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O&M/
Balancing Risk, Reliability, and Safety at Plants Slated for Retirement
04/01/2015 | Thomas W. Overton, JD
When the decision is made to retire a power plant, the work of getting there is just beginning. Maintaining safe and reliable generation requires strong leadership, clear communications, and heightened attention to operations and maintenance, staff morale, and post-shutdown plans.
For utilities and other generators facing the challenge of winding down operations at an aging power plant without compromising safety or reliability, Kenny Mullinax, senior manager of coal transition for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), has some succinct advice: "It's not saying the right things, but doing the right things."
The reason for this advice is that successfully navigating the last few years of a plant's service life begins and ends with its staff.
The U.S. generation fleet is undergoing a profound transition. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated in its 2014 Annual Energy Outlook that 61 GW of coal-fired capacity would retire by 2020, 90% of that by 2016. That represents at least 400 units across the country.
And coal is not alone. The EIA projects that substantial amounts of nuclear generation will retire after 2030 unless the licenses for those plants are extended beyond the current 60 years. And more than a few older gas-fired thermal units will be retired as pressures mount to raise efficiencies and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Not all of these plants are operated by large organizations like TVA. Many are owned and operated by smaller utilities that may have no institutional experience with retiring a power plant—and may not appreciate that doing so is not simply a matter of shutting down the boilers on the last day of operations. Far from representing a reduction in work and management, selecting a plant for retirement creates a whole new set of challenges on top of existing day-to-day concerns.
When the decision is made to retire a plant, a great many things change, though day-to-day operation may superficially appear to continue as it always has.
The biggest impact is on plant staff, who will immediately be worrying about the future of their jobs—worries that can distract from safe operation if not firmly addressed. Meeting that challenge requires active, upfront engagement from senior management, Mullinax said in an interview with POWER.
"We are really spending a lot of our efforts on face-to-face conversations with our people, being very transparent with them around closure dates, what our intentions are, what our plans are, and trying to place as many of them in our company as possible," Mullinax said.
TVA has announced nearly 6 GW of coal retirements, which means Mullinax and his team have been very busy (Figure 1). He stressed repeatedly that TVA's focus is on personnel concerns.
1. Winding down. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has committed to closing the five-unit, 1,184-MW Colbert plant in Alabama by 2016. Units 1–4 may be repowered with biomass and returned to service. Courtesy: TVA
"The bulk of our energy is put around our people to keep them in the right state of mind and keep the morale in good shape. We know they're capable of keeping our assets running," he added.
American Electric Power (AEP) is undergoing a similar transition (see "American Electric Power: A Coal Powerhouse Repositions Itself" in the February 2015 issue), with even more coal capacity slated for retirement than TVA (Figure 2). Dan Lee, AEP's senior vice president of fossil and hydro generation, echoed Mullinax's sentiments.
2. End of an era. American Electric Power's 400-MW coal-fired Kanawha River Plant in Glasgow, W.Va., was retired at the end of 2014. Courtesy: AEP
Keeping morale up with an impending retirement is "an everyday challenge for the management of the facility," Lee said. Making that happen requires a lot of visibility from senior management. Good lines of communication—always important—are even more critical in these situations.
"A sizeable number of folks have worked at the plant for some time, their families have lived in the community, they feel real pride in the plant and want to see it do well up to retirement," he noted.
Plant staff are stressed and concerned about their future, Lee said, and will naturally have a lot of questions. "It's a big thing to get those questions answered. That helps a lot."
Mullinax agreed. "There is nothing more important than face time," he said.
Mullinax said that his team does everything it can to augment communication with plant staff. Questions his team answers are available not just to the staff who asked them but to everyone—these Q&A sessions are posted on the company network for all TVA employees to access.
Though not an option for every plant, both TVA and AEP make active efforts to place staff from a retiring plant into new positions with active assets.
"A sizeable number of these folks are going to be able to transfer," Lee said.
Mullinax's team takes the lead in finding these new jobs and makes it clear to plant staff that the company will take care of them as best it can. That's not only a source of reassurance; it also allows the staff to keep focused. "They let us deal with the day-to-day struggles of finding them a job," he said, "and that keeps their minds seriously focused on returning home safely every day."
For key staff, management must be alert to the importance of keeping their expertise around. AEP often offers economic incentives for staff to stay with the plant up to retirement, Lee said.
When vacant positions must be filled, TVA uses contractors rather than permanent replacements, often bringing back retired staff to wind up operations. That allows it to leverage that experience while easing the transition when it's time to transfer the remaining staff to an active plant, Mullinax said. "This is working out really well for us."
Keeping Morale Up
Few things threaten reliability and safe operation more than deteriorating morale among plant staff. Even when their jobs are secure, staff will naturally be upset to learn that a plant they may have put 10, 20, or even 30 or more years of their lives into is retiring.
That means the retirement process has to be handled with dignity, both toward staff and toward the plant itself.
"We really try to do it on a solid level of pride and dignity, as well as a legacy," Mullinax said. "We call it gracefully walking our plants into retirement."
Upper management needs to make it clear that a retiring plant is still valued until the day it retires, even if it may be pushed down the dispatch order.
"It's important that they still feel like an important part of the family," Lee noted. "Being able to contribute on the days when system demand is high is a big point for these folks, so we make sure when that happens that some kind of appreciation is shared."
"Little things" like plant cleanliness and appearance are not little things in these situations.
"The housekeeping standards in our retiring plants are really good," Mullinax said. "We are continuing to keep our floors waxed and shiny. We want to keep that pride level extremely high. Our staff want to walk out of the plant with the same pride that people did 60 years ago when they walked into it."
Even when the economic reasons for retirement are clear, some long-time plant staff and plant management may be inclined to blame themselves, wondering if there might have been things they could have done differently over the years to keep the plant operating. That risk has to be met head-on, Mullinax said.
"We make sure our people understand that our plants are not being closed because of them. It is not their fault, it is not because they have not maintained them, not because they have not managed them. The plants are being closed down because of economic reasons."
Creative O&M
Scheduling a plant for retirement involves other significant changes, including a major shift in its operations and maintenance (O&M) posture. With the operations horizon contracting to a few more years at most, the goal shifts to getting the plant safely to its retirement date without major capital expenses. That places an extra burden on maintenance staff to harness their creativity.
"Clearly you're not making capital investments," Lee noted. "We have made prudent maintenance spending decisions, and our plant managers have done a wonderful job keeping costs under control. We've done a lot of patch-it-up O&M work to avoid any big capital spending and big component replacement."
This means added demands on plant staff to be more flexible and innovative. AEP has seen availability of its retiring units degrade over time, but on the whole, its plant staff have been "amazingly good at being there when we needed them," Lee said.
Mullinax echoed those thoughts: "We are not spending large capital dollars for the long-term view on those plants. The dollars we're spending are to keep them reliable."
That means maintenance staff are sometimes called upon to stretch component lives further than what might once have been envisioned.
"We have some of the most talented people in the industry," he said, "and they have really stepped up with some ways to keep our assets very reliable in a very low budget environment."
The results have been impressive for TVA. Mullinax explained, "One of our units right now that is working toward a world-record run, that has been online 941 days [Paradise Unit 2; see article in the April 2013 issue], is one that we are also walking into retirement three years from now."
Making this happen, however, isn't easy.
For plants that are retiring, TVA schedules shorter outages. "We don't do the 25- to 45-day outages we have done previously," he said. "We are doing more five- to 10-day outages now" during the off-season. During these outages, staff perform comprehensive inspections of known problem areas. "We know the areas that have been a historical challenge, so we will go in and do a little work in there. We have a lot of data on our components, so we know what's coming ahead of time."
With no capital budget, the goal shifts to keeping things running. "We will go in and find the components, cut small sections out, and just do partial replacements and bring those areas back up to compliance."
When components are reaching or approaching end of life before retirement, plant staff need to make judgment calls on what to do. Mullinax said TVA's staff will look at what the most cost-effective approach is, whether to replace the failing component with one from a plant that has already been shut down or to operate the plant on a lower level of redundancy. "It's all very dependent on what the system it is."
For safety-related systems, the staff will obviously do whatever it takes to bring the system back up, but where it's reliability related, they have to get creative.
"We get our subject matter experts together with our day-to-day O&M people and say, here is our problem, and give them a chance to bring some solutions to the table," Mullinax said. "They are very innovative people, and they have come up with very unique ways to extend lives."
"We are running on a lot of innovation today, and it is the result of our people and giving them flexibility to maybe try something, even if it didn't work. They are coming up with a lot of solutions that historically we would not even have thought about."
"They continue to come to us with solutions that sometimes just completely blow your mind, you think, 'Wow, why did we not come up with that before?'"
Lee has seen the same thing with AEP's fleet. "It really makes you proud to see how innovative folks can be" when it comes to keeping things running safely, he said.
Jeff Pope, manager of facility decommissioning and demolition services for Burns & McDonnell, who spoke during a session on plant decommissioning at the Energy, Utility & Environment Conference in San Diego this February, explained that another challenge is that plant staff need to be mindful of the need to deplete stores of chemicals and spare parts during the final days. The more that's left over, the more work that is necessary after final shutdown. Managing coal inventories is also key—coal stockpiles should be burned down to the extent possible, something that requires substantial advance planning.
Safety Is Still First
Management at a retiring plant must take extra care to make sure safety standards do not degrade in the waning days of a plant's life. That sometimes means making difficult decisions on reliability, Lee said.
"We have had a number of facilities where we've chosen not to operate the unit because we have a safety concern" that AEP was not willing to risk, he said. Making those decisions, though, enhances safety overall because it underscores how seriously upper management takes it. "Where that actually happens, if people see it, they embrace it," Lee noted.
That pays dividends when retiring a plant. "Our safety performance at these retiring plants matches up well with the rest of the fleet," Lee said.
Mullinax agreed. "We don't compromise any of our compliance standards, period," he said. "Everything from a safety and regulatory standpoint we are continuing to walk through and do those things the right way."
Both oversight and incentives need to remain in place. Even where other budgets are constrained, plant managers still need to be allowed to recognize successes.
Plant staff should also be clear that regulatory and record-keeping obligations are not relaxed because the plant will be shutting down. Indeed, these are as important as ever given the added work and oversight that will be present once the plant enters the decommissioning phase (Figure 3).
3. End of the line. AEP's 106-MW Picway Power Plant in Lockbourne, Ohio, was shut down last year. Courtesy: AEP
Walking Down the Final Days
One big challenge of the decommissioning process is that it has to begin while the plant is still operating. It's a challenge for both the decommissioning team and the plant staff.
There is a lot to be done during this period, Lee noted. "We certainly have put a lot of effort into preparing for the tasks that will come after the units are no longer available," he said. "It's not that the tasks are that complex, but there are so many of them, and they may sound small, but they all add up to a very important activity to make sure that we decommission the site properly. So there's a lot of activity going on around that."
That means a lot of careful planning is necessary.
"It's important to analyze out the things that need to be done to do that right without being a distraction to plant staff," Lee said.
TVA approaches decommissioning with a handpicked team of subject matter experts who focus on what needs to be done so that plant staff are not burdened with these tasks, Mullinax said.
Still, some involvement of plant staff is unavoidable, Pope noted, especially for those staff members who have worked at the facility the longest. The decommissioning team will need to work with them to identify areas where toxic substances such as asbestos, PCBs, mercury, nuclear sources (such as flow meters and exit signs), and so forth are located—both areas of past spills and areas where such materials may have been stored in the past. Plant staff will also need to be available to help identify components that can be recovered for further use, whether they are to be sold or repurposed.
These activities need to be carefully coordinated with plant operations. To the extent possible, the decommissioning team should take advantage of outages to conduct inspections and interviews.
In the end, Mullinax stressed, it comes down to strong leadership and good communications. Senior executives need to be visible at the plant and ready to answer all questions, not just once but throughout the process. Regular all-hands meetings are important to keep staff engaged in their daily jobs and not worried about the future.
"On a lot of these things there are no answers until you get closer to the retirement date," he noted. "So we continue to walk through this with them. It is not one of those once-a-month things; it is a daily journey."
And impending retirement or not, everyone has to stay as focused on quality work, as they always have been.
"Our goal is still to get better every day," Mullinax insisted. ■
— Thomas W. Overton, JD is a POWER associate editor.


This was one of my first "amatuer night" type cocmedy shows. And BigBoneBArbie was by far my favorite. Not only did she hit home with things we see everyday, she was hilarious while doing so!!! I definately cadn't wai to see her again at our local Funnybone and other comedy spots around Richmond. So glad to see a female comedian doing her thing in a mans world.


I bet that you ran into a little problem at least once, while developing top-down game. I'm talking about enemies that overlap each other while chasing player. So after a few minutes of gameplay we'll get 10 enemy sprites that move and act like one.
It's definitely very inconvenient and looks awful. That's why I created a simple AI (based on state machine) which make enemies scatter after collision and continue to chase player or whatever they're supposed to do.


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Home Featured posts Test-drive: C-Class
Test-drive: C-Class
Business Cornwall's Morveth Ward has been trying out the new Mercedes-Benz C-Class. Here's what he thought
Mercedes-Benz of Truro has what must be the best showroom in Cornwall with fantastic facilities. They even have a meeting room where customers can work or entertain their clients.
L-R: Drew Thacker BDM of Mercedes-Benz Truro and Morveth Ward
I've typically been quite pessimistic and critical when looking at this type of executive car under the assumption that there are a lot of cheaper alternatives that tick much of the same boxes on paper.
But that's the thing, this is no longer the case, the new C-Class range starts from only a relatively small amount more than the Ford Mondeo! Is this something that needs to be dispelled, are there too many business people assuming that Mercedes-Benz is out of there price range or an unjustified extra spend.
The car I test drove was the C250 BlueTECH AMG Line which was very nicely finished and looked striking in white sat on the 19" multi-spoke alloys. The softer, cleaner lines make for a slightly less aggressive looking car when compared to the predecessor C-Class but it now feels more apt and looks more modern, as you'd expect.
For some it may be a little ostentatious. However, by the time I arrived at home on the farm, the car was lagged in mud which I thought created a good image and harped back to the day where people were buying spray-on mud for their Chelsea Tractor.
The cockpit of this car was what really did it for me, I'm often very disappointed by modern uninspiring car interiors. The luxurious interior is the best I've seen in a modern car for a long time and I gave it a thorough test, travelling around 500 miles in two days.
It just makes long journeys so much less daunting and labourious, in fact on the way back from Bath heading to Exeter Racecourse Conference Centre I was actually looking forward to the journey. Everything is just exactly where you want it, down to the cup holders, seating position arm rests and cubby holes etc.
I'm 6ft 4" and I had plenty of room in every respect. This model came with black ash wood finishing on the dash and door cards together with red leather and ambient lighting. Many of the functions including radio and navigation are controlled through a tablet-style screen using a touch pad or rotary control situated on the centre consol. They do take a little bit of familiarisation to work efficiently but it's like anything, practice makes perfect. It's extremely rare that I say this about a modern car but this has heart and soul, something which is devoid in most comparable. Most of this is how the interior and drive makes you feel.
More generally the equipment is also brilliant including LED lights with cornering function and high-beam assist so you're not blinding fellow drivers on Cornish B roads or constantly flicking between main beam and dip.
The handling and performance is strong too. The power delivery isn't aggressive and I wouldn't say it's particularly fun to drive (I will have to wait for the C63 V8 AMG next year for that) but it's quick enough and the delivery is most importantly, effortless.
The handling is flat and there are very good levels of grip. However there was nothing that particularly enticed me into driving this car hard, I actually found myself having the agility mode set to Comfort most of the time, despite all intentions to exploit Sport+ mode. In this mode the luxurious feel is furthered by the drive where the air suspension works wonders in ironing out any uneven ground and the smooth 7 speed automatic gearbox changes gear so seamlessly that you barely hear a change in engine note.
The fuel consumption is decent, not when compared to unrealistic claimed figures which are invariably optimistic no matter what the manufacturer (they're all doing it), but this is a 153 mph (claimed) car that was returning 50 mpg for me in ordinary driving. That's good and with low C02 emissions you can expect lower company car tax too.
If you spend a lot of time travelling in a car then there are few better cockpits than a new C-Class and with competitive offers for business this indulgence can come at an affordable price. If you're from west Cornwall like me, it will make London no longer feel like a cross-continent Top Gear style expedition, but more like a saunter across the Tamar.
To find out more contact drew.thacker@mercedes-benzsouthwest.co.uk
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Kantchari est une commune et le chef-lieu du département de Kantchari dans la province de la Tapoa de la région de l'Est au Burkina Faso.

Géographie
La commune de #Kantchari est située dans la province de la Tapoa qui fait partie de la région de l'Est. Le chef-lieu, Kantchari, est situé à 56 km de Diapaga, chef-lieu de province et à 150 km de Fada N'Gourma chef-lieu de région. Elle couvre une superficie de 3520 km².

La commune de Kantchari est limitée :
 au Nord par la république du Niger ;
 au sud par la commune rurale de Partiaga et la commune urbaine de Diapaga ;
 à l'Est par la commune rurale de Botou ;
 à l'Ouest par la commune rurale de Matiakoali.

Cette commune rurale fait frontière avec le Niger et Kantchari centre est précisément à 17 km de la frontière.

Sur le plan hydrographique, la commune comprend des cours d'eau temporaires dont le Diamangou, le Goulbi et le Kompiengou. Et des plans d'eau permanents de Boudieri, Sampieri et Balgou (Sakoini).
La commune a récemment élaboré son plan communal de développement bâti autour de grandes ambitions de développement socio-économique de la commune.

Histoire

Au plan administratif, Kantchari a connu une évolution de la période coloniale à nos jours, à travers les principales dates suivantes :

 en 1905, la localité est érigée en canton, dans la subdivision de Diapaga ;
 en 1932, avec la dissolution de la colonie de Haute-Volta, Kantchari est rattaché à la colonie du Niger, tout comme une grande partie de la région de l'Est ;
 en 1949, à la reconstitution de la colonie de la Haute-Volta, il redevient canton;
 en 1984, dans le cadre de la réorganisation du territoire du Burkina Faso en province, Diapaga devient chef-lieu de la province de la Tapoa et Kantchari chef-lieu du département ;
 en 1993, dans le cadre de la mise en œuvre de la décentralisation, Kantchari devient une commune de moyen exercice, avec délégation spéciale administrée par un Préfet-Maire ; cette commune disposait alors d'un budget propre ;
 en décembre 2004, avec l'adoption du code général des collectivités territoriales, le département de Kantchari est érigé en commune rurale, dont fait partie l'ensemble des villages administratifs du département.

La commune de Kantchari compte 30 villages. La ville de Kantchari est répartie en 05 secteurs.

Le village de Kantchari a été fondé par le lignage Gulmance  des *Yebnani* à la fin du 18 siècle. Les Yebnani accueillirent les membres du clan *bi guamba* ayant fui à cette époque les razzias et les rapts de captifs. Dans la même période, on note l'installation dans le village d'un clan de guerriers, les Lompo et d'un lignage peulh, lequel tissa des alliances matrimoniales avec les Yebnani. Aujourd'hui Kantchari compte plus de quatorze patronymes Gulmanceba.

Au moment de la colonisation, plusieurs lignages Haoussa originaires du Niger se sont installés à Kantchari. La vague la plus récente du peuplement est composée de Mossis.

La chefferie dans le village de Kantchari est exercée par les descendants du conquérant Yebnani, le fondateur de Kantchari.  La succession à la chefferie se fait au sein des aînés du clan Yebnani par désignation du conseil de sages, les konbala. Le chef du «Canton» de Kantchari est intronisé à Partiaga. Coutumièrement, la cité  de Kantchari est organisée en 7 quartiers qui sont Dagali, Sodeni, Toungou, Dadjoari, Gnandjuanou, Gnanani, Guandjuali. Ces quartiers sont dirigés par des ministres appelés konbala nommés par le chef de Kantchari. Au sein de la plupart des villages de la commune, il y a un chef de village qui est intronisé par le chef de Kantchari.

Le village Sakoani constitue le village le plus important sur le plan traditionnel, du fait de son importance historique. Il constitue apparemment le village le plus ancien, puis viendrait Kantchari.
Ces deux localités constituent donc les villages traditionnels qui détiennent une préséance sur les autres villages de la commune rurale de Kantchari. Il est par ailleurs important de rappeler le lien historique entre Sakoani et Kantchari,  villages de la même commune et Matiakoali.

Une partie des villages actuels reçoivent leur chefferie de Kantchari et une autre partie de Sakoani. Le chef du village de Mantougou lui est intronisé à Matiakoali.

Économie

La commune possède un petit aérodrome.

Santé et éducation

Kantchari accueille un centre de santé et de promotion sociale (CSPS).

Culture

Notes et références

Ville dans le département de Kantchari

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Mr Crisp joined Blast Movement Technologies (BMT) as chief operating officer in June. He has extensive managerial experience in supply chain and manufacturing, has held general manager positions in the fuel and chemical industries and holds degrees in engineering and business.
"As our business continues to growth at 40 % per annum, and we continue to expand into new international markets, BMT will benefit from Adam's manufacturing and financial experience," said Mr. Jacques Janse, CEO.
BMT's expansion plans include Russia, South America and Africa. "Since opening an office in Ghana and increasing our customer support presence, we've seen a significant increase in the number new customers and our Net Promoter Score, which is now at 72, said Janse. Our focus on providing the best possible customer support through our technical consultants ensures customers maximize their return on investment, which are improved grade, reconciliation and recovered tonnes.
"We're also replicating sales and support office expansion in Russia and South America, so Adam's experience will be instrumental to our success," said Janse.


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Whistle Blower Lawsuit Filed Against Keller Administration Alleges Serious Abuse Of Personnel Rules And Regulations, Racism And Age Discrimination
It has been reported that on January 24 a "whistleblower lawsuit" was filed against the Mayor Tim Keller Administration in State District Court by a terminated Deputy Human Resources Director. According to the lawsuit, the former employee alleges that she was repeatedly directed to hire preselected people, fabricate reasons for reassigning others and give preferential treatment to "millennial" job candidates and "friends and allies" of Keller's executive management team.
Keller's executive team includes Chief Administrative Officer Sarita Nair, Chief Operations Officer Lawrence Rael and Chief Financial Officer Sanjay Bhakta and all 16 Department Directors. Bhakta is named in his professional capacity in overseeing the Human Resources Department and in and individual capacity. All of the executive team are at will employees and serve at the pleasure of Keller.
A link to the full Albuquerque Journal article is here:
https://www.abqjournal.com/2353571/past-city-official-files-whistleblower-suit.html
The plaintiff in the whistleblower case is identified as Patricia Martinez. She was the Deputy Director of the city's Human Resources Department. She was fired January 31, 2020 by Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Sanjay Bhadka, who oversees the Department of Human Resources. She is claiming that Mayor Tim Keller's administration manipulated the city's hiring and personnel rules and regulations, merit system ordinance, demanding that she do the Keller Administration's bidding. According to the lawsuit, she raised concerns with City Attorney Estaban Aguilar and to the City's Inspector General and she was fired for it.
The allegations include that the Keller Administration Human Resources Department is "driven by a mayoral administration with an agenda of "quid pro quo" practices, cronyism, racism, defiance of the state's Inspection of Public Records Act and a general spirit of flouting established City of Albuquerque rules and regulations and best practices".
Specific allegations in the whistle blower lawsuit include the following:
1. Members of the Keller's executive team directed her to hire a specific person as a Human Resources Investigator with Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Sanjay Bhakta instructing her to score that candidate the highest for the position, even if a current city employee scored better. Bhakta oversees Human Resources.
2. CFO Bhakta directed Martinez to personally check on an applicant and find him a job in Human Resources because Bhakta "knew his mother."
3. Keller's project manager and the city's planning director told Martinez "that Mayor Keller wanted to restructure the Planning Department in an effort to remove two employees". According to the lawsuit, Martinez said she told Bhakta the two employees were classified positions and that they could not be removed was without cause as per the personnel rules and regulations.
4. A senior personnel officer from Municipal Development asked Martinez to lower a division manager's salary "to assist him in double dipping on external retirement benefits," and that Bhakta had already made that request once previously. According to the lawsuit, Martinez denied the request.
5. CFO Bhakta is alleged to have said that "blacks and Hispanics are dumb' or words to that effect."
6. Bhakta and City Atorney Esteban Aguilar Jr. on separate occasions gave Martinez directions meant to subvert the state's public records law, with Bhakta telling her not to put certain information in email and Aguilar asking for documents to be hand-delivered to avoid a paper trail.
7. Bhakta told Martinez to transfer the Albuquerque Police Department's Human Resources coordinator to the Aviation Department, "despite the fact [the Aviation Deparment] was already staffed with three other HR administrators." That shuffling created a spot at APD that officials could use to reassign someone they wanted removed from the central Human Resources Department.
OTHER ALLEGATIONS
According to the lawsuit, "members of Keller's executive team' told Martinez that the mayor and others on his team wanted to replace the director and employment manager who were working in the HR Department at the time. They told Martinez — who started as Albuquerque's deputy HR director in October 2018 after holding a similar job at the city of Rio Rancho — that she was the department's "de facto director" which she interpreted to mean that she would get the top job if she followed their directions."
The lawsuit goes on to allege that "… Bhakta told Martinez that high-ranking APD officials wanted to fire the department's HR coordinator. … Bhakta further asserted to Ms. Martinez that because [the HR coordinator] was African American, the Executive team could not fire her because they did not want any problems with the 'Black' community as Mayor Keller was receiving pressure from the African American community due to his limited hiring of African Americans. "
According to the complaint, the employee who moved from central Human Resources Department to APD received a "substantial" pay raise. When Martinez raised concerns with Bhakta about the transfer and raise, the lawsuit alleges: "[Bhata] stated he wanted to give her less but Lawrence Rael, the city's Chief Operating Officers, was a friend of hers and her husband and persuaded Defendant Bhakta to increase his proposed offer to her otherwise she would not accept it and would stay in Human Resources."
Frankly, as disappointing as it is, the hiring of preselected people and fabricating reasons to get rid of people happens at the beginning of all Mayoral Administrations. It usually happens when you have people from the prior administration desperate to hold on to their jobs who hold "unclassified" or at will positions and who then attempt to have their positions become "classified". It also happens when a Mayor-elect is desperate to fill city hall with supporters who worked on the campaign, who want high paying jobs and who do not have the necessary minimum qualifications to fill a job.
KELLER'S EARLY PERSONNEL HIRES
Truth be known there were very early warning signs that the Keller Administration was inept or feckless enough to abuse the city's personnel rules and regulations and that Tim Keller had a real hang up about age.
In 2018, During Mayor Keller's first months in office, he was initially given high marks for appointing experienced city hall people like former New Mexico Treasurer James Lewis, former City CAO Lawrence Rael and former City Attorney and CAO David Campbell to key positions. Within a year both Lewis and Campbell were gone with confidential sources saying Keller had a tendency to just ignore their advice. Keller was also given high marks for appointing woman to executive positions including Sarita Nair as Chief Administration Officer, Shelle Sanchez as Cultural Services Director, Mary Scott as Human Service Director, Ana Sanchez as Senior Affairs Director, Nyka Allen as Aviation Director and Katy Duhigg as City Clerk.
Chief Administrative Officer Sarita Nair and Chief Financial Officer Sanja Bhutka worked for Tim Keller when he was New Mexico State Auditor. Both Nair and Bhutka are viewed as within Keller's inner circle and as political operatives at his beckon call.
As Keller's first year in office progressed, Keller had a few vetting and appointment missteps with a City Clerk nominee and then the City Attorney appointment. The first City Clerk nominee withdrew her acceptance of her appointment because her financial problems and tax lien problems where investigated and reported upon by the Albuquerque Journal. This indicated a failed "vetting process" for political appointments.
A second appointment misstep was soliciting and appointing beyond the advertised application closing date a City Attorney who needed to be confirmed by the City Council. The soliciting and appointing a city attorney after the closure date for applications and after all applicant interviews had been conducted resulted in the charge of political cronyism against Keller's Chief Administrative Officer who knows and went to law school with the city attorney selected. Keller also had told others he wanted a City Attorney in his 40's.
Keller raised more than a few eyebrows and protests during his first year in office regarding the following appointments and salaries paid to them:
A. Keller created an Assistant Mayor position and hired Obama Administration Political Strategist Gary Lee at $75,000. Lee only reported to Keller and within months quite the job for undisclosed reasons.
B. Keller appointed his longtime political consultant and campaign manager Alan Packman at $75,000 to work at 311. Packman only reports to Keller and is now paid $82,000 and has absolutely no call center experience.
C. Keller hired former New Jersey State Trooper Leonard Nerbetski as the "Real Time Crime Center Director". Nerbetski was hired even though he has a history of excessive use of force that resulted in hundreds of thousands paid in settlements. Albuquerque is under a DOJ consent decree for APD's excessive use of force and deadly force calling into question if the new hire could be committed to constitutional policing practices.
https://www.petedinelli.com/2018/11/29/grading-mayor-tim-kellers-first-year-in-office/
MAYOR TIM KELLER'S HANG UP ABOUT AGE
What differentiates the whistle blower lawsuit from the norm is the allegation that Mayor Keller wanted to give preferential treatment to "millennial" job applicants. Keller was elected at the age of 40 and is now 43 and considers himself a millennial. He does not realize he is now middle age, but at times does not act it.
Back in October, 2017 Tim Keller said he wanted to attract and hire people within his own age group, which is understandable and can be appreciated, provided you can find qualified people. Mayor Keller was elected with huge support of the progressive wing of the Democrat Party, which has a likely majority of people in the 55+ age group.
The majority of people who voted in the 2017 election probably had 15 to 20 years on Mayor Keller, or at least a lot more gray hair than he does. Age and academic credentials should not be the overriding determining factor to be a City Hall Director, but competency and management skills should be. Just because a person is in their 50s and 60s should not exclude them from any management position.
Frankly, Mayor Keller's hang up about age is well known by city hall insiders as well as people who worked on his campaign in 2017 and his transition team. One source that worked on Keller's campaign reported that Keller consistently surrounded himself with younger campaign workers and would go out of his way NOT to get input from "older workers" not in his age group.
After being elected Mayor, Keller made it known to more than one person on his transition team that he wanted to surround himself with his "generation" as Department heads and people in their 40's. Experience and knowledge of city hall and ability to do a job was not as critical to Keller as was age. Review of Keller's list of Department Directors confirms this point.
This explains a lot, especially the fact that Mayor Tim Keller is known to hold Director's meetings at "Kinder Care" facilities.
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With 75 % of your 1RM, complete 3 sets of 3 repetitions of deadlift.
Run the big loop for time.
Note: On the deadlift, you must use the overhand grip. Compare your best big loop time and today's effort following the maximum weight deadlift. Were you faster or slower?
On Monday, September 24, 2012, Aimee Nitzberg will be teaching all the classes at CrossFit Amundson. This will be an outstanding opportunity for CrossFit Amundson Athletes to receive Yoga instruction from one of the most talented Yoga practitioners and instructors in the Country. This very special Yoga day with Aimee follows on the heels of the Warrior Yoga and Unbeatable Mind Seminar at CrossFit Amundson on September 21, 2012. We are excited to offer our Athletes such incredible training and learning opportunities. We highly recommend everyone try a class at Aimee's Yoga Studio which happens to be our neighbor! The class times at Pleasure Point Yoga coincide perfectly with our CrossFit schedule, allowing you to take both a Yoga and CrossFit class in the same day.


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successfully gaining in independence from an unpopular government that served the interests of a King (George III). Thus the, essay entered the field at a time when an entire worldview was in crisis. (After all, a moral principle such as 'do not kill innocent people for pleasure' might be eastern washington university thesis requirements for admission universally accepted simply because it is a valuable rule for any society to have.) In any case, the anthropological evidence, even as known to Locke, does not support the. For all we know, the thinking part of a human being might be no more an immaterial substance than a heart or lung, a position that drew charges of atheism. Locke maintained, in his Two Treatises of Government published just as it was just after an English revolution (for which Locke was to be something of an apologist that revolution was not only a right but was often an effective obligation where states denied the. He took the time to argue against a number of propositions that rationalists offer as universally accepted truth, for instance the principle of identity, pointing out that at the very least children and idiots are often unaware of these propositions.
Fraser (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894 which is based on a collation of the first four editions of the. Thomas Aquinas, for example, we find a clear expression of the intuition that the ideas of such disparate thinkers as Aristotle, Plato, and Augustine can be fit into a comprehensive worldview, with Christianity at its core. Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) was devoted to the first, and Humes. The fundamental nature of the mind is just as mysterious as that of the physical world. Not to be confused with, an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. If we are simply not in a position to discover these ultimate truths, we can free ourselves from useless wrangling and focus on what is within our grasp.


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Location Malham Moor. Middle House Pasture.
Geology Great Scar Limestone Karst scenery with pavement and adjacent doline depression and watersink. Reference: Waltham, D. and Lowe, D. (Eds.) 2013. 'Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire Dales. Volume 1.' British Cave Research Association. ISBN 978-0-900265-46-4 (paperback). Volume 1 of this invaluable new book includes a total of 16 chapters written by specialist researchers on different aspects of the Pennine Limestone Scenery and provides a comprehensive review of the current understanding of the landscapes of the Craven Limestone Uplands.
Record Name Malham Moor. Round house settlement on Middle House Pasture.
Dimensions Settlement enclosure bank contains 22 round houses and is 400m in circumference. Second attached enclosure is larger.
Additional Notes Raistrick excavated two of the round houses at Middle House Pasture. He describes the excavation and the few finds. By analogy with other sites in the area, Raistrick considered that the settlement at Middle House pasture was of Late Iron Age or Romano British Age.
Image 1 Description The settlement location on Middle House Pasture. Above the Scar in middle distance.
Image 2 Description Ric in possession.
Image 3 Description The walk to Middle House Pasture passes Ha Mire and Great Close Mire which were once extensions of Malham Tarn visible in distance.
Image 4 Description Cotton Grass with Birds Eye Primrose.
Image 5 Description Northern Marsh Orchids.
Image 6 Description Ha Mire is Spring fed. Bog bean seen here.
Image 8 Description The Settlement enclosure with round houses and Jackie surveying the scene.
Image 9 Description Ric , in possession and Master of all he possesses.
Image 11 Description The long walk back to Malham Tarn starts across limestone pavement. Clints and grykes were formed below loessic soil which supported hazel scrub and limestone ashwood. An Iron Age field boundary crosses the bare limestone, once woodland.
Image 12 Description Clints and grykes were formed below loessic soil which supported hazel scrub and limestone ashwood. An Iron Age field boundary crosses the bare limestone, once woodland.
Image 13 Description Malham Tarn. Evening sun.
Image 15 Description Ha Mire again.


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Q: any other method beside setter and getter that will perform the same functionality but better?    class MathOperations{
 public:
 void Message();
 void setSum(int);
 void setSuB(int);
 void setMul(int);
 void setDiv(int);
 void setSqrt(int);
 int getSum();
 int getSub();
 int getMul();
 int getDiv();
 int getSqrt();
private:
int sum, subtract, multiply, divide, sqrt;

is there a better way of using setter and getter in a class??? if there's any please give me some examples. im just trying to learn a little bit more about class so im trying to implement my knowledge even though im just a beginner.. i read in a book that is it better to use static methods and use the keyword this but not sure how that works.. any simple advice will be grateful appreciate.

A: If the class is just a bunch of simple setters/getters I would consider making a struct (they are almost the same as class, but in case of public variables I prefere to name it struct) with public variables. But in any case if your methods are that simple compiler will probably inline them.
Also don't optimize the code until you found a bottleneck

A: class MathOperations{
    public:
    void Message();
    void setA(int);
    void setB(int);
    int getA();
    ing getB();
    int getSum();
    int getSub();
    int getMul();
    double getDiv();
    double getSqrt();
    private:
    int a, b;

Instead of storing the values for sum, sub, mul, and divide you want to set A and B then calculate the answers. Also, divide should return a double or float unless you are anticipating truncation. What I mean by this is if you have getDiv() return an int and a=1 and b=2 it will return 0 (1/2 = 0.5 which truncates to 0), if you are looking for a nice floating point answer you should be using a double or float.
Here is an example implementation of getDiv():
double MathOperations::getDiv() {
    double tempa = (double)this->a;
    double tempb = (double)this->b;
    return tempa/tempb;
}

As far as optimising your current example goes, if you are doing something like the following:
class foo {
    public:
    void setA(int);
    void setB(int);
    int getA();
    int getB();

    private:
    int A,B;
}

The only true overhead you are getting (assuming the compiler doesn't optimise this code) is you add a function call to the stack when getting or setting the variable and pop it off when done and making a copy of the variable to return. This is negligible on modern computers.
EDIT:double tempa = (double)this->a There is a lot going on in this little line of code, let me break it down and explain.

*

*this->a refers to the local member of the class a which is an integer. Read more about classes here: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/classes/

*(double)this->a For the math we are going to do, we want this->a to be a double so we can get a nice number like 3.141519 when doing division. To do this we cast it to a double, basically telling the compiler to convert the integer to a double in memory before storing it in tempa. Read more about data types here: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/variables/ Read more about typecasting here: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/typecasting/

*double tempa = here we assign the new double value from 2. to a temporary value tempa that we can use for division.

If you find cplusplus.com's tutorial a little hard to follow you can try your hand at http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c++-tutorial.html which can be a little easier to read.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Indian Filmmaking Duo Raj & DK Ink Multiyear Netflix Deal
August 4, 2022 jokotingkir
Indian filmmaking duo Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, better known as Raj & DK, have entered into a multi-year agreement to direct and produce movies and series for Netflix.
Known for their quirky genre mashups and distinctive style, Raj & DK have won commercial success and critical acclaim in a variety of forms in India, working across indie films, big-budget features and, more recently, series.
In 2021, they launched their own production banner D2R Indie to produce indie film projects from emerging directors. The company's first release, which Raj & DK produced, was the well-received Telugu-language comedy drama Cinema Bandi, helmed by first-time filmmaker Praveen Kandregula and released on Netflix last year.
Raj & DK also already have their next series in the works as directors and showrunners at Netflix — the upcoming comedy crime thriller series, Guns & Gulaabs. Netflix describes the project as "a story of love and innocence in a world of crime, a nostalgic tale of all kinds of firsts, from first love to first kill."
"Raj & DK are one of the most original creative voices in the country," said Monika Shergill, Netflix's head of content in India. "Along with their unique and ingenious storytelling style, they are also a powerhouse studio. We are excited to continue our relationship with them for a multi-year creative partnership that will bring superlative entertainment to Netflix members around the world."
Added Raj & DK in a statement: "We are looking forward to creating big, unique stories and challenging ourselves to push the storytelling into exciting and fresh spaces."
See also Netflix Drops First Trailer for 'Harry & Meghan' Doc Series
Tags: amp, Deal, Duo, Filmmaking, Indian, Ink, Multiyear, Netflix, Raj
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I hate to be trite and formulaic in my reviews with undeserved platitudes, but Mellisa Ameila truly is a precocious author, a talent who could develop into one of the leading voices of fiction. At 17 years old, she has more pure writing talent than most other authors with long, established careers. On the other hand, at 17 years old, she doesn't yet have the full life-experience upon which to draw, that reservoir of observations and development which will make her already prodigious talent even more compelling.
Don't get me wrong. This book was a joy to read. If it seemed a little teenage girl-centric at times, a little weak on the depth of relationships, well, that is to be expected. And by choosing a 19-year-old woman as a protagonist, it makes sense. I just look forward to reading more of her work as she matures as she certainly has the writing chops to be a success.
Ameila has one of the freshest voices in modern fiction to surface for quite some time. She is not a rote, plodding author, staying safe with standard writing styles. "Vibrant" is perhaps the word that first springs to mind in describing her style. As an American, that took me a bit of adjustment, to get the flow and rhythm of her very English narrative, but after getting past the mushy peas, knickers, and fags, I found myself adapting to her style. And it is that very unique style which makes the book itself unique, something other than run-of-the-mill.
While her wordsmithing is the star of the book, the story is just as unique and off-the-wall. Khyle Exeter is a 19-year-old woman, someone on her own for quite a while and with deep-seated resentment of her mother. She returns to Blackleigh, a rather run-down city in Oxfordshire, and to put it bluntly, things get weird. She is stalked by Marcus, a powerful and threatening man, someone who Khyle feels hates her--and there is some truth to that--but who then seems to be protecting her. And she does need protecting. There are vampire-ish people (people?) who draw sustenance from the life-force of humans, wolves, harpies, a team of supernatural police-types, and a powerful entity which is ready to take over the world. Khyle finds power within herself, learns things about her mother which changes her entire view on that relationship, and gets involved with trying to stop the threatened apocalypse.
As I alluded above, the narrative does have a twinge of the young adult genre, but don't let that dissuade you. I am a middle-aged man who thinks the Twilight saga is mind-numbing. Yet, I was thoroughly engrossed with Amelia's work and look forward to reading more of anything she chooses to write.
It is not often that a new author explodes on the scene, and Ameila deserves to have her work widely disseminated. I have the feeling that she will become a major player in the fiction market for many, many years to come.


I was sent the Fabuloss Detox Tea 14 Day teatox and I've been using it for about a week now so I thought I'd do a "mid-detox-update" kinda thing. So far so good, I haven't had any major bad reactions to it (see here - no mega pooping like some other detox teas I've tried in the past) and both are actually very tasty, so it's not like a chore to drink them twice a day. You drink one in the morning and one every second evening. I would say my skin has cleared up a bit, but I've been trying to eat better, drink more water and take better care of my skin but I think it could be a contributing factor! Other than that, energy and weight-loss wise I haven't noticed too much but maybe in the next week I'll drop three dress sizes and have toddler-strength energy. It definitely encouraged me to eat healthier though so that's a good start so far. Keep your fingers crossed for me! **And yes, my cup does say I LOVE FAIRYCAKES with a big bun on it. I like to make life hard for myself.


text:
At least 4 dead in Alabama flash floods
A stalled weather front drenched the state for hours, leaving entire communities under water
Jay Reeves/Associated Press
Michael Halbert wades through his flooded neighborhood in Pelham, Ala., on Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021.
October 7, 2021 at 10:24 a.m.
By Jay Reeves | Associated Press
PELHAM, Ala. — Terrified drivers climbed out of swamped cars and muddy floodwater flowed through neighborhoods after a stalled weather front drenched Alabama for hours, leaving entire communities under water Thursday and killing at least four people, with still more drenching storms to come.
Dozens of people had to be rescued Wednesday night in central Alabama, where the National Weather Service said as much as 13 inches of rain fell, and a south Alabama town temporarily lost its main grocery store when a creek came through the doors of the Piggly Wiggly. Near the coast, heavy rains caused sewage to bubble out of underground pipes.
Metro Birmingham remained under a flash flood watch, and meteorologists predicted another wet day for most of Alabama and parts of Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. As much as 5 more inches of rain was possible through Thursday evening, the weather service said.
A 4-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman died in separate incidents when floods carried away vehicles in northeast Alabama, said Marshall County Coroner Cody Nugent. Searchers found the bodies of a boyfriend and girlfriend, both 23, inside a car that was swept away by a fast-moving stream in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover, said Shelby County Coroner Lina Evans.
"Normally it's just a trickle. It was raging," she said. She identified the victims as Latin Marie Hill and Myles Jared Butler, both of Hoover.
The rain caused havoc in places across north Alabama, submerging cars in metro Birmingham and parts of the Tennessee Valley. Rescue crews helped motorists escape as low visibility and standing water made travel life-threatening in some areas.
Some of the worst flooding happened in Pelham, outside Birmingham, where 82 people were rescued from homes and more than 15 were pulled from vehicles after up to 13 inches of rain sent creeks and streams overflowing their banks, the Pelham Fire Department said early Thursday. More than 100 rescuers were involved in the effort, as were 16 boats, the statement said.
"Water was coming in the car so fast I had to bail out the window," said Jill Caskey, who watched Thursday morning as a tow truck hauled away her sport utility vehicle from a low-lying parking lot in Pelham. The car stalled as she was trying to navigate floodwaters during the deluge Wednesday night.
A police officer helped her to high ground, and Caskey's husband picked her up on a roadside. But it then took them three hours to travel a few miles home because of flooded roads.
Caskey has heard the weather safety mantra of "turn around, don't drown," but said "it really happened so fast I didn't have time to think about it."
The Alabama deluge comes about seven weeks after flooding killed more than a dozen people in Tennessee. These types of floods may be more common in the future because of global warming, scientists say.
Federal research has found that man-made climate change doubles the chances of the types of heavy rains that swamped Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with 26 inches of rain in 2016, killing a dozen people and damaging 150,000 homes.
In south Alabama near the Florida line, water covered streets in the flood-prone Escambia County towns of Brewton and East Brewton, inundating a shopping center and sending as much as 3 feet of water into the Piggly Wiggly. Two schools had to cancel classes, said Escambia Sheriff Heath Jackson.
"We're hoping that the rain is going to stop so we can get some of this water … out of here," Jackson told WKRG-TV.
To the south, in Baldwin County, as much as 250,000 gallons of waste water overflowed from sewage systems along Mobile Bay, officials said.
With rainfall totals already ranging from 2 inches to as much 6 inches across the state this week, forecasters said another 3 inches of rain was possible, with the heaviest rains to the north.
Severe storms and a few isolated tornadoes from a slow-moving low pressure system were a threat, mainly in the afternoon, forecasters said. The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for northeastern Alabama, northwestern Georgia and southern Tennessee.
Rains should end in Alabama by late Thursday as storms move eastward. Flash flood warnings were in effect through Friday along the weather front, stretching from the Florida Panhandle through northern Georgia and mountainous regions of the eastern Tennessee and the western Carolinas.
Back in Pelham, Michael Halbert waded through his neighborhood to a townhome that filled with more than 40 inches of water. He tried to get items off the floor, but still lost some of his belongings, and his Jeep filled with water outside.
"Flood insurance is going to have fun," he said.
Associated Press reporter Jeff Martin in Marietta, Georgia, contributed to this report.
Midday Wire


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What scares me most when hitchhiking, isn't the people. It's the condition of cars and the quality of driving. Or lack thereof.
As my hitchhiking journey took me out of Romania, two lovely young men picked me up in a very old car that had something large and white strapped to the roof. Upon closer inspection, I realised that there were in fact two white things on the roof. Fridges. And so it was that we continued on our way to Serbia under these fridges.
Approaching the border, they gestured some form of apology and left us with only a few kilometres to walk. As is often the way, before me and my hitchhiking partner could continue our journey, a man shouted to us and offered us a ride. He had a great handlebar moustache and his face was deeply etched with many years of a hard and difficult life. His frown was not a signal of a bad day, it ran much deeper than that. I don't know anything about this man and I never will. I will never understand why he took us to the border without saying a word and then turned tail and went back whence he came. But it doesn't matter. For his little kindness, I am grateful.
There is one place where you are almost guaranteed to not obtain a ride when you are hitchhiking. No man's land. That little grey area that falls before and after the borders of two countries. If you are hitchhiking from here, drivers seem to presume that you have something to hide. I often find it very difficult to know where a border starts and finishes when I am on foot. At times, I have had my passport checked by 4 different groups of people, only to find that I have several more groups to go. Then on other days, everything is organised in one nice place and I can understand what is going on. This understanding is a rarity. After a lot of unsuccessful hitching in the no man's land between Romania and Serbia, we realised that we were in no man's land. We shuffled on, walking for several kilometres and the world became dark around us. There were very few cars and we had only one thin sleeping bag and no tent between us. The cold had caught up with us and sleeping outside on the Romanian / Serbian border seemed like an unattractive but realistic option. We toured the lorry park and asked every individual to help us. None of them were going anywhere. None of them knew what to say to us. They pointed down the road, 'Yes Belgrade is that way.' Thank-you for your time.
Debating whether we should try to sleep in a lorry, walk until we find some form of inhabited area, or hitchhike all night filled our following conversations. Looking ahead, we could see no lights in the distance. In hindsight, I now know that the nearest town was close to 30 km away. Sleeping in a lorry seemed unlikely as we had already made an approach to everyone in the park. Continuing hitchhiking seemed to be our only option. But it was cold. A small Serbian trucker took an interest in us which at times is good and at others is bad. We tried to shoe him away, but in the end, he seemed to want to help. He had a friendly face and when all you have to guide you is your instincts, you learn when to trust them and when to not. We followed the man to his truck and climbed in, unsure of what would be happening as he had made it clear that he was not going to Belgrade, our intended destination.
Within a short time, we were on our way to somewhere. We snaked and twisted through narrow roads until eventually, we were on the outskirts of a small town and pulled up in a car park. The place was pulled right out of a cheap horror movie and I wasn't at all happy to be there. When a couple of guys and dark car turned up after a phone call by our driver, I pulled my passport from my bag and readied myself for some form of action. I'm not a fighter. But nor am I do-nothinger. If something bad happens, I would at least give it my best shot.
Bristling like a spitting kitten and feeling that glorious rush of adrenaline that makes life so exciting, our truck driver sprang from the truck, made some sort of exchange, then returned a few minutes later. He smiled and we were on our way. Dare I say that it was almost a disappointment? We hope for excitement in life and mine was fairly full of it throughout this journey but promises had not been fulfilled. I had been told repeatedly that I would end up mugged, attacked, or in some other form, physically mistreated by hitchhiking through Europe. Especially when hitchhiking late at night. People had lied to me about the evil state of the world.
I was starting to believe that in fact, people are wonderful and so too is the world. What a dangerous idea to have. How could I believe that everything would be OK?
Needless to say, that night I arrived in Belgrade without a problem. I walked through the city, saw some new places, ate some cheese pastry, drank some wine from a plastic bottle, and the very next morning, continued my journey in the hope of doing the same thing again. The world was cold and I was chasing the sun. With a little bit of luck, I thought that I might just be OK. I still believe that everything will be OK. It always will be, until it's not. Until that time, I will not worry about what might happen. Instead, I will enjoy what is happening now. I will live my life as an adventure. I will live my life as if I enjoy it.
This post is a blog entry from a much larger hitchhiking adventure. You can also watch the video and read the full story.
Serbia 'The Evil State Of The World' Say It Again!


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Is "The Great Replacement Theory" Real?
Come the end of this century, just about everywhere outside Russia and Eastern Europe, white-majority homelands will be Gone With the Wind. Those businesses and think tanks that consequently petition governments to liberalize immigration inflows may well be short-sighted, greedy, or exploitative, caring more for profit margins than for the future social cohesion of their homelands. But they are not actively trying to destroy the white West… just doing so accidentally.
Steven Tucker for Taki's Mag
Just like pandas, white people are fast becoming an endangered species out there in their traditional areas of natural habitat, and for the same basic reason, too—namely, a strange reluctance to keep producing enough new bear cubs. The main difference is that, in order to combat this sad population decline, the People's Republic of China isn't currently blindly importing millions upon millions of potentially hostile black and brown bears from abroad in order to usurp the panda's traditional place in the domestic food chain, unlike the ruling politburos of the U.S. and Europe.
The "Great Replacement Theory" holds that the native white panda (or possibly polar bear) populations of North America and Europe are being subjected to a "genocide by substitution" facilitated by programs of uncontrolled black and Muslim mass immigration that have been proceeding with ever-increasing speed over recent decades, at the alleged hands of such nefarious globalist elites as the IMF, E.U., U.N., and the wholly fictional Elders of Zion. But is this actually true, or just an alarmist conspiracy theory, as most mainstream naysayers maintain?
The French Resistance
The idea has most purchase in its main native birthplace of France where, in a November 2022 interview, perpetually depressed French novelist Michel Houellebecq told fellow Gallic thinker Michel Onfray that "The Great Replacement, I was shocked it is called a theory. It is not a theory, it is a fact." "This is objectively what the numbers say," Onfray agreed. And, objectively, this really is what they say, too. Come the end of this century, just about everywhere outside Russia and Eastern Europe, white-majority homelands will be Gone With the Wind.
"Come the end of this century, just about everywhere outside Russia and Eastern Europe, white-majority homelands will be Gone With the Wind."
Houellebecq said the unspoken (at least in public) "wish of the native [white] French population" was not "that the Muslims assimilate, but that they stop robbing them and attacking them. Or else, another solution, that they leave." And, if they don't leave, then a mass foreign bear-hunt may ensue: "People are arming themselves. They are getting guns, taking classes at shooting ranges…. When entire territories are under Islamic control, I think that acts of resistance will take place. There will be attacks and shootings in mosques, in cafés frequented by Muslims, in short, Bataclan in reverse."
As if on cue, on 23 December one particular alienated Elmer Fudd, named by London's Times as 69-year-old white Frenchman William Malet, went on just such a reverse-Bataclan hunting spree in Paris' Kurdish quarter, killing three completely innocent people. Most subsequent media coverage focused upon the alleged shooter's self-admitted "pathological hatred" of foreigners, but spent rather less time explaining how this had allegedly originated.
In 2016, three young men of "North African heritage" (media-speak for "Muslim criminals") had broken into his home. He had confronted them with a kitchen knife—rather than simply bending over and eagerly asking if they'd like to rape him, too, as contemporary polite liberal etiquette now recommends—then was sentenced to twelve months in prison for his unacceptable show of resistance. Worse, two of the injured burglars later sued him for €30,000 in damages, thereby literally making victims out of criminals and criminals out of victims.
Therefore, Houllebecq was proved correct: If, as here, Muslims don't "stop robbing them," then eventually their white French victims really will snap and perpetrate "attacks and shootings" in Muslim areas, as forecast. Houellebecq's own reward for unwisely resisting was to be swiftly threatened with being sued by the Grand Mosque of Paris for supposedly inciting hatred with his grim words. The Mosque has since dropped its complaint, but only after Houellebecq met with its chief rector and modified his remarks to be more to the imam's liking, as a good little subaltern native always should.
Numbers Don't Lie—but Politicians Do
Data shows the Great Replacement really is occurring—that's why saying so obviously now needs to be threatened with legal censorship—but the main factors behind it are probably not some implausible, planet-spanning, deliberate Jewish-globalist plot, as a hard-core minority of actual conspiracists maintain, but impersonal socioeconomic forces such as panda-like low white birth rates and the resultant Western demand for cheap, replacement immigrant labor from abroad. Those businesses and think tanks that consequently petition governments to liberalize immigration inflows may well be short-sighted, greedy, or exploitative, caring more for profit margins than for the future social cohesion of their homelands, but they are not actively trying to destroy the white West…just doing so accidentally.
Consider a recent tweet exchange, occurring in the wake of new U.K. census data being released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in late November 2022, in which sphere-headed ex–Cabinet Minister Sajid Javid responded to a post from chief Brexiteer Nigel Farage observing that several English cities were now "minority white[-British]" with the supremely unconcerned two-word shrug "So what?"
So what? How about what just happened in Paris, maybe? Or all the recent interethnic riots between Pakistani Muslims like Javid and Indian Hindus like his boss Rishi Sunak in the U.K.'s first-ever Great Replacement white-minority city, Leicester? That's "so what," Mr. Malteser-Head.
Panda-ing to the Mob
With such supremely blasé attitudes, our ruling class only fuels belief in parasitic conspiracy theories ever further. A classic example occurred in June 2020, when environmental "save the pandas" charity World Wildlife Fund UK (WWF) released a short video, narrated by celebrated conservationist Sir David Attenborough, arguing human population growth was endangering the planet and its creatures. A brief clip of thousands of brown-skinned Indians bathing in a river was accompanied by Attenborough warning of the pressing need to "stabilize the human population as low as we fairly can." Hours after sharing the film, the WWF then deleted it, cringingly tweeting thus:
Earlier today we shared a video that could appear to support a narrative that people of color are responsible for the pressures of a growing world population. This is not our intent at all. We have deleted the video and apologize—we will do better.
How impeccably woke of them. Even the panda on their Twitter logo is now a fashionably gay, rainbow-colored specimen: Explains why they are really going extinct. Online leftists, however, chose hysterically to misinterpret the WWF video as indicating a sinister wish to cause a different form of planetary life to die out, too: black and brown people, like all those lovely Indians cavorting in their blessed river. Self-righteous tweets soon began breeding faster than the Ganges-bathers themselves. Complaints about the "inherent racism of overpopulation narratives" vied with alarmist assertions that the idea the teeming masses of Africa and Asia could ever become subject to any kind of number-limiting demographic "control" from above was "terrifying, frankly."
Accordingly, reedited versions of the WWF's clip soon reappeared online, but with one very significant editorial change: The only footage now allowed to illustrate the booming global population was of white people. And this, despite the fact that, of all major races on Earth, whites currently have amongst the lowest birth rates.
It is not merely "a narrative" that non-whites are responsible for "the pressures of a growing world population," as the WWF's mea culpa pleaded, but an undeniable demographic datum. Population Institute Canada (PIC), of whom Attenborough is also a patron, complained the WWF's completely accurate message had simply been labeled an inconvenient "hate fact" by the online mob.
PIC explained that "Western Europe's [population] growth-rate is near zero, while Canada, the US and Australia are growing only through immigration, mostly of people of non-European origin. In contrast, sub-Saharan Africa is growing at 3% annually, which means a population doubling time of about 23 years, and Africa is on track to add one billion people a few decades hence." Unsurprisingly, it turns out "Nature doesn't care about a 'Social Justice' agenda," unlike woke mobs on Twitter, and that black Africans still produce pollutants, just like white Europeans.
What appears to be the implicit message in editing out images of all non-whites in a population-control video and replacing them with whites? Simply that "whites should be made to die out and be replaced." This obviously is not what the WWF actually believes, but you can see how certain people might conclude otherwise. And what heinous acts might such a conclusion then one day lead such individuals to perform? I think we've just seen a sneak preview of that over in Paris.
A best-selling 2003 British humor book about grammar took as its title a zoology text's comically mistaken assertion that, due to an unfortunate error in comma placement, today's typical bamboo-chomping panda Eats, Shoots & Leaves. A bit like today's equally endangered white Frenchman in a Kurdish café, then.
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Posted in Media+CultureBy Alexander Ackley
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Viktor Viktorovich Sobolev (; September 2, 1915 – January 7, 1999) was a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (since 1981), Hero of Socialist Labour (1985).

Biography
He was born in Petrograd, and studied at the Leningrad State University from 1933 to 1938, and in 1948, he received the title of Professor. He was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1958.

References

Sources
  (in Russian)
  (in Russian)

1915 births
1999 deaths
Soviet  astronomers
Heroes of Socialist Labour
Soviet scientists
Soviet professors
Full Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences


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