This short essay gives an alternative perspective on Twitter & the media that you won't find in mainstream consensus.

Quote:Way back in the early days of the internet, those already on-line could not help but notice that the media was hilariously ignorant, but supremely confident, of this revolutionary new thing called the internet. On television, the people who claimed it was their job to keep the rest of us informed clearly knew nothing about this new “internet thing” or the people signing up for accounts. The print side of the media barely knew the internet existed and had no interest in it at all.

In those early days it was a glimpse into the weird combination of ignorance, insulation and confidence that defined the mass media. Television and radio are pure carnival acts, selecting for people who fit a role. The print side, the people engaged in “serious journalism”, are stenographers and cheerleaders, hoping to one day be noticed by the carnival operators so they can get on television. The whole thing is part of a large scale agitation campaign on behalf of the ruling class.

This is what makes the collapse of Twitter so amusing. The agitation machine that is the modern mass media was invited onto Twitter in the early days as a way to promote the product over the alternatives. Twitter was custom built for the slow-witted, but supremely confident people who make up mass media. All they needed to do is download an app, open it up and begin typing. Limiting it to short messages reduced the odds of them exposing their stupidity.

It did not take long before the mouth breathers of the Left followed the media onto the platform and it became an echo chamber. Of course, it did not take long before the enemies of this unholy alliance of the confidently stupid joined Twitter to mock and ridicule these people. For a short while it was amusing to see someone, probably posting from the john, wrecking the day of sanctimonious simpletons like David French or Max Boot, with mockery and irreverence.

Of course, that is why the whole thing was doomed. The agitation machine we call the media can only exist when the people inside of it are sure they are the intellectual vanguard, the cutting edge of history. That only works when they are not exposed to reality, which is what happened when they went on-line. It has been forgotten but the great censorship campaign began in the comment sections first and then spread to the rest of the internet. Twitter was late to the intolerance party.

Now the party is over. Contrary to the pained howling by conspiracy theorists like ADL leader Jonathan Greenblatt, Elon Musk did not buy Twitter as part of some five cushion bank shot plan to bring back you know who. Musk bought the company because he thinks you can have a successful platform that allows open debate with limited moderation. Elon Musk is a civic nationalist who still believes all the old liberal ideals about the marketplace of ideas.

Of course, we live in a post liberal age. The people with real power no longer hold those old liberal ideals. They see themselves as guardians of humanity who must carefully manage the choices of the people. They are the elite of the managerial system and as the elite, their job is not only to set the direction for humanity, but to make sure the rules are properly enforced. All of their chanting about democracy aside, theirs is a totalitarian dictatorship of the managerial elite.

This is why Musk’s project is doomed. For starters, the agitation machine known as the media cannot exist on a platform which allows criticism of the media. That risks holding a mirror up to them. The dimwitted scolds that follow them around demanding censorship of imaginary things like hate speech cannot exist on a platform that does not provide them protection. This is why they avoid Gab. If they start demanding censorship there, the response is mockery.

This why the media are threatening to stomp off in a huff to the Mastodon, the federated system of independently created nodes. Because they are stupid and do not know how anything works, they think that there is a trust and safety team there waiting for them to arrive from Twitter. These people are so insulated they just assume the internet works by magic, rather than people. Just wait until they learn that Gab is a node on the Mastodon system. That will be a fun day.

The bigger problem for the Musk project is that the people with real power, like the duopoly that controls the mobile device market, will make sure he is never able to create his civic nationalist paradise. Apple is preparing to remove Twitter from the Apple ecosystem and you can be sure Google is doing the same. After all, both companies work closely to prevent competition. They have long ago worked out how to cooperate on censorship issues.

Then there are the advertisers and purchasers of Twitter data. The main source of revenue for Twitter and all internet firms is the sale of user data. They sell this in packages to companies, market researchers, political campaigns and the many intelligence services tracking our moves. All of the people running these outfits strongly believe in the dictatorship of the managerial elite. They see the Musk project as a direct challenge to the system, so they will oppose it.

Even if Musk was not walking headlong into the civilizational abattoir known as managerialism, large scale social media was always doomed. The reason is people self-segregate and they do this because they do not enjoy conflict. It is only the spiteful mutants who enjoy constant turmoil. The other 80% of humanity just want to talk about their stuff with other likeminded people. This is why all previous large scale social media projects eventually disaggregated.

While the whole thing is amusing, it should also serve as a reminder to dissidents that this abomination we call modernity is unnatural. Projects like Twitter that were supposed to control the culture run counter to human nature. Mother Nature is undefeated in this area, which is why the graveyard of intellectual thought is littered with the ideas that challenged human nature. Musk will fail for the same reason the ghouls before him failed with Twitter. It runs contrary to our nature.

An Unnatural Death

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magaz...-lifestyle

Quote:

• Science
  

Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought
“We may cross a tipping point when most men will be sub-fertile,” says one expert. Here are environmental and lifestyle factors that could increase a man’s risk.
Coloured Scanning Electron Micrograph (SEM) of several mature human sperm (also called spermatozoa). Each sperm is about 65 micrometers long and broadly divided into head (red), neck and tail (blue) regions.
Micrograph by DR TONY BRAIN, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY


ByStacey Colino
Published November 15, 2022
• 10 min read
Five years ago, a study describing a precipitous decline in sperm counts sparked extreme concerns that humanity was on the path to extinction. Now a new study shows that sperm counts have fallen further and the rate of decline is speeding up, raising fears of a looming global fertility crisis.
The initial study, published in July 2017, revealed that sperm counts—the number of sperm in a single ejaculate—plummeted by more than 50 percent among men in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011. Since then, a team led by the same researchers has explored what has happened in the last 10 years. In a new meta-analysis, which appears today in the journal Human Reproduction Update, researchers analyzed studies of semen samples published between 2014 and 2019 and added this to their previous data. The newer studies have a more global perspective and involved semen samples from 14,233 men, including some from South and Central America, Africa, and Asia. The upshot: Not only has the decline in total sperm counts continued—reaching a drop of 62 percent—but the decline per year has doubled since 2000.
The 2017 report[/url] also revealed that sperm concentration (the number of sperm per milliliter of semen) dropped by an average of 1.6 percent per year, totaling more than a 52 percent among men in these regions over the previous four decades.



As part of semen analysis, a gridded microscopic view allows technicians to estimate sperm numbers. Here, 60-70 million sperm per millilitre of ejaculate are seen; a normal count is about 113 million sperm per ml. Worldwide research on male fertility suggests sperm coun...
Photograph by JAMES KING-HOLMES, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

“The decline is not tapering off—it’s steep and significant,” says study co-author Shanna Swan, a reproductive and environmental epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “Overall the drop is similar in magnitude but when we look at recent years, we see that it’s speeding up.”
Study lead author Hagai Levine, a medical epidemiologist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Braun School of Public Health, calls the results “worrisome as we were hoping that at some point the decline would be leveling off. The opposite may be true, and we may cross a tipping point when most men will be sub-fertile or when the causes of this decline will also manifest by other adverse health trends.”
Rising infertility
Contrary to common perception, infertility impacts men and women equally, says Amy E.T. Sparks, a reproductive physiologist and director of the IVF and Andrology Laboratories at the University of Iowa Center for Advanced Reproductive Health. “I think the perception that infertility is primarily a woman’s problem may be due to the tendency for women to initially seek medical care for infertility rather than men.” In the scientific community, the prevailing view is that male and female fertility challenges are each responsible for about one-third of infertility cases; the remaining cases are due to a combination of male and female factors.
But the new data suggests a “substantial increase in the proportion of men with low sperm counts which leads to a reduced capability for fertilizing their partners,” says David M. Kristensen, a molecular toxicologist at Roskilde University and Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark who was not involved in the study. “This is of concern for not only the families that are affected but also for societies in general, as many countries such as Italy and Japan are already suffering from shrinking populations.”
Beyond reproductive matters, there’s also a concern that reduced sperm counts are associated with a variety of health problems in men. “There is an association between semen quality and overall health—studies suggest that impaired semen quality is associated with a higher risk of testicular cancer, cardiovascular disease, and [premature] mortality,” notes Michael Eisenberg, director of male reproductive medicine and surgery and a professor of urology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who was not involved in either meta-analysis.

“One can view the decline in sperm counts as a biomarker for male health in general,” says Kristensen.
In fact, a [url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/andr.12477]study in a 2018 issue of the journal Andrology found a higher risk of hospitalization among men who had lower sperm concentrations. Those with sperm concentrations below 15 million/mL—considered low—had a 53 percent greater risk of being hospitalized for any reason over the course of 36 years than those with more robust sperm concentrations between 51 and 100 million/mL. This effect persisted even after the researchers controlled for body weight, smoking, and other factors.
Complicating factors
It’s important to note that the decline in sperm counts isn’t happening in a vacuum. Low sperm count often goes hand in hand with low testosterone levels and changes in male genital development while in the womb, says Swan, author of the book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race.
In a man, the production of sperm requires a certain level of testosterone as well as the testes’ ability to regulate the temperature of the tissue in which sperm are made, Sparks explains. “Levels of testosterone have been reported to be declining during the same period of time that the sperm production rates were measured in this meta-analysis.”
It’s also important to recognize that it’s not just a matter of what a man is exposed during his lifetime that can affect his sperm quality. What an expectant mother is exposed to while she’s pregnant can affect the sperm concentrations of her male offspring: During early pregnancy—what’s called the “reproductive programming window”—certain environmental chemicals can affect women in ways that could permanently alter the reproductive development of their male babies, Swan explains. “Whatever disruption to reproductive development that occurs in utero is permanent,” she says.

By contrast, the damage done to a man’s sperm during his life—such as by smoking or being exposed to pesticides—can be reversed if the exposure to the harmful chemical stops. It takes about 75 days for sperm to mature, says Swan, which means that men essentially have regular opportunities for a do-over for their sperm quality every two and a half months.
What’s driving the decline? 
 Neither the 2017 nor the 2022 meta-analyses examined what is causing the drop in sperm count, but other research suggests environmental and lifestyle factors may be to blame. These include exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (which mimic or interfere with the body’s hormones), smoking, and obesity. For example, a study in a 2022 issue of the journal Toxicology found that occupational exposure to pesticides was associated with sperm found in lower concentrations, sperm that were poor swimmers, and sperm with more DNA damage. And a study in a 2019 issue of the journal Human Reproduction found that men who are overweight tend to have reduced sperm concentration, lower total sperm count, and fewer motile sperm.
The fact that the sperm count decline is also occurring in countries in South and Central America, Africa, and Asia, according to the new meta-analysis, suggests that the lifestyle factors and environmental exposures that are likely to blame are present globally, Swan says.
As for what’s accelerating the sperm count decline found in the new meta-analysis, no one knows for sure. Levine suggests it may be due to “mixture effects” with chemicals—meaning that when various individual chemicals are added together in the environment, they can have a bigger, more detrimental impact by magnifying each other’s negative effects. Or, he says, the decline may result from “cumulative exposure over time.”
Given that the latest meta-analysis included data from 50 years, Swan suspects the acceleration stems from the cumulative impact of environmental chemicals over generations. Remember: While in the womb, a male fetus is exposed to the same chemicals and lifestyle factors—such as poor diet, smoking, and obesity—that his mother is exposed to while she’s pregnant. But the transmission of these exposures doesn’t stop there—the epigenetic effects of these exposures may be transmitted from one generation to the next, not just from the mother but possibly from the father too. It may be due to factors in the father’s sperm that disrupt the reproductive development of male fetuses in the womb, Levine notes.

As more generations are exposed to these environmental chemicals and harmful lifestyle factors over time, the effects may become additive.
A wake-up call
More research needs to be done to determine what is tanking sperm counts. In the meantime, men and women can try to protect their reproductive health—by consuming a healthy diet, exercising regularly, maintaining a healthy body weight, and avoiding smoking—all behaviors Eisenberg advises his male patients to adopt.
Swan also recommends reducing exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals by being a savvy consumer. These chemicals include: phthalates (in plastics and personal-care products such as nail polishes, shampoos, and hair sprays), bisphenol A (in hard plastics, adhesives, and the lining of some food cans), flame retardants (in furniture and carpets), perfluoroalkyl substances (in nonstick cookware and stain-resistant carpets), and pesticides (in plant-based foods and lawn-care products).
Ultimately, Levine and Swan say that local and global actions are needed to reduce or get rid of these chemicals in our environments. “We should find ways to prevent further decline and even reverse the trends,” Levine says. “We must avoid being complacent about it and fool ourselves that assisted reproduction is the solution.”

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 !!!



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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?