embarking on such a risky project, we believe our results with Acanthamoeba-infecting viruses can be extrapolated to many other DNA viruses capable of infecting humans or animals. It is thus likely that ancient permafrost (eventually much older than 50,000 years, our limit solely dictated by the validity range of radiocarbon dating) will release these unknown viruses upon thawing. How long these viruses could remain infectious once exposed to outdoor conditions (UV light, oxygen, heat), and how likely they will be to encounter and infect a suitable host in the interval, is yet impossible to estimate. But the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming when permafrost thawing will keep accelerating, and more people will be populating the Arctic in the wake of industrial ventures.

An update on eukaryotic viruses revived from ancient permafrost

Quote:Can deadly virus and microbes survive in the ice?

An outbreak of anthrax in Siberia in 2016 caused the death of a 12-year-old-boy, hospitalization of scores of other people and the death of more than two thousand reindeer. The outbreak was traced back to an old reindeer corpse, which had melted out of the permafrost during what was the warmest Arctic summer on record.

The anthrax in Siberia outbreak generated a fear that other and perhaps even more dangerous microbes could be released from the melting ice, such as smallpox. Is it possible that malignant viruses and microbes, after hibernating in the ice for millennia, could be released by the on-going melt and pose a risk to humans?