What are good titles for science fair smoking project

As the title states, I want to move on from my DT770 pro's. They sound awesome and I love the bass, but I know that a V sound can only give so much. I want something that is more accurate/surrounding while still giving me a rich, warmer sound.
I've tried HD600's at a friend's and they're way too flat for me, which I know is what they're supposed to be, but it's not for me. He also had a modded pair of Fostex T50rp mk-3 that sounded amazing and highly accurate, but he said that they're basically one of a kind as the guy he sent them to no longer makes mods.
So here's what I'm looking for specifically in a pair of headphones:

• Warm, rich tones / bass.
• Closed, Semi, or Open is fine, no preference.
• Wide soundstage where it feels like you can pick out the instruments and their placements in a studio on the right tracks.
• More precise mids are great, but not sharp highs (something clean and clear, but not piercing is preferable)
• Ohms are no issue, though my current DAC (Fiio K3 - Bass & Gain turned on) only goes up to 150, so if you go above that, I'd love your recommendations on a DAC as well.

A few example songs that I already know well/enjoy if you happen to have a DT770 and your recommendation handy:
Becca Stevens - Tillery - Perfect Animal :: I can tell that there's a fairly wide soundstage to the recording, with really nice layering. Any particular take on this would be great.
Kove - Tonight :: I like a lot of DnB, so this one relies on its basslines heavily, as you can tell. This one is really easy to tell the difference between a high quality recording vs a lower quality recording and can get muddled, but with the right setup, it's really warm.
Morgin Madison, Linney - Time (Viligir Remix) :: Another bassy one, this has growly, glitchy basslines along with a vocal mix and synths.
Tesseract - Legion - War of Being :: I also listen to a lot of metal, this is a fairly balanced song with good layering and clean vocals (mixed far back, but as you listen, you'll see why) and nicely mixed guitars, bass, and drums.

Reddit Account: u/Thenn_Applicant
Discord Tag: Garin
Name and House: Dorian Merryweather
Age: 49
Cultural Group: Reachman
Appearance: [Dorian's chestnut brown hair has been greying for quite a while, however is short beard retains more color, including a few stray red hairs peppered throughout it. While his features have softened and gained some pudge as he aged past his prime, he remains in overall good shape. This is partly due to his great love of gardening and crop cultivation, which have left his hands and nails rather rough.](Dodin-Bouffant-The-Taste-of-Things-Vest.webp (500×650) (williamjacket.com))
Trait: Numerate
Skills: Avaricious (e), Architect, Administrator, Investor
Talents: Language (High Valyrian) Cooking, Gardening
Negative Trait: N/A
Starting Title: Lord of Longtable
Starting Location: Opening Event
Biography:
It has been said; men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war. As such, it begs the question, what does a man have left when he finally tires of war? In pursuit of an answer, of any answer, one half of Dorian Merryweather’s life was spent. He was the second son of Lord Arthor Merryweather of Longtable. Like many others born in a place of natural abundance, he longed for more, for something greater than a mere provincial estate. The tourneys of Highgarden, the hunts of Horn Hill and the books of Oldtown all called to him, and so he could never ride past his father’s mild and verdant fields fast enough. Dorian counted himself lucky not to be the heir, for that meant he could pick where his future lay, unchained from the uninspiring home of his childhood. Instead it was his older brother, Bennard, who envied his free-flying lifestyle, contriving any excuse to join him on his escapades and agurk lessons and ceremonies he ought to have attended.
Lord Arthor was fairly permissive of this deriliction of duties, as the friendships forced on such journeys were worth more than lessons that could be repeated later, or tasks that could be handed off to lowborn stewards. The boys attended tourneys, balls, hunts and feasts, living the life the bards extolled as the height of reachman’s chivalry. The one time they did not shirk their duties was when their father had the honor of hosting King Mern and his court for a tourney on the Warrior’s day. The Merryweather sons would present the king and his family with silver bowls of dilligrout, a most exquisite stew of capons, white wine and almond milk. They had the joy of tasting it once the Gardeners had their fill, a taste they would never forget. On the tournament field three days later, Mern knighted them both, though Dorian was only sixteen at the time, green as a knight could ever be.
Five years later, as news of Aegon Targaryen and his early conquests spread, the lords of the Reach were summoned to Goldengrove, where they found a veritable forest of Westermen’s banners being planted beside their own. The fall of the Storm Kings had led to a whirlwind of diplomacy between the houses of Gardener and Lannister. The plan was presented to the lords with the two kings sitting beside one another on the dais as though they were brothers. They held up Aegon’s letter of demands, scornfully reading it aloud and then proceeded to tear it up to a roaring acclamation from the hall. Standing there before the hall, Mern could hardly be called the Warrior incarnate. There stood a man well past his prime, old enough to be a grandfather and with no great victories to his name, in battle or on the tourney field. All the same, this man, whom they called their king, always seemed to know exactly what to say to win someone over. If he’d declared war on hell itself that evening, the Merryweather brothers would probably still have marched off with him when the next morning dawned. Bennard and Dorian shouted as loud as anyone, death to the foreign upstart. That evening were betrothed to westerwomen they’d never met before, made plans for a real battle, which they had never fought in before, and drank, ate and sang as though the night would last forever. House Merryweather was not able to secure a command, yet King Mern remembered his stay at Longtable fondly. He gave Bennard and Dorian a place in the vanguard, and even adorned Bennard with a brooch of the order of the green hand the morning before the army Goldengrove, a momentous honor which Bennard would cherish for the remainder of his days. He did not have many left, as it turned out. The Field of Fire began like a dream, as the two brothers rode off at the break of dawn, two out of five thousand sets of gleaming armor atop proud warhorses. By the end of the day it had become a nightmare. Caught up in the maelstrom of battle, Dorian did not see the moment when their loss was assured, but the Gods know he could hear it, the creeping, hungry flames that descended on the reachmen like an army of its own. As hundreds were broiled inside their steel plate and thousands more choked on the inferno’s horrible vanguard of black smoke, Bennard and Dorian broke and fled. They were not far behind the retreating Loren Lannister in their escape, but half a minute made all the difference. The lines of fire fanned out, hunting more living things to devour, and engulfed the two brothers. Dorian could feel how the flames spread from his surcoat to his undershirt, all the way down to the hairs on his chest, beginning to sear his skin. In a desperate act he threw himself in the Blackwater, and would have perished if not for the shoddy work of his squire that morning, which left him able to tear off his plate before he could sink. With bloodied, burn-marked fingers, he clung to the roots of a tree by the riverside, water up to his chest. He was retrieved after some time, how long he could not say. For the next two moons his mind was adrift, distracted from his pains by milk of the poppy. The next two were far worse, as he grew more lucid and realized the extent of the damage. A burn-mark stretched from his right thigh, all the way up his chest and left bicep to the apple of his neck. Many times over, flakes of dead or dying skin had to be peeled off by the maester as the scabs kept bursting with blood and clear liquid. By the end of that year he was able to walk again, though the burn mark would leave a feverish red mark across the front of his body, his new skin settling into twisted lines.
Bennard was far worse for wear, alive yet burned all the way to his face and crippled from a fall off his horse. His nose and ear-lobes had to be cut off, too burned to save, and even his eyelids were permanently scarred, unable to sprout new lashes. The more lucid Bennard became, the deeper his sorrow. Eventually he began refusing food. The new lord of Longtable would not eat anything his cooks set in front of him. In spite of his ever present pains, Dorian began going to the kitchens, reprimanding the cooks for their failings. He knew his brother well and knew his palette, and began ordering them to make his brother’s favorites. When he felt they were making mistakes, he interrupted their work himself. He was a stranger to the kitchen, yet would criticize how things were cut too roughly, spiced too little or too much. He was a terror to the cooks, yet they could not refuse him.
His attempts to intervene were however hampered by a newfound aversion to heat. The sound of the hearth, of boiling and searing, the general sense of warmth around him made him nauseous and caused his movements to seize up. Still, he went to his brother’s bedside every day, and afterwards he forced himself back to the kitchens. His sister, Lydia, tried to stop him at first, but soon found her protes fell on deaf ears, and so joined him, if only to leash him in when he went too far. Finally, there was only one dish they hadn’t tried; the dilligrout they’d once served to the late King Mern. Every time it was made, it came out wrong. It soon turned out the cook who had served them that evening six years ago had since retired, and his exact method had never been recorded or taught to anyone else. Dorian would first invite the man to Longtable, then summon him with armed knights when invitations were refused.
Theomar, the man who appeared before him, was a sorry sight, looking frightened and confused as he was taken to his old workplace. It was explained by his sons that he’d been growing senile even six years ago, often snapping at the kitchen maids under him when his memory failed him. Since then he’d gotten worse, seldom eating, let alone cooking. Something in the old man’s eyes did seem to brighten for a moment when the sounds and smells of his old kitchen surrounded him, and Dorian ordered him to make dilligrout. Before long that faint spark had been drowned out by tears. He would start boiling capon or crushing almonds, only to leave the job half-done whenever he had to fetch something new. Serving maids were put at his disposal to bring him ingredients, yet an ingredient ordered would be met with a reprimand as he seemed to forget which dish he was making every few minutes. Finally Dorian snapped at the man, grabbing him by his collar and shouting accusations of treason against House Merryweather. By the time Lydia could restrain him and try to apologize, the man was a wreck on the floor. After watching it for a while, waiting for the man to get up and continue his work, even Dorian was overcome by pity and shame for what he’d done. The old cook was praying to the gods, begging forgiveness for his failings. Dorian began to realize he’d broken a great man down and would himself beg forgiveness. He offered the man his old cook’s quarters back for the rest of his life, and promised his sons that his maester would tend to the man in his old age, that he would be fed from Longtable’s stores.
At this point, he resolved to make the dilligrout himself. Through it all, Bennard was barely clinging to life, or rather being tethered to it by the will of others. He could only be fed when drugged down by the milk of the poppy, and the more often it was used, the less effective it became. Every day Dorian braved the kitchens, yet he could not recreate the flavor of that wonderful night. It was by the grace of the gods, perhaps with Theomar as their vessel, that Dorian would even come close. The old man could no longer cook, but over time he began to wander into the kitchens and sit down on a chair. At first Dorian thought the man only sought the warmth of the hearth for his weary bones, yet he discovered it to be more than that. Theomar’s eyes were like clouded glass, yet they brightened every now and then, hearing almonds being ground, smelling capons searing in fat, as though it was stirring the kitchenmaster of yore back to life. Eventually Dorian began to walk up to the old cook with his ingredients, bidding him to smell or taste small portions. Sometimes he got simple instructions out of it, ‘too coarse’, ‘too sour’, ‘underdone’. Som times a mere nod or frown was all Theomar managed. Over the course of a couple of days, Dorian put together one final attempt to get the dish made rightWhen he arrived in Bennard’s chamber, he was met with a look which brought forth discomfort that no flame could produce in Dorian. Plainly, raspingly, his brother asked him why he wouldn’t let him die. It was easy, Bennard reasoned. All Dorian needed to do was wait and become lord. The words almost made Dorian throw the dilligrout on the floor. Almost. He placed two bowls on Bennard’s table, the dilligrout and one brimming with milk of the poppy. Dorian told his brother to make his choice. If he sought death, Dorian would let him, but he would not hear that it was an easy thing, watching his brother die. That evening, the milk of the poppy was carried away by the maester, the empty bowl of stew taken to be washed in the kitchens. From then on, Bennard ate what his brother brought him without complaint. He lasted just into the new year, dying on its tenth day. In the predawn gloom of the twelfth, Theomar died in his sleep
Dorian took up his lordly task joylessly. His old wanderlust returned, spurred by the horrible memories that now stained Longtable and the reach itself in his mind. The final straw came when their new Tyrell overlords, insisted on him marrying a lady from a dornish house. His previous betrothal had fallen through, as the parents of his western bride had not wished to draw the ire of the Targaryens by maintaining an old alliance meant to oppose them. Instead of obliging, he boarded a ship from Oldtown going east. It stopped only briefly in Planky Town before going to Tyrosh. Noting him to be a nobleman, a few of the city’s wealthy men would host him for a while, though they quickly lost interest when his lack of knowledge of trade became apparent. After that, he spent time in the markets and squares where the common people lived. His old curiosity was piqued, and he decided to embark on a quest of learning, fashioning himself another Lomas Longstrider. He moved on to Myr, and the experience was much the same in broad strokes, a few rich men showed interest and quickly lost it. As he’d visited the dye markets he went to see the city’s famous artisans at work. One thing was notably different, he met a Tyroshi woman with green-dyed hair, going by the name Maryah. She was a trader, and the two had taken the same ship to Myr. She had been to Myr before and showed him many of its secrets. They spent an entire day in one of the vast delicacy markets so she could show him the many tastes of the city. Having no plans in advance, he asked where she was headed next.
Without a second thought he would join her on a journey to Lys. He soon understood it to be a test. It was not long before she teased him, speculating he’d only joined her for a chance to see the famous pleasure houses. Evening after evening they stayed in the city and Maryah would tease and test him over the matter. Finally he told her he’d renounce his betrothal for her, that there was no one else in his eye. She laughed, replying he would not have to. The next morning, Dorian awoke to find that she was already up, the green washed from her black curls. Maryah had in fact been Joanna Dayne, his dornish bride to be, having traveled the same route as him ever since his ship stopped at Planky Town to refill its food and water. She was already quite familiar with the three closest free cities, having served as a dornish envoy on behalf of its spice traders. As they planned their return to Westeros, Joanna asked him what else in the world he wanted to see. Within a few moons of being wed, they left Westeros, not to return for three years.The journey was what his mind needed, away from the Reach, its knights and tapestries, hunts and tourneys. Ultimately, the lords and knights of his homeland, for all their songs and poetry, lived every day in preparation for war, frivolous though the preparations were. Joanna showed him a different world, the remnants of Old Valyria. War was to be sure inescapable. Wherever they went, there were soldiers, tapestries, contests of arms, and yet the cities housed something else as well, a boundless potential for creation, commerce and growth.
Thanks to Joanna Dayne’s knowledge their stays became far better planned, and they could enjoy the hospitality of wealthy locals far longer. She knew how to talk about the spice trade and similar matters, and Dorian began to pick up on it. On their second stay in Myr, he procured a great deal of fine parchment and began taking notes, everything from negotiation tactics and the prices of cloves or red peppers to court customs, as well as more eclectic pieces of knowledge, details of running an eastern estate, descriptions of technological marvels he had never seen in Westeros, and ingredients in the local food. By the time they neared Qarth he had quite the list of recipes, among other things. There he was even able to learn a few all the way from Yi Ti, as some local cooks catered to merchants from the Golden Empire. On their journey home they’d end up taking the opportunity to see the newly made port of King’s Landing. By that time, a third member had joined their journey, their infant daughter Florys. Having left Longtable in the care of his sister and steward for three years, Dorian finally accepted the responsibility of running his ancestral home.
Longtable was considered to rule over some of the best lands in the Reach, ideally situated along the river with abundant soil which could provide two grain harvests in a year. Having seen the estates which supplied the great cities of the east, Dorian was all too aware of its comparative shortcomings. He found that the abundance of the land had a counterproductive effect, breeding complacency and carelessness. From his grandiose tour of the east, he went on a painstaking tour of his own lands, trying to get an overview of everything he ruled over. He paid the citadel a fee to send him half a dozen maesters in training for a season. These young men, literate and numerate, would serve his own maester in conducting a survey of the land, giving Dorian account of all resources at his disposal as lord. The results were quite varied.
Some peasants were found to have remarkable agricultural insights which they had no way of writing down, entirely reliant on passing the knowledge to their children. Knowing the risks of such a method of transferring knowledge, Dorian ordered such insights recorded. In other places there were farmers and communities who were unwittingly exhausting their soil. Instances of lack of fallow land, excessive grazing by cows and lack of crop rotation were also made note of, followed by edicts against such heedless practices. Septons, sheriffs and tax collectors were given written copies and were obliged to read them to the peasantry wherever it was deemed necessary. It also became part of the obligations of farmers to plant a set amount of clover in their fields and pastures, a practice some had taken up on their own but which had already become a standardized law among the estates belonging to Myr and Volantis. Irrigation was expanded and land inheritance was reformed to prevent the splitting of fields past a certain threshold.
Lord Dorian was not always successful. Some eastern ideas had been useful innovations which improved conditions across the board. In time he learned that the peculiarities of the westerosi system were sometimes necessary for the sake of stability, not merely the misshapen fruits of ignorance. His attempt to enclose part of the common lands proved abortive, as it nearly caused a peasant rebellion. A procession of aggrieved smallfolk headed for Longtable had to be dispersed by knights, armed with wooden clubs to prevent needless bloodshed.Two men were hanged and five sent to the wall, but the reform was thereafter abandoned, leading the populace to calm down. Dorian was not much of a military leader and had not wielded weapons since the Field of Fire. He became aware of his need to bolster his forces, a notion reinforced by the establishment of the Black Roses not long after his return, and again with the Kingswood Catastrophe
In the meantime, he and Joanna raised a family together. Three more daughters would be born healthy, with a couple of miscarriages and a stillbirth in between, also a daughter. Their travels did not entirely come to an end. In 13 AC they would tour the northern free cities of Norvos, Qohor, Pentos, Braavos and Lorath, which they had missed on their original journey. The lion’s share of 17 AC was spent on a journey to the Summer Islands. At other times they would make shorter journeys around the Seven Kingdoms, where they felt more secure in bringing their older children along. Whether it was visiting Joanna’s family in Dorne, tourneys and feasts in the Reach and West or even one trip to see the wall, a nameday wish by Florys, they were often on the move. Like most of their peers, they frequented Oldtown and Highgarden
The growing rift between the two queens and their children was a situation Dorian would watch with dread in his heart, remembering keenly how a generation of young men had been brought to the field of fire. To his mind, the Targaryen rule ought not go to waste. Like Valyria of old, it had begun with fire and blood, yet similarly peace and prosperity had followed in its wake. If only the dragons could stand united, perhaps another long peace like the one the Freehold once enjoyed could again be established. If not, another century of blood was upon them. Under Dorian, Longtable became a place where he sought to bring together people from across the kingdoms and forge unity over the dinner table, an attitude which somewhat vexed and confounded his more militaristic daughter and heiress, Lady Florys. Even amid her questioning of the viability of his peaceful ways when surrounded by those who would make war, a terrible sight would steel his resolve, watching the Mander burning green, every bit as terrible as the flames from twenty one years prior. That night he made a simple vow, never again.
The League of the Cornucopia, he would name his little group, a gallery of lords and ladies whose acquaintances he’d made over the years. With these fellow gourmets he would share the culinary knowledge he’d gleaned from his journeys in the east and west. Most unusual for a lord of his rank, Dorian came to spend a great deal of time in his kitchens, testing out recipes himself. On occasion, the dishes he served to his guests for these small, intimate gatherings would be the work of his own hands. The membership did vary from time to time, both based on who could make it and who he sought to bring together. Rather than a fully closed circle, the League is more like a form of feasting, only it’s done for a much smaller crowd, without the public spectacle. Such occasions allowed for more refined foods which did not need to be served to hundreds and kept constantly warm over the course of hours like some common tavern stew. It also opened up an arena of more intimate diplomacy and negotiation for those who sought it, hosted on neutral ground by a lordly mediator, free from prying eyes.
Timeline:
25BC: Dorian is born, second in line to Longtable
24BC: His sister Lydia is born
9BC: House Merryweather hosts House Gardener for a tourney and feast. Dorian and his older brother Bennard serve the dish of honor to King Mern Gardener and his family. During the subsequent tourney, Mern knights both boys, despite their inexperience and lack of victory in the tourney
9BC-2BC: Dorian spends much time travelling the reach, attending events
1BC: Dorian and Bennard fight in the vanguard at the Field of Fire. Both are burned, Bennard far more severely than Dorian. Lord Merryweather is killed. Traumatized by the battle and his new maimed body, Bennard starts refusing food. Dorian desperately tries to re-create the dish they served King Mern eight years ago. The cook who made it has since gone senile, but eventually manages to help Dorian re-create it. He is given a place at court as apology for his mistreatment at Dorian's hands before this occurred.
1AC: Lord Bennard dies at the beginning of the year, leaving Dorian as lord of Longtable. His sister Lydia fulfills her betrothal to House Tarly, becoming lady of Horn Hill. At the prospect of marrying a Dornishwoman on the King's orders, Dorian decides to leave Westeros to put off his marriage. In Myr, he meets a woman calling herself Maryah, claiming to be a Tyroshi merchant. They fall in love and travel to Lys together. There Dorian promises to set aside his betrothal for her, whereupon she reveals herself as Joanna Dayne, his dornish betrothed.
1AC-4AC: Dorian and Joanna wed at Longtable, then depart on a new journey of the east. They reach as far as Qarth before turning back home. In 3AC, on the way back, their first child, Florys, is born while the couple are in Volantis, on the way home. They return via the newly built port of King's Landing.
4AC-8AC: Using knowledge from the east, Lord Dorian embarks on a project of rationalizing the agriculture of Longtable
5AC: Dorian and Joanna have their second child, a girl named Ellyn
8AC: Their third daughter, Desmera, is born
13AC: Dorian and Joanna spend a year travelling the northern free cities
14AC: Their fourth and final daughter, Gwin, is born
17AC: Dorian and Joanna undertake a journey to the Summer Islands with their children
23AC: The aftermath of the battle of Stonebridge brings back memories of the Field of Fire, as the Merryweathers watch burning slag run down the Mander
25AC: The Merryweathers travel to the celebration of the maturity of Aegon's sons
Family Tree:
Arthor Merryweather (father, d.1BC)
Cerelle Merryweather (pending family connection) (mother, d.20AC)
Bennard Merryweather (brother, d.1AC)
Lydia Merryweather (sister, b.24BC)
Glendon Merryweather (uncle, d.1BC)
Myrcella Pommingham (aunt, d.22AC)
Leo Merryweather (cousin, b.13AC)
Joanna Dayne (wife, b.26AC)
Florys Merryweather (daughter, b.3AC)
Ellyn Merryweather (daughter, b.5AC)
Desmera Merryweather (daughter, b.8AC)
Gwin Merryweather (daughter, b.13AC)
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Auxiliary Character:
Name and House: Florys Merryweather
Age: 23
Cultural Group: Reachman
Appearance: [A short, muscular woman with wavy black hair, normally worn in a bun. She has high cheekbones and a proud demeanor. Her rigid strength stands in contrast to the more relaxed nature of the Merryweather court, one she finds overly lax and casual](0_0.png (896×1344) (discordapp.com))
Trait: Hale
Skills: Swords (e), Essosi Blademaster
Talents: Dancing, Fishing, Cooking
Negative Traits: N/A
Starting Title: Heir to Longtable
Starting Location: Opening Event
Timeline:
3AC: Florys is born in Volantis, while her parents are on their way home from Essos
10AC: Florys starts training under Saathos Trevelyan, her father's Master at Arms
13 AC: She joins her parents on a tour of Pentos, Braavos, Norvos and Qohor
17AC: She travels with her parents to the Summer Islands
19AC-23AC: As she comes of age, Florys becomes more critical of her father's desire for peace, viewing it as increasingly far-fetched amid the increasingly controversial regency and the impending succession dispute. She resolves to make the kinds of connections her father seems unwilling to, in case of war
25AC: She accompanies her family to the celebrations
NPCS:
Ser Leo Merryweather (Age: 37, Archetype: Magnate) Lord Merryweather's first cousin, he has become an indispensable agent in the daily running of Longtable. Despite his foppish demeanor and aparent laziness, he is highly capable and loyal in his task of increasing his family's fortune. He remains happily unwed
Saathos Tevelyan: (Age:48, Archetype: Master at Arms) The son of a Lysene father and a Myrish mother, Saathos initially sought a career in amongst Myr's military officers, however his family's relatively low status proved an impediment to further promotion, later compounded by a dispute with a superior. He met Lord Merryweather in 3AC and eventually travelled West to offer his services five years later, finding his career progress stonewalled in his home city. Well into middle age, he still looks firm and imposing as profesisonal a soldier ought to

Hiii! I'd like to start off by saying that it's tragic that there are others that share my suffering of having unwanted dogs pushed on them but I'm glad I'm not alone in that. None of you deserve it and I really hope that your situations get better someday because living with shitty dogs you never wanted fucking sucks! I myself am currently coping with a situation surrounding my dad and two dogs that belong to our neighbours. Allegedly at least. In reality? Hmm... bit more complex than that - I don't know if I'm just being overdramatic, it is kind of jumbled and really long, but I'm just so tired of dealing with this and I want someone to hear it
For some context behind the living situation, I am unfortunately at a few months into 27 still living with my parents who rent a townhouse 🙁 It's my own fault really and I have a feeling the situation I'm in now may be fate's rendering of judgement on me for growing up into a failure. It's a really long story but the summary is that I was in a deep depression spiral for a bunch of reasons leading me to make sooo many poor financial and educational decisions starting around late elementary school to last year. About 2 years ago I finally started taking steps towards fixing my problems which included some soul searching within, but I think I've got another year or two yet before I'd consider myself comfortable enough financially to finally get out of here and away from this demented doggy day care more or less for good. For what it might be worth, while I don't pay rent I do help out with chores and pay for various things in general - I've fronted pet supplies and vet bills, gas, groceries, purchased furniture, kitchen tools, paid my mom's car insurance when she's been late on it because of my dad's drinking, paid for maintenance stuff such as some supplies to fix holes or damage that my dad puts in walls and doors, among other things like you know, random stuff that needs fixing haha. I want to think I'm not a *complete* parasite, but I totally understand if you still see me as one. Really, I get it. I promise you I'm trying and I will be useful one day. Until then though, 😔
My parents currently own 3 dogs and 2 cats so it's already pretty crowded here and to top it off I have a mild allergy to pet hair so the only time I ever have a clear nose is when I'm out of the house: a 10yr old schipperke named Kallie, a 4yr old golden retriever named Sundance, and some kind of mix that reminds me of a GSD mixed with a pitbull I guess that's like idk 2-3yrs old - her name is Suzuki and she's a rescue that my parents brought back after selling something to a Kijiji buyer. Dunno her breed exactly though. The cats are a black cat named Ninja that we've had since 2014 and a tabby stray named Loki that followed us home from a dumpster a few years ago so we decided to keep her. I love them both so much and Loki is especially dear to me and is actually closer to being my cat than my parents' cat - I am 100% taking her when I leave. They are relevant to this further down trust me.
For the record I don't have issues with Kallie and Sundance and actually do love them a lot despite the fact that I'm not actually the biggest fan of dogs - they're an exception, and I warmed up to Suzuki about a year ago though she has an issue which is relevant for the problem animals.
Several other dogs that weren't ours have been through this house in the past as my dad is well, soft-hearted and naive when it comes to specifically animals. Some of them have been problems. Some of them represent Problems. All of the extra dogs have been unilaterally his decision and any voice of disapproval ignites a conflict. Right now there are 2 other dogs on top of the family 3 and these two are the Big Problems™️ rn: the first one is a shitzuo (emphasis on the SHIT) named Keno or Kino or who fucking cares I'll just call him Keno. The other one is a mix of something that looks a little like Suzuki, but is white and might have a little chihuahua in him. His name is Benji. I'll start with Benji since I actually have sympathy for his owner and as much as I find him annoying he has some potential to be a decent dog one day if given the proper support, but that's not my problem as it's not my dog.
Benji is a younger doggo, about a year old. His owner is a single mom currently going through a bad divorce from what I hear which honestly is really unfortunate and I do hope her situation improves someday. He's kinda friendly most of the time, but his owner has still not gotten him fixed, which is an issue particularly because of how much time he spends in the same house as Suzuki, who my mom has not gotten fixed either despite my offers to pay for it and attempts to schedule it for her. I regularly stop Benji's attempts to mount her, but I know I won't be able to stop it forever and I'm terrified of the outcome. Every time I bring it up to my parents, I am either blown off with a half-thought response or (in the case of my dad) straight up yelled at and threatened as this dog is apparently just "playing" or "fighting for dominance." 🫠 I just don't want to have to exist next to a bunch of puppies that my parents are completely incapable of taking care of but there's nothing I can do about it. God, imagining the noise level and smell of the house makes me shiver. Aaaaaa. Benji is also an extremely pushy and jealous dog as he's still very young and isn't being trained adequately by either his owner or my dad - I cannot pet the family dogs without this little annoyance trying to worm his way in and interrupt. One positive I can think of is that he at least defers to me and folds over in submission the moment I express any kind of disapproval. Well, that and he isn't Keno.
Keno is.... a fucking NIGHTMARE that is driving me to insanity and I am devoting basically the rest of this rant to this untrained monstrosity and its neglectfully absent handlers. I have never, in my entire life, EVER, hated a dog more than this shaggy, aggressive, shrieking rat. It all started about six months ago when some neighbours who I've never met in my life got this stupid idiot dumbshit animal as a rescue. My mom let it come over once and I had one of those really bad gut feelings. My dad then suggested to them that he could keep an eye on it, as both of the owners work all day and don't get home until later while my dad is at home usually as he's on disability. From then on this curly-haired terror has been at our house almost 7 days a week, for at LEAST 12 hours a day. Let's see if I can describe just much I hate this animal without hitting a character limit.
The dog wasn't (and still isn't) yard trained or outside-trained in general. This dog is like 2 years old or something and every time I've brought it up my dad freaks out and says "that's not going to happen, that's just how he is! Get used to it!" My dad's solution is to cover our ENTIRE front entrance into the building hallway in piss pads. Yea, training pads. These are filled up multiple times a day - sometimes multiple times an HOUR ... you can imagine the amount of garbage this creates which my dad then complains about having to deal with (he's the ONLY reason this dog still comes here) - and yes, he throws the used piss pads in the KITCHEN TRASH, YOU KNOW, THE ONES WITH FECES AND URINE ON THEM 🙃The dog regularly misses too and wastes all over the floor and wall! I rented a carpet cleaner for when I moved rooms and my mom decided to use it after to clean up the entrance way, hahaha, it was pissed up less than 2 hours later! The doors and walls around there are starting to be stained by dog piss and it gets worse when the pads get moved around for whatever reason. If you were to look closely, you may see tiny streaks from where the dog rushed to its mandatory shitting sessions. We used to have a bench beside the door for putting on shoes and stuff, and the closet was actually used for coats, hats, and things. Now the whole area has been devoted to this walking feces factory and on top of that the perpetually soiled pads sit in front of our downstairs bathroom as well. Suffice to say that I have not used that washroom in nearly six months and only make use of the upstairs one now. Petty? Maybe. Legend has it that some of my makeup is still in there.
As mentioned earlier, from what I've been told this dog is a rescue. It has behaviour problems. Crazy, I know. You'd be shocked to know that its owners are not experienced with handling rescues. It barks at many, oh many things. There is not a single multicellular organism in this city that this thing has not barked at. When it gets let outside, the very first thing it does is run to the end of the yard and shriek at the sky! And this thing is one of those dogs that has the projection of a large dog, but the bark of a small one. Yea, it's actually piercing, and if I'm in the same room as it my ears physically hurt when it barks and leaves my ears ringing. Definitely an effective deterrent, as I don't really leave my room anymore while it's here, so I guess I basically don't leave my room anymore except to go to work or cook... Of course this dog does more than bark though! It's actually fairly aggressive, too, because of course it is. You cannot discipline this dog, both because of the coddling my father does for it and the dog's own reaction to various techniques. Very growly and bares its teeth. I went to close the living room curtain once and the dog snapped at my hand, biting me. It has bitten me again one other time when I shooed it out of my new room that I was cleaning out (note: my dad yelled at me later because it's "Keno's relaxing spot" and I'm cruel to take that away from it, don't worry it hasn't been back in since) I'm not allowed to teach this dog in any way, as any genuine attempt from me (mainly out of desperation to make what time I have left in this house livable I don't actually want to teach this mutt, I want it gone) is swiftly shut down by my dad who says once again that the dog will never learn and that's just how it is. GREAT. GET RID OF THE FUCKING THING THEN IF ITS UNFIXABLE. Oh, it's your "duty" to ensure the dog doesn't get put down apparently, because that's what will 100% happen if the dog gets given up according to him. He's not a "killer" 🙄 mf hearing that is unbelievably infuriating this dog will have no fucking chance in the future if it doesn't get given up at least now it could potentially be taken care of by someone halfway decent at it. I've told him multiple times that him ENABLING these dipshit owners is just causing more problems for this awful animal further down the road. I hate the shit out of this thing and I'm still trying to think of its well-being. UGH.
God tho, words cannot describe how much of a trigger this dog's bark is. I hate it. I cannot stand it. It's an audible plague. It worms through earplugs, headphones, walls. I cannot get it out of my fucking mind. Even on the few days this dog isn't here, I can still hear it shrieking away a few doors down. It's barking as I type this part someone save me this dog allegedly was supposed to go home an hour ago. The latest this thing has stayed was until 11:30 PM. What the fuck.
Apparently the dog is fixed. However for some reason it repeatedly tries to mount Suzuki. It does not do that with the other dogs who are all fixed. Huh. Oh, it also likes to rub up against the only part of our couch with an arm rest and has claimed it as its territory - actually briefly fought with Benji over it two weeks ago. Mom said it was a serious incident but nothing came of it, as usual haha. Whatever, point is this dog is a problem in yet another way. I love being told off about not wanting this dog to rub its fucking ass up against my thigh while I'm trying to just sit on the couch for whatever reason at the time.
What makes my blood boil the most about the behaviour though is how this dog treats our cats and even the other neighbour's dog. It's a fucking menace, an actual danger. It chases and harasses our cats in some attempt to police them or something. If Loki jumps onto a high point that she regularly lounges at, he dashes at her and barks at her. If Ninja meows at the door to be put on a leash in the yard, he barks and chases him. This dog has lunged at our cats more than once. I'm scared that something is going to happen to them because those things happen way faster than one can stop them. I don't know if I could handle seeing that image in reality. I really don't think I could. I hope I don't have to and even writing about the possibility gives me anxiety and the fact that my dad jokes about how Keno "definitely came from a family where he was supposed to keep an eye on a cat" just brings me to my fucking limit as it is. I nearly had that sort of scare a couple months ago when Benji and Keno were scrapping in my dad's room. I saw that they were getting too aggressive, but my dad has made it umm, very clear that I am not allowed to police them on it. So yea, it happened super quick - Keno clamped down on Benji's throat and hurt him. While the little guy lived, he now has a semi-persistent cough and at the time I genuinely thought the dog was gonna cross the forever bridge as he was struggling to breathe for like 10min. What changed from this incident? Well, nothing! My dad blamed Benji. I feel really bad about the incident as there was a brief window where I could have stopped it, but my fear of causing an argument with my dad led to an animal getting hurt, even if it's one I'm not a huge fan of.
Where are the owners? Haha. At work apparently. As mentioned, the dog is here nearly 7 days a week, at least 12 hours a day, usually longer than that (7am to 7pm, but this dog has fucking arrived at like 6:10am before.) Weekends are supposed to be a reprieve from this demon, but every couple weekends it'll come over on those days too and sometimes for completely fucking random reasons! Aren't owners usually comfy leaving their dog at their house for two hours? Why the fuck are these people unable to do that? Why do my parents get no notice apparently? Why do my parents take this shit? I am not allowed to voice disapproval towards this dog or the situation of any kind - my dad immediately launches into a tirade more colourful than a pastel palette if I even slightly remind him that I hate this fucking thing. My mom shuts me down - "That's enough.", "Don't", "I don't want your dad to get angry" the last time this happened my dad insisted that either I "love all of them or abuse all of them, no pick and choosing" he then drank himself silly and forgot about it. Why did that happen? I came in the door and pet our dogs plus Benji because he was actually behaving pretty well for once!
Yea the owners are so shitty. Benji's owner has told my mom (who then relayed it to me) about how they find it funny and cute that their awful dog pisses all over our walls and barks teehee 😊 at least Benji's owner tries and walks our schipperke at night sometimes. Keno's diabolical yet incompetent owners very clearly know they have a golden goose in the form of my father who is only spineless when it comes to dogs. He has sadly attached himself to this stupid mutt, and I'm worried that I'm going to have to deal with it for as long as I associate with my parents, at least until it passes. In fact, my dad has straight up said that he considers this dog his own, and part of the family. Many times he has mentioned that poor Keno's "REAL FAMILY" is here in our house. Keno's owners apparently pay my dad $100 a month sometimes for the privilege of letting it ruin this house for a minimum of 60 hours a week. Damn they got a good deal. The owners have other issues too, but basically I just can't believe that this is the hill my dad (and by extension my mom as she's been stockholm'd by my dad) is willing to die on. I can't believe this fucking dog has so much sway in things here. I can't believe my dad constantly praises and gives it love while in the same breath detailling very specifically how much joy I suck away from his life and how much of a regret of his I am. How do I stop being worth less to him than this dog? Before this thing, it was a neighbour's chihuahua named Oreo that also pissed all over the place and yapped. Despite the fact that I'd sometimes exit the shower and have to step over dog shit, I'd much rather have that yappy dog back then keep dealing with this hellspawn. At least back then my father pretended to care about me. I wish this thing would just fucking leave. I wish my mom would actually put her foot down like she says she is. I'm so tired of this. I'm tired of being told about how I'm supposed to just LIKE this shitty dog and how my open dislike of it is animal abuse or some shit that's like actually untrue (what the fuck.) I do my best to just ignore it as much as I can but this dog has driven me to crying fits more than once because it Just. Doesn't. Stop. The reminders are everywhere. It's sunken its teeth into every fucking aspect of life here and I am so miserable. If I could afford it I would move out yesterday. I want out so badly but can only bide my time while bitching like some drama queen because I was an idiot
Wow, this has ballooned way beyond how long I thought it'd be. Oops. Hey, even if you don't read it, it felt pretty good to type.
tldr: THESE 2 DOGS ARE SHIT BUT ONE IS SHITTIER AND THE WORST

For the longest time, you could go to a "ColinThompson.com" website made by Colin Thompson himself, and browse through it quite unimpeded. Even though I remember everybody saying at the time that this website was badly designed.
The design was never a problem for me, personally. It was a matter of looking at the image on the front - which was apparently called "Nana's Album" - until I found the text drawn onto it that was also the right hyperlink. You can say that reading his books trains you to handle such a clustered and chaotic arrangement of HTML buttons.
After a while, the website started to break, and certain links stopped working. You could still kinda get around on browser history or URL manipulation fairly well. Colin Thompson would also go on long periods of time without updating the website or at any rate, updating the notice that tells you the date of the last update. Books would be published and you would have to go to your library to be able to tell.
Now the website's not up at all. I tried the Wayback Archive too, but then it just got scary as I tried browsing around and a clearly-malicious "info dialogue" appeared saying "owned." It even had the Wayback Machine's name as its title for some reason, too. At that point I just noped out of there.
At this point, I can't show you the Colin Thompson website, because I'm scared to retry the Wayback Machine and no amount of image searching has proven worthy of just literally giving the user a screenshot of a bi-decade spanning website that thousands of people have seen. For some reason it thinks I want his illustrations, even though I typed COLINTHOMPSON.COM WEBSITE.
You know, The Internet really sucks with stuff related to this. I've seen so little coverage and exposition on what Colin Thompson has been up to in his career, and I've read two memorable books of his that aren't even listed on his Wikipedia page. It says that he's alive and 81 years old, but genuinely I would not be that surprised if Wikipedia was failing to inform me that he's actually dead. I would be fucking devastated, but not surprised. If you want to know, those two books are "Watch This Space: In the Pink" and "The Corner of My Eye". Titles are approximate. I don't know when they came out. The second name is actually one of his esteemed trademark self-done "detailed" picture books, but I'd say it's not one of his good ones because you come out of it without much wonder and much of the art inside is highly recycled. Like, yes, recycled from previous illustrations in his other picture books.
I really want to know what Colin Thompson is doing these days and to get the website back. I'm not going to try to act like any of these responsibilities should fall on the shoulders of you, but I posted this because it's just something worth talking about. I'm pretty much the Colin Thompson fan. I'd say that if I still had Colin Thompson's email address, it'd be up to me to do something about it. I think at this point nobody does, because it was colin@colinthompson.com. Yes, colin "at" the original solo-project website that's freaking down right now. We have no options.

Good evening everyone.
We, from the mod team, wanted to briefly address an issue that has recently developed in the sub. Some of you (probably a lot of you, to be quite honest) are undoubtedly aware of the attempt last year to build a Discord server for users of this sub, the intention having been an eventual merger with and officialization by the sub. That would have been, to my mind, a rather interesting project. I want to clarify that I was in no way connected with this effort, nor did I ever participate in the server, meaning that I retained the neutrality and distance from it to deal with the issue in front of us right now. To whit, that server pretty immediately devolved into a morass of issues, including infighting, transphobia, racism, bullying, and ableism. It also, fairly shortly into its existence, became intensely un-democratic and authoritarian on the part of a user who, in essence, performed a hostile takeover of the moderation and ownership of the server. I have, from the point of neutrality, gathered evidence behind these facts. The person in question has, so far, failed to refute these claims.
Now we move to the sticky bit: it is not our tendency to police what happens outside this sub. That would, in a sense, make us vastly undemocratic ourselves. However, as this was a server made up of sub users, intended to become our official server, and as this drama has now reached our shores, we feel that we are sufficiently involved as to warrant action. To that effect, we are banning the aforementioned user. We are also going to be very thorough in removing server-related drama from the sub. At the same time, we also realize that the culmination of the problematic behavior that resulted in a schism, which saw the foundation of a new sun and a split in our membership. If you are part of the group of schismatics we, of course, mean no offense to you. You are welcome to remain here. But we must always, and always will, enforce the rules of this sub. That includes that each of the aforementioned issues are, by themselves, violations. Let alone despicable behavior from anyone claiming to be a leftist.
As ever, we wish each of our users good health and continued safety. We appreciate all of your hard work and hope that it continues to bring us to a just and equal world. Shalom.

The job market is tough out there, but I noticed a few people I know who seem to to be doing ok and picked their brain to understand why.
Note that these experiences are specific to California tech industry (mix of swe, pm, sales, ds) and isn't very helpful if you're looking for a job right now. But I've found it helpful for thinking about how to build a career that makes it so one doesn't need to job search again. These are all people with 5-10 years of work experience
1. They don't apply to jobs
They get multiple interviews and job offers per year through a mixture of cold outreach from recruiters and people they worked with in the past asking them to join them. They almost never apply to jobs, and when they do it's when they aren't actively looking to change jobs but because the role is a uniquely good fit for what they're interested in. Earlier in their careers they got recruited by no-name or not very high quality companies, but as time went on (5+ years) they started to get recruited by big tech or hot tech startups.
2. They've interviewed at least a few times per year for their entire career, even when they didn't need to
They do this to keep their interview skills fresh and to understand what skills the market is seeking or headed in. This helps them figure out which projects and teams to transfer to. These are generally interviews they got from #1. Sometimes these turned into actual jobs that they took
They get these interviews thru 2 main ways:
3. They have a clear brand that jumps off their Linkedin profiles
One person I have in mind has a strong record in ecommerce sales and a record of being promoted and eventually got good brand names on their resume. Another person has a mixture of work, volunteer, and personal projects that show their competency in data science. When recruiters keyword search for terms related to these roles, they're likely to come up in their results.
Earlier in their careers they did things to show interest or experience in their field, even though they only had an internship or maybe 1 job (or no jobs). They did a bunch of projects, volunteering, organized local meetups, etc., usually on nights and weekends. In some cases they tried to reverse engineer what keywords recruiters might look for and frame their experiences around that
4. They built credibility in all of their past jobs. Their colleagues left and recruited them.
These people didn't job hop every year. They stayed in each place for a couple years, or in any case built up enough credibility so that when their colleagues joined new companies and were looking for people, they were the first ones they asked to come along. Interestingly, some of these people weren't well-liked by their referrals, but their reputation was strong enough
I know this isn't very short-term practical insight, but hope people get some value from it!

https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dissecting-the-new-york-times-plea
"Story at a Glance:
•Repeatedly forcing the public (e.g., through mandates) to use unsafe and ineffective therapies (that injured millions) has created a public relations disaster for the establishment.
• Various attempts have been made to do the impossible—restore the public’s trust in our medical institutions without any of them admitting fault.
• Here, I review each of the previous attempts and how they were used to create the recent infamous article by the NYT—which while monumental for bringing attention to the COVID vaccine-injured, also repeats a variety of strategic and very harmful lies to protect the vaccine industry.
• One of the mysteries of the COVID-19 response is what could have possibly justified breaking the public’s trust in the medical institutions our society revolves around. Here I will review the most compelling explanations we’ve come across after three years of investigating this commonly asked question."
....
"Before we go any further, I'd like to focus on its title, which sadly synopsizes the entire NYT article:
Note: thousands is a very clever word to use here, since if 999,900 people were permanently disabled by the vaccine, it would still be “true” but it implies a far smaller number.
When the word “believe” is used, it can have a few different meanings. For example it could be used:
• When you think something is true but don’t have the ability to back it up (e.g., I frequently use “believe” here because I think it is important to note the claims I am making that I cannot provide strong evidence for).
• To characterize something someone thinks is true an irrational belief that only exists in their head (e.g., a common way medicine gaslights patients ds by arguing the symptoms they experienced from a pharmaceutical injury are actually just “in their head”).
• When you want to acknowledge someone’s feelings to make it seem like you are doing something but divorce the discussion from any factual or substantiative grounding (something which sadly is quite common in the modern left).
In turn, I would argue the NYT was not using “believe” in the way I believe is appropriate to do and instead doing the latter two. Thus, like all good propagandists, they are attempting to find a way to twist the situation so that they can have their cake and eat it. Similarly, if you consider the other underlined phrase, it’s clear someone spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to write something that sounded like an acceptable admission and apology to those injured by the vaccines but simultaneously suggested that those injuries aren’t really a thing and there is nothing to be concerned about with the vaccine." .... "Note: as I show throughout this article, one of the most common scripts used to defend the vaccination program has been that the injuries are rare (e.g., one in a million). The best estimate I have seen of the vaccine injury rate is 18% of recipients experiencing mild to moderate injuries, 0.9% experience significant injuries (e.g., disabilities)—which of course does not include the many who have died (which many estimate at around 1 in 1000)."

Round 1, Pick 26 - Graham Barton, C, Duke:
NFL: The Buccaneers fortify the offensive line with an experienced player who offers position flexibility. His elite presence on the interior should help elevate the run game and keep Baker Mayfield upright.
CBS Sports: A. This is a great pick. They have major issues at center and a question at left guard and he can play both. I love this pick. Barton will move inside from tackle, but he can play there in a pinch too.
ESPN: The Bucs got their top pick of an interior offensive lineman in Barton, who can immediately step in to fill the void left by center Ryan Jensen's retirement. While all but four of Barton's offensive snaps over the last three seasons have come at left tackle -- where he allowed just one sack in 2023 and two in 2022 -- he played 446 snaps at center as a freshman, which is his most natural fit and what caught the Bucs' eye. He plays with a great base, a good anchor and a "nasty temperament" that the Bucs' front office covets.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Likes his coffee hot and water cold which is actually reasonable.
Round 2, Pick 57 - Chris Braswell, DE, Alabama:
NFL: It's not often that a player with two college starts lands inside the top 60 picks, but Braswell did emerge last season as a jack of all trades for the Crimson Tide. At the very least, he could be a terrific special-teamer, but the Bucs likely hope to develop Braswell's pass-rush arsenal and squeeze even more out of his terrific athletic profile.
CBS Sports: A+. Had early RD2 grade on this outside rusher. Length, methodical pass-rush moves, deceptive power. Very productive generating pressure at Alabama. Sets a sturdy edge. A need in the post Shaq Barrett era.
ESPN: While the Bucs did sign Randy Gregory in free agency, he'll likely wind up being more of a rotational player opposite second-year edge YaYa Diaby. What they've needed is a replacement for Shaquil Barrett, who departed for the Miami Dolphins in free agency. Braswell's three forced fumbles in 2023 were tied for the most in the SEC, while his 42 pressures were the third most in the SEC. His eight sacks were tied for the fifth most in the SEC after having 2.5 sacks from 2020 to 2022. He also had 53 coverage snaps in 2023, which Todd Bowles does ask of his edge rushers. Braswell played 41 games with Crimson Tide but only made two starts, both of which came last season.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: He only likes the yellow part of the gummy worm.
Round 3, Pick 89 - Tykee Smith, S, Georgia:
NFL: Smith has a Mike Edwards-like projection, so it's easy to see why the Bucs took Smith here, in the same range they drafted Edwards in 2019. Although Smith is undersized and not an elite athlete, he has the nose for the ball and enough special-teams value to be a contributor in Year 1.
CBS Sports: B-. Slot defender / safety hybrid closer to slot CB size but doesn’t have those quicks. Surprisingly powerful hitter at his size and plays with a lot of conviction when tracking the football. Super-smart in coverage. Reads QB’s in a flash which helps him play faster than his timed speed.
ESPN: The Bucs see Smith as a nickel, and he played 80% of snaps in the slot with Bowles keeping a close watch on the UGA program, where his son, Troy, plays. They started undrafted free agent rookie Christian Izien last year and signed Tavierre Thomas in free agency, but their secondary as a whole needs more takeaways, which is where Smith comes in. His four interceptions in 2023 were tied for the third most in the SEC. He was also one of three FBS players with four or more interceptions and two or more sacks in 2023 alongside Michigan's Mike Sainristil and UNLV's Cameron Oliver.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Ribs. This man loves ribs. Cannot get enough ribs!
Round 3, Pick 92 - Jalen McMillan, WR, Washington:
NFL: A smooth-moving slot or outside receiver, McMillan returned from injury to help the Huskies make it all the way to the national title game. He has big mitts, good hands and more juice than he's sometimes given credit for. This is a really nice weapon to add to the Bucs' WR room.
CBS Sports: B+. Crafty, complete wideout with a trademark trait. Runs quality routes. Adequate separation. Not a burner. Not slow. Tracks it with good concentrations. Not a huge YAC type nor someone who thrives when leaping for the football in traffic. Robert Woods type with a bit more juice.
ESPN: The Bucs declined No. 3 wide receiver Russell Gage's option this year, and he was released. Mike Evans will also be 31 and Chris Godwin enters the third and final year of his contract, worth $20 million per year. McMillan can line up inside or outside but 33 of his 45 receptions came out of the slot in 2023, and he caught six passes out of the backfield. He's also a master of the post route. His six touchdown catches on post routes since 2022 are tied for the most in the FBS, while his 253 receiving yards on post route concepts since 2022 are the 10th most in the FBS.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Still willing to try and get the band back together.
Round 4, Pick 125 - Bucky Irving, RB, Oregon:
NFL: Bucky to the Bucs keeps the run on Ducks going. He's not terribly fast but can get up to max speed quickly and might end up as a decent complement to Rachaad White, even if they do similar things well.
CBS Sports: A. Bad testing figures - - despite reasonable speed - - but one of the most elusive, hard-to-corral RBs over the last few drafts. Smaller stature. Decent contact balance too. Weapon in the receiving game, and of course, out in space. Fun addition.
ESPN: The Bucs have had the league's worst rushing attack over the last two seasons (82.9 yards per game) and wanted to bolster competition. Irving is 5-9 and 192 pounds and ran a 4.55 40-yard dash at the NFL combine -- 14th among 20 running backs. While his testing was not great, the tape shows production. He topped 1,000 rushing yards in each of his two seasons at Oregon, including 1,180 with 11 touchdowns in 2023. He broke or evaded an FBS-high 144 tackles since 2022, and he had 896 rushing yards between the tackles in 2023, averaging 7.1 yards per rush. His 56 receptions last season led all FBS running backs.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: He once ate an 8 layer peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Round 6, Pick 220 - Elijah Klein, OG, UTEP:
NFL: With 55 college starts and good length, Klein has a chance to make it in Tampa. He's stiff and might be an inside-only blocker, however.
CBS Sports: C. Smooth operator at guard. Quality run-blocking abilities. Opens the gate too soon in pass pro and not ultra experienced there. Not many true sets in college.
ESPN: The Bucs didn't re-sign Matt Feiler or Aaron Stinnie, who both started at left guard last season. Along with Cody Mauch, they finished with a combined 70.2% run blocking win rate among guards -- 16th in the league last year. None of them finished in the top 50 in pass block win rate either. The Bucs did sign free agent Sua Opeta from the Philadelphia Eagles, and Klein will compete with those two. Klein allowed 1.3% pressures at UTEP and in 45 games, he allowed four sacks with a 1.6% blown run block rate. In 2023, he allowed one sack all season.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Always wondered how Raymans hands worked if he doesn’t have arms.
Round 7, Pick 246 - Devin Culp, TE, Washington:
NFL: Culp shocked a few people when he ran a 4.47-second 40-yard dash, but his 230-pound frame figures to limit his role quite a bit. Even so, Culp improved each college season and has some unrealized potential as an H-back.
CBS Sports: B+. Smaller, speedster H-back TE type. Was very underutilized at Washington but flashed when given the opportunity. Made some impressive snags in traffic. Not much YAC-wise but can run away from second-level defenders if given space.
ESPN: The Bucs' 502 combined yards from tight ends last year was third worst, and they needed to bolster competition at the position. At 6-3 and 231 pounds, Culp ran a 4.47s 40-yard dash at the scouting combine, which was the fastest among tight ends this year. But he'll need to improve as an in-line blocker, which is where his size is a concern. He's also had some drops with six (8.8% drop rate) in 28 games.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Has soft hands… both ON and OFF the field.

There is more to it than the title. I was engaged to be married to a woman I was with for almost four years. In our last year together, she pretty much treated me like a ghost, ignoring messages, not wanting to go on dates, and the last straw was blocking me on social media. I did everything to keep the relationship alive, working long hours, going to visit her in her city every month, trying to talk to her, but she kept pushing me away. Eventually our last conversation was over the phone, at night, and her last words to me were "I don't love you now," "I am seeing someone else," and "I need you to back off." This was after Valentine’s Day, after a hard day of work, after I sent her a valentine gift. I was devastated and pretty much cursed out God, blamed the world, blamed myself for the relationship ending after I did everything I could to keep it. To this day I have doubt I am worthy to be a child of God, that I failed my family, I failed myself, and I failed at life. I was severely depressed for a long time. I am still depressed, but I have a better handle on it now.
A few months after the relationship ended, I have mixed feelings of love and hate towards my ex. I cannot forgive her, no matter how hard I tried. I have tried deeply and daily to forgive her, but I do not believe I can. I have not spoken to her since Feb 2023. I have blocked her on all social media. The only way she can contact me is by email, letter, or by going to my parents’ home. I have already told myself, if she ever wants to talk to me, it must be in person, no other way. I will not talk to people solely through social media anymore, it must be face to face or on an actual voice call (no voice messages) if we live in the same city.
In June 2023, I move to China and am working as an English teacher. I wanted to get far away from the past and I did. My family are supportive of my decision.
In July 2023, I met this sweet and intelligent woman through a language exchange app. We simply wanted to help each other practice English, Spanish, and Chinese. After a week or so she asked to have dinner with me as friends and I thought nothing of it. I was still recovering from the last relationship and wanted nothing to do with a new one. She chose a cool restaurant, had a bar, Mexican food, and great drinks. I expected the meetup to be about 30 minutes. It ended up being 3 hours. We had no idea that time flew quickly. The conversation we had was fun. The day we had dinner was the last day I was staying in her city, I had to move to another Chinese city in China for work. I never stopped thinking about her.
Few months pass by and its December 2023. I told myself “Screw it." I went online and ordered a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her home. Once the order was made, I thought nothing of it and continued my routines for the next few days. The flowers were going to be delivered on Christmas. Christmas is not a big holiday in China. I got anxious as the day got closer. I thought “what am I doing? I only met her once in person, we are language partners, I live in a different city, she and I are full time workers… blah blah blah.” At this point there was nothing I could do; I could not cancel the order. Christmas day comes, its dinner time, I am chilling with other foreigners, and I got a notification from the woman saying, “thank you for the flowers, they are beautiful.” I asked if we could chat, and she said of course. I do not know what came over me, I was scared but I wanted to be honest with her.
She told me “This is not a gift for a friend.” I responded in honesty “I have been thinking about you since the night we had dinner and I want to know if you could give me the chance to impress you and become your partner.” She said, “I had been waiting for you to do that, I do not know if it is romantic, but I do like you and would like to know you more.” This was a great feeling. I was happy and thankful. I thanked God and myself for doing it.
We met up a few weeks ago in her city and we had a wonderful dinner, we spent the entire day together, talking, walking, exchanging ideas, enjoying each other’s company. We even challenged each other to be healthier. Next time I see her, I must do 30 pushups and she has to do 1 pushup (not fair, but if I win, she has to ride a bike with me around a park). We have given each other cute nicknames; she calls me “Winnie the Pooh” and I call her “Honey.” She asked me why I call her “Honey” and I told her because, “Winnie the Pooh likes Honey.”
We kept our language exchange schedule, and we understand that we are both busy with work and taking this relationship slow is good for us. She has told me multiple times that she wants me in her city. Whether she wants me or not, I have always planned to go back to that city. The weather is nice, there are more things to do, it’s closer to other major cities.
There are so many times I want to talk to her, but the fear and past experiences shake me to the core. I TRULY want to talk to her, about anything. Hearing and listening to her speak about her passions and hobbies is joyous to me. We always exchange ideas in our weekly exchanges. I do not want to say, “I love her,” I am too scared to say that. However, I want her as my girlfriend. I just do not know what to do to overcome this fear and progress our relationship further.
Note: If anyone is wondering, yes, she is Chinese. I am American but my appearance is Hispanic.

Having spent a few dozen hours in the game & menu loading a save file that had 230 gold bricks……. I realized how frustrating this game was and the potential it could’ve had. I just am at a loss for words on the game. This game had SO MUCH POTENTIAl but had too much focus on the toys, & bugs or game breaking engine problems.
I haven't touched dimensions in a hot minute but.. really wish lego added more PATCHES before they shut down the game & wish it got its own remastered lego game without the toys…. or some version with a % meter & better save system…. Feel like if TT worked longer on it, they could have been better fixes with the game & the other lego ip dlc’s.
I noticed a few times HOW ANNOYED I was when my many save files from 2019, 2023, & 2024 all were gone….. on ps4 I just gave up caring and was disappointed even after completing it & saving the game to my console. so furthermore after I just stopped playing, not sure if this is a bug but was annoying.
Starting with the dlc's i noticed things felt off like each dlc was the weakest or too short for a game entry story, or more specifically the simpsons one recreating the episode with homer & the chilli cook off, of all the new story levels it was fun but felt weird. All the other lego film games got it down very well gameplay wise so, why not do a lego batman movie or a lego simpson's game? & have it's own game... instead of dimensions? ALSO THE PUZZLES THE COLOR PUZZLES THE KEYSTONES all annoying. DOING THEM EVERY DAM TIME I GOT SOOOOOO BORED… decent game, fun worlds, annoying locking content in it and no 100% to finish. Only letting the player use a character…. That was Dedicated TO THAT SPECIFIC world locking you out… is annoying also cant access mini-kits without said character… This is not fun TT…. but moving on to a few other things, did not care for switching the keystones, and using vehicles for every dam puzzle or ramp.
The best level was probably fantastic beasts or portal & that could’ve & should have been added in its own lego Hogwarts FB saga game.
I enjoyed the lego ninjago game more then I thought I would, & the first lego movie game was cool just felt weird they put Lego Batman movie in dimensions vs its own separate actual lego game.
The movie scene cutscenes for each dlc were recreated in the dimensions in-game engine & had a fun charm to them. But at times was very disappointing as the quality difference is very noticeable. On the contrary, The LEGO Movie Game used movie cutscenes beautifully and it worked out really well. Could be a licensing issue, but if not I have no idea why they didn’t just use movie cutscenes where they could. I understand not wanting to release 60% of the movie in the game, but they could always shape it around the scenes shown in the trailer. The batman story pack felt like devs rushed it…. Not bringing actors back for discount va’s. Robin sounds like a kid in this dlc not anything like Michael cera. I can understand if they didn't get every one back for the game for rights or contract issues but just was weird. & newt or the FB story were interesting using new keystone & magic abilties. The ghostbuster ones were weird since I never cared for the movie..
There are a few differences like In the dlc levels, Batman is picked up by Alfred outside the power plant and heads directly to Commissioner Gordon's retirement party. In the film, he heads home and the retirement party is the next evening.
Some of the voice work is off. Many characters don’t sound like they did in the movie (I know they’re different VA’s) Alfred sounds nothing like movie Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), Robin sounds nothing like movie Robin (Michael Cera), etc. Other LEGO projects have had fairly good voice replication.
The LEGO Batman Movie expansion is all and all a success. It’s given us the best portal base so far, as well as the first expansion to give us 2 mini-figures which are both great. The game is great and funny as well as a decent length. The game only suffers from occasional bugs and terrible voice acting.
Maybe I just really disliked the keystone puzzles but I was really disappointed in it overall. The scenes were funny bringing in joker & all the villains, I enjoyed seeing the gremlins & agent smith from matrix & sauron’s eye but wish they made a lego Batman game not within dimensions.
If you want to play around in the LEGO Batman Movie HUB world you can access to the HUB world for maximum fun. Id say just try the hub level if you are interested but I felt bored with the lego batman movie game dlc levels. Sadly its REPLAY-Ability was a 5… compared to fantastic beasts and others.
imagine what they could've done with a full roster of batman's villains & heroes in a full open linear game with gotham, & sure we've had tons of batman games but just loved will arnett's version of batman. I really love will arnett so felt like dimensions needed more of that batman.
Too much clutter & focus on building vehicles when they aren't all that interesting or useful…. Switching from the ecto car to the ghost trap each time felt stupid. Even tho they fixed it in 2016 with the characters instant traps. Flying characters freak out when you are next to the edge of the map & fall off repeatedly or just stand there hovering… did NO ONE THINK about patching that?
I also understand this is not a typical lego game & the audience is for kids but at least try to juggle both demographics for those who dont want to waste time?
No percent on gold bricks collected, or the items…. Why couldn’t they added a save system where if you lose your file you can save & quit with the bricks you found why is it on ps4 ps5…. Somehow deleting the game doesn’t remember where you left off?? Was this a patch that they never fixed?
Also, anyone else find it weird that the courtroom from Ghostbusters 2 isn't in the world? They even have the whole Titanic, something that only appears for 30 seconds in the movie, but one of the most important scenes isn't in the world at all or hell adding more side characters or locations why not explore inside of a building?
Also X-PO talks too much, every line of him talking during hints. I've made the choice to leave the main campaign unfinished just so he can stay silent while I play other levels. In the actual campaign and cutscenes he's fine but they made a huge mistake making him react to puzzles.
The bugs and lack of polish ruin the game..massively this is a massively outdated engine and the more they keep adding to it the buggier the games get. I'd love to see a new one built from the ground up for next gen capable created of anything they can think of with some impressive graphics. When you look at the fidelity of ratchet and clank on PS Pro there's no reason this game can't look as good as the Lego movies or very close, it's just laziness and greed (lack of investment from WB wanting to just churn out content quickly on the old engine) even on ps4 its annoying losing your save file deleting the game then reinstalling It AND LOSING ALL YOUR PROGRESS!!!!
In addition to that.... if your in game and you come across a character with some of the features or skills that you don't own and it doesn’t register or displays a hint message on your system with them… saying use this specific character, your forever locked out of hiring them when you need them, after it has taken them home & shows the ability… the game forgets…. you own them, while the game gets amnesia, even if you own the tag it gets stuck with missing features, forcing you to reload & quit, Really lame, as well as if you don’t own a certain character & need them for specific puzzle your just screwed.. it sounds like this would have been an afterthought amidst the torrent of further stand-alone level and story packs not being patched & lack of auto save or levels not being able to cloud save. >_< why? who knows...
So many boring hubs, & races locking variety or enjoyment, too many hubs that had New York…ghostbusters 1980 New York, ghostbusters 2016 New York……. FB New York…..Lego Batman movie Gotham hub just looks like New York.
Characters like the witch newt Gandalf all have the same magic ability, not interesting since they all do the exact same thing.
The vehicles are very boring, not very interesting too small. Why is chima here??? Random moments that just feel weird the battle arena was fun but after a while I got bored.
Also, I kinda wish there were in game unlockable characters: Like if you bought the Sonic dlc, beating quests would unlock the ability to buy Amy, Tails, Shadow etc. or The Simpsons allowing you to buy Marge, Lisa, maggie or each of the ghostbusters, etc. with studs.
Overall there were a few interesting levels but could’ve been cooler if we got a lego Batman movie game, or a lego bttf game, or a lego ghostbusters game, yada yada..... & just surprised at it not being its own game instead of within dimensions. I know sadly this likely wont happen tho.. it disappoints me that the game is mostly looking at build instructions, back & forth again and again….. I am very upset dimensions wont ever be remastered added with better patches because what I had played felt muddied & not crafted well. I don’t mean to be so negative but it was weird having these problems front & center. in the end too many glitches & gameplay loop moments.

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

I've been playing with my sample spreadsheet and was reminded that I literally relegated Sucreabeille to its own tab away from everyone else because I felt so negatively! They were my intro to indies, when I didn't know how to research scents or houses yet. I was hesitant to purchase because their marketing vibe didn't mesh with me, but I was convinced by the fawning reviews on almost every scent (on their website). At the time, I also didn't realize how expensive Suc is compared to many other brands!
I figured I could post these as a counterpoint to the mostly positive reviews that showed up when I searched for Suc scents. I'm sure the house works really well for some, but it REALLY didn't for me. Their pure gourmands worked better, but I haven't worn my top rated scent from this batch since I tried it out. I rested all of these for two weeks before testing, and I haven't revisited them since I got through all of them a few weeks after that.
My tastes: I really like rich resins and non-nag incense, as well as a spectrum of flormands and gourmands. I don't love fruits, green/aquatic scents or many dirt/dead leaf scents. Top houses: Olympic Orchids, Mythpunk Olfactive, Solstice Scents. Mid houses: Nui Cobalt, Cocoa Pink. Low hit rates: Suc, Alkemia, Possets, Haus of Gloi, BPAL GC
With that, I hope you enjoy my record of bewilderment.
BELSNICKEL Hot espresso with juniper berries and brown sugar.

• In the jar, tutti fruitti jelly beans, maaaybe coffee jelly bean if I smell hard enough to get a headache. On skin, very sweet, easier to see the brown sugar now and it's THICK. Syrupy. There's a little bitter note that could be juniper, sure, but it's toying with soapiness. After 15 min, already almost gone. The sweetness plus green now smells like a bathroom air freshener, plus the bathroom; not good. By an hour: gone! Weirdly getting more wafts of it around 4 hrs, and it's back to tutti fruitti? MAYBE brown sugar but god, just cloying. Erratic and synthetic, big disappointment. 1/10

CHAOS WITCH Freshly cut magnolias and moonflowers play with nutmeg cream.

• Very sweet pale floral with a cool spice, not identifiable as nutmeg. No clear magnolia. I didn't pay close enough attention to review this one well, but I was very disappointed by the complete lack of magnolia (a scent I love) and the vaguely unpleasant Suc DNA 3/10

DO NO HARM, TAKE NO SHIT Plums, nectarines, apricots, and blackberries sparkle on a bed of sage and fallen leaves deep in the autumnal forest.

• In jar: Fairly pleasant candy fruit smell (plum, berries) with a little cool herbaceous back to it. On skin: Fruits disappear to general sweetness over a damp earth and burnt rubber scent, maybe burnt leaves? Confusing. At 15 min, sort of a fruity sweetness? Over a sour off-note that could be the rotten leaves, but it comes off as sort of... poopy? I actually washed this off before leaving for work (less than an hour) bc I didn't want to smell like it - scrubbing didn't totally work, so I can say it's vaguely sweet with a dirty-herby soap base that I don't care for but isn't making me yak 1/10

AFTERGLOW Dark chocolate, amber, honey.

• Definitely get dark chocolate and honey in the jar! Not creamy but still rich and warm. On skin it loses power and sweetness very fast, it's a very faint borderline-musty borderline-burnt rubber smell with a baby powder. After a few minutes, thank god it's back to the bottle smell! Not as chocolatey which is too bad, but a pleasant sweet amber with a hint of chocolate. Something of the wet scent is still sneaking around? But then it turned into a cocoa butter lotion smell. Stays similar over the next 4 or 5 hrs, growing fainter. I think I like this? Maybe a bit synthetic though, but then again I don't always love the sharpness of honey 6/10

CREAM TEA A warm mug of creamy, frothy, caffeine-injected tea. A blend of chai tea, burnt sugar, white musk, warm milk, and hot scones slathered with raspberry jam and honey.

• More like an iced chai, not a warm scent in the jar. There's a sharp zingy berry in the background which might be what's cooling it down. On skin, the cool note is more dry loose leaf black tea, with a big sweet raspberry jam in front - not the most natural but nice. As it starts to dry, the closer I get to my skin the more it smells like a scented lotion. I don't get milk or pastry, or any of the chai spice at this point. At an hour, a sweet, creamy raspberry; still reminds me of a scented lotion, a bit bath-producty for me. At 4 hrs, a very faint sweet raspberry. Creamy in the sense that it's not sharp at all. Barely there but very pleasant. 6/10

YOUR SKELETON IS ALWAYS WET Pistachio and almond with exotic spices.

• In jar: Nutty! Close to what I hoped for, definitely pistachio/almond extract with a little hint of spice. Wet on skin, like huffing an extract bottle ach! That's a plus for me haha. Dries down to be very faint, mostly spices. This reminds me more of some chai blends I've had than Cream Tea does. At an hour, mostly dry spices, like a spice cabinet for only sweet bakes. I think the nuts are presenting as bottles of extract in that same cabinet, but definitely not the stars. 4 hrs: very faint, more of the nuts now but it's a generic non-spice sweetness, only vaguely nutty and kind of black peppery 5/10

COVEN A cauldron of herbs float in black, golden, and white ambers. Fir needles, cedarwood, and autumn leaves against a backdrop of pumpkin spice and sassafras.

• Definitely get a dark green foresty scent with a soft herbal element; a vague sweetness that is nondescript light spice, maybe the sassafras. Started promisingly dark-wet-forest but then turns into a barely-there high end/sexy soap, maybe that's ambecedar. Maybe good for soapy folk, not for me! 4/10

AMAZONIA Pear, fig, blueberry, ylang ylang.

• So so sweet, almost like one of those shark or frog gummy candies, gummy life savers, chewy gummy bears. No specific fruits identifiable. On skin, there's something musty to the fruitiness, maybe like a plasticky scent. I could almost pretend to smell pear, but it's not good 1/10

SMOKE AND DECAY Warm snickerdoodle cookies dipped in buttercream frosting, campfire wood smoke, crisp red apple, Indian sandalwood, a freshly poured oatmeal stout, orange spiced chai tea.

• Yummm sweet baking spices, definitely like a dark molasses spice cake in the jar (but the carrier smell is bleh). Wet on skin it's immediately a more realistic foody spice, but with a warm wood. After a minute the spice blooms off and there's something almost floral about it? Definitely get a bit of the orange, maybe cookie dough. 8/10

VENOM Oud wood, smoked patchouli, coal, freshly paved tar, cedarwood.

• WOW!! Smells like a sweet burning tire?? Maybe in a good way?? I want to smell it on a boy. Hmm but not good after all. Disappears almost entirely, fades to a hard to detect sun-sweet fresh asphalt. So hard to pick up though. 1/10

HOCUS POCUS Wormwood, bitter almond, figs, violets, nicotina, sparkling aldehyde.

• The wormwood is giving thin and clean-sweet like a not-quite almond extract. However, once this dries it's straight up Dove soap. It's so spot on idk what else to say! Another one for the soap lovers. 3/10

Hiii so I’m fairly new on this subreddit and like what I said on my title, I’m looking for someone who can end my hopeless romantic reign. I would love to be treated and (eventually) be loved right because I’m confident that I too, can treat and love you right. :>>
Here’s somethings about me:

• 5’4 in height; average weight (normal pa rin naman BMI ko last I checked 😆)
• Mestiza with chinky eyes (not too singkit)
• I love cats, I have 2 myself, and of course dogs, I also have 2
• I’m currently a Nursing student (not in the big 4 but still a participant in UAAP)
• a fan of F1 and american football, this was what I focused on during the pandemic
• good at cooking and singing (2 main entries to be a certified Filipino jk)
• My friends say I have a great kanal humor (pero as a versatile girlie, can turn into aircon humor asw)
• I adore everything romance or romcom, it keeps me sane 🤣

Here’s somethings about you: - 21 to 28 years old - NOT A GHOSTER (if we don’t click, have the decency to at least say goodbye) - taller than 5’8 hopefully - can match my kalog energy - not a dry texter - caring, respects boundaries, and most importantly; - A ROMANTIC ❗️❗️❗️
Just give me a unique intro if you’re going to message and not just your typical hi/hello. :>>> Please be prepared to send a picture bc I will too. I don’t have t/g so IG is the only way to go and maybe we can level up to messenger. Lastly, I may be a romantic but I can differentiate whether you’re being genuine or you’re just lovebombing me (experience-based trauma) so please please please be as genuine as you are.

Okay so I know people are going to see that title and immediately think “wannabe” but please hear me out. There’s a lot of backstory in this.
I 21m think I might have ADHD but I’m confused, lost, I don’t know where to start and I don’t want to embarrass myself and just turn out “I’m normal.”
I have a somewhat regular life now. I live alone, pay my bills, work, socialise, etc. However recently I’ve been overthinking a lot about my lifestyle and I just am unsure what to do. For example, my sleep schedule is royally fucked. I can’t sleep for the life of me. I feel uncomfortable if I move a smidge and just start thinking about stupid shit and fantasies until my body is quite literally exhausted enough to sleep. Which results in me then getting up at a random time 4 hours later. Can’t go back to sleep but will then sleep again 3 hours later for another 4 hours. I have to just lay there for hours on end to get a “good nights sleep.” Then at work I’m so underwhelmed and feel a force to work. I feel like I have to force myself to work or I won’t do it. I’m so bad at finishing things. I prepare things and make a plan in my head but it takes me double the time to actually finish it because I just get so bored and then have to force myself to do it again. I’ve also felt unmotivated recently and to be truthful it’s because this is the longest period I’ve had at work where I have not been promoted. Just plain feeling what’s the point at the moment. And the coffee. I’m mugging the company off completely. If I don’t have 3 I will just lollope.
Outside of work I also am backed up on so much stuff I have to do. I have my gym membership I haven’t cancelled yet. I haven’t cleaned my bathroom which I said I’d do 2 weeks ago. I haven’t sent my mum the bedsheets I saw that she wanted yet. I haven’t organised my washing properly in weeks. Just so many task that take so long to do for no reason at all and I can’t explain it. I could be lazy but I just can’t seem to do them on time. Don’t get me started on Christmas. Every year I am running around on the last week looking for anything. I left it so late last year I didnt even have any Christmassy wrapping paper. I also don’t know if this is a thing but if I enjoy a song I will play it over and over and over again until I will randomly no longer like it. I will replay the song so many times until I don’t get any enjoyment from it at all.
Now for some backstory. When I was around 12 I started getting panic attacks. I have anxiety and a panic disorder which I have been diagnosed with. My mum then started to notice difference with me and spoke with the family worker I had at the time. I had troubles in school and they suspected at the time I had autism. My family worker was a very nice lady and hope she is doing well but was very unsure if it was autism at the time, however suggested to my mum that I might be masking. At 12 this made no sense to me at all but I can see what she meant at the time. It took 2 years to get me referred and I went to get diagnosed. I just remember this woman giving me a book and asking me to explain the pictures and then pick an object out of a box and then talk about my school life. I didn’t lie, I was an utter shit show. I was expelled from 2 schools at that point. After that was done it took another month until my mum got the news that I did not have autism. I just remember her being devastated and confused on what was wrong with me. I then continued being a shit, until I turned into a bigger shit. I started smoking and drinking and then bam kicked out my 3rd school by age 15. I was then enrolled into a school for kids who had previously been bullied or suffer with other disabilities which make it no longer possible for them to attend mainstream schools. I remember her having to apply for this thing with the council so my education was paid for “truthfully I think I still have that document standing to this day.” This school offered lessons either one on one with a teacher or small groups. They also offered students with trained therapists and my one was an absolute gem. He enjoyed my company and I enjoyed his. A few months went by and me, my mum, my head teacher, another teacher and my therapist were in this meeting. I don’t remember much about it just shit I didn’t bother to listen to. However my therapist suggested to my mum that I might have ADHD and spoke with her about symptoms he had noticed which I didn’t even really pay much attention to. My mum flat out said no and said she wasn’t going to wait another 2 years for me to get seen to. So I continued to live my life yet again, get head boy, become a mentor, run an afterschool club, attend music, photography and art club. Then just randomly dropped out. Don’t know why I did this.
I just don’t know where to start, how do I even go about it. Do I just ring my doctors and say I think I have this? What if I look like a complete idiot? I just am so confused and lost and scared and where to start? I just can’t keep living like this I just want a bit of normality in my life and am just so tired of being like this.

As the title suggests, I am trying to build a long-term financial model for my household, but struggling with where to start.
I would rather not use a financial advisor because 1) I don’t need money management, just a one-time model setup for my long term plan and I’m sure I could maintain this if there was a good framework/template to start with, 2) I like doing all of our finances (investments, taxes, budgeting) myself, and 3) I want to be able to tweak this plan over time myself, and not have to pay some wealth advisor a fixed fee just to tell me what I could get to with a spreadsheet.
The things I’m struggling with, in particular, are:

• how to account for inflation of costs/income over time. For example, my mortgage is fixed, but how should I project things like my kids future college tuition, or cost of living, or prospective salary increases? Just a flat 3% inflator YOY seems fine, but not sure if there’s a better way to do that.
  
• how to model different scenarios. Will my wife want to stay home after our kids are born? What should I expect for childcare costs with 2 kids vs 3? Etc
  
• how to think about how much money me/my wife really want in retirement vs just in a brokerage account vs a high yield savings account. We are a high income couple and I feel like currently we are putting too much into retirement and could probably scale that back at some point to focus on more near term goals like moving into a “forever home”. But I don’t really know how to think about whether the next 15 years of our lives cost-wise relative to my retirement years.
  

Any suggestions, or good books or templates for building something like this, would be greatly appreciated!

This story takes place over the course of about 2 ish years so details may get a little jumbled, so please bare with me. Let me start this story by setting the stage and important characters.
Dm - pretty okay guy but a little hot headed at times (This is mildly important)
Me - Aasimar warlock fighter multi class
K - tabaxi monk and problem player
There are a few other players but they don't really play too much of a role in this story, so I'll bring them up as needed.
We were playing Rime of the Frostmaiden, my first long term campign and the first character that I geniunely enjoyed and charished. Like I said above, I was playing an Aasimar warlock fighter, who was in the rime escaping a bounty on her head and was making ends meet by smuggling goods in and out of the ten towns. I loved her so much.
The campign starts and everything is fine for the most part, there are some in character disagreements but it was all in good fun, or so I thought. K's character constantly called my character evil for worshipping the Raven queen (hexblade warlock), before any of the problems actually start to arise its non stop and I quote, "Your a smelly stinky warlock drow!" I worked with my dm when making my charcter, and we decied that she was techinally a half helf, her fatehr being a dark elf. The only thing that made her stand out as anything else was the fact that she was well over six feet tall and build like a brick shit house.
I found out after these first few sessions that this player was the kind to run ahead of the party, without telling anyone in character, and get into trouble. The first time this happened and they showed their true colors was when we were exploring a mineshaft and turns out there was a Grell hiding in there under the specific condition, written IN THE BOOK mind you, that it would only come out if someone were in the room ALONE. Can you guess who found it and almost died as a result? If you guessed K, then you would be right. After a battle and K almost going down, almost, they start to raise hell and say that it wasn't fair and they couldn't do anything (The grell had them grappled and held in the air the majority of the fight while everyone else peppered it with spells). The DMm had to tell them that it wasn't an encounter that he made, that it was in the book and supposed to be there.
We continue with our sessioned and what not, having an occational out burst from K about the game being too hard from them splitting the party and running off. Things do start to bubble when the dm punishes K in game for their antics. For example, they start acting out of line with their gods beleifs and their god stops talking to/interacting with them, to which K whines and throws a fit over. A few more issues that we run into along the way include, but are not limited to

• K threatening to burn down a mans house because they losyt a fight. This fight was something set up by a fight club, with rules. The whole point of the fights were to rank up and challenge the champ.
• K breaking into their moms house through the chimmney and getting their ass lit on fire.
• K constantly stealing from the people of the ten towns, which if you know, are starving and activley dying.
• K complaining during almost every combat that it was unfair, unbalanced, and not fun. All the while everyone else, myself included, was having a great time
• K leaving call multiple times during session, espesially during combat, and blaming it on ADHD. This specific one pissed both me and the dm off, who I stated was a hot head before. He did not take kindly to his time and resourses being wasted. I was upset because I also have ADHD and found a ways to manage it during sessions, even offered to help K! But they always turned me down and just continued with leaving session and upseting the dm over it, while contining to blaim it on a mental illness that them and I shared.

The major two events that earn this post its title goes as follow, in this order.
My charcter was assasinated.
Her past caught up with her and she was killed, bled out in the middle of the tundra. But the dm and I talked about this, and it was meant to happen. You see, the dm sent me some cool prostetic homebrew that I really wanted to use. So we made a plan for my character to get killed, lose an arm in the process and be brought back as a reborn with an arm made of magic from the Raven Queen. What I wasn't expecting was the dm to give me a choice in letting my character die or taking the reserection in exchange for soemthing. The original trade would have been that she comes back to life but no matter what she or her father did, she and him would forever have their fates severed and couldnt do anything to save eachother.
This is a deal my character would not have taken, and I would have let her stayed dead to keep in charcter. But the dm threw me a bone and gave me a different deal instead. To which every time she died here after, she would have to stay dead for a longer and longer time, each time. Like that stop motion Pinoccio moive if you've seen it. While the dm and I were talking about it, I thought it would be funny to just roll new stats to keep everyone on their toes as we ended session before I made my decision.
Que K absolutly losing their mind in our general chat, saying that if my character dies then they wanted a new character too. The only reason this would be an issue was because we had lost a lot of the original party, K and myself being the only characters left. The Dm had even stated a while before that if we lost all the pcs that he would consider ending the campign, as no ones character would have the same inititave to act and all that. So K threaning to make a new character because I might make a new character, made things more complicated. I had put almost a year of my time at this point and didn't want it to go down the drain because of this. Which also plays into why the dm game be an easier deal for my character to take for her life back.
They had an actual break down over this, why? I still have no clue.
The second event was a dragon encounter. An Adult Black Dragon that was destorying the Ten Towns.
It was the most high stakes encounter we had ever had at that point, and everyone was stressed to say the least. My self and the artificer cast fly on eachother so we can actually reach the dragon who keeps doing fly by breath attacks. After almost an hour and a half of combat we finally slay the dragon, with myself landing the final blow. I was fucking estatic! My first dragon encounter and was the one to kill it. K however, wasn't happy.
Imeadiatly they start screaming about how they couldn't land a hit on the dragon and were useless for the fight. Saying that the Dm ran the encounter wrong, which upset the dm who was once again running a written encounter from the module. They kept screaming over the vc while we all tried to calm them down. It ended with the relativly calm barbarian pc who snapped and went off on them. There was so much yelling and fighting that I just left. I heard from the dm after the fact that K threatened to leave, which I guess they thought would work like it had in the past, but everyone who was left in vc told them to go ahead.
They stayed and we continued to have issues with them threatening to kill off their character if things didn't go their way or they weren't the mvp of every session. Needless to say, the dm kicked them after a few more sessions.

Hey y'all! I'm trying to see if I have a good chance of getting into UT Austin with a biology major. Here are some of my stats so far ( I am currently a junior) Cumulatively I am taking 13 APS over the course of my high school career.
Weighted GPA: 5.2, Unweighted GPA: 4.0 Rank: 29/477

1. Austin Youth Symphony Orchestra (all four years of high school)
2. Varsity Choir at my public school (all four years of highs chool)
3. President of a non profit organization called HWARANG

• teach Ukraine, Vietnam, and Guatemala students english
• Nursing Home Volunteering

1. President of HWARANG Medical Committee
2. Student Council Administrative Director
3. Will be co-founding a club called "The Brown Bag Project"

• more volunteering to help homeless individuals in the area

1. Created a project called Project Care (reached over 5,000 individuals- placed 5th in regionals)
2. HOSA Regional Qualifier
3. DECA State Qualifier (2 years)
4. Shadowing a dentistry
5. Working at Camp Camp

• Volunteering for Autistic individuals

1. Presidential Volunteer Service Award (Over 100 hours in one year)
2. AP Capstone Diploma

I plan to do things over the summer and during senior year. Let me know what my chances are looking like please :-)
I also may major in Bio-Chem or something else in the science (let me know if I have a good chance in the science majors in general, because I know how competitive biology is)

I downloaded bumble for the very first time a little less than a year ago. I was excited to actually try dating apps at first, since I never had. I had done online dating, but through the old school PC based apps like OK cupid, I got 2 long term relationships from those and was now trying bumble since it seemed that's where the people were.
I even liked the spin where women had to message first. As a man, her showing some effort is wonderful, I don't have to come up with my most witty opener, just to hear crickets. If she engages first, there must be something she likes about me. At first, this worked well. I got a few matches, and went on some dates, but within a few months, the matches started to degrade in quality and they became less frequent and the experience got stale. I don't know for sure, but I suspect your algorithm "got to know me" a little better, and decided I was only worthy of people I wasn't overly interested in.
I could tell your algorithm was struggling when the distances from my place started getting longer and longer for my matches. I live in a place of over 2 million people, so that's not the problem. But let me tell you something, I was getting notifications from my phone 3 or 4 times a day! I want desperately a long term relationship again.
I do well in relationships and when my phone would ding, I'd get excited, only to have it be an ad from YOU bumble, or some sort of weird pep talk that "Confidence is hot" or that "my boss wouldn't know about my profile?" What? Thanks but having been in several relationships and knowing women in real life, I really didn't need the pep talk that "confidence is hot" and I'm quite sure my boss doesn't give a shit what I do on bumble. So since I now equated notifications with nonsense from you. I stopped even checking, maybe I'd check a couple times a week instead of everyday like I was. I lost engagement and yes, I even lost matches, because it was easier to risk losing a match than get my hopes up over your harassing notifications.
Then I noticed something else, almost every profile had heavily filtered pictures, and very few of the pictures were of someplace local. Again, I live in a place of 2 million people...sort of strange that almost no one has a picture that looks like it was taken around here. Nope, apparently everyone is in Bali all the time. I can only assume that these profiles are to pad out your women numbers. I don't know how you're doing it, but I've seen the picture of heavily filtered Megan by the Eiffel tower at least 3 times now. It's getting old.
Because I wasn't engaged as much, I obviously got less dates. You can certainly blame me for that if you wish, but I think I'm the kind of man you want on your app. I'm not perfect. I mean, I'm divorced for one.......but I'm well educated and I think I have my house in order and I'm not out here just sending dick pics or trying to get laid. I put some thought into my messages and into my profile. I'm really looking for a woman to experience the world with!
Now with your rebrand....I have to say, I'm getting tired, I understand you need to build a user base of women and need to cater to that, but it is us men that are paying the bills, we're the ones buying spotlights, or super likes or whatever you're calling it these days, we're the ones shelling out hundreds of dollars in just a hope that we might go on a date with a woman that we can share the world with. The reality bumble, is that dates aren't happening anymore or at any frequency that justifies spending anything. I'm not on your app to swipe, I'm not on your app to spotlight, or like or even text with someone. I'm on your app because I want to go on dates.
Now let's go through the progression of how that happens on your app.
First I have to create a top notch profile; And because your gender ratio is 2 to 1 men to women, I better be in the top half because if not, there's not going to be any matches, just by simple math. If the ratio is 2 to 1 and every single woman matches with a DIFFERENT man, there's still 50% of men without a match.
THEN, I have to swipe, which....is a soul crushing activity on any app if you're actually looking for a long term relationship.
THEN I get a match! Oh boy!.............Then she has to respond in 24 hours. Hope she doesn't get sick or have a big work project or forget about me in her sea of matches and dick pics!
THEN she gets to send an "Opening move" AKA AI Generated nonsense.
THEN I Have to respond.....and again, it better be a top notch witty response. Like it has to be funny and interesting at the level of Anthony Bourdain Meets James Bond Meets Robin Williams meets Bob Ross levels!
THEN if she likes it, then and only then will I get a text, a text, not a date, a text from an actual woman, and its likely to be "Hey or something else low effort"
THEN we have to hope that continues long enough to appropriately share numbers or get an actual date arranged.
If this is the way you're going to run it bumble.........then I have to say, I'll just walk up to some woman at a bar. She might say no, we might find we're incompatible in the first 5 seconds, but at least a date or prelude to a date happened.
You're a dating app after all. If dates aren't happening or require that many hoops, that could get screwed by your algorithms at any time, than I, and I hope many other men like me get off your application yesterday, and I certainly hope they spend not one more dime until this subreddit's front page is filled with stories of GOOD MEN and GOOD WOMEN meeting from bumble. THAT is how you will make money, and THAT is how you will repair your significantly tarnished reputation among both men and women. Ladies, I can't imagine this is working for you either.
As an epilogue. I hired matchmaker............she wasn't cheap, but unlike you, she doesn't upsell me daily, she listens to me, she doesn't blow smoke about what is and isn't realistic, and more importantly, her matches are good and getting better, and dates are actually happening. That's more than I can say for you. It's a shame matchmaking isn't accessible to everyone, or you'd be out of business even faster. Reading this back.......it appears I was having an abusive relationship with Bumble that needs to stop.

Hello, sorry if I'm posting in the wrong thread but I don't have anywhere else to go. I don't know if I'm reading the situation wrong/if I'm the crazy exaggerator so here I wanted an outside opinion.
For context, me and my sister were raised by my single mom, who is also an immigrant. My sister has classified my mom as a narcissist and an abuser, and I would definitely agree that she has narcissistic tendencies, they're pretty much in line with the "immigrant parent" experience and although the abuse has lessened with age.
My sister was pretty much the scapegoat and I was the golden child 80% of the time; the only time I was "the problem" was when social issues were involved as I was very much autistic+ADD and had no idea how to relate to others, so I was bullied and blamed for it. My sister has ADHD and was terrible at school, which is where a lot of my mom's anger towards her came from. She's very bitter about the majority of our childhood, which I understand; there are things that happened that I will also simply never recover from, even with therapy.
My sister is bubbly, charismatic, and very empathetic. I can't stress that enough; everyone loves her. She's friends with random people in our neighborhood, she talks to and befriends homeless people, and is training to be a social worker. She has many close friends and talks to them all day and night. Our relationship was pretty rocky when we were kids, and I can't say that we're as close as some siblings are, but I always thought our relationship was okay. My mom would sometimes complain that we were against her, but I think she was just frustrated that we wouldn't turn on each other easily. However, I did start to notice a few things about my sisters behavior that is concerning me.

• She has a victim complex/hard time doing anything important by herself, but only when I'm available to help/do it for her.

I think this is a consequence of her never being trusted to do things as a child, but I thought she would attempt to get better with age. Nope. She would ask me to fill out her student loan and passport forms, saying that she was scared to get things wrong. When I would try to get her to do it herself, she would get upset with me and call me selfish. She says that this is because she feels that she is not smart enough to do anything bc of her childhood; fair, but she's 22 now, so I think she should try to help herself out and try to build confidence. She now pays her friends to fill out forms for her; one of them is actually being paid to apply for graduate programs for her. Any mention of this makes her talk about how badly she was treated as a kid and how its lead to her being so scared of doing anything, so OF COURSE she needs help 24/7.
But at the same time, she goes out of her way to help other people with their paperwork; she even helped a coworker get into grant/loan program for university, and that paperwork was 10 times harder than what she has to fill out. It's very confusing, it makes me feel like she does these things so people like her.

• She hates responsibility.
  I feel like this is her being self aware that she's sort of useless. For example; she doesn't have a credit card, and just uses my moms/mine and pays us back at the end of the month. Recently, I asked her to stop using my credit card since she kept forgetting to pay me the right amount. She also had this habit of using my card as a form of revenge against me if I forgot to pick up her things during my grocery run (she can't drive). She would also threaten to use my card if I didn't do things for her (she said it was a joke, but it rubbed me the wrong way). Anyway, she got upset and said she needed my card for emergencies. I asked why she didn't just apply for a credit card. She said she was unsure if she would be responsible enough to manage a credit cards and make payments on time. But...she felt comfortable using MY card? The one that I have to manage and make sure payments are made on time? I explained how worrisome that was and she just told me I was crazy and controlling.
  

This has also steeped into how she approaches things like deadlines. She missed a deadline for a grant she really needed (twice) and spent an entire week emailing the grant team asking them to accept her application, and then emailing their bosses when they refused. Whenever she's rejected from graduate programs she's always confused and says she should've gotten in, even though there are some clear deficits in her applications.

• She is always telling me how bad of a person I am when I don't do as she says. Like, morally.

A good example I can think of is that she asked me to chip in $23 for her friends birthday; I was confused why I had to pay since the girl wasn't MY friend. My sister argued that since I had talked to her and liked her, this made us friends, and friends contribute to birthdays. She also said if I backed out then she would have to split my part over other people who I would consider to be my friends and that those friends were in tight financial situations, so I would be a shitty person for making them pay extra. I still refused to pay; this really had nothing to do with me. She just looked at me and said that she was surprised that I was such a shitty person. There are similar stories to this; whenever she wants me to do something and I refuse, she makes me out to be a horrible person. Not in a yelling/screaming way; she just comments "oh, never knew you were that shitty" and keeps it up for however long it is until I do the thing she asked for. for some reason I never really saw them as weird until I brought it up with some friends and they said that was messed up.

• She makes fun of/belittles me in front of her friends constantly, but gets upset when I do it back.

^pretty self explanatory. a lot of my sisters friends really like me; I think they see me as a big sister, and a lot of them are in similar situations/career paths as me. They're all very nice. My sister and I are very snarky towards each other, but she is especially mean to me in front of her friends. I'm not 100% sure what she says either; she tries her best to make sure I'm not around much when she's talking to her friends, going out of her way to make sure to exclude me from any plans she makes even when her friends want me to come. She also enjoys rubbing the fact she has friends/plans that I can't join in my face. I'm usually quite busy so it doesn't bother me much, but I have noticed it. she also tends to try and be mean to me in front of them as a joke, but if I snap back I can tell that she gets upset about it. She's asked me to not call her things like stupid in front of her friends (fair, she can be super sensitive about that), but has told many of them about my ASD without my permission (she only asked when they let it slip that they knew). So that's weird.

• she is always switching up the narrative.

this is the thing that makes me feel INSANE. she is always telling me how horrible she has it at home and how much our mom hates her, and how I will never understand how it feels to be her so it's unfair when I call her out on things like not doing chores (like she does to me) because she will always be scolded more harshly than I will be. that's fine, a little grace is fine, but then she'll just outright lie about how "great" she is. For example, in the summer my mother was gone, so we split the chores in the house. I work a lot on weekdays, so she was to take care of general upkeep, and I would do the heavy chores (taking laundry to the laundromat, cooking in bulk for the week, mopping and vacuuming the apartment) on the weekend. I noticed that she would often not be the best at this, but as long as I could fix it on the weekend it was fine. But if I ever messed up, she would be merciless; she refused to wash the dishes for a whole week because I couldn't do them on Sunday since I had extra errands to run that weekend. I brought this up to her and she said we split the chores and that was that. I pointed out that she wasn't keeping her end of the bargain either, but she told me she was simply too busy to keep up with all the work she was being given and that the chore split was unfair anyway. I didn't really know how to deal with that so I dropped it.

• She sets boundaries, but I can't.

There are more issues but I will leave it at this one for last. She has always been very vocal about setting boundaries with me and my mom. For example, we can't give her chores last minute or it messes up her schedule (even if she's doing nothing). She's also really big on talking issues out, but usually the talk just keeps going until we agree with whatever she's saying. Personally, I am the type of person who gets really short and petty when I'm angry, so its not a good idea to talk to me. She will INSIST on talking to me even when I want to shut the conversation down and say my refusal to talk is just proof that she's right and I'm wrong. But if I talk, the conversation will just repeat itself until she gets the answer she wants out of me. She's very good with therapy-speech as well; to be honest, she always sounds condescending when she argues with me or my mom even though she says I'm just projecting. I could be, but I don't hear it when she's arguing with her friends or in online classes.
I'm probably being very one sided here, but whenever I think about some of these issues it just reminds me of my mom in a way. I've survived my mom by just nodding along and waiting for the storm to blow over, but my sisters actions are much more annoying to me for some reason. If anyone has any input it would be appreciated. I don't want to think I'm living with 2 narcissists; maybe I'm actually the problem. because of my ASD I find it very hard to communicate my feelings and I tend to shut up or become very mean and short at random times. I try my best but I do need to work on using my words and making sure they can't be used against me.

***Lily*** “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run off when I did. I should’ve known you would have my best interests at heart,” I whisper.
“I… I don’t have a heart…” He chuckles meekly.
I chuckle too and respond, “Still, you’re as generous as you are funny. Strong as you are quick. And clever as you are funny. As annoying as it can be sometimes.”
I laugh again. After a moment, I can feel the awkwardness lift as he chuckled then started to move his arms. Suddenly he hugs me back, tightly. Something wet ran down my cheek and I hear him murmur something and ask, “Did you say something?”
“What? No.” He says. He then pushes me back as he says, “Oh crap! We forgot to get you leather armor!”
“Now, now dearie. Believe it or not, we actually took care of it while you were running around looking for her.” Silkie says coming up towards us down the stairs.
“Oh. How did you…” he starts to say as he looks towards me. He then stops and stares at me for a minute. “What happened to your hair?” He asks.
“Oh! This? Believe it or not, this is my original hair color. Do you… do you like it?” I ask back.
“I do. It really is captivating.” He says, putting his hat back on.
I smile. Afterwards, we turn towards the voice that yells, “Yargh! All done. Let’s see how it fits now, yargh.”
It’s Mr. Doe holding the leather armor from before. “That was fast.” Silkie says.
“Yargh. I’ve done me fair share of tanning. This be nothing to a mighty man of the sea, yargh.” He says.
I get up and go over to try them on again.
“Hey John. You got here fast. Did you lock up shop already?” Wabbajack asks him.
“Lock? Why would I lock up me shop, yargh.” He answers.
There is a moment of silence at that statement.
“You’re joking. Right?” Wabbajack asks.
After I am done putting on the leather gloves, shin-guards, and breastplate, I notice that the gloves and shin-guards fit better, and the breastplate conforms a lot better to my shape than before too. “Wow, this is a lot better!” I announce.
“Wow, that is an impressive refit.” Silkie adds.
“Refit? From who?” Wabbajack asks.
“That was Iris’s old assassin armor.” Silkie answers.
Wabbajack looks back at the armor for a minute. Afterwards, he just says, “Impressive refit.”
I then to puff my face in annoyance.
Silkie looks back at Mr. John Doe and asks, “I gotta say, your skills with leather is astonishing but, I don’t think that you quite have what it takes to run your Own business. What do you say you come work for us? Open up your shop here? That way, you can focus on your leatherworks and we can handle your business side of things.”
He takes a puff of his corn-cob pipe and says, “Yargh, well. That would be a lot more fun for me too, yargh. Mayhaps…” He then shakes his head as he says, “Yargh, I can’t. I already have a shop. I can’t abandon it, yargh.”
At that point, a ball of eyeballs with a funny hat float towards him. It then says, “Observer 2-5-6-9 reporting. You are Mr. John Doe, correct?”
“Yargh, that be I. Who’s asking?” Mr. Doe responds.
“Observer 2-5-6-9. I regret to inform you that your store, “The Blubbering Walrus”, has been ransacked and looted. All items, including the boards that made the structure, were taken. We apologize for your loss. Would you like to make a report?” it answers in an almost robotic tone.
“Yargh! What! Me entire store is gone!” Mr. Doe exclaims.
What did you expect? You left the store unsupervised and unlocked. Still, it Is kinda surprising to hear that they took the Structure as well.
“Yes. Unfortunately, none of your items, or building, were insured by the Dimensional Union of Multiplying Basic Opportunities, so you will not be compensated for the loss of any of your stock. We wish you luck in your future endeavors.” It says as it floats towards me.
“Observer 2-5-6-9, reporting. Are you Lily Extravagund?” it then asks me.
“Um, yes?” I answer.
“I regret to inform you that your picnic basket was stolen in the recent raid on the “Blubbering Walrus”. Unfortunately, none of your items were insured by the Dimensional Union of Multiplying Basic Opportunities, so you will not be compensated for the loss. We apologize and wish you luck in your future endeavers.” It then floats away.
“Okay… that was interesting.” I say.
“You might want to reconsider her offer.” Wabbajack says.
“Yargh, business is hard. Very well madame. If you really think me works are worthy, I’ll reopen the Blubbering Walrus here. Although, I will need me own tools, yargh.” He says, offering his hand.
“That’s all well and good but, unfortunately, I am not the person to decide that. That would be up to Iris.” Silkie says, crossing two of her arms and putting one against her cheek and the other on her hip.
“Who? Yargh.” He asks.
“My sis.” Wabbajack says.
“Yargh! That be a surprise. Any advice?” Mr. Doe asks Wabbajack.
As helpful as ever, Wabbajack just shrugs. He then goes, “OH! Buffalo wings! She loves those.”
Silence.
“Don’t worry dear, I’ll put in a good word for you.” Silkie says. “Go ahead and wait down here while I go talk to her.” She says as she goes back up the stairs.
“Looks like you’re on the fast track to being part of the family John.” Wabbajack mentions, offering his hand.
Mr. Doe takes a puff and takes it. They then perform a vigorous shake. He then takes another puff and goes back to the cafeteria.
Wabbajack looks back towards me and asks, “Well. Take two, are you ready to try getting a familiar?”
I adjust all my new gear. From my mask and emblem to my still-empty quiver, all the way to my new shin-guards. Making sure that it’s comfortable. I then let out a chuckle. Wabbajack asks, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I’m just starting to feel like a Real adventurer.” I answer.
He laughs. I then let out a laugh as well.
I then skip towards the door. As I am skipping, I look over my shoulder and say, “Come on! We still got to head to Mogsten’s!”
He adjusts his hat and says, “Coming!” He then starts walking behind me and says, “Hey! Shouldn’t You be following Me?”
I chuckle as I say, “Well then, move faster!”
I hear him chuckle as he immediately catches up to me.
We open the door and head on out back to Mogsten’s. I stay close to Wabbajack so not to get lost again. I eventually look back up to the sky, between the clouds and the flying creatures with and without cities on their back. It’s all so crazy. I feel more alive than I have felt in, well, ever. A month ago, I would have laughed someone out of town if they had told me a place like this existed. Now, I can’t help but imagine what else is out there. There must be So much if Wabbajack, with how much he has seen and done, if he still gets surprised every now and again. Magic is real, and it is Improved with science. A thought occurs however so I ask, “Hey, is there more than what’s here or is there other countries or whatever they might be called?”
He puts a finger to his chin and answers, “Well, it goes on forever. It’s all Spiritopia but there are different cultures depending how far out you go. Up is typically for the people who enjoy flying as opposed to walking and down is for the people who prefer something overhead at all times, like molemen, certain kinds of vampires, and some reptile people. The list goes on.” He then points to the right and says, “If I’m not turned around again, that should be towards the oceanic district, for the ones who enjoy or need to be moisturized at all times. The other way is the forest district where people who enjoy that kind of place. Personally, I have thought about a treehouse myself. Each kind of district offers unique kinds of goods but, the city district, the place that we are at now, offers goods from all of them but it’s more generalized. The forest district offers some unique fruits and poisons that aren’t sold here for example. But, unless you are looking for something incredibly specific, you should be able to find it here.”
“Wow… this place goes on forever huh?” I say amazed. I then ask, “What about sandy areas? Are there species who need that kind of environment?”
He shrugs and says, “Well, before you get to the oceanic district, there is quite a bit of sand. Not to mention, sand bathing is surprisingly popular so there are businesses here that offer that service. But, not exactly popular material to build on. Some people like to go camping there however.”
It’s like a veritable playground. I ask another question, “Now that I think about it, was this place always like this or were there people who cultivated it like this?”
He tilts his head as he answers, “Well, that’s the thing with certain dimensions. Some just are. This is a perfect example of that kind of place. There is no history, no records, or no previous involvement. This place was just paved and ready for the first group of people who came by. Although, what was weird, even by my standards, was that there were Detailed instructions on how to cultivate All this. That is the only time that had Ever happened AND people following it.”
“Wait. Instructions? So… Someone left it?” I ask.
“Well, yes. Someone had to. The problem is, there was no traces on it whatsoever. It’s like it came with the dimension.” He answers, pointing a finger in the air.
“And that doesn’t happen often?” I ask as well.
“Well, the instructions part is actually pretty common. But it was discovered by a group of people with the diversity and skill that were willing to follow it. That. That takes planning of an extraordinary scale. Most people, even with the instructions, just ignore it and start doing their own thing. Which usually causes problems down the road. Hubs like this are rare admittedly. Especially as free as it is.” He answers again, this time scratching his head.
“So, is Spiritopia one of a kind?” I ask.
“As far as I know but, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another similar to it however.” He says, as he walks normally again.
I look forward to try and process all this stuff but, as I do, I see Mogsten’s sign over his tent.
Before we walk in, I stop Wabbajack.
“Hmm? Don’t tell me your having doubts now, are you?” he asks.
I shake my head and say, “I Have to know something.”
“What’s up?” he asks.
“Is chewed gum really an ingredient in certain things?” I ask.
He lets out a laugh as he answers, “Surprisingly. The fact that they are pre-chewed make it easier to get samples from certain creatures. For example, would you rather get venom directly from a snake or trick it with some gum and extract it that way?”
“I guess that is a possibility…” I say.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s Definitely not as concentrated as pure extract but, it’s usually good enough for moderate level stuff.” He explains.
We stand there for a minute. He then asks, “Was that all?”
I snap out of it and say, “Oh! Yes. Let’s do this!” I then march right through the flap towards the surprisingly large inside.
As we enter, we see Mogsten, in full on bit mode, with a customer. Looks like a fishman.
“Yes. It is quite a rare piece. I don’t see how I could sell it for anything less than, say, a thousand currency?” I hear him say.
“A thousand! Forget that! I would buy it for twenty currency.” The fishman says.
“But sir, giant’s horns are indeed rare. Not to mention to find one willing to give it up is even More difficult. I don’t know when I would ever get another one! Nine hundred fifty.” Mogsten states.
“Ha! Nine hundred fifty? Dude, this shop is terrible! If you don’t want me to spread the word around that you rip off your customers with absurd prices Gnome!” He pauses and grabs the horn. He then says, “Then I guess the price on this is free. Ha!”
“Actually, nine hundred fifty is a pretty fair price for a giant’s horn.” Wabbajack points out.
“And who asked…” he starts to say as he turns around. He then sees Wabbajack and panics “A-a-a-a. You! Crap! Look, don’t kill me man! Look, I’ll give you the horn! Just, don’t hurt me!”
“Umm, that horn isn’t yours though. You haven’t paid Mr. Mogsten for it yet.” I point out.
“Shut up you brat! I ain’t talking to you! Besides, he’s a Gnome. What’s he gonna do? Throw rocks at me?” the fishman says.
Wabbajack steps towards him and he just falls backwards. Before the fishman can even mouth whatever he wants to say, Wabbajack says, “One, this “brat” is a very good friend of mine. Two, gnome or not, you don’t just take whatever products you want just because you feel like it. Three, that gnome could easily kill you in any number of ways. And four, you won’t make any friends if you continue being as rude as you have been.”
I see a puddle appear on the floor and some gasping. He then just falls flat. He looks like he is still breathing.
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