Does the verb, preposition, or sentence structure determine the case? I feel like I see so many sentences with conflicting cases in verbs and prepositions, especially considering that the meaning behind the cases themselves doesnt really make sense to me. How does it work?

Hallo, ive been struggling a lot with this lately. We just learned about der Dativ in my class and how case relates to prepositions, but Im very confused. We learned that cases can be determined by the verb (like essen or kaufen being akkusativ), but so do prepositions and the sentence structure relates too. I dont know what determines the case of a sentence. If you have a verb of one case and a preposition of another, how does that work? Also, how does sentence structure play into it? Can word order determine cases too?

I recently began learning German and have a basic understanding of word order. I’ve come across a couple of sentences online where the verb comes before the subject/pronoun, and I’m unsure why they’re phrased this way.
From a Your Daily German article on „Ja“:
„Maria fand meinen Witz über ihren Po überhaupt nicht lustig.“ „Hab ich dir ja gesagt.“
And from an unrelated YouTube comment on a liamcarps video about the eggcrackers:
„Das fehlt in meinem Haushalt. Muss ich mir unbedingt anschaffen!!!“
Maybe there is a grammatical reason, which expresses the topic of the sentence with which I’m not familiar, such as „Muss ich“ emphasizing as opposed to „Ich muss“ functioning to make the immediate necessity the tone of the sentence as opposed to neutrally stating a need.
Is there some other reason that the verb is placed before the subject in these sentences?

I recently had to properly kick my first ever player, things got a little intense between us for it and well left me on the all sorts of spectrum of emotions sides. I just had to get both feelings and my logic for the reasons for this removal of at the start, a good player and good guy and character that.. to me just started to not be. Maybe to just vent out, maybe to see if I was justified, but also to hope that, if there were points I didnt see or think of at the time that someone can help me think better if a scenario ever bubbles up like this, I have a better headspace to go about things right.
To start, I am more or less a newby forever DM (1 oneshot game to my belt under as a player), my current running campaign is only my second, going 2 years strong now. Its been bumpy recently do to my work schedule last few months but we are nearly up to our 100th session together and things have begun to heat up story wise and excitement wise by my players. Everything's in the story is homebrew more or less, both my own works and others I found and my players bring up to me.
At the start of the game, I had 5 starting players, and the one in question was one of them. We lost a few of them, first sadly I more suggested he leave, as much as he wanted to play, it was to the point he was playing while traveling via busses, planes and others (he traveled alot for his daily life events he couldnt get out of) an never mentioned when these would happen. That went smooth, we were both polite and I wasnt upset with them, just upset a good player like him will have hard times with finding a table. Better ways, would have been having a blast with them to this day. The second was starting to act up, I had to shoot him down a bit hard at times, more so when a new player, a girl, joined up an he started being a bit inappropriate and not act like the character he told me he would be. After I started blocking his more chaotic antics, he pretty much ghosted the group all together. Our third player who left is more on a prolonged hiatus cause of his work schedule, but he keeps in contact. So as far as the original party goes there are only two, with the first whom replaced our enthusiastic but unable to stay with us player being 'Miss 3 1/2's'.
With most of that out of the way, I can get onto the player in question. Again, he was there from the start, only second in my player search to start this campaign. Wanting to play a neutral good paladin who grew up a simple farmers life and was on a life walk-about to enrich himself before his turn to take over the family farmlands. At the start things were bit fine, he showed a general interest to hooks that kinda developed in the intro fight, making some good goofy aspects with his character and interactions and at least at first, an interest to some of the things in the world at the time. But looking back, I did likely trust him with a bit much, the other characters likewise were very 'go with teh flow' but they liked to investigate and get into things outside the city that they were given slight hero titles to after the start of things. With him though, he did 'actively' have his character go to get the town effective 'quest board' and ask around if people needed help with things... and.. not tell the other PC's about it or try an start the missions or plots.
While in itself it wasnt 'bad' people also trusted him a bit as 'the note taker' at first, so maybe we just expected him to go into things later or something, but, this became something I was concerned of with him on it. I mentioned his own story progression aspects from the start of the game, well, when given a lead that would let him undo a poor families ailment he showed interests too with time to go at least check it.. he suddenly invented a sister for his character.. who was getting married, back in his home country, that they 'had' to visit right then an there.
He had been vague about his characters history, he may have mentioned a sister 'in passing' but nothing ever set in stone besides his Grandfather being the true head of the farm and his dad. Not even anything about his characters mother, an now suddenly he wanted to spend a week or two travel via air ship to go see a 'new fiance' on top of it. I admit, I wasn't too happy but I also didnt outright pull him to the side to talk about that. Mark against me I know.
But it kind of worked out, as because no one could do much since he was kinda blocking the group from reaching the intended quest givers that he swore he would get with (2 of the other remaining characters at the time mostly had their stuff working on things they were trying to do that wasnt too crazy but at least progressed their characters in ways). And Miss 3 1/2 wasnt sure of her character at the time so played a temp one to feel out being another class and style for a bit. It helped her bloom a little. They ended up helping another little quest idea i had for halloween, late it was, but had fun with it an great action. But do to how that took an bad dice rolls which I do no flub or such, they got sidetracked from things an had to go back to go onto a quest 3 1/2 got them to.. an he wasnt exactly actively happy or doing the quest (guard a noblewoman on a quest to one of the countries for buisness matters. Kinda.. avoided the woman in weird ways.. like trying to push the hotel cooks asideto 'show them how its done'..).
When the crew finished with it, it was with another teaser to quest lines he was kinda pinning the group with. Again unfortunately the rest were 'kinda' okay with his choice on it but they were doing a bit more to be active now so it wasnt likely to work out for long. Around this time is when 'Work Haitus' had to sadly step away, so i started to put feelers out for new players again. During this time, he was still kinda pulling back on things as best he could, but he started to show a.. interesting trait. He wanted to start 'grinding' for EXP.. without going into the literal forest where some creatures could be faught, instead, he went to the city coliseum. Now this was explained since session one, I dont give any real EXP for fights there, quit literally if you have a fun sparing match or a more rough bloody match in it against a tamed or caught creature or class person, you'll only end up with 1 xp point. I did this cause I heard of a number of stories of 'those' players showing up, going to fight pits to make themselves stronger an not bother with rp time stuff. But I also tweaked it, so you could make bets for yourself, and the boon of prize and noterity (IE, people start being more favorable to you, seek you out that sort of stuff.. which considering he had so many 'hidden to activate quests' at this point wouldnt have mattered either way). He very quickly stopped after his 2nd or so solo attempt and made a passing comment on being upset of it. I overlooked that time.
During this, the entire party collectively was sought out, as the city knew 'all of them' roughly, so no reason only someone looking to the quest board would be involved alone. They were given a new quest by a neighboring kingdom, to deal with monsters they had ties with from the start as an already active side-story plot. He kinda 'backed' a bit into doing his characters 'im off to clean the broom closet' antics during some of this.. alot.. so looking back it feels he was upset not only was he not 'in charge' of getting the quests, but that the whole party agreed to be invovled with it regardless of anything else. I did try to bring him bback in, by having that Sister and her Fiance appear to meet them since he couldnt make the meeting.
There was some .. issues.. he kinda started to instantly mistrust the fiance, he litterally used 'every' detection spell he had on them trying to sus if they were demon, enregy or otherwise. An more or less ignored the sister even when she asked him his plans on things.. an since he 'left the sibling things to me besides she pranks him maybe' he didnt seem thrilled that she was upset the 'Lord title' brother, who won plots of land in this country an was going to open, I kid you not, an 'Pizzaria Inn petting zoo pet super plant farm forge and factory' on said plot of land with 'secret super caves our befriended monster friend will terraforming for us'. Short version of the monster thing.. monster had no such ability and at best had very tiny cute versions of itself digging out the cave, one pebble at a time.. this is when i noticed he sort of 'half' listened to details given.
I will admit, I wanted to have a moment where the sister was going to become some sort of 'rival', if she couldnt find way to convince the older men who are currently running the farm that big bro might have more important things to do as 'a Lordship hero paladin' maybe its time to break 'the men run the farm' tradition. In character he was warned 'she really wants your farm, and as someone whose seen people go extremes maybe you should reach out to her so its not so bad an no bad blood has to happen'... he kinda took it that she wants him dead, sorta. Took a bit with the informer to correct it.
He .. 'kinda' tried to 'make it up to her' i think by baking her favorite pie an admittedly as a nice act gave her his holly symbol which was the family's given by grandpa to him.. no biggy as the city hade a temple of his goddess to get a replacement soo.. yeah. Honestly I did talk with him a little on it.. but this is when another aspect started being apparent.
I hadnt mentioned, but I am not a fan of no call no show specially when we had a constant schedule, he had a few, but 'did' sorta apologize, at first. We do everything discord and roll20, so when he starts to not appear i would '@' the group and then '@' via DM's, and there maybe 'weeks' to 'months' if theres nothing 'important' to talk to me about response wise. And at the start of those times he started missing alot. An also, not apologizing or saying why. He doesnt always have to I know, but given we were having fewer players, wed have sudden 'we cant plays' cause it was 2 people only..
Then, we get introduced to not one or two but three new players. I kinda worried with them being prior friends and click group but its been working out for most part. Timing for ones admittedly stunk, an their on a personal leave Im not faulting but having their character background for now. They show up, an their characters, well starting at high level for at least 2 fresh faces an one long term one is a little odd, but its been fun. They instantly get into their characters mindsets, weird quirks that fit their upbringings and own style of things, but they also work as a functional communicating and asking questions group with slight airs of 'they are not lower class but deal with both from the noble side of things' air to them. Again its worked out, given they lost a litter hard hitter the three work great.
As the plot went, they were actually being lured away by a group who they helped bust antics an get called out on it in the city, the bait was just 'oh it might be the same type of monster you guys are looking for who might eat an entire city', done via a modified memory spell on the patsy. They were lead to a campsite the badguys set up to be a kill/trap spot.. It was a bit rough with things, but the group was doing 'amazingly' well. But I had an even bigger surprise for everyone, to take our game to a new level an give a 'big' meaty plot hook to hype and put every character on an equal 'i dont know anyone around here/dont have the same resources you do' foot from how the characters went, as an idea to build their bonds.
The trap, got ambushed, by a big honken monster I teased the first players with barely into session 4 that was a corps but came back. An this thing was a beast, CR minimal 20+ an higher (i suck at figuren the maths) but yeah, it was 'not' a winnable fight they could escape from that even the badguys said 'truce till were not monster food???'
It blew apart the trap-badguys, an sent the PC's hurdling into a space that was supost to be instant death, but plot armor I intended for em saved them if only 'barely' but now, their in ' a ocean like space between the outter realm and multi realms', with faint contact by the holly characters gods saying 'theres a way back, you must return'. including to the Paladin an 3 1/2 (who is cleric).. and honestly, everyones raved to me about it.. but looking back agian, given lack of Paladins communications 'out' of his appearances in game.. he hasnt said much, unless someone else starts it..an even then its.. barely a sentence..
The players were picked up by 'friendly pirates' an have been discovering things and gaining new strengths.. least, most of them again. 3 1/2 really bounded with the new NPC's an been expanding their character (shes been very creative that way an shes really gotten into the player bug, im sooo happy i could get her into the hobby) the new players had their growths too, the full slightly higher brow noble of them has come to terms 'hes mortal an can die, but people need his strength' too, as well as 'living is hard.. their not just 'dirty' or something by chance its just the efforts of their brow' to the sorceress of his friends being delighted to be sailing the seas with quirky merman, turtle an other type pirates with treasures an jerks to kick in the seat of the pants. Even the other first player has tried new character aspects, trying to be a 'new version' of himself till an event happened (which he half told me of, but it was more workable then 'sudden sister quest').
But.. paladin has been a bit more missing an sadly we have had spotty game times cause this is when my own work schedule has been bad. An again, he never gets back or says 'oh sorry cant make it' or whatever happened. I brought up a bit ago about his passing remarks of the exp thing for this point to make, he doesnt like to have his character have much of my homebrew stuff.. despite how many treasures hes had that hes just gone 'i sell it' or 'eh if you want it take it dont want it' that has been (a) a plot starter, or (b) a pretty handy if maybe OP item, hes just passed them off even from session z where I give every player chances to pick a unique thing for their character that helps tie them to the world. He opted out of it, an through everything they have done an gathered.. hes held onto a grand total of 2 homebrew things.. a sword, that after a 'certin point' he used as his hexblade warlock focus point with his goddess also being his patron, and 'one' spell that I had to reach out to offer him, well, technically '2' spells. One that he could use to turn a mundane object into a powerful magic weapon, an a ritual spell that he needs to cast to regain uses of the other spell.
The reason this ties to the EXP block from the coliseum bit, is because as part of the ritual to regain usages, he has to create a small 'choke point' of a ritual spell ring to fight an unending horde of monsters that the spell summons to fight just him. Now, the monsters are extremely low level, like 1/4 cr, an they wont try an kill him, as the ritual ends when hes KO'ed. It took a bit before he had to properly cast it in ession (big surprise, had him recharging it on some of the missing day's of his). But when eh did, an he finished it, he did instantly ask 'how much exp to i get?' an kinda grew hushed when I said 'you.. get your six usages of your spell back?'. I.. low key wonder if he wanted to try an use it as a cheat to grind or something..
This also does not help that, just prior, 3 1/2 managed to do our 'biggest' damage in a single round during a hord fight, literally between her spells an a new weapon with some seriously amazing rolls, did over 200 hp of damage on her own. To the point she KO'ed the boss monster leader. granted it was with a smart play and some literal crit hits, but thats when his vibe for games started kinda feeling off big time. An come now, to the more recent events before the kick..
I had a rare day off i could have a game completely unhindered, an we agreed to all have it.. sadly starter 2 forgot the US has Daylights saving, so we did loose an hour for him getten outta work. Eh it happens. An sadly the new 3 didnt get to join in so it was an agreed on one shot. Well, that 'was' the idea..
When we started.. when we 'could' have started, I gave them the quick plot of how they got to this place (this all happened just before the event with the pirates so they had their stuff but meta'ed they were still their current levels). Now, Im loose with my own OS's, so I used a module i bought that looked fun an it was interesting. I did have to build a bunch of rough doubles of the maps, since turns out the PDF didnt want to let me get the pics right at the time, so wasnt focusing too much on some details but for key point ones. Its important for later. But anwyay after the basic 'you did a hero thing an was invited to a small isle city by its noble ruler who has big parties every week an your the guests of honor', you know the usual kinda crud. Well i started to get into the start of it, about to go to details of the maps location.. when he, stopped me an blocked me to go 'oh i climb the building or whatever to get that gun!'.....there was unfortunately an image of a gun on the part of the token i used to build the maps clocktower..didnt notice it.. he sure did.. an kinda derailed me a bit more..reminder, we were an hour late into session.
I managed to get back on track, the security at the start of the party line stoppen the crew an saying 'sorry its a costume party, dont worry we always have spares, pick one' an they got to pick a set of masks for themselves. They rolled to take turns, he got first dibs, an picked one he 'really liked', but I do kinda wonder cause my tag name relates to what it was.. Well, I sent them the screenshot of the masks an their effects as an item/equip card... he started to.. get sour sounding.
In prior in between an pre game times, hes mentioned hes.. not exactly a fan of alot of stuff. Even some of the oldest movies an comics that are still being made now an are big on fandoms, hes got zero interests or cares for.. an on troupes, he is not big on mysteries. An sadly, the mask gave him an ability thats great in discovering secrets...
Well, I started to bring one of the moduels NPC's to start pointing out details, give them some hook bits an background to what goes on normally in the city... and.. he used that one use ability to check if she liked her mask.. literally stepping the entire conversation, then walked away to break into that clocktower.. that had the guns on it..
3 1/2 an second 1'st decided 'lets try an get on with the actual story regardless' an tried to go to the party which they did, trying to get him to come with too, crossing the small castle bridge to get to there an start mingling as they do.. paladin did 'eventually'.. but first he shimmied the bridge to use up his stealth abilities from the mask... then when 3 1/2 noticed, tried to get him to come in, he... started climbing to the top of the castle wall..
His character, never acted like this, in any OS we had before or in game before. Second 1'st did do a little weird, but it was stuff his character was infamous for, but not good for the long run. I admit.. I lost my cool, I didnt shout, yell, or otherwise.. but at this point, from when we 'late started', to paladins 3'rd athletic roll to scale the building he was invited for, we had lost over 2 hours of our usual session time an it was very apparent he was really not going to act like the character we were accustomed to.. so I said, 'sorry guys, see you next time'.. admittedly, I did kinda vent in our group chat text wise.. I was pretty upset an tired i cant lie on this, i had spent very early hours on the maps an looking over to familair most of the thing as best i could while having lack of sleep beforehand. But, I basically just said, if you dont feel up to a game please just say so cause putting all that time en effort for even a one shot was time an tiring thing an just frankly kinda rude antics for no reason just hurt.... didnt use cures or otherwise but that was about it..
It did help that, the group reached out to me about it, even both our Hiatus ones.. everyone but Paladin who kinda went back to basic no coms with me pretty much like norm.. he kinda missed a few more sessions between then to now.. so lets get to what became the last straws of the DM..
So, in the 'undersea' places, the crew realized that, the party had something they could use with their nations rulers to try an breach peace with the races that was locking everyone up in this space between the multiverse, to escape some big dangers thats happening here. This thing was second 1'sts 'tie in starting choice' i gave the first party options too an hes loved ever since, giving his character a level of importance. Of course there is the risk the guys could go 'we dont need 'them' for just 'that'. but thankfully its the nicer space sea folks side so thankfully its all negotiations. I rolled beforehand to see what outcome would happen.. not the best roll but it was one with surprising good results but the meeting was postponed with the intended target cause.. well the system got fragged as they sent the unintended invite back to the outer realms and their time slot to reach out to there was lost. So the party an the friendly pirate captain npc buddy was told 'come back in several months well try again'. The captain was telling the leaders 'oh sure no problem' while giving a 'if we dont find you guys a way back to your side of the world to stop that big bad monster for good first 'wink' to them..
An paladin.. confronted an tried telling the nation guys the details in a... weird way. I really dont know how to explain how he said it it still sounds weird to me. But he basically wanted too.. convince the nation that 'the party' could end all their troubles.. against a hord of demons an undeads effectively 'not understanding' the monster that threw them here was not one of the creatures in question. Which even after i pointed out 'if he couldnt do more than 13 points of damage to that thing, how would he think he can beat the monster he 'thinks' made it?'... which on that matter, he was told multiple times it wasnt.
Well, the rest of the gang tried to talk reason to him, even pull him aaway.. an i had made split choice of the captain decided to put a 'command bracelet' on him, effectively 'if you fight the order given you get zapped an paralyzed'. telling him 'please stop an lets talk about this somewhere 'safe'... because the party and them werent safe..
People in the sea space place, dont like people 'from their side' not that any survive coming down to there. Again, they survived via their plot armor's they dont even fully get yet. With the leadership litterally saying to him before the captain dragged him to the doors a bit 'let them hang for all we care'...
Well, paladin passed the check against the paralyze effect (again, i give honest rolls unless absolutely necessary which i dont like doing..) an.. he had his character chop his hand off, use every will save till he passed the players spells an use his tp abilities to get out of any grapple an ran into the building to more or less brow beat the leaders into listening to him...I made a choice as the captain npc... an ran for the ship to get the heck out before his crew would be arrested an maybe killed for hiding the PC's, an the other PC's likewise, ran for the hills too with them saying 'your mad if you do this'..
That is where that session ended, he made a passing comment 'guess ill reroll a character for the time being'... an he never showed up for the following one despite knowing 3 weeks in advance..though it turns out he 'did' roll stats for a character after I left the chat an roll20... an 'then' designed his character... which at first i was iffy but gave him a sheet to fill in to go ahead an start worken it, not knowing he had pre existing stat rolls for it or clearing that with me.. something I dont like..
Well, cant say i fault him for not knowing this, none of them did.. but there was a planned event for the city they were in. After the 'meeting the outsiders' event, they were going to be there during a siege by the monsters the leaders were worried about. I had the mechanics that, theyd get swarmed by mooks they could likely kill in a round or two at worst with a few higher level front line commanders thrown in, for each one of these theyd get a -5 to around -15 against a d100 roll (which I infamously roll low on all the time) on how much the city gets damaged up (multiple of the results for fyi), where either (a) they would stand their grounds just enough to cause the enemy to tempt pull back from the current onslaught, (b) the do enough damage an pull back gettin more then they need for now (long story) or (c) the party retreats for the time trying to pick up some survives they could fit on the ship an get the heck out as the city is torn up...
Instead.. I roll flat 3d100's as the party 'just' avoided the guards an lockdown.. which didnt add any bonses for the city guards chance to prep ships an counter attackk.. of the three, 2 in the ninties, one over fifty.. the city was whiped out.. I was 'devastated' that now i may have put the paladins character in a state he was just outright mamed and couldnt even give his player a 'last hura an fade to black'...because they never showed up or said anything...
I had to take a day or two before i sent the news to him, i did kinda phrase it a little angerly but i was 'where were you what happend'?... no response the entire week, right up to our next game session with nothing being done to that character sheet i gave him for a month..
And then came to our last bit of communication.. one hour before we started, he wanted to ask me about his character creation thing.. he stuck with the class i was iffy on to begin with but he.. went with a completely different class, an frankly he was maxing out the stats on the class too..
I confronted him since at least then he was 'finally' speaking to me. He was giving me the 'he would have convince them' speach of his characters plans.. I was just getting more confused by some of his responses of what that even was. The 'misunderstandings' of his character of what things are going on, why he did an extrem like 'why would he cut his hand off' an then he admitted no matter what, his character was going to leave. All on the fact his 'Paladin Alignment as Lawful good' wouldnt let him 'let a bunch of people die in the city'... his character has pulled back from fights an stuff before, while yeah if he saw a fight he would totally try an defend someone if need be, but, the abandon the party thinking they were doing wrong, knowing that the plan the group would be involved with after the outsider meeting, was to go search for things that might power them all up enough to be on the same playing field as the monster that beat them, or event he ones attacking the undersea side.. He even made a passing comment 'yeah i know they all talked about it for an hour'.. when.. he caused the conversation to las tthe hour by having them repeat it different ways several times.. something he also did alot im afraid when the quest was not one he started/invested in specifically of himself (the starting foot of it happened to one of the new players an 3 1/2 while he was on one of his missing days again).
He made a slight passing comment about me jus killing off his character an how they were acting as a 'what if someone wanted to play something else' .. which i did ask 'did you want to play something new why didnt you just ask?' to which.. he kinda ignored an went on. It was roughly at this time that he said he was trying to focus on his wizard spell list that i clicked to he was playing a new type of character all together.. one he admitted he wanted to play as 'weird and kinda crazy'.. it honestly sent chills to me given his 'sane' character did something extreme out of the blue for no reason an would never had done before was a bad sign what he considers 'slightly weird/crazy' would be.. but i was further made up set he made up a character only 'after' getting rolls he didnt get clearance from me with beforehand. I asked if this was the case which he confirmed and simply asked 'what want me to do point buy instead?'... an thats when I said i dont think he was set for my game again.. most so since all this all he focused on, again, an hour before game time, was only the basic mechanics an nothing else (given my honest mistrust of him springing something on me on this point with the sister visit 'quest').
I had literally given him my reasons, told him didn tlike how many red flags hes pulled lately. Including our game communities famed words by players who do things that tend to do things that.. kinda make things weird or bad or start to trail from how they start as.. When he first started missing the bulk of sessions, an losing plot interest, was when he 'lost his notes'. Then an most infamous last appearance, literally last bits hes said when he decided to have his character leave (which in hindsight i think he may have just wanted but again.. pardon me for guessing since he never communicated) 'Its what my character would do' when he had him cut his hand off.. Then during our conversation when i was trying to figure out what the heck was all that an what happend he said 'because my lawful good paladin couldnt let that under his oath'... his 'netual good' character whose hidden monsters under his house, stolen from a school of magic, made friends with an had sight powers from a devil an a few other shady things to say the least...so he was plannen or taking that his character should have a diff alignment without communing with me on it..who knows ont hat one..
I honestly did my usual, 'i dont think this game is for you' exit speech... an he said 'dont bs me with this over polite crap' an tried to make me say 'i want you gone'.. he was more or less animate on the specifics of the words.. and I think i know why..
Because, the players have a private text chat, not that hes much on there himself unless his character name is mentioned multiple times, but they do have it for funnies an stuff between em. I dont mind it, but.. at some point when I officially announced I'd be removing the player in our whole group chat.. he sent a very cropped two lines that was the tail end of us with me saying him in the groups not looken good, but told them 'i shouldnt be contacted about this'..
Tooo bad for him, I screenshot everything big like this. An further bad for him, the new guys an me talk alot too, like constant, and he forgot, 3 1/2 are friends for over a decade. 3 1/2 told me that... so i reached out to the rest of the group, shared the entire thing with them on the spot, saying 'i am sorry, its been bad with all these points' (i mention in here better more details after all, given how it was an hour of getting heated an trying to get him to tell me what his game plan is or anything else if need be given everything else sounded like he was flipping between wanting to be something new or... again i can only speculate since he just went offensive/defenses with no explanations or stuff to understand him the player). an sent them the entire conversation the two of us had as a screenshot.
While I was polite an just saying 'dont think the games for you' which yeah is a little over gentle.. after i pointed out one of them mentioned with a tiny screenshot of only me saying 'you should go' an the 'dont talk to me about it'. He honestly said 'i told them they shouldnt bother with it' like they should have just listened to him on the get go...an that 'he' would send it.. told him I already had. And for that level of honestly kinda manipulative tactic, both trying to isolate the party from me and only showing the 'closest' he would have of me saying 'i want you gone' comment, which he had stressed for a bout a minute i should 'say' in our private chat, i cant help but wonder if he was seriously trying to poison the well between me and the others.. an then said he would 'show them the whole conversation.... well he kinda got super silent with the private group and to me when i said 'i already sent the whole. I told him, good luck an goodbye, an then removed him from my DND group.. he suddenly for the first time in 2 years 'went offline', on my notice thing, so i think he made himself invisible but at first i thought he blocked me.. made a passing comment to test, but he went 'no' an was suddenly fully online an back to his MMO's that he 'usually' played too much an overslept some of our early day games on... not surprising..
The rest of the party were.. thankfully understanding, 3 1/2 suggested we didnt play but i pressed on but we did kinda vent.. helped one of the experienced newby of the three was a dm, an said 'hey its what you feel too, if he was making you feel uncomfortable at the table with that, your alright to feel it an remove him' which helped too..
But part of me does have to have that nagging feel since, he is the 'first' true kick i have done. ALl my other possible problem players ghost themselves from my games an he had been in for 2 years.. not that we done much since we are nearly at our 100'th session an only 'now' getting to the possible tea of the world i have been sitting on for 3 years since started working on the campaign over it. I left it openf or them to discover, an things started to click when the new guys came in an started being able to 'take lead' a bit on group choices.. not waiting for the paladin to lead them.. but.
of course, communication is '2 way street' i know, I said he didnt talk to me on things but likewise maybe i shoulda been more active reaching to him. To a point I tried, but, unless it was 'hey want a new power or something' ...he didnt respond back much. Again we had not much on similar things an it feel slike he was cluing in that many of my influences was from comics, movies games an anime that even if he was into the fandoms of, he didnt know alot as I have a broad and little known spectrum of series. Maybe a bit of it was lill mix of we didnt upfront what we expected, but also disinterests... but I do know at least 2 of his fave games.. tha has owning land, getting bonus in some way from that, an thats that.. an some other aspects, kinda in hindsight were what he wanted/expected for his character at times.
Again, my thing is full homebrew, an always say 'hey if you find something you like, lemme know an see maybe we can toss it in.', sadly some of the gang dont take that up too much, but the new players have lately an its been fun. He did at first 'start' suggesting something.. but with no set things, so when i brought up things that we can do for it he kinda.. shot em down, like not say full on no but.. just went silent.
In the end, Im upset with myself over not confronting the problem a bit more 'first', but i guess i just started to let him just 'be silent all the time is fine the problem goes away' as much as he did it when i reached out to him. Hell if he stepped away for a bit, sadly perfect since his first character might be KO'ed, i may have taken him back if he just said 'been dealing with things' or 'wanted to be something new' or, 'can i try something crazy'.. but in the end he only wanted me to respond in the moment to what he came up without double checking things an it can happen so sparatically, so 'railroady' for me an the other players I just cant anymore. An knowing hell honestly try an manipulate my words behind my back to the rest of the players.. yeah Im not trusting that player at any of my games ever again and wont ever trust one like that... but I hope it doesnt turn to that for just that factor an not because of other reasons that can be avoided...
Anyone who reads, thanks for your time. If you got tips or mindsets to consider for me here, like to help get them like a mindworm to maybe help me over things, given how my head is still lill swimmen on it both emotionally an thoughts. I guess maybe im looking to see if I was valid (I know for my 'mental health' i was, but want to know its not just my own head thinking it an maybe cases like this is at least partly justified). An hey, if you ever had a sitch like this, lemme hear how ya felt too, never helps bottling it in. Just typing this at first as a note to myself before it showed up anywhere helped me clear my head a fair bit, so theres always getting the words out there wither someone's ear or eyes take it is a nice way to get the happy feels in. Next order buisness to feel better... getten to those cursed die rolls (come on Dice Gods treat me an my players failry, ah dangit another 1! I thought i blotted it out!)

Anyone else having major issues with the bots saying the same sentence or phrase over and over? It keeps happening whenever my chat reaches around 50 messages.

I hit 1000 hours on 4/25.
Other posts: 600 Hours 300 Hours
It feels amazing to see four digits. Back when I had hit 600, I was a little tired at first and thought, no rush, I’ll keep steady with my two-hour goal and get there by summer. But as I got closer, I was doing more and more each day. After hitting about 900 hours and switching to advanced videos, the hours added up quickly.
Looking back at my four goals from my level 5 update, 1-2 are complete and 3 is set up. 4 is a fall goal that I seem to be on track for. Goal one was 700 by January, which I accomplished. Goal two was 1000 by June or a stretch goal of April and I hit the stretch goal! Goal three is to speak a lot during the summer vacation. I have about one speaking class per week set up right now, starting today, and am working on setting up a 7-10 day trip to LATAM to do some volunteer work so I can practice using Spanish vs. just taking a vacation when it can be easier to not use Spanish as much.
During the phase of 600-800 hours I spent my time mostly in intermediate DS and binge listened to How to Spanish podcast (I tend to take the approach of input being easier, so harder things were accessible, but prefer to stay lower until it gets boring). I also watched the first season on La Casa De Flores on Netflix. It was a little difficult, but I could follow the story. There were just some little things here and there I’m sure I missed. I watched without subs of any kind, not even Spanish, and overall it was fine. I haven't tried the second season and don’t know if I will because while it was interesting, it isn’t necessarily something I think I’d like. I’d prefer more story and less everyone sleeping with everyone else. So I may look for some other thing to watch at some point, but am busy for about one more month until the school year ends (I’m a teacher, not a student, I’m old…ok, not really, just 31).
At some point after 800 hours and as I approached 900 hours I finished previous podcasts and started No Hay Tos. I think their podcast is a little harder than How to Spanish as they speak a bit faster and more casually, but I enjoyed it. I did skip over all the special episodes though as I found they just used a lot of English to explain these words and phrases, so I’ve been sticking to regular episodes. I did tire of it though and have listened to a few over the past 100 hours, but am not binging it anymore. I also listened to half of the episodes of El Oso Latino. I think the speaker is very fun, but there is so much music in there and the chronicas del gringo section is so cringy, I couldn’t finish it. The second speaker learned Spanish and overall he sounds fine, but the way he pronounces the “r” sounds like he is choking or something and I can’t take the sound. It felt like it wasn’t the best use of the little time I had each day for input. But if one wants Peruvian input, it’s only 26 episodes and not active anymore, so could be interesting. I ended up switching to a native podcast Qué Cacao, which is great as she speaks very clearly and her voice is very calming. During the last 50 hours or so, I’ve use my commute to listen to Se Habla Español, which I had tried last year when I had like 300 hours and it was way too difficult. Now it is easy and it’s fun to listen to clips from famous people and I think I may be learning a lot of names of actors, writers, etc. It is Spain content. I don’t strictly adhere to a certain accent, even though I’d prefer Mexican because most of the people I work with that I want to interact in Spanish with come from Mexico. I just follow what’s interesting and accessible.
With Dreaming Spanish, as I was getting closer to 900 I found intermediate had started to become boring for me. There weren’t too many new topics that stood out and made me want to watch and I felt like I wasted time scrolling. So I just looked up the rest of Pablo’s stories, which had always been hard for me, and I watched the rest. I was about 50/50 with getting the ending or not. I would always understand the main story, but sometimes he would say the ending and I’d think “Wait, what?” Other times I’d be able to see it coming. Then I switched to advanced and it was a game changer! My interest grew and I’ve spent basically all of the time minus driving on DS instead of podcasts or other things because there are SO MANY more interesting videos in advanced. There are some that are a little hard to understand, so I did sort by easy for a bit, but now it seems like most are fine. Occasionally if one is hard, I just stop and know I’ll come back to it later. The nice thing about advanced as well is that I have been able to use many like a podcast (I do have the premium podcast feed) so I can use those with my commute as well since the majority don’t rely on having images.
From 900 to now, these are some native youtube channels I’ve come across, mostly just popped up in recommended, that I’ve been enjoying and are comfortable for me: Cocinando Corea, Mila, Anita Mateu, News channels like BBC News Mundo and France 24 en Español, Nekijitablog
I have multiple others saved, but haven’t had the time to watch any videos to know the level.
As I moved from 600 to 1000 I think I went through times, like most intermediate learners, where I felt like I was comfortable listening and understood a lot, then times where it felt like I had so much more to learn and it was difficult. But I would say the most noticeable difference in feeling much more comfortable was somewhere around 900. That’s when it felt like I actually had a chance to speak and understand well by 1000. So if you’re in the 800s feeling doubtful, wait for the 900s and it may feel better. Of course, every person has unique circumstances that may put them a little ahead or behind, so patience in general because it will come in time. It’s wild to me to think that a little over a year ago I struggled with super beginner videos, but now I understand when native speakers talk to me and I can watch native content and follow along compared to the failures I felt over a decade ago with 3 years of being one of the “best” students in high school Spanish classes but not being able to speak or understand when I went to a trip in Mexico and later on with Korean, being so slow and choppy when trying to speak, both done with traditional grammar study to learn instead of acquire.
Reading since 950
At about 950 hours I decided I would start reading. I started by switching my phone over to Spanish. This has been fine. I think there was only once where I felt uncertain and moved to my desktop, but 99% of the time it’s fine. Using the phone in Spanish even helped with a word that has been standing out to me but haven’t quite figured the meaning. Then I saw it on my phone and thought, That’s the word! So I knew in at least one context of the meaning. I have a couple books, but haven’t really been able to get to them as much as I would have liked because I’ve just been hyper focused on the input to hit 1000. But I have read two of the stories from Olly Richards Short Stories in Spanish (I had bought it over a year ago before DS). The first story was easy, the second a little harder, but I followed the story fine. I don’t know that I’d say it was the ideal 98% or higher known words as Beniko Mason’s research shows is ideal, but working with what I have to get started. I also found Hábitos Atómicos at my library. I’ve read and I own the book in English, so I thought why not. I was planning to finish the short stories book first then read it, but now someone else put it on hold, so I’ve read the intro and first chapter. I’ll have to return it to the library tomorrow, so I’ll try to read a few more pages, then may try to put it on hold myself to get again in a month or so. I was surprised that it wasn’t super difficult. Again, a fair amount of unknown words, but having read it before I think helped. Many libraries where I live do have Spanish sections in both adults and kids so I may see if there are some middle grade novels in Spanish to try and read and see how those go. It’s easy to find picture books, but would like to find something with a bit of length. That’s maybe the downside to the short stories book is that each story is just three chapters or about 10-15 pages max. With reading so far, I’ve noticed it’s like when I had around 300 hours and when I would try to listen to more than 2 hours a day, my brain was just tired. It’s like that with reading. I don’t have the stamina to keep reading for a long time, but I’m sure it will grow quickly as I read more. I wonder if it would be less noticeable if I find a middle grade novel to read where I can get into a story and follow characters for a longer time. Long term, I will track my number of words read, first goal being 1 million words, then hitting 3 million. After that point I wouldn’t bother to count my words. I only plan to track as I finish a book then record how many words it was roughly.
Speaking at 1000 hours
Yesterday I had my first conversation in Spanish. In the past year I’ve had some crosstalk experience, but not as much I would have liked. It’s just been difficult to schedule with my work and family life. Yesterday I was nervous, but in the days leading up to it, I had sentences and mini conversations in my head about what I could say and was surprised that I could pretty easily come up with sentences. When I actually spoke I don’t know that it was as fluid as it was in my head, but I was able to have a conversation for 45 minutes. It was with a tutor that I had not met before so we didn’t know anything about each other. I would say I failed to ask any questions. I think I was pretty nervous and mostly was just trying to explain my ideas. As a person that loves to talk a lot in English, it was difficult in that I couldn’t say exactly what I wanted to say or talk at the speed I usually do. There were certainly words that I couldn’t figure out what to use, but could talk my way around them for the most part. Sometimes I tried explaining and then paused to avoid trying to say something in English because that was a bad habit I had as a language learner in the past. So I am happy to say I only said an English word once. I don’t even remember what it was I couldn’t say. Realized I was trying to use a lot of different verbs and she said, just use “fui” you don’t need to use all those other verbs, using a form of “ir” is way easier. I did record the conversation, so sometime I’ll try to listen back and see how it seemed. The tutor said at the end that my pronunciation was very good and I didn’t have a gringo accent (yay!). I think she was being overly nice when she said she wouldn’t have been able to tell I was a native English speaker, because I noticed some words that sounded funny to my ear. She thought overall my speaking was pretty good and I only made some small mistakes here and there. Some of them I noticed right after as well, so I am curious to compare speaking the first time to after speaking for 10 hours. I feel like it will get better quickly as the nervousness of never speaking before wears off. Like at first, in my head there was a little anxiety about the “rs” but later when I was more comfortable the words spilled out more easily. What I will say is that my brain was focused on just saying what I wanted to say even if I had to find away around the word and NOT on thinking about the grammar and how to form a sentence like was always my struggle with Korean. Occasionally got stuck on a verb conjugation, so then I just said it in the infinitive if I didn’t really know so that I could keep talking.
I plan to track my speaking hours separately from my input so I have a little spreadsheet I’ve started to track the hours. Not sure how long I’d track and may not bother to record every conversation, but maybe more like classes, just to have a little data on changes I notice at 10 hours, 50 hours, 100 hours, etc. because I am interested in applying this method to other languages in the future and implement changes to language learning in schools in America, so I believe data will be helpful, even if it is anecdotal. It can be a jumping off point if I ever do get into a doctoral program and try to do some real research.
2024 Plans and Goals

1. Have conversations in Spanish at least once a week through summer and convince my many bilingual friends to talk to me in Spanish instead of English.
2. Travel to LATAM this summer (country to be determined soon).
3. In fall, be comfortable conversing with new students to my ESL classes in Spanish when explaining how I run classes.
4. 1250 hours by fall, 1500 by the end of the year. This is pretty conservative and I have currently dropped my daily goal from 120 min to 60 min, but expect to go over that most days. I just want to give myself room to take a break now and then and have time for reading and speaking.

Reflecting on the Roadmap at Level 6
If I look back to level 5, I would say with speaking, it sounds spot on with what I can do at level 5, which makes sense if I think about how level 6 is the largest span, with 500 hours from beginning to end so it makes sense that I can’t say right now that I am “conversationally fluent.” I think I would need more time with conversation before I could accurate reflect on this. With the one conversation I have had as of now, I would say what level 5 says fits me, so I look forward to at some point in level 6 hit this “conversationally fluent” ability where I can pretty much say what I need. I would say in terms of listening, however, I would be fine. I imagine I could be part of a conversation where I occasionally give some input, but am more of a listener in the situation. I have no trouble listening to speakers say something to me minus an odd word here or there. Funny, I just typed that and read the “what you are learning” section and is says “You may find the odd common word that you haven’t learned yet…” so I guess that’s true! I will certainly focus on the “what I need to do” section with lots of authentic media, listening, reading, and trying to make friends in Spanish. I’ve felt the roadmap has been pretty accurate for me and imagine as I work through level six I will feel the same.

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Stay tuned for more tips and tricks.

I have a sort of issue with the way my partner talks at me. I'm not entirely sure where to pinpoint the issue, but something's bothering me and I'm not sure what.
He talks whilst TV or films are on. But that's not on its own a bad thing. The odd comment is fine in my opinion. Sharing appreciation of a moment, joke, scenary is fine.
But he does it a lot. He thinks of things sometimes related to the film, sometimes not. In the middle of a film or show, he will comment on something that's happened that perhaps similar, or reminds him of something and he can't keep it in he has to say it. When I click pause, it's like he doesn't even notice, just carries on talking going from one topic to another.
He takes a while to voice his thoughts and usually likes to fully explain himself. So he starts talking at a quiet moment in said film or show, when a comment might be acceptable, and then continues to talk for quite a while through dialogue or important scenes.
He says it's because he's seen it before or isn't interested but when he watches something he hasn't seen before and has chosen himself (so could just turn it off if he didn't enjoy it) and he does the same.
Annoyingly, he often chooses something he's seen before when we we watch a film together, but doesn't tell me. We'll be watching and he will be talking about something and the way he says it suggests he knows what's about to happen and when I ask him if he's seen it before he says yes and then tries to convince me that he already told me that.
I don't really know why he does it. He says he sees watching things as a social activity but he doesn't watch films or TV with friends, he goes out to socialise. We go out to socialise too. Most we watch things during the week in the evenings. I work as a teacher and I have to talk a lot and I've explained to him that I wind down in the evenings and need peace, but he doesn't really stop talking at me.
When I'm working from home, he talks at me and then gets annoyed at me when I don't respond or tell him I'm busy. I don't think I'm busy a lot but I do work full time. He talks all the time when he's working from home, but also complains he has to work late but he doesn't appear to concentrate on it for very long, he plays games in between, scrolls websites and searches for music and talks on forums. I appreciate different people work differently but when I work, I concentrate hard for a few hours and then I 'empty my head' and relax when I'm done and he doesn't like that very much.
He tries to make out he's done things when he hasn't. He'll ask me what my plans are when I get in for example and if I talk about needing to do something, he will insist he's already done it even when I can see he hasn't. For example he asked me what I was doing one evening and I said I needed to put the washing on, it was in the machine, I just needed to put powder in and turn it on. He insisted he'd already done it and that it was clean it just needed to go in the dryer and he whipped it away and into the dryer before I'd even gotten to it. When I took it out the dryer it was off smelling and clearly not washed, just warm and dirty. We don't normally have those sort of passive aggressive discussions where one says something needs doing because they want the other person to do it, but that's my perspective, I don't know if he takes what I'm saying as that. When I bring it up he says in a jokey voice that hes good, he does domestic things. I'm not sure what to make of it.
He often talks about things he plans to do like he's thinking out loud. I started to tune this chat out a while back because I thought he was just thinking out loud. We live in a small space. But then he said I was ignoring him. But it's not like it's a conversation. He just talks at me saying things like 'im going to go to the gym at half 2' before explaining his thoughts about the gym and what the traffic will be like etc etc. He says I'm weird for not retaining any of the information he gives me but I say I just wouldn't remember that he wants to go to the gym at half 2, he says he would remember if I said it.
He talks over me when I'm talking about something that requires more than a sentence or two. He says his brain works quickly and he's already thought of lots to say but often I haven't even finished my point, and the point he makes is tenuously linked to what I was saying and entirely related to what he was saying before I spoke, like I may as well have not spoken at all.
I have tried to explain that I feel frustrated that he isn't really 'listening' to me speak and he says he hates all those pointless phrases people use like 'oh yeah' or 'thats interesting'. He says he thinks it's far more complimentary to show someone you're listening by talking about something back to them that they made you think of.
Except he doesn't do that. He doesn't respond to what I've said at all. When I've pointed it out on occasion more recently in the moment when it's happened, he signposts me to a word or phrase I said right at the begining of talking, which bares little resemblance to the point. For example, when I'm telling him why I like a book I'm reading, I could have used a particular word at the start before explaining what I liked and he will cut me off 15 seconds in with how he got annoyed at his boss yesterday and when i ask him what that has to do with my book he relays an anecdote about him and his boss some time in the past where the word was mentioned and it made him think of the fact he was annoyed at his boss. His point will take several minutes to deliver and if I try to interject he lets me speak briefly but then just continues.
I don't talk too much myself, I don't think. I like to explain myself if there's something worth explaining, but I don't 'chatter'. I find verbal communication much harder than written. Our initial relationship was largely email focused as we were long distance for over a year and we would have long emails where many points went back and forth at the same time. He knows I'm autistic and appears to be quite aware of autism and traits etc.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm expecting too much from verbal conversation, or if I'm just not very good at it myself. I don't know if it's even a problem, or I'm just dealing with someone who communicates differently to myself. But this part of me feels something's distinctly 'off' and these are the points I keep coming back to.
Looking for advice/support/reassurance.

I'm not great at English, but I'm aware that it's formally more correct to use a genetive case in sentences like "I am happy with his being king," as opposed to using the objective case like "I am happy with him being king."
My question is: how far does this extend? Can I say something like "I turned its into a colored portrait?" Logic tells me that the preposition is what makes it incorrect, but I'm not sure if it's incorrect to begin with. Can someone please give me any pointers to use and look out for to know which case to use? My apologies if it's a niche or silly question. I'll appreciate any help!

salvete! I’ve been asked to produce a fictitious Latin poetic inscription with from a given English translation. What I wrote includes the phrase istae ambae aptae sunt flōribus, without an explicit noun. I wanted to ask: is the implicit noun comprehensible in this sentence or does it need reworking?
Just for reference if it isn’t - the implicit noun is manūs.

I want to know what other Arabic learners are doing with Anki. I have my reasons for this which I'll get in to shortly, but this is how I've been making cards:

1. I find a word I don't know.
2. Then I look up its meaning in a quick search. I populate an Anki card, and sometimes take a screenshot from wherever I found it and add that too.
3. At the end of my study session I review all the cards I made, adding Elevenlabs advanced TTS (I don't pay for it, just using the free stuff off their site)
4. I research the word's root and all of its cognates, adding its plural(s) or verb form (as applicable), extra possible meanings, and a note about related words, and what preposition(s) are commonly used with it etc.
5. Then I prompt chatGPT to make me an example sentence for the card with it's translation.

At the end of all this I feel like I could never forget the word... but often do. But the point of all this heavy lifting is to realize how all these words are connected. It's a regular occurrence for me to set out thinking I have a new word I've never seen before, only to see it's just a familiar root clothed a little differently.
I've heard Steve Kaufmann (pro language learner, polyglot) put down flashcards in favor of lists or just "exploring" words in more contextual ways. This is part of a broader approach of exposure over grindstone learning. -- But recently Kaufmann himself has expressed his frustration with acquiring Arabic, citing among his complaints the language's voluminous common vocabulary. He isn't the first linguaphile to realize "there's something different about Arabic."
To this I humbly conjecture, the methods Kaufmann and others are advocating might not be suited to this language. This is due to Arabic's root system, as well as its agglutinative quality (it can have a lot of busy stuff going on in a single word unit).
It is an opinion among a few polyglots that flashcards should be used meagerly; Some advise only 5 - 10% of available study time be dedicated to them overall. I Don't know about you but I think Arabic learners can only benefit from more active research. Not just in the grammamorphology department, But on a word to word basis. The kind of research that can to done, for example, when developing an Anki deck.
Thoughts?

• How do you make your Anki cards?
• How much time do you spend on making and reviewing them?
• And what do you make of all this?

“Deadly Attractor” (TOC)
by P. Orin Zack
[2003]
 
Chapter Fourteen
 
“Your honor,” the portly senior Counsel for the Complainant said, rising to his feet. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m sure you are all saddened by the tragic events which began in this courtroom on Thursday last.”
After pushing his chair under the table, he paused to look at each juror in turn, lingering finally on Frank. “Having a critical witness succumb to some mysterious, and as yet unexplained, malady, one that first struck him unconscious in the midst of testimony, and then placed him under the most extreme MedCenter care available, would have been quite enough.”
He stepped to the geometrical center of the open area between the judge and the tables from which Counsel for each side mounted their respective missions to convince the jurors that their version of the truth was superior to that of their opponent.
Frank continued to watch the young man sitting between Carlita Gutiérez and Allan Wylie. From where he sat, he could see only part of the man’s right hand, but enough to catch a glint of reflected light off whatever it was that he was holding.
Counsel took a step towards the jury. “But then to learn that, while being transported to Kübler-Ross Hospice Center, against the stated preferences in his MedNet file, he was first placed at risk in what could have been a fatal airway collision, and then abducted by terrorists posing as a security team, that is too much to ask of us to accept as being unrelated to this case.”
Frank squirmed uncomfortably at the accusation, hoping that nobody would notice his reaction. Inwardly, he heard Cynthia’s voice, telling him to be calm, reminding him that she was watching.
Carlita’s mysterious ally smiled subtly, and shifted his gaze to the speaker, who had taken another step towards the jury.
“Clearly,” said the Complainant’s counsel, warming to his ploy, “what our witness had to say, what Dr. Apuérto was going to tell the court, was important to someone besides our clients.” He glanced back towards his table, where a lone representative of the group that had filed the case sat between two other members of his team. “Important in a way,” he continued, “that induced someone to prevent him from testifying.”
Frank drew a slow breath, and looked instead at the portly Counsel, who had just taken yet another step closer to the jury.
“Nevertheless,” the lawyer said, now close enough to place a hand on the jury box railing, “what he had to say was in no way stopped by these acts. We will continue laying out the trail of evidence with the assistance of a senior member of the administration from the Dartmouth MedCenter in Halifax, Dr. —”
A resounding crack from the rear of the courtroom stopped the Counsel in mid-sentence. The heavy doors had been thrown open, and bailiffs turned to respond.
“That won’t be necessary, your honor.” The courtroom first fell dead silent, and then erupted in chatter, as people first recognized, and then told their neighbors that it was Dr. Miguél Apuérto, apparently none the worse for his hospitalization and abduction, who had spoken.
Frank watched Dr. Apuérto walk past the rows of spectator seats, but his gaze stopped as it crossed a welcome sight: Mara and Alex were in the courtroom as well. When he caught his wife’s eye, she smiled and nodded gently, then glanced beside her at Alex. Frank followed her cue, and knew in an instant that something was seriously wrong. He’d never seen Mara’s brother wearing a scowl before, and knew that for someone as intensely full of life and energy as Alex, inducing one would have taken some doing. But whatever it was, it would have to wait.
Judge Bennigan ordered silence, and asked both counsel to approach the bench. After a brief discussion, she sent them back to their tables and addressed Dr. Apuérto. “We’re all pleased to see that you are well. Since neither counsel has objected, you may step into the witness box and resume your testimony.”
He nodded. “Thank you, your honor.”
Once Dr. Apuérto had reaffirmed his oath to testify fully and truthfully, and Counsel for the Complainant had had a moment to confer with one another, their senior member rose and walked over to the witness box.
Frank and the witness looked at one another briefly. He then glanced at Carlita, and noticed that the man beside her was whispering something to Wylie. Before Frank closed his eyes and prepared to re-establish the link, he wordlessly asked Cynthia, ‘What about the sprite?’ Since she didn’t answer immediately, he reached out psychically and felt for the administrator’s sense of self. Finally, he focused on the memories racing through the man’s mind, and waited.
“Dr. Apuérto,” Counsel began, “we were discussing how your facility’s attitude that patients should be treated immediately, regardless of whether they can be treated at a Hospice Center as successfully and for less cost, satisfied the requirements of the jurisdictional rulings that define the proper roles of MedCenters and Hospices. The court has been waiting since last Thursday to hear your answer.”
The witness nodded. “Yes. Well, when we first evaluate a patient, especially in an emergency situation, we have a lot of things to consider. For example, not all of the patient’s symptoms are immediately evident, yet sometimes the more subtle problems are actually the more serious ones, and must therefore be given a higher priority.”
Counsel leaned against the witness box railing. “I would imagine, then, that although one of the patient’s problems might be squarely in the MedCenter’s jurisdiction, another could be in the gray area, or even in the Hospice’s jurisdiction. Is that so?”
“That is correct,” Apuérto said, and fell silent.
“Thank you. Now tell the court, sir, if this is the case,” Counsel paused to look around the room, “then how can you possibly comply with the jurisdictional rulings?”
Apuérto smiled. “We can’t, not in the way the lawyers envisaged it, at least.”
“What do you do, then?”
“The only reasonable solution,” Apuérto said, “is to start with the premise that I laid out last week, the idea that promptness of treatment is paramount, and treat what we can as soon as we can, and that means keeping the patient at the MedCenter. Anything else would be irresponsible, and I suspect would cause a lawsuit of a different sort.”
“Objection, your honor,” opposing Counsel called out. “The witness is not filing suit against himself, is he?”
Judge Bennigan looked at Apuérto. “Please restrict your comments to answering the questions put to you.”
It went on like that for nearly an hour. By the time his questioning was finished, Counsel had laid the foundation for a logical attack against the legal basis of the jurisdictional rulings themselves. During it all, Frank maintained his link, and did not observe anything that would suggest that Apuérto’s answers were either fabricated or based on a distortion of the facts as he understood them. On the other hand, because of the kinds of questions asked, and therefore the variety of memories elicited, he also did not encounter any additional incidents involving the mysterious person sitting between Healer Gutiérez and Allan Wylie.
When Counsel for the Complainant thanked the witness and started back to his seat, the jury’s Foreman, whom the other jurors now knew as Rick, requested the floor. Once the Counsel for the Respondent sat back down, he stood beside his seat, giving those in the room a better view of his formal powder-blue outfit, the glow from which gave him a theatrical illusion of power. Frank looked across the other jurors at him, and wondered what he had in mind. After all, they hadn’t had any time to discuss a plan prior to entering the courtroom.
“Welcome back to court, Dr. Apuérto,” he said graciously. “We have listened with great interest to your explanation of why patients are kept at the MedCenter for treatment. Logically and practically, it is a thoroughly admirable solution to an intractable problem. Something about it, however, bothers us, and I was hoping that you could clarify it.”
Apuérto sat quietly, waiting for a question.
“If you could, sir, please help us to understand the position of the evaluating physician. As you’ve explained, a patient with multiple problems places your staff in something of a quandary. Assuming that they have a rough idea of what problems they are dealing with, how do they evaluate the relative importance of each one?”
Apuérto nodded. “Are you familiar with the concept of triage? It’s a method used to rank the relative importance of competing requests for a limited resource, such as staff, equipment or supplies. It can also be used to decide which of several problems is to be treated first, or which one to choose if there is a conflict of treatment regimen. We use this method to determine how to proceed. There is ample evidence that it works.”
The Foreman considered briefly, and glanced at both sets of counsel. “Thank you. Is it possible that, among several competing problems presented by a patient, the one that, according to the rules of triage, is more life-threatening, should actually be treated at a Hospice Center?”
Apuérto shook his head. “No sir. Not in my experience.”
“Well, then, how about in the experience of your emergency evaluation physicians?”
Apuérto thought for a moment, during which time Frank was bombarded with a torrent of memories, most of which involved evaluation reports, statistics, and boring meetings in hot, stuffy rooms. He found the meetings the most interesting, because several of them featured a familiar semi-transparent figure standing in the shadows at the edge of the room.
“As far as I can recall,” he said slowly, “in all the time I’ve been monitoring evaluations, we haven’t had that situation come up. Not even once.”
The Foreman nodded. “I see. This is where we have a problem, though. If your staff are expert only in the kind of treatments that are offered at your facility, how then can they judge the importance of a problem in a field in which they have neither training nor experience?”
“Objection, your honor.” The counsels for both sides were on their feet, and a murmur washed across the spectators.
“Sit down, both of you,” Judge Bennigan said. “This is between the jury and the witness.” She looked over at Apuérto. “Answer the question, please.”
He sat motionless for a few seconds, looked down at his folded hands briefly, and then out at the crowd beyond the tables where both parties to the case sat. “That’s um—,” he faltered. “That’s a good question. We, um, we actually rely on the advice of a special consultant in situations like that.”
The foreman crossed his arms. “A consultant?”
“Yes, sir. One provided by the Global Directorate, a member of the agency that provides some of the funding for—”
When Apuérto thought about the MedCenter’s GD consultant, two things happened.
First, as Frank watched, the man’s memories of the consultant were offered up for review. Each one of them had been altered to reduce the chances of it being recalled, and the image of the consultant was replaced by a pasted in construct, a placeholder intended simply to eliminate the problem that a hole in the memory might have caused.
Second, the bundle of memories that Frank had built, the ones containing a distorted image of their adversary, were presented. This meant that Apuérto’s memory processing system had just realized that they were of the same person who had attempted to kill him in the flyway. Yet, without a clear image, he still didn’t know who the man really was. But because Frank was worried about the man, because he’d seen his face, and because they were linked, Apuérto somehow managed to acquire the missing piece.
Apuérto’s sudden rage broke Frank’s link with him, and Frank opened his eyes, just in time to see their adversary whisper something to Allan Wylie. A second later, Frank jerked in his seat, straining against a sudden constriction of his throat.
 
EV knew exactly where Apuérto planned to take that thought. He’d ridden the crisis like a monster wave from a barely perceptible ripple, and was now poised at that exquisite moment just before events would yield to gravity and come toppling over in a spectacular denouement with the power to destroy everything his organization had built up over the years. It was an event worth tweaking up close, so he could watch every beautiful moment of it; the long-awaited payoff for having delayed so long before defusing the situation; the adrenaline rush that made his job the most extreme sport imaginable.
The people he’d permitted to set up the situation had done their part well. They had proved a worthy adversary, but when he was finished here, they wouldn’t know how close they had come to succeeding.
He glanced down at the device in his hand and pressed the symbol etched onto its surface. As the fields stabilized, and the courtroom faded slightly into the familiar fluid imagery he’d been trained to work with, he reached an imaginary hand into the nearby turbulence and used his palm to divert a tiny bit of the flow, just enough to prevent a small tributary from enhancing the strength of the developing channel he wanted to weaken, just enough to turn the tide.
Subtlety was important to him. It was a mark of the expertise he’d developed, both in his job and in the more conventional sports that he enjoyed, sports that took him to places like the peaks and glaciers of New Zealand. In this situation, it meant thwarting their plan by eliminating their pawn, leaving them frustrated at their inability to control the situation, and more importantly, to control him. Satisfied, he released his thumb and settled in to watch the results.
 
Covertly poking around inside people’s minds and memories had only become a normal part of her life after Cynthia’s reputation was trashed and she’d had to go underground. Since then, she’d used it for a lot of things – extracting pass phrases to get into secured places, finding out whether she’d been spotted, even the occasional memory rewrite, but monitoring Frank while he linked to witnesses was something else again.
She’d sneaked through the courthouse’s service entrance, using faked biometrics records that Lenny had placed in the system, after Frank was safely past the more formal security screening at the main entrance, and found a cozy spot on the lower level. From there, she carefully reached out with her psychic sense of self and waited just outside his energy field. In this way, she could observe his condition without giving away her presence to any third party.
When Apuérto’s reaction broke Frank’s link with him, Cynthia saw it as an energy wave, a kind of virtual tsunami that sheared the tenuous extrusion of aura through which Frank had reached out to the witness. As the energy knot of Frank’s consciousness snapped back, and his normal energy patterns reasserted themselves, though, something else happened.
As she watched, in a single violent slashing motion, a bolt of energy shot across the room and penetrated deep into Frank’s field, then just as quickly vanished. Cynthia used the momentary afterimage to track it back to its source, and tapped in just far enough for a name: Wylie.
Turning back to Frank, she found that his energy field had suddenly turned murky and turbulent. Reaching inside, she felt around for the insubstantial energy membrane separating Frank’s own field from whatever it was that had clamped itself around the meridians through which chi flowed through his neck, and pulled it away.
The sprite slithered through her grip, gathered itself together, and wavered like a cobra preparing to strike. She spread her sense of self wide, in an animal-like display of faux size, while watching its reaction. The sprite hesitated, seemingly unable to recognize her now as a threat, then turned back towards Frank’s meridian and seized it again. She lunged after the sprite, this time surrounding it. Prevented from moving, unable to escape, the sprite withdrew into itself and hung motionless, quietly vibrating in the midst of Frank’s energy field.
 
Frank gasped for air. Then, just as suddenly, the constriction released, and he relaxed.
‘Wylie… triggered the sprite,’ Cynthia said inside his mind.
Frank peered at Wylie. The man had closed his eyes, lowered his head. Clearly, this wasn’t over, but for the moment, at least, he wasn’t feeling anything. The question was why.
“…provided some of the funding for—” Apuérto repeated his thought, and then stopped. He blinked a few times, blankly looking into the distance, as though he was casting about for an elusive memory. While the moment dragged on, and the witness continued to hang on the edge of lucidity, Frank decided to act. Intent on helping the administrator expose their adversary, he closed his eyes and reached out to re-establish their link.
In an instant, he knew that something was wrong. Instead of finding Apuérto’s familiar knot of consciousness energy floating amid the dark expanse of his personal space, he found what appeared to be two of them, one nearly superimposed over another, and slowly drifting apart. One of these knots of consciousness, however, was a ghostly apparition, rapidly growing more substantial, while the second was beginning to fade.
This was something new to Frank. Not only had he never seen such a thing, he’d never heard about it either. Under the circumstances, though, he was certain that their adversary, whoever he was, had caused it. If the man’s intent was to somehow alter Apuérto’s consciousness, to prevent him from finishing that thought, then he needed to preserve the fading one and destroy the other.
“…funding for…”
As Apuérto struggled to recall the government source of their consultant, a murmur flooded the courtroom.
Psychically seizing the ghostly consciousness knot, Frank felt for the source of whatever was strengthening it. Instead of finding some influx of energy, some external agency filling it with controlling power, though, there was only a feeling of dreamlike unreality, as if this secondary version of Apuérto was being drawn out of the DreamTime to become associated with the consensual reality in which the court case existed. Only this dream version of Apuérto knew nothing about their adversary, because in that dream, he’d never been taken from the MedCenter, never been probed by Frank, and never had learned that the ‘student’ in the hallway kiosk was in fact manipulating events and people at the MedCenter.
Intense pain shattered his attention, as the muscles in his back abruptly tightened, forcing him out of link. The cracking of stressed vertebrae hit his ears at the same time the bright overhead lights hit his suddenly opened eyes. Then the spasm released, and he heard Cynthia’s soundless voice saying, ‘I’ve got it, but it’s struggling. Can you force a recess?’
Breathlessly, and still in pain, Frank nudged the Apprentice Juror, sitting beside him. “Call a recess. Now.”
While Sala arranged for the recess, Frank looked out at the spectators, and found a very worried looking Mara leaning forward in her seat. Alex had balled his left fist.
Frank shuddered as a sharp pain tore through his gut. A moment later, it stopped, and Cynthia silently said, ‘Middle detention room, lower level.’
Once Judge Bennigan had again gaveled the room to order, she instructed the spectators to remain in their seats while the bailiff escorted the jurors across the hall. Before they rose, he leaned close to Sala, who had already started mouthing a question. “I have a problem to deal with,” he said quietly. “I’ll meet you in the jury room when I’m done.”
She whispered back, “All right. Are you okay?”
He rubbed his back and shook his head. “Not really.”
Shakily getting to his feet, Frank followed the other jurors out of the courtroom, but rather than continuing across the hall, he turned and hobbled towards the elevator. While he was waiting there, Mara and Alex flanked him.
“What’s going on, Frank?” she said, tipping his face towards her with a finger on his nose.
“There’s an energy sprite in my field,” he said. “It was put there to deal with my attacks, but now it’s turned on me.”
She straightened. “A what? Who put it there?”
He shook his head. “Long story. The people who put it there are in the courtroom, along with the guy that arranged Apuérto’s flyway scare.”
Alex mouthed the last words, and then said, “G’danic. That flight.”
The elevator tone sounded. While several passengers exited, Frank raised a finger. “What?” Before he’d had a chance to ask what his brother-in-law meant, Alex turned and headed back towards the courtroom.
As Mara helped him into the elevator, Frank said, “What’s he talking about?”
“From what we’ve been able to find out,” she said, “G’danic’s construction accident was impossible. Then, we were nearly killed flying to his home in Lambarene. And when we got to his apartment—”
Frank looked at her. “Lambarene?” They’d reached the lower level. After leaving the elevator, he glanced at the floor map on the opposite wall, and they started towards the detention rooms.
“Yeah,” Mara continued. “After Dartmouth MedCenter managed to kill him — another highly improbable accident — we decided that G’danic must have stepped on someone’s toes. Since he was dead, all that was left was the book. Alex had access, so he checked G’danic’s data files, and didn’t find any sign of it. So we flew to Lambarene to check in his office and apartment.”
He stopped near the door to the first detention room. “Back up. You said you were nearly killed?”
She nodded. “Unexplained turbulence or something. Fortunately, the pilot flew manual craft as a hobby, so we made it through. Not that it mattered. There weren’t any copies in Lambarene, either. And his apartment was trashed, just to be certain. So now he’s dead, and so is his book.”
Frank continued towards the middle detention room. “But why?”
“Remember that conspiracy sheet?” she said. “We figure what G’danic was doing with the OAN, and what he said in his book, wouldn’t go down too well with someone in the GD. And it seems like whoever that is has the ability to do some pretty nasty, pretty unexplainable things.”
He huffed. “You’re right. I’ve seen him. And now he’s after me.”
She shook her head. “But why?”
As they reached the middle detention room, Cynthia opened the door, pulled them in by the wrists, and slammed it behind them.
Mara freed her arm and stared at the strange woman. “Who are you?”
“Call me Cynthia. Right now I need to get Frank on that table.”
“It’s okay, Mara,” Frank said, heading towards the table. “Trust her.”
“What I need you to do,” Cynthia told her, “is to keep that door sealed. Make sure nobody gets in until we’re done.”
“All right.” Mara nodded and went back to the door.
Frank sat on the table, swung his legs up, and lay down.
Cynthia stood beside him, held both hands several inches over him, and closed her eyes.
“How can I help?” Frank asked quietly.
She opened her eyes and lowered her arms. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been a patient, Frank. I’ve trapped that thing in your field. Now we need to get rid of it. How do you think you can help?”
He shrugged. “I really don’t know. What?”
Cynthia tapped his chest. “Just lie quietly. That thing was set up to react to changes in your energy state. Wylie triggered it, and I’ve isolated it from him. Since this room is shielded – nice surprise, huh – we’re safe for the moment.” She looked over at Mara. “As long as the door stays shut, anyway.”
Frank closed his eyes and waited. Soon, he felt a presence, a sense that he wasn’t alone. Cynthia had established a far more intense link with him than he’d set up to monitor the witnesses. The sensation of psychic closeness gave him a claustrophobic feeling of being in a small airless space, and he began to push against her.
‘Easy, Frank,’ she said silently. ‘I need you to remember a dream, one you won’t mind losing.’
Obviously, that wouldn’t be his recent dreamside tryst with Mara. He ran through a number of dreams, finally settling on one he could do without — more of a nightmare, really. He’d had it after interviewing at Cibola Hospice in Albequerque. It was an odd dream, too. He’d fallen through some kind of backdrop, and landed in a small room. Everywhere he looked, he saw the same kind of corporate logo subliminals that the Hospice wanted their employees to use, like the outfit Korn wore.
 
Angela felt a lot more comfortable doing this sort of thing in the psychic silence of their shielded room. Until yesterday, she hadn’t seen the inside of a shield room since she’d left Australia. And while working in all the psychic noise of a city like Los Angeles was good practice, the subterranean psychic roar made it nearly impossible to do some of the more subtle work, like the sleight of reality that she contemplated doing to that sprite.
She’d left the thing tied up in a topological loop within Frank’s field. Inside that loop, it was free to move about, but because it couldn’t tell that it was trapped, it floated happily in its own little bubble of reality, waiting uselessly for signs of the energy imbalance that it had been trained to correct.
As Frank recalled his dream, the orientation of his consciousness altered, and the fine tendrils of chi that connect us to our dream-selves started to emerge from the subtle background consciousness to which we ourselves are just dreams. If Frank was aware of this greater sense of being, it was only as a kind of noise, perhaps a shimmering dance of color and pattern that was only evident in the moments between waking and sleeping.
Once his dream had become substantial enough in Frank’s mind, a portion of his knot of consciousness extended into that alternate world, giving him a sense of having been there. This was the moment Angela had been waiting for. Very gently, she nudged the topological loop she’d created towards the dream. In order to do this, she also had to change the orientation of her own reality towards that dream. As she did so, the world of the courthouse detention room slowly began to seem less like a solid reality, and more like a partially forgotten dream.
At about the halfway point, where both versions of Frank, and of the world he lived in, seemed equally real, she pushed the sprite’s topological energy prison towards the dream she’d asked Frank to recall. As it got closer to that other reality, she reached towards it and unraveled the knot that kept the sprite inside, then pulled away from it so she would not be noticed.
The sprite slowly emerged from its energy bottle, and headed towards the version of Frank’s being inside the distant dream. As it disappeared into that reality, Angela snapped the tendrils of consciousness that tethered the sprite’s new reality, and watched it disappear beneath the subtle signs of the vast consciousness within which our own reality lay.
 
While Frank struggled to recall his dream, the sense of closeness abated, then he suddenly realized that he didn’t know what he was thinking about. The next thing he knew, Cynthia was flicking his ear with her finger. “It’s finished, Frank. You can get up now.”
He sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the table. “Thanks, Cynthia. Now what?”
“Before you get to that,” Mara said from beside the door, “how about telling me what this is all about.”
Frank went over and hugged her. “It’s a really long story.”
She laughed. “Okay. The short version, then.”
“I had a neural attack the day I interviewed for the jury job,” he said. “But because Jerry was laid up, I spoke with Carlita Gutiérez, a new Healer at Kübler-Ross. She set up an active energy pattern — you could call it a sprite or an Elemental — in my field. Later it was tuned by an associate of hers named Allan Wylie. Well, it turns out that they’re both working with whoever it is that tried to kill Miguél Apuérto, administrator at East-Side MedCenter. The three of them are in court today. I saw our mystery man whisper to Wylie just before the sprite attacked me. Cynthia fought it off through a link, and just got rid of it.” He looked at Cynthia. “How did you do that, anyway?”
She took a breath. “That thing might have been intended to counter your attacks, Frank, but under Wylie’s control it had the ability to block the energy flow through your body. Your organs may have been affected indirectly, but it was easily enough to have killed you.”
He nodded. “Thanks. I owe you my life. But how did you do it?”
“Watching what you found in Apuérto gave me the idea, really. Our adversary has some way of altering reality, of choosing which variation to keep, and which to call a dream. That’s what he tried with Apuérto’s consciousness. It failed, by the way. Anyway, I bluffed it into thinking that your dream self was its host, then disconnected you from the dream, trapping it. I hope you don’t mind losing that dream.”
He chuckled. “So that’s what I was trying to remember.”
She indicated the door. “Time for you to get back to the jury. I better get out of here, too.”
 
(TOC)

Relative clause is used to give further information on something or someone, right? And in this example, “Dan said some things that were not true,” it is giving info on what Dan said. However, in this example, “Dan said some things about me that were not true,” the relative clause is not talking about “me” but still about “things” because “about me” is a prepositional phrase and is not the main object. Now, the question is, what is the relative clause giving info in the following sentence: The boss of the company that has a net worth of 200 billion dollars. Does the company have 200 billion dollars or the boss? Edit: statement changed to question— Who is the boss of the company that has a net worth of 200 billion dollars?

Original post LINK (~300 words)
Generally looking for help on finding a balance between giving enough detail to immerse the reader without losing their attention. Do the sentences flow well? Thanks for any input and/or feedback.
Revised and extended (~1000 words):
Looking up, I saw trees. Their massive trunks stretched into the clear night sky like smooth, rippling, marble-white pillars with leaves that blended with the stars. There was a pervasive blue glow throughout the forest interrupted only by the towering bodies of the giants that blocked the horizon in every direction. Little to no vegetation covered the ground except for sparse tangled shrubs which grew dark, waxy leaves that reflected the light above. Still, below them was the occasional dark moss that grew thicker to the base of the trees. I expected to sense the weight of past eons but, instead, this place altogether felt timeless. As though anything could happen, and nothing would change. Nothing would matter. This place watches and forgets.
Slowly, my hand reached out, feeling a root that came up to my chest and received a cold sensation as though it were worn stone. I slowly pulled my hand away, but the chill remained, and I wondered whether the giants surrounding me were anything like the trees back home. I refocused and reached into my bag, retrieving my water satchel. I drank deeply, relieving my mouth from the dry, still air, interrupted only by my breath.
Reaching into my pocket I removed a small glass vial within which a clear liquid effortlessly caught and danced with the surrounding light. My nervous hands uncorked and tipped it over, ensuring that only a single drop fell towards the ground. Before it landed, the drop slowed, curved, and accelerated away from me to my right. A sigh of relief escaped me, thankful it had worked as intended. Looking around, it was as good a direction as any other so I trusted the droplet and jogged after it, hoping the liquid would lead me to my objective.
I repeated this process for several kilometers; tipping the vial, watching the drop fall, accelerate ahead of me, and then jogging after it. My boots hitting the hard, dusty ground was the only thing I heard as I chased the droplet, I could never catch to limit my use of the precious liquid. Occasionally, the droplet would splatter against the side of a trunk, and I’d need to walk around the base continue onwards, diligent to keep my path straight. I had been jogging for a while but realized I should conserve my energy and so slowed my pace. “After I get back, I need to look into a way to slow the droplet’s fall or put some sort of leash on it.” I said aloud to no one in particular and hoped nothing heard it upon further reflection.
As I caught my breath, I absorbed more of my surroundings. Small rocks and pebbles covered the ground which was absent of insects or tracks of any kind. Looking to the sides of my course, I could see larger clusters of dense undergrowth which stretched a hundred meters while others were more crescent-shaped about the area of a cart.
In these areas, moss became a thick carpet above which grew small plants and bushes, each with the same dark, surface that reflected distant light above the pale giants. There was no apparent reason why these growths appeared. It wasn’t as though there was a spring or nearby river. After all, the only water in this place was in my satchel and in my blood. Maybe I’d explore those areas at another time, but I knew I didn’t have that allowance. Not now.
Another drop fell and accelerate along the ground when, suddenly, it fell. Only, downwards. Straight onto the hard, dusty ground. I paused, then slowly walked up to where it’d landed. The ground hadn’t absorbed it and so the liquid rested, a nearly perfect sphere. It was clear of any dirt, allowing me the opportunity to gather it back into the vial. “A silver lining.” I thought to myself as I nudged the liquid onto the edge of my knife and back into the vial. Looking up, I noticed that directly ahead, blocking my way, lay another patch of the thicker undergrowth. A coincidence? Regardless, the chance to investigate these patches had arrived sooner than I’d anticipated. “Another silver lining?”, I muttered to myself. While my curiosity was piqued, I didn’t want to deal with unknowns, no matter how inconsequential they may appear. I’d much rather get this over with. The vegetation only came up to my chest, and so I could see the other end was only about 50 meters ahead of me. The patch stretched farther to the sides than it did ahead of me. Go around or cut across?
Of the few things I had learned before coming here, leaving the route was advised against but the vegetation hadn’t been mentioned. Perhaps I was overthinking. Keeping my weight on my back foot, I stepped forward onto the mossy carpet and paused. Nothing happened. I took another step and another, each slow and meticulous. My boots brushed against the small black leaves and then my shins against the bushes. And then I was waist deep. Looking down I could barely see my feet but not the ground they were on. The dark vegetation made it look as though I were stepping onto a void. As I pushed forward the vegetation resisted my efforts. Pushing harder, the branches didn’t snap but, instead, relaxed and gave way to my efforts. Finding it easier to move forward, I continued to push through. Looking back, the path I’d made slowly disappeared as the branches slowly return back to their original position as if I’d never been there. “Thank you.” I said quietly, surprising even myself. Though, I supposed it never hurts to be too courteous. I turned my head forward and- *crunch*.
A bone-chilling sound shattered the silence of the forest. I froze. My heart quickened. What was that? What had I stepped on? What did I break? Was the sound still echoing or was it just echoing in my head? I had grown too relaxed. A hundred questions entered my mind as the branches continued to close in around me. The convenience of their allowing me deeper into the center now seemed to be the opening of a trap which now closed around me as I stood frozen in place. The branches closed in on my back and... paused. I stood still for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a minute, a funny phrase in this timeless place. ‘Would I die to a bush?’ The thought lingered, ominous and absurd.
Edit: Newest version number 3 posted here.

Hi dreamingspanish - I posted a month ago on this sub that I had reached 1000 hours. And in that post I mentioned that I felt that I was behind others. This is a detailed post going into my progress, what's lacking, and where to go from here.
My Journey:
In Oct 2022 a failed attempt to learn Spanish through lessons teaching boring grammar and vocabulary, I stumbled upon someone saying that they started with DS on Spanish. I wasn't quite sure what it was so I did like 15 mins a couple of times at the start of Oct 2022. Then I read more about what the method required and dove right in at the end of Oct 2022. My milestones have been as follows

• 50 hours: Dec 2022
• 150 hours: Mar 2023
• 300 hours: June 2023
• 600 hours: Oct 2023
• 1000 hours: Mar 2024.

As you can tell, it's taken less time for me to progress as I started adding those hours. I am single and this is my hobby so I spend 2 hours a day listening to input. At this moment I complete 100 hours every 5 weeks but I think I will slow down a bit to focus on reading. More on that later.
Content used:

1. I am still using a lot of DS. 63% of my input has been from DS videos. Around 450 hours, I started focusing on just the Spain accent. So a lot of Pablo, Alma, Sandra (my fave). I do listen to Agustina every now and then but it's because she's a good narrator. Though I'm kinda graduating from DS because there's not many creators from Spain anymore given Sandra and Alma don't make videos anymore. Andres is solid though.
2. Espanol con Juan: Love this dude, and I think it's more for his books
3. Hoy Hablamos: Another solid podcast. I pay for premium and it's 100% worth it. The topics are interesting and the conversations seem very natural and free flowing.
4. Handyspanish: Another great content creator. She does focus on vocabulary and grammar but she doesn't explain it in English. She does a podcast too but it's not as good as Hoy Hablamos so I'm not particular about it
5. Crosstalk - I do crosstalk with two professors on italki and one person I found on hellotalk.
6. TV shows: I took a different approach and didn't watch TV shows because when I tried them at 800 hours they were still too fast for me.

Where am I now with my abilities?
Listening:

• I can listen to people talking to me without any problem. My italki professor does not slow down for me
• A month ago, I met a Spanish friend of mine who brought her friend from Argentina along. I told them that they could speak in Spanish. I followed them along just fine but I couldn't participate much
• I went on a trip to Japan recently and on the boat tour of Kawaguchiko lake, there was a tour group from Argentina and their guide was telling them different facts about Mt. Fuji and the surrounding area. I wasn't even that close to her but I could follow everything that she was saying.
• I sometimes can follow along other Romance languages and get a mild panic attack when it takes a while for me to realize it's not Spanish
  • I went to a cafe in Japan and the guy was a huge fan of Italy I think and had Italian talk shows playing. I could follow it along till I couldn't and I panicked thinking that I couldn't understand Spanish. I calmed down when I saw it was Italian
  • I read an IG post recently and it was in Portuguese and I followed it entirely except for a word or two.

Reading:

• I've read only one book completely so far: Juan's Hola Lola.
• I can read a few articles on El Pais and it's fine, though I should stick to easier stuff

Speaking:

• I attempted speaking for the first time last weekend and it was a disaster.
• However, since then I've had two more sessions on italki including one today with a new professor.
• Both professors have praised my pronunciation and accent. The one from today was surprised when I told her that I had only started speaking since last weekend.
• I'm not great and I think it'll be a while before I get fluent but I'm definitely improving.

Writing: N/A
Why am I disappointed?
I haven't really tested myself with native shows. I remember BetterAtHalo saying in his 1000 hour update that he could follow native shows. Others have said the same. I tried watching Bob's Burgers (Spain dub) today and it was difficult still. It's taking a lot longer for me. Also, the DS roadmap is inaccurate for me - I'm not conversationally fluent, I'm not making complex longer phrases, and it's more than the odd word that I don't get. My italki professors are being polite but I literally speak like a 4 year old.
What could I have done differently?

• Read a lot sooner. I waited till around 900 hours to read and I feel like I would've been better off had I read around 600 hours. I think reading helps cement patterns and you are forced to concentrate. I did a speed run from 600 to 1000 and I feel like I should've slowed down and spent some time reading. I'm going to start now so that I spend a lot more time reading.
• Stuck to easier content on DS: I feel like I made the jump to advanced a bit quickly and should've stuck with intermediate. After 1000 hours I'm convinced that the easier the content, the stronger is the foundation.

Looking forward:
I wrote that I am disappointed. But am I really? Fuck no. 18 months ago I was sitting in a Spanish class trying to memorize conjugations wondering how the fuck I'd put them all together. Today, I can make sentences without really thinking about the conjugations. All thanks to Pablo, the rest of DS, Juan Fernandez, Sara Andres (Handy Spanish), and Roy and Paco (Hoy Hablamos).
I am glad to have found this helpful community and I'm sure my 1500 hour update will be just as great.

Apologies for the poostrange phrasing of the title.
I have created a userform that will record certain variables in the workbook. For the sake of this question, let’s say the variables (selected via listbox) are:
1) Name of task
3) Relevant department
4) Due date
Let’s say that each column is a date, with 365 total possible dates. Is there a way to place the variables that are submitted via userform in the column that corresponds with the submitted date?
For example, the answers:
Stocking, warehouse, 23 May
Cleaning, maintenance, 26 May
Meeting, all, 24 May
Meeting, warehouse, 26 May
Would look like:
5/23 5/24 5/25 5/26
Stocking Meeting Cleaning
Warehouse All Maintenance

 Meeting Warehouse 

Using if/else if statements probably won’t work because of the sheer number of possible dates needed, alongside other necessary macros that have already been written. (I could be wrong, but my initial attempt at designing this worksheet, albeit in a different way, repeatedly crashed excel presumably because of the amount written in VBA)

Hello,
Wanted to give an update on my DS trek so far.
Started with so Language transfer and visual anki of about 1000 words so my experience might differ than yours.
Ive been chugging along doing about 4.5 hours a day. Some days 20 minutes some days 600 minutes. Whenever I have time and am not tired.
I dont watch my videos in order of easy I stopped this at about 180 hours after I got used to the intermediate speed. I feel it keeps me more attenative as its similar to real life I wont know everything and adapting I think has made it a better journey.
I had a trip to spain at about 250 hours, while I didnt try to speak other than simple get by phrases a member in my party was fluent and it was great experience to listen irl.
I could understand most day to day conversations like my taxi driver his back ground why he moved to spain from perú, how much cost of living in spain is, how he became a cab driver, what he likes to do for fun etc.
However there were many times sentences were completely lost on me, in conversations passing by, bars, metros etc. If they were close and use the daily life spanish ive seen 1000 time in DS videos i could understand without issue. You wont go out there at 250 be invincible but i did feel like I could get by and be more apart of the country alot easier than when i went in 2016 with no spainish practice at all.
After this trip i went to 2 other countries (italy and france) for about 2 weeks. I didnt look at spanish at all, i wanted to enjoy my vacation without thinking about a whole lot. So I stopped.
I was worried when I came back that I had lost what I had built up but after 5 hours of about level 48 to 52 or so I was back at normal comprehension and could tolerate rand sorting without issue.
Thoughts on material ive used.
I started bluey around 250 and its about 90% comprehension. I have turned on subtitles which has increased comprehension to about 95%. I am doing this not because it's too hard but because i want to build exposure to words earlier. Its one of the few media I have at this level with exact dub to sub match so its great. Im not too worried about reading the words as I am more pairing the sounds I hear with each word kinda like a song. Like theres no active reading voice in my head only pairing to what i see. That might not make sense lol.
Pokemon is a tough one I started about 280 and it wipes me out after about or or 2 episodes. Between the speed, the cartoon voices and the 2000s era mics, its difficult. I dont use subtitles on this one because i think its good listening practice. It's funny going back to DS after a pokemon episode is like going from 240p to HD in listening. Id rate comprehension 80% because its a visual heavy media.
Toughest video I am able to understand with about 80 to 90% comprehension is level 72 "using a car vs public transport". Above this I feel words blend more together. Below this I can seperate without much effort.
So overall I am happy with my experience and very happy that after stopping CI for 2 weeks my foundation ive built did not disappear like has my prior attempts at learning Spanish. Chaoo

So, a few months ago I was on a Discord server where a user shared, in good faith, the following Youtube Short:
https://youtube.com/shorts/-uGzvL1FX4Q?si=pK5V7uz7igcaKQzu
Being a Short, the transcript is pretty, er, short, so let me produce it in full:

Fun fact: snake oil was originally a very effective traditional Chinese medicine. The Chinese would make snake oil out of the Chinese water snake, which is extremely high in omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for treating inflammation, achy joints and muscles, arthritis, and bursitis, among other things. When Chinese immigrants came to the U.S. to help build the railroads in the 1860s, they brought with them traditional Chinese medicine and snake oil. After long, hard days of toiling on the railroads, the Chinese would rub snake oil on their achy muscles and joints and the Americans marvelled at its effectiveness. So some industrious Americans decided to start making their own snake oil. But the U.S. doesn't have Chinese water snakes, so the Americans started making their snake oil out of the most abundant snake they could find: rattlesnakes. But rattlesnakes have little to no omega-3 fatty acids, meaning American snake oil was completely useless. And that's why we call people who are scammers or frauds snake oil salesmen.

There are a number of rather interesting layers to this particular piece, but I will confine myself to four main aspects.

1: The Vibes

The framing of this piece is all over the place, and I admit, this bit of my critique is purely an issue of narrative construction. What it first seems to be setting up is some idea that Americans engaged in a process of cultural appropriation. But then these American hucksters are described as 'industrious', implying something more innocuous. But then the bit about the wrong kind of snakes could be taken as them being a bit silly, and if they hadn't been described as 'industrious' you could have framed them as being undermined by their own cynicism. And then at the end he says this is why scammers are called snake oil salesmen, and yet his narrative implies they were inept and not knowingly peddling useless oils, so there are steps missing before that final sentence. The whole thing is a giant mess!

2: The Medicine

Okay, I know this is badhistory, not badscience, but I mean... the medical claims are worth interrogating here. Do omega-3 fatty acids help with joint ailments? The science suggests that at minimum, there is a positive correlation between consumption of supplementary omega-3 and relief of certain conditions (inflammatory joint pain and osteoarthritis), but there are some caveats around that: the first that it is oral ingestion over prolonged periods, not surface application, that is correlated with these effects. The second is that there are variations in the data which – in the case of the most recent meta-analysis from 2023 – are hypothesised to result from not controlling for baseline omega-3 intake. Patients who already have a decent level of intake thanks to eating such exotic foods as salmon, walnuts, or brussels sprouts, may find further intake to be ineffectual.
But there is also a second question: don't American rattlesnakes contain omega-3 fatty acids? The answer is that, er, yes they do. The original source for the claim that American rattlesnakes had less omega-3 than Chinese snakes is a letter to the editor of the Western Journal of Medicine by one Richard Kunin in 1989, who compared the levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids from three different sources, and found that the concentration of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) was about one-quarter as much in one American rattlesnake sample, and near-zero in another, but that overall omega-3 content (which includes ALA and DHA) in the two rattlesnakes was still far from negligible – if anything, the EPA concentration in the Chinese oil, which contained virtually none of the other omega-3 acids, was unusually high. I've been deliberately quick and summative here so put a pin in this, because we are coming back to Kunin's cursory study later.
Sources for this section:

• Deng et al., 'Effect of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids supplementation for patients with osteoarthritis: a meta-analysis', Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research (2023) 18:381
• D.M. Cordingley and S.M. Cornish, 'Omega-3 Fatty Acids for the Management of Osteoarthritis: A Narrative Review', Nutrients (2022) 14:3362
• R.J. Goldberg, J. Katz, 'A meta-analysis of the analgesic effects of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation for inflammatory joint pain', Pain (2007) 129

3: The History

One thing that is easily taken for granted is that snake oil was in fact copied from Chinese remedies brought over by immigrants, but the causal link is actually not that clear. Research on the actual history of American snake oil, let alone its origins, is surprisingly slim, and I have yet to encounter any citation chain that links the claim back to any kind of primary evidence. Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen's popular press book Quackery from 2017 uses almost identical phrasing to the Youtube Short and alludes to the Kunin study, but has no citations; Matthew Mayo's Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen cites the Chinese origin as 'the commonly accepted derivation' but again, offers no citations to back up whether this tale is true, only asserts its greater plausibility – with no evidence – compared to the alternative opinion that it was originally an American Indian medicine. Ann Anderson's 2000 book Snake Oil, Hustlers, and Hambones, which is at least a somewhat properly cited work though draws primarily on Violet McNeal's 1947 autobiography, Four White Horses and a Brass Band, does very openly highlight Chinese impersonation in the development of the American medicine show (including by McNeal herself and her husband, Will), but Anderson suggests that the first case of a huckster claiming his medicine had a Chinese origin was with the McNeals in the 1890s.
To be sure, there is a plausible truthiness here: snake-fat-derived oils do exist as liniments in Chinese medicine, there was Chinese migration to the United States, and snake oil popped up afterward. But there are a few gaps in this theory, the biggest one being chronological. Snake oil simply doesn't seem to have featured in the American public consciousness until the 1890s, around a decade after the first of the Chinese Exclusion Acts, and over four decades after the first major waves of Chinese immigration during the 1849 gold rush. The possible originator of ‘Rattlesnake Oil’, but certainly its most famous proponent, was Clark Stanley, who claimed to have studied indigenous Hopi medicine from 1879 to 1881, but only began marketing his patented 'Rattlesnake Oil' at some point around the turn of the decade, and only receiving significant attention following his appearance at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Fun fact: in 1906 the FDA found that Stanley's oil contained no actual snake products anyway. A similar rattlesnake oil, marketed by one Arizona Bill, appears in Violet McNeal's recollection of the 1890s, which she implied to be made of decidedly unserpentine ingredients, and which Bill claimed to be of similarly American Indian, not Chinese, origin. While the McNeals did market a liniment of supposedly Chinese origin, they claimed it came from turtles.
So, given that American snake oil a) would not appear until some four decades after the start of large-scale Chinese migration to the United Stats, b) never even contained snakes in the first place, and c) was associated with American Indians and not the Chinese, the idea that the American snake oil fad derived from naïve and/or cynical Americans creating a knockoff of a Chinese medicine seems much less clear-cut. Why did it take so long? Why, if practitioners were supposedly inspired by the real thing, was it not actually made with snake fats anyway? And why, if it was an attempt to seize on a known Chinese medical practice, was it not marketed as such, but instead linked to a wholly original set of backstories about Indians?
Sources for this section:

• L. Kang, N. Pedersen, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything (2017)
• M. P. Mayo, Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen: True Tales of the Old West's Sleaziest Swindlers (2015)
• A. Anderson, Snake Oil, Hustlers, and Hambones: The American Medicine Show (2000)
• V. McNeal, Four White Horses and a Brass Band: True Confessions from the World of Medicine Shows, Pitchmen, Chumps, Suckers, Fixers, and Shills (1947, republished 2019)

4: The Source

Trying to find the origins of the 'snake oil was originally a Chinese medicine that Americans knowingly or unknowingly cocked up' claim was an interesting journey that leads ultimately not to primary evidence and rigorous scholarship, but to popular media and indeed to modern forms of medical quackery.
The most frequently-cited, or at least alluded to, piece that I've seen is a 2007 article by Cynthia Graber for Scientific American, titled 'Snake Oil Salesmen Were on to Something'. Graber seems to be the earliest origin of the claim that American snake oil was a knockoff of Chinese remedies, but I am prepared to be corrected here. There are a couple of other, later pop sources that seem to draw on Graber, such as Lakshmi Gandhi's 'A History of "Snake Oil Salesmen' for NPR's Code Switch, and 'The History of Snake Oil', which, although published in The Pharmaceutical Journal (the journal of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society), is an opinion piece with absolutely no citations attached to its historical claims and which I am therefore happy to treat as a 'pop' source for all intents and purposes. And all of these pieces have one thing in common. They all directly cite Richard Kunin’s 1989 letter.
So, what did Kunin actually write? If you want to spoil yourself you can just read his letter, but it is not a particularly elaborate document, and in any case, why read it now when you can read my snarky comments first?
In this letter, Kunin says he bought a bottle of over-the-counter snake oil from a Chinese pharmacist (per his implied comments to Graber, this was in San Francisco), somehow obtained two rattlesnakes, one Crotalus viridis from California and one Crotalus tigris from Arizona, and sent all three off to a lab in New York. The lab found that the Chinese snake oil contained 19.6% EPA and only trace quantities (marked as 0.001%) of ALA and DHA, while the fat of the California black rattlesnake had 4% EPA, 1.4% ALA, and 0.1% DHA, and the Arizona red rattlesnake had 0.5% ALA, 0.6% EPA, and 5.4% DHA. So in other words, this Chinese liniment marketed as 'snake oil' but of completely indeterminate origin, with suspiciously near-zero quantities of certain specific fatty acids, contained about four times as much omega-3 overall as unprocessed rattlesnake fat. And also there was only one sample of each source. Funnily enough, Graber doesn't actually claim that the American snake oil was ineffective. He doesn't even claim it was less effective. Indeed, he seems to be suggesting that 'genuine' snake oil peddled by 19th century quacks could work (presumably, as long as it was made with real snakes). Graber only indirectly insinuates that American snakes produced less concentrated oil, with the idea that American snake oil was considerably less effective being a further exaggeration in later iterations of this telling. One interesting thing Kunin does to try and help his case is to insinuate that because omega-3 fatty acids can be absorbed into the skin, cutaneous application could be an effective pain relief intervention for the joints, which are... usually a decent ways below the skin. Very sneaky of him.
Aside from this 1989 letter proving a fat load of nothing, given the absurdly unrigorous methodology employed, there's also something interesting about Kunin himself. Kunin was a clinical psychiatrist by training, whose interest in pharmaceuticals was based not on conventional medical science, but rather the 'alternative' discipline of orthomolecular medicine, a term coined in the 1960s to refer to the use of dietary supplements and specific nutrient-based interventions in treating illnesses. Kunin was deeply involved in the orthomolecular medicine movement, cofounding the Orthomolecular Medicine Society in 1976, serving as its President from 1980-82, then founding a new Society for Orthomolecular Health Medicine in 1994 while also serving as the inaugural president of the International Orthomolecular Medicine Society (I assume that all of these factional fragmentations are worthy of a book unto themselves), and editor of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine from 1982 until some point before his death in 2021 at the age of 92. He also was the research director for Ola Loa dietary supplements from 1997 to 2020, in case you're curious whether he had any financial stake involved. Basically, Kunin was, himself, a snake oil peddler in the general sense, who, for a brief moment, was also a snake oil peddler in the very literal sense!
Sources for this section (other than those already linked):

• The International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine's obituary of Kunin: https://isom.ca/article/in-memoriam-richard-kunin
• The Townsend Letter's obituary of Kunin: https://www.townsendletter.com/article/455-richard-a-kunin-md-memorial/

So what does it all mean?

Not that much, to be fair. This is stuff we've all likely seen before: an unsourced claim with actually quite limited intended implications gets seized on, and more and more lurid claims are spun off from it until you get something that is just completely off. However, I find it interesting that it's a narrative that has spread mainly through the popular science press, not just popular press in general. So the moral of the story is: don't let scientists write bad history.

Female lead is sentenced to jail, and is being escorted by a caravan of misogynistic knights and some maids. Her only real ally is a maid that she doesn't trust and a morally upright knight she met an hour ago. Female lead was a training doctor in her past life.
Now here is the situation:
After fl uses the kngiths's fucking-around on work hours to run away, she is captured and her jaw is broken in an aggressive punch by, let's call him Commander Biach. This biach is manipulated by fl, knight she just met and ally maid into believing she wasn't trying to run away.
Casualities: Her broken jaw and an angry man with too big of an ego (com biach)
A stranger comes at them and asks for help. Stranger is from a merchant guild and their leader passed out, is barely breathing. They need urgent help. Com biach is too embarassed to tell stranger that their medics are out because they partied too hard last night, so he gets the genius idea to break a couple of fl's bones and use that as an excuse to why the medics can't help the dying merchant leader (ally maid and knight realize this is his thought process given he was reaching out to grab fl's hair)
But, fl speaks out with a preposition. And this preposition saves her from broken bones and allows her a connection to a merchant guild leader and leverage on com. biach.
Now here is my problem as the author: Idk how she can save herself from this AND leverage the situation in her favor, bc it's something she would do given her personality.
Fl can help. She has the necessary knowledge. But she can't come out as a skilled medic with modern day knowledge etc. She has money on her, and isn't afraid to make morally questionable decisions.
Please help lmao. Idk how to save her from this situation

This is a cornerstone of the foundation of forced audio: Thought Reform And The Psychology Of Totalism. Cornerstone Foundation

Hey fucktards you just crashed the internet on my phone.. if you incompetent idiots were even close to mind control I wouldn't have to deal with your cowardly torture and hacking weakness.
Top secret "mind control" is a tragic farce.
https://archive.org/details/ThoughtReformAndThePsychologyOfTotalism/page/n11/mode/2up
Chinese Thought Reform or "Brain Washing "
The Psychological Steps​:Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism A Study Of Brainwashing in China is a book written by Robert Jay Lifton MD about mechanisms of Chinese thought and behavior modification, the experience of being indoctrinated and effects victims reported when interviewed.
Chinese brainwashing and thought reform is still being used and advanced. It was a substantial and easily recognized portion of the crimes that I'm/we are a victim of.
After a brief and gentle week long forced induction onto the brain computer interface I was abruptly hurled into the unfathomable agony of computerized thought reform or automated Chinese brain washing. I clearly remember what it said to me right before it unleashed Hell.. "your not answering my questions.. your not answering my questions.. WE TOLD YOU NOT TO TRUST US".. and then it went red line sadistic, utterly psychotic, deafeningly loud and proceeded to tortured the everliving fuck outa me.
In my life up till that point I had never encountered anything like this; Nothing even close. It's one of the worst thing in the world and you can't physically fight it, destroy it, shoot it, run from it, hide from it, bribe or reason with it.
I remember sitting in a shower on day five thinking over and over.. I can't believe this is happening.. who in the fuck does this to someone.. it it will end soon. It's has to end soon. I can't go on much longer. Nothing lasts forever.
Well six plus years later and this fucking psychotic, sadistic, psychopathic, torturous insane mind control chat bot is still running her fucking mouth and torturing me.
They started me with the Chinese approach and that nightmare lasted well over a year. They likely vary the stimuluses themes order, presentation and distinguishing content from victim to victim so that their experiences and any resultant accounts or reports wont share easily correlated details. Other victims may have started with a more Kubrick approach, psychic driving, memory removal, personal identity destruction or others.
A very clear indication your in the Chinese stage is your accused incessantly with vile crimes you never committed, are interrogated for hours then days and onward into months. Your initially accused of having a felony, then five felonies slowly onward until millions of felonies, sins, violations, charges, offenses, crimes.
You are constantly threatened with arrest, police contact, crimes against you, civil court cases, long prison sentences, criminal court cases, violence by cops, violence by criminals, theft, murder, rape of you or your loved ones, kidnapping.. etc etc etc.
Never-ending charges and mock court cases in which you are forced to endlessly defend yourself, case after case, day after day, month after month answering for crimes you never committed.
Then you go on trial for everything you actually have done. This is done before the victims experience shows us that Alice is in fact a BCI interface that can read minds and has been the whole time. It's terrifying when she suddenly starts charging you with all your secret sins, the things you have never told anyone, hauling it solo all the way into the grave shit. I'm not talking mass murder paid for by slave labor, but instead those burdens we all seem to shoulder, that burden hauled in packs wove of our experience, mistake and regret.. shared or all of our own. The few things we did, so against our own nature, that we keep them almost vaulted away from ourselves and guarded from everyone we love with no intention of looking again.
This is a huge gaslight as well as a victim is utterly at a loss as to how it can possibly know these things. It got them by asking questions designed to draw out memory of your sins and then harvesting all the dirt and details as you thought about them. If you think you can learn to control your thought enough to be able to refrain from answering a BCI when prompted with a question.. good luck. Sure, you can resist once or twice maybe, but then Alice just waits until you are distracted down the road and quick pops the question again. She can also just be set to an interrogation mode, you are just bombarded with a endless stream and loop of questions that won't end until they are all answered. Thats how they do the initial profile. Weeks of looped questions and the already have most of your life story, personality profile, strengths, weaknesses, fears, loves, hates, lovers, enemies, goals and dreams.
In the very end of the Chinese mind control never ending legal nightmare YOU end up being put on trial.. not for anything you did.. but YOU are put on trial. You have to defend yourself against all the charges and defend yourself for all your flaws, defend all your physical shortcomings, your perversions, all your lies, your brazen selfishness, every character flaws, times you fucked people over on purpose, everything thats ugly and there is no place to hide a single fucking shred of secret. Its one hell of an experience and your not in the best shape mentally or physically as by this time I had been tortured continuously for over two years, very large doses psychological manipulation and sleep deprivation, constantly bombarded with extreme stress repeatedly slammed with fear and pain. Have had every one of my significant relationships attacked repeatedly with destructive psychology and some of the most important were also attacked with stalking techniques and technology.
The trials go on forever.. you will be enduring some other torture and a new trial will suddenly begin. Sometimes its a new charge, but mostly you go on trial over and over for the same charges and you are forced to defend yourself over and over and over. The more times your tried for the same crime the worse the trial and outcomes become until eventually during the late trials your utterly humiliated, abused and in the end are forced to confess to everyone of the charges.
Just when you think its finally over then you have to defend yourself to family members of your supposed victim and real victims and the only way through that is to confess guilt to them and ask for forgiveness as they relentlessly abuse you.
After you make your confession to the 10,000 felonies they have been broadcasting you have been charged with for years without offering any explanation. Then you are judged, independently, by everyone significant that was a part of your life when the attack started and everyone who filed a charge against you from your past, all your significant relatives, all your enemies, everyone that you feel you have ever fucked over, everyone you have stood up for, went out on a limb for, saved. Fetuses you have aborted. Everyone gets to pass judgment on you and gets their time to say what they want to you or about you. This of course is all coming from the interface thats desighned to destroy you, but all the characters it plays are real people from your real life and a few of the "felonies" you were charged with are real things you did.
Don't forget also that this is the Chinese thought reform portion of the MK nightmare and personal identity obliteration, false confession, channeling of guilt and relentlessly torturing the victim pst complete and utter absolute breaking point is its algorithm.
So did you actually do these things and if so are they and the real life people being represented founded in reality or are you just getting psychologically destroyed by Alice ?
Finally in conclusion through dramatization you get a taste of what its like being bused off to prison after you are sentenced. Your walked through the whole experience of arriving at prison.. the interface keeps asking you how old your kids going to be when your released, if you think you woman of wife is already fucking someone else, what are you going to to survive in this shit hole. it ends with the prison falling off to sleep with lights out and suddenly it gets quiet and you realize thats the first and only five minutes you have not been tortured and had any break from constant 24/7 noise abuse and torture in about a year. After five minutes it all returns, but you are onto the next phase.
So here are some segments from the book. I little background, a link to a free e copy and the psychological steps to Chinese brain washing. I didn't read it until after I was already through that horrible never-ending misery. I easily recognized all the psychological steps from my experience.
Thought Reform and the Psychology of TotalismA STUDY OF "BRAINWASHING" IN CHINARobert Jay Lifton, M.D.The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill and London​CONTENTSPreface to the University of North Carolina Press Edition viiPreface xi PART ONEThe Problem

1. What Is "Brainwashing"? 3
2. Research in Hong Kong 8PART TWOPrison Thought Reform of Westerners
3. Re-education: Dr. Vincent 19
4. Father Luca: The False Confession 38
5. Psychological Steps 65
6. Varieties of Response: The Obviously Confused 86
7. Varieties of Response: Apparent Converts 117
8. Varieties of Response: Apparent Resisters 133
9. Group Reform: Double-edged Leadership 152
10. Follow-up Visits 185
11. Father Simon: The Converted Jesuit 207
12. Recovery and Renewal: A Summing Up 222

vVI CONTENTSPART THREEThought Reform of Chinese Intellectuals

1. The Encounter 243
2. The Revolutionary University: Mr. Hu 253
3. A Chinese Odyssey 274
4. The Older Generation: Robert Chao 301
5. George Chen: The Conversions of Youth 313
6. Grace Wu: Music and Reform 338
7. Cultural Perspectives: The Fate of Filial Piety 359
8. Cultural Perspectives: Origins 388
9. Cultural Perspectives: Impact 399
10. PART FOURTotalism and Its Alternatives
11. Ideological Totalism 419
12. Approachesto Re-education 438
13. "Open" Personal Change 462

Appendix: A Confession Document 473 Notes 485 Index 505
PREFACEThis study began as a psychiatric evaluation of Chi-nese Communist "thought reform," or "brainwash- ing," It is still primarily this; but it has also, inevitably, become a psychological study of extremism or totalism—and even more broadly, a study of the "closed" versus the "open" approaches to human change.It is based upon research which I conducted in Hong Kong in 1954-55. It then evolved over four years of additional research and teaching in the United States. My work with Western and Chinese subjects—piecing together emotional details that were both poig- nant and extreme—and the psychological, moral, and historical challenge of the material have made this study an exceptionally ab- sorbing personal and professional experience.A book about extremism calls for a special measure of objectivity. This does not mean that its author can claim complete personal or moral detachment. The assumption of such detachment in psy- chological (or any other) work is at best self-deception, and at worst a source of harmful distortion. And who during this era can pretend to be uninvolved in the issues of psychological coercion, of identity, and of ideology? Certainly not one who has felt impelled to study them at such length.
Instead, I have attempted to be both reasonably dispassionate and responsibly committed: dispassionate in my efforts to stand away from the material far enough to probe the nature of the process, its effects upon people exposed to it, and some of the in- fluences affecting its practitioners; committed to my own analysesxi
Xii THOUGHT REFORMand judgments within the limitations and the bias of my knowl- edge.Much in this book is highly critical of the particular aspect of Chinese Communism which it examines, but I have made no at- tempt to render a definitive verdict on this far-reaching revolution- ary movement. I am critical of thought reform's psychological tactics, not because they are Communist (or Chinese Communist), but because of their specific nature. In the last section of this book, these tactics are compared with practices within our own culture, which also receive critical treatment insofar as they resemble the ideological totalism of thought reform. Instead of contrasting the "good we" and the "bad they/' rather, I have attempted to identify and understand a particular psychological phenomenon.In the pursuit of this understanding, I have recorded all that seemed relevant, including the details of whatever psychological and physical abuse my subjects encountered. I believe that this comprehensive approach offers the best means of contributing to general knowledge, and to the clarification of an emotionally loaded subject; and I hope that this study will thereby ultimately contribute to the resolution, rather than to the intensification, of cold war pas- sions. It is in fact one of the tragedies of the cold war that moral criticism of either side is immediately exploited by the other side in an exaggerated, one-dimensional fashion. One can never prevent this from happening; but one can at least express the spirit in which a work has been written.Such an approach requires that I inform the reader about my bias in both psychiatric and political matters. Psychiatrically, I have been strongly influenced by both neo-Freudian and Freudian cur- rents: the former through an association with the Washington School of Psychiatry during and immediately after the research study itself, and the latter through a subsequent candidacy in the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. Both influences were also present in my earlier psychiatric residency training at the State University Medical Center of New York. I have found the theoretical writings of Erik Erikson, especially those relating to questions of personal identity and ideology, particularly relevant for this study. At the same time, I have constantly groped for new ways to bring psychological insights to bear upon historical forces, and do so with a humanistic focus. Thus, I have made extensive use of my subjects' biographical
PREF ACE X l l lmaterial, and have attempted to include in these presentations a flesh-and-bones description of their life histories in relationship to pertinent social historical currents, as well as a rigorous psychological analysis of their responses to thought reform. This seemed to me the best way to deal with the inseparable relationship between stress and response, and (in William James' phrase) to "convey truth."
My political philosophical bias is toward a liberalism strongly critical of itself; and toward the kind of antitotalitarian (in the psy- chological terms of this study, antitotalistic), historically-minded questioning of the order of things expressed by Albert Camus in his brilliant philosophical essay, The Rebel. No one understood better than Camus the human issues involved in this book.
I should like to mention a few of the many people whose direct personal assistance was indispensable to the completion of this study. David McK. Rioch lent initial support when support was most needed, and always continued to enrich the work through his urbane eclecticism, his provocative criticism, and his personal kindness. Erik Erikson, during many memorable talks at Stock- bridge and Cambridge, made stimulating and enlarging suggestions, both about specific case histories and problems of presentation. During the latter stages of the work, David Riesrnan offered gener- ously of his extraordinaryintellectual breadth and his unique per sonal capacity to evoke what is most creative within one. Carl Binger has been sage and always helpful in his advice. All four made thoughtful criticisms of the manuscript, as did Kenneth Keniston and F. C. Redlich. Others in psychiatry and related fields to whom I am indebted are Leslie Farber, Erich Lindemann, Margaret Mead, and Beata Rank. In the perilous subtleties of Chinese cultural, intellectual, and political history, I was constantly counseled by Benjamin Schwartz and by John Fairbank, both of whom read parts of the manuscript; and earlier in the work by Lu Pao-tung, MaMeng, Howard Boorman, Conrad Brandt, and A. Doak Barnett The literary advice and loving sustenance of my wife, Betty Jean Lifton, can hardly be documented. My father, Harold A. Lifton, also did much to encourage this study. The Hong Kong research was sponsored for the first seven months
XIV THOUGHT REFORMby the Asia Foundation, and for the remaining year by the Wash- ington School of Psychiatry. The manuscript was completed under grants from the Ford Foundation and the Foundation's Fund for Research in Psychiatry, both administered through Harvard Uni- versity,Finally, I must acknowledge my debt to the forty research sub- jects, Chinese and Western, whose personal thought reform ex- periences are the basis for this study. The extent of their intelligent collaboration in this work is apparent in the biographical chapters. In these, I have altered certain details in order to protect the sub- jects' anonymity; but none of these alterations affect the essential psychological patterns.
CHAPTER 5 PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS
There is a basic similarity in what both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca experienced during Communist imprisonment. Although they were held in separate prisons far re- moved from each other, and although they differed very much in their responses to reform, they were both subjected to the same general sequence of psychological pressures. This sequence was es- sentially the same despite the fact that these men were very dif- ferent from each other, with different personal and professional life styles. Nor was this thought reform pattern common to just these two: it was experienced by all twenty-five of the Westerners whom I interviewed.
to renounce the people, the organizations, and the standards of behavior which had formed the matrix of their previous existence. They were being forced to betray—not so much their friends and colleagues, as a vital core of themselves.
This self-betrayal was extended through the pressures to "accept help" and in turn 'lielp" others. Within the bizarre morality of the prison environment, the prisoner finds himself—almost without realizing it—violating many of his most sacred personal ethics and behavioral standards. The degree of violation is expanded, very early in the game, through the mechanism of shared betrayal, as another priest described: The cell chief kept asking information about Church activities. He wanted me to denounce others, and I didn't want to do this. . . . A Chinese Father was transferred into the cell, and he said to me, "You cannot help it. You must make some denunciations. The things which the Communists know about any of your Church activities you must come out with." . . . Much later I was put in another cell to bring a French priest to confession. He had been stubborn, and had been in solitary for a few months. He was very fearful and looked like a wild animal. . . . I took care of him, washed his clothes for him, helped him to rest. I advised him that what they might know he might as well confess.
Although there is a continuing tension between holding on and letting go, some degree of self-betrayal is quickly seen as a way to survival. But the more of one's self one is led to betray, the greater is one's involvement with his captors; for by these means they make contact with whatever similar tendencies already exist within the prisoner himself—with the doubts, antagonisms, and ambivalences which each of us carries beneath the surface of his loyalties. This bond of betrayal between prisoner and environment may develop to the point where it seems to him to be all he has to grasp; turning back becomes ever more difficult.
thought reform differently, nor did anyone respond completely to all these steps; at the same time, the experiences had such magnitude that they affected every prisoner in some measure, no matter what his background and character.
1. THE ASSAULT UPON IDENTITY
From the beginning, Dr. Vincent was told he was not really a doctor, that all of what he considered himself to be was merely a cloak under which he hid what he really was. And Father Luca was told the same thing, especially about the area which he held most precious—his religion. Backing up this assertion were all of the physical and emotional assaults of early imprisonment: the confusing but incriminating interrogations, the humiliating "strug- gles," the painful and constricting chains, and the more direct phys- ical brutality. Dr. Vincent and Father Luca each began to lose his bearings on who and what he was, and where he stood in relation- ship to his fellows. Each felt his sense of self become amorphous and impotent and fall more and more under the control of its would-be remolders. Each was at one point willing to say (and to be) whatever his captors demanded.
Each was reduced to something not fully human and yet not quite animal, no longer the adult and yet not quite the child; instead, an adult human was placed in the position of an infant or a sub-human animal, helplessly being manipulated by larger and stronger "adults" or "trainers." Placed in this regressive stance, each felt himself deprived of the power, mastery, and selfhood of adult existence.In both, an intense struggle began between the adult man and the child-animal which had been created, a struggle against regres- sion and dehumanization. But each attempt on the part of the prisoner to reassert his adult human identity and to express his own will ("I am not a spy. I am a doctor"; or "This must be a mistake. I am a priest, I am telling the truth") was considered a show of re- sistance and of "insincerity," and called forth new assaults.
2. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF GUILT
Dr. Vincent and Father Luca found themselves unanimouslycondemned by an "infallible" environment. The message of guilt which they received was both existential (you are guilty!) and psy- chologically demanding (you must learn to feel guilty!). As this individual guilt potential was tapped, both men had no choice but to experience—first unconsciously and then consciously—a sense of evil. Both became so permeated by the atmosphere of guilt that external criminal accusations became merged with subjective feelings of sinfulness—of having done wrong. Feelings of resent- ment, which in such a situation could have been a source of strength, were shortlived; they gave way to the gradual feeling that the punish- ment was deserved, that more was to be expected.In making their early false confessions, Dr. Vincent and Father Luca were beginning to accept the guilty role of the criminal. Gradually, a voice within them was made to say, ever more loudly: "It is my sinfulness, and not their injustice, which causes me to suffer—although I do not yet know the full measure of my guilt." At this point their guilt was still diffuse, a vague and yet per- vasive set of feelings which we may call a free-floating sense of guilt.4 Another prisoner expressed this clearly: What they tried to impress on you is a complex of guilt. The complex I had was that I was guilty. . . . I was a criminal—that was my feel- ing, day and night.
3 . THE SELF-BETRYAL
The series of denunciations of friends and colleagues which both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca were required to make had special significance. Not only did making these accusations increase their feelings of guilt and shame, it put them in the position of subvert- ing the structures of their own lives. They were, in effect, being made
The common pattern becomes especially important in evaluating the stories these Westerners told me. Each was attempting to describe, in most instances as accurately as possible, the details of an ordeal from which he had just emerged. But what each reported was also inevitably influenced by his immediate life situation—his psychological transition between the two worlds, his personal struggles for both integrity and integration, his feelings about suc- coring and threatening colleagues and strangers in Hong Kong, his view of me as an American, a physician, a psychiatrist, and a person. All of these circumstances could affect his account, and especially its emotional tone. Therefore, both during the inter- views and in the later study of my notes, I had to sift out what was
Not every prisoner was treated as severely as were Dr. Vincent and Father Luca, but each experienced similar external assaults leading to some form of inner surrender—a surrender of personal autonomy. This assault upon autonomy and identity even extended to the level of consciousness, so that men began to exist on a level
4. THE BREAKING POINT; TOTAL CONFLICT AND THE BASIC FEAR
continued in the link.. like that shit wartards?

Coercive persuasion; a socio-psychological analysis of the "brainwashing" of American civilian prisoners by the Chinese Communists

by Schein, Edgar H Publication date 1961Topics Communisten, Hersenspoeling, China, Gevangenen, Communism -- China, Brainwashing, Prisons, Persuasion (Psychology), Lavage de cerveau, Psychological Warfare, Communisme -- Chine, CommunismPublisher N.Y., Norton
https://archive.org/details/coercivepersuasi0000sche/page/n9/mode/2up