Future-Proofing Your Smartphone: A Lesson from Apple and Samsung

Since we all need smartphones to navigate this modern world of ours, any tips that will help you make the best purchase decisions should be welcome, right? I bought an iPhone 14 when it came out in 2022, and you can learn something from my experience.

See, Apple loves to tout its optimisation superiority and how that means they can get more done with less powerful hardware than the competition. This means that, apart from the processor, Apple usually has inferior hardware compared to its Android counterparts.

However, by being able to control everything from hardware to software and everything in between, they are able to optimise their devices better. This, for example, explains why the iPhone 16 Pro Max has better battery life than Android phones with much bigger physical batteries.

Almost every test you see has the 16 Pro Max, with its 4685mAh battery, beating out phones like the S24 Ultra with its 5000mAh battery. That’s impressive optimisation and efficiency.

This has meant that Apple has often gotten away with inferior hardware. iPhones—and Macs too—have had less RAM than their counterparts for years. In practice, Apple users were not getting inferior performance regardless of the hardware inferiority, and all was well with the world.

The problems came when technological advances in artificial intelligence led to a leap in hardware requirements.

Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence was announced a few months ago, but the announcement was annoying because it revealed that only the iPhone 16 series and the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max would be getting it. Last year’s iPhone 15 and 15 Plus would not be getting it, let alone my iPhone 14.

Was Apple trying to force users to upgrade? No, it was just a matter of those excluded iPhones having too little RAM to run Apple Intelligence.

So, for years, iPhone users got away with less RAM, but when running AI locally became a thing, they could not participate. This left Apple in a position of dropping support for phones that were not even one year old when first announcing Apple Intelligence.

In contrast, Samsung introduced Galaxy AI, and the Galaxy S22 series—which came out in the same year as my iPhone 14—is getting it. Even 2021’s S21 series gets some Galaxy AI features.

Future-proofing

The lesson here is on future-proofing. See, my iPhone 14 is still usable for me, and fortunately, none of what Apple Intelligence offers sounds revolutionary enough for me to want to upgrade to get it. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to get it, but I’m not losing sleep over it.

However, it is annoying to not get updates because Apple cheaped out and gave us inferior raw specs for years.

My experience with the iPhone 14 and the recent Apple Intelligence announcement highlights a crucial consideration when choosing a smartphone: future-proofing.

While Apple excels at optimisation, relying solely on this can have drawbacks. For years, iPhones have often boasted less RAM than Android competitors. This strategy worked well while software demands remained low. However, the rise of AI-powered features, like Apple Intelligence, has changed the game.

The iPhone 14, despite its age, is still a capable device. However, its limited RAM prevents it from accessing Apple Intelligence, however useful the feature may be in the future. This shows the importance of considering a device’s long-term capabilities beyond its initial performance.

Key Considerations for Future-proofing:

  1. RAM: Look for a phone with ample RAM. This is crucial for handling demanding tasks, running multiple apps simultaneously, and ensuring smooth performance as software and AI capabilities evolve.
  2. Processor Power: While optimisation plays a significant role, a powerful processor provides a strong foundation for future-proofing. It ensures the device can handle the increasing computational demands of future software updates and emerging technologies.
  3. Software Updates: Prioritise phones with strong software update support. Regular updates bring security patches, bug fixes, and new features, extending the device’s lifespan and ensuring it remains relevant.
  4. Manufacturer’s Track Record: Research the manufacturer’s history of software updates and support. Some companies offer longer update cycles, providing more value over time.

By carefully considering these factors, you can make a more informed purchase decision and increase the likelihood that your smartphone will remain a valuable asset for years to come. While the initial cost might be a factor, investing in a device with a strong foundation for the future can save you from costly upgrades and ensure a smoother, more enjoyable user experience over the long term.

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  1. Nope. Don’t waste those usds

    Good article..but I beg to differ… The cost of a say poco f6 is 290usd with 8gb 256.there are others like realme oppo… The uppermidrange…if you buy it this way.. Upgrade every yr and spend wayless than a single iPhone… I mean 1200 for 256gb iPhone when you can get a similar performance at 290 is bonkers. For 90% of ppl midrange is more than enough…. You forget how are you going to future proof the battery. The value in futureproofing fmakes no sense because of advances in the actual tech that make it impossible. Plus older tech is cheaper….a sd 8gen 1is 30% less than gen 2 but 60% cheaper

  2. MYST🀄

    So on the Africa Defence and Security group it was serious business. We weren’t allowed to share pictures of lets say, bikini girls. So there is a guy who posted a picture of a lady and drew an AK47 with microsoft paint.. Kkkk

    So another group was created so we could speak freely. Its called United Provinces, one day I might get to share the group link with you. It’s a group were anything goes. Sometimes people hear me laughing by myself, because if I had data, you can spend an entire day.

    Let me share some of the threads with you…. Lets see of this works.

    [12/27, 17:07] +44: Ungatenge mota wotadza kumboi rakidza rakaidza mumaraini haaaa unoroyiwa very fast
    [12/27, 17:07] +36: I think if we move away from that mentality we can be able to channel our resources to things that matter the most
    [12/27, 17:08] +44: Ayiwa ka Ghost hazvinzwaro .
    [12/27, 17:08] +263: Mota mu Zimbabwe ndoyatoti great achievement cz zhinji dzakanaka dzinodhura ndedzema company 😀😀😀😀😀
    [12/27, 17:09] +263: Zvekuti unemba bt uchifamba netsoka hatizvitsvaki kuno unohi uri datya
    [12/27, 17:09] +36 : You know i am right
    [12/27, 17:09] +44: Obva hake atenga ne qaud bike haaaaa pamusoro pemota mafanha Otadza kuzvi taura .Haaaaa shuwa oooohh vanhu vanoku shura
    [12/27, 17:10] +36 : Like what they did kuma Mps and Chiefs
    [12/27, 17:10] +263 : Unoita dzimba 2,3,4 or 5 mtwn bt unopedzerwa mhata nemunhu ane mark 2 ye 1000🤣🤣🤣🤣
    [12/27, 17:10] +36 : Reason why masses also support that and worship cars is because vatoriwo ne mindset iyoyo.kungoshayawo mukana wekuti vapindewo vadye
    [12/27, 17:11] +44 : Kikikiki waona manje kikikiki
    [12/27, 17:12] +36 : Regai vaende ku Moon,hatidi kuenda ikoko 😂..saka you admit kuti zvakadakwa ka
    [12/27, 17:12] +263: Ko unotombozvizivawo fut izvi🤣🤣🤣
    [12/27, 17:12] +36 : Reason why our black folks in the West buy a lot of cars then end up broke
    [12/27, 17:12] +36: But they are learning,vakuita vachichinja. Learning from others mistakes
    [12/27, 17:12] +44: Aaaahh ndingatadze kuziva izvozvo here .Ndakazvi tambira ndozvi supporte futi
    [12/27, 17:13] +44 : Pakaipa
    [12/27, 17:13] +36: Look at vana Kanye,nana Jay Z nana 50 to name just a few they know kuti zviya ma1 vakazvisiya faster faster vasati va broker and thats when they became richer
    [12/27, 17:14] +263 : Yah sasa hako ana razemba vakaita ma millionare in their early 20s but atina kumbovahwa isu
    [12/27, 17:14] +36: Imwewo ndo iya yekunzwa munhu achi flexer nekuti hanzi akunzi Dr. 😂 Tanzwa nekuudza kunzi ningi ava Dr
    [12/27, 17:14] +36 : Kkkkkk zvakaoma
    [12/27, 17:15] +36: Pane basa Cde
    [12/27, 17:15] +44: Yellow born reku bhundeki rino swera rato gwinhiwa wangu ukatori wona riri mu Honda fit kikiki
    [12/27, 17:16] +263 : 😂sasai kuti imba haihurise kudarika mota
    [12/27, 17:16] +36: Problem ndeyekuti if you try to address it unonzi because hauna or you can’t reach it that’s why . 😂
    [12/27, 17:16] +263: They were selling porn to the rich
    [12/27, 17:16] +44 : 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
    [12/27, 17:17] +263 : Aaaah kkkkkkk you have a point
    [12/27, 17:17] +36 : Lol we were not on what they did but the way money is spent
    [12/27, 17:17] +36 : Most rich people aren’t clean we know
    [12/27, 17:17] +263 : 😂😂😂😂 okay
    [12/27, 17:18] +36 : Some sell drugs and sing a little but end up broke cz they chased after a fleet of cars and zero appreciating assets
    [12/27, 17:19] +36 : Its similar with out leadership selling our precious minerals in return for greenbacks which their store in their homes which loses value and are worthless over long time
    [12/27, 17:19] +263 : Nobody knows kuti you own a house. (ladies won’t know u own a house unless you preach about it.)

    Different from a car. Akaona uchifamba nayo everyday them it’s understood ndeyako. So you can ball
    [12/27, 17:20] +36 : Ka mentality katinako. You might even say its a spirit. When we talk of territorial spirits there are also spirits which attach themselves to ethnicities,you see vanhu of same ethnicity from different parts of the world acting the same way yet they have never met or settled in a same location
    [12/27, 17:21] +36 : Zvinoda minamato and a drastic change of mind kuti tipunyuke
    [12/27, 17:23] +44 : 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
    [12/27, 17:23] +263 : Ko kamentality kekuti kana usina stand hauna chauri kuita mulife
    [12/27, 17:29] +263 : Ako ndinakowo hangu ini. im old school….i see value in land .zvekukumbira umwe murume kuti ndichazoitawo vaenzi musi wakati vozoenda musi wakati haaa zvodzimba gentlemen

    Kana atori ma stands ndipei kana 1000
    [12/27, 17:30] +36: Zvakaoma. Dai Mwari vatinzwira nyasha as an ethnicity vakawanda vavhurike maziso because kutambura kwacho because of this kwanyanya.and it will get worse
    [12/27, 17:30] +36 : This will also be a precursor to the disunity irimo matiri as well
    [12/27, 17:30] +36 : Saka pakaipa
    [12/27, 17:31] +263 : Iwe tisiye takadero kwamuri hakuna ma sanctions 😆😆😆

  3. MYST🀄

    [12/30, 14:08] Dzidzai: This kinda makes me a Knight. Otherwise I wouldn’t have the tie
    [12/30, 14:21] +263: Dzidzai is here to end the year with a bang.
    [12/30, 14:23] +263 78: Danger Sikelemu
    [12/30, 14:25] +263 77: 😅
    [12/30, 14:25] +263 78: 😁
    [12/30, 14:35] +263 71: Was going thru his first post before i realize it was him kkkkkk
    [12/30, 14:37] +44 74: 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 but still hayasi
    [12/30, 14:37] +263 71: How are you doing bro @⁨Dzidzai⁩
    [12/30, 14:37] +263 78: It can only be Dzidzai.
    [12/30, 14:38] +263 71: 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
    [12/30, 14:39] +44 74: And he is gone till next year
    [12/30, 14:40] +263 71: 1st of january vanongouya ne 30 kana 40 ma downloads ka1
    [12/30, 14:41] +263 78: Kkkk
    So today is a warm up or build up to the ultimate showdown tomorrow.
    [12/30, 14:41] +263 71: Teaser iyi 😂😂😂😂
    [12/30, 14:42] +263 78: Rehearsals
    [12/30, 14:42] +263 71: 😂😂😂😂
    [12/30, 14:43] +263 78: I must buy data so that I do not miss the big show tomorrow.
    [12/30, 14:47] +263 77: Ayah kkkkkkk
    [12/30, 14:52] Dzidzai: All good. Compliments of the season

  4. MYST🀄

    [12/25, 15:29] +44 74: According to most experts, a female German Shepherd is generally considered “better” for most families as they tend to be slightly easier to train, less dominant, and more affectionate than males, making them a better choice for households with children
    [12/25, 15:45] +263 78: I had a rhodesian ridge back a female yaidambura munhu kadzi wese or munhu anopfeka macolor akawanda or madhende 😹
    [12/25, 15:45] +44 74: 🤣🤣
    [12/25, 15:48] +263 77: Uuuu kule
    [12/25, 15:51] +263 78: 🤦🏾‍♂️haaa i wont forget the humiliation. Yayotopenga
    [12/25, 16:57] +36 20: Aaah yes,ndivo vaya who think since the bullet does not go through there is no pain,after an argument over 5 bottles of vodka 😂
    [12/25, 17:06] +263 77: Tipeio book racho.kkkk
    [12/25, 17:07] +263 77: Probably Ecclesiastica
    [12/25, 17:09] +263 77: Thnk u
    [12/25, 17:09] Prosper: Bhaibheri rina apokirifa. Bhuku ra Sira
    [12/25, 17:10] +263 77: *Ukabata fon yamadam nyora kut “kwauy” or “vari.”*
    *Ukaona prediction yagona kukupedzisa ichiti “kwauyiwa” or “varipo” bata munhu huro ndiwe unenge uchitaurwa*
    [12/25, 17:10] +263 77: 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂
    [12/25, 17:11] +263 77: Kkkkk..Shava matanga. Shona yenyu yakanyanya🤣🤣🤣
    [12/25, 17:11] Prosper: Shows you the selectiveness applied to books of the bible
    [12/25, 17:12] Prosper: Shamwari tinombunyikidzwa kutaura chirungu. Tafinhwa nazvo
    [12/25, 17:13] +263 77: Like apo mkma hpna chandanzwa ini
    [12/25, 17:17] Prosper: uri musalad here iwe? Are you nose-brigade?
    [12/25, 17:20] General: *Variku gocha tokumbirawo hutsi huperere kuma yard kwenyu vamwe tine Asthma. Chatova chikumbiro ma good neighbours*🤣🤣🤣
    [12/25, 17:21] +263 77: No handisi musald akoma BT ndirikuzama kubatabidz kt which books are those. Apokirifa ndokutii.. Handisikuda kukunzwai Nhuka BT ndini nditori kumashure apo
    [12/25, 17:59] +263 77: 🤣🤣🤣
    Chekenyenye…..
    [12/25, 18:00] +263 77: *Vehama, izvozvi hapashaikwe umwe murume mukuru arikuti mdara kumwana mudiki kwaari iri nyaya yekuda kutengerwa doro chete*
    *Kusakwana*
    🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️
    *Handidi vanhu vane nharo*
    [12/25, 18:03] +263 77: Pano angava ani🫣🫣🫣🫣🫣
    [12/25, 18:03] +263 77: Kwamakuyenda uko….
    [12/25, 18:03] +263 77: Ini ndaakutiza
    🏃🏿‍♂️
    [12/25, 18:04] +263 77: Enda hako ini ndamuziva
    [12/25, 18:04] +263 77: Kkkk
    [12/25, 18:05] +263 77: Ingotiiii dyooo kechihwani…(Ndiyani)
    [12/25, 18:07] +263 77: Iwe mazino angu achipo nemaziso.unoda.kundiitisa manyada
    Asi ndinogona kungozvireva ini🙈🙈🙈

  5. MYST🀄

    Spoiler Alert🚨

    To my upcoming science fiction book AD2060, I will be adding the House of Dangote, Masiyiwa and Mostepe.

    If you haven’t read the synopsis.. Billionaires meet on Abromo’s boat somewhere on the Indian ocean. They decide to accept refugees who want to run away from Earth 🌎 and go to Mars 🌕 using their rockets and space ships.

    It becomes an extreme sport because the Earth Defence Force actively tries to stop people leaving in droves.

    An overzealous Earth general ‘buzz cut’ Smith thrusts himself into the first Earth Mars war, after general Rosebud resigns.. ⚡⚡

    Then we will see about a movie
    or series.

  6. Trigga🔫

    Missed call, ndini ndafona.

    Sir Wiki, inini hangu ndoda D4D not a GD6. Do not get me wrong, GD6 is pretty nice but that’s also the problem. When we go 4×4 off-roading some of us want to punch it hard and return with our cars all muddy and dirty to show you we have been somewhere interesting. With a GD6 ndinenge ndichiteta.

    If you can add a winch, spotlights, run flat tyres, expanded fuel tank, rooftop tent, snorkel. I’m in heaven. Ndatenda🙏

  7. MYST🀄

    What’s for supper.

    First, I do not have a fridge, so my tomatoes go bad pretty quickly. My solution. I cook all of then at once, make sure they come to a boil.. Add salt, chillies and garlic. Then I can them in my used Mayonnaise jars, that way I can keep them for a month no problem because the jars are airtight.

    So for supper, yeah, ummm homemade canned Tomato soup with that stuff which is not Penne, yeah Macaroni.

    Meat tozoiona next year perhaps, but gomba needs to be filled. To be honest, I would rather be having Sadza nema veg, but its boring cooking your own all the time, sometimes you want to taste another hand, because Sadza rinosiyana.

    #blessedandthankful

  8. MYST🀄

    Tichikura, no Mazoe no problem. Taitora mvura toisa tushuga mbichana, yainzi koro water. 😂

    Kana kutora magazine, iwe woti ku left ndekwangu, ku right ndekwako, then we would open page by page, to’ona anenge anezvakanaka kukunda umwe.

    Hatina kukurira mu luxury, zvakawanda taingozvionera muma bhuku. Civies day was the worst day, no label but bhero, not from America but South Africa. Umwe achiuya ne Sean Jean yakanyora ne Japanese kana LA Gear, iwe.

    Makanganwa kwamakabva ma Comrade. Vashomashoma venyu vakakurira mu luxury. Munotsvinya, nemari dzedu futi, run a business rako tione usingaite fraud, kwete kudya mari dzenherera, moti vhairira futi. Hamusvode, varungu vatema.

  9. MYST🀄

    Have you ever met someone who gets Carte Blanche and doesn’t know what to do with it. Write down anything you need on your farm from nails to tractors and it will be given.

    Then you come to me to ask me off course for free but a consultant you would pay lots of money north of a 1000. Its sad actually, not knowing what to do with largesse.

    Using tax payers money to pimp up your farms which you give to each other. Comrades

    Do you know I met a guy at ZANU PF head quarters who fought in the 2nd Chimurenga. He said to me, I bled for this country but I don’t have land kana 1ha chaiyo. Reality!

    Then I went to the culture floor, is it 9th zviya, then I met an elderly sekuru who told me about rituals, he used to drive vaChitepo and crew to Chipinge he said. Then I took a photo of Mbuya Nehanda’s portrait in his office, then someone on the group said where did you get this photo, then I realised it was a big deal.

  10. MYST🀄

    Ukaona wapihwa green beret ne dagger patch unengewabva ku Wafa Wafa usina kufa.

    Konangale – Ma Fans Angu

    Commando ‘The Deadliest’

  11. MYST🀄

    Original sound – Major King

    Thanks SANDF, I know my kids are in good hands.

    CHAPTER ONE
    INTRODUCTION
    AIM AND FOCUS OF THE DEFENCE REVIEW
    1. In May 1996 the Minister of Defence presented to Parliament the White Paper on National Defence
    for the Republic of South Africa. Parliament approved the document, with strong support expressed by
    all political parties.
    2. The overarching theme of the White Paper is the transformation of defence policy and the South
    African National Defence Force (SANDF) in the light of the momentous political and strategic
    developments which have occurred at national, regional and international levels following the demise of
    the Cold War and the ending of apartheid.
    3. At national level these developments include the establishment of a democratic government; the
    introduction of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to address poverty and socio-
    economic inequality; the policy of national unity and reconciliation; and the adoption of a new
    Constitution which outlaws discrimination, enshrines fundamental human rights and lays the basis for
    democratic civil-military relations.
    4. After two and a half decades of isolation, South Africa has been welcomed back into the international
    community and has joined a host of important regional and international bodies. South Africa now
    engages in defence co-operation with a number of countries and participates in regional security
    arrangements under the auspices of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
    5. In the light of these developments and the integration of the former statutory and non-statutory forces,
    the challenge of transformation is substantial and complex. The White Paper addresses this challenge at
    the level of broad policy. It establishes a policy framework and the main principles of defence in our
    new democracy.
    6. The White Paper also provides for a Defence Review, the aim of which is to elaborate on this policy
    framework through comprehensive long-range planning on such matters as posture, doctrine, force
    design, force levels, logistic support, armaments, equipment, human resources and funding.
    7. More specifically, the White Paper provides that the Review will encompass the following:
    7.1 It will present options with respect to the size, roles and structure of the SANDF.
    7.2 It will address the implications of the core force approach, described in Chapter 5 of
    the White Paper, for the size, doctrine, posture, weaponry, equipment and other features of
    the SANDF.
    7.3 It will address the strategic and technical implications of the constitutional provision
    that the SANDF “shall be primarily defensive in the exercise or performance of its powers
    and functions”.
    7.4 It will deal with the implications of the principles of “defence in a democracy”,
    described in Chapter 2 of the White Paper, for the orientation of the SANDF.
    7.5 It will present, for the consideration of Parliament and the public, detailed and well-
    motivated budgetary forecasts and proposals; specific policies regarding the provisioning
    of logistic resources; and the identification of appropriate technology to optimise the cost-
    effectiveness of the core force.
    7.6 It will deal with the size and structure of the Part-Time Component (PTC).
    7.7 It will include an examination of prevailing conditions in the SANDF with the view to
    rationalising current spending, eliminating waste and unnecessary duplication, and
    determining the most cost-effective means of managing human and material resources.
    7.8 It will provide details on the rationalisation, redesign and right-sizing of the SANDF
    given the absence of a foreseeable conventional military threat.
    7.9 In the context of demobilisation and rationalisation, it will outline a formula and
    guidelines for ensuring that the former statutory and non-statutory forces are equitably
    represented in the SANDF.

  12. MYST🀄

    I am reading a policy paper with arguments below. My colleagues are not wrong. Unfortunately their measures ultimately benefit industrialised countries. If we move to services before industrialisation we basically become your workers. Your big corporates like Amazon, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, AMD, Google, SpaceX, Tesla need people to answer phones and do computer wizardry.

    Countries have different growth trajectories and interests. You cannot apply a one size fits all. Amazon opening in South Africa makes sense, they are industrialised already, perhaps an increase in services is what they need.

    We first have to catch up to South Africa before we can start to think about services. We first have to get the basics right. We also know that countries developed by industrialisation and being export oriented. Those are facts.. Services on the other hand are yet to be proven.

    Perhaps services and the need to pivot come from saturation, you have done everything and now you need to find a way to maintain value. So If we move to services early while shipping out cheap raw materials, you can maintain a very very high standard of living.

    The Earth is rich enough to cater for all 10 billion people on the planet. I will digress a bit. However, the Earth will not be able to sustain us if we keep on this trajectory, resources will finish when the population hits a certain mark. Conflict over scarce resources will only get worse and our environment will bare the brunt. Its imperative humans look to the heavens and spend more on space exploration than defence for example, not completely but more funding can be channeled to getting people off this world, and defence companies wont lose their contracts, its aerospace🌎 It guarantees the survival of the human race.. The potential for resources in space also justifies this change in mentality..

    I think for us its industrialisation and an export oriented economy. Services by they nature will come.

    Dzidzai Chidumba
    Chaminuka University
    December 2024

    SERVICING DEVELOPMENT: PRODUCTIVE UPGRADING OF
    LABOR-ABSORBING SERVICES IN DEVELOPING ECONOMIES
    Dani Rodrik and Rohan Sandhu
    Harvard University
    May 2024
    I. Introduction
    The future of developing countries lies in services. Enhancing productivity in labor-absorbing
    services in particular must be an essential priority, for reasons of both growth and equity. In this
    paper we provide a broad overview of what such a strategy might look like, drawing on a wide
    range of existing programs on which it might build.
    Emphasizing a services-driven model may seem odd in view of the phenomenal success that
    countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and China have had with the strategy of export-oriented
    industrialization. Indeed, historically industrialization has been the main vehicle for modern
    economic growth. The aptly-named Industrial Revolution in Britain was itself the product of the
    application of new technologies to manufactures such as cotton textiles. Almost all subsequent
    and sustained cases of economic catch-up, from the United States to Japan, were the result of
    industrialization. The conventional recipe for low-income countries such as those of Sub-
    Saharan Africa is to replicate these experiences, by removing obstacles to (or actively
    promoting) rapid industrialization so their firms can plug into global manufacturing value chains.
    Today, even advanced economies are engaged in industrial and other policies to reinvigorate
    their manufacturing sectors, weakened by decades of competition with China

  13. MYST🀄

    Longines Presents a Limited-Edition Conquest Heritage for the Year of the Snake

    https://hypebeast.com/2024/12/longines-conquest-heritage-year-of-the-snake-limited-edition-release-info

  14. MYST🀄
  15. MYST🀄

    ‘Peaky Blinders’ Creator Steven Knight Teases More Franchise Projects Post Film

    https://hypebeast.com/2024/12/peaky-blinders-creator-steven-knight-teases-more-franchise-projects-post-film-cillian-murphy-new

  16. MYST🀄

    A butterfly collector in Africa with more than 4.2 million seeks to share them for the future

    https://phys.org/news/2024-12-butterfly-collector-africa-million-future.html

    I was glad to note that our insect collection came back, so I was told, we had swoped it for one of the lost Zimbabwe birds at Groote Schuur.

    There is a lad from St Johns College who got an international scholarship for his collection. Life is not linear, there are things you do not think important that other find important, because they are important.

  17. MYST🀄

    Abu Dhabi Film Commission Raises Its New Rebate to Up to 50% of Qualified Production Spend

    https://variety.com/2024/film/global/abu-dhabi-film-commission-rebate-to-up-to-50-production-spend-1236261559/

  18. MYST🀄

    Sony Pictures Entertainment Brings Movie Magic to Mercedes-Benz

    https://hypebeast.com/2024/12/sony-pictures-entertainment-x-mercedes-benz-info

  19. Hypercar Territory🚀

    This Stealthy Koenigsegg Agera Is Up for Auction

    https://hypebeast.com/2024/12/koenigsegg-agera-rm-sothebys-auction-info

    If you ever come into money, real money that doesn’t need to be described, get an exotic.

  20. Cobra iComms

    Some people confuse government with party.

    I am working for the government, no you are working for the party, and probably one faction.

    The party could be split among three lines. Then sublines below, then foot soldiers below.

    Sometimes its better to be neutral, because no one knows were the wind is blowing.

  21. MYST🀄

    There was joker here that used to organise robberies on me.

    He is not organising robberies on me any more.

    Hwinza – Denga

  22. MYST🀄

    It makes no sense to me. Chitungwiza Municipality diligently collects all our bins but you go dump litter in public spaces.

    Pampers, pizza boxes, chicken feathers and all manner of filth. My gripe is that you block the water ways and we end up swimming in our homes.

    Its very clever, very intentional and if you want to show us the good food you eat, do it on TikTok and monetise it.

    We are watching you. Billiv dat! 💂

  23. J-Lo🍑

    Peace to the fallen!

  24. Anonymous

    Things are moving so fast that even advice has no got a very short shelf life.

    That’s why blogging is harder, the contents get out of date and lose value too quickly.

  25. MYST🀄

    I have seen about 3 Navy guys pa J pama shops.

    That blue hue.

    Ehe! Ehe!

  26. MYST🀄

    I am challenging anyone in the Army to a timed stripping of an AK47 assault rifle. And, first to 30 press ups.

    Ready, set…..

  27. MYST🀄

    I have another drop kick to my name, I coached both Allan Wilson and Selborne Routledge. Uriga came through for the win against Tynwald.

    I found a player, you know yourself big guy. Then when I asked Saints for a scholarship then were willing to put up half of the fees, but $600 was too much for him. He was on the Rhaghibi group, mfana, asking for all sorts of advice what school do I go to for A Level. $600 was too much, he went to ZRP Highschool, instead, I was happy.

    He was same size like Tinashe Bopoto, he played for Zim that lad. He used to push me around and practice that lad, then the teachers would laugh. Brilliant!

    We tried mfana, don’t ever blame me for not trying.

    Some of you only know me know…

    Ninja Academy.

    Moris Depot.

    Kkkkk…. I remember carrying a Baikal Shotgun in the middle of town. Ndakaburuka pa Copacabana. I was full on terminator gift basket. Then at fourth street a conductor asked me.

    Moto ka’ uyu?

    Ehe!

    Bho!

    Ndidzikise pa Remand.

    Bho!

    I surrendered the Baikal at Morris Depot but not the shells its in my blazer somewhere.

    Slug.

  28. MYST🀄

    Haubate Msoja iwe!

  29. MYST🀄

    Zachariah, System, Alick and another Kevias?

    Ah!

  30. MYST🀄

    Step pon Space Boi, suicide mi frend.

    Me ave a couple of dogs who buss one in di edh! Fi mi!

    Funny story, someone came to my window at 2 am.

    His request play Alkaline.

    What?

    Play ALKALINE!

    I’m sorry I said if you come in, ndokudheda!

    Ndongo Defender! Territory Yangu!

    They had been a lot more before you!

    I’m damaged goods, so lighten up!

    Have fun lads. That’s an order from Coporo.

  31. MYST🀄

    There Is nothing wrong with spending New Years in Nhimbe. Original. Talent on the Desk and guest DJ.

  32. MYST🀄

    I have seen my first original Gucci pa Unit J ma Shops.

    You know who you are!

    Bomboclaat! Bloodclaat! Suck yuh mudda!

  33. MYST🀄

    DJ Runaway!

    If you give everyone in the Bar 30mins play tonakirwa.

    You are boring.

    Give!

  34. MYST🀄

    Pane kanyaya kakaitika.

    There was a sword in the stone.

    It was prophesized that whoever removed the sword in the stome would be King of Britannia and France.

    All the important people in the village tried, then the body builders, then the blacksmiths.

    I don’t know the specifics but a young boy of 16 years old called Arthur removed Xcalibre from the Stone. Then the people bowed to him then Merlin came.

  35. Hound of Basketville🐅

    DIE!

  36. Scots Quilts

    Shadaya how may girls have you taken on a date that you don’t actually date rape?

    Mr.. I know everything about getting woman.

    Scotland FC.

    Its Mayweather mudhara! 💦

  37. MYST🀄

    Eddie Cross, China tinoida tisingaide.

    Blood claat!

    Write about your illustrious life.

    AGENT

  38. Cobra Kai☠️

    Happy New Year Mai Ropafadzo🙏

  39. MYST🀄

    Bootleg inongoti dyo!

  40. MYST🀄

    Ko Passion Java, I heard uri mwana wemu Chitungwiza.

    You went to Matapi before you opened the Aquatic Complex. The pool not the side or even Seke Saints FC.

    I would love to see you do 330km/h on the Autobahn like the Dutch guy. Not all sections on the Autobahn are unlimited speed limit.

    Your beautiful girlfriend can film you.

  41. Ward21 Mentally Insanse

    Mi nuh go no where!

    Mi ah bud mun.

    Mi stay, right ere!

  42. MYST🀄

    Who wrote the shortest verse in the Bible, between Habakkuk and Malikai?

    Mupfana muduku!

  43. MYST🀄

    DJ Rice vajamuka.

    Yesaya!

  44. Men are from Malawi🇲🇼🇿🇼

    Gemma at Great Zimbabwe I lit a flame, put my Okapi to the ground, behaved like a clown saw monkeys and a Kudu.

    Arikukwata seChimunya, chemangwana. Akachejera sitereki…

    Blaz!

  45. MYST🀄

    On the Astronomy WhatsApp group, I tried to come up with names for planets in our solar system in Shona. I have forgotten some but lets have another crack.

    Sun – Zuva (It take about 8 minutes for light from the Sun to reach the Earth.. 🌍🌕. Distance from the Sun is measured in AU.. How long in light years does it take to reach our nearest neighbour solar system Alpha Centauri vapfana?

    Mercury – Korokoza
    Venus- Nehanda
    Earth – Nyikadzimu
    Mars- Murenga
    Jupiter – Gurukuro (a failed star, if you give it x1000 more mass it will turn into our third star. Most solar system are binary star system, yes two suns, we may have another in an elliptical orbit that takes thousands of years, its called Nemesis🌕🌕
    Saturn- Mutota
    Neptune – Nyami Nyami
    Uranus – 🙊
    Pluto – Kadiki

    Asteroid – Dombo
    Asteroid Belt – Bhandi rematombo
    Oort cloud – Makore….
    Galaxy-?
    Black Hole- Chadzimira
    Star – Nyenyedzi (off course)
    Shooting Star – Chipoko
    Universe- Dziva Guru
    Milkyway = Milkyway (half way cross the galaxy and turn left at the big dipper)
    Gravity – Uremu
    Nebula -?

    You may live you entire life having other people name things in honour of their ancestors like Ares or Mars, Venus, Artemis, Neptune with his Navy Trident.

    Why cannot you not name things, its perfectly normal.

  46. MYST🀄

    Happy New Year Comrades.

    My New Years resolution. I don’t care if you are child soldier or a woman.

    Ndoda’.

  47. MYST🀄
  48. MYST🀄

    James Webb Space Telescope discovers 4th exoplanet in sweet triple ‘super puff’ star system

    https://www.space.com/kepler-51d-superpuff-exoplanet

    Three stars, bloody hell…🌕🌕🌕

  49. MYST🀄

    Eddie is cross that there are over 80,000 Chinese nationals in Zimbabwe. How many Zimbabweans are in South Africa because of the ruling party and its surrogate the opposition? . If you didn’t know that the opposition in Zimbabwe is for show, then you live on Mars.

    Ko iwewe wakabva kupi Eddie, usadaro, ngatigarisaneyi?

    We want more, a million plus Chinese nationals not forgetting Vietnamese too. We like to play with clever and strong people.

  50. Truck Simulator

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  51. Dzidzai Chidumba

    Beta Fiction, Spain’s No. 1 Independent Distributor in 2024, Sets New Films by ‘El 47’s’ Marcel Barrena and ‘House on Fire’s’ Dani de la Orde

    https://variety.com/2024/film/global/beta-fiction-spain-marcel-barrena-dani-de-la-orden-1236261833/

    What was the last movie we made comrades? Movies from India and Nigeria are getting better year on year. Are we consumers or are we makers? Consuming is easy, so do we like it easy?

  52. Dzidzai Chidumba

    I have always said if you are my friend you can call me Dzidzai, no matter your age.

    If you are not my friend, have some manners and address me as Mr. Chidumba. If you find those words hard to say, you can call me Baba Naniso.

    If that’s too difficult for you, don’t speak to me at all. You can tell how a person was raised by how they speak. This is why parents pay top dollar for their sons to go to Peterhouse or Falcon so they can learn decorum. Asi iwe iwe you think hazvina basa, shura.

    My dad used to say some people are uncivilised, I didn’t understand it then as a kid, but I totally understand it now. Some people are common.

  53. Dzidzai Chidumba

    David Lynch’s ‘Dune’ at 40: David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation is a true spice oddity

    https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/david-lynchs-dune-at-40-david-lynchs-1984-adaptation-is-a-true-spice-oddity

  54. Dzidzai

    One of my favourite TV shows is Shark Tank.

    You would see an 8 year old arrive with their parent. In some quarters you would think the Dad owns the business.

    Then the father would let an 8 year old speak on behalf of the company his child started. An 8 year old negotiating business deals with billionaires. Billionaires listening attentively seeing if there is value in the proposition. A couple of children raised funding for their businesses on Shark Tank, $100s of thousands, putting you money and faith in a child, a money mindset.

    Its perfectly allowed to start a company at a very young age, as long as you have a product or service that can be monetised and return value for shareholders. Follow your passion, write it down, plan, manuva, be confident to ask, an idea can never be fully stolen from the originator.

    Never let anything stop your entrepreneurial spirit. Go for it. You do not know the day your idea may receive funding, so work on it now. Solve a problem or create something, wow! the world. Be confident in your idea, but also be flexible to change it or expand.

    Your driver will drive you to school and to the office if need be and those that work for you have to listen to you and respect you. You will be the boss.

    Rise up entrepreneurs. You are the backbone of economies.

    http://www.kickstarter.com

  55. Dzidzai

    Inini I like to be friends with someone who discusses ideas and likes to have fun.

    If you find yourself discussing a person from morning to evening, you have a problem and poverty will eventually come knocking at your door.

    6 to 6 take take nemunhu. Small minded.

  56. MYST🀄

    Do you know Chinese cuisine is some of the best in the world. I blessed to have sampled some at that Chinese restaurant in Milton Park and the Spring Rolls at Avondale. Indian, Japanese, Mexican and also and French cuisine ranks highly.. I am yet to sample Japanese, Thai, Ethiopian, Mauritian, Russian cuisine, especially Ramen and Sake, noodles do not count.

    There is an entire planet to explore, once a while spoil yourself or imagine it.

  57. CarX Street Drive

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  58. MYST🀄

    How pigeons, cats, whales and even robotic catfish have acted as spies through the ages

    https://phys.org/news/2024-12-pigeons-cats-whales-robotic-catfish.html

    We have those cats in our neighbourhood as well, cats from hell.

  59. RTD LLEWELLYN 2022

    This is an excerpt from Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Firewall by James Swallow

    Publishing in March 2022 and available everywhere in paperback and ebook formats.

    Legendary agent Sam Fisher teams up with a new NSA recruit – his own daughter – to save the world
    in this gripping new thriller from the renowned Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® videogame universe.

    Veteran Fourth Echelon agent Sam Fisher has a new
    mission recruiting and training the next generation
    of Splinter Cell operatives for the NSA’s covert action
    division, including his daughter Sarah. But when a lethal
    assassin from Fisher’s past returns from the dead on a
    mission of murder, father and daughter are thrust into
    a race against time as a sinister threat to global security
    is revealed. A dangerous cyberwarfare technology
    known as Gordian Sword – capable of crashing airliners,
    destroying computer networks and plunging entire
    cities into darkness – is being auctioned off to whichever
    rogue state makes the highest bid. Sam and Sarah must
    call on their very singular set of skills to neutralize
    Gordian Sword and stop the weapon falling into the
    wrong hands – at any cost…

    One
    Gunterfabrik – Kreuzberg – Berlin
    It took four days for them to narrow the search.
    Four cold days on the streets of a stone-gray city where the
    spring seemed unable to take hold, the season still warring
    with the last overcast remains of a winter unwilling to give
    ground.
    They got close to the target on the second night, tracking a
    hand-off in the U-Bahn at Alexanderplatz, but a wild scramble
    that saw them changing trains and sprinting down rain-
    slick platforms netted nothing but irritation. Their quarry –
    designated with the codename Treble – avoided the team with
    an ease that bordered on insulting.
    Later, Lynx had earned hard looks when she suggested that
    the target had deliberately drawn them in to get the measure
    of the operatives sent to capture him.
    Her companions reacted predictably. Gator, the stocky
    corn-fed ex-Ranger, took it as a personal failure on his part
    and spent hours staring into his coffee and squaring away

    his kit to hide his frustration. Buzzard, the wiry New Yorker
    forever pent up with nervous energy, played with his knife
    and pored over a map of the city. Neither man seemed to sleep
    that much, both always awake when Lynx rose each morning,
    in their dingy safe house off Karl-Marx-Strasse.
    She wasn’t like them. Of average build, with dark brown
    shoulder-length hair, she could have blended into any crowd
    of tourists without making a ripple. But if you gave her a
    second look, meeting those sharp green eyes, you might have
    sensed something of the hard focus she kept hidden.
    The others had been career military before their
    recruitment, although Buzzard was circumspect about what
    branch. Lynx guessed Navy, but he wouldn’t confirm or deny,
    and when he posed the question to her, she was equally tight-
    lipped. Gator decided she was former police, and she allowed
    him to believe that. The truth was more complex.
    The secrecy  – even from each other  – was part of the
    program. Sometimes active missions meant working with
    people you knew next to nothing about, finding a way to
    mesh together into an operable unit at short notice. Hence
    the codenames and the lack of personal small talk. The people
    in charge wanted this op to be about the takedown, not a
    team-building exercise for agents in the field.
    Lynx was fine with that. Having seen Gator and Buzzard
    out in the world over the past few days, she had her doubts
    that either man had the right mindset for collaboration.
    Still, they managed to track Treble to his staging area, a
    victory of sorts. Lynx studied the derelict building across the
    street, through the windshield of their rented VW Golf, the
    brutalist five-story block of concrete and graffiti-covered glass

    rising behind a corrugated metal fence.
    Against the whirl of fine rain falling from a low night sky,
    the place had an unlovely look to it, the typical silhouette
    of utilitarian East German architecture. The sign over the
    entrance was still visible despite decades of decay. The place
    had been a textile factory turning out sports kits for kids
    playing soccer inside the Deutsche Demokratische Republik,
    but that had been before the fall of the Berlin Wall and Die
    Wende, what the Germans called the turning point.
    Lynx looked around, checking her sector for traffic, finding
    nothing. This whole area on the bank of the river Spree had
    been just inside the wall in the bad old days of the Cold War,
    and you could see the legacy of it in the buildings. Like a lot
    of Berlin’s riverside real estate, the fate of the factory would be
    to get gobbled up by some property developer, then razed to
    the ground so some new modernist construction could rise
    in its place. Or maybe they would keep the exterior intact,
    playing on its Communist-era retro chic. She wondered what
    the DDR stalwarts of the past would make of that. For her,
    those people and that time were ancient history, something
    that only existed in movies and documentaries.
    “No visual,” drawled Gator, down low in the passenger seat
    with a pair of low-light goggles held to his face. He peered at
    the factory’s lightless windows. “Treble could be masking his
    signature.”
    “He’s smart,” offered Buzzard, leaning forward in the VW’s
    backseat. He carefully screwed a long sound suppressor
    into the barrel of a Glock 17 pistol, before loading it with a
    magazine of blue-tipped bullets.
    “More than you know,” noted Lynx. “He practically wrote

    the book on this.”
    “You a fan?” Gator gave a derisive snort and a pointed look,
    then went on. “There’s only one of him. All you gotta do is
    make sure you don’t repeat the screw-up at the subway.”
    “Don’t put that on me,” she said. “You’re the one that
    spooked him.”
    “And you’re the one supposed to mark him.” Gator checked
    his own weapon, before stuffing it into his overcoat.
    “He got past us all,” Lynx snapped. “Like I said, he’s top
    tier.”
    Buzzard drummed his fingers on the doorframe. “So, we
    do this different,” he said. “The mistake was leaving him a way
    out at the station. This time, we split up, cut off his escape
    routes.”
    Lynx shook her head. “Wrong. We need to come at Treble
    in force. It’s the only shot we have at taking him down.
    Remember the briefing.” The thin document that operational
    command had given them talked in no uncertain terms about
    their target’s superlative skillset, easily the equal of the best
    the Spetsnaz, SAS, or SEALs had to offer.
    “I got my force multiplier right here.” Gator smirked and
    patted his gun.
    Lynx pulled a face, but clearly the other two had already
    made up their minds, and she knew it would be a waste of
    her time trying to bring them around. Buzzard elected to go
    up the drainpipe on the west side of the factory and work his
    way down from the roof, while Gator would go in from the
    riverside. That left Lynx with the front entrance. Her scowl
    deepened.
    Buzzard pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to reveal a

    device that resembled a smartphone clipped to the inside
    of his forearm. The screen blinked on, and he tapped it
    experimentally. “All right. Synchronize OPSATs.”
    “Copy.” Lynx and Gator had identical tech of their own,
    part of a clandestine network that gave near-instantaneous
    communication to the chair-warmers back at command. The
    Operational Satellite Uplink, to give it its full name, could be
    slaved to a strategic mission interface for real-time tactical
    data exchange, but for the duration of this action, most of
    those functions were inactive.
    The three operatives keyed in their identity codes, and
    their OPSATs vibrated against their skin. Next, Buzzard
    handed out the last items of their gear: flexible ballistic cloth
    facemasks and low-light monocles that fitted over one eye.
    Suitably equipped, with hoods pulled up over their heads,
    the trio became faceless.
    Lynx checked her pistol one last time as Gator slipped into
    the rain, then she followed him out, taking care to close the
    door quietly. Buzzard was a step behind, a gray shape in the
    steady downpour.
    “Comms check.” Gator’s gruff tones sounded in Lynx’s ear,
    relayed through a tiny radio bead inside her earlobe.
    “Lynx,” she replied, her voice picked up by a dermal
    microphone taped to her throat.
    “Buzzard.” The other man followed protocol, and from the
    corner of her eye, Lynx saw him dash across the empty street
    and vanish around a wall.
    “Good copy.” At the other end of the block, Gator hesitated
    and threw a look in Lynx’s direction. Illuminated by the dull
    glow of a streetlight, he gave her the sketch of a salute and

    melted into the shadows.
    Lynx got to the front entrance in quick steps, taking care
    to avoid the deep puddles where the rain collected. Drawing
    her weapon, she squeezed through a narrow gap in two sheets
    of metal fencing. A truck rumbled past, headlights briefly
    throwing a wash of white over the building’s tumbledown
    façade, and she froze, letting it pass before moving on.
    She checked the edges of the door and found no sign
    of sensors or booby-traps. That meant Treble had either
    neglected to place any – unlikely, given what she knew about
    him – or that he’d placed them so well she couldn’t see them
    on the first pass.
    Lynx flicked down her low-light monocle and examined
    the entryway more closely. As she did, she heard a grunt from
    Buzzard.
    “Ascending.”
    “Copy,” replied Gator. “At the rear door. Tripwire. Made safe.”
    As he spoke, Lynx caught sight of the same thing. A nearly
    invisible length of line at ankle height had been placed inside
    the entrance vestibule, and she followed it to a primed nine-
    banger stun grenade, cleverly hidden under some debris.
    “Same here,” she whispered. Lynx chose to leave the trap in
    place and stepped over it with a gymnast’s ease.
    She moved slowly, steadily, spreading her weight with each
    footfall. A narrow and tall atrium, the entrance had a central
    staircase choked with rubble and broken furniture. High
    above, a cracked skylight allowed runnels of rain to fall the
    distance and spatter against the tiled floor.
    Lynx stayed low, moving from cover to cover, pausing every
    few moments to survey her surroundings. The view through

    the monocle cast everything in fuzzy shades of sea-green and
    corpse-white, as if she was at the bottom of a lake.
    She held her breath. In the distance, somewhere in the
    direction of Engelbecken Park, police sirens wailed, then
    grew faint.
    In short order, Lynx moved from room to room, looking
    for anything that indicated Treble’s presence, coming up
    empty. “Ground floor, no contact,” she announced.
    “Basement, no contact,” said Gator. “Proceeding to first floor.”
    “Roof, no contact.” Buzzard seemed out of breath, then he
    corrected himself. “I mean, I found a spotter perch up here but
    no spotter.” He sighed. “Descending to fifth.”
    “Copy.” Lynx considered that for a moment. Had Treble been
    up there, watching them before they made entry? She sucked
    in a breath of musty air, and then set off, making for the
    stairwell at the end of the corridor. “Proceeding to second
    floor.”
    •••
    Buzzard climbed into the building through a gap that had once
    held a skylight. The swollen and cracked wood took his weight,
    and he dropped into a cat-footed landing on damp, mold-
    blackened carpet. The office space he descended into was
    empty, everything not nailed down long gone, leaving only
    bare walls covered in dirt and graffiti tags layers deep. The
    concrete floor beneath the rancid carpet meant no creaking
    floorboards to betray his movements. The only sound was the
    rain.
    Or was it?
    Buzzard turned his head in the direction of a ghost of a
    noise. He caught an electronic mutter, like the sound of static

    from a poorly tuned radio. It was frustratingly indistinct, but
    he didn’t dare ignore it. The noise was a sign of life, and that
    meant they were right about Treble hiding out here.
    Keeping to the shadows, Buzzard crept forward, out of
    the office and on to a long landing. More ruined flooring
    squelched under his boots, the edges of the mildewed carpet
    tiles curling up like decayed flower petals. He fixed his sights
    on the source of the sound, bringing up his pistol, resting his
    finger on the trigger.
    Through his low-light monocle, he spotted a knife edge of
    illumination emerging from beneath a half-closed door a few
    meters away. The sound came again, clearer this time. The
    burble of a voice on the other end of a phone.
    So Treble was in there, talking to someone. That meant he
    would be distracted. Vulnerable.
    Buzzard hesitated, tapping his throat mike three times, the
    code for target sighted.
    “Can you confirm?” Lynx whispered in his earpiece.
    He frowned. The only way he could do that was to kick
    open the door and put a round in Treble’s chest. Buzzard
    didn’t reply. He had to be quick and quiet, or the element of
    surprise would be lost.
    He was within arm’s reach of the half-open door when his
    movement triggered the proximity sensor of a device hidden
    under a fold of rotted carpet. In a fizzing burst, the concealed
    shocker released the full stun charge stored in its dense battery
    core, hitting the operative with punishing force.
    Buzzard’s muscles locked in agony, and he toppled forward
    like a felled tree. His body sang with pain, as if he had been
    dipped in fire.

  60. RTD LLEWELLYN

    Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell®: Firewall

    Cntd…. His shuddering hands clutched at the air and his mouth locked open.
    He heard Gator in his ear, calling for an update, but all
    Buzzard could do was lie in a trembling heap and scream
    silently as electricity shot through him.
    •••
    “Buzzard, respond?” Gator hesitated at the edge of the first-
    floor atrium, waiting for a reply that didn’t come. “Buzzard,
    key your mike if you can.”
    “You think Treble got him?” Lynx ventured the question on
    both of their minds.
    “Maybe.” Gator released a breath. “I’ll draw him out.”
    “Bad idea.”
    “Didn’t ask your opinion.” He brought the Glock close to
    his chest and picked a direction, moving down the corridor
    to his right.
    The floor opened up into a grid of office cubicles with
    tumbledown wooden partitions. The space had high ceilings
    deep with shadows and Gator scanned for movement among
    the hanging pipework and broken ducting. Opportunistic
    thieves had been through here in the past, ripping up the walls
    and the flooring for the building’s copper wiring. The drifts
    of debris everywhere made it hard to move without making
    noise, and Gator strained to listen over the constant ticking of
    the rain on the grime-coated windows.
    He would have been hard pressed to put it into words, but
    Gator had an inkling. Some sixth sense trained into him by
    his drill instructors at Ranger School, warning him he wasn’t
    alone. Treble was in here with him, he could feel it, like an itch
    between his shoulders.
    And that meant a trap, waiting for him to put the wrong foot forward. His lip curled. That had to be what Buzzard had
    run into, some fake-out set by their target to thin the ranks of
    his hunters.
    A voice in the back of Gator’s head asked him if maybe Lynx
    had been right all along. If Treble wanted to pick them off
    one by one, they had given the man exactly what he wanted.
    Re-evaluating his situation, Gator started a slow retreat,
    moving back the way he had come, as another truck raced
    past down on the street. The vehicle’s headlights threw a fan
    of light through the windows, and for a moment the jumping
    shadows took on the shape of a man.
    Gator fired without thinking, putting two rounds up into
    the dark figure. The Glock’s stifled cough echoed through the
    open space, and spent brass pinged off the wooden partitions,
    but he hit nothing.
    The shadow was just that, a hazy black form that melted
    away as the truck carried on its journey. Gator cursed inwardly,
    angry at himself for letting his eagerness get in the way.
    His patience waned, and he decided to even the odds. The
    Ranger felt for the cylindrical shape of a flashbang grenade
    clipped to the inside of his jacket. If Treble was in the room, it
    was the best way to force him into the open.
    He fumbled for the grenade as a low whistle sounded from
    above him. Gator twisted, spinning around to bring up the
    gun, and he had the impression of a figure suspended in the
    gloom, dangling from one of the pipes.
    Before he could get off a shot, the man was on him, gravity
    bringing them together with enough force to put the thickset
    Ranger down on the floor.
    Gator fought to keep control of his pistol, but his assailant snaked a wiry, muscular arm around his neck and pulled him
    in close. Unable to call out a warning to Lynx, his air choked
    off, Gator’s vision began to fog as the sleeper hold took effect.
    He jerked the Glock’s trigger and the shot went wild,
    pinging off the floor. He had the dim impression of a black-
    clad stalker, of rasping breath sounding near his ear. In a
    last-ditch attempt to break free, Gator kicked and punched,
    feeling his blows hit body armor.
    Blood roaring in his ears, Gator desperately tried to fight
    back as the color bled out of his world and the shadows closed
    in. He pulled the flashbang’s pin in a last act of defiance – but
    as the cylinder rolled away from him across the floor, he had
    already lost consciousness.
    •••
    Lynx heard the stun grenade go off on the floor below her,
    and saw the brief flash of oxide-white light through cracks in
    the concrete.
    In the wake of the sound-shock, she caught the crunch of
    booted feet moving away, and burst into motion, tracking
    them.
    He took down Gator.
    She didn’t question the thought, overlooking the sharp
    realization that she was now the last hunter standing. Her
    target was heading to the northeast corner of the building,
    in the direction of the river. There was a bridge that way, she
    remembered, and if he could get outside and across to the
    other bank, Treble would vanish. The city turned into a warren
    over there, and alone, she had no chance of tagging him.
    If she didn’t stop him here inside the factory, he’d be as
    good as gone.

    A few meters away, a rough-edged hole in the floor where
    part of the structure had collapsed formed a pool of blackness
    leading down to the level below. Lynx made her choice
    without hesitating, dropping into a sliding motion that took
    her over the edge and into the dark.
    It was a risky ploy, dropping into the unknown, but she
    took the chance that she wouldn’t fall feet-first on to a pile
    of rusted rebar or another booby-trap. The drop was longer
    than she expected, and Lynx landed off-kilter, stumbling as
    she tried to recover her balance.
    In the pitch dark she fumbled to adjust her low-light
    monocle. Everything through her right eye’s vision showed
    green and white. Every support pillar or fallen wall stood out,
    complicating her sight picture.
    Treble could not have missed her entrance, and from
    somewhere across the open space, Lynx heard a faint click
    and then a high-pitched whine, like a camera flash charging.
    She fired in the direction of the noise, not so much to score
    a hit, but more to force a reaction. Bullets sparked off the wall,
    and a piece of the shadows broke off and dove behind cover.
    There!
    Finding her momentum again, Lynx pulled herself over
    one of the low partitions, half-rolling, half-diving, gun close
    in and ready. She landed sure-footed this time, firing another
    two rounds into the space where Treble had gone. But he’d
    faded away.
    She pivoted on her heel, instinct screaming at her to watch
    her back.
    Treble had set up the three operatives to draw them close at
    Alexanderplatz and he had done it again. The target intuited how the team’s dynamic operated and turned that against
    them. Isolate and neutralize. Good tactics.
    Lynx evaded the short, hard punch that came straight at her,
    flinching away, but not fast enough to get off cleanly. Treble’s
    gloved knuckles kissed her cheekbone with a glancing hit that
    took her monocle with it, ripping the device from her masked
    face.
    She ducked low, bringing up her gun, but Treble slammed
    the heel of his hand into her solar plexus, blowing the air out
    of her lungs in a pained rush. Lynx staggered back a step, and
    Treble’s shadowy form kept coming, out of the dark and into
    the half-light. He reached out and snagged her wrist, bending
    it the wrong way. She hissed in pain and lost her grip on the
    Glock.
    The gun fell at her feet, but Lynx had no time to think
    about it. Treble moved on her, firing rapid blows out of the
    gloom that she deflected more by the sound than by seeing
    them.
    She tried to extend the distance, but he wouldn’t let her,
    keeping up the pressure, forcing her to dance to his tune.
    Anger flared, and Lynx used it to fuel her, feinting right,
    avoiding a chopping blow aimed at her throat. She pushed in
    closer, moving inside Treble’s guard, and landed return blows
    on his belly, chest, and throat.
    Her attacker growled and lost a step as he soaked up the hits,
    passing through a shaft of moonlight from a broken window.
    Lynx glimpsed a craggy, unshaven face hidden behind insect-
    like night-vision goggles, and a loose coat over matte black
    tactical gear.
    She kept up the momentum, using her edge in speed and agility. Treble was easily twice her mass, and one well-placed
    blow from him could put her down hard. But each hit she sent
    his way was guesswork and instinct. Fighting in the dimness
    was like boxing smoke, and she couldn’t be sure if she could
    hold her own.
    “Lynx…?” Buzzard’s voice echoed behind her, and she
    looked without thinking, snared by the distraction. “You
    there?”
    The wiry young man stood in the passage, groggy and slow,
    supporting himself with one hand up on the doorjamb. In the
    weak light, he looked pale and unsteady. Whatever Treble had
    used to put him down, he felt the effects of it.
    The target made a tsk noise under his breath and moved
    like lightning. He snatched the seam of Lynx’s hoodie and
    yanked her off balance, pulling her to him. Pressing her back
    to his chest, he put one arm at her throat and started the slow
    business of choking her out.
    Part of Lynx realized that Treble had been taking his time
    with her in the exchange of blows, playing it out. At the same
    time, he had drawn a gun with his other hand, bringing it to
    bear on Buzzard.
    Lynx tried to shout a warning, but a strangled gasp emerged
    from her lips.
    Treble’s silenced pistol chugged, and a blue spark burst on
    Buzzard’s chest. He gave a cry and fell out of sight.
    The instinctive action for Lynx would have been to wrestle
    the man’s hand away from her neck, to take a desperate gulp of
    air before she blacked out – but she fought down the animal
    panic rising inside her and felt for her only remaining weapon.
    Her fingers found the black polymer combat knife tucked into a sheath-pocket at her thigh and pulled it free, twisting
    it around in her grip. Her blood thundering in her ears, Lynx
    put her energy into forcing the blade up and back, until the
    point pushed into the soft flesh of Treble’s throat.
    She applied steady pressure against his Adam’s apple, and
    felt her opponent stiffen. The slightest motion of her hand
    would open his throat to the air.
    Treble’s grip slackened and Lynx fought the urge to stumble
    away and suck in air. She kept the knife in place, making it
    clear where the balance of this fight now lay.
    Treble slowly put away his gun and spoke in a low voice full
    of rough edges.
    “OK,” he allowed, then pressed a microphone tab at his
    neck and repeated the same word three times. “Endex. Endex.
    Endex.”

  61. RTD LLEWELLYN

    Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell®

    Two
    Gunterfabrik – Kreuzberg – Berlin
    “All right, you heard the man. This training exercise is
    concluded.”
    Anna Grímsdóttir removed the wireless headset she had
    been using to monitor the radio channel, stepping back
    from the bank of surveillance monitors inside the rear of the
    unmarked Renault truck. Her gaze raked over the gang of
    field technicians waiting for her word, each one carrying gear
    with which to sanitize the site. None of them would move
    without her order.
    Grim – as most of her colleagues knew her – instilled that
    sort of obedience in her subordinates. Firm, no-nonsense and
    pragmatic, the tall, henna-haired woman’s official title was
    “technical operations officer” , a deliberately vague euphemism
    that could cover a multitude of clandestine works. In the real
    world, that translated into mission command for one of the
    best kept secrets on the planet – Fourth Echelon, a covert anti-
    terror and counter-intelligence unit that lived in the deep black.

    “I want this location cleaned up inside of fifteen minutes,”
    Grim told the techs. “Move.”
    The team  – each one dressed in deliberately nondescript
    street clothing – scrambled to obey. Emerging from the rear
    of the truck, they made their way to the derelict Gunterfabrik
    building, while Grim followed on behind at a more leisurely
    pace, checking up and down the street with a clinical,
    experienced eye.
    No police, no watchers. All clear… For now.
    She didn’t need to tell the techs that they were operating in-
    country without the blessing of the German government or
    their intelligence services. If the Bundesnachrichtendienst –
    the BND  – knew that a Fourth Echelon Splinter Cell
    deployment was happening right in their backyard, their
    reaction would be, to put it mildly, unpleasant. Thus, it was
    vital to pick up after themselves and leave no traces that they
    were ever here. The Splinter Cells were shadows, the knife in
    the dark that no one saw coming.
    That’s practically the 4E motto, Grim thought, with a rare
    smile.
    This hunt-and-trap mission was part evaluation, part
    live-fire exercise. The added wrinkle of working in a non-
    permissive environment was one more test for Grim’s latest
    batch of recruits from the Farm, the training facility for the
    Central Intelligence Agency and other elements of America’s
    covert apparatus.
    Gator, Lynx, and Buzzard were the only three potentials
    who had made the cut for Fourth Echelon’s punishing training
    regimen, and all three were potentially looking at a failing
    grade.

    Grim entered the factory through the front door, passing
    one of the techs at work making a tripwire safe, and found
    the night’s senior instructor waiting for her in the atrium. He
    rubbed at a sore spot on his throat, his expression thoughtful.
    “Sam.” She gave him a nod.
    “Grim.” Sam Fisher returned the gesture, removing the
    distinctive tri-focal vision goggles from atop his forehead and
    stowing them in his coat. “Enjoy the show?”
    “You know me,” she replied. “I’m always watching.”
    Grim nodded to where another tech recovered one of
    dozens of wireless camera pods that had been secreted inside
    the Gunterfabrik building for the purpose of monitoring the
    night’s events.
    “No doubt,” allowed Fisher, the briefest flicker of a wry
    smile crossing his face, then vanishing.
    Tall, but not overly so, beneath the big coat Fisher had a
    spare, lean build that men half his age would have killed for.
    With a closely cut beard and short hair turning from black
    to gunmetal, he could have been anything from fifty to sixty
    years old. Hard eyes and the lines around them told the tale of
    a life lived in the fight, and a will to keep up the contest until
    the bitter end.
    A former Navy SEAL before he became a CIA paramilitary
    officer, Fisher had been one of the first recruits in the early
    Aughts to what would eventually become Fourth Echelon. In
    that time, he had forged a reputation that few knew of, but
    all who did respected. In many ways, Grim reflected, he set
    the benchmark for every Splinter Cell operative who had
    followed in his wake. It was a testament to Fisher’s tenacity

    and resilience that the work hadn’t yet put him in the ground.
    “So?” She made a circling gesture with one hand. “Do you
    have any good news for me?”
    “I’m always a ray of sunshine, Grim.”
    “Right.” She drew out the word. As one of the most
    experienced operators in the field, Fisher’s evaluation of the
    trainees could make or break them. A single word from him
    would see a recruit out, and he had failed more potential new
    agents than any other instructor.
    But high standards were what made Fourth Echelon an
    exemplary unit. Existing beyond oversight of all but the
    President of the United States, the group drew intelligence
    and resources from the top tier of the National Security
    Agency, operating in the espionage world’s most rarified air.
    It might have been a cliché, but the Splinter Cells really were
    the best of the best at what they did.
    “The skinny kid,” began Fisher, nodding toward Buzzard,
    who was being helped to his feet by a medic. “Showed some
    grit, shaking off a shocker like that. But he still needs some
    seasoning.”
    Grim sighed and called out to the younger man. “Rybicki,
    you’re a fail for this evaluation.” Buzzard couldn’t manage any
    more response than a shaky nod of the head, almost grateful
    for the excuse. The shock-tipped training round Fisher had
    put in his chest had robbed him of his voice.
    Gator – whose real name was Michaels – passed them by
    as two more techs carried out his unconscious form between
    them. Grim didn’t have to ask about that one. When the
    moment came, his hesitation had cost him dearly. The Ranger
    would join Rybicki on the next transport back to the States.

    Fisher gave a shrug and said nothing.
    The two young men would never know exactly who or what
    they had been auditioning for. The terms “Fourth Echelon”
    and “Splinter Cell” had not been uttered in the presence of
    those trainees. They’d rotate back to their units with a story
    they could never tell, about a shady recruiter who had pulled
    them off the line one day for a training mission in Germany
    that nobody could explain.
    The only member of the trio still able to stand under their
    own power was Lynx, but even so she limped visibly as she
    came into the atrium, one hand pressed to her masked face,
    and dark hair spilling out over her neck. The blade she’d
    managed to put to Fisher’s throat was nowhere to be seen.
    “What about her?” Grim eyed him. “She almost cut you a
    new smile, Sam.”
    “Quick,” admitted Fisher. “Good instincts. Definitely the
    best of the three.” He sighed. “Green light.”
    Grim raised an eyebrow. “You’re passing her?”
    “You think I’m wrong?”
    “No. In fact, I’m in full agreement with you, it’s just rare to
    see it.” Grim folded her arms. “Two fails, one pass. Not getting
    soft in your old age, are you?”
    “You know better than that.”
    Grim frowned. “I do. But it’s important I make sure your
    evaluation is on point. Especially in this case.” She raised her
    hand and beckoned Lynx over to them.
    Fisher’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    He knew Grim well enough to sense when she was hiding
    something.
    “Don’t get mad,” she said. “And believe me when I tell you,

    I’m doing this for the best of the agency.” As Lynx warily
    approached, Grim gestured at the younger woman’s face.
    “Take off your mask, please.”
    Lynx reluctantly peeled away the covering, revealing herself
    in full for the first time. She managed an awkward smile in
    Fisher’s direction.
    “Hey, Dad,” she said.
    “Sarah.” Fisher froze, and his gaze turned flinty. There was
    a new contusion on his daughter’s face that he had given her
    only moments ago, unaware of the fact that the woman who
    came closest to killing him in the mock engagement was his
    only child. “What the hell is this?”
    “This is Trainee Lynx, aka Sarah Burns, aka Sarah Fisher.”
    Grim stood her ground, waiting for the storm she knew
    would come. “Now you know why I insisted on anonymizing
    the recruit data for this exercise.”
    “Clear the room.” Fisher addressed the order to the techs
    who were still at work in the atrium, and when they hesitated,
    looking to Grim for confirmation, he let out a growl. “Did I
    stutter?”
    The techs departed in short order without stopping to pick
    up their gear, leaving Grim, Sam, and Sarah in the echoing,
    rain-damp space. Fisher’s daughter sighed and drew a breath.
    “Dad, will you let me explain?”
    “Wait your turn.” Fisher turned on Grim. “You put her
    in a live-fire exercise. You kept this from me? What were
    you thinking?” He didn’t raise his voice. His cold and stony
    annoyance was enough.
    “I can’t allow good potential to go to waste, Sam,” replied
    Grim.

    “Thought those fight moves looked familiar,” Fisher
    muttered, shooting Sarah another look. “I taught you that,
    after…” He trailed off.
    After she was kidnapped, Grim thought, twice in as many
    years. Despite her father’s attempts to isolate Sarah from the
    harsh realities of his clandestine career, her life had been
    marred by incidents when his dark world impinged on her
    civilian existence.
    Fisher reframed his thoughts. “When I agreed Sarah could
    take a role with Fourth Echelon, I wanted her to be an analyst.”
    He put hard emphasis on the word.
    “You might have agreed to that,” Sarah said quietly. “I
    didn’t. I make my own choices.” Before her father could
    respond, she continued. “Kicks and punches aren’t the only
    thing you taught me, Dad. I learned responsibility. I learned
    about duty. You taught me to see things as they are, and not to
    be afraid of them.”
    Fisher scowled. “I wanted to keep you safe!”
    “Like I said, my choice.” Sarah met her father’s gaze.
    Fisher turned back to Grim. “If I had known she–”
    “If you had known Lynx was Sarah, you wouldn’t have
    treated her impartially,” Grim spoke over him, her voice like a
    whip-crack. “I concealed her identity from you so you would
    test her like Michaels and Rybicki, and push her as hard as she
    needed to go.” She opened her hands. “And you did just give
    her a passing grade.”
    “He did?” Despite her fatigue, Sarah’s eyes lit up.
    “Rescinded,” said Fisher. “Red light.”
    “Too late for that,” Grim said firmly. “Sarah’s in the top
    percentile of our evaluation. She’s excelled in all areas.”

    “In simulations,” he insisted.
    Grim allowed that. “True. But she was the only one of the
    trainees who came close enough to put a mark on you. Tell
    me, Sam, how many times has that happened?”
    Fisher said nothing, his lips compressing into a thin line.
    Grim relented. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the whole
    picture. But Sarah has the skills we need. And I defy you to
    tell me otherwise.”
    Fisher’s silence lengthened. He had no response to Grim’s
    statement because he knew it was true. Sarah wasn’t a callow,
    bookish student anymore, she was a capable young woman,
    and she clearly had the innate instincts perfect for a covert
    operative. Finally, he spoke again. “You sure about this, kid?”
    “I want to do more,” Sarah saw an opening and pounced on
    it. “Like you and Uncle Vic did. I can make a difference.”
    “We’re not like Vic’s organization,” Fisher told her. Sam’s
    old friend and Sarah’s ersatz “Uncle” Victor Coste ran Paladin
    Nine Security, a private military contractor that handled
    everything from high-end bodyguard duties to kidnap and
    recovery operations. “What we do makes that PNC stuff look
    like the bush league.”
    Sarah hesitated, and for a second Grim thought she saw her
    wavering. Then Fisher’s daughter straightened. “Your instinct
    is to protect me, and I love you for that. You’re not sure I can
    do this, I get it. But there’s only one way to find out.”
    Fisher gave a shake of the head and cast a glance in Grim’s
    direction. “You like being right, don’t you?”
    “No doubt,” she admitted.
    “Then don’t make me regret this.” It was as close to an
    admission of acceptance as Sam Fisher would ever give, and

    Grim decided not to push it any further.
    He would come around. And if he didn’t… He’d have to live
    with it. Grim’s directive was to keep Fourth Echelon running
    at maximum efficiency, not to keep Sam Fisher happy.
    Drew, one of the techs, came back into the atrium
    brandishing an encrypted satellite-comm handset. “Call from
    the bird,” he explained. “It’s urgent.”
    Grim took the handset and pressed it to her ear. “Go for
    Grímsdóttir.”
    “Ma’am, this is Kade. What’s your status there?” Lea Kade
    served as one of the operational crew aboard the C-147B
    Paladin, Fourth Echelon’s mobile airborne mission hub.
    Currently, the black jet was parked in a secluded hangar, several
    kilometers away at Ramstein Air Force Base. The Paladin’s crew
    were looped in on the exercise, along with Grim and her cadre
    of technicians.
    “We’re wrapping up. Is there a problem?”
    “We need you and Treble back here ASAP,” Kade replied. “We
    have a priority, eyes-only communique for the attention of you
    both.”
    Grim frowned, and Fisher caught the look in her eye. He
    knew it of old: something was up.
    “Origin?” Grim asked the question, but she already knew
    the answer.
    “The Black Box,” said Kade, and left it at that. The nickname
    had only one meaning in this context – the priority message
    had come directly from the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade
    in Maryland.

  62. MYST🀄

    Project Cell C

    Continued….

    As the the follow up party closed in Bravo Zero 1,2,3 dug themselves back into the snow, careful to only reveal their weapons and line of sight. Bravo Zero 3 gave BZ1 his side arm. We are limited in rounds, to win this fight we need surgical small arms fire, head shots.

    The first snow mobile was drawing near, damn this barren waster land, it was easier to find a pin in hay than find cover in Antarctica. BZ2, let of his first shot. A halo of blood spurted from the rider, as he fell off and his snow mobile went crashing into one of the crevices. The coterie of three laid such devastating accurate fire, that all that could be seen in the distance was sprays of red stuff and heads reclining violently back.

    The snow white landscape was turned in a river of blood. In the distance the remaining Marines were evacuated from this deadly situation. Lets go gents BZ3 muttered, we have a window, before that drone gets back on our trail. All the while BZ2 was trying to process the order that had come, leave Sierra 6 behind, why?

    The comms crackled. It was the OGS Nehanda, a littoral combat ship which was parked off the coast. Are you lads okay. Yes but BZ1 is in bad shape and in need of medical attention. Copied S6, rendezvous at the backup pickup zone, we are sending a team to pick you up, we have no back up helo so it will be a boat. Copied Iron Fish, BZ3 out.

    They could see in the distance a shadow of a boat approaching from the horizon. A welcome sight for sore eyes.. Just then BZ3 saw from the corner of the eye, a right hook coming from BZ2, instinctively he tilted his head and the fist sailed harmlessly by grazing the side of his face covered by a full thermal suit. Another had came and soon the pair was engaged in hand to hand combat.

    Like to spent swimmers the two tried to wrestle the advantage from the other but the well trained men couldn’t get the better of each other. BZ2 noticed the shocked look on BZ3s face. The two men knew each other families, they had shared a beer or two together and considered each other friends in a world you are meant to distrust each other.

    Then the grunting and panting was disturbed by a sharp sound followed by smoke. To BZ2s horror, BZ3 had been shot by his own side arm by BZ1 lying prone on the snow covered surface.

    What the hell! Our orders were to leave him behind. So you shoot him? Those were our orders, no man! Not like this! BZ3 lay there in agony clutching his abdomen, blood starting to trickle onto the snow. BZ2 let out a desperate cry, picked up BZ1 and made for the beach. The two men were soon on a boat heading back to the ship. The helmsman broke the silence, we were as shocked as you, everyone of the ship is shocked. The orders came from the highest office in the land, all our hands are tied. He must have made someone very high up upset. BZ2 could only manage a shake of the head and a look at the fading beach.

    Get up! S6 told himself. What what just happened, get up! His inner voice rang out again. In the distance a drone was in reconnaissance mode, scouring every inch of snow in carefully designed pattern to snag its quarry. S6 had to get out of there, but how.

    Briefing reports before the mission had told them of an Argentinian submarine shadowing them. If only he could get to it, he may have a way out unless the Argentinian considered him a nuisance, then he might be spending New Years with a cell mate.

    He had to find the sub, otherwise it would be worse. After some calculation and help from his Thermal suits AI co-pilot then narrowed the search to a grid not more than 12km out to sea. It would be easier if the Submarine was surfaced, but he knew in this game there is no easy and its the way they liked it.

    After giving himself some first aid and stabilising the wound, he set out to sea. Luckily the bullet had gone through his not so big man handles, missing vital organs but he knew there must be fragments inside that needed to be taken care off. Lest he gets the slow puncture.

    He swam a slow and steady breast stroke, the fatigue the pain was unbearable. All he could do now for motivation is imagine his family. Imagine how happy they would be when they saw dad walk through the door. The questions and off course those soft dad we missed you chants.

    Just then his suit, sounded an alarm. They had made it, first miracle. He was right on top of the Submarine. Depth 100m. He would need to dive down to the submarine and get their attention somehow, second miracle then pray they would respond third miracle.

    His suit was rated for 200m dive depth, and he would have about 30m oxygen. The dive began and the invisible submarine was now a giant shadow below the waves. But there was a problem, the bullet had raptured one of the oxygen lines and he only had 03:59 minutes of air left.

    He made his way into one of the torpedo tubes. If for some reason the captain decided to test fire he would be obliterated probably taking down the sub in the explosion as well. He looked the hud he had 00:03 seconds of oxygen left. He got to the hatch? all the oxygen had run out, he had now between 2-4 minutes to live, going back to the surface was not an option. He started a steady tap on the hatch.

    A technician in the Torpedo room heard a faint clatter coming from one of the tubes. At first he dismissed it as one of the soundtracks of being submerged deep in water. He drew closer, then listened as the tapping grew fainter.

    He immediately went to the comms. (Spanish) El Captain this is Alvaro in the Torpedo room. Yes go ahead. There is tapping coming from one of the Torpedo tubes. Say again? There is tapping coming from one of the Torpedo tubes. Is it a fault? No sir its Morse Code. Yes sir its Morse Code. Are you sure it is not a biological trapped in there. If its a biological sir it knows Morse Code, what are your orders Sir. Should I open the hatch. Wait, let me speak with the first officer first………

  63. RTD LLEWELLYN 2022

    Before I left Mount Pleasant the soldiers said to me, ‘keep fit’. A very simple and straight forward message etched in my mind.

    Do you know I hold the record for being removed from WhatsApp groups, I have lost count. ‘You cannot send messages to this group because you are no longer a participant’

    I used to be one of the group admins for the Army recruitment group, asi zvakapera. Then I was added onto another Army group, then they came, then I wasn’t anymore. I was also a moderator on the SAS group on Facebook called RTD LLEWELLYN, then a clever person locked my Facebook account, but I came back, hacking a hacker, then the iPad had to be relieved from my position. I actually heard the person. I was sitting outside, door open in the evening watching the Stars, they made the mistake of rushing and dropped a pan on the gas stove because my room has no light, just the way I like it. Then panic, then they ran… Lol

    I had fun though will while it lasted, and we traded some valuable information to teach the incoming generation. Some of us do not worry about winning or losing, we worry about duty for our nation, our first love, that’s all, then we are gone!

  64. STYLISH_NGODA

    Iwee techzim site rako harisi kundipa ma images why
    @techzim.co.zw

  65. MYST🀄

    So I was thinking the other day, in my next job interview I am likely to be asked, what have you been doing since 2023, there is a gap here in your CV, I do not understand about, what were you doing?

    My answer will very be simple, I took on a tyrant that used all the state resources and machinery he could munster to hold on to power. You see, we thought we had turned a corner only to realise it was out of the pan into the fire. I am here because it didn’t quite work out in the end, but my gallantry cannot be questioned, and I have an experience of a lifetime some can only dream about, plus I read an wrote a lot.

    Sacrifice for our people, a real life of sacrifice Mr. Cross.

  66. MYST🀄

    I love this kind of stuff. That’s how I spend most my afternoons.

    Dassault Mirage 2000 (1978)

    Continuing the tradition of delta-winged Dassault fighters, the Mirage 2000 brought the family up to
    date and established itself not only as the backbone of the French Air Force but also as a genuine success on the export market. The basic
    fighter has been adapted for roles including nuclear strike and conventional attack.

    Specification (Mirage 2000-5)

    Type: Multi-role fighter
    Dimensions: Length: 14.36m (47ft 1.25in); Wingspan:9.13m (29ft 11.5in); Height: 5.20m (17ft 0.75in)

    Weight: 15,000kg (33,069lb) maximum take-off

    Powerplant: 1 x 98.06kN (22,046lb) SNECMA M53-P20
    afterburning turbofan

    Maximum speed: 2335km/h (1451mph) at high altitude
    Range: 3333km (2071 miles) with drop tanks

    Service ceiling: 16,460m (54,000ft)
    Crew: 1 or 2

    Armament: 2 x 30mm (1.18in) cannon and up to 6300kg
    (13,889lb) of disposable stores carried on five under-fuselage and four underwing hardpoints.

  67. MYST🀄

    Going to the bar is now an extreme sport. I do not know why some people blame me for misfortune in their life. If you find you want to box a lot, go to the gym you might become our next heavyweight, and get paid for it.

  68. MYST🀄

    Roman Catholics, St. Theresa and the ladies who took time from their schedules, thank you very much. 🙏

  69. MYST🀄

    One of my favourite tracks.

    Killa T, Jah Prayzah – Hondo

    If you really listen to the message you will realise its inspired, prophetic.

    ‘Tinoda kubvisa hondo sevanhu vatema, tinoda kubvisa hondo tese tiwirirare’.

    It echoes Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited – Vanhu Vatema.

    ‘Africa kana takabatana iwe, ahonde ahonde’

    When you look at another black person, do you see a slave or do you see a free man?

  70. MYST🀄

    We were coming from that place in Kensington, that restaurant next to the pharmacy, the one that sells nice pies.

    Zvikanzi neumwe munhu, sometimes tinotyira kure, achireva varungu, ah?. Ndikati munhu uyu, anokanganwa ndakakura nevarungu, we used to share the same showers, brush our teeth together, share tuck, eat together, play together and sleep next to each other.

    Chinoshamisira i character yemunhu kwete ganda rake.

    Ndakangogara mumotokari ndobva ndanyarara.

    There are some things fire cannot cool Ras🔥

  71. MYST🀄

    I feel for vaMugabe. The system failed him. These lads started a long time ago putting their machinery in order. If you dig deeper you may find some families from South Africa with names on wine bottles..

    Not Rothmans yedu yema cigarettes but it probably rhymes.

  72. Afrikaner Hart

    Bok Van Blerk – De Kaplyn
    Bok Van Blerk – De la Rey
    Bok Van Blerk – Sing Afrikaner

    Kommando Originators

  73. Runway Spotter

    There is a heavy landing at 16:56

    Its a sight.

  74. MYST🀄

    We used to have a wooden crocodile on top of the TV stand growing up in our call house in Unit J. I didn’t understand the significance then, ko taiziveyi, tayaruka..

  75. SADC

    Friend to non.

    Enemy to all!

  76. MYST🀄

    For one it was gigantic, you couldn’t miss it.

  77. Dzidzai Chidumba

    Mechanised Brigade, Armoured Car Regiment. You may think that sometimes I forget you, never. You are the teeth of the pijisi. 🐏

    Happy New Year 🙏

    Excalibur Army

    PATRIOT II
    MULTI-PURPOSE PLATFORM FEATURING SUPERIOR
    OFF-ROAD MOBILITY

    The PATRIOT II is an upgraded modular wheeled combat tactical vehicle that
    features excellent mobility in difficult terrain thanks to the unique TATRA chassis.

    It offers wide range of mission kits and armament choices – remote or manually
    controlled machine guns, or even a 20 mm cannon with superior firepower, grenade
    launchers or ATGMs.
    The vehicle provides a unified platform for the „PATRIOT family“ of defence
    and civil safety applications, such as reconnaissance, special operations,
    communications, command and control, chemical, medevac, EOD, PSYOPS, riot
    control, and of course troops transport or direct combat. Any configuration
    is possible for the PATRIOT.

    NEW
    PRODUCT

    ARMOURED AND INFANTRY FIGHTING VEHICLES – PATRIOT II
    110KM/H
    TATRA
    ANTI-MINE PROTECTION
    Level 2a/2b – 3a/3b
    STANAG 4569

    EXCALIBUR ARMY spol. s r.o.
    Olomoucká 1841/175
    785 01  ŠTERNBERK
    Czech Republic
    EXCALIBUR ARMY spol. s r.o.
    Tovární 1553
    535 01  PŘELOUČ
    Czech Republic
    EXCALIBUR ARMY spol. s r.o.
    Čepí 101
    533 32  ČEPÍ
    Czech Republic
    e-mail sales@excaliburarmy.cz
    tel. +420 585 083 111

    You should see it, its nice. Distribution and sales for Africa?

  78. MYST🀄

    Journal of KONES Powertrain and Transport, Vol. 16, No. 1 2009
    MODALITY OF COMBAT VEHICLES DESIGN USING
    MULTI-FUNCTION COMBAT PLATFORM AS AN EXAMPLE
    Krzysztof Markiewicz
    OĞrodek Badawczo Rozwojowy UrządzeĔ Mechanicznych
    OBRUM Gliwice, Sp. z o.o.
    Toszecka 102, 44-117 Gliwice, Poland
    tel.:+48 32 3019349
    obrum_tr@obrum.gliwice.pl

    2. Main requirements put in relation to future combat vehicles
    Taking into consideration the highest unification level of combat, logistic equipment, we have
    to state that the specific requirement for transportation means of light forces shall be balanced
    meeting of mutually excluding criteria (for instance, ballistic protection – inner volume – mass).
    Thus, we should not expose a high level feature in assumed designs but balance all of them at
    reasonable level.
    Analyses of specialistic references, FCS and GTK programmes indicate that one main
    requirement while constructing future APCs shall be modal design useful for further development
    in future. This requirement mainly contributes to cost optimising during the whole life.
    3. Modal design of combat vehicles
    In armoured equipment actually in use of military troops, including tracklaying and wheeled
    vehicles, combat tanks, infantry vehicles are featured with the highest level of complicity and
    integrity, as well as – at appropriately lower level – self-propelled artillery, technical and
    engineering vehicles as well as APCs.
    High level if integration causes difficulties in technological operations while they are
    constructed, during inspection methods and construction elements are heavy without possibility to
    regenerate them at battle-field.
    Highly integrated construction made according to standard project methods, provide so called
    performances but they also influence high manufacture, repair and procurement expenses.
    Changing the project method that assumed design segments disintegration principle, being
    advantageous from point of view of manufacture and usage techniques, i.e. such methods that
    influence manufacture, inspection and assembling, we may meet a lot of economic criteria of
    manufacture and operation of combat equipment.
    According to project methodology, this new type of design that confirms existing the firm
    actual connection between construction form and manufacture methods, and then operation, called
    schematic modal construction, has been presented in the below Fig.
    This new construction type in armoured equipment allows creating operation configuration of
    armoured vehicle, that give an opportunity to optimise basic equipment and combat set to
    accomplish specified task.
    We may assume as module a unified design centre, of exchangeable form, having shape of
    exchangeable segment of complete device or unit.
    By mission (operation) set we could name this its part – also in form of single or compound
    modal set – characterized by specific functional character.
    Thus, in case of APC the mission module shall be armoured loading volume or load-unload
    device in case of specialistic containers transportation.

    For infantry fighting vehicle, crew compartment together with ramp that allows “jumping off”
    the team shall be the mission module, equipped with device to overcome contaminated terrains. In
    commander and control vehicle, in mission module, the below mentioned items shall be located:
    necessary devices that allow imaging the present situation at battle-field as well as automated fire
    control system. Commander vehicles shall be equipped (in mission module) with equipment that
    depends on purpose:
    logistic chief commanding vehicle – the standard ones adapted to subunits in logistic troops.
    commanding vehicles and commander-headquarters WR and A – the standard ones the same
    as for other equivalents in Tactic Units and general military troops.
    Self-propelled mortars shall be equipped with fire module composed of navigation equipment,
    fire management system, automatic single-barrel or double-barrel mortar including feeder and
    ammunition magazine module.
    There is opportunity to develop fire module to gun of tank type, fed automatically with
    ammunition located in crewless turret. We obtain, in connection with drive module, the tank
    system.
    Thus, there is opportunity to develop mission modules for new vision of future battle-field and
    back-up facilities service as well as humanitarian actions, including sanitary modules and hospital
    containers as well as social devices.
    Drive module including wheel or tracklaying system (wheel-tracklaying), equipped with
    handles and quick release couplings to assemble mission module as well as system necessary to
    put in motion, including drive system, transmission, control, internal or external communication
    source.

  79. MYST🀄

    Three
    GreenSea Incorporated – Canary Wharf – London
    The pen spun around in Charlie Cole’s fingers, gaining speed
    until it became a silver blur.
    “You know the problem with me, Jan,” he said to the air, as
    he typed one-handed on the illuminated keyboard in front of
    him. “There’s too much gray hat in me. I can’t stay in my lane.”
    The pen reached escape velocity and flew out of his grip,
    clattering across his desk and into the shadows, but Charlie
    paid it no heed. In the darkened office, the only light came from
    the skyline of glassy skyscrapers surrounding the building and
    the soft glow of a computer screen. On the display, endless
    lines of blue-on-black text scrolled past as Charlie ventured
    deeper and deeper into layers of secured data.
    He leaned in, both hands on the keyboard, and kept talking.
    “Would I have even spotted this if you hadn’t brought it to me?
    Yeah, probably. I mean, I’m always sticking my nose where it
    doesn’t belong.” He drummed out another command string
    without taking a breath. “I’m the kid who keeps pestering the

  80. MYST🀄

    magician to explain the tricks, right? Peek behind the curtain,
    look in the box. That’s always my instinct.”
    Charlie turned in his chair, toward a smartphone sitting on
    pile of books nearby, its screen blinking to show an open line.
    Jan had still not picked up, and that wasn’t like her, not at all.
    Three rings and she answered, every single call. This was the
    first time that Charlie had ever spoken to her voicemail, and
    he found it hard to stop.
    “Listen,” he said, his tone turning serious. “I think this is
    something bad, even worse than you said. There’s more here
    than some routing errors and weird email trails. I have to
    take this up the line to Borden.” He threw up his hands as if
    Jan stood in the room with him, anticipating her reaction. “I
    know, I know, like you always say, the guy’s a knob-head.” He
    chuckled. Jan’s favorite description of the company’s senior
    security executive sounded strange when uttered in Charlie’s
    East Coast American accent; something about Jan’s cut-glass
    English delivery of the insult always made it land perfectly. “But
    I gotta. I gotta,” he said. “Can’t sit on this. I mean, that’s what
    they hired us for, right?” He paused, his brow furrowed with
    worry. Still no pickup. He didn’t want to admit how much it
    bothered him. “OK, so you call me back the moment you get
    this. Right? Right.”
    Charlie leaned over and tapped the END CALL tab, and
    the phone went dark. In the moment of quiet that followed,
    he drew in a long breath, then raised his head to look out of the
    window.
    Most of the other office buildings in this quadrant of
    London’s Docklands development were empty this late into
    the evening, with a few floors working as the international

  81. MYST🀄

    trade and banking concerns continued to do business with
    Moscow, Mumbai, Tokyo, and Beijing. GreenSea’s offices
    were always carefully lit at low levels, as part of the company’s
    ecologically-aware mission dedicated to conservation, energy
    efficiency, and renewable power sources. In the dark mirror
    of the windows, Charlie saw himself reflected, along with the
    other staff in their glass-walled workspaces.
    His youthful face  – still boyish into his thirties  – was
    marred by his concern for his friend. An itching, crawling
    sensation gathered at the small of his back, a sure sign of his
    fear index ramping up.
    The last time I felt like this…
    Charlie killed the thought before it could fully form. He
    did not want to dwell on those days, getting bombed and shot
    at. They were part of a life he had left behind.
    Jan Freling had been headhunted by GreenSea’s recruiters
    around the same time as Charlie, she from a major banking
    conglomerate in Dubai and he at the end of his contract with
    a certain three-letter-acronym division of the US government.
    As he understood it, Jan was the errant daughter of some ultra-
    rich British bluebloods, who had discovered an aptitude for
    computer mischief at boarding school and parlayed that into a
    career in information security. Charlie’s upbringing mirrored
    the whole “computer mischief ” bit, but his origin story came
    from the broken cogs of the American social services system,
    and a childhood of adoption with families who never quite
    got him. Few people did, but Jan was one of them.
    She described their working relationship as the crass Yank
    and the slick Brit, and together they made an excellent team
    working to keep GreenSea’s networks digitally secure. One o

  82. MYST🀄

    I don’t know why

  83. Anonymous

    the world’s top three eco-technology corporations, GreenSea
    specialized in building hyper-efficient windmills and wave-
    farms. Their patents were worth billions of dollars. Company
    CEO Edward Morant wanted that intellectual property
    protected, and paid Cole and Freling very well to bring their
    expertise to his security department. For Jan, the job had
    been a way to prove herself; for Charlie, it was a way out of
    the clandestine world and back to something grounded.
    Something safer.
    He blew out a breath and sent the data he had gathered to a
    secure tablet, rising to stand as the progress bar filled. Charlie
    looked up, in the direction of the corridor that led straight to
    Gary Borden’s massive corner office. Once he did this, there
    would be no turning back. People would be angry. People
    would lose their jobs. People would go to jail.
    Charlie knew this because of what Jan had discovered
    on a sweep through the company network infrastructure.
    Someone inside the GreenSea Corporation had been secretly
    transferring money and assets to another company and
    doing it for quite a while. They were hiding it from the sight
    of the board members and the external financial regulators
    alike. Millions of virtual dollars, vanishing unseen into the
    digital ether. The transactions were buried so deep that only
    someone with the singular focus of an obsessive – say, like a
    pair of high-functioning tech geeks – would be able to track
    them.
    The tablet pinged, signaling completion of the data
    transfer. Charlie stood straight and plucked the device from
    its charging cradle, tucking it under his arm as he marched
    down the corridor toward Borden’s office.

  84. MYST🀄

    Along the way, Charlie became aware that the floor seemed
    busier than usual. Faces from the other departments were
    around, hushed conversations were happening. Something
    important was going on, and it dawned on him that he was
    out of the loop. He wondered what he had missed.
    He rapped on Borden’s door, peering through the frosted
    glass to catch sight of his boss perched on the edge of his
    desk. Borden had a Bluetooth headset looped over one of the
    misshapen ears that sat low on the man’s head, and his lips
    curled when he saw Charlie’s face. He held up a single finger,
    in a just one minute gesture, and Charlie had to work not to
    shake his head.
    Borden always made the people he considered his inferiors
    wait. Charlie guessed he thought it was some kind of power
    move, but all it really did was show off what an irritating
    person he was.
    Eventually, Borden finished his call and granted Charlie
    entry. “Cole,” he began, setting the terms of the conversation
    before the other man could even speak. “I don’t have a lot of
    time, it’s all hands on deck here. What do you want?” His
    voice had a nasal register that made everything he said sound
    dismissive.
    Charlie held up the tablet computer. “I have something
    you should look at.”
    “Can it wait?” Borden waved in the direction of a monitor
    on his desk, which showed a live feed from the conference
    room in the main atrium. In the middle of the screen, the
    lectern on the dais in front of the GreenSea logo stood vacant.
    From the camera angle, Charlie could see the room filling

  85. Anonymous

    with people wearing visitor lanyards, patiently waiting for
    something to happen.
    “Is there a press event?” For a moment, Charlie lost focus
    on his reason for being there.
    Borden rolled his eyes. “Do you ever actually read the
    memos you’re sent, Cole? Or do you sit back there having
    a wank and playing videogames all day?” He nodded in the
    direction of Charlie’s workspace. “For crying out loud, you
    need to pay attention to the outside world!”
    “Rude,” managed Charlie.
    “Where’s your pal Freling, eh?” Borden looked up,
    surveying the corridor. “Usually when you come in here
    bothering me, she’s along for backup.”
    “I don’t know,” Charlie admitted. “She didn’t come in today.
    I don’t know where she is.”
    “Better not be throwing a sickie,” said the other man. He
    sighed. “Look, write up a memo and send it to my inbox, I’ll
    read it tomorrow.”
    Charlie shook his head. “This really can’t wait.”
    Borden scowled at him. He had made no secret of the
    fact that he hadn’t wanted Morant to bring on Cole and
    Freling to bolster GreenSea’s IT security. He viewed them as
    dilettantes, little better than the hackers they fought to keep
    off the network. Even though they had been in place for over
    a year and done great things, the man refused to change his
    mind.
    “Spit it out, then.” Borden folded his arms across his chest,
    taking on a haughty air. “I’ll give you one minute.” He looked
    at his wristwatch. “Tick-tock.”
    Charlie sucked in a breath and launched in. “Jan conducted

  86. Anonymous

    security review of our redundant servers and she found
    something off.”
    “I didn’t authorize any reviews,” Borden snapped. “That
    sort of thing has to go through me first.”
    “Kind of the point,” Charlie retorted. “You authorize it,
    it gets logged in the system, and if any outsider has software
    implants in our system, they know about it too. This was totally
    on the D-L.”
    Borden said nothing, reluctantly accepting the logic of
    that, and made a keep going motion.
    “So, the sweep detected an anomaly in the redundant
    memory of the company financial database.” Charlie gestured
    with the tablet computer in his hand. “Jan brought it to me,
    and we dug into it. We found a bunch of transaction trails that
    had been erased after the fact, but there was partial data in the
    headers. Enough for us to reconstruct them.”
    “What, you’re telling me someone’s stealing our money?”
    Borden snorted with derision.
    “Not just money. Hardware and a bunch of other stuff,
    even some land deeds, all being diverted off-grid.”
    “No chance. This network is airtight.”
    “Nothing’s airtight,” Charlie said firmly, with the certainty
    of hard-won experience behind the words. “Believe me.”
    Borden snatched the tablet out of his hand and swiped
    across the pages it displayed, barely reading what was written
    there. “If someone hijacked GreenSea assets, we’d have
    spotted it by now…”
    “Not if they made it look like nothing was missing,” insisted
    Charlie. “Faked the entries.”
    Borden made a disinterested noise and looked past

  87. Anonymous

    Charlie, watching some of their colleagues through his office
    window. The tempo around whatever was going on tonight
    had peaked, and he saw movement on the monitor screen.
    Down in the conference space, Edward Morant had taken the
    lectern, speaking animatedly to members of the press.
    “You know what your problem is?” Borden continued.
    Charlie straightened. “I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”
    “You like finding complications where there aren’t any.
    It’s conspiracy theory thinking, adding two and two and
    getting… a unicorn!” Borden waggled his finger. “This isn’t
    spook country, Cole. You don’t work for the CIA anymore,
    there’s no Reds under the bed.”
    “NSA,” he muttered, “I never worked for the CIA.” But
    Borden wasn’t listening.
    “If you’re so certain there’s an issue here, then riddle me
    this.” The other man discarded Charlie’s tablet on his desk and
    fixed him with a look. “Who’s behind it? If there’s malfeasance
    afoot, it means sod all without any attribution.”
    Charlie fell silent. This was the question he’d been dreading,
    not just because the answer he had was sketchy, but because
    of the wider implications if it turned out to be correct.
    According to the data Charlie and Jan had scraped
    together, the illicit transfers had flowed through a web of
    shell companies and blind servers, ultimately leading toward
    a single locus; another corporate entity on the far side of the
    world, known as much for its bleeding-edge technology as for
    its unwillingness to follow convention.
    “Teague.” Charlie said the name. The Teague Technical
    Group – more commonly known as T-Tec – were the biggest
    of the new beasts in the world of next-gen technology and

  88. Anonymous

    computing, currently engaged in consuming most of their
    competition on the way toward global dominance of the
    social media datasphere. If the threads of half-deleted files Jan
    had discovered were authentic, it meant that T-Tec were not
    just engaged in their usual raft of dirty business tricks, they
    were actively engaging in criminality.
    “And there he is,” said Borden, with a smirk. He pointed
    at the monitor as a fresh-faced, well-tanned young man in a
    designer jacket stepped into view.
    Brody Teague. The founder-CEO-wunderkind master of
    T-Tec, the man running the company stealing from GreenSea,
    and he was right there, on the screen. In the building, in fact,
    five floors down from where they currently stood.
    Charlie gaped, and for a second it was like his world
    inverted itself. How was it possible for him to say Teague’s
    name, and then have him appear, like a summoned monster?
    Borden threw Charlie a sneering look. “What’s the matter
    with you, Cole? You look like you’re having a stroke!”
    “What…?” Charlie forced himself to concentrate. “What’s
    going on?”
    “Like I said, you need to read the bloody memos!” Borden
    tapped a button on the side of his monitor and the volume
    came up.
    “–such an amazing development for GreenSea!” Edward
    Morant was in mid-flow, gesturing with both hands, smiling
    tightly. “As of today, our company’s new partnership with the
    Teague Technical Group represents the next step in its evolution,
    the start of a synergy that will take our vision for Earth-friendly
    technology to a whole new level.” He seemed to be reading the
    words off an autocue, and the stiff smile didn’t reach his eyes

  89. Anonymous

    “Partnership?” Charlie echoed the word suspiciously.
    Suddenly, the reason behind the frenzied activity in the office
    became abundantly clear. He really had been way behind the
    curve on this, so lost in the investigation with Jan that news of
    it had never reached him.
    “More like takeover,” Borden said, with a snort. “Teague
    Technical swallows up competitors like a shark going after
    chum, chum.” He followed that up with a shrug. “Morant’s
    trying to save face, make it look like it’s amicable, but it’s a
    forced buy-out, pure and simple. I don’t care, though. My
    shares are going to triple in value.”
    On the screen, Brody Teague had decided to take the
    spotlight, and he came up to the lectern, into a storm of
    camera flashes, gently sidelining Morant before the other
    man was aware of it. In his ten thousand dollar suit, Teague
    was the epitome of the alpha geek, the kind of slick smartass
    guy that Charlie contemptuously thought of as a “bro-
    grammer” . Athletic and trim, aggressively intelligent, and
    totally unhindered by any moral compass, he was what you
    would get if you spliced a Silicon Valley tech dude with a
    Hollywood-handsome frat boy.
    “What a great day,” Teague said, with a glib smile, beginning
    with the words that had become his signature catchphrase. “A
    great day for GreenSea, a great day for our shareholders.”
    The insincerity oozing from Teague’s voice was like
    nails drawn down a blackboard for Charlie, and he hit the
    mute button, ignoring Borden’s scowl as his mind raced to
    assimilate this alarming new development. “Listen to me, we
    have a problem.”
    “Another? Still waiting for you to explain the first on

  90. Anonymous

    Borden’s attention went to the corridor as the elevator arrived
    in the nearby reception area, and a group of new arrivals
    emerged.
    Charlie looked in the same direction and saw two dark-
    suited bodyguards wearing augmented reality-enhanced
    glasses and radio earpieces. The pair flanked a harried-
    looking Indian executive, while another man in dark clothes,
    impossible to see clearly from this angle, hung back by the
    elevator.
    Borden made for the door, but Charlie blocked his exit.
    “Gary, for crying out loud, have you not been listening?” He
    made a point of using Borden’s first name to emphasize his
    seriousness.
    “To be honest, I don’t pay much attention to what comes
    out of your mouth,” retorted the other man.
    “The security breach,” insisted Charlie. “It has T-Tec’s stink
    all over it! Something is not right–”
    Borden shook his head, cutting him off. “The company
    that just bought out GreenSea is also stealing from it? Do you
    hear yourself? Does that make any sense? As of now, Brody
    Teague owns all this, from staplers to servers!” He gestured
    at the building around them. “You really want to make waves
    with the new boss ten seconds after he takes over?” He didn’t
    wait for a reply, and pushed past Charlie, out into the corridor.
    Lost for words, Charlie snatched up his tablet and followed
    him, moving woodenly. “What just happened?” He asked
    himself the question, his hands finding one another as he
    tried to keep hold of the unfolding events.
    “Hello, hello!” He heard Borden’s voice take on an
    uncharacteristically cheery tone as the other man greeted the

  91. Anonymous

    new arrivals. “Gary Borden, GreenSea systems security senior
    executive. A pleasure to meet you!”
    “Samir Patel,” said the Indian man, without accepting
    Borden’s offer of a handshake. His tone was brisk and
    distracted. “You can consider me Brody’s second-in-
    command. I want a tour of your setup, Gary. It’s imperative
    we ensure that everything is adequate while Brody is on site.”
    “Of course!” Borden led Patel away in the opposite
    direction. “Shall we start with our operations center?”
    “I suppose so.” Patel’s voice echoed down the corridor as
    they moved away, sounding equally terse and indifferent.
    Charlie saw him turn toward the man lurking by the elevator.
    “Mr Stone, if you could join us?”
    The man called Stone moved out into the atrium, and
    Charlie felt an odd chill run through him as he caught
    sight of his face. Narrow and gaunt, with a hawkish nose
    and cold eyes, the final member of Patel’s entourage was
    tall and intimidating. He wore a dark coat better suited to a
    chilly climate, and with every step he took, he seemed to be
    evaluating everything around him.
    When the man looked in Charlie’s direction, he couldn’t
    help but turn away, suddenly fearful of making eye contact.
    The reaction was strange, almost primal. He’d felt the
    same thing when he was a kid, trying to avoid the gaze of a
    neighborhood bully, and again much later, when men with
    guns had held his life in their hands.
    There was something else familiar about Stone, not just a
    face that rang a distant bell of memory in Charlie’s thoughts,
    but in the way the man carried himself. He moved like a
    predator stalking prey.

  92. MYST🀄

    Only one other person Charlie Cole knew had that same
    aura about them, that razor edge hiding in plain sight; but it
    had been a long time since he had seen Sam Fisher.

  93. MYST🀄

    Oppo down!

  94. MYST🀄

    Ndakambonzi ndirikudanana nehure inini i dont see the problem

  95. Anonymous

    Imagine you have ZNA on your CV

  96. MYST🀄

    You should promote reading and writing not fear it copa zhetie

  97. MYST🀄

    THE OCCULT ROOTS
    OF NAZISM
    Secret Aryan Cults and their
    Influence on Nazi Ideology
    NICHOLAS GOODRICK-CLARK

    The Order of the New Templars
    LANZ’S desire to found a chivalrous order evolved directly from his
    racist-elitist gnosis. Although his theology was formally complete by
    1905, he had not yet identified its historical agents beyond the
    Israelites and the early Christians. In the course of theostara series this
    rudimentary definition was extended to include eminent medieval
    saints, monastic founders, and mystics; these individual agents of the
    gnosis were supplemented by the reformed monastic orders and the
    associated military orders of the Crusades. This choice reflects
    personal preferences. His adoption of chivalrous agents for the
    gnostic tradition was fostered by a complex of factors involving his
    own psychological disposition and the neo-romantic climate of
    Austrian and German culture at the turn of the century. Even as a boy
    Lanz had felt drawn to the Middle Ages and its pageant of knights,
    noblemen, and monks. His decision to enter the Cistercian novitiate
    owed much to thcse sentiments, and it is likely that his adult desire to
    identify with the aristocracy derived from similar fantasies. As a scion
    of the German nobility, Lanz could fcel assured of a tangible link with
    a venerable tradition that transcended the present.
    Adolf Josef Lanz was born of middle-class parents, whose male
    forebears can be traced back to the early eighteenth century, so it
    seems improbable that his claims to aristocratic lineage were legitimate.’
    Some scant evidence can ~ievertheless be found to vindicate these
    claims. The name ‘Liebenfels’, which Lanz had hyphenated to his own
    by 1903,2 indicated his descent from an old Swiss-Swabian family
    originating in the fifteenth century. Lanz also used the blazon of this
    family, an eagle wing argent upon a gules field. The founder of this
    line, Hans Lanz, had been a barber-surgeon at Meersburg before
    rapidly ascending the social scale. After Joining an aristocratic
    fraternity at Constance in 1454, he married a noblewoman in 1463 thereby acquiring a title to her estates including Schloss Liebenfels
    near Mammern. Between 1471 and 1475 Hans Lanz acted as town
    magistrate at Constance. He was subsequently ennobled by Emperor
    Frederick 111, with whom he stood in high favour for his representation
    of Austrian interests in Switzerland. Having been granted the title
    Lanz von Liebenfels, he bore the eagle wing argent upon a gules field
    blazon of the Liebenfels family, which had died out at the end of the
    fourteenth century. The descendants of Hans Lanz von Liebenfels (d.
    1502) held high offices in Church and State: women in three
    successive generations became princess-abbesses at Sackingen during
    the eighteenth century. The family cannot be traced later thanc. 1 790.3
    In -1878 one C. vbn Lantz, a Russian army colonel serving in
    Austria, also thought that he was related to the Lanz von Liebenfels,
    but his connection with the Viennese family is unproven.’ In 1899 a
    handbook of bourgeois heraldry describkd ~ahz’s family as the
    Viennese line of the noble Lanz von Liebenfels, a family of ‘Bavarian
    origin, some of whose descendants had settled in Silesia and other
    foreign countries’. The decorated Russian officer was also mentioned
    but not identified as a close re1ative.j Although there is no further
    evidence of an emigration to Eastern Europe, it remains conceivable
    that Lanz’s ancestor, Matthias Lanz (b. 1720), was a derogated
    descendant of such emigrants. Besides this slight evidence for a
    genealogical link, several rumours spread amongst Lanz’s friends
    regarding his marital title to the name: one story records his marriage
    to a Liebenfels upon leaving the abbey in 1899, another relates that he
    was on intimate terms with a family called von Liebenfels-Frascati.”
    Whether it was an oral tradition of noble origins amongst his own
    familv or a liaison with a noble family which led Lanz to assume an
    aristocratic title will probably never be known with certainty, despite
    extensive ancestral research bv his followers.’ The real im~ortance of
    this obscure genealogical issue concerns Lanz’s later foundation of a
    chivalrous order. While noble status satisfied his desire for member-
    ship of an enduring traditional elite, his own order could fulfil a
    similar function.
    Besides these fantasies of nobilitv. one must consider his romantic , ,
    reverence for holy orders, which was compounded by a subsequent
    interest in the Knights Templars. Lanz’s first interest in the Templars
    stemmed from a reading of the medieval lays concerning Parsifal and
    the knights of the Grail. These epics were enjoying a contemporary
    vogue owing to their operatic treatment by Richard Wagner and the
    subsequent popularization of their mythology by such neo-romant

  98. Anonymous

    Ariosophy and Adolf Hitler
    THE reactionary political motives and revolutionary expectations of
    the various Armanists, Ariosophists, and rune occultists admit of
    comparison with the ideas of National Socialism. The enthusiasm of
    the Aryan occultists for Nazism has already been noted: Lanz von
    Liebenfels wrote in 1932 ‘Hitler is one of our pupils’,’ and both
    Werner von Bulow and Herbert Reichstein applauded the advent of
    the Third Reich in their magazines. But our final question must be to
    what extent Ariosophy actually influenced Nazism. Some answers to
    this problem have already been given. The lineage of the early Nazi
    Party in respect of its sponsors, newspaper, and symbol has been
    traced to the Thule Society, the Germanenorden, and thus to the ideas
    of Guido von List. It has also been shown how Himrnler officially
    patronized Karl Maria Wiligut, whose prehistorical speculations were
    rooted in the ideas of List and his Armanist epigones. In order to
    complete our enquiry, attention must now be focused on the beliefs of
    Adolf Hitler and their possible debt to Ario~ophy.~
    Friedrich Heer has described the various towns where the young
    Hitler lived, commenting on their cultural atmosphere and potential
    influence upon him. In 1889 Hitler was born at Braunau am Inn, a
    riverside town on the Austrian-Bavarian border where his father
    served as an imperial customs officer. Between 1892 and 1895 his
    father was posted to Passau. The dominant baroque Catholic culture
    of this old ecclesiastical centre was visibly expressed in the cathedral,
    churches, monasteries, and chapels of the town, the ubiquitous clergy
    and the rich liturgical festivals. Heer has suggested that this ambience
    may have instilled a religious-millenarian awareness in the infant
    Hitler which later characterized his emotional outlook and world-
    view. Such an influence would have been subsequently deepened by
    his attendance at the Benedictine monastery school at Lambach from

  99. Anonymous

    1897 to 1899. Here Hitler is said to have been happy, taking an active
    part in the ceremonial and pageantry of the church which again
    dominated the face of this town.3 The frequent depiction of village
    churches, monasteries and the monumental ecclesiastical architecture
    of Vienna in Hider’s own paintings between 1906 and 19 13 provides
    further evidence of his attraction to the visual metaphor of the
    Catholic Church and its thousand-year continuity in his Austrian
    h~meland.~ This deep involvement in Catholic culture could imply
    an imaginative disposition towards the dualist-millenarian ideas of
    Ariosoph y.
    Hitler’s period at Linz from 1900 to 1905 was less fortunate. The
    sophisticated urban environment put great pressure on a boy more
    used to school life in small towns and the country and his academic
    performance deteriorated. But in this town Hitler encountered
    nationalism and Pan-Germanism. Linz was close to the Czech-settled
    lands of South Bohemia and the incursion of Czech immigrants,
    business, and property interests was warily watched by the Austrian
    Germans of the town. Hitler’s history master, Dr Leopold Potsch, was
    prominent in several nationalist Vereine and also introduced his boys
    to epic periods of German history with magic lantern shows on the
    Nibelungs, Charlemagne, Bismarck, and the establishment of the
    Second Reich. Hitler was always enthusiastic for these history lessons
    and his belief in ‘Germany’ as a mother symbol of romantic Volk
    identity and imperial continuity may be traced to his school experiences
    in Linz. Heer has elicited from survivors several descriptions of
    Hitler’s childhood interest in German racial characteristics and his
    segregation of classmates into Germans and non-germ an^.^ This early
    fixation on mother Germany across the border in the context of both
    manichaean and millenarian ideas would also find an echo in the
    writings of both List and Lanz von Liebenfels.
    At a more rational level, Hider’s independent move to Vienna for
    formal artistic training was prompted by his interests and ambitions,
    but his life in the capital was fatally flawed by his failure to secure
    admission to the Academy of Fine Arts. Following his initial rejection
    in October 1907 and the death of his mother that Christmas, Hitler
    returned to Vienna in February 1908 in order to lead the life of a
    private artist-student with modest means. Together with August
    Kubizek, his boyhood friend from Linz, he enjoyed the galleries, the
    city architecture, and Wagner operas until the summer. However, his
    increasing sense of exclusion from a proper artistic career, his
    aversion to any other kind of work, and the steady depletion of hi

  100. MYST🀄

    funds gradually vitiated this idyll. In November 1908 he vanished
    from his shared lodging and henceforth lived alone. The slow descent
    into genteel poverty followed by destitution had begun. Now Hitler
    experienced the dark side of life in the city. The dingy rented rooms,
    the crowded soup-kitchens and the filthy flop-houses, the poor streets
    teeming with foreign immigrants from the provinces, and the Jews
    with their strange garb and customs, represented a fallen world.
    Vienna and the multi-racial Habsburg empire appeared to Hitler in
    his misfortune as the complete antithesis of his fairytale image of
    mother Germany and her pure national culture. In such a mood
    Hider would have been deeply receptive to the manichaean comic-
    book dualism of blonds and darks, heroes and sub-men, Aryans and
    Tschandalen, described in the Ostara of Lanz von Liebenfels.
    But what is the evidence for Hider’s acauaintance with the Ostara
    and its determinative influence besides these earlier predisposing
    factors? In the first place, the chronology is unobjectionable. By the
    middle of 1908 Lanz had already published 25 Ostara numbers and
    would have published a further 40 numbers before Hitler finally left
    Vienna in May 19 13. In view of the similarity of their ideas relating to
    the glorification and preservation of the endangered Aryan race, the
    suppression and ultimate extermination of the non-Aryans, and the
    establishment of a fabulous Aryan-German millennia1 empire, the
    link between the two men looks highly probable. Hitler stated
    subsequently in Mein Kampf that his experiences at Vienna had laid the
    granite foundation of his outlook and that he had studied racist
    pamphlets at this time.6 The likelihood of a local ideological influence
    again seems substantial. Earlier Hitler biographers tended to confine
    their surveys of Hider’s supposed sources of inspiration to intellectually
    respectable writers on racial superiority and anti-Semitism such as
    Gobineau, Nietzsche, Wagner, and Chamberlain. But there is no
    evidence that Hider read their scholarly works. It is altogether more
    likely that he would have picked up ideas to rationalize his own dualist
    outlook and fixation on Germany from cheap and accessible pamphlets
    in contemporary Vienna.
    Austrian scholars were the first to suggest that Hitler gleaned the
    materials for his racist political ideas from the trivial literature of Lanz
    von Liebenfels. As early as the 1930s August M. Knoll used to ridicule
    the Nazis before his student audiences at the University of Vienna by
    observing that the German leader had simply taken his ideas from the
    locally notorious and scurrilous Ostara. This originally polemical
    speculation was first pursued by Wilfried Daim after the war. Daim

  101. Anonymous

    was a psychologist with a particular interest in sectarian beliefs and
    political ideologies. When Knoll mentioned the congruence of Lanz’s
    bizarre ideas with Nazi aims, Daim was very interested as a result of his
    plan to write a book about Nazism as a perverse religious system. The
    existence of a sectarian father behind Nazi ideology would lend great
    weight to his thesis. Itwas soon discovered that Lanz was still alive and
    the-two scholars arranged to interview him at his home in Vienna-
    Grinzing. On 1 1 May 195 1 Lanz told Daim that Hitler had visited him
    at the Ostara office in Rodaun during 1909. Lanz recalled that Hitler ”
    mentioned his living in the Felberstrasse, where he had been able to
    obtain the Ostara at a nearby tobacco-kiosk. He said that he was
    interested in the racial theories of Lanz and wished to buy some back
    numbers in order to complete his collection. Lanz noticed that Hitler
    looked very poor and gave him the requested back numbers free, as
    well as two crowns for his return fare to the city centre.
    Lanz’s statement was confirmed by several pieces of independent
    evidence. According to police records, Hitler was indeed resident
    from 18 November 1908 to 20 August 1909 at Felberstrasse 22/16, a
    dreary street on the north side of the ~estbahnhof, where he had
    moved after abruptly quitting the room he shared with August
    Kubizek. Daim also discovered from the Austrian Tobacco Authority
    that a kiosk had been leased at this time on the ” ground floor of
    Felberstrasse 18. Lanz is not likely to have known these details unless
    told them by Hitler himself. The mention ofHitler’s poverty also rings
    true, for Hitler’s funds began to run very low in the course of 1909; the
    autumn and winter witnessed the most wretched period of his life
    when he was forced into short-stay warming-houses and doss-houses
    for heat and shelter at night. Finally, it must be remembered that Lanz
    would have been unlikely to fabricate an association with Hitler and
    Nazi ideology in 1951: Vienna was under Allied occupation and
    political investigations were still in progress. It therefore seems most
    probable that Hitler did visit Lanz and that he was a regular Ostara
    reader.7
    In order to corroborate Lanz’s testimony further, Daim subsequently
    interviewed Josef Greiner, whom he regarded as the principal
    surviving witness of Hitler’s life in Vienna after 1908. In his post-war
    Hitler biography Das Ende der Hitler-Mytkos (1 947), Greiner claimed to
    have been friendly with Hitler at the men’s hostel on the Meldemann-
    strasse in Vienna-Brigittenau, where Hitler lived from February 19 10
    until his departure for Munich in May 1913. On 31 December 1955
    Greiner supplied Daim with further details about Hider’s life in the

  102. MYST🀄

    hostel. He recalled that Hider possessed a substantial Ostam collection-
    there must have been at least fifty numbers in a stack about 25
    centimetres in thickness. When showed co~ies of the first Ostara series
    by Daim, Greiner said he remembered the distinctive comet design on
    the covers of the earliest numbers. He also claimed to remember
    Hider engaging in heated discussions with a fellow-boarder called
    Grill about the racial ideas of Lanz von Liebenfels. In a later
    conversation with Daim. Greiner stated that Hitler and Grill had once
    travelled out to Heiligenkreuz Abbey to ask for Lanz’s current
    addre~s.~
    Des~ite Daim’s conviction that Greiner’s memorv seemed reliable
    and his statements authentic, his testimony must be regarded with the
    utmost caution. In the first place, Greiner’s Hider biography has been
    found so inaccurate and even simply inventive on points of detail that
    several scholars have doubted whether Greiner ever knew Hitler at
    all.9 The most important doubts concerning his authenticity as a
    source concern his dating. Greiner stated to Jetzinger that he
    befriended Hitler at the hostel in 1907 and that their acquaintance
    ended when he went to study engineering at Berlin in late 1909. Since
    Hitler did not move into the hostel until early 1910, Greiner cannot
    have met Hider, unless he had mistaken the dates. On the other hand,
    the memoirs of Reinhold Hanisch, another hostel inmate and the
    salesman of Hider’s paintings, do refer to a man called Greiner at the
    hostel.1° This mention would suggest that Greiner did know Hider at
    the hostel, but that he forgot the exact date. But Greiner’s facility for
    invention was still apparent in his testimony to Daim: Hitler cannot
    have possibly wanted to learn Lanz’s address from the Heiligenkreuz
    monks if he already possessed Ostara numbers which gave an ofice
    address. nor if he had recentlv visited Lanz in 1909. This visit to the
    abbey cannot have occurred earlier, because neither man had met
    Grill, Hider’s companion on the alleged Heiligenkreuz excursion,
    until they moved into the hostel in 19 10. The only valuable evidence
    in Greiner’s testimony relating to the possible influence of Lanz on
    Hitler is that Hider possessed an Ostara collection and that he often
    discussed Lanz’s theories with Grill during his time at the men’s
    hostel.
    On the basis of these testimonies by Lanz and Greiner, the internal
    evidence of an ideological congruence between Lanz and Hitler may
    be reviewed. The most important similarity is their manichaean-
    dualist outlook: the world is divided into the light blue-blond Aryan
    heroes and the dark non-Aryan demons, working respectively for

  103. MYST🀄

    good and evil, order and chaos, salvation and destruction, in the
    universe. The Aryan is regarded by both men as the source and
    instrument of all that is fine, noble, and constructive, while the non-
    Aryan is allegedly bent upon confusion, subversion, and corruption.
    Lanz’s detailed provisions for Aryan supremacy were also echoed in
    the Third Reich: decrees banning inter-racial marriages, the extinction
    of inferior races and the wroliferation of ~ure-blooded Germans bv
    means of polygamy, and the care of unmarried mothers in the SS
    hbensborn maternity homes were all anticipated in the Ostara. Lanz’s
    attitudes to sex and marriage were also shared by Hitler. Both men
    emphasized the propagative value of marital relations and regarded
    women ambivalently. Lanz described women as ‘grown-up children’
    yet condemned their capricious tendency to foil the breeding of a
    master-race by their sexual preference for racial inferiors. Hitler also
    treated women as pets, and his own sexual relations were characterized
    by a mixture of reverence, fear, and disgust.
    But Hitler would not have accepted other parts of Lanz’s ideology.
    Lanz wanted a pan-Aryan state under Habsburg rule in Vienna, while
    Hitler despised the Austrian dynasty, averting his gaze from its racial
    Babylon to the German motherland across the border. Lanz’s
    doctrine was also deeply imbued with Catholic and Cistercian liturgy:
    prayer, communion, the advent of a racially pure Christ-Frauja
    messiah, the establishment of priories for the Order of the New
    Templars, and the elaboration of ceremony would have possessed
    little appeal for Hitler, who rejected the ritual of Catholicism as an
    adolescent and later saw himself as the new German messiah. On the
    other hand, Hitler’s enthusiasm for Wagner’s chivalrous portrayal of
    the grail, its guardian knights and their idealism would have made him
    receptive to Lanz’s notion of a crusading order dedicated to the purity
    of Aryan blood. In a conversation of 1934 Hitler paid tribute to this
    notion: ‘How can we arrest racial decay? Shall we form a select
    company of the really initiated? An Order, the brotherhood of
    Templars round the holy grail of pure blood?”’ This utterance could
    be traced to a pre-war encounter with Lanz and his Order of the New
    Templars as well as to the operas of Richard Wagner.
    During theThird Reich Lanz is supposed to have been forbidden to
    publish, and his organizations, the ONT and the Lumenclub, were
    officially dissolved by order of the Gestapo.12 These measures were
    most probably the result of the general Nazi policy of suppressing
    lodge organizations and esoteric groups, but it is also possible that
    Hitler wished to avoid any connection being made between his o

  104. MYST🀄

    political ideas and the sectarian doctrine of Lanz. A single Lanz
    monograph, Das Buch der Psalmen teutsch (1926), stands among the
    surviving 2,000 volumes of Hider’s personal library,Is but this is
    neither conclusive evidence that the book was read nor does it
    essentially relate to Lanz’s ideology, being a later liturgical work. It
    also remains a fact that Hitler never mentioned the name of Lanz in
    any recorded conversation, speech, or document. If Hider had been
    importantly influenced by his contact with the Ostara, he cannot be
    said to have ever acknowledged this debt. However, given his rapid
    political advance in Germany during the 1920s, and his titanic stature
    in the 1930s, it is not likely that he would point to the scurrilous
    pamphlets of an abstruse mystic in Vienna as his original inspiration.
    On the basis of the available evidence, then, it seems most probable
    that Hitler did read and collect the Ostara in Vienna. Its contents
    served to rationalize and consolidate his emerging convictions about
    the dualist nature of humanity and world-development and buttressed
    his own sense of mission to save the world. If his acquaintance with the
    series was limited to the numbers that appeared between late 1908 and
    the middle of 1909, he must have been interested in Lanz’s empirical
    studies of racial characteristics, the differences between the blonds
    and the darks and the discussion of women, feminism, and sexuality
    in these particular issues. If he continued to collect numbers at the
    men’s hostel between 19 10 and May 191 3, he would have become
    familiar with the full scope of Lanz’s manichaean fantasy of the
    struggle between the blonds and the darks for racial and political
    supremacy. Only his continued subscription at Munich would have
    introduced him to Lanz’s concept of the grail as the central mystery of
    the Aryan race-cult and to materials about the ‘ario-christian’ Templars.
    But even if Hider read no further Ostara numbers after leavingvienna,
    he would still have absorbed the essential aspects of Lanz’s Ariosophy:
    the longing for an Aryan theocracy in the form of a divinely-ordained
    dictatorship of blue-blond Germans over all racial inferiors: the belief
    in an evil conspiracy of such inferiors against the heroic Germans
    throughout history; and the apocalyptic expectation of a pan-German
    millennium that would realize Aryan world-supremacy. Such black-
    and-white dualism was the granite foundation of Hitler’s political
    outlook for life.
    The evidence for Hitler’s knowledge of Guido von List and his
    Armanism is less firm and rests upon the testimony of a third party
    and some literary inferences. When Daim delivered a lecture at
    Munich in 1959 about Lanz von Liebenfels, he mentioned hi

  105. MYST🀄

    associate List in the subculture of Aryan occultism at Vienna. Daim
    was subsequently approached by a certain Elsa Schmidt-Falk, who
    claimed that Hider had reeularlv visited her and her late husband in “J
    Munich. At these meetings Hitler frequently mentioned his reading
    List and quoted the old master’s books with enthusiasm. Hitler also
    told her that some members of the List Society at Vienna had given
    him a letter of introduction to the President of the Society at Munich,
    but this came to nothing as Wannieck was ‘either mortally ill or had
    already died’ by the time Hitler finally arrived in Munich.I4 A further
    Munich source could corroborate Hitler’s interest in List. In 1921 Dr
    Babette Steininger, an early Nazi Party member, presented Hitlerwith
    Tagore’s essay on nationalism as a birthday present. On the flyleaf she
    wrote a personal dedication: ‘To Adolf Hitler my dear Armanen-
    brother’.Ii Her use of the esoteric term suggests a shared interest in the
    work of List. A final indication that Hitler might have been familiar
    with List’s themes is provided by Kubizek’s description of Hitler’s
    draft for a play he wrote at their shared lodging in 1908. The drama
    was based on the conflict between Christian missionaries and the
    Germanic priests ofa pagan shrine in the Bavarian mountains.16 Hitler
    might have easily taken this idea from List’s Die Ananenschaft der An’o-
    Gemanen, published earlier in the same year.
    Elsa Schmidt-Falk was in charge of a genealogical research group
    within the Nazi Party at Munich during the 1920s. She claims that she
    often met Hitler, whom she also knew from his Vienna period.
    According to her, Hitler was particularly inspired by List’s ~eutsch-
    Mythologische Landschaftsbilder of which he possessed the first edition.
    He also had a high opinion of Der Unbesiegbare (1898) and discussed
    most of the Ario-Germanic researches with her. Her other claims
    included the following statements: Hitler was inspired by List to
    undertake subterranean explorations at St Stephen’s Cathedral in
    Vienna; Hitler was so intrigued by List’s burial of the wine bottles at
    Carnuntum in 1875 that he wanted to exhume this ‘first swastika’ once
    he had annexed Austria; Hitler’s delight over List’s regional folklore
    led him to suggest that she write a ‘Bayrisch-Mythologische Land-
    schaftsbilder’ about the environs of Munich; other Nazi leaders,
    including Ludendorff, Hess, and Eckart, were supposed to have read
    List. l7
    The full range of Schmidt-Falk’s claims make her testimony rather
    dubious. There is no evidence for Hitler ever having a particular
    interest in either archaeology or folklore. If Hitler hadread only the
    first edition ofDeutsch-Mythologische Landschaftsbilder, he would not ha

  106. MYST🀄

    Propulsion, power and thermal systems for a Mars
    mission
    Oliver Boom (boom@kth.se), Francesco Tosto (tosto@kth.se), Guillaume Tousignant
    (gtou@kth.se), Tong Wang(tongw@kth.se)
    KTH Royal Institute of technology
    Abstract
    The aim of this paper is to prove the feasibility of a Mars mission from the propulsive and electrical
    generation point of view. Different technologies are presented, while calculations are performed for fuel mass
    and engines/subsystems main dimensions. Bimodal nuclear thermal rockets, along with solar arrays and batteries,
    has been proven to be the best option for both propulsion and power generation during the whole mission. Safety
    requirements and thermal control system are also studied.
    I. INTRODUCTION
    Colonizing Mars is becoming an increasingly popular topic in today’s space research. Several space
    agencies and private companies are investing huge amounts of money in the study of advanced technologies
    that would enable a future landing on Mars. However, rocket engines now available for space exploration
    are not able to simultaneously achieve high specific impulse values and, at the same time, consume
    little propellant. It is therefore necessary the development of new propulsion technologies; important
    requirements of the propulsion system could be, for example:
    ‚ high specific impulse;
    ‚ high level of thrust;
    ‚ low risk of failure to safeguard crew on board;
    ‚ bimodal operation for primary power generation.
    During the past years several solutions have been studied: the most intriguing is undoubtedly represented
    by the Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR), designed and developed by NASA as part of NERVA program[1].
    This technology, in particular the bimodal NTR, is being studied and analyzed in this paper. Due to its
    properties, it has been found to be the most suitable for a Mars mission.
    A brief description of the Mars mission, together with its requirements, is given in section II.
    A detailed overview of the NTR propulsion system, along with other available technologies, is instead
    shown in section III. Engines and fuel mass estimations for the mission are instead discussed in section IV.
    Electrical power is provided by the nuclear rocket due to its bimodal operational mode: an extended
    overview, together with power requirement calculations for interplanetary travel and Mars/Earth orbit, is
    instead discussed in section V. Thermal control system is instead the topic of section VI.
    Last two sections are related to safety issues (section VII) and off-nominal cases (section VIII).
    II. MISSION REQUIREMENTS
    Several constraints have been considered for the manned Mars Mission outlined in this paper. Firstly, it
    is assumed that the space ship adopted to travel backward and forward from Mars should be able to carry
    30 passengers and provide them all life support facilities.
    The whole ship should be ready by the year 2032. Optimistically, it is assumed that by then already several human missions to Mars have been performed since some years. Furthermore, the ship should be
    built for many trips back and forth between the planets.
    The mandate of the propulsion and power systems team was: to provide the means of transporting the 30
    passengers and 8 crew from LEO to Mars, a mechanism for reaching Mars surface from Mars orbit and
    a way by which they can then return to Earth. Team agreed also to include an artificial gravity system
    on board in order to offer an Earth-like condition to the crew. The engine technology that best fit this
    mandate had to be identified and the engines sized to provide the necessary thrust for the mission. Also
    the power budget for various stages of the mission was calculated, the logistics for the transitions between
    primary and secondary power systems evaluated and thus the primary power generation equipment sized.
    Full redundancy of the power system was essential and it was paramount to choose the best compromise
    between performance and safety.
    III. PROPULSION TECHNOLOGY
    The propulsive method chosen is nuclear thermal. The main points of concern while selecting the propul-
    sive system were: efficiency, thrust, thrust-to-weight, convenience and the stage of development of the
    technology. The system had to be efficient enough to avoid bringing a huge amount of fuel for the mission.
    Having massive quantities of fuel would make for a complex and costly mission. The thrust of the system
    had to be high enough to be able to takeoff from Mars ground to Mars orbit. This was the critical stage
    of the mission: the stage requiring the most power from the engines and therefore the point for which
    the engines were sized. Less importantly the thrust also had to be high enough to reduce the burn times.
    A high system weight was detrimental to the mission, especially if it were to have to land and takeoff
    again. The convenience criteria were as follows: the fuel used, the ease of refueling, price, the safety and
    the possibility to use the same system for all phases of the mission. The stage of development of the
    technology refers both to the track-record and proven performance of the technology as well as whether
    any large scale up or development is required.
    For this mission, several technologies were studied: nuclear thermal (NTR), magnetoplasma, and chemical
    (methane). The chemical option was seen to be very convenient due to its refueling potential, having a
    very high thrust to weight, as well as being a proven technology with no need for a large development.
    However it was eventually discarded as its has relatively low efficiency. The specific impulse of these
    engines can go up to roughly 350s, which is fine for an ascent vehicle, but too low for long burns in
    space. The fuel masses required are compared to the nuclear thermal solution in Table I. (All the values
    are calculated for the worst case scenario, assuming the Venus flyby trajectory, no aerobraking and a fully
    powered descent.)
    As can be seen here, chemical rockets are not a practical option due to the huge amount of fuel required.
    For this reason chemical technology was discarded.
    The magnetoplasma option was discarded because the thrust was too low to be used for the descent and
    ascent phases, so it would have to be coupled with another propulsive system for that part of the mission.
    This would raise the already prohibitively high mass of the system, and increase the cost further. T

  107. Anonymous

    Spacesuits Are Spacecraft
    History of Spacesuits
    Spacesuits are much more than a set of clothes that astronauts wear. However, like a set of clothes, different suits serve different
    purposes. Space exploration usually includes two different kinds of spacesuits, both of which protect astronauts from the extreme
    environment of space, just as a spacecraft does. One kind of spacesuit is worn inside a spacecraft during launch and ascent to space
    and again on the way home during reentry (descent) into Earth’s atmosphere and during landing. The other kind is designed
    specifically for spacewalks—when astronauts go outside of their spacecraft to explore. NASA refers to a spacewalk as an
    “extravehicular activity” (EVA), so this type of suit is often called an EVA suit. Educators and students can learn more about the
    hazards of deep space in “Hazards to Deep Space Astronauts,” an educator guide filled with activities for middle school students:
    https://www.nasa.gov/stem-ed-resources/hazards-to-deep-space-astronauts.html.
    The full-page infographic on the next page depicts NASA spacesuit designs across the years. NASA astronauts first flew into space
    during the Mercury program (1958 to 1963), and NASA’s first spacesuits were made for Project Mercury. The Mercury suits were only
    worn inside the spacecraft; NASA’s first spacewalks would not take place until the Agency’s second space program, Gemini (1965 to
    1966). The suits used for Gemini were more advanced than the Mercury suits but much simpler than those worn today. The Gemini
    suits did not contain their own life support. A hose connected the astronaut to the spacecraft, and the astronaut breathed oxygen from
    the spacecraft through the hose.
    Spacesuits for the Apollo program (1967 to 1972) had to do things the Mercury and Gemini suits could not. These suits had to protect
    astronauts while they were walking on the Moon. The Apollo suits had boots made for walking on rocky ground, and they had a life
    support system. Astronauts could walk far away from the lunar lander because they were not connected by a hose. Following the
    Apollo program, NASA conducted three astronaut missions aboard Skylab (1973 to 1974), a small space station in low Earth orbit.
    The Skylab spacesuits resembled the Apollo suits in some ways, but they connected to the spacecraft with a hose during EVAs, like
    the Gemini suits. During the Space Shuttle Program (1972 to 2011), astronauts wore orange pressure suits for launch and landing.
    These suits were only worn inside the spacecraft. Astronauts wore heavy white spacesuits for spacewalks outside the space shuttle.
    Astronauts on the International Space Station currently use spacesuits that were designed more
    than 45 years ago for the Space Shuttle Program, and they rely on these refurbished and partially
    redesigned spacesuits for EVAs. Over the past 20 years, however, NASA has been researching
    and developing groundbreaking spacesuit technology that has resulted in a prototype known as
    the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU). The xEMU will be used to support the creation
    of a new generation of spacesuits by commercial partners for multiple NASA programs.
    Specifically, this research will be used in the development of spacesuits for use on the
    International Space Station and on Artemis missions involving Gateway and the Human Landing
    System (HLS).
    Artemis Generation Spacesuits
    Like earlier NASA missions, the Artemis missions will require two spacesuits: one worn inside a
    spacecraft during dynamic activities such as launch and reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, and
    another worn outside a spacecraft during spacewalks that will function as a self-contained
    personal spaceship. Before astronauts launch on Artemis missions to the Moon, they will suit up
    in a bright orange spacesuit called the Orion Crew Survival System (OCSS), pictured at right.
    They will continue to wear this suit while they are inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The OCSS is
    designed with a custom fit and equipped with technology to help protect astronauts on launch day,
    during emergency situations, throughout high-risk parts of missions near the Moon, and during
    the high-speed return through Earth’s atmospherePreface
    Artemis Generation Spacesuits was published by NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement as part of a series of educator guides to help
    middle school students reach their potential to join the next-generation STEM workforce. The activities can be used in both formal
    and informal education settings as well as by families for individual use. Each activity is aligned to national standards for science,
    technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and the NASA messaging is current as of July 2022.
    STEM Education Standards
    The STEM disciplines matrix shown below aligns each activity in this module to standards for teaching STEM according to four
    primary focus areas within each discipline. The four focus areas for science were adapted from the Next Generation Science
    Standards (NGSS) middle school disciplinary core ideas. The four focus areas for technology were adapted from the International
    Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards for Students. The four focus areas for engineering were adapted from the
    National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) and NGSS science and engineering practices. The four focus areas for mathematics
    were adapted from the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Math middle school content standards by domain

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