Not my text, resposting:
https://www.reddit.com/UFOs/comments/1crmb60/that_ww2_ufo_footage_is_possibly_narrated_by/
Props to for pointing this out!
And for this post.
Listen to the audio starting from :20 seconds up until :50 seconds on that clip that has been making the rounds. Grusch has a very particular inflection and pauses with “ahhh”, during that timeframe he does that about 3 times. He has a particular speech pattern that would be hard to disguise even with modulation.
Now listen to his opening statements here at the start from :10 to :35 he does the exact same type of inflections as in the distorted audio! Listen to them back to back, once you recognize the vocal patterns in his voice, the modulation does not hide that it is him. Why/how would RegicideAnon have a video that Grusch narrated???
Edit: this is the WW2 Archive Footage I am referring to
Edit2: pointed out his T’s also sound the same. In the opening statements at 1:08 you can hear how he ends “Current” and it ends very similarly to how he ends “It” and “Compensate” at :35 in the archived footage.
Edit3: Do Up/Downvotes affect post visibility? I only ask since from when I posted this almost an hour ago it has sat at 0, which is kinda strange that it’s being downvoted so heavily?
EDIT4: Okay so this one is a little weird, and very tinfoil-y I admit, but I feel I should point this out: Here is David Grusch’s resume
Note that during the timeframe this video was released, and around the time that MH370 occurred, David was:
July 2014 – December 2016, Adjunct Professor, School of Security and Global Studies, American Public University System (APUS)
• Undergraduate school professor developing technical coursework and program plans. Expertly instructed courses in the Intelligence Studies track, to include open source/social media analysis, signals and imagery analysis, and research methods.
December 2013 – March 2016, Chief, Intelligence Integration Division, Space Security and Defense Program (SSDP), Reston, VA (USAF Active Duty)
• Lead military intelligence officer for the SSDP Director, a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES) advising the Deputy Secretary of Defense (DEPSECDEF), Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (PDDNI), and National Security Council (NSC). Coordinated sensitive Multi-INT collection activities and modeling/simulation to support national space security objectives and advanced NSG programs. SSDP intelligence lead for the standup of the National Space Defense Center (NSDC).
It’s possible that during his time at the university he was analyzing and restoring WW2 archival footage? In order to verify this we’d have to find someone that knew him around that time frame to confirm or deny that he spoke of this previously.
The second thing that stood out to me was “Coordinated sensitive Multi-INT collection activities and modeling/simulation to support national space security objectives and advanced NSG programs.” I know with the recent MH370 video going around people are saying that if it WAS a hoax it would need to be created with someone with military access and very very expensive and sophisticated equipment. Possible the same equipment used to model and simulate space security objectives and NSG programs? Maybe this was a recreation of an event that the government didn’t see but was told was a possibility?
Edit5: I know many are asking how we know the voiceover wasn’t added recently, unfortunately the link to the video on RegicideAnon’s page on web archive doesn’t work, however another link to the same video was found that was posted to Facebook on September of 2015, that includes the voiceover:
https://www.facebook.com/ufovni/videos/ww2-archive-footage-of-flying-sauce510648672443495/
Thanks to for translating the description on the video:
“The following video was confiscated from the Kodiak Historical Military Museum on September 7th 1993 (the voiceover in the video actually said November 7th 1993). Originally a collection of gradings were donated with no date record or source of recording. In the video a UFO can be seen flying low on an island, alongside the planes as it approaches the runway. The location and date of filming are unknown.”
Interestingly the info about the museum and the collections is not mentioned in the clip at all, suggesting this is either a clip of a longer video or that the poster “Paranormal” somehow got more info with the clip.
Final Edit: I know that some people are in the process of actually examining the audio with professional programs so hopefully soon we’ll have concrete evidence if the voices match, however I want to leave you all and anyone else that stumbles upon the thread with this last bit; check out the following two sections and judge for yourself if this “but” sound exactly the same.
:42-:46 of the WW2 Archive Footage
27:44-27:46 of the NewsNation Interview
Please keep up the fantastic discussion and as always don’t forget to keep reaching out to your state congress representatives to keep the pressure on disclosure! We all deserve the truth, for the betterment of humanity.

I didn’t do it. I didn’! I didn’t! I’m no murderer, no, listen! I will tell you your a killer. You do not believe me? Even for a moment? But little is my own sentence even a concern for me, the freedom in society has little left to offer me. Grief and horror are all that fill my mind, the only residents remaining in my home. And you’d expect it to be such an oppressing grief. But no, no, no…it is much more the horror. It is much more the intense fear, the great disgusting and evil works that wait for me in the dark. The grizzly voice that reassures me of fate in its worst forms. It is here now. Cackling at its maniacal work. I hear it. What are you worth wretch! You’ll burn all your years and infinite more! But forgive me, my anger is difficult to suppress against my enemy. He lingers still. A lover of deception however, would be a fool in his own craft to reveal his intentions. Thus, would be a fool to reveal their own horrid form. Therefore, relinquish some of your repulsion of me, so that you may have at least some possibility of belief in what I say. I understand the situation I’m in, but why should I refrain from telling the truth simply because it is unlikely you will believe me? Especially when you condemn me? Listen then!
I was watching television, and my roommate was out the entirety of this night. My family remained in Los Angeles during this time, so they are not making any affect on what occurred. But you want me to tell of my roommate? I am telling you! You ask about the murderer, so you must listen to all I know of him. It was in the most ordinary of circumstances and activity when such a striking and alarming voice pierced the room. The TV was quiet, and I lounged about with dull mind. When I heard someone call for my name from down the hall, whom which I couldn’t see since the door was closed, I of course simply responded, “Yeah?” This was the very first of the remarkable experiences I began to have. I realized what had just occurred. I was home alone, so who could be calling to me from my own room? Well I suspected then my roommate. But I had trouble reconciling the voice I heard with that of my roommate. It had such an eerie tone to it. Almost as if it were teasing me. Yet, it was such a convincing and deceptive call, that the mocking tone it had was almost imperceivable. As if maybe this creepy inflection was a result of my own nerves or unfamiliarity with the event.
Regardless of it’s true nature, this odd quality roused my attention. Was I indeed not alone? But then it must be my roommate, since it was my name. I could not get over the gross friendly tone it called to me with. It’s as if it was bragging about knowing my name. I froze for a moment with the TV playing, listening for another call. “Javier” a woman's voice called out gently and compassionately. But such disgusting compassion did it call out. It seems it couldn’t itself disguise just the slightest hint of malevolence that just snuck under the tone. Or perhaps it meant to say it how it did. But it terrified me. I reasoned it must be somebody I know. But I couldn’t bear the action of getting up looking around. I was simply frozen, wishing not to move and cause myself to miss out on hearing more by making a racket myself. it didn’t even come from behind the door, it was as if it was somewhere far away. Yet it was so clear and punctual in volume.
This left me more at unease and helpless to find a solution. This time I did not respond. I greatly regretted responding the first time. I only paused the TV and looked about myself anxiously, dreading that something would speak again. After many moments of silence, I compromised to rest from my alert. And as the words spoke drifted deeper into the past, the simple abnormality of them caused them to resist their place in my mind as credibly existing. Though it happened not long ago that same hour, I questioned if I did indeed hear a call out for my name in such a mysterious and ugly tone as I had. This was just before the most morbid of calls occurred. It spoke to my name again, “Would you come, Javier?” But such terror came over me in that delicately rude and friendly tone which it spoke to me in. The suspense and anticipation for the call was intensely surmised to a realization as my heart began a sprint. This voice was not just a woman's, it was my sister. How incredibly unlikely she would be here, unannounced and somehow in my home without my knowledge. I still held intense fear, for you must understand the uncanny sense from this call. It was as if someone was inciting their vocals and tone to imitate or mock a human. It seemed not as if they were doing an impression of my sister—no, for it sounded exactly like my sister—but instead it seemed as if they attempted an impression of a human. Such a perfect quality, yet just so slightly imperfect that I may subconsciously perceive something wasn’t quite genuine in this call. I darted my perceptions across the room wide eyed. I quickly looked about myself, checking behind me multiple times.
Now, the following details not only enhance the unbelievable notions of my current situation, but may in fact completely discredit me in even speaking about them. But you must hear it! I implore you to imagine this! It is the truth—all of what I say is. For the night I heard her—my sister that is—speak to me in my own apartment, was the same night, as I learned weeks later, is the same night she had died. Sophia, that is her name, had killed herself.
Many nights passed like this when I was alone. I was tormented by calls with no direction or location. I shuddered at creepy voices beckoning in the dark. Sometimes, even in daylight, things spoke to me while I was alone. Unrelenting and disturbing voices within my home. Now, you may presume at this moment I am clearly schizophrenic. Indeed, I too had this notion. I seeked a psychiatrist during this time, to which medicine was prescribed and an indefinite period of shipping as well. But I perceived far too many REAL things. Yes, these could be hallucinations, but you couldn’t possibly have that conclusion if you hear what else this has done to me.
It happened after many terrible nights that I heard of my sister’s death. I was very shocked at first. But sadness was not next door, grief did not have time to move in. Instead, a realization taunted and teased my peace. I would hear her tonight, speaking to me. You may not imagine the dread that filled my day. I went to work and back home as a zombie. The tasks and conversations passed me by as dreams. I was incredibly absent and void of presence in my own life. My head spun before it comprehended any purpose of grief and despair. When I returned home I found myself double, triple checking that the lights were on and the blinds shut. Even though these things were clearly in my sight. I also locked doors and called my roommate to make sure he was home. I begged and pleaded with him, but he only brushed me off telling me he can't ditch his shift. I paced back and forth within the rooms pitching the plan to myself to have a hotel room. I eventually settled on this as it brought peace to me. And that night passed, at least before I slept, how I hoped. My sister did not speak to me from the darkness. But woe had not stopped its intention upon me that night.
I managed to fall asleep. In my dreams that night, I was visited with a vivid nightmare. I stood in my childhood home waiting at the door with a bat in my hand, standing between my sister and the entrance. I had this feeling that something bad was going to happen, and that I had to protect her, though nothing in particular was occurring. Then, with a gentle creek, a clawed hand reached and pushed the front door gently open. A demonically horned monstrosity stepped into the room. Its hooves clopped upon the wood floor. I intended to combat it, but my muscles took no command from me, and I swung the bat as if I was in molasses. It lunged with a deep roar to my sister, digging its hands into her stomach and viciously tearing it open with ease. It dug through her chest cavity as a dog digs holes in the dirt, spewing and tossing guts and organs out slashed and mutilated. I stood helpless and disgusted, until it turned towards me. It dropped my sister to the ground like a doll it no longer wanted to play with. It approached and grasped me tightly, growling a deep animalistic anger, its stature looming over me. It took its claw and dug it into its own eye, slicing it and tearing it open. It leaned over me, inches from my face. I screamed in horror. Black blood seeped and dripped from its swollen socket into my mouth. I struggled ferociously but the blood continuously poured from its eye into me.
I awoke sweating in pitch black, feeling Intense fear in myself. As a child that had not had their night light. I was terrified of the thought of something being in the darkness. I knew I was awake, and I was in a hotel in the middle of the night, but my heart started racing in irrational fear. I didn’t even have the courage to lift my head and look about the room to satiate the tormenting curiosity in the mystery of a possible supernatural visitor. But, I did. There was a demon sitting on the chair. A darker than dark silhouette of someone sitting hunched, looking at me. It was a shadow. But I knew, even then, this was a devil. I felt it. The blood in my skin fell away. I was mortified; in absolute terror. I stared unmoving with my heart beating out of my chest at this figure.
I slowly began to hold disdain for it. It did not move, it did not speak. But, I was beginning to be relieved of my fear. Instead, it was replaced with hate. Burning, mean hate. I hated it. No, I abhorred it. I was angry. The most intense rage fell upon me. I stood up from my bed, looking about the darkness. I stomped and clenched my fists. Captured in the most ridiculous delusion of fury, I began yelling and thrashing my room. I broke vases and electronics. I smashed the TV to the ground. I bit and gnawed at the chair leg which the thing sat on. I flipped the mattress and kicked doors off their hinges. I scratched and tore pillows like a feline. I was filled with so much hate and anger. I remained like this until hotel staff came to subdue me. Which, at their arrival, the feeling subsided suddenly.
I now was plagued daily by these voices, and nightly by this demon. The visits were not as dramatic as the first, but still, It watched me from different places in the dark each time. All it did was sit there. Weeks passed like this, I lost tremendous amounts of sleep attending to fruitless solutions and avoidances. Either I slept not a wink the night and evaded my tormentor, save for the voices if I’m alone, or I had to face my tormentor in the midst of night with a bravery I did not possess, awoken by various nightmares or visions designed for me that night.
But this is merely his entrance, I must now speak of the acquaintance he made with me. It was another terrible midnight where I stared at it, in whichever spot it had chose for the night, contemplating the nature of such a gross presence and its effect on me. When, filled with a ridiculous exhaustion and exhasperation, I called out to it, “What do you want!” I saw a slight twitch in its head, which struck me with more surprise than fear, although I had both. “Do you know me?” It spoke in a low and growled voice. It had such a tone of malevolence and mocking speech, it even felt as if it spoke condescendingly, as if I was a child it was reducing to. “No.” I said, my breath failing me. “I knew your sister.” The demon stated with a snicker, which developed into a chuckle, then an intense and hearty laugh. He wailed and howled in laughter even, he sounded insane. Such a disgusting sound it was to hear its voice in the darkness so pleased with itself. It confused and frustrated me in fear greatly, and it became so loud and went on for so long I couldn’t stand it. “Shut up!” I yelled finally. It stopped laughing immediately. “But you know Javier, you know me too.” It spoke very seriously. I stared in bewilderment. “You’re guilty! You’re guilty! You love murder! Haha! You love yourself! You stroke huh?” The demon spoke without relent and enjoyed his own hilarity. “What the fuck?” I said in a trembled whisper. “Yea, you hate clothes, you little pathetic bitch.” It cackled.
I was roused again with the most extreme and unimaginable anger. I yelled my defense at him. He grew in laughter. I screamed any kind of profanity and slur I could think of at his station, and he only grew in volume with me. This went on until I finally arrived at my king accusation, which was finally enough to have it stir, “You’re a failure of creation!” He was silent for a moment. “What is it you know of creation?” It spoke with such a terrible and tremendous tone. “Are you worth any more than me? You’re subject to death the same. I’m a connoisseur of freedoms, yet, what are you? You are a slave of fear, scared of your own desires. And, even more so, subject to me.. As much as a mouse loses its life to the metal spring when it grabs cheese, so do you spoil by me.” “You speak nonsense!” I retorted “You’re very stupid, it’s difficult for you to grasp.”
Then, without much more deliberation, it simply began roaring with the most horrific and inhumane noises. It began screeching—it screeched with blood curdling yells and sorrow. It screamed as if it was lit on fire. At once, in the shadows, it began clawing at its own face. I heard sounds of ripping and tearing—with noises as if pounds of deli meat were slammed onto the cutting board. This was accompanied by an intense and putrid smell of rot, and I began weeping. This experience was more than I could bare, and I couldn’t describe to u what was unnaturally filled in my mind. This night felt as if i was never going to escape the moment, like the present moment was my eternity. This sight annoyed me to my soul for what seemed like hours, and I even conjectured to myself that this torture was eternal.
But soon, he did indeed cease. A gentle glow of orange illuminated the end of my bed. He stood before me, tall and with elegance in the light. He was skinned, his jaw dislocated, his face scratched bare and raw so that no features were pertruding. He was completely nude, with hooves and fur patches among his disfigured appearances. He wore this boldly with shame, yet, overcame it with overwhelming pride.
Such beauty it was to admire his stature. I could not help but gaze with wonder and pleasure. I must have admired him for a while, perhaps even hours. I became mad with lust for him, such a delicious sight he was! I should give up my other fruitless endeavors of life if I could just have the delight to taste him.
But just as I settled on my prospective bliss, my roommate entered the room. His yell of terror attacked my ears, interrupting us. Why scream? Why that hideous look on his face? What was he so scared of? What possessed him to be worthy of beholding any sort of indignation upon my beautiful companion? A little worm—that ugly little leech that dared breath the same air as us. “Get rid of it.” The demon told me, but I hardly needed a command to conceive of my goal.
Oh, what fun I had! It was like the first fresh sip of lemonade on a summer day! Like the sunshine that seeps through window seals—like the birds chirping in the dewy mornings. Like the adrenaline of a rollercoaster—the tickle of a drop. Like the intoxication that gives you belief of so much confidence. And to feel it on my hands? It was the joy of a child when he smashes his fingers into the moist sand—that innocent satisfaction of destroying a castle. Like the excitement of opening your favorite bag of chips—grabbing the ends and pulling the plastic with might until bursts open with goodies; yes, that’s what it was like for me to stick my thumbs deep into his eye sockets, and pull to open—if only I could. It was such, as when I bit down on his throat with all my might and sipped. It was indeed so, when I scratched and clawed till my nails came off, opening his chest and pulling at ribs like discarded hot wings, ripping at organs and intestines, pulling of nails, bending fingers two loops around, snapping his arms, smashing his head with my foot—but again my happiness was destroyed. For my companion had fled the scene, and he was no longer present. At once, I recovered some coherence and realized the tragedy of what I had done. How would I hide this? How could I discard of blood evidence all over me? How was he going to chip in on rent in this condition? I obviously had not calculated all the required considerations before doing such a thing. I was enraged by the black magic possessed by the demon, stupid, tricky, evil thing. So you see, it was his fault.

"Children learn to correlate consequences with their own actions. This is true of all of us, no matter what species we are. Adulthood is universally defined by maturity, and maturity is defined by nature as appropriate behavior to ensure your species' survival. If we apply this wisdom to the stage of evolution of a species, the culture and conservative capacity of intelligent creatures, then we can see it on that scale also. A species is like a child while they liberally explore their surroundings, learning the best behavior by trying everything, through the Trial of Errors. Then they mature and adopt appropriate behavior, avoiding doing things that work against their species, as individuals and as a whole. We can apply this pattern to the history of all alien races among us here today. This also includes the humans. I testify to this, as one who remains traveling alongside them and seeing each era of their ascended history. As the representative of the will of the Frendsikeel, as attorney to the cause of human endeavors and as their one follower in this galaxy, I say the humans are very cool." The alien sea otter with the boney shells covering her body spoke somehow in a human voice, having perfected the use of her translator so that it was indistinguishable from human speech.
There was applause among the limited audience of aliens at the application hearing for membership, each in their own way of signaling immediate approval. If the Cave Gods agreed, the Combine would be added to the councils of the Cave Gods And Friends Association. It was the dawn of a new and wonderful age for the humans.
The alien attorney visibly shuddered as an equally smoothly articulated translation started, and in a voice all-too-familiar. Osowl Fitten, Attorney-to-the-Humans, heard her nemesis from across the vast distances of both space and time. She was the Sunder representative, Supreme Prosecutor (of the humans) Eshka Layenna. The reptilian alien slithered out with a stylized collar to hide her frill and colorful paint on her face to look more appealing to the human eye. Indeed, the humans felt their eyes drawn to the masterful and ancient alien, who specialized in charm and glamor.
"Beautiful denizens of Rhema, world of art and music, esteemed guru, priests and patrons of the arts, lend to me your native attention. I will speak for you, and worry not what decision is made behind my back, by our wise leaders, the benevolent Cave Gods. They have heard the song of human laughter, recognized the absolution of human mistakes, graced the humans with thousands of years of benefits and gifts simply because they admire the beauty of the human soul. Is beauty not important? I would not stand in the way of beauty. We all know it is the first component of harmony, and we all know harmony is the first component of peace and we also know that peacefulness is necessary for love. And what meaning is there, that is greater than love?" Eshka Layenna spoke with passion in her human sounding voice, translated from a skillful use of her own vowels in order to inflect such sincere emotion. The attorney for the humans worried, for she had sparred with this particular individual alien half a dozen times throughout the centuries, and clearly they were both on the same course through the stars, sleeping for decades at a time in order to extend the usefulness of their respective careers.
The prosecutor skillfully explained that humans were beautiful in the ears of the blind leadership who had overlooked the capacity that humans had for, in their own word: violence.
Osowl Fitten sat quiet during her turn to speak in rebuttal. She could not quickly speak without thinking, it was not the way of her species and she was especially slow to decide what she wanted to say. In the silence one of the humans coughed expectantly, it was meant to prompt her, and she knew so. It was in all things, their little violences, and she had started to find it beautiful.
"Violence is the appropriate behavior when humans utilize it. They are equally capable of restraint and sometimes their violence is directed purely against the storm. Humans respond to all violence, they endure it and survive, they fight back, they commit violence for gain, even sometimes because they want to commit violence, with no further motivation. The Sunder administration has long sought to prosecute the humans because of this, and they are here today, to do this. I approve of this because it is the appropriate behavior. I would like to point out that the Sunder have invented many consequences to inflict on humans, and I must point out that to the human, those are called weapons and the Sunder have become hypocrites. On this day the Sunder are here to prevent the humans from becoming their equal, which is the appropriate behavior for the Sunder, because they anticipate that humans are dangerous, a known threat. They would list off all the times they have tried to blame humans for tragic events, or simply point out that humans were involved in a disproportionate amount of such tragic events, at the very least. And yes, humans are dangerous. Does not each new member bring a gift to the association? The Blue Light Watchers brought the gift of honest music, such as nobody had ever heard. Who among us was not moved by their music? The humans have brought a gift, and I foresee, the Dream Time, that this gift shall prove to be the greatest gift of all."
"What gift would that be?" Eshka Layenna spoke out of turn, amid gasps and gestures of outrageous surprise. Osowl refused to engage her opponent informally and ceased speaking until the Cave Gods had politely reminded the respected and venerable serpent of the absolute procedure of the courtroom, and begged her to behave appropriately. Then Osowl spoke, carefully avoiding addressing the question, while answering it anyway:
"When the Dream Time goes into darkness, and the galaxy can be crossed in an instant by the mere thought of terror, and there is no trade besides violence with this spreading nightmare from outside, that is when the greatest gift of all shall shine upon the threshold." Osowl Fitten turned off her translator and captions and spoke only in her own language. For a moment the court felt confused by this deliberate action, before the significance of it began to sink in. Even the scarred and brutal human Admiral Jinar they had allowed into the proceedings looked deeply moved, her eyes watering, as though she personally understood both the words and the power behind them.
"I have no further arguments, Wise Ones. The prosecution rests." Eshka Layenna said with strange reverence, abandoning her entire cause suddenly.
"This then, is the final enactment of all our discussions, and there are no further actors. Let the humans say then, what is decided here today." The Cave Gods spoke in rehearsed unison.
The humans cheered. They had just become members of the Cave Gods And Friends Association, and the humans were now officially equal to all the coolest aliens throughout the galaxy.
When the courtroom had emptied there were still two creatures sitting there. Osowl Fitten stared for a moment at the human, gradually recognizing her.
"You are Jinar. How so? Humans do not use Star Sleep or live such profoundly long life spans. But I am sure, somehow you are she." Osowl Fitten said at last.
"I am now Admiral Jinar, of the Combine Unified Forces. We are currently disbanded, but I still think they are coming, and we should be preparing for them. Now that we have a say in things, I'd like to get started on that." Admiral Jinar told Osowl Fitten, coldly speaking business.
"Are you not pleased that humans are now recognized as equals to the Cave Gods themselves? In the association, all species have an equal vote." Osowl Fitten twitched her whiskers in a personal greeting, hoping to see Jinar's mood change.
Jinar relaxed and smiled just a little bit. Somehow sitting there trying to interpret the whisker twitches of the Frendsikeel made her feel like a little girl again. It was just a moment, but it reminded her of her own resolve of character. She had felt a kind of personal hell for most of her life, regretting something she had done while she was very young, but worried it somehow defined her. When she had defeated the scout, something had changed, she had realized she was merely playing a role, and the universe was calling the shots.
"Maybe it was better to have gods. The thought that we are responsible for the course is somehow terrifying." Jinar said in plain, soldier-like way of speaking.
"This is humor." Osowl gestured that she found it mildly amusing.
"Do you think they are out there? You're my attorney, I kinda care what you think." Jinar grinned a little, realizing she could communicate very easily with the alien. It was like Osowl just understood everything. It was reassuring to be fully understood and also approved of at the same time.
"It is not a coincidence that I chose this world for Summoning. Allow me to show you what inspires so much art, why this world is a melting pot of artists from seven alien species who all come here for inspiration." Osowl Fitten paused and found a small box held for her by a servo.
"What is it?" Jinar wondered.
"It is a gift." Osowl seemed perplexed. She was trying to assess the correct way to receive such a gift. It was meant as a statement of many different meanings, what was known as a cruciform. Osowl realized it was in the form of clothing, a colorful sash. She wrapped it over one shoulder, wearing it as a kind of toga.
"What for?" Jinar asked.
"It is complicated. I will wear this, to show my admiration and to accept the insult. It is a sign of deep friendship, but one forged through a necessary rivalry, for we are not without the other. My opponent, perhaps she says farewell."
"No, she says she wishes to be your companion still - to continue to argue with you. We shall Star Sleep beside each other and visit the same places. I do not want to be alone and I do not want this to end. It is what is best for each. Ave." The Sunder spoke from the shaded curtains, slithering out dramatically.
"I accept this. I would not wish to be without you. I understand the duality of our arguments the same way you do. Come with me, and we shall visit distant stars and foreign worlds." Osowl Fitten said without hesitation.
From there, the three women went to the attraction of Rhema that Osowl had chosen as a backdrop for the human inclusion in the association.
"Of this moment, we suspend ourselves, for the brace, my dears." Osowl hissed in Sunder and made her new friend laugh with an emote.
Eshka Layenna stopped and suddenly slithered around Jinar with serpentine swiftness. "Is she with us, equal one?" In plain English, another idiom but this as a joke of some kind by Eshka Layenna. She donned a purple garland and wrapped part of it gently around Jinar, the exact movement dancelike and affectionate. She flicked out her snake tongue absently in her self-satisfaction and then turned and wrapped part of the boa around Osowl, who groaned in mock reluctance to the amicable game.
"So we walk together?" Jinar asked.
"Precisely. Unless there is a place we must do something else?" Eshka gestured to the colonial canteen.
"They serve alcohol here?" Jinar felt no resistance as she walked towards the bar with her old lady alien friends in tow, the fragile feathered tether wrapped loosely around all of them.
"Drinks. You may take your toxic beverage." Osowl complained.
"I insist. I know you got something you'll imbibe." Jinar grinned.
At the bar the servo identified them and guessed they wanted alcohol. Osowl was served a thimble of it and a proper shotglass with the colonial guard stamp half scratched off of it was put down for the lady in uniform.
"That's pretty strong. Can I have more?"
"No." The servo said, and took the shotglass and wiped it out with a wash towel.
"Actually, I'm good. That's a pretty nice buzz." Jinar grinned.
"It is precise, madam." The servo said with a little bit of an attitude.
"I'll have mine - not." Osowl said.
"Is that right, are you afraid you'll seem ridiculous? I assure you your friends won't notice your inability to change your eye color while intoxicated. If it helps, you can wear a mood medallion. Would her Gentleness wish her mood medallion?" The servo had split personalities, and was suddenly all cool while talking to Osowl.
"Very much so, Jehosephet." Osowl accepted the medallion with a quickness that conveyed a gleeful shift in her feelings about the bar. Once her medallion was worn and shining, looking exactly like flax colored eyes, she gladly accepted the drink with no further inhibitions. She took the thimble and insufflated it and exhaled what sounded like a drunken wheezing.
"You party hard." Jinar complimented Osowl.
"Yes, this is the celebration I am in for." Osowl seemed to be gagging in her translator and took it off to fumble with the delicate settings.
Jinar laughed, noting that her eyes were flaxen with tints of green and yellow while her medallion showed bright red frustration and embarrassment.
"I cannot drink alcohol, so I shall wear the hat." Eshka Layenna leaned on the bar and the servo placed a massive crown of supreme derpiness on her, some kind of cartoon creature vaguely resembling a Sunder. It looked insane. Jinar laughed so hard she fell over and landed on her butt.
"Okay, so now that none of us may have her pride before the others, now what?" Osowl sounded normal, but her medallion was a glimmering pink, showing she was aware she was being deceptive in some way, as her voice betrayed none of her sloppiness in communicating. It somehow made her seem more hilarious to Jinar, as she could tell Osowl was drunk.
"I am worried that if we stay we'll be seen this way by those who admire and respect us and it will somehow diminish our reputations." Eshka Layenna stated.
"That's part of the fun. But anyhow, we're on a mission. Let's go to this place." Jinar agreed.
"I am afraid our jovial antics won't last beyond the threshold." Osowl cringed as she realized she had spoke a word that meant the same as Threshold, the prophecy of her people.
"What's the matter?" Jinar's voice drained of laughter and she adopted gradual concern, as Osowl hesitated to answer.
"Let us go first, and bid this moment to memory." Osowl insisted.
They departed, leaving their festive garments behind.
There was no landscape to explore, but rather spires of habitats above radiated pools of slag. They flew in a saucer, hovering at different speeds and angles against the natural gravity of Rhema. After a while the saucer had found a break in the low gray-orange clouds that obscured the world below the observational habitats.
"What is the significance of this wasteland?" Jinar asked slowly, not really wanting to hear the answer - already knowing what such an answer would be. The rhetorical nature of her voice was greeted by merciful silence.
The three sisters, each from a distant corner of the galaxy, born in different ages, and different species, stared out at the desolation and they each recognized the same measure of it, for it was the limit of suffering.
Osowl knew her friends understood. She herself had adjusted to her existence, the last of her people. It still hurt to come home.

I wrote a fun little story to test the Spoken system - Back to the Patent Office - that inserts a story for Doc Emmett Brown, Marty McFly and Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer, between when the first Back to the Future movie ends and the second begins. Fun fact: the end of the first movie and the beginning of the second had the same scene, the “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads” scene. But because Jennifer was played by Claudia Wells in the first movie but she didn’t continue to the second, the scene was re-shot with Elisabeth Shue. My little story is told from the first person POV of Jennifer (I imagine the Claudia Wells version). The problem with 1st person POV is that lines like “What do you mean the future?” I asked severely. “Where are we?” Requires inflection to denote the lines that are spoken aloud from those that are not, ie dialog tags or other parts of the narrative. AI narration isn’t quite there yet to make this distinction, so 1st pov is a bit less effective than it could be, and that I think it will be in the coming couple years.
He waved his hand in a wide arc and said, “The more you know,” just as four cheerful tones sounded overhead.

I don’t mean someone who is whining over a situation because while that’s annoying I’ve noticed lately some people talk with this constant whine like tone to their voice. It’s high pitched and abrasive and just sounds like they are whining about something. There’s that inflection on the ends of words that’s drawn out and nasally. I work at an airport and it doesn’t matter what region of the country they are from because they will still have their regional accent plus that obnoxious whiny inflection. There are a few YouTube short creators who do this too and I just don’t understand why they sound like this. Even asking for something just sounds like a whiny baby asking for it.

I was recently blindsided with a performance review of 2/5. I'm in Sales, I've been with the company for 10 years and have never missed my sales targets. Last year I ended up in the top 3 in the organization in only 11 months (I was transferred to a new team - but same reporting structure/org).
Three months into the year I had an issue that included management caused by a combination of my lack of judgement and a misunderstanding caused by newly hired people. Ultimately I was told to write a formal apology, which I did and followed up with in-person apologies. I genuinely felt bad for my behavior, and the incident it served as an inflection point for me. I began seeing a therapist to deal with the personal reasons I was allowing myself to become frustrated to that degree, which wasn't something they even asked me to do (the incident wasn't violent, or part of repeat behavior, etc.)
9+ months later, I have productive working relationships with all the individuals involved, and there had been no more mention of this incident... until my performance review.
During my performance review my direct manager (and his boss) both joined to communicate the "low performer" score but could not provide any examples beyond the incident 9 months prior. Instead they commented on how they didn't like how I communicate or my approach to working with other colleagues (both things they had never mentioned to me prior to this meeting). Moreover, the definition of a poor performer in this organization represents someone who exceeds dereliction in their duties - so it's a stark contrast from someone who has been thematically successful for a decade. When I asked for examples or reasons why these issues weren't shared with me when they happened ("how do you expect me to improve if I'm not aware of what's wrong?"), but they told me that they thought sharing that information "wouldn't be helpful."
They also mentioned that they wanted to give me 3/5, and my direct manager even said he wanted to give me a 4/5 - but that the SLT "calibrated" my score down. Again, no explanation as who, why or for what reason.
Clearly something is up and I should start looking for new roles, but I like the business I'm with well enough and I'm successful at job. This score prevents me from transferring to a new team, and ultimately just limits my options.
I want to go to HR and dispute this rating if for nothing else to save face, by time, or get away from these particular bozos who clearly don't want me around.
Does this sound like a good idea? What would you do?

https://preview.redd.it/czvxj0rwlozc1.jpg?width=1680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2f99c0e984148ef165419673198b861b52d1f05
Tldr: The first two weeks of the Wormhole War appear to go exceptionally well for the SYNDE Coalition. There are also reasons for real concern. How concerned? It's complicated.
When I wrote the first chapter of this review, I tried to focus on what I knew to be true given the natural limitations of getting factual information during EVE conflicts. That initial post has proven very fruitful in terms of the people who have since reached out with correcting and clarifying information. In addition, there has been a veritable waterfall of recent leaks within the wormhole community both from SYNDE (pre-war discussions with HAWKS leadership leaked within their coalition) and from HK (internal SYNDE corp meetings and SYNDE coalition meetings leaked publicly).
Those sources must be carefully considered against other evidence like zKillboard (ty u/Squizz) and the invaluable Wormhole War spreadsheet maintained by u/lynkfox https://www.reddit.com/Eve/comments/1c1r66c/real_state_of_the_wormhole_wa
All that being said, I think it’s right to say that we have considerably more insight into the how and the why of the pre- and early-war periods of the past few months.
I will try to cite sources and BRs where I am able while at the same time respecting the wishes of those who have offered insight in confidence. In any case, this post offers updates to my first part, and then an exploration of the initial couple of weeks of this conflict that is still raging violently in Wormhole space.

Part 1 – Wormhole War: History and Prelude Update:

u/Loroseco (HK leadership) provided additional context to the initial post which has since been confirmed by Synde internal leaks (pre-war demands from Hawks leadership). On March 24, immediately prior to severing their long-standing alliance with HAWKS, SYNDE asked HAWKS leadership for a large number of C6 farms. It is clear from the conversation that SYNDE expected a stern HAWKS rejection that would provide them with a casus belli for the war they were set to launch. That stratagem did not go as planned. HAWKS agreed to the SYNDE demands, and SYNDE – likely unable to stop their pre-planned momentum and with a huge coalition awaiting the signal to launch their complicated, multi-pronged attack – dismissed HAWKS acceptance and ended the alliance anyway. HAWKS structures were attacked minutes later across C5 and C6 space by SYNDE and members of their expansive coalition (TURBO, HC, ATRAX, DISI, SUGAR, FFEW, EXIT).
While there has been considerable spin around the true nature of the SYNDE motivations for the war, it seems clear it boils down to SYNDE wanting to become the pre-eminent power in high class wormhole space and being willing to violate a number of strong wormhole taboos to make that possible.

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War: Lazerhawks Burning

On March 24, the war began in earnest when SYNDE’s carefully assembled wormhole coalition began reinforcing a large number of HAWKS farms in both C5 and C6 space. Once those shields were reinforced, most of the attacking groups returned to their respective staging systems and “rage rolled” for more HAWKS farms. It appears that most Coalition groups were staging from their home holes (most often with a C5 static), but the larger Coalition members had staged from a C6 wormhole with a C6 static, permitting them to rage roll for HAWKS C6 farms. The Synde Coalition called this staging hole “Waffles” and it would become a significant system as the war progressed.
For the non-wormholers, “rage rolling” is when a group “rolls” a wormhole’s static wormhole repeatedly, generating connections to new holes in order to access the hole or holes you are seeking. (Outside of war, rage rolling is a common activity for pvp corps to generate pvp content, including ganking, skirmishes and honor brawls.) By rage rolling, SYNDE Coalition members were able to reinforce a large number of HAWKS farms, return to staging, roll, and then reinforce another. Again, it is very difficult to know with any precision since there is no EVE output for reinforced citadels unless they are actually killed, but it appears that the SYNDE Coalition was reinforcing double digit farms daily, and would continue to do so throughout this initial phase of the War.
The first farm to fall happened three days later, as TURBO took a HAWKS C5 farm. https://br.evetools.org/related/31002099/202403271900
That began a steady deluge, as HAWKS lost farm after farm, appearing to offer little in the way of resistance. On April 1st, the Initiative openly added their strength to the offensive. They took their first HAWKS C6 on Apri 4th along with a smattering of coalition support. https://br.evetools.org/b66141ee6ddb48200112d7848
Through April 4th, or 10 days after the start of the war, HAWKS had lost 17 Astrahus’ and 13 Fortizars across nearly 20 high class farms now held by SYNDE and their coalition partners. SYNDE was well on their way to achieving their objectives.
SYNDE reached out to HAWKS leadership and offered surrender terms.

Given How This War is Going: The Ultimatum

As this has been leaked and confirmed by both parties to the War, I am offering the surrender terms verbatim:

Given how this war is going, this will be the only offer we give you:
Settle, transfer every single c6 remaining to SYNDE and we'll spare your home and give an appropriate number of c6s so you're not entirely without farms, make an agreement on no log off traps/rage rolling c6s/bashing farms
Or you can let it go to option 2:
Continue fighting, lose the rest of c6 space, and see the entire coalition in your home. It might take us a month but it's clear we can do it.
Let us know.

A similar ultimatum was issued by Philip II of Macedon to the Spartans in 338 BC. After laying waste to Athens and Thebes, Philip sent a messenger to Sparta with the following note: “If I capture your city, I will destroy you.” The Spartans responded in short order. It was a one word answer: “If”
HAWKS responded similarly, only with a more modern version: “Get fucked”
There would be no negotiation with a group that backstabbed HAWKS and lied repeatedly, and for months. Honor and reputation are too heavily prized in this corner of EVE. The Wormhole War would be decided in space, not on Discord.

HAWKS Undercurrents of Resistance

There were many signs pointing towards the ultimatum’s explicit argument that a SYNDE Coalition victory was inevitable. HAWKS farms were falling at a remarkable rate. SYNDE boasted a wormhole coalition numbering 2-3 times the size of HAWKS and their allies. SYNDE now had the active support of the Initiative, giving them a massive well of support from the lone nullbloc with extensive wormhole experience and expertise.
Despite this, there were some troubling signs for SYNDE and their partners, undercurrents of resistance that hinted that their offensive campaign was not as unstoppable as it might seem.

Hard Knocks Reborn

This view might earn me criticism, but over EVE’s history, the “MVP” of all current and prior Wormhole Corps is Hard Knocks. In their heyday, they excelled across a wide spectrum of EVE competencies – PVP, PVE and all the metagaming that EVE is famous for (diplo, spycraft, third-party technical, etc).
Hard Knocks had effectively not existed for years. The day before the war began, zkillboard indicated that Hard Knocks had 1 active member. Most of their members had won EVE, with others joining other wormhole or nullsec groups.
Within days of SYNDE launching the Wormhole War, much of Hard Knocks leadership had resubbed. The sudden rebirth of Hard Knocks was not viewed as a major problem by SYNDE leadership, who noted in a coalition meeting that the worst-case was a scenario where HK might be able to put 30-50 pilots on grid – not a particularly troubling number. This would prove to be an appalling misjudgment as HK leveraged their considerable institutional wormhole knowledge, experience, relationships and assets in support of HAWKS.

ATRAX Eviction: The First Home Hole Eviction of the War

Within days of the SYNDE offensive campaign kicking off, one of their coalition members – ATRAX – had their home hole besieged. It appears that while HAWKS was reeling from the initial onslaught, a small number of hardcore HK/SL0W/CUYS/Voidlings/BBERG pilots targeted ATRAX’ C5 home hole. That group held hole control from ATRAX for days, preventing them from getting many of their members who had been supporting the SYNDE offensive back to their home to actively defend it. In a clinical eviction effort, the ATRAX home hole fell on March 31st, a week after the war began. https://br.evetools.org/b660a0cfa4541b60012c1babc
At a practical level, this was crushing for ATRAX members. Whatever assets they had in their home hole were now forfeit, and many important toons were now stuck in that system in safelogged capitals. When a hole is being evicted, and defense is not possible, it is common practice in wormholes to put as much as you can inside a freighter-class ship or a capital ship and then safelog that ship. Recall that any ship in a person’s hangar will drop when that citadel is destroyed in a wormhole. This process of safelogging is much more challenging when your key toons are not in home at that time. The evictors are rumored to have looted a large number of ATRAX capitals from their destroyed citadel grids.
At a broader level, this was not a significant loss for SYNDE and their coalition. ATRAX was not one of the large groups in the SYNDE coalition – the major players are SYNDE, TURBO, HC and of course INIT. On top of that, ATRAX has proven quite resilient. Although a third of their members left ATRAX after the eviction, those who remained reset in Jita or elsewhere and continued to contribute earnestly to the SYNDE war effort.
This was likely a small blip on the SYNDE radar, and an acceptable loss to the coalition. They did not deviate from their focus on burning HAWKS farms, one after another.

HK Staging Defense: The First Brawl

As HK members continued to resub, they began assembling their group in a C6 wormhole with a C6 static, J115844. They were joined by Voidlings, a smaller wh pvp group that had been evicted by SYNDE and INIT prior to the start of the war. Voidlings was looking to regroup and had joined the HAWKS side in part to avenge their recent eviction.
It is likely that HK planned to use this C6 in the same way that SYNDE was using their C6 staging, as a good way to access the now-widely-contested C6 environment by rage rolling for targets C6 wormholes to attack or defend.
As HK was in the initial stages of getting J115844 set up as their main staging, SYNDE rolled in and reinforced their staging fortizar citadel. They returned days later to reinforce the armor timer. Still fragile at this early stage of the war, on April 4th HK sounded the alarm within the HAWKS-allied groups to please come help support their hull timer. Perhaps for the first time since the war began, HAWKS formed a heavy shield fleet, left their heavily fortified home hole and rushed to help defend the HK hole. HAWKS added 30 Nighthawks to the 30 Vultures that HK and Voidlings had on hand in that C6 staging.
With SYNDE rage rolling from their C6 staging seeking to connect to the HK hole, HK and HAWKS could only wait. With scouts in the SYNDE hole, they were well aware that SYNDE and TURBO had assembled a fleet in excess of 120 ships for that evening’s offensive actions.
With under an hour until the hull timer, SYNDE struck gold and rolled their C6 staging directly into the C6 HK staging. SYNDE immediately jumped Sabres through the HK hole and bubbled in order to prevent the HK/HAWKS fleet from rolling that hole. Both fleets began undocking, with the SYNDE/TURBO heavy armor fleet warping one by one to the hole as they undocked from their staging fortizar. HK/HAWKS instead warped their entire defense fleet to a tactical ping well off the hole given the bubbles blanketing it on their side. As part of the SYNDE fleet led by alliance leads Cyrus Kurush and Mark Resurrectus began jumping the hole, the HK FC Viktor Pvolman noticed that the bubble on the hole had expired, and he made the decision to suicide a rolling capital into the hole.
For the non-wormholers, when fleets in two systems are going to engage, the primary limiting factor is the mass limit of the connecting wormhole. In this case, it was a W237 wormhole, one that connects two C6 holes. That hole can accommodate 3.3b of ship mass (with a range of plus or minus 10%). This means that a fresh, unmassed hole could permit roughly 33 Megathron Navy Issues through it before it collapsed. A rolling carrier by itself is between 1-2B in mass depending on several factors, so if HK could get a rolling carrier through that hole, it would significantly limit the SYNDE/TURBO ability to send in their full fleet – one that was almost certainly a 3.3b fleet, as most wormhole groups carefully plan their combat fleets based on the mass of hole they plan to travel through.
The HK FC likely judged that his HK/HAWKS fleet would lose to the larger SYNDE fleet – which would then mean losing hole control, and subsequently the HK staging with its fort hull timer fast approaching. An HK pilot warped his rolling carrier to the hole just before a new bubble went up, permitting him to land right on the hole as the SYNDE/TURBO fleet continued flooding in. The carrier jumped, putting over 1B of mass on the connecting wormhole. What follows was a comedic series of events. Despite a heavy armor fleet landing all around it, that carrier was able to warp off the hole to a nearby combat site, landing at range. In the confusion, two rather expensive ships warped after the fleeing carrier directly to that combat site – where they promptly died to rats. https://kb.evetools.org/kill/116748195/ https://kb.evetools.org/kill/116748204/
The carrier pilot was informed that the wormhole remain unbubbled, so while the SYNDE ships were dying he aligned his carrier away from the combat site and back to the hole. He warped there into the middle of a number of SYNDE and TURBO ships, jumping immediately on landing and destroying that wormhole connection – leaving several SYNDE/TURBO ships unable to join the rest of the fleet in the HK staging brawl.
The carrier was promptly dispatched with violence by the SYNDE heavy armor fleet on the other side of the now-gone hole. https://kb.evetools.org/kill/116748176/
That would be the high point for SYNDE/TURBO, as the fight between the two fleets in the HK hole quickly turned into a rout. The short-range heavy armor fleet brought by SYNDE FC and Coalition lead Cyrus Kurush was unable to apply at all to the Nighthawks and Vultures who maintained range control throughout. Including the loss of the carrier, the HAWKS side lost 8b while the SYNDE side lost 65b. HK retained hole control, and their staging repaired. https://br.evetools.org/b663ea2bbf68f7000119e6a92
It appears that many errors in planning and execution led to this outcome, but in the grand scheme of things, it seemed a minor almost irrelevant setback for SYNDE. They continued to burn HAWKS farms with abandon, untroubled by a “resurgent” HK that could only put 27 ships on grid to defend their staging.

Espionage and SYNDE State of the Coalition: April 7th

This SYNDE coalition meeting exactly two weeks into the Wormhole War marks a critical turning point in the broader campaign for two primary reasons: One, it likely marks the high point of SYNDE achievement and optimism, and two, the fact that I know about it at all is (or at least should be) a massive cause for long-term concern by the SYNDE coalition.
Spycraft and espionage are often important and impactful elements of major EVE events and wars, and the Wormhole War is no exception.
It has been shared with me that one contributing reason for the early successes of SYNDE coalition is that they had an effective spy who was well integrated into HAWKS. That spy had been sharing pings, fleet movements and farm defense plans with SYNDE leadership on a minute by minute basis. That permitted SYNDE to alert coalition allies anytime HAWKS quick response fleets that were trying to save farms were en route, giving SYNDE allies the ability to roll holes or disengage as appropriate. The existence of this spy has been confirmed to me by both sides – as was their discovery by HAWKS around this time when SYNDE’s sun was ascendant. It is unknown if SYNDE still has spies well placed in HAWKS or HK, but it is undeniable that this time period is a major inflection point in the Wormhole War.
As mentioned earlier, HK has a well-earned reputation for exceptionalism across a wide range of essential EVE skillsets, including espionage. As HK worked back into form, so too did that element. The past week or so has seen a flood of high level leaks of internal SYNDE coalition, corp and leadership comm recordings by members of HK’s leadership. Some have found their way to Reddit, most are being shared across a wide range of wormhole community channels. In fairness, I do not know if they are the result of HK espionage or coming from other members supporting HAWKS – but it is HK who is driving the leaks, so I can only really attribute them to their work. I would be happy to be corrected on this point should additional information emerge. A complete audio file of this coalition meeting is now freely available, and I’m sure someone will link it in the comments if it’s of interest.
In this April 7th coalition meeting, SYNDE lead Cyrus Kurush declared that the coalition is well on the way to their goal of removing HAWKS from C6 space. He openly discussed evicting Hawks from their home, and acknowledged the strength of the SYNDE Coalition’s Nullsec support.
He indicated that while a HAWKS home eviction had been considered, the coalition’s full weight would remain on destroying and taking HAWKS farms. It appears his rationale was an asset denial one. Cyrus Kurush argued that this was a war for resources, and that without farms, HAWKS would not be able to access the resources needed to sustain war.
He also explicitly acknowledged a key development in the War. In the first week of the war, HAWKS transferred “16-17 C6s” to NOVAC, one of the two large high class wh pvp groups (along with LUPUS) that had remained neutral thus far. In response, SYNDE informed NOVAC that they would need to pick a side soon and that SYNDE viewed those farms as part of the broader set of HAWKS C6 farms that were to be redistributed in their new Wormhole order. Unsurprisingly, this would soon have a significant impact on NOVAC’s outlook – though likely not the change that SYNDE had hoped for.
When asked about the recent fleet feed in HK’s staging, Cyrus Kurush declared that the coalition was adopting a Goon Nullsec mentality to fights: helldunk or blueballs. He feared that lost fights would enhance HAWKS morale and bolster their allies, so going forward coalition members were only to take fight where they “can absolutely destroy” HAWKS fleets.
Ironically, when he was asked about the covert side of the war, Cyrus Kurush claimed that whatever HAWKS and HK has in terms of spies and information, SYNDE has the same or better. I say irony because, again, I am only privy to this knowledge because of a recent HK leak.
Cyrus Kurush then stated that their cause was attracting more wormhole groups, sharing in confidence that Chiffas – a wormhole pvp group that often punches above their weight – was joining the SYNDE Coalition.
The very next day, Chiffas absolutely demolished a TURBO fleet. https://br.evetools.org/related/31002076/202404081900
They would not be joining the SYNDE Coalition after all.

The Nullsec Effect: Initiative and Goons Mobilizing

Perhaps the most impactful early-war development was the increasingly widespread awareness throughout the wormhole community about the close alliance between SYNDE and INIT. By this stage, INIT had been taking high class farms directly and now owned several other farms they had previously been renting from SYNDE – both C5s and C6s.
Spurred on by the chaos in high class wormhole space and the invitation by SYNDE to take their own slice of the spice fields, INIT and GOONS formed dedicated “wormhole eviction” SIGs – openly pinging out for member interest in their primary coalition comms channels. INIT and GOONS looked forwards to an environment where they could own their own spice fields instead of renting. That mobilization effort continues.
These developments sent shock waves through the wormhole community, shock waves which continue to reverberate to this day.
It is one thing to batphone a friendly nullbloc if you need help in a difficult situation – defending one’s home is generally viewed as a good reason to batphone anyone and everyone, for instance. Openly allying with a nullbloc in order to achieve objectives in wormhole space has been almost universally scorned by the wormhole community. As any wormhole history nerd could likely confirm, this has generally been viewed as clear casus belli for eviction, and one that is likely to rally widespread wormhole support. You can’t be a wormhole cartel that is allied with a kspace super power – it runs against the natural order of things.
Recent leaks have shown that as far back as Summer 2023, nine months before they ended their alliance with HAWKS, SYNDE leadership was negotiating with INIT about a potential eviction of HAWKS home.
SYNDE was betting that a desire for more and better farms would ensure continued allegiance by wormhole coalition partners despite this rather egregious and open violation of wormhole norms.
More to follow as we explore the two most important strategic developments in the war thus far – the eviction of Sugar, and the eviction of the SYNDE coalition staging. Those two events would cost the SYNDE coalition hundreds of members and well over 1t in assets. They would also be the first time in the war that a 300 pilot Init fleet arrived on grid…on a day when hundreds of billions would be destroyed.
(Full photography credit to u/Thorshammer667 for the C6 wormhole screenshot!)

This post has no story-line or character spoilers in it whatsoever. Still, I marked it as such because I know that communities can be fickle about that sort of thing.
Remember when HER would come out with one - sometimes two! - Nancy Drew games per year? Now, we have to wait several years between games before we get a new one, and the wait is definitely not worth the end product. (Or the whapping $32.)
For the sake of this post, I'm just going to focus on KEY. MID is another post in and of itself.
First, let's talk about the mechanics: Classic v/s Modern.
I was so excited when we received the option to choose between the two different modes. Who wouldn't want to play a new-aged ND game in classic mode? I was ready for the nostalgia that MID abandoned. I thought, "Hey! HER really is listening to the criticism they received from their previous game!"
But did they?
No.
Classic mode is played with the painfully obvious inflection that this game really isn't supposed to be played in Classic Mode. The point-and-click mechanic is off and you STILL have to switch back and forth between classic and modern. Otherwise, you will 100% miss certain things you need to see.
HER completely missed the mark (and the point) with the classic mode option. We were only given this option as a means to placate those of us who either don't like "modern mode" or simply cannot play it due to motion sickness. It's a copout.
Next, let's talk about the graphics.
I would sooner rather have the earlier, first few games' graphics than the graphics from KEY. There are little to no details - especially in the backgrounds. The atmosphere is severely lacking, the aesthetic is vanished, and can we PLEASE all agree that all the NPCs (that are all clones of each other, nonetheless) are entirely unnecessary? I realize that they're trying to fill the void of a more open-world type map (which is also unnecessary for a ND game), but come on...
It's giving 1990s - and not in a good way.
Nancy...
Oh, how I miss Lani. Nancy just isn't the same without her classic 30-year-old-playing-a-teenager voice.
Look, I realize that Brittney Cox is doing the best she can, but the lines read like a robot. THE VOICE DOES NOT MATCH THE CHARACTER. It doesn't scratch that certain itch we all have when it comes to Nancy saying her classic lines like, "it's locked."
She also has oddly-timed inflections and emphasizes the wrong words. It just is what it is, and I'm done sugar-coating it.
HER is ruining the franchise. If they keep going on like this, I unfortunately foresee the Nancy Drew series becoming just another thing we've lost to "the good ol' days." It's honestly like the team has never played a ND game in their lives and is going off a vague idea of what someone else who has also never played a ND game has told them.
Will they listen to our complaints for the next game? Only time will tell... (In another 5+ years probably.)​

I run a small hedge fund based out of Raleigh, NC. Myself and my Fund are long $HAYPP. Please see the disclaimer at the bottom of the post. For more blog posts like this check out my Fund's blog at https://www.rogue-funds.com/blog
Also if you would like to see this blog post with pretty pictures you can also check out: https://www.rogue-funds.com/blog/haypp-group
All Financial Figures are in USD unless otherwise specified.
I think HAYPP Group, the biggest online retailer of nicotine pouches, can capture a huge chunk of the sales in what I believe will be the biggest form of nicotine intake growth over the next 10-15 years.
The future of nicotine consumption will be nicotine pouches and it is growing at an unprecedented rate. Here in the States the go to item for nicotine pouches are Zyn’s (owned by Philip Morris), in Europe it’s Velo (owned by British American Tobacco), but there are various other brands that all catching fire: ON! (Altria), Rogue, Juice Head, FRE, Lucy, and Sesh, among various others.
What is HAYPP?
Brief History
HAYPP is an online retailer and distributor of nicotine pouches and snus. The company was started by a couple of Swedish teenagers in 2009 and through mergers and acquisitions they no longer are in charge of the company as the current CEO joined in 2017/2018. The company bought Nicokick.com and northerner.com (northerner owns 9% of stock) which are now both of their main American brands. They switched from Snus to Nicotine Pouches 6 years ago and haven’t looked back.
HAYPP currently owns a roughly 85% online market share for their Nordic part of the business, which they refer to as their “core” business as well as a ~55% market share of the oral nicotine market (85% market share of the legal nicotine pouch e-commerce market) for their growth market which is considered the US, UK, Germany, and Swiss countries.
SEO Powerhouse
So how do they have such a grasp on what would obviously be a hyper competitive online industry? The main reason for their hyper success in the online market is that they have a death grip on the SEO landscape. Their mastery of SEO allows them to spend almost nothing on marketing and to keep pushing out their distribution system (which continues to drive costs down for them and consumers). This creates a positive feedback loop as they become even cheaper than their competitors, allowing them to lock in customers (over 90% of the customers becoming recurring customers).
If you google just about anything related to Nicotine pouches, there is probably a 95%+ chance that the top unpaid search result will be a HAYPP Group Domain. Even niche searches such as “what is an upper decky” (Gen. Z slang for nicotine pouches) or basic searches such as “what are the top nicotine pouches” you will see that HAYPP Group owns the top of the search.
This is huge when sites like Google severely limit the amount of advertising that addictive products can utilize on their search engine. HAYPP ends up barely spending anything on marketing due to 40% of new customers coming through word of mouth and the rest from SEO.
Data
Their other field of expertise is data collection and selling. Due to the large variety of pouches and being the number one online seller of nicotine pouches, they have created a major database which they sell to various nicotine pouch producers such as Philip Morris and Altria. Producers buy these on an annualized basis, and you can see the usage of their data among the investor relation reports/presentations/websites of various producers. As you can see from my beautiful pictures on this post, they compile plenty of data to help me understand the business better.
Lowest Cost Seller and Best E-Commerce Distribution
Due to their distribution network, HAYPP has become one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) sellers of nicotine pouches in the world. You can buy Zyn’s cheaper from HAYPP websites than you can from the ZYN website. Haypp’s prices are 20-40% cheaper than grocery stores and 30-50% cheaper than convenience stores.
They have been integrating their distribution network so that most variable costs are being converted to vertical fixed costs creating operating leverage for them as they rapidly scale their revenue and are able to increase margins. They have implemented 2-day delivery across the US and close to implementing across Europe markets as well.
Leveraging Market Share for High Quality New Products
The last part of their business model is their ability to leverage their large consumer base to help new products capture market share, which allows them to capture higher margins on their products and it increases the variety of products which consumers would like to buy. In Nordic countries the variety of products is a benefit to them as consumers want to try various brands and flavors. When this competition trend hits the US it will only benefit them even more.
Why Haypp vs Pouch Companies
Currently in the US there are only a couple main brands with Zyn owning a huge chunk of the market. In Europe, Velo is the most popular brand but there are many Nordic brands that consistently attack margins and currently there is little competition in the US market which most likely won’t last much longer. As consumers search out the cheapest product and try to hunt for variety, HAYPP will be that future as convenience stores lag in variety and cost.
Products such as Zyn will definitely continue to grow (currently Zyn is growing at 70% y/y) but we could see margins shrink as competition becomes fiercer and consumers branch out away from the first movers, although Zyn continues to take up 70% of the US market. This only further benefits HAYPP as they are the go-to spot for a large amount of variety. Although they don’t benefit as much from less competition, they are still beneficiaries of an oligopoly esque market due to their cost and distribution networks.
Most large publicly traded pouch companies are also cigarette and chewing tobacco sellers who are rapidly seeing those segments get cannibalized by vaping and nicotine pouches combined with regulatory crackdown risk. Since HAYPP has no exposure to either one, you will not experience any cannibalization outside of snus cannibalization in the Nordics. This is the best pure play bet on nicotine pouch consumption.
Certain countries have limited the ability for consumers to have access to nicotine via retail stores which will allow them to take huge shares of the overall market in places like Germany or in California where they have banned flavored nicotine products in retail stores has led to windfall of customers to HAYPP’s e-commerce model.
Management
The current CEO of HAYPP group, Gavin O’Dowd, used to work for British American Tobacco (BAT) and was the driving force for the VELO acquisition. He currently owns 3.6% of the stock and various other PE firms and Family Offices own large chunks of HAYPP. Most executives have warrants that could give them the right to 200k-400k shares each (29m shares outstanding with no serious history of dilution).
Regulations
As many of you are aware, regulations are a huge part of the nicotine industry. Taxes are going to be huge risks, which are then combined with flavor bans. I think nicotine pouches are one of the products that are least likely to get hit with serious bans since their health risk is much lower than almost any other nicotine product.
The nicotine pouch industry as a whole has been behaving spectacularly well when it comes to ensuring they are not purposefully marketing to young people. They are trying to avoid having a Juul 2.0 fiasco which basically murdered that business and completely fragmented the vaping industry which is on the brink of regulatory crack down.
HAYPP does their part by ensuring age regulation across their whole site. They have age verification to order and deliver. They have a huge emphasis on ensuring that they abide by the law.
Financials
Core Segment (Nordic Countries)
The company is growing heavily in every segment that it operates in. Its core segment seems to be slowing down in growth due to heavy cannibalization from snus sales. This should only be temporary as nicotine pouch volume grows at 30%+ y/y. Once snus nears its cannibalization endpoint, I would expect revenue to begin growing again in its core market (although not at 30%). Current revenue is $250m USD and EBITDA is about $18m USD for just the core segment for the last twelve months. Management expects high single digit EBITDA margins for 2025.
Growth Segment (US, UK, Germany, Switzerland)
The growth segment is skyrocketing. Growth is over 46% y/y and this growth has been consistent and should continue to be consistent. EBITDA margin for the growth markets has begun to inflect positively which will cause a massive amount of leverage in their EBITDA to occur as their fixed cost model begins to do its job. As economies of scale drive forward, we should see this margin increase substantially over the coming years. Currently Revenue is at $77m USD for growth markets and EBITDA is at -$3.5m USD.
Let’s Talk about the Growth Segment a bit more.
This is where the real value from HAYPP will come into play. While it currently begins to inflect positive in terms of profitability, it should be noted that the Growth markets have a massive TAM compared to their core market and could cause the company to 5x in the next few years if they maintain or gain market share and continue to grow in these massive TAMs.
As they grow, their competitive advantage deepens due to sticky customers and cheaper products from economies of scale. The US has an even faster scale of 49%+ growth y/y and HAYPP is outpacing the US nicotine pouch growth at 57% y/y. As the US begins to approve various products and variety begins to flood the US market, a ton of US users want to try various Nordic brands that don’t have access which lends a very strong lean towards an online website such as HAYPP. The US is a very ripe environment along with the UK and Germany (where nicotine can only be sold online) for HAYPP to continue to outperform massively.
Emerging Segment
Their “emerging” segment is where they have begun to introduce vapes into their value chain. HAYPP is beginning to sell vapes to UK and Germany, but it is at the very beginning stages and has no current significant impact on their bottom or top line. The company says the growth they are experiencing in this segment has been very similar to the growth that they experienced when they introduced Nicotine Pouches in growth markets. This is the most likely segment to get hit with regulatory concerns, so for now I won’t even consider this in a to be a profitable unit and will just assume it will be a small drain on EBITDA for the foreseeable future.
Balance Sheet
The balance sheet is great with no large debt burden and good working capital management. As they hit profitability this yeaearly next year I would expect a cash build up until the company decides if they will be returning cash to shareholders or reinvesting in the business.
Valuation
HAYPP is extremely undervalued based on where they are from a profitability standpoint and their current inflection point. Due to their high growth, it will be hard to pinpoint an exact value on them so this will merely be an exercise in estimating their value among a range more than usual (anyone who claims they can perfectly value a high growth company is probably overvaluing due to unsound conviction).
First let’s look at how they are currently valued, which is roughly 14x their core EBITDA. Now let’s take a second and think about how insane that statement was. Their core market is the Nordic countries which will be hitting growth again as their snus cannibalization slows, the Nordic countries basically have no further regulation risk for nicotine pouches, and it is a noncyclical industry. I would argue that 14x their core EBITDA is probably an appropriate valuation based on only their core segment.
What this means is (if you haven’t noticed already) that you are getting their “growth” segment for free based on the valuation of the stock. The growth segment alone is probably worth multiples of the current stock price due to the massive TAM and extreme growth prospects. If we assume the emerging segment is worthless (which it isn’t and it will be profitable at some point) then that means all of the upside in the stock can be based on what the value of the growth segment. Based on TAM, growth, and lack of cyclicality then this leaves the only risk as regulation.
There will most likely be some sort of regulation, but we are very far from that as the Tobacco industry has been very careful in how they implement their new nicotine pouch momentum in a more appropriate way compared to vapes. The most likely regulations will probably be flavor bans of some sort or retail bans (which further benefits HAYPP). Regulations will most likely be limited in scope due to just the sheer lack of mortality risk associated with pouches vs any other form of common nicotine intake.
Based on their probable conservative revenue growth (40% average for the next 3 years, and 15% after that), EBITDA growth, the fact that they will have both core and growth markets at high single digit EBITDA margins in 2025, and their lack of cyclicality, then I would estimate that their Growth markets are worth a very conservative $400m-$500m USD. I am likely undershooting the valuation because they are driving profitability very fast and their revenue is growing closer to 40%-60% in growth markets right now. If they are able to keep up current growth figures and expand to double digit margins before the end of the decade then they could be worth 2x-3x this value (which is why valuing growth companies are so hard, because I can’t foresee the future). Again, I valued the emerging segment as worthless which is unlikely as well.
So, based on the value of $450m USD for the growth markets and the current value of $240 USD for the Nordic markets, that would create a sum of the parts equal to roughly $700m or nearly triple the current share price. This valuation leaves a ton of room for margin expansion and higher growth prospects because let’s face it, the US alone is probably worth at least 3x-5x more than the Nordic countries not including the UK, Germany, or Swiss. This is a very conservative valuation for the company, but it shows how great the risk/reward is based on the current price. Using a conservative valuation here also helps accommodate for regulation risk.
In SEK terms this would be 250 SEK/share or 7.35B SEK.
Conclusion
Even accommodating for regulation risk, a valuation of $700m seems appropriate as a starting point for the valuation for HAYPP Group. I think there is a very high likelihood that I could be off on this by a large margin, but I feel like the downside is very protected with this valuation. Management has been great in execution and I expect that to continue. In a more bullish case where every segment of the company fires on all cylinders we could see a valuation of $1.5B+, but that is not a scenario that I would like to bet my investors’ money on. For now, I will stay invested and keep watching them execute and adjust my valuation accordingly.
Disclaimer: The author of this idea and his Fund have a position in securities discussed at the time of posting and may trade in and out of this position without informing the reader.
Opinions expressed herein by the author are not an investment recommendation and are not meant to be relied upon in investment decisions. The author is not acting in an investment adviser capacity. This is not an investment research report. The author's opinions expressed herein address only select aspects of potential investment in securities of the companies mentioned and cannot be a substitute for comprehensive investment analysis. Any analysis presented herein is illustrative in nature, limited in scope, based on an incomplete set of information, and has limitations to its accuracy. The author recommends that potential and existing investors conduct thorough investment research of their own, including detailed review of the companies' SEC and CSA filings, and consult a qualified investment adviser. The information upon which this material is based was obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but has not been independently verified. Therefore, the author cannot guarantee its accuracy. Any opinions or estimates constitute the author's best judgment as of the date of publication and are subject to change without notice. The author and funds the author advises may buy or sell shares without any further notice. This article may contain certain opinions and “forward-looking statements,” which may be identified by the use of such words as “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “should,” “planned,” “estimated,” “potential,” “outlook,” “forecast,” “plan” and other similar terms. All such opinions and forward-looking statements are conditional and are subject to various factors, including, without limitation, general and local economic conditions, changing levels of competition within certain industries and markets, changes in legislation or regulation, and other economic, competitive, governmental, regulatory and technological factors, any or all of which could cause actual results to differ materially from projected results.

Founder Neil Parikh shares the story:
I went to medical school at Brown, and I thought I was going to be a doctor. But the thing about medical school at that time was that they were not looking for innovative students. It’s mostly memorizing stuff, doing your homework, and taking a test. It's like the army. And that didn't resonate very well with me.
So I told my parents, ‘Hey, I'm going to take a year off. I'm going to move to New York City, and I'm going to figure something else out.’
First of all, they had a heart attack. My parents called me and turned blue in the face. They were very upset because they thought I might never go back to medical school. Which I didn't. So I moved to New York with some of my friends who had just graduated from undergrad. We ended up starting a series of companies, one of them being Consigned. And we were actually in an accelerator program in New York City at a coworking space where I happened to sit next to somebody who became my friend named Phillip. One day, I heard him talking about how he used to sell mattresses online from his dorm room.
And I'm like, ‘That's a dumb idea. Who's ever going to buy a mattress on the internet? Don't you have to try it before you buy it?’
But my dad was actually a sleep doctor. And I guess I've been thinking about the consumer applications of what could happen in healthcare and e-commerce. We realized together that there was a moment in time when all these industries could be disruptive. We saw Warby Parker and Harry's, and we said, ‘That's funny; mattresses are like a terrible industry. You have to negotiate the price.’
But when we go buy this water, you don't say, ‘No, I'm going to pay 80 cents for it.’
So we thought, ‘What if we could totally improve the experience? But more importantly than that, what if we could build the Nike of sleep, where we could figure out how to create products, services, and other things that could help?’
Then, over time, we expanded into many other categories, and the co-founding journey evolved with that.
Q: You go to raise money from investors, but their reaction is not what you expected. What happened?
It's so funny because we were like, ‘This is a genius idea. Of course, it's going to work.’
Then we start pitching investors on Casper, and one by one, it's like dominoes falling, but in a bad way. Everybody's like, ‘Yeah, nobody's ever going to buy a mattress on the internet. The economics are never going to work.’
We probably had 50 meetings of all no's before we got to our first yes.
Q: How did you sell $1 Million of mattresses in 30 days? What was that inflection point?
I think it was aggressively using earned media and then following up with paid media. Earned media is often about credibility, about figuring out how to get in front of people when they're not in the mindset to buy something. Paid media is often about finding people who are currently in the market.
Now, the thing about mattresses is not that many people wake up in the morning and go, ‘Oh yeah, today's a good day to buy a mattress.’
Usually, there's something happening in your life. You're moving into somebody's house, out of somebody's house, you're going to college, you're moving out of your parent’s house. There's usually some life event that's happening. So, a lot of what we spent our time on was thinking through how we could figure out how to tap into those life events and make sure that we're present right there when we need to.
Now, the amazing thing about having an expensive product (~$1,000) is you only have to sell a thousand beds.
Okay, ‘Are there a thousand people that we can find that could buy our product in a month?’
Now that I look back on it, it's not that impossible to think about, right? If I called up 50 people every day, could I sell a thousand in a month? Maybe. And so, I think actually it wasn't so implausible, but to be fair, a lot of things had to go right at the same time.
Q: What were some of the marketing strategies you used to tap into those life events?
So, over time, it was a lot of marketing partnerships. In our first year, we partnered with Uber. In New York City, there was a little Casper button, and you could call a Casper van that would show up at your house. Inside that van, we'd built a little bedroom where you could go try out the product. Instead of opening our own showrooms at the beginning, you could get a showroom on demand.
We also partnered with people who were delivering mailers to your house. We figured out that right when you're about to move, you change your address. That's probably a good time to message you because you're going to be in the market. We partnered with colleges and figured out how to get things to you.
I think a lot of marketing is about arbitrage. It's how you can figure out how to get your message to people whom other people are ignoring. So, in the early days, we'd advertise on these radio shows that nobody had ever heard of. What we realized is that these radio hosts, when they would talk about how amazing Casper was to their audience in Oregon or places that were outside of New York City, would crush it. Their sell-through rates would be incredible. While a lot of our competitors were just advertising in the traditional New York and San Francisco, we realized there are so many people outside of the core demographic that you expect could buy your product.
I think you have to be creative and figure out how to do things differently. I mean, look, how many marketing campaigns the average person can even remember? I bet it's less than one handful.
What that means is that breaking through the noise is really hard.
We realized was that nobody was advertising on the New York City subways.
If you rode the subway back then, the only ads you would see are for dermatologists who pop your pimples and really weird stuff. There were no cool brands advertising on the subways. So we met the person who does the advertising and said, ‘You know what, maybe this can be interesting.’
You have a captive audience. They have to sit opposite this advertising for a meaningful amount of time. And maybe we can be a little bit controversial.
So we started launching puzzles, which we actually put on either word games or other puzzles that people could solve. And what happened?
They weren't really necessarily always about our product, but everybody would start talking about them because they'd go, ‘Oh man, did you solve that puzzle for that game?’
We turned an advertising unit, which was kind of bad, into one that was much cooler and ended up having a captive audience that then people would actually start talking about natively.
The extension was a lot further than we expected.
You can listen to the full interview here, and you can find more stories like this one here.

I wrote a short bit in response to this prompt around a year ago. I liked the idea and have been meaning to come back to it for a while. I've edited the original 200 odd words and added about 1800 more.

Timefall

Small fires still burn where the wreckage of the machine landed. I cough and cough, wipe streaming tears from stinging eyes. Where am I? When am I? Force of habit prompts numb fingers to fish the phone from my pocket and I blink at the cracked screen.

October 12th, 952 

“952,” I gasp. The when explains the where. This is the bank of the river before there was a city here. Before my ancestors even came to this land.
The machine worked. Its pieces lie broken and scattered around me. Half worked, I guess. I won’t be going back.
Shit.
Perhaps the fact that I have traveled back through time should prompt disbelief and wonder - but I knew that it was theoretically possible, that my machine could achieve this. I didn’t really think about returning though. After all, I wasn’t supposed to send myself back.
But then another thought occurs to me. One that brings a bigger shock than the realisation that I am stuck in the past. How the heck does my phone know the date?
I look back at the cracked screen, squinting at the icons in the corner. Three bars of signal.
There’s a sound behind me.
“Is it really you?”
English. A woman’s voice. I turn around slowly.
The first thing I notice is the flatbow in her left hand. Her right is sliding an arrow back into the quiver on her hip. Her clothes are coarse homespun and stained leather. The kind of thing I’d expect to see in the tenth century…
“Dr Jones?” She raises her hand, palm first, as she approaches slowly, cautiously.
Her face looks vaguely familiar somehow, but I’m sure I’ve never seen this person in my life. She’s at least half my age, maybe 20? Shaved head. Dark skin, like mine. That’s got to make it hard fitting in around here. A hysterical laugh tears itself from my throat, a sudden braying hoot.
It acts like a kind of signal to the young woman, she surges forward and tears the phone from my hand, then throws it in a spinning arc. There is a distant splash as it is swallowed by the pristine waters of the wide river.
I stare stupidly after it, frowning.
“That’s how they find the newcomers … always glued to their phones,” she shakes her head.
“Who are you? How do you know my name..” My mouth wants to babble endless questions and it takes a real effort to shut it. I need to pay attention if I want to find out what’s going on here.
A mad smile creases her face and she looks me square in the eye. “It is you! I knew this was the right place. I’m Amy, by the way. I’ve been waiting to meet you for a long time.”
She hugs me fiercely. I’ve never been more confused in my life.
“Come on, we’ve got to go, NOW.” She tugs on my hand and we start moving. “Can you run?” she asks.
“My left leg is hurt, but I’ll do my best.”
A mechanical buzzing sound rises behind us and I turn to see a dark shape floating over the river. It’s a damn drone of some kind. There are at least 200 meters between us and the wooded hills that we are heading toward. I turn back to warn Amy only to see her put arrow to bow and release in one smooth motion. The drone is still hovering above where my phone disappeared when the arrow strikes it. There is a fiery pop, then it falls burning into the water.
There must be some kind of explosive charge on those arrows.
We make it to the cover of the woods and Amy lets me stop to catch my breath.
“Listen,” I gasp. “I need some explanations for what is going on here.”
She smiles indulgently as she leans against a tree, completely unflustered by her exertions.
“That’s fair,” she says. “Where would you like me to start?”
“Maybe let’s begin with the small stuff. Like, who are you and what do you want with me? Then we work our way to why medieval England seems to be full of time travelers.”
“Small stuff first, huh?” She laughs, but it looks like she’s masking some kind of anger as well. “My full name is Amy Wynne-Jones. I’m your daughter … Dad.”
“But… I don’t have a daughter!”
Of all the things she could have said. This only raises more questions. I clap my hands to my temples and close my eyes.
Breath Gary. Just breathe.
She said Amy Wynne-Jones. Oh shit!
“Diana! Your mother is Diana.”
“Gee. You catch on fast. Maybe you should be a scientist, Dad.”
“Wait. This is impossible. I only slept with Diana last week, at the party after our funding got renewed. We agreed - it was just a fling…”
Amy is looking at me with a disgusted expression on her face. “Too much info, Dad. You can talk this over with Mum when we get back to the base.”
“She’s here too? But how can this be? It doesn’t match our time-space models - there is a linear relationship…”
“Yeah, yeah. ‘A linear relationship between the time-space coordinates suggests that time stream coordinates cannot intersect unless there is a rigid relationship.’ That part is quite correct. I’ve read all your papers, and there were just a few things you got wrong.”
I stare stupidly at my fully grown daughter, trying to process her words while the rest of my mind tries to find some footing in the new reality. It feels like my brain has been sucked out and replaced with stale air.
Amy sighs and shakes her head. “Come on then. We need to get moving. I suggest we walk and talk, all right?”
Frankly, I’m happy for the simple act of just following instructions.
And to think, this was supposed to be a simple, unmanned test.
The natural beauty of this place is quite stunning. I’ve lived in central London all my life and I’m so used to seeing advertising hoardings, neon lighting and an endless tide of rubbish. All this green - this fresh air - it’s distracting. Overwhelming.
Never mind the fact that I’ve just discovered I’m a father. My adult daughter is now leading me through a medieval forest a hundred miles and 1100 years away from my cozy, single-bedroom apartment.
Getting drunk and sleeping with a co-worker without protection. What was I thinking? What were we thinking?
I can’t help but curse internally. Diana and I were supposedly among the smartest people on the planet!
Amy hasn’t stopped talking, as she picks a path through the arboreal gloom of the forest. She seems to have inherited her mother’s loquacious nature. “I didn’t even bring a phone. That's how they got most of the refugees... killer drones got most of them easily.”
“Refugees? Killer machines!?” My brain feels ready to explode out of my head. “Just stop!”
With a sigh, Amy turns to face me. I squat on my haunches and hug my knees as I try to force my mind around my circumstances.
“Y’know, Mum took this a lot better. And I was a lot more angry when she finally got here. Like, needing therapy mad. At least you didn’t know you were abandoning me.”
“Why are there machines trying to kill us?”
Amy slings her bow over her shoulder and then hunkers down opposite me, looking me in the eye.
“Yeah. Finding out about those fuckers was my first concern when I made timefall. Don't worry though, like I said, they aren't great at differentiating humans who aren't carrying any technology. I was lucky, in that I had nothing but my clothes with me when I came through the portal."
"Portal? There was no portal, just a probability field sustained within a temporal arc..." My mind races over possibilities. "A bridge over the gravity inflections, yes, but how could there be a portal? "
"Look, I had the benefit of learning from your research and we've added a lot, but there are still gaps in our understanding of exactly what happened with the experiment. We simply couldn't replicate it. It was Mom who managed to stabilize the portal. Even so, it only opens at random intervals, and it never appears in the same place at this end.”
“So, even with a portal, we can’t go back?”
I can see her mother in her face as she thinks about how best to deliver the bad news. Diana and I had been research partners for almost ten years, I know that look well.
“You know that’s not how it works.”
“Why are you so grown up?” The tears come without warning, a sense of loss that washes over me like a wave and is gone. Amy moves to hug me, but I hold her back with one hand. “Sorry, I’m not ready for that.” I dash the tears away and shake my head.
“Mum managed to replicate what you did after two years of secretly trying while promising the Institute that she had moved the project to other areas of research. That means she got here two years ago.”
The logical part of my brain unfreezes. “Of course. The initial quantum bridge created ripples, spreading out through the time axis… So you must have jumped, something like ten years after that.”
I’m not sure if that’s respect in her eyes or not. It is at least some kind of relief at not having to explain things.
My hand flies to my mouth of its own accord. “You must have still only been a child when you left!”
“Gifted, but troubled. That’s how they described me.” Amy flashes me a roguish grin. “Once I worked out that you weren’t both dead - like the Institute claimed - I wouldn’t let anything stop me.”
My beautiful, headstrong daughter.
I don’t give her the chance to ward me off, I throw my arms around her. She returns my hug tentatively at first and then fiercely. I feel a wetness on my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Thanks, Dad.” She pulls back and smiles through the tears. “You’re the last one to come back. And we need you. There’s not many of us left.”
“How many others?”
“There was a small group of the refugees. Sometime after I used the portal at the Institute, people started jumping back … to escape. There was a war. Spies found out about the time portal Mum constructed to follow you. Somehow, that ignited a global conflict. The refugees were already here when I arrived. Those that survived. Whoever - whatever - won the war in the future - sent back the machines. Because of the ripples, they were already here, before anyone arrived. Waiting for the last of the us. Their mission is to erase every trace of the humans who escaped into the past.”
“You said you need me though. What can I do?”
“Mum and I have been working for two years now. We’ve stolen enough tech to build a stasis pod. A time capsule.”
Of course! The realization strikes my heart like a freeze ray. For a second it seems possible. But no…
“Causality dictates that the initial gap in the time be sufficient that the material transferred can disperse and return to a similar state…”
“That’s where you were wrong.” Her fingers tighten on my arm and she draws close. “Your mass formed the portal that I traveled through.”
And I realise what this horrible feeling is that I’ve had in the back of my head since I woke up.
“You’re a walking fault line in causality, Dad. You’re the only one who can go back. You've got to change the future to save the family you never knew you had.”
Vertigo.
Somewhere inside, there's a part of me that that just keeps falling.
Thanks for reading, I really hope you enjoyed the story! All crit/feedback welcome!
WizardRites

As always, thank you to u/SpacePaladin15 for the wonderful universe that is NoP! Thank you to u/cruisingNW for proof reading and helping me make this chapter as good as it can be, you're the man! Honestly LoM wouldn't have gone very far without him! If you haven't you should absolutely go read Foundations of Humanity! It's very good AND it just updated!
A big thanks to u/Saint-Andros for helping with proofreading! He writes Out of Our Elements which is a very good one! If you like a good fic in the wilderness and a pair of cute 'friends' ;) you'll love OOE!
Also thank you to u/brotanics! For this wonderful fanart of Taisa. And this one! She's so cute I'm gonna die
And thank you to u/Jimdandy117! For this adorable fanart of Chris and Renkel! Dear god help he's adorable I love him so much
Thank you u/SlimyRage, or AsciiSquid on Discord, for makin' Vengineer Taisa Gamin'. She's absolutely adorable, I love her lil' workers apron. She looks so excited to get to work!
Thank you u/Braquen! For this astounding Pixel Art of Taisa after a few range day dates with Chris! Her little hat and gunbelt are absolutely astounding!
Thank you u/VeryUnluckyDice! For this Artwork of Taisa and Chris as characters from One Piece! I've never seen or read it before but it's incredibly cute!
Thank you to u/creditmission for their wonderful work of several LoM fanfics!
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Memory Transcription Subject: Taisa, Venlil Starship Engineer, Crystal Star Shipping Co-Owner
Date [Standardized Human Time]: October 16th, 2136
My ear twitches as it catches the first sounds of morning coming from the kitchen, and Chris snorts at the sudden interruption. I delight in the comforting pull of his arms, even if it tugs my wool a little. He draws small circles in the wool of my back, gently coaxing me to wake alongside him, even as his groggy grumble reminds me how long I’d already been awake.
“G’Mornin, Darlin’.” He yawns before planting a small kiss on my snout, eagerly met by my own happy mewl as I stretched and wove my claws through the ‘wool’ on his chest, “Sleep well?”
“Better than I would have thought…” I purred, nuzzling up into his neck as I stretched, reaching for my pad on the bed-side before flicking it on to a notification from over a claw ago that it’d lost signal. “Don’t know if Mama even responded.”
“I’m sorry, Darlin’.” He whispered, pulling me in tight to his chest with a sorrowful look on his face.
“I hope they’re alright.” I whispered back, pressing in close as I pulled my eyes from the empty screen, dropping the pad to fall into the mattress beside us.
“I’m sure they are, hon’.” Chris’ voice poured through me as he held me tight, his hands still gently caressing my wool as the sounds in the kitchen grew ever louder. “Though, if’n we make it out the other side of all this, I think your Pa’s gonna have words for me again.”
“Mama too!” A small burble of whistling laughter filled my throat at the memory of Papa angrily jabbing a claw up at Chris’ hulking form when we’d returned from The Cradle.
“I’ll bet they’re happier to see us alive than they will be angry we stayed.” Chris rumbled in reply, his hand trailing lightly through my wool down my back.
“I hope so.” I sighed, stretching in his grasp, doing my best to work the lethargy from my limbs as the tantalizing taste of whatever Darlene was cooking reached my tongue. “For now let's just…”
“Get through this as best we can? Agreed.” Chris grunted, finishing my hanging sentence as he propped himself up against a pile of pillows and suddenly pulled me against him. A soft bleat of surprise slipped from my mouth, quickly silenced by a wonderfully warm kiss that I eagerly pressed into. A small smile crossed his lips as we hung there, separated by no more than a breath of air before he spoke. “Smells like Ma’s makin’ up somethin’ delicious.”
“Of course food is the first thing your mind goes to once you’re actually awake.” I laughed, my tail slipping from his leg to playfully tap the side of his face as I slid down to nuzzle his neck.
“When Ma’s cookin’ you bet it is!” He replied, placing another, softer kiss on my crown before shifting out beneath me and rising to his feet with a stretch and a yawn. “‘Sides, it beats stayin’ in bed all day just… waitin’.”
“Yea, yea I suppose it does.” My ears drooped at the mention of what was coming, that hanging specter of the Extermination Fleet slipping to the forefront of my mind as I ran my claws through my wool, peering into the old mirror in the corner. “What did you want to do today?”
“First: eat breakfast. Then we feed the cows real quick ‘fore they get upset. After that, I figure we go up to the peak again and watch the lightshow. Hidin’ won’t do us no good anyhow, least we can have a nice view if’n it all comes down.” He answered, his voice stiff in its attempts to be nonchalant, doing his best to stay upbeat despite the subject. “Make a few sandwiches and snacks, take a nice hike and just watch.”
“Think that’ll help at all?” I asked, my voice only just louder than a whisper as I turned from the mirror, finding him already dressed and, for the most part, groomed.
“No clue, but I bet it’ll feel a lot better than sitting in a dank hole waiting for it to end anyhow.” Chris shrugged, pulling his hat down tight on his head as he bent over to give me another kiss. “‘Sides, I bet Roscoe’d love to find his way along for a bit. Though you might have to fight him o’er the peaches.”
A jolt of surprise flicked up my ears as I felt my tail wag at the thought of the dog joyfully chomping at the peaches, his little shoot-tail wagging as fast as he could manage. “That does sound nice…”
“Thought you’d like that. Now, how’s ‘bout we get some breakfast?” He asked with a smile, stepping to the door with a sure stride before swinging it open and gesturing me through. “After you, Hon’.”
The delightful, familiar taste of sizzling potatoes, carrots and all manner of spices I couldn’t recognize filled the air as we stepped into the kitchen to find Darlene hard at work over the stove, whistling happily as she was surrounded by what I thought had to be the entire kitchen’s worth of pots, pans, skillets and tools. Michael and Ryan were sat at the island across from her, chatting idly as Roscoe happily trotted to Chris and I.
A twitch of fear zipped down my spine and out of my tail as the dog looked up to me, letting out a soft whine as he licked his chops and plopped to the floor before rolling over to show Chris and I his belly.
“Good Morn’ Roscoooe! Time for some belly rubs, ol’ buddy.” Chris cooed, stooping over to vigorously rub at the dogs belly, eliciting a rising rumble of groans, pants and whines as the brown and white mass of fur wiggled back and forth happily. “You happy to see Taisa again, bud?”
A lolling, pink tongue fell from Roscoe’s mouth as he basked in the moment of adoring attention. I glanced up, finding Chris’ parents and Ryan watching me hover off to Chris’ side. Michael gave me a nod and a small smile, gently encouraging me forward to Chris’ side. “He still won’t bite ya, unless’n ya consider over-eager kisses to be bitin’.”
The light warmth of a small bloom spread under my wool as I stepped forward, crouching at Chris’ side. Worry flashed through my mind while I looked down at Roscoe’s glistening, pointed teeth before being rapidly replaced by amusement as he let out an adorable, appreciative grunt that sounded far too much like Papa after settling into a good bath to relax.
You’ve come this far already, he was plenty gentle last time you were here paw-feeding him peaches.
My paw slipped into his fur, met by a warm, soft blanket that I hadn’t fully expected as I slowly massaged my claws through his coat, eliciting another battery of pleased groans. Before I knew it, both of my paws were hard at work rubbing and scratching though his fur as if I weren’t touching a predator like it was nothing to be worried about.
Maybe because it isn’t. You’re in love with one, after all.
The distinct clink of plates being set on the countertop snapped me from the luxurious fur of Roscoe’s coat as Darlene’s sing-song voice filled the air. “Breakfast is served!”
“Taisa, I couldn’t rightly convince Michael or Ryan to give up a Naw’lins breakfast today but don’chu worry. I’ve got the vegan options set aside for ya in the green bowls and the blue carton next to the coffee is the vanilla oat…” She paused a moment, obviously searching her mind for a ‘better’ word than whatever the actual one was. “Juice? It’s good to cut the coffee with, if’n it’s a bit too strong for ya. Oh! And the orange pitcher is orange juice if ya really don’t like the coffee!”
I looked across the table, finding four green bowls and a platter amongst a scattered sea of different colored bowls, platters and trays. Ryan leaned forward, gently sticking his fork into a thin, flaky white slab sat atop a blue plate before setting it onto his own.
Is that…
Does it really matter anymore?
Chris pulled his eyes from the spread of food in front of us, glancing over at me with worried eyes as the rest of his family set about preparing their own plates. He slipped into a stool with a soft creak, pulling a plate in front of himself before settling a napkin across his lap. Another zip of fear bolted down my tail at the thought of my Love digging into a cut of flesh like his brother was. I could feel my ears swiveling with anxiety as my tail all but twisted itself into knots and I watched him gently skewer a few pieces of fruit and collect a scoop of some steaming medley of vegetables.
Is Chris going to?
It's lab-grown, isn’t it? Not a single animal was hurt making it so why shouldn’t he? Is it really any worse than a plant when it’s grown in a lab?
My wool flared with worry as I settled into the stool next to him, nervously fidgeting with the plate and ‘fork’ in front of me as I watched Chris’ family take their picks of the spread on the table. Each one had picked at least something off the… other plates before picking a few pieces of fruit: a steaming helping of rice and vegetables, a scoop of those delicious crispy tubers Papa loved or whatever those fluffy, golden pillows were off the green dishes. Chris looked over to me again, his gaze making me feel like I was little more than an upset pup about to throw a fit for not being entirely comfortable.
Disappointment…
That’s not what he thinks and you know it.
But what if he does? What if I a-
You’re not. And we already knew what he was when we made our decision. It had to happen sometime, didn’t it?
I let out a soft sigh, placing a paw on his thigh and meeting his eye as he took a crunchy bite from an apple. “Chris, what do you want to eat?”
“I’m fine with some fr-” He started, talking between chews of his apple, earning an annoyed look from Darlene.
“No, not what you’re fine with, what do you want to eat?” I repeated, pressing my paw a little tighter to his leg as my tail found its way around his ankle. “I… you don’t have to try and dance around what you are for my sake, Love. I love you for you, not your diet. If I could get past the eyes I can get past this.”
“You sure?” He whispered, glancing from me to that same plate he’d kept looking at in the middle of the table with a few cuts of pink and speckled black meat on it. “I don’t wanna ma-”
“Chris, you’ve done nothing but take supplements, indulge Papa’s cooking and eat a genuinely concerning volume of string-fruit for the past few herds. Yes, I’m sure.” I answered, patting his leg and taking a deep breath before watching as he looked to his family for a moment and then back to me.
Chris’ mouth hung open as he tried to stammer a response, some assurance, some empty ‘I’m fine’, before he sighed, setting his hand softly on mine and squeezing gently before I turned my paw over to squeeze back. “… Thank you, Darlin’. Mama’s blackened Red-Drum n’ grits ‘re worth it, I promise you that.”
“Go for it, big-guy.” I purred, doing my best to bolster my confidence as he leaned forward to take a scoop of the off-white grain, dropping it into a bowl before gently laying a sliver of pink and black flesh across the top of it.
A silver spoon cut a piece of the meat free along with a scoop of the ‘grits’, he drew in a deep breath as it hung just before his mouth, closing his eyes with a small smile that reminded me all too much of Mama when Papa made one of her Mama’s recipes. The spoon slipped into his mouth, the food disappearing with it, prompting a pleasant groan from Chris before he leaned back in his chair and let out a contented sigh. “Stars I’ve missed that. No offense to your Pa’ but ain’t nothin’ beat’s Ma’s cookin’.”
“I t-think he might contest that.” I replied, as a shiver passed through my wool at the thought before I quickly batted it away, doing my best to plant my foot against the building anxiety in my chest. “What should I have?”
“Can’t go wrong with Ma’s pancakes and some maple syrup! Fluffy as all hell and just as sweet.Fully Vegan too!” He replied, pointing to the golden pillows before breaking off another chunk of flesh as his voice turned mischievous. “‘Tween that, some fruit and a good helping of roasted vegetables, I’m not sure you could fit much else.”
“Excuse you! I can eat my fill plenty!” I bleated back, pulling my eyes from the contents of his bowl to look over the ‘pancakes’, catching a trio of amused eyes watching us as we bickered. Defiantly I leaned forward and skewered one, plopping it on my plate before collecting the flask of brown syrup, dumping a hardy portion on top of it and cutting a slice free to pop into my mouth.
Stars above was he right.
The dough all but melted in my mouth, the nutty sweetness of the syrup mixed with the light airy taste of the pancake to make something that far outstripped any dessert Strayu I’d ever had. I found myself letting out a trill of happiness as I took another bite, my tail wagging ecstatically at each delicious chew before my plate was suddenly empty again.
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone go through one of Ma’s Vegan pancakes quite that fast other’n Annie.” Ryan laughed before skewering another few golden brown chunks of potato and popping them in his mouth.
“Well lucky for her, seconds are an option!” Darlene replied with a broad grin, gently cutting her meal up as she watched me reach for another delicious pancake. “So, what are you two getting up to today?”
“Well,” Chris mumbled past a mouthful of his food, holding a fist to his mouth seemingly appeasing her, even if only just, before continuing. “I’s figurin’ we’ll take care of feedin’ the cow’s for y’all ‘fore we head up to the outlook to… watch.”
“Oh! Thank you, Son.” Michael responded, sliding his now clean plate away from himself as he spoke. “Guess Ryan an’ I can get some work done in the garage then!”
“I’ll have some snacks and a good dinner ready for you two when you’re done! Won’t do to go up there and be hungry!” Darlene exclaimed, a flash of excitement in her eyes as she started to rattle off options she could have ready for us to take up.
“Thank you Ma’. Whatever you decide on I’m sure we’ll love it.” Chris stated, a small smile pulling at the corners of his face as he scooped the last of the grits from his bowl.
It’s like nothing’s even happening to them. Just like it’s another normal paw.
[Advance Transcript by Time Unit: 8 Hours]
The silence of the forest around us echoed with the sounds of calling birds and rustling leaves that sounded strikingly familiar to the preserves at home, the dragging weight of a ‘lunch box’ that was positively stuffed to the brim with food hung on my shoulder as we steadily plodded our way up the mountainside. The sky far above had shifted, the pale blues and white clouds of day deepening into streaking purples, fiery oranges and brilliant yellows as the sun had begun to set. It still amazed me that he got to see the night every paw, watching what Heartwood River had built an entire festival around, something that most Venlil never even saw in the first place was so common, so beautiful.
It was astoundingly, beautifully, breathtaking.
Chris’ heavy footfalls a few tails ahead pulled me from my thoughts, the soft, hollow clunk of his guitar on his hip accompanied the jangling clink of the golden buckles on his rifle’s sling as he spoke. “Not much farther now, Darlin’. You still good carryin’ dinner? I can take it off ya’ ‘til we get to the top if’n ya need.”
I stifled a snicker as I readjusted the strap, picking up my pace so I wasn’t slowing us down. “I’m fine. Not like I’m gonna let you carry everything, Heartwood. Besides, lower gravity certainly helps!”
“Oh? You gonna jump up to give me another kiss?” He laughed, slowing his stride for a few steps to let me catch up. “Certainly wouldn’t mind any.”
“Oh really? Maybe I will!”” I purred back, sticking my tongue out at him as he shifted the rifle around to rest against his back, prompting another thought to surface in my mind. “Why’d you bring the revolver and the rifle?”
He gave a noncommittal shrug and grunt, his hand rising to rest on the gleaming pistol as the holster squeaked and groaned a little under the weight. “Just… feels like somethin’ I can control in all this. ‘Sides, she’s like an old good luck charm. Pappy always told me I’d never be alone so long’s I kept a good rifle by my side when things got rough. I figure there ain’t nothin’ much rougher’n this.”
A soft mewl of understanding slipped from my snout as the path beneath our feet leveled out, the trees in front of us fading away to a vast expanse of rising mountain peaks and deep, tree filled valleys framing the setting sun like a perfectly placed photograph. “Mama always seems to feel better when she’s got that old rifle of hers around, said having it nearby always calmed her nerves.”
“I’m surprised that monster doesn’t knock her on her ass! I need to get her to let me send some rounds through that thing sometime to feel it out.” He replied with a smile, gently setting his old wooden guitar down, leaning it against the low edge of the rock outcropping before slinging his rifle free and bringing it to his shoulder to look out across the valley. “Ol’ Isabella ain’t never let me down, she’s like a lucky charm ‘s far as I’m concerned.”
“I know you said your ‘Pappy’ gave her to you for those competitions you two used to go to, but I don’t think you ever told me why it was that gun specifically.” I asked, nonchalantly setting my load down on top of the rock outcropping, doing my best to hide the wag in my tail as I tried to nudge him into rambling again. It was always cute when he got excited about something.
Same thing he said about me getting tail deep in oil, spare parts and burnt carbon.
“Ol’ Izzy? She’s a Henry Model ‘60. Same gun the ‘hero’ used in one of our favorite movies set back in the eighteen hundreds, or at least a really nice replica with some customizations Pappy and I had ‘our’ gunsmith down in town do.” He answered, slipping the lever down with the sweet sound of well maintained linkages and religiously oiled parts.
“What’d you have them do?” I asked, leering around his side to stare up at the rifle in his hands, my ears raised with interest as he lowered it and crouched to my height to show me.
“Most of it was to do with the action, bringin’ her up to competition grade. Lightening a few parts here, strengthening a few bolts there, tightening up some linkages over yonder. Cleaned out the rifling, added a loop lever and made the trigger feather weight. Top it all off with the blackout finish to make the gold pop against her ebony furniture and damn if she ain’t pretty.” He let out a chuckle as he polished a smudge from the rifle’s gleaming flank, a fond look on his face as he brought his eyes up to cast a gaze out across the mountain range. “Hell, Pappy always used to joke that she ‘was the only woman that boy’d ever need’. Mama never was a fan of that one...”
Stars I love it when he gets like this.
“Is that normal, for Humans?”
“Hmm?”
“Getting that attached to a firearm? Mama used to spend a whole half-claw taking her rifle apart, oiling it, checking the connections and making sure everything was right before putting it back together again. She said it helped calm her down when her leg hurt.”
“Firearms specifically? No, not really, most people just have something what’s important to them for one reason or another. Pa’s ol’ telescope was another gift from Pappy and whenever he gets stressed out he just sits there and stares up at the sky with it. Ma’ loves her ol’ mixer from the restaurant, anytime she gets wired she dives straight into making something to keep her hands busy…” He sighed as his hands tightened around the rifle for a moment before he leaned it against the rock outcrop and sat down. “For me, Izzy’s one of the few things that ain’t family that’s always been there and… she’s really the last thing I have of Pappy… Man, I miss him sometimes.”
“He sounds like he meant a lot to you, Heartwood… I wish I’d gotten to meet him.”
“He did, Darlin’... He sure did.”
Silence fell between the two of us as I slipped down to sit beside him, the only sounds around us those of the forest itself and the hollow, musical winds of the valleys beyond. Chris’ hand found my back, my tail slipping tight around his wrist as I pressed into him. Everything was quiet again as we watched the sun dip below the distant horizon, the spectrum of vibrant colors slipping away to the deep black-blue of night and its tapestry of stars.
Stars above but that moon was beautiful.
I’d seen it last time we were here, but not like this. This time it was massive, a glowing white spot-light casting down onto us, the rising mountains and the rest of Earth below it. A dusting of black dots zipped back and forth in front of it, Earth’s defenders settling into their final preparations as the Extermination fleet no doubt closed in.
Like it's trying to shine a little light of its own.
Michael had shown us video from one of Earth’s orbital telescopes of the U.N.’s opening salvo, a veritable basin of FTL propelled asteroids they had managed to drop from warp just in front of the fleet had sent them scampering out of the way as best they could. More than a few Federation ships had been turned to scrap-piles against the rocks while a few pawfuls more slammed into each other in their panic. It was crafty, that was certain, I’d never seen anything even close to it tried before in any of the history books I’d read. Humanity, it seemed, was pulling out all the stops they could think of.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me at least a little hope.
“What was the movie?” I asked, breaking the silence with a whisper, doing my best to lift the mood back up to something positive. I nuzzled his neck gently before I rose, padding over to root around in the bag to find what Darlene had packed for us.
“Old western flick, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. ‘Bout a few outlaws durin’ the civil war a few hundred years ago tryin’ to steal a bunch of gold and what not. I’d show it to you but… well it’s kinda violent. Don’t think it even made it near the data-dump.”
“Heartwood, after what we’ve gone through I think a ‘rather violent’ movie is the least of things to be concerned about me bolting off for. Once this is all over I think a claw spent curled up in bed watching a movie would be well deserved.”
“Well… it’s a bit more than thaaaat.” He stated, his voice stretching as I heard the smile I knew was spreading on his face fill his voice clear as the river. “That’s the last movie in the saga, can’t just watch one!”
“Then we can make a whole paw of it!” I replied, my voice a happy, joking purr as I pulled the first platter of vegetables and ‘nut-cheeses’ from inside the bag before meandering back over to Chris. “Get some more of that ‘sushi’ from the place you won’t shut up about in Tokyo, put the movies on the holo-viewer in our cabin and just relax.”
“Damn if that don’t sound like a nice date night to me.” He replied, reaching up to snag a slice of apple from the tray as I set it on the rock in front of me.
He glanced over, meeting my eyes as we sat and watched the gathering storm in the void beyond, his voice strong and confident as he spoke, even if his inflection was still horrible. “I love you, Tai… Whatever happens, I love you.”
“I love you too, Chris.” I affirmed, staring back into his eyes before placing my crown gently to his forehead. “Whatever happens.”
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I know this is a long shot but one of our core maintainers added some support for Latin to our hover over dictionary. The pull request adds a few deinflection rules around how to search up a canonical form of a dictionary entry. For example in English when someone searches "cats", you would direct them to the dictionary definition for "cat" with the "plural" tag. That's what this pull request is proposing adding for Latin.
Here's an example from the pull request:

{ name: 'feminine', description: 'Adjective form', rules: [ suffixInflection('a', 'us', ['adj12'], ['adj12']) ] } 

Indicates a deinflection rule that states any word that ends in an "a" should redirect to the dictionary entry where that "a" replaced with an "us" with the "Adjective, 1st-2nd declension" tag.
I'm completely ignorant in Latin so I can't really review this Pull Request. If someone could lend their Latin expertise, even if it's just a soundness check, that would be awesome. multas gratias 🙏
Pull request: https://github.com/themoeway/yomitan/pull/901

The arrival of Generative AI has triggered widespread attention, prompting every organization to prioritize it, with many transitioning from the “what” to the “how”. This jolt has created a whirlwind pace of innovation across various industries and many companies are already transitioning. The primary focus is to enhance customer experience by increasing the human connection between buyer and brands.
This blog aims to take a deep dive into how Generative AI can catalyze inflection points in enhancing customer journey. In recent years, many companies have sought to enhance the customer journey through cutting-edge technology transformation to make customer interactions more responsive and personalized.
While Gen AI could impact most of the business functions, we would like to focus on Customer operations, marketing and sales, and software engineering that could account for approximately 75 percent of total annual value from Generative AI use cases.
Impact of Gen AI in Customer Operations
Business and Consumers wanted to stay connected seamlessly, be it a purchase, technical assistance or after sales support. Gen AI has the potential to revolutionize the entire customer operations. The research found that application of Gen AI increased the issue resolution by 14 percent an hour and reduced the time spent on issue handling by 9 percent.
The following are some of the operational enhancements that Generative AI development services can bring:
Customer Self-Service: Customers expect interactions to be more human-like, personalized and immediate regardless of demographic and geographical limitations. The increase in quality of chatbots and self-service solutions has minimized the need to engage one-on-one with an agent. However, if required, someone can be triggered to the right agent who solve the issue in the first conversation. As a service agent, these self-service solutions have improved overall productivity and focus more on strategic value adds which can subsequently increase agent satisfaction. This is one of the effective use cases of Gen AI.
Improved Customer Satisfaction: Generative AI can instantly retrieve specific customer transaction data and help the human customer service representative to successfully answer customer queries and resolve issues during the initial interactions. Further, it can improve the turnaround time and quality by providing assistance real-time and recommending next steps.
Improved Sales: Because of its ability to rapidly process data on customers and their browsing histories, the technology can identify product suggestions and deals tailored to customer preferences. Gen AI can improve cross-sell recommendations from better understanding of customer needs holistically. We estimate that Gen AI could increase customer operations productivity by a value ranging from 30 to 45 percent of current function costs.
Marketing & Sales
Consumers are demanding more personalized and engaging content. Marketers are pushed to deliver this promise while driving cost saving, speed to market, and workflow efficiency. Sales and Marketing professionals mine for market trends and customer information from unstructured data sources (like social media platform, new, research, production information and customer feedback) and draft effective marketing and sales communication. Generative AI can create personalized messages for targeted customers based on their interests, preferences and behaviors.
Once the LLm’s are trained on proper unbiased training data, it can do content creation tasks such as drafting brand headlines, content creation, social media posts and product descriptions.
This tailored content creation capability can not only maximize end user engagement across the marketing funnel but also catalyze conversion rates and enhance brand outcomes.
Some of the potential benefits of Gen AI for marketing include the following:
Hyper-personalization: Conventional content creation method is a time-consuming process and often lacks agility to both customer needs and adapting to a person’s evolving needs. With AI-generated contents, companies can drive creative content generation to enhance the personalization of marketing messages for different customer segments, geographies, and demographics. Generating tailored content for targeted audience can enhance customer value, attraction, conversion and retention in the long run.
SEO Optimization: Generative AI can aid marketers in achieving improved conversion rates and reduced costs through the optimization of search engine optimization (SEO) for various marketing and sales technical elements, including page titles, image tags, and URLs. It has the capability to generate essential SEO tokens, assist specialists in creating digital content optimized for SEO, and disseminate targeted content to customers.
Competitor analysis: Gen AI can quickly analyze sentiment and activation across a broad competitive set, to inform competitive benchmarking and due diligence. These insights can augment a marketer’s ability to deploy content in real-time that helps position brands ahead of their competition. Generative AI could also change the way both B2B and B2C companies approach sales. The following are two use cases for sales:
Increase Sales Conversion: Generative AI could identify and prioritize sales leads by creating comprehensive consumer profiles from structured and unstructured data and suggesting actions to staff to improve client engagement at every point of contact.
Improve lead development: Generative AI could help sales representatives nurture leads by synthesizing relevant product sales information and customer profiles and creating discussion scripts to facilitate customer conversation, including up- and cross-selling talking points. It could also automate sales follow-ups and passively nurture leads until clients are ready for direct interaction with a human sales agent.
Generative AI could increase sales productivity by 3 to 5 percent of current global sales expenditures.
Software Engineering
LLM’s can be trained to develop applications that can generate code by understanding the natural-language prompt. Study indicates that software engineering productivity could be impacted 20 – 45 percent of current annual spending on the function. Time spent on activities such as generating initial code draft, code correction and refactoring, root-cause analysis (RCA) and generating new system design could be drastically reduced.
Large technology companies are already selling generative AI for software engineering, including GitHub Copilot, which is now integrated with OpenAI’s GPT-4, and Replit, used by more than 20 million coders.
By accelerating the coding process, generative AI could push the skill sets and capabilities needed in software engineering toward code and architecture design.
Better System design and Planning: Software Engineers leverage generative AI to create multiple IT architecture designs and iterate on the potential configurations, accelerating system design, and allowing faster time to market. Gen AI can also assist in analyzing, cleaning and labelling large volumes of data from different platforms.
Coding & Testing: Software engineers can use AI assisted tools to generate code drafts, rapidly fix syntax issues, and debug codes. Gen AI can also be their coding companion and serve as a navigable knowledge base. Engineers employ algorithms that can enhance functional and performance testing to ensure quality and can generate test cases and test data automatically.
Conclusion
Getting the most value from generative AI
When implemented in the right way, Gen AI can increase employee productivity, enable personalized experience for customers, and drive tangible value for organizations. The rapid development of generative AI is likely to significantly increase the impact of AI overall, generating trillions of dollars of additional value each year and transforming the nature of work. Intellectyx, a pioneer in data science and Artificial Intelligence, is committed to empowering organizations by maximizing tangible Gen AI ROI. By partnering with Intellectyx, organizations can unlock the full potential of their data, make informed decisions, enhance operational efficiency, and ultimately drive business growth.
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Usually when we talk about consonant clusters in English, it is about clusters found in common native (or anglicized) words with their supposed "proper" / "mainstream" pronunciations, often only in their lexical forms. However, this leaves out more marginal but actually possible ones: traditionally we have /θl/ in "thlipsis" from Greek roots, and many initial clusters in which /ʃ/ replaces /s/; for newly-coined terms, onomatopoeias, or loanwords we have /vl/ vlog, /vɹ/ vroom, and /zl/ zloty, just to name a few. We can do /θp/ "lithp" when imitating people with lisps too. Most English cluster lists also don't bother to show clusters found in inflected forms, such as /mpst/ found in "glimpsed".
Combined with certain accent features and inflections we can even create this: now imagine a word that ends with /ns/. I'll just use "mince" to showcase here. For a speaker with the prince-prints merger, it undergoes epenthesis to form /nts/ (as if it is spelled "mints"), so we get /ntst/ from its past participle "minced". If this ever becomes a noun we can then form its plural "minceds" which has /ntsts/. Other examples include /mpfts/ from "triumpheds" with the epenthesis.
My question is: are there any more unusual English consonant clusters, both possible and pronounceable to average English speakers?

Hi!
I’ve worked with a fair number of people in the past, and the feedback I got was surprising and very positive, given they were essentially strangers to me when I met them. I’ve spoken with professional SLTs and gotten good feedback on my teaching methods also.
I want to pursue this avenue, but I’m not in a position to go the professional route acquiring multiple degrees and so on. More a coach through lived experience and self-taught teaching practices.
Does anyone have advice on getting established? There are quite a lot of coaches out there already spanning a wide range of nationalities, I want to pivot to help those in the UK with correlating voice change (MtF) with maintaining their accent, unique regional inflections and so on.
My concerns though, I don’t know if building a wwwdottransvoicecoachingforbritishpeopleinnitdotcom is where I want to go, these long pages of ‘the secret to your voice!’ And ‘unlock your real potential!’ And ‘the things they won’t teach you!’ followed by the ‘one time fee of just £1,249’ I just… don’t think that’s me? I don’t think I can earnestly sell myself on an infomercial page.
I’m also crap at ‘content’, YouTube Instagram and TikTok are a nightmare for me. I’m absolutely fine working with students (Lots of experience as a musician prior to this) but trying to fake enthusiasm and put on an over excited voice? I can’t get my thoughts out without fumbling and needing to do a dozen jump cuts and the energy ends up all over the place.
I guess I’m hoping there’s something obvious I’ve missed but I’m probably SoL. I’d love to help others and share what I’ve gained, but maybe I’m not cut out for it.

Hi everyone,
Long time listener, first time caller. A joke from calling into radio stations. Despite the dated joke, I am a man in my mids 20s. I was born right before the turn of the century so I got to grow up as the digital age was developing. I knew I was different growing up but I never really knew why until I was about twelve. I remember talking to Child Study professionals from ages 4-12. I got modified assignments, I got put into another room during tests and got extra time. It was only during a routine check up did I learn of my diagnosis. "So how's the Aspergers?" An awkward question that I had no answer to but my mom answered like it was nothing. I asked her on the car ride and that opened Pandora's Box. I started doing more research. I started connecting dots. I was happy I could make sense of why the world didn't seem to make sense through my eyes. The bullying sucked I will admit but I at least I knew why. The almost obsessive interests in Pokemon and Digimon, the tendency to hyperfixate on things, the random repeating of phrases. But my sudden clarity would become a blessing and a curse. Through the trials and tribulations of the American public school system, I slowly became more self-aware of my behavior. Why didn't I fit in quite as easily as others? Sure there are a lot of kids that are awkward and get made fun of for their character quirks that don't have ASD. But I wanted to be accepted. So I slowly took bits and pieces from friends who were in the cooler social circles. I used to laugh at everything, not knowing when a joke started and ended, and got made fun of. So I learned to look for the minor inflections in voices that denotes a laugh. I learned to use my dry manner of speak to my advantage. I copied mannerisms, became hyperaware of my body language. I started masking. I still made social faux pas but it was mitigated. I count myself lucky that I had a large, diverse group of friends I could be myself around. But along the way, I lost sight of who that person truly was. I spent so long with the mask up that I wasn't sure if there was a real person underneath. MAsking your quirks makes you hyperaware, hypervigilant. I developed social anxiety and became self-conscious about how I was being perceived at any given moment. I have since worked on this in therapy and am doing better but it has been a long road.
Growing up, my mom had to facilitate a lot of my friendships until about 5th grade. She wanted to make sure I was developing as much as I could. I was a hyperactive kid who would not shut up about my special interests. Luckily, the friends I made shared those same interests. I had a friend who I knew since kindergarten. We would go to each other's houses all the time. We would gush over Power Rangers. It was a particularly big special interest for me and it was freeing to be able to talk about. Unfortunately, as we grew older, we slowly grew apart. He became more interested in fitting in. He would often say "You are obsessed" and "that stuff is for kids" even though we were 8, 9, 10 years old. The things I was into became frowned upon. So I hid them. I would get made fun of but he never outwardly defend me. I still considered him my best friend. But I think I stopped being his. We are still friends but not as close as we used to be. My outlook on life is very simple and tends to be black and white. If we have a few decent interactions and connect on a single interest, I consider you a friend. Understanding the nuance between acquaintance and friend can be difficult at times. I don't do well with change. The people you think are going to be in your life forever may not be there in a few years. That hurt to learn. Learning that people grow and change into adulthood hurts too. Things aren't the same as they were when you were young. But I still want to just play video games, play with imaginary friends and just hang out like we did 10 years ago. It hurts that people don't share the same thoughts on consistency like me. But Individuals are allowed to be just that, individual. Again, I am lucky enough to have found people that like me for me. I played soccer at the collegiate level and met lifelong friends through it. I was able to find people that accepted me with all of my perceived flaws and quirks. I came to terms with the fickleness of human personality and understood that others are dealing with their own stuff too. Im still anxious but I feel more comfortable in my own skin.
Now, of course, if you expecting to hear something about romantic relationships, we have finally arrived. I just wanted to give some context. Of course, I did overexplain some things but I digress. Growing up, I was a romantic cynic on the outside, and a hopeless romantic on the inside. I always wanted love but yet never understood how to get it. I watched a lot of television and played a lot of games. I am naturally introverted and am often in my own head rather than reality. I used to daydream about being a relationship all the time. I would develop crushes and think I was going to spend my life with the person. Yes even at 8 years old. I would build up the courage and confess my affection through notes or through someone else. But I never really knew the other person. I was falling in love with a idea. I liked the idea of love. Someone who is there for you. To help comfort you when you're sad. They make you happy and you get to kiss all the time. But that way of thinking is selfish. You are taking the other person out the equation and you are constructing a person that will compensate your feelings of loneliness. It's not totally a bad thing. I can be nice to escape from reality from time to time. But at some point, you have to come back. Which sucks. But I learned this the hard way. And sometimes, that's the only way. Women, men or any person you are trying to date have their own thoughts, emotions, wants and needs. You can't expect a blank canvas. As a man, I was lucky to have female friends who could give me a perspective on life as a women. The do and don'ts of courting, be respectful and taking rejection in stride. I started college thinking every thing would be different. I would start dating with this new rubric. I met someone who seem to fit every category. She also played soccer, she was in the same major and I found her attractive (she wore glasses, that's a thing for me). I will say I had a very low threshold for attraction. We were snapchating, talking every day and we became pretty good friends. In retrospect, the relationship was a little one-sided as I was more a person to vent to, but I digress. I was convinced that things were going well. I confessed one night after mustering up all my courage (notice the pattern?). She said maybe. People, if you get a maybe, take it as a NO and try to move on. I latched on that maybe and selfishly thought 'She'll come around, eventually'. I made sure stay respectful. I asked her out a few times but did not a committal response. One night, I had helped her walk a friend home from a party. We ran into some friends of hers and they asked "is that your boooooyfriend", like a child. She responded with an "Ew no" and we moved on. After taking some time, I realized that I needed to exercise some self-respect. I sent a text explaining that I liked being her friend and I did not want to lose that. But I still liked her romatically so i needed time and space to work that out. I had been falling for the surface level things we had in common and we never connected any deeper. I grew from the experience and learned that, for me at least, a relationship should have a basis in friendship. Love your partner, but you should also like your partner too. Also, for all the young men who are attracted to women out there, you can be friends with the other sex without expecting sex or a relationship. As I stated, I benefitted by the different perspectives of the friends I had made. My first relationship ended up being with a women I had made friends with freshmen year of college.
I had a lot of bad luck with romance all throughout my schooling days. Most of it was my fault, given I never really knew the people i had crushes on. In college, it was more out of my control. I used dating apps (every one you could think of) and didn't have much success. I worked on myself and slowly improved my dating profile. I tried the direct approach, giving a personal description that almost exceeded the character count. I wanted to make sure the other person knew as much about me as possible. That didn't seem to work so I tried the witty line. That kinda worked but not by much. I got few matches that didn't go anywhere. I got a date once but the person on the profile didn't really look like it in real life. That and we didn't really have anything in common. I will say I did not deal with that the most mature way (ghosted). Don't do that, I'm not proud of it but live and learn. The next time I asked somebody out, they texted me the morning after at 3 am to tell me they are getting back with their ex and she subsequently tried to set me up with a friend out of pity. I could only laugh. At that point, I decided to give up on love. It wasn't meant for me. I got too many quirks and idiosyncracies. I don't deserve love. I'm just a wast...and the spiral continued. Funny enough, I decided to download Tinder for umpteenth time at the beginning of junior year. I swiped on a friend that I made freshman year who I had been attracted but never acted on it. She had a boyfriend at the time so I just let it go. She, her friends and I were often studying in the same common area and developed a rapport. They were Bio majors so I didn't have any classes in common with them my sophomore year. I would always say hi in passing and stop for small talk here and there but nothing major. I was surprised when she matched with me. It was a surreal feeling. Does someone that I like like me back? This was unprecedented. I felt like I made progress. Maybe people like me can find someone. But I didn't want to get my hopes up. She could have swiped because we knew each other (I don't know what that means either but it's what I thought). Then we talked. and talked some more. And some more. I never asked for advice from friends. I tried to be as authentic as possible. It turns out I am pretty witty over text. I was (and still am) oblivious to signs of attractions, given it had never been reciprocated before. She actually asked me to see a scary movie together. I made a comment about scarying easily and she said I could hold her hand if I get jumpy. Well that is the most obvious sign I could get. Date goes well, We start studying together. I actually initiated a snuggle as we watched a movie. RED ALERT, physical contact with a romantic interest. Wooooo! One day we are hanging out and tells me that her friends had said that they wished that they could find a guy like me back then. That helped my self-esteem immensely. I felt comfortable disclosing my ASD after she asked why I wasn't the party type of person. Too loud, too many smells, too crowded. She was receptive and understanding. I was estatic. I was doing the impossible, in my eyes. I had a lot of firsts in a short amount of time. Specifically, in the physical department. I got my first kiss, and some touchy-feelies of private parts in one night. Things were happening fast. I got asked to define the relationship AFTER my first time. That was a very awkward time to be asked this question. But I wanted to be with her so... yeah. I did everything I could to be a good boyfriend. Be supportive, try to hang out when I can, make time for her and make sure that I try to be the best person I can be. Unfortunately, some things are out of your control. After a month, there had been a bit of distance. I was oblivious to it; I was so focused on being the perfect boyfriend. One day, we were trying to pick something to watch and we couldn't decide on anything. She didn't like anime and I didn't want to watch baking shows. She asked me if something felt off between us. I didn't think so but she did. She essentially told me that she wasn't falling in love with and she didn't think she would. I was blindsided. I accepted it, I couldn't really blame her. I didn't do anything wrong. But those thoughts started to come back. "See, you don't deserve it and you never did", "the other foot was going to drop eventually", "too good to be true", etc. I spiralled. I was a mess for months. I finally got diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I started taking meds. I started therapy. Eventually, I got better and felt ready to try again.
I was a bit jaded butwanted to start putting myself out there, slowly. This time, I chose a combination of witty honesty for my Tinder profile. Something like looking for wholesome connections on Tinder may not be the best, but I am naive. Then I met HER. Oh man, what a looker. And would you believe she messaged me first? She was refreshed by my honesty and thought I was attractive. Woah. Now this is 4 months from when my first relationship ended. I wanted to take things slow. I told myself that I would make sure I truly connected with someone before getting into a relationship. So that's what I did. We talked every day, really getting to know each other. We had similar interests and some different ones. She is brutally honest and straightforward just like me. She is confident and funny, but she had such a capacity for empathy and understanding. They say you should never have your standards too high. I had always felt like mine were, given I spent years in my own head, crafting the perfect person. But, imagine, you meet someone who fits so closely to almost every criteria? We became good friends. I slowly opened up more. That includes complimenting her, believe or not. I tend to come on strong in most situations so I tried to be more reserved. She has such a beautiful smile. Anyway, i digress. I started to realize that I was falling for her. Hard. Not like before though. Like I wake up and think about her. Go to bed and think about her. We started talking over winter break while I was at home. We were long distance but I would come back every other week. Our first date was at....a movie (original I know). I was very nervous because I really liked her, I wanted it to go well..and we were also horny people in their early twenties who may or may not planned to do the deed in the parking lot. Which was not great because again, I was nervous. But things got better. She became my girlfriend. The bad thoughts went away. I fell in love. Let me tell you, it feels great. Plus, lockdown happened towards the beginning of our relationship. So we got to see each other super often. Inseperable. We knew that we would marry each other. We found our person. 4 years later, now its happily ever after. Except life isn't a fairy tale. Nothing to celebrate on my anniversary, no one to see on Valentine's Day. We went on a break in Spetmeber to work on ourselves. We became co-depepndent. She had mental health challenges that I couldn't fix. I couldn't make it better. No matter how hard i tried. We were our own support system. But she was the love of my life and I wasn't going to give up. But then she broke up with me in October. She fell out of love. She called me the next day and changed her mind. She made a mistake. I have a girlfriend again. Two days later, she broke up with me again. She made a mistake in making a mistake. Fast forward a month, her birthday is coming up. I still check up on her story on Insta. It would be the first I missed. I had sent her a letter to get closure. She responded. We talk. Im just happy to hear her voice. two days later, she misses me and wants to come back. I'm happy. My whole outlook changes. I can listen to music again. We plan on spend thanksgiving together. Things are gonna back to normal. I stayed up all night the night before I pick her up from school. I'm too excited. Then the text. "I think Im running away from my problems please don't come". She blocks me again. We talk. If she is going to come back, she wants to come back better. She doesn't want me to wait and if I find somebody else....I stopped her. I only wanted to be with her. I wont wait but I will always keep the door open for her. She is worth it. But I lied. I lied to her but more importantly, I lied to myself. I was telling myself I was getting better. I downloaded apps again. I started working out again. Im moving on. No, I waited. I put my life on hold. Waiting. For just one phone call. One text. I get the love of my life back. Today, I saw a picture of her kissing another guy. She was happy. She was better. He looked like I did when I was with her. I reached out. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell. But I couldn't. Because love is unconditional. I love her and I always will. But with love comes loss. Love means being happy for her even if it's not with me. Love is not some emotion that makes you want to have sex and kiss. Love is commitment. Love is doing the little things. Love is being there even when you are mad at each other. Love is not standing in the way of your loved ones happiness. Love is hard. Love is not a feeling. I have a hard time with feelings. I can;t understand them half the time. But I know what love is. I had it and I lost it. It's soul crushing and it's not fair. But Love....is knowing when to let go. I hope I can find it again someday. But for now, I have to stop waiting.

Founder Neil Parikh shares the story:
I went to medical school at Brown, and I thought I was going to be a doctor. But the thing about medical school at that time was that they were not looking for innovative students. It’s mostly memorizing stuff, doing your homework, and taking a test. It's like the army. And that didn't resonate very well with me.
So I told my parents, ‘Hey, I'm going to take a year off. I'm going to move to New York City, and I'm going to figure something else out.’
First of all, they had a heart attack. My parents called me and turned blue in the face. They were very upset because they thought I might never go back to medical school. Which I didn't. So I moved to New York with some of my friends who had just graduated from undergrad. We ended up starting a series of companies, one of them being Consigned. And we were actually in an accelerator program in New York City at a coworking space where I happened to sit next to somebody who became my friend named Phillip. One day, I heard him talking about how he used to sell mattresses online from his dorm room.
And I'm like, ‘That's a dumb idea. Who's ever going to buy a mattress on the internet? Don't you have to try it before you buy it?’
But my dad was actually a sleep doctor. And I guess I've been thinking about the consumer applications of what could happen in healthcare and e-commerce. We realized together that there was a moment in time when all these industries could be disruptive. We saw Warby Parker and Harry's, and we said, ‘That's funny; mattresses are like a terrible industry. You have to negotiate the price.’
But when we go buy this water, you don't say, ‘No, I'm going to pay 80 cents for it.’
So we thought, ‘What if we could totally improve the experience? But more importantly than that, what if we could build the Nike of sleep, where we could figure out how to create products, services, and other things that could help?’
Then, over time, we expanded into many other categories, and the co-founding journey evolved with that.
Q: You go to raise money from investors, but their reaction is not what you expected. What happened?
It's so funny because we were like, ‘This is a genius idea. Of course, it's going to work.’
Then we start pitching investors on Casper, and one by one, it's like dominoes falling, but in a bad way. Everybody's like, ‘Yeah, nobody's ever going to buy a mattress on the internet. The economics are never going to work.’
We probably had 50 meetings of all no's before we got to our first yes.
Q: How did you sell $1 Million of mattresses in 30 days? What was that inflection point?
I think it was aggressively using earned media and then following up with paid media. Earned media is often about credibility, about figuring out how to get in front of people when they're not in the mindset to buy something. Paid media is often about finding people who are currently in the market.
Now, the thing about mattresses is not that many people wake up in the morning and go, ‘Oh yeah, today's a good day to buy a mattress.’
Usually, there's something happening in your life. You're moving into somebody's house, out of somebody's house, you're going to college, you're moving out of your parent’s house. There's usually some life event that's happening. So, a lot of what we spent our time on was thinking through how we could figure out how to tap into those life events and make sure that we're present right there when we need to.
Now, the amazing thing about having an expensive product (~$1,000) is you only have to sell a thousand beds.
Okay, ‘Are there a thousand people that we can find that could buy our product in a month?’
Now that I look back on it, it's not that impossible to think about, right? If I called up 50 people every day, could I sell a thousand in a month? Maybe. And so, I think actually it wasn't so implausible, but to be fair, a lot of things had to go right at the same time.
Q: What were some of the marketing strategies you used to tap into those life events?
So, over time, it was a lot of marketing partnerships. In our first year, we partnered with Uber. In New York City, there was a little Casper button, and you could call a Casper van that would show up at your house. Inside that van, we'd built a little bedroom where you could go try out the product. Instead of opening our own showrooms at the beginning, you could get a showroom on demand.
We also partnered with people who were delivering mailers to your house. We figured out that right when you're about to move, you change your address. That's probably a good time to message you because you're going to be in the market. We partnered with colleges and figured out how to get things to you.
I think a lot of marketing is about arbitrage. It's how you can figure out how to get your message to people whom other people are ignoring. So, in the early days, we'd advertise on these radio shows that nobody had ever heard of. What we realized is that these radio hosts, when they would talk about how amazing Casper was to their audience in Oregon or places that were outside of New York City, would crush it. Their sell-through rates would be incredible. While a lot of our competitors were just advertising in the traditional New York and San Francisco, we realized there are so many people outside of the core demographic that you expect could buy your product.
I think you have to be creative and figure out how to do things differently. I mean, look, how many marketing campaigns the average person can even remember? I bet it's less than one handful.
What that means is that breaking through the noise is really hard.
We realized was that nobody was advertising on the New York City subways.
If you rode the subway back then, the only ads you would see are for dermatologists who pop your pimples and really weird stuff. There were no cool brands advertising on the subways. So we met the person who does the advertising and said, ‘You know what, maybe this can be interesting.’
You have a captive audience. They have to sit opposite this advertising for a meaningful amount of time. And maybe we can be a little bit controversial.
So we started launching puzzles, which we actually put on either word games or other puzzles that people could solve. And what happened?
They weren't really necessarily always about our product, but everybody would start talking about them because they'd go, ‘Oh man, did you solve that puzzle for that game?’
We turned an advertising unit, which was kind of bad, into one that was much cooler and ended up having a captive audience that then people would actually start talking about natively.
The extension was a lot further than we expected.
You can listen to the full interview here, and you can find more stories like this one here.

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'War is the assassin's trade'
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Marcus stared at the thin, slightly curved arm of steel that protruded out from the snake-humanoid's cloaked form.
His eyes then traced its lithe torso, seeing the thin dark wrappings that clung to its skin, clearly well suited for a night raid like this. The body suit was patched with form-fitting leathers around the chest and kneecaps for protection of only the vitals, and the long shawl that hung from the creature's face gave away nothing to Marcus except the amber eye-slits that blinked horizontally at him from within their visor.
From the black scales he saw between those eyes, and the long, thin tail that trailed from the creature's back, Marcus was certain of his assassin's species.
*A Yokun…*he thought. One of the beasts behind this whole proxy war.
He gulped, watching the serpent close the door to his chamber, noticing the bloodied snout of one of his guards lying just beyond the doorway.
Those guards were of Clan Marrow. Armed and armored. That means one thing: this guy's good.
Marcus licked his lips, thinking of any way he could alert the palace servants.
"I presume you didn't come here to talk," he said, moving slightly to his left, hand reaching into his pocket to precure Gatskeek's dagger.
He got his hand round the hilt. He blinked once, and then he was looking at the tip of the Yokun's blade, its edge glistening with ratman blood.
"Drop it, human," the creature hissed.
Marcus dared not even gulp – the sword (a Wakizashi, by the looks of it) was close enough to his throat that even a single twitch out of line would be instant death.
He let the dagger fall to the ground.
And he waited.
He watched the eyes of his enemy in silence, head rushing as he tried to think of a way out of this.
"I suppose negotiations are out of the picture?" he asked, raising his hands and keeping his body as rigid as possible. "If it's any compensation, I believe we could come to some form of mutually beneficial arrangeme-"
The Yokun had stepped behind him and tied a muzzle round his mouth before he could finish whatever 'plan' he was spinning on the spot to stall for time.
"Be a good monkey and keep quiet," the creature told him. "And you might just keep your head."
Marcus felt the arm of the snake coil round his neck, the other one jabbing into his back to propel him forward.
A woman…he realized, noting the inflection in her voice. And one who, it seems, wants me alive…
And without any other alternative, he allowed himself to be guided outside, stepping over the gradually pooling blood from the two guardsmen lying prone at his doorway.
Clean cuts – across the throat. Absolute precision, no waste, no struggle.
His eyes shot back to try and get a glimpse of his captor.
"Keep moving," she whispered.
You're good, aren't you?
The end of the hallway turned into a crossroads, and Marcus heard a general shout go up from deeper within the palace chambers.
Ahead, two guards ran in tandem with torches burning in their hands. As they turned they saw the pair moving down the dimly lit hallway and were about to call out for aid were it not for the two shuriken that stopped their tongues – embedding themselves deep beneath the chin of each paralyzed rat.
As they fell to the floor together in a spasming, twitching heap, Marcus's assailant finished them off with two masterful mercy strokes of her Wakisashi. It all happened so fast that Marcus couldn't be sure it had happened at all.
His assailant scanned the bottom floors as they entered into a long, spiral stairway that would lead out into the servants' quarters and then the front door of the palace. From the confidence with which this snake moved, avoiding contact with any guards by keeping to the pillars and shadows of the castle's environs, Marcus made two more assumptions:
One: she knew the layout of the castle and
Two: she'd already taken care of the guards at the front door.
So thorough must this girl's preparations have been, that when a general shout went up from the palace courtyard outside – just beside where the quarters of the Glumrat representatives slept – he was actually struck with surprise:
"H-help! Bloody murder…isssss…being…done! Asssssasssssinssss have invaded palaccccce!"
Marcus heard his captor hiss behind him.
You didn't realize it takes more than just precision to kill a Gloomraava, did you? Especially one of Clan Glumrot. You left old Verulex alive, and now you're going to pay the price.
As the snake-fiend practically threw Marcus down the right corridor that led towards the servants' quarters, he began to piece together what must be happening right now – a precision strike at the throats of the war-council…probably based on reports that a meeting had been held on this night, when we would all be gathered together.
And that meant someone gave her the intel…
The Yokun dashed through the servant rats who screamed as they awoke to Marcus's gagged form being bulldozed through the door to their quarters. The Yokun's blade flew to slice at their jugulars like it were a homing eagle, and she simply continued on her way into the long, vine-coated corridor that led down into the palace foyer. Into freedom.
"Wait," Marcus heard her say as she launched both her and him down onto the carpeted floor of the palace and scanned her surroundings.
Marcus could see nothing out of the ordinary – the lilac and strawberries of the foyer were just as bright as they ever had been.
…but, come to think of it, maybe they were just a little too bright to be believed.
As a hail of arrows came flying from the palace doorway Marcus felt himself thrown into the air and spun like a ragdoll as the Yokun's tail whipped about to slash at the storm of projectiles. When he landed, he did so in the snake-woman's arms, and she immediately took up her blade and placed the tip directly under Marcus's throat.
"Don't bother," she told the air before her. "Make one more move, and he dies."
Marcus's eyes flew to see what she evidently could see, and noticed the tell-tale signs of silhouettes glittering against the corrugated steel of the palace door.
Slowly, the spell of indivisibility was lifted, and Marcus looked upon a retinue of familiar, yet bloody face: Deekius, Skeever, and a detachment of Shrykul's halberd-wielding honor-guards.
The king himself stood at the center of their formation, clutching a strip of gauze to his bleeding neck.
"Tsk'alia!" Marcus heard his assailant scoff. "The rodent king yet lives…"
How had she hit them all at once? Marcus's mind railed with nothing else better to do. How could this single woman…without being detected…unless…
The realization pierced him with an intensity that matched the kiss of the Yokun's cold steel under his chin.
There's more than one of them…
That at least told him something: if there was indeed a team of assassins working together here, they had clearly spent themselves too thin, and one of them had been exceedingly sloppy.
She straightened up and pressed the Wakizashi's bloody tip deeper into Marcus's neck, so he could feel the thin trickle of his blood run in a little red river down his throat.
"Make one more move and he dies," she told the ratmen. "You understand, vermin? Your Shai-Alud dies here and now."
Marcus's eyes flew to each of the panting, breathless rats, settling finally on Skeever. He tried to communicate with his eyes flaring eyes and nostrils alone that the snake she-devil was bluffing – that she clearly wanted him alive. But judging from the sagging shoulders and sorrow-filled face of the Talon-Commander, he could tell he wasn't getting through.
"Be…letting…her…pass," Shrykul said. "There is…being…enough…bloodshed on this night."
The guards parted unsteadily, eyeing up the Yokun as she kicked at Marcus's legs to move him forward passed the crowd of his allies. As he looked upon Skeever's face – wracked with pain and fury in equal measure – he felt the ratman give his sleeve a reassuring tug.
"Hands off!" his captor hissed. "Or he dies!"
The rats gave them an even wider bearth, and Marcus had no choice but to stagger towards the exit, looking round only once to see the bloody form of Verulex appear at the top of the castle stairway and be cowed into silence by King Shrykul's shaking head. A sharp sting of pain beneath his ear jerked him back to face the slowly approaching palace gates.
"Eyes forward," the Yokun corrected him.
This time he let out a gulp. He knew that as soon as he left the safety of these gates, the chances of him returning were probably slim. And whatever the snake-fiend had in store for him, it hardly bode well.
The gates to the castle opened and Marcus was thrust into the streets with the Yokun's dark blade glancing his throat as she grimaced, looking about her fervently as though she was waiting for something.
Then, looking to the skies, she saw what she needed to see.
And Marcus's eyes went wide as he realized the situation was far worse than he'd imagined.
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