Hello everyone, I Will be finishing in 2 years, and during weekends or after working hours ( during my private time), I am into cosplay. I draw and do other stuff but with everything else my face is hidden. I go to conventions in cosplay and last convention I spotted one of my students from my TA duties there . She didn’t recognize me but definitely stared and had her doubts. On another incident, today My PI told one of my colleagues that she should stop uploading her normal clothes casual pics to SNS as it is unprofessional . In my case, i do enjoy uploading and posing as the character i am acting as but do it all from a side account that not a single person in our lab knows about. Some of my anime circle know but they’re pretty chill about it . Otherwise I made the side account with another email and linked it to a facebook with another name and don’t follow myself or my colleagues from it to avoid suspicion. I have always loved portraying different characters ( nothing being revealing in the outfits tho) and usually i am quite reserved and out of the spotlight but this was for a very long time , “ my only spotlight”.
Does your PI have a say on what you do outside of working hours?

Gonna try and make this short. I was an avid COD player starting around 2010-2011. I played every release leading up to about 2017 when my PS4 bit the dust and i just thought of using my time doing other things. fast forward to xmas this past year my lady and i decide to buy a ps5, shortly after the new mw3 remaster came out and i purchased that. i do not play the campaign ever i only play multiplayer, more specifically i basically only play TDM or hardcore TDM. My kdr MAY be at 1.00 but honestly its probably is lower. i can get in a match and go 3-24 easily depnding on the map lol, im a middle aged man. im out here trying to have guy time not go pro.
In april i noticed i had random friends on my friends list that were in chinese/japanese characters, at first i was like how did those get there, but then i thought maybe someone switched the name on their account from my old friends from my playing days. to be safe i deleted the old friends outside of who i play with currently, including the strange accounts.
Well last week i try to log on and i do not get online. so I assume the serve it down, but after 3 days still not connecting. this lead me to investigate. to which i find i have been banned from MW3, Warzone, and MW2. I appealed it, trying to explain the situation withint the 1000 character account but that did not work and now i have no more appeals. I aslo noticed my activision account was connected to a random steam account. i have no idea what steam is, as i am a middle aged man as i have said. activision has not seemed to care.
Oddly enough i went to vent on twitter and to my surprise hundred of bots came trying to get me to pay this account or that account to regain my account back. which im definitely not doing that. I assume that is a hustle for hackers.
My question is, is there anything i can do or anyone i can actually contact outside of the appeal form? LIke an email or someone to actually explain the situation and not rely on AI to make a decision on the status of my long running account? I literally just purchased the 420 cheech and chong bundle too.
I have screen shots and more via my facebook post i made last week about the situation that shows the freidn requests and my appeal band. The other interesting this is i stopped getting activision emails, so i was unaware of the punishment until i researched it.
https://www.facebook.com/iamlurk/posts/10161545608546473
twitter links with the bots trying to scam me:
https://twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788056855865876968
https://twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788071385069228455/
twitter.com/lurkcity/status/1788209225916637622

TL;DR - 25 years with the same woman. She's cheated on me at least once that I knew of, possibly more but I've never been able to prove it. I'm beginning to feel like something isn't right again, and don't know if I should let it go or look for evidence of infidelity. If I find, should I leave her?
My wife (we'll call her Dee) and I have been together for about 25 years now, living together for most of that time, and officially married for 12 years.
Our first few years together were amazing, we had a great sex life, and did everything together. In her early 20s, they found pre-cancerous lesions on her cervix, which had to be surgically removed, and our sex life started to go downhill as it was now very painful for her.
Despite this, I continued to work menial jobs to pay the bills while she went to school. Between stress and eating out frequently, I went from a svelte 80Kg (I'm 185cm BTW) to about 105Kg, and despite being skinny growing up, I've struggled with my weight ever since.
When she graduated, having paid her bills for the last 4 or 5 years, and seeing potential in me to take care of their daughter, her parents invited us to move in with them while I went to school, an offer I gladly accepted at the age of 24.
For the next year, I worked got, did excellent in school, and would go on to graduate with top marks. At one point, we went back home to visit with friends, and I was taken aside and told by one of them that Dee had cheated on me.
As soon we were back together, I confronted her immediately and she denied everything. Dee claimed that she couldn't understand why my friends were trying to hurt our relationship, and other assurances. I believed her, and cut off ties with my friends who would besmirch her character like that, but it never sat well with me.
The following spring of 2005, she left her computer unlocked and her email open. Something deep inside me couldn't let go, and I decided to snoop. I'm not proud of it, but nevertheless, I found what I was looking for - an email from her to "Charles", some disgusting yeti of a man-child, begging him to deny that they'd fooled around and tell my friend William that he was mistaken, and it wasn't her.
I confronted her again, and again, she lied, and only when I showed her her own confession did she finally admit to it. She said it was a stupid thing to do, she was afraid she was going to lose me, it happened when we weren't doing well together (although she never voiced her displeasure to me)...
I can't explain why I stayed - perhaps it was because I believed I still had a future with her, but I told her it was going take a lot of work to rebuild our relationship.
Within a year, we moved out, I bought us a house, and things were good for a while. eventually, I started to feel that terrible ache in my heart again, and after seeing some suspicious text messages in her phone (although nothing outright damning), I confronted her again, and again, she flatly denied that she was seeing anyone else. The texts were harmless, she's like that with all of her friends.
Things have gone on that way for a while, and today I decided to snoop around in her Facebook messages, and came across her chat with a man from back in 2015. Again, a fat, unattractive older man. In it, he apologized for being "gropey" with her at a party at his place, and she replied with "no worries, were all a little on the stupid end."
Of course she never mentioned any of this to me, so I can't help but wonder what else she's keeping from me. Her and her sister go on trips without me, concerts, comedy shows, and the like, and I can't but wonder what she gets up to.
I have no idea whether she's currently cheating on me, or what she's allowed to happen to her in any of these places. She's not the time to discourage unsolicited male attention, and knowing I would be upset, is more apt to keep it from me.
I work from home 90% of the time now, and make a very good living and have a great job with a good pension. I'm actively working on my weight through eating clean and exercising. I do all the cooking, all of the cleaning, and pay all of our bills. I'm a good provider, and our future is assured.
I don't know why she feels she needs to step out on me, and of the two of us, I'm insatiably horny and always go out of my way to take care of sexual needs as often as she'll let me. Although I'm past my prime, and have put on a few stone, I'm not unattractive.
I feel sick right now thinking about all of this, and am unsure what to do.
I feel like I don't have any concrete evidence that she's been unfaithful recently, but have terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that something isn't right. I'm tempted to get ahold of her mobile phone after she's gone to bed and see if my worries are justified.
Should I leave it alone, or should I keep digging? What should I do if I find it?

There are many posts about this, but I hope to gather some clear information about this change, as the Help page is of limited use.
On my phone, the Messenger app is asking me to set up a PIN (or another option) to access chat history across devices.

• I've seen discussions about "secret" chats and "normal" chats merging. Are old conversations "converted", or do they remain as they were? Is "secret" the only option for new chats?

This official Q&A says that chat history will now be stored on devices (presumably with a knock-on effect on both device storage, and phone backup file size), unless you turn on secure storage, then data remains on Facebook's servers.

• Does using secure storage mean that Low storage mode does not come into play?

I can still use messaging in a desktop web browser as normal at facebook.com. It appears that message history is loaded from the server as I scroll.

• Will I be forced to use end-to-end encryption on this interface at some point?

The choice about how to access chat history - I guess PIN in the best choice if you use Messenger cross-platform. (I note that it is only the key, not the chat history, which is stored with Apple or Google if you choose that option.)

• Those who have set it up - which did you choose and why? I'm not going to worry about why you would choose a 40 character code if you can choose a 6 character PIN...

Grateful for any thoughts on these interrelated questions, do let me know if I've made incorrect assumptions. Main aim is to avoid losing any data. I'm now concerned about deleting the Messenger app in case chat history is lost.
In reading about this I also found out some other things: the website messenger.com; the Messenger desktop app; there was for a while an app called Messenger Lite; and the fact that messaging has been added back into the main Facebook app having been removed some years ago. So it's all a bit of a mess.
It occurs to me that this implementation is quite different to WhatsApp, which does not retain messages on a server. Facebook bought the former, and at one time announced an intention to merge the platforms, so you might have expected them to switch to the same model.

This morning, on my way to work, I was stopped by some temporary lights for roadworks on the main (only) road through my small community. A lady had to pull out of her drive in the middle of the road work area and was a bit slow so I missed my green light waiting for her.
Out of character, I stuck my middle finger up at her as she drove towards me. She pulled over and told me that she has to take her chance with the lights because she needs to get out of her house still. I was quite rude and sarcastic in my reply and I didn't apologise (even though I obviously knew I'd been a dick).
She has posted (fairly and politely) on the community Facebook page about it so I now know her name. Part of me wants to message her a sincere apology for being so rude; part of me is terrified that she'll either send me a shouty message in response or even add my name to her post. I have no evidence to support my fears, she's probably a very nice, normal lady and I'm just anxious. Equally I can't decide if I'd be wrong to reach out because she's probably moved on and I'd just be doing it to make myself feel better.

DAY: DAY: MAY 12, 2024

• 5-12-2024CAN I TAKE YOUR ORDER—AND YOUR DATA? THE HIDDEN REASON RETAILERS ARE REPLACING STAFF WITH AI BOTS You might have seen viral videos of Wendy’s drive-thru customers in the United States ordering their fast food from the firm’s generative AI bot Wendy’s FreshAI. Most show a very human-like transaction punctuated with cries of amazement at how fast, accurate and polite the system is. While the system and others like it are in their infancy, and some still rely heavily on human assistance, retailers are investing huge sums in AI to replace human workers. Why the rush to automate? It might seem like it’s all about slashing
• 5-12-2024AI FILM FESTIVAL GIVES GLIMPSE OF CINEMA’S FUTURE With fantastical characters including mud people and giant grandmothers, an AI film festival is giving a glimpse of the storytelling made possible by the novel technology. Nearly 3,000 short films were submitted to the festival organized by Runway AI, one of the leading start-ups in the field of AI-powered video generation. The 10 films selected put the filmmakers’ vivid imaginations on display, with their stories set in aesthetically stunning universes. “There is a perception of … AI- driven filmmaking and creation as having a very specific style
• 5-12-2024AI SYSTEMS ARE ALREADY SKILLED AT DECEIVING AND MANIPULATING HUMANS, STUDY SHOWS Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems have already learned how to deceive humans, even systems that have been trained to be helpful and honest. In a review article published in the journal Patterns on May 10, researchers describe the risks of deception by AI systems and call for governments to develop strong regulations to address this issue as soon as possible. “AI developers do not have a confident understanding of what causes undesirable AI behaviors
• 5-12-2024THE END OF THE PACKAGE HOLIDAY PROVIDER? BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY COULD REVOLUTIONIZE TRAVEL EXPERIENCES Forget the middleman—blockchain technology could lead to the end of the traditional package holiday provider, putting power back into the hands of customers, according to a new study from the University of Surrey. The research looked into user acceptance of blockchain-based sharing platforms similar to Airbnb. The study found that blockchain technology could eliminate intermediaries, such as holiday providers, potentially slashing costs by bypassing booking platforms. The study also suggests that property owners stand to gain from blockchain adoption and gain more direct income
• 5-12-2024NOW THEY FEAR IT WAS A SCAM Sleep-deprived and anxious about feeding their babies, tens of thousands of moms in Illinois and elsewhere recently turned to a variety of Facebook groups offering support for breastfeeding, pumping breast milk and postpartum care. Direct responses were often remarkably prompt from the creator and admin of these groups, a Facebook user named “Cathy Marie Chan,” whose profile featured a smiling picture of a woman purporting to be a board-certified lactation consultant
• 5-12-2024HERE ARE FOUR RED FLAGS TO WATCH FOR IN YOUR CHATBOT ‘FRIEND’ It’s been seven years since the launch of Replika, an artificially intelligent chatbot designed to be a friend to human users. Despite early warnings about the dangers of such AI friends, interest in friendships and even romantic relationships with AI is on the rise. The Google Play store shows more than 30 million total downloads of Replika and two of its major competitors since their respective launches. With one in four people around the world reporting being lonely, it is no wonder so many are drawn to the promise
• 5-12-2024CALL FOR SAFEGUARDS TO PREVENT UNWANTED ‘HAUNTINGS’ BY AI CHATBOTS OF DEAD LOVED ONES Without design safety standards, artificial intelligence that allows users to hold text and voice conversations with lost loved ones runs the risk of causing psychological harm and even digitally “haunting” those left behind, according to University of Cambridge researchers. “Deadbots” or “Griefbots” are AI chatbots that simulate the language patterns and personality traits of the dead
• 5-12-2024TURING TEST STUDY SHOWS HUMANS RATE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS MORE ‘MORAL’ THAN OTHER PEOPLE A new study has found that when people are presented with two answers to an ethical question, most will think the answer from artificial intelligence (AI) is better than the response from another person. “Attributions Toward Artificial Agents in a Modified Moral Turing Test
• 5-12-2024FAKE US SCHOOL AUDIO STOKES AI ALARM The fabricated audio clip of the Maryland school principal underscores the ease with which widely available AI and editing tools can be misused to impersonate celebrities and everyday citizens alike. A fabricated audio clip of a US high school principal prompted a torrent of outrage, leaving him battling allegations of racism and anti-Semitism in a case that has sparked new alarm about AI manipulation. Police charged a disgruntled staff member at the Maryland school with manufacturing the recording that surfaced in January
• 5-12-2024ELECTRONIC MUSIC WITH A HUMAN RHYTHM
• 5-12-2024RESEARCHERS TEST AI SYSTEMS’ ABILITY TO SOLVE THE NEW YORK TIMES’ CONNECTIONS PUZZLE
• 5-12-2024SCIENTISTS CONVERT CHICKEN FAT INTO ENERGY STORAGE DEVICES
• 5-12-2024RED, YELLOW, GREEN … AND WHITE? SMARTER VEHICLES COULD MEAN BIG CHANGES FOR THE TRAFFIC LIGHT
• 5-12-2024FRENCH ART GROUP USES BRAINWAVES AND AI TO RECREATE LANDSCAPES
• 5-12-2024MICROSOFT, AMAZON TO INVEST BILLIONS IN FRENCH TECH
• 5-12-2024NEW RESEARCH SHOWS HOW CHILD-LIKE LANGUAGE LEARNING IS POSSIBLE USING AI TOOLS
• 5-12-2024TEAM DESIGNS ROBOTS TO HELP WITH HUMAN HABITATION IN SPACE
• 5-12-2024TRADING BETWEEN HOUSEHOLDS IN SMART ENERGY COMMUNITIES
• 5-12-2024RESEARCHERS DEVELOP AI-POWERED ‘EYE’ FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE TO ‘SEE’ OBJECTS
• 5-12-2024RESEARCHERS DEVELOP A BIOMECHANICAL DATASET FOR BADMINTON PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
• 5-12-2024AMAZON’S NEW FEES ON SELLERS LIKENED TO ‘KICK IN THE GUT’
• 5-12-2024ALMOST HALF OF IT COULD COME FROM PENNSYLVANIA WASTEWATER
• 5-12-2024NEW LARGE LEARNING MODEL SHOWS HOW AI MIGHT SHAPE LGBTQIA+ ADVOCACY
• 5-12-2024RESEARCHER EXPLAINS WHY WE SHOULD CARE MORE ABOUT CONVERGING TECHNOLOGIES
• 5-12-2024COMMERCIAL JET MAKER AIRBUS IS STAYING HUMBLE EVEN AS BOEING FLOUNDERS. THERE’S A REASON FOR THAT
• 5-12-2024BOLSTER SAFEGUARDS AFTER HEALTH CARE CYBERATTACK
• 5-12-2024HUNDREDS OF CITIES HAVE ACHIEVED ZERO ROAD DEATHS IN A YEAR—HERE’S HOW THEY DID IT
• 5-12-2024DIGITAL HUMAN MODEL AIDS DESIGN OF MOTORCYCLES, BASED ON RIDING POSTURE
• 5-12-2024AI TECHNOLOGY IS SHOWING CULTURAL BIASES—HERE’S WHY AND WHAT CAN BE DONE
• 5-12-2024RESEARCH SHOWS VR POSES PRIVACY RISKS FOR KIDS—PARENTS AREN’T AS WORRIED AS THEY SHOULD BE
• 5-12-2024NEW SOFTWARE TRAINED ON PHOTOGRAPHIC DATABASE MAY ALLOW FACIAL RECOGNITION BENEATH THE MASK
• 5-12-2024SMARTPHONE APP CAN UNMASK FORGED DOCUMENTS
• 5-12-2024NEW STUDY FINDS AI-GENERATED EMPATHY HAS ITS LIMITS
• 5-12-2024ROBOTIC SYSTEM FEEDS PEOPLE WITH SEVERE MOBILITY LIMITATIONS
• 5-12-2024PROTOTYPE BROWSER EXTENSION ADDS WIKIPEDIA-LIKE CITATIONS ON YOUTUBE TO CURB MISINFORMATION
• 5-12-2024SAMSUNG TO BUY FRENCH MEDICAL AI FIRM SONIO
• 5-12-2024AI AND HOLOGRAPHY BRING 3D AUGMENTED REALITY TO REGULAR GLASSES
• 5-12-2024DOVE’S LATEST ‘REAL BEAUTY’ DRIVE—AND WHY AI WILL BE HARDER TO DITCH THAN IT THINKS
• 5-12-2024RESEARCH CASTS NEW LIGHT ON BIKE SAFETY IN THE AGE OF SELF-DRIVING CARS
• 5-12-2024A SECOND LIFE FOR DISCARDED LITHIUM-ION CELLS
• 5-12-2024SINCE TESLA RECALLED ITS VEHICLES IN 2023, THERE HAVE BEEN 20 ACCIDENTS AND INVESTIGATORS ARE ASKING WHY

MAY 12, 2024

• 5-12-2024CAN I TAKE YOUR ORDER—AND YOUR DATA? THE HIDDEN REASON RETAILERS ARE REPLACING STAFF WITH AI BOTS
• 5-12-2024AI FILM FESTIVAL GIVES GLIMPSE OF CINEMA’S FUTURE
• 5-12-2024AI SYSTEMS ARE ALREADY SKILLED AT DECEIVING AND MANIPULATING HUMANS, STUDY SHOWS
• 5-12-2024THE END OF THE PACKAGE HOLIDAY PROVIDER? BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY COULD REVOLUTIONIZE TRAVEL EXPERIENCES
• 5-12-2024NOW THEY FEAR IT WAS A SCAM
• 5-12-2024HERE ARE FOUR RED FLAGS TO WATCH FOR IN YOUR CHATBOT ‘FRIEND’
• 5-12-2024CALL FOR SAFEGUARDS TO PREVENT UNWANTED ‘HAUNTINGS’ BY AI CHATBOTS OF DEAD LOVED ONES
• 5-12-2024TURING TEST STUDY SHOWS HUMANS RATE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS MORE ‘MORAL’ THAN OTHER PEOPLE
• 5-12-2024FAKE US SCHOOL AUDIO STOKES AI ALARM
• 5-12-2024ELECTRONIC MUSIC WITH A HUMAN RHYTHM
• 5-12-2024RESEARCHERS TEST AI SYSTEMS’ ABILITY TO SOLVE THE NEW YORK TIMES’ CONNECTIONS PUZZLE
• 5-12-2024SCIENTISTS CONVERT CHICKEN FAT INTO ENERGY STORAGE DEVICES
• 5-12-2024RED, YELLOW, GREEN … AND WHITE? SMARTER VEHICLES COULD MEAN BIG CHANGES FOR THE TRAFFIC LIGHT
• 5-12-2024FRENCH ART GROUP USES BRAINWAVES AND AI TO RECREATE LANDSCAPES
• 5-12-2024MICROSOFT, AMAZON TO INVEST BILLIONS IN FRENCH TECH
• 5-12-2024NEW RESEARCH SHOWS HOW CHILD-LIKE LANGUAGE LEARNING IS POSSIBLE USING AI TOOLS
• 5-12-2024TEAM DESIGNS ROBOTS TO HELP WITH HUMAN HABITATION IN SPACE
• 5-12-2024TRADING BETWEEN HOUSEHOLDS IN SMART ENERGY COMMUNITIES
• 5-12-2024RESEARCHERS DEVELOP AI-POWERED ‘EYE’ FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE TO ‘SEE’ OBJECTS
• 5-12-2024RESEARCHERS DEVELOP A BIOMECHANICAL DATASET FOR BADMINTON PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
• 5-12-2024AMAZON’S NEW FEES ON SELLERS LIKENED TO ‘KICK IN THE GUT’
• 5-12-2024ALMOST HALF OF IT COULD COME FROM PENNSYLVANIA WASTEWATER
• 5-12-2024NEW LARGE LEARNING MODEL SHOWS HOW AI MIGHT SHAPE LGBTQIA+ ADVOCACY
• 5-12-2024RESEARCHER EXPLAINS WHY WE SHOULD CARE MORE ABOUT CONVERGING TECHNOLOGIES
• 5-12-2024COMMERCIAL JET MAKER AIRBUS IS STAYING HUMBLE EVEN AS BOEING FLOUNDERS. THERE’S A REASON FOR THAT
• 5-12-2024BOLSTER SAFEGUARDS AFTER HEALTH CARE CYBERATTACK
• 5-12-2024HUNDREDS OF CITIES HAVE ACHIEVED ZERO ROAD DEATHS IN A YEAR—HERE’S HOW THEY DID IT
• 5-12-2024DIGITAL HUMAN MODEL AIDS DESIGN OF MOTORCYCLES, BASED ON RIDING POSTURE
• 5-12-2024AI TECHNOLOGY IS SHOWING CULTURAL BIASES—HERE’S WHY AND WHAT CAN BE DONE
• 5-12-2024RESEARCH SHOWS VR POSES PRIVACY RISKS FOR KIDS—PARENTS AREN’T AS WORRIED AS THEY SHOULD BE
• 5-12-2024NEW SOFTWARE TRAINED ON PHOTOGRAPHIC DATABASE MAY ALLOW FACIAL RECOGNITION BENEATH THE MASK
• 5-12-2024SMARTPHONE APP CAN UNMASK FORGED DOCUMENTS
• 5-12-2024NEW STUDY FINDS AI-GENERATED EMPATHY HAS ITS LIMITS
• 5-12-2024ROBOTIC SYSTEM FEEDS PEOPLE WITH SEVERE MOBILITY LIMITATIONS
• 5-12-2024PROTOTYPE BROWSER EXTENSION ADDS WIKIPEDIA-LIKE CITATIONS ON YOUTUBE TO CURB MISINFORMATION
• 5-12-2024SAMSUNG TO BUY FRENCH MEDICAL AI FIRM SONIO
• 5-12-2024AI AND HOLOGRAPHY BRING 3D AUGMENTED REALITY TO REGULAR GLASSES
• 5-12-2024DOVE’S LATEST ‘REAL BEAUTY’ DRIVE—AND WHY AI WILL BE HARDER TO DITCH THAN IT THINKS
• 5-12-2024RESEARCH CASTS NEW LIGHT ON BIKE SAFETY IN THE AGE OF SELF-DRIVING CARS
• 5-12-2024A SECOND LIFE FOR DISCARDED LITHIUM-ION CELLS
• 5-12-2024SINCE TESLA RECALLED ITS VEHICLES IN 2023, THERE HAVE BEEN 20 ACCIDENTS AND INVESTIGATORS ARE ASKING WHY

On May 10th, 2024, the Darkest Dungeon subreddit was hit by a post about Wayne June. The voice actor for the narration of the game was deemed as every type of -ist and -phobe, with his tweet history scanned for anything he liked. Not what he posted, what he liked. These ranged from simple tweets from Elon Musk about the word “racist” being used more in news reports, to a post from End Wokeness about how San Francisco wants to use drones to catch criminals. You might be wondering “when does the offensiveness happen?”
Apparently, his main crime is liking a post that determined the people who need a roulette reel to pick a bathroom are people who don’t have all their marbles.
Even in 2010, this would have been common knowledge. We would point and laugh at people who wandered into the wrong toilet, especially if they sat down on a urinal. Now, we are forced to respect this concept that people can wander around into spaces that they are not welcomed, especially by feminists who claim a bear is safer to be around than a man. The institution has become insane, with indie titles copying this sentiment, ironically for a series that’s all about characters going insane. What furthers disappointment is how the mods of the subreddit defended his cancellation and even attacked any rejection of said cancellation.
What followed was another post that determined this outrage was extra and unjustified, but was quickly taken down by the mods who “wanted the topic to stay in the initial post, to avoid the subject getting out of control”. This is woke-speak for “do not go against our agenda, and stick to the narrative”. I’ve noticed for a while that indie is not safe from the woke mindvirus. I am told that indie is the way to go to be safe, only to be met with multiple woke circles revolving around popular indie titles. And remember: this has nothing to do with the developers, because this was a voice actor they hired.
In the case of Wayne June, his activity is no different than Joe Rogan on JRE, with his likes of Elon Musk being seen as mundane and uneventful to normal people. But to the woke, this is him announcing that he is the enemy, because the woke oppose liberalism. Liberals are not allowed to demand freedom of speech or even freedom of association, they must be contained and controlled in fear of the narrative being questioned. Progressives have determined that they must control the narrative, as a form of biopower, inspired by postmodernist philosophers like Michel Foucault. It’s not that these things make sense or adhere to reality, but they must control them and manipulate people into believing they are, so that a progression is made.
Naturally, Red Hook Studios has two choices to follow up from this event:

1. Accept the cancelation and exile Wayne June
2. Reject the cancelation and feel the wrath of gaming journalists

If anything, we are now going to get hit pieces and more cancellation material about this poor guy, who is simply a voice actor for an indie game. If this were the 00s, the absence of twitter(as well as facebook) would have kept this guy under the radar. Now that indie developers, as well as employees, are practically forced to hold social media accounts, they are forced to obey the woke narrative. In order to gain traction, they must appeal to woke streamers and woke journalists, only to accidentally enter a cursed contract to join the church of woke, being conscripted into a culture war they weren’t even aware of. I don’t know how old the guy is, but he looks like he’s in his late 40s, meaning he is simply a product of his time.
I also don’t want people to react negatively to the developers themselves, over what their subreddit does. I don’t know how intertwined they are with each other, but it’s not like they are willing to do a woke test before acquiring free labor. Sadly, this is why the woke keep on taking over places, because they don’t have anything better to do and find benefit in controlling the narrative. Their quest for power becomes jampacked with plenty of acolytes who are willing to sacrifice their own time and money for their gnostic, civil religion. With how they kick and scream when people don’t believe their pseudoscientific nonsense, you’re damn right they’re going to stay dedicated to spreading the word, by any means necessary.
Indie is not safe from wokeness. It never was. It is harder to directly tie oneself to wokeness when going indie, but the indirect enforcement around social media and journalism will cause the product to become infected through fandom. Any power witnessed by the woke will be sought by them and turned into a tourist trap. The tourists will follow the fashion, they will start making up conspiracy theories about how “x project was always woke”, and eventually the neglect or ignorance of the game developers will be taken advantage of. Then there is also the threat of money loss, whenever tourists take over a particular property as the majority of a fandom.
To make an example, let’s say you release a game and didn’t expect much of an audience. Somehow, you get 100k people going crazy about your game and you feel like you hit the jackpot. So much attention, so many possibilities, and now you can make more games. Money goes way, goes into further production, and suddenly the fans start making demands. The liberal developer will obey them because they don’t see a harm in making money from pleasing the audience.
All the while, the tourists were making the demands for diversity and they made sure they were the loudest. Positivity is enjoyed in silence, while negativity is heard by everyone through reviews and hit pieces. The woke embrace negativity, while liberals beg for omission of anything that would get the attention of the woke. Unfortunately for liberals, the woke are able to make things up and cancel anyone they want with anything they want. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be convincing and inflammatory enough to be spread around and get memory holed.
If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t be constantly doing this.
Being a game developer is hard, but being an indie game developer is utter hell. The amount of tip-toeing they have to do, the ridiculous demands they have to obey, the sheer amount of gaslighting they have to suffer through. Many are not mentally prepared for such a moment. This is why, for any aspiring indie game developer: be mentally prepared for the worst. Practice your cancellation in the mirror if you have to.
It’ll save you in the long run.

On May 10th, 2024, the Darkest Dungeon subreddit was hit by a post about Wayne June. The voice actor for the narration of the game was deemed as every type of -ist and -phobe, with his tweet history scanned for anything he liked. Not what he posted, what he liked. These ranged from simple tweets from Elon Musk about the word “racist” being used more in news reports, to a post from End Wokeness about how San Francisco wants to use drones to catch criminals. You might be wondering “when does the offensiveness happen?”
Apparently, his main crime is liking a post that determined the people who need a roulette reel to pick a bathroom are people who don’t have all their marbles.
Even in 2010, this would have been common knowledge. We would point and laugh at people who wandered into the wrong toilet, especially if they sat down on a urinal. Now, we are forced to respect this concept that people can wander around into spaces that they are not welcomed, especially by feminists who claim a bear is safer to be around than a man. The institution has become insane, with indie titles copying this sentiment, ironically for a series that’s all about characters going insane. What furthers disappointment is how the mods of the subreddit defended his cancellation and even attacked any rejection of said cancellation.
What followed was another post that determined this outrage was extra and unjustified, but was quickly taken down by the mods who “wanted the topic to stay in the initial post, to avoid the subject getting out of control”. This is woke-speak for “do not go against our agenda, and stick to the narrative”. I’ve noticed for a while that indie is not safe from the woke mindvirus. I am told that indie is the way to go to be safe, only to be met with multiple woke circles revolving around popular indie titles. And remember: this has nothing to do with the developers, because this was a voice actor they hired.
In the case of Wayne June, his activity is no different than Joe Rogan on JRE, with his likes of Elon Musk being seen as mundane and uneventful to normal people. But to the woke, this is him announcing that he is the enemy, because the woke oppose liberalism. Liberals are not allowed to demand freedom of speech or even freedom of association, they must be contained and controlled in fear of the narrative being questioned. Progressives have determined that they must control the narrative, as a form of biopower, inspired by postmodernist philosophers like Michel Foucault. It’s not that these things make sense or adhere to reality, but they must control them and manipulate people into believing they are, so that a progression is made.
Naturally, Red Hook Studios has two choices to follow up from this event:

1. Accept the cancelation and exile Wayne June
2. Reject the cancelation and feel the wrath of gaming journalists

If anything, we are now going to get hit pieces and more cancellation material about this poor guy, who is simply a voice actor for an indie game. If this were the 00s, the absence of twitter(as well as facebook) would have kept this guy under the radar. Now that indie developers, as well as employees, are practically forced to hold social media accounts, they are forced to obey the woke narrative. In order to gain traction, they must appeal to woke streamers and woke journalists, only to accidentally enter a cursed contract to join the church of woke, being conscripted into a culture war they weren’t even aware of. I don’t know how old the guy is, but he looks like he’s in his late 40s, meaning he is simply a product of his time.
I also don’t want people to react negatively to the developers themselves, over what their subreddit does. I don’t know how intertwined they are with each other, but it’s not like they are willing to do a woke test before acquiring free labor. Sadly, this is why the woke keep on taking over places, because they don’t have anything better to do and find benefit in controlling the narrative. Their quest for power becomes jampacked with plenty of acolytes who are willing to sacrifice their own time and money for their gnostic, civil religion. With how they kick and scream when people don’t believe their pseudoscientific nonsense, you’re damn right they’re going to stay dedicated to spreading the word, by any means necessary.
Indie is not safe from wokeness. It never was. It is harder to directly tie oneself to wokeness when going indie, but the indirect enforcement around social media and journalism will cause the product to become infected through fandom. Any power witnessed by the woke will be sought by them and turned into a tourist trap. The tourists will follow the fashion, they will start making up conspiracy theories about how “x project was always woke”, and eventually the neglect or ignorance of the game developers will be taken advantage of. Then there is also the threat of money loss, whenever tourists take over a particular property as the majority of a fandom.
To make an example, let’s say you release a game and didn’t expect much of an audience. Somehow, you get 100k people going crazy about your game and you feel like you hit the jackpot. So much attention, so many possibilities, and now you can make more games. Money goes way, goes into further production, and suddenly the fans start making demands. The liberal developer will obey them because they don’t see a harm in making money from pleasing the audience.
All the while, the tourists were making the demands for diversity and they made sure they were the loudest. Positivity is enjoyed in silence, while negativity is heard by everyone through reviews and hit pieces. The woke embrace negativity, while liberals beg for omission of anything that would get the attention of the woke. Unfortunately for liberals, the woke are able to make things up and cancel anyone they want with anything they want. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be convincing and inflammatory enough to be spread around and get memory holed.
If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t be constantly doing this.
Being a game developer is hard, but being an indie game developer is utter hell. The amount of tip-toeing they have to do, the ridiculous demands they have to obey, the sheer amount of gaslighting they have to suffer through. Many are not mentally prepared for such a moment. This is why, for any aspiring indie game developer: be mentally prepared for the worst. Practice your cancellation in the mirror if you have to.
It’ll save you in the long run.

Searched and saw the last topic was 3 or 2 years ago. I remember Anne talking about the idea for a 3rd book that would be set in New Orleans and Reuben and Co. would be seeking out ancient werewolves in the Bayou (a possible crossover with the vampires or witches or both? Though, she later on said she hated the crossovers with the vampires and witches, then went back on that stance when fans didn't like the outcome for some characters in the Prince Lestat trilogy). Anyway, she said this in 2013 on the Craig Ferguson show and I know she said herself she would start novels but get bored and set them aside (she said, I think it was on her Facebook page, she had started a novel set during the French Revolution, but halfway toward the end set it aside for she got bored with it) but she seemed really eager to get to work on a 3rd Wolf novel.
So, question is, do you think she may have finished it and set it aside to start the Prince Lestat trilogy and it may be a work that will be pulished sometime in the future? Or she never started and it was just tossing out a mention of an idea for a 3rd Wolf book? Of note, on the Books-A-Million website, if you put her in the search menu, and go to the nearly last page, you'll find Unpublished Ghost Detective Novel set for 2029 publication. Not sure how accurate that is, and 2029 might just be a placeholder year, but made me think there's a chance that maybe this 3rd Wolf book could be published. I know Christopher said he would see her last work published so figured it was this ghost detective novel.
And the interview where she mentioned the ideas for a 3rd Wolf Gift novel. Mention is at 35:30 time mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dYZzD2pXJs

With the Humble Bundle, there are a lot of new players that are likely to join in the community. So here's my welcome, and some things to know.

System Core Summary

The Cypher System is a Universal TTRPG that can be used for any style of game. It's written by a team of VERY experienced writers. People that worked for TSR, WotC, Paizo, etc.
The system itself is HIGHLY customizable. Setting up a campaign is like getting a box of lego bricks, and building it up how you want. Do you want a free-form improv light narrative game that's entirely theatre of the mind? Easy! Done. Would you prefer it to be more tactical, crunchy, lethal, with precise measurements and gridded battlemaps? There are rules for that as well. There are options for every genre, with more coming out all the time. As of me writing this, MCG just had their kickstarter for both a Cyberpunk genre book, and a Weird West genre book.
Cypher also has some of the best mechanics I've ever seen in the form of GM and Player Intrusions. It's a tool that lets anyone at the table affect the scene, without it feeling "cheaty" or ruining the fact that it's a Game, with Rules. As a GM you never have to worry about encounter balance or anything, because you are given the tools to modify things as part of play.

Being a GM is EASY STREET!

I'd be hard pressed to find a system that's easier to run. The rolls are all player-facing, and as a GM you can focus almost entirely on managing the storyline and world. When it comes to conflicts, all you really need to know are how some of the rules basics work, and how to tell the players a difficulty from 1 to 10 (or 1 to 15 for super heroes).
And because of the fact that Cyphers are one-use character abilities, and even Artifacts often deplete. You rarely have to worry about giving out an item that permanently breaks the rest of the campaign. Everything is always refreshing and new in those areas.
As mentioned before you never have to worry about balancing encounters or anything. NPC's are also those same 1 to 10 difficulties, and due to GM Intrusions, you have a mechanic to make it easier or harder within the confines of the rules. Players don't have to worry about you having to "fudge rolls", or do anything that starts to remove the Game from Roleplaying Game. That is NEVER needed in this system. You will always have the tools you need to balance things as a GM.

The Community

The Cypher System has one of the best TTRPG communities I've ever seen with the Cypher Unlimited community both on DISCORD and facebook. It's like 6k-7k members on the discord alone. Although not officially run by MonteCook Games, they work closely with MCG, and that's where the events happen like AMA's, Online Conventions, Give-Aways, etc. It's a very well run community I'd suggest checking out.

Videos

I've got a complete video tutorial that walks you through the steps if you need it HERE. I've also got some examples of play in edited one-shots with players like BobWorldBuilder, NerdImmersion, TreantMonk, Indestructoboy, etc. HERE and HERE. If you've only played D&D 5e and want to know why Cypher may actually work out for you better, you can watch this video HERE.

Open License

Monte Cook Games has not one, but two licenses to make products for the cypher system. One of them is a little more closed, but allows you to actually write content in some of their I.P.'s! The other is a very simple open license that let's you use the main rules not only from the core rulebook, but all of their genre books as well (which they add as soon as they are published). the open license (CSOL), has all of the main rules content from those books, although things like advice, lore, world settings, etc.. you still need to buy the books for. But if you just need the main mechanics, you can use the SRD for quick reference. This also means there are a bunch of established third party creators to check out.

Online Support

Monte Cook Games has a launched a growing number of Online tools. From an NPC/Bestiary reference area, to a full on Character Builder that let's you make, organize, and export to PDF or even some Virtual Table Tops. Speaking of VTT's, there is strong support for both Roll20 and Foundry, with soon-to-exist support in other platforms like Alchemy. FoundryVTT is my personal favourite. It's been crafted well enough that you can run it perfectly fine with zero mods of any kind. Although with the addition of just a few content mods you could have the entirety of the SRD contents as drag-and-drop supported in your game. So if you live in the digital world, MCG has you covered there as well.

Any Other Input?

If any of the other regulars around here have any input, feel free to add more things for new players to know.

Hi! Since the beginning of Pandemic, I have been a subject of online discredit and character assassination. Though the latter was not that clear, but all comments are pointing at me. I usually rebut but for the sake of my inner peace, I never responded. Although a friend of mine clarified. Mind you it was pandemic, family got COVID, I was the only one who can go out to buy supplies and meds, and I am at home with my nephews and nieces who are also susceptible on the disease. I was so stressed working online, we were not trained naman on that set up.
I though the mockery, as I describe it, gonna end there. Pero syempre its PH, we dont want to see you successful and happy haha jk lang. So, it came back again. This time, malicious news about me spread. I could not defend myself, coz the info were somewhat true — they were just shared maliciously. What hurts me even is the fact that its my friends who sell me out in exchange.
Ever since that day, I very seldom open my facebook account and I feel anxious whenever I do. Makita ko lang homepage kinakabahan nako. Ang safe lang sakin yung mismong profile ko, dun lang ako napapanatag.
So I guess its true, that other than Social Anxiety is happening, it also translates into the socmed platform.
I am just sharing. I hope we can be fine someday 😊😊😊

Please, feel free to add any events below! Check out the Visitor's Guide for more things to do around town!
Looking to meet up with people? Check out Meetup St. Louis.
Be sure to continue scrolling past the Weekly Events for Trivia Nights, Live Music, Sporting Events, Local Comedy, and more!
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• Bacon Fest at Alpha Brewing Company
  • May 19, 2024
  • Bacon lovers, rejoice! Alpha Brewing Co. is hosting a sizzling event on May 19. Tickets to Bacon Fest include all the bacon and beer that you can consume – plus, live music from two bands.
• Cardinals HOF Presents: Flashback Fridays
  • May 17, 2024
  • Visit the Cardinals Museum for a candid interview in our Sportsman's Park Theater with former Cardinals Catcher Mike Matheny on Friday, May 17th at 4:30pm.
• Cardinals HOF Presents: Saturday Signings
  • May 18, 2024
  • Saturday, May 18th is Saturday Signings with former Cardinals Catcher Mike Matheny from 2-4pm in the Cardinals Museum!
• Chess at the Brewery
  • Every Wednesday
  • Local meetup group of chess players that meet at breweries on Wednesday nights. They rotate locations each week.
  • See their Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/chessatthebrewery/) for the location this week.
• Chinese Culture Days at Missouri Botanical Garden
  • May 18 - 19, 2024
  • Chinese Culture Days at the Missouri Botanical Garden feature colorful Chinese pageantry, music, dance and art.
  • At the event, you can also immerse yourself in the history and legends of China while enjoying traditional cuisine.
• E.T. Bracket Series at World Wide Technology Raceway
  • May 18, 2024
  • The E.T. Bracket Series presented by Carl’s 4WD & Performance Center at World Wide Technology Raceway allows drivers in different vehicles to compete on an equal basis against each other.
• Family Night with Fredbird
  • Wednesdays
  • Join others at Cardinals Nation Restaurant & Bar for Family Night with Fredbird on select Wednesday evenings this off-season! Bring your family down for games, prizes, and meet Fredbird from 6:30-7:30pm.
• Karaoke Wednesdays at HandleBar
  • Every Wednesday
  • Browse the catalog and find your favorite songs to sing! Songbookslive.com/stlredcarpet
• Karaoke Wednesdays at Mack's Bar & Grill
  • Every Wednesday
• Landmarks Downtown Walking Tours
  • Every Saturday
  • Landmarks Downtown St. Louis Walking Tours: History, Culture, Architecture, and Exercise: What could be better on a Saturday morning.
• Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection at St. Louis Art Museum
  • February 23 - July 14, 2024
  • Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection celebrates a transformative gift of outstanding works by Native American artists active across the 20th century. The promised gift of 100 works establishes a critical junction between the Saint Louis Art Museum’s deep collection of pre-1920 Indigenous art and a growing emphasis on the contemporary.
• Open Mic Night at Schlafly Bottleworks (Maplewood)
  • Every Wednesday
  • Join others every Wednesday evening and showcase your talents with our Open Mic Night! Open sign up begins at 6:30PM with music starting at 7:00PM. They welcome original material, covers and spoken word! Grab a beer, then play and listen every Wednesday! There are no cover charges and no drink minimums to attend.
• Pointfest
  • May 18, 2024
  • POINTFEST returns to Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre - St. Louis on May 18.
• Ranken Technical College Midnight Madness at World Wide Technology Raceway
  • May 17, 2024
  • The Ranken Technical College Midnight Madness program fueled by NOS Energy Drinks offers a safer alternative to illegal street racing.
  • Organized yet informal drag racing will take place on the confines of World Wide Technology Raceway’s NHRA-sanctioned ¼-mile drag strip on select Fridays throughout the season.
• Soulard Farmer's Market
  • Wednesdays - Saturdays
  • Soulard Farmers Market is located at 730 Carroll Street in St. Louis, Missouri, a half mile north of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. The market is open Wednesday through Saturday, year round. They feature locally grown and shipped in goods, including: produce, meats, cheeses, spices, gourmet kettle corn, flowers, baked goods, and general merchandise. There are also several different eateries that have many food options, which allows customers the convenience to grab a quick bite to eat and a drink while shopping.
• St. Louis CITY Block Party
  • May 15, 2024
  • Before the St. Louis CITY SC vs LAFC match kickoff, get the party started early with happy hour on Lou Fusz Plaza at CITYPARK and live DJ entertainment! CITY SC presents the free CITY Block Party featuring DJ Chris Brown as well as local food and beverage vendors, fan giveaways, and games and activities for all ages. The block party is free and open to the public.
• St. Louis CITY SC Street Party at Schlafly Tap Room
  • May 15, 2024
  • In celebration of ALL home soccer games, Schlafly will close down "Louligan Street" and support our team the only way they know how: great food, drinks, and fun. There are beer tents, food trucks, special (game day and late night) menus, and more. Get here early and park!
• Sunday Bingo at Tim's Chrome Bar
  • Every Sunday
  • Get in the mood for some fun with an afternoon of BINGO at Tim’s. They'll supply the cards and daubers. Just bring yourself and your BINGO loving friends. Play for some good laughs and a variety prizes. Bar opens at 12 p.m., they'll start BINGO at 3 p.m. Cheers!
• Sunset Rooftop Yoga at Ballpark Village
  • May 16, 2024
  • Unwind on the rooftop of Ballpark Village in St. Louis during a one-hour yoga class led by YogaSix.
  • After the session, nama-stay for exclusive happy hour offers such as $3 domestic beers and $5 select cocktails.
• Taste of Maplewood
  • May 17 - 18, 2024
  • The Taste of Maplewood brings together our area’s most renowned restaurants, beloved boutiques, and one-of-a-kind novelty shops for a street party with live music on two stages, all in the heart of downtown Maplewood. Join us on Friday night for live music and a sampling of food vendors before the main event kicks off on Saturday.
  • In its 16th year, the festival’s vibe is distinct and unmistakable, radiating the culture and character of the local businesses.
• Thursday Nights at the Museum
  • Every Thursday
  • Kick off your weekend at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park! Each Thursday Night at the Museum will be the most fun, engaging, uplifting, thought-provoking, perspective-shaping night of your week. And there are drinks.
  • Join others starting at 5:30pm for happy hour and pop-up activities, such as brief tours, games, and performances. The main stage comes to life at 6:30pm, light appetizers and drinks are available for purchase until 7:00pm, and the Museum’s exhibits are open until 8:00pm for you to explore!
• Tower Grove Farmer's Market
  • Every Tuesday & Saturday
  • Join others every Saturday of the 2023 Tower Grove Farmers Market Season. They'll have over 100 vendors with local produce, meat, flowers, eggs, honey, prepared foods, art, jewelry, live music, and so much more.
• Vietnam: At War and At Home at Soldiers Memorial
  • Running until May 27, 2024
  • In 'Vietnam: At War and At Home' at Soldiers Memorial Military Museum, the story of the war’s origins, execution, conclusion and legacy are presented in engaging, accessible and evocative ways. The exhibit presents a diverse and holistic snapshot of the turbulent times in Vietnam, in the U.S. and in the St. Louis region.

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Sporting Events This Week	Attractions Around the Area	Comedy This Week
St. Louis Cardinals schedule	Anheuser-Busch Brewery	Funny Bone Comedy Club
St. Louis Blues schedule	City Museum	Helium Comedy Club
St. Louis City SC schedule	Gateway Arch	The Improv Shop
St. Louis Battlehawks schedule	Missouri History Museum
St. Louis Billikens schedule	National Blues Museum

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Trivia Nights
Location	Date/Time	More Information
Anheuser-Busch Biergarten	Tuesdays 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Trivia Details
Bar K	Tuesdays at 7:00 pm
City Foundry	Thursdays 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Crack Fox	Mondays 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm	They host a weekly free tournament and game night. Emphasis on Non Alcoholic refreshments and camaraderie.
Joey B's on the Hill	Mondays 8:30 pm - 10:30 pm	Trivia Details
Nick's Pub	Mondays
Felix's Pizza Pub	Tuesdays at 8:00 pm	Trivia Details
ITAP (Delmar Loop)	Wednesdays at 7:00 pm
ITAP (Soulard)	Tuesdays at 7:00 pm
Schlafly Brewpubs (Any Location)	Tuesdays 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm	Trivia Details
Rockwell Beer Co	Tuesdays	Trivia Details (Reservations required)
The Mack	Tuesdays at 8:00 pm	Trivia Details
The Pat Connolly Tavern	Wednesdays at 7:00 pm
The Post	Wednesdays 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm	Trivia Details
Pieces Board Game Bar & Cafe	Wednesdays	Trivia Details
HandleBar	Thursdays at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm	Trivia Details
Steve's Hot Dogs	Tuesdays 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm	Trivia Details
Wellspent Brewing	Thursdays at 7:00 pm

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Live Music This Week
Music Venues	Live Music Around Town
Blueberry Hill Duck Room	1860 Saloon
Chesterfield Amphitheater	BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups
Delmar Hall	Broadway Oyster Bar
Enterprise Center	City Foundry
The Fabulous Fox Theatre	Gallery Pub
The Factory	Game 6 Honky Tonk
Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre	Gaslight Lounge
Off Broadway	The Heavy Anchor
Old Rock House	Jazz St. Louis
The Pageant	Joe's Cafe
Red Flag	The Lot on the Landing
The Sheldon	Tim's Chrome Bar
St. Louis Music Park	McGurk's
St. Louis Symphony Concert Calendar	SoFar St. Louis Secret performances around town
Stifel Theatre	Venice Cafe
	Yaquis on Cherokee

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Recurring Outdoor Activities
Big Muddy Adventures – STL Riverfront Adventure	Big Muddy Adventures was established in 2002. They are the first professional outfitteguiding company providing access to the wild wonders of the Middle Mississippi and Lower Missouri Rivers.
Gateway Arch Events	There are a variety of things to do along the Mississippi River.
Hidden Valley Ski Resort	Ziplining, scenic chairlift rides, and hiking trails opened during the summer. Skiing, snowboarding during the winter.

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https://nymag.com/intelligencearticle/jamaal-bowman-george-latimer-primary-israel.html
The Most Endangered Democrat in America Jamaal Bowman might lose his job over Israel.
By Ross Barkan
Jamaal Bowman, the two-term congressman from Westchester County and the would-be future of the progressive left, is tired of the questions about George Latimer. "Yeah, I mean, I think it says something about his character, his integrity, and his actual leadership for the district. But enough of him. When are we going to talk about me?"
We're at Salsa Picante, a Mexican restaurant in Port Chester, the heavily Latino village on the eastern reaches of the 16th congressional district. It's late April, and Bowman, munching on chicken empanadas, is in a cheery mood, despite my prodding on Latimer. The night before, Summer Lee, a fellow progressive in Congress, had survived a furious primary challenge, and Bowman senses a pattern. "Salut!" he calls out. "I'm excited, hopefully, for the whole progressive movement to zero in on NY-16. Let's get to work."
The work is daunting. Bowman, less than two months from the June 25 primary, is one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents in America. This is in spite of — or because of — his charisma and budding celebrity, his ability to slash through the noise of 435 House members and command attention on a scale only one or two levels removed from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A former public-school principal and self-described hip-hop head, Bowman marries her online savvy with a deft working-class touch. Burly and boisterous, with a knack for whipping up crowds, it is not hard to imagine him as a future presidential candidate, storming through South Carolina with a pack of reporters hanging on his every word.
But first he needs to win. And Latimer, the sitting Westchester County executive, has outraised him in the primary, thanks in part to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — the conservative, ardently pro-Israel political powerhouse that is seeking to crush the pro-Palestinian movement and the left itself. "They do not want any critique, they do not want any accountability, and so what it looks like to people in my district and around the country is that Israel can do whatever it wants even though, to people on the outside looking in, it looks completely wrong and horrible," Bowman says of AIPAC. "One, it doesn't represent all the Jews. It doesn't represent all the Jews in Israel!"
"If Israel represents all the Jews," Bowman continues, revving up now, "and if Israel is doing bad things without accountability, some idiot in the street just makes the connection that, Oh, Jews must be bad because Israel is bad. That's fucking — excuse my language — that's effing scary, man, and dangerous. And as we fight antisemitism, that has to include accountability for Israel."
There was a time, not very long ago, when no member of Congress would speak this way. The Israeli government's response that has starved out Gaza and killed thousands of civilians has catalyzed a new era though. Mass protests have flooded the streets and rocked college campuses, including two, Columbia and City College, that are only a short drive from Westchester. Bowman has been an AIPAC target for his support of conditioning military aid to Israel and his willingness to label the military campaign in Gaza a "genocide," among other criticism lodged at the Jewish state. "AIPAC is one of the most powerful lobbies in America. Well you know what we have got to say to AIPAC? Bring it on," he said at his campaign kickoff earlier this year. "AIPAC, bring it on. We are not scared of none of that. I'm from the streets of New York."
In this deeply polarized moment, with Israel hawks reasserting themselves and the pro-Palestinian movement booming, few primaries in America offer a starker contrast between two candidates.
In one corner is Bowman, 48, the first Black congressman from Westchester who, just four years ago, unseated one of the staunchest Israel defenders in Congress, Eliot Engel. He immediately joined Ocaso-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib as one of the nation's leading progressives. Latimer, meanwhile, is a 70-year-old county executive, ex-state senator, ex-assemblyman, and ex-Rye councilman. (He also had a career, as he likes to remind voters, in marketing and sales.) After October 7, AIPAC asked Latimer to run against Bowman. "I was a reluctant bride," he told me in May, less than 24 hours after the NYPD had raided Columbia's campus to arrest the protesters who had occupied Hamilton Hall.
I met Latimer at the Mount Vernon Metro North station, where he dutifully passed out palm cards ("Good morning, I'm George Latimer, I'm on the ballot") to the few dreary commuters who ambled through. A couple lit up when they recognized him and one man, who was white, seemed to lament "identity politics" while promising his vote to Latimer. And it's easy to make this race, as much as it's become about Israel, about race: Latimer is the white ethnic, Irish and Italian, trying to depose a congressman who told me racism is the number-one issue facing the district and that he views himself, as the first Black man to hold this congressional seat, as a role model to Black youth throughout the area.
The district, which also ropes in a sliver of the northern Bronx including the sprawling and Bowman-friendly Co-op City, is both diverse and plenty segregated, with towns of immense wealth like Scarsdale lying within half-hour drives from working-class Yonkers. It's about 40 percent white, 29 percent Hispanic, and 21 percent Black. Bowman's trouble is that the white, well-heeled vote has soured on him, and Jews are expected to flock to Latimer. Jerry Skurnik, a Democratic consultant and data analyst, estimates that as much as 15 percent of the Democratic electorate who turn out in the primary might be Jewish. A conservative group, Westchester Unites, undertook an effort to register Jewish Republicans as Democrats to impact the primary, in an implicit effort to boost Latimer and undercut Bowman.
Both campaigns agree that Israel alone is not what motivates voters in Westchester and the Bronx, who are mostly consumed with the cost of living. Bowman, as a national figure, may be vulnerable to the very attacks that he once leveled against Engel: He's too high-flown to care adequately about quotidian Westchester concerns. "He has a different brand of politics which appeals more so to getting clicks and likes and retweets and making headlines versus someone who has delivered," said Tyrae Woodson-Samuels, the majority leader of the Westchester County Board of Legislators and a Latimer supporter.
Latimer is the rare insurgent who also profiles as an incumbent and can theoretically neutralize some of the attacks he's taking from the left. If, on Israel, Latimer has held to the rightward fringe of his own party — he refused, in his conversation with me, to support Chuck Schumer's call for Netanyahu to step aside — he is, on almost every other issue, a conventional, center-left Democrat. Until challenging Bowman, he regularly took the Working Families Party ballot line and earned plaudits from progressives for ousting Rob Astorino, his right-wing Republican predecessor as county executive.
"There are lots of people who really like both candidates," says Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic pollster. "For many voters, the most loyal Democratic voters who do turn out in these kinds of primaries, it's sort of like picking between mom and dad."
Latimer, in that sense, was the dream recruit for AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, another influential PAC that is spending heavily in Democratic primaries to bludgeon progressives. His knowledge of the district is encyclopedic and he shows up at every town board meeting, chicken dinner, and parade imaginable; he tells me he's at train stations five days a week and bagel shops on weekends. He has the ability to cut into Bowman's Black support, with endorsements from the Democratic committees in Yonkers and Mount Vernon. Bowman has won the backing of the influential health-care workers' union 1199 SEIU, but Latimer has racked up his own support from civil-service, transit, and firefighters' unions. In his Facebook musings on classic rock and the Knicks, he comes off as earnest and homespun, a Mr. Fix-It paterfamilias.
The cash, though, is anything but homespun. Latimer, never a prolific fundraiser before, banked $3 million at the end of March, double Bowman's haul, and there are top donors who are either AIPAC-affiliated or cut checks to Donald Trump, including Alex Campos, Alex Dubitsky, and Stephen and Carolyn Lauro, who once hosted a Long Island fundraiser for Trump. Another donor is Daniel Loeb, the hedge-fund billionaire who accused Latimer's old ally, the Black State Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, of doing "more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood" because she wasn't a supporter of charter schools, is another donor.
"You're the reason why these guys are donating to me — because of what you said and done," Latimer says of Bowman at the New Rochelle Diner after finishing at the Mount Vernon train stop. "I'm not even soliciting them. I have an event, they send checks. It's not going to change what I do in Congress, Ross, I'm going to be a very progressive congressman on most policy issues."
"It's deeply disturbing that the Latimer campaign is being financed by many of the same people trying to elect Trump," says Jasmine Gripper, the co-director of the Working Families Party's New York chapter. "He's accepting financing from people actively working against the Democratic Party."
The real threat for Bowman is the super-PAC spending. AIPAC and DMFI together can blow past $20 million, if they choose, in attack ads and mail. (AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment.) And he offers them enough fodder, like a House censure for pulling a false fire alarm when Democrats were trying to stall a vote, which Bowman told me was an accident and Latimer believes was intentional. Blog posts Bowman wrote more than a decade ago appeared to give credence to 9/11 conspiracy theories and last week his YouTube page following conspiracy accounts became news. More recently, he was forced to apologize after lavishing praise on Norman Finkelstein, the acerbic anti-Israel scholar, at a panel discussion.
"Bowman has been one of the most anti-Israel members of the entire United States Congress," charges Mark Mellman, the president of DMFI. "If he is defeated, it will send a strong message to the rest of the country." Justice Democrats, the group that helped launch politicians like Bowman into orbit and is fighting desperately now to save him, would not disagree with that last part. "It's absolutely a threat to the progressive movement and I think we have to be clear-eyed about what's at stake here," Usamah Andrabi, the group's communications director, tells me. "The same people spending millions to try to elect Donald Trump and prevent Hakeem Jeffries from being speaker of the House are also spending millions to try to send George Latimer to Congress."
Latimer, who once falsely accused Bowman of taking money "from Hamas," argues the AIPAC cash has only arrived because he was already, long before the primary, genuinely pro-Israel. He also believes Bowman invited their wrath. "If Mike Tyson was in the room and I decided to go over to Mike Tyson and say, 'Hey Mike Tyson, bring it on, yo,' what do I think Mike Tyson might do to me? Whatever I used to be, I wouldn't be the same person after he finished with me."
Latimer has a fondness for analogies. He's sitting with me and his campaign spokeswoman, and there are three paunchy, middle-aged men at a table near us, sipping coffee. "You shouldn't return hostages as part of a negotiation. You should just return them. If someone came into this room, for the sake of argument — terrible analogy, I'm about to make — somebody came into this room and killed those three guys and me, wounded you, and kidnapped her, what right do they have to hold onto her? What right? This is not, 'Let's negotiate now.' Four dead bodies, you're wounded, and she's kidnapped, and God only knows what they did to the people they kidnapped. Now let's ceasefire and have a negotiation? That's ridiculous."
Latimer refuses to critique the Israeli military strategy in Gaza or declare he would, as a congressman, ask the U.S. government to condition military aid to Israel, as Biden has done in opposition to a potential Israel attack on Rafah. Unlike Bowman, he's supportive of the police crackdowns on pro-Palestinian college protests and gladly associates himself with Israel hawks Ritchie Torres, John Fetterman, and Hakeem Jeffries, the AIPAC ally and House Democratic leader who has tempered his own outward pugilism since ascending to the top of his party. Jeffries has endorsed Bowman, a courtesy to an incumbent, but he has not tried to restrain AIPAC.
One irony of the primary is that Bowman, in 2021, broke with the Democratic Socialists of America over his support for funding the Iron Dome, an Israeli missile-defense system, and visiting Israel with J Street, the liberal (and much smaller) counter to AIPAC. J Street, still proudly Zionist, rescinded their endorsement earlier this year after Bowman began, like many activists, to speak of the Gaza death toll in terms of genocide.
Bowman tells me he is for, like almost every American politician, a two-state solution: a nation for the Jews and a nation for the Palestinians. Many of the most prominent activist groups in the nation today, like Within Our Lifetime and Jewish Voice for Peace, call for a single, multinational democratic state that wouldn't necessarily guarantee a Jewish numerical majority — something that even most leftists in elected office shy away from.
I ask Bowman if Israel should always have a Jewish majority. Strikingly, unlike a vast majority of American politicians, he doesn't answer immediately in the affirmative. "It might have been the day after or definitely the weekend after we won against Congressman Engel — who's my guy, Peter Beinart, wrote a one-state piece that I thought was brilliant, I thought it was phenomenal," he says. "Some of this stuff is, like, I'm not Jewish, man, you know? So I don't want to be talking out of turn about Jewish issues. I'm also not Palestinian, right? It's the same kind of deal but because my values are rooted in human rights and I know my district well, I have to comment on these things. And I do."
"I want Palestinians to be free from occupation and apartheid and I want Jews to be safe — and Palestinians to be safe, of course. How do we do that?" he adds. "Jews should have a safe place to exist. What that looks like, the details of that, let's figure that out. That is not Jews are safe, Palestinians are under occupation — those two things can't co-exist anymore."
It would be an exaggeration to say that the future of the progressive movement hinges on the outcome of this one primary. With or without Bowman, the Squad will be larger than it was four years ago, and the activists in the streets won't be deterred if Latimer is sworn into Congress. Unconditional support for Israel is no longer a guarantee within the Democratic Party — look no further than Schumer applying the sort of pressure on the Netanyahu government that AIPAC loathes.
But a Bowman defeat would deprive the left of one of its most prominent voices at a moment when Establishment forces have regrouped from some of their losses over the last decade. The prospect of this not only makes AIPAC giddy but thrills moderate Democrats who are weary of the media attention and influence the Squad perpetually commands. The fear, for progressives, is that this primary could offer an obvious roadmap for the future: hunt out popular — or possibly venal — local politicians who are willing to target leftists and promise them a bounty of campaign cash and super-PAC spending if they take the plunge. Some more just might.

It feels like the concept of trying to improve your mental health is something for women and children - almost every person I see online talking about it is a woman, people post slideshows on tiktok and instagram using cute soft illustrations where you're encouraged to "do yoga" or "drink water" (which is good advice regardless of gender, but both examples feel like they're directed at women. I can't remember the last time I saw a water bottle that wasn't pink or didn't have girly quotes in cursive printed on it).
Even apps that claim to help with self care are designed like a kid's game (like "Finch" for example). They're more focused on gamifying brushing your teeth or dressing up cute characters rather than actually helping you sort your head out. Then again, maybe I haven't been looking hard enough because I've only tried two apps (finch and daylio) so maybe I'm wrong and there are plenty of apps out there that aren't as embarrassing to use.
Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places for help, I know algorithms on social media can make it look like there's more of something than there really is. Even with that in mind, I have no idea how to handle my low points when all the advice I currently have involves methods that make me feel like I'm playing a game (like the grounding technique where you have to point out five things you see and stuff) or appropriating a feminine hobby like meditation or journaling (which sounds stupid now that I'm actually reading it, but it still feels patronising even if I acknowledge that it shouldn't be).
How do I overcome this issue? Is it common to feel this way?

I'm not very experienced in DnD, but it's always been an interest of mine. So, when I entered into a relationship with a DnD super nerd, I finally had an opportunity to feel like I was a part of it. But, as time went on, I realized the table I had joined was kind of... toxic, to say the least.
But, before I dive into that, let me introduce the key players.
First, we have the DM. We'll call him OverLord. He seemed like a decent guy, and was an excellent DM. But he worked long, odd hours and barely had time for his own campaign. He also controlled the discord, and was basically seen as the leader.
Next, his girlfriend, who we'll call Baroness. She wasn't a DnD player, and had little interest in it, but involved herself regardless because she was second in command. The regent of the group, in a way.
Then, there's FireFly. Sassy, dramatic, self centered. Seemed to think he was the main character (in game and IRL).
I also have to mention Cesspool, the rules lawyer.
And of course, Destro. My then boyfriend, now ex.
I also need to warn you that this story is more about the group and its politics than it is about the game.
Most of the group knew each other from college. I met them through Destro, and was made a part of the family after I defended them from an extremely toxic mutual, Major Bludd, who had victimized us all.
For context, Baroness was involved with Major Bludd at one point, but she moved on to OverLord. Major Bludd then wanted her back but she rejected him, so he started harassing her. He also toyed with FireFly. Although the group didn't cut all ties with him, they got sick of his bs and distanced themselves form him for the most part.
Before I met them, Major Bludd told me that the group was manipulative and toxic. That they had lied to make him look bad, and he was actually the victim of their gaslighting and bullying. I believed him for a time, but eventually he strung me along, used, and betrayed me, and it sucked. So, bitter, I reached out to Destro to find out the truth. Then I confronted Major Bludd, and that was how I was inducted into their group.
This group appeared to be the best sort of friends you could hope for. They were generous, involved and caring. But if you dug a little deeper, they were very cliquey.
OverLord and Baroness were put on a pedestal, and they controlled everything, whether it was justified or not. Everything had to happen on their terms, and it seemed they were beyond reproach. The group only played DnD twice in two whole years, because they controlled the schedule and their time was the only time that mattered.
Most of the members were also stinking rich, and it made them both delusional and judgemental — I also got the sense they weaponized generosity. But that's just an observation. Maybe I'm being judgey too.
One weekend, the boys wanted to play a sci fi campaign Baroness and I had no interest in. So we had a girl's weekend instead.
While I was at her place, Major Bludd caused some ripples in the background, probably because he found out Baroness and I were at the same place at the same time and he started freaking out. I'm not sure. So two other group members called us to interrogate us about what he did, so they could take care of the dumpster fire.
Now, the entire time she spoke to the other guys about it, something didn't sit right with me. I got the sense that she was enjoying the drama. She kept emphasizing that she was the most important part of it because she was Major Bludd's "golden toy", and that she was the only one who could ever control him, or get him to simmer down, because she was the center of his universe and the rest of us were powerless. It felt like she was proud of the fact that he was a scumbag to her because it made her important somehow.
She also compared our experiences with Major Bludd in a way that made it seem like I got her sloppy seconds, and that she was somehow more of a victim than anyone else, and that he only hurt me to get to her and a whole bunch of other crap.
There was a time after that I got a message from am obviously fake account, insulting Baroness (and me), and defending Major Bludd up and down. I showed it to Baroness and she got upset that I responded (telling the person to F off) instead of waiting for her to tell me what to say.
Baroness also had a habit of insulting and belittling Destro in backhanded ways, and deriding his standard of living, while constantly praising OverLord, as if to imply I got the short end of the stick.
Fast forward a month or two, and I get to play DnD with the group for the first and only time. It was a blast, but it got derailed by some of the dudes meta gaming for hours and going so far off the tracks the session never recovered.
Baroness tagged along that weekend, even though she wasn't playing. I think she was expecting more attention than she got, so when it wasn't forthcoming, she became... sour — at least towards me.
So, skip ahead again, about a year and a half, and the table finally plans another session.
Destro told me that it was going to be hosted at Baronness's parent's house, and they had set some juvenile ground rules, most importantly a maximum head count.
So OverLord thought it best to only involve the OG players. He apparently apologized profusely, and made it seem like an uncomfortable but necessary decision he had to make to keep the peace.
The problem is that I was the only one who didn't count as such, and so, I was the only one who wasn't invited.
It bugged me a little bit, but I wasn't too offended by it. I just thought it was ridiculous that a group of fully fledged adults were being treated, and behaving, like high schoolers who needed parental permission to play Dungeons and Dragons. It never occurred to them that it didn't have to be hosted there, and that a group of mid 20-30 year olds could surely find a space where their entire table had room.
But of course, no one could question OverLord or Baroness, and the two of them don't know what compromise is.
Anyway, Destro didn't want to go without me and chose to sit it out last minute, even though I assured him I didn't mind.
A few weeks later, FireFly let slip that a new player, one of Baroness's friends no one else knew, had joined them.
So much for OG players only.
So Destro brought it up with Cesspool, who agreed it was a dick move.
We suspect Baroness orchestrated it out of spite, because she was used to being the only rose among the thorns. So, when I joined their table, instead of joining her on the couch for the weekend, it angered her.
All of this might sound like a catfight, but it's aggravating that I was lied to. I was never welcome at the table the second time, but instead of telling me that (or why), they chose to tell petty lies, and cover it up with a lame excuse that I hadn't been with them long enough, only to turn around and invite someone unfamiliar in my place.
Though it could be that FireFly had a hand in it. I'm not sure and have no reason to believe that, but I figured I'd mention the problem between us just in case.
There was a time when Destro and I got into a heated argument over something disgusting (and criminal) he had done and tried to hide from me. FireFly witnessed it and turned against me without second thought, even though I was not in the wrong. Still, I apologized to him and tried to rebuild that bridge, but it wasn't good enough. He decided I was beneath him, and treated me like scum after that.
Maybe he turned others against me, but I don't think so. Cesspool and the other dudes were only ever warm to me.
Now, for the best bit. Skip ahead even further, about 6 months after the pettiness.
Destro hadn't been a good partner at all in the 3 or so years I was with him. And I, sick half to death, burned out, stressed, and struggling with severe panic disorder, had had enough. I don't need to go into detail about what actually happened, but I had my final straw with him, and tried to break up. It escalated into an argument, and then into violence — so severe I couldn't walk, or see out of my right eye because it had filled with blood. Suffice to say I ended up in hospital, and that was the last I ever saw, or ever will see, of him.
After that, Cesspool threatened me with a lawsuit because I mentioned his first name in a Facebook comment on a post about the abuse. I was then promptly removed from their discord, unfriended and blocked by everyone, and that was that.
My experience with these people left a sour taste in my mouth. Their cliquey-ness. Their snoot. Their childish behaviour and dramatics. How disorganized they were (I mean come on, only 2 sessions in 2 years is ludicrous). Their gatekeeping. Their cultish dynamic. It almost put me off playing DnD ever again.
But why let a few rotten apples ruin your love for fresh, home baked, apple pie?
Destro took everything out of me. I won't let him, or his toxic AH friends, ruin the little joys I have.
I'll find my table eventually. And it won't be full of catty losers who side with abusive pieces of shit.

I want to end my friendship with my best friend but I feel like a terrible person if I do
Hi! I (25F) recently went on my vacation with my best friend (25F) and since then, our friendship has not been the same. Prior to vacation, she was acting kind of strange - at least strange for her. She had recently started dating someone and I had asked her about it. Multiple times she stated it was just a friend but I found out they were together. This was very odd because she has always been honest and up front, but I didn’t think too much of it and moved on. We put $500 in each for vacation. She asked if she could have the $500 back because she didn’t have insurance so she used her money to go to the dr and had nothing for vacation. She said she’d pay me back. I said okay and sent her back the money. Obviously she hasn’t paid it back.
The vacation was a disaster and lots of tension due to how she acted in public drunk but I can forgive and move on. However, her and I did have a talk after vacation and I told her how I felt about her not paying me back, her not being honest and that she was acting out of character. I thought it went well. She had asked me to forgive her and that she didn’t want to throw away a friendship over it. I said ok.
a few days after that, she refused to come to my engagement. She said she was working but posted on Snapchat at being at the boyfriend’s house. I already knew the engagement was gonna happen for context but she was going to help my fiancee set up the engagement but backed out last minute. Yes, she was fully aware of the date of the engagement.
Since then, we just really don’t talk. She just makes shade posts on Facebook about me. I ignore it, even though it hurts. She was supposed to be my maid of honor. I just feel so devastated. I want to believe she’s not acting like ke herself and that this isn’t her. However, at the same time, I’m so drained by everything that has transpired and can’t keep forcing a friendship.
I feel bad for throwing away the friendship because she states she can’t afford to pay me back (even in payments). I feel like it’s wrong to be like that towards some struggling. But I also don’t want to throw away a friendship when I know she’s struggling mentally too and may have an affect on her. I don’t know. I’m lost. Sorry if the post is all over the place, I’m just very devastated. Feel free to ask questions! Am I wrong for wanting to end the friendship at this point?
TL;DR I want to throw away my friendship because she owes me $500, has been sketchy/lying, and didn’t show up to my engagement.