English 1st language, some Latin on college. Now I am learning Spanish at 64. I want to be able to have conversations with my Latin American work mates.
I am in unit 3. I get 90% + on all the units and exercises so far. When I try to think of things to say in Spanish I can only think of about 10% of what I have accomplished in the course so far. I feel like I can recognize what I need to to get the answers right. I am just not sure I am learning the language yet. Also I was feeling ok until unit 3. Things started getting a lot harder.
Is this common for the learning style that rosetta stone uses?
Should I be taking notes and creating vocabulary lists to drill? Or something else?
How do I get the most of of RS?

Hey folks, I have a bit of a conundrum here that’s probably mostly down to my own inexperience with the legal side of this stuff; I’ll be very happy if there’s an obvious straightforward answer I just missed here!
Essentially I’m trying to turn two parallel side gigs I have going into actual working businesses. One is repairing and making musical instruments, and the other is leathercrafting. As this all comes under the umbrella of handcrafts and I’m operating everything out of the same workshop, my understanding is that I could do all this as the same single sole trader even if I sold the different items through different websites. Obviously if the answer to this is ‘no’, my question stops here and I just do all my registration and accounts twice, but since I’m not relishing the prospect of doing it once I hope that’s not the case!
The bigger issue I have here is business names. I have two names and sets of branding picked out for each arm of this, and as far as I can see I can use these no problem as long as the wider business name is also included and accessible. My problem here is that you might describe some of my leathercrafting work as a little……risqué. I don’t actually care about customers or visitors to the leathercrafting side of things tracing it back to me, I’m more concerned with the business name being a very straightforward google-able link between the two websites. I’m slightly concerned about losing business on the guitar end of things (you’d be surprised how much of the international custom instrument market is from guys in American megachurch bands), but frankly slightly more concerned about my mother making the connection and having an extremely awkward family Christmas dinner down the line!
So short version; is there a practical way of operating two businesses as a single sole trader where it’s not very easy for customers visiting a website to find one from the other?

Long rant ahead, pretty disorganized as well as it was initially a reply on another post before I decided to make it its own post. Apologies!
As an Israeli, it's absolutely incredible to me how this conflict, which has nothing to do with the Westerners' public, takes up such a significant part of their lives. There are countless other significantly worse conflicts, tremendously worse global problems (climate change, the lingering effects of COVID, resources dwindling for humanity as a whole, pollution, etc.), the heaps of domestic issues (especially in the US) - and this far away conflict in a piece of land smaller than some major world cities is the biggest focus of some of these peoples' lives.
This isn't whataboutism, I'm not saying people can't take an interest with issue X just because there exists a worse issue Y. The point is the amount of time people are spending on this vs. other issues, even if we put aside the fact that they are all ignorant, completely misinformed useful idiots.
These "activists" are fully investing their time in this completely irrelevant issue to them. I was just visiting the US, and I passed by a virtue-signaling house in Seattle. It had it all - BLM, pride flag, and others. All worthy causes. But those were all small signs on the side of the house, but on the front was a gigantic Palestinian flag with a gigantic "free Palestine" slogan as well. Really?! This is the issue you're spending energy on and bringing the most awareness to? Not BLM, not LGBT, both of which are incredibly relevant to you and your country? Do black people, your actual fellow countrymen, no longer face racism? Do LGBT not get harassed or suffer violence?
And let's not forget another big elephant in the room - none of them speak up at all against antisemitism. So what, human rights activists, but Jews Don't Count? Hell, forget speaking up - many of them ENDORSE violence against Jews (and as we've seen from many of their protests, they're just violent in general). Unbelievable hypocrites, so it's "Palestinians are not Hamas" on the one hand, but every single Jew on the planet is complicit in whatever blood libel you've concocted?
Like with Jews in general, their hatred of every single Israeli alive is also massively hypocritical and obviously vile and wrong. I've not seen a single people alive receive as much hate as we do purely based on our nationality. Even those other nations that experience such hate online, it'd usually be isolated to receiving it from whatever nation they are in conflict with. Are Russian immigrants expected to give answers about the war? Do Chinese immigrants get hate for their government's actions? And so on.
I'm 35 years old and a computer nerd, and pretty much since I can remember myself, I would receive hate and contempt online just for mentioning I'm Israeli. Whenever we would take a trip abroad, my parents would make sure to tell us to always say we're from some other country if asked. Do you have any idea what an impact this has on a kid, growing up knowing he needs to be afraid to mention where he is? How difficult it was to understand why people might harm us when I'm just a kid, never did anything to anyone in my short life?
The amount of propaganda out there is just astonishing. It is mostly driven by Iran, Russia, and Qatar. It is extremely hard to fight this with such a small country as Israel, especially when our PR is disastrous and more often than not, it's regular people who do the job instead of officials. And Westerners eat it up, as well as apply their local race politics (mostly Americans) to the conflict when it has nothing to do with it, not to mention how they're completely unaware that even if it was relevant, the majority of Israelis are Mizrahi Jews, "brown" as Americans love to say, and on the flip side a sizeable amount of Palestinians are white skinned themselves, hell a lot of Levantines are like Syrians and Lebanese. Druze are basically 100% levantine and are pretty white skinned. Anyway, yeah, skin color has nothing to do with it, which is probably head error-inducing for Americans used to making it all about race.
It's depressing. And it honestly seems hopeless to battle it, we can't stand up to the incredible propaganda machine working against us constantly. Couple it with people generally prone to fall for populist rubbish and be ignorant in general, it's a losing battle.

Hello everyone,
I hope me - as a probably neurotypical person - asking this here is alright and I am not invading your space. Please let me know in case you don't feel comfortable with my question or general presence in this sub, I will delete my post if this is the case.
I think I personally am more on the neurotypical side or somewhere in the middle but I have several friends who refer to themselves as neurodivergent. In their cases it's more about ADHD, but since ADHD and autism so often go hand in hand the topic of neurodiversity is something I come into contact with quite a lot. Lately I've started looking into the differences between neurotypical and neurodivergent communication. The main reason behind this is that I feel like I am experiencing massive communication issues with one particular friend and my theory is that our approaches to communication are just so different that we end up constantly misunderstanding each other. Whether our issues actually have anything to do with being neurotypical or neurodivergent, I don't know, but this idea is what prompted me to take a closer look at the supposed differences between how both groups tend to communicate.
Unfortunately this has not helped me but has only left me with more questions. To keep it brief, the way I have seen neurodivergent people describe neurotypical communication simply does not align with my own personal experience, or I simply misunderstand the point they are trying to make.
I watched a few videos on Youtube by autistic creators talking about the double empathy problem and differences between neurotypical and neurodivergent communication. I agree that neurotypical people should make an effort to understand neurodivergent people and not expect neurodivergent people to adapt to the way neurotypical people communicate.
What I had issues with was the following: the idea that neurotypical people don't communicate clearly and how there's supposedly always a hidden meaning in their words and neurotypical people getting mad at neurodivergent people for not understanding that hidden meaning or for being honest and straightfoward.
Not only did I not really understand this but I have to admit that it actually made me feel attacked. Maybe I am taking it too personally but the assumption that I and the people around me are constantly lying is hurtful to me. I value honesty and I trust the people around me to be as honest with me as I am with them.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around this simply because neither do I think I personally am being dishonest in my communication nor do I perceive the people around me as dishonest. When I say something I mean it exactly that way: no hidden meaning. I usually assume people around me are honest until they give me a reason to believe otherwise. I am not saying that I am 100% honest all the time: I will sometimes skip details of a story if I think they are unnecessary and will just make the story too convoluted, and I have absolutely lied to people asking me something that was none of their business but telling them so would have given away personal information that I didn't want them to have about me. I also omit things a lot, or rather: I keep a lot of my thoughts to myself. If I have a negative opinion on something I will answer honestly if I'm being asked about my opinion on said thing but I will not necessarily just talk about it by myself. I think I have no obligation to share my thoughts or opinions with other people but depending on what it's about I think I can see how this could be perceived as being dishonest?
This whole honest/dishonest thing is just very confusing to me and I am hoping to get some insight from other people here who have spent more time dealing with this topic or simply have a better understanding due to their personal experience.
I have a few theories as to why this topic confuses me so much:

1. I am a lot more neurodivergent than I think and the way I communicate is not actually neurotypical and therefore I cannot relate to how neurotypical people supposedly communicate.
2. I don't realise that I and people around me are constantly being dishonest because I am so used to it that I don't notice it anymore. I might define honesty differently so I might be dishonest by neurodivergent definition and don't realise it because in my own view it's not dishonest.
3. It's a cultural thing: the creators I've watched were American, whereas I am European. I know Americans for example use "How are you?" as a greeting and not as an actual question which is confusing to a lot of Europeans because when you ask that here you usually really want to know how the other person is doing.

I would greatly appreciate some insight here. Thank you for reading!

I believe I heard it around 2015-16 on YouTube, but it could easily be older but is at the latest 6 years old. It was in the recommended links to Porter Robinson's Goodbye to a World, and has a similar vibe to it. I remember it made me feel the same type of sadness, like someone was dying or losing memories. It made a big impact on me but when I suddenly remembered it today, I couldn't remember anything else about it
I don't remember what the actual music was like other than it was mostly slow, melancholy instrumental until near the end. Somewhere in the second half, an old-school computer text-to-speech voice starts talking - no rhythm or rhyme, just over the music. It doesn't last long, but the only parts I remember are the start:
"Do you remember, when we went to the park...and you said"
and the end:
"How could I forget? H o w" (the final word is stretched)
I recreated it here, but the voice sounded more like a young boy. It could have been a vocaloid, but those seem more fluid and less robotic (and this was in unaccented American English). I'm pretty sure there were no other lyrics in the song up to that point or after, but that could be wrong.
.
I know it isn't any of these from my Googling:
Goodbye to a World by Porter Robinson (I know this is often the answer here but no. I'm fairly sure it's not by him at all, as his stuff is more high energy)
I Feel Fantastic
Paranoid Android or Fitter Happier by Radiohead
anything by Daft Punk
anything from Portal 1 or 2
Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap
Sign by VHS collection
O Superman by Laurie Anderson
I Need You by M83
Heaven by iMonster
How Does it Make You Feel by AIR
The Memory Could Not Be Read by Intruder Alert
Sun's Gone Dim by Johann Johannsson (I thought it could be this at first, but no)

Marketing is one of the most crucial operation for a Shopify store. There are lot’s of tactics Marketing is one of the most crucial operation for a Shopify store. There are lot’s of tactics to grow quickly and none of them not working. Well, if you looking for a way to create solid marketing plan, then this guide is for you. In this guide you’ll learn

• Definition of Marketing
• Market Research, Competitor Analysis and Defining Your Target Market
• Brand Identity and How to Create Your Branding
• Go-to-Market Strategy and Defining Your Marketing Strategy
• Inbound and Outbound Marketing Channels
• Marketing Plan Template
• FAQs

Definition of Marketing

American Marketing Association defines marketing as activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Source
What do you see here?

1. Marketing is not about activities, it contains activities, set of institutions and process.
2. Function of marketing is not generating sales. It’s creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that has value.
3. In this post we’ll focus on Shopify stores marketing. However in the big picture marketing has not limited with companies. Marketing can be done within organization or society.

Let’s summarize what marketing definition for a Shopify store. Marketing will create, communicate, deliver and exchange offers that have value for customers. As you can see main subject in here is customers. Because of this, I’ll put customers as the center of this guide. Everything we’ll do has to something with them.

Market Research, Competitor Analysis and Defining Your Target Market

This is a practical guide for marketing so I want to continue with a hypothetical Shopify stores for each steps.
Let’s say we have a Shopify store that has some high-end, organic baby clothes targeting new parents.

Market Research

How can we do the market research?
Let’s say you have a new Shopify store that has less than 500 order per month. You can hire expensive agencies, expensive experts to research the market, create market reports for you, etc. Even if you do that, I highly suspicious if it helps you.
However you can talk with your new-parent friends. Ask them about how do they decide to buy baby clothes? What they are looking for before completing their purchases? Do they get any expert opinion before making buying decision? How do they search online and what they want to see? Is there any great YouTube channels about this.
Don’t have any friends? Checkout your friends not a new-parents but parents and ask similar questions to them. If you also don’t have them, try to make new born friends. I know how hard it is but let’s be honest here. If you don’t know anybody in your target audience, how do you manage to get know them? All of the successful stores I saw they have direct relationship with their target audience.
When you make your research with real people, then you can extend your project to online. Try to search as they do. What do you find? Deep in dive and take your notes.

Competitor Analysis

When you done this market research, you’ll also see there are some other brands. This is a huge subject but let’s call these brands as competitor for now.
Now it’s time to analyze them.

1. Checkout their branding strategy.
2. What are their value propositions?
3. What is hot about them? Return guarantee, free shipping etc.
4. What is not hot about them? Poor product or store design, low UX on the website, etc.
5. What people think about them? Google reviews, Trust pilot reviews, product reviews on the store.
6. Are there any partnership or influencer program they’re running?
7. What is their Google/YouTube campaign strategy? Check it here.
8. What is their Facebook/Instagram campaign strategy? Check it here.

Create a spreadsheet with all of this information. We’ll use this when working on positioning and marketing strategy.

Define Your Target Market

What do you say about our target market? Can all of new parents be our target market?
Nope, it can’t. You need to deep dive into your market and find a sub-segment, a niche that will need your products much better than anybody else and afford it easily.
This is what I called ideal customer profile (ICP). Check out what is ideal customer profile and how to create your ideal customer profile posts to learn more about the concept.
For our hypothetical store, ICP can be something like this;
Demographics

• Age: 25-45 years old
• Gender: Primarily women, but also some men
• Education: College degree or higher
• Income: $75,000+ per household
• Location: Urban areas
• Occupation: Professionals, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home parents

Psychographics

• Values: Health, wellness, sustainability, social responsibility
• Lifestyle: Active, eco-conscious, family-oriented
• Interests: Organic food, natural products, children’s activities
• Media consumption: Social media, parenting blogs, magazines
• Shopping habits: Researches purchases thoroughly, values quality over price

Pain Points

• Concerns about harmful chemicals in baby clothes
• Difficulty finding stylish and affordable organic baby clothes
• Wants to make sustainable choices for their children

Needs

• High-quality, organic baby clothes that are safe and healthy for their children
• Unique and stylish designs that make their children look and feel good
• A brand that shares their values and commitment to sustainability

Buying Behaviors

• Researches products online before making a purchase
• Reads reviews and testimonials from other parents
• Shops at specialty stores and online retailers
• Willing to pay a premium for quality and sustainability

After creating ICP, it’s important to spend some time on empathy map. Don’t forget to check it, too.
Now we know our baby clothes Shopify store market, customer’s buying process and our ideal customer profile.

Brand Identity and How to Create Your Branding

I’ll follow the American Marketing Association (AMA) in here too.
First look at brand definition. AMA defines brand as “any distinctive feature like a name, term, design, or symbol that identifies goods or services”.
Branding is for creating and managing your brand’s identity. It involves your mission, values, culture and public image.
I’m not an expert on brand, but I know how branding can be effective for your conversions and performance. Here are some checklist for you.

1. Design consistency is the key. Your visual identity should be consistent across social media, Shopify store, emails, product detail pages, etc.
2. Copy consistency is the key. Your communication style should be consistent across social media, Shopify store, emails, product detail pages, etc.
3. Experience consistency is the key. Let’s say your brand looks like a high-end brand and when a new visitor visit your store first they see is an annoying popup saying want to get 10% OFF. This is simply how to destroy your brand.
4. Craft a story and stick to it. What makes you create this brand? Faces behind the brand. This is a huge leverage for creating trust and building bonds.

Go-to-Market Strategy and Defining Your Marketing Strategy

So far we identified our target market and ideal customer profile. Check out competitors and creates the branding for our store.
Now it’s time to work on go-to-market strategy and crafting our marketing strategy.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Let’s say you recently launched your Shopify store or add a new line of products.
You need a plan to introduce your store or new products to the market. This is what we called go-to-market(GTM) strategy.
Main goal of the GTM is letting people know that there is a new brand or product line. It’s similar to launch marketing. Key message here is there is a new products/brand launched and it offer the best for you. Give it a try, you’ll love it.
All of your messages and communication should be parallel to this process.
Our focus is convincing people to try our products/brand. So I always offer a special campaign just for the launch to give people to a reason to try your products/brand.
For our hypothetical Shopify store we can run a special campaign for launch like;

• Free shipping until X date.
• 5 different boy and girl bundle with 40% OFF to try our products.

Marketing Strategy

This is your plan of actions to sell or advertise your products. Now we can talk about selling part of the marketing.
Let’s say you have GREAT advertising creatives and a huge budget and just spending it. Don’t wait to crack the code and having lot’s of sales.
Your marketing strategy should be follow sales funnel. If you don’t have a high-converting sales funnel, you can’t expect people to buy from you. Check out How to Build High Converting Sales Funnel For Shopify post.
AIDA Sales Funnel Framework
Now we can continue with our hypothetical store example. We’re selling high-end, organic baby clothes on our store. We crafted our ICP, empathy map, work on branding and created our story.

Example Marketing Strategy

First step we’ll work on attention step. Our focus is getting attention of our target market attention.
We can create a educative e-book like “7 Harmful Chemicals Commonly Used in Baby Clothes and How to Avoid Them” and run some campaigns targeted new parents on social network (Facebook, Instagram or YouTube)
This ads will land on a landing page that gives brief information about why we should pay attention to chemicals in baby clothes for our little ones and make a promise like “I spend my last 5 years about researching chemicals on baby clothes and prepare this book for you and your little one”. Also there can be a quick video about our story explaining our expertise in this field and why we’re building this brand.
We can ask for their email address to share the book with them. When they enter their email address, we’ll send them this ebook.
After first email with the ebook, we can send a few more emails with easy to digest information about chemicals.
This will create an expertise image on our target customers and start to create a bond with them. Not a bad start, right?
At the same time we can use this content on our social media, right? Quick videos, infographics and posts about the chemicals in the baby clothes.
After getting a few thousands subscribers we can organize a webinar to answer questions. This will also a great content for re-used social media content and creating trust and expert image.
Then we can share a time-limited promotion with this people for a bundle. Like we’re running a campaign and these 5 chemical free baby clothes bundles 10% discounted until next week!
We can send emails about it and use this campaign for remarketing for only people who show interest in our e-book and webinar.
This is a very brief template of marketing plan.
Now let’s take a look at more common one.

• Post product photos on social media with lot’s of hashtags
• Run a Meta campaign without any targeting, land people on product detail page
• Give them WELCOME10 discount if they enter their email address
• Send them 15 emails in the next 5 days to maximize your sales.

It’s time for you. Which one do you want to choose? All of the experts recommending this without even asking who are your customers. Can you believe it?
Don’t forget that marketing strategy is not a hope. It’s a well documented plan of actions designed for turning strangers into customers.

Inbound and Outbound Marketing Channels

Inside the marketing strategy, channels plays a vital role. There are lot’s of ways to group channels. I’ll use most basic one.
Inbound Marketing Channels: With the inbound marketing your customers will find you and start the interaction. Most common channel for inbound marketing is organic search engine optimization.
After creating high quality content, when customers search something online, they can see your articles and first interaction happens.
Outbound Marketing Channels: With the outbound marketing you reach out to customers. Facebook/Instagram/YouTube ads, influencer marketing, display ads, podcast ads can be count in this category.
As you can imagine inbound marketing channels takes lot’s of efforts and time however over the time you’ll have organic marketing channel and it brings you customer without needing any budget.
Outbound marketing channels generally works with advertisement models and you need budgets to run these channels.
Most of time I recommend to start with outbound marketing channels and then invest inbound marketing channels overtime. Don’t forget to check Mastering Paid Ads For Shopify post.
Succesful marketing plans should be supported by high converting growth and conversion plans. Don’t forget to check Growth Guide For Shopify and Conversion Optimization Guide For Shopify too.
to grow quickly and none of them not working. Well, if you looking for a way to create solid marketing plan, then this guide is for you. In this guide you’ll learn

• Definition of Marketing
• Market Research, Competitor Analysis and Defining Your Target Market
• Brand Identity and How to Create Your Branding
• Go-to-Market Strategy and Defining Your Marketing Strategy
• Inbound and Outbound Marketing Channels
• Marketing Plan Template
• FAQs

Definition of Marketing

American Marketing Association defines marketing as activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Source
What do you see here?

1. Marketing is not about activities, it contains activities, set of institutions and process.
2. Function of marketing is not generating sales. It’s creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that has value.
3. In this post we’ll focus on Shopify stores marketing. However in the big picture marketing has not limited with companies. Marketing can be done within organization or society.

Let’s summarize what marketing definition for a Shopify store. Marketing will create, communicate, deliver and exchange offers that have value for customers. As you can see main subject in here is customers. Because of this, I’ll put customers as the center of this guide. Everything we’ll do has to something with them.

Market Research, Competitor Analysis and Defining Your Target Market

This is a practical guide for marketing so I want to continue with a hypothetical Shopify stores for each steps.
Let’s say we have a Shopify store that has some high-end, organic baby clothes targeting new parents.

Market Research

How can we do the market research?
Let’s say you have a new Shopify store that has less than 500 order per month. You can hire expensive agencies, expensive experts to research the market, create market reports for you, etc. Even if you do that, I highly suspicious if it helps you.
However you can talk with your new-parent friends. Ask them about how do they decide to buy baby clothes? What they are looking for before completing their purchases? Do they get any expert opinion before making buying decision? How do they search online and what they want to see? Is there any great YouTube channels about this.
Don’t have any friends? Checkout your friends not a new-parents but parents and ask similar questions to them. If you also don’t have them, try to make new born friends. I know how hard it is but let’s be honest here. If you don’t know anybody in your target audience, how do you manage to get know them? All of the successful stores I saw they have direct relationship with their target audience.
When you make your research with real people, then you can extend your project to online. Try to search as they do. What do you find? Deep in dive and take your notes.

Competitor Analysis

When you done this market research, you’ll also see there are some other brands. This is a huge subject but let’s call these brands as competitor for now.
Now it’s time to analyze them.

1. Checkout their branding strategy.
2. What are their value propositions?
3. What is hot about them? Return guarantee, free shipping etc.
4. What is not hot about them? Poor product or store design, low UX on the website, etc.
5. What people think about them? Google reviews, Trust pilot reviews, product reviews on the store.
6. Are there any partnership or influencer program they’re running?
7. What is their Google/YouTube campaign strategy? Check it here.
8. What is their Facebook/Instagram campaign strategy? Check it here.

Create a spreadsheet with all of this information. We’ll use this when working on positioning and marketing strategy.

Define Your Target Market

What do you say about our target market? Can all of new parents be our target market?
Nope, it can’t. You need to deep dive into your market and find a sub-segment, a niche that will need your products much better than anybody else and afford it easily.
This is what I called ideal customer profile (ICP). Check out what is ideal customer profile and how to create your ideal customer profile posts to learn more about the concept.
For our hypothetical store, ICP can be something like this;
Demographics

• Age: 25-45 years old
• Gender: Primarily women, but also some men
• Education: College degree or higher
• Income: $75,000+ per household
• Location: Urban areas
• Occupation: Professionals, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home parents

Psychographics

• Values: Health, wellness, sustainability, social responsibility
• Lifestyle: Active, eco-conscious, family-oriented
• Interests: Organic food, natural products, children’s activities
• Media consumption: Social media, parenting blogs, magazines
• Shopping habits: Researches purchases thoroughly, values quality over price

Pain Points

• Concerns about harmful chemicals in baby clothes
• Difficulty finding stylish and affordable organic baby clothes
• Wants to make sustainable choices for their children

Needs

• High-quality, organic baby clothes that are safe and healthy for their children
• Unique and stylish designs that make their children look and feel good
• A brand that shares their values and commitment to sustainability

Buying Behaviors

• Researches products online before making a purchase
• Reads reviews and testimonials from other parents
• Shops at specialty stores and online retailers
• Willing to pay a premium for quality and sustainability

After creating ICP, it’s important to spend some time on empathy map. Don’t forget to check it, too.
Now we know our baby clothes Shopify store market, customer’s buying process and our ideal customer profile.

Brand Identity and How to Create Your Branding

I’ll follow the American Marketing Association (AMA) in here too.
First look at brand definition. AMA defines brand as “any distinctive feature like a name, term, design, or symbol that identifies goods or services”.
Branding is for creating and managing your brand’s identity. It involves your mission, values, culture and public image.
I’m not an expert on brand, but I know how branding can be effective for your conversions and performance. Here are some checklist for you.

1. Design consistency is the key. Your visual identity should be consistent across social media, Shopify store, emails, product detail pages, etc.
2. Copy consistency is the key. Your communication style should be consistent across social media, Shopify store, emails, product detail pages, etc.
3. Experience consistency is the key. Let’s say your brand looks like a high-end brand and when a new visitor visit your store first they see is an annoying popup saying want to get 10% OFF. This is simply how to destroy your brand.
4. Craft a story and stick to it. What makes you create this brand? Faces behind the brand. This is a huge leverage for creating trust and building bonds.

Go-to-Market Strategy and Defining Your Marketing Strategy

So far we identified our target market and ideal customer profile. Check out competitors and creates the branding for our store.
Now it’s time to work on go-to-market strategy and crafting our marketing strategy.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Let’s say you recently launched your Shopify store or add a new line of products.
You need a plan to introduce your store or new products to the market. This is what we called go-to-market(GTM) strategy.
Main goal of the GTM is letting people know that there is a new brand or product line. It’s similar to launch marketing. Key message here is there is a new products/brand launched and it offer the best for you. Give it a try, you’ll love it.
All of your messages and communication should be parallel to this process.
Our focus is convincing people to try our products/brand. So I always offer a special campaign just for the launch to give people to a reason to try your products/brand.
For our hypothetical Shopify store we can run a special campaign for launch like;

• Free shipping until X date.
• 5 different boy and girl bundle with 40% OFF to try our products.

Marketing Strategy

This is your plan of actions to sell or advertise your products. Now we can talk about selling part of the marketing.
Let’s say you have GREAT advertising creatives and a huge budget and just spending it. Don’t wait to crack the code and having lot’s of sales.
Your marketing strategy should be follow sales funnel. If you don’t have a high-converting sales funnel, you can’t expect people to buy from you. Check out How to Build High Converting Sales Funnel For Shopify post.
This article first published at MarketingLib.
Don't forget to check Growth Suite on Shopify App Store.

Note: D ko na nilagay specific course kasi specific sa Uni namin yung description.
One of my(20M) history proffs(M I think early 30s) made us watch the movie Goyo and then discussed the reason on why the general experienced such defeat. One of the reason he discussed was the treachery of Januario Galut an Igorot soldier na tumulong sa Americans during that time.
Proff was so passionate on labelling him a traitor to the Filipino and his lack of patriotism. I wasn't going to say anything but he went on and began labelling all Igorots as traitors since the majority of them refused to fight with the Filipinos during those times. He said that all should've contributed during the war since we all lived in the same patch of land. He finished by saying that maybe their lack of contribution was because of their primitive thinking at the time. Ewan ko lang pero this AH was very proud bashing Igorots in a class with Igorot students(9 kami na Igorots in class mixed with others and two foreign students)
Being an Igorot myself, mejo tinamaan ako, not by guilt but by anger. I argued with him that; What right does the Revolutionary Army have to demand the help of the Igorots when they were treated like savages during those times. They were enslaved not just by the foreign collonizers but by their own fellow Filipinos. I also raised the records of discrimination that is still present today on how lowlanders view Igorots. (I actually gestured at him when I said lowlanders)
Proff asked me if I am not aware of the Human Zoo of Coney Island featuring Igorots on their display. But I argued back na despite this attrocity, the Americans soldiers were still more friendly during the war and actually acknowledged the contributions of the Igorot warriors while their fellow Filipinos were labelling them as savages.
What right does the Revolutionary Army have when its the Americans who first extended a friendly hand to the Igorots?
Ewan ko pero I think my proff did not like the idea of me contradicting his discussion so he told me to stop defending something that is wrong.
I felt insulted that time so I answered that I would rather change proff, instead of listening to someone who's ideas are based on obsolete and misguided information.
I placed a complaint of racism against him with our dean and luckily a lot of my classmates backed my complaint. I requested from our registrar to be transferred to a different class after that. Since prelims pa naman, my request was approved. The proff was "suspended daw" but I know that he was just transferred to a different department.
Some of my former classmates were saying na I could've just respected the proff instead of making a big deal out of it.
I was raised by my Igorot Parents in our Igorot community with my Igorot friends! Magay panbabawiak (No regrets).

Note: D ko na nilagay soecific course kasi specific sa Uni namin yung description.
One of my(20M) history proffs(M I think early 30s) made us watch the movie Goyo and then discussed the reason on why the general experienced such defeat. One of the reason he discussed was the treachery of Januario Galut an Igorot soldier na tumulong sa Americans during that time.
Proff was so passionate on labelling him a traitor to the Filipino and his lack of patriotism. I wasn't going to say anything but he went on and began labelling all Igorots as traitors since the majority of them refused to fight with the Filipinos during those times. He said that all should've contributed during the war since we all lived in the same patch of land. He finished by saying that maybe their lack of contribution was because of their primitive thinking at the time. Ewan ko lang pero this AH was very proud bashing Igorots in a class with Igorot students(9 kami na Igorots in class mixed with others and two foreign students)
Being an Igorot myself, mejo tinamaan ako, not by guilt but by anger. I argued with him that; What right does the Revolutionary Army have to demand the help of the Igorots when they were treated like savages during those times. They were enslaved not just by the foreign collonizers but by their own fellow Filipinos. I also raised the records of discrimination that is still present today on how lowlanders view Igorots. (I actually gestured at him when I said lowlanders)
Proff asked me if I am not aware of the Human Zoo of Coney Island featuring Igorots on their display. But I argued back na despite this attrocity, the Americans soldiers were still more friendly during the war and actually acknowledged the contributions of the Igorot warriors while their fellow Filipinos were labelling them as savages.
What right does the Revolutionary Army have when its the Americans who first extended a friendly hand to the Igorots?
Ewan ko pero I think my proff did not like the idea of me contradicting his discussion so he told me to stop defending something that is wrong.
I felt insulted that time so I answered that I would rather change proff, instead of listening to someone who's ideas are based on obsolete and misguided information.
I placed a complaint of racism against him with our dean and luckily a lot of my classmates backed my complaint. I requested from our registrar to be transferred to a different class after that. Since prelims pa naman, my request was approved. The proff was "suspended daw" but I know that he was just transferred to a different department.
Some of my former classmates were saying na I could've just respected the proff instead of making a big deal out of it.
I was raised by my Igorot Parents in our Igorot community with my Igorot friends! Magay panbabawiak (No regrets).

Six years together. 2024 has been quite a year so far. My boyfriend has been out of work for almost 5 months, which is yearly occurrence since his main source of income is from doing gig work with a local transportation company. He has been applying to jobs with an out of date resume, he hasn't had that much luck in finding work. When I suggested taking on a temporary job at a grocery store or cafe to stay afloat until his main job starts up again, he became extremely upset and said that those jobs were beneath him.
In these past 5 months he has been playing video games, smoking weed in my bathroom, randomly leaving at all hours to hang out with his friends. He doesn't help with any chores, out of fear for my safety I purchased him a new phone when he broke his, paid for two months worth of phone bills, purchase work boots, and allowed him to shake me down for cash to buy weed.
Even though he tries to gaslight me but saying that this is first year that he hasn't been without work, it hasn't been. Every year since he quit his job during covid(2020)and moved into my apt. he has had periods of no work and very little to no money. He just games and smokes those months away. He berates me for not cooking or cleaning when I was working two jobs and he was working none. When he finally did get a new job thanks to his dad helping him, he refused to contribute financially even though he saw how physically and mentally exhausted I was from working 6 days a week. He said I didn't deserve help. He treats me terribly whenever I help him out. He has forced me to pay his taxes, give him one of my stimulus bills, buy him food. He becomes irate if things aren't exactly how he wants it. He loves to make plans only to cancel at the last minute and then gaslight me about it. He would refuse to go out with me to events but then drop everything to go hang out with his friends.
I always told him that if he can't contribute financially due to not having enough or having work, it's fine but he should contribute by doinf household chores. He refuses.
I think what is going on is that my mind is trying to protect me by compartmentalizing and lessen the gravity of the situation and of what occurred this past weekend. I see the signs of being in an abusive relationship but I don't fully believe that I am in one because it doesn't fit what we all have been told are the signs of an abusive relationship.
In February he pushed some storage bins into me, one of which broke and cut me in my back because I told his parents that he hadn't been working for the past two months.
This past weekend which we were walking through a soon to be closed mall, I had been recording the beautiful 80's/90's architecture when he said wait, I instinctively turned around and he was scratching himself. I laughed a little bit and turned back and continued walking. Since I had my phone in my hand he thought I had recorded him, he rushed down the hallway angrily asking me if I recorded him and to give him my phone. I said I didn't and kept walking,I was wearing a hoodie and he grabbed my hood and pulled, angrily telling me to give him my phone, I told him to let go that he was hurting me. I tried to keep on walking but he was still holding onto and pulling my hood. He then proceeds to try to grab the phone out of my hands. You know when someone tries to grab something out of your hands and both of you start grappling over the item, that's what happened. My phone is brand new and did not have a case yet and I was worried he would smash it into the ground. I know my personal safety is more important than a phone but I couldn't let go even if I wanted to, he had grabbed onto me and was in the process of pushing me into the wall when a guy rounded the corner.
He didn't step in nor call the police as far as I know. I took the opportunity to get away from my boyfriend as quickly as I could.
I ran to the train station, he kept on yelling at me "Are you really going to act like this", I didn't answer. My neck and throat burned from where his was pulling back on my hoodie. I started to cry. There was a lady who seemed to notice that something was going on and nodded her head in approval when she saw me rushing past to get into the station.
When he finally did catch up to me and when he texted and called me afterwards, he kept on blaming me for what happened. He said that I shouldn't have walked away from him when he grabbed onto my hood and that I should have told him that I was playing around and pretending to record him( which is what I said to placate him). When I said that he shouldn't have grabbed my hoodie and pulled he retorted with the so now it's my fault, as if I made him pull my hoodie and react like that.
I wanted to go home but I didn't have my keys on me, so I went down to a nearby marina and watched the boats for awhile.
I ultimately ended up at his parents house. I did not tell them what happened. In the past he would become enraged when he found out that I had told his sisters or mom about what was really going on, and would forbade me to either go to a family function or to say anything. His dad then proceeded to have a conversation about selling his house and giving us the proceeds to buy a house but we should have two kids. His parents have been pressuring me have a child with him even though we aren't married. I want to get married and have a small church wedding but according to my boyfriend I don't deserve a wedding. He also shared with us the importance that both people in a relationship need to contribute financially and pay bills, I told him he should tell that to his son, not me. It would be insanity to have a child with a man like him. I know that he will not change who he is if a child came along.
My friends are aware of the general situation (not of this latest incident), some of my family is aware of the general situation( I don't want them to worry and I don't want to bring unnecessary drama into their lives). His family is aware, one of his older sister's told me to call her for help when I wanted to end things with him and she would come over but when I actually did reach out to her, she said that I was an adult and would need to handle things on my own. I think she feigned concerned in order to get information to gossip with the rest of their family.
I am scared of him. Scared of how he would react if I stand firm in him needing to leave. Scared that he will harm my friends, family, himself and me. He has threaten suicide before. He has threaten to harm my pet. He has threaten to steal my mom's ashes. I have asked him to leave before and either he refuses or he simply ignores me.Him leaving is not that simple. He has nothing to lose yet at the same time everything to lose. He doesn't want to go back to his parents house because they will make him find a full time job and then won't let him do what he wants, he would have less freedom( couldn't smoke weed)...and those are his words not mine. He has never agreed to a break or even a temporary visit because he would "come back madder". He knows if he does leave, I will try to end things with him.
He comes across as a calm, chill guy when he is around my friends and family because he is high all or most of the time. That calm, chill guy is not who he really is. He is angry, volatile, and cruel. Yes, he has his moments of kindness(or niceness) and sweetness. Is it "nice" to have someone around to talk with, yes. Who seemingly care about when you will be back home, yes. but do those niceties outweigh everything else that has happened.
There is so much more that I could add to this post, but I am exhausted and I have blocked several incidents out. He constantly tries to gaslights me. He lied about his background and education. He has gotten physical several other times as well as verbally/emotionally. He has engaged in several sexting relationships, most notably with his ex Christy and his "friend" Lore. When I expressed how hurtful his cheating was he stated that is who he is, that he's the kind guy but since he didn't sleep with them, it's fine, it's not cheating. These girls also do not see anything wrong with what they have done.
I do not have any immediate family ie siblings or parents. Therefore, I cannot go and stay with family until he leaves or have a family member accompany me while he moves out. I do have extended family in the area but life has taught me that there is no guarantee that they will help you even if you desperately need it. It's the American way to find your own way out of problems and pull yourself up by your bootstraps ( I say this sarcastically).
The apt. is in my name and I'm pretty sure there is a clause in it that states that if there are domestic disturbances I would have to move out. As stated above I don't have anywhere else to go, so he must leave.
Sometimes I think that this is my lot in life and that I should just accept it. I find myself questioning if what happened on Saturday really is abuse or if it was just a misunderstanding that got a little bit out of hand. Sometimes I just don't know anymore.

I am a machine learning engineer, with a master's degree in Computer Science, working for an Italian startup for almost 2 years. The only idea of GAP I have is here in Italy, but abroad I have no idea how to orient myself. Right now I am interviewing with European and American companies and when asked about my desired GAP I have no idea how to answer. Any advice?

I am a machine learning engineer, with a master's degree in Computer Science, working for an Italian startup for almost 2 years. The only idea of GAP I have is here in Italy, but abroad I have no idea how to orient myself. Right now I am interviewing with European and American companies and when asked about my desired GAP I have no idea how to answer. Any advice?

She said she wanted to go home. She said I didn't care about her unless she was leaving. I was just trying to understand what was going on. She said she was going home. I accepted that she didn't want to stay with me then but it was raining outside. "Can I at least give you a ride? It's raining and cold."
Her answer? "Oh, so you want me to beg for a ride?"
What??? I just offered her a ride.
"If you really wanted to give me a ride, you would have said 'I am giving you a ride home, let's go.' Not made me ask for it."
Look, at this point, I'm just confused. I did drive her home, and she left my car without saying goodbye. I gave her the space she needed and cried on the way home.
But no. She said I was codependent. She said it wasn't good that I was sad just because of her emotions. So, ok, I decided to take her advice. I went to the event we were planning on going on with friends to distract for a few hours. Before I left, she texts me.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh sorry I was getting ready to go to the thing."
"Oh. Fun! I can't wait for the next time you feel like shit and I can go out and have fun."
"Sick. Thanks for that."
"💋"
And then she blocked me everywhere.
I distracted myself. Then I got home and I cried. And I screamed. And I hit my head against the wall and yelled I GIVE UP I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING LEFT TO GIVE. Just that day we had gone through a workbook and discussed what our greatest fears were from each other. Mine were sarcasm and suddenly leaving. She had done both and she didn't give a damn. She actively chose to hurt me. And if it were me 2.5 years ago, maybe I would have had the emotional control to hold it in, to deal with things. But I didn't. I am a shell of who I once was. And I never have the power to consider leaving unless I am fully drained and feel like I can't breathe, I can't stand, I can't live.
So I packed all of her things up. I dumped boxes into my car and I drove to her house. I wanted to talk.
I knocked on her door. She opened it.
"What are you doing here?"
"You won. I don't know what you were trying to win, but whatever it was, you won."
She just stared at me.
I waited for her to say something. Nothing. Then, finally...
"What do you want?"
There was no chance of conversation. No "I'm sorry for using the things you fear most because I knew they would dig in and hurt." No. Just a what do you want? What do I want? To not be hurt. I want to not be blocked for 12 or 24 or 48 or 72 hours with no idea of what's going on until you decide that you're willing to come back. I want to not be put in situations where you say you block me because you don't want a wall of text, but in reality you want to hurt me fast and hard and then run away so that you don't hear the consequences of your actions.
"Your things are in the car. Please get them."
"OK. But only if you promise not to talk to me while I do."
"Sure. If that's what you want I won't talk."
The next day we texted and discussed things. Things were... emotional. Then she disappeared and stopped responding. That would have been fine, had her sister not called me looking for her since she hadn't been able to reach her. My heart dropped. Had something happened? Had she done something? I told her sister, "Hey, bad timing, but you should probably just go check her in person." And then, "And, not my business, but if you find her can you just let me know she's safe? Nothing else, I just want to know she's ok." Her sister said "Of course."
Queue to a few days ago. She asked me to hang out with her in person for a jazz thing. I said hey, look, I am very emotional right now. I want to see you but I can't today. Maybe we can talk in a few days?
Apparently that was the wrong answer.
"Honestly I'm just going to come get my stuff."
She did. And then she said "Leave me alone," so I did.
But I had no idea where we stood. Was this just another week-long block? I messaged her 4-5 days later.
"Hey, I just want to know if the plan is to go no contact or if there's a chance of staying friends or coming back to this in the future so I know whether to start grieving or not."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Sorry I don't want to be a bother I just want to know so I'm not on edge."
She called me. Man, that was hard.
I did my best not to cry. She asked me why I was crying. I said "Because you're my best friend and I don't want to lose you." She laughed. "You're the one that did this." She laughed. She laughed. She laughed.
I asked if theres a chance we would be able to either stay friends in the future or maybe come back to the relationship down the line after we had both worked on ourselves. She said "As long as you don't get emotional or controlling when you see me go on trips with other people."
Ow.
OK, maybe not. But what about controlling?
"You're trying to control me."
"What? When?"
"You're messaging my sister."
"I texted her once because I wanted to make sure you were safe." I then sent her the screenshots to prove this.
"You're contacting my family to try and control me. After we broke up."
"That was the day we broke up."
"LIES."
"What? That was Sunday?"
"You dropped my s*** off on saturday night. You texted my sister on sunday."
"Oh. Sorry. I guess it was saturday. Sorry, everything's been blending together in this wall of confusion and pain."
She laughed.
She said "Look, I'm just not going to be there for you anymore emotionally when you're never there for me."
"What was I supposed to do that night you wanted me to drop you off. Like, what was the best outcome?"
"Come over and hug me. Hold me."
"You said you didn't want to be next to me. You said you wanted me to take you home. And when I pulled in you just got out of the car and left without saying goodbye. Was I supposed to follow you into your house after all that?"
She changed the topic.
"But instead you chose to go have fun with your friends."
"Was I supposed to go home and cry alone? Can I not distract? I am not even sure why this started in the first place I am so confused and just wanted to stop crying and distract and go to this thing that you had made me confirm my attendance to just an hour prior to you leaving."
"Must have been nice having fun." She laughed loudly. "OK I have to get ready for work. Bye."
And then she hung up.
The amount of pain I felt in that moment. The amount of guilt. I did this. Even she said it. This was my fault my fault my fault. I shouldn't have reacted by dropping her stuff off. I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't it was my fault.
But I had nothing left. She stopped caring about me so quickly. She laughed when I cried.
I sent her a final message and went no contact. I final sorry to top off the mountain of apologies I had given her over the last two and a half years.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I was just trying to stop hurting myself. I will love you forever and if you ever need me you know where I live and are always welcome in. I feel that I am causing you pain and maybe resentment so I will let you move on to somebody better for you now. Goodbye."
And then I went no contact.
It's been a few days now and the pain comes and goes. Sometimes it's unbearable. Sometimes it's replaced by anger. And sometimes I just wish she would have given my my shirt back, the one passed down to me from my mother, the one I held near and dear to my heart that she would steal to wear. She has the rest of my stuff but really all I want is the shirt and I'll be at peace. But I've now initiated no contact on my end so perhaps my shirt and what it means to me is gone. Maybe she threw it away already. I don't know.
And these emotions come and go and sometimes I laugh and then the laugh turns into a gasp as my chest is stabbed with the most agonizing pain I can imagine and I feel like a fish out of water, making ungodly noises as I hope to black out and make the pain stop. And sometimes I imagine her coming back through my door like she used to, walking in and kissing me and picking me up and carrying me to bed and laying me down and holding me, her skin against mine, her lips against mine, her soul against mine.
But now, when that happens, I just need to remember one thing:
She laughed.

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I am STILL NOT the Original Poster. That is u/ta-bff-234324. He posted in AITAH and amiwrong but posted the same text in both subreddits. I chose to use the ones from AITAH
Thanks again to u/Literally_Taken for the rec and to Choice Evidence and u/chickenoodledeprived for letting me know about the update!
Previous BORU here. New update marked with ****\*
Trigger Warning: racism
Mood Spoiler: tentatively happy ending
Original Post: April 1, 2024
My (29M) best friend Jess (29F) keeps on mentioning my ex (29F) in front of my fiancee, and I am thinking of cutting her off. I want to know if I am overreacting, or if Jess is in the wrong.
For context, Jess and I went to the same high school and the same college. We were friends in high school. However, since we both went to the same out-of-state college, we became best friends since then. We have always been there for each other during the best and worst times. However, things have always been platonic, and she is more like a big sister to me, who made sure I stay on the right track.
I have only been in two long-term relationships so far. One was with my ex Lisa for 7 years. We met in college and dated all through our college years. Lisa and Jess also became good friends, too. After college, Lisa and I just grew apart and had different goals in life. I became "boring" after college as I was working on my PhD while doing a full time job. Lisa broke up with me as she wanted to party on weekends, while I was home studying. I was heartbroken, but I don't think I ever blamed her or had resentment towards her, as I understood my decisions were selfish and should not hold her back from having the best life.
Jess always stood by me and comforted me during that time. Jess and Lisa were good friends and Jess always kept on telling me that Lisa loves me and will be back one day when I am ready. I foolishly held on to that hope and stayed friends with Lisa. That was until I met my fiancee Yang. After I finished my PhD, I got a nice job in a big tech company. Yang joined our team a year after me. We started going out for drinks, and dinner and we started dating seriously pretty soon. We are happy together, and financially in a great place. Needless to say, I stopped talking to Lisa after I started dating Yang.
I proposed to Yang a year after we started dating and got engaged last year. Jess has been acting weirdly since we got engaged. One of the first things she said to Yang after we got engaged was how I had planned the same thing for Lisa (proposing on a local hiking trail). It was a bit off-putting that she was bringing up Lisa whom I broke up with almost 5 years ago on such a happy occasion. However, Yang asked me to not spoil my mood, as she felt Jess was just commenting on how I had that plan in mind for years. Since then, every time we meet, Jess without fail brings up Lisa and how the things I am doing are all the things I had planned with Lisa. This happened when we bought a house, planned for vacations, etc. Jess always starts with some nostalgic story and then brings up how Lisa and I were so happy together. She is still good friends with Lisa and keeps giving me updates about Lisa and how great Lisa is doing at work when no one is asking for it. It felt like she was painting a rosy picture of Lisa to Yang and telling Yang that she would always be second to Lisa.
Yang told me Jess's comments bothered her, and I also felt the same. I have brought this up with Jess many times and asked her not to do it. However, she says she will try but since I dated Lisa for 7 years, she would be part of many stories from the past. Also, she asked me why talking about Lisa bothers me and if I still have feelings for her. I have reduced hanging out with Jess. However, she is close with my mom and is always invited to all our family parties and holidays.
I talked to my mom and sister about this and they feel I am overreacting. They feel Jess is just telling stories and since the stories are mostly from college days and later, Lisa will be a character in the story. They also feel I should not be bothered by Jess mentioning Lisa since we broke up a long time ago. I feel that it's disrespectful to Yang as she doesn't need to hear about all the fun Lisa and I had when we were together and how we were planning to get married. Do you think I am the asshole to stop here or Jess is truly acting out of line?
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: Probably need to separate your time with your fiancé away from your friend. ... On a side note, your friend comes across poorly on one other aspect. When you were too busy to date so you could study. She is encouraging you to stay available while your ex goes about dating around? Think she ever encouraged your ex to not? Or do you think she was telling your ex she could have all the fun she wanted cause you'd still be around? Food for thought.

OOP: She thought we were 24 when we broke up and she always justified that Lisa was young and it's natural to date around before you settle down. She also encouraged me to do the same. However, after my breakup, I decided that I would not be in a relationship (based on what happened to the previous one) and never dated anyone until after I graduated.

Commenter: Not wrong, in fact it's thoughtful of your finace's feelings. " Jess always kept on telling me that Lisa loves me and will be back one day when I am ready." - yikes.
An easy: "Jess, you keep bringing up my ex, and keep making comments which are dismissive of my relationship with Yang. I am telling you point blank that this is harming our friendship and it saddens me that you dismiss my feelings as being unimportant on this topic. If you can't respect me, and my relationship with Yang, please understand why it will likely end our friendship."

OOP: We have had this exact conversation. Jess then proceeded to ask Yang is she offended by her telling stories about me. Yang was polite and said she is ok. Then she told me I am being too sensitive.

Commenter: Op do you know if Lisa is married? Maybe Jess is trying to sabotage your engagement so you can be with Lisa.

OOP: I know Lisa is single. She has not been in any serious long term relationship after me. Infant, Jess always makes it a point to bring that up regularly and update me, even after I tell her I have no interest. My mom loves gossip and they also discuss a out Lisa regularly.

Jess is just being a mean girl/have you talked to Lisa at all?
At this point, I suspect Jess is just being mean to Yang. I would have cut her off long ago if she was not so close to me or my family for so many years.
Lisa is out of the picture, to be honest. I have completely gone no contact with her for the last 2 years.
Jess has feelings for you:
That's not true. I did not write it since I thought it was irrelevant, but Jess is happily married and has a 3 year old kid.
There is no consensus bot on AITAH, but top comments were NTA
Update Post: April 23, 2024 (22 days later)
I wrote a post a month ago regarding my friend Jess mentioning my ex constantly in front of my fiancée. Thanks to everyone who commented, and how inappropriate it was. However, the last month has been nothing but crazy and I still trying to make sense of what happened so far.
After my post, I decided to talk to Jess and gave her an ultimatum not to speak about my ex Lisa again. I know Jess and Lisa are still friends, but I was uncomfortable of her comparing my fiancée Yang with Lisa all the time. I broke up with Lisa 5 years ago, and she is nothing but a faint memory in my past. Jess kept on defending herself and telling me that I was with Lisa for most of my adult life and it's hard to tell any stories from the past without including her. She also blamed me for being emotionally childish and just forgetting about Lisa when she was with me for 7 years. Finally, Jess agreed that she will not bring up Lisa in front of Yang, and I should also not treat Lisa as she does not exist since she is still Jess's friend. I informed Yang about our conversation. Although she was appreciative about it, she said I did not need to do it and she knows how much I love her and every time Jess brings up my Lisa, she feels sorry for Lisa that she let a guy like me go.
Yang went to visit China two weeks ago for a month as we plan to get married in her hometown. She is taking care of her shopping as well as preparations for the wedding. Jess invited me to her house that Friday for dinner as I was home alone. I am also good friends with her husband, and we were all just chatting and drinking in the living room. Around 7.30pm, the doorbell rang, and Jess excitedly went to open the door. To my surprise, it was fucking Lisa at the door. She was all dressed up as if she were ready for a date and came in. I had not seen her in person for almost 3 years and I was shocked to see her. She sat down and started making small talk with me. I was extremely uncomfortable and went into the kitchen to talk to Jess. I was angry at her and asked her what was going on. She kept on telling me that it's been 5 years since the breakup and to get over it and be nice to Lisa. She said Lisa was excited to meet me and she thought we were all adults and could have one fun evening together. We had a fight and I told her that she should not have invited Lisa after our conversation the other day and I do not want to be friends with her anymore. I went into the living room and politely excused myself and told everyone that I had a work emergency and had to leave early. Lisa looked sad, but I genuinely felt uncomfortable to be made to hang out with my ex without my consent.
I came home and called Yang. I have never seen her more furious, and she told me she is not comfortable with Jess anymore as she has some agenda that we do not know about. It's different to talk about Lisa, but to invite her without consulting is not ok. I also felt the same and I called Jess the next day and told her that she crossed a line, and I was terribly upset with her. I stopped taking her calls and ghosted her. I also told my mom and sister about the whole incident.
Last Sunday, my mom called me for lunch. When I got there, I saw Jess was already there. I told my mom that I do not want to talk to Jess and can't stay. However, she asked me to sit as they all wanted to talk to me. I have a glutton for punishment and decided to hear them out. My mom started with how Jess has been there for me all these years and only has my best interest at heart. She kept on telling me that they are the three people (mom, sister, and Jess) that love me the most. Jess started saying how she felt that I was making a big mistake in not having to hear what Lisa had to say. She told me that Lisa was my first love and Lisa is now ready to settle down and we can pick where we left off. She reminded me how broken I was when Lisa left me and how life is giving me a second chance. My sister also chimed in and said how they all liked Lisa more than Yang and how we both looked so great together. Finally, my mom started saying how our culture was so different than Yang and it is hard for them to relate to her. I asked them in what way, and my mom said that they did not understand what Yang says sometimes and have nothing in common with her. Then my mom asked me to think about how Lisa and I would have such wonderful looking kids, while if I marry Yang, our kids will look so different. I started getting their drift and I probed more. My mom told me how our kids would look Asian with "small eyes" and not like any others in the family.
I asked my mom if she cared about my kids looks more and not about how smart they will be since Yang has a PhD. She blew it off, and I realized she just did not want me to marry Yang because she was Chinese and not white. My mom told me to forgive Jess and my mom asked Jess to talk to Lisa on my behalf and asked her if she would be interested in getting back together with me. My mom was adamant that since I loved Lisa so much, I should be happy and pick up things where we left off as that is the best for everyone. I have never been so angry and may have said a lot of unkind things to all of them before I left
I am so depressed right now. I not only lost my best friend, but also am not sure how I can move on from what my mom said. My mom and sister raised me and that is the reason where I am today. However, I cannot get over how racist they are being and how they were just pretending to like Yang all these years while actively working on breaking us up. I have been so shocked that I have not told any of this to Yang so far. I might wait for her to come back next week and talk to her in person.
Again, thanks everyone for all your messages on the last post as they helped me a lot to think through the situation. My life is more fucked up than I could imagine, and I cannot imagine how dejected Yang will feel after hearing all this.
*****New Update Post: May 7, 2024 (5 weeks after OG post)****\*
I wrote a post two months ago regarding my best friend Jess constantly bringing up my ex when talking to my fiancée Yang. I wrote an update two weeks ago about my mom, sister and Jess scheming about trying to get me back with my ex Lisa because they were uncomfortable with Yang being Chinese. They tried to do it when my fiancée was visiting her parents and I felt so betrayed by their actions.
As I said in the previous post, I blew up on my mom and sister about what they said and immediately left. I did not take calls from them or answer texts for the next several days. Their messages initially were anger towards me on why I left before they could finish what they wanted to say. However, I think they realized on day 3 that they might have crossed the line this time and became extremely apologetic. I finally messaged them to leave me alone and not to contact Yang or I until we contact them. Jess did not message me the whole time.
I did not tell Yang about the situation until she came back home 9 days ago. I initially did not know how to bring up the subject, but she sensed something was wrong and asked me about it. I was so worried about hurting her, but I told her about what happened. I was upfront about the stunt Jess pulled and she was angry at Jess. I also told her about my visit to my mother's place, but she did not react with any anger. She just asked me if I was ok.
The next few days were confusing where I was more upset than Yang. She was just excited showing me all pictures and telling me stories. Finally, on last Thursday evening, she opened up and asked me if I was ok about my mom's behavior and what I plan to do. I told her my thoughts and how I cannot forgive them for what they said about her being Asian and them wanting me to marry a Lisa because she was white. I asked her why she was not more upset as it was bothering me.
She told me that when she told her parents about me, they had the exact same reaction for her dating someone who was not Chinese. Her family is very traditional, and her parents were very upset about her decision. It took them a few months to warm up to me and accept me. She never told me about this because she wanted me to have good relationship with her parents. She told me that now they are the most excited doing arrangements for our wedding.
She told me that she has always felt something was off when she talked to my mom, my sister or Jess and they did not like her. My mom and sister would be very friendly with her in front of me, but never invited her for anything when I am not around. She suspected that it may be due to fact that she is not white and does not understand the American traditions. She said she is not upset with them and now that this is in the open, she should talk to them and assure them that she would be as good of a wife as Lisa or any other girl. She said that she does not want to break a family in order to start a new one.
Despite my protests, Yang invited my mom and sister for lunch on Sunday. She said that it would be good for us to talk about everything and hear why they are concerned about her marrying me. I was really not happy with this, but Yang spent most of Sunday morning cooking for them.
When my mom and sister arrived, there were a lot of waterworks and apologies. My mom apologized to Yang and me for her behavior and told us that she would never bring it up again. My sister also was quiet and had tears in her eyes. There were a lot of blame games. My mom and my sister were blaming Jess for constantly telling them how Yang might not be great for me and how she won't fit into our family. My mom and sister fought with Jess after I left and Jess blamed Lisa. Based on Jess's story, Lisa has been depressed for the last few years and when I suddenly got engaged to Yang, it became worse. Jess thought I was also depressed after Lisa left me, because I did not date anyone for 3 years. In reality, I just wanted to focus on my work and studies and never had time. So, Lisa convinced Jess that she has to get back together with me as that is what I wanted too. Jess said how sorry she felt for Lisa as she was her longtime friend and listened to her plan as she thought it was good for everyone.
My mom and sister told us that I should stay away from Jess because she orchestrated the whole situation. They kept on hugging Yang and apologizing to her. Yang in turn also started crying and telling them that she will do better to fit in with them. It was all a big mess. I am still skeptical of my mom's change in heart, but I also want to see Yang happy. However, I think it will take a lot of time and healing before I could truly trust my mom and sister.
Currently, my mom invited us to lunch at her place next week and told me that Jess will not be there. Jess has still not message me or Yang. I really don't know what I can do in this situation. I am still upset and furious at my mom, but I also want to respect Yang's effort to keep the family together. Thanks to everyone for all the messages and supportive comments. It really helped reading them when I was feeling very sad.

I have been dating my long-distance boyfriend for almost four months now. I can't remember being this happy and excited in years. He makes me feel safe, welcome, wanted, all the things that I feel I don't often get from my family. We are seriously considering getting married. Yes, I know it is very fast, but my parents were married after only a few months, and have been married almost 30 years.
My boyfriend lives in Germany and I am from the US. I grew up in a religious household, while he does not believe in the Christian God. I personally am not too bothered by this-except for my family. Because we are "uber" religious, I have had numerous talks, chats, and even public confrontations over my even considering dating a non-Christian, much less marrying one. Recently, I received a medical diagnosis completely out of the blue: I went to the ER for a skin infection and walked out with a diagnosis for type 2 diabetes. My entire lifestyle is being uprooted and changed so I can get my health under control. However, this diagnosis has me unsure of where I stand with my faith. I haven't told any of my family that my faith is nearly gone, that I am tired of being a part of the American church anymore. Even my boyfriend, very respectfully of course but still firmly, is telling me that ignoring this issue is not an option.
On the note of public confrontation: I was yelled at (at least voices raised to me) by my grandfather in a public restaurant after I announced to him mine and my boyfriend's intent to hopefully get married. He spouted off saying that he could not congratulate me on a forthcoming marriage when my bf and I would be unequally yoked in a religious sense. It was my fault for telling him, I knew what would happen and I did it anyway. I did not respond to him at all, simply listened, and walked away when he was finished.
My parents are a bit more understanding. Whatever differences we have, or how I feel about them (our relationship can be a little strained at times because of them constantly gone or focused on other things/my siblings), they have spoken to me quite seriously about marrying someone not of my faith. But, my dad has specifically told me that everything I choose, it is on me. They cannot stop me, nor will they try. I'm finally feel like I'm being seen as an adult, maybe not among every single person in my extended family, but I and my family are having fun discussing mine and my bf's plans for our future together.
We have decided that although we are very sure we want to get married, it is incredibly wise to get to know each other better. He is finding a place for me to come live for a little while in Germany, so that I can meet him and his family, and figure out if Germany is a place that I actually COULD live.
We've already been through a couple of really really tough life circumstances in just the few months that we have been together. I've watched us grow, especially myself in ways I never thought possible. He challenges me, yet allows me to be myself, constantly asks for my input on even the smallest things, dotes on me, and just is quite honestly the best person to ever walk into my life.
I don't really know what else to say. If anyone actually sees and reads this, and has questions or comments I'll do my best to answer them. Otherwise, I was just kind of throwing my thoughts out there in the closest relevant space I could find and seeing what would happen. Thank you for your time. :)

I feel like I already know the answer to this but… in my culture the brides family pays for the wedding and the grooms family pays for the rehearsal dinner. With the cost of weddings these days my parents are paying for about 1/2 of the wedding and I am paying for the rest.
My mom and I were on a recent call with the wedding planner, and when she asked if we were having a rehearsal dinner or also a welcome party (destination wedding) my mom said something along the lines of “no clue we aren’t throwing one”. So we said no for now but might revisit later.
We’re already over budget with the wedding (not by a ton but still) so I do not expect, nor do I want, my parents to throw a rehearsal dinner too. I also don’t want to pay for one either. In all transparency I rather use any left over money from the budget on our honeymoon. I just feel like we’re already spending so much on feeding and entertaining other people so I’m sorry but that’s just where my priorities are.
My fiancé’s family has not offered or even mentioned anything about helping with the wedding. They do live in a different state so it’s not like we talk every day but still. The only time my MIL has asked about it in general is to ask what color she should wear and if they are going to do a mother-son dance. They have shown no intention towards contributing to anything wedding related. We aren’t having any other pre-wedding events like an engagement party, bridal shower, or even bachelobachelorette parties. And we haven’t asked for anything from them so far. Just that they show up to the big day.
So my question is, is it inappropriate to mention to them that the grooms family typically pays for the rehearsal dinner? Not necessarily asking them directly but mentioning it and seeing if they offer? Or should I just drop the whole thing in general and not do the rehearsal dinner either??
I come from a big hispanic family and my fiance is American. I’m not sure what the norm is for American weddings or if there even is one. We’re also the first getting married from both of our families so nothing to go off of.

I currently (40M) had my ex (35F) completely destroy our relationship while I was working out of town for a few months. This happened a year ago and wish I had these stories as a resource while going through it. I have just started to use Reddit and been reading the experiences of others here and have decided to share my story in hopes it will maybe help others. That way some good may come from some of the worst times of my life.
A little backstory for context for the story and insight to some of the decisions I made. When I turned 30 I left the major city in my Province (it is like a state if you are an American) because buying just a simple house is over a million dollars and I don't make near enough to afford that. My goal was to move to somewhere more rural to buy a house, meet someone, get married and have a child or two. It was my only dream I had and believed I could attain it. I lived out in the bush on my step dads property in a run down trailer I bought so I could save money for the first 3 years. I had my dog but the loneliness of living in the middle of nowhere had got to me. By then I had saved a fair amount of money, so I decided to move into the town. It was nice, it cut my commute down by 40 minutes, I had started to make a few friends and no longer felt so isolated. It was through my friends I met my future ex. Let's call her Kali. She had a long term boyfriend when we first met. Their relationship ended a couple of years after meeting her and we started dating a few months after.
We mostly had a great relationship for the next 4 years. The only thing was it was on again off again. She would dump me after I did anything really special for her for a week and beg me to take her back. It was like clockwork. I used to think it was because of her depression and that she didn't believe she deserved to be truly happy. Nowadays I actually think she might have been cheating the whole time and just felt guilty about it when I did nice stuff for her but I will never know the truth. I don't care what the reality is anymore anyway, Time has a funny way of making stuff like that irrelevant. We did have one bigger break of about 5 months. When it happened I took time off work to travel in my RV the whole time. From spring to summer. I really didn't like the town I lived in and decided to use that time to check out the rest of my Provence to figure out where I wanted to restart my life. She was basically the only reason I stayed for so long. I did have a decent job and family close by but most people I met there were not good people. Lots of drug users, liars, and general scumbags. I had only a few real friends there. After I got back and had decided where I was going to move to she had decided she wanted me back. She begged me to stay and be with her. She told me that she wanted to get serious. We started making real progress about getting married, having kids and looking at buying a house. Everything was coming up Milhouse and I couldn't be happier. So You can probably guess this is when my tale becomes interesting for you and life got real bad for me.
My career is seasonal. I work from spring to the end of fall and can go on unemployment insurance or find work. My dad had asked if I could help on his farm breeding horses that winter when I had still planned to leave my town. I had promised him that I would because it would give me a place to stay before people in my field of work would be looking for employees. This had been agreed upon before me and Kali had got back together. Now I have always been a man of my word. It's something I take great pride in. I have always hated liars. I don't mind a little embellishment to make a story more fun or if two people's stories are different as long as they both believe that was how the events happened. Everyone remembers things slightly off. She was upset that I had intended to keep my word to my dad but I had every second weekend off. The town my dad is in was only a 2 hour drive. So I told her I would be back twice monthly for weekends and that it would only be for 4 months. For the first two months everything seemed fine. During this time I started to look at rings to pop the question and booked an expensive spa for two days in May to propose. There was only one weird thing that happened during the first two months. On one of my visits she confided in me that her brother's wife had cheated on him and that their newborn baby was most likely not his. I was shocked that she not only knew but didn't plan to tell him. She said she didn't want to tell him for fear of breaking up the family. I told her that he has the right to know and that she was being a bad sister by knowing and not telling him. I also informed her if he found out she knew and didn't say anything that he would most likely kick her out of his life. She made me swear I wouldn't tell him. Even though I thought it was wrong I did agree to not say anything. It did get me wondering how she could not only not tell him but stay friends with someone that could do that to her brother. I think that's when I started to question her morals. The third month she asked that I didn't come out because she was "sick". I told her I didn't care, I could still come out and take care of her. She convinced me that she didn't want me to come so I just worked on the farm instead. I switched weekends so I could come out the next instead of in two weekends. The weekend she was "sick" her phone was off the whole time, lasting into the week. She told me her phone went through the washing machine. She was actually on a bender but I didn't learn that till later.
So I head out the following weekend. As soon as I arrive I start getting super sketchy vibes. I was already weirded out about the stuff with her brother and ghosting me for 4 days as we talked/texted multiple times a day normally. At first she acts great to me, cooks me steak and we go out to the bush to have a fire in the snow. At the fire she really started drinking heavily. She then mentions a guy she had been hanging with lets call him Brad. So alarm bells start going through my head. We go back to her house and she keeps drinking. I wanted to keep a clear head so I only had three beers all evening. She put her phone down unlocked because of how drunk she was and I took it to the bathroom with me to look up texts between them. I felt so guilty for doing it at first but once I see the text between the two of them the guilt is replaced with rage. I go to her room to confront her and she breaks down. First, how dare I go through her phone, this never would have happened if I would have broken my promise to my dad, nothing really happened between them, blah, blah, blah. I was furious and drove off. She blows up my phone the whole time. I don't answer. Ten minutes after I left her mother called me. She lives at her moms house. I took the call and her mom said she is freaking out and has harmed herself. I decide to go back and she has a bandage wrapped around her arm. Her mom hid all the sharp objects she could find. She was having a full on panic attack and begs me to not leave. I told her I would stay if she told me the truth. She admits to hooking up with him one time just that last weekend when she asked me not to come out. It kind of matches the messages and I believe her. I stay there till she falls asleep. Once she does I send Brad a text saying that she has a boyfriend with some screen shots of our conversations me and her have had that week. I was about to drive back to the farm when the dude called her phone. I pick up the call and tell him I am her boyfriend. He asks if that was a joke and I assure him it is not. He said he didn't know and actually apologized. I tell him that I'm pissed but if he didn't know I couldn't blame him. I should have asked him more questions but I was tired, not thinking straight and just wanted to go back to the Farm even though it was two am by this point. I get home and crash. Turned my ringer off because I know once she wakes up she will start calling like crazy. After getting the horses in for the night I decided to look at my phone for the first time all day. Around thirty missed calls and a ton of texts. I decide I need another day before I talk to her. Now while the whole day all I can think about is that it was just one time, she seems to be genuinely remorseful about it, how I'm 39 and really want children before I get too old. I took a call from her the next day on Sunday in the morning. She is still wasted. She hadn't stopped drinking since I was there Friday. We talk and I tell her that I am really upset but am willing to give us another chance. I still was in love with her and wanted to have kids, get married and buy a house with her. It was the dream I felt I worked so hard for. She was so happy I took her back and swore to me nothing like this would ever happen again. Basically I was a fool lol.
So I decided on my next set of days off to borrow my stepdads summer home on the river so we can have the place to ourselves. I grab food that she loves so I can cook her dinner and try to make it very romantic. I want to rekindle my love with her so I wanted to go all out on an amazing weekend. I pick her up and she is already a little drunk. I kind of wanted to hang sober but I don't wanna mess up with her so don't say anything thinking we can do a sober day when I take her out to go shopping and dinner the next day. When we get there she gets hammered. Kali had brought a big of bottle fireball on top of a bunch of white claws. I again didn't really drink that night. Once she was drunk and tired I carried her to the bed. As Kali is in my arms she looks up at me and says in slurred words "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Joe" I ask "what did you just say?". "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Brad" she replied. I put her to bed and my mind starts racing. Now her ex before me has a really close name to the one she said first but I also know she has a friend named Joe I only met a couple of times. They were not close or even hung out but were more like acquaintances. I go in her purse to look at her phone again but the battery is dead and I can't find her charger. I have an Iphone so I can't charge it up to look. I didn't sleep that well that night with everything going on in my head. I woke up at 6 am to her being very loud on the phone. I went out to the living room and she had drank all the booze left over from the night before. I ask her who she was on the phone with and she tells me an uber to leave. I ask why is she going to leave? Kali tells me she is upset that I tried to get into her phone. Guess I didn't put it back in her purse. Must have been out of sorts and forgot. I tell her I can drive her once I go to the washroom and get some clothes on. I go to do that, come out of the washroom to see Kali has already left. She was so drunk that she had left half her stuff behind. I decided to have breakfast before bringing her stuff to her house. After breakfast I packed her stuff into my SUV and noticed it had snowed that night. I could see her footprints out into the driveway. While Dropping off her stuff I noticed there were no footprints leading to her house, so I tried calling Kali. No answer. I left her stuff in the snow and decided to drive by her brothers and sisters house to see if there were footprints going into any of their houses but there were none. I sent her a nasty text about knowing she didn't go home, to go be with Brad or Joe or whoever and never call me again. It was a lot more profane than that but that's the gist of it. Cleaned up the house my stepdad lent me and back off to the farm yet again. The next day she blows up my phone and again I wait another day to talk to her. She tells me that she went home but I know that can't be true from the snow, but she says I must have been mistaken. She apologizes for getting drunk and leavening and that she is going to stop drinking after her birthday in two weeks. She has rented a hotel in the town I'm in for her birthday and wants to spend it with me. I agree just because I have to know the truth and want to look at her phone to make sure I am not crazy. She had gaslit me to the point I was questioning what I saw with my own eyes. A couple of days later I decided to send Joe a message on Facebook to see if he would give me the truth. I get a text from her telling me not to bug her friend and that she is embarrassed. I apologize and tell her I am excited about her birthday soon.
The weekend of her birthday comes so I go to meet her at the hotel. She brought her sister and other friend along. It actually is a really fun time. The girls did coke the first night into the second evening. I don't really like it but I figured she can let loose especially if she is going to stop drinking after her birthday. I also knew by Saturday night that they would all crash hard so it would give me time to look at her phone so I could know the truth. As I mentioned the weekend was really fun so I felt bad about going into her phone yet again. I did it anyway and my whole world came crashing down. Now I figured that I would maybe see Brad or Joe texts and Facebook messages. Seemed like Brad was done but Joe and her were totally hooking up. I also found out that she had slept with 3 other guys. I also saw she was using coke all the time now. She did it maybe three times a year when we dated but now it was every weekend. It looked like she started using regularly right before I left for the farm. Joe helped get it for her too, out of all the guys he was the one she hung with the most. Turns out he was also a meth head who was trying to quit for her. She also went to his house the morning she left the other weekend to hook up and buy coke. I was floored. I just staired and took screen shots till the early morning. I decided I wasn't just going to dump her but I wanted to ruin her life not realizing she was already doing that all by herself but hindsight is 20 20. So I started coming up with a plan of what I was going to do. I woke up the next morning and acted like everything was fine and went back to the farm. I was still so upset and didn't want to harm myself or others so had a family friend take my firearms for a while. I don't think I would have used them on myself or others but I knew I wasn't thinking clearly and didn't want them in my house while I was like that.
I didn't have to see her till I moved back because the next set I had off I had tickets for a concert in the city I used to live in. During that time all I thought about was how I was going to do something to ruin her life. I came up with some small things but my main plan was to pretend like we were fine and ghost her when my contract was up with my boss next winter. I had promised him another year after kali and I had gotten back together. Just typing it out makes me look back and cringe that I was so crazy. When I went to the city for the concert I told my best friend, my brother and a few others my plan. No one liked it and thought I should just go no contact, cut her straight out of my life. That probably was the smart thing to do but emotion was clouding my judgement. Also you all would get this story. They even informed me that because I would be lying to her, that I would be compromising my morals and turning into a worse person they didn't recognize. I either didn't see it that way or care. I have a hard time recalling what my brain was thinking during that time. All seems like a haze now that it's been a year. I think I was really upset that my dream and all I had worked for was ruined. A friend later said I may have been in love with the dream and not her. Maybe that's the reason I kept up all this insanity.
My time on the farm had come to an end and I was moving back to the town me and my ex lived in. I was set with my plan, excited to implement it and have what I considered just. But you know what they say of the best laid plans. My ex wanted to go to hang at her brothers as a welcome home party. I went but ended up drinking. Heavily drinking, to the point of black out. I don't remember much from that night but have had it recounted for me. I woke up in the drunk tank. Guess I couldn't lie and play it cool then huh? The story I was told later is, while at her brothers I had gotten drunk and loud. Kept waking up the new baby and we were asked to leave. So we caught a cab and I confronted her in the cab but all I could do was call her a lying, cheating, whore on repeat. She got upset and ran into the house locking me out. I had a bunch of my stuff in her house so I went to the door and demanded she let me in. All the while still only referring to her as the aforementioned 3 words. She told me to leave but my jacket and wallet were inside. It was below freezing at night still and probably wouldn't have made it home in the state I was in. I then kicked in her door to keep calling her LCW and grab my stuff. She was on the phone to the police, so I was taken away by them. One of the lowest points in my life. It still brings me so much shame to this day but it is what happened and I am not going to sugar coat it. I never laid a finger on her and I am so happy that I hadn't. Laying hands on women in that way is one of the scummiest things a man can do. I had to go back to her house once they let me out because my stuff was still there. I apologized to her mom who had been at her boyfriends that evening promising to repair the door for her. Kali begged me to talk to her and like an idiot I didn't just leave. I told her I saw everything and she only admitted to Brad and Joe. Lying about them and the others the whole time. Even when I brought up the screen shots she still couldn't come clean. I left just shaking my head. There is still a ton to this story but this is long enough. I could do a part 2 if there is interest. Catching you folks up to where I am now and the messed up things that happened in between.

Hello cat friends!
Here is a little about my cat Holly

• Sex: Female
• Breed: American Medium Hair
• Age: Almost 9
• Weight: 7 lbs
• Spayed or neutered: Yes

History:
I adopted Holly from my grandmother in late January 2024, after my grandfather passed. She could not physically take care of Holly. I didn't know too much about Holly's medical history. My grandmother didn't have many records and the vet she used to take Holly to, didn't have old records because I guess they changed ownership or whatever. My grandparents fed Holly whatever was affordable, mainly Friskies wet food. Apparently these GI issues have been going on for some years.
Food causing issues added GI issues... maybe...???
The vet I took Holly to recommend Purina EN (wet food) since it is meant for GI issues and is high in protein. That way Holly could at least get some nutrition. She was on that for about 1 1/2 months. But didn't see improvement in her GI issues. As of April 27th, 2024, I slowly started transitioning Holly onto Hill Z/D (wet food) to see if a hydrolyzed diet would help.
Holly gets about 1 1/4 of the 5.5oz cans a day.
Week 1: giving her 25% new food with 75% old food. Week 2: 50% new 50% old. However, as over week 2, I've noticed her vomiting seems to be a bit better, but the diarrhea has gotten worse. Holly seems to really like the food, but I don't then it's liking here. I keep a detailed spreadsheet that tracks her bowel movements, vomiting, urination, and other things. Prior to the start of the transition she was having, on average 1 diarrhea a day and 0.5 vomits a day (this is over a recorded 39 days. I got each average by dividing that number of diarrheas or vomits by the number of days). During the transition, she is at an average of 1.41 diarrheas a day and 0.1 vomits a day (over a 17 days period).
I did notice that Hills Z/D is a lot higher in carbs compared to the other foods she was on. So I'm wondering if the carbs are playing a part in some of this. Also, there has been an uptick in her flatulence.
Food Transition Question:
Am I transitioning her too quickly? Most of the answers I found online were showing transitioning to a new food over 10 - 14 days. So I decided to go slower and do 25% increments every 7 days. But, since I've seen some increase in diarrhea while on 50% new 50% old, I haven't increased to 75% new. I'm still at 50% new and 50% old. Should I maybe go back to 25% new and 75% old for a few more weeks?
I am going to ask the vet as well, but I also like to hear from experience of others.
I appreciate if anyone answer any responses that could be helpful.

If disguised under a preposterous or “absurd” appearance, [a UFO’s] effects would be undetected for a long time. I believe this could be a key to the confrontation with UFOs. ~Jacques Vallee

In 1954 the sociologist Gordon Allport published a book called The Nature of Prejudice. In it, he and some colleagues elucidated a link between increasing Intergroup Contact and reducing Racial Prejudice. At the time this was breakthrough research; repeated contact between members of the “in” and “out” group reduces stigma toward the “out” group.
In 1954 this could be easily illustrated by the attitudes of the public-at-large toward racial minorities over the preceding 100 years – shifting attitudes toward slaves and their descendants, as well as the previous 10 years – attitudes toward Japanese-Americans over the course of WWII.
As it turns out one of the most effective ways at reducing prejudice is “equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals.”
For African slaves, their descendants, Japanese-Americans, and countless others across history, this contact has been stained with blood and tears. But contact it was nonetheless, and our stigma toward these “out” groups declined overtime as they became part of the “in” group. They became ‘American’ and their “out” group identities and goals have become, and are becoming, less stigmatized.
Today, I believe we are watching this dissolution of stigma play out en masse on the world stage. The funny thing is that this time, all of humanity is part of a microcosmic “out” group and the aliens in their UFOs are part of the macrocosmic “in” group trying to get us to adopt their goals. What then, is so unsettling about humanity that they take such a slow-going route of stigma dissolution? Why don’t they just introduce themselves as equal status individuals?
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Attitude Rebound and Stigma
A few weeks ago I made the same post in both UFOs and Aliens. The post contained what I thought to be a reasonable, logical hypothesis that could easily explain away all paranormal phenomena… Yes, all paranormal phenomena. The post got about as much attention in each subreddit, however the reactions to its content was drastically different on each subreddit.
I will admit that I was being a little overzealous in my efforts to “raise the consciousness of humanity” and was proselytizing to some folks in the comments. My B 🙇🏻. What I found very very interesting, however, was how commenters on UFOs were much more critical and reductive than commenters on Aliens, who seemed more open to my zany hypothesis and its possibilities.
Now, I am not a physicist. I can barely remember the unit circle. I got a D in calculus at university. That is why/when I decided to get a liberal education rather than a scientific one. Having said that, I am very passionate about science and the scientific method. I am a nurse by trade, and for twelve hours a day, three days a week, according to my profession, I conduct three to five “n of 1” studies and report the results of these studies to a medical doctor. My job is to experiment on human beings and document outcomes.
What I observed when I made those posts was that one community was receptive and the other was hostile. I joined both UFOs and Aliens so that I could keep up to date on the latest disclosure news. I have noticed in my time browsing these subreddits that UFOs tends to request hard, ‘scientific’ data from posters, whereas Aliens seems to have more interest in the subjective experience of posters. Of course there is a lot of overlap given the content of these subreddits.
This is all just to say that the same message may be received differently, and it’s content interpreted differently, even by the same/overlapping populations, due to the stigma some individuals harbor. So I think it prudent that we introspect and hold an awareness of our own stigmas and biases, understanding they may be seated deep in our unconscious mind. We should reconsider the things we find absurd, for in the absurdity there may be a powerful lesson.
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Thank you to those who upvoted/downvoted and commented. Thank you for participating in this community. Thank you for being unwitting participants in this accidental study, and I will leave you with this quote from Gordon Allport:

It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes.

My 11 yo (turns 12 in August) American curl cat has been acting very sick. He tends to vomit a lot and last year it started to become projectile. I took him into the vet that time and they ran a full blood work panel and said he looked fine. They recommended some hairball food and said to not worry about the vomiting unless he starts acting different than usual (he will eat and act normal usually when he projectile vomits). Two days ago I noticed his behavior was off. He wasn't as lovey and was avoiding me which is very unlike him. He's usually all up in my personal space. He has been walking extremely slow and I was convinced something was off but gave it a night. The next day he ate nothing and drank no water. I gave him one more day before calling the vet. Went in today for an appointment and he got a full bloodwork panel, his electrolytes checked, thyroids checked, and an ultrasound (also no fever). It was odd because he was purring the entire time at the vet (which he usually hates because he has very bad anxiety). The vet said his labs came back fine and he couldn't diagnose him. He gave him a shot of anti nausea medication as well as a steroid shot. He also got IV fluids. He sat on my lap on the car ride home purring and looking out the window and I was so relieved seeing him feeling better. The second i brought him back inside he was acting strange again. The vet said the steroid should increase his appetite and he should be hungry by dinner (this was at 2:30 pm). It's now 11:00 pm and he still refuses to eat or drink water. The vet told me to update him in a few days but if he doesn't drink water I feel like I have to call tomorrow since water is much more crucial than food. I'm panicking because there is no answer to why he's avoiding eating and drinking but if he is not going to drink water regardless of medication than i don’t know what to do. I feel helpless watching him suffer. He has distanced himself from me (very unusual) and just sleeps all day, moves very slowly, and has a super dry nose. I don’t know if it's just his time or what, because the vet said everything seemed normal. If anyone has experienced something similar please leave advice as I am not ready to let go of my childhood best friend.

I watched it in a Facebook clip before the pandemic. And from the quality, I'm sure it released after 2000. Scene is - a group of soldiers are going somewhere in the back of a vehicle and they chat about why eating cows is fine but if you do the same with cats/dogs people are enraged.
One solder says why Indians worship cows, it's dumb. Because they eat cows. Other one says what about dogs/cats. He replies they are cute. So he says, the Chinese eat them, so they must be thinking Americans are dumb.
Please don't suggest random chatgpt answers.

I've been working for months to try to unravel the complicated history of my ancestry, but I was wondering if anyone could point me in a better direction.
From what I've found so far, it looks like my great-grandfather was born in a Rusyn village that's in present-day Ukraine. From what I can tell, everything about him seems to line up that of Rusyn people: he was a coal miner, his last name is a Hungarian-ized (later American-ized) version of a Rusyn last name, he was Greek Orthodox, he settled in PA, etc.
But... my great-grandmother is a whole different story. The area she was born in changes on literally every document I've been able to find, and since the majority of my grandmother's siblings have passed away and my grandmother wasn't raised with her parents for very long, I'm having a really hard time putting the pieces together. I know boarders changed constantly in Europe due to the wars, but how do I begin to unravel that? Her maiden name is Polish but she was allegedly born in Czechoslovakia (some docs say Krompachy, some "Kossive," some say she was born in Austria, some say "Slovakland," and some say Dubrava without a country name). But her sister wrote that she was born in "Brgesko, Czechoslovakia" which isn't a place from what I can tell-- the only thing that comes up is Brzesko, Poland. This is, notably, the one that seems to be the most accurate however, since "Kossive" and Krompachy came out of no where.
Additionally, if she was in fact Polish, why wouldn't she just write that on the census documents? Her ethnicity was written as Slovak, Hungarian, and "Slavish" and she wrote her native language as "Slavish" many times, but that doesn't make sense to me. If she was from Poland, why wouldn't she just write Polish? And if she wasn't Polish and she was Slovak, why wouldn't she just write that instead of "Slavish?" I think it's possible she might've been Rusyn as well, so that may explain the "Slavish" thing, but it's extremely difficult to discern that because I literally cannot figure out where she was actually born.
So, I guess my question is, how do I untangle this? What is the most straight-forward way (short of a DNA test 'cause I don't have the money nor the trust in these companies to do that) of being as certain as I can about their ethnicities? I want to be able to talk about where my family came from-- especially since this is important to my grandmother and I want to be able to give her an answer-- but I don't want to claim to be something I'm not.
And as an aside, I'm aware that a lot of these areas were part of the Empire and switched hands between Austria and Hungary often, but my main issue is trying to figure out where my great-grandma was actually born because there's so many inconsistencies there that I don't even know where to start. Additionally, I have tried to look into my great-grandmother's parents since she came to the US with them, but it's just brick wall after brick wall and people who've been doing this for a lot longer than I have can't breakthrough it.